小城畸人(外研社双语读库)(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Sherwood Anderson 舍伍德·安德森

出版社：外语教学与研究出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

小城畸人(外研社双语读库)试读：

CHAPTER 1 Hands

第一章 一双手

Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down. Across a long field that had been seeded for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeds, he could see the public highway along which went a wagon filled with berry pickers returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and shouted boisterously. A boy clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed and protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the road kicked up a cloud of dust that floated across the face of the departing sun. Over the long field came a thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing Biddlebaum, comb your hair, it's falling into your eyes," commanded the voice to the man, who was bald and whose nervous little hands fiddled about the bare white fore-head as though arranging a mass of tangled locks.

在俄亥俄州温斯堡镇旁的山谷边缘附近有一座小木屋。一个矮胖的老头儿正焦急地在半旧的走廊上来回踱步。小木屋前是一片开阔的田野，种的是苜蓿，却只开出了浓密的黄色芥末草。穿过田野，他看到一辆货车正在公路上行驶，车上坐满了刚从地里采完浆果回来的人。采浆果的那些年轻的小伙子和姑娘们大笑着、高声喊叫着。一个穿着蓝色衬衣的小伙子跳下货车，并试图把他身后的一个姑娘拽下来，那女孩尖叫着大声抗议。小伙子的脚踩在地上，扬起一片尘土，漂浮在落日的余晖中。田野那头传来了一个尖细的少女似的声音。“噢，温·彼得波姆，你梳梳头发吧，都快掉进眼睛里了！”声音所指的那个老头儿，头上光秃秃的，一双小手紧张地摸了摸白净的脑门，就好像在整理一大团凌乱的头发似的。

Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years. Among all the people of Winesburg but one had come close to him. With George Willard, son of Tom Willard, the proprietor of the New Willard House, he had formed something like a friendship. George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the evenings he walked out along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum's house. Now as the old man walked up and down on the veranda, his hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard would come and spend the evening with him. After the wagon containing the berry pickers had passed, he went across the field through the tall mustard weeds and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously along the road to the town. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own house.

这就是温·彼得波姆，一个总是惊惶不安、疑虑重重的老头儿。他在这个镇上住了二十年，却从来不认为自己是镇上生活的一份子。温斯堡镇里只有一个人和他有交情。那个人叫乔治·威拉德，是新威拉德旅社老板汤姆·威拉德的儿子。乔治和温之间建立了一种类似友谊的感情。乔治·威拉德在《温斯堡鹰报》当记者，有时他会在夜晚沿着公路步行到温·彼得波姆的家里。现在，老头儿就在山谷里来回踱步，双手紧张地四处动着，一心希望乔治能来和他共度这个夜晚。载着采浆果的少男少女的货车过去后，彼得波姆就从那片高高的芥末草地中间穿过田野，爬上铁路的围栏，沿着通向镇上的公路急切地眺望着。他在那里站了一会儿，不停地搓着手，来来回回地向公路张望着。接着，恐惧袭向他，他又跑回房子，重新在自家的门廊上踱步。

In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty years had been the town mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of doubts, came forth to look at the world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house, talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long years of silence.

二十年来，温·彼得波姆一直是小镇上的一个谜。但是，在乔治·威拉德面前，他却没那么怯懦了，而他那淹没于疑虑之海里的若隐若现的个性也得以展现出来。当那位年轻的记者站在他身边时，彼得波姆敢在大白天走上大街，也敢在自己家歪斜的门廊里大步徜徉，兴奋地讲话了。以往低沉而颤抖的声音也变得尖锐而响亮。驼着的背也挺得笔直。就像一尾鱼从渔夫的手中一扭身重又潜入小溪，沉默的彼得波姆一旦开始谈话，那股劲头像是要把漫长沉寂岁月里积攒在他脑袋里的思想全部化作语言一般。

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.

温·彼得波姆很善于用手势语言。他十指纤长，富于表现力，尽管非常活跃，却总是被竭力隐藏在口袋里或是背后。可是，现在这双手变成了他传情达意的生力军。

The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

温·彼得波姆的故事就是这双手的故事。这双手无休止的动作就好像是囚鸟在扑扇着双翼，温·彼得波姆也因此而得名（“温”在英文中和“翼”同音）。——这是镇上的一位无名诗人想出来的。可是，这双手却吓坏了它们的主人。他想要将它们藏起来，同时，他又惊奇地注视着其他人的手——那些手的主人和他并肩在田地里劳作，或者在乡村大路上赶着瞌睡的牲畜经过——他们的手安静而毫无表现力。

When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with them upon a table or on the walls of his house. The action made him more comfortable. If the desire to talk came to him when the two were walking in the fields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a fence and with his hands pounding busily talked with renewed ease.

彼得波姆对乔治说话的时候，紧握着拳头，敲打着桌子或者是他房子的墙。这种行为让他更舒服。当他们在田野里散步，彼得波姆想要谈话的时候，他会设法找到一截树桩或者是一块栅栏顶板，然后用手不停地、重重地敲打着，这样，他就能重新从容自在地交谈了。

The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland.

温·彼得波姆这双手的故事真值得大写特写。如果感性地写，那将会探及无名小卒的诸多奇异美好的品质。可这是诗人的工作。在温斯堡，这双手之所以引人注目仅仅是因为它们的动作而已。凭着这双手，温·彼得波姆曾在一天内摘过多达一百四十夸脱的草莓。这双手成了他的显著特征，使他出了名。它们同样使得这个原本怪异而不可捉摸的人变得更加离奇。温斯堡对温·彼得波姆的双手引以为傲，就好像为班克·怀特的新石头房子感到自豪，或者是因为威斯利·摩耶的的栗色雄马托尼·蒂普在克利夫兰秋季赛马中创下二分十五秒的记录而感到骄傲一样。

As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask about the hands.

至于乔治·威拉德，他也曾经很多次地想要问问有关这双手的事。

At times an almost overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt that there must be a reason for their strange activity and their inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing respect for Wing Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out the questions that were often in his mind.

有时，他被一种几乎无法抗拒的好奇心所控制。他感到其中必定有什么原因使得这双手行为奇特却总是深藏不露。但是，他对这双手的主人的尊敬与日俱增，这使得他没能把这萦绕心头的问题脱口说出。

Once he had been on the point of asking. The two were walking in the fields on a summer afternoon and had stopped to sit upon a grassy bank. All afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked as one inspired. By a fence he had stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon the top board had shouted at George Willard, condemning his tendency to be too much influenced by the people about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried. "You have the inclination to be alone and to dream and you are afraid of dreams. You want to be like others in town here. You hear them talk and you try to imitate them."

有一次，他几乎话到嘴边了。那正是个夏日的午后，他们两人在田野里散步，停下来，坐在草堤边。整个下午，彼得波姆说个不停，情绪高昂。他在篱笆边上停下来，对着乔治·威拉德大声叫嚷着，像只巨型啄木鸟似的，一下一下敲打着顶上的木板。他谴责他太易受旁人左右：“你在毁灭自我，”他大声喊道，“你容易孤独，又喜好做梦，可你又害怕这些梦。你希望和镇上其他的人一样。你听见他们谈话，还试图去模仿。”

On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried again to drive his point home. His voice became soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he launched into a long rambling talk, speaking as one lost in a dream.

坐在草堤边上的时候，温·彼得波姆又尽力阐明观点。他声音变得柔和，充满了怀旧情绪。他心满意足地叹了口气，像个迷失在梦境里的人一样开始了漫无边际的长谈。

Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In the picture men lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green open country came clean-limbed young men, some afoot, some mounted upon horses. In crowds the young men came to gather about the feet of an old man who sat beneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.

他为乔治·维拉德描绘了这个梦。在梦境中，人们重又生活在一种田园牧歌式的黄金时代。越过一片苍翠开阔的乡村，一群手足匀称的年轻小伙子走了过来，有的步行，有的骑马。他们走过去，聚集在一位老人的周围。这位老人坐在小花园的一棵树下，正对着他们侃侃而谈。

Wing Biddlebaum became wholly inspired. For once he forgot the hands. Slowly they stole forth and lay upon George Willard's shoulders. Something new and bold came into the voice that talked. "You must try to forget all you have learned," said the old man. "You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices."

彼得波姆整个人变得亢奋起来。就这一次，他忘记了自己的那双手。慢慢地，这双手滑了出来，停在了乔治·威拉德的肩膀上。彼得波姆说话的声音听起来有些不同，透着勇敢。“你必须尽力忘掉所有你学过的东西，”他说道，“你必须开始做梦。从此刻起，你万不可再听信旁人的高谈阔论。”

Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked long and earnestly at George Willard. His eyes glowed. Again he raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of horror swept over his face.

他停顿下来，热切而长久地注视着乔治。他的眼睛里闪闪发光。接下来，他抬起手轻抚着年轻人。而一瞥惊惧之色随即划过了他的脸庞。

With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. Tears came to his eyes. "I must be getting along home. I can talk no more with you," he said nervously.

彼得波姆浑身一震，跳了起来，然后将手深深地插进了自己的裤袋里。泪水随即涌入了他的眼眶。“我得回家了。我不能再和你多谈了。”他神色慌张地说。

Without looking back, the old man had hurried down the hillside and across a meadow, leaving George Willard perplexed and frightened upon the grassy slope. With a shiver of dread the boy arose and went along the road toward town. "I'll not ask him about his hands," he thought, touched by the memory of the terror he had seen in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong, but I don't want to know what it is. His hands have something to do with his fear of me and of everyone.”

老头儿头也不回地急急忙忙冲下山坡，穿过一片草地，留下乔治困惑又惶恐地坐在绿草如茵的山坡上。年轻人吓得哆嗦了一下，随后站了起来，沿着通向镇上的公路走去。“我不想再问他有关那双手的事了。 ”乔治想着，记起他在老人眼中看到的恐惧，不禁动容。“肯定有什么隐情，可我也不想弄明白。他对我和其他人的惧怕一定和他的那双手有关。”

And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise.

乔治·威拉德是对的。我们不妨简单地说说这双手的故事吧。也许我们的故事会引起某些诗人的注意。那些诗人愿意谈及感化的隐匿奇迹，对他们而言，这双手也不过是两面感化成功的旌旗罢了。

In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher in a town in Pennsylvania. He was not then known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys of his school.

温·彼得波姆年轻时曾经在宾夕法尼亚的一个小镇上当过学校老师。那时他并不叫这个名字，而以音调欠佳的阿道夫·迈尔斯为名。作为教师的阿道夫·迈尔斯深受学校男孩子们的喜爱。

Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men.

阿道夫·迈尔斯生来就是给年轻人当老师的。有些人世上少有，世人难解，性格过分温柔，以至于被当成一种可爱的缺点。他便是其中之一。这类人对于被管教的男孩子们的感情类似于性情温和的女子对于男子的爱情。

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the hair were a part of the schoolmaster's effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream.

可这还不过是粗略的表述。这里需要诗人来解释。阿道夫·迈尔斯曾经同他学校的男孩子们在傍晚散步，或者坐在校舍的台阶上谈天说地直到黄昏，全然迷失在一种梦境中。他的手四处游走，抚摩男孩子们的肩膀，把玩他们蓬蓬乱发的脑袋。当他说话的时候，声音变得轻柔又富于音律。声音也在爱抚着。在某种意义上，这声音和这双手，轻抚肩膀以及抚摸头发，都是这个老师在以某种方式努力将一个梦灌入那些年轻的头脑中。通过手指的爱抚，他也表达了自己的内心。有些人创造生活的力量是发散而不集中的，他亦是其中之一。在他双手的爱抚下，孩子们内心的疑虑被驱散了，于是也开始做梦。

And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the school became enamored of the young master. In his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning went forth to tell his dreams as facts. Strange, hideous accusations fell from his loose-hung lips. Through the Pennsylvania town went a shiver. Hidden, shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.

可这便是悲剧的开始。学校里一个懵懂的男孩子迷恋上了这位年轻的老师。他夜里躺在床上时幻想些不可名状的东西，清晨又将梦境当作事实讲了出来。从他那没有遮拦的嘴里说出了奇怪而可怕的控诉。整个宾夕法尼亚小镇为之不寒而栗。那些曾经隐藏在人们心里的对阿道夫·迈尔斯朦朦胧胧的怀疑，如今一下子激变成了让人坚信不移的事实。

The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were jerked out of bed and questioned. "He put his arms about me," said one. "His fingers were always playing in my hair," said another.

悲剧的势头急转直下。颤栗着的少年们从床上被拽起来问话。“他用胳膊搂过我。”一个孩子说。“他总是用手指抚摸我的头发。”另一个说。

One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse door. Calling Adolph Myers into the school yard he began to beat him with his fists. As his hard knuckles beat down into the frightened face of the school-master, his wrath became more and more terrible. Screaming with dismay, the children ran here and there like disturbed insects. "I'll teach you to put your hands on my boy, you beast," roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of beating the master, had begun to kick him about the yard.

一个下午，镇上的酒吧店主亨利·布莱德福德来到了学校的大门口。他将阿道夫·迈尔斯叫到学校后院，开始用拳头揍他。他坚硬的拳头落在了老师惊恐的脸上，可他的怒火却愈发不可遏止。惶恐不安的孩子们惊声尖叫，四处乱跑，像被惊扰的小虫子。“你竟敢把你的脏手伸到我孩子身上，你这个畜生，我得好好教训教训你。”酒吧店主咆哮着，打得不解气，就开始蛮院子地又踢又踹。

Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in the night. With lanterns in their hands a dozen men came to the door of the house where he lived alone and commanded that he dress and come forth. It was raining and one of the men had a rope in his hands. They had intended to hang the school-master, but something in his figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their hearts and they let him escape. As he ran away into the darkness they repented of their weakness and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls of soft mud at the figure that screamed and ran faster and faster into the darkness. For twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone in Winesburg. He was but forty but looked sixty-five. The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a freight station as he hurried through an eastern Ohio town. He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who raised chickens, and with her he lived until she died. He had been ill for a year after the experience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery worked as a day laborer in the fields, going timidly about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he did not understand what had happened he felt that the hands must be to blame. Again and again the fathers of the boys had talked of the hands. "Keep your hands to yourself," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing, with fury in the schoolhouse yard.

夜里，阿道夫·迈尔斯被从宾西尼亚的小镇赶了出去。一群男人，手里拿着灯笼，聚集到他独居的房子门前，命令他穿好衣服出来。天正下着雨，其中一个人手里还拿着一根绳子。他们本打算将他吊死，但是，这个老师看起来瘦小、苍白、可怜兮兮的，他们动了恻隐之心，于是，就让他逃走了。当他逃进黑暗中的时候，他们又懊悔自己心软，便在后面追赶他，一边咒骂着，一边用木棍和大块的软泥砸向他。老师尖声叫着，越跑越快，终于消失在了夜色里。阿道夫·迈尔斯在温斯堡住了二十年，孑然一身。不过四十来岁的人看上去倒有六十五岁。彼得波姆这个名字也是他在慌忙中经过俄亥俄东部的一个小镇时，在货站的一个货物箱上看到而得来的。他有个姑妈住在温斯堡，是个养鸡的老太太，长了一口黑牙，他一直和她住在一起，直到她去世。在经历了宾夕法尼亚的事情之后，他病了一年。身体康复后，他白天便在田里干活，四处走动时也畏畏缩缩地，总是尽力把手藏起来。尽管他不明白那究竟是怎么一回事，可他感到这双手是罪魁祸首。因为那些男孩的父亲们一次次地提到过这双手。“管好你的脏手。”那个酒吧店主就曾在校园的院子里暴跳如雷地这样咆哮过。

Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond the field was lost in the grey shadows. Going into his house he cut slices of bread and spread honey upon them. When the rumble of the evening train that took away the express cars loaded with the day's harvest of berries had passed and restored the silence of the summer night, he went again to walk upon the veranda. In the darkness he could not see the hands and they became quiet. Although he still hungered for the presence of the boy, who was the medium through which he expressed his love of man, the hunger became again a part of his loneliness and his waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the few dishes soiled by his simple meal and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the crumbs, carrying them to his mouth one by one with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary.

在山谷边，小木屋的回廊上，温·彼得波姆又开始来来回回地踱步。他一直徘徊到夕阳西下，直到田野那头的公路也消失在灰色的阴影里。他进了屋，切了几片面包，涂上蜂蜜。当晚间快车载着一天收获的浆果隆隆驶去，夏夜重新恢复寂静时，他又走到前门廊上。在黑夜中，他看不见那双手，手也一动不动。他仍然热切地盼望乔治能够出现。通过这位年轻人，他向人类表达了自己的亲近之情。但是，这种盼望最终也变成了他孤独的一部分，使得他总在等待。他点亮一盏灯，洗了洗那顿简单的晚餐弄脏的几个盘子，在通向门廊的纱门边支起一张折叠床，准备脱衣服睡觉。一些零星的白面包屑掉在桌旁洗涮干净的地板上；他把灯放在一张矮凳上，开始捡面包屑。然后，把它们一个接一个地放进嘴里，速度惊人。在桌子下浓密的阴影里，他跪着的身影看上去像是一个忙于教堂事务的牧师。他那些紧张而充满表现力的手指，在光影里闪现，人们很可能将它们误认为是信徒的手，在快速地、十个十个地数着念珠。

CHAPTER 2 Paper Pills

第二章 纸球

He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg. Later he married a girl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage she died.

他是一个大鼻子、大手的白胡子老头。很久以前，早在我们认识他以前，他曾是一个医生，赶着匹疲倦的白马穿过温斯堡的街道，从这个房子到下个房子。后来，他娶了个有钱的姑娘。他的岳父在死后给女儿留下了一大片肥沃的农场。这个姑娘文静、高挑，肤色偏黑。在很多人看来，她十分漂亮。温斯堡的人都很好奇，为什么她最后嫁给了这个医生。婚后不到一年，她就死了。

The knuckles of the doctor's hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods. He smoked a cob pipe and after his wife's death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he forgot all about it.

这个医生的手指关节特别粗大。当他双手紧握的时候，看上去就像两个未经涂漆的木制大球，还是用钢针串在一起的、胡桃般大的那种。他用科波烟斗抽烟。在妻子死后，他成天坐在空荡荡的办公室里，挨着一扇结满了蜘蛛网的窗户。他从不打开这扇窗户。他也曾在八月的一个热天试着开窗，却发现窗子已经卡死了。此后，他也完全忘记了这件事。

Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids.

温斯堡已经忘记了这个老人，但是，瑞非医生这个人身上有些非常优秀的品质。他的办公室在海夫纳街区的巴黎干货公司大楼上。他独自一人在发霉的办公室里无休止地工作，试图把他亲手毁掉的东西重新建立起来。他建起一座座小型真理金字塔，然后再将它们敲碎，这样，他或许就有理由去建立其他的金字塔。

Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls, and when the pockets were filled he dumped them out upon the floor. For ten years he had but one friend, anothe old man named John Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes, in a playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the nursery man. "That is to confound you, you blathering old sentimentalist," he cried, shaking with laughter.

瑞非医生是个高个子，一套衣服穿了十年。衣服的袖子磨损了，膝盖和手肘的地方都有小的破洞。他在办公室里也穿着一件亚麻的防尘服，衣服上有大大的口袋，里面总是被他塞满了纸片。数周后，这些纸片就会变成坚硬的、圆圆的小纸球。当口袋被装满的时候，他就把它们倒在地板上。十年来，他只有一个朋友。那是另一个老头，名叫约翰·斯帕尼亚德；他有一间苗圃。有时，老瑞非医生会开玩笑似的从口袋里掏出一把纸球，朝着苗圃的主人扔过去。“那是用来砸晕你的，你这个唠唠叨叨的老感伤派。”他大声地叫道，然后笑得全身直抖。

The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost under-foot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

瑞非医生的故事，还有他向他的妻子——那个高挑的、黑皮肤的姑娘——求爱、结婚，然后获得一大笔遗产的故事非常具有传奇色彩。这个故事很有趣，就像温斯堡果园里长的那种不够圆溜的小苹果一样很美味。秋天里，人们在果园里散步，脚下的土地因结了霜，变得十分坚硬。苹果被工人从树上摘下来。苹果被放进桶里并装船运往各个城市，然后被人们吃掉。被吃掉的地点是在挤满了人，放满了书籍、杂志和家具的公寓里。树上只剩下一些结疤的苹果，工人们一般不会把它们摘下来。它们看起来就像瑞非医生的指关节。咬上一口，真是美味无比。苹果的甜味都集中在边上一个小小的、圆圆的地方。有人会从这棵树跑到那棵树，踩在结了霜的地面上，采摘那些结疤的歪苹果，把口袋装得满满的。只有少数几个人知道这种苹果是甜的。

The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.

瑞非医生和那个姑娘的爱情故事开始于一个夏日的下午。那时他已四十五岁，已经开始养成把口袋装满纸片，把纸片变成硬硬的纸球，然后扔掉的习惯。当他坐着马车，由一匹疲倦的白马拉着在乡村公路上慢慢行进的时候，这种习惯就养成了。他把所思所想都写在纸上，有的是结尾，有的是开头。

One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.

瑞非医生的念头一个个渐渐变成了思想。众多的思想汇集在一起变成了真理，在他脑海里变成了庞然大物。这个真理遮蔽了整个世界。它先是变得可怕，然后渐渐淡去，但随即那些琐碎的思绪又重新冒了出来。

The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she was in the family way and had become frightened. She was in that condition because of a series of circumstances also curious.

那个高个子的黑皮肤姑娘来找瑞非医生，是因为她怀了孕，心中惊惶不安。她之所以会沦落到这步田地也是因为一系列奇妙的际遇。

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.

她的父母双亡，一大片富饶的土地落到了她手里，这就招致了一大群求婚者尾追不舍。两年内，她几乎每晚都有求婚者。除了两个人以外，其他求婚者都大同小异。他们同她谈论激情，望着她的时候，声音和眼睛里有种压抑的渴望。而这与众不同的两个人，彼此也是截然不同的。其中一位身材颀长的年轻人有着白净的手，是温斯堡一个珠宝商的儿子。他总是不停地同她谈及贞洁。每当他同她相处时，总是提到这个话题。而另一个黑发的男子，长着大耳朵，什么也不说，可总是想方设法地将她拉到暗处，然后开始亲吻她。

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to the one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again. She went into his office one morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her.

这个高个的黑姑娘一度曾考虑着应该嫁给珠宝商的儿子。她一言不发地坐上几个小时听他说话，接着她开始感到有些害怕。她觉得，在他关于贞洁的言论表象之下，隐藏着比其他人更加强烈的欲望。有时，在她看来，他说话时是将她的身体抱在手里的。她想象着他用那白净的双手慢慢转动自己的身体，定睛凝视着。夜晚，她梦到他咬了她身上，他的嘴里还滴着血。这样的梦她重复做了三次，然后，她就怀上了那位沉默的求婚者的孩子。他在激情迸发的时刻切切实实地咬在她的肩上，以至于那些牙印多日后还清晰可见。这位姑娘结识了瑞非医生后，似乎不想再离开他。一个清晨，她走进他的办公室，什么都没说，医生却似乎知道她发生了什么事。

In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners, Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman's white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. "I will take you driving into the country with me," he said.

他的办公室里有个女人，是温斯堡书店的老板娘。像所有老式的乡村医师一样，瑞非医生也拔牙。候诊的这个女人用块手帕捂住牙齿在呻吟着。书店老板陪着妻子。当那颗牙被拔出来的时候，他们都尖叫起来，血流到了女人的白色裙子上。可那个高挑的黑姑娘丝毫没有注意。书店老板夫妇离开后，医生笑了起来。“我开车带你去乡下吧。”他说。

For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls.

姑娘和医生好几个星期来几乎天天呆在一起。使姑娘结识医生的那件事经过一场病痛后过去了。但是，她就像那些发现了歪苹果的甜蜜秘密的人一样，对于坐在城市的公寓里吃那些圆溜溜的苹果再也喜欢不起来。在他们结识后的那个秋天，姑娘嫁给了瑞非医生，第二年的春天，她就死了。整个冬天，他把自己写在纸片上的那些零零碎碎的思想都念给她听了。念过之后，他便哈哈大笑，重新把纸片塞进衣袋里，让它们变成又圆又硬的纸球。

CHAPTER 3 Mother

第三章 母亲

Elizabeth Willard the mother of George Willard, was tall and gaunt and her face was marked with smallpox scars. Although she was but forty-five, some obscure disease had taken the fire out of her figure. Listlessly she went about the disorderly old hotel looking at the faded wallpaper and the ragged carpets and, when she was able to be about, doing the work of a chambermaid among beds soiled by the slumbers of fat traveling men. Her husband, Tom Willard, a slender, graceful man with square shoulders, a quick military step, and a black mustache trained to turn sharply up at the ends, tried to put the wife out of his mind. The presence of the tall ghostly figure, moving slowly through the halls, he took as a reproach to himself. When he thought of her he grew angry and swore. The hotel was unprofitable and forever on the edge of failure and he wished himself out of it. He thought of the old house and the woman who lived there with him as things defeated and done for. The hotel in which he had begun life so hopefully was now a mere ghost of what a hotel should be. As he went spruce and business-like through the streets of Winesburg, he sometimes stopped and turned quickly about as though fearing that the spirit of the hotel and of the woman would follow him even into the streets. "Damn such a life, damn it!" he sputtered aimlessly.

伊丽莎白·威拉德是乔治·威拉德的母亲。她个子很高，看上去十分憔悴，脸上布满着天花留下的伤疤。虽然才四十五岁，可某种不知名的疾病已经熄灭了她的生命之火。她无精打采地在这个杂乱无章、又老又旧的旅馆里转悠，看着那些褪了色的墙纸和残破的地毯；而且，当她能够活动时，她会做些清扫女工干的活儿——收拾那些被肥胖的旅客们睡觉时弄脏的床。可她的丈夫，汤姆·威拉德，身材颀长、气质文雅，有着宽宽的肩膀；走路像军人似的迈着大步，黑色的胡子两头梳得翘了起来；他一心想要把妻子置诸脑后。当他看见她那高高的、幽灵似的身影慢慢地穿过大厅时，总是引以为耻。他一想到她，就会怒火攻心，开始咒骂。旅店也不赚钱，总是在破产的边缘挣扎。他一心想自己能摆脱这个负担。他把这座老房子以及和他一起生活的这个女人看成是否中失败的、没救的东西。他曾经满怀希望地想在这个旅馆里开始新生活，可现如今，这个旅馆形同幽灵。当他衣冠楚楚、煞有介事地在温斯堡大街上穿行的时候，他时常会停下来，迅速地转个身，就好像害怕那旅店和他妻子的幽灵会跟着他跑到街上来似的。“这该死的日子，真该死！”他漫无目的、气急败坏地说。

Tom Willard had a passion for village politics and for years had been the leading Democrat in a strongly Republican community. Some day, he told himself, the fide of things political will turn in my favor and the years of ineffectual service count big in the bestowal of rewards. He dreamed of going to Congress and even of becoming governor. Once when a younger member of the party arose at a political conference and began to boast of his faithful service, Tom Willard grew white with fury. "Shut up, you," he roared, glaring about. "What do you know of service? What are you but a boy? Look at what I've done here! I was a Democrat here in Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat. In the old days they fairly hunted us with guns.”

汤姆·威拉德对乡村政治怀有极大的热情。多年来，在这个共和党占主导地位的社区，他一直是一名民主党的领军人物。他跟自己说，有朝一日，政治形势会变得有利于我；这么些年来毫无功效的努力，在论功行赏的时候必然会有巨大的回报。他还梦想着进入国会，甚至当上州长。一次，党内一个比他年轻的成员在一次政治会议上站出来，吹嘘自己忠贞不二的表现，汤姆·威拉德为此气得脸色发白，怒火中烧。“你给我闭嘴！”他咆哮着，怒目圆睁，“你懂什么效劳？你不过是个毛头小子？瞧瞧我都做了什么！在温斯堡还没人敢做个民主党人的时候，我就是个民主党人了。过去，他们竟还用枪抓捕过民主党。”

Between Elizabeth and her one son George there was a deep unexpressed bond of sympathy, based on a girlhood dream that had long ago died. In the son's presence she was timid and reserved, but sometimes while he hurried about town intent upon his duties as a reporter, she went into his room and closing the door knelt by a little desk, made of a kitchen table, that sat near a window. In the room by the desk she went through a ceremony that was half a prayer, half a demand, addressed to the skies. In the boyish figure she yearned to see something half forgotten that had once been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned that. "Even though I die, I will in some way keep defeat from you," she cried, and so deep was her determination that her whole body shook. Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. "If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back," she declared. "I ask God now to give me that privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both."Pausing uncertainly, the woman stared about the boy's room. "And do not let him become smart and successful either," she added vaguely.

伊丽莎白同她唯一的儿子乔治之间联结着一条深切的、难以言说的感情纽带——惺惺相惜之情，源于她少女时候的一个梦，那梦很久以前就泯灭了。同儿子在一起的时候，伊丽莎白是胆怯而保守的。可是，有时乔治在镇上忙忙碌碌、执行记者的公务的时候，她就会来到他的房间，关上门，跪在窗户旁一张小小的、用厨房餐桌改成的书桌旁。就在这个房间的书桌旁，她进行着某种仪式，对着天空念念有词，半是祷告，半是要求。在她儿子身上，她渴望见到某种东西再现，那东西曾经是她的一部分，却已经快被淡忘了。祈祷的内容就是如此。“即使我死去，我也要使你远离失败，”她叫道。她的决心非常强烈，以至于她全身颤抖。她的眼睛灼灼闪光，双拳紧握。“假如我死了，看到我的儿子变成了一个像我一样的无用之辈，我就会回来。”她发誓道，“我恳请上帝现在给予我这种权利。我要求这个特权。我愿意为此付出代价。上帝可以予我以痛击。我情愿承受可能降临的任何打击，只要允许我的儿子能代表我们两个人而有所作为。”她迟疑地停顿了一会儿，开始环顾儿子的房间。“但也不要让他变得精明或者成功。”她模模糊糊地加了一句。

The communion between George Willard and his mother was outwardly a formal thing without meaning. When she was ill and sat by the window in her room he sometimes went in the evening to make her a visit. They sat by a window that looked over the roof of a small frame building into Main Street. By turning their heads they could see through another window, along an alleyway that ran behind the Main Street stores and into the back door of Abner Groff's bakery. Sometimes as they sat thus a picture of village life presented itself to them. At the back door of his shop appeared Abner Groff with a stick or an empty milk bottle in his hand. For a long time there was a feud between the baker and a grey cat that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist. The boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the door of the bakery and presently emerge followed by the baker, who swore and waved his arms about. The baker's eyes were small and red and his black hair and beard were filled with flour dust. Sometimes he was so angry that, although the cat had disappeared, he hurled sticks, bits of broken glass, and even some of the tools of his trade about. Once he broke a window at the back of Sinning's Hardware Store. In the alley the grey cat crouched behind barrels filled with torn paper and broken bottles above which flew a black swarm of flies. Once when she was alone, and after watching a prolonged and ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white hands and wept. After that she did not look along the alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest between the bearded man and the cat. It seemed like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness.

乔治·威拉德同他母亲的感情交流从表面上来看中规中矩、别无他意。当她生病，坐在自己房间的窗边时，他有时会在晚上去看望她。他们会靠着窗户坐着，从窗户望出去，目光可越过窗外一户低矮楼房的屋顶看到大街。转过头，他们可以从另一扇窗户看出去，沿着大街店面后的一条巷道，看到阿布纳·格罗夫面包店的后门。有的时候，他们就那么坐着，一副乡村生活的场景就会展现在他们眼前。阿布纳·格罗夫会手拿一根手杖或一个空牛奶瓶从店的后门出来。这位面包店老板同一只灰猫在很长一段时间里势同水火；那只猫的主人是药剂师西尔维斯特·韦斯特。母子俩看见猫偷偷溜进面包店的后门，又马上出来了，猫后面紧跟着面包店老板；他挥舞着胳膊，大声咒骂着。他小小的眼睛充着血，黑色的头发和胡子上都沾满了面粉。有时，他大发雷霆，尽管猫都跑得不见踪影了，他还在到处猛扔木棍、玻璃碎片，甚至是他做生意用的家伙。有一次，他甚至砸碎了思宁五金店的一扇后窗。那只灰猫经常蹲伏在小巷里的几个木桶后；桶里装满了碎纸片和破酒瓶，一大群黑压压的苍蝇在上面飞来飞去。有一次，伊丽莎白独自坐在那里，看到面包店老板徒劳地发了很久的脾气之后，她把头俯在自己纤长而白皙的手上，哭了起来。从那以后，她再也不往小巷里张望了，而且极力忘记这场面包师和灰猫之间的战争。那就像她自己生活的一场预演，活灵活现得可怕。

In the evening when the son sat in the room with his mother, the silence made them both feel awkward. Darkness came on and the evening train came in at the station. In the street below feet tramped up and down upon a board sidewalk. In the station yard, after the evening train had gone, there was a heavy silence. Perhaps Skinner Leason, the express agent, moved a truck the length of the station platform. Over on Main Street sounded a man's voice, laughing. The door of the express office banged. George Willard arose and crossing the room fumbled for the doorknob. Sometimes he knocked against a chair, making it scrape along the floor. By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly still, listless. Her long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair. "I think you had better be out among the boys. You are too much indoors," she said, striving to relieve the embarrassment of the departure. "I thought I would take a walk," replied George Willard, who felt awkward and confused.

晚上，母子俩坐在房间里时，沉默的气氛让他们都感到尴尬难堪。夜幕降临，晚班车驶进车站。楼下街道上，沉重的脚步声在木板人行道上来来往往。夜班车开走后，车站里一片寂静。也许此时列车代理人斯金纳·利生正在移动一辆卡车，足有整个车站月台那么长。前面的大街上传来了一个男人的大笑声。列车办公室的门被人敲得砰砰响。乔治站起身来，穿过房间，在黑暗里摸索着找门把。有时他会撞在椅子上，椅子在地板上摩擦发出声响。母亲靠窗坐着，一动不动，无精打采。她那双纤长的、苍白而毫无血色的手，无力地垂在扶手的两边。“我想你最好出门去找你的年轻朋友们。你呆在屋里的时间太多了。”她说，竭力消除分别时的尴尬。“我想我该去散会儿步。”乔治回答，心里觉得尴尬又心烦。

One evening in July, when the transient guests who made the New Willard House their temporary home had become scarce, and the hallways, lighted only by kerosene lamps turned low, were plunged in gloom, Elizabeth Willard had an adventure. She had been ill in bed for several days and her son had not come to visit her. She was alarmed. The feeble blaze of life that remained in her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety and she crept out of bed, dressed and hurried along the hallway toward her son's room, shaking with exaggerated fears. As she went along she steadied herself with her hand, slipped along the papered walls of the hall and breathed with difficulty. The air whistled through her teeth. As she hurried forward she thought how foolish she was. "He is concerned with boyish affairs," she told herself. "Perhaps he has now begun to walk about in the evening with girls."

七月，在新威拉德旅店投宿的短期旅客数量减少了。一个夜晚，只点着煤油灯的走廊昏暗不明，显得低矮。伊丽莎白进行了一次难忘的探险。她已卧病在床了好几天，可乔治没有来看望她。她忧虑不安。因为焦虑，她体内微弱的生命余烬被煽动起来，变成了熊熊火焰。她爬下床，穿上衣服，沿着走廊急忙往儿子的房间走去，全身因为被放大的恐惧而簌簌发抖。她用手支撑自己走着，沿着大厅的墙纸悄然疾行，呼吸困难。气流从她的牙齿缝间呼呼吹过。就在她往前赶的时候，她又觉得自己非常愚蠢。“他在忙男孩子该干的事情呢，”她暗自想，“也许他现在已经开始和姑娘们一起在夜里散步呢。”

Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen by guests in the hotel that had once belonged to her father and the ownership of which still stood recorded in her name in the county courthouse. The hotel was continually losing patronage because of its shabbiness and she thought of herself as also shabby. Her own room was in an obscure corner and when she felt able to work she voluntarily worked among the beds, preferring the labor that could be done when the guests were abroad seeking trade among the merchants of Winesburg.

伊丽莎白害怕在旅店里被客人看见。这家旅店过去是她父亲的产业，现在在乡公所的记录里归在她的名下。旅店简陋，不断地失去主顾。现在，她觉得自己也是破旧不堪的了。她的房间在一个不起眼的角落里。当她觉得还能干些事情的时候，她会主动去整理床铺。客人们外出同温斯堡的商户做生意的时候，她愿意做些力所能及的事。

By the door of her son's room the mother knelt upon the floor and listened for some sound from within. When she heard the boy moving about and talking in low tones a smile came to her lips. George Willard had a habit of talking aloud to himself and to hear him doing so had always given his mother a peculiar pleasure. The habit in him, she felt, strengthened the secret bond that existed between them. A thousand times she had whispered to herself of the matter. "He is groping about, trying to find himself," she thought. "He is not a dull clod, all words and smartness. Within him there is a secret something that is striving to grow. It is the thing I let be killed in myself."In the darkness in the hallway by the door the sick woman arose and started again toward her own room. She was afraid that the door would open and the boy come upon her. When she had reached a safe distance and was about to turn a corner into a second hallway she stopped and bracing herself with her hands waited, thinking to shake off a trembling fit of weakness that had come upon her. The presence of the boy in the room had made her happy. In her bed, during the long hours alone, the little fears that had visited her had become giants. Now they were all gone. "When I get back to my room I shall sleep," she murmured gratefully.

母亲跪在儿子房门外的地板上，听着屋里面传出来的响声。等她听见儿子走动和低声说话的时候，唇角浮现出了微笑。乔治有高声自言自语的习惯。每当听见他这样说话的时候，伊丽莎白都会感到特别愉快。在母亲看来，他的这个习惯强化了母子间的那层神秘的关系。她无数次跟自己悄声谈及这个问题。“他正在努力探寻，发掘自我。”她想道，“他不是个迟钝的孩子，能言善道，而且机灵。他身上有种神秘的东西在努力壮大。那正是我曾拥有却被扼杀了的东西。”生病的母亲从走廊门前的地板上直起身来，在黑暗里重新朝着自己的房间走回去。她怕儿子会打开门撞见她。当她到了一个安全的距离，马上要转个弯到另一条走廊上的时候，她才停下来。她用手撑着自己，等了一会儿，想着撑过这一阵因身体虚弱而引起的颤抖。儿子呆在房间里，这让她十分高兴。在她独自躺在床上的漫长时光里，拜访她的那些小小的担忧曾经变成了巨人。可现在都烟消云散了。“回到房间我就该睡了。”她心怀感激地喃喃说道。

But Elizabeth Willard was not to return to her bed and to sleep. As she stood trembling in the darkness the door of her son's room opened and the boy's father, Tom Willard, stepped out. In the light that steamed out at the door he stood with the knob in his hand and talked. What he said infuriated the woman.

但是，她不能回到床上睡觉了。当她在黑暗中颤抖着站起来的时候，儿子的门打开了，走出来的却是她的丈夫汤姆·威拉德。他站在门开着的亮光中，手扶着门把，说着话。他的话立刻激怒了这位母亲。

Tom Willard was ambitious for his son. He had always thought of himself as a successful man, although nothing he had ever done had turned out successfully. However, when he was out of sight of the New Willard House and had no fear of coming upon his wife, he swaggered and began to dramatize himself as one of the chief men of the town. He wanted his son to succeed. He it was who had secured for the boy the position on the Winesburg Eagle. Now, with a ring of earnestness in his voice, he was advising concerning some course of conduct. "I tell you what, George, you've got to wake up," he said sharply. "Will Henderson has spoken to me three times concerning the matter. He says you go along for hours not hearing when you are spoken to and acting like a gawky girl. What ails you?"Tom Willard laughed good-naturedly. "Well, I guess you'll get over it," he said. "I told Will that. You're not a fool and you're not a woman. You're Tom Willard's son and you'll wake up. I'm not afraid. What you say clears things up. If being a newspaper man had put the notion of becoming a writer into your mind that's all right. Only I guess you'll have to wake up to do that too, eh?”

汤姆·威拉德对儿子有很高的期望。他一直自认为是个成功的男人，尽管他从没做成过一件成功的事。但是，一旦他离开新威拉德旅店，而且不用担心会碰见自己的妻子的时候，他便大摇大摆地开始扮演这个城镇上的大人物。他想要他的儿子成功。是他为儿子在《温斯堡鹰报》谋得了一个职位。此时，他正用一种恳切的语气就为人之道对儿子进行说教。“我告诉你，乔治，你得醒醒了。”他严厉地说，“就这个问题，威尔·亨德森已经对我说过三次了。他说你很长一段时间都对他说的话充耳不闻，行动起来像个傻里傻气的姑娘。你有什么烦心事吗？”汤姆·威拉德和善地笑了起来。“我想你会改掉这个毛病的。”他说，“我是这样告诉威尔的。你既不傻也不是个娘娘腔。你是我汤姆·威拉德的儿子，你会打起精神来的。我一点儿都不担心。你所说的证明了这一点。即使当记者使你产生了当作家的念头，那也是可以的。只不过我想你总得振作起来努把力吧，嗯？”

Tom Willard went briskly along the hallway and down a flight of stairs to the office. The woman in the darkness could hear him laughing and talking with a guest who was striving to wear away a dull evening by dozing in a chair by the office door. She returned to the door of her son's room. The weakness had passed from her body as by a miracle and she stepped boldly along. A thousand ideas raced through her head. When she heard the scraping of a chair and the sound of a pen scratching upon paper, she again turned and went back along the hallway to her own room.

汤姆步履轻快地沿着走廊下了一段楼梯，进了自己的办公室。伊丽莎白在黑暗里能听见他大笑的声音，还有他同一个顾客的谈话声。那位客人坐在靠近办公室门边的椅子上，打着瞌睡，试图以此来消磨枯燥的夜晚。她返身往儿子的房门走去。身体虚弱奇迹般地消失了，她大胆自信地向前走着。她脑袋里飞快地闪过无数念头。当听到椅子摩擦地面的声音和笔落在纸上的沙沙声时，她重又转过身，沿着来时的走廊往自己的房间走去。

A definite determination had come into the mind of the defeated wife of the Winesburg hotel keeper. The determination was the result of long years of quiet and rather ineffectual thinking. "Now," she told herself, "I will act. There is something threatening my boy and I will ward it off."The fact that the conversation between Tom Willard and his son had been rather quiet and natural, as though an understanding existed between them, maddened her. Although for years she had hated her husband, her hatred had always before been a quite impersonal thing. He had been merely a part of something else that she hated. Now, and by the few words at the door, he had become the thing personified. In the darkness of her own room she clenched her fists and glared about. Going to a cloth bag that hung on a nail by the wall she took out a long pair of sewing scissors and held them in her hand like a dagger. "I will stab him," she said aloud. "He has chosen to be the voice of evil and I will kill him. When I have killed him something will snap within myself and I will die also. It will be a release for all of us."

这位失败的妻子——温斯堡旅店的老板娘——在心里做了一个不可动摇的决定。这个决定是长年累月思考的结果，尽管这种思考是无声而且毫无成效的。“现在，” 她对自己说，“我得做点什么了。有件事情正在威胁着我的孩子，我不能让它发生。”父子间刚才的谈话平静而自然，就好像他们之间相互理解一样。这样的事实使她抓狂。多年以来，尽管伊丽莎白恨自己的丈夫，她的憎恨之前一直是以一种置身事外的形式存在着。他不过是她所恨着的某件不相干的东西的一部分。可是现在，他在门边说的那几句话，使他变成了一个活生生的可恨之人。她站在自己黑暗的房间里，紧握着拳头，愤怒地环顾四周。她走到墙边，从挂在钉子上的布袋里取出一把长长的缝纫剪刀，像把匕首似的握在手里。“我要捅死他。”她大声地说,“他自己选择了当魔鬼的代言人，我要杀了他。一旦我杀了他，我的生命也会中止，我也会死掉。这样我们就都解脱了。”

In her girlhood and before her marriage with Tom Willard, Elizabeth had borne a somewhat shaky reputation in Winesburg. For years she had been what is called "stage-struck" and had paraded through the streets with traveling men guests at her father's hotel, wearing loud clothes and urging them to tell her of life in the cities out of which they had come. Once she startled the town by putting on men's clothes and riding a bicycle down Main Street.

在她的少女时代，在嫁给汤姆·威拉德之前，伊丽莎白在温斯堡的名声就不大好。多年来，她一直想做演员，曾经穿着花哨的衣服，跟她父亲旅店里的客人一起在街上招摇过市。那些人来自不同的城市，她总追着他们给她讲述那里的生活。有一次，她穿着男人的衣服，在大街上骑自行车，把全镇的人都吓了一跳。

In her own mind the tall dark girl had been in those days much confused. A great restlessness was in her and it expressed itself in two ways. First there was an uneasy desire for change, for some big definite movement to her life. It was this feeling that had turned her mind to the stage. She dreamed of joining some company and wandering over the world, seeing always new faces and giving something out of herself to all people. Sometimes at night she was quite beside herself with the thought, but when she tried to talk of the matter to the members of the theatrical companies that came to Winesburg and stopped at her father's hotel, she got nowhere. They did not seem to know what she meant, or if she did get something of her passion expressed, they only laughed. "It's not like that," they said. "It's as dull and uninteresting as this here. Nothing comes of it.”

在那段日子里，这个高个子、黑皮肤的姑娘心里很混乱。内心巨大的躁动通过两个途径被释放了出来。首先，她渴望变化，渴望生活能发生大而明确的变化，尽管这种渴望会使她感到焦虑不安。正是这种情感使得她将注意力转向了舞台。她梦想能加入某个剧团，然后周游世界，不停地结识新的人，将自己的某些东西展现给所有人看。有时，她在夜晚想得如痴如醉，不能自已。但是，当她试着同一些来温斯堡住在她父亲旅店的剧团谈这个问题的时候，她却一无所获。他们似乎弄不明白她在说什么，或者，当她确实表达出了自己强烈的感情时，他们却只是哈哈大笑。“事情并非你想的样子。”他们说，“哪里都一样，和这里一样地乏味无趣。没什么结果的。”

With the traveling men when she walked about with them, and later with Tom Willard, it was quite different. Always they seemed to understand and sympathize with her. On the side streets of the village, in the darkness under the trees, they took hold of her hand and she thought that something unexpressed in herself came forth and became a part of an unexpressed something in them.

同那些旅行的人一起四处散步及后来同汤姆·威拉德在一起，却是极为不同的。他们似乎总能理解她，并赞同她。在乡村的小路上，在树下的阴影里，他们握住她的手，她觉得体内某种未表达出的东西释放了出来，并化作了他们身上未表现出的某种东西的一部分。

And then there was the second expression of her restlessness. When that came she felt for a time released and happy. She did not blame the men who walked with her and later she did not blame Tom Willard. It was always the same, beginning with kisses and ending, after strange wild emotions, with peace and then sobbing repentance. When she sobbed she put her hand upon the face of the man and had always the same thought. Even though he were large and bearded she thought he had become suddenly a little boy. She wondered why he did not sob also.

这便是她释放躁动的第二种方式。每当那时，她都会一度感到放松和快乐。她既没有责备那些同她散步的人，后来，她也没有责备汤姆·威拉德。事情总是这样，从亲吻开始，经历了奇怪的激情之后，归于平静，最后是哭泣着忏悔。当她哭泣时，会把手放在那个男人的脸上，心里总有相同的想法。即使对方身材高大、满脸胡子，她也觉得他突然变成了小男孩。她奇怪为什么他不和她一样哭泣。

In her room, tucked away in a corner of the old Willard House, Elizabeth Willard lighted a lamp and put it on a dressing table that stood by the door. A thought had come into her mind and she went to a closet and brought out a small square box and set it on the table. The box contained material for make-up and had been left with other things by a theatrical company that had once been stranded in Winesburg. Elizabeth Willard had decided that she would be beautiful. Her hair was still black and there was a great mass of it braided and coiled about her head. The scene that was to take place in the office below began to grow in her mind. No ghostly worn-out figure should confront Tom Willard, but something quite unexpected and startling. figureTall and with dusky cheeks and hair that fell in a mass from her shoulders, a figure should come striding down the stairway before the startled loungers in the hotel office. The figure would be silent—it would be swift and terrible. As a tigress whose cub had been threatened would she appear, coming out of the shadows, stealing noiselessly along and holding the long wicked scissors in her hand.

她的房间位于这间旅店的一个角落里。伊丽莎白·威拉德在她房里点了盏灯，并将灯放在门边的梳妆台上。她忽然想到了什么，走到壁橱前，拿出一个小的方盒子，放在桌子上。盒子里装着化妆用的材料，是一个剧团滞留在温斯堡镇的时候留下来的；他们还留了其他东西。伊丽莎白觉得她该弄得漂亮些。她的头发依旧乌黑，厚厚的头发编成发辫盘在头上。接下来在楼下办公室将要发生的情景开始在她脑海里预演。一个像幽灵一样憔悴的人影是无法同汤姆·威拉德对抗的，除非是某种很出人意料、令人吃惊的东西。一个高高的人影，双颊灰白，头发大片地垂过肩膀，会大步地走下楼梯，来到旅店办公室，站在目瞪口呆的闲人面前。这个人影将是沉默的——行动迅猛而可怕。她将会像护卫受到威胁的幼仔的母虎一样，无声无息地从阴暗的地方出现，潜行，手里紧握着长长的凶器。

With a little broken sob in her throat, Elizabeth Willard blew out the light that stood upon the table and stood weak and trembling in the darkness. The strength that had been as a miracle in her body left and she half reeled across the floor, clutching at the back of the chair in which she had spent so many long days staring out over the tin roofs into the main street of Winesburg. half reeled across the floorIn the hallway there was the sound of footsteps and George Willard came in at the door. Sitting in a chair beside his mother he began to talk. "I'm going to get out of here," he said. "I don't know where I shall go or what I shall do but I am going away.”

伊丽莎白低低地发出一声伤心的呜咽，吹灭了桌上的灯，虚弱地站在黑暗中发抖。身体里那股奇迹般的力量已经消失，她几乎是踉踉跄跄地穿过地板，紧紧抓住椅背。在这张椅子上，她曾度过了漫长的岁月——坐在上面越过锡制的屋顶，望着温斯堡的大街。走廊里响起了脚步声，接着，乔治从门外走了进来。他坐在母亲身边的椅子上，开始说话。“我打算离开这儿。”他说，“我不知道该去哪儿，也不知道该做什么，但我要离开了。”

The woman in the chair waited and trembled. An impulse came to her. "I suppose you had better wake up," she said. "You think that? You will go to the city and make money, eh? It will be better for you, you think, to be a business man, to be brisk and smart and alive?"She waited and trembled.

这位母亲坐在椅子上，等着，颤抖不已。她感到一阵冲动。“我想你该醒醒了。”她说，“你在想什么？跑到城市里，然后赚些钱，是吗？你可能认为这对你比较适合——做个商人，自信、干练、精明，然后就这么活着？”她等了等，不停地颤抖。

The son shook his head. "I suppose I can't make you understand, but oh, I wish I could," he said earnestly. "I can't even talk to father about it. I don't try. There isn't any use. I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think.”

儿子摇了摇头。“我想我无法让您明白，但是，我真希望我能做到啊。”他恳切地说，“我甚至不能和爸爸谈这个。我不会去试的。没什么意义。我真不知道该做什么。我只不过想出去走走，看看其他人，思考一下。”

Silence fell upon the room where the boy and woman sat together. Again, as on the other evenings, they were embarrassed. After a time the boy tried again to talk. "I suppose it won't be for a year or two but I've been thinking about it," he said, rising and going toward the door. "Something father said makes it sure that I shall have to go away."He fumbled with the doorknob. In the room the silence became unbearable to the woman. She wanted to cry out with joy because of the words that had come from the lips of her son, but the expression of joy had become impossible to her. "I think you had better go out among the boys. You are too much indoors," she said. "I thought I would go for a little walk," replied the son stepping awkwardly out of the room and closing the door.

母子俩一起坐在那里，又一次沉默相对。于是，像无数个夜晚那样，他们感到尴尬。过了一会儿，儿子试着重新开口。“我想这用不了一两年，可我一直想这么做。”他站起来，向门走去，说道，“爸爸说的话让我更加确信，是时候出去走走了。”他摸索着门把。房间里，沉默变得让这位母亲难以忍受。儿子刚才所说的话使她欢喜得想要大叫出来，可是对她而言，欢乐的表情已变得不可能。“我想你最好出去找伙伴们。你呆在屋里的时间太多了。”她说。“我想，我该出去走走。”儿子回答，同时极不自然地大步走出了房间，关上了门。

CHAPTER 4 The Philosopher

第四章 哲学家

Doctor Parcival was a large man with a drooping mouth covered by a yellow mustache. He always wore a dirty white waistcoat out of the pockets of which protruded a number of the kind of black cigars known as stogies. His teeth were black and irregular and there was something strange about his eyes. The lid of the left eye twitched; it fell down and snapped up; it was exactly as though the lid of the eye were a window shade and someone stood inside the doctor's head playing with the cord.

帕斯瓦尔医生身材高大，嘴角下垂，留着一撇黄色的小胡子。他总穿着一件脏兮兮的白马甲，口袋里鼓鼓囊囊地塞满了廉价细长的黑雪茄。他的牙齿发黑、十分不整齐，眼睛也有些奇怪。左眼皮总在抽搐，落下去又猛地睁开，活像一扇百叶窗，并且有人站在他脑袋里面，把玩着那根窗绳。

Doctor Parcival had a liking for the boy, George Willard. It began when George had been working for a year on the Winesburg Eagle and the acquaintanceship was entirely a matter of the doctor's own making.

帕斯瓦尔医生特别喜欢一个年轻人——乔治·威拉德。事情开始于乔治在《温斯堡鹰报》工作的一年后。他们的交情全是医生的一厢情愿。

In the late afternoon Will Henderson, owner and editor of the Eagle, went over to Tom Willy's saloon. Along an alleyway he went and slipping in at the back door of the saloon began drinking a drink made of a combination of sloe gin and soda water. Will Henderson was a sensualist and had reached the age of forty-five. He imagined the gin renewed the youth in him. Like most sensualists he enjoyed talking of women, and for an hour he lingered about gossiping with Tom Willy. The saloon keeper was a short, broad-shouldered man with peculiarly marked hands. That flaming kind of birthmark that sometimes paints with red the faces of men and women had touched with red Tom Willy's fingers and the backs of his hands. As he stood by the bar talking to Will Henderson he rubbed the hands together. As he grew more and more excited the red of his fingers deepened. It was as though the hands had been dipped in blood that had dried and faded.

某个傍晚，《鹰报》的老板兼主编——威尔·亨德森前往汤姆·威利的酒吧。他沿着小巷走，悄悄从酒吧的后门进去,然后喝一种掺苏打水的黑刺李杜松子酒。威尔·亨德森是个好色之徒，已经四十五岁了。他觉着杜松子酒能让他青春焕发。同大多数酒色之徒一样，他也喜欢谈论女人。他在那里逗留了一个小时，同汤姆·威利闲谈风月。酒吧的老板是个矮个子的男人，肩膀很宽，手上有种特殊的记号。那是一种胎记。人们有时会在男人或女人的脸上见到，红红的，就像火焰。汤姆·威利的手指和手背上就有这种红色的胎记。他站在吧台边上同威利·亨德森聊天的时候，不停地搓着手。随着他变得越来越兴奋，手指上的红色也变深了。这情景就好像是之前手曾被浸入血中，只不过血已经变干、变淡了。

As Will Henderson stood at the bar looking at the red hands and talking of women, his assistant, George Willard, sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle and listened to the talk of Doctor Parcival.

当威利·亨德森在酒吧看着这双红色的手闲谈风月的时候，他的助手乔治·威拉德正坐在《温斯堡鹰报》的办公室里，聆听帕斯瓦尔医生的高见。

Doctor Parcival appeared immediately after Will Henderson had disappeared. One might have supposed that the doctor had been watching from his office window and had seen the editor going along the alleyway. Coming in at the front door and finding himself a chair, he lighted one of the stogies and crossing his legs began to talk. He seemed intent upon convincing the boy of the advisability of adopting a line of conduct that he was himself unable to define.

威尔·亨德森刚离开报社，这位医生就来了。这让人不禁怀疑，这位医生是否一直在从他办公室的窗户里监视这里，并且看到主编大人拐进了那条小巷。他从前门一进来，就给自己找了把椅子坐下，然后点了根廉价细长的雪茄，跷起二郎腿，聊了起来。看起来，他是打算说服这个年轻人采纳某种连他自己都无法界定的做人之道。

"If you have your eyes open you will see that although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few patients," he began. "There is a reason for that. It is not an accident and it is not because I do not know as much of medicine as anyone here. I do not want patients. The reason, you see, does not appear on the surface. It lies in fact in my character, which has, if you think about it, many strange turns. Why I want to talk to you of the matter I don't know. I might keep still and get more credit in your eyes. I have a desire to make you admire me, that's a fact. I don't know why. That's why I talk. It's very amusing, eh?”“如果你留意过的话，你会发现，虽然我自称医生，其实并没有几个病人。”他开口说道，“这是有原因的。这不是种偶然，也不是因为我比这儿的任何人都学艺不精。我不想给人看病。你该明白，这个原因不是浮在表面上的。它是由于我的性格。如果你仔细想想，就会发现我性格里有很多奇怪的地方。我也不明白为什么我想把这件事告诉你。我可以保持沉默，然后获得你更多的信任。事实上，我倒很希望你能仰慕我。我也不知道这是怎么回事。所以想同你谈谈。这很有趣，不是吗？”

Sometimes the doctor launched into long tales concerning himself. To the boy the tales were very real and full of meaning. He began to admire the fat unclean-looking man and, in the afternoon when Will Henderson had gone, looked forward with keen interest to the doctor's coming.

时不时地，这位医生会对他自己的经历大谈特谈一番。在年轻人听来，那些故事是非常真实、意味深长的。他开始对这位胖胖的、看上去很邋遢的人心生敬仰。每当威尔·亨德森下午离开时，他就很期待那位医生的光临。

Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about five years. He came from Chicago and when he arrived was drunk and got into a fight with Albert Longworth, the baggageman. The fight concerned a trunk and ended by the doctor's being escorted to the village lockup. When he was released he rented a room above a shoe-repairing shop at the lower end of Main Street and put out the sign that announced himself as a doctor. Although he had but few patients and these of the poorer sort who were unable to pay, he seemed to have plenty of money for his needs. He slept in the office that was unspeakably dirty and dined at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small frame building opposite the railroad station. In the summer the lunch room was filled with flies and Biff Carter's white apron was more dirty than his floor. Doctor Parcival did not mind. Into the lunch room he stalked and deposited twenty cents upon the counter. "Feed me what you wish for that," he said laughing. "Use up food that you wouldn't otherwise sell. It makes no difference to me. I am a man of distinction, you see. Why should I concern myself with what I eat.”

帕斯瓦尔医生来温斯堡镇有五年了。他来自芝加哥。到这儿的时候酩酊大醉，还同脚夫阿尔伯特·朗沃思打了一架。打架的起因源于一个行李箱，结果是医生被押往村拘留所。等到他被释放后，他就在大街街尾的一家修鞋店的楼上租了个房间，挂牌行医了。尽管他没几个病人，有也是穷得付不了诊费的，可他看起来生活阔绰，足以满足自己的所需。他睡在脏得没法形容的诊室里，在火车站对面一间名叫比夫·卡特午餐厅的小木屋里吃饭。夏天的时候，午餐厅里飞满了苍蝇；老板身上的围裙比地板还要脏。可帕斯瓦尔医生一点也不介意。他满不在乎地走进午餐厅，扔了二十美分在柜台上。“随便给我弄些吃的。”他笑着说，“用你卖不出去的菜就行了。我无所谓的。我是个有身份的人，你知道的。我不会在乎吃的东西。”

The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard began nowhere and ended nowhere. Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies. And then again he was convinced that they contained the very essence of truth.

医生说给乔治听的故事都是没头没尾的。有时候，乔治觉得那都是他杜撰的，一派胡言。可接下来，他又坚信故事里包含了真谛。

"I was a reporter like you here," Doctor Parcival began. "It was in a town in Iowa—or was it in Illinois? I don't remember and anyway it makes no difference. Perhaps I am trying to conceal my identity and don't want to be very definite. Have you ever thought it strange that I have money for my needs although I do nothing? I may have stolen a great sum of money or been involved in a murder before I came here. There is food for thought in that, eh? If you were a really smart newspaper reporter you would look me up. In Chicago there was a Doctor Cronin who was murdered. Have you heard of that? Some men murdered him and put him in a trunk. In the early morning they hauled the trunk across the city. It sat on the back of an express wagon and they were on the seat as unconcerned as anything. Along they went through quiet streets where everyone was asleep. The sun was just coming up over the lake. Funny, eh—just to think of them smoking pipes and chattering as they drove along as unconcerned as I am now. Perhaps I was one of those men. That would be a strange turn of things, now wouldn't it, eh?”Again Doctor Parcival began his tale: "Well, anyway there I was, a reporter on a paper just as you are here, running about and getting little items to print. My mother was poor. She took in washing. Her dream was to make me a Presbyterian minister and I was studying with that end in view.“我做过记者，和你在这儿一样。”帕斯瓦尔医生开口说，“是在艾奥瓦州或是伊利诺伊州的一个小镇？我记不清了，反正这不重要。或许我正在试图隐瞒我的身份，不想被人看穿。你是不是也觉得奇怪？我虽然无所事事，可还衣食无忧。也许在来这里之前，我偷过一大笔钱，又或者，涉及过一场谋杀案。这些都能让人浮想联翩，不是吗？你要真是个机灵点儿的记者，你就该调查调查我。芝加哥有个名叫克罗宁的医生被人谋杀。你听说了吗？有些人杀了他，然后把尸体装进一个箱子。清晨，他们把箱子从城市一头拖到另一头。他们把它放在一辆高速货车后面，然后，若无其事地坐在座位上。他们静悄悄地穿过城市的大街小巷，那时人们还在睡觉呢。太阳刚从湖面上升起来。有趣吧——想想看，他们抽着烟斗，赶着车，若无其事地聊着天，就像我现在这个样子。或许我就是其中之一。现在事情就会出现奇怪的变化了，你说是吗？”医生又开始往下讲：“嗯，无论如何我都在那儿做过报社记者，就像你现在这样。四处跑跑，找点小新闻，登在报纸上。我妈妈是个穷人。她靠给人洗衣服谋生。她的梦想是让我当个长老会的牧师，我就为这个读的书。

"My father had been insane for a number of years. He was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. There you see I have let it slip out! All of this took place in Ohio, right here in Ohio. There is a clew if you ever get the notion of looking me up."“我爸疯了很多年。他呆在俄亥俄州代顿的一家精神病院里。你看，我不小心说漏嘴了！所有一切都发生在这里，就在俄亥俄州。如果你有心要调查我，这就是个线索。”

"I was going to tell you of my brother. That's the object of all this. That's what I'm getting at. My brother was a railroad painter and had a job on the Big Four. You know that road runs through Ohio here. With other men he lived in a box car and away they went from town to town painting the railroad property—switches, crossing gates, bridges, and stations.”“我打算跟你说说我的兄弟。这才是我的真正意图。我马上要讲到正题了。他是个铁路油漆工，在四大铁路公司工作。你知道铁路穿过俄亥俄州。他和其他工人一起住在货柜车厢里，往返于各个城镇间，给铁路设施涂漆——开关、闸门、桥梁和车站。”

"The Big Four paints its stations a nasty orange color. How I hated that color! My brother was always covered with it. On pay days he used to get drunk and come home wearing his paint-covered clothes and bringing his money with him. He did not give it to mother but laid it in a pile on our kitchen table.”“四大铁路公司的车站涂的是那种令人恶心的橘红色油漆。我真讨厌这种颜色！我的兄弟身上总有这种颜色。发薪水的时候，他常喝得烂醉，回家时穿着那件满是油漆的衣服，身上带着钱。他从不把钱给母亲，就那么摞成一摞堆在厨房的桌上。”

"About the house he went in the clothes covered with the nasty orange colored paint. I can see the picture. My mother, who was small and had red, sad-looking eyes, would come into the house from a little shed at the back. That's where she spent her time over the washtub scrubbing people's dirty clothes. In she would come and stand by the table, rubbing her eyes with her apron that was covered with soap-suds.”“他总穿着那件满是橘红色油漆的恶心衣服在房里走动。我现在还能回忆起那个场景。我的母亲很瘦小，眼睛红红的，表情悲伤，总是从后门的一个小棚子走进房子里。那是她洗衣服的地方，她每天趴在洗衣盆上刷洗别人的脏衣服。她会走进来站在桌子边上，用围裙揉揉眼睛，围裙上满是肥皂沫。”

“'Don't touch it! Don't you dare touch that money,' my brother roared, and then he himself took five or ten dollars and went tramping off to the saloons. When he had spent what he had taken he came back for more. He never gave my mother any money at all but stayed about until he had spent it all, a little at a time. Then he went back to his job with the painting crew on the railroad. After he had gone things began to arrive at our house, groceries and such things. Sometimes there would be a dress for mother or a pair of shoes for me.”“‘别碰！看谁敢动那钱！’我的兄弟咆哮着说。接着，他就拿着五或十美元，踏着沉重的脚步往酒吧去了。等他花光了拿去的钱，他就回家来再拿。他从不给母亲一分钱。每次都呆在外面直到把钱花光，一次花一点儿。之后，他就和别的油漆工回铁路上去上班了。他走之后，蔬菜和一些生活用品就源源不断地被送到家里来。有时，会带回给妈妈的裙子，或是给我的鞋。”

"Strange, eh? My mother loved my brother much more than she did me, although he never said a kind word to either of us and always raved up and down threatening us if we dared so much as touch the money that sometimes lay on the table three days."“很奇特，对不对？虽然他没对我们说过一句好话，还总是暴跳如雷地威胁我们不准动他放在桌上的钱——哪怕那钱会放上三天，可我母亲还是更偏爱他些。”

"We got along pretty well. I studied to be a minister and prayed. I was a regular ass about saying prayers. You should have heard me. When my father died I prayed all night, just as I did sometimes when my brother was in town drinking and going about buying the things for us. In the evening after supper I knelt by the table where the money lay and prayed for hours. When no one was looking I stole a dollar or two and put it in my pocket. That makes me laugh now but then it was terrible. It was on my mind all the time. I got six dollars a week from my job on the paper and always took it straight home to mother. The few dollars I stole from my brother's pile I spent on myself, you know, for trifles, candy and cigarettes and such things.”“我们关系很好。我为了做牧师读书，还祈祷。我祷告时就是个不折不扣的蠢蛋。你真该听听。我爸死的时候，我祈祷了一整晚。我兄弟在镇上喝酒、忙着给我们买东西的时候，我也时常这样为大家祈祷。晚饭过后，我会跪在放钱的桌子旁，祈祷好几个小时。趁着没人注意，从桌上偷一两块，放进自己的口袋。现在我说起来觉得好笑，可在那时，真是胆战心惊。我一直都记得这件事。我在报社工作，每周能挣六块钱，我总是直接拿回家给母亲。可从桌上那一摞钱里偷的几块我都花在了自己身上。你知道，都用来买了些小东西，糖、香烟什么的。”

"When my father died at the asylum over at Dayton, I went over there. I borrowed some money from the man for whom I worked and went on the train at night. It was raining. In the asylum they treated me as though I were a king."“父亲在代顿的精神病院里过世的时候，我曾去过。我向我的老板借了一些钱，晚上乘火车去的。那时下着雨。在精神病院，他们款待我的样子就好像我是个国王。”

"The men who had jobs in the asylum had found out I was a newspaper reporter. That made them afraid. There had been some negligence, some carelessness, you see, when father was ill. They thought perhaps I would write it up in the paper and make a fuss. I never intended to do anything of the kind."“在那家精神病院工作的人发现我是个报社记者。这让他们很害怕。要知道，当我父亲病重的时候，他们有些疏忽大意。他们觉得我可能会小题大作地在报纸上报道一番。可我从没这么想过。”

Anyway, in I went to the room where my father lay dead and blessed the dead body. I wonder what put that notion into my head. Wouldn't my brother, the painter, have laughed, though. There I stood over the dead body and spread out my hands. The superintendent of the asylum and some of his helpers came in and stood about looking sheepish. It was very amusing. I spread out my hands and said, 'Let peace brood over this carcass.' That's what I said.”Jumping to his feet and breaking off the tale, Doctor Parcival began to walk up and down in the office of the Winesburg Eagle where George Willard sat listening. He was awkward and, as the office was small, continually knocked against things. "What a fool I am to be talking," he said. "That is not my object in coming here and forcing my acquaintanceship upon you. I have something else in mind. You are a reporter just as I was once and you have attracted my attention. You may end by becoming just such another fool. I want to warn you and keep on warning you. That's why I seek you out.”“总之，我走进父亲停灵的房间，对着他的尸体开始祷告。我弄不清为什么我会那么做。即便这样，我那当油漆工的兄弟也不会笑话我。我站在尸体身旁，伸出双手。精神病院的院长和他的助手们走了进来，站在旁边，看着很窘迫。那场面很滑稽。我伸出双手说道：‘愿这具畜体安息。’我就是这么说的。”他一下站了起来，中断了讲述，开始在报社的办公室里来回地踱步，乔治·威拉德就坐在那里听着。他动作笨拙，办公室很小，所以总磕磕碰碰。“我说这些真像个傻瓜。”他说，“我来这儿可不是因为想强迫你同我交朋友。我有别的打算。你是个记者，我曾经也是。所以，你引起了我的注意。你有可能最后也变成另一个像我一样的傻瓜。我想给你提个醒，并一直想给你敲敲警钟。我就是为这个找你的。”

Doctor Parcival began talking of George Willard's attitude toward men. It seemed to the boy that the man had but one object in view, to make everyone seem despicable. "I want to fill you with hatred and contempt so that you will be a superior being," he declared. "Look at my brother. There was a fellow, eh? He despised everyone, you see. You have no idea with what contempt he looked upon mother and me. And was he not our superior? You know he was. You have not seen him and yet I have made you feel that. I have given you a sense of it. He is dead. Once when he was drunk he lay down on the tracks and the car in which he lived with the other painters ran over him."

于是，帕斯瓦尔医生开始和乔治谈起了处世之道。可在乔治看来，他只有一个目的——让人人都看起来卑鄙。“我想让你充满憎恨和藐视，这样，你才能成为人上人。”他郑重地说，“你看我的兄弟，他就是个例子，不是吗？要知道，他谁也瞧不起。你压根儿想不到他有多瞧不起我和母亲。他难道不比我们强吗？你知道的，他确实如此。你没见过他，可我已经让你感觉到了。我已经让你有了这种感觉。他死了。有一次他喝醉了，躺在铁轨上。他同其他油漆工住的那节车厢从他身上碾了过去。”

One day in August Doctor Parcival had an adventure in Winesburg. For a month George Willard had been going each morning to spend an hour in the doctor's office. The visits came about through a desire on the part of the doctor to read to the boy from the pages of a book he was in the process of writing. To write the book Doctor Parcival declared was the object of his coming to Winesburg to live.

八月的一天，帕斯瓦尔医生在温斯堡有过一次难忘的经历。那个月，乔治每天早上都会到医生的办公室呆上一个小时。因为医生想给乔治读读他在写的一本书。医生声称，他正是为了写这本书才住到温斯堡来的。

On the morning in August before the coming of the boy, an incident had happened in the doctor's office. There had been an accident on Main Street. A team of horses had been frightened by a train and had run away. A little girl, the daughter of a farmer, had been thrown from a buggy and killed.

八月的一个早上，乔治还没来。医生的诊室里发生了一个小插曲。大街上发生了一起事故。一群马被火车惊了，跑掉了。一个农夫的女儿——一个小姑娘，从马车上被甩下来，摔死了。

On Main Street everyone had become excited and a cry for doctors had gone up. All three of the active practitioners of the town had come quickly but had found the child dead. From the crowd someone had run to the office of Doctor Parcival who had bluntly refused to go down out of his office to the dead child. The useless cruelty of his refusal had passed unnoticed. Indeed, the man who had come up the stairway to summon him had hurried away without hearing the refusal.

大街上的人都惊动了，都叫着要找医生来。镇上三位积极的医生迅速赶了过去，却发现孩子已经死了。人群里有人跑到帕斯瓦尔医生的办公室，但医生却断然拒绝去救那个死去的孩子。当事人并没有注意到他的冷酷拒绝。事实上，奔上楼来叫他的人，没听见他拒绝就匆匆忙忙地走掉了。

All of this, Doctor Parcival did not know and when George Willard came to his office he found the man shaking with terror. "What I have done will arouse the people of this town," he declared excitedly. "Do I not know human nature? Do I not know what will happen? Word of my refusal will be whispered about. Presently men will get together in groups and talk of it. They will come here. We will quarrel and there will be talk of hanging. Then they will come again bearing a rope in their hands."

帕斯瓦尔医生显然对此也一无所知。乔治·威拉德走进他的办公室的时候，发现医生害怕得浑身发抖。“我的所作所为肯定会激起公愤的。”他大声喊起来，“我还不了解人类的本性吗？我还不知道会发生些什么吗？人们肯定会私下传播我拒绝的消息。不久，他们就会聚集起来，议论纷纷。他们会到这儿来。我们会争论一番，然后提到绞刑。接着，再来时，他们就会手里拿着根绳子。”

Doctor Parcival shook with fright. "I have a presentiment," he declared emphatically. "It may be that what I am talking about will not occur this morning. It may be put off until tonight but I will be hanged. Everyone will get excited. I will be hanged to a lamp post on Main Street."

医生害怕得一直抖。“我有预感，”他郑重其事地宣布，“我刚才说的一切估计不会在今天早上发生。可最迟拖到晚上，我就会被吊死。他们会群情激愤。我将会被吊死在大街的灯柱上。”

Going to the door of his dirty office, Doctor Parcival looked timidly down the stairway leading to the street. When he returned the fright that had been in his eyes was beginning to be replaced by doubt. Coming on tiptoe across the room he tapped George Willard on the shoulder. "If not now, sometime," he whispered, shaking his head. "In the end I will be crucified, uselessly crucified."

他走到他那脏兮兮的办公室的门边，畏畏缩缩地看着通往街道的楼梯。等他转回身来的时候，眼里的恐惧开始变成了怀疑。他轻手轻脚地穿过房间走过来，拍了拍乔治的肩膀。“如果不是现在，有朝一日也会，”他低声地说道，摇摇头，“最后，我也会被钉死的，毫无意义地钉死。”

Doctor Parcival began to plead with George Willard. "You must pay attention to me," he urged. "If something happens perhaps you will be able to write the book that I may never get written. The idea is very simple, so simple that if you are not careful you will forget it. It is this—that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. That's what I want to say. Don't you forget that. Whatever happens, don't you dare let yourself forget.”

医生又开始恳求乔治。“你必须对我留点心。”他催促道，“如果有事发生，或许你能把我没写完的书完成。这本书的主题很简单，简单到稍不留心就会忘记。那就是——世上人人都是基督，都被钉在十字架上。这就是我想说的。你千万别忘了。无论发生什么，你千万别忘记。”

CHAPTER 5 Nobody Knows

第五章 无人知晓

Looking cautiously about, George Willard arose from his desk in the office of the Winesburg Eagle and went hurriedly out at the back door. The night was warm and cloudy and although it was not yet eight o'clock, the alleyway back of the Eagle office was pitch dark. A team of horses tied to a post somewhere in the darkness stamped on the hard-baked ground. A cat sprang from under George Willard's feet and ran away into the night. The young man was nervous. All day he had gone about his work like one dazed by a blow. In the alleyway he trembled as though with fright.

乔治·威拉德先四处小心地望了望，然后从《温斯堡鹰报》办公室的书桌后站起身，急急忙忙地从后门出去了。这是个温暖而阴沉的夜晚，尽管不到八点，《鹰报》办公楼后的小巷内已经一片漆黑。黑暗中，一群马被拴在一根柱子上，踢着腿，蹬在烤得发硬的地面上。一只猫从乔治·威拉德脚下跳了过去，消失在黑夜里。年轻人有些紧张。一整天，他都像个被打昏了的人似的忙着工作。在巷子里，他就好像是被惊吓了似的颤抖着。

In the darkness George Willard walked along the alleyway, going carefully and cautiously. The back doors of the Winesburg stores were open and he could see men sitting about under the store lamps. In Myerbaum's Notion Store Mrs.Willy the saloon keeper's wife stood by the counter with a basket on her arm. Sid Green the clerk was waiting on her. He leaned over the counter and talked earnestly.

乔治·威拉德在黑暗里小心翼翼地沿着小巷走着。温斯堡各个商店的后门都开着，他可以看见人们在店里的灯下闲坐着。在梅尔波姆杂货店里，酒吧店的老板娘威利太太站在柜台边，胳膊上挽着一个篮子。店员锡德·格林陪在她旁边。他斜靠在柜台上面，郑重其事地说着话。

George Willard crouched and then jumped through the path of light that came out at the door. He began to run forward in the darkness. Behind Ed Griffith's saloon old Jerry Bird the town drunkard lay asleep on the ground. The runner stumbled over the sprawling legs. He laughed brokenly.

乔治·威拉德蹲下身子，随即一跃，跳过了从门口照出来的一片亮光。他开始在黑暗里向前奔跑。在埃德·格里菲思酒吧店的后面，老酒鬼杰里·伯德躺在地上睡着了。乔治绊在他伸出来的腿上。他笑得喘不过气。

George Willard had set forth upon an adventure. All day he had been trying to make up his mind to go through with the adventure and now he was acting. In the office of the Winesburg Eagle he had been sitting since six o'clock trying to think.

乔治·威拉德在做件冒险的事。这一整天，他都在竭力下定决心要将这件事做到底。现在，他就在付诸实践。在《鹰报》的办公室里，他从六点钟开始就一直坐着，努力思考着。

There had been no decision. He had just jumped to his feet, hurried past Will Henderson who was reading proof in the printshop and started to run along the alleyway.

他并没有做出什么决定。他于是跳起来，匆忙越过在印刷室里校样的威尔·亨德森，开始沿着小巷奔跑起来。

Through street after street went George Willard, avoiding the people who passed. He crossed and recrossed the road. When he passed a street lamp he pulled his hat down over his face. He did not dare think. In his mind there was a fear but it was a new kind of fear. He was afraid the adventure on which he had set out would be spoiled, that he would lose courage and turn back.

乔治·威拉德跑过一条又一条街道，躲过沿路的行人。他穿过马路，再穿回来。当穿过一盏街灯的时候，他把帽子拉下来盖住脸。他不敢想。他心里有种恐惧，可这是种新的恐惧。他害怕正在进行的这个冒险被破坏，那他将会失去勇气，无功而返。

George Willard found Louise Trunnion in the kitchen of her father's house. She was washing dishes by the light of a kerosene lamp. There she stood behind the screen door in the little shedlike kitchen at the back of the house. George Willard stopped by a picket fence and tried to control the shaking of his body. Only a narrow potato patch separated him from the adventure. Five minutes passed before he felt sure enough of himself to call to her. "Louise! Oh, Louise!" he called. The cry stuck in his throat. His voice became a hoarse whisper.

乔治·威拉德看见路易丝·特鲁宁在她父亲的厨房里。她在一盏煤油灯下洗着盘子。厨房在房子的后面，像个小棚屋似的。她就站在纱门后面。乔治·威拉德停在一道尖尖的篱笆旁，竭力控制他颤抖的身体。隔开他同这次冒险行为的只有一片窄小的土豆地。五分钟后，他才觉得有足够的信心开口叫她。“路易丝！哦，路易丝！”他叫道。叫声卡在了他的喉咙里。他的声音变成了嘶哑的低语。

Louise Trunnion came out across the potato patch holding the dish cloth in her hand. "How do you know I want to go out with you," she said sulkily. "What makes you so sure?"

路易丝·特鲁宁穿过那片土豆地走出来，手里还拿着洗碗布。“你怎么知道我想同你一起出去？”她闷闷不乐地说，“你凭什么这么自信？”

George Willard did not answer. In silence the two stood in the darkness with the fence between them.

乔治·威拉德没有答话。两个人隔着篱笆默默地站在黑暗里。

"You go on along," she said. "Pa's in there. I'll come along. You wait by Williams' barn.”“你先走吧。”她说，“我爸爸在那儿，我就来。你在威廉斯的谷仓旁等我。”

The young newspaper reporter had received a letter from Louise Trunnion. It had come that morning to the office of the Winesburg Eagle. The letter was brief. "I'm yours if you want me," it said. He thought it annoying that in the darkness by the fence she had pretended there was nothing between them. "She has a nerve! Well, gracious sakes, she has a nerve," he muttered as he went along the street and passed a row of vacant lots where corn grew. The corn was shoulder high and had been planted right down to the sidewalk. When Louise Trunnion came out of the front door of her house she still wore the gingham dress in which she had been washing dishes. There was no hat on her head. The boy could see her standing with the doorknob in her hand talking to someone within, no doubt to old Jake Trunnion, her father. Old Jake was half deaf and she shouted. The door closed and everything was dark and silent in the little side street. George Willard trembled more violently than ever.

年轻的记者收到过路易丝·特鲁宁的一封信。信是早上送到《鹰报》办公室的。内容很简洁。上面写的是：“如果你愿意，我就是你的。”可是，刚才在黑漆漆的篱笆边上她装作两人之间毫无关系的样子让他觉得气恼。“她真放肆！嘿，老天，她真放肆！”他低声嘟囔着，顺着街道走过一排种着玉米的空地。玉米长到人的肩膀那么高，一直种到了人行道上。路易丝从家里的前门出来，仍旧穿着洗碗时的格子布裙。她没有戴帽子。乔治看见她握着门把站在那里，同门里的人说话，毫无疑问，是同她的父亲，老杰克·特鲁宁。老杰克有些耳聋，她大声地嚷着。门关上了，小巷里一片漆黑寂静。乔治·威拉德比以往抖得更厉害了。

In the shadows by Williams' barn George and Louise stood, not daring to talk. She was not particularly comely and there was a black smudge on the side of her nose. George thought she must have rubbed her nose with her finger after she had been handling some of the kitchen pots.

乔治和路易丝站在谷仓旁的阴影里，谁也不敢开口。她并不是很漂亮，鼻子旁还有块黒印。乔治想，她一定是在拿过厨房的锅后拿手指檫过鼻子。

The young man began to laugh nervously. "It's warm," he said. He wanted to touch her with his hand. "I'm not very bold," he thought. Just to touch the folds of the soiled gingham dress would, he decided, be an exquisite pleasure. She began to quibble. "You think you're better than I am. Don't tell me, I guess I know," she said drawing closer to him.

这个年轻人开始神经质地大笑起来。“天气很暖和啊，”他说。他想用手碰碰她。“我不要太冒失。”他想。他打定主意，就去摸摸她那条弄脏了的格子棉裙的花边，那应该也很美妙。她开始找茬了。“你觉得你比我强。别告诉我，我想我知道。”她说着，向他靠近了些。

A flood of words burst from George Willard. He remembered the look that had lurked in the girl's eyes when they had met on the streets and thought of the note she had written. Doubt left him. The whispered tales concerning her that had gone about town gave him confidence. He became wholly the male, bold and aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her. "Ah, come on, it'll be all right. There won't be anyone know anything. How can they know?" he urged.

乔治·威拉德突然滔滔不绝地开始说话了。他记起在街上遇见的时候，这姑娘的眼睛里曾隐藏着的神情，然后他想起她写的那封信。他不再怀疑了。小镇里流传的那些关于她的事情给了他信心。他变得雄性十足，放肆大胆、勇往直前。在他的内心，他并不同情她。“啊，过来，没关系的。没人会知道。他们怎么可能知道呢？”他怂恿道。

They began to walk along a narrow brick sidewalk between the cracks of which tall weeds grew. Some of the bricks were missing and the sidewalk was rough and irregular. He took hold of her hand that was also rough and thought it delightfully small. "I can't go far," she said and her voice was quiet, unperturbed.

他们开始沿着一条狭窄的砖块铺成的人行道往前走；砖头缝里长着长长的杂草。有的地方砖头都没了，路面凹凸不平。他握住她的手。那只手也十分粗糙，可他觉得小得可爱。“我不能走远。”她说，声音安静而镇定。

They crossed a bridge that ran over a tiny stream and passed another vacant lot in which corn grew. The street ended. In the path at the side of the road they were compelled to walk one behind the other. Will Overton's berry field lay beside the road and there was a pile of boards. "Will is going to build a shed to store berry crates here," said George and they sat down upon the boards.

他们穿过一座小溪上的桥，然后经过了另一片长着玉米的空地。到了街道的尽头。在马路旁的小道上，他们只能一前一后地走。威尔·奥佛顿的浆果地就在马路边，那里有堆木板。“威尔打算在这里搭个棚子来放浆果箱。”乔治说，然后他们就在木板上坐了下来。

When George Willard got back into Main Street it was past ten o'clock and had begun to rain. Three times he walked up and down the length of Main Street. Sylvester West's Drug Store was still open and he went in and bought a cigar. When Shorty Crandall the clerk came out at the door with him he was pleased. For five minutes the two stood in the shelter of the store awning and talked. George Willard felt satisfied. He had wanted more than anything else to talk to some man. Around a corner toward the New Willard House he went whistling softly.

当乔治·威拉德回到大街上的时候，已经十点多了，而且开始下雨了。他在大街上来回走了整整三趟。西尔维斯特·韦斯特的杂货店还在营业，他进去买了支雪茄。店员肖提·克兰德尔送他出门的时候，他心情愉快。两个人站在店门的避雨蓬下聊了五分钟。乔治·威拉德感到心满意足。他特别想找个人聊聊。他轻轻地吹着口哨，往街转角的新威拉德旅店走去。

On the sidewalk at the side of Winney's Dry Goods Store where there was a high board fence covered with circus pictures, he stopped whistling and stood perfectly still in the darkness, attentive, listening as though for a voice calling his name. Then again he laughed nervously. "She hasn't got anything on me. Nobody knows," he muttered doggedly and went on his way.

他停在温尼的干货店旁的人行道上，那里有一块高高的木栅栏，上面贴满了马戏团的照片。他一动不动地站在黑暗中，停止了吹口哨，开始聚精会神地聆听，就好像有个声音在叫他的名字似的。接着，他又神经兮兮地笑起来。“她什么也没从我这儿得到。没人知道。”他固执地喃喃自语，然后继续走他的路。

CHAPTER 6 Godliness

第六章 虔诚

A Tale in Four Parts

一个由四部分组成的故事

I

一

There were always three or four old people sitting on the front porch of the house or puttering about the garden of the Bentley farm. Three of the old people were women and sisters to Jesse. They were a colorless, soft voiced lot. Then there was a silent old man with thin white hair who was Jesse's uncle.

本特利农场里总有三四位老人，或坐在房前的门廊里，或在花园里散步。其中的三位老太太是女的，是杰西的姐姐。她们面容苍白,说起话来轻声细语。还有一位是杰西的叔叔，有一头稀少的白发，总是缄默不语的。

The farmhouse was built of wood, a board outer-covering over a framework of logs. It was in reality not one house but a cluster of houses joined together in a rather haphazard manner. Inside, the place was full of surprises. One went up steps from the living room into the dining room and there were always steps to be ascended or descended in passing from one room to another. At meal times the place was like a beehive. At one moment all was quiet, then doors began to open, feet clattered on stairs, a murmur of soft voices arose and people appeared from a dozen obscure corners.

这座农舍用木头建成，是一大块向外伸着的木板盖在木头架子上。事实上，这不是一座房子，而是好几座，不过以相当无序的方式连在一起了。房子里面处处令人吃惊。从起居室到餐厅要上台阶，从一个房间走到另一个也要上下台阶。吃饭的时候，这个地方就像个马蜂窝。开始时，一切都很安静；接着，门纷纷被打开，杂乱的脚步声在台阶上响起；然后，听到轻声的喃喃自语，这些人便从各个不起眼的角落里冒了出来。

Besides the old people, already mentioned, many others lived in the Bentley house. There were four hired men, a woman named Aunt Callie Beebe, who was in charge of the housekeeping, a dull-witted girl named Eliza Stoughton, who made beds and helped with the milking, a boy who worked in the stables, and Jesse Bentley himself, the owner and overlord of it all.

除了之前提及的四位老人，农场里还住着许多人。这里有四个男仆；有管理家务的考利·毕比大妈；负责铺床和挤牛奶的傻丫头伊莱扎·斯托顿；收拾马厩的一个小伙子；还有杰西·本特利本人，他是这里的主人，主宰一切。

By the time the American Civil War had been over for twenty years, that part of Northern Ohio where the Bentley farms lay had begun to emerge from pioneer life. Jesse then owned machinery for harvesting grain. He had built modern barns and most of his land was drained with carefully laid tile drain, but in order to understand the man we will have to go back to an earlier day.

那时，美国内战已过去二十年了，本特利农场所在的俄亥俄北部地区已经开始从拓荒生活中崛起。杰西当时已经拥有了收割稻谷的机器。他已经建起了新式的谷仓，还用仔细铺设的排水瓦管给大多数土地排了水。但为了弄明白这个人，我们还得从更早的时候说起。

The Bentley family had been in Northern Ohio for several generations before Jesse's time. They came from New York State and took up land when the country was new and land could be had at a low price. For a long time they, in common with all the other Middle Western people, were very poor. The land they had settled upon was heavily wooded and covered with fallen logs and underbrush. After the long hard labor of clearing these away and cutting the timber, there were still the stumps to be reckoned with. Plows run through the fields caught on hidden roots, stones lay all about, on the low places water gathered, and the young corn turned yellow, sickened and died.

在杰西这一辈之前，本特利家族已经有好几代人在俄亥俄北部居住了。他们来自纽约州；当时这片土地还未经开垦，所以可以以低价买到，于是他们便买下了地，在这里扎根下来。在很长的一段时间内，他们同中西部的其他美国人一样，非常贫穷。他们定居的土地上森林繁茂，满是倒下来的原木和矮树丛。他们付出了长期而艰苦的劳动来清理这些东西、砍伐木材。但现在他们还有残留的树桩需要清理。耕地时，犁常会碰上埋在地下的树根和遍地都是的石头；低洼的地方有积水；刚长出来的玉米就变黄、枯萎，最后死掉了。

When Jesse Bentley's father and brothers had come into their ownership of the place, much of the harder part of the work of clearing had been done, but they clung to old traditions and worked like driven animals. They lived as practically all of the farming people of the time lived. In the spring and through most of the winter the highways leading into the town of Winesburg were a sea of mud. The four young men of the family worked hard all day in the fields, they ate heavily of coarse, greasy food, and at night slept like tired beasts on beds of straw. Into their lives came little that was not coarse and brutal and outwardly they were themselves coarse and brutal. On Saturday afternoons they hitched a team of horses to a three-seated wagon and went off to town. In town they stood about the stoves in the stores talking to other farmers or to the store keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in the winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with mud. Their hands as they stretched them out to the heat of the stoves were cracked and red. It was difficult for them to talk and so they for the most part kept silent. When they had bought meat, flour, sugar, and salt, they went into one of the Winesburg saloons and drank beer. Under the influence of drink the naturally strong lusts of their natures, kept suppressed by the heroic labor of breaking up new ground, were released. A kind of crude and animal-like poetic fervor took possession of them. On the road home they stood up on the wagon seats and shouted at the stars. Sometimes they fought long and bitterly and at other times they broke forth into songs. Once Enoch Bentley, the older one of the boys, struck his father, old Tom Bentley, with the butt of a teamster's whip, and the old man seemed likely to die. For days Enoch lay hid in the straw in the loft of the stable ready to flee if the result of his momentary passion turned out to be murder. He was kept alive with food brought by his mother, who also kept him informed of the injured man's condition. When all turned out well he emerged from his hiding place and went back to the work of clearing land as though nothing had happened.

等到杰西的父亲和兄弟们接手这片土地时，大部分艰苦的清理工作已经完成。可是，他们仍旧坚持旧式的农作方式，像牲口似的劳作。他们几乎和当时所有的庄稼汉们一样生活着。在春天和大部分冬天，通往温斯堡镇的大路都是一片泥泞。家里的四个年轻男人整天都在地里拼命干活，吃大量粗糙、油腻的食物，晚上睡在稻草床上，像累坏了的野兽一般。他们的生活中很少有不粗俗、不野蛮的人；表面上看，他们自己也是粗鄙、鲁莽的。每到周六下午，他们就赶着马，驾着一辆三人座的马车往小镇上去。在那里，他们会围在商店的火炉边上，同别的农夫或者店主们交谈。他们穿着套头衣，冬天时就穿着厚厚的、满是泥点的外套。他们在烤火时伸出来的手是干裂发红的。他们不善交谈，于是大多时候保持缄默。当他们买了肉、面粉、糖和盐之后，便会找间温斯堡的酒吧去喝啤酒。在酒精的作用下，平时被开垦新疆土的英雄劳动所压抑的、天生的强烈欲望便被释放了出来。他们被一种原始的、类似动物般的、充满诗意的热情所控制。回家途中，他们站在马车座位上，对着星星大叫大嚷。有时他们会长时间凶狠地斗殴，有时则会放声高歌。有一次，老大伊诺克·本特利用一个马车夫的马鞭鞭柄抽了他的父亲老汤姆·本特利一顿，老头看上去都要断气了。有好多天，艾诺克都藏在马厩阁楼的稻草堆里。一旦他那一时冲动的结果变成谋杀，他便准备偷偷逃走。他靠母亲带来的食物维系生命，她也将老头的伤情告诉他。情况一好转，他就从藏身之处冒了出来，像什么都没发生过一样回去开垦土地。

The Civil War brought a sharp turn to the fortunes of the Bentleys and was responsible for the rise of the youngest son, Jesse. Enoch, Edward, Harry, and Will Bentley all enlisted and before the long war ended they were all killed. For a time after they went away to the South, old Tom tried to run the place, but he was not successful. When the last of the four had been killed he sent word to Jesse that he would have to come home.

内战迅速地改变了本特利家族的命运，也成就了最小的儿子杰西。伊诺克·本特利、爱德华·本特利、哈里·本特利和威尔·本特利全都报名参了军；在漫长的战争结束之前，他们全死在了战场上。他们离家前往南方打仗之后，老汤姆曾试着独自耕作，却没能成功。当最后一个儿子也死在战场上时，他给杰西捎信，要他无论如何必须回家。

Then the mother, who had not been well for a year, died suddenly, and the father became altogether discouraged. He talked of selling the farm and moving into town. All day he went about shaking his head and muttering. The work in the fields was neglected and weeds grew high in the corn. Old Tim hired men but he did not use them intelligently. When they had gone away to the fields in the morning he wandered into the woods and sat down on a log. Sometimes he forgot to come home at night and one of the daughters had to go in search of him.

接着，病了一年的母亲突然去世，父亲便完全意志消沉了。他谈到想卖掉农场，搬到镇上去。他整天四处游荡，摇着脑袋喃喃自语。田地被荒废，玉米地里杂草丛生。老汤姆雇来工人却不善管理。工人们早上到田里干活的时候，他便在树林里盘桓，坐在一根木头上。有时候他晚上也忘了回家，女儿不得不四处寻找。

When Jesse Bentley came home to the farm and began to take charge of things he was a slight, sensitive-looking man of twenty-two. At eighteen he had left home to go to school to become a scholar and eventually to become a minister of the Presbyterian Church. All through his boyhood he had been what in our country was called an "odd sheep" and had not got on with his brothers. Of all the family only his mother had understood him and she was now dead. When he came home to take charge of the farm, that had at that time grown to more than six hundred acres, everyone on the farms about and in the nearby town of Winesburg smiled at the idea of his trying to handle the work that had been done by his four strong brothers.

杰西·本特利回到农场的家里开始接管一切的时候，已经是个二十二岁的成年男子了，看上去瘦弱而敏感。他十八岁时离家去上学，想成为一名学者，最后做一名长老会的神父。整个少年时期，他就是那种农村里称为“乖僻的羊”的人；他同几个哥哥的关系也不好。家里只有母亲理解他，但她现在也过世了。他回家接管的农场在那时已经扩大到了超过六百英亩。见他没法去接手过去由四个身强力壮的哥哥干的活，附近农场和温斯堡镇郊的所有人都嘲笑他。

There was indeed good cause to smile. By the standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man at all. He was small and very slender and womanish of body and, true to the traditions of young ministers, wore a long black coat and a narrow black string tie. The neighbors were amused when they saw him, after the years away, and they were even more amused when they saw the woman he had married in the city.

事实上，他们也有足够的理由笑话他。按照当时的标准，杰西看上去完全不像个男人。他瘦小纤细，身材像个女人；着装严格按照年轻牧师的传统穿戴：一件黑色长外套，系了个窄窄的黑色蝶形领结。每次邻居们看见他都忍俊不禁。多年以后，当他们看见他娶的城里的妻子时更是乐不可支。

As a matter of fact, Jesse's wife did soon go under. That was perhaps Jesse's fault. A farm in Northern Ohio in the hard years after the Civil War was no place for a delicate woman, and Katherine Bentley was delicate. Jesse was hard with her as he was with everybody about him in those days. She tried to do such work as all the neighbor women about her did and he let her go on without interference. She helped to do the milking and did part of the housework; she made the beds for the men and prepared their food. For a year she worked every day from sunrise until late at night and then after giving birth to a child she died.

事实上，他的妻子不久便死了。那或许都是杰西的错。在战后的艰难时世里，一个北俄亥俄州的农场并不适合雅致的女性；可凯瑟琳·本特利正是一位雅致的女人。杰西待她十分严厉，如同他那时待身边的每个人一样。她努力像周围所有的女人那样去干活，他也任她去，不加干涉。她帮着挤牛奶，做一部分家务，还给男人们铺床煮饭。她就这样每天从早到晚地操劳了一年，刚生完一个孩子就死了。

As for Jesse Bentley—although he was a delicately built man there was something within him that could not easily be killed. He had brown curly hair and grey eyes that were at times hard and direct, at times wavering and uncertain. Not only was he slender but he was also short of stature. His mouth was like the mouth of a sensitive and very determined child. Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed in getting what he wanted out of life and he did not know what he wanted. Within a very short time after he came home to the Bentley farm he made everyone there a little afraid of him, and his wife, who should have been close to him as his mother had been, was afraid also. At the end of two weeks after his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him the entire ownership of the place and retired into the background. Everyone retired into the background. In spite of his youth and inexperience, Jesse had the trick of mastering the souls of his people. He was so in earnest in everything he did and said that no one understood him. He made everyone on the farm work as they had never worked before and yet there was no joy in the work. If things went well they went well for Jesse and never for the people who were his dependents. Like a thousand other strong men who have come into the world here in America in these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He could master others but he could not master himself. The running of the farm as it had never been run before was easy for him. When he came home from Cleveland where he had been in school, he shut himself off from all of his people and began to make plans. He thought about the farm night and day and that made him successful. Other men on the farms about him worked too hard and were too fired to think, but to think of the farm and to be everlastingly making plans for its success was a relief to Jesse. It partially satisfied something in his passionate nature. Immediately after he came home he had a wing built on to the old house and in a large room facing the west he had windows that looked into the barnyard and other windows that looked off across the fields. By the window he sat down to think. Hour after hour and day after day he sat and looked over the land and thought out his new place in life. The passionate burning thing in his nature flamed up and his eyes became hard. He wanted to make the farm produce as no farm in his state had ever produced before and then he wanted something else. It was the indefinable hunger within that made his eyes waver and that kept him always more and more silent before people. He would have given much to achieve peace and in him was a fear that peace was the thing he could not achieve.

至于杰西·本特利本人——虽然他体格柔弱，可他体内仍有些东西不会被轻易抹杀。他有着一头棕色的卷发和一双灰色的眼睛。有时眼神冷酷而犀利，有时游移不定。他不但长得瘦，而且个头较矮。他的嘴很像一个敏感而非常固执的孩子的嘴。杰西·本特利是个狂热分子。他生来同这个时代和地方格格不入，因此，他备受煎熬，也折磨着别人。他从未成功地从生活里得到他想要的东西，而他也不知道他想要什么。在他回到本特利农场的一段非常短的时间内，农场里的人都有些怕他。他的妻子本应当像他母亲那样同他亲近，却也一样怕他。他回家两周后，老汤姆·本特利就将这个地方的全部所有权移交给了他，自己则退隐到幕后。人人都退隐到了幕后。尽管杰西年轻、缺乏经验，可他自有方法降伏他的手下。他对自己的所言所行极为较真，以至于没人能理解。他使农场里的人空前地忙碌，然而工作毫无乐趣。如果事情进展顺利，那也只对杰西有利，而对那些赖他生存的人而言则毫无益处。就像其他后期来到美国的成千上万的强者一样，杰西仅仅是外强中干而已。他能掌控别人，却无法控制自己。管理这个从未被管理过的农场于他是一件易事。他一从就学的克利夫兰回到家，就不与他的所有手下接触，而是自己着手制定计划。他夜以继日地对农场进行筹谋，并取得了成功。他周边其他农场的人都在过于辛苦地工作，过于激情似火，而无暇思考，可对杰西而言，考虑农场，并为使农场经营成功而不断制定计划却是一种放松。这部分地满足了他狂热天性中的某种东西。他一回家就紧挨着老屋搭建了一间偏房，里面有间朝西的大房间，一边的窗户能看到谷场，另一边的窗户能望到整个田野。他就坐在窗边思考。日复一日，他接连好几个小时坐在那里眺望这片土地，悟出了新的人生定位。天性中燃烧着的热情开始变成熊熊大火，他的眼神也变得坚定起来。他想让农场的产出达到州内其他的农场无法企及的目标，接下来，他还想要些别的什么。他内心的这种莫名的饥渴使他的眼神犹疑，在人前也愈发沉默。他本当多多付出以获得一种平静，但他心里担心这种平静是自己无法企及的。

All over his body Jesse Bentley was alive. In his small frame was gathered the force of a long line of strong men. He had always been extraordinarily alive when he was a small boy on the farm and later when he was a young man in school. In the school he had studied and thought of God and the Bible with his whole mind and heart. As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod. Although in his absorption in himself and in his own destiny he was blind to the fact that his young wife was doing a strong woman's work even after she had become large with child and that she was killing herself in his service, he did not intend to be unkind to her. When his father, who was old and twisted with toil, made over to him the ownership of the farm and seemed content to creep away to a corner and wait for death, he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old man from his mind.

杰西·本特利整个人都活力四射。在他矮小的骨架里聚集了一长排强者的合力。在农场还是个小男孩的时候，他的精力就格外充沛，后来青年时期在学校里也是如此。求学期间，他全心全意地研习和思考上帝与《圣经》。随着时光流逝，他逐渐对人类有了更深的认识，于是开始将自己看作是一个非比寻常的人，与他的同伴们截然不同。他特别想让自己的人生变得意义非凡。当他环顾四周，看到他人皆是碌碌无为，在他看来如同傻瓜一般时，他决不能容忍自己也成为一个傻瓜。他专心思考着自己及自己的命运，却忽略了一个事实——他年轻的妻子即使在怀孕之后仍在做着一个强壮农妇做的家事；她在为他付出，但也在自杀。尽管如此，他本无意如此虐待她。他的老父亲因长年辛劳而佝偻着身体，将农场之主的权力移交予他后便看似满意地隐身到角落里去，等待大限到来。而他则耸耸肩，随后便将这位老人置于脑后了。

In the room by the window overlooking the land that had come down to him sat Jesse thinking of his own affairs. In the stables he could hear the tramping of his horses and the restless movement of his cattle. Away in the fields he could see other cattle wandering over green hills. The voices of men, his men who worked for him, came in to him through the window. From the milkhouse there was the steady thump, thump of a churn being manipulated by the half-witted girl, Eliza Stoughton. Jesse's mind went back to the men of Old Testament days who had also owned lands and herds. He remembered how God had come down out of the skies and talked to these men and he wanted God to notice and to talk to him also. A kind of feverish boyish eagerness to in some way achieve in his own life the flavor of significance that had hung over these men took possession of him. Being a prayerful man he spoke of the matter aloud to God and the sound of his own words strengthened and fed his eagerness.

杰西坐在房间的窗边，思考着自己的事情，透过窗户可看见传到他手里的这片土地。他能听到自己的马群在牲畜棚里踏步，牛也在不停地来回走动着。远处，他能看到其他的牛在牧场的青山上转悠。为他干活的工人们的声音从窗户外传了进来。从挤奶房那儿传来一成不变的咚咚作响声，那是傻姑娘伊莉扎·斯托顿在摆弄搅乳器。杰西想到了《旧约》里的情形，那时的人也拥有土地和牲畜。他记得上帝是如何从天上来到凡间，并同人类交谈，他也希望上帝能看到他，并也来同他交谈。他多么希望能够在自己生命中以某种方式实现曾降临在那些人身上的荣光，这种狂热的、孩子气的迫切心情占据了他的身心。作为一个勤于祈祷的人，他将这番心事大声地说给上帝听，而他的祷告声同时也增强和满足了他的渴望。

"I am a new kind of man come into possession of these fields," he declared. "Look upon me, O God, and look Thou also upon my neighbors and all the men who have gone before me here! O God, create in me another Jesse, like that one of old, to rule over men and to be the father of sons who shall be rulers!"Jesse grew excited as he talked aloud and jumping to his feet walked up and down in the room. In fancy he saw himself living in old times and among old peoples. The land that lay stretched out before him became of vast significance, a place peopled by his fancy with a new race of men sprung from himself. It seemed to him that in his day as in those other and older days, kingdoms might be created and new impulses given to the lives of men by the power of God speaking through a chosen servant. He longed to be such a servant. "It is God's work I have come to the land to do," he declared in a loud voice and his short figure straightened and he thought that something like a halo of Godly approval hung over him.“我是继承这片土地的新新人类。”他大声说道，“请看看我，上帝啊，请您也看看我的四邻和我的先辈们！啊，上帝，请将我造成另一个杰西吧，像古代的杰西一样，统治众人，我的儿子们也注定成为统治者！”他在大声祷告的时候变得激动起来，于是跳起身，在房里走来走去。他幻想着自己置身于那个时代，置身于那些古人之中。那片在他眼前延伸开去的土地变得意义重大；在他的幻想里，那里住着一种由他繁衍而来的新新人类。在他看来，他所在的时代便如同那些其他的旧日光辉年代一般，通过一名上帝挑选的仆人来宣告上帝的力量。由此，新的王国将被创造，新的力量被注入人类的生活。他渴望成为上帝的那个仆人。“我正是来这里完成上帝指派的使命的。”他高声宣告道，瘦小的身体挺得绷直，他觉得好像自己头上悬着上帝所许的光环。

It will perhaps be somewhat difficult for the men and women of a later day to understand Jesse Bentley. In the last fifty years a vast change has taken place in the lives of our people. A revolution has in fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, attended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill cries of millions of new voices that have come among us from overseas, the going and coming of trains, the growth of cities, the building of the inter-urban car lines that weave in and out of towns and past farmhouses, and now in these later days the coming of the automobiles has worked a tremendous change in the lives and in the habits of thought of our people of Mid-America. 此句较长,建议在 the building前进行拆分。Books, badly imagined and written though they may be in the hurry of our times, are in every household, magazines circulate by the millions of copies, newspapers are everywhere. In our day a farmer standing by the stove in the store in his village has his mind filled to over-flowing with the words of other men. The newspapers and the magazines have pumped him full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city man of us all.

对后世的人而言，要理解杰西·本特利恐非易事。在刚过去的五十年里，人们的生活发生了巨大的变化。事实上，一场革命已经开始了。工业主义伴随着喧嚣和纷扰来到：我们中数以百万的海外移民发出尖锐的呼喊声；火车来往奔忙；城市兴起；在建的城间火车线穿过城镇、经过乡村；而近来发明的汽车也已使在美国中部生活的人们在生活及思维习惯上发生了巨大变化。书本——尽管在我们这个年代看来是仓促而就、缺乏想象与文采的——却已经成为居家必备；杂志的发行量超过百万，报纸更是遍地皆是。我们这个年代的农夫会站在村中小店的炉火边，脑袋里塞满了别人的语言，侃侃而谈。报纸和杂志已为这些人提供了诸多谈资。曾经的粗鄙无知，虽然有种孩子般的纯真美好，也已经永远消失了。炉火边的农夫同城里的人就如兄弟一般，如果听听他们说话，你会发现他同城里最棒的人一样，浅薄愚昧。

In Jesse Bentley's time and in the country districts of the whole Middle West in the years after the Civil War it was not so. Men labored too hard and were too tired to read. In them was no desire for words printed upon paper. As they worked in the fields, vague, half-formed thoughts took possession of them. They believed in God and in God's power to control their lives. In the little Protestant churches they gathered on Sunday to hear of God and his works. The churches were the center of the social and intellectual life of the times. The figure of God was big in the hearts of men.

但是，在杰西所处的年代里，整个中西部的农村在内战后的多年里都远非如此。人们疲于劳作，根本没力气再去阅读。他们对于印在纸上的铅字压根没有兴趣。当他们在田间劳作的时候，脑海里是些模糊而未成形的思想。他们信仰上帝，并坚信借由上帝的力量来掌控自己的生活。周日，他们聚集在小型的新教教堂里聆听上帝及其功绩。这些教堂就是当时社会和精神生活的中心。上帝的形象在当时人们的心中是伟大的。

And so, having been born an imaginative child and having within him a great intellectual eagerness, Jesse Bentley had turned wholeheartedly toward God. When the war took his brothers away, he saw the hand of God in that. When his father became ill and could no longer attend to the running of the farm, he took that also as a sign from God. In the city, when the word came to him, he walked about at night through the streets thinking of the matter and when he had come home and had got the work on the farm well under way, he went again at night to walk through the forests and over the low hills and to think of God.

因此，作为一个生来就富于想象力和极具强大知识渴求的孩子，杰西·本特利全身心地投入了上帝的怀抱。当内战夺走了他几个哥哥的生命时，他看到了上帝的力量。当他的父亲病倒，再也不能管理农场的时候，他也将此看作是上帝的指示。当他在城市里接到消息的时候，他在夜里步行穿过街道，思索着这个问题；当他回到家并将农场事务安排得井井有条的时候，他又在夜里步行穿过树林，越过低矮的山坡，同时思考着上帝。

As he walked the importance of his own figure in some divine plan grew in his mind. He grew avaricious and was impatient that the farm contained only six hundred acres. Kneeling in a fence corner at the edge of some meadow, he sent his voice abroad into the silence and looking up he saw the stars shining down at him. One evening, some months after his father's death, and when his wife Katherine was expecting at any moment to be laid abed of childbirth, Jesse left his house and went for a long walk. The Bentley farm was situated in a tiny valley watered by Wine Creek, and Jesse walked along the banks of the stream to the end of his own land and on through the fields of his neighbors. As he walked the valley broadened and then narrowed again. Great open stretches of field and wood lay before him. The moon came out from behind clouds, and, climbing a low hill, he sat down to think.

当他这样步行的时候，自己在某种神圣计划中的重要性越发地浮现在他的脑海里。他因农场只有六百英亩而变得贪婪、缺乏耐心。在某个草地边，他跪倒在篱笆的转角处放声高喊，周围一片静寂。他抬头仰望星空，看到星光照耀洒落在自己身上。父亲去世几个月后，他的妻子凯瑟琳也在随时待产。一个夜晚，杰西离开自己的房子去远处散步。本特利农场坐落在瓦英河所灌溉的一个小山谷里，杰西沿着溪流的河岸一直走到自家土地的尽头，再接着走过邻居家的田地。他一路走来，山谷时而宽时而窄。广袤的田野延伸开去，树林也展现在眼前。月亮从云层里出来，他爬上一座小山坡，坐下来思考。

Jesse thought that as the true servant of God the entire stretch of country through which he had walked should have come into his possession. He thought of his dead brothers and blamed them that they had not worked harder and achieved more. Before him in the moonlight the tiny stream ran down over stones, and he began to think of the men of old times who like himself had owned flocks and lands.

杰西想，作为上帝忠实的仆人，他所走过的整个农田都应当归他所有。他想起几个死去的哥哥，不由得责怪他们没能更努力些劳动，获得更多的土地。眼前，月光下的小溪顺着石子潺潺流下，他开始想到旧时和他一样的伟人们，他们曾牛羊成群，良田千顷。

A fantastic impulse, half fear, half greediness, took possession of Jesse Bentley. He remembered how in the old Bible story the Lord had appeared to that other Jesse and told him to send his son David to where Saul and the men of Israel were fighting the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. Into Jesse's mind came the conviction that all of the Ohio farmers who owned land in the valley of Wine Creek were Philistines and enemies of God. "Suppose," he whispered to himself, "there should come from among them one who, like Goliath the Philistine of Gath, could defeat me and take from me my possessions."In fancy he felt the sickening dread that he thought must have lain heavy on the heart of Saul before the coming of David. Jumping to his feet, he began to run through the night. As he ran he called to God. His voice carried far over the low hills. "Jehovah of Hosts," he cried, "send to me this night out of the womb of Katherine, a son. Let Thy grace alight upon me. Send me a son to be called David who shall help me to pluck at last all of these lands out of the hands of the Philistines and turn them to Thy service and to the building of Thy kingdom on earth."

一种奇异的冲动——半是害怕，半是贪婪——占据了杰西·本特利的心。他记起在《圣经》故事中，上帝如何出现在那个杰西面前，告知他将儿子大卫派到以拉谷去，在那里，扫罗正联合以色列人同非利士人打仗。杰西的心中此时坚定了一个信念：所有俄亥俄州瓦英谷里拥有土地的农场主们都是非利士人，也就是上帝的敌人。“假设，”他低声自语道，“他们当中会有一个像歌利亚一样的迦特非利士人，能够击败我并夺走我的所有。”在幻想中，他感到了那种令人厌恶的恐惧，他认为这种情绪必然也在大卫到来之前重重压在扫罗的心头。他跳起来，开始在黑夜中奔跑。他一边跑，一边呼唤着上帝。他的声音传遍了低矮的山坡。“万能的主啊”，他叫道，“今夜，从凯瑟琳的子宫里赐给我一个儿子吧。请您赐福与我。赐给我一个叫大卫的儿子，帮我从非利士人手中最终夺得所有这些土地，并使他们臣服于您，为您在世上建立王国。”

II

二

David Hardy of Winesburg, Ohio, was the grandson of Jesse Bentley, the owner of Bentley farms. When he was twelve years old he went to the old Bentley place to live. His mother, Louise Bentley, the girl who came into the world on that night when Jesse ran through the fields crying to God that he be given a son, had grown to womanhood on the farm and had married young John Hardy of Winesburg, who became a banker. Louise and her husband did not live happily together and everyone agreed that she was to blame. She was a small woman with sharp grey eyes and black hair. From childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper and when not angry she was often morose and silent. In Winesburg it was said that she drank. Her husband, the banker, who was a careful, shrewd man, tried hard to make her happy. When he began to make money he bought for her a large brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg and he was the first man in that town to keep a manservant to drive his wife's carriage.

俄亥俄州温斯堡的大卫·哈代是本特利农场主杰西·本特利的外孙。当他十二岁大的时候，便住到本特利老宅去了。他的母亲，路易丝·本特利，就是杰西当晚在田野里奔跑呼喊着上帝赐予儿子的时候降临人世的那个女儿。她在农场长大，嫁给了温斯堡镇年轻的后来成了银行家的约翰·哈代。路易丝同丈夫生活得并不幸福，大家一致认为责任在她。她是个瘦小的女人，有敏锐的灰眼睛和一头黑发。从儿时起，她便爱发脾气，不生气的时候，她也总是面容阴郁，沉默不语。温斯堡里传言她酗酒。她的银行家丈夫是个谨慎精明的人，竭尽全力来使她高兴。当他开始赚钱的时候，他便在温斯堡的埃尔姆大街上为她买了幢砖砌的大房子；他是镇上首位为妻子的马车雇佣男仆的人。

But Louise could not be made happy. She flew into half insane fits of temper during which she was sometimes silent, sometimes noisy and quarrelsome. She swore and cried out in her anger. She got a knife from the kitchen and threatened her husband's life. Once she deliberately set fire to the house, and often she hid herself away for days in her own room and would see no one. Her life, lived as a half recluse, gave rise to all sorts of stories concerning her. It was said that she took drugs and that she hid herself away from people because she was often so under the influence of drink that her condition could not be concealed. Sometimes on summer afternoons she came out of the house and got into her carriage. Dismissing the driver she took the reins in her own hands and drove off at top speed through the streets. If a pedestrian got in her way she drove straight ahead and the frightened citizen had to escape as best he could. To the people of the town it seemed as though she wanted to run them down. When she had driven through several streets, tearing around corners and beating the horses with the whip, she drove off into the country. On the country roads after she had gotten out of sight of the houses she let the horses slow down to a walk and her wild, reckless mood passed. She became thoughtful and muttered words. Sometimes tears came into her eyes. And then when she came back into town she again drove furiously through the quiet streets. But for the influence of her husband and the respect he inspired in people's minds she would have been arrested more than once by the town marshal.

可是，路易丝并不容易取悦。她很容易半癫狂地发脾气，有时沉默，有时狂躁、爱与人争吵。她生气时会咒骂和大声叫嚷。她还从厨房拿过刀，威胁要杀死丈夫。有一次，她故意在房里纵火；而且她经常躲在自己的房间里，好几天谁都不见。她过着半隐居的生活，各种关于她的故事甚嚣尘上。有传言说她吸毒，还说她受酗酒的影响很大，身体的状况往往无法掩饰，所以只得躲起来不见人。有时在夏日的下午，她会从房子里出来，登上马车。她将车夫赶开，自己抓着缰绳，飞一般地驶过街道。若是有行人挡道，她也照直冲过去，吓得那人不得不赶紧逃开。在镇上的人看来，她几乎是存心从他们身上碾过去的。她驶过几条街，疾转过几个弯，然后用鞭子抽打着马匹向乡村奔去。当驶上乡村的大道，再看不到镇上的房子的时候，她便让马慢下来，而她那狂野鲁莽的情绪总算过去了。她陷入了深思，开始喃喃自语。有时泪水会涌上她的眼眶。可当她返回镇上时，她又开始发疯般地在安静的街道上横冲直撞。要不是她丈夫的影响力，以及当地人对他心怀的敬意，她早被镇上的警长逮捕过不止一次了。

Young David Hardy grew up in the house with this woman and as can well be imagined there was not much joy in his childhood. He was too young then to have opinions of his own about people, but at times it was difficult for him not to have very definite opinions about the woman who was his mother. David was always a quiet, orderly boy and for a long time was thought by the people of Winesburg to be something of a dullard. His eyes were brown and as a child he had a habit of looking at things and people a long time without appearing to see what he was looking at. When he heard his mother spoken of harshly or when he overheard her berating his father, he was frightened and ran away to hide. Sometimes he could not find a hiding place and that confused him. Turning his face toward a tree or if he was indoors toward the wall, he closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, and early in life a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of him.

年轻的大卫·哈代跟着妈妈在这间房子里长大，可以想见，他的童年没有多少乐趣可言。那时的他太年幼，很难对人形成自己的观点。但对于这个是自己母亲的女人不持有非常肯定的观点，有时倒很难。大卫一直是个安静规矩的孩子，长久以来，温斯堡的人都认为他有些傻气。他的眼睛是棕色的，还是个孩子时他就养成了一种习惯：长时间地看着人或物，可看起来又好像什么也没看见。当他听见别人无情地谈及他的母亲或是无意听到母亲在叱骂父亲的时候，他就感到害怕，要找个地方躲起来。有时他找不到藏身之处，就会惊惶失措。于是，他将脸转向一棵树，如果在房内就转向墙，闭上双眼，竭力什么也不去想。他习惯高声自言自语；幼年时，一种寂静的哀伤时常占据心头。

On the occasions when David went to visit his grandfather on the Bentley farm, he was altogether contented and happy. Often he wished that he would never have to go back to town and once when he had come home from the farm after a long visit, something happened that had a lasting effect on his mind.

每当他前往本特利农场看望外公的时候，他总感到意足和快乐。他常常希望可以永远不再回到镇上去。有一次，他在农场呆了很长一段时间后返回家中时，发生了一件事，并对他产生了深远的影响。

David had come back into town with one of the hired men. The man was in a hurry to go about his own affairs and left the boy at the head of the street in which the Hardy house stood. It was early dusk of a fall evening and the sky was overcast with clouds. Something happened to David. He could not bear to go into the house where his mother and father lived, and on an impulse he decided to run away from home. He intended to go back to the farm and to his grandfather, but lost his way and for hours he wandered weeping and frightened on country roads. It started to rain and lightning flashed in the sky. The boy's imagination was excited and he fancied that he could see and hear strange things in the darkness. Into his mind came the conviction that he was walking and running in some terrible void where no one had ever been before. The darkness about him seemed limitless. The sound of the wind blowing in trees was terrifying. When a team of horses approached along the road in which he walked he was frightened and climbed a fence. Through a field he ran until he came into another road and getting upon his knees felt of the soft ground with his fingers. But for the figure of his grandfather, whom he was afraid he would never find in the darkness, he thought the world must be altogether empty. When his cries were heard by a farmer who was walking home from town and he was brought back to his father's house, he was so tired and excited that he did not know what was happening to him.

大卫同一个仆人返回镇上。那个仆人急于去忙自己的事情，就将他一个孩子扔在了哈代家房子所在的那条街的街头上。当时正值秋夜的傍晚时分，天空乌云密布。大卫变了主意。他无法忍受再回到父母住的那座房子里，冲动之下，他决定离家出走。他打算回农场和外公呆在一起，可迷了路。他在乡间的马路上哭泣着转悠了好几个小时，惊惶不安。天开始下雨，闪电划过天空。孩子的想象力被激发起来，他幻想着能够看到和听见黑暗中奇怪的东西。他心里坚信他正漫步、奔跑在前人未曾涉足过的某个恐怖虚幻空间里。笼罩在他四周的黑暗似乎无边无际。大风吹过树林的声响令人毛骨悚然。当一队人马沿着他所在的马路接近他的时候，他受到了惊吓，爬上了一道篱笆。他飞奔着越过田野，来到另一条马路上，然后双膝跪倒，用手指抚摸着身下松软的大地。要不是他外公的身影——他害怕他在黑暗中再也找不到他了——他认为这个世界必定是完全虚空的。一个从镇上步行回家的农夫听到了他的喊叫，将他送回了他父亲的家。他又累又兴奋，对于发生的事情茫然无知。

By chance David's father knew that he had disappeared. On the street he had met the farm hand from the Bentley place and knew of his son's return to town. When the boy did not come home an alarm was set up and John Hardy with several men of the town went to search the country. The report that David had been kidnapped ran about through the streets of Winesburg. When he came home there were no lights in the house, but his mother appeared and clutched him eagerly in her arms. David thought she had suddenly become another woman. He could not believe that so delightful a thing had happened. With her own hands Louise Hardy bathed his tired young body and cooked him food. She would not let him go to bed but, when he had put on his nightgown, blew out the lights and sat down in a chair to hold him in her arms. For an hour the woman sat in the darkness and held her boy. All the time she kept talking in a low voice. David could not understand what had so changed her. Her habitually dissatisfied face had become, he thought, the most peaceful and lovely thing he had ever seen. When he began to weep she held him more and more tightly. On and on went her voice. It was not harsh or shrill as when she talked to her husband, but was like rain falling on trees. Presently men began coming to the door to report that he had not been found, but she made him hide and be silent until she had sent them away. He thought it must be a game his mother and the men of the town were playing with him and laughed joyously. Into his mind came the thought that his having been lost and frightened in the darkness was an altogether unimportant matter. He thought that he would have been willing to go through the frightful experience a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother had suddenly become.

大卫的父亲偶然间知道了孩子失踪这件事。他在街上遇到了那个本特利农场来的仆人，得知儿子已经返回镇上了。孩子没有回到家时，约翰·哈代就马上警觉了起来。他同镇上的几个人前往乡村寻找。大卫被绑架的消息马上传遍了温斯堡的街头巷尾。当他回到家里时，房子里一片漆黑，只有他的母亲跑了出来，迫不及待地将他紧紧抱住。大卫觉得她突然变成了另一个女人。他不能相信竟然发生了这样的好事。路易丝·哈代亲自给疲倦的儿子洗澡，给他做饭吃。她甚至舍不得让他去睡觉。当他穿上睡袍，她便吹熄了灯，将他抱在怀里，坐在椅子上。这个女人在黑夜里搂着儿子坐了有一个钟头。她一直不停地低声说着话。大卫不明白是什么使她发生了如此变化。他认为，她那张习惯性布满怨怼的脸已变成了一张他所见过的最平和、最可爱的面庞。当他开始呜呜哭泣的时候，她便抱得更紧了。她不停地说着话。那声音与她平时同丈夫说话时的那种沙哑或者尖锐的嗓音不同，而像是落在树间的雨滴的声音。不一会儿，有些人开始到门口来汇报，说孩子还没有找到。可她却一声不吭地将孩子藏了起来，直到将来人都打发走。大卫想这一定是妈妈和镇上的人同他玩的一个游戏，于是他兴高采烈地大笑起来。他不由得觉得他的走失和在黑夜中受到的惊吓都不过是件完全无足轻重的事情。他觉得只要能在那条漫长黑暗的道路尽头确定看到一个如此可爱的妈妈突然出现，那么即使要他再经历这可怕的体验一千遍，他也愿意。

During the last years of young David's boyhood he saw his mother but seldom and she became for him just a woman with whom he had once lived. Still he could not get her figure out of his mind and as he grew older it became more definite. When he was twelve years old he went to the Bentley farm to live. Old Jesse came into town and fairly demanded that he be given charge of the boy. The old man was excited and determined on having his own way. He talked to John Hardy in the office of the Winesburg Savings Bank and then the two men went to the house on Elm Street to talk with Louise. They both expected her to make trouble but were mistaken. She was very quiet and when Jesse had explained his mission and had gone on at some length about the advantages to come through having the boy out of doors and in the quiet atmosphere of the old farmhouse, she nodded her head in approval. "It is an atmosphere not corrupted by my presence," she said sharply. Her shoulders shook and she seemed about to fly into a fit of temper. "It is a place for a man child, although it was never a place for me," she went on. "You never wanted me there and of course the air of your house did me no good. It was like poison in my blood but it will be different with him."

在大卫儿童时期的最后几年里，他很少见到母亲。对他而言，她变成了一个仅仅只是和他生活过一段时间的女人。但他仍不能将她的影子从脑海里抹去，随着年岁渐长，这个影子愈发变得清晰了。他长到十二岁时便住到了本特利农场。老杰西来到镇上，严正要求他们将孩子交给他管。老人非常激动而且决意如此。他在约翰·哈代的温斯堡储蓄银行的办公室里同他进行了会谈，然后两个人便一起回到位于埃尔姆大街的房子去和路易丝商量。他们都以为她会阻挠，可事实并非如此。她非常平静。当杰西说明了此行的目的，详细解释了让孩子呆在户外和老式农场安静的环境里生活的好处之后，她就点头表示同意了。“那里的气氛不会因为有我而变糟。”她一针见血地说。她的双肩颤抖，看上去似乎马上就要发火了。“那地方适合男孩子，尽管永远不适合我。”她继续说，“您从来都不想让我去那儿，当然，您房子那儿的空气对我也没好处。它对我而言就像毒药，可对大卫来说就不同了。”

Louise turned and went out of the room, leaving the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. As very often happened she later stayed in her room for days. Even when the boy's clothes were packed and he was taken away she did not appear. The loss of her son made a sharp break in her life and she seemed less inclined to quarrel with her husband. John Hardy thought it had all turned out very well indeed.

路易丝转身走出了房间，留下两个男人尴尬地默然相对。之后，她和往常的做法一样，在自己的房间里呆了好些天。甚至直到孩子的衣服收拾好，孩子也被带走了，她都没有出现。失去儿子在她的生活里划下了一道深深的伤痕，她几乎都懒得同丈夫吵架了。事实上，约翰·哈代认为这一切变化都非常好。

And so young David went to live in the Bentley farmhouse with Jesse. Two of the old farmer's sisters were alive and still lived in the house. They were afraid of Jesse and rarely spoke when he was about. One of the women who had been noted for her flaming red hair when she was younger was a born mother and became the boy's caretaker. Every night when he had gone to bed she went into his room and sat on the floor until he fell asleep. When he became drowsy she became bold and whispered things that he later thought he must have dreamed.

于是，小大卫便同老杰西住进了本特利农场。这位老农场主的两个姐姐还健在，仍住在那里。她们都挺害怕杰西。他在的时候，她们便很少说话。其中一个女人曾因年轻时有一头耀眼的红发而引人注目。她是个天生的母亲，于是就担任起了照顾孩子的工作。每晚大卫上床后，她就来到他的房间，坐在地板上直到他入睡。当他昏昏欲睡时，她就变得胆大了，开始喃喃地絮叨起来，大卫后来觉得自己一定是在做梦。

Her soft low voice called him endearing names and he dreamed that his mother had come to him and that she had changed so that she was always as she had been that time after he ran away. He also grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked the face of the woman on the floor so that she was ecstatically happy. Everyone in the old house became happy after the boy went there. The hard insistent thing in Jesse Bentley that had kept the people in the house silent and timid and that had never been dispelled by the presence of the girl Louise was apparently swept away by the coming of the boy. It was as though God had relented and sent a son to the man.

这位姑婆声音低沉柔和，用各种昵称叫着他；他梦见母亲来找他，完全变成了他离家出走回来后的那副温柔的样子。他也变得大胆起来，伸出手去抚摸站在地板上的那个姑妈的脸，这使她欣喜若狂。男孩来到这儿后，老屋子里的每个人都变得快乐了。杰西·本特利的性格严厉固执，弄得屋子里人人缄默胆怯，即使是他的女儿路易丝在的时候也没能让他改变。可是，大卫的到来却改变了这一切。这就好像是上帝垂怜他，赐给了他一个儿子。

The man who had proclaimed himself the only true servant of God in all the valley of Wine Creek, and who had wanted God to send him a sign of approval by way of a son out of the womb of Katherine, began to think that at last his prayers had been answered. Although he was at that time only fifty-five years old he looked seventy and was worn out with much thinking and scheming. The effort he had made to extend his land holdings had been successful and there were few farms in the valley that did not belong to him, but until David came he was a bitterly disappointed man.

他曾经自诩为上帝在瓦英河谷唯一忠诚的仆人，并祈求上帝通过凯瑟琳的子宫赐给他一个儿子以示首肯，如今他才觉得他的祈祷终于有了回应。尽管那时他才五十五岁，可看上去足有七十，过度的思考筹谋使他衰老。他扩张领土的努力成效卓著，山谷里几乎所有的农场都属于他，可直到大卫到来，他仍然是个极度失望的人。

There were two influences at work in Jesse Bentley and all his life his mind had been a battleground for these influences. First there was the old thing in him. He wanted to be a man of God and a leader among men of God. His walking in the fields and through the forests at night had brought him close to nature and there were forces in the passionately religious man that ran out to the forces in nature. The disappointment that had come to him when a daughter and not a son had been born to Katherine had fallen upon him like a blow struck by some unseen hand and the blow had somewhat softened his egotism. He still believed that God might at any moment make himself manifest out of the winds or the clouds, but he no longer demanded such recognition. Instead he prayed for it. Sometimes he was altogether doubtful and thought God had deserted the world. He regretted the fate that had not let him live in a simpler and sweeter time when at the beckoning of some strange cloud in the sky men left their lands and houses and went forth into the wilderness to create new races. While he worked night and day to make his farms more productive and to extend his holdings of land, he regretted that he could not use his own restless energy in the building of temples, the slaying of unbelievers and in general in the work of glorifying God's name on earth.

杰西·本特利的心里有两股力量在起作用，终其一生，这两股力量都在他脑子里相互厮杀搏斗。其一是他身上传统的东西。他希望成为上帝的仆人，并成为众人的领袖。他夜间在田野丛林里的漫步使得他亲近自然，然而，这个狂热的宗教信徒身上又有种力量向自然之力奔涌而出。凯瑟琳生的是女儿而非儿子这个事实使他失望，就好像有个看不见的人伸手狠狠打了他一拳，这个打击从而多少压制了他的妄自尊大。他仍然相信上帝会在任何时候从风中或者云里现身，可他不再要求亲眼目睹。取而代之的是，他为此而祈祷。有时他也会十分怀疑，认为上帝已经遗弃了这个世界。他抱怨自己命运不济，不能生在更单纯、甜蜜的年代，那时的人们听从天空中一片奇云的召唤就舍弃家园，去荒野中创造新的民族。在他日以继夜增加农场的产量和扩张土地的时候，他遗憾自己不能将这使不完的劲儿用来建造庙宇、宰杀异徒，以及一切在这个世上传扬上帝美名的事情。

That is what Jesse hungered for and then also he hungered for something else. He had grown into maturity in America in the years after the Civil War and he, like all men of his time, had been touched by the deep influences that were at work in the country during those years when modern industrialism was being born. He began to buy machines that would permit him to do the work of the farms while employing fewer men and he sometimes thought that if he were a younger man he would give up farming altogether and start a factory in Winesburg for the making of machinery. Jesse formed the habit of reading newspapers and magazines. He invented a machine for the making of fence out of wire. Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times and places that he had always cultivated in his own mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was growing up in the minds of others. The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made by tilling the land. More than once he went into Winesburg to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy about it. "You are a banker and you will have chances I never had," he said and his eyes shone. "I am thinking about it all the time. Big things are going to be done in the country and there will be more money to be made than I ever dreamed of. You get into it. I wish I were younger and had your chance."Jesse Bentley walked up and down in the bank office and grew more and more excited as he talked. At one time in his life he had been threatened with paralysis and his left side remained somewhat weakened. As he talked his left eyelid twitched. Later when he drove back home and when night came on and the stars came out it was harder to get back the old feeling of a close and personal God who lived in the sky overhead and who might at any moment reach out his hand, touch him on the shoulder, and appoint for him some heroic task to be done. Jesse's mind was fixed upon the things read in newspapers and magazines, on fortunes to be made almost without effort by shrewd men who bought and sold. For him the coming of the boy David did much to bring back with renewed force the old faith and it seemed to him that God had at last looked with favor upon him.

这是杰西曾渴望的事情，当时，他也曾渴望些别的东西。他在美国内战后长大成人，和那个时代的所有人一样，他被当时正在萌芽的现代工业主义在乡下的深远影响所触动。他开始购买机器，这使他在从事农场工作的时候可以减少雇佣人手。有时他甚至想，如果再年轻些，他会完全放弃农场工作，到温斯堡去开个工厂生产机器。杰西养成了阅读报纸和杂志的习惯。他还发明了一种用铁丝来做篱笆的机器。他模糊地意识到，时常盘桓在他脑海里的那种旧时代和地方的气氛同他人心里所想是大相径庭的。这是世界历史上最物质化的时代的开始：战争可以不为保家卫国；人类遗忘了上帝，只关注道德尺度；服务的意愿被权势的渴望所替代；美全然被置诸脑后，人们一股脑地热衷于获取财富。这个年代正在向杰西倾述它的历史，正如它向杰西周围的人倾诉一样。他变得贪婪，想要比耕作土地更快地获得金钱。他不止一次到温斯堡同女婿约翰·哈代谈及此事。“你是一个银行家，有我不可能有的机会。”他两眼灼灼地说，“我一直在想这件事。这个国家会发生大事，人们能赚到比我曾梦想过的更多的钱。你会实现这一切的。我真希望自己能年轻些，能有你这样的好机会。”杰西·本特利在银行的办公室里来回走着，越说越激动。他人生中曾有一次险些瘫痪，左半边身体因为后遗症不大灵活。说话的时候，他左边的眼睑抽搐。后来他驾车回家，当夜幕降临，繁星闪烁，他再难找回旧时那种同上帝亲近的感觉：住在天上的那位上帝随时会向他伸出手，触摸他的肩膀，托付他去完成某种英雄般的工作。杰西的心思完全被报纸杂志上的报道吸引——一些精明的买卖人几乎不费吹灰之力便发了财。对他而言，大卫的到来重新鼓起了他的旧时信仰，仿佛上帝最终眷顾于他。

As for the boy on the farm, life began to reveal itself to him in a thousand new and delightful ways. The kindly attitude of all about him expanded his quiet nature and he lost the half timid, hesitating manner he had always had with his people. At night when he went to bed after a long day of adventures in the stables, in the fields, or driving about from farm to farm with his grandfather, he wanted to embrace everyone in the house. If Sherley Bentley, the woman who came each night to sit on the floor by his bedside, did not appear at once, he went to the head of the stairs and shouted, his young voice ringing through the narrow halls where for so long there had been a tradition of silence. In the morning when he awoke and lay still in bed, the sounds that came in to him through the windows filled him with delight. He thought with a shudder of the life in the house in Winesburg and of his mother's angry voice that had always made him tremble. There in the country all sounds were pleasant sounds. When he awoke at dawn the barnyard back of the house also awoke. In the house people stirred about. Eliza Stoughton the half-witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farm hand and giggled noisily, in some distant field a cow bawled and was answered by the cattle in the stables, and one of the farm hands spoke sharply to the horse he was grooming by the stable door. David leaped out of bed and ran to a window. All of the people stirring about excited his mind, and he wondered what his mother was doing in the house in town.

对来到农场的大卫来说，生活正以无数种崭新又愉快的方式向他敞开怀抱。周遭所有的人对他都慈爱有加，这使他安静的天性变得开朗起来，逐渐改变了他同周围人在一起时半是胆怯半是犹疑的样子。整个白天，他都在马厩、田野里历险，或驾车同外公从一个农场驰骋到另一个农场，等晚上上床睡觉时，他几乎想要拥抱房子里的每个人。如果每晚来他房间坐在他床边的那位姑婆婆雪莉·本特利没有马上出现，他便会跑到楼梯头上大声喊叫，那稚嫩的声音在惯常寂静无声的狭窄走道里回响。清晨，当他醒来，静静地躺在床上时，从窗口飘进来的声音总让他满心喜悦。他战栗地想起温斯堡家里的生活和妈妈那总是让他浑身发抖的生气的声音。然而，这乡村里的所有声音都是令人愉快的。天亮，他起床的时候，房子后面的谷场上也开始有人工作了。人们在房子里四处走动。一个农场帮工捅着傻姑娘伊莱扎·斯托顿的肋骨，惹得她大声咯咯地笑。远处，一只奶牛在田野里哞哞叫唤，牲畜棚里的牛群应和着。另一个农场帮工正在马棚门边呵斥被洗刷的马匹。大卫从床上跳起来，跑到窗边。所有嘈杂的人声都令他兴奋，他不禁好奇，此刻镇上的妈妈正在房子里做什么。

From the windows of his own room he could not see directly into the barnyard where the farm hands had now all assembled to do the morning shores, but he could hear the voices of the men and the neighing of the horses. When one of the men laughed, he laughed also. Leaning out at the open window, he looked into an orchard where a fat sow wandered about with a litter of tiny pigs at her heels. Every morning he counted the pigs. "Four, five, six, seven," he said slowly, wetting his finger and making straight up and down marks on the window ledge. David ran to put on his trousers and shirt. A feverish desire to get out of doors took possession of him. Every morning he made such a noise coming down stairs that Aunt Callie, the housekeeper, declared he was trying to tear the house down. When he had run through the long old house, shutting the doors behind him with a bang, he came into the barnyard and looked about with an amazed air of expectancy. It seemed to him that in such a place tremendous things might have happened during the night. The farm hands looked at him and laughed. Henry Strader, an old man who had been on the farm since Jesse came into possession and who before David's time had never been known to make a joke, made the same joke every morning. It amused David so that he laughed and clapped his hands. "See, come here and look," cried the old man. "Grandfather Jesse's white mare has tom the black stocking she wears on her foot.”

从他房间的窗户不能直接看到谷场，在那里，农场的帮工们现在都已集合起来开始了早晨的工作。可是，他能听到他们的声音和马匹的嘶鸣。当有人大笑起来，他也不禁笑了。他从开着的窗户探出头去，看到果园里有只肥母猪在闲逛，身后还跟了一群小猪仔。每天清晨，他都会数数猪。“四、五、六、七。”他慢慢地说，将手指沾湿，在窗台上上上下下地划着竖线。大卫跑去赶紧将裤子和衬衣穿好。他忽然有种要冲出门去的强烈愿望。每天早晨，他下楼时都弄出很大的声响，管家考利婶婶常说他是要把房子给拆掉。等他跑过长长的老房子，将身后的门砰地关上，他来到谷场上，带着吃惊的神情四处张望，满怀期待。在他看来，晚上这里可能发生过一些惊人的大事。农场帮工们望着他大笑起来。一个从杰西接管这里便开始在这里工作的老帮工亨利·斯特雷德，在大卫来之前，没人知道他会说笑话。现在，他每天早晨都会讲同一个笑话。大卫觉得非常有趣，拍着巴掌哈哈大笑。“看，过来看啊，”老人大声叫道，“杰西爷爷的白色母马把穿在脚上的黑色长袜子给撕烂了。”

Day after day through the long summer, Jesse Bentley drove from farm to farm up and down the valley of Wine Creek, and his grandson went with him. They rode in a comfortable old phaeton drawn by the white horse. The old man scratched his thin white beard and talked to himself of his plans for increasing the productiveness of the fields they visited and of God's part in the plans all men made. Sometimes he looked at David and smiled happily and then for a long time he appeared to forget the boy's existence. More and more every day now his mind turned back again to the dreams that had filled his mind when he had first come out of the city to live on the land. One afternoon he startled David by letting his dreams take entire possession of him. With the boy as a witness, he went through a ceremony and brought about an accident that nearly destroyed the companionship that was growing up between them.

在漫长的夏季里，杰西·本特利每天都驾车在瓦英河谷的农场里来回奔驰，他的外孙也同他一起。他们驾着一辆舒适的旧马车，由一匹白马拉着。老人捋着稀薄的白胡子，自言自语地谈起他要增加他们看过的这片农田的产量的计划，还有上帝在众人制定的计划中所扮演的角色。有时他看着大卫，高兴地微笑着，可接着，有很长一段时间，他又像是忘了孩子的存在。现在，他每天都越来越多地回想起当初刚离开城市，并以农场为家时那些充斥在他脑子里的梦想。一天下午，他完全进入梦魇的样子把大卫吓坏了。他让孩子做见证，自己举行了一场仪式，结果导致了一场事故，几乎毁掉了两人之间日益深厚的情谊。

Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part of the valley some miles from home. A forest came down to the road and through the forest Wine Creek wriggled its way over stones toward a distant river. All the afternoon Jesse had been in a meditative mood and now he began to talk. His mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and plunder him of his possessions, and again as on that night when he had run through the fields crying for a son, he became excited to the edge of insanity. Stopping the horse he got out of the buggy and asked David to get out also. The two climbed over a fence and walked along the bank of the stream. The boy paid no attention to the muttering of his grandfather, but ran along beside him and wondered what was going to happen. When a rabbit jumped up and ran away through the woods, he clapped his hands and danced with delight. He looked at the tall trees and was sorry that he was not a little animal to climb high in the air without being frightened. Stooping, he picked up a small stone and threw it over the head of his grandfather into a clump of bushes. "Wake up, little animal. Go and climb to the top of the trees," he shouted in a shrill voice.

杰西同外孙驱车前往离家几英里的一个河谷偏远处。路边有一片森林，瓦英河穿过林区，蜿蜒地流过林林总总的石头，流向远处的一条河流。整个下午，杰西都沉浸在深思中，现在他开始说话了。他回想起了某个深恐有巨人来抢劫财物的夜晚。而且，和他在田野里奔跑，高声祈求儿子的那个夜晚一样，他变得激动起来，近乎疯狂。他停住马，从车上下来，叫大卫也下了车。两人翻过一道围栏，沿着小溪的河岸走。孩子没注意到外公在一旁喃喃自语，只是挨着他奔跑，好奇接下来会发生什么。看到一只野兔跳起来，穿过树林跑掉时，他高兴得拍着巴掌跳起舞来。他看着那些高大的树木，非常遗憾自己不是只小动物，不能毫不畏惧地爬到高处。他蹲下来捡起一块小石子，从他外公的头上扔过去，石子掉进了一丛灌木丛里。“快起来，小家伙。爬到树顶上去。”他尖声地大声叫着。

Jesse Bentley went along under the trees with his head bowed and with his mind in a ferment. His earnestness affected the boy, who presently became silent and a little alarmed. Into the old man's mind had come the notion that now he could bring from God a word or a sign out of the sky, that the presence of the boy and man on their knees in some lonely spot in the forest would make the miracle he had been waiting for almost inevitable. "It was in just such a place as this that other David tended the sheep when his father came and told him to go down unto Saul," he muttered.

杰西·本特利在树下低着头往前走，心里躁动不安。他郑重其事的样子影响到了孩子，大卫很快变得安静，继而有些不安起来。一个念头冲入这位老人的脑海之中：他能从天上的上帝那里获得一个承诺或是一个暗示，只要他和外孙在树林的某个僻静处跪下，就能将他一直期待的奇迹变为近乎必然的事实。“正是在像这样的一个地方，另一个大卫在那里牧羊，接着他的父亲来叫他下山去找扫罗。”他喃喃地说。

Taking the boy rather roughly by the shoulder, he climbed over a fallen log and when he had come to an open place among the trees he dropped upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice.

他粗鲁地抓住孩子的肩膀，越过倒在地上的木头，来到树林一片空地前，然后他双膝跪倒，开始大声地祈祷。

A kind of terror he had never known before took possession of David. Crouching beneath a tree he watched the man on the ground before him and his own knees began to tremble. It seemed to him that he was in the presence not only of his grandfather but of someone else, someone who might hurt him, someone who was not kindly but dangerous and brutal. He began to cry and reaching down picked up a small stick, which he held tightly gripped in his fingers. When Jesse Bentley, absorbed in his own idea, suddenly arose and advanced toward him, his terror grew until his whole body shook. In the woods an intense silence seemed to lie over everything and suddenly out of the silence came the old man's harsh and insistent voice. Gripping the boy's shoulders, Jesse turned his face to the sky and shouted. The whole left side of his face twitched and his hand on the boy's shoulder twitched also. "Make a sign to me, God," he cried. "Here I stand with the boy David. Come down to me out of the sky and make Thy presence known to me."

大卫感到从未有过的恐惧。他蹲在一棵树下，注视着面前空地上的这个男人，双膝开始颤抖。在他看来，在他面前的不再是他的外祖父，而是个会伤害到他的陌生人，不再慈爱，而是危险粗暴。他开始哭了起来，低头捡了根小树枝，紧紧地攥在手里。杰西·本特利全副心神都集中在那个念头上，他猛地站起来朝孩子走过去，大卫更害怕了，开始全身发抖。树林里的一切仿佛被一种死寂笼罩着，突然，老人沙哑而固执的声音打破了寂静。他紧抓住孩子的肩膀，将脸转向天空大喊起来。他的整个左半边脸抽搐着，放在孩子肩上的手也抽搐不停。“赐予我神谕吧，上帝。”他喊道，“我在这里，和这个名叫大卫的孩子一起。请您从天上降临人间，显显灵吧。”

With a cry of fear, David turned and, shaking himself loose from the hands that held him, ran away through the forest. He did not believe that the man who turned up his face and in a harsh voice shouted at the sky was his grandfather at all. The man did not look like his grandfather. The conviction that something strange and terrible had happened, that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into the body of the kindly old man, took possession of him. On and on he ran down the hillside, sobbing as he ran. When he fell over the roots of a tree and in falling struck his head, he arose and tried to run on again. His head hurt so that presently he fell down and lay still, but it was only after Jesse had carried him to the buggy and he awoke to find the old man's hand stroking his head tenderly that the terror left him. "Take me away. There is a terrible man back there in the woods," he declared firmly, while Jesse looked away over the tops of the trees and again his lips cried out to God. "What have I done that Thou dost not approve of me," he whispered softly, saying the words over and over as he drove rapidly along the road with the boy's cut and bleeding head held tenderly against his shoulder.

大卫惊恐地大叫一声，从外公手里挣脱出来，转身逃离了树林。他根本不相信，刚刚那个仰着脸朝天空用沙哑的声音大喊大叫的人是他的外公。那个人看上去不像外公。他深信，一定是发生了什么奇怪、可怕的事，是某种神奇的力量使一个陌生、危险的人进入到了原本慈爱的外公的体内。他伤心地哭着，一路不停地跑下山坡。他绊倒在一棵树的树根上，磕到了头，接着，他站了起来，试图再接着跑。他的头很痛，不久便跌倒在地上躺着不动了。杰西将他抱到马车上，他醒来时，发现老人的手正慈爱地抚摩着他的头。直到那时，他心里的恐惧才消失。“带我走。树林后面有个可怕的人。”他坚定地大声说。可杰西眺望着树顶，嘴里又开始对上帝念念有词，“上帝啊，您并不赞同我的所为。”他轻声低语，反复地说着那些话，驾着车沿着公路飞驰，将孩子流着血的头轻轻地靠在自己的肩膀上。

III Surrender

三 屈服

The story of Louise Bentley, who became Mrs. John Hardy and lived with her husband in a brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg, is a story of misunderstanding. Before such women as Louise can be understood and their lives made livable, much will have to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be written and thoughtful lives lived by people about them.

路易丝·本特利嫁给了约翰·哈代，并住在温斯堡埃尔姆大街的一间砖头房子里。她的故事是一个关于误解的故事。要理解路易丝这类女人并使她们的生活有意义，需要大费周章。得写上几本有深度的书，周边的人还得过一段深思熟虑的生活。

Born of a delicate and overworked mother, and an impulsive, hard, imaginative father, who did not look with favor upon her coming into the world, Louise was from childhood a neurotic, one of the race of over-sensitive women that in later days industrialism was to bring in such great numbers into the world.

她有一个纤弱而过度劳累的母亲，还有一个冲动、严厉而富于想象力的父亲；父亲并不希望她降临于世。从儿时起，路易丝就有些神经质，属于过度敏感的女性。工业化主义发展到后期，这样的女性便越来越多。

During her early years she lived on the Bentley farm, a silent, moody child, wanting love more than anything else in the world and not getting it. When she was fifteen she went to live in Winesburg with the family of Albert Hardy, who had a store for the sale of buggies and wagons, and who was a member of the town board of education.

她幼年住在本特利农场的时候，是一个沉默又阴郁的孩子，极度渴望被爱却得不到。等她长到十五岁，便住到了温斯堡阿尔伯特·哈代家里。此人经营一间出售马车和货车的商店，同时也是镇上教育委员会的一员。

Louise went into town to be a student in the Winesburg High School and she went to live at the Hardys' because Albert Hardy and her father were friends.

路易丝到镇上读温斯堡高中，她住在哈代家，是因为阿尔伯特同她父亲是朋友。

Hardy, the vehicle merchant of Winesburg, like thousands of other men of his times, was an enthusiast on the subject of education. He had made his own way in the world without learning got from books, but he was convinced that had he but known books things would have gone better with him. To everyone who came into his shop he talked of the matter, and in his own household he drove his family distracted by his constant harping on the subject.

温斯堡车商哈代同那个时代的其他千千万万人一样，热衷于教育问题。他在世上建功立业，并未借助书本上的知识，但他深信，若是读过书，他就能做得更好。他对每个光临的客人谈及此事，在家里也总是重弹旧调，惹人厌烦。

He had two daughters and one son, John Hardy, and more than once the daughters threatened to leave school altogether. As a matter of principle they did just enough work in their classes to avoid punishment. "I hate books and I hate anyone who likes books," Harriet, the younger of the two girls, declared passionately.

他有两个女儿，还有一个儿子——约翰·哈代；女儿们曾不止一次吵着要一起休学。在学业上，她们遵循着得过且过的原则。“我讨厌书本，也讨厌爱读书的人。”妹妹哈丽雅特情绪激昂地宣布道。

In Winesburg as on the farm Louise was not happy. For years she had dreamed of the time when she could go forth into the world, and she looked upon the move into the Hardy household as a great step in the direction of freedom. Always when she had thought of the matter, it had seemed to her that in town all must be gaiety and life, that there men and women must live happily and freely, giving and taking friendship and affection as one takes the feel of a wind on the cheek. After the silence and the cheerlessness of life in the Bentley house, she dreamed of stepping forth into an atmosphere that was warm and pulsating with life and reality. And in the Hardy household Louise might have got something of the thing for which she so hungered but for a mistake she made when she had just come to town.

路易丝在温斯堡同在农场一样不快乐。多年来，她一心希望走出去见见世面，她把住进哈代家看作奔向自由的重要一步。每当她思及此事，都会觉得小镇必定是充满欢乐、生机勃勃的，那里男男女女幸福自在地共处，共享友谊与爱情，那感觉就像微风拂过脸颊一般。经历了本特利家沉寂而无趣的生活后，她梦想着走进那种温暖又洋溢着生命和现实的氛围里。在哈代家，路易丝本可以得到她曾如此渴望的东西，却因为她刚到镇里时的一个过失使这一切化为泡影。

Louise won the disfavor of the two Hardy girls, Mary and Harriet, by her application to her studies in school. She did not come to the house until the day when school was to begin and knew nothing of the feeling they had in the matter. She was timid and during the first month made no acquaintances. Every Friday afternoon one of the hired men from the farm drove into Winesburg and took her home for the weekend, so that she did not spend the Saturday holiday with the town people. Because she was embarrassed and lonely she worked constantly at her studies. To Mary and Harriet, it seemed as though she tried to make trouble for them by her proficiency. In her eagerness to appear well Louise wanted to answer every question put to the class by the teacher. She jumped up and down and her eyes flashed. Then when she had answered some question the others in the class had been unable to answer, she smiled happily. "See, I have done it for you," her eyes seemed to say. "You need not bother about the matter. I will answer all questions. For the whole class it will be easy while I am here."

她在学校学习勤奋刻苦，使得她遭到了哈代姐妹玛丽同哈丽雅特的冷落。她一直到学校开学才搬进哈代家，因此关于姐妹俩对学习的看法这事，她一无所知。她性格胆怯，开头的一个月里没有交什么朋友。每周五下午，农场会派来帮工驾车将她从温斯堡接回家度周末，因此她没和镇上的人一起过周六的假期。由于局促不安、性情孤僻，她便专心向学。在玛丽和哈丽雅特看来，她似乎在用自己的优秀给她们找麻烦。她急于表现良好，便想答上老师在课堂上提出的每个问题。她跳来跳去，眼睛忽闪着。当她答出班里其他学生不会的问题时，便高兴地微笑。“看吧，我替你们做出来了。”她的眼睛仿佛在说，“你们不需要再费劲了。我能答出所有的问题。只要我在，全班都能轻松些。”

In the evening after supper in the Hardy house, Albert Hardy began to praise Louise. One of the teachers had spoken highly of her and he was delighted. "Well, again I have heard of it," he began, looking hard at his daughters and then turning to smile at Louise. "Another of the teachers has told me of the good work Louise is doing. Everyone in Winesburg is telling me how smart she is. I am ashamed that they do not speak so of my own girls."Arising, the merchant marched about the room and lighted his evening cigar.

在哈代家，晚上用过晚餐后，阿尔伯特便开始夸赞路易丝。有个老师非常赞赏她，因此他也觉得高兴。“哎，我又听说了，”他开口说道，严厉地望着自己的女儿们，然后转过头去朝路易丝微笑着，“又有一个老师向我表扬了路易丝做的功课。温斯堡的每个人都在告诉我她很聪明。令我感到惭愧的是，他们没有这样夸我的女儿们。”这位商人站起身来，在房里走来走去，点了一支晚上抽的雪茄。

The two girls looked at each other and shook their heads wearily. Seeing their indifference the father became angry. "I tell you it is something for you two to be thinking about," he cried, glaring at them. "There is a big change coming here in America and in learning is the only hope of the coming generations. Louise is the daughter of a rich man but she is not ashamed to study. It should make you ashamed to see what she does."

他的两个女儿对望了一眼，无奈地摇了摇头。父亲见到她们如此漠然，便生起气来了。“我跟你们说，你们两个该好好想想了，”他大声说着，怒视着她们，“现在美国正在经历巨变，只有学知识才是你们这代人的唯一出路。路易丝是有钱人家的孩子，可她却能不耻向学。和她相比，你们真该觉得羞愧。”

The merchant took his hat from a rack by the door and prepared to depart for the evening. At the door he stopped and glared back. So fierce was his manner that Louise was frightened and ran upstairs to her own room. The daughters began to speak of their own affairs. "Pay attention to me," roared the merchant. "Your minds are lazy. Your indifference to education is affecting your characters. You will amount to nothing. Now mark what I say—Louise will be so far ahead of you that you will never catch up.”

商人从门边的帽架上拿下帽子，打算晚上出门。他在门边停了一下，回头狠狠地瞪了一眼。他的目光太过凶狠，以至于路易丝被吓得逃回了楼上自己的房间。哈代姐妹俩开始谈论起自己的事情来。“给我听着，”她们的父亲大声咆哮着，“你们这些不动脑筋的懒丫头。你们对教育的漠然正在影响着你们的性格。你们会一事无成的。现在记住我说的话——路易丝会一直把你们甩得远远的，你们永远也追不上。”

The distracted man went out of the house and into the street shaking with wrath. He went along muttering words and swearing, but when he got into Main Street his anger passed. He stopped to talk of the weather or the crops with some other merchant or with a farmer who had come into town and forgot his daughters altogether or, if he thought of them, only shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well, girls will be girls," he muttered philosophically.

这位懊恼的父亲走出家门来到街上，全身气得发抖。他一路走着，口里咕咕哝哝地低声抱怨着、咒骂着，可当他走到大街上，他的愤怒就烟消云散了。他停下来同其他的某个商人或是刚进城的某个农夫谈起了天气或庄稼收成，将女儿们忘得一干二净了。假使他想起来，也不过是耸耸肩。“咳，算了，女孩子总归是女孩子。”他颇有哲理地唠叨着。

In the house when Louise came down into the room where the two girls sat, they would have nothing to do with her. One evening after she had been there for more than six weeks and was heartbroken because of the continued air of coldness with which she was always greeted, she burst into tears. "Shut up your crying and go back to your own room and to your books," Mary Hardy said sharply.

在他的家里，当路易丝从房间里下楼来的时候，那两姐妹坐在那里，谁也不愿理睬她。路易丝在那里住了六周多后，一个夜晚，她因为常常遭遇这种冷淡的氛围而伤心不已，放声大哭起来。“别哭了，回你自己的房间去读书吧！”玛丽·哈代尖刻地说。

The room occupied by Louise was on the second floor of the Hardy house, and her window looked out upon an orchard. There was a stove in the room and every evening young John Hardy carried up an armful of wood and put it in a box that stood by the wall. During the second month after she came to the house, Louise gave up all hope of getting on a friendly footing with the Hardy girls and went to her own room as soon as the evening meal was at an end.

路易丝住的房间在哈代家二楼，窗户正对着一个果园。房间里有个炉子，每晚小约翰·哈代都捧来一抱木柴放在靠墙放着的箱子里。路易丝来这儿的第二个月后就彻底放弃了同哈代姐妹友好共处的希望，晚饭一结束便回到自己的房间。

Her mind began to play with thoughts of making friends with John Hardy. When he came into the room with the wood in his arms, she pretended to be busy with her studies but watched him eagerly. When he had put the wood in the box and turned to go out, she put down her head and blushed. She tried to make talk but could say nothing, and after he had gone she was angry at herself for her stupidity. The mind of the country girl became filled with the idea of drawing close to the young man. She thought that in him might be found the quality she had all her life been seeking in people. It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different, and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes into a room. Day and night she thought of the matter, but although the thing she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and close it had as yet no conscious connection with sex. It had not become that definite, and her mind had only alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was at hand and unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly to her.

她开始考虑同约翰·哈代交朋友。当他抱着木柴进到房间里时，她假装忙于学习，却在仔细地观察他。等他把木柴放进箱子，转身出去的时候，她低下头，脸红了。她试图同他交谈可又开不了口，等他走了，她又为自己的愚笨感到生气。这个农场姑娘的脑海里满是同那个年轻人拉近距离的想法。她想，或许能在他身上找到她一直以来在人们身上寻觅的那种品质。在她看来，她同世上所有其他人之间横亘着一堵墙。她生活在某种温暖的生活内圆的边缘，这种内圆世界必定是对其他人完全敞开的，也是可以理解的。她沉迷于这个想法里，也许就需要她一个有勇气的行动来使自己同其他人之间的关系变得全然不同，那样也许就能有一个全新的生活，就好像开启了一扇门，进入了另一个房间。她日以继夜地想着这个问题，可尽管她那么热切向往的东西是非常温暖而亲密的，但却和性没有丝毫有意的联系。这个想法并不确定，她看中约翰这个人不过因为他近在左右，而且不像他的姐妹们那样敌视她。

The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older than Louise. In a certain kind of knowledge of the world they were years older. They lived as all of the young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those days young women did not go out of our towns to Eastern colleges and ideas in regard to social classes had hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in much the same social position as a daughter of a farmer or a merchant, and there were no leisure classes. A girl was "nice" or she was "not nice."If a nice girl, she had a young man who came to her house to see her on Sunday and on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she went with her young man to a dance or a church social. At other times she received him at the house and was given the use of the parlor for that purpose. No one intruded upon her. For hours the two sat behind closed doors. Sometimes the lights were turned low and the young man and woman embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair disarranged. After a year or two, if the impulse within them became strong and insistent enough, they married.

哈代姐妹——玛丽和哈丽雅特——都比路易丝大。在对这个世界的认识上，她们要老道得多。她们像所有中西部小镇上的年轻女孩那样生活着。在那时，年轻女孩们不会离开镇子到东部的大学去上学，也几乎不存在社会阶层的想法。工人的女儿同农夫或者商人的女儿社会地位完全平等，没有什么有闲阶级。评价一个女孩的标准只有“漂亮”或者“不漂亮”。一个漂亮的姑娘周日和周三晚便会有年轻男子上门求见。有时，她也会同那名追求者去参加舞会或教堂的社交。其余的时候，她在家中接待他，并拨有专门的会客室。没有人进去打搅。两个年轻人关起门来呆上好几个小时。有时，灯光被调暗，年轻男女拥抱在一起。双颊嫣红，发丝凌乱。一两年后，若是他们之间的激情足够强烈和持久，他们便会结婚。

One evening during her first winter in Winesburg, Louise had an adventure that gave a new impulse to her desire to break down the wall that she thought stood between her and John Hardy. It was Wednesday and immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on his hat and went away. Young John brought the wood and put it in the box in Louise's room. "You do work hard, don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before she could answer he also went away.

路易丝在温斯堡的第一个冬天的某个夜晚，经历了一次奇遇，使得她有了一种新的冲动，想去打破同约翰·哈代之间的那堵墙。那是一个星期三，阿尔伯特一吃完晚饭便戴上帽子出门去了。年轻的约翰将木柴放进路易丝房间的箱子里。“你真的很用功，对吧？”他讷讷地说道，然后在她反应过来之前就出去了。

Louise heard him go out of the house and had a mad desire to run after him. Opening her window she leaned out and called softly, "John, dear John, come back, don't go away.”The night was cloudy and she could not see far into the darkness, but as she waited she fancied she could hear a soft little noise as of someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the orchard. She was frightened and closed the window quickly. For an hour she moved about the room trembling with excitement and when she could not longer bear the waiting, she crept into the hall and down the stairs into a closet-like room that opened off the parlor.

路易丝听到他走出房子的声音，有股疯狂的冲动想追出去。她打开窗户，探出身子，轻声叫道，“约翰，亲爱的约翰，回来，别走。”天上有云，黑暗中她看不清楚，可当她等待时，她想象着自己能听到一种轻微的响声，像是有个人踮着脚穿过果园里的果树。她害怕起来，迅速关上了窗户。她在房间里来回走动了一个小时，激动地颤抖着。当她再也无法忍受这等待的时候，她就轻轻地溜过走廊，下楼来到一间类似壁橱的房间，那里有门通往会客室。

Louise had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had for weeks been in her mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had concealed himself in the orchard beneath her window and she was determined to find him and tell him that she wanted him to come close to her, to hold her in his arms, to tell her of his thoughts and dreams and to listen while she told him her thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will be easier to say things," she whispered to herself, as she stood in the little room groping for the door.

路易丝决定将数周来盘桓在脑海里的那个勇敢之举付诸实施。她相信约翰·哈代已经藏身在她窗下的果园里，她决意找到他并告诉他，她希望他同她接近，拥她入怀，告诉她他的想法和梦想，也希望他能倾听她的想法和梦想。“黑暗里比较容易说话。”她低声自语道，同时站在小房子里，摸索着朝门走去。

And then suddenly Louise realized that she was not alone in the house. In the parlor on the other side of the door a man's voice spoke softly and the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a little opening beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young man, came into the little dark room.

就在那时，路易丝突然意识到她并不是独自一人在这房子里。门那头的会客室里有个男人在轻声说话，接着，门开了。路易丝刚来得及把自己藏在楼梯下的一小块空地里，玛丽·哈代同她那年轻的追求者就进了那间昏暗的小房间。

For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and listened. Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the man who had come to spend the evening with her, brought to the country girl a knowledge of men and women. Putting her head down until she was curled into a little ball she lay perfectly still. It seemed to her that by some strange impulse of the gods, a great gift had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not understand the older woman's determined protest.

漆黑中，路易丝坐在地板上倾听了一个小时。玛丽·哈代没有说话，她同那位前来与她共度良宵的男子一道教会了这个农场姑娘什么是男女之事。她把头一直往下低，直到整个人蜷成一团，无声无息地躺在那里。在她看来，玛丽·哈代像是因为众神的一时冲动而被赋予了某种特质，她无法理解这位比她年长的女孩为什么决意要抵抗。

The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her. When she struggled and laughed, he but held her the more tightly. For an hour the contest between them went on and then they went back into the parlor and Louise escaped up the stairs. "I hope you were quiet out there. You must not disturb the little mouse at her studies," she heard Harriet saying to her sister as she stood by her own door in the hallway above.

年轻男子抱着玛丽·哈代，亲吻着她。当她挣扎着大笑起来的时候，他却反而抱得更紧。他们之间的这场嬉戏持续了一个小时，之后便回到会客室，路易丝也逃回了楼上。“我真希望你在那儿安静些。你不能打搅到那只学习的小耗子。”当她站在楼上自己房间的门边时，听到哈丽·雅特对自己的姐姐说道。

Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night, when all in the house were asleep, she crept downstairs and slipped it under his door. She was afraid that if she did not do the thing at once her courage would fail. In the note she tried to be quite definite about what she wanted. "I want someone to love me and I want to love someone," she wrote. "If you are the one for me I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a noise under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come to you. I am thinking about it all the time, so if you are to come at all you must come soon."

路易丝给约翰·哈代写了张便条。深夜时，房里的人都睡着了，她偷偷下楼，把纸条从他门边塞了进去。她深恐如果自己不马上做这件事，勇气就会消失。她试着在便条上相当明确地了阐明了自己想要的是什么。“我想有人来爱我，也想去爱一个人。”她如是写道，“如果你就是那个人，我希望你晚上到果园里来，在我窗下弄出些声响。我能很容易地爬下窗蓬来找你。我一直在想这件事，所以，如果你真打算来就要快。”

For a long time Louise did not know what would be the outcome of her bold attempt to secure for herself a lover. In a way she still did not know whether or not she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that to be held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of life, and then a new impulse came and she was terribly afraid. The age-old woman's desire to be possessed had taken possession of her, but so vague was her notion of life that it seemed to her just the touch

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