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When Captain Flint Was Still A Good Man. By Nick Dybek.
《那時，弗林特船長仍是個好人》尼克迪貝克著
VAST, turbulent and mysterious, the sea is a gift to storytellers. It is a perilous passageway to new lands and a bountiful source of food, beauty and lore.
大海，廣袤、躁動而神秘的大海，是上天賜給講故事人的禮物。它是通向新奇世界的驚險通道，是食物的源頭，美麗的源頭也是傳說的源頭。
Life on the rough seas turns ordinary men into heroes, but also into scoundrels and martyrs. No wonder these sodden, salt-crusted figures populate some of the best fiction.
生活在波濤洶涌的大海上可以既可以把普通人蛻變成英雄，也可將其變成惡棍或者烈士。難怪最好的小說中總不乏那些渾身濕透，透著鹽味的角色。
Nick Dybek has turned to such enduring tropes for his debut novel, “When Captain Flint Was Still A Good Man”.
尼克迪貝克在自己的處女作小說《那時，弗林特船長仍是個好人》中選用了這一經(jīng)久不衰的主題。
His story is set on Loyalty Island, a thin peninsula off the coast of Washington state, full of “the stink of herring, nickel paint, and kelp rotting on moorings and beaches”.
他的故事設(shè)定在忠誠島上，這是一座華盛頓州海岸線外的一座半島。島上“充斥著鯡魚、鎳漆的味道和挺錨處和海岸邊飄來的腐爛的海藻的臭味。”
In this remote fishing village, manhood means spending half of every year on a boat near Alaska, winching up crab pots from the freezing depths of the Bering Sea.
在這座遙遠的漁村，男子氣概意昧著每年花超過半年的時間駕船游弋在阿拉斯加附近，從冰冷的白令海深處，用絞盤絞起蝦籠。
The women stay behind, the boys hope to join their fathers and the men return home.
女人留在家中，孩子們則希望與父親一起出海。
If they are lucky, as shaggy, greasy strangers, telling stories that "were grey, drenched in icy slime. They made you gasp but not smile, and the men who told them smiled—if at all—only at the gasps."
如果幸運的話，大人們便可安全返家，像蓬頭垢面滿身油污的陌生人一樣，講述“灰色的，被冰冷泥漿浸濕的”故事，“這些故事讓人屏息凝神，但并不能使人發(fā)笑，講述人如果想笑的話，也只會在喘息間微笑。”
The book begins with the village on the edge of a crisis that occurred when the narrator was a boy.
故事開始于這座漁村處于危機邊緣的時刻，那時講述者還是個孩子。
John Gaunt, the owner of the fishing fleet, is on his death bed. He is the third generation of Gaunts to steer the fate and fortunes of Loyalty Island, and he has apparently left everything to his son Richard.
漁船隊老板約翰剛特躺在床上與世長辭。約翰剛特是掌控者忠誠島命運和財富的剛特家族的第三代，他的死把所有一切身后事都交給了兒子理查德。
But the proud locals loathe Richard. They know that he is no fisherman, but an urban and effeminate man, not yet 30, who left town to go to university and rarely comes back.
但自豪的當(dāng)?shù)厝擞憛捓聿榈隆Ｋ麄冋J為理查德算不上漁民，是個娘娘腔的的城里人。理查德當(dāng)時30歲，很早就離開小鎮(zhèn)去上大學(xué)，很少回來。
Just as the boats are primed for another season, Richard seems ready to sell to the Japanese. The people of Loyalty want only what they already have, and they are prepared to guard it fiercely.
正當(dāng)所有船只未下一個漁季蓄勢待發(fā)時，理查德似乎想將船只賣給日本人。忠誠島上居民只想保持現(xiàn)有的生活方式不變，因此他們準(zhǔn)備堅定地捍衛(wèi)這一切。
This story is recalled from a distance by Cal. Older and living anonymously in Chicago, Cal was 14 when Loyalty Island faced this uncertain future—an age when he could still lionise his father and the other fishermen, but also be a keen observer.
故事是通過遠離漁村的一個名叫卡爾的人的回憶展開的。現(xiàn)在的卡爾衣步入老年。默默無聞地居住在芝加哥市，但在忠誠島遭遇不確定未來的危機時，卡爾年僅14歲，在這個年齡，他仍崇拜自己的父親和其他漁民，同時又是一個敏銳的觀察者。
"I was still young enough to believe that the important questions had been answered somewhere," he muses, a reminiscence with hard edges.
他沉思道，“我當(dāng)時太年輕，認為重要的問題都有答案”，這樣的回憶棱角分明。
As a child he sensed that something was not right between his parents, who lived "like strangers on an aeroplane, squeezing politely past each other in tight spaces".
雖然是個孩子，他仍能感覺到父母的關(guān)系不很正常，他們就像“飛機上的乘客一樣，在狹小的空間，客客氣氣地擠在一起”。
But he adored them both—his gruff but gentle father ("hands as thick as strip steaks") and his melancholic wisp of a mother, who was wooed to Loyalty but never fitted in.
但他喜歡父母——父親是個急性子不過溫文爾雅，母親略帶一絲憂郁氣質(zhì)。父親希望母親能夠愛上忠誠島，但母親從未融入到這里的生活。
Instead she found nourishment in her substantial record collection (from Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" to John Coltrane's "bawling" sax), foreign films and John Gaunt, her only local friend.
相反，她從大量的唱片、國外電影和與約翰剛特的交往中自得其樂，而約翰剛特是她在當(dāng)?shù)匚ㄒ坏呐笥选?/div>
A seafaring life may be full of suffering, but it is also full of a macho romance that lends a larger sense of destiny to it all.
雖然航海生活充滿苦楚，但同樣也能充滿陽剛的傳奇，增添了一種強烈的人生終極感。
Mr Dybek considers several similarly timeworn themes, such as the spaces that grow between people, and especially the currents that set fathers and sons adrift.
迪貝克精心布置了若干相似的陳舊話題，如人與人之間產(chǎn)生的距離感，尤其是將父子送往海洋的洋流。
At times this book bears the stain of a debut: the circumstances too implausible; the kids too precocious; the similes too frequent and the album references too cool (a Facebook-ready list).
有時，這本書也會出現(xiàn)處女作的缺陷——如背景不真實，兒童太過早熟，比喻太頻繁，參考書目太酷（一張臉譜列表）。
But there is also wisdom here, and the momentum of a thrilling yarn, delivered as if by a scarred man by the consoling light of a fire.
但書中自有智慧存，令人興奮的故事就像是由一名疤面漢子坐在火堆旁向我們娓娓道來一樣，火光讓人安詳。
