A rose for Emily Faulkner

One

Miss Emily Grierson died, and the whole town People go to mourn: men go out of love because a monument has fallen. As for the women, most of them wanted to see the inside of her house out of curiosity. Except for an old servant who was a gardener and cook, no one had visited the house for at least ten years.

It was a large square wooden house that used to be painted white, located on one of the most elegant streets at that time, and decorated with domes, spiers and turrets in the style of the 1870s. The balcony with shaped patterns has a strong air of lightness. But things like car shops and cotton gins infringed upon the solemn names of the area and obliterated them completely. Only Miss Emily's house stood alone, surrounded by cotton carts and automobile pumps. Although the house is dilapidated, it is still unruly and pretentious, which is really the ugliest of ugliness. Miss Emily had now joined the ranks of those solemnly named representatives who lay dormant in the cedar-fringed cemetery, filled with rows of unknown victims of the North and South who had fallen at the Battle of Jefferson during the Civil War. Military tomb.

When Miss Emily was alive, she was always the embodiment of tradition, a symbol of obligation, and the object of people's attention. On that day in 1894, Colonel Sartoris, the mayor of the town, who issued the order that black women were not allowed to walk in the streets without wearing aprons, exempted her from all taxes due until the death of her father. From day one until her death, this was an obligation inherited by the whole town to her. This does not mean that Emily is willing to accept charity. It turns out that Colonel Sartoris made up a lot of lies, saying that Emily's father had loaned money to the government, so the government, as a transaction, would rather repay it in this way. . Only people of Sartoris's generation and people with brains like Sartoris can make up this story, and only women can believe it.

This arrangement caused some minor dissatisfaction when the more liberal-minded second generation became mayors and senators. On New Year's Day that year, they sent her a tax notice. February came and still no news. They sent an official letter asking her to come to the Sheriff's Office. A week later, the mayor personally wrote to Emily, expressing his willingness to visit her or send a car to greet her. The reply was a note written on antique letterhead with fluent calligraphy and small handwriting, but the ink was no longer there. Bright, the main message of the letter is that she doesn't go out at all. The tax notice was attached and no comments were expressed.

The senators held a special meeting and sent a delegation to visit her. They knocked on the door, but no one had passed through it since she stopped giving porcelain painting classes eight or ten years ago. The elderly black manservant welcomed them into the dark entrance hall, and from there, going up the stairs, the light became even darker. A dusty smell assaulted my nostrils. The air was damp and dull. No one had lived in this house for a long time. The black man opened a blind, and at this moment, it could be seen that the leather cover was torn; when they sat down, a burst of dust rose slowly on both sides of their thighs, and the dust particles slowly rotated in the ray of sunlight. On the easel in front of the fireplace that has lost its golden luster sits a charcoal portrait of Emily's father.

As soon as she entered the room, they all stood up. A petite woman with a round waist and a fat body, wearing a black dress, a thin gold watch chain dragged to her waist and fell into her belt, an ebony crutch supported her body, the head of the crutch was inlaid with gold Has lost its luster. She has a short frame, and perhaps because of this, other women look plump, but she gives people the impression of being fat. She looked like a corpse that had been immersed in stagnant water for a long time, bloated and white. When the guest explained the purpose of his visit, her eyes, which were sunken in the bulge of fat on her face, like two small briquettes kneaded in a ball of dough, kept moving, sometimes looking at the empty face, sometimes looking at the empty face. Look at that face.

She did not ask them to sit down.

She just stood at the door and listened quietly. It was not until the representative who spoke stuttered that they heard the ticking of the watch hidden at the other end of the gold chain.

Her tone was callous. "I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris has already told me so. Perhaps one of you can check the town government files and clarify the matter."

"We have checked the files, Miss Emily, we are the government authorities. Haven't you received a notice signed by the Chief Justice?"

"Yes, I have received a notice ," Miss Emily said, "Maybe he calls himself the Sheriff...but I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson."

"But it doesn't say so on the tax roll. You understand. We should..."

"You go to Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson."

"But. , Miss Emily——"

"You go to Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris has been dead for nearly ten years.) "I have no tax to pay in Jefferson. Than!" the black man responded. "Please get these gentlemen out."

二

In this way, she defeated them "both men and horses", just as she defeated them thirty years ago for that smell. Just like their fathers. It was two years after her father's death and shortly after her sweetheart—the man we all believed she would marry—had abandoned her. After her father died, she seldom went out; after her sweetheart left, people hardly saw her. A few women had the temerity to visit her, but they were all turned away. The only sign of life around her house was the black man who came in and out carrying a basket. He was still a young man.

"It seems that as long as it is a man, any man can keep the kitchen in order." The women all said this. Therefore, they were not surprised when the smell became stronger and stronger. That was another connection between the world of human beings and the noble and powerful Greer family.

A woman next door complained to Mayor Stephens, an eighty-year-old judge.

"But madam, what can I do about this matter?" he said.