Nathan and the Twelve-Year Gamble Chapter 5

I am a person with low self-confidence, which is directly related to the fact that I have not been with my parents since I was a child.

When my father was young, he went to Inner Mongolia to work as a farmer. He married my local mother and had children. I have three older sisters, and they all later returned to Beijing to live.

When I was six years old, I grew up at my grandmother's house with a bunch of cousins. Without the care of my parents and the fragrance of the green grass on the prairie, I felt as lifeless as a dried radish that had lost sunlight and moisture.

A few years later, my father brought my mother back to the city, but our family's financial situation was never very good. My father worked as a doctor in a health center, and my mother took care of the housework at home.

If you think about it, I am at least from a famous family.

My grandfather told me that my great-grandfather went to Japan in his early years, and after graduating from the Japanese Army Academy, he returned to China and joined the Beiyang Army. He worked in Duan Qirui's Army Ministry and was promoted to the rank of major general. My great-grandmother was a maidservant of the Empress Dowager Cixi. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, she married my great-grandfather. It is said that during the heyday of my ancestors, half of Deshengmen Street was my family's property. However, the family fell into poverty before the end of the civil war under the Beiyang government. Some of the Qin family descendants went to Taiwan, and those who stayed in Beijing gradually sold their ancestral property.

So when Clara Jiang first started pursuing me, I used this to brag about it. She asked me stupidly, "Hey, Nathan Qin, didn't your ancestors leave you a night-shining pearl or something?"

I actually asked my dad about this. He looked me up and down and said, "Night Pearl? I have seen a night owl before, and that's you!"

Actually, all of this is nonsense. In my childhood memories, our whole family was crowded in a few bungalows on the original site of the Sichuan Guild Hall. In the summer, the children ran around the alleys like crazy, and the adults either stood at the entrance of the alley with their arms folded, drinking tea and chatting, or set up a table in the noisy courtyard and the mahjong game began.

There is no trace of the wealth and prosperity inherited from our ancestors, but from my grandparents to my cousins, there is no one who is not able to play mahjong for two days and three nights.

This seems to be a kind of life in old Beijing, a civilian life that belongs to us.

Since I was thirteen, most of my pocket money came from winning at the mahjong table, such as Mixed Seven, Hao Seven, Su Seven Pairs, Qing Long Feng Yi Se Thirteen Yaos. There was nothing I couldn't win if I could only think of it.

I grew up while hanging out, playing mahjong, fighting, dating and flirting with girls. I was also admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music.

Within two months of entering college, I won the favor of many female classmates with my excellent guitar playing and the good voice that I had trained in my childhood on the prairie.

I thought my wonderful life had just begun, but my mother was involved in a car accident during the summer vacation of my freshman year. This was like adding insult to injury for my poor family.

I dropped out of school, and my girlfriend, who had once sworn to be my forever girlfriend, hooked up with a Japanese student, and then ran away with that grandson the next year.

Out of national sentiment, I swear that I will never forgive her in my life.

To make money, I first went to sing in a bar, but the boss fired me after less than half a month. I knew it was not because no one liked my singing, but because the boss's wife came to the bar more and more frequently after I came. I had no choice but to find a nightclub to work as a waiter. On my first day at work, I almost dropped a tray on Clara Jiang's feet.

Supervisor Jiang glanced at me, and a smile appeared on her sullen face. She raised her chin slightly, and her false eyelashes almost brushed my nose: "Hey, are you new here?"

Later, I often joked that it would be hard not to hit someone with such big feet. Every time, she would straighten her waist proudly, making the most of her 175cm height.

Three nights later, I carried Clara Jiang to the small bed with her eyes full of drunkenness. The bright moonlight shone through the floral curtains onto her snow-white chest. She asked me with a breath of alcohol: "Xuan'er, do you like me?"

I pried her hands off my neck and said softly, "Baby, I'm going to pee first. I've been holding it in all the way."

The bungalows in the compound are stacked next to each other, and none of them has a bathroom. If you want to use the toilet, you have to go to the public toilet at the corner of the street.

When I returned to the room, Clara Jiang was already snoring slightly, but that didn't stop me from waking her up and conquering her in the most primitive and passionate way.

After my mother was discharged from the hospital, Clara Jiang and I rented a one-bedroom apartment outside. We haven't moved for four whole years.

The important thing is that you no longer have to rush out the door to go to the toilet in the middle of the night.

Clara Jiang is a native Beijinger from Niujie, one year older than me. She once boasted that she was the school belle of Huimin Middle School. Until I accidentally came across a photo of her in her teenage years, Clara Jiang in the photo was short and fat, like a melon that had not yet grown.

"Oh my god, the campus belle in your school is so cool!" I raised the photo in my hand.

"Why are you going there? I was still young at that time, okay?" She snatched it away. "With my current appearance, anyone who tells me I was the school beauty back then would believe me!"

"But the evidence is irrefutable."

"Nonsense, just like how good-looking you were in school!"

"Let's not be unrealistic, okay? I'm not good-looking, and you've been chasing me for days?"

"Get lost! Don't carry me to bed, you idiot!"

"I don't want this beautiful lady who came to my door, do you think I'm stupid?"

We were actually quite happy when we first fell in love. Clara Jiang had the unique carefree and domineering nature of a Beijing girl, but as time went on, there were bound to be some bumps in the road. She was just that kind of person. Even if she loved me a lot in her heart, the way she expressed it would always come down to one thing: trying every way to control or even enslave me.

If I asked her, "Hey, can you be a little gentler?" she would glance at me coquettishly, then twist the tender flesh on the inside of my arm and ask back, "Am I not gentle?"

Miss Jiang's nickname is "Little Pepper." Her first job was as a waitress in a nightclub. She then kept changing jobs in the industry and finally when she jumped to Diamond World she had been promoted to foreman.

At that time, they had a special name: princesses.

---The "princess" half-kneeling and half-sitting, flirting with the man and serving him wine and laughter.

Apart from the uniforms and the company's management system, I really don't know how big the essential difference is between a princess and a prostitute.

But she never thought of giving up this job. I once discussed this matter seriously with her in bed, but she always said confidently: "Where can I find such a lucrative job? I don't sleep with anyone, why are you jealous? It would be great if I could make more money at a young age and open a store in the future... Wouldn't it be nice to just live a simple life?"

After a few times, I never mentioned it again.

I knew I didn't have the ability to support her. The energy of a Beijing man in my bones was helplessly suppressed by reality. Zodiac signs were not popular back then, but I was a Leo.

The most face-saving zodiac sign.

One day, the fat guy accidentally called me into a card game, and in the end, I defeated them with an absolute advantage of one roll three.

It turns out that the skills gained from years of wandering around the alley card tables are so important. In a trance, I saw a ray of hope, which became brighter and stronger, until it made my young face glow.

So, I stopped trying to change jobs, and stopped stopping Clara Jiang from drinking and laughing in her high-slit cheongsam that almost reached her waist. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, from sending Clara Jiang to work after dinner to picking her up after get off work at around 2 a.m., I spent almost every night at the card table.

From mahjong, push the bamboo, smash the golden flower, mahjong, landlord, three public, soha, to gambling on the 2002 World Cup, I am involved in almost everything and can do it all. Every time Clara Jiang asked me to quit gambling, I stiffened my neck and asked her to "be a good person", but in the end no one could convince anyone.

Relying on my experience in playing cards and my luck, I always lost less and won more. Last summer, Clara Jiang and I bought a car in installments.

Life is like a tangled mess of twine that's hard to untangle.

And have we ever really wanted to sort it out?