Chapter 10 Chapter nine

From then on, we started traveling all over the United States.Of all types of lodgings, I quickly fell in love with "utility motels" - clean, tidy, safe hideaways, ideal for sleeping, fighting, making up, greedy and illicit affairs.At first, fearing the growing suspicion around me, I hastily paid for two suites, each with a double bed.I don't know the significance of this group arrangement of men and women. Since this incomplete separation means dividing the room into two connected love nests, I can only write pseudo doggerel about privacy.After a while, the possibility of such legitimate interbreeding (two pairs of young people happily exchanging partners, or a child pretending to sleep and hearing the crackling sound) emboldened me, and occasionally Occupies a room with one full bed plus one child's bed, or two single beds.It was Paradise's prison, with yellow window shades hanging down to create the illusion of a Venetian morning and sunshine, when in reality, it was Pennsylvania and it was raining.

We know--we know, in Flaubert's accent--that stone villa, brick, mud-brick, cement sky, under the great chateaubriand-style grove, built in the Travel brochures describe places as "shady" or "spacious" or "picturesque".There was a kind of log cabin surrounded by knotty pine, whose golden-brown sheen reminded Lo of fried chicken bones.We despise the lime-paneled log cabins that smell like sewer or some other dank, pungent stench, nothing to brag about (other than a "nice bed"), a The stern-faced landlady is always ready for her offer ("...ah, I can do it for you...") to be rejected.

We already know (and this is a royal joke) the similar, same-size-fits-all hotel names—such as "Sunset Motel," "Upper Light Cottage," "Hilltop Court," "Pine View Court," "Mountain View Court" , "Sky Courtyard", "Park Square Courtyard", "Biye", "Mike's Courtyard"--; will constitute the temptation.Signs also sometimes have a special statement, such as "Children welcome, pets allowed" (you are welcome, you are allowed).Most of the bathrooms in that kind of hotel are showers with tile roofs. The nozzles are of different shapes, but the common point is that they all have a firm anti-religious feature, a hobby, while washing, suddenly the water becomes crazy hot. , or blindly cooling down, depending on whether your neighbor turns on the cold or hot water, in order to deprive you of continuing to enjoy a carefully-tempered shower.Some motels have posted instructions above the toilet (the towels are piled on the pool in a very unsanitary manner), asking the guests not to throw garbage, beer cans, cartons, dead babies into the pool; other places have special notices posted under the glass , such as "Code of Conduct" (Bicycles: You can often see cyclists coming up "Main Street" from a romantic moonlight ride. "Often at three o'clock in the morning," sneers the less-romantic Lo).

We learn about motel managers of all types, reformed criminals, retired teachers and big business losers, usually men; .Sometimes, in the hot and humid night, the train uttered a long desperate cry, mixed with strength and hysteria, and dragged out a piercing and ominous echo. We avoided the Traveller's House, a rustic but elegant country mourning house with no showers, stuffy powder-and-white bedrooms with elaborate dressers and landlady's children Photos of each metamorphosis period. Still, I often compromised with Lo's preference for "real" hotels.When the car is parked on a mellow and mysterious fork road at dusk, and the surroundings are quiet, and I caress her in the car, she will pick out the lakeside apartment that is highly recommended in the book, where all the conditions are available, such as a congenial partner , snacks, and open camping, all of which were illuminated by the headlights of the car she drove up to-but for me, I just wanted to see a horrible picture of a group of senior boys in sweaty shorts , with a face as red as burning cinders pressed against hers, while poor Dr. Humbert had nothing to hug but her strong knees, calmly accommodating his hemorrhoids in the damp grass.What tempted her the most was the "Colonial Hotel". In addition to its elegant atmosphere and picturesque scenery, it also guaranteed to have "unlimited breakfast, lunch, dinner and three meals a night".Precious memories of my father's palace-like taverns have sometimes made me long to seek a comparable in this strange country I have traveled.

But I was quickly disappointed; it was just that Lo kept tracking the scents of the food ads, and I got an altruistic financial boost from roadside signs like "Forest Inn, Children Under Fourteen Free."On the other hand, I can't help but shudder when I think of a self-proclaimed "upper class" hotel in a Midwestern state that advertised a midnight snack dubbed "refrigerator cleaning" because my accent annoyed them. Interested, I asked the names of my dead wife and my dead mother's servant.It cost me one hundred and twenty-four dollars to stay there for two days!You remember, Miranda, that other "biggest" robber's den with morning coffee and recirculating ice water and no kids under sixteen (no Lolitas, of course)?

Just arrived at a sleazy motel, the kind of place we're used to going to, and she either keeps the fan buzzing or forces me to throw a quarter into the radio or read all the signs, and asked plaintively why she couldn't ride the tail of the advertised cannon or swim in the local warm mineral pool.More often she puts on a dejected, bored, obnoxious slouching, and settles into a red spring chair, or a green chaise longue, or a canvas recliner with footstool and canopy, or A hanging chair, or lying in any lawn chair under a garden parasol in the inner courtyard, it would take hours of painstaking reassurance, threats, promises before she would rather do anything else in the face of my poor hedonistic cravings Before, let her lend me her brown body for a few seconds in this dark five-dollar room.

A combination of innocence and scheming, cuteness and vulgarity, blue sulking and rose-colored laughter, Lolita, who can be a curmudgeon when she's wayward, I used to have erratic bouts of boredom with her , violent abdominal pain, her sprawling, listless, dull-eyed eyes, and so-called slouching—a popular clown look that she knew was brutish—were unprepared.Psychologically, I found her to be a repulsive, old-fashioned little girl.Hilarious jazz, square dancing, sweet and creamy ice cream, musicals, film pictorials and more - these are the items that stand out on her pet list.God knows how many silver coins I fed that gorgeous music box every meal!I still hear the nasal voices of these invisible people serenading her, what are they called Sammy, Joe, Eddie, Tony, Peggy, Guy, and Patty, Rex; the songs are full of passion , but to me there is no difference at all, just like her various candies give my palate the same feeling.She believed with a heavenly devotion any ad or announcement in Film Love or Screenland—Sitarasir suffers from acne, or "If you wear your shirttails on Out of your jeans, you better watch out, girls, because Gul says you shouldn't be doing it".If a road sign says: Please visit our gift shop - we must visit, must buy its Indian curios, dolls, bronzes, cactus sweets. Words like "cheap jewelry and souvenirs" could easily drive her into a trance with their cadence.If a coffee shop sign said: "Iced drinks," she would get mechanically excited, even though drinks were served iced everywhere.Advertising is dedicated to people like her, the ideal consumer, both the subject and the body of all kinds of dirty advertising.She would have liked to patronize only those restaurants that had wrought the spirit of "Hinken food" onto lovely paper napkins or salads topped with dollops of cheese -- but hadn't.

During that time, neither she nor I had thought about the magic of money, but later it wreaked havoc on my nerves and hers.I used three other methods to control my adolescent concubine and keep her submissive and temperate. Years before, she had spent a rainy summer on a dilapidated farmstead in Alrachia under the supervision of the bad-eyed Miss Phelan.The farmhouse had belonged to a surly Haze long ago.It still stands in the distance on the edge of the flowerless forest, in a field of weeds at the end of an always muddy road, twenty miles from the nearest village.Lo recalled the scarecrow in a certain house, the deserted, wet old pasture, the wind, the swollen wildness, and revulsion made her twist her mouth and turn up her half-protruded tongue.It was there that I reminded her that she would live with me for months, maybe years in exile if need be, learning French and Latin with me, unless her "attitude at this time" changed.Charlotte, I'm beginning to understand you!

Such a simple kid, Lo yelled no!Whenever I tried to check her storm and pulled onto the highway, signaling to her that I was going to take her all the way into that dark, gloomy farmstead, she would frantically grab my hand on the steering wheel.But the further west we went, the more difficult that threat was to be realized, and I had to resort to other methods of persuasion. Among them, threatening a reformatory school is the most shameful one that I can think of.From the time we merged, I was wise enough to realize that I had to have her full cooperation to keep our relationship a secret, and that this should become second nature to her, no matter what resentment she might have for me, whatever she might What other pleasure to pursue.

"Come here and kiss your old man," I'd say, "drop the petulant nonsense. Before, when I was the girl of your dreams (readers will notice how painful it was for me to speak like Lo), You captivated the record of the number one shivering and crying idol among your peers (Lo: "My what? English please.") Your partner idol, you thought you were supposed to be like friend Humbert. But now, I Just your old man, dream father protecting his dream daughter. "My dear Dolores! I want to protect you, darling, from the coal sheds and alleys where little girls usually live and, ah, you know, my little darling, in the bilberry bushes in the gloomy summer Terrible thing that happened to you. Faithful, I will still be your protector; if you behave well, I hope the courts will legalize this protection before long. But, Dolores Haze, let us forget the so-called Legal term, that term justifies "lusty and promiscuous copulation" and I'm not a sexual psychopath who commits indecent, casual acts on young children, the rapist is Charlie Holmes; I'm a psychotherapist--middle There's a nice space between them. I'm your daddy, Lo. Look, I've got a book about you girls right now.

Look, dear, see what it says.Let me quote: A normal girl—normal, you mean—a normal girl is always trying to please her father.She sensed from them that the latter was a male herald who made her desirable but elusive ("elusive" is a good thing, according to Polonius!).A wise mother (and your poor mother must be wise if she is alive) should encourage friendship between father and daughter, recognizing--forgive the mediocrity of its ways--that the girl forms herself from her intercourse with her father. Views on love and ideals for men.So, what does this interesting book mean by engagement - and what does it suggest?Let me quote again: Sicilians regard sexual relations between father and daughter as natural, and girls involved in such relations are not spurned by their society.I am a big admirer of the Sicilians, they are excellent athletes, excellent musicians, excellent and upright people, lo, and great lovers.But let's not digress too far.Just a few days ago we read a lengthy article in the newspaper about a middle-aged moral offender accused of violating the Mann Act with the immoral purpose - whatever the purpose - of The crime of abducting a 19-year-old girl out of continental borders. Dolores dear!You're not nine, you're almost thirteen, and I'm not going to advise you to think of yourself as my cross-country slave, and I regret making the Mann Act a horrible pun, that's semantics God is Revenge by the fastening Philistines.I am your father, I speak English, and I love you. "Finally, let's see what happens if you, a pre-adult child, are accused of seducing a middle-aged man in an elegant hotel; if you complain to the police that I kidnapped and raped you, What happens then? Let's imagine they believe you. An underage woman, allowing a man twenty-one years her senior to know her flesh, commits her own sacrifice to legal rape, or second-degree sodomy. Depends on skill; ten years maximum. Well I'm going to jail. All right. I'm going to jail. But what about you, my orphan? Yes, you're lucky. Ward--I'm afraid that sounds a bit desolate. A grim good housekeeper of Miss Phelan's type, who is harsher and less drunk than her, will confiscate your lipstick and fine clothes. Never again Kind of roaming! I don't know if you've heard of the laws against unindependent, abandoned, wayward juvenile delinquents. You, happy abandoned child, will have Opportunity to knit, sing hymns, and eat rotten pancakes on Sundays in places of various names but alike, such as reform schools, general reform schools, youth reform schools, or those admirable sales homes for girls. Gotta go there, Lolita--my Lolita, this Lolita, a wayward little girl like you gotta get out of her Gatara period and go there. Simply put, if the two of us are found , you will inevitably be analyzed and disciplined, my baby, this is the end. My Lolita, you'll live with, with (come here, my brown flower) with thirty-nine other criminals in a filthy dormitory (no, let me say) Controlled by the vicious housekeeper.That's the case, there's only one option. Don't you think Dotales Haze had better go with her old man in this situation?After forcing her to admit it all, I managed to frighten Lo, but despite her abrupt attitude shift and her intellectual spurt, she still wasn't quite as sharp as her IQ would suggest.But if I did build a background of shared secrets, shared crimes, on the other hand, the success rate of keeping her good sense of humor is very small.Every morning during our year-long trip, I had to devise for her some expectations, some specific points of time and space for her to look forward to and save until bedtime.Otherwise, without a tangible, long-term purpose, the framework of her life would collapse and collapse.The desired object could be anything—a lighthouse in Virginia, a natural cave converted into a coffee shop in Arkansas, a rare display of guns and violins somewhere in Oklahoma, a replica of a "Lourdes cave" in Louisiana, a Photographs from the days of bonanza mining in a museum at a place of interest in Kishan, whatever they may be—as long as they lie before us like stars; I went to great lengths to explain to her the topographical maps of the United States of America, in order to give her the impression of "travelling," driving toward a given destination, toward strange pleasures.I have never seen such a smooth and lovely highway that stretches across the winding state lines of the forty-eight states.We devoured the highways greedily, gliding along the glossy black runways in awe-inspiring silence.Not only did Lo not want to linger in the scenery, but she also violently resented me for always drawing her attention to this and that fascinating scenery;In terms of pictorial thought, when the wide lowlands of the North American countryside first appeared, it seemed to remind me of some joyful discovery, and I was astonished. Those old painted canvases imported from America hung in nurseries in Central Europe Above the washbasin stand, the scene of the big green block painted on it should fascinate the sleepy child--blind twisted trees, a barn, a cow, a stream, misty orchards With dull white flowers, and perhaps a stone wall or a mountain in green gouache.Gradually, however, the more I became familiar with the basic patterns of those pastoral scenes, the stranger they seemed to me the more I looked at them.Beyond the farmlands of the plains and the toy-like rows of small roofs, there will always slowly diffuse a useless and lovely scene, a low slanting sun, with a golden-white light, turning the warm, flayed The color of peach flesh spreads across a two-dimensional space; the upper edge of the dove-gray clouds blends with the distant amorous mist.And perhaps a row of tall trees, silhouetted against the horizon, against the hot and pure noon scene above the clover moors, the clouds of Claude Lorraine drawn into the misty blue sky far away, only their heaped Parts stand out against the light gray hazy background.Or it could be Il Greco's forbidding horizon, pregnant with dark storms, fleeting glimpses of farmers with their implements, rippling water and bitter green corn all around. Like an open fan, somewhere in Kansas. On the wide plain, from time to time there are big trees that seem to be approaching us, and then consciously stop on the side of the road, casting a little humanitarian shade on the picnic table, dappled sunlight, flattened paper cups, fruit peel cores and ice The cream sticks were thrown to the ground.My casual Lo, a big user of roadside amenities, is often amused by toilet signage -- "Men's and Ladies' John and Jane," "Jack and Jill," and even "Buck's and More" I am immersed in an artist's dream, staring at the bright colors of gasoline equipment against the background of dark green oak trees, or staring at the distant mountains, desperately-scarred but still Untamed--extending from the wasteland that would encroach upon it. At night, big trucks decorated with colorful lights loom in the darkness like huge and scary Christmas trees;The next day, thin clouds gathered and merged overhead again, and the heat dispelled the blue sky. Mr. Luo wanted to make a noise to get something to drink. He bulged his cheeks vigorously against the wax paper tube, and then returned to the car. Sometimes, the inside always becomes a furnace; the road flickers slightly in front, and a car in the distance changes shape like a mirage under the reflection of the glare from the turning of the road. In the blazing light, it seems to be floating in the air, square and high, It's that old style.As we headed west, several clumps of trees called "sagebrush" by oilers appeared, then mysterious, table-shaped mountains, then red cliffs stained with blue spots of pine oil, and then another A mountain border, the yellowish brown gradually turns to blue, and the blue gradually turns to fantasy, and then a desert greets us, which will be greeted by strong wind and sand, gray thorn bushes, and toilet paper fragments that look like white flowers. Among the flower bases that are destroyed and withered by the wind; the road cabinet, sometimes a dull cow stands there, just in such a posture that does not move (tail on the left, white eyelashes on the right), crossing all human traffic laws. My lawyer advised me to give a clear and frank account of our future travel itinerary, and I don't think I can back away at this point.Roughly speaking, during that crazy year (August 1947-August 1948), our route started with a series of curves and twists in New England before snaking south , up and down, here and there; plummeting down to what is called "Dixieland," avoiding Florida, where the Farrows are, and turning west, through the Corn Belt and Cotton Belt ( I'm afraid it's not very clear, Clarence, I made no records at the time, except for a set of poor, crappy three-volume travel guides, which are almost a symbol of my broken past, and can be used to check these memories) ; crossed the Rocky Mountains twice, and spent the winter drifting in the southern desert; then reached the Pacific Ocean, turned north, and passed through the lush lilac bushes along the forest road; almost reached the Canadian border; Land and bad land, back to the wide agricultural country, where we escaped her birthplace of corn, coal, and lumber, in spite of little Lo's shrieking protests; Lee University City.