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 如果你弄倆大衛·鮑威（英國著名搖滾巨星，出生於1947年，一個相當非主流的傢伙。聲稱自己身高1.79米，不過看上去沒那麼高），把其中一個大衛·鮑威固定在另一個大衛·鮑威頭頂上，再在這兩個大衛·鮑威中上面的那個的兩條胳膊上分別再粘上一個大衛·鮑威，把這一咕堆東西用髒兮兮的海灘裝裹在一塊，你就得到一個東西，看起來並不完全像約翰·沃森，但是認識約翰的人會發現其中有令人難忘的相似之處。 他高大而笨拙。當他不再懷有任何瘋狂的臆想，只是帶着平靜而深切的沮喪坐在躺椅上盯着太平洋的時候，你會覺得把他和他的躺椅區分開來有些困難，你會不敢把你的手放在，比方說，他的胳膊上，搞不好它們突然之間咔噠一聲連你的手指一塊整個就崩塌了。 但是，當他轉向你的時候，他的微笑非常令人難忘。看起來就像是由生活中所有最大的苦難組成的，但是當他在面容上用一種獨特的方式簡單的表現出來的時候，讓你覺得在說： “哦，算了，沒什麼大不了的。” 當他說話的時候，你會高興地發現他經常浮現出讓你產生這種感覺的微笑來。 “哦是的，”他說，“他們來看我了。他們坐這裏。他們坐在你們現在坐的地方。” 他說的是長着金色鬍子和綠色翅膀，穿着爽健牌拖鞋的天使。 “他們吃墨西哥玉米片，他們說他們來的地方沒有這個。他們喝大量可樂，非常擅長很多事情。“ “是嗎？”阿瑟說，“是嗎？那，呃……什麼時候的事情？他們什麼時候來的？” 他也向外盯着太平洋。有幾隻小磯鷂沿着海岸跑着，看起來它們正面臨這樣的問題：他們要找到剛剛被海浪捲走的食物，可是又不願意把腳爪子打溼。爲了解決這個問題，它們用一種非常奇特的方式跑動着，這使它們看起來它們簡直像是瑞士一個非常聰明的傢伙製造出來的。 芬切琪坐在沙灘上，無聊地用手指劃出一些圖案。 “週末，主要是。”獨醒客說，“坐着小摩托。那是很好的車。”他笑了笑。 “我明白。”阿瑟說，“我明白。” 芬切琪輕微的咳嗽聲吸引了他的注意力，他回過頭去看她。她在沙裏面用像火柴棍組成的圖案畫着他們倆在雲彩裏面的情形。有那麼一會他還以爲她在惹他興奮起來，然後他意識到她在責備他。 “我們是什麼人？”她說的是，“憑什麼說他瘋了？” 他的房子的確很特別，因爲這是芬切琪和阿瑟見過的第一個這樣的事物，瞭解一下它是什麼樣子可以起到幫助作用。 它的樣子是這樣的： 內側翻到外面來了。 真的是內側翻到外面來了，以至於他們不得不停在地毯上。 一般被看做是外牆的牆面上刷着一般爲內牆設計的雅緻的粉色，靠着這堵牆的是書架，還有一對怪異的半圓桌面的三腿桌子，放置的方式讓人感覺有人把牆從正上方穿過桌子丟了下來，牆上還掛着令人心境平和的畫。 真正奇怪的地方是房頂。 它在自己身上摺疊起來，就連馬瑞特斯·C·埃舍爾（荷蘭著名圖形藝術家，經常直接用平面幾何和射影幾何的結構創造現實中不可能存在的圖形，比如四段首尾相連，不斷向下又回到原處的樓梯等）——假設他也經歷過靠政府救濟金生活的艱難夜晚，不過這可不是建議他這麼去做——看着自己的圖畫，特別是那幅有奇怪的樓梯的，都會覺得很難不感到震驚，見過之後也會以爲自己在做夢，因爲應該掛在裏面的小吊燈都在屋頂外面向上豎着。 令人迷惑。
