1

Truth be told, if Major Dover hadn't died of a stroke at Taunton Racecourse, Jim wouldn't have come to Thursgood. He came in the middle of the semester without an interview. It was the end of May, but in terms of climate, no one expected it to be the end of May. He had come through an unreliable agency that specialized in introducing teachers to prep schools, and he would take care of Old Man Dover's lessons for the time being, and wait until he found the right one. "I'm a linguist," Thursgood told the faculty lounge, "temporary." He pulled a lock of hair up from his forehead and said a little for himself. "P-r-i-d"—French is not Thursgood's specialty, so he looks at the note in his hand—"e-a-u-x, named Jim." I think he helped us cope until July without any problems. It was not difficult for the faculty to hear the hint in his words. Jim Pledo is a poor white man among the faculty. He was in the same category as Mrs. Loewday and Mr. Mattebay before him, and he was not very good. Mrs. Loewday had a Persian lambskin coat that was adored by the young people, but she turned out to be a blank check. Mr. Mattbay is a pianist but was called out to assist the police in their investigation while practicing accompaniment for the choir. As far as is known, he continues to assist to this day, as his suitcase is still in the basement waiting to be processed. A number of instructors, mainly Marjorie Banks, advocated unboxing. Among them, they said, there must have been some well-known lost items, such as a silver-framed photograph of Apramian's Lebanese mother, a Swiss military folding knife by Bester Ingram, and a watch from the housekeeper. But Thursgood, with his wrinkled face, was unmoved. It had only been five years since he had taken over the school from his father, but those five years had taught him that some things were better off being locked up.

Jim Pledo arrives in the pouring rain on a Friday. Heavy rain poured like cannon smoke down the brown ravine of Mount Kuntok, over the empty cricket pitch, and into the sandstone walls of the crumbling schoolhouse. He arrived shortly after lunch, driving an old red Alves car with a trailer for travel housing, which was originally blue, but which had changed hands several times, and was no longer of any color. The afternoon at Thursgood School was quiet, and the school days were noisy from morning to night, and only then was there a moment of silence. Students are sent to dorms for lunch breaks, while faculty members sit in the break room drinking coffee, reading newspapers, or correcting homework. Thursgood reading a novel to his mother. As a result, only the little guy in the entire school, Bill Roach, saw Jim arrive and see the Alves squeaking and splashing from the potholed lane, steaming from the front of the car, the windshield wipers constantly sweeping back and forth, and the trailer behind it jolting in the puddle.

At that time, Roach was still a freshman, and everyone thought that he was at least a little stupid if not to mention any flaws in his talent. He had already changed two prep schools in two semesters, with Thursgood being the second. He was a chubby, round kid with asthma, who spent most of his lunch break kneeling at the head of his bed, leaning on his stomach and looking out of the window. His mother lived in Bath and lived a prosperous life. Everyone thinks that his father is the richest parent in the school, but such a prominent position has caused his son to suffer a lot. Since Roach comes from a family where his parents are separated, he is naturally an observant person. Roach observed that Jim did not stop in front of the school building, but continued to drive until he reached the stable, indicating that he already knew the layout of the place. Later, Lodge thought that he must have come to survey the terrain first, or studied the map. When he had reached the stable, he did not stop, but kept his speed until he drove into the wet grass, and then he climbed over the mound and fell into the pit like a green onion, and was nowhere to be seen. Rocky had thought that Jim was driving so fast that the trailer would fold at right angles to the car in front of him and hang on the edge of the pit, but it turned out to be like a big rabbit jumping into a hole with its tail cocked and gone.

The origin of the pit is steeped in legends at Thursgood's school. It was located in a wasteland between the orchard, the orchard and the stables, and it looked like nothing more than a dent in the ground and overgrown with weeds. There are several small mounds on the north side, each as tall as a child's body, with clumps of shrubs that grow densely in the summer. It is because of these small mounds that the big pit is a great place for children to play, and because of this, it is famous, and the legend about it varies according to the imagination of each new student. One year it was said that these small mounds were the remains of an open-pit silver mine, and everyone began to dig for the treasure. Another year it was said that it was a fortress in the days of the Roman Empire, so everyone waved sticks and threw clods of earth and fought here. There was also a year when it was said that the big crater was a wartime bomb crater, and the mound was the human body that was buried and sat in it when the bomb bloomed. The reality is much more prosaic. Six years ago, shortly before Thursgood's father suddenly eloped with the castle innkeeper, he initiated the construction of a swimming pool and mobilized students to dig a large hole, one deep and one shallow. But the money raised was not enough to realize this ambition, so it was spent bits and pieces on other projects, such as buying a new projector for an art class, manually growing mushrooms in the school cellar, and so on. The sarcastic even said that when the fornicating lovers finally fled to the woman's hometown of Germany, they also took away some of the donations.

Jim didn't know any of these things. The truth is, it was a complete coincidence that he chose that corner of Thursgood's school where Roach had a legend of monsters in his heart.

Roach waited on the window, but saw nothing more. The Alves car and trailer were all stuck in the pit, and if it weren't for the red mud stains on the grass on the wheels, he would probably have thought it was all daydreaming. But wheel prints are a real thing, so when the bell rings at the end of the lunch break, he puts on long rain boots, wades through the rain to the edge of the big pit, climbs to a high place and looks down. Jim wore a military raincoat and a peculiar hat with a wide brim, like an African hunting hat, but it was fluffy and rolled up like a bohemian pirate, and the rain on it poured down like a ditch.

Alves cars are now present in the stable yard. Roach never figured out how Jim managed to get it out of the pit, but the trailer was still in the pit below, at the bottom of the brick pit that had been dug deeper. Jim sat on the door step, drinking from a green plastic flat-bottomed glass, rubbing his right shoulder with one hand as if he had touched something. Then the rain poured down from the brim of his hat. The hat was raised, and Rocky saw a face as red as fire, his brown beard stuck together by the rain like two canine teeth, and his face was even redder under the brim of the hat. His face was full of horizontal and vertical wrinkles, deep and curved. It occurred to Roach that he must have been starving somewhere in the tropics, and when he was hungry, he had to eat a full meal to fill his body, so there were so many wrinkles on his face. His left arm was still across his chest, and his right shoulder was high at the back of his neck. But the whole curled up shape is still, like a frozen animal, frozen in front of the background. On a whim, Rocky wished it was a stag, a noble animal.

"Who are you, kid?" The voice of the questioner was very much like that of a soldier.

"My name is Roach, sir. I'm a freshman. ”

The red-brick face under the shadow of the hat looked at Roach for most of the day. Then, reassuring Rocky, his face softened, and he smiled like a wolf, and his left hand was still pressed on his right shoulder, and he slowly massaged it again, while he took a large sip from the wide-mouthed plastic cup.

"Freshman, huh?" Jim said into the rim, still smiling, "I didn't expect that. ”

Jim stood up now, turned his hunched back to Roach, and began to scrutinize the four outriggers of the trailer. This inspection was very strict, shaking the spring under the car for a long time, and constantly raising the oddly dressed front of the car, and padding a few bricks at different angles and in different places. At this moment, the spring rain was pouring down on his raincoat, on his hat, and on the roof of the trailer. Roach noticed that in the midst of all this movement, Jim's right shoulder was not moving, and it was bulging high behind his neck, as if a large rock had been tucked under his raincoat. Therefore, he wondered if Jim was a big hunchback, and if anyone with a hunchback was as easy to touch as Jim. And he also noticed a general law that is worth remembering and can be applied later, that is, the hunched man walks with large steps, which is to maintain balance.

"Freshman, huh? I'm not a freshman," Jim continued, pulling one of the trailer's legs, in a much friendlier tone than he had just been, "I'm an old student. If you want to know how old you are, then I tell you, as old as Rip van Winkel, and a little older. Have friends? ”

"No, sir." Rocky replied simply. When students answer in the negative, they use this weak tone, and if they say yes, they let the questioner say it. Jim, however, said nothing, and Roach suddenly felt a strange sense of intimacy, a sense of hope.

"My name is Bill," he said, "and my official name at baptism was Bill, but Thursgood called me William." ”

"Bill, yes. Unpaid bills. Has anyone ever called you that? ”

"No, sir."

"It's a good name anyway."

"Thank you, sir."

"I know a lot of people named Bill, and they're all good."

In this way, both of them introduced themselves. Jim didn't chase Roach away, so Roach stayed on the edge of the pit, looking down through his rain-soaked glasses. He was surprised to notice that the bricks had been removed from the cucumber stand. A few pieces were already loose, and Jim must have loosened some more. Roach was glad that someone had just arrived at Thurswell School and dared to make such a claim and really dig up the walls of the school and use it on himself. To his particular delight, Jim turned on the tap to get water, because the faucet was something that no one was allowed to touch under the school's special rules: if he touched it, he would be punished and beaten.

"Hey, Bill, I ask you. Do you have marbles or something on you? ”

"What, sir, what?" Roach touched his pocket, a little dazed.

"Marbles, man. Round glass balls, so small. Don't students play marbles now? When I was in school, we used to play. ”

Roach didn't have marbles, but Apramian had a lot of them, which he had flown from Beirut. It took Roach about fifty seconds to hurry back to school, take a great risk to get one, and run back to the pit out of breath. He hesitated as soon as he reached the pit, for in his mind the pit was Jim's property, and Rocky had to get his permission to go down. But Jim was already in the trailer, so Roach waited a little and then tiptoed down the edge of the pit and reached through the door to hand the marbles. Jim didn't see him for a moment, he was drinking his glass of wine, and staring blankly out the window as the clouds gathered and dispersed on the top of Mount Quintok. Roach noticed that the act of drinking was really difficult, because Jim had to stand up straight and drink from the glass, which was not easy to do. To get to this angle, he had to lean his rickety body back. At this time, the rain fell heavily again, crackling like pebbles on the trailer.

"Sir." Roach called him, but Jim didn't move.

"The problem with Alves' car is that it doesn't have a fucking spring suspension," Jim finally began, not so much to his guests as to the window, "and you're driving a car, and your ass is right next to the white line on the road, and anyone is going to be crippled." He leaned back again and took a sip.

"Yes, sir." Roach said. He didn't expect Jim to think he could drive.

Jim had taken his hat off. His hazel hair was cut short, and in a few places the scissors had been cut too hard, revealing scar marks that were concentrated on one side. So Roach guessed that Jim was cutting his own hair with his good arm, which made him look even more crooked.

"I brought you a marble." Roach said.

"Good. Thank you, man. He took the marbles and rolled them slowly in the palm of his rough hand. Rocky knew right away that he was very good at everything, and that he was very good at what tools and what kind of guys. "The cart is uneven, you see, Bill," he said, still looking at the marbles intently, "with one head slanted, like me." You see. He turned to the side of the large window. There is an aluminium edge under the large window, which is placed there to receive the water that runs down. Jim put the marble on it and watched as it rolled headlong and fell to the ground.

"One end," he added, "is tilted toward the rear of the car." That's not going to work. Hey, hey, you little one, where have you been? ”

Roach bent down to look for the marbles and noticed that the trailer wasn't comfortable at all. Even though it's so clean, anyone can be its owner. There was a bed, a stool, a stove for the boat, and a liquefied gas tank. Roach didn't even have a picture of his wife, he thought. Roach had not yet met a bachelor, with the exception of Mr. Thursgood. The only things he could find were a mesh bag hanging from the door, a sewing kit next to the bed, a homemade shower head, holed in a biscuit cone and neatly welded to the roof of the car. On the table was a colorless bottle of liquor, either gin or vodka, because Rocky was drinking that when he went to his apartment for the weekend during the holidays.

"It looks like the east-west direction is okay, but the north-south direction is definitely slanted." Jim tried the other window frames, "What are you good at, Bill?" ”

"I don't know, sir." Luo Qi Muran said.

"You have to have a specialty, everybody. How's football going? Do you play football, Bill? ”

"No, sir." Roach said.

"So you're a nerd?" Jim asked nonchalantly, snorting, leaning on the bed and taking a sip of the wine. "But I mean, you don't look like a nerd at all," he added politely, "but you like to be alone." ”

"I don't know." Roach repeated, moving half a step toward the open door.

"And what are you best at?" He took another big sip, "You've got a specialty, Bill, everybody's got that." What I'm best at is playing the water. I wish you good health. ”

It was a mistake to ask Roach this question at this moment, for he himself was agonizing over it all day long. He has even recently wondered if he has any goals in this world. Whether it was in study or play, he felt that he was seriously lacking. Even the daily tasks of school life, such as folding quilts and packing clothes, he felt that he was not up to the task. And he was not pious enough, as the old lady of Cerskod said to him; He shouldn't have kept a straight face in church. For these shortcomings, he blames himself for not being good, but what he blames the most is that he still ruined his parents' marriage, and he should have foreseen it and taken steps to prevent it. He sometimes even wonders if he has more direct responsibility, for example, whether he is inherently evil, destructive, lazy, and has a bad personality that causes discord between his parents. In his old school, he had wanted to show it by shouting loudly, and even pretended to have epilepsy, which his aunt had. His parents met and discussed it – they were reasonable people and often did it – and decided to let him change schools. So, on the edge of a broken down trailer, a man he almost blindly admired—and a loner like himself—inadvertently posed the question to him, almost overwhelming him. He felt the blood on his face rush up, the fog on his lenses, and the trailer began to melt into a sea of bitterness. Roach didn't figure out if Jim had noticed this, only to see him suddenly turn around and hunch his back towards him. He walked over to the table and drank from his glass as he said a few words of remediation.

"Anyway, you're very observant, there's no problem with that, I can tell you, man. We loners are like that – there's no one to fall back on, right? No one else saw me. As soon as you appeared in the pit over there, I was startled and thought you were magical. I bet Bill Roach is the most observant person in the school, as long as he wears glasses. Is it? ”

"Yes," Rocky gratefully agreed, "I am. ”

"Well, then, you stay here and keep an eye on it," ordered Jim, putting the African Hunting Hat back on his head, "I'm going to go out and fix the legs." All right? ”

"Yes, sir."

"What about marbles?"

"Here, sir."

"It'll call me as soon as it rolls, okay? Facing north, facing south, whatever direction it rolls. Got it? ”

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know which side faces north?"

"Over there." Rocky immediately stretched out his arm and casually pointed in one direction.

"Yes. Well then, as soon as it rolls you bark. Jim said it again, and went out into the rain. A minute later, Rocky felt the floor shake beneath his feet, and as Jim wrenched on a leg, he heard another roar of pain or rage.

During the summer semester of that year, the students gave Jim a nickname. They tried several names before everyone was satisfied. They first called him "Cavalryman", because he was a bit of a military man, and sometimes liked to curse innoccupially, and often wandered alone in the Kuntok Mountains. Nevertheless, the "cavalry" did not call out. Later, they called him "Pirate" and for a while "Hungarian goulash" because of his love of spicy food. As they marched through the pit to church for vespers, the smell of steaming curry, shallots, and chili peppers wafted to them. He is also called "Hungarian goulash" because of his authentic French, which is considered to be soup with water. Barclay, a fifth-grade B, was able to learn his French vividly: "You've heard the question, Berg, what is Emile looking at?" —with a spasmodic wave of his right hand—"Don't stare at me, man, I'm not magical. Qu’est-ce qu’il regarde, Emile dans le tableau que tu as sous le nez？ Mon cher Berger, if you can't answer a clear French sentence right away, je te mettrai tout de suite à la porte, tu comprends, you fool? ”

But this frightening threat, whether in French or English, was never really carried out, but rather strangely added to the mildness of his demeanor, which could only be seen through the eyes of children.

However, they were also not satisfied with the "Hungarian goulash". The nickname lacks the vigour it contains, and it doesn't take into account Jim's love for England, and there's nothing wrong with trying to get him into a fight and tease him with this topic. If the fool Barclay dared to say a disrespectful word to the Queen, and marvel at the beauty of a foreign place, especially a tropical country, Jim's face would immediately turn red, and he would say in one breath how blessed it was to be an Englishman. He knew they were teasing him, but he took the bait. After he finished saying his big truth, he often showed a frustrated smile, saying to himself what he was fooled, failed and so on, and what else did someone look bad on his face, because he had to be punished, did more homework, and couldn't play football. But he did love England, because at the end of the day, no one suffers from it.

"The best place in the world!" At one point, he exclaimed, "Do you know why? Idiot, do you know why? ”

Barclay didn't know, so Jim picked up a piece of chalk and drew a globe on the board. To the west, he said, is the United States, full of greedy fools, who have spoiled their unique conditions. The East is China and Russia – he makes no distinction between them – overalls, labor camps, endless Long Marches. In the middle is the United Kingdom......

Eventually, they came up with the nickname "Rhino."

This half is a nonym for "Pledo", and the other half refers to his love of living in the wild and his love of sports, which they often see. They got up early and stripped naked, shivering with cold, and while waiting in line for a shower, they could see that the "rhinoceros" had returned from an early morning walk, hunched back with a rucksack on his back, striding down the canyon road. At bedtime, they catch a glimpse of the lonely figure in the plastic canopy of the handball court, tirelessly hitting the ball against the concrete wall. Sometimes, when the weather is warm at dusk, they can peek at him playing golf from his dorm window. He would often read them a very British adventure novel that he had grabbed from a dimly lit library, like that of Bigles, Pansy Westman, or Geoffrey Fanor, before he went to play golf and walk around the field with an old iron-headed bat. Every time he hit the ball, they waited for him to make a "snort" as he twisted his back and swung his stick forward, and he never let them down, and they held the full record. In the faculty cricket match, he scored 75 points before leaving the game, deliberately hitting the ball high and sending it to Barclay in the right back. "Catch, stupid, catch—send it out. Good ball, Barclay, good boy, that's what you're there for. ”

Despite his generous nature, it is widely known that he understands the criminal mind very well. There are many examples of this, the most illustrative of which occurred a few days before the end of the semester, when Barclay found a question for the next day in Jim's wastebasket and rented it out to candidates for five new pennies each time. Many students, after paying the money, shine a flashlight in the dormitory overnight, recite the answers, and do not sleep well all night. But when it came time to take the exam, Jim gave him a completely different question.

He sat down and said loudly, "This test is free for all of you." Then he opened the Daily Telegraph and began to read intently the latest opinion of the "magicians", who understood that this meant almost any man with a brain, even if he was only one who wrote for the good of the Queen.

Finally, there was the owl incident, which made sense to him because it involved death, and the children reacted differently to the phenomenon of death. One Wednesday, when it was still cold, Jim brought a bucket of coal to the classroom and started a fire in the fireplace. He sat with his back to the fire to keep warm while reading a French dictation question. First some dirt fell from the chimney of the fireplace, which he ignored, and then the owl fell. It was a big barn owl, and it must have been because in Dover's time, for many years, whether in summer or winter, it had never cleared the dust from the chimney, and it had made a nest in the chimney, and now it was dizzy from the soot and struggled desperately in the chimney, and it had become black and exhausted. It fell on the coal, rolled to the floor, croaked, trembled, and collapsed there as if it were the devil's secret messenger. Its body was curled up, its wings outstretched, its chest still breathing, and its eyelids were covered with dirt, but the daze eyes in the dirt stared straight at the students. No one was not afraid, not even the hero of everyone's mind, the good man Barclay. Except, though, Jim. Without saying a word, he immediately gathered up the bird and carried it outside. Like stowaways on a boat, they listened with bated breath to the movement outside, but heard nothing, until finally they heard the water from the faucet on the other side of the hallway, which was obviously Jim washing his hands. Barclay says, "He's peeing," prompting a disturbed laugh. But when they walked out of the classroom after class, they found the owl dumped there on the pile of mixed manure next to the big pit, completely dead, waiting to be buried. The braver stepped forward to take a look and found that the neck had been broken. Only a hunting ground warden would kill an owl so cleanly, Sudre said that, because he had a hunting ground keeper in his house.

The rest of the school at Thursgood, however, was not so consistent with Jim. The ghost of the pianist Mr. Matbay lingers. The housemaster sided with Bill Roach and thought that Jim was great and needed special care: it was a miracle that he had such a hunched back and yet could move with ease. Marjorie Banks said he was crushed by a bus while he was drunk. It was also Marjory Banks, who pointed out that the thick sweatshirt may have come of unknown origin at the faculty cricket match where Jim stood out. Marjorie Banks is not a cricket player, but he walked over with Thursgood to watch the game.

"Do you think that sweatshirt came from the right and bright way, or did it come with a sheep?" He asked aloud.

"Leonard, that's unfair." Thursgood reproached, patting his hound on the flank, "Bite him, Chenny, bite the bad guy." ”

But by the time Thursgood returned to his study, he had no smile at all, and he was always at ease. Pretending to be an Oxford graduate, he was able to deal with it, just as he had met an ancient language teacher who did not know Greek and a priest who did not understand theology when he was a student. This kind of person knows that he can't hide it in front of the evidence, and he will not be able to support it, and finally cry bitterly, automatically retire and beg, or be willing to reduce his salary and stay in his post. But he hadn't met anyone who was really accomplished but incognito, but he knew he wouldn't like them. He checked the school calendar and called a man named Mr. Stroll at the Medley Agency.

"What the hell do you want to know?" Mr. Stroll said with a loud sigh.

"There's nothing special to know about." Thursgood's mother was embroidering, pretending not to be listening, "It's just that if you want a written resume, you have to be complete and not omitted." What's more, we paid the intermediary fee. ”

Then Tersgood suddenly wondered if he had fallen asleep again after he had woken Mr. Stroll from his slumber.

"Very patriotic guy." Mr. Stroll finally spoke.

"I didn't hire him because he was patriotic."

"He's not working," Stroll said softly, his voice coming through the smoke, "and he's hospitalized." Spinal cord problems. ”

That's a good point. But I don't think he's been in the hospital for the last 25 years. It's annoying. He said that last sentence to his mother, with his hand over the microphone. Then he suddenly felt that Mr. Stroll had fallen asleep again.

"You're only going to hire him until the end of this semester," Stroll whispered, "and if you don't like him, you'll have to fire him then." You want a substitute teacher, and you are also a substitute teacher. You say you want to be cheap, and what you give is cheap. ”

"That being said," retorted Thursgood, rightly retorted, "but I have paid you twenty pounds of gold for your introduction, and my father has been associated with you for many years, so you must give me some assurance." Here's what you're writing here — I'm reading it to you — that's what you're writing here: 'Prior to injury, he worked overseas, in business and exploration. It's too vague to bring a lifetime of work with you in such a sentence, don't you say? ”

His mother nodded as she embroidered. "Isn't it?" She snapped up.

"That's the first point. I'll say one more thing—"

"Say no more, dear." His mother reminded him.

"I know he was in Oxford in 1938. Why didn't he graduate? What happened? ”

"I seem to remember that everyone had interrupted their studies at that time," said Mr. Stroll, after a long pause, "but you were too young to remember." ”

"He couldn't have been in prison for so many years." His mother said again after a long silence, still embroidering with her head down.

"He must be somewhere else." Tersgood said gloomily, looking beyond the wind-blown garden and staring blankly at the pit.

Throughout the summer, Bill Roach took turns living with his father and mother, and he was very uncomfortable, and he was always thinking about Jim: I don't know if his back hurts; He has no classes now, only half a semester's salary, and he doesn't know what kind of work he is doing to earn money; In particular, when the next semester begins, he will still teach there. Because Bill has an indescribable feeling that Jim lives on the surface of the earth very unsteadily, and can fall down at any time and anywhere, and there is no bottom. He feared that Jim, like himself, didn't have natural gravity to suck him in. He recalls the first time they met, especially when Jim asked him if he had any friends, and he was worried that he would have failed Jim's friendship just as he had failed the love of his parents, mainly because of the age gap between them. As a result, Jim may have gone elsewhere to find a friend, as if he had seen Jim's light grey eyes searching for another school. He also imagined that, like himself, Jim had someone he loved who had done something sorry for him, so he wanted to find someone to replace him. But when he thought about it, Bill Roach's imagination reached a dead end: he couldn't imagine how adults could fall in love with each other.

He had nothing to do but fantasize. He checked a medical book and asked his mother about the hunchback, and he wanted to steal a bottle of his father's vodka and take it to the Thursgood school as a gift, but he didn't dare. At last when his mother's chauffeur sent him to the hateful steps, he did not even say goodbye, but ran as fast as he could to the top of the pit. I was infinitely happy to see that Jim's trailer was still in the old place below, but the trailer was dirtier than before, and there was a new piece of land next to it, probably for growing vegetables for the winter. Jim was sitting on the door pedal and smiling at him, as if he had heard Bill coming, and had smiled in a welcome before he appeared on the edge of the pit.

It was this semester that Jim gave Roach a nickname. He stopped calling him Bill, he called him Big Fat instead. He didn't say why, and Roach couldn't object, as was generally the case when it came to choosing names. Roach pretends to be Jim's guardian, claiming to be the regent in his heart, replacing Jim's departed friend, whoever that friend may be.