The World of Suzie Wong [antikvár]

b o o k 1 CHAPTER ONE She came throngh the turnstile and joined the crowd waiting for the ferry: the women in cotton pyjama suits, the men with felt slippers and gold teeth. Her hair was tied behind her head in a pony-tail, and she wore jeans—green knee-length denirn jeans. That's odd, I thought A Chinese girl in jeans, How do you explain that? I watched her hold out a coin to a squatting vendor ín a battered old felt hat The vendor twirled a piece of Chinese newspapers into a cone, shovelled in melón seeds, and ex-changed it for the girFs ten cents. She turnéd away, absently picking the seeds with red-painted naíls, and stopped only a yard from me. Probably somé wealthy taipan's daughter, I thought. Or a student. Or a shopgkl—you never could teli with the Chinese., She cracked a seed edgewise between her teeth, peeled back the shell, popped the kernel into her mouth, Next to her an old man in a high-necked Chinese gown leant on an ebony stick, stroking his white, wispy, foot-long ribbon of beard. A baby peeped from íts sling on a woman's back, blinked its black contented eyes in perfect infantile security. A youth in hom-rimmed glasses and threadbare open-necked shirt held a book close to his nose. He wa§ stisdying a graph* The book was ealled Aerodynamies. The girl nipped another seed between her whíte even teeth. Just then her eyes caught mine. They seemed to ünger, so I said? 441 wish I could do that/9 44 Hah?" "Crack melón seeds—Tve never beeo able to learat 30 No talk." She turnéd her face away haughtíly, looking over the barrier behind which swarmed the ten-cent passengers for the lower deck: the coolies ín biu@ tattered trousers and the remnants of shirtsp the Cantones® fisherwomen in conical 5