Chapter II.I

Written: July 26, 2023

Translated: September 12, 2023

**J**o was led into a small room with gray walls, where, apart from a table and two chairs, there was nothing else. The guard lightly pushed the prisoner in the back and, making sure that he obediently sat down on the chair closest to the exit, closing the door behind him. Gloomy thoughts hovered in Jo's mind. He had been serving his sentence in this prison for two whole years, and that was only one-ninth of the entire sentence. During this time, he almost forgot what it was like to be free, breathe fresh air and communicate freely with other people...

A crazy thought crept into Jo's head that he was called into this room in order to release him from here early, but common sense suppressed this idea. Eighteen minutes have passed since the guard walked out the door. Jo, although accustomed to long and tedious sitting in a cell, was already tired of sitting on this hard chair, and he wanted to get up - not to go out, but just to stretch his stiff legs - when suddenly the front door, which was located just behind his chair, opened and the prisoner heard measured steps.

The man walked around the table and sat down in the chair opposite Jo. The prisoner began to look at the stranger. He looked like he was about thirty-something years old, or at most forty. He had short black hair and a neat moustache under an aquiline nose. He was dressed in a gray and clearly worn-out jacket, under which was a white shirt with a black check, and around his neck was a black tie. The stranger’s behavior, or rather the way he confidently carried himself, could be evidence that he had previously served in the military.

Jo, bored within the walls of this dull place, only had two minutes to understand in general terms who was sitting in front of him. It worked out that the stranger was in no hurry to start a conversation - automatically he said a dry greeting and, sitting in a chair, simply looked at the prisoner, clearly waiting for something. Finally he broke the silence in the stuffy air:

- So, I have the honour of seeing before me Jordan Thurlow, the same man who, two years and five months ago, was sentenced in United States District Court for the District of Oregon in the criminal case of one Delia Yonce? - he said insinuatingly.

When the stranger finished this introduction, Jo felt his insides turn over. It was not a matter of the somewhat rude intonation performed by the interlocutor’s baritone, but the fact is that this man, whom Jo sees in front of him for the first time, uttered a name dear to him - even if it was not a secret to everyone who was in this building, but for him, twenty-six-year-old Jo Thurlow, these two inmost words caused his body to experience an uncontrollable increase in heart rate and some breathing problems that only went away as the day went on. It was clear as day that the heart wound was fresh even after so much time spent in the dull dungeons of this concrete coffin.

The topic that the stranger brought up interested Jo. The momentary confusion caused by the spoken name soon gave way to calm and determination. Jo confirmed that the stranger was not mistaken in his guesses, internally understanding that in fact this man already knew everything if he was assigned a conversation with him. Adjusting his moustache, the inspector Galbraith - this is how the interlocutor introduced himself to the prisoner - made it clear that now the two of them would have a long interlocution.

The policeman asked Jo to start a story about how he ended up behind bars, and in particular to focus in the story on everything that concerns Delia Yonce, because this will serve as the basis for the subsequent story, but from his, Galbraith's side. Jo asked why mister inspector decided to start this speaking, but having received a dry response "Your words, Jordan, will help my investigation", he decided not to waste time and got down to business.

So, two years ago... Those blessed times for Jordan Thurlow had such a halo in his eyes that it seemed as if a completely different person had lived that life, and that for some reason someone else's memories had entered his head. This state of affairs was not caused by the passage of time - in fact, from the very first day of his prison sentence, Jo deliberately tried to abstract himself from what he had lived before, so that his heart would not suffer from the pain of loss. But no matter how much he wanted to push all the memories away into the attic of his mind, Jo, hearing this dear name from the lips of other people, fell into a state when his heart was ready to jump out of his chest from melancholy. Delia... He said her name tenderly. It sound so pretty and sophisticated at the same time...

Preparing to lay out the information of interest to the inspector, mister Thurlow, as he always did, began to collect his thoughts randomly scattered throughout his mind into a single whole, and also tried to feel as if he was reliving the events of days gone by. If not for this, he would hardly have been able to string together at least two words, and so he, having begged mister inspector for a little time - four minutes to be exact - began to tune in to catch the wave of the past. Having thrown away the nonsense of high-flown judgments, Jo seemed to freeze in one place - fixing his gaze in front of him, he seemed to begin meditation and surrender his thoughts to the foretime.

When Jo finally pulled himself together, the silence in the visiting room was finally broken. His interlocutor, slightly stretching his numb hands, prepared to catch every word that would come out of the mouth of this prisoner...

⁂

August of that year was unusually hot. Jordan Thurlow noted that this had never happened in his area before. Since his mother's death, he has never travelled outside of his hometown of Portland, and in connection with this, Jo, who previously did not like to travel around the world, roundly took root in the soil of his native home. Most of his free time, which was available to him in his chosen profession of culturologist, then twenty-four-year-old Jo spent walking in the forest behind his residential area.

There he slowly, one might even say melancholy, wandered along the paths with his faithful dog and, like romantic poets, his thoughts and feelings were almost completely given over to the nature around him. Exercises of this kind used to drag on until late at night, and so when Jo walked to home with Buffalo, the latter somewhat annoyed the neighbours with his ringing bark, which he made for any reason - be it a mouse running through the bushes or the cry of a night bird sitting on the branches.

As a matter of fact, from the sum of all these circumstances it followed that that among all the residents of Parkrose Neighborhood Jordan Thurlow had a reputation as an unscrupulous and lazy hedonist, whom, as he himself thought at times, was tolerated only because in the modern world you can’t just go and tell a person you don’t like everything that you think about him, and at the same time give him a strong thrashing - for the letter of the law hovers over every citizen like the sword of Damocles, and therefore, everyone, willy-nilly, has to, gritting his teeth, live according to the principles prescribed by The Highest of This World...

But one fine day, a change that occurred in the life of the entire village seemed to turn the entire routine of the last offspring of the Thurlow upside down. It was from that moment that Jo realized that, formally speaking, he was grabbed by the legs and began to be pulled underground, and even if he really wanted to, all he could do was slightly loosen the grip of the tenacious hands of this strange feeling called "affection", but there is no way to stop her intentions for his final fall to the center of the Earth. From that sacred - or is it cursed? - moment the name "Delia" was forever imprinted in his mind, and in fact his whole life could be divided into two stages - before meeting that girl and after...

Jordan Thurlow missed the very moment the Yonce family moved in, because just at that moment he was stuck at work in the center. So before he returns home Jo only caught sight of the burly mister Yonce himself - just at the minute when he was paying off the old Harris Sherwind. Jo had previously heard among the merchants that this stocky man with an incredibly scowling expression was planning to move here, but he didn't care much. They then met their gazes, but, without saying a single word to his future neighbour, the gorilla-like mister Yonce, wincing somehow in disgust, got into his car, which was parked at the gates of the Harris house and drove away. The next day Jo also left the Parkrose Neighborhood - true, not having his own personal car, he boarded the bus in the old fashioned way, which always travelled on schedule between the countryside and the center.

Jordan stayed in the center for about five days. There he had a place to spend the night - he rented a room in the cheapest hotel, where, of course, there were not the same amenities as in his home, but what difference did it really make to him where he rested after a working day. Actually, his life always flowed in this way - he was idle in his house, sometimes received calls from his boss, and, going to the center, did essentially meaningless work, which, however, brought in just enough money so that he could live without luxury, of course, but Jo never felt like a poor beggar either.

After working those five days, mister Thurlow left the building where his office was located and, quickening his pace, headed to the bus stop, where he, as always, got the bus that carried people on the route already described above. At that particular moment, the car was a little late, and Jo sat on the bench with a bored look, looking at other people who also needed to get to countryside. They were mostly old ladies who had small retail outlets in the Parkrose Neighborhood. Some were with a bag, some were with a basket. Five minutes passed. Jo looked at his wristwatch - this driver is already a full fifteen minutes late! Mister Thurlow didn't know what circumstance forced old Martin to make such a seemingly minor deviation from the rules prescribed by the highway administration, and deep down he had a desire to somehow get even with him, but Jo realized that this was not only a completely pointless undertaking, but also that he, being a frail and stunted young man, could in no way compete with this former athlete, who in his old age decided to choose the profession of an intercity bus driver.

Fortunately, when the time on his watch already showed about six o'clock in the evening, a familiar white bus appeared around the bend and stopped nearby. Mister Thurlow was in no hurry to get on, because, being a man, and a young one at that, he was simply obliged to let ahead of the respectable old women who, pushing each other, entered the front door of the bus. When the last woman, whom Jo recognized as the merchant from whom he always bought all sorts of bathroom accessories, disappeared into the black doorway, he got up from his usual place and, under the shouts of old Martin hurrying him, entered the crowded bus interior.

Alas, the traders took all the seats. Even those seats where no one was actually sitting were occupied by heavy bags. Jo had no choice but to spend the entire trip holding onto the handrails, from which the yellow paint had peeled off in places due to frequent friction, revealing the shiny aluminum surface hidden underneath. Behind the large windows of the bus, views of the trees spread out near the highway flashed by, among which there were occasionally lonely buildings - both residential and all sorts of cafes, shops and similar attributes of the modern American urban landscape.

Mister Thurlow saw all this for the millionth time, so with nothing else to do, he went deep into his thoughts - at such moments his eyes rested on one point and did not register anything. People around him might have thought he was having some kind of seizure, but in fact his mind was simply starting to float somewhere away from his body. During that trip in the bus, the subject of his thoughts was, as you might guess, the fact that a gentleman he did not know was moving to his native village. Jo asked himself what this man outside the city was looking for, what motivated him when, without bargaining, he paid old Harris Sherwind a considerable sum of money for that two-story house where in the old days the drunken brawls of Harris and his friends took place...

A theory arose in mister Thurlow's thoughts that perhaps this surly guy was a family man, and he bought a house in the outback in order to give his wife and child - for some reason Jo was sure that mister Yonce had an inheritor - the opportunity to live in nature. But on the other hand, how could this affect his work? Before Jo's eyes was the sight of mister Yonce getting into an unsightly-looking compact car. Apparently, this gentleman made a bet with his family that they would move out of town, knowing that with a personal car he could go to work without any problems. For some reason mister Thurlow imagined how this guy who looked like an old bear had to get up early in the morning, in order to have time not only to have breakfast, but also to get to his place of work, which, as Jo was firmly sure of this, was located in a wealthy area of the center.

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