chapter 12

The letter was in the red and white birdhouse mailbox at the foot of my steps. A woodpecker on top of the box attached to the swing arm was raised and even at that I might not have looked inside because I never got mail at the house. But the woodpecker had lost the point of his beak¹ quite recently. The wood was fresh broken. Somesmart kid shooting off his atom gun. The letter had Correo Aéreo on it and, a flock of Mexican stamps and writing that I might or might not have recognized if Mexico hadn't been on my mind pretty constantly lately. I couldn't read the postmark. It was hand-stamped and the ink pad was pretty far gone. The letter was thick. I climbed my steps and sat down in the living room to read it. The evening seemed very silent. Perhaps a letter from a dead man brings its own silence with it. It began without date and without preamble². I'm sitting beside a second-floor window in a room in a not too clean hotel in a town called Otatoclán, a mountain town with a lake. There's a mailbox just below the window and when the mozo comes in with some coffee I've ordered he is going to mail the letter for me and hold it up so that I can see it before he puts it in the slot. When he does that he gets a hundred-peso note, which is a hell of a lot of money for him. Why all the finagling? There's a swarthy character with pointed³ shoes and a dirty shirt outside the door watching it. He's waiting for something, I don't know what, but he won't let me out. It doesn't matter too much as long as the letter gets posted. I want you to have this money because I don't need it and the local gendarmerie would swipe it for sure. It is not intended to buy anything. Call it an apology for making you so much trouble and a token of esteem⁴ for a pretty decent guy. I've done everything wrong as usual, but I still have the gun. My hunch⁵ is that you have probably made up your mind on a certain point. I might have killed her and perhaps I did, but I never could have done the other thing. That kind of brutality⁶ is not in my line. So something is very sour. But it doesn't matter, not in the least. The main thing now is to save an unnecessary and useless scandal. Her father and her sister never did me any harm. They have their lives to live and I'm up to here in disgust with mine. Sylvia didn't make a bum⁷ out of me, I was one already. I can't give you any very clean answer about why she married me. I suppose it was just a whim⁸. At least she died young and beautiful. They say lust⁹ makes a man old, but keeps a woman young. They say a lot of nonsense. They say the rich can always protect themselves and that in their world it is always summer. I've lived with them and they are bored and lonely people. I have written a confession¹⁰. I feel a little sick and more than a little scared. You read about these situations in books, but you don't read the truth. When it happens to you, when all you have left is the gun in your pocket, when you are cornered in a dirty little hotel in a strange country, and have only one way out—believe me, pal¹¹, there is nothing elevating or dramatic about it. It is just plain nasty and sordid¹² and gray and grim. So forget it and me. But first drink a gimlet for me at Victor's. And the next time you make coffee, pour me a cup and put some bourbon in it and light me a cigarette and put it beside the cup. And after that forget the whole thing. Terry Lennox over and out. And so goodbye. A knock at the door. I guess it will be the mozo with the coffee. If it isn't, there will be some shooting. I like Mexicans, as a rule, but I don't like their jails. So long. TERRY That was all. I refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. It had been the mozo with the coffee all right. Otherwise I would never have had the letter. Not with a portrait of Madison in it. A portrait of Madison is a $5000 bill. It lay in front of me green and crisp on the table top. I had never even seen one before. Lots of people who work in banks haven't either. Very likely characters like Randy Starr and Menendez wear them for folding money. If you went to a bank and asked for one, they wouldn't have it. They'd have to get it for you from the Federal Reserve. It might take several days. There are only about a thousand of them in circulation in the whole U.S.A. Mine had a nice glow around it. It created a little private sunshine all its own. I sat there and looked at it for a long time. At last I put it away in my letter case and went out to the kitchen to make that coffee. I did what he asked me to, sentimental¹³ or not. I poured two cups and added some bourbon to his and set it down on the side of the table where he had sat the morning I took him to the plane. I lit a cigarette for him and set it in an ash tray beside the cup. I watched the steam rise from the coffee and the thin thread of smoke rise from the cigarette. Outside in the tecoma a bird was gassing around, talking to himself in low chirps¹⁴, with an occasional brief flutter of wings. Then the coffee didn't steam any more and the cigarette stopped smoking and was just a dead butt¹⁵ on the edge of an ash tray. I dropped it into the garbage can under the sink. I poured the coffee out and washed the cup and put it away. That was that. It didn't seem quite enough to do for five thousand dollars. I went to a late movie after a while. It meant nothing. I hardly saw what went on. It was just noise and big faces. When I got home again I set out a very dull Ruy Lopez and that didn't mean anything either. So I went to bed. But not to sleep. At three AM I was walking the floor and listening to Khachaturyan working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto¹⁶. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it. A white night for me is as rare as a fat postman. If it hadn't been for Mr. Howard Spencer at the Ritz-Beverly I would have killed a bottle and knocked myself out. And the next time I saw a polite character drunk in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith¹⁷, I would depart rapidly in several directions. There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

1 beak   

n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻

参考例句：

• The bird had a worm in its beak.鸟儿嘴里叼着一条虫。
• This bird employs its beak as a weapon.这种鸟用嘴作武器。

2 preamble   

n.前言；序文

参考例句：

• He spoke without preamble.他没有开场白地讲起来。
• The controversy has arisen over the text of the preamble to the unification treaty.针对统一条约的序文出现了争论。

3 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

4 esteem   

n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• The veteran worker ranks high in public love and esteem.那位老工人深受大伙的爱戴。

5 hunch   

n.预感，直觉

参考例句：

• I have a hunch that he didn't really want to go.我有这么一种感觉，他并不真正想去。
• I had a hunch that Susan and I would work well together.我有预感和苏珊共事会很融洽。

6 brutality   

n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮

参考例句：

• The brutality of the crime has appalled the public. 罪行之残暴使公众大为震惊。
• a general who was infamous for his brutality 因残忍而恶名昭彰的将军

7 bum   

n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨

参考例句：

• A man pinched her bum on the train so she hit him.在火车上有人捏她屁股，她打了那人。
• The penniless man had to bum a ride home.那个身无分文的人只好乞求搭车回家。

8 whim   

n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想

参考例句：

• I bought the encyclopedia on a whim.我凭一时的兴致买了这本百科全书。
• He had a sudden whim to go sailing today.今天他突然想要去航海。

9 lust   

n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望

参考例句：

• He was filled with lust for power.他内心充满了对权力的渴望。
• Sensing the explorer's lust for gold, the chief wisely presented gold ornaments as gifts.酋长觉察出探险者们垂涎黄金的欲念，就聪明地把金饰品作为礼物赠送给他们。

10 confession   

n.自白，供认，承认

参考例句：

• Her confession was simply tantamount to a casual explanation.她的自白简直等于一篇即席说明。
• The police used torture to extort a confession from him.警察对他用刑逼供。

11 pal   

n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友

参考例句：

• He is a pal of mine.他是我的一个朋友。
• Listen,pal,I don't want you talking to my sister any more.听着，小子，我不让你再和我妹妹说话了。

12 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

13 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

14 chirps   

鸟叫，虫鸣( chirp的第三人称单数 )； 啾； 啾啾

参考例句：

• The linnet chirps her vernal song. 红雀吱喳鸣叫着她春天的歌。
• She heard nothing but the chirps and whirrs of insects. 除了虫的鸣叫声外，她什么也没听见。

15 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

16 concerto   

n.协奏曲

参考例句：

• The piano concerto was well rendered.钢琴协奏曲演奏得很好。
• The concert ended with a Mozart violin concerto.音乐会在莫扎特的小提琴协奏曲中结束。

17 wraith   

n.幽灵；骨瘦如柴的人

参考例句：

• My only question right now involves the wraith.我唯一的问题是关于幽灵的。
• So,what you're saying is the Ancients actually created the Wraith?照你这么说，实际上是古人创造了幽灵？