如同时间本身一般，西区下层红砖地区的某一大片人口是那么的不安、变幻和短暂。无家可归，他们拥有一百个家。他们从一个出租房间飞翔到另一个出租房间，永远是过客——在居所上是过客，在心灵和思想上也是过客。他们在拉格泰姆风格的音乐中唱着《家，甜蜜的家》；他们用小包袱携带着自己的生活和家当；他们的藤蔓缠绕着一顶礼帽；一盆橡胶树就是他们的无花果树。

因此，这个地区的房屋经历了千百位居民后，应该会有千百个故事要讲，当然大部分可能都是无聊的；但如果在这些漂泊的幽灵之后找不到一两个鬼魂，那将是奇怪的。

一天晚上，一个年轻人在这些破旧的红色大厦中徘徊，按响它们的门铃。在第十二户时，他将瘦弱的行李放在台阶上，擦了擦帽带和额头上的灰尘。铃声在遥远的某个空洞深处微弱地回响。

这第十二户的门口，走出来一位管家，她让他想起了一只不健康的、吃饱了的虫子，虫子啃食了坚果，只剩下空壳，如今试图用可食用的住客来填补这个空缺。

他问是否有房间出租。

“进来，”管家说道。她的声音从喉咙里发出，听起来像是被毛发覆盖。“我有第三层后面的房间，自上周以来就空着。您想看看吗？”

年轻人跟着她上了楼。无特定来源的一缕微光缓和了走廊里的阴影。他们踩在一块仿佛自己都要反对的楼梯地毯上，脚步无声。那地毯似乎已经变成了植物，在那种污秽、无日的空气中退化为青苔或扩展的苔藓，生长在楼梯的斑驳地方，脚下像有机物一样粘腻。每转一个弯，墙壁上都有空缺的壁龛。或许曾经有植物被放置在里面。如果是这样，它们早已死于那种令人作呕的、受污染的空气中。也许曾经有圣人的雕像伫立于此，但想象恶魔在黑暗中将它们拖走，扔入某个低劣的家具坑中并不困难。

“这是房间，”管家从她绒毛般的喉咙里说。“这是个不错的房间。它不常空着。我去年夏天有些优雅的人住在这里——根本没麻烦，且每分钟都提前付款。水龙头在走廊尽头。斯普劳尔斯和穆尼连续住了三个月。他们做了一场杂耍小品。布雷塔·斯普劳尔斯小姐——你可能听说过她——哦，那都是舞台名字——就在梳妆台上方挂着结婚证书，框起来的。煤气在这里，你看

XVI The Furnished Room RESTLESS, SHIFTING, FUGACIOUS as time itself, is a certain vast bulk of the population of the redbrick district of the lower West Side.Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients for ever - transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing 'Home Sweet Home' in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree. Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant ghosts. One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hat-band and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, sur­ feited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers. He asked if there was a room to let. 'Come in,' said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. 'I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?' The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have for­ sworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below. 'This is the room,' said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. 'It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer - no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney-kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls - you may have heard of her - Oh, that was just the stage names - right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see

“储藏室有很多空间。这是个大家都喜欢的房间。它从来不会闲着太久。”

“这里有很多剧院的人住吗？”年轻人问道。

“他们来来去去。我大部分的住客都和剧院有关。是的，先生，这里是剧院区。演员们从来不在任何地方待太久。我也能分到一部分。是的，他们来，他们又走。”

他租下了这个房间，并提前支付了一周的租金。他说自己很累，想立即入住。他数出了钱。管家说道，房间已经准备好了，甚至包括毛巾和水。当管家转身离开时，他再一次将那千百次萦绕在心头的问题问出来。

“一位年轻女孩——瓦什纳小姐——埃洛伊斯·瓦什纳小姐——你还记得你这里有这样的住客吗？她可能在舞台上唱歌。一个身材中等、纤细的金发女孩，带着一颗深色的痣在左眉头旁边。”

“我不记得这个名字。那些舞台上的人换名字就像换房间一样频繁。他们来来去去。不，我想不起她。”

“不。”总是“不”。五个月的无休止询问和不可避免的否定。白天在经理、经纪人、学校和合唱团中反复提问；夜晚则在剧院的观众席中，从全明星阵容到低级音乐厅，甚至害怕发现自己最希望找到的东西。他深爱过的她却一直未能找回。他确信自她从家中消失以来，这座被水环绕的大城市某处仍然藏着她，但整个城市就像是一片巨大的流沙，不断地移动，没有根基，今天的上层颗粒明天就埋没在泥污与烂泥之中。

这间出租房以一种似乎热情好客的第一印象接待了这位新客人，那种病态的、疲惫的、敷衍的欢迎，就像是半妖媚者虚假的微笑。那种表面的舒适感由腐朽的家具反射而来，破旧的绒布沙发和两把椅子的褴褛面料，两个窗户之间的一幅窄便宜镜子，一两副镀金的画框，以及角落里的铁床。

客人懒散地靠在一把椅子上，而房间则如同巴别塔中的公寓，困惑地试图对他讲述其多样的租客故事。

一块五彩斑斓的地毯，如同一些璀璨花朵般的长方形图案…

there is plenty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long.' 'Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?' asked the young man. 'They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is con­ nected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes.' He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue. 'A young girl - Miss Vashner - Miss Eloise Vashner - do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.' 'No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind.' No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audi­ ences of theatres from all-star casts down to music-halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disap­ pearance from home this great water-girt city held her some­ where, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, con­ fused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry. A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered, rectangular

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