Chapter 8 green door

Suppose you wander down Broadway after dinner, smoke a cigar for ten minutes, and decide whether to go to a tragic tragedy or a serious one. Things like juggling?You suddenly feel a hand on your shoulder.You turn around and see the moving eyes of a beautiful woman dressed in Russian sable and bejeweled, which surprises you.She hastily stuffed a hot buttered bread roll into your hand, quickly pulled out a pair of sharp scissors, snapped off the second button of your coat, and uttered a word with deep meaning: "Parallelogram!" Then turned and walked quickly along a side street, and looked back with panic.

This is an out-and-out adventure, would you believe it?Will not.You'll blush with embarrassment, you'll drop the roll with embarrassment, and keep walking down Broadway, and you'll fumble feebly for the lost button.You sure do, unless you're one of the rare lucky ones whose adventurous spirit hasn't died down. There are not many real adventurers.Most of the so-called adventurers printed in books and newspapers are businessmen with extraordinary means.They go out for what they need - the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, women's love, treasures, crowns and honor.This is not the case with real adventurers, who meet and meet unknown fate aimlessly and without scheming.A good example is the prodigal son who came home.

The half-adventurers—those valiant and glorious figures—are innumerable.From the Crusades to the West Bank bluffs, they enriched the art of history, the art of fiction, and the variety of historical fiction.But each of them had a prize to win, a ball to score, an ax to grind, a race to compete, a new sword to strike, a name to engrave, and something to argue with —therefore they were not after real adventures. In the big city, Romance and Qiyu, twin elves, are always looking for someone who is devoted to them.They peeped at us slyly and challenged us in twenty disguises as we roamed the streets.We didn't know why we looked up suddenly, and we heard a cry of pain and fear coming from an empty locked house.The taxi driver didn't stop at the street corner we were familiar with, but asked us to get off at an unfamiliar door, opened the door with a smile and told us to enter.From a lattice window on a high place somewhere, scraps of paper with written words fluttered down and scattered at our feet.Among the passing crowd, we exchange eyes of hatred, love and fear with the strangers hurrying past.Suddenly there is a downpour, and our umbrella may be protecting the daughter of the full moon and the direct sister of the star.At every corner handkerchiefs are dropped, fingers greet, eyes wink, and fleeting signs of adventure, bewildered, lonely, exuberant, mysterious, dangerous, slip into our hands.But we are reluctant to catch these signs and follow them.We are numbed by conventional wisdom.We walk on carelessly, and when we have lived a dull life, we look back, and it turns out that the romance of our life is just married once or twice, a rosette locked in a drawer, a lifetime Hatred and a punching bag—that's such a pale page.

Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer.Hardly a night passed when he did not step out of the bedroom at the end of the hall to search for the unexpected and the startling.It seemed to him that the funniest things in life might be hidden around the next street corner.Sometimes he came to some strange side roads to try his luck.On two occasions he spent the night at the station.He was repeatedly swindled by resourceful crooks; on one occasion he lost his watch and wallet as a result of being too tempted.But his enthusiasm for the challenge remained undiminished, and every pleasant adventure was recorded in the book.

One evening, Rudolph was walking on a street that runs through the city in the old city.Two streams of people filled the sidewalk—some hurrying home, and some unable to stay at home and going out to eat out.The fast food restaurant is brightly lit and welcoming. The young adventurer walked calmly and carefully with a light-hearted air, and by day he was a salesman in a piano shop.His tie passed through a topaz ring instead of a pin.He once wrote to the editor of a magazine that Miss Libby's "Juni's Test of Love" was the work that had the greatest influence on his life. As he walked, the loud clicking sound of a pair of dentures in a glass case on the sidewalk first caught his attention.The glass case stood in front of the window of a restaurant.His second glimpse was of the dentist's flashing lightning sign high up in the building next door.A large, strangely dressed negro, in a red coat with embroidered borders, yellow trousers, and a service cap, handed out cards to passers-by if they would accept them.

Rudolph was used to advertisements for dentists. He usually walked straight past the person who distributed the cards without answering any of them. Hold the card and smile at the way black people have succeeded. When he had advanced a few yards, he glanced at the card casually, wondered, and turned it over again.One side of the card was blank, and the other side was written in ink: "Green Door." Rudolph saw again, three steps ahead of him, a passerby threw the card handed to him by the black man on the ground.Rudolph picked it up, the card bearing the dentist's name, address, the usual items of dentures, bridges, crowns, and a false promise of a "painless" procedure.

The adventurous piano salesman paused on a street corner to think for a moment, then walked across the street for a block before turning back to join the upward flow.When he walked in front of the black man again, he pretended not to pay attention to him, and accidentally accepted the card handed over by the other party.After walking a dozen steps or so, he looked at the card carefully, and it was exactly the same as the first card he got, with the words "Green Door" still written on it.On the sidewalk were three or four cards dropped by passers-by, all blank side up.Rudolph turned the cards over, each of which had an advertisement for a dental clinic.

For a truly adventurous man like Rudolf Steiner, the odd and outlandish need not beckon him again.But this time was the second time, so he began to explore. Rudolph ambled over to the burly black man, who was still standing by the box with its teeth chattering.He didn't get a card when he walked by this time.Despite his gaudy and ludicrous attire, the African exuded a natural and savage majesty, handing some kindly cards and letting others go on their way undisturbed.Every half minute he hummed a hoarse sentence that others could not understand, similar to what the tram conductor said or sung in grand operas.Not only did he not give Rudolph the card this time, but Rudolph seemed to feel that what he received from the big shiny black face was a cold, almost contemptuous look.

This look stung the adventurer, who saw in it a silent condemnation.Regardless of the meaning of the mysterious words written on the card, the Negro had twice chosen him from among those who received the card, and now seems to have decided that he lacked the intelligence and energy to solve the mystery. Leaving the crowd, the young man appraised the building nimbly, where he felt his adventure must be hidden.The building is five stories high, and the ground floor is a small restaurant.The first floor is closed at the moment, and seems to sell millinery or fur goods.Judging from the flashing electric letters on the second floor, it is a dentist's office.Above that, barely indicated by various textual signals in Babel, this floor was the residence of palm readers, master tailors, musicians, and physicians.One floor higher, the draped curtains and the white milk bottles on the window sills announce that this is the family quarters.

Having drawn his conclusions from his observations, he walked briskly up the high stone steps into the building.He went up two flights of carpeted stairs and stopped at the top.There were two gas lamps burning in the passage, one far away on the right, and the nearer one on the left, dimly lit.He looked towards the nearer one, and saw a green door in the halo of yellow light.He hesitated for a while, thinking of the sneer of the black African handing the card, then went straight to the green door and knocked a few times. The true adventurer was out of breath for a few seconds before the door answered, and what could happen behind that green panel!A group of gamblers playing cards; a cunning liar who is cunningly playing tricks and preparing to be hooked; a beauty who loves courage and is planning to be wooed; Pile will answer the frivolous knock.

There was a slight rustling sound in the room, and the door slowly opened.A girl who was not yet twenty years old stood inside the door, her face was pale and precarious.She let go of the handle and staggered, fumbling with one hand.Rudolph hugged her, let her lie on the faded sofa against the wall, turned and closed the door, and looked around the room by the flickering gas lamp.He saw that the house was emptied, but the walls were bare. The girl lay quietly, as if in a coma.Rudolph was eager to find a bucket in the room, and rolled the man on it—oh no, that's what you do with a drowning man.He took off his hat and slapped her.It worked because the brim of his bowler hat accidentally touched her nose and she opened her eyes.And so the young man saw that her face was the one missing from the many familiar portraits buried in the gallery of his heart: the open gray eyes, the slightly turned-out nose, the chestnut hair curled like a Peanut vines—all these seemed to be the goal and harvest of his previous adventures, but this face was painfully thin and pale. The girl looked at him calmly, then smiled sweetly. "I passed out, didn't I?" she asked, her voice weak. "Well, who wouldn't faint, try not eating for three days." "Himmel!" cried Rudolf, jumping up, "wait for me to come back." He rushed out the green door and down the stairs again.Twenty minutes later he came back and tiptoed the door for her to open.He was holding a pile of things from grocery stores and restaurants in his hands and placed them on the table.There was bread and butter, cold meats, cakes, pies, pickles, oysters, a roast chicken, a bottle of milk, and a steaming bottle of black tea. Rudolph shouted: "It's unbelievable not to eat. You can't be angry with people like this again. Dinner is ready." He helped her to a chair at the table and asked: "Is there a cup for tea? ?” She replied, “On the shelf by the window.” When he came over with the glass, he was pleasantly surprised to find that she had eaten a large piece of pickle, which she could not go wrong with a woman. Instinctively pulled it out of the paper bag.He snatched it from her hand with a smile, filled the glass with milk, and ordered: "Drink this first, then drink some tea, and then eat a chicken wing. If you feel well, eat kimchi tomorrow. Now, if You let me be your guest, and we'll have dinner together." He pulled up another chair.The girl drank a cup of tea, her eyes brightened, and a little color appeared on her face.She started to gobble it up like a starved beast.She seemed to take the young man's presence and help as a matter of course--not that she was ignorant of the rules, but that she had suffered so much that she had the right to ignore the hypocrisy of human politeness.But as she gained strength and comfort, she began to notice a little of proper manners.So she told him her own trivial story, the kind of story that happens a thousand times a day in the city, and no one bothers to tell it—about the meager wages of the shopgirls, some of which were deducted for "fines", fines but increased the store's profits; and the lost hours of sickness, and then the lost position, and the lost hope, and then--the adventurer's knock on the green door. But to Rudolph, the story sounded as momentous as a pivotal plot in The Iliad or Mini's Test of Love. "It's unbelievable what you've been through," he marvels. "It's really too much to bear," the girl said seriously. "You have no relatives or friends in town?" "Nothing at all." "I'm alone in the world, too," Rudolph said after a pause. "I'm glad to hear that," said the girl at once.The young man was a little pleased to hear her approve of his solitude. Her eyelids closed suddenly, and she sighed, "I'm dead sleepy, and I feel so good." Rudolph stood up and took his hat. "Then I shall say good night. It will do you best to sleep in it all night." He held out his hand and she took it and said "good night".But there was evidently a very frank and touching question in her eyes, so he answered it in words. "Oh, I'll see how you are tomorrow. You can't get rid of me so easily." At the door, she asked, "How did you come to knock on my door?" It seemed that the question of how he came was far less important than the fact that he had been. He looked at her for a moment, remembering the card, and felt a sudden pang of jealousy.What would happen if those two cards fell into the hands of someone else equally adventurous?He immediately decided that she must not let her know the truth.He must not let her know that he understood the expedients she was compelled to employ by great difficulty. "We have a piano tuner in our shop who lives in this building," he said. "I knocked on your door by mistake." The last thing he saw in this room was her smile before the green door closed. He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around curiously.Then he walked down the aisle to the other end and back again, ascending to the upper floor and continuing his nerve-wracking exploration.It turned out that every door he found in the building was painted green. Surprised, he went downstairs to the sidewalk.The burly black African was still standing there.Rudolph took out two cards and stood in front of him, asking: "Can you tell me why you gave me these cards and what does that mean?" The negro smiled kindly and pointed to a brilliant advertisement for his master's profession: "Look over there, boss," he said, pointing ahead, "but I'm afraid you're a little late for the first act. gone." Looking in the direction he was pointing, Rudolph saw above a theater a dazzling flashlight advertising a new play: "The Green Door." "They say it's a first-rate show, sir," said the black person. "The theater manager gave me a dollar, sir, to send some of his cards along with the doctor's ad. I can send you one of the doctor's." Card, sir?" When Rudolph returned to the corner of the block where he lived, he stopped to drink a beer and smoke a cigar.Coming out of the shop with a cigar lit, he buttoned up his coat, pushed back his hat, and said categorically to the lamppost on the corner: "It's the same anyway, I believe it was the finger of the goddess of fate pointing me in the direction to find her." In this case, a conclusion like this would surely bring Rudolf Steiner into the ranks of true believers in romance and adventure.

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