Two Cities

Chapter 10 Five Years Later

Tellson's Bank, by the gates of the Law Society of London, was an old-fashioned place even in 780.It's cramped, dark, ugly, and inconvenient.It is an old-fashioned place, morally speaking, and the shareholders of the bank are proud of its smallness, its darkness, its ugliness, its inconvenience.They go so far as to flaunt its outstanding features, and are excited by a different belief that it would not be so honorable if it were not so repulsive.This is not a passive belief, but an active weapon that can be wielded in more convenient business situations.They said Tellson's Bank didn't need to be big, light, or fancy, Knock's might, Snook Brothers might, but Tellson's, thank God! —If any of the director's children wanted to rebuild Tellson's Bank, he would be disinherited.In this matter, Tellson's Bank is very much like a state.The state is always disinheriting the sons who propose to modify the laws and customs, which are all the more respectable precisely because they have long been abhorred.

The result was that the inconvenience of Tellson's Bank was a perfect achievement.Its door is idiotically stubborn, and when you push it open, it makes a small noise in its throat, causing you to stagger and fall two steps into the bank. shop.There are two small nondescript counters, and the old clerks at the counters check the signatures in front of the dimly lit windows, making your checks tremble like a wind blows.The window was perpetually stained with muddy water from Fleet Street, darkened still more by its own iron grating and layers of shadows from the Law Society.If you have to meet the "banking authorities" because of work, you will be sent to a place like "death row" in the back, where you will make a serious confession for accidentally going the wrong way, until the "authorities" intervene Walked in slowly in the pocket, and it was hard to even blink in surprise in the eerie gloom.Your money was taken from the moth-eaten wooden drawer and sent there.Wood dust flies up your nose and down your throat when you open and close the drawers.Your banknotes smell musty and look like they will soon be disintegrated into shreds.Your gold and silver utensils are stuffed into a place of filth, and within a day or two their luster will be corroded by their surroundings.Your papers are tucked away in a makeshift vault that was altered from the kitchen sink.All the fat in the parchment was pressed out and mixed with the air in the bank.Your lighter boxes of family papers are carried upstairs into a Bammyside-style hall where a huge dining table is always set, but no banquet is ever set up.There, even in 780, [-], your lover's first love letter to you and your young child's first letter to you have just been almost peeped by many people, and it didn't take long for the top row The level was hung at the gate of the Law Society to show the public.This practice is so insensitive, barbaric and fierce that it can be compared with Abyssinia and Ashanti.

But in fact the death penalty is a fashionable trick in every profession.Tellson Bank is certainly not far behind.If death is beneficial to nature to solve all problems, why can't it be adopted in legislation?Therefore, those who forged documents were executed.Those who use counterfeit money will be executed.Those who opened the letters privately were executed.Anyone who steals four shillings and sixpence is to die.Whoever stole the horse and ran away while being in charge of the horse in front of Tellson's Bank was put to death.Those who counterfeit the shilling were put to death. There are three-quarters of the notes in the entire scale of the "crime" instrument, and anyone who touches it will be executed.It's not entirely useless for crime prevention--it's worth noting: the opposite is true--but it cuts out the troubles that every well-detailed case brings to the world, and erases a lot of trouble.Thus Tellson's Bank claimed as many lives during its existence as did larger corporations of its day.If the heads that landed in front of it were not dealt with quietly, but were placed at the gate of the law school, they might have obscured the light that is now scarce on the bottom of the bank to a considerable extent.

Crouching and meticulously working on the various dim cupboards and half-doors of Tellson's Bank are elderly people.As soon as a young man enters Tellson's Bank, he is sent somewhere to be hidden until he becomes an old man.They stored him like cheese in a dark corner until he grew blue mold and gave off a real Tellsonian smell before letting him out.He was poring over the thick ledgers then, and would have cast his breeches and overshoes into the institution to add to its weight.

There was a handyman outside Tellson's Bank, who answered the door from time to time, ran errands, and never entered the door unless someone called.This man acts as a living sign for the bank.He was never absent from work, unless he was on errands.But he will be represented by his son when he is gone: a 12-year-old ugly naughty kid who looks exactly like that man.It was known that Tellson's had taken the handyman with style.Banks have always had to put up with one man for this kind of work, and it was he who was sent to the job by circumstances and trends.The man, whose name was Cruncher, had adopted the name Jerry a few years earlier in the parish of Huntsditch in the east, when his godparents proclaimed his aversion to the Devil.

Location: Mr. Cruncher's private residence in Xuanjian Hutong, Baipao Seng District.When: Annot Dominion at seven o'clock on a windy morning in March 780 (Mr. Cruncher always referred to "Annot Domini" as "Anna Domino". Thinks that the Christian era was created from a lady named Anna Dominoes, and started by naming it after himself).

The environment of Mr. Cruncher's residence is not warm, there are only two numbers in all, and the other number one is a small room with only one piece of glass as a window.But both rooms were cleaned perfectly.It was still early that windy March morning, but the room where he slept had been tidied up.A very clean white table-cloth had been spread on a rough pine table, on which were laid the glasses and plates for breakfast.Mr. Cruncher tucked himself up with a brightly colored quilt in white skirt, like a buffoon at home.He slept soundly at first, then started tossing and tossing, eventually flipping onto the covers, revealing his messy head of hair.At this moment he cried out very angrily:
"Damn it, she's doing it again!" A tidy, hard-working woman stood up from the corner (where she was kneeling just now), very quickly, but with a hint of fear, indicating that she was being scolded It was her.

"Why," said Mr. Cruncher, sitting up on the bed, looking for his boots, "you're at it again, aren't you?"

After saying good morning in this respectful manner, he threw his boot at the woman for a third greeting.The muddy boots illustrate the peculiarity of Mr. Cruncher's domestic condition: he always came home from the bank every day with clean boots, but when he got up the next morning they were covered with mud. .

"What are you doing again," Mr. Cruncher missed, changing his greeting. "Are you looking for trouble again?"

"I'm just praying." "Praying! What a lovely woman!" Kneeling down on the ground with a "boom" and cursing me, what the hell do you mean? "I didn't curse you, I was just praying for you." "No. If you were praying for me, would I be so fierce? Come here! Your mother is such a good woman, Jerry, she Pray that your dad fails and doesn't let him get ahead. Your mother is very responsible, son. Your mother believes in God, son. Then kneel down and pray that the bread and butter in her only son's mouth will be taken from his mouth."

Master Cruncher (he was now in his shirt-sleeves) must have been offended at this, and turning to his mother, he protested strongly that his food should not be taken from him.

"What do you think your prayers are worth?" said Mr. Cruncher, quite oblivious to the change in his attitude. "You self-important woman, how much do you think your prayers are worth?" "I pray from the bottom of my heart, Jerry. It's worth nothing more than that."

"Not much more," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "So, it's not worth much at all. Anyway, I won't allow anyone to pray for my bad luck, I tell you. I can't stand it. I can't let you babble and pray for my bad luck. You want to kneel You can kneel, you better pray for your family, but don't pray for their bad luck. If my wife is not so unreasonable, this poor child is not so unreasonable, I can make money last week Now, you won't be cursed, and you'll be unlucky if you don't have God's blessing. Damn it!" said Mr. Cruncher, as he dressed. "I've had bad luck last week, with one misfortune after another, the worst that can happen to an honest poor businessman! Dress, little Jerry, and help me while I shine my boots." I'll keep an eye on your mother, and if she wants to get down on her knees, call me. Because, let me tell you," he said, turning to his wife, "I'm not going out like this. I'm already like a movie. The cab was about to fall apart, sleepy like an opium addict. My waist was also exhausted. If it wasn’t for the pain, I wouldn’t even know where it was me and where it was someone else. But there was still Didn't add a few words. So I guess you are praying every day not to let my pockets bulge, I will not let you go, his grandma, what do you have to say now!"

Mr. Cruncher said to himself: "Oh, yes, you also believe in God, you will never do anything against your man and child, you will not!" Sparks of sarcasm fly from the whirling millstone while polishing boots for work.At this time, his son was obediently monitoring his mother.The kid also had spiky hair on his head, only softer, and his young eyes were set close together, like his father's.Now and then he ran out of his sleeping hut (where he washed) and cried in a low voice, "You're going to kneel again, mother-father, look!" Smirked and ran into the house.He just kept disturbing his mother like this.

Mr. Cruncher, who was still in a bad temper by breakfast time, had a special distaste for Mrs. Cruncher saying her prayers.

"Enough, grandma! What are you up to?" replied his wife, who was just "begging for blessings." "Don't beg!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking around, as if wishing the bread would disappear because of his wife's entreaties. "I don't want to be blessed with no house, no home, no food on the dinner table. Shut up!" His eyes were red and his temper was very angry, as if he hadn't slept last night and came back from a party, and that party was more interesting nothing.He wasn't eating his breakfast, he was throwing a tantrum over it, howling at it like a zoo dweller.It was just before nine o'clock when he let down his bulging mane, put on a respectable businesslike air outside his true self, and went out to start his day's work.

Although he likes to call himself an "honest businessman," his work can hardly be called "business."All his capital is a wooden stool.It was a wooden stool made by cutting off the back of a broken chair.Little Jerry would take this stool with his father to the bank building every morning, put it down in front of the window closest to the gate of the law society, and then pull a handful of hay from passing vehicles so that his odd-job father's feet would not feel uncomfortable. cold.This completes the all-day "Set Up Camp" mission.The place where Mr. Cruncher worked was as famous in Fleet Street and the Law School as it was in the neighborhood, and it was as ugly as the buildings.

He had "set camp" at quarter-to-eight, just in time to touch his three-cornered hat to the elderly old men who came into Tellson's Bank.Jerry went to work on this windy March morning.When Jerry Jr. wasn't entering the law school gates to harass and inflict sharp physical or psychological harm on passing children (if the children were small enough for his kind of friendly activity), he stood beside his father.The father and son were very much alike, watching the early morning traffic on Fleet Street without saying a word.The two heads were as close together as their two pairs of eyes, much like a pair of monkeys.The grown Jerry occasionally bit the hay and spat it out, and the bright eyes of the young Jerry rolled and looked at him like everything else on Fleet Street.At this time, the two became even more alike.

At this moment an official courier within Tellson's Bank stuck his head through the door and said:

"Message to be delivered!" "Great, Daddy! We've got business early in the morning!" Little Jerry congratulated his father in this way, sat down on the stool, and became interested in the hay his father had just chewed. and meditated. "Forever rust! His fingers are always rust!" whispered Little Jerry. "Where did my father's rust come from? There is no rust here!"

(End of this chapter)