While Hannah went downstairs to look out, Jania slipped out of the house through her bedroom window. She landed silently in the front yard. Two policemen noticed her but paid no attention to her. She would pretend she was bored and wanted to go for a walk, and the adults would smile indulgently and let her do whatever she wanted. The process of leaving the front yard was smoother, and even though her brother was sitting in front of the living room window, Hannah easily distracted him by pretending to look at his phone.
Jania doesn't want anyone to know where she has been, and among "anyone", the one who needs to be guarded the most is her lying brother. She quickened her pace and ran out of the community, leaving behind the idle and bored peers on the street, and headed straight for the woods on the edge of the town.
The weather was too sunny. The sunlight polished every leaf until it was shiny and bright, and there was an overly strong scent of jasmine in the air, making Jania feel a little breathless. She stopped before the last ramp and looked back at the town behind her. The scenery you see is one that you won't get tired of looking at for a long time. Those fairy-tale houses, the forest roads in full bloom, this oil painting of summer in the countryside is so dazzling under the bright sun. It seems to draw the human soul in, and then burn into a handful of ashes.
This is where she was born and grew up. Jania thought silently in her heart. Regenberg was her home, her “territory,” as Kepler-Cologne would have joked. Everything here was so familiar to her that she shouldn't be afraid - she shouldn't be unfamiliar with what she saw.
A strong wind blew from the direction of the woods. The back of Jania's neck was immersed in a slightly cool moisture, as if falling into the morning mist of early spring. She looked up at the sky and could only find a few white cumulus clouds between the intertwined eaves, which were small, cotton-like, light and soft clouds. What people often see in the background of comics is this simple cloud structure. As a child, Malcolm told her that usually represented sunny days, as long as they didn't pile up and change further.
Jania thought of the bamboo pole in her bedroom and the mysterious figure who had left it to her. She imagined Akarahama's ugly, cramped smile emerging from the shadows of the clouds, like an ape version of the Cheshire Cat. They had talked about clouds that stormy seaside night. The commonalities between clouds and heroic stories. Fighting against the scorching sun in the fierce torrent, and then steaming up to the heaven. A path of spiritual advancement.
There is another way. A top-down path to fall. Jania felt the bandages on her palms soaked with sweat. She applied the bandage herself without letting anyone else intervene, so she might not have handled it properly enough, but she knew that this was the safest way to do it. She couldn't follow her mother's wishes and go to a community doctor they were familiar with, because the wound was obviously weird. As long as a professional takes a closer look, they will realize that it cannot be an ordinary stab wound. Her brother also refused to see a doctor, but he asked professionals to help.
The sound of wind coming from the woodland became louder and louder, finally forming a high and low pitch. The rapid and slow swaying of the sea of trees has turned into an ominous chorus in Zhaniya's ears. A tone that does not belong to Reigenberg at all. She closed her eyes and forcefully pumped the air into her lungs, and the overripe wet aroma also waited for an opportunity to mix into her breath. But this is not Jasmine's fault, but some other foreign object.
Some kind of foreign object has sneaked into her home, making all the familiar melodies in life absurd and specious. She saw that the cumulus clouds in the sky were gathering. The dark colors are scattered at the bottom of the clouds. The weather forecast for the past few days has been all wrong. It will rain quite a bit soon today.
Weather is a complex system. Even if it displays all the data, people still can't fully understand how the system works. Jania remembered that the weather forecast within twenty-four hours was more than 80% accurate, which meant that meteorologists could still make mistakes. Before something actually happens, they can only judge trends and possibilities. No matter how smart and professional the person is, they cannot grasp the final impact of any disturbing factor on the entire system in real time.
Now Jania feels the same way: invaded, out of control, unpredictable. She couldn't help but want to defend her territory, just as Leo had to watch and warn every stranger. In fact, Leo doesn't bark at every stranger. He has his own way of distinguishing likes and dislikes. And Jania, as she pushed on through the rush of wind that preceded a sudden shower, asked herself to discern the matter anew. She may be misinformed, she may be biased, as she was with Ermia Lehmann.
Consider Lyman, who is obsessed with Hannah. He was a product of his environment - as Jania put it, because she felt it was nurture. She could see many of her parents' traits in herself, even though her childhood experiences were very different from those of her parents, which was undoubtedly the result of heredity. Where is Hannah? Hannah is unlike any of her parents. There is no trace of Hannah on the traditional blue-collar couple, and they have no idea what their daughter is thinking about. Hannah is shaped by her own unique mind and highly developed information technology.
As for Ermiya Lehmann, she was born into a scholarly family with a silver spoon in her mouth, and grew up with a resistance to the vulgarity and shallowness of modernity. He probably hasn’t watched much TV, and he is even more suspicious of Internet culture. This is not to say that the Lymans do not understand the technical principles of the Internet. They just regard it as a conceptual extension of the library and postal system and categorically deny that it has any new connotations. When Urmia Lehmann gives examples, she always uses characters or books from at least two hundred years ago, almost like a vampire who has just escaped from the castle. Jenny really couldn't imagine how a person could live in such a tepid and boring family without feeling suffocated.
But that's not why she resents Lyman. It is not because of his slowness, backwardness or denial of all the advantages of modern spirit, but precisely because of his classical kindness. On that Friday evening, she walked out of school and walked in the fields by the lake, where Ermia Lehmann was imagining their plans for a benefit performance. He recognized her as Hannah's inseparable friend, and they exchanged a few polite words.
Just then, a shadow appeared across the lake. He was an old, lame man, wearing a badly worn olive-colored leather hat and carrying an unusually large traveling bag. This man was dressed in bloated and dirty clothes, but the arm he used to hold the stick was frighteningly thin. After such a long time passed, Zhannia could only recall the most unforgettable details of the sunset silhouette: the wrist was so thin that it blended into the shadow of the stick, so that from her perspective, it no longer looked like a human hand. Instead of a wooden stick, a strangely long insect-like leg sprouted from the person's shoulder, precariously supporting the large pile of things as it crawled forward.
She watched the scavenger walking along the lake, picking up discarded bottles and jars from the dense rushes on the lakeside, and she wondered what was going on. disease? drug? Mental problems? She tried to find clues in the man's movements. And then Lyman saw what she saw. He let out a long sigh, the tone was full of melancholy and had a poetic quality that moved the listeners.
Jania went to look at him confused. Lyman sat on a stone by the lake, with her legs together like an aristocratic lady, with one hand on her knees and the other supporting her chin, staring at the scavengers on the other side with pity. His eyes were moist and his handsome face was sad.
"An unimaginable tragedy," he said to himself. "What's the point of such a miserable life?"
He meant it sincerely, at least Jania couldn't provide any evidence to the contrary. His exclamation contained a maturity and pessimism beyond that of his peers, as well as shock and disappointment at the misery of the world - and that made Zhannia furious. At that time, she was extremely surprised and annoyed. She really wanted to hold down Lyman's shoulders and shake him hard for a while, shaking his head out of the mist of previous centuries. What's the matter with you? She really wanted to ask him. What the hell is wrong with you? Morphine was invented two hundred years ago, and mental hospitals existed before the fourth century AD! Madness, epidemics, poverty, disasters, wars... these sufferings have run through the entire history of mankind! What is so unimaginable about these? Isn't there a single mention of it in those classics that you chew over and over again? It has been fifty years since the invention of the Internet, and yet you are still alive today to discover that there are such tragic things in the world?
She couldn't stand the way Lyman looked. That sad face of a beautiful scholarly boy. That kind of fateful tragedy that attributes the ending of the scavengers to some irresistible generality. Stand by and watch it carefully, and then sigh without raising your buttocks. Now she couldn't say that this was necessarily Lehmann's personal problem, because she had discovered that many artists were like this. They regard the inner world as reality and the outer world as a glimmer from which they draw inspiration. In that case, arguing with them about standards of morality and respect is like trying to ban a dog from sniffing a telephone pole.
Even Malcolm lives in his own world. He also has the common traits and flaws of artists, but that world is located at a lower level, closer to dust and roads, rather than flowers, cakes or elegant ancient books bound in vellum. But at heart, neither Marr nor Lyman are inquisitive people. They stop at a grand experience that transcends self-experience, a tragic intoxication in art, and do not necessarily really care about specific people and things. Therefore, Lyman would never really care whether a scavenger ended up here due to illness or gambling, because those are just means of expression of "the impermanence of the world" and "destined fate." People think Ermia Lehmann is a good-tempered person, and even Hannah thinks he is a shy and reclusive person. But in Jania's view, what is the difference between this kind of compassion and complete contempt?
So, on that evening when she met the scavengers by chance, Jania learned some characteristics of personality types. It wasn't so much that she got to know Lyman better, but that she got to know herself better. She, Jania Dubois, although like Mal, loved to fantasize and dream, she had inherited her mother's characteristic of focusing on concrete things rather than concepts. She couldn't bear to sit there and lament something that she couldn't help, such as destiny, political environment, social prejudice, economic laws... whatever words adults liked to use, she just didn't like to chew on these concepts. What she needs is to move her body, to lower her head and grasp every specific person and specific problem. If the way for artists to fight against their own insignificance is to devote themselves to creation, then her way to fight against fear is to take action, walk, run, don't think about what will be at the end, and just focus on the nearest problem at hand.
The question at hand now is: Can a murderer be justified in killing a murderer in a brutal way? A further question is: Is it justified to publicly torture and kill in front of innocent people? Regarding these two issues, Jania’s own opinion is, no.
It's like killing an animal. People kill animals every day, she said to herself. But beating a dog to death because of fear of rabies and publicly posting bloody and cruel torture videos online are two different things in the eyes of civilized society, because what the latter really wants to torture is the audience. By torturing animals, the executioner demonstrates his status to the audience. Pain and death are inflicted on the animals, while demonstrations and intimidation are directed at fellow animals. This is plain malice.
Last night Lot became that dog. Faced with a mad dog as dangerous as "The Devotee", Jania herself would not hesitate to kill it, but she would not play with it cruelly, let alone do that in front of Hannah or her parents. If that thing—that thing that once leaned against the speaker of the record player—had any respect or concern for her brother, it could have told Lot to surrender to the police, hang himself in the woods, or even use a bread knife. It would be better to cut the throat. But it just performed such a perverted suicide show in front of them!
This is killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. Jania could only think so. She could also be wrong, because she didn't know what method the thing used to deal with Lot, and whether it could use the same method to deal with her. What would happen if she told her brother the true identity of her best friend? Maybe one day she would stand on the roof, hum a few favorite ballads, and then land on the concrete floor with her feet in the air. This kind of imagination made her feel like there was ice water surging in her blood vessels, and even her steps seemed as frivolous as walking on a soft bed. But she refused to give up halfway, because her way to fight against fear was not to escape into the trance-like realm of art, or to hide under the covers and pretend to sleep, but to never stop acting.
Take a step forward. One step further. The wind blowing from the woodland had created a faint resistance against her, hinting that the weather was about to change. The green wilderness unfolded in layers in the wind, and the staggered depths made Zhaniya lose her direction for a time. She was worried that she was really living in a foreign land, until the green hills covered with green onion appeared under the condensing clouds.
A ruin covered with dead vines appeared before our eyes. A hundred years ago, a stone house called the "Wagner Church" by the locals stood here, but now only the gray rocks are scattered here and there. There used to be a cemetery behind the church, but all the tombstones have long been destroyed. There is no reason for people to remember this old place anymore, but Leo prefers this wilderness with lush grass. It was it that led Jania to the discovery, and Jania shared the secret base with her brother.
It's no longer a secret. "Meet me at the ruins of the Wagner Church." - When this note appeared on the desk in Jania's bedroom, she knew that it was no coincidence that it was chosen there. This person, this unknown thing, knew her and her brother, and it might even know the history of Regenberg. The note was even written in German!
The person who left the message is currently sitting on the ruins of the old church. When Jania walked onto the hill where the green grass swayed, the figure with a back facing the woodland turned back and smiled in her direction. In the well-lit field, Zhannia could see the other person's eyes clearly this time. They were a pair of unfocused eyes, almost like the eyes of a blind person or a dead thing.
The wound on Zhaniya’s right hand was throbbing again. She had seen this particularly weird look twice last night. Yes, indeed twice, in the shattered mirror room of Pierre's house, the man who was pronounced dead by Lot also opened his eyes, but acted like a man who could not see clearly. She didn't have time to think about it at the time, and she decided it was some kind of weirdness caused by Lot. But now she can tell, whether it is on her brother or Mr. Gloves, this look represents another unfamiliar participant.
She hesitated at the border between hills and plains. The changing heights of the howling wind are humming some ominous melody, reminiscent of water pianos and atonal music. Jania deliberately controlled the rhythm of her breathing to eliminate the uneasy suffocation in her chest. There were so many questions waiting for her to figure out, but her tongue felt like it was stuck on the roof of her mouth. She reached into her belt and pulled out the note she had found while looking for a bandage.
"It's you," she said.
The wind suddenly became violent. The scene in front of me was unprecedentedly rich. The green melted and twisted in her eyes like algae swaying on the surface of a ripple. Zhaniya was startled, and her fingers couldn't help but loosen. The note was immediately snatched away by the strong wind and sank in the flowing green waves. Now no one in the world knows why she came here, except the person who wrote her the note.
The inviter rose from the moss-grown rubble. The sound of wind lingered around him, singing his every move. He walked around on the top of the hill, and his slow steps gradually stirred up manic and frantic sounds in the hearts of the viewers. When he spoke, his drawl sounded like a song.
"Me," he said, as if that answered everything. Before Zhannia had time to think clearly about the next question she wanted to ask, the man on the top of the hill stopped and took off the glove on his left hand. The tightly wrapped bandage has long been removed. He turned to smile at her again, and what appeared in front of Jania's eyes was a blackened and withered hand that was close to carbonization.
(End of chapter)
