Chapter 2 Chapter One

Grant lay on his white hospital bed and stared at the ceiling in disgust.He was well aware of every new crack in the white surface.He once turned this ceiling into a map and explored it; traveling between rivers, islands and land.He also used the ceiling to play guessing games, looking for hidden shapes; imagining faces, birds and fish.He also used the ceiling to do math, reliving his childhood; reciting theorems, measuring angles and doing trigonometry.But now Grant has nothing to do but stare at it.He hated this ceiling in his eyes. He had suggested that Dwarf moved his bed a bit so he could develop a new ceiling, but that seemed to disrupt the harmony of the room.In the hospital, coordination is second only to cleanliness, and it is so sacred and inviolable that anything that disrupts the balance is a kind of profanity.Why doesn't he study?she asked.

Why didn't he buy those expensive new novels his friends brought him? "Too many people have been born into this world, and too many words have been written. It is frightening to think of the millions of words being printed every minute." "You are too cynical." Dwarf Winter Melon said. Dwarf Melon was Nurse Ingleham, five feet two inches tall and well proportioned. Grant called her shorty as compensation, since he was now, so to speak, bossed around by a woman he could have easily handled.Not only because she always told him what he could do and what he couldn't do, but when she easily lifted his eight-foot body, he felt even more humiliated.Obviously, weight is nothing to a dwarf melon.She throws mattresses like she's juggling a turntable with careless grace.She was replaced by Amazon, with arms like beech branches.Amazon is Nurse Dallow, from Gloucestershire who gets homesick every daffodil season. (The dwarf melon comes from Lyon St. Annes, and daffodils mean nothing to her.) She has big soft hands, big soft eyes, and always seems to have infinite compassion for you, but even The slightest physical exertion would make her pant like a pump.On the whole, Grant found it more humiliating to be thought of as dead weight than as light as a feather.

The reason Grant was bedridden, the fault of the gnomes and the Amazons, was because he tripped over a swinging door in the ground.This is of course a great disgrace, especially compared to the other patients of Amazon and Dwarf Melon.To trip over a flipped door is the ultimate folly;He was passionately pursuing Benny at the time.Scoo, in the middle of their walk, suddenly lost half his height. Fortunately, Benny lost her center of gravity at the next corner and crashed into the arms of Officer Williams, which allowed Grant to regain his mental balance. Benny had been away from him for three years, which was all right for a man who was used to his freedom, but Benny didn't have to play by the rules all the time, and not in the hospital.

Grant stopped staring at the ceiling and turned his gaze to a large book on the bedside table; a pile of expensive books that the gnocchi had been encouraging him to read.The top one had a beautiful landscape of Pelegah, dyed an unnatural pink, and it was Lavinia.Feige's annual history of impeccable heroine struggles.The port scene on the cover indicates that the heroine must be a navy wife, whether she is called Valerie or Angela or Cecil or Denise.He opened the book and read something like Lavinia's. "Sweat and the Plow" is Silas.Wickley's 700 pages of local literature.From the first paragraph, it is similar to Silas's previous book: mother lies on the eleventh floor and sleeps late, father works hard on the ninth floor, the eldest son lies to the government in the cowshed, the eldest daughter and her lover lie on the straw In the pile, the others lived humble lives in the barn.Rainwater leaks from thatched roofs, and manure steams in dunghills.Silas never skipped the fertilizer part.It's not Xi Lasi's fault that only the fertilizer steam section has a positive feeling. If there is any brand of fertilizer steam that is downward, Xi Lasi will definitely use it.

Beneath the heavy shadows of Silas and the bright cover lies a love story of Edwardian opulence and baroque romance called The Bell on Her Toe.Rupert in the book.Lu Zhi teased the evil.Rupert.Lu Zhi always makes you laugh out loud in the first three pages. On page three you find Rupert imitating George.Bernashaw, a joking and unruly guy, uses irony, the cheapest and most convenient way, to express his wit, which is irony.So after three sentences, you're ready to read the joke. The one with the red gun flare on the dark green cover is Oscar.Oakley's new work.Those difficult dialogues in compound American English are neither humorous nor poignant.Blondes, bars, intense chases, very outstanding trash.

"The Case of the Lost Can Opener" by John.james.Mark, there are three procedural errors on the first two pages, which give Grant at least five minutes of fun in composing an imaginary letter to the author. He couldn't remember what the thin blue book was at the bottom.Some serious book on statistics, he thought.Chi Chi flies, calories, or sex or something. Even with that kind of book, you can anticipate what the next page will be.Why in this vast world, no one tries to change it?Why is everyone nailed to the formula now?Writers today write what their readers want them to write.People talk about "a new Silas. Vicky"

Or "a new Lavinia Fitch" as if they said "a new brick" or "a new comb."They never say "a new book by so-and-so," people are no longer interested in the book itself, but simply because it is new.They already knew exactly what kind of book it was going to be. Grant looked away from the pile of books that dazzled him, thinking that it would be a good thing if the world stopped printing for a generation.Let literature pause for a while.Some Superman should invent a beam that stops everything at the same time.Then when you lie flat on the bed, no one will send you so many boring things, and there will be no housekeeper nagging you to read them.

He heard the door open, but he didn't want to find out.He turned his face to the wall, as if making a firm statement. He heard someone approaching his bed and closed his eyes to avoid talking.He wanted neither Gloucestershire's sympathy nor Lancashire's tact now.But at this moment, a breath with the fragrance of the grass in his hometown turned into a faint temptation to tease his sense of smell and make him dizzy. He savored and pondered calmly.Dwarf melons smell of lavender-scented body powder, and Amazons smell of soap and iodine.But now it was Lancarouse's perfume that permeated his nose, and among the people he knew, there was only one person who wore Lancarouse No. 5, and that was Marta.Harold.

He was squinting at her with one eye open, and she had bent over to see if he was asleep, and was standing hesitantly, looking at the apparently untouched pile of books on the table.Under her arm are two new books and a bouquet of white lilacs on the other.He didn't know if she chose white lilac because it was the perfect tweed for winter (she had it in her dressing room at the theater from December to March) or because it wouldn't take away from her black and white dress of the day The elegant demeanor of the dress.On her head was a new hat, and on her forehead was the pearl necklace she always wore: the necklace that had helped him win her back.She looked very well-mannered, very Parisian, and, God forbid, not like a paramedic.

"Did I wake you up, Aaron?" "No, I'm not asleep." "Looks like I'm overdoing it," she said, placing the two books she'd brought along with the others that had been ignored. "I hope you find these two books a little more interesting than the others you've read. Wouldn't you like to read a little bit of our Lavinia?" "I can't read anything." "Will you be in pain?" "It hurts like hell, but it's neither my legs nor my back." "What is that?" "What my cousin Lola calls a 'boring prick'."

"Poor Aaron, your Laura is absolutely right." She took a bouquet of narcissus out of the obviously oversized glass jar, dropped them into the washbasin in one of her most graceful gestures, and then Insert the lilacs. "Some people think that boredom is some serious exhaustion, but it's not, of course. It's the little things." "Insignificant, like being struck down by hives." "Why don't you find something to do?" "Improve this shining moment?" "Improve your mind, not to mention your soul and temper. You can study some kind of philosophy, yoga or something. But I think an analytical mind may not be able to appreciate abstract things." "I did think about going back to algebra, which I never really got into in school. But I've been doing so many geometry problems on that damn ceiling lately that I'm kind of out of touch with math." "Well, I guess it's no use asking people in your situation to do puzzles. What about crosswords? I can find you a book like that, if you want." "Please do not." "You can make your own, sure. I've heard it's more fun to design crosswords than to solve them." "Maybe, but a dictionary weighs a few pounds. Besides, I've always hated looking things up in reference books." "Do you play chess? I don't remember. How about solving the game? The white moves and the opponent moves three moves or something." "My interest in chess is entirely pictorial." "Image?" "Very decorative, samurai and pawns, etc., very elegant." "It's so cute, I can help you bring a set of chess to play. Well, instead of playing chess, you can do some academic research. That is also a kind of mathematics.Find answers to unanswered questions. " "You mean crime? I'm familiar with all the cases in history that have gone nowhere. Of course a man in bed cannot contribute anything." "I don't mean the archives at Scotland Yard, I mean the more classical ones, certain mysteries that have baffled people for a long time." "For example what?" "Like a letter in a box." "Oh, not Mary, Queen of Scots." "Why not?" Marta asked, looking at Marley, as all actresses do. Stuart always glorified her. "I will be interested in a bad woman, but I will never study a stupid woman." "Stupid?" Marta says, her best contralto for playing the Electra. "Very stupid." "Oh, Aaron, how can you say that?" "If she wore another hair accessory, no one would pay attention to her at all. It's all about the beanie." "You think she'd love less if she wore a bonnet?" "She's never been more in love, no matter what hat she's wearing." Marta's face stinks as if she spent an hour grooming and then received the most severe humiliation in her life at the theater. "Why do you think that?" "Mary Stuart is eight feet tall, and almost all women of great stature are frigid. The doctors say so." When he was talking, it suddenly occurred to him that Marta had regarded him as a backup flower protector all these years, how he had never thought that her calmness and rationality towards men might also have something to do with her height. But Marta didn't think about it, she was still thinking about her favorite queen. "At least she was a martyr, you can't deny that." "Martyrdom for what?" "Her religion." "She was martyred only by her rheumatism. She married Donley without the Pope's permission, and with Protestant rites." "Wait a minute and you'll tell me she's not even a prisoner anymore." "Your problem is that in your imagination she is in a small room at the top of the castle with iron bars on the windows and only one old servant praying with her. In fact she lives in a mansion with sixty servants When the number of servants was reduced to thirty, she complained bitterly. When there were only two male secretaries, a few maids, a tailor, and one or two cooks left, she could not bear to live. Out of pocket to help her cover these costs. She paid the money for twenty years, and for twenty years, Mary.Stuart also continued to sell the crown of the King of Scotland to the whole of Europe, hoping that someone would launch a revolution and let her return to her lost throne, or let her ascend to the throne of Queen Elizabeth. " He saw Marta smiling. "Do you feel better?" "Is something better?" "Boring thorns." he laughed. "Yes, I've forgotten them just now. It's at least a good thing Mary Stuart did." "How do you know Mary so well?" "I wrote an essay about her my last year at school." "You don't like her, I suppose." "Didn't like her what I found." "You don't think she is tragic." "Oh, she is, very much. But not what the general public thinks. Her tragedy is that she was born a queen and has the appearance of a country peasant woman. Shaming Mrs. Tudor across the street is harmless and funny. Maybe it will affect your odd job. chance, but after all it only affects you personally. But doing the same to a country would be dire. If you were to stake the lives of tens of millions of people in a country just to humiliate a royal rival, you would It ended in failure." He thought for a while and then said, "If she is a teacher in a girls' school, she must be very successful." "You are wicked." "I have good intentions. The staff will love her, and the little girls will adore her. That's what I call her tragedy." "Well, it looks like there's no more messages in the box, what else? The Man in the Iron Mask?" "I don't remember who it was, but I'm not interested in anyone who hides behind tin. I'm not interested in anyone unless I can see his face." "Ah, yes, I've forgotten your enthusiasm for faces. The Boyars are pretty good-looking folks, if you look around, they ought to have a mystery or two for you to study. Or Birkin Warbeck, certainly. Impersonation is always very attractive, isn't it?lovely game.The weight can never be all the way here or there, you push it down and it gets up again, like a tumbler. " The door opened, and Mrs. Tinker's ordinary face emerged from under the brim of her hat, which was more ordinary than her face and had a long history.Mrs. Tinkle had worn it since she first served Grant, so he could hardly imagine her wearing anything else.As far as he knew she did own another hat, and she said that when she wore the blue one, she was feeling melancholy.She was "melancholy" only occasionally, and she was never at 19 Tenby Road.She usually wears this hat because she feels that traditional etiquette requires it, and it becomes the standard of evaluation for the entire ceremony. ("Did you like it, Tinker. What is it like? ""Not worthy of my sad little cap. ") She wore it to Princess Elizabeth's wedding, and various other royal ceremonies, and in fact she even had a two-second flash on a newsreel where the Duchess of Kent cut the ribbon. For Rand, this is just a news report: a criterion for judging the social value of a certain occasion, whether it is worth wearing the hat that symbolizes "I am blue". "I heard you had a visitor," said Mrs. Tinker, "and as I was about to leave I found the voice sounded familiar, so I said to myself, 'It must be Miss Harold,' so I came in." She carried various paper bags and a small bouquet of autumn peonies.She greeted Marta in a woman-to-woman manner, and she was considered well-dressed in her day, so she naturally gave a modest compliment to the stage goddess' costume, while at the same time she glanced at Marta. beautiful lilac flowers.Marta didn't see Mrs. Tinker's eyes, but she saw the small bouquet of anchovies, and she immediately handled the situation with a skillful gesture as if she had rehearsed it. "It's a waste of me to buy white lilacs for you. The wild lilies brought by Mrs. Tink can compare to me." "lily?" "They're one of King Solomon's glory, not too restrictive, not too wild." Mrs. Tinkle only went to church at weddings and baptisms, but she belonged to the generation that went to Sunday School on Sunday.Now she looked with renewed interest at the bouquet of glory held in her woolen glove. "Well, I never knew. Seems pretty plausible, doesn't it? I always thought of them as calla lilies, calla lilies all over the place. They're expensive, you know, but kind of depressing. So they were originally colored?Why can't they say that?Why do we have to call them lilies? " So they start talking about translation and how misleading the Bible is ("I've always wondered what unrequited charity is," says Mrs. Tinker), and the awkward moment is over. While they were still busy discussing the Bible, the short melon came in with an extra vase. Grant noticed that the vases were designed for white lilacs rather than anemones.They are obviously used by the short melon to curry favor with Marta, paving the way for a good relationship in the future.But Marta never spent time with women unless she needed them right away.The back-and-forth with Mrs. Tinker is just her social artifice, a conditioned response. So the dwarf melon has been relegated to a functional rather than a social role.She gathered the discarded narcissus from the washbasin and gently put them back in the vase.The dwarf melon was so beautiful when tender that Grant gazed at her for a moment. "Then," said Marta finally planting her lilacs, and placing them where he could see them, "I'll let Mrs. Tinkle feed you her delicacies in those paper bags. That wouldn't be, Could it be, dear Mrs. Tinker, that one of the bags contains your wonderful bachelor biscuits?" Mrs. Tinker blushed with joy. "Would you like one or two? Just out of the oven." "Oh, of course I'll have to pay for it - those nutritious little cakes will pile up on my waist - but give me a few to put in a bag for afternoon tea at the theater." With obsequious deliberation, she selected two ("I like the ones with a little burnt edge."), dropped them in her handbag, and said, "Goodbye, Aaron, I'll be starting in a day or two." Get you a pair of socks to knit. Nothing I know soothes the mood like knitting. Isn't it, Miss Nurse." "Oh, yes, indeed. Many of my male patients also knit. They find it a good way to pass the time." Marta blew him a kiss from the door and left, and the short melon politely sent her out. "Crap is crap, and not much better," said Mrs. Tinker, opening the paper bag she had brought. She wasn't referring to Marta.