Chapter 84
Su Chunjun was born into a family of eunuchs in Shandong.
The family can be traced back to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, when he was a third-ranking official in the Daotai. Until now, the old and the young of the Qing Dynasty still call Su Chunjun’s father “Master Daodai”.
Su Chunjun’s mother was a native of Jiangnan, the same place as Zhu Yanshu’s mother. The first time Su Chunjun rented an apartment in Zhu’s house, he met Ms. Zhu and thought she was a good person.
Su Chunjun’s mother was a lady of honor, and her family was a family of officials and eunuchs.
After Su Chunjun’s mother married into the family, she taught her children and devoted herself to the study of Western learning. She had great attainments in Western painting, and once translated several English biographies and novels in her bedroom. His first teacher was his mother.
Su Chunjun was not his mother’s only child. He had an elder brother and sister above him, and a younger brother below him, but he died young. So there were only three of his mother’s children.
His grandfather was a school official. After the fall of the Qing government, his grandfather recommended his father to join the local national government. His father accidentally found favor with President Yuan, who was only about 20 years old at the time, and quickly rose to the top, co-drafting many of his major speeches before he ascended to the throne.
Su Chunjun believes that his father may even have been one of Yuan’s inner circle at the time.
However, after the fall of President Yuan, his father disappeared and returned to his hometown, where he hid for a few years before he dared to come out again.
Later, his father moved on to attach himself to General Zhang, but after General Zhang was killed, he did nothing again.
Now, his father was still ambitious even though he was nearly seventy years old.
Su Chunjun took a sip of the already cold tea and said calmly, “Even though I haven’t been home for a few years, I believe that my father still won’t be honest by now.”
Zhu Yanshu covered her mouth and laughed softly when she heard this, and said softly, “Tell me about your mother, when I saw you, I knew that she must have been a very wonderful woman.”
Now it is already the next day, since last night after he kowtowed to Ms. Zhu, he was watched by Second Miss Yang, in order to avoid letting Second Miss Yang pry out more secrets, he can only come back today during the day to confess to Ms. Zhu about what happened at home.
Only after that, Ms. Zhu can decide whether to accept him to marry Ms. Yang or not.
He and Ms. Zhu were the only two people in the house now.
Zhang Ma made tea for them and went out to buy groceries, Miss Yang had to go and busy herself with the engagement banquet, had to run to a few more hotels to ask for the banquet, had to go to the newspaper office to register, and had to go and buy a lot of trivial things.
The only one who was honestly escorted to school was Second Miss Yang.
Su Chunjun held the cool cup of tea and said gently, “My mother …… is a very diligent person.”
He changed his mother s surname after he left home. His mother, Ms. Su, had always studied hard, even though she came from a feudal family and married into another, even more feudal family. But she didn’t follow her husband’s preferences blindly, and while she studied the West to keep up with him, she ended up choosing painting for her studies, because Western painting was what really impressed her.
But there is no doubt that his mother was deeply in love with his father. And his father, no less, was a man who could make women fall in love.
He had always thought they were in love.
Until his mother fell seriously ill, and he rushed home only to find that his uncles had already begun to introduce his father to a new wife, and they had already decided on a candidate, even to the point that the new wife had already taken up residence and begun to take care of his father’s life.
And the father had not refused at all. He was even surprised when he went to question him and advised him, “The doctor has already said that it’s just this month or two. But don’t worry, I’ll keep your mother’s wife’s filial piety for a year, and I won’t have another wedding until this time next year.”
Su Chunjun’s body grew cold all over when he heard this.
Mother was still alive, still alive! But everyone in this family, including his father, had already treated her as dead. It was like arranging everything else in the house, like the kitchen would start preparing the ingredients for New Year’s Eve half a year in advance, and some ingredients that were rare, even more years in advance.
They were then already preparing for their father’s wedding a year later.
They didn’t have the pain and sadness of a loved one about to pass away.
They were more than happy for the wedding a year later.
The most painful thing for him was that he seemed to be the only “normal” person in the family.
His father was like that, and his elder brother and sister both advised him in the same way.
His elder brother said, “Ms. Dai is a famous girl, you should be more polite to her. Don’t play the childish temper, and don’t let people laugh at our family for not having a family education. Are you going to bully your stepmother like a little doll?”
The eldest sister cried in front of him, and after crying, she also advised him, “Dad is surely going to remarry, and his willingness to guard mom for a year is already enough. Don’t make Dad angry!”
He began to wonder if he was really wrong.
He didn’t want to stay in that joyful home and watch everyone consoling his father for the impending loss of his wife followed closely by congratulating him on the fact that he would soon be marrying an even more beautiful, younger, and better-established young lady.
They shifted their emotions between sadness and joy more skillfully than actors on a theater stage. Laughing one second, they could cry the next. Tears wiped away, and he was a shining, good man again.
He couldn’t do it.
He could only stay in the hospital with his mother all the time.
But his company could not stop death.
At this point in time, his father came to visit his mother, and his fiancée came with him. Mother forced herself to sit up to receive these two people, and when they left, she never opened her eyes again.
Then the most absurd thing happened!
They actually said that by mother’s “last order”, father was to marry his fiancée within a hundred days!
Because mother didn’t want to leave father alone, she “asked” them to get married as soon as possible.
Are these people shameless?
Can they sleep at night if they do this?
Su Chunjun saw his subordinates change into new clothes before they could even take off their hemp clothes. The white cloths in the house were replaced with red lanterns before they were even hung. The spiritual hall had not even been decorated before it was transformed into a joyful hall.
He wanted to make a scene in the wedding hall, but he was caught by his cousins who had prepared for it and locked up in his room before he had a chance to do anything.
He just ran to his father’s door in the middle of the night under the influence of alcohol and cursed.
Zhu Yanshu shook his head and held Su Chunjun’s hand and patted it, “Silly child.”
There was no expression at all as he recounted it, as if he was telling someone else’s story. But it wasn’t that he wasn’t sad or upset. Rather, those feelings had already been deposited in his heart. He would cry at the first time of his pain, the tears would have dried up by the hundredth time, and by the thousandth time, he would already only be shedding tears in his heart.
Su Chunjun laughed a little and said, “Then I ran out, with nothing, just a suit of clothes, and the things in my pockets.” His watch, fountain pen, and a string of beads he took off his mother’s hand.
He had no place to go when he ran out, and he didn’t know what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t just lie down on the railroad tracks and bounce into the sea and the river, either, much less immerse himself in a sea of booze and be a drunkard from then on.
He can’t die cowardly, he can only live.
Zhu Yanshu: “So you can’t find a goal to live now?”
Su Chunjun shook his head, “I can’t hide it from you, I have found a goal. But this goal is too far away for me to show it to you, and I don’t know if it will succeed. It is like a star hanging in the sky, I look at it and follow the direction it points, then at least I know that every step I take is right, as to whether I can reach the destination or not, then only God knows.”
Zhu Yan Shu was thoughtful, but did not continue to pursue, “You have your ideals, which is a good thing. Nowadays, in this world, the most feared thing is to have no ideals and live like a walking corpse.”
Su Chunjun said, “I am sincere to Miss Er, and I also sincerely want to build a happy family with her. You don’t have to worry that my ideals will hurt my family, I have confidence in that. My ideals and my family are irreconcilable.”
Zhu Yan Shu laughed, “Who can guarantee a long life? Every bit of preparation we make is just to live up to the moment, this moment.”