Making awkward calls is agony for Eccles; at least anticipation1 of them is. Usually, the dream is worse than the reality: God rules reality. The actual presences of people are always bearable. Mrs. Springer is a plump, dark, small?boned woman with a gypsy look about her. Both the mother and the daughter have a sinister2 aura, but in the mother this ability to create uneasiness is a settled gift, thoroughly3 meshed4 into the strategies of middle?class life. With the daughter it is a floating thing, useless and as dangerous to herself as to others. Eccles is relieved that Janice is out of the house; he feels guiltiest in her presence. She and Mrs. Fosnacht have gone into Brewer7 to a matinee of Some Like It Hot. Their two sons are in the Springers' back yard. Mrs. Springer takes him through the house to the screened?in porch, where she can keep an eye on the children. Her house is expensively but confusedly famished8; each room seems to contain one more easy chair than necessary. To get from the front door to the back they take a crooked9 path in the packed rooms. She leads him slowly; both of her ankles are bound in elastic10 bandages. The pained littleness of her steps reinforces his illusion that her hips12 are encased in a plaster cast. She gently lowers herself onto the cushions of the porch glider13 and startles Eccles by kicking up her legs as, with a squeak15 and sharp sway, the glider takes her weight. The action seems to express pleasure; her bald pale calves16 stick out stiff and her saddle shoes are for a moment lifted from the floor. These shoes are cracked and rounded, as if they've been revolved17 in a damp tub for years. He sits down in a trickily18 hinged aluminumand?plastic lawn chair. Through the porch screen at his side, he can see Nelson Angstrom and the slightly older Fosnacht boy play in the sun around a swing?slide?and?sandbox set. Eccles once bought one of those and when it came, all in pieces in a long cardboard box, was humiliated20 to find himself unable to put it together; Angus, the old deaf sexton, finally had to do it for him.
"It's nice to see you," Mrs. Springer says. "It's been so long since you came last."
`Just three weeks, isn't it?" he says. The chair presses against his back and he hooks his heels around the pipe at the bottom to keep it from folding. "It's been a busy time, with the confirmation21 classes and the Youth Group deciding to have a softball team this year and a number of deaths in the parish." His previous contacts with this woman have not disposed him to be apologetic. Her having so large a home offends his aristocratic sense of caste; he would like her better, and she would be more comfortable, if her place were smaller.
"Yes I wouldn't want your job for the world."
"I enjoy it most of the time."
"They say you do. They say you're becoming quite an expert golf player."
Oh dear. And he thought she was relaxing. He thought for the moment they were on the porch of a shabby peeling house and she was a long?suffering fat factory wife who had learned to take fife as it came. That is what she looked like; that is easily what she might have been. Fred Springer when he married her was probably less likely?looking than Harry22 Angstrom when her daughter married him. He tries to imagine Harry four years ago, and gets a presentable picture: tall, fair, famous in his school days, clever enough ? a son of the morning. His air of confidence must have especially appealed to Janice. David and Michal. Defraud24 ye not one the other .... He scratches his forehead and says, "Playing golf with someone is a good way to get to know him. That's what I try to do, you understand ? get to know people. I don't think you can lead someone to Christ unless you know him."
"Well now what do you know about my son?in?law that I don't?"
"That he's a good man, for one thing."
"Good for what?"
"Must you be good for something?" He tries to think. "Yes, I suppose you must."
"Nelson! Stop that this minute!" She turns rigid25 in the glider but does not rise to see what is making the boy cry. Eccles, sitting by the screen, can see. The Fosnacht boy stands by the swing, holding two red plastic trucks. Angstrom's son, some inches shorter, is batting with an open hand toward the bigger boy's chest, but does not quite dare to move forward a step and actually strike him. Young Fosnacht stands fast, with the maddening invulnerability of the stupid, looking down at the flailing26 hand and contorted face of the smaller boy without even a smile of satisfaction, a true scientist, observing without passion the effect of his experiment. Mrs. Springer's voice leaps to a frantic27 hardness and cuts through the screen: "Did you hear me I said stop that bawling28!"
Nelson's face turns up toward the porch and he tries to explain, "Pilly have ?Pilly -" But just trying to describe the injustice29 gives it unbearable30 force, and as if struck from behind he totters31 forward and slaps the thief's chest and receives a mild shove that makes him sit on the ground. He rolls on his stomach and spins in the grass, revolved by his own incoherent kicking. Eccles' heart seems to twist with the child's body; he knows so well the propulsive32 power of a wrong, the way the mind batters33 against it and each futile34 blow sucks the air emptier until it seems the whole frame of blood and bone must burst in a universe that can be such a vacuum.
"The boy's taken his truck," he tells Mrs. Springer.
"Well let him get it himself," she says. "He must learn. I can't be getting up on these legs and running outside every minute; they've been at it like that all afternoon."
"Billy." The boy looks up in surprise toward Eccles' male voice. "Give it back." Billy considers this new evidence and hesitates indeterminately. "Now, please." Convinced, Billy walks over and pedantically35 drops the toy on his sobbing36 playmate's head.
The new pain starts fresh grief in Nelson's throat, but seeing the truck on the grass beside his face chokes him. It takes him a moment to realize that the cause of his misery38 is removed and another moment to rein11 the emotion in his body. His great dry gasps39 as he rounds these comers seem to heave the sheet of trimmed grass and the sunshine itself. A wasp41 bumping persistently43 against the screen dips and the aluminum19 chair under Eccles threatens to buckle44; as if the wide world is participating in Nelson's readjustment.
"I don't know why the boy is such a sissy," Mrs. Springer says. "Or maybe I do."
Her sly adding this irks Eccles. "Why?"
The liverish skin under her eyes lifts and the corners of her mouth pull down in an appraising45 scowl46. "Well, he's like his dad: spoiled. He's been made too much of and thinks the world owes him what he wants."
"It was the other boy; Nelson only wanted what was his."
"Yes and I suppose you think with his dad it was all Janice's fault." The way she pronounces ` Janice" makes the girl seem more substantial, precious, and important than the pathetic shadow in Eccles' mind. He wonders if she's not, after all, right: if he hasn't gone over to the other side.
"Nó I don't," he says. "I think his behavior has no justification47. This isn't to say, though, that his behavior doesn't have reasons, reasons that in part your daughter could have controlled. With my Church, I believe that we are all responsible beings, responsible for ourselves and for each other." The words, so well turned?out, taste chalky in his mouth. He wishes she'd offer him something to drink. Spring is turning warm.
The old gypsy sees his uncertainty48. "Well that's easy to say," she says. "It's not so easy maybe to take such a view if you're nine months expecting and from a respectable home and your husband's running around a few miles away with some bat and everybody thinks it's the funniest thing since I don't know what." The word "bat" darts49 into the air like one, quick and black.
"Nobody thinks it's funny, Mrs. Springer."
"You don't hear the talk I do. You don't see the smiles. Why, one woman as good as said to me the other day if she can't keep him she has no right to him. She had the gall50 to grin right in my face. I could have strangled her. I said to her, `A man has duty too. It isn't all one way.' It's women like her give men the ideas they have, that the world's just here for their pleasure. From the way you act you half?believe it too. Well if the world is going to be full of Harry Angstroms how much longer do you think they'll need your church?"
She has sat up and her dark eyes are lacquered by tears that do not fall. Her voice has risen in pitch and abrades51 Eccles' face like a file; he feels covered with cuts. Her talk of the smiling gossip encircling this affair has surrounded him with a dreadful reality, like the reality of those hundred faces when on Sunday mornings at 11:30 he mounts the pulpit and the text flies from his mind and his notes dissolve into nonsense. He fumbles52 through his memory and manages to bring out, "I feel Harry is in some respects a special case."
"The only thing special about him is he doesn't care who he hurts or how much. Now I mean no offense53, Reverend Eccles, and I'm sure you've done your best considering how busy you are, but to be honest I wish that first night I had called the police like I wanted to."
He seems to hear that she is going to call the police to arrest him. Why not? With his white collar he forges God's name on every word he speaks. He steals belief from the children he is supposed to be teaching. He murders faith in the minds of any who really listen to his babble54. He commits fraud with every schooled cadence55 of the service, mouthing Our Father when his heart knows the real father he is trying to please, has been trying to please all his life, the God who smokes cigars. He asks her, "What can the police do?"
"Well I don't know but more than play golf I expect."
"I'm quite sure he will come back."
"You've been saying that for two months."
"I still believe it." But he doesn't, he doesn't believe anything. There is silence while Mrs. Springer seems to read this fact in his face.
"Could you" ? her voice is changed; it beseeches56 ? "bring me over that stool there in the corner? I have to get my legs up."
When he blinks, his eyelids57 scratch. He rouses from his daze58 and gets the stool and takes it to her. Her broad shins in their green childlike socks lift meekly59, and as he places the stool under the heels, his bending, with its echo of religious?pamphlet paintings of Christ washing the feet ofbeggars, fits his body to receive a new flow of force. He straightens up and towers above her. She plucks at her skirt at the knees, tugging60 it down.
"Thank you," she says. "That's a real relief for me."
"I'm afraid it's the only sort of relief I've given you," he confesses with a simplicity61 that he finds, and mocks himself for finding, admirable.
"Ah," she sighs. "There's not much anybody can do I guess."
"No, there are things to do. Perhaps you're right about the police. Or at least a lawyer."
"Fred's against it."
"Mr. Springer has good reasons. I don't mean merely business reasons. All the law can extract from Harry is financial support; and I don't think, in this case, that money is really the point. In fact I'm not sure money is ever really the point."
"That's easy to say if you've always had enough." He doesn't mind. It seems to slip from her automatically, with less malice62 than lassitude; he is certain she wants to listen.
"That may be. I don't know. But at any rate my concern everyone's concern for that matter, I'm sure ? is with the general health of the situation. And if there's to be a true healing, it must be Harry and Janice who act. Really, no matter how much we want to help, no matter how much we try to do on the fringes, we're outside." In imitation of his father he has clasped his hands behind him and turned his back on his auditor63; through the screen he watches the one other who, perhaps, is not outside, Nelson, lead the Fosnacht boy across the lawn in pursuit of a neighbor's dog. Nelson's laughter spills from his head as his clumsy tottering64 steps jar his body. The dog is old, reddish, small, and slow; the Fosnacht boy is puzzled yet pleased by his friend's cry of "Lion! Lion!" It interests Eccles to see that under conditions of peace Angstrom's boy leads the other. The green air seen through the muzzy screen seems to vibrate with Nelson's noise. Eccles feels the situation: this constant translucent65 outpour of selfless excitement must naturally now and then dam in the duller boy's narrower passages and produce a sullen66 backflow, a stubborn bullying67 act. He pities Nelson, who will be stranded68 in innocent surprise many times before he locates in himself the source of this strange reverse tide. It seems to Eccles that he himselfwas this way as a boy, always giving and giving and always being suddenly swamped. The old dog's tail wags as the boys approach. It stops wagging and droops69 in an uncertain wary70 arc when they surround it like hunters, crowing. Nelson reaches out and beats the dog's back with both hands. Eccles wants to shout; the dog might bite; he can't bear to watch.
"Yes but he drifts further away," Mrs. Springer is whining71. "He's well off. He has no reason to come back if we don't give him one."
Eccles sits down in the aluminum chair again. "No. He'll come back for the same reason he left. He's fastidious. He has to loop the loop. The world he's in now, the world of this girl in Brewer, won't continue to satisfy his fantasies. Just in seeing him from week to week, I've noticed a change."
"Well not to hear Peggy Fosnacht tell it. She says she hears he's leading the life of Riley. I don't know how many women he has."
"Just one, I'm sure. The strange thing about Angstrom, he's by nature a domestic creature. Oh dear."
There is a flurry in the remote group; the boys run one way and the dog the other. Young Fosnacht halts but Nelson keeps coming, his face stretched by fright.
Mrs. Springer hears his sobbing and says angrily, "Did they get Elsie to snap again? That dog must be sick in the head the way she keeps coming over here for more."
Eccles jumps up ? his chair collapses72 behind him ? and opens the screen door and runs down to meet Nelson in the sunshine. The boy shies from him. He grabs him. "Did the dog bite?"
The boy's sobbing is paralyzed by this new fright, the man in black grabbing him.
"Did Elsie bite you?"
The Fosnacht boy hangs back at a safe distance.
Nelson, unexpectedly solid and damp in Eccles' arms, releases great rippling73 gasps and begins to find his voice.
Eccles shakes him to choke this threat of wailing74 and, wild to make himself understood, with a quick lunge clicks his teeth at the child's cheek. "Like that? Did the dog do that?"
The boy's face goes rapt at the pantomime. "Like dis," he says, and his fine little lip lifts from his teeth and his nose wrinkles and he jerks his head an inch to one side.
"No bite?" Eccles insists, relaxing the grip of his arms.
The little lip lifts again with that miniature fierceness. Eccles feels mocked by a petite facial alertness that recalls, in tilt75 and cast, Harry's. Sobbing sweeps over Nelson again and he breaks away and runs up the porch steps to his grandmother. Eccles stands up; in just that little time of squatting76 the sun has started sweat on his black back.
As he climbs the steps he is troubled by something pathetic, something penetratingly touching77, in the memory of those tiny square teeth bared in that play snarl78. The harmlessness yet the reality of the instinct: the kitten's instinct to kill the spool79 with its cotton paws.
He comes onto the porch to find the boy between his grand-mother's legs, his face buried in her belly80. In worming against her warmth he has pulled her dress up from her knees, and their repulsive81 breadth and pallor, laid bare defenselessly, superimposed upon the tiny, gamely gritted82 teeth the boy exposed for him, this old whiteness strained through this fine mesh5, make a milk that feels to Eccles like his own blood. Strong ? as if pity is, as he has been taught, not a helpless outcry but a powerful tide that could redeem83 the world ? he steps forward and promises to the two bowed heads, "If he doesn't come back when she has the baby, then you should get the law after him. There are laws, of course; quite a few."
"Elsie snaps," Mrs. Springer says, "because you and Billy tease her."
"Naughty Elsie," Nelson says.
"Naughty Nelson," Mrs. Springer corrects. She lifts her face to Eccles and continues in the same correcting voice, "Yes well she's a week due now and I don't see him running in."
His moment of sympathy for her has passed; he leaves her on the porch. Love never ends, he tells himself, using the Revised Standard Version. The King James has it that it never fails. Mrs. Springer's voice carries after him into the house, "Now the next time I catch you teasing Elsie you're going to get a whipping from your grandmom."
"No, Mom?mom," the child begs coyly, fright gone.
Eccles thought he would find the kitchen and take a drink of water from the tap but the kitchen slips by him in the jumble84 of rooms. He makes a mouth that works up saliva85 and swallows it as he leaves the stucco house. He gets into his Buick and drives down Joseph Street and then a block along Jackson Road to the Angstroms' number, 303.
Mrs. Angstrom has four?cornered nostrils87. Lozenge?shape, they are set in a nose that is not so much large as extra?defined; the little pieces of muscle and cartilage and bone are individually emphatic88 and divide the skin into many facets89 in the sharp light. Their interview takes place in her kitchen amid several burning light bulbs. Burning in the middle of day: their home is the dark side of a two?family brick house. She came to the door wearing suds on her red forearms and returns with him to a sink full of bloated shirts and underwear. She plunges90 at these things vigorously while they talk. She is a vigorous woman. Mrs. Springer's fat ? soft, aching excess ? had puffed91 out from little bones, the bones once of a slip of a woman like Janice; Mrs. Angstrom's is packed on a great harsh frame. Harry's size must come from her side. Eccles is continually conscious of the long faucets92, heraldic of cool water, shielded by her formidable body; but the opportunity never arises for a request so small as a glass of water.
"I don't know why you come to me," she says. "Harold's one and twenty. I have no control over him."
"He hasn't been to see you?"
"No sir." She displays her profile above her left shoulder. "You've made him so ashamed I suppose he's embarrassed to."
"He should be ashamed, don't you think?"
"I wouldn't know why. I never wanted him to go with the girl in the first place. Just to look at her you know she's two?thirds crazy."
"Oh now, that's not true, is it?"
"Not true! Why the first thing that girl said to me was, Why don't I get a washing machine? Comes into my kitchen, takes one look around, and starts telling me how to manage my life."
"Surely you don't think she meant anything."
"No, she didn't mean anything. All she meant was, What was I doing living in such a run?down half?house when she came from a great big stucco barn on Joseph Street with the kitchen full of gadgets93, and, Wasn't I lucky to be fobbing off my boy on such a well?equipped little trick? I never liked that girl's eyes. They never met your face full?on." She turns her face on Eccles and, warned, he returns her stare. Beneath her misted spectacles ? an old?fashioned type, circles of steel?rimmed40 glass in which the bifocal crescents catch a pinker tint94 of light ?her arrogantly95 tilted96 nose displays its meaty, intricate underside. Her broad mouth is stretched slightly by a vague expectation. Eccles realizes that this woman is a humorist. The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't ? whichever seems likelier to win an effect. The strange thing is how much he likes her, though in a way she is plunging97 at him as roughly as she plunges the dirty clothes. But that's it, it's the same to her. Unlike Mrs. Springer, she doesn't really see him at all. Her confrontation98 is with everybody, and secure under the breadth of her satire99 he can say what he pleases.
He bluntly defends Janice. "The girl is shy."
"Shy! She wasn't too shy to get herself pregnant so poor Hassy has to marry her when he could scarcely tuck his shirt?tail in."
"He was one and twenty, as you say."
"Yes, well, years. Some die young; some are born old."
Epigrams, everything. My, she is funny. Eccles laughs out loud. She doesn't acknowledge hearing him, and turns to her wash with furious seriousness. "About as shy as a snake," she says, "that girl. These little women are poison. Mincing100 around with their sneaky eyes getting everybody's sympathy. Well she doesn't get mine; let the men weep. To hear her father?in?law talk she's the worst martyr101 since Joan of Arc."
He laughs again; but isn't she? "Well, uh, what does Mr. Angstrom think Harry should do?"
"Crawl back. What else? He will, too, poor boy. He's just like his father underneath102. All soft heart. I suppose that's why men rule the world. They're all heart."
"That's an unusual view."
"Is it? It's what they keep telling you in church. Men are all heart and women are all body. I don't know who's supposed to have the brains. God, I suppose."
Eccles smiles, wondering if the Lutheran church gives everyone such ideas. Luther himself was a little like this, perhaps overstating half?truths in a kind of comic wrath103. The whole black Protestant paradox104?thumping105 maybe begins there. Helpless, predestined Man, the king of Creation. Utterly106 fallen: a hubris107 in shoving the particular aside. Maybe: he's forgotten most of the theology they made him absorb. It occurs to him that he should see the Angstroms' pastor108.
Mrs. Angstrom picks up a dropped thread. "Now my daughter Miriam is as old as the hills and always was; I've never worried about her. I remember, on Sundays long ago when we'd walk out by the quarry109 Harold was so afraid ?he wasn't more than twelve then ? he was so afraid she'd fall over the edge. I knew she wouldn't. You watch her. She won't marry out of pity like poor Hassy and then have all the world jump on him for trying to get out."
"I'm not so sure the world has jumped on him. The girl's mother and I were just discussing that it seemed quite the contrary."
"Don't you think it. That girl gets no sympathy from me. She has everybody on her side from Eisenhower down. They'll talk him around. You'll talk him around. And there's another."
The front door has opened with a softness she alone hears. Her husband comes into the kitchen wearing a white shirt and a tie but with his fingernails outlined in black; he is a printer. He is as tall as his wife but seems shorter. His mouth works self?deprecatorily over badly fitted false teeth. His nose is Harry's, a neat smooth button. "How do you do, Father," he says; either he was raised as a Catholic or among Catholics.
"Mr. Angstrom, it's very nice to meet you." The man's hand has tough ridges111 but a soft, dry palm. "We've been discussing your son."
"I feel terrible about that." Eccles believes him. Earl Angstrom has a gray, ragged112 look. This business has blighted113 him. He thins his lips across his slipping teeth like a man with stomach trouble biting back gas. He is being nibbled114 from within. Color has washed from his hair and eyes like cheap ink. A straight man, who has measured his life with the pica?stick and locked the forms tight, he has returned in the morning and found the type scrambled115.
"He goes on and on about the girl as if she was the mother of Christ," Mrs. Angstrom says.
"That's not true," Angstrom says mildly, and sits down in his white shirt at the porcelain116 kitchen table. Four settings, year after year, have worn black blurs117 through the enamel118. "I just don't see how Harry could make such a mess. He wasn't like other boys, sloppy119. He was a tidy worker."
With raw sudsy hands Mrs. Angstrom has set about heating coffee for her husband. This small act of service seems to bring her into harmony with him; they begin, in the sudden way of old couples apparently120 at odds121, to speak as one. "It was the Army," she says. "When he came back from Texas he was a different boy."
"He didn't want to come into the shop," Angstrom says. "He didn't want to go into a dirty trade."
"Reverend Eccles, would you like some coffee?" Mrs. Angstrom asks.
At last, his chance. "No, thank you. What I would love, though, is a glass of water."
"Just water? With ice?"
"Any way. Any way would be lovely."
"Yes, Earl is right," she says. "People now say how lazy Hassy is, but he's not. He never was. When you'd be proud of his basketball in high school you know, people would say, `Yes well but he's so tall, it's easy for him.' But they didn't know how he had worked at that. Out back every evening banging the ball way past dark; you wondered how he could see."
"From about twelve years old on," Angstrom says, "he was at that night and day. I put a pole up for him out back; the garage wasn't high enough."
"When he set his mind to something," Mrs. Angstrom says, "there was no stopping him." She yanks powerfully at the lever of the ice?cube tray and with a brilliant multiple crunch122 that sends chips sparkling the cubes come loose. "He wanted to be best at that and I honestly believe he was."
"I know what you mean," Eccles says. "I play a little golf with him and already he's become better than I am."
She puts the cubes in a glass and holds the glass under a spigot and brings it to him. He tilts123 it at his lips and Earl Angstrom's palely vehement124 voice wavers through the liquid. "Then he comes back from the Army and all he cares about is chasing ass6."
"Your language, Earl," his wife says, setting coffee in a flowered cup on the table between his hands.
He looks down into the steam and says, "Excuse me. When I think of what that boy's doing my stomach does somersaults. He's become the worst kind of Brewer bum42. If I could get my loving hands on him, Father, I'd try to thrash him if he killed me in the process." His ashen125 face bunches defiantly126 at the mouth; his colorless eyes swarm127 with glitter.
Eccles says "No" into his tilted glass like a megaphone and then drinks until no more water can be sucked from under the ice cubes that bump his upper lip. He wipes the moisture from his mouth and says, "There's a great deal of goodness in your son. When I'm with him ? it's rather unfortunate, really ? I feel so cheerful I quite forget what the point of my seeing him is." He laughs, first at Mr., and, failing here to rouse a smile, at Mrs.
"This golf you play," Angstrom says. "What is the point? In my opinion a good swift kick is what he needs. The girl's parents should call in the Brewer police, him living in sin with a tart14 like that."
Eccles glances toward Mrs. Angstrom and feels the arch of his eyebrows128 like drying paste on his forehead. He didn't expect, a minute ago, to be looking toward her as an ally and toward this worn?out good man as a rather vulgar and disappointing foe129.
"Don't talk nonsense, Earl," Mrs. Angstrom says. "What does Springer want with his name in the papers? The way you talk you'd think poor Harry was your enemy."
"He is my enemy," Angstrom says. He touches the saucer from both sides with his stained fingertips. "That night I spent walking the streets looking for him he became my enemy. You can't talk. You didn't see the girl's face."
"What do I care about her face? You talk about tarts37: they don't become ivory?white saints in my book just by having a marriage license130. That girl wanted Harry and got him with the only trick she knew and now she's run out of tricks."
"Don't talk that way, Mary. It's just words with you. Suppose I had acted the way Harry has."
"Ah," she says, and turns, and Eccles flinches131, seeing her face taut132 to release a missile. "I didn't want you; you wanted me. Or wasn't it that way?"
"Yes of course it was that way," Angstrom mutters.
"Well then: where's the comparison?"
Angstrom has hunched133 his shoulders over the coffee, drawn134 himself in very small, as if she has boxed him into a tiny corner. "Oh Mary," he sighs, not daring move with words.
Eccles tries to defend him; he goes to the weaker side of a fight almost automatically. "I don't think you can say," he tells Mrs. Angstrom, "that Janice didn't imagine that her marriage was built on mutual135 attraction. If the girl was such a clever schemer she wouldn't have let Harry slip away so easily."
Mrs. Angstrom's interest in this discussion, now that she knows she pressed her husband too hard, has waned136; she maintains a position ? that Janice is in control ? so obviously false that it amounts to a concession137. "She hasn't let him slip away," she says. "She'll have him back, you watch."
Eccles asks the man, "Do you think too that Harry will come around?"
"No," Angstrom says, looking down, "never. He's too far gone. He'll just slide deeper and deeper now until we might as well forget him. If he was twenty, or twenty?two; but at his age . . . In the shop sometimes you see these young Brewer bums138. They can't stick it. They're like cripples only they don't limp. Human garbage, they call them. And I sit there at the machine for two months wondering how the hell it could be my Harry, that used to hate a mess so much."
Eccles looks over at Harry's mother and is jarred to see her leaning against the sink with soaked cheeks gleaming under the glasses. He gets up in shock. Is she crying because she thinks her husband is speaking the truth, or because she thinks he is saying this just to hurt her, in revenge for making him admit that he had wanted her? "I hope you're wrong," Eccles says. "I must go now; I thank you both for discussing this with me. I realize it's painful."
Angstrom takes him back through the house and in the dark of the dining room touches his arm. "He liked things just so," he says. "I never saw a boy like him. Any rumpus in the family he'd take hard out of all reason ? when Mary and I, you know, would have our fun." Eccles nods, but doubts that "fun" quite describes what he's seen.
In the living?room shadows a slender girl stands in a barearmed summer dress. "Mim! Did you just get in?"
"Yeah."
"This is Father ? I mean Reverend ='
"Eccles."
"Eccles, he came to talk about Harry. My daughter Miriam." "Hello, Miriam. I've heard Harry speak very fondly of you."
"Hi."
With that word the big window behind her takes on the intimate glaze139 of the big window in a luncheonette. Flip140 greetings seem to trail behind her with wisps of cigarette smoke and drugstore perfume. Mrs. Angstrom's nose has delicacy141 on the girl's face, a sharpness Saracen or even more ancient, barbaric. Taken with the prominent nose her height at first glance seems her mother's, but when her father stands beside her, Eccles sees that it is his height; their bodies, the beautiful girl's and the weary man's, are the same. They have the same narrowness, and a serviceable vulgarity that offends him. They'll get through. They know what they're doing. It's a weakness of his, to prefer people who don't know what they're doing. The helpless: these, and the people on top, beyond help. The ones who maneuver142 more or less well in the middle seem to his aristocratic prejudices to be thieving from both ends. When they bunch at the door, Angstrom puts his arm around his daughter's waist and Eccles thinks of Mrs. Angstrom silent in the kitchen with her wet cheeks and red arms, a mad captive. Yet, turning on the pavement to wave at the two of them in the doorway143, he has to smile at their incongruous symmetry, the earringed Arab boy with her innocent contempt for his eunuch's collar, and the limp?faced old woman of a printer, paired in slenderness, interlocked.
He gets into the Buick thirsty and vexed144. There was something pleasant said in the last half?hour but he can't remember what it was. He feels scratched, hot, confused, and dry; he's spent an afternoon in a bramble patch. He's seen half a dozen people and a dog and nowhere did an opinion tally145 with his own, that Harry Angstrom was worth saving and could be saved. Instead down there between the brambles there seemed to be no Harry at all: nothing but stale air and last year's dead stalks. The day is declining through the white afternoon to the long blue spring evening. He drives past a corner where someone is practicing on a trumpet146 behind an open upstairs window. Du du do do da da dee. Dee dee da da do do du. Cars are whispering home from work. He drives across the town, tacking147 on the diagonal streets along a course parallel to the distant ridge110 of the mountain. Fritz Kruppenbach, Mt. Judge's Lutheran minister for twenty?seven years, lives in a high brick house not far from the cemetery148. The motorcycle belonging to his college?age son is on its side in the driveway, partly dismantled149. The sloping lawn, graded in fussy150 terraces, has the unnatural151 chartreuse evenness that comes with much fertilizing152, much weed?killing153, and much mowing154. Mrs. Kruppenbach ? will Lucy ever achieve that dimpled, obedient look? ? comes to the door in a dark wool dress that makes no compromise with the season. Her gray hair girdles her head with braids of great compactness. When she lets all that hair down, she must be a witch. "He's mowing out back," she says.
"I'd like to talk to him for just a few minutes. It's a problem that involves our two congregations."
"Go up to his room, why do?an tcha? I'll fetch him."
The house ? foyer, halls, staircase, even the minister's leathery den23 upstairs ? is flooded with the smell of beef roasting. Eccles sits by the window of Kruppenbach's den on an oak?backed choir155 pew left over from some renovation156. Seated on the bench he feels an adolescent compulsion to pray but instead peers across the valley at the green fragments of the golf course where he would like to be, with Harry. Eccles has found other partners either better or worse than he; only Harry is both, and only Harry gives the game a desperate gaiety, as if they are together engaged in an impossible quest set by a benevolent157 but absurd lord, a quest whose humiliations sting them almost to tears but one that is renewed at each tee, in a fresh flood of green. And for Eccles there is an additional hope, a secret detennination to trounce Harry. He feels that the thing that makes Harry unsteady, that makes him unable to repeat his beautiful effortless swing every time, is the thing at the root of all the problems that he has created; and that by beating him decisively he, Eccles, will get on top of this weakness, this flaw, and hence solve the problems. In the meantime there is the pleasure of hearing Harry now and then cry, "Hey, hey," or "I love it, love it!" Their rapport158 at moments attains159 for Eccles a pitch of pleasure, a harmless ecstasy160, that makes the world with its vicious circumstantiality seem remote and spherical161 and green.
The house shudders162 to the master's step. Kruppenbach comes up the stairs into his den, angry at being taken from his lawnmowing. He wears old black pants and an undershirt soaked with sweat. His shoulders are coated with wiry gray wool.
"Hello, Chack," he says at pulpit volume, with no intonation163 of greeting. His German accent makes his words seem stones, set angrily one on top of another. "What is it?"
Eccles, not daring "Fritz" with the older man, laughs and blurts164, "Hello!"
Kruppenbach grimaces165. He has a massive square head, crewcut. He is a man of brick: as if he was born as a baby literally166 of clay and decades of exposure have baked him to the color and hardness of brick. He repeats, "What?"
"You have a family called Angstrom."
"Yes."
"The father's a printer."
"Yes."
"Their son, Harry, deserted167 his wife over two months ago; her people, the Springers, are in my church."
"Yes, well. The boy. The boy's a Schussel."
Eccles isn't certain what that means. He supposes that Kruppenbach doesn't sit down because he doesn't want to stain his furniture with his own sweat. His continuing to stand puts Eccles in a petitionary position, sitting on the bench like a choirboy. The odor of meat cooking grows more insistent168 as he explains what he thinks happened: how Harry has been in a sense spoiled by his athletic169 successes; how the wife, to be fair, had perhaps showed little imagination in their marriage; how he himself, as minister, had tried to keep the boy's conscience in touch with his wife without pressing him into a premature170 reunion, for the boy's problem wasn't so much a lack of feeling as an uncontrolled excess of it; how the four parents, for various reasons, were of little help; how he had witnessed, just minutes ago, a quarrel between the Angstroms that perhaps offered a clue as to why their son
"Do you think," Kruppenbach at last interrupts, "do you think this is your job, to meddle171 in these people's lives? I know what they teach you at seminary now: this psychology172 and that. But I don't agree with it. You think now your job is to be an unpaid173 doctor, to run around and plug up the holes and make everything smooth. I don't think that. I don't think that's your job."
"I only ?"
"No now let me finish. I've been in Mt. Judge twenty?seven years and you've been here two. I've listened to your story but I wasn't listening to what it said about the people, I was listening to what it said about you. What I heard was this: the story of a minister of God selling his message for a few scraps174 of gossip and a few games of golf. What do you think now it looks like to God, one childish husband leaving one childish wife? Do you ever think any more what God sees? Or have you grown beyond that?"
"No, of course not. But it seems to me our role in a situation like this =
"It seems to you our role is to be cops, cops without handcuffs, without guns, without anything but our human good nature. Isn't it right? Don't answer, just think if I'm not right. Well, I say that's a Devil's idea. I say, let the cops be cops and look after their laws that have nothing to do with us."
"I agree, up to a point -"
"There iss no up to a point! There is no reason or measure in what we must do." His thick forefinger175, woolly between the knuckles176, has begun to tap emphasis on the back of a leather chair. "If Gott wants to end misery He'll declare the Kingdom now." Jack86 feels a blush begin to bum his face. "How big do you think your little friends look among the billions that God sees? In Bombay now they die in the streets every minute. You say role. I say you don't know what your role is or you'd be home locked in prayer. There is your role: to make yourself an exemplar of faith. There is where comfort comes from: faith, not what little finagling a body can do here and there, stirring the bucket. In running back and forth177 you run from the duty given you by God, to make your faith powerful, so when the call comes you can go out and tell them, `Yes, he is dead, but you will see him again in Heaven. Yes, you suffer, but you must love your pain, because it is Christ's pain.' When on Sunday morning then, when we go before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ, hot" ? he clenches178 his hairy fists ? "with Christ, on fire: burn them with the force of our belief. That is why they come; why else would they pay us? Anything else we can do or say anyone can do and say. They have doctors and lawyers for that. It's all in the Book ? a thief with faith is worth all the Pharisees. Make no mistake. Now I'm serious. Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency179 and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil's work."
"Fritz," Mrs. Kruppenbach's voice calls carefully up the stairs. "Supper."
The red man in his undershirt looks down at Eccles and asks, "Will you kneel a moment with me and pray for Christ to come into this room?"
"No. No I won't. I'm too angry. It would be hypocritical."
The refusal, unthinkable from a layman180, makes Kruppenbach, not softer, but stiller. "Hypocrisy," he says mildly. "You have no seriousness. Don't you believe in damnation? Didn't you know when you put that collar on, what you risked?" In the brick skin of his face his eyes seem small imperfections, pink and glazed181 with water as if smarting in intense heat.
He turns without waiting for Jack to answer and goes downstairs for supper. Jack descends182 behind him and continues out the door. His heart is beating like a scolded child's and his knees are weak with fury. He had come for an exchange of information and been flagellated with an insane spiel. Unctuous183 old thundering Hun, no conception of the ministry184 as a legacy185 of light, probably himself scrambled into it out of a butcher's shop. Jack realizes that these are spiteful and unworthy thoughts but he can't stop them. His depression is so deep that he tries to gouge186 it deeper by telling himself He's right, he's right as he sits behind the pearl?gray steering187 wheel. He bows his head so his forehead touches an arc of its perfect plastic circle, but he can't cry; he's parched188. His shame and failure hang downward in him heavy but fruitless.
Though he knows that Lucy wants him home ? if dinner is not quite ready he will be in time to give the children their baths ? he instead drives to the drugstore in the center of town. The poodlecut girl behind the counter is in his Youth Group and two parishioners buying medicine or contraceptives or Kleenex hail him gaily189. It is here that in truth they come to find the antidotes190 to their lives. He feels at home; Eccles feels most at home in Godless public places. He rests his wrists on the cold clean marble and orders a vanilla191 ice?cream soda192 with a scoop193 of maple194?walnut195 ice cream, and drinks two Coca?Cola glasses full of miraculous196 clear water before it comes.
收听单词发音 |
1
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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meshed
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| 有孔的，有孔眼的，啮合的 | |
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mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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famished
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| adj.饥饿的 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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glider
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| n.滑翔机；滑翔导弹 | |
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tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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15
squeak
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| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
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calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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trickily
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| adv.欺骗着，用奸计 | |
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aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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defraud
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| vt.欺骗，欺诈 | |
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25
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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26
flailing
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| v.鞭打( flail的现在分词 )；用连枷脱粒；（臂或腿）无法控制地乱动；扫雷坦克 | |
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27
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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28
bawling
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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29
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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30
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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31
totters
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| v.走得或动得不稳( totter的第三人称单数 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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32
propulsive
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| adj.推进的 | |
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batters
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| n.面糊（煎料）( batter的名词复数 )；面糊（用于做糕饼）；（ 棒球） 正在击球的球员；击球员v.连续猛击( batter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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34
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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pedantically
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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tarts
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| n.果馅饼( tart的名词复数 )；轻佻的女人；妓女；小妞 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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39
gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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rimmed
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| adj.有边缘的，有框的v.沿…边缘滚动；给…镶边 | |
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wasp
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| n.黄蜂，蚂蜂 | |
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42
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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43
persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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44
buckle
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| n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲 | |
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45
appraising
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| v.估价( appraise的现在分词 )；估计；估量；评价 | |
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46
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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47
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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48
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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49
darts
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| n.掷飞镖游戏；飞镖( dart的名词复数 )；急驰，飞奔v.投掷，投射( dart的第三人称单数 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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50
gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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51
abrades
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| v.刮擦( abrade的第三人称单数 )；（在精神方面）折磨（人）；消磨（意志、精神等）；使精疲力尽 | |
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52
fumbles
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| 摸索，笨拙的处理( fumble的名词复数 ) | |
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53
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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54
babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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55
cadence
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| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
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56
beseeches
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的第三人称单数 ) | |
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57
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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58
daze
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| v.(使)茫然，(使)发昏 | |
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59
meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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60
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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61
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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62
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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63
auditor
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| n.审计员，旁听着 | |
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64
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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65
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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66
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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67
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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68
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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69
droops
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的名词复数 ) | |
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70
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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71
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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72
collapses
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| 折叠( collapse的第三人称单数 )； 倒塌； 崩溃； （尤指工作劳累后）坐下 | |
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73
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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74
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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75
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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76
squatting
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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77
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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78
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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79
spool
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| n.（缠录音带等的）卷盘（轴）；v.把…绕在卷轴上 | |
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80
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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81
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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82
gritted
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| v.以沙砾覆盖（某物），撒沙砾于( grit的过去式和过去分词 )；咬紧牙关 | |
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83
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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84
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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85
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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86
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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87
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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88
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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89
facets
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| n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面 | |
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90
plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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91
puffed
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| 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 | |
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92
faucets
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| n.水龙头( faucet的名词复数 ) | |
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93
gadgets
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| n.小机械，小器具（ gadget的名词复数 ） | |
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94
tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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95
arrogantly
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| adv.傲慢地 | |
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96
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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97
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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98
confrontation
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| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
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99
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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100
mincing
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| adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎 | |
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101
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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102
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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103
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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104
paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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105
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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106
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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107
hubris
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| n.傲慢，骄傲 | |
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108
pastor
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| n.牧师，牧人 | |
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109
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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110
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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111
ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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112
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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113
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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114
nibbled
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的过去式和过去分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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115
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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116
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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117
blurs
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| n.模糊( blur的名词复数 )；模糊之物；（移动的）模糊形状；模糊的记忆v.（使）变模糊( blur的第三人称单数 )；（使）难以区分 | |
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118
enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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119
sloppy
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| adj.邋遢的，不整洁的 | |
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120
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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121
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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122
crunch
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| n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声 | |
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123
tilts
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| （意欲赢得某物或战胜某人的）企图，尝试( tilt的名词复数 ) | |
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124
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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125
ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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126
defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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127
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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128
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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129
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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130
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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131
flinches
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的第三人称单数 ) | |
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132
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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133
hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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134
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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135
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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136
waned
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| v.衰落( wane的过去式和过去分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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137
concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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138
bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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139
glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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140
flip
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| vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的 | |
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141
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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142
maneuver
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| n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略 | |
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143
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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144
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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145
tally
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| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
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146
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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147
tacking
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| （帆船）抢风行驶，定位焊[铆]紧钉 | |
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148
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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149
dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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150
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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151
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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152
fertilizing
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| v.施肥( fertilize的现在分词 ) | |
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153
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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154
mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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155
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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156
renovation
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| n.革新，整修 | |
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157
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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158
rapport
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| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
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159
attains
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的第三人称单数 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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160
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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161
spherical
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| adj.球形的；球面的 | |
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162
shudders
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| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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163
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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164
blurts
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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165
grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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166
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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167
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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168
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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169
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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170
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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171
meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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172
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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173
unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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174
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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175
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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176
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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177
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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178
clenches
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的第三人称单数 ) | |
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179
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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180
layman
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| n.俗人，门外汉，凡人 | |
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181
glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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182
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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183
unctuous
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| adj.油腔滑调的，大胆的 | |
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184
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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185
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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186
gouge
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| v.凿；挖出；n.半圆凿；凿孔；欺诈 | |
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187
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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188
parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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189
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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190
antidotes
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| 解药( antidote的名词复数 )； 解毒剂； 对抗手段； 除害物 | |
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191
vanilla
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| n.香子兰，香草 | |
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192
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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193
scoop
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| n.铲子，舀取，独家新闻；v.汲取，舀取，抢先登出 | |
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194
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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195
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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196
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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