Chapter 6 Chapter 5 A Feast of Fear

At first the great stone steps seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid; but before he reached the top he was aware of a man leaning against the retaining wall of the embankment and watching the banks of the river.He was of ordinary build, wearing a silk hat and a more formal, fashionable frock coat, with a red flower in his buttonhole.Despite Syme's approaching steps, he remained motionless.It wasn't until Syme approached him, in the dim morning light, that Syme could see clearly that he had a thin intellectual face, with a small triangular black beard on the tip of his chin, which looked like a man who only Some negligence; the rest of the face is clean-shaven—ascetic, dignified and elegant.Syme came closer and closer, and saw all that was clear, the man remained motionless.

Syme's instinct told him first that this was the man he was obliged to meet.Seeing the man's lack of reaction, however, Syme deduced that he was not.Now, with a stranger so close to him, he remained quite uncharacteristically still, and again Syme concluded that this person had something to do with his mad adventure.He was as still as a wax figure, and the stillness was somewhat nerve-wracking.Syme looked again and again at the pale, dignified, delicate face, but it still stared blankly at the banks of the river.Syme took from his pocket the note that Buttons had handed him certifying his election, and held it out in front of the sad, pretty face.The man smiled, but it was an amazing smile because it started on the right cheek and disappeared on the left.

Intellectually, such a smile scares no one.A lot of people put on this twisted smile and play neurotic tricks, and a lot of people even look more attractive because of it.But Syme couldn't help being nervous, in a gloomy dawn, with dangerous missions and solitude on the great wet stone steps. The river is tranquil, and the person is tranquil. This person has a classic face.The last nightmarish feeling was when his smile suddenly went wrong. The spasm that followed his smile came on suddenly, and his face fell into a fit of melancholy.He spoke without further explanation or inquiry, as if addressing an old colleague.

"If we walk to Leicester Square," he said, "we'll be in time for breakfast. Always insist on an early breakfast on Sunday. Have you slept?" "No," said Syme. "I haven't slept either," he replied in his usual tone. "I'm going to sleep after breakfast." His tone was light and polite, yet utterly numb, in stark contrast to the frenzy on his face.It seemed to him that all kind words were lifeless expedients, that his only life was hatred. After a short pause, he continued: "Of course, the secretary of the branch has told you everything that can be said. The only thing that is absolutely impossible to tell you is the last thought of the chairman, because his thoughts swell and expand like a tropical forest. Maybe you don't Yes, I'd better tell you that the idea of ​​his present operation is to hide us in the most grotesque degree of publicity. Indeed, at first we met in a cellar in the basement, like your branch office. Then on Sunday let We had a single room in a normal restaurant. He said if you don't hide and hide no one can find you. Well, he's the only person on earth I know; sometimes I really think he's huge Heads go a little crazy with age. Now, we show ourselves off in public. We have breakfast on a balcony - maybe you won't say no - on a balcony overlooking Leicester Square."

"What do people say?" asked Syme. "They said it very simply," replied his guide. "They said we were a bunch of merry gentlemen pretending to be anarchists." "I think that's a very clever idea," said Syme. "Smart! God will condemn you for your brazenness! Smart!" cried the other in a harsh voice, as weird and startling as his twisted smile. Said he was smart." So talking, they walked out of a narrow street, where the morning sun flooded Leicester Square.I think it is absolutely impossible for people to know why this square looks so foreign, and in some ways continental.It is also impossible to know whether it is its foreign style that attracts foreigners, or whether foreigners give it a foreign style.But on this special morning, this kind of scenery is extraordinarily vivid and clear.The empty squares and sunlit foliage and the statues and Saracens silhouette of the Alhambra made it look like a replica of some French or even Spanish public place.The scenery kept Syme's excitement unabated, and throughout the course of his adventure he experienced various forms of excitement, that weird thrill of straying into a new world.In fact, since his boyhood, he had been buying shoddy cigars around Leicester Square.But after he turned the corner and saw the trees and the Moorish cupolas, he might have sworn that he was entering some unknown part of a foreign town.

At one corner of the square, a thriving but quiet restaurant jutted out of some kind of sharp corner, the huge body of which was located on a street behind.In the wall was a huge French window, probably that of a large café; and beyond, almost projecting over the square, a formidable buttressed balcony large enough for a dining table.In fact, it does house a dining table, or strictly speaking a breakfast table; and around it, gleaming in the sun and unmistakable to passers-by, is a group of talkative gentlemen, all dressed in exaggerated fashions and waistcoats. It was white, and the flowers pinned to the buttonholes were very expensive.The few jokes they told could be heard across the square.Then the serious secretary showed his abnormal smile, and Syme understood that this noisy breakfast meeting was the secret meeting place of these European bomb assassins.

As Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something he hadn't seen before.He hadn't really seen it before, because it was so big that it was confusing.In the corner closest to the balcony, what blocks most of the view is a man's mountain-like back.Syme's first thought when he saw him was that his weight must overwhelm the stone balcony.He's huge not just because he's abnormally tall, but also because he's ridiculously fat.The man's original proportions were designed to be large, like a huge statue that was deliberately carved. The white-haired head looked ridiculously large from the back, and the ears on both sides of the head were also abnormally large.He was staggeringly scaled up, and the sense of size was astounding, so that when Syme saw him, everyone seemed small and dwarfed.They were still sitting there in their long frock coats and flowers, but now it looked like the big man was entertaining five children to tea.

As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter came out with a smile on his face. "The gentlemen are up there," he said, "and they're talking and laughing. They say they're going to bomb the king." After speaking, the waiter quickly left with the napkin on his arm, not disgusted by the unusually frivolous behavior of the gentlemen upstairs. The two climbed the stairs quietly. It never occurred to Syme to ask if the giant who nearly filled and overwhelmed the balcony was the great Chairman whom everyone feared.He carries with him an inexplicable, but sudden certainty that this is the case.In fact, Syme was a man who was extremely sensitive to unknown psychological dangers.

He is not afraid of physical danger, but he is too sensitive to the presence of evil spirits.Already that night two meaningless little things were peering eagerly at him, giving him the feeling that he was getting closer to the headquarters of hell.The feeling became overwhelming just as he approached the marvelous chairman. The form of realization is a childish and nasty imagination.Sunday's face grew bigger and bigger as he walked across the interior to the balcony; Syme's haunting fear was that the closer he got to it the face would get too big and he'd scream.He remembered that as a child he was afraid to look at Memnon's mask in the British Museum because it was a face and it was too big.

Syme made his way to an empty seat at the breakfast table with a courage greater than that of jumping off a cliff.The gentlemen greeted him with lighthearted banter, like they were old friends.He looked at their traditional coats and their sturdy, shiny coffee pots and calmed down, then he turned his gaze back to Sunday.His face was unusually large, but not outrageous. In the presence of the Chairman all appeared very ordinary; at first glance they had nothing to stand out about, except that, at the whim of the Chairman, they all dressed with a festive decency that made This meal looks like a breakfast wedding reception.There is a man who can attract people's attention even if he takes it at a glance.He's at least a regular or garden bomb assassin.In fact, he was wearing a white turtleneck and a satin bow tie, which are standard for formal occasions; but above this collar was a protruding head, his confusing brown hair and beard. Kai Island dog, almost covering his eyes.But his eyes, as they glanced out from the tangled mass of hair, could be seen to be the melancholy eyes of some Russian serf.The man didn't feel quite as frightening as the Chairman, but he had all the weirdness that could only come from a total monster.Had a cat's or a dog's head popped out of the stiff cravat and collar, the silly contrast would have been jaw-dropping.

The man's name was Gogol, a Pole, and in the chief's circle he was known as Tuesday.His soul and speech were hopelessly miserable; he could not force himself to play the successful and frivolous role that the Sunday Chairman asked of him.In fact, when Syme walked in, the chairman, whose policy was to boldly disregard public suspicion, was mocking Gogol for his inability to project human charisma. "Our friend Tuesday," said the chairman in a voice that was both quiet and sonorous, "our friend Tuesday does not appear to have grasped the plan. He is dressed like a gentleman, but his soul is too noble to pretend. He insisted Take the way of the conspirators on the stage. Now if a gentleman walks around London in a top hat and frock coat, no one will know he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman wears a top hat and frock coat tuxedo, but walks on hands and knees on the ground—then he is quite striking, as the Gogol brothers do. He walks on hands and knees on the ground with inexhaustible means of communication, until Now he finds it difficult to walk upright." “I’m not good at hiding,” Gogol said sullenly, with a thick foreign accent. “I’m not ashamed of this cause.” "You're good at hiding, my boy, and that's why your career is like this," said the chairman kindly. "You try to hide as well as everyone else. But you can't, and you see, you're a fool! You try to put two A combination of inconsistent approaches. When a head of household finds a man under his bed, he may stop to find out the details. But if he finds a man in a top hat under his bed, it must be the case, my dear Tuesday , he is unlikely to forget it. Now about your being found under Admiral Biffin's bed—" "I'm not good at deceiving," said Tuesday gloomily, blushing. "Yes, my boy, yes," said the Chairman with dull enthusiasm, "you're not good at anything." As their conversation progressed, Syme observed those around him more intently.As he watched, he gradually felt his sense of strange spiritual objects revive. Syme's first thought was that they were all of ordinary build and wearing ordinary clothes, except Gogol, who was hairy.But as he looked at the others, he realized that they had the same quality as the man by the river, a devilish detail.The smile, which would have grotesquely deformed the delicate face of the old guide, was typical of all the details.After looking at those people ten or twenty times, there was always something abnormal about them, almost dehumanized.The only metaphor Syme could come up with was that they all looked like fashionable, personable people, but the sunken mirror showed them false distortions. Only a single instance of this half-veiled eccentricity can be shown.Syme's guide had the title of Monday; he was Secretary of the Council, with a wry grin more terrifying than anything, save of course the Chairman's terrible mirth.However, since Syme could observe him carefully, he could have more impressions.His delicate face was haggard, and Syme decided that some disease had worn him down; but somehow the sadness in his dark eyes denied it.It was not physical disease that afflicted him.His eyes were alive with intellectual torment, as if mere thought was pain. He was typical of the bunch; everyone was badly bad, and not in the same way.Next to him sits the disheveled Tuesday Gogol, whose madness is even more evident.Next came Wednesday, the Marquis de Saint-Eustache, a very singular character.At first glance, there was nothing unusual about him, except that he was the only one at the table who was seriously dressed in upper-class attire.His black French beard was trimmed square, and his black frock coat was cut even more squarely.Syme, who was so sensitive to these things, felt for some reason or other in this man a richness of mood, so suffocatingly thick, that one recalled for no reason the swooning spirits of Byron's gloomy poetry. The breath of sleep and the extinguished lamp.With it came the feeling that he was not wearing lighter but softer clothes; his black was richer and warmer than the shadows on him, as if composed of darker colours.His black overcoat looked like blackened purple, his black beard looked like blackened blue, and under the dark bush his dark red mouth looked dissolute and contemptuous.In any case he was not a Frenchman, he might have been a Jew; he might have been something deeper in the dark heart of the Orient.In the brightly colored Persian tiles and drawings of tyrants hunting, you can see those almond eyes, those dark blue beards, those cruel crimson lips. Syme next observed an elderly man, Professor de Worms, who still held Friday's seat, although every day there was an expectation that his death would make it vacant.Apart from his intellect, he was in the final breakdown stages of the decline of old age.His face was as gray as his long beard, and his brow was set in a cluster of wrinkles that showed slight desperation.In others, even in Gogol, the groom-like splendor of the gown could not express a more poignant contrast.The red flowers in his buttonholes framed a leaden-discolored face, a hideous figure like drunken dandies who had draped their clothes over a corpse.When he stood up or sat down with considerable difficulty and danger, something worse than weakness was revealed, something that was unreasonably connected with the general feeling of terror.It doesn't just show oldness, it shows corruption.Another nasty thought passed through Syme's trembling mind, and he couldn't help thinking that the old man would fall if he moved an arm or a leg. At the end of the table sits Saturday, the easiest and most difficult of them all.A stocky, short man with a clean-shaven, dour, square face, he was a practicing physician, whose real name was Bull.He had a combination of well-bredness and fashionable roughness, which is not uncommon among young doctors.He wears his fine clothes confidently without relaxing, and usually wears a steady smile on his face.There's nothing weird about him, except he wears a pair of black glasses.It might have been merely a climax of a nervous imagination that had come before, but the two black lenses terrified Syme, for they reminded him of sinister scenes that he had mostly forgotten and a story about putting little coins in the eyes of the dead. on the story.Syme was always staring at the black glasses and the toothy grin with no eyes.The dying professor, or the pale secretary wearing it, might have been more appropriate.But it was a mystery to be worn by this young and vulgar man.He hides key parts of his face.You couldn't tell what his smile or his seriousness meant.Partly for this reason, and partly because he had a coarse masculinity which most men lacked, Syme thought he might be the worst of them all.Syme even thought his eyes were covered because they were so frightening.

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