Chapter 58 57

【Airport】 On the day the legacy lapsed, I was heading south on the road out of Dupivogur, kicking the stones on the asphalt and pacing in circles to keep my body warm.By the time the sun was overhead, I hadn't seen a car for three hours. I try not to think about that money.My shoulders were sore from the weight of the pack, so I put it on the ground and passed the time watching the white seabirds.My mind keeps thinking about my grandmother and mother.Wonder if people with billions of dollars are just as likely to die of cancer as anyone else.Maybe.I picked up a piece of lava from the side of the road and threw it into the sea.

By mid-afternoon, when the clouds had started to increase, I walked down to the fjord below the road and ate cheese and old bread from my backpack for lunch.I lay on the black sand and stared at the clouds.It's half past one.It's two fifty in London.Maybe the legacy expires at midnight.Or when Pitcherd was on the phone with the banker in town, asking him to transfer the money directly.I thought of Ashley and Emmaine looking at each other in a certain room in 1916, and he wrote to her two months later telling her that everything he ever had or would ever have would be hers.Soon, that fortune that has been waiting for eighty years will be mixed with other money, and in the end no one will be able to tell the difference.Soon, no one will think about them anymore.

I closed my eyes and slept until the wind started to pick up again. There was no southbound traffic that afternoon.At dusk I entered the village and found a small hotel near the port.I took the cheapest room and they gave me the key to a large bedroom on the top floor with six bunk beds under the sloping roof ceiling.The restaurant downstairs was closed and I didn't have the money to eat there anyway.I sat on the lower bunk, looked out of the small window, opened a can of beans I bought in Reykjavik with a jackknife, and ate directly. I took my notebook out of my backpack, hoping that after reading about all the people I met in Europe, I might understand what I was doing here.I want to remember Corinne, Christian, Desmarais, even the manager of the Berlin post office.What I want to remember most is Mi Rui.I slowly turn the pages.There is hardly any mention of them in it.It's all about Ashley and Inmogene, and it lists questions and survey targets, train or plane times, addresses of libraries and archives.I turned to the day after I met Mi Rui.

□□□ september 4 paris Yesterday I found out that the painting is a very abstract work, meaningless.I can't stand the thought of wasted time. Bought a ticket to Amiens and wandered around the city this last night.I met a girl named Mi Rui in a bar in the Latin Quarter.Stay up all night with her and her friends which is obviously in French called une nuit blanche.Today we're going to take the one o'clock train to Picardy together.If she will show up. The thing that bothers me the most is that I still don't know why Yin Mozhen came to France. I turned off the light and climbed into bed.I knew I had to let go of everything, but the harder I tried, the tighter I held onto it.I'll always think about the week after my mother's funeral, when my father put away her clothes for his sisters, and they all came to the closet and looked at the shoes, the coat, the handbag, but no one took anything.I remember picking up a pair of shoes and looking at them.That's not even real leather.

It was past two o'clock when I got out of bed.I turned on the light and pulled out the plastic folder containing Inmogen's letter, photocopies of my investigation, and the file given to me by Downing & Hooper.I took the lighter out of the front pocket of my backpack and walked into the tiny bathroom.The lighter is in my hand.The envelopes on the wet tiles were also wet. Not long after, I put down the lighter.Sitting on the tile floor and crying. Later that night I dreamed that I was in Paris.I met Miri at a museum where her art class was sketching an atrium filled with marble sculptures.I arrived early and saw Miri on the other side of the atrium, sitting with Claire on a bench with a large sketchbook on her lap.I decided to hang around the museum until her class was over.

Upstairs, in a dimly lit exhibition room, is a long row of portraits in which everyone looks familiar, even though some are hundreds of years old.In a painting at the end of the corridor, there is a woman I have never seen before.I recognized her right away.I stared at the painting for a while, then went downstairs.Mi Rui's class is over. It was raining early this morning, but I was still on the road at six o'clock.Twenty minutes later, an electrician in a white van gave me a ride all the way to Reykjavik.My luck has changed again.In the afternoon, he dropped me off on the road to Keflavik Airport, where the traffic is relatively steady, and it only took me a few minutes to hitch a ride.

By the time I arrived at the ticket counter at the airport, I had already missed my flight to France that day.But the service staff said that if I am willing to transfer in Copenhagen, she can help me arrange it for 22,000 kroner.The plane left in ninety minutes.I don't know if Mi Rui will come to see me. I took bills out of my pocket and spread them out on the counter, and a heavy ziplock bag with coins.I counted them all, but the difference was almost two thousand crowns.The waiter looked at me suspiciously. don't you have a credit card Exceeded the quota. I rummaged in my backpack, found a twenty-pound note hidden inside, and ran to the currency exchange counter at the National Bank of Iceland to change the pound into twenty-five hundred kronor.I bought a plane ticket and went through security.Near the boarding gate, I called Mi Rui from the payphone, but it went straight to her voicemail.I hastily leave a message:

I'm Tristan.I'm coming back.I will arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Terminal 1 at 5:15.Scandinavian Airlines from Copenhagen.hope you will come I hung up the phone and ran through the terminal to the gate.The plane is only half full, and the entire row behind you is mine.As I put on my seatbelt, a flight attendant was explaining safety in Icelandic and Danish. I'm glad there's no one sitting next to me because I'm dirty, unshaven, and feel like I haven't slept well in months.My skin was parched from the Icelandic wind.My hair needed a trim, my clothes were dirty and wrinkled from being stuffed in a backpack for weeks, and cleaned with just a bar of hard soap in the hotel sink.I don't know if Mi Rui will come, and what she will look like.But the more I imagined, the more I felt bad, so after I took off, I focused on what I could be sure of.I tried to imagine Paris, with its parks and avenues, but it was hard not to think of one thing: In four hours I would land there, penniless and without a place to live.

When I arrived at Copenhagen Airport, I called Mi Rui again.Still didn't answer.I left another message and also wrote her an e-mail from the pay computer next to the eating area.Then I sat by the gate and watched the plane unload and refuel the plane bound for Paris; I reached into my coat pocket and felt the cold silver brooch. Dear passengers, I am very pleased to announce to you that Scandinavian Airlines flight 559 headed to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport is now boarding My seat is the second row on the plane.The middle-aged woman by the aisle watched as I stuffed my backpack into the overhead bin and pushed past her to take my seat by the window.A few minutes after takeoff, she closed the magazine and asked me where I was from.Her accent sounds Irish.

Americans in German overcoats.She said: When a backpacker travels all over Europe.I've heard of this kind of travel.If today is Tuesday, this must be Paris, something like that? almost. Sounds like fun.How do you feel about Europe at the moment? I looked out the window and watched the clouds below. Of course, the woman went on: not everyone I like here. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I was the first person to get off the plane.Outside baggage claim, a dense line of people waits behind a glass barrier.Mi Rui is there. She leaned forward, her elbows on the railing, her face in her hands.As soon as she saw me, she straightened up, opened her mouth, but covered it with her hand, as if embarrassed.She ran to keep up with me on the other side of the railing, appearing and disappearing behind families with strollers and pickup drivers holding posters with their names written on them.Mi Rui walked around the end of the wall and took my hand.

follow me. She took me out of the terminal through the automatic doors.The autumn air was cool and we were walking quickly on the sidewalk.Cars and buses pass by us, stop and load people, and then drive out.Mi Rui took me to a small space behind a potted plant.I put my arms around her and pulled her closer.I kissed her.Her lips are warm.She smiled, wiped away a tear, then laughed and whispered my name.I cupped her face in one hand and kissed her again.A line of Mercedes taxis passed us, followed by a staff member pushing a long line of luggage trolleys. Mi Rui held my hand and felt the small scar on the palm.She frowned and stroked the wound. You are hurt. I fell down in Iceland.There is lava on the ground.very sharp. Mi Rui took my hand and kissed it playfully. Sorry, I'm not good at waiting.I'm just worried that you'll never come back.But you are back.so you don't have to explain anything I didn't get that money. Mi Rui looked at me.After a month, her hair had grown to cover her ears.Her gray eyes looked pale in the sun. Are you too late? I shake my head.Turns out the money didn't belong to me. Mi Rui nodded slowly.She watched the taxi go by, then interlocked my fingers and turned to look at me.We walk on the sidewalk towards the RER train bound for Paris.Then she said: Then you're right.You finally got your answer. I think so. What is the answer? I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my remaining Icelandic change, brass coins with a fish engraved on the back.I gave the coin to Mi Rui. What's this? Three hundred and fifty crowns.About four euros.is the only thing left of me in this world certainly not. Mi Rui put the change into her pocket.I hold her in one arm. What is winter like here? It was dark and cold."But we'll get through it," she said.