In August 1922, Zhang Youyi, who was in Shaston, England, found herself pregnant again. Her husband, Xu Zhimo, surprised her when he heard the news of her pregnancy: he forced her to have a fetus.
Zhang Youyi did not want to risk a fetus, and she did not understand why her husband did not want this child, so she said tentatively: "I heard that someone died because of the beating." ”
After Xu Zhimo listened, he coldly refuted her: "There are still people who have died because of train accidents, do you see that people don't take trains?" ”
In order to persuade Zhang Youyi to beat up the child in his belly, Xu Zhimo also made up a lie and said: "This kind of thing is common in the West. ”
The child that Xu Zhimo forced Zhang Youyi to kill was his later youngest son Peter (Xu Desheng), who was not accepted by his father from the beginning. At the same time, his mother suffered a lot because of his arrival.
Zhang Youyi and Xu Zhimo
Since knowing that she was pregnant, Zhang Youyi was a little worried in her heart, and she also felt that this child had not come at the right time: she was in a foreign country at this time, and there were no relatives around to take care of her, and her husband Xu Zhimo, who was studying abroad, had become obsessed with the talented daughter Lin Huiyin.
In early September, Xu Zhimo secretly left the house they rented in Shaston, which also meant that Zhang Youyi did not even have the last to rely on. At this time, because of the obvious pregnancy response, her physical condition is very poor.
Before Xu Zhimo ran away from home, he had proposed a divorce, this request was rejected by Zhang Youyi, although she had noticed that her husband had a new girlfriend, but she was not very sure, she still thought: this marriage, there is still room for redemption.
A week after Xu Zhimo left, Zhang Youyi, who was unstable due to pregnancy and hormones, had an emotional breakdown, and she later said when recalling this past:
"Where did Xu Zhimo go?" I couldn't sleep in the big bed he shared; when I walked through the rooms in the house, I always felt like I was screaming and losing my voice. I was completely alone. ”
At the saddest time, Zhang Youyi thought of suicide, she said:
"I considered cutting off my own life and my children's lives. I thought, I simply disappeared from this world and ended this tragedy, how simple. I can crash my head on the balcony, or I can drown in the pond, or I can close all the windows and twist the gas..."
Zhang Youyi
People say that "mother and child are connected to the heart", and these thoughts after Zhang Youyi was abandoned, Peter in his belly could not not feel it. Unfortunately, Zhang Youyi at that time could not perceive this. Even if she could perceive, perhaps, she would not be able to control herself.
According to modern medical research theory, when the child is in the abdomen, he can accurately detect the mother's emotions, in other words: little Peter must be aware that "the mother wants to kill herself and him."
Zhang Youyi's sanity finally triumphed, thinking of her parents, she finally sobered up: "The body is affected by the parents, suicide is a sick thought, I want to cut off this thought." ”
After being abandoned, Zhang Youyi, who did not have the courage to return to China, asked for help from her second brother Zhang Junjie, who was far away in France. The answer she received was: "Never beat the fetus, my brother is willing to adopt." The second brother also gave her his address in France.
After having the words of the second brother, Zhang Youyi left Sharston one morning in the autumn of that year, dragging her pregnant body.
A pregnant woman who does not know English, alone from Shaston, England, to France, not to mention how many bumps to go through on this road, just crossing the English Channel is enough to toss. This difficult journey, Zhang Youyi did not want to remember it at all, so that she really "blurred" this journey.
Poor Peter in his stomach, not only could not keep up with his nutrition, but also suffered from the bumps with his mother along the way. Fortunately, it was also on this road, on the boat crossing the English Channel, Zhang Youyi, who felt the violent fetal movement, decided to go against Xu Zhimo's decision and leave the child behind.
Middle-aged Zhang Youyi (1937)
But at this time, although Zhang Youyi no longer had the idea of beating the fetus, she still did not want this child, and her original intention was: to give the child to the second brother to raise. But after living in Paris with her second brother for a while, she found that "no matter how well he is, he can't take care of the children independently." ”
why? Because Zhang Youyi found that the second brother who studied philosophy could not even take care of himself. After determining that the second brother was not the person to take care of the child, she turned to her in-laws. She thought to herself, "No matter what happened between me and Xu Zhimo, this child is the bloodline of the Xu family, and I can send the child back to my hometown and ask the Xu family for adoption." ”
Zhang Youyi's lack of want for this child is related to her resentment towards Xu Zhimo. There are very few women in this world who, after being abandoned by a man, still love the child left by that man as always.
After having this idea, Zhang Youyi wrote to Xu Zhimo's parents to report the relevant information. Immediately afterward, Xu's parents sent a check for $200 and promised to pay it monthly.
After having the money, Zhang Youyi stayed at the home of his second brother's friend Liu Wendao and his wife, whose home was located in the countryside. Zhang Youyi lied to Liu and his wife that she was unwell and planned to find a place to stay during Xu Zhimo's travels.
Zhang Youyi really did not want to tell Liu Wendao and his wife that she had been abandoned by Xu Zhimo, and in order to cover up the facts, she chose to lie. But one lie often takes a hundred lies to round it up. In order to make the Couple surnamed Liu believe that she was not abandoned by Xu Zhimo, she always pretended to "know Xu Zhimo's whereabouts".
From left to right: Zhang Junjie, Mrs. Liu Wendao, Zhang Youyi, who is pregnant with Peter, and Liu Wendao
During the days of living in the Liu family, Zhang Youyi lived very badly, she basically belonged to the state of no one to take care of, during the day, Liu Wendao and his wife went to study, and she always stayed alone.
One day, Zhang Youyi's seventh brother, Zhang Jingqiu, came to see her, and on that day, his brother not only cooked for her, but also cleaned for her. While being moved, she also determined that she should be with her loved ones. Therefore, she resolutely stood up with a big belly and went to Germany with her seventh brother. The journey was also bumpy, but because the fetus was 9 months old, she no longer worried about accidents.
On February 24, 1922, shortly after arriving in Berlin, Germany, Zhang Youyi gave birth to her son Peter in the hospital. Giving birth to a male fetus is usually considered a "great thing", but Zhang Youyi is upset about the child's gender.
After being pregnant and abandoned, Zhang Youyi is full of resentment towards Xu Zhimo, she does not want a son who resembles Xu Zhimo, but only wants a daughter who looks and has the same personality as her. Dissatisfied with Peter's gender, Zhang Youyi later recounted her state of mind at that time in her recollection, saying:
"When he (the doctor) brought my son to show me, I almost cried because I wanted a girl, a girl carved out of my mold, not a copy of Xu Zhimo."
On the night of Peter's birth, Zhang Youyi looked at his small face that resembled Xu Zhimo and kept muttering: "How come, I have compared the characteristics of pregnancy, it is the characteristics of pregnant girls, how can it be?" ”
Zhang Youyi is so taboo about the gender of her children because she is ready for divorce, and she does not want to have anything to do with Xu Zhimo. Undoubtedly, a child who is exactly the same as Xu Zhimo will keep her living in the shadows.
Every day after giving birth, Zhang Youyi was alone, and her seventh brother felt that "the delivery room is not a place for men to stay", so although he was in Berlin, he insisted on refusing to step into her delivery room.
Group photo of the Zhang family brothers and sisters: the third sitting on the left is Zhang Youyi; the right stand is the seventh brother Zhang Jingqiu
Loneliness made Zhang Youyi's mood very bad, and her bad dew flowed very badly. Zhang Youyi did not breastfeed Peter, this time, because of her bad mood after childbirth, resulting in less milk, on the other hand, it is related to her heart. As soon as she saw the small face that was exactly the same as Xu Zhimo's, there was a nameless anger in her heart. In such a situation, it was difficult for her to breastfeed Peter.
Peter's full name is "Xu Desheng", which, as the name suggests, means "he was born in Germany". But this name has another meaning, Zhang Youyi wants to use the child's name to remind herself: we must not forget the humiliation we have suffered.
A week after giving birth, Zhang Youyi made a surprising decision: she was determined to discharge herself and leave the child in the hospital. Of course, the doctors disagreed, and they were worried that Zhang Youyi wanted to abandon the child in the hospital. The doctor frowned and said to her, "The baby is very healthy, you don't need to leave him in the hospital." ”
But even though the doctor said so, Zhang Youyi still stubbornly left Peter in the hospital. Later, in her memoir, Little Feet and Suits, she recounted why she had left Peter in the hospital, saying:
"When it was time to go back to the small apartment where I lived with my seventh brother, I was at a loss. I was suddenly afraid to go home with my baby, and I didn't know how to start taking care of the baby in Berlin..."
Zhang Youyi attributed the reason for leaving Peter to her own dazedness, but in fact, the reasons behind her behavior were obviously more complicated. Poor Peter, just 7 days after his birth, was left alone in the cold hospital.
When Zhang Youyi was still in the moon, Xu Zhimo couldn't wait to take Jin Yuelin, Wu Jingxiong and other witnesses and signed a divorce agreement with her. After signing the divorce, Xu Zhimo went to the hospital to visit Peter. The reason why he did this is said to be because he was afraid that after seeing the children, he would not be able to make up his mind to divorce.
Xu Zhimo, as a father, looked at his newborn son through the window, and he was a little fascinated, and he kept praising the child, but he did not ask Zhang Youyi how to raise the child. No one expected that the first meeting between Xu Zhimo and Peter would be Yong Ti.
Xu Zhimo
Because he was hospitalized at birth and was not breastfed, Peter's health was not particularly good.
After Zhang Youyi put Peter in the hospital, his second brother Zhang Junjie was very anxious. The man, who had planned to adopt Peter, had mixed feelings about finding his sister's best friend Dora. After Dora lived with Zhang Youyi and helped take care of Peter, she finally stopped feeling that taking care of her young son was a difficult task.
Dora also found a German teacher for Zhang Youyi, and she also introduced Zhang Youyi to study at pestalozi College.
Every day, after Zhang Youyi went to school, Dora took care of Peter for her alone. Over time, Peter and Dora became very close, and Dora regarded him as her own. The life of two women with a child also officially began.
For Zhang Youyi and Dora, the most difficult thing is not to take the child, but how to face the eyes of the outside world. Although they were in Germany at that time, Germany was not open at that time, and people still had a lot of opinions about a woman alone with a child. Zhang Youyi has been blinded by many people, and she has to move frequently.
Recalling this past, Zhang Youyi once described her life at that time, saying:
"I've made up different stories in front of each landlord, such as Peter's dad dying, or his dad finishing school in England while I was working in Germany. We even told a landlord the truth and told her I was divorced, but she looked at me with a suspicious look as if I were a prisoner, and that attitude made me very uncomfortable. ”
Moving frequently is not a good thing for raising children. Peter, who was not in good health, began to get sick regularly, and when he turned one year old, Peter became seriously ill: he had severe diarrhea and had difficulty breathing.
Zhang Youyi and Peter
Dora and Zhang Youyi took Peter to see hays, a famous doctor, but he could not find the cause. In the spring of 1923, he and other doctors found a parasite in Peter's small intestine, who was only one and a half years old. They speculated that Peter was infected from stale milk.
Because Peter was so small and the parasite was located right between the intestines and skin, the doctors were unable to catch the parasite.
Seeing that Dr. Hayes was unable to heal Peter, Dora and Zhang Youyi went to a Swiss clinic to seek medical treatment. Dr. Hayes told Zhang Youyi that the hospital's medical expenses were extremely expensive, and there was no guarantee that it would be cured.
After learning the news, Zhang Youyi had to write a letter to Xu Zhimo's parents who were far away in Jiaoshi for help, and she told them the doctor's diagnosis, but the reply she got was that their money was not enough to send Peter to Switzerland for treatment.
Faced with this dilemma, Zhang Youyi and Dora could only look at Peter and sigh. Zhang Youyi did not understand: The in-laws are obviously very rich people, why don't they pay for Peter's treatment? Thinking about it, she finally understood: neither of them had ever met Peter, and that she and their son were divorced at this time, so that this grandson could not even be considered their grandson in name, but only a grandson in reality, and had never met, let alone had feelings.
Zhang Youyi could only lament: "If they had seen Peter, maybe things would turn around." ”
Peter
Peter, who was ill and incurable, was in so much pain that by the winter of 1924 he could no longer sleep peacefully during the day and night, and could not even breathe if he did not exert force. Seeing her children in such pain, Zhang Youyi's heart was like a knife, and Dora, who had been with them, was also in pain.
Peter was a very beautiful child, he had big eyes, long eyelashes, he was also very artistically talented, and he was particularly sensitive to music. Every time, as long as the phonograph plays music, he will quiet down, and sometimes, he will take the "baton" to conduct the music.
Also because Peter loves music, after he fell ill and couldn't sleep, Zhang Youyi and Dora used a phonograph to play music to him in order to comfort him. But the neighbors always complain that their music is too loud...
Peter, who had no money to heal, was getting worse and worse every day, first he could not eat meat, then he could not even eat bread, and later he could not even drink soup.
Zhang Youyi watched Peter's stomach swell bigger and bigger, but her body became thinner and thinner, and she wept day by day. She was so thin that when she went to class, she often had two huge dark circles under her eyes.
While their mother and son are struggling to survive in Germany, Xu Zhimo in China is in a hot love affair, and he and Lu Xiaoman, the wife of his friend Wang Zhao, are in love, and Lu Xiaoman is ready to divorce him.
At this time, Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi, one is in heaven and the other is in hell. The one in heaven seems to have forgotten that he has a young son who is wandering in a foreign land; the one in hell blames himself every day in the groans of his son: he blames himself for not breastfeeding his son, he blames himself for not taking good care of his son...
One night, Zhang Youyi, who had fallen asleep because she was too tired, heard several screams, and Zhang Youyi quickly got up and ran to Peter's bed after hearing the sound, and she found that her son was still awake. After seeing his mother, he clutched his belly and said to her in German: "Mommy, Peter is in pain." ”
That night, Zhang Youyi and Dora grabbed their clothes and carried Peter to the hospital. This time, the person responsible for diagnosing him was still Dr. Hayes.
On March 19, 1925, shortly after this emergency hospitalization, the skinny little Peter died of illness, and when he died, he was less than a month away from his 3rd birthday.
After Peter's death, Zhang Youyi and Dora wanted to cry without tears, although they had expected Peter to die, but when it happened, they still could not accept it. For a long time to come, Zhang Youyi felt as if her soul had been sucked away.
A week after Peter's death, a scene that surprised Zhang Youyi happened: Xu Zhimo actually arrived in Berlin. Zhang Youyi said with remorse: "If I knew that you were coming, I would wait for you to come and then cremate him, and let you look at him." ”
Zhang Youyi did not know that Xu Zhimo's coming to Germany this time was not really for Peter, he was here to "temporarily avoid" domestic public opinion. It turned out that after falling in love with lu Xiaoman, the husband of a wife, domestic public opinion continued, in order to avoid and test his love with Lu Xiaoman, he chose to "go abroad for a walk".
Lu Xiaoman and Xu Zhimo
Because he came a little late, Xu Zhimo finally saw only Peter's altar of ashes. While holding the altar of ashes, he finally shed tears. Later, he wrote a eulogy for Peter's death called "My Peter". In the eulogy, there are several sentences that look like this:
"Peter, cute little Peter, I 'count' your father, but when I think of my past as a father, I have a lot of feelings in my heart... But my affection! Is it resentment, is it hatred, is it repentance, is it pity? ”
Undoubtedly, Xu Zhimo in this eulogy remembers his "past traces" of forcing Zhang Youyi to beat up Peter and sign a divorce agreement after Peter was born. But whether he really "repented" is unknown.
After arriving in Berlin, Xu Zhimo wrote countless letters to Lu Xiaoman, and while he was with her Qingqing and me, he also mentioned Peter's death, and he wrote:
"Just sent Ms. C (Zhang Youyi) back, poor unfortunate mother, three-year-old child (Peter) only a handful of cold ash, died a week ago."
In the letter, Xu Zhimo did not even want to call Peter "son", but only called him "little child". If Peter had a spirit in heaven who knew the outcome, he would not have known how he would have felt.
Shortly after Peter's death, Xu Zhimo, who learned that Wang Xian had agreed to divorce, returned to China happily. Shortly thereafter, he married Lu Xiaoman.
What makes Xu Zhimo feel difficult to accept is that as he grows older, he likes children more and more, but he has not ushered in the crystallization of his and Lu Xiaoman's love. The reason is that Lu Xiaoman had an abortion in order to marry him, and thus lost his fertility forever.
The more he didn't get it, the more he couldn't put it down, and Xu Zhimo, who had been begging for a son, was actually a little enchanted later, and as soon as he saw someone else's child, he would go up and tease him. I don't know, xu Zhimo, who especially thinks about his children, has ever thought of his young son Peter, who has died prematurely, because he "can't ask for a son"?
On November 19, 1931, Xu Zhimo was killed in a plane crash. After that, he was buried back in Jiaoshi, Zhejiang, next to his tomb is the tomb of his young son Peter. Before he died, he probably could not have imagined that after his death, the person who accompanied him through countless miserable winds and cold rains was peter, the young son who had been abandoned by him.
Xu Zhimo and Peter Cemetery
Peter's death was eventually exchanged for the rebirth of his mother, Zhang Youyi. After his death, Zhang Youyi became not afraid of anything, and for the rest of her life, she could finally let go of her hands and feet to do what she wanted to do.
Later, with her own efforts and the support of her brothers, Zhang Youyi became the vice president of the Shanghai Women's Commercial Savings Bank, and she also became the actual helmsman of Yunsheng Clothing Company.
People say that "in a tragic marriage, the real tragedy is usually a child", and Peter is not a victim of the tragic marriage between Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi. If, if there is, Peter's ending will certainly be rewritten. However, there has never been an "if" in the world.