Sedpan stood next to the straw mat bed on which the mother and child lay. Through the cracks in the dry and shrunken wall panels, the morning sun fell down like a long path drawn by pencils, cut off by his spread legs and the whip in his hand, across the motionless form of his mother.
She lay down, her gloomy and unfathomable eyes looking up at him motionlessly, the children around her wrapped in a piece of cloth that was clean but slightly blackened. Behind them, an old black woman squatted by a humble fireplace where the dying fire was smoking.
"Well, Miri," said Saidpan, "it's a pity that you're not a mare. Otherwise, I'll be able to give you a decent horse shed." ”
The girl on the grass mat still did not move.
She had been looking up at him expressionlessly, her gloomy and unpredictable young face still bloodless due to the pain of the labor just now. Sedpan moved, moving his sixty-year-old man's face into the sunlight that the pencil had drawn out. He said calmly to the crouching black woman, "Gliseda got off the colt this morning. ”
"Male or female?" The black woman asked.
"Public. Croaking foal. ...... What about this? He pointed to the grass pad with his whip-holding finger.
"It's a mother, I think."
"Ha," said Saidpan, "a little colt that croaks." In the future, it will be like the old Rob Roy in '61, and I rode it north, remember? ”
"Remember, sir."
"Ha," he looked back at the grass mat. No one could tell if the girl was still looking at him. He pointed again at the grass pad with his finger holding the whip.
"Whatever they need, try to find a way." He walked outside, past the crumbling doorway, down the steps, into the thick weeds (right here, the large sickle that Walsh had borrowed from him three months ago to cut the weeds was still rusting against the corner of the porch).
Right here, his horse was waiting for him, and right here, Walsh was standing, holding the reins in his hand. When Colonel Saidpan crossed his horse and left home to fight the Yankees, Walsh did not go.
I'm taking care of the Colonel's house, watching over his.
He always told all those who asked about him and those who didn't—Wasch was a thin, malaria-stricken man, with light eyes always with an inquiring look, and looked to be about thirty-five years old, though everyone knew that he had not only a daughter, but also an eight-year-old granddaughter.
His answer was deceitful, and the vast majority of those who heard him say this—the few men who remained in the local area, aged between eighteen and fifty—knew that while some believed that Walsh really believed it, even these people believed that Walsh always had some brains and would not try it before Mrs. Saidpan or Sedpan's slaves.
They said he didn't do it because he was still a bit of a brain, or just too lazy, too lazy, because he knew that his only connection to the Sedpan Plantation was that many years ago Colonel Sedpan had allowed him to live in his own territory, occupying a crumbling shack on the valley moor that Sedpan had erected when he was single for fishing.
Since then, it has been on the verge of collapse due to abandonment, and now it looks like an aging sick beast, lying there in a terrible way to drink water in its dying struggle. The slaves of Sedpan also heard him say this. They burst out laughing.
This wasn't the first time they laughed at him and called him a poor white ghost behind his back. They then came to him in person, and they greeted him in droves on the recognizable road up from the swamp and the old fishing camp: "Why didn't you go to war, white?" ”
At this point, he would stop and look around at the circle around him with mocking black faces, white eyes, and white teeth.
I have to feed my daughter, I have to support my family, he said, and don't stand in my way,. ”
? They learned from him,? They laughed.
Who is this, call us?
Well, he said, if I leave, I don't have any waiting for the people in the house. ”
"You don't have anything else to do except the shed below, a place where the Colonel won't let us live."
He scolded, and sometimes he would grab a stick from the ground and pounce on them, and at this time they would scatter in front of him and run away, but it was always as if he was still surrounding him with that black laughter, mocking, dodging, making you unable to get rid of it, making him anxious and annoyed, breathless, and almost helpless.
Once, this happened in the backyard of that big house. It was in the Tennessee Mountains and in Wexberg that bad news had come from Sherman, who had been to the plantation, and that the vast majority of blacks had followed him.
Almost everything had been taken out by the Confederates, and Mrs. Sedpan gave Walsh a message that he could go to the backyard trellis to collect the ripening Scuppeno grapes. This time it was a maid, one of the few blacks left behind, and this time she had to retreat all the way to the kitchen steps before turning around.
"Just stand there, white. Just stop there. When the Colonel was at home, he never let you go up these steps, and now don't come up. ”
This is true. But there was also an element of pride in it: he had never tried to enter the great house, though he was sure that as soon as he went in, Sedpan would receive him and permit him.
I can't give a chance to tell me they're not allowed to go up here and there. He thought to himself, I won't even give the Colonel a chance to scold the for me. ”
It was because of this that he did not go in, although occasionally on Sundays, when no one in the house was there to accompany Sedpan, they had spent more than one afternoon together. Perhaps he knew in his heart that this was because Sedpan had nothing to do, and Sedpan was not the kind of person who could live alone.
But it turned out to be true: the two of them always stayed under the grapevine all afternoon and afternoon, Sedpan in a hammock, Walsh sitting with his back to a pillar, and a bucket of water from the sink between them, drinking it in the same jar.
On weekdays, he always saw the graceful figure of this man, running across the plantation straddling the graceful body of the black stallion, who was born almost on the same day of the same month of the same year as him, though neither of them realized it, perhaps because Walsh already had a granddaughter, and the young master of Sedpan was still a young man in school.
Looking at the man's majestic posture on the horse, Walsh always felt quiet and proud in his heart. He often thought that in this world, the negroes were created by God in the Bible to bear the condemnation of heaven, and should be divided into animals and slaves of all white men, but their situation was better than his and his family's, and even the house they lived in and even the clothes they wore were better than his;
In this world, he always felt wrapped in the echo of black laughter, such a world is really just a dream, an illusion, the real world is another, across it, Walsh's idol seems to be riding on the back of that black thoroughbred horse, alone,
He remembered that the Scriptures said that all men were created in the image of God, so that, at least in God's eyes, all men were the same; therefore, he was able to say this, as if to speak of himself: "A beautiful and proud man." If God Himself had come and galloped around the world on a horse, He would have behaved like this. ”
Sedpan returned in 1865 on the black stallion.
He seemed to be ten years old all at once. In the winter of his wife's death, when his son was also killed in the war, he returned to a ruined plantation with a certificate of valor awarded by General Lee himself; there, for more than a year, his daughter had partly lived on a pitiful thing sent by the man who had been allowed to live in the crumbling fishing hut fifteen years earlier, and he had forgotten about it when he returned.
Walsh greeted him there, his appearance unchanged: still so dry and thin, still so unseen in his age, his pale eyes staring inquiringly, a little unconfident, a little servile, and a little affectionate.
"Ah, Colonel," said Walsh, "they killed our men, but they didn't bring us down, did they?" ”
That was the main theme of their conversation for the next five years.
Now they were drinking inferior whiskey from a stone jar, not in the grapevine, but behind the small shop that Sidepan had managed to open next to the main road.
It was a house with a grid of shelves, and Walsh was in charge of collecting money and guarding the door, and here he sold things like kerosene, food, beautifully wrapped old candy, and cheap bead ribbons to black people and poor white people like Walsh.
These men either walked, or rode a skinny mule, for a dime and a dime, galloped with this man who had once galloped on horseback (the black stallion was still alive, and the shed in which this treasure lived was better than the house where his master lived), crossed his fertile fields, ran ten miles in one go, and heroically led the troops to fight, bargaining endlessly; until Sidepan started a fire, blasted all the people out, closed the door and locked them from inside.
After that, he and Walsh would go to the back of the wine jar.
But their conversation was no longer quiet, unlike in the past, with Sidepan lying in a hammock, delivering an empty monologue, and Walsh crouching against his pillar, giggling and laughing.
Now they were all sitting, Sedpan in the only chair, and Wasch was casually finding a box or a small bucket to sit on, and even this was only for a short while, because soon Sedpan would reach the point where he was not willing to fail but was powerless and therefore angry.
He would stand up, wobble, rush from side to side, and once again announce that he was going to pick up his pistol, step on a dark horse, and go straight to Washington, killing Lincoln (who was dead by this time) and Sherman (who had been disarmed by this time).
"Kill them!" He would yell, "Shoot them like dogs, they dogs—"
"All right, Colonel; all right, Colonel," Wirh would say, as he grabbed the fallen Sidepan. Then he would intercept a passing car and send Sedpan home, and when there was no car, he would walk more than a mile and borrow one from the nearest house.
He was now in that big house. He had been doing this for a long time, sending Sedpan home in a borrowed car of whatever kind, whispering and coaxing him to go forward, as if Sedpan were a horse, a stallion.
The daughter would greet them and silently open the door for them. Walsh would carry this burden into the once white main entrance. Every piece of glass on the scalloped windows here was brought from Europe, and where a piece of glass is now missing, they nailed wooden planks, and they walked through the velvet polished carpet and walked up the grand staircase (the grandeur of the past,
Now only a line of white planks between two faded lines of paint remained, like a fading apparition), and then they entered the bedroom. It was dusk, and he would put his burdens on the bed, undress him, and then he would always sit quietly in the chair next to him.
After a while, the daughter would come to the door.
"We're fine now," he would tell her, "and you don't have to worry about anything, Miss Judith." ”
Then it would get dark, and after a while he would lie on the floor next to the bed, not going to sleep, because after a while—sometimes it wasn't until midnight—the man in the bed would move, hum, and then shout, "What about Walsh?" ”
"Here it is, Colonel." Go to sleep. We're not broken yet, right? You and I can still do it." ”
Even then, he had seen the ribbon tied around his granddaughter's waist. She was fifteen years old, already developed, and her kind of person was precocious.
He knew where the ribbon came from, and for three years he had seen it and this kind of thing every day, and it was useless for her to lie about its origin, but she did not lie, and suddenly became bold, gloomy, and frightening.
"All right," he said, "if the Colonel is willing to give it to you, I hope you will think of thanking him." ”
Even when he saw the dress, looked at her mysterious, provocative, and frightened face, and heard her say that it was made for her by the Colonel's daughter, Miss Judith, his heart was still very calm. However, when the shop closed that afternoon, he followed him to the back and approached Saidpan with a rather serious look.
"Go get the jar." Saidpan commanded.
"Wait," said Walsh, "don't take it first, just wait." ”
Sedpan also did not deny the dress. "What's wrong?" He said.
But Walsh met his arrogant gaze; he spoke very calmly. "I've known you for twenty years. What you asked me to do, I have never dismissed. I'm almost sixty years old. She was only a fifteen-year-old girl. ”
You mean I'm going to hurt a? Me, someone as old as you? ”
"If you were someone else, I could say you're as old as I am. Whether she's old or not, I'm not going to let her take that dress or anything else from you. But you're different. ”
"How is it different?" In response, Walsh only looked at him inquiringly with his calm light-colored eyes. "So, you're afraid of me because of this?"
Now, Inquisitive was no longer inquisitive in His eyes, and had become quiet and serene.
"I'm not afraid. Just because you're brave. It is not to say that at any time or day in your life you are a brave person and have obtained a document from General Lee to prove it. I mean, your bravery is as alive as you are breathing.
That's the difference. I don't need someone to give me any bills to know. I also know that no matter what you are in charge of or dispose of, whether it is a regiment of soldiers, or an ignorant, or just a hunting dog, you will take care of it. ”
This time it was Saidpan who turned his eyes away, suddenly and violently. "Take the jar." He said sharply.
"Yes, Colonel."
So, on this Sunday morning two years later, when he saw the black midwife he had found three miles into the crumbling door, and inside the door his granddaughter was lying crying and screaming, his heart, though concerned, remained calm.
He knew what people had been saying—the negroes in the little rooms in the area and the white people who wandered around the shop all day were quietly staring at the three of them: Sedpan, him, and his granddaughter, who, as her body became more apparent day by day, took on a brazen but cowering and provocative look, and they came and went on the stage like three actors.
"I know what they're mumbling," he thought, "I can almost hear those words." Walsh Jones finally got old Sidepan in. It took him twenty years, but he finally got it. ”
It will be dawn in a moment, not yet.
From inside the house, from the side of the warped door frame where the dim light was emitted, the granddaughter's voice kept coming, as if it were dominated by a clock.
At this time, his mind was moving forward slowly and horribly, groping in a daze, and somehow intertwined with the sound of the galloping horse's hooves, until in the middle of this run, the graceful and proud man riding on the graceful and proud stallion suddenly galloped forward;
At this moment, his dazed and groping thoughts also flowed down, unusually clear, it was not a confession, or even an explanation, but like a holy relic, solitary, understandable, but not desecrated by the contact of mortals:
"He is greater than all the Yankees who killed his wife and son, took his slaves, and destroyed his fields, greater than this place that suited him so well, this ghost place that forced him to open only a small village shop; greater than this persecution, this persecution of him by this cup of bitterness, which is held up to his mouth in the Bible.
How could I, who lived so close to him, for twenty years, not be taught by him at all, changed by him? Maybe I wasn't as great as he was, maybe I hadn't ridden a horse once. But at least I was being dragged by him. I can still do it with him, as long as he is willing to tell me what he wants to tell me to do. ”
It was dawn. Suddenly he could see the house and saw the black woman looking at him in the door. Then he realized that his granddaughter's cries had stopped.
"It's a girl," said the black woman, "and if you want, you can tell him." She walked in again.
"Girl," he repeated, "a girl." ”
He was amazed, and he heard the hooves of galloping horses again, and saw the proud figure galloping again.
He seemed to see it galloping by, the embodiment of this god, the embodiment of the accumulation of time and time, running to the top of the peak, above its head, the saber was waving, a gun-piercing flag hunting the wind, lined with a thunderous sulfur color of the sky, rushing down, at this time, for the first time in his life, perhaps Sedpan was really an old man like him.
"Got a girl," he thought in amazement; then he thought with childlike surprise, "Yes, sir." In any case, if it weren't for the fate that I should be a prince, I would be a dog. ”
He entered the house and walked clumsily on tiptoeing, as if he were no longer living here, as if it were possible that this baby who had just gasped for breath and was crying in the morning light had taken his home, even if it was his own flesh and blood.
However, he leaned down to the grass mat, and he still couldn't see clearly, and could only vaguely see his granddaughter's exhausted face. The black woman crouching in front of the fireplace spoke, "If you want, you'd better tell him." It was dawn. ”
It's not really necessary.
He had not yet turned the corner of the porch—where the great scythe borrowed three months earlier to clear the weeds under his feet was resting—Sedpan himself came on the old stallion. He didn't think about how Sedpan got the news. He took it for granted that it was this incident that made the man go out so early on Sunday.
When Sedpan got off his horse, he stood and took the reins, his thin face almost tinged with a demented expression because of a boiling sense of triumph, and he said, "It's a girl, Colonel." If you're not as old as me, I'm a dog—"
It kept him in front of him and into the room. He stood there, holding the reins in his hand, and heard Sedpan walking up to the grass-mat bed on the floor. He heard said by Sedpan, and it was as if something had suddenly frozen in his body.
By then, the sun, the rapidly moving sun at this latitude in Mississippi, had risen. He felt as if he were standing under a strange sky, in the midst of a strange scene, and everything was familiar only because it was familiar in the dream, like the dream of a person who had never climbed upwards falling down.
"I thought I heard that, impossible." He thought calmly, "I know, it's impossible. ”
But the voice, the familiar voice that said that, was still talking down, and was now telling the old black lady about the little colt that had come down this morning.
"That's what he got up early for," he thought, "that's what it is." Not for me, for my people, not even for himself. ”
Sidepan came out. He descended the steps into the meadow, and his movements were so heavy and unhurried, as they had been hastily and urgently in his youth. He didn't look at Walsh squarely. He said, "Dixie stayed behind to take care of her. You'd better..." Then he seemed to see Walsh facing him and stopped. "How?" He said.
"You just said..." Walsh heard his own voice dry, like a duck calling, like a deaf man talking. You said that if she were a mare, you would give her a good stable. ”
"What's wrong?" Saidpan said. His eyes widened and narrowed, and the elephant's fist loosened and clenched, and Walsh began to approach him, his waist slightly bent.
Sedpan was stunned for a moment, looking at this man he had known for twenty years that he had only known right and wrong, a man he knew no more than the horse under his crotch. His eyes narrowed and wide open, and he did not move, but seemed to suddenly straighten up.
"Get out of the way," he shouted suddenly, "don't touch me." ”
"I'm just going to touch you, Colonel." Walsh said in that flat, calm, almost gentle voice, still moving forward.
Sedpan raised his hand and held the horse whip in his hand; the old black woman looked out from the crumbling doorway, her deformed black face like a decaying and crippled ghost.
"Get out, Walsh." Saidpan said. Then he did.
The black old woman leapt into the grass and ran like a dexterous goat. Sedpan whipped Wosh in the face again, causing him to fall to his knees.
When Walsh got up and walked further, he had the big scythe in his hand, which he had borrowed from Sedpan three months earlier, and Sedpan would never need it again. When he entered the house again, his granddaughter moved on the grass mat and called out his name in exasperation.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"What's the matter, my dear?"
"It's noisy outside."
"Nothing happened." He said softly. He knelt down and awkwardly touched her scalding forehead. "Do you want anything?"
"I'm going to drink," she complained, "I've been lying here trying to drink for half a day." No one cares about me, no one cares about me. ”
"Okay, okay." Walsh coaxed her. He stood up stiffly, took a scoop of water, lifted her head to drink, and when he was finished, he put her down, watching her stone-like face that was absolutely expressionless turn toward the child. After a short while, he saw her in silent tears.
"Well, well," he said, "if it were me, I wouldn't cry." Old DiXi said that she was a very good little girl. It's all good now. It's all over. There's no need to cry now. ”
But she was still weeping silently, and he stood up almost gloomily, and stood uneasily beside the grass mat for a while, thinking the same thing he thought when he was his wife at first, and then when it was his daughter's turn to lie like this:
"Woman. It's a mystery I can't guess. They want children, but they have children, and they cry for them. It's a mystery I can't guess. No man can understand. Then he walked away, pulled a chair to the window, and sat down.
All morning, long, bright, full of sunshine, he sat at the window, waiting. From time to time, he stood up and tiptoed over to the grass mat. His granddaughter was now asleep, her face gloomy, calm, tired, and the baby lay in the crook of her arm.
Then he went back to his chair and sat down again, and he waited, wondering why they had been delayed for so long, and then he remembered that it was Sunday. Halfway through the afternoon, he was sitting, and a half-sized white boy turned the corner of the house, met the dead body, gasped and shouted coldly, he looked up and saw Walsh at the window, as if hypnotized for a moment, and then turned and fled.
So Walsh got up and tiptoed to the grass bed.
The granddaughter is awake now, probably unconsciously awakened by the child's shouts.
"Miri," he said, "are you hungry?" ”
She didn't answer and twisted her face away. He lit a fire in the fireplace and made the fatty ridge meat and cold corn bread he had brought home the day before; and poured water into a broken coffee pot to boil. But when he took the plate, she didn't want to eat it, so he ate it himself and ate it quietly alone.
After eating, the plate was not collected, and it was back to the window.
Now he seemed to realize and feel that the men should be assembling with horses and guns and dogs—those strange, vengeful people: people like Sedpan, at a time when Walsh could not cross the grapevine, and when they were closer to the house, they were the same people gathered at the table of Saidpan.
Those who set an example for the younger ones in how to fight may have also received signed pieces of paper from the generals saying that they were first-class heroes and good men; that they had once rode on horseback and ran proudly and spiritlessly through the beautiful plantations—a symbol of praise and hope; and a tool of sorrow and despair.
They would think he was going to run away and avoid people like them.
But he felt that the place where he had escaped was no better than the place he had to escape. If he ran, it would just be from a group of evil shadows that seemed quite large to another group that was exactly the same, because he knew that all the people in the whole world were the same, and he was already old, too old, and even if he wanted to escape, he would not be far away.
No matter how he ran, no matter how far he ran, he could never avoid them: a man who was almost sixty years old could not run that far. It is impossible to go far beyond the world in which these people live, a world in which they set the rules and order for life.
After five years, he felt that for the first time he had understood how the Yankees, or any other army, could crush them—these handsome, proud, brave people; people selected from all of them, who were recognized as the best, who embodied courage, glory, and pride.
Perhaps, if Walsh had followed them to the battlefield, he might have seen through them earlier. However, if he had seen through these people earlier, how would his life have been since then? How could he bear to spend these five years by recalling his former life?
Now the sun is about to set. The little fellow had been crying; he had walked over to the grass mat and saw his granddaughter feeding the child, her face still so dazed, gloomy, and elusive.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"I don't want to eat anything."
"You should eat something."
This time she simply did not answer and looked down at the child. He returned to his chair and found that the sun had set.
"It won't be much longer." He thought.
He could sense that they were quite close now, a group of eccentric, vengeful men. He even seemed to hear what they were talking about him, the undercurrent of faith that lay beneath the fury in front of him: Old Walsh Jones had been planted.
He thought he had caught Saidpan, but in fact Saidpan had tricked him. He felt that he had caught the colonel in this matter, thinking that Sedpan had to marry the maid, or he would have to give money. But the colonel did not do it.
"But I never counted on it, Colonel!" He shouted out, awakened by his own voice, and turned back to see his granddaughter staring at him.
"Who are you talking to?" She said.
"No one. I was just thinking about things and unconsciously said it. ”
Her face began to be unclear again, turning into a gloomy, blurry shadow in the twilight.
"I think so. I think you'll have to shout louder, he'll have to hear it in the upper house. I also thought, if you want to call him here, you have to do something, just shout. ”
"Okay, okay," he said, "don't worry. ”
But his heart was already thinking involuntarily again: "You know that I absolutely do not." You know that I have never counted on, never asked for anyone alive, and apart from you, you know what I am counting on you.
I never asked. I don't think so. I said, I don't need it. How could someone like Walsh Jones have to question and suspect a man who even General Lee said on a handwritten piece of paper that he was a brave teacher? "Brave," he thought, "if only none of them had come home on horseback in six or five years." ”
He thought that it was best that people like him and people like himself had never lived in this world out of breath. It would be better for a person of his own kind who is still alive to call a gust of wind blowing off the ground than to have another Walsh Jones watch his whole life tear off him and burn it like a dry corn husk thrown at a fire.
He stopped, motionless.
He heard the sound of the horse's hooves, suddenly and clearly; and now he saw the lantern, the figure shaking, the barrel of the gun shining in the moving light. He still didn't move. It was getting dark, and he listened as they surrounded the house, and as they spoke, they brushed against the small bushes.
The lantern was still coming on its own; its light fell on the dead bodies lying quietly in the weeds, and stopped moving, the horses were tall and large, and the shadows were everywhere. A man dismounted and bent down toward the dead body in the light. The man had a pistol in his hand; he stood up straight, facing the house.
"Jones." He said.
"I'm here," Walsh said quietly from the window, "is it you, Major?" ”
"Come out."
"Yes," he said quietly, "I'll put my granddaughter in place first." ”
"We'll place her." Come out. ”
"Yes, Major. Wait a minute. ”
"Light up. Turn on the lights. ”
"Yes. Wait a minute. They could hear his voice retreating into the house, but they could not see him, and he walked quickly to the crack in the chimney, where he hid a knife for a butcher, and which, because it was as sharp as a razor, had become what Wash was proud of in his scruffy life and his scruffy house.
As he approached the grass mat, he heard his granddaughter's voice: "Who?" Light the lamp, Grandpa. ”
"No lights, my dear. It didn't take a minute. He said, kneeling and groping into her voice, and now he was quietly asking, "Where are you?" ”
"Right here," she said irritably, "where can I be?" What's this..." His hand touched her face. "This is what... grandfather! Outside..."
"Jones!" The chief of police said, "Get out of it!" ”
"Wait a minute, Major," he said.
Now he was up and moving quickly. Touching the darkness, he knew where the kerosene was, and he knew that the bucket was full, because only two days before he had filled it in the shop and put it there until he hitched a ride and brought it back, because five gallons was too heavy.
There was still coal in the hearth, and besides, the crumbling house itself was almost like a tinder: coal, the fireplace, the walls, it exploded, it became a single blue glare. Lined with this blue light, the people waiting outside saw him, and in this crazy moment, he was holding aloft the big scythe, jumping towards them, and the horse was turning backwards.
They strangled their horses and turned back to face the strong light, at which point a frantic black shadow was clearly reflected, and this thin figure with a large scythe held high was still running towards them.
"Jones!" The chief of police shouted, "Stop! Stop, or I'll shoot. Jones! Jones, "But the thin, furious man continued to pounce against the backdrop of the dazzling glare and the blazing fire.
He held his sickle aloft, toward them, toward the eyes of those round-eyed horses, toward the flashes of those dangling barrels, without shouting, without making a sound.
William Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962), one of the most influential writers in the history of American literature, a representative of stream-of-consciousness literature in the United States, and winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and artistic contributions to the contemporary American novel."