Chapter Forty-Three
In my second year living with Andemund, I met an old friend from before I lost my memory. He found me and told me that I had once been a tutor for his cousin and that he had something to return to me.
It was a cold winter morning, and the streets were shrouded in a damp, chilling mist. As I opened the door to fetch the milk, I heard someone call from behind, “Alan?”
The man speaking wore gold-rimmed glasses and was holding the hand of a red-haired boy, about eight or nine years old. They stood at the corner of the street, partially obscured by the thick fog. He told the boy to wait where he was and then walked over to me. We ended up chatting in the doorway.
“I used to be a tutor?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes. You came to my grandfather’s house every week. We were friends.” He looked at me with concern and asked, “Little Alan, I heard you lost your memory?”
“I got a head injury during the air raids. Just my luck,” I shrugged.
“Do you still get headaches from time to time?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. No, I don’t.”
The man with the gold-rimmed glasses seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. He had a habit of squinting whenever he was thinking. After chatting for a while, he looked me over and remarked, “Alan, you look like you’re doing well.”
“Oh, yes. I live with my partner.”
“No,” he corrected me, “I mean you look happy.”
I asked him, “You don’t look happy?”
“I just had a breakup.”
“You can win them back. There’s an art to courting someone—if you use the right methods, no one is unattainable.” I reassured him, “The trick is persistence. Darling, don’t give up.”
“Alan, you don’t understand,” he said. “I couldn’t protect the person I love. He was in terrible danger, and all I could do was watch him suffer, powerless to save him from that pain. I thought about taking him out of that wretched watchtower, bringing him to the countryside, away from that hellhole—but I wasn’t capable. Oh, Alan, I really thought about it—you have to believe me.”
“He?”
“Oh, right. I’m gay.”
“What a coincidence, so am I.” I grinned, patting his shoulder. “It’s alright, don’t give up. Things will get better.”
“Really? Alan, you truly believe that?” He suddenly took a step forward, asking earnestly, as if a spark of hope had been reignited.
“What?”
“You think I shouldn’t give up? That everything will get better?” He looked me straight in the eye.
“Unless he’s in love with someone else, you should hold on, darling.”
His expression dimmed, and with a sigh, he pulled a golden pocket watch out of his suit jacket and handed it to me.
“This is yours. I’m returning it as promised.”
The pocket watch was intricately crafted, likely the work of a master artisan. It felt heavy and cold in my hand. I couldn’t recall ever owning it, nor could I understand why I would have bought something so valuable. Opening the cover, I noticed the hands had stopped at three in the afternoon.
“The watch is broken,” I told him. “The hands aren’t moving.”
“September 13, 1945—the day the person I love forgot me completely,” he said, then asked, “Alan, you don’t mind that I broke your watch, do you?”
“Of course not. How about coming inside for a cup of coffee?” I suggested.
“No, thank you. I need to go back,” he replied with a cheerful smile. “I have something pressing to take care of. I just stopped by to say goodbye to my love.”
“Oh, by the way,” he said, as if suddenly remembering, “that was years ago, Alan. We once planned to take a train to the lake district in September to see the lavender fields. We never made it. Quite a pity.”
“Yes, quite a pity,” I agreed.
We embraced like old friends saying goodbye. Suddenly, it occurred to me, “By the way, what’s your name, sir?”
"Arnold. Arnold Visco, a psychologist." He had already walked several steps away when he suddenly smiled, blew me a kiss, and said, "Alan, my dear, goodbye."
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but his expression seemed tinged with sadness.
I watched him walk toward the red-haired little boy in the distance. The brat waved at me energetically before turning and disappearing with his cousin into the thick fog blanketing the streets of London.
That was the only time I ever saw him, amidst the dense white mists of London.
I dislike London’s winter fogs. They are damp and chilly, making the old wound on my chest throb faintly. Sometimes, ordinary things take on a bizarre, twisted appearance in the fog, conjuring the kind of illusions children often experience while reading fairy tales.
A few days ago, Andemund was driving us to run some errands in West London. That morning, the fog was unprecedentedly heavy; spreading my palm, I could almost feel the moisture seeping through my fingers. Through the fogged-up car window, I glimpsed a gray watchtower, its silhouette faint but unmistakable, standing tall not far away. The straight, gray-brick structure loomed starkly amidst the haze.
Suddenly, I felt as though I’d seen it before, standing under a bright, clear sky.
Looking out from the tower’s windows, you would surely see the towering chimneys of factories, with pigeons wheeling around them in endless circles. The door must be securely locked, impossible to open no matter how desperately one shakes it.
For some reason, such an ordinary image sent a chill through my entire body.
I said to Andemund, "Darling, do you see that gray watchtower outside? The moment I saw it, I suddenly felt like I didn’t love you anymore."
Andemund didn’t answer me right away. He simply freed a hand to interlock it tightly with mine, then pressed the gas pedal, speeding out of that neighborhood.
After a long time, he pulled the car over to the side of the road and smiled at me. "It’s alright, Alan. As long as I love you, that’s enough."
Andemund thought for a moment. "In the spring, I’ll be able to take some time off. We can go to Berlin then."
"I don’t want to go there," I said.
"There are many ruins and cemeteries left from the last world war there. I heard there’s a place that might be the resting place of a highly talented mathematician. I’d like you to visit it with me. She laid the foundation for modern mechanical encryption in cryptography. I think you’d like her—I saw you working on those cryptograms in the newspaper recently."
"The inventor of Enigma? I remember you said she was British. I don’t understand why she would work for the Nazis."
“I heard she had no choice. She and her husband worked for the intelligence bureau. The government suspected them of treason and issued an execution order. Only she escaped the fire that engulfed her apartment, contacted the German spy who had once tried to buy her off, and fled to Berlin.”
“What about her husband and child?”
“Her husband likely perished in the fire orchestrated by the bureau. Fortunately, the child had been sent to live with an uncle in the countryside beforehand and grew up safely. This mathematician spent her entire life worrying about the son she left behind in England. She even betrayed organizational secrets for her son’s sake.”
“She was a good mother,” I said.
“Alan, I want you to remember this—before the fire, she was loyal to Britain. It was her loyalty that wasn’t rewarded as it should have been.” Andemund clasped my hand and said softly, “We’re going to Berlin in April.”
“Really?” I asked. “You also said we’d buy a villa in Beaconsfield and move there.”
“Oh, yes.” He leaned in and kissed my cheek. “You said you like the countryside. But that will have to wait many years.”
“Many years?”
“Yes, my dear. When we’re both old.”
The thick fog was gradually lifting, and the icy, bright winter sunlight reflected off the windshield, glaring so sharply it was hard to keep my eyes open.
In the distance, the church bells chimed nine o’clock.
Around Christmas, I received a letter from America.
Inside the envelope was only a piece of paper folded into quarters and a few dried rose petals. It was a sketch in blue-black ink, drawn on stationery meant for air force use, with not a single word written. The image seemed to depict me as a student, sitting beneath a lush oak tree with a heavy book in my arms. A breeze brushed past; my eyes were lightly closed, my chin resting on the book’s spine.
I could almost feel the pure, beautiful moments flowing off the paper.
The envelope had no return address, and the postmark read San Francisco.
I folded it back up and tucked it into the Yeats poetry collection Andemund had given me. I never read poetry collections, but Andemund had insisted on giving it to me.
The first poem was “When You Are Old.”
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
...
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
...
I originally wanted to sign my name on the flyleaf, but someone had torn it out of the book. Andemund wrote both of our names in blue-black ink beneath the poem.
Alan Caster
Andemund Garcia
***
Author’s Note: And with this, the story officially comes to an end. Thank you all for your unwavering support along the way. O(∩_∩)O~ I initially planned for 200,000 words, but the plot progressed faster than expected. From here on, it’s time for revisions and typo corrections—there likely won’t be any new updates. Another story completed… I feel so emotional, so accomplished. I’m thinking of printing a physical copy just to flip through when I feel like it. Planning to start custom printing on the 10th—getting four copies for myself and looking for takers for the remaining 16. >_< (I’ll link the order form in the announcement on the 10th.) The days are long, and the robes grow thin; here, we take our leave. I don’t know when we’ll meet again, but I hope someone remembers the writer who poured their heart into creating stories on the web.
Translator’s Note: Physical copies are still available for purchase, but I honestly don’t know whether the ones you can find on platforms like Taobao are the original official versions, since this novel was written in 2011 and published in December 2014. The author is 空灯流远 (Kōng dēng liú yuǎn) and you can find them on JJWXC and Weibo.