"Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused - Fiction From Today`s China [редактор Говард Голдблатт]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Голдблатт Говард, Мэн Ван, Сюэ Цань, Фейю Би,...)

Another Rule

I am a young woman whose job is very mechanical, as mechanical as the hands of timepieces, always making circular motions with the same radius and in the same direction; as mechanical as a fatigued truck traveling invariably down a fixed route. Usually when I am reading the study materials delivered by my work unit, especially articles about the new trends in struggles, I can never remember whether Iraq annexed Kuwait or the other way around or if the Scud stopped the Patriot or vice versa, even if I read the same news item ten times. But I am able to commit to memory all the typos in the articles. For instance, in the lower-right corner at the end of a line, I will easily spot an apostrophe that should be a comma, and so forth. That's what comes of being a proofreader.

This simple work keeps my chaotic mind from making many mistakes, I am glad to say, since I am a daydreamer who finds it hard to play by the rules. Let's say, for example, that the fainthearted son of a cold-blooded murderer accidentally kills someone. When the death sentence falls upon the frightened son, the father, who has always been able to escape the net of justice, mysteriously takes his son's place at the execution ground. This act must be regarded as a mockery of the law, but I will be moved by the loving sacrifice of a brutish father who kills without compunction, until my face is bathed in tears; I will even hold him in some regard.

When I see an accomplished surgeon refuse to treat a class enemy's vvife who is in great pain and in need of help, I am disgusted. My problematic views and a tendency toward aberrant thinking are enough to deprive me of the chance to become a doctor or lawyer.

They say that to be a writer, you must follow even more rules. I know only too well that my deviant thinking and convoluted logic keep me at odds with those rules. Fortunately, I am aware of these flaws and have never expected or hoped to become much of anything.

Yet there may be another possibility. You might happen to share my way of thinking, which means you could interpret my un-orthodoxy as a rule in its own right. Anything is possible.