Hepburn and Hannele were to make a small excursion to the glacier1 which stood there always in sight, coldly grinning in the sky. The weather had been very hot, but this morning there were loose clouds in the sky. The captain rowed over the lake soon after dawn. Hannele stepped into the little craft, and they pulled back to the town. There was a wind ruffling2 the water, so that the boat leaped and chuckled3. The glacier, in a recess4 among the folded mountains, looked cold and angry. But morning was very sweet in the sky, and blowing very sweet with a faint scent5 of the second hay from the low lands at the head of the lake. Beyond stood naked grey rock like a wall of mountains, pure rock, with faint, thin slashes6 of snow. Yesterday it had rained on the lake. The sun was going to appear from behind the Breitsteinhorn, the sky with its clouds floating in blue light and yellow radiance was lovely and cheering again. But dark clouds seemed to spout7 up from the Pinzgau valley. And once across the lake, all was shadow, when the water no longer gave back the sky-morning.
The day was a feast day, a holiday. Already so early three young men from the mountains were bathing near the steps of the Badeanstalt. Handsome, physical fellows, with good limbs rolling and swaying in the early morning water. They seemed to enjoy it too. But to Hepburn it was always as if a dark wing were stretched in the sky, over these mountains, like a doom8. And these three young, lusty, naked men swimming and rolling in the shadow.
Hepburn’s was the first boat stirring. He made fast in the hotel boat-house, and he and Hannele went into the little town. It was deep in shadow, though the light of the sky, curdled9 with cloud, was bright overhead. But dark and chill and heavy lay the shadow in the black-and-white town, like a sediment10.
The shops were all shut, but peasants from the hills were already strolling about in their holiday dress: the men in their short leather trousers, like football drawers, and bare brown knees and great boots: their little grey jackets faced with green, and their green hats with the proud chamois-brush behind. They seemed to stray about like lost souls, and the proud chamois-brush behind their hats, this proud, cocky, perking-up tail, like a mountain-buck with his tail up, was belied11 by the lost-soul look of the men, as they loitered about with their hands shoved in the front pockets of their trousers. Some women also were creeping about: peasant women, in the funny little black hats that had thick gold under the brim and long black streamers of ribbon, broad, black, water-wave ribbon starting from a bow under the brim behind and streaming right to the bottom of the skirt. These women, in their thick, dark dresses with tight bodices and massive, heavy, full skirts, and bright or dark aprons12, strode about with the heavy stride of the mountain women, the heavy, quick, forward-leaning motion. They were waiting for the town-day to begin.
Hepburn had a knapsack on his back, with food for the day. But bread was wanting. They found the door of the bakery open, and got a loaf: a long, hot loaf of pure white bread, beautifully sweet bread. It cost seventy kronen. To Hepburn it was always a mystery where this exquisite13 bread came from, in a lost land.
In the little square where the clock stood were bunches of people, and a big motor-omnibus, and a motor-car that would hold about eight people. Hepburn had paid his seven hundred kronen for the two tickets. Hannele tied up her head in a thin scarf and put on her thick coat. She and Hepburn sat in front by the peaked driver. And at seven o’clock away went the car, swooping14 out of the town, past the handsome old Tyrolese Schloss, or manor15, black-and-white, with its little black spires16 pricking17 up, past the station, and under the trees by the lakeside. The road was not good, but they ran at a great speed, out past the end of the lake, where the reeds grew, out into the open valley mouth, where the mountains opened in two clefts18. It was cold in the car. Hepburn buttoned himself up to the throat and pulled his hat down on his ears. Hannele’s scarf fluttered. She sat without saying anything, erect20, her face fine and keen, watching ahead. From the deep Pinzgau Valley came the river roaring and raging, a glacier river of pale, seething21 ice-water. Over went the car, over the log bridge, darting22 towards the great slopes opposite. And then a sudden immense turn, a swerve23 under the height of the mountain-side, and again a darting lurch24 forward, under the pear trees of the high-road, past the big old ruined castle that so magnificently watched the valley mouth, and the foaming25 river; on, rushing under the huge roofs of the balconied peasant houses of a village, then swinging again to take another valley mouth, there where a little village clustered all black and white on a knoll27, with a white church that had a black steeple, and a white castle with black spires, and clustering, ample black-and-white houses of the Tyrol. There is a grandeur28 even in the peasant houses, with their great wide passage halls where the swallows build, and where one could build a whole English cottage.
So the motor-car darted29 up this new, narrow, wilder, more sinister30 valley. A herd31 of almost wild young horses, handsome reddish things, burst around the car, and one great mare32 with full flanks went crashing up the road ahead, her heels flashing to the car, while her foal whinneyed and screamed from behind. But no, she could not turn from the road. On and on she crashed, forging ahead, the car behind her. And then at last she did swerve aside, among the thin alder33 trees by the wild riverbed.
‘If it isn’t a cow, it’s a horse,’ said the driver, who was thin and weaselish and silent, with his ear-flaps over his ears.
But the great mare had shaken herself in a wild swerve, and screaming and whinneying was plunging34 back to her foal. Hannele had been frightened.
The car rushed on, through water-meadows, along a naked, white bit of mountain road. Ahead was a darkness of mountain front and pine trees. To the right was the stony35, furious, lion-like river, tawny-coloured here, and the slope up beyond. But the road for the moment was swinging fairly level through the stunned36 water-meadows of the savage37 valley. There were gates to open, and Hepburn jumped down to open them, as if he were the footboy. The heavy Jews of the wrong sort, seated behind, of course did not stir.
At a house on a knoll the driver sounded his horn, and out rushed children crying Papa! Papa! — then a woman with a basket. A few brief words from the weaselish man, who smiled with warm, manly38 blue eyes at his children, then the car leaped forward. The whole bearing of the man was so different when he was looking at his own family. He could not even say thank you when Hepburn opened the gates. He hated and even despised his human cargo39 of middle-class people. Deep, deep is class hatred40, and it begins to swallow all human feeling in its abyss. So, stiff, silent, thin, capable, and neuter towards his fares, sat the little driver with the flaps over his ears, and his thin nose cold.
The car swept round, suddenly, into the trees: and into the ravine. The river shouted at the bottom of a gulf41. Bristling42 pine trees stood around. The air was black and cold and forever sunless. The motor-car rushed on, in this blackness under the rock-walls and the fir trees.
Then it suddenly stopped. There was a huge motor-omnibus ahead, drab and enormous-looking. Tourists and trippers of last night coming back from the glacier. It stood like a great rock. And the smaller motor-car edged past, tilting43 into the rock gutter44 under the face of stone.
So, after a while of this valley of the shadow of death, lurching in steep loops upwards45, the motor-car scrambling46 wonderfully, struggling past trees and rock upwards, at last they came to the end. It was a huge inn or tourist hotel of brown wood: and here the road ended in a little wide bay surrounded and overhung by trees. Beyond was a garage and a bridge over a roaring river: and always the overhung darkness of trees and the intolerable steep slopes immediately above.
Hannele left her big coat. The sky looked blue above the gloom. They set out across the hollow-sounding bridge, over the everlasting48 mad rush of ice-water, to the immediate47 upslope of the path, under dark trees. But a little old man in a sort of sentry-box wanted fifty or sixty kronen: apparently49 for the upkeep of the road, a sort of toll50.
The other tourists were coming — some stopping to have a drink first. The second omnibus had not yet arrived. Hannele and Hepburn were the first two, treading slowly up that dark path, under the trees. The grasses hanging on the rock face were still dewy. There were a few wild raspberries, and a tiny tuft of bilberries with black berries here and there, and a few tufts of unripe51 cranberries52. The many hundreds of tourists who passed up and down did not leave much to pick. Some mountain harebells, like bells of blue water, hung coldly glistening53 in their darkness. Sometimes the hairy mountain-bell, pale-blue and bristling, stood alone, curving his head right down, stiff and taut54. There was an occasional big, moist, lolling daisy.
So the two climbed slowly up the steep ledge55 of a road. This valley was just a mountain cleft19, cleft sheer in the hard, living rock, with black trees like hair flourishing in this secret, naked place of the earth. At the bottom of the open wedge for ever roared the rampant56, insatiable water. The sky from above was like a sharp wedge forcing its way into the earth’s cleavage, and that eternal ferocious57 water was like the steel edge of the wedge, the terrible tip biting in into the rocks’ intensity58. Who could have thought that the soft sky of light, and the soft foam26 of water could thrust and penetrate59 into the dark, strong earth? But so it was. Hannele and Hepburn, toiling60 up the steep little ledge of a road that hung half-way down the gulf, looked back, time after time, back down upon the brown timbers and shingle61 roofs of the hotel, that now, away below, looked damp and wedged in like boulders62. Then back at the next tourists struggling up. Then down at the water, that rushed like a beast of prey63. And then, as they rose higher, they looked up also at the livid great sides of rock, livid, bare rock that sloped from the sky-ridge in a hideous64 sheer swerve downwards65.
In his heart of hearts Hepburn hated it. He hated it, he loathed66 it, it seemed almost obscene, this livid, naked slide of rock, unthinkably huge and massive, sliding down to this gulf where bushes grew like hair in the darkness and water roared. Above, there were thin slashes of snow.
So the two climbed slowly on, up the eternal side of that valley, sweating with the exertion67. Sometimes the sun, now risen high, shone full on their side of the gulley. Tourists were trickling68 downhill too: two maidens70 with bare arms and bare heads and huge boots: men tourists with great knapsacks and edelweiss in their hats: giving Bergheil for a greeting. But the captain said Good-day. He refused this Bergheil business. People swarming71 touristy on these horrible mountains made him feel almost sick.
He and Hannele also were not in good company together. There was a sort of silent hostility72 between them. She hated the effort of climbing; but the high air, the cold in the air, the savage cat-howling sound of the water, those awful flanks of livid rock, all this thrilled and excited her to another sort of savageness73. And he, dark, rather slender and feline74, with something of the physical suavity75 of a delicate-footed race, he hated beating his way up the rock, he hated the sound of the water, it frightened him, and the high air hit him in the chest, like a viper76.
‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ she cried, taking great breaths in her splendid chest.
‘Yes. And horrible. Detestable,’ he said.
She turned with a flash, and the high strident sound of the mountain in her voice.
‘If you don’t like it,’ she said, rather jeering77, ‘why ever did you come?’
‘I had to try,’ he said.
‘And if you don’t like it,’ she said, ‘why should you try to spoil it for me?’
‘I hate it,’ he answered.
They were climbing more into the height, more into the light, into the open, in the full sun. The valley cleft was sinking below them. Opposite was only the sheer, livid slide of the naked rock, tipping from the pure sky. At a certain angle they could see away beyond the lake lying far off and small, the wall of those other rocks like a curtain of stone, dim and diminished to the horizon. And the sky with curdling78 clouds and blue sunshine intermittent79.
‘Wonderful, wonderful, to be high up,’ she said, breathing great breaths.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It IS wonderful. But very detestable. I want to live near the sea-level. I am no mountain-topper.’
‘Evidently not,’ she said.
‘Bergheil!’ cried a youth with bare arms and bare chest, bare head, terrific fanged80 boots, a knapsack and an alpenstock, and all the bronzed wind and sun of the mountain snow in his skin and his faintly bleached81 hair. With his great heavy knapsack, his rumpled82 thick stockings, his ghastly fanged boots, Hepburn found him repulsive83.
‘Guten Tag’ he answered coldly.
‘Gruss Gott,’ said Hannele.
And the young Tannh?user, the young Siegfried, this young Balder beautiful strode climbing down the rocks, marching and swinging with his alpenstock. And immediately after the youth came a maiden69, with hair on the wind and her shirt-breast open, striding in corduroy breeches, rumpled worsted stockings, thick boots, a knapsack and an alpenstock. She passed without greeting. And our pair stopped in angry silence and watched her dropping down the mountain-side.
收听单词发音 |
1
glacier
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| n.冰川，冰河 | |
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ruffling
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| 弄皱( ruffle的现在分词 )； 弄乱； 激怒； 扰乱 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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slashes
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| n.（用刀等）砍( slash的名词复数 )；（长而窄的）伤口；斜杠；撒尿v.挥砍( slash的第三人称单数 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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spout
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| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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curdled
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| v.（使）凝结( curdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sediment
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| n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物) | |
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belied
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| v.掩饰( belie的过去式和过去分词 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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swooping
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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pricking
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| 刺，刺痕，刺痛感 | |
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clefts
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| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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swerve
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| v.突然转向，背离；n．转向，弯曲，背离 | |
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lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
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foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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knoll
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| n.小山，小丘 | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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alder
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| n.赤杨树 | |
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plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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47
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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49
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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51
unripe
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| adj.未成熟的；n.未成熟 | |
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52
cranberries
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| n.越橘( cranberry的名词复数 ) | |
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53
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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54
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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56
rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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57
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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61
shingle
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| n.木瓦板；小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌)；v.用木瓦板盖（屋顶）；把（女子头发）剪短 | |
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boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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63
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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71
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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72
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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73
savageness
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| 天然，野蛮 | |
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74
feline
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| adj.猫科的 | |
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75
suavity
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| n.温和；殷勤 | |
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76
viper
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| n.毒蛇；危险的人 | |
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77
jeering
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| adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
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78
curdling
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| n.凝化v.（使）凝结( curdle的现在分词 ) | |
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79
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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80
fanged
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| adj.有尖牙的，有牙根的，有毒牙的 | |
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81
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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82
rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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