2、英文版 One ...
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One
Smashed by rain, the little town leashing Liam for thirty years where life had been operating with machine-like regularity seemed doused in a disconsolate hush. The heaven spreading itself out into the earth with the same hue, pallid to be sure, their meeting-line at the end of the road was blurry. Liam looked up and probably lost the presence of mind— it was pile-up of gray clouds, taking forever to penetrate he bet, that alienated people from God. There were fretting and scurrying, but unheard. There were wishes and prayers, but unanswered. Therefore, his trip to the grocery store this time didn't make any sense, for days were gone when he relatively had had cash at his disposal and he was a prey to the recession now, between jobs much longer than he could make a calculation.
Overwhelmed by disinclination to move ahead,whether on the road to the grocery store or the one leading to his forties. Liam went back home, only to smell stirrings within the bush nearby, from where a figure of man, clad in drab, was dashing out of it when the idea of a pressing robbery flashed through his mind but he even didn't want to take the trouble to speed up the pace.
"Freeze!" growled Archie.
Partly because of the fact that he did have nothing to lose, partly because of his sleeping thirst for life, Liam looked Archie square in the eye. Archie, a subtle combination he thought, had had burned into him the crush of his life passage by sharp bones in his face and was embedded with ultramarine eyes, which several years ago were speckled with glossy granules.
"You should have worn a mask." Liam made a dismissive remark.
Archie intercepted so unusual a look from Liam that he became more taken aback than exasperated. That wasn't how plots unfolded! If everything went well, he was to be beaten to death, the best ending he had exactly intended for. In such a world, to rob people with nothing of something, a sin it was!
Under the veneer of rage, he roared again,"No noise! Money?"
Upon hearing "money", Liam was provoked to fall into an unwieldy situation."Money. Damn it. Money. Where is it? Where?!"He dashed forward and punched his fist right in Archie and yelled," I didn't, don't and won't have any cash!"
Archie banged his fist down on Liam's head perfunctorily and then Liam administered sharp smacks to Archie's back.. They spent themselves at last, summing up the lingering tussle with resigned loathing, not directed at each other but something else.
"What can you expect at the end of the fu/cking world!"
"You can say that again!"
"I would hijack, were I you. A higher chance of fortune."
"No. A crash goes overboard. I mean… I just don't want other by-products."
"Uh-huh, a clash with me then is much more reasonable. A person of principle!"Liam chuckled at his own joke. "And benevolence." He continued.
Archie turned his head away, because he was solely familiar with the absence of a spray of flush.
A cascade of silence.
Like casting gravel, turbulent stretches of the river couldn't be swayed by ripples. Drenched clothes waxed in weight, as oppressive as those memories they harbored which hounded them till they waked up at night.
Liam heaved a sigh."Again, What can you expect at the end of the fu/cking world?"
Archie, actually, had nowhere or anywhere to go, since any place could serve as an accommodation. He would rather travel in parallel with Liam somehow, relishing the sound of their feet striking the ground to the same rhythm, and a tacit permission had been given.
"Look, maybe I can piece together a meal at home tonight to make me worth every penny."Liam brandished a wry smile.
"Yeah, you are the only product I took today."
"Tomorrow's is beyond me."
"Last Supper?"
"You said it.Would you mind?"
It was a question weighty with information.
Poignant recollection turned on Archie and began to take its toll, giving him a constricting sensation around his sternum.
"Not at all."
Here came the best ending, in another way, though.The more a day with souls tortured by the sight of ills it couldn't cure, wrongs it couldn't right, sufferings it couldn't relieve, the more monotonous meagreness his life would be attenuated to.
Two
"So are you, a person of principle."
The supper couldn't be more simple.
"And also with a sense of ritual."Archie paused for a second,"Where are you going with these candles? They should go with your wife."
"A wife? Someone like me? A cluster of rubbish."
"Well, get your point but I don't see eye to eye on the last one."
"Thanks. We are under the same umbrella then."
The candles flickered, emanating lambent glow and giving contour to their faces in the dark. The light, slightly balmy, was redolent of an early spring in their pristine days, splendid and lavish with sunshine and silence.
In the nick of time, the candles joggled and kissed the table.
"Budge your chair towards me."
Three
A fire accident was nothing less than a big splash in the little town. No one knew, however, burnt down had not been a house but a cage and buried under the clutter of fragmented walls was ash of Liam and Archie.
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第2章 英文版
