被背弃的老祖母
The pillow rose about her shoulders and pressed against her heart and the memory was being squeezed out of it: oh, push down the pillow, somebody: it would smother her if she tried to hold it. Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with no threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come? She tried to remember. No, I swear he never harmed me but in that. He never harmed me but in that…and what if he did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were kilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or she’d never sleep. She was in bed again and the shades were not down. How could that happen? Better turn over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares. “Mother, how do you feel now?” and a stinging wetness on her forehead. But I don’t like having my face washed in cold water!
枕头突然从她的双肩升起，压在她的胸口上，把埋在心底的往事都要挤压出来了：啊，快来人把枕头推开吧！这枕头可要把她闷死了，如果她想就这样躺着的话。这一天微风轻拂，温暖如春，吉吉利利的。可是尽管如此他还是没有来。女人已经蒙上白色面纱，准备好结婚蛋糕，而男的却还没有来，她该怎么办呢？她竭力回忆。不，除了这一次外，他可从来没有伤害过我呀。除了这一次，从来没有伤害过我??如果伤害过我，又怎么样呢？是有那么一天，那一天，一股黑烟袅袅升起把那一天遮盖住了，黑烟逐渐蔓延开来，飘到阳光灿烂的田野，那里庄稼种植得井井有条。那是地狱，她一见就知道。六十年来她一直在祈祷，希望永远不要再想起他，不要使自己的灵魂堕入地狱的万丈深渊。可现在，她刚刚摆脱了哈里医生，想休息一会时，这两件可怕的事竟然融成了一体：对他的回忆就象是从地狱深处升起的烟雾在她的脑海里浮荡。突然在脑顶盖处响起了一个尖锐的声音：艾伦，这是受挫的虚荣心。可别让这种受挫的虚荣心占了上风啊。很多女孩子都遭到过被遗弃的命运，你是给遗弃了，是吗？那么勇敢坚强地面对现实吧。她的眼皮抖动着，青灰色的光芒，象一张薄纸遮盖在眼皮上，在她眼前闪烁。她必须起身去把窗帘拉上，不然的话一定睡不着。她又回到了床上，可是窗帘还是没有拉上。咦，这是怎么回事？最好翻过身去，背对着亮光，在亮光里入睡是会做恶梦的。“妈妈，你感觉怎样？”刺骨的潮湿贴在她的前额。我可不喜欢用冷水洗脸！
11
了不起的盖茨比
One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good by.
I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss THIS OR that's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matching of invitations: \ Schultz’s’?\long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
That's my Middle West not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Caraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all Tom and Gatsby, Daisyand Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed somedeficiency in common which made us subtly inadaptable to Eastern life.
12
我记忆中最鲜明的景象之一就是每年圣诞节从预备学校，以及后来从大学回到西部的情景。到芝加哥以外的地方去的同学往往在一个十二月黄昏六点钟聚在那座古老、优暗的联邦车站，和几个家在芝加哥的朋友匆匆话别，只见他们已经裹入了他们自己的节日欢娱气氛。我记得那些从东部某某私立女校回来的女学生的皮大衣以及她们在严寒的空气中喊喊喳喳的笑语，记得我们发现熟人时抢手呼唤，记得互相比较收到的邀请：“你到奥德威家去吗？赫西家呢？舒尔茨家呢？”还记得紧紧抓在我们戴了手套的手里的长条绿色车票。最后还有停在月台门口轨道上的芝加哥－密尔沃基－圣保罗铁路的朦胧的黄色客车，看上去就像圣诞节一样地使人愉快。
火车在寒冬的黑夜里奔驰，真正的白雪、我们的雪，开始在两边向远方伸展，迎着车窗闪耀，威斯康星州的小车站暗灰的灯火从眼前掠过，这时空中突然出现一股使人神清气爽的寒气。我们吃过晚饭穿过寒冷的通廊往回走时，一路深深地呼吸着这寒气，在奇异的一个小时中难以言喻地意识到自己与这片乡土之间的血肉相连的关系，然后我们就要重新不留痕迹地融化在其中了。
这就是我的中西部——不是麦田，不是草原，也不是瑞典移民的荒凉村镇，而是我青年时代那些激动人心的还乡的火车，是严寒的黑夜里的街灯和雪橇的铃声，是圣诞冬青花环被窗内的灯火映在雪地的影子。我是其中的一部分，由于那些漫长的冬天我为人不免有点矜持，由于从小在卡罗威公馆长大，态度上也不免有点自满。在我们那个城市里，人家的住宅仍旧世世代代称为某姓的公馆。我现在才明白这个故事到头来是一个西部的故事——汤姆和盖茨比、黛西、乔丹和我，我们都是西部人，也许我们具有什么共同的缺陷使我们无形中不能适应东部的生活。
13