Chapter 3

'Do you mean to tell this court that your wife did not recognize your brand-new Plymouth sedan behind Quentin's car?' the DA asked him on cross-examination.
'I swapped cars for the evening with a friend,' Andy said, and this cool admission of how well-planned his investigation had been did him no good at all in the eyes of the jury.
After returning the friend's car and picking up his own, he had gone home. Linda had been in bed, reading a book. He asked her how her trip to Portland had been. She replied that it had been fun, but she hadn't seen anything she liked well enough to buy. That's when I knew for sure,' Andy told the breathless spectators. He spoke in the same calm, remote voice in which he delivered almost all of his testimony.
'What was your frame of mind in the seventeen days between then and the night your wife was murdered?' Andy's lawyer asked him.
'I was in great distress,' Andy said calmly, coldly. Like a man reciting a shopping list he said that he had considered suicide, and had even gone so far as to purchase a gun in Lewiston on 8 September.
His lawyer then invited him to tell the jury what had happened after his wife left to meet Glenn Quentin on the night of the murders. Andy told them ... and the impression he made was the worst possible.
I knew him for close to thirty years, and I can tell you he was the most self-possessed man I've ever known. What was right with him he'd only give you a little at a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as some writer or other has called it, you would never know. He was the type of man who, if he had decided to commit suicide, would do it without leaving a note but not until his affairs had been put neatly in order. If he had cried on the witness stand, or if his voice had thickened and grown hesitant, even if he had gotten yelling at that Washington-bound District Attorney, I don't believe he would have gotten the life sentence he wound up with. Even if he had've he would have been out on parole by 1954. But he told his story like a recording machine, seeming to say to the jury: this is it. Take it or leave it. They left it.
He said he was drunk that night, that he'd been more or less drunk since 24 August, and that he was a man who didn't handle his liquor very well. Of course that by itself would have been hard for any jury to swallow. They just couldn't see this coldly self-possessed young man in the neat double-breasted three-piece woollen suit ever getting falling-down drunk over his wife's sleazy little affair with some small-town golf pro. I believed it because I had a chance to watch Andy that those six men and six women didn't have.
Andy Dufresne took just four drinks a year all the time I knew him. He would meet me in the exercise yard every year about a week before his birthday and then again about two weeks before Christmas. On each occasion he would arrange for a bottle of Jack Daniels. He bought it the way most cons arrange to buy their stuff-the slave's wages they pay in here, plus a little of his own. Up until 1965 what you got for your time was a dime an hour. In '65 they raised it all the way up to a quarter. My commission on liquor was and is ten per cent, and when you add on that surcharge to the price of a fine sippin' whiskey like the Black Jack, you get an idea of how many hours of Andy Dufresne's sweat in the prison laundry was going to buy his four drinks a year.
On the morning of his birthday, 20 September, he would have himself a big knock, and then he'd have another that night after lights out. The following day he'd give the rest of the bottle back to me, and I would share it around. As for the other bottle, he dealt himself one drink Christmas night and another on New Year's Eve. Then that one would also come to me with instructions to pass it on. Four drinks a year -and that is the behaviour of a man who has been bitten hard by the bottle. Hard enough to draw blood.
He told the jury that on the night of the 10th he had been so drunk he could only remember what had happened in little isolated snatches. He had gotten drunk that afternoon - 'I took on a double helping of Dutch courage' is how he put it -before taking on Linda.
After she left to meet Quentin, he remembered deciding to confront them. On the way to Quentin's bungalow, he swung into the country club for a couple of quick ones. He could not, he said, remember telling the bartender he could 'read about the rest of it in the papers', or saying anything to him at all. He remembered buying beer in the Handy-Pik, but not the dishtowels. 'Why would I want dishtowels?' he asked, and one of the papers reported that three of the lady jurors shuddered.
Later, much later, he speculated to me about the clerk who had testified on the subject of those dishtoweis, and I think it'i worth jotting down what he said. 'Suppose that, during their chmvmhn fur witnesses,' Andy said one day in the oxwulio yard, 'they stumble on this fellow who sold me the beer that night. By then three days have gone by. The facts of the case have been broadsided in all the papers. Maybe they ganged up on the guy, five or six cops, plus the dick from the attorney general's office, plus the DA's assistant. Memory is a pretty subjective thing, Red. They could have started out with "Isn't it possible that he purchased four or five dishtowels?" and worked their way up from there. If enough people want you to remember something, that can be a pretty powerful persuader.'
I agreed that it could.
'But there's one even more powerful,' Andy went on in that musing way of his. 'I think it's at least possible that he convinced himself. It was the limelight. Reporters asking him questions, his picture in the papers ... all topped, of course, by his star turn in court. I'm not saying that he deliberately falsified his story, or perjured himself. I think it's possible that lie could have passed a lie detector test with flying colours, or sworn on his mother's sacred name that I bought those dishtowels. But still ... memory is such a goddam subjective thing.
'I know this much: even though my own lawyer thought I had to be lying about half my story, he never bought that business about the dishtowels. It's crazy on the face of it. I was pig-drunk, too drunk to have been thinking about muffling the gunshots. If I'd done it, I just would have let them rip.'
He went up to the turnout and parked there. He drank beer and smoked cigarettes. He watched the lights downstairs in Quentin's place go out. He watched a single light go on upstairs ... and fifteen minutes later he watched that one go out. He said he could guess the rest.
'Mr Dufresne, did you then go up to Glenn Quentin's house and kill the two of them?' his lawyer thundered.

　　“你是说你开了你的普利茅斯牌新车跟随你太太？”检察官审问他。
　　“那天晚上我和一个朋友换了车子。”安迪说。但他冷静地承认自己计划得多么周详，只会使陪审员感到他城府很深，对他一点好处也没有。
　　在还了朋友的车、取回自己的车后，安迪便回家去。琳达早已上床，正在看书。他问她去波特兰好玩吗？她回答说很有意思，不过没有看到她想买的东西。“这时我可以确定了。”安迪告诉那些屏息的旁听者。他在陈述时一直保持冷静和淡漠的声调。
　　“从那时候到你太太被杀的那十七天，你脑子里都在想些什么？”安迪的律师问他。
　　“我很难过。”安迪冷静淡漠地说，他说他曾经想过自杀，同时在九月八日去路易斯登镇买了一把枪，他说这段话时，口气好像在念购物单一样。
　　他的律师要他告诉陪审团，在他太太被杀当晚，琳达离家去和昆丁幽会后，到底发生了什么事情。安迪说了，但他所造成的印象更糟。
　　我认识他将近三十年了，我可以告诉你，他是我所认识的人当中自制力最强的一个人。对他有利的事情，他一次只会透露一点点；对他不利的事更是守口如瓶。如果他心底暗藏了什么秘密，那么你永远也无从得知。如果他决定自杀的话，他会等到所有事情都处理得干净利落，连字条都不留。如果他当年出庭时曾经又哭又叫、结结巴巴地说不清楚，甚至对着检察官大吼，我相信他都不至于被判无期徒刑。即使判刑，也会在一九五四年就获得假释。但他说起自己的故事时，就像播放唱片似的，仿佛在告诉陪审团的人说：信不信由你。而他们压根儿就不相信。
　　他说那天晚上他喝醉了，而且自从八月二十四日后，他常醉酒，他不是一个善饮的人。陪审团的人无法相信这么一个冷静自制、穿着笔挺双排扣三件头毛料西装的年轻人，会为了太太和镇上的高尔夫球教练有染而酗酒，但我相信，因为我有机会和他长久相处、仔细观察他，而那六男六女的陪审团却没有这样的机会。
　　自从我认识他以来，他一年只喝四次酒。每年他都会在生日前一个星期到运动场和我碰头，然后在圣诞节前两星期再碰头一次。每次他都要我替他弄一瓶酒。跟其他犯人一样，他拿在狱中做工赚的钱来买酒，另外再自掏腰包补足不够的钱。一九六五年以前，肖申克的工资是每小时一毛钱，一九六五年起调升到每小时两毛五分。我每瓶酒抽百分之十的佣金，因此你可以算一下，安迪·杜佛尼要在洗衣房中流多少汗，一年才喝得起四次酒。
　　在他生日的那天早上，也就是九月二十日，他会狠狠喝醉，当晚熄灯后再醉一次。第二天他会把剩下的半瓶给我，让我和其他人分享。至于另一瓶，他在圣诞夜喝一次，除夕喝一次，然后剩下的酒再交给我分给其他人。一年才喝四次，因为他被酒害惨了。
　　他告诉陪审团，十日晚上他喝得酩酊大醉，当晚发生的事只记得片片段段。其实早在那天下午，他就已经醉了：“喝下双份的荷兰勇气。”他说。
　　琳达离家出走后，他决定去找他们当面理论。在去昆丁家的路上，他又进乡村俱乐部的酒吧喝了几杯。他不记得曾经告诉酒保要他第二天看报纸，或对他说了什么。他记得去便利商店中买啤酒，但没有买擦碗布。“我为何要买擦碗布呢？”他又问。其中一家报纸报道，有三位女陪审员聆听这些话后，感到不寒而栗。
　　后来，在过了很久以后，安迪和我谈话时，对那个店员为何作证说他买了擦碗布有一番推测，我觉得应该把他当时说的话约略记一记。“假定在他们到处寻找证人的时候，雷德，”安迪有一天在运动场对我说，“他们碰到这个卖啤酒给我的店员，当时已经过了三天，有关这个案子的种种发现，也已经在所有报纸上大肆渲染。或许五、六个警察，再加上检察官办公室派来办案的探员和助理，一起找上他。记忆其实是很主观的事情。他们一开始可能只是问：‘他有没有可能买了四、五条擦碗布？’然后一步步进逼。如果有够多的人一直要你记得某件事，那种说服力是很惊人的。”
　　我同意，确实有这个可能。
　　安迪继续说：“但是还有一种更强大的说服力，我想至少不无这个可能，也就是他说服自己相信他真的卖了擦碗布给我。这个案子是众所瞩目的焦点。记者纷纷采访他，他的照片刊登在报纸上……当然更威风的是，他像明星般出现在法庭上。我并不是说，他故意编造故事或作伪证。我觉得有可能他通过了测谎，或用他妈妈神圣之名发过誓，说我确实买了擦碗布，但是……记忆仍然可能是他妈的非常主观的事情。我只知道：虽然连我的律师也认为我所说的有一半都是谎话，但他也不相信擦碗布的部分。这件事太疯狂了，我那时已经烂醉如泥了，怎么还会想到把枪包起来灭音呢？如果真的是我杀的，我才不管三七二十一呢。”
　　他开车来到岔道，把车停在旁边，静静地喝啤酒和抽烟。他看到昆丁家楼下的灯熄了，只剩下楼上一盏灯还亮着……再过了十五分钟，那盏灯也熄了。他说他可以猜到接下来发生了什么事。
　　“杜佛尼先生，那么你有没有进昆丁的屋子，把他们两人给杀了？”他的律师吼道。