Chapter 30 29

29 They were sitting in a seedy coffee shop around the corner from the hotel.Duncan was counting the money to see how much he had left to pay for breakfast.Marianne unbuttoned her coat, but kept her hands firmly on her neck.She didn't want anyone to see her red dress, because it was obviously part of last night's party, and Embry's earrings, which she kept in her pocket. They were seated at a green tree-paper-covered table, which was in disarray, with dirty glasses and saucers, crumbs, spilled drinks, and smears of cream left by previous passengers. something down.Those men were courageous. When they came to breakfast early in the morning, the table was clean and unused.Happy travelers always leave a pile of this garbage when they leave, knowing that the place will never be visited again.Marianne looked at the mess with disgust, but she was going to try to be as casual as possible about breakfast, she didn't want to make a fool of her stomach.She thought, I'll just have coffee and toast, or maybe some jam, and it'll be all right.

A disheveled waitress came over to clear the tables and dropped a battered menu in front of them each.Marianne opened her share and found the "Breakfast" section. Everything about last night seemed to be resolved, and even the face of Peter, whom she imagined chasing her with open eyes, was blurred with daylight.There was nothing pleasing about it, it just made her see things clearly, but all was buried under the heavy drowsiness of the night.When she woke up, she only heard the sound of water flowing in the water pipe, and someone was talking loudly in the corridor, but she couldn't remember where she was.

She lay still, trying to concentrate her thoughts, to figure out what was going on; she stared at the water-stained ceiling, but it was no use.Then Duncan's head popped out from under the pillow, and at night he slept with the pillow over his head for safety.He stared at her blankly for a while, as if he didn't recognize her at all, and he couldn't figure out why he came to this room.Then he said, "Let's get up." She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, but he just licked them when she sat up straight again, as if she reminded him that it was time to eat.He said, "I'm hungry, let's go to breakfast. You look awful," he added.

"You're not pretty in your own way," she replied.He had dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was disheveled like a crow's nest.They got up from the bed; she looked at a yellow mirror hanging precariously in the bathroom, and saw that she was pale and haggard, and her skin was strangely dry. bad. She didn't want to wear those clothes again, but there was no way.They dressed in silence; the room was small, and it was awkward for two people to be crowded together.In the dim light of the morning the room looked even more dilapidated.They sneaked down the stairs. She looked across the table at him to see him arched again, huddled in his coat.He lit another cigarette and was now watching the smoke rising.Those eyes were not looking at her, they seemed very far away.To her, his starved body seemed nothing more than rocks in the dark, ribbed and unspeakably thin, like a washboard.But the memory of it all fades quickly, as fleetingly as other impressions of softness.No matter what decision she made, she has forgotten it now, and now she even doubts whether she has made any decision.It could be an illusion, like the blue light shining on them.Still, she thought, something in his life was finally done, and she felt tiredly that she had something; it was a small consolation; but for her it was not over, inconclusive.

Peter was still there, he hadn't disappeared, he was as real as the crumbs on the table, and she had to do something about it.She had to go home, the morning train was late, she could take the afternoon train, and before that she had to talk to Peter and explain.Or don't explain it at all.There is no real reason to explain, because explanation involves cause and effect, and this event is neither cause nor effect.It came out of nowhere, it didn't know where it was going, it was outside the chain of cause and effect.Suddenly she remembered that she hadn't packed her bags yet. She looks at the menu. "Bacon and eggs, tender and casual," she read. "Our shop has refined fresh and tender sausages."

She thought of pigs and chickens.She turned quickly to look at the "Toast" column.She felt something move in her throat and closed the menu. "What do you want?" Duncan asked. "Nothing, I can't eat anything," she said. "I can't eat anything. Not even louzi juice." It finally came to this point.Her body refused to accept anything, the circle became smaller and smaller, and finally shrunk to a small dot, and all food was excluded... She looked at the oil stains on the menu cover, felt more and more pitiful, and almost whimpered stand up. "Really? Well," said Duncan at once, "then the money can be spent on me alone."

When the waitress came again, he ordered a ham and eggs.As soon as the food was served on the table, he ate voraciously in front of her, without greeting her or saying a word.She watched him distressedly as he pricked the egg with a fork, and the yolk ran all over the plate, and she turned her head away.She felt like throwing up. "Well," he said as they went out into the street after paying the bill, "thank you for all of this. I've got to go home and have term papers to write." Marianne thought of the cold bus, smelling of gasoline and stale cigarettes, and of the dishes in the kitchen sink.Taking a bus is not a big problem, as long as the car drives along the road and the tires screech, there will be more and more people inside, and it will gradually get warmer.But what about the lifestyle that hides among those dirty dishes and dirty glasses?It's so offensive.She can't go back.

"Duncan," she said, "please don't go." "What? Is there anything else?" "I can't go back." He frowned at her. "What do you expect of me?" he asked. "You shouldn't expect me to do anything. I want to shrink back into my shell. For now, my so-called truth is enough." "You don't need to do anything, can you just..." "No," he said, "I don't want to do anything. You're not my go-to anymore, you're so real. You've got a problem and you want someone to talk to. It's going to make me worry about you or something, I don't have time for that."

She looked down at their feet on the snow-smudged sidewalk. "I really can't go back." He watched her with increasing attention. "Are you going to puke?" he asked. "Don't do that." She stood in front of him without saying a word.She had no reason to ask him to accompany her.There is no reason, what's the use of going on like this? "Okay," he said after a moment of hesitation, "but it can't be too long, okay?" She nodded gratefully. They headed north. "You know we can't go to my place," he said. "They're going to make a fuss."

"I know." "Where are you going, then?" he asked. She didn't think about it.There is no good way at all.She covered her ears with her hands. "I don't know either," her voice became louder and hysterical, "I don't know, maybe it's better to go back..." "Well, what's the matter with you," he said gently, "don't be like this. Let's go for a walk." He pulled her hands off her ears.All right," she said along his lines. They walked forward hand in hand, Duncan held her hand and kept shaking it back and forth.He had been sullen at breakfast, and now seemed inexplicably cheerful.They walked up the slope, getting farther and farther away from the lakeside.The sidewalks were full of women in fur coats who went shopping on Saturdays. They were frowning and staring at each other with a clear goal. They trudged through the slush like icebreakers, hands Holding a shopping bag helps maintain your balance.Marianne and Duncan avoided them as best they could, and parted their hands when they came rushing straight at them.Cars passed by on the street emitting smoke, splashing little bits of muddy water.Sheets of soot fell from the gray sky, thick and wet like snowflakes.

"I need some fresh air," said Duncan, after walking in silence for twenty minutes. "It's like a fishbowl full of dying ants. Let's take a subway ride, can you?" She nodded.The further she went, the better, she thought. They descended the nearest pale-blue-tiled corridor; the subway smelled of wet sweaters and mothballs.After a while, they took the elevator to the ground again. "Let's take the streetcar," Duncan said.It seemed that he knew exactly where he was going, and Marianne could not have wished for that.He leads the way.Everything is up to him. There were no seats on the tram, so they had to stand.Marianne held the metal pole with one hand and bent down to look out the window.The man standing next to her wore a knitted green and orange wool hat with a large gold glitter studded like a teapot cover, and over the top she saw passing by the car window an unfamiliar scene, at first a store , followed by houses, then a bridge, and after that several houses.She didn't know which part of the city it was in. Duncan reached out and took hold of the rope above her head.The tram came to a halt, and they squeezed to the rear door and jumped out. "Got to walk now," Duncan said.He turned onto a side road.The houses here are a little smaller and newer than in Marianne's area, but they still look dark and tall.Many of the houses had wooden porches with square columns in front, the paint was gray or white and yellow.The snow on the grass is relatively clean.As they passed, an old man was shoveling snow along the path with a shovel.There was silence, and the clicking of the shovel sounded strangely loud.There are surprisingly many cats here.Marianne thought that when the snow melted in the spring, the street would smell very bad: the snow would show through the mud; They dig holes everywhere to excrete, thinking that they are clean and hidden, and it will be bad once the snow melts.At that time, the old people had to come out of the gray gate with a shovel, creaking on the grass, and burying the dirt.Spring cleaning, which also comes with a sense of purpose. They walked across the street and down a steep ramp.Suddenly Duncan broke into a gallop, dragging Marian like a sled. "Don't run!" she cried, so loudly that she surprised herself. "I can't run!" She felt the drapes in all the windows shake uncomfortably as they passed, and it seemed that every house had a stern look on it. "No!" Duncan yelled over his shoulder at her.- We are on the run!hurry up! " A seam in her armpit was torn.She seemed to see the red dress on her body burst in the air, and pieces fell behind her like feathers.them.Jing ran down the sidewalk and slid unsteadily toward a fence in the middle of the road. On the fence was a yellow and black checkered sign that said "DANGER".She was worried that they would go through the wooden fence and flip over some invisible edge in the back in a kind of slow motion, like a car flipping off a cliff in a movie, but Duncan swerved around the end of the fence at the last minute , they came to a cinder-paved path with high steep slopes on both sides.Soon there was a pedestrian bridge at the foot of the mountain. Duncan stopped, and Marianne slipped and hit him. Her lungs hurt like hell, and she just felt dizzy from shortness of breath.They were leaning against the low concrete wall on one side of the pedestrian bridge, Marianne resting her arms on the top of the wall, panting.She looked out, and at the level of her eyes were all the tops of the trees, the tips of the tangled branches had turned pale red and yellow, and the branches were covered with leaf buds. "We're not there yet," Duncan said.He pulled her arm and said, "Let's go down." He led her to the end of the bridge. On one side of the bridge, there was a path made by people, and the muddy road was full of footprints.They climbed down carefully, walking sideways step by step, like children learning to walk stairs.The water from the melting ice under the pedestrian bridge dripped on them. When they came to the level ground below, Marianne asked, "Are you there?" "Not yet," Duncan said.He left the bridge again and walked forward.Marianne just wished she could find a place to sit. They came to the ravine that divided the city into several parts, but in which ravine she did not know.Looking out of her living room window, she could also see a deep ditch near which she had gone for walks, but this one she did not recognize at all.The ditch was narrow and deep, surrounded by trees that seemed to hold the snow off the steep slope.There were children playing by the edge of the ditch in the distance, and Marianne could see their bright red and blue clothes, and faintly heard their laughter. They walked one after the other along a trail on the frozen snow.This road has been walked, but not many people go.Now and then she noticed tracks which she thought were horses' hooves.As for Duncan, all she could see was his arched back and his feet moving constantly on the snow. She wished he had turned so she could see his face; seeing only his expressionless back now made her a little uneasy. "We'll be sitting down right away," he seemed to answer her. She didn't see anywhere to sit.They now crossed a field of tall weeds, dry grass stalks brushing against them.Among these grasses are stickweed, Dipsacus, Achyranthes, and a shriveled, unknown gray plant.There are clusters of brown thorns growing on Achyranthes knuckles, and the continuous thorns have turned silvery white under the sun and rain.In addition, the ground is just a large piece of grass stalks and branches, which looks very monotonous.Going forward, there are ditch walls on both sides. There are houses on the top of the ditch. A row of houses is built on the edge of the ditch. Due to the erosion of wind and rain, traces of peeling can be seen everywhere on the ditch wall.The creek disappeared under the ground. Marianne turned and looked back.The ravine turned a bend; she passed without noticing it; and before them another bridge appeared, this one larger.They went on. "I like coming here in winter," said Duncan after a while. "I've only been here in the summer before. It's full of trees and weeds, with thick leaves everywhere, you can't see the road three feet away, and some vines are poisonous.And there are many people.Drunk old men sleep under the bridge, and children come to play here.There is a horse racing training ground nearby. The road we are walking now is probably the horse track.I used to come here because it was cooler.But it's even better when it snows.Cover up all that trash.Well, now some people are filling it with trash, first from the side of the creek, I don't understand how they like to throw things around, old tires, cans... destroying the scenery..." She couldn't see From his mouth, these words seemed to come from the air; his voice was very hurried and buzzing so that people could not hear clearly, as if the sound had been absorbed by the snow. They came to a more spacious place, where the grass was sparser.Duncan left the path and walked on through the frozen snow, with Marianne following him.They climbed up a small hill with one deep foot and one shallow foot. "Here we are," said Duncan, stopping, turning, and reaching out to pull her up. Marianne gasped heavily, and took a step back subconsciously: they were standing on the edge of a cliff. The road ahead suddenly stopped.At their feet was a huge approximately circular pit. On the side of the round pit was a circle of roads, leading to the bottom of the pit in a spiral shape. The bottom of the pit was a large snow-covered flat land.Directly opposite them, across the crater, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was a row of black shed-like buildings.Seems to have been closed long ago and unoccupied. "What's that?" she asked. "Just a brick factory," Duncan replied. "There is clay soil underneath, and the workers drove the steam excavator down this road to dig the soil up." "It's the first time I've heard of such a thing in a ditch," she said.There seems to be something wrong with such a deep pit in the city. People always think that these ditches are the deepest places in the city.It made her wonder if the white expanse at the bottom of the pit was solid earth at all; it looked like a thin layer of ice, and the bottom was probably empty, and it wasn't very safe if you walked on it. , is likely to sink into it. "Hey, there are a lot of good things hidden in the ditch. There's a prison nearby." Duncan sat on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling carelessly, and he took out another cigarette casually.She sat down next to him after a while, though she was still a little concerned that the soil beneath them wasn't firm enough.This kind of thing can easily collapse.They both looked at the great hole dug out of the ground. "I don't know what time it is," said Marianne.Listen carefully as she speaks: her voice is quickly lost in this open field. Duncan didn't answer.He smoked his cigarette without saying a word, then got up, walked a few steps along the edge of the pit, and lay down in the snow on a flat grassless field.He spread his hands and feet and looked up at the sky, looking very calm.Marianne went and lay down too. "You'll catch a cold," he said, "but lie down if you like." She was lying an arm's length away from him.It seems inappropriate to get too close here.The sky overhead was a light gray, and although the sun was hidden by clouds, it was still illuminated by diffuse light. In the silence Duncan said, "Then why can't you go back? I mean, aren't you going to get married and have a family? I thought you were pretty capable." "I'm going to get married," she said bitterly. "But it's different now, I don't know," she said, not wanting to talk about it. "Others will say it's naturally what's on your mind." "I know that," she said impatiently; she's not an idiot. "But how can I get rid of it?" " "It should be said that you are asking me this question," said Duncan's voice, "from the wrong person. People say I live in a fantasy world. But at least my fantasies are in some ways all my own. Things, I choose, and I like them sometimes. But you don't seem to like the choices you make." "Maybe I should see a therapist," she said sullenly. "Oh, don't go, don't go to them. They're just trying to condition you." "But I just need to make some adjustments. It's not bad at all. It's not a problem to be emotionally unstable all the time." She also thought that it would be impossible to starve to death without eating anything.She realized that all she really needed was basic security.For months she thought she was headed in that direction, but in reality she wasn't making any progress. She can't do anything.For now, the only solid catch is Duncan, and that's all she actually has. She suddenly wanted to be sure that he was still with her, that he would disappear without a trace or sink beneath the white ground.She needs confirmation. "How did you feel last night?" she asked.He never said a word about it. "What do you think? Oh, you mean that." He was silent for a few minutes.She waited earnestly for his answer, as if she was waiting for some divine revelation.But when he finally opened his mouth, what he said was, "I like this place, especially in winter, when it's so close to absolute zero. It makes me feel more human. I don't like it by comparison. Tropical islands, where there's so much meat, I'm always wondering if I'm a walking vegetable or a giant amphibian. But the closest you'll get to having nothing is on the snow. " Marianne was confused by him, what did that have to do with her problem? "You want me to say that's something I'll never forget, don't you?" he asked. "It got me out of my shell, made me a real man, and solved all my problems, didn't it?" "Ok……" "You sure hope so, and I've seen that you do. I like other people to join in my fantasy life, and to a certain extent, I'm generally happy to join theirs too. .That was good, as usual." It was so easy to understand the meaning of these words that it took no effort at all.So she wasn't the first. She had imagined herself in the role of a nurse in starched smock as a last consolation, and now she was completely broken; she felt that she had hardly any energy for anger.Then she was completely fooled by him.She should have thought of that.She stared at the vast sky, thinking about all this, but after a few minutes, she felt that it didn't matter much.It is very likely that what he said was the same as many things he said before, and it was also made up to coax her. She sat up and brushed the snow off her sleeves.Time to take some action. "Well, you can just joke around," she said.She didn't want him to know if she believed him. "Now I have to decide what to do next." He grinned at her. "Don't ask me, this is your business. But it seems that you should take some measures: looking for trouble in a vacuum is eventually tiresome. You walked into this dead end yourself, you Created it, you have to figure out your own way out." He stood up. Marianne also stood up.Originally, her mind had calmed down, but now she felt a wave of despair attacking her again. It slowly penetrates into your body like after taking some kind of drug. "Duncan," she said, "won't you go back with me and talk to Peter? I don't think I can talk, I don't know what to say, he won't understand..." "Oh, no," he said, "you can't do that. It's none of my business. It would be disastrous, can't you see? I mean me." He folded his arms He hugged his chest and grabbed his elbow. "Please," she said.She knew he would say no. "No," he said, "that won't work." He turned and looked down at the marks their bodies had made in the snow.Then he stepped on it, first his own and then the one she had left, stirring up the snow with his feet. "Come here," he said, "and I'll show you the way back." He led her a little further on, until she came to a road that went up and then turned back down.Below is a wide highway, the road winds upwards, and there is another bridge in the distance, on which subway vehicles are driving.She recognized the bridge, and now she knew where she was. "Can't you walk over there with me?" she asked. "No. I will stay here for a while. But you have to go." His voice was cold and there was no room for negotiation.He turned and left. Cars passed by quickly.She trudged up the hill in the direction of the bridge, glancing back halfway.She almost expected him to turn into steam and disappear into the white gully, but he was still there, his black figure reflected on the white snow, squatting on the edge of the pit, looking at nothing. The deep pit is in a daze.