Royal Beatings
Royal Beatings
Royal Beating. That was Flo’s promise. You are going to get one Royal Beating.
The word Royal lolled on Flo’s tongue, took on trappings. Rose had a need to picture things, topursue absurdities, that was stronger than the need to stay out of trouble, and instead of taking thisthreat to heart she pondered: how is a beating royal? She came up with a tree-lined avenue, acrowd of formal spectators, some white horses and black slaves. Someone knelt, and the bloodcame leaping out like banners. An occasion both savage and splendid. In real life they didn’tapproach such dignity and it was only Flo who tried to supply the event with some high air ofnecessity and regret. Rose and her father soon got beyond anything presentable.
Her father was king of the royal beatings. Those Flo gave never amounted to much; they werequick cuffs and slaps dashed off while her attention remained elsewhere. You get out of my road,she would say. You mind your own business. You take that look off your face.
They lived behind a store in Hanratty, Ontario. There were four of them: Rose, her father, Flo,Rose’s young half brother Brian. The store was really a house, bought by Rose’s father andmother when they married and set up here in the furniture and upholstery repair business. Hermother could do upholstery. From both parents Rose should have inherited clever hands, a quicksympathy with materials, an eye for the nicest turns of mending, but she hadn’t. She was clumsy,and when something broke she couldn’t wait to sweep it up and throw it away.
Her mother had died. She said to Rose’s father during the afternoon, “I have a feeling that is sohard to describe. It’s like a boiled egg in my chest, with the shell left on.” She died before night,she had a blood clot on her lung. Rose was a baby in a basket at the time, so of course could notremember any of this. She heard it from Flo, who must have heard it from her father. Flo camealong soon afterwards, to take over Rose in the basket, marry her father, open up the front room tomake a grocery store. Rose, who had known the house only as a store, who had known only Flofor a mother, looked back on the sixteen or so months her parents spent here as an orderly, fargentler and more ceremonious time, with little touches of affluence. She had nothing to go on butsome egg cups her mother had bought, with a pattern of vines and birds on them, delicately drawnas if with red ink; the pattern was beginning to wear away. No books or clothes or pictures of hermother remained. Her father must have got rid of them, or else Flo would. Flo’s only story abouther mother, the one about her death, was oddly grudging. Flo liked the details of a death: thethings people said, the way they protested or tried to get out of bed or swore or laughed (some didthose things), but when she said that Rose’s mother mentioned a hard-boiled egg in her chest shemade the comparison sound slightly foolish, as if her mother really was the kind of person whomight think you could swallow an egg whole.
Her father had a shed out behind the store, where he worked at his furniture repairing andrestoring. He caned chair seats and backs, mended wicker-work, filled cracks, put legs back on, allmost admirably and skillfully and cheaply. That was his pride: to startle people with such finework, such moderate, even ridiculous charges. During the Depression people could not afford topay more, perhaps, but he continued the practice through the war, through the years of prosperityafter the war, until he died. He never discussed with Flo what he charged or what was owing.
After he died she had to go out and unlock the shed and take all sorts of scraps of paper and tornenvelopes from the big wicked-looking hooks that were his files. Many of these she found werenot accounts or receipts at all but records of the weather, bits of information about the garden,things he had been moved to write down.
Ate new potatoes 25th June. Record.
Dark Day, 1880’s, nothing supernatural.
Clouds of ash from forest fires.
Aug 16, 1938. Giant thunderstorm in evng. Lightning str Pres. Church, TurberryTwp. Will of God?
Scald strawberries to remove acid.
All things are alive. Spinoza.
Flo thought Spinoza must be some new vegetable he planned to grow, like broccoli or eggplant.
He would often try some new thing. She showed the scrap of paper to Rose and asked, did sheknow what Spinoza was? Rose did know, or had an idea-she was in her teens by that time-butshe replied that she did not. She had reached an age where she thought she could not stand toknow any more, about her father, or about Flo; she pushed any discovery aside withembarrassment and dread.
There was a stove in the shed, and many rough shelves covered with cans of paint and varnish,shellac and turpentine, jars of soaking brushes and also some dark sticky bottles of coughmedicine. Why should a man who coughed constantly, whose lungs took in a whiff of gas in theWar (called, in Rose’s earliest childhood, not the First, but the Last, War) spend all his daysbreathing fumes of paint and turpentine? At the time, such questions were not asked as often asthey are now. On the bench outside Flo’s store several old men from the neighborhood satgossiping, drowsing, in the warm weather, and some of these old men coughed all the time too.
The fact is they were dying, slowly and discreetly, of what was called, without any particularsense of grievance, “the foundry disease.” They had worked all their lives at the foundry in town,and now they sat still, with their wasted yellow faces, coughing, chuckling, drifting into aimlessobscenity on the subject of women walking by, or any young girl on a bicycle.
From the shed came not only coughing, but speech, a continual muttering, reproachful orencouraging, usually just below the level at which separate words could be made out. Slowingdown when her father was at a tricky piece of work, taking on a cheerful speed when he was doingsomething less demanding, sandpapering or painting. Now and then some words would breakthrough and hang clear and nonsensical on the air. When he realized they were out, there would bea quick bit of coverup coughing, a swallowing, an alert, unusual silence.
“Macaroni, pepperoni, Botticelli, beans-”
What could that mean? Rose used to repeat such things to herself. She could never ask him. Theperson who spoke these words and the person who spoke to her as her father were not the same,though they seemed to occupy the same space. It would be the worst sort of taste to acknowledgethe person who was not supposed to be there; it would not be forgiven. Just the same, she loiteredand listened.
The cloud-capped towers, she heard him say once.
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces.”
That was like a hand clapped against Rose’s chest, not to hurt, but astonish her, to take herbreath away. She had to run then, she had to get away. She knew that was enough to hear, andbesides, what if he caught her? It would be terrible.
This was something the same as bathroom noises. Flo had saved up, and had a bathroom put in,but there was no place to put it except in a corner of the kitchen. The door did not fit, the wallswere only beaverboard. The result was that even the tearing of a piece of toilet paper, the shiftingof a haunch, was audible to those working or talking or eating in the kitchen. They were allfamiliar with each other’s nether voices, not only in their more explosive moments but in theirintimate sighs and growls and pleas and statements. And they were all most prudish people. So noone ever seemed to hear, or be listening, and no reference was made. The person creating thenoises in the bathroom was not connected with the person who walked out.
They lived in a poor part of town. There was Hanratty and West Hanratty, with the river flowingbetween them. This was West Hanratty. In Hanratty the social structure ran from doctors anddentists and lawyers down to foundry workers and factory workers and draymen; in West Hanrattyit ran from factory workers and foundry workers down to large improvident families of casualbootleggers and prostitutes and unsuccessful thieves. Rose thought of her own family as straddlingthe river, belonging nowhere, but that was not true. West Hanratty was where the store was andthey were, on the straggling tail end of the main street. Across the road from them was ablacksmith shop, boarded up about the time the war started, and a house that had been anotherstore at one time. The Salada Tea sign had never been taken out of the front window; it remainedas a proud and interesting decoration though there was no Salada Tea for sale inside. There wasjust a bit of sidewalk, too cracked and tilted for roller-skating, though Rose longed for roller skatesand often pictured herself whizzing along in a plaid skirt, agile and fashionable. There was onestreet light, a tin flower; then the amenities gave up and there were dirt roads and boggy places,front-yard dumps and strange-looking houses. What made the houses strange-looking were theattempts to keep them from going completely to ruin. With some the attempt had never beenmade. These were gray and rotted and leaning over, falling into a landscape of scrub hollows, frogponds, cattails and nettles. Most houses, however, had been patched up with tarpaper, a few freshshingles, sheets of tin, hammered-out stovepipes, even cardboard. This was, of course, in the daysbefore the war, days of what would later be legendary poverty, from which Rose would remembermostly low-down things-serious-looking anthills and wooden steps, and a cloudy, interesting,problematical light on the world.
THERE WAS A LONG TRUCE between Flo and Rose in the beginning. Rose’s nature wasgrowing like a prickly pineapple, but slowly, and secretly, hard pride and skepticism overlapping,to make something surprising even to herself. Before she was old enough to go to school, andwhile Brian was still in the baby carriage, Rose stayed in the store with both of them-Flo sittingon the high stool behind the counter, Brian asleep by the window; Rose knelt or lay on the widecreaky floorboards working with crayons on pieces of brown paper too torn or irregular to be usedfor wrapping.
People who came to the store were mostly from the houses around. Some country people cametoo, on their way home from town, and a few people from Hanratty, who walked across the bridge.
Some people were always on the main street, in and out of stores, as if it was their duty to bealways on display and their right to be welcomed. For instance, Becky Tyde.
Becky Tyde climbed up on Flo’s counter, made room for herself beside an open tin of crumblyjamfilled cookies.
“Are these any good?” she said to Flo, and boldly began to eat one. “When are you going togive us a job, Flo?”
“You could go and work in the butcher shop,” said Flo innocently.
“You could go and work for your brother.”
“Roberta?” said Becky with a stagey sort of contempt. “You think I’d work for him?” Herbrother who ran the butcher shop was named Robert but often called Roberta, because of his meekand nervous ways. Becky Tyde laughed. Her laugh was loud and noisy like an engine bearingdown on you.
She was a big-headed loud-voiced dwarf, with a mascot’s sexless swagger, a red velvet tam, atwisted neck that forced her to hold her head on one side, always looking up and sideways. Shewore little polished high-heeled shoes, real lady’s shoes. Rose watched her shoes, being scared ofthe rest of her, of her laugh and her neck. She knew from Flo that Becky Tyde had been sick withpolio as a child, that was why her neck was twisted and why she had not grown any taller. It washard to believe that she had started out differently, that she had ever been normal. Flo said she wasnot cracked, she had as much brains as anybody, but she knew she could get away with anything.
“You know I used to live out here?” Becky said, noticing Rose. “Hey! What’s-your-name!
Didn’t I used to live out here, Flo?”
“If you did it was before my time,” said Flo, as if she didn’t know anything.
“That was before the neighborhood got so downhill. Excuse me saying so. My father built hishouse out here and he built his slaughter-house and we had half an acre of orchard.”
“Is that so?” said Flo, using her humoring voice, full of false geniality, humility even. “Thenwhy did you ever move away?”
“I told you, it got to be such a downhill neighborhood,” said Becky. She would put a wholecookie in her mouth if she felt like it, let her cheeks puff out like a frog’s. She never told any more.
Flo knew anyway, as who didn’t. Everyone knew the house, red brick with the veranda pulledoff and the orchard, what was left of it, full of the usual outflow-car seats and washing machinesand bedsprings and junk. The house would never look sinister, in spite of what had happened in it,because there was so much wreckage and confusion all around.
Becky’s old father was a different kind of butcher from her brother according to Flo. A bad-tempered Englishman. And different from Becky in the matter of mouthiness. His was never open.
A skinflint, a family tyrant. After Becky had polio he wouldn’t let her go back to school. She wasseldom seen outside the house, never outside the yard. He didn’t want people gloating. That waswhat Becky said, at the trial. Her mother was dead by that time and her sisters married. Just Beckyand Robert at home. People would stop Robert on the road and ask him, “How about your sister,Robert? Is she altogether better now?”
“Yes.”
“Does she do the housework? Does she get your supper?”
“Yes.”
“And is your father good to her, Robert?”
The story being that the father beat them, had beaten all his chil dren and beaten his wife aswell, beat Becky more now because of her deformity, which some people believed he had caused(they did not understand about polio). The stories persisted and got added to. The reason thatBecky was kept out of sight was now supposed to be her pregnancy, and the father of the childwas supposed to be her own father. Then people said it had been born, and disposed of.
“What?”
“Disposed of,” Flo said. “They used to say go and get your lamb chops at Tyde’s, get them niceand tender! It was all lies in all probability,” she said regretfully.
Rose could be drawn back-from watching the wind shiver along the old torn awning, catch inthe tear-by this tone of regret, caution, in Flo’s voice. Flo telling a story-and this was not theonly one, or even the most lurid one, she knew-would incline her head and let her face go softand thoughtful, tantalizing, warning.
“I shouldn’t even be telling you this stuff.”
More was to follow.
Three useless young men, who hung around the livery stable, got together - or were gottogether, by more influential and respectful men in town-and prepared to give old man Tyde ahorsewhipping, in the interests of public morality. They blacked their faces. They were providedwith whips and a quart of whiskey apiece, for courage. They were: Jelly Smith, a horse-racer and adrinker; Bob Temple, a ballplayer and strongman; and Hat Nettleton, who worked on the towndray, and had his nickname from a bowler hat he wore, out of vanity as much as for the comiceffect. (He still worked on the dray, in fact; he had kept the name if not the hat, and could often beseen in public-almost as often as Becky Tyde-delivering sacks of coal, which blackened hisface and arms. That should have brought to mind his story; but didn’t. Present time and past, theshady melodramatic past of Flo’s stories, were quite separate, at least for Rose. Present peoplecould not be fitted into the past. Becky herself, town oddity and public pet, harmless andmalicious, could never match the butcher’s prisoner, the cripple daughter, a white streak at thewindow: mute, beaten, impregnated. As with the house, only a formal connection could be made.)The young men primed to do the horsewhipping showed up late, outside Tyde’s house, aftereverybody had gone to bed. They had a gun, but they used up their ammunition firing it off in theyard. They yelled for the butcher and beat on the door; finally they broke it down. Tyde concludedthey were after his money, so he put some bills in a handkerchief and sent Becky down with them,maybe thinking those men would be touched or scared by the sight of a little wrynecked girl, adwarf. But that didn’t content them. They came upstairs and dragged the butcher out from underhis bed, in his nightgown. They dragged him outside and stood him in the snow. The temperaturewas four below zero, a fact noted later in court. They meant to hold a mock trial but they could notremember how it was done. So they began to beat him and kept beating him until he fell. Theyyelled at him, Butcher’s meat! and continued beating him while his nightgown and the snow hewas lying in turned red. His son Robert said in court that he had not watched the beating. Beckysaid that Robert had watched at first but had run away and hid. She herself had watched all theway through. She watched the men leave at last and her father make his delayed bloody progressthrough the snow and up the steps of the veranda. She did not go out to help him, or open the dooruntil he got to it. Why not? she was asked in court, and she said she did not go out because she justhad her nightgown on, and she did not open the door because she did not want to let the cold intothe house.
Old man Tyde then appeared to have recovered his strength. He sent Robert to harness thehorse, and made Becky heat water so that he could wash. He dressed and took all the money andwith no explanation to his children got into the cutter and drove to Belgrave where he left thehorse tied in the cold and took the early morning train to Toronto. On the train he behaved oddly,groaning and cursing as if he was drunk. He was picked up on the streets of Toronto a day later,out of his mind with fever, and was taken to a hospital, where he died. He still had all the money.
The cause of death was given as pneumonia.
But the authorities got wind, Flo said. The case came to trial. The three men who did it allreceived long prison sentences. A farce, said Flo. Within a year they were all free, had all beenpardoned, had jobs waiting for them. And why was that? It was because too many higher-ups werein on it. And it seemed as if Becky and Robert had no interest in seeing justice done. They wereleft well-off. They bought a house in Hanratty. Robert went into the store. Becky after her longseclusion started on a career of public sociability and display.
That was all. Flo put the lid down on the story as if she was sick of it. It reflected no good onanybody.
“Imagine,” Flo said.
Flo at this time must have been in her early thirties. A young woman. She wore exactly thesame clothes that a woman of fifty, or sixty, or seventy, might wear: print housedresses loose atthe neck and sleeves as well as the waist; bib aprons, also of print, which she took off when shecame from the kitchen into the store. This was a common costume at the time, for a poor thoughnot absolutely poverty-stricken woman; it was also, in a way, a scornful deliberate choice. Floscorned slacks, she scorned the outfits of people trying to be in style, she scorned lipstick andpermanents. She wore her own black hair cut straight across, just long enough to push behind herears. She was tall but fine-boned, with narrow wrists and shoulders, a small head, a pale, freckled,mobile, monkeyish face. If she had thought it worthwhile, and had the resources, she might havehad a black-and-pale, fragile, nurtured sort of prettiness; Rose realized that later. But she wouldhave to have been a different person altogether; she would have to have learned to resist makingfaces, at herself and others.
Rose’s earliest memories of Flo were of extraordinary softness and hardness. The soft hair, thelong, soft, pale cheeks, soft almost invisible fuzz in front of her ears and above her mouth. Thesharpness of her knees, hardness of her lap, flatness of her front.
When Flo sang:
Oh the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette treesAnd the soda-water fountain …Rose thought of Flo’s old life before she married her father, when she worked as a waitress inthe coffee shop in union Station, and went with her girl friends Mavis and Irene to Centre Island,and was followed by men on dark streets and knew how payphones and elevators worked. Roseheard in her voice the reckless dangerous life of cities, the gum-chewing sharp answers.
And when she sang:
Then slowly, slowly, she got up
And slowly she came nigh him
And all she said, that she ever did say,
Was young man I think, you’re dyin’!
Rose thought of a life Flo seemed to have had beyond that, earlier than that, crowded andlegendary, with Barbara Allen and Becky Tyde’s father and all kinds of old outrages and sorrowsjumbled up together in it.
THE ROYAL BEATINGS. What got them started?
Suppose a Saturday, in spring. Leaves not out yet but the doors open to the sunlight. Crows.
Ditches full of running water. Hopeful weather. Often on Saturdays Flo left Rose in charge of thestore- it’s a few years now, these are the years when Rose was nine, ten, eleven, twelve-whileshe herself went across the bridge to Hanratty (going uptown they called it) to shop and seepeople, and listen to them. Among the people she listened to were Mrs. Lawyer Davies, Mrs.
Anglican Rector Henley-Smith, and Mrs. Horse-Doctor McKay. She came home and imitatedthem at supper: their high-flown remarks, their flibberty voices. Monsters, she made them seem; offoolishness, and showiness, and self-approbation.
When she finished shopping she went into the coffee shop of the Queen’s Hotel and had asundae. What kind? Rose and Brian wanted to know when she got home, and they would bedisappointed if it was only pineapple or butterscotch, pleased if it was a Tin Roof, or Black andWhite. Then she smoked a cigarette. She had some ready-rolled, that she carried with her, so thatshe wouldn’t have to roll one in public. Smoking was the one thing she did that she would havecalled showing off in anybody else. It was a habit left over from her working days, from Toronto.
She knew it was asking for trouble. Once the Catholic priest came over to her right in the Queen’sHotel, and flashed his lighter at her before she could get her matches out. She thanked him but didnot enter into conversation, lest he should try to convert her.
Another time, on the way home, she saw at the town end of the bridge a boy in a blue jacket,apparently looking at the water. Eighteen, nineteen years old. Nobody she knew. Skinny, weaklylooking, something the matter with him, she saw at once. Was he thinking of jumping? Just as shecame up even with him, what does he do but turn and display, holding his jacket open, also hispants. What he must have suffered from the cold, on a day that had Flo holding her coat collartight around her throat.
When she first saw what he had in his hand, Flo said, all she could think of was, what is hedoing out here with a baloney sausage?
She could say that. It was offered as truth; no joke. She maintained that she despised dirty talk.
She would go out and yell at the old men sitting in front of her store.
“If you want to stay where you are you better clean your mouths out!”
Saturday, then. For some reason Flo is not going uptown, has decided to stay home and scrubthe kitchen floor. Perhaps this has put her in a bad mood. Perhaps she was in a bad mood anyway,due to people not paying their bills, or the stirring-up of feelings in spring. The wrangle with Rosehas already commenced, has been going on forever, like a dream that goes back and back intoother dreams, over hills and through doorways, maddeningly dim and populous and familiar andelusive. They are carting all the chairs out of the kitchen preparatory to the scrubbing, and theyhave also got to move some extra provisions for the store, some cartons of canned goods, tins ofmaple syrup, coal-oil cans, jars of vinegar. They take these things out to the woodshed. Brian whois five or six by this time is helping drag the tins.
“Yes,” says Flo, carrying on from our lost starting-point. “Yes, and that filth you taught toBrian.”
“What filth?”
“And he doesn’t know any better.”
There is one step down from the kitchen to the woodshed, a bit of carpet on it so worn Rosecan’t ever remember seeing the pattern. Brian loosens it, dragging a tin.
“Two Vancouvers,” she says softly.
Flo is back in the kitchen. Brian looks from Flo to Rose and Rose says again in a slightly loudervoice, an encouraging sing-song, “Two Vancouvers-”
“Fried in snot!” finishes Brian, not able to control himself any longer.
“Two pickled arseholes-” “-tied in a knot!”
There it is. The filth.
Two Vancouvers fried in snot!
Two pickled arseholes tied in a knot!
Rose has known that for years, learned it when she first went to school. She came home andasked Flo, what is a Vancouver?
“It’s a city. It’s a long ways away.” “What else besides a city?”
Flo said, what did she mean, what else? How could it be fried, Rose said, approaching thedangerous moment, the delightful moment, when she would have to come out with the wholething.
“Two Vancouvers fried in snot! / Two pickled arseholes tied in a knot!”
“You’re going to get it!” cried Flo in a predictable rage. “Say that again and you’ll get a goodclout!”
Rose couldn’t stop herself. She hummed it tenderly, tried saying the innocent words aloud,humming through the others. It was not just the words snot and arsehole that gave her pleasure,though of course they did. It was the pickling and tying and the unimaginable Vancouvers. Shesaw them in her mind shaped rather like octopuses, twitching in the pan. The tumble of reason; thespark and spit of craziness.
Lately she has remembered it again and taught it to Brian, to see if it has the same effect on him,and of course it has.
“Oh, I heard you!” says Flo. “I heard that! And I’m warning you!” So she is. Brian takes thewarning. He runs away, out the wood- shed door, to do as he likes. Being a boy, free to help ornot, involve himself or not. Not committed to the household struggle. They don’t need himanyway, except to use against each other, they hardly notice his going. They continue, can’t helpcontinuing, can’t leave each other alone. When they seem to have given up they were really justwaiting and building up steam.
Flo gets out the scrub pail and the brush and the rag and the pad for her knees, a dirty red rubberpad. She starts to work on the floor. Rose sits on the kitchen table, the only place left to sit,swinging her legs. She can feel the cool oilcloth, because she is wearing shorts, last summer’stight faded shorts dug out of the summer-clothes bag. The smell a bit moldy from winter storage.
Flo crawls around underneath, scrubbing with the brush, wiping with the rag. Her legs are long,white and muscular, marked all over with blue veins as if somebody had been drawing rivers onthem with an indelible pencil. An abnormal energy, a violent disgust, is expressed in the chewingof the brush at the linoleum, the swish of the rag.
What do they have to say to each other? It doesn’t really matter. Flo speaks of Rose’s smart-aleck behavior, rudeness and sloppiness and conceit. Her willingness to make work for others, herlack of gratitude. She mentions Brian’s innocence, Rose’s corruption. Oh, don’t you think you’resomebody, says Flo, and a moment later, Who do you think you are? Rose contradicts and objectswith such poisonous reasonableness and mildness, displays theatrical unconcern. Flo goes beyondher ordinary scorn and self-possession and becomes amazingly theatrical herself, saying it was forRose that she sacrificed her life. She saw her father saddled with a baby daughter and she thought,what is that man going to do? So she married him, and here she is, on her knees.
At that moment the bell rings, to announce a customer in the store. Because the fight is on, Roseis not permitted to go into the store and wait on whoever it is. Flo gets up and throws off herapron, groaning-but not communicatively, it is not a groan whose exasperation Rose is allowedto share-and goes in and serves. Rose hears her using her normal voice.
“About time! Sure is!”
She comes back and ties on her apron and is ready to resume. “You never have a thought foranybody but your own-self! You never have a thought for what I’m doing.”
“I never asked you to do anything. I wished you never had. I would have been a lot better off.”
Rose says this smiling directly at Flo, who has not yet gone down on her knees. Flo sees thesmile, grabs the scrub rag that is hanging on the side of the pail, and throws it at her. It may bemeant to hit her in the face but instead it falls against Rose’s leg and she raises her foot andcatches it, swinging it negligently against her ankle.
“All right,” says Flo. “You’ve done it this time. All right.”
Rose watches her go to the woodshed door, hears her tramp through the woodshed, pause in thedoorway, where the screen door hasn’t yet been hung, and the storm door is standing open,propped with a brick. She calls Rose’s father. She calls him in a warning, summoning voice, as ifagainst her will preparing him for bad news. He will know what this is about.
The kitchen floor has five or six different patterns of linoleum on it. Ends, which Flo got fornothing and ingeniously trimmed and fitted together, bordering them with tin strips and tacks.
While Rose sits on the table waiting, she looks at the floor, at this satisfying arrangement ofrectangles, triangles, some other shape whose name she is trying to remember. She hears Flocoming back through the woodshed, on the creaky plank walk laid over the dirt floor. She isloitering, waiting, too. She and Rose can carry this no further, by themselves.
Rose hears her father come in. She stiffens, a tremor runs through her legs, she feels them shiveron the oilcloth. Called away from some peaceful, absorbing task, away from the words running inhis head, called out of himself, her father has to say something. He says, “Well? What’s wrong?”
Now comes another voice of Flo’s. Enriched, hurt, apologetic, it seems to have beenmanufactured on the spot. She is sorry to have called him from his work.
Would never have done it, if Rose was not driving her to distraction. How to distraction? Withher back-talk and impudence and her terrible tongue. The things Rose has said to Flo are such that,if Flo had said them to her mother, she knows her father would have thrashed her into the ground.
Rose tries to butt in, to say this isn’t true.
What isn’t true?
Her father raises a hand, doesn’t look at her, says, “Be quiet.” When she says it isn’t true, Rosemeans that she herself didn’t start this, only responded, that she was goaded by Flo, who is now,she believes, telling the grossest sort of lies, twisting everything to suit herself. Rose puts aside herother knowledge that whatever Flo has said or done, whatever she herself has said or done, doesnot really matter at all. It is the struggle itself that counts, and that can’t be stopped, can never bestopped, short of where it has got to, now.
Flo’s knees are dirty, in spite of the pad. The scrub rag is still hanging over Rose’s foot.
Her father wipes his hands, listening to Flo. He takes his time. He is slow at getting into thespirit of things, tired in advance, maybe, on the verge of rejecting the role he has to play. He won’tlook at Rose, but at any sound or stirring from Rose, he holds up his hand.
“Well we don’t need the public in on this, that’s for sure,” Flo says, and she goes to lock thedoor of the store, putting in the store window the sign that says “Back Soon,” a sign Rose madefor her with a great deal of fancy curving and shading of letters in black and red crayon. When shecomes back she shuts the door to the store, then the door to the stairs, then the door to thewoodshed.
Her shoes have left marks on the clean wet part of the floor. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says now,in a voice worn down from its emotional peak. “I don’t know what to do about her.” She looksdown and sees her dirty knees (following Rose’s eyes) and rubs at them viciously with her barehands, smearing the dirt around.
“She humiliates me,” she says, straightening up. There it is, the explanation. “She humiliatesme,” she repeats with satisfaction. “She has no respect.”
“I do not!”
“Quiet, you!” says her father.
“If I hadn’t called your father you’d still be sitting there with that grin on your face! What otherway is there to manage you?”
Rose detects in her father some objections to Flo’s rhetoric, some embarrassment andreluctance. She is wrong, and ought to know she is wrong, in thinking that she can count on this.
The fact that she knows about it, and he knows she knows, will not make things any better. He isbeginning to warm up. He gives her a look. This look is at first cold and challenging. It informsher of his judgment, of the hopelessness of her position. Then it clears, it begins to fill up withsomething else, the way a spring fills up when you clear the leaves away. It fills with hatred andpleasure. Rose sees that and knows it. Is that just a description of anger, should she see his eyesfilling up with anger? No. Hatred is right. Pleasure is right. His face loosens and changes andgrows younger, and he holds up his hand this time to silence Flo.
“All right,” he says, meaning that’s enough, more than enough, this part is over, things canproceed. He starts to loosen his belt.
Flo has stopped anyway. She has the same difficulty Rose does, a difficulty in believing thatwhat you know must happen really will happen, that there comes a time when you can’t drawback.
“Oh, I don’t know, don’t be too hard on her.” She is moving around nervously as if she hasthoughts of opening some escape route. “Oh, you don’t have to use the belt on her. Do you have touse the belt?”
He doesn’t answer. The belt is coming off, not hastily. It is being grasped at the necessary point.
All right you. He is coming over to Rose. He pushes her off the table. His face, like his voice, isquite out of character. He is like a bad actor, who turns a part grotesque. As if he must savor andinsist on just what is shameful and terrible about this. That is not to say he is pretending, that he isacting, and does not mean it. He is acting, and he means it. Rose knows that, she knows everythingabout him.
She has since wondered about murders, and murderers. Does the thing have to be carriedthrough, in the end, partly for the effect, to prove to the audience of one-who won’t be able toreport, only register, the lesson-that such a thing can happen, that there is nothing that can’thappen, that the most dreadful antic is justified, feelings can be found to match it?
She tries again looking at the kitchen floor, that clever and comforting geometrical arrangement,instead of looking at him or his belt. How can this go on in front of such daily witnesses-thelinoleum, the calendar with the mill and creek and autumn trees, the old accommodating pots andpans?
Hold out your hand!
Those things aren’t going to help her, none of them can rescue her.
They turn bland and useless, even unfriendly. Pots can show malice, the patterns of linoleumcan leer up at you, treachery is the other side of dailiness.
At the first, or maybe the second, crack of pain, she draws back. She will not accept it. She runsaround the room, she tries to get to the doors. Her father blocks her off. Not an ounce of courageor of stoicism in her, it would seem. She runs, she screams, she implores. Her father is after her,cracking the belt at her when he can, then abandoning it and using his hands. Bang over the ear,then bang over the other ear. Back and forth, her head ringing. Bang in the face. Up against thewall and bang in the face again. He shakes her and hits her against the wall, he kicks her legs. Sheis incoherent, insane, shrieking. Forgive me! Oh please, forgive me!
Flo is shrieking too. Stop, stop!
Not yet. He throws Rose down. Or perhaps she throws herself down. He kicks her legs again.
She has given up on words but is letting out a noise, the sort of noise that makes Flo cry, Oh, whatif people can hear her? The very last-ditch willing sound of humiliation and defeat it is, for itseems Rose must play her part in this with the same grossness, the same exaggeration, that herfather displays, playing his. She plays his victim with a self-indulgence that arouses, and maybehopes to arouse, his final, sickened contempt.
They will give this anything that is necessary, it seems, they will go to any lengths.
Not quite. He has never managed to really injure her, though there are times, of course, whenshe prays that he will. He hits her with an open hand, there is some restraint in his kicks.
Now he stops, he is out of breath. He allows Flo to move in, he grabs Rose up and gives her apush in Flo’s direction, making a sound of disgust. Flo retrieves her, opens the stair door, shovesher up the stairs.
“Go on up to your room now! Hurry!”
Rose goes up the stairs, stumbling, letting herself stumble, letting herself fall against the steps.
She doesn’t bang her door because a gesture like that could still bring him after her, and anyway,she is weak. She lies on the bed. She can hear through the stovepipe hole Flo snuffling andremonstrating, her father saying angrily that Flo should have kept quiet then, if she did not wantRose punished she should not have recommended it. Flo says she never recommended a hidinglike that.
They argue back and forth on this. Flo’s frightened voice is growing stronger, getting itsconfidence back. By stages, by arguing, they are being drawn back into themselves. Soon it’s onlyFlo talking; he will not talk any more. Rose has had to fight down her noisy sobbing, so as to listento them, and when she loses interest in listening, and wants to sob some more, she finds she can’twork herself up to it. She has passed into a state of calm, in which outrage is perceived ascomplete and final. In this state events and possibilities take on a lovely simplicity. Choices aremercifully clear. The words that come to mind are not the quibbling, seldom the conditional.
Never is a word to which the right is suddenly established. She will never speak to them, she willnever look at them with anything but loathing, she will never forgive them. She will punish them;she will finish them. Encased in these finalities, and in her bodily pain, she floats in curiouscomfort, beyond herself, beyond responsibility.
Suppose she dies now? Suppose she commits suicide? Suppose she runs away? Any of thesethings would be appropriate. It is only a matter of choosing, of figuring out the way. She floats inher pure superior state as if kindly drugged.
And just as there is a moment, when you are drugged, in which you feel perfectly safe, sure,unreachable, and then without warning and right next to it a moment in which you know the wholeprotection has fatally cracked, though it is still pretending to hold soundly together, so there is amoment now-the moment, in fact, when Rose hears Flo step on the stairs-that contains for herboth present peace and freedom and a sure knowledge of the whole down-spiraling course ofevents from now on.
Flo comes into the room without knocking, but with a hesitation that shows it might haveoccurred to her. She brings a jar of cold cream. Rose is hanging on to advantage as long as shecan, lying face down on the bed, refusing to acknowledge or answer.
“Oh come on,” Flo says uneasily. “You aren’t so bad off, are you? You put some of this on andyou’ll feel better.”
She is bluffing. She doesn’t know for sure what damage has been done. She has the lid off thecold cream. Rose can smell it. The intimate, babyish, humiliating smell. She won’t allow it nearher. But in order to avoid it, the big ready clot of it in Flo’s hand, she has to move. She scuffles,resists, loses dignity, and lets Flo see there is not really much the matter.
“All right,” Flo says. “You win. I’ll leave it here and you can put it on when you like.”
Later still a tray will appear. Flo will put it down without a word and go away. A large glass ofchocolate milk on it, made with Vita-Malt from the store. Some rich streaks of Vita-Malt aroundthe bottom of the glass. Little sandwiches, neat and appetizing. Canned salmon of the first qualityand reddest color, plenty of mayonnaise. A couple of butter tarts from a bakery package, chocolatebiscuits with a peppermint filling. Rose’s favorites, in the sandwich, tart and cookie line. She willturn away, refuse to look, but left alone with these eatables will be miserably tempted, roused andtroubled and drawn back from thoughts of suicide or flight by the smell of salmon, the anticipationof crisp chocolate, she will reach out a finger, just to run it around the edge of one of thesandwiches (crusts cut off!) to get the overflow, get a taste. Then she will decide to eat one, forstrength to refuse the rest. One will not be noticed. Soon, in helpless corruption, she will eat themall. She will drink the chocolate milk, eat the tarts, eat the cookies. She will get the malty syrupout of the bottom of the glass with her finger, though she sniffles with shame. Too late.
Flo will come up and get the tray. She may say, “I see you got your appetite still,” or, “Did youlike the chocolate milk, was it enough syrup in it?” depending on how chastened she is feeling,herself. At any rate, all advantage will be lost. Rose will understand that life has started up again,that they will all sit around the table eating again, listening to the radio news. Tomorrow morning,maybe even tonight. Unseemly and unlikely as that may be. They will be embarrassed, but ratherless than you might expect considering how they have behaved. They will feel a queer lassitude, aconvalescent indolence, not far off satisfaction.
One night after a scene like this they were all in the kitchen. It must have been summer, or atleast warm weather, because her father spoke of the old men who sat on the bench in front of thestore.
“Do you know what they’re talking about now?” he said, and nodded his head towards the storeto show who he meant, though of course they were not there now, they went home at dark.
“Those old coots,” said Flo. “What?”
There was about them both a geniality not exactly false but a bit more emphatic than wasnormal, without company.
Rose’s father told them then that the old men had picked up the idea somewhere that whatlooked like a star in the western sky, the first star that came out after sunset, the evening star, wasin reality an airship hovering over Bay City, Michigan, on the other side of Lake Huron. AnAmerican invention, sent up to rival the heavenly bodies. They were all in agreement about this,the idea was congenial to them. They believed it to be lit by ten thousand electric light bulbs. Herfather had ruthlessly disagreed with them, pointing out that it was the planet Venus they saw,which had appeared in the sky long before the invention of an electric light bulb. They had neverheard of the planet Venus.
“Ignoramuses,” said Flo. At which Rose knew, and knew her father knew, that Flo had neverheard of the planet Venus either. To distract them from this, or even apologize for it, Flo put downher teacup, stretched out with her head resting on the chair she had been sitting on and her feet onanother chair (somehow she managed to tuck her dress modestly between her legs at the sametime), and lay stiff as a board, so that Brian cried out in delight, “Do that! Do that!”
Flo was double-jointed and very strong. In moments of celebration or emergency she would dotricks.
They were silent while she turned herself around, not using her arms at all but just her stronglegs and feet. Then they all cried out in triumph, though they had seen it before.
Just as Flo turned herself Rose got a picture in her mind of that airship, an elongated transparentbubble, with its strings of diamond lights, floating in the miraculous American sky.
“The planet Venus!” her father said, applauding Flo. “Ten thousand electric lights!”
There was a feeling of permission, relaxation, even a current of happiness, in the room.
YEARS LATER, many years later, on a Sunday morning, Rose turned on the radio. This waswhen she was living by herself in Toronto.
Well sir.
It was a different kind of a place in our day. Yes it was.
It was all horses then. Horses and buggies. Buggy races up and down the main street on theSaturday nights.
“Just like the chariot races,” says the announcer’s, or interviewer’s, smooth encouraging voice.
I never seen a one of them.
“No sir, that was the old Roman chariot races I was referring to.
That was before your time.”
Musta been before my time. I’m a hunerd and two years old. “That’s a wonderful age, sir.”
It is so.
She left it on, as she went around the apartment kitchen, making coffee for herself. It seemed toher that this must be a staged interview, a scene from some play, and she wanted to find out what itwas. The old man’s voice was so vain and belligerent, the interviewer’s quite hopeless andalarmed, under its practiced gentleness and ease. You were surely meant to see him holding themicrophone up to some toothless, reckless, preening centenarian, wondering what in God’s namehe was doing here, and what would he say next?
“They must have been fairly dangerous.”
What was dangerous?
“Those buggy races.”
They was. Dangerous. Used to be the runaway horses. Used to be a plenty of accidents. Fellowswas dragged along on the gravel and cut their face open. Wouldna matter so much if they wasdead. Heh.
Some of them horses was the high-steppers. Some, they had to have the mustard under their tail.
Some wouldn step out for nothin. That’s the thing it is with the horses. Some’ll work and pull tillthey drop down dead and some wouldn pull your cock out of a pail of lard. Hehe.
It must be a real interview after all. Otherwise they wouldn’t have put that in, wouldn’t haverisked it. It’s all right if the old man says it. Local color. Anything rendered harmless anddelightful by his hundred years.
Accidents all the time then. In the mill. Foundry. Wasn’t the precautions.
“You didn’t have so many strikes then, I don’t suppose? You didn’t have so many unions?”
Everybody taking it easy nowadays. We worked and we was glad to get it. Worked and was glad toget it.
“You didn’t have television.”
Didn’t have no T.V. Didn’t have no radio. No picture show.
“You made your own entertainment.”
That’s the way we did.
“You had a lot of experiences young men growing up today will never have.”
Experiences.
“Can you recall any of them for us?”
I eaten groundhog meat one time One winter You wouldna cared for it. Heh.
There was a pause, of appreciation, it would seem, then the announcer’s voice saying that theforegoing had been an interview with Mr. Wilfred Nettleton of Hanratty, Ontario, made on hishundred and second birthday, two weeks before his death, last spring. A living link with our past.
Mr. Nettleton had been interviewed in the Wawanash County Home for the Aged.
Hat Nettleton.
Horsewhipper into centenarian. Photographed on his birthday, fussed over by nurses, kissed nodoubt by a girl reporter. Flash bulbs popping at him. Tape recorder drinking in the sound of hisvoice. Oldest resident. Oldest horsewhipper. Living link with our past.
Looking out from her kitchen window at the cold lake, Rose was longing to tell somebody. Itwas Flo who would enjoy hearing. She thought of her saying Imagine! in a way that meant shewas having her worst suspicions gorgeously confirmed. But Flo was in the same place HatNettleton had died in, and there wasn’t any way Rose could reach her. She had been there evenwhen that interview was recorded, though she would not have heard it, would not have knownabout it. After Rose put her in the Home, a couple of years earlier, she had stopped talking. Shehad removed herself, and spent most of her time sitting in a corner of her crib, looking crafty anddisagreeable, not answering anybody, though she occasionally showed her feelings by biting anurse.
庄严的鞭打
庄严的鞭打
庄严的鞭打。弗洛如此承诺。你会得到一次庄严的鞭打。
“庄严”这个词懒懒地溜出弗洛的舌尖，那是危险的诱饵。露丝需要想象这幅画面，追赶这荒唐的意味。她的渴望强烈，强过了少惹麻烦、把这威胁放在心上的警告，她细细思量：鞭打，怎么才叫庄严呢？她想到了树木排列两旁的大道，一群正经的观光者，一些白马和黑奴。有人跪在地上，那血汹涌而出，一如旗帜的颜色。这景象，野蛮又壮观。现实生活中，他们所做的并没有如此高贵，只不过弗洛想给这事添点紧要和悔恨的意味而已。露丝和她爸爸很快就把这些事搞得都没法说出去了。
在“庄严鞭打”这件事情上，她爸爸可以封王。弗洛打的次数不够，都是些随意的匆匆扇过，心不在焉。你别挡我的道，她会这样说。你管好你自己的事。你少露出那表情。
他们住在安大略省汉拉提的一家店铺后面。家里有四个人：露丝、她的爸爸、弗洛，还有露丝同父异母的弟弟。那家店铺其实是所房子，是当年露丝的父母结婚时候买下来的，准备在家具和家居装饰行业立足。她妈妈会做家居装饰。露丝本该遗传父母的心灵手巧，对物件迅速感悟，敏锐发现最佳修补时机，但她没有。她很笨拙，要是什么东西坏了，她都等不及要将它们扫到一边扔掉。
她的母亲已经过世。那天下午，露丝的母亲对父亲说：“我有种很难描述的感觉。就像胸口有一只煮熟、剥开的鸡蛋。”夜晚来临前，她就离开了人世，血液淤积在她的肺部。那个时候露丝还是个睡在摇篮里的小婴儿，所以她当然记不得这些。这是她从弗洛那里听来的，而弗洛是从她父亲那里听来的。妈妈去世之后不久，弗洛就过来了，照看摇篮里的露丝，跟她父亲结了婚，将前门打开，开起了杂货店。在露丝的印象里，这所房子从一开始就是杂货店，弗洛就是她妈妈，不过她会去想象她父母在这里度过的从前那十六七个月，那是一段井井有条、更温和，又更有仪式感的时光，只是并不富裕。除了她妈妈买的蛋杯之外，其他的，她再也无法想象下去了。那蛋杯上有枝蔓和鸟儿的图形，像是故意用红墨水画出来的，现在那图案已经开始消散。她妈妈的书、衣服和照片都没有留下。一定是她父亲把它们给扔了，要不然就是弗洛扔的。弗洛讲过的唯一跟她妈妈有关的故事，就是死亡的故事，带有一种奇怪的怨恨。弗洛喜欢死亡的细节：那些人说的话，那些人表示抵抗或者想从床上下来或者破口大骂或者捧腹大笑的方式（有的人是会这么做），但是当她说起露丝的妈妈，提到胸口那只煮熟的鸡蛋时，她的表达方式让这个类比听上去有点蠢，让你感觉她妈妈真的是那种会一口吞下整只鸡蛋的人。
杂货店后面有个她父亲的小棚，他在那里维修家具。他制作椅子的座位和靠背：拉上藤条，挑起柳枝，填上空隙，再装好桌脚，一气呵成，羡煞旁人，要价却不高。这是他自豪的地方，用如此精湛的工艺、低到不可想象的价格一鸣惊人。在经济萧条时期，人们或许没几个钱可以花，但他却仍然能在战争中维持生计，甚至维持到战争之后那繁荣的几年，直到他死去。他从来不会跟弗洛讨论他要的价或是别人欠的钱。他去世之后，她得走到屋外打开小棚子的锁，把所有的纸片和信封从那个丑陋的大钩子上扯下来，那是他的文件。她找到的东西完全不是什么账目或收据，而是天气记录，关于这园子的信息，一些受到触动而写下来的东西。
6月25日吃新的土豆，记下来。
漆黑的一天，1880年代，不是什么超自然。
森林大火带来的团团灰云。
1938年8月16日。傍晚的大雷暴。闪电袭击了长老会教堂，特贝里地区。上帝的旨意吗？
煮烫草莓，把酸除掉。
一切都充满生机。斯宾诺莎。
弗洛想，斯宾诺莎一定是他计划种植的新型蔬菜，比如花椰菜或茄子之类。他经常会尝试些新东西。她拿着几张纸去问露丝：知不知道斯宾诺莎是什么东西？露丝的确知道，或者大概了解是怎么回事，她那时候还是十几岁的样子，不过她回答说，她并不清楚。她认为自己已经到了一个年龄，已经无法忍受知道更多关于她父亲或者弗洛的事情了，她把所有的发现都尴尬地推到一旁，心生畏惧。
小棚里有个炉子，一罐罐颜料、虫胶清漆和松节油摆满在粗糙的架子上，广口瓶里装着湿透的笔刷子，黏糊糊的黑瓶子里放的是咳嗽药。为什么这么一个成日咳嗽、在战争中吸够了毒气的男人，还要天天在这里呼吸油漆和松节油的气味呢？（那场战争，在露丝的童年时代，不是被叫作“第一次世界大战”，而是“上一场战争”。）那个时候，人们不像现在这样爱追究这类问题。在弗洛的店铺外面的长椅上，几个住在附近的年长男人会坐在一块，在暖和的阳光下窃窃私语、打着盹，他们中有些人也总是咳嗽个不停。他们的生命正走向尾声，慢慢地、小心翼翼地靠近死亡，他们的死亡原因是“铸造类疾病”——这词里并没有什么埋怨。他们一辈子都在镇上的铸工厂干活，现在他们坐在那里，脸色发黄、面容憔悴，咳嗽、轻笑着，迷离的眼神滑过眼前的女人和骑着车的女孩子们，不知所终。
小棚里传来的除了咳嗽声，还有他们的说话声，一连串的低语，或气愤，或振奋，差一点逐个字都能听得一清二楚。当她父亲手头的活有些棘手的时候，语速就会放慢；要是比较容易上手，比如用砂纸打磨或者上油漆的时候，语调就轻快很多。几个没什么意义的词偶尔会突出重围、清晰可辨。当他发现被人听到，会佯装咳嗽几声，一阵警惕，一阵异常的安静。
“通心粉、辣味香肠、波提切利、豆子——”
他们在说什么呢？露丝曾经会重复说给自己听。她从来没有问过他。说出这些话的人，跟作为她父亲对她讲话的人并不是同一个，尽管他们占据同一个空间。要是你认定了某个人，结果发现不是他，那真是最糟了。跟以前一样，她还是在那晃荡，听了下去。
高耸入云的铁塔。她听见他曾经这样说。
“高耸入云的铁塔，无与伦比的宫殿。”
露丝觉得自己的胸脯就像挨了一掌，不是伤害，而是让她惊讶，让她目瞪口呆。她得跑开，她得逃离。她知道，听到这些就已经足够，万一她被他抓住了呢？那就可怕了。
浴室的声音也一样。弗洛省下了些钱，在房子里加了个浴室，但是除了把它塞进厨房角落之外，就找不着其他空间了。那扇门不合适，墙壁也都是硬建筑纸板做的。结果呢，你在里面撕一张厕纸、换一下蹲姿，在厨房里干活、聊天、吃饭的人都能听见。他们对彼此下半身发出的声音都很熟悉，不仅是那些爆发性的时刻，甚至连他们私底下叹息、低号、哀求或者说点什么都听得一清二楚。他们可都是正经人。所以没有人表现出来自己在听或者被人听见，没有人提到这里边的任何事。在浴室里制造这些声音的人跟从这里走出去的人，就完全不相干了。
他们住在镇上比较穷的区域。镇上有汉拉提和西汉拉提，一条河在其间流淌。这边是西汉拉提。那边是汉拉提，社会结构是从医生、牙医和律师到铸造工人、工厂工人和车夫；而在西汉拉提，有工厂工人和铸造工人、大批出来瞎混的赌徒、妓女和一事无成的小偷们。露丝觉得自己家是跨过河流，不属于任何一处的，不过事实并非如此。她家的小店就在西汉拉提，在主干道那个乱哄哄的尽头。他们家对面是一个铁匠店，战争开始时建起来的，曾经是另外一家店。“色拉茶”标志牌一直没有从窗前拿走，它成为了一个自豪而有趣的装饰，尽管这里并不卖什么色拉茶了。窄窄的人行道，对于轮滑来说太过崎岖。尽管如此，露丝总是渴望踩上轮滑，想象自己穿着格子裙敏捷又有型地飕飕滑过。还有一个街灯，一朵锡花；别提“风景宜人”这样的词，这儿都是脏兮兮的道路、沼泽似的泥地，院子前满地垃圾，还有古怪的房子。之所以把房子弄得如此古怪，是因为人们总想把它们修补成看上去不至于完全毁掉的样子，结果还没怎么修就撂下了。这些房子灰头土脸、摇摇欲坠，像要倾倒在泥坑、青蛙池塘、香蒲花和荨麻上。不过，大多数房子都已经贴上了沥青油纸，有一些新鲜的鹅卵石和锡纸、锻好的火炉烟囱，甚至还有硬纸板。当然，这是在战争之前的样子，此后这段贫困时期成了传奇岁月，而露丝记得的多半也是这些破败景象——肃穆的蚁丘和木阶梯，还有这世上的一盏暗淡、滑稽、时好时坏的灯。
一开始，有很长一段时间，弗洛和露丝说好了不再吵架。露丝的天性就像个长刺的菠萝，慢慢地、悄悄地，顽固的骄傲和怀疑重新冒了出来，她做出了些连自己都觉得吃惊的事情。露丝还没上学而布莱恩还在婴儿车里的时候，她就在店里跟他俩待在一起——弗洛坐在前台后面的高脚凳上，布莱恩在窗前熟睡，露丝跪着或者躺在一块宽宽的、嘎吱作响的木地板条上，拿着蜡笔在牛皮纸上画来画去，那些纸一般都是零碎的，要么太小，要么太不规则，没法用来包裹了。
来小店的大多数是住这附近的人。有些从镇上回村里的人，回家的时候也会顺道过来看看。
也有一些是从汉拉提来的，他们从桥那边过来。有的人总是在这条主道上逛悠，在店里进进出出，似乎常在店里出现是他们的义务，被人欢迎惠顾是他们的权利。比如说贝基•泰德。
贝基•泰德爬上了弗洛的柜台，在一罐蘸满酱的碎饼干面前给自己腾了点位置。
“这个好吃吗？”她对弗洛说，大胆地拿起一块吃了起来，“你什么时候打算给我们个活儿干啊，弗洛？”
“你可以去屠宰店里干活，”弗洛天真地说，“你可以去给你的哥哥干活。”
“罗贝塔吗？”贝基露出了一种不自然的藐视，“你觉得我会为他工作吗？”她的那位开屠宰店的哥哥叫罗伯特，但是通常人们会叫成女孩儿名字“罗贝塔”，因为他平时又温顺又紧张。贝基•泰德大笑了起来。她的笑声又高又吵，像一个咄咄逼人的引擎。
她身材矮小，长着一个大脑袋，声音很大，走起路来就像一个不辨性别的吉祥物，戴着一顶红红的天鹅绒无檐圆帽，因为脖子是扭着的，她的头得歪向一边，总是朝上面和两侧看。她穿着擦得发亮的小小高跟鞋，那种真正的女士鞋。露丝看着她，除了这高跟鞋，露丝怕她的一切，怕她的笑声，怕她的脖子。露丝从弗洛那儿得知，贝基•泰德小时候得了小儿麻痹症，所以她的脖子是扭着的，人也一直没长高。很难相信她打小就跟人们不一样，就没有正常过。弗洛说她不是蠢，她跟其他人脑子一样好使，但她也知道她什么事情都能躲得过。
“你知道我之前在那儿住吗？”贝基说，她注意到了露丝，“嘿！你叫什么名字！我以前不是就住在那儿吗，弗洛？”
“如果是的话那应该是我来之前了。”弗洛说，好像她什么都没有注意到似的。
“那是这一带住宅衰落之前的事儿了。抱歉我这么说啊。我爸爸之前把房子建在了那儿，然后盖了他的屠宰店，我们还有半英亩果园。”
“是吗？”弗洛用她那幽默的语调说，声音里充满了假扮的真诚和谦恭，“那你为什么要搬走呢？”
“我不是跟你说，这一代住宅区衰落了嘛。”贝基说。她要是愿意，就会把一整块饼干塞进自己的嘴里，让自己的脸颊鼓得像青蛙似的。不过她没再说什么。
弗洛反正已经知道她要说什么了，谁不知道呢。每个人都知道这所房子，红砖砌成的门廊，还有果园，可剩在这儿的，就都是平常东西了——车座椅、洗衣机、弹簧床，还有垃圾。因为这儿到处都是残片和混乱的状态，这房子看上去并不凶险，尽管这里面是发生过一些事的。
根据弗洛听来的故事，贝基的老父亲跟她哥哥并不是同一种类型的屠夫。她父亲是一个脾气很差的英国人。在爱说话这方面就跟贝基不一样。他可从来都不怎么说话。他是个吝啬鬼，是家里的暴君。贝基得了小儿麻痹症之后，他就不让她回学校去了。她很少能够看到房子以及院子之外的世界。他不想让别人看到她时幸灾乐祸。贝基在审讯的时候是这么说的。她的妈妈那个时候已经过世，她的姐姐也结婚了。只有贝基和罗伯特在家。人们会在路上叫住罗伯特问：“你的妹妹呢，罗伯特？她现在好些了吗？”
“好了。”
“她做家务吗？她帮你搞定晚饭吗？”
“是的。”
“你的父亲待她好吗，罗伯特？”
故事是这么说的：父亲会打他们俩，他会打所有的孩子，还打妻子，现在就更常打贝基了，因为她的身体缺陷，有些人觉得贝基这病就是他引起的（他们不知道小儿麻痹症是什么）。
这故事继续有人传，还添油加醋。有人说人们看不见贝基是因为她怀孕了，那孩子的父亲是她自己的父亲。然后人们说这孩子其实已经出生，然后被遗弃了。
“什么？”
“被遗弃了，”弗洛说，“他们曾经会说，到泰德家的店拿你的羊排吧，要取好的、软的那块！
可能都是谎话而已。”她懊恼地说。
听到弗洛话里的懊恼和谨慎，露丝有退却之意，她看着风从老旧的雨棚颤抖而过，雨棚在风中撕裂。弗洛讲的故事会主宰她的头脑，也会让她的脸变得温柔、多虑、贪婪而警戒——露丝知道，发生了的故事可不仅仅是这个，这甚至都不是最耸人听闻的。
“我真不该告诉你这些。”
后来发生了更多的事情。
三个没用的年轻人在马车行旁边转悠，三个人在一起——或者可以说，他们是被镇上更有影响力、更受尊敬的人撺掇在一起的，他们仨为了公共道德，打算抽泰德老头儿一马鞭子。他们把自己的脸涂黑。为了鼓劲，有人给了他们每人一夸脱的威士忌。他们分别是杰利•史密斯，一个赛马选手和酒徒；鲍勃•坦布尔，一个棒球运动员和大力士；还有帽子•内特尔顿，他在镇上的运货马车上干活，他有那个“帽子”的绰号是因为他老戴着圆顶高帽，这是出于虚荣，不过也制造了同等的喜剧效果。其实他现在仍然在运货马车上工作，虽然帽子不总戴，但那绰号保留着，人们通常能够在公众场合看见他——就跟看到贝基•泰德一样。大家会看见他在派送一袋袋煤，把脸和手臂弄得漆黑。这事儿应该会让人想起他的那些故事，然而最终没有。无论过去还是现在，弗洛那些名声败坏、情节夸张的故事，至少对于露丝来说，都很遥远了。现在的人们都不能想象过去的事情。贝基本人，这个镇上的怪胎、公众的宠物，这个外貌凶险，却又人畜无害的人，如今也跟“屠夫的囚徒”“瘸腿的女儿”这类称号不搭边了。
窗户上那行白字“哑巴、怂货、脏东西”已经与她无关。至于这房子，也只是因为她来过，才说得上跟她有点正经的联系。
本来要去抽鞭子的年轻人晚到了些，在大家都入睡之后，他们来到泰德的家门外。他们有把枪，但是在院子里扫射时已经用光了子弹。他们大声喊屠夫出来，猛敲房门，最终把门给撞开了。泰德觉得他们是来找他要钱的，所以他把一些钱放在手帕里，让贝基拿下去，或许觉得那些男人看到这个身材矮小、歪着脖子的小女孩会被触动或者吓到。但是这并没有令他们满意。他们跑到楼上去，把穿着睡衣的屠夫从床底下拉出来。他们把他拉到门外，让他站在雪地里。当时的温度是零下四度，这一点在后来的法庭上也有提到。他们假装审判他，但是已经不记得是怎么个流程。所以他们开始打他，一直打他，直到他倒下。他们朝他大吼，屠夫的肉！他们继续鞭打他，直到他的睡衣和他身下的雪地都变得血红。他的儿子罗伯特在法庭上说他没有看到他被鞭打的过程。贝基说，罗伯特一开始还在看着的，后来就跑到一边去躲起来了。她自己目睹了整个经过。她看到那些男人最后离开了，很久之后，她的父亲血迹斑斑地在雪地上努力地爬到门口走廊。她没有走过去帮他，也没有打开门，直到他够着门的时候才给他开。为什么不帮他一把呢？人们在法庭上问她，她说她没有出去是因为她刚刚穿上睡衣，没有开门是因为她不想让冷空气进屋子。
老泰德后来慢慢地恢复了他的体力。他让罗伯特去给马匹套上挽具，然后让贝基倒了热水给他洗漱。他穿好衣服，拿出所有的钱，对孩子们二话不说，就坐上马拉雪橇，到贝尔格雷夫，把那匹马留在寒冬里，坐上去多伦多的早班车走了。在火车上，他表现得很怪异，就像喝醉酒似的骂骂咧咧，哀叹连天。一天之后，他在多伦多的街上被人救起，发着烧，完全神志不清，被带到了医院，然后死去。他的钱全都在身上。他的死因是肺炎。
但是政府得到了消息，弗洛说。这件事情就上了法庭。打他的那三个人全被判了很长的刑期。这是个闹剧，弗洛说。一年之内他们就都被释放了，一切都被原谅了，出来之后他们还能接着上班。为什么会这样？因为太多上头的人干预了这事。贝基和罗伯特好像也并不关心正义是否会得到伸张。他们都被打点得很不错。他们还在汉拉提买了个房子。罗伯特到店里干活去了。贝基消停了许久之后，就又开始进行社交了。
事情就是这样。弗洛讲完了这故事，仿佛她已经对此感到厌烦。这故事对任何人都没什么好处。
“想象一下。”弗洛说。
弗洛这个时候三十出头。一个年轻女人。她穿的衣服跟一个五六十岁或者七十岁的女人可能会穿的没什么区别。印花家居裙在脖子、袖子和腰部松松垮垮，她还有个围裙，同样是印花的，从厨房走到店里的时候，她就会脱下来。对于一个没什么钱但也不至于无法解决温饱的女人来说，这在那时是惯常服饰。在某种程度上说，也是种出于不屑的刻意选择。弗洛瞧不上懒散的打扮，瞧不上人们尝试追赶潮流的打扮，瞧不上口红和烫发。她自己乌黑的头发直直垂落，刚好能让她拨到耳朵后面去。她长得很高，但骨骼娇小；窄窄的手腕和肩膀，脑袋很小，一张苍白、布着雀斑、灵活又顽皮的脸。如果她觉得值得，又有些办法的话，她可以拥有一副用晒黑掩盖苍白、精致而姣好的面容；这是露丝后来意识到的。但是这得让她变成完全不同的人了，无论是对自己还是对别人，她都得学会不做古怪表情才行。
在露丝对弗洛的早年记忆里，弗洛身上有着极柔软和极硬朗的部分。软软的头发，长长的、软软的、苍白的脸颊，在她的耳朵前，嘴唇上那些柔软得几乎看不见的毛发。还有她硬邦邦的膝盖，硬邦邦的大腿，以及平坦的胸部。
弗洛唱：
蜜蜂嗡嗡飞过香烟树，
还有苏打喷水池……
在弗洛嫁给她父亲之前，露丝就思考过弗洛的老年生活会是什么样的。那时弗洛在联合车站的一家咖啡店当服务员，跟她的女友玛维斯和艾琳到多伦多湖心岛去，后面跟着的是黑压压街道上那些懂公用电话和电梯原理的男人。在弗洛的声音里，露丝听到的是来自城市里轻率的危险生活，以及那些不屑一顾的尖锐答案。
她唱道：
慢慢地，慢慢地，她起身
慢慢地，她朝他走近
她说了，也只说了那句话，
年轻人，我觉得你在死去！
在那之前，在那之外，露丝觉得弗洛似乎拥有一种这样的生活，人山人海、充满传说，芭芭拉•艾伦、贝基•泰德的父亲，以及所有人的愤怒和悲伤全在其中。
庄严的鞭打，那是怎么开始的？
就当这是个周六，春天的周六。树叶还没有长出来，家门已经向阳光敞开。乌鸦。水沟里水满而急。满怀希望的天气。通常在周六，弗洛会出去，让露丝来照看店铺——那是几年前的事情了，那个时候露丝才九岁、十岁或十一二岁的样子。弗洛会走上桥到汉拉提去（大家管这叫“进城”），她到那边买东西、见人，听他们说话。其中有罗娅•戴维斯太太、安杰丽卡•瑞克特•亨雷——史密斯太太，还有霍斯——道格特•麦克凯太太。她回到家模仿她们傻里傻气的声音。把她们学得跟怪物似的，一副愚蠢、做作、洋洋得意的样子。
买东西回来之后，她走进皇后酒店的咖啡店要一杯圣代。哪一种？她回到家的时候，露丝和布莱恩都想知道。如果是菠萝或者奶油糖果，他们会很失望，如果是铁皮屋顶圣代或者黑白圣代，他们就挺高兴。然后她会抽烟。她之前已经卷好了，带在身上，这样就不用在公共场合卷烟了。她是抽烟的，但也会觉得这是个炫耀的行为。这是她在多伦多干活的时候留下的习惯。她知道这事儿是找麻烦。有一次，一位天主教牧师正好在皇后酒店向她走来，还没等她拿出火柴，就在她面前点亮了打火机给她借火。她谢了他，但是两人没说话，她担心此人要劝她入教。
还有一次，在回家的路上，她看到镇上那座小桥的尾部，有一个穿着蓝色夹克的男孩分明在朝河水里看。大概十八九岁。她不认识。他长得很瘦，看上去有点虚弱，一定是有什么事，她马上就看了出来。他想跳河吗？当她与他站在同一个平面的时候，他转过身，他的夹克和裤子敞开，裸露着身体。他一定会被冻坏的。在这种天气下弗洛会把自己的大衣领子紧紧围着脖子系好。
当她看到他手里握着的那个东西，弗洛说，她能想到的就是，他拿着根大红肠站在这里是要干吗？
这话，她是能说出口的。这也是个真话，不是玩笑。她一直保持着对脏话的厌恶。她会走出去对着她门口坐着的老男人们大喊：
“如果你还想在这待着，最好嘴巴干净点！”
然后，是个周六。由于某些缘故，弗洛不准备进城去，决定待在家里擦厨房地板。或许这让她心情不太好。或许她本来心情就不太好，因为有些人不给她付账，也或者因为春天里躁动的情绪，她跟露丝就开始吵嘴了，一直这么吵下去，就像一个梦回来了，又到了另一个梦里，它们越过山丘，穿过一道道房门，稀碎、嘈杂、熟悉又令人难以捉摸，让人恼火。她们把厨房椅子全搬出去准备擦地板，拿点存货放到店里去，几箱罐头，几罐枫糖浆，一些煤油罐、瓶装醋。她们把这些东西搬到小棚子里。五六岁的布莱恩好像也在帮忙拖着罐头。
“没错，”她们俩已经不知道从什么时候开始吵起来的，弗洛接着说，“没错，还有你教给布莱恩的那些肮脏东西。”
“什么脏东西？”
“他也不学点好的。”
从厨房到小棚得下一个台阶，有张地毯铺在上面，太旧了，露丝好像都没看见那上面的图案。布莱恩将地毯抖抖松，把一个罐头拖了过来。
“两个温哥华——”她轻轻地说。
弗洛回到厨房。布莱恩看看弗洛，又看看露丝，露丝用唱歌般的振奋语调稍微大点声说：“两个温哥华——”
“炸在鼻涕里。”布莱恩把话接完，再也憋不下去了。
“两只腌屁眼——”
“——绑成一个结。”
说的就是这个。肮脏东西。
两个温哥华，炸在鼻涕里；两只腌屁眼，绑成一个结。
露丝会说这个已经几年时间了，从刚上学的时候就学会了。她回到家问弗洛：什么是温哥华？
“是一个城市。离这里很远。”
“除了城市还有别的意思吗？”
弗洛问：别的意思，是什么意思？她为什么会被油炸呢，露丝说着，慢慢接近那个危险的时刻，愉悦的时刻，她会把她知道的东西一股脑都说出来。
“两个温哥华，炸在鼻涕里；两只腌屁眼，绑成一个结。”
“你迟早会挨打的！”弗洛怒声说道，意料之中的愤怒，“你再说一遍就揍你！”
可露丝停不下来。她轻轻地把它哼了出来，试着大声说出那些纯洁的单词，其他则含糊带过。“鼻涕”和“屁眼”两个词当然给她带来了愉悦感，但不仅仅是因为这个。令她愉悦的还有“腌”和“绑”，还有给人无限遐想的“温哥华”的意思。她在脑中想象它们的样子，大概像是章鱼一样，在盘中扭动着。她的理智被绊倒，她的冲动开始发热、炸裂。
最近她又想起了这句话，于是教会了布莱恩说，她要看看是不是在他身上也有同样的效果，当然，是有的。
“哦，我听到你们说什么了！”弗洛说，“你听到了！我警告你们！”
没错，她在警告他们。布莱恩听到了这次警告。他跑了出去，跑出小棚子，去做自己喜欢做的事情了。他是个男孩，帮不帮忙、加不加入都没关系。他没义务去管家里的争执。反正她们也不需要他，除非互相吵架的时候利用他一下，不然她们很难注意到他到底去了哪儿。另外两位在继续，停不下来，就是不能自己安静地待一会儿。当你以为她们已经放弃争斗的时候，她们实际上只是在慢慢酝酿而已。
弗洛把桶、刷子和破布都拿了出来，还有膝盖的垫板，那是一块脏脏的红色橡胶垫板。她开始干地上的活儿了。露丝坐在厨房的桌子上，晃动着双腿，这是厨房唯一可以让人坐的地方。因为穿着短裤，她能感受到油布的凉爽，这是她从夏天衣物包里发现的，是去年夏天那件紧身、褪色的短裤。她们闻到了冬天储物区里一点发霉的气味。
弗洛从下面爬过，用刷子用力搓洗，拿破布来回擦拭。她的脚又长又白，也很结实，蓝色的血管凸显出来，仿佛有人用洗不掉印记的铅笔在她的脚上画了些河流。刷子咀嚼着油地毡，破布嚓嚓作响，透着一股反常的能量，以及剧烈的厌恶。
她们有什么要跟对方说的？其实都无关紧要。弗洛会说露丝自作聪明、行为粗鲁、废话太多、狂妄自大。她总是想让别人干活，不懂感激。她也会提到布莱恩的天真，露丝的堕落。
哦，别以为你有多了不起，弗洛说，一会儿又说，你以为你是谁啊？露丝却用一种理性又温和的方式对她的话作出回应和表示反对，这种出乎意料的冷漠颇具杀伤力。弗洛就不再像往常那样正常嘲讽或者泰然自若了，她变得非常夸张，她说她牺牲了自己，完全是为了露丝。
当时她看见露丝的父亲把他幼小的女儿放在马鞍上，就想，那个人要做些什么？于是她跟他结婚了，现在她就在这里，跪在地板上。
这个时候铃声响了，这是有顾客来了的意思。因为她们还在吵架，弗洛不准露丝到店里去，不管是谁，就让她在这里等着。弗洛起身，把她的围裙丢在一边，抱怨了一声，走进去招呼顾客。不过这声叹息并没有跟露丝交流的意思，这种恼火的情绪也是露丝不准表现出来的。
露丝听到她用正常的声音说：
“是时候了！当然！”
她回来，系上她的围裙，准备继续吵。
“除了你自己，你从来没为别人着想过！你从来没想过我在做什么。”
“我从来都没要你去做过什么啊。我倒希望这些你都没做过呢。这样的话我就好多了。”
在弗洛俯身下去擦地板前，露丝微笑地在弗洛面前直接说了这些话。弗洛看见了她那种笑，拿起挂在桶边的破布就朝她扔了过去。本来是要砸向露丝的脸的，但那块布偏偏掉落在露丝的腿上。她抬起脚把它接住，满不在乎地用脚踝摇了摇。
“好，”弗洛说，“你干了这事儿，好。”
露丝看着她走向小棚子，听见她在小棚子里踏步穿过，又在门廊停了下来，纱门还没有挂起来，外门仍然敞开着，用一块砖头顶住了。她喊露丝父亲的名字，用警告的、召唤的声音喊他的名字，似乎如果有人胆敢反对她，就会要他好看，他会知道自己到底犯了什么错。
厨房的地板上有五六块形状各异的油地毡。弗洛巧妙地将几块油地毡的末端修剪并拼接在一起，用锡条和大头钉把它们接上。露丝坐在桌子上等，看着地板上那些组合完美的形状，长方形、三角形，还有一些她正在想到底叫什么名字的形状。她听见弗洛从小棚子走回来，走上脏地板那吱嘎作响的厚木板。她在四处走动，像等着些什么。她和露丝两个人都继续不下去了。
露丝听到她的父亲进来了。她身体变得僵硬，双腿感觉到一阵震颤，她能感觉到腿在油地毡上轻轻抖动。她爸爸本来沉浸在安静的工作里，脑子里的句子仍然活跃，这时却被喊了一声，总得说点什么。他说：“嗯？怎么了？”
弗洛又喊了一声。她的声音浑厚，仿佛受伤和带有歉意，像是在这个时候特意包装过一样。
在他工作的时候把他叫过来，她感到很抱歉。如果不是因为露丝让她分心，她是不会这么做的。怎么让她分心了？她还嘴，行为放肆，说话不检点。露丝对弗洛说过的那些话，如果换作弗洛对她妈妈说，她知道她爸会把自己打得不成样子。
露丝试着插嘴，说事情不是这样的。
什么不是这样的？
她爸爸伸出了手，看都没看她一眼，说：“安静。”
当她说“不是这样”的时候，露丝的意思是，这场争吵并不是她挑起的，她只是在回应而已，是弗洛激起了她的情绪。在她看来，弗洛这个时候在讲着最恶劣的谎话，把一切事实都扭转到对自己有利的一面。露丝其实知道，无论弗洛说了或者做了什么，无论她自己说了或者做了什么，都无关紧要了，但是她现在忘掉了这一点。她俩确实吵过架，这事才是重要的，她们的争吵无法停止，永远也停止不了，到现在也没法说到了什么地步。
虽然有衬垫，弗洛的膝盖还是脏了。露丝的脚上仍然挂着那块破布。
她的父亲擦擦手，听弗洛说。他不着急。他进入状态总是很慢，事先就困住了，处在拒绝融入他必须扮演的角色的边缘。他不看露丝，但是一旦露丝发出什么声响或搅了什么动静，他就会把手举起来示意她别说话。
“这事我们不需要别人来看，这准没错。”弗洛说着，就去关上店铺的门，把店铺窗口“马上回来”的标语牌子挂了上去，这块牌子是露丝给她写的，用红色和黑色的蜡笔给字母描上了不少夸张的曲线和阴影。弗洛回来的时候关上了店铺的门，还有楼梯口的门，还有通往小棚的门。
她的鞋子在湿漉漉的干净地板上留下了脚印。
“嗯，我不知道啊，”她开口说话了，情绪绷紧之后松懈下来，声音里能听得出，“我真不知道拿她怎么办了。”她低头看她脏脏的膝盖（因为露丝也在看），然后用手猛地擦了擦，把脏东西抹掉。
“她羞辱我。”她直起腰来说。对，这就是她的解释了。“她羞辱我，”她满意地重复道，“她不懂得尊重人。”
“我才没有！”
“你闭嘴！”她父亲说。
“如果我没把你爸爸叫来，你现在还坐在那儿嬉皮笑脸呢！对付你还能有什么别的办法？”
露丝发现她的父亲对弗洛的假设有些抗拒，有些尴尬和不情愿。她错了，她必须知道她自己错了，这么想，她可以有所指望。然而实际上，尽管她知道这一点，而他也知道她知道，事情却好不到哪儿去。他开始进入状态了。他给了她一个脸色。这个脸色的第一眼冰冷又挑衅，传递了他的决断，传递出她无望的处境。后来这脸色消散，开始装进了别的含义，就像装进了春天，把落叶扫了个干净。它充满了憎恨和喜悦。露丝看到这神情，也明白过来了。
那神情描述的仅仅是愤怒吗？她看到他的眼睛里充满了愤怒吗？不是的。有憎恨。也有愉悦。他的脸放松了下来，开始变化，显得更加年轻了，这一次他举起手来让弗洛停下。
“好了。”他说。意思是够了，不仅仅是够了，这部分结束了，事情可以继续了。他开始解开他的皮带。
弗洛本来就已经停下来了。她跟露丝一样，难以相信一件觉得要发生的事情果真会发生，到了某一时刻，就再无法挽回。
“哦，这个啊，你也别对她太狠啦，”她紧张地四处走动，仿佛想给自己找一条逃脱的路，“哦，你不用拿皮带吧。一定要用皮带吗？”
他没有回答。皮带解了下来，不紧不慢的。但那皮带倒是被抓得正当好。给我老实点。他朝露丝走去。他把她从那张桌子上拉下来。他的脸就像他的声音一样，完全不像是他自己的。
他就像是个糟糕的演员，把一个角色演得非常怪异。他仿佛必须体会以及坚持认定这件事情的可耻和糟糕之处似的。不是说他在假装，在表演，本来没这个意思。他是在表演，但也想这么做。露丝知道这点，露丝知道关于他的一切。
此后她一直在思考关于谋杀和凶手的事情。最后，事情一定要水落石出，坚决执行，就为了证明给那些只听命不声张的观众看，此类事情会发生，什么事情都会发生，最可怕的丑角已经绳之以法，得以平民愤吗？
她再次观察厨房的地板，那精巧又舒适的几何布置，而不去看他和他的皮带。眼前是每天都能看到的油布毡，还有磨坊、小溪和秋叶，以及有了年纪但仍然好用的高锅和平底锅，这样的事情，怎么能在这些日常的东西面前发生呢？
把手伸出来！
那些东西帮不上她的忙，没有一样东西能救她。它们变得冷淡而无用，甚至不友好。高锅可以露出敌意，油布毡的图案可以表现出鄙夷，变节也是这些日常用品的另一面。
第一下，或者可能第二下的时候，一阵疼痛袭来，她的手缩了回去。她不接受。她绕着房间跑，想跑到门口。她的父亲把她堵了回去。她似乎连一盎司的勇气或者忍耐都没有了。她跑着，尖叫着，哀求着。她父亲追她，时不时用皮带抽她，随后把皮带丢在一边，直接上手。
扇向一只耳朵，扇向另一只耳朵。反复扇，她的脑袋嗡嗡作响。给她的脸来一巴掌。把她推到墙上，又来一巴掌。他摇晃她的身子，推到墙上打，踢她小腿。她语无伦次、神志不清、大声尖叫。原谅我！求你了，原谅我！
弗洛也尖叫了起来。停下，停下！
还没完。他把露丝扔了下来。或者可能是她把自己扔了下来。他又朝她的小腿踢去。她已经放弃说话，只发出一阵声响，这声响让弗洛大喊了起来：哦，万一别人听见她在叫呢？这是她言不由衷的最后呼喊，带着羞辱和失败，因为露丝已然融入她的角色，身处这同样的恶劣与夸张之中，她父亲也一样，在这由他造成的局面里扮演着自己的角色。她则扮演他的受害者，她正用那入戏的劲头激起或者可能希望激起他最后那厌恶的蔑视。
他们似乎会任由事态发展到任何必要的程度。
还不至于。他还没能让她受伤，当然，尽管有的时候她希望他会这么做。他用巴掌打她，踢她的时候却是有些许控制的。
现在他停下来了，他得喘口气。他准许弗洛进来了，一把抓住露丝，朝弗洛的方向推了过去，发出一阵反感的声音。弗洛把她接了过来，打开楼梯门，将她推上楼梯。
“现在回你房间去！快去！”
露丝上了楼梯，磕磕碰碰的，她尽管让自己磕磕碰碰，让自己摔在楼梯上。她没有把门砰的一声关紧，因为这种行为会让他继续来找她麻烦，而且她也没什么力气了。她躺在床上，还能透过火炉烟囱听到弗洛嘟嘟哝哝的抗议，她爸爸生气地说既然不想让露丝受到惩罚，弗洛那个时候就不应该说话，不应该提议。弗洛说她从来没有提议他下此狠手。
他们来来回回地为这事争辩。弗洛原本害怕的声音变得更加有力，重又变得自信。吵着吵着，慢慢地，两个人的话都少了起来。过了一会儿就只有弗洛在说话，他不再说了。露丝一开始得努力止住抽泣声，这样才能听他们说话，但是等她已经没兴趣听下去，想再哭一会儿的时候，她发现自己都哭不出来了。她已经过渡到一个平静的阶段，愤怒的情绪已经到达终点。在这个当口，发生的事情和接下来的可能性就到了一个简单到可爱的阶段。幸运的是，往后该如何选择已经一目了然。她脑海中出现的词语都异常坚决，很少假设。没有任何一个词是临时想出来的。她再也不会跟他们说话了，她对他们只会有厌恶，再也不会原谅。她要惩罚他们；她要终结他们。当她将这些结束的话语和身体的疼痛安顿完毕后，她感到了一种超出自我、超出责任感的奇怪舒适。
如果她现在死了呢？如果她现在自杀了呢？如果她现在离家出走呢？做这些事情都是合适的。就在于她选不选择这种方式而已。她陶醉于一种纯粹的优越感之中，有点像是嗑了药。
就像嗑药的时候你会感到有一个时刻，你处在十足安全、确信、不可触及的状态中，然后在你未做任何准备之时，就在这个时刻的下一秒，你知道这整套保护体系出现了致命的裂痕，尽管它仍然在假装一切无恙，现在，也出现了这个时刻——露丝听见弗洛走上了楼梯——这意味着，此刻她虽然保持着宁静和自由，但是清楚这种状态就要下滑了。
弗洛不敲门就进房间来了，但是她犹豫了一下，似乎要表明这整件事本来也是没法避免的。
她带来了一罐冻乳膏。露丝尽可能地维持着刚才那种思想优势，将脸贴在床上，拒绝回应。
“哎呀，得了，”弗洛不自然地说道，“也没那么糟糕吧，对不？把这涂点在身上就会好多啦。”
她在哄小孩呢。她不知道刚才造成了多大的伤害。她挤了一点冻乳膏出来。露丝能闻到它。
那种亲密的、幼稚的、羞辱的味道。她不会允许这玩意靠近自己。但是为了躲开它，躲开弗洛手中那一大团东西，她得移动。她挪动着身子、抗拒着，丢了尊严，还让弗洛看到这也没什么大不了的。
“好了好了，”弗洛说，“你赢了。我把它留在这里，你想什么时候用就什么时候用。”
之后会出现一个托盘。弗洛会把它放下来，一句话都不说，然后走开。上面有大大的一杯巧克力牛奶，是店里卖的丹麦牌子Vita-Malt。杯子底部有厚厚的条纹。小块的三明治，外形匀称又开胃。罐装的上等三文鱼，色泽很美，还有很多蛋黄酱。还有烘焙的黄油馅饼，放了胡椒薄荷的巧克力饼干。她会转过身去，拒绝看它们，但如果把这些食物放在一边，又会被痛苦地诱惑、勾引和困扰，三文鱼的鲜美，以及对松脆巧克力的渴望，会将她从自杀或者离家出走的思绪当中拽回去，她会伸出手，在其中一块三明治边缘（外面那层小碎皮被弄下来了！）感受点味道，尝尝鲜。然后她会决定去吃一块，这样她就有毅力拒绝其他了。就吃一块他们是不会注意到的。过了一会儿，出于无助的贪婪，她会把它们全部吃掉。她会用手指将杯子底下那层麦芽糖浆给抹干净，尽管她闻到了羞愧。太晚了。
弗洛会过来把托盘收走。她可能会说“你还是有胃口的嘛”，或者说：“你喜欢巧克力牛奶吗？
里面的糖浆够吗？”这得看她觉得自己受了多大惩罚了。在任何一种情况下，她都会失去自己的优势。露丝会明白，她的生活又重新开始了，他们又会坐在一张桌子上一起吃饭，听广播新闻。明天早上，或者今晚就这样。尽管现在看起来还不会。他们会尴尬，但他们的表现远没有你想象的那样尴尬。你会感到一种假模假式的倦意，和好之后的慵懒，一切也将将凑合。
在这之后的一天晚上，他们都在厨房里。那一定是个夏天，或者至少是个温暖的季节，因为她父亲在说店门口长椅上坐着的老男人。
“你知道他们现在正说些什么吗？”他说着，朝着店铺的方向点着头，示意他说的是哪个人。
当然他们都已经不坐在那儿了，他们在黑暗的夜色中回家去了。
“那些老笨蛋啊，”弗洛说，“说什么呢？”
这个时候旁人不在，他们之间产生了一种不能说是假情假意，但是有那么一点夸张的亲密。
然后露丝的爸爸就告诉她们，那些老男人觉得，西边天空那个看着像星星的物体，那日落后第一颗星星，傍晚的星星，其实是密歇根州贝城休伦湖对面那呼啸而过的飞艇。这是美国人的发明，他们将它送上天去与天体对抗。她们对这个观点都表示同意，一致赞成这个想法。
她们相信这艘飞艇是由一万个电灯泡点亮的。她的父亲残酷地否定了她们，他指出她们看见的其实是金星这个行星，而它存在于天空中比电灯泡的发明早多了。她们却从来没有听说过金星。
“真无知。”弗洛说。露丝知道，也知道她父亲知道，弗洛自己也没听说过金星这回事。为了转移他们的注意力，或者甚至为了避免道歉，弗洛把她的茶杯放下，脖子伸展开，将脑袋靠着她一直坐着的椅子，腿搭在另一把椅子上（同时她还能优雅地将裙子塞进她的两腿之间），然后像一块木板一样躺下来，这让布莱恩高兴地喊了起来：“做那个动作！做那个动作！”
弗洛很强健，身体也非常灵活。有时为了玩乐或者有什么突发情况，她会玩点花招。
她的身体翻转了过来，不是靠手臂，而是靠她强壮的腿和脚。于是他们都胜利似的欢呼起来，尽管这情景他们之前都见过。
就在弗洛表演翻身之后，露丝的脑中出现了那飞艇的图案，那是一条细长的透明的气泡，照射出钻石的光芒，在奇妙的美国上空飘浮。
“金星！”她的父亲说，以此鼓励弗洛，“一万个灯泡！”
房间里显出一种释放和轻松，甚至是一种幸福感。
多年以后，很多年以后，在一个周日的清晨，露丝打开了收音机。这是她一个人在多伦多生活的时候。
啊，先生。
在我那个时候，这里完全是不一样的地方啊。是的呢。
那个时候到处都是马。马和马车。周六晚马车在主干道上来回奔跑。
“就像战车比赛一样。”播音员，或者是采访者用流畅的、鼓舞人心的声音说。
我从来没有看过任何一个比赛呢。
“哦，不是，先生，我说的是罗马的战车比赛。那是你这个时代以前的事情了。”
肯定是以前的事情了。我都已经一百零二岁啦。
“真是个美妙的年龄啊，先生。”
没错。
她走到厨房给自己泡咖啡，收音机还是开着。她觉得这一定是个排演的采访，出自某个话剧的场景，她想知道这出戏叫什么名字。那位老人的声音是如此骄傲而挑衅，在温和而自然的伪装之下，采访他的人感到绝望而警惕。你肯定能看到这样的一个人，他拿着麦克风，对面是一个没牙、粗鲁、洋洋得意、年纪有一百多岁的老人，他会在想，自己到底在干些什么呀，接下来会说些什么呀？
“那肯定非常危险的。”
什么很危险？
“那些马车比赛。”
没错。是很危险。会有一些脱缰的马。以前还出过很多事故。人们被飞奔的马拖在碎石路上，脸都被刮出了血。他们死了你又能有多关心呢？嘿。
有一些马跑得飞快。有一些，得放一些芥末在它们尾巴下面才能快。有的让它跑得谈条件。
马就是这样的。有的会不管不顾狠命干活，直到奄奄一息，有的会把肥佬的鸡巴都给你拽出来。呵呵。
毕竟这一定是个真实的访谈。不然的话他们也不会安排这个采访，不会冒这个险。那个老人这么说也没问题。这是本地特色。这么大的年纪了，说了些什么的，倒也都是没什么害处，听起来愉悦的。
那个时候总是发生意外。在磨坊。在铸造厂。没人注意防范。
“那个时候没有什么罢工吧？我觉得。没有什么工会吧？”
现在人人都觉得这事很自然了。我们工作，我们很高兴得到它。工作，很高兴可以得到这工作。
“那个时候没有电视。”
没有电视。没有电台。没有电影。
“你得自己创造自己的娱乐活动。”
我们就是这么干的。
“你会有今天很多年轻人没有的经验。”
经验。
“你能想起的比如有哪些呢？”
我有一次吃了土拨鼠的肉。在一个冬天。你也不会在意的。嘿。
有一阵停顿，似乎是赞赏的停顿，然后主播便开声说，刚才那个采访录音的主角是安大略省的威尔弗雷德•纽特顿先生，他在去年春天，102岁生日两天之后去世。他的人生连接着我们的过去。威尔弗雷德•纽特顿先生是在瓦瓦纳什郡城一家养老院接受的采访。
“帽子”•纽特顿。
那个抽马鞭子的人已过百岁了。他生日的时候会被拍来拍去，被护士大呼小叫，还毫无疑问被一个女记者给亲了。闪光灯朝他冲来。录音机把他的声音吸走。最老的居民。最老的抽马鞭子的人。他的生活连接着我们的过去。
露丝从她的厨房窗口朝冰冷的湖水望去，她想找人倾诉。弗洛喜欢倾听。她想到弗洛说“你想想！”的样子，这话似乎是在说她最糟糕的怀疑都要变成无懈可击的现实。弗洛与纽特顿先生是在同一个地方死去的，但露丝却再也无法听到她的声音。这个采访在录音的时候，她都还在那里，尽管她没有听到过，也并不知道有这件事。露丝将她送往养老院的前几天，弗洛已经开始不说话了。她将自己剥离了出去，大部分时间就坐在她那有围栏的床上，看上去诡计多端、颇有怨气，但是没有骂任何人，尽管她偶尔会用打护士来表达一下自己的感情。
Privilege
Privilege
Rose knew a lot of people who wished they had been born poor, and hadn’t been. So she wouldqueen it over them, offering various scandals and bits of squalor from her childhood. The Boys’
Toilet and the Girls’ Toilet. Old Mr. Burns in his Toilet. Shorty McGill and Franny McGill in theentrance to the Boys’ Toilet. She did not deliberately repeat the toilet locale, and was a bitsurprised at the way it kept cropping up. She knew that those little dark or painted shacks weresupposed to be comical—always were, in country humor—but she saw them instead as scenes ofmarvelous shame and outrage.
The Girls’ Toilet and the Boys’ Toilet each had a protected entry-way, which saved having adoor. Snow blew in anyway through the cracks between the boards and the knotholes that were forspying. Snow piled up on the seat and on the floor. Many people, it seemed, declined to use thehole. In the heaped snow under a glaze of ice, where the snow had melted and frozen again, wereturds copious or lonesome, preserved as if under glass, bright as mustard or grimy as charcoal,with every shading in between. Rose’s stomach turned at the sight; despair got hold of her. Shehalted in the doorway, could not force herself, decided she could wait. Two or three times she weton the way home, running from the school to the store, which was not very far. Flo was disgusted.
“Wee-pee, wee-pee,” she sang out loud, mocking Rose. “Walking home and she had a weepee!”
Flo was also fairly pleased, because she liked to see people brought down to earth, Natureasserting itself; she was the sort of woman who will make public what she finds in the laundrybag. Rose was mortified, but didn’t reveal the problem. Why not? She was probably afraid that Flowould show up at the school with a pail and shovel, cleaning up, and lambasting everybody intothe bargain.
She believed the order of things at school to be unchangeable, the rules there different from anythat Flo could understand, the savagery incalculable. Justice and cleanliness she saw now asinnocent notions out of a primitive period of her life. She was building up the first store of thingsshe could never tell.
She could never tell about Mr. Burns. Right after she started to school, and before she had anyidea what she was going to see—or, indeed, of what there was to see—Rose was running along theschool fence with some other girls, through the red dock and goldenrod, and crouching behind Mr.
Burns’s toilet, which backed on the schoolyard. Someone had reached through the fence andyanked the bottom boards off, so you could see in. Old Mr. Burns, half-blind, paunchy, dirty,spirited, came down the backyard talking to himself, singing, swiping at the tall weeds with hiscane. In the toilet, too, after some moments of strain and silence, his voice was heard.
There is a green hill far away
Outside a city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.
Mr. Burns’s singing was not pious but hectoring, as if he longed, even now, for a fight.
Religion, around here, came out mostly in fights. People were Catholics or fundamentalistProtestants, honor- bound to molest each other. Many of the Protestants had been — or theirfamilies had been—Anglicans, Presbyterians. But they had got too poor to show up at thosechurches, so had veered off to the Salvation Army, the Pentecostals. Others had been totalheathens until they were saved. Some were heathens yet, but Protestant in fights. Flo said theAnglicans and the Presbyterians were snobs and the rest were Holy Rollers, while the Catholicswould put up with any two-facedness or debauching, as long as they got your money for the Pope.
So Rose did not have to go to any church at all.
All the little girls squatted to see, peered in at that part of Mr.
Burns that sagged through the hole. For years Rose thought she had seen testicles but onreflection she believed it was only bum. Something like a cow’s udder, which looked to have aprickly surface, like the piece of tongue before Flo boiled it. She wouldn’t eat that tongue, andafter she told him what it was Brian wouldn’t eat it either, so Flo went into a temper and said theycould live on boiled baloney.
Older girls didn’t get down to look, but stood by, some making puking noises. Other little girlsjumped up and joined them, eager to imitate, but Rose remained squatting, amazed and thoughtful.
She would have liked longer to contemplate, but Mr. Burns removed himself, came out buttoningand singing. Girls sneaked along the fence, to call to him.
“Mr. Burns! Good morning Mr. Burns! Mr. Burns-your-balls!” He came roaring at the fence,chopping with his cane, as if they were chickens.
Younger and older, boys and girls and everybody—except the teacher, of course, who lockedthe door at recess and stayed in the school, like Rose holding off till she got home, riskingaccidents and enduring agonies—everybody gathered to look in the entryway of the Boys’ Toiletwhen the word went round: Shortie McGill is fucking Franny McGill!
Brother and sister.
Relations performing.
That was Flo’s word for it: perform. Back in the country, back on the hill farms she came from,Flo said that people had gone dotty, been known to eat boiled hay, and performed with their too-close relations. Before Rose understood what was meant she used to imagine some makeshiftstage, some rickety old barn stage, where members of a family got up and gave silly songs andrecitations. What a performance! Flo would say in disgust, blowing out smoke, referring not toany single act but to everything along that line, past and present and future, going on anywhere inthe world. People’s diversions, like their pretensions, could not stop astounding her.
Whose idea was this, for Franny and Shortie? Probably some of the big boys dared Shortie, orhe bragged and they challenged him. One thing was certain: the idea could not be Franny’s. Shehad to be caught for this, or trapped. You couldn’t say caught, really, because she wouldn’t run,wouldn’t put that much faith in escaping. But she showed unwillingness, had to be dragged, thenpushed down where they wanted her. Did she know what was coming? She would know at leastthat nothing other people devised for her ever turned out to be pleasant.
Franny McGill had been smashed against the wall, by her father, drunk, when she was a baby.
So Flo said. Another story had Franny falling out of a cutter, drunk, kicked by a horse. At any rate,smashed. Her face had got the worst of it. Her nose was crooked, making every breath she took along, dismal-sounding snuffle. Her teeth were badly bunched together, so that she could not closeher mouth and never could contain her quantities of spit. She was white, bony, shuffling, fearful,like an old woman. Marooned in Grade Two or Three, she could read and write a little, wasseldom called on to do so. She may not have been so stupid as everybody thought, but simplystunned, bewildered, by continual assault. And in spite of everything there was something hopefulabout her. She would follow after anybody who did not immediately attack and insult her; shewould offer bits of crayon, knots of chewed gum pried off seats and desks. It was necessary to fendher off firmly, and scowl warningly whenever she caught your eye.
Go away Franny. Go away or I’ll punch you. I will. I really will. The use Shortie was making ofher, that others made, would continue. She would get pregnant, be taken away, come back and getpregnant again, be taken away, come back, get pregnant, be taken away again. There would be talkof getting her sterilized, getting the Lions Club to pay for it, there would be talk of shutting her up,when she died suddenly of pneumonia, solving the problem. Later on Rose would think of Frannywhen she came across the figure of an idiotic, saintly whore, in a book or a movie. Men who madebooks and movies seemed to have a fondness for this figure, though Rose noticed they wouldclean her up. They cheated, she thought, when they left out the breathing and the spit and theteeth; they were refusing to take into account the aphrodisiac prickles of disgust, in their hurry toreward themselves with the notion of a soothing blankness, undifferentiating welcome.
The welcome Franny gave Shortie was not so saintly, after all. She let out howls, made ripply,phlegmy, by her breathing problems. She kept jerking one leg. Either the shoe had come off, orshe had not been wearing shoes to start with. There was her white leg and bare foot, with muddytoes—looking too normal, too vigorous and self-respecting, to belong to Franny McGill. That wasall of her Rose could see. She was small, and had got shoved to the back of the crowd. Big boyswere around them, hollering encouragement, big girls were hovering behind, giggling. Rose wasinterested but not alarmed. An act performed on Franny had no general significance, no bearing onwhat could happen to anyone else. It was only further abuse.
When Rose told people these things, in later years, they had considerable effect. She had toswear they were true, she was not exaggerating. And they were true, but the effect was off-balance.
Her schooling seemed deplorable. It seemed she must have been miserable, and that was not so.
She was learning. She learned how to manage in the big fights that tore up the school two or threetimes a year. Her inclination was to be neutral, and that was a bad mistake; it could bring bothsides down on you. The thing to do was to ally yourself with people living near you, so you wouldnot be in too much danger walking home. She was never sure what fights were about, and she didnot have a good instinct for fighting, did not really understand the necessity. She would always betaken by surprise by a snowball, a stone, a shingle whacked down from behind. She knew shewould never flourish, never get to any very secure position—if indeed there was such a thing—inthe world of school. But she was not miserable, except in the matter of not being able to go to thetoilet. Learning to survive, no matter with what cravenness and caution, what shocks andforebodings, is not the same as being miserable. It is too interesting.
She learned to fend off Franny. She learned never to go near the school basement which had allthe windows broken and was black, dripping, like a cave; to avoid the dark place under the stepsand the place between the woodpiles; not to attract in any way the attention of the big boys, whoseemed like wild dogs, to her, just as quick and strong, capricious, jubilant in attack.
A mistake she made early and would not have made later on was in telling Flo the truth insteadof some lie when a big boy, one of the Morey boys, tripped and grabbed her as she was comingdown the fire escape, tearing the sleeve of her raincoat out at the armhole. Flo came to the schoolto raise Cain (her stated intention) and heard witnesses swear Rose had torn it on a nail. Theteacher was glum, would not declare herself, indicated Flo’s visit was not welcome. Adults did notcome to the school, in West Hanratty. Mothers were strongly partisan in fights, would hang overtheir gates, and yell; some would even rush out to tug hair and flail shingles, themselves. Theywould abuse the teacher behind her back and send their children off to school with instructions notto take any lip from her. But they would never have behaved as Flo did, never have set foot onschool property, never have carried a complaint to that level. They would never have believed, asFlo seemed to believe (and here Rose saw her for the first time out of her depth, mistaken) thatoffenders would confess, or be handed over, that justice would take any form but a ripping andtearing of a Morey coat, in revenge, a secret mutilation in the cloakroom.
Flo said the teacher did not know her business.
But she did. She knew it very well. She locked the door at recess and let whatever was going tohappen outside, happen. She never tried to make the big boys come up from the basement or infrom the fire escape. She made them chop kindling for the stove and fill the drinking pail;otherwise they were at liberty. They didn’t mind the wood-chopping or pumping, though theyliked to douse people with freezing water, and came near murder with the axe. They were just atschool because there was no place else for them to be. They were old enough for work but therewere no jobs for them. Older girls could get jobs, as maids at least; so they did not stay in school,unless they were planning to write the Entrance, go to high school, maybe someday get jobs instores or banks. Some of them would do that. From places like West Hanratty girls move up moreeasily than boys.
The teacher had the big girls, excepting those in the Entrance Class, kept busy bossing theyounger children, petting and slapping them, correcting spelling, and removing for their own useanything interesting in the way of pencil boxes, new crayons, Cracker Jack jewelry. What went onin the cloakroom, what lunchpail robbing or coat-slashing or pulling down pants there was, theteacher did not consider her affair.
She was not in any way enthusiastic, imaginative, sympathetic. She walked over the bridgeevery day from Hanratty where she had a sick husband. She had come back to teaching in middleage. Probably this was the only job she could get. She had to keep at it, so she kept at it. She neverput paper cut-outs up on the windows or pasted gold stars in the workbooks. She never diddrawings on the board with colored chalk. She had no gold stars, there was no colored chalk. Sheshowed no love of anything she taught, or anybody. She must have wished, if she wished foranything, to be told one day she could go home, never see any of them, never open a spellingbook, again.
But she did teach things. She must have taught something to the people who were going to writethe Entrance, because some of them passed it. She must have made a stab at teaching everybodywho came into that school to read and write and do simple arithmetic. The stair railings wereknocked out, desks were wrenched loose from the floor, the stove smoked and the pipes were heldtogether with wire, there were no library books or maps, and never enough chalk; even theyardstick was dirty and splintered at one end. Fights and sex and pilferage were the importantthings going on. Nevertheless. Facts and tables were presented. In the face of all that disruption,discomfort, impossibility, some thread of ordinary classroom routine was maintained; an offering.
Some people learned to subtract. Some people learned to spell.
She took snuff. She was the only person Rose had ever seen do that. She would sprinkle a bit onthe back of her hand and lift the hand to her face, give a delicate snort. Her head back, her throatexposed, she looked for a moment contemptuous, challenging. Otherwise she was not in the leasteccentric. She was plump, gray, shabby.
Flo said she had probably fogged her brain with the snuff. It was like being a drug addict.
Cigarettes only shot your nerves.
One thing in the school was captivating, lovely. Pictures of birds. Rose didn’t know if theteacher had climbed up and nailed them above the blackboard, too high for easy desecration, ifthey were her first and last hopeful effort, or if they dated from some earlier, easier time, in theschool’s history. Where had they come from, how had they arrived there, when nothing else did,in the way of decoration, illustration?
A red-headed woodpecker; an oriole; a blue jay; a Canada Goose. The colors clear and long-lasting. Backgrounds of pure snow, of blossoming branches, of heady summer sky. In an ordinaryclassroom they would not have seemed so extraordinary. Here they were bright and eloquent, somuch at variance with everything else that what they seemed to represent was not the birdsthemselves, not those skies and snows, but some other world of hardy innocence, bounteousinformation, privileged light-heartedness. No stealing from lunchpails there; no slashing coats; nopulling down pants and probing with painful sticks; no fucking; no Franny.
THERE WERE THREE BIG GIRLS in the Entrance Class. One was named Donna; one wasCora; one was Bernice. Those three were the Entrance Class; there was nobody else. Threequeens. But when you looked closer, a queen and two princesses. That was how Rose thought ofthem. They walked around the schoolyard arm-in-arm, or with their arms around each other’swaists. Cora in the middle. She was the tallest. Donna and Bernice leaning against and leading upto her.
It was Cora Rose loved.
Cora lived with her grandparents. Her grandmother went across the bridge to Hanratty, to docleaning and ironing. Her grandfather was the honey-dumper. That meant he went around cleaningout toilets. That was his job.
Before she had the money saved up to put in a real bathroom Flo had got a chemical toilet to putin a corner of the woodshed. A better arrangement than the outhouse, particularly in thewintertime. Cora’s grandfather disapproved. He said to Flo, “Many has got these chemicals in andmany has wished they never.”
He pronounced the ch in chemicals like the ch in church.
Cora was illegitimate. Her mother worked somewhere, or was married. Perhaps she worked as amaid, and she was able to send castoffs. Cora had plenty of clothes. She came to school in fawn-colored satin, rippling over the hips; in royal-blue velvet with a rose of the same material floppingfrom one shoulder; in dull rose crepe loaded with fringe. These clothes were too old for her (Rosedid not think so), but not too big. She was tall, solid, womanly. Sometimes she did her hair in aroll on top of her head, let it dip over one eye. She and Donna and Bernice often had their hairdone in some grown- up style, their lips richly painted, their cheeks cakily powdered. Cora’sfeatures were heavy. She had an oily forehead, lazy brunette eyelids, the ripe and indolent self-satisfaction that would soon go hard and matronly. But she was splendid at the moment, walkingin the schoolyard with her attendants (it was actually Donna with the pale oval face, the fair frizzyhair, who came closest to being pretty), arms linked, seriously talking. She did not waste anyattention on the boys at school, none of those girls did. They were waiting, perhaps alreadyacquiring, real boyfriends. Some boys called to them from the basement door, wistfully insulting,and Cora turned and yelled at them.
“Too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!”
Rose had no idea what that meant, but she was full of admira tion for the way Cora turned onher hips, for the taunting, cruel, yet lazy and unperturbed sound of her voice, her glossy look.
When she was by herself she would act that out, the whole scene, the boys calling, Rose beingCora. She would turn just as Cora did, on her imaginary tormentors, she would deal out just suchprovocative scorn.
Too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!
Rose walked around the yard behind the store, imagining the fleshy satin rippling over her ownhips, her own hair rolled and dipping, her lips red. She wanted to grow up to be exactly like Cora.
She did not want to wait to grow up. She wanted to be Cora, now.
Cora wore high heels to school. She was not light- footed. When she walked around theschoolroom in her rich dresses you could feel the room tremble, you could hear the windowsrattle. You could smell her, too. Her talcum and cosmetics, her warm dark skin and hair.
THE THREE OF THEM sat at the top of the fire escape, in the first warm weather. They wereputting on nail polish. It smelled like bananas, with a queer chemical edge. Rose had meant to goup the fire escape into the school, as she usually did, avoiding the everyday threat of the mainentrance, but when she saw those girls she turned back, she did not dare expect them to shift over.
Cora called down.
“You can come up if you want to. Come on up!”
She was teasing her, encouraging her, as she would a puppy. “How would you like to get yournails done?”
“Then they’ll all want to,” said the girl named Bernice, who as it turned out owned the nailpolish.
“We won’t do them,” said Cora. “We’ll just do her. What’s your name? Rose? We’ll just doRose. Come on up, honey.”
She made Rose hold out her hand. Rose saw with alarm how mottled it was, how grubby. And itwas cold and trembly. A small, disgusting object. Rose would not have been surprised to see Coradrop it.
“Spread your fingers out. There. Relax. Lookit your hand shake! I’m not going to bite you. AmI? Hold steady like a good girl. You don’t want me to go all crooked, do you?”
She dipped the brush in the bottle. The colour was deep red, like raspberries. Rose loved thesmell. Cora’s own fingers were large, pink, steady, warm.
“Isn’t that pretty? Won’t your nails look pretty?”
She was doing it in the difficult, now-forgotten style of that time, leaving the half-moon and thetops of the nails bare.
“It’s rosy to match your name. That’s a pretty name, Rose. I like it. I like it better than Cora. Ihate Cora. Your fingers are freezing for such a warm day. Aren’t they freezing, compared tomine?”
She was flirting, indulging herself, as girls that age will do. They will try out charm onanything, on dogs or cats or their own faces in the mirror. Rose was too much overcome to enjoyherself, at the moment. She was weak and dazzled, terrified by such high favor.
From that day on, Rose was obsessed. She spent her time trying to walk and look like Cora,repeating every word she had ever heard her say. Trying to be her. There was a charm to Roseabout every gesture Cora made, about the way she stuck a pencil into her thick, coarse hair, theway she groaned sometimes in school, with imperial boredom. The way she licked her finger andcarefully smoothed her eyebrows. Rose licked her own finger, and smoothed her own eyebrows,longing for them to be dark, instead of sunbleached and nearly invisible.
Imitation was not enough. Rose went further. She imagined that she would be sick and Corawould somehow be called to look after her. Night-time cuddles, strokings, rockings. She made upstories of danger and rescue, accidents and gratitude. Sometimes she rescued Cora, sometimesCora rescued Rose. Then all was warmth, indulgence, revelations.
That’s a pretty name.
Come on up, honey.
The opening, the increase, the flow, of love. Sexual love, not sure yet exactly what it needed toconcentrate on. It must be there from the start, like the hard white honey in the pail, waiting tomelt and flow. There was some sharpness lacking, some urgency missing; there was the incidentaldifference in the sex of the person chosen; otherwise it was the same thing, the same thing that hasovertaken Rose since. The high tide; the indelible folly; the flash flood.
When things were flowering—lilacs, apple trees, hawthorns along the road—they had the gameof funerals, organized by the older girls. The person who was supposed to be dead—a girl, onlygirls played this game—lay stretched out at the top of the fire escape. The rest filed up slowly,singing some hymn, and cast down their armloads of flowers. They bent over pretending to sob(some really managed it) and took the last look. That was all there was to it. Everybody wassupposed to get a chance to be dead but it didn’t work out that way. After the big girls had eachhad their turn they couldn’t be bothered playing subordinate roles in the funerals of the youngerones. Those left to carry on soon realized that the game had lost all its importance, its glamor, andthey drifted away, leaving only a stubborn rag-tag to finish things off. Rose was one of those left.
She held out in hopes that Cora might walk up the fire escape in her procession, but Cora ignoredit.
The person playing dead got to choose what the processional hymn was. Cora had chosen “Howbeautiful Heaven must be.” She lay heaped with flowers, lilac, and wore her rose crepe dress. Alsosome beads, a brooch that said her name in green sequins, heavy face powder. Powder wastrembling in the soft hairs at the corners of her mouth. Her eyelashes fluttered. Her expression wasconcentrated, frowning, sternly dead. Sadly singing, laying down lilacs, Rose was close enough tocommit some act of worship, but could not find any. She could only pile up details to be thoughtover later. The color of Cora’s hair. The under-strands shone where it was pulled up over her ears.
A lighter caramel, warmer, than the hair on top. Her arms were bare, dusky, flattened out, theheavy arms of a woman, fringe lying on them. What was her real smell? What was the statement,frowning and complacent, of her plucked eyebrows? Rose would strain over these thingsafterwards, when she was alone, strain to remember them, know them, get them for good. Whatwas the use of that? When she thought of Cora she had the sense of a glowing dark spot, a meltingcenter, a smell and taste of burnt chocolate, that she could never get at.
What can be done about love, when it gets to this point, of such impotence and hopelessnessand crazy concentration? Something will have to whack it.
She made a bad mistake soon. She stole some candy from Flo’s store, to give to Cora. Anidiotic, inadequate thing to do, a childish thing to do, as she knew at the time. The mistake was notjust in the stealing, though that was stupid, and not easy. Flo kept the candy up behind the counter,on a slanted shelf in open boxes, out of reach but not out of reach of children. Rose had to watchher chance, then climb up on the stool and fill a bag with whatever she could grab—gum drops,jelly beans, licorice allsorts, maple buds, chicken bones. She didn’t eat any of it herself. She had toget the bag to school, which she did by carrying it under her skirt, the top of it tucked into theelastic top of her underpants. Her arm was pressed tightly against her waist to hold everything inplace. Flo said, “What’s the matter, have you got a stomachache?” but luckily was too busy toinvestigate.
Rose hid the bag in her desk and waited for an opportunity, which didn’t crop up as expected.
Even if she had bought the candy, obtained it legitimately, the whole thing would have been amistake. It would have been all right at the beginning, but not now. By now she required toomuch, in the way of gratitude, recognition, but was not in the state to accept anything. Her heartpounded, her mouth filled with the strange coppery taste of longing and despair, if Cora evenhappened to walk past her desk with her heavy, important tread, in her cloud of skin-heatedperfumes. No gesture could match what Rose felt, no satisfaction was possible, and she knew thatwhat she was doing was clownish, unlucky.
She could not bring herself to offer it, there was never a right time, so after a few days shedecided to leave the bag in Cora’s desk. Even that was difficult. She had to pretend she hadforgotten something, after four, run back into the school, with the knowledge that she would haveto run out again later, alone, past the big boys at the basement door.
The teacher was there, putting on her hat. Every day for that walk across the bridge she put onher old green hat with a bit of feather stuck in it. Cora’s friend Donna was wiping off the boards.
Rose tried to stuff the bag into Cora’s desk. Something fell out. The teacher didn’t bother, butDonna turned and yelled at her, “Hey, what are you doing in Cora’s desk?”
Rose dropped the bag on the seat and ran out.
The thing she hadn’t foreseen at all was that Cora would come to Flo’s store and turn the candyin. But that was what Cora did. She did not do it to make trouble for Rose but simply to enjoyherself. She enjoyed her importance and respectability and the pleasure of grown-up exchange.
“I don’t know what she wanted to give it to me for,” she said, or Flo said she said. Flo’simitation was off, for once; it did not sound to Rose at all like Cora’s voice. Flo made her soundmincing and whining.
“I-thought-I-better-come-and-tell-you!”
The candy was in no condition for eating, anyway. It was all squeezed and melted together, sothat Flo had to throw it out.
Flo was dumbfounded. She said so. Not at the stealing. She was naturally against stealing butshe seemed to understand that in this case it was the secondary evil, it was less important.
“What were you doing with it? Giving it to her? What were you giving it to her for? Are you inlove with her or something?”
She meant that as an insult and a joke. Rose answered no, because she associated love withmovie endings, kissing, and getting married. Her feelings were at the moment shocked andexposed, and already, though she didn’t know it, starting to wither and curl up at the edges. Flowas a drying blast.
“You are so,” said Flo. “You make me sick.”
It wasn’t future homosexuality Flo was talking about. If she had known about that, or thought ofit, it would have seemed to her even more of a joke, even more outlandish, moreincomprehensible, than the regular carrying- on. It was love she sickened at. It was theenslavement, the self-abasement, the self-deception. That struck her. She saw the danger, all right;she read the flaw. Headlong hopefulness, readiness, need.
“What is so wonderful about her?” asked Flo, and immediately answered herself. “Nothing. Sheis a far cry from good-looking. She is going to turn out a monster of fat. I can see the signs. She isgoing to have a mustache, too. She has one already. Where does she get her clothes from? I guessshe thinks they suit her.”
Rose did not reply to this and Flo said further that Cora had no father, you might wonder whather mother worked at, and who was her grandfather? The honey-dumper!
Flo went back to the subject of Cora, now and then, for years. “There goes your idol!” shewould say, seeing Cora go by the store after she had started to high school.
Rose pretended to have no recollection.
“You know her!” Flo kept it up. “You tried to give her the candy! You stole that candy for her!
Didn’t I have a laugh.”
Rose’s pretense was not altogether a lie. She remembered the facts, but not the feelings. Coraturned into a big dark sulky-looking girl with round shoulders, carrying her high school books.
The books were no help to her, she failed at high school. She wore ordinary blouses and a navyblue skirt, which did make her look fat. Perhaps her personality could not survive the loss of herelegant dresses. She went away, she got a war job. She joined the air force, and appeared home onleave, bunched into their dreadful uniform. She married an airman.
Rose was not much bothered by this loss, this transformation. Life was altogether a series ofsurprising developments, as far as she could learn. She only thought how out-of-date Flo was, asshe went on recalling the story and making Cora sound worse and worse — swarthy, hairy,swaggering, fat. So long after, and so uselessly, Rose saw Flo trying to warn and alter her.
THE SCHOOL CHANGED with the war. It dwindled, lost all its evil energy, its anarchic spirit, itsstyle. The fierce boys went into the Army. West Hanratty changed too. People moved away to takewar jobs and even those who stayed behind were working, being better paid than they had everdreamed. Respectability took hold, in all but the stubbornest cases. Roofs got shingled all overinstead of in patches. Houses were painted, or covered with imitation brick. Refrigerators werebought and bragged about. When Rose thought of West Hanratty during the war years, and duringthe years before, the two times were so separate it was as if an entirely different lighting had beenused, or as if it was all on film and the film had been printed in a different way, so that on the onehand things looked clean-edged and decent and limited and ordinary, and on the other, dark,grainy, jumbled, and disturbing.
The school itself got fixed up. Windows replaced, desks screwed down, dirty words hiddenunder splashes of dull red paint. The Boys’ Toilet and the Girls’ Toilet were knocked down andthe pits filled in. The Government and the School Board saw fit to put flush toilets in the cleaned-up basement.
Everybody was moving in that direction. Mr. Burns died in the summertime and the people whobought his place put in a bathroom. They also put up a high fence of chicken wire, so that nobodyfrom the schoolyard could reach over and get their lilacs. Flo was putting in a bathroom too, shesaid they might as well have the works, it was wartime prosperity.
Cora’s grandfather had to retire, and there never was another honey-dumper.
特权
特权
露丝知道不少人希望自己天生穷困，然而事实并非如此。所以在这点上她还赢了他们一把，她会把自己童年里那些糗事、那点儿邋遢往昔跟他们讲。男厕所和女厕所。老伯恩斯先生在厕所里。肖蒂•麦吉尔和弗兰妮•麦吉尔在男厕所门口。她不是故意要重复厕所这个地方，而且还有点惊讶为什么这事儿老是被提起。她知道，讲讲那些黑乎乎或者上了色的棚屋是件搞笑事——在这乡村的幽默范畴里，向来如此。然而在她看来，这些场景都蕴含着巨大的羞耻和愤怒。
女厕所和男厕所都有一个围栏通道，也就省下了安装门的麻烦。但雪会从木板围栏的缝隙吹进来，上面的小孔还可以用来偷窥。雪堆积在地板上，在每个蹲位上。似乎很多人都不愿意在蹲坑里解决问题。厚厚的积雪下面，是一层冰。那冰，是雪融化了又冻上的，是丰富的粪便之所在。有时它们是孤单的存在，像保存在玻璃之下似的，芥末般明亮，木炭般肮脏，每堆都形态各异。露丝一瞥见，肠胃就有反应，她被绝望紧紧控制住了。她在门口停了一下，没法勉强自己进去，于是决定可以再等等。有两三次，她尿在了回家的途中，从学校跑回店里路程并不远。弗洛觉得恶心。
“尿啦，尿啦，”她大声喊道，嘲笑露丝，“走回家路上，她还尿啦。”
弗洛同时也感到相当愉快，因为她喜欢看到人们向现实低头，让自然行使它的权力。她是那种在洗衣袋里找到什么都会公之于众的人。露丝感到羞辱，但是她没有把遇到的问题说出来。为什么？她大概是担心弗洛会出现在学校，拿着桶和铁锹把厕所铲个干净，然后严肃地把每个人都批评一顿。
她相信学校里形成的秩序是改不了的，而那里的规矩跟弗洛能理解的一切都不一样，野蛮行为数不胜数。她现在将正直和整洁看作无罪，是出于她早年形成的认知。她正在建构第一层认知，然而无论如何都无法将其表达出来。
她永远也没法说伯恩斯先生的事。刚开始上学没多久，那时候她还不知道自己会见识到什么事情——或者说还没什么事情可见识呢，她就跟其他几个女孩沿着学校的围栏小跑，穿过红色站台和秋麒麟草，蹲在校园后面伯恩斯先生的厕所外偷看。有人够到这围栏底部，把下面那木板抽掉了，你可以看到里面的光景。视力模糊、大腹便便、邋里邋遢、精神矍铄的老伯恩斯先生从后院走下来，自言自语、欢声歌唱，用他的拐杖抽打高高的野草。在厕所里也一样，片刻绷紧和沉默过后，他的声音就嘹亮起来。
翠绿的山丘在远方
在那城墙外
死去的君主被迫害
为我们他上了天堂
伯恩斯先生的歌唱并不虔诚，而是凶巴巴的，似乎他即便在这个时候，都渴望着一场战斗。
在这一代，宗教大多终结于乱斗。无论你是天主教徒，还是原教旨清教徒，你都有借着光荣的名号引起骚乱的权利。很多清教徒或者他们的家人都是圣公会信徒和长老会信徒。但是他们太穷，往往没钱去教堂，所以势头一转，就要去参加救世军，参加五旬节派。其他就变成了异教徒，直至有人来拯救他们。有人现在还是异教徒，但是为清教徒战斗。弗洛说圣公会信徒和长老会信徒都是势利鬼，剩下的又是狂热之徒，而天主教徒又总能容忍任何表里不一或玩忽职守的行为，只要他们为教皇搞到足够的钱就行。所以露丝哪个教堂都不用去。
所有的小女孩都蹲在那儿看，往里面偷瞄，瞄到伯恩斯先生的某部分从身体里落入洞中。很多年以来，露丝都觉得自己看到了睾丸，但是回想起来她觉得那只是屁股而已。有点像奶牛的乳房，不过看上去有个多刺的表层，就像弗洛煮的动物舌头煮熟之前。她不吃那舌头，告诉布莱恩之后，布莱恩也不吃，于是弗洛就生气了，说，你们要不吃就自己去喝西北风吧。
大一点的女孩并没有蹲下去看，只是站在一旁，有些人发出了干呕的声音。有些小女孩跳起来加入她们，跃跃欲试想学那声音。但是露丝还是在那蹲着，为此感到惊讶，陷入沉思。她是很想仔细琢磨这事儿的，但是伯恩斯先生移开了身子，系上了纽扣，唱着歌。女孩们偷偷沿着围栏喊他。
“伯恩斯先生！早上好伯恩斯先生！你的蛋蛋伯恩斯先生！”
他对着围栏大吼起来，用拐杖劈打着，仿佛那围栏是小鸡似的。
年长年幼的男孩女孩，所有人，当然除了老师——老师会在放学的时候锁上门，待在学校，就像露丝一样，她回到家才能松一口气，冒着各种意外之险，忍受着各种痛苦——所有人就跑过来往男厕所入口通道看，人们四处讲：“肖蒂•麦吉尔在操弗兰妮•麦吉尔！”
他们是兄妹。
这段关系，被表演出来。
这是弗洛表达的词汇：表演。在乡村里，在那山上她原来的农场里，弗洛说人们都是疯疯癫癫的，据说他们吃水煮干草，表演他们的亲密关系。露丝在搞懂她的意思之前，曾想象那些临时舞台，比如在老谷仓里临时搭建的晃悠悠的舞台上，家庭成员上去唱一首很傻的歌，背诵一首诗。表演得可真好啊！弗洛会厌恶地说，吐出烟圈，她说的不是某一场表演，而是在这世界上发生着的，过去、现在和未来所有这类的表演。人们的娱乐方式，就如同他们的虚伪一样，让她无法不惊讶。
弗兰妮和肖蒂的这个表演，是谁出的主意？很可能有些大男孩问肖蒂敢不敢这么做，或者是他自己吹嘘，然后别人挑唆他。有一件事是确定的：这不是弗兰妮的主意。她是被抓住干这事儿的，她是受困的人。你也不能说抓住，真的，因为她没有逃，也没觉得能有多大希望逃。但是她表现出了不情愿，别人得拽住她，然后把她推倒在他们想要解决的地方。她知道要发生什么事情吗？她至少会知道，别人为她设计的那些事情，没有一件会让她感到愉悦。
弗兰妮•麦吉尔还是个婴儿的时候，曾经被她的爸爸，她喝醉了的爸爸，顶在墙上“毁了一通”。弗洛是这么说的。另一个故事，就是弗兰妮曾经从割草机上掉下来，喝醉了，被马给踢了。反正，就是毁了。她的脸最糟糕。她的鼻子整个歪了，所以每次呼吸都会发出一阵长长的、阴沉的鼻息声。她的牙齿狠狠地撞到了一起，所以她闭不上嘴巴，口水也含不住。她肤色苍白，瘦骨嶙峋，一瘸一拐，胆战心惊，就像个老女人似的。就这样自生自灭到了二年级或者三年级，她能读点写点，但是很少有人叫她这么做。她可能并不像大家所想的那么愚蠢，只是因为长期遭遇攻击，变得愣愣的，很茫然。然而，她还抱着些希望。那些没有马上打她或者侮辱她的人，她会跟着他们，给他们一些蜡笔头和从椅子、凳子上刮下来的口香糖。见到她马上躲开是必要的，她看到你眼睛的时候，你要露出警告的怒容。
走开弗兰妮，走开，不然我就打你了。我会的。我真的会。
肖蒂对她的利用，别人对她的利用，会继续的。她会怀孕，被带走，回来，再怀孕，被带走，回来，怀孕，再次被带走。有人说让她绝育吧，让狮子会付钱好了，有人说让她闭嘴，突然得个肺炎，一劳永逸解决掉。后来，当露丝在书上或者电影里看到一个白痴而无害的妓女形象时，她就想起了弗兰妮。写书和拍电影的男人们喜欢在作品里塑造一个这样的角色，但露丝注意到他们最终会将她清除出局。她觉得这是他们的欺骗，他们没提那呼吸、那口水、那牙齿；他们拒绝考虑那反胃春药带来的刺痛感，他们只是急着收获高潮，带着空白的平静，冷淡的欢迎。
然而弗兰妮对肖蒂表示的欢迎并没有那么神圣。她会吼叫，由于她的呼吸问题，她的声音会抖动，会有痰声。她一直拖着一条腿。要么是鞋子掉了，要么一开始就没穿鞋子。那是她白皙的大腿，光着脚，脚趾上沾着泥——看着太正常、太饱满、太体面了，都不像是弗兰妮•麦吉尔的腿。那是露丝所有能看到的景象。她长得小，被冲到了人群后面去。大一点的男生围着他们，高喊助威，大一点的女生在后面晃荡，发出吃吃的笑声。露丝饶有兴致，但感觉这并不构成威胁。弗兰妮的表演并不带有普遍含义，不代表这能对任何人造成什么后果。她只能继续被欺负。
多年以后，当露丝跟别人说这些事情的时候，他们的反应就大了。她得发誓这的确发生过，她不是在夸张。这的确是真的，但影响出乎意料。她的学校教育听上去惨得可以。听上去她肯定深感痛苦，但情况并非如此。她在学习。她学习在那些一年会发生两三次的大型斗殴之下应该怎么做。她是中立的，这是个严重的错误，这会让双方都不待见你。你要做的，就是跟离你最近的人结盟，这样你走回家的时候就不会遭遇太多危险。她从来不知道打那些架到底是为了什么，她对打架也没有很好的直觉，不太懂到底有什么必要。她总是对后面掉落的一个雪球、一块石头和一块木瓦感到惊讶。她觉得在学校这个世界里，她永远也不会成长，永远也不会到达一个安全的位置——如果的确有这么个位置的话。但是她并不感到痛苦，除了对她不能上厕所这件事情。学习如何生存，不管是以何种懦弱和谨慎、何种惊诧和预感来学习生存，那跟痛苦也是不一样的。这太有趣了。
她学会了如何避开弗兰妮。她学会了永远不要靠近学校地下室，那里所有的窗户都是破的、黑的，滴着油，就跟山洞似的；还学会了避开楼梯下的那些漆黑之处和木柴堆之间的地方；不要去勾起大男孩们的注意，他们对她来说就像野狗一样，打起架来一样敏捷、强壮、突发奇想、精力旺盛。
早些时候，她犯过的一个错误就是告诉弗洛一件事情的真相，而没有扯谎。有一次露丝从安全梯走下来，有个大男孩，一个莫雷来的男孩，绊了她一脚，抓住了她，从袖口那儿把她的雨衣袖子给撕开了。弗洛到学校去大闹了一番（她就是这么打算的），然后听见有人作证说是露丝自己把衣服挂在钉子上扯开的。老师情绪阴沉，不表态，但暗示弗洛来这趟是不受欢迎的。在西汉拉提，大人们都不来学校。妈妈们都是各派别的争斗者，她们会在大门前示威、喊叫；有的甚至还会冲出去抓头发、挥砖块，亲自上阵。她们会在背后偷袭老师，然后送孩子上学，叫他们一句话也别听老师的。但是她们从来不会像弗洛一样，踏入学校的领地，如此抱怨。她们也从来不会像弗洛那样相信犯错的人会承认错误、受到处罚，正义总会得到伸张，反正不是把一件莫雷大衣撕破那样的大仇，不是在衣帽间悄悄疗伤——在这点上，露丝第一次觉得自己犯了个错误，不该这么做。
弗洛说老师自己都不知道自己在干什么。
但是老师知道。她非常清楚。放学就把门锁上，让外面发生的事情自己发生去。她从来不会让大男孩们从地下室上来，或者从安全梯下来。她让他们砍柴、热炉子，把水倒进饮水桶；其他时候他们就自由了。他们不介意砍柴或者倒水，尽管他们喜欢把人按到冰冷的水里，拿着斧头差点砍人。他们待在学校里，因为没其他地方可去。他们已经到了要去工作的年龄，却没有他们能干的工作。大一点的女孩能找到工作，至少是当个女佣，所以她们不会留在学校里，除非参加升学考试，上升学班，然后上高中或在店里或银行找工作。有些人会这样。
西汉拉提这个地方的女孩子上升要比男孩子容易。
大一点的女孩，除了那些在升学班继续上课的之外，都被这位老师叫去忙了。她们忙着教育那些小孩子，哄他们、扇他们、纠正拼写，他们原本用铅笔盒、新蜡笔、杰克焦糖饼干附赠的珠宝玩些小把戏，如今也被大女孩们禁止掉了。在衣帽间发生的事，饭盒被偷走、外套被撕破，或者当众脱别人裤子这些事情，老师不觉得是自己该管的。
她完全不是个热情、有想象力和同情心的人。她每天从汉拉提过桥而来，那边有她生病的丈夫。她人到中年，返校教书。这大概是她能找到的唯一工作了。她得坚持下去，所以也就坚持了下去。她从来不会往窗户上贴贴纸，或者在练习本上贴金色的星星。她从来不会用彩色粉笔在黑板上画画。她没有金色的星星，也没有彩色粉笔。她并不爱她所教的东西，也不爱她所教的人。她一定希望——如果她也会希望点什么的话——有一天有人告诉她，她可以回家了，再也不用看见他们任何一个人，不用打开任何一本书，再也不用了。
但是她的确是教了些东西的。她一定教了升学班同学一些知识，因为有些人通过了考试。她一定是尝试教了每个来学校的人如何读书、写作、做简单的算术。楼梯的围栏被敲倒了，桌子从地上拧开了，冒烟的炉子和管子跟电线缠绕在一起，那里没有图书馆书籍，没有地图，没有足够的粉笔，就连戒尺都是脏的，一头裂开了。打架、性爱、偷窃是在这里发生的重要的事。无论如何。桌子和事实都摆了出来。尽管乱作一团，尽管有诸多不适，尽管无可救药，普通课堂的规矩仍然维持着；这是她上的贡。有些人学会了如何拼写。
她吸鼻烟。她是露丝见过的唯一吸鼻烟的人。她会在手背上洒一点点，将手背凑到脸前，优雅一吸。她的头靠后，露出喉咙来，她在寻找一个可以表示出轻蔑和挑战的瞬间。不然的话她其实毫无特别之处，她是一个身材发胖、头发灰白、衣衫破旧的人。
弗洛说她大概是被鼻烟的烟呛了脑子了。就像上了毒瘾一样。烟只会麻木你的神经。
学校里有一件事情是可爱而迷人的。鸟儿的照片。露丝不知道老师是不是亲自爬上去把它们钉在了上面，总之这高度让人们难以亵渎，也不知道这照片是不是她第一个和最后一个努力的希望，不知道是不是早就在那里，在学校没那么混乱的时候。它们是从哪儿来的，为什么会在这里？这周围可没有任何形式的装饰和图案啊。
红色脑袋的啄木鸟，黄鹂，蓝雀，加拿大雁。它们的色泽清雅而长久。背景是皑皑白雪，枝条上花儿绽放，夏日天空甚是醉人。在一个平常的教室里，它们看上去并不出奇。在这儿，它们明亮而有力，这照片与周围的一切是如此的不同，看上去，它们代表的不是鸟儿本身，不是蓝天和白雪，而是另一个世界，这个世界有坚守的纯洁，有充裕的信息，有它独特的无忧无虑。那里没有偷饭盒、撕外套、脱裤子，也不会有人用棍子把你戳得很痛，没有性爱，没有弗兰妮。
升学班有三个大女孩。一个叫多娜，一个叫科拉，一个叫柏妮丝。她们三个在升学班；没别人了。三个女王。但是如果你细看，就会发现这是一个女王和两个公主。露丝对她们是这么看的。她们在校园里手挽着手走着，或者手臂绕着另一个人的腰上。科拉在中间。她是最高的那个。多娜和柏妮丝靠在她的身上。
露丝爱的是科拉。
科拉跟她的祖父母住在一起。她的祖母过桥去汉拉提给人洗熨衣服。她的祖父是一个“掏蜜的”。意思是他是个到处扫厕所的。这是他的工作。
在省下钱搭建一个真正的卫生间之前，弗洛已经在柴房角落里放了一个化学除臭剂了。比起在外面搭个厕所，这是个更好的安排，特别在冬天。科拉的祖父不同意。他对弗洛说：“不少人买了这些化学用品，都后悔了，希望自己没买。”
他在化学用品（chemicals）这个词里“ch”的发音跟教堂（church）里“ch”的发音一样。
科拉是私生女。她的妈妈在其他地方工作，或者已经结婚了。可能是去给别人当用人，这样才得以给她寄旧衣服。科拉有很多衣服。她穿着一件黄褐色缎子裙去上学，衣服在臀部泛起波纹；还有宝蓝色的天鹅绒，同样材质的玫瑰从肩上垂落下来；玫瑰上的绉纱是流苏。这些衣服对她来说太显老了（但是露丝不这么看），但是并不大。她长得很高，很结实，也很有女人味。有时候她把头发卷起来立在头上，让发尾悬落于一只眼睛旁。她、多娜和柏妮丝总是把头发梳得很成人，嘴唇涂着厚厚的唇膏，脸颊擦着厚厚的粉。科拉给人的感觉很“重”。
她的前额油滑，深色的眼皮显出慵懒，有一种成熟而舒适的自我满足感，很快将会变成顽固和安逸。但是她此时的状态极佳，走在校园中，随从在旁（随从就是长着苍白椭圆脸蛋、满头卷发的多娜，最接近于漂亮的那一个），手挽着手，聊着正经事。她并没有在学校里的男生身上浪费什么时间，这些女孩都不会这样做。她们在等待，也许早就得到了真正的男朋友。一些男孩从地下室的门口冲她们喊，满心想着羞羞她们，科拉就转过身去，朝他们吼。
睡摇篮太老，睡床上你还嫩！
露丝不知道这句话是什么意思，但是她对科拉心生羡慕，羡慕她能够开口发出这般嘲弄且残忍、漫不经心又满不在乎的声音，羡慕她那神采奕奕的模样。她一个人的时候会把这一幕演出来，假装男孩子在叫唤，露丝扮演科拉。她会像科拉一样转过身去，想象一副要治他们的样子，她会发出这般挑衅的嘲讽。
睡摇篮太老，睡床上你还嫩！
露丝在店铺后面的院子里走着，想象丰盈的绸缎波纹落在自己的臀部，她的头发卷起又垂落，嘴唇红润。她希望自己长大后就是科拉那个样子。她不想等着长大，她就想变成科拉，就现在。
科拉穿着高跟鞋去上学。她走路并不轻快。当她穿着厚重的裙子走到教室旁边的时候，你能感觉到整个屋子都在晃动，你能听到窗户噼啪作响。你还能闻到她的味道。她浓妆的味道，她暖暖的深色肌肤和头发。
在天气转暖的第一天，她们三个人坐在安全梯上面。她们在涂指甲油。闻着像香蕉，混着点奇怪的化学味道。露丝本来想从安全梯上去，进入学校的，她平常也这么做，为的是避免走正常大门时天天都能遇到的威胁。但是当她看到那些女孩都坐在那儿的时候，她就不敢再往前了，转身走开。
科拉叫住她。
“你想来你就来呀。过来呀！”
她在逗弄她，在鼓动她，就像对待一只宠物一样。
“你想涂什么样的指甲油呀？”
“这么说她们就都想涂了。”那个叫柏妮丝的女孩说，她就是那个拥有指甲油的人。
“我们不给她们涂，”科拉说，“我们就给她涂。你叫什么名字？露丝？我们就给露丝涂。过来吧，亲爱的。”
她让露丝伸出手。露丝警惕地看着，那指甲油真是色彩斑驳又邋里邋遢的。涂上去感觉凉飕飕的。小巧又肉麻的东西。露丝觉得科拉很有可能把这玩意儿碰掉在地上。
“伸出你的手指。对啦。放松。看看你的手都在抖呢！我又不会咬你。对吧？像个好女孩一样，稳稳地把手伸好。你不想让我涂得歪歪扭扭吧？”
她在瓶子里蘸了蘸。那颜色是深红，像浆果一样。露丝喜欢那味道。科拉的手指粗大、红润、稳重而温暖。
“好看吗？你的指甲是不是很好看？”
她给她做的是那种难度很高、现在已经不流行的风格，在月牙和指甲的泛白处留了白。
“跟你的名字很像，润润的。这名字很好听，露丝。我喜欢。比科拉这名字喜欢。我讨厌‘科拉’。天气挺暖和的，你手指好靓啊。跟我的比起来，是不是挺凉的？”
她在逗弄，她沉湎于这种调戏，那个年龄的女孩都喜欢这样。她们会在任何事物上，在小狗小猫身上，在镜中对着自己的脸，施展这种魔力。此时露丝也已经被这魔咒制服，自我欣赏起来。她已被这眷顾弄得柔弱无力、目眩神迷。
从那天开始，这事就在露丝心间挥之不去了。她花时间去学科拉怎么走路，怎么才能看着像她，听见她说过的话，都会去重复。她试着成为科拉。科拉做的每一个动作，她将铅笔插进那厚厚的、粗糙的头发里，在学校的时候，她发出那种帝王般闲适的叹气声，这些对露丝来说都颇具魅力。还有她舔舔手指，仔细润润眉毛的样子。露丝也舔舔手指，润润眉毛，希望能浓郁乌黑一点，不要像漂白过的一样，看都看不见。
模仿还不够。露丝还要做更多。她想象自己病了，有人叫科拉来照看她。临睡前抱一抱、摸一摸和摇一摇。她自己编造关于遇到陷阱、实施营救的故事，突发意外，最后感激涕零。有时候是她救了科拉，有的时候是科拉救了她。然后一切都温暖如初，大家陶醉着，互相敞开心扉。
这名字很好听。
过来吧，亲爱的。
关于爱，这样的开场，这样的进展，这样的流转。这是关于性的爱，但是还不知道它的重点应该放在哪儿。肯定是在开始那个部分，就像桶里硬硬的白色蜜糖，正待融化和流淌。但其中缺乏了一些清晰的、紧要的交代，因为这和爱不同性别的人，是有微妙差别的；如果不是这样的话，那就是同一回事了，征服露丝的都是同一回事。它像潮水涌来，让人失去知觉，直至山洪暴发。
鲜花盛开时——路边有丁香花、苹果树和山楂树，大一点的女孩们就开始玩起葬礼的游戏。
扮演死亡的女孩，对，只有女孩玩这个游戏，她就躺在安全梯上面，身体展开着。其他人慢慢地围过来，唱着赞美诗，把手臂上的花撒下去。她们弯下身，假装哭泣（有些人还真哭了），瞥去最后一眼。这就是整个仪式了。本来说，每个人都有一次死亡机会的，但其实不是这样。大女孩们轮着演完死者之后，就没心思给小一点的女孩们配戏了。那些留下来玩的人很快就意识到，这个游戏已经失去了它的重要性，它原本的魅力，所以也就转身离开，只有那些没什么地位的顽固分子在那坚持搞完。露丝就是其中一个。她希望科拉会走上安全梯，排进她周围的队伍里，但是科拉把她忽略了。
扮演死者的人可以选择葬礼赞美诗是什么。科拉选择的是《天堂美丽如是》。她躺在花丛之中，大多是丁香花，穿着玫瑰绉纱裙。还有些珠串，一枚胸针上的绿色亮片写着她的名字，粉涂得厚厚的。嘴角的粉末在柔软的发梢上颤抖。睫毛迎风摆动。她凝神、阴沉而肃穆，撒手人寰，一去不返。悲伤的曲子唱了起来，丁香花放下，露丝似乎马上就能想起一种表示敬畏的动作了，但是最终一无所获。她只能记住一些细节，待稍后再去回想。科拉头发的颜色。那底下的发丝拉到她耳朵旁闪闪发亮。那是浅浅的焦糖色，比头发的颜色要显得暖和。
她颜色发深的手臂没有遮盖，平伸出去，流苏就盖在这个女人的结实手臂上。她真正的气味是什么样的呢？她修过的眉毛下，眉头稍皱却怡然自得，这又表示着什么呢？事后露丝独自一人时，她会对这些仔细思考、回想、认识，并解释出好的意义来。这又有什么作用呢？当她想起科拉的时候，她的脑中就浮现出一个周围发亮的黑点，那中心正在融化，散发出烤焦巧克力的味道，那是她永远无法领悟的深意。
当爱情发展到这个地步时，又当如何是好呢？她的爱已经无力抵御、不可救药、走火入魔了。得有当头一棒才好。
她很快就犯了个错误。她从弗洛的店里偷了些糖果，要给科拉。这件事情没过大脑，行为失当，很小孩子气，偷糖果的时候她就知道。不仅仅是错在偷东西，尽管偷也是件蠢事，而且没那么容易。弗洛把糖果藏在柜台后面，那个斜斜的架子上，盒子是打开的，小孩子虽然够不着，但是能看见。露丝得看准时机，爬上椅子，抓着什么是什么，往袋子里填——橡皮糖、软心豆、甘草什锦糖、枫芽糖、鸡骨糖。她自己一颗都没吃。她得把袋子拿去学校，所以就藏在自己的裙子下面，袋子口塞进内裤的松紧带里。她手臂按住，手腕又紧紧按住手臂，保证里面稳稳当当。弗洛说：“你怎么了？肚子疼吗？”不过幸运的是她太忙了，没有时间做调查。
露丝把袋子藏在桌子下，等待一个机会，不过这机会并没有如期而至。
即便这糖果是正正当当拿来的，整件事情也是个错误。刚开始她们的关系没问题，现在不是了。现在她要求太多，她需要感激，需要得到承认，却培养不出接纳这一切的状态。如果科拉竟然走过她桌前，散发出发自肌肤的热乎乎的香水味，那么她的心会跳得怦怦响，她的嘴巴会尝到渴望和绝望的黄铜味。没有任何举动能描述露丝的感受，也没有任何举动能让她得到满足，她知道她做的事情很出丑、很不幸。
她没办法把糖果拿给她，没有一个好的时机，所以几天之后，她决定把那个袋子留在科拉的桌子里。连这都是件难事。时间在四点之后。她得假装她落了些什么东西，所以就跑回学校，她知道她这么回来，待会儿独自出去的时候，会遇到那些在地下室门口的男孩。
老师在那儿，她正在戴帽子。每天走过桥的时候，她都戴上那顶旧的绿色帽子，几根羽毛插于其上。科拉的朋友多娜在擦黑板。露丝想把袋子放进科拉的桌子里。有些东西掉了出来。
老师不管，但是多娜转过身来冲她喊：“嘿，你在科拉的桌子里搞什么呀？”
露丝把袋子掉在椅子上，跑了出去。
露丝完全没有想到的是，科拉会到弗洛的店里，把糖果交上去。但是科拉的确这么做了。她这么做不是为了给露丝添麻烦，就是自我享受而已。她享受她的重要性，享受被尊重，享受成人交易的愉悦。
“我不知道她送我这个是想要什么。”她说。弗洛说她说。弗洛这次模仿得完全不像，对露丝来说这听着根本就不是科拉的声音。弗洛把她的声音模仿得做作而幽怨。
我想我最好来告诉你一声！
反正糖果也不太能吃了。全都受了挤压，融在了一块，所以弗洛扔掉了。
弗洛目瞪口呆。她这么说的。不是因为偷东西。她自然是反对偷东西的，但是在这件事情上，她认为这只是二等罪恶，不是最重要的。
“你拿这个干吗？你给她吗？你给她干吗呀？你爱上她了还是怎么着？”
她这么说，是侮辱，也当是讲个笑话。露丝说不是，因为她理解的爱是跟电影结局、跟亲吻、跟结婚联系起来的。此刻她感觉震惊，感觉被暴露，在她尚未察觉的情况下，她已经开始熄灭，开始埋藏了。弗洛咄咄逼人，像要吸干她的勇气。
“你就是这样，”弗洛说，“你让我感到恶心。”
弗洛说的不是将来的同性恋生活。如果她知道，或者想过这事，对她来说这似乎更像一个笑话，比日常生活中发生的这件事情更加怪诞，更加难以理解。她厌恶的是这次的爱本身。是甘愿被征服，是自我降格、自我欺骗。是这些刺激了她。她看到了危险，没错；她看到了缺陷。这种轻浮的希望，这种满心乐意，这种需求。
“她有什么好的？”弗洛问，然后马上自己回答说，“没有。她离好看还差得远着呢。她以后会变成一个肥胖的怪兽。我能看到这迹象。她还会长胡子。她其实已经有胡子了。她的衣服是从哪儿来的？我猜她觉得这衣服很合身吧。”
露丝没有回应，弗洛又继续说，科拉没有爸爸，你可能想知道她妈妈是在哪儿工作的，她的祖父又是谁？那个“掏蜜的”！
弗洛继续讲科拉的话题，反反复复讲了好几年。
“你的偶像在那儿呢！”在露丝上高中之后，如果看见科拉走过她的店铺，她会这么说。
露丝假装想不起来什么。
“你知道她的！”弗洛又接着说，“你还想给她糖果呢！你还为她偷了糖果呢！可把我给笑死了。”
露丝的假装并不全是谎言。她记得那些事情，但已经忘却了感觉。科拉已经变成个头高大、皮肤黝黑、满脸愠怒的女孩，她肩膀圆圆的，背着她的高中课本。那课本对她来说没什么用，她没有通过高中的课业。她穿着普通的上衣和海军蓝的裙子，看起来的确胖。也许那优雅的裙子不见了，她的性格也就显露无遗了。她离开家，找了一份战时的工作。她加入了空军，放假的时候回了家，身体捆在那可怕的制服里。她嫁给了一名海军士兵。
面对这种失去，这种转变，露丝并没有心烦意乱。就她的经验而言，生活其实就是由一系列出乎意料的变化连成的。她只是在想弗洛的想法有多过时，弗洛一直在回想着那件事情，一直想把科拉说得越来越糟，说她黑，说她多毛，说她大摇大摆，说她胖。
学校因为战争的关系也在改变着。它没那么复杂了，失去了那股恶意的力量，那种无政府主义的精神，失去了它的风格。凶猛的男孩们参了军。西汉拉提也变了，人们搬出去，参与战时的工作，即便是那些留下来的人们也在工作，领着他们做梦也想不到的薪水。除非是根深蒂固的观念所致，人们一般也能在各自的生活中获得尊重。房顶都铺上了木瓦，不再有修修补补的痕迹。房子也都被上了色，或者由仿砖装饰表面。人们买了冰箱，或者吹嘘冰箱有多好。当露丝想起西汉拉提的时候，战争前那几年跟战争时那几年是完全不一样的，就像打了两种不同的灯光一样，或者仿佛它们在电影里，但电影的画质都不一样：一种干净、体面、规矩又普通；另一种，黑暗、聒噪、混乱，令人不安。
学校也被整修了。换了新的窗户，桌子螺丝拧紧了，墙上的脏话隐藏在泼上去暗红色的油漆下。男厕所和女厕所被推倒了，坑都填上了。政府和学校董事会局觉得，在整洁如新的地下室建造抽水马桶厕所是比较合适的选择。
每个人都朝着这个方向生活。伯恩斯先生在夏日去世，买了他的房子的人建了一个卫生间。
他们还在四周立起了高高的铁丝网，这样学校里来的人就不会伸手进去摘他们的丁香花了。
弗洛这个时候也搭建了一个卫生间。她说她也应该干点活。这是战时的繁荣景象。
科拉的祖父要退休了，再也没有出现过另一个“掏蜜的”。
Half a Grapefruit
Half a Grapefruit
Rose wrote the Entrance, she went across the bridge, she went to high school.
There were four large clean windows along the wall. There were new fluorescent lights. Theclass was Health and Guidance, a new idea. Boys and girls mixed until after Christmas, when theygot on to Family Life. The teacher was young and optimistic. She wore a dashing red suit thatflared out over the hips. She went up and down, up and down the rows, making everybody saywhat they had for breakfast, to see if they were keeping Canada’s Food Rules.
Differences soon became evident, between town and country. “Fried potatoes.”
“Bread and corn syrup.”
“Tea and porridge.”
“Tea and bread.”
“Tea and fried eggs and cottage roll.”
“Raisin pie.”
There was some laughing, the teacher making ineffectual scolding faces. She was getting to thetown side of the room. A rough sort of segregation was maintained, voluntarily, in the classroom.
Over here people claimed to have eaten toast and marmalade, bacon and eggs, Corn Flakes, evenwaffles and syrup. Orange juice, said a few.
Rose had stuck herself on to the back of a town row. West Hanratty was not represented, exceptby her. She was wanting badly to align herself with towners, against her place of origin, to attachherself to those waffle-eating coffee-drinking aloof and knowledgeable possessors of breakfastnooks.
“Half a grapefruit,” she said boldly. Nobody else had thought of it.
As a matter of fact Flo would have thought eating grapefruit for breakfast as bad as drinkingchampagne. They didn’t even sell them in the store. They didn’t go in much for fresh fruit. A fewspotty bananas, small unpromising oranges. Flo believed, as many country people did, thatanything not well-cooked was bad for the stomach. For breakfast they too had tea and porridge.
Puffed Rice in the summertime. The first morning the Puffed Rice, light as pollen, came spillinginto the bowl, was as festive, as encouraging a time as the first day walking on the hard roadwithout rubbers or the first day the door could be left open in the lovely, brief time between frostand flies.
Rose was pleased with herself for thinking of the grapefruit and with the way she had said it, inso bold, yet natural, a voice. Her voice could go dry altogether in school, her heart could roll itselfup into a thumping ball and lodge in her throat, sweat could plaster her blouse to her arms, in spiteof Mum. Her nerves were calamitous.
She was walking home across the bridge a few days later, and she heard someone calling. Nother name but she knew it was meant for her, so she softened her steps on the boards, and listened.
The voices were underneath her, it seemed, though she could look down through the cracks andsee nothing but fast-running water. Somebody must be hidden down by the pilings. The voiceswere wistful, so delicately disguised she could not tell if they were boys’ or girls’.
“Half-a-grapefruit!”
She would hear that called, now and again, for years, called out from an alley or a dark window.
She would never let on she heard, but would soon have to touch her face, wipe the moisture awayfrom her upper lip. We sweat for our pretensions.
It could have been worse. Disgrace was the easiest thing to come by. High school life washazardous, in that harsh clean light, and nothing was ever forgotten. Rose could have been the girlwho lost the Kotex. That was probably a country girl, carrying the Kotex in her pocket or in theback of her notebook, for use later in the day. Anybody who lived at a distance might have donethat. Rose herself had done it. There was a Kotex dispenser in the girls’ washroom but it wasalways empty, would swallow your dimes but disgorge nothing in return. There was the famouspact made by two country girls to seek out the janitor at lunchtime, ask him to fill it. No use.
“Which one of you is the one that needs it?” he said. They fled. They said his room under thestairs had an old grimy couch in it, and a cat’s skeleton. They swore to it.
That Kotex must have fallen on the floor, maybe in the cloakroom, then been picked up andsmuggled somehow into the trophy case in the main hall. There it came to public notice. Foldingand carrying had spoiled its fresh look, rubbed its surface, so that it was possible to imagine it hadbeen warmed against the body. A great scandal. In morning assembly, the Principal madereference to a disgusting object. He vowed to discover, expose, flog and expel, the culprit who hadput it on view. Every girl in the school was denying knowledge of it. Theories abounded. Rosewas afraid that she might be a leading candidate for ownership, so was relieved whenresponsibility was fixed on a big sullen country girl named Muriel Mason, who wore slub rayonhousedresses to school, and had B.O.
“You got the rag on today, Muriel?” boys would say to her now, would call after her.
“If I was Muriel Mason I would want to kill myself,” Rose heard a senior girl say to another onthe stairs. “I would kill myself.” She spoke not pityingly but impatiently.
Every day when Rose got home she would tell Flo about what went on in school. Flo enjoyedthe episode of the Kotex, would ask about fresh developments. Half-a-grapefruit she never got tohear about. Rose would not have told her anything in which she did not play a superior, anonlooker’s part. Pitfalls were for others, Flo and Rose agreed. The change in Rose, once she leftthe scene, crossed the bridge, changed herself into chronicler, was remarkable. No nerves anymore. A loud skeptical voice, some hip-swinging in a red and yellow plaid skirt, more than a hintof swaggering.
Flo and Rose had switched roles. Now Rose was the one bringing stories home, Flo was the onewho knew the names of the characters and was waiting to hear.
Horse Nicholson, Del Fairbridge, Runt Chesterton. Florence Dodie, Shirley Pickering, RubyCarruthers. Flo waited daily for news of them. She called them Jokers.
“Well, what did those jokers get up to today?”
They would sit in the kitchen, the door wide open to the store in case any customers came in,and to the stairs in case her father called. He was in bed. Flo made coffee or she told Rose to get acouple of Cokes out of the cooler.
This is the sort of story Rose brought home:
Ruby Carruthers was a slutty sort of girl, a red-head with a bad squint. (One of the greatdifferences between then and now, at least in the country, and places like West Hanratty, was thatsquints and walleyes were let alone, teeth overlapped or protruded any way they liked.) RubyCarruthers worked for Bryants the hardware people; she did housework for her board and stayedin the house when they went away, as they often did, to the horse races or the hockey games or toFlorida. One time when she was there alone three boys went over to see her. Del Fairbridge, HorseNicholson, Runt Chesterton.
“To see what they could get,” Flo put in. She looked at the ceiling and told Rose to keep hervoice down. Her father would not tolerate this sort of story.
Del Fairbridge was a good-looking boy, conceited, and not very clever. He said he would gointo the house and persuade Ruby with no trouble at all, and if he could get her to do it with allthree of them, he would. What he did not know was that Horse Nicholson had already arrangedwith Ruby to meet him under the veranda.
“Spiders in there, likely,” said Flo. “I guess they don’t care.” While Del was wandering aroundthe dark house looking for her, Ruby was under the veranda with Horse, and Runt who was in onthe whole plan was sitting on the veranda steps keeping watch, no doubt listening attentively to thebumping and the breathing.
Presently Horse came out and said he was going into the house to find Del, not to enlighten himbut to see how the joke was working, this being the most important part of the proceedings, as faras Horse was concerned. He found Del eating marshmallows in the pantry and saying RubyCarruthers wasn’t fit to piss on, he could do better any day, and he was going home.
Meanwhile Runt had crawled under the veranda and got to work on Ruby.
“Jesus Murphy!” said Flo.
Then Horse came out and Runt and Ruby could hear him over head, walking on the veranda.
Said Ruby, who is that? And Runt said, oh, that’s only Horse Nicholson. Then who the hell areyou? said Ruby.
Jesus Murphy!
Rose did not bother with the rest of the story, which was that Ruby got into a bad mood, sat onthe veranda steps with the dirt from underneath all over her clothes and in her hair, refused tosmoke a cigarette or share a package of cupcakes (now probably rather squashed) that Runt hadswiped from the grocery store where he worked after school. They teased her to tell them whatwas the matter and at last she said, “I think I got a right to know who I’m doing it with.”
“She’ll get what she deserves,” said Flo philosophically. Other people thought so too. It was thefashion, if you picked up any of Ruby’s things, by mistake, particularly her gym suit or runningshoes, to go and wash your hands, so you wouldn’t risk getting V.D.
Upstairs Rose’s father was having a coughing fit. These fits were desperate, but they hadbecome used to them. Flo got up and went to the bottom of the stairs. She listened there until thefit was over.
“That medicine doesn’t help him one iota,” she said. “That doctor couldn’t put a Band-Aid onstraight.” To the end, she blamed all Rose’s father’s troubles on medicines, doctors.
“If you ever got up to any of that with a boy it would be the end of you,” she said. “I mean it.”
Rose flushed with rage and said she would die first. “I hope so,” Flo said.
HERE IS THE sort of story Flo told Rose:
When her mother died, Flo was twelve, and her father gave her away. He gave her to a well-to-do farming family who were to work her for her board and send her to school. But most of thetime they did not send her. There was too much work to be done. They were hard people.
“If you were picking apples and there was one left on the tree you would have to go back andpick over every tree in the entire orchard.
The same when you were out picking up stones in the field. Leave one and you had to do thewhole field again.”
The wife was the sister of a bishop. She was always careful of her skin, rubbing it with HindsHoney and Almond. She took a high tone with everybody and was sarcastic and believed that shehad married down.
“But she was good-looking,” said Flo, “and she give me one thing. It was a long pair of satingloves, they were a light brown color. Fawn. They were lovely. I never meant to lose them but Idid.”
Flo had to take the men’s dinner to them in the far field. The husband opened it up and said,“Why is there no pie in this dinner?”
“If you want any pie you can make it yourself,” said Flo, in the exact words and tone of hermistress when they were packing the dinner. It was not surprising that she could imitate thatwoman so well; she was always doing it, even practicing at the mirror. It was surprising she let itout then.
The husband was amazed, but recognized the imitation. He marched Flo back to the house anddemanded of his wife if that was what she had said. He was a big man, and very bad-tempered.
No, it is not true, said the bishop’s sister, that girl is nothing but a troublemaker and a liar. Shefaced him down, and when she got Flo alone she hit her such a clout that Flo was knocked acrossthe room into a cupboard. Her scalp was cut. It healed in time without stitches (the bishop’s sisterdidn’t get the doctor, she didn’t want talk) and Flo had the scar still.
She never went back to school after that.
Just before she was fourteen she ran away. She lied about her age and got a job in the glovefactory, in Hanratty. But the bishop’s sister found out where she was, and every once in a whilewould come to see her. We forgive you, Flo. You ran away and left us but we still think of you asour Flo and our friend. You are welcome to come out and spend a day with us. Wouldn’t you likea day in the country? It’s not very healthy in the glove factory, for a young person. You need theair. Why don’t you come and see us? Why don’t you come today?
And every time Flo accepted this invitation it would turn out that there was a big fruitpreserving or chili sauce making in progress, or they were wallpapering or spring-cleaning, or thethreshers were coming. All she ever got to see of the country was where she threw the dishwaterover the fence. She never could understand why she went or why she stayed. It was a long way, toturn around and walk back to town. And they were such a helpless outfit on their own. Thebishop’s sister put her preserving jars away dirty. When you brought them up from the cellar therewould be bits of mold growing in them, clots of fuzzy rotten fruit on the bottom. How could youhelp but be sorry for people like that?
When the bishop’s sister was in the hospital, dying, it happened that Flo was in there too. Shewas in for her gall bladder operation, which Rose could just remember. The bishop’s sister heardthat Flo was there and wanted to see her. So Flo let herself be hoisted into a wheel chair andwheeled down the hall, and as soon as she laid eyes on the woman in the bed—the tall, smooth-skinned woman all bony and spotted now, drugged and cancerous—she began an overwhelmingnosebleed, the first and last she ever suffered in her life. The red blood was whipping out of her,she said, like streamers.
She had the nurses running for help up and down the hall. It seemed as if nothing could stop it.
When she lifted her head it shot right on the sick woman’s bed, when she lowered her head itstreamed down on the floor. They had to put her in ice packs, finally. She never got to say good-bye to the woman in the bed.
“I never did say good-bye to her.”
“Would you want to?”
“Well yes,” said Flo. “Oh yes. I would.”
Rose brought a pile of books home every night. Latin, Algebra, Ancient and Medieval History,French, Geography. The Merchant of Venice, A Tale of Two Cities, Shorter Poems, Macbeth. Floexpressed hostility to them as she did toward all books. The hostility seemed to increase with abook’s weight and size, the darkness and gloominess of its binding and the length and difficulty ofthe words in its title. Shorter Poems enraged her, because she opened it and found a poem that wasfive pages long.
She made rubble out of the titles. Rose believed she deliberately mispronounced. Ode came outOdd and Ulysses had a long shh in it, as if the hero was drunk.
Rose’s father had to come downstairs to go to the bathroom. He hung on to the banister andmoved slowly but without halting. He wore a brown wool bathrobe with a tasseled tie. Roseavoided looking at his face. This was not particularly because of the alterations his sickness mighthave made, but because of the bad opinion of herself she was afraid she would find written there.
It was for him she brought the books, no doubt about it, to show off to him. And he did look atthem, he could not walk past any book in the world without picking it up and looking at its title.
But all he said was, “Look out you don’t get too smart for your own good.”
Rose believed he said that to please Flo, in case she might be listening. She was in the store atthe time. But Rose imagined that no matter where Flo was now, he would speak as if she might belistening. He was anxious to please Flo, to anticipate her objections. He had made a decision, itseemed. Safety lay with Flo.
Rose never answered him back. When he spoke she automatically bowed her head, tightenedher lips in an expression that was secretive, but carefully not disrespectful. She was circumspect.
But all her need for flaunting, her high hopes of herself, her gaudy ambitions, were not hiddenfrom him. He knew them all, and Rose was ashamed, just to be in the same room with him. Shefelt that she disgraced him, had disgraced him somehow from the time she was born, and woulddisgrace him still more thoroughly in the future. But she was not repenting. She knew her ownstubbornness; she did not mean to change.
Flo was his idea of what a woman ought to be. Rose knew that, and indeed he often said it. Awoman ought to be energetic, practical, clever at making and saving; she ought to be shrewd, goodat bargaining and bossing and seeing through people’s pretensions. At the same time she should benaive intellectually, childlike, contemptuous of maps and long words and anything in books, fullof charming jumbled notions, superstitions, traditional beliefs.
“Women’s minds are different,” he said to Rose during one of the calm, even friendly periods,when she was a bit younger. Perhaps he forgot that Rose was, or would be, a woman herself.
“They believe what they have to believe. You can’t follow their thought.” He was saying this inconnection with a belief of Flo’s, that wearing rubbers in the house would make you go blind.
“But they can manage life some ways, that’s their talent, it’s not in their heads, there’s somethingthey are smarter at than a man.”
So part of Rose’s disgrace was that she was female but mistakenly so, would not turn out to bethe right kind of woman. But there was more to it. The real problem was that she combined andcarried on what he must have thought of as the worst qualities in himself. All the things he hadbeaten down, successfully submerged, in himself, had surfaced again in her, and she was showingno will to combat them. She mooned and daydreamed, she was vain and eager to show off; herwhole life was in her head. She had not inherited the thing he took pride in, and counted on—hisskill with his hands, his thoroughness and conscientiousness at any work; in fact she wasunusually clumsy, slapdash, ready to cut corners. The sight of her slopping around with her handsin the dishpan, her thoughts a thousand miles away, her rump already bigger than Flo’s, her hairwild and bushy; the sight of the large and indolent and self-absorbed fact of her, seemed to fill himwith irritation, with melancholy, almost with disgust.
All of which Rose knew. Until he had passed through the room she was holding herself still, shewas looking at herself through his eyes. She too could hate the space she occupied. But the minutehe was gone she recovered. She went back into her thoughts or to the mirror, where she was oftenbusy these days, piling all her hair up on top of her head, turning part way to see the line of herbust, or pulling the skin to see how she would look with a slant, a very slight, provocative slant, toher eyes.
She knew perfectly well, too, that he had another set of feelings about her. She knew he feltpride in her as well as this nearly uncontrollable irritation and apprehension; the truth was, thefinal truth was, that he would not have her otherwise and willed her as she was. Or one part of himdid. Naturally he had to keep denying this. Out of humility, he had to, and perversity. Perversehumility. And he had to seem to be in sufficient agreement with Flo.
Rose did not really think this through, or want to. She was as uneasy as he was, about the waytheir chords struck together.
When rose came home from school Flo said to her, “Well, it’s a good thing you got here. Youhave to stay in the store.”
Her father was going to London, to the Veterans’ Hospital. “Why?”
“Don’t ask me. The doctor said.”
“Is he worse?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. That do-nothing doctor doesn’t think so. He came thismorning and looked him over and he says he’s going. We’re lucky, we got Billy Pope to run himdown.”
Billy Pope was a cousin of Flo’s who worked in the butcher shop. He used to actually live at theslaughterhouse, in two rooms with cement floors, smelling naturally of tripe and entrails and livepig. But he must have had a home-loving nature; he grew geraniums in old tobacco cans, on thethick cement windowsills. Now he had the little apartment over the shop, and had saved his moneyand bought a car, an Oldsmobile. This was shortly after the war, when new cars made a specialsensation. When he came to visit he kept wandering to the window and taking a look at it, sayingsomething to call attention, such as, “She’s light on the hay but you don’t get the fertilizer out ofher.”
Flo was proud of him and the car.
“See, Billy Pope’s got a big back seat, if your father needs to lay down.” “Flo!”
Rose’s father was calling her. When he was in bed at first he very seldom called her, and thendiscreetly, apologetically even. But he had got past that, called her often, made up reasons, shesaid, to get her upstairs.
“How does he think he’ll get along without me down there?” she said. “He can’t let me alonefive minutes.” She seemed proud of this, although often she would make him wait; sometimes shewould go to the bottom of the stairs and force him to call down further details about why heneeded her. She told people in the store that he wouldn’t let her alone for five minutes, and howshe had to change his sheets twice a day. That was true. His sheets became soaked with sweat.
Late at night she or Rose, or both of them, would be out at the washing machine in the woodshed.
Sometimes, Rose saw, her father’s underwear was stained. She would not want to look, but Floheld it up, waved it almost under Rose’s nose, cried out, “Lookit that again!” and made cluckingnoises that were a burlesque of disapproval.
Rose hated her at these times, hated her father as well; his sickness; the poverty or frugality thatmade it unthinkable for them to send things to the laundry; the way there was not a thing in theirlives they were protected from. Flo was there to see to that.
ROSE STAYED IN THE STORE. No one came in. It was a gritty, windy day, past the usual timefor snow, though there hadn’t been any. She could hear Flo moving around upstairs, scolding andencouraging, getting her father dressed, probably, packing his suitcase, looking for things. Rosehad her school books on the counter and to shut out the household noises she was reading a storyin her English book. It was a story by Katherine Mansfield, called The Garden Party. There werepoor people in that story. They lived along the lane at the bottom of the garden. They were viewedwith compassion. All very well. But Rose was angry in a way that the story did not mean her tobe. She could not really understand what she was angry about, but it had something to do with thefact that she was sure Katherine Mansfield was never obliged to look at stained underwear; herrelatives might be cruel and frivolous but their accents would be agreeable; her compassion wasfloating on clouds of good fortune, deplored by herself, no doubt, but despised by Rose. Rose wasgetting to be a prig about poverty, and would stay that way for a long time.
She heard Billy Pope come into the kitchen and shout out cheerfully, “Well, I guess yezwondered where I was.”
Katherine Mansfield had no relatives who said yez.
Rose had finished the story. She picked up Macbeth. She had memorized some speeches fromit. She memorized things from Shakespeare, and poems, other than the things they had tomemorize, for school. She didn’t imagine herself as an actress, playing Lady Macbeth on a stage,when she said them. She imagined herself being her, being Lady Macbeth.
“I come on foot,” Billy Pope was shouting up the stairs. “I had to take her in.” He assumedeveryone would know he meant the car. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t idle her, she stalls on me.
I didn’t want to go down to the city with anything running not right. Rose home?”
Billy Pope had been fond of Rose ever since she was a little girl. He used to give her a dime,and say, “Save up and buy yourself some corsets.” That was when she was flat and thin. His joke.
He came into the store.
“Well Rose, you bein a good girl?”
She barely spoke to him.
“You goin at your schoolbooks? You want to be a schoolteacher?” “I might.” She had nointention of being a schoolteacher. But it was surprising how people would let you alone, once youadmitted to that ambition.
“This is a sad day for you folks here,” said Billy Pope in a lower voice. Rose lifted her head andlooked at him coldly.
“I mean, your Dad goin down to the hospital. They’ll fix him up, though. They got all theequipment down there. They got the good doctors.”
“I doubt it,” Rose said. She hated that too, the way people hinted at things and then withdrew,that slyness. Death and sex were what they did that about.
“They’ll fix him and get him back by spring.”
“Not if he has lung cancer,” Rose said firmly. She had never said that before and certainly Flohad not said it.
Billy Pope looked as miserable and ashamed for her as if she had said something very dirty.
“Now that isn’t no way for you to talk. You don’t talk that way. He’s going to be comingdownstairs and he could of heard you.”
There is no denying the situation gave Rose pleasure, at times. A severe pleasure, when she wasnot too mixed up in it, washing the sheets or listening to a coughing fit. She dramatized her ownpart in it, saw herself clear-eyed and unsurprised, refusing all deceptions, young in years but old inbitter experience of life. In such a spirit she had said lung cancer.
Billy Pope phoned the garage. It turned out that the car would not be fixed until suppertime.
Rather than set out then, Billy Pope would stay overnight, sleeping on the kitchen couch. He andRose’s father would go down to the hospital in the morning.
“There don’t need to be any great hurry, I’m not going to jump for him,” said Flo, meaning thedoctor. She had come into the store to get a can of salmon, to make a loaf. Although she was notgoing anywhere and had not planned to, she had put on stockings, and a clean blouse and skirt.
She and Billy Pope kept up a loud conversation in the kitchen while she got supper. Rose sat onthe high stool and recited in her head, looking out the front window at West Hanratty, the dustscudding along the street, the dry puddle-holes.
Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers!
A jolt it would give them, if she yelled that into the kitchen.
At six o’clock she locked the store. When she went into the kitchen she was surprised to see herfather there. She hadn’t heard him. He hadn’t been either talking or coughing. He was dressed inhis good suit, which was an unusual color—a dark oily sort of green. Perhaps it had been cheap.
“Look at him all dressed up,” Flo said. “He thinks he looks smart. He’s so pleased with himselfhe wouldn’t go back to bed.”
Rose’s father smiled unnaturally, obediently.
“How do you feel now?” Flo said.
“I feel all right.”
“You haven’t had a coughing spell, anyway.” Her father’s face was newly shaved, smooth anddelicate, like the animals they had once carved at school out of yellow laundry soap.
“Maybe I ought to get up and stay up.”
“That’s the ticket,” Billy Pope said boisterously. “No more laziness.
Get up and stay up. Get back to work.”
There was a bottle of whiskey on the table. Billy Pope had brought it. The men drank it out oflittle glasses that had once held cream cheese. They topped it up with half an inch or so of water.
Brian, Rose’s half brother, had come in from playing somewhere; noisy, muddy, with the coldsmell of outdoors around him.
Just as he came in Rose said, “Can I have some?” nodding at the whiskey bottle.
“Girls don’t drink that,” Billy Pope said.
“Give you some and we’d have Brian whining after some,” said Flo. “Can I have some?” saidBrian, whining, and Flo laughed uproar- iously, sliding her own glass behind the bread box. “Seethere?”
“THERE USED TO BE people around in the old days that did cures,” said Billy Pope at thesupper table. “But you don’t hear about none of them no more.”
“Too bad we can’t get hold of one of them right now,” said Rose’s father, getting hold of andconquering a coughing fit.
“There was the one faith healer I used to hear my Dad talk about,” said Billy Pope. “He had away of talkin, he talked like the Bible. So this deaf fellow went to him and he seen him and hecured him of his deafness. Then he says to him, ‘Durst hear?’”
“Dost hear?” Rose suggested. She had drained Flo’s glass while getting out the bread forsupper, and felt more kindly disposed toward all her relatives.
“That’s it. Dost hear? And the fellow said yes, he did. So the faith healer says then, Dostbelieve? Now maybe the fellow didn’t understand what he meant. And he says what in? So thefaith healer he got mad, and he took away the fellow’s hearing like that, and he went home deaf ashe come.”
Flo said that out where she lived when she was little, there was a woman who had second sight.
Buggies, and later on, cars, would be parked to the end of her lane on Sundays. That was the daypeople came from a distance to consult with her. Mostly they came to consult her about things thatwere lost.
“Didn’t they want to get in touch with their relations?” Rose’s father said, egging Flo on as heliked to when she was telling a story. “I thought she could put you in touch with the dead.”
“Well, most of them seen enough of their relations when they was alive.”
It was rings and wills and livestock they wanted to know about; where had things disappearedto?
“One fellow I knew went to her and he had lost his wallet. He was a man that worked on therailway line. And she says to him, well, do you remember it was about a week ago you wereworking along the tracks and you come along near an orchard and you thought you would like anapple? So you hopped over the fence and it was right then you dropped your wallet, right then andthere in the long grass. But a dog came along, she says, a dog picked it up and dropped it a waysfurther along the fence, and that’s where you’ll find it. Well, he’d forgot all about the orchard andclimbing that fence and he was so amazed at her, he gave her a dollar. And he went and found hiswallet in the very place she described. This is true, I knew him. But the money was all chewed up,it was all chewed up in shreds, and when he found that he was so mad he said he wished he nevergive her so much!”
“Now, you never went to her,” said Rose’s father. “You wouldn’t put your faith in the like ofthat?” When he talked to Flo he often spoke in country phrases, and adopted the country habit ofteasing, saying the opposite of what’s true, or believed to be true.
“No, I never went actually to ask her anything,” Flo said. “But one time I went. I had to go overthere and get some green onions. My mother was sick and suffering with her nerves and thiswoman sent word over, that she had some green onions was good for nerves. It wasn’t nerves atall it was cancer, so what good they did I don’t know.”
Flo’s voice climbed and hurried on, embarrassed that she had let that out.
“I had to go and get them. She had them pulled and washed and tied up for me, and she says,don’t go yet, come on in the kitchen and see what I got for you. Well, I didn’t know what, but Idasn’t not do it. I thought she was a witch. We all did. We all did, at school. So I sat down in thekitchen and she went in the pantry and brought out a big chocolate cake and she cut a piece andgive it to me. I had to sit and eat it. She sat there and watched me eat. All I can remember abouther is her hands. They were great big red hands with big veins sticking up on them, and she’d beflopping and twisting them all the time in her lap. I often thought since, she ought to eat the greenonions herself, she didn’t have so good nerves either.
“Then I tasted a funny taste. In the cake. It was peculiar. I dasn’t stop eating though. I ate andate and when I finished it all up I said thank-you and I tell you I got out of there. I walked all theway down the lane because I figured she was watching me but when I got to the road I started torun. But I was still scared she was following after me, like invisible or something, and she mightread what was in my mind and pick me up and pound my brains out on the gravel. When I gothome I just flung open the door and hollered Poison! That’s what I was thinking. I thought shemade me eat a poisoned cake.
“All it was was moldy. That’s what my mother said. The damp in her house and she would gofor days without no visitors to eat it, in spite of the crowds she collected other times. She couldhave a cake sitting around too long a while.
“But I didn’t think so. No. I thought I had ate poison and I was doomed. I went and sat in thissort of place I had in a corner of the granary. Nobody knew I had it. I kept all kinds of junk inthere. I kept some chips of broken china and some velvet flowers. I remember them, they were offa hat that had got rained on. So I just sat there, and I waited.”
Billy Pope was laughing at her. “Did they come and haul you out?” “I forget. I don’t think so.
They would’ve had a hard time finding me, I was in behind all the feed bags. No. I don’t know. Iguess what happened in the end was I got tired out waiting and come out by myself.”
“And lived to tell the tale,” said Rose’s father, swallowing the last word as he was overcome bya prolonged coughing fit. Flo said he shouldn’t stay up any longer but he said he would just liedown on the kitchen couch, which he did. Flo and Rose cleared the table and washed the dishes,then for something to do they all—Flo and Billy Pope and Brian and Rose—sat around the tableand played euchre. Her father dozed. Rose thought of Flo sitting in a corner of the granary withthe bits of china and the wilted velvet flowers and whatever else was precious to her, waiting, in agradually reduced state of terror, it must have been, and exaltation, and desire, to see how deathwould slice the day.
Her father was waiting. His shed was locked, his books would not be opened again, by him, andtomorrow was the last day he would wear shoes. They were all used to this idea, and in some waysthey would be more disturbed if his death did not take place, than if it did. No one could ask whathe thought about it. He would have treated such an inquiry as an impertinence, a piece ofdramatizing, an indulgence. Rose believed he would have. She believed he was prepared forWestminster Hospital, the old soldiers’ hospital, prepared for its masculine gloom, its yellowingcurtains pulled around the bed, its spotty basins. And for what followed. She understood that hewould never be with her more than at the present moment. The surprise to come was that hewouldn’t be with her less.
DRINKING COFFEE, wandering around the blind green halls of the new high school, at theCentennial Year Reunion—she hadn’t come for that, had bumped into it accidentally, so to speak,when she came home to see what was to be done about Flo—Rose met people who said, “Did youknow Ruby Carruthers was dead? They took off the one breast and then the other but it was allthrough her, she died.”
And people who said, “I saw your picture in a magazine, what was the name of that magazine, Ihave it at home.”
The new high school had an auto mechanics shop for training auto mechanics and a beautyparlor for training beauty parlor operators; a library; an auditorium; a gymnasium; a whirlingfountain arrangement for washing your hands in the Ladies’ Room. Also a functioning dispenserof Kotex.
Del Fairbridge had become an undertaker.
Runt Chesterton had become an accountant.
Horse Nicholson had made a lot of money as a contractor and had left that to go into politics.
He had made a speech saying that what they needed was a lot more God in the classroom and a lotless French.
半个柚子
半个柚子
露丝通过了升学考试，走过桥，上高中。
墙上有四面大大的干净窗户。头顶是崭新的日光灯。这堂课是卫生与指南，一个教学新主意。男生女生混在一起上课，圣诞过后，他们就去上家庭生活课。现在教这门课的年轻老师是个乐观派。穿了一件亮红色的套装，上衣盖过臀部。老师沿着一排座位走过来又走过去，反复多次，让每个人都讲讲自己早饭吃了些什么，检查他们是否遵守着加拿大的饮食规则。
城镇和乡村间的差异很快就这么显现出来了。
“油炸土豆。”
“面包，还有玉米糖浆。”
“茶和粥。”
“茶和面包。”
“茶、煎鸡蛋，还有农家肉卷。”
“葡萄干馅饼。”
有人在笑，老师板起脸，但没什么用。她开始走向城里的同学。教室里，同学们自行划成两派，坐在两个方位。这边的人说自己吃了吐司加果酱，培根和鸡蛋，玉米片，甚至还有华夫饼就糖浆。橙汁，有些人说。
露丝挤进了城里人的最后一排。除了她，没有人来自西汉拉提。她实在太想跟城里同学一道，与自己原来的地方对立起来，跟那些吃华夫饼、喝咖啡的人，那些对早餐颇有见地的人扯上关系了。
“半个柚子。”她大胆地说。没人想过这个。
事实上，弗洛会觉得早餐吃柚子跟喝香槟一样糟糕。他们在店里压根就不卖柚子。不怎么进新鲜水果。有些带斑点的香蕉，还有些卖相不佳的小橙子。跟很多村里的人一样，弗洛觉得所有没有认真煮过的东西对胃都是不好的。早餐她们也喝茶和粥。夏天会吃泡米。吃泡米的第一个早晨，它轻得就像花粉一样，撒进碗里，那是快乐的、令人振奋的时刻，就像头一回甩掉了橡胶鞋，赤脚踩在硬硬的路上；又像在天寒地冻和鸟儿纷飞的短暂季节之间，头一回快乐地敞开了门。
露丝很高兴自己能想到柚子这事儿，而且以这样自信又自然的语调说了出来。在学校她的声音几近干涸，她的心脏滚动成一个巨大的球体堵住喉咙，汗水像石膏一样将外套紧紧黏住手臂，即便妈妈帮忙也会无济于事。她的神经被下了诅咒。
几天之后，她走上那座桥回家，路上听见有人在喊她。喊的并不是她的名字，不过她知道是在叫她，所以她在桥板上放慢脚步，听了起来。那声音似乎是从她底下发出来的，尽管她从桥上的缝隙往下看，只能看见湍急的流水。一定有人躲在了桥桩旁边。那声音像在渴望些什么，伪装得恰到好处，露丝都分不清到底是男孩还是女孩。
“半个柚子！”
那些年里，她仿佛听到有人一遍又一遍地在喊这句话，从小巷，从一扇漆黑的窗户。她再也不能任由这样的声音出现，但很快她就又要捂住自己的脸，将唇膏从她的上嘴唇擦去。人们出汗，总是因为撒了谎。
事情本来还可以更糟的。丢脸这件事最容易。高中生活处处是险境，在那干净而刺眼的强光底下，没有人会忘记你做过些什么。露丝也可能会成为那个丢了高洁丝卫生巾的女生。那可能是个乡村姑娘，她把卫生巾放进口袋里，也可能是笔记本后面，等晚些时候再用。离家远的人一般都会这么做。露丝自己也这么干过。女厕所里有一个高洁丝卫生巾自动贩售机，不过里面常常是没货的，你投硬币进去，它什么都吐不出来。大家都知道，有两个乡村姑娘商量好，在午餐时间去找门卫把货补上。没用。
“你们俩谁要用？”他说。于是她们就逃跑了。她们说这门卫的屋子就在楼梯下，里面有一张脏兮兮的老沙发，还有猫的骷髅骨。她们发誓说，这千真万确。
高洁丝卫生巾一定是丢在了地上，或者是在衣帽间，然后被人捡了起来，偷混进大厅放奖杯的橱窗里。人人都看见了。因为经过了折叠，在运送至奖杯橱窗的过程中又一番折腾，它已经不是原本的样子，表面被磨损了，所以有可能让人想到，它之前还被人家放在身子底下暖过。大丑闻。在早上的大会上，校长提到了这个令人恶心的东西。他发誓，一定要揪出把它放进橱窗的肇事者，公开批评、严加责罚、开除出校。学校里的每一个女孩都否认自己知道这件事。一时兴起不少理论。露丝担心别人怀疑卫生巾是她的，所以当人们的目标锁定在一个块头很大、脸色阴沉、名叫莫瑞尔•梅森的乡村女孩身上时，她大大地松了一口气。这个女孩穿着一件粗纺人造纤维的居家便服上学，还有体臭。
“你今天戴那破布了吗，莫瑞尔？”男孩会这么跟她说话，会在她背后喊她名字。
“如果我是莫瑞尔•梅森，我会想杀了我自己，”露丝在楼梯上听见一个高年级的学生对她的伙伴说，“我会杀了我自己。”她的声音里没有同情，只有不耐烦。
露丝每天回家后都会告诉弗洛今天学校发生了什么。弗洛很喜欢听高洁丝卫生巾那一段，会问她有没有什么新进展。不过弗洛从来没有听她说过半个柚子的故事。要是那故事不能把她自己摆在一个优越的、俯视者的角色上，她就不会讲。错误都是别人犯的，这是弗洛和露丝的共识。当露丝离开学校，走上桥，将自己转化为一个叙述者，她就变得不一样了，效果显而易见。不再紧张了。她会发出质疑的声音，穿着那红黄相间的格子裙，臀部轻轻摆动，昂首阔步、得意洋洋。
弗洛和露丝变换了角色。现在露丝是那个把故事带回家的人，弗洛记住了故事的主角叫什么名字，她成了那个等着听后续故事的人。
霍斯•尼科尔森、戴尔•费尔布里奇、兰特•切斯特顿。弗洛伦斯•多迪、雪莉•皮克林、鲁比•卡拉瑟斯。弗洛每天都在等待他们的新消息。她称他们为“小丑角儿”。
“喂，那些小丑角儿今天又要干些什么了？”
她们会坐在厨房，门敞开着，顾客可以随时进来，如果她父亲叫她，也可以从对着门的楼梯间听到。他躺在床上。弗洛煮了咖啡，她让露丝从冰箱里拿几瓶可乐出来。
露丝带回来的就是这类故事：
鲁比•卡拉瑟斯是那种很放荡的女孩，红头发，斜眼很厉害。（至少在这片乡村，现在跟过去的最大区别之一，就是在那个时候，不管你是斜眼还是斜视都没人当回事，他们也不会在乎你牙齿有没有叠着长，长到哪边去。）鲁比•卡拉瑟斯为布莱恩特斯工作，布莱恩特斯是做五金器具生意的。他们常常跑去看赛马或者冰球，或者去佛罗里达，这个时候鲁比就待在屋子里，干点家务活赚她的伙食费。有一次，她又一个人在那里，有三个男孩跑过去看她。戴尔•费尔布里奇、霍斯•尼科尔森、兰特•切斯特顿。
“他们去看能不能揩到什么油。”弗洛说道。她看着天花板，跟露丝说声音要压低一点。她父亲不会喜欢这种故事的。
戴尔•费尔布里奇是个很好看的男孩，自负，但不是很聪明。他说他能进屋子说服鲁比跟他干那事，如果能行，他会让她跟他们三个都干一遍。不过他不知道的是，霍斯•尼科尔森已经和鲁比约好在门廊下见面了。
“那里肯定有蜘蛛，很有可能，”弗洛说，“不过我猜他们不在乎。”
当戴尔在那漆黑的屋子里四处找她的时候，鲁比已经在门廊下跟霍斯一起了，兰特是他们一伙儿的，他坐在门廊的阶梯上放哨，不消说，他也在认真地聆听着那些肉体碰撞的声音和两人的呼吸声。
现在霍斯爬了上来，说他要进屋子里找戴尔，不是去给戴尔出个什么点子，是去看看这笑话现在闹得怎么样了，他觉得这就是这笑话里最关键的部分了。他看见戴尔正在食品柜前吃棉花糖，然后听见戴尔说，现在要搞鲁比•卡拉瑟斯还不是时候，他以后哪天来都比现在强，他要回家了。
这个时候，兰特爬下了门廊，准备跟鲁比干。
我的老天爷啊！弗洛说。
然后霍斯从屋子里走了出来，兰特和鲁比能听见头顶上他走过门廊的声音。鲁比问，那是谁啊？兰特说，哦，那只是霍斯•尼科尔森而已。那你他妈是谁啊？鲁比问。
我的老天爷啊！
露丝也不用讲后来的故事了。鲁比心情很不好，坐在门廊的阶梯上，衣服和头发上全都是从门廊下面蹭来的灰。兰特从他放学之后当临时工的那家杂货店里偷来了纸杯蛋糕，现在大概已经被挤碎了，可是她不想一起吃，也不想抽烟。他们逗她，怎么啦，怎么不高兴啊。最后她说：“我觉得干那事的时候，我有权利知道对方是谁。”
“她会得到她应得的东西。”弗洛意味深长地说。其他人也是这么想的。如果你不小心拿起了鲁比的东西，特别是她的运动服或者是跑步鞋，那你就得去洗手，不然的话你就有得性病的风险，现在这是大家的共识，人人都这么做。
露丝的父亲在楼上，咳嗽得很凶。这咳嗽声令人沮丧，不过他们已经听习惯了。弗洛起身走到楼梯下。她在那里听着，直到咳嗽声停止。
“那药对他一丁点用都没有，”她说，“那个医生连个邦迪创可贴都贴不好。”最后，她把露丝父亲的所有糟糕事情都怪在了药物和医生头上。
“如果你跟一个男孩随便干那种事你就完蛋了，”她说，“我是认真的。”
露丝很生气，满脸通红，她说要是这样她恨不得先死了算了。
“我也希望是这样。”弗洛说。
弗洛跟露丝讲的是这样的故事：
弗洛妈妈去世的时候，她十二岁，她的父亲把她给送走了。他把她送到一个富裕的农民家庭，她给他们干活赚饭钱，他们送她上学。不过大多数时候他们也不送她上学。太多活儿要干了。他们可不那么好对付。
“如果你摘苹果的时候落下了一个，你得回去把果园里所有的果树都从头再摘一遍。在地里捡石头也是一个样。落下一颗就得去整片地里重新找。”
家里的女主人是一个主教的妹妹。她对自己的皮肤总是很当心，会涂海茵兹蜂蜜和杏仁霜。
她对谁说话都是提高音调，很刻薄，她觉得自己这是下嫁。
“但是她长得很好看，”弗洛说，“她还给了我一样东西。是一副长长的缎子手套。浅棕色或浅黄褐色。看上去很漂亮。我弄丢了，我不是故意弄丢的。”
弗洛得把晚餐给男人们送到那片远远的田地里。那位丈夫打开了餐盒说：“怎么这晚餐里没有馅饼呢？”
“如果你想吃馅饼的话，你大可以自己去做。”男人们给自己盛晚餐的时候，弗洛用女主人的声音说。用词和语调都一模一样。她把那女人的语气模仿得这么像也不奇怪，她总是这么学她说话，甚至会对着镜子练习。不过她说出这话来的时候着实把那些人吓了一跳。
丈夫吃了一惊，他认出了这种模仿。他领着弗洛一步步走回房子里，质问他的妻子这话她是不是说过。他是个魁梧的男人，脾气很坏。不是，这不是真的，主教的妹妹说道，那女孩光会惹麻烦、撒谎。弗洛面向他，他领着她单独走到一处，一拳猛地打过去，使她撞到了房间那边的茶柜上。她的头皮都被撞破了。最后是自己痊愈的（主教的妹妹没有叫医生来，弗洛也不愿意吱声），她现在头上还有伤疤。
从那以后，她就再也没有回到学校。
快到十四岁的时候，她跑掉了。她谎报了年龄，在汉拉提一家手套工厂找了份工作。但是主教的妹妹发现了她的去处，隔一段时间就会去找她一次。我们原谅你了，弗洛。你虽然离我们而去，但我们仍然把你看作我们的弗洛，我们的朋友。我们欢迎你找天时间出来跟我们在一起。你不喜欢在乡村里待上一天吗？对于一个年轻人来说，待在一家手套工厂里不是很健康。你需要清新的空气啊。为什么不出来见我们呢？你今天为什么不出来呢？
每次弗洛接受邀请出来，要不是正值水果储藏期，就是人们正在制作辣味番茄沙司，要么就是春季大扫除或者将要使用打谷机之时。她唯一能看见乡村风景的时候，就是她把洗碗盆抬到栅栏边时。她不明白她为什么要来，为什么要留在这。回城里可要走很长一段路啊。还有，他们穿的衣服可真是叫人无话可说。主教的妹妹的果酱罐子一般都很脏。当你从地窖里把它们拿上来的时候，里面长着霉菌，底部有腐烂成块的水果渣。你怎么忍得住不为这种人感到可怜呢？
主教的妹妹在医院走到生命尽头的时候，弗洛也在她身边。弗洛是来做她的胆囊手术的，那时候露丝刚好能记事。主教的妹妹听说弗洛也在，想见见她。于是弗洛被抬到轮椅上，转着轮子到了大厅。那个身材高挑、有着光滑皮肤的女人，如今已经骨瘦如柴，脸上长斑，癌症缠身，用了很多药。当弗洛把目光放到这个女人身上时，弗洛开始止不住地流鼻血，那是她人生中第一次，也是最后一次。那红红的血液汹涌而出，流光溢彩。
护士们看到此景跑到大厅里四处找医生。似乎没有什么办法能让这次血流停止。她抬起头来，血直射在了那病女人的床上，她低下头，血就源源不断地流淌到了地上。他们最后用冰块给她敷上了。她没有跟床上那个女人说再见。
“我从来都没有跟她说再见。”
“你想跟她说吗？”
“嗯，我想的，”弗洛说，“噢，是的，我会说的。”
露丝每天晚上都会带一摞书回来。拉丁文、代数、古代史、中世纪史、法语、地理。《威尼斯商人》《双城记》《短诗》《麦克白》。弗洛对这些书表现出敌意，就跟她对所有书的态度一样。她的敌意似乎随着一本书的重量和尺寸的增加而增多，还跟书包装线、书名的长度和难懂程度有关。当她翻开《短诗》的时候，她发现一首诗居然有五页长，这让她感到愤慨。
她把那书名读得磕磕巴巴。露丝觉得她是故意读错的。“Ode”（颂歌）会读成“Odd”（奇怪），“Ulysses”（尤利西斯）里面有一个长长的“shh”音，听上去就像这英雄喝高了似的。
露丝的爸爸去浴室得先到楼下来。他紧紧地抓住栏杆，慢慢地向下移动，但中途不会停下来。他穿着一件棕色的羊毛浴袍，戴着一条流苏领带。露丝尽量避免看他的脸。并不是因为会看到他的脸因为生病变了样，而是因为她害怕在他的脸上看到对她的差评。她是为了他才买下这些书的，毫无疑问，就是为了向他炫耀。他也的确看了看这些书，只要他从一本书旁走过，都会拿起来看它的书名。但是他说的却只是这个：“小心点，别自作聪明。”
露丝觉得他这么说是为了哄弗洛开心，假设她能听见这话。那个时候她在看着店里的生意。
但是露丝又想，无论弗洛在哪，他都会这么说的，他就假装弗洛是听到了这话。他急着想哄弗洛开心，期待着她能反对。仿佛他是做了这个决定的。弗洛很安全。
露丝从来都没有回应过他。当他说话的时候，她会自然低下头、紧闭双唇，表示不想开口，又并非不敬。她谨慎行事。但是她对夸耀的需求、对自己的高期待、她那浮夸的野心，他却看得一清二楚。他对她的心思了如指掌，令露丝感到丢脸，跟他同处一室就是件很丢脸的事情。她觉得自己给他丢脸了，从出生开始就给他丢脸，以后会丢得更加彻底。但她不是在忏悔。她清楚自己的固执，并不想改变。
他认为女人就应该是弗洛那个样子。露丝知道，事实上他也经常这么说。一个女人应该精力充沛、脚踏实地、心灵手巧、精打细算，会砍价、会指挥、会察言观色，还机灵能干。在读书上也该钝些，孩子气些，该对地图和长单词或者书里的一切感到不屑，脑子里都是迷人的混沌想法，迷信神灵、笃信传统。
“女人的脑子不太一样。”在他心平气和，甚至和睦友善的时候，他这样对露丝说。那时候露丝比现在小。或许他忘了露丝是个女孩，或者以后是要成为女人的。“她们相信那些自己认定了的事情，你跟不上的。”他指的是自己跟不上弗洛的一个想法，弗洛认为，在家里穿橡胶制品会让人变瞎。“不过在某些方面她们能把生活照顾得很好，那是她们的本事。倒不是因为她们脑袋灵光，但她们就有一些比男人要聪明的地方。”
所以让露丝感到丢脸的地方就在于，她是女人，但这是个错误，她不会变成那种“恰当”的女人。事情还不止这些。真正的问题，是她身上遗传并且结合了他的特质，那些他一定会觉得自己最糟糕的特质。那些他已经破除和埋葬的东西，又一次出现在了她的身上，可是她对此完全不想反抗。她想入非非、爱慕虚荣，把整个人生放在脑海之中。那些他引以为傲、赖以生存的东西呢，比如他的手艺，他在工作上的透彻和严谨，却没有遗传给她。事实上，她不是一般的笨拙、草率和图省事。她的手放在洗碗盆里漫不经心，思绪在千里之外，她的臀部已经大过弗洛，头发乱作一团，看到这景象，看到她那笨重、懒散又以自我为中心的样子，他的心中充满了愤懑、忧愁，甚至厌恶。
这些露丝都知道。他穿过房间的时候，她一直沉默，在他的眼睛里读出他自己的想法。她也讨厌自己那么占地方，不过他一走，这些情绪也都没了。她又重新做起白日梦来，或者照镜子，她这几天一直忙着照镜子，把自己的头发盘到头上，转过半边身来看自己的臀部，或者捏起皮肤，颇挑逗地斜眼端详起来。
她也非常清楚，他对她还有另一种看法。他有无法控制的愤怒和恐惧，却也为她感到过同等程度的骄傲。事实，最后的事实，就是如果换了个人，他宁可不要，也不会强迫她保持现在的样子。或者说，他身上的某一部分的确是这么想的。自然，他得一直否认这一点。出于谦恭，他得这么做——也出于倔强。倔强的谦恭。他得完完全全跟弗洛达成一致。
露丝没有仔细想这事儿，也不愿想。感到两颗心的碰撞时，她和他一样，都很不自在。
露丝从学校回来的时候，弗洛对她说：“啊，你回来就好了。你得在店里面待着。”
她的父亲要去伦敦，去退伍军人医院。
“为什么？”
“别问我。医生说要去的。”
“是更严重了吗？”
“我不知道。我什么都不知道。那个什么事都不会干的医生觉得没有。他今天早上来了，打量了一眼，就说他要去。我们很幸运，有比利•波普带他过去。”
比利•波普是弗洛的表兄弟，在肉店干活。他以前真的是住过屠宰场的，那有两个房间，铺着水泥地，有牛肚、内脏和生猪的味道。但他一定天性爱家，他会在旧烟草罐头里种天竺葵花，放在厚厚的水泥窗台前。如今他在肉店楼上有一个住处，存了钱，买了一辆奥尔兹莫比尔牌汽车。战后没多久就买的，那时候新车有一种独特的诱惑力。他过来做客的时候，眼睛也不时向窗外望，留意着点，说些吸引大家注意的话，比如：“她在草堆上挺亮的啊，她也需要肥料的哟。”
弗洛为他和他的车感到骄傲。
“看，比利•波普有一个宽敞的后座呢，你爸爸可以躺在上面。”
“弗洛！”
露丝的父亲在叫弗洛。他刚开始生病在床的时候，很少叫她，后来甚至变得小心谨慎，心生歉意。但是他从那种情绪中走出来了，她说，他现在常常编个理由叫她上楼去。
“他怎么会觉得在那里没了我能行？”她说，“他离开我五分钟都不行。”她似乎对此感到骄傲，不过她常常会让他先等等。有的时候他会跑下一层到楼底下去，这他就不得不交代详细点为什么要让她上来了。她跟店里的人说，他五分钟都离不开她，她每天都要给他洗两次床单。这是真的。他的床单被他的汗水浸透了。到了晚上，她或者露丝，或者她们俩，都会在柴房的洗衣机旁。有时候露丝看到她爸爸内裤上的污渍。露丝不会去看，但是弗洛会把它拿起来，杵到几乎是露丝鼻子下边，大喊道：“瞅瞅这个呀！”然后啧啧两声，责骂嘲弄几句。
在这些时候，露丝都恨她，也恨她的父亲。恨他的病态，恨他的贫穷和节省，连送点东西去洗衣房都变得难以想象；还有，她们的生命中，没有一样东西是受到保护的。这些事情，弗洛可也是看在眼里的。
露丝在店里待着。没人进来。这是一个尘土飞扬的大风天，已经过了平常下雪的时节，却总也没下雪。她可以听见弗洛在楼梯间走动，骂骂咧咧，又鼓着劲儿，叫她爸爸穿好衣服，也许现在正在打包他的行李，四处找东西。露丝把她的教科书放在柜台上，读英语课本，这样就不用听到家里的噪声了。这是凯瑟琳•曼斯菲尔德写的一个故事，叫作《花园茶会》。故事里有一些很穷的人。他们住在花园最底下的小巷子里。描写他们用的是同情的笔触。表达得恰到好处。但是露丝很生气，因为这个故事并非如她所想。她不清楚自己到底是在为什么生气，但是肯定是跟凯瑟琳•曼斯菲尔德从来没有义务去看一条有污渍的内裤有关。她的亲戚也许是残酷又浅薄，但是他们可能有着悦耳的口音，她的同情是浮在丰硕的财富之上的，她为穷人哀叹，毫无疑问，这点是露丝所鄙视的。露丝在对待贫穷这个问题上，俨然是个义正严辞的专家，并且会这样持续很长时间。
她听见比利•波普高兴地喊着走进厨房：“啊，我猜恁在想我到底是在哪儿呢。”
凯瑟琳•曼斯菲尔德的亲戚们可不会说“恁”。
露丝已经读完那个故事。她拿起《麦克白》。她能背得出里面的一些台词。她能背诵莎士比亚和诗歌，却背不了学校里规定的那些东西。当她说出这些台词的时候，她并没有把自己想象成一个演员，在舞台上表演麦克白夫人的样子。她想象的是她自己，她自己就是麦克白夫人。
“我是走过来的，”比利•波普往楼上的方向喊，“我得把她带进里面去。”他以为人人都能明白他说的“她”指的就是他的车。“我不知道为什么，我玩不转她，她朝我灭了火。我不能开着一个不怎么灵光的东西到城里来。露丝在家吗？”
打露丝还是个小女孩的时候起，比利•波普就很喜欢她。他常常会给她10分硬币，然后说：“存起来，给自己买些紧身胸衣吧。”这时候她还胸部平坦、身体瘦削。他是开开玩笑。
他走进店里。
“露丝，你乖乖的吗？”
她没怎么理他。
“你在看你的教科书吗？你想当个教书匠吗？”
“有可能。”她没打算做一个学校的老师。但是你一旦说自己想当老师，就不会有人再去管你了——这点也真是叫人吃惊。
“今天对你们来说真是悲伤的日子。”比利•波普声音低低地说。
露丝抬起头来，冷淡地看着他。
“我是说，你爸爸要去医院。不过他们会让他好起来的。他们那里都有设备。他们有好的医生。”
“我怀疑。”露丝说。这事她也很讨厌，讨厌人们话语中暗示点什么，然后又把话给收回去，那狡猾劲儿。谈到死亡和性的时候就容易这样。
“他们会把他治好，然后春天把他送回来。”
“如果得了肺癌就不一定了。”露丝坚定地说。她从来没有说过这话，弗洛也没有这么说过。
比利•波普看着她，表情愁苦，像她说了什么污言秽语，为她感到丢脸似的。
“你又不是没别的可说。不能这么说话的。他会从楼上下来，然后会听见你说的。”
毫无疑问，这样的情形有时会让露丝感到痛快。在她不被杂事烦扰，比如洗床单和听见那一连串咳嗽发作的时候，她感到淋漓尽致的痛快。她会幻想自己在此事中扮演的角色，会看到自己思维清晰、沉着冷静，拒绝一切欺骗之语，年纪虽小，却成熟老练。如此这般，她说出了“肺癌”这个词。
比利•波普打电话给车库。结果发现那车得到晚餐时间才会修好。不过比利•波普不会在那个时候出发，而是要留下来过夜，在厨房沙发上睡觉。他和露丝的爸爸会在第二天早晨去医院。
“也不用那么着急啊，我也不是要追着去见他。”弗洛说，她指的是医生。她到店里拿来了一罐三文鱼，做了份吃的。尽管她哪儿都不去，也没打算去哪儿，她已经穿好了长袜、干净的外套和裙子。
做晚餐的时候，她和比利•波普一直在厨房里高声说话。露丝坐在高高的椅子上默诵着，她从窗前望向西边的汉拉提，尘土在街道和干了的水洼上扬起。
你们这些杀人的助手，
进入我的妇人的胸中，把我的乳水当作胆汁吧！
如果她朝厨房里大声朗诵这话，准能让他们震惊。
六点钟的时候她关上了店门。她走到厨房的时候，惊讶地看到了她父亲也在那里。她没听见他的动静呢。他没说话，也不咳嗽。穿得好好的，衣服颜色还不寻常，一种油性的深绿色。
可能这衣服挺便宜的。
“瞧他都穿好啦，”弗洛说，“他觉得他看上去挺精神的。不用回床上躺着了，他可高兴了。”
露丝的父亲不自然地、顺从地笑笑。
“你现在感觉怎么样？”弗洛说。
“我感觉很好。”
“你也没咳嗽嘛。”
她父亲的脸刚刮过胡子，平滑而精致，就像他们曾经在学校里用洗衣皂雕刻的动物一样。
“或许我应该起来，一宿都醒着。”
“票在那里，”比利•波普热切地说着，“别再懒惰了。起床了，今晚别睡。回去工作吧。”
桌子上有一瓶威士忌。是比利•波普带回来的。这两个男人用曾经拿来装奶油芝士的小杯子盛着把它喝光，那奶油芝士就用大概半英寸的水搅拌开来。
露丝的同父异母弟弟布莱恩跑过来玩。他闹哄哄的，身上还带着泥，有一股来自户外的冰冷味道。
他刚进来，露丝就说：“我能喝点吗？”她朝威士忌瓶子点了点头。
“女孩子不能喝的。”比利•波普说。
“如果给了你一点，布莱恩就会过来哭着要了。”弗洛说。
“我能喝点吗？”布莱恩说。他哭闹着，弗洛哈哈大笑了起来，把她的杯子移到面包盒后面。“瞧见了吧？”
“以前的确有人是能治好的，”比利•波普在晚饭桌上说，“但这事儿现在就没听说了。”
“真糟糕我们现在连一个人都搞不定了。”露丝的爸爸说着，正在搞定那串咳嗽。
“我以前听我爸讲过一个信仰治疗师，”比利•波普说，“他有他自己说话的方式，他说起话来跟《圣经》似的。所以有个聋子走到他那儿，他看见他，然后帮他治好了耳聋。然后他问他：
你敢听见？”
“你可听见？”露丝建议道。她去拿面包作晚餐的时候把弗洛杯子里的酒一饮而尽了，所以面对着亲友们，也就感觉更加亲切自然了些。
“没错。你可听见？然后那个人说听见了，他听见了。所以信仰治疗师就说，你可相信？不过可能那个人并不是很明白他是什么意思。然后他说，相信什么？信仰治疗师就生气了，就又带走了那个人的听力，他也就还是个聋子了，跟原来一样。”
弗洛说，她还小的时候，住在她家那边有个女人有千里目。每到周日，马车啊，后来是汽车啊都会在路的尽头停下。那天，人们远道而来向她询问要事。大多数都是来咨询自己丢的东西都丢到哪儿去了。
“他们不是想跟自己的朋友保持联系吗？”露丝的爸爸说。他总是喜欢在她讲故事的时候撺掇几句。“我以为她能让你跟死去的人联系上呢。”
“可是呢，大多数人在活着的时候已经受够他们的那些朋友了。”
他们想知道的是戒指、遗物和牲口，它们都跑到哪儿去了。
“有一个我认识的人到她那儿去，他丢了钱包。他在铁路线工作。然后她告诉他，嘿，你记得大概一周之前，你沿着铁路走到果园附近，然后你想吃个苹果的事吗？你当时跃过了栅栏，就在那时你的钱包掉了，掉在了长长的野草里。不过一只狗走了过来，她说，那只狗把钱包叼了起来，然后沿着栅栏把它叼到很远的地方，你就去那找好了。可是呢，他已经忘掉果园和爬栅栏的事情了，不过他觉得她很神，于是就给了她一加元。然后他到那儿去，就在她描述的那个地方找到了钱包。真事儿。我认识他。但是钱都已经被撕得粉碎，成了碎纸条，他发现后气疯了，说他真希望自己没给她那么多钱。”
“听着，永远别去找她，”露丝的父亲说，“你不会相信那种事情吧？”当他跟弗洛说话的时候，他经常会用乡村方言，或者乡村的调侃方式，也就是用反话来表达他的真实想法。
“不会，我从来不会真的去问她点什么事儿。”弗洛说，“但有一次我就去了。我得去那里拿一些葱。我妈妈病了，是神经上的病症，这个女人传话过来说，葱会对神经比较好。其实这根本就不是神经问题，是癌症，所以他们到底做过些什么有用的事，我是不知道的。”
弗洛的声音急匆匆的，越说调子越高，把这事儿说了出来，还让她有点尴尬。
“我得去取葱。她把葱拔了出来，洗干净，捆上给我，然后说，先别走，到厨房里看看我给你带了什么。嗯，我不知道是什么，但是我可不敢看。我觉得她是个女巫。我们都这么觉得。
在学校，都这么觉得。所以我坐在厨房里，她到食品柜那儿拿出个大巧克力蛋糕切出一块来递给我。我得坐下来把它吃掉。她坐在那看我吃。我能记住的就是她的手。那红通通的大手，粗粗的血管突起。那手放在她的腿上，向来都是这儿拍拍，那儿捏捏。从那之后，我常常想，她应该自己吃点葱去，她的神经状况也不怎么好。
“然后我尝了一口，怪怪的。那个蛋糕。奇怪的感觉。但是我没敢停下来。我吃啊吃啊把它全吃完了，我说谢谢，然后我跟你说我就跑啦。我沿着小巷走着，我总觉得她在看着我走，所以到了大路上我就跑啊。但是我还是害怕，怕她在后面跟着我，可能她是隐形还是什么的，可能她能读我脑子里在想什么，把我逮住，揪着我的脑袋往碎石上撞。回到家我甩开门大声呼叫：有毒啊！我就是这么想的。我觉得她让我吃了一个毒蛋糕。
“全都是发霉的东西。我妈妈是这么说的。她房间很潮湿，里面的东西没人吃，她能连着放几天，因为平时也没人来，至于其他时候她招来的那群人，那是另一回事。她能对着一块蛋糕坐特别久。
“但我不这么觉得。不这么想。我觉得我吃了有毒的东西，我死定了。我就跑到谷仓的一个角落里，就这种地方。没人知道我干过这事儿。我把所有没用的玩意儿都放在那里。我把一些碎陶瓷片啊、绒花啊什么的都放在那儿。我记得它们，就在一顶沾有雨水的帽子那边。我就坐那儿，就等着。”
比利•波普在笑她：“他们把你拖出去了吗？”
“我忘了。我觉得没有。他们找我可没那么容易，我坐在所有饲料袋后边儿呢。没有，我不知道。我想最后是我等得太困了，就自己走出来了。”
“还能活下来把这个故事讲出来。”露丝父亲说的最后一个词被一阵长长的咳嗽声所吞没。弗洛说他不能再熬夜了。他说他就在厨房的沙发上躺一会，他也这么做了。弗洛和露丝把桌子擦干净，洗了碗碟，然后为了找点事情做，他们所有人，弗洛、比利•波普、布莱恩和露丝都围坐在桌子前，开始玩尤克牌。她父亲打起瞌睡来。露丝在想象弗洛坐在谷仓角落的样子，旁边是破碎的瓷器和旧了的绒花，那些对她来说是珍贵之物。她就在那儿等着，恐惧一点点在减少，看到死亡如何撕裂白天，那过程一定充满兴奋和欲求吧。
她的父亲在等着。小棚屋锁上了，书再也不会被他翻开了，明天是他最后一天穿鞋的日子。
他们都已经习惯这么想了，要是他没死，某种程度上反倒还觉得不对劲。也没有人能问他是怎么想的。他可能会把这种问题当作粗鲁的，有种大惊小怪和无礼放纵的意味。露丝相信他会这么想。他相信他已经做好了去威斯敏斯特医院、去老兵医院的准备了，他将不再孔武有力，床边会围起发黄的帘子，盥洗槽将满是斑点，连同其他后续的事，他也都做好了准备。
她明白以后与他共处的时光不会比此刻多。不过出乎意料的是，其实并没有比现在少。
露丝参加了一场新高中的百年纪念会，她喝着咖啡，在暗绿色的校园围墙边闲逛。她不是故意要来，是想回家看能帮弗洛忙活些什么的时候，无意间撞上的。但在那个纪念会上，露丝听见有人说：“你知道吗，鲁比•卡拉瑟斯死了。他们切掉了她一个乳房，然后又切掉了另一个，但是癌症爬上了她全身，她死了。”
有人还会说：“我在杂志上看到你的照片了，那杂志是什么名字来着，我家里有。”
新高中有一间为汽车维修训练而设的汽车维修店，一家为训练美容师而设的美容院，一个图书馆，一座礼堂，一家健身房，还有设在女洗手间里，水回旋着的喷水池，专门给人洗手的。还有高洁丝卫生巾的自动贩售机。
戴尔•费尔布里奇当了殡仪员。
兰特•切斯特顿当上了会计师。
霍斯•尼科尔森做了承包商，赚了一大笔钱，现在转行进入政坛。他做过一个演讲，说学校里需要多谈些神的信仰，少学些法语。
Wild Swans
Wild Swans
Flo said to watch out for White Slavers. She said this was how they operated: an old woman, amotherly or grandmotherly sort, made friends while riding beside you on a bus or train. Sheoffered you candy, which was drugged. Pretty soon you began to droop and mumble, were in nocondition to speak for yourself. Oh, Help, the woman said, my daughter (granddaughter) is sick,please somebody help me get her off so that she can recover in the fresh air. Up stepped a politegentleman, pretending to be a stranger, offering assistance. Together, at the next stop, they hustledyou off the train or bus, and that was the last the ordinary world ever saw of you. They kept you aprisoner in the White Slave place (to which you had been transported drugged and bound so youwouldn’t even know where you were), until such time as you were thoroughly degraded and indespair, your insides torn up by drunken men and invested with vile disease, your mind destroyedby drugs, your hair and teeth fallen out. It took about three years, for you to get to this state. Youwouldn’t want to go home, then, maybe couldn’t remember home, or find your way if you did. Sothey let you out on the streets.
Flo took ten dollars and put it in a little cloth bag which she sewed to the strap of Rose’s slip.
Another thing likely to happen was that Rose would get her purse stolen.
Watch out, Flo said as well, for people dressed up as ministers. They were the worst. Thatdisguise was commonly adopted by White Slavers, as well as those after your money.
Rose said she didn’t see how she could tell which ones were disguised.
Flo had worked in Toronto once. She had worked as a waitress in a coffee shop in unionStation. That was how she knew all she knew. She never saw sunlight, in those days, except on herdays off. But she saw plenty else. She saw a man cut another man’s stomach with a knife, just pullout his shirt and do a tidy cut, as if it was a water-melon not a stomach. The stomach’s owner justsat looking down surprised, with no time to protest. Flo implied that that was nothing, in Toronto.
She saw two bad women (that was what Flo called whores, running the two words together, likebadminton) get into a fight, and a man laughed at them, other men stopped and laughed and eggedthem on, and they had their fists full of each other’s hair. At last the police came and took themaway, still howling and yelping.
She saw a child die of a fit, too. Its face was black as ink.
“Well I’m not scared,” said Rose provokingly. “There’s the police, anyway.”
“Oh, them! They’d be the first ones to diddle you!”
She did not believe anything Flo said on the subject of sex.
Consider the undertaker.
A little bald man, very neatly dressed, would come into the store sometimes and speak to Flowith a placating expression.
“I only wanted a bag of candy. And maybe a few packages of gum. And one or two chocolatebars. Could you go to the trouble of wrapping them?”
Flo in her mock-deferential tone would assure him that she could. She wrapped them in heavy-duty white paper, so they were something like presents. He took his time with the selection,humming and chatting, then dawdled for a while. He might ask how Flo was feeling. And howRose was, if she was there.
“You look pale. Young girls need fresh air.” To Flo he would say, “You work too hard. You’veworked hard all your life.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Flo would say agreeably.
When he went out she hurried to the window. There it was—the old black hearse with its purplecurtains.
“He’ll be after them today!” Flo would say as the hearse rolled away at a gentle pace, almost afuneral pace. The little man had been an undertaker, but he was retired now. The hearse wasretired too.
His sons had taken over the undertaking and bought a new one. He drove the old hearse all overthe country, looking for women. So Flo said. Rose could not believe it. Flo said he gave them thegum and the candy. Rose said he probably ate them himself. Flo said he had been seen, he hadbeen heard. In mild weather he drove with the windows down, singing, to himself or to somebodyout of sight in the back.
Her brow is like the snowdrift
Her throat is like the swan
Flo imitated him singing. Gently overtaking some woman walking on a back road, or resting ata country crossroads. All compliments and courtesy and chocolate bars, offering a ride. Of courseevery woman who reported being asked said she had turned him down. He never pesteredanybody, drove politely on. He called in at houses, and if the husband was home he seemed to likejust as well as anything to sit and chat. Wives said that was all he ever did anyway but Flo did notbelieve it.
“Some women are taken in,” she said. “A number.” She liked to speculate on what the hearsewas like inside. Plush. Plush on the walls and the roof and the floor. Soft purple, the color of thecurtains, the color of dark lilacs.
All nonsense, Rose thought. Who could believe it, of a man that age?
ROSE WAS GOING to Toronto on the train for the first time by herself. She had been oncebefore, but that was with Flo, long before her father died. They took along their own sandwichesand bought milk from the vendor on the train. It was sour. Sour chocolate milk. Rose kept takingtiny sips, unwilling to admit that something so much desired could fail her. Flo sniffed it, thenhunted up and down the train until she found the old man in his red jacket, with no teeth and thetray hanging around his neck. She invited him to sample the chocolate milk. She invited peoplenearby to smell it. He let her have some ginger ale for nothing. It was slightly warm.
“I let him know,” Flo said looking around after he had left. “You have to let them know.”
A woman agreed with her but most people looked out the window. Rose drank the warm gingerale. Either that, or the scene with the vendor, or the conversation Flo and the agreeing woman nowgot into about where they came from, why they were going to Toronto, and Rose’s morningconstipation which was why she was lacking color, or the small amount of chocolate milk she hadgot inside her, caused her to throw up in the train toilet. All day long she was afraid people inToronto could smell vomit on her coat.
This time Flo started the trip off by saying, “Keep an eye on her, she’s never been away fromhome before!” to the conductor, then looking around and laughing, to show that was jokinglymeant. Then she had to get off. It seemed the conductor had no more need for jokes than Rose had,and no intention of keeping an eye on anybody. He never spoke to Rose except to ask for herticket. She had a window seat, and was soon extraordinarily happy. She felt Flo receding, WestHanratty flying away from her, her own wearying self discarded as easily as everything else. Sheloved the towns less and less known. A woman was standing at her back door in her nightgown,not caring if everybody on the train saw her. They were traveling south, out of the snow belt, intoan earlier spring, a tenderer sort of landscape. People could grow peach trees in their backyards.
Rose collected in her mind the things she had to look for in Toronto. First, things for Flo.
Special stockings for her varicose veins. A special kind of cement for sticking handles on pots.
And a full set of dominoes.
For herself Rose wanted to buy hair-remover to put on her arms and legs, and if possible anarrangement of inflatable cushions, supposed to reduce your hips and thighs. She thought theyprobably had hair-remover in the drugstore in Hanratty, but the woman in there was a friend ofFlo’s and told everything. She told Flo who bought hair dye and slimming medicine and Frenchsafes. As for the cushion business, you could send away for it but there was sure to be a commentat the Post Office, and Flo knew people there as well. She also hoped to buy some bangles, and anangora sweater. She had great hopes of silver bangles and powder-blue angora. She thought theycould transform her, make her calm and slender and take the fizz out of her hair, dry herunderarms and turn her complexion to pearl.
The money for these things, as well as the money for the trip, came from a prize Rose had won,for writing an essay called “Art and Science in the World of Tomorrow.” To her surprise, Floasked if she could read it, and while she was reading it, she remarked that they must have thoughtthey had to give Rose the prize for swallowing the dictionary. Then she said shyly, “It’s veryinteresting.”
She would have to spend the night at Cela McKinney’s. Cela McKinney was her father’scousin. She had married a hotel manager and thought she had gone up in the world. But the hotelmanager came home one day and sat down on the dining room floor between two chairs and said,“I am never going to leave this house again.” Nothing unusual had happened, he had just decidednot to go out of the house again, and he didn’t, until he died. That had made Cela McKinney oddand nervous. She locked her doors at eight o’clock. She was also very stingy. Supper was usuallyoatmeal porridge, with raisins. Her house was dark and narrow and smelled like a bank.
The train was filling up. At Brantford a man asked if she would mind if he sat down beside her.
“It’s cooler out than you’d think,” he said. He offered her part of his newspaper. She said nothanks.
Then lest he think her rude she said it really was cooler. She went on looking out the window atthe spring morning. There was no snow left, down here. The trees and bushes seemed to have apaler bark than they did at home. Even the sunlight looked different. It was as different from home,here, as the coast of the Mediterranean would be, or the valleys of California.
“Filthy windows, you’d think they’d take more care,” the man said. “Do you travel much bytrain?”
She said no.
Water was lying in the fields. He nodded at it and said there was a lot this year.
“Heavy snows.”
She noticed his saying snows, a poetic-sounding word. Anyone at home would have said snow.
“I had an unusual experience the other day. I was driving out in the country. In fact I was on myway to see one of my parishioners, a lady with a heart condition—”
She looked quickly at his collar. He was wearing an ordinary shirt and tie and a dark blue suit.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m a United Church minister. But I don’t always wear my uniform. I wearit for preaching in. I’m off duty today.”
“Well as I said I was driving through the country and I saw some Canada Geese down on apond, and I took another look, and there were some swans down with them. A whole great flock ofswans. What a lovely sight they were. They would be on their spring migration, I expect, headingup north. What a spectacle. I never saw anything like it.”
Rose was unable to think appreciatively of the wild swans because she was afraid he was goingto lead the conversation from them to Nature in general and then to God, the way a minister wouldfeel obliged to do. But he did not, he stopped with the swans.
“A very fine sight. You would have enjoyed them.”
He was between fifty and sixty years old, Rose thought. He was short, and energetic-looking,with a square ruddy face and bright waves of gray hair combed straight up from his forehead.
When she realized he was not going to mention God she felt she ought to show her gratitude.
She said they must have been lovely.
“It wasn’t even a regular pond, it was just some water lying in a field. It was just by luck thewater was lying there and I had to drive by there. And they came down and I came driving by atthe right time. Just by luck. They come in at the east end of Lake Erie, I think. But I never waslucky enough to see them before.”
She turned by degrees to the window, and he returned to his paper. She remained slightlysmiling, so as not to seem rude, not to seem to be rejecting conversation altogether. The morningreally was cool, and she had taken down her coat off the hook where she put it when she first goton the train, she had spread it over herself, like a lap robe. She had set her purse on the floor whenthe minister sat down, to give him room. He took the sections of the paper apart, shaking andrustling them in a leisurely, rather showy, way. He seemed to her the sort of person who doeseverything in a showy way. A ministerial way. He brushed aside the sections he didn’t want at themoment. A corner of newspaper touched her leg, just at the edge of her coat.
She thought for some time that it was the paper. Then she said to herself, what if it is a hand?
That was the kind of thing she could imagine. She would sometimes look at men’s hands, at thefuzz on their forearms, their concentrating profiles. She would think about everything they coulddo. Even the stupid ones. For instance the driver-salesman who brought the bread to Flo’s store.
The ripeness and confidence of manner, the settled mixture of ease and alertness, with which hehandled the bread truck. A fold of mature belly over the belt did not displease her. Another timeshe had her eye on the French teacher at school. Not a Frenchman at all, really, his name wasMcLaren, but Rose thought teaching French had rubbed off on him, made him look like one.
Quick and sallow; sharp shoulders; hooked nose and sad eyes. She saw him lapping and coilinghis way through slow pleasures, a perfect autocrat of indulgences. She had a considerable longingto be somebody’s object. Pounded, pleasured, reduced, exhausted.
But what if it was a hand? What if it really was a hand? She shifted slightly, moved as much asshe could towards the window. Her imagination seemed to have created this reality, a reality shewas not prepared for at all. She found it alarming. She was concentrating on that leg, that bit ofskin with the stocking over it. She could not bring herself to look. Was there a pressure, or wasthere not? She shifted again. Her legs had been, and remained, tightly closed. It was. It was a hand.
It was a hand’s pressure.
Please don’t. That was what she tried to say. She shaped the words in her mind, tried them out,then couldn’t get them past her lips. Why was that? The embarrassment, was it, the fear thatpeople might hear? People were all around them, the seats were full.
It was not only that.
She did manage to look at him, not raising her head but turning it cautiously. He had tilted hisseat back and closed his eyes. There was his dark blue suit sleeve, disappearing under thenewspaper. He had arranged the paper so that it overlapped Rose’s coat. His hand was underneath,simply resting, as if flung out in sleep.
Now, Rose could have shifted the newspaper and removed her coat. If he was not asleep, hewould have been obliged to draw back his hand. If he was asleep, if he did not draw it back, shecould have whispered, Excuse me, and set his hand firmly on his own knee. This solution, soobvious and foolproof, did not occur to her. And she would have to wonder, why not? Theminister’s hand was not, or not yet, at all welcome to her. It made her feel uncomfortable,resentful, slightly disgusted, trapped and wary. But she could not take charge of it, to reject it. Shecould not insist that it was there, when he seemed to be insisting that it was not. How could shedeclare him responsible, when he lay there so harmless and trusting, resting himself before hisbusy day, with such a pleased and healthy face? A man older than her father would be, if he wereliving, a man used to deference, an appreciator of Nature, delighter in wild swans. If she did sayPlease don’t she was sure he would ignore her, as if overlooking some silliness or impoliteness onher part. She knew that as soon as she said it she would hope he had not heard.
But there was more to it than that. Curiosity. More constant, more imperious, than any lust. Alust in itself, that will make you draw back and wait, wait too long, risk almost anything, just tosee what will happen. To see what will happen.
The hand began, over the next several miles, the most delicate, the most timid, pressures andinvestigations. Not asleep. Or if he was, his hand wasn’t. She did feel disgust. She felt a faint,wandering nausea. She thought of flesh: lumps of flesh, pink snouts, fat tongues, blunt fingers, allon their way trotting and creeping and lolling and rubbing, looking for their comfort. She thoughtof cats in heat rubbing themselves along the top of board fences, yowling with their miserablecomplaint. It was pitiful, infantile, this itching and shoving and squeezing. Spongy tissues,inflamed membranes, tormented nerve-ends, shameful smells; humiliation.
All that was starting. His hand, that she wouldn’t ever have wanted to hold, that she wouldn’thave squeezed back, his stubborn patient hand was able, after all, to get the ferns to rustle and thestreams to flow, to waken a sly luxuriance.
Nevertheless, she would rather not. She would still rather not. Please remove this, she said outthe window. Stop it, please, she said to the stumps and barns. The hand moved up her leg past thetop of her stocking to her bare skin, had moved higher, under her suspender, reached herunderpants and the lower part of her belly. Her legs were still crossed, pinched together. While herlegs stayed crossed she could lay claim to innocence, she had not admitted anything. She couldstill believe that she would stop this in a minute. Nothing was going to happen, nothing more. Herlegs were never going to open.
But they were. They were. As the train crossed the Niagara Escarpment above Dundas, as theylooked down at the preglacial valley, the silver-wooded rubble of little hills, as they came slidingdown to the shores of Lake Ontario, she would make this slow, and silent, and definite,declaration, perhaps disappointing as much as satisfying the hand’s owner. He would not lift hiseyelids, his face would not alter, his fingers would not hesitate, but would go powerfully anddiscreetly to work. Invasion, and welcome, and sunlight flashing far and wide on the lake water;miles of bare orchards stirring round Burlington.
This was disgrace, this was beggary. But what harm in that, we say to ourselves at suchmoments, what harm in anything, the worse the better, as we ride the cold wave of greed, ofgreedy assent. A stranger’s hand, or root vegetables or humble kitchen tools that people tell jokesabout; the world is tumbling with innocent-seeming objects ready to declare themselves, slipperyand obliging. She was careful of her breathing. She could not believe this. Victim and accompliceshe was borne past Glassco’s Jams and Marmalades, past the big pulsating pipes of oil refineries.
They glided into suburbs where bedsheets, and towels used to wipe up intimate stains flappedleeringly on the clotheslines, where even the children seemed to be frolicking lewdly in theschoolyards, and the very truckdrivers stopped at the railway crossings must be thrusting theirthumbs gleefully into curled hands. Such cunning antics now, such popular visions. The gates andtowers of the Exhibition Grounds came to view, the painted domes and pillars floated marvelouslyagainst her eyelids’ rosy sky. Then flew apart in celebration. You could have had such a flock ofbirds, wild swans, even, wakened under one big dome together, exploding from it, taking to thesky.
She bit the edge of her tongue. Very soon the conductor passed through the train, to stir thetravelers, warn them back to life.
In the darkness under the station the United Church minister, refreshed, opened his eyes and gothis paper folded together, then asked if she would like some help with her coat. His gallantry wasself-satisfied, dismissive. No, said Rose, with a sore tongue. He hurried out of the train ahead ofher. She did not see him in the station. She never saw him again in her life. But he remained oncall, so to speak, for years and years, ready to slip into place at a critical moment, without evenany regard, later on, for husband or lovers. What recommended him? She could never understandit. His simplicity, his arrogance, his perversely appealing lack of handsomeness, even of ordinarygrown-up masculinity? When he stood up she saw that he was shorter even than she had thought,that his face was pink and shiny, that there was something crude and pushy and childish abouthim.
Was he a minister, really, or was that only what he said? Flo had mentioned people who werenot ministers, dressed up as if they were. Not real ministers dressed as if they were not. Or,stranger still, men who were not real ministers pretending to be real but dressed as if they werenot. But that she had come as close as she had, to what could happen, was an unwelcome thing.
Rose walked through union Station feeling the little bag with the ten dollars rubbing at her, knewshe would feel it all day long, rubbing its reminder against her skin.
She couldn’t stop getting Flo’s messages, even with that. She remembered, because she was inunion Station, that there was a girl named Mavis working here, in the Gift Shop, when Flo wasworking in the coffee shop. Mavis had warts on her eyelids that looked like they were going toturn into sties but they didn’t, they went away. Maybe she had them removed, Flo didn’t ask. Shewas very good-looking, without them. There was a movie star in those days she looked a lot like.
The movie star’s name was Frances Farmer.
Frances Farmer. Rose had never heard of her.
That was the name. And Mavis went and bought herself a big hat that dipped over one eye and adress entirely made of lace. She went off for the weekend to Georgian Bay, to a resort up there.
She booked herself in under the name of Florence Farmer. To give everybody the idea she wasreally the other one, Frances Farmer, but calling herself Florence because she was on holidays anddidn’t want to be recognized. She had a little cigarette holder that was black and mother-of-pearl.
She could have been arrested, Flo said. For the nerve.
Rose almost went over to the Gift Shop, to see if Mavis was still there and if she couldrecognize her. She thought it would be an especially fine thing, to manage a transformation likethat. To dare it; to get away with it, to enter on preposterous adventures in your own, but newlynamed, skin.
野天鹅
野天鹅
弗洛说，要警惕那些白奴贩子。她说他们是这样操作的：一个老女人，像当妈的或者是当外婆的，在你坐公交车或者火车的时候跟你交朋友。她会给你糖果吃，其实那是毒品。很快你就口水横流、神志不清，完全没法为自己说话了。哦，救命啊，女人说，我的女儿（孙女）病倒啦，谁来帮帮我把她抱出去呼吸点清新空气，让她好起来吧。然后一位彬彬有礼的绅士走来，假装是个陌生人，来提供帮助。于是他们在下一站，一起推推搡搡地把你带下火车或者公交车，那就是这个世界见你最后一眼的时候了。他们会把你送到囚禁白奴的地方囚禁你（你已经中了毒，被绑着运到这里，所以你也不知道自己在哪儿），到了这个时候，你就完全处于屈辱和绝望之中了，喝醉的男人将你蹂躏个遍，还注入了极可怕的病毒，你的头脑已经被毒品摧毁，你的头发和牙齿都往下掉。三年后你就到了这个境地。那个时候你已经不想回家，可能都记不起来家了，要是记得，也找不到回去的路。所以他们把你扔到街上去。
弗洛拿了十块钱，放进小布袋里，那个小布袋是弗洛给露丝缝的，就缝在露丝的腰带间。另外一件有可能发生的事情，就是露丝的钱包会被偷。
小心点啊，弗洛说，看到穿得像牧师的人都留个心眼。他们是最坏的。白奴贩子最爱假装牧师，小偷也是。
露丝说她分不清哪个是假装的哪个不是。
弗洛之前在多伦多工作过。她在联合车站一家咖啡馆工作。就是在那里，她学到了如今知晓的一切。那些时候，她从来没有见过阳光，除非是在她放假的时候。但是她见到了很多别的事。她见过一个男人用刀子划开另外一个男人的肚子，他就拉开他的衬衫，利落地划了一刀，仿佛那是个西瓜不是肚子。那肚子的主人就低头往下看，满脸惊讶，没有时间反抗。弗洛暗示说，在多伦多，这都不算什么。她见过两个坏女人——弗洛管妓女叫“坏女人”，两个词语连起来用，就像羽毛球也叫“坏明顿”（badminton）一样，她们打架了，有个男人对着她们大笑，其他男人也停下来笑，朝她们扔鸡蛋，她们的拳头往对方头发上猛砸一通。最后警察来把她们带走了，带走的时候她们还大吼大叫个不停。
她还见过一个死于痉挛的孩子。他的脸就像墨水一样黑。
“不过我不怕，”露丝挑衅地说，“不是还有警察吗？”
“哦，警察！他是第一个骗你的人！”
她不相信弗洛说的关于性方面的话。想想那些送葬者吧。
一个穿着整洁的小个子秃头男人有时候会到店里来，带着抚慰的神色跟弗洛说话。
“我只要一包糖果。可能几包口香糖就可以了。一两块巧克力棒。能麻烦你帮我包一下吗？”
弗洛用一种嘲讽的礼貌语调告诉他“没问题”。她拿结实的白色纸张把它们包好，像几份礼物似的。他则慢慢挑选，一边哼着歌，聊着天，然后闲站一会儿。他可能会问弗洛感觉怎么样。如果露丝在，也会问露丝感觉怎么样。
“你脸色苍白。年轻女孩们需要点新鲜空气啊。”他会对弗洛说，“你干活太卖力了。你这辈子都在卖力干活呢。”
“咱们下等人就是没法休息啊。”弗洛会同意地说。
他走出去之后，弗洛会匆匆跑到窗户去看。就在那，一辆破旧的黑色灵车，紫色的帘子放下来。
“他今天就会去追她们！”灵车慢慢开走，就像葬礼的速度那样慢慢开走时，弗洛会这么说。
那小个子男人就是个送葬者，不过他已经退休了。那灵车其实也已经退休了。他的儿子接过了送葬的工作，买了一辆新车。于是他就开着这辆旧灵车跑遍乡村，找女人玩。弗洛说。露丝不相信这事。弗洛说他给她们口香糖和糖果。露丝说他很可能是自己吃了呀。弗洛说她见过，她听说过。天气暖和的时候，他会把窗户拉下来，唱歌，唱给自己听，也唱给跟在后面看不见的人们听。
她的眉毛像雪堆
她的喉咙像天鹅
弗洛学着他唱。他会温柔地赶上那些岔道上走着的女人，或者在乡村的十字路口上休息。他会拿出所有的赞美、礼貌，还有巧克力棒，载她们一程。当然，听说每一个被问到的女人都拒绝了他。他从来没有打扰到任何人，只是礼貌地继续开车。他还会光顾别人家里，如果丈夫在家，他就会像平常人一样坐在那里聊天。妻子们说，反正他做过的事情就是这些了，但是弗洛不相信。
“有些女人被带进他的灵车里了，”她说，“有不少。”她喜欢猜测那灵车里面是什么。奢华。
墙壁、屋顶和地板都是奢华的。淡紫色，窗帘的颜色，深色丁香花的颜色。
全都胡说八道，露丝想。谁能相信呢，那个年龄的男人？
露丝要第一次自己一个人坐火车去多伦多了。她之前去过，不过是跟弗洛在一起，远在她父亲去世之前。她们带上了自己的三明治，在火车上的小摊上买了牛奶。是酸的。酸的巧克力牛奶。露丝一直在小口小口地抿，不愿意相信她渴望良久的东西居然如此令她失望。弗洛闻了闻，然后翻遍火车上下，终于找到了那个穿着红色夹克衫的老男人，他没牙，一个托盘挂在了他的脖子上。她让他自己喝喝那巧克力牛奶。她让旁边的人闻闻。他只好免费给了她一些姜汁啤酒。还有点热乎。
“我让他知道，”他走了之后，弗洛环顾四周说，“你得让他们知道。”
有个女人表示同意，但是大多数人都望向窗外。露丝喝下了那瓶热乎乎的姜汁啤酒。在火车上，要么是这样，要么就是会发生小摊贩的那件事，要么呢，就是弗洛跟那个表示同意的女人熟络了起来，她们聊到对方来自哪里，为什么去多伦多，还聊到露丝脸色这么差是因为早上便秘，或者是因为喝了点巧克力奶，所以到火车的厕所里吐了。她整天都在害怕多伦多的人们会闻到她大衣上呕吐的味道。
这一次旅途开始前，弗洛对列车员说：“看着点她啊，她可从来没有离开过家！”然后她环顾四周大笑，表示这只是开开玩笑。再接着她就得下车了。那位列车员好像没什么听笑话的需要，更不把露丝放在心上，也不打算“看着点”什么人。除了检查车票，他也没有跟露丝说过什么。露丝坐在靠窗的位置上，很快就心情雀跃了，她轻快地把那个倦怠的自己丢掉，就像把一切抛在脑后一样。她对那些市镇的感情渐渐淡去，渐渐感到陌生。一个女人穿着睡衣站在她的后门前，不在乎车上的其他人有没有看见她。他们往南边行进，开出那雪域，迎接一个早春，去看更柔和的风景。人们可以在他们的后院里种植桃树。
露丝在脑子里整理她到多伦多的购物清单。首先，买弗洛的东西。她静脉曲张，需要一些特殊的长袜。一种用来黏合壶把手的特殊水泥。还有一整套多米诺骨牌。
她自己想买个手臂和腿用的除毛器，如果可能的话还买一些充气垫，据说可以瘦臀和大腿的充气垫。她觉得西汉拉提的药房里可能是有除毛器的，不过弗洛的朋友在那个店里，她买了染发剂、减肥药和避孕套，那朋友就跟她讲了关于这事的一切。说到充气垫，你可以邮寄，不过得跟邮局的人说明，而且弗洛也认识邮局里的人。露丝还打算买些镯子，还有安哥拉山羊毛衣。她对银镯子和深蓝色的安哥拉山羊毛衣满心期待。她觉得这些服饰可以让她变个人，可以让她变得安详、苗条、头发柔顺、腋下干燥、神采奕奕。
买这些东西的钱，以及这次旅途的钱，是露丝写《明日世界的艺术和科学》这篇论文赢来的奖金。让她吃惊的是，弗洛问她能不能读这篇文章，而她读的时候评价说，他们肯定想过要给露丝颁发一个“吃透词典”奖。然后她不好意思地说：“有意思。”
她会在塞拉•麦肯尼家过夜。塞拉•麦肯尼是她父亲的表亲。她嫁给了一位酒店经理，就觉得在这世间有了地位。然而有一天，酒店经理回到家，坐在餐厅两张椅子的地板上说：“我再也不想离开这个房子了。”没什么特别的事情发生，但是他就是决定不再离开这个房子了，他真的没离开过，直到他死去。这让塞拉•麦肯尼感到奇怪又紧张。每到八点她就要锁住房门。她还很小气。晚餐通常是燕麦粥加葡萄干。她的房子漆黑、狭窄，闻起来像个银行。
越来越多的人渐渐上了火车。在布兰特福德，一个男人问，是否介意他坐在她旁边。
“外面比你想象的要冷。”他说。他拿出一份报纸给她看。她说不用，谢谢。
为了不让他感到她粗鲁，她说，外面的确更冷一些。她继续看窗外这个早春的清晨。这里已经看不见雪了。这里的树和灌木丛似乎比家里的要更苍白些。甚至阳光看上去都不一样。就像地中海岸，就像加州山谷，跟家里都不一样。
“窗户可真脏，总觉得他们能打理打理的，”那个男人说，“你常坐火车出门吗？”
她说不是的。
窗外的田地里淌着水。他点了点头，说今年这样的景象很常见。
“下了很大的白雪。”
她注意到他说的是“白雪”，蛮有诗意的说法。家里的人们都会说雪。
“有一天我经历了件不一样的事。我在村外开车。实际上我正开车去看我的一位教民，是个得了心脏毛病的女士——”
她快速地看了看他的领子。他穿着一件普通的衬衫，打着领带，深蓝色的套装。
“哦，对了，”他说，“我是联合教会的牧师。但是我并不经常穿我的服装。布道的时候才会穿上。我今天休息。
“好了，我刚才说到，我开车经过乡村，看到一些加拿大雁在池塘里，我又看了一眼，跟它们在一起的还有些天鹅。有很大一群天鹅。那景象多美妙啊。它们应该是正在春天的迁徙之中，我想，它们正去往北方。多壮观啊。我从来没有见过这样的景象。”
露丝没法对这些野天鹅产生什么赞赏之情，因为她害怕这个对话会引向对自然的讨论，然后会说到神，牧师通常会觉得有义务这么做。但是他没有，他说完天鹅就停下来了。
他大概是五六十岁，露丝想。他个头小，精神矍铄，长着一张红润的方脸，他的额头前整齐地梳着灰白头发的清晰波浪。当她意识到他不会提到神的时候，她觉得自己应该表现出一些感激来。
她说，那一定是美妙的景象啊。
“那甚至都不算一个真正的池塘，就是那片田地恰好有些水，那有水是全凭运气，就这么淌下来，我也恰好是在那个时候开车经过。就是运气。水是从伊利湖的东部末端下来的，我觉得。但是以前我从来没有这么好的运气看见。”
她的身子往窗户转过去一点，他回去看他的报纸。她一直保持微笑，这样看上去不至于粗鲁，不至于显得她完全拒绝对话。早上的确冷，她从挂钩上取下了自己的大衣。一进火车她就把这大衣挂在火车上，现在她将它盖住了身体，就像盖着条毛毯一样。那牧师坐下来的时候，她就把自己的钱包放在地板上了，给他挪点位置。他将报纸的不同部分分开，慢悠悠地，以一种显摆的姿态摇晃着它，发出沙沙的声音。这是牧师看报的方式。他把现在不想看的部分都甩一边去。报纸的一角碰到了她的腿，就在那件大衣的边上。
她想了一会儿，是报纸碰着了她。然后她对自己说：如果碰到她的是手怎么办？这是她能想到的事情。她有的时候会看男人的手，看他们前臂的汗毛，看他们正集中精力看的文件。她会想象一切他们能做的事情。那些愚蠢的男人也不例外。比如那个把面包送到弗洛的店铺的流动销售员。他的举动熟练而自信，面对面包车，他已经练就了一套悠然又警觉的工作方式。但皮带上方的便便大腹让她心生不悦。还有一次她观察学校里的一个法国老师。真的，不是个法国人，他的名字是麦克拉伦，但是露丝觉得教法文已经擦去了他本来的面貌，让他看着就跟法国人一样了。他身手敏捷，面色发黄，有着瘦削的肩膀、钩子鼻和犹豫的眼神。
她看见他在那不紧不慢的欢愉里徜徉，驻守在这自我沉迷之中。她非常希望自己也成为别人的关注对象。若是这样，她的心会怦怦作响、心满意足，随后累得损兵折将、偃旗息鼓。
如果是一只手呢？如果它真是一只手可怎么办？她微微转动，尽量往窗户那边靠。她的想象力似乎已经创造了这样的现实，她完全没有做好准备的现实。她觉得情形危急。她把注意力放在了那条腿上，放在那条长袜盖住的那小片皮肤上。她简直没法去看。她是在那个地方感受到了一种压力吗？还是没有？她又转了一下身子。她的两腿一直都是，现在也是，紧紧地并拢着。是。那是一只手。那是一只手的压力。
请不要这样。她想这么说。她把那语句在脑子里变了变，想把它们说出来，但是无法送出她的唇间。为什么？是尴尬吗，是害怕别人可能听到吗？他们身边全都是人，座位都是满的。
不仅仅是这样。
她最终还是去看他了，不是抬头去看，而是小心翼翼地扭头去看。他已经斜靠着座椅，闭上了他的眼睛。消失在报纸下面的，是他深蓝色套装的袖子。他已经将报纸重新放好，于是也盖住了露丝的大衣。他的手放在下面，只是放那儿，就像是睡觉的时候伸出去的一样。
现在，露丝可以移一移报纸，把大衣拿走。如果他不是在睡觉的话，他就得把手缩回去了。
如果他在睡觉，那么她可能会小声地说，抱歉，然后把他的手稳稳地放在他自己的膝盖上面。这种明显又无误的解决办法，她并没有想到。于是她又得想，为什么不这样做呢？她并不欢迎，或者说暂时还不欢迎这位牧师的手。这让她感到不适、愤懑，感到一丝厌恶，感到行动受限，必须小心翼翼。如果他坚持说手没有放在那儿，她也没法坚持说，那手就是放在了那。在忙碌的一天开始前，他躺在那里，带着愉悦而健康的脸庞，看上去毫无恶意、值得信任，这叫她怎么说他对此事有责任呢？如果她父亲还活着，他会比她父亲年纪更大，这是个受人尊敬的男人，他会欣赏自然，会对野天鹅感到欣喜。如果她真的说了请不要这样，她敢肯定他不会在意这句话，就像忽略她身上的某种笨拙和无礼一样。
但除此之外还有更多。好奇。比任何情欲更加不离不弃、更加专横跋扈。这是一种自我的情欲，它会让你后退、等待，等待太久，几乎赌上一切，就为了看看到底会发生什么。看看到底会发生什么。
接下来几英里的旅途上，那只手开始了它最优雅、最怯懦的按压和勘探。没睡着。如果说他睡着了，他的手并没有。她的的确确感觉到了恶心。她感到一阵眩晕的、错乱的作呕。她想到的是肉体：层叠的肉体、粉红的口鼻、肥大的舌头、粗钝的手指，都在慢慢地、悄悄地、懒懒地摩挲着，寻着安慰。她想象着发情的猫儿就着木围栏的顶部来回摩擦，哀嚎着表达那痛苦的埋怨。那样的痛痒、推撞、挤压，如此可怜、如此幼稚。吸水的纸巾、兴奋的内膜、煎熬的神经、羞辱的味道；耻。
一切都开始了。他的手，她不想去拉他的手，她也不想挤回去，他那顽固的、坚韧的手，毕竟能让植物沙沙作响，能让小溪淙淙流淌，也能唤醒偷欢的极乐世界。
无论如何，她还是不要。她还是不要这样。拿开吧，她对着窗外说。停下来吧，求你了，她对着树桩和谷仓说。那手移上了她的腿，越过了她的长袜，来到她露出的皮肤上，然后又移得更高，在她的吊带之下，到达了她的内裤和肚子下方的那个部分。她的两腿仍然是合上的，并拢在一起。两腿如果并在一起，她就可以认为清白，就可以什么都不承认了。她还觉得自己能放下这心思一会儿。没什么事要发生，没什么事情。她的双腿永远不会张开。
但是它们张开了。张开了。火车经过登达斯的尼亚加拉悬崖，他们低头去看那冰河期前的山谷，看小山银灰的碎石，当他们的火车滑过安大略湖的岸边时，她会缓慢地、安静地、确定地做出这个宣告的姿态，这举动或许令人失望，正如会让那只手的主人感到满足一样。他没有睁开眼，他的脸没有转动，但是他的手指不会犹豫，有力而谨慎地工作着。侵略吧，欢迎吧，阳光照耀在湖面上，尽情铺洒；伯灵顿那几英里开外的果园，光秃秃的，骚动着呀。
这是耻辱，这是乞讨。但又有什么害处呢，在这样的时刻我们总会这样对自己说，有什么害处呢，当我们驾着贪婪的冰凉波浪时，越坏越好呢，我们得到了贪婪的许可。陌生人的手、根类蔬菜、简陋的厨房工具，人们常拿这些来讲笑话；这些看上去人畜无害的东西争先恐后地向世界宣告它的无辜，有油嘴滑舌的，有忠厚老实的。她小心呼吸着。她无法相信这些。
她是受害者，也是同谋者，火车经过格拉斯科的果酱工厂，经过炼油厂那巨大的如脉搏般跳动的输油管。他们滑进了郊区，在那儿，床单和毛巾用来擦去那些私密的污渍，它们垂落在晾衣绳上，色眯眯的；同样是在那儿，连孩子们都在校园里玩着下流的游戏，停在铁道十字路口的司机一定正在欢快地将拇指插进那握起的双手里。看看现在，景色这么好，动作却这么怪。展览中心的大门和高塔出现在眼前，着了色的穹顶和柱子在她眼皮下玫瑰色的天空中惊异地飘浮着。你甚至可以看到一群鸟儿——一群野天鹅，在这大大的穹顶之下觉醒、爆破，然后向天空进发。
她咬了咬舌边。很快，列车员就穿过火车，叫醒旅客，警告他们该到现实中来了。
在漆黑的车站下，联合教会牧师清醒过来，睁开眼睛，把报纸叠起来，然后问要不要帮忙弄她的大衣。他自我满足于这殷勤，又显得满不在乎。不用，露丝说，她舌头还痛着。他在她前头，快速地走出了火车。她在车站也没看见他。此生再没见过他。但是关于他的记忆总是出现，可以这么说，年复一年，在这之后，这记忆随时可以溜进一个关键的瞬间，干扰到丈夫或者情人出现的时刻。是什么让他出现的？她不明白。他的率真、他的傲慢，他面容的毫不英俊，甚至是他那普普通通的成人男子模样？当他站起来的时候，她看到他甚至都没她想象的高，他的脸红扑扑地发着光，这是他的糙、他的任性和他的孩子气。
他是一个牧师，真的吗，还是他自己编的？弗洛提到过那些不是牧师却穿得像牧师的人。她说的可不是穿得不像牧师，但其实真的是牧师的人啊。或者说，更奇怪的那种，不是真的牧师，假装是，但穿得跟他们不是似的。她亲身遇到的那件事，是一件讨厌的事。露丝穿过联合车站，感觉到那装着十块钱的小袋子在她身上摩擦着，她知道她整天都会感觉到它的存在，她的皮肤会在这个提示器上如此摩擦着。
即便如此，她脑子里也一直想着弗洛传递的信息。因为她在联合车站，她记得弗洛在这里的咖啡店工作的时候，有一个叫梅维斯的女孩也在这里工作，在礼品店里。梅维斯的眼皮上有个疣子，似乎要变成麦粒肿的样子，不过最后没有，这疣子不见了。可能她做了去除手术，弗洛没问。去除它之后，她的样子很好看。她长得很像那个时候的一个电影女明星。那个明星叫弗兰西斯•法默。
弗兰西斯•法默。露丝从来没有听说过她。
是这名字。梅维斯去买了一顶大大的帽子，垂在她一只眼睛前，还有一条完全用蕾丝做成的连衣裙。她周末的时候去乔治亚湾，去那儿的一个旅游胜地。她是用弗洛伦斯•法默这个名字订票的。其实她想告诉大家，她是另外一个人，是弗兰西斯•法默，她管自己叫弗洛伦斯是因为她在度假，不想被人认出来。她有一个黑色的珍珠母做的烟斗。她会被抓起来的，弗洛说。就凭这胆儿。
露丝差点就要去那礼品店，去看梅维斯是不是仍然在那儿，看自己能不能认出她来。她想，能做出这样的一个转变，会是一件特别棒的事情。去挑战它，去摆脱它，独自踏上那段荒谬的旅程，以脱胎换骨的身份。
The Beggar Maid
The Beggar Maid
Patrick Blatchford was in love with Rose. This had become a fixed, even furious, idea with him.
For her, a continual surprise. He wanted to marry her. He waited for her after classes, moved inand walked beside her, so that anybody she was talking to would have to reckon with his presence.
He would not talk, when these friends or classmates of hers were around, but he would try to catchher eye, so that he could indicate by a cold incredulous look what he thought of their conversation.
Rose was flattered, but nervous. A girl named Nancy Falls, a friend of hers, mispronouncedMetternich in his presence. He said to her later, “How can you be friends with people like that?”
Nancy and Rose had gone and sold their blood together, at Victoria Hospital. They each gotfifteen dollars. They spent most of the money on evening shoes, tarty silver sandals. Then becausethey were sure the bloodletting had caused them to lose weight they had hot fudge sundaes atBoomers. Why was Rose unable to defend Nancy to Patrick?
Patrick was twenty-four years old, a graduate student, planning to be a history professor. Hewas tall, thin, fair, and good-looking, though he had a long pale-red birthmark, dribbling like a teardown his temple and his cheek. He apologized for it, but said it was fading, as he got older. Whenhe was forty, it would have faded away. It was not the birthmark that canceled out his good looks,Rose thought. (Something did cancel them out, or at least diminish them, for her; she had to keepreminding herself they were there.) There was something edgy, jumpy, disconcerting, about him.
His voice would break under stress—with her, it seemed he was always under stress—he knockeddishes and cups off tables, spilled drinks and bowls of peanuts, like a comedian. He was not acomedian; nothing could be further from his intentions. He came from British Columbia. Hisfamily was rich.
He arrived early to pick Rose up, when they were going to the movies. He wouldn’t knock, heknew he was early. He sat on the step outside Dr. Henshawe’s door. This was in the winter, it wasdark out, but there was a little coach lamp beside the door.
“Oh, Rose! Come and look!” called Dr. Henshawe, in her soft, amused voice, and they lookeddown together from the dark window of the study. “The poor young man,” said Dr. Henshawetenderly. Dr. Henshawe was in her seventies. She was a former English professor, fastidious andlively. She had a lame leg, but a still youthfully, charmingly tilted head, with white braids woundaround it.
She called Patrick poor because he was in love, and perhaps also because he was a male,doomed to push and blunder. Even from up here he looked stubborn and pitiable, determined anddependent, sitting out there in the cold.
“Guarding the door,” Dr. Henshawe said. “Oh, Rose!”
Another time she said disturbingly, “Oh, dear, I’m afraid he is after the wrong girl.”
Rose didn’t like her saying that. She didn’t like her laughing at Patrick. She didn’t like Patricksitting out on the steps that way, either. He was asking to be laughed at. He was the mostvulnerable person Rose had ever known, he made himself so, didn’t know anything aboutprotecting himself. But he was also full of cruel judgments, he was full of conceit.
“YOU ARE A SCHOLAR, Rose,” Dr. Henshawe would say. “This will interest you.” Then shewould read aloud something from the paper, or, more likely, something from Canadian Forum orThe Atlantic Monthly. Dr. Henshawe had at one time headed the city’s school board, she was afounding member of the C.C.F. She still sat on committees, wrote letters to the paper, reviewedbooks. Her father and mother had been medical missionaries; she had been born in China. Herhouse was small and perfect. Polished floors, glowing rugs, Chinese vases, bowls and landscapes,black carved screens. Much that Rose could not appreciate, at the time. She could not reallydistinguish between the little jade animals on Dr. Henshawe’s mantelpiece, and the ornamentsdisplayed in the jewelry store window, in Hanratty, though she could now distinguish betweeneither of these and the things Flo bought from the five-and-ten.
She could not really decide how much she liked being at Dr. Henshawe’s. At times she feltdiscouraged, sitting in the dining room with a linen napkin on her knee, eating from fine whiteplates on blue placemats. For one thing, there was never enough to eat, and she had taken tobuying doughnuts and chocolate bars and hiding them in her room. The canary swung on its perchin the dining room window and Dr. Henshawe directed conversation. She talked about politics,about writers. She mentioned Frank Scott and Dorothy Livesay. She said Rose must read them.
Rose must read this, she must read that. Rose became sullenly determined not to. She was readingThomas Mann. She was reading Tolstoy.
Before she came to Dr. Henshawe’s, Rose had never heard of the working class. She took thedesignation home.
“This would have to be the last part of town where they put the sewers,” Flo said.
“Of course,” Rose said coolly. “This is the working-class part of town.”
“Working class?” said Flo. “Not if the ones around here can help it.” Dr. Henshawe’s house haddone one thing. It had destroyed the naturalness, the taken-for-granted background, of home. Togo back there was to go quite literally into a crude light. Flo had put fluorescent lights in the storeand the kitchen. There was also, in a corner of the kitchen, a floor lamp Flo had won at Bingo; itsshade was permanently wrapped in wide strips of cellophane. What Dr. Henshawe’s house andFlo’s house did best, in Rose’s opinion, was discredit each other. In Dr. Henshawe’s charmingrooms there was always for Rose the raw knowledge of home, an indigestible lump, and at home,now, her sense of order and modulation elsewhere exposed such embarrassing sad poverty, inpeople who never thought themselves poor. Poverty was not just wretchedness, as Dr. Henshaweseemed to think, it was not just deprivation. It meant having those ugly tube lights and being proudof them. It meant continual talk of money and malicious talk about new things people had boughtand whether they were paid for. It meant pride and jealousy flaring over something like the newpair of plastic curtains, imitating lace, that Flo had bought for the front window. That as well ashanging your clothes on nails behind the door and being able to hear every sound from thebathroom. It meant decorating your walls with a number of admonitions, pious and cheerful andmildly bawdy.
THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD
BELIEVE IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
AND THOU SHALL BE SAVED
Why did Flo have those, when she wasn’t even religious? They were what people had, commonas calendars.
THIS IS MY KITCHEN AND I WILL DO
AS I DARNED PLEASE
MORE THAN TWO PERSONS TO A BED
IS DANGER0US AND UNLAWFUL
Billy Pope had brought that one. What would Patrick have to say about them? What wouldsomeone who was offended by a mispronunciation of Metternich think of Billy Pope’s stories?
Billy Pope worked in Tyde’s Butcher Shop. What he talked about most frequently now was theD.P., the Belgian, who had come to work there, and got on Billy Pope’s nerves with his impudentsinging of French songs and his naive notions of getting on in this country, buying a butcher shopof his own.
“Don’t you think you can come over here and get yourself ideas,” Billy Pope said to the D.P.
“It’s youse workin for us, and don’t think that’ll change into us workin for youse.” That shut himup, Billy Pope said.
Patrick would say from time to time that since her home was only fifty miles away he ought tocome up and meet Rose’s family.
“There’s only my stepmother.”
“It’s too bad I couldn’t have met your father.”
Rashly, she had presented her father to Patrick as a reader of history, an amateur scholar. Thatwas not exactly a lie, but it did not give a truthful picture of the circumstances.
“Is your stepmother your guardian?”
Rose had to say she did not know.
“Well, your father must have appointed a guardian for you in his will. Who administers hisestate?”
His estate. Rose thought an estate was land, such as people owned in England.
Patrick thought it was rather charming of her to think that. “No, his money and stocks and soon. What he left.”
“I don’t think he left any.”
“Don’t be silly,” Patrick said.
AND SOMETIMES Dr. Henshawe would say, “Well, you are a scholar, you are not interested inthat.” Usually she was speaking of some event at the college; a pep rally, a football game, a dance.
And usually she was right; Rose was not interested. But she was not eager to admit it. She did notseek or relish that definition of herself.
On the stairway wall hung graduation photographs of all the other girls, scholarship girls, whohad lived with Dr. Henshawe. Most of them had got to be teachers, then mothers. One was adietician, two were librarians, one was a professor of English, like Dr. Henshawe herself. Rose didnot care for the look of them, for their soft-focused meekly smiling gratitude, their large teeth andmaidenly rolls of hair. They seemed to be urging on her some deadly secular piety. There were noactresses among them, no brassy magazine journalists; none of them had latched on to the sort oflife Rose wanted for herself. She wanted to perform in public. She thought she wanted to be anactress but she never tried to act, was afraid to go near the college drama productions. She knewshe couldn’t sing or dance. She would really have liked to play the harp, but she had no ear formusic. She wanted to be known and envied, slim and clever. She told Dr. Henshawe that if shehad been a man she would have wanted to be a foreign correspondent.
“Then you must be one,” cried Dr. Henshawe alarmingly. “The future will be wide open, forwomen. You must concentrate on languages. You must take courses in political science. Andeconomics. Perhaps you could get a job on the paper for the summer. I have friends there.”
Rose was frightened at the idea of working on a paper, and she hated the introductoryeconomics course; she was looking for a way of dropping it. It was dangerous to mention things toDr. Henshawe.
SHE HAD GOT TO LIVE with Dr. Henshawe by accident. Another girl had been picked to movein, but she got sick; she had T.B., and went instead to a sanatorium. Dr. Henshawe came up to thecollege office on the second day of registration to get the names of some other scholarshipfreshmen.
Rose had been in the office just a little while before, asking where the meeting of thescholarship students was to be held. She had lost her notice. The Bursar was giving a talk to thenew scholarship students, telling them of ways to earn money and live cheaply and explaining thehigh standards of performance to be expected of them here, if they wanted their payments to keepcoming.
Rose found out the number of the room, and started up the stairs to the first floor. A girl cameup beside her and said, “Are you on your way to three-oh-twelve, too?”
They walked together, telling each other the details of their scholarships. Rose did not yet havea place to live, she was staying at the Y. She did not really have enough money to be here at all.
She had a scholarship for her tuition and the county prize to buy her books and a bursary of threehundred dollars to live on; that was all.
“You’ll have to get a job,” the other girl said. She had a larger bursary, because she was inScience (that’s where the money is, the money’s all in science, she said seriously), but she washoping to get a job in the cafeteria. She had a room in somebody’s basement. How much doesyour room cost, how much does a hot plate cost, Rose asked her, her head swimming with anxiouscalculations.
This girl wore her hair in a roll. She wore a crepe blouse, yellowed and shining from washingand ironing. Her breasts were large and sagging. She probably wore a dirty-pink hooked-up-the-side brassiere. She had a scaly patch on one cheek.
“This must be it,” she said.
There was a little window in the door. They could look through at the other scholarship winnersalready assembled and waiting. It seemed to Rose that she saw four or five girls of the samestooped and matronly type as the girl who was beside her, and several bright-eyed, self-satisfiedbabyish-looking boys. It seemed to be the rule that girl scholarship winners looked about forty andboys about twelve. It was not possible, of course, that they all looked like this. It was not possiblethat in one glance through the window of the door Rose could detect traces of eczema, stainedunderarms, dandruff, moldy deposits on the teeth and crusty flakes in the corners of the eyes. Thatwas only what she thought. But there was a pall over them, she was not mistaken, there was a trueterrible pall of eagerness and docility. How else could they have supplied so many right answers,so many pleasing answers, how else distinguished themselves and got themselves here? And Rosehad done the same.
“I have to go to the john,” she said.
She could see herself, working in the cafeteria. Her figure, broad enough already, broadened outstill more by the green cotton uniform, her face red and her hair stringy from the heat. Dishing upstew and fried chicken for those of inferior intelligence and handsomer means. Blocked off by thesteam tables, the uniform, by decent hard work that nobody need be ashamed of, by publiclyproclaimed braininess and poverty. Boys could get away with that, barely. For girls it was fatal.
Poverty in girls is not attractive unless combined with sweet sluttishness, stupidity. Braininess isnot attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class. Was this true, and was shefoolish enough to care? It was; she was.
She went back to the first floor where the halls were crowded with ordinary students who werenot on scholarships, who would not be expected to get A’s and be grateful and live cheap.
Enviable and innocent, they milled around the registration tables in their new purple and whiteblazers, their purple Frosh beanies, yelling reminders to each other, confused information,nonsensical insults. She walked among them feeling bitterly superior and despondent. The skirt ofher green corduroy suit kept falling back between her legs as she walked. The material was limp;she should have spent more and bought the heavier weight. She thought now that the jacket wasnot properly cut either, though it had looked all right at home. The whole outfit had been made bya dressmaker in Hanratty, a friend of Flo’s, whose main concern had been that there should be norevelations of the figure. When Rose asked if the skirt couldn’t be made tighter this woman hadsaid, “You wouldn’t want your b.t.m. to show, now would you?” and Rose hadn’t wanted to sayshe didn’t care.
Another thing the dressmaker said was, “I thought now you was through school you’d begetting a job and help out at home.”
A woman walking down the hail stopped Rose.
“Aren’t you one of the scholarship girls?”
It was the Registrar’s secretary. Rose thought she was going to be reprimanded, for not being atthe meeting, and she was going to say she felt sick. She prepared her face for this lie. But thesecretary said, “Come with me, now. I’ve got somebody I want you to meet.”
Dr. Henshawe was making a charming nuisance of herself in the office. She liked poor girls,bright girls, but they had to be fairly good-looking girls.
“I think this could be your lucky day,” the secretary said, leading Rose. “If you could put apleasanter expression on your face.”
Rose hated being told that, but she smiled obediently.
Within the hour she was taken home with Dr. Henshawe, installed in the house with the Chinesescreens and vases, and told she was a scholar.
SHE GOT A JOB working in the Library of the college, instead of in the cafeteria. Dr. Henshawewas a friend of the Head Librarian. She worked on Saturday afternoons. She worked in the stacks,putting books away. On Saturday afternoons in the fall the Library was nearly empty, because ofthe football games. The narrow windows were open to the leafy campus, the football field, the dryfall country. The distant songs and shouts came drifting in.
The college buildings were not old at all, but they were built to look old. They were built ofstone. The Arts building had a tower, and the Library had casement windows, which might havebeen designed for shooting arrows through. The buildings and the books in the Library were whatpleased Rose most about the place. The life that usually filled it, and that was now drained away,concentrated around the football field, letting loose those noises, seemed to her inappropriate anddistracting. The cheers and songs were idiotic, if you listened to the words. What did they want tobuild such dignified buildings for, if they were going to sing songs like that?
She knew enough not to reveal these opinions. If anybody said to her, “It’s awful you have towork Saturdays and can’t get to any of the games,” she would fervently agree.
Once a man grabbed her bare leg, between her sock and her skirt. It happened in the Agriculturesection, down at the bottom of the stacks. Only the faculty, graduate students, and employees hadaccess to the stacks, though someone could have hoisted himself through a ground-floor window,if he was skinny. She had seen a man crouched down looking at the books on a low shelf, furtheralong. As she reached up to push a book into place he passed behind her. He bent and grabbed herleg, all in one smooth startling motion, and then was gone. She could feel for quite a while wherehis fingers had dug in. It didn’t seem to her a sexual touch, it was more like a joke, though not atall a friendly one. She heard him run away, or felt him running; the metal shelves were vibrating.
Then they stopped. There was no sound of him. She walked around looking between the stacks,looking into the carrels. Suppose she did see him, or bumped into him around a corner, what didshe intend to do? She did not know. It was simply necessary to look for him, as in some tensechildish game. She looked down at the sturdy pinkish calf of her leg. Amazing, that out of the bluesomebody had wanted to blotch and punish it.
There were usually a few graduate students working in the carrels, even on Saturday afternoons.
More rarely, a professor. Every carrel she looked into was empty; until she came to the one in thecorner. She poked her head in freely, by this time not expecting anybody. Then she had to say shewas sorry.
There was a young man with a book on his lap, books on the floor, papers all around him. Roseasked him if he had seen anybody run past. He said no.
She told him what had happened. She didn’t tell him because she was frightened or disgusted,as he seemed afterwards to think, but just because she had to tell somebody; it was so odd. Shewas not prepared at all for his response. His long neck and face turned red, the flush entirelyabsorbing a birthmark down the side of his cheek. He was thin and fair. He stood up without anythought for the book in his lap or the papers in front of him. The book thumped on the floor. Agreat sheaf of papers, pushed across the desk, upset his ink bottle.
“How vile,” he said.
“Grab the ink,” Rose said. He leaned to catch the bottle and knocked it on to the floor.
Fortunately the top was on, and it did not break.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No, not really.”
“Come on upstairs. We’ll report it.”
“Oh, no.”
“He can’t get away with that. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
“There isn’t anybody to report to,” Rose said with relief. “The Librarian goes off at noon onSaturdays.”
“It’s disgusting,” he said in a high-pitched, excitable voice. Rose was sorry now that she hadtold him anything, and said she had to get back to work.
“Are you really all right?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ll be right here. Just call me if he comes back.”
That was Patrick. If she had been trying to make him fall in love with her, there was no betterway she could have chosen. He had many chivalric notions, which he pretended to mock, bysaying certain words and phrases as if in quotation marks. The fair sex, he would say, and damselin distress. Coming to his carrel with that story, Rose had turned herself into a damsel in distress.
The pretended irony would not fool anybody; it was clear that he did wish to operate in a world ofknights and ladies; outrages; devotions.
She continued to see him in the Library, every Saturday, and often she met him walking acrossthe campus or in the cafeteria. He made a point of greeting her with courtesy and concern, saying,“How are you,” in a way that suggested she might have suffered a further attack, or might still berecovering from the first one. He always flushed deeply when he saw her, and she thought that thiswas because the memory of what she had told him so embarrassed him. Later she found out it wasbecause he was in love.
He discovered her name, and where she lived. He phoned her at Dr. Henshawe’s house andasked her to go to the movies. At first when he said, “This is Patrick Blatchford speaking.” Rosecould not think who it was, but after a moment she recognized the high, rather aggrieved andtremulous voice. She said she would go. This was partly because Dr. Henshawe was always sayingshe was glad Rose did not waste her time running around with boys.
Rather soon after she started to go out with him, she said to Patrick, “Wouldn’t it be funny if itwas you grabbed my leg that day in the Library?”
He did not think it would be funny. He was horrified that she would think such a thing.
She said she was only joking. She said she meant that it would be a good twist in a story; maybea Maugham story, or a Hitchcock movie. They had just been to see a Hitchcock movie.
“You know, if Hitchcock made a movie out of something like that, you could be a wildinsatiable leg- grabber with one half of your personality, and the other half could be a timidscholar.”
He didn’t like that either.
“Is that how I seem to you, a timid scholar?” It seemed to her he deepened his voice, introduceda few growling notes, drew in his chin, as if for a joke. But he seldom joked with her; he didn’tthink joking was suitable when you were in love.
“I didn’t say you were a timid scholar or a leg-grabber. It was just an idea.”
After a while he said, “I suppose I don’t seem very manly.”
She was startled and irritated by such exposure. He took such chances; had nothing ever taughthim not to take such chances? But maybe he didn’t, after all. He knew she would have to saysomething reassuring. Though she was longing not to, she longed to say judiciously, “Well, no.
You don’t.”
But that would not actually be true. He did seem masculine to her. Because he took thosechances. Only a man could be so careless and demanding.
“We come from two different worlds,” she said to him, on another occasion. She felt like acharacter in a play, saying that. “My people are poor people. You would think the place I lived inwas a dump.”
Now she was the one who was being dishonest, pretending to throw herself on his mercy; for ofcourse she did not expect him to say, oh, well, if you come from poor people and live in a dump,then I will have to withdraw my offer.
“But I’m glad,” said Patrick. “I’m glad you’re poor. You’re so lovely. You’re like the BeggarMaid.”
“Who?”
“King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. You know. The painting.
Don’t you know that painting?”
Patrick had a trick—no, it was not a trick, Patrick had no tricks— Patrick had a way ofexpressing surprise, fairly scornful surprise, when people did not know something he knew, andsimilar scorn, similar surprise, whenever they had bothered to know something he did not. Hisarrogance and humility were both oddly exaggerated. The arrogance, Rose decided in time, mustcome from being rich, though Patrick was never arrogant about that in itself. His sisters, when shemet them, turned out to be the same way, disgusted with anybody who did not know about horsesor sailing, and just as disgusted by anybody knowing about music, say, or politics. Patrick andthey could do little together but radiate disgust. But wasn’t Billy Pope as bad, wasn’t Flo as bad,when it came to arrogance? Maybe. There was a difference, though, and the difference was thatBilly Pope and Flo were not protected. Things could get at them: D.P.’s; people speaking Frenchon the radio; changes. Patrick and his sisters behaved as if things could never get at them. Theirvoices, when they quarreled at the table, were astonishingly childish; their demands for food theyliked, their petulance at seeing anything on the table they didn’t like, were those of children. Theyhad never had to defer and polish themselves and win favor in the world, they never would haveto, and that was because they were rich.
Rose had no idea at the beginning, how rich Patrick was. Nobody believed that. Everybodybelieved she had been calculating and clever, and she was so far from clever, in that way, that shereally did not mind if they believed it. It turned out that other girls had been trying, and had notstruck, as she had, the necessary note. Older girls, sorority girls, who had never noticed her before,began to look at her with puzzlement and respect. Even Dr. Henshawe, when she saw that thingswere more serious than she had supposed, and settled Rose down to have a talk about it, assumedthat she would have an eye on the money.
“It is no small triumph to attract the attentions of the heir to a mercantile empire,” said Dr.
Henshawe, being ironic and serious at the same time. “I don’t despise wealth,” she said.
“Sometimes I wish I had some of it.” (Did she really suppose she had not?) “I am sure you willlearn how to put it to good uses. But what about your ambitions, Rose? What about your studiesand your degree? Are you going to forget all that so soon?”
Mercantile Empire was a rather grand way of putting it. Patrick’s family owned a chain ofdepartment stores in British Columbia. All Patrick had said to Rose was that his father ownedsome stores. When she said two different worlds to him she was thinking that he probably lived insome substantial house like the houses in Dr. Henshawe’s neighborhood. She was thinking of themost prosperous merchants in Hanratty. She could not realize what a coup she had made becauseit would have been a coup for her if the butcher’s son had fallen for her, or the jeweler’s; peoplewould say she had done well.
She had a look at that painting. She looked it up in an art book in the Library. She studied theBeggar Maid, meek and voluptuous, with her shy white feet. The milky surrender of her, thehelplessness and gratitude. Was that how Patrick saw Rose? Was that how she could be? Shewould need that king, sharp and swarthy as he looked, even in his trance of passion, clever andbarbaric. He could make a puddle of her, with his fierce desire. There would be no apologizingwith him, none of that flinching, that lack of faith, that seemed to be revealed in all transactionswith Patrick.
She could not turn Patrick down. She could not do it. It was not the amount of money but theamount of love he offered that she could not ignore; she believed that she felt sorry for him, thatshe had to help him out. It was as if he had come up to her in a crowd carrying a large, simple,dazzling object—a huge egg, maybe, of solid silver, something of doubtful use and punishingweight—and was offering it to her, in fact thrusting it at her, begging her to take some of theweight of it off him. If she thrust it back, how could he bear it? But that explanation left somethingout. It left out her own appetite, which was not for wealth but for worship. The size, the weight,the shine, of what he said was love (and she did not doubt him) had to impress her, even thoughshe had never asked for it. It did not seem likely such an offering would come her way again.
Patrick himself, though worshipful, did in some oblique way acknowledge her luck.
She had always thought this would happen, that somebody would look at her and love hertotally and helplessly. At the same time she had thought that nobody would, nobody would wanther at all, and up until now, nobody had. What made you wanted was nothing you did, it wassomething you had, and how could you ever tell whether you had it? She would look at herself inthe glass and think: wife, sweetheart. Those mild lovely words. How could they apply to her? Itwas a miracle; it was a mistake. It was what she had dreamed of; it was not what she wanted.
She grew very tired, irritable, sleepless. She tried to think admiringly of Patrick. His lean, fair-skinned face was really very handsome. He must know a number of things. He graded papers,presided at examinations, he was finishing his thesis. There was a smell of pipe tobacco and roughwool about him, that she liked. He was twenty-four. No other girl she knew, who had a boyfriend,had one as old as that.
Then without warning she thought of him saying, “I suppose I don’t seem very manly.” Shethought of him saying, “Do you love me? Do you really love me?” He would look at her in ascared and threatening way. Then when she said yes he said how lucky he was, how lucky theywere, he mentioned friends of his and their girls, comparing their love affairs unfavorably to hisand Rose’s. Rose would shiver with irritation and misery. She was sick of herself as much as him,she was sick of the picture they made at this moment, walking across a snowy downtown park, herbare hand snuggled in Patrick’s, in his pocket. Some outrageous and cruel things were beingshouted, inside her. She had to do something, to keep them from getting out. She started ticklingand teasing him.
Outside Dr. Henshawe’s back door, in the snow, she kissed him, tried to make him open hismouth, she did scandalous things to him. When he kissed her his lips were soft; his tongue wasshy; he collapsed over rather than held her, she could not find any force in him.
“You’re lovely. You have lovely skin. Such fair eyebrows. You’re so delicate.”
She was pleased to hear that, anybody would be. But she said warningly, “I’m not so delicate,really. I’m quite large.”
“You don’t know how I love you. There’s a book I have called The White Goddess. Every timeI look at the tide it reminds me of you.”
She wriggled away from him. She bent down and got a handful of snow from the drift by thesteps and clapped it on his head.
“My White God.”
He shook the snow out. She scooped up some more and threw it at him. He didn’t laugh, he wassurprised and alarmed. She brushed the snow off his eyebrows and licked it off his ears. She waslaughing, though she felt desperate rather than merry. She didn’t know what made her do this.
“Dr. Hen-shawe,” Patrick hissed at her. The tender poetic voice he used for rhapsodizing abouther could entirely disappear, could change to remonstrance, exasperation, with no steps at allbetween.
“Dr. Henshawe will hear you!”
“Dr. Henshawe says you are an honorable young man,” Rose said dreamily. “I think she’s inlove with you.” It was true; Dr. Henshawe had said that. And it was true that he was. He couldn’tbear the way Rose was talking. She blew at the snow in his hair. “Why don’t you go in anddeflower her? I’m sure she’s a virgin. That’s her window. Why don’t you?” She rubbed his hair,then slipped her hand inside his overcoat and rubbed the front of his pants. “You’re hard!” shesaid triumphantly. “Oh, Patrick! You’ve got a hard-on for Dr. Henshawe!” She had never saidanything like this before, never come near behaving like this.
“Shut up!” said Patrick, tormented. But she couldn’t. She raised her head and in a loud whisperpretended to call towards an upstairs window, “Dr. Henshawe! Come and see what Patrick’s gotfor you!” Her bullying hand went for his fly.
To stop her, to keep her quiet, Patrick had to struggle with her. He got a hand over her mouth,with the other hand beating her away from his zipper. The big loose sleeves of his overcoat beat ather like floppy wings. As soon as he started to fight she was relieved—that was what she wantedfrom him, some sort of action. But she had to keep resisting, until he really proved himselfstronger. She was afraid he might not be able to.
But he was. He forced her down, down, to her knees, face down in the snow. He pulled herarms back and rubbed her face in the snow. Then he let her go, and almost spoiled it.
“Are you all right? Are you? I’m sorry. Rose?”
She staggered up and shoved her snowy face into his. He backed off.
“Kiss me! Kiss the snow! I love you!”
“Do you?” he said plaintively, and brushed the snow from a corner of her mouth and kissed her,with understandable bewilderment. “Do you?”
Then the light came on, flooding them and the trampled snow, and Dr. Henshawe was callingover their heads.
“Rose! Rose!”
She called in a patient, encouraging voice, as if Rose was lost in a fog nearby, and neededdirecting home.
“DO YOU LOVE HIM, Rose?” said Dr. Henshawe. “Now, think about it. Do you?” Her voicewas full of doubt and seriousness. Rose took a deep breath and answered as it filled with calmemotion, “Yes, I do.”
“Well, then.”
In the middle of the night Rose woke up and ate chocolate bars.
She craved sweets. Often in class or in the middle of a movie she started thinking about fudgecupcakes, brownies, some kind of cake Dr. Henshawe bought at the European Bakery; it was filledwith dollops of rich bitter chocolate, that ran out on the plate. Whenever she tried to think aboutherself and Patrick, whenever she made up her mind to decide what she really felt, these cravingsintervened.
She was putting on weight, and had developed a nest of pimples between her eyebrows.
Her bedroom was cold, being over the garage, with windows on three sides. Otherwise it waspleasant. Over the bed hung framed photographs of Greek skies and ruins, taken by Dr. Henshaweherself on her Mediterranean trip.
She was writing an essay on Yeats’s plays. In one of the plays a young bride is lured away bythe fairies from her sensible unbearable marriage.
“Come away, oh, human child …” Rose read, and her eyes filled up with tears for herself, as ifshe was that shy elusive virgin, too fine for the bewildered peasants who have entrapped her. Inactual fact she was the peasant, shocking high-minded Patrick, but he did not look for escape.
She took down one of those Greek photographs and defaced the wallpaper, writing the start of apoem which had come to her while she ate chocolate bars in bed and the wind from Gibbons Parkbanged at the garage walls.
Heedless in my dark womb
I bear a madman’s child....
She never wrote any more of it, and wondered sometimes if she had meant headless. She nevertried to rub it out, either.
PATRICK SHARED an apartment with two other graduate students. He lived plainly, did not owna car or belong to a fraternity. His clothes had an ordinary academic shabbiness. His friends werethe sons of teachers and ministers. He said his father had all but disowned him, for becoming anintellectual. He said he would never go back into business.
They came back to the apartment in the early afternoon when they knew both the other studentswould be out. The apartment was cold. They undressed quickly and got into Patrick’s bed. Nowwas the time. They clung together, shivering and giggling. Rose was doing the giggling. She felt aneed to be continually playful. She was terrified that they would not manage it, that there was agreat humiliation in store, a great exposure of their poor deceits and stratagems. But the deceitsand stratagems were only hers. Patrick was never a fraud; he managed, in spite of giganticembarrassment, apologies; he passed through some amazed pantings and flounderings, to peace.
Rose was no help, presenting instead of an honest passivity much twisting and flutteringeagerness, unpracticed counterfeit of passion. She was pleased when it was accomplished; she didnot have to counterfeit that. They had done what others did, they had done what lovers did. Shethought of celebration. What occurred to her was something delicious to eat, a sundae at Boomers,apple pie with hot cinnamon sauce. She was not at all prepared for Patrick’s idea, which was tostay where they were and try again.
When pleasure presented itself, the fifth or sixth time they were together, she was thrown out ofgear entirely, her passionate carrying-on was silenced.
Patrick said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing!” Rose said, turning herself radiant and attentive once more. But she kept forgetting,the new developments interfered, and she had finally to give in to that struggle, more or lessignoring Patrick. When she could take note of him again she overwhelmed him with gratitude; shewas really grateful now, and she wanted to be forgiven, though she could not say so, for all herpretended gratitude, her patronizing, her doubts.
Why should she doubt so much, she thought, lying comfortably in the bed while Patrick went tomake some instant coffee. Might it not be possible, to feel as she pretended? If this sexual surprisewas possible, wasn’t anything? Patrick was not much help; his chivalry and self-abasement, nextdoor to his scoldings, did discourage her. But wasn’t the real fault hers? Her conviction thatanyone who could fall in love with her must be hopelessly lacking, must finally be revealed as afool? So she took note of anything that was foolish about Patrick, even though she thought shewas looking for things that were masterful, admirable. At this moment, in his bed, in his room,surrounded by his books and clothes, his shoe brushes and typewriter, some tacked-up cartoons—she sat up in bed to look at them, and they really were quite funny, he must allow things to befunny when she was not here—she could see him as a likable, intelligent, even humorous person;no hero; no fool. Perhaps they could be ordinary. If only, when he came back in, he would notstart thanking and fondling and worshiping her. She didn’t like worship, really; it was only theidea of it she liked. On the other hand, she didn’t like it when he started to correct and criticizeher. There was much he planned to change.
Patrick loved her. What did he love? Not her accent, which he was trying hard to alter, thoughshe was often mutinous and unreasonable, declaring in the face of all evidence that she did nothave a country accent, everybody talked the way she did. Not her jittery sexual boldness (his reliefat her virginity matched hers at his competence). She could make him flinch at a vulgar word, adrawling tone. All the time, moving and speaking, she was destroying herself for him, yet helooked right through her, through all the distractions she was creating, and loved some obedientimage that she herself could not see. And his hopes were high. Her accent could be eliminated, herfriends could be discredited and removed, her vulgarity could be discouraged.
What about all the rest of her? Energy, laziness, vanity, discontent, ambition? She concealed allthat. He had no idea. For all her doubts about him, she never wanted him to fall out of love withher.
They made two trips.
They went to British Columbia, on the train, during the Easter holidays. His parents sent Patrickmoney for his ticket. He paid for Rose, using up what he had in the bank and borrowing from oneof his roommates. He told her not to reveal to his parents that she had not paid for her own ticket.
She saw that he meant to conceal that she was poor. He knew nothing about women’s clothes, orhe would not have thought that possible. Though she had done the best she could. She hadborrowed Dr. Henshawe’s raincoat for the coastal weather. It was a bit long, but otherwise allright, due to Dr. Henshawe’s classically youthful tastes. She had sold more blood and bought afuzzy angora sweater, peach-colored, which was extremely messy and looked like a small-towngirl’s idea of dressing up. She always realized things like that as soon as a purchase was made, notbefore.
Patrick’s parents lived on Vancouver Island, near Sidney. About half an acre of clipped greenlawn—green in the middle of winter; March seemed like the middle of winter to Rose—slopeddown to a stone wall and a narrow pebbly beach and salt water. The house was half stone, halfstucco-and-timber. It was built in the Tudor style, and others. The windows of the living room, thedining room, the den, all faced the sea, and because of the strong winds that sometimes blewonshore, they were made of thick glass, plate- glass Rose supposed, like the windows of theautomobile showroom in Hanratty. The seaward wall of the dining room was all windows, curvingout in a gentle bay; you looked through the thick curved glass as through the bottom of a bottle.
The sideboard too had a curving, gleaming belly, and seemed as big as a boat. Size was noticeableeverywhere and particularly thickness. Thickness of towels and rugs and handles of knives andforks, and silences. There was a terrible amount of luxury and unease. After a day or so there Rosebecame so discouraged that her wrists and ankles felt weak. Picking up her knife and fork was achore; cutting and chewing the perfect roast beef was almost beyond her; she got short of breathclimbing the stairs. She had never known before how some places could choke you off, choke offyour very life. She had not known this in spite of a number of very unfriendly places she had beenin.
The first morning, Patrick’s mother took her for a walk in the grounds, pointing out thegreenhouse, the cottage where “the couple” lived: a charming, ivied, shuttered cottage, bigger thanDr. Henshawe’s house. The couple, the servants, were more gently spoken, more discreet anddignified, than anyone Rose could think of in Hanratty, and indeed they were superior in theseways to Patrick’s family.
Patrick’s mother showed her the rose garden, the kitchen garden. There were many low stonewalls.
“Patrick built them,” said his mother. She explained anything with an indifference that borderedon distaste. “He built all these walls.”
Rose’s voice came out full of false assurance, eager and inappropriately enthusiastic.
“He must be a true Scot,” she said. Patrick was a Scot, in spite of his name. The Blatchfords hadcome from Glasgow. “Weren’t the best stonemasons always Scotsmen?” (She had learned quiterecently not to say “Scotch.”) “Maybe he had stonemason ancestors.”
She cringed afterwards, thinking of these efforts, the pretense of ease and gaiety, as cheap andimitative as her clothes.
“No,” said Patrick’s mother. “No. I don’t think they were stonema-sons.” Something like fogwent out from her: affront, disapproval, dismay. Rose thought that perhaps she had been offendedby the suggestion that her husband’s family might have worked with their hands. When she got toknow her better — or had observed her longer; it was impossible to get to know her — sheunderstood that Patrick’s mother disliked anything fanciful, speculative, abstract, in conversation.
She would also, of course, dislike Rose’s chatty tone. Any interest beyond the factualconsideration of the matter at hand—food, weather, invitations, furniture, servants—seemed to hersloppy, ill-bred, and dangerous. It was all right to say, “This is a warm day,” but not, “This dayreminds me of when we used to—” She hated people being reminded.
She was the only child of one of the early lumber barons of Vancouver Island. She had beenborn in a vanished northern settlement. But whenever Patrick tried to get her to talk about the past,whenever he asked her for the simplest sort of information— what steamers went up the coast,what year was the settlement abandoned, what was the route of the first logging railway—shewould say irritably, “I don’t know. How would I know about that?” This irritation was thestrongest note that ever got into her words.
Neither did Patrick’s father care for this concern about the past. Many things, most things, aboutPatrick, seemed to strike him as bad signs.
“What do you want to know all that for?” he shouted down the table. He was a short square-shouldered man, red-faced, astonishingly belligerent. Patrick looked like his mother, who was tall,fair, and elegant in the most muted way possible, as if her clothes, her makeup, her style, werechosen with an ideal neutrality in mind.
“Because I am interested in history,” said Patrick in an angry, pompous, but nervously breakingvoice.
“Because-I-am-interested-in-history” said his sister Marion in an immediate parody, break andall. “History!”
The sisters Joan and Marion were younger than Patrick, older than Rose. Unlike Patrick theyshowed no nervousness, no cracks in self-satisfaction. At an earlier meal they had questionedRose.
“Do you ride?”
“No.”
“Do you sail?”
“No.”
“Play tennis? Play golf? Play badminton?”
“No. No. No.”
“Perhaps she is an intellectual genius, like Patrick,” the father said.
And Patrick, to Rose’s horror and embarrassment, began to shout at the table in general anaccount of her scholarships and prizes. What did he hope for? Was he so witless as to think suchbragging would subdue them, would bring out anything but further scorn? Against Patrick, againsthis shouting boasts, his contempt for sports and television, his so-called intellectual interests, thefamily seemed united. But this alliance was only temporary. The father’s dislike of his daughterswas minor only in comparison with his dislike of Patrick. He railed at them too, when he couldspare a moment; he jeered at the amount of time they spent at their games, complained about thecost of their equipment, their boats, their horses. And they wrangled with each other, on obscurequestions of scores and borrowings and damages. All complained to the mother about the food,which was plentiful and delicious. The mother spoke as little as possible to anyone and to tell thetruth Rose did not blame her. She had never imagined so much true malevolence collected in oneplace. Billy Pope was a bigot and a grumbler, Flo was capricious, unjust, and gossipy, her father,when he was alive, had been capable of cold judgments and unremitting disapproval; butcompared to Patrick’s family, all Rose’s own people seemed jovial and content.
“Are they always like this?” she said to Patrick. “Is it me? They don’t like me.”
“They don’t like you because I chose you,” said Patrick with some satisfaction.
They lay on the stony beach after dark, in their raincoats, hugged and kissed and uncomfortably,unsuccessfully, attempted more. Rose got seaweed stains on Dr. Henshawe’s coat. Patrick said,“You see why I need you? I need you so much!”
SHE TOOK HIM to Hanratty. It was just as bad as she had thought it would be. Flo had gone togreat trouble, and cooked a meal of scalloped potatoes, turnips, big country sausages which were aspecial present from Billy Pope, from the butcher shop. Patrick detested coarse-textured food, andmade no pretense of eating it. The table was spread with a plastic cloth, they ate under the tube offluorescent light. The centerpiece was new and especially for the occasion. A plastic swan, limegreen in color, with slits in the wings, in which were stuck folded, colored paper napkins. BillyPope, reminded to take one, grunted, refused. Otherwise he was on dismally good behavior. Wordhad reached him, word had reached both of them, of Rose’s triumph. It had come from theirsuperiors in Hanratty; otherwise they could not have believed it. Customers in the butcher shop—formidable ladies, the dentist’s wife, the veterinarian’s wife— had said to Billy Pope that theyheard Rose had picked herself up a millionaire. Rose knew Billy Pope would go back to worktomorrow with stories of the millionaire, or millionaire’s son, and that all these stories wouldfocus on his—Billy Pope’s—forthright and unintimi-dated behavior in the situation.
“We just set him down and give him some sausages, don’t make no difference to us what hecomes from!”
She knew Flo would have her comments too, that Patrick’s nervousness would not escape her,that she would be able to mimic his voice and his flapping hands that had knocked over theketchup bottle. But at present they both sat hunched over the table in miserable eclipse. Rose triedto start some conversation, talking brightly, unnaturally, rather as if she was an interviewer tryingto draw out a couple of simple local people. She felt ashamed on more levels than she could count.
She was ashamed of the food and the swan and the plastic tablecloth; ashamed for Patrick, thegloomy snob, who made a startled grimace when Flo passed him the toothpick-holder; ashamedfor Flo with her timidity and hypocrisy and pretensions; most of all ashamed for herself. Shedidn’t even have any way that she could talk, and sound natural. With Patrick there, she couldn’tslip back into an accent closer to Flo’s, Billy Pope’s and Hanratty’s. That accent jarred on her earsnow, anyway. It seemed to involve not just a different pronunciation but a whole differentapproach to talking. Talking was shouting; the words were separated and emphasized so thatpeople could bombard each other with them. And the things people said were like lines from themost hackneyed rural comedy. Wal if a feller took a notion to, they said. They really said that.
Seeing them through Patrick’s eyes, hearing them through his ears, Rose too had to be amazed.
She was trying to get them to talk about local history, some things she thought Patrick might beinterested in. Presently Flo did begin to talk, she could only be held in so long, whatever hermisgivings. The conversation took another line from anything Rose had intended.
“The line I lived on when I was just young,” Flo said, “it was the worst place ever created forsuiciding.”
“A line is a concession road. In the township,” Rose said to Patrick. She had doubts about whatwas coming, and rightly so, for then Patrick got to hear about a man who cut his own throat, hisown throat, from ear to ear, a man who shot himself the first time and didn’t do enough damage,so he loaded up and fired again and managed it, another man who hanged himself using a chain,the kind of chain you hook on a tractor with, so it was a wonder his head was not torn off.
Tore off, Flo said.
She went on to a woman who, though not a suicide, had been dead in her house a week beforeshe was found, and that was in the summer. She asked Patrick to imagine it. All this happened,said Flo, within five miles of where she herself was born. She was presenting credentials, nottrying to horrify Patrick, at least not more than was acceptable, in a social way; she did not meanto disconcert him. How could he understand that?
“You were right,” said Patrick, as they left Hanratty on the bus. “It is a dump. You must be gladto get away.”
Rose felt immediately that he should not have said that.
“Of course that’s not your real mother,” Patrick said. “Your real parents can’t have been likethat.” Rose did not like his saying that either, though it was what she believed, herself. She sawthat he was trying to provide for her a more genteel background, perhaps something like thehomes of his poor friends: a few books about, a tea tray, and mended linen, worn good taste;proud, tired, educated people. What a coward he was, she thought angrily, but she knew that sheherself was the coward, not knowing any way to be comfortable with her own people or thekitchen or any of it. Years later she would learn how to use it, she would be able to amuse orintimidate right-thinking people at dinner parties with glimpses of her early home. At the momentshe felt confusion, misery.
Nevertheless her loyalty was starting. Now that she was sure of getting away, a layer of loyaltyand protectiveness was hardening around every memory she had, around the store and the town,the flat, somewhat scrubby, unremarkable countryside. She would oppose this secretly to Patrick’sviews of mountains and ocean, his stone and timbered mansion. Her allegiances were far moreproud and stubborn than his.
But it turned out he was not leaving anything behind.
PATRICK GAVE HER a diamond ring and announced that he was giving up being a historian forher sake. He was going into his father’s business.
She said she thought he hated his father’s business. He said that he could not afford to take suchan attitude now that he would have a wife to support.
It seemed that Patrick’s desire to marry even to marry Rose, had been taken by his father as asign of sanity. Great streaks of bounty were mixed in with all the ill will in that family. His fatherat once offered a job in one of the stores, offered to buy them a house. Patrick was as incapable ofturning down this offer as Rose was of turning down Patrick’s, and his reasons were as littlemercenary as hers.
“Will we have a house like your parents?” Rose said. She really thought it might be necessary tostart off in that style.
“Well, maybe not at first. Not quite so—”
“I don’t want a house like that! I don’t want to live like that!” “We’ll live however you like.
We’ll have whatever kind of house you like.”
Provided it’s not a dump, she thought nastily.
Girls she hardly knew stopped and asked to see her ring, admired it, wished her happiness.
When she went back to Hanratty for a weekend, alone this time, thank God, she met the dentist’swife on the main street.
“Oh, Rose, isn’t it wonderful! When are you coming back again? We’re going to give a tea foryou, the ladies in town all want to give a tea for you!”
This woman had never spoken to Rose, never given any sign before of knowing who she was.
Paths were opening now, barriers were softening. And Rose—oh, this was the worst, this was theshame of it—Rose, instead of cutting the dentist’s wife, was blushing and skittishly flashing herdiamond and saying yes, that would be a lovely idea. When people said how happy she must beshe did think herself happy. It was as simple as that. She dimpled and sparkled and turned herselfinto a fiancée with no trouble at all. Where will you live, people said and she said oh, in BritishColumbia! That added more magic to the tale. Is it really beautiful there, they said, is it neverwinter?
“Oh, yes!” cried Rose, “Oh, no!”
SHE WOKE UP EARLY, got up and dressed and let herself out of the side door of Dr.
Henshawe’s garage. It was too early for the buses to be running. She walked through the city toPatrick’s apartment. She walked across the park. Around the South African War Memorial a pairof greyhounds were leaping and playing, an old woman standing by, holding their leashes. Thesun was just up, shining on their pale hides. The grass was wet. Daffodils and narcisus in bloom.
Patrick came to the door, tousled, frowning sleepily, in his gray and maroon striped pajamas.
“Rose! What’s the matter?”
She couldn’t say anything. He pulled her into the apartment. She put her arms around him andhid her face against his chest and in a stagey voice said, “Please Patrick. Please let me not marryyou.”
“Are you sick? What’s the matter?”
“Please let me not marry you,” she said again, with even less conviction.
“You’re crazy.”
She didn’t blame him for thinking so. Her voice sounded so unnatural, wheedling, silly. As soonas he opened the door and she faced the fact of him, his sleepy eyes, his pajamas, she saw thatwhat she had come to do was enormous, impossible. She would have to explain everything to him,and of course she could not do it. She could not make him see her necessity. She could not findany tone of voice, any expression of the face, that would serve her.
“Are you upset?” said Patrick. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing.”
“How did you get here anyway?”
“Walked.”
She had been fighting back a need to go to the bathroom. It seemed that if she went to thebathroom she would destroy some of the strength of her case. But she had to. She freed herself.
She said, “Wait a minute, I’m going to the john.”
When she came out Patrick had the electric kettle going, was measuring out instant coffee. Helooked decent and bewildered.
“I’m not really awake,” he said. “Now. Sit down. First of all, are you premenstrual?”
“No.” But she realized with dismay that she was, and that he might be able to figure it out,because they had been worried last month.
“Well, if you’re not premenstrual, and nothing’s happened to upset you, then what is all thisabout?”
“I don’t want to get married,” she said, backing away from the cruelty of I don’t want to marryyou.
“When did you come to this decision?” “Long ago. This morning.”
They were talking in whispers. Rose looked at the clock. It was a little after seven.
“When do the others get up?”
“About eight.”
“Is there milk for the coffee?” She went to the refrigerator. “Quiet with the door,” said Patrick,too late.
“I’m sorry,” she said, in her strange silly voice.
“We went for a walk last night and everything was fine. You come this morning and tell me youdon’t want to get married. Why don’t you want to get married?”
“I just don’t. I don’t want to be married.”
“What else do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Patrick kept staring at her sternly, drinking his coffee. He who used to plead with her do youlove me, do you really, did not bring the subject up now.
“Well I know.”
“What?”
“I know who’s been talking to you.”
“Nobody has been talking to me.”
“Oh, no. Well, I bet. Dr. Henshawe has.”
“No.”
“Some people don’t have a very high opinion of her. They think she has an influence on girls.
She doesn’t like the girls who live with her to have boyfriends. Does she? You even told me that.
She doesn’t like them to be normal.”
“That’s not it.”
“What did she say to you, Rose?”
“She didn’t say anything.” Rose began to cry.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, Patrick, listen, please, I can’t marry you, please, I don’t know why, I can’t, please, I’msorry, believe me, I can’t,” Rose babbled at him, weeping, and Patrick saying, “Ssh! You’ll wakethem up!” lifted or dragged her out of the kitchen chair and took her to his room, where she sat onthe bed. He shut the door. She held her arms across her stomach, and rocked back and forth.
“What is it Rose? What’s the matter? Are you sick!”
“It’s just so hard to tell you!”
“Tell me what?”
“What I just did tell you.”
“I mean have you found out you have T.B. or something?” “No!”
“Is there something in your family you haven’t told me about?
Insanity?” said Patrick encouragingly.
“No!” Rose rocked and wept.
“So what is it?”
“I don’t love you!” she said. “I don’t love you. I don’t love you.” She fell on the bed and put herhead in the pillow. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t help it.”
After a moment or two Patrick said, “Well. If you don’t love me you don’t love me. I’m notforcing you to.” His voice sounded strained and spiteful, against the reasonableness of what hewas saying. “I just wonder,” he said, “if you know what you do want. I don’t think you do. I don’tthink you have any idea what you want. You’re just in a state.”
“I don’t have to know what I want to know what I don’t want!” Rose said, turning over. Thisreleased her. “I never loved you.”
“Ssh. You’ll wake them. We have to stop.”
“I never loved you. I never wanted to. It was a mistake.”
“All right. All right. You made your point.”
Patrick’s face was so white the birthmark stood out like a cut, and that only made her eager tocontinue.
“Why am I supposed to love you? Why do you act as if there was something wrong with me if Ididn’t? You despise me. You despise my family and my background and you think you are doingme a great favor—”
“I fell in love with you,” Patrick said. “I don’t despise you. Oh, Rose. I worship you.”
“You’re a sissy,” Rose said. “You’re a prude.” She jumped off the bed with great pleasure asshe said this. She felt full of energy. More was coming. Terrible things were coming.
“You don’t even know how to make love right. I always wanted to get out of this from the veryfirst. I felt sorry for you. You won’t look where you’re going, you’re always knocking things over,just because you can’t be bothered, you can’t be bothered noticing anything, you’re so wrapped upin yourself, and you’re always bragging, it’s so stupid, you don’t even know how to brag right, ifyou really want to impress people you’ll never do it, the way you do it all they do is laugh at you!”
Patrick sat on the bed and looked up at her, his face open to whatever she would say. Shewanted to beat and beat him, to say worse and worse, uglier and crueller, things. She took a breath,drew in air, to stop the things she felt rising in her from getting out.
“I don’t want to see you, ever!” she said viciously. But at the door she turned and said in anormal and regretful voice, “Good-bye.”
PATRICK WROTE HER A NOTE: “I don’t understand what happened the other day and I wantto talk to you about it. But I think we should wait for two weeks and not see or talk to each otherand find out how we feel at the end of that time.”
Rose had forgotten all about giving him back his ring. When she came out of his apartmentbuilding that morning she was still wearing it. She couldn’t go back, and it seemed too valuable tosend through the mail. She continued to wear it, mostly because she did not want to have to tellDr. Henshawe what had happened. She was relieved to get Patrick’s note. She thought that shecould give him back the ring then.
She thought about what Patrick had said about Dr. Henshawe. No doubt there was some truth inthat, else why should she be so reluctant to tell Dr. Henshawe she had broken her engagement—sounwilling to face her sensible approval, her restrained, relieved congratulations?
She told Dr. Henshawe that she was not seeing Patrick while she studied for her exams. Rosecould see that even that pleased her.
She told no one that her situation had changed. It was not just Dr. Henshawe she didn’t wantknowing. She didn’t like giving up being envied; the experience was so new to her.
She tried to think what to do next. She could not stay on at Dr. Henshawe’s. It seemed clear thatif she escaped from Patrick, she must escape from Dr. Henshawe too. And she did not want to stayon at the college, with people knowing about her broken engagement, with the girls who nowcongratulated her saying they had known all along it was a fluke, her getting Patrick. She wouldhave to get a job.
The Head Librarian had offered her a job for the summer but that was perhaps at Dr.
Henshawe’s suggestion. Once she moved out, the offer might not hold. She knew that instead ofstudying for her exams she ought to be downtown, applying for work as a filing clerk at theinsurance offices, applying at Bell Telephone, at the department stores. The idea frightened her.
She kept on studying. That was the one thing she really knew how to do. She was a scholarshipstudent after all.
On Saturday afternoon, when she was working at the Library, she saw Patrick. She did not seehim by accident. She went down to the bottom floor, trying not to make a noise on the spiralingmetal staircase. There was a place in the stacks where she could stand, almost in darkness, and seeinto his carrel. She did that. She couldn’t see his face. She saw his long pink neck and the old plaidshirt he wore on Saturdays. His long neck. His bony shoulders. She was no longer irritated by him,no longer frightened by him; she was free. She could look at him as she would look at anybody.
She could appreciate him. He had behaved well. He had not tried to rouse her pity, he had notbullied her, he had not molested her with pitiful telephone calls and letters. He had not come andsat on Dr. Henshawe’s doorstep. He was an honorable person, and he would never know how sheacknowledged that, how she was grateful for it. The things she had said to him made her ashamednow. And they were not even true. Not all of them. He did know how to make love. She was somoved, made so gentle and wistful, by the sight of him, that she wanted to give him something,some surprising bounty, she wished to undo his unhappiness.
Then she had a compelling picture of herself. She was running softly into Patrick’s carrel, shewas throwing her arms around him from behind, she was giving everything back to him. Would hetake it from her, would he still want it? She saw them laughing and crying, explaining, forgiving. Ilove you, I do love you, it’s all right, I was terrible, I didn’t mean it, I was just crazy, I love you,it’s all right. This was a violent temptation for her; it was barely resistable. She had an impulse tohurl herself. Whether it was off a cliff or into a warm bed of welcoming grass and flowers, shereally could not tell.
It was not resistable, after all. She did it.
WHEN ROSE AFTERWARDS REVIEWED and talked about this moment in her life—for shewent through a period, like most people nowadays, of talking freely about her most privatedecisions, to friends and lovers and party acquaintances whom she might never see again, whilethey did the same—she said that comradely compassion had overcome her, she was not proofagainst the sight of a bare bent neck. Then she went further into it, and said greed, greed. She saidshe had run to him and clung to him and overcome his suspicions and kissed and cried andreinstated herself simply because she did not know how to do without his love and his promise tolook after her; she was frightened of the world and she had not been able to think up any otherplan for herself. When she was seeing life in economic terms, or was with people who did, shesaid that only middle-class people had choices anyway, that if she had had the price of a trainticket to Toronto her life would have been different.
Nonsense, she might say later, never mind that, it was really vanity, it was vanity pure andsimple, to resurrect him, to bring him back his happiness. To see if she could do that. She couldnot resist such a test of power. She explained then that she had paid for it. She said that she andPatrick had been married ten years, and that during that time the scenes of the first break-up andreconciliation had been periodically repeated, with her saying again all the things she had said thefirst time, and the things she had held back, and many other things which occurred to her. Shehopes she did not tell people (but thinks she did) that she used to beat her head against the bedpost,that she smashed a gravy boat through a dining-room window; that she was so frightened, sosickened by what she had done that she lay in bed, shivering, and begged and begged for hisforgiveness. Which he granted. Sometimes she flew at him; sometimes he beat her. The nextmorning they would get up early and make a special breakfast, they would sit eating bacon andeggs and drinking filtered coffee, worn out, bewildered, treating each other with shamefacedkindness.
What do you think triggers the reaction? they would say.
Do you think we ought to take a holiday? A holiday together?
Holidays alone?
A waste, a sham, those efforts, as it turned out. But they worked for the moment. Calmed down,they would say that most people probably went through the same things like this, in a marriage,and indeed they seemed to know mostly people who did. They could not separate until enoughdamage had been done, until nearly mortal damage had been done, to keep them apart. And untilRose could get a job and make her own money, so perhaps there was a very ordinary reason afterall.
What she never said to anybody, never confided, was that she sometimes thought it had notbeen pity or greed or cowardice or vanity but something quite different, like a vision of happiness.
In view of everything else she had told she could hardly tell that. It seems very odd; she can’tjustify it. She doesn’t mean that they had perfectly ordinary, bearable times in their marriage, longbusy stretches of wallpapering and vacationing and meals and shopping and worrying about achild’s illness, but that sometimes, without reason or warning, happiness, the possibility ofhappiness, would surprise them. Then it was as if they were in different though identical-seemingskins, as if there existed a radiantly kind and innocent Rose and Patrick, hardly ever visible, in theshadow of their usual selves. Perhaps it was that Patrick she saw when she was free of him,invisible to him, looking into his carrel. Perhaps it was. She should have left him there.
SHE KNEW that was how she had seen him; she knows it, because it happened again. She was ina Toronto airport, in the middle of the night. This was about nine years after she and Patrick weredivorced. She had become fairly well-known by this time, her face was familiar to many people inthis country. She did a television program on which she interviewed politicians, actors, writers,personalities, and many ordinary people who were angry about something the government or thepolice or a union had done to them. Sometimes she talked to people who had seen strange sights,UFO’s, or sea monsters, or who had unusual accomplishments or collections, or kept up someobsolete custom.
She was alone. No one was meeting her. She had just come in on a delayed flight fromYellowknife. She was tired and bedraggled. She saw Patrick standing with his back to her, at acoffee bar. He wore a raincoat. He was heavier than he had been, but she knew him at once. Andshe had the same feeling that this was a person she was bound to, that by a certain magical, yetpossible trick, they could find and trust each other, and that to begin this all that she had to do wasgo up and touch him on the shoulder, surprise him with his happiness.
She did not do this, of course, but she did stop. She was standing still when he turned around,heading for one of the little plastic tables and curved seats grouped in front of the coffee bar. Allhis skinniness and academic shabbiness, his look of prim authoritarianism, was gone. He hadsmoothed out, filled out, into such a modish and agreeable, responsible, slightly complacent-looking man. His birthmark had faded. She thought how haggard and dreary she must look, in herrumpled trenchcoat, her long, graying hair fallen forward around her face, old mascara smudgedunder her eyes.
He made a face at her. It was a truly hateful, savagely warning, face; infantile, self-indulgent,yet calculated; it was a timed explosion of disgust and loathing. It was hard to believe. But she sawit.
Sometimes when Rose was talking to someone in front of the television cameras she wouldsense the desire in them to make a face. She would sense it in all sorts of people, in skillfulpoliticians and witty liberal bishops and honored humanitarians, in housewives who had witnessednatural disasters and in workmen who had performed heroic rescues or been cheated out ofdisability pensions. They were longing to sabotage themselves, to make a face or say a dirty word.
Was this the face they all wanted to make? To show somebody, to show everybody? Theywouldn’t do it, though; they wouldn’t get the chance. Special circumstances were required. A luridunreal place, the middle of the night, a staggering unhinging weariness, the sudden, hallucinatoryappearance of your true enemy.
She hurried away then, down the long vari-colored corridor, shaking. She had seen Patrick;Patrick had seen her; he had made that face. But she was not really able to understand how shecould be an enemy. How could anybody hate Rose so much, at the very moment when she wasready to come forward with her good will, her smiling confession of exhaustion, her air ofdiffident faith in civilized overtures?
Oh, Patrick could. Patrick could.
乞丐新娘
乞丐新娘
帕特里克•布兰奇福德爱上了露丝。这在他已经成为了一个坚定不移、愈来愈强烈的想法。对她来说，这却是一连串的惊讶。他想娶她。他放学之后等着她，进来跟她一起走，这样一来，她跟谁说话，那个人都会意识到他的存在。他不说话，她这些朋友或同学在身边的时候，他会对上她的眼睛，给出一个冷冷的怀疑的眼光，表达他对这群人聊天内容的看法。露丝受宠若惊，不过也紧张。有个女孩叫南希•佛斯，是她的朋友，当着他的面读错了“梅特涅”这个名字。他过了会儿跟露丝说：“你怎么能跟这样的人做朋友呢？”
南希和露丝一起去维多利亚医院卖血。她们都得到了十五美元。她们把大部分的钱都花在了晚宴鞋上，那种花哨的银色凉鞋。当然由于放了血，她们觉得自己一定也减重不少，所以就跑到“甜潮店”去吃巧克力圣代。为什么露丝没能在帕特里克面前为南希辩护呢？
帕特里克二十四岁，是一名研究生，打算当历史教授。他个子很高，瘦瘦的，长得挺好看，尽管脸上有一道长长的淡红色胎记，仿佛泪水从太阳穴和脸颊滚落下来。他为此表示歉意，说随着年龄增长，它正在褪去，到了四十岁就会完全消失不见的。但是这胎记并没有抵消英俊，露丝想。（但确实也有些因素抵消了他的英俊或者让她忽略了他的相貌；她得一直提醒自己，他长得其实还挺好看的。）他这个人有一点焦躁、局促和仓皇。他的声音听上去总像是备受压力——跟她在一起的时候，似乎他也总有压力。他会把碟子和杯子从桌面上碰掉，把喝的东西和碗里装的花生洒出来，跟个喜剧演员似的。他不是一个喜剧演员，从来就没想过会扮演这个角色。他来自不列颠哥伦比亚。他家很有钱。
他们俩有一次约好去看电影，他早早地来接露丝。他没敲门，知道自己来早了。他坐在亨肖博士家门口的阶梯上。这是在冬天，外面漆黑一片，门口亮着门廊灯。
“哦，露丝！过来看呀！”亨肖博士用逗乐的声音轻轻地喊道。于是她们一起从书房漆黑的窗户往下看。“那个可怜的年轻人啊。”亨肖博士温柔地说。亨肖博士已经七十多岁了，她退休前是英语教授，充满生气，却不好取悦。她跛着脚，仍然青春又神气地斜着脑袋，白色的辫子绕在周围。
她说帕特里克“可怜”是因为他恋爱了，还可能因为他是个男的，注定要鲁莽犯错。即便是从这里看下去，他都显得固执又令人同情，踌躇满志却又需要依靠，就这么在寒冬中坐着。
“他守门呢，”亨肖博士说，“哦，露丝啊！”
另外一次，她的话就有点让人心烦了：“哦，我的天啊，恐怕他是追错了人呢。”
露丝不喜欢她这么说。她不喜欢她这么嘲笑帕特里克。她也不喜欢帕特里克那么坐在阶梯上。这嘲笑是他自找的。他是露丝认识的人中最脆弱的一个，他把自己弄成那样，所以也不懂得保护自己。不过他也有很多凶巴巴的评论，他充满了自负。
“你是搞学问的人，露丝，”亨肖博士会说，“你会觉得这个有意思的。”然后她会大声读报纸上的内容，通常是《加拿大论坛报》或《大西洋月刊》。亨肖博士是加拿大社会党的创始成员，一度是学校董事会的头儿。她现在仍然是委员会成员，给报纸写信和书评。她在中国出生，父母都是懂医药的传道士。她的房子小巧周正。锃亮的地板、鲜艳的毯子，有来自中国的花瓶、碗和风景画，还有乌黑的木雕屏风。在当时，这些都不是露丝能欣赏的东西。亨肖博士家壁炉架上摆放的玉雕小动物跟汉拉提珠宝商店橱窗里摆放的饰品到底有什么区别，她那时还分辨不出来。尽管她已经能够分辨这两样东西跟弗洛从廉价商店买回来的东西有什么不一样了。
她不太能知道自己到底喜不喜欢待在亨肖博士家。有时她会感到受挫，因为坐在用餐室的时候，她要在膝盖上铺一块亚麻布手帕，用蓝色餐具垫上那精致的白色碟子就餐。首先，分量是从来都不够，她得去买甜甜圈和巧克力棒，把它们藏在自己的房间里。用餐室的窗户上，金丝雀在它的栖息处摇晃着身子，亨肖博士掌控着对话。她会谈到政治，谈到作家。她会提起弗兰克•斯科特和多萝西•利夫赛。她说露丝一定要去读读他们。露丝一定要读读这个，一定要读读那个。露丝开始不高兴、不情愿了。她读的是托马斯•曼。她读托尔斯泰。
来亨肖博士家之前，露丝从来没有听说过“工人阶级”。她把这个称谓带回了家。
“他们要是装下水道，这里肯定是镇上最后一处。”弗洛说。
“当然了，”露丝冷静地说，“这可是镇上的工人阶级区。”
“工人阶级？”弗洛说，“这里的人想不做工人阶级都难吧。”
亨肖博士的家做了一件事。它摧毁了“家”给人的理所当然的印象——回到家里，就等于回到粗鲁的光线笼罩之下。弗洛在店里和厨房都安了荧光灯。厨房的角落里还有一盏弗洛在宾果游戏中赢来的落地灯；它的灯影永远包裹在宽条纹透明玻璃纸里。在露丝看来，亨肖博士和弗洛的房子表现最突出的地方，就是在互相怀疑。亨肖博士那迷人的房间总是会带给露丝一种关于家的原始认知，华丽得无法消化，现在回到自己家里呢，她在别处和在那些从来没有感觉过自己贫穷的人身上感受到的秩序和整洁感，就会暴露出这个地方尴尬又令人悲伤的穷酸。但是亨肖博士的想法似乎是这样的：贫穷并不只关于可怜，也不只关于匮乏。贫穷意味着拥有那些难看的日光灯，并为它们感到自豪。它还意味着不断地故意谈论那些人们买回来的新东西，谈论他们有没有为此付钱。它意味着因新的塑料窗帘和仿制蕾丝而升腾起的骄傲和嫉妒，弗洛还买过这种窗帘挂在前窗。它同样意味着把你的衣服挂在门后边，意味着能听到浴室里的每一句话。它意味着用一连串的警告、伪善、欢乐和稍微下流的话语来装饰你的墙壁。
主是我的牧羊人
当信主耶稣，你们都必得救
弗洛都不信教，她怎么会这些呢？人们都会这些，它们就像日历一样稀松平常。
这是我厨房，我爱干吗干吗
超过两人一张床，一来危险二违法
比利•波普带来了这句话。帕特里克会对这话说些什么呢？一个因为念错“梅特涅”就感到被冒犯的人，会怎么看待比利•波普的故事呢？
比利•波普在泰德的肉店工作。现在他最常提到的，是那位政府救助的流浪者，那位比利时人。他来这边干活，整天肆无忌惮地唱着法文歌，对这个国家抱有幼稚的想法，希望哪天能买一家自己的肉店，这些都让比利•波普好生不得安宁。
“别想着你能来这搞到什么点子，”比利•波普对流浪者说，“是恁们给我们打工，别想着我们哪天会给恁们打工。”这话让他住了嘴，比利•波普说。
帕特里克老是说，露丝家只有五十英里远，所以他应该过去见见她的家人。
“只有我继母在。”
“太糟糕了，我都没法见到你的爸爸。”
她草草地向帕特里克介绍了她的父亲，说他是一位历史阅读者，一位业余学者。这算不上假话，不过她还是没有把真实情况告诉他。
“你的继母是你的监护人吗？”
露丝得说，她不知道。
“嗯，你爸爸在遗嘱里肯定给你指定了一个监护人的。他的房产管理者是谁？”
他的房产。露丝以为房产就是土地，就像在英国人们所拥有的那种。
帕特里克觉得她这么想实在是太迷人了。
“不是，是他的钱和物资和其他东西。他留下来的东西。”
“我不觉得他留下了什么东西。”
“别傻了。”帕特里克说。
有时候亨肖博士会说：“嗯，你是个搞学问的人，对那些可不会感兴趣。”有的时候她指的是学校里的一些事，比如赛前运动会、一场足球赛和一场舞蹈。通常她是对的，露丝是不感兴趣。但是她并不着急去承认这一点。她没有去给自己下定义，也并不为这种定义感到快乐。
楼梯墙壁上挂着的是其他女孩的毕业照，她们是获得奖学金的女孩，都跟亨肖博士一起生活过。大多数人都成了老师，然后成了母亲。其中一位是营养学家，两位是图书管理员，还有一位是英语教授，就像亨肖博士自己一样。露丝并不在意她们的长相，那些随意而温顺的微笑表达着感激之情，她们长着巨大的牙齿和少女般的卷发。她们似乎在敦促她死心塌地遵循世俗轨迹。这里没有演员，没有闹哄哄的杂志记者，没有人理解露丝想要的那种生活。她想在公共场合表演。她想做一名演员，但是她从来没有表演的机会，又害怕靠近学校的戏剧。
她知道她唱也不行，跳也不行。她真的很想演奏竖琴，但是她在音乐上也不灵光。她希望出名、惹人艳羡，希望苗条、伶俐。她跟亨肖博士说，如果她是个男人，她会想去做一名国外通讯员。
“那你一定要去做啊，”亨肖博士义正严辞地说，“未来对女性是敞开的。你得把重点放在语言上。你得上政治科学的课。还有经济学。也许你这个夏天可以找份在报社的工作。我在那儿有朋友。”
露丝害怕在报社工作，她也讨厌入门经济学，她正想着怎么才能甩掉这门课。跟亨肖博士提点事儿可真是危险。
她跟亨肖博士住到一起是出于偶然。本来是另外一名女孩被选上来这里住，但是她病了，她得了肺结核，所以就直接到疗养院住去了。新生入学第二天，亨肖博士到大学办公室查阅获得奖学金的大一新生名单。
露丝到办公室有一会儿了，她来问获奖学金的学生会议是在哪里举行。她把自己那张通知给弄丢了。财务主管在那个会议上讲新来的获奖学金的学生应该如何挣钱、如何节约，向他们介绍如果想要获得收入，这里需要什么样的高要求表现。
露丝找到了那个会议室的门牌号，开始走下楼梯去一楼。一位女孩跟在她后面走了过来，说：“你也去 3012 室吗？”
她们一起走，互相交流她们奖学金的细节。露丝还没有住的地方，她那个时候住在基督教青年会，也没多少能在这里住下的钱。她手头的钱就是交学费的奖学金、供她买书的国家奖金和三百块钱的大学奖学金，这就是全部了。
“你得找份工作。”另外一位女孩说。她的大学奖学金更丰厚些，因为她是在科学系（钱都在那儿呢，钱全都在科学系，她认真地说），但是她希望在餐厅里找份工作。她住在别人的地下室一个小间里。你的房间要花多少钱？一份热食要多少钱？露丝问她，她的脑子在焦急的算术中扑腾着。
这位女孩把头发卷了起来。她穿着一件已经发黄的绉纱衬衫，由于熨洗的缘故闪着亮光。她的双乳巨大，下垂着。大概是穿了一件脏粉色的侧扣式胸罩。她的脸颊上有一块鳞样的斑点。
“肯定是这里了。”她说。
门上有个小窗口。从这可以看到其他奖学金获得者已经聚集在里面等着了。露丝好像看见那里有四五个女孩都长得差不多，躬着背，一副中年妇女的模样，就像身边这位似的。还有一些长着明亮双眸、洋洋自得的娃娃脸男孩。仿佛这里的规则是获得奖学金的女孩长得都像四十岁，男孩长得都像二十岁似的。当然，他们不可能全长成这样。同样不太可能的是，露丝只消看一眼，就能探测出这里的人有的长了湿疹，胳膊底下有斑，有头屑，牙齿上还有霉掉的残留物，眼角有硬硬的薄片。这只是她自己想出来的。不过的确有一种东西笼罩着他们，露丝没有看错，笼罩着他们的是一种渴望而顺从的氛围，这种感受真切又可怕。如果不是有这样的氛围，他们又怎能给出那么多正确而又取悦人心的答案呢？如果不是这样，还有什么能让他们跟其他人区别开来，考上这所学校？露丝做的，也是一样的事罢了。
“我得去上个厕所。”她说。
她能够想象自己在餐厅工作的样子。她想象自己的体形，本身已经够宽大了，穿着一件绿色棉制服更宽大些，由于闷热，她的脸蛋通红，头发黏黏的，为那些智力不足、财力丰厚的食客们分别盛上炖物和炸鸡。她觉得自己受了拘束，不仅仅是因为餐厅里的那些蒸汽保温餐桌、那身制服、那个不需要感到丢人的体面的辛苦活儿，还因为她向公众展示的那种机敏和贫穷。男孩们如果是这样，勉强还行。对于女孩们来说，这则是致命的。贫穷女孩并不吸引人，除非她有点浪浪的、蠢蠢的。机敏的女孩也不吸引人，除非她还有些优雅，有点格调。
是这样吗？还是说因为她蠢才在意这事儿？的确是这样；也是因为蠢。
她回到一楼，那个大堂里挤满了普通的、没有获得奖学金的学生，人们不会指望他们得A，指望他们充满感激、节俭生活。他们令人艳羡，又天真无邪，在入学登记台前绕成圈，穿着崭新的紫色和白色上衣，戴着他们紫色的新生小圆帽，骂骂咧咧和高声呼喊着的，无非是要记的事情、混乱的信息和荒唐的辱骂。她走在他们中间，带着一种苦涩的优越和不快。她穿着一件灯芯绒套装，不过走路的时候，这套装的裙子老是在她两腿之间往后扯。那材质很是松软，她应该多花点钱，买一件更加厚实的。她现在觉得那件夹克衫剪裁得也不对头了，尽管在家里的时候看上去一切都好。这身衣服是汉拉提一个女裁缝做的，是弗洛的朋友，她的主要想法就是做衣服跟体形不应该有什么关联。当露丝问到这裙子能不能做得更紧的时候，这个女人说：“你不会想要展示自己的屁股，对吧？”露丝不打算说：我不在乎。
女裁缝还说了另外一件事：“我想你现在已经上完学了，应该找份工作，给家里搭把手了吧。”
一位从大堂走下来的女士叫住了露丝。
“你不是获了奖学金的女孩吗？”
这是入学注册主任的秘书。露丝想自己会被谴责一番，因为她没有去开会，她准备说自己病了。她已经做出一副撒谎的表情来了。但是秘书说：“现在跟我过来吧。我这儿有一个你想见的人。”
在办公室里，亨肖博士把自己变成了一个可爱的讨厌鬼。她喜欢贫穷的女孩，聪明的女孩，但她们都得是很好看的女孩才行。
“我想今天是你的幸运日子了，”秘书带着露丝过来，说，“摆出一副高兴的样子来就好。”
露丝讨厌别人让她这么做，但她还是顺从地笑了笑。
一个小时之内，她就被亨肖博士带进家了。她在那个有中国屏风和花瓶的家里安顿了下来。
亨肖博士告诉她，她是个搞学问的人了。
她在大学图书馆工作，不是在餐厅里了。亨肖博士是图书馆长的朋友。她在每个星期六下午工作。她身处书架之间，负责把图书放好。秋天的周六下午，由于足球比赛的缘故，图书馆几乎空无一人。狭窄的窗户打开，那边就是枝叶繁茂的校园，是足球场，是干燥的秋天的国度。遥远的歌声和吵闹声随波而来。
大学的大楼并不老旧，但是有意造出古老的样子。它们是用石头建的。艺术楼有一个塔，图书馆有个竖铰链窗，可能是设计出来射箭用的。图书馆最让露丝感到愉悦的地方，就是这建筑和里面的藏书。这楼里通常到处都是人，现在人流分散出去，蜂拥在足球场周围，发出那些响声，对她来说既不合时宜，又打扰人。如果你仔细听那些词，那欢呼和歌声蠢得可以。
既然他们要如此歌唱，当初还造这样庄严的建筑来做什么？
她相当清楚，这想法不宜说出去。如果有人跟她说：“太糟糕了，你要在周六工作不能去看比赛。”她会热烈地表示同意。
有一次一个男人抓了抓她没有遮盖的腿，就在她的袜子和裙子中间。这是在书架的农业栏发生的事情，就在那书架下面。只有教职工、研究生和员工能够到书架这边来，不过如果那个人足够瘦，他也可以从底层窗户吊着上来。她还见过有人蹲下来看底层书架上的书，蹲了好长时间。当她往上把一本书推放归位的那当口儿，那人从她后面过去了。他弯腰抓住了她的腿，这令人惊异的动作迅猛又流畅，一下子人就不见了。她有好一会儿还能感觉到他的手指抠进来的地方。这不像是关于性的抚摸，更像是一个玩笑，虽然并不友好。她听见他跑开，感觉到他的跑动——那金属的架子在震动——然后停住。没有他的声音。她四处走动，看看架子中间，看看那些小单间的动静。假如她果真见到了他，把他撞进角落里，她准备做些什么？她不知道。只知道找到他是必要的，就像是那些紧张的孩子们的游戏一样。她往下看看自己那壮硕而红润的腿肚子。棒极了，冷不丁地现在有人想蹭蹭、揩揩油了。
小单间里总是会有一些研究生在，周六下午也是如此。偶尔会有教授在那。她去看的每一个单间都是空的，直到她来到角落的那间。她悠然地戳戳脑袋，觉得那儿也不会有什么人。然后她就得说句抱歉了。
那里有一个男人，一本书摆在大腿上，其他书放地上，周围都是试卷。露丝问见没见到有人跑过。他说没有。
她告诉了他事情的经过。她只是觉得必须把这事儿告诉别人，并不是因为感到害怕或者感到恶心才这么跟他说——不过他之后倒是这么觉得的。真奇怪。她完全没有做好准备听他是什么反应。他那长长的脖子和脸蛋变得通红，那血流冲淡了胎记，冲下了他的脸颊。他身材瘦削，相貌英俊。他站了起来，全然不顾腿上的书或者周围的试卷。那书撞到了地面上。那一大沓试卷被推过桌子，打翻了他的墨水瓶。
“太恶劣了。”他说。
“抓住墨水瓶。”露丝说。他侧身过去接瓶子却又把它打翻在地。幸亏那盖子还在，没有破。
“他伤害你了吗？”
“没有，其实没有。”
“上楼去。我们去报告这事儿。”
“哦，别。”
“他逃不过的。这是不允许的。”
“没有人可以报告，”露丝放松下来说，“图书管理员在周日中午就下班了。”
“太恶心了。”他用激动的声音说，调门高高的。露丝很后悔自己跟他讲了这些事，然后她说她要回去工作了。
“你真的没事吗？”
“哦，是的。”
“我会在这里。如果他回来你告诉我。”
那就是帕特里克。如果说她一直试图让他爱上自己，那么没有比现在更好的选择了。他有很多骑士精神的想法，尽管他假装在嘲笑它们，他会说一些特定的词句，假装是在引用。女子，他会这样说，还会说落难少女。露丝来到那个单间，带着她的故事，她便把自己变成了落难少女。他语气中那假装的讽刺可唬不了人，很清楚，他就是希望能够跟这个世界上的骑士和女士们携手共进，因邪恶愤慨，为正义献身。
每个周六，她仍然会在图书馆里见到他，也常常能看到他走在校园和餐厅里。他对她打招呼带着一种礼貌和关怀：“你还好吗？”这样问候是因为想到她可能会受到更多袭击，或者可能仍然没有从第一次袭击中走出来。他常常见到她就脸红得厉害，她觉得这是因为他老记着第一次她告诉他的事，羞愧得脸红。后来她发现这是因为爱。
他发现了她的姓名以及住处。他往亨肖博士家里打电话给她，问她要不要一起去看电影。一开始他说：“我是帕特里克•布兰奇福德。”露丝都想不起来这是谁，但是一会儿之后露丝认出了那个音调高高的，听上去委屈又胆怯的声音。她说她会去。她会去的部分原因是亨肖博士总是说，露丝没有浪费时间跟男孩子们混在一起，她可真是欣慰。
开始跟帕特里克出去约会不久后，她就跟他说：“要是那天是你抓了我的腿该多有趣啊，是不是？”
他不觉得有趣。他觉得她这么想太恐怖了。
她说这只是开玩笑。她说她是想说，如果是这样，那么这个故事转折还挺妙的，可能是个毛姆的故事，或者希区柯克的电影。他们刚刚一起去看了一部希区柯克的电影。
“你知道，如果希区柯克拍了部这样的电影，你的性格可能就一半是狂野无节制的抓腿人，另一半就是个胆怯的学者了。”
他也不喜欢这说法。
“一个胆怯的学者，这是你对我的看法吗？”她觉得他压低了自己的嗓音，用了几个嗡鸣声，拽起他的下巴，似乎是为一个笑话做出的表情。但是他很少跟她讲笑话，他觉得在恋爱的时候不适合讲笑话。
“我不是说你是一个胆怯的学者或者是一个抓腿人。这只不过是个想法。”
过了一会儿他说：“我想我看上去并不怎么有男子气概吧。”
对于他的这种坦白，她感到震惊，并且被激怒了。他这是碰运气的话，没有什么教过他不要这么碰运气吗？不过可能他其实并没有。他知道她肯定要说一些安慰他的话。尽管她很希望不要这么做，希望谨慎地说一句：“嗯，你不怎么有男子气概。”
但这不是真的。对她来说，他的确挺有男子气的。就是因为他会碰运气。只有男人会如此粗心又有所求。
“我们来自两个不一样的世界。”另一次，她跟他说。说这话的时候她感觉自己就像话剧里的一个角色似的。“我那边的人是穷人。你会觉得我住的地方是一个垃圾堆。”
现在，她成了那个不诚实的人了，假装把自己扔在他的怜悯之中，因为她觉得他当然不会说，哦，这样啊，如果你身边都是穷人，还来自垃圾堆，那我就收回我的请求好了。
“但是我挺高兴的，”帕特里克说，“很高兴，你是个穷人。你这么漂亮。你就像乞丐新娘。”
“谁？”
“国王科法图和乞丐新娘。你知道。那幅画。你不知道那幅画吗？”
帕特里克有个把戏——不对，这不是把戏，帕特里克没有把戏。当人们不知道一些他知道的东西时，帕特里克有一种表达惊讶的方法，那种颇为讽刺的惊讶；同样，当人们要劳烦他去了解一些他不知道的东西时，他也会显出同样的讽刺，同样的惊讶。他的傲慢和谦卑都夸张得古怪。那种傲慢，露丝那时就觉得，一定来自他的富裕家境，尽管帕特里克从来没有在那个方面表现出自己的傲慢来。当她见到他的姐妹们的时候，发现她们也一样，对任何不知道马匹和航海的人都感到厌恶，就像厌恶任何知道音乐或者政治的人一样。帕特里克跟她们在一起的时候，除了扩大这厌恶情绪就没别的了。但是，当比利•波普傲慢起来，当弗洛傲慢起来的时候，不也一样糟糕吗？可能是。但有一个差别，那就是比利•波普和弗洛是不受保护的。他们是会受到烦扰的，比如流浪者，比如在电台里说法语的人，比如变化。帕特里克和他的姐妹们表现得就像永远都不会受到什么事情烦扰一样。当他们在桌前吵架的时候，他们的声音听上去孩子气得令人震惊；他们对食物的要求是这样的：只要见到桌上有什么他们不喜欢吃的，就会大发雷霆，跟小孩子一样。他们从来都没有通过顺从和光鲜赢得这个世界的喜爱，他们从来也都不需要，因为他们很有钱。
露丝一开始对帕特里克有多少钱是没有概念的。没人相信这一点。每个人都认为她很聪明，已经算计过了。这么说来，她离聪明还远着呢，她也的确不在意他们到底相不相信。后来她发现，那些一直在努力往上爬的女孩，并没有像她那样击中了关键。大一点的女孩，还有女生联谊会的女孩们，之前从来没有注意过她，于是开始用困惑和尊敬的目光来看待她。就连亨肖博士，这个在她看来想问题要更正经一点的人，都让露丝过去好好聊一聊，觉得她可能是看中了人家的钱。
“吸引了商业帝国二代的注意是一个很大的胜利。”亨肖博士说，话语里同时带着讽刺和严肃。“我不是鄙视财富，”她说，“有时候我希望自己能有一些财富。”（她还真希望过自己没有吗？）“我相信你能够学会如何把这些财富用在好的地方。但是你的抱负呢，露丝？你的学习，还有你的学位呢？你这么快就要把这一切忘了吗？”
“商业帝国”真是一种相当堂皇的表达法。帕特里克的家庭在不列颠哥伦比亚拥有连锁百货商场。帕特里克只跟露丝提了下他父亲有几家店。当她跟他说“两个不一样的世界”时，她觉得他可能是住在亨肖博士那一带那种大房子里。她想象的是汉拉提最有钱的商人。她意识不到自己撞了个多大的彩头，因为如果屠夫的儿子或者珠宝商的儿子爱上了她，也会是个彩头，人们会说她“干得漂亮”。
她去看了那幅画。她在图书馆里查阅了一本艺术类图书。她研究乞丐新娘，温和动人、体态丰盈，长着羞答答的白皙双腿。她看到乞丐新娘那欲说还休的顺从，那种无助和感激。这就是帕特里克心目中的露丝吗？这就是她会成为的人吗？她需要的是那位国王，皮肤黝黑、个性敏锐，透着热情、聪明和野性的气质。他那凶猛的欲望会让她春心荡漾。他身上没有那种歉意，没有信念不足，没有畏畏缩缩，而这些似乎在帕特里克身上处处可见。
她不能拒绝帕特里克。她做不到。她无法忽视的，并不是那堆钱，而是那堆爱。她认为自己是在怜惜他，想帮他的忙。仿佛他穿过人群，来到她身边，拿着一颗巨大的、简单的、明晃晃的物体——也许是一颗蛋，银灿灿的蛋，用途可疑，重量唬人，仿佛他在把这个递给她，事实上是硬塞给她，求她给他卸点重量。如果她又塞回去，他如何忍受得了？但是这种解释里遗漏了一些东西。遗漏了她自己的欲望，不是对于财富的欲望，而是对于被崇拜的欲望。
他所说的那些话，那尺寸、那分量、那光辉，就是爱——她从来没有怀疑过这点，这爱必然给她留下了印记，尽管她自己从来没有要过。这样的给予似乎以后不会再出现了。帕特里克自己虽然对她心怀敬意，但是含糊间也承认了这是她的运气。
她总是觉得这是会发生的事情，觉得有人会看着她，全心全意、无可救药地爱上她。同时她又觉得没有人会爱上她，完全不会有人爱上她，在此之前，从来没有。别人想要你，不是因为你做了什么，而是因为你身上有什么，可你怎么知道你到底有没有那个东西呢？她会对着镜子想：妻子，亲爱的。这些温和而好听的词语。这些词怎么能用在她身上呢？这是个奇迹，这是个错误。那是她梦想的东西，但不是她想要的东西。
她变得疲惫、易怒、缺觉。她尝试以赞赏的方式来看待帕特里克。他那微倾着、白嫩的脸蛋的确很好看。他一定知道很多事情。他给试卷打分、主持考试、正在做论文。他身上有一种烟斗和糙糙的羊毛衫味道。他二十四岁。就她所知，没有一个女孩有年纪这般大的男朋友。
她没有顾忌地琢磨起他说的话来：“我想我看上去并不怎么有男子气概吧。”她觉得他是在说：“你爱我吗？你爱我吗？”他会以一种吓人的、威胁的方式看着她。然后当她说爱的时候，他说自己真是幸运啊，他们俩真是幸运啊，他提到他的朋友和他朋友的女孩们，跟他和露丝的爱情比起来多没劲哪。露丝会发抖，带着恼怒和痛苦。她厌恶自己，就像她厌恶他一样，她厌恶他们此刻营造的画面，走过市中心白雪皑皑的公园，她光着的双手塞到帕特里克身上，塞到他的口袋里。她内心里，呼喊着残酷而骇人的话语。她得做些事情，得防止自己会离开这段关系。她开始对他打趣和玩闹起来。
在亨肖博士的后院里，在雪中，她亲吻了他，试着让他张开嘴，她对他做不少耸人听闻的事情。当他亲吻她的时候，他的嘴唇是软软的，他的舌头羞答答的，他并不是扶着她，而是瘫向一边，她在他身上没有发现任何力量。
“你很好看。你的皮肤很好。眉毛也真是漂亮。你真是优雅。”
她听到这很开心，谁听了都会开心。但是她用警告的语气说：“我不优雅，真的。我很大块头。”
“你不知道我有多爱你。我有一本书叫作‘白色女神’。每次我看到这个题目，都会想起你。”
她从他身上扭开。弯腰下来在阶梯处的雪堆里抓了一把雪，然后拍在他的脑袋上。
“我的白色男神。”
他把雪甩开。她抓起更多的雪，然后甩向他。他没有笑，他感到讶异和惊恐。她把雪从他的眉毛刷下，用舌头舔掉耳朵里的。她大笑起来，尽管她的感受并不是快乐，而是绝望。她不知道她为什么会这么干。
“哼唧——肖博士。”帕特里克对她嘟哝两声。那种他用来赞美她的，温柔如诗般的声音消失了，没有任何过渡就变成了抗议和恼火。
“亨肖博士会听见你的！”
“亨肖博士说你是一个值得尊敬的年轻男人，”露丝憧憬地说，“我觉得她是爱上你了。”这是真的，亨肖博士是这么说过。他的确是这样的男人，这也没错。但是他忍受不了她说话的方式。她吹走了他头发上的雪。“你为什么不进去蹂躏下她？我觉得她一定是个处女。那是她的窗户。为什么不去呢？”她擦擦他的头发，然后任她放在他大衣内的手滑下去，摩擦他裤子前面。“你硬了呀！”她胜利地说，“哦，帕特里克！你对亨肖博士硬了呀！”她在这之前从来没有说过这样的话，表现得跟这也完全不一样。
“别说了！”帕特里克说，他备受折磨。但是她停不下来。她抬起头，用耳语假装对着楼上的窗户高喊。“亨肖博士！下来瞧瞧帕特里克给你带了什么！”她那欺负人的手伸向他的裤门襟。
为了制止她，为了让她安静下来，帕特里克得跟她扭打在一起。他一只手盖住她的嘴巴，另一只手把她的手从拉链上打掉。那外套大大的宽松的袖子像扑棱扑棱的翅膀一样拍打着她。
他刚要开始打架的时候，她就松了一口气——她就想要他这样，要他有点行动力。但是她得继续抵抗，直到他证明自己比她更强壮为止。她担心的是他比自己还弱。
但是他是很强壮。他把她压下去，再压下去，直到她双膝跪地，脸朝着地下的雪。他将她的手臂向后拉，让她的脸在雪地上摩擦。然后他放手了，不然真要出事了。
“你还好吗？你怎么样？对不起。露丝？”
她摇摇晃晃地站起来，用她那沾满了雪的脸朝他身上撞。他退了几步。
“吻我！吻这些雪！我爱你！”
“你爱我吗？”他哀愁地说，把她一边嘴角上的雪扫开，吻了她，脸上露出可以理解的困惑，“你爱我吗？”
然后一束光线冲着他们洒了下来，洒在雪地上，亨肖博士在他们的头顶上叫起来。
“露丝！露丝！”
她用一种耐心的、鼓舞的声音喊着，仿佛露丝在附近的大雾中迷了路，需要她指引回家的方向。
“你爱他吗，露丝？”亨肖博士说，“别这样，你好好想想。你爱他吗？”她的声音里充满了怀疑和严肃。露丝深深地吸了一口气，用似乎满心平静的声音说：“是的，我爱他。”
“那就行了。”
到了半夜，露丝起来吃巧克力棒。她渴望甜食。通常在教室的时候，或者电影看到半途，她就开始想念软糖蛋糕、布朗尼，那种亨肖博士在欧洲饼店买回来的糕点，那些糕点里放满了厚厚的苦苦的巧克力，溢到盘子外面。每当她开始想她和帕特里克，想看看自己的感受到底是怎么样的，这些渴望就来作乱了。
她的体重在增加，眉毛之间长起了一些粉刺。
她的卧室很冷，就在车库上面，三个方向都有窗户。除了这点之外，这房子还是挺让人愉悦的。床的上方挂着的是希腊天空和废墟的相框照片，这是亨肖博士在地中海之行中拍下来的。
她正在写一篇关于叶芝戏剧的论文。其中一个戏剧写道，一个年轻的新娘正经受一场合情合理又难以忍受的婚姻，最终被精灵们从婚姻里引诱出去了。
“去吧，人世间的孩子……”露丝读着，为自己，她眼里噙着泪水，仿佛她就是那个羞涩而难懂的处女，跟那个将她围困的懵懂农民比起来，她太过优秀了。然而现实生活中，露丝才是那个农民，帕特里克有着惊人的崇高品质，但是他没有想要逃跑。
她将其中一张希腊照片拿了下来，墙纸被磨损了些。她在床上吃着巧克力棒，风从吉本斯公园呼啸而过，撞在车库的墙上。她写下一首诗歌的开头：
稍不注意，漆黑的子宫下，
我就怀上了个，疯子的孩子。
她没有再写更多，有的时候也在想“稍不注意”指的是什么。她也从来没有想把这首诗擦去。
帕特里克跟另外两个研究生同学在一起住。他住处很简朴，也没参加什么联谊会。他穿的衣服像寻常学生一样破破旧旧的。他的朋友们都是老师和牧师的儿子们。他说他的父亲一直不希望他成为一名知识分子。他说他永远也不会去做生意。
下午早些时候，他们回到他的公寓，他知道其他的学生会出去。那房子很冷。他们很快就脱下了衣服，钻进帕特里克的被窝。现在是时候了。他们紧紧抱在一起，发着抖，发着笑。发笑的那个人是露丝。她觉得有必要一直把这事儿弄得比较随意好玩的样子。她非常害怕他们在床上没办成，害怕回到店里被羞辱，害怕暴露了他们之间可怜的欺骗和诡计。然而这欺骗和诡计，只是她的。帕特里克从来都不是一个骗子，尽管面临巨大的尴尬，还有歉意，他挺过来了；经历一番茫然失措和心神不宁之后，他也到达了平静。露丝不顶什么用，她没有将她的消极情绪诚实地表现出来，而是带来一种扭曲又按捺不住的渴望，一种伪造得颇不熟练的激情。当那件事情完成了的时候，她很愉快，这个她倒不需要去伪装。他们做了其他人都做的事情，做了爱人们都做的事情。她想怎么庆祝一下。她想到的，就是一些好吃的东西，比如甜潮店里的巧克力圣代，有热肉桂调味酱的苹果派。她可没有准备好去面对帕特里克的想法，他说，要留在这里，再试一遍。
当他们第五或者第六次在一起面对这种欢愉的时候，她完全就力不从心了，她那随身携带的激情已经沉默了。
帕特里克说：“你怎么了？”
“没什么呀！”露丝说，再一次让自己容光焕发、聚精会神起来。但是她总是忘记要这样做，于是会被新的思绪干扰，最终，她不得不向那挣扎投降了，多多少少的，也不把帕特里克放心上了。一旦她又能对他留心起来，她就会表现出让他不知所措的感动。她现在的确很感激他，她想被原谅，原谅她那假装的感动，原谅她施恩的姿态，原谅她的怀疑。
为什么她要怀疑这么多？当帕特里克去冲速溶咖啡的时候，她舒舒服服地躺在床上，这么想着。她假装的那些东西，不同样也可以感觉出来吗？如果性功能都出乎意料地没问题，那么其他任何事情不也一样吗？帕特里克在这事儿上也不顶用，他的骑士想法，他的自我贬低，几乎都如同他的责骂一般，都令她心灰意冷。但是错不是正在于她吗？她那个“人人都会爱上她”的坚定想法必然已经无法挽回，最终必然会是一件蠢事吗？所以她会留心帕特里克每一个愚蠢的信号，尽管她觉得自己寻找的其实只是他身上那些熟能生巧、令人倾慕的东西。此时此刻，在他的床上、他的房间里，围绕着她的是他的书和衣服，他的鞋刷和打字机，还有贴在各处的卡通画——她坐在床上看它们，它们真的很有趣，她不在的时候，他肯定是把这里弄得很有趣的。她能看出，他是一个可爱、聪明甚至幽默的人，不是英雄，也不是蠢材。或许他们能一起过普通人的生活。只要他回来之后，不要又开始对她进行一番感谢、爱抚和崇拜就行。她不喜欢崇拜，真的，她只是喜欢崇拜这个想法而已。另一方面，她也不喜欢他纠正和批评她。他想改变的东西太多了。
帕特里克爱她。他爱她什么？不是她的口音，他在尝试改变她的口音，只不过她常常不听劝告，也不讲道理，面对凿凿证据，她仍然宣称自己没有乡村口音，大家跟她说话一模一样。
也不是她对待性的过度反应（她的处女身让他松了一口气，他的性能力也让她松了一口气）。然而只要她爆出一个粗鲁的词，发出一个慢悠悠的声响，就能把他吓退。在所有这些时候，她做的动作、她说的话，都在对着他毁掉她自己，然而，他仍然直面着她，穿过所有她制造的障碍，去爱那个她自己都看不见的、乖巧的形象。他的希望很远大。她的口音可以被消灭，她的朋友们可以名誉扫地、被清除出局，她的粗鲁可以被纠正。
她的其他品质呢？她的活力、懒惰、虚荣、不满和野心呢？她全部隐藏起来了。他对此一无所知。尽管对她有怀疑，她却从来不想就此让他对这份爱做个了断。
他们去旅游了两次。
复活节假期的时候，他们坐火车去了不列颠哥伦比亚。帕特里克的父母给帕特里克寄了钱。
他为露丝付了钱，自己用完了在银行里的积蓄，还从他一个同学那里借了点。他告诉她不要跟他父母说她自己没有付钱的事情。她知道这意思是要瞒着他们她很穷。他对女孩的衣着一无所知，可能他也是觉得自己不可能搞懂这事。反正她能做的都已经做了。为了应对海岸的气候，她从亨肖博士那里拿了一件雨衣。虽然有点长，但除了这些以外都还好，而亨肖博士的品味一贯都是青春系的。为了买一件毛绒绒、桃红色的安哥拉羊毛衫，她还去卖了比上次更多的血，不过这衣服看上去乱糟糟的，像一个小镇女生为了打扮自己想出来的主意。她总是在买完了之后才意识到这一点，之前却意识不到。
帕特里克的父母住在西德尼附近的温哥华岛上。半亩修剪过的绿草坪沿着石墙、窄窄的卵石沙滩和海水倾泻而下——现在已是隆冬，那草地仍然是绿的；而在露丝那儿，三月看上去就像隆冬。那房子一半是石头造的，一半是木材加以外墙粉饰。都铎式风格，混搭其他。客厅、餐室和书房的窗户都面朝大海，由于强风有时候也会刮到岸上来，这些窗户都有厚厚的玻璃，露丝觉得应该是那种平板玻璃，就像汉拉提汽车展厅里的那种。餐室外墙也都是玻璃所造，那曲线就在温柔的海湾里伸展，你望着那厚厚的曲线玻璃，就像望向一个瓶底。餐具柜也有一个弧状的、发出微光的肚子，看上去就像一艘小船那么大。这里到处都会让人注意到尺寸，特别是厚度。毛巾的厚度，地毯的、刀柄的、叉子的厚度，还有沉默的厚度。这里的奢侈和不安都是厚重的。一两天之后，露丝已经气馁，因为她的手腕和脚踝都觉得没力气了。拿起自己的刀叉是一件麻烦事，切开和咬下一块完好的烤牛肉几乎是办不到的；爬个楼梯都让她气喘吁吁。她从来不知道有些地方会让你窒息，会让你的生活窒息。除了一些她去过的非常不友好的地方之外，她从来不知道还有这事儿。
第一天早晨，帕特里克的妈妈带她到处走走，她指着一个花房，那是“夫妇二人”住的小别墅，那是一个有百叶窗、有常春藤环绕的漂亮别墅，比亨肖博士的房子更大。那对夫妇以及仆人们说起话来，比露丝在汉拉提见过的任何一个人都要更加温和、谨慎和端庄，比较之下，他们显得比帕特里克家的人更像是占据着优势地位。
帕特里克的妈妈带她去看玫瑰花园和果菜园。那里有不少低矮的石墙。
“这是帕特里克建造的。”他妈妈说。她说任何话都显得很冷淡，几近厌恶。“这些石墙是他建造的。”
露丝的声音一出来，全都是错误的把握和不恰当的热情。
“他一定是真正的苏格兰人。”她说。帕特里克是一名苏格兰人，虽然名字不像。布兰奇福德家族来自格拉斯哥。“最好的石匠不都是来自苏格兰吗？（她就在最近才学会不要说“苏格兰来的”。）也许他有一个当石匠的祖先呢。”
说完之后她退缩了下，她想着自己为这事付出的努力，那种假装自然、假装愉悦，就跟她的衣服一样廉价，一样亦步亦趋。
“不是，”帕特里克的妈妈说，“不是。我不觉得他们是石匠。”她身上仿佛散发出一种烟雾来：她被冒犯了，她不同意，她不高兴。露丝觉得，也许是因为暗示她丈夫的家族需要自己亲自参与劳动的身份让她感到被冒犯了。但是当她更了解她的时候——或者说观察她更久的时候，因为了解她是不可能的——她明白了，帕特里克的妈妈不喜欢对话里出现任何想象的、推测的、抽象的东西。当然，她也不会喜欢露丝那闲聊式的语调。任何关于眼下实际事物之外的东西，也就是食物、天气、邀请、家具和仆人之外的东西，对她而言，都是马虎、粗野、危险的。说“今天这天气真暖和”没问题，但是说“今天让我想起我们以前——”就不行了。她讨厌让人们想起。
她是早年温哥华岛上一个大亨的独生女。她出生在如今已经消失了的北方领地。但是每当帕特里克让她讲往事，让她提供最简单的信息，比如什么样的轮船到了岸，比如领地是哪一年被遗弃的，比如森林铁路的路线是什么的时候，她都会生气地说：“我不知道。我怎么可能知道这些？”这些气愤的话是她语言里最强烈的表达了。
帕特里克的父亲也不关心过去。关于帕特里克的很多事情，大多数事情都让他觉得是个糟糕的信号。
“你想知道那些干吗？”他在饭桌上吼道。他长着平平的肩膀和通红的脸，出奇地好斗。帕特里克长得像他的母亲，很高，好看，优雅，温和的姿态处处都像，仿佛她的衣服、妆容、风格，都是凭借脑子里一个理想的中性形象选定的。
“因为我对历史感兴趣。”帕特里克用一种愤怒而自负，但是紧张得破音的声调说道。
“因为我对历史感兴趣，”他的妹妹玛丽昂马上学了起来，包括那个破音和其他，“历史！”
乔恩和玛丽昂都比帕特里克年纪小，但是比露丝大。不像帕特里克，她们不紧张，她们在自我满足上不露破绽。早前吃饭的时候她们向露丝提出过疑问。
“你骑车吗？”
“不。”
“你驾船航行吗？”
“不。”
“你打网球吗？打高尔夫吗？打羽毛球吗？”
“不。不。不。”
“也许她是个学问天才，就跟帕特里克一样。”父亲说。而让露丝感到恐惧而尴尬的是，帕特里克开始在饭桌上大吼着露丝获得多少奖学金和奖项。他希望干什么？难道他蠢到觉得这样的吹嘘会让他们服气，难道这样做不是除了被嘲讽，什么都捞不到吗？面对帕特里克大吼着的炫耀，面对他对运动和电视的鄙视，面对他所谓的学问兴趣，家人们的抵触显得团结一致。但这个联盟只是暂时的。他父亲对自己女儿的厌恶跟对帕特里克的厌恶比起来，也没少到哪里去。他有时间的话也会斥责她们，他会嘲讽她们花这么多时间来玩游戏，抱怨她们花太多钱来买设备、买船只、买马匹。她们会互相争吵，争吵那些关于分数、借还和损伤的含糊问题。她们都会向妈妈抱怨食物，尽管食物丰富而美味。那位母亲的话也说得尽量少，说实在的，露丝不怪她。她从来没有想象过一个地方会同时积聚那么多的恶意。比利•波普是个偏执又爱抱怨的人，弗洛也阴晴不定、不公平，喜欢说长道短，她的父亲活着的时候，总能给出冷酷的评价和不间断的反对意见，但是相对于帕特里克的家人来说，露丝家的人反而显得愉悦而富足了。
“他们总是这样吗？”她对帕特里克说，“还是因为我？他们不喜欢我。”
“他们不喜欢你是因为我选择了你。”帕特里克带着些许满足说。
夜幕降临之后，他们躺在石子沙滩上，穿着雨衣，拥抱、亲吻，但不舒服，也没成功，于是再试了一遍。亨肖博士那件外套被露丝蹭上了海草的斑痕。帕特里克说：“你知道我为什么需要你了吧？我是多么需要你啊！”
她带他去汉拉提。事情跟她想象的一样糟糕。弗洛惹上大麻烦了，她做了一顿烤土豆，还有大头菜和大大的乡村香肠，那香肠来自屠夫店，是比利•波普送上的特殊礼物。帕特里克不喜欢这种粗糙的食物，也没有装得很喜欢。那张桌子铺了一张塑料桌布，他们就在荧光灯下吃。桌子中间摆放的物件是崭新的，专为此刻准备的，一只塑料天鹅。颜色是石灰绿，翅膀上有个缝口，那里叠放着有颜色的纸巾。他们让比利•波普先拿一块，但是他嘟哝两声，拒绝了。要不然他就会闷闷不乐、老老实实地坐在那儿不动。他想张口说话，他们俩都想张口说话，讲讲露丝的这次大捷。这个消息是从汉拉提那些有话语权的人们中间传出来的，否则他们也不会相信这事。屠夫店的顾客，那些令人生畏的女士们，牙医和兽医的太太们，告诉比利•波普，露丝找了个百万富翁。露丝知道明天比利•波普开工的时候会给大家讲百万富翁或者百万富翁儿子的故事，而所有的故事结果都是在说他自己——比利•波普在这个场合又有什么直接和大胆的行为。
“我们给了他一些香肠让他好好坐下来吃了，他是哪儿来的对我们来说都一样！”
她知道弗洛也会说点什么的，她知道帕特里克那紧张的样子可逃不过她的眼睛，她知道她会学他的声音，学他那笨手笨脚乱拍一气碰倒厨房瓶子的动作。但是现在，他们都弓身坐在桌子前，无精打采的，可难受了。露丝努力说话，兴高采烈地、不自然地发言，就像是一个采访者在调动淳朴的当地居民的兴致。这需要的水平太高，都丈量不过来，她感到很是羞愧。
她还为这食物、这天鹅、这塑料桌布感到羞愧；她为帕特里克，这个郁郁寡欢的大人物感到羞愧，弗洛递给他牙签筒的时候，他还做了一个受惊吓的厌恶表情；她也为弗洛的胆怯、伪善和假装感到羞愧；她最为自己感到羞愧。她甚至都没能好好说话，无法说得更自然些。因为帕特里克，她说话的口音再也回不到从前跟弗洛、比利•波普、汉拉提的口音比较像的样子。反正那口音现在听上去也很刺耳。好像是不仅仅是发音的问题，完全是整个不同的说话方式。说话就是大喊大叫，词都是分开的，每一个词都是重音，仿佛人们可以用来当炸弹互相扔似的。大家说出来的话也都像最平庸的农村喜剧里的台词。没准儿真有一个伙计会这么想——他们都是这么说话的。真的是这么说。露丝想象自己通过帕特里克的眼睛和耳朵来看他们的样子，听他们的语言，也无法不对此感到惊异。
她试着让他们谈谈关于当地历史的话题，她觉得这个帕特里克可能会感兴趣。现在弗洛的确开始说话了，不论她有什么疑虑，憋到现在已经是她的极限了。这对话另起了个话题，不是露丝计划的那种。
“我小时候住的那路线，”弗洛说，“是弄得最糟糕的自杀地界。”
“她说的那路线就是乡村里的特许公路路段，镇区下面是有的。”露丝对帕特里克说。她怀疑接下来她要说什么，果然，帕特里克听到的是有个男人怎么割开自己的喉咙，这话全听进了耳朵里，有个男人第一次一枪把自己给崩了但是没怎么受伤，所以他又装上了子弹，又开火才搞定，另外一个男人用一条链子把自己给吊了起来，是开拖拉机你会勾上的那种链子，所以他的脑袋居然都没拧下来，真是件怪事。
拧下来，弗洛说。
她又讲一个女人的故事，虽然她不是自杀，不过她是在夏天死在自己的房子里，一周之后才被发现。她说要帕特里克想象一下。全部这些事情，弗洛说，都发生在离她出生地五英里的地方。她给出的可都是证据，不是要吓唬帕特里克，至少不是要吓到他无法接受，她是以社交方式在讲述，她不是在为难他。他如何能明白这些呢？
“你是对的，”当帕特里克坐公交车离开汉拉提的时候，他说，“这是个垃圾场。你能离开这个地方一定很开心。”
露丝马上觉得，他不应该这样说。
“当然那不是你的亲妈，”帕特里克说，“你的亲生父母肯定不会是那样的。”露丝也不喜欢他这么说，尽管她自己是这么认为的。她看到他正在试着为她提供一个更加有教养的环境，也许就跟他那些穷朋友们家里一样：有一些书，有个茶托，还有修补过的亚麻布，衣着品味佳，那是一些骄傲、疲乏而受过教育的人们。他真是个胆小鬼，她生气地想，但是她知道自己也是一个胆小鬼，她都不知道应该如何跟自己家乡的人相处得舒服，如何在厨房或者任何事情得心应手。几年之后，她将学会运用这些的方法，她会在晚宴上动用一些来自家乡的灵感把在场的人逗笑或者镇住他们。但现在她感到困惑和痛苦。
无论如何，她的忠诚感萌芽了。现在她要离开这个地方，在她所有的记忆周围，在小店和小镇周围，在那不算热闹，有点乱糟糟的乡村周围，她架设起了一层忠诚和防护的外壳。她会悄悄以此与帕特里克的世界抗衡，他的高山和海洋，他的石头和木制房屋。
但其实他什么都没有留下。
帕特里克给了她一枚钻戒，向她宣布：为了她，他要放弃做一个历史学家。他要去跟他爸爸做生意了。
她说她还以为他讨厌他爸爸的生意呢。他说现在因为有妻子要养，这样的态度暂时行不通了。
仿佛帕特里克对结婚的欲望，即便是想跟露丝结婚的欲望，都是需要他父亲经手的，作为一种理性的标志。在他那个家，丰厚的礼金和病态的意志混搭在了一起。他的父亲曾经想为他在店里找份工作，想给他们买栋房子。帕特里克没能拒绝他的好意，就像露丝也没能拒绝自己的一样，他们的理由都是不希望通过金钱来包办婚姻。
“我们的房子会像你父母的那样吗？”露丝说。她真的觉得一开始可能就会住那样的房子了。
“嗯，可能一开始不会那样。不是完全——”
“我不想要那样的房子！我不想那样生活！”
“你想怎么生活就怎么生活。你想要什么样的房子就要什么样的房子。”
只要不是一个垃圾场就好，她心里愤愤地想。
不熟悉的女孩们会停下来问她这戒指的来历，欣赏它，祝福她。这个周末她一个人回到汉拉提的时候，真是谢天谢地，她在主街道上遇到了牙医的老婆。
“哦，露丝，可真是棒极了呀！你什么时候再回来呢？我们要请你喝茶，镇上的姑娘们要请你喝茶才好！”
这个女人之前从来没有跟露丝说过话，从来没有任何迹象表明她之前认识露丝。如今道路敞开了，障碍变小了。然后露丝——哦，这是最糟糕的，这是最丢人的——露丝没有打断牙医老婆的话，她脸红起来，得意地扬着自己的钻戒说，好啊，这个主意不错。当人们说她一定很幸福的时候她的确觉得自己幸福了。就这么简单。她笑容满面、神采奕奕，把自己变成一个烦恼全无的未婚妻。你住在哪里呀，人们会问，然后她说，哦，在不列颠哥伦比亚！这传说就更有奇效了。那里是不是真的很漂亮啊，他们说，是不是从来都没有冬天啊？
“哦，是呀！”露丝喊道，“哦，不对！”
她早早地醒了，起床、穿好衣服，从亨肖博士车库的侧门出去。太早了，公交车还没来。她步行穿过这城市，到帕特里克的公寓去。穿过公园。在南非战争纪念馆，她看见一对灰狗在跳跃，在玩耍，一位老女士站在旁边，牵着它们的皮绳。太阳刚刚升起，照射在它们发白的皮毛上。草地是湿湿的。水仙花都开了。
帕特里克在门口，头发乱乱的，睡眼惺忪，穿着灰色和红色条纹的睡衣。
“露丝！你怎么了？”
她什么都说不出来。他把她拉进屋子里。她将他抱住，头埋在他的胸口，用夸张的声音说：“求你了，帕特里克。请你，别让我嫁给你。”
“你生病了吗？你怎么了？”
“请你别让我嫁给你。”她又说了一遍，但语气没那么坚定。
“你疯了。”
她并不怪他这么想。她的声音听上去很不自然，像在哄骗，像在犯傻。他打开门之后，她看到了他的样子，他迷惘的眼睛，他的睡衣，她知道她要来做的事情简直是浩瀚繁杂，是天方夜谭。她得把一切解释给他听，但是这个她肯定也办不到。她找不到用哪种语调、用哪种表情来与之相配才好。
“你生气了吗？”帕特里克说，“发生什么了？”
“没什么。”
“那你是怎么过来的呢？”
“走过来。”
她一直在和想去洗手间的冲动而斗争。仿佛如果她去洗手间的话，她在这事儿上积蓄起来的力量就会被毁掉。但是她得上厕所。她放了自己一马。她说：“等等，我要上个厕所。”
她出来之后，帕特里克打开电水壶开关，开始冲速溶咖啡。他看上去很得体，又困惑。
“我其实还没清醒过来，”他说，“好了。坐下来。首先，你是快来月经了吗？”
“不是。”但是她沮丧地想起，她的确是在经期前，而且他可能之后也能知道，因为上个月他们还为这事担忧来着。
“好吧，如果你不是快来月经，也没有什么让你生气的事情，那这又是为什么呢？”
“我不想结婚。”她说，婉转了一下，没有太残忍地说“我不想嫁给你”。
“你是什么时候这样决定的？”
“很久了。今天早上。”
他们很小声地交流着。露丝看看钟点。七点过了一些。
“其他人什么时候起来？”
“大概八点。”
“有冲咖啡的牛奶吗？”她去冰箱里看。
“关门小声点。”帕特里克说。不过太晚了。
“抱歉。”她用她那奇怪的、显得蠢蠢的声音说。
“我们昨天晚上一起散步的时候还什么事都没有。你今天早上就过来告诉我你不想结婚了。你为什么不想结婚？”
“我就是不想。我不想结婚。”
“你还想做什么呢？”
“我不知道。”
帕特里克一直态度严峻地盯着她，喝着咖啡。他这个之前会以恳求的语气说“你爱我吗，你真的爱我吗”的人，现在却不提这个话题了。
“嗯，我知道。”
“什么？”
“我知道谁在跟你聊。”
“没人跟我聊。”
“哦，不。好吧，亨肖博士在跟你聊。”
“不是。”
“有些人对她评价不太高。他们觉得她对女孩会有影响。她不喜欢跟她住在一起的女孩有男朋友。是吧？你甚至都跟我说过。她不喜欢让她们过正常人的生活。”
“不是这样。”
“她跟你说了什么，露丝？”
“她什么都没说。”露丝开始哭了。
“真的吗？”
“哦，帕特里克，听我说，求求你，我不能嫁给你，别这样，我不知道这是为什么，我不能，拜托了，我很抱歉，相信我，我不能……”露丝絮叨着，哭泣着。帕特里克说：“小声点！你吵醒他们了！”把她从厨房的椅子上提起或者说是拖了出来带到他自己房间里，她坐在床上。
他关上门。她抱住他的肚子来回摇。
“怎么了，露丝？你怎么了？你病了吗？”
“跟你说这个好难！”
“跟我说什么？”
“说我刚才说的那些！”
“我是说你是查出自己得了肺结核还是什么吗？”
“不是！”
“是你家里有什么事情你没告诉我吗？是精神疾病吗？”帕特里克鼓起勇气说。
“不是！”露丝摇着，哭着。
“那是什么呢？”
“我不爱你！”她说，“我不爱你。我不爱你。”她躺落在床上，头枕住枕头。“对不起。对不起。我控制不了。”
过了一会儿帕特里克说：“好吧。如果你不喜欢我那就不喜欢我吧。我不是在强迫你。”他的声音听上去牵强附会、怀恨在心，跟他话里的通情达理完全不一样。“我只是想，”他说，“你是否知道你自己要什么。我不觉得你知道。我不觉得你想清楚了你自己要什么。你现在就是在某个状态里。”
“我不需要知道我想要什么不想要什么！”露丝翻过身说。这话让她解脱了。“我从来都不爱你。”
“嘘。你会吵醒他们的。我们得停下来了。”
“我从来都不爱你。我从来都不想。这是一个错误。”
“好的。好的。你的意思也表达到了。”
“我凭什么要爱你？为什么你表现得像我不爱你就觉得我有什么不对劲似的？你鄙视我。你鄙视我的家人，我的背景，你还觉得你在帮我一个大忙——”
“我是爱上了你，”帕特里克说，“我不是鄙视你。哦，露丝，我崇拜你。”
“你是个娘炮，”露丝说，“你装模作样。”说这话时，她身心大悦，跳下床去。她感觉自己充满了能量。还有更多话呢。还有更可怕的事情要发生。
“你甚至都不知道该怎么做爱。我跟你第一次的时候就想逃开了。我真是同情你。你从来都不看路，总是把东西碰倒，因为你自己都不在乎，你不在乎要注意些什么，你的眼里只有你自己，你老是吹嘘，太蠢了，你甚至都不知道该怎么吹才是对的，如果你真的想要给别人留下印象你不会这么做的，你这样做的方式只会让别人嘲笑你！”
帕特里克坐在床上，抬头看她，她说什么，他的脸都朝着她。她想继续鞭笞他，说更坏的坏话，说些更丑恶、更残忍的事情。她深吸一口气，以防体内正在越烧越旺的怒火跑出来。
“我不想再见到你了，再也不想！”她恶狠狠地说。但是走到门口的时候，她却转过身来，用一种正常而遗憾的声音说了声：“再见。”
帕特里克给她写了一张纸条：“我不明白那天发生了什么，我想跟你谈谈这件事情。但是我觉得我们应该等两个星期，我们不见面，不跟对方说话，看看到两个星期的时候我们的感觉是怎么样的。”
露丝把还戒指给他这事儿全给忘了。当她早上从他的公寓楼走出来的时候，她还戴着它呢。
她不能回去，而且如果寄的话也太贵重了。她继续戴着它，最主要的原因是这样就不用告诉亨肖博士到底发生了什么。收到帕特里克的纸条，她松了一口气。她想到那个时候她就可以把戒指还给他了。
她在想帕特里克说亨肖博士的那些话。不消说，这话里是有说对了的地方，不然的话，为什么她那么不愿意告诉亨肖博士她打破了婚约，不愿意面对她那理性的赞同，她那克制的、宽慰的祝贺呢？
她告诉亨肖博士她在准备考试的时候不去见帕特里克。露丝能看出，即便是这事儿，也能让她愉悦起来。
她没有告诉任何人她的情况不一样了。她不仅仅是不想让亨肖博士知道。她不想放弃被嫉妒的感觉，这体验对她来说还是新鲜事。
她试着考虑下一步该做什么。她不能再待在亨肖博士家里了。事情在那明摆着，如果她想逃开帕特里克，那么她必须也得逃开亨肖博士。她不想再住在大学里，让人们都知道她婚约破裂，让现在祝贺她的女孩们说一直就知道她也就是碰了个运气。
图书馆长给她提供一份暑期工作，不过这大概是亨肖博士的建议。她一旦搬出去，这份工作可能就保不住。她知道她不该准备考试，而是应该去市中心，申请保险公司档案管理员的工作，在贝尔电话公司，在百货商场找份工作。这想法把她给吓着了。她一直在学习。这是她唯一知道该怎么做的事情了。毕竟她是一个获得奖学金的学生。
周六下午，当她在图书馆工作的时候，她见到了帕特里克。不是偶然遇见。她走到底层去，试着不要在螺旋的金属阶梯上弄出声音来。书架中间有个地方，她可以站在那里，几乎漆黑一片，她朝他所在的小单间里看。她就站在那里了。她看不清他的脸。他能看见他那粉色的脖子，和他那件在周六穿的旧格子纹衬衫。他那长长的脖子。他那瘦削的肩膀。她不再被他激怒，不再被他吓退，她是自由的。她看着他，就像她看着任何人一样。她能欣赏他了。他的表现很好。他并没有去唤醒她的同情，他并没有欺负她，他没有可怜兮兮地打电话和写信骚扰她。他没有坐在亨肖博士的楼梯上不走。他是一个值得尊敬的人，他永远不会知道她对此有着怎样的赞许，怎样的感激。她现在对自己说过的那些话感到惭愧了。那些话甚至都不是真的。不全是。他确实知道怎么做爱。看到他的样子，她很感动，她变得温柔又依依不舍，她想给他一些东西，给他一些惊喜的回馈，她想消除他的不快。
然后她无法自控地想象了自己的一个画面。她轻轻地跑到帕特里克的单间，从后面抱住他，把一切还给他。他还会要吗，他还想要吗？她想到他们大笑、大哭、解释、原谅。我爱你。
我真的爱你，没事的，我很糟糕，我不是故意的，我只是疯了，我爱你，没事了。这对她来说是一个强烈的诱惑，甚至是难以抵抗的诱惑。她有一种向前奔去的冲动。前方到底是悬崖还是野草和鲜花的温床，她真的不知道。
毕竟，这是抵御不了的诱惑。她真的这么做了。
当露丝日后想起，并谈起她人生中的这个时刻，她说有一种战友般的热情战胜了她，她看到那光溜溜的弯弯的脖子，就抵抗不住了——跟现在大多数人一样，她那时处于跟朋友、爱人，以及可能不会再见到的聚会上的人自由谈论个人决定的时期，那些朋友们也会各自说起自己的事。她会更进一步说，那是贪心啊，贪心啊。她说她向他跑去，紧紧抱住他，稳住了他的怀疑，又亲，又哭，让自己恢复到原来的样子。而这一切，都只是因为她不知道没有了他的爱和承诺的关照该怎么办；她对世界感到害怕，她也不能为自己想出别的计划来。当她从经济的角度看待生活，或者她跟这样看待生活的人们在一起的时候，她便说，只有中产阶级的人们是有选择的，如果她够钱买一张去多伦多的火车票，她的人生也就不一样了。
胡说八道，她之后可能也会说，别管那些，其实是虚荣，让她回来，重新把幸福带给他，其实就是因为虚荣，没别的。就看她会不会这样做。她无法抵抗这股力量的检验。然后她解释说她已经为这付出代价了。她说她和帕特里克已经结婚十年，在这十年里，第一次分手又和好的场景阶段性地一遍遍重复着，第一次说的话全都重新说一遍。她还跟大家倾诉了她所压抑的情绪，以及在她身上发生的事情。她希望她没有告诉别人（不过她觉得她说了）她曾经用头往床柱上撞，往餐室窗户扔调料瓶将它打碎；她为自己所做的事情感到恐惧而厌倦，于是躺在床上发抖，不断乞求他的原谅。他原谅了她。有的时候他猛扑向她，有的时候他打她。第二天早上他们会早早地起床，做一顿特殊的早餐，他们会坐下来，吃培根、鸡蛋，喝过滤咖啡，筋疲力尽，带着羞愧的好意来对待对方。
你觉得引发这次争吵的原因是什么？他们会问。
你觉得我们应该去度假吗？一起去度假？就我们俩？
结果，那是一场浪费，一个假象，那些努力全都是。但是那一阵是奏效的。冷静下来之后，他们会说，婚姻里大多数人可能都会经历同样的过程，事实上他们似乎也认识大部分有这种经历的人。直到发生了足够的、几乎致命的伤害，才最终分开。他们俩，则是直到露丝找到一份工作、自己开始赚钱的时候才分开的，这其实也就是一个普通原因而已。
她从来没有跟任何人吐露过这样的感受：有的时候她觉得他们的婚姻生活其实并不是关于同情、贪婪、胆小，或者虚荣，而是一些非常不一样的东西，仿佛是幸福的画面。不过鉴于她说过那些事，她又很难把这种感受同时表达出来。因为听上去会很奇怪，她说不通。她的意思不是说他们的婚姻完全可以平平凡凡、相互忍耐，不是铺开墙纸、度假、晚饭、购物、担心孩子健康，而是有的时候，不知道什么原因，在没有预警的情况下，幸福，幸福的可能性，会让他们感到惊讶。那个时候就好像他们俩都不是自己，只是拥有看上去一模一样的表层皮肤而已，好比有带着满满善良和单纯的露丝和帕特里克，只是在他们平常面目的遮盖之下很难看得清楚而已。或许这是她在那个单间里见过的帕特里克，那时的她对他来说是自由的，遁形的。或许是。她应该把这样的他留在那里。
她知道这就是她看他的方式，她知道的，因为这样的场景又发生了一遍。有一次深夜她在多伦多机场。这是她跟帕特里克离婚九年之后了。这个时候她已经相当出名，她的脸对这个国家很多人来说都很熟悉。她在做一个电视节目，采访政客、演员、作家、名人，还有一些人，他们为政府、政治或者工会对他们做过的事感到愤怒。有的时候她会跟那些见过奇怪景象的人对话。比如有人看到了UFO，看到了海怪，还有些人拥有不寻常的成就或收藏品，遵循某种过时风俗。
她一个人在那。不是要跟人见面。她刚刚从一趟延误的航班下来。她很疲惫，衣衫不整。她看到帕特里克背对着她，在一个咖啡吧里。他穿着一件雨衣。他比之前胖了，但是她一下子就认出了他。她又有了那种同样的感觉：这就是她注定要在一起的那个人，由于某种魔法，可能还是某种招数，他们会找到对方，信任对方，而开始这一切她需要做的，就是走上前碰碰他肩膀，给他个惊喜，给他一点幸福。
当然，她没有这么做，但她停了下来。她仍然站在那里，他转过身来，向咖啡吧前面那其中一张塑料桌子和弧线椅子走去。他那瘦削的身材、寒酸的学院气，他那板着脸的专横表情，通通不见了。他变得圆润，变得充实，变成了这般时髦、悦目、有责任感、有点得意的男人。他的胎记已经褪去。她想着自己穿着那么皱巴巴的风衣，看上去得多憔悴无力，她那长长的、变灰的头发散落在她脸的周围，眼睛下面是沾上许久的睫毛膏污渍。
他对她做了一个表情。这个表情，是一个真切的痛恨，凶狠的警告，显得幼稚、没有克制，却似乎是精心设计过的；像是一个厌恶和憎恨的定时炸弹。很难相信。但是她看到了。
有的时候，当露丝在电视机镜头前跟别人谈话的时候，她能感觉到他们也有做这个表情的冲动。她会在所有人身上感受到这一点，在精于算计的政客身上，风趣智慧的自由派主教身上，还有受人尊敬的人道主义者、目睹自然灾害的家庭主妇，以及实施过英勇的救援又在伤残退休金的问题上被骗的工人身上。他们渴望着冲破自己的藩篱，做一个表情，说一次脏话。这就是他们都想做的表情吗？想让某些人看到，让所有人看到吗？不过他们不会这么做，他们得不到这个机会。他们需要特殊的环境。在一个极其超现实的地方，在半夜，带着一种难以置信、精神失常的倦意，突然间，你真正的敌人就这样如梦如幻地出现了。
然后她跑开了，跑到那长长的五颜六色的门廊上，颤抖着。她看到了帕特里克，帕特里克看到了她，他做出了那个表情。但是她并没有真正理解，为什么她会成为一个敌人。就在她已经准备好带着她的善意，微笑着默认她的疲惫，用羞涩的信念奏响这文明的前奏时，为什么有人会这样恨她呢？
哦，帕特里克会。帕特里克会的。
Mischief
Mischief
Rose fell in love with Clifford at a party which Clifford and Jocelyn gave and Patrick and Roseattended. They had been married about three years at this time, Clifford and Jocelyn a year or solonger.
Clifford and Jocelyn lived out past West Vancouver, in one of those summer cottages,haphazardly winterized, that used to line the short curving streets between the lower highway andthe sea. The party was in March, on a rainy night. Rose was nervous about going to it. She feltalmost sick as they drove through West Vancouver, watched the neon lights weeping in thepuddles on the road, listened to the condemning tick of the windshield wipers. She would oftenafterwards look back and see herself sitting beside Patrick, in her low-cut black blouse and blackvelvet skirt which she hoped would turn out to be the right thing to wear; she was wishing theywere just going to the movies. She had no idea that her life was going to be altered.
Patrick was nervous too, although he would not have admitted it. Social life was a puzzling,often disagreeable business for them both. They had arrived in Vancouver knowing nobody. Theyfollowed leads. Rose was not sure whether they really longed for friends, or simply believed theyought to have them. They dressed up and went out to visit people, or tidied up the living room andwaited for the people who had been invited to visit them. In some cases they established steadyvisiting patterns. They had some drinks, during those evenings, and around eleven or eleven-thirty—which hardly ever came soon enough—Rose went out to the kitchen and made coffee andsomething to eat. The things she made to eat were usually squares of toast, with a slice of tomatoon top, then a square of cheese, then a bit of bacon, the whole thing broiled and held together witha toothpick. She could not manage to think of anything else.
It was easier for them to become friends with people Patrick liked than with people Rose likedbecause Rose was very adaptable, in fact deceitful, and Patrick was hardly adaptable at all. But inthis case, the case of Jocelyn and Clifford, the friends were Rose’s. Or Jocelyn was. Jocelyn andRose had known enough not to try to establish couple-visiting. Patrick disliked Clifford withoutknowing him because Clifford was a violinist; no doubt Clifford disliked Patrick because Patrickworked in a branch of his family’s department store. In those days the barriers between peoplewere still strong and reliable; between arty people and business people; between men and women.
Rose did not know any of Jocelyn’s friends, but understood they were musicians and journalistsand lecturers at the University and even a woman writer who had had a play performed on theradio. She expected them to be intelligent, witty, and easily contemptuous. It seemed to her that allthe time she and Patrick were sitting in the living rooms, visiting or being visited, really clever andfunny people, who had a right to despise them, were conducting irregular lives and partieselsewhere. Now came the chance to be with those people, but her stomach rejected it, her handswere sweating.
JOCELYN AND ROSE had met in the maternity ward of the North Vancouver General Hospital.
The first thing Rose saw, on being taken back to the ward after having Anna, was Jocelyn sittingup in bed reading the Journals of André Gide. Rose knew the book by its colors, having noticed iton the drugstore stands. Gide was on the list of writers she meant to work through. At that timeshe read only great writers.
The immediately startling and comforting thing to Rose, about Jocelyn, was how much Jocelynlooked like a student, how little she had let herself be affected by the maternity ward. Jocelyn hadlong black braids, a heavy pale face, thick glasses, no trace of prettiness, and an air of comfortableconcentration.
A woman in the bed beside Jocelyn was describing the arrangement of her kitchen cupboards.
She would forget to tell where she kept something—rice, say, or brown sugar—and then shewould have to start all over again, making sure her audience was with her by saying “Rememberon the right hand highest shelf next the stove, that’s where I keep the packages of soup but not thecanned soup, I keep the canned soup underneath the counter in with the canned goods, well, rightnext to that—”
Other women tried to interrupt, to tell how they kept things, but they were not successful, or notfor long. Jocelyn sat reading, and twiddling the end of a braid between her fingers, as if she was ina library, at college, as if she was researching for a paper, and this world of other women hadnever closed down on her at all. Rose wished she could manage as well.
She was still dazed from the birth. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw an eclipse, a big blackball with a ring of fire. That was the baby’s head, ringed with pain, the instant before she pushed itout. Across this image, in disturbing waves, went the talking woman’s kitchen shelves, dippingunder their glaring weight of cans and packages. But she could open her eyes and see Jocelyn,black and white, braids falling over her hospital nightgown. Jocelyn was the only person she sawwho looked calm and serious enough to match the occasion.
Soon Jocelyn got out of bed, showing long white unshaved legs and a stomach still stretched bypregnancy. She put on a striped bathrobe. Instead of a cord, she tied a man’s necktie around herwaist. She slapped across the hospital linoleum in her bare feet. A nurse came running, warned herto put on slippers.
“I don’t own any slippers.”
“Do you own shoes?” said the nurse rather nastily.
“Oh, yes. I own shoes.”
Jocelyn went back to the little metal cabinet beside her bed and took out a pair of large, dirty,run-over moccasins. She went off making as sloppy and insolent a noise as before.
Rose was longing to know her.
The next day Rose had her own book out to read. It was The LastPuritan, by George Santayana, but unfortunately it was a library copy; the title on the cover wasrubbed and dim, so it was impossible that Jocelyn should admire Rose’s reading material as Rosehad admired hers. Rose didn’t know how she could get to talk to her.
The woman who had explained about her cupboards was talking about how she used hervacuum cleaner. She said it was very important to use all the attachments because they each had apurpose and after all you had paid for them. Many people didn’t use them. She described how shevacuumed her living-room drapes. Another woman said she had tried to do that but the materialkept getting bunched up. The authoritative woman said that was because she hadn’t been doing itproperly.
Rose caught Jocelyn’s eye around the corner of her book.
“I hope you polish your stove knobs,” she said quietly.
“I certainly do,” said Jocelyn.
“Do you polish them every day?”
“I used to polish them twice a day but now that I have the new baby I just don’t know if I’ll getaround to it.”
“Do you use that special stove-knob polish?”
“I certainly do. And I use the special stove-knob cloths that come in that special package.”
“That’s good. Some people don’t.”
“Some people will use anything.”
“Old dishrags.”
“Old snotrags.”
“Old snot.”
After this their friendship bloomed in a hurry. It was one of those luxuriant intimacies thatspring up in institutions; in schools, at camp, in prison. They walked in the halls, disobeying thenurses. They annoyed and mystified the other women. They became hysterical as schoolgirls, fromthe things they read aloud to each other. They did not read Gide or Santayana but the copies ofTrue Love and Personal Romances which they had found in the waiting room.
“It says here you can buy false calves,” Rose read. “I don’t see how you’d hide them, though. Iguess you strap them on your legs. Or maybe they just sit here inside your stockings but wouldn’tyou think they’d show?”
“On your legs?” said Jocelyn. “You strap them on your legs? Oh, false calves! False calves! Ithought you were talking about false calves! False baby cows!”
Anything like that could set them off.
“False baby cows!”
“False tits, false bums, false baby cows!”
“What will they think of next!”
The vacuum-cleaning woman said they were always butting in and spoiling other people’sconversations and she didn’t see what was so funny about dirty language. She said if they didn’tstop the way they carried on they would sour their milk.
“I’ve been wondering if maybe mine is sour,” Jocelyn said. “It’s an awfully disgusting color.”
“What color?” Rose asked.
“Well. Sort of blue.”
“Good God, maybe it’s ink!”
The vacuum-cleaning woman said she was going to tell the nurse they were swearing. She saidshe was no prude, but. She asked if they were fit to be mothers. How was Jocelyn going to manageto wash diapers, when anybody could see she never washed her dressing gown?
Jocelyn said she planned to use moss, she was an Indian.
“I can believe it,” the woman said.
After this Jocelyn and Rose prefaced many remarks with: I’m no prude, but.
“I’m no prude but would you look at this pudding!”
“I’m no prude but it feels like this kid has a full set of teeth.”
The nurse said, wasn’t it time for them to grow up?
Walking in the halls, Jocelyn told Rose that she was twenty-five, that her baby was to be calledAdam, that she had a two-year-old boy at home, named Jerome, that her husband’s name wasClifford and that he played the violin for a living. He played in the Vancouver Symphony. Theywere poor. Jocelyn came from Massachusetts and had gone to Wellesley College. Her father was apsychiatrist and her mother was a pediatrician. Rose told Jocelyn that she came from a small townin Ontario and that Patrick came from Vancouver Island and that his parents did not approve of themarriage.
“In the town I come from,” Rose said, exaggerating, “everybody says yez. What’ll yez have?
How’re yez doin.”
“Yez?”
“Youse. It’s the plural of you.”
“Oh. Like Brooklyn. And James Joyce. Who does Patrick work for?”
“His family’s store. His family has a department store.”
“So aren’t you rich now? Aren’t you too rich to be in the ward?” “We just spent all our moneyon a house Patrick wanted.” “Didn’t you want it?”
“Not so much as he did.”
That was something Rose had never said before.
They plunged into more random revelations.
Jocelyn hated her mother. Her mother had made her sleep in a room with white organdycurtains and had encouraged her to collect ducks. By the time she was thirteen Jocelyn hadprobably the largest collection in the world of rubber ducks, ceramic ducks, wooden ducks,pictures of ducks, embroidered ducks. She had also written what she described as a hideouslyprecocious story called “The Marvelous Great Adventures of Oliver the Grand Duck,” which hermother actually got printed and distributed to friends and relatives at Christmas time.
“She is the sort of person who just covers everything with a kind of rotten smarminess. She sortof oozes over everything. She never talks in a normal voice, never. She’s coy. She’s just so filthycoy. Naturally she’s a great success as a pediatrician. She has these rotten coy little names for allthe parts of your body.”
Rose, who would have been delighted with organdy curtains, perceived the fine lines, the waysof giving offence, that existed in Jocelyn’s world. It seemed a much less crude and provisionalworld than her own. She doubted if she could tell Jocelyn about Hanratty but she began to try. Shedelivered Flo and the store in broad strokes. She played up the poverty. She didn’t really have to.
The true facts of her childhood were exotic enough to Jocelyn, and of all things, enviable.
“It seems more real,” Jocelyn said. “I know that’s a romantic notion.”
They talked of their youthful ambitions. (They really believed their youth to be past.) Rose saidshe had wanted to be an actress though she was too much of a coward ever to walk on a stage.
Jocelyn had wanted to be a writer but was shamed out of it by memories of the Grand Duck.
“Then I met Clifford,” she said. “When I saw what real talent was, I knew that I would probablyjust be fooling around, trying to write, and I’d be better off nurturing him, or whatever the hell it isI do for him. He is really gifted. Sometimes he’s a squalid sort of person. He gets away with itbecause he is really gifted.”
“I think that is a romantic notion,” Rose said firmly and jealously. “That gifted people ought toget away with things.”
“Do you? But great artists always have.”
“Not women.”
“But women usually aren’t great artists, not in the same way.” These were the ideas of mostwell-educated, thoughtful, even unconventional or politically radical young women of the time.
One of the reasons Rose did not share them was that she had not been well educated. Jocelyn saidto her, much later in their friendship, that one of the reasons she found it so interesting to talk toRose, from the start, was that Rose had ideas but was uneducated. Rose was surprised at this, andmentioned the college she had attended in Western Ontario. Then she saw by an embarrassedwithdrawal or regret, a sudden lack of frankness in Jocelyn’s face—very unusual with her—thatthat was exactly what Jocelyn had meant.
After the difference of opinion about artists, and about men and women artists, Rose took agood look at Clifford when he came visiting in the evening. She thought him wan, self-indulgent,and neurotic-looking. Further discoveries concerning the tact, the effort, the sheer physical energyJocelyn expended on this marriage (it was she who fixed the leaky taps and dug up the cloggeddrains) made Rose certain that Jocelyn was wasting herself, she was mistaken. She had a feelingthat Jocelyn did not see much point in marriage with Patrick, either.
AT FIRST the party was easier than Rose had expected. She had been afraid that she would be toodressed-up; she would have liked to wear her toreador pants but Patrick would never have stoodfor it. But only a few of the girls were in slacks. The rest wore stockings, earrings, outfits muchlike her own. As at any gathering of young women at that time, three or four were noticeablypregnant. And most of the men were in suits and shirts and ties, like Patrick. Rose was relieved.
Not only did she want Patrick to fit into the party; she wanted him to accept the people there, to beconvinced they were not all freaks. When Patrick was a student he had taken her to concerts andplays and did not seem overly suspicious of the people who participated in them; indeed he ratherfavored these things, because they were detested by his family, and at that time—the time he choseRose—he was having a brief rebellion against his family. Once he and Rose had gone to Torontoand sat in the Chinese temple room at the Museum, looking at the frescoes. Patrick told her howthey were brought in small pieces from Shansi province; he seemed quite proud of his knowledge,and at the same time disarmingly, uncharacteristically humble, admitting he had got it all on atour. It was since he had gone to work that he had developed harsh opinions and deliveredwholesale condemnations. Modern Art was a Hoax. Avant-garde plays were filthy. Patrick had aspecial, mincing, spitting way of saying avant- garde, making the words seem disgustinglypretentious. And so they were, Rose thought. In a way, she could see what he meant. She couldsee too many sides of things; Patrick had not that problem.
Except for some great periodic fights she was very docile with Patrick, she tried to keep infavor. It was not easy to do so. Even before they were married he had a habit of deliveringreproving lectures, in response to a simple question or observation. Sometimes in those days shewould ask him a question in the hope that he would show off some superior knowledge that shecould admire him for, but she was usually sorry she had asked, the answer was so long and hadsuch a scolding tone, and the knowledge wouldn’t be so superior, either. She did want to admirehim, and respect him; it seemed that was a leap she was always on the edge of taking.
Later she thought that she did respect Patrick, but not in the way he wanted to be respected, andshe did love him, not in the way he wanted to be loved. She didn’t know it then. She thought sheknew something about him, she thought she knew that he didn’t really want to be whatever he waszealously making himself into. That arrogance might be called respect; that highhandedness, love.
It didn’t do anything to make him happy.
A few men wore jeans and turtlenecks or sweatshirts. Clifford was one of them, all in black. Itwas the time of the beatniks in San Francisco. Jocelyn had called Rose up on the phone and readher Howl. Clifford’s skin looked very tanned, against the black, his hair was long for the time andalmost as light a color as unbleached cotton; his eyes too were very light in color, a bright gray-blue. He looked small and cat-like to Rose, rather effeminate; she hoped Patrick wouldn’t be tooput off by him.
There was beer to drink, and a wine punch. Jocelyn, who was a splendid cook, was stirring a potof jambalaya. Rose made a trip to the bathroom to remove herself from Patrick, who seemed towant to stick close to her (she thought he was being a watchdog; she forgot that he might be shy).
When she came out he had moved on. She drank three cups of punch in quick succession and wasintroduced to the woman who had written the play. To Rose’s surprise this woman was one of thedrabbest, least confident-looking people in the room.
“I liked your play,” Rose told her. As a matter of fact she had found it mystifying, and Patrickhad thought it was revolting. It seemed to be about a woman who ate her own children. Rose knewthat was symbolic, but couldn’t quite figure out what it was symbolic of.
“Oh, but the production was terrible!” the woman said. In her embarrassment, her excitementand eagerness to talk about her play, she sprayed Rose with punch. “They made it so literal. I wasafraid it would just come across as gruesome and I meant it to be quite delicate, I meant it to be sodifferent from the way they made it.” She started telling Rose everything that had gone wrong, themiscasting, the chopping of the most important—the crucial—lines. Rose felt flattered, listeningto these details, and tried inconspicuously to wipe away the spray.
“But you did see what I meant?” the woman said.
“Oh, yes!”
Clifford poured Rose another cup of punch and smiled at her. “Rose, you look delicious.”
Delicious seemed an odd word for Clifford to use. Perhaps he was drunk. Or perhaps, hatingparties altogether as Jocelyn said he did, he had taken on a role; he was the sort of man who told agirl she looked delicious. He might be adept at disguises, as Rose thought she herself was gettingto be. She went on talking to the writer and a man who taught English Literature of theSeventeenth Century. She too might have been poor and clever, radical and irreverent for allanybody could tell.
A man and a girl were embracing passionately in the narrow hall. Whenever anybody wanted toget through, this couple had to separate but they continued looking at each other, and did not evenclose their mouths. The sight of those wet open mouths made Rose shiver. She had never beenembraced like that in her life, never had her mouth opened like that. Patrick thought French-kissing was disgusting.
A little bald man named Cyril had stationed himself outside the bathroom door, and was kissingany girl who came out, saying, “Welcome, sweetheart, so glad you could come, so glad youwent.”
“Cyril is awful,” the woman writer said. “Cyril thinks he has to try to act like a poet. He can’tthink of anything to do but hang around the john and upset people. He thinks he’s outrageous.”
“Is he a poet?” Rose said.
The lecturer in English Literature said, “He told me he had burned all his poems.”
“How flamboyant of him,” Rose said. She was delighted with herself for saying this, and withthem for laughing.
The lecturer began to think of Tom Swifties.
“I can never think of any of those things,” said the writer mourn fully, “I care too much aboutlanguage.”
Loud voices were coming from the living room. Rose recognized Patrick’s voice, soaring overand subduing everyone else’s. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, to cover him up—she knew some disaster was on the way—but just then a tall, curly-haired, elated-looking mancame through the hall, pushing the passionate couple unceremoniously apart, holding up his handsfor attention.
“Listen to this,” he said to the whole kitchen. “There’s this guy in the living room you wouldn’tbelieve him. Listen.”
There must have been a conversation about Indians going on in the living room. Now Patrickhad taken it over.
“Take them away,” said Patrick. “Take them away from their parents as soon as they’re bornand put them in a civilized environment and educate them and they will turn out just as good aswhites any day.” No doubt he thought he was expressing liberal views. If they thought this wasamazing, they should have got him on the execution of the Rosenbergs or the trial of Alger Hiss orthe necessity for nuclear testing.
Some girl said mildly, “Well, you know, there is their own culture.” “Their culture is done for,”
said Patrick. “Kaput.” This was a word he was using a good deal right now. He could use somewords, clichés, editorial phrases—massive reappraisal was one of them— with such relish andnumbing authority that you would think he was their originator, or at least that the very fact of hisusing them gave them weight and luster.
“They want to be civilized,” he said. “The smarter ones do.” “Well, perhaps they don’t considerthey’re exactly uncivilized,” said the girl with an icy demureness that was lost on Patrick.
“Some people need a push.”
The self-congratulatory tones, the ripe admonishment, caused the man in the kitchen to throwup his hands, and wag his head in delight and disbelief. “This has got to be a Socred politician.”
As a matter of fact Patrick did vote Social Credit.
“Yes, well, like it or not,” he was saying, “they have to be dragged kicking and screaming intothe twentieth century.”
“Kicking and screaming?” someone repeated.
“Kicking and screaming into the twentieth century,” said Patrick, who never minded sayinganything again.
“What an interesting expression. So humane as well.”
Wouldn’t he understand now, that he was being cornered, being baited and laughed at? ButPatrick, being cornered, could only grow more thunderous. Rose could not listen any longer. Sheheaded for the back passage, which was full of all the boots, coats, bottles, tubs, toys, that Jocelynand Clifford had pitched out of the way for the party. Thank God it was empty of people. She wentout of the back door and stood burning and shivering in the cool wet night. Her feelings were asconfused as anybody’s can get. She was humiliated, she was ashamed of Patrick. But she knewthat it was his style that most humiliated her, and that made her suspect something corrupt andfrivolous in herself. She was angry at those other people who were cleverer, or at least far quicker,than he was. She wanted to think badly of them. What did they care about Indians, really? Given achance to behave decently to an Indian, Patrick might just come out ahead of them. This was along shot, but she had to believe it. Patrick was a good person. His opinions were not good, but hewas. The core of Patrick, Rose believed, was simple, pure and trustworthy. But how was she to getat it, to reassure herself, much less reveal it to others?
She heard the back door close and was afraid that Jocelyn had come out looking for her. Jocelynwas not someone who could believe in Patrick’s core. She thought him stiff-necked, thick-skulled,and essentially silly.
It was not Jocelyn. It was Clifford. Rose didn’t want to have to say anything to him. Slightlydrunk as she was, woebegone, wet-faced from the rain, she looked at him without welcome. Buthe put his arms around her and rocked her.
“Oh Rose. Rose baby. Never mind. Rose.”
So this was Clifford.
For five minutes or so they were kissing, murmuring, shivering, pressing, touching. Theyreturned to the party by the front door. Cyril was there. He said, “Hey, wow, where have you twobeen?”
“Walking in the rain,” said Clifford coolly. The same light possibly hostile voice in which hehad told Rose she looked delicious. The Patrick-baiting had stopped. Conversation had becomelooser, drunker, more irresponsible. Jocelyn was serving jambalaya. She went to the bathroom todry her hair and put lipstick on her rubbed-bare mouth. She was transformed, invulnerable. Thefirst person she met coming out was Patrick. She had a wish to make him happy. She didn’t carenow what he had said, or would say.
“I don’t think we’ve met, sir,” she said, in a tiny flirtatious voice she used with him sometimes,when they were feeling easy together. “But you may kiss my hand.”
“For crying out loud,” said Patrick heartily, and he did squeeze her and kiss her, with a loudsmacking noise, on the cheek. He always smacked when he kissed. And his elbows alwaysmanaged to dig in somewhere and hurt her.
“Enjoying yourself?” Rose said.
“Not bad, not bad.”
During the rest of the evening, of course, she was playing the game of watching Clifford whilepretending not to watch him, and it seemed to her he was doing the same, and their eyes met, afew times, without expression, sending a perfectly clear message that rocked her on her feet. Shesaw him quite differently now. His body that had seemed small and tame now appeared to her lightand slippery and full of energy; he was like a lynx or a bobcat. He had his tan from skiing. Hewent up Seymour Mountain and skied. An expensive hobby, but one which Jocelyn felt could notbe denied him, because of the problems he had with his image. His masculine image, as a violinist,in this society. So Jocelyn said. Jocelyn had told Rose all about Clifford’s background: the arthriticfather, the small grocery store in a town in upstate New York, the poor tough neighborhood. Shehad talked about his problems as a child; the inappropriate talent, the grudging parents, the jeeringschoolmates. His childhood left him bitter, Jocelyn said. But Rose no longer believed that Jocelynhad the last word on Clifford.
THE PARTY WAS ON a Friday night. The phone rang the next morning, when Patrick and Annawere at the table eating eggs.
“How are you?” said Clifford.
“Fine.”
“I wanted to phone you. I thought you might think I was just drunk or something. I wasn’t.”
“Oh, no.”
“I’ve thought about you all night. I thought about you before, too.” “Yes.” The kitchen wasdazzling. The whole scene in front of her, of Patrick and Anna at the table, the coffee pot withdribbles down the side, the jar of marmalade, was exploding with joy and possibility and danger.
Rose’s mouth was so dry she could hardly talk.
“It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Patrick and Anna and I might go up the mountain.”
“Patrick’s home?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. That was dumb of me. I forgot nobody else works Saturdays. I’m over here at arehearsal.”
“Yes.”
“Can you pretend it’s somebody else? Pretend it’s Jocelyn.” “Sure.”
“I love you, Rose,” said Clifford, and hung up.
“Who was that?” said Patrick.
“Jocelyn.”
“Does she have to call when I’m home?”
“She forgot. Clifford’s at a rehearsal so she forgot other people aren’t working.” Rose delightedin saying Clifford’s name. Deceitfulness, concealment, seemed to come marvelously easy to her;that might almost be a pleasure in itself.
“I didn’t realize they’d have to work Saturdays,” she said, to keep on the subject. “They mustwork terribly long hours.”
“They don’t work any longer hours than normal people, it’s just strung out differently. Hedoesn’t look capable of much work.”
“He’s supposed to be quite good. As a violinist.” “He looks like a jerk.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“I guess I never considered him, really.”
JOCELYN PHONED on Monday and said she didn’t know why she gave parties, she was stillwading through the mess.
“Didn’t Clifford help clean it up?”
“You are joking. I hardly saw him all weekend. He rehearsed Saturday and played yesterday.
He says parties are my idea, I can deal with the aftermath. It’s true. I get these fits ofgregariousness, a party is the only cure. Patrick was interesting.”
“Very.”
“He’s quite a stunning type, really, isn’t he?”
“There are lots and lots like him. You just don’t get to meet them.” “Woe is me.”
This was just like any other conversation with Jocelyn. Their conversations, their friendship,could go on in the same way. Rose did not feel bound by any loyalty to Jocelyn because she haddivided Clifford. There was the Clifford Jocelyn knew, the same one she had always presented toRose; there was also the Clifford Rose knew, now. She thought Jocelyn could be mistaken abouthim. For instance, when she said his childhood had left him bitter. What Jocelyn called bitternessseemed to Rose something more complex and more ordinary; just the weariness, suppleness,deviousness, meanness, common to a class. Common to Clifford’s class, and Rose’s. Jocelyn hadbeen insulated in some ways, left stem and innocent. In some ways she was like Patrick.
From now on Rose did see Clifford and herself as being one sort of people, and Jocelyn andPatrick, though they seemed so different, and so disliked each other, as being another sort. Theywere whole and predictable. They took the lives they were leading absolutely seriously. Comparedto them, both Clifford and Rose were shifty pieces of business.
If Jocelyn fell in love with a married man, what would she do? Before she even touched hishand, she would probably call a conference. Clifford would be invited, and the man himself, andthe man’s wife, and very likely Jocelyn’s psychiatrist. (In spite of her rejection of her familyJocelyn believed that going to a psychiatrist was something everybody should do at developing oradjusting stages of life and she went herself, once a week.) Jocelyn would consider theimplications; she would look things in the face. Never try to sneak her pleasure. She had neverlearned to sneak things. That was why it was unlikely that she would ever fall in love with anotherman. She was not greedy. And Patrick was not greedy either now, at least not for love.
If loving Patrick was recognizing something good, and guileless, at the bottom of him, being inlove with Clifford was something else altogether. Rose did not have to believe that Clifford wasgood, and certainly she knew he was not guileless. No revelation of his duplicity or heartlessness,towards people other than herself, could have mattered to her. What was she in love with, then,what did she want of him? She wanted tricks, a glittering secret, tender celebrations of lust, aregular conflagration of adultery. All this after five minutes in the rain.
Six months or so after that party Rose lay awake all night. Patrick slept beside her in their stoneand cedar house in a suburb called Capilano Heights, on the side of Grouse Mountain. The nextnight it was arranged that Clifford would sleep beside her, in Powell River, where he was playingwith the touring orchestra. She could not believe that this would really happen. That is, she placedall her faith in the event, but could not fit it into the order of things that she knew.
During all these months Clifford and Rose had never gone to bed together. They had not madelove anywhere else, either. This was the situation: Jocelyn and Clifford did not own a car. Patrickand Rose owned a car, but Rose did not drive it. Clifford’s work did have the advantage ofirregular hours, but how was he to get to see Rose? Could he ride the bus across the Lions GateBridge, then walk up her suburban street in broad daylight, past the neighbors’ picture windows?
Could Rose hire a baby sitter, pretend she was going to see the dentist, take the bus over to town,meet Clifford in a restaurant, go with him to a hotel room? But they didn’t know which hotel to goto; they were afraid that without luggage they would be turned out on the street, or reported to theVice Squad, made to sit in the Police Station while Jocelyn and Patrick were summoned to comeand get them. Also, they didn’t have enough money.
Rose had gone over to Vancouver, though, using the dentist excuse, and they had sat in a café,side by side in a black booth, kissing and fondling, right out in public in a place frequented byClifford’s students and fellow musicians; what a risk to take. On the bus going home Rose lookeddown her dress at the sweat blooming between her breasts and could have fainted at the splendorof herself, as well as at the thought of the risk undertaken. Another time, a very hot Augustafternoon, she waited in an alley behind the theater where Clifford was rehearsing, lurked in theshadows then grappled with him deliriously, unsatisfactorily. They saw a door open, and slippedinside. There were boxes stacked all around. They were looking for some nesting spot when a manspoke to them.
“Can I do anything for you?”
They had entered the back storeroom of a shoe store. The man’s voice was icy; terrifying. TheVice Squad. The Police Station. Rose’s dress was undone to the waist.
Once they met in a park, where Rose often took Anna, and pushed her on the swings. They heldhands on a bench, under cover of Rose’s wide cotton skirt. They laced their fingers together andsqueezed painfully. Then Anna surprised them, coming up behind the bench and shouting, “Boo! Icaught you!” Clifford turned disastrously pale. On the way home Rose said to Anna, “That wasfunny when you jumped out behind the bench. I thought you were still on the swing.”
“I know,” said Anna.
“What did you mean, you’d caught us?”
“I caught you,” said Anna, and giggled, in what seemed to Rose a disturbingly pert andknowledgeable way.
“Would you like a fudgsicle? I would!” Rose said gaily, with thoughts of blackmail andbargains, Anna dredging this up for her psychiatrist in twenty years’ time. The episode made herfeel shaky and sick and she wondered if it had given Clifford a distaste for her. It had, but onlytemporarily.
AS SOON AS IT WAS LIGHT she got out of bed and went to look at the day, to see if it wouldbe good for flying. The sky was clear; no sign of the fog that often grounded planes at this time ofyear. Nobody but Clifford knew she was going to Powell River. They had been planning this forsix weeks, ever since they knew he was going on tour. Patrick thought she was going to Victoria,where she had a friend whom she had known at college. She had pretended, during the past fewweeks, to have been in touch with this friend again. She had said she would be back tomorrownight. Today was Saturday. Patrick was at home to look after Anna.
She went into the dining room to check the money she had saved from Family Allowancechecks. It was in the bottom of the silver muffin dish. Thirteen dollars. She meant to add that towhat Patrick gave her to get to Victoria. Patrick always gave her money when she asked, but hewanted to know how much and what for. Once when they were out walking she wanted to go intoa drugstore; she asked him for money and he said, with no more than customary sternness, “Whatfor?” and Rose began to cry, because she had been going to buy vaginal jelly. She might just aswell have laughed, and would have, now. Since she had fallen in love with Clifford, she neverquarreled with Patrick.
She figured out again the money she would need. The plane ticket, the money for the airportbus, from Vancouver, and for the bus or maybe it would have to be a taxi into Powell River,something left over for food and coffee. Clifford would pay for the hotel. The thought filled herwith sexual comfort, submissiveness, though she knew Jerome needed new glasses, Adam neededrubber boots. She thought of that neutral, smooth, generous bed, which already existed, waswaiting for them. Long ago when she was a young girl (she was now twenty-three) she had oftenthought of bland rented beds and locked doors, with such luxuriant hopes, and now she did again,though for a time in between, before and after she was married, the thought of anything connectedwith sex irritated her, rather in the way Modem Art irritated Patrick.
She walked around the house softly, planning her day as a series of actions. Take a bath, oil andpowder herself, put her diaphragm and jelly in her purse. Remember the money. Mascara, facecream, lipstick. She stood at the top of the two steps leading down into the living room. The wallsof the living room were moss green, the fireplace was white, the curtains and slipcovers had asilky pattern of gray and green and yellow leaves on a white background. On the mantel were twoWedgwood vases, white with a circlet of green leaves. Patrick was very fond of these vases.
Sometimes when he came home from work he went straight into the living room and shifted themaround a bit on the mantel, thinking their symmetrical position had been disturbed.
“Has anybody been fooling around with these vases?”
“Well of course. As soon as you leave for work I rush in and juggle them around.”
“I meant Anna. You don’t let her touch them, do you?”
Patrick didn’t like to hear her refer to the vases in any joking way.
He thought she didn’t appreciate the house. He didn’t know, but maybe could guess what shehad said to Jocelyn, the first time Jocelyn came here, and they were standing where Rose stoodnow, looking down at the living room.
“The department store heir’s dream of elegance.”
At this treachery even Jocelyn looked abashed. It was not exactly true. Patrick dreamed ofgetting much more elegant. And it was not true in the implication that it had all been Patrick’schoice, and that Rose had always held aloof from it. It had been Patrick’s choice, but there were alot of things she had liked at one time. She used to climb up and polish the glass drops of thedining-room chandelier, using a cloth dipped in water and baking soda. She liked the chandelier;its drops had a blue or lilac cast. But people she admired would not have chandeliers in theirdining rooms. It was unlikely that they would have dining rooms. If they did, they would have thinwhite candles stuck into the branches of a black metal candleholder, made in Scandinavia. Or elsethey would have heavy candles in wine bottles, loaded with drippings of colored wax. The peopleshe admired were inevitably poorer than she was. It seemed a bad joke on her, after being poor allher life in a place where poverty was never anything to be proud of, that now she had to feelapologetic and embarrassed about the opposite condition — with someone like Jocelyn, forinstance, who could say middle-class prosperity so viciously and despisingly.
But if she hadn’t been exposed to other people, if she hadn’t learned from Jocelyn, would shestill have liked the house? No. She must have been souring on it, anyway. When people came tovisit for the first time Patrick always took them on a tour, pointing out the chandelier, the powderroom with concealed lighting, by the front door, the walk- in closets and the louvered doorsopening on to the patio. He was as proud of this house, as eager to call attention to its smalldistinctions, as if he, not Rose, had grown up poor. Rose had been uneasy about these tours fromthe start, and tagged along in silence, or made deprecating remarks which Patrick did not like.
After a while she stayed in the kitchen, but she could still hear Patrick’s voice and she knewbeforehand everything he would say. She knew that he would pull the dining-room curtains andpoint to the small illuminated fountain—Neptune with a fig-leaf—he had put in the garden, andthen he would say, “Now there is our answer to the suburban swimming-pool mania!”
AFTER SHE BATHED she reached for a bottle of what she thought was baby oil, to pour over herbody. The clear liquid ran down over her breasts and belly, stinging and burning. She looked at thelabel and saw that this was not baby oil at all, it was nail polish remover. She scrubbed it off,splashed herself with cold water, towelled desperately, thinking of ruined skin, the hospital; grafts,scars, punishment.
Anna was scratching sleepily but urgently at the bathroom door. Rose had locked it, for thispreparation, though she didn’t usually lock it when she took a bath. She let Anna in.
“Your front is all red,” Anna said, as she hoisted herself on to the toilet. Rose found the baby oiland tried to cool herself with it. She used too much, and got oily spots on her new brassiere.
She had thought Clifford might write to her while he was touring, but he did not. He called herfrom Prince George, and was business-like.
“When do you get into Powell River?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Okay, take the bus or whatever they have into town. Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I only know the name of our hotel. You can’t wait there.”
“How about the bus depot? Every town has a bus depot.”
“Okay, the bus depot. I’ll pick you up there probably about five o’clock, and we can get youinto some other hotel. I hope to God there’s more than one. Okay then.”
He was pretending to the other members of the orchestra that he was spending the night withfriends in Powell River.
“I could go and hear you play,” Rose said. “Couldn’t I?”
“Well. Sure.”
“I’d be very inconspicuous. I’d sit at the back. I’ll disguise myself as an old lady. I love to hearyou play.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No.”
“Clifford?”
“Yes?”
“You still want me to come?”
“Oh, Rose.”
“I know. It’s just the way you sound.”
“I’m in the hotel lobby. They’re waiting for me. I’m supposed to be talking to Jocelyn.”
“Okay. I know. I’ll come.”
“Powell River. The bus depot. Five o’clock.”
This was different from their usual telephone conversations.
Usually they were plaintive and silly; or else they worked each other up so that they could nottalk at all.
“Heavy breathing there.”
“I know.”
“We’ll have to talk about something else.”
“What else is there?”
“Is it foggy where you are?”
“Yes. Is it foggy where you are too?”
“Yes. Can you hear the foghorn?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it a horrible sound?”
“I don’t mind it, really. I sort of like it.”
“Jocelyn doesn’t. You know how she describes it? She says it’s the sound of a cosmicboredom.”
They had at first avoided speaking of Jocelyn and Patrick at all. Then they spoke of them in acrisp practical way, as if they were adults, parents, to be outwitted. Now they could mention themalmost tenderly, admiringly, as if they were their children.
THERE WAS NO BUS DEPOT in Powell River. Rose got into the airport limousine with fourother passengers, all men, and told the driver she wanted to go to the bus depot.
“You know where that is?”
“No,” she said. Already she felt them all watching her. “Did you want to catch a bus?”
“No.”
“Just wanted to go to the bus depot?”
“I planned to meet somebody there.”
“I didn’t even know there was a bus depot here,” said one of the passengers.
“There isn’t, that I know of,” said the driver. “Now there is a bus, it goes down to Vancouver inthe morning and it comes back at night, and it stops at the old men’s home. The old loggers’ home.
That’s where it stops. All I can do is take you there. Is that all right?”
Rose said it would be fine. Then she felt she had to go on explaining.
“My friend and I just arranged to meet there because we couldn’t think where else. We don’tknow Powell River at all and we just thought, every town has a bus depot!”
She was thinking that she shouldn’t have said my friend, she should have said my husband.
They were going to ask her what she and her friend were doing here if neither of them knew thetown.
“My friend is playing in the orchestra that’s giving a concert here tonight. She plays the violin.”
All looked away from her, as if that was what a lie deserved. She was trying to remember ifthere was a female violinist. What if they should ask her name?
The driver let her off in front of a long two-story wooden building with peeling paint.
“I guess you could go in the sunporch, there at the end. That’s where the bus picks them up,anyway.”
In the sunporch there was a pool table. Nobody was playing. Some old men were playingcheckers; others watched. Rose thought of explaining herself to them but decided not to; theyseemed mercifully uninterested. She was worn out by her explanations in the limousine.
It was ten past four by the sunporch clock. She thought she could put in the time till five bywalking around the town.
As soon as she went outside she noticed a bad smell, and became worried, thinking it mightcome from herself.
She got out the stick cologne she had bought in the Vancouver airport—spending money shecould not afford—and rubbed it on her wrists and neck. The smell persisted, and at last sherealized it came from the pulp mills. The town was difficult to walk around in because the streetswere so steep, and in many places there was no sidewalk. There was no place to loiter. Shethought people stared at her, recognizing a stranger. Some men in a car yelled at her. She saw herown reflection in store windows and understood that she looked as if she wanted to be stared atand yelled at. She was wearing black velvet toreador pants, a tight- fitting highnecked blacksweater and a beige jacket which she slung over her shoulder, though there was a chilly wind. Shewho had once chosen full skirts and soft colors, babyish angora sweaters, scalloped necklines, hadnow taken to wearing dramatic sexually advertising clothes. The new underwear she had on at thismoment was black lace and pink nylon. In the waiting room at the Vancouver airport she had doneher eyes with heavy mascara, black eyeliner, and silver eyeshadow; her lipstick was almost white.
All this was a fashion of those years and so looked less ghastly than it would seem later, but it wasalarming enough. The assurance with which she carried such a disguise fluctuated considerably.
She would not have dared parade it in front of Patrick or Jocelyn. When she went to see Jocelynshe always wore her baggiest slacks and sweaters. Nevertheless when she opened the door Jocelynwould say, “Hello, Sexy,” in a tone of friendly scorn. Jocelyn herself had become spectacularlyunkempt. She dressed exclusively in old clothes of Clifford’s. Old pants that didn’t quite zip up onher because her stomach had never flattened out after Adam, and frayed white shirts Clifford hadonce worn for performances. Apparently Jocelyn thought the whole business of keeping yourfigure and wearing makeup and trying to look in any way seductive was sourly amusing, beneathcontempt; it was like vacuuming the curtains. She said that Clifford felt the same way. Clifford,reported Jocelyn, was attracted by the very absence of female artifice and trappings; he likedunshaved legs and hairy armpits and natural smells. Rose wondered if Clifford had really said this,and why. Out of pity, or comradeliness; or as a joke?
Rose found a public library and went in and looked at the titles of the books, but she could notpay attention. There was a fairly incapacitating though not unpleasant buzzing throughout herhead and body. At twenty to five she was back in the sunporch, waiting.
She was still waiting at ten past six. She had counted the money in her purse. A dollar and sixty-three cents. She could not go to a hotel. She did not think they would let her stay in the sunporchall night. There was nothing at all that she could do except pray that Clifford might still arrive. Shedid not believe he would. The schedule had been changed; he had been summoned home becauseone of the children was sick; he had broken his wrist and couldn’t play the violin; Powell Riverwas not a real place at all but a bad-smelling mirage where guilty travelers were trapped forpunishment. She wasn’t really surprised. She had made the jump that wasn’t to be made, and thiswas how she had landed.
Before the old men went in to supper she asked them if they knew of a concert being given thatnight in the high school auditorium. They answered grudgingly, no.
“Never heard of them giving no concerts here.”
She said that her husband was playing in the orchestra, it was on tour from Vancouver, she hadflown up to meet him; she was supposed to meet him here.
Here?
“Maybe got lost,” said one of the old men in what seemed to her a spiteful, knowing way.
“Maybe your husband got lost, heh? Husbands always getting lost!”
It was nearly dark out. This was October, and further north than Vancouver. She tried to thinkwhat to do. The only thing that occurred to her was to pretend to pass out, then claim loss ofmemory. Would Patrick ever believe that? She would have to say she had no idea what she wasdoing in Powell River. She would have to say she didn’t remember anything she had said in thelimousine, didn’t know anything about the orchestra. She would have to convince policemen anddoctors, be written about in the newspapers. Oh, where was Clifford, why had he abandoned her,could there have been an accident on the road? She thought she should destroy the piece of paperin her purse, on which she had written his instructions. She thought that she had better get rid ofher diaphragm as well.
She was going through her purse when a van parked outside. She thought it must be a policevan; she thought the old men must have phoned up and reported her as a suspicious character.
Clifford got out and came running up the sunporch steps. It took her a moment to recognizehim.
THEY HAD BEER and hamburgers in one of the hotels, a different hotel from the one where theorchestra was staying. Rose’s hands were shaking so that she slopped the beer. There had been arehearsal he hadn’t counted on, Clifford said. Then he had been about half an hour looking for thebus depot.
“I guess it wasn’t such a bright idea, the bus depot.”
Her hand was lying on the table. He wiped the beer off with a napkin, then put his own handover hers. She thought of this often, afterwards.
“We better get you checked in here.”
“Don’t we check in together?”
“Better if it’s just you.”
“Ever since I got here,” Rose said, “it has been so peculiar. It has been so sinister. I felteverybody knew.”
She started telling him, in what she hoped was an entertaining way, about the limousine driver,the other passengers, the old men in the Loggers’ Home. “It was such a relief when you showedup, such a terrible relief. That’s why I’m shaking.” She told him about her plan to fake amnesiaand the realization that she had better throw her diaphragm away. He laughed, but without delight,she thought. It seemed to her that when she spoke of the diaphragm his lips tightened, in reproof ordistaste.
“But it’s lovely now,” she said hastily. This was the longest conversation they had ever had,face to face.
“It was just your guilt-feelings,” he said. “Which are natural.”
He stroked her hand. She tried to rub her finger on his pulse, as they used to do. He let go. Halfan hour later, she was saying, “Is it all right if I still go to the concert?”
“Do you still want to?”
“What else is there to do?”
She shrugged as she said this. Her eyelids were lowered, her lips full and brooding. She wasdoing some sort of imitation, of Barbara Stanwyck perhaps, in similar circumstances. She didn’tintend to do an imitation, of course. She was trying to find some way to be so enticing, so aloofand enticing, that she would make him change his mind.
“The thing is, I have to get the van back. I have to pick up the other guys.”
“I can walk. Tell me where it is.”
“Uphill from here, I’m afraid.”
“That won’t hurt me.”
“Rose. It’s much better this way, Rose. It really is.”
“If you say so.” She couldn’t manage another shrug. She still thought there must be some wayto turn things around and start again. Start again; set right whatever she had said or done wrong;make none of this true. She had already made the mistake of asking what she had said or donewrong and he had said, nothing. Nothing. She had nothing to do with it, he said. It was being awayfrom home for a month that had made him see everything differently. Jocelyn. The children. Thedamage.
“It’s only mischief,” he said.
He had got his hair cut shorter than she had ever seen it. His tan had faded. Indeed, indeed, helooked as if he had shed a skin, and it was the skin that had hankered after hers. He was again thepale, and rather irritable, but dutiful, young husband she had observed paying visits to Jocelyn inthe maternity ward.
“What is?”
“What we’re doing. It’s not some big necessary thing. It’s ordinary mischief.”
“You called me from Prince George.” Barbara Stanwyck had vanished, Rose heard herselfbegin to whine.
“I know I did.” He spoke like a nagged husband.
“Did you feel like this then?”
“Yes and no. We’d made all the plans. Wouldn’t it have been worse if I’d told you on thephone?”
“What do you mean, mischief?”
“Oh, Rose.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. If we went ahead with this, what good do you think it would doanybody? Rose? Really?”
“Us,” Rose said. “It would do us good.”
“No it wouldn’t. It would end up in one big mess.”
“Just once.”
“You said just once. You said we would have a memory instead of a dream.”
“Jesus. I said a lot of puke.”
He had said her tongue was like a little warmblooded snake, a pretty snake, and her nipples likeberries. He would not care to be reminded.
Overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla: Glinka
Serenade for Strings: Tchaikovsky
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral:
First Movement
The Moldau: Smetana
William Tell Overture: Rossini
She could not hear any of this music for a long time without a specific attack of shame, that waslike a whole wall crumbling in on her, rubble choking her.
JUST BEFORE CLIFFORD LEFT on tour, Jocelyn had phoned Rose and said that her baby sittercould not come. It was the day she went to see her psychiatrist. Rose offered to come and lookafter Adam and Jerome. She had done this before. She made the long trip on three buses, takingAnna with her.
Jocelyn’s house was heated by an oil stove in the kitchen, and an enormous stone fireplace inthe small living room. The oil stove was covered with spill-marks; orange peel and coffee groundsand charred wood and ashes tumbled out of the fireplace. There was no basement and no clothesdryer. The weather was rainy, and the ceiling-racks and stand-up racks were draped with dampgraying sheets and diapers, hardening towels. There was no washing machine either. Jocelyn hadwashed those sheets in the bathtub.
“No washer or dryer but she’s going to a psychiatrist,” said Patrick, to whom Rose sometimesdisloyally reported what she knew he would like to hear.
“She must be crazy,” Rose said. She made him laugh.
But Patrick didn’t like her going to baby-sit.
“You’re certainly at her beck and call,” he said. “It’s a wonder you don’t go and scrub her floorsfor her.”
As a matter of fact, Rose did.
When Jocelyn was there, the disorder of the house had a certain willed and impressive quality.
When she was gone, it became unbearable. Rose would go to work with a knife, scraping atancient crusts of Pablum on the kitchen chairs, scouring the coffee pot, wiping the floor. She didspare some time for investigation. She went into the bedroom—she had to watch out for Jerome, aprecocious and irritating child—and looked at Clifford’s socks and underwear, all crumpled inwith Jocelyn’s old nursing brassieres and torn garter belts. She looked to see if he had a record onthe turntable, wondering if it would be something that would make him think of her.
Telemann. Not likely. But she played it, to hear what he had been hearing. She drank coffeefrom what she believed to be his dirty breakfast cup. She covered the casserole of Spanish ricefrom which he had taken his supper the night before. She sought out traces of his presence (hedidn’t use an electric razor, he used old-fashioned shaving soap in a wooden bowl), but shebelieved that his life in that house, Jocelyn’s house, was all pretense, and waiting, like her own lifein Patrick’s house.
When Jocelyn came home Rose felt she ought to apologize for the cleaning she had done, andJocelyn, really wanting to talk about her fight with the psychiatrist who reminded her of hermother, agreed that it certainly was a cowardly mania, this thing Rose had about housecleaning,and she had better go to a psych herself, if she ever wanted to get rid of it. She was joking; butgoing home on the bus, with Anna cranky and no preparations made for Patrick’s supper, Rose didwonder why she always seemed to be on the wrong end of things, disapproved of by her ownneighbors because she didn’t pay enough attention to housework, and reproved by Jocelyn forbeing insufficiently tolerant of the natural chaos and refuse of life. She thought of love, toreconcile herself. She was loved, not in a dutiful, husbandly way but crazily, adulterously, asJocelyn and her neighbors were not. She used that to reconcile herself to all sorts of things: toPatrick, for instance, turning over in bed with an indulgent little clucking noise that meant she wasabsolved of all her failings for the moment, they were to make love.
THE SANE AND DECENT THINGS Clifford had said cut no ice with Rose at all. She saw thathe had betrayed her. Sanity and decency were never what she had asked of him. She watched him,in the auditorium of the Powell River High School. She watched him playing his violin, with asomber and attentive expression she had once seen directed towards herself. She did not see howshe could do without.
In the middle of the night she phoned him, from her hotel to his. “Please talk to me.”
“That’s okay,” said Clifford, after a moment’s silence. “That’s okay, Joss.”
He must have a roommate, whom the phone might have wakened. He was pretending to talk toJocelyn. Or else he was so sleepy he really thought she was Jocelyn.
“Clifford, it’s me.”
“That’s okay,” Clifford said. “Take it easy. Go to sleep.” He hung up the phone.
JOCELYN AND CLIFFORD are living in Toronto. They are not poor anymore. Clifford issuccessful. His name is seen on record jackets, heard on the radio. His face and more frequentlyhis hands have appeared on television as he labors at his violin. Jocelyn has dieted and becomeslender, has had her hair cut and styled; it is parted in the middle and curves away from her face,with a wing of pure white rising from each temple.
They live in a large brick house on the edge of a ravine. There are bird-feeders in the back yard.
They have installed a sauna. Clifford spends a good deal of time sitting there. He thinks that willkeep him from becoming arthritic, like his father. Arthritis is his greatest fear.
Rose used to go to see them sometimes. She was living in the country by herself. She taught at acommunity college and liked to have a place to stay overnight when she came in to Toronto. Theyseemed glad to have her. They said she was their oldest friend.
One time when Rose was visiting them Jocelyn told a story about Adam. Adam had anapartment in the basement of the house. Jerome lived downtown, with his girlfriend. Adambrought his girls here.
“I was reading in the den,” said Jocelyn, “when Clifford was out. I heard this girl, down inAdam’s apartment, saying no, no! The noise from his apartment comes straight up into the den.
We warned him about that, we thought he’d be embarrassed—”
“I didn’t think he’d be embarrassed,” said Clifford.
“But he just said, we should put on the record player. So, I kept hearing the poor unknown girlbleating and protesting, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought these situations are really new,there are no precedents, are you supposed to stop your son from raping some girl if that’s whathe’s doing, right under your nose or at least under your feet? I went downstairs eventually and Istarted getting all the family skis out of the closet that backs on his bedroom, I stayed thereslamming those skis around, thinking I’d say I was going to polish them. It was July. Adam neversaid anything to me. I wish he’d move out.”
Rose told about how much money Patrick had and how he had married a sensible woman evenricher than he was, who had made a dazzling living room with mirrors and pale velvet and a wiresculpture like blasted bird cages. Patrick did not mind Modern Art any more.
“Of course it isn’t the same,” said Rose to Jocelyn, “it isn’t the same house. I wonder what shehas done with the Wedgwood vases.”
“Maybe she has a campy laundry room. She keeps the bleach in one and the detergent in theother.”
“They sit perfectly symmetrically on the shelf.”
But Rose had her old, old, twinge of guilt.
“Just the same, I like Patrick.”
Jocelyn said, “Why?”
“He’s nicer than most people.”
“Silly rot,” said Jocelyn. “And I bet he doesn’t like you.”
“That’s right,” Rose said. She started to tell them about her trip down on the bus. It was one ofthe times when she was not driving her car, because too many things were wrong with it and shecould not afford to get it fixed.
“The man in the seat across from me was telling me about how he used to drive big trucks. Hesaid we never seen trucks in this country like they got in the States.” She put on her countryaccent. “In the Yewnited States they got these special roads what they call turnpikes, and onlytrucks is allowed to go on them. They get serviced on these roads from one end of the country tothe other and so most people never sees them at all. They’re so big the cab is half the size of a busand they got a driver in there and an assistant driver and another driver and another assistant driverhavin a sleep. Toilet and kitchen and beds and all. They go eighty, ninety miles an hour, becausethere is never no speed limit on them turnpikes.”
“You are getting very weird,” said Clifford. “Living up there.” “Never mind the trucks,” Jocelynsaid. “Never mind the old mythology. Clifford wants to leave me again.”
They settled down to drinking and talking about what Clifford and Jocelyn should do. This wasnot an unfamiliar conversation. What does Clifford really want? Does he really want not to bemarried to Jocelyn or does he want something unattainable? Is he going through a middle-agecrisis?
“Don’t be so banal,” Clifford said to Rose. She was the one who said middle-age crisis. “I’vebeen going through this ever since I was twenty-five. I’ve wanted out ever since I got in.”
“That is new, for Clifford to say that,” said Jocelyn. She went out to the kitchen to get somecheese and grapes. “For him to actually come out and say that,” she yelled from the kitchen. Roseavoided looking at Clifford, not because they had any secrets but because it seemed a courtesy toJocelyn not to look at each other while she was out of the room.
“What is happening now,” said Jocelyn, coming back with a platter of cheese and grapes in onehand and a bottle of gin in the other, “is that Clifford is wide open. He used to bitch and stew andsome other bilge would come out that had nothing to do with the real problem. Now he just comesout with it. The great blazing truth. It’s a total illumination.”
Rose had a bit of difficulty catching the tone. She felt as if living in the country had made herslow. Was Jocelyn’s talk a parody, was she being sarcastic? No. She was not.
“But then I go and deflate the truth for you,” said Clifford, grinning. He was drinking beer fromthe bottle. He thought beer was better for him than gin. “It’s absolutely true I’ve wanted out eversince I got in. And it’s also true that I wanted in, and I wanted to stay in. I wanted to be married toyou and I want to be married to you and I couldn’t stand being married to you and I can’t standbeing married to you. It’s a static contradiction.”
“It sounds like hell,” Rose said.
“I didn’t say that. I am just making the point that it is no middle-age crisis.”
“Well, maybe that was oversimplifying,” said Rose. Nevertheless, she said firmly, in thesensible, down-to-earth, countrified style she was adopting for the moment, all they were hearingabout was Clifford. What did Clifford really want, what did Clifford need? Did he need a studio,did he need a holiday, did he need to go to Europe by himself? What made him think, she said,that Jocelyn could be endlessly concerned about his welfare? Jocelyn was not his mother.
“And it’s your fault,” she said to Jocelyn, “for not telling him to put up or shut up. Never mindwhat he really wants. Get out or shut up. That’s all you need to say to him. Shut up or get out,” shesaid to Clifford with mock gruffness. “Excuse me for being so unsubtle. Or frankly hostile.”
She didn’t run any risk at all by sounding hostile, and she knew it. She would run a risk bybeing genteel and indifferent. The way she was talking now was a proof that she was their truefriend and took them seriously. And so she did, up to a point.
“She’s right, you fucking son-of-a-bitch,” said Jocelyn experimentally. “Shut up or get out.”
When Jocelyn called Rose on the phone, years ago, to read her the poem Howl, she was notable, in spite of her usual boldness of speech, to say the word fuck. She tried to force herself, thenshe said, “Oh, it’s stupid, but I can’t say it. I’m going to have to say eff. You’ll know what I meanwhen I say eff?”
“But she said it’s your fault,” said Clifford. “You want to be the mother. You want to be thegrownup. You want to be long-suffering.”
“Balls,” said Jocelyn. “Oh, maybe. Maybe, yes. Maybe I do.”
“I bet at school you were always latching on to those kids with the problems,” said Clifford withhis tender grin. “Those poor kids, the ones with acne or awful clothes or speech impediments. I betyou just persecuted those poor kids with friendliness.”
Jocelyn picked up the cheese knife and waved it at him.
“You be careful. You haven’t got acne or a speech impediment. You are sickeningly good-looking. And talented. And lucky.”
“I have nearly insuperable problems coming to terms with the adult male role,” said Cliffordpriggishly. “The psych says so.”
“I don’t believe you. Psychs never say anything like nearly insuperable. And they don’t use thatjargon. And they don’t make those judgments. I don’t believe you, Clifford.”
“Well, I don’t really go to the psych at all. I go to the dirty movies down on Yonge.”
Clifford went off to sit in the sauna.
Rose watched him leave the room. He was wearing jeans, and aT-shirt that said Just passin thru. His waist and hips were narrow as a twelve-year-old’s. Hisgray hair was cut in a very short brush cut, showing his skull. Was this the way musicians woretheir hair nowadays, when politicians and accountants were bushy and bearded, or was itClifford’s own perversity? His tan looked like pancake makeup, though it was probably all real.
There was something theatrical about him altogether, tight and glittery and taunting. Somethingobscene about his skinniness and sweet, hard smile.
“Is he well?” she said to Jocelyn. “He’s terribly thin.”
“He wants to look like that. He eats yogurt and black bread.” “You can never split up,” Rosesaid, “because your house is too beautiful.” She stretched out on the hooked rug. The living roomhad white walls, thick white curtains, old pine furniture, large bright paintings, hooked rugs. On alow round table at her elbow was a bowl of polished stones for people to pick up and hold and runthrough their fingers. The stones came from Vancouver beaches, from Sandy Cove and EnglishBay and Kitsilano and Ambleside and Dundarave. Jerome and Adam had collected them a longtime ago.
JO CELYN AND CLIFFORD left British Columbia soon after Clifford returned from hisprovincial tour. They went to Montreal, then to Halifax, then to Toronto. They seemed hardly toremember Vancouver. Once they tried to think of the name of the street where they had lived andit was Rose who had to supply it for them. When Rose lived in Capilano Heights she used to spenda lot of time remembering the parts of Ontario where she had lived, being faithful, in a way, to thatearlier landscape. Now that she was living in Ontario she put the same sort of effort intoremembering things about Vancouver, puzzling to get details straight, that were in themselvesquite ordinary. For instance, she tried to remember just where you waited for the Pacific Stage bus,when you were going from North Vancouver to West Vancouver. She pictured herself getting onthat old green bus around one o’clock, say, on a spring day. Going to baby-sit for Jocelyn. Annawith her, in her yellow slicker and rainhat. Cold rain. The long, swampy stretch of land as youwent into West Vancouver. Where the shopping-centers and highrises are now. She could see thestreets, the houses, the old Safeway, St. Mawes Hotel, the thick closing-in of the woods, the placewhere you got off the bus at the little store. Black Cat cigarettes sign. Cedar dampness as youwalked in through the woods to Jocelyn’s house. Deadness of early afternoon. Nap time. Youngwomen drinking coffee looking out of rainy windows. Retired couples walking dogs. Pad of feeton the thick mold. Crocuses, early daffodils, the cold bulbs blooming. That profound difference ofthe air close to the sea, the inescapable dripping vegetation, the stillness. Anna pulling on herhand, Jocelyn’s brown wooden cottage ahead. Such a rich weight of apprehension, complicationsdescending as she neared that house.
Other things she was not so keen on remembering.
She had wept on the plane, behind her sunglasses, all the way from Powell River. She wept,sitting in the waiting room at the Vancouver airport. She was not able to stop weeping and gohome to Patrick. A plainclothes policeman sat down beside her, opened his jacket to show her hisbadge, asked if there was anything he could do for her. Someone must have summoned him.
Terrified at being so conspicuous, she fled to the Ladies’. She didn’t think to comfort herself witha drink, didn’t think of looking for the bar. She never went to bars then. She didn’t take atranquilizer, didn’t have any, didn’t know about them. Maybe there weren’t such things.
The suffering. What was it? It was all a waste, it reflected no credit. An entirely dishonorablegrief. All mashed pride and ridiculed fantasy. It was as if she had taken a hammer and deliberatelysmashed her big toe. That’s what she thinks sometimes. At other times she thinks it was necessary,it was the start of wrecks and changes, the start of being where she is now instead of in Patrick’shouse. Life making a gigantic fuss, as usual, for a small effect.
Patrick could not speak when she told him. He had no lecture prepared. He didn’t speak for along time but followed her around the house while she kept justifying herself, complaining. It wasas if he wanted her to go on talking, though he couldn’t credit what she was saying, because itwould be much worse if she stopped.
She didn’t tell him the whole truth. She said that she had “had an affair” with Clifford, and bythe telling gave herself a dim secondhand sort of comfort, which was pierced, presently, but notreally destroyed, by Patrick’s look and silence. It seemed ill-timed, unfair of him, to show such abare face, such an inappropriate undigestible chunk of grief.
Then the phone rang, and she thought it would be Clifford, experiencing a change of heart. Itwas not Clifford, it was a man she had met at Jocelyn’s party. He said he was directing a radioplay, and he needed a country girl. He remembered her accent.
Not Clifford.
She would rather not think of any of this. She prefers to see through metal window-frames ofdripping cedars and salmonberry bushes and the proliferating mortal greenery of the rain forestsome small views of lost daily life. Anna’s yellow slicker. The smoke from Jocelyn’s foul fire.
“DO YOU WANT TO SEE the junk I’ve been buying?” said Jocelyn, and took Rose upstairs. Sheshowed her an embroidered skirt and a deep-red satin blouse. A daffodil-colored silk pajama suit.
A long shapeless rough-woven dress from Ireland.
“I’m spending a fortune. What I would once have thought was a fortune. It took me so long. Ittook us both so long, just to be able to spend money. We could not bring ourselves to do it. Wedespised people who had color television. And you know something—color television is great!
We sit around now and say, what would we like? Maybe one of those little toaster-ovens for thecottage? Maybe I’d like a hair blower? All those things everybody else has known about for yearsbut we thought we were too good for. You know what we are, we say to each other? We’reConsumers! And it’s Okay!
“And not just paintings and records and books. We always knew they were okay. Color T.V.!
Hair dryers! Waffle irons!”
“Remote-control birdcages!” Rose cried cheerfully.
“That’s the idea.”
“Heated towels.”
“Heated towel racks, dummy! They’re lovely.”
“Electric carving knives, electric toothbrushes, electric toothpicks.” “Some of those things arenot as bad as they sound. Really they’re not.”
ANOTHER TIME when Rose came down Jocelyn and Clifford had a party. When everyone hadgone home the three of them, Jocelyn and Clifford and Rose, sat around on the living-room floor,all fairly drunk, and very comfortable. The party had gone well. Rose was feeling a remote andwistful lust; a memory of lust, maybe. Jocelyn said she didn’t want to go to bed.
“What can we do?” said Rose. “We shouldn’t drink any more.” “We could make love,” Cliffordsaid.
Jocelyn and Rose said, “Really?” at exactly the same time. Then they linked their little fingersand said, “Smoke goes up the chimney.”
Following which, Clifford removed their clothes. They didn’t shiver, it was warm in front of thefire. Clifford kept switching his attention nicely from one to the other. He got out of his ownclothes as well. Rose felt curious, disbelieving, hardly willing, slightly aroused and, at some levelshe was too sluggish to reach for, appalled and sad. Though Clifford paid preliminary homage tothem both, she was the one he finally made love to, rather quickly on the nubbly hooked rug.
Jocelyn seemed to hover above them making comforting noises of assent.
The next morning Rose had to go out before Jocelyn and Clifford were awake. She had to godowntown on the subway. She found she was looking at men with that speculative hunger, thatcold and hurtful need, which for a while she had been free of. She began to get very angry. Shewas angry at Clifford and Jocelyn. She felt that they had made a fool of her, cheated her; shownher a glaring lack, that otherwise she would not have been aware of. She resolved never to seethem again and to write them a letter in which she would comment on their selfishness,obtuseness, and moral degeneracy. By the time she had the letter written to her own satisfaction, inher head, she was back in the country again and had calmed down. She decided not to write it.
Sometime later she decided to go on being friends with Clifford and Jocelyn, because she neededsuch friends occasionally, at that stage of her life.
淘气
淘气
在一场聚会上，露丝爱上了克里夫德。那场聚会是克里夫德和乔瑟琳办的，露丝和帕特里克去参加。那时他们俩已经结婚三年。克里夫德和乔瑟琳结婚一年左右，或者更长时间。
克里夫德和乔瑟琳住在温哥华西部郊外的夏日农舍，就是那些冬天不怎么保暖的小屋。在大海和低低的公路之间，这些小屋排出了一条弯弯曲曲的街道。聚会是在三月份的雨夜。露丝为此感到很紧张。当他们开车穿过温哥华西部时，她看到路旁的霓虹灯在水洼里流泪，听着雨刮摩擦挡风玻璃发出该死的咔嗒声，她几乎想吐。在这以后，她总是会想起那天，她坐在帕特里克旁边，穿着低胸的黑衬衫和黑色的天鹅绒裙子。她希望自己穿对了衣服。她希望他们只是去看了场电影。她完全不知道之后的人生会发生改变。
帕特里克也很紧张，尽管他不会承认。对他们来说，社交生活是一件令人困惑而不快的事情。他们来到温哥华的时候一个人都不认识。他们随大流。露丝也不知道自己是真的想要朋友，还是只是觉得他们应该有朋友而已。他们穿戴好出去见人，或者把房间收拾好，等着他们邀请的人过来。在有些场合，他们确立着一套稳定的迎客模式。晚上他们会喝点东西，到了总是很难等的11点或者11点半左右，露丝会跑到厨房做点咖啡和其他东西。她做的通常是一块吐司，上面放一片番茄，然后是一块奶酪，一点培根，用牙签穿起来烤好。其他的，也就顾不上了。
如果他们俩要一起去交朋友，那么他们更容易同时结交上帕特里克喜欢的人，而不是露丝喜欢的人。因为帕特里克跟很多人都合得来，只是不怎么真诚的那种，而露丝跟人合不来。不过这一次，乔瑟琳和克里夫德举行聚会的这一次，他们都是露丝的朋友。或者说，乔瑟琳是露丝的朋友。乔瑟琳和露丝其实各自懂得，不要让夫妻双双来做客这种事情成为习惯。帕特里克不认识克里夫德，但知道他是个拉小提琴的就已经不喜欢他了。不消说，克里夫德也不喜欢帕特里克，因为帕特里克在他家族的百货商场分店工作。那时候，人与人之间的隔阂仍然坚不可摧，搞艺术的和做生意的人之间，男人和女人之间，都是如此。
乔瑟琳的朋友，露丝一个都不认识，但是她知道他们都是音乐家、记者、大学老师，甚至还有一个女作家，她写了个剧本，在电台播出过。她觉得这些人应该都是聪明、风趣，很容易瞧不起人的那一类。露丝觉得她和帕特里克好像就一直坐在客厅里，跟来来去去的人打打招呼。那些人机智幽默，拥有鄙视他们的权力，在别处有着不寻常的生活和聚会——现在，跟这些人待在一起的机会来了，她却感到反胃，她的手心在出汗。
乔瑟琳和露丝是在北温哥华综合医院的产房认识的。把安娜生下来之后，露丝回到产房见到的第一件事，就是乔瑟琳坐在床上看《纪德日记》。露丝看颜色就能知道这是本什么书，她之前在杂货店书报摊上注意到过。纪德是她打算读透的作家之一。那个时候，她只读伟大作家的作品。
乔瑟琳长得像个学生，几乎没有受到产房环境的影响，这让露丝顿时感到讶异和舒心。乔瑟琳有一条长长的黑辫子，一张凝重而苍白的脸，戴着厚厚的眼镜，不怎么漂亮，细看却很舒服。
乔瑟琳邻床的那女人正在描述她是怎么整理橱柜的。她会忘记交代她把大米红糖什么的都放哪了，然后她就得重新再讲一遍，确保她的听众能全听懂。她这样说：“记住了，炉子右边最高的架子上，我放的是汤包，不是罐头汤，我把罐头汤放在柜台下面，跟其他罐装食物放在一起，它的旁边就是——”
其他女人试图打断，也想来讲讲她们的整理经验，但是都没太成功，没能说太久。乔瑟琳就坐在那里读书，用手指在辫子的小尾巴上打着圈，就像在图书馆、在大学里一样，仿佛她是在为论文做研究，而这个世界上的其他女人从来都无法对她造成影响。露丝希望自己也能做到这一点。
她刚生完孩子，仍然头昏脑涨。闭上眼睛的时候，她能看到月食，一个大黑球，周围是火圈。那是婴儿的脑袋，婴儿被推出来之前的那一瞬，周围绕紧了疼痛。在这图像之外是叨扰人的声波，女人们谈论着厨房里的架子，沉浸在她们那夺目的罐头和汤包里。但是当睁开眼睛，她看到的却是乔瑟琳，黑色的辫子落在她雪白的病号服上。乔瑟琳是她见过的唯一能够以冷静和严肃稳住这场面的人。
很快，乔瑟琳从床上站起身来，露出了还没有刮毛的长腿，因为怀孕，她肚子上的皮肤被抻长了。她披上一件条纹睡衣。绑在她腰间的不是绳子，而是一条男人的领带。她光着脚在医院的油地毡上吧嗒吧嗒地走过。护士跑过来，提醒她要穿上拖鞋。
“我没有拖鞋。”
“那你有鞋子吗？”护士的态度很不好。
“噢，有。我有鞋子。”
乔瑟琳回到她床边的小金属柜子旁，拿出一双大大的、脏脏的、超出了脚尺寸的软皮平底鞋。她穿上了，跟以往一样，走出去时发出一阵声响，显得邋里邋遢、目无旁人。
露丝很想认识她。
第二天，露丝拿出自己的书来读，是乔治•桑塔耶纳写的《最后一个清教徒》，不幸的是，由于这是图书馆借来的，封面上的书名已经被磨得模糊不清，所以，想要乔瑟琳像自己佩服她那样佩服自己正在读的书，已经不可能了。露丝不知道该怎么跟她说话。
那个解释过她怎样整理柜子的女人正在讲她如何使用真空吸尘器。她说用那些辅助工具是很重要的，因为它们各自都有不同的功能，而毕竟你也是花了钱的。很多人都没有用过这些。
她又讲她如何清洁自己卧室窗帘。另一个女人说她也这么做，但是那窗帘就老是卷起来。于是那权威女人就说那是因为她没有掌握方法。
露丝在她那本书的折角处遇到了乔瑟琳的目光。
“但愿你也会擦你炉子的旋钮呢。”她安静地说。
“当然，我会。”乔瑟琳说。
“你每天都擦吗？”
“我以前是每两天擦一次，现在我有个新宝宝了，所以我不知道还能不能有精力去做这件事情。”
“你会用那款炉子钮专门的清洁剂来擦吗？”
“当然会了。我还会用那套专用包装里的抹布呢。”
“不错啊。有的人是不用的。”
“有些人什么都用。”
“旧洗碗布啊。”
“旧手帕啊。”
“旧手帕上的鼻涕啊。”
这之后，她们俩的友谊就迅速生长起来。就像在一些机构、学校、露营以及监狱里那种蓬勃发展的亲密关系一样。她们一起走在大厅里，不听护士的劝告。她们吵着别的女人。她们就像学校女孩一样歇斯底里，大声朝着对方朗诵。她们不读纪德或者是桑塔耶纳了，现在读的是《真爱》和《个人浪漫》，这是她们在候诊室里找到的。
“这里说你可以买一些假腿肚子，”露丝读着，“不过我不知道应该怎么把它们藏起来。我想应该是把它们绑在你的小腿上吧。或者可能它们只是套进了你的袜子里，可是你不觉得这会露出来吗？”
“在你的腿上？”乔瑟琳说，“你把它们绑在你的腿上？哦，你说的是假腿肚子！假腿肚子！我还以为你说的是假牛犊子呢！以为是假的小牛娃娃！”
类似这样的玩笑就能让她们疯上一阵。
“假牛娃娃！”
“假奶子、假屁股、假牛娃娃！”
那个真空吸尘器女人说她们总是插嘴，打断别人讲话，而且她并不觉得说这些脏话有什么好笑的。她说如果她们不停下来的话，她们的牛奶就会馊掉。
“我想知道我的牛奶是不是馊掉了呢，”乔瑟琳说，“这颜色真是可怕。”
“什么颜色呀？”露丝问。
“嗯，有点蓝蓝的。”
“上帝啊，没准是墨水呢！”
真空吸尘器女人说她们俩如果再骂脏话，她就要去告诉护士了。她说她不是在装正经。她问她们俩这样还怎么当妈。人人都知道乔瑟琳从来都不会去洗自己的睡衣，她这样的人还怎么去给孩子洗尿布呢？
乔瑟琳说她会用苔藓来洗，她是个印第安人。
“真是不可思议。”那位女人说。
这之后，乔瑟琳和露丝会用这样的话来作为开场白：
“我不是在装正经，不过你瞧瞧这布丁都成什么样子了！”
“我不是在装正经，但是这孩子好像长着满口的牙呢。”
护士说，她们也是时候长点心了吧？
两个人走在大厅里的时候，乔瑟琳告诉露丝她二十五岁了，她孩子要起名亚当，她家里还有一个叫杰罗姆的两岁小孩，她的丈夫名字叫克里夫德，他是以拉小提琴为生的。他在温哥华交响乐团演奏。他们没什么钱。乔瑟琳是从马萨诸塞州来的，上过韦尔斯利学院。她的父亲是心理医生，她的妈妈是耳科医生。露丝告诉乔瑟琳，她来自安大略省的一个小镇，帕特里克是温哥华岛人，他的父母并不同意他俩这门婚事。
“在我的那个小镇上，”露丝夸张地说，“大家都说‘恁’。‘恁’都吃过吗？ ‘恁’最近好吗？”
“恁？”
“恁们。这就是你的复数了。”
“哦。跟布鲁克林一样。还有詹姆斯•乔伊斯。帕特里克是在哪里工作？”
“他家的百货商场。他家开了一个百货商场。”
“那你不是很有钱吗？干吗还来这个产房呢？”
“我们刚刚花完了所有的钱，买了帕特里克想要的一栋房子。”
“你不想要吗？”
“没他那么想要。”
有些话，露丝以前是从来没有说过的。
她们又随意聊起了更多两个人都能扯上点关系的事情来。
乔瑟琳讨厌她的妈妈。她妈妈非得让她睡在有白色蝉翼纱窗帘的房间里，还鼓励她多搜集鸭子。乔瑟琳十三岁的时候，她可能都已经拥有了这个世界上最大的鸭子库了，包括橡皮鸭子、陶器鸭子、木头鸭子、鸭子图片和绣花鸭子。她还写了一个早熟得可怕的故事《大鸭子奥利弗的伟大旅行》。她妈妈还把这故事打印了出来，在圣诞节的时候向朋友和亲戚分发。
“她是那种会用过时的奉承话把一切掩饰过去的人。她好像什么都过了火。她从来都不用正常的声音说话，从来都不。她忸忸怩怩的，忸怩得有点下流。一般来说，她是一个很出色的儿科医生。她对你身体的每个部位都起了一个糟透了的忸怩的名字。”
露丝自己其实挺喜欢蝉翼纱窗帘的，不过她也感受到了与乔瑟琳之间交往的那条界限，理解该采取的进击方式。跟她自己的世界相比起来，乔瑟琳的世界好像没有那么自然和即兴。她怀疑自己能不能告诉乔瑟琳汉拉提那边的事情，不过她已经开始尝试。她随口提起弗洛和那家小店。她装作若无其事地谈论着贫穷。她没必要这样谨慎的。她童年的那些事情对于乔瑟琳来说都足够奇异，而且一切，都令人羡慕。
“听上去真实多了，”乔瑟琳说，“我知道我有点浪漫的想法。”
她们谈论各自青春时代的野心。（她们真的都相信自己的青春已经过去了。）露丝说她想当一个演员，不过她太胆小，从来都不敢走上台。乔瑟琳想当一个作家，不过由于她写过大鸭子的故事，一直都羞于提笔。
“然后我就遇见了克里夫德，”她说，“当我见识到什么是真正的才华，我就知道我这么写来写去也只是瞎糊弄而已，我最好是好好照顾他，或者为他干点什么都行。他真的很有才华。有的时候他有点道德问题，不过他躲开了那些麻烦活得好好的，说明他真的是个很有才华的人。”
“我觉得这是个浪漫的想法，”露丝坚定地说，她很嫉妒，“有才华的人就得躲开这些东西。”
“你真这么觉得吗？不过伟大的艺术家总是可以这样。”
“说的不是女人。”
“但是女人通常都不是伟大的艺术家，不太一样。”
这就是这个时代受过良好教育、深思熟虑，甚至不恪守传统、在政治上激进的年轻女性的想法。露丝不同意这种观点的原因是她并没有受到良好的教育。后来乔瑟琳跟她说，一开始她跟露丝聊天的时候觉得很有意思的一点，就是尽管露丝没有受过教育，但还是有些想法的。
露丝很惊讶，于是提到了她曾经上过西安大略大学。然后她看到乔瑟琳的脸上露出了一种尴尬的悔意，有一瞬，那种坦诚的感觉消失不见了。这在她是很不寻常的事情，而她那脸上的表情，的确又是乔瑟琳本人的意思。
在她们对艺术家以及对于男性和女性艺术家有了不一样的看法之后的那天晚上，克里夫德前来看望乔瑟琳，露丝仔细地看了看他。她觉得他脸色苍白、自我放纵，看上去有点神经质。
后来她发现了乔瑟琳在这场婚姻中所动用的计谋、努力，以及纯粹的体力（家里漏水的水龙头和堵塞的下水道都是她修好的）。这让露丝确信，是乔瑟琳浪费了自己，她想错了。她有种感觉，觉得乔瑟琳在露丝自己与帕特里克的婚姻里也没有看到太多意义。
一开始，这场聚会比露丝想象的要简单。她有点担心她穿得过于隆重，她其实想穿她的紧身运动裤，但这不会得到帕特里克的支持。但是只有少部分女孩是穿裤子的。其他人都穿长袜、戴耳环，跟她自己穿得差不多。那个时候，前往任何聚会的年轻女人当中，总有那么三四个能看出来是怀孕了的。大部分男人都穿着整套西服、衬衫，打领带，就像帕特里克一样。露丝松了口气。她不仅仅希望帕特里克能够融入这场聚会，还希望他能接纳那里的人，相信他们都不是些怪人。当帕特里克还是学生的时候，他带她去听音乐会和看话剧，他那时不会对参与其中的人有过多的怀疑，事实上他相当喜欢这些东西，因为这些东西是他家人所憎恶的，而就在他选择露丝的那段时间里，他正处于对家人的叛逆期。有一次他和露丝去多伦多，坐在博物馆的中国寺庙里看壁画。帕特里克告诉她这些壁画是怎样从中国的山西省零零碎碎带出来的。他对自己拥有的知识很是自豪，同时却卸下了高姿态的全副武装，谦逊地承认自己只是从一次旅行中得知的。工作之后他的观点才变得尖锐，发起大规模的抨击。现代艺术都是唬人的。先锋艺术都是下流玩意儿。帕特里克对先锋艺术有一种特别的、装腔作势的、轻蔑唾弃的评判方式，他的用词听上去做作得恶心。的确是这样，露丝想。不过她能以某种方式理解他的意思。她能看到一件事情的很多个方面。所以帕特里克其实没问题。
除了阶段性的吵架，她温顺地同帕特里克生活着，想保持良好的感情状态。做到这点并不简单。即便是在他们结婚之前，出现个简单的问题，发现点事情，他都会说上一番责备的话。
通常在那些日子里，她会问他一个问题，希望他能够借此炫耀些高人一等的知识，好让她崇拜。但是她每次问完之后都会后悔，他的回答很长，带有指责的意味，知识也没那么高人一等。她的确想羡慕他、尊敬他，但她每次总是像被推到悬崖上，需要大步跃过深渊才行。
后来她想，她的确是尊重帕特里克的，但并不是他想要获得尊重的那种方式，她也爱他，但不是他希望被爱的那种方式。她当时却不懂得。她觉得自己是懂他的，她觉得她知道，他并不想成为自己正在狂热地成为的人。他那种傲慢也许就叫作尊重，那种专横，那种爱。但这不能让他感到快乐。
有些人穿的是牛仔裤、高领衣服和运动衫。克里夫德是他们其中一位，他穿着一身黑。那正是旧金山“垮掉的一代”出现之时。乔瑟琳打电话叫上露丝，来读她的《嚎叫》。克里夫德皮肤黝黑，跟他穿着的那身全黑相映衬，那时他的头发还长，颜色浅得就跟没有漂白过的棉花一样。他的眼睛颜色也属浅淡一类，是那种明亮的灰蓝。在露丝看起来，他显得矮小，轻手轻脚的，女孩子气，她希望他不要太敷衍帕特里克了。
那里提供啤酒和潘趣酒。乔瑟琳这个大厨正在搅拌一锅什锦饭。为了远离似乎越靠越近的帕特里克，露丝去上了个洗手间。（她觉得帕特里克总是盯得很紧，却忘了他可能是因为害羞。）她出来之后，他已经往前走了。她连续地快速喝了三杯潘趣酒。有人把她介绍给话剧的女作者。让露丝感到吃惊的是，这位女士是这屋子里看上去最不引人注目、最不自信的人。
“我喜欢你的话剧。”露丝对她说。事实上她一开始觉得看不懂这个话剧，帕特里克还觉得有点令人作呕。这好像是讲一个女人吃了她孩子的故事。露丝知道这是个象征手法，但是不太清楚这到底是在象征些什么。
“哦，可是它的制作一团糟！”那位女士说。她的言语中带着尴尬、兴奋和急迫，手里的潘趣酒洒在了露丝的身上。“他们做得太直白了。我担心它看上去会让人觉得可怕，原本是想优雅一点的，我想象中的跟他们演出来的完全不一样。”她开始告诉露丝，一切都弄得很糟糕，演员选错了，最重要、最关键的台词都被删掉了。对方的倾诉让露丝受宠若惊，她一边听着这些细节，一边悄悄地把洒在身上的酒抹掉。
“但你懂我意思吧？”那女人说。
“哦，我懂！”
克里夫德为露丝倒上另一杯潘趣酒，对她笑笑。
“露丝，你看上去很可口。”
克里夫德用了“可口”这个词，听上去很奇怪。可能他喝醉了。或者，就像乔瑟琳说的，他讨厌聚会，所以就找了个角色来扮演，扮演一个会告诉女孩“你长得很可口”的男人。他可能擅长伪装，露丝觉得自己也快变成那样了。她继续去跟一个作家以及一个教十七世纪英国文学的人聊天。她出身贫穷但聪明，激进又不重礼节，大家也都能看得出来。
一个男人和女孩在窄窄的过道里热情拥抱着。无论谁走过，这一对儿都得分开，但是他们继续注视着对方，甚至连嘴都还一直没闭上。看到那湿湿的嘴巴张着，露丝就直哆嗦。她这辈子从来没有像他们那样跟人拥抱过，她的嘴巴也从来没有那样张开过。帕特里克觉得法式接吻很恶心。
一位叫西里尔的秃头男人定定地站在洗手间门外，上前亲吻每一个从那里出来的女孩，说：“欢迎啊，亲爱的，你来了可真好，很高兴你来了。”
“西里尔很讨厌，”那位女作家说，“西里尔以为他得像个诗人似的。除了在厕所周围溜达、吵着别人，他也想不出什么事情来做。他觉得自己很了不起似的。”
“他是诗人吗？”露丝问。
那位教英国文学的讲师说：“他告诉我他已经烧掉了自己所有的诗歌。”
“好浮夸啊。”露丝说。她这话逗笑了周围的人，她很高兴自己这样说。
那位讲者开始想玩些汤姆•斯威夫特的幽默文字游戏了。
“那种词儿我一点儿都想不出来，”那位作家伤心地说，“我太在意语言了。”
客厅里传来了响亮的声音。露丝认出了那是帕特里克的声音，那声音骤然响起，将其他声音制服。露丝张开嘴想说点什么，说什么都行，想把他的声音盖住。她知道有些不好的事情要发生了——就在这时，一个满脸洋溢着兴奋的卷发男人来到大厅，热情又随意地把这对夫妻推向两边，举起双手，仔细倾听。
“听啊，”他对整个厨房的人说，“你们不会相信这个客厅的家伙说的话的。你们听啊。”
肯定是有人在客厅里开始谈论印第安人的事情，现在帕特里克接上茬了。
“要把他们带走，”帕特里克说，“要在他们刚出生的时候就从父母身边带走，放到一个文明的环境里，让他们接受教育，他们就会变得跟白人一样有教养。”毫无疑问，他觉得自己在表达自由的观点。如果他们觉得这发言精彩，那么就应该把他送到因为间谍罪被处死的罗森博格夫妇的绞刑架上，或者是像审判间谍阿尔杰•希斯那样，或者带去做核试验。
有些女孩语气温和地说：“嗯，你知道的，他们自己有自己的文化。”
“他们的文化已经，”帕特里克说，“土崩瓦解。”他现在总是在用这个词。他使用一些词的时候，比如俗语或者是严肃社论文章里的词，比如“全面重新评估”这种，用得是如此悠然自得又浑然不觉，以至于你会认为是他自己发明了这个词，或者至少就是因为他用了，这些词才显现出了分量和光彩。
“他们想要文明化，”他说，“那些聪明点的人想要。”
“嗯，或许是他们不觉得自己就是没被文明化。”一位穿着冰冷色系，显得娴静稳重的女孩没太懂帕特里克。
“有些人就需要别人推一把。”
那洋洋自得的腔调，那老成的责备语气，让厨房里的那个男人听了之后直摆手。他摇头笑笑，不信这些：“这人得是个社会信贷运动政治家。”
事实上帕特里克还真的给社会信贷运动党投过票的。
“没错，嗯，不管你怎么看，”他这么说，“他们就得连踢带喊地被拖进二十世纪。”
“连踢带喊？”有人重复道。
“连踢带喊被拖进二十世纪。”帕特里克重复说什么都不介意。
“多有趣的表达。也很人性化嘛。”
难道他自己没有明白过来，他正在被冷落、被逗弄、被嘲笑吗？但是如果帕特里克知道自己被冷落，就会更加来势汹汹。露丝再也听不下去了。她走向后门的过道，那里堆满了靴子、大衣、瓶子、木盆和玩具，乔瑟琳和克里夫德从中拨出一条路来通向聚会地点。谢谢老天爷，这会儿没有人。她走出后门，在潮湿而凉爽的夜晚里站着，气得浑身滚烫发抖。她感到受了羞辱，她为帕特里克感到羞耻。但是她知道，让她丢脸的只是他的行事风格，这又让她怀疑起自己是不是心灵败坏、想法轻浮了。她是对那些比帕特里克聪明，或者至少比他反应快很多的人感到生气。她想把他们想得很坏。他们对印第安人能有多关心啊，说真的？如果有机会好好对待一个印第安人，帕特里克可能比他们表现得要好多了。这事儿虽然只是脑中设想，但是她得这么相信。帕特里克是个好人。他的观点不怎么样，但他人好。他的心，露丝相信，是简单的、纯洁的、值得信任的。但她要怎样领悟这件事，怎样才能让她自己安心，怎样不让别人觉察到这些心理活动呢？
她听到后门关上了，担心乔瑟琳出来找她。乔瑟琳可不是个能相信帕特里克内心是怎么好的人。她觉得他嘴硬、脑子不开化，主要是笨。
不是乔瑟琳。是克里夫德。露丝不想和他说任何话。他有点喝醉了，满脸忧伤，整张脸都被雨水淋湿了，露丝看他的眼神里没点欢迎的意思。但是他用自己的手臂把她揽了过来，摇摇她的身子。
“哦，露丝。露丝宝贝。没关系的。露丝。”
克里夫德这么干了。
差不多过了五分钟他们开始亲吻、嘟哝、发抖、紧抱、抚摸。他们从前门回到聚会里去，西里尔在那。他说：“嘿，哇，你们俩去哪儿了？”
“在雨中散步呢。”克里夫德冷静地说。就跟他说露丝“很可口”时一样，这声音轻盈，或许不太友好。逗弄帕特里克的游戏已经结束。他们的谈话变得随意、醉醺醺的，也没那么有责任感了。乔瑟琳把什锦饭端了上来。露丝到浴室把头发吹干，在光秃秃互相摩擦着的嘴唇上涂好唇膏。她像变了个人似的，变得强硬了。出来之后，她见到的第一个人就是帕特里克。她想哄他开开心。不管他之前说过什么，要说些什么。
“我想我们之前没见过，先生。”她用低低的调情语调说，他们俩在一起氛围轻松点的时候，她也会这么跟他说。“不过你可以亲吻我的手。”
“我的天啊。”帕特里克发自内心地喊道，他捏她，亲她的脸颊，声响很大。他亲吻的时候总是会发出声响。他的手肘总是会戳到她哪儿，戳疼她。
“玩得开心吗？”露丝说。
“还好，还好。”
当然了，在这夜晚接下来的时间里，她玩起了偷偷看克里夫德又假装没在看他的游戏，她觉得克里夫德也在做同样的事情，两个人的眼睛相遇了几次，面无表情，但其中的清晰信息却给了她强烈的震撼。她眼里的他，已经跟从前很不一样了。他那瘦小、单薄的身体现在对她来说，是轻盈、光滑，又富有能量的，他像一只猞猁，或者一只短尾猫。因为滑雪，他肤色黝黑。他登上过西摩山去滑雪。这是一个昂贵的爱好，但乔瑟琳觉得，正是这项运动稳住了他有点缺失的形象——他作为小提琴家在这个社会上的男子汉形象。乔瑟琳把克里夫德的事情都告诉了露丝：有一个得了关节炎的爸爸，在纽约郊区小镇上有一个小杂货店，有一群不太友好的邻居。她也讲过他小时候遇到的问题：不合时宜的才华，吝啬的父母，还有欺负人的同学。他的童年让他痛苦，乔瑟琳说。但是露丝现在不再觉得乔瑟琳对克里夫德有最终发言权了。
那个聚会是在周五的晚上。第二天早上，电话铃响了，帕特里克和安娜坐在桌前吃鸡蛋。
“你还好吗？”克里夫德问。
“挺好的。”
“我想给你打电话。我觉得你可能以为我喝醉了或者怎么样。我没有。”
“啊，没有。”
“我整个晚上都在想你。我以前也在想你。”
“对啊。”那间厨房简直绚丽夺目。她眼前的那幅景象，帕特里克和安娜坐在桌前，咖啡壶里的咖啡要从壶里滴下来，什锦饭的罐头，都充满了欢乐、可能和危险。露丝的嘴巴太干了，她都说不上话来了。
“天气真不错，”她说，“帕特里克、安娜和我可能会去爬山。”
“帕特里克在家里吗？”
“他在。”
“哦，天哪。我真傻。我忘了周六是不上班的。我在这儿彩排呢。”
“对啊。”
“你能假装我是别人吗？就假装是乔瑟琳。”
“当然。”
“我爱你，露丝。”克里夫德挂了电话。
“是谁呀？”
“乔瑟琳。”
“我在家的时候她也要打电话来吗？”
“她忘掉了。克里夫德在彩排，所以她忘了其他人都没在上班。”露丝提到了克里夫德的名字，很高兴。欺骗、隐藏，对她来说似乎显得不可思议的轻松，它们本身几乎都变成了一件愉悦的事情。
“我不知道他们要在周六工作，”她说，还在聊这个话题，“他们肯定会工作很长的时间。”
“他们也不比一般人工作长多少，只不过时间安排不一样。他看上去不像是能干很多活的人。”
“他应该是挺不错的。作为小提琴家。”
“他看上去像个混蛋。”
“你这么觉得吗？”
“你不这么觉得吗？”
“我想我从来都没对他有过什么想法，说真的。”
周一乔瑟琳打电话过来，说她也不知道自己为什么办了个聚会，她现在还在对付那片狼藉呢。
“克里夫德没帮忙收拾吗？”
“开玩笑，我整个周末都没看见他。他周六要彩排，昨天表演。他说聚会是我想出来的，所以我来对付这后面的事。没错。我是想多跟人社交一下，办聚会是唯一的办法了。帕特里克是个很有意思的人。”
“非常有意思。”
“他是有魅力的那种，真的，对吧？”
“像他那样的人有一大把。你只是没遇到而已。”
“伤感啊。”
这个对话跟往常没有什么不同。她们的对话，她们之间的友谊，跟以前也没什么两样。露丝没有因为要忠于朋友乔瑟琳而感觉到束缚，因为她已经把克里夫德一分为二了。其中一个是乔瑟琳认识的克里夫德，就是她常常会描述给露丝听的那个；还有一个露丝认识的克里夫德，就是现在那个。她觉得乔瑟琳可能对他的理解有偏差。比如当她说他的童年让他痛苦的时候——乔瑟琳所说的痛苦，在露丝看来更加复杂，也更为平常。其实就是倦乏、顺从、委屈又抬不起头而已，这对那个阶层来说是寻常事，是克里夫德，也是露丝那个阶层的寻常事。乔瑟琳在某种意义上被侮辱了一下，不安又手足无措。在某些方面她跟帕特里克很像。
从现在开始，露丝的确把克里夫德和自己看成了一类人，而乔瑟琳和帕特里克则是另一类人，尽管他们看上去如此不同，又如此厌烦对方。他们身心健全，也规规矩矩。他们对自己的生活采取的是绝对严肃的态度。跟他们比较起来，克里夫德和露丝可不好对付呢。
如果乔瑟琳爱上了一个已婚男人，她会怎么做呢？在她触碰他的手之前，她会先召开一个会议。克里夫德会被邀请到会议中，那个男人也会，还有那个男人的老婆，特别有可能的是乔瑟琳的心理医生。（尽管她的家人不同意，乔瑟琳相信去看心理医生是每个处于人生成长或者自我调节阶段里的人都应该做的事情，她自己就每周去一次。）乔瑟琳会考虑其中的影响，她会直面事情的因果。她从来都没有试过偷着乐。也从来都没有试过偷着干点什么事。
这就是为什么她很难爱上别的男人。她不贪心。帕特里克现在也不贪心，至少不对爱贪心。
如果爱上帕特里克是因为看到他心底里的善良和厚道，那么爱上克里夫德就是因为看到了除此之外其他所有的东西。露丝不用相信克里夫德是一个善良的人，当然她也知道他不厚道。
他表现出来的那种虚伪和无情，不管是对别人还是对她自己，于她而言都无关紧要。那她爱他的是什么，她想要他的什么呢？她想要小花招，想要听闪着金光的秘密，想要温柔的爱欲，想要规律的猛烈的性。在雨中那五分钟之后，她想要这所有。
聚会过去六个月后，露丝躺在床上，一夜没合眼。在克劳斯山边上一个叫作卡皮兰诺高地的郊区，这是一座石头和杉木做成的房子，帕特里克睡在她身旁。接下来的打算，就是第二天晚上她要跟克里夫德在鲍威尔河那边同床共枕，如今他正随乐团演出。她无法相信这真的要发生了。她把所有的信念都放在了这件事上，但就是没法把事情安排好。
在这几个月里，克里夫德和露丝从来没有一起上过床。他们也没有在其他地方做过爱。情况是这样的：乔瑟琳和克里夫德没有车。帕特里克和露丝有车，但是露丝不会开。克里夫德不定期的工作时间的确给了他一些方便，但是他怎么去看露丝呢？他要坐公交车跨过狮门大桥，然后大白天的踏上郊区的街道，从邻居们的大落地窗前走过吗？露丝可以雇一个保姆，假装自己要去看牙医，坐公交车去城里，在餐厅跟克里夫德碰头，然后和他去酒店吗？但是他们不知道该去哪家酒店，他们担心没有行李，会在街上被发现，或者被人向缉捕队告发，要坐在警察局受审问，乔瑟琳和帕特里克被通知来接他们。还有，他们没有足够的钱。
不过露丝是去过温哥华的，用的就是看牙医的借口。他们俩并排坐在一家咖啡厅里，亲吻着、爱抚着。那是克里夫德的学生和音乐家同事们经常出入的地方，多冒险啊。坐公交车回去的路上，露丝低头看她的连衣裙，那汗水淙淙地从她的双乳间流过，想到这光辉熠熠的自己，想到那千钧一发的时刻，她几乎要昏厥过去。还有另一次，在一个炎热的八月下午，她在剧院后面一条小巷里等正在彩排的克里夫德，在那遮蔽处躲着，然后发狂地、不知满足地跟他扭抱在一起。他们看见一道门打开了，溜了进去。周围全都堆满了盒子。他们在找一个可以安顿下来的地方，这时，有一个男人跟他们说话了。
“有什么需要帮忙的吗？”
他们走进的是一家鞋店的库房。那男人的声音冰冷又可怕。缉捕队。警察局。露丝的连衣裙脱到了腰间。
有一次他们在公园里见面，露丝常常带安娜去那儿，推着她玩荡秋千。他们在一张长椅上手拉着手，放在露丝那宽大的棉裙子底下。他们的手指勾连在一起，抓得紧紧的，很疼。然后安娜在长椅后面突然出现，大叫道：“嘭！我抓到你们啦！”可真是惊喜啊。回家的路上，露丝对安娜说：“你在长椅背后跳出来吓我们的时候可真好玩。我以为你还在荡秋千呢。”
“我知道。”安娜说。
“你说你抓到我们了，是什么意思呢？”
“我抓到你们了。”安娜说，咯咯地笑着，露丝觉得这笑声里有一种令人不安的冒失，她像知道很多的样子。
“想吃巧克力软糖冰棒吗？我想喔！”露丝快活地说道。她想着自己贿赂她、跟她商量，就因为这事安娜将向心理医生咨询二十年。这段插曲让露丝感到心神不宁、心生厌恶，她想知道她有没有让克里夫德感到心里不舒服。有，但只是暂时的。
天亮时，她走下床去看天气怎么样，适不适合飞行。天空清朗，见不到雾气，在这时期，大雾总让飞机无法航行。除了克里夫德，没人知道她要去鲍威尔河。自从得知克里夫德要随团演出，他们就开始计划这件事情，现在已有六周之久了。帕特里克以为她要去维多利亚，她在那儿有一个大学同学。在过去的几个星期里，她一直在假装跟以前的这位朋友重新开始联系。她说她明天晚上会回来。今天是周六。帕特里克在家里照顾安娜。
她到餐室去看那笔从家庭津贴存下来的钱还在不在。就垫在放松糕的银盘子底下。十三美元。她要把这笔钱跟帕特里克给她去维多利亚的钱一起拿上。只要她问，帕特里克都会给她钱，但是他想知道要多少，用来干什么。有一次他们在外面散步，她想去药店，问他要钱，他又摆出往常那副严肃的样子问道：“你用来干什么？”露丝开始哭了起来，因为她要去买阴道润滑剂。她也有可能为此笑起来，现在也会笑着。自从她爱上克里夫德之后，她从来没有跟帕特里克争吵过。
她算了一下她需要的钱。飞机票、去机场的巴士票，从温哥华到鲍威尔河坐汽车或者是出租车的钱，剩下的就买吃的和咖啡。克里夫德会付酒店的钱。想到这里，她浑身都充满了一种性欲上的安慰和顺从，尽管她知道杰罗姆需要新眼镜，亚当需要橡胶靴子。她想到那素色的、顺滑的、宽大的床，它已经在那里，在那里等着他们了。很久以前，当她还是个小女孩的时候（她现在二十三岁），她常常会带着奢侈的希望，去幻想一张平淡无奇的出租床和一扇紧锁的房门。现在这样的幻想又来了。尽管在她结婚之前和之后一段时间里，想到关于性的一切都会激怒她，就像现代艺术会激怒帕特里克一样。
在屋里她轻轻地走着，一步步计划她的这一天。洗澡、擦油和粉，把避孕的子宫帽和润滑剂放进钱包里。记得带钱。睫毛膏、面霜、口红。她站在离客厅还有两级台阶的地方。客厅的墙壁是苔藓般的绿色，壁炉是白色的，窗帘盒、沙发套都是一种款式，白色作底，上面有灰色、绿色和黄色的叶子。壁炉架上是两个英国韦奇伍德的花瓶陶器，白色的，上面围着绿色的叶子。帕特里克对这两个花瓶情有独钟。有时候他下班回来，就径直走向客厅，在壁炉架上把它们转过来一点点，他觉得它们的位置不太对称。
“有谁弄过这些花瓶吗？”
“当然有，你刚一上班我就冲进来把它们抛来抛去了。”
“我说的是安娜。你没让她碰吧？”
帕特里克不喜欢听见她用开玩笑的方式来评论这两个花瓶。他会觉得她不喜欢这房子。他不知道，不过也许能猜到，露丝曾经就和乔瑟琳站在现在她站的这个地方，往下朝客厅看去，她这样对乔瑟琳说：
“这就是一个百货商场老板的儿子对高雅的想象。”
这种背叛甚至让乔瑟琳感到难堪。这话说得不全对。帕特里克梦想得到更加高雅一些的东西。而且并不如露丝这句话所暗示，这全是帕特里克的选择，露丝就一点没参与。确实是帕特里克选的，但是有很多东西也是露丝喜欢过的。她曾经爬上去擦餐室顶上那吊灯的水滴玻璃，那块布沾的是水和小苏打。她喜欢那吊灯，它垂下来，是蓝色和淡紫色的。但是她所仰慕的人们是不会在餐室里挂吊灯的。他们似乎也不会有餐室。如果他们有，也会拿上一盏来自斯堪的纳维亚的黑色金属烛台，把细细的白色蜡烛插进去。或者他们会在酒瓶子里插上厚厚的蜡烛，地下是各种颜色的蜡滴。她所仰慕的那些人都不可避免地比她清贫。这对她来说似乎是个糟糕的玩笑，她从来没有摆脱过贫穷，而贫穷在她所在的地方也从来不是什么值得骄傲的事，现在呢，她来到相反的境地，却必须为此感到抱歉和尴尬了——比如说她跟乔瑟琳在一起的时候就会这样，乔瑟琳说起中产阶级的时候都带着猛烈的批评和鄙视。
那么，如果她没向别人如此暴露过，如果她没有从乔瑟琳那里学到这些观点，她还会喜欢这所房子吗？不会。她终究也一定会对这房子厌烦的。当有人来访，帕特里克经常带他们参观，他会指指吊灯，然后带他们去家里的前门附近，去里面有盏暗灯的化妆室，还有能进得去人的衣橱，以及通往露台的天窗。他为这所房子感到自豪，急着想让大家都注意到那些微妙的不同，仿佛从贫穷家庭长大的不是露丝而是他自己似的。露丝对这种参观一开始就感觉不太愉快，她就默默地跟着，说一些帕特里克不想听到的反话。过了一会儿，她就待在厨房里，不过她仍然能够听到帕特里克的声音，而且她事先就知道帕特里克会说什么。她知道他会拉起餐室的窗帘，然后指着那小小的发光的温泉，他把一尊海神的雕像放在那里，挂着一片无花果叶子，他会说：“这就是乡村游泳爱好者的答案啦！”
洗完澡之后，她拿起一瓶她觉得是婴儿润肤油的瓶子，涂抹自己的身体。液体朝她的乳房和肚子顺流而下，感觉像针扎和火烧。她看了看标签，这根本不是婴儿润肤油，是洗甲水。她把它擦掉，用冷水泼向自己的身体，使劲地用布猛擦，想到毁掉的皮肤、医院、移植手术、伤疤和惩罚。
安娜在抓浴室的门，带着睡意，却抓得急迫。为了防止她这么干，露丝锁上了门，尽管她平时洗澡的时候也不怎么锁门。她让安娜进来。
“你这前面全红了呢。”安娜一边把自己撑上了马桶，一边说着。露丝找到了婴儿润肤油，试着用它来消肿。不过她倒得太多了，新内衣上沾上了油滴。
她以为克里夫德会在他巡演的时候写信给自己，不过他没有。他从乔治王子城给她打来电话，语气很商务。
“你什么时候会到鲍威尔河？”
“四点。”
“好，坐任何一辆可以到城里的车。你到那儿了吗？”
“没有。”
“我也没有。我只知道我们酒店的名字。你不能在那儿等。”
“汽车站怎么样？每个城里都有一个汽车站。”
“好，汽车站。我到那接你，大概五点，然后我们可以把你送到其他酒店。上帝保佑那里不止一个酒店啊。好了，就这样。”
在其他乐团成员面前，他假装自己要去鲍威尔河跟朋友们一起过夜。
“我可以去听你演奏，”露丝说，“可以吗？”
“嗯。当然。”
“我不会让别人看出来的。我就坐在最后一排。我会扮成很老的样子。我想听你演奏。”
“好啊。”
“你不介意吗？”
“不介意。”
“克里夫德？”
“怎么了？”
“你还想让我过去吗？”
“哦，露丝啊。”
“不是，就是你的语气听上去不太像。”
“我在酒店大堂里呢。他们在等我。我假装在跟乔瑟琳打电话呢。”
“好的。我知道了。我会过去。”
“鲍威尔河。汽车站。五点。”
这一次，跟他们平常打电话不太一样。平常他们讲话挺哀怨的，傻傻的，或者是直接上动作，连话都顾不上说了。
“你那儿喘气声很重。”
“我知道。”
“我们得聊些别的。”
“还有什么别的？”
“你们那儿也雾气很大吗？”
“对。你能听见雾角声吗？”
“能。”
“那声音听上去是不是很可怕？”
“我没关系，真的。我挺喜欢的。”
“乔瑟琳不喜欢。你知道她怎么形容这声音吗？她说这是宇宙乏味之声。”
他们一开始完全避免讲到乔瑟琳和帕特里克。后来就开始以一种直接而老练的方式谈论起他们了，仿佛他们自己是大人、家长，是更智慧的一类。现在他们几乎可以用温柔、赏识的方式来提起他们，就像他们是自己的孩子一样。
鲍威尔河没有汽车站。露丝坐进了机场轿车，跟另外四个乘客在一起，都是男士。她告诉司机她想去汽车站。
“你知道在哪儿吗？”
“不知道。”她说。她已经感觉大家都在看着她了。
“你想去坐汽车吗？”
“不是。”
“就是想去汽车站？”
“我是要去那儿见一个人。”
“我都不知道那儿有汽车站。”一位乘客说。
“没有，我没听说过，”司机说，“有一趟车，早上到温哥华，晚上回来，它会停在那个老头儿的门前。那个老伐木工人的家门前。就停在那儿。我就只能把你带到那儿去了。可以吗？”
露丝说可以。接下来她觉得她得继续解释她的去意。
“我的朋友和我打算在那儿见面，因为我们想不到在哪里可以见面。我们完全不熟悉鲍威尔河，就觉得，每个城里都该有一个汽车站的！”
她在想，她不该说“我的朋友”，她应该说“我的丈夫”。他们就问她既然两个人都不知道这地方那他们在那干吗。
“我的朋友在乐团演奏，今晚他们有演出。她拉小提琴。”
他们都不朝她看了，看来这个谎撒得挺好。她在想那乐团里是不是有一个女小提琴家。万一他们问到她名字怎么办？
司机在一栋长长的、漆刮去不少的两层木楼前让她下车。
“我想你可以到玻璃门廊去，就在那尽头。反正汽车就在那接人的。”
玻璃门廊里有一张台球桌。没人在玩。几个老男人在玩西洋跳棋，没人在看。露丝想要不要向他们解释一下自己的来意，不过还是决定不要了。幸好，他们看上去也不感兴趣。在轿车里的那一番解释已经让她累得慌了。
玻璃门廊的钟显示四点十分。她想在剩下时间里到城里的附近区域走走，直到五点。
一走出去，她就闻到了一阵臭味，她开始担心这味道是不是她自己的。她把自己从温哥华机场买来的古龙香水拿出来——她在花自己花不起的钱——然后抹在手腕和脖子上。那味道还在，最后她发现是从果酱厂那里发出来的。在城里走两圈不容易，因为街道很陡，很多地方都没有人行道。没有可以闲逛的地方。她觉得人们在盯着她，认出了这个陌生人。有些开车的人朝她大喊。她看到在商店橱窗里映出的自己，被别人盯着、大喊，就像是她自己招来的一样。她穿着黑色的天鹅绒斗牛士短裤，紧身高领黑色毛衣，肩上还搭着一件淡棕色的夹克衫，尽管风吹得挺冷的。她原本的穿衣选择是宽下摆的裙子，淡色系，儿童式的安哥拉羊毛衫，扇形开领，如今穿得很是性感而诱人。现在她穿的新内衣是黑色的蕾丝和粉色的尼龙。
在温哥华的候机室里，她在眼睛旁涂上了厚厚的睫毛膏、黑色的眼线、银色的眼影，她的口红几乎是白色的。这都是那些年流行的时尚，所以没有像后来人们感觉的那么怪异，但已经够引人注目的了。她对在不同场合的妆容仔细考虑过。她不敢在帕特里克和乔瑟琳面前把自己画成这样，每次她去看乔瑟琳，她都会穿她最宽松的裤子和毛衣。不过每次乔瑟琳开门的时候都会说：“你好啊，性感女士。”带着友好的讽刺。乔瑟琳自己穿着很不讲究。她专门穿克里夫德的旧衣服。她的那些旧短裤都拉不上拉链，因为她生完亚当之后肚子就再也没有平回来过。她还会穿克里夫德曾经穿去表演、已经被磨损了的白衬衫。显然，乔瑟琳觉得所有保持体形、化妆、看上去诱人那档子事都可笑得很，不屑一顾，就像用吸尘器清洁窗帘一样。她说克里夫德也是这么认为的。乔瑟琳说，克里夫德会被那些没有雕琢和诱惑的女性所吸引，他喜欢没有刮毛的腿，毛茸茸的腋窝，还有那自然的味道。露丝好奇克里夫德是不是真说过这话，为什么会这么想。他是出于同情、友好，还是开个玩笑？
露丝发现一个公共图书馆，走进去，看了看书名，但是她集中不了注意力。她整个脑子和身体涌过一阵无法掌控、倒也不算不快活的嗡鸣。五点二十的时候她回到玻璃门廊，继续等。
六点十分她还在等。她数她钱包里的钱。一美元六十三美分。她不能去酒店。她觉得他们也不会让她整晚都待在玻璃门廊里。除了祈祷克里夫德也许还是会来的，没有别的办法。她不相信他会来。计划改了；他被叫回了家因为有个孩子病了；他的手腕扭伤了，拉不了小提琴了；鲍威尔河根本就不是个真实存在的地方，只是负罪的旅行者困在这里接受惩罚的海市蜃楼。她不是非常惊讶。她迈出了不该迈的那一步，结局就是现在这样。
在那几个老男人吃晚饭之前，她问他们知不知道晚上高中体育馆里有音乐会。他们不太愿意搭理地说，没有。
“从来没听说过有人在这儿有音乐会。”
她说她丈夫在乐团里演奏，是一个到温哥华的巡演，她现在飞过来看他，他们本来打算在这里见面的。
这儿吗？
“也许是走丢了吧，”一个老男人说，这语调听上去恶意满满，却又是的确知道的样子，“也许你老公走丢了吧，对吧？老公通常都走丢！”
外面天都快黑了。现在是十月，这里比温哥华更偏北得多。她试着想该怎么办。唯一能想到的就是假装晕倒，就说自己失忆了。帕特里克会相信吗？她会说她也不晓得自己在鲍威尔河干吗。她会说在轿车上的事情她什么都记不得了，关于乐团的事情什么都不知道。她得让警察和医生相信，得让报纸这么写。哦，克里夫德在哪里呢，为什么抛弃了她，会是路上出什么意外了吗？她觉得她得毁掉钱包里的那张纸，那里写着的是他给的路线。她想她还是把避孕的子宫帽丢掉比较好。
她刚往钱包里看，一辆货车就停在了外面。她想一定是一辆警车。她想那老男人们一定打电话报警了，说他们发现了一个可疑人士。
克里夫德走了出来，跑上了玻璃门廊的阶梯。她过了好一会儿才把他认出来。
他们在酒店里喝了啤酒、吃了汉堡，不是乐团住的那个酒店。露丝的手在抖，把啤酒给洒了。克里夫德说，他之前没算上另外一场彩排。还有他找汽车站找了半个小时。
“我想那也不是个好点子，在汽车站等。”
她的手放在桌子上。他用手帕擦去了啤酒，把自己的手放在她的手上。这个举动她在日后常常想起。
“还是先让你在这儿登记入住吧。”
“我们不一块儿登记吗？”
“你登记比较好。”
“我来到这儿之后，”露丝说，“一切都感觉很奇怪。感觉很罪恶。我感觉大家都知道了。”她开始告诉他那些故事，不过是希望以一种轻松愉悦的方式来讲：那个轿车司机、那些乘客，那些在伐木工人房子里的老男人。“你来了之后我可松了一口气，松了一大口气。所以我在发抖。”她告诉他她想过自己假装失忆，觉得应该把子宫帽丢掉的事情。他大笑起来，不过不是快活地笑，她想。她感觉当她提到子宫帽的时候，他的嘴唇紧了一下，表现出一副责备或厌恶的样子。
“但现在一切都好啦。”她急促地说。这是他们在一起面对面最长的对话。
“只是因为你的内疚情绪，”他说，“这很正常的。”
他拍了拍她的手。她想像以前那样，用手指在他的脉搏上摩擦。他放开了手。
半个小时后之后，她说：“我还可以去音乐会吗？”
“你还想去吗？”
“还有什么别的可干的？”
她说这话的时候耸了耸肩。她的眼皮垂了下来，嘴唇饱满，沉思着。她在模仿别人，可能是演过类似场景的芭芭拉•史坦威。当然她不是故意要模仿的。她只是想找一种有诱惑力的方式，一种超然而有诱惑力的方式，会让他改变想法的方式。
“是这样的，我得把车开回去。但我得把其他人接上。”
“我可以走。你告诉我在哪里。”
“恐怕从这要上坡才能到那去。”
“那我无所谓的。”
“露丝。最好是这样。露丝。真的。”
“就按你说的吧。”她做不到再耸一次肩了。她还在想一定有什么办法让这调子变回来，重新来一遍。重新来一遍，把那些她说错的，或者做错的都重新纠正过来。她已经犯了一个错误，她问他自己是不是说错了什么，做错了什么，然后他说没有。没有。她跟这事儿没关系，他说。他已经离家一个月了，看很多事情都不一样了。乔瑟琳。孩子们。这一场破坏。
“只是淘气而已。”他说。
他的头发比她之前见过的还要短。他褪掉了黝黑的肤色。确实是，确实是这样，他看上去像是脱了一层皮似的，脱掉的是那层对她如饥似渴的皮。他又变成那个她在医院里见过的，到产房看望乔瑟琳的，苍白、易怒，但是本分的年轻丈夫了。
“什么淘气？”
“我们做的事情。这不是什么必要的大事。就是平常的淘气而已。”
“你从乔治王子城给我打电话。”芭芭拉•史坦威消失了，露丝听到自己在哀诉。
“我知道。”他讲话像是个牢骚满腹的丈夫。
“你那个时候也是这种感觉吗？”
“是也不是。我们做好了计划。我要是在电话上这么对你说，不是更糟吗？”
“淘气，你这是什么意思？”
“哦，露丝啊。”
“你这话是什么意思？”
“你知道我的意思。如果我们再继续这样下去，你觉得任何人会有好处吗？露丝，说真的？”
“我们，”露丝说，“对我们会有好处。”
“不，不会的。一切会乱成一团。”
“就一次。”
“不。”
“你说就一次。你说我们会拥有一段记忆，而不是一个梦。”
“老天爷。我说了很多恶心话。”
他说过她的舌头就像一条小小的暖暖的蛇，一条漂亮的蛇，他说过她的乳沟就像浆果一样。
她向他提起这事，他也不放在心上了。
格林卡：《鲁斯兰和柳德米拉序曲》
柴可夫斯基：《弦乐小夜曲》
贝多芬：《第六交响曲：第一乐章》
斯美塔那：《我的祖国》
罗西尼：《威廉退尔序曲》
在很长一段时间里，这些音乐她都听不进去，不时会袭来一阵真真切切的羞辱感，就像一整堵墙向她倾倒，碎石将她掩埋。
在克里夫德离开家随团演出之前，乔瑟琳给露丝打过电话，跟她说保姆不能来，她自己那天要去看心理医生。露丝说她可以去帮忙照顾亚当和杰罗姆。她之前也这么做过。她带着安娜，坐了三趟巴士，踏上长长的旅途，到了他们家。
乔瑟琳的房子是靠厨房里的油炉取暖的，客厅里还有庞大的石头火炉。油炉上面都是溅出来的油印，火炉边尽是橙皮、咖啡渣、焦掉的木头和灰烬。这房子没有地下室，也没有干衣机。天花板的架子和普通的站立架上盖着的是潮湿的、泛灰色的床单和尿布，还有变硬的毛巾。
“她家既没洗衣机也没干衣机，却要去看心理医生。 ”帕特里克对露丝说。露丝经常背着乔瑟琳跟帕特里克说些他喜欢听的。
“她一定是疯啦。”露丝说。这话让帕特里克笑了起来。
但是帕特里克不喜欢她去当保姆。
“你真是有求必应啊，”他说，“你没去帮他们家擦地板可真稀奇。”
其实，露丝真的擦过。
乔瑟琳在家的时候，那房子的乱倒显出了一种坚强和感人的特质。然而一旦她走了之后，一切就无法忍受了。露丝去当保姆的时候会带个刀子，把厨房椅子上年代久远的麦片屑刮掉，冲洗咖啡壶，擦地板。她的确还花了点时间看看还有什么可干的。她跑去卧室，因为她得看着杰罗姆，这是个早熟又易怒的孩子，她看到克里夫德的袜子和内裤全都跟乔瑟琳的护理胸罩和破旧的吊袜束腰带皱皱地卷在了一起。她去看是不是在唱盘上有一张能让他想起自己的唱片。
泰勒曼。不像是。但她还是放了出来，听听他到底在听什么。她觉得桌子上那个是他脏脏的早餐杯，她拿起来喝咖啡。她把他昨天晚上吃过西班牙大米的砂锅盖了起来。她寻找他的踪迹（他用的不是电剃须刀，而是那种放在木碗里的老式刮胡皂），但是她相信，他在那所房子里，那所乔瑟琳的房子里时，全都是假装的。他在等待，就像她在帕特里克那所房子里时一样。
乔瑟琳回来的时候，露丝觉得自己应该为收拾她的房子这件事向她道歉，不过乔瑟琳想说的却是她跟心理医生吵了一架，她说心理医生提起了她的母亲，心理医生觉得那肯定是轻度狂躁症，她又说露丝在打扫房子这毛病，要是真的想治好，也应该去看看心理医生。她是在开玩笑。但是在坐巴士回家的路上，脾气暴躁的安娜，想到还不知道给帕特里克准备什么晚餐，露丝就会觉得，为什么她老是让事情往错误的方向走，为什么会让邻居们嫌弃自己在家务上不用心，为什么会让乔瑟琳指责自己对自然凌乱状态或对生活超脱行为容忍度低。她想到要去爱，要去跟自己和解。她是被爱的，不过不是本分的、夫妻间的爱，而是疯狂的、出轨的爱，而乔瑟琳和她的邻居并不是这样的。她用这一点来让自己跟任何事情和解，比如跟帕特里克——他在床上翻过身来，发出轻轻的咯咯声中——借此赦免她所有的失误，他们开始做爱。
克里夫德说的那番冷静而体面的话对露丝没什么影响。她看到了，他已经背叛了她。冷静和体面从来都不是她对他的要求。她在鲍威尔河高中的礼堂里听他演奏。她看着他演奏他的小提琴，带着一种忧郁而殷切的表达，这种表达她也曾经直面过。她不知道没有他，自己该怎么活。
半夜，她从自己的酒店打电话到他的酒店。
“跟我说话吧。”
“没事的，克里夫德。”沉默一阵。“没事的，乔斯。”
他肯定有个室友，被电话吵醒了。他在假装跟乔瑟琳说话。要不就是他困得不行真以为是乔瑟琳。
“克里夫德，是我。”
“没事的，”克里夫德说，“放心。去睡吧。”
他挂了电话。
乔瑟琳和克里夫德住在多伦多。他们不再贫穷。克里夫德很成功。他的名字出现在唱片包装上，在电台节目里。电视上也经常出现他的面孔，出现更多的是他那只在小提琴上耕耘的手。乔瑟琳调整了饮食，变得更加苗条了，她剪去了头发，做了造型；由中间分开，划向脸的两边，两条白线在太阳穴上方升起。
他们住在一条深径旁边大大的砖房里。后院有喂鸟器。他们还在那儿盖了个桑拿浴室。克里夫德总是长时间地坐在那里。他觉得这能让他预防关节炎，以防像他爸爸一样。关节炎是他最大的恐惧。
露丝以前会去看他们。她自己一个人住在乡村里，在一所社区大学教书，到多伦多想找个地方过夜的时候，就会来这里。他们似乎很高兴接待她。他们说她是他们交情最老的朋友了。
有一次露丝来看乔瑟琳的时候，乔瑟琳讲了个亚当的事儿。亚当在这所房子的地下一层有个住处。杰罗姆和他的女朋友住在市中心。亚当会带他的女孩们来这。
“当时我在小房间里看书，”乔瑟琳说，“克里夫德出去了。我听见从亚当的房间里传出来这女孩的声音，她喊：不要！不要！那房间里的声音直直地传了上来。我们向他警告过这件事，我们觉得他会尴尬—— ”
“我不觉得他会尴尬。”克里夫德说。
“但他都说了，我们在那时候应该放点唱片的声音。然后我一直都在听着那个不知道叫什么名字的可怜女孩喊啊，反抗啊，我不知道该怎么办。我觉得这情况还真是头回见，之前没经历过，如果你听见你的儿子在强奸什么女孩，就在你眼皮底下，或者至少就在你脚底下，你会制止他吗？最后我跑到楼下把背靠在他卧室柜子里所有的滑雪板都拿了出来，如果他问到我就说我想把它们擦擦干净。那是七月。亚当从那儿以后再也没对我说过什么。我希望他能搬出去。”
露丝就讲帕特里克现在有多少钱，讲他娶了一个比他还有钱的现实的女人，那女人布置了一个金光闪闪的卧室，有镜子和浅白的天鹅绒，还有用电线做成的雕塑，活像个讨人厌的鸟笼子。帕特里克现在对现代艺术没什么意见了。
“当然这已经不一样了，”露丝对乔瑟琳说，“房子也不一样了。我想知道她对那两个英国韦奇伍德的花瓶陶器都做了些什么。”
“没准她还有一个特别有格调的洗衣间呢。把漂白粉放在一个地方，除垢剂放在另一地方。”
“他们在架子上放着，很对称。”
但是露丝心里还藏着那一阵久远的痛苦的内疚。
“跟以前一样，我喜欢帕特里克。”
乔瑟琳说，“为什么？”
“他这个人比大多数人都要好。”
“傻成这样，”乔瑟琳说，“我觉得他肯定不喜欢你。”
“没错。”露丝说。她开始告诉他们有一次她坐巴士的故事。那次她没在开车，因为事儿太多了忙不过来，没时间修好它。
“那个坐在我对面的男人告诉我他之前开卡车的事儿，他说我们从来都没有见过他在美国开的那种卡车。”露丝开始带上她那边的口音接着说：“在美国他们有那种叫高速路的玩意儿，只有卡车能上路。他们从这些路的一端开到另一端，所以大部分人都从来没见过他们。他们这汽车可大了，有巴士的一半儿大，有个司机，还有个助理司机，还有另外一个司机和助理司机可以先睡下休息。那还有洗手间、厨房和床那些东西。一个小时能走八九十英里，因为那卡车其实不限速。”
“你变的好怪啊，”克里夫德说，“你还住在那儿呢。”
“别管那些卡车了，”乔瑟琳说，“别管那些老神话传说了。克里夫德又想着要离开我了。”
他们坐下来喝酒，一边讨论着克里夫德和乔瑟琳应该怎么办。这不是个陌生的对话。克里夫德真正想要什么。他真的是不想要跟乔瑟琳的婚姻，还是说他想要一些无法获得的事情？他是在经历中年危机吗？
“别说那些老话了。”克里夫德对露丝说。她常说中年危机。“我二十五岁就开始经历中年危机了。我一进去了就想逃出来。”
“克里夫德说这话挺新鲜的啊。”乔瑟琳说。她跑去厨房拿点奶酪和葡萄。“他还真把这话说出来了。”她从厨房那边喊着。露丝避免看着克里夫德，不是因为他们之间有秘密，是因为乔瑟琳不在的时候，他们俩互相不对视似乎是一种礼貌。
“现在是这样的，”乔瑟琳说，一手拿着一盘奶酪和葡萄，一手拿着一瓶金酒，“他经常叽叽歪歪、胡说八道的，对解决真正的问题一点用都不顶。现在他走出来了。那个伟大的光明的真理啊。现在一切豁然开朗了。”
露丝跟上这说话的节奏有些困难。她觉得生活在乡村里让她思维变慢了。乔瑟琳的话是不是在嘲弄，在讽刺呢？不，她不是。
“那现在呢，我就把真理散播给你啦。”克里夫德哈哈大笑起来。他拿着瓶子喝啤酒。他觉得喝啤酒比喝金酒要好。“说真的，一旦我进去了，就想出来。没骗你，我想进来，想留在这儿。我想跟你结婚，想跟你结婚，又没法儿忍受跟你结婚，没法忍受。这是个静态的抵触行为。”
“听上去很可怕。”露丝说。
“我可不是那意思。我只是在说这不是中年危机。”
“嗯，可能你想得太简单了。”露丝说。露丝现在的语气坚定、理智，又很接地气，带着乡里人的气息，不过他们还是在听克里夫德说了些什么。克里夫德真正想要的是什么，他需要什么？他需要一个工作室，还是假期，还是一个人去欧洲旅行？她说，是什么让他觉得乔瑟琳会无休止地替他操心有没有享受到福利？乔瑟琳又不是他妈妈。
“这是你的错，”她对乔瑟琳说，“你没告诉他要么忍，要么滚，就是你的错。别管他要什么。
要么滚，要么忍。你就跟他说这些得了。要么忍，要么滚出去。”她对克里夫德说，带着粗暴的嘲讽。“抱歉我说得这么直接，直接得这么不友好。”
她话说得这么不友好倒没什么事儿，她知道的。表现得过于礼貌和冷淡才“有事儿”呢。她现在说话给人的感觉就是在表明她是他们真正的朋友，对他们上心。她的确是这样的，在某种程度上。
“她说得对，你这操蛋的混账，”乔瑟琳试着这样说，“要么忍，要么滚。”
几年前，当乔瑟琳打电话给露丝，给她念诗集《嚎叫》的时候，尽管她平时说话大胆，但是她还是说不出“操”这个字。她试着强迫自己，不过她还是说：“哦，太傻了，我说不出来。我得说‘该死’。我说‘该死’的时候，你知道我在说什么吧？”
“但她的意思是说这是你的错，”克里夫德说，“你想当那个妈妈的角色。你想当大人。你想长期忍受痛苦。”
“混蛋，”乔瑟琳说，“哦，或许吧，或许吧。是的。或许我是这样的。”
“在学校里我敢肯定你会去跟那些孩子聊他们的问题吧，”克里夫德浅浅一笑，“那些可怜的孩子啊，脸上有粉刺，身上穿着可怕的衣服，讲话还口吃。你肯定对那些孩子不怎么好，把他们给害了。”
乔瑟琳拿起奶酪刀朝他那边挥了挥。
“你小心点儿。你就没粉刺说话不口吃。你就好看到不行，就那么有才，就那么好运气。”
“我作为一个成年男人，有一些几乎无法逾越的问题，”克里夫德自负地说道，“心理医生这么说的。”
“我不相信你。心理医生不会说什么‘几乎无法逾越’的话。他们不用这词的。他们也不下结论。我不相信你，克里夫德。”
“实话说，我还真没去看过心理医生呢。我就到央街看黄片儿。”
克里夫德到外面桑拿室去了。露丝看着他离开。他穿着牛仔裤、一件写着“只是路过”的 T恤。他的手腕和臀部就像一个十二岁男孩一样瘦小。他灰灰的头发剃成了平头，脑袋轮廓凸显出来。现在音乐家的发型都这样吗，是不是政客和会计师都留浓密的胡子了？还是说克里夫德就爱这样？他棕黑的肤色看上去像是化了个煎饼妆似的，尽管可能这是不加修饰的肤色。他整个人看上去有一种夸张的感觉，精瘦、有光辉，又显得搞笑。他那消瘦的、甜甜的、吃力的微笑显得猥琐。
“他还好吗？”她对乔瑟琳说，“他瘦得可怕呀。”
“他就希望看上去是那样。他平时吃酸奶和黑面包。”
“你们可不能分开呀，”露丝说，“因为你们这房子太漂亮了。”她舒展双手到那张钩针编织地毯上。客厅有白色的墙壁、厚厚的白色窗帘、旧旧的松木家具、大大的明亮画作，还有钩针编织地毯。她手肘下面那个低低的圆桌上放着的是一碗擦亮过的石头，可以拿起来在手指上滑一遍。那些石头来自温哥华沙滩。桑迪湾、英吉利湾、基斯兰奴、安布尔塞德、丹大拉夫。杰罗姆和亚当很久以前就开始搜集它们了。
克里夫德从各省的巡演回来之后，乔瑟琳和克里夫德就离开了不列颠哥伦比亚。他们去了蒙特利尔，然后是哈利法克斯，然后是多伦多。他们很难想起温哥华来了。有一次他们试着回想他们之前住的那条街道的名字，到后来还是露丝告诉他们的。露丝住在卡普兰诺高地的时候，曾经花很多时间去回想她之前住过的安大略省的一些地方，以某种方式表现对那景致的忠诚。现在他住在安大略省，仍然以同样的精力去回想温哥华，把那些本来平凡无奇却在此时让她困惑的细节搞清楚。比如，她试着回忆在哪里等太平洋城市公共汽车，什么时候可以从北温哥华到西温哥华去。她想象着自己大概一点钟的时候坐上那老旧的绿色汽车，比如说吧，在一个春日。去给乔瑟琳照顾小孩。安娜跟她在一起，穿着她那件黄色的雨衣，带着雨帽。冷冷的雨。到西温哥华要经过一段长长的泥泞之地。现在那地方已经是购物中心和高楼大厦了。她能回想起街道、房子，那熟悉的西夫韦超市，圣莫斯酒店，通往森林厚重的大门入口，还有你下车之后就会看见那个小店的地方。那里有黑猫的香烟标志。走进树林，穿过去，就会到乔瑟琳的房子，潮湿的杉树。午后的死寂。打盹时间。年轻女人边喝咖啡边看着雨天的窗外。退休的夫妻在遛狗。脚踩在土里印出个模型来。番红花，刚冒出头来的水仙，冰冷的灯泡亮起来开始发烫。临近海水时那截然不同的气味，那些不住向下飘落的草木将你包围，那整座森林的寂静。安娜拉着她的手，乔瑟琳的棕色木屋就在前方。走近房子的时候，那种厚重的恐惧和复杂的思绪也就降临了。
其他的事情她就不太想去回忆了。
从鲍威尔河回来，她在飞机上戴着太阳镜哭了一路。她坐在温哥华机场的等候室里，仍在哭泣。她无法停止掉眼泪，就这么回家见帕特里克。一个便衣警察坐到了她身边，翻开他的夹克衫，让她看自己的徽章，问她有没有什么要帮忙的。是有人看到了她的样子，叫他来的。
她被吓到了，没意识到自己的失态。原来这么明显，她向厕所跑去。她没想过要借酒消愁什么的，没想过要找个酒吧喝一杯。那个时候她还从来没泡过吧呢。她也没有服用镇定剂，她没有这东西，也不懂。也许世上并没有这玩意的吧。
那种痛苦。那是什么样的痛苦啊？全是浪费，没有回报。从头到尾都是不光彩的悲伤。骄傲被揉碎，幻想是泡沫。仿佛她拿了把锤子，故意砸碎了自己的大脚趾。她有时候就是这么想的。有时又觉得这是必要的，是破坏和改变的开始，是她如今自己作为独立的人，而不是在帕特里克家的人的开始。像往常一样，牵一发，便动了全身，这不大的力量，却带来了不小的混乱。
帕特里克说不出话来。她把这事告诉他的时候，他没准备什么长篇大论。他沉默良久，却在屋子里听她为自己辩白、抱怨。仿佛是他想要她继续说下去，尽管他不相信她说的话，而要是她不说，事情就会变得更糟。
她并没有全告诉他。她说她跟克里夫德“搞了外遇”，说这话的时候她得到了某种微弱的间接的安慰，却被克里夫德的目光和沉默顿时刺穿，不过，这安慰倒也没真的被摧毁。似乎他摆出这面无表情的姿态，这不甚恰当、难以消化的巨大悲伤，有点不合时机，不太公正。
然后电话铃声就响起了，她想会是克里夫德，情绪一变。不是克里夫德，是那次在乔瑟琳的聚会上见到的一个男人。他说他在执导一出广播剧，需要一个乡村女孩。他记得她的口音。
不是克里夫德。
她还是不要想这些了。她还是愿意去想透过金属窗框看到的那些摇摇欲滴的雪松、树莓丛，林子里蓬勃发育的绿色生命，那些在逝去的日常生活窥到的小景致。还有安娜的黄色雨衣。
乔瑟琳生起的那堆脏兮兮的火里冒出的烟。
“你想看我都买了些什么废物吗？”乔瑟琳说着，带露丝到了楼上。她给她看刺绣的裙子，深红色的缎子外套。水仙颜色的丝绸睡衣套装。爱尔兰带回来的长长的、看不出形状来的粗编织连衣裙。
“我在花好多钱。我以前想的就是有好多钱。费了我好长时间。为了能花这么多钱，真是费了我们俩好长时间啊。我们干不了这样的事情。我们鄙视那些有彩色电视的人。你知道吗——彩色电视可好看了！我们现在坐下来说，我们想要点什么呢？要么给我们的别墅添个烤箱？
或许我想要个吹风机？大家都已经知道那些东西好多年了，可是我们觉得有这些东西可真是奢侈。你知道我们现在跟对方说些什么吗？我们是消费者！所以这些都没有问题！”
“不仅仅是画作、唱片和图书。买这些没问题。彩色电视！吹风机！华夫饼干模子！”
“遥控鸟笼子！”露丝欢快地说。
“这想法不错。”
“电热毛巾！”
“是电热毛巾架子，傻瓜！它们很不错。”
“电动雕刻刀，电动牙刷，电动牙签。”
“有些东西还真没它们听上去那么糟糕。真的没有。”
还有一次，克里夫德和乔瑟琳举行聚会的时候，露丝来了。其他人回家之后，他们仨，乔瑟琳、克里夫德和露丝，就对着坐在客厅的地板上，都喝得醉醺醺的，很舒服。那个聚会玩得不错。露丝感到一阵遥远的、留恋的欲望，可能是一种回忆的欲望。乔瑟琳说她不想回床上休息。
“那我们干点什么呢？”露丝说，“我们不能喝下去了。”
“我们可以做爱啊。”克里夫德说。
乔瑟琳和露丝说：“真的？”异口同声。然后他们各自将手指都扣起来，说：“烟顺烟囱而上。”
接下来，克里夫德把她们的衣服脱掉。她们没有发抖，火堆前暖烘烘的。克里夫德对两人轮流关照，都很周到。他也解去了自己的衣服。露丝心头涌起一阵好奇，不敢相信，不情不愿，欲望却被勾起，她动作不紧不慢，在某种程度上难以捉摸，震惊又悲伤。然而，尽管克里夫德最初对两人都有所表示，最后却只对露丝做了爱，就在那粗糙的钩针编织地毯上。乔瑟琳发出满足的声响，那声响似乎徜徉他们之上。
第二天，露丝得赶在乔瑟琳和克里夫德醒来之前出门。她得坐地铁到城里去。她发现自己正看着那些男人，似乎饥渴着，有着冰冷又刺痛的需求，随即又摆脱了这种感觉。她开始生气。她对克里夫德和乔瑟琳感到生气。她觉得他们在愚弄她、欺骗她，向她展示她那明晃晃的不足之处，她宁愿自己没有注意到这一点。她决定再也不要见他们，给他们写封信，把他们的自私、愚蠢和道德退化都写在信里。等她把那封信在脑子里写到满意了，她已经回到乡村，平静了下来。她决定不去写这封信。一段时间之后，她决定跟克里夫德和乔瑟琳继续做朋友，因为她偶尔需要这样的朋友，在她那个阶段的人生里。
Providence
Providence
Rose had a dream about Anna. This was after she had gone away and left Anna behind. Shedreamed she met Anna walking up Gonzales Hill. She knew she was coming from school. Shewent up to speak to her but Anna walked past not speaking. No wonder. She was covered withclay that seemed to have leaves or branches in it, so that the effect was of dead garlands.
Decoration; ruination. And the clay or mud was not dry, it was still dripping off her, so that shelooked crude and sad, a botched heavy-headed idol.
“Do you want to come with me, do you want to stay with Daddy?” Rose had said to her, butAnna had refused to answer, saying instead, “I don’t want you to go.” Rose had got a job at a radiostation in a town in the Kootenay mountains.
Anna was lying in the four-poster bed where Patrick and Rose used to sleep, where Patrick nowslept alone. Rose slept in the den.
Anna would go to sleep in that bed, then Patrick would carry her to her own bed. NeitherPatrick nor Rose knew when this stopped being occasional, and became essential. Everything inthe house was out of kilter. Rose was packing her trunk. She did it in the daytime when Patrickand Anna were not around. She and Patrick spent the evenings in different parts of the house.
Once she went into the dining room and found him putting fresh Scotch tape on the snapshots inthe album. She was angry at him for doing this. She saw a snapshot of herself, pushing Anna on aswing in the park; herself smirking in a bikini; true lies.
“It wasn’t any better then,” she said. “Not really.” She meant that she had always been planning,at the back of her mind, to do what she was doing now. Even on her wedding day she had knownthis time would come, and that if it didn’t she might as well be dead. The betrayal was hers.
“I know that,” said Patrick angrily.
But of course it had been better, because she hadn’t started to try to make the break come, shehad forgotten for long stretches that it would have to come. Even to say she had been planning tobreak, had started to break, was wrong, because she had done nothing deliberately, nothing at allintelligently, it had happened as painfully and ruinously as possible with all sorts of shilly-shallying and reconciling and berating, and right now she felt as if she was walking a swingingbridge and could only keep her eyes on the slats ahead, never look down or around.
“Which do you want?” she said softly to Anna. Instead of answering, Anna called out forPatrick. When he came she sat up and pulled them both down on the bed, one on each side of her.
She held on to them, and began to sob and shake. A violently dramatic child, sometimes, a bareblade.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “You don’t have fights any more.” Patrick looked across at Rosewithout accusation. His customary look for years, even when they were making love, had beenaccusing, but he felt such pain on Anna’s account that all accusation was wiped out. Rose had toget up and go out, leaving him to comfort Anna, because she was afraid a great, deceptive rush offeeling for him was on the way.
It was true, they did not have fights any more. She had scars on her wrists and her body, whichshe had made (not quite in the most dangerous places) with a razor blade. Once in the kitchen ofthis house Patrick had tried to choke her. Once she had run outside and knelt in her nightgown,tearing up handfuls of grass. Yet for Anna this bloody fabric her parents had made, of mistakesand mismatches, that anybody could see ought to be torn up and thrown away, was still the trueweb of life, of father and mother, of beginning and shelter. What fraud, thought Rose, what fraudfor everybody. We come from unions which don’t have in them anything like what we think wedeserve.
She wrote to Tom, to tell him what she was going to do. Tom was a teacher at the University ofCalgary. Rose was a little bit in love with him (so she said to friends who knew about the affair: alittle bit in love). She had met him here a year ago—he was the brother of a woman she sometimesacted with in radio plays—and since then she had stayed with him once in Victoria. They wrotelong letters to each other. He was a courtly man, a historian, he wrote witty and delicately amorousletters. She had been a little afraid that when she announced that she was leaving Patrick, Tomwould write less often, or more guardedly, in case she might be hoping for too much from him.
Getting ideas. But he did not, he was not so vulgar or so cowardly; he trusted her.
She said to her friends that leaving Patrick had nothing to do with Tom and that she wouldprobably not see Tom any oftener than she had before. She believed that, but she had chosenbetween the job in the mountain town and one on Vancouver Island because she liked the idea ofbeing closer to Calgary.
In the morning Anna was cheerful, she said it was all right. She said she wanted to stay. Shewanted to stay in her school, with her friends. She turned halfway down the walk to wave andshriek at her parents.
“Have a happy divorce!”
ROSE HAD THOUGHT that once she got out of Patrick’s house she would live in a bare room,some place stained and shabby. She would not care, she would not bother making a setting forherself, she disliked all that. The apartment which she found—the upstairs of a brown brick househalfway up the mountainside—was stained and shabby, but she immediately set to work to fix itup. The red-and-gold wallpaper (these places, she was to discover, were often tricked out withsomeone’s idea of elegant wallpaper) had been hastily put on, and was ripping and curling awayfrom the baseboard. She bought some paste and pasted it down. She bought hanging plants andcoaxed them not to die. She put up amusing posters in the bathroom. She paid insulting prices foran Indian bedspread, baskets and pottery and painted mugs, in the only shop in town where suchthings were to be found. She painted the kitchen blue and white, trying to get the colors of willow-pattern china. The landlord promised to pay for the paint but didn’t. She bought blue candles,some incense, a great bunch of dried gold leaves and grass. What she had, when all this wasfinished, was a place which belonged quite recognizably to a woman, living alone, probably nolonger young, who was connected, or hoped to be connected, with a college or the arts. Just as thehouse she had lived in before, Patrick’s house, belonged recognizably to a successful business orprofessional man with inherited money and standards.
The town in the mountains seemed remote from everything. But Rose liked it, partly because ofthat. When you come back to living in a town after having lived in cities you have the idea thateverything is comprehensible and easy there, almost as if some people have got together and said,“Let’s play Town.” You think that nobody could die there.
Tom wrote that he must come to see her. In October (she had hardly expected it would be sosoon) there was an opportunity, a conference in Vancouver. He planned to leave the conference aday early, and to pretend to have taken an extra day there, so that he could have two days free. Buthe phoned from Vancouver that he could not come. He had an infected tooth, he was in bad pain,he was to have emergency dental surgery on the very day he had planned to spend with Rose. Sohe was to get the extra day after all, he said, did she think it was a judgment on him? He said hewas taking a Calvinistic view of things, and was groggy with pain and pills.
Rose’s friend Dorothy asked did she believe him? It had not occurred to Rose not to.
“I don’t think he’d do that,” she said, and Dorothy said quite cheerfully, even negligently, “Oh,they’ll do anything.”
Dorothy was the only other woman at the station; she did a homemakers’ program twice aweek, and went around giving talks to women’s groups; she was much in demand as mistress ofceremonies at prizegiving dinners for young people’s organizations; that sort of thing. She andRose had struck up a friendship based mostly on their more-or-less single condition and theirventuresome natures. Dorothy had a lover in Seattle, and she did not trust him.
“They’ll do anything,” Dorothy said. They were having coffee in the Hole-in-One, a littlecoffee-and-doughnut shop next to the radio station. Dorothy began telling Rose a story about anaffair she had had with the owner of the station who was an old man now and spent most of histime in California. He had given her a necklace for Christmas that he said was jade. He said he hadbought it in Vancouver. She went to have the clasp fixed and asked proudly how much thenecklace was worth. She was told it was not jade at all; the jeweler explained how to tell, holdingit up to the light. A few days later the owner’s wife came into the office showing off an identicalnecklace; she too had been told the jade story. While Dorothy was telling her this, Rose waslooking at Dorothy’s ash-blonde wig, which was glossy and luxuriant and not for a momentbelievable, and her face, whose chipped and battered look the wig and her turquoise eye shadowemphasized. In a city she would have looked whorish; here, people thought she was outlandish,but glamorous, a representative of some legendary fashionable world.
“That was the last time I trusted a man,” Dorothy said. “At the same time as me he was laying agirl who worked in here—married girl, a waitress—and his grandchildren’s baby sitter. How doyou like that?”
At Christmas Rose went back to Patrick’s house. She had not seen Tom yet, but he had sent hera fringed, embroidered, dark blue shawl, bought during a conference holiday in Mexico, in earlyDecember, to which he had taken his wife (after all he had promised her, Rose said to Dorothy).
Anna had stretched out in three months. She loved to suck her stomach in and stick her ribs out,looking like a child of famine. She was high-spirited, acrobatic, full of antics and riddles. Walkingto the store with her mother—for Rose was again doing the shopping, the cooking, sometimes wasdesperate with fear that her job and her apartment and Tom did not exist outside of herimagination—she said, “I always forget when I’m at school.”
“Forget what?”
“I always forget you’re not at home and then I remember. It’s only Mrs. Kreber.” Mrs. Kreberwas the housekeeper Patrick had hired.
Rose decided to take her away. Patrick did not say no, he said that maybe it was best. But hecould not stay in the house while Rose was packing Anna’s things.
Anna said later on she had not known she was coming to live with Rose, she had thought shewas coming for a visit. Rose believed she had to say and think something like this, so she wouldnot be guilty of any decision.
The train into the mountains was slowed by a great fall of snow. The water froze. The trainstood a long time in the little stations, wrapped in clouds of steam as the pipes were thawed. Theygot into their outdoor clothes and ran along the platform. Rose said, “I’ll have to buy you a wintercoat. I’ll have to buy you some warm boots.” In the dark coastal winters rubber boots and hoodedraincoats were enough. Anna must have understood then that she was staying, but she saidnothing.
At night while Anna slept Rose looked out at the shocking depth and glitter of the snow. Thetrain crept along slowly, fearful of avalanches. Rose was not alarmed, she liked the idea of theirbeing shut up in this dark cubicle, under the rough train blankets, borne through such implacablelandscape. She always felt that the progress of trains, however perilous, was safe and proper. Shefelt that planes, on the other hand, might at any moment be appalled by what they were doing, andsink through the air without a whisper of protest.
She sent Anna to school, in her new winter clothes. It was all right, Anna did not shrink orsuffer as an outsider. Within a week there were children coming home with her, she was going tothe houses of other children. Rose went out to meet her, in the early winter dark, along the streetswith their high walls of snow. In the fall a bear had come down the mountain, entered the town.
News of it came over the radio. An unusual visitor, a black bear, is strolling along Fulton Street.
You are advised to keep your children indoors. Rose knew that a bear was not likely to walk intotown in the winter, but she was worried just the same. Also she was afraid of cars, with the streetsso narrow and the corners hard to see around. Sometimes Anna would have gone home anotherway, and Rose would go all the way to the other child’s house and find her not there. Then shewould run, run all the way home along the hilly streets and up the long stairs, her heart poundingfrom the exercise and from fear, which she tried to hide when she found Anna there.
Her heart would pound also from hauling the laundry, the groceries. The laundromat, thesupermarket, the liquor store, were all at the bottom of the hill. She was busy all the time. Shealways had urgent plans for the next hour. Pick up the resoled shoes, wash and tint her hair, mendAnna’s coat for school tomorrow. Besides her job, which was hard enough, she was doing thesame things she had always done, and doing them under harder circumstances. There was asurprising amount of comfort in these chores.
Two things she bought for Anna: the goldfish, and the television set. Cats or dogs were notpermitted in the apartment, only birds or fish. One day in January, the second week Anna wasthere, Rose walked down the hill to meet her, after school, to take her to Woolworth’s to buy thefish. She looked at Anna’s face and thought it was dirty, then saw that it was stained with tears.
“Today I heard somebody calling Jeremy,” Anna said, “and I thought Jeremy was here.” Jeremywas a little boy she had often played with at home.
Rose mentioned the fish.
“My stomach hurts.”
“Are you hungry maybe? I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee. What would you like?”
It was a terrible day. They were walking through the park, a shortcut to downtown. There hadbeen a thaw, then a freeze, so that there was ice everywhere, with water or slush on top of it. Thesun was shining, but it was the kind of winter sunshine that only makes your eyes hurt, and yourclothes too heavy, and emphasizes all disorder and difficulty, such as the difficulty now, in tryingto walk on the ice. All around were teenagers just out of school, and their noise, their whoopingand sliding, the way a boy and girl sat on a bench on the ice, kissing ostentatiously, made Rosefeel even more discouraged.
Anna had chocolate milk. The teenagers had accompanied them into the restaurant. It was anoldfashioned place with the high-backed booths of the forties, and an orange-haired owner-cookwhom everyone called Dree; it was the shabby reality that people recognized nostalgically inmovies, and, best of all, nobody there had any idea that it was anything to be nostalgic about. Dreewas probably saving to fix it up. But today Rose thought of those restaurants it reminded her of,where she had gone after school, and thought that she had after all been very unhappy in them.
“You don’t love Daddy,” said Anna. “I know you don’t.”
“Well, I like him,” Rose said. “We just can’t live together, that’s all.” Like most things you areadvised to say, this rang false, and Anna said, “You don’t like him. You’re just lying.” She wasbeginning to sound more competent, and seemed to be looking forward to getting the better of hermother.
“Aren’t you?”
Rose was in fact just on the verge of saying no, she did not like him. If that’s what you want,you can have it, she felt like saying. Anna did want it, but could she stand it? How do you everjudge what children can stand? And actually the words love, don’t love, like, don’t like, even hate,had no meaning for Rose where Patrick was concerned.
“My stomach still hurts,” said Anna with some satisfaction, and pushed the chocolate milkaway. But she caught the danger signals, she did not want this to go any further. “When are wegetting the fish?” she said, as if Rose had been stalling.
They bought an orange fish, a blue spotted fish, a black fish with a velvety-looking body andhorrible bulging eyes, all of which they carried home in a plastic bag. They bought a fish bowl,colored pebbles, a green plastic plant. Both of them were restored by the inside of Woolworth’s,the flashing fish and the singing birds and the bright pink and green lingerie and the gilt-framedmirrors and the kitchen plastic and a large lobster of cold red rubber.
On the television set Anna liked to watch “Family Court,” a program about teenagers needingabortions, and ladies picked up for shoplifting, and fathers showing up after long years away toreclaim their lost children who liked their stepfathers better. Another program she liked was called“The Brady Bunch.” The Brady Bunch was a family of six beautiful, busy, comicallymisunderstood or misunderstanding children, with a pretty blonde mother, a handsome dark father,a cheerful housekeeper. The Brady Bunch came on at six o’clock, and Anna wanted to eat supperwatching it. Rose allowed this because she often wanted to work through Anna’s suppertime. Shebegan putting things in bowls, so that Anna could manage more easily. She stopped makingsuppers of meat and potatoes and vegetables, because she had to throw so much out. She madechili instead, or scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato sandwiches, wieners wrapped in biscuit dough.
Sometimes Anna wanted cereal, and Rose let her have it. But then she would think there wassomething disastrously wrong, when she saw Anna in front of the television set eating CaptainCrunch, at the very hour when families everywhere were gathered at kitchen or dining-roomtables, preparing to eat and quarrel and amuse and torment each other. She got a chicken, shemade a thick golden soup with vegetables and barley. Anna wanted Captain Crunch instead. Shesaid the soup had a funny taste. It’s lovely soup, cried Rose, you’ve hardly tasted it, Anna, pleasetry it.
“For my sake,” it’s a wonder she didn’t say. She was relieved, on the whole, when Anna saidcalmly, “No.”
At eight o’clock she began to hound Anna into her bath, into bed. It was only when all this wasaccomplished—when she had brought the final glass of chocolate milk, mopped up the bathroom,picked up the papers, crayons, felt cutouts, scissors, dirty socks, Chinese checkers, also the blanketin which Anna wrapped herself to watch television, because the apartment was cold, made Anna’slunch for the next day, turned off her light over her protest—that Rose could settle down with adrink, or a cup of coffee laced with rum, and give herself over to satisfaction, appreciation. Shewould turn off the lights and sit by the high front window looking out over this mountain town shehad hardly known existed a year ago, and she would think what a miracle it was that this hadhappened, that she had come all this way and was working, she had Anna, she was paying forAnna’s life and her own. She could feel the weight of Anna in the apartment then just as naturallyas she had felt her weight in her body, and without having to go and look at her she could see withstunning, fearful pleasure the fair hair and fair skin and glistening eyebrows, the profile alongwhich, if you looked closely, you could see the tiny almost invisible hairs rise, catching the light.
For the first time in her life she understood domesticity, knew the meaning of shelter, and laboredto manage it.
“What made you want out of marriage?” said Dorothy. She had been married too, a long timeago.
Rose didn’t know what to mention first. The scars on her wrist? The choking in the kitchen, thegrubbing at the grass? All beside the point.
“I was just bored,” said Dorothy. “It just bored the hell out of me, to tell you the honest truth.”
She was half-drunk. Rose started to laugh and Dorothy said, “What in hell are you laughing at?”
“It’s just a relief to hear somebody say that. Instead of talking about how you didn’tcommunicate.”
“Well, we didn’t communicate, either. No, the fact was I was out of my mind over somebodyelse. I was having an affair with a guy who worked for a newspaper. A journalist. Well, he wentoff to England, the journalist did, and he wrote me a letter over the Atlantic saying he really trulyloved me. He wrote me that letter because he was over the Atlantic, and I was here, but I didn’thave sense enough to know that. Do you know what I did? I left my husband—well, that was noloss—and I borrowed money, fifteen hundred dollars I borrowed from the bank. And I flew toEngland after him. I phoned his paper, they said he’d gone to Turkey. I sat in the hotel waiting forhim to come back. Oh, what a time. I never went out of the hotel. If I went to get a massage orhave my hair done I told them where to page me. I kept pestering them fifty times a day. Isn’tthere a letter? Wasn’t there a phone call? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
“Did he ever come back?”
“I phoned again, they told me he’d gone to Kenya. I had started getting the shakes. I saw I hadto get hold of myself so I did, in the nick of time. I flew home. I started paying back the bloodybank.”
Dorothy drank vodka, unmixed, from a water tumbler.
“Oh, two or three years later I met him, where was it. It was in an airport. No, it was in adepartment store. I’m sorry I missed you when you came to England, he said. I said, oh, that’s allright, I managed to have a good time anyway. I was still paying it back. I should’ve told him hewas a shit.”
At work Rose read commercials and the weather forecasts, answered letters, answered thetelephone, typed up the news, did the voices in Sunday skits written by a local minister, andplanned to do interviews. She wanted to do a story on the town’s early settlers; she went andtalked to an old blind man who lived above a feed store. He told her that in the old days apples andcherries had been tied to the boughs of pine and cedar trees, pictures taken of them and sent toEngland. That brought the English immigrants, convinced they were coming to a land where theorchards were already in bloom. When she got back to the station with this story everybodylaughed; they had heard it so often before.
She wasn’t forgetting Tom. He wrote; she wrote. Without this connection to a man, she mighthave seen herself as an uncertain and pathetic person; that connection held her new life in place.
For a while it looked as if luck was with them. A conference was set up in Calgary, on radio inrural life, or something of that sort, and the station was sending Rose. All without the leastconnivance on her part. She and Tom were jubilant and silly on the phone. She asked one of theyoung teachers across the hall if she would move in and look after Anna. The girl was glad toagree to do it; the other teacher’s boyfriend had moved in, and they were temporarily crowded.
Rose went back to the shop where she had bought the bedspread and the pots; she bought a caftan-nightgown sort of robe with a pattern of birds on it, in jewel colors. It made her think of theEmperor’s nightingale. She put a fresh rinse on her hair. She was to go sixty miles by bus, thencatch a plane. She would exchange an hour of terror for the extra time in Calgary. People at thestation enjoyed scaring her, telling her how the little planes rose almost straight up out of themountain airport, then bucked and shivered their way over the Rockies. She did think it would notbe right to die that way, to crash in the mountains going to see Tom. She thought this, in spite ofthe fever she was in to go. It seemed too frivolous an errand to die on. It seemed like treachery, totake such a risk; not treachery to Anna and certainly not to Patrick but perhaps to herself. But justbecause the journey was frivolously undertaken, because it was not entirely real, she believed shewould not die.
She was in such high spirits she played Chinese checkers all the time with Anna. She playedSorry, or any game Anna wanted. The night before she was to leave—she had arranged for a taxito pick her up, at half-past five in the morning—they were playing Chinese checkers, and Annasaid, “Oh, I can’t see with these blue ones,” and drooped over the board, about to cry, which shenever did, in a game. Rose touched her forehead and led her, complaining, to bed. Her temperaturewas a hundred and two. It was too late to phone Tom at his office and of course Rose couldn’tphone him at home. She did phone the taxi, and the airport, to cancel. Even if Anna seemed betterin the morning, she wouldn’t be able to go. She went over and told the girl who had been going tostay with Anna, then phoned the man who was arranging the conference, in Calgary. “Oh God,yes,” he said. “Kids!” In the morning, with Anna wrapped in her blanket, watching cartoons, shephoned Tom in his office. “You’re here, you’re here!” he said. “Where are you?”
Then she had to tell him.
Anna coughed, her fever went up and down. Rose tried to get the heat up, fiddled with thethermostat, drained the radiators, phoned the landlord’s office and left a message. He didn’t phoneback. She phoned him at home at seven o’clock the next morning, told him her child hadbronchitis (which she may have believed at the time, but it was not true), told him she would givehim one hour to get her some heat or she would phone the newspaper, she would denounce himover the radio, she would sue him, she would find the proper channels. He came at once, with aput-upon face (a poor man trying to make ends meet bedeviled by hysterical women), he didsomething to the thermostat in the hall, and the radiators started to get hot. The teachers told Rosethat he had the hall thermostat fixed to control the heat and that he had never given in to protestsbefore. She felt proud, she felt like a fierce slum mother who had screamed and sworn and carriedon, for her child’s sake. She forgot that slum mothers are seldom fierce, being too tired andbewildered. It was her middle-class certainties, her expectations of justice, that had given her suchenergy, such a high-handed style of abuse; that had scared him.
After two days she had to go back to work. Anna had improved, but Rose was worried all thetime. She could not swallow a cup of coffee, for the chunk of anxiety in her throat. Anna was allright, she took her cough medicine, she sat up in bed, crayoning. When her mother came home shehad a story to tell her. It was about some princesses.
There was a white princess who dressed all in bride clothes and wore pearls. Swans and lambsand polar bears were her pets, and she had lilies and narcissus in her garden. She ate mashedpotatoes, vanilla ice cream, shredded coconut and meringue off the top of pies. A pink princessgrew roses and ate strawberries, kept flamingoes (Anna described them, could not think of thename) on a leash. The blue princess subsisted on grapes and ink. The brown princess thoughdrably dressed feasted better than anybody; she had roast beef and gravy and chocolate cake withchocolate icing, also chocolate ice cream with chocolate fudge sauce. What was there in hergarden?
“Rude things,” said Anna. “All over the ground.”
This time Tom and Rose did not refer so openly to their disap pointment. They had begun tohold back a little, maybe to suspect that they were unlucky for each other. They wrote tenderly,carefully, amusingly, and almost as if the last failure had not happened.
In March he phoned to tell her that his wife and children were going to England. He was goingto join them there, but later, ten days later. So there will be ten days, cried Rose, blotting out thelong absence to come (he was to stay in England until the end of the summer). It turned out not tobe ten days, not quite, because he was obliged to go to Madison, Wisconsin, on the way toEngland. But you must come here first, Rose said, swallowing this disappointment, how long canyou stay, can you stay a week? She pictured them eating long sunny breakfasts. She saw herself inthe Emperor’s nightingale outfit. She would have filtered coffee (she must buy a filter pot) and thatgood bitter marmalade in the stone jar. She didn’t give any thought to her morning chores at thestation.
He said he didn’t know about that, his mother was coming to help Pamela and the children getoff, and he couldn’t just pack up and leave her. It would really be so much better, he said, if shecould come to Calgary.
Then he became very happy and said they would go to Banff. They would take three or fourdays’ holiday, could she manage that, how about a long weekend? She said wasn’t Banff difficultfor him, he might run into someone he knew. He said no, no, it would be all right. She wasn’tquite so happy as he was because she hadn’t altogether liked being in the hotel with him, inVictoria. He had gone down to the lobby to get a paper, and phoned their room, to see if she knewenough not to answer. She knew enough, but the maneuver depressed her. Nevertheless she saidfine, wonderful, and they got calendars at each end of the phone, so that they could figure outwhich days. They could take in a weekend, she had a weekend coming to her. And she couldprobably manage Friday as well, and part at least of Monday. Dorothy could do the absolutelynecessary things for her. Dorothy owed her some working time. Rose had covered for her, whenshe was fogged in, in Seattle; she had spent an hour on the air reading household hints and recipesshe never believed would work.
She had nearly two weeks to make the arrangements. She spoke to the teacher again and theteacher said she could come. She bought a sweater. She hoped she would not be expected to learnto ski, in that time. There must be walks they could take. She thought they would spend most oftheir time eating and drinking and talking and making love. Thoughts of this latter exercisetroubled her a bit. Their talk on the phone was decorous, almost shy, but their letters, now thatthey were sure of meeting, were filled with inflammatory promises. These were what Rose lovedreading and writing, but she could not remember Tom as clearly as she wanted to. She couldremember what he looked like, that he was not very tall, and spare, with gray waving hair and along, clever face, but she could not remember any little, maddening things about him, any tone orsmell. The thing she could remember too well was that their time in Victoria had not beencompletely successful; she could remember something between a curse and an apology, theslippery edge of failure. This made her especially eager to try again, to succeed.
She was to leave Friday, early in the morning, taking the same bus and plane she had planned totake before.
Tuesday morning it began to snow. She did not pay much attention. It was wet, pretty snow,coming straight down in big flakes. She wondered if it would be snowing in Banff. She hoped so,she liked the idea of lying in bed and watching it. It snowed more or less steadily for two days, andlate Thursday afternoon when she went to pick up her ticket at the travel agency they told her theairport had been closed. She did not show or even feel any worry; she was a bit relieved, that shewould not have to fly. How about trains, she said, but of course the train didn’t go to Calgary, itwent down to Spokane. She knew that already. Then the bus, she said. They phoned to make surethe highways were open and the buses were running. During that conversation her heart began topound a bit, but it was all right, everything was all right, the bus was running. It won’t be muchfun, they said, it leaves here at half-past twelve, that’s twelve midnight, and it gets into Calgaryaround 2 p.m. the next day.
“That’s all right.”
“You must really want to get to Calgary,” the grubby young man said. This was a mostramshackle informal travel agency, set up in a hotel lobby outside the door of the beer parlor.
“It’s Banff, actually,” she said brazenly. “And I do.”
“Going to do some skiing?”
“Maybe.” She was convinced he guessed everything. She didn’t know then how commonplacesuch illicit jaunts were; she thought the aura of sin was dancing round her like half-visible flameson a gas burner.
She went home thinking she would be better off, really, sitting on the bus, getting closer andcloser to Tom, than lying in bed unable to sleep. She would just have to ask the teacher to move intonight.
The teacher was waiting for her, playing Chinese checkers with Anna. “Oh, I don’t know howto tell you,” she said; “I’m so awfully sorry but something’s happened.”
She said her sister had had a miscarriage and was in need of her help. Her sister lived inVancouver.
“My boyfriend is driving me down tomorrow if we can get through.”
This was the first Rose had heard of any boyfriend, and she immediately suspected the wholestory. Some flying chance the girl was off on; she too had smelled love and hope. Somebody’shusband, maybe, or some boy her own age. Rose looked at her once-acned face now rosy withshame and excitement and knew she would never budge her. The teacher went on to embroider herstory with talk of her sister’s two little children; both boys, and they had been just longing for agirl.
Rose started phoning, to get somebody else. She phoned students, wives of the men she workedwith, who might be able to give her names; she phoned Dorothy who hated children. It was no use.
She followed leads that people had given her, though she realized these were probably worthless,given only to get rid of her. She was ashamed of her persistence. At last Anna said, “I could stayhere by myself.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I did before. When I was sick and you had to go to work.” “How would you like,” said Rose,and felt a true sudden pleasure at so easy and reckless a solution, “how would you like to come toBanff?”
They packed in a great rush. Fortunately Rose had been to the laundromat the night before. Shedid not allow herself to think about what Anna would do in Banff, about who would pay for theextra room, about whether Anna would in fact agree to having a separate room. She threw incoloring books and story books and messy kits of do-it-yourself decorations, anything she thoughtmight do for amusement. Anna was excited by the turn of events, not dismayed at the thought ofthe bus ride. Rose remembered to call ahead of time for the taxi to pick them up at midnight.
They almost got stuck driving down to the bus depot. Rose thought what a good idea it had beento call the taxi half an hour ahead of time, for what was usually a five-minute drive. The bus depotwas an old service station, a dreary place. She left Anna on a bench with the luggage and went tobuy their tickets. When she came back Anna was drooped over the suitcase, having given way tosleepiness as soon as her mother’s back was turned.
“You can sleep on the bus.”
Anna straightened up, denied being tired. Rose hoped it would be warm on the bus. Perhaps sheshould have brought a blanket, to wrap around Anna. She had thought of it, but they had enough tocarry already, with the shopping bag full of Anna’s books and amusements; it was too much tothink of arriving in Calgary straggle-haired, cranky and constipated, with crayons spilling from thebag and a trailing blanket as well. She had decided not to.
There were just a few other passengers waiting. A young couple in jeans, looking cold andundernourished. A poor, respectable old woman wearing her winter hat; Indian grandmother witha baby. A man lying on one of the benches looked sick or drunk. Rose hoped he was just in thebus depot getting warm, not waiting for the bus, because he looked as if he might throw up. Or ifhe was getting on the bus, she hoped he would throw up now, not later. She thought she had bettertake Anna to the washroom here. However unpleasant it was, it was probably better than what theyhad on the bus. Anna was wandering around looking at the cigarette machines, candy machines,drink and sandwich machines. Rose wondered if she should buy some sandwiches, some wateryhot chocolate. Once into the mountains, she might wish she had.
Suddenly she thought that she had forgotten to phone Tom, to tell him to meet the bus not theplane. She would do it when they stopped for breakfast.
Attention all passengers waiting for the bus to Cranbrook, Radium Hot Springs, Golden,Calgary. Your bus has been canceled. Bus due to leave here at twelve-thirty has been canceled.
Rose went up to the wicket and said what is this, what happened, tell me, is the highway closed?
Yawning, the man told her, “It’s closed past Cranbrook. Open from here to Cranbrook but closedpast that. And closed west of here to Grand Forks so the bus won’t even get here tonight.”
Calmly, Rose asked, what were the other buses she could take? “What do you mean, otherbuses?”
“Well, isn’t there a bus to Spokane? I could get from there to Calgary.”
Unwillingly he pulled out his schedules. Then they both remembered that if the highway wasclosed between here and Grand Forks, that was no good, no bus would be coming through. Rosethought of the train to Spokane, then the bus to Calgary. She could never do it, it would beimpossible with Anna. Nevertheless she asked about trains, had he heard anything about thetrains?
“Heard they’re running twelve hours late.”
She kept standing at the wicket, as if some solution was owing to her, would have to appear.
“I can’t do anything more for you here, lady.”
She turned away and saw Anna at the pay phones, fiddling with the coin return boxes.
Sometimes she found a dime that way.
Anna came walking over, not running, but walking quickly, in an unnaturally sedate andagitated way. “Come here,” she said, “come here.” She pulled Rose, numb as she was, over to oneof the pay phones. She dipped the coin box towards her. It was full of silver. Full. She beganscraping it into her hand. Quarters, nickels, dimes. More and more. She filled her pockets. Itlooked as if the box was refilling every time she closed it, as it might in a dream or a fairy tale.
Finally she did empty it, she picked out the last dime. She looked up at Rose with a pale, tired,blazing face.
“Don’t say anything,” she commanded.
Rose told her that they were not going on the bus after all. She phoned for the same taxi, to takethem home. Anna accepted the change in plans without interest. Rose noticed that she settledherself very carefully into the taxi, so that the coins would not clink in her pockets.
In the apartment Rose made herself a drink. Without taking off her boots or her coat Annastarted spreading the money out on the kitchen table and separating it into piles to be counted.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I can’t be-lieve it.” She was using a strange adult voice, a voiceof true astonishment masked by social astonishment, as if the only way she could control and dealwith the event was to dramatize it in this way.
“It must be from a long distance call,” said Rose. “The money didn’t go through. I suppose it allbelongs to the phone company.”
“But we can’t give it back, can we?” said Anna, guilty and triumphant, and Rose said no.
“It’s crazy,” Rose said. She meant the idea of the money belonging to the phone company. Shewas tired and mixed-up but beginning to feel temporarily and absurdly light-hearted. She couldsee showers of coins coming down on them, or snowstorms; what carelessness there waseverywhere, what elegant caprice.
They tried to count it, but kept getting confused. They played with it instead, dropping coinsostentatiously through their fingers. That was a giddy time late at night in the rented kitchen on themountainside. Bounty where you’d never look for it; streaks of loss and luck. One of the fewtimes, one of the few hours, when Rose could truly say she was not at the mercy of past or future,or love, or anybody. She hoped it was the same for Anna.
Tom wrote her a long letter, a loving humorous letter, mentioning fate. A grieved, relievedrenunciation, before he set off for England. Rose didn’t have any address for him, there, or shemight have written asking him to give them another chance. That was her nature.
This last snow of the winter was quickly gone, causing some flooding in the valleys. Patrickwrote that he would drive up in June, when school was out, and take Anna back with him for thesummer. He said he wanted to start the divorce, because he had met a girl he wanted to marry. Hername was Elizabeth. He said she was a fine and stable person.
And did Rose not think, said Patrick, that it might be better for Anna to be settled in her oldhome next year, in the home she had always known, to be back at her old school with her oldfriends (Jeremy kept asking about her) rather than traipsing around with Rose in her newindependent existence? Might it not be true—and here Rose thought she heard the voice of thestable girlfriend— that she was using Anna to give herself some stability, rather than face up to theconsequences of the path she had chosen? Of course, he said, Anna must be given her choice.
Rose wanted to reply that she was making a home for Anna here, but she could not do that,truthfully. She no longer wanted to stay. The charm, the transparency, of this town was gone forher. The pay was poor. She would never be able to afford anything but this cheap apartment. Shemight never get a better job, or another lover. She was thinking of going east, going to Toronto,trying to get a job there, with a radio or television station, perhaps even some acting jobs. Shewanted to take Anna with her, set them up again in some temporary shelter. It was just as Patricksaid. She wanted to come home to Anna, to fill her life with Anna. She didn’t think Anna wouldchoose that life. Poor, picturesque, gypsying childhoods are not much favored by children, thoughthey will claim to value them, for all sorts of reasons, later on.
Anna went to live with Patrick and Elizabeth. She began to take drama and ballet lessons.
Elizabeth thought she should have some accomplishments, and keep busy. They gave her the four-poster bed, with a new canopy, and got her a kitten.
Elizabeth made her a nightgown and cap to match the bed. They sent Rose a picture of hersitting there, with the kitten, looking demure and satisfied in the midst of all that flowered cloth.
The spotted fish died first, then the orange one. That was before Anna left. Neither suggestedanother trip to Woolworth’s, so that the black one should have company. It didn’t look as if itwanted company. Swollen, bug-eyed, baleful and at ease, it commanded the whole fishbowl for itsown.
Anna made Rose promise not to flush it down the toilet after she, Anna, was gone. Rosepromised, and before she left for Toronto she walked over to Dorothy’s house, carrying thefishbowl, to make her this unwelcome present. Dorothy accepted it decently, said she would nameit after the man from Seattle, and congratulated Rose on leaving.
Rose set to work cleaning out the apartment, finding marbles and drawings and some letters byAnna begun—mostly at Rose’s instigation—and never finished, never mailed.
Dear Daddy,
I am fine. Are you? I was sick but I am fine now. I hope you are not sick.
Dear Jeremy,
How tall are you now? I am fine.
天意
天意
露丝梦见了安娜。这是在她离开家、把安娜抛下之后做的梦。她梦见她看到安娜走上了冈萨雷斯山。她知道她是从学校那里过来的。她走上前去跟安娜说话，但安娜从她身边走了过去，没吭声。怪不得。 她身上盖着黏土，似乎有一些枝叶在里面，一种枯枝败叶系成花圈的感觉。装饰；毁灭。那黏土和泥巴是湿的，从她的身上滴了下来，所以她看上去粗劣又忧伤，像一尊笨手笨脚、昏昏沉沉的神像。
“你想跟我来吗，你想跟爸爸在一起吗？”露丝这样对她说，但是安娜拒绝回答，等于在说：“我不想你走。”露丝在库特尼山的广播电台找了一份工作。
安娜睡在帕特里克和露丝曾经睡过的四柱床，现在帕特里克一个人睡。露丝睡在小房间里。
安娜会睡在那张四柱床上，然后帕特里克会把她抱到自己的床上。帕特里克和露丝都不知道，这从什么时候开始不再是偶然事件，而成为了必然的。屋子里所有东西都乱了套。露丝在打包她的行李。白天帕特里克和安娜都不在的时候，她就打包收拾。到了晚上，她和帕特里克就在屋子里不同的区域活动。有一次她走到用餐室，看见他正在往相册的照片贴透明胶带。她对他做这件事感到很生气。她看见了自己的照片，在公园里推着安娜荡秋千；她穿着比基尼假笑着；真实的谎言。
“那个时候也没好多少，”她说，“不是真开心。”她的意思是她总是在计划，在心灵深处计划，她现在要做的这件事。甚至在她结婚的时候，她就知道这样的日子会到来，知道如果这日子不来，那么她还是死了的好。是她在背叛。
“我知道。”帕特里克愤怒地说。
但是当然也有好一点的时候，因为她并没有开始尝试去分手，在很长一段时间里，她也忘记了这分手的一天会来。甚至，说她一直计划着分手、已经开始要分手是错误的，因为她没有故意去做什么，没有盘算去做什么，这件事情的发生，是痛苦的，是破坏性的，这里面有犹豫不决，有重归于好，有猛烈申斥，现在的她就像走在一座摇摇晃晃的桥上，她只有紧紧盯着桥上的板条，不敢往下或者周围多看。
“你想要谁呢？”她轻轻地对安娜说。安娜没有回答，而是向帕特里克呼救。他来了，安娜就坐起来，把他们两个都拉到床上，一边一个。她紧紧抓住他们，然后开始哭泣、颤抖。这是一个非常戏剧化的孩子，有的时候，就像一把光秃秃的刀锋。
“你们不用那样，”她说，“你们不用再吵架了。”
帕特里克向露丝看过去，眼里没有责备。多少年来，他看着她的眼神，即便是做爱的时候，都是责备，但是如今他感受到了安娜身上这般的痛苦，连责备都没有了。露丝得起身、出门去，留下他去安慰安娜，因为她害怕那种欺骗性的强烈感情又要涌上来了。
没错，他们不再吵架了。露丝的手腕和身体上有伤疤，那是她用剃刀刮的（不过不是在那些危险的部分）。有一次在这房子的厨房里，帕特里克想把她掐死。有一次她跑到外面去，穿着睡衣，跪了下来，扯了一手的草。然而对于安娜来说，她父母建立起来的这该死的家庭，这错误的、不匹配的结构，在任何人看来都已经撕毁、抛弃，对她仍然是生活真正的织网，仍然有父亲和母亲，仍然是开端和庇护。真是个骗局，露丝想，对每个人来说都是个骗局啊。我们是从工会来的人，我们没有自己觉得能够配得上他们的东西。
她写信给汤姆，告诉他自己要怎么做。汤姆是卡尔加里大学的老师。露丝有点爱上了他（她这么告诉了解这个中情事的朋友：有点爱上了他）。她是一年前在这里遇到他的——他是一个有时跟她一起演广播剧的女人的哥哥。遇见他之后，她跟他在维多利亚待了一段时间。他们互相给对方写很长的信。他是个谦恭的男人，一个历史学家，写的情书都充满智慧、用词考究。她有点害怕，如果自己说要离开帕特里克，汤姆会不会给她写得少了，或者更有戒心，因为担心她可能会向他索要得更多。打主意。但是他没有，他没有那么粗鲁，或者那么怯懦；他相信她。
她跟她的朋友说，离开帕特里克跟汤姆没有任何关系，离开之后她很可能再也不能像从前那样见到汤姆了。她是这么认为的，不过她选择了一份在山城小镇和温哥华岛之间的工作，因为她喜欢离卡尔加里近一点。
到了早上，安娜很开心，说没关系。她说她想留下来。她想待在她的学校里，跟她的朋友在一起。走到半路上她转过身来向自己的父母招手、高喊：
“离婚快乐！”
露丝以为她一旦走出帕特里克的房子，就会住进一个四壁空空的房间里，脏兮兮的，破旧不堪。但她不会在乎，她也不会想给自己的房子重新布置一番，她讨厌那些事情。她找的房子是在山城小镇山腰，一个棕色砖房的上层，真的是脏兮兮、破旧不堪，不过她马上就开始动手整修。那里的红色和金色墙纸是匆忙贴上的，从底部开始卷曲、撕裂（这些地方，她发现，用的法子就是贴一些优雅的墙纸）。她挂上了一些植物，哄着它们活得长些。她在洗手间贴上了搞笑的海报。为了买到印度的床罩、篮子、陶器和彩绘杯子，她找到了城里唯一的那家店，付了一笔高得像在自取其辱的钱。她把厨房刷成了蓝色和白色，试着做成中国瓷器上的那种柳叶图案。房东答应付掉油漆的钱，不过后来他没有。她还买了蓝色的蜡烛，一些焚香，还有一大堆干的金叶子和草。等这一切都完工之后，她所在的这所房子，一眼看上去，便很像一个独自生活的女人——她也许不再年轻，跟大学或艺术有些关系，或者是希望有些关系——的房子。正如她之前住的那所房子，那所帕特里克的房子，一眼看上去就很像属于一个成功商人或职业男性，遗传了父辈的钱以及生活标准。
这山间小镇看上去远离尘嚣。但是露丝喜欢，部分也是这个原因。当你住在城市里，又回到小镇上生活时，你会感觉身边的一切都是通俗易懂的，仿佛人们都会聚在一起说：“让我们在这里尽情玩耍吧！”你会觉得这里不会有人逝去。
汤姆写信说，他一定要来见她。十月份（她想不到会这么快）有一个机会，他要到温哥华参加一个会议。他计划早一天离开会议，然后假装在那里多留一天，这样他就会有两天空余的时间了。但是他从温哥华打电话来说，他来不了了。他的牙感染了，非常疼，他得在跟露丝约定见面的那一天去做一个紧急牙科手术。最后他还真是得在那里多留一天，他说，她会不会因此对他有看法？他说他最近在以加尔文教派的角度看问题，这疼痛和这药都让他头昏脑涨。
露丝的朋友多萝西问她，相信他吗？露丝没想过不相信。
“我觉得他不会撒谎。”她说。然后多萝西语调轻快，甚至有点漫不经心地说：“哦，他们什么都干得出来。”
多萝西是广播台里唯一的另外一位女士；她一个星期做两次家庭主妇的节目，然后到处去给妇女小组做演讲等等，在那些年轻人组织的颁奖晚宴里，她也是颇受欢迎的女主持。她和露丝的友谊很大程度建立在她们多多少少属于单身，还有她们的冒险天性上。多萝西在西雅图有一个情人，但是她并不相信他。
“他们什么都干得出来。”多萝西说。他们在广播电台里一家名为“一杆进洞”的小咖啡甜品店用餐。多萝西开始告诉露丝她跟电台老板的一段情事，他现在是个老男人了，大多数时候都在加州。他给了她一条圣诞项链，说是玉做的。他说他是在温哥华买的。她有一次跑去修项链的挂钩，然后自豪地问这项链值多少钱。然后别人告诉她这根本就不是玉，珠宝商跟她解释应该如何鉴别，应该举起它对着灯光看。几天之后那老板的老婆到办公室来，显摆着她那条一模一样的项链，她老公跟她说了一模一样的话。当多萝西跟她说这件事情的时候，露丝在看多萝西那灰金色的假发，光滑而繁茂，一副不可信任的样子，然而她的脸，饱经风霜、坑坑洼洼，在那假发和绿松石色的眼睛映照下更加明显。在城里，她这副样子看上去像个荡妇，这里的人们则认为她是个古怪之人，但是颇有魅力，像是传奇时尚世界的代言人。
“这是我最后一次相信一个男人。”多萝西说，“他跟我在一起的时候还泡另外一个在这工作的女孩——结了婚的，一个服务员——还泡他祖母的保姆。瞧瞧这是什么事儿啊你说？”
圣诞节的时候露丝回到帕特里克家。她还没有见到汤姆，但是他送了一条流苏绣花的深蓝色围巾，在十二月初到墨西哥开会的假期买的，去墨西哥的时候他是带着他太太去的（露丝跟多萝西说，毕竟他答应过她）。三个月来，安娜就长高了不少。她喜欢把自己的肚子缩进去，肋骨突出来，看上去像一个闹饥荒的小孩。她情绪高涨、姿势灵活，说着各种各样的滑稽话和谜语。回来之后，露丝又开始干起了购物、做饭的活，有的时候她满怀恐惧和绝望地想，她的工作、她的房子和汤姆是不是只在她的想象之中。跟妈妈一起去店里买东西的安娜说：“在学校的时候我总是会忘记。”
“忘记什么？”
“我总是会忘记你不在家，然后我就想起来了。只是克莱伯太太在。”克莱伯太太是帕特里克请来的管家。
露丝决定把她带走。帕特里克没有说“不”，他说可能这样最好。不过露丝在收拾安娜的东西时帕特里克就没有待在屋子里了。
安娜后来说，她不知道自己要跟露丝一起住了，她以为只是来玩一会儿。露丝觉得安娜这话就是随便说说想想，所以露丝自己也不会对任何决定感到内疚。
开往山间的火车因为大雪而减慢了速度。水也冻成冰了。火车在小车站里逗留了很长的时间，被蒸汽包围着，管道也逐渐解冻。她们穿上外套，跑过站台。露丝说：“我要给你买一件冬天的大衣。我要给你买一双暖暖的长筒靴。”如果是在沿岸地区，漆黑的冬季只要穿橡胶靴和有帽子的雨衣就够了。安娜那个时候一定知道她是要留下来的，但是她什么都没说。
到了晚上安娜入睡的时候，露丝望向窗外那厚似深海、熠熠发光的雪堆。火车慢慢爬行，担心发生雪崩。露丝并不为此担心，她喜欢这感觉：被关在这漆黑的小空间，盖在火车这糙糙的被子下，穿过外面这汹涌难平的风景。她总是能感受到火车的行进，尽管危险，却安全而稳当。她感觉若是飞机看到了这一幕，肯定会被眼前的景象惊呆，一句抗议的私语都说不出来，便沉默在云层之中了。
她送安娜去上学，让她穿着那件崭新的冬天大衣。都很好，安娜没有像外来者那样畏畏缩缩，受不住这环境。一个星期没到，她已经带其他孩子回家了，她也去别的孩子家做客。在冬天天刚黑时，露丝沿着堆成高墙的雪去接她。到了秋天，一只熊从山上走了下来，走进了小镇里。广播里是它的新闻。一位不寻常的访客，一只黑熊，在富尔顿街漫步。我们建议您让孩子待在家里。露丝知道一只熊是不太可能在冬天跑到镇上来的，但是她还是很担心。她还很害怕车辆，街道那么窄，拐角又看不清。有的时候安娜回家会走另外一条路，露丝就一直会走到别的孩子家里找她，发现她不在。然后她就会跑，沿着山路街道一直跑，跑回家里，跑上长长的楼梯，她的心怦怦地跳，因为跑，也因为怕，当她发现安娜在那的时候，她想躲起来。
送洗衣服、提拉杂货的时候，她的心也怦怦地跳。洗衣店、超市、贩酒店，都在山底下。她整天都很忙碌。下一个小时总是有紧急任务。要去拿换鞋底的鞋子，要去染发，要去补安娜明天穿去学校的大衣。除了她自己本身就很繁重的工作之外，她还会做她以前常做的那些事，而且是在更为困难的条件下。然而她竟然也在这些杂事里找到了很大的安慰。
她为安娜买了两样东西：金鱼和电视机。公寓里不许养猫狗，只能养小鸟和鱼。一月的一天，安娜来这里的第二个星期，露丝走下小山丘去接放学的她，带她去伍尔沃斯商场买鱼。
她看着安娜的脸，觉得有点脏，然后她发现那是脏脏的泪痕。
“今天我听见有人叫杰罗姆，”安娜说，“然后我以为杰罗姆是在这里。”杰罗姆是经常跟她一起在家里玩耍的男孩。
露丝提到了鱼。
“我胃疼。”
“你是饿了吗？我想喝杯咖啡。你想要吗？”
那是糟糕的一天。她们在公园里走着，那是到市中心的近路。之前解了冻，又结了冰，所以街上到处都是冰块，上面是水和半融化的雪。太阳照耀下来，那种冬天的阳光，会把你的眼睛刺疼，会让你的衣服变得很沉，会凸显这一切混乱和艰难，就像现在走在冰上这样的艰难。周围都是放了学的青少年们，他们在吵闹和呼喊，在四处滑行，男孩和女孩坐在冰块上的长凳上面，肆无忌惮地亲吻着，这让露丝感到更为沮丧。
安娜喝了巧克力奶。青少年随着她们一起进了餐厅。这是一个老派的地方，有二十世纪四十年代那种背板高高的电话亭，有一个橘黄色头发的厨师老板，大家都叫他德里尔，这餐厅是人们会在电影里认出来的那种恋旧场所的现实简陋版，然而好在这儿的人也不觉得这里有什么好恋旧的。德里尔可能正在攒钱准备整修这个地方。不过今天它倒是让露丝想起了以前那些餐厅，想起以前放学之后她都会去的那些地方，然而毕竟，那些地方也不怎么让她快乐。
“你不爱爸爸，”安娜说，“我觉得你不爱。”
“嗯，我喜欢他，”露丝说，“我们只是不能住在一起，就是这样。”
就像有人会建议你应该怎么说话一样，这就是一句不该说的话了，安娜说：“你不喜欢他。你就是在撒谎。”她说话听起来更加强势了，看上去都要争过她的妈妈。
“不是吗？”
其实露丝已经快要说“是”了，她不喜欢他。如果这是你想要的，那你就这么理解去吧，她想这么说。安娜的确想要这答案，但是她能受得了吗？你到底怎么判断一个孩子能不能忍受？
事实上，爱、不爱、喜欢、不喜欢，甚至恨，在露丝对帕特里克的感情上，其实无关紧要。
“我的胃还疼。”安娜说，带着一点满足感，然后她把巧克力牛奶推到一边去。但是她捕捉到了危险的信号，她并不想要这件事情继续发展下去。“我们什么时候能够去买鱼？”她说，好像露丝是在拖着不去似的。
她们去买了一条橘黄色的鱼、一条蓝色的斑点鱼，还有一条黑色的鱼，看上去身子仿佛是天鹅绒，长着可怕的突出来的鱼眼，她们用一个塑料袋装了起来，拎回家去。她们还买了鱼缸、五颜六色的卵石，还有绿色塑料植物。看到伍尔沃思的店内布置，她们的心情也都恢复了过来，水里扑棱着的鱼儿，欢声歌唱的鸟儿，还有色泽鲜亮的粉色和绿色的内衣裤、镶了金框的镜子、厨房塑料用具，以及一只橡胶做的大大的红红的龙虾。
安娜喜欢在电视上看《家庭法院》，这个节目讲的是需要堕胎的青少年、被抓到偷窃的女人、失散多年找到小孩但小孩喜欢上继父的爸爸。她还喜欢另一个叫作《脱线家族》的电视剧，剧中那家人有六个孩子，他们长得好看、忙忙碌碌，老是误会别人和被别人误会，很有喜剧效果，还有漂亮的金发妈妈、英俊的黑发爸爸和活泼开朗的管家。这个节目六点开始，安娜想边吃晚饭边看。露丝允许她这样做，因为她常常想在安娜吃晚饭的时候干点活。她开始用一个碗，这样安娜吃起来也就更简单。她已经不再在晚饭时做肉、土豆和蔬菜了，因为很多最后都要扔掉。她做咖喱或是摊鸡蛋、培根和番茄三明治，以及里面有维也纳小香肠的饼干面团。有的时候安娜想吃麦片粥，露丝就让她吃了。但是当各地的家庭都聚在厨房或者餐厅里，准备吃东西，准备吵一通、闹腾下、折磨对方的时候，她却看到安娜坐在电视机前吃着“嘎嘣脆船长”牌的麦片，她觉得有点不对劲了。于是她取出一只鸡，做了一碗有蔬菜和大麦的金黄色的浓汤。但是安娜还是想要“嘎嘣脆船长”。她说这汤的味道很怪。这汤很好喝，露丝喊道，你都没尝过，你尝一口嘛。
“就当是为了我。”这话她没说出来也真是难得。不过，当安娜冷静地说“不”的时候，她松了一口气。
八点的时候她开始赶安娜去洗澡、睡觉。也只有在这个时候，当一切都已经完成——当她喝下最后一杯巧克力奶，拖好浴室的地，收拾起纸张、蜡笔，还有掉落在地的剪纸图案、剪刀、脏袜子、跳棋，以及因为这屋子很冷，安娜要把自己给裹起来看电视的毛巾，她还要做好第二天为安娜准备的午餐，虽然面对安娜的抗议还是要把她房间的灯给关掉——完成这一切之后，露丝才能坐下来好好喝上一杯，或者是喝些添了朗姆酒的咖啡，尽情享受，获得满足。她会把灯全部关掉，坐在高高的窗台旁，看着这一年前就有，但她几乎一无所知的山城小镇，她会想，眼下发生的这一切，可真是个奇迹啊，她一路走来，现在有了工作，带着安娜，为安娜和她自己的生活提供经济支持。她能够感觉到安娜在这屋子里的重量，就像她能很自然地感觉到自己身体里的重量一样，不用去看她，她都能带着一种惊诧又惧怕的愉悦感想象她那头金发，那美好的皮肤，那闪着亮光的眉毛，如果你细细看那侧脸，就会看到那细小的、几乎看不见的碎发扬了起来，向着光线迎了过去。在她人生的头一回，她对家庭生活有了理解，懂得了庇护的意义，于是努力将这一切安顿好。
“是什么让你想离婚呢？”多萝西说，她也结婚了，很久之前就结婚了。
露丝不知道应该先提哪件事。她手腕上的那些伤疤吗？在厨房里被掐，还是扯地上的草的事儿？这全都跟离婚的话题有关。
“我就是厌倦了，”多萝西说，“我就是厌烦透了，我跟你说大实话。”
她喝得半醉。露丝开始大笑，多萝丝说：“你到底在笑什么？”
“听见有人这么说可真是松了一口气。因为你讲的不是你们怎么谈不来。”
“嗯，我们也是谈不来。不，其实是我那个时候脑子里想着别人。我当时跟一个报社里的人搞上了。一个记者。然后呢，那记者跑去了英格兰，然后他在大西洋的那边说他真的很爱我。
他给我写那封信是因为他在太平洋那边，而我在这边，不过我当时没有想得特别清楚这是怎么一回事。你知道我做了什么吗？我离开了我的丈夫——不过这也没什么损失，然后我借了钱，一千五百块钱，从银行里借的。然后我追随他，飞到了英格兰。我打电话给他的报社，他们说他已经去土耳其了。我坐在酒店里等着他回来。哦，那可真漫长啊。我一直都没出酒店。如果我要去做个按摩或者弄个头发，我就告诉他们应该在哪儿找我。我一天得烦他们五十多次。不是给我写了封信吗？不是打过电话吗？天哪，天哪，天哪。”
“他回来了吗？”
“我又打了一次电话，他们告诉我他去了肯尼亚了。我就开始发抖了。我觉得我得稳住，所以我及时镇定了下来。我飞回了家。我开始给那该死的银行还钱。”
多萝西从一个大水杯里喝纯的伏特加。
“哦，两三年之后我见到了他，哪儿来着。就在机场。不是，是在百货商场。真是抱歉，上次你来英国的时候我没见到你，他说。我说，哦，没事，反正我也过得挺好的。我现在还在还钱呢。我该告诉他，他这人就是一坨屎。”
工作的时候，露丝阅读广告和天气预报，接电话、打字写新闻，给一个当地牧师写的周日小短剧配音，准备采访。她想做一个关于镇上早期居民的故事；她跑去找住在饲料店上面的那个老盲人。他告诉她，以前苹果和樱桃都是绑在菠萝和雪杉树上的，有人拍了这个的照片寄到英国去。所以这吸引了一批英国移民们，他们相信这片土地上的果园都长着早已成熟的果子。当她回到电台里告诉大家这个故事的时候，人人都笑了；这事儿他们以前听得多了。
她没有忘记汤姆。他写给她，她写给他。如果没有跟这个男人的联系，她可能会把自己看作一个没有确定感的可怜人；那种联系让她的新生活有了秩序。有一阵子似乎是碰上了运气。
卡尔加里要举行一个会议，关于乡村生活的，要在电台报道，反正是类似的事情，电台派了露丝去。她二话不说就同意了。她和汤姆通话的时候喜洋洋、傻乎乎的。她问住在门廊那边的一位年轻教师，能不能搬过来帮忙照顾安娜。那女孩很高兴就接受了：另一位老师的男朋友搬到了她家，所以他们那间屋子现在很挤。露丝回到之前买过东西的店里去，之前她在这里买了床罩和锅，现在去买那种宝石颜色、小鸟图案、有带子的长袖浴袍。这让她想起国王的夜莺。她往头发上打了点水。她要坐六十英里的汽车，然后坐飞机。她宁愿在卡尔加里少待一点时间，也不想忍受在飞机上那一个小时的惊恐。电台的人们喜欢吓她，告诉她那些小飞机是怎么样在山城机场直直地往上冲，然后一个激灵，打着颤飞过落基山脉的。她觉得去见汤姆的时候在山脉里机毁人亡，这个死法真是不合适。她想过这问题，虽然满心狂热地想去。但为了这样的使命去死也太没有意义了。这看上去就像要干什么背信弃义的勾当，就像要去冒险，当然不是对安娜的背信弃义，也不是对帕特里克的，是对她自己的。但也正是因为这旅程的使命没什么意义，所以它才显得不是完全真实的，她才觉得她不会死。
她的兴致很高，所以一直跟安娜玩跳棋。她还跟安娜玩一个叫作 Sorry 的棋盘游戏，安娜想玩什么就陪她玩什么。她已经叫了一辆出租车在她走的那天早上五点半来接她——要走之前的那天晚上，她们在玩跳棋，安娜说：“哦，我找不到蓝色的棋子了。”然后她把头朝棋盘低下去，像要哭的样子，她以前玩游戏的时候可从不会这样。露丝摸摸她的前额，领着正在抱怨的她去床上睡觉。她的体温是 120 度。现在打电话给汤姆的办公室已经太晚了，当然露丝没有打电话到他家里去。不过她打给了出租车和机场，说取消预约。即便安娜早上的时候好了一些，她也不能离开。她走过去告诉要陪着安娜的那个女孩儿，然后打电话给安排卡尔加里会议的那个人。“哦，天啊，是啊，”他说，“孩子嘛！”早上，安娜裹在毛巾里看卡通片的时候，她给汤姆的办公室打电话。“你在！你在！”他说，“你在哪儿？”
然后她就得跟他说事实。
安娜咳嗽，体温一会儿升一会儿降。她试着让温度调高一点，摆弄恒温器，排掉暖气里的水，打电话到房东的办公室，留了言。他没有打回来。她在第二天早上七点又给他打了一次电话，她告诉他说她孩子有支气管炎（那个时候她是这么觉得的，但其实不是），她告诉他，她给他一个小时的时间让屋子暖和起来，不然的话她就打电话给报社，在电台谴责他，她会去告他，她会去找合适的渠道。他马上就来了，带着一张被欺负的脸（一副勉强维持生计、被一个歇斯底里的女人烦扰的可怜男人模样），他调了调门廊里的恒温器，然后暖气开始变暖了。住在那里的老师们告诉露丝，那个人把恒温器给修好了，热度也上来了，他以前可从来没有管过他们的抗议。她感到自豪，感到自己像一个激烈的贫民窟母亲，为了孩子而尖叫、咒骂，从而度过难关。不过她忘了贫民窟妈妈是很少有这么激烈的，她们通常都很累、不知所措。正是因为她身上有那种中产者的笃定，那种对正义的期望，让她有了这股能量，这盛气凌人的谴责，把他给吓坏了。
两天之后她回去工作了。安娜的身体状况好了些，但是露丝还是整天都在担心。她连一杯咖啡都喝不下，因为嗓子里堵得慌。安娜好起来了，露丝给她带了咳嗽药，她坐在床上，用蜡笔画画。她等着妈妈回家，跟妈妈讲一个故事。这是一个关于公主的故事。
有一个白色的公主，她全身都穿着新娘的礼服，戴着珠宝。天鹅、羊羔和北极熊都是她的宠物，在她的花园里，有百合和水仙花。她吃的是土豆泥、香草冰淇淋、椰丝，还有馅饼上面的酥皮。有一个粉色的公主，她种玫瑰、吃草莓，养了一些火烈鸟（安娜说不出来这个名字，比画了一阵），把它们拴起来。蓝色的公主以葡萄和墨水为生。棕色的公主尽管穿着朴素，但是吃得比任何人都要丰盛，她吃的是烤牛肉，上面有肉汁；还有巧克力蛋糕，上面有巧克力糖霜；还有巧克力冰淇淋，上面有巧克力酱。她的花园里有什么呢？
“脏东西，”安娜说，“弄得遍地都是。”
这一次，汤姆和露丝并没有很坦白地表达他们的失望。他们开始变得克制了一点，可能都怀疑自己没运气跟对方碰上。他们的信写得很温柔、很谨慎，也打趣，仿佛上一次的失落经历并没有发生似的。
到了三月份，他打电话告诉她说，他的老婆孩子都去英国了。他要跟他们一起去，但是会晚一点，晚十天。所以会有十天的时间，露丝喊道，那漫长的分别似乎也不算什么了（他要在英国待到暑假结束）。结果，其实不是十天，没有十天那么多，因为他在前往英格兰的路上，还得去一趟麦迪逊和威斯康辛。但是你一定要先来这里，露丝说，她把那失望咽了下去，你能在这里留多久，能留一个星期吗？她想象着他们在阳光底下吃着悠长的早餐。她仿佛看到自己穿着国王的夜莺的服装。他们要喝过滤咖啡（她要买一个压滤壶），吃那种上好的、苦苦的、装在石瓮里的橘子酱。她一点都没想自己早上在电台还有工作要做。
他说他说不准呢，帕米拉和孩子们出发的时候，他的妈妈要来帮忙，他也不能收拾好东西就这么离开她。如果你能来卡尔加里，他说，那就好多了。
然后他开始变得很开心，说他们可以去班芙。他们会花三四天去那里度假，她可以去吗，度过一个长长的周末怎么样？她说去班芙对他来说不太方便吧，因为可能会遇到一些他认识的人。他说没事的。她没有他那么高兴，因为在维多利亚跟他在酒店的那会儿，她也并非尽兴。他下去酒店大堂拿报纸，然后打电话到他们的房间，想看她是不是懂得不要去接。她知道不要去接，但是这诡计让她沮丧。尽管如此，她还是答应了跟他度周末，她说好，很棒，他们在各自电话的那头拿起日历看，看看是哪天。他们可以腾出一个周末来，正好比较近的一个周末她也有空。她可能还可以搞定周五那天，以及至少是周一的少部分时间。多萝西也欠着她一些工时。那个时候多萝西在西雅图被大雾阻隔，露丝替了班；她花了一个小时在电台直播朗诵她自己都不相信有用的家庭小贴士和食谱。
她有将近两周的时间来安排。她跟那位老师又打了一次招呼，老师说她会来。她买了一件毛衣。她希望到了那时候她可以不要学什么滑雪。他们肯定要一起散散步的。她想他们大部分时间会一起吃饭、喝酒、聊天和做爱。最后的这个想法让她有点困扰。他们在电话里聊天很正经，几乎是害羞的，但是他们答应了见面之后，那些来往的信件里就充满了激动人心的许诺。这些是露丝喜欢读也喜欢写的内容，但是她却不那么能记得汤姆本人是什么样子了。他能够记起他的模样，他不是很高，也不胖，灰灰的头发会扬起来，还有一张长长的聪明的脸蛋，但是他记不起关于他的任何的挑逗人心的小事儿了，记不起任何调调和味道。她能非常清晰想起来的东西，就是他们在维多利亚的那段时光相处得不是很完满，她能想起那件事情里有咒骂，有道歉，差点就滑向失败的悬崖。这让她很想再试一遍，想成功。
她会在周五走，一大早，就坐上次她计划要坐的大巴和飞机。
周二的早上开始下雪。她没太在意。那是潮潮的、好看的雪，大片的雪花直直落下。她想，在班芙会不会下雪呢。她希望能下，因为她喜欢躺在床上看雪。接下来两天也持续地时多时少地下雪，周四下午晚些时候，她去旅行社取票，他们告诉她机场已经关闭了。她甚至都没有表现出或者是感到任何的担心，她有点松口气，因为不用坐飞机了。那火车呢，她说，不过火车肯定是不去卡尔加里的，它会直接去斯波坎市。这个她早已清楚。那么大巴呢，她说。他们打电话确认高速公路是不是还通行，大巴还开不开。他们对话的时候她的心开始有点怦怦跳，但是还好，一切都还好，大巴要开的。不过这旅途就没那么有意思了，他们说，在这儿是十二点半走，是凌晨的十二点半，到卡尔加里的时候大概第二天下午两点。
“没问题。”
“你一定是很想去卡尔加里。”那个邋里邋遢的年轻男人说。这是一个看上去快要倒闭的不正规的旅行社，就在一个宾馆大堂，啤酒店的门口。
“是班芙，其实，”她大胆地说，“我确实很想去那儿。”
“去那滑雪吗？”
“可能是。”他猜出来的所有事她都相信。那个时候她不知道这种偷偷摸摸的旅行有多普遍，她以为罪恶之神就像燃气灶上时隐时现的火焰那样在她身边舞蹈着。
她回家去，想着坐在大巴上感觉离汤姆越来越靠近，比躺在家里失眠好多了。她今晚就叫那位老师搬进来。那位老师正在等着她呢，她在跟安娜玩跳棋。“哦，我不知道应该怎么告诉你，”她说，“我真的非常抱歉，但是发生了点事情。”
她说她的姐姐流产了，很需要她的帮助。她的姐姐住在温哥华。
“我的男朋友明天会开车带我过去，如果我们能开过去的话。”
这是露丝第一次听说什么男朋友的事儿，她马上就怀疑她说的整件事情了。别人家的女人不在，绝妙的机会来了；她嗅到了那种爱和希望。可能是别人的丈夫，可能是跟她同龄的男孩。露丝看着那老师一度长了粉刺的脸，现在像玫瑰般红润，带着羞耻和兴奋，她知道她不会追问。那老师继续润色她的故事，讲她姐姐的两个小孩，两个都是男孩，他们一直都想要有个女儿。
露丝开始打电话，让别人来。她打电话给学生们，与她一同工作的男人的妻子们，她们可能还会告诉她谁还有空；她打电话给多萝西，虽然知道她恨小孩。没用。她按照大家给她的线索来逐个找人，尽管她最后意识到这可能都没什么用，大家全都甩开了她。她对自己的坚持感到羞愤。最后安娜说：“我可以自己待在这儿。”
“别傻了。”
“我以前自己待着过。那时候我病了，你得去上班。”
“你想不想去，”露丝说，就这么不假思索地想到一计，却突然感到一阵着实的快乐，“你想一起去班芙吗？”
她们就匆忙地收拾好了行李。幸运的是，露丝在那天晚上之前就去了洗衣店。她不允许自己去想安娜会在班芙做些什么，也不去想谁要来为她多付一个房间的钱，不去想安娜是不是真的会同意自己单独住一个房间。她往行李箱里扔进色彩书、故事书，还有那种 DIY 装饰的整套工具包，那些她觉得可以取乐的东西。这事突然来了个大转变让安娜很激动，坐大巴不觉得有什么不开心的。露丝记着提前给出租车打了电话，凌晨接她们过去。
她在去汽车站的时候差点就堵在路上了。露丝想，提前半个小时叫出租车可真是个好主意啊，一般去车站开车五分钟就到了。汽车站是一个老旧的服务站，一个破败之地。她把安娜留在长凳上，行李放旁边，然后去买她们的票。当她回来的时候，安娜已经朝着行李低下头去，她妈妈一转身，她就把自己交给睡眠了。
“你可以在大巴上睡。”
安娜直起身来，说自己不困。露丝希望大巴能暖和点。可能她应该带上一条毛巾，裹在安娜身上。她想过这事儿，但是她包里已经装得够多了，购物袋里装满了安娜的书和玩具；到达卡尔加里会蓬头垢面、情绪暴躁、肠胃不畅，这已经够她想了的，再考虑从包里洒出来的画笔、拖着的毛巾，脑子实在不够用。她决定不带。
只有其他几个乘客在等。一对年轻夫妇，穿着牛仔裤，很冷、营养不良的样子。一位虚弱却显得体面的老女士，戴着她的冬帽。一位印第安老祖母，她抱着婴儿。一个男人躺在长凳上，看上去生病或者是喝醉了。露丝觉得他不是来车站等车，而是来取暖的，因为他看上去好像要吐的样子。如果他真的要上车，那么她希望他现在吐出来，而不是上了车再吐。她想她最好带安娜去一下这里的洗手间。不管那洗手间有多令人不悦，总比上车之后再解决好。
安娜四处走着，看着那些售烟机，还有售糖果、售酒和三明治的机器。露丝想她是不是应该买些三明治，买些淡点的热巧克力。一旦进了山城，她可能就会挂念这些东西了。
她突然想起她忘了给汤姆打电话，告诉他去车站接她，不是去机场。她打算她们停车下来吃早饭的时候就告诉他。
各位乘客请注意，您乘坐的前往克兰布鲁克、镭温泉镇、戈尔登、卡尔加里的班车已取消。
十二点三十分从此地出发的班车已取消。
露丝跑到边门去问，这是怎么回事，发生什么了，告诉我，是高速公路封了吗？那个男人打了个哈欠，告诉她：“是克兰布鲁克之后的地方都封了。从这儿到克兰布鲁克是通行的，但是从那儿往后的路就都封了。这儿往西到大福克斯的路也封了，所以班车今晚也到不了。”
露丝冷静地问，那还有没有其他能坐的班车？
“其他班车是什么意思？”
“怎么，不是有车到斯波坎市吗？我能从那儿到卡尔加里。”
他不情愿地拉出他的时刻表。然后他们都想起来，如果从这到大福克斯的高速路封了的话，那就不妙了，没有车会来。露丝又想坐火车去斯波坎市，然后坐汽车到卡尔加里。她不能这样做，跟安娜一起这样是行不通的。不过她还是去问了火车的事，他有没有听说火车能不能走？
“好像他们会晚12个小时开。”
她继续站在边门上，仿佛那些解决办法是欠她的，一会就能自己出现：
“我只能帮你到这里了，女士。”
她转过身看到安娜在付费电话旁边，摆弄着硬币返回筐。有的时候她能在那里找到一角钱。
安娜走了过来，不是跑，是快走，以一种不寻常的庄重和焦灼的方式。“来这里，”她说，“来这里。”她拉着木然的露丝到其中一个付费电话旁。她往硬币筐里伸了伸手。全都是硬币。全都是。她开始一手把硬币抓起来。两分半、五分和一角，还有更多。她装满了自己的口袋。
看来这个筐子是每次她一关上就会有新的硬币出来，就像在梦里或者神话里一样。最后她把里面的钱都拿完了，拣出来最后的一角。她抬头看露丝，她苍白的脸蛋上显出倦意，也焕发着容光。
“什么都别说。”她命令道。
露丝告诉她，她们不会坐大巴了。她们给同样的出租车打了电话，带她们回家。安娜对这个计划的改变没有表现出什么兴趣。露丝注意到她很小心地让自己坐进了出租车里，以防硬币在她的口袋里发出叮当响。
在家里，露丝给自己做了一杯喝的。安娜连靴子和大衣都没脱，就开始把钱拿出来摆在厨房桌子上，把它们分成几摞准备数。
“我不敢相信，”她说，“我不敢相信。”她用一种奇怪的大人的口吻说。这口吻里饱含着一种真实的惊讶，却是戴上了世俗面具的惊讶，仿佛以这种方式来增强戏剧效果是她把控和处理这件事情的唯一方式。
“一定是有人打了一个长途的电话，”露丝说，“那钱没有进到里面去。我觉得这本来全都该属于电话公司的。”
“但是我们也还不回去了，对吧？”安娜说，带着一种胜利的内疚，露丝说，不能了。
“疯了。”露丝说。她是说那钱是电话公司的，这事疯了。她很累，都糊涂了，不过开始感到了一种暂时的、不可思议的轻松。她能看到硬币就像淋浴或者暴风雪一样向她们掉落下来，这类差错可真是随处都有，一种优雅的任性。
她们试着去数，但是数不清楚。那硬币就明晃晃地从指尖掉落下来。那是在山坡上的深夜，她们在租来的厨房里度过了目眩神迷的时光。它是突如其来的奖赏，那遗失的旅途，这拣来的幸运。在这少有的一段时光，这少有的几个小时里，露丝能够发自内心地说，她并不处于过去或者未来，处于爱情或者任何人的掌控之下。她希望安娜也一样。
汤姆给她写了一封长信，一封充满爱意和幽默感的信，他提到了命运。这是出发去英国之前，一种悲伤又释然的放弃。露丝没有看到他在英国的任何地址，不然她可能就会写信给他，让他再给他们一次机会了。她本性如此。
这冬季的最后一场雪很快融去，一些山谷因此起了洪水。帕特里克写信说，六月学校放假的时候，他会开车过来，带安娜去过夏天。他说他想开始办离婚了，因为他遇到了一个他想娶的女孩。她的名字叫伊丽莎白。他说她是一个很好很稳定的人。
露丝难道没有去想，帕特里克说，没有去想对于安娜来说，明年安顿在她的老家，在她那个原本就熟悉的老家会更好吗？她可以回到她原来的学校跟她的朋友在一起（杰罗姆总是问她怎么样了），而不是马不停蹄地跟着露丝，陪她过独立新生活。难道她不是在利用安娜给她自己一点稳定的感觉——对了，她就是在这个时候听到那个稳定的女朋友的声音的——难道她不是在利用安娜来弥补她自己选择那条道路的后果吗？当然，他说，也必须给安娜选择。
露丝想回应说，她正在这里为安娜搭建一个家，但是她这话说不出口，真的。她也不想再说了。这个小镇的魅力与其透明度对她来说已经不再。薪水很低。除了这廉价的房子，她也负担不起什么其他东西了。她可能再也不能找到更好的工作，或者另一个爱人。她想着去东边，去多伦多，试着在那里找份工作，一份电台或者电视的工作，可能甚至是一些表演类的工作。她想带上安娜一起，找个临时的住处先安顿下来。就跟帕特里克说的一样。她想回到家就看到安娜，让安娜来充实她的生活。她不觉得安娜会选择那种生活。贫穷、如画的风景和吉普赛式的童年生活，孩子们并不喜欢，尽管日后不管出于什么原因，他们会说这是值得珍惜的一段时光。
那条有斑点的小鱼第一个死掉了，然后是橘黄色的那条。安娜和露丝也不再提要去伍尔沃思了，所以那条黑色的鱼也可以有个陪伴。但是它看上去好像也并不需要陪伴。它身体肿胀、凸着眼，一副杀气腾腾又悠然自得的样子，仿佛已经宣布整个鱼缸都是它的领地。
安娜让露丝保证，她走之前，不要把这条鱼倒进厕所冲掉。露丝答应了，离开这里去多伦多之前，她走到多萝西的家门前，带上鱼缸，给她送上这份不受欢迎的礼物。多萝西礼貌地接受了，她说她会以西雅图那个男人的名字为它命名，向露丝的出发道贺。
安娜继续跟帕特里克和伊丽莎白一起生活。她开始上戏剧和芭蕾课。伊丽莎白觉得孩子们应该有所成就，应该保持忙碌。他们给她买了一张四柱床。伊丽莎白为床做了一个床顶华盖和床罩，还给安娜做了一套与之相衬的睡衣和帽子。
他们给了安娜一只小猫，也给露丝寄去了一张安娜和小猫坐在床上的照片，在照片里，安娜坐在满是绣花的布料上，看上去娴静又满足。
Simon’s Luck
Simon’s Luck
Rose gets lonely in new places; she wishes she had invitations. She goes out and walks the streetsand looks in the lighted windows at all the Saturday- night parties, the Sunday- night familysuppers. It’s no good telling herself she wouldn’t be long inside there, chattering and gettingdrunk, or spooning up the gravy, before she’d wish she was walking the streets. She thinks shecould take on any hospitality. She could go to parties in rooms hung with posters, lit by lamps withCoca-Cola shades, everything crumbly and askew; or else in warm professional rooms with lots ofbooks, and brass rubbings, and maybe a skull or two; even in the recreation rooms she can just seethe tops of, through the basement windows: rows of beer stems, hunting horns, drinking horns,guns. She could go and sit on lurex-threaded sofas under hangings of black velvet displayingmountains, galleons, polar bears, executed in brushed wool. She would like very much to bedishing up a costly cabinet de diplomate out of a cut-glass bowl in a rich dining room with a biggleaming belly of sideboard behind her, and a dim picture of horses feeding, cows feeding, sheepfeeding, on badly painted purple grass. Or she could do as well with batter pudding in the eatingnook of a kitchen in a little stucco house by the bus stop, plaster pears and peaches decorating thewall, ivy curling out of little brass pots. Rose is an actress; she can fit in anywhere.
She does get asked to parties. About two years ago, she was at a party in a high-rise apartmentbuilding in Kingston. The windows looked out on Lake Ontario and Wolfe Island. Rose didn’t livein Kingston. She lived up-country; she had been teaching drama for two years at a communitycollege. Some people were surprised that she would do this. They did not know how little moneyan actress might make; they thought that being well-known automatically meant being well-off.
She had driven down to Kingston just for this party, a fact which slightely shamed her. She hadnot met the hostess before. She had known the host last year, when he was teaching at thecommunity college and living with another girl.
The hostess, whose name was Shelley, took Rose into the bedroom to put down her coat.
Shelley was a thin, solemn-looking girl, a true blonde, with nearly white eyebrows, hair long andthick and straight as if cut from a block of wood. It seemed that she took her waif style seriously.
Her voice was low and mournful, making Rose’s own voice, her greeting of a moment ago, soundaltogether too sprightly in her own ears.
In a basket at the foot of the bed a tortoiseshell cat was suckling four tiny, blind kittens.
“That’s Tasha,” the hosetess said. “We can look at her kittens but we can’t touch them, else shewouldn’t feed them any more.”
She knelt down by the basket, crooning, talking to the mother cat with an intense devotion thatRose thought affected. The shawl around her shoulders was black, trimmed with jet beads. Somebeads were crooked, some were missing. It was a genuine old shawl, not an imitation. Her limp,slightly yellowed, eyelet-embroidered dress was genuine too, though probably a petticoat in thefirst place. Such clothes took looking for.
On the other side of the spool bed was a large mirror, hung suspiciously high, and tilted. Rosetried to get a look at herself when the girl was bent over the basket. It is very hard to look in themirror when there is another, and particularly a younger, woman in the room. Rose was wearing aflowered cotton dress, a long dress with a tucked bodice and puffed sleeves, which was too short inthe waist and too tight in the bust to be comfortable. There was something wrongly youthful ortheatrical about it; perhaps she was not slim enough to wear that style. Her reddish-brown hair wasdyed at home. Lines ran both ways under her eyes, trapping little diamonds of darkened skin.
Rose knew by now that when she found people affected, as she did this girl, and their roomscoyly decorated, their manner of living irritating (that mirror, the patchwork quilt, the Japaneseerotic drawings over the bed, the African music coming from the living room), it was usuallybecause she, Rose, hadn’t received and was afraid she wouldn’t receive the attention she wanted,hadn’t penetrated the party, felt that she might be doomed to hang around on the fringes of things,making judgments.
She felt better in the living room, where there were some people she knew, and some faces asold as her own. She drank quickly at first, and before long was using the newborn kittens as aspringboard for her own story. She said that something dreadful had happened to her cat that veryday.
“The worst of it is,” she said, “that I never liked my cat much. It wasn’t my idea to have a cat. Itwas his. He followed me home one day and insisted on being taken in. He was just like some bigsneering hulk of an unemployable, set on convincing me I owed him a living. Well, he always hada fondness for the clothes dryer. He liked to jump in when it was warm, as soon as I’d taken theclothes out. Usually I just have one load but today I had two, and when I reached in to take thesecond load out, I thought I felt something. I thought, what do I have that’s fur?”
People moaned or laughed, in a sympathetically horrified way. Rose looked around at themappealingly. She felt much better. The living room, with its lake view, its careful decor (a jukebox,barber-shop mirrors, turn-of-the-century advertisements—Smoke, for your throat’s sake—old silklampshades, farmhouse bowls and jugs, primitive masks and sculptures), no longer seemed sohostile. She took another drink of her gin and knew there was a limited time coming now whenshe would feel light and welcome as a hummingbird, convinced that many people in the roomwere witty and many were kind, and some were both together.
“Oh, no, I thought. But it was. It was. Death in the dryer.”
“A warning to all pleasure seekers,” said a little sharp-faced man at her elbow, a man she hadknown slightly for years. He taught in the English department of the university, where the hosttaught now, and the hostess was a graduate student.
“That’s terrible,” said the hostess, with her cold, fixed look of sensitivity. Those who hadlaughed looked a bit abashed, as if they thought they might have seemed heartless. “Your cat.
That’s terrible. How could you come tonight?”
As a matter of fact the incident had not happened today at all; it had happened last week. Rosewondered if the girl meant to put her at a disadvantage. She said sincerely and regretfully that shehadn’t been very fond of the cat and that had made it seem worse, somehow. That’s what she wastrying to explain, she said.
“I felt as if maybe it was my fault. Maybe if I’d been fonder, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Of course it wouldn’t,” said the man beside her. “It was warmth he was seeking in the dryer. Itwas love. Ah, Rose!”
“Now you won’t be able to fuck the cat any more,” said a tall boy Rose hadn’t noticed before.
He seemed to have sprung up, right in front of her. “Fuck the dog, fuck the cat, I don’t know whatyou do, Rose.”
She was searching for his name. She had recognized him as a student, or former student.
“David,” she said. “Hello, David.” She was so pleased at coming up with the name that she wasslow in registering what he had said.
“Fuck the dog, fuck the cat,” he repeated, swaying over her.
“I beg your pardon,” Rose said, and put on a quizzical, indulgent, charming expression. Thepeople around her were finding it as hard to adjust to what the boy said as she was. The mood ofsociability, sympathy, expectation of goodwill was not easy to halt; it rolled on in spite of signsthat there was plenty here it wasn’t going to be able to absorb. Almost everyone was still smiling,as if the boy was telling an anecdote or playing a part, the point of which would be made clear in amoment. The hostess cast down her eyes and slipped away.
“Beg yours,” said the boy in a very ugly tone. “Up yours, Rose.” He was white and brittle-looking, desperately drunk. He had probably been brought up in a gentle home, where peopletalked about answering Nature’s call and blessed each other for sneezing.
A short, strong man with black curly hair took hold of the boy’s arm just below the shoulder.
“Move it along,” he said, almost maternally. He spoke with a muddled European accent, mostlyFrench, Rose thought, though she was not good about accents. She did tend to think, in spite ofknowing better, that such accents spring from a richer and more complicated masculinity than themasculinity to be found in North America and in places like Hanratty, where she had grown up.
Such an accent promised masculinity tinged with suffering, tenderness, and guile.
The host appeared in a velvet jumpsuit and took hold of the other arm, more or lesssymbolically, at the same time kissing Rose’s cheek, because he hadn’t seen her when she camein. “Must talk to you,” he murmured, meaning he hoped he wouldn’t have to, because there was somuch tricky territory; the girl he had lived with last year, for one thing, and a night he had spentwith Rose toward the end of term, when there had been a lot of drinking and bragging andlamenting about faithlessness, as well as some curiously insulting though pleasurable sex. He waslooking very brushed and tended, thinner but softened, with his flowing hair and suit of bottle-green velvet. Only three years younger than Rose, but look at him. He had shed a wife, a family, ahouse, a discouraging future, set himself up with new clothes and new furniture and a successionof student mistresses. Men can do it.
“My, my,” Rose said and leaned against the wall. “What was that all about?”
The man beside her, who had smiled all the time and looked into his glass, said, “Ah, thesensitive youth of our time! Their grace of language, their depth of feeling! We must bow beforethem.”
The man with the black curly hair came back, didn’t say a word, but handed Rose a fresh drinkand took her glass.
The host came back too.
“Rose baby. I don’t know how he got in. I said no bloody students.
There’s got to be some place safe from them.”
“He was in one of my classes last year,” Rose said. That really was all she could remember. Shesupposed they were thinking there must be more to it.
“Did he want to be an actor?” said the man beside her. “I’ll bet he did. Remember the good olddays when they all wanted to be lawyers and engineers and business executives? They tell methat’s coming back. I hope so. I devoutly hope so. Rose, I bet you listened to his problems. Youmust never do that. I bet that’s what you did.”
“Oh, I suppose.”
“They come along looking for a parent- substitute. It’s banal as can be. They trail aroundworshipping you and bothering you and then bam! It’s parent-substitute rejecting time!”
Rose drank, and leaned against the wall, and heard them take up the theme of what studentsexpected nowadays, how they broke down your door to tell you about their abortions, their suicideattempts, their creativity crises, their weight problems. Always using the same words: personhood,values, rejection.
“I’m not rejecting you, you silly bugger, I’m flunking you!” said the little sharp man, recalling atriumphant confrontation he had had with one such student. They laughed at that and at the youngwoman who said, “God, the difference when I was at university! You wouldn’t have mentioned anabortion in a professor’s office any more than you would have shit on the floor. Shat on the floor.”
Rose was laughing too, but felt smashed, under the skin. It would be better, in a way, if therewere something behind this such as they suspected. If she had slept with that boy. If she hadpromised him something, if she had betrayed him, humiliated him. She could not rememberanything. He had sprung out of the floor to accuse her. She must have done something, and shecould not remember it. She could not remember anything to do with her students; that was thetruth. She was solicitous and charming, all warmth and acceptance; she listened and advised; thenshe could not get their names straight. She could not remember a thing she had said to them.
A woman touched her arm. “Wake up,” she said, in a tone of sly intimacy that made Rose thinkshe must know her. Another student? But no, the woman introduced herself.
“I’m doing a paper on female suicide,” she said. “I mean, the suicide of female artists.” She saidshe had seen Rose on television and was longing to talk to her. She mentioned Diane Arbus,Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Christiane Pflug. She was well informed. She lookedlike a prime candidate herself, Rose thought: emaciated, bloodless, obsessed. Rose said she washungry, and the woman followed her out to the kitchen.
“And too many actresses to count—” the woman said. “Margaret Sullavan—”
“I’m just a teacher now.”
“Oh, nonsense. I’m sure you are an actress to the marrow of your bones.”
The hostess had made bread: glazed and braided and decorated loaves. Rose wondered at thepains taken here. The bread, the p?té, the hanging plants, the kittens, all on behalf of a mostprecarious and temporary domesticity. She wished, she often wished, that she could take suchpains, that she could make ceremonies, impose herself, make bread.
She noticed a group of younger members of the faculty — she would have thought themstudents, except for what the host had said about students not being let in—who were sitting on thecounters and standing in front of the sink. They were talking in low, serious voices. One of themlooked at her. She smiled. Her smile was not returned. A couple of others looked at her, and theywent on talking. She was sure they were talking about her, about what had happened in the livingroom. She urged the woman to try some bread and p?té. Presumably that would keep her quiet, sothat Rose could overhear what was being said.
“I never eat at parties.”
The woman’s manner toward her was turning dark and vaguely accusing. Rose had learned thatthis was a department wife. Perhaps it had been a political move, inviting her. And promising herRose; had that been part of the move?
“Are you always so hungry?” the woman said. “Are you never ill?” “I am when there’ssomething this good to eat,” Rose said. She was only trying to set an example, and could hardlychew or swallow, in her anxiety to hear what was being said of her. “No, I’m not often ill,” shesaid. It surprised her to realize that was true. She used to get sick with colds and flu and crampsand headaches; those definite ailments had now disappeared, simmered down into a low, steadyhum of uneasiness, fatigue, apprehension.
Fucked-up jealous establishment.
Rose heard that, or thought she heard it. They were giving her quick, despising looks. Or so shethought; she could not look directly at them. Establishment. That was Rose. Was it? Was thatRose? Was that Rose who had taken a teaching job because she wasn’t getting enough acting jobsto support herself, was granted the teaching job because of her experience on stage and television,but had to accept a cut in pay because she lacked degrees? She wanted to go over and tell themthat. She wanted to state her case. The years of work, the exhaustion, the traveling, the high schoolauditoriums, the nerves, the boredom, the never knowing where your next pay was coming from.
She wanted to plead with them, so they would forgive her and love her and take her on their side.
It was their side she wanted to be on, not the side of the people in the living room who had takenup her cause. But that was a choice made because of fear, not on principle. She feared them. Shefeared their hard- hearted virtue, their cool despising faces, their secrets, their laughter, theirobscenities.
She thought of Anna, her own daughter. Anna was seventeen. She had long fair hair and wore afine gold chain around her throat. It was so fine you had to look closely to make sure it was achain, not just a glinting of her smooth bright skin. She was not like these young people but shewas equally remote. She practised ballet and rode her horse every day but she didn’t plan to ride incompetitions or be a ballerina. Why not?
“Because it would be silly.”
Something about Anna’s style, the fine chain, her silences, made Rose think of her grandmother,Patrick’s mother. But then, she thought, Anna might not be so silent, so fastidious, sounforthcoming, with anybody but her mother.
The man with the black curly hair stood in the kitchen doorway giving her an impudent andironic look.
“Do you know who that is?” Rose said to the suicide woman. “The man who took the drunkaway?”
“That’s Simon. I don’t think the boy was drunk, I think he’s on drugs.”
“What does he do?”
“Well, I expect he’s a student of sorts.”
“No,” said Rose. “That man—Simon?”
“Oh, Simon. He’s in the classics department. I don’t think he’s always been a teacher.”
“Like me,” Rose said, and turned the smile she had tried on the young people on Simon. Tiredand adrift and witless as she was, she was beginning to feel familiar twinges, tidal promises.
If he smiles back, things will start to be all right.
He did smile, and the suicide woman spoke sharply. “Look, do you come to a party just to meetmen?”
WHEN SIMON WAS FOURTEEN, he and his older sister and another boy, a friend of theirs,were hidden in a freight car, traveling from occupied to unoccupied France. They were on theirway to Lyons, where they would be looked after, redirected to safe places, by members of anorganization that was trying to save Jewish children. Simon and his sister had already been sentout of Poland, at the beginning of the war, to stay with French relatives. Now they had to be sentaway again.
The freight car stopped. The train was standing still, at night somewhere out in the country.
They could hear French and German voices. There was some commotion in the cars ahead. Theyheard the doors grinding open, heard and felt the boots striking on the bare floors of those cars. Aninspection of the train. They lay down under some sacks, but did not even try to cover their faces;they thought there was no hope. The voices were getting closer and they heard the boots on thegravel beside the track. Then the train began to move. It moved so slowly that they did not noticefor a moment or so, and even then they thought it was just a shunting of the cars. They expected itto stop, so that the inspection could continue. But the train kept moving. It moved a little faster,then faster; it picked up its ordinary speed, which was nothing very great. They were moving, theywere free of the inspection, they were being carried away. Simon never knew what had happened.
The danger was past.
Simon said that when he realized they were safe he suddenly felt that they would get through,that nothing could happen to them now, that they were particularly blessed and lucky. He tookwhat happened for a lucky sign.
Rose asked him, had he ever seen his friend and his sister again? “No. Never. Not after Lyons.”
“So, it was only lucky for you.”
Simon laughed. They were in bed, in Rose’s bed in an old house, on the outskirts of acrossroads village; they had driven there straight from the party. It was April, the wind was cold,and Rose’s house was chilly. The furnace was inadequate. Simon put a hand to the wallpaperbehind the bed, made her feel the draft.
“What it needs is some insulation.”
“I know. It’s awful. And you should see my fuel bills.”
Simon said she should get a wood stove. He told her about various kinds of firewood. Maple, hesaid, was a lovely wood to burn. Then he held forth on different kinds of insulation. Styrofoam,Micafil, fiberglass. He got out of bed and padded around naked, looking at the walls of her house.
Rose shouted after him.
“Now I remember. It was a grant.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
She got out of bed and wrapped herself in a blanket. Standing at the top of the stairs, she said,“That boy came to me with an application for a grant. He wanted to be a playwright. I just thisminute remembered.”
“What boy?” said Simon. “Oh.”
“But I recommended him. I know I did.” The truth was she recommended everybody. If shecould not see their merits, she believed it might just be a case of their having merits she wasunable to see.
“He must not have got it. So he thought I shafted him.”
“Well, suppose you had,” said Simon, peering down the cellarway.
“That would be your right.”
“I know. I’m a coward about that lot. I hate their disapproval. They are so virtuous.”
“They are not virtuous at all,” said Simon. “I’m going to put my shoes on and look at yourfurnace. You probably need the filters cleaned. That is just their style. They are not much to befeared, they are just as stupid as anybody. They want a chunk of the power. Naturally.”
“But would you get such venomous—” Rose had to stop and start the word again—“suchvenomousness, simply from ambition?”
“What else?” said Simon, climbing the stairs. He made a grab for the blanket, wrapped himselfup with her, pecked her nose. “Enough of that, Rose. Have you no shame? I’m a poor fellow cometo look at your furnace. Your basement furnace. Sorry to bump into you like this, ma’am.” Shealready knew a few of his characters. This was The Humble Workman. Some others were The OldPhilosopher, who bowed low to her, Japanese style, as he came out of the bathroom, murmuringmemento mori, memento mori; and, when appropriate, The Mad Satyr, nuzzling and leaping,making triumphant smacking noises against her navel.
At the crossroads store she bought real coffee instead of instant, real cream, bacon, frozenbroccoli, a hunk of local cheese, canned crabmeat, the best- looking tomatoes they had,mushrooms, long-grained rice. Cigarettes as well. She was in that state of happiness which seemsperfectly natural and unthreatened. If asked, she would have said it was because of the weather—the day was bright, in spite of the harsh wind—as much as because of Simon.
“You must’ve brought home company,” said the woman who kept the store. She spoke with nosurprise or malice or censure, just a comradely sort of envy.
“When I wasn’t expecting it.” Rose dumped more groceries on the counter. “What a lot ofbother they are. Not to mention expense. Look at that bacon. And cream.”
“I could stand a bit of it,” the woman said.
SIMON COOKED a remarkable supper from the resources provided, while Rose did nothingmuch but stand around watching, and change the sheets.
“Country life,” she said. “I came here with some ideas about how I would live. I thought Iwould go for long walks on the deserted country roads. And the first time I did, I heard a carcoming tearing along on the gravel behind me. I got well off. Then I heard shots. I was terrified. Ihid in the bushes and a car came roaring past, weaving all over the road—and they were shootingout of the windows. I cut back through the fields and told the woman at the store I thought weshould call the police. She said oh, yes, weekends the boys get a case of beer in the car and theygo out shooting groundhogs. Then she said, what were you doing up that road anyway? I could seeshe thought going for walks by yourself was a lot more suspicious than shooting groundhogs.
There were lots of things like that. I don’t think I’d stay, but the job’s here and the rent’s cheap.
Not that she isn’t nice, the woman in the store. She tells fortunes. Cards and teacups.”
Simon said that he had been sent from Lyons to work on a farm in the mountains of Provence.
The people there lived and farmed very much as in the Middle Ages. They could not read or writeor speak French. When they got sick they waited either to die or to get better. They had never seena doctor, though a veterinarian came once a year to inspect the cows. Simon ran a pitchfork intohis foot, the wound became infected, he was feverish and had the greatest difficulty in persuadingthem to send for the veterinarian, who was then in the next village. At last they did, and theveterinarian came and gave Simon a shot with a great horse needle, and he got better. Thehousehold was bewildered and amused to see such measures taken on behalf of human life.
“Country life.”
“But here it is not so bad. This house could be made very comfort able,” said Simon, musing.
“You should have a garden.”
“That was another idea I had, I tried to have a garden. Nothing did very well. I was lookingforward to the cabbages, I think cabbages are beautiful, but some worm got into them. It ate up theleaves till they looked like lace, and then they all turned yellow and lay on the ground.”
“Cabbages are a very hard thing to grow. You should try with something easier.” Simon left thetable and went to the window. “Point me out where you had your garden.”
“Along the fence. That’s where they had it before.”
“That is no good, it’s too close to the walnut tree. Walnut trees are bad for the soil.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it’s true. You should have it nearer the house. Tomorrow I will dig up a garden for you.
You’ll need a lot of fertilizer. Now. Sheep manure is the very best fertilizer. Do you know anyonearound here who has sheep? We will get several sacks of sheep manure and draw up a plan ofwhat to plant, though it’s too early yet, there could still be frost. You can start some thingsindoors, from seed. Tomatoes.”
“I thought you had to go back on the morning bus,” Rose said. They had driven up in her car.
“Monday is a light day. I will phone up and cancel. I’ll tell the girls in the office to say I have asore throat.”
“Sore throat?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s good that you’re here,” said Rose truthfully. “Otherwise I’d be spending my time thinkingabout that boy. I’d be trying not to, but it would keep coming at me. In unprotected moments. Iwould have been in a state of humiliation.”
“That’s a pretty small thing to get into a state of humiliation about.” “So I see. It doesn’t takemuch with me.”
“Learn not to be so thin-skinned,” said Simon, as if he were taking her over, in a sensible way,along with the house and garden. “Radishes. Leaf lettuce. Onions. Potatoes. Do you eat potatoes?”
Before he left they drew up a plan of the garden. He dug and worked the soil for her, though hehad to content himself with cow manure. Rose had to go to work, on Monday, but kept him in hermind all day. She saw him digging in the garden. She saw him naked peering down the cellarway.
A short, thick man, hairy, warm, with a crumpled comedian’s face. She knew what he would saywhen she got home. He would say, “I hope I done it to your satisfaction, mum,” and yank aforelock.
That was what he did, and she was so delighted she cried out, “Oh Simon, you idiot, you’re theman for my life!” Such was the privilege, the widespread sunlight of the moment, that she did notreflect that saying this might be unwise.
IN THE MIDDLE of the week she went to the store, not to buy anything, but to get her fortunetold. The woman looked in her cup and said, “Oh, you! You’ve met the man who will changeeverything.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“He will change your life. Oh Lord. You won’t stay here. I see fame.
I see water.”
“I don’t know about that. I think he wants to insulate my house.” “The change has begunalready.”
“Yes. I know it has. Yes.”
SHE COULD NOT REMEMBER what they had said about Simon coming again. She thought thathe was coming on the weekend. She expected him, and she went out and bought groceries, not atthe local store this time but at a supermarket several miles away. She hoped the woman at the storewouldn’t see her carrying the grocery bags into the house. She had wanted fresh vegetables andsteak and imported black cherries, and Camembert and pears. She had bought wine, too, and a pairof sheets covered with stylish garlands of blue and yellow flowers. She was thinking her palehaunches would show up well against them.
On Friday night she put the sheets on the bed and the cherries in a blue bowl. The wine waschilling, the cheese was getting soft. Around nine o’clock came the loud knock, the expectedjoking knock on the door. She was surprised that she hadn’t heard his car.
“Felt lonesome,” said the woman from the store. “So I just thought I’d drop in and—oh-oh.
You’re expecting your company.”
“Not really,” Rose said. Her heart had started thumping joyfully when she heard the knock andwas thumping still. “I don’t know when he’s arriving here,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Bugger of a rain.”
The woman’s voice sounded hearty and practical, as if Rose might need distracting orconsoling.
“I just hope he isn’t driving in it, then,” Rose said.
“No sir, you wouldn’t want him driving in it.”
The woman ran her fingers through her short gray hair, shaking the rain out, and Rose knew sheought to offer her something. A glass of wine? She might become mellow and talkative, wantingto stay and finish the bottle. Here was a person Rose had talked to, plenty of times, a friend ofsorts, somebody she would have claimed to like, and she could hardly be bothered to acknowledgeher. It would have been the same at that moment with anyone who was not Simon. Anyone elseseemed accidental and irritating.
Rose could see what was coming. All the ordinary delights, consolations, diversions, of lifewould be rolled up and packed away; the pleasure found in food, lilacs, music, thunder in thenight, would vanish. Nothing would do any more but to lie under Simon, nothing would do but togive way to pangs and convulsions.
She decided on tea. She thought she might as well put the time to use by having another go ather future.
“It’s not clear,” the woman said.
“What’s not?”
“I’m not able to get anything in focus tonight. That happens. No, to be honest, I can’t locatehim.”
“Can’t locate him?”
“In your future. I’m beat.”
Rose thought she was saying this out of ill-will, out of jealousy. “Well, I’m not just concernedabout him.”
“Maybe I could do better if you had any possessions of his, just let me have it to hang on to.
Anything he had his hands on, do you have that?”
“Me,” said Rose. A cheap boast, at which the fortune-teller was obliged to laugh.
“No, seriously.”
“I don’t think so. I threw his cigarette butts out.”
AFTER THE WOMAN had gone Rose sat up waiting. Soon it was midnight. The rain came downhard. The next time she looked it was twenty to two. How could time so empty pass so quickly?
She put out the lights because she didn’t want to be caught sitting up. She undressed, but couldn’tlie down on the fresh sheets. She sat on in the kitchen, in the dark. From time to time she madefresh tea. Some light from the street light at the corner came into the room. The village had brightnew mercury vapor lights. She could see that light, a bit of the store, the church steps across theroad. The church no longer served the discreet and respectable Protestant sect that had built it, butproclaimed itself a Temple of Nazareth, also a Holiness Center, whatever that might be. Thingswere more askew here than Rose had noticed before. No retired farmers lived in these houses; infact there were no farms to retire from, just the poor fields covered with juniper. People workedthirty or forty miles away, in factories, in the Provincial Mental Hospital, or they didn’t work atall, they lived a mysterious life on the borders of criminality or a life of orderly craziness in theshade of the Holiness Center. People’s lives were surely more desperate than they used to be, andwhat could be more desperate than a woman of Rose’s age, sitting up all night in her dark kitchenwaiting for her lover? And this was a situation she had created, she had done it all herself, itseemed she never learned any lessons at all. She had turned Simon into the peg on which herhopes were hung and she could never manage now to turn him back into himself.
The mistake was in buying the wine, she thought, and the sheets and the cheese and the cherries.
Preparations court disaster. She hadn’t realized that till she opened the door and the commotion ofher heart turned from merriment to dismay, like the sound of a tower full of bells turned comically(but not for Rose) into a rusty foghorn.
Hour after hour in the dark and the rain she foresaw what could happen. She could wait throughthe weekend, fortifying herself with excuses and sickening with doubt, never leaving the house incase the phone might ring. Back at work on Monday, dazed but slightly comforted by the realworld, she would get up the courage to write him a note, in care of the classics department.
“I was thinking we might plant the garden next weekend. I have bought a great array of seeds (alie, but she would buy them, if she heard from him). Do let me know if you’re coming, but don’tworry if you’ve made other plans.”
Then she would worry: did it sound too off-hand, with that mention of other plans? Wouldn’t itbe too pushy, if she hadn’t tacked that on? All her confidence, her lightness of heart, would haveleaked away, but she would try to counterfeit it.
“If it’s too wet to work in the garden we could always go for a drive. Maybe we could shootsome groundhogs. Best, Rose.”
Then a further time of waiting, for which the weekend would have been only a casual trial run,a haphazard introduction to the serious, commonplace, miserable ritual. Putting her hand into themailbox and drawing the mail out without looking at it, refusing to leave the college until fiveo’clock, putting a cushion against the telephone to block her view of it; pretending inattention.
Watch-pot thinking. Sitting up late at night, drinking, never getting quite sick enough of thisfoolishness to give up on it because the waiting would be interspersed with such green andspringlike reveries, such convincing arguments as to his intentions. These would be enough, atsome point, to make her decide that he must have been taken ill, he would never have deserted herotherwise. She would phone the Kingston Hospital, ask about his condition, be told that he wasnot a patient. After that would come the day she went into the college library, picked up backcopies of the Kingston paper, searched the obituaries to discover if he had by any chance droppeddead. Then, giving in utterly, cold and shaking, she would call him at the University. The girl inhis office would say he was gone. Gone to Europe, gone to California; he had only been teachingthere for a single term. Gone on a camping trip, gone to get married.
Or she might say, “Just a minute, please,” and turn Rose over to him, just like that.
“Yes?”
“Simon?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Rose.”
“Rose?” It wouldn’t be as drastic as that. It would be worse.
“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he would say, or, “Rose, how are you?” or even, “How is thatgarden?”
Better lose him now. But going by the phone she put her hand on it, to see if it was warm,maybe, or to encourage it.
Before it began to get light Monday morning she packed what she thought she would need intothe back of the car, and locked the house, with the Camembert still weeping on the kitchencounter; she drove off in a westerly direction. She meant to be gone a couple of days, until shecame to her senses and could face the sheets and the patch of readied earth and the place behindthe bed where she had put her hand to feel the draft. (Why did she bring her boots and her wintercoat, if this was the case?) She wrote a letter to the college— she could lie beautifully in letters,though not on the phone—in which she said that she had been called to Toronto by the terminalillness of a dear friend. (Perhaps she didn’t lie so beautifully after all, perhaps she overdid it.) Shehad been awake almost the whole weekend, drinking, not so very much, but steadily. I’m nothaving any of it, she said out loud, very seriously and emphatically, as she loaded the car. And asshe crouched in the front seat, writing the letter, which she could more comfortably have written inthe house, she thought how many crazy letters she had written, how many overblown excuses shehad found, having to leave a place, or being afraid to leave a place, on account of some man.
Nobody knew the extent of her foolishness, friends who had known her twenty years didn’t knowhalf of the flights she had been on, the money she had spent, and the risks she had taken. Here shewas, she thought a bit later, driving a car, shutting down the windshield wipers as the rain finallylet up on a Monday morning at ten o’clock, stopping for gas, stopping to get a transfer of money,now that the banks were open; she was competent and cheery, she remembered what to do, whowould guess what mortifications, memories of mortification, predictions, were beating in herhead? The most mortifying thing of all was simply hope, which burrows so deceitfully at first,masks itself cunningly, but not for long. In a week’s time it can be out trilling and twittering andsinging hymns at heaven’s gate. And it was busy even now, telling her that Simon might beturning into her driveway at this very moment, might be standing at her door with his handstogether, praying, mocking, apologizing. Memento mori.
Even so, even if that were true, what would happen some day, some morning? Some morningshe could wake up and she would know by his breathing that he was awake beside her and nottouching her, and that she was not supposed to touch him. So much female touching is asking (thisis what she would have learned, or learned again, from him); women’s tenderness is greedy, theirsensuality is dishonest. She would lie there wishing she had some plain defect, something hershame could curl around and protect. As it was, she would have to be ashamed of, burdened by,the whole physical fact of herself, the whole outspread naked digesting putrefying fact. Her fleshcould seem disastrous; thick and porous, gray and spotty. His body would not be in question, itnever would be; he would be the one who condemned and forgave and how could she ever knowif he would forgive her again? Come here, he could tell her, or go away. Never since Patrick hadshe been the free person, the one with that power; maybe she had used it all up, all that wascoming to her.
Or she might hear him at a party, saying, “And then I knew I’d be all right, I knew it was alucky sign.” Telling his story to some tarty unworthy girl in a leopard-spotted silk, or—far worse—to a gentle long-haired girl in an embroidered smock, who would lead him by the hand, sooneror later, through a doorway into a room or landscape where Rose couldn’t follow.
Yes, but wasn’t it possible nothing like that would happen, wasn’t it possible there’d be nothingbut kindness, and sheep manure, and deep spring nights with the frogs singing? A failure toappear, on the first weekend, or to telephone, might have meant nothing but a different timetable;no ominous sign at all. Thinking like this, every twenty miles or so, she slowed, even looked for aplace to turn around. Then she did not do it, she speeded up, thinking she would drive a littlefurther to make sure her head was clear. Thoughts of herself sitting in the kitchen, images of loss,poured over her again. And so it was, back and forth, as if the rear end of the car was held by amagnetic force, which ebbed and strengthened, ebbed and strengthened again, but the strength wasnever quite enough to make her turn, and after a while she became almost impersonally curious,seeing it as a real physical force and wondering if it was getting weaker, as she drove, if at somepoint far ahead the car and she would leap free of it, and she would recognize the moment whenshe left its field.
So she kept driving. Muskoka; the Lakehead; the Manitoba border. Sometimes she slept in thecar, pulled off to the side of the road for an hour or so. In Manitoba it was too cold to do that; shechecked into a motel. She ate in roadside restaurants. Before she entered a restaurant she combedher hair and made up her face and put on that distant, dreamy, short-sighted look women wearwhen they think some man may be watching them. It was too much to say that she really expectedSimon to be there, but it seemed she did not entirely rule him out.
The force did weaken, with distance. It was as simple as that, though the distance, she thoughtafterwards, would have to be covered by car, or by bus, or bicycle; you couldn’t get the sameresults by flying. In a prairie town within sight of the Cypress Hills she recognized the change. Shehad driven all night until the sun came up behind her and she felt calm and clearheaded as you doat such times. She went into a café and ordered coffee and fried eggs. She sat at the counterlooking at the usual things there are behind café counters — the coffee- pots and the bright,probably stale pieces of lemon and raspberry pie, the thick glass dishes they put ice-cream or jelloin. It was those dishes that told her of her changed state. She could not have said she found themshapely, or eloquent, without misstating the case. All she could have said was that she saw them ina way that wouldn’t be possible to a person in any stage of love. She felt their solidity with aconvalescent gratitude whose weight settled comfortably into her brains and feet. She realized thenthat she had come into this café without the least far-fetched idea of Simon, so it seemed the worldhad stopped being a stage where she might meet him, and gone back to being itself. During thatbountifully clear half-hour before her breakfast made her so sleepy she had to get to a motel,where she fell asleep with her clothes on and the curtains open to the sun, she thought how loveremoves the world for you, and just as surely when it’s going well as when it’s going badly. Thisshouldn’t have been, and wasn’t, a surprise to her; the surprise was that she so much wanted,required, everything to be there for her, thick and plain as ice-cream dishes, so that it seemed toher it might not be the disappointment, the losses, the dissolution, she had been running from, anymore than the opposite of those things; the celebration and shock of love, the dazzling alteration.
Even if that was safe, she couldn’t accept it. Either way you were robbed of something—a privatebalance spring, a little dry kernel of probity. So she thought.
She wrote to the college that while in Toronto attending the deathbed of her friend she had runinto an old acquaintance who had offered her a job on the west coast, and that she was going thereimmediately. She supposed they could make trouble for her but she also supposed, rightly, thatthey would not bother, since the terms of her employment, and particularly her pay, were not quiteregular. She wrote to the agency from which she rented the house; she wrote to the woman at thestore, good luck and good-bye. On the Hope-Princeton highway she got out of the car and stood inthe cool rain of the coastal mountains. She felt relatively safe, and exhausted, and sane, though sheknew she had left some people behind who would not agree with that.
Luck was with her. In Vancouver she met a man she knew who was casting a new televisionseries. It was to be produced on the west coast and concerned a family, or pseudo-family, ofeccentrics and drifters using an old house on Salt Spring Island as their home or headquarters.
Rose got the role of the woman who owned the house, the pseudo-mother. Just as she had said inthe letter; a job on the west coast, possibly the best job she had ever had. Some special make-uptechniques, aging techniques, had to be used on her face; the makeup man joked that if the serieswas a success, and ran for a few years, these techniques would not be necessary.
A word everybody at the coast was using was fragile. They spoke of feeling fragile today, ofbeing in a fragile state. Not me, Rose said, I am getting a distinct feeling of being made of oldhorsehide. The wind and sun on the prairies had browned and roughened her skin. She slapped hercreased brown neck, to emphasize the word horse-hide. She was already beginning to adopt someof the turns of phrase, the mannerisms, of the character she was to play.
A YEAR OR SO LATER Rose was out on the deck of one of the B.C. ferries, wearing a dingysweater and a head scarf. She had to creep around among the lifeboats, keeping an eye on a prettyyoung girl who was freezing in cut-off jeans and a halter. According to the script, the woman Roseplayed was afraid this young girl meant to jump off the boat because she was pregnant.
Filming this scene, they collected a sizeable crowd. When they broke and walked towards thesheltered part of the deck, to put on their coats and drink coffee, a woman in the crowd reached outand touched Rose’s arm.
“You won’t remember me,” she said, and in fact Rose did not remember her. Then this womanbegan to talk about Kingston, the couple who had given the party, even about the death of Rose’scat. Rose recognized her as the woman who had been doing the paper on suicide. But she lookedquite different; she was wearing an expensive beige pant-suit, a beige and white scarf around herhair; she was no longer fringed and soiled and stringy and mutinous-looking. She introduced ahusband, who grunted at Rose as if to say that if she expected him to make a big fuss about her,she had another thing coming. He moved away and the woman said, “Poor Simon. You know hedied.”
Then she wanted to know if they were going to be shooting any more scenes. Rose knew whyshe asked. She wanted to get into the background or even the foreground of these scenes so thatshe could call up her friends and tell them to watch her. If she called the people who had been atthat party she would have to say that she knew the series was utter tripe but that she had beenpersuaded to be in a scene, for the fun of it.
“Died?”
The woman took off her scarf and the wind blew her hair across her face.
“Cancer of the pancreas,” she said, and turned to face the wind so that she could put the scarf onagain, more to her satisfaction. Her voice seemed to Rose knowledgeable and sly. “I don’t knowhow well you knew him,” she said. Was that to make Rose wonder how well she knew him? Thatslyness could ask for help, as well as measure victories and surprises. She tucked her chin in,knotting the scarf.
“So sad,” she said, business-like now. “Sad. He had it for a long time.”
Somebody was calling Rose’s name; she had to go back to the scene. The girl didn’t throwherself into the sea. They didn’t have things like that happening in the series. Such things alwaysthreatened to happen but they didn’t happen, except now and then to peripheral and unappealingcharacters. People watching trusted that they would be protected from predictable disasters, alsofrom those shifts of emphasis that throw the story line open to question, the disarrangementswhich demand new judgments and solutions, and throw the windows open on inappropriateunforgettable scenery.
Simon’s dying struck Rose as that kind of disarrangement. It was preposterous, it was unfair,that such a chunk of information should have been left out, and that Rose even at this late datecould have thought herself the only person who could seriously lack power.
西蒙的运气
西蒙的运气
到了新的地方，露丝觉得孤单。她希望自己能接到别人的邀请。她走出去，沿着街道上走，透过闪着亮光的窗户看到那些周六晚的聚会和周日晚的家庭聚餐。其实她如果真进去的话是不会在里面待很久的，闲聊、喝醉，拿大勺子舀肉汁，然后会想着到街上走走该多好。她觉得自己能接受任何善意的表示。这些聚会她都愿意参加：在挂着海报的房间，那里还有罩着可口可乐灯罩的灯，所有的东西一碰就碎、歪歪扭扭的；在那种摆着很多书的温暖房间，有拓印品，也许还摆放着一两个头骨；甚至在那些她能透过地下室的窗户看到上等货的娱乐室，有一排排的啤酒杯、猎号、角杯和枪支。她可以坐在路勒克斯螺纹的沙发上，沙发上面挂着一张黑天鹅绒的画，展示着山脉、帆船，还有杀死北极熊得来的拉绒毛。她很想待在一间豪华的餐室，后面是肚子闪着亮光的餐具柜，她想将昂贵的舶来食物从一只雕花玻璃大碗里舀起来，在那儿，还有一幅模糊的图画，上面画着马匹、母牛和绵羊，它们正在吃着画得很难看的紫色的草。或者，她在公交车站旁边那所小灰泥房子里也能混得不错，她会在厨房的角落吃点奶油布丁，石膏做的梨子和桃子装饰着墙面，一个黄铜罐子上长出了弯弯的常春藤。露丝是个演员，她去哪儿都能待得住。
她的确曾经被邀请去参加聚会。大概是两年前，她被邀请去位于金斯敦一栋高楼里的聚会。
从窗户往外看，可以看到安大略湖和沃尔夫岛。露丝不住在金斯敦。她住在内陆地带，在一个社区大学里教了两年的戏剧。有人很惊讶她居然会做这份工作，他们不知道一个演员赚的钱有多少，以为出名自然就是有钱的意思了。
她开车去金斯敦就是为了这个聚会，这件事让她感到有点丢脸。在此之前她没有见过那房子的女主人。男主人她是认识的，他去年在社区大学教书，跟另外一个女孩生活在一起。
女主人名叫雪莱，她带着露丝到卧室放好她的大衣。雪莱是一个瘦瘦的、看上去很严肃的女孩，有着真正的金发，几乎是白色的眉毛，又长又厚的头发直直垂下来，像是一块切下来的木头。她似乎很把自己那副流浪风格当回事。她的声音低沉，像在诉说悲伤，这让露丝方才的那声招呼听上去显得太生动活泼了。
床脚下的一个篮子里躺着一只花斑猫，它在给四只小小的、什么都还看不见的小猫喂奶。
“那是塔莎，”女主人说，“我们可以看看它的小猫，但是不能摸，不然的话它就不会给它们喂东西了。”
她在篮子旁边跪下身子，轻轻哼唱，带着强烈的爱意跟猫妈妈说话，露丝觉得有点做作。她身上的披肩是黑色的，周围是镶边的珠串。有些珠子歪了，有些已经不见。这条披肩是的确用得很旧，不是仿旧的。她那软塌塌的、有点发黄、镶着绣花金属圈的裙子也是真的，尽管原先应该是条衬裙。这些衣服可都不是好找的。
线轴床的另外一端是一面巨大的镜子，挂得相当高，歪斜着。那女孩朝着篮子弯下身去的时候，露丝想在镜子里端详下自己。如果同一个房间里有另外一个人，特别是更年轻的女孩在的话，往镜子里看一眼是件很难的事情。露丝穿着一条棉质的花裙子，有鼓鼓的胸衣和泡泡袖，但腰间太短，胸部又太紧，不太舒服。这衣服有一种不恰当的青春感和夸张，可能她不够苗条，穿不了这种风格的衣服。她那红褐色的头发是在家里染了再来的。她双眼底下都画了眼线，困住了暗色皮肤上贴着的小钻石。
露丝觉得这女孩做作，她现在知道，当她觉得人们做作，觉得他们的房间布置得忸怩作态、生活方式令人恼火的时候（比如看到那面镜子，那拼缀而成的被子，那床上的色情图画，还有从客厅传来的非洲音乐）——当她有这种感受的时候，通常都是因为她自己没有得到，或者担心没有得到想要的那种关注，没有沉浸到这场聚会里，感觉自己可能注定要游走在事情的边缘，在指手画脚。
在客厅里的时候她感觉要好一些，那里有一些她认识的人，一些年纪跟她差不多的面孔。她很快地喝了点酒，不久就以刚出生的小猫咪作为跳板，开始讲她自己的故事。她说就在那天，她家的猫身上发生了一些很可怕的事情。
“最糟糕的是，”她说，“我从来都不喜欢我的猫。不是我想养猫的。是我的猫想要我。它有一天跟着我回来，一定要我带它进去。它就好像一个失业的人，长着大块头，冷嘲热讽的样子，觉得我欠它一个生活。嗯，它总是很喜欢干衣机。我一把衣服拿出来，它就跳进去，那时候里面还是暖暖的。通常我就只烘干一次衣服，但是今天我烘干两次，当我再次伸手进去拿第二次烘干的衣服的时候，我觉得我感觉到了些什么。我想，我哪有皮草衣服呢？”
人们呻吟着、大笑着，惊恐，又面露同情。露丝殷切地看着周围的人们。她感觉好多了。这客厅外面是湖景，室内布置得讲究（有一个自动点唱机、理发店镜子，世纪之交时期的广告，比如“抽烟吧，为你的喉咙想着点”，还有老式丝绸灯罩，农舍的碗具和水壶，原始的面具和雕刻），也就没显得那么不友好了。她又喝了一口她的金酒，她知道现在又迎来了这样一个有限的时光，她感到身体轻快，就像一只蜂鸟一样颇受欢迎，她相信这屋子里有很多风趣的人，很多善良的人，有些人两种品质都具备。
“哦，别这样，我想。但是确实发生了。确实。干衣机里的死亡事故。”
“这是对所有找乐子的人的警告。”她手肘边上，一位尖脸的男人说，她与这位男人浅交数年。他在大学的英语系教书，这家的主人目前也教这个，女主人则是个研究生。
“真可怕。”女主人说，露出那冰冷、直勾勾的敏感眼神。那些笑了的人看上去有点难堪，仿佛他们觉得自己可能显得有点无情了。“你的猫。太可怕了。发生这样的事儿你今晚怎么还能来这里？”
事实上这场意外根本就不是今天发生的，是上个星期发生的。露丝想知道这个女孩是不是想把她摆在不利的位置。她真诚地、带着悔意地说，她并不是很喜欢这只猫，可是这听上去更糟了。她是在解释，她说。
“我觉得可能这是我的错。可能如果我能更喜欢它一点的话，这件事情就不会发生了。”
“当然不会，”坐在她旁边的男人说，“它在干衣机里是想暖和一点。那是爱。啊，露丝！”
“现在你再也不能操那只猫了。”一个露丝之前没有注意到的高个子男孩说。他像是猛地蹦了出来似的，就出现在了她的眼前。“操那只狗，操那只猫，我不知道你干什么，露丝。”
她在想他的名字。她记得他是一个学生，之前的一个学生。
“大卫，”她说，“你好，大卫。”她为自己能想起这名字来很高兴，至于他说了些什么，就不太能进脑子了。
“操那只狗，操那只猫。”他重复道，占了上风。
“你说什么来着？”露丝说，她做出了一个谜样的、可爱的、自我陶醉的表情。她旁边的人们看见这表情都很难调整过来去想那男孩到底说了她什么。那种之前养成的社交情绪、同情心，以及对友好的期待，并不是说停就能停的，尽管这里有一大堆信号暗示事情起了变化，但是却不易被人们接收到。几乎每个人都在笑，似乎那个男孩只是讲了个有趣的故事，或者是演了一个什么角色似的，不过这话的意思一会儿他们也就弄明白了。女主人垂下双眼，悄悄走掉了。
“该问你说什么来着，”那男孩的语气很难听，“说你的事儿，露丝。”他长得很白，看着很脆弱的样子，已经醉得不行。他可能是在一个文雅的家庭长大的，在家里人们会用内急来代替上厕所，打喷嚏的时候会互相保佑对方。
一个矮小强壮、长着黑色鬈发的男人抓住了这男孩肩膀下的手臂。
“别说这事儿了。”他几乎是用一种哄孩子的语气说。虽然露丝对口音并不太懂，但是觉得他说着一种混搭的欧洲口音，主要是法国口音。虽然知之甚少，但她也的确觉得这种口音是来自更加丰富、更加复杂的雄性特质，并不是北美或者像汉拉提这种她出生的地方。它带着一种痛苦、温柔和哄骗的雄性特质。
主人穿着一件丝绒连衣裤出现了，他抓住了男孩的另一边肩膀，多多少少有点象征性的意思，同时还亲吻了露丝的脸颊，因为她进来的时候他没有看见她。“得跟你聊聊。”他嘟哝着，这意思是说他其实希望不用跟她聊什么，因为这里面有太多微妙的话题了。比如去年跟他一起住的那个女孩，还有学期结束的时候跟露丝一起度过的那个夜晚，他们还喝了酒，吹嘘了一番，抱怨人们都失去了信念，还有带着奇怪的侮辱意味但还算愉悦的性爱。他把自己打理得很得体，比以前更瘦，很温和，头发顺滑，穿着一件深绿色的丝绒套装。他只比露丝小三岁，但是瞧瞧他呀。他照料着他的老婆，有一个家，有一栋房子，未来尽管令人沮丧，但是新衣服、新家具，还有连续不断的学生情妇，就能让人过得好。男人就可以做到这样。
“我的天，我的天，”露丝说着，背靠着墙壁，“这是怎么回事呀？”
她身边那位一直在笑的男人朝自己杯子的里面看，说：“啊，真是我们时代的敏感青年！他们的语言多么优雅，他们的感情史多么深刻！我们应该在他们面前鞠躬。”
那位长着一头黑色鬈发的男人回来了，什么话也没有说，只是给了露丝一杯新的酒，拿走了她的杯子。
主人也回来了。
“露丝宝贝。我不知道这个人是怎么进来的。我说过该死的学生不能来。得有个什么地方让他们待着别捣乱。”
“他是去年我们班的一个学生。”露丝说。她能记起来的就是这些了。他觉得他们会认为肯定不仅仅是这样的。
“他是想当演员吗？”在她身边的男人说，“我敢打赌他就是。还记得以前那些好时光吗？以前人人都想当律师、工程师和企业经理人员。他们说这日子已经又要来了。我希望是这样。我虔诚地希望是这样。露丝，我敢打赌你一定听他说过他有什么问题。你一定别听。我打赌你一定这样听说过。”
“哦，或许吧。”
“他们就是抱着想找个爸妈的心态来的。真够庸俗的。他们追着你跑，烦着你，结果突然！现在到了封杀爸妈的时间了！”
露丝喝着酒，靠着墙壁，听他们聊起学生们现在都在想些什么，他们砸你的门，告诉你他们堕胎、尝试自杀、创意枯竭，还有体重问题。他们总是用同一类词：人格、价值和拒绝。
“我不是在抵制你，你这个蠢人，我是不让你过！”那位长着尖脸的小个子男人说道，他回想起跟一个这样的学生胜利的对质。他们大笑了起来。有个年轻女人说：“上帝啊，我那时候上大学可不是这样！你要是在教授办公室提堕胎，就跟你在地板上拉了一样！就跟拉屎一样！”
露丝也大笑起来，但是觉得皮肤之下，整个人醉醺醺的。要是正如他们所怀疑的，他们之前背后发生过什么事情的话，那倒要好些。如果她跟那个男孩睡过，如果她曾经允诺过他一些什么事情，如果她曾经背叛过他，羞辱过他。但是她什么都不记得了。这个人就突然从地底下出现，来指责她。她肯定是做过些什么事情，她记不得了。其实真实的情况是她不记得跟她学生有关的事情了。她殷切而有魅力，给予人们温暖和怀抱，她听人诉说，又给人建议，然后她还记不得他们的名字。她跟他们说过的话，她一句都想不起来。
一个女人碰了碰她的手臂。“醒醒。”她说，那声音有一种偷偷摸摸的亲密感，这让露丝觉得她肯定认识她。又是一位学生？不是，那女人介绍了自己。
“我在写一篇关于女性自杀的论文，”她说，“我是说女性艺术家的自杀。”她说她在电视上见过露丝，一直很想跟她聊聊。她提到了黛安娜•阿勃丝、弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫、西尔维娅•普拉特、安妮•塞克斯顿、克里斯蒂安•普夫卢格。她见识不少。这个人就是她论文里的主要候选对象了，露丝想，她长得憔悴、面无血色、鬼迷心窍的。露丝说她饿了，那位女士跟着她去了厨房。
“还有很多女演员呢——”那女人说，“玛格丽特•沙利文——”
“我现在只是一个老师。”
“哦，别瞎说。我知道你骨子里是一个演员。”
女主人做了面包，光滑的、编成花儿的、表面有些装点的面包。露丝想知道这里面都包含了多少痛苦。这些面包、肉酱，这些悬挂的植物，还有小猫，都代表着那种不稳定的临时家庭生活。她希望，她常常希望自己能承受这些痛苦，能够举行这些仪式，能够强迫她自己，能够自己制作面包。
她注意到这里一群年轻点的人——她觉得他们是学生，尽管那位主人说学生是不让进来的。
这些年轻人有的坐在前台上，有的坐在水槽前。他们用低低的、严肃的声音交谈。其中有一个人看着她。她笑了。但是对方没有回应的笑。其他人也看了看她，继续交谈。她觉得他们一定是在说她，在说这客厅刚刚发生了什么事。她对那个女人说，快点试试面包和肉酱。露丝可能是想让她安静点，这样就能听到对面那帮人在说些什么了。
“我参加聚会从来不吃东西。”
那个女人对待她的方式变得不悦，有点责怪的意思了。露丝知道了这是某个部门的人的妻子。可能邀请她是出于一种政治意图。那么露丝答应她，是不是也是这意图的一种了呢？
“你总是这么饿吗？”那女人说，“你是从来都没病过吗？”
“要是有这么好吃的东西，没错呀。”露丝说。她只是试着举个例子，完全没有嚼或者是吞下去，她正焦虑地听别人在说她什么呢。“不，我不是经常生病。”她说。意识到这一点之后，她还挺吃惊的。她以前常常感冒、流感、痉挛和头痛；那些实打实的病痛现在已经不见了，消退成一种慢性的、惯常的不安、疲乏和恐惧。
净会嫉妒的该死的老顽固。
露丝听到了这句话，她觉得她听到了。他们朝她快速地做出了一个鄙视的表情。她觉得是。
她没法直接看他们。老顽固。说的就是露丝。是吗？是露丝吗？是不是说露丝接受教师这份工作，就是因为她没有找到足够的表演工作来支撑自己的生活，说她找这份教书的工作就是因为她在舞台和电视上的经验不足，结果因为她学历不够，还得在工资上扣点？她想过去跟他们说说这事儿。她想讲讲她的事儿。她想讲那几年的工作，那些筋疲力尽的事，那些旅行、高中礼堂，那些神经紧张、百无聊赖，还有永远不知道下一次钱什么时候能到账的时光。她想恳求他们，这样他们就能原谅她、爱她，把她拉到他们一边。她想站在他们那一边，而不是客厅里跟她从事同一事业的人那边。但这是出于恐惧而做出的选择，并非出于原则。她害怕他们。她害怕他们决绝的道德观，他们冷酷的鄙视神情，害怕他们的秘密、他们的笑声、他们的猥琐。
她想到了安娜，她自己的女儿。安娜十七岁。她有着一头长长的金发，脖子上戴着一条好看的金项链。那实在是一条上好的项链，以至于你得靠近看才能看出来，本来还以为那是润滑明亮的皮肤闪着的亮光呢。她跟这些年轻人不一样，但也同样不合群。她每天都练习芭蕾、骑马，但是并没有计划去参加骑马比赛，或者是做芭蕾舞演员。为什么不去呢？
“因为这样很傻。”
安娜的风格，那上等的项链，还有她的沉默，让露丝想起了她的祖母，帕特里克的妈妈。不过她想，安娜大概只对自己的妈妈那么沉默寡言、难以讨好和无动于衷。
那位有着黑色鬈发的男人站在厨房门口对她做了一个鲁莽、讽刺的神情。
“你知道那是谁吗？”露丝对那位自杀女人说，“那个把喝高了的人带走的男人是谁？”
“那是西蒙。我不知道他是喝高了呢，我以为他嗑药了。”
“他是做什么的？”
“嗯，我觉得他是个学生之类的。”
“不是，”露丝说，“那个男人——西蒙。”
“哦，西蒙。他是在古典系的。我觉得他不是专职的老师。”
“就跟我一样。”露丝说，将她对年轻人露出的微笑对着西蒙做了一遍。尽管疲惫、茫然、脑子不灵光，她仍然能感觉到那种熟悉的刺痛感，觉得承诺这事儿总是没个定数。
如果他对她回笑的话，那么事情就会开始变好。
他的确笑了，那自杀女人尖锐地说了句话。
“瞧，你来参加聚会就是为了遇见男人的吧？”
西蒙十四岁的时候，他和他的姐姐以及另外一个男孩，也是他们的一个朋友，一起躲在运货车厢上，从法国被占区域运送到了未被占领的区域。他们要到里昂去，在那里，帮助犹太儿童的组织会照看他们，把他们领到安全的地方。战争开始的时候，西蒙和他的姐姐已经被送出波兰，跟法国的亲戚待在一起。现在他们要被送走了。
运货汽车停了下来。在乡村某处，火车也静止不动了。他们能听见法国和德国人的声音。前面的车里有些骚乱。他们听见门嘎吱一声打开了，他们听见也感觉到皮靴在撞击着那光秃秃的地板。有人在检查火车。他们在一些粗布袋下面躺下，甚至都没有盖住脸。他们觉得没有希望了。他们听见跑道上靴子踩在砂石上的声音。然后，火车开动了。开得很慢，有一阵他们都没有注意到，甚至以为这只是车在转轨而已。他们以为车会停下来，检查会继续。但是火车继续开动着。开得快些，又快些，按照正常的速度行驶起来，没发生什么大事。他们向前移动着，没有人来检查，他们被运走了。西蒙从来都不知道发生了什么。危险过去了。
西蒙说，当他意识到已经安全的时候，他突然觉得，他们是可以熬过这一关的，现在，什么事情也不会在他们身上发生了，他们会拥有特别的祝福和运气。这已经发生了的事情，对他来说是一个幸运的信号。
露丝问他，他见过自己的朋友或者姐姐吗？
“没有。从来没有。里昂之后就再没有了。”
“所以，这只是你自己的运气而已。”
西蒙大笑了起来。在一个十字路口边的村庄，他们躺在床上，躺在一所老房子里，露丝的床上。聚会过后，他们就直接开车到了那里。那是四月，风是冰冷的，露丝的房子冷飕飕的。
炉子温度不够。西蒙一只手放在床后面的墙纸上，让她感受炉子送的热风。
“这东西得补上点绝缘材料才好。”
“我知道。很糟糕。你得看看我的燃气单子。”
西蒙说她应该用柴火炉。他跟她讲了很多种不一样的木柴。枫树，他说，是一种很不错的燃烧木材。然后他又说了很多种不一样的绝缘材料。有泡沫聚苯乙烯、麦克菲尔和玻璃纤维。
他走下床去，光着身子到处走，看着她家的墙壁。露丝对着他大喊起来。
“我想起来了。是补助金的事。”
“什么？听不见你说话。”
她走下床去，用毛毯把自己裹起来。她站在楼梯上面，说：“那个男孩拿着一份补助金申请书来找我。他想当个剧作家。我是这时候突然想起来了。”
“什么男孩？”西蒙说，“哦。”
“不过我推荐了他。我知道。”事实上她什么人都推荐了。如果说她没看到他们的优点，那么其实她还是相信他们是有优点的，只是她自己看不到而已。
“他肯定是没得到。所以他觉得是我骗了他。”
“嗯，就当你是吧，”西蒙说，他朝下面通往地下室的路看了看，“那是你的权利。”
“我知道。我在那方面是胆小鬼。我讨厌他们的否定。他们都那么清高。”
“他们一点都不清高，”西蒙说，“我得把鞋子穿上，看看你的炉子。你得把你的过滤器给清理清理。他们就是这种风格。对他们也没有什么好害怕的，他们就跟别人一样蠢。他们就是想要权力。很自然的事。”
“但是你面对的这种凶狠毒辣——”露丝得停下来重新把这个词说一遍——“这种凶狠毒辣，仅仅是因为他们有野心吗？”
“不然还有什么？”西蒙爬上楼梯说。他一把抓住那毛毯，跟她裹在一起，啄她的鼻子。“得啦露丝。你羞不羞？我只是一个来看你炉子的可怜伙计。我是来看你地下室的炉子的。这样撞见你可真是不好意思，女士。”她已经知道他的一些个性特点了。这位是谦逊的技工。别的人有些是老哲学家，会对她深深鞠躬；还有日本风，从浴室走出来之后，会嘟哝“记住你终有一死”这样的话。还有疯癫色情狂，他们用鼻子紧挨着她，跳过来又跳过去，朝着她的肚子拍打着，发出胜利的响声。
她在十字路口买了真正的咖啡，不是那种速溶的，还买了真的奶油、培根、冷冻西兰花、一块当地奶酪、罐装蟹肉，他们吃过的长得最好看的西红柿，还有蘑菇、长粒大米。还有香烟。她如今处在一种幸福之中，一种完全自然、不受威胁的幸福之中。如果有人问到，她会说这是因为天气好，尽管狂风呼啸，但天色明亮——也是因为有西蒙，但这些都一样。
“你肯定是带了个伴儿回去。”看店的女人说。她的话语里没有惊讶、恶意或者谴责，只有一种朋友之间的忌妒。
“我可没想着这事儿，”露丝在柜台上又扔下一点杂货。“他们可真烦呢。更别提得花多少钱了。瞧瞧那培根。还有奶油。”
“这事儿我多少能忍着点。”那女人说。
西蒙用买回来的食材做了一顿丰盛的晚餐，露丝什么都没做，就站在一旁看着，然后换床单。
“乡村生活啊，”她说，“已经变了，或者我已经忘记了。我来这的时候带着点想法，想着应该怎么生活。我觉得我会在这荒废的乡间小路上走上很长的时间。一开始我是这么做的，然后我听见后面有一辆车在砂石路上狂奔过来。我可撞大运了。然后我听见枪声。我吓坏了。我躲在灌木丛中，一辆车就呼啸而过，碾过整条路——他们往窗外开枪。我从地里抄了过去，跟那店里的女人说，我觉得我们应该叫警察。她说哦，对，到了周末啊，男孩们就会拿一箱啤酒到车里，打土拨鼠去了。然后她说，你到那条路上去干嘛呢？我能看出来，她会觉得一个人散散步要比去打土拨鼠还值得怀疑。还有很多这种事儿。我不觉得我会留在这，但是我的工作在这里，房租也便宜。不是说她不好，不是说那女人不好。她能算命。用纸牌和茶杯什么的。”
西蒙说他被人从里昂送到了普罗旺斯山间的一个农场干活。那里的人们生活和农耕的感觉很像中世纪。他们不懂法语，不会读，不会写，也不会说。他们要是病了，要么等死，要么就是等着好起来。他们从来没有去看过医生，尽管一位兽医会一年来一次，看奶牛。一把干草叉戳进了西蒙的脚，那伤口开始感染，他发烧了，他想劝人们帮他把隔壁村里的兽医叫来看看病，但是这事儿可不容易。最后他们终于答应了，那兽医过来了，用大大的马针给他注射，他好了些。那家人很是疑惑，不过这方法能在人类身上奏效，他们也觉得有意思。
他说他正在康复的时候，就教他们玩牌。他教的是妈妈和孩子，因为爸爸和祖父动作太慢了，也不情愿，祖母则把自己锁在谷仓的小房子里，每两天随便吃点。
“是真的吗？这可能吗？”
他们正在向对方敞开心扉：欢愉、故事、玩笑和坦白。
“乡村生活！”西蒙说，“但是在这里还行。这间房子可以弄得很舒服。你应该有个花园。”
“这是我另外的一个想法，我试着弄一个花园。但是都干得不太好。我试着种甘蓝，我觉得甘蓝很好看，但是里面钻进了些虫子。虫子把叶子都吃掉了，最后看上去就跟一个鞋带似的，然后它们都变黄了，倒在地上。”
“甘蓝是很难种的。你应该从种点简单的东西开始。”西蒙离开桌子，跑到窗前。“你指给我看，你的花园是在哪个位置。”
“栅栏边上。之前就在那个地方。”
“那样不好，离胡桃树太近了。胡桃树对土壤不好。”
“我不知道呢。”
“嗯，是真的。你得把它种在离房子近的地方。明天我会给你挖个花园。你需要很多肥料。好了。羊粪肥是很好的肥料。你知道附近谁家有羊么？我们搞几袋羊粪肥来，然后计划计划该种些什么，虽然现在还早，但是霜冻也还是有的。你可以先从室内开始，从种子开始。西红柿。”
“我以为你明天一早就要坐公交回去呢。”露丝说。他们是开她的车来的。
“周一是比较轻松的。我打个电话就可以取消。我会告诉办公室里的女孩说我喉咙痛。”
“喉咙痛？”
“类似这种。”
“你在这真好，”露丝真心地说，“不然的话我会老是想着那个男孩。我会试着不去想，但是这事儿就总是会自己冒出来。就在那些毫无防备的时候。我就会一直觉得自己在被羞辱。”
“这是件很小的事，犯不着觉得自己被羞辱。”
“我也这么觉得。这对我影响也不那么大。”
“试着别那么敏感，”西蒙说，他就像是在替她进行理性思考似的，正如为她琢磨这房子和花园，“小萝卜。莴苣叶。洋葱。土豆。你吃土豆吗？”
他走之前，他们做了一个花园的计划。他为她挖好、铺好土壤，虽然最后用牛粪他也欣然接受了。露丝周一得去上班，但是整天都想着他。她看见他在花园里挖土。她看见他裸着身子，往下朝地下室看。一个爱笑的、厚实的男人，毛发很多，很温暖，长着一张皱巴巴的、喜剧演员的脸。她知道她回家的时候，他会说些什么。他会说：“我想我做得让您满意了，妈妈。”然后猛拉一下前额的头发。
他真的就是这么干的，她很开心，喊了出来：“哦，西蒙，你这个傻蛋，你就是我生命中的男人啊！”这是个特殊的时刻，阳光铺洒的时刻。不过她没有想过这样说可能是不明智的。
一周过半，她到店里去，不是买什么东西，是去算命。那女人往她的杯子里面看，说：“哦，你啊！你遇见了能够改变一切的男人！”
“对，我是这么觉得的。”
“他会改变你的人生。哦，老天爷。你不会留在这个地方了。我看到了名誉。我看到了水。”
“这我不知道。我觉得他想把我的房子弄得独一无二。”
“那种改变已经发生了。”
“是的。我知道已经发生了。是的。”
她记不得西蒙再次要来的时候，那些人都说了些什么了。她以为西蒙是在周末来的。她等着他来，出去买些杂货，这次不是当地的小店上，而是跑去几英里外的超市。她希望小店里的女人没有看到她提着一个杂货袋进家门。她想要新鲜蔬菜、牛排和进口的黑莓，卡门贝尔奶酪和梨子。她还买了酒，一套床品，上面印着的是蓝花和黄花的时髦花环。她想着她白晳的腰臀会露出来正对着它们。
周五晚上她把床单铺在床上，蓝色的碗里放着樱桃。酒冷了，奶酪变软了。九点左右传来一阵响亮的敲门声，她原以为这敲门声会搞怪一点的。她很惊讶没有听到他的车声。
“有点孤单了，”店里的女人说，“所以我就想我来坐坐——哦，哦。你在等你的同伴。”
“也不是。”露丝说。听到敲门声的时候她的心就欣喜地怦怦跳，现在还是怦怦跳。“我不知道他什么时候到，”她说，“可能明天来吧。”
“这雨挺混账的。”
那女人的声音听上去亲切又实在，仿佛现在露丝可能需要转移下注意力，需要一些安慰才好似的。
“那我只希望他不会在这大雨中开车。”露丝说。
“没错儿，你不会想让他在这大雨天里开车。”
那位女人用她的手指划过她的灰色短发，把雨水晃出去，露丝知道她应该给她点什么东西。
一杯酒吗？她可能会微醺然后多话，想留在这儿然后把整个瓶子都喝完。露丝跟她聊过很多次，她是那种露丝会表示很喜欢的人，但是露丝现在没心思对她说什么好话。只要不是西蒙，此刻跟谁在一起都一样。任何人出现都显得很突然，很让人心烦。
露丝能想象接下来会发生什么。所有平常的愉悦感，生活里的那种慰藉和消遣都卷铺盖而去了；食物、丁香花、音乐里的欢愉，晚间的雷声，都会消失。除了躺在西蒙身下，什么都没了意义，只有悲痛和狂笑，其他都没了意义。
她决定请她喝茶。她想倒不如把这时间用来再给未来占占卜好了。
“不清晰。”那女人说。
“什么不清晰？”
“今晚我没法得到一个固定的信息。有时这样的事会发生。不，说实在的，我定位不到他。”
“定位不到他？”
“在你的未来里。我被打败了。”
露丝觉得她说这话是出于敌意、出于忌妒。
“嗯，我不只是想着他啦。”
“如果你有一个他的物件的话，我可能会做得好一点，你让我抓着就行。任何他摸过的东西，你有吗？”
“我。”露丝说。这吹嘘虽然不高明，却让这占卜师忍不住大笑起来。
“不，我说真的。”
“那没有。我把他的烟头都给扔了。”
那女人走后，露丝熬夜等他。很快就到午夜了。那雨滂沱而下。再一次看时间，已经是一点五十。这空虚的时间为何过去得那么快？她把灯灭掉，因为她不想让别人看到她在熬夜干等。她没穿衣服，但是不能躺在那新床单上。她坐在厨房里，漆黑的厨房。她一次次地泡新的茶。角落里的街灯照进了房间。这村庄里有些明亮崭新的水银蒸汽灯。她能看见那灯，能看见小店一角，能看见跨过道路的教堂。那教堂已经不再为当年建造了它的谨慎而体面的新教派服务，它宣称自己是一个拿撒勒神庙，也可以说是个神灵中心，不管它是什么吧。这个地方的事情比露丝之前注意到的要更加畸形一些。那些房子里并没有住着退休的农民，事实上这里根本也没有什么可退休的农民，那贫瘠的地里都是些刺柏。人们是到三四十英里之外的地方去上班，在工厂里，在省级精神科医院，或者压根就不工作，他们在犯罪高发的边缘地带过着神秘的生活，或者是在神灵中心的庇护之下生活地井然有序，也极之疯狂。人们的生活当然比原来更加绝望，然而，又有什么比露丝这样年龄的女人，在厨房里坐了整晚，就为等待她的爱人更绝望的呢？此情此景，就是她所创造的，是她一个人造成的，她这样子好像之前都没挨过什么教训似的。她已经把西蒙当作她挂靠希望的木桩，而且她再也不能把他变成他原来的样子了。
错就错在买酒，她想，错在买床单、买奶酪、买樱桃。这些准备工夫都招致了灾难。直到她打开门，那心中的愉悦变成失落，就像挂满了钟的塔突然好笑地变成了一堆生锈的雾角——只是露丝可没觉得这有什么好笑的。至此，她才意识到这是个错误。
在这漆黑的雨夜中，一个接一个小时过去，她想到了之后会发生什么。她会在周末继续等，用借口让自己变得强大些，又被怀疑搞得心生厌恶，为了防止电话铃响，她不会离开房子。
周一她会去上班，用这现实世界冲冲头脑，稍微缓和下来，就有了点勇气给他写个纸条，借故问问古典系的情况如何。
“我想我们可能可以在下周给花园种种东西。我买了一大批种子（这是撒谎的，不过如果能收到他的回应，她的确会去买）。你来的话一定要告诉我，但是如果你有其他计划的话，也别担心。”
然后她就会担心：这里提到其他计划，是不是说得太随意了。可要是不加上这一点，是不是又显得太强迫了？尽管她所有的自信，她的愉快心情都溜走了，她也会试着伪造一下。
“如果在花园里干活感觉太潮湿的话，我们也可以去开车呀。也许我们可以去打一些土拨鼠呢。祝好，露丝。”
然后是更长的等待，周末只是一次随意的试验而已，它是一场正式、普通、痛苦仪式的没章法的序曲。把手伸进信箱拿出信件看都不看一眼，拒绝在五点之前离开学院，把垫子放在电话机上不想看到它，假装心不在焉。怔怔想事情。熬夜到很晚、喝酒，然而她对这愚蠢劲儿还没完全厌倦，还没到要放弃的地步，因为这等待点缀了些绿意和春天般的幻想，这是对他来意的有力证据。这些就够了，在某种程度上，足够让她在心里决定，他一定是病了，不然他肯定不会抛弃她的。她会打电话给金斯敦医院，问问他的情况，然后有人会告诉她，他不是这里的病人。之后就会有一天她跑去学校图书馆，拿出金斯敦论文的备份，查看讣告看看他会不会是死掉了。然后，她完全放弃，她很冷，发着抖，她会打电话到大学里找他。他办公室的女孩会说他已经走了。去了欧洲，去了加利福尼亚，他只在这里教一个学期的书。去露营了，去结婚。
或者她会说“请你等等”，然后就这样把电话给他。
“你好？”
“西蒙吗？”
“是的。”
“我是露丝。”
“露丝？”
这对话肯定没那么激烈直接。会更糟糕一点。
“我本来想打电话给你，”他会说，或者说：“露丝，你还好吗？”或者甚至是：“那花园怎么样了？”
最好别跟他说下去了。但是打电话的时候，她还是把手放在了上面，看看是否也许能通过电话来感受到温暖，或者，去温暖温暖它。
周一天刚破晓的时候，她带上了她觉得需要的东西，放到车后座，锁上门，卡门贝尔奶酪还在厨房的台子上往下渗。她朝西开走了。她想离开几天，直到她后来清醒过来，能够面对这床单、这块正待动工的土地，还有床后面她去感受热风的那个地方，再回来。（如果是这样的话，为什么她还要带上她的靴子和冬衣呢？）她给学院写了一封信——她能在信里扯谎，打电话就不行。她说因为一个亲密的朋友到了疾病晚期，她被叫去了多伦多。（也许她并没有把这个谎扯得多漂亮，也许她写得有点过火了。）整个周末她都没睡着，她喝酒，虽然不多，但一杯杯地喝。我再也不忍了，她大声地说，把东西装上车的时候，她严肃、断然地说。她蜷在前座上写那封信——本可以在家里舒舒服服地写，她想起了自己写过的很多信，她找了多少夸张的借口，都是为了某个男人要离开某个地方或者害怕离开某个地方。没有人知道她有多愚蠢，至于她坐过多少次飞机，这其中有一半的次数，结识她二十年的朋友都是不知道的，他们还不知道她花了多少钱，冒过多少险。
过了一会儿，她开动车，停下挡风玻璃的雨刮，十点到了，雨水终于让周一清晨见了天日，她停下来给车加油，银行开门了，她去取了一笔钱；这时候她信心大增、情绪饱满，该做什么她都记得，谁又会去想她脑子里曾经翻腾起什么屈辱、什么记忆、什么样的猜测呢？这其中最屈辱的事情，就是希望。刚开始，这希望埋下了深深的欺骗性的伏笔，又以诡计掩饰之。不过很快就被识破了。一个星期之内它就能在天堂门口叽叽喳喳地唱起赞歌来了。即便是此刻，这希望都在忙活着，告诉她西蒙可能就在这个时候把车开进她的车道，可能会站在她的门口，双手合拢地祈祷、嘲笑和道歉。记住你终有一死。
即便是这样，即便这是真的，那么到了某一天，到了某一天早上，会发生什么呢？某一天早晨醒来之后，她能够听到他的呼吸，知道他就在身边躺着，他醒了过来，却没有去碰她，她也不能去碰他。女性对身体接触要得太多了（这是她从他那儿学到的，或者说又学到了一次）。女人有着贪婪的温柔，她们的感官并不诚实。她会躺在那里，希望自己能有一些明显的缺陷，有一些能够用羞耻感来围绕和保护着的事情。如果是这样的话，她就会为她的身体，为她裸体日渐败坏的事实感到羞耻，为此身负重担。她的肉体看上去是灾难性的，厚实又坑坑洼洼，发灰又斑斑点点。他的身体则不容置疑，永远不容置疑；他是那个扮演谴责和原谅角色的人，然而她又怎么知道他是不是原谅她了呢？过来，他会跟她说，或者说，走开吧。帕特里克之后，她也并没有能做一个身心自由的人，不再拥有那种力量，可能她已经全部用完了吧，归她所有的自由，她已经全部用完了。
或者，她可能听说他在一个聚会上说：“后来我知道我没事了，我知道这是一个幸运的标志。”他正在把自己的故事说给一个打扮得花枝招展、穿着豹纹绸缎的拙劣的女孩听，或者是更糟糕的，他讲给一个穿着绣花罩衫、留着长发的温柔女孩听，而这个人迟早会拉起他的手，把他从走廊领到一个露丝没法跟去的房间或者风景里。
没错，但是如果这些都不发生，不也是可能的吗？只有善意、只有羊粪肥、只有深春的夜晚和青蛙的叫声，这不都是可能的吗？第一周他没出现，没打电话，可能只是因为时间规划不一样而已，也不是什么坏兆头啊。这么一想，她每二十英里，就会放慢速度，甚至想看有没有什么地方可以掉头回去。然后她并没有这么做，她反而加速了，她想她要开得远一点，看看自己的头脑是否清晰。独自坐在厨房里那失意的感觉再次向她涌来了。然后就是这样，反反复复，仿佛车的后座是磁力推动似的，一会儿缓下来一会儿又发力，缓下来又发力，但是这力量却一直不足以让她调头，过了一会儿她不自觉地感到好奇了，感觉这力量是车子本身使然，她往前开着，仿佛在远远的前方某处，她和这车会摆脱这股力量的控制，她会重新回到刚刚开走的那个瞬间。
所以她继续开。莫斯科卡、湖首大学、马尼托巴边界。有时她在车里睡觉，在路上停下一个小时左右。在莫斯科卡这样睡觉的话太冷了，她入住了一家汽车旅馆。她在路边餐厅吃东西。走进餐厅之前，她梳了梳自己的头发，抹了抹脸，装扮上那副有距离感的、梦幻般的、近视般的表情，当女人们觉得有些男人在看着她们的时候，就会做出这副表情来。虽说西蒙出现在这里实在有点不切实际，但是她似乎并没有排除这个选项。
开出一段距离之后，那股车里的力量的确弱了下来。事情就是这样简单，她之后想——尽管开出这段距离，其实小车、巴士和单车也都能做到；飞机可不行。她开了一整晚的车，直到太阳从她背后升起，她感到平静、清醒，在这些时候你常常会有这种感觉。她走进一家咖啡厅，点了咖啡和煎蛋。她坐在吧台前，看着咖啡吧台后面的平常物事——那里有咖啡壶，有颜色鲜亮、也许已经不新鲜的柠檬和树莓派，他们把冰淇淋和果冻放在厚厚的玻璃餐具里。
那些餐具向她暗示，她的状态已经跟先前不一样了。可如果说它们摆放得恰到好处、利落体面，那便是在歪曲事实。她只能说，处于任何一个爱情阶段的人都不该如此。带着一种大病初愈的感激，她感觉到了它们的坚固和厚实，这分量舒舒服服地在她的大脑和双脚沉了下来。然后她意识到，当她走进这家咖啡店的时候，她脑子里不再有关于西蒙的一丝念想，所以这世界也不再是她可能会遇见他的舞台，这世界，又重新做回自己了。在那拨云见日的半个小时之后，吃过的早餐让她昏昏入睡，她得回汽车旅馆去，她穿着衣服就睡着了，窗帘拉开着，阳光照进来，她想，爱情这件事可真是把你的整个世界都带走了啊，它能把你打点得很好，也能让你活得很差。对她而言，这不应该是，也不曾是一个惊喜；真正的惊喜，就是她是那么地想要，想要求一切都在她身边，她的渴望就像冰淇淋餐具一样厚实而直白，这样一来，她所逃离的那些东西，竟可能不仅仅是失望、失去和解散，而同样是那些庆祝、爱的冲击和眼花缭乱的改变。但即便那令人感觉安全，她也接受不了。不管是用哪种方式，你都是被抢去了些东西——抢去了一个自我平衡的弹簧，抢去了笃定的正直和诚实。她是这么想的。
她给学院写信说，她在多伦多看望临终前的朋友时，遇到了一位旧相识，对方在西海岸给她提供了一份工作，她马上就会去那边。她觉得他们可能会找她麻烦，但是她也理所当然地觉得，他们其实已经懒得去管这事了，因为她的雇佣关系，尤其是她的薪水都不是固定的。她写信给她租房子的中介公司，她写信给店里的那位女人，祝好运，再见了。在希望镇到普林斯顿的高速公路，她从车上走下来，站在海岸山脉的冰雨之中。她感到相对安全了些，精疲力竭，但也清醒了些，尽管被她抛下的一些人不会同意这一点。
她交上了好运。在温哥华她遇到了一位之前认识的男人，对方正在为一部电视剧选演员。这部剧会在西海岸制作，讲的是一个家庭，或者说是个冒牌家庭，都是些古怪之人和漂泊者组成的，他们把盐泉岛的一所老房子当作他们的家，或者是总部。露丝获得了这所房子女房东的角色，那位“冒牌妈妈”。就跟她在信中所写的一样，这是西海岸的一份工作，可能是她从事过的最好工作。她的脸上会用一些特殊的化妆技术，变衰老的技术，那位男化妆师开玩笑说，如果这电视剧成功了，还能再演上几年的话，到时候可就不需要用到这技术了。
在海岸地区，每个人都会用到的词就是“脆弱”。他们会说今天的感觉很脆弱，或者是今天在一个脆弱的状态里。说的可不是我，露丝说，我有一种明显的感觉，我这身上的皮可是马革做的。大草原的风和阳光让她的皮肤变得黝黑而粗粝。她拍拍黝黑的起了皱的脖子，强调“马革”这个词。她已经开始用上她要扮演的这个角色里的一些用词、举动和性格了。
大约一年之后，露丝在一趟不列颠哥伦比亚轮渡的甲板上，穿着一件褪色的毛衣、戴着头巾，慢慢地在救生船之间走过，盯着一位穿着破烂牛仔裤和三角背心、冻得发抖的漂亮女孩。根据剧本所描述，露丝扮演的那位女人很担心这年轻女孩会从船上跳下去，因为她怀孕了。
拍这一幕的时候她吸引了很大一群人。中途休息的时候，他们走向甲板的遮蔽处，穿上外套、喝点咖啡。人群里的一个女人伸出手碰碰露丝的肩膀。
“你不记得我。”她说，事实上露丝的确不记得她。然后这位女人开始讲金斯敦的事情，讲那对举办了聚会的夫妇，甚至讲了露丝那只死去的猫。露丝认出她来了，她就是那个在写自杀论文的女人。但是她看上去很不一样，她穿着昂贵的米色套装，米色和白色围巾围绕在她头发周围。她也不再像以前那样，拖着流苏、邋里邋遢、青筋暴露，看上去那么难以驯服了。
她介绍了她的丈夫，对方向露丝嘟哝了两声，仿佛在说，如果她希望他对自己大呼小叫一番，那么她得另作打算了。他走开了，那个女人说：“可怜的西蒙。你知道，他死了。”
然后她想知道之后这戏还要不要继续拍下去。露丝知道为什么她会问起这事儿。她想凑到这些戏里的背景甚至前景上来，这样她就能给自己的朋友打电话，告诉他们在电视上看她。如果她给那场聚会里的人打电话，她就会告诉他们，她知道这个系列就是纯粹的垃圾，不过就是有人在劝她去演，为了玩玩。
“死了吗？”
那位女人脱下了她的围巾，风吹着她的头发，吹过她的脸。
“胰腺癌。”她说，然后脸朝着风，重新把围巾戴上，戴得更满意一点。露丝觉得她的声音听上去显得颇有见识和心机。“我不知道你了解他多少。”她说。她这话，是为了让露丝想想这位女人有多了解他吗？那心机能帮上她不少忙，她也能用它来丈量胜利。你可能会为她感到遗憾，但是永远不要相信她。露丝没在想那女人说的话，反而在思忖着这事儿。“伤感。”她说，她现在的语气跟办公事似的。她把自己的下巴塞进围巾里，刚好像打成个结。“伤感。他得这病很久了。”
有人在喊露丝的名字，她得回去拍戏了。那女孩没有跳海。在这剧里也没有发生类似的事情。这种危险总是眼看着就要发生，但都没有发生，除非是发生在不时会有一些不重要的、不吸引人的角色身上。人们看着，他们相信自己在可预见的灾难发生时会受到保护，同时在那些重要的转机发生的时候，故事线会扔出一个开放的问题，混乱的状态会需要一个全新的判断和解决方法，在那些不太恰当而令人难以忘怀的场景里，一扇扇窗户会打开。
西蒙的死，就像剧中那些混乱状态那样击中了露丝。这太荒谬，这不公平，竟然连这样大的消息都会迟到，竟然在这样的日子里，露丝都会觉得自己是唯一真正缺乏力量的人。
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In the store, in the old days, Flo used to say she could tell when some woman was going off thetrack. Special headgear or footwear were often the first giveaways. Galoshes flopping open on asummer day. Rubber boots they slopped around in, or men’s workboots. They might say it was onaccount of corns, but Flo knew better. It was deliberate, it was meant to tell. Next might come theold felt hat, the torn raincoat worn in all weathers, the trousers held up at the waist with twine, thedim shredded scarves, the layers of ravelling sweaters.
Mothers and daughters often the same way. It was always in them. Waves of craziness, alwaysrising, irresistible as giggles, from some place deep inside, gradually getting the better of them.
They used to come telling Flo their stories. Flo would string them along. “Is that so?” she wouldsay. “Isn’t that a shame?”
My vegetable grater is gone and I know who took it.
There is a man comes and looks at me when I take my clothes off at night. I put the blind downand he looks through the crack.
Two hills of new potatoes stolen. A jar of whole peaches. Some nice ducks’ eggs.
One of those women they took to the County Home at last. The first thing they did, Flo said,was give her a bath. The next thing they did was cut off her hair, which had grown out like ahaystack. They expected to find anything in it, a dead bird or maybe a nest of baby mouseskeletons. They did find burrs and leaves and a bee that must have got caught and buzzed itself todeath. When they had cut down far enough they found a cloth hat. It had rotted on her head andthe hair had just pushed up through it, like grass through wire.
FLO HAD GOT into the habit of keeping the table set for the next meal, to save trouble. Theplastic cloth was gummy, the outline of the plate and saucer plain on it as the outline of pictures ona greasy wall. The refrigerator was full of sulfurous scraps, dark crusts, furry oddments. Rose gotto work cleaning, scraping, scalding. Sometimes Flo came lumbering through on her two canes.
She might ignore Rose’s presence altogether, she might tip the jug of maple syrup up against hermouth and drink it like wine. She loved sweet things now, craved them. Brown sugar by thespoonful, maple syrup, tinned puddings, jelly, globs of sweetness to slide down her throat. She hadgiven up smoking, probably for fear of fire.
Another time she said, “What are you doing in there behind the counter? You ask me what youwant, and I’ll get it.” She thought the kitchen was the store.
“I’m Rose,” Rose said in a loud, slow voice. “‘We’re in the kitchen. I’m cleaning up thekitchen.”
The old arrangement of the kitchen: mysterious, personal, eccentric. Big pan in the oven,medium-sized pan under the potato pot on the corner shelf, little pan hanging on the nail by thesink. Colander under the sink. Dishrags, newspaper clippings, scissors, muffin tins, hanging onvarious nails. Piles of bills and letters on the sewing-machine, on the telephone shelf. You wouldthink someone had set them down a day or two ago, but they were years old. Rose had comeacross some letters written by herself, in a forced and spritely style. False messengers; falseconnections, with a lost period of her life.
“Rose is away,” Flo said. She had a habit now of sticking her bottom lip out, when she wasdispleased or perplexed. “Rose got married.”
The second morning Rose got up and found that a gigantic stirring-up had occurred in thekitchen, as if someone had wielded a big shaky spoon. The big pan was lodged behind therefrigerator; the egg lifter was in with the towels, the breadknife was in the flour bin and theroasting pan wedged in the pipes under the sink. Rose made Flo’s breakfast porridge and Flo said,“You’re that woman they were sending to look after me.”
“Yes.”
“You aren’t from around here?”
“No.”
“I haven’t got money to pay you. They sent you, they can pay you.” Flo spread brown sugarover her porridge until the porridge was entirely covered, then patted the sugar smooth with herspoon.
After breakfast she spied the cutting board, which Rose had been using when she cut bread forher own toast. “What is this thing doing here getting in our road?” said Flo authoritatively, pickingit up and marching off—as well as anybody with two canes could march—to hide it somewhere, inthe piano bench or under the back steps.
YEARS AGO, Flo had had a little glassed-in side porch built on to the house. From there shecould watch the road just as she used to watch from behind the counter of the store (the storewindow was now boarded up, the old advertising signs painted over). The road wasn’t the mainroad out of Hanratty through West Hanratty to the Lake, any more; there was a highway bypass.
And it was paved, now, with wide gutters, new mercury vapor street lights. The old bridge wasgone and a new, wide bridge, much less emphatic, had taken its place. The change from Hanrattyto West Hanratty was hardly noticeable. West Hanratty had got itself spruced up with paint andaluminum siding; Flo’s place was about the only eyesore left.
What were the things Flo put up to look at, in her little porch, where she had been sitting foryears now with her joints and arteries hardening?
A calendar with a picture of a puppy and a kitten on it. Faces turned towards each other so thatthe noses touched, and the space between the two bodies made a heart.
A photograph, in color, of Princess Anne as a child.
A Blue Mountain pottery vase, gift from Brian and Phoebe, with three yellow plastic roses in it,vase and roses bearing several seasons’ sifting of dust.
Six shells from the Pacific coast, sent home by Rose but not gathered by her, as Flo believed, orhad once believed. Bought on a vacation in the State of Washington. They were an impulse item ina plastic bag by the cashier’s desk in a tourist restaurant.
THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, in black cutout scroll with a sprinkling of glitter. Free gift froma dairy.
Newspaper photograph of seven coffins in a row. Two large and five small. Parents andchildren, all shot by the father in the middle of the night, for reasons nobody knew, in a farmhouseout in the country. That house was not easy to find but Flo had seen it. Neighbors took her, on aSunday drive, in the days when she was using only one cane. They had to ask directions at a gasstation on the highway, and again at a crossroads store. They were told that many people hadasked the same questions, had been equally determined. Though Flo had to admit there wasnothing much to see. A house like any other. The chimney, the windows, the shingles, the door.
Something that could have been a dishtowel, or a diaper, that nobody had felt like taking in, left torot on the line.
Rose had not been back to see Flo for nearly two years. She had been busy, she had beentraveling with small companies, financed by grants, putting on plays or scenes from plays, orgiving readings, in high school auditoriums and community halls, all over the country. It was partof her job to go on local television chatting about these productions, trying to drum up interest,telling amusing stories about things that had happened during the tour. There was nothingshameful about any of this, but sometimes Rose was deeply, unaccountably ashamed. She did notlet her confusion show. When she talked in public she was frank and charming; she had a puzzled,diffi-dent way of leading into her anecdotes, as if she was just now remembering, had not toldthem a hundred times already. Back in her hotel room, she often shivered and moaned, as if shewere having an attack of fever. She blamed it on exhaustion, or her approaching menopause. Shecouldn’t remember any of the people she had met, the charming, interesting people who hadinvited her to dinner and to whom, over drinks in various cities, she had told intimate things abouther life.
Neglect in Flo’s house had turned a final corner, since Rose saw it last. The rooms were pluggedup with rags and papers and dirt. Pull a blind to let some light in, and the blind comes apart in yourhand. Shake a curtain and the curtain falls to rags, letting loose a choking dust. Put a hand into adrawer and it sinks into something soft and dark and rubbishy.
We hate to write bad news but it looks like she has got past where she can look after herself. Wetry to look in on her but we are not so young ourselves any more so it looks like maybe the timehas come.
The same letter, more or less, had been written to Rose and to her half-brother, Brian, who wasan engineer, living in Toronto. Rose had just come back from her tour. She had assumed thatBrian and his wife, Phoebe, whom she saw seldom, were keeping in touch with Flo. After all, Flowas Brian’s mother, Rose’s stepmother. And it turned out that they had been keeping in touch, orso they thought. Brian had recently been in South America but Phoebe had been phoning Floevery Sunday night. Flo had little to say but she had never talked to Phoebe anyway; she had saidshe was fine, everything was fine, she had offered some information about the weather. Rose hadobserved Flo on the telephone, since she came home and she saw how Phoebe could have beendeceived. Flo spoke normally, she said hello, fine, that was a big storm we had last night, yes, thelights were out here for hours. If you didn’t live in the neighborhood you wouldn’t realize therehadn’t been any storm.
It wasn’t that Rose had entirely forgotten Flo in those two years. She had fits of worry abouther. It was just that for some time now she had been between fits. One time the fit had come overher in the middle of a January storm, she had driven two hundred miles through blizzards, pastditched cars, and when she finally parked on Flo’s street, finally tramped up the walk Flo had notbeen able to shovel, she was full of relief for herself and concern for Flo, a general turmoil offeelings both anxious and pleasurable. Flo opened the door and gave a bark of warning.
“You can’t park there!”
“What?”
“Can’t park there!”
Flo said there was a new bylaw; no parking on the streets during the winter months.
“You’ll have to shovel out a place.” Of course Rose had an explosion.
“If you say one more word right now I’ll get in the car and drive back.”
“Well you can’t park—”
“One more word!”
“Why do you have to stand here and argue with the cold blasting into the house?”
Rose stepped inside. Home.
That was one of the stories she told about Flo. She did it well; her own exhaustion and sense ofvirtue; Flo’s bark, her waving cane, her fierce unwillingness to be the object of anybody’s rescue.
AFTER SHE READ THE LETTER Rose had phoned Phoebe, and Phoebe had asked her to cometo dinner, so they could talk. Rose resolved to behave well. She had an idea that Brian and Phoebemoved in a permanent cloud of disapproval of her. She thought that they disapproved of hersuccess, limited and precarious and provincial though it might be, and that they disapproved of hereven more when she failed. She knew it was not likely they would have her on their minds somuch, or feel anything so definite.
She put on a plain skirt and an old blouse, but at the last minute changed into a long dress, madeof thin red and gold cotton from India, the very thing that would justify their saying that Rose wasalways so theatrical.
Nevertheless she made up her mind as she usually did that she would speak in a low voice, stickto facts, not to get into any stale and silly arguments with Brian. And as usual most of the senseseemed to fly out of her head as soon as she entered their house, was subjected to their calmroutines, felt the flow of satisfaction, self-satisfaction, perfectly justified self-satisfaction, thatemanated from the very bowls and draperies. She was nervous, when Phoebe asked her about hertour, and Phoebe was a bit nervous too, because Brian sat silent, not exactly frowning butindicating that the frivolity of the subject did not please him. In Rose’s presence Brian had saidmore than once that he had no use for people in her line of work.
But he had no use for a good many people. Actors, artists, journalists, rich people (he wouldnever admit to being one himself), the entire Arts faculty of universities. Whole classes andcategories, down the drain. Convicted of woolly-mindedness, and showy behavior; inaccurate talk,many excesses. Rose did not know if he spoke the truth or if this was something he had to say infront of her. He offered the bait of his low-voiced contempt; she rose to it; they had fights, she hadleft his house in tears. And underneath all this, Rose felt, they loved each other. But they couldnever stop the old, old competition; who is the better person, who has chosen the better work?
What were they looking for? Each other’s good opinion, which perhaps they meant to grant, infull, but not yet. Phoebe, who was a calm and dutiful woman with a great talent for normalizingthings (the very opposite of their family talent for blowing things up), would serve food and pourcoffee and regard them with a polite puzzlement; their contest, their vulnerability, their hurt,perhaps seemed as odd to her as the antics of comic-strip characters who stick their fingers intolight sockets.
“I always wished Flo could have come back for another visit with us,” Phoebe said. Flo hadcome once, and asked to be taken home after three days. But afterwards it seemed to be a pleasureto her, to sit and list the things Brian and Phoebe owned, the features of their house. Brian andPhoebe lived quite unostentatiously, in Don Mills, and the things Flo dwelt on—the door chimes,the automatic garage doors, the swimming pool—were among the ordinary suburban acquisitions.
Rose had said as much to Flo who believed that she, Rose, was jealous.
“You wouldn’t turn them down if you was offered.”
“Yes I would.”
That was true, Rose believed it was true, but how could she ever explain it to Flo or anybody inHanratty? If you stay in Hanratty and do not get rich it is all right because you are living out yourlife as was intended, but if you go away and do not get rich, or, like Rose, do not remain rich, thenwhat was the point?
After dinner Rose and Brian and Phoebe sat in the backyard beside the pool, where the youngestof Brian and Phoebe’s four daughters was riding an inflated dragon. Everything had goneamicably, so far. It had been decided that Rose would go to Hanratty, that she would make thearrangements to get Flo into the Wawanash County Home. Brian had already made inquiries aboutit, or his secretary had, and he said that it seemed not only cheaper but better-run, with morefacilities, than any private nursing home.
“She’ll probably meet old friends there,” Phoebe said.
Rose’s docility, her good behavior, was partly based on a vision she had been building up allevening, and would never reveal to Brian and Phoebe. She pictured herself going to Hanratty andlooking after Flo, living with her, taking care of her for as long as was necessary. She thought howshe would clean and paint Flo’s kitchen, patch the shingles over the leaky spots (that was one ofthe things the letter had mentioned), plant flowers in the pots, and make nourishing soup. Shewasn’t so far gone as to imagine Flo fitting comfortably into this picture, settling down to a life ofgratitude. But the crankier Flo got, the milder and more patient Rose would become, and who,then, could accuse her of egotism and frivolity?
This vision did not survive the first two days of being home.
“WOULD YOU LIKE a pudding?” Rose said.
“Oh, I don’t care.”
The elaborate carelessness some people will show, the gleam of hope, on being offered a drink.
Rose made a trifle. Berries, peaches, custard, cake, whipped cream and sweet sherry.
Flo ate half the bowlful. She dipped in greedily, not bothering to transfer a portion to a smallerbowl.
“That was lovely,” she said. Rose had never heard such an admission of grateful pleasure fromher. “Lovely,” said Flo and sat remembering, appreciating, belching a little. The suave dreamycustard, the nipping berries, robust peaches, luxury of sherry- soaked cake, munificence ofwhipped cream.
Rose thought that she had never done anything in her life that came near pleasing Flo as thisdid.
“I’ll make another soon.”
Flo recovered herself. “Oh well. You do what you like.”
Rose drove out to the County Home. She was conducted through it. She tried to tell Flo about itwhen she came back.
“Whose home?” said Flo.
“No, the County Home.”
Rose mentioned some people she had seen there. Flo would not admit to knowing any of them.
Rose spoke of the view and the pleasant rooms. Flo looked angry; her face darkened and she stuckout her lip. Rose handed her a mobile she had bought for fifty cents in the County Home CraftsCenter. Cutout birds of blue and yellow paper were bobbing and dancing, on undetectable currentsof air.
“Stick it up your arse,” said Flo.
Rose put the mobile up in the porch and said she had seen the trays coming up, with supper onthem.
“They go to the dining room if they’re able, and if they’re not they have trays in their rooms. Isaw what they were having.
“Roast beef, well done, mashed potatoes and green beans, the frozen not the canned kind. Or anomelette. You could have a mushroom omelette or a chicken omelette or a plain omelette, if youliked.”
“What was for dessert?”
“Ice cream. You could have sauce on it.” “What kind of sauce was there?” “Chocolate.
Butterscotch. Walnut.”
“I can’t eat walnuts.”
“There was marshmallow too.”
OUT AT THE HOME the old people were arranged in tiers. On the first floor were the bright andtidy ones. They walked around, usually with the help of canes. They visited each other, playedcards. They had singsongs and hobbies. In the Crafts Center they painted pictures, hooked rugs,made quilts. If they were not able to do things like that they could make rag dolls, mobiles like theone Rose bought, poodles and snowmen which were constructed of Styrofoam balls, with sequinsfor eyes; they also made silhouette pictures by placing thumbtacks on traced outlines; knights onhorseback, battleships, airplanes, castles.
They organized concerts; they held dances; they had checker tournaments.
“Some of them say they are the happiest here they have ever been in their lives.”
Up one floor there was more television watching, there were more wheelchairs. There werethose whose heads drooped, whose tongues lolled, whose limbs shook uncontrollably.
Nevertheless sociability was still flourishing, also rationality, with occasional blanks and absences.
On the third floor you might get some surprises.
Some of them up there had given up speaking.
Some had given up moving, except for odd jerks and tosses of the head, flailing of the arms, thatseemed to be without purpose or control.
Nearly all had given up worrying about whether they were wet or dry.
Bodies were fed and wiped, taken up and tied in chairs, untied and put to bed. Taking inoxygen, giving out carbon dioxide, they continued to participate in the life of the world.
Crouched in her crib, diapered, dark as a nut, with three tufts of hair like dandelion flosssprouting from her head, an old woman was making loud shaky noises.
“Hello Aunty,” the nurse said. “You’re spelling today. It’s lovely weather outside.” She bent tothe old woman’s ear. “Can you spell weather?”
This nurse showed her gums when she smiled, which was all the time; she had an air of nearlydemented hilarity.
“Weather,” said the old woman. She strained forward, grunting, to get the word. Rose thoughtshe might be going to have a bowel movement. “W-E-A-T-H-E-R.”
That reminded her.
“Whether. W-H-E-T-H-E-R.”
So far so good.
“Now you say something to her,” the nurse said to Rose.
The words in Rose’s mind were for a moment all obscene or despairing.
But without prompting came another.
“Forest. F-O-R-E-S-T.”
“Celebrate,” said Rose suddenly.
“C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E.”
You had to listen very hard to make out what the old woman was saying, because she had lostmuch of the power to shape sounds. What she said seemed not to come from her mouth or herthroat, but from deep in her lungs and belly.
“Isn’t she a wonder,” the nurse said. “She can’t see and that’s the only way we can tell she canhear. Like if you say, ‘Here’s your dinner.’ she won’t pay any attention to it, but she might startspelling dinner,
“Dinner,” she said, to illustrate, and the old woman picked it up. “D-I-N-N …” Sometimes along wait, a long wait between letters.
It seemed she had only the thinnest thread to follow, meandering through that emptiness orconfusion that nobody on this side can do more than guess at. But she didn’t lose it, she followedit through to the end, however tricky the word might be, or cumbersome. Finished. Then she wassitting waiting; waiting, in the middle of her sightless eventless day, till up from somewherepopped another word. She would encompass it, bend all her energy to master it. Rose wonderedwhat the words were like, when she held them in her mind. Did they carry their usual meaning, orany meaning at all? Were they like words in dreams or in the minds of young children, each onemarvelous and distinct and alive as a new animal? This one limp and clear, like a jellyfish, that onehard and mean and secretive, like a horned snail. They could be austere and comical as top hats, orsmooth and lively and flattering as ribbons. A parade of private visitors, not over yet.
SOMETHING WOKE ROSE early the next morning. She was sleeping in the little porch, the onlyplace in Flo’s house where the smell was bearable. The sky was milky and brightening. The treesacross the river due to be cut down soon, to make room for a trailer park—were hunched againstthe dawn sky like shaggy dark animals, like buffalo. Rose had been dreaming. She had beenhaving a dream obviously connected with her tour of the Home the day before.
Someone was taking her through a large building where there were people in cages. Everythingwas dim and cobwebby at first, and Rose was protesting that this seemed a poor arrangement. Butas she went on the cages got larger and more elaborate, they were like enormous wicker birdcages,Victorian birdcages, fancifully shaped and decorated. Food was being offered to the people in thecages and Rose examined it, saw that it was choice; chocolate mousse, trifle, Black Forest Cake.
Then in one of the cages Rose spotted Flo, who was handsomely seated on a throne-like chair,spelling out words in a clear authoritative voice (what the words were, Rose, wakening, could notremember) and looking pleased with herself, for showing powers she had kept secret till now.
Rose listened to hear Flo breathing, stirring, in her rubble-lined room. She heard nothing. Whatif Flo had died? Suppose she had died at the very moment she was making her radiant, satisfiedappearance in Rose’s dream? Rose hurried out of bed, ran barefoot to Flo’s room. The bed therewas empty. She went into the kitchen and found Flo sitting at the table, dressed to go out, wearingthe navy blue summer coat and matching turban hat she had worn to Brian’s and Phoebe’swedding. The coat was rumpled and in need of cleaning, the turban was crooked.
“Now I’m ready for to go,” Flo said.
“Go where?”
“Out there,” said Flo, jerking her head. “Out to the whattayacallit.
The Poorhouse.”
“The Home,” said Rose. “You don’t have to go today.”
“They hired you to take me, now you get a move on and take me,”
Flo said.
“I’m not hired. I’m Rose. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“You can make it. I won’t drink it.”
She made Rose think of a woman who had started in labor.
Such was her concentration, her determination, her urgency. Rose thought Flo felt her deathmoving in her like a child, getting ready to tear her. So she gave up arguing, she got dressed,hastily packed a bag for Flo, got her to the car and drove her out to the Home, but in the matter ofFlo’s quickly tearing and relieving death she was mistaken.
SOME TIME BEFORE THIS, Rose had been in a play, on national television. The TrojanWomen. She had no lines, and in fact she was in the play simply to do a favor for a friend, whohad got a better part elsewhere. The director thought to liven all the weeping and mourning byhaving the Trojan women go bare-breasted. One breast apiece, they showed, the right in the caseof royal personages such as Hecuba and Helen; the left, in the case of ordinary virgins or wives,such as Rose. Rose didn’t think herself enhanced by this exposure—she was getting on, after all,her bosom tended to flop—but she got used to the idea. She didn’t count on the sensation theywould create. She didn’t think many people would be watching. She forgot about those parts ofthe country where people can’t exercise their preference for quiz shows, police- car chases,American situation comedies, and are compelled to put up with talks on public affairs and tours ofart galleries and ambitious offerings of drama. She did not think they would be so amazed, either,now that every magazine rack in every town was serving up slices and cutlets of bare flesh. Howcould such outrage fasten on the Trojan ladies’ sad-eyed collection, puckered with cold thenrunning with sweat under the lights, badly and chalk- ily made- up, all looking rather foolishwithout their mates, rather pitiful and unnatural, like tumors?
Flo took to pen and paper over that, forced her stiff swollen fingers, crippled almost out of usewith arthritis, to write the word Shame. She wrote that if Rose’s father had not been dead long agohe would now wish that he was. That was true. Rose read the letter, or part of it, out loud to somefriends she was having for dinner. She read it for comic effect, and dramatic effect, to show thegulf that lay behind her, though she did realize, if she thought about it, that such a gulf wasnothing special. Most of her friends, who seemed to her ordinarily hard-working, anxious, andhopeful, people, could lay claim to being disowned or prayed for, in some disappointed home.
Halfway through, she had to stop reading. It wasn’t that she thought how shabby it was, to beexposing and making fun of Flo this way. She had done it often enough before; it was no news toher that it was shabby. What stopped her was, in fact, that gulf; she had a fresh and overwhelmingrealization of it, and it was nothing to laugh about. These reproaches of Flo’s made as much senseas a protest about raising umbrellas, a warning against eating raisins. But they were painfully,truly, meant; they were all a hard life had to offer. Shame on a bare breast.
Another time, Rose was getting an award. So were several other people. A reception was beingheld, in a Toronto hotel. Flo had been sent an invitation, but Rose had never thought that shewould come. She had thought she should give someone’s name, when the organizers asked aboutrelatives, and she could hardly name Brian and Phoebe. Of course it was possible that she did,secretly, want Flo to come, wanted to show Flo, intimidate her, finally remove herself from Flo’sshade. That would be a natural thing to want to do.
Flo came down on the train, unannounced. She got to the hotel. She was arthritic then, but stillmoving without a cane. She had always been decently, soberly, cheaply, dressed, but now itseemed she had spent money and asked advice. She was wearing a mauve and purple checkedpants suit, and beads like strings of white and yellow popcorn. Her hair was covered by a thickgray-blue wig, pulled low on her forehead like a woollen cap. From the vee of the jacket, and itstoo-short sleeves, her neck and wrists stuck out brown and warty as if covered with bark. ‘Whenshe saw Rose she stood still. She seemed to be waiting—not just for Rose to go over to her but forher feelings about the scene in front of her to crystallize.
Soon they did.
“Look at the Nigger!” said Flo in a loud voice, before Rose was anywhere near her. Her tonewas one of simple, gratified astonishment, as if she had been peering down the Grand Canyon orseen oranges growing on a tree.
She meant George, who was getting one of the awards. He turned around, to see if someone wasfeeding him a comic line. And Flo did look like a comic character, except that her bewilderment,her authenticity, were quite daunting. Did she note the stir she had caused? Possibly. After thatone outburst she clammed up, would not speak again except in the most grudging monosyllables,would not eat any food or drink any drink offered her, would not sit down, but stood astonishedand unflinching in the middle of that gathering of the bearded and beaded, the unisexual and theunashamedly un-Anglo-Saxon, until it was time for her to be taken to her train and sent home.
ROSE FOUND THAT WIG under the bed, during the horrifying clean-up that followed Flo’sremoval. She took it out to the Home, along with some clothes she had washed or had dry-cleaned,and some stockings, talcum powder, cologne, that she had bought. Sometimes Flo seemed to thinkRose was a doctor, and she said, “I don’t want no woman doctor, you can just clear out.” Butwhen she saw Rose carrying the wig she said, “Rose! What is that you got in your hand, is it adead gray squirrel!?”
“No,” said Rose, “it’s a wig.”
“What?”
“A wig,” said Rose, and Flo began to laugh. Rose laughed too. The wig did look like a dead cator squirrel, even though she had washed and brushed it; it was a disturbing-looking object.
“My God, Rose, I thought what is she doing bringing me a dead squirrel! If I put it onsomebody’d be sure to take a shot at me.”
Rose stuck it on her own head, to continue the comedy, and Flo laughed so that she rocked backand forth in her crib.
When she got her breath Flo said, “What am I doing with these damn sides up on my bed? Areyou and Brian behaving yourselves? Don’t fight, it gets on your father’s nerves. Do you know howmany gallstones they took out of me? Fifteen! One as big as a pullet’s egg. I got them somewhere.
I’m going to take them home.” She pulled at the sheets, searching. “They were in a bottle.”
“I’ve got them already,” said Rose. “I took them home.”
“Did you? Did you show your father?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, that’s where they are then,” said Flo, and she lay down and closed her eyes.
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在过去的日子里，在店里的时候，弗洛会说，她能听出女人们从小道上走下来的声音。她们特别的帽子和鞋子总是第一个走漏风声。夏天到来，长筒橡胶套鞋吧嗒吧嗒地踩在地板上。
胶靴，男人的工装靴，就这么踩着。人们会说那是因为踩到了地上的玉米，但是弗洛知道更多。这声音是故意弄出来。然后出场的是旧毡帽，还有在任何时候都会穿上的破旧雨衣，用麻绳束在腰上的长裤，颜色暗淡的碎布围巾，还有松松垮垮的毛线衫。
妈妈和女儿们都差不多。从远远的地方传来一阵难以抑制的疯疯癫癫的笑声，调门越来越高，直至无法自控。她们总是这样。
她们总是过来跟弗洛讲她们的故事。弗洛则在一边搭腔。“真的吗？”她会说，“太可惜了吧。”
我的刨丝刀不见了，我知道是谁拿走的。
晚上我脱衣服的时候，有个男人跑过来瞅我。我把百叶窗拉上，他就从缝里瞄。
两个小山丘新种的土豆都被偷啦。一整罐桃子啊。还有很好的鸭蛋啊。
其中有个女人，他们最后带去了养老院。他们做的第一件事，弗洛说，就是给她洗个澡。第二件事就是给她剪头发，那头发长得都跟干草堆似的了。他们觉得还可以在那头发上找点什么，比如一只死鸟或者是一个堆着幼鼠骷髅的窝。不过他们确实找到了些小种子和小叶子，还有一只被抓毙命的嗡嗡的蜜蜂。当他们把头发剪到差不多的时候，就在那上面发现了一顶布帽子。那帽子在她的头上已经烂掉，头发正好穿过了帽子，就像杂草穿过电线，交错排布。
弗洛已经养成了习惯，为下一顿先把桌子摆好，省点麻烦。塑料桌布黏黏的，餐碟和茶托的轮廓清晰地印在上面，仿佛这轮廓是在一面油油的墙上勾勒出来似的。冰箱里全都是零零碎碎的东西，有含硫的食品、肉类、谷类、豆类，黑乎乎、毛茸茸的。有时候弗洛吃力地撑着那两条拐杖走过来。她可能完全忽视了露丝的存在，拿枫糖浆的罐子碰碰自己的嘴巴，然后像酒一样喝了起来。她现在很喜欢甜食，简直痴迷。一满勺红糖、枫糖浆、罐装的布丁、果冻，甜味涓涓滑向她的喉咙。她已经戒烟了，大概是害怕起火的缘故。
另外一次她说：“你在那柜台后面站着干嘛？你跟我说你要什么，我就去帮你拿呀。”她以为那厨房是店铺。
“我是露丝，”露丝大声地、慢慢地说，“我们在厨房呢。我在打扫厨房呢。”
这是厨房一直以来的摆设，有一种神秘的、私人的、古怪的感觉。大平底锅放在烤箱上，中等大小的平底锅放在角落架子上，土豆盆底下，小平底锅挂在水槽旁的钉子上。滤锅放在水槽下面。洗碗布、剪报、剪刀、松饼罐头，挂在不同的钉子上。电话架子上放着缝纫机，那里有一堆堆的电费单和信件。你会以为这是一两天前放在上面的，其实已经颇有些年月了。
露丝也看到过一些她自己写的信，那信里有一种不自然的活泼。错误的送信人，错误的联系点，那是她人生中一段遗失的时期。
“露丝出去了。”弗洛说。她现在有个习惯，就是如果她感到不高兴或者困惑，就会把自己的下嘴唇往外伸。“露丝结婚了。”
第二天早上露丝起床的时候，发现整个厨房发生了重大混乱事件，就像有人摇晃着大勺子在这狂舞了一通似的。大平底锅被甩到了冰箱后面夹住，夹蛋器跟毛巾混在一起，面包刀藏在面粉箱里，烤盘挤进了水槽下面的管子里。露丝给弗洛做了早餐粥，弗洛说：“你就是他们派来照顾我的那个女人。”
“是的。”
“你不是住在这附近的吗？”
“不是。”
“我没钱付给你。他们派你来的，他们给你钱。”
弗洛把红糖撒在粥上面，直到粥将其全部淹没，然后用勺子轻轻拍打。
早上她勘查了一下刀板，露丝一直用这刀板来切她自己的吐司。“这玩意儿干嘛在这挡我们的道？”弗洛宣判之后，把它拿起来，大步走开——拄着两根拐杖的那种大步走开，然后将它藏到某处，钢琴椅子或者后踏板下面。
多年以前，弗洛房子外有一个小小的门廊，四周是玻璃围住的。从那儿她可以看到马路，就像以前站在店里的柜台后也可以看到外面一样（但是店里的窗户已经被遮挡了视线，有个旧旧的广告标志画在了上面）。这里本来有一条从西汉拉提通往湖那边的高速支路，如今也已经不复存在。路重新铺过了，两侧挖了宽宽的沟渠，竖着水银蒸汽路灯。旧的桥不见了，一座崭新、宽阔，却不那么鲜艳的桥取代了它的位置。从汉拉提到西汉拉提发生的变化并不那么容易让人注意到。西汉拉提的街道被涂上了油彩，两旁都是铝墙板，弗洛那个屋子，是唯一刺眼的地方了。
在那个小门廊旁边坐了几年，坐到关节和动脉硬化的弗洛，都在看些什么呢？
她看上面有小狗和小猫的日历。它们的脸朝向对方，鼻子碰鼻子，身体之间的空隙刚好形成一个爱心。
安妮公主还小的时候的一张彩色照片。
还有悉尼蓝山的陶器花瓶。这是布莱恩和菲比送来的礼物，上面插有三枝塑料玫瑰花，现在，花和瓶都已经染上几年的尘埃。
还有太平洋海岸的六只贝壳。弗洛觉得，或者说曾经觉得，这并不是露丝自己捡回来的。是在华盛顿州度假的时候买的。是在一家游客餐厅收银台的塑料包装袋里，被人心血来潮放进去的。露丝只是把它寄回了家。
“上帝是我的牧羊人”，这句话印在了一张裁切下来的黑色卷轴上，周围洒上了金色星点。买乳制品时候的赠品。
还有新闻照片，七个灵柩排成一列。两个大的，五个小的。乡村一个农舍里，大人和小孩，都被父亲在半夜枪杀，没人知道原因。在一个周日，她的邻居带上她驱车过去看个究竟，那时她还只需用一根拐杖。他们在高速路上的加油站问了问方向，在十字路口的店铺又问了一次。他们听说很多人也都问了同一个问题，也都一样坚决地刨根问底。不过弗洛也得承认，那里真没什么好看的。没什么特别的房子。烟囱、窗户、木瓦、房门。有些可能是洗碗布或者尿布之类的东西，似乎没人要带进屋子里去，所以就留在划出的线上随它腐烂去了。
露丝已经两年没有回去看弗洛了。她很忙，她一直随小公司旅行，接受各方拨款，在全国各地的高中体育馆或者社区会堂组织话剧或者演一些话剧，或者举办朗诵会。在电视上谈论这些制作，引起大家的兴趣，讲一些巡演过程中发生的趣事，是她工作的一部分。这没什么丢人的，但有时候露丝会感到深深的、不可名状的羞愧。但是她没有表现出自己的困惑。当她在公共场合发言的时候，她是坦率而富有魅力的，她会用一种含混、腼腆的方式讲她那些趣事，仿佛她只是刚刚记起，而不是早就说过几百遍了。回到酒店，她就常常发抖、呻吟，好像被一场高烧侵袭一般。她觉得这是工作精疲力尽所造成，或者是因为自己快要到来的绝经期。她想不起自己见过的任何人了，包括那些有魅力又有趣的人——在不同的城市里，他们曾邀请她共进晚餐，喝酒的时候，她又曾将心底的秘密和盘托出。
自从露丝来过之后，弗洛这所无人照看的房子就翻到了最后一篇。屋里飞扬着碎布、纸张和灰尘。要是拉拉窗帘让阳光进来呢，那窗帘就能整个撕裂落到你手上。摇摇窗帘，就会碎成破布，掀起一片呛人的尘埃。将一只手放进抽屉，就能浸入软绵绵、黑乎乎、尽是碎片的废物堆中。
我们不想写坏消息，但是好像她已经过了可以自我照看的年龄。我们试着照看她，不过我们自己也不再年轻了，所以也许现在是时候了。
同一封信，或者是相同意思的信，寄给了露丝和她同父异母的兄弟布莱恩。布莱恩是一位工程师，住在多伦多。露丝也刚刚巡回演出回来。她觉得布莱恩和他的妻子菲比是跟弗洛有联系的，虽然他俩不常见面。毕竟弗洛是布莱恩的亲生母亲，露丝的继母。事实如此，他们确实在保持联系，或者是他们自己以为是在保持联系。布莱恩最近在南美，不过菲比每个星期天晚上都跟弗洛打电话。弗洛话很少，不过反正她也没什么要跟菲比说的。她说她过得挺好，一切都好，她还提供了当地天气如何的信息。露丝回家之后，她观察了下弗洛打电话的样子，就知道菲比是怎样被骗了的。弗洛用很正常的语调说，她说你好，很好，昨天有大暴风雨，是的，路灯灭了几个小时。如果你没住在这附近你也不会意识到这儿有什么暴风雨。
在那两年的时间里，露丝并不是忘记了弗洛。她有时会思念爆发，会非常想念她。只不过她现在是处于两次发作之间。有一次她思念爆发了，在一月的狂风乱作之中，她开车两英里，顶着暴风雪，路过倒向沟渠的汽车，最终在弗洛那条街道上停下。她终于踩上了那条弗洛不能铲平的道路，她松了一口气，对弗洛她情感杂陈，满满的挂念、焦虑和欣喜。弗洛开门，给了她一个厉声警告。
“你不能在这停车！”
“什么？”
“不能在这停车！”
弗洛说有一个新的地方法规，冬天不能把车停在街道上。
“你得把这地方铲出个位置来。”
当然，露丝也爆发了。
“你再说一遍我马上就进车里开回去。”
“可是你不能停在——”
“你再说一遍！”
“你干嘛站在这跟冷飕飕的风吵架，争着谁先进去呀？”
露丝进去了。家。
这是她讲的其中一个关于弗洛的故事。她讲得很好，讲她的筋疲力尽，她的道德自觉；讲弗洛大吼一声，挥动拐杖，讲她对于任何拯救的对象都表现得如何不情愿。
读完信之后，露丝打电话给菲比，菲比就邀请她吃晚餐聊聊。露丝决定要在他们面前表现得好一点。她觉得布莱恩和菲比处在一种对她持否定的永恒状态之中。她觉得他们否定她的成功，尽管这成功也许是狭隘、飘渺、局限了些，而当她失败的时候，那否定也就更严重了。
她也知道，他们不会太把她放在心上，或者对她有什么实在的感觉。
她穿上一条朴素的裙子和旧衬衫，但是最后一分钟换成了一条长裙，材质是红色和金色的薄棉，来自印度。这打扮恰好能证实他们的一种说法：露丝啊，总是这么浮夸。
无论如何，她已经下定决心，就跟往常一样，低声说话，只谈事实，不会跟布莱恩进行任何陈腐而愚蠢的争论。然而也跟往常一样，走进他们的房子之后，大部分自持的感觉也就无影无踪了，她已经屈从于那屋内的平静日常，她能感觉到那些从餐具和纺织品蔓延开来的满足感、自我满足感、可以自圆其说的自我满足感。当菲比问到关于巡回演出的事情时，她很紧张，菲比也有一点紧张，因为布莱恩坐在那儿一言不发，不一定是在皱眉头，但是在暗示：
谈论这个轻浮的话题让他感到不快。当着露丝的面，布莱恩不止一次说过，她那条工作线上的人，对他来说不顶什么用。但是很多人对他来说也不顶什么用。演员、艺术家、记者、有钱人（他从来不会承认自己就是有钱人），大学全体艺术领域教职工。整个阶级、整个学科，见鬼去吧。都犯下了思维混乱、行为浮夸、言语不清、界限模糊的过错。露丝不知道这是真心话，还是故意在她面前说的。他那低低声音里透露出的一丝轻蔑，令她警觉并反驳，他们吵架，她被留在屋子里哭泣。但在这些事情的深层内部，露丝感觉他们是爱对方的。他们永远都不会停止那古老的竞争：谁更好，谁找到了一份更好的工作？谁在追求什么目标？
他们各自有好想法，或许本想互相充分交流的，只是尚未开始。菲比是个平静又负责任的女人，有一种大事化小的能力（跟擅长把事情闹大的这家子人完全不同），她会送上食物，倒上咖啡，礼貌地看待这两位不解之谜，看他们之间的竞争，他们的脆弱，他们的伤痛，对她而言，看起来就像连环画角色把自己的手指插进插座一样古怪而可笑。
“我总是希望弗洛能够再过来一次。”菲比说。弗洛曾经来过一次，三天之后就说要回家了。
不过那之后她就挺开心的了，她会坐在那儿逐个数布莱恩和菲比的东西，说他们房子都有什么特点。布莱恩和菲比在唐米尔斯生活得并不铺张，弗洛看到的那些东西——门铃、自动车库门、游泳池，也都是郊区平常人家拥有的东西而已。露丝对弗洛说过的不少话，弗洛都当作是露丝的嫉妒。
“如果人家请了你去，你是不会拒绝的。”
“我会。”
这是真的，露丝相信的确如此，但是她该如何向汉拉提的人或者弗洛解释这件事情呢？如果你就住在汉拉提，没什么钱也情有可原，但是如果你非要到外面去生活，还没什么钱，或者是像露丝这种，后来变得没什么钱，这又是怎么一回事呢？
晚饭过后，露丝、布莱恩和菲比坐在游泳池旁边的院子里，布莱恩和菲比四个女儿中最小的那个，正坐在一条充气龙上面。到此为止，大家都很和睦。大家决定，露丝该去汉拉提看看，然后安排弗洛住在瓦瓦诺许的养老院里。布莱恩已经咨询过这件事了，要么是他的秘书问过，他说这个地方不仅仅是更便宜，还比其他私人疗养院管理更好，有更多的设备。
“她可能会在那儿见到一些老朋友。”菲比说。
露丝顺从和得体的表现，有一部分是建立在她那天晚上想象的场景之上的，不过她不会把这点对布莱恩和菲比流露出来。她想象着自己去汉拉提看弗洛，跟她一起生活，照顾她，能多久就多久。她想象自己如何清理弗洛的厨房，给它上漆，补上木瓦漏了的地方（信里就是这么提到的），在壶里种花，做有营养的汤。她还没有去想象弗洛如何适应这布置好的家，安心度过这满怀感激的余生。但是弗洛越是暴躁，露丝就会越平和，越耐心，然后，谁又会说她妄自尊大、轻浮草率呢？
回家之后头两天，这想象就已经站不住脚了。
“你想吃布丁吗？”露丝说。
“哦，无所谓。”
那事不关己的冷漠。如果奉上一杯饮品，或许倒会有一丝希望。
露丝做了个松糕。有浆果、桃子和蛋奶糊的糕点，打上奶油和甜雪利酒。
弗洛吃了半份。她馋嘴地直接在盘上吃，都没舀到更小的碗里来。
“真美味。”她说。露丝从来没有听她用过这种肯定词汇。“美味。”弗洛坐在那里回味着，打个小嗝。甜软的蛋奶糊，玲珑的小浆果，结实的桃子，浸透了雪利酒的美好，打上了奶油的丰盈。
露丝想这辈子都还没遇到一个能令弗洛如此愉悦的东西。
“我马上就再做一个。”
弗洛又平静下来了。“哦，好吧。你爱做什么做什么。”
露丝开车去养老院。有人向她介绍了一圈。回来之后，她想跟弗洛说说这事。
“谁家？”弗洛问。
“不是，是养老院。”
露丝说有她认识的人在那儿。弗洛不会承认她认识他们的。露丝说那里的风景不错，房间也敞亮。弗洛看上去很生气，她的脸一沉，嘴巴嘟起来。露丝把一个花了25分钱在养老院工艺中心买的风铃给了她。黄色的纸张，蓝色的小鸟，在微不可查的风里转动着、舞蹈着。
“挂上去吧你这笨蛋。”弗洛说。
露丝把风铃挂在门廊上面，还说她看见了托盘，晚餐是放在上面的。
“如果可以的话他们会去餐厅，但是如果他们不能去的话，在房间里有托盘。我见过他们吃的东西。
“烤牛肉，全熟的，土豆泥，还有四季豆，冷冻的，不是那种罐装的。或者蛋饼。你可以要一个蘑菇蛋饼或者是鸡肉蛋饼，光要一个蛋饼也行，如果你喜欢。”
“点心是什么？”
“冰淇淋。你可以放调味酱。”
“有什么样的调味酱？”
“巧克力。奶油糖果。核桃。”
“我吃不了核桃。”
“还有果汁软糖呢。”
养老院的老人们分成几排住下。一层住着的是那些干净整洁的人。他们会四处走走，常常拄着拐杖。他们串门、玩牌。他们有自己的调调和爱好。在公益中心，他们画画、编织地毯、缝被子。如果他们做不了这些，也可以去做布娃娃，做露丝买的那种风铃，还有用泡沫小球做成的小狗和雪人，亮片当作眼睛。他们还会做映衬其中的场景，比如照着圈定的轮廓钉上图钉：比如在马背上、战场上、飞机上、城堡上放置一个骑士。
他们组织音乐会，一起跳舞，还有跳棋比赛。
“有些人说这里是他们这辈子最开心的时光。”
再上一层呢，就有更多电视可看、更多轮椅了。那里的人脑袋垂着，舌头伸着，胳膊摇着，失去控制。然而社交能力仍然管用，理智仍然清晰，只是间或茫然或者失神。
三楼你就可能会发现些惊喜了。
他们有些人已经放弃讲话了。
有些人已经放弃了移动，只有那些奇怪的动作，摇头晃脑、胡乱摆臂，看上去似乎毫无目的，控制不了。
几乎所有人都已经放弃了担心自己身体是干是湿。
有人喂他们进食，替他们擦身子，把他们搬上轮椅，然后绑上，松开又搬回床上去。吸入氧气，呼出二氧化碳，他们继续参与这世界的生命活动。
一位老女士发出了响亮的颤抖的声音，她蜷缩在有围栏的床上，裹着尿布，头发像顶着三堆破土而出的蒲公英，黑乎乎的，她像个疯子一样。
“你好阿姨，”护士说，“你今天要拼写呢。外面天气不错。”她弯腰凑近老女士的耳旁。“你能拼天气这个词吗？”
这位护士笑的时候会露出她嘴里的口香糖，她嘴里老是有口香糖。她有一种近乎狂喜的欢快感。
“天气。”老女士说。她嘟嘟哝哝，全身绷紧，为了抓到那个词。露丝觉得她这个样子也许是想去上厕所。“W-E-A-T-HE-R。”
这还提醒了她另外一个词呢。
“Whether，W-H-E-T-H-E-R。”
一切还好。
“你给她想个什么词吧。”护士对露丝说。
露丝脑子里的词在这一会儿全都不见了，要么就是那些特别绝望的词。
不过没再多想就正好出来了一个。
“Forest。F-O-R-E-S-T。”
“庆祝。”露丝突然说。
“C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E。”
你得很仔细听，才能听出来这位老女士在说什么，因为她已经没什么力气发出有区别的音了。她说出来的话听上去不是来自嘴巴或者嗓子，而是来自深深的肺部或者是肚子。
“她可真是个奇迹啊，对吧，”护士说，“她看不见，那是我们唯一能知道她还能听见的方法了。好比如果你说，‘你的晚餐来了’，她是不会注意的，但是她可能会开始拼‘晚餐’这个单词。”
“晚餐。”她说出这个词来，以便演示。老女士抓到了。
“D-I-N-N……”有时候会有很长的停顿，两个字母之间的长停顿。她似乎只跟随着最薄弱的那条思路，歪歪扭扭地穿过一片空白和困惑，除了猜测，没有人能多为此做些什么。但是她并没有跟丢，她跟着那思路到了尽头，不管这词有多狡猾，多繁琐，她跟住了。完成了。然后她就坐在那里等着、等着，在那无事发生、无事可看的白天，直到哪儿再出现了另外一个词。她将它包围，动用全身之力去制服它。露丝想知道当她脑子里浮现那些词的时候，都会浮现出什么图像来。它们还是原来的意思吗，或者说它们的词义还在吗？它们是像梦中，或者是孩子脑中的词一样，每一个都像新生动物一般奇异、独特而富有活力吗？这个词清澈又柔软，就像水母一样，那个词坚硬、神秘而不友善，就像长角的蜗牛。它们能像高帽子一样干练而滑稽，或者缎带一样柔软、活泼又谄媚。就像一队隐密的拜访者，一切还没结束呢。
露丝第二天早上被吵醒了。她在小门廊那儿睡着了，那是弗洛的房子里唯一味道还能忍受的地方。天色朦胧，开始被照亮。河对岸的树刺向破晓的天空，像一些乱蓬蓬、黑乎乎的动物，比如水牛——不过那树很快就要被砍掉了，那儿要建个停车场。露丝那时候在做梦。她做的梦很明显是跟她前一天去养老院转过一圈有关。
有人带她到一座大楼里去参观，那里的人都在笼子里住着。一开始是光线暗淡、蛛网密布的感觉，露丝抗议说这笼子摆放似乎不妥。但是她越往前走，那些笼子也就越大、越有规律了，像柳条编的巨大鸟笼，维多利亚时期的鸟笼，形状和装饰都颇为新潮。人们把食物放到笼子里的人们面前，露丝看了看，他们可以选择巧克力慕斯、松糕、黑森林蛋糕。然后在某个笼子里，露丝看到了弗洛，她端庄地坐在一个王位般的椅子上，用清晰而权威的声音拼读单词（不过露丝醒来之后就忘了是什么词了）。她看着还挺愉快，因为她展现出了隐藏至今的力量。
露丝倾听，听弗洛在那个碎尸围绕的房间里，那呼吸声、搅动声。她什么都没听到。万一弗洛死了呢？万一就在露丝的梦里，当她让弗洛容光焕发、心满意足的时候死了呢？露丝慌忙跳下床去，光脚跑到弗洛的房间。床上没人。她又去厨房找，发现弗洛坐在桌子前，穿好衣服要出去，她穿了那件夏天的海军蓝外套，配上一顶她在布莱恩和菲比的婚礼上戴过的无檐帽。外套皱巴巴的，得洗，帽子也歪来歪去的。
“现在我做好准备要去了。”弗洛说。
“去哪儿？”
“就那儿，”弗洛说，头猛地一伸，“去那个哇塔呀咯利。那个穷房子。”
“养老院。”露丝说，“你不用今天去的。”
“他们雇了你带我去，现在你得继续带我过去。”弗洛说。
“他们没有雇我。我是露丝。我给你泡杯茶。”
“你自己弄。我不喝。”
她让露丝想到那个从劳工起步的女人。这是她的专注之事、决心之事和紧迫之事。露丝觉得，弗洛已经感到她的死亡正像一个孩子那样朝她靠近，准备撕扯她。所以她不再争论，她穿好衣服，匆忙为她打好包裹，把她带到车里，送她去养老院。不过，弗洛对死亡的撕裂和释怀，却并非她所想的那样。
不久前，露丝在国家电视台的一出话剧里演戏。《特洛伊女人》。她没有台词，事实上她去演那个话剧只不过是为了帮朋友一个忙，因为她接了更好的戏。导演觉得，为了让哭泣和哀痛更为生动，得让这些特洛伊女人都把胸脯露出来。每个人都露一边，如果是皇室的大人物，比如赫卡伯和海伦，就露出右胸；如果是平常的处女或者妻子，比如露丝那样的，就露出左胸。露丝并不觉得这个露胸的做法能提高多少表现力，况且她胸部也有点下垂了，不过，她还是顺从了那个想法。她不指望他们能创造什么效果。她也不觉得会有多少人在看。
她忘了在某些地区，有的人是不能自由选择看问答节目、警车追逐戏和美国情景喜剧的，他们必须忍受电视里的人谈论公共事务、看艺术巡展，看别人满腔热血奉上的戏剧演出。她也没有想到，当每本杂志盛放着这裸露肉体在市镇上的书架上售卖时，人们会感到那么惊讶。
在愤怒之下，谁还能把注意力集中在特洛伊女人们那一起忧伤的眼神、那冻得瑟瑟发抖的神情上呢？然而在灯光之下，汗水流淌，妆容泛白、衰败，伴侣们不在，她们看上去都相当愚蠢、可怜而生硬，如同一块块肿瘤。愤怒让人们已经不再关注这些。
弗洛拿出纸笔垫在这杂志上，用那依旧肿胀的手指——关节炎几乎导致了残疾，她写下了“羞耻”两个字。她写道，如果露丝的爸爸不是死得早，那么他会希望自己现在就去死。这是真的。露丝读了这封信，或者读了一半，她对一起吃晚餐的朋友们大声念了出来。她念这信是为了喜剧效果，也是为了形成强烈反差，表示她身后那隔阂有多深。尽管她的确意识到，如果仔细想想，这样的隔阂也没什么特别的。她大部分朋友，那些在她看来都只是正常努力工作、心有所系、充满希望的人们，背后也有令人沮丧的家庭，宣称跟他们断绝关系，祈祷他们回头是岸。
读了一半，她就停了下来。不是因为她觉得这样当众说弗洛并取笑她的行为有多恶劣。之前类似的事情她已经做过很多次了，这种感觉已经不新鲜了。让她停下来的原因，事实上，是那隔阂。而她对此又有了一种全新的、汹涌的认识，她现在觉得这没什么好笑的了。弗洛的这些责怪，无异于抗议一把撑起的雨伞，无异于警告正在吃葡萄的人们。但是那些话都是刺痛的、真心的、有意的，都是艰辛生活所给予的。露胸，丢人哪。
还有一次，露丝要去领奖。还有其他人。多伦多酒店要举行一个颁奖典礼。弗洛收到了邀请函，但是露丝从来没想过她会来。当组织者问她亲戚的姓名时，她想过应该报其他人的名字，但是她难以说出布莱恩和菲比这两个名字来。当然，如果说她内心的确想让弗洛来，想在弗洛面前表现，想唬住她，最终达到从她阴影之下离开的目的，这也是有可能的。这样做也是件挺自然的事情。
弗洛从火车上下来，没通知谁。她自己去的酒店。那个时候她已经有关节炎了，但是仍然能不拄拐杖走路。她的穿衣风格向来都是干净整洁又廉价朴素，但是现在看上去好像在这上面花了点钱，征询了一些建议。她穿着一件紫色和淡紫相间的格子裤套装，戴着像是白色和黄色爆米花连成的珠串。她的头发被厚厚的灰蓝色假发盖住，拉得很低，遮挡了前额，就像一顶羊毛帽。她的脖子和腕部通过V领夹克衫和过短的袖子露了出来，皮肤黝黑、斑点处处，就像被盖上了一层树皮似的。她似乎在等待，不是等着露丝过去迎接，而是等着眼前的画面能让她凝结出具体的话语。
很快她就等到了。
“瞧那黑鬼！”弗洛大声说道，露丝那个时候还不在她身边呢。她的语调充满了简单而满足的惊喜，就像她低头看到了大峡谷，抬头撞见橙子在树上长着一样。
她说的是乔治，乔治正在领奖。他转过身来，看是不是有人在专门说些搞笑话逗他。弗洛看着是像个搞笑人物，尽管那种捉摸不透、那种一本正经显得怪吓人的。她注意到了自己造成的那番骚乱吗？有可能。因为在她那突如其来的爆发之后，她就再也没有说过什么，只自顾自地嘟哝一个单音节，也再没有吃过或者喝过什么别人给她的东西，她也不坐下来，只是在那些蓄着须和流着汗的人群中间，在那些雌雄莫辨、厚颜无耻的非盎格鲁——撒克逊人中间，诧异而坚定地站立着。
露丝是在床底下找到那顶假发的。那是在弗洛搬走后的一次惊悚的房屋大扫除中发现的。她拿出来送去养老院，一同拿过去的还有她洗过或者干洗过的衣服，她买的一些袜子、爽身粉和古龙水。有时候弗洛似乎觉得露丝是一位医生，然后她说：“我不想要女医生，你出去就好。”但是当她看到露丝拿着假发过来的时候她说：“露丝啊！你手里拿的是什么东西啊，是一只死了的灰色松鼠吗？”
“不是，”露丝说，“是假发。”
“什么？”
“假发。”露丝说，说完弗洛就开始大笑起来。露丝也笑了。那假发看上去的确像一只死猫或者松鼠来着，尽管她已经洗过、刷过，但它看上去还是像一个挺膈应人的物件。
“我的天啊，露丝，我在想她在干嘛给我带一只死松鼠回来！如果我把它戴在别人头上，我想别人肯定一枪崩了我。”
露丝把它套在了自己的头上，将这个搞笑的事情进行下去，弗洛在她的围床上笑得前俯后仰的。
缓过气来的时候，弗洛说：“我这床周围都是些栏杆，这算是什么玩意儿啊？你和布莱恩表现得好吗？别打架，你们老爸会生气的。你知道他们从我身上取走了多少胆结石吗？十五块！
有一块就跟鸡蛋一样大。我把它们放在了哪儿？我得把它们带回家去。”她拉开床单开始找，“放在一个瓶子里的。”
“我已经拿到啦。”露丝说，“我拿回家了。”
“拿回家了吗？拿给你爸爸看了吗？”
“是啊。”
“哦，那就对了，那就在那儿了。”弗洛说，于是她躺了下来，闭上了她的双眼。
Who Do You Think You Are?
Who Do You Think You Are?
There were some things Rose and her brother Brian could safely talk about, without runningaground on principles or statements of position, and one of them was Milton Homer. They bothremembered that when they had measles and there was a quarantine notice put up on the door—this was long ago, before their father died and before Brian went to school—Milton Homer camealong the street and read it. They heard him coming over the bridge and as usual he wascomplaining loudly. His progress through town was not silent unless his mouth was full of candy;otherwise he would be yelling at dogs and bullying the trees and telephone poles, mulling over oldgrievances.
“And I did not and I did not and I did not!” he yelled, and hit the bridge railing.
Rose and Brian pulled back the quilt that was hung over the window to keep the light out, sothey would not go blind.
“Milton Homer,” said Brian appreciatively.
Milton Homer then saw the notice on the door. He turned and mounted the steps and read it. Hecould read. He would go along the main street reading all the signs out loud.
Rose and Brian remembered this and they agreed that it was the side door, where Flo later stuckon the glassed- in porch; before that there was only a slanting wooden platform, and theyremembered Milton Homer standing on it. If the quarantine notice was there and not on the frontdoor, which led into Flo’s store, then the store must have been open; that seemed odd, and couldonly be explained by Flo’s having bullied the Health Officer. Rose couldn’t remember; she couldonly remember Milton Homer on the platform with his big head on one side and his fist raised toknock.
“Measles, huh?” said Milton Homer. He didn’t knock, after all; he stuck his head close to thedoor and shouted, “Can’t scare me!” Then he turned around but did not leave the yard. He walkedover to the swing, sat down, took hold of the ropes and began moodily, then with mounting andferocious glee, to give himself a ride.
“Milton Homer’s on the swing, Milton Homer’s on the swing!” Rose shouted. She had run fromthe window to the stairwell.
Flo came from wherever she was to look out the side window. “He won’t hurt it,” said Flosurprisingly. Rose had thought she would chase him with the broom. Afterwards she wondered:
could Flo have been frightened? Not likely. It would be a matter of Milton Homer’s privileges.
“I can’t sit on the seat after Milton Homer’s sat on it!”
“You! You go on back to bed.”
Rose went back into the dark smelly measles room and began to tell Brian a story she thoughthe wouldn’t like.
“When you were a baby, Milton Homer came and picked you up.” “He did not.”
“He came and held you and asked what your name was. I remember.”
Brian went out to the stairwell.
“Did Milton Homer come and pick me up and ask what my name was? Did he? When I was ababy?”
“You tell Rose he did the same for her.”
Rose knew that was likely, though she hadn’t been going to mention it. She didn’t really knowif she remembered Milton Homer holding Brian, or had been told about it. Whenever there was anew baby in a house, in that recent past when babies were still being born at home, Milton Homercame as soon as possible and asked to see the baby, then asked its name, and delivered a setspeech. The speech was to the effect that if the baby lived, it was to be hoped it would lead aChristian life, and if it died, it was to be hoped it would go straight to Heaven. The same idea asbaptism, but Milton did not call on the Father or the Son or do any business with water. He did allthis on his own authority. He seemed to be overcome by a stammer he did not have at other times,or else he stammered on purpose in order to give his pronouncements more weight. He opened hismouth wide and rocked back and forth, taking up each phrase with a deep grunt.
“And if the Baby—if the Baby—if the Baby—lives—”
Rose would do this years later, in her brother’s living room, rocking back and forth, chanting,each if coming out like an explo sion, leading up to the major explosion of lives.
“He will live a—good life—and he will—and he will—and he will—not sin. He will lead agood life—a good life—and he will not sin. He will not sin!”
“And if the baby—if the baby—if the baby—dies—”
“Now that’s enough. That’s enough, Rose,” said Brian, but he laughed. He could put up withRose’s theatrics when they were about Hanratty.
“How can you remember?” said Brian’s wife Phoebe, hoping to stop Rose before she went ontoo long and roused Brian’s impatience. “Did you see him do it? That often?”
“Oh no,” said Rose, with some surprise. “I didn’t see him do it. What I saw was Ralph Gillespiedoing Milton Homer. He was a boy in school. Ralph.”
MILTON HOMER’S OTHER PUBLIC FUNCTION, as Rose and Brian remembered it, was tomarch in parades. There used to be plenty of parades in Hanratty. The Orange Walk, on theTwelfth of July; the High School Cadet Parade, in May; the schoolchildren’s Empire Day Parade,the Legion’s Church Parade, the Santa Claus Parade, the Lions Club Old-Timers’ Parade. One ofthe most derogatory things that could be said about anyone in Hanratty was that he or she wasfond of parading around, but almost every soul in town—in the town proper, not West Hanratty,that goes without saying—would get a chance to march in public in some organized and approvedaffair. The only thing was that you must never look as if you were enjoying it; you had to give theimpression of being called forth out of preferred obscurity; ready to do your duty and gravelypreoccupied with whatever notions the parade celebrated.
The Orange Walk was the most splendid of all the parades. King Billy at the head of it rode ahorse as near pure white as could be found, and the Black Knights at the rear, the noblest rank ofOrangemen—usually thin, and poor, and proud and fanatical old farmers—rode dark horses andwore the ancient father-to-son top hats and swallow-tail coats. The banners were all gorgeous silksand embroideries, blue and gold, orange and white, scenes of Protestant triumph, lilies and openBibles, mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry. The ladies came beneath theirsunshades, Orangemen’s wives and daughters all wearing white for purity. Then the bands, thefifes and drums, and gifted step-dancers performing on a clean haywagon as a movable stage.
Also, there came Milton Homer. He could show up anywhere in the parade and he varied hisplace in it from time to time, stepping out behind King Billy or the Black Knights or the step-dancers or the shy orange-sashed children who carried the banners. Behind the Black Knights hewould pull a dour face, and hold his head as if a top hat was riding on it; behind the ladies hewiggled his hips and diddled an imaginary sunshade. He was a mimic of ferocious gifts andterrible energy. He could take the step-dancers’ tidy show and turn it into an idiot’s prance, andstill keep the beat.
The Orange Walk was his best opportunity, in parades, but he was conspicuous in all of them.
Head in the air, arms whipping out, snootily in step, he marched behind the commanding officer ofthe Legion. On Empire Day he provided himself with a Red Ensign and a union Jack, and keptthem going like whirligigs above his head. In the Santa Claus parade he snatched candy meant forchildren; he did not do it for a joke.
You would think that somebody in authority in Hanratty would have put an end to this. MiltonHomer’s contribution to any parade was wholly negative; designed, if Milton Homer could havedesigned anything, just to make the parade look foolish. Why didn’t the organizers and theparaders make an effort to keep him out? They must have decided that was easier said than done.
Milton lived with his two old-maid aunts, his parents being dead, and nobody would have liked toask the two old ladies to keep him home. It must have seemed as if they had enough on their handsalready. How could they keep him in, once he had heard the band? They would have to lock himup, tie him down. And nobody wanted to haul him out and drag him away once things began. Hisprotests would have ruined everything. There wasn’t any doubt that he would protest. He had astrong, deep voice and he was a strong man, though not very tall. He was about the size ofNapoleon. He had kicked through gates and fences when people tried to shut him out of theiryards. Once he had smashed a child’s wagon on the sidewalk, simply because it was in his way.
Letting him participate must have seemed the best choice, under the circumstances.
Not that it was done as the best of bad choices. Nobody looked askance at Milton in a parade;everybody was used to him. Even the Commanding Officer would let himself be mocked, and theBlack Knights with their old black grievances took no notice. People just said, “Oh, there’sMilton,” from the sidewalk. There wasn’t much laughing at him, though strangers in town, cityrelatives invited to watch the parade, might point him out and laugh themselves silly, thinking hewas there officially and for purposes of comic relief, like the clowns who were actually youngbusinessmen, unsuccessfully turning cartwheels.
“Who is that?” the visitors said, and were answered with nonchalance and a particularly obscuresort of pride.
“That’s just Milton Homer. It wouldn’t be a parade without Milton Homer.”
“THE VILLAGE IDIOT,” said Phoebe, trying to comprehend these things, with her inexhaustibleunappreciated politeness, and both Rose and Brian said that they had never heard him describedthat way. They had never thought of Hanratty as a village. A village was a cluster of picturesquehouses around a steepled church on a Christmas card. Villagers were the costumed chorus in thehigh school operetta. If it was necessary to describe Milton Homer to an outsider, people wouldsay that he was “not all there.” Rose had wondered, even at that time, what was the part thatwasn’t there? She still wondered. Brains, would be the easiest answer. Milton Homer must surelyhave had a low I.Q. Yes; but so did plenty of people, in Hanratty and out of it, and they did notdistinguish themselves as he did. He could read without difficulty, as shown in the case of thequarantine sign; he knew how to count his change, as evidenced in many stories about how peoplehad tried to cheat him. What was missing was a sense of precaution, Rose thought now. Socialinhibition, though there was no such name for it at that time. Whatever it is that ordinary peoplelose when they are drunk, Milton Homer never had, or might have chosen not to have— and this iswhat interests Rose—at some point early in life. Even his expressions, his everyday looks, werethose that drunks wear in theatrical extremity—goggling, leering, drooping looks that seemedboldly calculated, and at the same time helpless, involuntary; is such a thing possible?
The two ladies Milton Homer lived with were his mother’s sisters. They were twins; theirnames were Hattie and Mattie Milton, and they were usually called Miss Hattie and Miss Mattie,perhaps to detract from any silly sound their names might have had otherwise. Milton had beennamed after his mother’s family. That was a common practice, and there was probably no thoughtof linking together the names of two great poets. That coincidence was never mentioned and wasperhaps not noticed. Rose did not notice it until one day in high school when the boy who satbehind her tapped her on the shoulder and showed her what he had written in his English book. Hehad stroked out the word Chapman’s in the title of a poem and inked in the word Milton, so thatthe title now read: On First Looking into Milton Homer.
Any mention of Milton Homer was a joke, but this changed title was also a joke because itreferred, rather weakly, to Milton Homer’s more scandalous behavior. The story was that when hegot behind somebody in a line-up at the Post Office or a movie theater, he would open his coat andpresent himself, then lunge and commence rubbing. Though of course he wouldn’t get that far; theobject of his passion would have ducked out of his way. Boys were said to dare each other to gethim into position, and stay close ahead of him until the very last moment, then jump aside andreveal him in dire importunity.
It was in honor of this story—whether it was true or not, had happened once, under provocation,or kept happening all the time—that ladies crossed the street when they saw Milton coming, thatchildren were warned to stay clear of him. Just don’t let him monkey around was what Flo said.
He was allowed into houses on those ritual occasions when there was a new baby—with hospitalbirths getting commoner, those occasions diminished—but at other times the doors were lockedagainst him. He would come and knock, and kick the door panels, and go away. But he was lethave his way in yards, because he didn’t take things, and could do so much damage if offended.
Of course, it was another story altogether when he appeared with one of his aunts. At thosetimes he was hangdog-looking, well-behaved; his powers and his passions, whatever they were, allbanked and hidden. He would be eating candy the aunt had bought him, out of a paper bag. Heoffered it when told to, though nobody but the most greedy person alive would touch what mighthave been touched by Milton Homer’s fingers or blessed by his spittle. The aunts saw that he gothis hair cut; they did their best to keep him presentable. They washed and ironed and mended hisclothes, sent him out in his raincoat and rubbers, or knitted cap and muffler, as the weatherindicated. Did they know how he conducted himself when out of their sight? They must haveheard, and if they heard they must have suffered, being people of pride and methodist morals. Itwas their grandfather who had started the flax mill in Hanratty and compelled all his employees tospend their Saturday nights at a Bible Class he himself conducted. The Homers, too, were decentpeople. Some of the Homers were supposed to be in favor of putting Milton away but the Miltonladies wouldn’t do it. Nobody suggested they refused out of tender-heartedness.
“They won’t put him in the Asylum, they’re too proud.”
Miss Hattie Milton taught at the high school. She had been teach ing there longer than all theother teachers combined and was more important than the Principal. She taught English—thealteration in the poem was the more daring and satisfying because it occurred under her nose—andthe thing she was famous for was keeping order. She did this without apparent effort, through theforce of her large-bosomed, talcumed, spectacled, innocent and powerful presence, and her refusalto see that there was any difference between teen-agers (she did not use the word) and students inGrade Four. She assigned a lot of memory work. One day she wrote a long poem on the board andsaid that everyone was to copy it out, then learn it off by heart, and the next day recite it. This waswhen Rose was in her third or fourth year at high school and she did not believe these instructionswere to be taken literally. She learned poetry with ease; it seemed reasonable to her to skip the firststep. She read the poem and learned it, verse by verse, then said it over a couple of times in herhead. While she was doing this Miss Hattie asked her why she wasn’t copying.
Rose replied that she knew the poem already, though she was not perfectly sure that this wastrue.
“Do you really?” said Miss Hattie. “Stand up and face the back of the room.”
Rose did so, trembling for her boast.
“Now recite the poem to the class.”
Rose’s confidence was not mistaken. She recited without a hitch.
What did she expect to follow? Astonishment, and compliments, and unaccustomed respect?
“Well, you may know the poem,” Miss Hattie said, “but that is no excuse for not doing whatyou were told. Sit down and write it in your book. I want you to write every line three times. Ifyou don’t get finished you can stay after four.”
Rose did have to stay after four, of course, raging and writing while Miss Hattie got out hercrocheting. When Rose took the copy to her desk Miss Hattie said mildly enough but with finality,“You can’t go thinking you are better than other people just because you can learn poems. Who doyou think you are?”
This was not the first time in her life Rose had been asked who she thought she was; in fact thequestion had often struck her like a monotonous gong and she paid no attention to it. But sheunderstood, afterwards, that Miss Hattie was not a sadistic teacher; she had refrained from sayingwhat she now said in front of the class. And she was not vindictive; she was not taking revengebecause she had not believed Rose and had been proved wrong. The lesson she was trying to teachhere was more important to her than any poem, and one she truly believed Rose needed. It seemedthat many other people believed she needed it, too.
THE WHOLE CLASS was invited, at the end of the senior year, to a lantern slide show at theMiltons’ house. The lantern slides were of China, where Miss Mattie, the stay-at-home twin, hadbeen a missionary in her youth. Miss Mattie was very shy, and she stayed in the background,working the slides, while Miss Hattie commented. The lantern slides showed a yellow country;much as expected. Yellow hills and sky; yellow people, rickshaws, parasols, all dry and papery-looking, fragile, unlikely, with black zigzags where the paint had cracked, on the temples, theroads and faces. At this very time, the one and only time Rose sat in the Miltons’ parlor, Mao wasin power in China and the Korean War was underway, but Miss Hattie made no concessions tohistory, any more than she made concessions to the fact that the members of her audience wereeighteen and nineteen years old.
“The Chinese are heathens,” Miss Hattie said. “That is why they have beggars.”
There was a beggar, kneeling in the street, arms outstretched to a rich lady in a rickshaw, whowas not paying any attention to him.
“They do eat things we wouldn’t touch,” Miss Hattie said. Some Chinese were pictured pokingsticks into bowls. “But they eat a better diet when they become Christians. The first generation ofChristians is an inch and a half taller.”
Christians of the first generation were standing in a row with their mouths open, possiblysinging. They wore black and white clothes.
After the slides, plates of sandwiches, cookies, tarts were served. All were home-made and verygood. A punch of grape juice and ginger-ale was poured into paper cups. Milton sat in a corner inhis thick tweed suit, a white shirt and a tie, on which punch and crumbs had already been spilled.
“Some day it will just blow up in their faces,” Flo had said darkly, meaning Milton. Could thatbe the reason people came, year after year, to see the lantern slides and drink the punch that all thejokes were about? To see Milton with his jowls and stomach swollen as if with bad intentions,ready to blow? All he did was stuff himself at an unbelievable rate. It seemed as if he downed datesquares, hermits, Nanaimo bars and fruit drops, butter tarts and brownies, whole, the way a snakewill swallow frogs. Milton was similarly distended.
METHODISTS WERE PEOPLE whose power in Hanratty was passing, but slowly. The days ofthe compulsory Bible Class were over. Perhaps the Miltons didn’t know that. Perhaps they knew itbut put a heroic face on their decline. They behaved as if the requirements of piety hadn’t changedand as if its connection with prosperity was unaltered. Their brick house, with its overstuffedcomfort, their coats with collars of snug dull fur, seemed proclaimed as a Methodist house,Methodist clothing, inelegant on purpose, heavy, satisfactory. Everything about them seemed tosay that they had applied themselves to the world’s work for God’s sake, and God had not let themdown. For God’s sake the hall floor shone with wax around the runner, the lines were drawnperfectly with a straight pen in the account book, the begonias flourished, the money went into thebank.
But mistakes were made, nowadays. The mistake the Milton ladies made was in drawing up apetition to be sent to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, asking for the removal from the airof the programs that interfered with church-going on Sunday nights: Edgar Bergen and CharlieMcCarthy; Jack Benny; Fred Allen. They got the minister to speak about their petition in church—this was in the United Church, where Methodists had been outnumbered by Presbyterians andCongregationalists, and it was not a scene Rose witnessed, but had described to her by Flo—andafterwards they waited, Miss Hattie and Miss Mattie, one on each side of the outgoing stream,intending to deflect people and make them sign the petition, which was set up on a little table inthe church vestibule. Behind the table Milton Homer was sitting. He had to be there; they never lethim get out of going to church on Sunday. They had given him a job to keep him busy; he was tobe in charge of the fountain pens, making sure they were full and handing them to signers.
That was the obvious part of the mistake. Milton had got the idea of drawing whiskers onhimself, and had done so, without the help of a mirror. Whiskers curled out over his big sadcheeks, up towards his bloodshot foreboding eyes. He had put the pen in his mouth, too, so thatink had blotched his lips. In short, he had made himself so comical a sight that the petition whichnobody really wanted could be treated as a comedy, too, and the power of the Milton sisters, theflax-mill Methodists, could be seen as a leftover dribble. People smiled and slid past; nothingcould be done. Of course the Milton ladies didn’t scold Milton or put on any show for the public,they just bundled him up with their petition and took him home.
“That was the end of them thinking they could run things,” Flo said. It was hard to tell, asalways, what particular defeat—was it that of religion or pretension?—she was so glad to see.
THE BOY WHO SHOWED ROSE the poem in Miss Hattie’s own English class in Hanratty highschool was Ralph Gillespie, the same boy who specialized in Milton Homer imitations. As Roseremembered it, he hadn’t started on the imitations at the time he showed her the poem. They camelater, during the last few months he was in school. In most classes he sat ahead of Rose or behindher, due to the alphabetical closeness of their names. Beyond this alphabetical closeness they didhave something like a family similarity, not in looks but in habits or tendencies. Instead ofembarrassing them, as it would have done if they had really been brother and sister, this drewthem together in helpful conspiracy. Both of them lost or mislaid, or never adequately providedthemselves with, all the pencils, rulers, erasers, pen-nibs, ruled paper, graph paper, the compass,dividers, protractor, necessary for a successful school life; both of them were sloppy with ink,subject to spilling and blotting mishaps; both of them were negligent about doing homework butpanicky about not having done it. So they did their best to help each other out, sharing whateversupplies they had, begging from their more provident neighbors, finding someone’s homework tocopy. They developed the comradeship of captives, of soldiers who have no heart for thecampaign, wishing only to survive and avoid action.
That wasn’t quite all. Their shoes and boots became well acquainted, scuffling and pushing infriendly and private encounter, sometimes resting together a moment in tentative encouragement;this mutual kindness particularly helped them through those moments when people were beingselected to do mathematics problems on the blackboard.
Once Ralph came in after noon hour with his hair full of snow. He leaned back and shook thesnow over Rose’s desk, saying, “Do you have those dandruff blues?”
“No. Mine’s white.”
This seemed to Rose a moment of some intimacy, with its physi cal frankness, its rememberedchildhood joke. Another day at noon hour, before the bell rang, she came into the classroom andfound him, in a ring of onlookers, doing his Milton Homer imitation. She was surprised andworried; surprised because his shyness in class had always equalled hers and had been one of thethings that united them; worried that he might not be able to bring it off, might not make themlaugh. But he was very good; his large, pale, good-natured face took on the lumpy desperation ofMilton’s; his eyes goggled and his jowls shook and his words came out in a hoarse hypnotizedsingsong. He was so successful that Rose was amazed, and so was everybody else. From that timeon Ralph began to do imitations; he had several, but Milton Homer was his trademark. Rose neverquite got over a comradely sort of apprehension on his behalf. She had another feeling as well, notenvy but a shaky sort of longing. She wanted to do the same. Not Milton Homer; she did not wantto do Milton Homer. She wanted to fill up in that magical, releasing way, transform herself; shewanted the courage and the power.
Not long after he started publicly developing these talents he had, Ralph Gillespie dropped outof school. Rose missed his feet and his breathing and his finger tapping her shoulder. She met himsometimes on the street but he did not seem to be quite the same person. They never stopped totalk, just said hello and hurried past. They had been close and conspiring for years, it seemed,maintaining their spurious domesticity, but they had never talked outside of school, never gonebeyond the most formal recognition of each other, and it seemed they could not, now. Rose neverasked him why he had dropped out; she did not even know if he had found a job. They knew eachother’s necks and shoulders, heads and feet, but were not able to confront each other as full-lengthpresences.
After a while Rose didn’t see him on the street any more. She heard that he had joined theNavy. He must have been just waiting till he was old enough to do that. He had joined the Navyand gone to Halifax. The war was over, it was only the peacetime Navy. Just the same it was oddto think of Ralph Gillespie, in uniform, on the deck of a destroyer, maybe firing off guns. Rosewas just beginning to understand that the boys she knew, however incompetent they might seem,were going to turn into men, and be allowed to do things that you would think required a lot moretalent and authority than they could have.
THERE WAS A TIME, after she gave up the store and before her arthritis became too crippling,during which Flo went out to Bingo games and sometimes played cards with her neighbors at theLegion Hall. When Rose was home on a visit conversation was difficult, so she would ask Floabout the people she saw at the Legion. She would ask for news of her own contemporaries, HorseNicholson, Runt Chesterton, whom she could not really imagine as grown men; did Flo ever seethem?
“There’s one I see and he’s around there all the time. Ralph Gillespie.”
Rose said that she had thought Ralph Gillespie was in the Navy. “He was too but he’s backhome now. He was in an accident.” “What kind of accident?”
“I don’t know. It was in the Navy. He was in a Navy hospital three solid years. They had torebuild him from scratch. He’s all right now except he walks with a limp, he sort of drags the oneleg.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Well, yes. That’s what I say. I don’t hold any grudge against him but there’s some up there atthe Legion that do.”
“Hold a grudge?”
“Because of the pension,” said Flo, surprised and rather contemptuous of Rose for not takinginto account so basic a fact of life, and so natural an attitude, in Hanratty. “They think, well, he’sset for life. I say he must’ve suffered for it. Some people say he gets a lot but I don’t believe it. Hedoesn’t need much, he’s all on his own. One thing, if he suffers pain he don’t let on. Like me. Idon’t let on. Weep and you weep alone. He’s a good darts player. He’ll play anything that’s going.
And he can imitate people to the life.”
“Does he still do Milton Homer? He used to do Milton Homer at school.”
“He does him. Milton Homer. He’s comical at that. He does some others too.”
“Is Milton Homer still alive? Is he still marching in parades?” “Sure he’s still alive. He’squietened down a lot, though. He’s out there at the County Home and you can see him on a sunnyday down by the highway keeping an eye on the traffic and licking up an ice cream cone. Both theold ladies is dead.”
“So he isn’t in the parades any more?”
“There isn’t the parades to be in. Parades have fallen off a lot. All the Orangemen are dying outand you wouldn’t get the turnout, anyway, people’d rather stay home and watch their T.V.”
ON LATER VISITS Rose found that Flo had turned against the Legion. “I don’t want to be one ofthose old crackpots,” she said.
“What old crackpots?”
“Sit around up there telling the same stupid yarns and drinking beer. They make me sick.”
This was very much in Flo’s usual pattern. People, places, amusements, went abruptly in andout of favor. The turnabouts had become more drastic and frequent with age.
“Don’t you like any of them any more? Is Ralph Gillespie still going there?”
“He still is. He likes it so well he tried to get himself a job there. He tried to get the part-timebar job. Some people say he got turned down because he already has got the pension but I think itwas because of the way he carries on.”
“How? Does he get drunk?”
“You couldn’t tell if he was, he carries on just the same, imitating, and half the time he’simitating somebody that the newer people that’s come to town, they don’t know even who theperson was, they just think it’s Ralph being idiotic.”
“Like Milton Homer?”
“That’s right. How do they know it’s supposed to be Milton Homer and what was MiltonHomer like? They don’t know. Ralph don’t know when to stop. He Milton Homer’d himself rightout of a job.”
After Rose had taken Flo to the County Home—she had not seen Milton Homer there, thoughshe had seen other people she had long believed dead—and was staying to clean up the house andget it ready for sale, she herself was taken to the Legion by Flo’s neighbors, who thought she mustbe lonely on a Saturday night. She did not know how to refuse, so she found herself sitting at along table in the basement of the hall, where the bar was, just at the time the last sunlight wascoming across the fields of beans and corn, across the gravel parking lot and through the highwindows, staining the plywood walls. All around the walls were photographs, with names letteredby hand and taped to the frames. Rose got up to have a look at them. The Hundred and Sixth, justbefore embarkation, 1915. Various heroes of that war, whose names were carried on by sons andnephews, but whose existence had not been known to her before. When she came back to the tablea card game had started. She wondered if it had been a disruptive thing to do, getting up to look atthe pictures. Probably nobody ever looked at them; they were not for looking at; they were justthere, like the plywood on the walls. Visitors, outsiders, are always looking at things, alwaystaking an interest, asking who was this, when was that, trying to liven up the conversation. Theyput too much in; they want too much out. Also, it could have looked as if she was parading aroundthe room, asking for attention.
A woman sat down and introduced herself. She was the wife of one of the men playing cards.
“I’ve seen you on television,” she said. Rose was always a bit apologetic when somebody saidthis; that is, she had to control what she recognized in herself as an absurd impulse to apologize.
Here in Hanratty the impulse was stronger than usual. She was aware of having done things thatmust seem high- handed. She remembered her days as a television interviewer, her beguilingconfidence and charm; here as nowhere else they must understand how that was a sham. Heracting was another matter. The things she was ashamed of were not what they must think she wasashamed of; not a flopping bare breast, but a failure she couldn’t seize upon or explain.
This woman who was talking to her did not belong to Hanratty. She said she had come fromSarnia when she was married, fifteen years ago.
“I still find it hard to get used to. Frankly I do. After the city. You look better in person than youdo in that series.”
“I should hope so,” said Rose, and told about how they made her up. People were interested inthings like that and Rose was more comfortable, once the conversation got on to technical details.
“Well, here’s old Ralph,” the woman said. She moved over, making room for a thin, gray-haired man holding a mug of beer. This was Ralph Gillespie. If Rose had met him on the street shewould not have recognized him, he would have been a stranger to her, but after she had looked athim for a moment he seemed quite unchanged to her, unchanged from himself at seventeen orfifteen, his gray hair which had been light brown still falling over his forehead, his face still paleand calm and rather large for his body, the same diffident, watchful, withholding look. But hisbody was thinner and his shoulders seemed to have shrunk together. He wore a short-sleevedsweater with a little collar and three ornamental buttons; it was light-blue with beige and yellowstripes. This sweater seemed to Rose to speak of aging jauntiness, a kind of petrified adolescence.
She noticed that his arms were old and skinny and that his hands shook so badly that he used bothof them to raise the glass of beer to his mouth.
“You’re not staying around here long, are you?” said the woman who had come from Sarnia.
Rose said that she was going to Toronto tomorrow, Sunday, night.
“You must have a busy life,” the woman said, with a large sigh, an honest envy that in itselfwould have declared out-of-town origins.
Rose was thinking that on Monday at noon she was to meet a man for lunch and to go to bed.
This man was Tom Shepherd, whom she had known for a long time. At one time he had been inlove with her, he had written love letters to her. The last time she had been with him, in Toronto,when they were sitting up in bed afterwards drinking gin and tonic—they always drank a gooddeal when they were together—Rose suddenly thought, or knew, that there was somebody now,some woman he was in love with and was courting from a distance, probably writing letters to,and that there must have been another woman he was robustly bedding, at the time he was writingletters to her. Also, and all the time, there was his wife. Rose wanted to ask him about this; thenecessity, the difficulties, the satisfactions. Her interest was friendly and uncritical but she knew,she had just enough sense to know, that the question would not do.
The conversation in the Legion had turned on lottery tickets, Bingo games, winnings. The menplaying cards—Flo’s neighbor among them—were talking about a man who was supposed to havewon ten thousand dollars, and never publicized the fact, because he had gone bankrupt a few yearsbefore and owed so many people money.
One of them said that if he had declared himself bankrupt, he didn’t owe the money any more.
“Maybe he didn’t owe it then,” another said. “But he owes it now. The reason is, he’s got itnow.”
This opinion was generally favored.
Rose and Ralph Gillespie looked at each other. There was the same silent joke, the sameconspiracy, comfort; the same, the same.
“I hear you’re quite a mimic,” Rose said.
That was wrong; she shouldn’t have said anything. He laughed and shook his head.
“Oh, come on. I hear you do a sensational Milton Homer.” “I don’t know about that.”
“Is he still around?”
“Far as I know he’s out at the County Home.”
“Remember Miss Hattie and Miss Mattie? They had the lantern slide show at their house.”
“Sure.”
“My mental picture of China is still pretty well based on those slides.”
Rose went on talking like this, though she wished she could stop. She was talking in whatelsewhere might have been considered an amusing, confidential, recognizably and meaninglesslyflirtatious style. She did not get much response from Ralph Gillespie, though he seemed attentive,even welcoming. All the time she talked, she was wondering what he wanted her to say. He didwant something. But he would not make any move to get it. Her first impression of him, asboyishly shy and ingratiating, had to change. That was his surface. Underneath he was self-sufficient, resigned to living in bafflement, perhaps proud. She wished that he would speak to herfrom that level, and she thought he wished it, too, but they were prevented.
But when Rose remembered this unsatisfactory conversation she seemed to recall a wave ofkindness, of sympathy and forgiveness, though certainly no words of that kind had been spoken.
That peculiar shame which she carried around with her seemed to have been eased. The thing shewas ashamed of, in acting, was that she might have been paying attention to the wrong things,reporting antics, when there was always something further, a tone, a depth, a light, that shecouldn’t get and wouldn’t get. And it wasn’t just about acting she suspected this. Everything shehad done could sometimes be seen as a mistake. She had never felt this more strongly than whenshe was talking to Ralph Gillespie, but when she thought about him afterwards her mistakesappeared unimportant. She was enough a child of her time to wonder if what she felt about himwas simply sexual warmth, sexual curiosity; she did not think it was. There seemed to be feelingswhich could only be spoken of in translation; perhaps they could only be acted on in translation;not speaking of them and not acting on them is the right course to take because translation isdubious. Dangerous, as well.
For these reasons Rose did not explain anything further about Ralph Gillespie to Brian andPhoebe when she recalled Milton Homer’s ceremony with babies or his expression of diabolicalhappiness on the swing. She did not even mention that he was dead. She knew he was deadbecause she still had a subscription to the Hanratty paper. Flo had given Rose a seven- yearsubscription on the last Christmas when she felt obliged to give Christmas presents;characteristically, Flo said that the paper was just for people to get their names in and hadn’tanything in it worth reading. Usually Rose turned the pages quickly and put the paper in thefirebox. But she did see the story about Ralph which was on the front page.
FORMER NAVY MAN DIES
Mr. Ralph Gillespie, Naval Petty Officer, retired, sustained fatal head injuries atthe Legion Hall on Saturday night last. No other person was implicated in the falland unfortunately several hours passed before Mr. Gillespie’s body wasdiscovered. It is thought that he mistook the basement door for the exit door andlost his balance, which was precarious due to an old injury suffered in his navalcareer which left him partly disabled.
The paper went on to give the names of Ralph’s parents, who were apparently still alive, and ofhis married sister. The Legion was taking charge of the funeral services.
Rose didn’t tell this to anybody, glad that there was one thing at least she wouldn’t spoil bytelling, though she knew it was lack of material as much as honorable restraint that kept her quiet.
What could she say about herself and Ralph Gillespie, except that she felt his life, close, closerthan the lives of men she’d loved, one slot over from her own?
你以为你是谁？
你以为你是谁？
有些事情，露丝和她的弟弟布莱恩是可以安全谈论的，不用因为原则和立场问题而搁浅。弥尔顿•荷马就是这其中一个话题。他们都记得，在很久以前，他们的父亲还活着，布莱恩还没上学的时候，他们俩都得了麻疹，有一张隔离告示贴在了门上。弥尔顿•荷马从街上走来，把它读了读。他们听见他像往常一样从桥那边过来，大声抱怨着。除非他满嘴塞满了糖果，不然他走在小镇上的时候一路都不会安静下来，他会对着街上的狗大喊大叫，对树木和电话线杆子动手动脚，满腹牢骚。
“我没有！我没有！我没有！”他大喊起来，一边敲打着桥上的栏杆。
露丝和布莱恩把挂在窗外的被子拉回来想挡住阳光，不然他们会被晒瞎。
“弥尔顿•荷马。”布莱恩赞赏地说道。
于是弥尔顿•荷马就看到了门上的告示。他转过身去，走上阶梯，读上面的字。他可以认字了。他走在大街上能大声把所有的标示牌都读出来。
露丝和布莱恩记得这件事，他们都觉得当时告示是贴在侧门。这里之前是一个倾斜的木板台，后来弗洛迷上了这里的玻璃门廊，他们记得弥尔顿•荷马就在这个地方站着。如果这个隔离通知贴在了侧门，而不是贴在直接通往弗洛那家店正门的话，那么小店当时肯定营业了。
这么想来就有点奇怪了，唯一能解释这点的，就是弗洛当时把卫生部门的官员给打了。露丝不记得了，她只记得弥尔顿•荷马站在台子上，大脑袋歪向一旁，举起拳头来要敲门。
“麻疹，对吧？”弥尔顿•荷马说。他终究没有敲门，脑袋快要贴在门上，喊道：“这吓不倒我！”然后他转过身去，不过没有离开院子。他走向秋千，坐下来，抓住两边的绳子，刚开始荡得并不平稳，随后趁着一股势不可挡的开心劲儿，他便腾云驾雾起来。
“弥尔顿•荷马在荡秋千，弥尔顿•荷马在荡秋千！”
露丝喊道。她从窗台跑到楼梯间上去。
弗洛随便找了一扇侧窗探头出来看。
“他还真是没事儿。”弗洛惊讶地说道。露丝还以为她会拿着扫帚追着他跑呢。之后她又想：
弗洛是不是被吓坏了？不太像。这应该是弥尔顿•荷马的特权吧。
“我不能去坐弥尔顿•荷马坐过的地方！”
“你！你回去睡觉。”
露丝回到有味道的漆黑麻疹小屋里，开始跟布莱恩讲一个她觉得他不会喜欢的故事。
“你还是个婴儿的时候，弥尔顿•荷马来抱过你。”
“他才没有。”
“他走过来抱着你，还问你叫什么名字。我记得。”
布莱恩跑到楼梯间去。
“弥尔顿•荷马走过来抱着我问我叫什么名字了？是真的吗？那时我还是个婴儿？”
“你跟露丝说他对她也干过一样的事儿。”
露丝知道，这么说没错，尽管她不准备提。她其实也太记得弥尔顿•荷马是不是真的抱过布莱恩，或者有没有人告诉过她这件事。在不久前的过去，婴儿们都是在家里接生的，每当一个新的婴儿在屋子里降生，弥尔顿•荷马就会马上跑过去看，问他们他叫什么名字，高谈阔论一番。他的讲话大致意思是如果这个婴儿存活下去，便希望他能过上基督徒的生活，如果不幸死去，则希望他能直接进入天堂。这跟洗礼的理念一样，只不过弥尔顿没有提到上帝和耶稣，也没有跟水扯上什么关系。他做这些事情完全是按照自己的心意。讲话的时候，他似乎患上了平日里没有的口吃，或者说，他其实是故意用断断续续的语调给他的声明增加分量。
他嘴巴张大，前后摇晃，每个词都要伴着一声沉沉的咕哝。
“如果这个婴儿——如果婴儿——如果婴儿——存活——”
于是几年之后的现在，在她弟弟的卧室里，露丝也做着同样的事情，前后摇晃，念唱着这些话语，每一个“如果”蹦出来，都像是经历了一次爆破，它们推向高潮，推至“存活”一词的时候，就会引发全面爆炸。
“他会过上——富足生活——他会——他会——他不会——犯下罪过。他会过上富足生活——富足生活——他不会犯下罪过。他不会犯下罪过！
“如果婴儿——如果婴儿——如果婴儿——死去——”
“好，够了。够了，露丝。”布莱恩说道，不过他笑了。要是讲到汉拉提，他是能忍受露丝这种夸张戏剧表演的。
“你是怎么记得这些的？”布莱恩的妻子菲比问，她也想让露丝停下来，不然这样下去的话会让布莱恩感到不耐烦。
“你看到他这么做过吗？经常吗？”
“哦，没有，”露丝有些吃惊地说，“我没看到他这样做。我看到的是拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮模仿弥尔顿•荷马。他是学校里的一个男孩。拉尔夫。”
露丝和布莱恩回忆，弥尔顿•荷马的另外一个公共用途，就是参加游行。汉拉提以前曾经举行过很多游行。比如七月十二日的奥兰治游行，五月的高中军校游行，学生们的大英帝国日游行，社团的教堂游行，圣诞老人游行，狮子俱乐部的老时光游行。在汉拉提最能贬低人的话，就是说这个人喜欢到处游行，然而城里几乎每一个人，都有机会在公共场合参与一场有组织、被批准的游行——不消说，确切地说是在城里，不是在西汉拉提。你唯一要注意的是，必须表现得一点都不享受的样子，你得给人一种本来好好在家待着却被叫了出来的印象，得让人看不出你对这事儿有什么偏好，你就是履行这项义务而已，准备着被这游行灌输庄严的思想。
奥兰治游行是所有游行中最恢宏夺目的。比利王骑着一匹纯白色的马，色泽千里难寻，黑骑士在尾部，他们是奥兰治人最尊贵的一级，骑着黑色的马，戴着父亲会传给儿子的那种古代高帽，穿着燕尾外衣。这些奥兰治人一般身材瘦削、家境贫穷，是一群骄傲而狂热的老农夫。他们拉起的横幅都是用华丽的丝绸和刺绣所做，蓝色、金色、橙色和白色，图案是新教徒的胜利场景、百合和翻开的《圣经》，还有语录，敬神的、荣耀的、热烈而偏执的语录。
女士们打着阳伞走了过来，奥兰治人的妻子和女儿们都穿着白色，以示纯洁。然后是乐队、横笛和鼓，还有才华横溢的踢踏舞者在干净的干草货车上表演，那是一个移动的舞台。
还有，弥尔顿•荷马登场了。他会在游行中的任何地方出现，从比利王那里到黑骑士，到踢踏舞者，到羞答答的佩戴奥兰治橙色肩带的孩子们那里，到处窜。走到黑骑士后面的时候他会一脸严肃，昂着头，像是戴着一顶高帽似的，走在女士们后面的时候他会扭动臀部，撑着一把想象中的阳伞。在模仿这方面，他有无法遏制的天赋和不忍直视的精力。他能让踢踏舞者那整体划一的表演变成一场白痴的乱舞，还同时能保持节奏。
奥兰治游行是他在游行上的最好机会，尽管每一场游行他的表演都相当突出。他高昂着头，大摆着手，重踏着步，跟在军团指挥官的后面行进。到帝国日那天，他就给自己找来一面加拿大红船旗和英国国旗，在脑袋上方像陀螺一样挥舞着转圈儿。圣诞老人游行的时候，他就抢走了本来给孩子们的糖果，而且是真的抢走了，没闹着玩。
你可能会想，汉拉提政府的人应该制止这样的事情发生。弥尔顿•荷马对任何游行的贡献都是负面的。如果弥尔顿•荷马能设计点什么的话，他的游行就是设计出来的，故意把游行搞得很蠢的样子。为什么组织者和游行者不把他赶走呢？他们肯定觉得该这么做，可做起来没说的容易啊。米尔顿跟他两个老处女姑姑生活在一起，他的父母已经去世了，没人会想跟那两位老女士说：让他在家里好好待着。她们看上去已经杂务缠身了。如果他听见乐队的声音，怎么才能阻止他参与进来呢？她们得把他锁上，把他绑起来。这样的事情发生过一次，就不再有人想把他拽开拖到一边去了。因为他要是抗议，就会把所有的事情给毁了。毫无疑问，他就是会抗议的。他有厚重深沉的嗓音，还是个强壮的男人，尽管不算高大。他的身高跟拿破仑差不多。人们想把他赶出院子的时候，他对大门和栅栏一顿猛踢。有一次他在人行道上把一辆童车给撞毁了，就是因为童车挡了他的道。这么说来，让他参与进来，看来是最佳的选择。
所以，这是诸多坏选择中最好的一个。没人在游行里把弥尔顿当一回事，大家都习惯他了。
甚至指挥官也任由他嘲弄，以往闷闷不乐、牢骚满腹的黑骑士也对他不闻不问。路边的人们只是说：“哦，那是弥尔顿。”人们不怎么被他逗笑，尽管城里的陌生人、来这儿的亲戚们，如果被邀请去看游行，都会傻笑着把他指出来，以为他是官方派来搞笑、缓和气氛的，就像那些本来是年轻的商人，被派来做小丑，结果侧手翻还翻失败了的那种。
“那是谁啊？”来访者问。人们冷冷地回答着，带着一种特殊的模糊的自豪感：
“那只是弥尔顿•荷马而已。没有弥尔顿•荷马就不是游行了。”
“那个村庄白痴。”菲比说。她尝试理解这里发生的一切，她的这份礼貌无人能懂，却一直保持。露丝和布莱恩说，他们都没有听到弥尔顿•荷马这样被描述过。他们从来没有把汉拉提当作村庄。村庄，是那种在圣诞贺卡里出现的，风景如画的房屋环绕在尖塔教堂周围的样子。
村民们是在学校合唱团穿着表演服饰唱轻歌剧的人。如果要把弥尔顿•荷马介绍给一个外来人，人们会说他这个人是“部分缺失”。露丝从那个时候就开始想，他们说的到底是哪一部分缺失？她现在还在想。大脑吧，这应该是最简单的答案。弥尔顿•荷马的智商肯定低。没错。
但是汉拉提和汉拉提之外的人，很多人也一样智商低，只不过他们没有用行为来把自己跟别人区分开来罢了。他没有阅读障碍，能看隔离告示就说明了这一点；他也知道怎么数零钱，人们五次三番地想骗他，结果他证明了自己不好骗。他缺失的是一种谨慎的直觉，露丝现在觉得。是一种“社会约束”，尽管那个时候还没有这样的词。正常人喝醉了的时候缺失的那个东西，就是弥尔顿•荷马从来没有的东西，或者是他在早年的时候，就选择不去拥有的东西。
这就是露丝感兴趣的地方了，他的表情，他每天的模样，眼睛瞪圆、眉毛挑起、肩膀一垂，都是那种戏剧里演的酒鬼特别夸张的样子，那种似乎经过大胆设计才能做出的表演，那种同时无助又无法自控的感觉——真的是这样吗？
弥尔顿•荷马跟他妈妈的两个姐妹一起住。她们俩是双胞胎，名字是海蒂和玛蒂•弥尔顿，不过通常人们叫她们海蒂和玛蒂小姐，大概是为了不让这名字跟任何显得愚蠢的东西联系起来吧。弥尔顿是跟着他妈妈那边姓，这是个惯例，而且也没想过这跟两位大诗人的名字有什么关联。这个巧合从来没有被提起，或许也没人注意。露丝一开始也没注意，直到上高中的某一天，有个坐在后面的男孩拍他的肩膀，让她看自己在英语课本上写了什么。他把诗歌标题上的“查普曼译”这个词给去掉了，用墨笔写上“弥尔顿”，所以那标题读起来就是《初窥弥尔顿•荷马有感》。
提到弥尔顿•荷马，就等于在说笑话，但他们觉得这改了的标题好笑，是因为它隐约暗示着弥尔顿•荷马那不堪入目的行为。人们说当他在邮局或者电影院排队的时候，会敞开他的外衣，露出身体，然后突然前冲，开始摩擦起来。当然他不会做得太过分，他那东西就像心血来潮，但半途而废。男孩子们互相怂恿对方去跟他排一次队，一直贴在他前面，直到最后那个关键时刻，突然跳到一边，让大家看到他一个人如饥似渴地摩擦身体的样子。
不管这事是真是假，他是因为受刺激了才这么干，还是说他每次都这么干，反正后来，女士们要是看到弥尔顿，就会走到马路另一边，大人会警告孩子们离他远远的。别让他毛手毛脚的，弗洛说。随着在医院生孩子越来越平常，家庭里因为婴儿出生而举行仪式的场合也就少了。他有的时候是可以进去屋子里瞅瞅那些仪式的，不过有的时候人们会把大门紧锁，以防他进去。他会走过来敲门，踢门上的镶板，然后走开。不过他可以在院子里做他的事情，反正他不会拿走什么东西，不过要是他受到了冒犯，就会大搞破坏了。
当然了，他跟姑姑在一起的时候，就是完全不一样的人了。那个时候他就表现得怯生生的，很乖巧，他的能量和激情全都藏得好好的。他会吃他姑姑给他买来的、放在纸包里的糖。姑姑让他跟别人分着吃的时候，他也会这么做，尽管除非是世界上最馋嘴的人，没人会去碰弥尔顿•荷马的手指碰过或者是口水沾过的东西。姑姑看见他剪了头发，就会用一切办法让这发型看着体面。她们还会帮他熨洗衣服、缝缝补补，给他拿雨衣雨鞋，给他戴织好的帽子和围巾，视天气情况而定。她们知道自己不在场的时候他是怎么出去野的吗？她们肯定听说过，要是听说过，作为有自尊心、恪守卫理公会道德教条的人，她们必然深感痛苦。当年正是他的爷爷在汉拉提开了一家亚麻加工厂，并且强制所有厂员在周六晚上参与他组织的圣经课。
荷马一家，也都是体面人。荷马家族里的人似乎应该把弥尔顿剔除开去才对，但是这两位弥尔顿女士可不愿意，她们心肠仁慈。
“她们不会把他送进精神病院的，她们可是很自尊的人。”
海蒂•弥尔顿在高中教书。她教书的时间比其他所有老师都要长，她比校长还重要。她教的是英语，所以学生们要是对书里的诗歌作什么自行改动的话，就显得更大胆、更有满足感了，因为这事儿就在她眼皮底下发生呢。而她，正是以维持纪律闻名的。她胸部硕大、搽脂抹粉，戴上眼镜，就一副心无杂念、凛然正气的样子，管好纪律不在话下。她不用“青少年”这个词，也拒绝将四年级学生跟青少年区别对待。她会布置很多记忆性的作业。有一天她在黑板上书写了一首长诗，说每个人都要把它抄下来，牢记在心，第二天背出来。这是露丝上高中三四年级的时候发生的事情，她以为这些话都是说说而已的。她学诗轻而易举，跳过抄写这第一步也合情合理。她把诗读了一遍，逐句学懂，在脑子里默诵了好几遍。这个时候，海蒂小姐过来问她为什么不抄下来。
露丝回答说，这首诗她早就会了，尽管她不是很确定到底真会还是假会。
“你真的会了吗？”海蒂小姐说，“站起来，脸朝教室后面。”
露丝照做了，为自己的吹嘘而颤抖。
“现在向全班同学把这首诗背下来。”
露丝的自信没有错。她背下来了，中间完全没有断过。接下来会怎么样？惊叹、赞扬，还是赢得罕见的尊重呢？
“看来，你也许知道这首诗，”海蒂小姐说，“让你做什么，你就得做，这没有借口。坐下，把这首诗抄在书上。我要你每行抄三遍。如果没有完成，就留到四点以后。”
当然，露丝的确被留到了四点以后，她愤愤地抄着诗，海蒂小姐在一旁织她的东西。当露丝把抄好的诗递给她看的时候，海蒂小姐的声音挺温和，但语言却是决绝的：“不要以为你会读诗就比其他人好到哪儿去。你以为你是谁呀？”
露丝不是第一次被人问到她以为自己是谁，事实上，这问题总是像个单调乏味的大钟那样常常给她敲那么几下，她都没再注意了。但是后来她明白过来，海蒂小姐并不是一个爱施暴的老师，她已经收回了她如今在全班同学面前说的话。她也不是怀恨在心，因为她不认为露丝会背诗错在了哪里，她不是想报复露丝。她想给露丝的教训，对她来说比任何诗都重要，她真实地相信，露丝需要这样的教训。似乎很多人也是这么认为的。
高中学年结束的时候，全班同学都被邀请去弥尔顿家里看幻灯片。这个幻灯片是关于中国的。玛蒂小姐，也就是常年留在家里的双胞胎的另一个，年轻的时候是个传教士。玛蒂小姐非常害羞，她会坐在最后面操作幻灯片，海蒂小姐负责讲解。幻灯片上展示的，如大家所想的那样，是一个黄蒙蒙的国家。黄土山坡、灰黄的天空、黄种人、黄包车、遮阳伞，都显得干瘪、瘦削和脆弱，庙宇上、道路上以及人们脸上涂抹的色彩会裂开一道道缝，仿佛不是真的一般。也就在露丝坐在弥尔顿家客厅的时候，毛泽东早已掌权中国，眼下正是朝鲜战争。
但是海蒂小姐对历史并不在意，同时，她也不在意她的观众已经有十八九岁了。
“中国人是异教徒，”海蒂小姐说，“这就是为什么他们有乞丐。”
画面上的确出现了一个乞丐，正跪在地上乞讨，向黄包车内的一个富家女伸出手臂，而对方无视他的存在。
“他们会吃那些我们不会碰的东西。”海蒂说。画面上还展示了一些拿着细棍子往碗里戳的中国人。“但是如果他们成为了基督徒，就会享用好一点的食物了。第一代基督徒的身高比他们要高1.5英寸。”
第一代基督徒站成一排，张开嘴，可能是在歌唱。他们穿着红白两色的衣服。
幻灯片放完后，装有三明治、饼干和馅饼的碟子就端了上来。都是自己家做的，味道很不错。葡萄汁和姜汁啤酒倒进了杯子里。弥尔顿坐在角落里，穿着他那件厚厚的花呢外套，里面是白色的衬衫，戴着一条领带，酒和点心屑都已经洒得满地都是了。
“有一天这些食物会在他脸上爆炸的。”弗洛曾经这样阴沉沉地说，她说的是弥尔顿。所以大家年复一年来这里看幻灯片和喝酒水，其实就是为了看笑话的吗？打着坏主意，想来看看弥尔顿的下巴和肚子是怎么鼓成一团、准备爆炸的吗？他干的事儿，就是在那里以惊人的速度把自己填满。他吃燕麦枣块、小甜饼、纳奈莫棒和水果硬糖，还有牛油蛋挞和巧克力糕饼，吃这所有的所有，颇有一条蛇吞下一只青蛙的架势。那鼓胀的样子都差不多。
卫理公会教徒在汉拉提的势力正在消散，尽管这个过程进行得很慢。上必修圣经课的日子已经过去了。也许弥尔顿一家对此并不知情。也许他们知情，只不过对此事摆出一副凛然拒绝的姿态。他们给人的感觉，仿佛虔心向神仍然必要，繁荣因此而生，一如既往。这砖房里的布置，沙发和床厚实而舒适，大衣领子毛绒绒的，已经表明这是个卫理公会教徒的家，着装也是如此，厚重、踏实，刻意的豪放。关于他们的一切似乎都为了说明，他们正在使用上帝的杰作，而上帝并没有令它们失望。以上帝的名义，他们沿着大厅周围，用记账本专用直线画笔规整地在地板上涂了一圈蜡。以上帝的名义，让秋海棠绽放，把钱存进银行。
但是这年头，出差错也在所难免。弥尔顿家的女士出的差错，就是向加拿大广播公司递交了一份她们执笔的请愿书，她们请求删掉干涉周日晚上礼拜的广播内容，其中包括埃德加•伯根和查理•麦卡锡的节目、杰克•本尼的节目、弗莱德•艾伦的节目。她们请牧师到教堂里宣讲请愿，这可是联合基督教会，长老会教徒和公理会教徒比卫理公会教徒人数要多。接下来的这一幕，并不是露丝亲眼所见，而是弗洛告诉她的：牧师宣讲完之后，海蒂小姐和玛蒂小姐一人站在走出教堂的人潮一边，说服他们在教堂前厅小桌子的请愿书上签字。弥尔顿•荷马坐在桌子前。他必须得坐在那儿，到周日，他可逃不掉去教堂。她们给了他个活儿干，让他忙起来，负责一支水笔，他得保证这笔是有墨的，并且递交给签字人。
这就是明显出差错的地方了。弥尔顿突然兴起，往自己脸上画胡子，连镜子都没用。那胡子从他那庞大而忧愁的下巴蜿蜒而过，涌到他那布满血丝、似乎在预知不幸的双眼周围。他还把钢笔放进嘴巴里，那墨汁就渗到了他嘴唇上。说白了，那请愿书本来就没人要签，还搞出了这么滑稽的一幕，就更没人想被当成个笑话来看待了。开亚麻加工厂的弥尔顿姐妹的势力，也只被当作几滴残留的水花溅起而已。人们笑笑，走开，什么事情都没有做成。当然，弥尔顿姐妹也没有责骂弥尔顿或者把这事儿闹开，她们只是把他裹上，带着请愿书，回家了。
“这就是她们认为自己能运作点什么事的最后念想了。”弗洛说。跟往常一样，她也说不清到底是打败她们的哪一部分让她感到舒心，是挑战了她们的宗教信仰，还是拆穿了她们的假模假式呢？
汉拉提高中海蒂小姐的英语课上，给露丝看那首诗的男孩叫作拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮，就是那个特别擅长模仿弥尔顿•荷马的男孩。露丝记得，他给她看那首诗的时候，他还没有开始模仿。那是后来发生的事了，是他在学校的最后几个月里。因为名字的字母拼写相近，大多数课堂上他都是坐在露丝前面或者后面的。不过除了名字之外，他们的家族的确也有相似的地方，不是在相貌方面，而是在习惯和倾向方面。如果他们俩真的是兄弟姐妹的话，这样的关系其实还挺尴尬，不过幸好并非如此，所以这巧合也自然让他们亲密起来了。铅笔啊、尺子啊、橡皮啊、钢笔尖啊、横格纸啊、方格纸啊、指南针啊、圆规啊、量角器啊，那些让学校生活良好有序的东西，他们都容易丢，或者是不知道放哪儿，或者是从来都没拥有过全套的。他们用墨水的时候都笨手笨脚的，准会洒，然后弄脏东西。他们都不想做作业，但是没做又提心吊胆。所以他们尽力帮助对方，要是对方缺什么，就求着那些什么都有的旁桌同学要，找别人的作业来抄。他们发展出了囚徒般的友谊，就像军营里两个无心恋战的战友，一心想要逃命，避免参与行动。
这还不是全部。他们俩的鞋子和靴子老混在一起，扭打着、推搡着、私自会面，以示友好，有的时候那鞋子靴子像是受了鼓励，还躺在一起休息。这情谊让他们互相扶持，尤其是在被老师叫去黑板前写数学答案的时候。
有一次中午过后，拉尔夫顶着满头雪走了进来。他往后面一靠，把雪花晃到了露丝的桌面上，说：“你有那种蓝色的头皮屑吗？”
“没有。我的是白色的。”
肢体语言如此坦然，讲的都是儿时笑话，这时刻，对露丝来说是在表达亲昵。另一天午后，上课铃响之前，她到教室看见他，有一圈围观的人，看着他在模仿弥尔顿•荷马。她又吃惊又担心，吃惊的是，跟她一样，他平时也常常害羞，这是他们俩能玩在一起的原因之一；担心的是，他下不来台，他的模仿不能让别人笑出来。不过他表演得很好，他那大大的、苍白的、纯良的脸换上了弥尔顿那坑坑洼洼的面容，表现出绝望，他眼睛瞪得圆圆的，晃着下巴，哑着嗓子，嘟哝着单调的词。他模仿得太成功了，露丝为之惊叹，其他人也是。从那时候起，拉尔夫就开始他的模仿之路了。他模仿了不少人，但是弥尔顿•荷马是他的商标。作为他的亲密战友，露丝还没有从为他感到惊慌的情绪中走出来。她还有另外一种感受，不是嫉妒，而是一种似是而非的渴望。她也想这么干。不是模仿弥尔顿•荷马，她不想做弥尔顿•荷马。她只是想踩上那十足诱人又轻松自如的道路，她想脱胎换骨；她想要勇气和能量。
没等拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮公开发展这些才能，他就辍学了。露丝想念他的脚，他的呼吸，他用手指拍打她肩膀的感觉。她有时候会在街上撞见他，但是他看起来不像是同一个人了。他们从来没有停下来聊过天，光说句“你好”，就匆匆再见。几年来，他们是亲密同盟，但似乎是维持家庭关系的那种，在学校之外，就从来没有说过话，除了正式会面，再没别的联系了。如今，也没法再联系了。露丝从来没有问过他为什么会辍学，甚至都不知道他是不是找到了工作。他们熟知对方的头和脚、脖颈和肩膀，但是从来没有以自主人格的姿态互相打过照面。
一段时间之后，露丝就再没有跟他在街上见过了。她听说他参加了海军。他肯定一直在等着加入海军，等到年龄够了就去。他加入海军，去了哈利法克斯港。现在战争已经结束，海军也只是和平年代的海军。拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮穿着军服，趴在驱逐舰的甲板上，可能扣动扳机射出子弹——想想是件挺奇怪的事。露丝开始理解那些她认识的男孩，不管看上去多么不能干，早晚要变成男人，去做那些你觉得需要动用更多天赋和权力才能做成的事。
有一段这样的时光：弗洛不再开店了，她的关节炎又还没有恶化到像后来那样完全不能走动，她会常常到外面去玩宾果游戏，有的时候会到军团大厅跟她的邻居们玩牌。露丝回家探望的时候，话匣子总是很难打开，所以她会问弗洛在军团里见到什么人。她会问她的同龄人最近怎么样了，比如说霍斯•尼克尔森和兰特•切斯特顿，她都无法想象他们变成男人的样子。
弗洛见过他们吗？
“有一个，他总是在那儿。拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮。”
露丝说她还以为拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮是在海军服役呢。
“他之前是，不过现在回家了。他出了场事故。”
“什么事故？”
“我不知道。在海军的事故。他在海军医院都已经三年整了。他们得帮他重新接骨头。他现在好了，不过走路是跛脚的，拖着一条腿往前走。”
“太糟糕了。”
“嗯，是啊。我也是这么说的。我不怨恨他，不过军团里有人这样。”
“怨恨他？”
“因为养老金的事。”弗洛说。露丝连这么基本的生活事务都不想，这让弗洛感到吃惊，也甚是鄙夷，在汉拉提，对这事儿有怨恨的态度也是很自然的。“他们觉得，对吧，他自己这辈子养老金是有着落了。我说，他肯定为此受了不少苦。有人说他拿到了很多，我不信。他也不需要太多，他总是自力更生。就说一点，如果他觉得疼，他是不会表现出来的。我就是这样。我不会表现出来。你要是哭肯定就自己一个人哭。他是一个很好的飞镖选手。他能表演这里所有发生的事情。他能把别人模仿得惟妙惟肖的。”
“他还模仿弥尔顿•荷马吗？他之前在学校里模仿弥尔顿•荷马。”
“他模仿他。弥尔顿•荷马。模仿起来很搞笑。他也模仿别人。”
“弥尔顿•荷马还活着吗？他还跟在游行队伍里踏步吗？”
“他当然活着了。不过现在消停多了。他在养老院里，阳光好点的日子，你能看见他在公路边盯着车流，舔雪糕筒。两位女士都已经死了。”
“所以他不在游行队伍里了？”
“也没什么游行队伍了。现在游行少多了。现在奥兰治人活着的不剩几个了，来看游行的观众也不多，反正，大家更喜欢待在家里看电视呢。”
后来几次探望的时候，露丝发现弗洛已经跟军团的人为敌了。
“我不想当那些老疯子。”她说。
“什么老疯子？”
“围着坐在那儿一边喝酒一边讲一模一样的蠢故事。我不舒服。”
这就是弗洛的日常生活。见一些人、去一些地方、说说笑笑，一会喜欢，一会又厌恶。随着年龄增长，这样的转变越来越激烈，也越来越常发生了。
“他们你一个都不喜欢了吗？拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮还在那儿吗？”
“他还在那儿。他喜欢那儿，都想在那儿找份工作来着。他想兼职去酒吧工作。有些人说他被拒绝的原因是他已经有那份养老金了，但我觉得是因为他那做事方式而已。”
“什么方式？他酗酒吗？”
“你也不能说到底是还是不是，他跟以前一样，模仿别人，有一半时间他都是在模仿新来这镇上的人，人们都不知道他模仿的是谁，他们就觉得拉尔夫跟个白痴似的。”
“就像弥尔顿•荷马一样吗？”
“对啊。他们怎么知道弥尔顿•荷马是谁，他长什么样？他们不知道的呀。拉尔夫不知道什么时候应该停下来。他就模仿着，把工作都给模仿没了。”
露丝把弗洛送去了养老院。在那儿她没有看到弥尔顿•荷马，但是看到了很多她以为早就不在人世的人。她待在原来的房子里打扫，准备把它卖出去。弗洛的邻居看到了她，就带她到军团里玩，因为他们觉得她一个人度过周六晚上会很孤单。露丝不知道该如何拒绝，所以就坐在了军团大厅地下楼层一张长长的桌子前，那是酒吧。最后一缕阳光穿过豆子和玉米地，穿过铺着砾石的停车场，穿过高高的窗户，在夹板墙印上了点点斑驳。
墙上挂满了照片，手写的名字贴在了相框上。露丝起身去看。一百零六号。就在1915年战争发动之前。那场战争有很多英雄，他们的子侄延续了他们的姓氏，不过他们自己，露丝却是第一次听说。她回到桌子前的时候，大家已经开始玩牌了。她不知道自己中途去看那些照片算不算坏了这个局。也许从来没有人看过这些照片，也许这些照片也从来不是用来看的，它们就像墙上的夹板一样。拜访的人、从外面来的人就喜欢东看西看，哪儿都觉得有趣，问这是什么，那是什么，试着保持活跃的对话。他们问了太多的问题，又想知道太多的答案。而且露丝这样看上去好像在这屋子里游行似的，像在吸引大家的注意力。
一位女士坐下来介绍自己。她是一个正在玩牌的男人的妻子。“我在电视上见过你。”她说。
别人提到这点的时候，露丝总是感觉有一些歉意，她意识到了自己的这点，必须克制表达歉意的冲动。在汉拉提，这种冲动就比平常表现得更加厉害了。她意识到自己做了一些看上去高高在上的事情。她记得自己在电视里当访谈主持人的时候，那粉饰过的自信和魅力，如今无人得知那仅仅是一种欺骗的假象。她的表演则是另一回事。那些让她感到羞愧的事情，并非他们认为她应该感到羞愧的事情，不是那种衰败的胸部，是一种她自己也拿不准、说不清的失败。
这个跟她聊天的女人并不来自汉拉提。她说她是在十五年前结婚的时候从萨尼亚过来的。
“我还是觉得要习惯这里有点难。说真的。从城市那边过来之后。你真人比在那个电视系列看起来要好看。”
“希望是这样吧。”露丝说，然后跟她讲上电视前人们是怎么给她化妆的。大家都对这些事情比较感兴趣，谈到技术细节，露丝也更自在一些。
“看，这是老拉尔夫。”女人说。她移过身去，把位子让给一个头发灰白、拿着一大杯子啤酒的清瘦男人。这是拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮。如果露丝在路上看见了他，是认不出他来的，他看上去就像一个陌生人，但是看了他一会儿之后，露丝觉得他没怎么变，跟十七岁或者十五岁一样，没什么变化，他那灰白头发落在前额，跟从前浅棕色的时候并无二致，他的脸庞仍然苍白、平静，对于他的瘦小身体而言显得过大，他仍然是一副怯怯的、处处提防的神态，目光谨慎。但是他的身体更瘦削了，他的肩膀似乎收缩到了一起。他穿着一件短袖运动衫，小小的领子，三颗装饰性的纽扣，浅蓝色，有米色和黄色的条纹。对于露丝来说，看到这件衣服就似乎要谈到活力老矣、青春竟逝一类的话了。她注意到他衰老的手臂已经是皮包骨，他的手颤抖得厉害，需要双手捧着啤酒杯子才能送到他的嘴上。
“你不会在这里待太久的，对吧？”来自萨莉亚的女士说。
露丝说她明天就要去多伦多了，星期天，晚上。
“你的生活肯定很忙碌。”女士说。她大大地叹了一口气，那诚实的羡慕，一看就是来自乡镇之外的语气。
露丝那时在想，周一中午她要去见个人，跟他吃午饭，然后睡觉。这个男人叫汤姆•谢普德，两人认识已久。他曾经爱过她，曾经给她写情信。她跟他在一起的最后一次，是在多伦多，喝完金汤力鸡尾酒，他们两个人坐在床上。他们在一起的时候，总是会喝很多。那时，露丝突然想到，或者知道，他现在就爱着一个人，一个在远处的女人，或许还会给他写情书；她想到，当他给自己写情书的时候，一定身旁也有个跟他睡觉的女人。以及，一直以来，他还有老婆。露丝想问他这些事，这必要性，这难处，这满足感。她的好奇是友好的，并不是针锋相对，但是她也知道，并且有足够的敏锐知道，这些问题听上去并没有那么友好。
军团里的话题已经变成了彩票、宾果游戏和赚头。那些玩牌的男人里，也有弗洛的邻居，他们在聊着一个能赢一万美元的男人，但是他从来没敢把这事儿说出来，因为他已经破产多年，还欠了很多人的钱。
有人说，他如果宣布自己破产了的话，就不再算是欠钱了。
“也许他那个时候不欠，”另外一个人说，“但是他现在欠钱了。所以他不说的原因是他现在有钱了。”
这个观点受到了大家的欢迎。
露丝和拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮面面相觑。同样的无声玩笑，同样的盟友，同样的舒适，都一样，都一样的。
“我听说你特别会模仿。”露丝说。
这句话不对头了，她不应该说什么的。他大笑，摇摇头。
“哦，别这样。我听说你模仿弥尔顿•荷马模仿得可生动了。”
“我可不知道这事。”
“他还在吗？”
“据我所知他还在养老院。”
“还记得海蒂小姐和玛蒂小姐吗？她们家里还可以放幻灯片呢。”
“当然。”
“我对中国的印象到现在还停留在那些幻灯片上。”
露丝继续说，尽管她希望自己能够停下来。她说话的语调，要是放在别的地方，就会被人看作是一种显而易见又毫无意义的调情，说的都是不为人知的事，听上去很是逗趣。她没听到拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮有什么回应，尽管他看上去听得很认真，甚至是欢迎的样子。而她说话的时候也总是在想，他想要她说些什么。他的确有自己想听的话。但是他不会暗示让她说。她对他的第一印象改变了，不再是那种男孩般的害羞和随和。那是他的表面。在内心里，他是个自负的人，顺其自然地生活在困惑或骄傲之中。她希望他能够用他自己那个层次的态度来跟她说话，她想，他应该也是如此希望的，但是终究没有这么做。
但是当露丝想起那不甚满意的对话时，她想起的是一种善意、同情和原谅，尽管谁也没有提起这些词。她身上一直有的那种奇怪的羞愧感似乎已经抹去。她感到羞愧的那些事，那些关于她在电视上表演的事——也许只是因为她把注意力都放在了错误的事情上而已，她注意的是报道时的姿态，然而她没有理解，也理解不到的，是更加远一点的东西，是报道的调子、深度和信号。但是她所怀疑的不仅仅是那表演。她做过的那些事情，有时全是一种错误。跟拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮聊天的时候，这种感觉前所未有地强烈，但是当她后来想起他的时候，那错误，也就变得没有那么重要了。她那个时候足够孩子气，她在想自己对他的感觉，是否纯粹是对性爱感到的温暖和好奇。不是，她不觉得。他们之间的感觉，似乎需要某种翻译，或许他们只能通过这种翻译来扮演自己的角色；然而，不再提这些、不再扮演这角色才是正经事，因为这样的翻译也是模棱两可的。同样，也很危险。
所以，当露丝回想起弥尔顿•荷马的“婴儿仪式”，以及他荡秋千露出的那残忍的幸福感时，她也并没有对布莱恩和菲比解释任何关于拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮的事情。她知道他死去的事情，是因为她还在订阅汉拉提报纸。去年圣诞节的时候，弗洛觉得应该给露丝一份圣诞礼物，就给她订阅了七年。弗洛还说这报纸就登登别人的名字，也没什么阅读价值——这话很像是她说的。露丝通常都是迅速地翻翻报纸，然后放进炉膛。但是她却读了头版上关于拉尔夫的那一篇。
前海军士兵逝世
上周日晚，退役海军军士拉尔夫•?吉莱斯皮先生的头部在军团大厅遭遇致命伤。无一人被通知事故发生。不幸的是，几个小时过后，吉莱斯皮先生的尸体才被发现。据估计，他错把地下楼层的入口当成了出口，失去平衡。他在海军生涯中曾经受过伤，身有残疾，故而这次事故将他置于危险之中。
拉尔夫父母的名字也报道了出来，显然他们仍然活着，同样刊登的还有他已婚的姐姐的名字。军团负责善后事宜。
露丝没有把这个告诉任何人，也很庆幸，有这样一件她可以不讲出来以至毁掉的事情，尽管除了她要为了那层信念而保有克制之外，她对此事的细节也知之甚少，所以才能一言不发。
她能对自己和拉尔夫•吉莱斯皮说些什么呢，除了说，她感觉他的生活很近，比她爱过的那些男人还要更近一条缝的距离，除了这，她还能说什么呢？