-
In the dining-saloon I sit at a table with
three other men; Laura sits some way oft with a
married couple and
their daughter. I
can observe her without her knowing, and this
gives me pleasure, for it is as in a moving
picture that I can note the grace of
her gestures, whether she raises a glass of wine
to her lips or turns with
a remark to
one of her neighbours or takes a cigarette from
her case with those slender fingers. I have
never had much of an eye for noticing
the clothes of women, but I get the impression
that Laura is always in
grey and white
by day, looking cool when other people are flushed
and shiny in the tropical heat; in the
evening she wears soft rich colours,
dark red, olive green, midnight blue, always of
the most supple flowing
texture. I
ventured to say something of the kind to her, when
she laughed at my clumsy compliment and
said I had better take to writing
fashion articles instead of political leaders.
在餐厅里，
我同另外三个男人围坐在一张桌子旁，
而劳拉同一对夫妇及他们的女儿一块儿坐
在离我不远的地方。
我可以观察她而不让她发觉，
这使我觉得开心，
因为我可以像看电影一
样地欣赏她优雅的动作，
不论是举杯送到
唇边，
还是扭头与邻座交谈，
抑或是用她那纤细的
手指从烟盒中夹取香烟的动作。
我向
来不太会欣赏也不大注意
女人的衣着，
但我却有这样的
印象：
劳拉白天总穿着灰色和白色的衣服，
因而当别人被热带的高温烘烤得红光满
面时，
她
看上去却给人一种清爽的感觉。
到了晚间，她又总是穿着深红、橄榄绿、深蓝等色调柔和富
丽、质料柔
软光滑的衣服。
当我不揣冒昧地将这话对她讲时，
她对我这种笨拙的恭维报以开
心的大
笑，还说我最好不再写什
么政坛人物的述评文章而改行专写时装评论算了。
The tall Colonel whose name is
Dalrymple seems a nice chap . He and I and Laura
and a Chinese woman
improbably galled
Mme Merveille have made up a Bridge-tour and thus
beguile ourselves for an hour or so
after dinner while others dance on
deck. The Colonel, who is not too offensively an
Empire-builder,
sometimes tries to talk
to me about public affairs; he says he used to
read me, and is rather charmingly
deferential , prefacing his remarks by
'Of course it's not for me to suggest to you
?
tell
me exactly how he thinks some topical item of our
dome, the or foreign policy should be handled. He
is
by no means stupid or ill-informed;
a little opinionated perhaps, and just about as
far to the Right as
anybody could go,
but I like him, and try not to tease him by
putting forward views which would only bring a
puzzled look to his face. Besides, I do
not want to become involved in discussion. I
observe with
amusement how totally the
concerns of the world, which once absorbed me to
the exclusion of all else
except an
occasional relaxation with poetry or music, have
lost interest for me eve to the extent of a bored
distaste. Doubtless some instinct
impels me gluttonously to cram these the last
weeks of my life with the
gentler
things I never had time for, releasing some
suppressed inclination which in fact was always
latent.
Or maybe Laura's unwitting
influence has called it out.
※
那个名叫达里波的高个子上校看样子是个好相处的人。他和我同劳拉及一个竟被人
称呼为麦尔维尔夫人的中国妇
女凑成一桌桥牌，四人搭档。这样，<
/p>
晚饭后，当其他的人在甲
板上跳舞时，
我们便用打牌来消遣个把小时。
上校
不是个令人讨厌的帝国的卫道士，
他经常
找我谈论一些国家大事。
他说他以前
常读我写的文章；他说话温文尔
雅，彬彬有礼，一开口
总是先来上一句
“当然，
我没有资格建议您
??
”
接下来他就会明确地谈他该如何处置关于
某项国内或外交事务的意见。他决不算愚笨，也绝谈不上孤陋寡闻，只是可能有一点偏执，
< br>
政治思想上极端右倾保
守，
但我对他颇有好感，
因而尽量不提出一些只会使他露出困惑的神
< br>色的见解，以免使他难堪。况且，我也不想
陷入讨论的旋涡。我有趣地发觉，自己
过去除偶
尔借诗歌或音乐消遣放松一下外，
一
心专注的世界大事现在不仅是
索然无味，
而且简直是令
人厌烦了。
这无疑是自己受某种本能的驱使，
要
贪婪地用一些过去无暇享受的赏心乐事
来填
补自己生命中的最后几周，
释放那些在过去虽受到压抑但一直潜伏在自己心中的欲望。
也许
是劳拉的无意的
影响唤起了我心中的欲望。
Dismissive
as Pharisee, I regarded as moonlings all those
whose life was lived on a less practical plane.
Protests about damage to 'natural
beauty' froze me wit,
spare no regrets
for a lake dammed into hydraulic use for the
benefit of an industrial city in the Midlands.
And so it was for all things. A hard
materialism was my creed, accepted as a law of
progress; any ascription
of
disinterested motives aroused not only my
suspicion but my scorn.
※
过去，我像法利赛人一样自以为是，轻视别人。只要别人的生活不像我这么讲求实
际，我就把他们看作月球居
民。
对于人们因“大自然的美”遭到破坏而提出的抗议我嗤之以
鼻，因为我相信文明的进步的合理性。
对于为了
利用水力使内地某个工业城市受益而在某个
湖泊上筑起拦湖大坝这种事情我根本不觉得遗憾。
对一切事物我都是这
种态度。
我信仰绝对
的实用主义，
并将其看作是人类进步的自然法则。
任何人若标榜自己的行为出于无私的动
机，
那不仅会引起我的怀疑，而且会引起我的轻蔑。
And now see how I stand, as sentimental
and sensitive as any old maid doing water-colour s
of sunsets! I
once flattered myself
that I was an adult man; I now perceive that I am
gloriously and abolescently silly. A
new Clovis, loving what I have
despised, and suffering from calf-love into the
bar gain, I want my till of
beauty
before I go. Geographically I did not care and
scarcely know where I am. There are no signposts
in
the sea.
可是看看现在的我吧，竟然像一个老
处女正用水彩画着西下的残阳，十分地多愁善感
!
我曾
自诩
为老成持重，现在
却意识到自己原来这么幼稚无知。就像那个改弦易辙的克洛维一样，<
/p>
我竟然对自己过去所鄙视的一切开始热爱起
来，
并且还要遭受少年初恋的痛苦。
我想在离开
人世之前尽情享受一切美
好的东西。我不知道也不想知道自己身
处何方。茫茫大海无路标。
The young moon lies on her back
tonight as is her habit in the tropics, and as, I
think, is suitable if not seemly for a
virgin. Not a star but might not shoot down and
accept the invitation to
become her
lover. When all my fellow-passengers have finally
dispersed to bed, I creep up again to the
deserted deck and slip into the
swimming pool and float, no longer what people
believe me to be, a middle-
aged
journalist taking a holiday on an ocean-going
liner, but a liberated being, bathed in ()
mythological
water s, an Endymion young
and strong, with a god for his father and a vision
of the world inspired from
Olympus. All
weight is lifted from my limbs; 1 am one with the
night; I understand the meaning of
pantheism . How my friends would laugh
if they knew I had come to this! To have discarded
, as I believe,
all usual frailties ,
to have become incapable of envy, ambition, malice
, the desire to score off my
neighbour,
to enjoy this purification even as I enjoy the
clean voluptuousness of the warm breeze on my
skin and the cool support of the water.
Thus, I imagine, must the pious feel cleansed on
leaving the
confessional after the
solemnity of absolution .
※
今夜的一弯新月仰面斜躺在天空，这是月亮在热带地区常见的姿势。在我看来，这
种姿势对一个少女来说虽说有
些不雅，
但却还是适宜的。
没有哪一颗星星不愿飞射下来接受
邀请做她的情人。
当船上的其他乘客
最后一个个都
回舱就寝之后，
我一个人又悄悄爬上空荡
荡的甲板，
滑人游泳池，
在水面上浮游着。
这时我已不再是人
们所熟
悉的那位在远洋海轮上
度假的中年记者了，
而是一个无拘无束的沐浴着天池神水的自由快乐的人，
就像神话中那位
有天神作父亲并有一
双奥林匹斯山诸神所赐的观察人世的慧眼的年轻健壮的恩底弥翁。
我只
觉身体四肢轻飘飘的没有任何重量，
并且
和夜的世界合为一体。
我悟出了泛神论的真正意义。
我的那
些朋友们若知道我已变成这样，他们不知会笑成什么样
子
!
在享受着这暖风浴肤，凉
水托体所带来的清新快感时，我相信我的心灵也得到了净化，丢弃了凡人皆有的种种弱点，
变得不会嫉妒，没有野
心，没有恶意，与世
无争。照我想象，那些虔诚的教徒在做完庄严的
忏悔仪式离开
忏悔室时，他们心灵得到净化的
感觉一定就像我此时的感觉一样。
Sometimes Laura and I lean over the
taffrail , and that is happiness. It may be by
daylight, looking at the
sea, rippled
with little white ponies, or with no ripples at
all but on-ly the lazy satin of blue, marbled at
the
edge where the passage of our ship
has disturbed it. Or it may be at night, when the
sky surely seems
blacker than ever at
home and the stars more golden. I recall a phrase
from the diary of a half- literate
soldier,
‘
The
stars seemed little cuts in the black cover,
through which a
bright beyond was
seen.' Sometimes these untaught scribblers have a
way of putting things.
※
有时，劳拉和我一起倚在船尾栏杆上，这对我是一种幸福。倘是在白天，我们凭栏
远眺大海，
只见海面上时而
翻卷起白色的浪花，
时而平静得宛若一幅微微飘动起伏着的蓝色
< br>缎面，完全见不到翻起的浪花，只有我们的轮船驶
过之处才泛起一道道如大理石般
的波纹。
若是在夜晚，我们翘首望天，这儿的夜空比故乡的更黑，
星光却显得更加
璀璨。此时此景令
我不由想起一个粗通文墨的士兵在日记中写的这样一句话：
“星星看起来就像一个黑锅盖上
挖<
/p>
的许多小窟窿，透过这些小窟窿可以看见锅盖外面的亮光。
”有时候那些没念过书的人信
笔涂鸦写的东西倒也有那
么两下子。
The wireless told us today that there
is fog all over England.
据无线电广播，今天全英格兰弥漫着大雾。
Sometimes we follow a coastline, it may
be precipitous bluffs of grey limestone rising
sheer out of the sea,
or a low-lying
arid stretch with miles of white sandy beach, and
no sign of habitation, very bleachedand
barren. These coasts remind me of
people; either they are forbidding and
unapproachable , or else they
present
no mystery and show all they have to give at a
glance, you feel the country would continue to be
flat and featureless however far you
penetrated inland. What I like best are the stern
cliffs, with ranges of
mountains
soaring behind them, full of possibilities, peaks
to be scaled only by the most daring. What plants
of the high altitudes grow unravished
among their crags and valleys? So do I let my
imagination play over
the recesses of
Laura's Character, so austere in the foreground
but nurturing what treasures of tenderness,
like delicate flowers, for the
discovery of the venturesome.
※
有时，我们的轮船沿着海岸线航行。时而是突拔而起的石灰岩峭壁，时而是地势低
洼连绵数英里的茫茫沙滩，渺
无人迹，凄惨荒凉。这种海岸景象使我
联想到这样一些人，
他
们或者是令人望而生畏，难以接近，或者是无秘可
隐，让人一眼就可看穿。
看见这些海岸，
你会产生这样的感觉：不论你向内陆腹地深人
多远，那里的土地都将和岸
边一样平淡无奇。
我最喜爱的是岸边的那些悬崖峭壁及其背后的那高耸云端、
神秘莫测的峰峦叠嶂，
那山峰只
有
最英勇无畏的人才能够攀登上去。
在崇山峻岭之间人迹未至的石隙和幽谷中生长着的是一
些什么样的高原植物
呢
?
我也这样地让自己的想象力尽情地探索劳拉性格深处的秘密。她的
性情表面上严肃冷峻，
但她内心里却蕴育
着丰富温柔的情感，
宛如娇嫩的花朵，
等待着勇士
去发现。