Chapter 31 "Tanner's Twelve Gymnastic Gold Hairpins" - Addition's Adventure Story

Let’s look at a few passages from the book: First, a certain shepherd of the "Macedonian Internal Revolutionary Organization".He assisted Ivan Tanner across the Greek-Serbian border so that Tanner could visit his son, who was said to be the leader of the Macedonian revolution one day—"Border?" He laughed. "What border?" He clenched his fists and beat his thighs. "National borders? Just because the Greeks and Serbs drew an imaginary line in the heart of Macedonia, does that mean there is a national border? Just because despots and oppressors erect barbed wire and set up sentries, does that constitute a border?" Borders?" ... "So we have to find a place where it will be easier to cross the border," he said. "We just pretended to be two silly shepherds driving a flock of sheep. Do goats know about national borders or barbed wire? Goats just know where there is grass and eat it."

Secondly, there is Milan Butecchi, the Deputy Minister of the Interior of the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in the novel, the leader of the rebel army during the Great War, an important organizational cadre of the Tito government after the war, and a highly respected scholar and thinker. He wrote a This book about the future of the Balkan Peninsula, Tanner will ship the book and the author back to the United States. — "But war has always been with us, and I suspect it will always be. I know what war was like. I've studied history all my life, Mr. Tanner, and I know the pattern of war growing up, Unprecedented great powers are fighting each other with unprecedentedly large armies. You know that poem "The Beach of Dover"? It's by the English poet Matthew Arnold. I remember one of the lines. 'Armies of ignorance fight in the night. 'All armies are ignorant, Mr. Tanner, and all wars are fought in the dark night of the soul. Now our world is made up of gigantic countries, isn't it? China, Soviet Union, America, Common Market, Socialism in Eastern Europe Nations. Great powers and multinational alliances. Years ago if two countries were at war, a peace seeker could walk fifty miles to another country so he wouldn't have to worry about being in the middle of a war. Small nations fought small wars, small armies fought small battles , the world continues to function. But imagine a war today between the United States and the Soviet Union, or the United States and China, or the Soviet Union and China. Where can we go? Where can we hide? The whole world will become What's it like?"

Then, it was Evan Tanner's own thought.At that time, he was eager to find a way to escape from Latvia, so he went to Tallinn, the seaport capital of Estonia, to try his luck alone.These feelings and thoughts are a bit Conrad-"Tallinn's harborside bar is like any portside bar. Everyone chats about women and ships, drinks hard, and there are twelve languages ​​​​talking in the shop at the same time. And underneath it all is a benign disregard for law and order. At their core, every crew member is a smuggler and anarchist. When a man spends most of his time sailing open water surrounded by people from all over the world sailor, he would learn not to be too submissive to the government of a quarter of the earth which, for some mysterious reason, God felt ought to be spoiled and covered with land."

Of course there are more than these three paragraphs, but first. Here, we cut these three paragraphs from the complete novel, or "liberate" them, and read them separately, as Benjamin said, "I launched an armed robbery, rescued these sentences, and made them shine", It is an attempt to point out a way of reading novels, a way of reading that does not see the forest for the trees, a way of reading that also tries to stare at a certain tree alone in the forest of novels. What needs to be briefly explained is that there are many ways to read novels, so many that you can conceptually treat it as an infinite variety to protect its openness, so there is no way in meaning.Here, we are not marking one of them alone, but marking one of them "multiple". There may still be a certain degree of risk, but just remember that the methods and methods do not exclude each other and replace each other. Can only accommodate one perspective, rhythm, focus and mind?And, who said you can't read the same novel again?

In fact, people can be far more free and flexible than they think. In fact, people often draw an imaginary line, and even set up barbed wire to limit themselves.And these three wonderful discourses that we have liberated are exactly what they are talking about. It is not difficult for people to have a wider heart than a bar in Tallinn. They can converse in twelve languages ​​at the same time, and they can "benignly disregard" law and order. Can be a smuggler and anarchist who travels all over the world. These three discourses constitute a fascinating and boundless landscape of anarchy, which can be skipped at a glance. To be honest, it does not affect the normal progress of the storyline, but Borges said it well, the novel is not just the plot, especially the novel .Borges believed that short stories are often a plot, a special story, but what a long novel really presents in the end is a special character.Just as "Don Quixote" really presents the sad knight of La Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza.Often, the plots that are long and inevitably adventurous are unreasonable or even wrong. Cervantes also had this trouble, but Borges thought that when he wrote Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, these flaws were just It is just the professional nitpicking of professional literature scholars and the jokes of knowledgeable people.

Likewise, in the long, serial series of spy adventures we have at this moment, the really fascinating and truly different from other world-saving heroic spy stories is ultimately the anarchist Ivan Tanner himself. isn't it? This is the third cross-border adventure story of our sleepless brother Tanner. It is triggered by a cross-border love story (love is like a goat that eats grass, does not know borders and barbed wire), but As it goes forward, it becomes more and more bloated and sloppy until it is out of control. In the end, the original will to bring out beautiful girls from the old Soviet Iron Curtain in the Baltic Sea was implemented, but it was also forced to do a lot of other things by accident, and even more. What's funny is that Tanner was alone when he set off, but when he returned home, he helped the whole big tour group with the old and the young, just like what Jesus said when he kidnapped the fisherman Peter to go with him in the "Bible and Gospel", "I will let you Fishermen are like fishers.”

However, it would not be fair to attribute such a snowballing result to fate. After all, Tanner threw down the first pebble intentionally or unintentionally—we all know that, as a person An agent with a secret mission should live a life of "subtraction", which is the reason for his moral dilemma and life tragedy, which is exactly what Le Carré's great novels touch upon.He may have family, children, and friends, and theoretically he must, otherwise he will be suspicious, and will emerge abnormally from the society where he wants to disappear and dissolve into the sea like a drop of water; The "body" of a normal family is not only a natural human need, but also a necessary cover.Therefore, his real difficulty lies not in being alone, but in being ruthless (to his relatives and to himself) in a state of non-aloneness, always maintaining a real, inner absolute loneliness or ruthlessness, and some secret thoughts will never be revealed. It can be said that some behaviors must always be done behind everyone's back, and some natural emotions are always set at the strict limit of prohibition, and cannot be allowed to develop freely and safely, otherwise it may not only endanger the execution of a mission, but may even To directly disintegrate the ultimate and exclusive emotions and beliefs, that is to spy on the God of the world, the national monster you are always ready to die for, and so on.This kind of self-subtraction, self-forced loneliness, especially on the eve of a mission, at that moment you have to let go of everything, including your own life and the lives of all others. Your life is so narrow that there is only one thing, The only one with you is yourself in the mirror.

But what did we see Ivan Tanner do?He wanted to go to Macedonia to see the son he accidentally left there. Like us normal people when we set off on a trip, it took so much time and money to make such a trip. We always try to use it as much as possible and even help the neighbors to buy one. The gift is back, isn't it? So things were "wrong" from the beginning. At the moment when subtraction should be used, Tanner actually used addition, and the future changed completely. The subtraction story of the traditional secret agent is not only manifested in the moment when we accept the task and prepare to act. It is just the official start of the subtraction operation. It will also snowball and become more and more violent until the eve of the end of the story. Reach the peak; moreover, it will never be limited to, satisfied with, or counted on the spy himself. Next, what it subtracts one by one is all the unlucky others involved, no matter good or evil, those who resist it If you die, those who kindly help it will die faster. Therefore, the calculation answer of the peak at the end of the story is usually the smallest natural number "1", which means that the spy is the only one left. It seems like a nightmare——OK , well-meaning spy stories will leave us something more or less, the answer equals "2", usually a young woman, ragged, bloody, in shock but still beautiful.

Therefore, under the superficial framework of such a heroic story, what we really read is actually a medical record of the outbreak and spread of a deadly infectious disease. Wherever he goes, no one he touches is spared; it seems to be the harshest eugenics fable, regardless of age, race, occupation, or gender, only the two most handsome and most beautiful can survive. Come down, the god here is vulgar, a groupie who only looks at people's appearance. This kind of subtraction spy story is popular in modern times. The Cold War between East and West in the 20th century transformed the entire human world into a super-large petri dish, making it popular in the world first with written books and then with continuous video movies and TV. Its ultimate form, I personally think, was completed nearly a thousand years ago in China, which is the traditional story of Wu Zixu's escape.

At the turn of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the family of Wu She, a doctor of the State of Chu, was wiped out. Only the second son, Wu Zixu, persisted in taking revenge and refused to die, so he fled eastward to the rising downstream State of Wu.Like Ivan Tanner, on this death journey followed by pursuers, he also received desperate assistance and cover from fishermen and farmers whom he had never met before. However, Wu Zixu, who is narrow-minded and suspicious, worried that these well-meaning people would leak his information. Their whereabouts, when they were parting, actually asked them to promise to keep their secrets, so someone committed suicide in front of Wu Zixu on the spot, and buried all the secrets with death, so that he could set off to the next stop with peace of mind, and then kill another kind-hearted person.

Usually, in order to gain insight into the hypocrisy and absurdity of things, there is an easy way to dispel the charm, that is to follow its logic a little more exaggerated and push down one more step, and we can clearly see that it is ridiculous or ridiculous. Horror (the two are often two sides of one body) from its true colors——Wu Zixu's escape is just such a small step, and the hero is restored to a virus, revealing the secret. The question is, those of us who are kind, respect life, release Brazilian turtles and piranhas, and worry about lost and stranded dolphins in front of the TV, why do we not get angry and enjoy it for hundreds of years in such subtraction stories? Woolen cloth? The more peaceful answer is because we know the story is false, the people killed are actors and props, and so on, but it's more than that. Most of the time when it’s okay, we usually believe and say that life is priceless, and what we emphasize is not necessarily its priceless value. For example, we say that the famous painting of “Mona Lisa’s smile” or the golden mask of the totem Carmen is Priceless and ordinary (when have we ever protected people like we protected that painting and that mask? We also thought that it was reasonable and heroic to sacrifice a few human lives because of this painting and this mask, didn’t we?), but Just like the troublesome mathematicians in ancient Greece encountered infinite numbers, they cannot establish formulas and cannot calculate each other, so we say that life is inalienable, that is, we don’t know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide—for those who are uncertain and do not understand It is good and wise to put aside doubts and keep its simplicity and inviolability. But we also know that it is by no means completely independent, and they have a logically paradoxical "relationship" that cannot be deduced, so a bunch of famous sophisms are derived. The simplest is that some infinities are part of other infinities, Just like natural numbers are part of integers, so, intuitively, some infinities are far "bigger" than others, aren't they?There is some ominous smell revealed here. What's more ominous is that life cannot be calculated, but it has "units". We can see a person, a life, etc. with our eyes, and we can add, subtract, multiply, and divide with our fingers, and we are always tempted to do so. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, two means greater than one, twice as much as one, therefore, in the world of conceptual truth, life is inalienable and cannot be replaced. However, in the real world where gods conflict, life becomes It is expendable. The legitimacy of the subtraction adventure story is based on such a digital and sacrificial real world. In order to protect two people, kill or kill one person, there is obviously a surplus, and the high profit of twice the profit, It is also effective in calming our moral anxiety. But let's go further and ask, in such a story of invincible and plague-like people going wherever they go and dying, since only one or two survived in the end, who exactly did we protect?Where is the fat surplus we make at the expense of all we see? The answer is a bit like an advert, we earned the whole world—this is the eternal background and the source of all its legitimacy for this kind of subtractive agent story that everyone knows.There will always be one or some strange people who are both clever and calm but too crazy to know what to do. They want to control the whole world or even destroy the whole world altogether. From the demons of ancient religions to the "three hundred people" that has been passed down from the Middle Ages to the present day. Secretly control the whole world" pure intimidation tradition, to Hitler-style modern madman, etc., etc., these things finally converged into the Cold War between East and West in the twentieth century, forming the peak of doomsday fear, extremely realistic and extremely imaginary mutual reference Supporting each other, on the one hand, evil is materialized and released from neurotic individual imaginations to broad daylight to become a reality of every day and every hour; on the other hand, reality is also symbolized, and the necessary calculations of every day and every hour no longer operate on rationality On top of this, it is unfolding towards a nightmare that cannot be verified and cannot be returned.The Cold War in the 20th century was precisely Zhuang Zhou’s dream of a butterfly, which was the nightmare version of Zhuang Zi or a butterfly. What’s worse, it was not easy to wake up. The cold war ended, and the historical bang of the collapse of the Berlin Wall could not break people who had been in deep sleep for a long time. Isn't our own confrontation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait today so realistic and dreamlike? There is one point here that we must point out, such an unfortunate result is all due to the novel writers, film and TV screenwriters of the story of the subtraction agent who are not fair. They are responsible, but they are only uninformed or slightly informed Small characters are accomplices, but the real main suspects are still those in power (politicians, arms dealers, multinational corporate giants, etc.), they need these existing nightmares very much, and they need a lot of hypnotists to lull people to sleep. In the dream, There is no need for public debate, no rational or well-founded persuasion, which saves a lot of trouble and cost. In this way, this kind of forced calculation method of exchanging one infinite life for two infinite lives is no longer as warm and sad as the story of someone diving into the water to save two people, but he sacrificed generously. A real, on-site, real-time computing basis, and, alas, this is the only basis on which it barely stands—now, the fruits of sacrifice are separated in space, that is, the rescued are not present; they are also delayed in time, That is to say, the saved person is in the future or even not born at all. Such a promise that has no credibility, no verification, and no punishment after the event is just a scam most of the time, and it is really hard not to be a scam.Think about it, sacrificing you to save them, I am the only one who is fine, and all the benefits belong to me, how can you say that such a thing is not a scam? In the history of writing spy novels, the person who understands this kind of deception best is probably Le Carré, because he himself was once a member of this fraud group and really participated in British intelligence work. Rehabilitation also writes this kind of subtractive spy stories, but reduces the fallen people to just death, there is no such thing as a heroic sacrifice, some are just being tricked into killing others or dying foolishly A death of hypocrisy, injustice, without compensation and ultimately of nothingness.As directly marked in his book "Mirror War", the so-called set of libretto to save the world and defend the world is nothing but an illusion that looks the same; moreover, people on both sides are such sad mirror images of each other , no one is really a devil or a hero, they do exactly the same thing, they just keep killing innocent others and themselves for an illusion. Bullock, who has never participated in a fraud group, came from the opposite direction and completely reversed the established writing method-the soft-hearted Ivan Tanner is not a murderous spy, let alone sacrificed from time to time. Those who save lives include those who were originally meant to be saved, as well as those who have to be rescued along the way.Of course, in the process, he will also be in danger of killing himself, but we know that saving people is risky. Just ask the firefighters who rushed into the fire and rescued the crying child, or the diving rescue we mentioned earlier. For those who are drowning, isn't such a risk common sense? Marx hated this kind of sentimental humanitarianism not because he was chaotic and murderous by nature, and he was happy to see people in a miserable situation without extending a helping hand, but because he was worried that the historical mission would be ruined and history would be hindered in order to save a person. event.He is the one who believes in that delayed payment, and is probably the most violent and powerful proponent and defender of this set of dreams. Borges, on the other hand, said clearly, even in a tone of puzzlement, that everyone should be a humanitarian—he didn’t know why people could not be humanitarians. Isn’t this common sense?Is this something that needs to be explained and doubted? But just as we always think that Borges is far more naive than Marx, Bloch’s spy stories of returning to common sense and returning to the normal humanitarian world are generally regarded as adult fairy tales of spy novels. If this did not happen to us collectively Sensory dysfunction, that must be strange and sad things happening in the world before our eyes, we must be caught in some kind of hallucinations and nightmares, nightmares become reality, night becomes day, so that reality is seen as a dream instead , The words of common sense are regarded as nonsense instead. Which anthropologist said it?Only children and savages can't tell dream from reality.But think about it, is it like this? Borges didn't tell us how to wake up, how to be the humanitarian we should be (probably because he was one of the few people who didn't sleep), but Bullock's Ivan Tanner may give us some Prompt, he told (or paraphrased) us, don't draw some imaginary lines to limit ourselves, let alone set up barbed wire, set up sentries on this imaginary line, and swear at every turn to guarantee the death of yourself and others. It, confirm it, after we divide the land, we continue to divide the sea and the sky (this is far more serious than Tanner thinks), and in the process of drawing lines like this, we will inevitably cut ourselves It was a mess, and it was not as good as that confident grazing goat.We think this is a necessary protection, but we only protect our own obscenity, selfishness and cruelty, and mistakenly think that human life is composed of these bad things, and forget that those magnificent and beautiful emotions and imaginations are also our normal. A part of humanity, the most important or most worth defending part. Crossing borders, benignly disregarding law and order, in order to save suffering people one by one - under the sweet fairy tale shell, I can't help but see it as a serious writing metaphor, a free and sober the sound of.