From here it was a four-mile walk to his village: a further mile to the turning, to which the abominable Russell had now fiercely declined to take him, and from there a further three miles of winding country lane.
The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.
He shook his head sharply in the hope that it might dislodge some salient fact which would fall into place and make sense of an otherwise utterly bewildering Universe, but since the salient fact, if there was one, entirely failed to do this, he set off up the road again, hoping that a good vigorous walk, and maybe even some good painful blisters, would help to reassure him of his own existence at least, if not his sanity.
It was 10.30 when he arrived, a fact he discovered from the steamed and greasy window of the Horse and Groom pub, in which there had hung for many years a battered old Guiness clock which featured a picture of an emu with a pint glass jammed rather amusingly down its throat.
This was the pub at which he had passed the fateful lunchtime during which first his house and then the entire planet Earth had been demolished, or rather had seemed to be demolished. No, damn it, had been demolished, because if it hadn’t then where the bloody heck had he been for the last eight years, and how he had got there if not in one of the big yellow Vogon ships which the appalling Russell had just been telling him were merely drug-induced hallucinations, and yet if it had been demolished, what was he currently standing on?…
He jammed the brake on this line of thought because it wasn’t going to get him any further than it had the last twenty times he’d been over it.
He started again.
This was the pub at which he had passed the fateful lunchtime during which whatever it was had happened that he was going to sort out later had happened, and…
It still didn’t make sense.
He started again.
This was the pub in which…
This was a pub.
Pubs served drinks and he couldn’t half do with one.
Satisfied that his jumbled thought processes had at last arrived at a conclusion, and a conclusion he was happy with, even if it wasn’t the one he had set out to achieve, he strode towards the door.
And stopped.
从这里到他的村庄有四英里的路要走：离路口还有一英里，讨厌的拉塞尔拒绝载他了；剩下的三英里则是纠结的乡间小道。
那辆萨博恼怒地冲进了夜幕中。阿瑟看着它离去，脑子一片空白，感觉就好像一个认为自己五年来彻底失明的人最后发现只是因为戴的帽子太大。
他猛地甩了甩头，希望能够甩去一些明显的事实，那些事实打算依次出现然后向阿瑟呈现出另外一个完全不知所云的宇宙。但是由于那些明显的事实（如果有的话）完全地失败了，他就继续上路，希望充满活力的步伐甚至一些有益的疼痛的水泡，可以至少帮助他确定自己的存在，但自己的心智健全就不一定了。
当他到达时，已经是晚上十点半，他从“马儿和马夫”酒馆又湿又油的窗户上发现了一个事实，那个酒吧多年来一直挂着一只被压瘪了的破旧吉尼斯表，表上画着一只鸸鹋，一只一品脱的玻璃杯滑稽地塞在那只鸸鹋的喉咙里。
这就是陪他度过了那个意义重大的午餐时间的酒馆。在那段时间里，先是他自己的房子被毁了，然后是整个地球也被毁了——或者应该说看上去被毁了。不，该死的，它就是被毁了。因为如果它没被毁，那么这过去的八年来他究竟在他妈的哪儿？如果他没有呆在讨厌的拉塞尔所说的只是药物幻觉的沃贡黄色大飞船上，他又是怎么去的那些地方？但是如果它被毁了，那么现在他又是站在哪儿……？
他打断了自己的思绪，因为这并不能让他比前二十次想得更远。
他再一次思考。
这就是陪他度过了那个意义重大的午餐时间的酒馆。在那段时间里，无论发生了什么，他随后都会搞清楚的，而且……
这仍然理不出个头绪。
他再一次思考。
这就是那个酒馆……
这就是个酒馆。
酒馆是提供饮料的，但他根本不想来一杯。
他混乱的思路终于得出了一个令人高兴的结论，他对此感到满意，尽管那并不是他一开始打算得出的结论。他大步走向酒馆的门。
然后停了下来。