“让那些死去的人安葬他们的死亡。”当男孩在荒凉的丛林里跋涉，藤蔓在他脚边缠绕时，这句话在他的耳边响起。一次又一次，他听到船长喊：“全速前进，让那些死去的人安葬他们的死亡。”现在船长不在了。男孩的同伴带领着他穿越这片诡异的丛林，他感觉非常孤独。他在想那句话到底是什么意思。死人能做什么呢？他们怎么能安葬自己呢？

这个想法在男孩的脑海里盘旋，与最后那段日子的记忆混杂在一起。他再次听到暴风雨的咆哮声，船就在他的脚下剧烈地晃动。台风似乎无处不在，就连身经百战无所不知的船长，也被这突如其来的一切吓到了。

“抓紧主帆！”他对船员们喊道，“全速前进，让死去的人安葬他们的死亡！”男孩紧紧地抓住了船身，即便船身已经裂开。天空中的闪电像烟花一样，在此之前，男孩只是听说过，却从未见过；雷霆撼动了空气，船身在它的吼叫声中不停地摇晃。大浪翻滚而来，打在甲板上，然后消退，片刻宁静之后，大浪再次涌现，像黑黢黢的山峦将小船包围。

在他意识到究竟发生了什么之前，这段记忆会在一瞬间侵占男孩的头脑。然后它们慢慢消退，就像暴风雨终将消退那样。他们又回到了丛林，日复一日单调地走着，身边都是藤蔓和树木，完全不像是以海为生的水手们的生活。有时，男孩会回想起在风暴之前，甚至是在上船之前，他在陆地上生活的时光，他在农场生活时，觉得“被陆地包围着”，尽管他当时还不明白这个词是什么意思。他想起自己的父母虚弱憔悴的面容。他相信他们尽了最大可能来为他创造一个家，但是母亲悲伤的、布满皱纹的脸，和父亲皲裂的手，比他所有的童年记忆都要深刻。这些记忆就像毁灭性的风暴和闪电那样，布满了男孩的天空。

对男孩来说，出生地的石头路预示着他不会喜欢这种生活，也不会喜欢这个地方。但大海更加温柔，变幻莫测，正适合一个有野心的小伙子去塑造自己。所以他来到了海上。他已经领略到了大海的冷酷，他想着，思绪又回到了丛林里。很快，他的思绪又飘回到了在船上的幸福的日子。尽管他是以偷渡者的身份上的船，但船长还是收留了他，并且每天都给他安排些课程——教他观测星空、绘制船的航线。“无知是很危险的，不只是在船上，在生活中都是这样的。”船长警告他说。很快，男孩就像了解自己一样熟悉了夜晚的星空和船长房间的航海图。在不

断学习的过程中，他感到安心。

但如果船长突然身陷困境，男孩又怎么能再次获得安全感呢？他又怎么能相信船长所说的一切不会导致同样的灾难性的的结局呢？“让死去的人安葬他们的死亡。”是的，他已经看到了暴风雨过后那些死去的人。幸存的船员提醒他离那些尸体远点，最后不得不拽着他的胳膊将他拉走，那句“让死去的人安葬他们的死亡”又出现在他的脑海中。这句话到底是什么意思？在记忆中搜索，男孩震惊地发现，在船难发生之后，他已无法将船长与其他人区分开来——厨师，最低等的船员，甚至是他的父亲。这就是船长所说的“他们的死亡”的意思吗，所有的死者都是属于彼此的？

他一步一步地机械地走着，让自己不要再去想自己的家，以及那个他唯一敬重过的男人。走去哪里呢？他不知道前方是什么。但他依然移动着脚步，似乎是按照自己的意愿。他的心依然在跳动，肺依然在吸入空气。他的思绪继续追溯着自己的生命，伴随着自己的心跳与呼吸，他继续向前走着。

Special Stories

After the Shipwreck

“Let the dead bury their dead.”

The words rang in the boy’s ears as he trudged through the inhospitable jungle,vines snarling around his ankles. Over and over again, he heard the captain shout, “Full speed ahead, let the dead bury their dead.”

Now the captain was gone and the boy felt alone despite his companions, now leading him through the alien jungle. He wondered what the words meant. How can the dead do anything? How can the dead have dead of their own?

These thoughts circled the boy’s head, intermingled with the events of the last days. Again he heard the roar of the storm, felt the ship bucking and braying beneath his feet. The typhoon had come out of nowhere, it had seemed; even the captain, who surely knew everything, was taken aback by its sudden appearance.

“Avast and hold the mainsail!” he shouted to the crew. “Stay fast and let the dead bury their dead!”

The boy had held fast, even as the ship had come apart. Even as the lightning lit up the sky like the fireworks the boy had heard about, but never seen. Even as the thunder filled the air, shaking the very timbers of the ship with its bellowing ferocity. The walls of water rose up, crashing over the deck, then receded for an instant of calm before rising up as a dark mountain to once again besiege the small ship.

These memories would come to the boy in a split-second, filling his brain before he had a chance to consciously remember what had happened. Then they would recede,just as the storm had eventually receded, and the jungle would return, the monotonous trudging, day after day amid the vines and trees that were nothing like his second home on the ocean.

Sometimes, the boy would think back to before the storm, and even before the ship, to his life on land—the stultifying life on the farm where he felt landlocked before he even understood what that word signified. He thought of his mother and father, frail and worn-looking. He believed his parents did all they could to create a home for him,but his mother’s sad, creased face and his father’s cracked hands crowded out all other childhood memories. They filled the boy’s sky, just as the thunder had, and were just as devastating, in their own way, as the storm.

For the boy, his birthplace’s rocky ground yielded only a life he could not live and a place he could not love. But the sea was softer, a malleable place in which an enterprising lad could reinvent himself. So the boy had run off to sea. He had learned the hardness of the sea, he thought, as he jerked his mind back to the jungle.

Soon, his thoughts drifted back to his blissful days upon the ship. Although he had come aboard as a stowaway, the captain took him in and gave him daily lessons in reading the stars and plotting the ship’s course. “Ignorance is dangerous, not only aboard ship but also in life,” the captain warned. The eager boy soon grew familiar with the night’s sky and knew the maps in the captain’s quarters as well as he knew his own reflection. He had felt so secure in the captain’s knowledge and in his own growing understanding.

But if the captain could be caught unawares, how could the boy ever feel safe again? How could he trust that everything the captain had said wouldn’t lead to the same disastrous end?

“Let the dead bury their dead.” Well, he had seen the dead after the storm. As the remaining crew members had urged him away from the wreckage, finally having to pull him by his arms to force his legs to move, the words “ Let the dead bury their dead” appeared unbidden in his mind. But what did those words mean? Searching his memory, the boy was shocked to find that after the shipwreck, his mind’s eye could no longer distinguish the captain from any other man—the cook, the lowest deckhand, or even the boy’s father. Was that what the captain meant by “their dead”—that all the dead belonged to one another?

He walked mechanically, pace after pace, leading him away from the remains of his home and the only man he had ever loved. Toward what? He had no knowledge of what lay ahead. But still his legs moved, seemingly of their own accord, his heart continued to beat, his lungs continued to fill with air. His mind continued to retrace his life, and with the beating of his heart and the filling of his lungs, still he walked.