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"She told me," he wrote, "to come back in five years, and that stared me thinking. In five year I'd be 42, and what would a girl of 21 want with a man twice as old as her?"
"她要我五年之后再回來找她，"他寫道，"這話使我認真思考了起來：五年之后，我就四十二歲了，一個二十一歲的姑娘要一個是她兩倍年紀的男人干什么?"
John Monahan moved in circles where the work of the Zeritskys was well known. Not only did he see an opportunity of being still only 37 when his darling reached 21, but he foresaw a painless way of passing the years which he must endure without her. Accordingly, he presented himself for the deep-freeze, paid his $3000 and the $500 storage charge in advance, and left, he claimed, "written instructions to let me out in five years, so there'd be no mistakes."
約翰·莫納漢經(jīng)常活動的那個圈子里的人，都很了解齊氏兄弟干的行當。莫納漢不僅看到一個機會，能使他的心上人長到二十一歲時，他自己仍保持三十七歲，而且他預見到一個無痛苦的方法，可使他度過沒有姑娘陪伴的那難熬的五個年頭。因此，他前去申請冷凍，預付了三千美元和五百美元的儲存費，他還聲稱留下了"書面指示，五年解凍，以防差錯。"
Nobody knows how the slip happened, but somehow John A. Monahan, or rather the number assignedto him, was entered on the books for 25 years instead of five years. Upon being defrosted, and discovering that a quarter of a century had elapsed, his rage was awesome. Along with everything else, his love for his sweetheart had been perfectly preserved, but she had given up waiting for him and was a happy mother of two boys and six girls.
誰也不知道疏忽怎么發(fā)生的，不知怎的，約翰·A·莫納漢，確切地說是指定給他的那個代號，在簿子上登記的是冷凍二十五年而不是五年。解凍之后，他發(fā)現(xiàn)四分之一世紀已經(jīng)過去了，于是大發(fā)雷霆。他對情人的愛，與其他一切一起完好地保存了下來，可是她早已放棄了等他的念頭，已經(jīng)成了一個有二子六女的幸福母親。
Monahan's accusation that the Zeritskys had "ruined his life" may be taken with a grain of salt. He was still a young man, and the rumor that he got a hundred thousand for the magazinerights to his story was true.
莫納漢指控齊里茨基兄弟"毀了他的一生"，這未必可以全信。他依然是個年輕人，況且雜志付給他十萬美元的文章版權稅的傳說也是真的。
