And still plucking at her chin, thinking absently, but scarcely conscious of her thinking, like a child in reverie, she thought:
“There is a freight-train going west along the river. Now, by the sound, it should be passing below Patton Hill, just across from where Riverside Park used to be before the flood came and washed it all away. . . . Now it is getting farther off, across the river from the casket factory. . . . Now it is almost gone, I can hear nothing but the sound of wheels . . . it is going west toward Boiling Springs . . . and after that it will come to Wilson City, Tennessee . . . and then to Dover. . . . Knoxville . . . Memphis — after that? I wonder where the train is going . . . where it will be tomorrow night? . . . Perhaps across the Mississippi River, and then on through Arkansas . . . perhaps to St. Louis . . . and then on to — what comes next?” she thought absently, plucking at her chin —“to Kansas City, I suppose . . . and then to Denver . . . and across the Rocky Mountains . . . and across the desert . . . and then across more mountains and then at last to California.”
And still plucking at her chin, and scarcely conscious of her thought — not THINKING, indeed, so much as reflecting by a series of broken but powerful images all cogent8 to a central intuition about life — her mind resumed again its sleepless9 patient speculation10:
“How strange and full of mystery life is. . . . Tomorrow we shall all get up, dress, go out on the streets, see and speak to one another — and yet we shall know absolutely nothing about anyone else. . . . I know almost everyone in town — the bankers, the lawyers, the butchers, the bakers11, the grocers, the clerks in the stores, the Greek restaurant man, Tony Scarsati the fruit dealer12, even the niggers down in Niggertown — I know them all, as well as their wives and children — where they came from, what they are doing, all the lies and scandals and jokes and mean stories, whether true or false, that are told about them — and yet I really know nothing about any of them. I know nothing about anyone, not even about myself —” and, suddenly, this fact seemed terrible and grotesque13 to her, and she thought desperately14:
“What is wrong with people? . . . Why do we never get to know one another? . . . Why is it that we get born and live and die here in this world without ever finding out what anyone else is like? . . . No, what is the strangest thing of all — why is it that all our efforts to know people in this world lead only to greater ignorance and confusion than before? We get together and talk, and say we think and feel and believe in such a way, and yet what we really think and feel and believe we never say at all. Why is this? We talk and talk in an effort to understand another person, and yet almost all we say is false: we hardly ever say what we mean or tell the truth — it all leads to greater misunderstanding and fear than before — it would be better if we said nothing. Tomorrow I shall dress and go out on the street and bow and smile and flatter people, laying it on with a trowel, because I want them to like me, I want to make ‘a good impression,’ to be a ‘success’— and yet I have no notion what it is all about. When I pass Judge Junius Pearson on the street I will smile and bow and try to make a good impression on him, and if he speaks to me I shall almost fawn15 upon him in order to flatter my way into his good graces. Why? I do not like him, I hate his long pointed16 nose, and the sneering17 and disdainful look upon his face: I think he is ‘looking down’ on me — but I know that he goes with the ‘swell18’ social set and is invited out to all the parties at Catawba House by Mrs. Goulderbilt and is received by them as a social equal. And I feel that if Junius Pearson should accept me as HIS social equal it would help me — get me forward somehow — make me a success — get ME an invitation to Catawba House. And yet it would get me nothing; even if I were Mrs. Goulderbilt’s closest friend, what good would it do me? But the people I really like and feel at home with are working people of Papa’s kind. The people I really like are Ollie Gant, and old man Alec Ramsay, and big Mike Fogarty, and Mr. Jannadeau, and Myrtis, my little nigger servant girl, and Mr. Luther, the fish man down in the market, and the nigger Jacken, the fruit and vegetable man, and Ernest Pegram, and Mr. Duncan and the Tarkintons — all the old neighbours down on Woodson Street — and Tony Scarsati and Mr. Pappas. Mr. Pappas is just a Greek luncheon-room proprietor19, but he seems to me to be one of the finest people I have ever known, and yet if Junius Pearson saw me talking to him I should try to make a joke out of it — to make a joke out of talking to a Greek who runs a restaurant. In the same way, when some of my new friends see me talking to people like Mr. Jannadeau or Mike Fogarty or Ollie or Ernest Pegram or the Tarkintons or the old Woodson Street crowd, I feel ashamed or embarrassed, and turn it off as a big joke. I laugh about Mr. Jannadeau and his dirty fingers and the way he picks his nose, and old Alec Ramsay and Ernest Pegram spitting tobacco while they talk, and then I wind up by appearing to be democratic and saying in a frank and open manner —‘Well, I like them . . . I don’t care what anyone says’ (when no one has said anything!), ‘I like them, and always have. If the truth is told, they’re just as good as anyone else!’— as if there is any doubt about it, and as if I should have to justify20 myself for being ‘democratic.’ Why ‘democratic’? Why should I apologize or defend myself for liking21 people when no one has accused me?
“I’m pushing Hugh ahead now all the time; he’s tired and sick and worn out and exhausted22 — but I keep ‘pushing him ahead’ without knowing what it is we’re pushing ahead toward, where it will all wind up. What is it all about? I’ve pushed him ahead from Woodson Street up here to Weaver23 Street: and now this neighbourhood has become old-fashioned — the swell society crowd is all moving out to Grovemont — opposite the golf-course; and now I’m pushing him to move out there, build upon the lot we own or buy a house. I’ve ‘pushed’ him and myself until now he belongs to the Rotary24 Club and I belong to the Thursday Literary Club, the Orpheus Society, the Saturday Musical Guild25, the Woman’s Club, the Discussion Group, and God knows what else — all these silly and foolish little clubs in which we have no interest — and yet it would kill us if we did not belong to them, we feel that they are a sign that we are ‘getting ahead.’ Getting ahead to what?
“And it is the same with all of us: pretend, pretend, pretend — show-off, show-off, show-off — try to keep up with the neighbours and to go ahead of them — and never a word of truth; never a word of what we really feel, and understand and know. The one who shouts the loudest goes the farthest:— Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs26 sits up on top of the whole heap, she goes everywhere and makes speeches; people say ‘Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs said so-and-so’— and all because she shouts out everywhere that she is a lady and a member of an old family and the widow of Richard Jeter Ebbs. And no one in town ever met Richard Jeter Ebbs, they don’t know who he was, what he did, where he came from; neither do they know who Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs was, or where she came from, or who or what her family was.
“Why are we all so false, cowardly, cruel, and disloyal toward one another and toward ourselves? Why do we spend our days in doing useless things, in false pretence27 and triviality? Why do we waste our lives — exhaust our energy — throw everything good away on falseness and lies and emptiness? Why do we deliberately28 destroy ourselves this way, when we want joy and love and beauty and it is all around us in the world if we would only take it? Why are we so afraid and ashamed when there is really nothing to be afraid and ashamed of? Why have we wasted everything, thrown our loves away, what is this horrible thing in life that makes us throw ourselves away — to hunt out death when what we want is life? Why is it that we are always strangers in this world, and never come to know one another, and are full of fear and shame and hate and falseness, when what we want is love? Why is it? Why? Why? Why?”
And with that numb29 horror of disbelief and silence and the dark about her, in her, filling her, it seemed to her suddenly that there was some monstrous30 and malevolent31 force in life that held all mankind in its spell and that compelled men to destroy themselves against their will. It seemed to her that everything in life — the things men did and said, the way they acted — was grotesque, perverse32, and accidental, that there was no reason for anything.
A thousand scenes from her whole life, seen now with the terrible detachment of a spectator, and dark and sombre with the light of time, swarmed33 through her mind: she saw herself as a child of ten, hanging on grimly to her father, a thin fury of a little girl, during his sprees of howling drunkenness — slapping him in the face to make him obey her, feeding him hot soup, undressing him, sending for McGuire, “sobering him up” and forcing him to obey her when no one else could come near him. And she saw herself later, a kind of slavey at her mother’s boarding-house in St. Louis during the World’s Fair, drudging from morn to night, a grain of human dust, an atom thrust by chance into the great roar of a distant city, or on an expedition as blind, capricious, and fatally mistaken as all life. Later, she saw herself as a girl in high school, she remembered her dreams and hopes, the pitiably mistaken innocence34 of her vision of the world; her grand ambitions to “study music,” to follow a “career in grand opera”; later still, a girl of eighteen or twenty, amorous35 of life, thirsting for the great cities and voyages of the world, playing popular songs of the period —“Love Me and the World Is Mine,” “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” “Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold,” and so on — for her father, as he sat, on summer evenings, on his porch; a little later, “touring” the little cities of the South, singing and playing the popular “rhythm” and sentimental36 ballads37 of the period in vaudeville38 and moving-picture houses. She remembered how she had once been invited to a week-end house party with a dozen other young men and women of her acquaintance, and of how she had been afraid to go, and how desperately ashamed she was when she had “to go in swimming” with the others, and to “show her figure,” her long skinny legs, even when they were concealed39 by the clumsy bathing dress and the black stockings of the period. She remembered her marriage then, the first years of her life with Barton, her tragic40 failure to have children, and the long horror of Gant’s last years of sickness — the years of sombre waiting, the ever-impending terror of his death.
A thousand scenes from this past life flashed through her mind now, as she lay there in the darkness, and all of them seemed grotesque, accidental and mistaken, as reasonless as everything in life.
And filled with a numb, speechless feeling of despair and nameless terror, she heard, somewhere across the night, the sound of a train again, and thought:
“My God! My God! What is life about? We are all lying here in darkness in ten thousand little towns — waiting, listening, hoping — for what?”
And suddenly, with a feeling of terrible revelation, she saw the strangeness and mystery of man’s life; she felt about her in the darkness the presence of ten thousand people, each lying in his bed, naked and alone, united at the heart of night and darkness, and listening, as she, to the sounds of silence and of sleep. And suddenly it seemed to her that she knew all these lonely, strange, and unknown watchers of the night, that she was speaking to them, and they to her, across the fields of sleep, as they had never spoken before, that she knew men now in all their dark and naked loneliness, without falseness and pretence as she had never known them. And it seemed to her that if men would only listen in the darkness, and send the language of their naked lonely spirits across the silence of the night, all of the error, falseness and confusion of their lives would vanish; they would no longer be strangers, and each would find the life he sought and never yet had found.
“If we only could!” she thought. “If we only could!”
Then, as she listened, there was nothing but the huge hush of night and silence, and far away the whistle of a train. Suddenly the phone rang.
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收听单词发音
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1
tolling
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| [财]来料加工 | |
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2
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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3
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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5
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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7
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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8
cogent
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| adj.强有力的，有说服力的 | |
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9
sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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11
bakers
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| n.面包师( baker的名词复数 )；面包店；面包店店主；十三 | |
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12
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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14
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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15
fawn
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| n.未满周岁的小鹿；v.巴结，奉承 | |
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16
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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18
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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19
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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20
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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21
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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weaver
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| n.织布工；编织者 | |
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24
rotary
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| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
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guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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ebbs
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| 退潮( ebb的名词复数 )； 落潮； 衰退 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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28
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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29
numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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31
malevolent
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| adj.有恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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32
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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33
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 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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34
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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35
amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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36
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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37
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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38
vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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39
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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40
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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