Subby lay on that bench in Madison Square, tossing and turning. Whenever the geese draw in the night sky, whenever a woman without a sealskin coat makes out with her husband, whenever Soapy lies on that street park bench and tosses and turns, that's when you know winter is looming.
A sheet of dead leaves drifted down to Soapy's lap. It was Jack Frost's1 business card. Jack was polite to the longtime residents of Madison Square, always saying hello before his annual visit. He handed his card to North Wind, the doorman of the open-air apartment, at the crossroads so that the tenants would be prepared.
Subby realized that the time had come for him to organize a one-man finance committee in order to stave off the winter. For this reason, he tossed and turned on the bench, unable to sleep.
Subby's plans for a winter home were not overly extravagant. He had no intention of cruising the Mediterranean, no desire to bask in the sleep-inducing southern sun, and no thought of going rafting in Vesuvius Bay. All he wanted with all his heart was to spend three months on an island. Three months without worrying about food or lodging, with mates who are like-minded, and without the North Wind and the police bosses to pester him, there is no greater joy in life, as far as Subi is concerned.
Over the years, the hospitable Blackwell Island jail has been his winter home. Just as better-off New Yorkers buy tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera every winter, Soobie has had to make some of the most necessary arrangements for his annual "winter hunting" trip.
Now, it's time.
Last night, he had lain on the old square fountain and the near benches, tucking three thick Sunday newspapers into his shirt and covering his ankles and knees, all without keeping the cold out. That brought the shadow of the island to Subi's mind quickly and vividly.
He despised the handouts made to the local poor in the name of charity. In Subhi's eyes, the law was much kinder than relief. There were plenty of places for him to go, from those run by the city to those run by the relief agencies, and in all those places he was able to mingle.
Of course, life could not be considered luxurious
. But for a man of such high soul as Subhi, the charity approach would not work. For every little favor received from a charitable organization, money, of course, did not have to be spent, but mental humiliation had to be paid in return.
Just as Caesar did with Brutus, it is true that everything has its advantages and disadvantages. To sleep in a bed in a charity unit, you must first be escorted to take a bath; to eat a piece of bread from him, you must first give a full account of your personal history.
Therefore, it is better to be a guest of the law. The law, though it is ironclad and by the book, is at least not so ungrateful as to interfere in a lord's private affairs.
Now that he had made up his mind to go to the island, Subi was immediately ready to realize his plan. There were quite a few ways to save time. There was nothing more comfortable than to have a nice meal in one of the posh restaurants and then declare that he was not worth a penny, which could be quietly and quietly handed over to the police.
The rest will be taken care of by a sensible pusher.
Subby left the bench and paced out of the square, crossing the flat tarmac where Broadway Road and Five Horse Paths meet. He turned onto Broadway Road and stopped in front of a brightly lit restaurant that brought together the best of grape, silk and protoplasm every night.
Subby was confident in the part of his suit undershirt above the lowest button. He'd shaved his face, his top was passable, and his clean, live-knotted tie had been given to him by a lady from his church on Thanksgiving Day. As long as he could walk to the table without arousing suspicion, it was a win.
His upper body, exposed on the table, wasn't enough to make the waiter suspicious. A roast mallard, Subhi thought, that would be close enough - another bottle of Chablis then a Camembert, a small cup of espresso and a cigar smoke. A dollar a pop kind would do the trick.
The total would not be so large as to send the hotel counter into a fit of vengeance, and the toothsome meal would make his journey to the Winter Palace unencumbered and satisfying. But no sooner had Subhi stepped through the door of the hotel than the waiter's foreman's eyes fell on his old pants and worn leather shoes.
Strong, sharp hands pushed him around and quietly and quickly dispatched him to the sidewalk, where the unseemly fate of the mallard, who had narrowly escaped assassination, was reversed.
Subby left Broadway Road. It didn't look like it was going to be possible to get to that day-dreaming island by flossing. It was better to think of another way to get into hell. There was a store on the corner of Sixth Avenue, brightly lit and chicly furnished, with large glass windows that caught the eye.
Subby picked up a pebble and smashed it against the glass. People came running around the corner, led by a patrolman. Subi stood still, both hands in her pockets, and smiled straight at the brass buttons.
"Where's the guy who did this?" The cop asked furiously.
"Can't you see that I might be a little bit involved in this?" Subhi said, sounding friendly though a little mocking, as if good fortune awaited him.
In the cop's head Subhi wasn't even a circumstantial witness. None of the window smashers stayed to deal with the law's errand boys. They always run away in a puff of smoke. The policeman saw a man half a block away running to catch a ride.
He drew his baton and went after the unlucky man. Subhi was so fuming inside that he shuffled away and drove off. Twice now, both smashed pots. Across the street was an unimpressive diner. It catered to eaters with big appetites and small wallets.
The plates and the atmosphere were coarse, the soup and napkins thin. Subhi didn't get any stares as he scooted his revealing shoes and revealing pants into the restaurant.
He took a seat at the table and consumed a steak, a pancake, a doughnut, and a pie. When he finished eating he confessed to the waiter that he had no business making the acquaintance of Mr. Money, who was also a stranger to him.
"Get your hands dirty and go get a policeman," said Subhi, "and don't keep the moncler waiting."
"There's no need to alarm His Lordship the policeman," said the waiter, his voice as greasy as custard and his eyes as red as cocktail-soaked cherries, "Oi, Con!"
The two waiters cleanly forked Subi outward, just in time for him to fall with his left ear to the ground on the iron-hard sidewalk. He braced himself section by section, like a carpenter opening a folding ruler, then dusted off his clothes. The arrest seemed like nothing more than a trip-colored dream. That island was far away.
There was a policeman standing in front of a drugstore two storefronts away, and he smiled a bare smile and walked away down the street.
Subby kept going for five blocks before gathering the courage to pursue arrest again. This time the odds were so good that he thought it was a sure thing, a sure thing. A delightfully simple young woman stood in front of the window, staring with interest at the display of shaving cylinders and inkwells.
And two yards away from the store, there was a burly man - a policeman - leaning on the fire-fighting tap with a grim expression. Subhi's plan was to play the part of a nasty, obnoxious hooligan.
His subject's urbane and skilful nature, and the proximity of a devoted patrolman, gave him good reason to believe that the policeman's lovely hands would soon fall upon him, and keep him fed and watered in his little comfort zone of the island's winter hibernation.
Subby pulled up the live-knotted tie the church lady had given him, pulled out the sleeves of his shirt that had retracted into the cuffs, and pushed his hat back, so crooked that it was about to fall off, and went over to the woman. He had the face to put the small hooligan should do that set of disgusting hook paragraph after paragraph performance.
Subby dipped his gaze over to see the cop staring at him. The young woman moved a few steps away and concentrated on the shaving tank again. Subhi followed, boldly stepped next to her, raised his hat a little, and said:
"Aha, I say, Betelia! Didn't you say you were going to play in my yard?"
The police were still staring. All the slighted woman had to do was wave her finger around and Subby was equal to going into the comfort zone. He imagined he already felt the comfort and warmth of the cruiser. The young lady turned her face, reached out a hand, and grabbed Subhi's sleeve.
"Ain't that right, Mike," she said cheerfully, "but first you'll have to break down and buy me a cup of cat piss. If it wasn't for that patrolman's constant eyeballing, I'd be hitting on you a long time ago."
The pussy clung to the oak tree that was Subby like ivy, and Subby, well chagrined, made his way past the cop. It seemed his freedom was doomed.
At the first turn of the road, he dumped his female companion and sped off. In one breath he came to a place where, at night, the most frivolous lights, the easiest of hearts, the flippantest of alliances, and the lightest of operas met. Ladies and gentlemen in light cloaks walked gaily about in the cold air.
Subby felt a sudden pang of fear; could some terrible magic have subdued him so that he would never be arrested? The thought panicked him a little, but when he met a policeman patrolling the brightly lit theater, he immediately fished for the "disturbing the peace" straw.
Subby straightened his gong-like voice on the sidewalk and yelled like a drunk. He jumped, he yelled, he cursed, he made as much noise as he could.
The policeman, letting his baton swirl, turned his body with his back to Subi and explained to a citizen:
"It's a Yale boy celebrating a victory; they played Hadford College and bought them duck eggs. It's noisy enough, but it's out of the way. We have instructions to let them just make a scene."
Subby stopped his futile bickering in disgust. Wasn't there going to be a single policeman to arrest him? In his fantasies. That island had become the unattainable Arcadia⑩. He buttoned up his thin blouse to ward off the biting wind.
He saw a well-dressed man in a cigar-smoking store lighting a cigarette into a wavering flame. The man leaned a silk umbrella against the door as he entered the store. Subhi stepped through the door of the store, picked up the silk umbrella, and retreated slowly. The man against the fire rushed out after him.
"My umbrella." He snapped.
"Oh yeah?" Subby said with a sneer; adding insult to the charge of petty theft. "Well, then why don't you call the police? Nice, I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call a patrolman? There's one on the corner over there."
The umbrella owner slowed down, and so did Subhi. He had a hunch: once again, he had back luck. The policeman looked at the two men curiously.
"Of course," said the umbrella owner, "well ...... yeah, you know sometimes misunderstandings happen ...... I ...... I hope you won't be offended if this umbrella is yours ...... I picked it up in a restaurant this morning ...... If you recognize it as yours, then ...... I hope you don't ......"
"Of course it's mine." Subi said viciously.
The former owner of the umbrella retired. The good cop scurried off to assist a tall blonde lady in an evening gown across the street before she was hit by a trolley coming this way two blocks away.
Subby walked east, crossing a road that was uneven from renovations. He angrily threw his umbrella into a pothole. He muttered curses at the guys in helmets and batons. Because he wanted to fall foul of the law, and they thought he was a king who could never make a mistake.
Finally, Subby came to a road leading to the East Side, where the lights were dimmed and the noise came faintly. He headed down the street toward Madison Square, for even though his home was merely a bench in a park, he still had the instinct to return home late at night.
But at an unusually quiet section, Subhi stopped in his tracks. There was an old church here, quaintly built and not very organized, the kind of house with a mountain wall.
Soft light reflected through the mauve flowered glass windows, and the organist pressed over and over on the keyboard in order to practice the Sunday hymns. Moving musical notes drifted into Subi's ears, drawing him in and gluing him to the spiraling bars.
The bright moon hung in the mid-heaven, glorious and still; cars and pedestrians were scarce; the frosted finches under the eaves chirped a few times in their sleep - a realm reminiscent for a moment of a graveyard by a country church. The hymns played by the organist settled Subi at the railings, for hymns were familiar to him when he had a mother's love, roses, ambitions, friends, and a white, spotless mind and collar in his life.
Subby's sensitive mood at this time and the subterfuge of the old church met together to bring about a sudden and marvelous change in his soul. He felt a violent loathing for the muddy pit into which he had fallen. The degrading times, the vulgar desires, the discouragement, the decline of talent, the bad motives - all these now formed the content of his life.
For a moment, a new mood of enlightenment stirred him. A strong and swift impulse motivated him to fight his way to a rocky destiny. He was going to pull himself out of the mire; he was going to be a good man again. He was going to conquer the sin that had taken hold of him.
It was not too late, he was still quite young, and he was going to revive the ambitions of his day, and steadfastly bring them to fruition. The solemn and sweet tones of the organ had caused a revolution within him. Tomorrow he would seek employment in the bustling business district.
A leather importer had once asked him to drive a cart. He would go to the merchant tomorrow and take the job. He was going to be a famous man. He was going to-
Subhi felt a hand pressing on his arm. He whipped his head around haughtily, only to see the fat face of a policeman.
"What are you doing here?" The cop asked.
"Nothing." Subby replied.
"Then you come with me." The cop said.
The next morning, the pushover in the police courtroom pronounced the sentence, "Blackwell's Island, three months."
Expanded:
O Henry's famous masterpiece of short stories, the famous American short story writer of the early 20th century. It is one of his outstanding short stories.
Subby, the protagonist, begins to make efforts to enter his winter abode, Blackwell Prison, when winter is approaching, and tries all sorts of ways to get the police to arrest him. However, none of them are successful.
Just as he is moved by the music of the hymns in the church and decides to give up his old life and start anew, he is arrested by the police and sent to prison "as he wished".
The author uses a light and humorous tone to describe the ridiculous attempts of Sopie, a vagabond, to achieve his own ludicrous goals.
For example, he cheats at restaurants, smashes store windows, molests young women, disturbs the peace and steals. It is incredible, and even more ridiculous, that the police show a kind of "tolerance" instead of punishing these illegal actions.
It is a wonderful irony that when Sopi gave up his original idea, the "tolerant" police arrested him for doing nothing. From there, the ridiculous becomes pathetic, infuriating, and deplorable.
The novel is aimed at the American society at that time, and truly reflects the reality of the society which does not know right and wrong, and which turns black and white upside down.
Some writers from the small and medium-sized bourgeoisie in this period, from their own class, on the one hand, condemned the evils of the capitalist system, depicted the miserable life of the people, and reflected the people's dissatisfaction with the bourgeoisie rule;
On the other hand, they had fantasies of American bourgeoisie democracy, and put forward all kinds of measures to improve the situation. However, when the turbulent current of imperialism came, they explored their personal fate and destiny with pessimism and despair.
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