Chapter 35 chapter Five

Yes, Lily, standing on the edge of the lawn, decided that was their boat.That was the little boat with the grey-brown sail she saw now, smooth and fast on the water, across the bay.She thought, he was sitting in the boat, and the children remained silent.It was impossible for her to go to him.Her unexpressed sympathy weighed heavily on her, making it difficult to paint. She had always found him difficult.In retrospect, she had never been able to compliment him to his face.It makes their relationship something neutral, without the sexy element in it that makes him so tender and considerate in Min-tae's presence, almost elated.He would bring her a flower and lend her his book.But, does he really trust Min Tae to read those books seriously?She carried them around the garden with her, clipping leaves into books to mark where she had read.

"Do you remember the old days, Mr. Carmichael?" She looked at the old man, eager to ask him.But he put his hat over half his brow; she supposed he was asleep, or dreaming, or pondering lines. "Do you remember the old days?" She passed by Carmichael and couldn't help asking him.She thought again of Mrs. Ramsay sitting on the beach; the barrel floating on the water, rocking up and down with the waves;Why, after all these years, does this scene remain in the memory, haunting, sparkling, down to the last detail, while all other scenes long before or after it are blank Woolen cloth?

"Is it a boat? Is it a prawn-crap?" asked Mrs. Ramsay.Lily repeated what she had said, turned around, and reluctantly returned to her canvas.Thankfully, she thought, picking up her paintbrush again, the question of that space remained unresolved.It stared at her.The balance of the whole picture depends on this weight.The exterior of the painting should be beautiful and radiant, light and slender, one color blending with another, like the colors on a butterfly's wings; however, under this exterior, there should be a solid structure held together with steel clamps .It is so light that your breath can wrinkle it; and it is so solid that a troop of horses cannot break it apart.So she began to smear a layer of red and a layer of gray on the canvas, and she began to fill the gap with color layer by layer, gradually embodying the picture in her mind.At the same time, she appears to be sitting on the beach with Mrs Ramsay.

"Is it a boat? Is it a barrel?" asked Mrs. Ramsay.She started looking around for her glasses.Having found her glasses, she sat and looked out to sea in silence.Lily, who was painting leisurely, felt as if a door had opened. She walked in and stood in a tall, very dark, very solemn place like a church, gazing silently around.From a distant world came a tumultuous voice.Several ships turned into plumes of smoke and disappeared on the distant horizon.Charles was throwing stone flakes and making them float on the water. Mrs Ramsay sat silently.She was happy, Lily thought, to rest in the state of silence; to rest in the extreme ambiguity of human interrelationships.Who knows who we are and how we feel inside?Even in a moment of intimacy, who can know all this?Is this learning?Mrs. Ramsay would probably ask (and around her, such scenes of silence seemed to occur frequently): If all this was said, wouldn't it make things worse?Isn't it possible for us to express a richer content when we are so silently facing each other?At least at this moment, it seems to have an unusually rich connotation.She poked a hole in the sand and covered it up with sand, as if to bury the perfect moment in it.It is like a drop of silver liquid, in which people dipped, and it illuminated the darkness of the past.

Lily took a step back, bringing her canvas—just like that—in the center of her field of vision.It is a strange path for the painter to walk.You go farther and farther out, until at last you seem to be on a narrow plank in the sea, alone and alone.When she used the brush to dip the blue paint, she also dipped the tip of the brush with memories of the past.She remembered, and now Mrs Ramsay had risen from the sand.It's time to go home - it's almost time for lunch.They all walked back from the beach together, she and William Banks walking behind, Minta ahead of them, with a hole in her sock.What a conspicuous pink heel peeping out of that little round hole!How disgusted William Bankes was to see it!Though as far as she could remember, he hadn't said anything.The hole meant to him the ruin of women, the habits of untidiness, the departure of the servants, the bed not made by noon--everything he hated most.He has a habitual movement: trembling and stretching out his fingers, as if to cover an unsightly object.That's what he did now—covering his hands in front of him.Min Tai continued to walk forward, probably Paul met her, and the two of them went into the garden together.

Lily Briscoe, thinking of the Rayleighs, squeezed green paint onto the palette.She gathered her impressions of the Rayleighs in her heart.A succession of scenes from their married life floated before her; one of them took place on a staircase at dawn.Paul had gone home and gone to bed long ago; Minta was late.It was about three o'clock in the morning when Min-tae came up the stairs, wearing a garland of flowers, heavy makeup, and all the splendor.Paul came out in his pajamas, a poker in his hand in case any thieves encountered him.Min Tai stood at the window halfway up the stairs, eating a sandwich in the pale morning light, and there was a hole in the carpet on the stairs.But what did they say?Lily asked herself.It seemed that by imagining a glance, she could hear them talking.Minta continued to gnaw at her sandwich disgustingly, and Paul scolded her with some violent words, lowering his voice so as not to wake the children—the two little boys.His face was haggard and elongated; she was flirtatious and flamboyant, not caring.About a year or so after their marriage, their relationship fell apart; their marriage turned out poorly.

Lily dipped a little green paint into her paintbrush, she thought, this is what it means to "know" people, "care about" them, "love" them!Not a word of it was true; it was all her imagination; but, nevertheless, that was all she knew of their situation.She continued to dig deeper into her paintings, and she continued to dig deeper into the bygone years. Another time, Paul said he was "playing chess in a coffee shop."According to this sentence, she imagined a complete scene.She remembered, and when he said that, she imagined how he called home, and how the maid replied, "Sir, madam is not at home," and he made up his mind not to come home.In her imagination, she saw him sitting in a corner of a dark place, the red plush seat was covered with smoke and dust, those maids were always familiar with you, he played chess with a small man, he was in the tea business Yes, lived at Selberton, and that was all Paul knew about him.Min Tae wasn't there when he came home, and the scene on the stairs followed.He had a poker in his hand to guard against thieves (and, no doubt, to show her too), and he made a very distressing speech, saying that she had ruined his life.At any rate, when Lily visited them at a cottage near Lakemansworthy, their relationship was terribly strained.Paul took her into the garden to see his Belgian rabbits, and Minta followed them at every step, singing and putting her bare arm on Paul's shoulder so he wouldn't reveal anything to Lily.

Lily thought that Mintae was sick of rabbits.However, Min Tai kept her mouth shut, and she never mentioned things like Paul playing chess in the cafe.She is much more cautious, much more careful.Let's get on with their story -- now they've passed that dangerous stage.She had been with them for a while last summer.Once, their car breaks down midway and Min-tae has to pass him the tool.He sat by the side of the road fixing his car, and she handed him the tools in a businesslike, direct, friendly way—a testament to the fact that their relationship was fine now.They're not "in love" anymore; no, he's in love with another woman, a serious woman with braids and a briefcase in her hand (Min Tae once described her with gratitude, almost admiration ), she and Paul attend conferences together, and she and Paul share the same views (and they increasingly express their opinions) on issues such as land value tax and property tax.His affair didn't break up his marital relationship with Min Tae, but adjusted it properly.As he sat by the side of the road fixing his car and she handed him the tools, the couple clearly became close friends.

This is the story of the Rayleighs, Lily thought.She thought that she herself was telling the story to Mrs. Ramsay, and she must be full of curiosity to know how the Rayleighs were doing.She would be a little elated if she could tell Mrs Ramsay that the marriage had not turned out well. But the dead man!Lily thought.Some obstacle in her composition made her stop pensively, she stepped back a step or two, and sighed: Oh, that dead man!She murmured that people sympathized with the dead, brushed them aside, and even treated them with a little contempt.They are now at our disposal.Mrs. Ramsay had vanished, she thought, gone.Now we can go beyond her wishes and improve on her old, limited ideas.She has receded further and further away from us.With some irony, she seemed to see Mrs. Ramsay at the end of the corridor of the years, saying those inappropriate words: "Marry, marry!" (At dawn, she sat upright, bird Start chirping outside in the garden.) Now you have to tell her that things are going against your will.They are happy, their life is like that; I am happy, my life is like this.Life has completely changed.In such a case, Mrs. Ramsay's whole being, even her beauty, was in the blink of an eye, turned to dust.Lily stood there for a while, with the hot sun on her back, summing up the Raleighs in her mind, and felt that she had won Mrs Ramsay herself: she would never have imagined that Paul would play chess in a café, And there was a mistress who never imagined him sitting by the side of the road fixing a car while Minta handed him tools; she never imagined Lily standing here painting, never married, not even with William Banks marry.

Mrs Ramsay had already figured it out.Maybe she'd force them to marry if she was still alive.Mrs Ramsay told her that summer that William Banks was "the kindest man ever."He is "the leading scientist of our time, my husband said".He was again "poor William—it made me sad that I went to see him and found nothing in his house, not even flowers for him".Therefore, she often asked the two of them to go for a walk together.Mrs. Ramsay told Lily with that slight sarcasm that would have slipped her through people's fingers: she had a scientific mind; she liked flowers as much as William;Lily approached and stepped back from her easel, and as she looked at the picture she wondered: Why is Mrs Ramsay so obsessed with marriage?

(Suddenly, as suddenly as a shooting star gliding across the night sky, a red fire seemed to flare up in her mind, enveloping Paul Relais, from whom it emanated. It was like a pack of savages A bonfire had been lit on a remote beach in celebration of some occasion. She heard the cheering roar of the flames and the crackling of the logs. The sea for miles around turned red and gold. The smoke mingled with the scent of some alcohol, intoxicating her, for she felt again the frivolous longing to leap off a cliff and drown in the sea in search of a pearl brooch in the sand. The cheering, roaring, crackling flame made her back away with fear and disgust, as if when she saw the magnificence and power of the flame, she also saw how it greedily devoured the world. wealth in a house, and she resented it. But, as a spectacle of splendor, it surpassed anything she had ever seen, and as a beacon of signaling, year after year Burning on a deserted island at the edge of the sea, Paul's fire of love flared up as soon as the word "love" was mentioned, as happened now. The flame died down, she laughed. Saying to herself, "Mr. and Mrs. Rayleigh," she remembered how Paul went to play chess in the cafe.) She thought, what a close call, she finally escaped the snare of love by luck.She was looking at the pattern on the tablecloth, and a thought flashed through her mind: She was going to move the tree to the center of the frame, she would never have to marry anyone, and she was so happy about it.She had felt Mrs. Ramsay's power, and now she could stand up to Mrs. Ramsay--a tribute to Mrs. Ramsay's amazing power over others.As long as she says to do this, others will follow her orders.Even her shadow, sitting at the window with James, is imbued with authority.She recalled how shocked William Banks had been to find her oblivious to the significance of the mother-child picture.Doesn't she appreciate their beauty?he asked.She remembered William Banks, with a wise child's eye, as she explained that there was nothing disrespectful about her composition: it was just a bright color here that needed a shadow there to set it off.She does not mean to desecrate a sacred subject that Raphael once devoutly depicted.She's not being cynical.On the contrary, she was serious.Thanks to his scientific mind, he understood her intentions well enough—a testament to the delight and great comfort of unbiased intelligence.After all, then, she could seriously talk about painting with a man.Indeed, his friendship had been one of her most precious pleasures in life.She adored William Banks. They toured Hampton Court together, and he was the perfect gentleman, taking frequent walks by the river and giving her plenty of time to wash.This is a typical example of their mutual relationship.Many things they agree with each other tacitly, self-evident.Summer after summer, they strolled through the courtyard, admiring the well-proportioned buildings and beautiful flowers. As they walked, he would explain to her all kinds of knowledge about perspective and architecture, and he would stop to gaze at a plant. A view of trees or a lake, or admiring an innocent child—(he regretted that he didn't have a daughter), his expressionless, lonely look, for a man who spent so many years in the laboratory It was quite natural to say that when he stepped out of the laboratory, the outside world seemed to make him dizzy, so he walked slowly, raising his hands above his eyes to shade the sun, and often stopped and threw his head back. , just to take a deep breath of fresh air.Then he would tell her that his housekeeper was on vacation and he had to buy a new carpet for the stairs in his house.Maybe she would like to go shopping with him.Once their conversation turned to the Ramsays, he said that the first time he had met Mrs. Ramsay she had been wearing a gray hat before she was more than nineteen or twenty.She is amazingly beautiful.He stood gazing at the boulevards of Hampton Court, and it seemed he saw her tall figure among the fountains. Now Lily looked up the stone steps in the living room.Through William's eyes, she saw the figure of a woman, serene and quiet, with downcast eyes.She sat silently, brooding (Lily thought she was wearing gray that day).Her gaze was down to the ground.She never raises her eyes.Yes, she was staring intently at the ground, Lily thought, I must have seen her look like that too, but not in gray, and not so quiet, so young, so serene.That image will pop up in front of you at any time.As William said, she was stunningly beautiful.But beauty isn't everything.Beauty has its disadvantages—it comes too easily; it comes too complete.It made life still—frozen.It makes one forget those little inner disturbances: a flush of excitement, a pallor of disappointment, some strange deformation, some light or shadow; A style that people will never forget.Under the cover of beauty, it is of course easier to erase all these gently.But Lily was not sure: what did Mrs. Ramsay look like when she put the hunter's hat on her head, or ran across the meadow, or scolded Gardener Kennedy?Who can tell her?Who can help her answer this question? Her thoughts had involuntarily floated from the depths of her heart to the outside, and she found that half of her attention had been taken away from the picture, and she was looking at Mr. Carmichael in a daze, as if looking at something unreal.He was lying in a chair with his hands folded on his big belly, not reading or sleeping, but basking in the sun as contentedly as a well-fed animal.The book in his hand had already fallen to the grass. She wanted to go up to him at once and say, "Mr. Carmichael!" and he would look up at you benevolently, as always, with his smoky green eyes.But only wake people up if you know what you want to say to them.It wasn't one thing she wanted to say, but everything.A few words will only interrupt the train of thought, split the mind, and say nothing. "Let's talk about life and death; talk about Mrs. Ramsay."—No, she thought, you and others can't tell anything.Momentary urgency, always hard to hit the target.Words flowed sideways from his mouth, hitting the target several inches below.So you give up hope, and the unspoken thoughts sink back into the depths of your soul, and you're like most middle-aged people—cautious, hesitant, with lines between your eyes, and a kind of An air of infinite awareness.For how can you put into words the feelings of the flesh, the emptiness that is there? (She is looking at the stone steps of the living room, which look strangely empty.) It is the human body, not the human mind, that feels.The sensations aroused in the flesh by the empty stone steps suddenly became extremely unpleasant.Desiring but not having it made her feel stiff, empty and tense.Afterwards, she was unable to get what she wanted again—continuous desire, always in vain—what a heart-wrenching pain, and this pain twisted her heart again and again!Oh Mrs Ramsay!She called out silently in her heart, calling out to the shadowy figure sitting beside the boat, calling out to the abstract ghost transformed from her, the woman in gray clothes, as if reproaching her for leaving quietly, and looking forward to her going back .Thinking about the dead seems to be a very safe thing.Phantom, air, nothingness, this is something you can easily and safely play with in the palm of your hand at any time of day or night; It touches your heart and makes you miserable.Suddenly the empty stone steps, the ruffles of the interior chair covers, the puppies waddling on the terraces, the undulating sounds and whispers of the garden, like delicate curves and curlicues, surround a center of utter emptiness. She turned to Mr. Carmichael, intending to ask him: "What does this mean? How do you explain all this?" For, at this moment in the morning, the whole world has dissolved into a pool of thought, a deep pool of reality, and you It is almost conceivable that if Mr. Carmichael spoke, it would be possible to draw a drop of water on the surface of this pool of thought.Then what?A certain vision may arise.A ghost's hand will be blocked upwards, and a sharp knife is shining coldly in the air.Of course, this is all nonsense. She had a strange feeling that he understood all the thoughts she couldn't express.He was a marvelous old man, with a yellow stain in his beard, and with his poetry and his mysteries in his heart, he sailed smoothly in a world that gave him everything he wanted, so she He thought that as long as he lay on the grass and stretched his hand down, he could easily grab whatever he needed.She looked at her painting.According to her speculation, this is likely to be his answer-"you", "I", "she" have all disappeared with the passage of time, nothing will remain, everything is constantly changing; Not so with paintings, they last forever.Yet her picture would hang in the attic, she thought;You can say that even this sketch may not be the real work, but the idea it tries to express, and it will "remain forever".She wanted to say it, or to suggest it unspokenly, because it would have sounded a little too boastful even to herself; and when she looked at the picture, she To her surprise, she couldn't see clearly.Her eye sockets were filled with a scalding fluid (at first she didn't realize they were tears), which didn't tug at the firm line of her lips but only clouded the air; hot tears rolled down her cheeks.She had perfect control over herself - oh yes! — in all other respects.Was she, then, weeping for Mrs Ramsay, unconscious of any unpleasant feeling?She resumed conversation with old Mr. Carmichael.So what is it?what does it meanCan the ghost reach out and grab you?Will that sharp knife hurt someone?Will that fist be clenched?Is there no safe place?Can the mind fail to understand the laws of the world?No guide, no safe place to hide, everything is a miracle, just a blind leap from the spire of the pagoda?Is it possible, even for old people, that this is life—surprised, unexpected, ignorant?It suddenly occurred to her that if they both rose from the grass now and demanded an explanation of why life is so short and why it is so elusive, if they spoke like two men fully armed (with nothing hidden from them), Ask for an explanation in a strong and fierce tone, and the beauty will curl up and retreat quietly, the space will be filled, and those empty curlicues will form a certain shape; if their voices are loud enough, perhaps Ramsay Madame will be back. "Mrs. Ramsay!" she cried, "Mrs. Ramsay!" tears rolled down her cheeks.