Chapter 15 Chapter Fourteen

The Park Lane Hospital for the Dying is a sixty-story building of primrose-coloured brick and tile.The Savage got off the taxi plane, just as a colorful air hearse whized off the roof of the house, swept across the park, and flew west to the Feather Slough Crematorium.At the elevator door, the leader of the doorman told him the news he needed.He got off the elevator on the seventeenth floor and came to Ward No. 81 (the team leader explained that it was the acute aging ward). The wards are large, brightened by sunlight and yellow paint.There are twenty beds in total, each with patients.Linda was dying, among the other patients—with all the modern amenities.The cheerful tunes of synthetic music perpetually float in the air, and at the end of each bed there is a TV set facing the dying man, which is on from morning till night, like a faucet that never turns off.The main scent in the ward changes automatically every quarter of an hour. "We try," explained the nurse who accompanied the Savage from the door, "to create a sufficiently pleasant atmosphere here, somewhere between a first-class hotel and a palace of the senses—if you know what I mean. "

"Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring her polite explanations. The nurse was offended. "You're in a hurry," she said. "Is there hope?" he asked. "You mean hope of immortality?" (He nods.) "Of course not. Those sent here are hopeless..." She ate at the pained look on his pale face. Surprised, he shut up. "Why, what's the big deal?" she asked.She was not used to this kind of reaction from guests (though, not because there weren't many, and there shouldn't be). "Aren't you sick?" He shook his head. "She's my mother," he said in a barely audible voice.

Upon hearing this word, the nurse gave him a look of surprise and terror, and then looked away.She blushed from her temples to the base of her neck. "Take me to her," said the Savage, trying to be normal. She blushed and led him to the ward.The still young, not yet aged faces (for aging progresses so rapidly, the hearts and brains are old, the faces have not had time to age) turned towards them as they passed through the ward.The dazed, uncurious eyes of second-degree infancy followed their passing figures.The savage shuddered at the sight of them. Linda was lying on the last bed in her row, leaning on the cushions and watching the semifinals of the South American Riemann Curved Tennis Championship.The ball game plays silently, zoomed out, on the TV screen at the foot of the bed.On the glowing square screens tiny human figures scurry about silently like fish in an aquarium—all excited silent people from another world.

Linda continued to watch the TV, showing an ambiguous smile that half understood, and an idiot-like joy bloomed on her pale and swollen face.She closed her eyelids from time to time, as if she had dozed off for a few seconds, was slightly startled, and woke up again. She saw the strange tennis player in the aquarium; Drunk, Kiss"; smelled fresh verbena from the ventilator above her head - she felt these things when she woke up, or rather felt a dream, a woman transformed and dressed by the soma in her blood. A dream made of brilliant things.She gave her baby-satisfied smile again, broken and dim.

"Okay, I have to go," the nurse said, "My group of children are coming, not to mention there is bed No. 3," she pointed to the other side of the ward, "he may die at any time now. Okay, you Please go ahead." The nurse hurried away. The Savage sat down by the bed. "Linda," he said, taking her hand. As soon as her name was called, the patient turned around, and his dull eyes flashed with recognition.She squeezed his hand and smiled, moved her lips, then suddenly moved her head forward and fell asleep.He sat looking at her, searching in her weary body the face of radiant youth, the face of his childhood in Malpais.He found it.He closed his eyes and thought of her voice, her movements, and the whole experience of their mother and son together. "Strep horse turn right, to the T of Bamboli..." How beautifully she sang!And those nursery rhymes, how strange and mysterious, like magic!

Tears welled up in his eyes as he recalled the words and Linda's voice reciting them.Then there is the reading class.The little boy squatted on the bottle, and the little cat sat on the cushion.There is also a Practical Guide for Embryokubeta Staff.On long nights by the firepit, or on the roof of the summer cottage, when she told him stories of the other place beyond the reservation--the good, good other place.He also kept the memory of it intact--like the story of Paradise, of the Paradise of Goodness and Beauty, without it being tainted by contact with real London and actual civilized men and women.

A sudden high-pitched noise opened his eyes, and he hastily wiped away his tears and looked around.A seemingly endless stream of people was flooding the ward.All eight-year-old identical-looking twin boys came in one after another, one after the other, like a nightmare.The faces, the repetitive faces—so many people and only one face—the same nostrils, the same big gray eyes, staring and rolling like pugs.They came in screaming and chirping in khaki uniforms, with drawn lips.In an instant, the ward seemed to be crawling with maggots.Some of them squeezed between the beds, some turned over from the beds, some slipped under the beds, some looked into the TV, and some made faces at the patients.

Linda surprised them, or rather frightened them.A crowd of people crowded around her bed, staring at her with terror and foolish curiosity, like wild animals suddenly discovering something they have never seen before. "Ah, look, look!" the twins whispered in terror, "what's the matter with her? Why is she so fat?" They had never seen a face like hers before, and the faces they had seen were all young and smooth, and their bodies were all slender and straight.All these dying people in their sixties had the features of adolescent girls.Linda is only in her forties, but by comparison, she is already an old monster with loose skin and distorted description.

"Isn't she scary?" A whisper came, "Look at her teeth!" A pug-faced twin popped out from under the bed between John's chair and the wall and began staring at Linda's sleeping face. "I'm talking..." He began to speak, but before he could finish, it suddenly turned into a scream.The Savage had seized him by the collar, lifted him from the edge of the chair, and slapped him so handsomely that he ran away screaming. As soon as he heard his cry, the head nurse rushed to rescue him. "What's the matter with him?" she demanded fiercely. "I won't let you beat the child."

"Well, tell them not to come to this bed." The barbarian voice trembled with anger, "What are these dirty little devils doing here? Shame!" "Shame? What do you mean? Tell you, we are setting death conditions for them," she warned viciously. "If you interfere with their condition setting again, I will call the guards to kick you out." The barbarian stood up and approached her a few steps, his movements and expressions were majestic, and the head nurse backed away in fright.It took him a lot of effort to control himself, and without speaking, he turned around and went back to the bed, and sat down.

The head nurse was relieved, and said in a sharp voice and uncertain dignity: "You have to remember, I warned you." But she finally took the two little "Bao inquiring" away, Let them play "find the zipper".One of her colleagues is organizing the game over there. "Come on, dear," she said to the nurse, "and get your coffee drink." As soon as she exercised her authority, she regained her confidence and felt better. "Now, children!" she cried. Just now Linda had moved uncomfortably, opened her eyes for a moment, looked around in a daze, and then fell asleep again.The Savage sat beside her, trying to recover the state of mind he had been in a few minutes before. "A, B, C, Vitamin D," he recited, as if the words were a spell to bring back the dead past.But the spell had no effect, the beautiful memories stubbornly refused to arise, and what really revived were the hateful memories of jealousy, ugliness, and suffering.Pope, whose shoulder was cut and dripping with blood; Linda, who slept ugly; flies buzzing around Mescal, who knocked over the bed; the urchin who yelled strange things at Linda when she passed by... Ah ,no no!He closed his eyes, shook his head desperately, and tried his best to deny these memories. "A, B, C, Vitamin, D..." He tried to recall the days when he sat on Linda's lap, and Linda put her arms around him, rocking him, singing repeatedly, rocking him. , until he was shaken to sleep: "A, B, C, vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D..." Wu Lize's super soprano has risen step by step, and has reached the height of crying.Suddenly the scent of verbena from the scent cycle is gone, replaced by a strong geranium mint.Linda moved, woke up, watched the semi-finalists for a few seconds inexplicably, then raised her head, sniffed the freshly scented air, and suddenly smiled—a very happy child's laugh. "Pope!" she murmured, closing her eyes. "Oh, I like this so much, I like it so much..." She sighed and fell back on the pillow. "But Linda," pleaded the Savage, "don't you know me?" He had done all he could, had done his best; why couldn't she be forgotten?He almost squeezed her limp hand with all his strength, as if he wanted to force her to wake up from that obscene and happy dream, wake up from that vile and hateful memory—back to the present, back to reality.Back to the terrible present, the terrible reality—and that reality seemed sublime, profound, and immensely important because of the imminent death that made it all terrible. "Don't you know me, Linda?" He vaguely felt her hand clenching tightly as an answer.Tears welled up in his eyes, and he bent down and kissed her. Her lips moved. "Pope!" she whispered.It was as if a bucket of dung had been thrown over his head and face. Anger suddenly burned in his heart.He suffered a second setback, and his melancholy found another outlet, turning into agitated grief. "But I'm John!" he cried, "I'm John!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her in agony. Linda's eyes blinked and opened, recognizing him. "John!"—but she put his real face, his real rough hands, into an imaginary world; She treated her memories as well as the strangely misplaced feelings that made up her dream world.She recognized him as her son John, but imagined him as someone who had broken into her Malpais Paradise, where she was spending her soma holiday with Pope.John is angry because she likes Pope.John was shaking her because Pope was in her bed—as if that was some kind of mistake, as if civilized people didn't do that. "Everyone belongs to each other..." Her voice died away suddenly, transforming into a breathless, barely audible gurgle.Her lips drooped and she tried so hard to fill her lungs with air that she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.She tried to cry out, but no sound came out, and only the terror in her wide eyes showed her torment.Her hand went down to her throat, then scratched at the air—the air she could no longer breathe, the air that no longer existed for her. The Savage stood up and bent over her. "What are you talking about, Linda? What?" he said beggingly, as if begging her to reassure him. The way she looked in his eyes was indescribably horrible—horrible, as if she was still blaming him.She tried to push herself up, but fell back on the pillow.Her face was terribly contorted, and her lips were black and blue. The savage turned and walked out of the sickroom. "Quick! Quick!" he cried. "Quick!" The head nurse stood among a circle of twins who were playing "Zip Zipper" and turned her head.She was taken aback at first, but then dismissed it. "Don't make noise! ​​Think about the children." She frowned and said, "You might break the conditioning... what are you doing?" He had already entered the circle. "Be careful!" a child screamed. "Come on! Come on! Something happened! I killed her." Linda was dead when they got back to the ward. The Savage was stunned. He stood silently for a moment, then knelt down by the bed, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed uncontrollably. The nurse stood hesitantly, looking at the man kneeling by the bed (what a disgraceful look) and then at the children (what a pity they were).They had stopped "finding the zipper" and were looking across the room, staring wide-eyed at this disgusting show by bed twenty.Should she talk to him and restore his shame?Make him understand his situation?To let him know what mortal pain he would inflict on these poor innocent children?He would use his disgusting yelling to destroy all the normal settings for the children's death conditions-as if death was a terrible thing, and someone would think it was so serious!That could very well give children the most disastrous thoughts about the subject, messing them up and making them react in the wrong, antisocial way. The head nurse came forward and touched his shoulder. "Can you behave yourself?" she whispered angrily.But she looked around and saw six or seven children had stood up and walked towards the ward.The circle is about to break up.Immediately... no, that's too risky, and the conditioning of an entire group of kids could be delayed by six or seven months.She hurried to the endangered children in her charge. "Now, who wants a chocolate bar?" she exclaimed in a cheerful tone. "I want to eat!" cried the entire Bokanovsky group.Bed No. 20 was forgotten. "Oh, God, God, God..." the Savage kept saying to himself.His heart was filled with pain and regret, and the only clear voice in the chaos was God. "God!" he cried out in a low voice, "God..." "What the hell is he talking about?" said a voice, that voice was very close, very clear, very sharp, piercing through the melodious singing of super high-pitched Wu Li Tse. The Savage turned around abruptly, let go of the hands on his face, and looked around.Five twins in khaki uniforms stood in a row, glaring at him like pug dogs, each holding a half of a bar cake in their right hand, and the melted chocolate stained their identical faces in different shapes. They all smirked at the same time when they met his eyes, and one of them pointed at Linda with the leftover stick. "Is she dead?" he asked. The savage stared at him silently for a while, then stood up silently and walked silently towards the door. "Is she dead?" The questionable twin asked again as he pattered along with him. The barbarian looked down at him, still didn't speak, just pushed him away.The child fell to the floor and immediately howled.The savage didn't even look back.