《斯坦贝克携犬横越美国》章节试读

《斯坦贝克携犬横越美国》的笔记-寂寞的美国人 - 寂寞的美国人

其实还是没多久以前，一个人一旦出海，他的存在便会随着停止两三年，或永远。当加了篷子的马车出发横越这片大陆时，留在家乡的亲朋好友或许再也听不到这些流浪者的消息，日子继续过下去，问题一个个解决，决定一个个做出来。就连我都还记得那时电报只代表一件事———家里有人去世。但是仅在一段短短的时间内，电话改变了一切。如果在这篇流浪的叙述中，你们觉得我似乎砍断了联系着家庭悲欢、家中小家伙现犯的恶行、小小家伙长牙的时刻以及生意上成功与苦闷的那条线，那么我告诉你们，事实并非如此。一个礼拜有三天我会在某个酒吧、超级市场或轮胎与工具杂物服务站，打电话到纽约重建我在时空中的身份。在那三四分钟内，我像拖着尾巴的彗星一样，有了属于一个人的名字、责任、快乐与挫败。那种感觉就像在两个空间中来回闪避，是一种冲破声音藩篱的沉默爆炸，那是一种奇异的经验，就像在一种已知却又异化的水中快蘸一下的感觉。
There was a time not too long ago when a man put out to sea and ceased to exist for two or three years or forever. And when the covered wagons set out to cross the continent, friends and relations remaining at home might never hear from the wanderers again. Life went on, problems were settled, decisions were taken. Even I can remember when a telegram meant just one thing— a death in the family. In one short lifetime the telephone has changed all that. If in this wandering narrative I seem to have cut the cords of family joys and sorrows, of Junior’s current delinquency and junior Junior’s new tooth, of business triumph and agony, it is not so. Three times a week from some bar, supermarket, or tire-and-tool-cluttered service station, I put calls through to New York and reestablished my identity in time and space. For three or four minutes I had a name, and the duties and joys and frustrations a man carries with him like a comet’s tail. It was like dodging back and forth from one dimension to another, a silent explosion of breaking through a sound barrier, a curious experience, like a quick dip into a known but alien water.

《斯坦贝克携犬横越美国》的笔记-第109页

As I sat secure in the silence, a jeep scuffed to a stop on the road and good Charley left his work and roared. A young man in boots, corduroys, and a red and black checked mackinaw climbed out and strode near. He spoke in the harsh unfriendly tone a man uses when he doesn’t much like what he has to do.
“Don’t you know this land is posted? This is private property.”
Normally his tone would have sparked a tinder in me. I would have flared an ugliness of anger and he would then have been able to evict me with pleasure and good conscience. We might even have edged into a quarrel with passion and violence. That would be only normal, except that the beauty and the quiet made me slow to respond with resentment, and in my hesitation I lost it. I said, “I knew it must be private. I was about to look for someone to ask permission or maybe pay to rest here.”
“The owner don’t want campers. They leave papers around and build fires.”
“I don’t blame him. I know the mess they make.”
“See that sign on that tree? No trespassing, hunting, fishing, camping.”
“Well,” I said, “that sounds as if it means business. If it’s your job to throw me off, you’ve got to throw me off. I’ll go peacefully. But I’ve just made a pot of coffee. Do you think your boss would mind if I finished it? Would he mind if I offered you a cup? Then you could kick me off quicker.”
The young man grinned. “What the hell,” he said. “You don’t build no fires and you don’t throw out no trash.”
“I’m doing worse than that. I’m trying to bribe you with a cup of coffee. It’s worse than that too. I’m suggesting a dollop of Old Grandad in the coffee.”
He laughed then. “What the hell!” he said. “Let me get my jeep off the road.”
Well, the whole pattern was broken. He squatted crosslegged in the pine needles on the ground and sipped his coffee. Charley sniffed close and let himself be touched, and that’s a rare thing for Charley. He does not permit strangers to touch him, just happens to be somewhere else. But this young man’s fingers found the place behind the ears Charley delights to have rubbed, and he sighed contentedly and sat down.
“What you doing—going hunting? I see your guns in the truck.”
“Just driving through. You know how you see a place and it’s just right, and you’re just tired enough, I guess you can’t help stopping.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean. You got a nice outfit.”
“I like it and Charley likes it.”
“Charley? Never heard of a dog named Charley. Hello, Charley.”
“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with your boss. Think I ought to drag ass now?”
“What the hell?” he said. “He ain’t here. I’m in charge. You ain’t doing no harm.”
“I’m trespassing.”
“Know something? Fella camped here, kind of a nut. So I came to kick him off. He said something funny. He says, ‘Trespassing ain’t a crime and ain’t a misdemeanor.’ He says it’s a tort. Now what the hell does that mean? He was a kind of a nut.”
“Search me,” I said, “I’m not a nut. Let me warm up your coffee.” I warmed it two ways.
“You make swell coffee,” said my host.
“Before it gets too dark I’ve got to find a place to park. Know any place up the road where they’ll let me stay the night?”
“If you pull over that way behind those pine trees nobody could see you from the road.”
“But I’d be committing a tort.”
“Yeah. I wish to Christ I knew what that meant.”
He drove ahead of me in the jeep and helped me find a level place in the pine grove. And after dark he came into Rocinante and admired her facilities and we drank some whisky together and had a nice visit and told each other a few lies. I showed him some fancy jigs and poppers I’d bought at Abercrombie and Fitch, and gave him one, and I gave him some paperback thriller I’d finished with, all loaded with sex and sadism, and also a copy of Field and Stream. In return he invited me to stay as long as I wished and said that he’d come by tomorrow and we’d do a little fishing, and I accepted for one day at least. It’s nice to have friends, and besides I wanted a little time to think about the things I’d seen, the huge factories and plants and the scurry and production.
The guardian of the lake was a lonely man, the more so because he had a wife. He showed me her picture in a plastic shield in his wallet, a prettyish blond girl trying her best to live up to the pictures in the magazines, a girl of products, home permanents, shampoos, rinses, skin conditioners. She hated being out in what she called the sticks, longed for the great and gracious life in Toledo or South Bend. Her only company was found in the shiny pages of Charm and Glamour. Eventually she would sulk her way to success. Her husband would get a job in some great clanging organism of progress, and they would live happily ever after. All this came through in small, oblique spurts in his conversation. She knew exactly what she wanted and he didn’t, but his want would ache in him all his life. After he drove away in his jeep I lived his life for him and it put a mist of despair on me. He wanted his pretty little wife and he wanted something else and he couldn’t have both.
Charley had a dream so violent that he awakened me. His legs jerked in the motions of running and he made little yipping cries. Perhaps he dreamed he chased some gigantic rabbit and couldn’t quite catch it. Or maybe in his dream something chased him. On the second supposition I put out my hand and awakened him, but the dream must have been strong. He muttered to himself and complained and drank a half a bowl of water before he went back to sleep.
The guardian came back soon after sun-up. He brought a rod and I got out my own and rigged a spinning reel, and had to find my glasses to tie on the bright painted popper. The monofilament line is transparent, said to be invisible to fish, and is completely invisible to me without my glasses.
I said, “You know, I don’t have a fishing license.”
“What the hell,” he said, “we probably won’t catch anything anyway.”
And he was right, we didn’t.
We walked and cast and walked and did everything we knew to interest bass or pike. My friend kept saying, “They’re right down there if we can just get the message through.” But we never did. If they were down there, they still are. A remarkable amount of fishing is like that, but I like it just the same. My wants are simple. I have no desire to latch onto a monster symbol of fate and prove my manhood in titanic piscine war. But sometimes I do like a couple of cooperative fish of frying size. At noon I refused an invitation to come to dinner and meet the wife. I was growing increasingly anxious to meet my own wife, so I hurried on.
被中文版吃掉的一桩事儿。本来看到日版comment里“コーヒー一杯で談笑できるのが羨ましい”还想说也有喝酒啊，结果一看这件就没话说了233