Chapter 14

MARTIN

 

Everyone bloody¹ knew everything about me, so I didn't see the point of this lark², and I told them that.

'Oh, come on, man,' said JJ, in his irritating American way. It doesn't take long, I find, to be irritated by Yanks. I know they're our friends and everything, and they respect success over there, unlike the ungrateful natives of this bloody chippy dump, but all that cool-daddio stuff gets on my wick. I mean, you should have seen him. You'd have thought he was on the roof to promote his latest movie. You certainly wouldn't think he'd been puttering around Archway delivering pizzas.

'We just want to hear your side of it,' said Jess.

'There isn't a "my side". I was a bloody idiot and I'm paying the price.'

'So you don't want to defend yourself? Because you're among friends here,' said JJ.

'She just spat³ at me,' I pointed⁴ out. 'What kind of a friend is that?'

'Oh, don't be such a baby,' said Jess. 'My friends are always spitting at me. I never take it personally.'

'Maybe you should. Perhaps that's how your friends intend it to be taken.'

Jess snorted. 'If I took it personally, I wouldn't have any friends left.'

We let that one hang in the air.

'So what do you want to know, that you don't know already?'

There are two sides to every story,' said Jess. 'We only know the bad side.'

'I didn't know she was fifteen,' I said. 'She told me she was eighteen. She looked eighteen.' That was it. That was the good side of the story.

'So if she'd been, like, six months older you wouldn't be up here?'

'I don't suppose I would, no. Because I wouldn't have broken the law. Wouldn't have gone to prison. Wouldn't have lost my job, my wife wouldn't have found out…'

'So you're saying it was just bad luck.'

'I'd say there was a certain degree of culpability⁵ involved.' This was, I need hardly tell you, an attempt at dry understatement; I didn't know then that Jess is at her happiest wallowing in the marshland of the bleeding obvious.

'Just because you've swallowed a fucking dictionary, it doesn't mean you've done nothing wrong,' said Jess.

'That's what "culpability"…'

'Because some married men wouldn't have shagged her no matter how old she was. And you've got kids and all, haven't you?'

'I have indeed.'

'So bad luck's got nothing to do with it.'

Oh, for fuck's sake. Why d'you think I've been dangling⁶ my feet over the ledge⁷, you moron⁸? I screwed up. I'm not trying to make excuses for myself. I feel so wretched I want to die.'

'I should hope so.'

'Thanks. And thanks for introducing this exercise, too. Very helpful. Very… curative.'

Another polysyllabic word, another dirty look.

I'm interested in something,' said JJ.

'Go on.'

'Why is it easier to like leap into the void than to face up to what you've done?'

'This is facing up to what I've done.'

'People are always fucking young girls and leaving their wives and kids. They don't all jump off of buildings, man.'

'No. But like Jess says, maybe they should.'

'Really? You think anyone who makes a mistake of this kind should die? Woah. That's some heavy shit,' said JJ.

Did I really think that? Maybe I did. Or maybe I had done. As some of you might know, I'd written things in newspapers which said exactly that, more or less. This was before my fall from grace, naturally. I'd called for the restoration of the death penalty, for example. I'd called for resignations and chemical castrations and prison sentences and public humiliations and penances¹⁰ of every kind. And maybe I had meant it when I'd said that men who couldn't keep their things in their trousers should be… Actually, I can't remember what I thought the appropriate punishment was now for philanderers and serial¹¹ adulterers. I shall have to look up the column in question. But the point is that I was practising what I preached. I hadn't been able to keep my thing in my trousers, so now I had to jump. I was a slave to my own logic¹². That was the price you had to pay if you were a tabloid¹³ columnist¹⁴ who crossed the line you'd drawn¹⁵.

'Not every mistake, no. But maybe this one.'

'Jesus,' said JJ. 'You're real tough on yourself.'

'It's not just that, anyway. It's the public thing. The humiliation⁹. The enjoyment¹⁶ of the humiliation. The TV show on cable that's watched by three people. Everything. I've… I've run out of room. I can't see any way forward or back.'

There was a thoughtful silence, for about ten seconds.

'Right,' said Jess. 'My turn.'

1 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

2 lark   

n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏

参考例句：

• He thinks it cruel to confine a lark in a cage.他认为把云雀关在笼子里太残忍了。
• She lived in the village with her grandparents as cheerful as a lark.她同祖父母一起住在乡间非常快活。

3 spat   

n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声

参考例句：

• Her parents always have spats.她的父母经常有些小的口角。
• There is only a spat between the brother and sister.那只是兄妹间的小吵小闹。

4 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

5 culpability   

n.苛责，有罪

参考例句：

• As if the estrangement between them had come of any culpability of hers. 姐弟俩疏远的责任竟仿佛落到了她的身上！ 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• The offence, as now defined in English law, covers a wide spectrum of culpability. 英国法律规定，违法包括很多种过失行为。 来自互联网

6 dangling   

悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口

参考例句：

• The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. 结果，那颗牙就晃来晃去吊在床柱上了。
• The children sat on the high wall,their legs dangling. 孩子们坐在一堵高墙上，摇晃着他们的双腿。

7 ledge   

n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁

参考例句：

• They paid out the line to lower him to the ledge.他们放出绳子使他降到那块岩石的突出部分。
• Suddenly he struck his toe on a rocky ledge and fell.突然他的脚趾绊在一块突出的岩石上，摔倒了。

8 moron   

n.极蠢之人，低能儿

参考例句：

• I used to think that Gordon was a moron.我曾以为戈登是个白痴。
• He's an absolute moron!他纯粹是个傻子！

9 humiliation   

n.羞辱

参考例句：

• He suffered the humiliation of being forced to ask for his cards.他蒙受了被迫要求辞职的羞辱。
• He will wish to revenge his humiliation in last Season's Final.他会为在上个季度的决赛中所受的耻辱而报复的。

10 penances   

n.（赎罪的）苦行，苦修( penance的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Brahman! O my child! Cease from practising further penances. 婆罗门！我的孩子！请停止练习进一步的苦行。 来自互联网

11 serial   

n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的

参考例句：

• A new serial is starting on television tonight.今晚电视开播一部新的电视连续剧。
• Can you account for the serial failures in our experiment?你能解释我们实验屡屡失败的原因吗？

12 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

13 tabloid   

adj.轰动性的，庸俗的；n.小报，文摘

参考例句：

• He launched into a verbal assault on tabloid journalism.他口头对小报新闻进行了抨击。
• He believes that the tabloid press has behaved disgracefully.他认为小报媒体的行为不太光彩。

14 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。

15 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

16 enjoyment   

n.乐趣；享有；享用

参考例句：

• Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同，我们这次访问更加愉快了。
• After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话，这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。