I failed to apply for the job. I was bored and smoked by a telephone pole on the streets of London, watching a group of girls in short skirts feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square opposite. A flock of white pigeons gathered around, the faces of the girls were like red apples, and their laughter was as crisp as silver bells. A little boy in a dark blue pullover staggered past them, holding three red, yellow and blue hydrogen balloons tightly in his hand.
A poster of the victory in the war was posted on the wall not far away, and there was a gray monument in the distance. People walked past the monument silently. Its pedestals are covered with tulips, some in bloom and some withered.
I saw an old woman in black mourning standing silently in front of it, crossing her chest with her skinny hands, and muttering something.
Perhaps their sons, or husbands, had been lost in the war.
I coughed after two puffs and had to curse and throw the cheap cigarettes away.
My name is Alan Castells. I graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Cambridge. After graduation, I was catching up with the war of the economic depression and working in a restaurant in London. It is said that the last air raid by the Germans destroyed the restaurant, and the chandelier fell on my head unfortunately.
I was taken to a military hospital. The doctor said that the chandelier hit me and I lost my memory, and a piece of shrapnel hit my chest, so when I coughed, my lungs hurt. I was in the hospital for a long time, flirting with every nurse girl who gave me my injections until the attending doctor flew into a rage. They gave me a pension and threw me out.
I've rented an apartment in the West End of London and it's due soon. Unemployed, no money, bad cigarettes, leaning on a pole and whistling to pretty girls, I thought I looked like a hooligan.
It had been a pleasant walk in the sunny afternoon, but the cold, damp air now approaching evening made the old wound ache in my chest. I want to go home, but I don't have a penny in my pocket for the tram ride.
I lit another cigarette and looked around sullenly, hoping for a ride.
A stretched black car stopped in front of him. The car door opened, and a man in a windbreaker got out of the back seat. He has light blond hair and dark blue eyes like opals in antique shops, with his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, walking towards me. The setting sun fell on his hair and shoulders with warm afterglow, as beautiful as a character in an oil painting.
Just enough to make people look lost.
"Excuse me, sir," he said to me.
I saw him take out a delicate cigarette case and take out a cigarette. I fumbled all over my pockets to find a twopence lighter.
"Thank you." He said very gentlemanly, holding the lighted cigarette between his slender fingers, but he didn't smoke it.
I desperately smoked the cigarette in my hand, pretending to be dismissive—this is someone who is in two worlds with me, a rich man.
He took the one in my hand, stubbed out the cigarette butt, threw it on the ground, and said, "You are not suitable for cigarettes, you will cough."
"Oh, baby, don't care about me so much." Leaning against the telephone pole angrily, I blurted out: "I will fall in love with you."
His dark blue eyes were bent, and he nodded: "Okay."
Then he held out his hand to me: "My name is Andremon. Andremon Garcia. If you have no plans today, can you have dinner with me?"
"It's like a line to invite a lady." I protested.
But at noon I only ate a piece of dry bread.
So an hour later we were sitting in a French restaurant on Belford Street. Andemon's order was elegant and just right to my liking.
He even ordered my favorite cider for me.
He barely ate, just smiled at me across the table.
"So your name is Alan Castor?" he asked me.
"Don't like the name?"
"No." Rubbing the goblet with his index finger, Andemon said meaningfully, "I like this name. I like it terribly."
I asked him, "Why did you invite me to dinner?"
"I'm after you, Ellen."
I was eating tiramisu, my mouth was full of cream, and I looked up in horror: "Is this a date?"
"You said you'd love me, didn't you?"
I quickly swallowed the last bite of dessert and stood up to leave: "Oh dear, you heard me wrong."
He reached out and took my arm.
"But I mean it, Alan Castor."
The next morning, I went out to pick up the newspaper in my pajamas. I was hesitating whether to hang out or look for a job today. When I opened the door, I saw the driver who drove Andemont yesterday. I remember this driver, his name was Peter, he was wearing a straight military uniform, and his blue eyes were always cold.
He glanced critically at my small apartment of less than twenty square meters and the sofa with broken springs, and refused to comment. Then he handed me a large bunch of deep red roses with a blank expression, turned around and left.
Below the bouquet is a card with beautiful and flowing cursive script:
I stopped him: "Tell your boss, homosexuality is against the law!"
The blue-eyed driver turned stiffly and stared at me. "He knows."
I received the same rose the next day, and the words on the card became:
I asked Peter, "Is this the only way Andrew chases people?"
On the third day there were no more roses. Peter stood at the door and asked bluntly, "Mr. Garcia said—'Baby, how do you like me to chase you'?"
One morning the doorbell rang. As usual, I opened the door with my breakfast bread in my mouth and a coffee cup in my left hand. I stuck my head out the door: "Tell your freaky boss I'm not gay! Hell!"
Andemon looked handsome and charming in a white suit. He corrected me very gentlemanly: "No, you are."
He sincerely suggested: "Ellen, we can have a romantic relationship for a while. If you get tired, you can always leave."
I looked him up and down: "I prefer the waitresses in the cafe downstairs."
The downstairs cafe soon had a waitress change. I looked through the glass door in disappointment, and turned to meet Anderson.
I whistled.
He stops me.
"Alan, do you really have no feelings for me?"
"Oh, baby, you are beautiful." At that moment, I pointed to my chest, not knowing what I was talking about: "But I have a little pain here."
I don't understand why he seems so desperate.
He just stubbornly asked me repeatedly: "Alan, how can I make you fall in love with me?"
I have asked Andrew many times why he likes me. Andmond always thinks seriously for a while before replying: "Honey, it's love at first sight."
I always feel that something is wrong, but his words are very sincere, and he always looks at the other person's eyes when he speaks. I refused him, but he hugged me forcefully, his arms strangled my shoulders so badly. He said over and over, Alan, I love you.
"Are you sure you're sane?" I asked him.
He kissed my hair, and his voice was soft and pleasant: "Not sure."
All I know is that Andrón Garcia works for a government agency and has some ties to the military. He helped me find a research fellowship at the Institute of Mathematics, and we lived in his cottage in London. It's been two years, and everything seems too good to be true. I have no memory of the past, and he never asked me these questions.
He just hugged me as I tried to remember the past and said, "Ellen, don't think about things you can't remember."
I know he doesn't live here often. Because when I went for the first time, all the sofas were covered with dust covers. Oil paintings by famous painters hang on the walls, which look like authentic works. There is a particularly empty piano room on the second floor, which somehow feels familiar to me.
"My family has estates in Newcastle and Darlington, and we can go hunting there in autumn," he said.
I don't smoke anymore. Anderson threw all my cigarettes in the trash. He never blamed anything, but he would pop up when I sneaked out the lighter to light a cigarette, gently undressed me, threw me on the bed, and tossed my legs apart.
Anderson can play the piano. I like to see him sitting in front of the grand piano in the piano room and looking intently. Beethoven's melody unfolded in the room beautifully.
Sometimes he would tell me stories he had heard at work. My favorite story is about a group of cryptographers breaking a German cipher called "Mi". Among them was a genius mathematician who graduated from Cambridge. Based on group theory, he solved the biggest puzzle in this war. They even produced a batch of decryption machines. This thing was so advanced that after the war, Prime Minister Churchill personally ordered them to be smashed into pieces no larger than the size of a fist.
I was doing crossword puzzles for the newspaper at the time, and I was very dissatisfied: "I also graduated from Cambridge, does he have my genius?"
Andre Mengheng sat by the fireplace and read the materials, and thought about it for a moment: "Yes."
I squinted at him: "Am I more handsome, handsome and charming?"
He looked at me carefully for a long time, and smiled with his eyes bent: "Yes."
I was angry: "Let him go to hell!"
"No, honey." Andemon put down the information in his hand and came to kiss me: "He is with the one who loves him. Together forever."
I once found a black and white photograph in a cupboard at home of a beautiful woman in trousers and a blouse. The fluffy curly hair draped over the shoulders, and the smile was like a delicate flower.
"Ex-girlfriend?" I asked.
"This is Anne, my assistant." He sighed: "During the war, she entered the German occupied area alone and rescued three valuable female colleagues from the concentration camp. It is very remarkable."
"Oh, it's amazing!" At that moment, I don't know why, and I feel a little nostalgic: "Is there a chance to meet her?"
"No." Andermeng's dark blue eyes dimmed a bit: "She died. But her colleague survived."
"I think I've seen her somewhere."
"That's an illusion." He took the photo and put it in his suit pocket: "You remember it wrong."
I keep remembering things wrong.
I once stopped by a cable factory to meet an acquaintance, and happened to see workers copying electric meters. A Jew with shoulder-length black curly hair and an aquiline nose, in an oil-stained blue overalls, climbed up a pipe to read a meter. It felt very familiar for a moment.
For some reason, I suddenly saw him wearing a woolen coat, sitting casually on the window sill of the office drinking coffee.
"What's his name?" I asked my friend.
"Raphael Hughes," said the friend indifferently, "this man was a coward who didn't go to the front in the war."
"Where was he during the war?"
"God knows. I asked him, but he never said anything." The friend shrugged.
I remembered that I had never been on a battlefield, and suddenly felt a strange sense of familiarity. But I don't know Raphael. Xiuzi was a man, so he glanced at him silently and left.
Friends and I discussed the devastation of the London air raids, and his relatives and friends who never came home. He looked sad, but his eyes were full of hope: "The war is won, I can't believe it!"
I don't know anything about these. Whenever I try to recall them, I feel nothing but a void in my chest, like the endless gray-blue sky of Britain overhead.