1
Late autumn night always comes early. With the clock pointing to 7:50, Wang, the owner of the lottery shop, looked out the door, wondering why the big man had not come yet. Speak of the devil, speak of the devil, boss Wang turned his head, Dahua has rushed into the door, muffled voice said, “Old rules”. Wang boss nodded, tacit understanding to hit the lottery, “just in time”.
The lottery shop, which has been open for more than four years next to a large community, has a small presence and no room for too many customers. Business has been tepid, barely enough to support a family.
Boss Wang sometimes looks at the “big store” of others, which is full of old lottery people all the year round. It is hard not to feel a little envious, because they may call out to the boss to play some more lottery tickets. Boss Wang also wanted to “enlarge” the shop next door that had been vacant for a long time, but this idea was always ruthlessly dismissed by the boss’s wife. The boss refused to make any additional changes or expenses that would dilute the meagre profit.
Lao Wang sometimes wants to argue: “These two years, the lottery shop’s business is much better than in previous years…” But think about it, and can’t say it.
After all, it was the market that held him back:
The community has a “lake” in its name — a few years ago, it was really a city lake. With the high-rise buildings in the center of Wucheng rising, the government has filled the lake with land and concentrated the “still built houses” in the demolished areas of the old city. With the influx of displaced people, the neighborhood has quietly become a vast, densely populated area. Smart real estate developers, relying on the population base, have also built a lot of relatively cheap commercial housing and supporting shopping malls, the popularity of this area is gradually booming, like a new “sub-center” style.
Boss Wang moved here in 2014 when he was relocated. In his 50s, after several previous business failures, a friend asked him if he wanted to open a lottery shop when he moved. Idleness, he thought, was idleness, and hence the lottery shop.
The community is emerging, with a large population, convenient transportation, and low rent. It also catches up with the vigorous “national entrepreneurship”, making it difficult to find a shop for the bottom of the real estate. At that time, a street is a lively big site, looking around, each shop, is not in the heat of the decoration, is in the jubilant opening, a piece of flowers with brocade festival. Laughter, excited real estate agents shuttling between.
The buzz lasted only a couple of years, and since 2017, “transfer” signs have been posted frequently in shops around Mr. Wang’s store. New shops have opened one after another, milk tea shops, dumplings, sushi restaurants, hot pot restaurants, hair salons, beauty parlors, clothing stores… All kinds of formats come on stage after you sing, but the frequency of renewal is faster and faster, fast less than half a year, slow to hold a full year, then shut down.
There was a sort of depression in the streets, coming and going. At first, Mr. Wang would sigh and become numb and even have a bad taste — every time he saw a new store open, he would bet with his wife on how long it would last.
So the lottery shop, which could not make a lot of money, became the patriarch of the street. Boss Wang said contentedly: “I didn’t expect to turn around, or lottery is good, drought and flood, no matter what the situation outside, there are always people to buy my lottery ticket.”
One of his friends advised him that business in the neighborhood would not be very good, and suggested that he should open a lottery shop in an industrial area or a village in the city. “There are many factories, many workers, that business, tut…” The friend exaggerated envy, “really is always a sea of people, factory people off work ah, your store will be able to beat around to be picked up by them.”
Boss Wang smiled. He was too far away and afraid of trouble. He had never thought of that. In recent years, small lottery shop has become his “comfort zone”, he had seen in the shop in the economics of telephone guide students to write papers, one side is canny, a professor at the university of seen feeding her child in her arms and handed him a number one hand, a young mother met a group of choi tickets, but fights after winning drama, but also seen unkempt 10 yuan money handed over the tramp, there are all kinds of suits, hurrying to the young, saying nothing, play the lottery and turned to go.
Of course, most of the people who come to the store are regulars. Apart from the occasional winner of hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of small prizes, most of them appear in the lottery shops silently or joyously, at their own fixed time and frequency. Over time, Wang and they reached a tacit understanding, know when they will come, how much bets.
Lottery shop out of a big prize, that time, boss wang excited, asked people to do “this shop happy in the double chromosphere second prize” banner hanging at the door, to the shop brought a wave of small peak sales. But before long, the water returned to its usual shape, the banner hung down a corner, Wang boss too lazy to stick it up, too lazy to tear it down.
2
Boss Wang can’t remember when Dahua first walked into his store — by the time I got the impression he was already a regular. The double chromosphere opens 3 times every week, big China period does not fall, every period 20 notes, no more no less, sometimes hand over oneself to choose good number, sometimes carelessly let wang boss “machine dozen” go.
In Boss Wang’s story, I gradually restored the scene when Dahua appeared in the lottery shop: he was tall and his back was slightly stooped. Although he shaved off a special bald head, his eyelids were slightly drooped without a trace of malicious breath. His northwest accent makes him a bit different from the crowd of local punters Shouting hubei dialect.
What made Boss Wang pay attention to him was a faint sadness that came from him: unlike other lottery players who were laughing and beaming, his brow was always furled, and he never said much except to pay for tickets. Most of the time, Dahua comes in the daytime, sometimes carrying vegetables and meat he has just bought from the market. “He’s a stranger, and I don’t see anyone else with him, and I don’t see him at work. It’s strange.”
After getting to know him better, Wang extracted some words from Dahua: He came to Wucheng in 2016 with his wife, a native of The central province of Xicheng, where they had been living together. His wife works very hard at work. He takes care of the family in the morning and at night. No matter how much, Dahua would not say.
Boss Wang said that he met Dahua’s wife one night. He saw Dahua striding toward the store, followed half a step away by a small woman with clear features. The woman has been trying to reach out and hold Dahua, but Dahua impatiently pushed her away, without a half minute to stop. Two people pull all the way, but do not speak, as if a mime.
Dahua walked into the lottery shop, and the woman followed him unsteadily. She put her hand on the number dahua gave Lao Wang, “Don’t sell it, boss.” The woman whispered to Boss Wang, but she kept looking at Dahua. Dahua turned his head away from the woman’s eyes and said firmly, “Don’t pay attention to her. Dial the number for me!”
Wang boss hesitated for a moment, or take the number of Dahua. For an instant, the woman let go of her hand and squatted on the ground feebly. Her tears ran down her face in silence. A moment later, she dried her eyes again and got up to go out and chase Da Hua as he left.
The landlady got up and shouted angrily, “It’s not a thing!” Lao Wang looked at the back of the two people, the heart is not the taste. He always had a good impression of Dahua. “He was very polite and looked like a cultured person, not like those people.”
“Those people” is what Wang secretly calls most of his regular lottery customers. Although his business depends on them, Wang despises them and “just wants to get something for nothing”.
The next day, Dahua came to the shop. Boss Wang hesitated and asked, “Was that your wife yesterday? Quarrelling?”
Dahua weng Weng spirit ground “um” a voice then no longer speak. On impulse, Boss Wang blurted out the words in his mind many times last night: “Buy less in the future. It’s not worth having any family conflicts for this.”
Voice voice falls, wang boss regretted, but dahua hind still buys every lottery ticket, never delay.
Listen to boss Wang said here, I sighed. I came to ask Boss Wang about Dahua because he is the husband of my best friend Ding Ding.
3
Dahua took Tintin on a trip to Phuket in the spring of 2016. He told Tintin that it was to make up for the honeymoon he didn’t have when he got married.
Dahua chose the best hotel on the island, ate the best, played the best, and had a very pleasant seven-day vacation. After returning, Tintin showed us the huge ruby ring on her finger: “Dahua bought it hard. It cost more than 8,000 yuan. I think he was cheated.”
When Tintin shows us her love, her voice is accusatory, and she carefully suppresses her innermost joy, as if fearing that excessive triumph might terrify her hard-won happiness.
However, neither Tintin nor Dahua thought that this trip would be their last for many years.
In 1996, at the age of 21, after graduating from junior college, dahua entered the local “Shengtian Chemical Company” in West City and worked for 20 years. Dahua sometimes wondered how he could stay there until he was middle-aged. “Maybe the boss was nice and the company was human,” he said.
But Tintin disagrees: “He’s just a chickenhearted person, afraid to jump ship and change jobs.”
In 2003, after graduating from Dingding University, he applied for the branch office of Shengtian Chemical In Wucheng, and fell in love with Dahua in a group construction tour. After that, they had a long-distance relationship for 6 years.
When it came time to talk about marriage, a series of contradictions surfaced, such as the company’s regulation not to support internal employees to get married, and dahua and Tintin eventually had to make a sacrifice. Although Dingding is an only child, Wucheng is also more developed than The West city, but she finally ao Hua, give in, resign, pack up the luggage, alone by train to the West city.
From Wucheng that day, parents did not go to see Ding Ding, arrived at the exit of the West city railway station, Dahua opened his arms to welcome her.
In The northwestern town of Tintin, it’s hard to find a job — 28 years old, married and not pregnant, on a resume that has many HR people frowning. After the couple discussed, Tintin did not find a job, one heart at home to prepare for pregnancy.
As a result, the baby never got pregnant and Tintin never went out to look for a job. Over time, the two also got used to such a lifestyle: Dahua went out to work in the morning, while Tintin did housework and chased the TV series at home; In the evening, after Dahua came home from work, they cooked and walked together. Although the time is not very rich, but also happy.
In 2013, Dahua was promoted to be the head of sales of the company. Within two years, Dahua had bought a new car and a new house. New house in the west of the most prosperous section of the road, the day of the house, Tintin went to see the house, from the large terrace to see out, sunset under the sky, the old city wall was gently sprinkled with light gold.
As night falls, Tintin watches the lights of the ancient city gradually turn on. He is happy but a little uneasy and asks Dahua: “Should we buy such an expensive house?”
Dahua grinned. “Didn’t you always say that the house is too small now? I’ll get you a bigger one. Do you like it?”
“Yes.” Tintin thought, the previous slightly straitened and embarrassed days, is finally over.
Tintin forgets who said that adult life can only be described as “walking on thin ice”, and every time he feels a little relieved, he does not dare to pronounce “recently really happy ah” for fear of being overheard by fate.
Not long after Dahua and Tintin return from their vacation in Thailand, the sledgehammer of life strikes them without warning.
Like many people familiar with the hidden rules of the industry, Dahua secretly set up a company by itself after becoming the head of the sales department. By taking advantage of the price difference of raw materials in the industry, dahua dug the corner of Shengtian Chemical and took away some customer resources. This major violation of the rules, was coveted his position for a long time after the enemy learned, mercilessly stabbed the boss there.
Dahua initially shrugged off the incident, thinking that with 20 years of service, it was simply being “notified” and given some punishment. But the course of events was beyond his control, and his colleagues, who knew that he had offended them, were mostly tacitly silent, and few had come out to support him. The boss did not have the usual tolerance, no tangle, directly let HR inform Dahua to go through the departure procedures.
Dahua couldn’t believe it. He refused to communicate with HR, stuck in the boss’s office, grabbed the boss’s desk, pinched his fingernails on the desk and told the boss how he had been working diligently for 20 years, starting from the most junior employee, working overtime day and night and never taking a vacation for many years. The boss sighed and waved him out the door.
“The bottom line is not to be touched.” That was the last word the boss gave him.
4
Dahua spent a long time in his room trying to digest this. In his days of big sleep, Tintin worried, she worried about her husband’s mental state, but more is to feel the pressure: the renovation of the new house has been half done, can not stop; Two house loans, and the cost of daily living… Tintin felt a sense of suffocation at the thought.
She sat down carefully beside Dahua’s bed. Before she could speak, Dahua buried his head in the quilt. This period of time, they have not directly discussed the future, every time Tintin tried to start the ball, see Dahua’s face refused expression. Tintin had to swallow the words back to the belly, she was afraid to grasp the bad sense of proportion, stimulate to the moment of Dahua.
The first conflict, however, came sooner than Tintin had expected.
On the Dragon Boat Festival, they go to Dahua’s parents’ house for dinner. Dahua’s parents said they would like to move to the couple’s small house after their son and daughter-in-law’s new house is decorated.
Dahua quickly agreed. Tintin thought for a while and pulled him onto the balcony. “Now neither of us has income,” he asked. “After we let our parents live there, we can just rent out their old house and give us a subsidy from the rental income.
After that, Dahua’s face suddenly changed and he shouted in a low voice, “Don’t even think about it! How can you have the idea of renting out your parents’ house to subsidize us? Their house, do not rent, let out, the rent is also their, how can we gnaw old!”
Tintin didn’t expect dahua’s reaction so strong, Leng for a moment, also nasty: “Do I chew the old? All these years, we haven’t even spent a cent on their marriage! If you had not lost your job now, I would certainly say nothing, but now the situation is different! Besides, isn’t this our house for them to live in? Otherwise, we’ll rent out our own apartment for even more than their old one…”
Dahua’s face is so gloomy that he seems to drop water and pincers Tintin’s wrist to pain: “Other things are easy to say, this matter is not to be discussed! And you’re not going to tell Mom and Dad about my job loss. You’re going to tell them, and there’s no future for us!”
After years of marriage, it is the first time for Tintin to see Dahua make such a gaffe. She is angry and afraid, and her tears roll down in a string. Seeing this, Dahua took a breath and whispered, “I can’t let my family know about my unemployment. I have been their pride since I was a child. But now I am not only unemployed, but also nettling my parents. Promise me, and help me keep it from them.”
Tintin turned his back to Dahua. Dahua stood up and said firmly, “Anything else you want, this is the bottom line!”
Tintin asks in reply: “How long can you hide it?”
Dahua said carelessly, “Don’t worry. I will surely find a job in two months.”
Tintin looked at Dahua’s face, can see dahua strong pretend calm, she did not speak.
The moon outside was lightly hanging in the sky, and Tintin could hear all kinds of noise in the next building, laughing children, frolicking couples, bickering couples. But on this hot summer night, she suddenly felt a little cold.
The days that followed were chaotic and chaotic, and quarrels were a regular occurrence.
Dahua goes out early and comes back late every day. Tintin doesn’t know what he is busy with. He doesn’t dare to ask and doesn’t want to ask, because every time she asks, Dahua will change his face.
Reality is far more brutal than Dahua imagined. Two months later, he still has no job.
It never rains but it pours. At the end of 2016, two years after his father’s death, Tintin’s mother became chronically ill and needed long-term care. This seemed to be the last straw to break the camel’s back. Ding Ding cried and said that he would go back to Wucheng. Dahua thought for a long time and nodded: “Ok, you go to take care of your mother first, I happen to go to Guangzhou to see a boss, if we can talk, I can enter the job, everything will be all right. When I have finished talking with you there, I will look for you in Wucheng.”
Tintin returned to Wucheng, while taking care of his mother, while full of anxious waiting for the news of Dahua. When Dahua appeared in front of her with her luggage, her face looked gaunt, she knew that god did not care for them. Perhaps she had already prepared for it, but Tintin calmed down. She said nothing more and tried to hide her disappointment. She took Dahua’s luggage and hugged Dahua to show her comfort.
After returning from Guangzhou, Dahua never mentioned job hunting, and even words like “looking for a job” and “applying for a resume” became taboo between the couple.
When Dahua was in Wucheng, he stayed at home every day, shopping, cooking and taking care of his mother-in-law. Tintin was too lazy to hurry, and sometimes she thought, “That’s it.”
In early 2017, Tintin made a trip back to the west, sold the new car he left behind and the new house he still had to renovate, and paid off the old one first. Life seems to have come full circle.
Friends advised her, “do not sell, the west city property market is the upward trend, endure two years, can appreciate a lot.” Tintin smiles wryly and does not explain — friends are unable to understand the pressure she is under at the moment. A few years ago, when money was relatively loose, she and Dahua hardly saved any money. At that time, Dahua spent money relentlessly, as if to compensate for the injustice accumulated in the early years. Now Tintin doesn’t want to feel “in debt” anymore. “I can’t take it anymore. Only people who have faith in tomorrow can take out loans. I am a man without hope.
Also after the mortgage, there is a small amount of money, Tintin let Dahua put money, told him, this money, is her last sense of security, death can not move.
She has not told her in-laws dahua unemployment, only said that Dahua was transferred to the wucheng branch, they will come over together. Tintin then asked a friend to help him find a job as an office administrator in his hometown.
Tintin has been out of the workforce for so long that the company seems like a complete stranger to her. She relearned the office software, familiar with various internal processes, in a hurry, full of loopholes; She did not know what to do with several instructions that appeared at the same time, because each seemed urgent and difficult; She doesn’t know how to say “no” to overwork assigned by her boss. She doesn’t defend herself when her co-workers dump her… She would call us at lunch or after work, sobbing and saying, “I can’t hold on.”
But through gritted teeth, she managed to pull through — the job guaranteed her a salary of 5,000 yuan a month. In a second-tier city like Wucheng, that is a modest but not shabby salary. The money covers her and Dahua’s rent in Wucheng, her mother’s medical bills, and daily living expenses. Although the poor, but every month careful calculation, also can dog bite the tail.
Tintin always thought she was a bird hiding under her husband’s wings, but now she has become a nesting swallow. There had been times when she had looked at herself in the mirror and wanted to give heaven a middle finger, but ended up rubbing her nose and smiling.
5
The job she wanted to escape from every day did not defeat Tintin, and the worry that she could not make ends meet every month did not defeat Tintin. However, a thick pile of lottery tickets found at home inadvertently gave her a suffocating feeling.
She did not know when Dahua began to buy lottery tickets, but she felt that although her husband did not tell her about it, he did not intend to conceal it: a thick stack of lottery tickets was neatly placed in an empty mooncake box by him.
Tintin remembers the box.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, they passed a Starbucks and Dahua suddenly offered to go in and buy a box of mooncakes. Tintin disagrees, saying there is no need to buy such expensive mooncakes now. Besides, starbucks mooncakes are not so good, so just pick up a box at the supermarket.
Dahua suddenly burst out, Shouting in the busy street, just like a little boy who is trying to get toys by the corner of his mother’s dress: “I just want to buy a box of mooncakes Did I say no to something you wanted to buy before? Why should I want to buy something?”
People’s eyes seemed to have no place to glance over, Tintin’s face flushed, buried his head into the shop, hurried to buy a box to carry out, Dahua’s face just slightly relaxed.
Two people all the way speechless. After returning home, Tintin leaned against the bed and watched Dahua stuffing the mooncakes into his mouth one by one.
Faced with Tintin’s questioning, Dahua readily confesses that the money used to buy lottery tickets is the small amount of savings they have in hand — he keeps some money in the current account instead of putting it into financial management.
Dahua explained how he bought lottery tickets. Tintin simply calculated that he spent nearly 500 yuan on lottery tickets every month. That may not seem like much, but it is an unacceptable expense for Tintin now. Most importantly, this money, is how many times at the end of the month when she would rather eat white water noodles not willing to draw on the deposit!
Tintin suddenly felt the invisible but heavy wall that had been supporting her fall down in a heap of dust. She broke down and beat Dahua and asked him why. Dahua remained silent, just as he had faced his wife and asked why he did not go to find a job. Tintin’s fist hit a cotton ball, gradually taking all her strength away. She lay in bed with only one thought in her mind: Divorce.
Once the idea of divorce out of the bud, injustice will be like the overflowing of the wild grass general growth. Tintin said that what she was afraid of was never accompanying Dahua to endure hardship, but the kind of despair that Dahua brought to her that could not see tomorrow.
On the day when he almost made up his mind, Tintin came home from work and found Dahua was gone. He called his cell phone and turned it off.
This is very abnormal, dahua has no friends in Wucheng, Dingding’s heart clenched, despite not to take off high heels, running around looking for Dahua. She passed the intersection where Dahua waited for her to get off work every day, passed the small street garden where Dahua pushed her mother to bask in the sun, passed the small vegetable market where Dahua often bought vegetables — when they went shopping here together on weekends, Dahua excitedly told her which one had the cheapest vegetables and the freshest meat… All the way to find, Tintin’s tears trickled down imperceptibly, the hard heart, also seems to be in the tears bubble soft.
In the near collapse, Dahua’s mobile phone connected, according to his guidance, Tintin found him in the river beach where they often walk. At night, the river was like a bottomless beast, and Dahua was sitting beside the platform.
Tintin looked across the river to see the glow. The crowd roared. They sat side by side in silence. Daya hunched over, the new stubble on her head still unshaved, speckled white, stood out in the moonlight. He watched the water lapping against the concrete steps, then again, then again.
Dahua spoke, sounding depressed. He said he showed up for an interview today and within 10 minutes of walking in the door, he knew he was finished.
He told Tintin that after two years in Wucheng, he had sent a lot of resumes, but he didn’t want to tell tintin, because he didn’t want tintin to see that he couldn’t even get an interview. When a company finally offered him an interview today, he was so excited for a long time that all he could think about was how happy Tintin would be if the interview went well… But the failure of the interview made him think that he might never find a job again.
The depth of the words, with a flicker and choked. After nearly 10 years of marriage, dahua, who is always proud, has never shown any fragility in front of Tintin. However, this sound completely broke Tintin’s heart.
The two men did not speak again, surrounded by children frolicking with their light kites. Little by little the kite flew higher and higher, the children clapped and laughed.
Tintin took Dahua home, divorce, no longer say export.
Later, Tintin still could not help but put his heart long doubt asked: “That day, why did you turn off your phone and sit by the river?”
Long pause, long to ding ding thought dahua would not return, but he irrelevant answer ground said 1: “you know, that day, I sat by the river, for a long time, I have been holding those lottery tickets in my wallet, I think, tomorrow is the lottery.
6
Neither Boss Wang nor Ding Ding knows when Dahua started to buy lottery tickets, only Dahua himself has always remembered.
When he first came to Wucheng, he looked like a trapped animal. Except for the necessary daily shopping and taking care of his mother-in-law at regular intervals, he could only walk around his room all day, sleeping, watching TV dramas and being in a daze. With the window facing a big tree, Dahua often looks at the bare tree, waiting for the light to turn from bright to dark outside.
There was no central heating in winter, which made him uncomfortable as a child and an adult. It was cold and wet, and he could not bear to turn on the air-conditioner, so he looked forward to a sunny day. Tintin sometimes advised him to go for a walk, but he refused, “thinking that people would look at a big old man wandering around in the daytime”.
One day, he took it into his head to take Tintin to work.
At 7 a.m., dripping water freezes outside. They stomped their feet, carrying freshly bought steamed buns in their bags and soy milk in their hands. Soy milk is taken out of the boiling water, and they have to switch back and forth, but do not want to put it in the bag – this is the best hand warmer.
They walked 15 minutes from their rented place to the subway station, got on line 3, transferred to line 1, and sat from the north side of the city to the west. When dahua almost lost track of time, they arrived at the terminus. Get out of the subway station, and then sit on the battery car, before moving to the park where Tintin works.
Instead of going straight back, dahua decided to wait outside the building to pick up his wife from work. At dusk, when the night wind from the outskirts of the city swept shadows from side to side under the streetlamps, he suddenly became sad.
When Tintin comes out from work, the circles under her eyes are red — she had complained to Dahua that the supervisor had been treating her badly before, and then she stopped talking when Dahua didn’t like to listen.
“Let’s quit and quit tomorrow.” Dahua said.
Tintin gave him a feeble look. “stop that now.”
Dahua is struck by a feeling of powerlessness at this moment. He can feel the twitching of his facial muscles. He tries to control his emotions and says nothing.
I do not know when the sky floated sleet, two people did not open an umbrella, did not hand, wet ground gradually become muddy, coolness gradually from the trouser leg ooze up, has been frozen to the heart.
After that, Dahua started buying lottery tickets.
7
I’m the only one of my friends who hasn’t tried to persuade Tintin to divorce.
When I met Dahua, he was so much older than a few years ago that I almost didn’t recognize him. The last time I saw him was years ago, when I was on a business trip to West City and I had a little get-together with them. They excitedly took me to see our new house, which had just been bought. On the huge terrace, Dahua’s eyes glistened and he was full of energy. He told me excitedly that in the future they would be building a small garden on the terrace: “Then you will all come and play at our house, and we will be together on the terrace BBQ!”
“Actually, with all your years of experience in the industry, it shouldn’t be so hard to find a job, should it?” I asked.
“I really tried, but There was nothing I could do. Before the matter made a little big, sheng day’s boss put out the word, most of the peers in the West city will not want me. I thought it would be better to come to Wucheng, but it was the same. No company would want me, even if I had been paid a very low salary.” He explained dully. “Do you know how hard it is for young people out there to compete for jobs these days? Any conditions can be agreed! I’m no match for them. I’m 45 years old, I went to Shengtian after graduation, I really don’t know what I can do without Shengtian. Now that I’ve been thrown out, I don’t know how to interview or find a job.”
“What about doing something else?”
“I’ve wanted to do a little business, too — but you know what the economy has been like these last two years. In the store where I bought lottery tickets, The boss Wang talked with me. In recent years, we have opened one store after another in the neighborhood where we live. The little savings we had, we did not have enough and did not dare. Tintin and I are so rich that we can’t afford to lose.”
There was a long, measured silence, and I asked the question that bothered me the most: “Would you accept a job with a low bar? For example, a Didi driver, a surrogate driver, or even a takeaway delivery, it’s a little hard work, but it’s better than staying at home all the time. The income is good, so Ding Ding will feel less pressure.”
Dahua looked down and thought for a long time. When she looked up, she did not show any sign of anger on her face, but she did not look directly into my eyes. “These tintin have been mentioned to me, and I have thought about them myself, but you know I was in charge of more than 20 people before.
These words did not convince me.
He did not look up at me, his eyes unfocused, the white skin on his lips stubbornly turned up, the corners of his mouth still cracked, and his fingers unconsciously pressed frequently against the rim of the cup. I suddenly understood why Tintin didn’t have the heart to blame him much.
“But why do you buy lottery tickets? You know how unreal this thing is, right? Don’t buy it, Tintin works so hard. You can buy as many things as you need with the money from the lottery. Why throw it into that bottomless pit?”
“I haven’t got a head in my life. You know, tintin and I didn’t have a baby, we didn’t have a baby before, and now we don’t dare to have a baby. I think this is the only thing I can do in my life. I never dare to think about a few years from now. But every time I buy a lottery ticket or wait for the number to open, It’s probably the only time I have left to hope.”
Here, for the first time, Dahua looked straight into my eyes. “Hope, you know? Hope.”
I met his eyes and shook my head thoughtfully for a long time. “I still don’t agree,” I said. “It can only give you psychological comfort, like opium.”
He hung his head again. “I know you don’t agree, but that’s all right.”
I asked Tintin why he didn’t divorce.
“I’ve blamed him, and I hate him for not getting a good job. One day, however, It suddenly dawned on me. What could he possibly have done that was totally unforgivable? He’s still looking for a job, but he can’t find one. For so many years before, I didn’t work and he didn’t say a word about me, so Now I think I can support my family. It’s just that My abilities are limited. Maybe he’s better suited to finding a woman who can make money.” Tintin smiled sadly.
“Should he take responsibility for the family?”
“It’s not that he doesn’t contribute to the family, he cooks, he does the housework, he takes care of me and my mother, And I’m actually very grateful to him.”
“And you blame him for playing the lottery?”
“Yes, I wish he would break this bad habit. I never believed in lotteries. I still don’t even know how to buy lottery tickets. But Now I will not be so vehemently against him, perhaps, the lottery is his little spiritual sustenance. Dahua was too proud to admit that losing his job was a great blow to him. Then if anything would make him feel better, I’d take it.”
“You do love him, then?”
Tintin pondered for a long time. Finally, she told me:
“I don’t know.”
(The characters and place names in this article are all pseudonyms)
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