Part 2 Chapter 13

The nurse with the round pale face ? a country kind of face comes in Monday evening and says to him, "My mother is having to drop something off for me tonight. Should I ask her to come up and see you for a second?"

 

"Did she say she'd be willing?" When 1 think of you thinking she's

 

your daughter it's like rubbing her all over with shit, Ruth had said the

last time they talked.

 

The young woman in her folded cap smiles. "I mentioned the other night, casual?like, that you were here, and I think she would be. She didn't say anything rude or anything." There is on her face a trace of a blush, a simper, a secret. If something does not soon happen to her, it will become a silly empty face. Innocence¹ is just an early stage of stupidity.

 

This has not been the best day for Harry². The sounds of traffic and work resuming on the street outside reminded him of how out of it he still is. Janice didn't visit, and now her evening class has begun. All day gray clouds packed the sky, in long rolls of nimbus, and trailed black wisps above the brick chimneys, but no rain has actually fallen. The view from his window consists of several intricately notched³ bands of ornamental⁴ brickwork capping the third stories of narrow buildings that hold at street level a coffee shop, a dry cleaner's, an office?supplies store. The corner building is painted gray, the middle one blue, and the third, with the most ornate window framing, beige. It has slowly dawned upon the people of Brewer⁵ that you can paint over brick with any color you choose, not just brick red. People live behind the upper windows across the street, but though Harry faithfully stares he has not yet been rewarded with the sight of a woman undressing, or even of anyone coming to the window to look out. Further depressing him, he has not been able to have a bowel⁶ movement since entering St. Joseph's three days ago. The first day, he blamed the awkwardness of the bedpan and his solicitude⁷ for the nurses who would have to carry what he produced away, and the second day, the change of diet from what he usually eats ? the food the hospital dieticians conjure⁸ up looks pretty good but tastes like wet cardboard and chews like chaff⁹, so bland¹⁰ as to shut down his salivary¹¹ glands¹² ? but on the third day, when he can wander the halls and use the bathroom behind a closed door in his room, he blames himself, his decrepitude¹³, his drying up, the running down of his inner processes. Running out of even gas.

 

It is strange that this girl (hardly that, she would be only three years younger than Nelson) should offer to bring him her mother, for last night he dreamed about Ruth. As the world around him goes gray, his dreams have taken on intense color. Ruth ? Ruth as she had been, the spring they lived and slept together, both of them twenty?six, she fleshy, cocky, pretty in a coarse heavy careless way ? was wearing a sea?blue dress, with small white polka dots, and he was pressing his body against it, with her body inside it, and telling her how lovely a color it was on her, while the hair on her head glistened¹⁴ red, brown, and gold, close to his eyes. Ruth had turned her head not, he felt, in aversion from him but in natural embarrassment¹⁵ at the situation, for she seemed to be living with him and Janice, all together, and Janice was somewhere near them ?upstairs, though the furniture around them was sunstruck floral?patterned wicker, as from their Florida condo, which has no upstairs. His embrace of Ruth felt semi?permitted, like an embrace of a legal relation, and his praise of her vivid dress was meant to urge her into his own sense of well?being, of their love being at last all right. He hid his face beside her throat, in the curtain of her many?colored hair, and knew he could fuck her forever, on and on, bottomlessly spilling himself into her solid beauty. When he awoke it was with the kind of absolute hard?on he almost never has while awake, what with the anti?hypertensive medicine and his generally gray mood. He saw while the dream still freshly clung to him in sky?blue shreds¹⁶ that the white polka dots were the confettilike bits of blossom that littered the sidewalk a month ago on that street of Bradford pear trees up near Summer, where he had once lived with Ruth, and that the splashy sunlight was what used to pour in on Ma Springer's iron table of ferns and African violets, in the little sunroom across the foyer from the gloomy living room. For though the furniture of the dream was Florida, the house they were all sharing had certainly been the old Springer manse.

 

Harry asks the round?faced nurse, "How much do you know about me and your mother?"

 

The blush deepens a shade. "Oh, nothing. She never lets on about the time before she settled down with my father." It now sounds rather conventional, Ruth's time as a single woman; but at the time she was beyond the pale, a lost soul scandalous to the narrow world of Mt. Judge. "I figure you were a special friend."

 

"Maybe not that special," Harry tells her.

 

He feels bad, because there is nothing much she can say to that, his lie, just stand there polite with her puffy upper lip, a nurse being patient with a patient. He is leaving her out on a limb. He loves her; love flows through him like a blind outpouring, an anesthesia. He tells his possible daughter, "Look, it's a cute idea, but if she came up it would be because you asked her to rather than she wanted to on her own, and, frankly¹⁷, Annabelle" ? he has never called her by her name before ? "I'd just as soon she didn't see me like this. You say she's lost weight and looks snappy. I'm fat and a medical mess. Maybe she'd be too much for me."

 

The girl's face returns to being pale and prim¹⁸. Boundaries have been restored, just as he's getting to feel paternal¹⁹. "Very well," Annabelle says. "I'll tell her you've been released, if she asks."

 

"Might she ask? Wait. Don't get prissy. Tell me, why did you want to get us together?"

 

"You seem so interested in her. Your face comes to life when I mention her."

 

"It does? Maybe it's looking at you that does it." He dares go on, "I've been wondering, though, if you should still be living with her. Maybe you ought to get out from under her wing."

 

"I did, for a while. I didn't like it. Living alone is tough. Men can get nasty."

 

"Can we really? I'm sorry to hear it."

 

Her face softens²⁰ into a dear smile, that curls her upper lip at the edges and buckles²¹ the plump part in the middle. "Anyway, she says just what you say. But I like it, for now. It's not like she's my mother any more, she's a roommate. Believe me, bad things can happen to women who live alone in this city. Brewer isn't New York but it isn't Penn Park, either."

 

Of course. She can read his address right off the chart at the foot of the bed. To her he is one of those Penn Park snobs²² he himself has always resented. "Brewer's a rugged²³ town," he agrees, sinking back into his pillow. "Always was. Coal and steel. Bars and cathouses all along the railroad tracks right through the middle of the city, when I was young." He glances away, at the ornamental brickwork, the hurrying dry dark clouds. He tells his nurse, "You know best how to live your own life. Tell your mother, if she asks, that maybe we'll meet some other time." Under the pear trees, in Paradise.

1 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

2 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

3 notched   

a.有凹口的，有缺口的

参考例句：

• Torino notched up a 2-1 win at Lazio. 都灵队以2 比1 赢了拉齐奧队。
• He notched up ten points in the first five minutes of the game. 他在比赛开始后的五分钟里得了十分。

4 ornamental   

adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物

参考例句：

• The stream was dammed up to form ornamental lakes.溪流用水坝拦挡起来,形成了装饰性的湖泊。
• The ornamental ironwork lends a touch of elegance to the house.铁艺饰件为房子略添雅致。

5 brewer   

n. 啤酒制造者

参考例句：

• Brewer is a very interesting man. 布鲁尔是一个很有趣的人。
• I decided to quit my job to become a brewer. 我决定辞职，做一名酿酒人。

6 bowel   

n.肠(尤指人肠)；内部，深处

参考例句：

• Irritable bowel syndrome seems to affect more women than men.女性比男性更易患肠易激综合征。
• Have you had a bowel movement today?你今天有排便吗？

7 solicitude   

n.焦虑

参考例句：

• Your solicitude was a great consolation to me.你对我的关怀给了我莫大的安慰。
• He is full of tender solicitude towards my sister.他对我妹妹满心牵挂。

8 conjure   

v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法

参考例句：

• I conjure you not to betray me.我恳求你不要背弃我。
• I can't simply conjure up the money out of thin air.我是不能像变魔术似的把钱变来。

9 chaff   

v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳

参考例句：

• I didn't mind their chaff.我不在乎他们的玩笑。
• Old birds are not caught with chaff.谷糠难诱老雀。

10 bland   

adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的

参考例句：

• He eats bland food because of his stomach trouble.他因胃病而吃清淡的食物。
• This soup is too bland for me.这汤我喝起来偏淡。

11 salivary   

adj. 唾液的

参考例句：

• Small doses depress salivary and bronchial secretion and sweating. 小剂量可抑制唾液分泌、支气管分泌及出汗。
• The five pairs of salivary glands open into the mouth. 有五对唾液腺通向口腔。

12 glands   

n.腺( gland的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a snake's poison glands 蛇的毒腺
• the sebaceous glands in the skin 皮脂腺

13 decrepitude   

n.衰老；破旧

参考例句：

• Staying youth can be likened to climbing steep hill,while negligence will lead to decrepitude overnight. 保持青春已如爬坡，任由衰老会一泻千里。
• The building had a general air of decrepitude and neglect.这座建筑看上去破旧失修，无人照管。

14 glistened   

v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Pearls of dew glistened on the grass. 草地上珠露晶莹。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Her eyes glistened with tears. 她的眼里闪着泪花。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

15 embarrassment   

n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫

参考例句：

• She could have died away with embarrassment.她窘迫得要死。
• Coughing at a concert can be a real embarrassment.在音乐会上咳嗽真会使人难堪。

16 shreds   

v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件）

参考例句：

• Peel the carrots and cut them into shreds. 将胡罗卜削皮，切成丝。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I want to take this diary and rip it into shreds. 我真想一赌气扯了这日记。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

17 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

18 prim   

adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地

参考例句：

• She's too prim to enjoy rude jokes!她太古板，不喜欢听粗野的笑话！
• He is prim and precise in manner.他的态度一本正经而严谨

19 paternal   

adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的

参考例句：

• I was brought up by my paternal aunt.我是姑姑扶养大的。
• My father wrote me a letter full of his paternal love for me.我父亲给我写了一封充满父爱的信。

20 softens   

（使）变软( soften的第三人称单数 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰

参考例句：

• Iron softens with heat. 铁受热就软化。
• Moonlight softens our faults; all shabbiness dissolves into shadow. 月光淡化了我们的各种缺点，所有的卑微都化解为依稀朦胧的阴影。 来自名作英译部分

21 buckles   

搭扣，扣环( buckle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She gazed proudly at the shiny buckles on her shoes. 她骄傲地注视着鞋上闪亮的扣环。
• When the plate becomes unstable, it buckles laterally. 当板失去稳定时，就发生横向屈曲。

22 snobs   

（谄上傲下的）势利小人( snob的名词复数 )； 自高自大者，自命不凡者

参考例句：

• She dislikes snobs intensely. 她极其厌恶势利小人。
• Most of the people who worshipped her, who read every tidbit about her in the gossip press and hung up pictures of her in their rooms, were not social snobs. 崇敬她大多数的人不会放过每一篇报导她的八卦新闻，甚至在他们的房间中悬挂黛妃的画像，这些人并非都是傲慢成性。

23 rugged   

adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的

参考例句：

• Football players must be rugged.足球运动员必须健壮。
• The Rocky Mountains have rugged mountains and roads.落基山脉有崇山峻岭和崎岖不平的道路。