I dislocated my right hand, and I can't find the keyhole with my left hand. Anderson took my hand and opened the door for me.
He hugged my waist from behind, and slowly held my dislocated hand, interlocking his fingers. My arm drooped lifelessly, and I let him hold it. Then he let go of his palm and stroked up his wrist bit by bit. Andemon's movements were very light, through the coat, it was as gentle as soothing.
By the time he grabbed my injured elbow, it was too late to regret.
Andemont hugged my waist suddenly and said, "Alan, your eyes are beautiful."
I just felt severe pain coming from my right hand, and I could hardly stand still. I would have fallen to the floor if it hadn't been for Andymond supporting me from behind.
His voice passed through the pain and seemed unreal: "The elbow is reset, and it can't be used in the short term."
I barely turned on the dim chandelier. The landlady was asleep, and the front hall was empty. I was exhausted from the pain, so I pulled over the chair with outdated pattern cushions in the corner, stretched my legs and sat down, then pointed to the side, motioning for Anderson to sit down.
Andemont just leaned against the door frame and didn't come in. He was wearing a black coat, with the dark night behind him, dripping all over his body, like a devil who suddenly visited in a storybook.
He asked me, "Alan, you promised to wait for me, didn't you?"
I didn't answer him.
He just stood there, neither leaving nor coming in.
Andremon stood on the edge of light and darkness, the god of death, and invited me.
I've never seen such a serious expression on his face, that kind of expression almost made me think he was in pain.
If the Lord gives me another chance to truly understand Andremon and the truth of the whole story, I will agree to wait for him without hesitation. Even if the sea dries up and the rocks rot, I will stay here until the war is over.
But at that time, I didn't know the price he paid for making this promise. I only remembered that he walked side by side with Linton to the car parked outside the library, and his smile was as beautiful as the sunshine in March.
I took off my wet coat and hung it on the coat rack and said, "Honey, I don't love you anymore."
"You're kidding, Alan."
The light cast a small shadow on Andymond's tall nose. His handsome face was pale and pale after being drenched by the rain, which made my heart ache a bit. I made myself as gentle as possible: "Arnold—your therapist did a great job. Honey, I've broken up."
He still stood stubbornly by the door, motionless. When I turned around and went up the stairs, he said, his voice trembling: "What if I apologize?"
I sighed: "It's useless."
I fired up the fireplace in my room, changed into dry clothes, and swallowed an aspirin with the hot water. The arm that had just been connected was aching, and I read "Selected Poems of Yeats" by the fire for a while.
The book was given to me by Andrémond when I was with him, in beautiful cursive script, with our names written in blue ink on the title page. I don't quite understand Anderson's taste, and his stacks of thick-covered hardcover books, each written by an author who's been dead for at least a hundred years. I never read poetry, but he insisted on giving me this book.
The first song is "The Years Are Gone"
There was no sound for a long time, only the crackling of the fire and the rain outside the window were heard in the room. I thought Andrew had left, so I took the book and went downstairs to lock the door. But he was still there, stubbornly standing under the porch, looking at me quietly across the front hall.
It took a long time for Andymond to speak, his voice almost drowned in the sound of the rain.
"Alan, I just want a promise from you."
"I'm graduating in the summer, will you let me into Plimpton Manor?"
Andemon was silent for a long time: "No."
I stood at the bottom of the stairs and suddenly felt very sad.
It is impossible for him to trust me, but he wants me to wait for him.
I walked over and handed him the book in my hand.
"You gave it to me so we never see each other again." I heard myself say, "You know I've never been interested in poetry."
Andmond didn't reach out to take the book. His dark green eyes kept looking at my face.
He said: "Ellen, I thought at first, even if we can't be together, I hope you can keep this book."
I bent down and put the book at his feet.
"Alan, I must be responsible to my agency. You are a high-risk person being targeted. I just try to keep you out of the truth. I won't make you suffer."
"What truth?"
Anderson suddenly stopped talking.
He sighed, turned around slowly, and disappeared into the vast rain.
He wasn't driving and I don't know how he got here or how he left.
The next day the landlady opened the door and found "Selected Poems of Yeats" on the stone steps of the porch. I don't know if Andrew left in a hurry and dropped it on the ground, or he came back halfway and left the book in front of my door.
Whatever the reason, it's impossible for me now to know. I've lost my last chance to ask him.
In the morning, Arnold came to help me bandage with a smile.
"Mr. Garcia said that your hand is dislocated." He gloated: "I heard that you were beaten when you picked up a girl?"
"I am a hero saving the beauty." I was sullen.
Arnold disinfected my wound with iodine and cotton swabs, and hummed a little tune: "Oh, that's great, your eyes will be swollen for a week."
My dislocated hand was hung up in bandages.
"Mr. Garcia handled it perfectly and will be back in three weeks."
I asked him, "Aren't you a psychiatrist?"
Arnold adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses: "Little Allen, a psychiatrist is also a doctor."
That's how the matter came to an end. For even when it ends, war sweeps it from the arena of life.
Andrew was right.
The spring of 1939 passed, the summer passed, and no one believed that war was coming.
Summer is a grand and grand graduation ceremony.
Finally, autumn comes softly but cruelly.
On September 1, Germany broke the Munich agreement and invaded Poland.
On September 3, we declared war on Germany.
Yet wars only exist on the radio, and all we experience is inflation and recession.
Germany has cut off our sea supply lines and their subs are attacking our cargo ships at sea.
Two months after the declaration of war, the landlady began to complain to me that sugar cubes were too expensive, and that I could only put a small cube in a cup of coffee.
Gasoline was rationed, and private cars on the streets gradually became rare.
I started looking around for a job. But the streets are full of unemployed people with gloomy and hopeless faces.
On the way home, I saw a lot of people in black parading. The parade was mighty, and everyone held a blood-red swastika flag and sang Nazi party anthems.
Accidentally knocked down one of them and apologized quickly.
The man looked at me seriously: "Long live Nazism, long live Britain!"
I grabbed the pedestrians next to me and asked, "Who are they?"
"The Blackshirts! The British Fascist League!" The person caught by me replied with a look of surprise: "You don't even know? They asked to negotiate a peace with Germany..."
The old Lupoli coffee shop often complained to the customers with a cigarette in its mouth: "It's all the fault of the Jews. If the Jews hadn't invested heavily in Poland, how could we have made a war guarantee to Poland? The Jews ruined it a few years ago. German economy - by the way, I have no personal prejudice against Hitler."
Political turmoil and rumors abounded in those days. No one can guess what will happen a year from now, or even hold out hope for the Nazis.
And my Andymon is very far away from me.
Linton told me that the code system used by the German U-boat that sank our transport was a "mystery."
Linton is now the head of Office One. He came to Cambridge on a weekday for the first time and stopped me on the lawn of King's College.
"No way, Mr. Garcia is on a secret business trip." He pulled me to a bench by the side of the road and sat down, his eyes sparkling: "Alan, I deciphered 'Blueberry' by myself! I can do it on my own, too."
"I remember this Italian Class A cipher."
"Mr. Garcia's own grade A," he said.
"Then don't come to me next time." I glanced at him: "Do you have money? I don't have money to go to the bar."
He reluctantly took out his pocket: "Why are you going to the bar?"
"Picking up girls." I yawned: "Don't come to me for help until next time."
Linton mumbled and handed me some bills.
In fact, I am not going to pick up girls, but recently I am used to bring a newspaper every day to find a bar with few people, find a seat by the window and sit down, and then take out a pen and scratch paper to do calculations. I love listening to the wind chimes hanging from the window of the bar, their soft sound in the breeze.
In addition to looking for a job, I put almost all my energy on "fans".
I don't know who invented it, who the inventor was, who kept the key there.
All I know is that if Andremon and I are geniuses, then the inventor of "Mystery" is a genius among geniuses!
But now that the cheapest gin and water is tenpence a glass, I'm really tight.
Andrew is gone, I have no one to discuss, only one person to calculate silently. In the past, I used to provide him with various ideas for him to verify. When I really had to verify it myself, I realized that the amount of calculation was really abnormal.
I can't believe I could have deciphered it without Andemon.
After the war started, Arnold had no time to fool around. Even if he occasionally has time to go to the Cherry Bar to find a woman, I don't have time to accompany him, and I even push and push the kid's math tuition.
One morning in November, this fox had time to pick me up from the bar and asked me why I didn't go to make up lessons for his cousin.
"For the British people." I told him with a smile.
Arnold narrowed his eyes in disbelief.
"I'm writing a thesis. 'Group theory'—you know that."
"You've been writing a paper for years... what the hell is that?"
"You won't be interested." I was a little impatient: "Permutation groups, symmetries... I'm writing a thesis on its deep application."
etc
group theory
It's as if you're looking for inspiration all over the world, but the goddess of inspiration is sitting in your living room drinking afternoon tea.
At that moment, I was in a trance in the thin sunlight of late autumn.