Chapter 121 No. 62, One Picbus Side Street

The big car door at No. 62 Birkbus Street was exactly the same as any other big car door half a century ago.The door was often ajar in a most attractive manner, and through the cracks revealed two not very bleak things: a courtyard with vines on the surrounding walls, and the face of a porter who lingered without incident.Several big trees can be seen on the wall at the bottom of the courtyard.When a ray of sunshine brings life to the yard, and a glass of red wine brings joy to the concierge, it is difficult for people passing by the door of No. 62 Birkbus Street not to feel happy about it, but we hope See is a miserable place.

There is a smile at the door, but prayer and weeping in the house. If we can - and it is not easy - pass the door of the porter - it is almost impossible for anyone to do, because here is the saying "Sesame, open the door!" We must know , if we pass the porter's gate and go to the right into a small hall with a narrow staircase between two walls that can only accommodate one person at a time, if we are not afraid of the light yellow mortar on the wall And the stairs, and the color of cocoa on the footings on both sides of the stairs, if we dare to go up, through the first wide step in the middle of the stairs, and then through the second widest step, we reach the corridor of the first floor In the hall, the walls of the aisle were also painted with yellow plaster, and the base of the walls was also painted in cocoa, as if the colors on both sides of the stairs followed us up the stairs quietly and tenaciously.Sunlight poured into the stairs and passages through two well-crafted windows.The aisle turned a corner and it was dark.If we also turn the corner and take a few steps forward, we will come to a door, which is not closed, so it looks very mysterious.We opened the door and went in, and we came to a small room about six feet square, with a small square floor, washed, clean, and deserted, with fifteen sous on the wall and a roll of small green flowers printed on it. Nanjing paper.A dim white light came in from a large pane of glass on the left, as wide as the room. We saw no one when we looked at it;There was no decoration on the walls, no furniture on the floor, not a single chair.

If we look again, we will see a square hole about a foot long on the wall facing the door. The hole is equipped with black iron bars, which are knotty and strong, intersecting into square holes, I almost say intertwined into a dense network, The diagonal of the hole is less than an inch and a half.The little green flowers on the Nanjing paper came neatly and quietly into contact with these eerie iron bars, neither feeling panic nor running wildly.If a slender person tried to get in and out of the square hole, he would be blocked by its iron net.It does not let the body in or out, but it lets the eye, that is to say, the spirit.Someone seemed to have thought of this, for there was also a piece of tin plate set into the wall a little later on, with innumerable holes in it, smaller than those in a colander.Under the iron sheet, there was an opening, exactly the same as the opening of the letter box.A cotton gauze ribbon hangs down to the right of the sheltered opening and is tied to the bell.

If you pull the strap, the little bell will jingle for a while, and you will also hear the voice of a person speaking, and suddenly the voice will come from very close to your ear, making your hair stand on end. . "Who is it?" the voice asked. It was a woman's voice, a voice so soft that it made people feel sad. At this point, there is another sentence that must be known.And if you didn't know it, the voices were silent, and the walls were silent again, as if the partitions were dark and terrible sepulchres. If you know that sentence, there will answer: "Please come in from the right."

Looking to the right, we see, opposite the window, a gray-painted glass door with a glass frame at the top.We unbolted the door and walked through the door opening with exactly the impression of entering one of those barred boxes around a theatre's pool, and seeing a sort of grating not down, branch lights unlit. scenario.We were indeed in a kind of box, with a little sunlight filtering through the glass door, the interior was dark and narrow, with only two old chairs and a loose foot-wiping mat, it was indeed a real box, and There was a balustrade at elbow height with a black painted backing.The box was fenced, but not the golden-painted fences of the opera house, but a row of grotesquely interlaced iron bars, embedded in the wall with fist-like iron tenons.

After the first few minutes, when our vision began to adjust to the half-light of the cellar, we would look behind the bars, but we could only see as far as six inches from the bars.Looking there, our eyes will meet a row of blackboard windows, on which a few horizontal bars as yellow as fruit bread are nailed to make them firm.Those shutters are composed of several long and thin wooden boards that can be opened and closed. A row of shutters covers the entire width of the iron fence and is always tightly closed. After a while, you'll hear someone calling you from behind the shutter and saying:

"Here I am. What do you want me for?" It was the voice of a loved one, sometimes a lover.You can't see people, and you can barely hear your breath.It seems to be talking to ghosts through the tomb wall. If you meet certain necessary conditions-which is very rare-the narrow plank of the window will turn away from you, and the ghost will have a figure.You will see, as far as the iron bars allow, behind the iron bars and the shutters, a human head appears. You can only see the mouth and chin, and the rest is covered by the black veil.That head talks to you, but doesn't look at you, and never smiles at you.

The light shines from behind you so that you see her in light and she sees you in darkness.That arrangement is symbolic. At the same time, your eyes will greedily shoot through the crack in the plank to the place that is completely cut off from outsiders.A hazy mist enveloped the figure in black.Your eyes search the fog, trying to make out what's around the figure.You'll find right away that you can't see anything.All you see is emptiness, darkness, cold smoke mingled with death, an eerie silence, a silence in which not even a sigh is heard, a silence in which nothing can be seen, not even a ghost. No dimness.

What you see is the interior of a monastery. Such was the interior of the gloomy and silent house of the so-called Bernard Convent of the Perpetual Order.The wing we are in is the reception room.The first person to talk to you is the messenger. She has been sitting next to the square hole on the other side of the wall under the double cover of iron nets and thousand-hole boards. She never moves or makes a sound. The wing was dark because the parlor had a window on the worldly side, but not on the monastery side.Common eyes should never pry into holy places. But there is light on the side of darkness, and life in death.We shall go in, and let the reader in, though that monastery is very tightly guarded, and at the same time we shall speak, within due limits, of things which the storyteller has never seen, and therefore never has. talked about.