Chapter 29 29. Harold and Queenie

After writing the letter, Harold persuaded a young man to buy him an envelope and the best postage stamp.It was too late to see Queenie, so he slept the night on a bench in the municipal park.Early the next morning, he went to the public toilet to wash it well, and combed his hair with his fingers.Someone dropped a plastic razor by the sink and he shaved with it and it wasn't a clean shave but at least it wasn't as long and looked more like thorns than a bunch of curls now of weeds.The area around the mouth is particularly pale, which is incompatible with the dark skin around the nose and eyes.He picked up his backpack and walked towards the nursing home.His body seemed empty, and he didn't know if it was time to eat, but he had no appetite at all.If I had to say what I felt, it would be a faint nausea.

The sky was covered with thick white clouds, and the salty air was already warming up.Small families driving out, carrying picnic chairs and food, spread out another "home" on the beach.As far as the eye can see, the metallic surface of the sea glistens in the morning light. Harold knew the end was coming, but he had no idea what it would be like, or what to do after it. He turned into the driveway of St. Bernardine's Sanitarium and walked up the tarmac again.The asphalt road should have been paved recently, and Harold felt sticky under his feet.He rang the doorbell without hesitation, closed his eyes while waiting, and groped for the wall.Not sure if the nurse who answered the door was the one who answered his phone, he hoped he didn't have to explain too much.He had no energy left to speak.The door opened.

In front of him appeared a woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a cream-coloured high-necked gown, and a black lace-up coat over it.He had goosebumps all over his body. "My name is Harold Fry," he said, "and I've come a long way to save Queenie Hennessy." He suddenly wanted water, and his legs were shaking.He needs a chair. The nun smiled.Her skin was soft and smooth, and Harold could see that her hair was silver-gray at the roots.She threw her arms around Harold, and her hands were warm, rough, strong hands.He was afraid that he would cry. "You're welcome, Harold," she said.She called herself Sister Philomena and told him to hurry in.

He wiped his shoes once, then again. "Don't worry," she said, but he couldn't stop.He stomped his feet vigorously on the threshold, and then lifted them up to check carefully. After seeing that there was no dirt on the upper of the shoe, he continued to rub the sole of the shoe on the doormat.Just like when he was a child, he had to clean his shoes before entering those aunts' homes. "I guess I should take my shoes outside the door." The air inside was cold and still, with a smell of disinfectant that reminded him of Maureen.There was also a smell of something eaten, possibly potatoes.Standing in a pair of socks, Harold felt as if he was naked and very small.

The nun smiled. "I think you would really like to see Queenie." She asked him if he was ready to go with her, and he nodded. They walked along the blue carpet without making a sound.No applause, no laughing nurses, no cheering patients.There was only one Harold, following the loose silhouette of a nun, down an empty, clean corridor.He wasn't sure if he could vaguely hear the singing, but when he listened carefully, he felt that it might have been imagined by him.Maybe it was the wind blowing through the front window, or someone calling someone.He suddenly realized that he forgot to bring flowers.

"Are you okay?" she asked.He nodded again. When they arrived, the window on the left was open, and they had a good view of the garden.Harold looked longingly at the manicured lawn, imagining the feeling of his bare feet on the soft ground.There was a row of benches, and a sprinkler spouted arcs that caught the sun and glowed.There was a row of closed doors ahead, and he was sure Queenie must be behind one of them.He stared intently at the garden, and suddenly a great terror rose in his heart. "How long did you say you were gone?" "Oh," he replied.Even with her behind, the importance of the journey dwindles to almost insignificance. "It's been a long walk," she said. "I'm afraid we didn't let the other pilgrims in. We saw them on TV and thought it was a bit too loud for such a large crowd." She turned her head, and Harold felt as if she was He blinked, though that was certainly not possible.

They passed a half-open door.Harold dared not look in. "Sister Philomena!" someone shouted outside, as softly as a whisper. She stopped and looked into the other room, her arms outstretched against the door frame. "I'll be over soon." She said to the people in the room.The nun stood with one foot slightly raised in the air, pointing to the ground, as if she were a dancer, only wearing sneakers.Harold was overwhelmed, he knew nothing about her.The nun turned around and smiled warmly at Harold, saying that she would be there soon.Harold felt a little cold, or tired, or something that took the life out of him.

The nun took a few more steps, stopped and knocked lightly on the door.She paused for a moment, resting her knuckles on the door, putting her ear to it, then clicked the door open and peered inside. "We have a visitor," she said into the room.Harold still couldn't see anything. The nun pushed the door open and stood by it herself to make way. "It's exciting," she said.He took a deep breath, as if from the bottom of his feet, and cast his gaze into the room. There was only one window in the room, and outside the window was a distant gray sky.A simple bed rests on the wall under a cross, with a basin under the bed and an empty chair at the end.

"But she's not here." He didn't expect to breathe a sigh of relief, a little dizzy.Sister Philomena smiled: "Of course she is here." She nodded towards the bed, and Harold looked again, and found that there seemed to be a small figure under the white sheets.Something sticks out from the shadow, like a long white straw.Harold looked again attentively, and suddenly realized that it was Queenie's arm.He felt blood rushing to his brain. "Harold," came the nun's voice.Her face was close together, and her skin was covered with fine wrinkles. "Queenie was a little confused and suffered a little bit. But she persevered, just like you told me." She took a step back and let him in.He took a few steps forward, and then a few more steps, his heart beating wildly.He walked so far for this woman, and when he finally stood beside her, his legs suddenly seemed to have turned into liquid.She lay there quietly, just a few feet from him, her face turned to the light that came in through the window.He didn't know if she was sleeping, had just taken sleeping pills, or was waiting for something else.She didn't move, and didn't notice his presence, her body was barely visible under the sheets, she was as thin as a child.

Harold took off his backpack and put it in front of his stomach, as if to stop the scene in front of him.He mustered up the courage to take a step forward, another step. What was left of Queenie's hair was thin, white as milanums on a bush, and fluffed over her scalp, parted as if blown away by a strong wind.He could see the paper-thin skin on her scalp and the tape covering her neck. Queenie Hennessy looked like someone else, someone he had never met.A ghost, a body.He looked back for Sister Philomena, but the door was empty.She's gone. He could have dropped the gift and left, perhaps leaving another card behind.Writing a few lines seems to be the best option, at least he can write a few words of comfort.He suddenly felt a force, and was about to turn around, when Queenie's head began to turn slowly and steadily from the window, and Harold froze again, staring intently.First the left eye and nose, then the right cheek, until she was fully turned and they met for the first time in twenty years.Harold's breathing stopped.

Something is wrong with her head.That's two heads growing together, the second grows from the cheekbone of the first one, and grows all the way to the chin, as if it will explode at any time.It squeezed her right eye shut and pushed straight towards the ear.The lower right corner of her lip was squeezed and pulled towards the jaw.She raised her dry hand as if trying to hide, but she couldn't stop it.Harold groaned in pain. Before he could react, he sighed.Her hands fumbled for tissues, but couldn't find them. He'd rather he could pretend it wasn't such a horrible scene, but he couldn't.His mouth was open, and two words came out automatically: "Hi, Queenie." Six hundred miles away, that's all he could say. She said nothing. "I'm Harold," he said, "Harold Fry." He realized he was nodding, exaggerating every word, not at her distorted face, but at her. Withered hands said, "We worked together a long time ago. Do you remember?" He glanced at the huge tumor again.It was a glistening bulb covered with a web of blood vessels and bruises.Queenie blinked at him with her only open eye, and a crystal tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and fell onto the pillow. "Did you get my letter?" Her face was naked, like a trapped animal. "Where are the postcards?" Am I dying?her eyes asked.Will it hurt? He couldn't watch it.He opened the backpack, and he turned everything out. Although the backpack was dark, his hands were trembling again, and he felt that Queenie was staring at him, so he couldn't remember what he was looking for. "I've brought some little souvenirs I picked up along the way. There's a piece of quartz for the wall that would look great in your window. I looked for it and found it. And honey. Where did it go? ?” He suddenly realized that with such a large tumor, she might not be able to eat anymore. "But of course, maybe you don't like honey at all. But that's a nice jar, maybe for a pen. Bought it at Buckfast Church." He pulled out the paper bag of rose quartz and handed it to her.She didn't move.He put it near her withered hand and clapped it twice.When he raised his eyes, he froze.Queenie Hennessy was sliding off the pillow, as if that horrible bump on her face was trying to pull her down to the ground. He didn't know what to do.He knew he should help, but he didn't know how.He feared there were more, more wounds, more brutal evidence of her frail life beneath her taped neck.He can't stand it.Harold yelled for help, trying to keep his voice down at first so as not to scare her.But then he yelled again, louder and louder. "Hello, Queenie," said the nun who came in, but it wasn't the nun just now.Her voice is younger, her body is stronger and her movements are bolder. "How about some light? It's like a morgue here." She walked to the window and flung open the curtains. The metal rings that hung the curtains jingled on the bars. "It's great to have a visitor to see you." Harold felt that everything about her was a bit too lively compared with this room, especially Queenie was in such a fragile state now.Harold was almost annoyed that they should let her take care of a fragile patient like Queenie, but he was relieved that she could help. "She—" he couldn't finish the sentence, he could only point to the bed. "No, here we go again," the nun said briskly, as if Queenie was a child and got food on her clothes again. She walked to the other side of the bed, adjusted the position of Queenie's pillow, then reached out to hook her armpit and lift her up, lifting her body up.Queenie was at her mercy like a battered doll, and that was the last Harold could remember of her—enduring again and again when she was lifted and placed on a pillow, making jokes that disgusted him so much. "Evidently Henry has come all the way to see you. All the way—where did you come from, Henry?" Harold opened his mouth to explain that his name was not Henry and he lived in Kingsbridge, but suddenly lost the motivation to speak.She wasn't worth the effort he'd put in to correct it.At that moment, he didn't even feel that it was worth spending so much effort to be a human being. "Did you mean Dorset?" asked the nun again. "Yes," said Harold in the same tone, so that for a moment it sounded like they were both calling to the sea breeze, "From the south." "Shall we make him a cup of tea?" She asked Queenie, without looking at her, "Just sit down, Harold, and I'll make us both a cup of tea so you can hear what's going on. We've been busy lately, haven't we? There are so many letters and cards, and a woman wrote from Perth last week." She turned to Harold as she walked, "She can hear you," she said.He thought it would be inconsiderate of Queenie to stress this in front of Queenie, if she could really hear.But he didn't say it.Now the simpler the better. Harold pulled the chair by Queenie's bed and pulled it back a few inches so as not to block the others.He clamped his hands between his knees. "Hello," he said again, as if the two had just met, "I really have to say, you're doing a great job. My wife—you remember Maureen?—my wife asked me to pass on Her best wishes." Pulling Maureen into the conversation, Harold felt a little safer.He wished Queenie would say something to break the silence, but she said nothing. "Yeah, you did a great job," and then, "Really, great." He looked back to see if the nun had finished pouring tea and returned to the room, but it was still just the two of them.He stretched long, although he was actually quite energetic. "I've been walking for a long time," he said weakly, "would you like to hang the quartz for you? The employees in the store like to put it on the wall, and I know you will like it too. It is said that it has the function of promoting body recovery." She Opening his eyes, he saw his gaze. "But I'm not sure that's the case either." He didn't know how long he would hold on like this.He stood up, and the quartz attached to the end of the rope slipped from between his fingers and swayed from side to side.He pretended to be looking for a suitable place to hang it up.The sky outside the window was a dazzling white, and it was impossible to tell whether it was clouds or the sun. In the garden, a nun was casually pushing a patient in a wheelchair across the lawn, talking softly.Harold wondered if she was praying, envied her calmness. Harold felt the old emotions and images coming back.They had been buried by him for so long, because no one could endure such torture every day.He grabbed the window sill and tried to take a deep breath, but the hot air didn't let him breathe a sigh of relief. He saw again the afternoon when he drove Maureen to the funeral director to see David one last time.She brought a few things: a red rose, a teddy bear, and a pillow.In the car she asked Harold what he had prepared for David, although she knew he had nothing.The sun was very low that day, hurting his eyes all the way.Both of them wore sunglasses, and Maureen was unwilling to take them off when she got home. At the undertaker's place she told Harold that she wanted to say goodbye to David alone, and Harold was surprised.He buried his face in his hands, sat outside and waited until a passer-by offered him a cigarette.Although it had been a long time since he had smoked, Harold took it.He tried to imagine what a father would say to his dead son. His fingers shook so badly that a passer-by had to light three matches to light his cigarette.The strong smell of nicotine filled his throat in an instant, burning all the way down, turning his internal organs upside down.He stood up and bent over the trash can, and a rotten smell hit his nostrils.Behind him, the air was cut by a piercing, heart-rending cry, like an animal howling, and Harold stopped, his hands on the edge of the trash can, his face turned to the contents of the trash can. "Don't!" Maureen wailed in the funeral home, "Don't! Don't! Don't!" The cry seemed to hit him, bouncing off the metal-like sky above him. Harold gasped and spat a pile of white foamy vomit into the trash can. She accidentally met his gaze when she came out, and put on her sunglasses with her hands like lightning.She was crying so hard it seemed like she was going to melt.He was horrified to see how much she had lost and her black dress hung like a hanger from her shoulders.He wanted to go over and hug her, and let her hug him, but he smelled of cigarettes and vomit.He hung his head down and lingered by the trash can, pretending he hadn't seen her just now, and she walked straight past him and got into the car.The distance between them shone like glass in the sun.He wiped his face and hands, and finally followed. On the return journey, neither of them said a word.Harold knew something was going on between them that could never be changed.He didn't say goodbye to his son.Maureen has, but he doesn't.This distinction will always exist.A small cremation was held later, but Maureen didn't want to accept any tributes.She hung up the curtains to keep prying eyes out, though sometimes he felt it was more to keep her from seeing the outside world.She complained for a while, blaming Harold, and then she stopped even complaining.They pass each other on the stairs like strangers. He remembered the look she gave him when she came out of the funeral home that day before she put on her sunglasses.That look seemed to be a contract between them, so that they could only speak insincerely to each other for the rest of their lives, tearing apart what they once cherished the most. Thinking of all this in the nursing home where Queenie was dying, Harold trembled with pain. He thought that when he finally saw Queenie, he could say thank you, maybe even goodbye.He thought that the reunion of the two would somehow forgive those bad mistakes of the past.But there was no reunion, not even a farewell, because the woman he knew had left.Harold felt he should stay, leaning against the window pane until he accepted it.Or should I sit down, it will feel better if I sit down.But he knew it was impossible before he even sat down.Whether sitting or standing, it took him a long time to get the fact embedded in his perception that Maureen's condition had declined to this point.David has gone too, and will never come back.Harold tied the quartz to a curtain hook and tied it in a knot.It swirled in the sun, so small it was almost imperceptible. He thought of the shoelaces that David had untied the day he nearly drowned.Thinking of driving back from the funeral home with Maureen, knowing it was over.Also, when he saw that he was still a little boy and his mother was gone, he lay motionless on the bed, wondering if the more he didn't move, the more chance he had to die.And here, after so many years, lay a kind and considerate woman with whom he did not know much, struggling to hold on to the last vestiges of life left.Standing by and watching is not enough. In silence he walked to Queenie's bedside.She turned her head, found his gaze, and watched him sit down beside her.He reached out to hold her hand, such fragile hands, almost without any flesh.It curled up slightly and touched his hand too.he laughed. "It seems like a long time has passed since the day I found you in the stationery cabinet." At least this is what he wanted to say in his heart, but he didn't know if he said it or not.The air was still for a long time, empty, until her hand slipped from his and her breathing slowed.A jingle of china bells startled Harold. "Are you all right, Henry?" The young nun walked in cheerfully, carrying a tray.Harold looked at Queenie again.She has closed her eyes. "May I leave my tea here?" he said. "I must go."