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【完形填空】Cloze: The Last Lightkeeper
The storm arrived without warning. Chen Wei, sixty-one, had worked as a lighthouse keeper on the northern cape for thirty-five years, and he understood the sea (1) a farmer understands the soil.
He was checking the small garden behind the station when the first wave (2) his boat, which had been tied, unwisely, to the pier below.
He watched it disappear beneath the water. Then he went inside, locked the door, and waited.
When he first came in 1985, the station was a group of buildings with a staff of nine.
They lived in a small house on the hill, grew vegetables in a walled garden, and (3) turns climbing the tower every four hours to refill the lamp's oil.
The government had built it in 1902, during a period of rapid coastal development, to guide ships (4) the dangerous waters offshore.
Chen's father had been a keeper too.
The family's connection to this work was, in Chen's words, nothing special — just a (5) for solitude.
But when the station was automated in 2005, the staff (6) from nine to two.
By 2015, Chen was alone.
The machines did the rest: a backup battery, a sensor that could detect fog within a range of three miles, and a satellite link that sent a signal every sixty seconds.
"You are a relic," his daughter Lin told him last summer, during one of her rare visits from the city.
She was thirty-two, a marine biologist who studied the region's declining fish populations.
"The light doesn't need you. The birds don't need you. Even the fishermen have GPS now." Chen did not reply.
He had heard the same (7) from the local authorities in 2018, when they offered him a pension to leave.
He had refused. Not out of pride, he said later, but out of a desire to (8) a promise he had made to his father on his deathbed.
What Chen did not tell Lin was that the station's decline had begun long before the storm.
Since 2010, the coastline had been (9) at an average of 1.5 metres a year.
The land, once a fertile strip of marsh, had been polluted by waste from a nearby factory.
The insects went first. Then the birds. Then the fish.
Chen had kept a record — a collection of observations, really — noting each loss with a date and a short note.
He had tried to explain the pattern to a visiting group from the university, but they had (10) his findings as the complaints of an old man.
"Your data is not scientific," one of them said. "You have no control group." Chen had nodded, offered tea, and said nothing more.
After the storm, I drove out to see him. The road was still flooded in places, and I had to remove a fallen branch from the car's path.
Chen met me at the gate. He looked older than I remembered — thinner, his hands rough from clearing debris.
We sat on the porch and drank cold tea while he described the night of the storm.
"The light kept flashing," he said. "That was the strange part. The tower stood. The lamp worked. But the dock was gone, the boat was gone, and the backup generator had failed. So the light was shining on nothing."
He laughed, then stopped. "For three days, no one came. No boats. No planes. No radio. I was not aware of how much I had depended on the illusion of being needed."
By the time the coast guard arrived, Chen had made a decision. He would stay for one more winter, long enough to plant the marsh with a salt-tolerant grass he had been growing in tins behind the station.
It was a small plan, poorly funded and probably useless. The authorities had already given the land to a resort — thirty villas, a marina, and a glass navigation tower.
Chen had seen the brochure. He knew the resort would bring in more money in one season than the lighthouse had in ten years.
He also knew that the grass, if it grew, might stop the next storm from washing away the last of the soil.
"I am not trying to save the past," he told me, as the sun set. "I am trying to slow the future down."
We walked to the edge of the cliff. Below, the sea was calm now, a sheet of copper and grey. Chen pointed to a single cormorant flying low over the water.
"That one stayed," he said. "The others left. Maybe it is hurt. Maybe it is just stubborn." He paused.
Choices
(1) A. like B. as C. than D. so
(2) A. floated B. capsized C. sank D. damaged
(3) A. made B. took C. did D. had
(4) A. over B. through C. across D. into
(5) A. tendency B. habit C. routine D. custom
(6) A. fell B. declined C. dropped D. reduced
(7) A. argument B. discussion C. debate D. quarrel
(8) A. make B. fulfil C. keep D. hold
(9) A. withdrawing B. receding C. declining D. retreating
(10) A. ignored B. refused C. dismissed D. rejected