Kite song

The story always begins like this: an old father who is rich and royalty; A virtuous mother, a collection of human virtues, and then there must be a beautiful, delicate, spoiled as the apple of the eye. Unfortunately, this story is not exempt from the custom of generations of people who listen to the story to construct this first step layout.

It happened the day a kite with a song flew in Chinatown. The washermen were now coming back with empty carts, having delivered properly ironed clothes, sheets, and table-cloths; Fish line has completed the acquisition in the morning, abacus beads with wet silver fish scales; The men in the tea shop yawned as they took off the doors one by one, and the people watched a colorful phoenix kite fly over the white morning sea. There was a small music box on the kite, tinkling a tune back and forth. People said it was Mrs May's daughter's birthday. Some thought, a little sadly, that we were a good kite-flying people; It was a people who were good at making some inexplicable sustenance with kites.

But Boss May was the only one who had the spirit to make and fly kites. Every year Boss May comes up with new ideas for kites. Once a golden centipede flew, a hundred feet moved. People in the street watched the kite flying high and low, and then remembered what they were busy with. They woke up and went to work. Only one man stood watching in the middle of the road, a gnarled throat protruding from his heavy upturned neck. The boy riding his bicycle to school rang his bell and went round him. The boy glanced back at him, confirming that the ghost, in his thirties, was a vagabonds.

The next day it was known that the tramp, Mr. Kent, had been taken in by Boss May. For Mr. Kent had wandered all the way from the northern edge of the Pacific Ocean in search of Boss May's wife, Helen. The tramp, Mr. Kent, with a British knapsack on his back, American boots, and a dozen German iron crosses in his pockets, passed through the thickest of the jewellers, and stopped in front of Master May's house, which looked out on the bay.

It was Helen, the protagonist of Eureka's famous disappearance. Kent, the tramp, thought she was not so ugly as the townspeople said. In fact, the woman who had just entered middle age had a plain appearance, and there was nothing particularly ugly about her. Helen's pale, almost silvery eyes gave a slow, wary smile to the stranger, as the tramp called out her name.

'You don't remember me, Helen,' said Kent warmly. But surely you remember the restaurant near the church where your father and mother used to go? The one where your father used to play marbles? -- My father is a cook in that restaurant!

Helen blinked her slightly protruding silver eyes and tried to remember: churches, restaurants, a dark billiard room in a restaurant is true...

'When you left home,' said Kent more warmly, 'I was fighting in Europe, and came back to hear about you in the neighbourhood...

Helen interrupted the vagabond man with a drooping eyelid; Is your father all right? She remembered vividly the old smell of tobacco in the billiard room and the huge specimen of salmon on the wall. But she couldn't remember who the cook in that restaurant was. She thought her neighbors still talked about her because it was beyond their comprehension that she had run away from home with a Chinese man twenty years her senior. Helen could imagine how her father, the postman, had told the whole town that he had returned every letter and Christmas card from Helen. And then the whole town denies 16 years of Helen's life in town for running off with the Chinamen.

Homeless Kent said my father sent me to find you. He said that Helen was different from the people in the town, that Helen had seen a lot of things.

Helen's eyes became tense as a car drove up. The man who got out had a sharp beard on his chin. The tramp Kent thought that the Chinaman did not have the blue, malady face and small, thievish eyes that the townspeople had made him out to have. In his opinion, this Chinaman was no different from any other Chinaman except that he was small and thin. The girl who got out of the car confused the bum a little, and he stared at her like a chimi born to dogs and cats. The girl asked Helen aloud if she had seen the kite with the song. She was also like all girls, in front of a stranger always somewhat active, even if the stranger did not shy away from his wandering status. She was an elegant girl of fourteen, with a translucent complexion and a ringlet of curls at the edge of her hat. What makes her perfect, Kent thought, is that she's closer to the real and closer to the unreal. Helen told him that this was their daughter, called Ingrid, who was used to calling her by her Chinese milk name: Yingying.

Helen introduced homeless Kent to her husband as a childhood friend.

Without waiting for his wife to finish, the man known as Boss May waved the homeless man in. 'Helen has lived with me for nearly 20 years and this is the first time she has seen anyone from home,' he said. Boss May knew that his wife was exaggerating the friendship between the homeless man and her father. Boss May did not smile much, but there was an ineffable gentleness, which made Kent feel secure after years of wandering. He thought the town's description of the Chinaman lacked objectivity.

As he walked into the yard, Kent, a tramp, felt the half-blood girl's fuzzy eyes on his body and face. For the briefest of moments she and his eyes drifted back and forth. Her eyes were green with black, and they were the blackest he had ever seen. The secret look in the tramp's eyes made the little girl feel fresh. She saw that the tramp's ears had a conspicuous layer of grime in them, that the sea breeze was still in his thick hair, and that his eyes shone with the light of walking at night. Kent's leather boots were worn out. They were the toughest and most scoundrelled shoes that the little girl Yingying had ever seen in her fourteen years of life.

May introduced Kent to her old friend at her daughter's birthday party that night, saying that the white guy was the new manager of the store. But a suspiciously acting tramp had been heard passing through the street that morning. These streets, any time a person does not belong to their own, will be in the air spread a wave of unease.

In this way, homeless Kent became May's manager. Dressed in a gray suit bought at a pawnshop, he often stood in front of Master May's dark shop. He always sat on the stone lion to the left or right of the door when there were no visitors, and it suddenly became clear that the two stone beasts were not big or fierce. Kent, sitting on the stone lion, crossed his legs and smoked, his eyes as if he were amused by a joke that had sprung up in his heart. As soon as anyone came, Kent would run out into the street and persuade him to enter the shop. When Master May came to fetch the register after closing in the evening, Kent told him that the two mahogany cabinets should go there, and the painted pottery jars here. Or, he said, the problem is the lights. I wish I had more lights.

Boss May was always easy to talk to, and he nodded at every word Kent said. Then Kent took off his suit and began to work with it, thickening his neck and widening his shoulders. Soon the shop smelled of sweat from his armpits. Soon Kent was free from discussion with Boss May. Boss May came to his increasingly strange shop, only considerate: Kent you work hard, Kent you have turned the shop into an exhibition hall. Kent changed the customers of Boss Mei. There were often seven or eight white women in the shop listening to Kent talk eloquently about the three-colored glazed pottery of Qin brick, Han tile, Tang Dynasty. All it takes is one drop of Boss May's imprecise archaeological knowledge to turn Kent into a story of profound mystery. Whether it was Kent's constant shifting of the furnishings, or his ability to tell a story, Mr. May's business was alive. In the second month after Kent changed his status from homeless to manager, the two red sandalwood dragon and Phoenix beds, which were the most difficult to sell, were sold. Mr. May increasingly felt that he was redundant in the store, unable to sit or stand while Kent chatted and chatted with white customers over cigars. One of the two clerks who had been employed was fired by Master May on the second day of Kent's arrival. The last was named Beidou, a son with an extra finger on his right hand, who was retained because he could use an abacus with six fingers more than twice as fast as the others. Beidou sent Boss Mei to the workshop behind the store to make old copper coins with asphalt.

One afternoon, Boss Mei went into the shop and saw Yingying lying half on the mahogany couch, opposite a tripod with a man's waist hidden under the black curtain. Boss Mei was about to ask Yingying to put away her displeasing posture when the tripod made a "snaking" sound. Boss May remembered that it was called a camera. Said Master May, what is this!

Kent, directing Yingying to change her position, replied eagerly to Boss May that the man had been hired for advertising, and that the main reason why things did not sell was the absence of advertising.

I can't sell my children without selling things. Boss May was so anxious that even Yingying forgot to tell her. Kent blinked and watched the beard of the immutable Boss tremble thin under his chin. While watching the rare Beidou, he picked his nose with the left finger of his right hand. After hearing the words of Boss Mei, he forgot his finger in his nose.

Helen came out of the workshop at the back of the shop. She told boss May that the advertisement was her approval. Who opened the business does not advertise? She saw her husband run a hand through his salt-and-pepper gray beard, and knew that this was the moment when his temper and determination came up. 'Good wine needs no bush,' he said. 'Why advertise?' Only the six - fingered Beidou understood this sentence. Kent's only grey suit was open to reveal red and black trouser suspenders, and he looked both civil and military. He concentrated on quietly setting things up with the photographer, knowing that this could be left to Helen to take over Boss May.

Yingying's eyes were bright with green circles and bright red lips, and the blush on her face seeped out from under the thick white powder. Boss May was terrified by the sudden strange flamboyance of Yingying. English beauty has never contained such sharpness.

Helen has begun to argue with Boss May by using words like "old-fashioned" and "stuffy". She reminded Mrs May that the Great Recession was now spreading, followed by a new set of words: competitive, active. May wondered that it was only three months since the tramp Kent had arrived, and even Helen, who had always been indifferent to the world, was using the word "Great Depression". Helen said, it's going to be the thirties!

What about the thirties? Is that fourteen year old Gu who's been throwing his head around like that? So what about the Great Depression? Ghost depression go!

Helen had first heard her husband refer to her people as "Gweilo" to her face. Her mostly white eyebrows turned red, which ran down the bridge of her long nose, and at last even the area where her lips met her nose turned red. As the pale woman of thirty changed colors, Boss May heard her say, with a clear, stern look, I hope you know what you're talking about.

Boss May felt cold, his wife at this time in a low-key show that she never easily let out of the sense of superiority.

Even Yingying was disturbed by the low tone and heavy formality of her mother's words. As she watched her parents, she accepted Kent's manipulations and the secret compliments that flew from the corners of his eyes. The army and the wanderings gave him a vividness, a well-placed sordid playfulness. Yingying loved the way his thumbs flicked the black and red stripes on his trousers. The restlessness of all the movements of the thirtysomething man gave the fourteen-year-old mixed-race girl an unfamiliar thrill of pleasure. The man who followed the kite made Yingying wake up every morning with a vague expectation.

Boss Mei told Yingying to go home with him immediately. Yingying put away the gestures and expressions Kent had put on. Boss May had spoken to her daughter in this tone no more than three times in her memory, a dictatorial, grim tone. Helen's face turned from red to white in this tone, restoring her original indifference and passivity.

Kent is still passionately recommending the need for advertising to Boss May. In the fluid language of a Chubatka tramp who had wandered from place to place in the wider world, he spoke his pitch for Boss May's business. He did not understand the meaning of Helen's momentary silence, and was only witticising that she might end up in Hollywood.

Boss May doesn't respond to Kent. His face was earthy as if he were gravely ill. He told Helen to wipe off Yingying's clown face, took her home, and ordered the Big Dipper to help him to restore the layout of the shop to its original appearance.

Kent watched eagerly as Mr. May moved everything to the same position he had held for years. The dust danced wildly in a solitary beam of light, and Boss May said to Kent, Go and put out that lamp. Kent thought he had misheard his order, which was directed entirely to a dollar-a-day busboy like Beidou. The photographer sees the signs and quickly dismantles the camera equipment while watching the same shop narrow and recede before his eyes. Kent saw May's master stride past, and with a gesture of his hand shut down the only light in the shop. The dust becomes silent and slowly falls to its place. Boss May asked Kent to help Beidou move the rosewood grandfather clock, said, back to the original place. Kent sneezed three times at the thoroughly restored shop. The cheap goods are placed in front of the store, and the magnificent and graceful are hidden in the depths of the store. Kent's face was reduced to tears by the violent vibration of the sneeze, and he saw darkness and disorder all back again, in the dark and mysterious old shop of Master May.

It was strange to Kent that Mrs May should remember the confusion of the arrangement so well, and that the seams of everything fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle with a high degree of precision.

Boss May understands Kent's power. In the three months since Kent arrived, the profit from the sale has doubled. But he knew better the danger Kent contained. He was not afraid of Kent's occasional conversation with Helen in the drawing-room about the people and things in his small town. Although Helen's father denied Helen, the whole town almost followed the old postman denied Helen, still can not stop Helen to listen to Kent sweet and sour about the town people's joys and sorrows. Sometimes Helen asked again what she had already heard, and the ready giggles of laughter broke out in the middle of Kent's speech. Boss May was not afraid of what might happen between Kent and his wife. At fifty-eight, Boss May had not lived fifty-eight years for nothing. It was clear to him that Kent's ambition was not Helen. What Kent's ambition was, however, was not clear to Boss May. So May felt that Kent was too dangerous for him to guard against. What puzzled Mr. May was that Kent, in a loud argument with him, had shouted loudly for his resignation, and had even openly pointed out Mr. May's ignorance and poor taste in business. But the next day Kent appeared in the store again in his only grey suit, with a bright face, as if he had not seen the store resume its labyrinth of attempts at business according to Mr. May's unreasonable eccentricness.

Mrs May, of course, was delighted that Kent would never mention resigning. This grievous bruise was accepted without trace by Kent, and it was this that frightened Master May: what great scheme could have brought a man down so far. Kent, as usual, took stock of the old and new stock and attended to the white women who were mature customers. In his spare moments he sat cross-legged on the stone lion by the door, hunching his shoulders voraciously and puffing on his cigar. Mr. May had promised to give him a 30% raise once his three-month probation was over. Three months and twelve days later, Kent had not said a word about his salary. Boss Mei kept asking Beidou who Kent met that day and what he did that day. Beidou told him that Kent had sent him to the bakehouse two blocks away to buy half a pound of biscuits and make a pot of tea when the rich white ladies came.

Christmas