bustling city

Last summer, I drove along the Alps and stopped briefly in Interlaken for three days.

This short trip is unplanned, just because the climate here is rainy and foggy every summer, and more than 60 kilometers away are winding mountain roads, which is more dangerous to drive.

I was unlucky and unfortunately missed a sunny day when passing by. To be on the safe side, I had to stay here and wait for the fog to clear before leaving.

In the evening, I wandered around the town to pass the time, and found a small shop, which was crowded with duty-free shops selling watches and restaurants selling sausage baked noodles and cheese fondue.

The front of this store is empty, and it is quite eye-catching. I searched around, but I didn't see where the signboard of his house was.

From the outside, it looks like a bookstore, but eleven o'clock in the middle of the night has already exceeded the normal business hours of bookstores, and it is quite puzzling that it is still closed.

The chandelier inside exudes warm light, casting on the unpolished log tables and chairs, as if covering these households with a furry cover.

There are posters of various books and movies on the window glass, as well as a variety of photos. I found that these things are all glued to the window glass with ordinary translucent adhesive tape. I can imagine how much effort it will take to tear them off. Clean up any glue left on the glass.

Although this kind of slovenliness seems to have a little natural beauty, it also looks quite silly.

I was attracted by one of those photos and decided to go in and have a look.

The photo was taken of the casino city called Mephisto. The entire [-]-square-kilometer area is like a moon surrounded by stars. Everything in the city is for the big casino in the center. and exist.

The photo freezes the casino in the evening, like a gigantic ornately dressed monster, entrenched in the center of the city.

At that time, I was very interested in the casino culture, and I went to Mephisto with a curious mind. In the still pictures of the photos, I could even see the flowing lights, shadows, sounds, cries and carnivals, and the endless flow of high-end cars. , The rich clothes and rags that go in and out of the casino.

I was intrigued by the very unartistic, very unrefined images of casinos in the bookstore display windows.

Even with the intention of showing off my knowledge and "kindly reminding" the owner to replace the inappropriate photo, I pushed the door and walked into this small shop without a signboard.

The next second, I was shocked by the deafening rock music inside.

I still know the band on the record player, SUM41, and I like to play their songs in the car on every road trip.

But in the bookstore...it really wasn't a harmonious match.

I have to say that the sound insulation effect of this building is excellent.

So much so that when I stood on the street and stared at the furnishings in the store, I instinctively had many warm assumptions, who knew that the reality was like this.

The sound was so loud that passersby couldn't help but look sideways, and I became the one who was embarrassed in place, feeling as if I accidentally let my vicious dog out and disturbed the people.

Before he was about to leave as usual, the man sitting behind the bar found me. He seemed to be waiting for someone else to come, or he was just a little surprised that I, an uninvited guest who came to the door in the middle of the night, had a flash of light on his face. With a look of astonishment, he hurriedly turned off the music.

Seeing the more embarrassing expression on his face than mine, my heart was balanced.

"Hallo!" he said, standing up.

I can roughly tell that this is German, but his pronunciation seems not very good. I can't even hear standard German, and I can't speak a few words, so I just spread my hands to show that I can't communicate.

I saw that he had a handsome face, without the high nose and deep eyes that are common here. He had a standard Asian appearance. At first glance, he thought he was from the same country as me, and he was a little excited to meet an old acquaintance in a foreign country, so now he is a little bit disappointed. .

The man scratched his head in embarrassment, and said to me in another sentence: "Bonjour, Dequoiavez-vousbesoin?" (Hello, what do you need?) He spoke French much more smoothly, and it sounded like the standard one on the radio. Tone, unfortunately I don't know much French.

I felt a little sorry, because it’s really hard to talk about it if I don’t understand the language, so I simply said to him in Chinese: “Are you still in business?” I thought that if he didn’t understand, then forget it, at worst, just sit down and order a drink. After a while, go back to the hostel and sleep.

Unexpectedly, he showed a dazed expression, as if he had been pardoned, and said to me: "As long as the lights are on, it is considered business hours, but usually at this time, there are not many customers coming."

He turned on the record player next to him, put in a disc, and adjusted the volume to an appropriate position with ease. As soon as the female jazz voice came out, the atmosphere of the bookstore quickly changed.

It seems that just now, while there were no customers, he hid in the store to make himself happy.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I went to complain to the boss about this little shop assistant, he would probably be deducted from his wages if he went fishing during working hours.

"Would you like something to drink?" As he asked, he quickly took two cups from the shelf: a transparent glass cup, for me to order wine or a cold drink; a ceramic mug, for coffee.

I found that his fingers are slender and beautiful, but there are many old scars on the back of his hand. I guess he is a male classmate with a story.

"Come on, do what you're good at."

He thought about it and asked me if drinking coffee at night would affect my rest, probably because he regarded me as a tourist who came to climb the mountain.

I told him that I could wait until six o'clock in the morning and sleep until the afternoon, and he stopped asking.

I watched him open a deep transparent jar next to him, use tweezers to fish out a piece of black raw chocolate, put it in a mug, and put the mug on the pouring table.

When the hot water is poured, the aroma of coffee soon permeates. I admire the chocolate gradually being submerged and melted by the coffee, and finally only a layer of delicate fat is left floating on top.

He didn't hide his confident look at all, and pushed the cup in front of me.

I have never seen this method before, and thought it was quite novel. I took a sip immediately after I took it. The black coffee has a creamy aroma that seems to have no bitterness, and it matches well with the rich aftertaste of chocolate. I praise it In a word, he had known such an expression on his face.

I found that it was difficult for me to accurately judge his age. His facial features still carried the freshness and youthfulness of a young man, but sometimes, I felt that there was an indescribable vicissitudes and maturity faintly revealed, like two In his early teens, it seemed like he was approaching forty.

"What's the name of this?" I pointed to this strange cup of coffee and asked him.

"It's called... Black Cloud Overwhelming City?" He thought about it.

I glanced at the menu on the table, and it said "Make Perfect Coffee" on it, and I knew he was talking nonsense on the spot.

But it's quite in line with the setting of this drink.

The atmosphere in the store and the demeanor of this young man made me feel comfortable and at ease. I didn't rush to leave, so I just got up and browsed the books on the shelf.

It's not what I imagined.

Most of these roadside book bars like to sell some best-selling novels, popular books on psychology and success, but here are all slightly difficult world classics, from classics such as Dante and Shakespeare to modern ones. For example, Joyce McCarthy, I have seen a large part of the books for the first time, and I have to read the introduction to understand their artistic weight.

There is an English translation of "The Gambler" * in the corner. I have read this story, and I think it is very interesting to think of the photo of Mephisto Casino pasted on the window.

"Who is the owner of your shop?" I turned around and asked the young man.

He was resting his chin and drawing a map freehand on a sketchbook. When he heard me speak, he raised his head and said, "I am the boss."

Shocked, I began to mentally guess his story.

"You picked all these books?" "Yes."

He nodded of course.

"Have you read them all?" "Have you read half of them...there are some others I want to read, so I bought them and read them slowly."

Maybe it was because the surprise on my face was too obvious, he laughed and said hospitablely: "If you want to see something, I can recommend it for you."

I really want to try his seemingly inscrutable cultural accomplishment, but at the moment, I have something more curious.

I pulled out the book "The Gambler" from the corner and gave him a nod, and asked him, "Are you interested in gambling culture? I see you have a picture of Mephisto hanging outside—you know that is a casino, right?" ?” His face was a little dark, although he was still smiling, but I could feel that his connection with this topic might not be as simple as “interest”.

"Mephisto, I lived there for a while."

"Yourself? For a bet?" He stared into my eyes for a long time, I think he didn't want to mention it that much, or he was a little...overly cautious about bringing it up, maybe he was measuring me Is it qualified enough to know.

"It's okay if it's inconvenient for you to say it." I suppressed my curiosity and retreated, "I just passed by here on a trip, and I was very curious to see the photo hanging outside of you - I just went to Mephisto before. Played it once and was very impressed.”

The young man nodded. He was so calm that I couldn't figure out his thoughts. I felt that although I looked a little older than myself, I was still a little tender to play with him psychologically.

I think he has seen through my little trick, but he didn't expose it.

"Have you tried it in Mephisto? BlackJack*? Roulette*?" "I played two roulettes and lost about... more than $20; Blood compensation."

I am honest.

He laughed out loud, and I figured maybe it was because I was playing too lightly.

But he seemed to let go of his guard because of this: "I gambled, but I didn't stay there for the gamble.

I've been there for as long as I can remember, don't know how I got there. "

I understood right away.

Mephisto has formed its own ecological circle. When I went there, I learned about their culture out of interest, so I knew that a group of people called "Sons of Satan" mostly won their parents at the gambling table. With a large sum of money, he dragged his family to live in Las Vegas temporarily, and gave birth to them in Las Vegas.

These gamblers who have tasted the sweetness always hope to find opportunities for class leaps in dice, cards and chips, and they often lose everything in the end.

Parents were either killed or imprisoned because of usury, or committed suicide because of the bloody reality, leaving these children wandering around in the casino to fend for themselves.

The city of Las Vegas is called Mephisto, which is the incarnation of Satan in Faust, so these children born in the midst of inflated and overflowing dark desires become "sons of Satan".

Most of them died young, because Mephisto was a cruel, money-obsessed world, and they were poor and white.

And some survived, sinking into the city's sinister and seductive dream world, becoming part of the danger.

But it is said that very few eventually left Mephisto.

"Did you go to Mephistopheles and hear the legend about the Red Knight?" he asked me.

With a thought in my mind, I vaguely had a guess that made me unable to restrain my excitement, so I hurriedly said I heard it.

That was a genius who appeared suddenly. It is said that the money he won was almost enough to change the owner of the casino. However, the most legendary part was that he used all the money to set up a gamble and fished out a huge Qianshu Group.

The young man turned off the record player, played a song on his phone, and showed me the words on the screen.

——The title of this song is "Red Knight"*.

He lowered his eyes, as if he was recalling something far, far away. I waited patiently, and my palms were already covered with sweat.

When the song was almost at the end, he suddenly looked at me and said to me: "Let me introduce myself, I am Zhou Jin, and my nickname in the Mephisto Casino was 'Red Knight'."

Note: 1. "The Gambler", Fyodor Dostoyevsky 2. BlackJack: Blackjack, commonly known as blackjack 21. Roulette: Roulette 3. "Red Knight", Yuan Liyuan

I originally planned to move Confessions first, but I can’t find the document, so let’s move to Prosperity first.