Chapter 22 Chapter 21

As dark clouds swept over the sea and the farm, Holmes opened the door of Mrs. Munroe's cottage and staggered in.The curtains were drawn, the lights were turned off, and there was a bark-like smell of mothballs everywhere.Every three or four steps, he had to pause for a moment, look into the darkness ahead, and readjust the crutch in his hand, as if he was worried that some unimaginable vague shadow would jump out of the shadow and startle him.He continued to walk forward, the sound of his cane hitting the floor was far less heavy and tired than his footsteps.At last he entered Roger's open door, and entered the only room in the cottage which was not completely cut off from the sun.It was the first and last time he set foot on one of the boy's few territories.

He sat down beside Roger's neatly made bed and looked at the surrounding environment.There is a schoolbag hanging on the handle of the closet door, and a butterfly net stands in the corner.He stood up again and walked slowly around the room.A lot of books. National Geographic Magazine.Small stones and shells on a chest of drawers.Photos and colorful paintings hang on the walls.The student's desk is filled with everything—six textbooks, five sharpened pencils, paintbrushes, blank paper—and a glass jar containing two bees. "Here it is." He picked up the bottle and glanced at the contents (the two bees were undisturbed, the same as when he first spotted them on the train to Tokyo).He put the bottle back on the table, making sure it was in exactly the same place as before.How orderly and precise is this boy's room, everything is laid out and neat, even the things on the bedside table are in order - scissors, a bottle of glue, a large scrapbook with a plain black cover .

Holmes picked up the scrapbook, sat down on the edge of the bed again, and opened it casually.Inside were the boy's carefully collected and clipped pictures, some of which were wild animals and forests, some of which were soldiers and wars. In the end, his eyes fell on the dilapidated photos of the former government buildings in Hiroshima.After reading the scrapbook, the exhaustion that had been lingering since dawn finally swallowed him completely. Outside the window, the sunlight suddenly dimmed. The slender branches scraped across the window panes, making almost no sound. "I don't know," he said out of nowhere, sitting on Roger's bed, "I don't know," he repeated.After finishing speaking, he lay on the boy's pillow, closed his eyes, and hugged the scrapbook tightly to his chest: "I don't know anything—"

Then, he fell asleep, but this sleep was neither a pillow after exhaustion, nor a nap in which dreams and reality were intertwined, but a lazy state that dragged him into endless tranquility.Now, that big, deep dream was transporting him elsewhere, dragging him away from the bedroom where his body was.He slept for more than six hours, his breathing was even and deep, and he didn't move his hands or feet.He didn't hear the thunder at noon, and he didn't notice the storm that was blowing across his land, bending the tall grass and wet the ground with pea-sized raindrops; It was blown open, the cool after-rain air blowing into the living room, down the hallway, and into Roger's bedroom.

But Holmes felt the coolness on his face and neck, like icy palms pressing lightly on his skin, urging him to wake up quickly. "Who is it?" he muttered waking up.He opened his eyes and stared at the bedside table (scissors, glue).He slowly looked away, finally locking his eyes on the hallway outside the room, which was blurred between the boy's bright bedroom and the open front door.It took him several seconds to confirm that someone was waiting in the dark of the corridor, the person was motionless, facing him, silhouetted by the light behind him.The breeze rustled her dress, lifting the hem of her skirt. "Who is it?" he asked again, but he couldn't sit up yet.Just then, the figure receded and seemed to slide toward the hall—he finally saw her.She took a suitcase into the cabin and closed the front door, and the cabin was plunged into darkness again, and she disappeared as quickly as she had first appeared. "Mrs. Monroe—"

She emerged, walking toward the boy's bedroom as if attracted by a magnet.Her head floated in the darkness, like an ethereal white sphere against a pitch-black background, but the darkness was not a color, but floated and swayed beneath her.Holmes speculated that it should be the mourning dress she was wearing.She did wear a black dress, trimmed with lace, rather austere; her skin was pale, and deep dark circles could be seen around her eyes (sadness had taken away her youth, and she was haggard and sluggish ).She stepped across the threshold, nodding expressionlessly, and walked toward him, not a trace of the grief she had wept on the day Roger died, or the anger she had shown at the apiary.On the contrary, he felt a kind of tenderness, a kind of obedience, and even peace from her.You can't blame me or my bees anymore, he thought, you're wrong about us, boy, and now you realize you're wrong too.She stretched out her pale hand towards him, and carefully pulled the scrapbook out of his hand.She avoided his gaze, but he saw her round pupils in profile, as hollow as the eyes he had seen in Roger's corpse.Without saying a word, she put the scrapbook back on the bedside table, arranging it neatly according to the boy's habit.

"Why are you here?" Holmes put his feet on the ground and sat up straight on the mattress.As soon as he finished saying this, he immediately blushed with embarrassment—he was sleeping in her hut, holding the scrapbook of her dead son, and even if someone wanted to ask this question, it should be her who asked it.But Mrs. Monroe didn't mind his presence, which only made him more uncomfortable.He looked around and saw the cane lying against the bedside table. "I didn't expect you to come back so soon," he said, groping absently, and grabbed the handle of the crutch, "I hope you haven't been too tired this journey." He was ashamed of his shallow words, and his face became more and more red .

At this moment, Mrs. Monroe was standing at the desk with his back to him (he was sitting on the bed with his back to her).She explained that she thought it would be better to go back to the cottage.Holmes heard her calm tone, and his uneasiness disappeared. "I've got a lot to do here," she said. "A lot to do—Roger's business, mine." "You must be starving." He leaned on his crutches, "I asked that girl to bring you something to eat. Or, you can go to my restaurant to eat?" He didn't know if Anderson's daughter had finished shopping for groceries in the town. He stood up, but Mrs. Monroe replied behind him, "I'm not hungry."

Holmes turned towards her, who was staring sideways at him (with a blank, disgusted look which never met his, always kept him at the edge of her vision). "Is there anything else you need?" All he could think about was, "What can I do?" "I can take care of myself, thank you." She turned her eyes away completely. She let go of her folded arms and began to look through the things on the table.Holmes watched her profile, and suddenly understood the real reason for her return so soon: she wanted to put a good end to this chapter of her life. "You're leaving me, aren't you?" He blurted out before he could think clearly.

Her fingertips flicked across the tabletop, brushes and white paper, and stayed for a while on the smooth wooden surface (Roger used to do his homework here, drew those beautiful pictures hanging on the wall, obviously serious thoroughly read his magazines and books).Although the child was no longer alive, she could still seem to see him sitting there while she was busy cooking and cleaning in the main house.Holmes also seemed to see Roger sitting at the table—like himself, he bent over the table, sitting from day to night, and from night to dawn.He wanted to tell Mrs. Monroe what he saw, and told her that they all imagined the same picture, but he didn't say it, he just kept silent, waiting for the definitive answer from her: "Yes Yes, sir, I am leaving you."

Of course you must go, thought Holmes.He understood her decision, but her certainty made him feel sad.He stammered, as if begging her to give him a second chance: "Please, you don't need to make such a hasty decision, really, especially at this time." "Not at all hasty, you understand. I've thought about it for hours—I can't change my mind about it any more—and there's no value here for me, except for these things. It doesn't matter anymore." She picked up a red paintbrush and twirled it between her fingers thoughtfully, "No, this decision is not hasty at all." A sudden breeze blew gently at the window above Roger's desk, and branches brushed against the glass.For a while, the breeze became stronger, shaking the big tree outside the window, and the branches knocked on the window violently.Mrs. Munroe's answer made Holmes very frustrated. He could only sigh and asked again: "Then where are you going? London? What are you going to do?" "I really don't know. I feel like my life doesn't matter anymore, no matter what." Her son died.Her husband died.She buried the person she loved the most with her own hands, and buried herself in their tomb since then.Holmes recalled a poem he had read in his youth, and a line in it had haunted his mind as a boy: I am going alone, and you may find me there.Her desperation left him speechless, and he stepped forward and said, "How could it not matter? To give up hope is to give up everything, and you can't do that, dear. No matter what the situation is, you must persevere, if you If you don’t insist, how will your love for your son continue.” Love, this is a word that Mrs. Monroe has never heard him say.She glanced at him and stopped him with cold eyes.Then, as if she didn't want to discuss the subject any further, she turned her eyes to the desk and said, "I've learned a lot about these things." Holmes saw her reach out for the glass jar in which the bees were contained. "Really?" he asked. "These are Japanese bees, very gentle and shy, aren't they? Not like the bees you keep, are they?" She held the glass bottle in her palm. "You're right. Looks like you've done some research." Mrs. Monroe's little knowledge surprised him, but when she stopped talking, he frowned again (her eyes remained hover over the bottle and stare at the dead bees inside).Unable to bear the silence, he went on: "They are very remarkable creatures—very shy, as you say, but they spare no effort when it comes to destroying their enemies." He told her that the Japanese giant hornet hunted all kinds of bees and wasps.Once the hornets find the hive, they leave a secretion to mark it, and this secretion will call all the hornets in the nearby area together to attack the hive.But Japanese honeybees are able to detect the hornet's secretions, giving themselves time to prepare for an impending attack.When the bumblebees enter the hive, the bees will surround them one by one, surround each other with their bodies, and keep them at a temperature of forty-seven degrees Celsius (too hot for bumblebees, but too hot for bees) just right). "They're really amazing, aren't they?" he concluded. "I happened to come across an apiary in Tokyo, you know. I was lucky enough to see them in person—" Sunlight pierced through the clouds and illuminated the curtains.At this moment, Holmes felt that it was really inappropriate for him to publish such a tirade at this time (Mrs. Monroe's son was buried in the tomb, and what he could give her was an introduction about Japanese bees).He shook his head, annoyed at his helplessness and stupidity.When he was thinking about how to apologize, she put the glass bottle on the table and said in an excited and trembling voice: "It doesn't make sense—it's not human, how do you say that—they're not human, just Science and books, things stuffed in bottles and boxes. Do you know what it's like to love someone?" There was contempt and contempt in her hoarse voice, and Holmes was irritated by the sharp resentment of her tone.He tried to calm himself down before answering, but he found that his hands were gripping the cane so tightly that his knuckles were starting to turn white.What do you know, he thought.He sighed angrily, let go of his grip on the cane, and staggered back to Roger's bedside. "I'm not that rigid," he said, sitting down at the foot of the bed. "At least, I don't want to think so myself. But how can I tell you to convince you? If I tell you that my love for bees is neither Do you find me a little more human for the purposes of any scientific study, not from a lecture in a book?" She still stared at the glass bottle, did not answer, did not move. "Mrs. Munroe, I'm afraid my memory is failing as I grow older, as you must be well aware. I often misplace things—my cigars, my walking stick, and sometimes my shoes - I find things in my pockets that I don't know when I put them in, which amuses me and scares me. Other times, I forget why I walked from one room to another. Another room, or can't understand the sentence I just wrote. But there are so many other things that are so firmly burned in my mind that they seem to be forever, which is really paradoxical. For example, I remember very well when I was eighteen. I was a tall, loner, not exactly handsome Oxford student spending my evenings with a tutor who taught mathematics and logic. The tutor was a conformist but loving Fussy, not likeable, lived at Christ Church College like me, you may have heard his name, Lewis Carroll - I call him CL Dawgson Reverend. He invented amazing math riddles puzzles and word puzzles, and the cipher texts that most interested me, whose magic tricks and origami art are still fresh in my memory. Also, I also vividly remember a pony I had when I was a child, I remember riding it, galloping across the Yorkshire moors, getting lost in a sea of ​​heather blooms and being so happy. There are many other scenes like this in my head and it's easy to recall .Why they survived, while other memories disappeared, I can't say. "But let me tell you one more thing about myself, because I think it's important. I know, when you look at me, you think I'm an emotionless person. Boy, you feel that way , The fault is more on me than on you. You only know me when I was old, living in seclusion in this isolated apiary. Every time I say a few more words, I often talk about bees. So I don't blame you for thinking that way about me. But I never had the slightest interest in the world of bees and hives until I was forty-eight—and by forty-nine I couldn't think of anything but them. Nothing else. How am I going to explain all of this?" He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and continued, "You know, I was investigating a woman who was younger than me and never knew me, but I found her so charming that I found myself thinking about her all the time - and I didn't quite understand why. Our time together was very brief, less than an hour, really. She was always with me. I don't know, and I don't know much about her, except that she likes to read and walk among the flowers, so I walk with her, you know, among the flowers. The details of the case don't matter, The important thing is that in the end she disappeared from my life. I can't explain my feelings, I just feel like I lost something very important, and there is a big hole in my heart. But, but, she started again It appeared in my mind. When she first appeared, my mind was clear and I felt nothing. Later, she appeared again and again, and never left me—” He was silent, narrowing his eyes , as if calling for the past. Mrs. Monroe looked back at him and made a slight grimace: "Why did you tell me this? Does this matter have any meaning?" When she spoke, there were wrinkles on her smooth forehead, and deep The sunken wrinkles became the most conspicuous places on her face.Holmes did not look at her, but cast his eyes on the floor, as if fixed upon something which only he could see. It didn't mean much, he told her, even if Mrs. Keller appeared before him, across the river of history, and held out her gloved hand to him, it didn't mean much.In the park of the Physical and Botanical Society, she had stroked bluebriers and belladonnas, horsetails and feverfew, and held an iris in her palm.When she withdrew her hand, she saw a worker bee flying onto the glove.But she didn't flinch, didn't shake the bee off, and didn't crush it to death, but looked at it carefully, showing reverence (she smiled curiously, and whispered something in an affectionate tone).The worker bee stayed on her hand and was not in a hurry to leave, nor did it stick its thorns into her glove. It seemed that it was sizing up the other party just like her. "That kind of intimate communication, I can't accurately describe it in words, and I haven't seen a similar scene since then." Holmes raised his head, "In short, the communication lasted only about ten seconds, absolutely no more. Then, when she decided it was time to let the little thing go, she put it back into the flower from which it came. This brief and simple passage, the woman and her gentle hand, Having a life she had trusted with all my heart to hold in my hands made me dive headfirst into the world of bees and dive into it with all my heart. It's not some exact science, you see, dear, but it's not like What you said makes no sense." Mrs. Monroe still stared at him: "But that's hardly true love, isn't it?" "I don't know much about love," he said bitterly, "I never said I did." Whoever or what sparked his interest in bees, he knew, his solitary lifelong quest would be utterly destructive. Relying on the scientific method, his ideas and books are beyond the comprehension of the emotional layman.But he also has golden swarms, golden flowers, and golden pollen.The miraculous hive culture that underpins the bee's way of life—persisting century after century, age after age, millennium after millennium—testifies to the ingenuity of the insect kingdom when it comes to overcoming existential dilemmas.A hive is a small, self-sufficient society, with none of its members dependent on human handouts.Only those who stand guard on the fringes of the bees' world, protecting their complex kingdoms from evolution, are interested in the partnership between man and bees, finding peace in their harmonious hum, soothing the soul, and facing the troubles of the world. When changing, you can get a little comfort.And the resulting mystery, surprise and awe are even more evident in the orange sunlight shining on the bee farm in the evening.He was sure that Roger had experienced and thought about all this.More than once, when they were in the apiary together, he had found an expression of genuine wonder on the child's face, and it filled him with an emotion he couldn't quite express. "Maybe someone would say it's a kind of love, if they insist on that—" His expression suddenly became sad and suppressed. Mrs. Monroe found him secretly crying (tears welled up in his eyes, down his cheeks, and into his beard).But the tear faded as quickly as it came, and Holmes wiped it from his cheeks with a sigh.Finally, he heard himself say, "I really hope you'll think about it again, it's really important to me if you stay." Mrs. Monroe refused to speak, but turned her eyes to the painting , as if when he didn't exist.Holmes bowed his head again.This is what I deserve, he thought.The tears started pouring again, but stopped immediately. "Do you miss him?" Finally, she broke the silence and asked in a flat tone. "Of course." He replied immediately. Her eyes flicked past the painting and stopped on a sepia photograph (of which she was holding baby Roger in her arms, with her young husband standing proudly beside them). "He admires you, really. Do you know that?" Holmes looked up, and nodded with relief.She turned and looked at him. "It was Roger who told me about the bees in the bottle. Everything you told him about the bees, he told me; everything you said, he told me." The sharp seriousness died away, and Mrs. Monroe suddenly wanted to speak to him.There was melancholy in her soft voice, and she looked him directly in the eyes, and it seemed to Holmes that she forgave him.But he only dared to listen carefully, nodded in agreement, and secretly looked at her. Her pain became more and more obvious, and she stared carefully at his troubled and haggard face: "Sir, what should I do now? My son is gone, what should I do? Why did he leave me like that?" But Holmes could not think of any definite answer to her.She begged him with her eyes, as if she wanted only one thing, something of value, something sure and good.At that moment, he suddenly felt that the most cruel and ruthless but also the most tenacious and unyielding mentality in the world should be to find the true meaning of one thing without a certain answer.Besides, he knew that he couldn't invent a lie to comfort her like he did with Mr. Mei Qi; nor could he create a satisfactory conclusion to fill the gap in the facts like Dr. Watson wrote a novel.No, this time, the truth was plain and undeniable: Roger was dead, and by an unfortunate accident. "Why did all this happen, sir? I must know why." What she said had been said before by countless people—those who came to see him when he was in London; Wanting his help, asking him to ease their troubles and bring their lives back to normal.If only things were that simple, he thought.It would be nice if every problem could be identified with a solution. Then the confusion came over again, and he couldn't think anymore, but he did his best to get his thoughts across.He said solemnly: "Sometimes, it seems that many things happen beyond our comprehension. My dear, the reality is unfair and illogical to us. We can't find it no matter what. There’s a reason for that. But that’s what they are, unfortunately. I believe, I really believe, that if we’re going to live we’re going to have to accept the harshest reality.” Mrs. Munroe stared at him for a moment, as if not intending to respond, but then, with a wry smile, said, "Yes, it is." In the ensuing silence, she turned her eyes to the desk again—pen , paper, books, glass bottles—she neatly arranged everything she ever touched.After finishing, she turned around and said to him, "I'm sorry, I'm going to sleep. I've been really tired the past few days." "Are you going to stay with me tonight?" Holmes was worried about her. At the same time, he also felt that she should not be alone at this time. "Anderson's daughter is cooking, but maybe you'll find she's not very good at cooking. There are clean sheets in the guest room, I'm sure—" "I'm very comfortable here, thank you," she said. Holmes tried to assert himself, but Mrs. Munroe was already looking past him into the dark corridor.She arched her back, but her head was raised firmly, her eyes were wide open, the pupils were round and black, and there was a light green circle around them.Ignoring his presence, she pushed him aside and walked into Roger's room without a word.She would probably come out in the same way, he thought.As she walked toward the door, he stopped her, grabbed her hand, and prevented her from going forward. "my child--" She didn't struggle, and he didn't stop her anymore. He just held her hand, and she grabbed his hand. Neither of them spoke, nor did they look at each other—their palms were close to each other, and their fingers touched lightly. The touch had conveyed caring for each other—finally, she nodded, withdrew her hand, walked out the door, and quickly disappeared into the corridor, leaving him alone in the dark. After a while he stood up and left Roger's room without looking back.In the corridors he walked like a blind man, tapping his cane in front of him (behind him was the boy's bright room, in front of him was the dim cottage, and Mrs. Monroe was somewhere in front of him).When he reached the door, he fumbled for the door handle, and with great effort, he opened the door.The light outside stung his eyes and stopped him momentarily; he stood there, eyes squinted, breathing in the damp air after the rain.The serenity of the apiary beckoned him like a sanctuary, and he felt as at peace as he had sat between four stones.He took a deep breath and stepped forward, but still couldn't keep his eyes open as he walked up the path.He stopped on the road and searched his pockets for Jamaican cigars, but found only a box of matches.Forget it, he thought.He walked on, his shoes crackling in the mud, and the tall grass on either side of the path glistened with dew.When approaching the apiary, a red butterfly flew past him.Another butterfly followed, as if chasing the one before it—and then another.When the last butterfly had flown away, he scanned the entire apiary and finally settled on the rows of hives and the lawn where the four stones were hidden (everything is wet and quiet after the rain) . He went on, toward the point where the farm meets the skyline; on the horizon were his farm, his garden, and Mrs. Monroe's cottage.In the white and pure soil, the changes in the rock formations show the changes of the years. The winding path leading to the beach is lined with cliffs. Each rock formation implies the vicissitudes of history. They have been continuously and slowly formed over a long period of time. There are also fossils and curled roots between the layers. He began to walk down the path (as if his feet were constantly guiding him, and he leaned on crutches, leaving small holes in the wet limestone floor), listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, the distant The rumble, the hiss, and the short silence that followed were like the original language of the Creator before human life was conceived.He saw the afternoon breeze blending harmoniously with the undulations of the ocean; on the beach, miles away, the reflection of the sun shimmered on the water.The time passed minute by minute, and the sea water became more and more dazzling. The sun seemed to rise from the depths of the seabed, and the range of orange and red in the waves became larger and larger. But everything seemed so distant, so abstract, and so strange to him.The more he looked at the sea and the sky, the more he felt the distance between them and people.This, he thought, might be the reason why human beings are always at odds—the speed of human evolution far outstrips our natural nature, and that deviation is an unavoidable side effect.Thinking of this, the sudden surge of sadness made him almost unbearable.The waves are still rolling, the cliffs are still towering, the breeze is still salty, and the storm is still relieving the summer heat.He continued to walk down the path, and a restless thought came to him: he just wanted to be a part of the primitive natural order, to escape the constraints of being a human being and the unnecessary noise of human self-righteousness.It was so deeply ingrained in his mind that it surpassed everything he valued and believed (the many works and theories he wrote, the countless things he observed).The sun was sinking, and the sky began to shake; the moon occupied the sky, reflecting the sun's rays, like a vague and transparent semicircle, hanging above the blue-black sky.He quickly thought about the sun and the moon, one is a scorching hot and dazzling planet, the other is a frigid and lifeless crescent moon, running on their own orbits, yet they are indispensable to each other.Thinking of this, he felt satisfied.A sentence suddenly appeared in his mind, as for the source, he had long forgotten: the sun cannot catch up with the moon, and the night cannot surpass the day.At last, as it had happened time and time again on his walks in the past, dusk fell. He was halfway to the path, and the sun had dipped below the horizon, and the sun was shining on the tide pools and rubble piles, mingling with the dark shadows.He sat down on a bench overlooking the ocean, put his cane aside, and looked down at the beach—then the ocean, then the ever-changing, boundless sky.A few dark clouds that refused to leave still stayed in the distance, and the occasional flashes of light in the clouds were like fireflies.A few seagulls seemed to be calling at him, flying in circles around each other, deftly taking off on the breeze; below them, the orange waves, blurred and shimmering.Where the path turned to the beach, he noticed a few patches of new grass and blooming briars, but they looked like wanderers driven from the fertile land above.He thought he heard the sound of his own breathing—continuous, low and rhythmic, somewhat similar to the whimpering of the wind—or was it some other sound?Sounds coming from somewhere nearby?He thought, maybe it's the faint murmur of the cliffs, maybe it's the vibration of countless cracks in the soil, maybe it's the sound of stones, grass roots and land proclaiming their eternal existence beyond human beings for thousands of years; Talking is like telling time gently. He closes his eyes. His body relaxed, and his whole body felt exhausted.He sat on the bench and told himself, don't move, think of all the things that can last.The wild daffodils and the herb garden, the breeze blowing through the pines, had been there before he was born.He suddenly felt a tingling sensation in his neck, and he seemed to have it in his beard as well.He slowly raised one hand from his knee.Huge thistles curled upward.Purple Buddleia is in full bloom.Today's rain wets his land.Will it rain again tomorrow?The land after the heavy rain is more fragrant.The dense rhododendrons and laurel sway slightly in the grass.what is this?His hands also began to tingle, a tingling sensation spreading from his neck to his fists.His breathing became rapid, but his eyes remained open.There, on his outstretched fingers, scurrying about like a headless fly, it was a solitary worker bee.Its pollen-basket is full; it is far from the hive and comes alone to find food.What a wonderful little life, he thought, watching it dance in his palm.Then, with a wave of his hand, he sent it into the air.It flew so swiftly and effortlessly into this shifting, paradoxical world that it made him jealous.