It was six o'clock in the morning in March, and the sky was still dark.The long train passed sideways through the scattered lights of the machine yard, rattled lightly across the junction of the train tracks, changed to another lane, entered the lights of the railway signal room, and came out through the The cross-track signal pole with a lonely green light dotted with a red light headed towards the dark and empty platform waiting under the arc. The London Mail is approaching its terminus. Five hundred miles of journeys were left behind to London Euston station and last night's endless darkness, five hundred miles of moonlit fields and sleepy villages, five hundred miles of dark towns and never-ending Five hundred miles of rain, fog, frost, and flying snow, five hundred miles of tunnels and land bridges.

Now, at six o'clock in the morning on a bleak March morning, the hills rose from all around to surround the train, which looked very relaxed and calm, about to stop to rest after its long and fast journey.In the crowded carriages, all but one person breathed a sigh of relief that the train had arrived. Of those relieved, at least two were almost jumping with joy.One of them was a passenger on the train, and the other was a railway service worker.The passenger's name was Aaron Grant, and the railroad attendant was Maud Greyhound. Maud Greyhound was a sleeper train attendant and the most annoying fellow between Seso and Torquay.For twenty years Mauld had made travelers endure his intimidation, their anger, and his extortion—of course, financial extortion.Undoubtedly, the complaints from passengers have never stopped.Among first-class passengers, for example, he was known far and wide for his "yogurt" infamy. (Whenever his elongated bitter face appeared in the damp and dark Euston station, everyone said "My God! Yogurt again.") And among the third-class passengers, he His nickname is even more varied, but no matter what everyone calls him, it is very appropriate and lifelike.As for what his colleagues called him, it didn't matter much.Only three of them could kill him: a cowboy from Texas; an acting corporal in the Queen's Cameroon Highland Regiment; a London woman.Mord doesn't buy into any class or achievement: he hates this, resents that, but he's terribly afraid of getting punched.

For twenty years Maud Grechew had contributed little to his work.He had been bored less than a week since he had been doing this job, but he found it a lucrative job, and he wanted to stay and make some money.If you get your breakfast tea from Maud, you will find the tea weak, the biscuits limp, the sugar dirty, the tray full of water, and the spoon missing; His protest ended without a problem.Occasionally someone like the admiral would make the bold statement that "tea sucks," but the average person would just laugh and pay.Over the past 20 years, or because of excessive annoyance, or being intimidated or blackmailed, passengers paid and received money from Moder.He now owns a cottage in Dunno, a chain of fried fish joints in Glasgow and a solid bank balance.In fact, he could have retired years ago, but he can't bear to lose his full pension, so is willing to endure boredom for a while, and balance his mentality by not serving breakfast tea unless guests ask; Sometimes he was so sleepy that he simply forgot about the guests' orders.Every time the train arrived at the station, he cheered as if he had just served a sentence of imprisonment, and the time for his release was getting closer and closer.

Aaron Grant watched the lights of the platform through the fogged train windows and listened to the soft rattle of the wheels as they passed the railroad junction and changed to the other lane.He was very happy, because the end of this journey was the end of a whole night of pain.Grant forced himself not to open the door to the hallway all night, lying awake and sweating on the expensive bedding.He was sweating not because the train cabin was too hot (in fact the train's air conditioning was great) but because (oh misery! oh shame! oh shame!) the train cabin represented "a cramped closed space".From the eyes of ordinary people, this is a clean small room, with sleepers, washbasins, mirrors and various luggage racks; open or hidden cabinets can be selected according to preference; there is also a beautiful small drawer that can be used to store passengers Items considered valuable; plus a hook to hang a watch.But to the man in it, the sad and bewitched man in it, it is "a small, confined space."

"Overwork," is what the doctor called it. Dr. Wimber Street gracefully crossed his legs, admiring his wobbling feet, and said, "Relax, read a magazine or something." Grant couldn't imagine how he could relax, and at the same time he thought "look" a nasty word and a disdainful diversion.Look, it's a stupid act of piling up a table to satisfy pure animal desires.Look, it really is! The word sounds like some kind of insult, some kind of contempt. The doctor's self-admired eyes shifted from the dangling feet to the shoes, and said, "What do you usually do?"

"No." Grant replied curtly. "What do you do on vacation?" "fishing." "You fish?" said the therapist.Apparently Grant's answer lured him away from his original focus on narcissism. "You don't think that's a hobby?" "of course not." "Then what do you say it is?" "Something between a sport and a religion." Wimber Streeter smiled understandingly at Grant's answer, assuring him that it was only a matter of time before he was cured, time plus rest. At least he really didn't open the door last night, but this victory came at a great price.He was drained, hollowed out, like a half-dead corpse. "Don't force it," said the doctor, "if you want to go out, go out." However, if you really opened this door last night, it would undoubtedly be a sentence that you will not be able to recover. surrender.So he lay there sweating and never opened the door.

But now, in the lightless darkness of the morning, in the cold and unspeakable darkness, it was as if all goodness and value had been stripped from him. "This is how a woman feels after a long labor." Following the most basic explanation prompted and repeated by Wimber Streeter, Grant thought, "But at least they're paid with a baby afterward, and what have I?" It's something to be proud of, he thought, proud of not opening a door that he had no reason to open, oh my God! Now he did, reluctantly, and at the same time enjoying the irony of the forcedness.He hated to face the morning, wished he could throw himself back on the wrinkled couch and go back to sleep.

He picked up the two suitcases that Yogurt had not helped him, rolled up the unread periodicals under his arm, walked out of the berth and into the hallway.The door at the end of the hallway is blocked by the luggage of generously tipped travelers and so close to the roof that the doors are barely visible.So Grant made his way to the second coach where the first-class car was, but the end of that car was also filled with waist-high privileged-class obstacles, so he walked down the corridor to the rear door instead.At this moment, Yogurt poked his head out of his cubicle at the far end to see if the passengers in berth seven B knew the train was coming.Passengers, be they seven B sleepers or any other bed size, know they have the right to alight at their own pace when the train arrives at a station.But Yogurt didn't want to let the passenger sleep and waste time waiting in the car, so he knocked loudly on the door of Sleeper 7B and walked in.

When Grant came to the door, Yogurt was tugging at the sleeves of the fully dressed passenger lying on berth number seven B, and saying roughly, "Hurry up, sir, hurry up! We're almost at the station." Yogurt looked up when Grant's shadow passed through the door, and said in disgust, "Sleeping like an owl." Grant noticed that the whole small room was filled with a thick whiskey smell, thick as if it could stick a stick.He picked up the newspaper that the yoghurt had dropped while shaking the man, and smoothed the man's coat. "You don't recognize a dead man?" he said.Through the vague drowsiness he heard himself say, "You don't recognize dead people?" As if it wasn't a big deal. "Don't you recognize a primrose?" "Don't you recognize a Rubens?" "Don't you recognize the Albert Monument?"

"Die!" Yogurt almost roared. "No way! I'm leaving get off work soon." Grant noted from the sidelines that the whole thing meant nothing more to the tasteless and heartless Mr. Greychel.Someone leaves life, leaves warmth, feelings, and perceptions, and enters nothingness, and all this, for the blind Gretchure, is too late for him to get off work. "What should I do?" Yogurt said, "Someone died in the car I served. What should I do?" "Call the police, of course!" said Grant, feeling again that life itself could have its joys. Grant felt a twisted, eerie pleasure that Yogurt was finally in big trouble: not only did he not tip him, but he was causing him the greatest inconvenience of twenty years on the railroad.

Grant took one more look at the young face under the black messy hair, and continued to walk towards the end of the corridor.Dead people are not his responsibility.In his life, he had seen many dead people. Although he couldn't help feeling nervous about this irreparable regret, death could no longer scare him. The rattling of the train stopped, replaced by a muffled rumble as it approached the station.Grant rolled down the car window and watched the gray sign on the platform slowly pass by.The cold hit him like a heavy punch in the face, and he began to tremble uncontrollably. He put the two suitcases on the platform, resentful that his teeth were chattering like a goddamn monkey, and he wished he could die for a while.In the inexplicable depths of his heart, he also knew that it was a blessing to be shivering from the cold and tension on the platform at six o'clock in the morning in winter, compared to being in a desperate situation, at least it meant that he was still alive. But it would be wonderful to be able to stop breathing for a while and then come back to life when we were happier. ' "To the hotel, sir?" said the porter at the railway station. "I'll push you there with a cart." He staggered up the steps and then across the bridge. The wood under his feet echoed hollowly like a drum, and there was a burst of water vapor all around him. There was a loud clang and echo from the dark underground.People guessed wrong about hell, he thought. Hell is not a nice warm place to fry people, but a big, cold, echoing cave, where there is no past and no future, a dark, echoing barren place.Hell is the condensate of all evil mixed with a winter morning after a sleepless night of self-loathing. He walked into the empty atrium, and the sudden silence soothed him.Although the darkness is cold, it is very fresh. A gray halo reveals the breath of the morning, and the smell of snow reveals the feeling of being in a highland.After dawn, Tommy will pick him up at the hotel, and then they will drive to the clean and vast Scottish Highland countryside, entering the vast, simple and unchanging world of the Highlands.There, people spend their entire lives in their beds, and no one bothers to close the door. In the restaurant of the hotel, only half of the lights were on, and there were many tables lined up without tablecloths in the dark place without lights.He remembered that he had never seen such an undecorated table before, a heap of rags stripped of its white armor. A child in a black uniform skirt and a green embroidered sweater jacket, rubbing his head against the screen door, seemed startled at the sight of Grant.He asked if there was anything to eat in the morning.The little girl took the cruet from the sideboard and presented it to him with great dignity. "I'll get Mary," she said kindly, and disappeared behind the screen door. "Service" itself has lost the formality and glamor it used to pay attention to, and has become the simplicity of everything that housewives say.But the occasional "I'll get Mary" more than made up for the inappropriateness of her embroidered bodysuit instead of uniform. Mary was a carefree, fat woman who would have been a wet nurse if it hadn't been out of fashion.Under her care, Grant felt as relaxed as a child in front of a kind elder.It's a beautiful thing, he thought bitterly.When he so desperately needed comfort, a fat restaurant waitress gave it to him. He ate the food the woman brought and felt better.After a while she came back and removed the sliced ​​toast from the table and replaced it with a plate of buns. "These buns for you," she said. "It was delivered just now. Now this kind of small bread is not as good as before. It is not chewy, but it is better than toast." She pushed the marmalade to his hand to see if he needed more milk, then left again.Grant, who didn't want to eat any more, spread butter on the bun and reached for the newspaper he hadn't read last night.It was the London Evening Paper which he had, but doubtfully failed to recognize. "I bought the evening paper?" As usual, he had already read the evening paper at four o'clock yesterday afternoon, why did he buy another one at seven o'clock? Did buying the evening paper become a reflex action, as automatic as brushing his teeth? A brightly lit newsstand wants to buy the evening paper?Grant scanned the headlines of the newspapers he had read yesterday afternoon again and thought, oh my god! It's the same kind of news all the time.It's yesterday's paper, but it could be last year's or next month's, because the headlines will always be the same as the one he's seeing now: Scrambling Cabinet, Blonde Dead Corpse in Maida Valley, Tariffs in place, Traffic Jams, The presence of American stars, as well as street accidents and so on.He moved the food away, but as he pulled out the next stack of newspapers, he noticed pencil marks in the margins of the "Latest News" column.He turned the newspaper over to see who was scribbling there.Judging from the situation of the scribbling, it doesn't look like the hasty handwriting of a newspaper boy, but someone trying to write a poem.Judging from his intermittent writing, it is obvious that he is not trying to recall a famous poem, but an original work.The missing two lines of the poem have also been ticked off in sufficient measure, a technique Grant had used when he was ranked the best sonnet writer in school. But the poem is not his. He suddenly realized where the newspaper came from.He acquired the paper much more automatically and more automatically than he usually did with the evening papers.When the newspaper slipped to the floor of berth seven B, he carried it away with the other magazines under his arm.The consciousness in his head, or the remaining consciousness after experiencing last night, was all focused on the commotion caused by the yogurt treatment of the helpless man.His only deliberate act was smoothing the man's coat to condemn Yogurt, and he tucked the newspaper, along with the other magazines, under his arm to free a hand. So that young man with the shaggy black hair and sloppy eyebrows was a poet, wasn't he? Grant looked at the pencil writing with interest. The fifth line and the sixth line, so the draft looks like this: the talking beast still river walking stone singing sand guard the way road to heaven Well, to be fair, this is pretty weird.Is this a precursor to delirium? Understandably, nothing is mundane in this world of the poet's alcoholic dreams.In the eyes of this young man with willful brows, everything in nature has changed completely. What kind of paradise is guarded by such horrific and weird images? Is it a kind of oblivion? Paradise? Why would he go through known horrors to get to Paradise? Grant thought about it as he ate fresh but not chewy bread.The adult's handwriting experience is so out of style, not because his coordination function is not good, but because he has never really grown up, he is still a little boy.This inference is drawn from his handwriting, which is in the form of copybooks.It is strange that such a person with individual characteristics unconsciously presents his own personality characteristics in the font.The vast majority of people will unknowingly adjust the copybook-style fonts in school to their favorite form. One of Grant's small interests over the years has been a particular focus on handwriting. In fact, the result of long-term observation of fonts has benefited him a lot in his work. Of course, occasionally his inferences will be wrong.But in general, handwriting provides very good clues to interpreting a person's character.It is only a special case that a murderer who kills people like hemp and dissolves his body with strong acid happens to write extraordinary good characters.Normally, people who continue to use school scripts are either not smart enough, or write so little that they can't incorporate their own personality into the typeface. Clearly it was not a lack of personality that made his handwriting so juvenile, as the man was able to use these words wisely to describe the nightmarish danger beyond heaven's gates.His personality, his energy and interest, had gone elsewhere.But where? Maybe somewhere more dynamic, more outgoing.Notes or journals like "Tony, see you at the Cumberland Bar at 6:45". But he is so thoughtful that he can analyze and write about the fantasy kingdom on the way to heaven.Deep thinking and able to jump out of things, observe and record it. Grant chewed the bun, lost in the pleasure of dreaming.He noticed that these words ending in ns and ms are closely connected together. Does it mean that they are inherently good liars, or are they pretending to be mysterious? This young poet with willful eyebrows shows unusual delicate thoughts.Strange to say, the information revealed by the appearance is closely related to the eyebrows. As long as the angle is slightly changed, the whole effect will be quite different.The bigwigs of the film industry took a few pretty girls from the mountain villages of Balkhan or Marswell, shaved off their eyebrows, and changed their eyebrows to different shapes, and they immediately transformed into people from Omsk and Tomsk. Sky's mysterious stunner.The cartoonist Tripper had told him once that Ernie Price had lost his chance to be Prime Minister because of his eyebrows. "They don't like his eyebrows." Tripper sipped his beer, a serious look in his eyes. "Don't ask me why, I just do the drawing. Maybe it's because this brow shape looks like a grump. They don't like grumpy people. You don't believe that, but it's Ernie Poole. They just don’t like his eyebrows.” Grumpy eyebrows, productive eyebrows, anxious eyebrows, it’s the eyebrows that set the tone for the facial expression.And just because of the slanted black eyebrows, the thin and fair face lying on the pillow still looks willful even in death. Still, at least the man was sane when he wrote those lines.The drunkenness of the seventh B berth—the suffocating air, the crumpled blankets, the empty wine bottles rolling on the floor, the overturned glasses on the shelf—maybe just the paradise he was looking for, but When he draws the blueprint of this road to heaven, man is sober. Singing sand. Dangerous but full of a certain charm. Singing sand.Is there really singing sand somewhere? (a faintly familiar sound).Singing sand.When you walk by and they cry at your feet, or when the wind blows... A man in a plaid tweed jacket comes up to Grant, reaches for a bun from a plate, "Look Come and enjoy yourself!" Tommy pulled out his chair and sat down and said. He broke the bread and buttered it, "Now these things are not chewy at all. When I was a child, I bit down and let my teeth sink into the bread, and then pulled it hard to see who won the battle between the teeth and the bread." , if the tooth wins smoothly, then you can enjoy the delicious taste of flour and yeast in your mouth for several minutes. Unfortunately, it is not as good as before, even if you fold the bread in half and put it in your mouth, you will not choke. " Grant looked at him with emotion, and thought, There has never been such an intimacy.This intimacy will make it impossible to separate two friends who grew up wearing open crotch pants.They went to public school together, but every time Tommy met, he was reminded of his preschool days.Maybe it's because this fresh, pinkish-brown round face, with its innocent eyes, is no different from the face on the maroon jacket buttoned crookedly! Tommy never cared about the buttons on his sweatshirt. How to buckle it. As always, Tommy wasted no time or energy in asking about Grant's journey and health, and neither did Laura. They accept him as he is, as if he's been here for a while, or as if he's never been away at all, just from his last visit.The atmosphere is natural and laid back. "How is Laura?" "Wonderful, she says she's a little fatter, but I can't see it, I've never liked skinny women." When they were both twenty, Grant had thought about marrying his cousin Laura, and he was sure that Laura had wanted to marry him too, but before they could confess, the magic of love wore off and they fell back into friendship inside.This magic has become the dream of long highland summer days, the morning smell of pine needles on the hillsides, and countless evenings with sweet clover.For Grant, Lola had always been a part of a happy summer holiday, learning to paddle together, fishing together, walking to Laraig for the first time together, and reaching the summit of Braywick for the first time together.But until that summer, the summer when their adolescence was drawing to a close, "Happy" It crystallized into Laura herself, and the whole summer was focused on Laura Grant alone.To this day, whenever he thinks about that summer, he still feels a little uneasy.That incident was like a brilliant iris of bubbles, light and perfect, but because neither of them confessed anything, the bubble has not burst yet, and remains in a light and perfect state unchanged.After that, the two of them turned to other things, other people respectively.And Lola kept jumping from one person to the next like a hopscotch, with childlike dexterity and carelessness.Later, Grant took her to the Iron Boys' dance, she met Tommy Rankin, and that was it. "What the hell happened at the station? There are a lot of ambulances there," Tommy asked. "Someone died on a train, and I think that's why." "Oh!" Tommy changed the topic and said with a thankful tone, "it's a good thing you didn't die." "God has mercy on me, not me." "Then you folks at Scotland Yard will miss you." "I doubt it." "Mary, I'd like a pot of strong tea," said Tommy, flipping the saucer of buns contemptuously with his forefinger, "and I'd like a few of these bargains, too." He stared at Grant and said: "They will miss you, they will feel that there is one less hand, won't they?" He let out a long breath and almost burst out laughing for the first time in months.Tommy felt sorry for Scotland Yard, not because they had lost his brains, but because they had lost a man.His "family" attitude echoed the businesslike response of Grant's boss. "Sick leave!" Bryce opened his eyes wide, glanced at Grant's seemingly healthy body, and then returned to Grant's face with a look of disgust, "Is there a mistake! When I was young, everyone worked hard, Until the ambulance takes you away. But what a real dedication." It's not easy to tell Bryce what the doctor said, and even if he did, Bryce wouldn't make it easier for him.Bryce has no nerves in his body, and if he doesn't have a shred of intelligence, he is not human at all.When he learned of Grant's illness, he neither understood nor sympathized. On the contrary, there was a subtle hint in his expression: Grant had neglected his duties.How could it be possible to look so well and so healthy with such a serious illness? It must have had something to do with Grant's desire to go to the Highland River; probably the fishing arrangements had been made before he went to see Dr. Wimber Streeter. . "How would they fill your void?" Tommy asked. "Probably to promote Officer Williams! Anyway, he's been waiting a long time for a promotion." It was not so easy to explain the matter to the faithful Sergeant Williams.It is certainly not a pleasant thing for your subordinates who have worshiped you as a hero for many years, but you have become a lunatic with no ability to fight back for a demon that does not exist in front of him.Also, Williams didn't have a single nerve in his body, and he was resigned to everything.Telling Williams about it and watching his attitude change from admiration to concern, even pity? It wasn't easy either. "Pass me the jar of jam," said Tommy.