Chapter 2 Part 1 Chapter 1

This script, Briony completed it in one go in two days.During those two days, she was busy writing and writing, so she missed a lunch and dinner.She also designed posters, program listings, and theater tickets; she also erected a foldable partition diagonally along the wall to serve as a ticket booth; and finally, she lined donation boxes with red crepe paper.After all the preparations are in place, the only thing she can do is to ponder over the completed script and wait for the arrival of her cousins ​​far away in the north.The rehearsal time is only one day.In one day, her brother will be back.This drama, which sometimes makes people break out in cold sweat and sometimes feels painful and desperate, tells a story of the heart.In the prologue, which rhymes with lines, the message of the story is conveyed: love not based on reason is doomed to failure.The heroine of the story, Arabella, is punished by bad luck for her reckless love for an evil foreign count—she and her sweetheart elope to a seaside town on a whim, where she catches cholera.And when she fell ill in a small attic and almost everyone, including her lover, abandoned her, at this moment, she found a sense of humor deep in her heart.Meanwhile, fate gave her a second chance.She meets a poor doctor - who is in fact a prince.He concealed his true identity and specialized in helping the poor.He cured her disease.This time, Arabella made a wise choice and was rewarded by fate - she was reunited with her family and married her doctor prince on a "breezy and sunny spring day" .

Mrs. Tallis read the seven-page "Arabella Ordeal" at her dressing table in her bedroom, with the author's arm around her shoulders the entire time.Briony studied her mother's face carefully, trying to catch every fleeting expression.Emily Tallis was nervous at times, snickered at times, and after reading the play, she showed a reassuring smile and nodded knowingly.Afterwards, she picked up her daughter and put her on her lap—ah, this soft little body, she remembered it since it was born, until now, it has not completely left the mother, not yet— Emily said the play was "amazing" and immediately whispered into her daughter's strained little ear that in the poster to be posted on the blackboard shelf next to the ticket booth at the entrance of the theater, she agreed. Quote the word "remarkable."

Briony didn't know it at the time, but this was already the most successful moment of her play.Other ideas are just daydreams, which can't bring her any satisfaction, and even make her feel frustrated.On summer evenings, when the day was over, Briony liked to curl up on the daybed and hide in the beautiful afterglow of dusk.At this time, some clear and desirable fantasies often linger in her heart.These fantasies are skits in themselves, each revolving around Leon.In one scene, when Arabella feels alone and hopeless, his large, gentle face is distorted with pain.In another scene, he's hanging out with a group of friends, cocktail glass in hand, in a trendy urban spa pool: My sister is the writer Briony Tallis, and you've no doubt heard of her.There is another scene: when the play is over and the curtain is slowly lowering (in fact, there is no curtain, there can be no curtain), Leon throws his fist in the air in ecstasy.Briony's script was not actually written for her cousin, but for her brother, to welcome him back, to gain his admiration, and to lead him from one half-hearted relationship to another. Come out of the relationship, find a wife who can persuade him to go back to the country and invite Briony to be the best man at the wedding.

Briony was a very neat child.Her sister's room was a kennel: books were not folded, clothes were not folded, the bed was not made, and the ashtray was not emptied; Briony's room was a sanctuary for her vices: a model farm lay horizontally On the spacious windowsills there were familiar animals, all facing in one direction—towards their owners—as if about to burst out into song, and even the hens in the yard were neatly locked up in the fence.In fact, Briony's room was the only tidy upstairs room in the house.The dolls in her spacious model mansion seem to have accepted the strict order that they are not allowed to lean their backs against the wall. ——cowboys, deep-sea divers, humanoid mice—all neatly lined up, like militiamen waiting for combat orders.

A fondness for miniatures is a sign of a person who appreciates order and tidiness.Another hallmark of these men was their love of all things secret: in one of Briony's prized varnished cabinets was a secret drawer.To open it, one has to find a cleverly bent tenon and click on a small button on it.In this secret drawer, there is a locked diary and a notebook. The contents of the book are written in a mysterious symbol invented by Briony herself.Letters and postcards are hidden in a toy safe that requires a six-digit code to open.An old tin coin-box was hidden under a removable floor under the bed, and it contained treasures that had been preserved for four years, that is, since her ninth birthday, and they had been there: A twin acorns produced by a genetic mutation, a piece of pyrite, a charm for calling rain (purchased at a fairground) and a squirrel skull as light as a leaf.

But neither the secret drawer, the locked diary, nor the notes written in cryptic symbols can hide the simple fact that Briony has no secrets.Her yearning for a harmonious and orderly world makes it impossible for her to do any reckless wrongdoing.Both vandalism and vandalism were too disorderly for her taste, and there was nothing ruthless in her nature.Furthermore, the relative isolation of Tallis and the fact that Briony was the only minor child in the family made it impossible—at least during the long summers—for her to act childishly and conspire with her friends.Briony's life was devoid of fun and shameless, and she had no secrets to hide.No one knew that she had a squirrel skull under her bed, and no one wanted to know.None of this was particularly distressing; or rather, only perhaps in hindsight, once the issues were resolved.

At eleven, she wrote her first story.It was a ridiculous love story written in imitation of half a dozen folklore, and the author failed to gain the respect of the readers because of the author's lack of insight into the world-this, Briony realized only later.But this first clumsy attempt had taught her that imagination itself was a great source of secrets: once she started writing a story, no one could reveal it.It is too uncertain, too vulnerable, and too embarrassing to use words to pretend to think, so absolutely no one should know.Even when writing "She Said" or "Then", the muscles of her face could not help twitching, thinking that she was too stupid to act as if she knew the mind of an imaginary character.When she reveals the weakness of a certain character, she will naturally expose her own shortcomings; readers will definitely think that she is writing about herself, because how can she have such a say in other people's affairs? Only When the story was written, only the fates of all the characters had an ending, only the whole story was told, so that it was like any other finished story in the world—at least at this point—Brie Oni felt that she was immune, and began to punch holes in the margins of the manuscript paper, bound the chapters with tape, painted on the cover, and then took the completed work to her mother Or Dad (if he's home) to watch.

Her efforts were encouraged.In fact, when the Tallis family came to realize that the youngest child had a quirky mind and a gift for words, they welcomed it.After long afternoons of looking through dictionaries and thesauruses and dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms, she was able to invent many absurd and haunting sentence patterns: a coin hidden in a villain's pocket becomes "secret Biography"; a petty hooligan caught stealing a car cries "shamelessly and justifiably"; a heroine on a thoroughbred horse makes a "hasty" night trip; the king's deeply wrinkled forehead Became an angry "pictograph".The family encouraged Briony to read her stories aloud in the library.She was always brave when she read aloud, making big gestures with her free hand, arching her eyebrows in cadence.In the process of reading aloud, she would look down at the pages of the book, then quickly raise her head, fix her eyes on everyone's face one by one, unapologetically demanding the family's full attention while she worked her narrative magic, while she Her parents and sister were surprised by the behavior of this normally quiet girl.

Even without the attention and appreciation of her family, Briony could not have given up writing.Like many writers before her, she came to realize that not all the praise was good for her.For example, the enthusiasm of the older sister Cecilia seems exaggerated, perhaps condescending, and aggressive.She asked Briony to catalog each of the bound stories and place them on the shelves in the library, among the works of Robindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian.Maybe Cecilia was just joking and Briony didn't take it seriously.She is on the right track and fulfilled on other levels.Writing stories that not only deal with secrets but also turn the world into a miniature model certainly gives her a lot of fun.A world made in just five pages is far more interesting than a scaled-down model of a farm.A spoiled prince's childhood can be contained in half a page, a fast-paced sentence can express a moonlit night's passage through a sleepy village, a single word—a glimpse of an eye—can express The protagonist has fallen in love.A story that Briony has recently completed is so full of vitality that the manuscript paper in her hand seems to be trembling with life.At the same time, her love for order is also satisfied, because a disordered world can be organized in writing.For example, a major crisis in the heroine's life can be accompanied by hail, strong wind, and thunder, while the wedding is often accompanied by sunny weather.Briony's liking for order also gave birth to the principle of justice, and death and marriage became the active forces of housekeeping: death is the patent of the morally ill, and marriage is a reward that is not offered until the last page.

Briony's script for Leon's coming home was her first step into theater, a transition she didn't find difficult.It was a relief for Briony to not have to write "she said" in her script, or describe the weather, the coming of spring, or the face of the heroine, because she discovered that beauty is just a narrow line. The spectral band, but the ugliness is in every form.Compressing a vast world into words is itself a kind of arrangement, and the arranged world has almost lost its color. Therefore, to make up for this, every sentence is extremely emotional. For this reason, the exclamation point is indispensable. . The Ordeal of Arabella may have been a melodrama, although its author had not heard the term at the time.This script is not intended to make people laugh, but to shock readers, then relieve them, and finally teach them.Briony's naive, massive effort for the play—posters, tickets, ticket booths—made her especially vulnerable to failure.She could have easily written "Arabella's Ordeal" as another story rather than a play to welcome Leon, but the news that her cousins ​​were coming from the North prompted her to leap into a new kind of creation form.

Fifteen-year-old Lola and nine-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot are "refugees" created by a bitter family civil war.The incident should have had a greater psychological impact on Briony.She had heard her mother accuse her sister Hermione of acting impulsively, lamented the plight of the three children, and condemned the meekness and evasion of her brother-in-law Cecil, who had fled to Oxford for peace. Go to the Spiritual Academy.Briony had listened to her mother and sister analyze the latest twists and turns and injuries, attacks and counter-offensives of this "civil war", and knew that it was not a matter of a day or two for cousins ​​and brothers to live in their house, but it might last for a year. semester.She had also heard that the family house was more than enough for three more children, and that the Quincy children could stay here as long as they wanted.But if their parents came to visit the children at the same time, they had to promise not to bring their quarrels to the Tallis house.The two rooms next to Briony's bedroom had been cleaned, with new curtains and furniture brought in from other rooms.Originally, Briony would also participate in the preparation work, but it happened to be the two days when her enthusiasm for writing was high, and she had to be busy with arranging the entrance of the "theater", so she didn't participate.She only vaguely knew that divorce was a disaster, but she didn't consider it a suitable subject to write about, and she didn't give it much thought.For her, it's a secular dissolution, irreversible, so it doesn't leave much room for the storyteller: it belongs in the realm of disorder.Marriage--or rather a wedding--was the real thing, its formality, its order, its reward of virtue, its pomp and feast, and the intoxicating spectacle of growing old together. promise.Beautiful weddings also suggest sexual bliss, which Briony could not have imagined.In the aisles of country chapels and city cathedrals, her heroes and heroines naively reach the pinnacle of their lives, and no longer need to go any further. If divorce represents the unsavory antithesis of weddings, then it can easily be thrown into the other scale of the scale, with betrayal, evil, theft, assault and lies.However, it shows the inglorious side of endless quarrels and tedious complex life, so it is impossible for Briony to consider as a subject of writing, just as she would not consider "Rearmament" and "Army". Bisignia Problem" or "Flowering Tips".When, after waiting all Saturday morning, Briony finally heard wheels roll over the gravel path under her bedroom window, she grabbed the script and rushed downstairs, across the hall, into the bright blinding midday sun , Shouted to the little guests in the car who were huddled together with their luggage: "I have written all your roles! The premiere will be held tomorrow, and the rehearsal will be in five minutes!" The little guests were stunned by her words, and Brie Oni did this not because she didn't care about others, but because of her highly concentrated artistic ambition. Soon, her mother and sister came to make a more relaxed schedule for the young guests.Three blond-haired, freckled children were shown to their rooms, and Hardman's son, Danny, carried their luggage upstairs.They were then given a visit to the kitchen for mulled wine, a tour of the house, a swim in the pool, and lunch under the vines in the south garden.Emily and Cecilia chattered on and on throughout the whole process, which took away the sense of relief the guests should have had.Briony knew that if she had traveled two hundred miles to a strange mansion, shrewd questions and comic whispers and a hundred different ways of telling her she was free to choose would surely She was deeply depressed.What people don't realize is that what children need most right now is solitude.But the Quincy kids did everything they could to pretend they were happy and at ease.This bodes well for The Ordeal of Arabella: if the three of them have an obvious knack for pretending, they will be able to play well even if they bear no resemblance to the characters they will be playing.Before lunch, Briony slipped into the empty rehearsal room—what used to be the nursery—pacing up and down the painted floor, considering various roles. It was obvious that Arabella, with her black hair like Briony, could not have had freckled parents, would not run off with a freckled foreign earl, rent a house from a freckled tavernkeeper. You can't fall in love with a prince with freckles in an attic room, let alone be married by a priest with freckles in front of a group of people with freckles.But there is no other way but to make do with it.The color of her cousin's hair is so bright, it's almost like a fluorescent color, and it can't be hidden.Briony can only think this way: Arabella has no freckles, which is a "symbol"-if Briony writes it, it may become a "hieroglyph" again-a symbol of her extraordinaryness.Although she navigates a tainted world, her pure spirit is absolutely unquestionable.Furthermore, the fact that the two twin brothers were indistinguishable by strangers posed another problem.Can the wicked count and the handsome prince look so much alike? And... can they both look like the same person as Arabella's father and the presiding priest? Would it work if Laura was the prince? Jackson and Pierre These two little fellows looked impatient.They are the kind of little boys who will do what you say.But is their sister willing to play a man? She has a pair of green eyes and a very bony face; her cheeks are thin, and there is a kind of indifference in her silence, revealing a stubborn will and a violent temper.Perhaps, just mentioning the possibility of playing a male role to Lola will trigger a crisis.Besides, can Briony really hold hands with Lola at the altar while Jackson is reciting the blessing? It was not until five o'clock in the afternoon that she could gather the actors in the nursery.She lined up three benches and squeezed herself into an old baby highchair—an artist's unruly move that gave her the height advantage of a tennis umpire.The twins finally showed up reluctantly after a full three hours of squabbling in the pool.They were barefoot, wearing tank tops, and water from their swimming trunks was dripping onto the floor.Water was still running down their necks from their matted hair, and both were shivering with cold, shaking their knees to keep warm.Soaking in water for a long time made their skin white and wrinkled, and their freckles looked black in the relatively weak light of the nursery.Their older sister sat between them, with her left leg crossed over her right knee, looking quite composed.She wore a lot of perfume and changed into a green plaid cotton dress to compensate for the color of her skin.She wore sandals, an anklet, and vermilion nail polish on her toes.Briony gasped when she saw those toenails.She immediately decided that Lola must not be asked to play the prince. Everyone is seated, the playwright is going to give a little speech, give a general introduction to the plot of the play, and point out that tomorrow night, they will perform to grown-ups in the library to arouse the enthusiasm of the actors , but before she could speak, Piero took the lead. "I hate the theater, I hate this stuff." "I hate it too, I don't like makeup." Jackson also said. At lunch, everyone knew how to tell the twins apart: Pierrot's left earlobe was missing a triangular piece.It is said to be the result of a dog he pissed off when he was three years old. Lola's eyes flicked away.Briony reasoned: "How can you guys hate drama?" "Pure show off." Piero shrugged his shoulders as he stated the self-evident truth. Briony knew he was right.And this is why she herself likes plays (at least the ones she wrote herself).She thinks everyone will appreciate her talent.Water dripped from the chairs of the two boys and slowly seeped into the cracks in the floor.Watching them, Briony knew they would never understand her ambitions.She forgave them, and forgiveness softened her tone. "Don't you think Shakespeare was showing off too?" Pierrot's eyes flicked to his sister's knees and looked towards Jackson.This challenging name had a hint of scholasticism and sophistication, and he felt vaguely familiar with it.But the twins each find courage in the other. "Everyone knows he's just showing off." "that is." When Laura started to speak, she first turned to Pierrot, and when she was halfway through, she turned to Jackson again, and then she finished speaking.In the Briony household, Mrs. Tullis never had anything to say to both daughters at the same time.Now Briony saw what Lola did. "You act obediently, otherwise you will be beaten, and I have to tell my parents." "If you hit us, we're going to tell Mom and Dad." "Just act obediently, or I will sue." Lola's threat had been bargained by the two brothers, but hadn't lost its force.Piero bit his lower lip and said: "Why do we have to act?" This question already contained the meaning of concession.Lola tried to loosen his clumps of hair. "Remember what Mom and Dad said? We are guests here, we must...how must we do? You say, what must we do?" "It must be obeyed," the twins said in chorus of pain.They almost stuttered at the unusual word. Laura turned to Briony, smiled and said, "Please tell us what the play is about." mom and dad.Whatever legal validity is locked up in the word, it will fly to pieces, or go its separate ways; but at this moment, this cannot be admitted, and even the youngest child must be brave and strong.Briony was suddenly ashamed of her selfish motives; it never occurred to her that her cousins ​​would be reluctant to play the part in "The Orb of Arabella."But they had their trials, their own distresses, and now, as guests in her house, they considered themselves obliged to obey.To make matters worse, Lola also made it clear that she was forced to play the role.The vulnerable Quincy family is being threatened.However, Briony still struggles to unravel the big question: Is Lola manipulative? Is she using the twins to express her own hostility or sabotage? Briony feels more powerful than Lola. He was two years younger and had lost two full years of tempering, which put him at a disadvantage in front of her.Now her play seemed a miserable, embarrassing thing. She avoided Lola's gaze.Although the silliness of the script had made her dizzy, she briefly stated the main plot of the play.But she was no longer in the mood to excite her cousins ​​on their first night of arrival. As soon as she finished the storyline, Pierrot said: "I'm going to be a count. I like being a bad guy." Jackson said simply: "I'm a prince. I've always been a prince." She could have pulled the brothers over and kissed their little cheeks, but she just said, "Okay then." Laura lowered her crossed legs, pulled up her skirt, and stood up, as if she was about to leave.She sighed sadly, and said helplessly: "I think, since you wrote the play, you will always play Arabella yourself..." "Oh, no," said Briony, "absolutely not." She said "no", but she meant "yes".Of course she was going to play Arabella.The "no" she said was directed at the causal relationship in Laura's words.She didn't want to play Arabella because she wrote the script herself.She took the part because she hadn't even thought of having someone else play it; she wanted Leon to see her as Arabella because she "is" Arabella. But she had said "no," and now Laura said softly, "In that case, would you mind me playing the part? I think I could play her very well. In fact, the two of us ..." She hesitated to speak.Briony watched her, unable to hide her horror.She was at a loss for words.She knows that once a word is spoken, it is hard to chase after it.While Briony was silent, Lola took advantage of the momentum and advanced. "I also had a serious illness last year, so I can play that role well." Can too? Briony can't pander to her cousin.Anxiety about the end of the world blocked her thoughts. One of the twins said proudly: "And you also participated in the school performance." How could she tell them that Arabella didn't have freckles? She had gray skin, dark hair, and her thoughts were Briony's thoughts.But how could she refuse the request of her cousin who was far away from home and bankrupt? Lola seemed to read her mind, because she played her last card at this moment, a trump card that could not be refused. "Please, just say 'yes'! This is the only good thing I've had in months." Row.Unable to get the word out of her tongue, Briony nodded, and at the same time, sullen, she felt an undeniably self-destructive thrill spread through her skin, spilling out, chugs The room darkened.She really wanted to walk away, she really wanted to lie face to face on the bed, savor the hateful spiciness of this moment alone, and then return to the derivative state before the destruction began.She needs to close her eyes and contemplate her failures, her sacrifices.She needs to look ahead to the new situation.Not only did she have to think about Leon, but she also had to think about the old-fashioned peach-and-beige satin dress she was going to wear to Arabella's wedding.Her mother is looking for this dress for her.But now the dress was for Laura.How could her mother despise her daughter who has always loved her so much? Briony seemed to see this dress docilely put on her cousin, and witnessed her mother's icy smile.She knew her only rational choice was to run away, live among the hedges, eat berries, talk to no one, and be found by a bushy-haired lumberjack one winter dawn, huddled under a giant oak tree, Beautiful, dying, with bare feet, or perhaps ballet slippers with pink straps... Self-pity demands her full attention, and she can only bring twigs to life when she is alone, yet in the split second she nods her head in agreement—how a head on one side can change a life!—Laura has picked up Brio from the floor Nina Zha manuscript, the twin brothers also stood up quietly from the chair, followed their sister to the center of the nursery.The space was cleared by Briony the day before.Would she dare to run away now? Lola was pacing the floor, one hand over her eyebrow.She scans the first few pages of the script and silently recites the opening lines.She said that everything was safe from the beginning, and at this moment she cast the two younger brothers as Arabella's parents and described the beginning of the play to them as if she knew the scene perfectly.Lola's complacent, step-by-step, and merciless attitude make Briony's self-pity seem out of place.Or would she be more and more interested?—Because Briony was not even given the role of Arabella's mother, she slipped out of the nursery and stumbled into her own room, lying face down on the The dark bed is undoubtedly logical.Lola, however, is so buoyant and totally immersed in the character; Briony knows her own emotions won't reveal—much less inspire—guilt.It was all this that gave her the strength to rise up and resist. Before, in her happy, smooth life, she had never actually confronted anyone.Now she understands: It's like diving into a swimming pool in early June; you have to be brave enough to dive in.Her heart pounded and her breath became short and rapid as she squeezed out of the high chair and walked over to where her cousin was standing. She snatched the script from Laura's hand and said in an unusually high-pitched voice, "If you were Arabella, I would be the director. Thank you very much, and I'll read the opening words." Lola put her freckled hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry - sorry!" she said, "I'm just starting." Briony didn't know how to respond, so she turned to Pierrot and said, "You don't look much like Arabella's mother." Lola's decision to assign roles was removed, prompting the twins to roar with laughter, which shifted the balance of power.Lola shrugged her bony shoulders dramatically, walked to the window, and looked out.Maybe she wanted to rush out of the room herself, but she held on. The twins start a wrestling match, and their sister suspects she has a headache, but rehearsals begin anyway.In an uneasy silence, Briony reads the opening poem: This is a story about willful Arabella, She elopes with a young man from outside. left home for Eastbourne without consent, Poverty and sickness left her with her last sixpence in her pocket. Seeing his eldest daughter so poor all her life, The hearts of her parents were filled with infinite grief and indignation. Arabella's father stood by the wrought-iron gate of the estate, and his wife stood beside him.He first begged his daughter to think twice, then in desperation ordered her not to leave.The sad and obstinate heroine faces her father, and beside her stands the count, whose horses are tied to a nearby oak tree, neighing and scratching, impatient to set off.My father's heart was full of tenderness, and he said tremblingly: My dear daughter, you are young and lovely, But you have no life experience, although you think The world is at your feet, But it will rise up and crush you to the ground. Briony puts the roles in place, herself clutching Jackson's arm, while Laura and Pierrot stand hand in hand a few yards away.The boys looked at each other and giggled, and the girls hurriedly booed to stop it.It was annoying enough, but only when Jackson began to read, did Briony gradually understand the disparity between vision and implementation.Jackson's tone has no cadence, as if every word is a name on the dead list.Although Briony read the phrase "no life experience" to her several times, he just couldn't pronounce it, and omitted the last two words in the line.As for Laura, she delivered her lines accurately and casually, and sometimes smiled inexplicably at an inner thought, determined to let her almost adult mind be known to be elsewhere at the moment. In this way, they continued to rehearse.The cousins ​​from the north had been rehearsing for half an hour, quietly destroying Briony's creation, and finally her sister Cecilia called the two cousins ​​to take a bath.Thank goodness for that!