Chapter 10 ten

That night I took for the first time the kind of travel that has since become the monotonous regularity of my life: running through an unknown country, from one unknown place to another.For the next year it became my main activity, or rather passive act of my military career, not fighting, not marching, but this rapid movement at night; because in the end, I didn't fight at all. By the time I put on my uniform, our enemy had begun to retreat so rapidly that our superiors had to hastily impose an abbreviated program of military training on us.The training, which was intended to last two years, was completed in six months, and the large numbers of personnel assembled in one place for these projects were sent to twenty other places.A new weapon came along, and those of us who went three or four bases to get hold of the old weapons were sent to the fifth, sixth, seventh bases to learn the new ones.The closer we got to victory, the faster we were running across the country in pursuit of a role in a play that started out with very few people on stage and now suddenly has too many actors.Or so it seems.In reality, this phenomenon of too many actors has always been rare. If it weren't for this last scene, a large-scale attack on Japan that took suicidal resistance, this situation would not have happened.My contemporaries and I are not my contemporaries, as fate has now carved that old word too finely.It is estimated that most of us would be killed.But those slightly larger than us surrounded the enemy more quickly than expected, and then there was the decisive atomic explosion.This seems to have saved our lives.

So these trips through parts of the United States I didn't know became my main memory of the war, and I count the night trips to Leper's as the first of them.Where to find him wasn't a problem: I was at Christmas, which meant he was at home.His family lives far north in Vermont. In this season of the year, even the main paved roads in that place are potholed and deformed by the cold weather. Keep fighting.The natural state of everything is cold, and the houses are fragile paradises, clinging to the deathly landscape, comfortable and unforgettable only by themselves and simply because of their warmth.

The Lepers were such a warm house perched alone on a cold hillside.I arrived there in the wee hours of the morning after a whole night's travel that foreshadowed my future war; A staff member is fully awake, none of them look clean, as if they are all at home; in the car, passengers pick up and drop off in deserted and dark places; Among them, I tried to decipher the meaning of Leper's telegram in the drowsy intervals. Arriving in the town at dawn, encouraged by the reappearance of daylight and coffee in a large, thick white mug, I accepted a hopeful explanation.Leper escaped.A man cannot escape from the army, so he must have escaped from something else.The most logical escape for a soldier is from danger, death, and enemies.Since Leper hadn't been sent overseas yet, the enemy must be at home.And the only enemies in this country are spies.Leper escaped the spies.

I've come to this conclusion and don't want to go any further.Probably because of the stories in our smoking room about him wreaking havoc all over the world, I kind of want to give this conclusion a go.When I had this thought, I felt a great relief.After all, this war still has some characteristics, some hope, and some vitality.My acquaintances became involved with spies as soon as they entered the war.I began to hope that this would not be such a dull war after all. I was told that the Leperiers were not far from town.I was also told that there were no taxis; no one would offer to drive me there, which I didn't have to be told.This is Vermont.But if that meant being harsh on strangers, it also meant beautiful mornings like this one.In such an early morning, the white snow that is almost blue covers the hillside like a soft quilt, and the birch and pine trees stand firm on their positions. They are rigid lines against the snow and the sky, very thin, Very tough, like a Vermonter.

The sun is the boon of this morning, a celebratory factor, an esthete with no purpose other than to emit light.All else is harsh and harsh, but this Greek sun alone evokes joy from all angles, and softens with brightness the rigid faces of the country.When I walked quickly on the road, the cold wind cut my face like a knife, but the sun caressed the back of my neck. The road ran along the side of a ridge, and after about a mile I saw a house on the top of the hill that must have been Lepper's.It was another grim-looking Vermont house, white of course, with long, narrow windows in front like any other house in New England.Behind one window hung a gold star announcing the service of the country by a son of the family, while behind another window stood Leper.

Although I was going straight to his front door, he beckoned to me several times without taking his eyes off me for a moment, as if keeping me on this path.He was still standing at the first-floor window when I reached the door, so I opened it myself and stepped into the hall.Leper has come to the door of the room on the right, which is the dining room. Into this room, he said, I spend most of my time here. As usual, there is no prologue.Why here, Leper?It's not very comfortable here, is it? Ah, what a useful room. Yes, I see it is also useful. There is no confusion about doing things in the dining room.In the living room, people don't know what to do.People have problems in the living room.

The same goes for bedrooms.I said this in an attempt to soften the ominousness in his demeanor, but it backfired. He turned away, and I followed him into a bare dining room with no carpet on the floor, some high-backed chairs, and an unlit fire in the fireplace.With false sincerity, I said: If you want to be in a room that actually functions, you should spend your time in the bathroom. He looked at me and I noticed that his left upper lip moved up once or twice, as if he was about to growl or cry.Then I realized it had nothing to do with his emotions, it was involuntary. He sat down in the only chair with arms at the head of the table, which, I thought, was his father's chair.I took off my overcoat and took a seat in the middle of the table, with my back to the fire.Sitting here at least I can see the happy sun on the white snow.

Here, there is no need to think about what will happen.For example, you know that three meals a day will be delivered. I bet your mother wouldn't be too happy cooking a meal. Power jumped into his expression for the first time.Why do you want her to be happy!He stared defiantly at my startled face, and I just have to be happy!he exclaimed fervently, and I saw tears quiver in his eyes. Ah, she must be happy.Say something, the more rambling and superficial the better, say anything that will stop him from speaking; I don't want to see him like that.You're home again, and she's probably happy.

His face regained that blank expression.Since I must keep the conversation superficial, the onus of keeping it going falls on me.How long are you going to be home? He shrugged, a look of distaste for my question on his face.He had lost the careful politeness he had always possessed. Ah, if you're on vacation, you have to know when you're coming back.I say this in a tone that I think is older than I was then, a little businesslike, a little sophisticated.The military doesn't give you a false pass and say, come back when you've had enough rest, you hear me? I don't have a fake certificate at all.He moaned; despair slid across his face, his hands clenched together, that's how he moaned.

I know you said, I say in short, dead syllables, that you escaped.I no longer want my speculations to be true, I don't want to continue to associate this with spies, with deserters, with anything out of the ordinary.I thought things were going to be that way, and now I don't want it to be that way anymore. I escaped!The word get out spews out with a sound and intensity that doesn't belong to Leper.His face was full of rage, but his eyes were not rage; on the contrary, these eyes saw the reality in front of him.Eyes full of fear. What do you mean, you escaped?I snapped, you didn't run away from the army.

Let you talk.But you are blinded by nonsense.Now his eyes, too, were furious, staring blindly at me.What do you know about this?Such words would never have come from Lepper who loved the mother otter. Ah, do I want my answer?I know what's normal in the military and that's it. Normal, he repeated bitterly, what a fucking idiot word.I see that's what you're thinking of, right?That's what you'll think, someone like you.You're thinking I'm abnormal, right?I can see what you're thinking I see a lot of things I've never seen before His voice drops to a surly whisper You're thinking I'm on my nerves. I deduced the meaning of the word.I immediately hated the pronunciation of it.It opened up a world that I didn't know existed but that actually existed. Insane, crazy, weird, those are familiar words.The word neuro has a sudden psychiatric quality to it, a methodical, diagnostic voice.As if Leper had learned the word in captivity, far from German or Vermont, from any experience we had in common, as if that was Japan. Fear made my stomach convulse, and it seemed to be clamped tightly by a pair of pliers.Now I don't care what I say to him; I worry about myself.You know, if Leper got his nerves, it was the military that got him, and me and all our classmates were about to join.You make me sick, you and your bloody army vocabulary. He was practically laughing, laughing everywhere except his eyes, which continued to defy what he was saying, and they wanted to strike me down, under Section 8 of U.S. Army Regulations. Regulations on the dismissal of those who are insane. 】. As a last resort, I always took refuge in an unwarranted, dismissive sense of superiority.I sat back in my chair, raised my eyebrows, and shrugged.I have no idea what you're talking about.I can't understand your words at all, I think it's all in Japanese. Paragraph 8 of the Army Regulations, this is how the military treats lunatics. Mentally ill patients should be sent to the lunatic asylum.Now you understand what I'm saying?Section 8 of the Army Regulations, it's like a discharge from the military, or worse.You will never find a job after that.Everybody wants to know why you got kicked out, and when they know you got kicked out under Section 8 of Army Regulations, they look at you like that look on your face just now, like you're looking at a full Snotty face, but don't want them to know you're disgusting and they just look at you and say, ah, there doesn't seem to be any openings here right now.You've been looked down upon all your life, and that's what Section 8 of Army Regulations is about. You don't have to yell at me, I'm hard of hearing. Then it's your turn, kid.Next thing they got you. No one caught me. Ah, they've got you. Don't tell me who got me and who didn't.Who do you think you are talking to?Go play with your snail, Lepellier. He started laughing again.You've always been the lofty manor, haven't you?A high-spirited guy, except when it matters.You have always been cruel in your bones.I've known this for a long time, but I never admitted it.But in the last few weeks, with desperation on his face again, I've admitted many things to myself.It's not about you, you don't have to be complacent, I don't think about you.Why should I miss you?Have you thought of me a little bit?I was thinking about myself, and my mother, and my dad, and I kept pleasing them all.Ah, don't bother with that now.Now it happens to be you that I am speaking to.A man of cruel nature.Like, now there's that blind bewilderment in his eyes again, a wild naughtiness on his lips, like that time you pushed Finny off the tree. I jump out of my chair.you crazy idiot He's still laughing like you crippled him for life that time. My foot swept towards the leg of his chair and kicked him away.Leper overturned with chair on the ground.He lay there laughing and screaming, with his head on the floor and his knees thrown up, always a man of cruelty at his core. I hurried downstairs, and his mother, tall, kind, and elegant, was trembling at the door.What happened?Erwin! I was so very that it was a mistake, I listened objectively to my own voice, he said something crazy.I lost control I forgot about him, he's got nerves, right?He didn't know what he was talking about. Oh, my God, the kid is sick.We both ran to pick up Leper who was giggling, are you here to bully him? I'm so sorry, I mutter, I'd better go. Mrs. Leperier helped Leper up the stairs.Don't go, he said with a giggle, stay for lunch.This is reliable, whether it is war or peace, there are always three meals a day in this room. I really stayed.Sometimes people are too ashamed to leave.This is true now.Sometimes, you want to know the facts so much that you are very humble and stupid to stay.This is also true now. It was a big Vermont lunch, more like a dinner party, and it was no more real than a theatrical meal in the first place.Leper ate almost nothing, but my own appetite made me more and more humiliating.I eat all I can get my hands on and then have to ask with embarrassment for more to be handed over to me.But this led to an incredible change: Mrs. Lepellier began to have a different impression of me because I liked her cooking.By the end of the meal, she was able to speak directly to me in her high but elegant and cadenced voice. My eating was so ugly, too clumsy, and I was so embarrassed that I went through Yu's behavior throughout lunch amounted to a long and complicated apology.When she gave me a second dessert, I could see that she had accepted my apology.She must be thinking: This kid is actually kind, has a bad temper and can't restrain himself, but he feels sorry, he is a good boy at heart.Leper was more forthright. She suggested that Leper and I go for a walk after lunch.Leiper seems to be extremely obedient now, but he never looks at his mother, he is such a filial and good son.So he put on something made of rags, canvas, woolen, flannel, put together to form a piece of clothing against the biting cold wind, and we went out the back door into a beautiful scene of fading sunlight.It is not New England that I feel in my heart; I am a guest in this country, a familiar one now, but whenever I see a deserted winter field I cannot help feeling that it is not nature.I love trudging along it, trying to figure out if there was ever a crop growing here in the summer, or if there was ever a pasture, or what it was like, deep down in the soul, where it's all driven by the five senses and Where basic expectations are judged, I know nothing will grow here.We wandered through one of these wastelands, each step I took breaking through the thin crust of ice, stepping into the soft snow beneath the crust, and I waited for him in the winter outdoors that Leper loved regain sanity.Just as I knew the land couldn't grow crops, so I knew Leper wouldn't be wild, vindictive, or cranky as he trekked through the mountains of Vermont. Does Vermont have a garrison?I asked, delusional in my conviction that I should risk him talking, even risking him talking about the Army. I don't think so. There should be, they should have sent you here.That way, you won't be nervous. Yes, he gave a dry laugh, I'm what they call service catatonic. I laughed exaggeratedly, that's what they call it? Leper didn't bother to answer.In the past, he would always reply politely with this sentence: Yes, that's what they call it.But today, he gave me a thoughtful glance and said nothing. We walked on, the ice shell cracking easily under our feet.Serving Catatonia, I said, which sounds like a line from Brinker's poem. That bastard! You don't know, Brinker has changed a lot lately The bastard is turned into Snow White and I know how he is. ah.He didn't become Snow White. Too bad there was that nervous laugh in his voice again, Snow White with Brinker's face, what a picture.As he spoke, he began to cry. leper!What's wrong?What's the matter, Leper?leper! He let out a hoarse, piercing cry; any more grief and he'd be tearing his country grocer's clothes.leper!leper!This emotional exposure pulled us together violently; now, I was the closest person he had in the world, and he was the closest person I was.Leper, for heaven's sake, Leper.I'm about to cry myself, don't cry, don't cry anymore.do not do that.Don't do that, Leper. Then he became quieter, not because he was less desperate, but because he was too tired to continue crying like this, and I said, Sorry, I brought up Brinker.I didn't know you hated him so much.Leper didn't look like someone capable of such a vengeance.Especially now, he is exhaling rapidly, like a laborious steam locomotive, his nose and eyes are red from crying, and his cheeks are also red, with large irregular red spots. It's the kind of fragile fair skin that can easily take on unhealthy colors.His face was flushed like a daub, but none of the red accentuated his sadness.Instead of looking hopeless and hateful, he looked like a half-made-up clown in his plaid clothes and red blotches. I don't really hate Brinker, I don't really hate him, I don't hate him any more than anyone else.His tear-filled eyes probed me cautiously.The wind picked up a cloud of snow powder and sprinkled it past us.It was only because he took a sharp breath, so hard, whistled that he reminded me of his face on a woman's body.That's what got on my nerves.Thoughts like that.I have no idea.I figured they must be right.I think I'm neurotic.I think I must be.I must be.Have you ever had such a thought? No. If you ever, if you just happen to keep imagining a man's head on a woman's body, or sometimes you look at a chair arm for so long that it turns into a human arm, or something like that, you'll Are you panicking because of this?can you? I didn't say anything. Perhaps everyone who leaves his hometown for the first time will have similar imaginations.What do you say?The first barracks I was in, they called it the Reception Center, and we got up every morning when it was still dark, and the food there was so bad we had to throw it away.All my clothes had been taken away and I was wearing this military uniform whose smell I wasn't even familiar with.After starting boot training, I was sleepy all day long.I dozed off throughout the day, when we were in class, when we were shooting, and everywhere else.But not at night.There was a guy next to me who was coughing all the time and it sounded like his stomach was turning upside down.Once, it sounded like he was about to cough his stomach straight out of his mouth and hit the floor with a thud.He always faces me.Even though we slept head to toe, I knew his stomach would fall right in front of me.I never sleep at night.During the day I couldn't eat the food that was supposed to be thrown away, so I was always hungry except in the cafeteria.Canteen, anything in the military has a nice word for it, did you think of that? I nodded imperceptibly, then shook my head, ambiguously. Good word for me, he added in a distorted voice, as if his tongue was swollen, nerve.I think I'm crazy, I must be.However, is it my nerves, or the army's nerves?Because they messed up everything.I couldn't sleep in the bed, I had to sleep everywhere else.I couldn't eat in the cafeteria, I had to eat everywhere else.Everything started to mess up.The man who slept next to me at night was coughing like hell.That's when things started to change.One day, I couldn't tell what was wrong with the corporal's face.This face keeps turning into a face I know from elsewhere, and then I start thinking, he looks like me, and then he and Leper's voice get thicker and thicker, it's not recognizable as his anymore, and he's a woman again , I stared at him like I'm staring at you now, and his face turned into a woman's face, and I started yelling at everyone, and I started yelling so that everyone would see too , I don't want to be the only one who sees this kind of thing, I'm shouting louder and louder so that everyone within range of my voice can hear you can see there's nothing wrong with the way I'm thinking Crazy, right, I do everything for good reason, right, but I can't yell fast enough, or loud enough, and when someone finally comes to me, it's sleeping in the bed next to me The one who coughed.He was carrying a broom because we were sweeping the barracks, but I saw right away that it wasn't a broom but a severed human leg.I remember thinking, he must be helping with the amputation in the hospital when he heard me shouting.As you can see, my analysis is quite logical.The ice crust continued to crunch under our feet, and the icy trees rattled with the cold as we reached the edge of the field.These two sets of high-pitched noises sounded to my ears like rifles firing at a distance. I didn't say anything, and Leper, who had talked too much, went on, talking through the wind and rattle, as if his story never ended.Then they grabbed me, arms everywhere, legs everywhere, heads everywhere and I couldn't figure out exactly when shut up! The voice became softer and more careful, when exactly You thought I wanted to hear the creepy details!shut up!I don't bother to listen!I don't bother to hear what happened to you, Leper.I don't care!Do you understand this?It has nothing to do with me!No relationship!I don't bother to listen! I turned and started lumbering across the fields, running in a straight line avoiding his house and toward the road leading back into town.I left Leper, and I left him to tell the wind his story.He might go on forever, I don't care.I don't want to hear any more.I've heard too much of it.He told me such a story, what does it mean!I don't want to hear any more.Don't want to hear it now, and never want to hear it in the future.I don't bother to listen because it has nothing to do with me.I don't want to hear it again at all, ever.