Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen

Now we have to focus on Werther's Main Street, because it's Thursday, the day after her call.The streets are full of transparent people and transparent processes, into which we can enter and penetrate with the delight of an angel or a writer, but for the purposes of this report we need only pick Person.He didn't like to go far, and just walked around the village casually, which was rather tedious.A dreary stream of traffic rolled by, some tired and trying to find a place to park with difficulty, others coming from or heading to the far more fashionable tourist spot twenty miles to the north.Many times he passed the old fountain, water dripping from a hollow wood trough carved with geranium lace.He inspected post offices and banks, churches and travel agencies, and a black hut that was still allowed, with its cabbage patch and scarecrow cross, between the boarding-house and the laundry.

He drank beer at two different taverns.He lingers, lingers, in front of a sportswear store—buying a nice gray turtleneck with a beautiful little American flag embroidered on the chest. "Made in Turkey," reads its discreet label. He decided it was time for some refreshments—and found her sitting in a roadside tavern.You changed direction and walked towards her, thinking she was alone, and later discovered that there was a second handbag on the opposite chair, but it was too late.Meanwhile, her companion came out of the same-sex dating public restroom and returned to her seat, speaking in that lovely New York accent with that whore show off he would recognize even in heaven come out:

"That toilet is ridiculous." Hugh Posen, meanwhile, who had failed to shed his pretense of smiling, had caught their attention, and had been invited to sit down with them. A customer sitting next door, who looked ridiculously like Person's late aunt Melissa, whom we all loved, was reading the Herald Tribune.Almanda thought (the word used its indecent connotation) that Julia Moore must have met Percy.Julia thought she had seen it.Xio thought so too, and indeed he had seen it.Did the lookalike of his aunt allow him to borrow her vacant chair?She readily lent him the chair.She was a very kind person, with five cats, and lived in a cottage at the end of a birch-lined road, one of the quietest parts of the country.

Our conversation was interrupted by a deafening crash as a deadpan waitress, a poor woman, dropped a plate of lemonade and pastry due to lack of dexterity.She squatted down and tidied up with her characteristic quick and continuous small movements, her face still expressionless. Almanda told Percy that Julia had come all the way from Geneva to ask her for some phrase translation questions.Julia is leaving for Moscow tomorrow, and she wants to take these translations with her to "impress" her Russian friends.At this point Percy is actually doing her stepfather a favor. "It was my former stepfather, thank God," said Julia. "By the way, Percy, you travel by that name, and you might be able to help. As she explained just now: I want to get a and they promised me to take me to a well-known young Russian poet. Almanda has given me some nice words, but we are stumped by the following sentences," (she from Take a note from her handbag) "I wonder how to say this: 'What a beautiful little church, what a big pile of snow.' You see, let's translate it into French first, and she thinks 'Snowdrift ’ It’s supposed to be rafale de neige, but I’m sure it won’t be rafale in French, rafalovich in Russian, or any of the words they use when they say ‘blizzard’.”

"The word you want," said our Person, "is congere, feminine, which I learned from my mother." "So, in Russian it should be sugrob," Almanda added dryly, "but there won't be a lot of snow there in August." Julia laughed.Julia looked happy and healthy.Julia was even more beautiful than she had been two years before.Now can I see her in my dreams with new eyebrows and new hair?How fast can Meng catch up with new fashions?Will she continue to keep that Japanese doll hairstyle in the next dream? "Let me order something for you," said Almanda to Percy, without the gesture that usually corresponded to that.

Percy thought he'd like a cup of hot chocolate.Meeting an old flame in public is so exciting!Almanda naturally had nothing to fear.She belongs to a whole different class and stays out of the fray.Hugh thought of R's famous novella "Three Tenses". "There's something else we haven't quite settled, Almanda, don't you think?" "Besides, we've spent two hours on it," said Almanda rather crossly—perhaps not realizing that she had nothing to fear. "Three Tenses" describes this vividly, writing a completely different, purely intellectual or artistic level of charm: a fashionable man in a dark blue tuxedo is on a brightly lit verandah Dinner with three bare-shouldered beauties, Alice, Beata and Claire, who have never met each other before. A (Alice) is a former lover, B (Beta) is his current mistress, and C (Claire) is his future wife.

At the moment he regretted that he had not drank coffee like Almanda and Julia.Chocolate is not good.The waiter brought You a cup of hot milk.You also got a little sugar and a very delicate thing that could barely be called an envelope.You tore open the top end of the envelope.You added the light brown powder it contained into the thoroughly stirred milk in his own cup.You took a sip—and hurriedly added sugar.But the taste was already boring, bitter, and out of shape, and adding sugar would not help. Almanda, who has been watching him closely through the stages of wonder and disbelief, laughs:

"Now you know what 'hot chocolate' is like in Switzerland. My mother," she continued, turning her face to Julia (who, though actually proud of her reticence, was in the past tense with some demonstrative informality, reaching out to Hugh's cup with his little teaspoon, and scooping out a little), "When my mother first tasted the stuff, tears welled up in her eyes, as she The chocolates from my childhood are still fresh in my memory." "It tastes awful," agreed Julia, still licking her fat pale lips, "but I still prefer this hot chocolate to our American fudge."

"That's because you're the most unpatriotic guy in the world," Almanda said. The charm of the past tense lies in its mystery.He knew Julia well enough to know that she must have never spoken of their affair to a friend whom they had met by chance—it was but a drop in the ocean of her romance.Thus, in this precious brief moment, between Julia and him (or Alice and the narrator, so to speak), a pact to the past is formed, an invisible pact designed to resist reality , reality is represented by noisy intersections, whizzing cars, trees and strangers.The B of the trio is Bizzy Witt, and the main stranger—and this brings up another thrill—is his future lover, Armanda; Knowing all about it) as little as knowing anything about the past that Hugh is now re-tasting with his brown powdered milk.Hugh is a sentimental nerd, and not necessarily a very nice guy (nice guys are higher than him, he's just a rather lovable guy).He felt that it was a pity that there was no musical accompaniment for such a beautiful day, and no Romanian violinist played beautiful music for the two people whose initials were intertwined and the letters were intertwined.You can't even hear Charm (a waltz) playing over the bistro's speakers.But there was a background rhythm, made up of the voices of passers-by, the tinkling of pottery, and the mountain breeze drawn by the venerable old chestnut tree at the corner.

After a while, they got up and left.Almanda reminded him not to forget that he was going on an outing tomorrow.Julia shook his hand and begged him to pray for her, because she was going to say je t'aime in Russian to that passionate poet of excellence; saying it in Russian sounded like saying "yellow blue tibia" in English. "(with gargle).They broke up with each other.The two girls got into Julia's beautiful car.Hugh Person started back to the hotel, but stopped suddenly, cursed, and went back to get his bag.