Following the fourth pipe—Pyne, after the second, had ceased to trouble to repeat his feat of legerdemain16, “The sleep” claimed Mrs. Sin. Her languorous17 eyes closed, and her face assumed that rapt expression of Buddha-like beatitude which Rita had observed at Kilfane's flat. According to some scientific works on the subject, sleep is not invariably induced in the case of Europeans by the use of chandu. Loosely, this is true. But this type of European never becomes an habitue; the habitue always sleeps. That dream-world to which opium alone holds the key becomes the real world “for the delights of which the smoker gladly resigns all mundane18 interests.” The exiled Chinaman returns again to the sampan of his boyhood, floating joyously19 on the waters of some willow-lined canal; the Malay hears once more the mystic whispering in the mangrove20 swamps, or scents21 the fragrance22 of nutmeg and cinnamon in the far-off golden Chersonese. Mrs. Sin doubtless lived anew the triumphs of earlier days in Buenos Ayres, when she had been La Belle23 Lola, the greatly beloved, and before she had met and married Sin Sin Wa. Gives much, but claims all, and he who would open the poppy-gates must close the door of ambition and bid farewell to manhood.
Sir Lucien stood looking at the woman, and although one pipe had affected24 him but slightly, his imagination momentarily ran riot and a pageant25 of his life swept before him, so that his jaw26 grew hard and grim and he clenched27 his hands convulsively. An unbroken stillness prevailed in the opium-house of Sin Sin Wa.
Recovering from his fit of abstraction, Pyne, casting a final keen glance at the sleeper28, walked out of the room. He looked along the carpeted corridor in the direction of the cubicles29, paused, and then opened the heavy door masking the recess30 behind the cupboard. Next opening the false back of the cupboard, he passed through to the lumber-room beyond, and partly closed the second door.
He descended31 the stair and went along the passage; but ere he reached the door of the room on the ground floor:
“Hello! hello! Sin Sin! Sin Sin Wa!” croaked32 the raven33. “Number one p'lice chop, lo!” The note of a police whistle followed, rendered with uncanny fidelity34.
Pyne entered the room. It presented the same aspect as when he had left it. The ship's lantern stood upon the table, and Sin Sin Wa sat upon the tea-chest, the great black bird perched on his shoulder. The fire in the stove had burned lower, and its downcast glow revealed less mercilessly the dirty condition of the floor. Otherwise no one, nothing, seemed to have been disturbed. Pyne leaned against the doorpost, taking out and lighting35 a cigarette. The eye of Sin Sin Wa glanced sideways at him.
“Well, Sin Sin,” said Sir Lucien, dropping a match and extinguishing it under his foot, “you see I am not smoking tonight.”
“No smokee,” murmured the Chinaman. “Velly good stuff.”
“Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin.”
“Number one proper,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, and relapsed into smiling silence.
“Number one p'lice,” croaked the raven sleepily. “Smartest—” He even attempted the castanets imitation, but was overcome by drowsiness36.
For a while Sir Lucien stood watching the singular pair and smiling in his ironical37 fashion. The motive38 which had prompted him to leave the neighboring house and to seek the companionship of Sin Sin Wa was so obscure and belonged so peculiarly to the superdelicacies of chivalry39, that already he was laughing at himself. But, nevertheless, in this house and not in its secret annex40 of a Hundred Raptures41 he designed to spend the night. Presently:
“Hon'lable p'lice patrol come 'long plenty soon,” murmured Sin Sin Wa.
“Indeed?” said Sir Lucien, glancing at his wristwatch. “The door is open above.”
Sin Sin Wa raised one yellow forefinger42, without moving either hand from the knee upon which it rested, and shook it slightly to and fro.
“Allee lightee,” he murmured. “No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers.”
“Will they want to come in?”
“Wantchee dlink,” replied Sin Sin Wa.
“Oh, I see. If I go out into the passage it will be all right?”
“Allee lightee.”
Even as he softly crooned the words came a heavy squelch43 of rubbers upon the wet pavement outside, followed by a rapping on the door. Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien, and the latter immediately withdrew, partly closing the door. The Chinaman shuffled44 across and admitted two constables45. The raven, remaining perched upon his shoulder, shrieked47, “Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres,” and, fully48 awakened49, rattled50 invisible castanets.
The police strode into the stuffy51 little room without ceremony, a pair of burly fellows, fresh-complexioned, and genial52 as men are wont53 to be who have reached a welcome resting-place on a damp and cheerless night. They stood by the stove, warming their hands; and one of them stooped, took up the little poker54, and stirred the embers to a brighter glow.
“Been havin' a pipe, Sin?” he asked, winking55 at his companion. “I can smell something like opium!”
“No smokee opium,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently56. “Smokee Woodbine.”
“You likee tly one piecee pipee one time?” inquired the Chinaman. “Gotchee fliend makee smokee.”
“Now's your chance, Jim!” he cried. “You always said you'd like to have a cut at it.”
“H'm!” muttered the other. “A 'double' o' that fifteen over-proof Jamaica of yours, Sin, would hit me in a tender spot tonight.”
He resumed his seat on the tea-chest, and the raven muttered sleepily, “Sin Sin—Sin.”
“H'm!” repeated the constable.
He raised the skirt of his heavy top-coat, and from his trouser-pocket drew out a leather purse. The eye of Sin Sin Wa remained fixed59 upon a distant corner of the room. From the purse the constable took a shilling, ringing it loudly upon the table.
“Double rum, miss, please!” he said, facetiously60. “There's no treason allowed nowadays, so my pal's—”
“I stood yours last night Jim, anyway!” cried the other, grinning. “Go on, stump up!”
Jim rang a second shilling on the table.
“Two double rums!” he called.
Sin Sin Wa reached a long arm into the little cupboard beside him and withdrew a bottle and a glass. Leaning forward he placed bottle and glass on the table, and adroitly61 swept the coins into his yellow palm.
“Number one p'lice chop,” croaked the raven.
“You're right, old bird!” said Jim, pouring out a stiff peg62 of the spirit and disposing of it at a draught63. “We should freeze to death on this blasted riverside beat if it wasn't for Sin Sin.”
He measured out a second portion for his companion, and the latter drank the raw spirit off as though it had been ale, replaced the glass on the table, and having adjusted his belt and lantern in that characteristic way which belongs exclusively to members of the Metropolitan64 Police Force, turned and departed.
“Good night, Sin,” he said, opening the door.
“So-long,” murmured the Chinaman.
“Good night, old bird,” cried Jim, following his colleague.
“So-long.”
The door closed, and Sin Sin Wa, shuffling65 across, rebolted it. As Sir Lucien came out from his hiding-place Sin Sin Wa returned to his seat on the tea-chest, first putting the glass, unwashed, and the rum bottle back in the cupboard.
To the ordinary observer the Chinaman presents an inscrutable mystery. His seemingly unemotional character and his racial inability to express his thoughts intelligibly66 in any European tongue stamp him as a creature apart, and one whom many are prone67 erroneously to classify very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien usually spoke68 to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that weird69 jargon70 known as “pidgin.” But the silly Sin Wa who murmured gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse71 upon many and curious subjects in his own language were two different beings—as Sir Lucien was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one-eyed raven sank into slumber72, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of oral intercourse73 as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from those of the rest of the civilized74 world.
“So you make a profit on your rum, Sin Sin Wa,” he said ironically, “at the same time that you keep in the good graces of the police?”
Sin Sin Wa's expression underwent a subtle change at the sound of his native language. He moved his hands and became slightly animated75.
“A great people of the West, most honorable sir,” he replied in the pure mandarin76 dialect, “claim credit for having said that 'business is business.' Yet he who thus expressed himself was a Chinaman.”
“You surprise me.”
“The wise man must often find occasion for surprise most honorable sir.”
Sir Lucien lighted a cigarette.
“I sometimes wonder, Sin Sin Wa,” he said slowly, “what your aim in life can be. Your father was neither a ship's carpenter nor a shopkeeper. This I know. Your age I do not know and cannot guess, but you are no longer young. You covet77 wealth. For what purpose, Sin Sin Wa?”
Standing78 behind the Chinaman, Sir Lucien's dark face, since he made no effort to hide his feelings, revealed the fact that he attached to this seemingly abstract discussion a greater importance than his tone of voice might have led one to suppose. Sin Sin Wa remained silent for some time, then:
“Most honorable sir,” he replied, “when I have smoked the opium, before my eyes—for in dreams I have two—a certain picture arises. It is that of a farm in the province of Ho-Nan. Beyond the farm stretch paddy-fields as far as one can see. Men and women and boys and girls move about the farm, happy in their labors79, and far, far away dwell the mountain gods, who send the great Yellow River sweeping80 down through the valleys where the poppy is in bloom. It is to possess that farm, most honorable sir, and those paddy-fields that I covet wealth.”
“And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost sight of this ideal?”
“Never.”
“But—your wife?”
Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.
“A man may not always have the same wife,” he replied cryptically82. “The honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring83 unselfishly in my miserable84 house and scorning the love of other men as she has always done—and as an honorable and upright woman is expected to do—may one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never knows. Or she may leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that some little maiden85 of Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest and tender, will consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?”
Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:
“She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said, almost sadly. “She will come to your house only to cheat you.”
“We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir,” he answered, “and it is this: 'He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.' She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It is all I ask.”
There came a soft rapping on the outer door—three raps, a pause, and then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.
“Sin Sin Wa,” he croaked, “number one p'lice chop, lo!”
Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.
“The traffic. A consignment87 of opium,” he said. “Sam Tuk calls.”
Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:
“I should like to go with you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said. “Would it be safe to leave the house—with the upper door unlocked?”
Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.
“All are sleeping, most honorable sir?”
“All.”
“I will lock the room above and the outer door. It is safe.”
“Come, Tling-a-Ling,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “you go to bed, my little black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan.”
Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped89 the raven. Sin Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.
“I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf,” he said. “Your magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper90 absence for one moment, most honorable sir.”
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收听单词发音
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1
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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3
smoker
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| n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室 | |
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abstain
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| v.自制，戒绝，弃权，避免 | |
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fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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7
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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8
appraise
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| v.估价，评价，鉴定 | |
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9
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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10
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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nicotine
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| n.(化)尼古丁，烟碱 | |
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13
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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14
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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15
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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16
legerdemain
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| n.戏法，诈术 | |
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17
languorous
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| adj.怠惰的，没精打采的 | |
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18
mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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19
joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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20
mangrove
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| n.(植物)红树，红树林 | |
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21
scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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22
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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23
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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24
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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27
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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29
cubicles
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| n.小卧室，斗室( cubicle的名词复数 ) | |
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30
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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31
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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32
croaked
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的过去式和过去分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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34
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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35
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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36
drowsiness
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| n.睡意；嗜睡 | |
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37
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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annex
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| vt.兼并，吞并；n.附属建筑物 | |
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41
raptures
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| 极度欢喜( rapture的名词复数 ) | |
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42
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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43
squelch
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| v.压制，镇压；发吧唧声 | |
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shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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45
constables
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| n.警察( constable的名词复数 ) | |
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46
constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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47
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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49
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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50
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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51
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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52
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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53
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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54
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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55
winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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56
complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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57
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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58
blandly
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| adv.温和地，殷勤地 | |
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59
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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60
facetiously
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| adv.爱开玩笑地；滑稽地，爱开玩笑地 | |
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61
adroitly
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| adv.熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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62
peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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63
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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64
metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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65
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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66
intelligibly
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| adv.可理解地，明了地，清晰地 | |
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67
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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68
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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69
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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70
jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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71
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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72
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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73
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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74
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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75
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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76
Mandarin
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| n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的 | |
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77
covet
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| vt.垂涎；贪图(尤指属于他人的东西) | |
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78
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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79
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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80
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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81
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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82
cryptically
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83
laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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84
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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85
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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86
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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87
consignment
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| n.寄售；发货；委托；交运货物 | |
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88
sedately
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| adv.镇静地，安详地 | |
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89
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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90
improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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