During the second year of being with Andrew, I met an old friend from before I lost my memory. He came to me and said that I had been his cousin's governess, and he wanted to give me something back.
It happened to be a winter morning, and there was a cold mist floating on the street. I opened the door to fetch milk, and heard someone behind me shout, "Alan?"
The man who spoke was wearing gold-rimmed glasses, holding a little red-haired boy with his left hand, who looked about eight or nine years old, standing in the thick fog on the corner of the street. He told the little boy to wait where he was, and walked towards me. We just chatted on the porch.
"I was a governess before?" I was surprised.
"Yes. You come to my grandpa's house every week. We are friends." He asked me with concern: "Little Allen, I heard you lost your memory?"
"Head wound in the air raid, bad luck." I shrugged.
"Do you get headaches from time to time?"
"Oh, don't worry about me, it won't."
The man in the gold-rimmed glasses seemed relieved. He seemed to habitually squint his eyes when he was thinking. We chatted for a while, and he looked me over and commented, "Alan, you seem to be doing well."
"Oh yes. I live with my lover."
"No," he corrected me, "I mean you look happy."
I asked him, "You don't look happy?"
"I'm dumped."
"You can get it back. There is a trick to picking up girls. As long as the method is right, there is no woman you can't catch." I comforted him: "The trick is to persevere. Darling, don't give up."
"Alan, you don't understand." He said: "I have no ability to protect the person I love. He was in danger once, and I can only watch him suffer, and there is no way to save him from this pain. I've thought about taking him out of the watchtower, into the country, out of that damn place—but I'm not capable of that. Oh, Alan, I really did—you've got to believe me."
"he?"
"Oh, yes. I'm gay."
"What a coincidence, me too." I grinned and patted him on the shoulder: "It's okay, don't give up. It will get better."
"Really? Alan, do you really think so?" He suddenly took a step forward and asked me seriously, as if some hope suddenly burned.
"What?"
"You think I shouldn't give up? Everything will be fine?" He looked me straight in the eye.
"Unless he loves someone else, you should insist, dear."
His face darkened, he sighed, took out a gold pocket watch from his suit jacket pocket, and handed it to me.
"This is your thing, and I will return it to you as agreed."
The pocket watch is exquisite in workmanship, as if it came from a famous artist, and it feels heavy and cold in the hand. I don't remember owning it, and I can't figure out why I bought such an expensive item in the first place. Opening the cover of the watch, I found that the time had stopped at three o'clock in the afternoon.
"The watch is broken." I told him, "The hands haven't moved."
"September 13, 1945, the people I love completely forget my time." He asked me, "Alan, you don't mind if I break your watch."
"Of course not. Go in and have a cup of coffee?" I suggested.
"No. I want to go back." He refused with a smile: "I have something to do. I just stopped by to say goodbye to my lover."
"Oh, that's right." He seemed to suddenly remember: "That was a few years ago, Alan. We once made an appointment to take the train to the Lake District to see the lavender fields together in September. It's a pity that we didn't go."
"Yeah, what a pity." I agreed.
We hug and say goodbye like old friends. Suddenly I thought: "By the way, what's your name, sir?"
"Arnold. Arnold. Visco, psychiatrist." He had already walked a few steps, suddenly smiled, and blew a kiss to me: "Alan, dear, goodbye."
It may be my illusion, but his expression seems a little sad.
I watched him walk towards the little red-haired boy in the distance. The little kid gave me a strong wave, then turned and disappeared with his cousin into the thick fog of the London streets.
It was the only time I saw him, in the milky fog.
I don't like the fog in London winter. They were cold and damp, making the old wounds in my chest ache. Sometimes ordinary things will appear particularly distorted and weird in the fog, which makes people have the hallucinations that children often have when reading fairy tale books.
Andymond was driving a few days ago and we were on errands in the West End. That morning, the fog was unprecedentedly heavy, and I could almost feel the moisture flowing through my fingers when I spread my palms. I see a gray watchtower in the mist outside the car window. There are only vague outlines, towering not far away. The straight gray brick tower stood out in the mist.
I suddenly felt that I had seen it in the clear sky.
Looking out from the windows of the tower, you must be able to see the tall chimneys of the factory outside, and there are pigeons circling around. The door must be locked firmly, no matter how desperately shaken it will not open.
For some reason, such an ordinary picture gave me chills all over my body.
I said to Andemon: "Honey, do you see the gray watchtower outside? The moment I saw it, I suddenly felt that I didn't love you anymore."
Andmon didn't answer me right away, he just held my ten fingers tightly with one free hand, then stepped on the accelerator, and drove away from the block at a faster speed.
After a long time, he pulled the car over to the side of the road and smiled at me: "It's okay, Alan. As long as I love you, it's fine."
Andmond thought for a while: "I can take a vacation in the spring. Then we will go to Berlin together."
"I don't want to go there," I said.
"There are many ruins and cemeteries from the last world war over there. I heard that there may be a place where a very talented mathematician is buried. I want you to accompany me to see her. She laid the foundation for the modern machinery in cryptography. The basics of encryption. You'll like her—I saw you playing with a newspaper cipher puzzle recently."
"The inventor of 'Miss'? I remember you saying she was British, I don't understand why she would work for the Nazis."
"I heard that she was forced to. She and her husband worked for the intelligence service. The government suspected them of treason and issued an order to deal with it. Only she escaped from the fire in her apartment, contacted the German spies who had planned to buy her, and went to Berlin."
"Where are her husband and children?"
"Her husband must have died in a fire made by the intelligence agency. Fortunately, the child was sent to his uncle's house in the country ahead of time and grew up smoothly. The mathematician's most concerned thing in her life is her son who stayed in England. She even My son betrayed the organization's information."
"She's a good mother," I said.
"Ellen, I want you to remember this—before the fire, she was loyal to England. It's just that this loyalty has not been reciprocated." Anderson squeezed my hand and said softly: "We will go to England in April Berlin."
"Really?" I said, "You also said that you were going to buy a cottage in Beckenfordshire, and we would move there."
"Oh, yes." He approached me and kissed my cheek: "You said you liked the country. But that will take many years to go."
"Many years later?"
"Well, honey. When we're all old."
The dense fog has gradually dissipated, and the cold and bright winter sun falls on the windshield, piercing people's eyes.
In the distance came the church bell tolling nine o'clock.
Around Christmas, I received a letter from America.
Inside the envelope was a square of paper and a few dried rose petals. It was a sketch drawn in blue and black ink, drawn on Air Force letterhead, without writing a single word. It seems to be me when I was a student, sitting under a leafy oak tree with a thick book in my arms. With the wind blowing, I slightly closed my eyes and rested my chin on the spine of the book.
You can almost feel the clean good times passing by on the letterhead.
The envelope was unaddressed and postmarked San Francisco.
I folded it up and put it in the "Selected Poems of Yeats" that Anderson gave me. I never read the book of poetry, but Anderson insisted on giving it to me.
The first song is "The Years Are Gone"
I wanted to sign on the title page, but the title page of this book was torn off. Andymond wrote our names in blue and black ink below the poem.
Alan Castor
Andremon Garcia