評論
打印
Two Cities
兩個紐約
Stanley Kauffmann
斯坦利·考夫曼
A young friend asked me recently what it's like to live in the city where I grew up.The question startled me. I never think of New York that way. True, when I walk along certain streets, I remember things that happened there, but the same city?
最近有一位年輕朋友問我，生活在從小長大的城市有何感受。這個問題使我大吃一驚，我還從未從這個方面想過紐約。說真的，我沿著幾條街道漫步的時候，便回想起這里發生的歷歷往事，可這是同一座城市嗎？
When I went to grammar school in the mid-1920s on 63rd Street between Second and Third Avenues—now a chic residential neighborhood bristling with high apartment houses—I passed a blacksmith shop on the way from the corner to the middle of the block. I can still hear the hiss of the white-hot horseshoes being plunged into a bucket of water, can still sniff the burny smell of the hoof to which a warm shoe was fixed. I used to hitch rides to and from school on the back step of horse-drawn ice wagons. I used to go shopping with my mother in the pushcart markets that lined both sides of Second Avenue from 70th Street to 76th. Those pushcarts were under the Second Avenue El. We lived on 68th Street near the corner of Second, and if one of us was on the phone when an El train came along, we had to halt the conversation until it passed. (Other boroughs still have Els, but people under 50 can't imagine one in mid-Manhattan.)
20世紀20年代中期，我去位于第二和第三大道之間的第63街上的小學上學——現在是公寓樓林立的雅致居民區——在從街角到街區之間的馬路上，我要經過一家鐵匠鋪。現在，我似乎仍然能聽到燒得白熱的馬蹄鐵被投入水桶時所發出的咝咝聲，仍能聞得到馬蹄釘上熱蹄鐵時所發出的糊味。當時，我常常在往返學校的途中搭乘在拉冰馬車的后面。我還常常和母親一道去位于第70和76街之間的第二大道兩邊的手推貨車市場買東西。這些手推貨車停在第二大道上的高架鐵路下面。我們住在靠近第二大道街角的第68街上，如果有人在打電話恰巧趕上高架鐵路上火車隆隆經過，就只好等火車通過后才繼續通話。（其他行政區仍然有高架鐵路，可是50歲以下的人無法想象在曼哈頓區中心區曾有過一條這樣的鐵路。）
