November 3. Yesterday I told the Commissioner1 that angina had been diagnosed and that I should have to retire as soon as a successor could be found. Temperature at 2 p.m. 91°. Much better night as the result of Evipan.
November 4. Went with Louise to 7.30 Mass but as pain threatened to return did not wait for Communion. In the evening told Louise that I should have to retire before end of tour. Did not mention angina but spoke2 of strained heart. Another good night as a result of Evipan. Temperature at 2 p.m. 89°.
November 5. Lamp thefts in Wellington Street. Spent long morning at Azikawe’s store checking story of fire in storeroom. Temperature at 2 p.m. 90°. Drove Louise to Club for library night.
November 6 - 10. First time I’ve failed to keep up daily entries. Pain has become more frequent and unwilling3 to take on any extra exertion4. Like a vice5. Lasts about a minute. Liable to come on if I walk more than half a mile. Last night or two have slept badly in spite of Evipan, I think from the apprehension6 of pain.
November 11. Saw Travis again. There seems to be no doubt now that it is angina. Told Louise tonight, but also that with care I may live for years. Discussed with Commissioner an early passage home. In any case can’t go for another month as too many cases I want to see through the courts in the next week or two. Agreed to dine with Fellowes on 13th, Commissioner on 14th. Temperature at 2 p.m. 88°.
2
Scobie laid down his pen and wiped his wrist on the blotting’ paper. It was just six o’clock on November 12 and Louise was out at the beach. His brain was clear, but the nerves tingled7 from his shoulder to his wrist He thought: I have come to the end. What years had passed since he walked up through the rain to the Nissen hut, while the sirens wailed8: the moment of happiness. It was time to die after so many years.
But there were still deceptions9 to be practised, just as though he were going to live through the night, good-byes to be said with only himself knowing that they were good-byes. He walked very slowly up the bin10 in case he was observed - wasn’t he a sick man? - and turned off by the Nissens. He couldn’t just die without some word - what word? O God, he prayed, let it be the right word, but when he knocked there was no reply, no words at all. Perhaps she was at the beach with Bagster.
The door was not locked and he went in. Years had passed in his brain, but here time had stood still. It might have been the same bottle of gin from which the boy had stolen - how long ago? The junior official’s chairs stood stiffly around, as though on a film set: he couldn’t believe they had ever moved, any more than the pouf presented by - was it Mrs Carter? On the bed the pillow had not been shaken after the siesta11, and he laid his hand on the warm mould of a skull12. O God, he prayed, I’m going away from all of you for ever: let her come back in time: let me see her once more, but the hot day cooled around him and nobody came. At 6.30 Louise would be back from the beach. He couldn’t wait any longer.
I must leave some kind of a message, he thought, and perhaps before I have written it she will have come. He felt a constriction13 in his breast worse than any pain he had ever invented to Travis. I shall never touch her again. I shall leave her mouth to others for the next twenty years. Most lovers deceived themselves with the idea of an eternal union beyond the grave, but he knew all the answers: he went to an eternity14 of deprivation15. He looked for paper and couldn’t find so much as a torn envelope; he thought he saw a writing-case, but it was the stamp-album that he unearthed16, and opening it at random17 for no reason, he felt fate throw another shaft18, for he remembered that particular stamp and how it came to be stained with gin. She will have to tear it out, he thought, but that won’t matter: she had told him that you can’t see where a stamp has been torn out. There was no scrap19 of paper even in his pockets, and in a sudden rush of jealousy20 he lifted up the little green image of George V and wrote in ink beneath it: I love you. She can’t take that out, he thought with cruelty and disappointment, that’s indelible. For a moment he felt as though he had laid a mine for an enemy, but this was no enemy. Wasn’t he clearing himself out of her path like a piece of dangerous wreckage21? He shut the door behind him and walked slowly down the hill - she might yet come. Everything he did now was for the last time - an odd sensation. He would never come this way again, and five minutes later taking a new bottle of gin from his cupboard, he thought: I shall never open another bottle. The actions which could be repeated became fewer and fewer. Presently there would be only one unrepeatable action left, the act of swallowing. He stood with the gin bottle poised22 and thought: then Hell will begin, and they’ll be safe from me, Helen, Louise, and You.
At dinner he talked deliberately23 of the week to come; he blamed himself for accepting Fellowes’s invitation and explained that dinner with the Commissioner the next day was unavoidable - there was much to discuss.
‘Is there no hope, Ticki, that after a rest, a long rest...?’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to carry on - to them or you. I might break down at any moment.’
‘It’s really retirement24?’
‘Yes.’
She began to discuss where they were to live. He felt tired to death, and it needed all his will to show interest in this fictitious25 village or that, in the kind of house he knew they would never inhabit. ‘I don’t want a suburb,’ Louise said. ‘What I’d really like would be a weather-board house in Kent, so that one can get up to town quite easily.’
He said, ‘Of course it will depend on what we can afford. My pension won’t be very large.’
‘I shall work,’ Louise said.’ It will be easy in wartime.’
‘I hope we shall be able to manage without that.’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
Bed-time came, and he felt a terrible unwillingness26 to let her go. There was nothing to do when she had once gone but die. He didn’t know how to keep her - they had talked about all the subjects they had in common. He said, ‘I shall sit here a while. Perhaps I shall feel sleepy if I stay up half an hour longer. I don’t want to take the Evipan if I can help it.’
‘I’m very tired after the beach. I’ll be off.’
When she’s gone, be thought, I shall be alone for ever. His heart beat and he was held in the nausea27 of an awful unreality. I can’t believe that I’m going to do this. Presently I shall get up and go to bed, and life will begin again. Nothing, nobody, can force me to die. Though the voice was no longer speaking from the cave of his belly28, it was as though fingers touched him, signalled their mute messages of distress29, tried to hold him...
‘What is it, Ticki? You look I’ll. Come to bed too.’
‘I wouldn’t sleep,’ he said obstinately30.
‘Is there nothing I can do?’ Louise asked. ‘Dear, I’d do anything...’ Her love was like a death sentence.
‘There’s nothing, dear,’ he said. ‘I mustn’t keep you up.’ But so soon as she turned towards the stairs he spoke again. ‘Read me something,’ he said, ‘you got a new book today. Read me something.’
‘You wouldn’t like it, Ticki. It’s poetry.’
‘Never mind. It may send me to sleep.’ He hardly listened while she read. People said you couldn’t love two women, but what was this emotion if it were not love? This hungry absorption of what he was never going to see again? The greying hair, the line of nerves upon the face, the thickening body held him as her beauty never had. She hadn’t put on her mosquito-boots, and her slippers31 were badly in need of mending. It isn’t beauty that we love, he thought, it’s failure - the failure to stay young for ever, the failure of nerves, the failure of the body. Beauty is like success: we can’t love it for long. He felt a terrible desire to protect - but that’s what I’m going to do, I am going to protect her from myself for ever. Some words she was reading momentarily caught his attention:
We are all falling. This hand’s falling too -
all have this falling sickness none withstands.
And yet there’s always One whose gentle hands
this universal falling can’t fall through.
They sounded like truth, but he rejected them - comfort can come too easily. He thought, those hands will never hold my fall: I slip between the fingers, I’m greased with falsehood, treachery. Trust was a dead language of which he had forgotten the grammar.
‘Dear, you are half asleep.’
‘For a moment.’
‘I’ll go up now. Don’t stay long. Perhaps you won’t need your Evipan tonight’
He watched her go. The lizard32 lay still upon the wall. Before she had reached the stairs he called her back. ‘Say good night, Louise, before you go. You may be asleep.’
She kissed him perfunctorily on the forehead and he gave her hand a casual caress33. There must be nothing strange on this last night, and nothing she would remember with regret. ‘Good night, Louise. You know I love you,’ he said with careful lightness.
‘Of course and I love you.’
‘Yes. Good night. Louise.’
‘Good night, Tick!.’ It was the best he could do with safety.
As soon as he heard the door close, he took out the cigarette carton in which he kept the ten doses of Evipan. He added two more doses for greater certainty - to have exceeded by two doses in ten days could not, surely, be regarded as suspicious. After that he took a long drink of whisky and sat still and waited for courage with the tablets in the palm of his hand. Now, he thought, I am absolutely alone: this was freezing-point.
But he was wrong. Solitude34 itself has a voice. It said to him. Throw away those tablets. You’ll never be able to collect enough again. You’ll be saved. Give up play-acting. Mount the stairs to bed and have a good night’s sleep. In the morning you’ll be woken by your boy, and you’ll drive down to the police station for a day’s ordinary work. The voice dwelt on the word ‘ordinary’ as it might have dwelt on the word ‘happy’ or ‘peaceful’.
‘No,’ Scobie said aloud, ‘no.’ He pushed the tablets in his mouth six at a time, and drank them down in two draughts35. Then he opened his diary and wrote against November 12, Called on H.R., out; temperature at 2 p.m. and broke abruptly36 off as though at that moment he had been gripped by the final pain. Afterwards he sat bolt upright and waited what seemed a long while for any indication at all of approaching death; he had no idea how it would come to him. He tried to pray, but the Hail Mary evaded37 his memory, and he was aware of his heartbeats like a clock striking the hour. He tried out an act of contrition38, but when he reached, ‘I am sorry and beg pardon’, a cloud formed over the door and drifted down over the whole room and he couldn’t remember what it was that he had to be sorry for. He had to hold himself upright with both hands, but he had forgotten the reason why he so held himself. Somewhere far away he thought he heard the sounds of pain. ‘A storm,’ he said aloud, ‘there’s going to be a storm,’ as the clouds grew, and he tried to get up to close the windows. ‘Ali,’ he called, ‘Ali.’ It seemed to him as though someone outside the room were seeking him, calling him, and he made a last effort to indicate that he was here. He got to his feet and heard the hammer of his heart beating out a reply. He had a message to convey, but the darkness and the storm drove it back within the case of his breast, and all the time outside the house, outside the world that drummed like hammer blows within his ear, someone wandered, seeking to get in, someone appealing for help, someone in need of nun39. And automatically at the call of need, at the cry of a victim, Scobie strung himself to act He dredged his consciousness up from an infinite distance in order to make some reply. He said aloud, ‘Dear God, I love...’ but the effort was too great and he did not feel his body when it struck the floor or hear the small tinkle40 of the medal as it span like a coin under the ice-box - the saint whose name nobody could remember.
收听单词发音 |
1
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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3
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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6
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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tingled
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deceptions
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| 欺骗( deception的名词复数 )； 骗术，诡计 | |
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10
bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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siesta
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| n.午睡 | |
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12
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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13
constriction
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| 压缩； 紧压的感觉； 束紧； 压缩物 | |
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14
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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15
deprivation
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| n.匮乏；丧失；夺去，贫困 | |
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16
unearthed
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| 出土的（考古） | |
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17
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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18
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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19
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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20
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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21
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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22
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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23
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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24
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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25
fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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26
unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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27
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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29
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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33
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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34
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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35
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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36
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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37
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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38
contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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