Chapter 12 11

11 Peter left soon after. He said he had to go to sleep for a while, and he suggested that I should go to sleep for a while.But I'm not tired at all.I'm excited and full of energy.I also don't want to look for things for nothing, and keep searching for things at home to pass the time.Since I was a child, every Sunday afternoon near dusk, I felt empty and uninterested in my heart. This afternoon, I felt a special sense of emptiness in my heart. After washing the dishes, I put the knives, forks and spoons back into the drawer, but I also know that it won't be long before they will be messed up again.I had just used the toaster, and while flicking its switch, I glanced at the several flipped magazines in the hall. Several titles seemed particularly eye-catching, and they created a new meaning in my heart, such as "Should You Adopt?" "Are You Really In Love? Twenty Self-Test Questions" and "Honeymoon Nervousness" and more.The phone rang, and I jumped up to answer it, but someone dialed the wrong number.Embry is still in her room, and I thought maybe I could talk to her, but somehow I don't think that would be of much use either.I hope to do something that has results and achievements, but what it is, I don't know very well.In the end I decided to go to the laundry room to do my laundry at night.

Naturally, we won't use the laundry facilities of the landlady downstairs, and we don't even know if she has a washing machine.She would never let something as unrefined as a line of laundry defile the well-kept grass in the back yard.The clothes of the mother and daughter never seemed to be dirty, maybe it was covered with a transparent plastic protective film.Neither of us ever went to her basement.I've never heard of her mentioning such a place.It is likely that in her code of etiquette, such things as washing clothes, although everyone knows it well, are not discussed by people of high status.

So when the pile of dirty laundry piled up and there were no clean replacements in the chest of drawers, we headed to the laundromat.Or, I usually go alone, and I can't wait as long as Ainsley.Sunday night is better than any other time on the weekend. At this time, there are few old gentlemen tying rose branches in the garden and spraying insecticide on the flowers; and there are few old ladies wearing colorful straw hats and white gloves. Driving or sitting in someone else's car to drink tea at another old lady's house.The closest laundromat was one tube stop away from us, and Saturdays were terrible because the bus was full of shoppers and old ladies in hats and gloves (not as fancy as visiting someone's house though ), and on Saturday nights, most young people go to the movies.I love Sunday nights when there are fewer people in the car and I don't like having people staring at you all the time, and my laundry bag is so noticeable.

I didn't want to stay at home that night, I just wanted to go out.I pulled out a frozen meal, warmed it up, ate it, and changed into the clothes I wore when I went out to do the laundry—jeans, a long-sleeved sweatshirt, and a pair of tartan sneakers I owned. Bought it on a whim and never worn it for anything other than laundry. I checked my wallet and it was full of quarters.I was stuffing the laundry bag when Ainsley walked in.She has been hiding in the room with the door closed for most of the day, God knows what witchcraft she is doing: such as soaking some aphrodisiacs, making some little wax figures in the shape of Leonard, and inserting certain parts of the wax figures. Put on a few hairpins and so on.At this moment, she instinctively felt that I was going out, so she walked out.

"Hey, are you going to do the laundry?" She carefully pretended to ask casually. "No," I said, "I cut Peter up into pieces, put him in a laundry bag, took him out, and buried him in a hollow." She must not appreciate my joke, so she didn't laugh. "By the way, bring me two clothes, okay? Just the most important stuff. " "Okay," I relented, "bring it here." It's always like this, and that's one reason why Ainsley doesn't have to do the laundry herself. She went to get the clothes, and a few minutes later, she came back with a large armful of colorful underwear in her hands.

"Ainsley, it's just the most important thing." "That's all that matters," she said grimly, but she only got half of it back when I insisted I couldn't fit so much into the bag. "Thanks, this really saved my life," she said. "See you later." I dragged the bag down the stairs, picked it up and threw it over my shoulder, and staggered out the door just as the landlady came out quietly through the velvet curtain at the living room entrance and gave me a cold look.I know she's expressing displeasure at us for having the audacity to expose such filth to the light of day.I silently quoted this sentence to her in my heart: We are all unclean.

As soon as I got on the bus, I stood up the large bag of clothes on the seat next to me, hoping to look like a child from a distance and not to offend the moralists who objected to working on Sundays.I remember one Sunday when I was getting out of the car when an old lady in black silk and a lavender hat grabbed me.Not only did she get annoyed that I didn't obey the fourth commandment, but that I was dressed so outrageously that she must have been saying, Jesus would never forgive me for wearing plaid running shoes like this. Then my eyes fell on a colorful advertisement above the car window showing a young woman in a corset jumping with six legs.Although I don't want to be picky, I have to say that this ad makes me uncomfortable, it's so unsubtle.As the car drove for several blocks, I wondered what kind of people would be drawn to that product by it, and whether they had done research on it.I guess the female image isn't very attractive to women, that's mostly for men, but men generally don't buy corsets.But every woman hopes that she is a beautiful young woman, and perhaps customers will think that buying this thing is equivalent to regaining their youth and slim figure.The car drove a few more blocks, and I remembered somewhere that I had read a famous saying that a corset is always necessary for a well-dressed woman, so what does the word "forever" really mean.During the rest of the journey, I thought about the problem of gaining weight in middle age. When will I gain weight?Maybe I've gained weight.I think you have to be very careful about this kind of thing, it often starts before you know it.

The laundry room is just at the entrance of the subway station on the street. I walked in and stood in front of a big washing machine, and suddenly remembered that I forgot to bring soap powder. "Oh, what the hell!" I said aloud. The man who was loading the washing machine next to me turned to me. He gave me a deadpan look. "Use mine," he said, handing over the box of soap powder. "Thanks, it would be nice to have a vending machine here, they should have thought of that." And then I recognized the man, who was the young man I had met doing beer advertising research.I stood there with soap powder in my hand, thinking how would he know that I forgot to bring soap powder?I didn't say this just now.

He looked at me more intently for a moment. "Ah," he said, "I recognize it. I couldn't remember where I saw you at first. You're not so primly dressed, and you look a little--showy." He leaned over again. Get down to fiddle with clothes. Very revealing.What do you mean, good or ring?I checked my whole body quickly, the seams were not torn, and the zippers were all closed.Then I hurriedly stuffed the clothes into the washing machine, and put the dark clothes and light clothes into two machines respectively.I tried to put the clothes away before he did so he couldn't see what I was doing, but he got ahead of me just in time to see me stuff Ainsley's lacy lingerie into the washing machine .

"Is this your thing?" he asked with interest. "No," I said, my face flushed. "I said, it doesn't look like yours." Is this a compliment or an insult?Judging by the flat tone of his speech, it was just a comment. As a comment, I thought, not without humor, that was accurate enough. I closed the thick glass doors of the two washing machines and stuffed coins into the slots in the cash registers on the machines. After a while, the machines made the familiar plop-plop sound, which meant everything was fine, and then I went to the row of chairs in the laundry room and sat on one of them.I realized I had to wait here, there wasn't much to do in this area on a Sunday.You can go to see the minister's movie, but I don't bring enough money, and I even forgot to bring the novel.

What was going on in my mind when I went out?I usually don't forget things like this. He sat down beside me. "The only problem with public laundromats," he says, "is that you always find someone else's pubic hair in the tub. I'm not being picky, I don't care much about germs and stuff like that, but it's annoying. Felt sick. Would you like some chocolate?" I looked around to see if anyone had heard us, no one else was in the laundry room. "Thank you, no, I said. "I don't really like chocolate, but I'm quitting smoking." He tore open the wrapper of a piece of chocolate and ate it slowly.We both stared at the row of shiny white washing machines, especially the three thick glass windows like portholes or aquarium tanks, in which our clothes were spinning round and round, taking on different colors and colors. Shapes, now twisted together, now disappear, now appear again in the soap foam.He ate the piece of chocolate, licked his fingers, smoothed the wrapper, folded it neatly, put it in his pocket, and then took out another cigarette. "I kind of like watching it," he said. "I look at the washing machine the way other people watch TV, and it has a calming effect on you because you always know what the outcome is and you don't have to think about it. But Sometimes I also make a little change to the washing content, and if I get tired of reading it, I will add a pair of green socks or other colored things." His voice was flat and monotonous, and he curled up Leaning forward, elbows on knees, head tucked into the collar of the black sweatshirt like a turtle tucks its head into its shell. "I come here a lot, sometimes just to get out of the apartment. As long as there's something to iron it's good. I like to get the wrinkles out and the clothes to be ironed so you have something to do. What if there's nothing to iron? Well, here, I'll come here and get something to iron." He didn't even look at me, maybe he was talking to himself.I also leaned forward so that I could see his face.The laundry room was lit by bluish fluorescent lights, which seemed to have no hues or shadows. Under this kind of light, his skin looked even paler. "I can't stay at home, it's the room. In the summer it's as hot as a stove, and the lights are dark, and the room is so hot you don't even want to use the iron.The room was not big, but it became more crowded when it was hot, and the distance from others seemed too close.I was in my room, with the door closed, but I still felt like they were there with me, and I could guess what they were doing.Fish always liked to sit in his chair and not move, even when he was writing, and then he would tear up what he had written, saying it wasn't good enough, and stare at him for days after that. The pieces of paper on the ground were in a daze.Once he crawled on the floor on all hands and feet, trying to stick up the scraps of paper with scotch tape, but of course he didn't succeed, and then he lost his temper, saying that we two stole some of his papers, It is good to use his point of view to write an article and publish it first.Trevor, if he doesn't have summer classes, cooks at home, cooks a dozen courses, makes the room even hotter, and I'd rather eat canned salmon than get into trouble, or else, he He just practiced fifteenth-century Italian calligraphy at home, such as scrolls, curlicues, and so on. He kept doing these fifteenth-century things, and he could clearly remember even the smallest dots and strokes.I guess it's kind of funny, but in a way it's not the way to go, at least to me, and I think he feels the same way.The thing is, they do the same thing over and over again, but they get nowhere, and they end up getting nothing done.Of course I'm no better than them, it's just as bad.I just can't write that damn term paper.I went to the zoo once and saw an animal in a cage, and it was walking back and forth like crazy all day long, following the same figure-of-eight route around and around.I remember its claws making a funny metallic sound on the bottom of the cage.It is said that this phenomenon will happen to animals after they are locked in cages. This is a manifestation of insanity. After that, even if you release them, they will still go around in circles in the same way.You read and read and read that material all day long, and by the time you get to the twentieth article, you don’t know what it’s talking about, and then you’re thinking about a certain year, a certain month , how many books are published in a given week, it is too many to bear.At this time," he finally looked towards me, but his eyes were strange, with that blurred look, it seemed that he was not looking at me, but a certain part of my body, "the text gradually becomes meaningless. " The washing machine started the drying program, and the clothes were spinning faster and faster, and then the water entered again, and the clothes were spinning again. He lit another cigarette. "So you're all students?" I said. "Of course," he said with a bitter face, "you can't tell? We are all graduate students, English majors, all three of us. It seems that everyone in this city is English-speaking. We can say that in this small world It is completely self-contained, and no one else is seen. That day, you, an outsider, broke in, which is extremely rare." "I always think graduate school is an exciting thing." This is not my real idea, I just want to add something, but when I said this, I immediately felt a bit of a middle school student's posturing Element. "Exciting," he sneered. "I've had that thought too. When you're a smart, hard-working undergrad, people tell you, go to grad school. They get you some money." , you become a graduate student; you think, this way I can pursue the truth. But you can’t pursue it at all, you dig deeper and deeper into the horns, and you get more and more trapped in those old grains and rotten sesame seeds , you end up remembering nothing but a big mess of commas and broken footnotes. It gets to the point where you're stuck in the middle and you wonder how you ever got out On this road. In America, I could have an excuse to say I was draft evasion, but here, there is no excuse at all. Besides, all that stuff you're doing Someone has done it, and the material has been excavated long ago, and you have to roll in the little residue left at the bottom of the barrel. I have been in college for nine years, and we hapless ghosts are pitiful enough. In order to find some new materials, There was nothing but rummaging through manuscripts, or delving into the best editions of Ruskin's party invitations and theater-ticket stubs, or trying to bluff people out of some literary unknown. That old guy Fish is writing his dissertation right now, and he wanted to do DH.Lawrence's uterus is a symbol, but the instructor told him that this topic has already been done.As a result, he had no choice but to choose another topic that was much more difficult, and now the more he wrote, the more he lost his mind and made a mess. ’ he stopped. "Oh, what's the subject?" I asked, trying to tease him to continue. "I don't know too well, he didn't even mention it, only when he was drunk, but then no one could figure out what he was talking about. That's why, he kept tearing and tearing, he It seems that I can’t figure out what I wrote.” "What is your topic?" I just found it a bit unimaginable. "I'm not at that stage yet. I can't tell when exactly it will start, and what will happen by then. I'm trying not to think about it now. I'm kind of writing a term paper that I owe , that was owed the year before last. I write one sentence a day, that is to say, I have to be in a good mood." The washing machine clicked and started the drying process, his face was livid, and he looked at them. "So what's the topic of your term paper?" I felt very curious, I thought, what surprised me was both his words and the change in his expression.Anyway, I don't want him to shut up. "You're not really interested," he said, "Pre-Raphaelite pornography. I was trying to write about Beardsley." "Oh." Both of us fell silent, thinking in our hearts that we wanted to write such a topic well. It seems that there is little hope. "Maybe," I said to him hesitantly, "you shouldn't be in this business. If you do something else, you might not be in such a bad mood." He sneered again, then coughed o "I should quit smoking," he said, "what else could I do? At this point, it will be very difficult to change.You have also changed inside. Everyone knows that you are too highly educated and specialized, and people in other industries will not hire you.No one wants me to dig a trench, I will dig out the sewer, and use a shovel to dig out those old antiques in the hell under the ground, such as water supply pipes, valves, sewage pipes, etc... that will not work, so I have to I have been doing coolies in the pile of books all my life. " I didn't answer.I looked at him and couldn't help imagining what it would be like if he worked in a place like Seymour's Office. I even imagined whether he could go upstairs to do business intelligence; no.He definitely can't do it. "Are you from out of town?" I finally asked, because there seemed to be nothing more to talk about about graduate students. "Of course, all three of us are out-of-towners; there aren't many locals, are there? That's why we rented that apartment, which, in good conscience, we couldn't afford. But there's no graduate dormitory here. Only The new coat-of-arms studded monastery-walled faux-English house could be rented out to postgraduate students, but the university wouldn't let me live in it, but even if I did it would be as bad as living with Trevor. Trevor is from Montreal, and his family lives in a high-end residential area like Westmont. He is very rich, but after the war they also went into business. The family now owns a factory that makes coconut cookies, something we never mention in the apartment.It's kind of awkward though because there's a constant pile of coconut cookies in the apartment and you have to eat it while pretending you don't know where it's coming from, I don't like coconuts.Fish was from Vancouver and he was always thinking about the sea.He used to take a walk along the trash-strewn lake, looking at the seagulls and the grape skins floating on the water, trying to get some comfort, but it didn't work.Both of them used to speak with their hometown accent, but now they can't hear it at all.You don't know where you're from until you've been in this school that's going to wring your brains out for a while. " "Where are you from?" "You certainly haven't heard of it," he answered curtly. The washing machine clicked to a stop, and we wheeled the barbed wire trolley across to transfer the clothes to the dryer.Then we sat down on the chairs again.Now there's just the hum of the dryer, the clacking of clothes in it, and nothing else to look at.He lit another cigarette. A slovenly old man came in with a flicker of footsteps, glanced at us, and walked out with a flicker.He may have come to find a place to sleep. "The thing is," he finally said again, "is that there's a kind of utility. You always feel like you're not getting anywhere, you're stuck in the middle of things and you can't move. I was in the apartment last week. It can be said that it is a bit deliberate, just to see what they will do. Maybe I also want to see what I will do. But the main thing is that I really want to find something new to do, It's fun to watch the flames go up and the wisps of smoke come out. But they just put the fire out and run around like two animals running around figure eights like crazy and yelling how I'm sick 'Oh, why set the fire? Maybe I'm too nervous to take it. It's better to go to a psychiatrist to check it out. It's actually useless. I know what the psychological examination is. It's useless at all. .that kind of thing doesn't fool me anymore, I know it all too well. I've been through it and I'm immune to it. Setting fire to the apartment didn't make a difference, it just made me move a little bit now Trevor yells and hops. Fish, I've got a freshman psychology textbook from somewhere and looked up my condition. They think I'm crazy," he throws his cigarette butt on the floor , put out with your foot. "I think they're crazy," he added. "Maybe," I said cautiously, "you'd better move out." He smiled with his mouth crooked. "Where should I move? I can't move without money. Besides, they took care of me, that's all." His body arched more and more, his neck retracted into his shoulders. I looked over from the side, and saw his thin face, with high cheekbones and sunken dark eye circles. I thought to myself, what he said just now, that free confession, I am afraid I would not be able to do it. I thought it was reckless, like a raw egg trying to break its shell: there was a danger that the yolk and white would run around and make a mess.He lit another cigarette and stuffed it in his mouth, it seemed that he felt no danger at all. In retrospect, I wonder how detached I was.The fidgeting feeling of the afternoon is gone, my mind is as calm as water, without a ripple, and I am in a dominant position in this white laundry room.I could easily wrap my arms around his wretched, huddled body, rock him gently, and comfort him.There was, however, something about him which, contrary to his boyish appearance, reminded one of a prematurely decrepit man, and that senile state of mind could not be consoled.I recalled the trick he played in the beer research, and I figured it might all be his invention.Naturally, it is possible that he is telling the truth, but it cannot be ruled out that he has planned to arouse my sympathy and comfort. My attention will cause him to secretly chuckle, and he can even shrink back into his sweatshirt and refuse others. touch and comfort. There must be some special feature in him that is described in science fiction, like a third eye or antennae.Although he didn't turn his head and couldn't see me, I still heard him say in a low voice coldly: "I can see that you appreciate my nervousness a little bit, and I know it's easy to arouse other people's sympathy. I'm disciplined, all women like flaws. I call out the Florence Nightingale instinct hidden in them. Be careful, though," and he turned to me , squinting at me slyly, "You've probably messed things up. Hunger is a more basic need than love. You know, Florence Nightingale was a cannibal." My calm state of mind was disturbed at once, and I just felt goose bumps all over my body.What can he blame me for?Could it be that the thoughts in my heart have been seen by him? I could think of no words to answer him. The humming dryer stopped. I stood up and thanked him solemnly: "Thank you for the soap powder." He stood up too, seemingly returning to his indifference to me. "It's okay," he replied. We stood side by side, pulling clothes out of the dryer and stuffing them into bags, neither of us talking. After packing up, he picked up the bag and walked towards the door together. I walked a little ahead, and when I reached the door, I stopped for a while, but he didn't intend to open the door for me, so I opened the door myself. We turned around at the same time as we got out of the laundry room, and we almost bumped into each other.We stood facing each other, not knowing what to do for a while, and then both of us opened our mouths to speak at the same time, but stopped immediately.Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, we both threw our bags on the pavement, took a step forward, hugged and kissed, whether I kissed him or he kissed me, I don't know, until now I also do not understand.There was a smell of smoke in his mouth, other than the smell of smoke, I only felt that he was dry and thin, as if the body in my arms and the face against my cheek were not flesh and blood, It was just a layer of toilet paper or parchment over a wire hanger, and I don't remember any passion at all. We stopped again almost at the same time, took a step back from each other, and looked at each other for a short while.Then he picked up the clothes bag, carried it on his shoulder, turned and walked in a different direction.It's funny, it's like a birthday present I got a year ago, it was a toy with magnets on the bottom, two plastic puppies slammed together to make out, and then slammed back Far. I can't remember what happened on the way home, I just remember staring at an advertisement on the bus for a long time, which showed a nurse in a white cap and white coat.She has a healthy and capable face and smiles at you with a bottle in her hand. The words on the advertisement are: "Give the gift of life."