As spread thighs2 are to the libertine3, flights of migratory4 birds to the ornithologist5, the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil. He would dream perhaps once a week that it had all been a dream, and that now he'd awakened7 to discover the pursuit of V. was merely a scholarly quest after all, an adventure of the mind, in the tradition of The Golden Bough8 or The White Goddess.
But soon enough he'd wake up the second, real time, to make again the tiresome9 discovery that it hadn't really ever stopped being the same simple-minded, literal pursuit; V. ambiguously a beast of venery, chased like the hart, hind10 or hare, chased like an obsolete11, or bizarre, or forbidden form of sexual delight. And clownish Stencil capering12 along behind her, bells ajingle, waving a wooden, toy oxgoad. For no one's amusement but his own.
His protest to the Margravine di Chiave Lowenstein (suspecting V.'s natural habitat to be the state of siege, he'd come to Mallorca directly from Toledo, where he'd spent a week night-walking the alcazar asking questions, gathering14 useless memorabilia): "It isn't espionage," had been, and still was, spoken more out of petulance16 than any desire to establish purity of motive17. He wished it could all be as respectacle and orthodox as spying. But somehow in his hands s the traditional tools and attitudes were always employed toward mean ends: cloak for a laundry sack, dagger18 to peel potatoes; dossiers to fill up dead Sunday afternoons; worst of all, disguise itself not out of any professional necessity but only as a trick, simply to involve him less in the chase, to put off some part of the pain of dilemma on various "impersonations."
Herbert Stencil, like small children at a certain stage and Henry Adams in the Education, as well as assorted20 autocrats21 since time out of mind, always referred to himself in the third person. This helped "Stencil" appear as only one among a repertoire22 of identities. "Forcible dislocation of personality" was what he called the general technique, which is not exactly the same as "seeing the other fellow's point of view"; for it involved, say, wearing clothes that Stencil wouldn't be caught dead in, eating foods that would have made Stencil gag, living in unfamiliar23 digs, frequenting bars or cafes of a non-Stencilian character; all this for weeks on end; and why? To keep Stencil in his place: that is, in the third person.
Around each seed of a dossier, therefore, had developed a nacreous mass of inference, poetic24 license25, forcible dislocation of personality into a past he didn't remember and had no right in, save the right of imaginative anxiety or historical care, which is recognized by no one. He tended each seashell on his submarine scungille farm, tender and impartial26, moving awkwardly about his staked preserve on the harborbed, carefully avoiding the little dark deep right there in the midst of the tame shellfish, down in which God knew what lived: the island Malta, where his father had died, where Herbert had never been and knew nothing at all about because something there kept him off, because it frightened him.
One evening, drowsing on the sofa in Bongo-Shaftsbury's apartment, Stencil took out his one souvenir of whatever old Sidney's Maltese adventure had been. A gay, four-color postcard, a Daily Mail battle photo from the Great War, showing a platoon of sweating, kilted Gordons wheeling a stretcher on which lay an enormous German enlisted27 man with a great mustache, one leg in a splint and a most comfortable grin. Sidney's message read: "I feel old, and yet like a sacrificial virgin28. Write and cheer me up. FATHER."
Young Stencil hadn't written because he was eighteen and never wrote. That was part of the present venery: the way he'd felt on hearing of Sidney's death half a year later and only then realizing that neither of them had communicated since the picture-postcard.
A certain Porpentine, one of his father's colleagues, had been murdered in Egypt under the duello by Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury, the father of the man who owned this apartment. Had Porpentine gone to Egypt like old Stencil to Malta, perhaps having written his own son that he felt like one other spy, who'd in turn one off to die in Schleswig-Holstein, Trieste, Sofia, anywhere? Apostolic succession. They must know when it's time, Stencil had often thought; but if death did come like some last charismatic bestowal, he'd have no real way of telling. He'd only the veiled references to Porpentine in the journals. The rest was impersonation and dream.
I
As the afternoon progressed, yellow clouds began to gather over Place Mohammed Ali, from the direction of the Libyan desert. A wind with no sound at all swept up rue29 Ibrahim and across the square, bringing a desert chill into the city.
For one P. Aieul, cafe waiter and amateur libertine, the clouds signaled rain. His lone30 customer, an Englishman, perhaps a tourist because his face was badly sunburned, sat all tweeds, ulster and expectation looking out on the square. Though he'd been there over coffee not fifteen minutes, already he seemed as permanent a landscape's feature as the equestrian31 statue of Mohammed Ali itself. Certain Englishmen, Aieul knew, have this talent. But they're usually not tourists.
Aieul lounged near the entrance to the cafe; outwardly inert32 but teeming inside with sad and philosophical33 reflections. Was this one waiting for a lady? How wrong to expect any romance or sudden love from Alexandria. No tourists' city gave that gift lightly. It took - how long had he been way from the Midi? twelve years? - at least that long. Let them be deceived into thinking the city something more than what their Baedekers said it was: a Pharos long gone to earthquake and the sea: picturesque34 but faceless Arabs; monuments, tombs, modern hotels. A false and bastard35 city; inert - for "them" - as Aieul himself.
He watched the sun darken and wind flutter the leaves of acacias round Place Mohammed Ali. In the distance a name was being bellowed36: Porpentine, Porpentine. It whined37 in the square's hollow reaches like a voice from childhood. Another fat Englishman, fair-haired, florid - didn't all Northerners look alike? - had been striding down rue Cherif Pacha in a dress suit and a pith helmet two sizes too large. Approaching Aieul's customer, he began blithering rapidly in English from twenty yards out. Something about a woman, a consulate39. The waiter shrugged40. Having teamed years back there was little to be curious about in the conversations of Englishmen. But the bad habit persisted.
Rain began, thin drops, hardly more than a mist. "Hat fingan," the fat one roared, "hat fingan kahwa bisukkar, ya weled." Two red faces burned angry at each other across the table.
Merde, Aieul thought. At the table: "M'sieu?"
"Ah," the gross smiled, "coffee then. Cafe, you know."
On his return the two were conversing42 lackadaisical43 about a grand party at the Consulate tonight. What consulate? All Aieul could distinguish were names. Victoria Wren44. Sir Alastair Wren (father? husband?). A Bongo-Shaftsbury. What ridiculous names that country produced. Aieul delivered the coffee and returned to his lounging space.
This fat one was out to seduce45 the girl, Victoria Wren, another tourist traveling with her tourist father. But was prevented by the lover, Bongo-Shaftsbury. The old one tweed - Porpentine - was the macquereau. The two he watched were anarchists47, plotting to assassinate48 Sir Alastair Wren, a powerful member of the English Parliament. The peer's wife - Victoria - was meanwhile being blackmailed49 by Bongo-Shaftsbury, who knew of her own secret anarchist46 sympathies. The two were music-hall entertainers, seeking jobs in a grand vaudeville50 being produced by Bongo-Shaftsbury, who was in town seeking funds from the foolish knight51 Wren. Bongo-Shaftsbury's avenue of approach would be through the glamorous52 actress Victoria, Wren's mistress, posing as his wife to satisfy the English fetish of respectability. Fat and Tweed would enter their consulate tonight arm-in-arm, singing a jovial54 song, shuffling55, rolling their eyes.
Rain had increased in thickness. A white envelope with a crest56 on the flap passed between the two at the table. All at once the tweed one jerked to his feet like a clockwork doll and began speaking in Italian.
A fit? But there was no sun. And Tweed had begun to sing:
Pazzo son!
Guardate, come io piango ed imploro . . .
Italian opera. Aieul felt sick. He watched them with a pained smile. The antic Englishman leaped in the air, clicked his heels; stood posturing57, fist on chest, other arm outstretched:
Come io chiedo pieta!
Rain drenched58 the two. The sunburned face bobbed like a balloon, the only touch of color in that square. Fat sat in the rain, sipping59 at the coffee, observing his frolicking companion. Aieul could hear drops of rain pattering on the pith helmet. At length Fat seemed to awake: arose, leaving a piastre and a millieme on the table (avare!) and nodded to the other, who now stood watching him. The square was empty except for Mohammed Ali and the horse.
(How many times had they stood this way: dwarfed60 horizontal and vertical61 by any plaza62 or late-afternoon? Could an argument from design be predicated on that instant only, then the two must have been displaceable, like minor63 chess pieces, anywhere across Europe's board. Both of a color though one hanging back diagonal in deference64 to his partner, both scanning any embassy's parquetry for signs of some dimly sensed opposition65 - lover, meal-ticket, object of political assassination66 - any statue's face for a reassurance67 of self-agency and perhaps, unhappily, self-humanity; might they be trying not to remember that each square in Europe, however you cut it, remains68 inanimate after all?)
They turned about formally and parted in opposite directions, Fat back toward the Hotel Khedival, Tweed into rue de Ras-et-Tin and the Turkish quarter.
Bonne chance, Aieul thought. Whatever it is tonight, bonne chance. Because I will see neither of you again, that's the least I can wish. He fell asleep at last against the wall, made drowsy69 by the rain, to dream of one Maryam and tonight, and the Arab quarter ....
Low places in the square filled, the usual random70 sets of criss-crossing concentric circles moved across them. Near eight o'clock, the rain slackened off.
II
Yusef the factotum71, temporarily on loan from Hotel Khedival, dashed through the failing rain, across the street to the Austrian Consulate; darting72 in by the servants' entrance.
"Late!" shouted Meknes, leader of the kitchen force. "And so, spawn73 of a homosexual camel: the punch table for you."
Not a bad assignment, Yusef thought as he put on the white jacket and combed his mustaches. From the punch table on the mezzanine one could see the whole show: down the decolletages of the prettier women (Italian breasts were the finest - ah!), over all that resplendent muster74 of stars, ribbons and exotic Orders.
Soon, from his vantage, Yusef could allow the first sneer75 of many this evening to ripple76 across a knowledgeable77 mouth. Let them make holiday while they could. Soon enough the fine clothes would be rags and the elegant woodwork crusted with blood. Yusef was an anarchist.
Anarchist and no one's fool. He kept abreast79 of current events, always on lookout80 for any news favorable to even minor chaos81. Tonight the political situation was hopeful: Sirdar Kitchener, England's newest colonial hero, recently victorious82 at Khartoum, was just now some 400 miles further down the White Nile, foraging84 about in the jungle; a General Marchand was also rumored85 in the vicinity. Britain wanted no part of France in the Nile Valley. M. Delcasse, Foreign Minister of a newly-formed French cabinet, would as soon go to war as not if there were any trouble when the two detachments met. As meet, everyone realized by now, they would. Russia would support France, while England had a temporary rapprochement with Germany - meaning Italy and Austria as well.
Bung ho, the English said. Up goes the balloon. Yusef, believing that an anarchist or devotee of annihilation must have some childhood memory to be nostalgic about by way of balance, loved balloons. Most nights at dreams' verge86 he could revolve87 like the moon about any gaily-dyed pig's intestine, distended88 with his own warm breath.
But from the corner of his eye now: miracle. How, if one believed in nothing, could one account . . .
A balloon-girl. A balloon-girl. Hardly seeming to touch the waxed mirror beneath. Holding her empty cup out to Yusef. Mesikum bilkher, good evening; are there any other cavities you wish filled, my English lady. Perhaps he would spare children like this. Would he? If it should come to a morning, any morning when all the muezzins were silent, the pigeons gone to bide89 among the catacombs, could he rise robeless in Nothing's dawn and do what he must? By conscience, must?
"Oh," she smiled: "Oh thank you. Leltak leben." May thy night be white as milk.
As thy belly90 . . . enough. She bobbed off, light as cigar smoke rising from the great room below. She'd pronounced her o's with a sigh, as if fainting from love. An older man, solidly built, hair gone gray-looking like a professional street-brawler in evening dress-joined her at the stairs. "Victoria," he rumbled91.
Victoria. Named after her queen. He fought in vain to hold back laughter. No telling what would amuse Yusef.
His attention was to stray to her now and again throughout the evening. It was pleasant amid all that glitter to have something to focus on. But she stood out. Her color - even her voice was lighter92 than the rest of her world, rising with the smoke to Yusef, whose hands were sticky with Chablis punch, mustache a sad tangle93 - he had a habit of unconsciously trimming the ends with his teeth.
Meknes dropped by every half-hour to call him names. If one happened to be in earshot they traded insults, some coarse, some ingenious, all following the Levantine pattern proceeding94 backward through the other's ancestry, creating extempore at each step or generation an even more improbable and bizarre misalliance.
Count Khevenhuller-Metsch the Austrian Consul38 had been spending much time in the company of his Russian counterpart, M. de Villiers. How, Yusef wondered, can two men joke like that and tomorrow be enemies. Perhaps they'd been enemies yesterday. He decided95 public servants weren't human.
Yusef shook the punch ladle at the retreating back of Meknes. Public servant indeed. What was he, Yusef, if not a public servant? Was he human? Before he'd embraced political nihilism, certainly. But as a servant, here, tonight, "them"? He might as well be a fixture96 on the wall.
But that will change, he smiled, grim. Soon he was day-dreaming again of balloons.
At the bottom of the steps sat the girl, Victoria, center of a curious tableau97. Seated next to her was a chubby98 blond man whose evening clothes looked shrunken by the rain. Standing99 facing them at the apices of a flat isosceles triangle were the gray-headed man who'd spoken her name, a young girl of eleven in a white shapeless frock, and another man whose face looked sunburned. The only voice Yusef could hear was Victoria's. "My sister is fond of rocks and fossils, Mr. Goodfellow." The blond head next to her nodded courteously100. "Show them, Mildred." The younger girl produced from her reticule a rock, turned and held it up first to Victoria's companion and then to the red face beside her. This one seemed to retreat, embarrassed. Yusef reflected that he could blush at will and no one would know. A few more words and the red face had left the group to come loping up the stairs.
To Yusef he held up five fingers: "Khamseh." As Yusef busied himself filling the cups, someone approached from behind and touched the Englishman lightly on one shoulder. The Englishman spun101, his hands balling into fists and moving into position for violence. Yusef's eyebrows102 went up a fraction of an inch. Another street-fighter. How long since he'd seen reflexes like that? In Tewfik the assassin, eighteen and apprentice103 tombstone-cutter - perhaps.
But this one was forty or forty-five. No one, Yusef reasoned, would stay fit that long unless his profession demanded it. What profession would include both a talent for killing104 and presence at a consulate party? An Austrian consulate at that.
The Englishman's hands had relaxed. He nodded pleasantly.
"Lovely girl," the other said. He wore blue-tinted105 spectacles and a false nose.
The Englishman smiled, turned, picked up his five cups of punch and started down the stairs. At the second step he tripped and fell; proceeded whirling and bouncing, followed by sounds of breaking glass and a spray of Chablis punch, to the bottom. Yusef noted106 that he knew how to take falls. The other street-fighter laughed to cover the general awkwardness.
"Saw a fellow do that in a music hall once," he rumbled. "You're much better, Porpentine. Really."
Porpentine extracted a cigarette and lay while smoking where he'd come to rest.
Up on the mezzanine the man with the blue eyeglasses peeked107 archly from behind a pillar, removed the nose, pocketed it and vanished.
A strange collection. There is more here, Yusef guessed. Had it to do with Kitchener and Marchand? Of course it must. But - His puzzling was interrupted by Meknes, who had returned to describe Yusef's great-great-great-grandfather and grandmother as a one-legged mongrel dog who fed on donkey excrement108 and a syphilitic elephant, respectively.
III
The Fink restaurant was quiet: not much doing. A few English and German tourists - the penny-pinching kind whom it was never any use approaching - sat scattered109 about the room, making noise enough for midday in Place Mohammed Ali.
Maxwell Rowley-Bugge, hair coiffed, mustaches curled and external clothing correct to the last wrinkle and thread, sat in one corner, back to the wall, feeling the first shooting pains of panic begin to dance about his abdomen110. For beneath the careful shell of hair, skin and fabric111 lay holed and gray linen112 and a ne'er-do-well's heart. Old Max was a peregrine and penniless at that.
Give it a quarter of an hour more, he decided. If nothing promising113 comes along I shall move on to L'Univers.
He had crossed the border into Baedeker land some eight years ago - '90 - after an unpleasantness in Yorkshire. It had been Ralph MacBurgess then - a young Lochinvar come down to the then wide enough horizons of England's vaudeville circuits. He sang a bit, danced a bit, told a number of passable barnyard jokes. But Max or Ralph had a problem; being perhaps too daft for small girls. This particular girl, Alice, had shown at age ten the same halfway114 responses (a game, she'd carol - such fun) of her predecessors115. But they know, Max told himself: no matter how young, they know what it is, what they're doing. Only they don't think about it that much. Which was why he drew the line at sixteen or so - any older and romance, religion, remorse entered blundering stagehands to ruin a pure pas de deux.
But this one had told her friends, who became jealous - one at least enough to pass it on to the clergyman, parents, police - O God. How awkward it had been. Though he'd not tried to forget the tableau - dressing116 room in the Athenaeum Theatre, a middle-sized town called Lardwick-in-the-Fen. Bare pipes, worn sequined gowns hung in a corner. Broken hollow-pasteboard pillar for the romantic tragedy the vaudeville had replaced. A costume box for their bed. Then footsteps, voices, a knob turning so slow . . .
She'd wanted it. Even afterward118, dry-eyed among a protective cordon119 of hating faces, the eyes had said: I still want it. Alice, the ruin of Ralph MacBurgess. Who knew what any of them wanted?
How he had come to Alexandria, where he would go on leaving, little of that could matter to any tourist. He was that sort of vagrant120 who exists, though unwillingly121, entirely122 within the Baedeker world - as much a feature of the topography as the other automata: waiters, porters, cabmen, clerks. Taken for granted. Whenever he was about his business - cadging123 meals, drinks, or lodging124 - a temporary covenant125 would come into effect between Max and his "touch"; by which Max was defined as a well-off fellow tourist temporarily embarrassed by a malfunction126 in Cook's machinery127.
A common game among tourists. They knew what he was; and those who participated in the game did so for the same reason they haggled128 at shops or gave baksheesh to beggars: it was in the unwritten laws of Baedeker land. Max was one of the minor inconveniences to an almost perfectly129 arranged tourist-state. The inconvenience was more than made up for in "color."
Fink's now began a burst into life. Max looked up with interest. Merrymakers were coming across rue de Rosette from a building which looked like an embassy or consulate. Party there must have only now broken up. The restaurant was filling rapidly. Max surveyed each newcomer, waiting for the imperceptible nod, the high-sign.
He decided at last on a group of four: two men, a small girl and a young lady who like the gown she wore seemed awkwardly bouffant130 and provincial131. All English, of course. Max had his criteria132.
He also had an eye, and something about the group disturbed him. After eight years in this supranational domain133 he knew a tourist when he saw one. The girls were almost certain - but their companions acted wrong: lacking a certain assurance an instinctive134 way of belonging to the touristic part of Alex common to all cities, which even the green show heir first time out. But it was getting late and Max had nowhere to stay tonight, nor had he eaten.
His opening line was unimportant, being only a choice among standard openers, each effective as long as the touches were eligible135 to play. It was the response that counted. Here it came out close to what he'd guessed. The two men, looking like a comedy team: one fair and fat, the other dark, red-faced and scrawny, seemed to want to play the gay dog. Fine, let them. Max knew how to be gay. During the introductions his eyes may have stayed a half-second too long on Mildred Wren. But she was myopic136 and stocky; nothing of that old Alice in her at all.
An ideal touch: all behaved as if they'd known him for years. But you somehow felt that through some horrible osmosis the word was going to get round. Wing in on the wind to every beggar, vagrant, exile-by-choice and peregrine-at-large in Alex that the team of Porpentine & Goodfellow plus the Wren sisters were sitting at a table in the Fink. This whole hard-up population might soon begin to drift in one by one, each getting the same sort of reception, drawn137 into the group cordially and casually138 as a close acquaintance who had left but a quarter of an hour before. Max was subject to visions. It would go on, into tomorrow, the next day, the next: they would keep calling for waiters in the same cheery voices to bring more chairs, food, wine. Soon the other tourists would have to be sent away: every chair in the Fink would be in use, spreading out from this table in rings, like a tree trunk or rain puddle140. And when the Fink's chairs ran out the harassed141 waiters would have to begin bringing more in from next door and down the street and then the next block, the next quarter; the seated beggars would overflow142 into the street, it would swell143 and swell . . . conversation would grow to enormity, each of the participating bringing to it his own reminiscences, jokes, dreams, looninesses, epigrams . . . an entertainment! A grand vaudeville! They'd sit like that, eating when hunger came, getting drunk, sleeping it off, getting drunk again. How would it end? How could it?
She'd been talking, the older girl - Victoria - while Voslauer gone perhaps to her head. Eighteen, Max guessed, slowly giving up his vision of vagrants' communion. About the age Alice would be, now.
Was there a bit of Alice there? Alice was of course another of his criteria. Well the same queer mixture, at least, of girl-at-play, girl-in-heat. Blithe and so green . . .
She was Catholic; had been to a convent school near her home. This was her first trip abroad. She talked perhaps overmuch about her religion; had indeed for a time considered the Son of God as a young lady will consider any eligible bachelor. But had realized eventually that of course he was not but maintained instead a great harem clad in black, decked only with rosaries. Unable to stand for any such competition Victoria had therefore left the novitiate after a matter of weeks but not the Church: that with its sadfaced statuary, odors of candles and incense144, formed along with an uncle Evelyn the foci of her serene145 orbit. The uncle, a wild or renegade sundowner, would arrive from Australia once every few years bringing no gifts but his wonderful yarns147. As far as Victoria remembered, he'd never repeated himself. More important perhaps, she was given enough material to evolve between visits a private back of beyond, a colonial doll's world she could play with and within constantly: developing, exploring, manipulating. Especially during Mass: for here was the stage or dramatic field already prepared, serviceable to a seedtime fancy. So it came about that God wore a wideawake hat and fought skirmishes with an aboriginal148 Satan out at the antipodes of the firmament149, in the name and for the safekeeping of any Victoria.
Now Alice - it had been "her" clergyman, had it not? she was C. of E., sturdy-English, future mother, apple cheeks, all that. What is wrong with you Max, he asked himself. Come out of that costume box, that cheerless past. This one's only Victoria, Victoria . . . but what was there about her?
Normally in gatherings150 like this Max could be talkative, amusing. Not so much by way of paying for his meal or kip as to keep fit, retain the fine edge, the knack151 for telling a good yarn146 and gauging152 his own rapport153 with the audience in case, in case . . .
He could go back into the business. There were touring companies abroad: even now, eight years aged117, eyebrow-line altered, hair dyed, the mustache - who'd know him? What need for exile? The story had spread to the troupe154 and through them to all small-urban and provincial England. But they'd all loved him, handsome, jolly Ralph. Surely after eight years, even if he were recognized . . .
But now Max found not much to say. The girl dominated conversation, and it was the kind of conversation Max had no knack for. Here were none of your post-mortems on the day past - vistas155! tombs! curious beggars! - no bringing out of small prizes from the shops and bazaars157, no speculation158 on tomorrow's itinerary159; only a passing reference to a party tonight at the Austrian Consulate. Here instead was unilateral confession160, and Mildred contemplating a rock with trilobite fossiles she'd found out near the site of the Pharos, the other two men listening to Victoria but yet off somewhere else switching glances at each other, at the door, about the room. Dinner came, was eaten, went. But even with a filled belly Max could not cheer up. They were somehow depressing: Max felt disquieted161. What had he walked into? It showed bad judgment162, settling on this lot.
"My God," from Goodfellow. They looked up to see, materialized behind them, an emaciated163 figure in evening dress whose head appeared to be that of a nettled164 sparrow-hawk. The head guffawed165, retaining its fierce expression. Victoria bubbled over in a laugh.
"It's Hugh!" she cried, delighted.
"Indeed," came a hollow voice from inside somewhere.
"Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury," said Goodfellow, ungracious.
"Harmakhis." Bongo-Shaftsbury indicated the ceramic166 hawk's head. "God of Heliopolis and chief deity167 of Lower Egypt. Utterly168 genuine, this: a mask, you know, used in the ancient rituals." He seated himself next to Victoria. Goodfellow scowled170. "Literally171 Horus on the horizon, also represented as a lion with the head of a man. Like the Sphinx."
"Oh," Victoria said (that languid "oh"), "the Sphinx."
"How far down the Nile do you intend to go," asked Porcine. "Mr. Goodfellow has mentioned your interest in Luxor."
"I feel it is fresh territory, sir," Bongo-Shaftsbury replied. "No first-rate work around the area since Grebaut discovered the tomb of the Theban priests back in '91. Of course one should have a look round the pyramids at Gaza, but that is pretty much old hat since Mr. Flinders Petrie's painstaking172 inspection173 of sixteen or seventeen years ago."
Now what was this, Max wondered. An Egyptologist was he, or only reciting from the pages of his Baedeker? Victoria poised174 prettily175 between Goodfellow and Bongo-Shaftsbury, attempting to maintain a kind of flirtatious equilibrium176.
On the face of it, all normal. Rivalry177 for the young lady's attentions between the two, Mildred a younger sister, Porpentine perhaps a personal secretary; for Goodfellow did have the affluent178 look. But beneath?
He came to the awareness179 reluctantly. In Baedeker land one doesn't often run across impostors. Duplicity is against the law, it is being a Bad Fellow.
But they were only posing as tourists. Playing a game different from Max's; and it frightened him.
Talk at the table stopped. The faces of the three men lost whatever marks of specific passion they had held. The cause was approaching their table: an unremarkable figure wearing a cape13 and blue eyeglasses.
"Hullo Lepsius," said Goodfellow. "Tire of the climate in Brindisi, did you?"
"Sudden business called me to Egypt."
So the party had already grown from four to seven. Max remembered his vision. What quaint139 manner of peregrine here: these two? He saw a flicker181 of communication between the newcomers, rapid and nearly coinciding with a similar glance between Porpentine and Goodfellow.
Was that how the sides were drawn up? Were there sides at all?
Goodfellow sniffed182 at his wine. "Your traveling companion," he said at last. "We'd rather hoped to see him again."
"Gone to a Switzerland," said Lepsius, "of clean winds, clean mountains. One can have enough, one day, of this soiled South."
"Unless you go far enough south. I imagine far enough down the Nile one gets back to a kind of primitive183 spotlessness."
Good timing184, Max noted. And the gestures preceded the lines as they should. Whoever they were it was none of your amateur night.
Lepsius speculated: "Doesn't the law of the wild beast prevail down there? There are no property rights. There is fighting. The victor wins all. Glory, life, power and property; all."
"Perhaps. But in Europe, you know, we are civilized185. Fortunately jungle law is inadmissible."
Odd: neither Porpentine nor Bongo-Shaftsbury spoke15. Each had bent186 a close eye on his own man, keeping expressionless.
"Shall we meet again in Cairo then," said Lepsius.
"Most certainly"; nodding.
Lepsius took his leave then.
"What a queer gentleman," Victoria smiled, restraining Mildred, who'd cocked an arm preparing to heave her rock at his retreating form.
Bongo-Shaftsbury turned to Porpentine. "Is it queer to favor the clean over the impure187?"
"It may depend on one's employment," was Porpentine's rejoinder: "and employer."
Time had come for the Fink to close up. Bongo-Shaftsbury took the check with an alacrity188 which amused them all. Half the battle, thought Max. Out in the street he touched Porpentine's sleeve and began an apologetic denunciation of Cook's. Victoria skipped ahead across rue Cherif Pacha to the hotel. Behind them a closed carriage came rattling189 out of the drive beside the Austrian Consulate and dashed away hell-for-leather down rue de Rosette.
Porpentine turned to watch it. "Someone is in a hurry," Bongo-Shaftsbury noted.
"Indeed," said Goodfellow. The three watched a few lights in the upper windows of the consulate. "Quiet, though."
Bongo-Shaftsbury laughed quickly, perhaps a bit incredulous.
"Here. In the street . . ."
"A fiver would see me through," Max had continued, trying to regain Porpentine's attention.
"Oh," vague, "of course, I could spare it." Fumbling190 naively191 with his wallet.
Victoria watched them from the curb192 opposite. "Do come along," she called.
Goodfellow grinned. "Here, m'dear." And started across with Bongo-Shaftsbury.
She stamped her foot. "Mr. Porpentine." Porpentine, five quid between his fingertips, looked around. "Do finish with your cripple. Give him his shilling and come. It's late."
The white wine, a ghost of Alice, first doubts that Porpentine was genuine; all could contribute to a violation193 of code. The code being only: Max, take whatever they give you. Max had already turned away from the note which fluttered in the street's wind, moved off against the wind. Limping toward the next pool of light he sensed Porpentine still looked after him. Also knew what he must look like: a little halt, less sure of his own memories' safety and of how many more pools of light he could reasonably expect from the street at night.
IV
The Alexandria and Cairo morning express was late. It puffed194 into the Gare du Caire slow, noisy, venting195 black smoke and white steam to mingle196 among palms and acacias in the park across the tracks from the station house.
Of course the train was late. Waldetar the conductor snorted good-naturedly at those on the platform. Tourists and businessmen, porters from Cook's and Gaze's, poorer, third-class passengers with their impedimenta - like a bazaar156 -: what else did they expect? Seven years he'd made the same leisurely197 run, and the train had never been on time. Schedules were for the line's owners, for those who calculated profit and loss. The train itself ran on a different clock - its own, which no human could read.
Waldetar was not an Alexandrian. Born in Portugal, he now lived with a wife and three children near the railroad yards in Cairo. His life's progress had been inevitably198 east; having somehow escaped the hothouse of his fellow Sephardim he flew to the other extreme and developed an obsession199 with ancestral roots. Land of triumph, land of God. Land of suffering, also. Scenes of specific persecution200 upset him.
But Alexandria was a special case. In the Jewish year 3554 Ptolemy Philopator, having been refused entrance to the temple at Jerusalem, returned to Alexandria and imprisoned201 many of the Jewish colony there. Christians202 were not the first to be put on exhibition and mass-murdered for the amusement of a mob. Here Ptolemy, after ordering Alexandria's Jews confined in the Hippodrome, embarked203 on a two-day debauch204. The king, his guests and a herd205 of killer206 elephants fed on wine and aphrodisiacs: when all had been up to the proper level of blood-lust, the elephants were turned loose into the arena207 and driven upon the prisoners. But turned (goes the tale) on the guards and spectators instead, trampling208 many to death. So impressed was Ptolemy that he released the condemned209, restored their privileges, and gave them leave to kill their enemies.
Waldetar, a highly religious man, had heard the story from his father and was inclined to take the common-sense view. If there is no telling what a drunken human will do, so much less a herd of drunken elephants. Why put it down to God's intervention210? There were enough instances of that in history, all regarded by Waldetar with terror and a sense of his own smallness: Noah's warning of the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, Lot's escape from annihilated211 Sodom. Men, he felt, even perhaps Sephardim, are at the mercy of the earth and its seas. Whether a cataclysm212 is accident or design, they need a God to keep them from harm.
The storm and the earthquake have no mind. Soul cannot commend no-soul. Only God can.
But elephants have souls. Anything that can get drunk, he reasoned, must have some soul. Perhaps this is all "soul" means. Events between soul and soul are not God's direct province: they are under the influence either of Fortune, or of virtue213. Fortune had saved the Jews in the Hippodrome.
Merely train's hardware for any casual onlooker214, Waldetar in private life was exactly this mist of philosophy, imagination and continual worry over his several relationships - not only with God, but also with Nita, with their children, with his own history. There's no organized effort about it but here remains a grand joke on all visitors to Baedeker's world: the permanent residents are actually humans in disguise.T his secret is as well kept as the others: that statues talk (though the vocal215 Memnon of Thebes, certain sunrises, been indiscreet), that some government buildings go mad and mosques216 make love.
Passengers and baggage aboard, the train overcame its inertia217 and started off only a quarter of an hour behind schedule toward the climbing sun. The railway from Alexandria to Cairo describes a rough arc whose chord points southeast. But the train must first angle north to skirt Lake Mareotis. While Waldetar made his way among the first-class compartments220 to gather tickets, the train passed rich villages and gardens alive with palms and orange trees. Abruptly221 these were left behind. Waldetar squeezed past a German with blue lenses for eyes and an Arab deep in conversation in time to enter a compartment219 and see from the window momentary222 death: desert. The site of the ancient Eleusis - a great mound223, looking like the one spot on earth fertile Demeter had never seen, passed by to the south.
At Sidi Gaber the train swung at last toward the southeast, inching slow as the sun; zenith and Cairo would in fact be reached at the same time. Across the Mahmudiyeh Canal, into a slow bloom of green - the Delta224 - and clouds of ducks and pelicans225 rising from the shores of Mareotis, frightened by the noise. Beneath the lake were 150 villages, submerged by a man-made Flood in 1801, when the English cut through an isthmus226 of desert during the siege of Alexandria, to let the Mediterranean227 in. Waldetar liked to think that the waterfowl soaring thick in the air were ghosts of fellahin. What submarine wonders at the floor of Mareotis! Lost country: houses, hovels, farms, water wheels, all intact.
Did the narwhal pull their plows228? Devilfish drive their water wheels?
Down the embankment a group of Arabs lazed about, evaporating water from the lake for salt. Far down the canal were barges229, their sails brave white under this sun.
Under the same sun Nita would be moving now about their little yard growing heavy with what Waldetar hoped would be a boy. A boy could even it up, two and two. Women outnumber us now, he thought: why should I contribute further to the imbalance?
"Though I'm not against it," he'd once told her during their courtship (part way here - in Barcelona, when he was stevedoring230 at the docks); "God's will, is it not? Look at Solomon, at many great kings. One man, several wives."
"Great king," she yelled: "who?" They both started to laugh like children. "One peasant girl you can't even support." Which is no way to impress a young man you are bent on marrying. It was one of the reasons he fell in love with her shortly afterward and why they'd stayed in love for nearly seven years of monogamy.
Nita, Nita . . The mind's picture was always of her seated behind their house at dusk, where the cries of children were drowned in the whistle of a night train for Suez; where cinders231 came to lodge232 in pores beginning to widen under the stresses of some heart's geology ("Your complexion233 is going from bad to worse," he'd say: "I'll have to start paying more attention to the lovely young French girls who are always making eyes at me." "Fine," she'd retort, "I'll tell that to the baker234 when he comes to sleep with me tomorrow, it'll make him feel better"); where all the nostalgias of an Iberian littoral236 lost to them - the squid hung to dry, nets stretched across any skyglow morning or evening, singing or drunken cries of sailors and fishermen from behind only the next looming237 warehouse238 (find them, find them!
voices whose misery239 is all the world's night) - came unreal, in a symbolic way, as a racketing over points, a chuff-chuff of inanimate breath, and had only pretended to gather among the pumpkins240, purslane and cucumbers, date palm, roses and poinsettias of their garden.
Halfway to Damanhur he heard a child crying from a compartment nearby. Curious, Waldetar looked inside. The was English, eleven or so, nearsighted: her watering eyes swam distorted behind thick eyeglasses. Across from her a man, thirty or so, harangued241. Another looked on, perhaps angry, his burning face at least giving the illusion. The girl held a rock to her flat bosom242.
"But have you never played with a clockwork doll?" the man insisted, the voice muffled243 through the door. "A doll which does everything perfectly, because of the machinery inside. Walks, sings, jumps rope. Real little boys and girls, you know, cry: act sullen244, won't behave." His hands lay perfectly still, long and starved-nervous, one on each knee.
"Bongo-Shaftsbury," the other began. Bongo-Shaftsbury waved him off, irritated.
"Come. May I show you a mechanical doll. An electro-mechanical doll."
"Have you one -" she was frightened, Waldetar thought with an onrush of sympathy, seeing his own girls. Damn some of these English - "have you one with you?"
"I am one," Bongo-Shaftsbury smiled. And pushed back the sleeve of his coat to remove a cufflink. He rolled up the shirt cuff245 and thrust the naked underside of his arm at the girl. Shiny and black, sewn into the flesh, was a miniature electric switch. Single-pole, double-throw. Waldetar recoiled and stood blinking. Thin silver wires ran from its terminals up the arm, disappearing under the sleeve.
"You see, Mildred. These wires run into my brain. When the switch is thrown the other -"
"Papa!" the girl cried.
"Everything works by electricity. Simple and clean."
"Stop it," said the other Englishman.
"Why, Porpentine." Vicious. "Why. For her? Touched by her fright, are you. Or is it for yourself."
Porpentine seemed to retreat bashfully. "One doesn't frighten a child, sir."
"Hurrah246. General principles again." Corpse247 fingers jabbed in the air. "But someday, Porpentine, I, or another, will catch you off guard. Loving, hating, even showing some absent-minded sympathy. I'll watch you. The moment you forget yourself enough to admit another's humanity, see him as a person and not a symbol - then perhaps-"
"What is humanity."
"You ask the obvious, ha, ha. Humanity is something to destroy."
There was noise from the rear car, behind Waldetar. Porpentine came dashing out and they collided. Mildred had fled, clutching her rock, to the adjoining compartment.
The door to the rear platform was open: in front of it a fat florid Englishman wrestled248 with the Arab Waldetar had seen earlier talking to the German. The Arab had a pistol. Porpentine moved toward them, closing cautiously, choosing his point. Waldetar, recovering at last, hurried in to break up the fight. Before he could reach them Porpentine had let loose a kick at the Arab's throat, catching249 him across the windpipe. The Arab collapsed250 rattling.
"Now," Porpentine pondered. The fat Englishman had taken the pistol.
"What is the trouble," Waldetar demanded, in his best public-servant's voice.
"Nothing." Porpentine held out a sovereign. "Nothing that cannot be healed by this sovereign cure."
Waldetar shrugged. Between them they got the Arab to a third-class compartment, instructed the attendant there to look after him - he was sick - and to put him off at Damanhur. A blue mark was appearing on the Arab's throat. He tried to talk several times. He looked sick enough.
When the Englishmen had at last returned to their compartments Waldetar fell into reverie which continued on past Damanhur (where he saw the Arab and blue-lensed German again conversing), through a narrowing Delta, the sun rose toward noon and the train crawled toward Cairo's Principal Station; as dozens of small children ran alongside the train calling for baksheesh; as girls in blue cotton skirts and veils, with breasts made sleek251 brown by the sun, traipsed down to the Nile to fill their water jars; as water wheels spun and irrigation canals glittered and interlaced away to the horizon; as fellahin lounged under the palms; as buffalo252 paced their every day's tracks round and round the sakiehs. The point of the green triangle is Cairo. It means that relatively253 speaking, assuming your train stands still and the land moves past, that the twin wastes of the Libyan and Arabian deserts to right and left creep in inexorably to narrow the fertile and quick part of your world until you are left with hardly more than a right-of-way, and before you a great city. So there crept in on the gentle Waldetar a suspicion cheerless as the desert.
If they are what I think; what sort of world is it when they must let children suffer?
Thinking, of course, of Manoel, Antonia and Maria: his own.
V
The desert creeps in on a man's land. Not a fellah, but he does own some land. Did own. From a boy, he has repaired the wall, mortared, carried stone heavy as he, lifted, set in place. Still the desert comes. Is the wall a traitor254, letting it in? Is the boy possessed255 by a djinn who makes his hands do the work wrong? Is the desert's attack too powerful for any boy, or wall, or dead father and mother?
No. The desert moves in. It happens, nothing else. No djinn in the boy, no treachery in the wall, no hostility256 in the desert. Nothing.
Soon, nothing. Soon only the desert. The two goats must choke on sand, nuzzling down to find the white clover. He, never to taste their soured milk again. The melons die beneath the sand. Never more can you give comfort in the summer, cool abdelawi, shaped like the Angel's trumpet257! The maize258 dies and there is no bread. The wife, the children grow sick and short-tempered. The man, he, runs one night out to where the wall was, begins to lift and toss imaginary rocks about, curses Allah, then begs forgiveness from the Prophet, then urinates on the desert, hoping to insult what cannot be insulted.
They find him in the morning a mile from the house, skin blued, shivering in a sleep which is almost death, tears turned to frost on the sand.
And now the house begins to fill with desert, like the lower half of an hourglass which will never be inverted259 again.
What does a man do? Gebrail shot a quick look back at his fare. Even here, in the Ezbekiyeh Garden at high noon, these horse's hooves sounded hollow. You jolly damn right Inglizi; a man comes to the City and drives for you and every other Frank with land to return to. His family lives all together in a room no bigger than your W.C., out in Arabian Cairo where you never go because it's too dirty, and not "curious." Where the street is so narrow hardly a man's shadow can pass; a street, like many not on any guidebook's map. Where the houses pile up in steps; so high that the windows of two buildings may touch across the street; and hide the sun. Where goldsmiths live in filth260 and tend tiny flames to make adornment261 far your traveling English ladies.
Five years Gebrail had hated them. Hated the stone buildings and metaled roads, the iron bridges and glass windows of Shepheard's Hotel which it seemed were only different forms of the same dead sand that had taken his home. "The City," Gebrail often told his wife, just after admitting he'd come home drunk and just before beginning to yell at his children - the five of them curled blind in the windowless room above the barber like so many puppy-bodies - "the city is only the desert in disguise."
The Lord's angel, Gebrail, dictated262 the Koran to Mohammed the Lord's Prophet. What a joke if all that holy book were only twenty-three years of listening to the desert. A desert which has no voice. If the Koran were nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a story, and his Paradise wishful thinking.
"Fine." The fare leaned over his shoulder, smelling of garlic, like an Italian. "Wait here." But dressed like an Inglizi. How horrible the face looked: dead skin peeling off the burned face in white rags. They were in front of Shepheard's Hotel.
Since noon they'd been all over the fashionable part of the city . From Hotel Victoria (where, oddly, his fare had emerged from the servants' entrance) they had driven first to the Quarter Rossetti, then a few stops along the Muski; then uphill to the Rond-Point, where Gebrail waited while the Englishman disappeared for half an hour into the Bazaars' pungent labyrinth263. Visiting, perhaps. Now he'd seen the girl before, surely. The girl in the Quarter Rossetti: Coptic, probably. Eyes made impossibly huge with mascara, pose slightly hooked and bowed, two vertical dimples on either side of the mouth, crocheted264 shawl covering hair and back, high cheekbones, warm-brown skin.
Of course she'd been a fare. He remembered the face. She was mistress to some clerk or other in the British Consulate. Gebrail had picked the boy up for her in front of the Hotel Victoria, across the street. Another time they'd gone to her rooms. It helped Gebrail to remember faces. Brought in more baksheesh if you bade them good-day any second time. How could you say they were people: they were money. What did he care about the love affairs of the English? Charity - selfless or erotic - was as much a lie as the Koran. Did not exist.
One merchant in the Muski too he had seen. A jewel merchant who had lent money to the Mahdists and was afraid his sympathies would become known now that the movement was crushed. What did the Englishman want there? He had brought no jewels away from the shop; though he'd remained inside for nearly an hour. Gebrail shrugged. They were both fools. The only Mahdi is the desert.
Mohammed Ahmed, the Mahdi of '83, was believed by some to be sleeping not dead in a cavern265 near Baghdad. And on the Last Day, when the prophet Christ re-establishes el-Islam as the religion of the world he will return to life to slay266 Dejal the antichrist at a church gate somewhere in Palestine. The Angel Asrafil will trumpet a blast to kill everything on earth, and another to awaken6 the dead.
But the desert's angel had hidden all the trumpets267 beneath the sand. The desert was prophecy enough of the Last Day.
Gebrail lounged exhausted268 against the seat of his pinto-colored phaeton. He watched the hindquarters of the poor horse. A poor horse's ass19. He nearly laughed. Was this a revelation then from God? Haze269 hung over the city.
Tonight, he would get drunk with an acquaintance who sold sycamore figs, whose name Gebrail didn't know. The fig-hawker believed in the Last Day; saw it, in fact, close at hand.
"Rumors270," he said darkly, smiling at the girl with the rotting teeth, who worked the Arabian cafes looking for love-needy Franks with her baby on one shoulder. "Political rumors."
"Politics is a lie."
"Far up the Bahr-el-Abyad, in the heathen jungle, is a place called Fashoda. The Franks - Inglizi, Feransawi - will fight a great battle there, which will spread in all directions to engulf271 the world."
"And Asrafil will sound the call to arms," snorted Gebrail. "He cannot. He is a lie, his trumpet is a lie. The only truth -"
"Is the desert, is the desert. Wahyat abuk! God forbid."
And the fig-hawker went off into the smoke to get more brandy.
Nothing was coming. Nothing was already here.
Back came the Englishman, with his gangrenous face. A fat friend followed him out of the hotel.
"Bide time," the fare called mirthfully.
"Ha, ho. I'm taking Victoria to the opera tomorrow night."
Back in the cab: "There is a chemist's shop near the Credit Lyonnais." Weary Gebrail gathered the reins272.
Night was coming rapidly. This haze would make the stars invisible. Brandy, too, would help. Gebrail enjoyed starless nights. As if a great lie were finally to be exposed . . .
VI
Three in the morning, hardly a sound in the streets, and time for Girgis the mountebank273 to be about his nighttime avocation274, burglary.
Breeze in the acacias: that was all. Girgis huddled275 in bushes, near the back of Shepheard's Hotel. While the sun was up he and a crew of Syrian acrobats and a trio from Port Said (dulcimer, Nubian drum, reed pipe) performed in a cleared space by the Ismailiyeh Canal out in the suburbs near the slaughterhouse of Abbasiyeh. A fair. There were swings and a fearsome steam-driven carousel276 for the children; serpent-charmers, and hawkers of all refreshment277: toasted seeds of abdelawi, limes, fried treacle278, water flavored with licorice or orange blossom, meat puddings. His customers were the children of Cairo and those aged children of Europe, the tourists.
Take from them by day, take from them by night. If only his bones weren't beginning so much to feel it. Performing the tricks - with silk kerchiefs, folding boxes, a mysteriously pocketed cloak decorated outside with hieroglyphic279 ploughs, scepters, feeding ibis, lily and sun - sleight-of-hand and burglary needed light hands, bones of rubber. But the clowning - that took it out of him. Hardened the bones: bones that should be alive, not rock rods under the flesh. Falling off the top of a motley pyramid of Syrians, making the dive look as near-fatal as it actually was; or else engaging the bottom man in a slapstick routine so violent that the whole construction tottered280 and swayed; mock-horror appearing on the faces of the others. While the children laughed, shrieked281, closed their eyes or enjoyed the suspense282. That was the only real compensation, he supposed - God knew it wasn't the pay - a response from the children; buffoon's treasure.
Enough, enough. Best get this over, he decided, and to bed as soon as possible. One of these days he'd climb up on that pyramid so exhausted, reflexes off enough, that the neckbreaking routine would be no sham283. Girgis shivered in the same wind that cooled the acacias. Up, he told his body: That window.
And was halfway erect284 before he saw his competition. Another comic acrobat, climbing out a window some ten feet above the bushes Girgis crouched285 in.
Patience, then. Study his technique. We can always learn. The other's face, turned in profile, seemed wrong: but it was only the streetlight. Feet now on a narrow ledge78, the man began to inch along crablike286, toward the corner of the building. After a few steps, stopped; began to pick at his face. Something white fluttered down, tissue-thin, into the bushes.
Skin? Girgis shivered again. He had a way of repressing thoughts of disease.
Apparently287 the ledge narrowed toward the corner. The thief was hugging the wall closer. He reached the corner. As he stood with each foot on a different side and the edge of the building bisecting him from eyebrows to abdomen he his balance and fell. On the way down he yelled out an obscenity in English. Then hit the shrubbery with a crash, rolled and lay still for a while. A match flared288 and went out, leaving only the pulsing coal of a cigarette.
Girgis was all sympathy. He could see it happening to himself one day, in front of the children, old and young. If he'd believed in signs he would have given it up for tonight and gone back to the tent they all shared near the slaughterhouse. But how could he stay alive on the few milliemes tossed his way during the day? "Mountebank is a dying profession," he'd reckon in his lighter moments. "All the good ones have moved into politics."
The Englishman put out his cigarette, rose and began to climb a tree nearby. Girgis lay muttering old curses. He could hear the Englishman wheezing289 and talking to himself as he ascended290, crawled out on a limb, straddled it and peered in a window.
After a lag of fifteen seconds, Girgis distinctly heard the words, "A bit thick, you know," from the tree. Another cigarette-coal appeared, then abruptly swung in a quick arc downward and hung a few feet below the limb. The Englishman was swinging by one arm from the limb.
This is ridiculous, Girgis thought.
Crash. The Englishman fell into the bushes again. Girgis got cautiously to his feet and went over to him.
"Bongo-Shaftsbury?" the Englishman said, hearing Girgis approach. He lay looking up at a starless zenith, picking absently at flakes291 of dead skin on his face. Girgis stopped a few feet away. "Not yet," the other continued, "you haven't got me quite yet. They are up there, on my bed, Goodfellow and the girl. We've been together now for two years, and I can't begin, you know, to count all the girls he's done this to. As if every capital of Europe were Margate, and the promenade292 a continent long." He began to sing.
It isn't the girl I saw you wiv in Brighton,
Who, who, who's your lady friend?
Mad, thought Girgis, pitying. The sun hadn't stopped with this poor fellow's face, it had gone on into the brain.
"She will be in 'love' with him, whatever the word means. He will leave her. Do you think I care? One accepts his partner as one does any tool, with all its idiosyncrasies. I had read Goodfellow's dossier, I knew what I was getting . . .
"But perhaps the sun, and what is happening down the Nile, and the knife-switch on your arm, which I did not expect; and the frightened child, and now -" he gestured up at the window he'd left "have thrown me off. We all have a threshold. Put your revolver away, Bongo-Shaftsbury - there's a good fellow - and wait, only wait. She is still faceless, still expendable. God, who knows how many of us will have to be sacrificed this coming week? She is the least of my worries. She and Goodfellow."
What comfort could Girgis give him? His English wasn't good, he'd only understood half the words. The madman had not moved, had only continued to stare at the sky. Girgis opened his mouth to speak thought better of it, and began to back away. He realized all at once how tired he was, how much the days of acrobatics293 took out of him. Would that alienated294 figure on the ground be Girgis someday?
I'm getting old, Girgis thought. I have seen my own ghost. But I'll have a look at the Hotel du Nil83 anyway. The tourists there aren't as rich. But we all do what we can.
VII
The bierhalle north of the Ezbekiyeh Garden had been created by north European tourists in their own image. One memory of home among the dark-skinned and tropical. But so German as to be ultimately a parody295 of home.
Hanne had held on to the job only because she was stout296 and blond. A smaller brunette from the south had stayed for a time but was finally let go because she didn't look German enough. A Bavarian peasant but not German enough! The whims297 of Boeblich the owner got only amusement from Hanne. Bred to patience - a barmaid since age thirteen - she had cultivated and perfected a vast cowlike calm which served her now in good stead among the drunkenness, sex for sale and general fatuousness298 of the bierhalle.
To the bovine299 of this world - this tourist world, at least - love comes, is undergone, and goes away unobtrusive as possible. So with Hanne and the itinerant300 Lepsius; a salesman - said he - of ladies' jewelry301. Who was she to question? Having been through it (her phrase), Hanne, schooled in the ways of an unsentimental world, knew well enough that men were obsessed302 with politics almost as much as women with marriage. Knew the bierhalle to be more than a place to get drunk or fixed303 up with a woman, just as its list of frequent customers did comprise individuals strange to Karl Baedeker's way of life.
How upset Boeblich would be could he see her lover. Hanne mooned about the kitchen now, in the slack period between dinner and serious drinking, up to her elbows in soapy water. Lepsius was certainly "not German enough." Half a head shorter than Hanne, eyes so delicate that he must wear tinted glasses even in the murk of Boeblich's, and such poor thin arms and legs.
"There is a competitor in town," he confided304 to her, "pushing an inferior line, underselling us - it's unethical, don't you see?" She'd nodded.
Well if he came in . . . anything she happened to overhear . . . a rotten business, nothing he'd ever want to subject a woman to . . . but . . .
For his poor weak eyes, his loud snoring, his boylike way of mounting her, taking too long to come to rest in the embrace of her fat legs . . . of course, she would go on watch for any "competitor." English he was, and somewhere had got a bad touch of the sun.
All day, through the slower morning hours, her hearing seemed to grow sharper. So that at noon when the kitchen erupted gently into disorder305 - nothing outright306: a few delayed orders, a dropped plate which shattered like her tender eardrums - she'd heard perhaps more than she was intended to. Fashoda, Fashoda . . . the word washed about Boeblich's like a pestilent rain. Even the faces changed: Grune the chef, Wernher the bartender, Musa the boy who swept floors, Lotte and Eva and the other girls, all seemed to've turned shifty, to've been hiding secrets all this time. There was even something sinister307 about the usual slap on the buttocks Boeblich gave Hanne as she passed by.
Imagination, she told herself. She'd always been a practical girl, not given to fancy. Could this be one of love's side-effects? To bring on visions, encourage voices which did not exist, to make the chewing and second digestion308 of any cud only mare218 difficult? It worried Hanne, who thought she knew everything about love. How was Lepsius different: a little slower, a little weaker; certainly no high priest at the business, no more mysterious or remarkable180 than any other of a dozen strangers.
Damn men and their politics. Perhaps it was a kind of sex for them. Didn't they even use the same word for what man does to a woman and what a successful politician does to his unlucky opponent? What was Fashoda to her, or Marchand or Kitchener, or whatever their names were, the two who had "met" - met for what? Hanne laughed, shaking her head. She could imagine, for what.
She pushed back a straggle of yellow hair with one soap-bleached hand. Odd how the skin died and grew soggy-white. It looked like leprosy. Since midday a certain leitmotif of disease had come jittering309 in, had half-revealed self, latent in the music of Cairo's afternoon; Fashoda, Fashoda, a word to give pale, unspecific headaches, a word suggestive of jungle, and outlandish micro-organisms, and fevers which were not love's (the only she'd known, after all, being a healthy girl) or anything human's. Was it a change in the light, or were the skins of the others actually beginning to show the blotches310 of disease?
She rinsed311 and stacked the last plate. No. A stain. Back went the plate into the dishwater. Hanne scrubbed, then examined the plate again tilting312 it toward the light. The stain was still there. Hardly visible. Roughly triangular313, it extended from an apex314 near the center to a base an inch or so from the edge. A sort of brown color, outlines indistinct against the faded white of the plate's surface. She tilted315 the plate another few degrees toward the light and the stain disappeared. Puzzled, she moved her head to look at it from another angle. The stain flickered316 twice in and out of existence. Hanne found that if she focused her eyes a little behind and off the edge of the plate the stain would remain fairly constant, though its shape had begun to change outline; now crescent, now trapezoid. Annoyed, she plunged317 the plate back into the water and searched among the kitchen gear under the sink for a stiffer brush.
Was the stain real? She didn't like its color. The color of her headache: pallid318 brown. It is a stain she told herself. That's all it is. She scrubbed fiercely. Outside, the beer-drinkers were coming in from the street. "Hanne," called Boeblich.
O God, would it never go away? She gave it up at last and stacked the plate with the other dishes. But now it seemed the stain had fissioned, and transferred like an overlay to each of her retinae.
A quick look at her hair in the mirror-fragment over the sink; then on went a smile and out went Hanne to wait on her countrymen.
Of course the first face she saw was that of the "competitor." It sickened her. Mottled red and white, and loose wisps of skin hanging . . . He was conferring anxiously with Varkumian the pimp, whom she knew. She began to make passes.
". . . Lord Cromer could keep it from avalanching . . ."
". . . Sir, every whore and assassin in Cairo . . ."
In the corner someone vomited319. Hanne rushed to clean it up.
". . . if they should assassinate Cromer . . ."
". . . bad show, to have no Consul-General . . ."
". . . it will degenerate320 . . ."
Amorous53 embrace from a customer. Boeblich approached with a friendly scowl169.
". . . keep him safe at all costs . . ."
". . . capable men in this sick world are at a . . ."
". . . Bongo-Shaftsbury will try . . ."
". . . the Opera . . ."
". . . where? Not the Opera . . ."
". . . Ezbekiyeh Garden . . ."
". . . the Opera . . . Manon Lescaut . . ."
". . . who did say? I know her . . . Zenobia the Copt . . ."
". . . Kenneth Slime at the Embassy's girl . . ."
Love. She paid attention.
". . . has it from Slime that Cromer is taking no precautions. My God: Goodfellow and I barged in this morning as Irish tourists: he in a moldly morning hat with a shamrock, I in a red beard. They threw us bodily into the street . . ."
". . . no precautions . . . O God . . ."
". . . God, with a shamrock . . . Goodfellow wanted to lob a bomb . . ."
". . . as if nothing could wake him up . . . doesn't he read the . . ."
A long wait by the bar while Wernher and Musa tapped a new keg. The triangular stain swam somewhere over the crowd, like a tongue on Pentecost.
". . . now that they have met . . ."
". . . they will stay, I imagine, round . . ."
". . . the jungles round . . ."
". . . will there be, do you think . . ."
". . . if it begins it will be round . . ."
Where?
"Fashoda."
"Fashoda."
Hanne continued on her way, through the establishment's ors and into the street. Grune the waiter found her ten minutes later leaning back against a shop front, gazing on night-garden with mild eyes.
"Come."
"What is Fashoda, Grune?"
Shrug41. "A place. Like Munich, Weimar, Kiel. A town, but in the jungle."
"What does it have to do with women's jewelry?"
"Come in. The girls and I can't handle that herd."
"I see something. Do you? Floating over the park." From across the canal came the whistle of the night express for Alexandria.
"Bitte . . ." Some common nostalgia235 - for the cities of home; for the train or only its whistle? - may have held them for a moment. Then the girl shrugged and they returned to the bierhalle.
Varkumian had been replaced by a young girl in a flowered dress. The leprous Englishman seemed upset. With ruminant resourcefulness Hanne rolled eyes, thrust bosoms321 at a middle-aged322 bank clerk seated with cronies at the table next to the couple. Received and accepted an invitation to join them.
"I followed you," the girl said. "Papa would die if he found out." Hanne could see her face, half in shadow. "About Mr. Goodfellow."
Pause. Then: "Your father was in a German church this afternoon. As we are now in a German beer hall. Sir Alastair was listening to someone play Bach. As if Bach were all that were left." Another pause. "So that he may know."
She hung her head, a mustache of beer foam323 on her upper lip. There came one of those queer lulls324 in the noise level of any room; in its center another whistle from the Alexandria express.
"You love Goodfellow," he said.
"Yes." Nearly a whisper.
"Whatever I may think," she said "I have guessed. You can't believe me, but I must say it. It's true."
"What would you have me do, then?"
Twisting ringlets round her fingers: "Nothing. Only understand."
"How can you -" exasperated325 - "men can get killed, don't you see, for 'understanding' someone. The way you want it. Is your whole family daft? Will they be content with nothing less than the heart, lights and liver?"
It was not love. Hanne excused herself and left. It was not man/woman. The stain was still with her. What could she tell Lepsius tonight. She had only the desire to remove his spectacles, snap and crush them, and watch him suffer. How delightful326 it would be.
This from gentle Hanne Echerze. Had the world gone mad with Fashoda?
VIII
The corridor runs by the curtained entrances to four boxes, located to audience right at the top level of the summer theatre in the Ezbekiyeh Garden.
A man wearing blue spectacles hurries into the second box from the stage end of the corridor. The red curtains, heavy velvet327 swing to and fro, unsynchronized, after his passage. The oscillation soon damps out because of the weight. They hang still. Ten minutes pass.
Two men turn the corner by the allegorical statue of Tragedy. Their feet crush unicorns328 and peacocks that repeat diamond-fashion the entire length of the carpet. The face of one is hardly to be distinguished329 beneath masses of white tissue which have obscured the features, and changed slightly the outlines of the face. The other is fat. They enter the box next to the one the man with the blue spectacles is in. Light from outside, late summer light now falls through a single window, turning the statue and the figured carpet to a monochrome orange. Shadows become more opaque330. The air between seems to thicken with an indeterminate color, though it is probably orange. Then a girl in a flowered dress comes down the hall and enters the box occupied by the two men. Minutes later she emerges, tears in her eyes and on her face. The fat man follows. They pass out of the field of vision.
The silence is total. So there's no warning when the red-and-white-faced man comes through his curtains holding a drawn pistol. The pistol smokes. He enters the next box. Soon he and the man with the blue spectacles, struggling, pitch through the curtains and fall to the carpet. Their lower halves are still hidden by the curtains. The man with the white-blotched face removes the blue spectacles snaps them two and drops them to the floor. The other shuts his eyes tightly, tries to turn his head away from the light.
Another has been standing at the end of the corridor. From this vantage he appears only as a shadow; the window is behind him. The man who removed the spectacles now crouches331, forcing the prostrate332 one's head toward the light. The man at the end of the corridor makes a small gesture with his right hand. The crouching333 man looks that way and half rises. A flame appears in the area of the other's right hand; another flame; another. The flames are colored a brighter orange than the sun.
Vision must be the last to go. There must also be a nearly imperceptible line between an eye that reflects and an eye that receives.
The half-crouched body collapses334. The face and its masses of white skin loom ever closer. At rest the body is assumed exactly into the space of this vantage.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
stencil
|
|
| v.用模版印刷；n.模版；复写纸，蜡纸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
thighs
|
|
| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
libertine
|
|
| n.淫荡者；adj.放荡的，自由思想的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
migratory
|
|
| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
ornithologist
|
|
| n.鸟类学家 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
awaken
|
|
| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
awakened
|
|
| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
bough
|
|
| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
tiresome
|
|
| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
hind
|
|
| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
obsolete
|
|
| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
capering
|
|
| v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的现在分词 )；蹦蹦跳跳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
cape
|
|
| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
gathering
|
|
| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
petulance
|
|
| n.发脾气，生气，易怒，暴躁，性急 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
motive
|
|
| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
dagger
|
|
| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
ass
|
|
| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
assorted
|
|
| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
autocrats
|
|
| n.独裁统治者( autocrat的名词复数 )；独断专行的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
repertoire
|
|
| n.(准备好演出的)节目，保留剧目；(计算机的)指令表，指令系统， <美>(某个人的)全部技能；清单，指令表 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
unfamiliar
|
|
| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
poetic
|
|
| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
license
|
|
| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
impartial
|
|
| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
enlisted
|
|
| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
virgin
|
|
| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
rue
|
|
| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
lone
|
|
| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
equestrian
|
|
| adj.骑马的；n.马术 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
inert
|
|
| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
philosophical
|
|
| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
picturesque
|
|
| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
bastard
|
|
| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
bellowed
|
|
| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
whined
|
|
| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
consul
|
|
| n.领事；执政官 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
consulate
|
|
| n.领事馆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
shrug
|
|
| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
conversing
|
|
| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
lackadaisical
|
|
| adj.无精打采的，无兴趣的；adv.无精打采地，不决断地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
wren
|
|
| n.鹪鹩；英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
seduce
|
|
| vt.勾引，诱奸，诱惑，引诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
anarchist
|
|
| n.无政府主义者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
anarchists
|
|
| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
assassinate
|
|
| vt.暗杀，行刺，中伤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
blackmailed
|
|
| 胁迫，尤指以透露他人不体面行为相威胁以勒索钱财( blackmail的过去式 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
vaudeville
|
|
| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
knight
|
|
| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
glamorous
|
|
| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
amorous
|
|
| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
jovial
|
|
| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
shuffling
|
|
| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
crest
|
|
| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
posturing
|
|
| 做出某种姿势( posture的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
drenched
|
|
| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
sipping
|
|
| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
dwarfed
|
|
| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
vertical
|
|
| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
plaza
|
|
| n.广场，市场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
minor
|
|
| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
deference
|
|
| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
opposition
|
|
| n.反对，敌对 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
assassination
|
|
| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
reassurance
|
|
| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
drowsy
|
|
| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
random
|
|
| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
factotum
|
|
| n.杂役；听差 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
darting
|
|
| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
spawn
|
|
| n.卵，产物，后代，结果；vt.产卵，种菌丝于，产生，造成；vi.产卵，大量生产 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
muster
|
|
| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
ripple
|
|
| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
knowledgeable
|
|
| adj.知识渊博的；有见识的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
ledge
|
|
| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
abreast
|
|
| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
lookout
|
|
| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
chaos
|
|
| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
victorious
|
|
| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
nil
|
|
| n.无，全无，零 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
foraging
|
|
| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的现在分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
rumored
|
|
| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
verge
|
|
| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
revolve
|
|
| vi.(使)旋转；循环出现 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
distended
|
|
| v.（使）膨胀，肿胀( distend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
bide
|
|
| v.忍耐；等候；住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
belly
|
|
| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
rumbled
|
|
| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
lighter
|
|
| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
tangle
|
|
| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
proceeding
|
|
| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
fixture
|
|
| n.固定设备；预定日期；比赛时间；定期存款 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
tableau
|
|
| n.画面，活人画（舞台上活人扮的静态画面） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
chubby
|
|
| adj.丰满的，圆胖的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
courteously
|
|
| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
spun
|
|
| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
eyebrows
|
|
| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
apprentice
|
|
| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
killing
|
|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
tinted
|
|
| adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
peeked
|
|
| v.很快地看( peek的过去式和过去分词 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
excrement
|
|
| n.排泄物，粪便 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
scattered
|
|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
abdomen
|
|
| n.腹，下腹(胸部到腿部的部分) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
fabric
|
|
| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
linen
|
|
| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
promising
|
|
| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
halfway
|
|
| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
predecessors
|
|
| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
dressing
|
|
| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
aged
|
|
| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
afterward
|
|
| adv.后来；以后 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
cordon
|
|
| n.警戒线，哨兵线 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
vagrant
|
|
| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
unwillingly
|
|
| adv.不情愿地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
cadging
|
|
| v.乞讨，乞得，索取( cadge的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
lodging
|
|
| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
covenant
|
|
| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
malfunction
|
|
| vi.发生功能故障，发生故障，显示机能失常 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
machinery
|
|
| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
haggled
|
|
| v.讨价还价( haggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
bouffant
|
|
| adj.（发式、裙子等）向外胀起的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
provincial
|
|
| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
criteria
|
|
| n.标准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
domain
|
|
| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
instinctive
|
|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
eligible
|
|
| adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
myopic
|
|
| adj.目光短浅的，缺乏远见的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
casually
|
|
| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
quaint
|
|
| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
puddle
|
|
| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
harassed
|
|
| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
overflow
|
|
| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
swell
|
|
| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
incense
|
|
| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
serene
|
|
| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
yarn
|
|
| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
yarns
|
|
| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
aboriginal
|
|
| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
firmament
|
|
| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
gatherings
|
|
| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
knack
|
|
| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
gauging
|
|
| n.测量[试]，测定，计量v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的现在分词 )；估计；计量；划分 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
rapport
|
|
| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
troupe
|
|
| n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
vistas
|
|
| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
bazaar
|
|
| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
bazaars
|
|
| （东方国家的）市场( bazaar的名词复数 )； 义卖； 义卖市场； （出售花哨商品等的）小商品市场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
speculation
|
|
| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
itinerary
|
|
| n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
confession
|
|
| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
disquieted
|
|
| v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
emaciated
|
|
| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
nettled
|
|
| v.拿荨麻打，拿荨麻刺（nettle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
guffawed
|
|
| v.大笑，狂笑( guffaw的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
ceramic
|
|
| n.制陶业，陶器，陶瓷工艺 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
167
deity
|
|
| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
scowl
|
|
| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
scowled
|
|
| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
literally
|
|
| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
172
painstaking
|
|
| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
173
inspection
|
|
| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
174
poised
|
|
| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
175
prettily
|
|
| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
176
equilibrium
|
|
| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
177
rivalry
|
|
| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
178
affluent
|
|
| adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
179
awareness
|
|
| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
180
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
181
flicker
|
|
| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
182
sniffed
|
|
| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
183
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
184
timing
|
|
| n.时间安排，时间选择 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
185
civilized
|
|
| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
186
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
187
impure
|
|
| adj.不纯净的，不洁的；不道德的，下流的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
188
alacrity
|
|
| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
189
rattling
|
|
| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
190
fumbling
|
|
| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
191
naively
|
|
| adv. 天真地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
192
curb
|
|
| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
193
violation
|
|
| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
194
puffed
|
|
| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
195
venting
|
|
| 消除； 泄去； 排去； 通风 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
196
mingle
|
|
| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
197
leisurely
|
|
| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
198
inevitably
|
|
| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
199
obsession
|
|
| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
200
persecution
|
|
| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
201
imprisoned
|
|
| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
202
Christians
|
|
| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
203
embarked
|
|
| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
204
debauch
|
|
| v.使堕落，放纵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
205
herd
|
|
| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
206
killer
|
|
| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
207
arena
|
|
| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
208
trampling
|
|
| 踩( trample的现在分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
209
condemned
|
|
| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
210
intervention
|
|
| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
211
annihilated
|
|
| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
212
cataclysm
|
|
| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
213
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
214
onlooker
|
|
| n.旁观者，观众 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
215
vocal
|
|
| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
216
mosques
|
|
| 清真寺； 伊斯兰教寺院，清真寺； 清真寺，伊斯兰教寺院( mosque的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
217
inertia
|
|
| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
218
mare
|
|
| n.母马，母驴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
219
compartment
|
|
| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
220
compartments
|
|
| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
221
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
222
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
223
mound
|
|
| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
224
delta
|
|
| n.（流的）角洲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
225
pelicans
|
|
| n.鹈鹕( pelican的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
226
isthmus
|
|
| n.地峡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
227
Mediterranean
|
|
| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
228
plows
|
|
| n.犁( plow的名词复数 )；犁型铲雪机v.耕( plow的第三人称单数 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
229
barges
|
|
| 驳船( barge的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
230
stevedoring
|
|
| v.码头装卸工人，搬运工( stevedore的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
231
cinders
|
|
| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
232
lodge
|
|
| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
233
complexion
|
|
| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
234
baker
|
|
| n.面包师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
235
nostalgia
|
|
| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
236
littoral
|
|
| adj.海岸的；湖岸的；n.沿（海）岸地区 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
237
looming
|
|
| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
238
warehouse
|
|
| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
239
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
240
pumpkins
|
|
| n.南瓜( pumpkin的名词复数 )；南瓜的果肉，南瓜囊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
241
harangued
|
|
| v.高谈阔论( harangue的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
242
bosom
|
|
| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
243
muffled
|
|
| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
244
sullen
|
|
| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
245
cuff
|
|
| n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
246
hurrah
|
|
| int.好哇，万岁，乌拉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
247
corpse
|
|
| n.尸体，死尸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
248
wrestled
|
|
| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
249
catching
|
|
| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
250
collapsed
|
|
| adj.倒塌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
251
sleek
|
|
| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
252
buffalo
|
|
| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
253
relatively
|
|
| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
254
traitor
|
|
| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
255
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
256
hostility
|
|
| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
257
trumpet
|
|
| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
258
maize
|
|
| n.玉米 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
259
inverted
|
|
| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
260
filth
|
|
| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
261
adornment
|
|
| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
262
dictated
|
|
| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
263
labyrinth
|
|
| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
264
crocheted
|
|
| v.用钩针编织( crochet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
265
cavern
|
|
| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
266
slay
|
|
| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
267
trumpets
|
|
| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
268
exhausted
|
|
| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
269
haze
|
|
| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
270
rumors
|
|
| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
271
engulf
|
|
| vt.吞没，吞食 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
272
reins
|
|
| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
273
mountebank
|
|
| n.江湖郎中；骗子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
274
avocation
|
|
| n.副业，业余爱好 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
275
huddled
|
|
| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
276
carousel
|
|
| n.旋转式行李输送带 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
277
refreshment
|
|
| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
278
treacle
|
|
| n.糖蜜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
279
hieroglyphic
|
|
| n.象形文字 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
280
tottered
|
|
| v.走得或动得不稳( totter的过去式和过去分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
281
shrieked
|
|
| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
282
suspense
|
|
| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
283
sham
|
|
| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
284
erect
|
|
| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
285
crouched
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
286
crablike
|
|
| adj.似蟹的，似蟹行般的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
287
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
288
Flared
|
|
| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
289
wheezing
|
|
| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
290
ascended
|
|
| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
291
flakes
|
|
| 小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
292
promenade
|
|
| n./v.散步 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
293
acrobatics
|
|
| n.杂技 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
294
alienated
|
|
| adj.感到孤独的，不合群的v.使疏远( alienate的过去式和过去分词 )；使不友好；转让；让渡（财产等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
295
parody
|
|
| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
297
WHIMS
|
|
| 虚妄，禅病 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
298
fatuousness
|
|
| n.愚昧，昏庸，蠢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
299
bovine
|
|
| adj.牛的；n.牛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
300
itinerant
|
|
| adj.巡回的；流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
301
jewelry
|
|
| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
302
obsessed
|
|
| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
303
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
304
confided
|
|
| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
305
disorder
|
|
| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
306
outright
|
|
| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
307
sinister
|
|
| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
308
digestion
|
|
| n.消化，吸收 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
309
jittering
|
|
| v.紧张不安，战战兢兢( jitter的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
310
blotches
|
|
| n.（皮肤上的）红斑，疹块( blotch的名词复数 )；大滴 [大片]（墨水或颜色的）污渍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
311
rinsed
|
|
| v.漂洗( rinse的过去式和过去分词 )；冲洗；用清水漂洗掉（肥皂泡等）；（用清水）冲掉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
312
tilting
|
|
| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
313
triangular
|
|
| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
314
apex
|
|
| n.顶点，最高点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
315
tilted
|
|
| v. 倾斜的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
316
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
317
plunged
|
|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
318
pallid
|
|
| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
319
vomited
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
320
degenerate
|
|
| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
321
bosoms
|
|
| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
322
middle-aged
|
|
| adj.中年的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
323
foam
|
|
| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
324
lulls
|
|
| n.间歇期（lull的复数形式）vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的第三人称单数形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
325
exasperated
|
|
| adj.恼怒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
326
delightful
|
|
| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
327
velvet
|
|
| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
328
unicorns
|
|
| n.（传说中身体似马的）独角兽( unicorn的名词复数 )；一角鲸；独角兽标记 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
329
distinguished
|
|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
330
opaque
|
|
| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
331
crouches
|
|
| n.蹲着的姿势( crouch的名词复数 )v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
332
prostrate
|
|
| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
333
crouching
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
334
collapses
|
|
| 折叠( collapse的第三人称单数 )； 倒塌； 崩溃； （尤指工作劳累后）坐下 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |