評論
打印
Chapter 38
第三十八章
I did not see him again for nearly a week. Then he fetched me soon after seven one evening and took me out to dinner. He was dressed in the deepest mourning, and on his bowler was a broad black band. He had even a black border to his handkerchief. His garb of woe suggested that he had lost in one catastrophe every relation he had in the world, even to cousins by marriage twice removed. His plumpness and his red, fat cheeks made his mourning not a little incongruous. It was cruel that his extreme unhappiness should have in it something of buffoonery.
又有將近一個星期我沒有再看到他。一天晚上剛過七點他來找我，約我出去吃晚飯。他身服重孝，圓頂硬禮帽上系著一條很寬的黑帶子，連使用的手帕也鑲著黑邊。他的這身喪服說明在一次災禍中他已經失去了世界上的一切親屬，甚至連姨表遠親也沒有了。他的肥胖的身軀、又紅又胖的面頰同身上的孝服很不協調。老天也真是殘忍，竟讓他這種無限凄愴悲慘帶上某種滑稽可笑的成分。
He told me he had made up his mind to go away, though not to Italy, as I had suggested, but to Holland.
他告訴我他已打定主意要到外國去，但并不是去我所建議的意大利，而是荷蘭。
I'm starting to-morrow. This is perhaps the last time we shall ever meet.
“我明天就動身。這也許是我們最后一次見面了。”
I made an appropriate rejoinder, and he smiled wanly.
我說了一句適當的答話，他勉強地笑了笑。
I haven't been home for five years. I think I'd forgotten it all; I seemed to have come so far away from my father's house that I was shy at the idea of revisiting it; but now I feel it's my only refuge.
“我已經有五年沒回老家了。我想家里的情況我都忘記了。我好象離開祖傳的老屋那么遙遠，甚至都不好意思再回去探望它了。但是現在我覺得這是我唯一的棲身之地。”
He was sore and bruised, and his thoughts went back to the tenderness of his mother's love. The ridicule he had endured for years seemed now to weigh him down, and the final blow of Blanche's treachery had robbed him of the resiliency which had made him take it so gaily. He could no longer laugh with those who laughed at him. He was an outcast. He told me of his childhood in the tidy brick house, and of his mother's passionate orderliness.
施特略夫現在遍體鱗傷，他的思想又讓他回去尋找慈母的溫情慰撫。多少年來他忍受的挪揄嘲笑現在好象已經把他壓倒，勃朗什對他的背叛給他帶來了最后一次打擊，使他失去了以笑臉承受譏嘲的韌性。他不能再同那些嘲笑他的人一起放聲大笑了。他已經成了一個擯棄于社會之外的人。他對我講他在一所整潔有序的磚房子里消磨掉的童年。他的母親生性愛好整潔，
