Chapter 3 winter night passerby

The story happened at a railway station.A locomotive belches white smoke, the rattle of a steam engine piston muffles the sound of your opening a book, and a puff of white steam partially obscures the first paragraph of the first chapter of the novel.The smell of the snack bar mingled with the smell of the train station.Someone stood in the steam-filled glass door and window of the snack bar and looked out. When the glass door was opened, the inside and outside of the snack bar were filled with fog, just like the scene of people who are short-sighted or squinted by soot when looking at the outside world.The text in this novel is blurred, like the glass windows of an old train are steamed, and the fog covers the pages.It was a winter rainy night, the protagonist walked into the snack bar, took off his damp coat, and a gust of water vapor enveloped his body in an instant.There was a long cry from the station, and the train disappeared at the end of the tracks, which gleamed coldly in the rain.

The elderly snack bar owner is making coffee with an espresso machine.The coffee machine whistles and spouts steam, as if the boss is giving a signal (at least the series of sentences in the second paragraph of the novel gives that impression).Upon hearing this signal, the poker players sitting at the table immediately stuck their cards to their chests, turned around and looked at the newcomer shaking his head and shoulders, while the customers standing at the counter held up their glasses. , pursing lips, squinting eyes and blowing coffee, or carefully sipping wine from a glass full of beer.The cat arched its waist, and the cashier closed the cash drawer with a ding-dong sound.All these signs point to a small country station, and unfamiliar faces are instantly recognizable.

Train stations are all much the same, and it doesn't matter if the lights are off, you're already familiar with them.They both smell of trains, even when the trains have left; they both have that peculiar smell of a train station, the smell of the last train after it has left.It's as if the lights on this station and the words you're chanting aren't designed to let you see things through the darkness and the smoke, but to make them one with the darkness and the smoke. I got off at this station tonight, for the first time in my life, but I feel very familiar with the situation here.I walked out and in again from this snack bar.Sometimes it's the smell of the platform, sometimes it's the smell of wet sawdust in the toilet, and all the smells mixed together is the smell of waiting for the train.And the smell of talking on the phone in a phone booth.If there is no response to the number you dial, you can smell the phone booth when you need to collect coins.

I am the protagonist of the novel, walking between the snack bar and the telephone booth.In other words, the protagonist of the novel is named "I", and you don't know anything about this character; the same is true for this station, you only know that it is called "Station", and you don't know anything else , I just know that no one answered your call from here.Perhaps in some distant city a telephone is ringing, but no one answers. I hung up the receiver, waited for the coins to rattle out of the phone, then went back to the snack bar, opened the glass door, and walked over to the pile of freshly laundered coffee cups that were still steaming.

The espresso machine in the train station bar (also known as the station snack bar) whistles and spouts steam, flaunting its locomotive kinship with the steam locomotives of the past and the electric locomotives of the present place.I have been walking up and down the station for a long time, because here I am caught in a trap, in the trap of lack of time that inevitably happens in railway stations.The electrification of railways has been realized for many years, but the air above the stations is still full of coal dust, and a novel describing trains and stations must inevitably mention this smell of smoke and dust.You have read a few pages of this novel, and I should tell you clearly whether the train station where I get off here is the train station in the past or the present train station.However, the text in the book describes a time and space without a clear concept, and tells about events without specific characters or characteristics.Be careful!This is the way to attract you, and you will be hooked step by step without knowing it. This is a trap.Perhaps the author is as immature as you, and you, the reader, are not yet clear about what joy reading this novel will bring you?

Here, I came to this old railway station.Everything here may remind you of the past, allowing you to see the lost time and place again; maybe the light of the electric light and the sound of the espresso machine here make you feel as if you are living in the contemporary era, enjoying the fun that life can bring you today.This bar may be my eyes, a pair of myopic or dust-squeezed eyes, I can't see anything clearly, everything seems to be smoky.But that doesn't rule out the fact that it might actually be brightly lit, with lights from neon tubes and reflectors lighting every corner of the place, music blaring from stereo speakers, pool tables and video game consoles. People are playing games, the color images on the TV screen are constantly changing, the tropical fish are swimming happily in the fish tank, and a string of bubbles are coming out of the air pipe.Instead of an old stuffed plastic bag hanging from my arm, I'm pushing a square suitcase with wheels and a galvanized folding handle.

Readers, you think that I am standing on the platform of this old station, staring at the hands of the wall clock, trying in vain to reverse the huge hour hand and experience the moment that already belongs to the past backwards.Don't you think that the calendar on my watch is snapping backwards in that small box, as if the severed heads on the guillotine rolled past my feet one by one?No matter how you describe it, the result is the same: I hold the handle and push this suitcase with wheels forward on the smooth platform, but my hand naturally expresses my inner revulsion, as if this honest suitcase It is speaking to me that it has become a burden to me, disgusting and exhausting.

Something must have gone wrong, such as a train that went wrong, was late, and delayed the timing of changing trains.Maybe someone should come to pick me up when I come, to pick up this box; it seems to worry me a lot now, whether it's because I'm afraid of losing it, or I'm anxious to get rid of it.But it is certain that this suitcase is unusual and cannot be handed over to the luggage storage office for temporary storage, nor can it be left unattended in the waiting room.It's useless for me to look at my watch now. If someone came to pick me up, they would have left by now.In vain did I try to turn back the clocks and the calendars. It was impossible to go back to the previous time, when the error had not yet occurred.If I should meet someone at this train station, he has nothing to do with this train station. He just got off here and changed to another train to leave here. Just like me, I was going to change trains here. One of the people should give something to another person, for example, I should give him this box with the wheels, but I failed to give him the box, and now it stays with me, let I feel tricky.So what should I do?The only way is to do everything possible to re-establish the connection that has been lost.

I have walked through the snack bar several times to the station gate, and the square outside the gate is pitch black, as if a wall prevents me from moving forward.There is a dark railway on one side and a dark urban area on the other. I can only stay in this illuminated middle ground.Where can I go?The city outside does not yet have a name, and we do not yet know whether it will be excluded from the novel or included in the text of the novel.Now I only know that the first chapter of this novel has been describing the train station and the snack bar, and I have been reluctant to leave here. If I leave here, it would be too imprudent, because someone may come here to find me, and I will I can't be seen carrying this big suitcase.So I kept stuffing coins into the payphone (it spit it out every time), stuffing lots and lots of coins, like making long-distance calls.Who knows where those who are supposed to give me instructions, or give me orders, are now?I work for people, and I don't look like a person who goes out on private business or business, but rather like a person on a mission, like a pawn in a big game, like a cog in a big machine, Too small to be noticeable.In fact, my task is to pass here without leaving any traces, but every minute I stay here will leave traces: if I do not speak, I will leave traces of a person who does not want to speak; if I speak, my Every sentence survives, possibly quoted directly or indirectly.Perhaps that is why the author puts forward a series of assumptions without writing any dialogue, allowing me to slip through and escape under this dense and dim cover of typefaces.

I was an unremarkable person, with no name or background.Reader, the reason you noticed me among the passengers getting off the bus and watched me move from bar to public phone box was because my name was "I".That's all you know about me, but it's enough to make you connect a part of yourself with this "me" that you don't know.The same is true of the author, although he does not want to talk about himself, he has decided to call the hero of the novel "I" to make the hero unobtrusive, because then he does not need to describe the hero in detail; The name or some modifiers say more or less about the protagonist than using the dry pronoun "I".Like you, the author connected a part of himself with this "I" when he wrote down the word "I", connected a part of him that he felt or imagined with this "I".It's never been easier to find common ground in me, as it stands now, that my appearance is that of a passenger who has lost the opportunity to change cars, which is something that anyone has experienced.But what happens at the beginning of a novel always refers to what happened in the past or what will happen in the past, which makes it dangerous for you, the reader, and the author, to find common ground in me.The more featureless the beginning of this novel, the more unclear the time and place, the greater the risk you and the author will take to identify a part of you with my character, because you do not yet know my history, I don't know why I was so eager to get rid of this box.

Getting rid of this box is the first condition to restore me to my former state, that is, to return to the state before what happened later.When I speak of going back to the past, I mean; I am going to undo the consequences of certain events and restore my original situation.But every moment of my life is made up of new events, and each new event inevitably brings new consequences, so the more I want to return to the original "zero" position, the more I leave this position. farther away.Although all my present actions are aimed at undoing the consequences of previous actions and have achieved considerable results, as if success is in sight, I must consider that every action I take to undo the consequences of the past will bring a series of new ones. Consequences will make things more complicated, and you will have to try to eliminate new consequences.I must therefore calculate with precision that each of my actions will have the best effect and least consequence. If nothing goes wrong, someone I don't know should pick me up when I get off the bus.He was carrying a case with wheels that was exactly the same as mine, but his case was empty.As pedestrians hurried to get on and off the train, the two boxes should have collided seemingly inadvertently on the platform.This seemingly accidental event could have happened quite by chance, but we had a code word for it, the horse racing headline in the newspaper that peeked out of my pocket.The man should have said to me: "Ah, Zeno of Elea is victorious!" while we exchanged the handles of the box, and at the same time chatted a little about the predictions of the race and the bets we had made. , and then push the boxes to the trains in different directions.To make it so no one sees that we've swapped boxes, and in the end I'm supposed to be taking his box and he's leaving here with mine. This plan was ideal, and because it was so ideal, it could not be realized if there was a small mistake.Now I stay here not knowing what to do, the only traveler at the station.There will be neither trains in nor out of this station until tomorrow morning.All this while the country town huddled in its own carapace.There are only a few locals left in the station bar, and they all know each other well.Although they didn't come to the station because they had anything to do, they came here through the dark station square.Maybe it's because the nearby public places are closed at this time, maybe it's because the train station still brings people some news in a country town, maybe it's because they still miss the old days when the train station was the small town's connection with the outside world The only hub. I mean small country towns don't exist any more (maybe they never did), everything is instantly connected to every other place, and the feeling of loneliness can only be felt on the way from one place to another. feel that.That is to say when people are not anywhere.I am staying here just in this situation, being regarded as a foreigner by these non-outsiders, at least I think they are non-outsiders and I envy them these non-outsiders.Yes, I envy them.I observe life here from the outside in this unconnected night and this nameless town, knowing that I have been excluded from all temporal connections, thinking of thousands of such small towns, thinking There are thousands of bars lit up at the moment, where people let the darkness hang over everything without any of my worries.Of course, they also have their troubles, and their troubles are not to be envied, but at this moment I am willing to exchange places with any of them, for example, with any of these young people.The young men drafted a petition on the taxation of neon lights, which was to collect signatures from shop owners before being handed over to the city hall, and are now reading their petition to the snack bar owners. The novel quotes some of their conversations here, just to describe the day-to-day life of this country town, "Hey, Almeida, have you signed yet?" they ask a woman.All I could see was the back of the woman, the belt and high collar of her fur-trimmed coat, the hand holding the wine glass, and the smoke lingering between her fingers. "Who told you I'm going to put neon lights in front of my store?" she replied, "If the city government wants to save money on street lights, I will never pay for the street lighting! Everyone knows where the Almida fur store is. .In the evening, I will put down the roller shutters. Goodbye, don’t care if the street is dark or not.” "That's why you should sign," the young men told her.They spoke to her with "you" (no one here uses "you"), and mixed with dialect.They have lived here for an unknown period of time, seeing each other every day, and they have long been used to each other.Every word they say is a continuation of what was said in the past.They joked with each other, sometimes seriously: "Honestly, you want the road to be dark so that it's hard to see who's coming up to you in your house! After the store closes you follow him in the shed behind the store." Who's having a tryst?" These conversations constitute an indistinct and extremely faint background sound.Sometimes a word or a sentence is revealed from it, which has decisive significance for the development of the storyline.If you want to understand this novel, you should not only accept this whisper but be good at understanding its hidden meaning.Maybe you can't (and I can't) do that yet.That is to say, when you read, your mind should be relaxed on the one hand and highly concentrated on the other hand, just like me, sitting at a table in a bar, with one arm on the table and a clenched fist to support your cheek. On the one hand, concentrate on reading, on the other hand, listen to their conversations.Now the novel is about to shed its cloak of impreciseness and clarity and begin to reveal some details about its characters, but it still hopes to leave you with the impression that the first time you see these characters, it seems that you have seen them thousands of times already seen them.We're in a town now, and it's always those people that we see.There is a force of habit in their faces that will tell a first-timer like me that these are the usual faces here, the usual lines, the mirrors in the station bars that record them day by day. emotions, their past and present.This woman may have once been the beauty of the town; and to-day, the first time I saw her, she still seemed to me an attractive woman.But if I imagine that my eyes are those of the other customers in this bar, there is a sense of boredom in her face (perhaps it represents the boredom of the entire population, but also my boredom or yours. of boredom).They have known her since they were children, know her life, know how she came to be, maybe some of them have a history with her, of course that is a thing of the past, long forgotten, but the past is all Casts a shadow over her face, obscuring her current features.It was these past events, other people's memories, that clouded her face and prevented me from seeing her as if I were seeing her for the first time. The favorite pastime of the patrons of the station snack bars seems to be betting, betting on the trivialities of everyday life.For example, a customer said: "Let's make a bet to see who will come to the bar first today, Dr. Marnell or Director Goering first?" Another customer said: "Let's bet again, Marne After the doctor came here, in order to avoid meeting his ex-wife, did he play billiards aside, or did he ask for a horse racing prediction form to fill out?" I've never made a bet in my life: I don't know what's going to happen half an hour from now, so how can I base my life on making either-or bets on everything? "No, I don't know." I whispered. "Don't know what?" she asked. I think this idea can be told to her, unlike other ideas that can only be known to myself.Tell this woman, it's the owner of the fur shop, she's sitting next to me, and I've wanted to talk to her for a while. "You rely on gambling for everything here?" "No, not by betting," she replied.I knew she would answer me like this.She thought it impossible to guess anywhere.Indeed, every night at this time Dr. Marne closed his clinic, and Commissioner Goering came here one after another after finishing his work in the police station.But what does this mean? "Nobody seems to suspect that Dr. Marne is avoiding seeing his ex-wife as much as possible," said the joke. "Marnet's ex-wife was me," she replied. "Don't listen to them gossiping." You, the reader, are now fully focused on this woman.In fact, you have been hanging around her a few pages ago; I, no, the author has already started hanging around this character.You had hoped that this ghost would gradually take human form like ghosts in other novels, and it was your expectation that drove the author to her, and it drove me (though I had other troubles) to go to her and talk to her.Although we started talking, I should stop our conversation as soon as possible, and should leave her and disappear from her side.You must really want to know more about her and what she looks like, but the book tells you very little, her face is still covered by smoke and hair, you have to learn from when she said the above sentence Understanding what was causing her pain in the motion of pursing her lips in pain. "What did they say about you?" I asked. "I don't know anything. All I know is that you have a store and you haven't installed the neon sign yet, but I don't even know where the store is." She explained to me that her store sells furs, suitcases and travel accessories.The store is not on the square in the station yard, but on a street next to the station, near the junction where the station crosses the railway. "Would you like to see it?" "I would have liked to get here earlier. Then I might have walked across the dark street to see your brightly lit shop, and then I'd go in and say, 'If you'd like, I can close the windows and doors for you. come down." She told me that she had already put down the shutters, but that she was going back to the store to take stock and be there until late at night. People in the bar joked and slapped each other on the shoulder.Their first bet had been revealed: Dr. Marne was striding into the bar. "It's strange that the chief is late this evening." Dr. Marne entered the bar, looked around, and raised his hand to greet everyone; his eyes did not stop at his ex-wife, but he must have noticed that a strange man was talking to her.He walked all the way to the end of the hall, turned his back to the bar hall, took out a coin and stuffed it into the small electronic billiard machine.I should have passed here unobtrusively, but now I am being watched, and there are two pairs of eyes that I can never escape, watching everything, full of jealousy and pain, like a camera, capturing all my activities.Just looking at those heavy, watery eyes was enough to tell me that the tragedy between them was far from over: he came to this bar every night to see her, to stimulate an old scar in his heart Today, maybe to see who will accompany her home at night; and she comes here every night to make him uncomfortable, hoping that he will gradually get used to pain like other things, hope that he can treat pain indifferently, Just like she has treated her life and those rumors in the past few years. "The thing I wish most in the world," I said to her, and now I had to go on, "is to turn back the clocks." The woman answered casually, for example, "That's easy, just turn the needle." I said, "No, just turn back time with such intense mental concentration." I mean, I don't know if I really said that, or if I meant to say it, or if the author interpreted the words I muttered in this way. "When I first arrived here, my first thought was: Maybe with some mental effort on my part, I could turn back time. Here, I'm back at the same train station as I left it. Nothing has changed. My whole life began at that station. There was a girl there who could have been my fiancée but didn't. Her eyes, her hair are the same... ..." She looked around for a while, as if she wanted to play a joke on me; I stretched my chin towards her, making a questioning gesture; the corners of her mouth turned up, as if she was about to smile at me but didn't.what happened?Did she suddenly change her mind, or was that just her smile? "I don't know if you said this as a compliment to me, let's count it as a compliment to me. Then?" she asked. "Later, I brought this box to this table and became who I am now." Although I have always thought about this box, this is the first time I have talked about it. "Square boxes with wheels are a hit this evening," she said. "What do you mean?" I asked quietly and quietly. "I sold only one of these boxes today." "Who did you sell it to?" "A stranger, a stranger like you. He got on the train at the station with an empty suitcase he just bought. It is exactly like your suitcase." "Then what's all the fuss about? Don't you sell boxes?" "I have placed this kind of box in the store for a long time, but no one in the local area buys it, and they don't like it. Either this kind of box is not suitable, or people here don't know the goods. In fact, this kind of box is very convenient." "I don't think so. For example, if I want to arrange something nice tonight, I'll have to keep thinking about this box and nothing else." "Then why don't you deposit it somewhere?" "I'd rather keep it in a trunk store," I said. "It's okay. It's just another box." She stood up and adjusted the collar and belt of her coat in the mirror. "If I pass by your store later and knock on the shutter door, will you hear me?" "You try it." She walked straight to the square in front of the station without greeting anyone. Dr. Marne left the pool table and walked towards the middle of the bar hall.Maybe he wanted to see what I looked like, to hear what people were saying or to see the smirks on their faces.But those people still bet on what he might do, regardless of whether he could hear them.There was a lively chatter about Dr. Marne, and occasional pats on the shoulders, but admiration for him always lingered in their banter.This is not only because Marne is a doctor, a doctor at the Municipal Epidemic Prevention Station or something similar, but also because he is everyone's friend, and when a friend suffers, everyone should share his suffering. "Commissioner Goering came later today than everyone expected," said someone, for he saw the Commissioner striding into the bar. "Hello, everyone!" The chief came in and walked to me, then looked down at the box and the newspaper, and whispered, "Eno of Alea." After speaking, he walked towards the cigarette counter. Someone reported me at the police station?He's a policeman working for our organization?I also walked to the cigarette counter, as if I wanted to buy cigarettes too. "Yan was killed. Get out of here quickly," he said. "What about the box?" I asked. "You take it. We're not interested in the case now. You leave here by the eleven o'clock express." "Express trains don't stop here..." "Stop. Go to platform six and stand near the unloading place. You still have three minutes." "Ok……" "Go, or I'll arrest you." Our organization is very powerful, it can mobilize the police and command the railway.I pushed my suitcase across the crosswalk to platform six; then I walked along the platform, and the unloading station was at the other end of the platform, near a dark intersection.The chief of police stood at the entrance of the snack department, staring at me.The express car sped by, then slowed down, stopped, wiped me from the chief's sight, and drove away with me.