You ask how glorious our country was, sir, and once our territory was eternally shone by the sun, in the north we were close to the Northern Lights, in the east we were close to the rising sun, in the south we were near the equinox, and in the west we were near the Last Judgment Day.

—Excerpt from: "Secrets of the Ottoman the Great and Rigoster Fischer"

Ashu served his three-year sentence in prison. He was tall and burly, and always had a "don't mess with me" expression on his face. Therefore, the biggest trouble he encountered in prison was how to spend time. He spends a lot of time working out, staying in shape, teaching himself how to juggle coins, and on top of that, he misses his beloved wife incessantly.

In Ah Xiu's opinion, the greatest and perhaps the only benefit of being in prison is that it gives him a real sense of relief. As time went on, this feeling became more and more intense. He no longer has to worry about someone trying to arrest him, because he has already been caught, and he no longer has to fear what will happen tomorrow, because tomorrow will surely be exactly the same as yesterday.

It doesn't matter if you did what you did to condemn you, Ashu thought. In his experience, everyone he met in prison seemed to be resentful about something. It's all the same old thing: law enforcement gets it wrong, they say you did something you didn't, or you don't do what they say. But there's only one thing that really matters: they've got you.

He found out about it in the first few days he came in. At that time, everything from the prison itself to the meals in the prison was completely new to him. Despite the pain of losing his freedom and the fear that flowed through his body, he still felt a sense of relief.

Ah Xiu tried not to talk too much. But by the middle of the following year, he mentioned the relief to his roommate Loki.

Loki is a scottish crook who grins with a scarred mouth. "That's right," he said, "you're right. If he is sentenced to death, the relief is even more complete. That's when you think of jokes like why those guys are always kicking around and wanting to kick their shoes off when the noose is around their necks, because their friends always say they're going to die in their shoes. ”

"What kind of joke is this?" Ashu asked.

"Of course, the joke about the gallows is the best joke. ”

"When was the last time a prisoner was executed in this prison?" Ashu asked.

"Hell, how do I know?" Loki's orange-blonde hair was shaved short, short enough to see the outline of a skull. "Let me tell you, as long as the hanging of prisoners stops, the country is not far from the end. Without the fear that the gallows brings, there would be no justice brought by the gallows. ”

Ah Xiu shrugged, he didn't see any romance in the death penalty.

As long as the death penalty is not imposed, he thought, prison is just a temporary suspension of life. There are two reasons for this: first, here life is not moving forward, but crawling downward. If it's enough for you to crawl, you can crawl and live. Second, as long as you hold on to it, they will let you out one day.

In the early days of his sentence, the future of free life was too far away for Ah Xiu to focus on and imagine. Later, freedom slowly turned into a ray of hope from afar. He learned a trick and told himself that "this will all pass" whenever something disgusting happens.

One day, the magical door to freedom will open before him and let him pass. He scratches out the days he spends on his wall day by day, paying no attention to the sunrise and sunset. He pulled out a book from the pile of discarded books in the prison library and followed the self-taught tricks with coins. He also made a mental list of what he planned to do when he was released from prison.

As time went on, Asho's list got shorter and shorter. Two years later, his list was reduced to just three items.

First of all, he had to take a warm bath. A real, long, thoroughly soaked bubble bath in the tub. You may have to read a newspaper in the shower, or you may not do anything. Sometimes he imagined taking this bath one way, and after a few days he changed it to another.

Then, he'd wipe himself clean and put on a bathrobe and maybe a pair of slippers. He liked the idea of wearing slippers. If he smokes, he has to light a cigar at this time, but unfortunately he never smokes. He would gently pick up his wife. He would take her into the bedroom, close the door and not come out, and call to order pizza if he was hungry.

Finally, a few days later, after coming out of the bedroom with Laura, he will put his head down, be honest, be patient, live honestly, and stay away from any trouble forever for the rest of his life.

"And then you're going to be happy?" asked Loki. On that day, they were working in the prison factory, assembling automatic bird feeders for the courtyard. It's a little more fun than stamping envelopes.

"No one can really be happy," Ashu replied, "and only death can bring eternal happiness." ”

"Herodotus. Loki said, "Hey, you're starting to learn to be smart." ”

"Who the fuck is Herodotus?" Essman interjected. He was in charge of assembling the two shells of the bird feeder together and handing them to Ah Xiu, who was in charge of tightening the screws for it.

"A dead Greek. Ashu replied.

"My former girlfriends were Greek," Mr. Essman said, "and their whole family ate shit." You won't believe it. Like rice wrapped in leaves, things like that. ”

Essman is built and shaped like a Coke machine, with blue eyes and blonde hair that is almost white. There's a guy who touches his girlfriend while she's dancing at a bar, and he beats the guy to the ground. The guy's friend called the police, arrested Essman, looked into his case record, and found that Essman had violated parole eighteen months earlier.

"What can I do?" Essman once told the sad story to Ah Xiu with a stomach full of grievances, "I warned him that she was my girlfriend. Do I have to endure that insult? I mean, his stinky paws almost touched her all over her body. ”

Ah Xiu only replied to him at that time, "What should you do, it's your own business." Then he walked away. He has long learned one thing, that is: in prison, you only take care of your own business, and don't mess with other people's affairs.

Bow your head and endure the days. Mind my own business.

A few months ago, Loki lent Asher a worn-out paperback copy of Herodotus' Histories. "It's not boring at all, it's just cool. When Ashu said that he never reads a book, he insisted on telling him, "Read a few pages first, and then tell me if you think it's great." ”

Ah Xiu grimaced helplessly, but he did start reading the book, and found that he was captivated by the book against his will.

"Greeks," Essman continued, with a look of disgust, "and what they do is a different matter. I was going to make out with my girlfriend in a different way, and she lost her temper and almost pulled out my eyeballs. ”

One day, without warning, Loki was suddenly transferred to another prison. His copy of Herodotus' book was left to Asher, and in the middle of the page was a nickel coin of five cents. In prison, it is illegal to keep coins privately. You can sharpen coins with stones and cut your opponent's face during a fight. Ah Xiu didn't want a weapon, but he wanted to find something to do with his hands.

Ashu was not superstitious, he never believed in what he had not seen with his own eyes. But in the final weeks of his sentence, he did sense that the shadow of disaster was hovering over the prison. It was exactly the same as what he had had a hunch a few days before that robbery. His stomach felt empty in the depths of his stomach, and he consoled himself that it was nothing more than worry and fear of being back in the outside world. But he couldn't tell. Compared to usual, he seems to be suffering from paranoia, and in prison, everyone is usually paranoia, which is one of the skills necessary for survival. Ah Xiu became more taciturn, more gloomy. He found himself paying attention to the body language of the guards, caring about the mannerisms of his fellow inmates, and bent on finding clues to something bad about to come. He was sure that something was really going to happen.

A month before his release, Ah Xiu sat in a cold office in front of a diminutive man with a burgundy birthmark on his forehead. There was a desk between the two seats, and in front of the man lay out Ashu's file. He held a ballpoint pen in his hand, the upper end of which was gnawed by his teeth.

"Is it cold, Ashu?"

"It's a bit cold. Ashu replied.

The man shrugged. "That's the problem with the system. The heating will not be turned on until December 1, and it will have to be turned off on March 1. I really don't understand this system. His index finger swiped across the paper, then pointed to a note on the left side of the file. "You're 32 years old?"

"Yes, sir. ”

"You look so young. ”

"The benefits of simple living. ”

"I heard you're a model prisoner here. ”

"I've learned to mind my own business, sir. ”

"Really?" he stared intently at Asho, the birthmark on his forehead darkening. Ah Xiu wanted to tell this man his opinion and experience about prison, but he didn't say anything, just nodded, and then concentrated on showing a look of utter remorse.

"I heard you have a wife, Ah Xiu. ”

"Her name is Laura. ”

"How is she?"

"Good. Although it was a long way, she came to visit me whenever she had the chance. We correspond, and whenever I get the chance, I call her. ”

"What does your wife do?"

"She's a travel agent, and she's in charge of getting people around for travel. ”

"How did you meet her?"

Ah Xiu didn't know why this person was asking this. He wanted to tell him it was none of his business, but he answered honestly. "She is the best friend of my good friend's wife. They helped us both go on a date, and it turned out that we fell in love at first sight. ”

"There's a job waiting for you when you get out?"

"Yes, sir. My good friend, Robbie, is the one I just talked about, and he owns a gym where I trained. He said that my old position was still waiting for me. ”

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"He said I'd get a lot of guests. Not only can you bring back old customers, but you can also attract people who want to make themselves stronger. ”

The man looked satisfied. He nibbled on the end of his ballpoint pen and flipped through another page of the file.

"What do you think of your sins?"

Ah Xiu shrugged, "I'm stupid. He said sincerely.

The man with the birthmark sighed. He sketched a few strokes on the form, and then quickly flipped through Ashu's file. "How do you get home from here?" he asked, "on the Greyhound bus?"

"Fly home. The benefits of having a wife who works as a travel agent. ”

The man frowned, and the birthmark wrinkled with it. "She gave you a plane ticket?"

"Not a ticket. She only gave me a string of confirmation numbers, which was an e-ticket. All I had to do was get to the airport within a month, show them my ID, and then I could fly home. ”

The man nodded, ticked off the last item, then closed the file and put down the ballpoint pen. He placed a pair of pale hands on the gray desk, as if they were a pair of pink animals. He clasped his hands together and his fingertips met each other, staring at Ah Xiu with a pair of watery brown eyes.

"You're in luck. "There's family to go back to, there's work waiting for you." You can leave everything that happened here behind you. You have a second chance in life. Cherish it. ”

When he got up to leave, he didn't say that he wanted to shake hands with Ah Xiu, and of course Ah Xiu didn't want to shake hands with him.

The last week before his release was the hardest, even more difficult than all of the last three years combined. Ah Xiu didn't know if it was because of the weather: it was dreary, silent, and cold, and it seemed like a storm was coming. But the storm did not come. He felt nervous and nervous, but deep down, he had a premonition that something was out of control. The cold wind howled in the windy courtyard of the prison, and Ah Xiu felt that he could even smell the snow in the air.

He called his wife on a collect phone. Ah Xiu knew that the phone company would charge an extra three dollars for every call made from the prison, so the operator was always very polite to people calling from prison. Ah Xiu thought that they must have understood who paid their wages.

"Something isn't quite right. He said to Laura. Of course, this was not the first thing he said to her. The first thing he said was "I love you". It's good to be able to say what you feel in your heart, and Ah Xiu will naturally do it.

"Hello," said Laura, "I love you too." What makes you feel wrong?"

"I don't know," he said, "maybe it's the weather." It feels like a storm is coming, but everything will be fine. ”

"I've got a nice weather here," she said, "and the leaves on the trees haven't fallen yet." If there is no storm, you can still see the leaves when you go home. ”

"Five days to go. Ah Xiu said.

"One hundred and twenty hours left, and then you can come back. She said.

"Is everything okay with you? Nothing is wrong?"

"Everything was fine. I'm going to see Robbie tonight, and we're planning a surprise party for you. ”

"Party?"

"Of course, you'll have to pretend you don't know about it, okay?"

"I acted as if I hadn't heard anything. ”

"What a good husband for me. She said. Ah Xiu could hear her smiling. He's been in prison for three years, but he still makes her smile.

"I love you, baby. Ah Xiu said.

"I love you too. Laura replied.

Ah Xiu put down the phone receiver.