Chapter 4 part four

Four A narrow corridor turned to the right, presumably leading to the back door to the street.There were also two staircases, equally narrow, and it was difficult to understand why there were two, for they did not seem to lead to different atlases. Mathias wanted to take the first staircase, the one that appeared to him as soon as he entered the hall; both staircases met this requirement to a certain extent, but neither fully.He hesitated for a few seconds, and finally chose the one farther away from him, since the other was clearly recessed.He went up one floor.As the innkeeper had told him beforehand, he saw two doors—one of which was without a handle.

The second door was not closed, only ajar.He knocked on the door, not daring to use too much force, for he was afraid of knocking the door open, because he felt that the door would open with a slight push. he waits.There was not enough light on the landing to make it clear to him whether the door was also painted to imitate the grain of wood, or if it was painted with glasses, eyes, hoops, or spirals like ropes rolled into a figure-eight. He tapped again with his chunky ring.Just as he had feared, the door opened of its own accord.He found that this door only led to another hall.He waited again, then went in because he didn't know where to knock anymore.Now three doors appeared in front of him.

One of the doors is open.Looking inside, it is not a kitchen as the owner said, but a spacious bedroom.The resemblance of this bedroom to a place Mathias remembered surprised Mathias, but he could not say exactly where he had seen this place.The middle of the bedroom is empty, allowing people to see the black and white tiles on the floor at a glance: the white octagonal tiles are the size of a basin, with four sides connected by straight lines, so that there are four groups of equal numbers of small black squares in the middle.And then Mathias thought of an old habit on the island: people always put tiles in the best rooms instead of floors—always always in the dining-room or the living room, and rarely in the bedrooms.The room was unmistakably a bedroom: a wide, low bed occupied one corner of the room, its long side leaning against the wall, facing the door.On the right side of the head of the bed there is a small table vertically against the wall, and a desk lamp is placed on the table.Then came a closed door, and then a dressing-table with an oval mirror set into it.There is a sheepskin rug at the edge of the bed for stepping on when getting out of bed.In this corner of the room, there are only a few things.To look further along the right wall, you have to poke your head into the room.Likewise, the left half of the room was covered by an ajar door, and Mathias, who was standing in the hall, could not be seen.

The tiles on the floor are very clean.The tiles were obviously new, dull but clean and spotless.The whole room has a clean, almost glamorous appearance (albeit a bit eccentric), as opposed to the stairway and hallway. The room was a bit eccentric, not entirely due to the tiles; the tiles were of a non-special color and could easily be explained in the bedroom: for example, as the whole suite changed, the uses of the various rooms had to be adjusted.The bed, the bedside lamp, the small rectangular sheepskin rug, and the dressing table with the oval mirror are all very ordinary, and the wallpaper on the wall is also ordinary, a cream color with colorful bouquets printed on it. Paper.On the bed was a painting (or merely a vulgar reproduction, framed by a fake painting by a famous artist) of a corner bedroom furnished exactly as in the room before us: a low bed, a bedside lamp , a sheepskin rug.A little girl in a nightgown is kneeling on a sheepskin, facing the bed, with her neck bowed and her palms folded, praying.The time is at night.The bedside lamp shines on the little girl's right shoulder and neck from a forty-five-degree angle.

The light on the bedside table was on—it was broad daylight now, and I must have forgotten to turn it off.The sunlight came in through the thin window screens, so that Mathias couldn't see that the bedside lamp was on, but the conical lampshade was undoubtedly illuminated by internal light.A small blue oblong object—a pack of cigarettes, presumably—beneath the lamp shone. Everything in the room was neatly arranged except for the bed which was the opposite, giving the look of a struggle or otherwise changing sheets.The crimson sheet that had been on the bed was disheveled, with one side trailing from the edge of the bed to the tiles.

A hot air came out of the room, as if there were still a fire burning in this season--this stove was hidden from Mathias, who was standing in the hall, by the half-open door. At the end of the hall there was an empty dustbin, and beyond that there were two brooms leaning against the wall.He went down the stairs, making up his mind at the foot of the stairs not to go through the narrow corridor that led directly to the pier.At last he was back in the lobby of the coffee shop, and there was no one there.He quickly reassured himself that the sailors would not buy watches, nor would the shopkeeper, nor would the girl who looked terrified, who probably was neither terrified nor clumsy nor obedient at all. will not buy.He pushed open the glass door and was back on the uneven, cracked pavement, facing the shimmering water that filled the harbour.

It's warmer now.He began to feel that his woolen village jacket felt heavy on him.Today is a very beautiful day in April. But he has wasted too much time, he can no longer procrastinate here to bask in the sun.Just now, while thinking about his thoughts, he approached the edge of the pier, facing the mud covered with crab shells and broken crab stings, now he turned around, turned his back to the edge of the pier, returned to the front of the row of houses, and tried Try his uncertain deals. Red windows...glass*... He mechanically turned the handle on the door and went into a shop next door; the shop had a low ceiling and was darker than the neighboring shop.A female customer was leaning over the counter, reviewing a long and large amount of bills settled by the female shopkeeper on the opposite side on a small rectangular piece of paper.He didn't say anything, for fear of disrupting their settlement.The shopkeeper was reading figures in a low voice, pointing to the ledgers with the point of her pencil; she paused, smiled at Mathias, who had just entered, and beckoned him to wait.She immediately immersed herself in the calculation again.She calculated so fast that Mathias wondered how the lady customer could keep up.However, she probably always miscalculated, because she kept counting the same figures over and over again, and it seemed that she could never finish.Finally she said loudly: "Forty-seven", and then wrote a few words on the piece of paper.

"Five pieces of female customers raised objections. The two of them re-checked the long line of deceptive numbers, and made a calculation. They both said it aloud at the same time, but at a dizzying speed: "Two plus one equals three, plus three, six, plus Four, ten..." The shophouse was crammed all over with wares of all kinds, stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling; there were even some shelves behind the glass windows, which were small in size, so that This made the store much darker.There were also many baskets and boxes piled on the ground.Occupying the rest of the room are the two large counters connected in an L shape, which have been covered by various items piled up on the counters, leaving only a half-meter-square area with a solitary There was a rectangular white paper full of numbers, and two women prostrated themselves on the white paper, one on each side.

All kinds of irrelevant items are piled up in a haphazard manner.There were sweets, chocolate drops, and jars of jam.There are wooden toys, canned food.A basket full of eggs lay on the ground; beside it shone a solitary fish in a shallow basket, shaped like a spindle and as long as a dagger, rigid and blue in color with wavy patterns. .But there are also pens and books, clogs, soft-soled shoes, and even bits and pieces of clothing.There were so many other things, so completely separate, that Mathias regretted not seeing what sign the shop had when he entered.In one corner stood a life-size mannequin, the upper torso of a young woman with severed limbs—the arm was severed just below the shoulder, and the thigh was severed twenty centimeters from the torso; her The head is turned forward and slightly sideways to create "beauty"; one side of her waist is more prominent than the other, which is the so-called "natural" posture.The parts of the whole model are well-proportioned, but judging from the broken limbs, it seems to be a little smaller than a normal human body.Her back is turned away, her face resting against a shelf piled high with ribbons.She wore only her bra and a tight garter belt, which is a fashion in town.

"Forty-five!" cried the landlady, triumphantly. "You're right." So she attacked the second row of numbers. A thin ribbon was stretched across her back, and the smooth golden skin on her shoulders shone brightly against the ribbon.The tips of the slightly raised vertebrae can be seen on the delicate skin of the lower nape of the neck. "Okay!" cried the shopkeeper, "we've finally got it right." Mathias glanced over a row of wine bottles, and then a row of jars of various colors. After making a half circle like this, his gaze landed on the face of the female shopkeeper.The female customer had straightened up, and her eyes were watching him firmly behind the glasses.Being caught out in this way by surprise, he could not remember what to say to meet this particular situation.

He could only resort to movement: he placed the small case in the half-meter-wide space on the counter and undid the button of the small case.He quickly picked up the black memo and put it in the opened lid.Still without saying a word, he unwrapped the watch protectors of the first set of watches—the most “expensive” ones. "Excuse me, please wait a moment," said the shopkeeper with a very friendly smile. She turned to the shelf, stooped, and removed the stack in front of the bottom drawers. things, opened one of the drawers, and took out with a kind of triumphant air a set of ten watches embedded in cardboard, exactly like the ones Mathias had shown her. This time the situation was undoubtedly unexpected. Arriving, Mathias had nothing more to say. He put the watch back in the case and put the memorandum on it again. Before closing the lid, he had time to glance at the brightly colored prints printed on the inside of the lid. dolls. "I want a quarter pound of candy," he said. "Okay. Which one do you want?" She recited a list of scents and prices.He didn't listen at all, and just pointed to a jar with the brightest candy wrappers in it. She weighed twenty-five centimeters of candy out of a jar and handed it to him in a cellophane bag; he put the candy in his right pocket, with the fine twine.Then he paid and walked out. He lingers in the store too long.It is very convenient to walk into the store-because you can walk in directly on the eighth road, just like walking into a countryman's house-but every time you go in, you always have to wait for a long time because there are customers in the store, and in the end it is just a long time. Disappointed. Fortunately, this store was followed by several houses in a row.He decided not to go up to the second floor of the store but to go next door, because he guessed that the second floor was where the mistress of the candy store lived. From dim corridors to closed doors, from narrow stairs to failure after failure, he was lost again among the phantoms of his imagination.On the foot of a dirty staircase, he tapped with his thick ring on a door without a handle, and the door opened of its own accord... and a suspicious face appeared through the crack —the gap in the door was just wide enough for him to see the black and white tiles on the floor...the square stone slabs on the floor were the same gray; The red sheets dragged from the bed to the floor... There are neither red sheets nor messy beds; neither sheepskin rugs nor bedside tables nor bedside lamps; Printed wallpaper, not to mention no pictures hanging on the wall.The room into which he had been taken was a kitchen, and he had laid the little box flat on the large oval table in the center of the kitchen.Then there is the linoleum on the table, the pattern on the linoleum, the click of the copper-clad buttons, etc... Coming out of the last shop--it was so dark that he could see nothing, perhaps hear nothing--he found himself at the end of the quay; from here the long jetty began. , it is almost perpendicular to the pier, and there is a cluster of parallel lines on the embankment that seem to stretch out from the signal platform as the centralized point.Two horizontal planes are lit by the sun, separated by two dark vertical planes. The end of the town is also here.Mathias certainly didn't sell a single watch, even if he walked around the three or four alleys behind the pier, the situation would be the same.He thought consolingly that this kind of thing was really only suitable for the country; in a town, even a small town, a watch of another quality was needed.There was no one on the causeway of the breakwater.He was going towards the causeway, when he saw a doorway in the wall of the breakwater, indicating that this was the end of the quay, and the wall continued to the right to a half-collapsed ancient wall, which was obviously Remains of the old royal city. Immediately, or almost immediately, beyond this wall there appeared a rocky coast of gentle undulations--a coast of great gray pebbles, gently sloping down to the water's edge, with no sand to be seen, even at low tide. Can't see either. Mathias descended the granite steps leading to the flat rock.Looking to his left, he could see the outer dike of the breakwater, straight and sunlit, and the walls above and below the dike were joined without a trace of seam; on the breakwater there was only this plane. Is such that.As long as the steps were fairly easy, he continued on towards the sea; but he was soon obliged to stop, for he dared not jump over a cleft in the rock, which was not really large, but he wore thick He was wearing leather shoes, was wearing a short jacket, and was still holding that precious little box, which made it difficult for him to walk, so he dared not jump over it. So he sat down on the rock, facing the sun, and set the little box against his side so that it wouldn't slide off.Although the wind here is relatively strong, he still loosened the belt of the jacket, undid all the buttons, and separated the left and right skirts to the back.Subconsciously, he reached into the left pocket of his jacket and touched his wallet.The sunlight reflected violently on the water, forcing him to close most of his eyelids.He thought of the little girl on the steamer.Her eyes were wide open, her head held up—hands drawn behind her back.Her air seemed to be tied to an iron post.He reached into the inside pocket of his coat again, took out his wallet, and checked to see if the paragraph he had clipped from yesterday's local daily, The Western Beacon, was still there.In fact, there is no reason for this clipping to be lost.Mathias put the wallet back into its original pocket. A small wave rushed over the rocks at the foot of the slope, and wet the part of one that had been dry until now.The tide is rising.A gull, then a second gull, then a third gull, one after another, gliding slowly against the wind—not moving.He saw the two iron rings nailed to the wall of the breakwater again. The water in the concave corner of the landing bridge rose and fell rhythmically, causing the two iron rings to be submerged and exposed at times.The last gull suddenly left its flight path, fell like a rock, broke through the water, and disappeared.A small wave hit the rocks with a slap.He was again standing in the narrow hall, facing the half-open door, the floor of the room was covered with black and white tiles. The frightened young girl sat on the edge of the untidy bed, her bare feet resting on the sheepskin blanket.The light on the bedside table was on.Mathias reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out his wallet.He took the clipping out of his wallet, put the wallet away, and read the passage again carefully from cover to cover. In fact, the content of the news is not much.The length of the article is no longer than a paragraph of minor news.The greater part of it is devoted to the useless circumstances of the discovery of the body; the whole concluding part is devoted to commenting on what the police station intends to do with the investigation, leaving only a few lines to describe the body itself. There is no mention of what kind of violence the victim was subjected to.With regard to incidents of this type, the use of adjectives such as "terrible", "despicable", and "hateful" to clarify the facts of the case is not enough to explain the problem.A few vague words of condolence for the girl's tragic experience are vain.The vague words used to describe the death process are actually the clichés traditionally used in this column of the newspaper, and can only provide a sketch at best.The reader is well aware that the editors use the same words and phrases whenever they encounter similar incidents, and never try to give any real information about a particular case, and it is almost suspected that they themselves know nothing about the case.They must have fabricated the whole case from beginning to end, starting with two or three basic details, such as age or hair color. A small wave crashed against the rock from below, only a few meters away from Mathias.His eyes began to ache.He moved his eyes away, turned back and looked towards the shore. There was a "customs road" extending south along the coast, where the sunlight was also so fierce that people couldn't keep their eyes open.He simply closed his eyes completely.On the other side, behind the wall of the jetty, the row of flat-fronted houses stretched along the quay to the triangular square and the iron-barred monument.On this side was a succession of storefront windows: a hardware store, a butcher's store, Hope's coffee shop.It was at the counter of this café that he had just drank a glass of absinthe worth three crowns and seven. He was standing in front of the half-open door of a room with black and white tiles in the narrow hall on the second floor.The girl sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, her bare feet trampling the wool of the blanket.The red sheet next to her dragged all the way to the floor. It was night.Only the small lamp on the bedside table was on.For a while, the whole scene was silent and motionless.Then I heard the sentence again: "Are you asleep?" The voice was serious and deep, a bit like singing, as if there was a hidden threat.At this moment Mathias saw in the oval mirror on the dressing table a man standing on the left side of the room.He was standing with his eyes fixed on something, but the mirror between him and Mathias could not be sure in which direction he was looking.The girl with her eyes lowered all the time stood up, and started to walk towards the person who had just spoken with timid steps.She left the visible part of the room, only to reappear in the oval mirror a few seconds later.When she got to her employer - not a step away - within reach - she stopped. Slowly the giant's hand came closer and rested on the fragile nape of her neck.That hand pinched the nape of the neck and pressed down. It seemed that there was no force on the surface, but there was a strong pressure that made the fragile body bend down slowly.The girl bent her legs, stepped back with one foot, then with the other, and finally knelt down on the tiles—it was a white octagonal tile, the size of a basin, and the four sides were connected by straight lines, so that there were four squares in the middle. Groups of equal numbers of small black squares. The man let go, and murmured another five or six monosyllabic words, with the same deep voice—but this time it was more vague, almost hoarse, and it was impossible to hear what he said clearly.It was a long time before the girl began to move—as if ordered to cross the vast expanse of sand and countless pools of water to reach her; she moved her arms slowly, almost cautiously; her obedient The little hand was lifted up along her thigh, turned to the waist, and finally stopped at the back, slightly below the waist and eyes—two disjointed joints crossed and stacked one by one, as if they were bound.At this time, the voice said again: "You are beautiful..." There seemed to be a kind of violence suppressed in the voice; the giant's fingers rested on the prisoner who was kneeling at his feet and stood by - she looked so small, as if she had been transformed . The fingertips moved over the bare skin of the back of her neck, from top to bottom, all over the back of her neck that was exposed due to the hairstyle, and then his fingers slid under the ears, in the same way stroking her mouth and face; she had to lift her face up to show her big black eyes with long, curved lashes like a doll's. A larger wave crashed against the rocks with a sound of lapping; a few drops of the spout were carried by the wind towards Mathias.The traveling salesman looked anxiously at his little case, but the water did not fall on it.He glanced at his watch and jumped to his feet.It was already eleven past five, the forty-five minutes prescribed by the owner of the garage had passed, and the bicycle must be ready.He quickly climbed up the flat rock, crossed the wall of the jetty from the small granite steps, and hurried towards the square; passed the road.The candy shopkeeper greeted him at the door. As soon as he turned the corner from the hardware store, he saw a shiny, nickel-plated bicycle leaning against the billboard behind the Memorial to the Dead.The countless smooth parts of the car reflect sunlight in all directions.The nearer he came, the more it seemed to Mathias that the car was complete and equipped with all the necessary parts, some of which he did not even know what they were for, and therefore considered superfluous. Turning the billboard, he walked straight into the coffee shop to pay for his rental car.No one was in the store except for a piece of paper hanging prominently from the handle of a soda straw in the middle of the counter.The paper said: "Take the bicycle at the door and leave the two hundred crown deposit here. Thank you." As Mathias took the money from his wallet, he was amazed at the formality: since people believed him and did not send someone to check the money, why did he have to pay the security deposit?It was an unnecessary test of his honesty.If he paid the full amount, and a thief came before the garage owner, how could he prove that he paid?On the other hand, he could just as easily say that the thief stole the money without paying.Presumably there are no bad guys on the island, and no one to be questioned.He put two hundred-crown notes under the straw and came out. He was stuffing the legs of his trousers into his wide socks when he suddenly heard the cheerful voice say: "Nice car! Huh?" He looked up and saw the garage owner's head sticking out of the door frame, right above the billboard. "Yes! Beautiful car..." Mathias agreed. His gaze follows the movie advert.Judging from the figure of the giant in Renaissance costume, he had no trouble pulling the young woman's upper body into his arms; it must have been his willingness to hold her in that position, to throw her back— Perhaps it was to better appreciate her looks.The ground under their feet was covered with black and white tiles... "It's last Sunday's movie," said the garage owner, "and I'm waiting for the early mail this morning to bring me new posters and footage." Mathias wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, and went into the tobacco shop with the owner of the garage.The owner of the store, when he discovered the security deposit under the soda straw, looked very surprised, declared that this formality was completely unnecessary, returned the two notes to Mathias, and stuck the note hanging from the straw. group. On the stone steps at the door they gossiped for a while longer.Once again the tobacconist complimented the quality of his bike, praising the tires, brakes, derailleur, and more.Finally, he said "Good luck to you!" The traveling salesman thanked him. "I'll be back by four o'clock," he said as he went away.His right hand is holding the handle of the bicycle, and his left hand is holding a small case. He doesn't want to tie the small case to the luggage rack, so as not to waste too much time every time he stops.The small box was not too heavy to prevent him from pedaling, since he was neither going too fast nor performing acrobatics. At first, he walked along the uneven stone pavement to the small garden of the town hall.Turn left from Little Garden onto the road that leads to Big Lighthouse Ji.As soon as he crossed the stone pavement of the square, he felt very light when he stepped on it, and he was very satisfied with his car. The cottages on either side of the road already had the typical appearance of country houses: bungalows with two square windows sandwiching a low door.If he had time to spare on his return, he thought of going from house to house; he had been procrastinating too long in this town, and to no avail.He quickly calculated the time left between now and the departure of the boat: less than five hours; the time for commuting by bicycle must be subtracted from it: one hour at most—if the total distance does not exceed ten to fifteen kilometers ( Unless he guessed wrong), an hour is enough.Therefore, he can have about four hours to conduct transactions (including non-executed transactions), that is, 240 minutes.He didn't bother with hard-to-convince customers anymore, just packed up his boxes and left as soon as he realized they didn't want to buy; that way, every failed sale only took a few seconds.As for the good deals, ten minutes was a fair amount, including the short walk in the village.On this basis, he could sell twenty-four watches in two hundred and forty minutes—perhaps not the most expensive watches, but, say, Crown's, plus profits... Just as he was about to cross the town boundary, he thought of the sailor from the steamship company, and the sailor's sister and three nieces.He was standing just in front of the last house in the town, which was on his right, a little distanced from the rest--so that he could safely regard it as the first house he entered into the country.He got off his bicycle, leaned it against the wall, and knocked on the wooden door. He looked at his nails and saw a thin, wet streak of grease on the inward side of his finger.But he has never touched the bicycle chain.He checked the handlebars, feeling under the right-hand grip and above the brake lever; the tips of his index and middle fingers were freshly stained.Probably the owner of the garage just wiped the oil on the connecting line of the brake, but forgot to clean the grip.Mathias looked around for something to hold his hand when the door opened.He hastened to put his hands in his pockets, and in his pockets he found the unopened pack of cigarettes, the pack of candies and the coiled rope. He put the oil stains from his fingernails on the small ropes, although the action was very fast. In a hurry, without the help of the other hand, and pointing in a pocket full of things, he still pointed as carefully as he could. Immediately the opening conversation, about the brother who works for the steamship company, the insanely cheap watches, the hallway that divides the whole house down the middle, the first door on the right, the spacious kitchen in the middle of the room The oval table (in fact, it can be said that this is a dining table in the dining room), oilcloth printed with colorful flowers; and then he used his fingers to lift the wrought brass button, and the lid of the box fell back, revealing a black Memorandum, product brochure... On the other side of the table stood a sideboard (as a typical dining-room sideboard would have been), on which stood a rectangular mirror frame among a myriad of odd objects, from coffee mills to colonial Spiky tropical fish, everything; the frame is made of nickel-plated metal, twenty centimeters high, reclining on invisible legs; inside the frame is a photo of Violet in his youth. Of course, the person in the picture is not Violet, but a girl who is like her miniature in every way, especially the face; According to her mature lines, she is already a young girl.She was wearing everyday clothes—the clothes of a little village girl, which is surprising, because in the countryside it is not usual to take snapshots and enlarge them, and to take pictures is always to commemorate some important event (in her case This age is usually commemorating the First Holy Communion), put on festive clothes, go to the photo studio, and stand between a chair and a pot of palm trees.Violet, on the other hand, stood with her back against a straight pine tree, her head resting on the bark, her legs rigid and slightly apart, her arms behind her back.Her posture is a mixture of resignation and rebellion, and she looks as if she has been tied to a tree. "What a beautiful daughter you have," said the traveling salesman affectionately. "Don't mention it, she is a real villain in our family. Don't believe her obedient appearance, she is obsessed with ghosts, this little ghost factory A domestic conversation began; Mathias, though interested in the education of his daughters--especially in that of Jacqueline, a disobedient girl who added so much trouble--was interested in the two older ones. The happy engagement of the young girl expressed great pleasure, but the mother did not express any intention of buying a watch.The issue of wedding presents has long since been resolved, and the family is trying to save money as much as possible. Unfortunately this woman was very nagging, and he had to listen patiently to the endless domestic chatter that was of no use to him, and he dared not interrupt her, for he had already taken the liberty of calling himself a friend of her family.From the conversation, he learned clearly about the situation of the two sons-in-law and their future marriage plans.After they planned to go on a honeymoon trip in the mainland, one of the couples would return to live on the island, and the other would live in... Violet's legs were spread apart, but they were all against the tree trunk; his heels touched the roots, and The distance between the heels is equal to the circumference of the trunk—about forty centimeters.Because of the tuft of grass growing in front, the little rope that tied her in this position was not visible.The forearms are tied behind the back and crossed at the waist, and each hand rests in the crook of the other's elbow.The shoulders must have been tied to the tree from behind, too, probably with straps through the armpits, but it couldn't be seen.The girl seemed tired and tense; her head was tilted to the right, her whole body was slightly twisted to the right, her right waist was slightly raised, protruding a little more than her left waist; only the front of her right foot touched the ground, her right elbow was hidden behind her, and The tip of the elbow protrudes beyond the trunk.This snapshot was taken by a traveler who visited the island last summer. Although the posture of the person in the photo is a bit rigid, the photo is full of vitality.Fortunately, this foreigner only stayed on the island for one day, otherwise God knows what else he would have done.The woman thought her daughter needed strict discipline, and unfortunately her father was dead (of which the traveling salesman knew, of course), and she took advantage of this opportunity to torment her mother nearly to the point of madness.The woman was already afraid that once her two dignified older daughters got married, she would be left alone with this heartless daughter; this child was only fifteen years old and would be disgraced by the family. Mathias wondered what the girl had done to make her mother hate her so much.There was no doubt that the girl looked precocious.But "no heart", "nonsense", "pranks"... are another matter.The fact that she was engaged and broke off to the young fisherman is not clear.Not to mention anything else, this kind of man who "falls in love" with this kind of little girl is first of all playing an absurd role.Why did the foreigner only spend one afternoon with the girl, but gave her a photo with such a gorgeous frame as a commemoration of the trip?The mother speaks without a smile of her daughter's "magical powers," and says emphatically: "People should have burned her as a witch long ago for something less." The dry grass at the foot of the pine started to catch fire, and the hem of the cottonwood was also ablaze.Violet's body twisted the other way, her head thrown back, her mouth gaping open.Mathias was finally able to say goodbye.当然，他要把雅克莲最近一次胡闹的行为告诉她的过于宽大的舅父。不，今天早上他不会遇见她的，既然她把羊群赶到悬崖的边沿去放牧，离开大路很远，而他自己是不会离开大路的，离开了大路就是向相反方向走去——走到马力克的农舍——除非他继续一直走到灯塔那里去。 他没有看自己手上的手表，免得因为浪费了这一段时间又引起自己徒然的悔恨。他宁愿尽量把车子踏快一点，可是小箱子碍手碍脚；为了改变一下这种状况，他一边使车子滑行，一边用左手同时扶着车柄和拿着小箱子——这样也并不十分方便。道路逐渐陡起来，使他不得不降低速度。此外，阳光和炎热越来越猛烈。 他停下来两次去访问路边两间孤零零的房子；他离开得那么匆忙，以致他心里总有那么一个印象：只要再逗留十秒钟，他的买卖就可能成功了。 他到达通向磨坊的叉路口上的时候，继续一直朝前走：他突然觉得拐弯是没有用的。 再过去一点，他经过一所小房子，离大道——大道从这里起变得平坦了——一点不远，可是他借口这房子太简陋，没有停下来。他想他应该到马力克的农舍里走一趟：他早就认识他们一家，他肯定能叫他们作成他一次买卖。再过去二公里，大路拐弯的地方，向左边叉出去的一条小路通往农庄，向右边叉出去的一条小路就是连接西南海岸的那条小路——直达年轻的维奥莱在悬崖边沿放羊的地方…… 海潮不断上涨。风越往这边吹，海水的冲击越猛烈。高大的浪头冲过来以后，就有一滩白色的瀑布从平滑的岩身上流回到海里去。小簇储色的泡沫，被最外边的岩石挡住，又受到回头浪的冲击，在阳光底下旋转飞舞。 在一个向右边凹进去的海岸凹口里面，风浪比较平静，浪潮一个接着一个在平滑的抄滩上消失，留下薄薄的一条泡沫花边，随着海浪的退走而不规则地向前移动，绘画出连续的花彩——不断地消失或者构成新的花样。 已经到了转弯角，看见那块二公里的白色路碑了（从这里起，再过去一千六百公尺，就是大路尽头那个大灯塔所在的村子了）。 交叉路口紧接着就出现了：左边是通到农舍去的；右边一路小路，开头很宽，自行车可以毫无困难地驶进去，可是不久就变成一条狭窄的泥土小路，仅能容纳一辆自行车顺利通过——路两旁灌木丛和低矮的金雀花丛中，随处可以发现一段段的车辙——过了几百公尺以后，路面倾斜成为浅坡，一直伸向开始耸起的崖脚。马弟雅思让车子自己滚下坡去。