Chapter 12 Winter 12. Wrong Station

For those who live in disgustingly poor conditions, the perfect place to go on a cold night is, of course, the cinema.Marcovaldo is obsessed with color movies, because the huge screen is enough to show the widest picture, vast grasslands, rolling mountains, African jungles, and islands full of flowers.He had to watch every film twice, and he had no choice but to leave until the cinema closed, but those natural landscapes still lingered in his mind, and he seemed to still be breathing the fragrance of those flowers and green grass. On this drizzly night, I was walking home, waiting for the No. 30 tram at the station, and suddenly woke up: the scenery of his life is just the tram, the traffic lights, the semi-basement, the gas stove, the clothes to dry, the warehouse, and the packing room—— All of this immediately turned the brilliance of the movie he had just felt into a cloud of dull, gloomy mist.

That night, the film Marcovaldo watched described a story that happened in the Indian forest: confused smoke rose from the swampy bushes, snakes crawled along the vines, and entrenched on the statues of the ancient temples covered by the jungle. Walking out of the cinema, Marcovaldo opened his eyes and looked down the street, then closed them and opened them again.He couldn't see anything, absolutely nothing, he couldn't see anything.While he was in the movie theater, a great fog descended on the city, dense and thick, swallowing everything in the world and dissolving all sound; The bright light drives the darkness into formless, elusive spots of light.Marcovaldo walked involuntarily towards the stop of the 30 tram and ran headfirst into a notice board.At the moment, he felt lucky, because the fog wiped out the world around him, and he was able to keep the scenes on the screen in his vision.The cold has also eased, and the clouds and fog are like a blanket, almost wrapping the city tightly.Marcovaldo clung to his overcoat, feeling assisted by outside sensations, he now seemed to be gliding in a vacuum that he could embellish with images of India, Gandhi, the jungle and Calcutta.

The trolley came along, ringing slowly, like a ghost.Everything around him was vaguely present. Marcovaldo sat on the innermost side of the tram, with his back turned to other passengers, staring out the window. Occasionally, there were some hazy spots of light and shadows darker than darkness, passing through the Nothingness of night.All of this was a wonderful opportunity for Marcovaldo that night. He could dream with his eyes open, and no matter where he went, he could never stop on the vast and boundless big screen in front of him. show movies. He was so dreamy that he didn't pay attention to the station where the tram was passing.He suddenly asked himself where he was now; turning around, he saw that the carriage was almost empty.He looked carefully through the window glass, pondered the faint flash of light outside the window, and finally concluded that he should get off at the next stop.He hurried to the door of the car and got out of the car in a hurry.

He looked around, trying to find a waypoint.The few lights and shadows that his eyes could gather couldn't compose the places he was familiar with.He got off at the wrong station, and he didn't know where he was now. If you run into a pedestrian, you can ask him to show you the way.However, in such a remote place, and in such a ghostly weather and time, there was hardly a single person.At last Marcovaldo saw a shadow and waited for him to come.However, he walked further and further away, maybe he crossed the road, or maybe he was just walking in the middle of the road, or maybe he was not a pedestrian, but just a cyclist, riding a bicycle without headlights.

Marcovaldo shouted: "Please! Please! Please stop! Can you tell me, Pancrazio? Where is Via Pancrazietti?" The shadow continued to move towards the distance, and when it almost disappeared, it replied: "Towards that..." But Marcovaldo did not understand what direction he was pointing. "To the right or to the left?" Marcovaldo yelled, but he didn't know if he was yelling into nothingness. The answer, or the epilogue of the answer, came: "……direction!" In fact, since each other can't see each other's position clearly, even if the figure points to the left or the right, it is tantamount to saying nothing.

Marcovaldo is now walking towards the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road. There is a flash of light not too far away, but the actual distance is far away. You need to pass through a square with a grassy safety island in the middle, and there are instructions for vehicles to turn The arrowhead is the only recognizable mark.It was late at night, but one or two coffee shops and hotels should still be open.The shimmering signboard just displayed the word "Bar", and then suddenly went out.The night is like a metal curtain door, covering the originally shining glass window in an instant.Only then did he realize that the bar was closed and far away from him.

Marcovaldo needed to find another light to get his bearings.He walked forward, but he didn't know whether he was walking on the right path, and he didn't know whether the light he was looking for was the light that had just flashed, or it would appear somewhere else, or it was simply unpredictable .He walked in a dark, milky mist so fine that he felt it seep through his coat and seep into his body, and he seemed to have fallen into a sieve, absorbing water like a sponge. His whole body was soaked in mist and dust. The light he traced turned out to be shining through the smoky glass doors of a hotel.There were no empty seats in the hotel, and there were people standing in front of the bar counter. Maybe it was because of poor lighting, maybe because of the heavy fog seeping in, and the figures here were also blurred, just like the hotels in ancient times or remote areas seen in movies.

"I'm going to... Maybe you know... Pancrazieti Avenue..." he asked the customers. The hotel was buzzing with drunken patrons laughing loudly, assuming he was drunk too.The questions he asked shyly, and the answers he received, were equally vague and indistinct.In order to warm himself, he first asked the waiter, or the customers standing in front of the bar counter ordered him to order a quarter liter of wine, and then, another half a kilo, several customers patted him on the shoulder, and Offer him a few drinks.All in all, when he came out of the hotel he was more bewildered than before, less sure how to get home, and the fog was thicker than ever covering the vastness of the earth and all colors.

Dragging his body warmed by the wine, he walked for a full quarter of an hour.As he walked, from time to time he felt that he needed to take a few steps to the left or right in order to grasp the width of the sidewalk, and needed to feel the walls of the store with his hands, if he still walked along the sidewalk, and there was indeed a wall of the store .As he walked, the fog in his head seemed to be thinning, while the fog on the street was thickening.He remembered that the people in the hotel told him to go a little further, touch about 100 meters, and then ask people.However, he doesn't know how far he has traveled after leaving the hotel. Perhaps, he is still wandering around the safety island.

This seems to be an uninhabited area, the surrounding brick walls are very similar to the walls of a factory, and there is a street sign indicating the name of the place at the corner, but the street lamp hanging in the middle of the road cannot project light onto the street sign.Marcovaldo wanted to see the name of the road on the sign, so he climbed up the pole with the "No Parking" sign.He leaned out from the top of the pole and put his nose close to the road sign, but the handwriting of the place name was faded, and he didn't bring a match with him, otherwise he only needed to light a match to see it.The wall above the sign appeared flat and wide, and Marcovaldo jumped from the pole of the "No Parking" sign and onto the wall.Standing on the edge of the wall, he vaguely saw a large whitish notice board.He walked a few steps forward along the edge of the wall, and walked up to the notice board. Under the light of the street lamp, there were several black words on the white background of the notice board: "Pedestrians are strictly prohibited", but he didn't Get any inspiration from this notice board.

The edges of the walls are quite wide, and you can walk on them with confidence and boldness.To tell the truth, it was better to walk on the wall than on the pavement, because the street lamp cast a band of light in the dark, just to illuminate his steps.After walking for a while, the wall disappeared.Marcovaldo ran into a pillar head-on, turned a ninety-degree turn, and continued walking.Along the way, Marcovaldo kept encountering corners, concave corners, forks, and pillars, and his walking route presented an irregular pattern.More than once, he thought that the wall had come to an end, only to find that it extended in another direction.After zigzagging and walking, he was already dizzy, not knowing where to jump off, and returned to the road.Jumping off...and what if the wall is not as high as the road?He crouched down in front of a pillar, trying to look under the wall, but there was no light to see the darkness below.Maybe the height of the wall and the road is only two meters, but now it seems like an abyss.He had no choice but to bite the bullet and move on. The way out soon appeared.It was a whitish flat land connected to the wall. He stepped onto the flat land and took a few steps, thinking that it might be the concrete roof of a building, extending into the dark depths.He immediately regretted stepping on this flat ground, and now he has lost any markers to distinguish the road. He is getting farther and farther away from the street lights, and every step he takes may lead to the edge of the roof, or go further, and fall into nothingness. That nothingness is indeed a bottomless pit.Looking down, I saw lights flickering in the distance. If they were street lights, then the ground must be still deeper.Marcovaldo seems to be suspended in an unimaginable dilemma.Suddenly, green and red lights appeared above, arranged in irregular shapes like constellations.He raised his head to inspect the lights, unknowingly stepped on the ground, and fell straight into nothingness. "I'm finished!" The terrible thought flashed through his mind.It was too late to say it, but it was soon, but he fell down and sat on a piece of soft ground, his hands touched the green grass; he fell in the middle of a piece of grass, safe and sound.Those low lights, which he thought were far away at first, turned out to be countless strings of lights clinging to the ground. It is quite rare to install lights close to the ground, but it also pointed out the way for him, making walking much more convenient.Right now, he no longer steps on the grass, but on the concrete floor. A wide concrete road runs through the grass, clearly illuminated by the lights that are close to the ground.around, but can't see anything.Only colorful lights flashed and disappeared from time to time in the sky. "The concrete road will always take me somewhere," Marcovaldo thought to himself, walking along the concrete road.He came to a fork in the road, or a crossroad, and each fork in the road was lit with small lights close to the ground, and there were big white numbers written on the road. He was discouraged.The surrounding flat grass and misty smoke disappeared.What is the point of choosing which direction to go now?At this moment, he saw a beam of light that was as tall as a person flickering.He saw a man, indeed a man, who seemed to be wearing a suit of yellow overalls, waving two signs with both hands like a station master directing the train to move. Marcovaldo ran towards the man, and before he reached him, he said out of breath: "Hey, please tell me, what should I do in such a foggy weather? Please listen to me..." "Don't worry," the man in the yellow overalls replied calmly and enthusiastically, "there is no fog above a kilometer above, so feel free to go. The escalator is over there. Go forward, and everyone else is going up." Although these few words were unclear, Marcovaldo was deeply encouraged.He was especially pleased to hear that there were others nearby.He didn't ask any more questions, and hurried to catch up with the others. The escalator that the man in the yellow overalls mysteriously foretells is actually a ladder with convenient steps, and the baffles on both sides are silvery white in the dark.Marcovaldo climbed the escalator.On the threshold of a small door a young lady greeted him with a courteous greeting which he felt could not have been addressed to him. Marcovaldo said repeatedly: "Greetings, miss! That's great!" It was incredible that he could find a place to rest now, drenched in the cold and damp. He walked in, his eyes were blinded by the light, and he blinked quickly.He discovered that this was no home.So, what exactly is this place?Believing he understood, he stepped into a bus, a long bus with many empty seats.He sat down.He usually takes the tram home instead of the bus because the fare is cheap, but this time he got lost in a remote area where only buses pass.Fortunately, it seems that this is the last bus, so he caught up!The seat is soft and very comfortable!Marcovaldo now realizes that he will always ride the bus in the future, although the passengers will be subject to certain restrictions, because at this moment he hears the announcement on the loudspeaker: "Please don't smoke, please wear your seat belt..." And , When the car starts, the sound of the engine is too loud. A man in uniform walks between the seats. "Excuse me, Monsieur Ticket Inspector," Marcovaldo asked, "do you know, Pancrazio? Is there a stop in Via Pancrazietti?" "What do you say, sir? First stop is Bombay, then Calcutta and Singapore." Marcovaldo looked around and saw other seats occupied by Indians with beards and turbans.There are also individual women who wear embroidered sari and have auspicious moles on their foreheads. Outside the window, the night sky is full of stars.At this moment, the plane passed through a layer of thick clouds and was flying towards a clear sky.