Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven

Newspapers were no longer delivered to the cells: Cincinnatus, noticing that everything that might have been relevant to the execution was cut out, offered not to read them.Breakfast was simpler: the chocolate drink - albeit of poor quality - had been replaced by some sort of liquid with a few leaves of tea floating in it, and the toast was hard and hard to bite through.Rodion did not deny that he was very tired of serving such a taciturn and critical prisoner. He deliberately prolonged his service in the cell longer and longer.His fiery red beard, his stupid blue eyes, his leather apron, his clawed hands--all this repeated itself and accumulated a depressing and repulsive impression, so that while he was cleaning, Cincinnatus turned to face the wall.

The same is the case today - only the return of the chair, with the deep tooth marks of the bulldog on the top of its straight back, lends a distinct character to the beginning of the day.When Rodion moved back to the chair, he also brought a note written by Mr. Pierre, with curly wool-like fonts, elegant punctuation marks, and a signature like a dance in a seven-act ballet.In witty and kind words, his neighbor thanked him for yesterday's friendly chat and expressed the hope that he would have the opportunity to chat again soon. "I can assure you," the note concluded, "that I have a very, very strong physique (marked two lines below with a ruler), and if you still don't believe me, I'll be happy to do it for you again at some point Some fun (underlined) shows to show off my agility and incredible muscularity."

For two hours afterward, Cincinnatus slipped imperceptibly into bouts of melancholy stupor, scratching his beard, flipping the pages of a book, and circling the cell.At this time, he had completed an extremely precise study of the cell—it could be said that he knew far more about the cell than he knew about the room he had lived in for many years. Take the case of the walls: they don't change in number, always four, all painted yellow, but because of the shadows on the walls, the bright ochre-colored reflections that come through the windows during the day are constantly shifting, Against the background, the base tone of the walls appears dark and even, and is actually an earthy color.In the light all the little bumps of the deep yellow paint could be seen - even the traced squiggles of the bristles of the paintbrush crossed over - and the precious parallelogram of sunlight at ten o'clock in the morning was there to show it. The familiar scribbles.

A cool air crept slowly up the heels from the dull stone floor.Somewhere in the slightly recessed ceiling was a small, crude lampshade, with a light in the center (enclosed in wire)—no, not in the middle.That's an unpleasant and glaring blemish - and in that sense it's equally unpleasant to paint an iron door without getting the paint all over it. Of the three pieces of furniture - bed, table, chair - only the last is movable.Spiders can move too.Above, the well-nourished critters had found a few pivots and wove a first-rate web, no less intelligent than Marthe, who could find places and places to hang clothes to dry in the most inhospitable corners on the surface. method.The spider's claws were folded so that the furry elbows emerged from the side of its body, and its round hazel eyes fixed on the hand pointing at it with the pencil, and began to back away, but it remained fixed on the hand.However, it is most eager to catch a fly, or a moth that has settled on Rodion's big finger-for example, at this time in the southwest corner of the spider's web. It is bright red in soft, smooth shades, with blue diamond-shaped patterns on its jagged edges.It swayed gently in the breeze.

The writing on the wall has been wiped off.Those prison rules are also missing.The ancient crocks containing the cave water, which reverberated from the depths, were also taken—or possibly broken.The whole room was empty, eerie, and cold, and the neutral character of the waiting room—of an office, hospital, or whatever—overwhelmed that of a prison—it was almost dusk, and all that could be heard was a humming Sound... the horror of this waiting has something to do with the mis-centering of the ceiling. The library books, bound in black shoe leather, lay on a table that had been covered with tartan oilcloth for some time.Thin pencils, shortened and bitten all over, rest on scribbled pages piled up like toy pinwheels.On the table lay a letter to Marthe, written by Cincinnatus the day before yesterday, the day after the meeting: but he could not make up his mind to send it, so left it lying idle on the table, It seemed that he was expecting it to complete its mission by itself, but his thoughts were vacillating. At the same time, he lacked another atmosphere, so he couldn't complete this mission at all.

Now the subject is the precious quality of Cincinnatus, the incompleteness of his flesh, most of his flesh in a very different place, only a small part wandering here, confused - a poor and vague Cincinnatus, a relatively dopey Cincinnatus, is as gullible, vulnerable, and ridiculous as a sleeping man.But even in this sleep state, his real life was — still, still — too exposed. Cincinnatus's face became pale and almost transparent, with downy cheeks sunken and a beard with soft hairs that looked like a messy sunbeam on the upper lip.In spite of all that Cincinnatus had endured, his little face was youthful, with wandering eyes, eyes that shifted from light to dark.As for the expression on his face, judging by the standards of his surroundings, it is absolutely unacceptable, especially at this time, he no longer hides himself.His shirt was open, his black dressing gown was billowing, his little feet were in large slippers, and his head was wearing a philosopher's beanie. Ripples (after all, a gust of wind came from nowhere!) ran through the transparent hair on his temples, forming a A complete picture, so obscene as to be indescribable—indeed, it is composed of a thousand inconspicuous overlapping details: the faint outline of the lips, which seems not to have been sufficiently The touch of one of the greatest masters; the trembling of an empty hand unshaded; the coming and going of light in eyes full of life; but even careful analysis and study of all this could not adequately explain the : Like an aspect of his being that crept into another dimension, like a tree whose complex foliage turns from shadow to light, so that you cannot tell where the transition from submerged to luminous of a different nature begins.It seemed possible that at any moment, as Cincinnatus paced back and forth within the confines of his haphazardly created cell, he would slip through the holes in the air with natural ease and into the unfamiliar The corridor, and disappearing there, proceeds as smoothly as a rotating mirror flashes everything in the room in turn, then disappears suddenly, as if out of air, into some new depth of sky.At the same time, everything about him that appeared frail and sleepy on the surface was actually full of intense, fiery, independent life: his bluest blue veins throbbed; the lips; the quivering of the skin on the cheeks and forehead, the soft light at the edge of the forehead... It was all so tantalizing that one longed to take this shameless and confusing flesh and all that it suggested and showed, all that was not. All the dizzying liberties possible are torn, cut to pieces, utterly destroyed--enough, enough--go no further, Cincinnatus, lie down in your bed, and you won't be agitated , not excited... Actually Cincinnatus knew that there were fierce eyes following his movements through the peephole, so he lay down, or sat at the table with a book open.

The dark stack of books on the table contained the following: first, a contemporary novel, which Cincinnatus despised when he was still free; Condensed rewriting and excerpts; the third is bound volumes of old magazines; the fourth is a few worn-out pamphlets in an unknown language that were given to him by mistake—he didn’t ask for them. The novel was the famous "Quarkus", and Cincinnatus had read more than a third of it, or about a thousand pages.The protagonist of the novel is an oak tree, and the novel is the biography of the oak tree.Where Cincinnatus left off reading, the oak tree is just beginning its third century, and simple calculations show that the oak tree will be at least six hundred years old by the end of the book.

The novel's originality is considered the pinnacle of modern thought.The author uses the gradual history of this tree (it grows alone on the edge of the canyon, is very tall, and the bottom of the valley is noisy and never-ending), to show all historical events or the shadows of events-the oak tree is always a witness.Now and then two warriors dismounted from the saddles of their war-horses (a piebald, a grey-hare-brown) converse--so as to rest under the shade of its noble foliage; With the song of the shaggy-haired fugitive maiden; now and then the storm, thunder and lightning, and a lord fleeing from a wrathful king rushes by; It trembles in the shadows; sometimes it reflects a short drama of the life of some villagers.There is a section of text that is a page and a half long, in which every word begins with a "P".

The author appears to be holding a camera, sitting somewhere on the top of an old oak tree, watching over his prey.Various figures come and go, resting among the green patches of sunlight.During normal, event-free times, there are scientific descriptions of the oak itself from dendrology, ornithology, coleopterology and mythology—or something popular, punctuated with folk humor.Among other things, there is an exhaustive list of all the initials inscribed on the bark, each explained.Finally, the music played by the running water, the rich colors of the sunset and the weather conditions are also inked.

Cincinnatus looked at it for a while, then put the book aside.This work is undoubtedly the best work produced in his time, but he still has a sense of melancholy in the process of reading, and he feels vaguely sad as he turns from page to page, allowing his continuous meditation to drown out the book's meaning. Storyline: I'm a dying man, what do all these old, self-deceiving, lifeless things matter to me?Otherwise, he began to imagine how the author himself was dying, young and full of life, who was said to be living on a small island in the North Sea.It is somewhat ridiculous that the author must die in the end--absurd because only death itself, only the author's inevitable physical death, is a real and indisputable thing.

Light moves along the walls.Rodion brought breakfast.Another butterfly wing slipped from between his fingers, leaving some colored powder on his fingers. "Is it because he hasn't come yet?" asked Cincinnatus.It was not the first time he had asked this question, and to Rodion's annoyance he once again refused to answer. "See you again—will they allow it?" asked Cincinnatus. Knowing that the usual heartburn was coming again, he lay down on the bed, turned on his face against the wall, and spent a long, long time digging for every possible pattern on the wall, from tiny clumps of glossy paint to their little circles. shadow.For example, he'd find a small silhouette with a big mouse-like ear, and then it didn't feel right, and couldn't be reconstructed.The cold ochre, lumpy and grave-smelling, was horrible, but his eyes kept searching, trying to connect the necessary little bumps—he longed so badly to see even something as close as a human face. A little bit of the same.Finally, he rolled over on his back, but with the same concentration he began to study the shadows and cracks in the ceiling. "Anyway, they've managed to soften me," Cincinnatus mused. "I've become so weak and vulnerable they could kill me with a fruit knife." He sat for some time on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between knees, hunched over.He let out a shaky sigh and resumed walking up and down.But what language was it written in? He became interested.Small and dense, in an ornate font, with dots and squiggles inside the sickle-shaped letters, it seems to be Oriental script-it reminds one or another of inscriptions on short swords in museums.Such an old booklet, the pages are faded... some are stained with large russet smudges. The clock struck seven.Soon, Rodion brought dinner. "Are you sure he hasn't come yet?" asked Cincinnatus. Rodion was about to go, but turned again on the threshold. "What a disgrace," he said in a whimpering voice, "that you're doing nothing all day and night...here's someone who's bringing you food, lovingly caring for you, consuming himself, while you're just talking about stupid things. question. Shame on you, you ungrateful . . . " Time continued to pass unhurriedly.The air in the cell gradually darkened, and when it was sufficiently dark, the light in the center of the ceiling—no, not quite in the middle, that was the case—turned on in time—a painful reminder.Cincinnatus undressed and went to bed with Qualkus in his arms.The author has written down to the age of civilization, as can be seen from the conversation of three merry travelers, Teeter, Pad, and the vagabond Zhu, who are sitting on the shady moss under an evening-blossoming black oak, from Swallow from the bottle. "Won't someone come to my rescue?" Cincinnatus suddenly cried out, sitting up in bed (spreading his hands like a beggar, showing that he has nothing). "Is it true that no one will come to my rescue?" Cincinnatus repeated, staring at the unchanging yellow on the wall, still holding up his empty hands. The pattern becomes a breeze, rustling the leaves.From the dark shadows above fell a large imitation oak, twice the size of the real thing, painted a bright, lustrous orange, and danced on the carpet, its peg cupped like an egg. Just as tight.