評論
打印
She wrote back in an unusually cheery vein intended to demonstrate, I suppose, that she was mending her ways. Referring to my visit, she wrote: "If I seemed unhappy to you at times, I am, but there's really nothing anyone can do about it, because I'm just so very tired and lonely that I'll just go to sleep and forget it." She was then seventy-eight.
她以一種不同尋常的、輕松歡快的語氣回了信。我猜想，這是她在努力補(bǔ)救自己做法的一種表示。在提到我的探望時，她寫道如果有時候你見到我不快樂，那么我的確是不快樂的。不過對此誰都無能為力，因為我只是太累了，太孤獨(dú)了，我只能睡一覺，把這些全忘了。”那年她78歲。
Now three years later, after the last bad fall, she had managed to forget the fatigue and loneliness and to recapture happiness. I soon stopped trying to argue her back to what I considered the real world and tried to travel along with her on those fantastic journeys into the past. One day when I arrived at her bedside she was radiant.
現(xiàn)在，三年過去了，她嚴(yán)重摔傷，她已經(jīng)忘記了那些疲憊和孤獨(dú)，重新找回了快樂。我很快便停止了對她的勸說，不再試圖把她拉回到我以為的“現(xiàn)實(shí)”中來，并且盡力同她一起踏上那些神奇的旅行，回到那些過去的歲月當(dāng)中。一天，我來到她床邊時，發(fā)現(xiàn)她容光煥發(fā)。
Feeling good today, I said.
“今天挺精神的嘛。”我說。
Why shouldn't I feel good? she asked. "Papa's going to take me up to Baltimore on the boat today."
“為什么不呢？”她反問，“今天爸爸要帶我坐船去巴爾的摩。”
At that moment she was a young girl standing on a wharf, waiting for the Chesapeake Bay steamer with her father, who had been dead sixty-one years. William Howard Taft was in the White House, America was a young country, and the future stretched before it in beams of crystal sunlight. "The greatest country on God's green earth," her father might have said, if I had been able to step into my mother's time machine.
那時的她還是個小女孩，站在碼頭上，和她的父親一起等候著切薩皮克灣的汽輪——事實(shí)上她的父親已經(jīng)去世61年了。那時，威廉·霍華德·塔夫特正在白宮執(zhí)政，美國還是一個年輕的國家，展現(xiàn)在這個國家面前的是一片光輝燦爛的前景。“美國是上帝賦予的這個綠色星球上最偉大的國家。”——若我能進(jìn)入母親的時光機(jī)，或許就能聽到外祖父這樣說。
About her father, my grandfather, my mother's childhood and her people, I knew very little.
關(guān)于我母親的父親也就是我的外祖父、她的童年以及她的家人，我?guī)缀跻粺o所知。
