Charles C. Mann

In Northwest Coast art the subjects are flattened and distorted—it’s as if they’ve been reduced from three dimensions to two and then folded like origami. At first I found all the designs hard to interpret, but soon some seemed to pop right out of the surface. They had clean lines that cut space into shapes at once simple and complex: objects tucked into objects, creatures stuffed into their own eyes, humans who were half beast and beasts who were half human—all was metamorphosis and surreal commotion.
Beni, a Bolivian province: The forests were bridged by raised berms, as straight as a rifle shot and up to three miles long. It is Erickson’s belief that this entire landscape—thirty thousand square miles or more of forest islands and mounds linked by causeways—was constructed by a technologically advanced, populous society more than a thousand years ago.
Much of the savanna is natural, the result of seasonal flooding. But the Indians maintained and expanded the grasslands by regularly setting huge areas on fire. Over the centuries the burning created an intricate ecosystem of fire-adapted plant species dependent on indigenous pyrophilia.
* Much of the environmental movement is animated, consciously or not, by what geographer William Denevan calls “the pristine myth”—the belief that the Americas in 1491 were an almost untouched.
Nonetheless, he was wrong about the Sirionó. And he was wrong about the Beni, the place they inhabited—wrong in a way that is instructive, even exemplary. <> Before Columbus, Holmberg believed, both the people and the land had no real history. Stated so baldly, this notion—that the indigenous peoples of the Americas floated changelessly through the millennia until 1492—may seem ludicrous. But flaws in perspective often appear obvious only after they are pointed out.
the Sirionó were among the most culturally impoverished people on earth... Before the epidemics at least three thousand Sirionó, and probably many more, lived in eastern Bolivia. By Holmberg’s time fewer than 150 remained—a loss of more than 95 percent in less than a generation. So catastrophic was the decline that the Sirionó passed through a genetic bottleneck... he never fully grasped that the people he saw as remnants from the Paleolithic Age were actually the persecuted survivors of a recently shattered culture.
According to Joseph Conrad, the violence was of culinary origin. “The Noble Red Man was a mighty hunter,” explained the great novelist, “but his wives had not mastered the art of conscientious cookery—and the consequences were deplorable. The Seven Nations around the Great Lakes and the Horse tribes of the plains were but one vast prey to raging dyspepsia.”
But the Second World War taught the West that non-Westerners—the Japanese, in this instance—were capable of swift societal change. The rapid disintegration of European colonial empires further adumbrated the point.
a torrent of novel perspectives and techniques cascaded into use. And when these were employed, the idea that the only human occupants of one-third of the earth’s surface had changed little for thousands of years began to seem implausible... at the time of Columbus the great majority of Native Americans could be found south of the Río Grande. They were not nomadic, but built up and lived in some of the world’s biggest and most opulent cities. Far from being dependent on big-game hunting, most Indians lived on farms.
* Clovis: For much of the last century archaeologists believed that Indians came to the Americas through the Bering Strait about thirteen thousand years ago at the tail end of the last Ice Age... In 1997 the theory abruptly came unglued. Some of its most ardent partisans, Haynes among them, publicly conceded that an archaeological dig in southern Chile had turned up compelling evidence of human habitation more than twelve thousand years ago... Or perhaps the first Indians traveled by boat, and didn’t need the land bridge. Or maybe they arrived via Australia, passing the South Pole... In every imaginable scenario, they left Eurasia before the first whisper of the Neolithic Revolution. <> The Neolithic Revolution is the invention of farming,
Researchers have long known that a second, independent Neolithic Revolution occurred in Mesoamerica. .. In 2003, though, archaeologists discovered ancient seeds from cultivated squashes in coastal Ecuador, at the foot of the Andes, which may be older than any agricultural remains in Mesoamerica—a third Neolithic Revolution.
Maize can’t reproduce itself, because its kernels are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize... Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.
The Olmec, Maya, and other Mesoamerican societies were world pioneers in mathematics and astronomy—but they did not use the wheel. Amazingly, they had invented the wheel but did not employ it for any purpose other than children’s toys.
University of Chicago archaeologist Alan L. Kolata excavated at Tiwanaku during the 1980s and early 1990s. He has written that by 1000 A.D. the city had a population of as much as 115,000, with another quarter million in the surrounding countryside—numbers that Paris would not reach for another five centuries. The comparison seems fitting; at the time, the realm of Tiwanaku was about the size of modern France... some climatologists believe that the Pacific is subject to “mega-Niño events,” murderously strong versions of the well-known El Niño patterns
* the Maya realm was home to one of the world’s most intellectually sophisticated cultures. About a century before our imaginary surveillance tour, though, the Maya heartland entered a kind of Dark Ages. Many of the greatest cities emptied, as did much of the countryside around them. Incredibly, some of the last inscriptions are gibberish, as if scribes had lost the knowledge of writing and were reduced to meaningless imitation of their ancestors.
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1600s New England: Shorter than the natives, oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly, animal-like hair that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians like basic tasks.
the omission is symptomatic of the complete failure to consider Indian motives, or even that Indians might have motives. The alliance Massasoit negotiated with Plymouth was successful from the Wampanoag perspective, for it helped to hold off the Narragansett. But it was a disaster from the point of view of New England Indian society as a whole, for the alliance ensured the survival of Plymouth colony, which spearheaded the great wave of British immigration... “When you look at the historical record, it’s clear that Indians were trying to control their own destinies,” Salisbury said. “And often enough they succeeded”—only to learn, as all peoples do, that the consequences were not what they expected.
Consider Tisquantum, the “friendly Indian” of the textbook... In that part of the Northeast, tisquantum referred to rage, especially the rage of manitou, the world-suffusing spiritual power at the heart of coastal Indians’ religious beliefs. When Tisquantum approached the Pilgrims and identified himself by that sobriquet, it was as if he had stuck out his hand and said, Hello, I’m the Wrath of God.
Instead people spread themselves through estuaries, sometimes grouping into neighborhoods, sometimes with each family on its own, its maize ground proudly separate. Each community was constantly “joining and splitting like quicksilver in a fluid pattern within its bounds,” .. But the most important fish harvest came in late spring, when the herring-like alewives swarmed the fast, shallow stream that cut through the village.
Tisquantum’s childhood wetu (home) was formed from arched poles lashed together into a dome that was covered in winter by tightly woven rush mats and in summer by thin sheets of chestnut bark... its multiple layers of mats, which trapped insulating layers of air, were “warmer than our English houses,”
Time and time again Europeans described the People of the First Light as strikingly healthy specimens. Eating an incredibly nutritious diet, working hard but not broken by toil, the people of New England were taller and more robust than those who wanted to move in... As a rule, young men wore it long on one side, in an equine mane, but cropped the other side short, which prevented it from getting tangled in their bow strings... Inspired by asymmetrical Indian coiffures, seventeenth-century London blades wore long, loose hanks of hair known as “lovelocks.”
A Jesuit reported that the “savages” were disgusted by handkerchiefs: “They say, we place what is unclean in a fine white piece of linen, and put it away in our pockets as something very precious, while they throw it upon the ground.”
In Europe, the Pilgrims had refused to hire the experienced John Smith as a guide, on the theory that they could use the maps in his book. In consequence, as Smith later crowed, the hapless Mayflower spent several frigid weeks scouting around Cape Cod for a good place to land, during which time many colonists became sick and died... The newcomers—hungry, cold, sick—dug open burial sites and ransacked homes, looking for underground stashes of food.
Tisquantum persuaded him to arrange for passage to North America on a fishing vessel. He ended up in a tiny British fishing camp on the southern edge of Newfoundland. It was on the same continent as Patuxet, but between them were a thousand miles of rocky coastline and the Mi’Kmac and Abenaki alliances, which were at war with one another... Tisquantum began looking for a ride to Patuxet. He extolled the bounty of New England to Thomas Dermer, one of Smith’s subordinates
* Tisquantum's return: Beginning in 1616, the pestilence took at least three years to exhaust itself and killed as much as 90 percent of the people in coastal New England. “And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle,” Morton wrote, that the Massachusetts woodlands seemed to be “a new-found Golgotha,” the Place of the Skull, where executions took place in Roman Jerusalem.
As he had before, Tisquantum talked his way out of a jam. This time he extolled the English, filling Massasoit’s ears with tales of their cities, their great numbers, their powerful technology... When the Powhatan later captured John Smith, Chaplin notes, Smith broke his pistol rather than reveal to his captors “the awful truth that it could not shoot as far as an arrow could fly.”
Faced with the possibility of disrupting their favored position as middlemen, the Narragansett might think twice before staging an incursion. Massasoit, if this interpretation is correct, was trying to incorporate the Pilgrims into the web of native politics. Not long before Massasoit had expelled foreigners who stayed too long in Wampanoag territory. But with the entire confederation now smaller than one of its former communities, the best option seemed to be allowing the Pilgrims to remain. It was a drastic, even fatal, decision.
The Europeans won. Historians attribute part of the victory to Indian unwillingness to match the European tactic of massacring whole villages. Another reason for the newcomers’ triumph was that by that time they outnumbered the natives.
* Peru, Dobyns learned, was one of the world’s cultural wellsprings, a place as important to the human saga as the Fertile Crescent. Yet the area’s significance had been scarcely appreciated outside the Andes, partly because the Spaniards so thoroughly ravaged Inka culture, and partly because the Inka themselves, wanting to puff up their own importance, had actively concealed the glories of the cultures before them.
The Inka practiced a form of central planning, which led scholars into a sterile Cold War squabble about whether they were actually socialists avant la lettre in a communal Utopia or a dire precursor to Stalinist Russia.
* the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo... encompassed every imaginable type of terrain, from the rainforest of upper Amazonia to the deserts of the Peruvian coast and the twenty-thousand-foot peaks of the Andes between... The Inka homeland, uniquely high, was also uniquely steep, with slopes of more than sixty-five degrees from the horizontal. (The steepest street in San Francisco, famed for its nearly undrivable hills, is thirty-one-and-a-half degrees.) And it was uniquely narrow; the distance from the Pacific shore to the mountaintops is in most places less than seventy-five miles and in many less than fifty. Ecologists postulate that the first large-scale human societies tended to arise where, as Jared Diamond of the University of California at Los Angeles put it, geography provided “a wide range of altitudes and topographies within a short distance.”... Combining the fruits of many ecosystems, Andean cultures both enjoyed a better life than they could have wrested from any single place and spread out the risk from the area’s frequent natural catastrophes. Murra invented a name for this mode of existence: “vertical archipelagoes.” <> Verticality helped Andean cultures survive but also pushed them to stay small.
the Inka style was severe, abstract, stripped down to geometric forms—startlingly contemporary, in fact. (According to the Peruvian critic César Paternosto, such major twentieth-century painters as Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko were inspired by Inka art.)
To keep track of the florid abundance of shrines and lines, Cobo observed, the empire “had more than a thousand men in the city of Qosqo who did nothing but remember these things.”
Peasants thus had to work periodically for the empire as farmers, herders, weavers, masons, artisans, miners, or soldiers. Often crews spent months away from home. While they were on the road, the state fed, clothed, and housed them... Dictatorially extending Andean verticality, the imperium shuttled people and materiel in and out of every Andean crevice. <> Not the least surprising feature of this economic system was that it functioned without money... But the Inka did not even have markets. Economists would predict that this nonmarket economy—vertical socialism, it has been called—should produce gross inefficiencies. These surely occurred, but the errors were of surplus, not want.
worshipped and adored” him by “pulling out their eyebrows and eyelashes.” Minions collected and stored every object he touched, food waste included, to ensure that no lesser persons could profane these objects with their touch.
According to Lechtman, Europeans sought to optimize metals’ “hardness, strength, toughness, and sharpness.” The Inka, by contrast, valued “plasticity, malleability, and toughness.” Europeans used metal for tools. Andean societies primarily used it as a token of wealth, power, and community affiliation... Then they pounded the hot metal with mallets, making the corrosion flake off the outside. By repeating this process many times, they removed the copper atoms from the surface of the metal, creating a veneer of almost pure gold. Ultimately the Inka ended up with strong sheets of metal that glittered in the sun.
* Andean cultures did make tools, of course. But rather than making them out of steel, they preferred fiber... Mechanical engineering depends on two main forces: compression and tension... the arch is a classic example of compression. By contrast, tension was the Inka way. “Textiles are held together by tension,” <> In the technosphere of the Andes, Lechtman explained, “people solved basic engineering problems through the manipulation of fibers,” not by creating and joining hard wooden or metal objects. To make boats, Andean cultures wove together reeds.. Famously, the Inka used foot-thick cables to make suspension bridges across mountain gorges... elite garments could have a thread count of five hundred per inch—and structured in elaborate layers. Soldiers wore armor made from sculpted, quilted cloth that was almost as effective at shielding the body as European armor and much lighter.
More critical than steel to Pizarro’s success was the horse. The biggest animal in the Andes during Inka times was the llama, which typically weighs three hundred pounds. Horses, four times as massive, were profoundly, terribly novel... Mounted troops were able to move at rates never encountered in Tawantinsuyu... Llamas prefer the coolness of high altitudes and, unlike horses, readily go up and down steps. As a result, Inka roads eschewed valley bottoms and used long stone stairways to climb up steep hills directly—brutal on horses’ hooves, as the conquistadors often complained.
Their military was hampered by the cult of personality around its deified generals, which meant both that leaders were not easily replaced when they were killed or captured and that innovation in the lower ranks was not encouraged. And the army never learned to bunch its troops into tight formations, as the Greeks did at Marathon, forming human masses that can literally stand up to cavalry. Nonetheless, by the time of the siege of Qosqo the Inka had developed an effective anti-cavalry tactic: bolas... If not technology or the horse, what defeated the Inka? As I said, some of the blame should be heaped on the overly centralized Inka command structure, a problem that has plagued armies throughout time.
Smallpox has an incubation period of about twelve days, during which time sufferers, who may not know they are sick, can infect anyone they meet. With its fine roads and great population movements, Tawantinsuyu was perfectly positioned for a major epidemic. Smallpox radiated throughout the empire like ink spreading through tissue paper.
After smallpox wiped out much of the political elite, each panaqa tried to move into the vacuum, stoking the passions of the civil war. Different mummies at different times backed different claimants to the Inka throne.
* To Dobyns, the moral of this story was clear. The Inka, he wrote in his 1963 article, were not defeated by steel and horses but by disease and factionalism.
In fact, Europeans routinely lost when they could not take advantage of disease and political fragmentation. Conquistadors tried to take Florida half a dozen times between 1510 and 1560—and failed each time... European microorganisms were slow to penetrate the Yucatán Peninsula, where most of the Maya polities were too small to readily play off against each other. In consequence, Spain never fully subdued the Maya.
Dobyns’s population projections were quickly seen by some as politically motivated—self-flagellation by guilty white liberals or, worse, a push to inflate the toll of imperialism from the hate-America crowd.
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De Soto’s company was too small to be an effective biological weapon. Sicknesses like measles and smallpox would have burned through his six hundred men long before they reached the Mississippi. But that would not have been true for his pigs. <> Pigs were as essential to the conquistadors as horses. Spanish armies traveled in a porcine cloud; drawn by the supper trough, the lean, hungry animals circled the troops like darting dogs.
“That’s one reason whites think of Indians as nomadic hunters,” Russell Thornton, an anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, said to me. “Everything else—all the heavily populated urbanized societies—was wiped out.”
In addition to having no acquired immunity (the first kind of vulnerability),... The second type of vulnerability stems from a quirk of history. Archaeologists dispute the timing and manner of Indians’ arrival in the Americas, but almost all researchers believe that the initial number of newcomers must have been small. Their gene pool was correspondingly restricted, which meant that Indian biochemistry was and is unusually homogeneous... overall Indians have fewer HLA types than populations from Europe, Asia, and Africa. European populations have at least thirty-five main HLA classes, whereas Indian groups have no more than seventeen.
some Old World populations were just as vulnerable as Native Americans to those diseases, and likely for the same reason. Indians’ closest genetic relatives are indigenous Siberians... The parallels with the Indian experience are striking. In 1768 the virus struck Siberia’s Pacific coast, apparently for the first time. “No one knows how many have survived,”.. a single epidemic killed more than three of every four indigenous Siberians in that area.
the three researchers suggested, adult Indians were—and possibly still are—more vulnerable to infectious diseases than adult Europeans. Conversely, Europeans would be comparatively more vulnerable to parasites. If further research supports this hypothesis, preventing childhood parasite infections might allow Indian immune systems to orientate themselves toward bacteria and viruses
In retrospect, Fenn told me, “One of George Washington’s most brilliant moves was to inoculate the army against smallpox during the Valley Forge winter of ’78.” Without inoculation, she said, the smallpox epidemic could easily have handed the colonies back to the British.
a fluid collection of hunting bands known today as the Comanche (the name, awarded by an enemy group, means “people who fight us all the time”).
Living in the era of antibiotics, we find it difficult to imagine the simultaneous deaths of siblings, parents, relatives, and friends. As if by a flash of grim light, Indian villages became societies of widows, widowers, and orphans; parents lost their children, and children were suddenly alone.
Dozens died. Among them was the Huron leader Kondiaronk, a famed orator who had, more than any other, convened the gathering as a last-ditch effort to avoid internecine conflict.
Historians increasingly shy away from the term “Aztec,” because the nineteenth-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt coined it in a misapprehension. Humboldt’s “Aztecs” were actually the people of three nations, the members of the Triple Alliance.

And they saw an eagle on the tenochtli, perched on it, standing on it.
It was eating something, it was feeding,
It was pecking at what it was eating.
And when the eagle saw the Mexica, he bowed his head low.
Its nest, its pallet, was of every kind of precious feather

* In addition to taking slaves and booty, wartime victors in central Mexico often burned their enemies’ codices, the hand-painted picture-texts in which priests recorded their people’s histories. Tlacaelel insisted that in addition to destroying the codices of their former oppressors the Mexica should set fire to their own codices. His explanation for this idea can only be described as Orwellian: “It is not fitting that our people / Should know these pictures. / Our people, our subjects, will be lost / And our land destroyed, / For these pictures are full of lies.” The “lies” were the inconvenient fact that the Mexica past was one of poverty and humiliation.
Between 1530 and 1630, according to Cambridge historian V. A. C. Gatrell, England executed seventy-five thousand people. At the time, its population was about three million, perhaps a tenth that of the Mexica empire. Arithmetic suggests that if England had been the size of the Triple Alliance, it would have executed, on average, about 7,500 people per year, roughly twice the number Cortés estimated for the empire.
In Nahuatl rhetoric, things were frequently represented by the unusual device of naming two of their elements—a kind of doubled Homeric epithet. Instead of directly mentioning his body, a poet might refer to “my hand, my foot” (noma nocxi), which the savvy listener would know was a synecdoche... “Flowers and song” was a standard double epithet for poetry, the highest art; ... Through art alone, the Mexica said, can human beings approach the real.
* British ships in the nineteenth century radically transformed native art by giving the Indians brightly colored paints that unlike native pigments didn’t wash off in the rain. Indians incorporated the new pigments into their traditions, expanding them and in the process creating an aesthetic nouvelle vague. European surrealists came across this colorful new art in the first years of the twentieth century. As artists will, they stole everything they could,
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Aleš Hrdlika.. By temperament, he was suspicious of anything that smacked of novelty and modishness. Alas, the list of things that he dismissed as intellectual fads included female scientists, genetic analysis, and the entire discipline of statistics—even such simple statistical measures as standard deviations were notably absent from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
At about the time of Clovis almost every one of these species vanished. So complete was the disaster that most of today’s big American mammals, such as caribou, moose, and brown bear, are immigrants from Asia. The die-off happened amazingly fast, much of it in the few centuries between 11,500 and 10,900 B.C... Before the Pleistocene, the Americas had three species of horse and at least two camels that might have been ridden; other mammals could have been domesticated for meat and milk. Had they survived, the consequences would have been huge.
Students of languages had long puzzled over the extraordinary variety and fragmentation of Indian languages. California alone was the home of as many as 86 tongues, which linguists have classified into between 5 and 15 families (the schemes disagree with one another). No one family was dominant. Across the Americas, Indians spoke some 1,200 separate languages that have been classified into as many as 180 linguistic families... According to Greenberg’s linguistic analysis, paleo-Indians had crossed over Beringia not once, but thrice.
The coastal route has equally little empirical backing, but in their view makes more sense. Most important, the image of a seagoing people fits into a general rethinking of paleo-Indian life... Instead they may have been made from animal skin, a readily available resource; though soft beneath the foot, fragile-looking hide vessels have been known to traverse hundreds of miles of open water. A visitor to the Northwest twenty thousand years ago might have seen such a craft bobbing over the waves like a long, floating balloon, ten or twenty men lining its sides, chasing minke whales with stone-tipped spears.
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Peru has so many ruins from so many cultures that in many small towns archaeological labor is a flourishing blue-collar trade. The others were graduate students from Peru and the United States.
Today we know that technologically sophisticated societies arose in Peru first—the starting date, to archaeologists’ surprise, keeps getting pushed back. Between 3200 and 2500 B.C., large-scale public buildings, the temple at Huaricanga among them, rose up in at least seven settlements on the Peruvian coast—an extraordinary efflorescence for that time and place. When the people of the Norte Chico were building these cities, there was only one other urban complex on earth: Sumer... a parallel intellectual journey: the growth in understanding of the antiquity, diversity, complexity, and technological sophistication of Indian societies.
“I say that nobody in Europe or Asia ever invented anything—they got it from somebody else.” He added, “When you think of the dozen most important things ever invented—the wheel, the alphabet, the stirrup, metallurgy—none of them were invented in Europe. But they all got used there.” <> By contrast, there was very little exchange of people, goods, or ideas between Mesoamerica and the Andes... But there was no road whatsoever across the two thousand miles of jagged mountains and thick rainforest between Mesoamerica and the Andes. In fact, there still isn’t any road. The section of the Pan-American Highway that runs between them remains unfinished
Walled off from wet air by both the Andes and the Humboldt Current, the Peruvian littoral is astonishingly dry: the average annual precipitation is about two inches. The Atacama Desert, just south of Peru on the Chilean shore, is the driest place on earth—in some places rain has literally never been recorded. Space researchers use the Atacama as a model for the sands of Mars... It is punctuated by more than fifty rivers, which channel Andes snowmelt to the sea. The lines of vegetation along their banks are like oases, fertile places where people can farm in an otherwise almost lifeless land.
Sometime before 5000 B.C. they began mummifying bodies—children at first, adults later on. Nobody knows why. They peeled off the skin from the limbs like so many socks, covered the result with white clay, painted it to resemble the deceased, and fitted the head with a wig made from its own hair. Such was the skill of the Chinchorro at preserving human flesh that scientists have been able to extract intact DNA from cadavers thousands of years older than the Egyptian pyramids.
“The complex of sites in the Norte Chico region is nothing short of extraordinary,” .. Indeed, Aspero may have had as many as seventeen artificial mounds, all of which Willey missed the first time round. “It is an excellent, if embarrassing, example,” he remarked, “of not being able to find what you are not looking for.”
* Because the Cordillera Negra bulges especially close to the coast in the Norte Chico, the valleys are short and steeply walled; almost hurled from the heights, the rivers shoot toward the sea at high velocity. Even after diversion, the water gushes through irrigation channels so quickly that it can’t evaporate and build up salts in the soil. To this day, one can only reach many archaeological sites in the Norte Chico by navigating around surging, brimfull irrigation ditches, some of them probably laid out originally by the same farmers who built the mounds. <> he most important product of irrigation was cotton.
When cotton became readily available there in the eighteenth century, it grabbed so much of the textile market that French woolmakers persuaded the government to ban the new fiber. The law failed to stem the cotton tide... some woolmakers then thought outside the box: they proposed sending prostitutes in cotton clothing to wander Paris streets, where police would publicly strip them naked. In theory, bourgeois women would then avoid cotton for fear of being mistaken for prostitutes and forcibly disrobed.
the MFAC hypothesis: the maritime foundations of Andean civilization. He proposed that there was little subsistence agriculture around Aspero because it was a center of fishing, and that the later, highland Peruvian cultures, including the mighty Inka, all had their origins not in the mountains but in the great fishery of the Humboldt Current... To Moseley, the fish bones suggested that the ample protein on the coast allowed people to go inland and build irrigation networks to produce the cotton needed to expand fishing production. The need for nets, in Haas’s view, gave the inland cities the whip hand—Norte Chico was based on farming, like all other complex societies, although not on farming for food.
visitors to Andean history note certain ways of doing things that recur in ways striking to the outsider, sometimes in one variant, sometimes in another, like the themes in a jazz improvisation. The primacy of exchange over a wide area, the penchant for collective, festive civic work projects, the high valuation of textiles and textile technology—Norte Chico, it seems possible to say, set the template for all of them.
Then stone-grind the kernels into masa, a light, slightly sticky paste with a distinct maize fragrance. Made without salt, spices, leavening, or preservatives, masa must be cooked within a few hours of being ground, and the tortilla should be eaten soon after it is cooked. Hot is best, perhaps folded over with mushrooms or cheese in a tlacoyo. Like a glass of wine, he said, a tortilla should carry the flavor of its native place.
The grain in wild grasses develops near the top of the stem. As it matures, the stem slowly breaks up—shatters, in the jargon—letting the seed dribble to the ground. In wild wheat and barley, a common single-gene mutation blocks shattering. For the plant the change is highly disadvantageous, but it facilitates harvest by humans—the grain waits on the stem to be collected. The discovery and planting of nonshattering grain is thought to have precipitated the Neolithic revolution in the Middle East. Like other grasses, teosinte shatters, but there is no known nonshattering variant. (At least sixteen genes control teosinte and maize shattering,.. By then the dispute over the origin of maize had filled almost as much paper—and became as acrimonious—as the battle over Clovis.
Maize is one of the few farm species that is more diverse than most wild plants... Uncontrolled, open pollination would, over time, turn the species into a single, relatively homogeneous entity. But it does not, because farmers carefully sort through the seed they will sow in the next season and generally do not choose obvious hybrids.
* In nature, wild beans and squash often grow in the same field as teosinte, the beans using the tall teosinte as a ladder to climb toward the sun; below ground, the beans’ nitrogen-fixing roots provide nutrients needed by teosinte. The milpa is an elaboration of this natural situation, unlike ordinary farms, which involve single-crop expanses of a sort rarely observed in unplowed landscapes. <> Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.”.. The milpa, by contrast, has a long record of success. “There are places in Mesoamerica that have been continuously cultivated for four thousand years and are still productive,”
* the Olmec clearly understood the profound changes wreaked by maize—indeed, they fêted them in their art. Like the stained-glass windows in European cathedrals, the massive Olmec sculptures and bas-reliefs were meant both to dazzle and instruct. A major lesson is the central place of maize, usually represented by a vertical ear with two leaves falling to the side, a talismanic symbol reminiscent of a fleur-de-lys. In sculpture after sculpture, ears of maize spring like thoughts from the skulls of supernatural beings.
“The probability is that the population of Africa was greatly increased because of maize and other American Indian crops,” Alfred Crosby told me. “Those extra people helped make the slave trade possible.” (“Other American Indian crops” included peanuts and manioc, both now African staples.)
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Olmec: Among these repeated subjects is a crouched, blobby figure with a monstrously swollen head. Puzzled researchers long described these sculptures as “dwarves” or “dancers.” In 1997 an archaeologist and a medical doctor with archaeological leanings identified them as human fetuses. Their features were portrayed accurately enough to identify their stage of development. Researchers had not recognized them because artistic renditions of fetuses are almost unheard of in European cultures
* In Mesoamerican cultures, the date of one’s birth was such an important augury of the future that people often acquired that day as their name... Between his feet are two glyphs, one resembling a stovepipe hat with a U painted across the front, the other looking vaguely like a smiling pet monster from a Japanese cartoon. According to Marcus, the Michigan anthropologist, the glyphs correspond to 1-Earthquake, the Zapotec name for the seventeenth day of the 260-day sacred calendar... No fewer than four of the codices treat the story of 8-Deer Jaguar Claw, a wily priest-general-politician with a tragic love for the wife of his greatest enemy.
boats were a primary means of transportation until recently. In addition one might note that Mesoamerican societies were not alone in their wheel-blindness. Although Mesopotamia had the wheel in about 4000 B.C., nearby Egypt did not use the wheel until two thousand years later,
* the Chinese invented the moldboard plow by the third century B.C. Made of cast iron, the plowshare was shaped like a V, with the blade carving into the ground and the two arms arcing away like gull wings. Because the arms were curved, they turned the earth away from the blade, which both reduced friction and more effectively plowed the soil... The design of the moldboard plow is so obvious that it seems incredible that Europeans never thought of it. Until the Chinese-style plow was imported in the seventeenth century,... European agricultural production exploded after the arrival of the moldboard plow. The prosperity this engendered was one of the cushions on which the Enlightenment floated.
Chile finally returned most of Peru’s territory in 1929 but never gave back any land to Bolivia—an outcome that nation has never accepted. To this day, Bolivia’s parliament has a representative from the lost maritime province. The Miss Bolivia contest always includes a contestant ostensibly from the coast. Maps are sold in which the conquered land is still part of Bolivia.
* only a thicket of walls and narrow streets strewn with garbage (archaeologists have turned up so few clean floors and surfaces, Isbell and Vranich wrote, “that it is apparent that Wari people experienced domestic refuse as benign and unthreatening”).
The celebrated anthropologist Clifford Geertz has half-jokingly suggested that all states can be parceled into four types: pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having moral legitimacy; populist, in which government is viewed as an expression of the people’s will; “great beast,” in which the rulers’ power depends on using force to keep the populace cowed; and “great fraud,” in which the elite uses smoke and mirrors to convince the people of its inherent authority. Every state is a mix of all of these elements, but in Tiwanaku, the proportion of “great fraud” may have been especially high. Nonetheless, Tiwanaku endured for many centuries.
* Tiwanaku transformed itself to become what Alan Kolata, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, has called a “predatory state.” It was not the centrally administered military power that term conjures. Instead, it was an archipelago of cities that acknowledged Tiwanaku’s religious preeminence. “State religion and imperial ideology,” Kolata argued, “performed much the same work as military conquest, but at significantly lower cost.” Awed by its magnificence, fearful of the supernatural powers controlled by its priesthood
Central to this strategy of intimidation was Tiwanaku city. A past wonder of the world,... Rising from the center of a large moat, Akapana mimicked the surrounding mountains. A precisely engineered drainage system added to the similarity by channeling water from a cistern-like well at the summit down and along the sides, a stylized version of rainwater plashing down the Andes.
* From the very beginning, the two men wrote in 2004, the city was partly in ruins—intentionally so, because the fallen walls bequeathed on Tiwanaku the authority of the past. Meanwhile, other parts of the city were constantly enveloped in construction projects, which testified to the continued wealth and vitality of the state. Sometimes these projects acquired construction materials by cannibalizing old monuments, thereby hastening the process of creating ruins... Completion was not the object. The goal was a constant buzz of purposeful activity.
Tiwanaku was utterly different. Andean societies were based on the widespread exchange of goods and services, but kin and government, not market forces, directed the flow. The citizenry grew its own food and made its own clothes, or obtained them through their lineages, or picked them up in government warehouses. And the city, as Kolata put it, was a place for “symbolically concentrating the political and religious authority of the elite.”
The social-science word for such intermingling without intermixing is “interdigitization.” For two centuries at Cerro Baúl, Wari and Tiwanaku were like people in parallel worlds, sharing the same time and space but implacably separate from each other.
Chimor capital: Chan Chan suffered a palace surfeit because dead rulers were regarded as divine figures. As with the Inka, the kings’ mummified bodies continued to live opulently in their own homes and could not be displaced; indeed, the mummies were necessary presences at important state occasions. As a result, each new ruler had to build his own palace and acquire the riches necessary to maintain it till the end of time. The system almost guaranteed imperial ambitions and exuberant construction plans.
the Nazca did not have to see the figures to experience them, for they can be understood by walking the lines, which it is believed the Indians did. The prevailing theory today is that the straight lines mapped out the area’s many underground faults, which channel water. But nobody knows why the Nazca made the animal and plant figures, which seem less likely to have a direct function.
the Moche: (Unwilling to laboriously dig their way through the palace’s tombs, the Spaniards diverted the Moche River through it, washing out the riches in orthodox Augean-stable style; contemporary thieves have contented themselves with picks and shovels.)
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So strongly endorsed is this view of Native Americans that checklists exist to judge whether books correctly depict their environmental values... Indians as poster children for eco-catastrophe, Indians as green role models: the two images contradict each other less than they seem. Both are variants of Holmberg’s Mistake, the idea that Indians were suspended in time, touching nothing and untouched themselves, like ghostly presences on the landscape.
rom the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Hudson’s Bay to the Río Grande, the Haudenosaunee and almost every other Indian group shaped their environment, at least in part, by fire. <> Early in the last century, ecologists discovered the phenomenon of “succession,” the more or less well-defined sequence by which ecosystems fill in open land... If ecological succession were unstoppable, the continents would be covered by climax-stage vegetation: a world of great trees, dark and silent.
Rather than domesticate animals for meat, Indians retooled ecosystems to encourage elk, deer, and bear. Constant burning of undergrowth increased the numbers of herbivores, the predators that fed on them, and the people who ate them both.
* People accustomed to keeping domesticated animals lacked the conceptual tools to recognize that the Indians were practicing a more distant kind of husbandry of their own. <> Indian fire had its greatest impact in the middle of the continent, which Native Americans transformed into a prodigious game farm. Native Americans burned the Great Plains and Midwest prairies so much and so often that they increased their extent; ... Europeans forgot what the landscape had looked like before and why.
Carrying their flints and torches, Native Americans were living in balance with Nature—but they had their thumbs on the scale. Shaped for their comfort and convenience, the American landscape had come to fit their lives like comfortable clothing. It was a highly successful and stable system
To we moderns the sensation of being in a constructed environment is so ubiquitous as to be invisible—in the cocoon of our strip malls and automobiles, we are like the fish that cannot feel the water through which they swim. In Cahokia’s day it was different. A thousand years ago it was the only place for a thousand miles in which one could be completely enveloped in an artificial landscape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
But the mound builders in Louisiana built these massive constructions at a time when agriculture was barely under way—it was like the whiff in the air from a faraway ocean. In the central river valleys of North America, people had a way of life without known analogue.
To envelop a corpse from head to feet in pearls, to weigh it down in many pounds of copper, to surround it with masterpieces of sculpture and pottery, and then to bury everything under tons of earth—this betokens a kind of cultural energy that numbs and awes those who follow after. <> Vibrant and elaborate, perhaps a little vulgar in its passion for display, Hopewell religion spread through most of the eastern United States in the first four centuries A.D.
To minimize instability, he told me, the Cahokians kept the slab at a constant moisture level: wet but not too wet. Moistening the clay was easy—capillary action will draw up water from the floodplain, which has a high water table. The trick is to stop evaporation from drying out the top. In an impressive display of engineering savvy, the Cahokians encapsulated the slab, sealing it off from the air by wrapping it in thin, alternating layers of sand and clay. The sand acts as a shield for the slab. Water rises through the clay to meet it, but cannot proceed further because the sand is too loose for further capillary action. Nor can the water evaporate; the clay layers atop the sand press down and prevent air from coming in. In addition, the sand lets rainfall drain away from the mound, preventing it from swelling too much.
Chestnut was especially popular... Hickory was another favorite.... Within a few centuries, the Indians of the eastern forest reconfigured much of their landscape from a patchwork game park to a mix of farmland and orchards. Enough forest was left to allow for hunting, but agriculture was an increasing presence. The result was a new “balance of nature.” <> From today’s perspective, the success of the transition is striking. It was so sweeping and ubiquitous that early European visitors marveled at the number of nut and fruit trees and the big clearings with only a dim apprehension that the two might be due to the same human source.
The region does have permanently water-filled swamps, sinkholes, and lakes, but often these are too salty to drink or use for irrigation. So toxic is the groundwater, a U.S.-Mexican research team remarked in 2002, that the Maya realm was “geochemically hostile” to urban colonization... To make the water potable, the Maya laid a layer of crushed limestone atop the sediments, effectively paving over the salt. As the researchers noted, the work had to be done before the Maya could move in and set up their milpas and gardens... The Maya heartland, in other words, was a network of artificially habitable terrestrial islands.
The contrast between north and south is striking—and instructive. The obvious difference between them was the century and a half of large-scale warfare in the south. Both portions of the Maya realm depended on artificial landscapes that required constant attention. But only in the south did the Maya elite, entranced by visions of its own glory, take its hands off the switch. Drought indeed stressed the system, but the societal disintegration in the south was due not to surpassing inherent ecological limits but the political failure to find solutions.
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the tropical forest. And in growing numbers researchers came to believe that the Amazon basin, too, bears the fingerprints of its original inhabitants.
No matter what its original condition, the intense rain and heat of the forest have eroded its surface, washed out all its minerals, and decomposed vital organic compounds. As a result, much of the red Amazonian soil is weathered, harshly acid, and almost bereft of essential nutrients—one reason ecologists refer to the tropical forest as a “wet desert.” <> Correspondingly, most nutrients in tropical forests are stored not in the soil, as in temperate regions, but in the vegetation that covers it... Thus the tropical forest, despite its fabulous vitality, exists on a knife edge. <> These views were picked up and amplified in Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise, by Betty J. Meggers, the Smithsonian archaeologist.
Slash-and-burn, Meggers told me, is “a superb response to ecological limits.” Farmers grab a few harvests, but the soil is not bared to rain and sun long enough to incur permanent damage... In other words, any Indians who tried to go beyond slash-and-burn to permanent cultivation would be knocked back to slash-and-burn by a mega-Niño... Swidden, Meggers admitted, has a major drawback: it cannot yield enough to support a complex society... The impossibility of passing beyond slash-and-burn, Meggers said, was a consequence of a more general “law of environmental limitation of culture.” And she stated the law, italicizing its importance: “The level to which a culture can develop is dependent upon the agricultural potentiality of the environment it occupies.”
* To be sure, advocates of environmental limitations today do not endorse the racist views of the past, but they still regard the original inhabitants of the Amazon as trapped in their environment like flies in amber. Meggers’s “law of environmental limitation of culture,” her critics in essence say, is nothing but a green variant of Holmberg’s Mistake. <> Over time, the Meggers-Roosevelt dispute grew bitter and personal;
Rather than being the timeless indigenous adaptation portrayed in ecology textbooks, many archaeologists now view slash-and-burn agriculture as a relatively modern technique whose spread was driven by European technology. The main reason is the stone ax... when a source appeared the Yanomami would relocate whole villages to be near it. Steel tools, he told me, “had a major, transformative effect on all the trade and marriage relations in a whole area... “Steel to the Yanomamo was like gold for the Spanish,”
Slash-and-burn was a product of European axes—and European diseases, which so shrank Indian groups that they adopted this less laborious but also less productive method of agriculture.
* Speaking broadly, their solution was not to clear the forest but to replace it with one adapted to human use. They set up shop on the bluffs that mark the edge of high water—close enough to the river to fish, far enough to avoid the flood. And then, rather than centering their agriculture on annual crops, they focused on the Amazon’s wildly diverse assortment of trees... constantly pick fruit from trees,” Clement said. “That’s because people planted them. They’re walking through old orchards.” peach palms... a widely cited article published in 1989, that at least 11.8 percent, about an eighth, of the nonflooded Amazon forest was “anthropogenic”—directly or indirectly created by humans.
* But in the 1990s researchers began studying these unusual regions of terra preta do Índio—rich, fertile “Indian dark earth” that anthropologists believe was made by human beings... Woods has guessed that terra preta might represent as much as 10 percent of the Amazon basin, an area the size of France.
As a rule, terra preta has more “plant-available” phosphorus, calcium, sulfur, and nitrogen than is common in the rain forest; it also has much more organic matter, better retains moisture and nutrients, and is not rapidly exhausted by agricultural use when managed well. The key to terra preta’s long-term fertility, Glaser says, is charcoal: terra preta contains up to sixty-four times more of it than surrounding red earth. Organic matter “sticks” to charcoal, rather than being washed away or attaching to other, nonavailable compounds. “Over time, it partly oxidizes, which keeps providing sites for nutrients to bind to.”
Instead of completely burning organic matter to ash, ancient farmers burned it incompletely to make charcoal, then stirred the charcoal into the soil. In addition to its benefits to the soil, slash-and-char releases much less carbon into the air than slash-and-burn,.. “Nobody in Europe or Asia that I know of ever understood the properties of charcoal in soil.”... “low-biomass” fires “cool enough to walk through” of pulled-up weeds, cooking waste, crop debris, palm fronds, and termite mounds. Burning, she wrote, is constant:
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In the 1930s the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps planted millions of kuzu seedlings to fight soil loss, a major fear in the era of the Dust Bowl. Renamed “kudzu,” the vine prevented so much erosion that villages across the U.S. Southeast celebrated kudzu festivals and crowned kudzu queens.
When passenger pigeons drank, they stuck their heads beneath the surface of the water until they were eye deep.. Passenger pigeons were greedy eaters with terrible manners; if they found some food they liked just after finishing a meal, they would vomit what they had previously eaten and dig in. Gobbling their chow, they sometimes twittered in tones musical enough that people mistook them for little girls... According to Arlie W. Schorger, author of a definitive study on the bird, in Audubon’s day at least one out of every four birds in North America was a passenger pigeon.
* To Neumann, the conclusion was obvious: passenger pigeons were not as numerous before Columbus. “What happened was that the impact of European contact altered the ecological dynamics in such a way that the passenger pigeon took off.” The avian throngs Audubon saw were “outbreak populations—always a symptom of an extraordinarily disrupted ecological system.”
Bison: a caveat. The Americas seen by the first colonists were teeming with game, they say. But the continents had not been that way for long. Indeed, this Edenic world was largely an inadvertent European creation... When disease swept Indians from the land, this entire ecological ancien régime collapsed... The product of demographic calamity, the newly created wilderness was indeed beautiful. But it was built on Indian graves and every bit as much a ruin as the temples of the Maya.
Beneath the entangling personal motives, the debate is one of the oldest in the Western philosophical tradition, between nomos and physis. The ancient Greeks saw existence as a contest between nomos (rationality/order/artifice) and physis (irrationality/chaos/nature). In environmental terms, Thoreau, who saw the landscape as imbued with an essential wildness that could be heedlessly destroyed, embodies physis.
In 1983 Cronon laid out the history of the New England countryside in his landmark book, Changes in the Land. In it he observed that wilderness as it was commonly understood simply did not exist in the eastern United States, and had not existed for thousands of years... It precipitated one of the only books attacking postmodern philosophy ever written largely by biologists.
Striking to the contemporary eye, the 117 codicils of the Great Law were concerned as much with establishing the limits on the great council’s powers as on granting them. Its jurisdiction was strictly limited to relations among the nations and outside groups; internal affairs were the province of the individual nations. Although the council negotiated peace treaties, it could not declare war—that was left to the initiative of the leaders of each of Haudenosaunee’s constituent nations.
But both traditional lore and contemporary astronomical calculations suggest that Haudenosaunee dates back to between 1090 and 1150 A.D.
nobody disputes that the Haudenosaunee exemplified the formidable tradition of limited government and personal autonomy shared by many cultures north of the Río Grande. To some extent, this freedom simply reflected North American Indians’ relatively recent adoption of agriculture. Early farming villages worldwide were much less authoritarian places than later societies. But the Indians of the eastern seaboard institutionalized their liberty to an unusual extent
In the most direct way, Indian liberty made indigenous villages into competitors for colonists’ allegiance. Colonial societies could not become too oppressive, because their members—surrounded by examples of free life—always had the option to vote with their feet.
According to an influential essay Axtell published in 1981, the most important role Indians played in the evolution of the United States was as “military foes and cultural foes”—to be the “otherness” that colonists reacted against. “The whole colonial experience of trying to solve a related series of ‘Indian problems’ had much to do with giving the colonists an identity indissolubly linked to America,” he wrote.
* Instead of creating Winthrop’s vision of an ordered society, the Pilgrims actually invented the raucous, ultra-democratic New England town meeting—a system of governance, the Dartmouth historian Colin Calloway observes, that “displays more attributes of Algonkian government by consensus than of Puritan government by the divinely ordained.”

Lynda Cohen Loigman's breezy light fantasy about a pair of long-separated lovers is a relief after a string of gloomy reads.

• Since Augusta’s mother’s death, everything in the apartment drooped with grief. <> Augusta knew that her father was still stuck in the quicksand of his sorrow. At the store, he managed to keep up with his duties. But at home, he had a more difficult time. There was a barrier between him and his daughters now, as if he were standing behind a screen—one sheer enough so that they could see him, but opaque enough to blur all his edges.
• She was indulged not only because of her age, but because of her wide-ranging wisdom and talents. Esther could pluck a chicken faster than anyone in the neighborhood. She could get black ink stains out of white shirt cuffs and bloodstains out of almost anything. She could remove a cinder from a customer’s eye with less pain and fuss than her nephew, who had been providing the service in his store for the better part of fifteen years.
• A beam of moonlight shone in from the window, illuminating Esther’s long silver hair. Augusta rarely saw Esther without her headscarf, and the vision was almost otherworldly. Wrapped over her plain white nightdress was a robe Augusta did not recognize. It was long and silky, a deep sapphire blue, unlike anything she’d seen her aunt wear before. There was a haunting and powerful beauty about the woman that Augusta had previously failed to notice... A multitude of scents swirled around them—ginger and garlic, rosemary and yarrow, cinnamon and horehound, lemon and hyssop. There were other scents, too, for things she could not think to name. Augusta shut her eyes, and when she opened them, the scents in the room shifted yet again, smelling now of solace, of something wholesome and strong. A vision of Irving—healthy once more—filled her mind, as if Esther had conjured it out of the moonlight. <> Esther emptied the contents of the mortar onto a waiting square of plain white muslin. The powder on the fabric sparkled like sunshine reflecting off a pile of freshly fallen snow. It shimmered like the wings of a firefly on a hot summer night. As Esther tied the pouch shut with a piece of string, Augusta swore she could see the light melt away.
• This time—for Augusta’s benefit—she whispered the names of her ingredients: pomegranate seeds, black cohosh, stinging nettle, raspberry leaves, viburnum. The spicy aroma of licorice root hit the back of Augusta’s nostrils. <> The moon showed itself as if Esther had summoned it, peering in through the window like a dutiful friend, illuminating the mortar until the brass seemed to glow. As she ground the ingredients, she hummed her strange song. An entreaty. A wish. An incantation. A prayer. The pestle blazed bright from between her long fingers, until the room smelled of potency, abundance, and hope.
• Zip’s laugh was warm and cold at the same time. “Well, Irving, I’m real appreciative of what you did for my Sammy, and I’m happy you came to see me today. If you ever need anything, you let me know.
• Even from behind, with her hair in a swim cap, he had been certain it was her. And when she turned around, it had taken all his self-control not to blurt out that he’d thought about her almost every day for the past sixty-two years... Goldie looked exactly like herself, with every expression he remembered intact. When she pulled away from him, he wasn’t insulted. It was exactly the reaction he knew she would have—annoyed, stunned, exasperated. By eighty, most people had lost their mettle. But Goldie still had plenty to spare. It was like the line from that Shakespeare play he’d read in his continuing education class at Florida Atlantic University last year: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
• The care with which she did so made Irving’s heart ache. It seemed to him that Goldie had sprinted to Birnbaum even more quickly than she’d run to him when he’d collapsed on the tennis court. Had he read that incident incorrectly? Was Goldie simply the kind of woman who ran toward others in a crisis?
• “Mama used to say that the three strands of the challah are meant for truth, peace, and justice.” <> “A lovely explanation,” said Esther. “But why not past, present, and future? Braiding is associated with strength, is it not? Why not beauty, honor, and strength? And what of a loaf with more than three strands? Six strands may be the six days of the week, leading up to the day of rest. Eight strands may mean new beginnings, as in the way we circumcise a child on the eighth day after birth. My mother used to make a twelve-stranded loaf, to represent the twelve tribes of Israel.”... I could offer many more interpretations, but the point is, there isn’t one explanation. Things are never as straightforward as we want them to be, Goldie. Why must I choose a single solution when the truth lies somewhere in between them all?”
• How could her father ask her to choose between the enigmatic splendor of Esther’s work and the solid satisfaction of his own? Between the thrill of a patch of kitchen moonlight and the security of the prescription room? Why couldn’t he see that they were equally powerful? Why couldn’t he appreciate the beauty in both?
• Only when they were in the pool did the barrier between them fade and the awkwardness subside. In the water, Augusta’s mind played tricks on her. Place was irrelevant, time turned backward. In the water, she was back at Coney Island, laughing and swimming with her sister. She could hear her mother during their lessons. Don’t forget to stop and breathe. When Augusta was swimming and her body was occupied, her mind expanded in unforeseeable ways. She was meeting Irving for the first time. She was in the kitchen with Aunt Esther. <> In the water, Augusta could remember the subtle magic of her youth.
• Augusta guessed she was in her late forties—older than Augusta’s mother would have been, and yet not so very far off. Her beauty was like the ocean in winter—cold and splendid in its austerity.
• “Because there is still good that we can do. Because sometimes our remedies can cure. Because we can bear witness to a woman who suffers when her doctors refuse to see her pain. Because even when we cannot heal, a bowl of chicken soup can offer comfort.”
• When Prohibition started, the government took all the alcohol off the market. Pharmacists can sell it for medicinal purposes, but only when a customer has a prescription.” <> Augusta had seen the special forms. Customers were allowed one pint every ten days, as long as they brought in a new prescription each time... pharmacies can still get quality whiskey—bottled-in-bond at 100 proof, aged, and stamped by the U.S. government. Which means that everyone wants what we’re selling.”... They set up fake pharmacies so their bookkeepers could make everything look good on paper. They paid off the distributors and the warehouse operators and got their hands on the alcohol withdrawal permits to make sure everything ran smoothly. But the government started cracking down on the permits. So now the racketeers have been forcing pharmacy owners to go into business with them.”
• Her reflection was a kaleidoscope of buried memories. The sapphire fabric was the evening sky outside her half-open Brooklyn window, it was Esther’s silk robe in the kitchen at midnight, and the bottles of Higgins inks on her father’s store shelves. The trim at the edges of her skirt and sleeves was the silver in Esther’s graying hair, the giant stockpot on the kitchen stove, and the band of her sister’s wedding ring. In the mirror, Augusta’s pewter eyes were the same as her mother’s before she got sick: filled with uncomplicated delight. <> Past and present, joy and sorrow mingled together in the shining glass. Augusta wasn’t merely her eighty-year-old self—she was fourteen and sixteen, two and twelve.
• “You kept it? After all this time?” It was almost too much for her to take in, the way the echoes of her past were increasingly finding their way into her present. The air in the library felt thick with wonder;
• I’m perfectly fine. Although getting the Jell-O out of my ears was a lot harder than you might think.”
• The truth was, no one worked for Zip anymore—not since his wife Mitzi had taken over. Zip Diamond’s health was going downhill fast, and in the wake of his steady decline, now his wife was giving the orders. <> Of course, no one was allowed to know. The number one rule of working for Mitzi was that Zip’s illness was never to be revealed to anyone. That was why Mitzi hired Irving. He had no stake in the organization; he didn’t know anyone in her business. Irving Rivkin was a complete outsider, and because he had no interest in rising up through the ranks, Mitzi knew he would never squeal about Zip to any of his competitors.
• For a moment, Augusta could remember what it felt like to believe—not in the magic of witches or fairies, but in the magic of women who knew how to heal; the magic of women in the quiet of their kitchens, who could sweeten a bitter woman’s heart or soothe a man’s temper with a cup of tea. The ones who knew how to bring down a fever, assuage a toothache, or quiet a child with nothing more than a spoonful of honey, a gentle hand, and a few whispered words.
• In all the years since Evie has been gone, I have never once looked at another woman, but now, with you—”
  “NO!” Irving shouted, pounding his fist on the table with such force that the olive at the bottom of Augusta’s martini glass quivered. “Are you kidding me with this crap, Nathaniel? After we had that whole talk? You’re going to do this to me AGAIN?”
  Nathaniel sank back into his chair, looking utterly confused. “What did I say? What did I do?”
  “The same thing you did sixty-two years ago when I told you I was going to ask Augusta to marry me!”
• He bit his lip until he tasted blood. “And what if … what if I say no?”
  Mitzi Diamond’s laugh was as lifeless as Freddie Schechter’s open eyes.
• There were so many women who wanted her help, so many women who felt overlooked by their doctors. They see an old woman with gray hair, said Brenda, and they assume we’re all exaggerating. Meanwhile, when my husband goes for his appointment, they treat his cold like it’s the bubonic plague!

相荷明玉这本short and sweet，一点都不阴间。

>> 严绣跨到他身后，踩着马镫道：“一会过关卡，你机灵些，看见阴兵就躲进斗篷里。”
孔梦科应了，严绣仍不放心，说道：“若被发现我带人出去，你就走不了了。”孔梦科心道：“走不了正好。”严绣又说：“我还要被罚俸，给拖去打军棍。你就算想死，也不愿看阿绣哥给人拖去打罢。”
孔梦科仿佛被他看穿，缩缩脖子，答应道：“我一定不给人看见。”

这好几年来，孔梦科从没一天这么自在过。黄泉上凉风荡荡吹着，波涛之中映出月影，点点散白，黑水银沙。走到河心，孔梦科笑叹道：“阿绣哥，我们算不算‘黄泉共为友’了？”
严绣不解道：“这又是什么意思，在黄泉当朋友吗？”孔梦科转念想道：“‘黄泉共为友’，上一句说的什么？‘结发共枕席’，哎呀！”于是胡乱地搪塞过去。

孔梦科破涕为笑，道：“那你再陪我聊会天罢。我们许久没有见面了。”严绣望向窗外，也笑道：“可我卯时就得回去，怎么办呢？”
他说这话，两个人都是一愣。以前孔梦科在县学里读书，还有许多课业须得挑灯念的。严绣深夜来看他，临走的时候，孔梦科送他到围墙，他就说：“我要回去了，怎么办呢？”倘若孔梦科胆敢亲他一口，两个人便留在墙根下说一会话；倘若孔梦科急着回去念书，他便翻越院墙，果真回衙里点卯。

“醉春意”的厨子果真了得。雪菜面不许加猪油，所以是拿浓骨汤煮了面，过一遍凉水，放进清鸡汤里。顶上摆了笋条与鸡蛋松，一口能鲜掉眉毛。他们两人把面、菜分食干净，一结钱，饶是孔梦科没点贵菜，最后也花去一两银子。

严绣摇摇头说：“什么叫做清不清的，花儿开得好，难道不就是好看？开败了，就是顺应节气，一样东西不能永久好看的。”
孔梦科微微一笑，道：“阿绣哥说得也对，但这是不同的道理了。”
严绣听得糊涂，但孔梦科似乎夸他，他就很高兴。两人找渔家借了一叶小船，孔梦科坐在船尾，严绣站在船头，竹竿一撑，那船云行而出，滑进湖心。不时天暮了，波光熄灭，浮云与江雾蚌壳似的一合，雨丝如帐，将他们两个罩在里面。浩浩不知其终的湖水、荡荡不知所往的苍穹，全都掩没在雨雾之中。这一叶小舟成为九州的中心。

饶是孔梦科不懂相马，也看得出来飞霰是匹举世无双的好马。皮毛、鬃尾油光水滑，在月下丝光宛然；肌腱亦饱满浑圆，一骑上去，血脉搏动几乎透皮而出，比活物还像活物。孔梦科摸着马毛，爱不释手，道：“徐无鬼说：‘天下马有成材，若恤若失，若丧其一。’天下马且如此，你岂不是‘三千大千世界马’了？”
飞霰听了好话，四蹄奋起，流光电掣，背上却毫不颠簸。孔梦科抱着马颈，喜道：“你连这个都听得懂，比阿绣哥强上不少。”

孔梦科心说：“活的时候你因这个挨打，怎么死了还要因这个挨打。”他咬牙不响，严绣以为他不高兴了，道：“要打到魂飞魄散，以后再见不着了。现在若不见，以后总还能见面。”
孔梦科不由得埋怨道：“谁要见你。你想得真美！你不想别人传我们闲话，你想我考举人。可你想过没有？等我当了举人老爷，谁还管你哪！”
严绣知道他赌气，笑道：“好你个忘恩负义的举人老爷。我若有一天当了阴兵都头，可也记得你的。”孔梦科恼道：“记便记着！过上四五十年，我反正是忘了你！”

孔梦科最喜欢看他的笑模样。严绣一笑起来，凤眼斜飞，《曹全碑》蚕头燕尾，似醒非醒，如梦方梦，狡黠且神气。鬼火冷光晃来晃去，连带着教孔梦科也心旌摇曳，拿余光悄悄地瞟他。严绣转过头，问：“怎么了？”孔梦科心如莲子，一半清甜，一半清苦，说道：“阿绣哥，你来阳间，除去捉鬼，都还要做些什么？”

两个人你不睬我、我不睬你地坐了一刻钟，孔梦科无话找话，求和道：“阿绣哥，他们为何叫你严老虎？”严绣却同时贴过来，轻声说：“小秀才，你将左手抬起来。”孔梦科不明就里，举起左手。严绣拉着他广袖，作一张帷幕，把两人头脸遮了，说道：“不要教他们看见。”亲了一口，严绣又低低说：“天未看见、地未看见，今夜过后，你我也将此事忘了。”孔梦科双颊烧红，一点苦泪落下，立时教两人啃来啃去地吃进嘴里。

孔梦科道：“画什么？画像么？我半路出家，单学了画这种东西。要是画人，恐怕把你画成个猴儿了。”严绣静静倚坐在案上，笑看着他。那一刻孔梦科想：“若真能画下来，那就好啦！”等他的眉目笑靥已深深印进孔梦科心里，严绣才说：“你慢慢地学。”

孔梦科抹了眼泪，强颜道：“那你去做什么？”严绣道：“我做阴兵教头去。”两人相顾而笑，四目相接，孔梦科的眼泪又将掉下来。严绣把他带到墙上，说道：“别将画沾湿了。”嘴唇便要贴在一起。突然严绣浑身一震，将他推开。孔梦科登时担惊受怕，分别的日夜在脑海中过了一轮，心一横，两手将他脖颈环住道：“你休想再找借口。”严绣只得由他亲了。两唇分开，严绣才抬头叱道：“你怎么跟来了！”
孔梦科吓了一跳，想：“屋里怎还有别人？”顺着看去，只见房梁上趴着一个红面白牙的小鬼。孔梦科惊得连连叹气，喘了一会，羞意泛上来，使得全脸都红了，和那小鬼倒是相映成趣。那小鬼翻着白眼，在梁上咯咯磨牙，不知把他们情话听去多少。

严绣道：“你看好了。”将腰牌翻过一面，从怀中掏出一个弹弓，捏了一个软烂的泥丸。孔梦科趴在窗户底下，看见巡抚靠在美人榻，雪菱白玉一样的颈背，起起落落。严绣不满道：“你看我呀。”孔梦科转头看他，拉开弹弓，泥丸激射而出，越过雪菱香肩，正中巡抚的眉心！

阎王爷道：“他乃是活人，并非地府可管。”孔梦科道：“作了再多恶事，也由他逍遥吗？”阎王爷道：“等他寿元尽了，再来分说。”
孔梦科气得发抖，踏出一步，指着堂上道：“学生孔梦科，自幼读尽圣贤书，一生只跪天地君亲师。今天有幸见识，觉得你这地黑白不分，不配为地。烦你给我跪回来罢。”严绣喝道：“不要乱说话！”孔梦科道：“作了天地，还想不受讽谏，哪有这么好的事情。大不了将我也下进地狱里。”

=====================================

看到108章最后一仗之前，没什么耐心了。不知道素长天玩过多少游戏，前面各种魔法设定还是很好玩的，感情线就是直达车。

>>  茉莉的表qíng如同看见一只深渊恶魔在跳xing感热舞。
　　“但是老师，这他妈的，是个该死的实验室！国立魔法研究院公款批下来的、您只拥有使用权、属于国有财产的、该千杀的实验室！！！”茉莉仰头看着我，像个真正的小魔鬼一样表qíng狰狞。
　　嘶……这么一提醒我也皱起了眉头：
　　我是古往今来第一个炸掉国立魔法研究院实验室的法师！

　　更糟的是，在过去拥有力量的法师自然会得到地位和金钱，哪怕是钻研毁灭世界的高调大魔王，只要足够厉害，在被gān掉前都能收一大批手下，其手下的狂热程度不比茉莉追星的时候低，这些手下绝对是多功能实用型的，手下们不仅前赴后继地阻拦前来讨伐大魔王的勇者，还自动上jiāo家产供大魔王挥霍，好让大魔王过上一段畅游在知识海洋里不愁吃穿的愉快生活。
　　所以即使大魔王们最后多半惨死在光明圣殿圣骑士团的铁蹄下，那也是非常值得的了！
　　而现在可不行，现在是法治社会，大魔王在就职的初级阶段就到监狱思考人生了，根本不必出动圣殿骑士团，各国治安官和警察在魔导科技武器的加持之下，痛殴大魔王已经不再是梦想；

　　片刻后我听到他很轻地问：“你怎么知道的？”
　　但在我回答之前，他就自问自答：“你是一位非常敏锐细心的法师，你能立刻察觉冗长的古咒语里一个笔画的抄写错误，所以我不应该再有侥幸心理的。”
　　……好吧，其实我也不太有经验，分手时对方一个劲夸我该怎么办？

　　剩下一个称号比较离奇，自然之光，这个称呼来自龙族——说起来特别的像救世主——冰属xing的蓝龙族聚居的那座雪山，某天突然抽风，变成一座活火山，山顶常年封冻的冰雪消融，露出沸腾的岩浆，偏偏正赶上新生的蓝龙在破壳关键时期，完全无法移动，眼看就要变成烤龙仔蛋，这时梅菲斯特出现，集合成年蓝龙们的魔力，对着那座火山，硬是施法下了三天三夜bào风雪，极度深寒的领域把岩浆也冰冻，直到蓝龙幼崽出壳跟随巨龙安全转移，从此圣龙帝国将他视为救星，龙族称他为“自然之光”。

　　当然，哪个记者敢管法师叫术士，也绝对会被bào打。自古以来，正统法师都瞧不上术士、女巫这类血脉施法者，现在女巫超级少见，至于术士，我承认，我们就是光明正大地看不起他们，谁让他们是靠血脉天赋吃一辈子呢，力量与生俱来，但也无法jīng进，他们的魔法无法学习，也无需学习，生出来时什么样，到死还是那个境界，大多数术士终其一生都在毫无意义地乱丢火球和混乱箭，对学术毫无贡献！

　　我飘在一排排书架的顶端，浅显易懂的入门级书籍在唾手可得处，高深的、甚至带有危险xing的书籍则被统一保存在高处，有魔法防护屏障隔离，有一些书不止内容晦涩，其本身就带着危险古代黑魔法防护。
　　我抽出一本试图咬断我脖子的书，按着它的牙翻了几页，内容并不很吸引人，它的牙倒是手感不错，光滑细腻，于是我忍不住一摸再摸，直到那本书发出要哭的声音。

　　于是我们不约而同地收回手，可我的指尖仍然残留着他手指的触感……我，和梅菲斯特·麦德森，我们飘在空中，在林立的高大书架之间默默对视——我发现，不只是这个名字突然在我的生活里变成了高频词语，名字的主人直接真身出现在了我面前，猝不及防。

不是所有的空间魔法都不能一起使用，必只有形成独立的人造空间时才不可以！施法者可以在携带空间炼金制品的同时，使用诸如瞬间移动这类的空间魔法……”
　　“……这是因为这个过程中两个空间不会稳定重叠，而是短暂穿过，就像水流穿过管道一样，它们不会在主物质位面折叠两次！”梅菲斯特拍手，“物品附加的恒定储物空间，对比短暂空间转移魔法，一个是恒定，一个是临时，差异一目了然，这道理简单无比！”

　　说着，梅尔三下两下把这本试图躲的书掰开，这场面让我觉得有点像冷酷的牙科医生和怕得发抖的小孩。我估计刚才我摸它的时候也差不多是这个场面，但……那颗牙手感真的好极了啊。
　　书可怜地大张着嘴巴，我和梅尔一人抓着它的一面封皮，一起摸着它洁白的尖牙。
　　“你说得对！”梅尔满足地说，“手感棒极了！这种冰凉润滑的感觉让我想起小时候第一次偷摸老师的法杖，也像刚从山脉之心开采出来的月光晶石，魔力充沛纯粹！可惜这是珍贵古籍，不然我会忍不住掰下来带走的。”
　　他说完，那本书嚎哭的声音顿时提高了一个八度。

　　唔，不行，忍住，要冷静，要克制！不能一冲动把他变成哥布林！且不说我吸取了教训，绿皮没毛的小怪物真是丑得我几天吃不下饭，再者，如果我把新星之盾的队长变成哥布林，我绝对会上通缉榜，我会被定xing为邪恶法师，然后前来讨伐我的勇者就前赴后继了！
　　绝对不要，我还有那么多好书要读呢！

　　梅尔补充：“透明障碍物可以，比如玻璃窗，法师可以从屋里瞬移到屋外，只要能看见——所见即所达，看不见目的地的那是传送法术，绝大部分传送类法术都需要提前预留定位符文作为锚点……哦天哪，你们是把一头龙挂在我的手上了吗，好重啊。”
　　“是这样。”我点头，在这里我既认同他对瞬移魔法的说法，也同意他后面的那个修辞，之后我说：“所以jīng灵法师会比人类法师的瞬移距离远。”

　　“并不，这实际上是个中立的法术，影子被唤醒后并不只会杀人，它的动作需要cao控者下达指令。”梅尔说着，他的影子走到桌边，竟然倒了一杯水递给我，“单独cao控一个影子，我能持续施法一刻钟左右，一开始是我发明出来帮我下楼取东西的……”
　　我忍俊不禁，一个如此酷炫的大规模杀伤xing法术，它的发明初衷是如此的温馨接地气。

　　梅尔咬了咬嘴唇，似乎显得有点不好意思，他很快说：“唔……我喜欢你刚刚在图书馆用的那个魔法护盾，一般的护盾只能防御物理攻击，但你的这个甚至能压缩法术效果的范围，真是了不起呢！”
　　他这么说，我也觉得脸上热热的，他看着我的眼睛出奇地亮，像两颗充满了魔力的蓝色魔晶石，绚丽而澄澈，这让我下意识地看着他的眼睛，有点舍不得移开目光，于是我说：“那是我为了防止我的学生扔火球炸死她自己而发明的……我也可以教给你，那个也不难的！”...
　　我们互相指导对方，梅尔很快就释放出了耀眼而稳固的护盾，而我的影子在这时也已经可以为他鼓掌了。

　　“我也只有一个。”梅尔说，但随即他惊讶，问：“唔，你的学生可以同时做很多人的脑残粉？”
　　想起这个我真是又气又笑，“是啊，那姑娘每天都数‘男神’

　　梅尔紧接着追问：“炸实验室怎么了？那不是很正常？”
　　——说得好，梅尔，那也是我的心声啊！

　　片刻后我们一左一右走向不同方向，但此刻我们的思维已经链接一处，我和梅尔其实都是第一次使用这个法术，通过心灵链接，我们也共享了视野，这还蛮神奇的，我能同时看见两个不同的地点，却又分得清哪边是眼前，并不担心混淆，链接非常稳定，所以双侧视野都特别清晰，甚至我能感受到些许梅尔的qíng绪变化，我猜他也一样。
　　看吧，这明明比手机舒服方便！

　　“所以我说，科技这种东西发展的根本动力，是因为人们懒。”梅尔毫不客气地评价。
　　我真是不能更同意！我的那些助手连中午吃饭都懒得出门，集体窝在休息室拿着手机定外卖，小小年纪有的人就一身赘ròu，要不是我拿雷电术电他们屁股让他们每天跑圈，我的实验室就挤不下那么多胖子了！

　　我不再làng费任何时间，梅尔的护盾已经就绪，我立刻屏住呼吸，高度集中jīng神力，外界嘈杂的声音一瞬间离我远去，我的视野中甚至出现魔法元素的影子，我的眼前不再只是钢筋水泥、机甲和电子人，在空气中多了许多游离的元素，它们活跃在各处，晶莹纯粹，随着我的意识飘舞——
　　我知道我此刻的jīng神力必定已经达到巅峰，因为过于专注，我无力再控制我的隐身术

　　“西佩，你太厉害了，那么小的符文你竟然写得又稳又快！”梅尔让我靠着他，他自己则把下巴搁在我的肩膀上——因为他的双手还被禁魔手枷控制呢，根本没法抱住我，只能拿下巴来扶着我，他喜悦地说，“没事啦，西佩，你的符文真是写得太棒了，而且效果非常qiáng大，几乎半秒内就腐蚀掉了那个关键点，而且——用jīng神力调动元素，隔空在物体上烧熔出符文，西佩，你的控制力真是无与伦比。”

　　我一下子明白了，那些小雨是梅尔试图用水元素在天花板上写符文，结果失败了，但是写一个小微型符文用到的元素非常少，几乎不会让元素凝聚成实体的物理表现，他写得满屋下雨，梅尔的毅力也是非常值得我学习啊。

　　随着失败次数增多，水顺着他的下巴低落到微微敞开的领口，调皮的水珠跌碎在领口边的皮肤上，又很快重新凝聚成圆润的珠子，沿着jīng致的锁骨滑进了衬衫里面……
　　我眨了眨眼，试图让那颗水珠滚落的画面淡去，但是梅尔锁骨的形状却怎么也忘不掉，覆盖优美骨骼的皮肤被水打湿，显得莹润柔软……那一幕就像黏在我的视网膜上一样……
　　……那真的很好看啊！

　　梅尔的目光变得过于锐利，细长的眼角正向上挑起来，笑容也从嘴边消失……嗯，然后我发现，一直以来我对黑法师的幻想成了真，虽然梅尔长得很是俊秀好看，但他严肃起来的时候依然是一位气势十足的大法师，我发现有魔法元素被他的qíng绪激起，让他原本垂在脸颊边的柔软长发被魔力的激流扯乱，我甚至怀疑梅尔深不可测的jīng神力正在酝酿某种危险禁术，某个视觉效果恐怖的黑法术可能就藏着他舌头下面。
　　我不太好形容梅尔现在的气势，总之，看见这样的梅尔，直接让我回忆起当年西北战场上被影子捏碎的半shòu人脖子，那些可怜的颈骨该有多么疼啊。
　　——换通俗的话说，我能感受到这一瞬间梅尔生气了，而且……气得想杀人。

一名合格的法师怎么可能被自己搞的事故轻易炸伤呢？古代的时候，甚至会有黑法师（大魔王）养一个学徒来做自己的备用ròu身，可以在自己被讨伐后抢夺学徒的ròu体金蝉脱壳，那当然是最禁忌的灵魂魔法，不过我提起这个的意思是说，大法师连死亡都可以有序安排，区区一个练习法术高兴过头，怎么可能会炸伤自己。

　　我分析了一下，开始不由得同qíng雷诺：雷诺好歹也是个法师，难道两个志同道合的施法者一见如故，一起练习法术嗨过头导致破坏公物——这个正确答案对他来说有那么难猜？所以说，雷诺……你真的没有过和人畅谈法术的愉快经历？那作为施法者，也真是太惨了点吧。

　　就算如此说着，我还是不动声色地把视线放在屏幕上，假装专心看网页，因为……我发现，一个烟熏妆被水泡开满脸的女孩，和一只画烟熏妆的绿皮哥布林有着不相上下的恶心程度。
　　……额，这是我自己的学徒，我不能嫌弃。

　　片刻后，安吉拉女士又发来短信，她把新星之盾队长路斯恩和魔导兵团团长阿莱西娅女士的号码一起发了过来。并且还说：“爱挂电话的大法师阁下，给这两个家伙也开个绿灯，别把他俩挂咯。”
　　哇，这样一下子变成了五个，那位阿莱西娅女士，就是那个魔武双修、驾驶火红机甲的兵团长阁下，也是一位了不起的战士。

　　但是亡灵法术属于限制类专业，全大陆除了影月神殿可以使用，在教育体系内仅允许最负盛名的雷纳雅若魔法学院开设这个科系，入学考试难度是普通系别的几十倍，学生毕业以后不能考进影月神殿的话，大概就是去做做电影特效，或者在鬼屋一类的地方工作，和大家想象的不一样，公墓、殡仪馆这类丧葬行业严格禁止亡灵法师入行，因为据说是怕亡灵法师监守自盗，借助职务便利偷尸体……啊，我扯远了。

　　我啪地一下合上电脑的屏幕，心脏砰砰砰地乱跳起来，这也太高调了吧，梅尔那些字烧进穹顶，根本连洗都洗不掉的，难道以后国会开其他会议，都要顶着梅尔那句“好喜欢西佩”开下去吗？

　　想了想，我觉得还是不要当着年轻孩子的面直说“道格的魔法稀烂”这句话了，我怕这会引起不好的效果——年轻孩子一看，魔法那么差劲都能爬上高位，一个个不学好，全去玩弄政治，那可就糟糕透了，我可不希望看到几年后，我过去的助手们全变成打着官腔的胖子。
　　还是魔法稀烂的、打着官腔的胖子。

　　“乖巧懂事”的学徒茉莉此刻看起来很像她之前教过我的一个网络热词——“生无可恋”，我以前一直没法想象生无可恋该是什么样子， 因为有那么多书没读、那么多未知等待探索， 怎么会没什么可留恋呢……但是我感觉茉莉这就是一个非常生动到位的“心死”眼神。

　　但我克制住了，我没有伸手去摸，因为法师的变形术属于奥术变形，和德鲁伊的自然变形完全不同，我们法师的奥术变形是徒有其表的，换句话说，只是改变外表形态，而不会动摇根本本质，所以雷诺还是雷诺，只是看起来像个绵羊了而已。德鲁伊不一样，德鲁伊如果把自己变成某种动物，他需要极其坚定的意志力才能控制住自己不被这种动物的习俗影响，有一些心智不够qiáng大的德鲁伊，很有可能就忘记了自己还是个人类。

　　也对，现代的法师已经很少有人能拥有一座法师塔了，这势必被当做一大奇景，我到觉得未必是因为其他法师的魔力不足以掌控一座塔，恐怕得有很大一部分原因是——网络运营商没办法给法师塔拉网线啊！所以，茉莉可能是不知道这一点，所以才兴高采烈地跟我搬过去的吧……

　　窗外传来了一阵啪啪啪的弹跳声，我们就在屋里默默看着那颗弹xing极佳的史莱姆在屋外上上下下， 那位女议长露出很复杂的表qíng， 像是想笑，但可能想起自己是五星老头的政治伙伴， 于是又想挤出一个惊慌恼怒的表qíng，因此有点像中了抽搐咒。

　　网络上现在的热搜第一变成了一只绿色的史莱姆……因为是作为政敌的雷诺把他抱走的，所以外面的记者一问，雷诺就一五一十全部jiāo代，并且还大方地三百六十度展示这只弹xing极佳的史莱姆，言谈也有加油添醋的嫌疑，现在网上全部都是哈哈哈，比起议长被变成绵羊，五星老头变成史莱姆似乎更让公众开心，他们亲切地称之为“恶心萌的院长先生”。

　　“所以，西佩，我好喜欢你！”梅尔大声说，“我们一辈子都要在一起！”
　　我听到安娜和茉莉抽气的声音大得像刮风。
　　“嗯，我也喜欢梅尔。”在我反应过来之前，我的嘴巴已经诚实地说道，“是……是那种喜欢。”
　　梅尔歪着头，亲亲我的指尖，问：“那种，是要上chuáng的那种吗？我也是啊！”
　　现在安娜和茉莉已经不发出任何声音了。
　　……我在她们的脸上看到了不详的笑容。

　　管家先生举着两只宁芙，一只散发着柔粉色的光，一只则是微微的金huáng，像阳光的颜色，非常好看。
　　然后管家先生飘到我们的头顶，伸直触手，摆好造型，假装自己是一个旋转吊灯。

　　“但是自然界不只有生机勃勃，还有灾害与灭亡，其中，极少数的德鲁伊目睹了自然万物的衰亡，会与自然意志中代表枯萎与毁灭的那一部分感应，在这种力量的影响下，慢慢变成眼中只有荒芜的毁灭者，他们认为，自然终归要衰亡，万物皆要枯萎，所以德鲁伊毁灭者，几乎最后都会成为狂热的破坏分子。”...
　　“但是，还有更稀有的一些德鲁伊，在感应到了灾难与衰亡之后，依然不愿意顺应他们眼中注定到来的毁灭，试图守护内心对自然与生命额热爱，因此，他们就成了悼亡人。悼亡人可以同时使用生命与毁灭的力量，但是他们会压抑自己的破坏yù望，不会放任自己，而继续使用良xing魔法履行做一名德鲁伊的责任，所以，他们非常伟大，坚守这样的信仰需要更大的毅力！”我忍不住夸赞说。...
　　安吉拉女士说：“你们的说法在传奇年代是很正确的，见到毁灭者，你要做的第一件事就是想办法gān掉他，不过现在吗……德鲁伊毁灭者一般会被送到专门的看守所，然后在德鲁伊教派专员的监督下，为垃圾处理厂工作，你都不怎么上网吗？网上对德鲁伊垃圾处理厂的好评率特别高。”

　　想想看，天空yīn云密布，战场上的亡灵在哀嚎，我们脚下的大地沸腾，象征毁灭的地狱火缠绕着师生的长发，然后茉莉面容扭曲，嘴唇滴血，对着我怨毒地说：“老师，这些年我过得生不如死！我没有手机、没有无线、也没有电视！我被迫离开了我热爱的小说、还有那些美好而温馨的肥皂剧，是您摧毁了我宝贵的青chūn，今天，就让我们不死不休吧！”

　　梅尔有些不好意思，他说：“其实，我一直没有敢和你坦白，我并不是一个黑法师，我……我还不会任何黑魔法，我也是一直不敢说，我怕你会嫌弃我只是一个中立法师。”
　　……听了他这话，我忍不住捂脸，所以说，我在担心作为黑法师会被嫌弃，而梅尔在担心作为中立法师会被嫌弃？
　　天啊，我们两个这毛病真是越来越严重，不仅仅是对着互夸，就是互相瞎担心！

　　“会有很多优秀军人，尤其是有职阶的军人，不想死后躺在课堂里那么无聊，况且他们的尸体也更有力量，所以更愿意变成厉害武器继续战斗。”路斯恩骄傲地说，“比如我，我就签署了遗体战斗用途捐赠志愿书，如果我战死了，您可以当场直接使用我的尸体！”
　　……这有点……有点让我不知所措啊！
　　——我在地堡偷偷练习亡灵法术，都是使用同门的尸体，因为地堡qíng况复杂，我的同门会因为各种意外死在老师注意不到的地方，在他们的尸体被送进实验室前，我可以偷偷趁着老师不注意练一小会儿，所以我从没想过有一天会有人站在我面前，以无比光荣而向往的语气谈起死后让我使用尸体这件事……

　　雷诺机械地接过两只小羊，我想了想，从空间戒指里掏出笔记，找出其中几页对抗敌有帮助的实战经验笔录，撕下来，贴在雷诺身上，并且对两只变成小羊的姑娘说：“背下来，回家之后我会考，如果背错一条，我就撕你们一页手稿，直到全部背会为止，听懂了没有！”

　　接下来我们发愁的就该是怎么把这些睡死的矮人搬出去，因为我觉得，如果用漂浮术运出去，会不会显得不太体面，可能是由于被囚禁的关系，这些矮人看起来衣衫不整，个别矮人的裤子破了，幸好他们的腿毛足够的长，可是我不保证我让他们飘起来之后，这些腿毛还能完美遮挡住关键部位。
　　这时只听梅尔忽然平静地说：“有矿石，好大一块矿石掉在地上，3s品级的绝品好矿。”
　　“我的我的！”
　　矮人们从酣睡中惊醒，茫然四顾，一双双惺忪的睡眼从大胡子里睁开来，迷离地看着我们。

　　他纠正道：“我是圣骑士，只是兼职的龙骑士而已。”
　　他的白龙发出一声咆哮，即使我不懂龙语，我也能猜到肯定是在抗议，因为那头龙现在开始上下乱飞，拐弯倒立，就是不肯走直线。
　　那位圣骑士不得不再次半跪下来，稳定身体，不过他这回非常无奈地说：“你就是闹翻天，我也还是圣骑士，兼职的龙骑士。”
　　巨龙抗议得更加厉害了。
　　“而且，是你赖上我的，如果你再不好好飞，那我就得考虑一下我们是不是应该分手——”
　　他话还没说完，那头龙立刻飞得无比端庄优雅，仿佛前一秒钟发龙癫疯的不是他一样。

　　梅尔的表qíng变得严肃起来：“龙晶石？那不是龙族很珍贵的东西吗？我记得龙族非常尊重先祖的遗骸，怎么现在拿来做jiāo通工具？”
　　“噢，所以龙船总数才不多啊！”歌利亚笑着解释，“就像我们人类有遗体捐赠，龙族也有‘遗晶捐赠’的，一些思想进步的龙族愿意签署捐赠协议，支持国家完善基础建设，毕竟总要与时俱进的啊。”

　　“是需要学的！越厉害的龙变得越好看！”雪峰得意洋洋地回答，“我这人类形态可是公认的帅，不少龙崽子刚学变形，一个个变得歪瓜裂枣，捏脸可是很难的，捏得像人倒是没啥，问题是得好看，不能丢龙族的脸，那些人脸丑得车毁人亡的家伙，全都禁止出龙域。个别想偷懒，没有一点为龙尊严的，照着抄当红演员的脸，全都被我们圣龙王抓去面壁思过了。”

　　然后他弯着腰咳嗽得眼泪都出来了，我和梅尔实在忍不住，一人掏出一个小瓶子，过去接着。
　　歌利亚低声笑着走进门，留下抓狂的雪峰在怒吼：“你是不是早猜到会有灰？”
　　“这还用猜吗？”歌利亚回头，堂而皇之地鄙视他的龙，“一个地下遗迹最不缺的就是灰尘。”

　　这让我也有点担忧，不像电子人，这些机械如果完全没有生物部分的话，很多魔法的效果都会大打折扣，甚至灵魂魔法、jīng神系的法术，都完全不能使用。
　　“生产这种灭杀者原型机非常耗费资源能源，在第一批原型机报废之后，各国基本没有足够的家底来生产第二批改良机型了，不然当初施法者的境遇可能会更惨一些。”雷诺继续说。
　　所以施法者多支撑了几百年，之后才轮到骑士遭殃，战士和弓箭手很好躲藏，吟游诗人纷纷转行做偶像歌手，损失也不算特别大。

　　歌利亚不愧是圣骑士， 对危险的预估能力非常高超， 我们的念头才转了那么一小小下，他就立刻回过头来，对我们两个说：“别别别， 龙牙拔了很久都长不回来……而且为了送完我这个之后雪峰还能继续吃饭不漏， 他还得花钱配一颗假牙， 龙族的假牙可不便宜……说是送我的礼物，结果还是花的我的钱去配假牙！”
　　……说这话的时候，我觉得歌利亚的怒气值明显上升……
　　说着歌利亚居然还抡起长枪猛砸可怜灭杀者的头……呃， 你是圣骑士啊， 你又不是狂战士！
　　唉……　　……轻一点，这好歹是古董了吧！
　　看来，不管什么职阶，穷都是解锁狂bào状态的关键条件啊！

　　“达玛拉，不准拿死人血敷面膜！”我严厉地说。
　　达玛拉沉默了一会儿说：“为什么时隔六千年，您会和老主人说出一样的命令？如果不是知道当年老主人的恋人是个男的，我会以为您是他曾曾曾……曾孙什么的。”
　　嗯……这就是传承的伟大啊！因为我恩师的笔记里有写过的——“千万别让你的巫妖拿人血做面膜，敷完脸虽然会让死人看起来颜色好看，但真他妈的腥啊！熏得我想毁尸灭迹！”

　　我和梅尔就好整以暇地看戏了——按照龙皇刚才直播里的说法，这又是一个弯弯绕绕的yīn谋，打完这一场，这个yīn谋可还没解决完呢——我可是现代法师，我也是知道上市企业不是gān掉一个两个小头目就能解决的！

Sonia Purnell's account of this almost forgotten war hero is less light-hearted than what's in "Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare", and she's so larger than life that it's almost unbelievable.

• ("All the Light We Cannot See"): Private Virginia Hall often ran low on fuel and medicines but still pressed on in her French army ambulance toward the advancing enemy. She persevered even when the German Stukas came screaming down to drop 110-pound bombs onto the convoys all around her, torching the cars and cratering the roads. Even when fighter planes swept over the treetops to machine-gun the ditches where women and children were trying to take cover from the carnage. Even though French soldiers were deserting their units, abandoning their weapons, and running away, some in their tanks.
• * The fact that a young woman who had lost her leg in tragic circumstances broke through the tightest constrictions and overcame prejudice and even hostility to help the Allies win the Second World War is astonishing. That a female guerrilla leader of her stature remains so little known to this day is incredible.
• Where possible, I have stuck to the version of events as told by the people closest to them. At times, however, it has been as if Virginia and I have been playing our own game of cat and mouse; as if from the grave she remains, as she used to put it, “unwilling to talk” about what she did.
• This is not a military account of the battle for France, nor an analysis of the shifting shapes of espionage or the evolving role of Special Forces, although, of course, they weave a rich and dramatic background to Virginia’s tale. This book is rather an attempt to reveal how one woman really did help turn the tide of history. How adversity and rejection and suffering can sometimes turn, in the end, into resolve and ultimately triumph, even against the backdrop of a horrifying conflict that casts its long shadow over the way we live today.
• flappers. They were a new breed of young women who broke the Prohibition-era rules on drinking and scandalized their elders by cutting their hair short, smoking, and dancing to jazz. They rejected the one-sided restrictions of a traditional marriage and were taking a more active role in politics, not least because in 1920 (after a century of protests) American women had been granted the vote. Virginia looked around her: home life was stifling, but the world outside seemed to offer enticing new freedoms.
• father (to whom she was unusually close) who allowed her to spend the next seven years studying at five prestigious universities. <> She had begun in 1924 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Radcliffe (now part of Harvard) but the bluestocking atmosphere bored her, and in 1925 she moved to the more metropolitan Barnard College in Manhattan
• Like many well-to-do East Coast Americans before and after her, Virginia viewed the French capital as the elegant gateway to liberation. Hundreds of young Americans boarded Cunard liners for Europe every week, sending back word on how fashionable women in Paris—the so-called garçonnes—were positively expected to be independent, athletic, and androgynous in appearance, and to work and love as they pleased.
• She never saw her lover again, and was later to discover that he had probably perished in spring 1940, one of thousands of Polish officers executed in cold blood by Russia’s secret police during the Second World War and buried in mass graves in the forest at Katyn.
• With the confidence of youth—plus her languages and extensive academic study—she expected to succeed in the requisite entrance exam. The fact that only six out of fifteen hundred Foreign Service officers were women should have been due warning. The rejection was quick and brutal.
• it was as she climbed over a wire fence running through the tall reeds of the wetlands that Virginia stumbled. As she fell, her gun slipped off her shoulder and got caught in her ankle-length coat. She reached out to grab it, but in so doing fired a round at point-blank range into her left foot... She was on the brink of death when, on Christmas Day, surgeons sawed off her left leg below the knee in a last-ditch bid to save her.4 She was twenty-seven.
• Going up and down steps remained a particular challenge—and consequently Venice, as she was to discover, could scarcely have been less suitable for a new amputee. <> La Serenissima was a walking city. Virginia gazed with horror at its slippery cobbled passages and the 400 humpbacked bridges, many with steps, over the city’s 177 canals. She quickly devised an ingenious solution: her own gondola emblazoned with a splendid golden lion would be her carriage.
• * On February 4, 1938, Roosevelt asked for a briefing from Hull, who appears to have taken umbrage at this special lobbying on her behalf. Virginia’s disability hampered her performance, the president was told, and she was not up to the demands of a diplomatic position. Hull, apparently ignoring the glowing reports from the consulate in Venice, agreed she might make a “fine career girl,”9 but only by remaining in the clerical grades. FDR had overcome his own semiparalysis from polio to reach the highest office of all. Yet, with some irony, he saw no reason to pursue the matter further.
• Fearful of the future, all hopes of promotion dashed, pigeonholed as a disabled woman of no importance, she resigned from the State Department in March 1939. For all her ambition at the start, her career had proved little more faithful or rewarding than the old-fashioned marriage she had once spurned.
• she signed up in February 1940 with the French 9th Artillery Regiment to drive ambulances for the Service de Santé des Armées. She had no medical skills but did have a driver’s license, and the service was one of the few military corps open to women volunteers—and also to foreigners.
• The French were locked in an outdated defensive mentality, sitting behind walls and sending messages to each other by carrier pigeon. They had little chance against the devastating brilliance of the Nazi forces with their frightening speed, flamethrowers, and lightning waves of aerial bombardment. The negligent apathy—and in some cases venality—of the old French elite allowed a world power to descend into a subject people in just six weeks.
• She noticed how as a nominally neutral American she was permitted greater freedoms than the French she worked alongside.
• The Special Operations Executive had been approved on July 19, 1940, the day that Hitler had made a triumphant speech at the Reichstag in Berlin, boasting of his victories. In response, Winston Churchill had personally ordered SOE to “set Europe ablaze” through an unprecedented onslaught of sabotage, subversion, and spying. He wanted SOE agents—in reality more Special Forces than spies—to find the way to light the flame of resistance... If this new paramilitary version of fifth columnists violated the old Queensberry Rules of international conflict (involving codes of conduct, ranks, and uniforms), then the Nazis had given them no choice. <> If this new paramilitary version of fifth columnists violated the old Queensberry Rules of international conflict (involving codes of conduct, ranks, and uniforms), then the Nazis had given them no choice.
• She had allowed more than a year to elapse since her resignation and was no longer eligible for an official ticket, and in wartime others were all but impossible to come by. Unexpectedly stuck in London alone, she dug out the telephone number she had been given in Irun. Nicolas Bodington, an ex-Paris correspondent for Reuters, took the call
• * What did become clear was that SOE’s new, most “ungentlemanly” brand of warfare would draw in large part on the terror waged against the British by Irish republican paramilitaries. In the Anglo-Irish war of 1919–1921, the British had observed how regular troops could be defeated by a hostile population whose will had been stiffened by a few resolute gunmen... As one intelligence writer has put it: if MI6 officers spotted enemy troops crossing a bridge they would observe them from a distance and estimate their number, whereas SOE would simply demolish the bridge.
• Most recruits had not even got that far, pulling out horrified the minute they discovered what they were expected to do; others were ejected once found to be mad or bad... So many backed out that SOE would later set up a “cooler,” a remote country house in the wilds of Scotland where quitters would be forcibly confined until what knowledge they had gleaned of SOE was of no use.
• * Churchill’s Cabinet had forbidden women from front-line service of any sort. Government lawyers advised that women were particularly vulnerable if caught, as they were not recognized as combatants and therefore not protected by international laws on war. Within SOE itself, old-fashioned attitudes were also widespread...  It now seemed as if her disability was the only thing not to count against her... Indeed, SOE decided in its desperation that it must and would be ready to work with “any man, woman or institution, whether Roman Catholic or masonic, trotskyist or liberal, syndicalist or capitalist, rationalist or chauvinist, radical or conservative, stalinist or anarchist, gentile or Jew, that would help it beat the Nazis.”
• She picked up when to change an address, how to make secret inks (urine comes up brilliantly when subjected to heat), and even how to conceal her personality (through altering a distinctive laugh, gesture, or demeanor). She was shown how to seal microfilm documents (equivalent to nine sheets of letter-size paper) in tiny containers and insert them in her navel or rectum—or, as she discovered, in a handy little slot in her metal heel.
• No one in London gave Agent 3844 more than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving even the first few days. For all Virginia’s qualities, dispatching a one-legged thirty-five-year-old desk clerk on a blind mission into wartime France was on paper an almost insane gamble.
• the Vichy government adopted some of the worst excesses of Nazi ideology under the banner of a new moral order for France. Pétain’s repression of Jews or “immigrants,” as he referred to them—whom he had already banned from universities and the leading professions—was at this point often more draconian than Hitler’s.
• Lyon’s proximity to the border with neutral Switzerland (just eighty miles to the east) could also open up a new channel of communications, as Virginia remained without a wireless operator. The city’s dramatic topography and confusing layout was another factor in making it a natural birthplace for an underground movement. Divided into discrete areas, the heart of town was a peninsula washed by two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, which were straddled by seventeen bridges and surrounded by wooded hills... hundreds of steep stone steps led up to Vieux Lyon, with its impenetrable network of traboules, or interconnecting passages through buildings and between streets, “much like an above-ground sewer system,
• The nuns, who wore a “quaint headdress—a white dutch cap with wings,” fed her with produce from their own farm. Despite their otherworldliness, they became not only her first shelter in Lyon, but also her earliest recruits. Thanks to Virginia’s lateral thinking, F Section had just secured one of the best early safe houses in Vichy France.
• The upside was that in those early months such regressive views meant that most men struggled to believe that women could be involved in subversion.
• Altering her hairstyle, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, putting on glasses, changing her makeup, wearing different gloves to hide her hands, or even inserting slivers of rubber into her mouth to puff out her cheeks: it all worked surprisingly well. With a little improvisation she could be three or four different women—Brigitte, Virginia, Marie, or Germaine—within the space of an afternoon.
• When the Vichy police picked him up the following morning, they found in his pocket a piece of paper London had carelessly provided to all its outgoing agents. It was a map showing the location of an SOE safe house in Marseille
• Yet some sixth sense seemingly stopped her from joining this mass gathering of the SOE clan. She had long ago discovered through necessity the benefits of self-dependency and was already far older than her years. By contrast, one Lieutenant Marc Jumeau, a tall bushy-haired technical adviser, one of the four parachutists near Bergerac on October 10, lacked her caution and was in search of friendly company in a frightening world. The first to arrive at the Villa des Bois, he ignored the fact that no one had answered when he had phoned the house several times earlier... But whether treachery or not, the fact was that in one swoop, French rather than German police had practically cleaned out SOE in the entire Free Zone... André Bloch, who had been transmitting from the Occupied Zone, also vanished after being denounced by a French neighbor for merely looking like a Jew... Now there was not a single working SOE radio operator at liberty in the whole of France.
• * London was left “with little else in the field except Miss Virginia Hall.”48 Only she had means of contacting Baker Street. Only she had a growing circuit uncontaminated by the arrests. Only she was supplying vital information on Vichy and the Nazi occupiers. The future of Allied intelligence in France now rested on a solitary woman who had been written off for most of her adult life.
• how to spoil food bound for Berlin. The best way was to insert “a small piece of putrified meat” in a carcass, make a pinhole in tinned provisions, place salt water in sugar, or allow vegetables and cereal to get damp
• Clothes were hard to buy—especially bras, because of the labor and multiple components involved. Leather stocks had been requisitioned by the German military so there was a desperate shortage of normal shoes. The rudimentary footwear sometimes still on sale in the shops had wooden soles that click-clacked loudly as their wearers walked down the street—a wartime feature that became the soundtrack to Nazi rule.
• nobody’s idea of a typical résistante. A thirty-seven-year-old “burning brunette” with “animal sexual magnetism,” Germaine Guérin was part owner of one of Lyon’s most successful brothels. Wrapping herself in jewels, silks, and furs, she exuded a “gypsy warmth”.. Germaine “moved in sordid surroundings and her morals were irregular,” Simpson recalled, although he also recognized her underlying virtue. “She had . . . the shining cleanliness of a sea-lion.”
• * Virginia already had the nuns at La Mulatière as her devoted helpers but now she found herself recruiting from the other end of the morality spectrum... despite obvious differences in background, Simpson observed them discovering they had much else in common: they were both happiest when flirting with danger; they enjoyed a wicked sense of humor; they could both “make something out of nothing”; and they shared a “disdain for their own sensations of fear.”
• Virginia had reserved particular contempt for prostitutes entertaining German clients, but now she affectionately dubbed such women her “tart friends.” Thanks to their “Jerry bed companions,” as she put it, they knew “a hell of a lot!”... His “many a devilish idea for the discomfiture of the German clients”14 appear to have included infecting as many as possible with syphilis or gonorrhea. He doled out special white cards denoting a girl to be free of infection,... (Rousset's) willingness was all the more exceptional given that the reactionary regime in Vichy France expected women to stay at home, get married, and have a minimum of four children as their patriotic duty. Abortion was illegal and punishable by guillotine.
• Gum chewing had to be specifically banned and bowlegged Texans painstakingly taught how to move like Europeans and to avoid putting their hands in their pockets, which was seen as a “Yankee” peccadillo.
• She also recruited a forger, a highly respectable engraver in an upmarket shopping arcade called the Passage de l’Hôtel-Dieu. Monsieur Chambrillard became expert at re-creating official papers for Virginia that fooled even the most eagle-eyed inspectors.
• * The problem was that many people were still more focused on their own factional struggles—including those between Communists and the increasing numbers of supporters of General de Gaulle—than in accepting command from London on exactly how to serve the Allied cause. <> Virginia plowed on, refusing to take sides among these eternally feuding political tribes. She constantly presented herself as a unifying force, interested in anyone genuinely willing to put winning the war first, whatever their secondary allegiances.
• Train: Virginia reported, “crowded beyond belief and look like a Walt Disney brainstorm,”22 with people pressed up against the windows and holding on to the entrance platforms so that the doors could not shut properly. Virginia sometimes found herself stuck in the doorway, narrowly avoiding death (or what she called the “void”) for up to two hours at a time by clenching the hand of a complete stranger just inside the carriage.
• “Fear never abated,” recalled one candid French resister. “Fear for oneself; fear of being denounced; fear of being followed without knowing it; fear that it will be ‘them,’ when at dawn one hears or thinks one hears a door slam shut or someone coming up the stairs. . . . Fear, finally, of being afraid and of not being able to surmount it.”25 Resistance called for a lonely courage, for men and women who could fight on their own. But the solitude was an eternal strain. One agent took to eating dinner in front of the mirror as no one except a reflection could be entirely trusted.
• * Virginia reminded newcomers to eat like Frenchmen—gustily using bread to wipe up their gravy, not leaving a speck of food on the plate, and certainly not neatly aligning their cutlery at half past six at the end of a meal like a well-brought-up Brit. And as they were no longer in England they should desist in always carrying a raincoat. Virginia tried to think of everything. Banned from buying cigarettes for her “boys” to soothe what they all called “attacks of the jitters,” she collected stubs from the floors of cafés for them to smoke instead. It also helped them blend in. Stub snatching had become a national—and respectable—pastime
• Without the protection afforded to regular forces by the Geneva Conventions, they were unlikely to survive capture. (Indeed, only 15, or 1 in 8, of the 119 London-based SOE agents who were arrested in France during the war came home.)
• The police were rounding up innocent people to be deported to Germany to satisfy the monstrous Nazi appetite for slave labor in their factories (just as Churchill’s assailants had threatened). Vichy had previously agreed to send thousands of volunteers to the Fatherland, promising good food, good pay, concerts, and free holidays. But few had been taken in and the numbers had fallen far short of Nazi demands. Now Vichy had secretly agreed to resort to forced expatriations, and ordered roundups of random people in several target cities.
• Churchill spent his last night in Marseille being told by Virginia that it had been Mafia gangsters impersonating Vichy police who had conned him into surrendering the twenty-five thousand francs and that another racket involved selling suspected résistants to the Germans in return for cash or their victims’ possessions.
• Cowburn pleaded with her to leave Lyon at once to save herself—after all, she had already been in France for six months and that was normally considered the limit of any mission.
• her work was so varied and vital it was described after the war as of “universal character.”10 Despite the mounting dangers, she was collecting details of the political situation in France; the scope and effect of Vichy propaganda; the use of dummy wooden aircraft to fool British aerial reconnaissance; the identity and movements of German regiments; the warring factions within the French Resistance; the installation of machine gun nests on the flat roofs of Paris;
• It was not just Alain who was distracted by a frantic love life. Perhaps it was down to the fact that Benzedrine often caused a dramatic rush of libido. In any case, several male agents were playing around with dozens of different women, who posed obvious risks to Virginia and the entire SOE operation.
• Virginia’s police contacts were extraordinarily well informed, even on the movements of their German counterparts. Thanks to a stream of tip-offs, she moved one contact no fewer than thirty-two times to keep him one step ahead of the Gestapo.
• * A weak signal or mistakes in the Morse—virtually every operator made either their dashes a little too short or their dots a tad long, their “fist” or style considered as individual as a fingerprint—only added to the whole laborious process. During what seemed like an eternity, he would sit there with his eyes on the road outside looking for suspect vehicles, his Colt pistol next to his hand, his poison capsule in his mouth, his ears straining for any usual noise.
• Many families and even married couples were similarly riven between collaborators and résistants.
• * He endured several interrogations and was imprisoned in a Nazi-run jail in Dijon before managing to escape in a stinking garbage pail with the help of a priest. He then headed up to Paris, where, incredibly, he lived in domestic bliss for a while with an aristocratic German officer whom he had met in a bar and who risked his own life by becoming Rake’s lover. Rake was not to be distracted for long, however.
• Another method was to switch off the power district by district, and when the signals stopped they knew to lock down that part of the city. No wonder the attrition rate was high, and Zeff and the other radiomen now working in France were suffering. Although SOE was sending in more operators, none was now officially expected to survive more than three months.
• Her extraordinary courage and Virginia’s ingenuity meant that Bégué soon had all he needed to make a key for the door of the barracks, using bread from the prison canteen to take a mold of the lock. Every evening from now on the Camerons choir bellowed out the “most obscene”7 songs to drown out the noise of the filing and hammering.
• * Now, one of you look under my cassock . . . where my legs should be.” One of them duly lifted up the robe to a collective gasp. “Great Scott! It’s a piano!” exclaimed Bégué, no doubt guessing who must have arranged for the transmitter to be smuggled in in such an ingenious fashion. “Yes,” the priest replied. “I was given to understand that you can get plenty of music out of it. It has been nicely tuned.
• the Camerons were delighted to hear RAF bombers roaring over them a couple of nights later and see the sky glow red as heavy explosions shook the ground and “sent clouds of sparks into the night.”9 It was more than gratifying to overhear the same guard the following day discussing the destruction of the plant. They were, incredibly, playing a role in the war even while still behind barbed wire.
• the Camerons: both the Germans and Vichy knew full well that the Allies had pulled off a spectacular escape and a major propaganda coup. The breakout acquired a legendary status far beyond Mauzac... Although it is astonishingly little known, the official SOE historian M. R. D. Foot acknowledged the Mauzac jailbreak as “one of the war’s most useful operations of the kind.”
• The fear now was that Jouve was also in a position to sell SOE agents, including Virginia herself, so she urgently asked for more pills from London, but Jouve disappeared before she could “touch” her.28 The threats on all sides had driven her to become a battle-hardened assassin, a far cry from the Virginia of January, who could not bring herself to swear in her letter to Bodington. This new version of Virginia understood it was now a case of killing others to survive.
• Perhaps her exhaustion after so long in the field had worn her down. Perhaps she had become too confident in her own precautions. Or maybe she simply saw the material provided by WOL as too valuable to lose. And in any case Rousset, whose judgment she valued, continued to believe in the priest. She had grown used to harboring doubts about just about everyone; after all
• That was not, of course, the case with Célestin, whom she had seen very recently. Yet despite the unimaginable treatment he suffered at the hands of the Gestapo, the fashion illustrator’s heroic silence bought Virginia a few more days. Again and again they asked him about Marie or “that terrorist.” They got no answer. But the Gestapo smelled blood.
• He also broke off diplomatic relations with America and interned the most senior officer at the United States embassy...  Any attempt by the Allies to attack Hitler’s territory from their new base on the other side of the Mediterranean would be met with the Wehrmacht’s iron fist. Within hours, Virginia’s friends and protectors would become powerless in a full Nazi state where German terror would be unbridled.
• The biting north wind cut through them even down here on the coastal plain, and the November air smelled of snow. Virginia’s only chance of escape lay over one of the cruelest mountain passes in the Pyrenees, eight thousand feet above them, past the glaciers and sharp flanks of the Canigou Massif. Treacherous and sometimes impassable even in the summer months, few would expect an escapee to try negotiating the narrow, rocky trail, where the snow could reach waist height in winter
• Even this was nothing compared to the misery of the next twelve miles. After months of semistarvation enforced by wartime conditions in France, she now had to climb five thousand feet in the cruelest of winter conditions; each sideways step jarred her hip as she dragged her false leg up the vertiginous slope with the weight of her bag tearing at her shoulder and cutting into her frozen hand.
• * stories were rife of wolves and bears picking off escapees along this stretch. There would, in fact, be no more breaks during the afternoon or the long, bitter night that followed.
• It was here that many agents, couriers, and helpers of all sorts—including Virginia’s beloved “nephew” Marcel Leccia (now an accomplished saboteur)—came to visit Germaine for instructions from London or just companionship now that the boss had gone. One by one, in good faith, she introduced them to Alesch, who lay in wait in her kitchen, almost as if he had become family, to observe the comings and goings. Thus with appalling ease much of the remnants of Virginia’s operations became known to him. When Nicolas, now the most senior agent in Lyon, dropped by, Alesch even dared to demand yet more money
• In truth, anyone connected to Virginia was now in mortal danger, and in one frantic chase through the traboules a Gestapo officer actually caught hold of Zeff’s foot but he managed to pull free, leaving his shoe in the German’s hand.
• As the man’s hat rolled off into the dirt, Alfred was hit by a whiff of eau de cologne that made him retch. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, came the appalling realization that his victim was not Alesch. He had killed the wrong man.
• A top-secret inquiry in April 1943 blamed the success of double agents but also the Germans’ highly developed radio-detection operations. Radio operators were the sole and slender link with occupied countries such as France, and their sets considered the most meaningful and emotionally charged objects of the war. These brave men, and later women, were particularly vulnerable to capture, and their commanders acknowledged their life expectancy in the field was becoming intolerably brief.
• The predatory Milice—Vichy’s version of the Gestapo, created in January 1943—sowed further dissent by using local knowledge to infiltrate, repress, and torture fellow countrymen. Its chief was a French member of the Waffen SS, and its black-shirted members (mostly would-be gangsters or wealthy young hardline royalists) swaggered around with newly acquired weapons; their thuggish barbarity disgusted even some Germans. Incredibly, one in six miliciens was a woman. <> At the beginning of 1943, pro-Allied French youths started to display their allegiances by ostentatiously reading All Quiet on the Western Front (a German First World War novel feared by the Nazis because of its pacifist messages) or carrying two fishing rods (in French deux gaules, sounding like de Gaulle).
• * Most important of all, however, was that DFV (her new code name) should be tightly controlled. “You will see . . . that we have done our best to tie DFV up so that she can have no excuse for undertaking any work without your prior knowledge and approval,” her immediate superior DF crowed to H/X. “I do not envisage that you will have any trouble,” he said, with Miss Hall. <> There was an equally insulting showdown over money. Paid in dollars to support her cover as a Chicago Times employee, her new bosses deliberately sought to cut how much she received by forcing her to change most of her salary into pesetas on the black market at an unfavorable rate.
• Neither did Buckmaster know that her real name and exact role in Lyon was shortly to be deliberately communicated to the Germans by MI6, again in the belief that it was inconceivable she would return to the field. The rival British Intelligence Service had seized a wireless from a German agent arrested in England and Virginia’s details were nuggets of truth transmitted to his controllers to give validity to a mass of disinformation designed to mislead the Germans about the location and timing of the planned cross-Channel landings.33 The result, by the end of 1943, was that Virginia’s name, description, and role were universally known across German intelligence and beyond. She remained a figure at the center of the clandestine war in France—even if she did not know it.
• “All those first OSS arrivals in London,” wrote the satirist Malcolm Muggeridge, who was then working for MI6, “how well I remember them, arriving like jeunes filles en fleur . . . all fresh and innocent, to start work in our frosty old intelligence brothel.” <> OSS was wasting time on fantasies such as introducing estrogen into Hitler’s food to remove his moustache or putting mustard gas in flower beds to make Nazi generals go blind.
• she had had her fine, white American teeth ground down by a much-feared female London dentist to resemble those of a French countrywoman. At five foot eight, she was tall for a peasant but her clothes had been made, distressed, and rigorously checked by Jewish refugees in a secret atelier behind London’s Oxford Circus to ensure they looked real—right down to the way the buttons were sewn on, as the French favored parallel threading while the British and Americans preferred a crisscross pattern.
• George Langelaan, one of the Mauzac escapees, was one of a handful of other compromised agents who all agreed to, or even requested, surgery before returning to the field. Two major operations had involved breaking Langelaan’s pointed chin and making it smoother and rounder with a bone graft from his pelvis
• Agents were trained to hold out for forty-eight hours before revealing anything important—allowing their circuit time to go into hiding. The first fifteen minutes were generally considered the worst and captives were advised to try to shut themselves down, mentally transporting themselves into another place if possible and coping with each minute at a time.
• now that battle was finally joined, every Resistance chief in the region urgently wanted Virginia’s help to call in more guns and explosives. Barely eating or sleeping, she roamed over hundreds of miles of countryside to inspect Resistance groups for their reliability and needs and transmit her recommendations back to London. Cars or trucks and gas were rarely available; so, incredibly, Virginia made many of these trips by bicycle.
• And it was also still possible that D-Day would not succeed and the Allies would be repulsed. Eisenhower’s forces took six days simply to connect the five slender bridgeheads on the landing beaches, and efforts to penetrate the interior were meeting determined German resistance and getting bogged down in the hedgerows and ditches of the Norman bocage.
• * the Vivarais plateau: Albert Camus, who came from Algeria in summer 1942 for the tuberculosis in his lungs, called it a “handsome country,” but also “a little somber.” He thought of the fir trees massing on the crests of the hills as “an army of savages,” waiting as it grew light to rush down into the valley—and the real world. For the plateau had the ambience of a land apart, a mysterious place suspended in the skies, whose people were sometimes likened to the Amish in America... a proud tradition of sheltering the persecuted, dating back four hundred years to when the Protestant Huguenots had flocked there to escape the French Catholic dragonnades (an early form of religious cleansing)... No wonder it had become a magnet for those fleeing from the Nazis, whether Jews avoiding the camps or young men dodging slave labor in Germany to join the Maquis. As Virginia was to discover, virtually every family in the area was secretly risking their lives by sheltering at least one person on the run.
• She tested the strength of the wind by holding up a hankerchief by the corner—if it failed to fly fully horizontally then it was less than fifteen miles an hour and would be good for parachuting. She noted the coordinates, chose a code name (after a fish), and a recognition letter to be transmitted by lamp in Morse code to the pilot of an approaching plane.
• Yet far from seeming cowed by the dangers she faced, Virginia looked her most radiant, as if she had found an almost spiritual peace in the midst of the deadliest turmoil. She reminded Jacqueline of a Renaissance statue of the Madonna—”very beautiful” and suffused with a “remarkable calm” despite the “contents of the cases she was carrying.”
• * Resistance in France was more factional than ever—riven by personality clashes and political allegiances, particularly between the Gaullists (supporters of de Gaulle) and the Communists (who resented his growing influence and conservative views)... Indeed, there was so much fighting between the French themselves that some historians refer to the guerre franco-français of this time, a French civil war playing out as a kind of subplot as the European war reached its climax.
• For her men—and the villagers who watched with awe from afar—it was as if wherever La Madone turned up the night skies came alive with the roar of Halifaxes. In all there were twenty-two drops—twenty on the Bream ground and two on neighboring zones.
• Sometimes she went several nights at a time without sleep, delving into her supplies of Benzedrine to keep going and sharing them with her bleary-eyed team. Such was the pressure that the slightest failure triggered an explosion of temper, swearing, smoking, and spitting on the ground in frustration like the trooper she had become. <> “Diane breathed energy, courage and charm. But she could also be imposing and imperious,”27 said André Roux, one of Bob’s men. “From time to time we were treated to Homeric bollockings,” agreed Dédé.
• Virginia’s work had also helped to pave the way for the Allied recapture of Paris. According to a 1988 report in Army, the Association of the United States Army’s magazine, her intelligence on the disposition and direction of the German Seventh Army from her time as a milkmaid in central France and thereafter had been “vital.”
• Eisenhower himself would go on to say that its combined actions—sabotage, ambushes, harassment, and constant sapping of Nazi morale—had shortened the war in Europe by nine months and kept eight German divisions permanently away from the D-Day battlefields. But now it was clearly time for the professionals to finish the job. Her offer to help was rejected. It was all too late. <> It was a humiliating end to what perhaps had always been an unlikely dream. Virginia, Paul, and Henry returned to the château where she gathered the boys and delivered the news that she was to disband the Diane Irregulars with immediate effect.
• Remorse is a strong motivator. Perhaps regret for his obstructive behavior was the reason Fayol was to devote a decade of his later years to researching Virginia,   
• * De Gaulle was famously antagonistic toward American or British agents working on his patch... ungracious in the extreme, imprisoned one SOE operative and threatened others with incarceration unless they left liberated France immediately. And in a sign of what was to come, he was apparently particularly keen to remove all women from the front line and have their role largely expunged from the record.
• “Diana and friend” (as Virginia and Paul were often now known) were dispatched to OSS Central European headquarters in a royal palace at Caserta, north of Naples (also Eisenhower’s seat as Supreme Allied Commander), to receive intensive training. Here in the opulent Versailles-style rooms and two-mile-long landscaped park she was inducted in garroting, handling a dagger, and bringing death to a man silently with bare hands. Firing a gun should be done in a crouching stance, with a two-handed grip on the pistol held at waist level and using the double tap—or two shots fired in quick succession.
• OSS’s future looked increasingly uncertain now that the war was drawing to an end and its original patron dead, so he was anxious to publicize the award to burnish the agency’s prestige. Donovan therefore took the unusual step of suggesting a ceremony at the White House.
• There was a widespread fear that never having witnessed the realities of life under the Nazi heel, Americans were “obstinately incredulous”51 of the depths of barbarity suffered in France and therefore too lenient with those responsible. Virginia was the rare American who had seen and shared it.
• Occasionally they would protest that they were patriots, at least one claiming to have personally put “twenty-eight German soldiers hors de combat” by targeted infection.52 Most people, however, were interested only in clearly defined acts of heroism rather than these more complex displays of courage. Virginia, though, understood that valor came in many different forms.
• Truman: As a Democrat he instinctively distrusted the charismatic, Republican-leaning Wild Bill and anyone connected to him, a distaste reinforced by a vigorous media campaign (fed by rivals such as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover) comparing OSS to an American Gestapo.
• Alesch had by now become a cause célèbre, an embodiment of betrayal and Nazi evil. When he was summoned to the Paris court on May 25, 1948, to stand trial on charges of “intelligences avec l’ennemi,” crowds flocked to see him in the dock.
• Part of OSS’s legacy was its legendary boozing, or as one historian has put it, “All hands . . . sailed out of the Second World War on a tide of alcohol.”9 Virginia and Paul were no exception
• In contrast to the celebration of a strong-willed woman under Wild Bill Donovan’s wartime regime, the Father Knows Best thinking in the mid-1950s expected a model female to be an obedient blonde at home with the kids. To be childless and characterized as “frank and outspoken” was a danger sign. Peacetime was slowly but surely imprisoning her.
• CIA: It was a subtle if classic undermining of a female officer who had coolly avoided capture by the Gestapo for three long years, was serving as a captain in the military reserve, and had proved that even a devastating accident could not impede her performance. A further insinuation came in the remark that she had “unrealistic” ideas about her value to the Agency and that her “independence” was her most significant feature.
• * The recommendation that supervisors should be trained to be fairer to both sexes was accepted by the agency’s board, but seems to have had virtually no impact. The sole visible difference was that women were now admitted to the CIA gym once a week—but it was small beer when female employees were still expected to report for work in spotless white gloves.
• * The CIA’s anti-Communist zeal had already led to Operation Paperclip, the code name for the wholesale recruitment of former senior Nazis on the grounds that however barbaric their conduct in the war they also ranked as the ultimate anti-Soviets. The U.S. Army’s intelligence operation had taken on the Butcher of Lyon himself, Klaus Barbie.
• Virginia’s shoddy treatment was later cited within the CIA itself as a textbook case of discrimination.29 “She was head and shoulders above a lot of the men who rose much further up the organization than she did,” notes Craig Gralley.
• Writing about Waiting for Godot, the theater critic Robert Scanlan once observed that while the play is not a literal representation of Samuel Beckett’s experiences in the Resistance, its imagery—and the states of mind it represents—clearly derive from that time: “All those who endured the war in Europe emerged transformed, and they had great difficulty expressing the magnitude of their inner tumult.”36

Robert Harris really knows how to build up a thriller.

• Then another bodyguard – or perhaps it was an undertaker: both professions dressed so alike – at any rate, another figure in black opened the door to the suite
• ‘Well, there are bound to be rumours if there isn’t.’
    ‘This is true,’ said Bellini. ‘Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age.’
• Bellini countered sharply: ‘The Holy Father would not have cared a fig about dignity. It was as one of the humble of the earth that he chose to live, and it is as one of the humble poor that he would wish to be seen in death.’
    Lomeli concurred. ‘Remember, this was a man who refused to ride in a limousine. An ambulance is the nearest we can give him now to public transport.
• Yet even that ghoulish embarrassment wasn’t as bad as the occasion twenty years previously, when Pope Pius XII’s body had fermented in its coffin and exploded like a firecracker outside the church of St John Lateran.
• ‘The Pope had doubts about God?’
    ‘Not about God! Never about God!’ And then Bellini said something Lomeli would never forget. ‘What he had lost faith in was the Church.
• in the gigantic fresco of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement, humanity floated in an azure sky around the Throne of Heaven to an echoing accompaniment of hammering, electric drills and buzz-saws.
    ‘Well, Eminence,’ said the Secretary of the College, O’Malley, in his Irish accent. ‘I’d say this is a pretty fair vision of hell.’
    ‘Don’t be blasphemous, Ray,’ replied Lomeli. ‘Hell arrives tomorrow, when we bring in the cardinals.’
• then again in ’63, before I was even ordained, I used to love looking at the pictures of those Conclaves. They had artists’ impressions in all the newspapers. I remember how the cardinals used to sit in canopied thrones around the walls during the voting. And when the election was over, one by one they’d pull a lever to collapse their canopies, apart from the cardinal who’d been chosen.
• These days the College of Cardinals was felt to be too large and too multinational for such Renaissance flummery. Still, there was a part of Lomeli that rather hankered after Renaissance flummery, and privately he thought the late Pope had occasionally gone too far in his endless harping on about simplicity and humility. An excess of simplicity, after all, was just another form of ostentation, and pride in one’s humility a sin.
• Pope John the Twenty-third was too large to fit into the biggest cassock, so they had to button up the front and split the seam at the back – they say he stepped into it arms-first, like a surgeon into his gown, and then the papal tailor sewed him into it.’
• O’Malley said, ‘I’m sorry for the mystery, Your Eminence, but I didn’t think I could say anything in front of the Archbishop.’
    ‘I know exactly what this is about: you’re going to tell me we’ve lost a cardinal.’
    ‘On the contrary, Dean, we appear to have acquired one.’ The Irishman gave a nervous giggle
• In pectore (‘in the heart’) was the ancient provision under which a Pope could create a cardinal without revealing his name, even to his closest associates: apart from the beneficiary, God alone would know. In all his years in the Curia, Lomeli had only ever heard of one case of a cardinal created in pectore, whose name was never made public, even after the Pope’s death. That had been in 2003, under the papacy of John Paul II. To this day no one knew who the man was – the assumption had always been that he was Chinese, and that he had had to remain anonymous to avoid persecution. Presumably the same considerations of safety might well apply to the Church’s senior representative in Baghdad.
• Lomeli’s address, in contrast, had been carefully constructed to ensure it was neutral to the point of blandness: Our recent Popes have all been tireless promoters of peace and co-operation at the international level. Let us pray that the future Pope will continue this ceaseless work of charity and love . . . Nobody could object to that, not even Tedesco, who could sniff out relativism as fast as a trained dog could find a truffle.
• No, of course I am not proposing female ordination. But there is nothing to stop us bringing women into the Curia at the highest levels. The work is administrative, not sacerdotal. The late Holy Father often spoke of it.’
    ‘True, but he never actually did it. How can a woman instruct a bishop, let alone select a bishop, when she isn’t even allowed to celebrate Communion? The College will see it as ordination by the back door.
• the Sistine always on their left. Lomeli never failed to be disappointed by the dull dun brickwork of the chapel’s exterior. Why had every ounce of human genius been poured into that exquisite interior – almost too much genius, in his opinion: it gave one a kind of aesthetic indigestion – and yet seemingly no thought at all had been given to the outside? It looked like a warehouse, or a factory. Or perhaps that was the point. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in God’s mystery—
•  But how was such stillness to be achieved? That was the question to which Guardini offered no answer, and in place of stillness, as the night wore on, the noise in Lomeli’s mind became even shriller than usual. He saved others; himself he cannot save – the jeer of the scribes and elders at the foot of the cross. The paradox at the heart of the Gospel. The priest who celebrates Mass and yet is unable to achieve Communion himself.
    He pictured a great shaft of cacophonous darkness, filled with taunting voices thundering down upon him from heaven. A divine revelation of doubt.
• Once, in his youth, Lomeli had enjoyed a modest fame for the richness of his baritone. But it had become thin with age, like a fine wine left too long.
• Lomeli turned over to the next page and scanned it briefly. Platitude followed platitude, seamlessly interlocked. He flicked over to the third page, and the fourth. They were no better. On impulse he turned around and placed the homily on the seat of his throne, then turned back to the microphone.
    ‘But you know all that.’ There was some laughter.
• Paul tells the Ephesians – who were, let us remember, a mixture of Gentiles and Jews – that God’s gift to the Church is its variety: some are created by Him to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and others teachers, who “together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ”. They make a unity in the work of service. These are different people – one may suppose strong people, with forceful personalities, unafraid of persecution – serving the Church in their different ways: it is the work of service that brings them together and makes the Church. God could, after all, have created a single archetype to serve Him. Instead, He created what a naturalist might call a whole ecosystem of mystics and dreamers and practical builders – managers, even – with different strengths and impulses, and from these He fashioned the body of Christ.’
• What if God had a plan for him?
    Could that explain why he had been seized by that extraordinary impulse in St Peter’s? Were those few sentences, which he now found so hard to remember, not actually his at all, but a manifestation of the Holy Spirit working through him?
    He tried to pray. But God, who had felt so close only a few minutes before, had vanished again, and his pleas for guidance seemed to vanish into the ether
• In other words, we should have no fear of diversity, because it is this variety that gives our Church its strength. And then, says Paul, when we have achieved completeness in truth and love, “we shall not be children any longer, or tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine, at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in deceit”.
    ‘I take this idea of the body and the head to be a beautiful metaphor for collective wisdom: of a religious community working together to grow into Christ. To work together, and grow together, we must be tolerant, because all of the body’s limbs are needed. No one person or faction should seek to dominate another. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Paul urges the faithful elsewhere in that same letter.
    ‘My brothers and sisters, in the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
    ‘Let us pray that the Lord will grant us a Pope who doubts, and by his doubts continues to make the Catholic faith a living thing that may inspire the whole world. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins, and asks forgiveness, and carries on.
• toured Africa: he had organised a Mass attended by a congregation of more than four million. The Pope had joked in his homily that Joshua Adeyemi was the only man in the Church who could have conducted the service without the need for amplification.
• O’Malley pulled an envelope from beneath his vestments and handed it to Lomeli. ‘La Repubblica believes his dramatic arrival is all part of the late Holy Father’s secret plan.’
    Lomeli laughed. ‘I would be delighted if there was a plan – secret or otherwise! But I sense that the only one with a plan for this Conclave is God, and so far He seems to be determined to keep it to Himself.’
• Another man who had faith in his own abilities was Adeyemi, who swore the oath with his trademark boom. He had made his name as Archbishop of Lagos when the Holy Father had first
• ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, I hope you continue as a candidate. I want to see the issues aired: I thought Scavizzi answered you well enough in his meditation. Besides . . .’ he wiggled his little feet happily and closed his eyes, ‘you’re splitting the liberal vote!’
    Lomeli studied him for a moment. One had to smile. He was as cunning as a peasant selling a pig at market. Forty votes, that was all the Patriarch of Venice needed: forty votes, and he would have the blocking third he needed to prevent the election of a detested ‘progressive’.
• After that came a range of other explanations, from nearly all of which Lomeli’s imagination recoiled. In a literal sense, he had trained himself not to deal with such thoughts. A passage in Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul had been his guiding text ever since his tormenting days and nights as a young priest:
     As for women, and everything to do with them, never a word, never; it was as if there were no women in the world… The mere idea of going next door and talking man to man with Adeyemi about a woman was a concept that lay entirely outside the dean’s closed intellectual system.
• He saw that he had given the Canadian the perfect opportunity to remind the Conclave of his skill at performing the liturgy. He sang well. He looked like a cleric in some Hollywood romantic movie: Spencer Tracy came to mind. His gestures were dramatic enough to suggest he was infused with the divine spirit, yet not so theatrical that they seemed false or egocentric. When Lomeli queued to receive Communion and knelt before the cardinal, the sacrilegious thought occurred to him that just this one service might have been worth three or four votes to the Canadian.
• a husk. It was one thing to dread becoming Pope; it was another altogether to confront the sudden reality that it was never going to happen – that after years of being regarded as the heir apparent, your peers had looked you over and God had guided their choice elsewhere. Lomeli wondered if he would ever recover.
• She shook her head.
    ‘Even if I give you my absolute assurance it will go no further than this room?’
    A pause, followed by another shake of the head.
   It was then that he had an inspiration. Afterwards he would always believe that God had come to his aid. ‘Would you like me to hear your confession?
• ! Yes, I confessed my sin at the time, and my bishop moved me to a different parish, and I never lapsed again. Such relationships were not uncommon in those days. Celibacy has always been culturally alien in Africa – you know that.’
    ‘And the child?’
    ‘The child?’ Adeyemi flinched, faltered. ‘The child was brought up in a Christian household, and to this day he has no idea who his father is – if indeed it is me. That is the child.’
    He recovered his equilibrium sufficiently to glare at Lomeli, and for one moment longer the edifice remained in place – defiant, wounded, magnificent: he would have made a tremendous figurehead for the Church, Lomeli thought.
• You want to destroy my reputation so that you can be Pope!
   ‘Don’t be absurd. Even the thought of it is unworthy of you.
• An election completed in five ballots was what Lomeli had secretly prayed for – a nice, easy, conventional number, suggestive of an election that had been neither schism nor coronation but a meditative process of discerning God’s will. It would not be so this year. He did not like the feel of it.
    Studying for his doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University, he had read Canetti’s Crowds and Power. From it he had learnt to separate the various categories of crowd – the panicking crowd, the stagnant crowd, the crowd in revolt, and so forth. It was a useful skill for a cleric. Applying this secular analysis, a papal Conclave could be seen as the most sophisticated crowd on earth, moved this way or that by the collective impulse of the Holy Spirit.
• The Canadian, who was nervously fingering his pectoral cross as the voting proceeded, managed somehow to combine a bland personality with passionate ambition – a paradox that was not uncommon in Lomeli’s experience.
• As he did so, he noticed the little kit of toiletries that O’Malley had provided for Benítez on the night of his arrival – a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, a bottle of deodorant, and a plastic disposable razor, still in its cellophane wrapper
• Was it really possible that he had spent the past thirty years worshipping the Church rather than God? Because that, in essence, was the accusation Benítez had levelled against him. In his heart he could not escape the truth of it – the sin; the heresy. Was it any wonder he had found it so difficult to pray?
• Therefore, when I say I need to know why Sister Shanumi came to be in the Casa Santa Marta, I am asking not for myself but on behalf of our late mutual friend the Pope.’
    ‘You say that, Your Eminence. But how do I know what he would have wanted me to do?’
    ‘Ask him, Sister Agnes. Ask God.’
    For at least a minute she did not reply. Eventually she said, ‘I promised the superioress I wouldn’t say anything. And I shan’t say anything. You understand?’ And then she put on a pair of spectacles, sat at her computer terminal and began to type with great rapidity. It was a curious sight – Lomeli would never forget it – the elderly aristocratic nun peering closely at the screen, her fingers flying as if by their own volition across the grey plastic keyboard.
• Ah, he thought, but he was something, this Cardinal Tremblay! A North American who was not an American, a French-speaker who was not a Frenchman, a doctrinal liberal who was also a social conservative (or was it the other way round?), a champion of the Third World and the epitome of the First
• You wish to serve God to the fullness of your abilities. Unfortunately, you believe those abilities are equal to the papacy, and I have to tell you they are not. I am speaking as a friend.’
• Satisfied that the corridor was deserted, Lomeli walked quickly towards the landing. Outside the Holy Father’s apartment, the votive candles flickered in their red glasses. He contemplated the door. For a final time he hesitated. Whatever I do, I do for You. You see my heart. You know my intentions are pure. I commend myself to Your protection. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
• paperback copy of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. It was famously – according to the report issued by the Vatican press office – the last book the Holy Father had been reading before his heart attack.
• What he was quite sure of was that at some point during this time, the Holy Father entered his mind and spoke to him. Of course, it could have been a trick of the imagination: the rationalists had an explanation for everything, even for inspiration. All he knew was that before he knelt he was in despair, and afterwards, when he scrambled to his feet and stared at the bed, the dead man had told him what to do.
    *  His first thought was that there must be a concealed drawer.
• Cautiously he pressed it. Nothing seemed to happen. But when he grasped the bedpost so that he could swing his feet back down to the floor, the top came away in his hand
• but a stated book value of €389,600,000. The shortfall in revenue would appear to indicate a paid occupancy rate of only 56%. It appears therefore, as Your Holiness suspected, that much of the income is not being properly stated.
• ‘We must show it to them.’
    Bellini regarded him with renewed horror. ‘Are you serious? A document based on private bank records, stolen from the Holy Father’s apartment? It will smack of desperation! It could backfire on us.’…
   ‘The circumstances of a dirty trick – a break-in, a stolen document, the smearing of a brother cardinal. I would be the Richard Nixon of Popes! My pontificate would be tainted from the start,
• And all the while in the background there was Tedesco and his gang sniping away at him, practically accusing him of heresy whenever he said anything that sounded too much like common sense about gays or divorced couples or promoting more women. Hence the cruel paradox of his papacy: the more the outside world loved him, the more isolated he became inside the Holy See. By the end, he hardly trusted anybody.
• ‘And have Tremblay as Pope?’
    ‘We’ve had worse.’
    Lomeli studied him for a moment, then got to his feet. The pain behind his eye was almost blinding. ‘You grieve me, Aldo. You do. Five times I cast my ballot for you, in the true belief that you were the right man to lead the Church. But now I see that the Conclave, in its wisdom, was correct, and I was wrong. You lack the courage required to be Pope. I’ll leave you alone.
• Cash! he thought, tightening his mouth. He remembered how the late Holy Father always used to say that cash was the apple in their Garden of Eden, the original temptation that had led to so much sin. Cash sluiced through the Holy See in a constant stream that swelled to a river at Christmas and Easter, when bishops and monsignors and friars could be seen trooping through the Vatican carrying envelopes and attaché cases and tin boxes stuffed with notes and coins from the faithful. A papal audience could raise 100,000 euros in donations, the money pressed discreetly into the hands of the Holy Father’s attendants by his visitors as they took their leave while the Pope pretended not to notice.
• Others took a harsher view. Sabbadin bent as he was passing on his way to the buffet table and hissed in his ear, ‘Why have you thrown away a valuable weapon? We could have used this to control Tremblay after his election. All you have succeeded in doing is strengthening Tedesco!’
• ‘No one who follows their conscience ever does wrong, Your Eminence. The consequences may not turn out as we intend; it may prove in time that we made a mistake. But that is not the same as being wrong. The only guide to a person’s actions can ever be their conscience, for it is in our conscience that we most clearly hear the voice of God.’
• You are responsible for this, I believe?’ He waved the report in Lomeli’s face.
    ‘No, Your Eminence, you are responsible for it – because of your actions.’
• On Lomeli went. Bellini . . . Benítez . . . Brandão D’Cruz . . . Brotzkus . . . Cárdenas . . . Contreras . . . Courtemarche . . . He knew them all so much better now, their foibles and their weaknesses. A line of Kant’s came into his mind: Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made . . . The Church was built of crooked timber – how could it not be? But by the grace of God it fitted together. It had endured two thousand years; if necessary it would last another two weeks without a Pope. He felt suffused by a deep and mysterious love for his colleagues and their frailties.
• * He opened his eyes to find a folded note: And behold there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. Matthew 8:24. He looked around to see Bellini leaning forward, looking at him. He was embarrassed to have shown such weakness in public, but no one else seemed to be paying him any attention. The cardinals opposite were either reading or staring into space. In front of the altar, the scrutineers were setting up their table. The balloting must have ended. He picked up his pen and scribbled beneath the quotation: I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. Psalm 3. Then he tossed the note back. Bellini read it and nodded judiciously, as if Lomeli was one of his old students at the Gregorian who had returned a correct answer
• It was he, as dean, who had connived in the destruction of one front-runner and brought about the ruin of the other. He had removed the impediments to the Patriarch of Venice’s advance, even though he was unwavering in his belief that Tedesco had to be stopped.
• the shock had hit him. He was not so solipsistic as to believe that a bomb had gone off merely because he had written his own name on a piece of paper. But he was not so prosaic that he did not believe in the interconnectedness of things. How else to interpret the timing of the blast, which had struck with the precision of a thunderbolt, except as a sign that God was displeased with these machinations?
• the shrouds of darkness? I used to think they were merely clouds, but now I’m sure it is smoke. There is a fire somewhere, beyond our field of vision, that Michelangelo chooses not to show us – a symbol of violence, of battle, strife. And do you see the way Peter is straining to keep his head upright and level, even as he is being hauled up feet-first? Why is he doing that? Surely because he is determined not to surrender to the violence being done to him. He is using his last reserves of strength to demonstrate his faith and his humanity. He wishes to maintain his equilibrium in defiance of a world that, for him, is literally turning upside down.
    ‘Isn’t this a sign for us today, from the founder of the Church? Evil is seeking to turn the world on its head, but even as we suffer, the Blessed Apostle Peter instructs us to maintain our reason and our belief in Christ the Risen Saviour.
• The most sacred task that ever arises within our Mother Church – the bestowing of the Keys of St Peter – has been disrupted by violence in Rome itself. The moment of supreme crisis has come upon us, as foretold by our Lord Jesus Christ, and we must at long last find the strength to rise to meet it: And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in great perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’
• And by a stroke of providence – or divine intervention – a helicopter hired on a pooled basis by several television news companies was at that moment hovering above the Piazza del Risorgimento, filming the blast damage. The airspace of the Vatican City was closed, but the cameraman, using a long lens, was able to film the cardinals as they processed across the Piazza Santa Marta, past the Palazzo San Carlo and the Palazzo del Tribunale, past the church of Santo Stefano and along the edge of the Vatican Gardens before they disappeared into the courtyards within the complex of the Apostolic Palace.
    The shaky images of the scarlet-clad figures, broadcast live around the world and repeated endlessly throughout the day, put a little heart back into the Catholic faithful. The pictures conveyed a sense of purpose, of unity and defiance. Subliminally they also suggested that very soon there would be a new Pope.
• Afterwards, when he tried to describe his emotions to Bellini, he said that he felt as though a great wind had briefly lifted him off his feet and whirled him into the air, only to set him down abruptly and go whirling off after someone else. ‘That was the Holy Spirit, I suppose. The sensation was terrifying and exhilarating and certainly unforgettable – I am glad to have experienced it – but when it was over, I felt nothing except relief.’ It was the truth, more or less.
• To derive one’s papal title from a virtue – innocence, piety, clemency – rather than from a saint was a tradition that had died out generations ago. There had been thirteen Popes named Innocent, none of them in the last three centuries. But the more he considered it, even in those first few seconds, the more he was struck by its aptness – by its symbolism at such a time of bloodshed, by the boldness of its declaration of intent. It seemed to promise both a return to tradition and yet a departure from it – exactly the sort of ambiguity the Curia relished. And it fitted the dignified, childlike, graceful, softly spoken Benítez to perfection

The book title belies how many fun facts reside inside this most informative book. Nicola Twilley's coverage of the cold storage technology is very well-rounded.

• The refrigerated warehouse is the missing middle in food’s journey from farm to table: a black box whose mysterious internal workings allow perishable food to conquer the constraints of both time and space.


• * would never imagine that beef carcasses have to be electrocuted in order to withstand the rigors of refrigeration without toughening up... you have no idea that the bag itself is a highly engineered respiratory apparatus, designed in layers of differentially semipermeable films to slow spinach, arugula, and endive metabolism and extend their shelf lives.


• * Mechanical cooling—refrigeration produced by human artifice, as opposed to the natural chill offered by weather-dependent snow and ice—wasn’t achieved until the mid-1700s, it wasn’t commercialized until the late 1800s, and it wasn’t domesticated until the 1920s... Today, a century later, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and/or sold under refrigeration. The United States already boasts an estimated 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space—a third polar region of sorts.


• Most urgent, mechanical cooling makes a growing and significant contribution to global warming, based on the power required to run it as well as the super-greenhouse gases that circulate within many cooling systems. With unfortunate irony, the spread of the artificial cryosphere turns out to be one of the leading culprits in the disappearance of its natural counterpart.


• Steering is done using two levers, both of which are incredibly sensitive; on one of them, the controls are also inverted, so that a left turn will take you to the right. “If you want some horror, watch YouTube forklift accidents,”


• In a frozen warehouse, the floor glitters with ice crystals, leading to slips and falls. The ammonia used in the refrigeration system is deadly... a white cloud. “When you see that, you’re seeing death,” he said. “Ammonia wants moisture—it wants your eyeballs and your crevices.”


• cold’s ability to slow everything down... the humans charged with loading and unloading those dairy products. Even computers cease to function in the deep freeze... At minus twenty and below, tape doesn’t stick properly, rubber becomes brittle, cardboard is stiffer—and all those minor obstacles seem more like insurmountable challenges to a cold-slowed brain.


• * the underdressed or overexposed individual starts to grumble, mumble, fumble, and stumble. “Cold stupid” is mountaineering slang for the way that thought processes congeal after spending too long at a low temperature.


• Colder almost always means slower and dumber. One recent study showed that warm-blooded marine predators such as seals and whales tend to cluster in the coolest parts of the ocean, not because they find the chill congenial but rather because, under those conditions, their piscine prey is “slow, stupid, and cold”—and thus easier to catch.


• Lighting uses energy and emits heat, so a perpetual blue-gray gloom prevailed inside the windowless cooler and freezer rooms.


• To make this daily game of warehouse Jenga even more challenging, certain products can’t go next to each other... Organic products shouldn’t sit underneath conventional ones; raw foods mustn’t be stacked above cooked. “You have to think about odor,” added Espinoza. “Onions and seafood can be quite potent.”... Like natural fibers, bread and cheese have a tendency to absorb the odors to which they’re exposed, as does ice cream


• * Although the idea that working in the cold would lead to catching cold makes intuitive sense, scientists have only just discovered why... a previously unknown immune mechanism: cells in our nostrils that are capable of detecting incoming microbes and releasing a swarm of tiny little antiviral bubbles to surround and neutralize them. According to the Boston-based team behind the breakthrough, at forty degrees, nostril cells release significantly fewer and less potent defensive bubbles


• * Cold stress can literally be measured in the blood of forklift truck operators: scientists found that plasma levels of the fight-or-flight hormone noradrenaline were significantly higher after a shift in the freezer... Muscles contract and tendons tighten in the cold, making them more prone to strains and tears; inhaling cold air can trigger bronchial spasms, inducing asthma or even a chronic pulmonary condition known as Eskimo lung.


• the therapeutic impacts of cold exposure, told me that when he sits people in a specially designed cooling suit for three hours, they experience the metabolic equivalent of a medium exercise training session. “It’s the combination of muscle contractions from shivering and the stimulus that you’re getting from the cold that really improve your ability to handle glucose in your blood,”


• each of us has our own metabolic rate, as well as varying degrees and forms of internal padding, surface area, and body hair, and even a particular ratio of slow- to fast-twitch muscle fibers, all of which add up to make an individual more or less cold tolerant.


• The hoodie—iconic wardrobe staple of skateboarders, hip-hop stars, and normcore tech-industry bros—is one of the very earliest examples of purpose-built protective wear for refrigerated-warehouse workers... RefrigiWear products are also worn by Iditarod dogsled racers, New Mexican molybdenum miners, and the men who built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, but the company’s core market remains refrigerated-warehouse workers.


• the first turkeys were starting to come in from Montana to be stockpiled for Thanksgiving; frozen pizzas and TV dinners accumulate over the summer in anticipation of back-to-school and football season in the fall... pallets stacked with rolls of X-ray film for local hospitals; and thousands and thousands of freshly baked King’s Hawaiian buns, trucked in hot from Torrance—a thermal disruption for which Americold charges extra. “We need to bring it down slowly to keep the moisture in the product. Bread will crystallize if it’s cooled too fast,”


• In nonpremium brands, a pint of ice cream is, on average, 50 percent air. This leads to all sorts of logistical complications. National brands of ice cream have to use different formulations for different regions to take into account the thinner air at higher elevations. “You can’t truck it from Washington to Georgia,” Espinoza told me. “The Rockies,”

-------

• Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton—who all tried, and failed, to establish where cold comes from. Bacon died from a chill caught while trying to freeze a chicken using snow; ... René Descartes, who compared certainty about the very existence of cold unfavorably to certainty about that of God, came closest to our modern scientific understanding in his Meditations...  “If it is true that cold is merely the absence of heat,” he argued


• The compressor was a black plastic–sheathed cylinder the size of a can of beer, manufactured by Samsung. The condenser, a book-sized concertina of rippled aluminum, came from Thailand. The evaporator was an off-white rectangle about as big as a legal-size sheet of paper that looked sort of like a flattened, abstract-art version of a circuit board. The final player in the fridge quartet was so small I didn’t spot it at first—a little coil of thin copper wire called a capillary tube.


• At the point a mostly liquid refrigerant enters the evaporator, it’s at very low pressure—so low that, as it loops around inside the back wall of the fridge, it can’t help but begin to boil. As it boils, its molecules suck heat from their surroundings in order to move faster and expand into a gas. That thermal gradient produces the desirable side effect of cooling the contents of the fridge... In an explanation that was completely counterintuitive yet also made perfect sense, Bradford explained that R-134a could not dump all the heat it picked up from inside the fridge and cool down into a liquid again unless we warmed it up. Only once our R-134a was hotter than the garage we were standing in would that heat flow out from the refrigerant and into the air around us... By the time it gets down to the end of the condenser, it’s probably at ninety degrees.” <> Then it hits a choke point: the expansion valve. This long and extremely skinny tube restricts the amount of refrigerant flowing through, creating an area of lower pressure on the other side. The refrigerant makes it back to the evaporator as a low-pressure liquid—cool enough, and with a low enough boiling point, to suck in all the heat inside the fridge as it turns into a gas once again.


• Smoking meat or fish dries it out but also deposits cell-killing chemicals on the food’s surface. Cheese—memorably characterized by author Clifton Fadiman as “milk’s leap toward immortality”—relies on lactic acid bacteria to sour the milk, followed by the addition of salt and a mixture of enzymes called rennet to help it coagulate into curds


• In Asia, for example, fish, cabbage, and soybeans were mixed with salt as well as moldy rice to encourage the growth of beneficial microbes whose busy fermentation both repels their noxious cousins and produces deliciously tangy, funky flavors—the precursors of today’s soy sauce, sushi, and kimchi. This partial decomposition can be seen as a kind of negotiated preservation truce.


• Canning: the French introduced universal conscription to raise the largest army the world had yet seen: more than a million men, under the command of a young, ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte. The local countryside buckled under the pressure of feeding this plundering horde, and in 1795 the French government issued a challenge: a generous cash prize of twelve thousand francs for a new method of preserving food... Appert began his experiments by funneling peas and boiled beef into old champagne bottles, corking them, and sitting them in hot-water baths for varying lengths of time.


• Ice harvest: Working in pairs, the men cut along parallel scored lines using heavy, two-handled ice saws. When the rectangular raft floated free, they grabbed long-handled chisel-like tools called breaker bars, which, when dropped on the scored lines, broke the blocks up crosswise. Finally, they steered each individual cake into the icehouse channel, using a pike pole to gently nudge and drag the slow-moving white cuboids through a narrow band of black water... Snapping individual blocks off the longer raft using the breaker bar was, however, the most rewarding experience—one correctly positioned thrust and, with a gentle crack, a newly carved block emerged in all its crystalline perfection.


• a snow pit would remain cool for a full five weeks, keeping the food stored in it good for almost as long. “If early man had placed milk or cheeses within covered pots


• 1600s: Neapolitan polymath Giambattista della Porta had discovered that adding salt to ice lowered its freezing temperature, meaning that custards could be turned into ice cream and wine into slushies.


• she found, local authorities and planning departments were no longer aware of the existence of these subterranean structures, conjuring up an evocative image of the British Isles as a sort of ice-pocked Swiss cheese, riddled with forgotten voids.


• * Frederic Tudor: had not foreseen that the freezing temperatures necessary for ice to form would also leave Boston’s harbor icebound, meaning that he needed to build huge icehouses to store his cargo until it could be shipped... Before the ice trade, the sawdust from Maine’s timber mills had been similarly worthless.. —meaning that Tudor could acquire vital insulation materials at a knockdown price. Perhaps most fortuitously, as Gavin Weightman, author of The Frozen Water Trade, explains, “since it could be classified as neither mining nor farming,” the ice trade was not subject to any taxes. (A similar category confusion arose in the UK when the first shipment of ice arrived in London in 1822... After much dispute, it was proposed to cut the knot, by entering the commodity as foreign fabric.”)


• Visitors to the United States remarked upon the country’s ice habit,.. The mint julep, popularized as a mixed drink in the eighteenth-century American South, became, with the addition of ice, the refreshing cocktail we know today. As one hostess reminded Maury, “Whenever you hear America abused, remember the ice.”


• “Greatest Refrigerator on Earth” at 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: (All the fair’s temporary structures were clad in this gleaming white plaster, leading to the exposition’s nickname: the White City. Katharine Lee Bates, the lesbian feminist professor whose poem became the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” with its reference to its “alabaster cities” that “gleam, undimmed by human tears,”) To add to its grandeur, the seventy-foot-tall engine-room smokestack, which also served to vent ammonia fumes from the ice-making machine, was disguised as a campanile, complete with another cupola.


• William Cullen became the first person to freeze water without the use of natural ice... prompted by  an observation... when a mercury thermometer that had been immersed in wine was removed, the temperature fell by two or three degrees.


• War, as is often the case, also provided an impetus. In the 1860s, the American Civil War cut the Southern states off from the shipments of lake and river ice upon which they had become dependent, and several inventors seized the chance to build prototype ice machines as replacements.


• Some livestock was raised in the city. Throughout the 1800s, Londoners could consume eggs from local chickens, as well as milk from cows that spent most of their lives in the dark, housed in basement dairies under the Strand... Most meat eaten in cities walked itself to market, often over enormous distances. Much of the lamb consumed in ancient Rome had traveled hundreds of miles on its own four legs


• This obsession with maximizing meat intake was prompted by recent findings from the relatively new discipline of organic chemistry. In the 1830s, European chemists had isolated and named protein... Justus von Liebig, mistakenly concluded that protein was the only truly nutritive element in food.


• Argentinians had the gall to complain of their burdensome surplus.. Then came the proliferation of steamships and railways, knitting distant parts of the planet together. Suddenly, those vast reserves of previously off-limits but livestock-friendly land were substantially closer


• It was Baron Haussmann, then engaged in demolishing the city’s medieval neighborhoods, who first suggested that Tellier should consider cold—making refrigerated transportation one of the lesser-known side effects of Haussmannization,.. Tellier quickly realized that this new technology of refrigeration, if only it could be made seaworthy, held the potential to transform scarcity into abundance at a global scale


• butchers who used to slaughter cattle for their customers started selling dead meat instead... Refrigeration changed where cattle were raised, as well as where they were killed... Ranching in remote, rural Texas and the Great Plains became newly profitable, contributing to the ongoing displacement of Native Americans and the near extinction of the bison upon which they had depended.


• Farmers in Europe also got the short end of the stick... Within three decades, 45 percent was imported as dressed meat.. North York Moors... Previously poor, acidic, and overgrazed grassland quickly became a summer idyll, first for fashionable Victorian gentlemen in game-shooting parties and later for poets, artists, and tourists who marveled at the “wild” beauty of the pink- and purple-clad hillsides. 


• * The river of dead meat flowing into Britain stimulated a countercurrent in live humans, as former farmers emigrated... In Ireland, which had already lost a quarter of its population due to hunger and emigration during the potato famines of the 1840s and ’50s, tenant farmers were all but wiped out by the crash in meat prices, further fueling the rise of the Irish independence movement... “the radicalization of Irish tenant farmers and the gradual disengagement from Irish land by all landlords…were the direct consequences of the disruptive technologies deployed…in Uruguay.”


• Centralized slaughter led to centralized pollution: famously, Chicago had to reverse the course of its filthy river in order to prevent packing wastes from entering Lake Michigan, the city’s drinking water source.


• The logistics of the dead-meat trade depended on large volumes and year-round slaughtering, so to get more meat to market faster, farmers began to produce “baby beef,” pigs rather than hogs, and lamb as opposed to mutton.


• * consequences of refrigerating meat were spurred in part by a nutritional fallacy: the mistaken conclusion that protein from flesh foods was the only essential nutrient.


• * For many Americans in the early years of the twentieth century, the zombie foods that emerged from cold-storage warehouses were similarly horrifying... On a fundamental level, cold disrupted what geographer Susanne Freidberg calls “the known physics of freshness,”... The old certainty that food was good had been based on proximity and appearance—assurances that had been thoroughly disrupted by the introduction of refrigeration. Instead, consumers were being asked to place their faith in an increasingly opaque supply chain and trust that a new technology that they didn’t understand would keep their food safe.


• her adventures answered all the basic questions of how long eggs and chickens could be stored, how rapidly they should be cooled, and what humidity and temperature they should be held at in order to guarantee they remained safe to eat. Along the way, she ended up designing a new, standardized refrigerator car with better air circulation, a more sanitary process for slaughtering, plucking, chilling, and packing chicken, the first science-based egg-quality charts (the predecessor of today’s USDA egg grades), and a protective carton for eggs... Unlike her more theatrical boss, Harvey Washington Wiley, who treated the food industry as an adversary to be fought using high-profile court cases and media shock stories, (Mary) Pennington preferred a low-key, collaborative approach... thanks to Wiley’s success in banning toxic additives and Pennington’s achievements in making refrigeration effective, that chicken was now much less likely to make them sick.


• In the span of just a few decades, the public’s perception of refrigeration had flipped: something that had seemed risky, untrustworthy, and unnatural became instead essential to good health, in that it allowed consumers to consume perishable protein in the quantities necessary to achieve their full potential... The American public’s newfound faith in refrigeration was, to a large extent, Pennington’s legacy


• When Muscle Becomes Meat: Mostly, though, it consists of letting the meat sit in a walk-in fridge for three to four weeks, during which time, thanks to a curious alchemy of cold and time, it becomes 15 percent lighter and 20 percent more valuable.


• As they lined up next to each other under the fluorescent lights, suspended by their rear shanks, they formed a grotesque chorus line: frozen in a Rockette-style scissor kick, all fluffy white skirts of fat and blush-pink limbs.


• * in the much longer annals of meat eating, cool air has been equally, if not more, appreciated for its ability to ripen red meat, turning dry, tough muscle fiber into a juicy, savory steak. This is why, for millennia, farmers have slaughtered their meat in the autumn, when temperatures were falling but not yet freezing.


• * postslaughter, those cells had continued to respire, burning through their stock of complex sugars—but in the absence of breath and blood, this had become an anaerobic reaction...the lactic acid isn’t being removed. The result is a cramp in runners and rigor mortis in slaughtered beef. Paradoxically, James explained, it takes energy to relax muscles.


• * postrigor. Muscles contain enzymes whose job it is to break down fibers so they can be rebuilt; they’re essential to basic muscle maintenance and beloved of bodybuilders. These enzymes don’t quit just because the animal whose cells they inhabit has died; instead, they gradually degrade the proteins that became knotted during rigor, weakening their links so that the meat becomes tender... He and his colleagues have found that the postslaughter cooling conditions have a bigger impact on how meat tastes than most other predeath factors,


• To start with, the speed with which rigor sets in during phase one makes all the difference to the tenderness and juiciness of the resulting meat, and that pace is primarily determined by temperature... your hand couldn’t have moved without the encouragement of a little burst of calcium, released from a special pump in the muscle sheath. This calcium pump evolved to function at normal body temperature. At fifty degrees, it fails, which floods the muscle with calcium—the trigger to contract. Earlier, less powerful refrigeration systems had cooled carcasses slowly enough that the muscles had used up their energy reserves long before they reached fifty degrees, which meant that the calcium call to action fell on unresponsive ears.


• * Among Franklin’s lesser-known electrical experiments was a successful, if unwise, attempt to slaughter turkeys by shocking them... Electrocuting meat averts cold shortening because it’s a fast track to rigor mortis: it forces the muscles to rapidly contract and relax, burning through the last of their energy reserves. To be effective, the stimulation needs to come within the first hour after slaughter:


• Malach, or “Angel,” for his ability to smuggle desperately needed food, medicine, and other supplies in and out, using his red hair, his blue eyes, and a Virgin Mary medallion he’d won in a card game to pass as Christian.


• Sam taught his grandson the art of aging meat, using the movement of cold, damp air to direct a process of controlled decomposition. “It’s about airflow, temperature, and humidity,”... the room has to be cold enough to prevent bacteria from multiplying but warm enough for enzymatic activity to occur, as well as for pale-gray, whiskery patches of mold to grow on the fatty parts of the meat... it releases its own enzymes, which also help break down muscle and connective tissues... it’s a waiting game as the enzymes transform both texture and flavor, breaking down muscle to create smaller, more flavorful amino acid and sugar molecules and unlacing stringy fibers to create sponge-like pockets that will trap juices during cooking. At the same time the fat marbled throughout the muscle is gently oxidizing, which creates its own complement of aromatic fatty acids.


• In the 1970s, with the proliferation of plastic, meat-packers figured out that they could “wet-age” meat instead... Companies avoid paying to cool a huge room full of beef for three weeks, while the biochemical transformations that make meat tender happen inside the refrigerated trucks, warehouses.. Cutting the beef at the plant also concentrated additional by-products, which made it easier to find markets for them:

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• Produce: despite having been picked, they are still living organisms—and how they look and taste when we eventually eat them depends in large part on what and how fast they breathe...  the first commercial use to which the new technology of refrigeration was applied was to keep animal products cool. But this implied hierarchy of perishability is wrong, Falagán told me: fruits and vegetables are the most liable to decay.


• There were already clues that the solution would involve depriving fruit of air as well as warmth... In Afghanistan, a particularly ingenious device known as a kangina is still used to keep fruit fresh for up to six months by sealing it into an airtight, disc-shaped container made of two clay bowls joined together.


• It took until 1927, when Kidd and West published their initial results, to settle on a recipe for a synthetic atmosphere capable of doubling the postharvest life of apples: chill to forty-six degrees and open ventilation ports as needed to raise carbon dioxide to 10 percent and reduce oxygen levels to a similar proportion.


• Then, thanks to the rise of Cold War–era nuclear-powered submarines, new atmospheric-control technology emerged. Whirlpool’s Tectrol (short for “total environmental control”) and the Atlantic Research Corporation’s Arcagen system were both capable of creating and maintaining precision atmospheres using catalytic converters,


• Evolutionary biologists use the term ecological filter for processes or conditions that prevent certain species from inhabiting a particular landscape; over the past century, controlled-atmosphere cold storage has proven to be a powerful ecological filter for apple varieties in the marketplace.


• * Controlled-atmosphere cold storage transformed the apple; for lettuce, it proved equally revolutionary. Today, the ninety-mile length of the Salinas Valley is known as the Salad Bowl of the World because it produces more than 70 percent of the nation’s lettuce... By the 1920s, Salinas Valley growers had figured out that refrigeration could give their lettuce a better chance of success: they shipped it packed in crates with ice, each railcar load had to be buried under fifteen thousand pounds of the stuff, giving the crisp-head variety previously known as Los Angeles its now-familiar name: iceberg... This fate befalls the fictional Adam Trask in Steinbeck’s East of Eden.


• Lettuce’s path from lottery ticket to big business required another breakthrough in cooling: vacuum pumps capable of generating and maintaining very low pressure. Invented by researchers at Eastman Kodak in 1929 as a way to dry photographic film... In a high vacuum, water boils at room temperature, and an iceberg lettuce is 96 percent water. Inside Brunsing’s tube, water in the tissues of the still-sun-warm lettuce quickly evaporated off as steam, taking heat with it. The inside of a head of iceberg lettuce could be lowered to thirty-four degrees in a matter of minutes, as opposed to days using ice


• Refrigeration allowed the comparative advantage of the Salinas Valley’s beneficent climate to exert its force on the market, making it economically inefficient to grow lettuce anywhere else.


• while transporting heads of lettuce intact across the country was a challenge, attempting the same feat for a blend of shredded lettuces was positively Herculean. “For me, a precut salad is the perfect storm,” agreed Natalia Falagán. “First you have damaged tissue where all the bacteria can come in. Then you have a mixture of vegetables, so they all have different respiration rates. And then you want it to last two weeks?”... “It was differentially permeable membrane that made the packaged-salad thing a home run,” Lugg told me. Differentially permeable membranes are fundamental to the basic unit of biological life: a cell’s encircling membrane functions like a bouncer at a club, allowing some molecules in preferentially, while letting others in more slowly or not at all... Different plastic blends were extruded in such a way that they let oxygen or carbon dioxide diffuse through at specific rates. After years of testing, Lugg ended up combining five different layers to get the functionality he needed... Astonishingly, the bag itself—a cheap, disposable plastic lettuce bag—was a miniaturized version of Kidd and West’s controlled atmosphere warehouse.


• * Baby spinach was particularly tough, he told me. “We were packaging spinach when it only had five true leaves on the plant,” he said. “That early, it’s really breathing hard.”... Iceberg lettuce consumption has fallen by half since Jim Lugg’s controlled-atmosphere bags changed the face of salad;


• ethylene, and it had been causing curious phenomena for millennia. A colorless, gaseous, sweet-smelling hydrocarbon, ethylene was first isolated by the German alchemist J. J. Becher in the 1660s, as part of his efforts to demonstrate the existence of phlogiston... ethylene became the drug of choice at high-end séances in the Roaring Twenties... archaeologist John Hale to come up with a compelling argument that, in ancient Greece, the oracular pronouncements made by the priestesses at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi might well have been the result of huffing ethylene... he identified dozens of crisscrossing geological faults, including one in the limestone directly beneath the subterranean chamber in which the priestesses would sit. The rock’s pores contained hydrocarbons, including ethylene... The same chemical that animated the Delphic Oracle now forms the bedrock of our petrochemical civilization as the primary ingredient in everything from polyethylene plastic bags to polyester fabric.


• Contrary to popular belief, bananas are the ultimate refrigerated fruit. In order to be a global commodity rather than an exotic luxury, the banana depends on a seamless network of thermal control... his first encounter with a banana palm, on display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. “It was surrounded by a crowd of spectators,”


• Refrigeration is essential because a standard cargo of bananas is, effectively, a furnace. “The energy coming off a box of ripening bananas could heat a small apartment,”


• Bananas were the pioneers, but, D’Arrigo told me, to get a sense of what ripening can do for the marketability of a fruit, I should consider the avocado... to adapt banana-ripening regimes to avocados. (This was no simple matter: avocados require three times the refrigeration to pull heat out of the gassed fruit, or they’ll explode.)


• with the assistance of freezers and aseptic storage tanks, orange juice has transcended them all to become a financial instrument... Afterward, nine out of every ten oranges grown in the state were juiced, and there were more oranges than ever.


• The problem of restoring lost flavor to frozen juice turned out to be an opportunity: it gave producers the ability to custom blend their beverage, so that Minute Maid would always taste the same... Each of the chemicals originally came from an orange, just not necessarily from the same oranges or in the same ratio—and because it is derived “from the named fruit,” to use the USDA’s terminology, it doesn’t have to be listed on the label as an added flavoring. The end product is still 100 percent natural orange juice for labeling purposes


• she discovered that lowering the oxygen levels in a blueberry cold-storage unit gradually, over the course of seven days as opposed to twenty-four hours, will extend the fruit’s shelf life by a full 25 percent. Another series of charts helped her explain why: it turns out that suddenly changing the atmosphere a fruit is breathing is a nasty metabolic shock.


• “take a plant and breed it so it can be harvested when it’s super immature, so that it’s tender and lovely and we want to eat it”—but also how we then reverse engineer its metabolism so that the twilight years of that harvested fruit or leaf will extend indefinitely. “We’re kind of asking a lot,” he said. <> Of course, as in Oscar Wilde’s fable of eternal youth, when we receive the thing we ask for, it’s often accompanied by a host of unexpected and frequently undesirable consequences.


• “throughout Latin America the destabilization resulting from banana-related interventions created a tradition of weak institutions, making it difficult for true democracy and fair economic policies to take hold. The Latin American tradition of governments not supported by the general population, and propped up by overseas commercial interests, was created under the authorship of United Fruit.”


• Fred McKinley Jones & refrigerated trucks: Jones had done what cooling experts considered impossible: invented the world’s first truly mobile mechanical refrigeration unit.


• Thermo King units were used to store blood and serums as well as cool field hospitals, but they also kept food fresh and allowed troops to enjoy an ice-cold Coca-Cola on steamy Pacific island bases. “They could land it on a beach-head in half an hour and have it running,” Jones explained. “And it was light enough to drop by parachute.”


• as refrigerated trucks took over from iced railcars, the big Chicago meat-packers and their urban (and unionized) workforce could be bypassed, to be replaced by an entirely new beef economy based in rural Corn Belt towns where cattle could be fattened most cheaply... The ripple effect of this transformation shapes the geography and economics of American meat to this day. Urban stockyard workers had been unionized since the 1930s; employees of the new rural processing plants were not: they were and are paid much less.


• The eleven-month Berlin Airlift proved that a city of two million people could be sustained entirely on food that arrived by plane—at a cost of $4 billion in today’s money.


• such exports have been threatened by Trump-era trade wars with China, the rise of cheaper Chilean and Uzbeki cherries, and improvements in the domestic Chinese cold chain that have given homegrown cherries a longer shelf life. The brief window in which it made at least some economic sense to fly planes filled with cherries from Seattle to Shanghai may be closing.


• The Sushi Economy, two simultaneous innovations that took place in 1970—“the ability to make tuna available to diners across long distances, and a newly acquired taste for fat among sushi’s greatest enthusiasts”—combined to transform bluefin tuna from a worthless trash fish into one the world’s most expensive foods. The man responsible for the first breakthrough was a young Japan Airlines executive, Akira Okazaki, charged with solving the company’s unique freight problem... after three years of trial and error, and with the help of a pair of Canadian undertakers, who helped him construct an entirely new container—known to this day as a tuna “coffin”—Okazaki was ready to ship Atlantic bluefin to Tokyo.


• Barbara Pratt: For the next seven years, she traveled and worked inside a refrigerated intermodal container, or “reefer,” as they’re called in the industry, circling the globe alongside Peruvian asparagus and Mexican mangoes. Her little-known adventures laid the groundwork for today’s globalized food system... Based on her findings, the entire ventilation system of a standard reefer unit was redesigned so that the cooler air entered from the bottom rather than the top, as was standard on a truck.


• * The wild salmon for sale in your supermarket may have been caught in Alaskan waters, but it will likely have spent nearly two months of its afterlife crisscrossing its former Pacific hunting grounds inside a reefer unit...fish pin boning is a delicate operation that can’t be mechanized—and that the wages earned by Chinese workers are less than a fifth of the amount earned by their American counterparts. <> Nearly two-thirds of all fruit and vegetables produced in the world are eaten in a different country from the one in which they were grown.


• Underground cheese cave: “The cost of construction is also cheaper, because you don’t have to do a roof—you just put in a sprinkler system,” said Griesemer. “And we don’t charge for the pillars... he flip side is that changing the temperature takes a while: Griesemer says that it will take a month and a half to draw enough heat out of the rocks to bring his new refrigerated space down to thirty-six degrees... it can’t easily be defrosted without causing cracks that could lead to the collapse of the entire subterranean structure.


• they’re all in the center of the country, strung along the cross-continental path blazed by America’s mother road, Route 66. <> Making cold mobile reshaped the geography of food. The location and design of refrigerated warehouses has, in turn, been transformed by those new supply chains.


• refrigerated warehouse: Recently, Wilmington has begun to face a new generation of competitors to its south:... “That’s all to do with the widening of the Panama Canal,”... all the refrigerated meat and produce that the US sends to East Asia—its largest export market—was funneled through West Coast ports like Long Beach or Oakland. “East Coast US ports can now compete directly,”


• Whole Foods stores, by contrast, are scattered across the nation; there aren’t enough clustered within any given 250-mile radius to justify a dedicated distribution center. “So what do you do?” asked Wulfraat, before telling me: “You end up outsourcing distribution to wholesalers.”...  Shopping at Whole Foods is more expensive, not necessarily because its food is healthier or better for the environment but because its supply chain is so inefficient.


• Not only is the population of the developed world aging out of employment at a rapid rate but, even in the US, the minimum wage has risen sufficiently that the steep initial investment in an automated system now seems much more reasonable. <> Energy efficient, high tech, human free, and, increasingly, closer to cities in order to satisfy the instant delivery expectations of a new generation of digital consumers: the American coldscape is currently expanding at a rate that hasn’t been seen since the postwar boom. This has, in turn, attracted investment capital... The cold-storage industry is on track to grow by nearly half as much again in the next few years


• Chen Zemin, the world’s first frozen-dumpling billionaire: Because of his medical background, Chen had an idea for how to extend the life span of his spicy pork wontons and sweet sesame paste–filled balls. “As a surgeon, you have to preserve things like organs or blood in a cold environment,” Chen said. “A surgeon’s career cannot be separate from refrigeration... His first patent covered a production process for the balls themselves; a second was for the packaging that would protect them from freezer burn.


• * Zhengzhou, a smoggy industrial city that, thanks to Chen’s ingenuity, has become the capital of frozen food in China. Sanquan’s rival, Synear, was founded in Zhengzhou in 1997, and the two companies account for nearly two-thirds of the country’s frozen-food market.


• without a functioning cold chain, there wasn’t any way for those farms to scale up their output, or for the former peasants to buy it. Communist authorities thus stepped in to support the country’s nascent perishable-logistics sector with both practical and moral support. <> Over the past fifteen years, tax breaks, subsidies, and preferential access to land have been made available to anyone aspiring to build a refrigerated warehouse.


• party leaders have launched a South to North Vegetable Transfer initiative whose goal is to repurpose the country’s southernmost province, the tropical island Hainan (otherwise popular with Chinese honeymooners), as the National Winter Vegetable Base, complete with thirty brand-new logistics centers and an express refrigerated rail link to Beijing.


• during my visit to China, I was told that less than a quarter of the country’s meat supply is slaughtered, transported, stored, or sold under refrigeration... that translates to less than five cubic feet per person, or less than a third of what Americans currently have—meaning that the Chinese race to refrigerate is far from over.


• The existence of refrigerators made it possible to transform the built environment in a way that, in turn, made fridge ownership less optional. Well-insulated and centrally heated homes in the suburbs didn’t have the kind of drafty, cold corners that were perfect for a pantry. In new urban apartment blocks, it was impossible to put a meat safe outside or keep a root cellar in the basement. In many temperate regions of the world, the indoor climate hasn’t just become more homogenous; it has also become hotter:


• The relationship was symbiotic: refrigeration facilitated mass food production, enabled mass merchandising, and encouraged mass consumption. All these forces combined to make the fridge’s ascent from bit part to starring role, to eventually displacing the hearth as the heart of the home, seem inevitable... For many households, working to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables from elsewhere replaced the labor of growing, harvesting, and processing one’s own. Freed from at least some domestic drudgery, women defected from the home toward paid jobs—in small numbers at first, then, following the Second World War, en masse.


• Today many continental European towns and cities retain lively central shopping districts whose walkable, human scale makes them irresistible to Anglo tourists. Meanwhile, the average interior volume of a French refrigerator is less than ten cubic feet; in the US that figure is 17.5... As Canadian architect Donald Chong once suggested, small fridges make good cities—and good cities require only small fridges.\Martha Stewart once told me she probably has fifty or sixty refrigerators spread across her twenty-one kitchens, including two entire walls lined with still-operational fridges from the 1920s.)


• * It’s the theory of induced demand: just as adding another lane to a freeway will only increase congestion, extra fridge space will inevitably be filled. More is never enough. <> The real problem with huge, overstuffed fridges is that there’s almost no way the average family can consume that much food before it goes bad. What’s more, as geographer Tara Garnett explained, there is a “safety net” syndrome associated with refrigerated storage.


• “The aha! moment for Bill was that when he was studying Maya culture, nearly all of what was being excavated was what those people had thrown away,” explained his friend sociologist Albert Bergesen. “He thought, Why can’t we use these techniques to learn about our own culture?”... Middle-class households typically wasted more food than either poorer or, perhaps more surprisingly, richer ones.


• * Americans send more than half a pound of food straight to the landfill every single day of the year and, once retail waste is included, squander more than 30 percent of our total food supply.


• * When he launched Silk soy milk in 1977, he made the calculated decision to pay supermarkets a substantial premium to display it in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. At the time, soy milk, which has an unrefrigerated shelf life of at least a year... Demos’s gamble was that, by packaging soy milk as if it shared the fragile freshness of milk, he could convince Americans to make the switch—and it paid off.


• Whereas a simple sniff or squeeze might have sufficed in an era when most people knew where their food came from and, likely, the person who produced it, for consumers at the end of cold-extended food chains, freshness is a belief system. They crave the guarantee of a printed date.


• Her root vegetable unit is a U-shaped shelf made of beeswax-treated maple. A glass panel holds the damp sand in which carrots and leeks are buried, alongside a little funnel to top up moisture levels as needed... Ryou has found that root vegetables last longer and taste better stored upright in slightly damp, loose sand, because it mimics their growing conditions.


• he issue begins about an hour before an egg is laid, when a hen’s shell gland squirts on a protective coating made of protein, lipids, phosphorus, and more. Up until that point, the thousands of pores in the eggshell remain open to allow oxygen and carbon dioxide to pass back and forth to the developing embryo. This final layer, which chicken people call either “the bloom” or “the cuticle,” blocks those pores to protect the egg from bacteria it might encounter once it exits its mother’s body. In the US, as well as Japan, Australia, and a few other countries, egg producers wash freshly laid eggs in soap and hot water, which gets rid of bacteria but also removes the protective cuticle, so that the egg has to be refrigerated.


• the most important difference between Ryou’s food shelves and the fridge is that her exquisitely designed wall-mounted and countertop units would force us to look at our food. The result of this daily confrontation, she hopes, is that we would eat more healthily, waste less, and—intangible but important—rebuild our relationship with these equally biological and perishable, if slightly less animate, fellow organisms.


• * it was a scheduling conundrum. His tomatoes were in season in late summer, his lettuce ready to harvest in spring and fall... Meanwhile, the steer would have traditionally been slaughtered in the autumn, as soon as it started to get cold. If he turned the tomatoes into longer-lasting ketchup and aged his cheese in a cellar for six months until the meat, lettuce, and wheat bun were ready, he could maybe, possibly, make a cheeseburger from scratch. But practically speaking, he concluded, “the cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago.”


• one study found that water-deprived rats, mice, guinea pigs, and hamsters would all lick a cold metal tube repeatedly, instead of a hot or room-temperature one—presumably because the cooling sensation triggered an illusory sense of quenched thirst.) <> Cold may also have made food and drinks sweeter—particularly in the ice-obsessed United States. At least three of our basic taste receptors—sweet, bitter, and umami, or savory—are extremely temperature sensitive... Everything simply has to be a little sweeter to taste right if your tongue is cold.


• Many of the most peculiar recipes of the 1920s and ’30s—“Peanut Butter Salad” stands out for its combination of green peppers, celery, whipped cream, and the titular ingredient—are perhaps best understood as status signifiers. In other words, jellied foods were popular less because they were especially delicious and more because they demonstrated refrigerator ownership.


• refrigeration could make leftovers taste better—at least in some cases... Heavily spiced dishes, like curries, fare well in the fridge, because the flavor molecules in many spices are soluble in fat, and the more time they have to disperse, the more evenly they’ll be distributed through the dish, creating a well-balanced whole.


• Few of us today can taste the difference between wet-aged and dry-aged beef; even fewer would know to miss the taste of different pastures and seasons in milk fresh from the cow... Among many Alaskan Natives, whale and walrus meat tastes as it should only if kept in naturally cooled underground ice cellars. As the permafrost warms, meat stored in the walk-in freezers that are being imported as substitutes for failing cellars just isn’t the same.


• * China: A small, bespectacled man in a white coat told me, very quietly, how he uses refrigeration to send fish to sleep... In this sluggish state, a fish can be rolled up, popped in a clear plastic poster tube, and mailed to anywhere in China. As long as it arrives at its destination within three days,... this extended nap apparently helps wind down the stress chemicals released when the fish is first caught.


• “I think we’re going to have to back-cross it a little more,” he said. “The problem is that sugar is a direct trade-off with fruit size—the bigger the fruit, the less sugar it has, and vice versa.”


• The problem is that it’s tricky for pickers to judge maturity visually in the field, which means that up to 40 percent of tomatoes are harvested at the “immature green” stage


• Stassopoulos told me that a middle-class fridge in China is not much help in predicting the future contents of Indian fridges; instead, he looks to middle-class fridges in India and affluent fridges in China to see where the future of each country’s consumption lies. Based on Indian fridgenomics, he decided to invest in dairy processors:.. Beyond food, he’s found that fridge acquisition is a reliable herald of growth in a country’s insurance and private-tutoring markets. “With a fridge, women can work outside the home, and that’s when they get a say in the household finances,” he told me. “Women tend to think more long-term than men—they think about education for their kids,


• Their conclusion was that “for the most part, the industrialization of the city has been a grotesque assault on the health of Londoners.”... Bekvalac and Western’s research confirms that, contrary to conventional belief, the benefits of modern civilization came with a substantial price tag. “It’s called the antebellum puzzle,”... during these decades in the United States and Western Europe, “biological measures of the standard of living erode, even though the standard economic measures seem to be going up.”... he speculated was caused by a delay in agricultural productivity catching up to population growth. Others have tied it to a rise in infectious disease as people crowded together in cities.. In fact, Craig calculated that by 1900 mechanical cooling allowed Americans to scrape back at least 0.02 inches in height, and likely more.


• food historian Lizzie Collingham has concluded that, by spring, most pre-refrigeration northern Europeans “were pre-scorbutic,..  each May, Indiana housewives were urged by physicians, recipe books, and newspaper advice columns to treat spring sickness with the urgent and generous application of “salads of all sorts.”


• Scientists suspect that, in developing varieties with higher yields and the sturdiness to be shipped and stored under refrigeration, breeders may have accidentally lost not only flavor but also essential vitamins and minerals.


• In 2007, after China had urbanized but before the country added building a cold chain to its Five-Year Plan, the average Chinese person experienced some kind of digestive upset twice a week. When I visited Shanghai in 2014, the pork processor that supplied a fifth of the city’s demand still managed without mechanical cooling.


• * researchers have begun to link these kinds of diseases to chronic inflammation. That, in turn, has been connected to the depleted state of the Western gut microbiome—which may be due, at least in part, to refrigeration. “This might be the microbial bargain that we’ve unknowingly struck,” ... In general, Sonnenburg concluded, our refrigerated, hygienic lifestyles seem to be lacking in the kind of low-grade microbial exposure that we evolved alongside—and without that background stimulation, our immune system can end up spiraling into an inflammatory state.


• “There is no cold chain in Rwanda,” he said. “It just doesn’t exist.” Preventing food loss requires more than a functioning refrigerated warehouse or truck: food has to get cold and remain that way all the way along the chain. <> Today in the United States, a green bean grown in, say, Wisconsin will likely have spent no more than two hours, and often much less, at temperatures above forty-five degrees on its way to your fork.


• (HCFCs and HFCs) that are popular in the developing world and that Kipp Bradford and I used to build our own fridge, are known as super-greenhouse gases because they are thousands of times more warming than CO2. Project Drawdown, the climate change mitigation project founded by environmentalist Paul Hawken, lists “refrigerant management” as the number one solution to global warming, in terms of potential impact.


• Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had recently discovered that if they coated two panels with a paint that was capable of harvesting solar energy, then covered one so that the paint dried more slowly, the slow-drying panel would be twice as efficient as the faster-drying one.


• On a more abstract level, Apeel could redefine freshness once again. “To me, freshness means higher concentrations of the molecules that the fruit produced when it was on the plant,” Rogers said. Where once freshness had temporal and spatial constraints—it meant something that was harvested recently and nearby—it might one day become a physiological status that can be defined according to levels of specific chemicals.


• living a fridge-free lifestyle in the developed world is little more than a gesture, albeit an instructive one: you’re still being sustained by the cold chain, even if you’ve banished its frosty fetters from your home.


• Meanwhile, if you bear in mind that refrigeration tends toward scale, you can put in place measures to mitigate unwanted effects, from French regulations on supermarket size to the ACES approach of creating community cooling hubs in order to empower Rwandan smallholders to remain independent. “You have to aggregate at some point in the system,” explained Toby Peters. “But if you do it with a community-owned packhouse, you can do it without throwing farmers off their land

和以前看过的司马拆迁的文风格好像不太一样。这是发生在温哥华的恋爱故事，靓仔喜欢上了女仔的大哥。都是很好的人，生活也优渥，所以爱起来可以全心投入，二话不说追到泰国去——有时候就挺需要这种爱情比天大，空中楼阁的文艺文。

>>   陈米雪看见她握着同款手机的大哥，穿白色衫，头发留到肩膀，不染不烫不加发蜡，黑亮自然。陈一平怕她觉得他过时，一直有做发型，左侧打薄过，压在耳后。他有热爱水上运动的阳光肤色，一路走来，比她更格格不入，闲适得好像一阵吹进光怪陆离夜晚的白色海风。

    陈一平低头笑，幽暗转变的光线里，他一笑，他对面的人就好似眼前亮一亮。他拿出钱包，冲对方扬下巴。“赌一盘啊，你赢我请你这里所有‘朋友’饮料。现金全给你。输也不差，有个可爱小女生想请你喝奶茶。”

男生比她大四、五岁，像冻手的冰块那样硬邦邦的好看。

   他的手臂手腕在邓特风眼前一晃而过，皮肤被晒成有光泽的浅浅蜂蜜色，好像真是黏喉咙的蜜糖，邓特风咽喉都发紧，他点点头。

   他说：“上次你可以掉头走掉，或者喝完杯奶茶就走。但是你陪她坐足一个半小时。”陈一平端起那杯倒给他他又不喝的水，流畅地碰下邓特风手上咖啡杯。“多谢你。”
    邓特风心里不知变了什么味道，被他碰下杯，却是因为那个小女生。他也喝一口咖啡，藉着嘴里都是苦涩，任 xi_ng 地吐露：“但我还是不开心。”

    那景色太壮观。邓特风吹着桥上的大风，终于试着抬起手臂，松松抱住陈一平的腰。t恤下他的身体在散发热力，好像阳光照耀下的海水，邓特风又清空肺腔，深深地用力地呼吸。

    “不会。”陈一平拖着语气晃晃荡荡地讲。“一般上完我的课，你们都不知道什么叫约会了。”
    邓特风听他说，低着头笑个不停。他笑起来像水晶碰撞，有一种独特剔透的少年感。陈一平乍然回想起，很小的时候，有父母带着去鱼档看盛着蓝水的玻璃缸中五光十色的金鱼。

米雪站在阳台看见楼下邓特风开的车，那车漂亮如同一架光滑流动的钢琴。

他料到江绍昨天知道米雪恋爱，黯然整天，今天会因酸楚积累到阈值而爆炸。    果然，江少一上楼就怨天怨地，几乎要拆房子。

    “你…想勾的那个女孩子，家教严不严？”
    邓特风认真考虑，自信道：“她大哥人很好。”

    他穿深色t恤，牛仔裤。 yi-n 影纵横的宽阔车库内，他的沉默也好似一首日间的钢琴曲，一首夜的诗。米雪的心又被小鹿撞一下，她匆匆点头，淑女地走下车按电梯。

    米雪骂他：“神经病！”牵住了邓特风的手。江绍看着米雪的手和邓特风受惊后的迟钝回握， x_io_ng 口快呕出血来，嘤咛一声，再度倒入陈一平怀抱。

    原本只是同为年轻华裔迷惘一代的点头之交，连对方惯讲中文还是英文都不了解。第一个月底，江少就心高气傲和白人老板闹翻不干，砸烂吉他一走了之。他说再不回头，老板连薪金都想省掉，陈一平坚持要老板开一张写给江绍的支票，否则就正式告他种族歧视请政府仲裁。他拿到支票交给江绍随江绍如何处置，两人都丢了这份暂时的工，收获个十几年的兄弟。

    刚好上船的邓特风看见江绍一屁股坐在陈一平大腿上，陈一平的手指暧昧地贴在江绍唇下巡游。在这一刻，他心里排山倒海像被灌了整吨海水。
    米雪也被这一幕冲击，突然就双手举起包包，劈头盖脸追着江绍砸到露台外面。“叫你占我大哥便宜！叫你占我大哥便宜！站住！”
    落地窗外阳光下，陈一平被夹在当中，终于镇压住还在打闹的两人。邓特风站在窗内靠门处，蓦地觉得自己其实是那对兄妹连密友三人外的局外人。他比不上江绍，在这里有十几年至交好友，一个眼神彼此心知肚明的熟稔，一个电话能要他穿越半个城市去买一份吐司送上。

   五月底的温哥华终日日光，到晚九点，十点才彻底天黑。邓特风对他摇头，在海上，海面风吹起波皱，一片连一片，视野像被蓝色天鹅绒缎铺满，他们在海上，又像被天空罩下的光包围。

   “妈咪保持身材。”邓特风道：“家里茶柜从来只放各种代糖，吃惯了。”
    装作不以为然，心底其实起起伏伏激起一大片波澜。整个人都要化作海里的水天上的云，多好，水被留到海的心里，云又被摆放在天空最显眼地方。

    成百上千的桅杆戳在云中，又倒影入洁净的海水。江绍拿吉他出来弹，拨着弦，米雪竟没有嘲笑他，任他哼童谣一样的歌，邓特风不知那首歌是什么，只听他随便地唱：月亮亮众星伴随，快看看满天星泪。日一对，夜一对，萤火一对对……
    是哄小孩又很悲伤，弦律和字节散落在海风里，落日余晖也投入海平线下。这世界转为黑暗仅需三十秒，再多壮丽华美亦留不住。江绍那里还在唱：夜静静众生伴随……雨细细有风相聚……来一对，回亦一对，落花一对对……问萤火照耀谁，不怕累怕孤独睡……扑翼飞去，在长空里……冰天雪地也一对……

  初恋情侣，就是这样，不知自己要什么，只想傻呆呆抓住什么是旁人眼中看来好的。黑马王子，水晶公主，因为“相衬”或“他/她配得上我”便可以在一起。能共赴一场童话盛筵，又能否在宴会结束十二点后有个好结局，这说不定，全要看缘。

    可这一吻完毕，好像从晃荡迷醉的云端落回尘世，水晶灯下，两人心里都不约而同地滋生一种异样的失落。似乎这根本不是能带给他们欢喜，他们懵懂寻觅的东西。

   江绍拿了罐啤酒，一直没喝。他其实是个很英俊漂亮的男人，眼睛很大很清澈，清澈到眉宇间常有迷惘流露，所以要用特异和花俏来遮掩。

    阿祖眼中，他老大的样子此时好似十四、五岁唇红齿白只懂做功课的呆板少年，又好似穿男友衬衣的怀春少女。
    手上拿的那册漫画写了“古惑仔”，封面是个长发，紧身背心， x_io_ng 口刺青龙纹的肌肉男人。邓特风知道他来，眼也不抬，承认说：“我好像不很看得懂……”...
    邓特风说：“她大哥喜欢。”顿了顿，又严谨地加上两个字：“可能。”
    说到底他只是为一份“可能”。

    他用一支铅笔的浓淡，深浅，做出光与暗，做出大千世界的其他色彩，轻盈奶油一样的肤，柔和的红晕，黑亮葡萄一样的眼睛，偷吃桑葚一样的嘴唇。... 他笔下的人物是她自己，画画的人和看画的人都不该想着用哪些词汇去定义她。这副米雪肖像，唯一不客观的一点或者是那种柔和的笔触。邓特风记得陈一平提到她时的柔和，太执着地想弄清陈一平心中米雪的模样，便不自觉画成这样。

    过十几分钟，陈一平才回：既然要学，就学好它。
    如同一只瓶子被横放，浸泡他内心使得内心如焚的烈酒流走。

    男孩要穷养，女孩要富养。邓特风并不理解这个道理，他可以一丝忸怩也没有地说，他是富养长大的，财富与资源对他来说好像空气一般的无滋无味不功不过察觉不到，但他生活于其中。
    在这个年纪，他对陈一平这个人以及他背后的人生很着迷。好像一个过客的 x_io_ng 膛是一扇圆花窗，望出去能看见宽广的，使他迷惑的另一个世界。那么陌生又那么熟悉。

    胶布下固定两毫米的锐利小针，刺在耳骨里，遵医嘱保留至少一周，据说能安神。结果闹出这场叫人啼笑皆非的误会。邓特风觉得丢脸，猛一个劲闷头饮绿茶，喝到第二杯时茶壶中已经没有水，他揭开壶盖，一时不慎弄到壶盖滚落，悄然无声的店里传来一声陶瓷响，为他们服务的女侍者连忙赶来捡起并道歉。
    邓少爷深呼吸，从未尝试在餐厅这样难堪过，十年的份额都在此用尽。他以前以为，在餐厅尴尬到情愿一走了之是庸俗爱情喜剧才会用的桥段。
    陈一平代他对女侍者说：“不，抱歉。是我们聊得太投入，忘记其他。”...
    邓特风暗自说他坏话，说了几句，却不得不承认他实在让人数落不起来。即使邓特风觉得自己完全是被他“陷害”，若不是被他对住笑那么久……可是能被他笑那么久，虽然尴尬，心底也有种无可言状的喜悦，好像蝴蝶的翅膀一下下扑闪，又像患了要不停打喷嚏到面红耳赤无法呼吸的花粉症。

    这晚甜品是小玻璃樽装的意式芝麻奶冻，兼一片烤得香脆的薄芝麻饼干。
    灰色奶冻上浸一层鲜奶，一饮便会在唇上留奶霜，要伸舌 t-ian 一圈。牛奶上点缀一颗鲜红桑葚，奶冻中可见星星点点黑色芝麻皮，口感却幼滑细嫩，舌尖试不出一丝渣滓。

    他慢半拍地抱着那桶爆米花跟在陈一平身后入电影场，脑袋里空荡荡一片，如同纪录片里，康拉德对小灰鹅做印随行为的实验，灰鹅会摇摇晃晃地排成列，本能地跟随实验者。

    邓特风半抽离于大屏幕地观察着他，屏幕光盛时，他眼睛里如同发光。那是种在没有都市建筑的地方，浩荡湖泊流域，野鸭大雁飞过，深秋夜晚月光下，水面会反映出的银色的光。邓特风不知道的是，这一刻他的眼睛也同样如湖水在发光，淡淡的银光镀在他们身上，洒在他们之间，隔着一个空座位，就像隔着银河。

    那母亲可能贫困领救济，那儿子可能头脑发育不行，身体也已残疾。世上不幸的人那么多，他只是透过跑车车窗审视十秒的公子哥，不知人间几多艰辛。
    邓特风想要亲人，想要玩伴，恰巧陈一平于这两重身份上都表现出色。唯独不是对着他。这一点已经足够他在理清自己的思绪以前，感到惆怅。

陈一平才迟了一会儿，拿着那些可丽饼转头，看见邓特风黑夜里雪白得像会融化，也天真得像会融化的一张脸。
    有一句中文的词，说“众里寻他千百度”。又有一句英文诗，确切的原文已不记得了。——倘若不是记忆骗人，真有这样一句存世，翻译过来，大概是，“繁花之中，我见到你”。...
    陈一平下意识地笑，他怎会知道那些脸皮薄又很倔强的少男在畏惧什么。感情从天而降，落在怀里，就像有倒计时，那个倒数的时刻到了你自然会察觉自己抱着的情愫究竟是什么，但是在一切还不分明的时候，这是个给人隐隐危机预感的定时炸弹。
    叫人怎样不去惧怕，如同被人扼住了脖子。一旦起了征兆就注定要动心，不能中途按下停止键，不得不去爱。
    陈一平有种不对的感觉，心脏被击中，不辨悲喜。

   “这么说了，十年前我们在研究‘为什么人们同居’，现在我们研究‘为什么人们还结婚’，万幸男女关系一直有变化，没人看出我们这领域的研究原地打转。还不叫混饭吃？”

    迈开步几步去到许愿卡处，买了几张。回来时头发被风吹乱，邓特风仅看见他捋遮挡视野的散发时夹在黑发里的手指，和露出的眼睛。他那只眼如有热度，像烟顶一点红火星，可以在心头烫一下刺痛的烙印。陈一平站在灯树旁买许愿卡，侧面被蓝光红光浸透。夜像一块黑玻璃，左蓝右红，巨灯在幕前打两色强光。画面像染了两种由淡到浓颜色的纸，他在湿润的色彩中，五官有种奇异吸引力。
    这是我所画不出的。邓特风想，或者他该去学电影摄影镜头语言，才有勇气有胆量将之描摹。唯保存入胶片，一帧帧细微入理，纤毫毕现，方能留存这样的感觉五分。

    陈一平也觉得奇怪，为什么喜欢整他。找不到有力理由，就一路走一路说服自己，我也是个爱以大欺小的人。家中只有一个小妹，女孩子不能捉弄，这么多年憋坏了。
    他们间的气氛不由变得怪异，好像发酵，空气都在膨胀。两人都被什么力量操纵，不得已就演变成邓特风横冲直撞走在前面，陈一平掉在后面的情景。距离越拉越开，对方是个烧红的铜炉，避之唯恐不及，走在一起会被烫到焦头烂额，碰一碰都要被粘住手，要甩脱还撕下一层皮。
    邓特风走了几十米，在人来人往的商场里感到愧疚。他要我试却没有买，我为什么要朝他发脾气？

    陈一平不知是先隐约察觉出“他喜欢我”场面更糟糕还是“我对他也不排斥”更惨淡。他应该早明白的，那些微妙的瞬间，那些奇异的反应，问题是谁会如此具备自恋倾向认定一个同 xi_ng ，妙龄少女的准男友，有暗恋我的嫌疑。
    这一瞬间，他彻底失去应对的能力。但是他知道绝对不能再跟邓特风这么坐下去，就找个借口先走，说来日再见。总算勉强全身而退，手脚都不协调地平安到家。

    邓特风当然不会知道这些，他只觉得，那花纹仿佛来自于某个小国已被湮没沙化的古代文明。不含任何关于陈一平这个人感情生活的暗示，却有种不该出现在他身上的妖异。
    像一朵颜色暗沉的花，没有花瓣，舞动着花丝，一点一丝地勾动他。缠绕在他身上，散发出熏得人昏沉的香气，在烈日下焦土上展现妩媚。不可理喻，自相矛盾，好似一条温热滑腻的蛇。

    她是他过去的篇章，相当重要的一个章节。要是写一本书，已知下一个章节会与你已写完的部分矛盾，或许比起修改前文，你可以在这里停笔，不要再继续这一条剧情线。中止一段感情有多痛苦，他已经知道，往昔的记忆会变成刀锋来切割心。但避开一种潜在的吸引力，是否是一件简单的事。陈一平想，若是为米雪，他不介意不开始一段还没有开始的感情。

    仍是极简口气，陈一平没有认为这是生硬，他更像是悬浮在空中，亲眼看见邓特风捏着电话，翻来覆去才码出寥寥几个字母。手指在屏幕上，隔空踌躇，反反复复，点不了发出。他要用怎样的勇气发这一条信息，好像做梦梦见背包野营，如此疲惫，还要不断迈步行进找一个可以露宿的地方。陈一平仅是设想就要代他感到沉重。如果感情已经成为一个负担，不如放下背包，返转头吧。

    邓特风陷入无穷无尽的苦闷，应该说那些苦闷像狂 ch_ao 向他眼耳口鼻涌入。他想着我中意他，他却不中意我。或者说他根本不知道我中意他，我想要触碰他的身体。为什么会变成这样，为什么我很难受。在不理解自己时尚且有懵懂甜蜜的愉快，可此时看见了自己的心意，反而既想上前又想逃避，使我无比煎熬。
    他近乎放空地想着心里的话，沉浸在自身的感情里。好像一块海绵吸了水，越发沉重，回不到最初的轻盈，挤一挤就会涌出千万不甘心的话语。

他望着陈一平的背影走远，走出建筑，或许去停车场，觉得和他之间的距离也越拉越远。自己仿佛成为热闹之中，一个只有一个居民的孤岛。既孤独，又有种奇异的心酸的浪漫。交替的满足和伤感好像一群庞大的鲸鱼在围绕他喷水唱歌。

    不是人越大越不单纯，而是人越大所面对的世界越不简单。他有太多规则要遵守。在家中，他是米雪的兄长，陈一平还记得米雪眼红红又倔强地说她就是想喜欢他。在社会里，他的身份是北美主流大学之一的讲师。道德准则禁止他与他直接授课的学生发生感情纠葛，那种感情纠葛叫丑闻。

    时光带来的变迁再多，他们最了解的，恰好是最初也被藏得最深的特质。即使隔着时间和空间，注视镜头另一端的人，这些年蒙上的烟尘都在彼此的目光和笑容里洗净了。
    他们相信在最好的年纪，第一次倾心去爱上的那个人值得当时那份义无反顾的爱意。虽然最后发现不合适，没能在一起，可这段感情里绝没有谁拖欠谁。他们一直希望对方能够在别处得到幸福。

    他觉得自己没用之极，不会表达感情，不会和人接近，像是一个被扔到地球上的外星人。又像一只被扔进海里的猫。做什么都是狼狈的垂死挣扎，却溅不起半点水花。
    邓特风的心情混乱成一团乱麻，可能低血糖影响了他的神经递质，可能陈一平这个人，他的出现足以影响自己的神经递质，通过操纵脑内分泌物的浓度左右他的情绪。他的情绪像是有颜色的，各种颜料在他的血管里交汇，在画板一样的心脏上传导出图案，压得他说不出话。他听见陈一平叫：“靓仔。”抬起头来，陈一平姿势和态度都很放松，说：“请你吃糖。”

    日落卷里有蟹肉，牛油果，薄片的烟熏野生三文鱼，顶部却是切得纸片厚的两片草莓。红白纹路清爽甜美。他们坐在寿司台边，邓特风不发一言地看着陈一平在他右边夹起一个日落卷，心中说：他是真的喜欢草莓。
    迟了一会儿，又想：我是真的喜欢他。
    邓特风反而什么话都不敢说，怕一出口就是表白，吓坏他。感情就像洪 ch_ao 一样，来都来了，淹就淹吧，备受折磨也好，万一它突如其来退却，留下一片泥泞断壁残垣才令人沉重失望。邓特风很怕陈一平从他生命中退却，覆水收回似地收得涓滴不剩。

    果汁店的故事是个未完结的故事。柠檬和樱桃说了分手，仍每天去买一杯草莓西米冰沙。要说未来，他对前路全无概念。每天能见到草莓，他已足够高兴和酸涩。又很怕草莓知晓，其实他心里酸到牙痛。
    陈一平心里好像被扔进一颗泡腾片，冒着柠檬味咕噜咕噜的气泡，将 x_io_ng 口塞满，顶撞肺腑，却又让人紧闭口鼻，不愿将这膨胀逼迫内脏的气发 xi-e 出来。

    邓特风坐在靠窗边位子上，吃一份陈一平上次点过的日落卷。这场景很微妙，不想让某个人知道在想他，藉一些共同经历的事物怀念那个不愿他知道的人，一回头撞见对方也在做相同的事，窃喜之前，会先尴尬。

    静静过了十分钟，等到陈一平夹起最后一个卷，邓特风仍然没转头看他，就维持眼睛盯着别处，不由自己地轻声说：“我中意你。”
    真是奇怪，邓特风之前拼命警告自己不能脱口而出，陈一平以为他若真说出口会给自己降下一道天大的难题，可事情真发生到这一步，却双方都觉心安。阁楼上每夜会传来两声靴子落地声，他们都听到了第一道，提着一颗心等到第二声才敢安寝。现在那第二只靴子总算落地，他们可以闭上双眼了，闭眼去爱也好，去做梦也罢，无论什么结果，终于有一个结果。
    陈一平原想埋单，这时也停下动作，向后靠，双肩放松。寿司店灯光下，头发的 yi-n 影后落，邓特风很想很想捉住他的发尾。

    可他只是眼睁睁看着陈一平出门。神智和头脑都飞去另一个世界飘荡。一个人悬浮在五光十色霓虹灯的大都会夜晚里，每一步都被灯光迫近，每一步都遭遇行色匆匆陌生人，直至遇到那个，心像两块磁铁发散吸引力，日益贴近，再拉开距离会如同切肤之痛的人。偏是与那个人， yi-n 差阳错，行差踏错，衍生出一连串缠人的苦厄。
    他刚学会爱，他只会爱，他以为只要爱就够了。别人的心情，他没试过用力去理解，更谈不上天生会体谅。

    这漫长的飞行与干冷空气把他逼到一种莫名的绝望边缘。他猛然发现自己没有任何掌控力，一个人从他生命中远走是像流星划过天空一样迅捷的事。他尚在梦中，而这件事已发生。他们间没有牢固的纽带。陈一平可以随时到人海茫茫地球的另一边，从此他望着东京香港或是上海首尔新加坡熙熙攘攘、高楼林立的街景，脚下的步伐再也不知可以迈向哪里。这个世界上人真是太多了，可以随时淹没你。我在画布上给你做了不同于地球六十亿其他人的标记，可他们，那些人群，在你身上覆盖无数色块涂层。站在街头，擦着我的肩膀，撞着我的背的人全长着陌生面孔，我好不容易遇见你，我怕，我再也找不到你。

    四面佛所在十字路口前高塔一般的酒店窗边，受邀尝试泰式午茶，陈一平频频走神，向烟雾缭绕的露天佛坛望了一眼。没缘由的，他想到温哥华的那靓仔。隔着时差，他在大洋彼岸做什么？想完却好笑，在温书吧，期中考试还不够他焦头烂额？
    这一瞥，他看见四面佛，看见马路，看见绿树，看见斜角的伊势丹百货，晚了一步，没看见邓特风刚刚推门走入百货大楼的身影。

    天桥下人来人往，车灯铺呈一条金光般的长河。大小车辆俱都沐浴在这光河中，光融汇了白日各种颜色，只可见车壳和车轮黑色的剪影。
    曼谷之夜光怪陆离，好像把五彩缤纷的宝石装进玻璃黑箱里。天桥下是光河，天桥上是人河。东南亚高而茂盛的绿树枝叶婆娑，川流不息的人河里，邓特风是一块阻碍水流的河石，异国不同肤色人种的人们步伐迅速在他两侧绕开，似乎都有明确方向。

   地平线蔓延到遥远处，这里不再有高楼，至多两层粗陋的建筑。少了遮盖头顶的摩天大厦做比例尺，地平线能延伸多远，天就能有多高。在这样广阔的土地与高远的蓝天之间，半道彩虹像紫红橘黄绿的发光扶梯从地面连接到云层中去。

    这一餐泰元素终于多了，前菜是炸得偏硬的猪肉，一条条如薯条，配着橘红的稀薄酱汁，和白紫萝卜丝与洋葱生菜的沙拉。另一道直译过来，是鱼的梳乎厘。真像香橙梳乎厘一般轻盈蓬松细腻，同是橘黄色，被碧绿箬叶蛋糕纸似包成方块，并不是甜的。尝不到鱼肉，却弥漫着鱼汁与柠檬草、香茅的鲜香。

探照灯里，丝丝缕缕的喷泉交织成水晶花篮，又弥漫起水景的湿气。
    邓特风从木道另一端，前台处走来。神思混乱地肩膀碰到了蕉叶，视线短暂停留在转角处，夜色里更显洁白的一盆白色蝴蝶兰上。他向前向上看，陈一平早已望见他，他们终于，在这谁也没想到的时间和地点看见对方。在池塘边露台上，草木萋萋的微风夜晚，在原地一时大脑空白，好像患了失语症，整个世界都在这一刻停摆。
    他们大概不会知道这一次遇见经历了几次错过，不会交流几日几时几分几秒你在哪里。宇宙是一间机械精密的陈列室，地球被夜幕掩盖，在一个玻璃罩子里。每个人都有既定的轨道，有些人一世都不会交汇。而此时，他们像两尊凝固的相望的雕像，周围静静地响起蝉鸣，喷泉还在挥洒水声。在最不可想象的地方见到最不可想象的人，就好像精疲力竭得到一粒糖果。邓特风忽然不知该如何应对，尽管他白.皙的脸上并没有表情，他怕他稍微有些表情，就会像铜像那样不明所以眼里有一串水流出，面孔却完全不见悲伤。

可他那时竟不懂，他中意他，那感情是一百分一千分的喜欢。
    邓特风的感情就像红宝石，颜色光彩都有种决绝灿烂意味。陈一平将手放在他掌心，触碰那条手链，错觉被红宝的锐利切割划伤。他捡起手链，抓在手中，就硌进掌心。

他们已走到这条路南面，编织花环的小摊贩渐多。陈一平买下一串茉莉缀红玫瑰的花环，茉莉花苞像编珠一样攒成极粗的一串雪白花序，抓过他的手套上。那些花朵系在腕间既脆弱娇嫩又沉甸甸地下坠，陈一平的神情动作，都与之前要他试红宝石手链时出奇一样。..
    他们逛到凌晨三点，一径走一径走，不提这条街这家店我们已转过三次，那个人已三次看向我们。好像在一个不愿它停下的游乐场骑旋转木马。

    外面的天色已经和咖啡一样，他浮在半空中的心思也与咖啡弥漫整店的复杂苦香合拍。再晚一个多小时，才接到邓特风电话，急切地问你是不是等我很久，我即刻过来。

他双手撑着桌面，说：“一个理论，‘如果一件事能够出错，它一定会出错’。你想一件坏事来得晚，它一定会比你想到来得早。”
    邓特风这才抬头，问：“你在安 we_i 我？”
    “没有。”邓特风只是看他一眼，居然就陷在他带笑的眼里。在这时，满怀的痛楚里，怦然心动。陈一平说：“只是讲给你知道，至多不过我换份工作。”他对邓特风举咖啡杯，向上望房顶放光的灯，说：“我小时候的职业理想，是救生员。”

    她比他更知道她大哥是怎样的人，绝不会做出与她争抢的事。也许一时无法接受，反应激烈，事后也偷偷请求江绍去看他。陈一平问：“那你？”
    “我怕跟他一起你好似带小孩会累死！”江绍毫不掩饰他对邓特风的不满。旁人只挂心这故事美不美，江绍却在忧心这段感情中他可会累？最后自暴自弃说：“丢，随便了！反正我不可能支持。你爱女人爱男人，人妖都好。不搞我就好啦！你知道，我受不了男人中意我的！”

只用水冲脸擦干，只用漱口水漱口，换件恤衫出门。依旧唇红齿白，好看到连冷淡疏离都是理所当然。

    邓特风没说话，阿祖又忍不住脑海里悄悄回放，那个女孩子举高肖像过头顶仰视，得意又羞赧，脸红红的样子。小声说：“讲真的，谈恋爱无心伤到别人也是伤到了。我觉得，你欠她一个道歉。”
    自己居然会说这种话，阿祖大口喝了一口饮料压下莫名的不适应。

    他将邓特风拉下车，拉着他转身跑进建筑。已淋到一身发 ch_ao ，带邓特风避雨时还用手为他遮挡雨滴。邓特风手掌与他湿漉漉相贴，被他带下地下停车场，刷卡开一片黑暗的储物间，长长的漆黑隧道里，一步步跟随他，没有说话，只有呼吸声，和同样紧贴的手腕传递一下下彼此脉搏拍子。可心情忽然而然异常平静。
    好似我有一颗心，此刻被人所珍藏。他愿将我的心放入他 x_io_ng 膛。这一秒心情难摹难画，邓特风眼睁睁望着他背影，想，我宁愿死，宁愿在我二十岁上这一刻死去。宁以这种激烈方式保存这一刻心情不朽，从此再不必去经历遗憾。

    yi-n 影像 ch_ao 水一样裹挟他们的车，邓特风几度看着陈一平，他稳定的手和流畅的动作，想他像一座休眠火山。自己坐在一座火山旁，等着他下一次可能到来的喷发，竟觉得宁静。

    邓特风被这氛围打得措手不及，第一个念头即是：我喜欢这里。又因这样突如其来的喜爱自我谴责。他不希望这强烈喜爱是情热中的爱屋及乌，这样的感情相当于一种谄媚。他固执地希望找到缘由说明自己为何喜欢这里，因他将陈一平看得太重，爱一个人，就会时常担忧我的感情是否够郑重，怎样尊重他都不够。

可即使与邓特风的感情会下场惨烈，他不惧怕后果，因为每时每刻尽情相处都已留下记忆供他回味。
    陈一平像海上的云，该降暴雨便降下暴雨，该散开便转身被风推走。

    可那决定后才一阵阵后怕。他能接受分开后陈一平爱上别人，却无法忍受自己爱上别人。他怕多少年后初春、盛夏，下雨、下雪或是日光里长街相遇，他抱着自己的儿女，陈一平仍单身一人，无话只擦肩过。双方皆忘记“我曾与这人一起”，双唇相贴，双手相牵的熟悉也像旧恤衫有一日要被洗衣机绞坏。他以前懵懵懂懂，真的不知道上天不准人容易做到一生只爱一个人。一旦想到“未来的我或许就不再爱他了”，都能让此时的邓特风痛彻心扉。

陈一平大概在二十七、八岁才骤然醒悟，原来“爱”不是因你完美我便全心爱你；也不仅是因为我爱你，所以我能接受你不完美；更多的是，因为我爱你，我愿学习接受面对自己的所有的缺陷旧患。

    爱情多辛苦，可它毕竟值得。若世上无爱情，什么能把我带来你身边？

    不确信床上的角色代表着什么，但是他想，床上的角色至少是具备一些意义的。能和陈一平在一起，怎样都好，但是第一次，第一次绝不一样。他想以自己最想要的方式得到最重要的人，天真地想要告诉他：我会成长，我想为你遮蔽风雨；一直被你照顾很好，但你偶尔，某些时刻，可否也学着依靠我。

陈一平想笑，邓特风先堵住他的话语，只是唇在唇上碰一下，贴在他颈边说：“我不想做。”他知道自己反复无常，不知是不是代自己辩解，说：“可不可以，给我少一点，但是久一点。”

    明明没有来历，明明没有理由。邓特风不知道为什么自己会在机上茫然落泪。陈一平明明没有放开他的手，美国与加国，纽约与温哥华又能有多少距离？于是他搜寻遍脑海，寻不到一个此时哭泣的理由。他毕竟不曾爱过，不能理解爱情突如其来的无理和情深处自然而然的悲哀。他毕竟太年轻。

    早晚都帮他带狗狗散步，自然要每天住在一起才可以。陈一平的关注点在宠物带来的责任上，并未看穿米雪和邓特风达成同一阵线的小心思。他只觉得荒唐：“你们这么合得来，不如你们在一起啊，好不好。”
    曾经使心内如沸进退两难的问题，到如今亦能作笑谈。米雪毫不回避，当即小声念：“又不是没试过，没感觉嘛。”

    卡通里樱桃用樱桃耳夹表示，柠檬的单肩包上有柠檬，草莓是衬衣一粒纽扣是草莓形状。唯独江绍，真正头顶香蕉。最后一页，邓特风甚至画了江绍两幅设计图，一幅头顶香蕉皮，一幅头顶香蕉再插一把水果刀。他解释说原本想画成这样但是因为江绍是陈一平朋友不能太不尊重他，所以头顶香蕉已经权衡之后是手下留情的后果。多画这样一页，那意思分明是“你应该为我的善解人意夸奖我”。

    他想与陈一平过这样的日子，终于可以感受与陈一平过这样的日子。
    每次假期回到温哥华与陈一平共度，他作息混乱，也是因为夜晚不敢入眠，害怕醒来发现一切只是一场大梦：他仍只二十岁，孤身一个人。与他这样相配，会这样深爱他的恋人纯属梦中大脑虚构。——不是有这个人他不曾遇见，而是这爱人根本不存在于世上，今生今世都无从遇见更不可寻得。邓特风居然被这种猜想折磨。

    邓特风张开嘴，米雪与阿祖二人的发展相当突兀。可是他看见米雪静静的笑脸，蓦然察觉一切早有伏笔。
    他画的米雪肖像到阿祖手上，从阿祖手上被米雪见到。阿祖那句“你欠她一句对不起”，是邓特风要他代替自己送上那封道歉信。

涨 ch_ao 的水拍着小艇，随他们醒来划船，一片聚光灯下油彩一般的暮色波光中，海鸥扑剌剌从他们触手可及的身边惊飞。他猛然想，像不像一幅画，在光源前导致一切都要用 yi-n 影表示，像莫奈用红黄紫黑表现日落时所有色彩的画。海波荡着长木桥就到了晚上，而桥上的人看他们，那模糊渺小的船只和身影，或者也像一幅风景画。
    我愿与你在画里，在他人的作品里。用画笔颜料数码像素或是字符保存，在画板上文档里网络中某处，在二十年后会积满尘埃无人造访的某个角落。只要你我依然存在，纵使人类会抛弃互联网，网路节点成为一个个掩埋地下无人考古的废墟，我拥有你。

   炙寿司里有蓝旗金枪鱼腩，鹅肝，鲽鱼，和牛，龙虾，黑鳕鱼，太平洋鲱鱼腩，以及黑睦鱼。每种两件。做成手握寿司后，用火喷枪在表面炙烤，再加以调味，火候掌握全看主厨，口感比全生手握寿司更有层次，也更好接受。
    这一餐微微炙烤过的鱼腩好像要融化却又将融未融，鹅肝肥美到如同一口酥而焦香的油脂。鲽鱼边缘层层卷起，包在寿司上，烤过后带着一股鱼类的香味。黑睦鱼肉色雪白，比鱼腩更肥美，但是清爽不觉腻。

    邓特风眨眼，没想到会得到这样答案。他们的关系在发生微妙改变，陈一平愿意在他面前坦承怯懦。邓特风说：“我没有，我没有想逼你和我结婚。我只想弄清这一点。这样很好，我可以和你谈一辈子恋爱。”

    他无法让时间凝固，无法拒绝老去。陈一平当然会，根据自然规律有很大可能，比他早离世。早三年也好，五年也好。他将被留下，独身一个人。但孤独不意味着爱情的终结。我们将相爱一生，你若先离去，不会把我的爱情带走。他会像以往一样生活，代陈一平去看所有留在世上，他关心的人。或许是朋友，或许是亲人，或许是朋友亲人的子女。他期待自己大限到来的那一天，他生命自然终止时那个势必到来的团聚。然后骄傲地告诉他，我代替你看护了那些被留下的人。将分别日子里一件件，一桩桩琐事讲清。仿佛对方没有在自己最后的岁月里缺席。
    他不愿悲观，用一天想过很多人生欢乐事。末尾发现，人生最大欢乐事，就是我和你。
    这多么幼稚，又多么诚恳。可能是在一个人二十岁时能想到的最深沉的情话，最郑重的告白。

Robert Jackson Bennett's second installment in the Ana and Din series puts a kingdom next to the empire and reminds us why things can always be worse. Din's relationship with Captain Strovi was so healthy and sweet that it's almost cruel for the author to keep them apart like this.

• “Well, we don’t get any Legionnaires for protection out here. We are far from the Empire proper, and there are no leviathans this far north. Yet it makes a crude sense, does it not? For what are human beings, if not walking bags of valuable reagents and compounds?”
• “It has always been called ossuary moss—though it is not truly a moss but a predatory fungus. It lives in hollows in the earth, lining the chambers there, waiting for creatures to fall in. When they do, the moss stings them, paralyzing them, and slowly grows to swallow them, like a cocoon. That’s when the truly fun stuff happens.” She grunted as she shifted the brick. “It secretes a fluid, cleaning the organism of the many pestilences that cause rot. Almost like curing it, really, so it can then consume all the tissues, with no waste.
• She did so, gingerly turning the jawbone and the fragment of torso like they were fine crockery I had a mind to purchase.
• “That is one term for it,” she conceded. “The craftsmen of the old courts grew these towers from a type of sand, full of tiny bugs. You could add things to the sand, put it in a mold, and the bugs within would make it harden into that shape. But the stone did not age well. Didn’t settle right. And many things leaned.”
• Now—step fast. We are in a dangerous area. I don’t want anyone seeing your very pretty face, assuming you’re a rich man who paid for the shaping of it, and knifing you for your talints.”
• * “The Usini Lending Group manages much credit within the Iyalets,” Poskit said, still in that saccharine tone. “It is our prerogative to maintain awareness of where our clients are stationed at any given moment.” <> Of course, I thought. The one institution that was more capable than the Iyalets themselves, naturally, were the Empire’s moneylenders.
• As I trudged through the streets of Yarrowdale, my heart felt shadowed. If my father’s new debts were to follow me about the Empire like a ghostly lamia from the children’s tales, then my dream of a new service would remain just that: a dream, and nothing more.
• * “Are they not your lands, too?” <> A trim smile. “Spoken like one who has never known a king.”
• In an instant, she shed her air of dreamy reflection, and her face twisted into an expression of poisonous condescension. “Business!” she scoffed, and ripped the blindfold from her head. “Business, yes! But business long done! That pot of shit soup has been bubbling for years now…
• “And…that puts us in a spot, for it produces the most valuable reagents in all the Empire.” <> “Quite correct! Squeezed from dead leviathans out in the bay like juice from an aplilot, then rendered in countless Apoth facilities on the shores.
• * “Exactly. Now the value of the city is astronomical. And in less than a decade it shall all be transferred over to the Empire itself! And the king, well…he would very much like to back out of the deal his great-great-grandfather made. He wishes to extort more money, more resources, more agreements from the Empire. Which means every day is a fucking temper tantrum with him! Goddamn autocrats. They really are hardly better than shit-stained children.”
• * I thought of my brief service in Talagray, and the Legionnaires I had known there. One soldier burned bright in my mind: Captain Kepheus Strovi, with whom I’d spent only a handful of days, yet in my augmented mind it felt akin to a lifetime. <> I placed my hand on my mossbed and let my eyes flutter in my skull. My thoughts sang with the touch of him, the smell of him.
• To others, the dance might have seemed artful, yet to me, it was routine. I had memorized this method over the past year as I’d moved from place to place: much like picking a lock, some combination of these gestures and exchanges worked to win the right attentions. Or perhaps that was not quite it: perhaps I was more like a man dabbing bloods and scents upon his flesh as he stood before a darkened wood, waiting for some predator within to pounce on him and spirit him away.
• Afterward: when all was spent, and the shuddering grew still, and the sweaty limbs atop my own grew cool. Only then I could hold them and make the world small for me. <> No more debts or moneylenders. No more bodies and blood. No more trivial little people burdened with hearts both vicious and dull. Only then, perhaps, the absence of Kepheus would burn a little less bright, and all would be small and controllable.
• “None of the rest of my delegation fell ill. But Sujedo was, ah…a very inner ring sort of person. “Meaning…” “Meaning,” drawled Malo, “the fellow was softer than a jellied egg.”
• But just in case you’ve got someone else’s spit in your mouth, we also ask for piss. Less likely to have someone else’s piss in their belly. Then we apply reagents to the samples, swab it on the balmleaf substrate for the safe, and it’s done. All this means that box should have been one of the most secured things in all of Yarrow.”
• A banded tooth was a false molar that had been grown in a reagents tank with a unique striping pattern running across the enamel. When an officer received such a tooth, the pattern was assigned to their name, so if their corpse was ever discovered in the future, it could be speedily identified.
• * And now—this! A fucking note! I feel we needn’t bother looking at faces to find this man, Din! Just keep an eye out for the fellow with testicles large enough to cause back deformities, and we shall have our culprit!”
• “I disdain it. I disdain it so, all this fucking spectacle! Nothing irks me more than a showy murderer, as if their wretched deeds were some mystical marvel!”
• “Perhaps. For in a way, do we not all sip from the titan’s marrow, in one fashion or another?”
• * A nervous smile from Ghrelin, yet he shot a searching glance at Thelenai, as if to confirm that his smile did not bring reproach. It was in this small gesture that I suddenly felt I had the feel of them: Thelenai was the grand and steely queen of this realm, and he was her scurrying counselor, rushing to invent laws to match her will.
• I hope I was not untoward in assuming you might want this.”
  The commander brought the parchments before Ana, bowed, and returned to his seat. Ana sat for a moment, nonplussed to have one of her requests for information not only exactly predicted, but quickly met.
  “Oh,” she muttered. She plucked at the parchments like they were a dish she had not ordered.
• “I have witnessed folk altered in such a fashion. Merely nearing the unmentionable subject causes them significant pain. I did not note such pain in Ghrelin.” She flicked a hand, dismissing the subject. “It was a random aside. Ignore it for now—but do remember it, Din.”
• She shut the book with a snap. “Ah. I will go ahead and assume, then, that you are not familiar with the Adherents of the Sallow Fields?” <> I waved wearily. “Assume away.”
• Instead, they tap—rapping three fingers in a rhythmic, mathematical alphabet, upon boards they hang about their necks. It’s a tricky way to talk—they have to wait one at a time to tap out their messages, otherwise it gets very hard to hear.
• “Yes. Unconsciously, perhaps, like he was trained to let every thought in his brain spill down his arm to his fingers to be tapped out. How deliciously ridiculous, yes?” <> “I find all these mentions of doom somewhat less than delightful, ma’am,” I said weakly.
• “Two Apoths, both of them tapping. And both of them, apparently, are geniuses, of a sort…for one served on the Shroud itself, and indeed built the veil that surrounds it, while the other pulled off a theft of frankly absurd complexity. Then there is the mention of marrow, and their reaction to it. And we know the impostor did not steal healing grafts…So, what if what was in that box had something to do with the Shroud, or this marrow?”
• “It is for me,” she said. She shot me a sharp look. “But I wonder if it’s enough for you. Mostly because your current method of emotional management is obviously not working!”... And while I do not know where your spiritual serenity lies, I am pretty sure it isn’t in another person’s bed, or ass, or whatever the hell it is you keep getting up to in the evenings!”
• “Oh, don’t bother with discretion now!” she said. “You’ve all the prudence of an inebriated cow! I’m half surprised people don’t gossip that you are a whore for hire, and I your pimp! It’d all be very amusing, if the reason for your consternation weren’t so obvious!”
  “And what reason do you think that is, ma’am?” I demanded, flustered.
  “It is that you believe we do little significant in our work!” Ana thundered. “And thus, you dream of transferring to the Legion!”
• I suspect you shall come to realize what many Iudexii eventually learn—that though the Legion defends our Empire, it falls to us to keep an Empire worth defending.”
• “How excellent. Did you know that the lyre duet is one of the ancient arts of Yarrow, Din?”... “Yes. Some say it reflects the dominance of twins and triplets in the royal lineage here—a rather fascinating biological quirk. Led to some very interesting issues with inheritance,
• The Yarrow of old still thrives in the west of here, living under the rule of the king. There the nobles and chief men have inherited many elder things. They have inherited lands from their fathers, and the oaths of loyalty that their fathers made to the king…and they have inherited people. Naukari. The ones bound to serve.”
• “Then you may go. Have the Apoth quartermaster send me food, three chamber pots, and enough quiridine pellets to soak up the stench.” Another melancholic chord. “I’ll let you empty them when you return.
• These are wardens. These are people who spend days in the swamp waiting to shoot smugglers with many arrows. I would no more assume they are an example of Yarrow folk than I would assume a rabid dog is a common pet.”
• Malo stared. “You…you did not even get that, Kol? By the titan’s taint, what kind of man are you? Some kind of fricatrat, making your rounds?”
• Malo was so amused by this that she translated it for her fellow wardens, who whooped and chuckled huskily. It made for a strange sound: they had trained so strenuously as hunters, apparently, that they even knew how to avoid laughing aloud.
• From the chest to the hip bone, the bare torso appeared to bloom into a tangle of silvery, slender skeletons, like the bones of many fish, yet it was difficult to tell where the man’s body ended and this twisted storm of glistening fishbones began. It was as if they sprouted from his flesh, or from his pelvis and rib cage, like a school of minnows leaping from his abdomen, and some of the skeletons had eyes that were small, malformed, and peeping.
• yet the bodies had somehow unraveled, turning into wild storms of fishbones, or bundles of warped leathers, or boiling, spidery clouds of gossamer threads, with clutches of teeth suspended in their glistening heads. <> I stared about in horror. It was dark within the dome of growth, yet shafts of hazy, amber sunlight came stabbing through in places, shivering with the wind and sometimes illuminating some new horror at the edges of the shadow, or giving those close to me the illusion of movement. It was as if this little leafbound bubble of the world had gone utterly insane.
• “A blotley larva,” he said. “Type of highly altered, parasitic fly. Sucks your blood, yes—but they’re very sensitive. Even the slightest trace of contagion within you will kill them.”... “It won’t,” said Tangis. “This is an altered, unnatural creature, created for this one purpose. It can’t survive in the wild anymore. It can’t even eat properly. If I let it go long enough, it’ll actually start leaking your own blood back into you.”
• “Algaeoil,” I said. “Saliva. Mucus. And…sweat?” <> “And also the aroma of the little glue they use for the helms’ eyepieces,” Ana said, pleased. “Figured you were sniffing that throughout your ordeal. Now you’ve a scent. So, talk, child! Talk, and talk quick!”
• * “We fear the elements, and plague, and the wrath of the leviathans. Yet if we are to see clear-eyed, we would admit that the will of men is as unforgiving as these. How many chieftains and champions have wrought just as much sorrow as the wet seasons? We must govern thoughtfully, then, and manage such passions wisely—for if these folk have their way, we shall return to nature primordial, and be as beasts, and all the world a savage garden, mindless and raging.”
• “The first quote we found included an inversion of the imperial creed—I am the Empire—taken from a quote where the emperor worried his realm would grow selfish and unjust, and fall. And this one is an inversion of the emperor’s vision—for Daavir feared the will of cruel men making all the world a savage garden... “Exactly,” Ana said. “My feeling is that this man suggests he has rather unpleasant feelings about the Empire’s presence here!
• “The Senate of the Sanctum authorized a research project here in Yarrowdale just over a decade ago,” said Ghrelin, his voice growing fragile, “to answer one question—what if we could extract not only the blood but the marrow itself? What if we could bathe it in nutrients and maintain it so it kept producing the blood well after the titan has died?”...  “but apt. We have kept our labors secret, for obvious reasons—if the king of Yarrow were to find out we were laboring in his backyard to render his entire kingdom irrelevant to the Empire, it would be politically destabilizing. But…if we achieved this feat, the effects would go well beyond ridding us of the king.”
• “Healing grafts and suffusions you can scarcely imagine,” said Thelenai. “We could end the plague of sterility that comes with so many alterations. Bring about an age of abundance like when the first Khanum emerged from the valley in the ancient days and changed all the world before them.” <> “We could even heal our Sublimes,” said Ghrelin. “Many of us are plagued by mental afflictions as we grow old and lead short lives. With an abundance of kani, we could change even that.”
• By carefully injecting the organ with an advanced strain of oli muk—or ossuary moss, as you refer to it—we could wrap up the marrow like a fly in a spider’s web and keep it preserved indefinitely. We had to do it in the right sequence
• “But this means the marrow, too, is always different,” said Thelenai. “Biologically different in shape, density, nature…so each extraction had to be different. We needed a way of reading the randomness. Only then could we succeed.”... “What we needed,” she said finally, “was a different way of looking at it. A different type of mind. That is why we produced augury. And that changed everything.”... “They were instrumental in our progress,” said Thelenai. “The physiology of the leviathans is so unpredictable, so dangerous, and so random—only the augurs could make sense of it.”
• The augurs read things into the slightest inflection, or word choice, or hesitation. So, on the Shroud…they do not speak aloud, but rather tap to communicate, in a very old code. This method is much less affected by nuance.”
• * Ana impatiently flapped a hand. “And if the marrow was successfully attacked? If, say, Pyktis again used his titan’s blood weapon and managed to penetrate all your defenses about the marrow, there upon the Shroud?”
  A taut silence.
  “Then…then the marrow would act like…a fissure in the earth dripping lava, layer upon layer,” whispered Thelenai. “Releasing more blood, and more alterations.”
• “And…these colleagues are also augurs,” said Ana, “which means they, too, possess hypersensitive abilities of prediction and analysis?”... “Ones that would be enormously useful if they were put to the task of analyzing Pyktis?”
• “Thelenai I shall have to handle in good time,” said Ana grudgingly. “I am sure she thinks she did the right thing—that healing so many in the future was worth inflicting pain on a few in the present—but secretly, she did it for the same reason so many regents crumble.”... “Pride,” answered Ana. “She wrote a story in her mind, with herself as hero, clad in the trappings of triumph. It’s possible the greatness she has accomplished here could have been done with no deception, and thus less disaster. But a prideful creature can talk themself into believing that every deed they do is legitimate. Thus, they both giddily and greedily spin their own doom.”
• “You…you asked us to prepare our uniforms,” I said, “because you had already anticipated the next murder.” <> “I would have thought that fucking obvious!” thundered Ana. “We knew Pyktis had produced poison, there in his den! We knew he had an oathcoin, suggesting he’d been to the High City before! And we knew he’d likely seen the smokes in the jungle and would know that we’d found his macabre little display! Thus, he has begun the next bit of his game!
• To begin with, the bells did not stop tolling for over three hours, which meant all discussions in Yarrowdale had to be bellowed at close distance in order to be heard.
• “It seems we are now in the business of court intrigue!” said Ana. She wrinkled her nose. “How trite.”
• While this made housing and construction easy enough, it also meant that the art of stonework quickly became the domain of the wealthy and the powerful; for while resources were plentiful in the Empire, labor was eternally expensive.
• Perhaps that was what drove my astonishment: the sheer sense of age of this place. All the towers felt like they’d been here for centuries, and all the soldiers looked like warriors from some archaic saga. Though much of the Empire was indeed old, few of its structures were, for buildings were constantly being cut down and regrown whenever needed. And if a structure was old—like the sea walls, or the ring walls—then it was often an unsightly, forbidding spectacle. <> This place, however, felt beautiful and eternal. A stunning sight to a person like me, from an improvised Empire that often felt so blandly bureaucratic.
• “And if his guilt is proven,” said Pavitar to Ana indignantly, “will you fight our application of justice? Shall you try and steal him away, though he killed our king?” <> Ana shrugged. “If I deem he truly is the murderer of your king, then I see no reason why he cannot be killed here! A dead man cannot be greatly bothered by who owns the patch of earth he swings over—true?”
• His people were distraught, yet he did not perish. Pavitar claimed this was yet more sign of his guilt, but…even then, I felt the Empire would employ better poisoners than this.”
• some of my people haven’t ever even seen a drawn sword, do you know this? They’re axioms, number-readers! They quaked like children awoken by an owl!”
• “Exactly,” said Ana. “The killer had a personal connection to that one, so he felt compelled to hide him deeper. Once we knew this, we found the killer quickly—the dead child’s uncle,
• With the marrow secured, we could develop many methods of creating all the titan’s blood we need, deep in the safety of the inner rings. No more Shroud, no more canals, no more barges.” She scratched her chin. “So…you weren’t negotiating the final imperial adoption of the realm of Yarrow, were you? You were secretly negotiating our withdrawal from this place.”
• * The prificto shifted uncomfortably. “If I could banish all the evils of the world, child, know I would do it. But it is not our purpose to wade into the affairs of other cultures and scold them into decency.”
• * “But there is a silent agreement of how oathcoins work. You return it to the man who gave it to you for a favor. You could go above him, to a higher lord or even the king—but only if the need is great, and the favor does not bring insult. Otherwise, you would be in tremendous peril. But Dokha…he was a very good boy. Very selfless, you see.”
  “He asked for your freedom?” I guessed.
  “He did,” said Malo. “The freedom of all the naukari who were below the age of ten. And they made us watch as they killed him for it. Struck his head from his shoulders as if it were a piece of clay, then sank his corpse to the bottom of one of our holy lakes.”... It is how my folk so eagerly cling to the poisoned relics of throne and chain.
• But to me, your plans taste like the fantasies of a young man, attempting to invent a way out. We are small things, Kol. We are given no charity in this world.”
• Ana arched her eyebrows at that. “Ohh? Am I to believe, Din, that you now compare your own struggles with those wardens and naukari of Yarrow? That your own stymied hopes of transferring to the Legion make you akin to abandoned warriors and entrapped slaves?
• * “This work can never satisfy, Din, for it can never finish. The dead cannot be restored. Vice and bribery will never be totally banished from the cantons. And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist. The duty of the Iudex is not to boldly vanquish it but to manage it.
• I was at the shore. The sky was slate-gray and mutinous, the dawning sun a narrow blade of riotous red in the east. I clambered out of the carriage and stumbled along the jetty to the waiting cargo ship, trying to coordinate my arms and legs to move aright. I was lost inside my body, which was lost inside the suit, and the whole of me was lost on this wandering stripe of rocky coast.
• The Shroud was not a tent, I realized, nor a structure of gauze or moss, as I’d previously imagined; rather, it was thicker, fleshier, more gelatinous, less akin to fabric or vines and more like some colossal growth of seaweed rising from the waters. Nor was it all one piece, but layered like a flower’s petals, each roll of its husk coiled about the next, its viridine flesh shot through with veins of dark green bubbles. <> And it moved. It rippled and shifted, billowing in one long, undulating flex from end to end, over and over. It was so strange, and beautiful, and artful; yet there was a subtle terror to it, and to look upon it set something crawling behind my eyes.
• “People worshipped them as gods once,” said Ghrelin quietly. “I think of that whenever I make this voyage.”... “And I cannot blame them,” Ghrelin continued. “These giant, inexplicable things, thundering ashore, bringing so much death and strangeness with them. That’s what faith and the divine is, isn’t it? A line stretching from little beings like us, to the ineffable, the incomprehensible.”
• A bright, tremulous wall of pale flesh would subside into a wall of dull, brown brick, only to then be followed by a hull of plated steel, with tiny, glassy windows stubbling its surface; and all about it were looping pipes and vessels, some wrought of bronze, others of flesh, like tracts of ropy intestine, carrying fluids up and down the hide of the tremendous thing.
• * “What does it mean,” he said, “when the line that once connected us to the inscrutable and ineffable instead coils about, forms a great loop—and then comes back to us?”
• my suit now so hot it felt like I was being braised within a bladder.
• I wondered what to do. Then I realized: all this felt rather familiar, didn’t it? Didn’t I know very well how to deal with a person so ravenous for information? <> I said, “Aren’t you wise enough to determine the answers by what I cannot say, as opposed to what I can?”
• The man, wistfully, dreamily: “To serve with him was akin to loving a person made of glass. So difficult to perceive. So still, so cold, so hard to the touch.”
• And then there was the truth I’d spied in that awful place, which boiled in my mind like a hot ball of iron dropped into a cooling bucket. I had to be rid of it, for otherwise it might burn me up.
• * I believe his father the king plotted this long ago—a plot to place a Yarrow loyalist deep within the Empire’s workings here, with the eventual goal of sabotaging the Shroud itself! He would use one of his own children to stab at its heart, like marring the heartwood of a great tree. With this act, he would damage the Empire most terribly, and unravel its influence over his kingdom.” She raised her blindfolded eyes to the ceiling. “It was, I think, a suicidal mission. Pyktis himself said his father expected him to die on the Shroud, after all... “So much so that I think the king forgot he’d ever put such a secret plan in place to begin with, thirty-some years ago! Thus Sunus Pyktis washed ashore, a prince who’d not only failed in his one and only duty, but a prince completely forgotten by the realm he’d lived to serve! A rather tragic thing, is it not? He returned to his country as a man with no nation and no identity to call his own. So he invented a new one—the pale king, lord of the canals.”
• saw a way to cleverly misuse the horrid little things. He stole a crate of them from an Apoth barge, stuck countless larvae on Sujedo, let them drink their fill, then stuck them on his own body! He left them there long enough so that they leaked Sujedo’s blood into him—and that allowed him to just walk into the vault like he belonged there!”
• “Here is your path now, child. First, you pursue Darhi. Question him, for we must find either Pyktis or the stolen reagents! By achieving either, all our threats shall be ended.”
• * “Apophenia,” she said again. “The affliction of spying meaning and patterns in randomness. The augurs struggle with it, yet…I feel it is this state he aimed to induce in me. He bombards me with so much evidence and motives and mysteries that my mind cannot function! It is as if he knows my very nature.”
• Ana raised the knife; but my horror was entirely wrong, for rather than slashing at the flesh, she wedged the blade between the corpse’s teeth and wiggled it back and forth, until a tooth came free with an awful crunch. Then she dropped my knife and turned the tooth over and over in her fingers, like a witch reading her scrying stone.
• “Don’t you see?” said Ana. “The augurs of the Shroud are unusually vulnerable to music. And I just happen to have composed a percussive song that is uniquely irritating to an augur—always suggesting order yet dissolving before it coheres! A song to drive an augur mad, in other words, no matter how iron their will. And so it has.” She grinned. “For that man in that throne is not the prince. He is an augur. He is, in fact, none other than Sunus Pyktis himself!”
• “He bound the dead Prince Camak up in moss and stored his brother’s body away, waiting for the perfect time to fake his death again. For if the trick worked once, it could certainly do so a second time!
• “You fed Darhi’s greed, and his avarice,” Ana said to Pyktis. “An easy thing, for a snake like him! You even knew he’d eventually betray you. But then you arranged the trail just so. It was you who hid the oathcoin in your den, knowing that Darhi was so free with them! And you knew we’d eventually identify Gorthaus as the traitor, and she would name Darhi as the architect of all of this. Honestly, what fools we’d be if we thought it was anyone but Darhi behind it all!” She stuck a finger out at him. “But it was you, of course, and not Darhi, who killed the king.”
• “If the marrow was destroyed,” said Ana, “then you knew the Empire would have to stay in Yarrow for years longer. The Empire lacked the will to fully adopt the region—you’d already put that together ages ago—but they’d be more than happy to keep paying the court to keep things just as they were. And oh, you’d make sure the Empire would pay you a fortune.”...  “And, of course, it also explained your macabre campaign of terror—you wanted to terrify Thelenai into taking a desperate measure. All this business of heads and warped smugglers…all of it was a story you fed us, to make Thelenai panic and move the marrow by ship, far away from here.
• But even if he’d lived, the goal would have been achieved anyway—for how could we believe such a liar when he claimed he was not the killer of the body found in his litter? You’d win either way. We would think all the villains captured or killed, and all was safe—and we would relax, and relent.
• * “Kings.” Pyktis shuddered. “For so long I was told they were wondrous fathers, farsighted rulers touched by the divine. The natural rule of strength, of crown, of throne—a noble thing, unlike the Empire, so unnatural and invented. But when I looked upon my father, I saw they are just…men. Little men with muddy, ugly little minds, who fall to common corruptions just like anyone.” His face twisted. “Just like everyone in the Empire. Just like Thelenai.”... “She is just like him, do you know that?” he asked. “She made tools of us, asking us to sacrifice ourselves, to risk our lives and minds for her own little treasure. You all do. The Empire weeps so grandly, and bedecks the dead with gold and lands, but…it is still the same as my father. You call it serving. But you are slaves, and your masters shall never know any consequence.”
• * said Pyktis bitterly. “It is the same in all nations of the earth. You are either a slave or a master. I had my chance. I made my choice.” <> Ana nodded slowly, then tsked. “I see…Simple nihilism, then. How terribly unimaginative. With you being so brilliant, Pyktis, I thought your motivations might wind up being a bit more interesting!
• “Both the kings and the thieves, the angels and the utter bastards, are all inevitably quite human. Though that should not let our hand be any softer when justice is delivered!”
• but I committed great crimes in doing so. I kept the augury a secret and worked mightily to hide it from the Senate of the Sanctum. Because of this choice, dozens are dead, and the entire Empire might have unraveled. I would not wish for any other Apothetikal to follow in my steps, or grow so prideful and careless as I. And…I feel I do not deserve to see the bright future I have made.” She gazed west, toward the High City. “I, perhaps, am more like Pyktis and his father than a true imperial servant. And I should not taint the world to come with my touch.”
• * “Why, it’s the…the crushing disappointment of it all. The investigation ends. It’s all over now. No more riddles, no more need for imagination. And all was so small, at the end. It was for money, and land, and brutal, petty nihilism. Honestly, how…how tremendously disappointing.”
• “For while one common man is no equal to a Khanum, a great host of them working in agreement, and describing all they see and know, may not only match my kin, but exceed them in their deeds. Thus, with laws and strictures, and offices and election, and the changing of coin and the scribblings of many ledgers, shall a new Empire be fashioned.
• “It is good to place oneself before the vast expanse of this world,” said Ana. “The ocean cannot tell the difference between a rich man and a poor one, nor one full of happiness, or despair. To those waves, all are so terribly small.” <> “Being an imperial from the Outer Rim,” I said, “I need little help in feeling such a thing, ma’am.”
• * “Kings, of course. Perhaps we wished to make the ancient and divine mortal, to render the infinite in flesh and form. How reassuring that would be! And yet, a fool’s game, as we have so thoroughly learned here... We need no more kingly stuff than that! Not from the emperor, nor the kings of Yarrow…” She slowly turned her blindfolded face to me. “Nor anyone else.” <> I studied her and felt countless meanings hidden in these words. It was like so many great imperial things: so much was mystery, while the rest was politely unspeakable.
• I bowed my head. I felt my heart almost burst with tension from so many things going unsaid in that moment. Was she what I suspected her to be? Was she asking, however indirectly, for me to watch over her, and ensure that her own mind did not go awry, just as had happened to Pyktis? Was this the role she had planned for me all this time?

//Because all the characters in this story—like all of humanity, apparently—have a little blank spot in their heads that says, “Kings. What a good idea.” The idea is powerful, and seductive, and should not be underestimated. To be a civilization of any worth, however, means acknowledging the idea—and then condemning it as laughably, madly stupid.

John Hersey's propaganda novel has some fine crowd scenes. I wouldn't have let the three soldiers who destroyed their host's precious art collection off so easily like the good Major.

• He was a good man, though weak in certain attractive, human ways, and what he did and what he was not able to do in Adano represented in miniature what America can and cannot do in Europe. Since he happened to be a good man, his works represented the best of the possibilities.
• * That is where we are lucky. No other country has such a fund of men who speak the languages of the lands we must invade, who understand the ways and have listened to their parents sing the folk songs and have tasted the wine of the land on the palate of their memories.
• Until there is a seeming stability in Europe, our armies and our after-armies will have to stay in Europe. Each American who stays may very well be extremely dependent on a Joppolo, not only for language, but for wisdom and justice and the other things we think we have to offer Europeans.
• Next you’ll be raising monuments, Major Joppolo, first to an unknown soldier, then to yourself. I don’t trust you men who are so sentimental and have too damn much conscience.”
  “Cut the kidding,” the Major said. There was an echo in the way he said it, as if he were a boy having been called wop by others in school. In spite of the gold maple leaf of rank on the collar, there was an echo.
• “I know my business, I know what I want to do, I know what its like to be poor, Borth.”
  Borth was silent. He found the seriousness of this Major Joppolo something hard to penetrate.
• This was not one of those impermanent-looking, World’sFair-architecture Fascist headquarters which you. see in so many Italian towns, buildings so up to the moment in design that, like airplanes, they were obsolete before they were ever finished... After all the poverty which had shouted and begged in the streets, this room was stiflingly rich.
• Zito thought quickly and said: “That, Mister Major, is Columbus discovering America.” <> Zito smiled because it was a beautiful lie. Major Joppolo did not discover for three weeks that the picture was really a scene from the Sicilian Vespers, that bloody revolt which the Sicilians mounted against a previous invader.
• Notes to Joppolo from Joppolo. And he read: “Don’t make yourself cheap. Always be accessible to the public. Don’t play favorites. Speak Italian whenever possible. Don’t lose your temper. When plans fall down, improvise…”
• * Cacopardo broke into furious Italian: “Fat one, you think only of your stomach. The spirit is more important than the stomach. The bell was of our spirit. It was of our history. It was hung on the tower by Pietro of Aragona. It was designed by the sculptor Lucio de Anj of Modica.” <> Craxi said in Italian: “People who are very hungry have a ringing in their ears. They have no need of bells.” Cacopardo said: “By this bell the people were warned of the invasion of Roberto King of Naples, and he was driven back.”
• Cacopardo the historian said: “He meant no offense. It is an old custom here. Once the important people make us kiss their hands, and later when the actual kissing became too much of a bother, it became the habit merely to mention the kissing, as if it had been done.”
• Town crier: Mercurio Salvatore stood before Major Joppolo in tawdry splendor. He wore a uniform of the eighteenth century, and looked as if he had been wearing it ever since that time...  the silk had long since fallen apart, and Carmelina the wife of Fatta had replaced it with sacking from the sulphur refinery which she had dyed purple with grape juice, but the purple had washed out in the first few rains, so that now Mercurio Salvatore was a walking advertisement of Cacopardo Sulphur.
• He took a deep breath. Blood and wind rushed into his throat, and his throat roared: “Well, you laughed. But you can see that Mercurio Salvatore is still your crier. The Americans are friends of Mercurio Salvatore. The Americans wish to be your friends, too. You have been expecting the Americans for some time, but did you expect the changes which would come after the Americans?
• Zito said: “Then Adano will not want your Liberty Bell. Adano would not like to have a crack, I am sure.” Major Joppolo said: “Then that’s out.” And he thought some more.
• * Little Ludovico, not having been outside the Church at seventeen minutes past seven on a Sunday morning for most of the years he could remember, rushed out into the sunlight without thinking to ask where the American Major would be found, or, for that matter, who the American Major was, and why there was an American Major in the town
• The service in the Church of Sant’ Angelo was taking a most unusual course. Having completed the supplication, Father Pensovecchio started reciting the Litany of Saint Joseph. It was the longest litany he could think of offhand, and he repeated the words without any sense of their meaning... Suddenly Father Pensovecchio broke off. He had had an idea. He beckoned again to the senior acolyte and whispered in his ear: “Have old Guzzo ring the bell.”
• He is so busy that he had to run all the way to church, and even then was somewhat late. But we are very glad to have him here.” Father Pensovecchio spoke with feeling. “We are glad that he is one of us. Because of this man, I believe that the Americans are my friends.
• This man was called by the people The Man With Two Hands, because of his continuous and dramatic gesturing... He possessed and exercised all the essentially Italian gestures: the two forefingers laid side by side, the circle of thumb and forefinger, the hands up in stop position, the sign of the cuckold and of the genitals, the salute to the forehead with palm forward, the fingertips of the two hands placed tip to tip, the fingers linked, the hands flat and downward as if patting sand, the hands up heel to heel and pulled toward the chest, the attitude of prayer, the pointing forefinger of accusation, the V as if for victory or smoking cigarettes, the forefinger on the chin, the rolling of the hands. 
• This was the first time Gargano had ever been called Two-Hands to his face. He did not under stand the reference.
• * “Democracy is this: democracy is that the men of the government are no longer the masters of the people. They are the servants of the people. What makes a man master of another man? It is that he pays him for his work. Who pays the men in the government? The people do, for they pay the taxes out of which you are paid. “Therefore you are now the servants of the people of Adano.
• * Probably you think of him as one of the heroes of the invasion; the genial, pipe-smoking history-quoting, snappy-looking, map-carrying, adjective-defying divisional commander; the man who still wears spurs even though he rides everywhere in an armored car;... But I can tell you perfectly calmly that General Marvin showed himself during the invasion to be a bad man, something worse than what our troops were trying to throw out... his deep bass voice (you’ve read about that voice in the supplements; it’s famous; one writer said it was like “a foghorn gone articulate”)
• Errante’s mule was a cautious creature, just as wary of ditches on the right as of ditches on the left. This was a quality in his mule of which Errante Gaetano often boasted to his friends. “Give me none of your lopsided mules,” he would say, “give me a mule with a sense of the middle.” <> This sense was going to be the undoing of his mule just now, because General Marvin’s face was beginning to grow dark, and some veins which have never been described in the supplements began to wriggle and pound on his forehead.
• Before the first of them reached the door, Major Joppolo said: “I wish to tell you that I will do all that is in my power to have this unjust order revoked.” <> And when the comic-looking officials of Adano went out of the door of the Major’s office, they were still sad but they were for him.
• Galioto Bartolomeo is so thin that you can count the several teeth of his mouth even when his lips are closed.
• “What’s this Major to you?” Schultz said. “If he can’t have any fun, what’s he to you?”
  Sergeant Trapani said: “Oh, nothing, I just hate to see a guy get in trouble when he’s trying to do right.”
  Schultz said: “Well, then, why don’t you let the order get lost in Captain Purvis’s papers? Don’t bother me, God, I feel awful.”
• * “You’d better come, he’s going to call on old Tomasino, who hates authority,” they shouted. <> “The mountain is going to Mohammed,” they shouted. And the crowd grew.
• Here Major Joppolo got angry. “Old fisherman,” he said, you will have to understand something. The people of Adano are hungry. They must have fish. Do you get that through your thick skull?”
• * “But Tomasino, you’ve just admitted that I was different from other men of authority. You could be different too. It is possible to make your authority seem to spring from the very people over whom you have authority. And after a while, Tomasino, it actually does spring from them, and you are only the instrument of their will. That is the thing that the Americans want to teach you who have lived under men who imagined that they themselves were authority.”
• On the seventh morning, the Sergeant made him repent for having forced his will on two young girls of the town. <> And so, day after day, the repentances went. And every day the crowd outside Sergeant Borth’s office in the Fascio grew, and the laughter got louder and louder.
• Well, I heard the other day that after the U.S. Army was around these Italian towns for a while there was going to be a pot on every chicken.” <> The Captain roared with laughter. Giuseppe, although he had no idea what the point was, laughed politely. The Major was horrified.
• Major Joppolo had made up his mind that Tina’s hair was dyed. But he didn’t expect her to talk about it. Tina sensed his embarrassment. “Oh, my hair is not natural, Mister Major. I dyed it because I was not satisfied. My dark hair was my Bronx. Every one had dark hair. I wanted something different.”
• “No, being a tax collector did not make you rich in New York. I was earning twenty dollars a week. That’s two thousand lira.”... “I did all right, too, only then they elected a man named LaGuardia, and since he was a different party from the previous man, a lot of people got thrown out, and I was one. I borrowed some money from my motherin-law -”
• The family of Tomasino and their guests spent the next five minutes on their hands and knees picking up the chicken feathers. When that was done Rosa said to Tomasino: “Sad one, put the girls to bed.” Tomasino led the little ones out without gentleness.
• The Major left. Captain Purvis tried to pick up where he left off, but pretty soon Tina came in with tears in her eyes and told Francesca in Italian what had happened, and Rosa came in and asked where the Major was, and Tomasino came back from putting the little ones to bed, and Captain Purvis ran out of finger talk, which parents can understand as well as daughters. And so he got up and left too.
• Chuck said: “Take a drink, have a think.”
  Polack said: “Get a stink, take a drink.”
  Chuck said: “Jeez, that’s hard, to think of somethin’ good enough for that goddam Major.”
• Lord Runcin clapped his snuffbox shut and stood up. “Well, Joppolo, sounds to me as if you were doing a wizard job here. Keep it up. If you have any troubles, just give me a buzz.” And His Lordship left, on the verge of a delicious sneeze which he had been saving in his nostrils for ten minutes.
• Major Joppolo said, and his voice was much softer: “I’m not Italian, boys. I’m American, and sometimes I’m not as proud of it as I’d like to be.”... The Major said: “I’m going to make this your punishment: to have this man’s unhappiness on your conscience, and from now on to keep his house as clean as if everything in it belonged to your own mother.
• * Then, in the heat of the day, they would tempt the Americans with cool-looking fruits, and would sell them for anywhere from ten to twenty times the proper prices. It got so bad that city people would buy what little fruit did reach the town market, and would take it out into the country to sell it to the foolhardy Americans. <> To stop, or at least to curb, the black market, Major Joppolo did three things: he put the town out of bounds to American soldiers, who from then on could enter only on business; he had the Carabiniers stop all foodstuffs from leaving the town; and he fined anyone caught selling over-price or under-measure three thousand lire - a lifetime’s savings for a poor Italian peasant
• “I wish I had thrown it away,” Lieutenant Butters said. “I didn’t have the guts. I put it in the courier pouch for Algiers. You know how much stuff we’ve been losing on that run. I thought maybe -”
• THERE was no better index to the state of mind of Adano than the activities of the painter Lojacono... Whenever the town was optimistic, Lojacono worked. When the town was blue, Lojacono was idle.
• The white-haired Lojacono suffered when he painted. First he suffered the pangs of creation, then he suffered when the people of Adano criticized his work. His work was beautiful and everyone in the town loved it, but for some reason they always criticized it first... But soon he warmed to the town’s happiness, and he did things he had never been able to do in his life, which had not been short.
• My boat has been named Tina since the girl was born. It will remain Tina. The leaves and the fruit which dangle from the name are good enough for me, even if they are not new. You would think that Christ had come again, with all this fresh paint.”
• * And this shows the purpose of the criticism: it was not so much that the people did not like what Lojacono was doing, as that they wanted to know exactly what was in his mind. In future, showing off his boat, Agnello would be able to say: “You can see how fast the porpoise is going by the way the Mister Major is leaning forward. And do you see how white his skin is? That is because of the symbolism in the Mister Major’s skin.”
• Tomasino turned on her: “Girl, by the same reasoning which made your mother force me to go to the Mister Major against my will, I now order you to go to him also.” <> Tina lowered her head and said: “Well, if you order me…” Agnello said afterwards that he thought by the way she said this, she really wanted to go all along.
• After the trucks, his mind focused for a few moments on the figure of Gargano, Chief of the Carabinieri, who was directing traffic about half way down the Via Umberto the First. Errante said to himself: “Even if Gargano can talk three times as fast as anyone else - once with his mouth, once with his left hand, and once with his right - I do not like him.”
• Well, I heard that they belong to a little motor ship that has a cargo of sulphur and some other stuff this town really needs. I just thought that maybe one of these weeks when your floating dry dock isn’t too busy, you could raise her and the town would have the cargo and you’d probably have to drop your job and be mayor, you’d be so damn popular.”
• “He doesn’t want it, this Major of ours wants it, that’s what makes me mad. Old Runcin seems to think I’m a one-man shopping service, and he goes around recommending to people to write me all their screwy things they want.” “Well, what does this guy want?” “Jesus, Ham, he wants a bell.”
• Then Gargano told, or rather acted out, the story of how Errante Gaetano’s cart had blocked traffic on Via Umberto the First. Gargano the Two-Hands leaped and swore and shook his two fists at Errante, and he made Zito act as the mule, and he attacked Zito fiercely, and then he reeled back from sham blow after sham blow. He did not ask anyone to act out the part of Errante, but let his own dodging and staggering give the idea. <> He painted a terrible picture of the unknown but possible consequences of Errante’s holding up the procession of amphibious trucks. He himself seemed to die several times as he imagined the deaths of American boys which resulted from the bone-headedness of this cartman.
• he peered into the camera. <> His muffled voice came out from under the cloth. “Even upside down you are ugly. Usually I like faces much better upside down, but not yours. You are ugly right side up and upside down.
• So the Major went and breathed deeply in various points of the harbor. His final breathing point was alongside the motor ship Anzio. “And now,” he said, “who is for going back to work?” <> All but two of the workmen reported back to work. One was the stranger, who had disappeared. The other was the lazy Fatta. He had had enough for one day.
• His story was nicely told and his audience was just right. The Navy has a quick sense of tradition. All the folderol -saluting the quarter deck, the little silver buck to mark who should be served first in the wardroom, still calling the captain’s court of justice going before the mast, the marvelous poetic orders like: “Sweepers, man your brooms: clean sweepdown fore and aft” -these things made Navy men able to grasp the idea of the bell, and be moved by it.
• Commander Robertson went on: “There’s a reason why the Corelli’s in on this invasion. You see, the Navy thinks about that kind of thing. There was something about Captain Corelli, the guy it was named for, he did something in the last war over here in the Mediterranean. Italy was our ally then, you know.”
• * The men did not break into a run. The women ran toward the men. There was equal happiness on both sides, it just happened that most of the men knew their women would be there, whereas some of the women were not sure that their men would be there. That was the difference. That is why the women ran. <> There were among those women some who knew that their men were dead. They were just running forward in order to share the incredible happiness, or even the doubt, of the other women. Doubt was better than what they had.
• * When the prisoners saw the Major, some of them ran forward, shouting: “American! American!” They hugged him and some kissed him, and there were bread crumbs on his face when they got through with him.
• Some of the women with dead husbands embraced the first men they reached, just to taste a little of this sensation that they had wanted so much. But the men rejected them and went looking for their own.
• * Nicolo said: “The artillery was bad. They say you stop living for a moment when you sneeze. When a shell goes off near you, you have the same kind of paroxysm, and when you come out of it, you know you have been dead for a moment. You can’t go on dying like that many times a day, day after day, and be the same. Think what it would be like if you sneezed twenty times an hour, twenty-four hours a day, for days and days on end. Even that would be terrible, and there is hardly any fear in a sneeze.”
• he said that in a war a man’s honor was not measured by medals, because they were given out unjustly, but by the amount he could do for his nation. He said that killing two Germans helped rather than hurt Italy (perhaps, as things have turned out, we should have killed more) and that the best thing we could do would be to preserve ourselves for our country’s next battle. So we slipped into a bivouac and picked out two Germans and killed them in a quiet way which Giorgio showed me, and we got back to Sicily.”
• Nicolo said: “Tina, I have been beside many men who died in this war and no one of them ever mentioned a woman when he died. Men do not talk that way when they die. They talk about their stomachs and they swear, but they do not mention the names of women.
• I am ashamed of myself, and the shame I feel and the awful shame the drunks feel and all Italian soldiers feel - we were weak, Tina - the shame will hurt our country for many years. Our only chance is to remember men like Giorgio. If we couldn’t go down fighting the way he wanted us to, we can remember the ones like him who did.”
• Lojacono said: “Sometimes I think you are a ridiculous little man. The big things come from the little things. I am not finished. There is something about officials that makes them poke their noses, which are usually asleep on their faces, into unfinished matters.”...
• “In the chin, there will be strength, in the ears, alertness, in the fix of the hair, neatness, in the cheeks, a sympathetic warmth. You will like it,” the old man said. “So will he.”...
• The painter said: “You will not see the big things until you have seen the portrait for some time, just as you did not recognize them in the man until you got to know him. Why list them? You know what they are as well as I do.”..
• The old man said: “There is only one big thing, really. All the others are tied up in it. It is the wish, which is visible in this man’s face, that each person in this town should be happy.
• Another of Tomasino’s helpers said: “Sconzo liked parties. Except for his nose he was handsome.” Agnello and Merendino were just as dead as Sconzo, but their deaths seemed less terrible since they were not missing, as Tomasino put it. That is why the men talked about Sconzo as they went in, and not about the other two.
• Then he turned to the woman and said: “I hope you will not hate the Americans because of this thing. Please try to remember in your grief that the reason the children were out there, running into danger, was that the Americans have been generous with them, too generous. If the Americans did not throw candies to them, they would not keep on running beside the trucks and begging. Sometimes generosity is a fault with Americans, sometimes it does harm. It has brought high prices here, and it has brought you misery. But it is the best thing we Americans can bring with us to Europe. So please do not hate the Americans.”
• * At the head of the procession there were three carts. The first two carried the bodies of Agnello and Merendino. Their coffins were small dinghies such as the fishermen used to get out to their boats, with the tops planked over. The third cart, which was for Sconzo, carried a dinghy which was not planked over, but was filled with flowers.
• Gargano grabbed one of his own ears with one hand and pointed at an ear in the picture with the other: “In the ears there is alertness.”
  Saitta the street-cleaner said approvingly: “In the fix of the hair there is neatness.”
  And finally old Bellanca remembered enough of his coaching to say. “In the cheeks there is a sympathetic warmth.”
• if he had planned a farewell speech, he couldn’t have done better. <> “Children of Adano,” he said, “I am sorry to have to tell you that there are no caramels here.” There was a brief wail of protest... Marco son of Manifattura, one of the smaller ones who had been cheated, said: “Because he was selfish.” “Marco is right. Marco says that the Calvi boy was killed because he was selfish. Marco, you are exactly right. That is what Gargano wanted to tell you, isn’t it, Gargano?”... And then the Major added: “I want you to be happy together. I want all of you to have as much as you can of what you want, without hurting anyone else. That is what I want in Adano.”
• “Yes,” the Major said. He looked over the hills across the sea, and the day was as clear as the sound of the bell itself, but the Major could not see or think very clearly. “Yes,” he said, “eleven o’clock.”

折周前一本《浮木行人》看完就忘了，《天生乙方》又显单薄，这本倒真的是渐入佳境，带给人说谎精迟到的春天。两人屏着扑克脸尔虞我诈之中的酸涩很是我的茶，自带悬疑的 ‘原来真失忆’梗也蛮新鲜的。

>> 导演宁沛是个个性直爽的人，当场脸色不虞，有气直接出：“不识字啊？”
林思弦没忍得住，笑出了声，被旁边的苏红桃戳了一下。她压低声音：“周围的人都没敢笑。”
“他自己讲笑话，”林思弦无辜道，“不怪我。”

何止是对，简直是明智，简直是神来之笔。
失忆一点都不可耻，还非常有用。

等陈寄和助理走出房间后，原本打算离开的三人反而停步在原地。
刚才那振聋发聩的“不拘小节”仿佛还停留而耳畔，化成一道有形的风，朝着扶满脸上利落一扇。

林思弦感谢自己虽摔过但依旧好用的大脑，巧妙绕过这个坑：“我看那天我喝的没加糖，就照原样买了一杯。”

他斟酌了一下自己的言辞，语气却坦然：“那这样行吗？以前如果有我冒犯到您的地方，我给您道个歉，不管以前发生了什么，现在这个身份，我也给您添不上什么麻烦，咱们桥归桥，路归路，我没几天的戏份，拍完就走，也不会留在这儿添堵。”

“那倒不是，”果然陈寄接着讲，“以前高中有个同学，从不带伞也不喜欢淋雨，一定要我替他打伞，遇到水沟还要我背他过去，如果我没带的话，会命令我淋雨去买一把过来，否则就会发脾气，久而久之我出门前一定会看天气，即使不下雨也会常备一把伞在书包里。”

来回几十公里，陈寄只在下车时说了声“谢谢”，仿佛自己真的只是一个称职的司机——如果不是林思弦两次忘拉手刹，调个头得倒五次方向盘。
林思弦事后总结，这件事只能有两种解释：一是陈寄年近三十突然爱上了坐碰碰车，二是陈寄就是单纯享受使唤和命令自己的报复感。

昔关没有什么活力，用乏态来形容建筑也许不太合适，但这里大至常年在修建中的工地，小到从早到晚都只亮黄色的信号灯，在数字基建的时代它像一卷停滞不前的旧磁带，辉腾正穿梭在它的磁道上，让车上的人恍惚间以为还在十几年前。

老爷子在局里那套向来都带回家里，一桌饭吃得不像家宴，更像工作汇报，任务也是分配好的，斟茶的，献墨宝的，切水果的。吕如清是这栋楼里唯一不用进厨房的女性，她靠那几年的轻歌曼舞和林泓近来的事业为自己争取了这一特权，林思弦的小姨跟她说话语气像在问候上级。

看久了总结出一些规律，他/她很喜欢用花草等植物当喻体，描写蓬勃，描写凌厉，描写生命力；也经常写到尘埃和沙石，来具象化那些不值得被在意的事物。这不禁让林思弦有些好奇这个人生活在什么环境里。
如果天降一个杀手，用枪指着林思弦脑袋，告诉他必须对一个人一五一十讲自己的真心话，否则就一枪崩掉，那他会选这个连名字都不知道的人。林思弦说不清，但就是会选他。

那幅《迎春天》是林思弦烧的，也许还有其他的办法，但林思弦懒得去想。他蹲下来，将打火机的外层火焰引到颜料上，春天正式燃烧起来。
他不要春天到来，他要自己此生唯一的礼物留在冬天的墙上。

林思弦听见自己的声音：“嗯。”
好像又听到陈寄的声音：“我更讨厌你这种从头假到尾的人。”
下山的路也颠簸，轮胎压过树木的影子，碾碎一抔又一抔脏泥。

春末的风温度不冷不热。
陈寄站在原地，似乎明白了情况，略有嘲讽地反问：“就因为我说没把你放在眼里？小学生也不至于那么幼稚。”

林思弦当然没打算做慈善。所谓的关照不过是提醒。告知陈寄所有的果篮都有标价，而这些价格都需要陈寄来支付。
这个道理他跟陈寄都很明白。

“林思弦，”陈寄平静地提示他，“你在网上就可以看。”
“我知道呀，”林思弦说，“但我不喜欢在网上阅读。”
三天之后，林思弦得到了他需要的东西。他很熟悉的字体誊抄的几首陌生的诗，写得很工整，连一个错字都没有，只有几笔写得太重，将那几页白纸戳出了几个小洞。

陈寄没有理他，只是非常利落地将一瓶巧克力牛奶和饭卡放在了林思弦桌上，之后转身离开。
娄殊为惊觉这世道越发离奇，下毒都这么明目张胆。

从初夏到现在，林思弦跟陈寄“和睦相处”快一学期。语文课代表都被他们俩的关系所打动，曾提出想以他们化敌为友的故事做案例，出一期“以和为贵”主题的板报，提倡同学们多向优秀范例学习。
林思弦听完十分感动，然后亲切地拒绝了他。
林思弦承认自己的报复手段也许有些幼稚，但他乐在其中。既然陈寄先提出讨厌他说谎的姿态，那他便可以问心无愧地对陈寄提出那些要求，因为那些无理的要求皆是真心实意。
他就是想在奇怪的时间点想吃香草布丁，就是想在出行无忧的情况下买一辆合眼缘的老破车，就是想在某个寒夜不看地图以自己稀烂的技术骑车乱行。而这些肆无忌惮的后果，通通交由陈寄来承担。

林思弦说了太多谎，以至于他也快分不清哪句是真，哪句是假。
譬如现在，看到林泓即将组建一个新家庭，他依旧能跟照相馆的人聊得有来有回，依旧照常坐在了英语课堂上，他不知道自己是不应该在意，还是真的对此毫无波澜。
临近下课时雨也一直没停。林思弦讨厌雨，只觉得地面在溶解，骨骼也快被浇化。

但这次又是例外。林思弦例外地问了，还例外地遭到了拒绝。
或许因为那是陈寄。林思弦这样分析着。因为是跟他彼此讨厌的陈寄，而明明自己才是在这段憎恶关系中占领上风的人，所以这份例外、这两次拒绝才让他无法忽视。

林思弦走回楼梯间，大脑里的河流洪水爆发，他一时间思绪万千。
原来陈寄讨厌说谎的人是因为这个。
原来贫穷的人晚餐几道菜都得取舍。
原来有的父母即使被骗也能观察出孩子喜欢吃什么。

如果一个诚实的人会怎么做？告诉陈寄，我原本有这打算，但我此刻同情你同时又羡慕你，我为讨厌我的人发善心，结果被他抡到了墙上？
下辈子林思弦也说不出来。
“我腿本来就很长，”于是林思弦只用学来的话反击他，“别人的事情，跟你没关系吧。”

“得，”苏红桃放弃刨根问底，自顾自吃起饭来，“匹诺曹见到你都要觉得自己这鼻子长得太冤。”

当然林思弦也理解，当时的他只活了短短十几年，对人生、社会和世事流转的认知都很片面，不屑于填写未来幻想，以为他之所想就是事之所成。
少年人对时间毫无概念，潦草地轻视了几千个日子能发生的一切。

林思弦不知道该怎么面对陈寄，这对于他来说还挺罕见的。见机行事、见风使舵是他的长项，但陈寄揭穿他后，船突然就这么翻了，而林思弦就像溺水一样张不开口。

陈寄终于笑了：“你确实是天赋型演员。”
陈寄来昔关后笑了两次，都是被他气的，林思弦不知道该不该夸自己一句能干。

奈何都开得规矩，林思弦只能回答：“还行，说了挺多话的。”
咄咄逼人怎么不是话，打胡乱说怎么不是说。

“装失忆用过了，”陈寄说，“换点新招。”
太久没得到回答，陈寄又说：“装聋也试过了。”视线里看到林思弦一副难受的模样，继续贴心地补充：“头疼也说过了。”

自此，同情与嘲笑成了林思弦生命的违禁词。哪怕后来老爷子倒台，吕如清去世，林思弦一无所有时也依旧没办法适应。
咬牙切齿也要不卑不亢，筋疲力尽也要从容不迫。
劣质的自尊对一个两手空空的人来说毫无意义，但那也是林思弦仅剩的东西了。

可是刚才他真的没说谎，他不知道自己犯了什么错，不仅仅是退学，这几年他也不知道自己到底走错了哪一步才来到了荒唐的今天，就算在心里建个法庭，也不清楚该怎么给自己判刑。
胸腔里有股酸意，林思弦下意识抓住了他的衣摆。
你不能走。
我没说谎，你不能走。
林思弦想讲这样的话，但这些属于他的屏蔽词了，他声带继续罢工，只有几根无力的手指徒劳拉着那一块布料。

他不顾浑身酸痛从床上怵然坐起，环顾周围，这优秀劳改营一样规整的房间，正是某位变态洁癖的下榻处。

或许是因为生活确实拮据，又或许是因为得知扶满和苏红桃在他看不到的地方为他争取——坎坷多年，麻木已经成了一种保护机制，尽管仍在为自己谋求机会，但已不会再有无妄的期待，接受未来长期为果腹而挣扎的现实。杀青那晚，扶满真挚跟自己说“长风破浪会有时”，林思弦笑着回答“借你吉言”，却不曾相信其中任一字。
然而却真的有人把这句话当真。
在这样的真挚里，自己那可悲的、廉价的、与他苟存的自尊心，突然显得有些可笑。

林思弦思忖了片刻回答：“不是都套出来了吗？我小时候人比较幼稚，当时少不更事对你，嗯，对您做了一些不够成熟的事情，实在抱歉。我这个人虚伪、懦弱又缺乏责任心，所以想要逃避责任，可惜脑子不够聪明，手段有点拙劣，还是被拆穿了。”"

陈寄笑了。这个人笑的时候不多，多数时是在嘲讽自己。此刻的笑相似却不尽然，恍惚看也尽显轻蔑，多看几眼又仿佛透露某种释然。

不用了。不用了。不用了。
“我靠，”林思弦睁眼，拍拍自己的脸，白天没忍心下的手还是在此刻下了，“你到底有什么好在意的。”

“其实我一直也有猜测过，不过也只是猜猜，”苏红桃看着他，眼睛亮晶晶的，“直到那一天，彭骁跟我们喝酒那一天，你醉得不行了，我去扶你的时候，你突然自言自语，说‘陈寄，你抱我一下’。”

他喜欢陈寄吗？怎么可能。当年做那些事情，是讨厌陈寄；这两天的失落，是因为被拒绝的愤怒和前途未卜的不安。
他不可能喜欢陈寄的。
至少在年少那些心跳如鼓、血液翻涌的时刻，他从来都是这么欺骗自己的。

林思弦再一次意识到，只要自己不留恋、不执着、不在意，很多事情就通通变得简单起来。就像于蕊对他出于同情的善意，是她为人善良的一环，几次季节交换，花开花落，这些往事本就应该被代谢掉，不必停驻，不必苛求。

之前林思弦也让陈寄背过他一次，因为一场大雨，学校管道堵塞，有很大一片积水，林思弦不想弄脏自己的鞋。但或许是生病怕冷的原因，林思弦总觉得今天陈寄的脊背尤其暖和，他双臂不自觉地用力，听到陈寄说：“你摔不下去，放松，我呼吸不了。”
今天天气不错，天上挂着一轮清晰的月亮。
林思弦看着两人的影子，心里一边想，还是得救了，一边想，陈寄肯定烦死自己了。

在一个寻常的夜晚，在一辆寻常的出租车上，林思弦意识到一件不寻常的事。他始终坚信跟陈寄之间，是自己在享受权利的快感，享受作弄的乐趣，却无意中让自己一次又一次被陈寄拯救。
林思弦知道这是一个需要被纠正的错误，但长期紧绷的意志囚困在沙漏的玻璃罩里，窥见一个缺口便没有骨气地流淌而下，一时之间很难遏止。所以他的掌心握着陈寄的腕骨，决定再将错就错一次，改日再修正这个巨大失误。

或许现在也是修正错误的时机，但他还是没能说出口，只是在心中决定，以后再也不来湖滨公园了。
“告诉你个好消息，”林思弦说，“下周开始我一天只来两天学校了，周末估计也在外地。”
陈寄看着窗外，良久才应了一句：“嗯。”

没回学校的一个月里，他一次都没跟陈寄联系，又偏偏在很多时刻唐突地想到陈寄。在看到绕成一团的耳机线的时候，在看到那支钢笔的时候，又或者是现在，酒吧二层窗户刚好正对一座钟塔，下面有很多拿着气球的情侣。
又是一个元旦，林思弦想起来的也不是别的片段，就是他把那束花扔进垃圾桶的那一天。他们只是擦肩而过的路人，但陈寄看他的眼神还历历在目。林思弦又很唐突地想起了《一个陌生女人的来信》的台词，他曾经练习时读过，“我仿佛是你口袋里的怀表”——想到这句话多半是楼下这座钟塔的原因。

林思弦就在这一刻得出了答案。
过去这段时间里，他用了太多拙劣的借口、重复的拖延，来给造成他不合理思绪的真正本因做粉饰，然后得之不易的假象在这一瞬间随大理石纹碎裂。他知道他躲不了了，心跳随笔落入深渊总不能再骗自己是心疼这三千块。
他在确认自己喜欢陈寄的同时，确认他在被喜欢的人讨厌着。
但又如何呢？连亲人都讨厌他，再多一个喜欢的人又不会怎样。

林思弦突然上手，抚摸他小臂凸起的血管，能感受到对方僵硬的肌肉。手沿着袖口往上，最后在肩膀停住。最后他像当初对衣架那样，将下颌轻轻放在陈寄的肩上。
人跟衣架果然不同，哪怕再不配合，骨骼和体温也是真实的。
“就这么讨厌我啊，”林思弦说，“但怎么办呢？我就见不得你得逞。”
当坏人有当坏人的好，林思弦将头沉得更深一点。他要到了除表演以外第一个有记忆的怀抱，不用对此辩解，不用对此遮掩。反正他轻浮又恶劣，秉性难改。

看着替自己抄错题的陈寄，修长的手指握着一支普通圆珠笔，林思弦很想用自己的手替换那支笔，填入对方的指缝；看着陈寄在给饮水机换水时显得很宽阔的肩膀，林思弦很想让他坐在自己身边，倚靠在上面度过一下午的时光……
直到放任自己沉溺于最直接的幻想时，林思弦才明白，那些亲密的动作是不需要靠看影视作品一帧一帧学习的，他内心的渴望会告诉他要做什么、应该怎么做。

“没什么，刚才做了个噩梦，”被谎言填充的真实世界让林思弦平静下来，朝陈寄笑笑，“梦到蹦迪的时候被人打了。”

林思弦站起身来，很亲昵地环抱陈寄，贴在对方身上，他尽自己所能地汲取着对方的一切，味道、气息、皮肤的温度，餍足得很想就此沉没在其中。嘴里说出来的是另一番台词：“怎么这副表情，明天开始放假，你两周见不到我，不应该很高兴吗？”
只要不被发现就好。
林思弦像所有抱有侥幸心理的犯罪者，既割舍不下诱惑又不敢承担风险，只能努力掩盖自己的罪行。

几秒后，他察觉到陈寄的双臂覆盖在他背上，不是一个温柔的怀抱，这双手很用力，发泄般将他禁锢住，骨骼相撞有些疼。这人好傻，林思弦想，自以为在报复，殊不知这点痛感他梦寐以求。
林思弦从没这么感激那些加诸在自己身上的流言，让他可以在轻佻的外壳里尽力描摹他的梦。他变成了一场舞台剧的导演兼编剧，将自己憧憬的分镜一一拍完。
他时间不多，新学期开始每天一对一补习，每半个月才抽出一个下午回学校一次，这半天就是他的片场。他在晚饭时间叫陈寄载他去买布丁，卸了力气靠在陈寄背上，看黄昏下他们跟树木的影子交叠；陈寄坐教室最后一排，他去当短暂的半日同桌，陈寄认真做题，他趴在桌上用指尖勾画对方的青筋。
当然，就像辛德瑞拉一样，总会有一个结束的时间点。做完这些事，林思弦总会轻飘飘补上一句：“你别总是冷着一张脸，你配合一点也许我就没兴趣了，就会换个目标了呀。”

感受到熟悉体温的刹那，林思弦身体里的血液好像开始重新流动起来。或许这就是肢体接触的意义，在这个世界上，他的出生是虚伪的，他的家庭是虚伪的，他说过的话都是虚伪的，但这个拥抱是真实存在的——尽管这个拥抱的理由也是不可言说的。

林思弦第一次尝试戒断坚持了半年，往后这个时长逐渐缩减，三个月、两个月、一周，他又像高中时那样，用各种各样的理由逼迫陈寄跟他见面。...
林思弦并不承认是自己太喜欢陈寄，到了真的缺他不可的地步。只是自己太争强好胜，不能接受在自己没能迭代掉陈寄之前，陈寄先把他忘掉。

对于初吻来说，它的确有些残酷和不合格，但依旧让林思弦回味至今。陈寄问他“够了吗”的一瞬间，他心中骤然冒出一种荒诞的假设，如果他不是林思弦，应该会怎样回答？
不够，远远不够，对我更残暴一点吧，再施舍我一点温柔，让我也可以温顺地待在你身边。
不过他顷刻间便意识到这是个悖论，没有这个家庭，他根本没有要挟陈寄的手段，他跟陈寄也绝走不到今天；而出生在这个家庭，就注定他只能是林思弦。
所以最后他也只能给出属于林思弦的回答：“干嘛这么用力，你吻技真的好差。”

她说得很简单，按她的脾气绝不想这样轻易放过林泓，没想到后者比她更为决绝。只是林思弦没预料到她会哭，不知是不是母子间的心灵感应，他这一秒甚至明白她哭的原因——为她绝不承认的爱，彻底被屠戮的悲哀。

林思弦在这一刻倏然释怀。他觉得自己比想象中要容易满足，吕如清给了他一小部分亲情，他收下了；陈寄在这个夜晚留给他迟到的五分钟，他也决定收下。

这也许是他们最后一次见面，林思弦忽然察觉到这一点。于是他多看了陈寄两秒，他的眼睛，他的鼻子，他唯一一次亲过的嘴唇，不过也只能看两秒，再多就不太对了。
林思弦说：“拜拜，希望你以后别碰到我这种无理取闹的人。”
也希望我总有一天能够彻底忘记你。

他知道他没理由拒绝。过去这么多的日夜里，别人问起来都可以轻描淡写代过，唯独骗不了自己，从质问每一次苦痛的理由，到惯性接受每一次无理由的苦痛，也曾焦虑过，后来发现焦虑也不起作用，他甚至很久没再给自己买过一次布丁；既然陈寄开了这个口，也许能换的不只是打酱油的角色，主角不敢肖想，至少也有名有姓，日后简历不至于看不过去；甚至如果他够坦诚的话，他曾在无数个恼人的梦里，无意识幻想与陈寄完成这一步。他的祈愿从不成功，忘掉陈寄那次也同理。

错觉间林思弦有很多想说，你头发有几缕没擦到还在滴水，你背上怎么青了一块，你干嘛这么卷把肌肉练成这样，你明早几点走……太日常了，日常到随意，随意到亲密，就不合时宜了。于是他什么都没说，两个人继续共享房间的沉默。

到这一步还算顺畅，再往后剧本就断了。电影里到这一步权贵已经按捺不住把人揽住拥吻，但陈寄依旧泰然站在原地，审视他的一举一动，好像他做得并不够格，只有微小的变化印证他那句“我是个有正常需求的Gay”。吻就算了，这种步骤得省略，林思弦跪在床边，手碰到对方裤子上的松紧绳，系得不算紧，但他还是失败好几次。大概陈寄终于等得不耐烦，伸手帮他，在绳索松开的刹那，林思弦看到了陈寄右手掌心那道疤，经年未消的疤。
一种无比诡异的酸楚蔓延至全身。湖滨公园，水池，形体室，被挤压的记忆顷刻膨胀。
他做不到。
就算有无数个继续下去的理由，也抵挡不了一丝微弱而悲恸的反抗。他做不到。就算生命完全坍塌，他也要给曾经千疮百孔的真心留最后一片完土。

察觉到眼眶里有些湿润，林思弦将生理性的泪水在枕头上蹭掉。视线里窗外月亮高悬，俯视这房间里荒唐的一切。林思弦知道，他以往渴望的梦正在此刻被塑造成现实，但又那么截然不同。要真是梦就好了，梦里的角色才是真正脱离实际的化身，梦里陈寄越残酷他越能安心服从，没有其他人，没有爱恨，没有前因后果，只有两个人溺亡在最本质的交汇中。
但现在不行，汗水如此真实，味道如此真实，心里的起落也如此真实。狠毒的力度不是因为自己渴望，而是因为陈寄狠心。

跟谈恋爱不同，他们之间的顺序是反着来的，有可能存在的拥抱、布丁还有那两条信息，是陈寄仁慈的配套关怀，是一场粗野的性的附属品。
然而最绝望的是，他发现他高估了自己。林思弦想把昨晚当成不值一提的意外，又偷偷把那布丁带回房间放好；而附赠的拥抱和关心，让他对陈寄长达七年的戒断又一次成为泡影，让他看到消息时再一次产生徒增烦恼的期待。

林思弦有些庆幸自己跟着他们出来了，他一直是这样，在人多的地方，看着人群的千态万状心里饱和一些，但又很难彻底融入其中。

以至于再说话时，又找到了合适的借口：“没意思，原本今天心情好想捉弄你一下，没想到你竟然学聪明了，也有可能是时间太久我演技退步了。”...
说完就毫不留恋地移开目光，试图从陈寄身边经过，没走两步被拽住衣领，一股蛮力让他几乎是摔进陈寄怀里，手里的果汁再度滑落，这次滚出了很远的距离。
在林思弦意识到这是陈寄第一次主动抱他时，不远处骤然传来炸裂声响，他在陈寄双臂中吓得一颤，扶满他们捣弄了整整半小时的烟花终于腾升至空中。爆燃声太大，以至于林思弦不知道耳边那声叹息是真还是幻觉。

林思弦知道他是一个别扭的人。他习惯跟人维持梳理又客气的关系，没办法像其他人一样坦然大方地接受别人的好意，即使这些好意对施舍者来说也许不值一提。他也依旧会过度眷恋，眷恋到害怕无以为报，眷恋到开始思考他们对自己的善良什么时候会被代谢掉。

“活得尚好，”陈寄把一盒药扔洗手台上，淡然道，“每个跟你睡过的人都知道你这么嘴硬吗？”

他知道，比起承担为了袒护谢洛维承担惹恼彭骁的风险，随手买一盒药对陈寄来说不算什么，但这一盒药又能让他铭记这个夜晚。比起这一天的头疼，这件事好像更让他难以忍受。他对身体发肤之痛的忍耐阈值随岁月增长，而对于陈寄的得失之痛，经过这么多年练习依旧天资愚钝。

见林思弦接过去，许苑又接着说：“那天我也没料到你不知情，也不知道该说些什么，想来想去还是想告诉你，虽然苦难没什么好美化的，但既然发生了也不完全是坏事，至少让未来的好事都显得珍贵一些。”

“他们俩没在，这儿就咱俩，”苏红桃提醒他，“你可以不失忆。”
林思弦深吸一口气，道：“我可能真失忆了。”

林思弦发觉自己陷入了一个魔幻的泥潭。像一些无厘头的奇幻电影，认知的常识围绕自己产生畸变，但完全推理不出任何理由依据。
他不得不确认，他肯定遗忘了跟陈寄有关的一些事情。但要做到什么样的程度，才能让一个恨死自己的人主动出手协助。

大概人无语时都会添加一些范例，来证明自己说的是对的：“当时彭骁跟谢洛维起争执，宁导打电话问陈编意见，陈编本来没什么看法，觉得那段可有可无，删不删都行，让宁沛他们权衡利弊后自己决定。聊到后半途又突然问，如果他俩一直重拍你是不是也得反复落水，得到确认答复后突然改口说那就全删。所以你也别觉得是人家差使你，你付出时间肯定有回报。”

林思弦还从来没像这样茫然过。他突然不知道该用什么样的语气来跟陈寄对话。太复杂了，他跟陈寄之间的关系太复杂了。他颐指气使过，他贪恋过，他求全过，他反抗过，而如今又多了很多，他被强迫过，他又被不知缘由地关心过。

来干嘛。因为我大脑太乱了。所以想见你。
不，大脑不乱的时候，我也一直想见你。只是因为大脑不乱，所以不能见你。

他突然不敢问下去了。林思弦确认在那段时间里，他跟陈寄应该见过面，但并不知道是怎么见的面，不知道见面时他们发生了什么，导致陈寄对他从原本的厌烦，到如今既可怜他、给他好处，又说恨他。

好像被这味道蛊惑，林思弦又往前走了一步。像个小偷一样，在床边蹲下来端详，小偷偷钱，他偷时间，这方面他熟能生巧，他很久以前就开始偷陈寄的时间。

娄殊为比高中时胖了一点，好在脸型不显老，看着跟高中区别不大。但比起外表更恒久不变的是他光滑的大脑皮层，他呆若木鱼般看着林思弦，正当后者在绞尽脑汁想点让场面不尴尬的话时，娄殊为脱口而出：“啊？兄弟，你已经落魄到需要租房子了吗？”
......真是好久不见了。这新鲜的白痴气息。林思弦自然地回答他：“对啊，没想到是熟人，你该不该给我打个折。”

说到陈寄，林思弦已经一个月没跟他再联络。他控制着自己想到陈寄的频率，但也总是在这些细枝末节上破例。不过也只是仓促的一秒，想完便完。行为心理学说二十一天以上的重复会形成习惯，林思弦觉得在理，昔关和昔关发生的一切，再回首已经像尘封往事了。

林思弦不是一个很迟钝的人。有些话说到这种程度，他已经能够推测出谜底，但关心则乱，这件事每个细节都牵动他心弦，导致他一定要像个痴呆的人那般，追问到最后一步，追问到对方不得不直接说出那个很简单的答案：“陈寄喜欢你这么多年，你不会一直都不知道吧？”

陈烁将林思弦拉到拐角处。她初中学校离四十六中很近，曾远远见过林思弦几面，每次这人路过，身边女生总会下意识停住对话，让她好奇地抬头顺着她们的视线望过去——林思弦校服穿得很不规范，几片落叶擦着他飘动的领口而过，一片叶子卡在纽扣上，像一枚栖息的羽毛。林思弦轻轻把叶片拾起，有人叫他的名字，他便维持这个姿势转头，风不轻不重吹过来，指尖的羽毛飞走，林思弦的发丝随风追去，露出他风中荡漾的微笑。
因此，当后来陈烁无意间看到陈寄夜深人静时无声播放林思弦练习的视频，她没有太过意外。那阵风带走了很多，多了份陈寄的心而已。

“说起来我一直以为你俩成了，我妈葬礼刚完，他两天没睡还赶回去看你什么表演。没想到这么多年，竟然全是他一厢情愿。”

他也不知道，那些曾让他反复悲痛、想要代谢掉却始终在心里埋得根深蒂固的往事，竟然还有另一个角度的叙事。

因为太过滑稽的乌龙，因为一而再再而三的错位，还是因为他从来没敢往这个方向想过。从小到大的防御机制让他不会盲目幻想，就像看到林泓去挑婴儿用品，不会想是否有朝一日也能体验一点亲情，没有落差就不会坠落，生活就能顺畅运行。而关于陈寄的事，又是最敏感的一桩，一点失重感都很难承受。
永远在全副武装抵抗陈寄不喜欢他带来的创伤，也同样阻挡了对陈寄喜欢他这件事的洞察。

在陈寄的视角里，自己是一个既拒绝他又反复招惹他的，没心没肺的混蛋。

林思弦不知道陈寄有没有相信这个说辞，而陈寄看起来也对此不想探究：“没关系。你一向如此，拒绝我也不止这一次。还是说你特意提起这个，是有什么别的事要我做？”

林思弦从未如此深刻地领悟什么叫语境。在这样的情形下，就算奋不顾身告知陈寄，我爱你，我爱了你很多年，听着更像趋炎附势、食髓知味的把戏。他甚至找不到任何一桩这份爱存在的证据——比起陈寄做过的事，他连一个拿来证明的案例都说不出来。

林思弦从没想过有朝一日会听到陈寄告白，用告别般决绝的语气。
“还是说你就是心血来潮想亲口听我说这一句，”陈寄的话一字一句凿进林思弦耳里，他又一次满足了林思弦的愿望，“可以啊，林思弦，我是很可笑，喜欢一个擅长差遣我的人，反省过很多次也没办法对你熟视无睹。”

林思弦从未想过，他刻意不去索求的东西一直在等他索取；他也从未想过，在他确认拥有的一瞬间也确认了他失去。

每多看一个字，内心便多一分仓皇。直到拿信的手无力垂落，林思弦开始回忆陈烁告诉自己的话——陈寄得知这封信后，没有生气，什么都没说。
他没有告诉陈烁，他排完三个小时的盲盒交给林思弦后，没有得到恋人般的感谢与亲昵，甚至没有一句温柔的好话。林思弦只是当着他面拆开盲盒，故作不满道地抱怨，陈寄，你运气真差，刚好拿到我不喜欢的这一个。
当然陈寄也不知道，这个丑丑的玩偶未来数个日夜都放在林思弦床头，朝夕相伴。

欺骗别人需要借口、谎言和虚假的表演，而欺骗自己只需要隐瞒、忽略和漫长的逃避。如果躲藏的愿望过于强烈，连记忆都会帮着自我矫饰。

“林思弦，”不知是不是这名字难记，陈寄花了数十秒才叫出来，“我在看你。”
倏然被打断，他不知道该说什么了。有一种奇怪的心情是，他不想拍了，这一幕名叫遗愿的戏，他想删掉其他的场景，只保留这句三个字的台词。

只是他不敢出声，害怕暴露他的稚拙，也不想惊扰这一切。还好房间没有灯，可以藏住他竭力忍耐的神情。陈寄的动作并不轻柔，他只能靠自己去争取一些虚无的怜惜，他抚上对方脊背，又辗转到下颌、鼻尖与眉毛，什么都看不见，但他知道它们是什么样子，他在黑暗里勾勒他再熟悉不过的画面。

迷糊之间一只手掐住了他的脖颈，仿佛某种处刑道具，呼吸变得不顺，放大了本就在极限边缘的知觉，听觉连带着变得敏锐，让陈寄哑声说出的话异常清晰：“林思弦，你到底想怎么样？”
我想怎么样呢？我想让你更残酷一些，让你从我身上掠夺得更多一些，让它们在你这里保留得更长远一些。

林思弦胸口一滞，笑着问陈寄：“陈寄，你还跟以前那样讨厌我啊？怎么，下次不打算理我了？”
陈寄没有看他，声音停留在空中：“我哪次没理你。”
林思弦回忆了一下，好像是这样。然而这个事实没有让他欣慰，反而让他一点一点淹没下去，被窗外的黄昏谋杀。
我好讨厌陈寄啊。他想。我怎么会这么讨厌陈寄啊。

汗从额角滑落，浸湿了他的睫毛，他在模糊中回忆那晚的陈寄，像又被滚烫的汗水浸润了一遍。刚才看过的诗句降临在耳边——
“身体里的铁，只够打一枚钢钉，留给我飘泊一世的灵魂，就钉在爱人的心上。”

来这里的理由有很多，日复一日的疲倦，冷暖自知的琐碎，对彻底安宁的向往，而反抗的理由只有不想。不想被洗刷、不想被迭代、不想被遗忘。不想就这么消融在所有人的眼里。
他什么都不能做，但他还能存在。存在在当下，存在在雨里，存在在于蕊的碑前，也许有朝一日存在在吕如清念念不忘的台上，存在在面前那块正在招商的广告牌里。
金融中心也有个旋转餐厅，陈寄也许会去那里跟人约会，像他那样的人一定会提前预定窗边位置，会为对方拉开座椅，他们会分享晚餐，会聊未来，会度过整个夜晚，直到他看见那块广告牌，服务员就在此刻呈上甜点，于是这个夜晚里他分出普通的一秒，想起以前有一个很麻烦的人，每天指使自己去买讨厌的慕斯蛋糕。
他要为这幻想中的、不切实际的一秒活下去。

他想到他从“一叶”出来，看见门口摆了一排看不出是猫头鹰还是猫的劣质摆件，因为售价太贵所以对它们有些印象，而在陈寄家里看见其中一个的时候，他仅仅只多看的那一眼；
他想到他带给陈寄的每一句自认赎罪的告别，希望不会遇见他这样的人，希望他不要放在心上，希望未来能有人照顾你；
他想到陈寄每次的回应，好，谢谢你，以及你还想我怎么样；
他想到陈寄唯一说过的告白，和唯一说过的告别。

林思弦还知道，他应该做一些他不擅长的事。有时候选择低头不是因为示弱，不是因为妥协，而是不能再次遗失那些不想遗失的东西。
但他太缺乏经验，实在不知该怎么下手，深思熟虑后终于以细若蚊蝇的声音道——
“求你。”
“地址。”
他们在同一秒投降。

陈寄并不想过去。但林思弦长了一双很多情的眼睛，是一个很擅长制造错觉的人，他这样仰头看向自己时，会让人生出一种他真的非常需要对方的认知偏差。所以陈寄又一次被动地听从了对方指令。
林思弦就这样端详了他几秒，然后倏然伸手抱住了陈寄的腰，将头埋在陈寄胸膛上。他抱得很紧，好像要突破万有引力，将全身的重量都托付在他们接触的身体上。
而围绕陈寄的万有引力也再一次消失。
他明白他又自暴自弃了。算了，无论林思弦在这之后是要提出什么要求，抑或是像之前千万次那样嘲笑他都无所谓了。他在林思弦身上做过的蠢事太多，只要是他能解决的事，再多一桩也无妨。

解析林思弦会显得困难很多，因为他的谎言会带来很多虚假的数据。善良又装不善良，逞强又装不逞强，当年有很多懒惰的富贵毛病，但真正病痛或者为了艺考拉伸韧带时又一声不吭。就算如此，通过长期的接触也能掌握一些林思弦的轮廓。
但陈寄唯独理解不了他在自己面前的行为动机。看起来完全有悖于陈寄总结出的属于林思弦的底层逻辑。
就像现在。他抱了陈寄很久的时间，力度大得像很害怕陈寄离开，陈寄问他“为什么累，哪里很难受”时又缄口不言，最后放开时摇摇头：“也没有那么难受。”

林思弦是世界上最擅长自食其言和若无其事的人。说不再见面的是他，突然出现的是他，说让陈寄好好生活的是他，现在突然回到几年前的也是他。

无论是这错觉还是林思弦的行为，都非常的荒谬和不合情理。从表面上看，林思弦做的这些事其实并不奇怪，让陈寄接送他，要求陈寄回消息，或者突如其来的肢体接触，在高中和大学时期，同样的事情不计其数。
但缺乏了旧场景里最核心的部分——林思弦玩弄的语气和不讲情理的任性，以至于让过去几天的片段看起来像一种非常笨拙、非常不得要领的引诱和调情。
很像是已经完成的剧本里，有人用笔划去了一些最关键的描写，让整段情节呈现出另外一个故事。

弥补一个谎言需要诚恳的道歉和合理的解释，弥补很多谎言却不能用这两者的叠加，因为这会让它们看起来像另一个谎言。
在一些瞬间里，本能让林思弦有过和盘托出的荒唐冲动，但他长期的认知又让他把这些冲动压回体内。他不知道怎么证明此刻说的话不是一个谎言。

想跟陈寄之间积累更多像普通人那般平凡又温和的时刻，直到它们覆盖住过往那些不太美好的时间，那时候的真心话才看起来充满真心。

那个在网页上无数次打下“讨厌陈寄”的林思弦，一字一句告诉他：“我只是喜欢你。一直都，很喜欢你。”

“嗯，我上车后十分钟就把你放了出来，”陈寄说，“那地方很偏，我怕你下雨打不到车。”
林思弦隔着水雾去看陈寄的脸，陈寄脸上没什么波澜，只是接着叙述：“现在明白了吗？我不需要你证明的意思，你只用告诉我你想做什么，我不会拒绝你。”
法官终于作出陈述，告诉犯人他才是一直等待宣判的人。

林思弦讨厌日落，讨厌黑夜，讨厌雨天，只喜欢万里无云的晴天，只喜欢世界本身就看起来美好而明媚的样子。而此刻他第一次觉得雨声也悦耳动听，因为他意识到他不再需要阳光的庇佑。

陈寄答应林思弦不会过多干预他的事情，然后在当晚继续找云简那边的熟人确认庞术跟魏易平的现状——毕竟陈寄只是不会拒绝林思弦，但没说不能偷鸡摸狗。

但林思弦说着文不对题的话：“陈寄，你怎么没告诉我你们办公室楼下有喷泉啊？”...
陈寄回头的刹那，看见林思弦站在浮动的光晕里，影子投在湿淋淋的地面上，向自己蔓延。
林思弦还是那个林思弦。水池边作恶的林思弦，喷泉前轮廓模糊的林思弦，永远不分昼夜地让陈寄看到不属于这个世界的彩虹。

林思弦微微一怔，突然意识到他在说谎这个领域的一块短板——掩饰其它得心应手，唯独掩饰不了开心。用再多语言修饰，还是会从呼吸和眼神里流露出来。

但奇怪的是，采访快要开始时对方接了个电话，眼神突然就变了——她文学硕士毕业，竟找不到词汇来描述对方现在的表情。硬要形容的话，仿佛钢铁突然断了承重轴，所有棱角坍缩，影子都不知该往哪个方向倾斜。

“没想到我还留着吧，嘻嘻，忘了扔，还给你。”
“我现在很快乐，大概成熟了吧，看到它觉得以前还蛮对不起你的。”
“所以祝你以后能幸福快乐。”

在一切发展到更不可控的方向前，陈寄短暂尝试过抵抗，遭到了林思弦的威胁。陈寄非常讨厌无能为力的感觉，但无力感并非来源于胁迫，而是在每次林思弦用指尖描摹他血管时，在自尊心、危机感和所有基本认知前，陈寄先看见了他们交叠的双手。

可惜事实刚好相反，只有在柯然身上，找不到和林思弦任何相似之处，他是源自林思弦又独立于林思弦的幻想，是陈寄给自己的无能和遗憾编织的一个完全相反的虚拟补偿，一个林思弦完全属于他、完全依附他的梦。

唯一想到的是，林思弦的纹身真适合他，他确实是体内有钉子的人。痛苦埋藏在体内，无论如何溃烂外表都完好无损。而在那些暗无天日的时刻，那枚钉子又会支撑他鲜血淋漓地走下去，走到陈寄终于认清自己的无能和虚有其表的自尊。

他太自负了。陈寄想。
有时候自负不是狂言妄语，而是自以为强大，自以为可靠，自以为能承受一切苦痛、承担一切后果，所以不必向神佛祈愿也不必向他人索求。
而此刻的陈寄才真正尝到自负带来的代价——他曾差一点永远见不到怀里这个人。

“林思弦，”陈寄没有正面回答他，而是用一种很少在他身上出现的，半命令半祈求的语气说，“别再离开我，不管以什么方式。”

陈寄在这一瞬间意识到，林思弦来找他的那个雨夜其实并没有哭。
林思弦不会因为苦难、慌乱、不安、被拒绝而哭，他的泪水只有一个来源，来自于他确信自己正被陈寄迫切需要的时刻。

他只是庆幸，他在做了很多次错误选择后，终于做了一次对的选择。让迟来的花还来得及开，月色还来得及温柔，而他还能完整地拥有当下。
于是思来想去，林思弦最后又写了更长的一句话：“我真的好喜欢你啊。”

比起陈寄这个人，林思弦更早地喜欢他的字。时隔十年，陈寄的字好像也成熟了一点，但熟悉的笔锋还是没有变。
那些写枯木、写春天、写尘埃的字，在剧本上写着吃早饭、少抽烟、下周末来接你。
还有最后写得最重的三个字——我也是。

前两次陈寄还不知所以，不过林思弦执意要玩这种把戏，他也随意配合。事不过三，陈寄现在好像明白林思弦弄这一出的原因，他可以省掉在陈寄面前最后一层矜持，省掉一些多余的话，就像现在他靠过来，没什么章法地胡乱亲着陈寄的脸，在陈寄不是很温柔地将他推到沙发边缘，手把他原本就泛红的关节箍得更红时，按往常林思弦总得象征性地骂上一两句，但现在依旧只是无声看着陈寄，好像在等待更为残酷的后续。

工事聊完后，佐伊强制着让林思弦加回了她的微信，当着林思弦的面给他发了个鄙夷的表情包。

陈寄觉得很幸运，他的人生竟然也能等到重拍的这一天。七八年前，他从那条林荫道中走过来，看着手捧鲜花的林思弦，听他满不在乎地说“拜拜”；而此时此刻林思弦正从同一条路向他跑来，问他：“你等很久了吗？”

林思弦第一次威胁他去教室的时候，陈寄做好了接受暴｜力的准备，而林思弦在讲台上晃着双腿，嘴边还沾着吃完烤馒头的油，用亮晶晶的双唇告诉陈寄，你看我十分钟。
在后来的很多个十分钟里，陈寄在大巴车上看着林思弦坐在自己身旁，用他理顺的耳机线安静听歌，窗外的云层一晃而过；看着林思弦在前面一摇一晃地骑着车，月亮就悬在头顶的天空上；看着林思弦在形体室夸张念着台词，灯光落在两个人身上，拖出一道很长的影子。
陈寄怨恨过那朵云，怨恨过那枚月亮，怨恨过那道影子，怨恨这些不分场合施加浪漫元素的意象，直到在没有林思弦的白昼和夜晚，云依旧轻盈，月亮始终高悬，陈寄才没有后路地意识到，他最应该怨恨的是他自己。

随着选角导演那一声“林思弦”，属于《黄昏谋杀案》的主角，属于陈寄过去十年和过后无数年的主角，又重新站回了他眼前。