Chapter 7 Garden of Forking Paths

For Victoria Ocampo On page 242 of Liddell Hart's "History of War in Europe", it is recorded that 13 British divisions (supported by 1,400 guns) attacked the Serre-Montauban line of defense. Scheduled to launch on July 24, 1916, it was later postponed to the morning of the 29th.Captain Liddell Hart explained that the reason for the delay was torrential rain, which of course was nothing out of the ordinary.The testimony of Dr. Yu Zhun, a former English teacher at Qingdao University, has been recorded, repeated, and verified by his signature, but it provides an unexpected explanation for this incident.The testimony record is missing the first two pages.

... I hang up the handset.I immediately recognized the voice answering the phone in German.It was the voice of Richard Madden.Madden was at Victor Runeberger's place, which meant that all our toil was in vain, our lives were at an end—but that was secondary, at least in my opinion.That is to say, Lunenberg has been arrested, or killed.Before sunset that day, I will meet the same fate.Madden was relentless.To be more precise, he must be ruthless.As an Irishman who obeys the orders of the United Kingdom, he is suspected of being inattentive and even treacherous. Now he has the opportunity to dig out two spies from the German Empire and arrest or kill them. How could he not seize this golden opportunity? I am very grateful Woolen cloth?I went upstairs to my room, locked the door ridiculously, and lay on my back on the small iron bed.Outside the window is the usual roof and the sun covered by clouds at six o'clock in the afternoon.It is hard to believe that this day, without premonition or warning, became my inevitable death day.Although my father has passed away, even though I spent my childhood in a symmetrical garden in Haifeng, do I have to die now?And then I thought, everything is coming to me now, before it's too late.It has been peaceful for so many years, but now something happened; there are tens of thousands of people in the sky, land and sea, and when something happened, it happened to me...Madden's unbearable Ma Sheng appeared in front of my eyes , Dispelled my cranky thoughts.I hated and was terrified (I'd tricked Richard Madden, and just waited until the gallows, and it was all right to admit that I was terrified), thinking that the self-satisfied warrior who made a mess of things must know that I had mastered secret.The name of the site where the British artillery was prepared to bombard Enclave.A bird flitted across the gray sky outside the window, and in my imagination I turned it into an airplane, and turned that airplane into many, dropping bombs with precision over the French sky, destroying the artillery.It would be nice if I could utter the name of the place before my mouth was smashed by a bullet, so that the German side could hear it... The sound that my flesh and blood can make is too weak.How can it reach the head's ears?The sickly obnoxious man who knew only that Runeberger and I were in Staffordshire, waiting for news of us in a closed office in Berlin, endlessly flipping through the papers... I gotta run, I yelled Say.I got up unnecessarily quietly, as if Madden was already spying on me.I couldn't help checking my pockets, maybe just to prove that I was helpless.What I found was what I expected.The American pocket watch, the nickel fob chain and the square coin, the chain with the key to the Lunenberger's house, now useless but constituting evidence, a notebook, a letter I read and decided to destroy immediately but did not letter, a false passport, a five-shilling piece, two shillings and a few pence, a red and blue pencil, a handkerchief, and a revolver with one cartridge.I picked up the gun ridiculously, weighed it in my hand, and emboldened myself.I vaguely thought that gunshots could travel far.Within ten minutes, my plan was well thought out.The telephone directory gave me the name of a man who alone could pass on the information for me: he lived in the suburbs of Fenton, less than half an hour by train.

I am a coward.I might as well say it now, because I have carried out a plan that no one would say was risky.I know the implementation process is scary.No, I'm not doing it for Germany.I don't care about a barbaric country that has corrupted me into a spy.Besides, I know an Englishman - a humble man - who is no less than Goethe to me.I talked to him for less than an hour, but in the middle of that hour he was like Goethe... I did it because I felt that the boss looked down on people of my race--looking down on the countless people who gathered in me. ancestors.I want to prove to him that a yellow man can save his army.Besides, I'm going to escape from the captain's grasp.He could knock on my door any minute and call my name.I dressed quietly, said goodbye to myself in the mirror, went downstairs, looked at the quiet street, and went out.The train station is not far from here, but I think it is better to take a carriage.The reason is to reduce the danger of being recognized; the fact is that in the deserted street, I feel particularly conspicuous and unsafe.I remember ordering the coachman to stop before the entrance of the station.I dawdled out of the car, which was Ashgrove village, but bought a ticket to get off a stop later.This train leaves at once: 8:50.I have to hurry, the next one leaves at 9:30.There was hardly anyone on the platform.I looked in several carriages: there were peasants, a woman in mourning, a young man absorbed in Tacilon's Chronicle, a soldier who seemed very happy.The train finally moved.A man I knew hurried up and chased him to the end of the platform, but he was a step too late.It was Captain Richard Madden.Dejected and apprehensive, I huddled in the corner of my seat, away from the dreaded window.I went from downcast to self-deprecating triumph.Thinking that my duel had already begun, even if I got ahead for forty minutes by luck and escaped the opponent's attack, I won the first round.I think this small victory foreshadows total success.I think the victory is not a small one, and I would have been imprisoned or beaten to death if it hadn't been for the precious advantage the train timetable gave me.I thought, not without sophistry, that my cowardly success proved that I could accomplish the enterprise of adventure.I drew from my cowardice the strength not to abandon me at critical moments.I foresee that men are more and more succumbed to dire deeds; before long the world will be full of warriors and brigands; and my advice to them is this: Those who do dire deeds should imagine that the deed has already been done, and that the future As in the past as irreversible.That's what I did, I saw myself as someone who was dead and watched the day, maybe the last, pass and night come.The train runs slowly among the (wood ash) trees on both sides.Stop in a place as desolate as a wilderness.No one reported the name of the station.Is it Ashgrove?I asked a few children on the platform.Ashgrove, they replied.I got out of the car.

A light illuminated the platform, but the faces of the children were in shadow.A kid asked me: Are you going to Dr. Stephen Albert's house?The other kid didn't wait for my answer, and said, "His house is far away from here, but if you take the road on the left and turn left at every intersection, you won't miss it."I gave them a coin (the last one I had), and went down a few stone steps into the lonely road.The road went downhill slowly.It is a dirt road, with trees on both sides, the branches meet in the sky, and the low and round moon seems to accompany me. For a while I thought that somehow Richard Madden had learned of my desperate plans.But I knew immediately that it was impossible.The kid told me to keep turning left, reminding me that that was the usual way to find the central courtyard of some mazes.I know something about mazes: I am worthy of being the great-grandson of Peng Kou, who is the governor of Yunnan. He resigned from his high position and rich salary, and he wants to write a novel with more characters than characters, and build a maze that no one can get out of.He spent thirteen years on these complicated tasks, but a foreigner assassinated him, his novels were like a book from the sky, and his labyrinth was not discovered.I contemplate that lost labyrinth under the trees in England: I imagine it untouched on a secret mountain, buried by rice fields or submerged in water, I imagine it vast, not just some octagonal pavilions and trances I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a labyrinth of labyrinths, a labyrinth of endless life, past and future, and in a sense even other planets.I was immersed in this illusory imagination, forgetting the situation where I was being hunted.For an unspecified period of time, I felt like I grasped the world in the abstract.The vagueness of the living fields, the moon, the evening hours, and the ease of the descent filled me with emotion.The evening seemed intimate and infinite.The road continued to incline, branching off in two branches in the blurry grass.A burst of pleasant music fluctuates with the wind, near or far, penetrating the leaves and distance.I thought to myself that a man can be the enemy of another, of a time, but not of a district, a firefly, a word, a garden, a stream, and a wind.Thinking so, I came to a large rusty iron gate.From the railing, you can see a forest avenue and a pavilion-like building.I suddenly understood two things, the first trivial, the second incredible; the music came from the gazebo, it was Chinese music.Because of this, I took it all in without really listening.I don't remember if there was a bell on the door or if I clapped the door.The music, like sparks flying, did not stop.

However, a lantern emerged from the deep house and gradually approached: a moon-white drum-shaped lantern, sometimes blocked by tree trunks.The one who carried the lantern was a tall man.I couldn't see his face clearly because of the glare.He opened the iron door and said to me in Chinese slowly: "It seems that Peng Xi is affectionate and doesn't let me be lonely. You must also want to visit the garden, right?" I recognized that he was referring to the name of one of our consuls, and I continued inexplicably: "garden?" "Garden of Forking Paths." My heart was pounding, and I said with incomprehensible affirmation:

"That's the garden of my great-grandfather Peng Kou." "Your great-grandfather? Your venerable great-grandfather? Come in, come in." The wet path is winding, just like I remember it from my childhood.We came to a study room with Eastern and Western books.I recognized several manuscript volumes, bound in yellow silk, from the never-printed "Yongle Dadian" compiled by edict of the third Ming emperor.The records on the gramophone were still spinning, and a bronze phoenix stood beside it.I remember a red porcelain vase, and a blue porcelain hundreds of years earlier, which our craftsmen imitated the work of Persian potters...

Stephen Albert looked at me with a smile.As I said earlier, he was tall and chiseled, with gray eyes and a gray beard.He had the look of a priest, a sailor; he later told me that he had been a missionary in Tianjin "before he wanted to be a sinologist." We took our seats; I on a low divan, his back to the window and a grandfather clock.I reckon Richard Madden, who is after me, won't be here in an hour.My irrevocable decision can wait. "Peng Kou's life was amazing," said Stephen Albert. "He became the governor of his home province, proficient in astronomy, astrology, classic interpretation, chess, and a famous poet and calligrapher: he abandoned all these to write books and build labyrinths. He abandoned the sought-after official status , a beautiful wife, a beautiful concubine, a grand banquet, and even abandoned his studies, and stayed in Mingxu Zhai for thirteen years. After his death, the heirs only found some messy manuscripts. As you may know, his family will burn the manuscripts but the executor—a Taoist priest or monk—insisted on publication."

"Peng Kou's descendants," I interjected, "are still blaming the Taoist priest. There is no reason to publish it. The book is a compilation of contradictory drafts. I read it once: the hero is in the third He died in the first round, but came back to life in the fourth round. As for Peng Kou's other work, the maze..." "That's the maze," he said, pointing to a tall lacquered cabinet. "A labyrinth carved in ivory!" I exclaimed. "A miniature maze..." "A labyrinth of symbols," he corrected me. "An invisible labyrinth of time. I, a British savage, was fortunate enough to realize the obvious mystery. After more than a hundred years, the details are hard to check, but it is not difficult to guess the situation at that time. Peng Kou once said: After I retire, I will write A novel. Another said: I will build a labyrinth after I retire. People think it is two things; no one thinks that books and labyrinths are one thing. Ming Xu Zhai is built in a garden that can be said to be quite intricate in the middle of his vast estate; this fact reminds one of a real labyrinth. Peng Kou is dead; in the middle of his vast estate no one has found the labyrinth. Two circumstances bring me to this problem straight away. One is about The strange legend that Peng Kou intends to build an absolutely boundless labyrinth. The second is a fragment of a letter I found."

Albert stood up.He opened the blackened golden cabinet and turned his back to me for a few seconds.When he turned around, he held a squared tissue paper in his hand, the original scarlet had faded to pink.Peng Kou's good handwriting is well-deserved.I look eagerly but incomprehensibly at what one of my ancestors wrote in petty lowercase: I bequeath the garden of forking paths to some posterity (not all of them).I silently returned the paper to Albert.He went on to say: "Before I found this letter, I asked myself: under what conditions can a book be infinite. I think there is only one condition, and that is that it goes round and round. The last page of the book must be the same as the first page. It could go on endlessly. I also recall the night in the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Queen Scheherazade (due to a mysterious omission of the scribe) began to narrate the story of the Thousand and One Nights verbatim , which could go back to the night she told, and thus become endless. I also think of oral literature, dictated by father and son, passed down from generation to generation, and each new storyteller adds a new chapter or chapter. Piously revised the chapters of my predecessors. I devoted myself to pondering these hypotheses; but the chapters that contradicted Peng Kou couldn’t be right. Just when I was confused, Oxford sent me the manuscript you saw. Naturally, I noticed this statement: I left the Garden of Forking Paths to some posterity (not all). It dawned on me almost on the spot; the Garden of Forking Paths was that messy novel; The image that the sentence revealed to me was a bifurcation of time, not space. I went through the work again and confirmed this theory. In all fiction, whenever a person is faced with several different choices, Always choose one possibility and exclude others; in Peng Kou’s intricate novels, the protagonist chooses all possibilities. In this way, many different future generations and many different times are produced, which are endlessly derived and branched. The contradictions in the novel arise from this. For example, Jun Fang has a secret; a stranger comes to him; Jun Fang is determined to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible endings: May be killed by him, both may be safe, or both may die, etc. In Peng Kou's works, there are various endings; each ending is the starting point of other branches. Sometimes, the maze's The trails converge: let's say you come here, but in one possible past you were my enemy and in another past you were my friend. If you can stand my terrible pronunciation, we Please read a few pages."

In the bright light his face was undoubtedly that of an old man, but there was something unwavering, even immortal, about his face.He reads slowly and precisely both versions of the same chapter.In the first, an army crosses a barren hill into battle; the arduous mountain march cost them their lives, and they win the battle easily; Go on, they also won the victory.I listen to these ancient tales with reverence, and what amazes me even more is that it was my ancestors who conceived them, and it was a man from a distant empire who restored them to them for me, time in a desperate adventure During the process, the location is a western island country.I remember the last words, repeated like a mystical precept in every form: Thus heroes fight, fearless of venerable hearts, fierce with swords of brass, seeking only to kill their opponents or die in the field.

From that moment on, I felt an invisible, untouchable restlessness all around and deep within me.Not the restlessness of the armies that parted ways, that went side-by-side, that finally came together, but a more difficult to grasp, more secret excitement, that had been foreshadowed by those armies.Stephen Albert went on to say: "I do not believe that your illustrious ancestor would have played with different modes of writing in vain. I do not think he could have devoted thirteen years to endless rhetorical experiments. In your country the novel is a minor literary genre; that At that time, he was considered unrefined. Peng Kou was a talented novelist, but he was also a writer. He would never think that he was just a writer of novels. His contemporaries recognized his preference for metaphysics and mysticism. His life has also fully proved this point. Philosophical discussions occupy many pages of his novels. I know that the unfathomable problem of time is his most concerned and focused problem. But this problem does not appear in the manuscript of "Garden". Not even the word time is used. How do you explain this deliberate avoidance?" I offer several views; none of them are sufficient to answer.We debated endlessly; Stephen Albert concluded by saying: "When setting a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only word that is not allowed to be used in the riddle?" I thought for a while and said: "Chess." "Exactly," said Albert. "The Garden of Forking Paths is a vast riddle, or fable, whose answer is time; for this occult reason the word time is not permitted in the manuscript. A word is omitted throughout, a clumsy metaphor, an obvious detour, Maybe it's the best way to solve riddles. In Peng Kou's tireless creation of novels, he used detours at every turn. I checked hundreds of pages of manuscripts, corrected the scribe's omissions, and guessed the messy ones. Intention, restore, or I think restore the original order, translated the entire work; but never found where the word time was used. Obviously, the Garden of Forking Paths is the incompleteness of the universe in Peng Kou's mind, but it is by no means False image. The difference between your ancestors and Newton and Schopenhauer is that he believed that time has no identity and absoluteness. He believed that time has countless series, diverging, converging and parallel time. The web of time. The web of times that come together, diverge, intersect, or never interfere with each other contains all possibilities. Most of the time, we don't exist; some of the time, there are you without me ;There were other times when I was without you; still other times when you and I were both. At this present moment chance brought you to the cottage; at another time you walked through the garden and found me dead; At another moment, I say what I say now, but I am a mistake, a ghost." "At all times," I said with a slight shock, "I am always grateful and admire you for recreating Peng Kou's garden." "It can't be all the time," he says with a laugh. "Because time forever bifurcates into countless futures. At some point in the future, I may be your enemy." I felt again the restlessness I had just mentioned.I feel that the dank gardens around the house are filled with countless invisible people.Those were Albert and I, hidden in other dimensions of time, busy and varied.When I raised my eyes again, the nightmarish haze dissipated.There was only one man in the yellow and black garden, but that man was as powerful as a statue, and coming down the path was Captain Richard Madden. "The future is already the present," I said. "But I'm your friend. May I read that letter again?" Albert stood up.He was tall, and he opened the drawer of the tall chest; for a few seconds his back was turned to me.I've got my pistol ready.I squeezed the trigger very carefully: Albert fell instantly, without a groan.I'm sure he died instantly, suddenly. The rest was as insignificant as a dream.Madden broke in and arrested me.I was sentenced to hang.I triumphed badly: I informed Berlin of the secret name of the city that was to be attacked.They bombed yesterday; I read about it in the papers.There was also a news in the newspaper that the famous Sinologist Stephen Albert was assassinated to death by a stranger named Yu Zhun. The motive for the assassination was unknown, which created a mystery for Britain.The head of Berlin has solved the mystery.He knew that it was difficult for me to announce the name of the city named Albert when the war was raging, and there was no other way than to kill a person with that name.He doesn't know (no one can know) my infinite regret and weariness.