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To Make Papa Proud
為了讓父親高興
Gregory H. Hemingway
格雷戈里·H·海明威
That summer in Havana I read papa's favorites, from Huckleberry Finn to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: like him, I sometimes had two or three books going at the same time. Then papa steered me to the short story masters, Maupassant and Chekhov. “Don't try to analyze — just relax and enjoy them.”
那年夏天在哈瓦那，我讀了爸爸最愛看的那些小說，從《哈克貝里·費恩歷險記》到《一位青年藝術家的肖像》。像他一樣，有時我兩三部小說同時看。后來爸爸指導我閱讀短篇小說大師莫伯桑和契訶夫。“不要勞神去作分析—只管身心放松，好好欣賞就行。”
“Now,” papa said one morning. “Try writing a short story yourself. And don't expect it to be any good.”
“聽著，”一天上午爸爸說。“你自己試著寫一篇短篇小說。可別指望會寫得怎么好。”
I sat down at a table with one of papa's fine-pointed pencils and thought and thought. I looked out the window, and listened to the birds, to a cat crying to join them, and to the scratch of my pencil, doodling. I let the cat out. Another wanted in.
我拿起爸爸的一支筆頭尖尖的鉛筆，在桌前坐了下來，想了又想。我望著窗外，聽著鳥兒鳴唱，聽著一只想要和鳥兒待在一起的貓拼命叫著；還聽著鉛筆在紙上亂涂亂畫的磨擦聲。我把貓放出去。另有一只貓想進來。
I went to papa's typewriter. He'd finished with it for the day. Slowly I typed out a story and then took it to him.
我走到爸爸的打字機旁。那天他已經用過打字機，不會再用了。我慢慢地打出了一篇小說，隨后拿去給他看。
Papa put his glasses on, poured himself another drink, and read, as I waited. He finished it and looked up at me. “It's excellent, Gig. Much better than anything I could do at your age. Only change I'd make is here,” and he pointed to the line about a bird falling from its nest and finding, miraculously, that if it flapped its wings, it wouldn't crash on the rocks below.
爸爸戴上眼鏡，給自己又倒了杯飲料，接著讀小說，我等在一旁。他讀完小說，抬頭看著我。“太棒了，吉格。比我在你這個年齡時能寫的任何東西都好得多。我想改的唯一地方在這兒，”我指著一行文字，描寫的是一只鳥從巢里跌落下來，卻驚奇地發現只要振動雙翅，就不會撞落在下面的巖石上。
