Like the kitchen, his bedroom seems to have been renovated in 1920: there is a shelf for a washbasin and a large jug next to the cabinet drawers and mirror. Someone had already put his clothes on the bed: a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, white underwear, and black socks. There was also a pair of black shoes on the worn Persian carpet next to the bed.

He got dressed. Although none of them are new, the texture of the clothes is very good. He wondered who the clothes belonged to, if he was putting on a pair of dead man's socks, if he was about to step into a pair of dead man's shoes, and if he was going to check his tie in the mirror. In the mirror, he was smiling at himself, his face full of mockery.

Now he couldn't imagine that he actually wanted to cut his throat with a razor just now. When I wear a tie, the reflection in the mirror is still smiling.

"Hey," he said to his Ashu, "do you know something I don't know?" As soon as he finished speaking, he immediately felt that he was too stupid.

The door creaked open, and the cat slipped in through the gap between the doorframe and the door, walked softly across the room, and jumped onto the windowsill. "Hey," he said to the cat, "I did close the door this time." I know I'm closed. She looked at him with an interested expression. Her eyes are dark yellow, the same color as amber. Then, she jumped from the windowsill onto the bed, curling up in a hairy blob on the bed. The curled up cats began to snooze on the old sheets.

When Ashu left the room, the door was left open so that the cat could leave, and by the way, the air in the room was changed. He walked down the stairs, which creaked and seemed to protest against his weight, as if they just wanted to be quiet and not disturbed in any way.

"Oh hell, you look pretty good. Nasus complimented. He was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, also wearing a black suit similar to Ashu's. "Have you ever driven a hearse?"

"Nope. ”

"Everything has a head," said Nasus, "and the car is parked right at the front door." ”

An old woman named Lila Draculas died. Under Mr. Nasus's direction, Asho carried the folded aluminum stretcher through the narrow staircase and into her room, opening the stretcher by the bedside. He pulled out a blue, translucent plastic body bag and spread it out next to the dead woman on the bed. She died in a pink pajama with a padded dressing gown. Ah Xiu picked her up and wrapped her in a blanket. She was so light that she didn't seem to have any weight.

He put her in the body bag, zipped it up, and carried it to the stretcher cart. While Ashu was busy with his work, Nasus spoke to a very old man - marriage had brought them together while she was still alive. The old man said that Nasus stood by and listened patiently until Asho had zipped up Mrs. Goodchurch's body bag, and the old man was still nagging and explaining to him how ungrateful his children were, and so were his grandchildren's generation—of course, it was not their fault, it was their parents' fault, and that the apple would not fall far from the tree, as the saying goes. He used to think that under their upbringing, his children would not be like this.

Ashu and Nasus push the stretcher on wheels to the narrow staircase. The old man followed them, wearing the slippers he wore in his bedroom, and he was still rambling on and about, mostly about money, human greed, and the ingratitude of his children.

Ah Xiu was responsible for carrying the heavier lower end of the stretcher, and carried it all the way to the street outside. Then, pushing the stretcher cart alone, he walked down the icy sidewalk to the hearse. Nasus opened the back door of the hearse, and Ashu hesitated.

Nasus instructed him, "Just push it in, the support frame will hold fast." So, Ah Xiu pushed the stretcher into the carriage, and the support frame was suddenly bitten by the edge of the carriage, and the wheels under the stretcher rotated and folded, and the stretcher smoothly pushed into the rear compartment of the hearse. Nasus showed him how to securely secure the stretcher in the carriage.

As Ashu closed the door, Nasus was still listening to the old man who had married Lila Draculas. He seemed unaware of the coldness, and stood in the freezing streets outside, wearing only slippers and dressing gowns, complaining to Nasus how greedy his children were, no better than dying vultures, clinging to his and Lila's small possessions.

He also recounted how the couple had moved from Berlin to Potsdam to Madrid and London, Birmingham, and how they ended up settling in Cairo, relieved that Lila had not died in an old people's home, and how he himself was afraid that she would die in an old people's home.

They had no choice but to walk the old man back to his house and send him up the stairs to his room. In the corner of the double bedroom, a small TV was on and buzzing. As Ah Xiu passed by, he noticed that the newscaster was smiling and squeezing his eyes at him. Convinced that no one was paying attention in his direction, he immediately turned off the television.

"They don't have money. When he finally got back into the hearse, Nasus told him, "He'll come to Azir tomorrow and choose the cheapest funeral." But I think her friends would have persuaded him to give her a nice funeral, a formal farewell in the room at the front of the funeral home. He would definitely complain that he was poor and had no money. During this time, the people in the neighborhood didn't have much money. In any case, he will be dead in six months, no more than a year at most. ”

Snowflakes were dancing in the circle of light of the headlights, and the snow was already drifting towards the more south. Ah Xiu asked curiously, "Is he sick?"

"Not for that reason. Women can save their men. And men—men like him—their women, once they die, they don't live long. You'll see. It didn't take long for him to begin to become dazed, and everything familiar was leaving with her departure. He began to get bored with life, his whole body went down to be emaciated, he gave up the pursuit of life, and then, he died. In the end, it may have been pneumonia, or cancer, or a heart that had stopped beating. When you are old and all your passion and fighting spirit are gone, your life will be over. ”

Ah Xiu thought for a moment, "Hey, Nasus?"

"What. ”

"Do you believe in souls?" he was surprised to hear the question pop out of his mouth. Actually, he didn't intend to ask. He wanted to start with something less direct, but he couldn't find anything to talk about.

"It depends. Back in my day, we all had souls. When you die, you have to wait in line in Hades, and you have to answer all the good and bad things you have done in your life. If you do something bad that weighs more than a feather, we'll feed your soul and heart to the three-headed dog – the soul eater. ”

"Then it must have eaten a lot of people. ”

"It's not as much as you think--- if you've ever seen its descendant in the human world, which seems to be called 'Louwey', you'll think it's still pretty cute sometimes. "And that feather, it's a pretty heavy feather, and we've made it a little special--- you know there's a joke about how much a ton of cotton weighs a ton of iron." Unless you're particularly evil, you'll outweigh that baby. Hey, park here, gas station, we've got to get some gas. ”

The street was quiet, the kind of quiet after the first snowfall. "There's going to be a white Christmas this year, and those monsters, I mean three-headed dogs, or gods, will have descendants?" said Ashu as he cheered.

"Of course, even if you are the protagonist of Christmas, he has descendants. That kid is such a lucky bastard, no, should I say lucky virgin. ”

"You mean Jesus?"

"Very, very lucky guys. Even if he fell into the dung pit, when he got up, he still smelled like a rose. By the way, you know what? Christmas wasn't his birthday. He borrowed it for his birthday from another day. Have you ever seen Mithra? a nice young man who loves a red hat, and he borrowed it from somewhere. ”

"No, I haven't seen it. ”

"Oh...... I've never seen him around. He's a child of a military family, and maybe he's back in the Middle East now, where life is better. But I guess the people over there have forgotten about him a long time ago. It is not uncommon for every soldier of the empire to smear the blood of the bull sacrificed to you on the first day, but the next day they can't even remember what your birthday is. ”

The whizzing sound of the windshield wipers pushed the snow off the car windows aside, squeezing the snowflakes into fine pieces of snow and ice slag.

The yellow light on the traffic light flashed a few times and turned red. Ah Xiu put his foot on the brakes, and the hearse swayed, slid for a while on the deserted street, and stopped.

The green light is on. Ah Xiu restarted the hearse and drove slowly at 10 miles per hour. On slippery roads covered in snow and ice, this speed is sufficient. The car seemed happy to drive slowly in second gear, and he guessed that the car was probably driven in second gear most of the time, and all the cars had to crawl slowly behind it.

"Your car is driving well. Nasus continued, "By the way, Jesus is doing quite well here. But I met a guy who said he had seen Jesus on the side of the road in Afghanistan and wanted to hitchhike, but no one would stop. Got it? It all depends on where you make a living. ”

"Looks like a big storm is coming. "Ashu is talking about the real weather.

Nasus opened his mouth to reply, but his words had nothing to do with the actual weather. "Look at me and Azir. "In a few years, our business won't be going to be able to do anything." We have savings, and we spend them in bad years. But for many years, business here has not been good, and every year has not been as good as it has been. Renekton went crazy and went crazy, transforming into a lizard all the time, eating animals that were hit by cars on the side of the road. What kind of life is that! As for Sivir, you've seen it. In this way, our life is still good! We still have at least a little faith to live on. The other fools have all but lost their faith. It's like the business of the funeral industry – whether you want it or not, the big corporations will buy you up and kick you out one day because they're stronger, they're more efficient, and they're doing what they do! Confrontation and fighting won't change this damn fact, because we've lost this war long ago, long before we got to this green land, whether it was a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago. Back then, we had already lost. We came here across the ocean, but the British didn't care about us. Either be bought out, continue to hold on, or get out. You're right, the storm is coming!"

Ah Xiu drove into the street full of dead houses, only their house was still inhabited, and all the other houses had dark windows and nailed wooden planks. "Drive to the back path. Nasus commanded.

He reversed in the backyard and didn't stop until the car was about to hit the two gates behind the house. Nasus opens the hearse and the door to the morgue, and Asho is in charge of unfastening the stretcher and pulling it out. As soon as the stretcher was lifted out of the carriage, the wheel bracket automatically unscrewed and fell. He pushed the stretcher cart to the embalming table and lifted Lila Draculas. She was as peaceful as a sleeping child, and he picked up her body bag cradle and carefully placed her on the cold porcelain table, as if he feared that he would wake her.

"I've got a teleportation board," said Nasus, "and you don't have to move her yourself. ”

"It doesn't matter. Ashur said, speaking more and more like Nasus now, "I'm big, it's nothing. ”

In his childhood, Ah Xiu was considered short in his age, and his whole body was skinny. In the photo of Ashu when he was a child, Laura only had one that was eye-catching and willing to put it in the frame. The photo shows a child with a serious expression, uninhibited unkempt black hair, and dark eyes, standing next to a table full of cakes and cookies. Ah Xiu estimated that the photo might have been taken at a Christmas party at some embassy, showing him wearing a bow tie and wearing his best outfit.

They moved so many times that his mother took Ashu with her, and initially moved from one embassy to another. His mother was a correspondent working in the Foreign Affairs Department, transcribing and sending confidential telegrams. Later, when he was eight years old, they returned to England. Because my mother was often sick, it was difficult for her to keep a long-term job, so she had to do odd jobs intermittently when her physical condition allowed. As a result, they had to move from one city to another often, living here for a year and living there for a year. They never stayed in one place for long, so that Ah Xiu could meet his friends and feel that this was his home. At that time, Ah Xiu was still a very thin child......