百度搜索 The Dead Father 天涯 或 The Dead Father 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
Evening. The campfire. Cats g in the distance. Julie washing her shirt. Emma her reticule.Tell me a story, said the Dead Father.
Certainly, said Thomas. One day in a wild place far from the city four men in dark suits with shirts and ties and attache cases taining Uzi submae guns seized me, saying that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that they were not going to hurt me. Then they hurt me, first with opehen with corkscrews. Then, splashing iodine on my several wounds, they sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom --
Oh! said the Dead Father. A dramatiarrative.
Very much so, said Thomas. They sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom up the side of a small mountain, dowher side of the same mountain, across a small river, to an even wilder place still farther from the city. There, they proceeded to lunch. We luogether with not a word spoken. Then, after polig the area down to the last chi bone, we mounted once again and fled in single file through the damp mists of the afternoon over hills and dales and through hiatuses of various kinds, events perhaps I t remember, to a yet wilder place rank with９9lｉb.he odor of fish and the odor of dead grasses still farther from the city. Here we watered the horses, against their will, they did not like the water. I helped make a fire gathering dry brahat had fallen from the trees but when I had finished helping make the fire I was told that no fire was wanted. heless one of the men opened his attache case, withdrew his submae gun and unfolding the folding stock fired a short burst into the dry branches setting them aflame. The horses reared and cried out in fear and the horseholder cursed the mae gunner and cursed me who had helped build a fire where no fire was wahen, mounting once again and leaving the fire to do what it would among the creaking brownstairees, ed down the ter of a long valley through fields of winter wheat, leaping stones and feo a house. Reining in there, we sat on our horses before the door of the house, horse breath visible in the chill of the evening, there was a light within. They escorted me into the house and by the dim illumination of a single dle hurt me again, with dinner forks. I asked for how many days or weeks or months was I to be thus transported and hurt and they said, until I aodated. I asked them what that meant, aodated, but they were silent.
We left the house and mounted again. Then, after gal<dfn></dfn>loping for some hours through the black of the night we came to a car wash. The car wash was made of steel and crete block, we clattered through the entrand past a meism wherein giant sponges were buffing late-model cars blue and gray and silver and behind that meism to a large room with sand on the floor. I was taken from my horse by two men who bound my hands behind my bad thrust into my mouth a piece of paper on which was written something I could not see but which I knew had to do with me, was about me. Then I ushed into the ring where wandered a dozen others similarly bound grippiweeeeth similar pieces of paper with things written on them, we walked or lurched around the ring avoiding bumping into each other but narrowly, when I came close to someone he or she made aggressive snarliures, I uood that we were to make aggressive snarliures, I made aggressive snarliures whenever one of them came near me meanwhile trying to read what was written on that persons piece of paper gripped between his or her teeth. But to no avail, I could not read what was written on any piece of paper although I did get a notion of the handwriting which was the same on every piece of paper, a fihin cursive. This dree to-ing and fro-ing persisted throughout the night and through the day and I became preoccupied with the thought, where was lunch? Having had lun the first day I expected it on the sed and third and fourth but this timism, there was no lunch, only snarling aggressive gestures and attempts unsuccessful invariably to read what was written on the pieces of paper gripped in the mouths of my prang colleagues. Then all-of-a-heap I was out of the ring and standing before a door, the door opened and I saw there two men oher side of a hospital bed atop which was a wood coffin taining a corpse, dead I assumed, the corpses hands were ere the air clutg and I noticed that the fingers on each hand were missing, the corpse clutched with no fingers, the door closed and there was a sound as of a lift, the door opened again and the two men were gone and the corpse was gone. I stepped through the door into the lift and the door closed behind me. I was taken to the top floor.
I was taken to the top floor, Thomas said, there I found behind a desk a man in a mask. The mask was as tall as the man and had been hewn from a tree, it was Afri in character and had been worked upon with chisels most skillfully or perhaps with hoe blades most skillfully, it resembled a human fa that five holes presehemselves, there were no ears. The man in the mask said that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that he was not going to hurt me. Then he hurt me, with dots. Then he asked my panions if I was maturing. Hes growing older, the taller of the two replied, and everyone present his was certainly true, the man in the mask expressed satisfa. Then, ing me in a djellabah of thirty shades of brown they removed me to a Land-Rover which immediately rovered out onto a broad arid plain for a distance of several hundred miles, stopping at intervals to take orol and water<dfn></dfn> in battered jerry s wrung from unwilling unbuttoned ht out-of-uniform supply sergeants at depots along the route. Where was lunch? I wondered remembering the first day, the chi, the cucumbers, the potato salad. Oher side of the desert we came to a s, great sucky grasses tufted into a green scum, we abahe Land-Rover for a pirogue, and with one of my panions paddling in the bow and the other poling iern and me in the middle set off across the dank whining surface, giant cypresses gnarling and snarling all about us and two-inch-high tree monkeys hanging by one arm like evil fruits therefrom. During a pause in the poling and paddling with the nose of the pirogue snugged into a greasy hummock they filled their pipes with damp tobacco drawn from their attache cases, the which I was not offered any of, and damaged me again, with harsh words. But they seemed to be tiring, I was hurt less than before, they told me I was wroc. but added that I was being, by virtue of their kind attentions and the waning of the preseury and the edifications of surface travel, less wrong than before. We were going to see the Great Father Serpent, they said, the Great Father Serpent would if I answered the riddle correctly grant me a boon but it was one boon to a er and I would never ahe riddle correctly so my hopes, they said, should not be got up. I rehearsed in my mind all the riddles that I krying to patch the right ao the right riddle, while I was dis my senses in this way we pushed off again into the filthy water, in the distance I could hear a r.
Im fatigued, said the Dead Father.
Be of good ce, said Thomas, it ends soon.
The r they told me was the voice of the Great Father Serpent calling for the foreskins of the uninitiated but I was safe, my foreskin had been surrendered long ago, to a surgeon in a hospital. As we drew hrough the tangling vines I per<bdi>..</bdi>ceived the outlines of a serpent of huge bigness which held in its mouth a sheet of tin on whiething was written, the roars rattled the tin and I was uo make out the message. My keepers hauled the pirogue onto the piece of ground on which the monster was resting and approached him most deferentially as who would not, shouting into his ear that I had e to be tested by the riddle and win for myself a boon and that if he were willing they would proceed to robe him for the riddling. The Great Father Serpent nodded most graciously and opening his mouth let fall the sheet of tin whi its reverse had been polished to the brightness of a mirror. My escorts set up the mirror side in such a way that the creature could regard himself with love as the fussing-over proceeded, I w the while if it would be possible to creep underh ahe writing there. First they ed the Great Father Serpent in fine smallclothes of softwhispering blush-colored geable taffeta taken from a mahogany wardrobe ious size located behind him, tussling for half an hour to cover his whole great length.
I like him, said the Dead Father, in that we are both long, very long.
Reserve judgment, said Thomas, we are not quite to the end.
Then they put on him, said Thomas, a kind of scarlet skirt stuffed with bombast and pleated and slashed so as to show a riner lining of a lighter scarlet, the two scarlets together making a brave show at his slightest movement or undulation. The Great Father Serpent looked her to the right nor to the left but stark ahead at his primrose image iin. Then they covered the upper or more headward length of him with a light jacket of white silk embroidered with a thread nutmeg in color and a thread goose-turd in color, these iwined, and trimmed with fine whipped lace. Then they put on him a sort of doublet of silver brocade slashed with scarlet and slashed again with gold, sleeves for his no-arms hanging there picked out with seed pearls, the doublet having four and one half dozen buttons, the buttons being one dozen of ivory, one dozen of silk, one dozen of silk and hair, one dozen mixed gold and silver wire, and six diamonds set in gold. hey put on him a great ade of unshor pear-colored inside and outside embroidered at the top and down the back with bugles and pearls tless in number and holding two dozens of buttons, altogether they were wo hours a-buttoning, while they buttoned I inched closer to the underside of the tin which was taller than myself and leaning against a tree, I inched and inched, sometimes half-inched, so that to the eye my movements were imperceptible. Then they belted around his midpoint a girdle of russet gold with pe<big></big>arls and spangles supp his hao which was buckled the scabbard (buff-colored leather worked in silver wire gimp and colored silk) which held the shining, split towo meters long. As they placed upon the oblohe French hat with its massy goldsmiths work and long black feather, I slipped beh the tin and out again, I could not believe what I saw written there. The Great Father Serpent nodded o his own image, whisked the tongue from its scabbard, and pronounced himself ready to riddle.
Here is the riddle said the Great Father Serpent with a great flourishing of his two-tipped tongue, and it is a son-of-a-bitch I will tell you that, the most are item in the ara, you will never guess it in a huhousand human years some of which I point out have already been used up by you in useless living and breathing but have a go, have a go, do: What do you really feel? Like murderinging, I answered, because that is what I had read on the underside of the tin, the w murderinging inscribed in a fihin cursive. Why bless my soul, said the Great Father Serpent, hes got it, and the two ruffians bli me in stunned wonder and I myself wondered, and marveled, but what I was w and marveling at was the closeness with which what I had answered accorded with my feelings, my lost feelings that I had never found before. I suppose, the Father Serpent said, that the boon you wish granted is the ability to carry out this foulness? Of course, I said, what else? Grahen, he said, but may I remind you that having the power is often enough. You dont have to actually do it. For the souls ease. I thahe Great Father Serpent; he bowed most cordially; my paniourned me to the city. I was abroad iy with murderinging in mind -- the dream of a stutterer.
That is a tall tale, said the Dead Father. I dont believe it ever happened.
No tale ever happened in the way we tell it, said Thomas, but the moral is always correct.
What is the moral?
Murderinging, Thomas said.
Murderinging is not correct, said the Dead Father. The sacred and her should not be murdereded. Never. Absolutely not.
I mentioned no names, said Thomas.
He was staring at the Dead Fathers belt buckle.
Very handsome buckle you have there, he said, I never noticed before.
The belt buckle was silver. Six inches square. A ruby or two.
The Dead Father regarded his belt buckle.
Gift of the citizens, many Fathers Days ago. One of several hundred sumptuous s, on that Fathers Day.
May I try it on? Thomas asked.
You want to try on my belt?
Yes Id like to try it on if you dont mind.
You may certainly try it on if you wish.
The Dead Father unbuckled the belt and ha to Thomas.
Thomas buckled on the Dead Fathers belt.
I like it, he said. Yes, it looks well ohe buckle. You may have the belt back, if you like.
My belt buckle! said the Dead Father.
Im sure you dont mind, said Thomas. Doubtless you have others just as sumptuous.
He hahe buckleless belt back to the Dead Father.
I dont mind?
Do you mind?
Yes, Julie asked iedly, do you mind?
I was always rather fond of that one.
Surely you have others just as fine.
Yes I have a great ma buckles.
I am delighted to hear it.
Not here. Not with me, the Dead Father said.
You have my old belt buckle, Thomas said. It will do.
Yes, Julie said, it will do.
Quite a good buckle, my old buckle, Thomas said.
Thank you, said the Dead Father, accepting the old buckle.
Not as fine as your former belt buckle, of course.
It isnt, the Dead Father said. I see that.
Thats why I wanted yours, Thomas explained.
I uand that, said the Dead Father. You wahe better buckle.
And now I have it, said Thomas.
He patted himself on the belt buckle.
Looks quite good I think.
It does, said Julie.
Yes, Emma agreed.
Gives you a bit more dash, said Julie. More dash than you had before.
Thank you, Thomas said. And to the Dead Father: And thank you.
My pleasure, said the Dead Father. Good to be able to do something for you younger men, on a while. Good to be able to give. Giving is, in a sense --
No, said Thomas, let us be clear. You didnt give. I took. There is a difference. I took it away from you. Just get it straight. The matters trivial, but I want no misuanding. I took it. Away from you.
Oh, said the Dead Father.
He thought for a moment.
Will there be solation?
Yes, said Thomas. You may make a speech.
No, Julie said. No speech.
A speech to the men? asked the Dead Father. To my assembled loyal, faithful --
No, said Julie.
Yes, said Thomas. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow?
Maybe tomorrow, said Thomas.
My speech!
To bed, said Thomas. All to bed now. Pleasant dreams.
Thomas regarded his e tights, his e boots, his new silver belt buckle.
Yes! he said.
百度搜索 The Dead Father 天涯 或 The Dead Father 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.