The Snow of Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain at an altitude of 19,710 feet above sea level, and it is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. The western peak is called the "Uaqi-Uay" of the Maasai (1), which is the temple of God. Near the West Peak, there was the carcass of a leopard that had dried and frozen. Leopards come to such a cold place to look for something, and no one has explained.

"The strange thing is that it doesn't hurt at all," he said. "You know, it was like that in the beginning."

"Is that really the case?"

"It's true. But I'm very sorry, this smell is so unbearable that you can't stand it. ”

"Don't say that! Please don't say that. ”

"Look at those birds," he said. "Is it the scenery here, or my smell that attracts them?"

The man lay on a canvas bed, in the shade of a mimosa tree, and he looked over the shade toward the sunlit plain, where three huge birds were crouching in disgust, and a dozen more soaring in the sky, casting swiftly moving shadows as they skimmed by.

"From the day the trucks broke down, they hovered there," he said. "Today is the first time they've fallen to the ground. I had at first looked very closely at their flight, and thought that I might use them once I wrote a short story. It's ridiculous to think about it now. ”

"I hope you don't write this," she said.

"I'm just talking," he said, "and if I talk, I'll feel much more relaxed." But I don't want to upset you. ”

"You know it's not going to upset me," she said, "I'm so anxious because I can't do anything about it." I think we might as well take it as easy as possible before the plane comes. ”

"Or wait until the plane doesn't come at all."

"Please tell me what I can do." There's always something I can do. ”

"You can saw off my leg so you don't let it spread, but I suspect that won't work either." Maybe you can beat me to death. You're a good shooter now. I taught you to shoot a gun, didn't I? ”

"Please don't say that. Can I read something to you? ”

"What do you read?"

"We can have any book in our bag that we haven't read."

"I can't hear you," he said, "only the conversation is the easiest." Let's argue, and the time to argue will pass quickly. ”

"I don't argue. I never wanted to argue. Let's stop arguing. No matter how irritable we are. Maybe today they'll come back in another truck. Maybe the plane will come. ”

"I don't want to move," said the man, "and there is no point in transferring now, unless it makes your mind a little easier." ”

"It's a sign of cowardice."

"Can't you just make a man die as easily as possible, and you have to scold him?" What's the use of you insulting me? ”

"You're not going to die."

"Don't be silly. I'm dying now. Don't believe you ask those bastards. He looked toward the place where the three nasty big birds were crouching, their bare heads curled up in their towering feathers. The fourth flew down, and it sped away, and then, staggering slowly toward the ones.

"There are these birds in every camp. You never noticed. If you don't give up on yourself, you won't die. ”

"Where did you read that?" You big fool. ”

"You might as well think of someone else."

"For God's sake," he said, "it has always been my business." ”

He lay quietly for a moment, then crossed the scorching and dazzling plain and looked out over the edge of the bushes. On the yellow plains, there were several wild sheep that appeared small and white, and in the distance he saw a herd of zebras, against the green bushes, appearing white and flowery. It is a comfortable and pleasant camp with large trees shaded and backed by mountains with clear water. There is a nearby water cavity that has almost dried up, and every morning, sand grouse flies there.

"Do you want me to read something to you?" she asked. She sat in a canvas chair by the canvas bed. "There's a breeze blowing."

"No, thank you."

"Maybe the truck will come."

"I don't care what trucks don't come."

"I care."

"There are so many things you care about, I don't care."

"Not a lot, Harry."

"How about a drink?"

"Drinking is bad for you. In a book published by Blake, it is said that not a drop of wine can be drunk. You shouldn't drink. ”

"Morrow!" He called.

"Yes, sir."

"Bring the whiskey soda."

"You shouldn't drink," she said. "That's what I mean when I say you're self-defeating. The book says that alcohol is harmful to you. I knew that alcohol was bad for you. ”

"No," he said. "Wine is good for me."

Now it's all over, he thought. Now he never had another chance to end it all. It all ended in a quarrel over such a trivial matter as a glass of wine.

He had not felt pain since the gangrene in his right leg had begun, and as the pain had gone, the fear had disappeared, and all he felt now was a strong sense of boredom and anger: this was the end. As for the fact that this ending was now coming, he did not feel much surprise. It has haunted him for many years; but now it does not make any sense in itself. It's strange that as long as you're tired of enough, you can achieve this ending so easily.

Now he could no longer write about the subject he had intended to leave for future writing, and he wanted to wait until he had enough knowledge before he could write it, so that he could write better. Well, he doesn't have to fail when he tries to write these things. Maybe you can never write these things out, which is why you have repeatedly delayed and delayed writing. Got it, now, he'll never know.

"I wish we hadn't come up here at all," the woman said. She bit her lip and looked at the wine glass he was holding in his hand. "You would never do anything like this in Paris. You've always said you like Paris. We could have stayed in Paris or anywhere else. I'm willing to go anywhere. I said I'd like to go wherever you wanted. If you wanted to hunt, we could have gone to Hungary and would have been very comfortable. ”

"What you have is damn money," he said.

"It's not fair to say that," she said. "It's always yours, just like mine." I left everything behind, no matter where I went, as long as you want to go I will go, I will do whatever you want. But I wish we hadn't come up here at all. ”

"You said you liked it here."

"As I said, you were safe and sound at that time. But now I hate it here. I don't understand why you have to let your legs go wrong. What the hell did we do to get us to encounter something like this? ”

"I think what I did was, at first I scratched my leg, forgot to put iodine on it, and then didn't pay attention to it at all, because I was never infected. Later, when it was serious, other antibacterial agents were used up, perhaps because of the use of a very weak carbolic acid solution, so that the microvascular paralysis, so began to develop gangrene. ”

He looked at her, "What else?" ”

"I don't mean that."

"If we had hired a clever mechanic instead of the half-bottled Jikuyu (2) driver, he might have checked the oil and would never have burned the bearings of the truck."

"If you hadn't left your own people—your old acquaintances of Godbury, Saratoga, and Palm Beach(3)—picked me up—"

"No, I'm in love with you. It's not fair for you to say that. I love you now, too. I love you forever. Do you love me? ”

"No," the man said. "I don't think so. I never thought of it that way. ”

"Harry, what are you talking about?" You're dizzy. ”

"No, I don't have a head to faint on."

"Don't you drink," she said. "Honey, I beg you not to drink. As long as we can do it, we have to do our best to do it. ”

"Go do it," he said. "I'm tired."

Now, in his mind's eye, he saw a railway station in Karagachi (4), where he was standing with his backpack, and it was now the headlights of the Simplen-Orient train that had cut through the darkness, when he was preparing to leave Thrace after the retreat (5). This is a scene that he is going to write about in the future, and there is the following plot: when he was eating breakfast in the morning, looking out the window at the snow in the Bulgarian mountains, Nansen's female secretary asked the old man if it was snow on the mountain, and the old man looked out the window and said, No, it is not snow. It's not snowing yet. So the female secretary repeated the old man's words to the other girls, no, you see. It wasn't snow, they all said, it's not snow, we're all wrong. But when he offered to exchange the inhabitants and send them to the mountains, it was the snow that they stepped on that winter until they died.

That Christmas in the High Ertal Mountains, the snow also fell for a whole week.

They were living in the logger's house that year, and the large square porcelain stove took up half of the room, and they slept on the mat containing the leaves of the beech, when the deserter ran into the house, his feet frozen in the snow and bloodied. He said that the gendarmes were chasing after him, so they put wool socks on him and pestered the gendarmes until the snowflakes covered the deserters.

In Hillends, on Christmas Day, the snow is so shining, you look out of the bar, it your eyes, you see everyone coming back from church to their homes. They carried heavy skis on their shoulders, from where they had walked up to the smooth, urine-yellow riverside road beside the steep mountains covered with pine forests, and from there they had slid all the way to the great slope of the glacier above the House of Medenaar, and the snow seemed smooth as frosting on a cake, as soft as powder, and he remembered the silent glide, so fast that you seemed to fall from the sky like a bird.

They were sealed off by heavy snow at the "Medernar House" for a week, and during the blizzard they played cards against the lights and in the smoke, and the more Mr. Renter lost, the greater the stakes fell. In the end he lost everything, lost everything, lost all the money from the ski school and all the proceeds of that season, and then lost all his money. He could see Mr. Renter's long nose, picked up the card, and then opened it and said, "Don't look." ”

It was always gambling. It's not snowing, you gamble, it snows too much, you gamble again. He remembered the time he had spent gambling in his life.

But he did not write a single line about it; and that bitter and clear Christmas, when mountains appeared on the other side of the plain, when Gardner flew over the line to bomb the train that carried the Austrian officers on vacation, and as the officers scattered, he strafed them with machine guns. He remembers Gardner walking into the cafeteria and starting to talk about it. After everyone listened to him, there was silence, and then one person said, "You damn murderous bad breed." ”

He also didn't write a single line about it.

The Austrians they killed were the Same Austrians who had skied with him not long ago, no, not the Austrians. Hans, the Austrian with whom he had been skiing all year, had been living in the "King-Hunter's Guest House", and when they went together to hunt rabbits in the small valley above the sawmill, they talked about the battle at Pasubio (6) and the attack on Portica and Asalona, without writing a single word.

About MonteCorno, Sitcombe, Alcito (7), he also did not write a word.

How many winters did he stay in Vorarlberg (8) and Arlberg (9)? After four winters, he remembered the fox seller, when they arrived in Bludenz (10), that time to buy gifts, and he remembered the cherry core smell peculiar to the mellow cherry wine, and the rapid glide on the frozen powdery snow, and you sang "Hey! Ho! Raleigh said! As he slid over the last section of the ramp, he flew straight down the steep slope, then turned three corners and slid to the orchard, out of which he crossed the ditch and onto the slippery road behind the inn. You knock on the straps, kick off your skis, lean them against the wooden wall outside the inn, the lights shining through the windows, and in the house, in the smoke-filled, freshly brewed warmth, people are playing the accordion.

"Where do we live in Paris?" He asked the woman, who was sitting in a canvas chair beside him, now, in Africa.

"In Creon. You know that. ”

"Why do I know it's there?"

"We've always lived there."

"No, it's not always there."

"We've lived there, and we've lived in the Building of Henry IV in the Saint-Germain district. You said you loved that place. ”

"Love is a pile of dung," Harry said. "And I'm a rooster crawling on a pile of dung and clucking."

"If you had to leave the world," she said, "wouldn't you have to cut down everything you couldn't take away?" I mean, do you have to take everything with you? Are you going to have to kill your horse, your wife, your saddle and your armor? ”

"Yes," he said. "Your damn money is my armor." It is my horse and my armor. ”

"Don't say that."

"All right. I won't say it. I don't want to hurt your feelings. ”

"It's a little late to say that."

"Well, I'll keep hurting you." That's a lot of fun. The only thing I really enjoy doing with you is that I can't do right now. ”

"No, that's not the truth. There are so many things you like to do, and as long as you like to do them, I have done them all. ”

"Oh, for God's sake, please don't boast so much, okay?"

He looked at her and saw that she was crying.

"You listen to me," he said. "Do you think it's funny for me to say that?" I don't know why I say that. I think it's about destroying everything to keep myself alive.

When we first started talking, I was fine. I didn't mean to start like this, but now I'm stupid like an old fool, and I'm really you. Honey, you don't care what I say. I love you, really.

You know I love you. I've never loved any other woman as much as I love you. ”

He unknowingly told the same set of lies that he usually used to make a living.

"You've been nice to me."

"You badass," he said. "You rich badass. This is poetry.

Now I'm full of poetry. Decay and poetry. Rotten poetry. ”

"Don't say it. Harry, why do you have to be so vicious now? ”

"I don't want anything to stay," the man said. "I don't want anything left behind me."

It was late afternoon, and he had been asleep for a while. The setting sun has faded behind the mountain. There was a shadow on the plain, and some small animals were eating near the camp; their heads fell quickly together, swinging their tails, and he watched as they were now running off the bushes. The big birds were no longer waiting on the ground. They all inhabit a tree heavily. There are many more of them. His waiting man was standing by the bed.

"The lady went hunting," said the maid. "What does the sir want?"

"Nothing."

She went hunting, wanting to get some beast meat, and she knew that he liked to watch and hunt, and had the heart to run far, so that she would not disturb this little plain and let him see that she was hunting. She was always so thoughtful and thoughtful, he thought. As long as she knows or reads, or she has heard about it, she has thought it through.

It wasn't her fault, he was finished when he came to her. How can a woman know that what you say is not sincere? How can you know that what you are saying is only out of habit and just for the sake of comfort? Ever since he stopped taking what he said to himself seriously, he had been more successful with women by lying than he had been with them in the past.

He doesn't lie because he has no truth to tell. He had enjoyed life, his life was over, and then he was with some different people, and he had more money, and he had survived again in the best places of the past, and in some other new places.

You don't let yourself think, which is amazing. You have such a good pair of internal organs, so you did not collapse like that, most of them collapsed, and you did not collapse, you have an attitude, since now you can no longer do it, you do not care about the work you do regularly. But in your heart you say that you are going to write about these people, about these very rich people; you say that you really do not belong to their category, but are just a spy in their kingdom; you say that you will leave this kingdom and write about this kingdom, and for the first time a person who is familiar with this kingdom will write it. But he would never write, because every day he did not write anything, coveted comfort, played the role he despised, blunted his talents, relaxed his will to work, and finally he simply did nothing. When he wasn't working, the people he knew now felt much more comfortable. Africa was the happiest place in the fortunate period of his life, and he came here to start from scratch. This time they came to Africa for a hunting trip with minimal comfort. There was no hardship, but no luxury, and he had thought that way he could retrain. In this way he might be able to remove the fat from his psyche, like a boxer who goes to the mountains to work and train in order to consume the fat in his body.

She used to love this safari. She had said he loved the hunting trip. She loves anything that is exciting, that she can change the environment, that she can meet new people, that she can see pleasant things. He had also once felt the illusion of a renewed recovery of the willpower of work. Now if it were over, he knew that it was the case, and he didn't have to become like a snake, nibbling at himself because his back was broken. It wasn't her fault. If it wasn't for her, there would have been other women. If he lives by lies, he should try to die with lies. He heard a gunshot from the other side of the mountain.

Her gun was hitting well, this kind, this rich lady, this thoughtful guardian and destroyer of his talents. Nonsense, it was he who ruined his talents. Why did he blame this woman because she had provided for him well? Although he has talent, he does not use it because he abandons it, because he betrays himself and everything he believes in, because he is over-drinking and dulls his keen senses, because he is lazy, because of laziness, because of snobbery, because of arrogance and prejudice, because of all other reasons, he destroys his talent. What is this? An old book catalog card? What exactly is his talent? Even if it was talent, he did not make full use of it, but used it to make trades. He never uses his talents to do something, but always uses it to decide what he can do. He was determined not to make a living with pens or pencils, but from something else. Strange to say, isn't it?

Whenever he fell in love with another woman, why did that other woman always have more money than the previous one? But when he was no longer genuinely in love, when he was just lying, as he was now with this woman, she was richer than all the women he had loved, she had money, she had husbands, children, she had lovers, but she was not satisfied with those lovers, she loved him with all her heart, she loved him as a writer, as a man, as a companion, as a proud property - strange to say, when he did not love her at all, and lied to her, in order to repay the money she spent for him, He could give her more than he had ever been in love.

Whatever we do is doomed, he thought. No matter what you do to live, that's where your talent lies. His whole life has been a betrayal of life force, in one form or another. And when you're not in love for ten minutes, the more you value money. He found out, but he would never write this, and he won't write it now. No, he wouldn't have written it, even though it was well worth writing about.

Now she came closer, across the clearing to the camp. She was wearing breeches and carrying her rifle, and two male servants came after her carrying a wild sheep. She was still a very good-looking woman, he thought, her body was also very moving, she was very talented and understanding of the pleasure of bed, she was not beautiful, but he liked her face, she had read a lot of books, she liked to ride horses and shoot guns, of course, she drank too much. When she was a relatively young woman, her husband died, and for a very short time she put her heart on two children who had just grown up, but the children did not need her, she was around them, they felt uncomfortable, and she concentrated on raising horses, reading and drinking. She likes to read before dinner at dusk and drink whiskey sodas while reading. By the time of dinner, she was already drunk, and another bottle of sweet wine at the dinner table was often drunk enough to make her drowsy.

This was what she was like before she had a lover. After having those lovers, she stopped drinking so much because she didn't have to get drunk and go to bed. But the lover bore her. She had married a husband who had never bored her, and these people had bored her.

Then one of her children died in a plane crash, and after the incident, she no longer needed a lover, alcohol was no longer an anesthetic, and she had to build another life. Suddenly, being alone frightened her. But she had to live with someone she respected.

It's very simple. She loved what he wrote, and she had always envied the kind of life he lived. She thought he had done exactly what he wanted to do. The steps she took to get him, and the way she ended up falling in love with him, were part of a normal process in which she built a new life for herself while he sold the remnants of his old life.

He sold the remnants of his old life in exchange for security, but also for comfort, and for what else? He didn't know. Whatever he wants, she'll buy him. He knew it. She is also a very gentle woman. He, like anyone else, was willing to share a bed with her at once; especially her, because she was richer, because she was funny and appreciative, and because she never made a lot of noise. But now the life she had re-established was coming to an end, for two weeks earlier a thorn had pierced his knee, and he had not applied iodine to the wound, when they approached and wanted to take pictures of a herd of antelopes, who were standing and peeping with their heads raised, sniffing the air with their noses open to the sides, waiting for a sound to run into the jungle. He hadn't been able to take pictures of the antelopes, which had run away.

Now she's here.

He turned his head on the canvas bed to look at her, "Hello," he said.

"I hit a wild sheep," she told him. "It can make you a good bowl of soup to drink, and I'll let them mash some mashed potatoes mixed with milk powder." What do you think at this point? ”

"Much better."

"How good should this be? You know, I thought you might get better. When I left, you were asleep. ”

"I had a good night's sleep. Are you running far? ”

"I didn't run far, just behind the mountain. I hit the wild sheep with one shot. ”

"You played pretty well, you know."

"I love shooting. I'm already in love with Africa. Seriously, if you're safe, this is the one I've had the most time. You don't know how fun it is to shoot with you. I'm already in love with this place. ”

"I love this place too."

"Honey, you don't know how remarkable it is to see how much better you feel.

You just felt so bad, I couldn't stand it. You don't talk to me like that anymore, okay? Do you promise me? ”

"No," he said. "I can't remember what I said."

"You don't have to destroy me, do you?" I'm just a middle-aged woman, but I love you, and I'm willing to do whatever you want. I've ruined it two or three times. You're not going to destroy me again, are you? ”

"I'd rather destroy you a few more times in bed," he said.

"Yeah. It was a pleasant destruction. That's how we arranged for such destruction. The plane will come tomorrow. ”

"How do you know it's coming tomorrow?"

"I'm sure. Plane must come. The servants had prepared all the firewood and the weeds that grew smoke. Today I went down again to take a look. There was enough for the plane to land, and we prepared two piles of smoke at either end of the clearing. ”

"Why do you think the plane will come tomorrow?"

"I'm sure it's coming. Now it has been delayed. That way, when you get to town, they'll cure your leg, and then we'll do some destruction instead of that nasty conversation. ”

"Shall we have some wine?" The sun is setting. ”

"Do you want to drink?"

"I want a drink."

"Let's have a drink together." Morrow, go get two whiskey sodas! ”

She called.

"You'd better put on mosquito boots," he told her.

"I'll wear it when I've taken a shower..."

As they drank, it was getting dark, and in the twilight when it was impossible to aim and shoot a gun, a hyena ran through the clearing and toward the mountain.

"That bastard ran over there every night," the man said. "For two weeks, every night."

"That's what makes that sound every night. Even though it was a nasty beast, I didn't care. ”

They drank wine together, without feeling pain, but feeling uncomfortable because they had been lying down and not being able to turn over, and the two servants had built a bunch of campfires, and the light and shadow jumped on the tent, and he felt that the kind of default mood he had for this pleasant life of surrender was now spontaneous again. She was indeed very nice to him. He was too her this afternoon and too unfair. She was a good woman, indeed an amazing woman. But at this moment, he suddenly remembered that he was about to die.

The thought was like a sudden shock; not the shock of running water or a swift wind; but the onslaught of a stench that had disappeared without a trace, and strangely the hyena had slipped along the edge of this stench without a trace.

"What, Harry?" She asked him.

"Nothing," he said. "You'd better move to the other side and sit down." Sit on the upper side. ”

"Did Molo change your medicine?"

"Changed. I just put on boric acid paste. ”

"What do you think?"

"It's a little shaky."

"I'm going to go in and take a shower," she said. "I'll be out right away. I'll have dinner with you, and then carry the canvas bed in. ”

In this way, he said to himself, let's end the quarrel, is doing the right thing. He never quarreled with this woman, but he quarreled with the women he fell in love with, and in the end, because of the corrosive effect of the quarrel, he always ruined the feelings they shared: he loved too much, asked too much, and thus exhausted everything.

He remembered the time when he was alone in Constantinople (11), where he had a quarrel before leaving Paris. He stayed night and night for prostitutes, and afterwards he still could not get rid of loneliness, but on the contrary felt even more unbearable loneliness, so he wrote a letter to her, his first mistress, the woman who left him, telling her how he had always cut off his love for her...

How once outside the Regency He thought he had seen her, in order to catch up with her, he ran dizzy, and he wanted to vomit, he would follow a woman who looked a bit like her on the boulevard, but he did not dare to see clearly that it was not her, for fear of losing the feelings she had aroused in his heart. He had slept with many women, but how each of them could only make him miss her more, and how he never cared what she did, because he knew that he could not get rid of his love for her. He wrote the letter calmly and soberly at the nightclub, sent it to New York, and begged her to send it to his office in Paris. This seems to be relatively stable. He missed her so much that night that he felt his heart empty and wanted to throw up, and he staggered through the streets, all the way through Taksim, when he bumped into a girl and took her to dinner. Later he came to a place and danced with her, but she danced so badly that he left her and got into a hot Armenian girl, who swung her belly against his body, and rubbed her stomach almost to the point of burning. He got into a fight with a British gunner with the rank of second lieutenant and took her away from the gunner. The gunner called him outside, and they fought in the dark, on the cobblestone floor of the street. He punched him twice in the jaw, but he didn't fall, and he knew he was going to have a fight. The gunner hit him first in the body, then in the corner of his eye. He swung his left hand again and hit the gunner, who pounced on him, grabbed his shirt, ripped off his sleeve, punched him twice in the ear, and then knocked him to the ground with his right hand as he pushed him away. When the gunner fell, his head fell to the ground first, so he ran away with the girl, because they heard the gendarmes coming. They got into a taxi and drove along the Bosphorus (12) towards Remilihiza, circled around, and returned to sleep in the city on a cold night, where she felt like her appearance, too mature, but silky as grease, like rose petals, like syrup, with a smooth belly, a towering chest, and no need to put a pillow under her hips, and before she woke up he left her, and in the first rays of dawn she looked vulgar, and he came to the Pila Palace with a blue eye, I was carrying the blouse in my hand, because the sleeves were gone.

That very night he left Constantinople for Anatolia (13), and later he recalled that trip, all day walking through the fields where the poppies were grown, where the people planted poppies and refined opium, and how new it was to you, and finally—in any direction it seemed wrong—to the place where they had attacked with the officers who had just come from Constantinople, and the officers had nothing, and the cannons had gone into the troops, and the English observer was crying like a child.

It was that day that he saw for the first time a dead man, dressed in a white ballet skirt and uplifted shoes with pompoms. The Turks kept coming like waves, and he saw the men in their skirts running, the officers shooting at them, and then the officers themselves fled, and he ran with the British observer, so that his lungs ached, and his mouth was full of the smell of copper, and they stopped behind the rocks to rest, and the Turks were still coming in waves. Later he saw things he had never imagined, and later he saw worse things than these. So, when he returned to Paris that time, he couldn't talk about it, and even if he brought it up, he couldn't stand it. As he passed the café, the American poet, with a large pile of plates in front of him and a stupid face like a potato, was lecturing to a Romanian named Tristan Cela (14) about the Dada Movement. Tristan Zera, always wearing single glasses, always had a headache; and then, when he returned to the apartment with his wife, he loved his wife again, the quarrel had passed, the anger had passed, he was glad that he had returned home, and the firm had delivered his letter to his apartment. Thus, one morning the reply to the letter he had written was delivered on a plate, and when he saw the handwriting on the envelope, he was chilling and wanted to tuck the letter under another letter. But his wife said, "Honey, who sent that letter?" So the opening thing ended.

He remembered the joys and quarrels he had had with all these women.

They always choose the best occasion to argue with him. Why do they always argue with him when he's in the best mood? He had never written anything about it, because at first he had no intention of hurting the feelings of any of them, and then it seemed as if he had written enough to write even if he had not written it. But he always thought that he would write in the end. There's so much to write about. He has witnessed changes in the world; not just those events; although he has witnessed many events and observed people, he has witnessed more subtle changes and remembers how people behave at different times. He himself had been in the midst of this change, he had observed it, and it was his duty to write about it, but now he would never write it again.

"What do you think?" She said. Now she had taken a shower and came out of the tent.

"Nothing."

"Will I have dinner for you now?" He saw Molo holding a folding table behind her, and another servant holding a plate.

"I'm going to write something," he said.

"You should drink some broth to restore your strength."

"I'm going to die tonight," he said, "and I don't need to recover any physical strength." ”

"Please don't be so exaggerated, Harry," she said.

"Why don't you smell your nose?" I'm already half rotten, and now I'm rotten to my thighs. Why should I joke with broth? Morrow, bring the whiskey soda. ”

"Please drink the broth," she said softly.

"All right."

The broth was too hot. He had to pour the broth into the cup and wait until it was cold enough to drink, before drinking the broth without choking up a mouthful.

"You're a good woman," he said, "and you don't have to care about me." ”

She looked up at him with a face that everyone knew in "Inspiration" and "City and Country" and loved by everyone, a face slightly inferior to that of drunkenness, slightly inferior to the pleasure of bed, but "City and Country" never showed her beautiful breasts, her useful thighs, her delicate hands that caressed you gently, and when he looked at her and saw her famous moving smile, he felt that death had come again. This time there was no impact. It is a breath, like a breeze that makes candlelight flicker and flames rise.

"Later they can take out my mosquito net and hang it on a tree and make a bunch of campfires." I don't want to move to the tent to sleep tonight. Not worth moving. Today was a clear night. It doesn't rain. ”

Well, you died like this, in a whisper that you couldn't hear.

Well, then there will be no more quarrels. He could guarantee that. This is an experience he has never experienced before, and he is not going to spoil it now. But he could also be disruptive. You've ruined everything. But maybe he won't.

"Can you dictate?"

"I haven't learned it," she told him.

There is no time, of course, although it seems to have been compressed, as long as you can handle it properly, you can write everything in with just one paragraph of text.

On the shore of the lake, on a hill, there is a house made of logs, and the gaps are inlaid with stucco into white. A bell hangs on a pillar by the door, which is used to summon people in to eat. Behind the house is a field, and behind the field is a forest. A row of Lombard poplar trees stretches from the house all the way to the pier. Another row of poplar trees lingered along the strip. At the edge of the forest there was a path leading to the mountains, where he had once picked blackberries. Later, the log house burned down, and the shotgun hanging from the deer's scaffolding above the fireplace burned down, and the barrel and butt burned out along with the lead bullets that had melted in the magazine, resting on the pile of ash—the ash that was originally used to boil alkaline water in the big iron pot of soap, and you asked grandfather if he could play with it, and he said, No. You know those shotguns are still his, and he's never bought another shotgun. He also stopped hunting. Now the house had been rebuilt with wood in the original place, painted white, and from the porch you could see the poplar trees and the lake and mountains over there; but there were no more shotguns. The shotgun barrel that used to hang on the deer's foot on the wall of the log house rested on the pile of ash, and no one ever touched it again.

After the war, we rented a salmon stream in the Black Forest (15) and there were two ways to run there. One is to walk down the valley from Triberg and then burn the mountain road that is covered in shade (near the white road) and walk up a hillside path, through the mountains, past many small farms with tall Black Forest-style houses, all the way to where the trails and streams intersect. We started fishing right here.

The other way is to climb steeply up the edge of the woods, then over the top of the mountain, through the pine forest, then out of the woods to the edge of a meadow, down the hill over the meadow to the bridge. The creek is a stream of birch trees, the creek is not wide, but narrow, clear and fast,around the birch roots rushing out of small pools.

In Triberg's guest house, the owner has been doing business this season. It's a very happy thing, we're all close friends. The following year's inflation, the owner of the previous year's money was not enough to buy the goods necessary to run the inn, so he hanged.

You can dictate this, but you cannot dictate to the castle parapet square, where the flower sellers dyed their flowers on the street, where the paint flowed everywhere, where the buses departed, where the old men and women always drank sweet wine and inferior brandy brewed from pomace, drunk; the little children snot in the cold wind; the smell of sweat and poverty, the drunkenness of the "amateur café", and the prostitutes of the "bagpipe" dance hall, who lived on the upper floors of the ballroom. The janitor entertained the Republican Self-Defense Forces in her cabin, and in a chair was the Mane hat of the Republican Self-Defense Forces. There was also a resident on the other side of the foyer, her husband was a cyclist, and how happy she was that morning when she opened the "Motor Vehicle" newspaper in the milk room and saw that he was third in the grand Paris Ring Race for the first time. She blushed, laughed out loud, and then ran upstairs, crying with the pale yellow sports newspaper in her hand.

He, Harry, was about to fly out in the early hours of the morning, and the husband of the woman who ran the "bagpipe" dance hall knocked on the door in a taxi to tell him to get up, and before they left, the two of them drank a glass of white wine at the zinc table between the bars. At that time, he was familiar with the neighbors of that area, because they were all poor.

There are two kinds of people near the castle parapet square: drunkards and athletes. Alcoholics discourage poverty with alcoholism, while athletes forget about poverty during exercise. They were descendants of the Paris Commune, so it was not difficult for them to understand their politics. They knew who had killed their fathers, brothers, relatives, and friends, and when the army of Versailles marched into Paris and occupied the city after the Commune, anyone who touched a cocoon on their hands, or who wore a beanie, or who bore any other sign indicating that he was a laborer, was killed. It was in the midst of this poverty, it was in this area, across the street, a horse butcher shop and a brewing cooperative, that he began his writing career thereafter. There was no longer an area in Paris that he loved so much, the overgrown trees, the white stucco walls, the old houses painted brown underneath, the long green buses in the circular squares, the purple paint of the flowers on the pavement, the Cardinal Descartes de Lémonhorn that spun down from the hill to the Seine, and the other narrow but lively Moffitard Road. The avenue that led to the Pantheon and the other avenue that he often rode by bicycle, the only street in the area paved with asphalt, the tires passed, felt smooth, and the streets were lined with towering and narrow houses, and the towering inferior guest house, where Paul Verlaine (16) died. In the apartment in which they lived, there were only two rooms, and he had a room on the top floor of the guest house, where he paid sixty francs a month in rent, where he wrote, and from this room he could see the rows of rooftops and chimneys and all the hills of Paris.

You can only see from that apartment the shop of the man who sold firewood and coal, who also sold wine, and sold inferior dessert wine. The horse's head hung outside the butcher shop, and the golden and red horse meat hung in the window of the butcher shop, the co-operative painted with green paint, where they bought wine to drink; mellow and cheap sweet wine. The rest were stucco walls and neighbors' windows. At night, someone is lying drunk on the street, groaning in the typical French drunkenness (people preach to you that there is no such drunkenness), and the neighbors will open the window, followed by a murmur.

"Where did the police go?" It's always when you don't need the police that this guy shows up. He was sleeping with the watchman woman. Go to the police. "It wasn't until I didn't know who had spilled a bucket of water from the window that the moaning stopped." What fell down? water. Ah, that's a clever way to do it. ”

So the windows were closed. Mary, his maid, protested the eight-hour workday, saying, "If a husband works until six o'clock, he will be slightly drunk on the way home, and he will not spend too much money." But if he only worked until five o'clock, he would get drunk every night, and you would have no children. The sin of shortening the working hours is suffered by the wife of the worker. ”

"Do you want to drink some more broth?" The woman asked him now.

"No, thank you very much. Tastes great. ”

"Drink a little more."

"I want to drink whiskey soda."

"Wine is not good for you."

"Yeah, alcohol is bad for me. Cole Porter (17) wrote these lyrics and composed the music. This knowledge is making you angry with me. ”

"You know I like you drinking."

"Ah, yes, but because alcohol is bad for me."

When she walked away, he thought, I would get everything I asked for. Not everything I asked for, but just everything I had. Well, he's tired. I'm so tired. He wanted to sleep for a while. He lay quietly, and Death was not there. It was about to wander up another street. It rides its bike in pairs and quietly drives on the sidewalk.

No, he never wrote about Paris. He didn't write about the Paris he loved. But what about the rest of the things he never wrote?

What about the big pastures and the silver-gray mountain bushes, the rushing and clear water in the irrigation canals, and the thick green alfalfa? The sheep gut trail winds up into the mountains, and the cattle are as timid as elk in the summer.

The roar and the constant noise, the slow-moving behemoths, lifted up a cloud of dust when you drove them down the hill in the fall. Behind the mountains, the rugged peaks appeared clearly in the twilight, riding down the path in the moonlight, and the valley was clean. He remembered that when you came down the mountain through the forest, in the dark you couldn't see the road, you could only grab the horse's tail and grope forward, these were the stories he wanted to write.

And the stupid boy who was doing the miscellaneous work, who had left him alone on the ranch and told him not to let anyone steal hay, the old bad guy from Fox, who had stopped by the pasture to get some fodder, and the old guy had beaten him when the fool had worked for him. The child wouldn't let him take it, and the old man said he was going to give him another beating. When he tried to break into the barn, the child brought a rifle from the kitchen and beat the old man to death, so that by the time they returned to the pasture, the old man had been dead for a week, frozen in the pen, and the dog had eaten part of him. But you wrap the remaining bodies in blankets and bundle them on a sleigh and let the kid do it for you, and the two of you, wearing skis, rush with the body, and then glide sixty miles to get the kid out of town. He didn't know that people would arrest him. He thinks he's done his duty, you're his friend, he's going to get paid. He helped drag this old fellow into the city, so that everyone could know how bad this old fellow had always been, how he wanted to steal the feed, the feed was not his, and when the administrative magistrate handcuffed the child, the child could not believe it. So he let out a cry. It's a story he's left ready to write in the future. From there he knew at least twenty interesting stories, but he had not written any of them. Why?

"You go and tell them why that is," he said.

"What's why, my dear?"

"Not why."

Since she had him, she didn't drink so much now. But if he had lived, he would never have written about her. He knows that now. Nor would he write about any of them. Rich people are stupid, they know how to drink heavily, or play bagamon all day (18). They are stupid, and nagging is annoying. He remembered poor Julian and the romantic awe he had with the rich, and remembered how he once started writing a short story, which he began by writing: "The rich and the rich are different from you and me. "Someone once said to Julian, yeah, they're richer than us. But for Julian, it wasn't a humorous word.

He considered them to be a special and charismatic race, and when he found out that they were not, he was ruined, just as anything else had destroyed him (19).

He had always despised those who had been ruined. There's no need for you to like this set at all, because you understand what's going on. Nothing could fool him, he thought, because nothing could hurt him, if he didn't care.

All right. Now if he dies, he doesn't care. One thing he had always feared was pain. He could bear the pain as much as anyone, unless the pain was too long, and the pain was so long that he was exhausted, but there was something here that he could not bear, but just when he felt that something was tearing him apart, the pain had stopped.

He remembered that a long time ago, when Williamson, the bomb-throwing officer, had crawled back through the barbed wire that night and hit a grenade thrown by a German patrolman, he screamed and begged everyone to kill him. He was a fat man, and although he liked to show off himself, sometimes unbelievably, he was brave and a good officer. But that night he was hit in the barbed wire, and a flash of light suddenly lit him up, and his intestines flowed out and hooked into the barbed wire, so when they carried him in, he was still alive, and they had to cut off his intestines. Kill me, Harry. For God's sake, kill me. Once they argued that whatever God brought you could tolerate, some people theorized that over time the pain would go away on its own. But he never forgot Williamson and that night. The pain in Williamson did not disappear until he gave him all the morphine tablets he had kept for his own use, and did not immediately stop the pain.

However, the pain he felt now was very easy, and if it went on like this and did not get worse, there would be nothing to worry about. But he thought how nice it would be to have a better companion together.

He thought for a moment about the companion he wanted.

No, he thought, you always do things for too long, too late, and you can't expect people to still be there. Everybody's gone. The wine has been dispersed, and now only you and the hostess are left.

I'm growing weary of death, just as I'm tired of everything else, he thought.

"It's really tiresome," he couldn't help but say out loud.

"What do you say, my dear?"

"You've been doing everything for too long."

He stared at her as she sat beside himself and between the campfire. She leaned back in her chair, the light of the fire shining on her moving face, and he could tell she was sleepy. He heard the hyena howl just outside the circle of fire.

"I've been writing," he said, "I'm tired." ”

"Do you think you can sleep?"

"I must be able to fall asleep. Why don't you go to sleep yet? ”

"I like to sit here with you."

"Do you feel anything strange?" He asked her.

"Nothing. It's just that I'm a little sleepy. ”

"I feel it."

Just then, he felt death approaching again.

"You know, the only thing I haven't lost is curiosity," he said to her.

"You never lost anything. You are the most perfect person I know of. ”

"Oh my God," he said. "Women know so little. On what basis are you saying that? Is it intuition? ”

For it was at this time that Death came, and Death's head rested on the foot of the canvas bed, and he could smell its breath.

"Don't believe death is a scythe and a skeleton," he told her. "It's probably two policemen on bicycles or a bird." Or it has a big nose like a hyena. ”

Now death had come upon him, but it no longer had any shape. It just takes up space.

"Tell it to go away."

It didn't go, on the contrary came closer.

"You're panting, puffing," he said to it, "you stinky bastard. ”

It was still approaching him, now he could not speak to it, and when it found that he could not speak, it came closer to him, and now he wanted to drive it away silently, but it climbed on him, so that its weight was all pressed against his chest, and it lay there, and he could not move or speak, and he heard the woman say, "Sir, fall asleep, lift the bed gently, and carry it to the tent." ”

He couldn't tell her to drive it away, and now it lay heavier on him so that he couldn't breathe, but when they lifted the canvas bed, suddenly everything was normal again, and the pressure disappeared from his chest.

It was morning, it was already good in the morning, and he heard the sound of a plane.

The plane appeared small, and then flew a great circle, and two male servants ran out and lit a fire with gasoline and piled up weeds, so that two thick streams of smoke rose at either end of the flat ground, and the morning wind blew the smoke toward the tent, and the plane circled twice, this time low, and then slid down, flattened, and landed smoothly, and old Compton, wearing a wide pair of tweed jackets on his upper body and a brown felt hat on his head, walked toward him.

"What's going on, old man?" Compton said.

"The leg is broken," he told him. "Do you want to have breakfast?"

"Thank you. I just have to drink some tea, you know this is a 'Tensha Moth', I didn't get that 'Lady'. Only one person can sit. Your truck is on the way. ”

Helen pulled Compton to the side and was saying something to him. Compton seemed more elated as he walked back.

"We've got to carry you into the plane right away," he said. "I'm going to come back and pick up your wife." Now I'm afraid I'll have to stop and refuel in Arusha (20). We'd better go right away. ”

"How about some tea?"

"You know, I don't really want to drink it."

The two maids lifted up the canvas bed, circled around the green tents, and then walked down the rocks to the flat ground, past the two thick plumes of smoke—which were now burning brightly and danglingly, and the wind blew the fire, and the weeds burned out—and came to the little plane. He was carried into the plane, and as soon as he got into the plane he lay down in a leather chair, his legs straight up next to Compton's seat. Compton started the motor and got on the plane. He said goodbye to Helen and the two male servants, the clatter of the motor became the usual familiar roar, they swayed and swung, Compton watched the burrows of the wild boars, the plane roared and jolted on the flat ground between the two piles of fire, and with the last bump, took off, and he saw them all standing below and raising their hands, and the tent on the side of the mountain now appeared flat, and the plain unfolded, and the clusters of woods, the bushes also appeared flat, the path where the beasts were infested, Now it all seemed to lead flat to those dry punctures, and there was a new discovery of water that he had never known before. Zebras, now see only their round, bulging backs. The great antelopes were as big as their long fingers, and when they crossed the plains, they seemed to be the black dots of the big heads crawling on the ground, and now when the shadows of the planes approached them, they were all scattered and running, and they now appeared smaller, and the movements could not be seen to be galloping. As far as you can see, the plain is now a grayish yellow, and in front of it is the back of the old Compton's tweed jacket and the brown felt hat. Then they flew over the first mountains, and the oryx were running up the mountain, and then they flew over the steep mountains, the steep deep valleys with thick green forests, and the slopes of the thriving bamboo forest, and then a large thick forest, and they flew over the forest, through the peaks and valleys. The hills were sloping low, then another plain, and now it was getting hot, the earth was glowing purple-brown, the planes were jolting hotly, and Compton looked back to see how he was doing in flight. Then in front of it is the black oppressive mountains.

Then they flew not in the direction of Arusha, but turned to the left, and it was obvious that he had enough fuel for them, and looking down he saw a pink cloud like a sieve falling down, sweeping across the earth, and from the air it looked like the first thunder of a sudden blizzard, and he knew that it was locusts coming from the south. Then they climbed high, as if they were flying east, and then the sky was dark, and they encountered a storm, and the rain was heavy, as if they were passing through a waterfall, and then they came out of the curtain of water, and Compton turned his head and grinned, while pointing with his fingers, and so ahead, as far as he could see, as vast as the whole world, so towering and grand in the sunlight, and unbelievably white, that is the square peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. So he understood that this was where he was going to fly now.

It was at this moment that the hyena stopped whimpering in the night and began to make a strange almost human-like cry. The woman heard the sound and turned uneasily on the bed. She didn't wake up. In the dream she was at home on Long Island, the eve of her daughter's first socializing. It seemed that her father was also present, and he seemed very rough. Then the hyena's loud cry woke her up, and for a moment she didn't know where she was, and she was scared. Then she took the flashlight and shined it on another canvas bed, and when Harry was asleep, they carried the bed in. Under the wooden strip of the mosquito net, his body was faintly visible, but he seemed to have stretched that leg out and shrugged along the edge of the canvas bed, and the gauze covered with the medicine had fallen, and she could not bear to look at the scene again.

"Molo," she shouted, "Morrow! Murrow! ”

Then she said, "Harry, Harry! Then she raised her voice, "Harry! Please wake up, Ah, Harry! ”

There was no answer, and no breathing could be heard.

Outside the tent, the hyena was still making that strange bark, and she had woken up to that bark. But because her heart was pounding, she couldn't hear the hyena's cries—