Chapter 20 second quarter

Ray opened the window to circulate the air inside, and when the smell was less strong, he climbed in against the wall.After a few seconds, he knew that there was no room for redemption.A person hangs upright, with his feet dangling back and forth on the ground, and a rope around his neck is tied to the ceiling.The old man was stiff and rotting, beyond recognition, but from his clothes, from his still bulging, frightened eyes, Ray recognized the deceased as the former sexton of a nearby Unitarian church.He found another business card on the chair, which was exactly the one that Director Kurtz entrusted to Greg in the church.On the back of the business card, the sexton wrote a last message to the police, saying that he believed until his death that if someone really sneaked into the tomb and killed Reverend Talbot

, then he will definitely see the murderer.He was so overwhelmed by the psychological horror of warning that somewhere in Boston that demons had descended and might again murder the rest of them that he hanged himself. Pietro Bacchi, an Italian, graduated from the University of Padua, now lives in Boston, and works as a tutor.Job opportunities are few and far between and he doesn't like them, and he can't help complaining, but he still tries to grab them when they are available.After being fired from Harvard, he tried to get other universities to teach. "An average teacher from France or Germany might find a place here," laughs the dean of a new Philadelphia college, "except for the Italians! We don't want opera singers, my friend." Universities don't appreciate opera artists at all.The councilors who run the university are full of prejudices, they cling to Greek and Latin, and they regard modern languages ​​as vulgar languages ​​used by Catholics, neither suitable nor necessary to teach.Therefore, when Bucky came to apply for a job, they always politely declined: "Thank you, Mr. Bucky."

Fortunately, toward the end of the war, there was a sudden, small demand for learning Italian in certain parts of Boston.Some New England merchants were eager to open their ports and learn as many languages ​​as possible.In addition, a group of nouveau riche who have made war fortune are desperate for their daughters to be educated and become educated ladies.Some thought it wise for young women to learn a little more rudimentary Italian in addition to French, and that when they reached the age of traveling (a recent fad among the Boston beauties) it might be worthwhile.So Pietro Bacchi, after being rudely fired from Harvard, made a living teaching Italian to enterprising businessmen and spoiled ladies.The young ladies kept changing their Italian teachers because those who taught music, art, and dance were more attractive to them, but Bucky always asked them to study for a full hour and a quarter.

This precarious existence terrified Pietro Baki. It wasn't the courses that tormented him at all, but the fact that he had to ask for a fee.The Americans in Boston founded their own Carthage, a land of money but little culture, a land doomed to ruin and vanish into nothingness.What did Plato say about the citizens of Sicily (argigentum)?These people go on building as if they would live forever, and they go on eating as if they will go to bliss in a moment. Some 25 years ago, in the beautiful Sicilian countryside, Pietro Batalo, like the Italians before him, fell in love with a dangerous woman.Her family, in contrast to the Batalo family, was a strong supporter of papal control of the country.Later, when the woman thought Pietro had hurt her, her family was overjoyed and prepared to excommunicate him and expel him from the country.After a series of adventures with various armies, Pietro and his businessman brother, eager to escape this destructive political and religious environment, changed their surname to "Bucky" and traveled across the ocean to America. In 1843, Pietro came to a strange town called Boston, and the people in the town were very friendly.By 1865, things had changed, and xenophobes saw their fears of a foreign explosion materialized, with notices plastered across windows: gringos not to be plastered here.Bucky had been invited to teach at Harvard, and, like the young Professor Longfellow, lived for a time in the beautiful neighborhood of Brighto Street.Later, Bucky fell in love with an Irish maid with unprecedented passion, and married her as his wife.But soon after the marriage, she found a new love.She left him, as Bucky's students said, leaving him with only a few of his shirts in the trunk, and a penchant for alcohol.Since then, Bucky's heart has been ashamed, and he is getting older day by day...

"I know her, well, I should say..." A person quickly followed Bucky, considering the appropriate words, "...it's difficult to get along with." "She's difficult?" Bucky didn't stop coming down the stairs. "Ha! She doesn't believe I'm Italian," Bucky said. "She says I'm not Italian!" A girl appeared at the top of the stairs, scowling, watching her father waddle behind the diminutive teacher. "Oh, I don't believe the boy meant that," he argued with the utmost seriousness. "That's what I mean!" the little girl screamed standing on the second-floor landing, leaning against the walnut railing, leaning so hard that she seemed about to fall onto Bucky's knit hat. "He doesn't look like an Italian at all, father! He's so small!"

"Arabella!" snapped the man, and stepped into the candlelit vestibule, grinning with the most sincere expression on his face, showing the yellow spots on his teeth, though they were all gilded. "I said, sir, just wait a little longer! Let's use this opportunity to talk about your fee, shall we, Mr. Bucky?" He suggested, his eyebrows raised tightly, trembling slightly, like an arrow on the string. Bucky turns and stares at him for a moment, clutching his bag tightly, fighting back his anger, blushing.In just a few years, his face has been covered with criss-cross wrinkles, and every small setback will make him doubt whether he still has the value of existence. "Yankee!" Bucky burst out and left.Arabella watched all this from top to bottom in bewilderment.She had just received a rudimentary Italian education and couldn't catch his puns: in Italian, the word "yankee" when read disconnected means "unbearable dog."