MADAME GAILLARD’S life already lay behind her, though she was not yet thirty years old. To the world she looked as old as her years-and at the same time two, three, a hundred times older, like the mummy of a young girl. But on the inside she was long since dead. When she was a child, her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker1, just above the base of the nose, and she had lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of human warmth and human coldness-indeed, every human passion. With that one blow, tenderness had become as foreign to her as enmity, joy as strange as despair. She felt nothing when later she slept with a man, and just as little when she bore her children. She did not grieve over those that died, nor rejoice over those that remained to her. When her husband beat her, she did not flinch2, and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera3 in the Hotel-Dieu. The only two sensations that she was aware of were a very slight depression at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation4 of mood at its departure. Otherwise, this numbed5 woman felt nothing. On the other hand ... or perhaps precisely6 because of her total lack of emotion... Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted7 to her nor discriminated8 against any one of them. She served up three meals a day and not the tiniest snack more. She diapered the little ones three times a day, but only until their second birthday. Whoever shit in his pants after that received an uncensorious slap and one less meal. Exactly one half of the boarding fees were spent for her wards9, exactly one half she retained for herself. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra, even when it was a matter of life and death. Otherwise her business would have been of no value to her. She needed the money. She had figured it down to the penny. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity10, with just enough beyond that so that she could afford to die at home rather than perish miserably11 in the Hotel-Dieu as her husband had. The death itself had left her cold. But she dreaded12 a communal13, public death among hundreds of strangers. She wanted to afford a private death, and for that she needed her full cut of the boarding fees. True, there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. Still, her record was considerably14 better than that of most other private foster mothers and surpassed by far the record of the great public and ecclesiastical orphanages15, where the losses often came to nine out of ten. There were plenty of replacements16. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings, bastards17, and orphans18 a year. Several such losses were quite affordable19.
For little Grenouille, Madame Gaillard’s establishment was a blessing20. He probably could not have survived anywhere else. But here, with this small-souled woman, he throve. He had a tough constitution. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again. He could eat watery21 soup for days on end, he managed on the thinnest milk, digested the rottenest vegetables and spoiled meat. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles22, dysentery, chicken pox, cholera, a twenty-foot fall into a well, and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. True, he bore scars and chafings and scabs from it all, and a slightly crippled foot left him with a limp, but he lived. He was as tough as a resistant23 bacterium24 and as content as a tick sitting quietly on a tree and living off a tiny drop of blood plundered25 years before. He required a minimum ration26 of food and clothing for his body. For his soul he required nothing. Security, attention, tenderness, love-or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require- were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille. Or rather, so it seems to us, he had totally dispensed27 with them just to go on living-from the very start. The cry that followed his birth, the cry with which he had brought himself to people’s attention and his mother to the gallows28, was not an instinctive29 cry for sympathy and love. That cry, emitted upon careful consideration, one might almost say upon mature consideration, was the newborn’s decision against love and nevertheless for life. Under the circumstances, the latter was possible only without the former, and had the child demanded both, it would doubtless have abruptly30 come to a grisly end. Of course, it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour31 by way of life, sparing itself and the world a great deal of mischief32. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum33 of native civility, and that Grenouille did not possess. He was an abomination from the start.
He decided34 in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice35.
Obviously he did not decide this as an adult would decide, who requires his more or less substantial experience and reason to choose among various options. But he did decide vegetatively, as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate36 or had better let things be.
Or like that tick in the tree, for which life has nothing better to offer than perpetual hibernation37. The ugly little tick, which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense38 emits nothing, lets not the tiniest bit of perspiration39 escape. The tick, which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. The lonely tick, which, wrapped up in itself, huddles40 in its tree, blind, deaf, and dumb, and simply sniffs41, sniffs all year long, for miles around, for the blood of some passing animal that it could never reach on its own power. The tick could let itself drop. It could fall to the floor of the forest and creep a millimeter or two here or there on its six tiny legs and lie down to die under the leaves-it would be no great loss, God knows. But the tick, stubborn, sullen42, and loathsome43, huddles there and lives and waits. Waits, for that most improbable of chances that will bring blood, in animal form, directly beneath its tree. And only then does it abandon caution and drop, and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh....
The young Grenouille was such a tick. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile, no cry, no glimmer44 in the eye, not even his own scent45. Every other woman would have kicked this monstrous46 child out. But not Madame Gaillard. She could not smell that he did not smell, and she expected no stirrings from his soul, because her own was sealed tight.
The other children, however, sensed at once what Grenouille was about. From the first day, the new arrival gave them the creeps. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. The younger ones would sometimes cry out in the night; they felt a draft sweep through the room. Others dreamed something was taking their breath away. One day the older ones conspired47 to suffocate48 him. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning, he was crumpled49 and squashed and blue, but not dead. They tried it a couple of times more, but in vain. Simple strangulation-using their bare hands or stopping up his mouth and nose- would have been a dependable method, but they did not dare try it. They didn’t want to touch him. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can’t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you.
As he grew older, they gave up their attempted murders. They probably realized that he could not be destroyed. Instead, they stayed out of his way, ran off, or at least avoided touching50 him. They did not hate him. They weren’t jealous of him either, nor did they begrudge51 him the food he ate. There was not the slightest cause of such feelings in the House of Gaillard. It simply disturbed them that he was there. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. They were afraid of him.
收听单词发音 |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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flinch
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| v.畏缩，退缩 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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numbed
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| v.使麻木，使麻痹( numb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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wards
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| 区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态 | |
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annuity
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| n.年金；养老金 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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orphanages
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| 孤儿院( orphanage的名词复数 ) | |
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replacements
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| n.代替( replacement的名词复数 )；替换的人[物]；替代品；归还 | |
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bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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orphans
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| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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affordable
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| adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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resistant
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| adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的 | |
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bacterium
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| n.(pl.)bacteria 细菌 | |
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plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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dispensed
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| v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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modicum
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| n.少量，一小份 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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germinate
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| v.发芽；发生；发展 | |
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hibernation
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| n.冬眠 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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huddles
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| （尤指杂乱地）挤在一起的人（或物品、建筑）( huddle的名词复数 )； （美式足球）队员靠拢（磋商战术） | |
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41
sniffs
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的第三人称单数 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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45
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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46
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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47
conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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48
suffocate
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| vt.使窒息，使缺氧，阻碍；vi.窒息，窒息而亡，阻碍发展 | |
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49
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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50
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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51
begrudge
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| vt.吝啬，羡慕 | |
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