Chapter 8 "Ticket to the Graveyard" - Fasten your seat belts, we're taking off

A few years ago, Taiwan’s publishing industry experienced a rather wonderful novel publishing experience: a German novelist whose identity was unclear from the publishing house itself to the vast majority of readers, a book also from the publishing house to the vast majority of readers Weird novels, which most readers have never heard of, were not introduced when they were published, and there was no exciting marketing, so they were quietly and lonely thrown into the book market. As a result, they suddenly found that the revolutionary situation was very good. Of course, we are no strangers to this novelist now, his name is Xu Sijin (translated into Juskind in mainland China); we may have read this strange novel, it is called, very likely, many people have read him one after another "The Pigeon", "The Story of Mr. Xia" and "The Double Bass".

A friend of mine described how he and Xu Sijin became friends: A friend went to his house to talk about this book for a full three hours. Let us briefly recall (of course not take three hours) this strange novel: the protagonist Grenouille in the book is an abandoned baby, adopted by a kind old woman selling vegetables, and when he grows up, he becomes an apprentice to a perfume master. Abnormally gifted, with a perfect nose and hands, and without a trace of body odor, he is like a blank perfume canvas. He soon becomes an excellent perfumer, but he is determined to collect the most beautiful fragrances in the world so that he can refine one. An ancient and unparalleled perfume, so he killed more than 20 beautiful virgins one after another, just to take off the fragrance of their bodies——

What is so good about this novel?The answer should be that the whole book is good-looking, but I think that the moment when the real thrills start to "take off" (take off) is about halfway through the novel. , hands-on refining all kinds of weird perfumes that pass through the senses and point directly to the heart.He can use smell to control people or like him, or sympathize with him, or avoid him, or don't think he exists at all. Pure and unrivaled brassy perfume..." Of course Bullock's novel was not as good as this, but the breath and direction of the whole novel, especially the key point of "taking off" suddenly during the novel and rising to the point where it seems as if it is unreal, always makes me think of it involuntarily.

, Scudder, who usually plays the role of the evil hunter, this time he not only continues to hunt down the murderer, but also plays the prey at the same time. This novel is not a guessing game of classical reasoning, where the villain is known early in the morning; nor is it the "inverted" writing method of Dr. Sondike's reasoning series, which uses the hands of detectives to reconstruct the crime process to find out who meets the prosecution conditions. evidence of crime.It's more like a "Suspense" offshoot of mystery novels, with Scudder and the murderer chasing through a modern metropolis of eight million people like two lonely duelists.

It all started years ago when Scudder was still a cop, when his prostitute and real estate expert girlfriend, Elaine Maddie, was stalked by a thug who didn't pay after the job and loved all kinds of brutal bdsm games In the end, Scudder set up a trap and successfully sent him to prison. However, after many years, the bad guys came back and began to launch a comprehensive revenge, threatening to get rid of all Scudder's women, and prepared to treat Scudder himself like a cat's claw. Playing like a mouse until the end-- Scudder, a solitary freelancer, is there many so-called "his women"?To be honest, there are not many, except for a few unlucky prostitutes who were abused with Elaine, there are only a few people, such as the ex-wife who lives in Long Island, and the sculptor girlfriend Jane Ken who is breaking up. Do Alcoholics Anonymous women count?Do women who occasionally drink a cup of coffee and chat with each other at the bar count?Or just an unknown woman nodding on the street?

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter what Scudder says, what Leo Morley the Revenge says. In this situation, the whole novel takes off with horror.With great difficulty, Scudder searched through all the women who might have suffered misfortune because of him, and asked them to go abroad for vacation one by one, and return to New York until the situation was resolved, or to ask the police to protect Yunyun. A phone call came in, and the murderer claimed that he had just disposed of another "blood relative" of Scudder, and this so-called blood relative, Scudder should have neither met nor known, but he did not expect that he was actually involved ——

That's all for the case. This is the most unfair part of this "atavistic" duel that the modern justice system has no hand in. Scudder is the defender and has to "like a juggler, throwing all the balls in his hands into the air... all To save, to protect all." However, Scudder knew it well: "The brutal truth is that these women not only don't belong to me now, they never belonged to me, let alone the future. I don't belong now, and never will/I'm alone The presence." Ridiculous, but real dilemma. There is a saying in Buddhism called "Love and Separation Suffering", which is one of the many pains in life that you can't handle. Let you cherish it, make you reluctant to part with it, so that you can't face all the birth, old age, sickness and death that you can't avoid after all with a clear mind and no worries. Therefore, the Buddhists who face up to the misery in the world, which is originally a pessimistic study of troubled times, advise us, Cutting the knife by ourselves is less painful. We need to take the initiative to cut off these emotional ties that will inevitably bring pain, and face the great cycle of life, death, prosperity and decline of nature calmly and calmly.

As far as the current level of Buddhism in Taiwan is concerned, Scudder’s original self-destruction is almost the same. He resigned from the police and broke the main tie with the entire society; he divorced and broke the bond of family and affection. Fixed entanglements; his life was "designed" into a releasable form, including living in a hotel, his girlfriend is a prostitute, friends only get together in various bars, and he doesn't smoke and quit drinking (the famous novelist Zhong A According to the city, one has to be cruel enough to give up smoking and drinking) - listed in this way, we almost believe that Bullock deliberately wrote Matthew Scudder in this way, as a man who walks alone in the gorgeous and sinful New York City Famous walking monk.

Of course, this may not be the case. When we read the novel carefully, it is reasonable to guess that it may be just the other way around: Bullock wanted to write and quite successfully wrote a "wisdom and affection" (to borrow the Buddhist word "Bodhisattva"). interpretation) people.This person is upright, sensitive, appreciative of beautiful things and people, and has nostalgia for all kinds of life. However, Bullock just found a deadly career for him, in a deadly city.Therefore, not only can he not turn his head away from seeing the evil and injustice everywhere, but he also has to take the initiative to seek and dig out it. In this way, his sensitive and upright traits are undoubtedly double self-punishment, and he has to keep seeing Good things disappear, innocent people fall, and the virtues and values ​​worth protecting are abandoned. In short, he has to learn to harden his heart and pretend to be a tough guy with no weaknesses and nothing to lose. survive.

As the book says, the little girl manslaughter that set off the chain reaction of Scudder leaving his job, getting a divorce, and starting drinking may, for some, be nothing more than a regrettable and forgettable accident , but to others, like Scudder, it has become a lifelong fork in the road, a perpetual nightmare. You don't want to do it again, just leave yourself alone and pretend that you have nothing to lose, nothing more than a few handcuffs. However, Leo Morley's comprehensive revenge action severely exposed the "lie" that Scudder had hypnotized him for many years, making him embarrassed.

These women who were massacred, Scudder can of course continue to declare loudly, they are by no means "my women", I have never had them in the past, present, and future, and there is absolutely nothing similar between me and them Love, family or friendship - these are still true words, but do they work?Will Scudder not feel guilty about their deaths and desperately want to prevent the next tragedy from happening? The matter is now very clear. It turns out that apart from the positive ties of "tangible" emotions between people, we may still have life itself for more people who are not relatives, and who do not have any love and friendship. Although most of the time it is hidden, we don’t even believe it exists at all. However, when a special situation comes suddenly, we often discover the strength and resilience of this connection—this is precisely the After receiving that fatal phone call, Scudder realized his embarrassing situation. It seems that this also seems to confirm the Buddhist idea of ​​a strong man breaking his wrist.Scudder is wise and affectionate, but it has become his weakness, his blind spot; relatively speaking, Leo Morley's ignorance of all living beings and everything makes him have a powerful force that is straightforward and ruthless, making him like a lone wolf. Sa Ran has an absolute advantage, he is the lonely existence. This may make people who read novels sad—here, we seem to have found a definition of a certain aspect of the so-called "end times": in a bad era, some good values ​​and virtues are not only useless, but extremely dangerous. In order to avoid suffering more completely, should we not cut off even the last frenulum of life itself?What lighthearted new relationship do we find ourselves having with this troubled world? —or we simply ask: so, how is it any different from letting ourselves die, or turning ourselves into a scum like Leo Morley? I think that Sakyamuni, who resolutely left home to seek the Tao, did not have, or it was too late to give us a more comprehensive answer. Nietzsche once said that Jesus, "died too young. If he lived to my age, he might withdraw his teachings—" The problem with Sakyamuni is not that he died too young, but that he may have been too gentle and too emotional. Concentration, this romantic prince who simply discarded the glory and wealth, but did not forget to fold a lotus flower and put it on the bedside of his young wife before he left, obviously felt the eternal suffering of life, old age, sickness and death more strongly than "ordinary people". To deal with this problem, he wanted to eliminate the pain, but such a single-minded mind, in a sense, made him like a scientist who buried his head in the laboratory to find a special drug that could eliminate a certain deadly virus. The joy of extinction, what he taught us, is extremely effective against the virus of "pain", but if you are not careful, even life itself will be wiped out. Perhaps, we should honestly admit that between compassion and pain, between faith, responsibility and pain, between life itself and pain, there is often no room for having both, and some philosophers cannot get rid of this. It may be right to call it the "burden of existence", as long as you live for a day, you cannot avoid it, and we may have to learn to accept its existence and try to get along with it. In the book, Bullock said through the mouth of an alcoholic woman: "People don't have to feel better when they are alive. Who stipulates that I have the obligation to be happy?" It's a frivolous statement, but maybe it's true.