Chapter 50 final sleep

The day before Martha's seventy-fourth birthday, she received the cabinet.The porters unpacked the boxes in the corridor downstairs, and carried them up the spacious and curved stairs with great effort.As they carried the chest of drawers past the bedroom door and scratched the handle, Martha saw it and felt a sudden throbbing in her heart. "Push it against the wall," she directed, and distractedly dismissed the worker to examine the cabinet alone.Soon she felt a sense of mystery and familiarity. When Martha was a child, she often visited her aunt.My aunt passed away at a young age.At every family gathering, the younger generations would talk about the past about my aunt, who was kidnapped by a gypsy when she was three years old; her lover had committed suicide for her; some wild birds in the forest often flew to her house to ask for bread crumbs.

Martha remembered well the morning they had seen each other for the last time.My aunt said strangely: "Martha, I will give you the cabinet with many drawers. Other children often open the drawers curiously to look at it. Only you respect other people's things and respect other people's secrets. That cabinet will be yours in the future. of." Martha looked at the cabinet, lost in thought.It has been about thirty years since I saw this cabinet.It is about a foot thick, four feet wide, and five feet high.The shape of the top of the cabinet is like an old European-style house, fan-shaped on three sides, and the middle is the highest.The whole cabinet is stained black, and thin patterns of gold can be seen through the cracked paint.The cabinet had twenty-four rows of drawers, each with fifteen more, and on the lower left were five flush drawers, all the same size.There is a small door on the right with the words "leap year" engraved on it.In fact, the cabinet was crudely made, with old-fashioned wooden handles for each drawer.It was exactly as Martha remembered it—each drawer represented a day of the year, and the little door was for the twenty-ninth of February in leap years.

I remember that when my aunt was alive, she always dealt with this cabinet. When she opened a drawer and took out a note inside, she would always solemnly announce: "Look at my luck today." Thinking of this, Martha frowned slightly.She knows that each drawer has a certain order, but she doesn't know whether to read the notes in the drawer from New Year's Day or birthday.She once remembered that there were thin and beautiful characters on the light blue note, but she never read the content. "Miss Martha, here comes your evening paper," said Susannah.Suzanne, a work-study college student, lived with Martha and helped her into a wheelchair in the morning and put her to bed at night.In the nearly twenty-five years since the accident, she had employed quite a few girls.Some were purely transactional, others were romantically involved, went away after graduation, and wrote to her for years.

"This cabinet does look weird." Suzanne said unintentionally. "It's very old and completely handmade," Martha replied, with a little displeasure in her tone. "Oh, I don't mean it's bad," Susannah explained hastily. "I mean, what can you hold in such a small drawer? I don't think it can hold a deck of cards. It's a A jewel box or something?" "You shouldn't ask so much," Martha said sharply, and she heard her aunt's tone in her voice. "You should respect other people's things." "I'm sorry," Susannah said aggrievedly, "I thought the drawer was empty."

"Nothing, maybe nothing." Martha's tone softened a lot.That night, she lay trembling in bed, and the dark room seemed to be filled with a thick mystery, like fog sifting in through the screen window.The light from the corridor caressed the dark cabinet, looming. "Nonsense, Martha," she cursed to herself, "you're a practical, unfanciful woman." She had been a private school teacher of mathematics before marrying an older but respectable man.She is very proud of her clever brain and quick thinking, how could she be superstitious about a piece of furniture?She was ashamed of what she had just thought, seeing it as a stupid superstition, a mild form of dementia to which her aunt had attached her fate during her lifetime.

"Really, Martha," she coaxed herself, raising her voice as usual the next morning, "after all these years, there might be nothing in the closet." , she pushed herself to the cabinet slowly and unconsciously, stroking the cabinet up and down with her hand, she touched drawer by drawer, several rows in a row, then took a deep breath and murmured: "Let's I'll see what's in there." She reached over, pulled out the first drawer, put it on her lap, and found to her surprise that there was indeed a small note inside. She reached over and carefully opened the crumpled note.It was a piece of blue paper, faded, and the paper was a bit brittle, and the ink had faded to a rust color, which looked a little like dried blood.Juanxiu's characters read: A message from the past.No punctuation, nothing, just a few words.

After looking at it for a few minutes, Martha refolded the note and put it gently back in the drawer.As she put the note back, she said to herself, "Now you see, Martha, a message from the past, and that's what this cabinet contains." That afternoon Suzanne brought a letter, in a large thick white envelope, addressed to a law firm, sealed twenty-five years ago, addressed to "To my niece Martha, at On her seventy-fourth birthday."The content of the letter is: Martha felt a chill, so it was "news from the past," not the locker itself, but a message from her aunt.

For the next few days, Martha viewed the cabinet as something sinister and refused to approach it.On the fourth day, she couldn't take it anymore, she jumped over two drawers and opened the fourth, "a beautiful child with fair hair". She thought about that for a long time, and she couldn't think of a single child she knew who had fair hair.She rarely sees children these days.After lunch, she fell asleep until Suzanne woke her up. "Miss Martha?" she said softly. "You used to tell me that if any children wanted dessert, bring them to you." Martha looked up and saw a lovely little girl with a little red riding hood on her long fair hair.She was surprised to think of the words on the note: a beautiful child with fair hair.After the little girl had gone, she told herself that it was purely a coincidence, but she still felt uneasy.

Every day Martha tried to ignore the dark cabinet, but every day she was attracted by an inexplicable force to open a drawer.One day, the note in the drawer was "Blessings from an old friend".Sure enough, on this day, she received a letter from a good colleague many years ago.Another day the note in the drawer was "a young guest".In the afternoon, a girl who had taken care of her in the past came to see her with her six-month-old daughter. Although there was still some reluctance in her heart, Martha began to believe in the things in the cabinet. Summer passed and autumn came, and each note was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, predicting her life.The cabinet seemed to grow larger and darker.Though she kept telling herself that the cabinet couldn't possibly retell its past to prophesy her future.

One day she opened a drawer with a white porcelain handle, and the note read: A memory of deceit and crime.She finished reading with a frown, and when she put the note back, there was a slight sound inside.She pulled the drawer out again and looked inside. There was a ring with a small sapphire in it. She took out the ring and tried it on, but it was too small.She turned the ring over and over, then, with a secret surprise, recognized it.Her face suddenly turned ugly, and she put the ring back.I remembered that I had firmly denied to my aunt that I did not take her ring. In fact, she hid the ring in the shoe box in the closet.

Martha quickly closed the drawer, turned the wheelchair back to the cabinet, trembling all over, said to herself: "I don't understand." Then she turned back to the cabinet and said, "I don't understand, how did she know. " A few days later, there was a note that read: A lie, a lifelong mistake. Martha was thinking hard to find the terrible lie, but could never remember it, when Suzanne brought the lunch. "Hey," Susannah said, looking out, "the house across the street is flying the flag, what day is it?" Martha suddenly remembered that today is November 11th, which is Armistice Day.Many years ago, my aunt’s boyfriend came to invite her to a parade in the town. At this time, Martha happened to be playing at her aunt’s house. When she ran into her aunt’s boyfriend at the door, she lied to him and said, “My aunt Karen is not At home, she went out to a parade with a handsome uncle." The next day, my aunt's boyfriend was found dead in the woods, having fallen from a horse. Martha lied without malice, just as a joke.When the body of her aunt's boyfriend was found, Martha panicked a bit, but when no one mentioned it, she slowly forgot about it.But my aunt knew it, my aunt knew it a long time ago. The note dated January 14 reads: A marriage of convenience.Martha knew it was her wedding anniversary, even though she had been a widow since her husband's accident twenty-five years earlier.She pondered, that marriage was indeed not a match made in heaven, but a very convenient marriage, and later she knew that her husband was having an affair. On February 14th, Martha opened the drawer with a heart-shaped handle, and the note read: A gift of pure resentment.Yes, she remembered, but he had deserved it. She remembered finding an embroidered and fragrant handkerchief with an address in her husband's pocket.She carefully washed and ironed the handkerchief, and put it in a pretty heart-shaped box, with a small pistol attached and loaded. Then I sent it out according to the address and put a card in it, which imitated my husband's handwriting and wrote: Everything is over, we have been found. During the next few weeks, when they sat silently facing each other after dinner, she looked at her husband with admiration.He stopped working overtime, and then read a book night after night, his face always stern and expressionless like a mask, while Martha embroidered lace, stitch by stitch. On an uncomfortably sunny day in March, the note read: A cup of coffee.Martha's breathing quickened at the note, remembering her husband's grim announcement that he was dissolving her marriage after she told her husband about the February 14th gift.She said that the original purpose of this incident was to warn him, and she didn't want things to come to this point. "What you said is not true," Martha protested. "It's true, I'm going to pack a few things and move to the hotel," he said, "tomorrow." The next day Martha sneaked into the kitchen and put a glass of water in the thermos the cook had prepared for her husband. Many sleeping pills.His car had been in an accident six miles from home, and Martha was still upstairs when she received the news, so no one suspected her.She originally hoped that the police would catch her, but instead, they didn't catch her, and she fell down the stairs by herself. After several months in the hospital, she was released, paralyzed, spacious house, and alone.Her financial situation is good enough for her to keep a cook and hire a female college student to take care of her.She read many books, played games by herself, and continued to sew. However, since that mysterious cabinet was delivered, her whole mind has been occupied by it.In theory she knew that fate was impossible to foretell.She often said to the cabinet: "It's just a coincidence." However, every morning when she woke up, she was determined not to open the drawer, but in the end she couldn't resist the magical power. One cold March day she opened the note and read: "A day of reckoning." Martha sat staring at the rows of drawers, distracted.Only a few drawers were left open.Then Suzanne interrupted her thoughts, "Miss Martha, I have a letter from you." Another letter from the law firm.She opened it wearily and found another sealed letter inside.It says this: Martha was stunned, and the past scenes were replaying in her mind, and the horrible memories kept stimulating her fragile nerves.Martha had trouble sleeping and eating.She felt that her whole mind was in a mess. What would Karen write in her letter?Will the police believe what Karen says?Would the police prosecute someone of that age?She wondered what to do with that annoying cabinet, sell it, burn it.I wish I opened my eyes one morning and it wasn't there."I wish you'd disappear," she said to the cabinet in the dark. The next morning, Suzanne said to Martha when she was helping her dress: "Miss Martha, you look bad today, you seem to have not slept all night." "I'm fine," Martha said, puffing out her chest as Suzanne made the bed and dusted the bookshelves.After Suzanne left, Martha faced the cabinet, now only two drawers remained open. "I will never open any of them," she swore. After nine o'clock, she read the morning paper over and over again.At ten o'clock she finished reading, at eleven o'clock she surrendered, she went up to open the penultimate drawer, the note said: The day of preparation. Martha frowned, and then Suzanne came over to wash her hair.When Suzanne changed the sheets she trimmed her nails, which weren't long, and then she asked Suzanne to change the cushion of the wheelchair. That night, as she lay in bed, she wondered what else was there to prepare?She listened to the ticking of the grandfather clock. It struck ten, eleven, then eleven fifteen.At half-past eleven she rang the bell beside the bed, and Susannah hurried in. "What's wrong?" she asked worriedly. "I'm going to get dressed and sit in the chair," Martha said firmly. "I'm going to wear a blue dress." Susannah helped her put it on, helped her to sit in the chair, then leaned over in front of Martha, and asked with concern: "Miss Martha, are you okay? I mean you seem to be very irritable, getting up like this in the middle of the night, a little... ...you are all right!" "I'm fine, Suzanne," said Martha, "you go to your room and rest." "Okay, but I'm a little worried about leaving you like this." She stopped talking without confidence, then leaned over and kissed Martha's cheek.Susannah had never kissed Martha like this before. Martha caresses the place where Susannah kissed her, listening to the sound of Susannah walking in the hallway and turning off the lights.Then slowly push the wheelchair to the cabinet.As she reached for the last drawer, the grandfather clock chimed dully at midnight. She said to the cabinet, "I'm here." She opened the drawer, and there was not only a note in it, but a small package, a beautiful handkerchief embroidered with a small lady's pistol wrapped in it.She opened the handkerchief, which she had seen a long time ago.what!Why didn't she notice that the words on it were Karen before, why didn't she see it before? She thought of the card she wrote back then, but she didn't see it.This mysterious cabinet means nothing to anyone.It turned out that Aunt Karen, who was older than her but about the same age, was actually her husband's mistress. She took out the note and held it in her hand, "I think she has some last words to say." She said calmly, and read the last note. He opened the note, held it gently in his left hand, put the pistol under his breast with his right hand and pulled the trigger, and the note flew to the ground. The note in the 365th drawer said: Last sleep.