Domenico Gnoli, L'inverno (Couple in bed) 1967
Henry
——
"Eighty-first Street is here — drive them, get them out of the car." The shepherd in the blue uniform shouted.
A group of citizens pushed and shoved down, and another group of pushed and shoved up. Ding-ding! The Manhattan Overhead Tramway Company's cattle trucks clicked away. John Perkins mingled among the sheep getting off the train and slowly walked down the steps of the station.
John walked slowly toward his apartment. Slowly, because in his dictionary of daily life, there is no word like "maybe". For a man who has been married for two years and lives in an apartment, there will be no accidents waiting for him at home. As he walked, with a gloomy cynical mood, he pondered the monotony of the day.
Katie would greet him at the door, giving him a kiss with the smell of moisturizer and buttery candy. Then he took off his shirt and sat down on a stiff bench reading the evening newspaper, which was so well typeset that it killed and injured many Russians and Japanese. Dinner is a pot of stew, a plate of seasoning "to ensure that the leather is not damaged" mixed with cold vegetables, simmered rhubarb and strawberry jam, jam on the bottle trademark paper to ensure that the ingredients are pure instructions, feel good not to be ashamed. After dinner, Katie would show him the new patch on her quilt cover sewn together from various pieces of rags, which the Iceman had cut from his snap-down bow tie and given to Katie. At half past seven, they spread the newspaper on the furniture to pick up the lime chips that had fallen from the ceiling, because the fat man who lived upstairs had begun gymnastics exercises. At eight o'clock, Higay and Mooney, who lived across the aisle, the partners of the two vaudeville teams that no one consulted, had a little drunkenness, and could not help but talk nonsense, fantasizing that Hamerstein was chasing them with a contract of five hundred dollars a week, so he began to fool around the house and turned the chairs upside down. Then the gentleman across the patio took out his flute and blew it in front of the window; the gas that leaked every night slipped into the street; the delivery lift slipped off; the janitor would drive Mrs. Čanowitzki's five children across the Yalu River again; the wife, wearing pale yellow shoes and a long-haired short-legged dog, would walk down the stairs lightly and stick her Name on Thursday on her electric bell and letterbox—and then the evening routine of Frogmore's apartment began.
John Perkins knew these things were going to happen. He also knew that at eight o'clock he would muster up the courage to pick up his hat, and his wife would say the following in a bad mood:
"John Perkins, I should know where you're going to go?"
"I'm going to go to McCloskey," he always replied, "and play a game or two of marbles with a friend." ”
Recently, John Perkins has developed a habit of dropping marbles in bags. Every night I had to play until ten o'clock or eleven o'clock before I came home. Sometimes Katie was already asleep; sometimes she was waiting; ready to melt the gilded marriage chains into her angry crucible with a little more gold. In the future, when Cupid, the god of love, confronts the victims in Frogmore's apartment in court, he will always be responsible for these things.
Tonight, when John Perkins arrives home, he encounters a big change that he has never seen in his rigid life. Neither Katie nor her passionate, candy-flavored kiss was there. The three rooms were a mess, and the signs seemed to be bad. Her belongings were scattered everywhere. Shoes were thrown on the floor, curl pliers, hair knots, pajamas, and powder boxes piled up on dressers and chairs—Katie's temper had never been like that. John saw a clump of her brown hair on the comb teeth and his heart sank. She must have encountered some particularly urgent accident, so she was so flustered, because she always carefully stored these loose hairs in the small blue bottle on the stove rack, ready to make more wig rolls that women especially like later.
A folded piece of paper hung from a rope on the nozzle of the gas lamp. John hurried over. It was a note left to him by his wife, which read:
Dear John,
I just got a telegram saying that my mother was seriously ill. I was going to take the train at 4:30. Sam Picked me up at the train station over there. Cold lamb in the fridge. I hope my mother's illness this time is not a recurrence of the tonsil abscess. Pay fifty cents to the person who delivered the milk. Last spring she had a terrible episode of the disease. For the gas meter, don't forget to write to the gas company. Your good socks are in the top drawer. I'll write again tomorrow. Hurry up.
Katie.
John and Katie had been married for two years and had never been separated for a single night. Stunned, he read the note again and again. The twists and turns of his unchanging daily life overwhelmed him.
The back of the chair was draped with a dressing gown with black dots on a red background that she must have draped when she cooked, revealing an empty and unformed desolate appearance. In a hurry, she threw away the clothes she usually wore, one by one. A small bag of butter hard candy she loved hadn't even untied the rope. A daily newspaper lay on the floor, opening a rectangular mouth where the train timetable had been cut. Everything in the room indicates a defect, a vanishing element, a sign of the departure of the soul and life. John Perkins stood among the lifeless relics, an inexplicable wave of sorrow welling up in his heart.
He set out to clean up the house and try to get it neat. When he touched Katie's clothes, he felt an almost terrifying feeling. He never thought about what life would be like without Katie. She had become so completely integrated into his life that she seemed to be the air he breathed—indispensable for a moment, but he never noticed it. Now, without knowing it beforehand, she was gone, gone, without a trace, as if she had never been a person. Of course, it was only a matter of days, at most a week or two, but to him it was as if Death had already extended a finger to his peaceful family.
John took the cold lamb from the refrigerator, made some coffee, and sat down to eat alone, facing the label paper on the strawberry jam bottle that was guaranteed to be pure. Stews and coles with sauces like leather shoe polish seem to have become something to be remembered in a vanished happiness. His home was torn apart. A mother-in-law with tonsil suppuration blasted his family god out of the clouds. John ate this lonely dinner and sat down at the window facing the street.
He didn't want to smoke. The city outside the window beckoned him, inviting him to its debauched and joyful dance. The night belongs to him. He can go out without questioning and have fun as freely as any free-spirited bachelor. As long as he was happy, he could drink, wander, and play until dawn; there would be no angry Katie waiting for him and sweeping him away. As long as he was happy, he could drop the bag of marbles with his hip-hop friends at McCloskey's until the light of dawn overshadowed the electric light. In the past, when life in Frostmore's apartment bored him, he was always suffering from the bondage of marriage. Now the bondage is lifted. Katie was gone.
John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his feelings. But as he sat in the ten-foot-wide, twelve-foot-long living room without Katie, he guessed the main cause of his troubles without the slightest discomfort. He now realized that Katie was a necessary condition for his happy life. His feelings for Katie, which had been numbed by the monotony of family chores, were now suddenly awakened by Katie's absence. It is only after the bird with a beautiful singing voice flies away that we realize the preciousness of its song—haven't these kinds of rhetorical and true-meaning aphorisms, preachings, and fables been taught to us long ago?
"I've always treated Katie like this," John Perkins muttered, "I'm such a double-hearted fool." Every night out to play marbles, fool around with friends, don't stay at home with Katie. This poor girl was alone and had no pastime, and I was treating her like that! John Perkins, you're the worst villain. I'm going to make up for what I used to be like about that girl. I'm going to take her out and have some entertainment too. From now on, I will cut off the Macloski gang and stop interacting. ”
Yes, the city was buzzing outside, summoning John Perkins out, following Mormorth to McCloskey's place, and friends were leisurely passing the time, playing nightly games, knocking marbles into the mesh bags. But neither the world of flowers nor the rattling pinballs could revive the interest of Perkins, who was frustrated by his wife's absence. What he had been deprived of, which he had not cherished in the past, even a little despised, now needed it. There was once a man named Adam who had been driven out of the orchard by angels, and the frustrated Perkins was probably his descendant.
Portrait Of Polly, The Amazon Parrot Belonging To George Price Boyce, 1878 by Mary Forster (English, 1853–1885)
John Perkins has a chair to his right. On the back of the chair was Katie's blue shirt. It still maintains the silhouette of Katie's figure to some extent. There were a few tiny wrinkles on the sleeves that were left behind when Katie waved her arms for his comfort and well-being. The shirt gives off a subtle and compelling aroma of wild hyacinths. John picked up the dress and looked earnestly at the indifferent tulle dress. Katie was never indifferent. Tears—yes, tears—well welled up in John Perkins' eyes. When she returned, the situation had to change. He must make up for all the things he is sorry for. Without her, what is the meaning of life?
The door opened. Katie walked in with a small tote bag. John stared at her dumbfounded.
"Ahhh! I'm so glad I'm back. Katie said. Mom wasn't very sick. Sam was waiting for me at the station, and he said that my mother's illness had only had a slight seizure, and that she would be fine after the telegram was sent. So I took the next train back. I really want to have a cup of coffee now. ”
The living machine in the front room of the third floor of Frogmore's apartment has returned to normal again, but unfortunately no one has heard the clicking and rattle of its wheels. The transmission belt slid into the groove, the spring was triggered, the gears aligned with the teeth, and the wheels turned again along the old tracks.
John Perkins looked at the clock. Eight o'clock. He reached for his hat and headed for the door.
"I'm going to go to McCloskey," John said, "and play a round or two of marbles with a friend." ”
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947, French) ~ Still life with cherries, 1914
The stock image comes from the web
Copyright belongs to the original author
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