評(píng)論
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In My Day
在我那個(gè)年代
Russell Baker
拉賽爾·貝克
At the age of eighty my mother had her last bad fall, and after that her mind wandered free through time. Some days she went to weddings and funerals that had taken place half a century earlier. On others she presided over family dinners cooked on Sunday afternoons for children who were now gray with age. Through all this she lay in bed but moved across time, traveling among the dead decades with a speed and ease beyond the gift of physical science.
母親80歲時(shí)狠狠地摔了一跤，這是她最后一次摔得這么嚴(yán)重。此后她的大腦便開(kāi)始在時(shí)間長(zhǎng)河中自在地神游。有時(shí)候她認(rèn)為自己是去參加婚禮或葬禮，而這些婚禮或葬禮其實(shí)是半個(gè)世紀(jì)前舉行的。有時(shí)候她又會(huì)沉浸于在星期天下午為孩子們做晚餐的情景中，而這些孩子們現(xiàn)在已到了兩鬢斑白的年紀(jì)。盡管她臥病在床，她的思緒卻能穿越時(shí)空，飛快自如地在已逝去的歲月里穿梭，這些依靠自然科學(xué)可辦不到。
Where's Russell? she asked one day when I came to visit at the nursing home.
“拉賽爾在哪兒？”有一天我去養(yǎng)老院探望時(shí)她問(wèn)道。
I'm Russell, I said.
“我就是拉賽爾。”我說(shuō)。
She gazed at this improbably overgrown figure out of an inconceivable future and promptly dismissed it.
她凝視著人高馬大的我，難以想象她的兒子會(huì)長(zhǎng)這么大，于是立即否認(rèn)了我的話。
Russell's only this big, she said, holding her hand, palm down, two feet from the floor. That day she was a young country wife in the backyard with a view of hazy blue Virginia mountains behind the apple orchard, and I was a stranger old enough to be her father.
“拉賽爾只有這么大。”她說(shuō)著，將手抬起約離地兩英尺，掌心向下比劃了一下。那時(shí)的她是那個(gè)站在后院的年輕村婦，從后院可以看到蘋(píng)果園后面暮靄蒙蒙的弗吉尼亞群山我對(duì)她來(lái)說(shuō)是一個(gè)年紀(jì)大得足以做她父親的陌生人。
Early one morning she phoned me in New York. "Are you coming to my funeral today?" she asked.
一天清晨，她給在紐約的我打電話，“你今天來(lái)參加我的葬禮嗎？”她問(wèn)道。
It was an awkward question with which to be awakened. "What are you talking about, for God's sake?" was the best reply I could manage.
這個(gè)怪異的問(wèn)題使我睡意全無(wú)：“看在上帝的份上！您在說(shuō)什么？”這是我所能給出的最好回答。
I'm being buried today, she declared briskly, as though announcing an important social event.
“今天'我就要下葬了。”她輕快地說(shuō)，就像在宣布一項(xiàng)重大的社會(huì)事件。
