THE TWO SISTERS(花河--英文版)(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Wang Hua

出版社：中译出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

THE TWO SISTERS(花河--英文版)试读：

A thirteen-year-old girl tends to be all at sea when forced to think about significant issues in life. However, White Peony could make plans and arrangements with a calm and clear mind. In fact, she didn't show her talents and seemed as ordinary as her younger sister Red Apricot until an unprecedentedly serious outbreak of Yuqiu Disease (a disease with such symptoms as a swollen sore throat, causing difficulty in swallowing) struck the Flower River area. That year, people of all ages and both sexes, including landlords and tenant farmers on both sides of Flower River, suffered from Yuqiu Disease, which gave them stomachaches. The symptoms lasted for more than ten days and many people died. The parents of White Peony and Red Apricot, as well as White Peony's future mother-in-law, were among those.

As a person in the family of White Peony's future husband had passed away and White Peony was an orphan, the family wanted her to marry into them. The man was named Wang Chong. He was seven or eight years older than White Peony and had long been anxious to marry. However, White Peony said she wanted to stay with her younger sister until she grew up. In her eyes, both Wang Chong's family and her own were tenant farmers of Lord Wang Tu, so whether she married into the Wangs or not made no difference.

White Peony had to think carefully about the future of herself and her younger sister.

The autumn harvest was coming soon and everyone was busy harvesting maize and cutting paddy. White Peony took her sister to the fields to sell crops instead of harvesting. She found two people who were willing to buy her crops, and led them to the edge of a field. They discussed how much the maize in this plot was worth and how much the paddy in that plot was worth. The two people offered a fair price which White Peony accepted, so she would not be the one to harvest the crops.

White Peony sold all of her family's crops except some rations for her and her sister to keep body and soul together for half a month. She left no ground for retreat and her goal was to marry into the Wangs. A few days after the harvest, the Wangs sent someone to collect the rent. "We have nothing to hand in," White Peony said.

"Where are your crops?" the collector asked. "They were used to offset debt before being harvested. We don't have any crops." "Do you have money?" "We wouldn't have repaid the debt with crops if we had." "Then what can we do?" "Take back the fields. We can't cultivate them."

"Taking back the fields is one thing and this year's rent is another."

White Peony uttered no sound and wore a stubborn expression.

The person sent by the Wangs was Zhu Daxiu, a man who had been brought up by Wu Xianggui, the landlord's wife. Although the Wangs were a family of landlords, the property was not so large that a steward was necessary. Wang Tu didn't handle affairs. He was born to be fun-loving, and enjoyed walking dogs and playing chess. He had previously been sent to collect rent, but if a tenant proposed to offset the rent with a dog he would agree without thinking, and if a tenant knew how to play chess he would play chess with them to offset the rent. This was why Wu Xianggui stopped him from collecting rent after three months, and started to take Zhu Daxiu with her instead. Zhu Daxiu was Wu Xianggui's nephew and a smart, studious and trustworthy young man. It only took two or three quarters for Wu Xianggui to teach him how to collect rent. Zhu Daxiu was more merciless than Wu Xianggui. At first, she had taken Zhu Daxiu with her to collect rent. Now Zhu Daxiu took a dog with him to collect it. The dog was fierce and its fur stood on end from head to foot. Even the fur on its face stood on end like the fur on its body. The dog always had bloodshot eyes. It looked like a slovenly villain who drank strong liquor all day. The villain could read Zhu Daxiu's meaningful glances, and attacked whoever annoyed its master.

However, the dog didn't bite White Peony because Zhu Daxiu didn't show anger. He said, "If you can't pay the rent, you'll have to be a servant girl to pay the rent." White Peony made no reply. This was not because she was afraid of being a servant girl; she had to remain calm because Zhu Daxiu was falling into her trap, and she feared that any negligence would mess up her plan.

Zhu Daxiu said, "You can't solve the problem by keeping silent. You and your sister have to work for the Wangs to pay the rent you owe. You can't go home until it's paid off."

"Fine," White Peony said.

She took her nine-year-old sister Red Apricot and followed Zhu Daxiu. Red Apricot was crying but White Peony pulled her sleeve and whispered in her ear, "Don't cry. Be obedient and I promise you'll have a better life." Red Apricot stopped crying. She had no idea what the future would bring, and she didn't have enough experience to convince her sister that it would be no good working for the Wangs. All she knew was that her sister had a plan and it was proper to listen to her.

Zhu Daxiu brought White Peony and Red Apricot back, but Wu Xianggui was unhappy. "They have sharp tongues and they'll stay here for a long time," she said to Zhu Daxiu, "but they're no good at work. Do you think this is cost-efficient?" Hearing this, Wang Tu who was standing aside cracked a joke: "How can you make a horse run without feeding it?" He winked and cast a glance at White Peony and Red Apricot as though they were a team. Wu Xianggui detested Wang Tu's whimsical attitude. She gave him a dirty look and walked away. Zhu Daxiu followed her quickly. He was very worried about her unhappiness. As Wu Xianggui was angry, he had to shut his mouth and follow her.

Zhu Daxiu came back again and shouted domineeringly at them, "Come to the central room with me right now." White Peony and Red Apricot followed him to the central room, where they saw Wu Xianggui sitting in an armchair smoking a long tobacco pipe. As tall as a man, the long pipe had been left by Wang Tu's father and it represented the authority of the Wangs.

Besides Wu Xianggui and Zhu Daxiu, the maidservant Aunt Pear Flower also stood in the central room and seemed to have just been reprimanded. Her grievance twisted her face like crumpled paper and she seemed on the verge of tears. White Peony and Red Apricot stoked her anger as they walked in. "These two little bitches? I should have known it would be such . . ." she began, but Wu Xianggui stopped her with a simple "Ahem". Aunt Pear Flower had to hold her tongue, but this didn't mean she had no complaint. She had been fired by Wu Xianggui when White Peony and Red Apricot arrived. She had worked for the Wangs for three years. She had been there since the day Wu Xianggui gave birth to her baby son, and it was she who had raised him for three years.

Although it was Wu Xianggui who fired her, she shifted her resentment to White Peony and Red Apricot. As Wu Xianggui didn't allow her to curse, she intended to pounce on White Peony and beat her. She couldn't vent her hatred until she had torn White Peony into pieces and swallowed her. Of course, she couldn't actually do this. Now that White Peony and Red Apricot were members of the Wangs, how could she beat them at will? Zhu Daxiu pulled her away easily.

Wu Xianggui turned to White Peony and Red Apricot and said, "Listen, little girls. Aunt Pear Flower has to go home if you stay. You'll be taking the bread out of her mouth."

"You asked us to pay the rent by labor. We'll leave now if you don't want us to stay," White Peony replied.

Wu Xianggui cast a hateful glance at her. She didn't like servants answering back, let alone a little girl. She took a deep puff on the pipe, blew the smoke out with a rush and said, "Of course you need to stay. Otherwise how can you pay the rent? But since you're here, Aunt Pear Flower has to go home, so you should pay this year's salary to her . . ."

"This isn't right. Aunt Pear Flower works for you, not for us!" White Peony interrupted.

Unexpectedly, Wu Xianggui heard White Peony out patiently this time. She suddenly found it interesting to let White Peony answer back. She was extremely curious about what she would do next. She leaned over to White Peony and said in a soft voice, "Aunt Pear Flower wouldn't have to go home if you weren't here. You two should take the blame. Even if the Wangs don't ask you to pay the salary, Aunt Pear Flower will." She stared at White Peony, wondering what she would say. White Peony was silent for a moment under her gaze, and then said, "Whatever you want." Wu Xianggui hadn't expected that she would give in so soon. Dissatisfaction and disappointment showed in her face. Aunt Pear Flower suddenly shouted, "Then I'm in distress!"

"The Wangs won't underpay you," Wu Xianggui said, "but these girls should be responsible, which means they should pay your salary."

"That means I get nothing. These little girls couldn't pay my salary even if they walked the streets!"

"The Wangs are fair, so how about this? Let them pay your salary from their two years of labor. I'll pay your salary after they've worked for two years." She then turned to White Peony and said, "As for your debt, it should be paid in labor within two years."

Aunt Pear Flower shouted again, "This is not right!"

Wu Xianggui said, "I have the final say. This is right."

This plan brought Wu Xianggui great joy, but White Peony was scornful of it. That night, lying in bed, she said to Red Apricot, "That scheming witch doesn't know that we want to work for the Wangs in the long term."

"I don't want to," Red Apricot replied.

"No, but we have to."

"I don't want to anyway."

"Don't be good-for-nothing. Be obedient."

She continued, "In fact, the witch didn't ask Aunt Pear Flower to go home because we're here. It's because the youngest son of the witch died, and it's useless for Aunt Pear Flower to stay here. I didn't expose the witch for fear of displeasing her. Remember, try not to provoke the witch."

Now White Peony had finished the first step of her life goal, and she could breathe a sigh of relief.Chapter 2hite Peony took Aunt Pear Flower's place completely. Aside from Wbabysitting, she cooked, fed the pigs and dogs, washed clothes and cleaned for the Wangs. Red Apricot was too young, so Wu Xianggui asked her to herd the cows. The five cows of the Wangs had been herded for many years by Li Shitou, the youngest son of Li Heshui. Now Wu Xianggui asked Li Shitou to go to the fields with his father, and for Red Apricot to herd the cows in his place.

White Peony was very satisfied with this result.

Because of her satisfaction, White Peony worked wholeheartedly. Wu Xianggui soon found that she worked harder than Aunt Pear Flower ever had, and she was even better than Aunt Pear Flower at some jobs. Moreover, she was more patient than Aunt Pear Flower with Peony, Wu Xianggui's eldest daughter. The 13-year-old Peony was spoiled and had many bad habits. Not a day went by when she did not torment others with her various tricks. In the past, Aunt Pear Flower often turned to Wu Xianggui when Peony caused trouble. Although Wu Xianggui was not always on her side to rescue her from a standoff, she turned to her anyway. White Peony was different. If Peony said that White Peony had not washed her clothes properly, White Peony would wash them again and do as she asked until Peony found it boring to make trouble. At the table, if Peony criticized the food and asked White Peony to cook something else for her, White Peony would cook without a word until Peony was satisfied. From this, Wu Xianggui drew the conclusion that White Peony was very honest.

As White Peony was such a good girl, Wu Xianggui was bound to like her. She assigned her some work related to privacy, such as emptying the chamber pot. She had never asked others to do this from the day she became a child bride to the day she managed household affairs as the authority figure of the Wangs. She had accomplished this by her own efforts. It took a good while to become the master of the house from a child bride. During this period she gradually handed over affairs to others. Now she only did some needlework, such as stitching leggings for Wang Tu. Her leggings could be stitched by others, but she had to stitch Wang Tu's leggings herself. Aside from needlework, emptying the chamber pot was the only thing left. She stopped others from meddling because she thought it was taboo for a woman.

As White Peony was an honest and dutiful girl, and Wu Xianggui was getting older, it was not out of the question to make some changes. One morning Wu Xianggui told White Peony, "Go to my room and empty the chamber pot." White Peony showed no dislike towards this new job. She was even irrepressibly excited. Soon after coming to the house, she began to encounter Wang Tu deliberately. For example, she tried to buy time when feeding his dog, hoping he would come to see the dog and bump into her. She filled Wang Tu's bowl with less rice so that she would have a chance to refill it once or twice. But there were limited opportunities to approach him because Wang Tu didn't like staying at home. Wu Xianggui's decision gave her a good reason to approach him. Besides, he got up late, so she had many opportunities.

With her heart pounding, White Peony walked into the room of Wang Tu and Wu Xianggui. The room was filled with a strange smell which irritated some of her senses but pleased others. The chamber pot was under the bed. The bed had carvings and an attractive mosquito net on which Wu Xianggui had embroidered a pair of mandarin ducks. Wang Tu was curled up sleeping soundly with his face facing outward. White Peony felt like jumping onto the bed. She took the chamber pot and left quickly.

White Peony wanted to go back but the chamber pot had to be emptied in the toilet, and she couldn't take it inside until it got dark. She gawked at it for a while, as though she saw Wang Tu in the wry-mouthed ceramic pot. However, as she lingered, Wang Tu came along. He couldn't find the chamber pot when he woke up, so he had to go to the toilet. Finding that White Peony was there, he was taken aback. As he was ready to turn around, she caught up with him. He asked, "You're done?"

She answered, "Yes."

He was ready to go to the toilet, but he asked, "Is it you who empties the chamber pot?" "Uh-huh," White Peony said. She felt that a burning tongue was licking her face, which irritated her face but gave her heart a lot of comfort.

"Ha-ha, you're a little girl!"Wang Tu laughed.

"I'm not so young," she replied.

Wang Tu went inside. His voice came out from the door and window covered with shabby sacks, "Ha-ha, how old are you?"

Hearing the sound of water, White Peony walked away quickly.

That night, White Peony put the chamber pot back under the bed and passed Wang Tu as she was coming out. He was going to the room to sleep. He talked about White Peony after he went to bed. "Did you ask the little girl to empty the chamber pot?" he asked Wu Xianggui with a casual air.

"Yes. Anything wrong?"

"No. I mean if you didn't ask her to do so, she definitely wouldn't dare."

White Peony had been thinking about catching Wang Tu's attention since she first came to the Wangs. For the relation between men and women, her petty trick seemed insufficiently clever. She was too young. At first, she thought she had taken a stride towards success by taking the job of emptying the chamber pot. She had been doing so for a long time, but Wang Tu never looked at her in earnest. She wouldn't have known how to open up a new situation but for Wang Tu's hint.

Wang Tu slept with the daughter-in-law of the tenant Zhou Dasuan, so he waived a quarter's rent for him. Zhu Daxiu went to collect the rent and brought back a rent-waiving note personally written by Wang Tu. The note didn't say that Wang Tu had slept with Zhou Dasuan's daughter-in-law, but Zhu Daxiu and Wu Xianggui both knew what had taken place. It was not the first time Wang Tu had done such a thing and written such a note. The Wangs had more than thirty tenants. Such a note had been written before to tenants who had young women. Wu Xianggui was so angry that she almost spat blood when she saw the note for the first time. The people of the Flower River area all knew that the tenants of the Wangs were not afraid of their landlord and even liked him. They cursed Wu Xianggui and Zhu Daxiu every day, but they laughed and joked with Wang Tu. He liked idling about on both banks of Flower River. He sometimes went to his tenants'houses to drink water. If there were young women, he would stay for a while. These young women were not afraid of Wang Tu. After the appearance of the first rent-waiving note, they proposed a condition to him: "You can sleep with me but you must promise to waive my family's rent for a quarter." Wang Tu always readily agreed. The men knew how these notes were obtained, but they didn't blame the young women or Wang Tu. They didn't care for the same reason Wu Xianggui did: a quarter's rent. Those whose rent was exempted didn't care, but Wu Xianggui cared about not receiving that rent. She had scorned the first rent-waiving note. She tore it up and told the tenant that it didn't count. However, Wang Tu wrote another note. Then he told her that she may have the final say on other affairs but he had the final say on that, because it was he and not she who had slept with the tenant's young woman.

After that, the young women put away the sense of shame in their hearts. When it came time to pay the rent, they vied with one another to seduce Wang Tu. As time passed, it became the normal way of things, like the caterwauling of cats in spring and autumn. But Wang Tu was not foolish; he wanted the rent. He understood the young women and himself, and knew how to deal with them. He avoided and stayed far away from them. He went to visit relatives or stayed in the city for half a month. Half a month was enough for Zhu Daxiu to collect the rent of all the tenants. Then he came back. If a persistent woman was still waiting for him, he was willing to trade with her.

When Wu Xianggui cursed Zhou Dasuan's daughter-in -law Jasmine and Wang Tu without scruple, White Peony came up with an idea. She wanted to draw inspiration from Jasmine. She made time to go across the river to visit her. She borrowed a needle from her and took the opportunity to size her up. After she got home, she stuffed cloth balls into her clothes to enlarge her breasts and hips. Stuffing her clothes with cloth balls meant increasing her confidence, and she was full of confidence after doing so. She lingered purposefully when she entered Wang Tu's room again to empty the chamber pot, trying to catch his eye. However, Wang Tu didn't change his behavior at all. He still got up late every day and occasionally opened his eyes when White Peony came close to his bed, but it was no use opening his eyes; it seemed he didn't see her at all.

White Peony was depressed. Although Red Apricot was careless, she sensed her sister's problem this time. The next day, Red Apricot came across Wang Tu by the river and thought that she could help her sister. She was herding cows by the river and Wang Tu was going to go cross the river to play chess in the street. In winter, the river level was extremely low. It was unnecessary to make a detour to the bridge, so Wang Tu chose to go across the river directly.

Seeing Wang Tu approaching her, Red Apricot looked at him without blinking. When he drew near, his dog wagged its tail. Wang Tu cast a glance at her and said in a joking tone, "You herd my cows here? Do you think they eat stones?" Red Apricot was amused and her laughter drew his attention, so he was willing to stay for a while. Red Apricot had been herding cows for his family for nearly one year. This was the first time he noticed that her voice was very special. "Your voice has always been so?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

He roared with laughter. Like his other whims, he wanted to study her voice.

"Laugh again," he said.

试读结束[说明：试读内容隐藏了图片]

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