In short I summarize this story as follows-There was a blue hotel and the proprietor, Scully in one time invited three customers to this hotel, one was Swede, the other was Easterner, and Cowboy. They played a game kind of tramp, also Scully’s son Johnnie played with that tramp. At the sudden Swede said Johnnie did cheating during the tramp, Jonnie insisted I’m not did any cheat,… started fight with violence-Swede Vs Jonnie……, and then Jonnie was whipped. After the win of Swede, Swede went to one bar and in that places he said “Have a drink?” because he won the fight,… in that bar, two man been there, two were prominent local business men; one was the district attorney; and one was professional gambler of the kind known as “square”. They rejected Swede’s invitation, so Swede’s got anger, had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the throat, to this acts gambler got angry, kill him with a long blade. After a month, that news told dweller of a blue hotel, Jonnie and cowboy and Easterner and Scully. Cowboy said that dead Swede had been awful fool, to this word Easterner said, “But actually, Johnnie did cheating.”-so it could be said possible that the man who had been this hotel, Jonnie, cowboy, Easterner, Scully also the bar and the people on that bar… usually there are from a dozen to fifty women really involved in every murder-Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
I felt after read, it could be said this kill is related to many people, but looking the attitude of robustly Swede, why he acts like fool. It was the problem whether what was convey to the dead.
In this story, Swede’s played important role, that have the resemblance of “Killers” recently I read probable due to the selector of this book was Masami Nishikawa.
I introduced the impressive expression on this story, that is the use of bird-I found out two use of bird- one was depiction of a blue hotel-“The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background.” The other was the scene Swede felt killed-“In his eyes was the dying-swan look.”.
I’m overcome at the last scene “This poor gambler isn’t even a noun. He is kind of an adverb.” This is the problem of a unit, what make you do like that or result, this impression was interesting.
参考
西川正身、1966年、“Modern American short stories1”、研究社
クレイン作・西田実訳、2002年、『赤い武功章他三編』、岩波文庫
