Chapter 6 Chapter Six

This Henry Emery Person, father of our Person, can be portrayed as a kind and sincere sweet little old man, or as a shameless liar, depending on the observer's point of view and position.There are many handwritten things that go around in the dungeons of no redemption in the darkness of self-blame.A schoolboy, as strong as a Boston strangler--hold out your hands, Hugh--couldn't handle it if all his schoolmates kept talking bad about his father.After two or three clumsy fights with some of his most annoying classmates, he adopted a shrewder and more effective approach of unsmiling half-acceptance.When he recalled this practice back then, he was shocked.But through this peculiar twist of conscience, the shock he felt became self-consolation, proof that he wasn't quite a monster.Until that day, he felt guilty every time he thought about some of his bad behavior, and it was time to take steps to get rid of this mentality.No matter how painful it is, they have to be disposed of, just like the paper bags containing false teeth and glasses that the school authorities once threw him.The only family member he could turn to for help was an uncle in Scranton, the United States. His uncle advised him to cremate the body abroad instead of sending it back to China.Although this method is not desirable, it is indeed easier in many aspects in practice. The main reason is of course that this method allows him to get rid of that terrible corpse immediately.

Everyone is very cooperative.Special thanks go to Harold Hall, Consul of the United States in Switzerland, who was very helpful in rendering all possible assistance to our poor friend. Hugh was excited by two things, the one in general and the other in particular.The first is the general feeling of being liberated, blissful, ecstatic, clean-cut, with most of the bad things in your life swept away.Specifically, he was delighted to find his father's bulging wallet, although worn out, with three thousand dollars in it.Like many young men with mysterious geniuses, he felt the gratifying thickness in the large stack of banknotes; his living ability was not strong, he had no ambition to make more money, and he did not worry about his future livelihood (later Knowing that the cash amounted to more than one-tenth of what he actually inherited, none of his character traits mattered).On that same day, he couldn't wait to move into a much more upscale apartment in Geneva, eat American lobster as his main meal, and went to find his first prostitute in an alley behind the hotel where he lived.

For optical and physical reasons, erotic love is less transparent than many other things that are far more complex.However, everyone knows that Hugh courted a thirty-eight-year-old mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter in his hometown, but he became impotent when making love to the first one, and was not bold enough when making love to the second one.Here is a banal example: long-suppressed sexual desire, acting alone in a habitually satisfying way, dreamlike beauty.The girl he picked up was a pudgy girl with a lovely, pale, vulgar face, Italian eyes.She took him to an ugly, shabby boarding house, next to a better bed - with the exact "number", in fact, ninety-one, ninety-two, about ninety-three years ago, one A Russian novelist stopped here on his way to Italy.The bed was not the same as it is now, with copper knobs, made, shuffled, covered with a men's frock coat, rearranged, with a half-open checkered Small suitcase, the traveler in nightshirt, bare neck, messy black hair, frock coat draped over his shoulders, we see him deciding what to take out of the suitcase (the suitcase will be delivered to For the mail wagon onwards), into a backpack (he put himself in a backpack over the mountains to the Italian border).He is looking forward to his painter friend Kondi Datov coming here to join him at any time for this excursion, a relaxing and pleasant excursion, even in the rainy season of August, romantics will glad to go.It was an uncomfortable season, with more rain.He had just been to the nearest casino, a ten-mile walk back and forth, and his boots were still wet.They stood outside the door, looking as if they had been expelled, with several layers of German newspapers wrapped around his feet, which he had accidentally discovered was easier to read than French.The main question now was whether to put my own manuscripts in a backpack or mail them in a suitcase: a draft letter; an unfinished short story written in a Russian copybook, wrapped in black cloth; a philosophical treatise Some parts of the book are written in a notebook I got from Geneva; there is also a leaflet of an immature novel, tentatively titled "Foster in Moscow".When he sat down at the trading desk, he could vaguely see through the backpack the first page of Foster's Love Story, scuffed with eraser and painted in purple, black, and reptile green. Insert text written in ink.Our Posen whore has slammed her huge handbag down on this same trading table.He was fascinated by his handwriting, that the chaotic handwriting on the page seemed to him orderly, the stains became beautiful pictures, and the words scribbled in the margins seemed to be wings.Instead of organizing his papers, he uncorked his portable ink bottle, pen in hand, and approached the trading desk.

Hugh Person followed the woman she met down the long, steep steps to her favorite street corner where they had parted for years.He had hoped that the girl would stay with him until the next morning—so that he would spend one less night in a hotel room where his dead father's presence was felt in every dark, secluded corner of his room.But when she saw that he intended to stay for the night, she misunderstood his purpose, and said grimly that it would take too long to restore such a poor actor, and sent him off altogether.However, it was not ghosts that kept him awake, but a dull mood.He opened both windows fully, facing the parking lot four stories below it.There was a small crescent moon overhead, too faint to illuminate the roofs of the houses descending toward the unseen lake.The light of one garage made it possible to make out the steps leading to a forlorn staircase of mottled shadows.Everything is dim and far away.Our Person has a fear of heights, and he feels gravity pulling him down to join the night and his father.When he was a child, he sleepwalked naked many times in his sleep state. Fortunately, the familiar environment protected him until this strange disease gradually disappeared.Tonight, he was on the top floor of a strange hotel, without any protection.He closed the window and sat in an armchair until dawn.