Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Author:Dai Sijie
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2013-07-09T21:00:00+00:00

They had apparently been invited to the farewell banquet at the instigation of the poetess. There was a brief discussion, which ended when she took some bank notes I out of her purse and gave one to each, under the covetous eyes of the villagers.

This time there was not just the one sorceress with a bow and arrow — all five of them were so armed. Who knows, maybe a bigger array of weapons was required to secure the safe passage of one privileged individual than to protect the soul of a man stricken with malaria. On the other hand, the Little Seamstress may have been unable to afford as much as the poetess, whose name was once celebrated throughout this province with its population of one hundred million.

While they were all waiting for the buffalo meat to have stewed long enough to be tender, one of the old women took FourEyes’s left hand and read his palm in the light of the blazing fire.

We were just out of earshot and couldn’t catch what the sorceress was saying, but we had a good view of her lowered eyelids, thin pinched lips and toothless gums as she muttered away. FourEyes and his mother listened spellbound. When she stopped talking, everyone stared at her. An uneasy silence ensued, until all the villagers started talking at once.

‘I expect she made some gloomy prediction,’ Luo said.

‘Such as: his precious suitcase is about to be stolen.’

‘No, I bet it was something about demons getting in his way.’

And he was probably right, because the next thing we saw was all five sorceresses rising up, swinging their bows belligerently into the air and crossing them with their arrows while they uttered piercing cries.

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