英语 廊桥遗梦笔记

他长期外出-有时一去二三个月-使婚姻生活很艰难，这点他知道。当初他们决定结婚时，她是知道他的工作的，他们隐隐约约地觉得可以设法处理。结果不行。一次他从冰岛摄影回来，她不在了。纸条上写着：“罗伯特，没能成功。我把弦吉他留给你。保持联系。”
　　他没和她保持联系，她也没有。一年以后离婚协议书寄到，他签了字，第二天就乘上一班飞机到澳大利亚去了。她除要自由之外，什么要求也没提。

His long absences--- two or three months sometimes--- were hard on the marriage. He knew that. She was aware of what he did when they decided to get married, and each of them had a vague sense that it could all be handled somehow. It couldn't. When he came home from photographing a story in Iceland, she was gone. The note read: "Robert, it didn't work out. I left you the Harmony guitar. Stay in touch."

He didn't stay in touch. Neither did she. He signed the divorce papers when they arrived a year later and caught a plane for Australia the next day. She had asked for nothing except her freedom.

但是他还是我行我素，读遍了当地图书馆有关探险和旅游的书籍，感到心满意足，除此之外就关在自己的小天地里，一连几天呆在流过村头的小河边，对舞会。橄榄球赛这些他感到厌倦的事都不悄一顾。他经常钓鱼。游泳。散步，躺在高高的草丛里聆听他想象中只有他能听到的远方的声音。“那边有巫师，”他常自言自语说，'如果你保持安静，侧耳倾听，他们是在那儿的。”这时他常常希望有一只狗共享这些时光。

But he had been content to read all the adventure and travel books in the local library and kept to himself otherwise, spending days along the river that ran through the edge of town, ignoring proms and football games and other things that bored him. He fished and swam and walked and lay in long grass listening to distant voices he fancied only he could hear. "There are wizards out there," he used to say to himself. "If you're quiet and open enough to hear them, they're out there." And he wished he had a dog to share these moments.

他说的时候也是这么想的，但最终也没有去

She had said to him: "Robert, I don't know who or what you are for sure, but please come visit me in Paris." He told her he would, meant it when he said it, but never got there.

他望着她，近些，更近些。她丰姿绰约，或者曾经一度如此，或者可能再度如此。

He stepped from the truck and looked at her, looked closer, and then closer still. She was lovely, or had been at one time, or could be again.

 

她曾和一位大学艺术系教授尼可洛有过一段恋情。他白天整天作画，夜间带她到那不勒斯的地下娱乐区去兜风，疯玩了一阵。这件事一年后结束，决定性的因素是她传统观念较深的父母越来越不赞成
　　她在黑头发上系着红缎带，恋恋不舍自己的梦。但是没有海员上岸来找她，也没有声音从窗下街头传进来。严酷的现实迫使她认识到自己的选择有限。理查德提供了另一种合理的选择：待她好，还有充满美妙希望的美国。
　　他们坐在地中海阳光下的一家咖啡馆里，她仔细打量了一身戎装的他，他正以美国中西部人特有的恳切的目光看着她，于是她就跟他到依阿华来了。

She wore ribbons in her black hair and clung to her dreams. But no handsome sailors disembarked looking for her, no voices came up to her window from the streets below. The hard press of reality brought her to the recognition that her choices were constrained. Richard offered a reasonable alternative: kindness and the sweet promise of America.

She had studied him in his soldier's uniform as they sat in a cafe in the Mediterranean sunlight, saw him looking earnestly at her in his midwestern way, and came to Iowa with him.

她拿出一个牛纸信封来，用手慢慢在上面拂拭，年年此日她都这么做的。

邮戳上的字是：“65。9。12，华盛顿。西雅图。”她总先读邮戳，这是仪式的一部分。然后读手写的收信人地址：“依阿华。温特塞特，弗朗西丝卡。约翰逊。”下一步是寄信人地址，在左上角潦草的几笔：“华盛顿州。贝灵汉，642号信箱。”她坐在靠窗的椅子里，看着地址，全神贯注。因为信封里面是他的手的动作，她要回味那二十二年前这双手在她身上的感觉。

She took out a manila envelope and brushed her hand across it slowly, as she did each year on this day. The postmark read "Seattle, WA, Sep 12 '65." She always looked at the postmark first. That was part of the ritual. Then to the address written in longhand: "Francesca Johnson, RR 2, Winterset, Iowa." Next the return address, carelessly scrabbled in the upper left: "Box 642, Bellingham, Washington." She sat in a chair by the window, looked at the addresses, and concentrated, for contained in them was the movement of his hands, and she wanted to bring back the feel of those hands on her twenty-two years ago.

 

Call me if you ever need anything or simply want to see me. I'll be there, pronto. Let me know if you can come out here sometime--- anytime. I can arrange plane fare, if that's a problem. I'm off to southeast India next week, but I'll be back in late October. 

她正坐在前廊的秋千上，喝着冰茶，漫不经心地看着一辆县公路上行驶的卡车下面卷扬起来和尘土。卡车行驶很慢，好像驾驶员在寻找什么，然后就在她的小巷口停下，把车头转向她的房子。天哪。她想，他是谁？

 

 　　她赤着脚，穿着牛仔裤和一件褪了色的蓝工作服，袖子高高卷起，衣摆放在裤子外面，长发用一只玳瑁梳子别起，那梳子还是她离开故国时父亲给她的。卡车驶进了巷子在绕屋的铁丝栅栏门前不远处停下。

She had been sitting on the front porch swing, drinking iced tea, casually watching the dust spiral up from under a pickup coming down the county road.

She was barefoot, wearing jeans and a faded blue workshirt with the sleeves rolled up, shirttail out.

 

Her voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else, to a teenage girl leaning out of a window in Naples, looking far down city streets toward the trains or out at the harbor and thinking of distant lovers yet to come. As she spoke, she watched the muscles in his forearm flex when he shifted gears.

太阳由白变红，正好落在玉米地上。她从窗户望也去看见一只鹰正乘着黄昏的风扶摇而上。收音机里播放着七点钟新闻和市场简讯。此刻弗朗西丝卡隔着黄色贴面的桌子望着罗伯特金凯，他走了很长的路到她的厨房来，漫漫长路，何止以英里计！

　　已经闻到香味了，

　　清静？清静能闻的到吗？排烧烤之余，今天的这顿饭确实是清静的做法。整个食物制作过程和链条上没有暴力，除了把菜从地里拨起来可以算。炖烩菜是静静地在进行，散发的味道也是静静的，厨房里也是静悄悄

A white sun had turned big red and lay just over the corn fields. Through the kitchen window she could see a hawk riding the early evening updrafts. The seven o'clock news and market summary were on the radio. And Francesca looked across the yellow Formica toward Robert Kincaid, who had come a long way to her kitchen. A long way, across more than miles.

"It already smells good,"

he said, pointing toward the stove. "It smells... quiet." He looked at her. "Quiet? Could something smell quiet?" She was thinking about the phrase, asking herself. He was right. After the pork chops and steaks and roasts she cooked for the family, this was quiet cooking. No violence involved anywhere down the food chain, except maybe for pulling up the vegetables. The stew cooked quietly and smelled quiet. It was quiet here in the kitchen.

她松了口气，又深深地失望。她心时来回翻腾：是的，请你走吧：再留下来唱杯白兰地；走吧。法伦。扬并不关心她的感觉，洗涤沁上的扑灯蛾也不关心，她不知道罗伯特金凯怎么样。

She was relieved. But she sank in disappointment. She turned around inside of herself. Yes, please leave. Have some more brandy. Stay. Go. Faron Young didn't care about her feelings. Neither did the moth above the sink. She didn't know for sure what Robert Kincaid thought.

 

I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head

她意识到隔着衬衫他的身体有多热。这股热气进入她的手，传到她的胳膊，然后散到全身任意流动，到处通行无阻，她也的确丝毫没有想加以控制。

She was conscious of how warm his body felt through the shirt. The warmth came into her hand, moved up her arm, and from there spread through her to wherever it wanted to go, with no effort ---indeed, with no control--- from her.

可是那慢步探戈舞已经开始了。他能听见在某个地方有手风琴正在奏这支舞曲。也许是很久很久以前，也许是很久很久以后，他不能确定。但是它正慢慢逼近他。那声音模糊了他的一切行为准则，使得除了合二为一之外，其他一切选择都逐渐消失。那乐曲毫不留情地向他逼来，直到他已经没有任何其他出路，只剩下走向弗朗西丝卡。约翰逊一条道。

But the slow street tango had begun. Somewhere it played; he could hear it, an old accordion. It was far back, or far ahead, he couldn't be sure. Yet it moved toward him steadily. And the sound of it blurred his criteria and funneled down his alternatives toward unity. Inexorably, it did that, until there was nowhere left to go, except toward Francesca Johnson.

我们正在放弃自己驰骋的天地，组织起来，矫饰感情。效率，效益还有其他种种头脑里想出来的花样。既然失去了自由驰骋的天地，牛仔就消失了，与此同时山上的狮子和大灰狼也消失了。为旅游者下的余地不多了。”

We're giving up free range, getting organized, feathering our emotions. Efficiency and effectiveness and all those other pieces of intellectual artifice. And with the loss of free range, the cowboy disappears, along with the mountain lion and gray wolf. There's not much room left for travelers.

现在，这么年之后，弗朗西丝卡拿着她的白兰地慢慢走上楼梯，右手拖在后边以回味当时他跟在后面上楼，经过走廊进入卧室的情景。

Now, all these years later, Francesca carried her brandy and walked slowly up the stairs, her right hand trailing behind her to bring along the memory of him up the stairs and down the hallway into the bedroom.

夜正浓，那伟长的盘旋上升的舞蹈连续着。罗伯特。金凯拚弃了一切线条感，回到他自己只同轮廊，声音和影子打交道的那部分。他一直走向最古老的方式，依靠夏草的秋叶上阳光照亮的融霜作为烛光指引的方向

The night went on, and the great spiral dance continued. Robert Kincaid discarded all sense of anything linear and moved to a part of himself that dealt only with shape and sound and shadow. Down the paths of the old ways he went, finding his direction by candles of sunlit frost melting upon the grass of summer and the red leaves of autumn.

终于，他明白了一切：他走过的所有荒野沙滩上所有那些细小的脚印，那些从未起锚的船上装的神秘的货箱，那些躲在帘幕后面看着他在昏暗的城市曲折的街道上行走的一张张脸-所有的这一切的意义他终于都明白了。像一个老猎人远行归来，看到家中的篝火之光，所有的孤寂之感一下了溶解了。终于，终于……他走了这么远。这么远来到这里。于是他以最完美的姿势在她身上，浸沉于终身不渝的，全心全意的对她的爱之中。

And he knew finally the meaning of all the small footprints on all the deserted beaches he had ever walked, of all the secret cargoes carried by ships that had never sailed, of all the curtained faces that had watched him pass down winding streets of twilight cities. And, like a great hunter of old who has traveled distant miles and now sees the light of his home campfires, his loneliness dissolved. At last. At last. He had come so far... so far. And he lay upon her, perfectly formed and unalterably complete in his love for her. At last.

我多么想要你，要跟你在一起，要成为你的一部分；同样的我也不能使自己摆脱我实实在在存在的责任。假如你强迫我跟你走，不论用体力或是用精神力量，我说过的，我都无力抗拒。我对你感情太深，没有力气抗拒。尽管我说了那么多关于不该剥夺你以大路为家的自由的话，我还是会跟你走，只是为了我自私的需要，我要你。”

 

 　　不过，求你别让我这么做，别让我放弃我的责任。我不能，不能因此而毕生为这件事所缠绕。如果现在我这样做了，这思想负担会使我变成另外一个人，不再是你所爱的那个女人。”

If you force me, physically or mentally, to go with you, as I said earlier, I cannot fight that. I don't have the strength, given my feelings for you. In spite of what I said about not taking the road away from you, I'd go because of my own selfish wanting of you.

But please don't make me. Don't make me give this up, my responsibilities. I cannot do that and live with the thought of it. If I did leave now, those thoughts would turn me into something other than the woman you have come to love.

她像一个远方的观察者年复一年跟踪观察罗伯特。金凯，眼看他渐渐老起来。

And like some distant observer tracking him through the years, she watched Robert Kincaid grow older.

她多年前第一次见到这张照片时还看得出他脖子里的银项链上系着一个小小的圆牌。迈可离家上大学去了，当理查德和卡洛琳去睡觉之后，她把迈可少年时集邮用的高度放大镜拿出来放到照片上。

Michael was away at college, and when Richard and Carolyn had gone to bed, she got out a powerful magnifying glass Michael had used for his stamp collection when he was young and brought it close to the photo. "My God," she breathed. The medallion said "Francesca" on it. That was his one small indiscretion, and she forgave him for it, smiling. In all of the photos after that, the medallion was always there on the silver chain.

理查德一九七九年世，葬礼完毕，孩子们都各自回到自己家里以后，她想起给罗伯特金凯打电话。他应该是六十六岁，她五十九岁。尽管已经失去了十四年，还来得及。她集中思考了一星期，最后从他的信头上找到了电话号码，拨了号。

　　电话铃响时她心脏几乎停止跳动。她听到有人拿起话筒，差点儿又把电话挂上。一个女人的声音说：“麦克格雷格尔保险公司。”弗朗西丝卡心沉下去了，不过还能恢复得过来问那女秘书她拨的号码对不对，就是这个号码。她谢谢她，挂了电话。

He would be sixty-six; she was fifty-nine. There was still time, even with the loss of fourteen years. She thought hard about it for a week and finally took the number off his letterhead and dialed it.

Her heart nearly stopped when the phone began to ring. She heard the receiver being picked up and almost put the phone back on the hook.

她知道那软信封里是什么，她确知无疑，就像她确知春天一定会再来一样。她小心打开信封，伸进手去，出来的是那银项链，上面系着的圆牌子上刻着“弗朗西丝卡”，背面用蚀刻刻出小得不能再小的字：“如捡到，请寄往美国依阿华州温特塞特R。R。2，弗朗西丝卡。约翰逊收。”信封下面还有他的银手镯，包在餐巾纸里。有一张纸条和手镯包在一起，那是她的笔迹

然后她想起来，这是他唯一拥有的她的东西，是证明她存在的唯一见证，此外就只有逐渐老化的胶片上日益模糊的她的影像了。这罗斯曼桥上的小条上面有斑点，有折痕，好像在皮夹里放了很久。
　　三个盒子每个都装着一架相机带一个镜头。都已饱经风雨侵蚀，带着伤痕。她把其中一架转过来，在取景器上有“尼康”字样，商标的左上角有一个“F”，她在杉树桥递给他的那架相机。

Then she remembered that was the only thing he had of hers, his only evidence she existed, aside from elusive images on slowly decaying film emulsions. The little note from Roseman Bridge. It was stained and curved, as if it had been carried in a billfold for a long time.

The three boxes each contained a camera with a lens attached. They were battered, scarred. Turning one around, she could read "Nikon" on the viewfinder and, just to the upper left of the Nikon label, the letter F. It was the camera she had handed him at Cedar Bridge.

我接受所有我谋求得到的海外派遣，只是为了抵挡给你打电话或来找你的诱惑，而事实上只要我醒着，生活中每时每刻都在这种诱惑。多少次，我对自己说：“去它的吧，我这就去依阿华温特塞特，不惜一切代价要把弗朗西丝卡带走。”

　　可是我记得你的话，我尊重你的感情。也许你是对的，我不知道。我只知道在那个炎热的星期五从你的小巷开车出来是我一生中做过的最艰难的事以后也决不会再有。

I was on the road almost constantly from 1965 to 1975. Just to remove some of the temp- tation to call you or come for you, a temptation I have virtually every waking moment of my life, l took all of the overseas assignments I could find. There have been times, many of them, when I've said, "The hell with it. I'm going to Win- terset, Iowa, and, whatever the cost, take Fran- cesca away with me." 

But I remember your words, and I respect your feelings. Maybe you were right; I just don't know. I do know that driving out of your lane that hot Friday morning was the hardest thing I've ever done or will ever do. In fact, I doubt if few men have ever done anything more difficult than that.

一九七二年我在缅因州阿卡迪亚国家公园的一座峭壁上摔了下来，跌断了踝骨，项链和圆牌一起给跌断了，幸亏是落在近处，我又找到了，请一位珠宝商修复了项链。
In 1972, I fell down a cliff in Maine, in Acadia National Park, and broke my ankle. The chain and medallion got torn off in the fall. Fortunately they landed close by. I found them again, and a jeweler mended the chain.
　　我心已蒙上了灰尘。我想不出来更恰当的说法。在你之前有过几个女人在你之后一个也没有，我并没有要发誓要保持独身，只是不感兴趣。

　　我有一次观察过一只加拿大鹅，它的伴侣被猎人杀死了。你知道这种鹅的伴侣是从一而终的。那雄鹅成天围着池塘转，日复一日。我最后一次看见它，它还在寻觅。这一比喻太浅露了，不够文学味儿，可这大致就我的感受。
I live with dust on my heart. That's about as well as I can put it. There were women before you, a few, but none after. I made no conscious pledge to celibacy; I'm just not interested. 

I once watched a Canada goose whose mate had been shot by hunters. They mate for life, you know. The gander circled the pond for days, and more days after that. When I last saw him, he was swimming alone through the wild rice, still looking. I suppose that analogy is a little too obvious for literary tastes, but it's pretty much the way I feel.

　　在雾蒙蒙的早晨，或是午后太阳在西北方水面上跳动时，我常试图想象你在哪里，在做什么。没什么复杂的事-不外乎到你的园子里去，坐在前廊的秋千上，站在你厨房洗涤池前之类的事。

我样样都记得：你的气息，你夏天一般的味道，你紧贴我身上的皮肤的手感还有在我爱着你时你说悄悄话的声音。

In my imagination, on foggy mornings or afternoons with the sun bouncing off northwest water, I try to think of where you might be in your life and what you might be doing as I'm thinking of you. Nothing complicated--- going out to your garden, sitting on your front porch swing, standing at the sink in your kitchen. Things like that. 

I remember everything. How you smelled, how you tasted like the summer. The feel of your skin against mine, and the sound of your whispers as I loved you.

我不喜欢自怜自艾。我不是这种人。而且大多数时候我不是这种感觉。相反，我有感激之情，因为我至少找到了你。我们本来也可能像一闪而过的两粒宇宙尘埃一样失之交臂。

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.

上帝，或是宇宙，或是不管叫它什么，总之那平衡与秩序的大系统是不承认地球上的时间的。对宇宙来说，四天与四兆光年没有什么区别。我努力记住这一点。但是我毕竟是一个男人。所有我能记起的一切哲学推理都不能阻止我要你，每天，每时，每刻，在我头脑深处是时间残忍的悲号，那永不能与你相聚的时间。
　　我爱你，深深地，全身心地爱你，直到永远。

God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind. 

But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head. 

I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.

对有些古老的风我至今不解，虽然我一直是，而且似乎永远是乘着这些风卷曲的脊梁而行。我徜徉在零度空间，世界在别处另一种物体中与我平行运行。我看世界就像两手插在裤袋里弯身向商店橱窗里张望一样。

There are old winds I still do not understand, though I have been riding, forever it seems, along the curl of their spines. I move in Dimension Z; the world goes by somewhere else in another slice of things, parallel to me. As if, hands in my pockets and bending a little forward, I see it through a department store window, looking inward.

欧几里德不一定全对。他假定平行线一直到头都是平行的。但是非欧几里德式存在也是可能的。两条平行线在遥远的某处相遇。那相交点正在消失，是对会合的幻觉。

但是我知道，我并非仅仅是幻觉而已。有时相会合是可能的-一种现实洋溢到另一种现实中去。那是轻柔的互相缠绕，而不是这个充斥着准确性的世界上所惯见的那种齐整的交织。没有穿梭声，只是……呵气。对了，就是这声音，也是这感觉。呵气。

Euclid was not always right. He assumed parallelness, in constancy, right to the end of things; but a non-Euclidean way of being is also possible, where the lines come together, far out there. A vanishing point. The illusion of convergence.

Yet I know it's more than illusion. Sometimes a coming together is possible, a spilling of one reality into another. A kind of soft enlacing.

下午早些时候她曾去过罗斯曼桥。现在她走到前廊，用毛巾擦干秋千，坐在上面，这里很凉，但是她要呆几分钟，每次都是这样。她走到庭院门口站着，然后走到小巷口。事隔二十二年之后她仍然看见他在近黄昏的午后走出卡车来问路，她还能看见哈里颠簸着驶向乡间公路然后停下-罗伯特。金凯站在踏板上，回头望着小巷。

Earlier in the afternoon, she had visited Roseman Bridge. Now she walked out on the porch, dried off the swing with a towel, and sat down. It was cold, but she would stay for a few minutes, as she always did. Then she walked to the yard gate and stood. Then to the head of the lane. Twenty-two years later, she could see him stepping from his truck in the late afternoon, trying to find his way; she could see Harry bouncing toward the county road, then stopping, and Robert Kincaid standing on the running board, looking back up the lane.

我把活的生命给了我的家庭，我把剩下的遗体给罗伯特。金凯。
I gave my family my life; I gave Robert Kincaid what was left of me.
　　我想理查德知道我内心有他达不到的地方，有时我怀疑他是否发现了我放在梳妆台抽屉里的牛皮纸信封。在他弥留之际在得梅音的一家医院里我坐在他身边他对了我说了以下的话：弗朗西丝卡，我知道你也有过自己的梦，我很抱歉我没能给你。“这是我们共同生活中最动人的时刻。

I think Richard knew there was something in me he could not reach, and I sometimes wonder if he found the manila envelope when I kept it at home in the bureau. Just before he died, I was sitting by him in a Des Moines hospital, and he said this to me: "Francesca, I know you had your own dreams, too. I'm sorry I couldn't give them to you."

在我这方面，我当然决不以同罗伯特。金凯在一起为耻。恰恰相反。这些年来我一直爱着他爱得要命，虽然由于我自己的原因，我只有过一次设法同他联系。

In any case, I'm certainly not ashamed of what Robert Kincaid and I had together. On the contrary. I loved him desperately throughout all these years, though, for my own reasons, I tried to contact him only once.

他们在漫长的一生中只在一起度过了四天，只有四天。就是在我们去参加那可笑的伊利诺伊州博览会的时候。你看妈妈这张照片，我从来没有见过她这样子。她真美。这不是照相的美，而是由于他为她做的一切。你看她，放荡不羁，自由自在，她的头发随风飘起，她的脸生动活泼，真是美妙极了。”

Look at the picture of Mom. I never saw her like that. She's so beautiful, and it's not the photograph. It's what he did for her. Just look at her; she's wild and free. Her hair's blowing in the wind, her face is alive. She just looks wonderful.

约翰，你知道你吹<老于世故的女士>这支曲子的第四节时差不多总是即兴重复的那调子吗？好了，我想我那天早晨把这拍成照片了。那天光线照在水上恰到好处，一只蓝色的苍鹭正好同时翻过我的取景器，我当时听到你吹那重复的调子，同时也真正看见了那曲调，于是扣下扳机。”

John, you know that riff you almost always play in the fourth measure of 'Sophisticated Lady'? Well, I think I got that on film the other morning. The light came across the water just right and a blue heron kind of looped through my viewfinder all at the same time. I could actually see your riff while I was hearing it and hit the shutter.

好家伙，他一边说儿一边儿哭。他大滴大滴眼泪往下落，老人才这么哭法儿，也就是萨克斯管才这么吹法儿。这以后我才明白为什么老是要求我吹。于是，说真格的，我开始喜欢上这小子了。能对一个女人这么钟情的人自己也是值得让人爱的。

And, man, he cried while he talked. He cried big tears, the kind it takes an old man to cry, the kind it takes a saxophone to play. Afterward, I understood why he always requested "Autumn Leaves." And, man, I started to love this guy. Anyone who can feel that way about a woman is worth lovin' himself.

我把那号吹出从来没有过的声音，我让它为他们分离的那些年月，为他们相隔的那千万里路而哭泣。在第一小节有一句立调，好象是在呼她的名字：“弗朗……西丝……卡”

I made that horn sound like it never had before; I made it cry for all the miles and years that separated them. There was a little melodic figure in the first measure that sort of pronounced her name--- "Fran... ces... ca."