The Thirteenth Tale 精彩片段：
BONES
It was Christmas Eve; it was late; it was snowing hard. The first taxi driver and the second refused to take me so far out of town on such a night, but the third, indifferent of expression, must have been moved by the ardor of my request, for he shrugged his shoulders and let me in. “We’ll give it a go,” he warned gruffly.
We drove out of town and the snow continued to fall, piling up meticulously, flake by flake, on every inch of earth, every hedge top, every bough. After the last village, the last farmhouse, we found ourselves in a white landscape, the road indistinguishable at times from the flat land all about, and I shrank into my seat, expecting at any moment that the driver would give up and turn back. Only my clear directions reassured him that we were in fact on a road. I got out myself to open the first gate, then we found ourselves at the second set, the main gates of the house.
‘I hope you’ll find your way back all right,“ I said.
‘Me? I’ll be all right,“ he said with another shrug.
As I expected, the gates were locked. Not wanting the driver to think I was some kind of thief, I pretended to be looking for my keys in my bag while he turned the car. Only when he was some distance away did I grab hold of the bars of the gate and clamber over.
The kitchen door was not locked. I pulled off my boots, shook the snow off my coat and hung it up. I walked through the empty kitchen and made my way to Emmeline’s quarters, where I knew Miss Winter would be. Full of accusations, full of questions, I stoked my rage; it was for Aurelius and for the woman whose bones had lain for sixty years in the burned-out ruins of Angelfield’s library. For all my inward storming, my approach was silent; the carpet drank in the fury of my tread. I did not knock but pushed the door open and went straight in. The curtains were still closed. At Emmeline’s bedside Miss Winter was sitting quietly. Startled by my entrance, she stared at me, an extraordinary shimmer in her eyes.
“Bones!” I hissed at her. “They have found bones at Angelfield!” I was all eyes, all ears, waiting on tenterhooks for an admission to emerge from her. Whether it was in word or expression or gesture did not matter. She would make it, and I would read it.
Except that there was something in the room trying to distract me from my scrutiny.
‘Bones?“ said Miss Winter. She was paper-white and there was an ocean in her eyes, vast enough to drown all my fury. ”Oh,“ she said.
Oh. What richness of vibration a single syllable can contain. Fear. despair. Sorrow and resignation. Relief, of a dark, unconsoling kind. And grief, deep and ancient.
And then the nagging distraction in the room swelled so urgently in my mind that there was no room for anything else. What was it? Some-ting extraneous to my drama of the bones. Something that preceded y intrusion. For a faltering second I was confused, then all the insignificant things I had noticed without noticing came together. The atmosphere in the room. The closed curtains. The aqueous transparency Miss Winter’s eyes. The fact that the steel core that had always been r essence seemed to have simply gone from her. My attention narrowed to one thing: Where was the slow tide of Emmeline’s breath? No sound came to my ears.
‘No! She’s—“
I fell to my knees by the bed and stared.
‘Yes,“ Miss Winter said softly. ”She’s gone. It was a few minutes ago.“