Chapter 9 part three

one The new movie advertisement has a landscape painting on it. At least Mathias thought he saw in the intertwined lines of the advertisement a wasteland with clusters of small trees, but there must be something else superimposed on the painting: because there are There are some shapes or colors that cannot be owned by the original painting.However, no one dared to say that a second painting was actually printed on it, because there was no visible connection between the two, and it was impossible to guess the purpose of the addition. Confused, it makes people wonder if the painting on it is a landscape.

The names of the main actors were printed at the top of the ad--all foreign names Mathias thought he had seen many times, but he couldn't remember their faces.At the bottom of the ad, printed in large letters is probably the title of the film: "Mr. X and the Double Loop".The title is so different from popular titles—not very alluring, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with humans—it’s almost impossible to tell what kind of movie it is.Maybe a detective movie, or a sci-fi flick. Mathias tried again to see what the intertwining arcs and angles meant, but couldn't see anything—he wasn't even sure if it was two pictures superimposed, or just one, or Three or even many paintings.

He stepped back a meter, trying to see the whole picture more clearly, but the more he saw it, the more confused he became. He only felt that the outline of the painting was blurred, endlessly changing, and incomprehensible.The movie wasn't showing until Saturday night or Sunday, and he couldn't see it because he was leaving on Friday afternoon. "Beautiful ad! Hmm!" said a familiar voice. Mathias raised his eyes.The garage owner's head was on display in the door opening above the billboard. "Yeah, it's a pretty advertisement..." began the traveling salesman cautiously.

"It's strange," continued the other, "where they got all these incredible colors!" Does this mean that he has already seen what the lines mean? "I'll bring you back the bicycle," said Mathias. "The fellow just played me a big joke!" "I don't think it's strange," the owner of the garage replied with a slight smile. "These new cars look shiny, but they are really not durable at all." The traveling salesman related his misfortunes just now: he was a few seconds late and missed the boat because of the fault in the chain, which delayed him for five minutes at the last moment.

The owner of the garage thought this kind of thing was too common, so he didn't even listen to him.he asks: "Did you come back from the dock?" "just came back……" "Would you like to take the bicycle with you?" the man said aloud, but always in a cheerful manner. Mathias explained that he had been to the cigarette shop to return the car and pay the rent, but there was no one there.He went out into the square again—for he didn't know what to do—and heard the steamer's whistle for the last time, after which the portholes were about to close.He went to the pier--he wasn't in a hurry, it was too late--he just wanted to see how the little steamers were going--to relax in general...

"Yes," said the man, "I saw you. I was there just now, at the end of the jetty." "Now I'm going to rent a room until Friday. Where can I get it?" The garage owner seemed to be thinking. "Today the ship is at least five minutes late." He was silent for a long time before saying. Of course, there are no hotels on the island, and there are no people who rent out rooms.Sometimes someone wants to rent a vacant room, but it is difficult to get in and out, and the equipment is uncomfortable.The best way to find out if a room is currently available is to inquire at the Hope coffee shop on the pier.Then the traveling salesman asked for the rent of the bicycle, and the owner asked for twenty crowns.From the perspective of the fact that the bicycle was new on the one hand, and that it was not working properly on the other, it was difficult to say whether the rent of twenty kronor was cheap or expensive.

"Oh, wait a minute," said the tobacco shop owner, "you can go to the widow Leduc, she lives not far from here, and she always has a nice room to let, but she is mad today, because she The girl is missing, it's best not to look for her." "Who's missing?" asked the traveling salesman. "Mrs. Leduc is an old friend of mine. I was only in her house this morning. I hope nothing happened?" "It's that girl Jacqueline again. Her family has been looking for her since noon, but they can't find her anywhere." "She may not be far away! This island is not very big."

Meadows and fields, potato fields, roadsides, hollows under overhanging rocks, sand, rocks, sea... "Don't worry," the man said with a wink. "Of course someone knows where she is." Now Mathias dared not leave.Once again he delayed too long.Again he had to struggle with pauses in speech that could break the conversation after every sentence. "So that's how it is," he said, "Is this the thing about shepherding that was talked about over there in Black Rock Village?" "Yes! She herds the sheep, but it is the shepherdess who steals the food!"

Among them: "Thirteen! That's a pitiful thing to say!"—"She's bewitched, the girl."—"Having a child is troublesome."—"She should be given a meal..." There is no reason for this conversation to end.Mathias said something, the man answered, Mathias answered.The man said something, and Mathias answered it.Mathias said something, and Mathias answered by himself.The shamefully slender figure of the little Jacqueline crept up the road, over the rocks and overhangs.In the lowlands where the wind cannot blow, on the grass of the pasture, under the shade of the bushes.Leaning against the trunk of a pine tree, she paused and slowly ran her fingertips through her hair, neck, shoulders...

She always came home to sleep--hers was the last one on the edge of town on the road to the lighthouse.Mathias will be boarding at her house this evening, and after saying good night to his mother and the two eldest daughters, he will hold a lighted candle in his right hand and the one through which he had carefully placed the little rope in his left. Little box, go upstairs to the bedroom; just look up, and he can see a little peasant girl in a black robe leading him up the dark stairs a few steps ahead, that is the childlike Violet... Violet!Violet! He pushed open the door of the coffee shop.Three sailors—one young, two older—sat around a table and were drinking wine.The terrified maid behind the counter, who looked like a beaten dog, leaned her back on the door frame of the inner room, her wrists gathered from her waist to her back.Mathias wiped his eyes.

He offered to rent a room.Without saying a word, she led him up the narrow spiral steps of the second staircase. As soon as she went up the stairs, the surroundings suddenly became dark, and she was very lightly stacking boxes and various sundries. up and down the stairs of things.They reached the landing, walked down narrow passages, and arrived at the room with the black and white flagstones...the bed had been remade.The bedside lamp was on on the small bedside table, and the bright light shone on the red fabric by the bedside, as well as on the several tiles and the sheepskin rug.On the dressing table, among the bottles of various sizes, there is the aluminum-plated metal photo frame slightly tilted back, which contains the photo.On the photo, the big oval mirror showed again... Mathias wiped his eyes. The young girl finally figured out that he wanted to rent a room for three days, as close to the port as possible.He went there as soon as she told him where the house was; the house was no longer really in the town, but near the town, in the middle of a wasteland which ran along the sea and the last few days of the town. The houses are next to each other, near the breakwater.The place, though rather remote, was closer to the docks than some parts of the town itself - the area between the old port and the ruins of the fort, for example, was farther from the docks. Although this house was outwardly better, cleaner, and more painted and whitewashed than most of the houses visited by the traveling salesman, it was clearly a building of the same age and style as the rest. Simple: only downstairs, no upstairs, and no attic; the front of the house is the same as the back, each with two small, almost square windows, with a low door in between.The gate is on the side facing the street—this street is a branch road, probably a shortcut leading to the fisherman's village that Mathias visited before Haijie of the "Gunma"—and the gate is also decorated with the same pattern. The thorn rose, with leaves like gorse leaves, perhaps more in bloom. A straight corridor bisected the house from front door to back door, leading to four rooms.Mathias's room was the one on the left inside, so it faced the back of the house—that is, it faced the cliff. The Hanging Rock is not very high--at any rate, not higher than the Hanging Rock on the south-west coast or the two bays at either end of the island.Its right side juts out into a coastal notch, and the ground is a little lower, allowing one to see the sea about half a kilometer away. From the peak on the edge of the hanging rock - just opposite the house - to the house, there is only a flat field not exceeding three hundred meters, the terrain is slightly undulating, and there is a deserted garden, which is still surrounded by a wire fence. , wire nailed to a stake.The whole landscape—the low sky, the triangular sea, the hanging rocks, the gardens—is rendered in gray.It has no luster and no shades of color. The windows facing the view were a meter wide and hardly more than a meter high—comprising four panes of equal size, bare of decoration, without curtains or windscreens.The window is deeply embedded in the wall, the room is large, and there is no transom on the door, so the light coming in through this window actually makes the whole room in darkness.There was only enough light on a small sturdy table built into an alcove to write or draw. The rest of the room was in darkness.The interior decoration accentuated this shortcoming: the wallpaper was very dark, the furniture was tall and heavy, and the wood was dark and crowded together.There was so much furniture stacked along the four walls that one wondered if this room was a living room or a utility room for extra furniture.What is particularly eye-catching are the three huge wardrobes, two of which are placed side by side, opposite the door leading to the corridor, almost occupying the entire wall of the room, leaving only a small space just enough to put a small wardrobe. The small dresser--this dresser stood in the darkest corner of the room, to the left of the window, and was separated from the window by two long chairs with paper-backed backs in the middle.On the other side of the window frame, there are two other chairs, corresponding to the two chairs here.Of the four chairs, only three are of the same style. Therefore, starting from the window and counting from the left (that is, counterclockwise), the total furniture in the room is: 1st chair, 2nd chair, dresser (in the corner), 1st wardrobe , a second wardrobe (to the second corner), a third chair, a cherrywood bed (with the head of the bed against the wall), a small round table with a fourth chair in front of it, a a chest of drawers (in the third corner), the door leading to the corridor, a writing desk with a folded-out top, then a third wardrobe placed diagonally in the fourth corner, and finally the fifth and third Six chairs.The last wardrobe is the largest, and the door is always locked. The shoebox where he keeps the small ropes is placed in the right corner of the bottom layer of this wardrobe. The little girl's body was found at low tide the next morning.It was a fisherman who caught a large crab, which has a smooth crab back, also known as a sleeping crab, and accidentally discovered it on the rocks below the two-kilometer turning angle. The traveling salesman got the news over an aperitif at the counter of the Hope coffee shop.The fisherman who narrated the incident seemed to know perfectly well where the body had been found, its position, and its condition; but he was not among those who found it, nor did he say that he had afterwards seen it himself.He seemed as unimpressed by what he was describing as if he had found a sugar mannequin on the shore.He spoke slowly and thoroughly, giving all the necessary specifics - though sometimes in an irrational order - and even adding what appeared to be reasonable explanations for each detail.Everything is clear, unmistakable, ordinary. Little Jacqueline lay naked on a patch of brown seaweed, among the large round rocks.The waves must have washed her naked, for it was impossible for her to drown in a bath at such a dangerous shore at this season.The hanging rock here is very steep. She must have lost her balance and fell down while playing on the edge of the hanging rock.Perhaps she once tried to walk to the sea by stepping on the protruding rock on the left, which was steep and more or less accessible.She might have missed, or slipped, or stepped on a ledge of rock that was too weak.She fell—a few meters high—to her death, breaking her bony neck. Just as the presumption of bathing cannot be established, so is the supposition that a silent swell carried her away at high tide; in fact, she had very little water in her lungs—if she had drowned in water. , the water in the lungs will be much more.In addition, she had bruises on her head and limbs, which were more like injuries from falling and hitting a ledge of rocks than a body from being washed up on the rocks by the sea.However—and this is to be expected—the rest of the body also bears some superficial scars that look like postmortem abrasions. In any case, it is difficult for a non-expert, even accustomed to such accidents, to determine with certainty the origin of the various wounds and blood spots found on the young girl's body; especially since crabs or some large fish Has begun to damage some particularly tender parts of the body.Fishermen believe that a man - especially an adult - can resist these attacks longer. He also thought that even a doctor would say nothing more about the matter, since it seemed to him clear enough.From him again the traveling salesman learned that there was no doctor on the island, and that the sailor, who spoke with authority, had been a nurse in the navy.There is only one old security team member here, and according to the custom, he only needs to fill in and issue a death certificate. The body had been sent back to the old mother, and two or three pieces of clothing scattered in the nearby seaweed were picked up and sent back together.According to the nurse, Mrs. Leduc was quite at peace when she learned the whereabouts of her youngest daughter and the main reason why she did not come home last night.No one in the audience was surprised by this. The audience—five other fishermen, the shopkeeper, and the young special girl—followed the narrative from beginning to end without interrupting, nodding only at key passages.Mathias did likewise. After the narration, there was a pause for a moment.Then the nurse repeated certain passages of the story, using the same vocabulary and sentences with the same structure: "Those crabs have begun to eat the softest parts: lips, neck, hands, ... and other places ... but only the beginning, there is little damage. Or it may be a red eel, or a white fish." There was another moment of silence, and finally someone said: "The devil finally punished her!" It was a fisherman who spoke--the young one.Immediately there was a burst of voices around him, the voice was quite low, neither agreeing nor disapproving.Then everyone fell silent again.Outside the glass door, beyond the stone pavement and mud, is the sea; the sea in the port this morning is gray, dull, and of no shade.The sun still hasn't come out. A voice behind Mathias said: "Perhaps someone pushed her—eh?—she fell... Otherwise, the girl is very agile." This time the silence was longer.The traveling salesman turned his head to inspect the audience in the hall, trying to read from their faces who had just spoken. "Anyone can stumble," said the nurse. Mathias drained the glass of absinthe in one gulp and set the glass down on the counter. He saw his right hand resting on the edge of the counter beside the empty wine glass, and he shoved it in the pocket of his jacket.The hand touched the opened pack of cigarettes in his pocket.He took one out of his pocket, put it on his mouth, and lit it. He rounded his lips and exhaled a puff of smoke. The smoke formed a large circle on the liquor counter, and then slowly changed in the calm air, as if it was about to become two rings of the same size.Mathias wanted to borrow a pair of scissors from the hostess as soon as possible to cut off the long nails. He didn't want to keep the long nails for another two days.Only then did he remember for the first time that he had left three cigarette butts on the grass on the hanging rock, below the two-kilometer turn. It didn't do him any harm to walk a little, and he had nothing else to do.It would take an hour, maybe an hour and a half at the most—he would be back in time for lunch—and this meant going to the house of his old friend Malick, whom he hadn't seen yesterday. He went to the bottom of the small valley again, that is, in the depression where the wind cannot blow.He thought he recognized the place, but the way he remembered it looked a little different from the way it actually looked before him.Losing the flock is not enough to account for the change.He tried to imagine his shiny bicycle lying across the flat grass, lit by the slanting sun.But now the sun is not out. He couldn't find any cigarette butts either.His three cigarettes were only half smoked, and they were probably picked up by passers-by last night or this morning.passer!No one would come to this deserted place—except those who were looking for the little shepherdess. He looked at the grass under his feet again, and now he thought it was no big deal to forget the cigarette butts: on the island and elsewhere, everyone smoked the blue brand of cigarettes.But Mathias's eyes did not leave the ground.He saw the little shepherdess lying at his feet, twisting to the sides, struggling weakly.He rolled her blouse and stuffed it in her mouth so that she could not cry out.When he came to the beach, he realized that he was not alone here.It was because of this that he raised his head.On the top of the hanging rock, fifteen or twenty meters away from him, a slender figure appeared against the background of the gray sky; the figure looked at him motionlessly. For a moment Mathias thought he saw little Jacqueline again.When he realized that the appearance of this kind of ghost was completely absurd, he also saw that the woman in front of him must be several centimeters taller and older than Jacqueline.On closer inspection, her face was not similar to Violet's, although he didn't think this face was strange.It took him a while to remember: this woman was the young woman of Jean Robin's family, who lived in the little house deep in the cove. He walked towards her--very slowly--almost without moving.Her costume--that of almost all the girls on the island--was simply a greatly simplified version of the old local dress: a thin black gown with long sleeves and a bodice.The waist and hips are quite close-fitting, but the skirt is very wide; the round neckline exposes the entire neck; the hairstyle is like this: take the nape as the midline, part the hair to the two sides, and comb it into two small braids, one side One, rolled into a small bridle, covering the upper half of the ears on both sides.The little girls actually wore the same skirts, only shorter and often without sleeves; As soon as the women came out of the house, they took off their narrow colored aprons and wrapped a large shawl with fringe around their shoulders.But the woman in front of her had neither an apron nor a shawl, nor was she wearing any warmer clothes, while Mathias didn't feel uncomfortable in a short skirt.He went to the top of the hanging rock, where the wind was so strong that she had to hold the ruffles of her skirt with one hand to keep it from being blown up by the wind.Now she turned her head away as if she had been caught doing something wrong. "Hello," Mathias said, "... are you out for road patrol?" "No," she said.After a few seconds, she said again, "It's over." He hadn't noticed how deep her voice was yesterday.He also couldn't remember if she had said a word.She was really short. Although the terrain where the traveling salesman was standing was low, he didn't need to raise his head to look up at her. She was only as tall as his shoulders. "The weather wasn't very nice this morning," he said. Suddenly she patted her head and looked at him, taking a step back.Her eyes were red, as if she had cried a lot.She shouted in a voice too low: "What are you looking for here? You know very well that he killed her!" She turned her head to the side again, bent her neck, trying to hide her face.The slender scratch, half-scarred, must have been a recent scratch; a movement of the edge of the puff revealed bloody spots on the skin. "Who is he?" Mathias asked. "Pierre." "Which Pierre?" "It is Pierre, your friend!" she said impatiently. Isn't his name Jean?Maybe his last name is Robin too?The name written on the door was not his. She raised her head again, and said more calmly: "I met you, it's only better." She rolled up her left sleeve and took off the watch Mathias gave her from her wrist. "I would have given it back to you long ago." "Don't you want it?" 'I want to give it back to you. " "As you please." "He'll kill me... as he killed Jacques Petit..." "Why did he kill her?" She shrugged. "Will he kill you if you keep the watch?" Mathias asked. She averted her eyes again: "He said you had said . . . He said he heard." "What did he hear?" "He heard what you said to me." "What did I say?" "I have no idea." Mathias took the watch she handed over and put it in his pocket. "Why did he kill her?" he asked. "I don't know--Jacques made fun of him." "That's not a reason." She shrugged. "He didn't kill her," said Mathias, "nobody killed her. She fell by herself. She slipped on the edge too far." "Little Jacques can't slip," said the young woman. -Look at this place.The soil slumps down every minute.Just get a little too close..." He pointed to the ledge of the cliff beside them, but she didn't even look at it. "You want to pretend you don't know," she said. "Don't worry, I won't tell." "What evidence do you have?" "You heard him say aloud at lunch yesterday: Now she will never come again... What does that mean... He pushed her down in revenge. You know very well that it was him. He was wandering around here when this happened." Mathias thought for a few minutes before answering: "You don't know when this happened." "But Maria didn't see her until half past twelve." "Before half past twelve, there is still the whole morning." The young woman hesitated for a while, and finally lowered her voice and said: "Little Jacques was still here after the stroke of eleven." Mathias recalled his own series of actions, and found that she was right.He felt that it was very bad for people to know such a detail.He asked her again: "How do you know?" Her answers were all he had expected, nothing new: she secretly visited her young girlfriend when she was herding sheep, and they parted ways at half past eleven.It can therefore be determined that the accident occurred within a period of about thirty minutes later.If only customers were so careful to remember the time when the traveling salesman crossed the road... "Even so," he said, "there's a whole hour in between . . . quite enough for a stumble." "He was wandering over the cliffs during this time, and he was chasing me, which he always does every time I walk out the door!" "Yes . . . of course . . . that's very strange. You repeat what he said at dinner: she'll never come again . . . " "Now...now she will never come again!" "Yes, yes, I heard that too." "Then you understand?" "Perhaps you are right," said Mathias. They stood there and said nothing more.Then he felt that she wanted to leave, but she only took two steps and came back, holding out her palm to show him what she had been hiding in her palm: "And I found this thing." It was a cigarette.Pointing to the bottom of the small valley with her finger, she continued: "I just found it here. People don't have the habit of throwing away half-smoked cigarettes. He often has a cigarette in his mouth every morning, and this time was no exception. His cigarette was the one when Jacques was struggling." depressed." Mathias reached out and grabbed the cigarette—probably to get a closer look.With one quick gesture he tucked the cigarette into his jacket pocket.The young woman looked at him with wide astonished eyes, and held out her hand to him for what was hers.But all he said was: "Here is the proof, indeed, that you are right." "I won't say it, don't take it away... I just wanted to throw it into the sea." She took a step back. Mathias forgot to answer.He saw her continue to back away, still looking at him with wide eyes.Then she turned sharply and ran in the direction of the lighthouse. He didn't go down the path he had just come up until she disappeared behind a plateau.At the bottom of the small valley out of the wind, the first thing that caught his sight was a second half-smoked cigarette on the grass, exactly like the first.I didn't see him when he came just now.A tuft of taller grass hid it, and no one could have seen it from any other angle had he not stood by accident in the right position. He picked up the cigarette, put it in his pocket, and began to search around the several square meters of land, hoping to find a third cigarette that might have fallen there.But he only remembered the general idea of ​​the place, and he couldn't quite determine the surrounding boundaries with certainty. He wasted all his troubles, but he never found the third cigarette.He thought it was a little shorter than the other two, and therefore less of a nuisance--especially if there was only one--any smoker of that length would have thrown it away.No one, as long as he thinks rationally, can imagine what kind of use this cigarette has ever had. Finally, Mathias thought again: Even if this cigarette butt is as long as the previous two, it can be considered that Jean Robin—or the man whose name is not Jean Robin—pulled the shepherdess with force. Lost in the struggle when heading towards the edge of the hanging rock.In a word, the main thing is that no one who might come to investigate finds more than one cigarette butt; for if one does not know what the cigarettes have been used for, one cannot suspect a traveling salesman--in the whole island In fact, perhaps the traveling salesman was the only one who never harbored any ill feeling for the dead girl, and it would be ridiculous to suspect him. On the contrary, the presence of several cigarette butts at the same time seems strange, which can make people guess that the girl's death was not due to a love dispute and her lover's revenge, but for other reasons; It is even more suspicious if it is not caused by seawater erosion, nor by fish or crab bites. Mathias, therefore, had only to destroy the two cigarette butts he had found, and declare that he had thrown away the one that the young woman had just handed him. This conversation and his own search took him a lot of time. In order to gain time, Mathias thought of taking another path, which would not pass the corner of the main road and reach the town directly.The wilderness is full of criss-cross paths, and there is a lot of choice.But the undulating terrain made him unable to see the destination he wanted to go to, so he had to rely on guesswork to determine the direction, and decided to make a turn of about 30 degrees from the road he came from. He must also walk a well-trodden path.In this way, not only can you avoid the inconvenience of walking among the thorn bushes, but you can also hope to find the shortcut from Maria Leduc to the hanging rock. Unfortunately, none of the countless trails available fit the thirty-degree angle he had calculated, so at the outset he had to choose one of two possible detours.These two roads are winding and intermittent, sometimes parting, sometimes joining, constantly crossing each other, and even breaking off suddenly at a bush.This made him have to turn again and again, stop and hesitate, and back away, encountering new problems with every step he took, and losing any confidence in the direction he chose. In addition, Mathias often made choices without careful consideration in the criss-crossing roads.He walked so fast that he didn't have much time to think.Something more serious troubled him, and that was his analysis of the three cigarette butts: the one left on the cliff was not the one the young woman had picked up.And she justified that crime by the abnormal length of the cigarette butt.Now, if a two-centimeter cigarette butt is publicly shown, how can the traveling salesman—in case of a confrontation—convince her to admit that it is the one she handed him?To explain why the cigarette end becomes shorter.Mathias had to admit that he had lit and smoked a cigarette before throwing it away—an explanation that was neither simple nor true. His reasoning and assumptions were interrupted by a surprise: it turned out that he was suddenly back on the main road, just opposite the road leading to Malick's farmhouse, in other words, two kilometers away from the road. Not far from the monument. Looking back, he recognized the trail that had brought him here, indeed the one he had walked on less than an hour before, and the same one he had cycled up here yesterday.After a few turns and a few more circles, he went back to his old path without noticing it. This incident disturbed him: he now suspected that there was no shortcut from the town to the depression in the cliff, whereas all his previous thoughts had assumed that there must be such a shortcut.Of course, this unexpected event delayed him even more: he was almost forty minutes late for lunch. This lack of punctuality annoyed him himself, since it was a favor of the coffee shop to serve him meals, which were only promised because there were no official restaurants at this time of year.He was the only customer in the coffee shop, and the owner pointed this out to him politely, but firmly, as soon as he passed.Mathias was out of breath from running, and looked very flustered: "I walked all the way to my old friend Malik's house," he argued, "you know, his house is over there in Black Rock Village. They kept me past my scheduled time..." He immediately realized how careless these few words were.He immediately stopped talking. Originally, he wanted to add that Logitech Malick wanted to keep him for dinner, but he refused because he was waiting here, etc., but he didn't dare to say any more.Perhaps Robert Malick himself had just walked out of Hope; it was best not to lie back, lest further exposure be revealed.His first lie was already in danger of being formally denied, and thus arousing all kinds of suspicions... "But you come from the road from the Great Lighthouse?" asked the innkeeper, who had been standing on the door-post looking down at him. "Of course it is." "Since you came on foot, you can take a much shorter way. Why didn't they tell you about it?" "They were probably afraid that I would get lost." "But the way is easy: just keep going along the back of the meadow. The path starts here, just behind." (He makes a vague gesture with his right hand) Mathias had to change the subject quickly, lest the other party ask where he passed and who he met in the farmhouse.Fortunately, the owner of the store was quite talkative at noon that day, and he took the initiative to change the subject, talking about the main news of the day: the tragic death of the youngest girl in the Leduc family.Hanging rocks are dangerous, rocks are fragile, oceans are unreliable, children are disobedient, and often do things that adults forbid them to do... “您要我告诉您大伙的意见吗？说也可怜，她的死对任何人都不是一个大损失。她真是一个恶魔，这女孩！” 马弟雅思根本没有注意听这一番话。他对这一切再也不感到兴趣。刚才他那么轻率地说出来的那番谎话，使他担足了心事：他每时每刻都害怕对方再提起这件事。他只有一个想法：尽快吃完午饭，真正到那个该死的农舍去一次，把谎话变成一件提早说出来的真事。 可是一到了码头上脱了险，他心里平静多了。他并不去寻找酒店主人和马力克老太太都提起过的那条越过草场的小路。他向左转，像惯常那样走到三角形小广场上。他开始不信任那些近路了。 他不愿意走高低不平的铺石道，宁愿走码头边沿大石块铺成的平坦的路了。在石块上走起来更方便些。可是他没浪费时间去欣赏二三公尺下面还没有被潮水淹没的沙泥土面的垃圾了。他也毫无困难地摆脱了第二个诱惑物——五金店的柜窗。广场中间，死者纪念碑在多云的天空底下显得比较随便。围成圆形的很高的铁栏杆再也不把它的垂直铁条的影子投射到人行道的石板上了。直立在台座上面的雕像仍然眺望大海，可是它的石头脸上并不流露任何优郁。旅行推销员要安安静静地去访问他的老朋友，他也不想打听关于老朋友的任何重要消息——好的坏的都不要——因为老太太已经把主要的情形告诉他了。他的视线偶然落到电影广告牌上的那幅五颜六色的海报上，他把眼睛挪开。他要安安静静地去访问……等等。