Chapter 17 16

16 Although she couldn't remember the street name and house number where he lived, she had no problem finding her way around.She hadn't been in the area for a long time, really, not since that day's visit.Her feet turned the corner almost automatically and walked in that direction, as if instinctively following someone's trail.This instinct has nothing to do with sight and smell, it's just a vague sense of direction.Besides, the road is not complicated, just cross the basketball court, climb up the slope of the asphalt road, and walk a block or two.However, since there were only some semi-bright street lights along the way today, unlike the scorching sun last time, she felt that the road seemed a little longer.She walked quickly because her legs were already cold, and the grass on the basketball court was covered with hoarfrost.

She also thought about the apartment a few times when there was nothing but a blank sheet of paper in front of her at work, or when she was bending over to pick up something that had fallen on the floor, but she never felt that it was special in the city. place.What came to her eyes was only the scenes of the rooms inside the apartment, as for the building itself, she didn't have much impression.This square, ordinary building has no distinctive features, and it took some effort to find it on the street at the moment. She rang the doorbell for number six, and as soon as the automatic door lock buzzed, she pushed open the glass door and walked in.

Duncan had opened the door a crack.He looked at her hesitantly, his hair falling over his eyes, which glistened in the half-light.He had a cigarette butt in his mouth that was almost burning his lips. "Bring something?" he asked. Without saying a word, she just handed him a small cloth bag under her arm, and he leaned back to let her in. "Not much," he said, pulling out the clothes.In total, there are two cotton shirts that have just been laundered, a pillow case, and some towels embroidered with flowers for the guests. These are gifts from an aunt, because they are always placed at the bottom of the bed sheet in the closet. So it was crumpled.

"I'm sorry," she said, "that's all I have." "Hey, it's better than nothing," he said grudgingly, before turning and walking toward his bedroom. Marianne wondered whether she should go in with him, or whether she should go back now that she had brought the clothes. "Can I see it?" she asked, hoping not to see this as an invasion of his privacy.She didn't want to go back to her residence immediately.There was nothing to do when she went back, not to mention that she had canceled her appointment with Peter. "As long as you want, of course you can, but there is nothing to see."

She walked into the doorway.The hall was exactly the same as the last time she came. If there was any difference, there were more papers scattered on the floor.The three sofas were still in their usual places, with one board leaning against the arm of the plush red sofa, and only one light was on next to the blue sofa, and Marianne supposed that the other two were not at home. Duncan's room was pretty much the same as it had been the last time she had been here.The ironing board is placed in the middle of the room, the chess pieces are arranged in two rows, and the black and white grid chessboard is placed on a pile of books at the moment.On the bed were some freshly ironed white shirts on hangers.Duncan hung up the shirt in the closet and plugged the iron in casually.Marianne took off her coat and sat down on the bed.

There were a few ashtrays full of cigarette butts on the floor, and he threw them into one of them and waited for the iron to heat up; The shirt came, and at the collar he moved the iron slowly, with great concentration.Marianne watched in silence, obviously not wishing to be disturbed.Seeing others ironing her clothes made her feel a little strange. Ainsley had given her a special look when she came out of the bedroom earlier, putting on her coat and carrying a small bag of clothes. "Where do you take these things?" she asked, too little to be worth a trip to the laundry room. "Oh, just go out for a while."

"What would I say if Peter called?" "He won't call. If he does, tell me I'm out." She hurried down the stairs as she spoke, not wanting to tell her about Duncan, not even mentioning his name.She worried that it would upset the balance of power. But Ainsley doesn't have time to meddle in her own business right now, she's just asking casually out of curiosity, she's elated at the possibility of a big win for her plan, and there's another thing she calls "" What a fluke." When Marian came home, she found Emberly reading a paperback book on baby care in the hall and asked, "Hey, how did you get the poor guy out so early this morning?"

Ainsley smiled. "It's unbelievable luck," she said. "I thought that the old man would hide under the stairs and intercept us. I was so worried that I couldn't do anything. I was going to make up a couple of lies to fool me. Like he's here to fix the phone or something..." "She was trying to get me out last night," put in Marianne. "She's perfectly aware that there's a man upstairs." "Well, she did go out for some reason. I stood at the window in the hall and watched her go. It was really luck, didn't you think? I never thought she would go out, and she went out early in the morning. Of course I didn't go to work today. I was walking around smoking a cigarette at that time. As soon as I saw her go out, I immediately pulled Lun out of the bed, put the clothes on him, and pushed him downstairs and went out. He was still in a daze Dazed. He drank so much, he was so drunk that he almost finished the bottle, all by himself. I don't think he knows what's going on. Yeah." She grinned with red lips.

"Ainsley, you are so guilty." "What's the matter? He looks very happy. But when we went out to breakfast today, he was very anxious, and kept apologizing, and then kept saying something reassuring, as if to comfort me or something, It made me a little embarrassed. Later, when his drink slowly faded and he became more and more sober, he wanted to run away from me immediately. Now," she said with her hands on her chest, "it's worth it. Not worth it, we'll have to wait and see." "Well, well," said Marianne, "could you please make my bed?"

Looking back now, she thought it was a bad omen for the landlady to go out.It was not at all her usual style, and it would have been all right if she had been hiding behind a piano or a velvet curtain, waiting for them to run down the stairs and pop out when they thought they were about to step safely through the gate. He was ironing his second shirt, and he seemed to forget everything around him, concentrating on the crumpled white shirt lying on the ironing board, carefully studying it, as if it were an extremely fragile ancient manuscript, He was racking his brains to decipher it.At first she always thought he was short, maybe because of his boyish face, or because he mostly sat when she saw him, but now she felt that if he hadn't shrunk his head and hunched his shoulders like that , he is actually quite tall.

She sat watching him, feeling an urge to talk to him.She wanted to break his obsession with the clothes he was ironing, break into his inner world, and she didn't want to be an irrelevant bystander.To calm herself down, she picked up her bag and went into the bathroom to comb her hair.It's not that her hair is messed up, it's just vicarious behavior, according to Ainsley.When the squirrel sees the bread crust, it feels that it is in danger and dare not go forward, or if it can't get it at all, it will scratch itself, which is also a substitute behavior.She wanted to talk to him, but feared that if she spoke to him now, it might negate the healing effect of the ironing. The bathroom is so-so, with balls of wet towels on the towel rack, and some shaving utensils and male cosmetics on the edge of the ceramic sanitary ware and the water tank.The mirror above the washbasin was broken, and only some broken glass remained on the edge of the wooden frame.She tried to take a picture on a broken glass, but the glass was too small to use. He was ironing the pillowcases when she got back into the room, looking much more relaxed.When he was ironing the shirts just now, he had to find the right place and do it slowly, but now he just pushed the iron straight and straight.He looked up at her as she entered the room. "You must be wondering why the mirror is broken like this?" he asked. "Ok……" "I broke it. Last week I broke it with a frying pan." "Oh," she said. "I was always afraid that one day I would walk into the bathroom and not see myself in the mirror, and I was so sick of it. So I went to the kitchen and grabbed the wok and slammed it on it, and they both freaked out," He said thoughtfully, "Trevor in particular was annoyed. He was frying an egg. I must have ruined that egg. It was full of glass shards. But I really don't understand them." Why not happy, everyone totally understands, it's just a token gesture of self-pity, and it's not a good mirror. But they've always been neurotic since then. Especially Trevor, who subconsciously thinks he's My mother, it's a little hard for him. I don't care, I'm used to it, I've been running away from the substitute mothers as many times as I can remember. I'm always followed by a bunch of characters trying to catch me, save me (God knows what), give me warmth, comfort and nourishment, make me quit smoking, and that's what happens when you're an orphan Kind of thing. They also quoted classics to enlighten me. Recently Trevor always quoted TS.Eliot's poems, Fish looked for sentences from (Oxford Dictionary)." "So how do you shave?" asked Marianne, who couldn't imagine coping without a mirror in the bathroom. Maybe he didn't shave at all, she thought as she talked.She never looked to see if he had a beard on his face. "what?" "I mean if there wasn't a mirror." "Oh," he said, grinning, "I have a mirror of my own. I can trust the mirror. I know the image in it. I just don't like public mirrors." He didn't seem interested in the subject anymore. , and ironed in silence for a while. "These things are ugly," he said again at last, this time ironing guest towels. "I'd hate to have flowers embroidered on them." "I understand, we never use these towels." He folded the towel and looked up at her wistfully. "You seem to be convinced of all this." "Um... all that stuff?" she asked cautiously. "About why I broke the mirror, and what I looked like in the mirror. I actually broke it because I wanted to smash something. The trouble is, people always believe what I say. I couldn't resist the temptation. As for the deep analysis of Trevor, I don't know if it is true or not. Maybe the truth of the matter is that I just imagined that he wanted to make himself See it as my mother. I'm not an orphan, I'm a man with parents, and they're all at home. Can you believe it?" "Should I believe it?" She didn't know if he meant what he said, and she couldn't tell from his expression.Perhaps this is again used to confuse people.If she answered wrongly and fell for his tricks, she would be bewildered and immediately plunged into an extremely embarrassing situation. "It's up to you. But the truth is, of course," he waved his hand away to reinforce his tone, while watching the movement of his hand, "I was not born to my parents. I was abandoned when I was a child." Bao, although my parents were suspicious, they never knew the truth." He closed his eyes and smiled faintly. "They always say my ears are too big, but I'm not human at all, I came down from the ground..." He opened his eyes and started ironing again, but his attention was no longer on the ironing board on.His iron accidentally touched his other hand, and he screamed in pain. "Damn it," he said.He put down the iron and stuffed his fingers into his mouth. Marianne had an impulse to go over and see if he was burned, and tell him to apply some cream or baking soda to relieve the pain, but she thought about it instead, and she sat without moving or making a sound. He looked at her now expectantly, but with a hint of hostility in his face. "Don't you want to comfort me a little?" he asked. "The way I see it," she said, "is that you don't really need reassurance." "Yeah, but I'd love a word or two of reassurance," he said sullenly. "It's a real pain." He picked up the iron again. After ironing the last towel, he folded it, unplugged it, and said, "It's been a while, thanks to the clothes, but it's not enough. I need to think of something else to do, so I can relax. You know, my habit of ironing and embroidering clothes is not very big, it is not an addiction, and there is no need to quit this habit, so I often iron some for fun." He walked over and carefully looked at her He sat down beside him and lit a cigarette. "This time it started the morning before yesterday. I dropped my term paper into a pool of water in the kitchen and got wet, so I had to take it up and iron it to dry. The paper has been typed, and I'm asked to redo the wobbly things. I can't bear to type it again, then I will start the stove again. The ironing effect is not bad, the words have not melted, but it can still be seen that it has been ironed, because there are places on one sheet. It’s burnt. But it’s not easy for the supervisor to refuse to accept it. If you say that your paper has been ironed, we won’t accept it. Wouldn’t it be a big joke in the world. So I handed it in, and I got excited after that , just ironed everything that was clean in the house, and then I went to the laundry room to do some dirty laundry, which is why I was sitting in the cinema watching that crappy movie, and I was waiting for the clothes, because Tired of watching the clothes spin in the washer all the time. It's not a good sign. If I'm bored of the laundry room, what do I do when I'm bored of other things? Then I put the laundry Iron it all out, and then you can't find anything to iron anymore." "And then you called me," Marianne said.She was a little annoyed that he kept talking to himself, always about himself, and seemed unaware that she was sitting next to him. "Oh, by the way, it's you. I'm calling you. At least I'm calling your company. I remember the name. The lady I want to answer is the switchboard lady. Whoever she is, I'll take your I said that you are not the same as the usual investigators, and they guessed it was you. You didn't tell me your name." Marianne didn't realize that she had forgotten to tell him her name, she thought he must have known it already. Her interruption just now seemed to make him not know what to say. He looked down at the floor and sucked on the cigarette butt in his mouth. She found it difficult to stay so silent. "Why do you like ironing and embroidering so much?" she asked. "I mean, what's the reason other than to relax yourself? Why do you have to iron? Like, you could just go play Bowling or something." He shrank his thin legs on the bed, and wrapped his arms around his knees. "Ironing is fun and easy," he said, "and I'm stuck in vocabulary for endless papers. By the way, I'm working on another paper right now, on 'Trollo Pu's sadomasochistic mode'. Ironing, oh, you smooth out the crumpled things. God behold, it's not because I love tidiness, but the flat surface is really pleasant... . . . " He shifted his position, now looking at her. "Why don't you give me a little iron on this shirt while it's still hot?" he said, "just a couple of irons on the collar and cuffs, it looks like you haven't done it in a few places. " "You mean the shirt I'm wearing?" "Yeah, let's talk about it," he said.He dropped his arms from his knees and stood up. "Oh, you can wear my dressing gown, don't worry, I won't peek." He took out a bunch of gray clothes from the cabinet and handed it to her, then turned around by himself. Marianne took the ball of gray dressing gown and stood there, lost for a moment.She knew it would make her feel uneasy and stupid to do what he said; but to say to him at this moment, "Thank you, I don't think so," would only make her feel more stupid, because he The suggestion was clearly harmless.After a while, she unconsciously undid the buttons, and put the dressing gown on her body. The dress was too big, the sleeves covered the hands, and the hem dragged to the ground. "Oh, take it," she said. She watched him fiddling with the iron in his hand, feeling a little uneasy.This time the action seems to be even more crucial, it is like a dangerous hand moving slowly close to your body, this dress was still on her body just now.But she thought it wouldn't matter if he ironed a hole in it, I've got other clothes to wear. "Okay," he said, "it's all ironed." He unplugged the plug again and hung the shirt on the narrow end of the ironing board.He seemed to have forgotten that she still had to wear it.Then, to her surprise, he went to the bed and climbed up beside her, lying on his back with his eyes closed, his arms under his head. "My God," he said, "how do you manage to keep up with so many distractions? It's like a term paper, you write all that stuff and it's useless, you just Get a score and throw it in the trash. You know full well that next year someone will come back and do the same thing all over again. It's like a mill, exactly like ironing things out, You iron your clothes, wear them for a day or two and they're wrinkled again." "Then you can iron again, can't you?" said Marianne in a soothing tone. "If the clothes don't wrinkle, you won't have a thing to do?" "Maybe I'll have to find something interesting to do for a change," he said, his eyes still closed, "from production to consumption; you wonder, maybe it can't be seen as just a form of The problem of turning your garbage into another form of garbage. The human mind is the least commercializable, but they have made great progress in this area. The stacks of old books in the library and those old car dumps What's the difference between the two? But what annoys me is that this stuff is inconclusive and you can never finish it. I have a great plan to keep the leaves growing on the tree forever, and every year Replacing new leaves is such a waste. Speaking of which, I also don't think there's any reason for the leaves to be green at all, I'm going to make the leaves white, and the black trunk goes with the leaves. The snow hasn't fallen yet, and I can't wait , there are too many green trees in this city in summer, it is too many to breathe, and the leaves fall again in autumn, making the roadsides full of fallen leaves. My hometown is a mining area, although there is no scenery, but at least there is no Trees, that's what I like, a lot of people don't. It's all made by those smelters, with tall chimneys that go straight into the sky, and the smoke that comes out at night is all fiery red, and the chemical fumes turn the smelters for miles around. The trees are all suffocated, and there is a desolation everywhere, only bare rocks, no grass grows, and there is a pile of slag, and the water accumulated on the stones has also turned yellowish brown due to chemicals. Nothing will live, and this time of year I used to go out of town and sit on rocks, waiting for the snow to fall…. Marianne sat on the edge of the bed, leaning slightly towards his face, not listening to his monotonous voice.She gazed at the outline of his head under his paper-thin skin and wondered how someone as thin as he could still be so energetic.She didn't want to touch him now, his eye sockets were sunken, and with the opening and closing of his jawbones, the edges and corners in front of his ears kept moving, all of which even made her feel a little disgusted. He opened his eyes suddenly and stared at her for a moment, as if he couldn't remember who she was or how she came into his bedroom. "Hey," he finally said, his voice was completely different from before, "you are a bit like me in this respect." He reached out and grabbed the shoulder of the dressing gown, dragging her down.She let herself fall backwards. The sudden change in the hypnotic flatness of his voice, and the realization that he, too, had flesh and blood like any other, startled her at first.She subconsciously straightened up and shrank back, resisting, but his arms wrapped around her, and she didn't expect him to have such strength.She didn't know what would happen next, and secretly suspected in her heart that what he was touching was actually his own dressing gown, which was just happened to be on her body. She moved her face back and looked down at him, his eyes closed. She kissed the tip of his nose. "I want to tell you something," she said softly, "I'm engaged . At this moment she couldn't remember exactly what Peter looked like, but she felt a little guilty thinking of his name. His dark eyes opened, staring blankly at her. "Well, that's your problem," he said. "Like when I told you I got an A for my paper on Pre-Raphaelite pornography - interesting is interesting, but that's irrelevant. Right?" "Well, but don't say that," she said.The situation at hand immediately became a matter of conscience. "I'm getting married, you know, and I shouldn't be here." "But you're here," he smiled. "Actually, I'm glad you told me about it. It makes me feel a lot safer. Because, really," he said, "I don't want to What do you think all this means. It might be to others, but it's never to me," he kissed the tip of her nose, "you're just another stand-in for the laundry room." Marianne wasn't sure if she should feel emotionally offended, but instead she felt a little relieved that there was nothing unhappiness in her heart. "Well, I don't know what kind of stand-in you are," she said. "I'm pretty good at that. I'm mobile. I'm a do-it-yourself double." He reached over her head and turned off the light. Not long after, there was the sound of the door opening and then closing, followed by heavy footsteps. "Oh, I hate it," his voice came out of his dressing gown, "They're back." He pushed her up, turned on the light, quickly wrapped the dressing gown around her, and slipped off the bed down.He smoothed his hair from his forehead with both hands and straightened his jumper.He stood in the middle of the room, looked angrily at the bedroom aisle, then rushed to the other side of the room, grabbed the chess board and threw it on the bed, sat across from her, and quickly helped the fallen chess piece up. "Hi," he said calmly after a moment to the man who had entered the room, and Marianne was afraid to turn her head because she was disheveled. "We're playing chess." "Oh, good," said a voice dubiously. "Why all the fuss?" said Marianne, after the man had gone into the bathroom and closed the door. "There's no need to panic, you know, it's only natural. If there's anything wrong, it's only them to blame." You shouldn't break in like this." When she said this, she herself felt particularly guilty. "Oh, I told you," he said, looking intently at the neatly arranged pieces on the chessboard. "They think they're my parents. You know parents never understand stuff like that. They'll think you're teaching me to be bad and not let them know." He reaches across the board Holding her hand, his fingers were dry and cold.