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One day (John calculated later that it must have been soon after his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book that he had never seen before Iying on the floor in the bedroom.
有一天（約翰后來算出那難是他十二歲生日后不久），他回家發現寢室地上有一本他從來沒有見過的書。
It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled.
那書很厚，樣子很古老；書脊叫耗子咬壞了；有些書頁散了，皺了。
He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
他揀了起來，看了看書名頁，那書叫做《威廉·莎士比亞全集》。
Linda was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinking mescal out of a cup.
琳妲躺在床上，從一個杯子里暖著一種非常難聞的美似可。
"Popé brought it," she said. Her voice was thick and hoarse like somebody else's voice.
“哪書是波培拿來的?！彼f。她的嗓子又粗又吸，仿佛是別人的聲音。
It was lying in one of the chests of the Antelope Kiva.
原放在羚羊圣窟的一個箱子里。
It's supposed to have been there for hundreds of years.
據說已經放了好幾百年。
I expect it's true, because I looked at it, and it seemed to be full of nonsense.
我覺得說得對，因為我看了看，認為滿是廢話。
Uncivilized. Still, it'll be good enough for you to practice your reading on.
木文明，可是用來訓練你讀書還是可以的。
She took a last sip, set the cup down on the floor beside the bed,
她喝完最后一口，把杯子放在床邊地面上，
turned over on her side, hiccoughed once or twice and went to sleep.
轉過身子，打了一兩個嗝，睡著了。
He opened the book at random.
他隨意翻開了書。
Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty …
不，而是生活在油漬斑斑汗臭薰人的床上。浸漬在腐敗、調情和做愛里，下面是惡心的豬圈……
The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder;
那些奇怪的話在他心里翻騰，有如滾滾雷霆說的話；
like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried;
有如夏令的舞會上的大鼓——若是鼓聲也能表達意思的話；有如唱玉米之歌的男聲，很美，很美，美得叫你想哭；
like old Mitsima saying magic over his feathers and his carved sticks and his bits of bone and stone–kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwe silokwe.Kiai silu silu, tsithl–but better than Mitsima's magic, because it meant more, because it talked to him, talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic, about Linda; about Linda lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed; about Linda and Popé, Linda and Popé.
有如老米季馬搖晃著羽翎。雕花手杖和石頭和骨頭物件時所念的咒語——佳特拉、其錄、喜洛虧、喜洛虧、凄哀、喜盧、喜盧、其托——但比那咒語好，因為它有更多的意思，因為那是說給他聽的；說得好極了，而且叫人聽得似懂非懂，那是一種美麗得懾人的咒語，是關于琳妲，關于琳妲躺在那兒打呼喀，床前地上擺著空杯子的。是關于琳妲與波培，琳妲與波培的。
