Chapter 31
If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.
He was tall and he gangled. When he sat in his deckchair gazing at the Pacific, not so much with any kind of wild surmise any longer as with a peaceful deep dejection, it was a little difficult to tell exactly where the deckchair ended and he began, and you would hesitate to put your hand on, say, his forearm in case the whole structure suddenly collapsed with a snap and took your thumb off.
But his smile when he turned it on you was quite remarkable. It seemed to be composed of all the worst things that life can do to you, but which, when he briefly reassembled them in that particular order on his face, made you suddenly fee:
Oh. Well that’s all right then.
When he spoke, you were glad that he used the smile that made you feel like that pretty often.
Oh yes, he said, they come and see me. They sit right here. They sit right where you’re sitting.
He was talking of the angels with the golden beards and green wings and Dr. Scholl sandals.
They eat nachos which they say they can’t get where they come from. They do a lot of coke and are very wonderful about a whole range of things.
Do they? said Arthur. Are they? So, er… when is this then? When do they come?
He gazed out at the Pacific as well. There were little sandpipers running along the margin of the shore which seemed to have this problem: they needed to find their food in the sand which a wave had just washed over, but they couldn’t bear to get their feet wet. To deal with this problem they ran with an odd kind of movement as if they’d been constructed by somebody very clever in Switzerland.
Fenchurch was sitting on the sand, idly drawing patterns in it with her fingers.
Weekends, mostly, said Wonko the Sane, on little scooters. They are great machines. He smiled.
I see, said Arthur. I see.
A tiny cough from Fenchurch attracted his attention and he looked round at her. She had scratched a little stick figure drawing in the sand of the two of them in the clouds. For a moment he thought she was trying to get him excited, then he realized that she was rebuking him.
Who are we, she was saying, to say he’s mad?
His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like.
What it was like was this:
It was inside out.
Actually inside out, to the extent that they had to park on the carpet.
All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-designed pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semi-circular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe.
Where it got really odd was the roof.
It folded back on itself like something that Maurits C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which is no part of this narrative’s purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.
Confusing.
第31章
如果你弄俩大卫·鲍威（英国著名摇滚巨星，出生于1947年，一个相当非主流的家伙。声称自己身高1.79米，不过看上去没那么高），把其中一个大卫·鲍威固定在另一个大卫·鲍威头顶上，再在这两个大卫·鲍威中上面的那个的两条胳膊上分别再粘上一个大卫·鲍威，把这一咕堆东西用脏兮兮的海滩装裹在一块，你就得到一个东西，看起来并不完全像约翰·沃森，但是认识约翰的人会发现其中有令人难忘的相似之处。
他高大而笨拙。当他不再怀有任何疯狂的臆想，只是带着平静而深切的沮丧坐在躺椅上盯着太平洋的时候，你会觉得把他和他的躺椅区分开来有些困难，你会不敢把你的手放在，比方说，他的胳膊上，搞不好它们突然之间咔哒一声连你的手指一块整个就崩塌了。
但是，当他转向你的时候，他的微笑非常令人难忘。看起来就像是由生活中所有最大的苦难组成的，但是当他在面容上用一种独特的方式简单的表现出来的时候，让你觉得在说：
“哦，算了，没什么大不了的。”
当他说话的时候，你会高兴地发现他经常浮现出让你产生这种感觉的微笑来。
“哦是的，”他说，“他们来看我了。他们坐这里。他们坐在你们现在坐的地方。”
他说的是长着金色胡子和绿色翅膀，穿着爽健牌拖鞋的天使。
“他们吃墨西哥玉米片，他们说他们来的地方没有这个。他们喝大量可乐，非常擅长很多事情。“
“是吗？”阿瑟说，“是吗？那，呃……什么时候的事情？他们什么时候来的？”
他也向外盯着太平洋。有几只小矶鹞沿着海岸跑着，看起来它们正面临这样的问题：他们要找到刚刚被海浪卷走的食物，可是又不愿意把脚爪子打湿。为了解决这个问题，它们用一种非常奇特的方式跑动着，这使它们看起来它们简直像是瑞士一个非常聪明的家伙制造出来的。
芬切琪坐在沙滩上，无聊地用手指划出一些图案。
“周末，主要是。”独醒客说，“坐着小摩托。那是很好的车。”他笑了笑。
“我明白。”阿瑟说，“我明白。”
芬切琪轻微的咳嗽声吸引了他的注意力，他回过头去看她。她在沙里面用像火柴棍组成的图案画着他们俩在云彩里面的情形。有那么一会他还以为她在惹他兴奋起来，然后他意识到她在责备他。
“我们是什么人？”她说的是，“凭什么说他疯了？”
他的房子的确很特别，因为这是芬切琪和阿瑟见过的第一个这样的事物，了解一下它是什么样子可以起到帮助作用。
它的样子是这样的：
内侧翻到外面来了。
真的是内侧翻到外面来了，以至于他们不得不停在地毯上。
一般被看做是外墙的墙面上刷着一般为内墙设计的雅致的粉色，靠着这堵墙的是书架，还有一对怪异的半圆桌面的三腿桌子，放置的方式让人感觉有人把墙从正上方穿过桌子丢了下来，墙上还挂着令人心境平和的画。
真正奇怪的地方是房顶。
它在自己身上折叠起来，就连马瑞特斯·C·埃舍尔（荷兰著名图形艺术家，经常直接用平面几何和射影几何的结构创造现实中不可能存在的图形，比如四段首尾相连，不断向下又回到原处的楼梯等）——假设他也经历过靠政府救济金生活的艰难夜晚，不过这可不是建议他这么去做——看着自己的图画，特别是那幅有奇怪的楼梯的，都会觉得很难不感到震惊，见过之后也会以为自己在做梦，因为应该挂在里面的小吊灯都在屋顶外面向上竖着。
令人迷惑。