Chapter 25 Section 23

I ask the German teacher to add half an hour each time.Now I seem to be more eager than ever to learn the language.His room was cold.He was dressed in weather gear and seemed to be building up furniture to block the windows bit by bit. We sat facing each other in the dark.My command of vocabulary and grammatical rules is surprisingly good.I can easily pass the written test and get high marks.However, I still have trouble pronouncing the words.Dunlop didn't seem to care. He demonstrated my pronunciation again and again, and the spit stars flew into my face. We speed up to three lessons a week.He seems to be changing his absent-minded ways and becoming slightly more attentive.Furniture, newspapers, cardboard boxes, plastic film—these objects, supposedly from cleaning ditches, piled up in corners and under windows.He stared at the inside of my mouth while I was doing pronunciation exercises.At one point he stuck in with his right finger to correct the movement of my tongue.It was a moment that felt strange and scary to me, such intimacy that I would never forget, and no one had ever played with my tongue before.

German shepherds are on a leash by men in Milex suits and also patrol the city.We welcome the dogs, we get used to them, we feed them, we pet them, but seeing men in uniform with padded boots and masks with hoses attached to their heads is not an adjustment. come over.We associate these attires with sources of our annoyance and fear. At lunch, Denise said, "Why can't they wear normal clothes?" "It's what they wear on duty," Babette said. "It doesn't mean we're in any danger. The dogs are just smelling a little bit of toxic residue on the outskirts of town."

"These are the things we're expected to believe," Heinrich said. "If they reveal the true findings, billions of dollars will be spent in lawsuits, not including demonstrations, panic, violence. and social unrest." He seemed to gloat at the prospect.Babette said, "That's a little extreme, isn't it?" "What is extreme, referring to what I said, or something that might happen?" "Both. There is no reason to believe that the published results are untrue." "Do you really believe that?" he said. "Why shouldn't you believe it?"

"If any of the true results of these investigations were revealed, the industry would collapse." "What investigation?" "Those investigations that are ongoing across the region." "That's it," she said. "Every day on the news shows there is a toxic spill: a carcinogenic solution spilling from a storage tank, arsenic from a chimney, radioactive waste from a power plant. If such an event How serious is the problem if it happens every hour of the day? Isn't the definition of a serious accident based on the fact that it doesn't happen routinely every day?"

The two girls looked at Heinrich, expecting him to come up with a clever rebuttal. "Forget about the leaks," he said. "These leaks are insignificant." That's not the line of conversation any of us would want him to take.Babette watched him carefully.He puts a slice of onion on the salad plate and cuts it in half the same size. "I wouldn't say they're trivial," she said cautiously. "They're small, everyday leaks that can be managed, but they're not trivial. We have to be vigilant about them." "The quicker we can forget about these leaks, the sooner we can start dealing with real problems."

"What's the real problem?" I said. His mouth is full of onions and cucumbers when he talks. "The real problem is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day. Radios, televisions, microwave ovens, cables outside our doors, radar speed monitors on highways. They've been telling us for years that such small doses of radiation don't No harm." "But now?" Babette said. We watched as he spooned mashed potatoes into volcano shapes on a plate.Carefully he poured the gravy into the opening in the top.Then, he began to remove fat, tendons and other unsightly things from the steak.I think eating is the only skill most people can specialize in.

"That's the new big problem," he said. "Forget about spills, fallout, leaks. It's the stuff in your own house hanging around you that will kill you sooner or later. That's the electromagnetic field. If I Who in this room is going to believe me when I say suicide rates among residents living near high-voltage power lines are at record levels? What makes these people so sad and depressed? Is it just the sight of these ugly wires and poles? Is it their brains? Cells damaged by constant exposure to radiation?" He dipped a small piece of steak in the crater's gravy and stuffed it into his mouth.But instead of eating it, he scooped some "low slope" mashed potatoes onto the steak before chewing.Questions about whether he'll be able to finish the gravy before the potato volcano collapses seem to be creating an air of tension.

"Forget about headaches and fatigue," he chewed. "What about insanity and domestic surly behavior and violence? There's science in that. Where do you think all the deformed babies come from? Radio and television, that's the root." .” The girls looked at him adoringly.I want to argue with him, I want to ask him why I should trust these scientific findings and not the findings that show we are not harmed by nyodine contamination.But considering my personal situation, what else can I say?I want to tell him that the kind of statistical evidence he cites is inherently inconclusive and misleading.I want to say that as he matures, he will learn to look at all such disastrous discoveries calmly and calmly, gradually get rid of narrow and rigid, form a well-founded and questioning spirit of exploration, increase the comprehensiveness of wisdom and judgment, and finally Aging and death.

But, I'm just saying: "Scare data is now an industry unto itself. All kinds of companies compete with each other to see how much they can scare us." "Let me tell you," he said, "when a rat is exposed to radiofrequency waves, its brain releases calcium ions. Does anyone around this table understand what that means?" Denise glanced at her mother. "Is that something taught in schools these days?" Babette said. "What happened in civics, how does a bill become law? The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of its two sides. I remember These theorems. Actually typed at Breeder Hills. Here's one. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania."

"Was it the Monit or was it sunk?" I said. "I don't know, but there's and." "What's the matter?" Steffi said. "What I'm trying to say is, he's a bureaucratic Indian. Here's one. Who invented the harvester, and how did it change the face of American agriculture?" "I'm trying to remember three types of rocks," I said. "Igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks, and one more." "How are you with 'logarithms'? What was the cause of the depression that led to 'The Great Crash'? Here's another one. Who wins? Be careful! It's not as obvious as it seems."

"Smokeless and asphalted," I said, "isosceles and non-isosceles." These mysterious and incomprehensible words came back to my memory as a bunch of confusing images when I was in school. "Here's another one. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes." Hallucinations continue to be a problem in the region.A toll-free hotline was established.There are counselors on duty throughout the day to answer questions from people who are constantly being troubled.Perhaps hallucinations and other involuntary ailments of mind and body were persistent aftereffects of the airborne poisoning incident.But it took a while to explain things like this, which are actually symptoms of the deep-seated loneliness we're starting to feel today.No other great city has so extensive and torturous an affair with which we can take some solace in comparing our plight.No great city is to blame for our sacrifices.There is no city to hate and fear.There are no heart-pounding mega-counseling centers to soothe our distress, to distract us a little from the fact that time—the time that is a factor in our uncommon destruction, the breaking of our chromosomes, the maddening increase in biological tissue—is essential to our consciousness. of constant pressure. "Babe," I said softly.That night I lay on the bed between her breasts again. While we were wonderfully spared outrage by living in a small town, not being in the midst of a major metropolis where everyone was watching made us feel a little lonely when the two of us were alone.

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