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PART TWO Soul and Body

第二部分灵与肉

It would be senseless for the author to try to convince the reader that his characters once actually lived. They were not born of a mother's womb; they were born of a stimulating phrase or two or from a basic situation. Tomas was born of the saying "Einmal ist keinmal". Tereza was born of the rumbling of a stomach.

一个作者企图让读者相信他的主人公们都曾经实有其人是毫无意义的。他们不是生于母亲的子宫，而是生于一种基本情境或一两个带激发性的词语。托马斯就是“Einmal ist keinmal”这一说法的产物，特丽莎则产于胃里咕咕的低语声。

The first time she went to Tomas's flat, her insides began to rumble. And no wonder: she had had nothing to eat since breakfast but a quick sandwich on the platform before boarding the train. She had concentrated on the daring journey ahead of her and forgotten about food. But when we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it. She felt terrible standing there in front of Tomas listening to her belly speak out. She felt like crying. Fortunately, after the first ten seconds Tomas put his arms around her and made her forget her ventral voices.

她第一次去托马斯的寓所，体内就开始咕咕咕了。这不奇怪：早饭后她除了开车前在站台上啃了一块三明治，至今什么也没吃。她全神贯注于前面的斗胆旅行而忘了吃饭。人们忽视自己的身体，是极容易受其报复的。于是她站在托马斯面前时，便惊恐地听到自己肚子里的叫声。她几乎要哭了。幸好只有十秒钟，托马斯便一把抱住了她，使她忘记了腹部的声音。

Tereza was therefore born of a situation which brutally reveals the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience.

于是，产生特丽莎的情境残酷地揭露出人类的一个基本经验，即心灵与肉体不可调和的两重性。

A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular beats in his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.

很久以前，一个人会惊异地听到自己胸内有节奏跳动，但从不去猜测那是什么。他还不能对人这样奇怪、陌生的东西给以辨识确定。那时的人体是一间囚室，囚室里的东西能看，能听，能恐惧，能思索，还能惊异。而人体消失之后所留存的东西，便算是灵魂。

Today, of course, the body is no longer unfamiliar: we know that the beating in our chest is the heart and that the nose is the nozzle of a hose sticking out of the body to take oxygen to the lungs. The face is nothing but an instrument panel registering all the body mechanisms: digestion, sight, hearing, respiration, thought.

当然，今天的人体不再陌生了：我们知道在胸膛里跳动的是心脏；鼻子是伸出体外的排气管，为肺输送氧气；脸呢，什么也不是，只是一块标记着所有生理过程的仪表板，标记着吃，看，听，呼吸以及思维的情况。

Ever since man has learned to give each part of the body a name, the body has given him less trouble. He has also learned that the soul is nothing more than the gray matter of the brain in action.

自从一个人学会了给人体的各个部位命名，人体就好对付多了。他还得知灵魂不过是大脑中一种活跃的灰色物质。

The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.

灵与肉两重性的古老命题终于被众多科学术语淹没，我们仅仅将其作为一种过时的浅见陋识而加以嘲笑。

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.

但是，假使他的一位恋人来听他腹内的咕咕隆隆，灵肉一体这个科学时代的诗意错觉，便即刻消失。

Tereza tried to see herself through her body. That is why, from girlhood on, she would stand before the mirror so often. And because she was afraid her mother would catch her at it, every peek into the mirror had a tinge of secret vice.

特丽莎力图透过自己的身体来认识自己。正因为如此，从孩提时代起，她就常常站在镜子前。她害怕母亲发现，每次偷偷照镜子都带有一种秘密犯禁的色彩。

It was not vanity that drew her to the mirror; it was amazement at seeing her own "I". She forgot she was looking at the instrument panel of her body mechanisms; she thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face. She forgot that the nose was merely the nozzle of a hose that took oxygen to the lungs; she saw it as the true expression of her nature.

不是虚荣心使她走向镜子，而是那种看见了“我”时的惊奇。她以为透过那面部状貌看到了自己灵魂的闪光，忘记了自己不过是看见了身体机制的仪表扳。她以为鼻子是自己天性的真实表露，忘记了那玩意儿不过是给肺输送氧气的通气管。

Staring at herself for long stretches of time, she was occasionally upset at the sight of her mother's features in her face. She would stare all the more doggedly at her image in an attempt to wish them away and keep only what was hers alone. Each time she succeeded was a time of intoxication: her soul would rise to the surface of her body like a crew charging up from the bowels of a ship, spreading out over the deck, waving at the sky and singing in jubilation.

久久地看着自己发呆，她不时也心烦意乱地看到自己脸上有母亲的影子。她更固执地盯着镜子，希望母亲的影子消逝而只留下她自己。每次的成功都令她陶醉：她的灵魂浮现于她的身体表面，如那些塞在底舱的水手终于冲了出来，散布在甲板上，向着长天挥臂欢呼。

She took after her mother, and not only physically. I sometimes have the feeling that her entire life was merely a continuation of her mother's, much as the course of a ball on the billiard table is merely the continuation of the player's arm movement.

她象她的母亲，不仅仅是模样象。有时候我有一种感觉，似乎她的整个生命只是她母亲的继续，象台球桌上一个球的运动只是球员手臂动作的延续罢了。

四岁的她便再也忘不了这句话了。她青春妙龄，坐在学校读书时，总是不听老师的课，想着与自己相象的那幅画。

该结婚的时候了，她有九个求婚者，围着她跪成一圈。她站在中间象个公主，不知挑选谁好：第一个最英俊，第二个最聪明，第三个最富裕，第四个最健壮，第五个门第显赫，等六个背诗如流，第七个见多识广，第八个工于小提琴，而第九个极富有男子气。他们都用同一种姿势跪着，膝盖上的功夫相差无几。

她最后选中了第九个，倒不是因为他最有男子气，而是与他性交时尽管她一再叮嘱：“小心”、“多多小心啊”，他却故意不小心，使她找不到人打胎而不得不嫁给他。

于是特丽莎出世了。从全国各地赶来的众多亲戚都围在小童车旁，与孩子逗趣。

特丽莎的母亲不愿逗趣，甚至根本不说话，只是牵挂着自已另外八个求婚者，看来他们都比第九个好。

象女儿一样，特丽莎的母亲也常常照镜子。一天，她发现眼角边有了皱纹，断定她的婚事简直毫无意义。

大约也是在此时，她遇到了一个男身女气的人，此人行骗有前科，又向她隐瞒了自己的两次离婚。

现在，她恨那些膝头带茧的求婚者，也极想换个位置让自己下跪，于是便跪倒在她的骗子新朋友面前，抛下丈夫与特丽莎，出走它方。

那个最有男子气的人变得最没有生气，他如此消沉，以至神经兮兮的，无事找事。

心里怎么想，日里就公开说出来。当局的警察被他的胡言乱语吓坏了，把他抓了起来，审判后给了他长长的刑期。

他们把他的住房封了，把特丽莎送交她母亲。

那个最无生气的人在铁窗里没呆多久就死了。

特丽莎与母亲随母亲的骗子来到靠近山区的——个小镇住下来。骗子在一个机关里供职，母亲则在—家商店干活。

母亲又生了三个孩子，当她重新照镜子时，发现自己又老又丑。

她意识到自己已失落一切，开始找寻罪恶的原由。

人人都会这么做的。她的第一个丈夫，有男子气但未被她爱过，未能留意她床上的轻声警告；而她的第二个丈夫，没有男子气却被她爱得太多，把她从布拉格拖来这个小镇，却跟一个又一个女人往来，使她永远陷入妒嫉。

她无力反抗，唯一属于她、又无法避离的人质便是特丽莎，她能以苦行赎清这一切罪孽。

Indeed, was she not the principal culprit determining her mother's fate? She, the absurd encounter of the sperm of the most manly of men and the egg of the most beautiful of women?

的确，难道她不是决定了母亲命运的最主要的罪源吗？她，不就是那最有男子气的男人的精子和那最漂亮的女人的卵子的荒谬结合吗？

Yes, it was in that fateful second, which was named Tereza, that the botched long-distance race, her mother's life, had begun.

是的，正是从那个要命的时刻起，拙劣的弥补引起了长途赛，开始了她母亲的命运。

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice.

特丽莎的母亲无休止地提醒她，母亲就意味着牺牲一切。一个因孩子而失掉一切的女人说出这话，自然言出有据颇近真理。特丽莎总是听着，相信当母亲是生活的最高价值，而当母亲也是最大的牺牲。

If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

如果一个母亲是人格化了的牺牲，那一个女儿便是无法赎补改变的罪过。

Of course, Tereza did not know the story of the night when her mother whispered "Be careful" into the ear of her father. Her guilty conscience was as vague as original sin. But she did what she could to rid herself of it.

当然，特丽莎并不知道那天夜地母亲向父亲耳语“小心”的情景。她的负罪感如同原罪一样解释不清。她尽了一切所能来摆脱她。

Her mother took her out of school at the age of fifteen, and Tereza went to work as a waitress, handing over all her earnings. She was willing to do anything to gain her mother's love. She ran the household, took care of her siblings, and spent all day Sunday cleaning house and doing the family wash.

十五岁时，她便被母亲领出了学校，当了女招待。她愿做一切事以讨得母亲的欢心，交出全部工资，做家务，照顾弟妹，用整个星期天打扫房屋和洗东西。

It was a pity, because she was the brightest in her class. She yearned for something higher, but in the small town there was nothing higher for her.

这真可惜，因为她是班上最有前途的学生。她渴望上进，只是这个小镇子不能使她满足。

Whenever she did the clothes, she kept a book next to the tub. As she turned the pages, the wash water dripped all over them.

于是无论她什么时候洗衣服，盆边总搁着一本书。她去翻书页，洗衣水滴在书上。

At home, there was no such thing as shame. Her mother marched about the flat in her underwear, sometimes braless and sometimes, on summer days, stark naked.

家里似乎没有什么羞耻可言。母亲穿着内衣在房子里冲来冲去，有时候乳罩都不戴，夏天，有些时候则干脆完全光着身子。

Her stepfather did not walk about naked, but he did go into the bathroom every time Tereza was in the bath. Once she locked herself in and her mother was furious. "Who do you think you are, anyway? Do you think he's going to bite off a piece of your beauty?"

继父虽然不光着身子行走，可每次特丽莎洗澡，他都往浴室里钻。有一次，她把自己锁在浴室里，母亲就大发雷霆：“你以为你是谁？他会把你的漂亮吞了吗？”

(This confrontation shows clearly that hatred for her daughter outweighed suspicion of her husband. Her daughter's guilt was infinite and included the husband's infidelities. Tereza's desire to be emancipated and insist on her rights—like the right to lock herself in the bathroom—was more objectionable to Tereza's mother than the possibility of her husband's taking a prurient interest in Tereza.)

（这种对立情绪清楚地表明，她对女儿的怨恨超过了对丈夫的猜忌。女儿的罪孽是无穷无尽的，甚至包括了她男人的不忠。特丽莎对解放的渴求和对自己权利的坚持——诸如锁上浴室门的权利——对于特丽莎的母亲来说，简直比她丈夫可能调戏特丽莎更令人讨厌。）

Once her mother decided to go naked in the winter when the lights were on. Tereza quickly ran to pull the curtains so that no one could see her from across the street. She heard her mother's laughter behind her. The following day her mother had some friends over: a neighbor, a woman she worked with, a local schoolmistress, and two or three other women in the habit of getting together regularly.

冬日的一天，母亲决意在灯下光着身子走走，特丽莎很快跑过去把窗帘拉上，唯恐街那边的行人看见她母亲。但她听到母亲在自己身后爆发出大笑。第二天，来了她母亲几个朋友：一位邻居，一位同事，一位女教师和其他两三个常来串门的女人。

Tereza and the sixteen-year-old son of one of them came in at one point to say hello, and her mother immediately took advantage of their presence to tell how Tereza had tried to protect her mother's modesty. She laughed, and all the women laughed with her.

特丽莎与随同来的一位十六岁的男孩不约而同地问好，而母亲立即乘大家都在场，告诉她们特丽莎如何企图保护母亲贞洁的事。她笑了，所有的女人也都笑了。

"Tereza can't reconcile herself to the idea that the human body pisses and farts," she said. Tereza turned bright red, but her mother would not stop. "What's so terrible about that?" and in answer to her own question she broke wind loudly. All the women laughed again.

“特丽莎对人要撤尿、要放屁的想法都不甘心承认呢，”她说。特丽莎脸红了，可她母亲还不罢休，“那有什么可怕的呢？”并以一个响屁回答了她自己提出的问题。所有的女人又笑起来。

Tereza's mother blew her nose noisily, talked to people in public about her sex life, and enjoyed demonstrating her false teeth. She was remarkably skillful at loosening them with her tongue, and in the midst of a broad smile would cause the uppers to drop down over the lowers in such a way as to give her face a sinister expression.

特丽莎的母亲响亮地擤鼻子，跟人们公开谈她的性生活，并且洋洋得意地展示她的假牙。她可以技艺纯熟地用舌头把那些假牙顶出来。如果嘴笑得太开，上排牙齿会落在下排牙齿上。诸如此类，给她的脸增添了一种凶狠的表情。

Her behavior was but a single grand gesture, a casting off of youth and beauty. In the days when she had had nine suitors kneeling round her in a circle, she guarded her nakedness apprehensively, as though trying to express the value of her body in terms of the modesty she accorded it. Now she had not only lost that modesty, she had radically broken with it, ceremoniously using her new immodesty to draw a dividing line through her life and proclaim that youth and beauty were overrated and worthless.

她的行为仅具有唯一的标示：抛弃青春和美丽。在九个求婚者跪在她周围的日子里，她聪明地保护着自己的裸身，这样做似乎是想努力表明她的身体在贞操方面的价值。现在，她不仅是失去了贞操，而且已经猛烈击碎了它，并张张扬扬地用新的不贞给今昔生活划一条界线，宣称青春与美丽被人们过分高估，其实毫无价值。

Tereza appears to me a continuation of the gesture by which her mother cast off her life as a young beauty, cast it far behind her.

依我看来，特丽莎只是她母亲这种标示的继续，她母亲正是这样来抛弃了自己小美人的生活，抛在身后远远的。

(And if Tereza has a nervous way of moving, if her gestures lack a certain easy grace, we must not be surprised: her mother's grand, wild, and self-destructive gesture has left an indelible imprint on her.)

（如果说特丽莎有些神经质的动作，姿态缺乏某种自然的优雅，我们是不会惊讶的。她母亲傲慢、粗野、自毁自虐的举止给她打下了不可磨灭的烙印。）

Tereza's mother demanded justice. She wanted to see the culprit penalized. That is why she insisted her daughter remain with her in the world of immodesty, where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible.

特丽莎的母亲要求公正。她想看见罪行遭到惩处清算。这就是她坚持让女儿伴着她留在那无贞洁世界里的原因。在那里，青春与美丽一文不值，世界不过是肉体巨大的集中营，人人都差不多，灵魂是看不见的。

Now we can better understand the meaning of Tereza's secret vice, her long looks and frequent glances in the mirror. It was a battle with her mother. It was a longing to be a body unlike other bodies, to find that the surface of her face reflected the crew of the soul charging up from below. It was not an easy task: her soul—her sad, timid, self-effacing soul—lay concealed in the depths of her bowels and was ashamed to show itself.

现在我们比较能理解了，为什么特丽莎久久凝视和不时瞥视镜子，并有一种犯禁负疚的感觉。她是在与母亲作战，是在期待着找到一个与别人不同的躯体，期待自己脸上显示出从最底层释放出来的水手一样的灵魂。这不是件容易的事：她的灵魂——那悲伤、怯懦、自我封闭的心灵——隐藏在身体内的底层，羞于显露自己。

So it was the day she first met Tomas. Weaving its way through the drunks in the hotel restaurant, her body sagged under the weight of the beers on the tray, and her soul lay somewhere at the level of the stomach or pancreas. Then Tomas called to her. That call meant a great deal, because it came from someone who knew neither her mother nor the drunks with their daily stereotypically scabrous remarks. His outsider status raised him above the rest.

于是，那一天她初识托马斯，在餐馆的醉鬼们当中曲折穿行，她的躯体被盘中的啤酒沉沉地垂压，她的灵魂在胃或胰腺的什么位置。后来，托马斯叫她，那声叫唤的意义太大了，因为呼唤者既不知道她母亲，也不知道那帮醉鬼，对他们日复一日单调的猥亵脏话也一无所知。他的上流身分使他超凡出众。

Something else raised him above the others as well: he had an open book on his table. No one had ever opened a book in that restaurant before. In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

另外，还有些事也使他显得与众不同：他的桌子上放着一本打开了的书。这个店子从未有人把书打开放在桌上。在特丽莎的眼里，那些书是友谊默契的象征。她也爱读书，她只有一件武器来与这个包围着她的恶浊世界相对抗：从市图书馆借来的书，首先又是小说。她读了大量小说，从菲尔丁到托马斯·曼。这些书不仅提供了一种能使她摆脱无聊生活的虚幻可能性，作为一种物体，它们还有着另一种意义：她喜欢腋下夹一本书在街上走。这与一百年前花花公子们的华美手杖一样有意义，使她与其他人区别开来。

(Comparing the book to the elegant cane of the dandy is not absolutely precise. A dandy's cane did more than make him different; it made him modern and up to date. The book made Tereza different, but old-fashioned. Of course, she was too young to see how old-fashioned she looked to others. The young men walking by with transistor radios pressed to their ears seemed silly to her. It never occurred to her that they were modern.)

（把书比作公子们的华美手杖还不很准确。手杖不但使主人区别于其他人，还使它的主人新派、时鬃。书使特丽莎与众不同，却是过时的时尚了。当然，她还太年轻，看不到她在别人眼里的老时鬃意昧。她居然认为年轻人走路时戴着个收音机耳机实在傻气，未曾想到那才是新派。）

And so the man who called to her was simultaneously a stranger and a member of the secret brotherhood. He called to her in a kind voice, and Tereza felt her soul rushing up to the surface through her blood vessels and pores to show itself to him.

所以，那个唤她的人是陌生者同时又是个与她有友谊默契的人。他唤她的声音是和善的，于是，特丽莎感到她的灵魂从血管里和毛孔里冲出体外，向他展示开来。

After Tomas had returned to Prague from Zurich, he began to feel uneasy at the thought that his acquaintance with Tereza was the result of six improbable fortuities.

托马期从苏黎世回到布拉格后，开始想到他与特丽莎的结识只不过是六个极其偶然机遇的结果，总觉得有些不安。

But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?

事实上，难道不是一件必然的偶然所带来的事件，才更见意义重大和值得注意么？

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

机遇，只有机遇才给我们启示。那些出自必然的事情，可以预期的事情，日日重复的事情，总是无言无语，只有机遇能劝我的说话。我们读出其中含义，就如吉普赛人从沉入杯底的吻啡渣里读出幻象。

Tomas appeared to Tereza in the hotel restaurant as chance in the absolute. There he sat, poring over an open book, when suddenly he raised his eyes to her, smiled, and said, "A cognac, please."

托马斯出现在餐馆里的特丽莎面前是绝对偶然的。他坐在那儿，展卷读书，突然接头看见了她，微笑着说：“请来一杯白兰地。”

At that moment, the radio happened to be playing music. On her way behind the counter to pour the cognac, Tereza turned the volume up. She recognized Beethoven. She had known his music from the time a string quartet from Prague had visited their town. Tereza (who, as we know, yearned for "something higher") went to the concert.

那一刻，收音机碰巧在放音乐。她去柜台后面倒白兰地，顺手将音量调大了一些。她听出是贝多芬。自从布拉格的某一个弦乐四重奏演出队到他的镇上演出以来，她便知道了贝多芬的音乐。特丽莎（如我们所知，她总是渴望“上进”）去听了音乐会。

The hall was nearly empty. The only other people in the audience were the local pharmacist and his wife. And although the quartet of musicians on stage faced only a "trio" of spectators down below, they were kind enough not to cancel the concert, and gave a private performance of the last three Beethoven quartets.

大厅里几乎是空的，除她以外，听众只有当地药技师和他老婆。但四重奏的演奏家们面对着台下一支“三重奏”的观众团，还是好心地没有取消演出。他们演奏了只多芬的最后三部四重奏乐曲。

Then the pharmacist invited the musicians to dinner and asked the girl in the audience to come along with them. From then on, Beethoven became her image of the world on the other side, the world she yearned for. Rounding the counter with Tomas's cognac, she tried to read chance's message: How was it possible that at the very moment she was taking an order of cognac to a stranger she found attractive, at that very moment she heard Beethoven?

后来，药剂师邀请乐手们吃饭，也叫了观众席中这位女孩子同往。从那的起，贝多芬便成了她对世界另一个面的想象，这是她所渴望的世界。当她端着白兰地绕出柜台时，她努力想弄懂这个机遇的启示：她应召给一位吸引着她的陌生男人送白兰地的时刻，偏偏就是她听到贝多芬之瞬间，这是多么巧！

Necessity knows no magic formulae—they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

必然性不是神奇的公式——它们都寓含在机遇之中。如果爱情是不能忘怀的，机缘一定会立即展翅向它飞落，象鸟儿飞向方济各翅膀。

He called her back to pay for the cognac. He closed his book (the emblem of the secret brotherhood), and she thought of asking him what he was reading.

他把她唤转来付酒钱，合上书（友谊默契的象征）。她想问问他读的什么书。

"Can you have it charged to my room?" he asked.

“你能把酒钱记在我帐上吗？”他问。

"Yes", she said. "What number are you in?"

“可以的。”她问，“你住几号房间？”

He showed her his key, which was attached to a piece of wood with a red six drawn on it.

他把钥匙给她看，钥匙系在一个木牌子上，上面画了个红色的六宇。

"That's odd," she said. "Six."

“怪了，”她说，“六。”

"What's so odd about that?" he asked.

“有什么奇怪的？”他问。

She had suddenly recalled that the house where they had lived in Prague before her parents were divorced was number six. But she answered something else (which we may credit to her wiles): "You're in room six and my shift ends at six."

她突然记取父母离婚前任在布拉格的房子也是六号，可她回答说：“你住在六号房，而我的班六点钟完。”（我们据此可以称赞她的狡黠。）

"Well, my train leaves at seven," said the stranger.

“行，我的火车七点开。”陌生人说。

She did not know how to respond, so she gave him the bill for his signature and took it over to the reception desk. When she finished work, the stranger was no longer at his table. Had he understood her discreet message? She left the restaurant in a state of excitement.

她不知道怎么回答才好，给了一张账单请他签字，又将其交至服务台。等她干完活，陌生人已不在桌旁了。他明白了她小心的暗示么？她兴奋地离开旅馆。

Opposite the hotel was a barren little park, as wretched as only the park of a dirty little town can be, but for Tereza it had always been an island of beauty: it had grass, four poplars, benches, a weeping willow, and a few forsythia bushes.

旅馆对面是一个荒芜的小公园，破败得只能在这肮脏小镇上找到。但对特丽莎来说，它一直是一个美丽的小岛：那里有草地，有四棵白杨树，有几条长凳，有一树垂柳，还有一点儿叫连翘的灌木丛。

He was sitting on a yellow bench that afforded a clear view of the restaurant entrance. The very same bench she had sat on the day before with a book in her lap! She knew then (the birds of fortuity had begun alighting on her shoulders) that this stranger was her fate. He called out to her, invited her to sit next to him. (The crew other soul rushed up to the deck other body.) Then she walked him to the station, and he gave her his card as a farewell gesture. "If ever you should happen to come to Prague..."

他坐在一张黄色的长凳上，能清楚地看到旅馆大门。天啊，正是她以前读书时常坐的那张凳子！于是她知道（机缘的鸟儿开始在她的肩头闪闪发光），那陌生人便是她的命运。他叫住她，邀请她坐在自己身边。（她灵魂的水手们已经冲上她身体的甲板了。）然后，她送他走列车站，他把名片给了她以示告别：“如果你偶然有机会来布拉格的话……”

Much more than the card he slipped her at the last minute, it was the call of all those fortuities (the book, Beethoven, the number six, the yellow park bench) which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate. It may well be those few fortuities (quite modest, by the way, even drab, just what one would expect from so lackluster a town) which set her love in motion and provided her with a source of energy she had not yet exhausted at the end of her days.

他在最后一刻塞给她的远不止一张名片，而是对所有机缘的召唤（那本书，贝多芬，数字六，黄色的公园长凳）。这一切给了她离开家庭去改变命运的勇气。也许正是这些机缘（相当平常简单，顺便说，甚至无多兴味，却是人们在这毫无生气的小镇里所期望的），使她爱情萌动，并给了她力量的源泉，使她一生永无怠倦。

Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences. "Co-incidence" means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet: Tomas appears in the hotel restaurant at the same time the radio is playing Beethoven. We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences. If the seat Tomas occupied had been occupied instead by the local butcher, Tereza never would have noticed that the radio was playing Beethoven (though the meeting of Beethoven and the butcher would also have been an interesting coincidence). But her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty, and she would never forget that music. Whenever she heard it, she would be touched. Everything going on around her at that moment would be haloed by the music and take on its beauty.

我们日复一日的生活都在与机缘的碰撞中度过。更准确地说，是在与人和事的偶然相遇中度过，我们称之为巧合。“巧合”是指两件事出入意料地同时发生了，相遇了：托马斯出现在旅馆餐厅的同时，收音机里播放贝多芬。我们甚至没有注意到大量的这样的巧合。如果托马斯坐的席位被当地屠夫占了，特丽莎就不会注意到收音机在播放贝多芬（尽管贝多芬与屠夫的相遇也是一种有趣的巧合）。但是她初生的爱情加强了她对美的敏感，也就忘不了那音乐；无论什么时候听到它，都会被深深打动。那一刻发生在她周围的一切皆因为音乐而生辉，而显得美好起来。

Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition—the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end—may seem quite novelistic to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive", "fabricated", and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic". Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

在特丽莎去见托马斯时腋下夹的那本小说中，安娜与沃伦斯基是在一种奇怪的情境中相遇的：他们俩在火车站相见，其时有一个人被火车轧死。在这部小说的结尾，安娜自己也躺在火车下。这是文章的对应——如音乐中开头与结尾有着同一动机也许显得太小说味了一些，我也同意这么说。但是得有个条件，就是别把那些“虚假的”、“杜撰的”、“违背生活真实”的概念，也用在“小说味”这个词语上。因为人类的生活确切地说，就是用这种方式构成的，

They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

人的生活就象作曲。各人为美感所导引，把一件件偶发事件（贝多芬的音乐，火车下的死亡）转换为音乐动机，然后，这个动机在各人生活的乐曲中取得一个永恒的位置。安娜可以选择另一种方式自杀，但死和火车站的动机，与爱的诞生有着不可忘怀的联系，并且在她绝望的时刻，以黑色的美诱惑着她。人们没有认识到这一点，即使在最痛苦的时候，各人总是根据美的法则来编织生活。

It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

指责小说中用神秘的巧合来迷惑人，是错误的（象安娜与沃伦斯基相遇，火车站，死，或者贝多芬，托马斯，特丽莎以及那白兰地）。指责人们对日常生活中的巧合视而不见，倒是正确的。他们这样做，把美在生活中应占的地位给剥夺得干干净净。

Impelled by the birds of fortuity fluttering down on her shoulders, she took a week's leave and, without a word to her mother, boarded the train to Prague. During the journey, she made frequent trips to the toilet to look in the mirror and beg her soul not to abandon the deck of her body for a moment on this most crucial day of her life. Scrutinizing herself on one such trip, she had a sudden scare: she felt a scratch in her throat. Could she be coming down with something on this most crucial day of her life?

机缘之鸟落在肩头，驱使她请了一个星期的假，也没跟母亲说，便登上火车夫布拉格。途中，她多次去盥洗间照镜子，乞求自己的灵魂不要离弃她身体的甲板，这是她一生中最关键的时刻呀。她仔细瞧着自己，突然惊慌地感到喉头有些痒，在性命攸关的日子里她会碰上什么恶运吗？

But there was no turning back. So she phoned him from the station, and the moment he opened the door, her stomach started rumbling terribly. She was mortified. She felt as though she were carrying her mother in her stomach and her mother had guffawed to spoil her meeting with Tomas.

可是没有转回的余地了，于是她从车站向他挂了电话。在他开门的那一瞬间，她的肚子却开始可怕地咕咕隆隆起来。她努力克制着，感到自己似乎把母亲藏在胃里带来了，是母亲的狂笑企图毁了她与托马斯的相见。

For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and kissed him passionately, her eyes misting. Before the first minute was up, they were making love. She screamed while making love. She had a fever by then. She had come down with the flu. The nozzle of the hose supplying oxygen to the lungs was stuffed and red.

几秒钟了，她害怕对方会因为自己肚子里粗鲁的声音把她撵出去，可是，他把她揽在怀里。她感激对方不计较可恨的咕咕声，泪眼模糊，热烈地吻他。还不到一分钟，他们便做起爱来。她在做爱时发出尖叫，以后就发烧。她被流感击倒，那根往肺里送氧气的排气管给堵住了，红了。

When she traveled to Prague a second time, it was with a heavy suitcase. She had packed all her things, determined never again to return to the small town. He had invited her to come to his place the following evening. That night, she had slept in a cheap hotel. In the morning, she carried her heavy suitcase to the station, left it there, and roamed the streets of Prague the whole day with Anna Karenina under her arm. Not even after she rang the doorbell and he opened the door would she part with it. It was like a ticket into Tomas's world. She realized that she had nothing but that miserable ticket, and the thought brought her nearly to tears. To keep from crying, she talked too much and too loudly, and she laughed. And again he took her in his arms almost at once and they made love. She had entered a mist in which nothing could be seen and only her scream could be heard.

她第二次来布拉格，带上了一口沉重的箱子。所有的东西都放在里面了，她决意不再回那个小镇。他邀请她第二天晚上去他家。当夜，她便住进一间便宜的旅店，次日把箱子寄存在车站后，腋下夹着那本《安娜·卡列尼娜》，在布拉格的街上游荡了一整天。即使在她按门铃以及他打开门之后，她都不愿丢开这本书。这本书就象是进入托马斯世界的通行证。她明白，除了这可怜的通行证以外，她一无所有。一想到这儿她就想哭。为了不使自己哭出来，她大声说了那么多话，还笑了。他立刻又一次拥抱了她，然后做爱。她象进入一片茫茫云雾，除了能听见自己的尖叫声外，什么也看不见。

It was no sigh, no moan; it was a real scream. She screamed so hard that Tomas had to turn his head away from her face, afraid that her voice so close to his ear would rupture his eardrum. The scream was not an expression of sensuality. Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound. But her scream aimed at crippling the senses, preventing all seeing and hearing. What was screaming in fact was the naive idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of body and soul, banish perhaps even time.

这不是叹息，不是呻吟，是一种真正的尖叫。叫得那么厉害，托马斯不得不把头偏离她的脸，惟恐声音太近会震破耳膜。这叫声不是一种肉欲的发泄。肉欲是各种感觉的总动员：当一个人激动亢奋地观察对象时，会极力捕捉每一种声响。而她的尖叫旨在削弱各种感觉，消除听力和视力。事实上，她所叫唤的是她那纯真理想主义的爱情，并试图以此来消除一切矛盾，消除灵与肉的双重性，甚至消灭时间。

Were her eyes closed? No, but they were not looking anywhere. She kept them fixed on the void of the ceiling. At times she twisted her head violently from side to side.

她的眼睛闭上了吗？没有。但它们没有看任何地方，久久停留在房顶的一片空白之中。不时疯狂地把自己的头从一边扭到另一边。

When the scream died down, she fell asleep at his side, clutching his hand. She held his hand all night.

她叫完了，便握着他的手在他身旁睡着了，整夜地握着，

Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So ifin her sleep she pressed Tomas's hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training for it since childhood.

还在八岁时，她便一只手握着另一只手睡觉，并使自己相信，她握的这只手属于她爱的一位男人，她的终身伴侣。所以，我们可以理解了，她梦中如此顽强地握着托马斯的手，是因为从孩提时代起就训练出了这一习惯。

A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with clean underwear—instead of being allowed to pursue "something higher" —stores up great reserves of vitality, a vitality never dreamed of by university students yawning over their books. Tereza had read a good deal more than they, and learned a good deal more about life, but she would never realize it. The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence. The elan with which Tereza flung herself into her new Prague existence was both frenzied and precarious. She seemed to be expecting someone to come up to her any day and say, "What are you doing here? Go back where you belong!" All her eagerness for life hung by a thread: Tomas's voice. For it was Tomas's voice that had once coaxed forth her timorous soul from its hiding place in her bowels.

一个被迫终日给人上酒、给弟妹洗衣的少女，不能去追求“上进”——势必积存着极大的生命潜在力。这种力是那些一读书就昏昏欲睡的大学生们做梦都想象不到的。特丽莎读得比他们多，也从生活中学到了许多，只是自己没有认识到这一点。大学生与自学者的差别与其说在于知识面，还不如说在于他们的生命力以及自信心。特丽莎投入布拉格新的生活中，其热情是狂乱而不稳定的。她似乎在等待着某一天，什么人过来说：“你在这儿干嘛？回你的老地方去吧！”她对生活的全部渴望都系在一根绳子上：托马斯的声音。因为正是这个声音曾经把她那怯懦的灵魂从她体内深处召唤了出来。

Tereza had a job in a darkroom, but it was not enough for her. She wanted to take pictures, not develop them. Tomas's friend Sabina lent her three or four monographs of famous photographers, then invited her to a cafe and explained over the open books what made each of the pictures interesting. Tereza listened with silent concentration, the kind few professors ever glimpse on their students' faces.

特丽莎在一间暗室里有了一份活，但这不够，她还想拍照，而不光是冲冲洗洗。托马斯的朋友萨宾娜借给她三、四本著名摄影家的专著，又邀她去一个咖啡馆，给她解释书上的照片，使她对每幅作品都增添了不少兴趣。她静静地凝神倾听，那模样，教授们从他们学生的脸上是不常看到的。．

Thanks to Sabina, she came to understand the ties between photography and painting, and she made Tomas take her to every exhibit that opened in Prague. Before long, she was placing her own pictures in the illustrated weekly where she worked, and finally she left the darkroom for the staff of professional photographers.

多亏萨宾娜，她渐渐明白了照片与绘画之间的关系。她还常常让托马斯带她参观布拉格举办的每一个展览。不久，她的摄影作品便刊登在她所服务的那份图片周刊上，最后，她离开暗室定进了专业摄影师的行列。

On the evening of that day, she and Tomas went out to a bar with friends to celebrate her promotion. Everyone danced. Tomas began to mope. Back at home, after some prodding from Tereza, he admitted that he had been jealous watching her dance with a colleague of his.

那天晚上，她和托马斯与几个朋友一起去酒吧，庆贺她的升迁。人人都跳了舞，托马斯却开始生闷气。回家后经她再三刺激，他才道出是因为看到她与他的同事跳舞而嫉妒。

"You mean you were really jealous?" she asked him ten times or more, incredulously, as though someone had just informed her she had been awarded a Nobel Prize.

“你说你真的是嫉妒吗？”她不相信地问了十多次，好象什么人刚听到自己荣获了诺贝尔奖的消息。

Then she put her arm around his waist and began dancing across the room. The step she used was not the one she had shown off in the bar. It was more like a village polka, a wild romp that sent her legs flying in the air and her torso bouncing all over the room, with Tomas in tow.

然后，她把一只手放在他肩上，一只手搂着他的腰，开始在房子里跳起舞来。她不是采用她在酒吧里的那种舞步，更象村民的波尔卡舞或一种瞎闹时的欢蹦乱跳。拖着托马斯，腿在空中飞扬，躯身满屋子乱转。

Before long, unfortunately, she began to be jealous herself, and Tomas saw her jealousy not as a Nobel Prize, but as a burden, a burden he would be saddled with until not long before his death.

不幸的是，没过多久，她自己也开始妒嫉起来。而托马斯没有把她的妒嫉看成诺贝尔奖，却看成了负担，一个直到他死都压着他的负担。

While she marched around the pool naked with a large group of other naked women, Tomas stood over them in a basket hanging from the pool's arched roof, shouting at them, making them sing and do kneebends. The moment one of them did a faulty kneebend, he would shoot her.

她赤身裸体与一大群裸身女人绕着游泳池行定，悬挂在圆形屋顶上篮子里的托马斯，冲着她们吼叫，要她们唱歌、下跪。只要一个人跪得不好，他便朝她开枪。

Let me return to this dream. Its horror did not begin with Tomas's first pistol shot; it was horrifying from the outset. Marching naked in formation with a group of naked women was for Tereza the quintessential image of horror. When she lived at home, her mother forbade her to lock the bathroom door. What she meant by her injunction was: Your body is just like all other bodies; you have no right to shame; you have no reason to hide something that exists in millions of identical copies. In her mother's world all bodies were the same and marched behind one another in formation. Since childhood, Tereza had seen nudity as a sign of concentration camp uniformity, a sign of humiliation.

让我回到这个梦里。梦的恐惧并不是始于托马斯的第一声枪响，而是从一开始就有的。与一群女人一起裸身列队行进，这在特丽莎那里是恐怖的典型意象。在家里的时候，母亲就不让她锁浴室门，这种规定的意思是说：你的身体与别人的没什么两样，你没有权利羞怯，没有理由把那雷同千万人的东西藏起来。在她母亲眼中，所有的躯体并无二致，一个双一个地排队行进在这个世界上面已。因此从孩提时代起，特丽莎就把裸身看成集中营规范化的象征，耻辱的象征。

There was yet another horror at the very beginning of the dream: all the women had to sing! Not only were their bodies identical, identically worthless, not only were their bodies mere resounding soulless mechanisms—the women rejoiced over it! Theirs was the joyful solidarity of the soulless. The women were pleased at having thrown off the ballast of the soul—that laughable conceit, that illusion of uniqueness—to become one like the next. Tereza sang with them, but did not rejoice. She sang because she was afraid that if she did not sing the women would kill her.

梦的开头还有另一种恐怖：所有的女人都得唱！她们不仅仅身体一致，一致得卑微下贱；不仅仅身体象没有灵魂的机械装置，彼此呼应共鸣——而且她们在为此狂欢！这是失去灵魂者兴高采烈的大团结。她们欣然于抛弃了灵魂的重压，抛弃了可笑的妄自尊大和绝无仅有的幻想——终于变得一个个彼此相似。特丽莎与她们一起唱，但并不高兴，她唱着，只是因为害怕，不这样女人们就会杀死她。

But what was the meaning of the fact that Tomas shot at them, toppling one after another into the pool, dead?

可托马斯把她们一个个射翻在水池中死去，又是什么意思呢？

The women, overjoyed by their sameness, their lack of diversity, were, in fact, celebrating their imminent demise, which would render their sameness absolute. So Tomas's shots were merely the joyful climax to their morbid march. After every report of his pistol, they burst into joyous laughter, and as each corpse sank beneath the surface, they sang even louder.

那些女人为她们的共同划一而兴高采烈，事实上，她们又在庆贺面临的死亡，行将在死亡中实现更、绝对的同一。托马斯的枪杀，只是她们病态操演中的极乐高潮而己。每一声枪晌之后，她们爆发出高兴的狂笑，每一具尸体沉入水中，她们的歌声会更加响亮。

But why was Tomas the one doing the shooting? And why was he out to shoot Tereza with the rest of them?

但为什么执行枪杀的是托马斯呢？又为什么托马斯一心要把特丽莎与那些人一起杀掉呢？

Because he was the one who sent Tereza to join them. That was what the dream was meant to tell Tomas, what Tereza was unable to tell him herself. She had come to him to escape her mother's world, a world where all bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceable. But he, too, had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them alike, made no, absolutely no distinction between Tereza's body and the other bodies. He had sent her back into the world she tried to escape, sent her to march naked with the other naked women.

因为他是送特丽莎加入她们一伙的人。这就是这个梦所告诉托马斯的，而特丽莎自己所不能告诉他的。她来到他这里，是为了逃离母亲的世界，那个所有躯体毫无差别的世界。她来到他这里，是为了使自己有一个独一无二的不可取代的躯体。但是，他还是把她与其他人等量齐观：吻她们一个样，抚摸她们一个样，对待特丽莎以及她们的身体绝对无所区分。他把她又送回到她企图逃离的世界，送回那些女人中间，与她们赤身裸体地走在一起。

She would dream three series of dreams in succession: the first was of cats going berserk and referred to the sufferings she had gone through in her lifetime; the second was images of her execution and came in countless variations; the third was of her life after death, when humiliation turned into a never-ending state.

她老是梦见三个连续的场景：首先是猫儿的狂暴，预示着她生活中的苦难；接着是幻想中多样无穷的死；最后便是她死后的生存，其时，耻辱已变成了一种永恒状态。

The dreams left nothing to be deciphered. The accusation they leveled at Tomas was so clear that his only reaction was to hang his head and stroke her hand without a word.

这些梦无法译解，然而给托马斯带来了如此明白无误的谴责，他的反应只能是低着头，一言不发地抚摸着她的手。

The dreams were eloquent, but they were also beautiful. That aspect seems to have escaped Freud in his theory of dreams. Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine—to dream about things that have not happened—is among mankind's deepest needs. Herein lies the danger. If dreams were not beautiful, they would quickly be forgotten. But Tereza kept coming back to her dreams, running through them in her mind, turning them into legends. Tomas lived under the hypnotic spell cast by the excruciating beauty of Tereza's dreams.

梦是意味深长的，同时又是美的。这一点看来被弗洛伊德的释梦理论给漏掉了。梦不仅仅是一种交流行为（如果你愿意，也可视之为密码交流）；也是一种审美活动，一种幻想游戏，一种本身有价值的游演算我们的梦证明，想象——梦见那些不曾发生的事。是人类的最深层需要。这里存在着危险。如果这些梦境不美，它们就会很快被忘记。特丽莎老是返回她的梦境，脑海里老是旧梦重温，最后把它们变成了铭刻。而托马斯就在特丽莎的梦呓下生活，这梦呓是她梦的残忍之美所放射出来的催眠迷咒。

"Dear Tereza, sweet Tereza, what am I losing you to? he once said to her as they sat face to face in a wine cellar. Every night you dream of death as if you really wished to quit this world……"

“亲爱的特丽莎，甜美的特丽莎，我正在失去你吗？”有一次，他们面对面地坐在一家酒店里，他说，“每一夜你都梦见死，好象你真的愿意告别这个世界……”

It was day; reason and will power were back in place. A drop of red wine ran slowly down her glass as she answered. "There's nothing I can do about it, Tomas. Oh, I understand. I know you love me. I know your infidelities are no great tragedy …"

那是在白天，理智与意志又回来了。一滴红色的葡萄酒馒慢流入她的杯子：“我毫无办法，托马斯，呵，我明白，我知道你爱我，我知道你对我的不忠不是什么大不了的事……”

She looked at him with love in her eyes, but she feared the night ahead, feared her dreams. Her life was split. Both day and night were competing for her.

她望着他，眼里充满了爱，但是她害怕即将到来的黑夜，害怕那些梦。她的生活是分裂的，她的白天与黑夜在抗争。

Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

不论谁，如果目标是 “上进”，那么某一天他一定会晕眩。怎么晕法？是害怕掉下去吗？当了望台有了防晕的扶栏之后，我们为什么害怕掉下去呢？不，这种晕眩是另一种东西，它是来自我们身下空洞世界的声音，引诱着我们，逗弄着我们；它是一种要倒下去的欲望。抗拒这种可怕的欲望，我们保护着自己，

The naked women marching around the swimming pool, the corpses in the hearse rejoicing that she, too, was dead— these were the "down below" she had feared and fled once before but which mysteriously beckoned her. These were her vertigo: she heard a sweet (almost joyous) summons to renounce her fate and soul. The solidarity of the soulless calling her. And in times of weakness, she was ready to heed the call and return to her mother. She was ready to dismiss the crew of her soul from the deck of her body; ready to descend to a place among her mother's friends and laugh when one of them broke wind noisily; ready to march around the pool naked with them and sing.

那些裸体女人围着游泳池行进，那些棺材里的尸体为她也是死人面欣喜——这就是她害怕的 “底下世界”。她曾经逃离，但这个世界神秘地召唤她回来。这些就是她的晕眩：她听了一种甜美的（几乎是欢快的）呼唤，重新宣读了她的命运和灵魂，听到了没有灵魂者的大聚集在召唤她。虚弱的时候，她打算响应这一召唤，回到母亲那里去；打算驱散她身体甲板上灵魂的水手们；打算趋就到母亲的朋友们中间去，当有人放响屁时跟着笑；还打算和她们一起围着游泳池裸身行走，一起唱歌。

True, Tereza fought with her mother until the day she left home, but let us not forget that she never stopped loving her. She would have done anything for her if her mother had asked in a loving voice. The only reason she found the strength to leave was that she never heard that voice.

的确，直到特丽莎离家那天，她一直在反抗母亲。可我们也不要忘记，她同时没有一天不是爱她的。只要母亲用一种爱的声音说话，她愿意为母亲做任何事情。她有勇气离开母亲的唯一原因就是，她从未听到那种声音。

When Tereza's mother realized that her aggressiveness no longer had any power over her daughter, she started writing her querulous letters, complaining about her husband, her boss, her health, her children, and assuring Tereza she was the only person left in her life.

特丽莎的母亲意识到自己的专横对女儿不再起作用时，便开始给她写一些发牢骚的信，抱怨自己的丈夫、自己的老板、自己的身体以及孩子，并让特丽莎相信她是她一生中唯一的亲人。

Tereza thought that at last, after twenty years, she was hearing the voice of her mother's love, and felt like going back. All the more because she felt so weak, so debilitated by Tomas's infidelities. They exposed her powerlessness, which in turn led to vertigo, the insuperable longing to fall.

特丽莎想到，二十年后她终于听到了母亲爱她的声音，她想回到母亲身边去。所有这一切都是因为她眼下感到如此虚弱，被托马斯的不忠弄得如此衰竭不堪。这暴露了她的无能，这种无能总是导向晕眩，导向不可战胜的倒下去的渴望。

One day her mother phoned to say she had cancer and only a few months to live. The news transformed into rebellion Tereza's despair at Tomas's infidelities. She had betrayed her mother, she told herself reproachfully, and for a man who did not love her.

一天，母亲打来电话说她身患癌症，只能活几个月了。消息变成了她对托马斯不忠的绝望反叛。她自责地对自己说，她为了一个男人背叛了母亲，可那个男人并不爱她。

She was willing to forget everything her mother had done to torture her. She was in a position to understand her now; they were in the same situation: her mother loved her stepfather just as Tereza loved Tomas, and her stepfather tortured her mother with his infidelities just as Tomas galled her with his. The cause of her mother's malice was that she had suffered so.Tereza told Tomas that her mother was ill and that she would be taking a week off to go and see her. Her voice was full of spite.

她愿意忘记母亲对她施及的一切磨难。她现在已能设身处地对母亲有所理解；她们置身于同样的处境：母亲爱她的继父，正如她爱托马斯，而继父用不忠的行为来折磨母亲，正如托马斯用同样的方式来伤害她。造成母亲怨恨的原由也是她受罪的根源。特丽莎告诉托马斯她母亲病了，她要花一个星期去看她。她的声音里充满恶意。

Sensing that the real reason calling her back to her mother was vertigo, Tomas opposed the trip. He rang up the hospital in the small town. Meticulous records of the incidence of cancer were kept throughout the country, so he had no trouble finding out that Tereza's mother had never been suspected of having the disease nor had she even seen a doctor for over a year.

托马斯反对她去，感觉到她回到母亲那儿去的真正动因不过是晕眩。他给那个小镇的医院挂了个电话，查找全镇关于癌症的详细记载，不难发现特丽莎的母亲根本没有癌症的怀疑，甚至一年多来从未看过病，

Tereza obeyed Tomas and did not go to visit her mother. Several hours after the decision she fell in the street and injured her knee. She began to teeter as she walked, fell almost daily, bumped into things or, at the very least, dropped objects.

特丽莎顺从托马斯没有去探视母亲。可几个小时之后，她摔倒在大街上，伤了膝盖。她走路开始步履不稳了，几乎每天都摔交，或者碰到什么东西，至少也得给什么东西绊一下。

She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of vertigo.

一种无法克制的要倒下去的欲念支配着她。她生活在不断晕眩的状态之中。

"Pick me up," is the message of a person who keeps falling. Tomas kept picking her up, patiently.

常常摔倒的人总是说：“扶我起来吧。”托马斯不断地耐心把她扶起来，

"I want to make love to you in my studio. It will be like a stage surrounded by people. The audience won't be allowed up close, but they won't be able to take their eyes off us...."

“我想与你在我的画室里做爱。那儿象一个围满了人群的舞台，观众不许靠近我们，但他们不得不注视着我们……”

As time passed, the image lost some of its original cruelty and began to excite Tereza. She would whisper the details to him while they made love.

随着时间的推移，这种景观对特丽莎来说已失去了初始的残酷，甚至开始使她有些兴奋。她与托马斯做爱，总是小声地向他叨念那些细节。

Then it occurred to her that there might be a way to avoid the condemnation she saw in Tomas's infidelities: all he had to do was take her along, take her with him when he went to see his mistresses! Maybe then her body would again become the first and only among all others. Her body would become his second, his assistant, his alter ego.

随后，她突然想到一个办法，可以使她看到托马斯的不忠而不去责怪：他只须带着她，带着她去与情妇幽会！她的身体也许又会成为她们中间最佳的和唯一的。她的身体将成为他的影子，他的助手，他的另一个自我。

"I'll undress them for you, give them a bath, bring them in to you …" she would whisper to him as they pressed together. She yearned for the two of them to merge into a hermaphrodite. Then the other women's bodies would be their playthings.

“我会为你去给她们脱衣服的，给她们洗澡，然后把她们带给你……”他们紧紧楼抱在一起时，她总是如此低语。她期望着他们两人融合成一个两性人，其他女人的身体将成为他们的玩物。

Oh, to be the alter ego of his polygamous life! Tomas refused to understand, but she could not get it out of her head, and tried to cultivate her friendship with Sabina. Tereza began by offering to do a series of photographs of Sabina.

呵，成为他一夫多妻生活中的另一个自我！托马斯根本不愿理解这一点，特丽莎却无法摆脱它。她试图培养自己与萨宾娜的友谊，开始主动为萨宾娜照相什么的。

Sabina invited Tereza to her studio, and at last she saw the spacious room and its centerpiece: the large, square, platform-like bed.

特丽莎应邀去萨宾娜的画室，终于看到了这间宽敞的房子和它的中心部分：那又大，又宽，讲台一样的床。

"I feel awful that you've never been here before," said Sabina, as she showed her the pictures leaning against the wall. She even pulled out an old canvas, of a steelworks under construction, which she had done during her school days, a period when the strictest realism had been required of all students (art that was not realistic was said to sap the foundations of socialism). In the spirit of the wager of the times, she had tried to be "stricter" than her teachers and had painted in a style concealing the brush strokes and closely resembling color photography.

萨宾娜把斜靠着墙的画展示给她看：“真是太奇怪了，你以前竟没到这里来过。”她甚至搬出她在学校时画的一张旧画：正在建设中的炼钢厂。那时是最严格的现实主义教育时期（据说非现实主义的艺术是在挖社会主义的墙脚）。以当时争强好胜的精神，她努力使自己比教师还“严格”，作画时隐藏了一一切笔触，画得几乎象彩色照片。

"Here is a painting I happened to drip red paint on. At first I was terribly upset, but then I started enjoying it. The trickle looked like a crack; it turned the building site into a battered old backdrop, a backdrop with a building site painted on it. I began playing with the crack, filling it out, wondering what might be visible behind it. And that's how I began my first cycle of paintings. I called it Behind the Scenes. Of course, I couldn't show them to anybody. I'd have been kicked out of the Academy. On the surface, there was always an impeccably realistic world, but underneath, behind the backdrop's cracked canvas, lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract."

“这张画，我偶然滴了一点红色颜料在上面。开始我叫苦不迭，后来倒欣赏起它来了。它一直流下去，看起来象一道裂缝。它把这个建筑工地变成了一个关合的陈旧景幕，景幕上画了些建筑工地而已。我开始来玩味这士道裂缝，把它涂满，老想着在那后面该看见什么。这就开始了我第一个时期的画，我称它为‘在景物之后’。当然，我不能把这些画给任何人看，我会被美术学院踢出来的。那些画，表面上总是一个无懈可击的现实主义世界，可是在下面，在有裂缝的景幕后面，隐藏着不同的东西，神秘而又抽象的东西。”

After pausing for a moment, she added, "On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth."

停了一下，她又说：“表面的东西是明白无误的谎言，下面却是神秘莫测的真理。”

Tereza listened to her with the remarkable concentration that few professors ever see on the face of a student and began to perceive that all Sabina's paintings, past and present, did indeed treat the same idea, that they all featured the confluence of two themes, two worlds, that they were all double exposures, so to speak. A landscape showing an old-fashioned table lamp shining through it. An idyllic still life of apples, nuts, and a tiny, candle-lit Christmas tree showing a hand ripping through the canvas.

特丽莎以高度的注意力凝神倾听，那模样，教授们在他们学生的脸上是不常看到的。她开始领悟萨宾娜的作品，过去的和现在的，的确在处理着同一观念，融会着两种主题，两个世界。它们正如常言所说，都有双重暴光。一张风景画同时又显现出一盏老式台灯的灯光。一种由苹果、坚果以及一小梯缀满烛光的圣诞树所组合的田园宁静生活，却透现出一只撕破画布的手。

She felt a rush of admiration for Sabina, and because Sabina treated her as a friend it was an admiration free of fear and suspicion and quickly turned into friendship.

她突然感到一股对萨宾娜的倾慕之情，因为萨宾娜把她当一个朋友。她的倾慕使畏怯和猜疑缓解了，变成了友谊。

She nearly forgot she had come to take photographs. Sabina had to remind her. Tereza finally looked away from the paintings only to see the bed set in the middle of the room like a platform.

她几乎忘记了自已是来拍照的。萨宾娜不得不提醒她。特丽莎终于把视线从那些画上移开，投向那张摆在房子中央的、讲台一样的床。

Next to the bed stood a small table, and on the table the model of a human head, the kind hairdressers put wigs on. Sabina's wig stand sported a bowler hat rather than a wig. "It used to belong to my grandfather," she said with a smile.

床的旁边是一张小桌，桌上放着一个人头模型，那种理发师们用来放假发的头型。萨宾娜的假发架上没有假发，倒套着一顶圆顶礼帽。“这原是我祖父的。”她笑笑说。

It was the kind of hat—black, hard, round—that Tereza had seen only on the screen, the kind of hat Chaplin wore.

这是一种黑黑的、硬硬的圆顶礼帽——特丽莎只在电影里见过，就是卓别林戴的那种。

She smiled back, picked it up, and after studying it for a time, said, "Would you like me to take your picture in it?"

她也笑笑，把帽子拿起来打量了一阵，说：“愿意让我拍一张你戴着它的照片吗？”

Sabina laughed for a long time at the idea.

这个主意让萨宾娜笑了好久。

Tereza put down the bowler hat, picked up her camera, and started taking pictures.

特丽莎把礼帽放下，拿起照相机开始拍。

When she had been at it for almost an hour, she suddenly said, "What would you say to some nude shots?"

约摸拍了一个小时，她突然问：“照点裸体的怎么样？”

"Nude shots?" Sabina laughed.

“裸体照？”萨宾娜笑了。

"Yes," said Tereza, repeating her proposal more boldly, "nude shots."

“是的，”特丽莎更大胆地重复她的建议，“裸体的。”

"That calls for a drink," said Sabina, and opened a bottle of wine.

“那得喝酒。”萨宾娜把酒瓶打开了。

Tereza felt her body going weak; she was suddenly tongue-tied.

特丽莎感到自己的身体虚弱起来，也突然结结巴巴起来。

Sabina, meanwhile, strode back and forth, wine in hand, going on about her grandfather, who'd been the mayor of a small town; Sabina had never known him; all he'd left behind was this bowler hat and a picture showing a raised platform with several small-town dignitaries on it; one of them was Grandfather; it wasn't at all clear what they were doing up there on the platform; maybe they were officiating at some ceremony, unveiling a monument to a fellow dignitary who had also once worn a bowler hat at public ceremonies.

萨宾娜端着酒走来定去，谈起了她爷爷，一个小城市的市长。萨宾娜从未见过他，他所留下的东西就是这顶礼帽以及一张与那小城里的显贵们站在高台上的照片。照片已看不清楚，不知他们站在台上干什么，也许他们在主持某个仪式，为某个重要人物的纪念碑揭幕，那个人或许也曾戴过一顶圆顶扎帽出席过某个公众仪式。

Sabina went on and on about the bowler hat and her grandfather until, emptying her third glass, she said "I'll be right back." and disappeared into the bathroom.

萨宾娜不断地讲礼帽，讲她爷爷，直到喝完第三杯酒，才说：“我马上就转来。”说完闪进了浴室。

She came out in her bathrobe. Tereza picked up her camera and put it to her eye. Sabina threw open the robe.

她穿着浴衣走了出来，待特丽莎举起相机选择镜头，她把浴衣打开来。

The camera served Tereza as both a mechanical eye through which to observe Tomas's mistress and a veil by which to conceal her face from her.

这部照相机既是特丽莎观察托马斯的情人的机器眼，又是遮掩自己的面孔的一块面纱。

It took Sabina some time before she could bring herself to slip out of the robe entirely. The situation she found herself in was proving a bit more difficult than she had expected.

萨宾娜花了点时间才把自已的浴衣完全脱掉，这时才发现她所外的境地比自己预计的要尴尬得多。

After several minutes of posing, she went up to Tereza and said, "Now it's my turn to take your picture. Strip!"

又花了几分钟摆弄姿态，她向特丽莎走去，说：“现在该我给你拍了。脱！”

Sabina had heard the command:"Strip!" so many times from Tomas that it was engraved in her memory.

萨宾娜多次从托马斯那里听到命令：“脱！”这已深深刻记在她的记忆里。

Thus, Tomas's mistress had just given Tomas's command to Tomas's wife. The two women were joined by the same magic word.

现在，托马斯的情人对托乌斯的妻子发出了托马斯的命令，两个女人被这同一个有魔力的字连在一起了。

That was Tomas's way of unexpectedly turning an innocent conversation with a woman into an erotic situation. Instead of stroking, flattering, pleading, he would issue a command, issue it abruptly, unexpectedly, softly yet firmly and authoritatively, and at a distance: at such moments he never touched the woman he was addressing. He often used it on Tereza as well, and even though he said it softly, even though he whispered it, it was a command, and obeying never failed to arouse her.

这就是托马斯的方式，不是去抚摸对方，向对方献媚，或是恳求对方，他是发出命令，使他与一位女人的纯真谈话突然转向性爱，突如其来，出入意外，温和而又坚定，甚至带有权威的口气。而且他还保持着一定距离：那时候他从不碰一下被他命令的女人。他也常常用这种方式对待特丽莎，尽管说得柔和，甚至近乎耳语，可那是命令，她从未拒绝服从过。

Hearing the word now made her desire to obey even stronger, because doing a stranger's bidding is a special madness, a madness all the more heady in this case because the command came not from a man but from a woman.

现在听到这个命令，她燃起了更为强烈的服从欲望。顺从一个陌生人的指令而行动，本身就是一种特有的疯野；而从一个来自女人而非男人的这种命令，疯野中就包含了更多的狂热。

Sabina took the camera from her, and Tereza took off her clothes. There she stood before Sabina naked and disarmed.

待萨宾娜接过照相机，特丽莎脱了衣服，光着身子站在萨宾娜面前，一副缴了械的样子。

Literally disarmed: deprived of the apparatus she had been using to cover her face and aim at Sabina like a weapon.

的确也是缴了械：她用来遮脸和对准萨宾娜的武器是给缴了。她完全是在接受托马斯情人的怜悯。

She was completely at the mercy of Tomas's mistress. This beautiful submission intoxicated Tereza. She wished that the moments she stood naked opposite Sabina would never end.

这个美丽的征服使她陶醉，她希望自己光着身子站在萨宾娜对面的时刻永远不要完结。

I think that Sabina, too, felt the strange enchantment of the situation: her lover's wife standing oddly compliant and timorous before her.

我想，萨宾娜也被这奇特的场景迷住了：她情人的妻子竟奇异地依顺而胆怯，站在她面前。

But after clicking the shutter two or three times, almost frightened by the enchantment and eager to dispel it, she burst into loud laughter.

不过按了两三次快门以后，她几乎被自已的迷醉吓住，为了驱散它，便高声大笑起来。

Tereza followed suit, and the two of them got dressed.

特丽莎也笑了，两人穿上衣服。

All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications. Not so the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, of which both stills and motion pictures are stored in archives throughout the world.

以往沙俄帝国的一切罪行都被他们谨慎地掩盖着：一百万立陶宛人的流放，成千上万波兰人的被杀害，以及对克里米亚半岛上的鞑靼人的镇压……这些留在我们的记忆之中，却没有留下任何照片资料。迟早这一切将被宣布为捏造的事实。可1968年的入侵捷克可不一样，全世界的档案库中都留下了关于这一事件的照片和电影片。

Czech photographers and cameramen were acutely aware that they were the ones who could best do the only thing left to do: preserve the face of violence for the distant future. Seven days in a row, Tereza roamed the streets, photographing Russian soldiers and officers in compromising situations.

捷克的摄影专家与摄影记者们都真正认识到，只有他们是最好完成这一工作的人了：为久远的未来保存暴力的嘴脸。连续几天了，特丽莎在形势有所缓解的大街上转，摄下侵略军的士兵和军官。

The Russians did not know what to do. They had been carefully briefed about how to behave if someone fired at them or threw stones, but they had received no directives about what to do when someone aimed a lens.

侵略者们不知道怎么办。他们用心地听取过上司的指示，怎么对付向他们开火和扔石头的情况，却没有接到过怎样对待这些摄影镜头的命令。

She shot roll after roll and gave about half of them, undeveloped, to foreign journalists (the borders were still open, and reporters passing through were grateful for any kind of document). Many of her photographs turned up in the Western press. They were pictures of tanks, of threatening fists, of houses destroyed, of corpses covered with bloodstained red-white-and-blue Czech flags, of young men on motorcycles racing full speed around the tanks and waving Czech flags on long staffs, of young girls in unbelievably short skirts provoking the miserable sexually famished Russian soldiers by kissing random passersby before their eyes. As I have said, the Russian invasion was not only a tragedy; it was a carnival of hate filled with a curious (and no longer explicable) euphoria.

她拍了一卷又一卷，把大约一半还没冲洗的胶卷送给那些外国新闻记者。她的很多照片都登上了西方报纸：坦克；示威的拳头；毁坏的房屋；血染的红白蓝三色捷克国旗高速包围着入侵坦克；少女们穿着短得难以置信的裙子，任意与马路上的行人接吻，来挑逗面前那些可怜的性饥渴的入侵士兵。正如我所说的，入侵并不仅仅是一场悲剧，还是一种仇恨的狂欢，充满着奇怪的欢欣痛快。

She took some fifty prints with her to Switzerland, prints she had made herself with all the care and skill she could muster. She offered them to a high-circulation illustrated magazine. The editor gave her a kind reception (all Czechs still wore the halo of their misfortune, and the good Swiss were touched); he offered her a seat, looked through the prints, praised them, and explained that because a certain time had elapsed since the events, they hadn't the slightest chance ( not that they aren't very beautiful! ) of being published.

她带了五十张自己全力精心处理的照片去了瑞士，送给了一家发行量极大的新闻图片杂志。编辑和蔼地接待了她，请她坐，看了看照片又夸奖了一通，然后解释，事件的特定时间已经过去了，它们已不可能有发表的机会。

"But it's not over yet in Prague!" she protested, and tried to explain to him in her bad German that at this very moment, even with the country occupied, with everything against them, workers' councils were forming in the factories, the students were going out on strike demanding the departure of the Russians, and the whole country was saying aloud what it thought.

“可这一切在布拉格并没有过去！”她反驳道，用自己糟糕的德语努力向对方解释，就是在此刻，尽管国家被攻占了，一切都在与他们作对，工厂里建立工人委员会，学生们罢课走出学校要求俄国撤军，整个国家都在把心里话吼出来。

"That's what's so unbelievable! And nobody here cares anymore."

“那是你们不能相信的！这儿没有人关心这一切。”

The editor was glad when an energetic woman came into the office and interrupted the conversation. The woman handed him a folder and said, "Here's the nudist beach article."

编辑很乐意一位劲冲冲的妇女走进办公室，打断谈话。那女人递给他一个夹子，说：“这是裸体主义者的海滩杰作。”

The editor was delicate enough to fear that a Czech who photographed tanks would find pictures of naked people on a beach frivolous.

编辑相当敏感，怕这些海滩裸体照片会使一个拍摄坦克的捷克人感到无聊。

He laid the folder at the far end of the desk and quickly said to the woman, "How would you like to meet a Czech colleague of yours? She's brought me some marvelous pictures."

他把夹子放到桌子远远的另一头，很快对那女人说：“认识一下你的捷克同事吧，她带来了一些精彩的照片。”

The woman shook Tereza's hand and picked up her photographs.

那女人握了握特丽莎的手，拿起她的照片。

"Have a look at mine in the meantime," she said.

“也看看我的吧。”她说。

Tereza leaned over to the folder and took out the pictures.

特丽莎朝那夹子倾过身子，取出了照片。

Almost apologetically the editor said to Tereza, "Of course they're completely different from your pictures."

编辑差不多在对特丽莎道歉：“当然，这些照片与你的完全不一样。”

"Not at all," said Tereza. "They're the same."

“不，它们都一样。”特丽莎说。

Neither the editor nor the photographer understood her, and even I find it difficult to explain what she had in mind when she compared a nude beach to the Russian invasion.

编辑与那摄影师都不理解她的话，甚至我也很难解释她比较这些裸泳海滩和俄国入侵时心里在想些什么。

Looking through the pictures, she stopped for a time at one that showed a family of four standing in a circle: a naked mother leaning over her children, her giant tits hanging low like a goat's or cow's, and the husband leaning the same way on the other side, his penis and scrotum looking very much like an udder in miniature.

看完照片，她的目光停留于其中一张。上面是一个四口之家，站成一圈：一个裸体的母亲靠着她的孩子们，巨大的奶头垂下来象牛，或者羊的奶子。她丈夫以同样的姿势依靠在另一边，阴茎和阴囊看上去也象牛或羊的小乳房。

"You don't like them, do you?" asked the editor.

“你不喜欢它们，是吗？”编辑问。

"They're good photographs."

“都是些好照片。”

"She's shocked by the subject matter," said the woman. "I can tell just by looking at you that you've never set foot on a nude beach."

“她给这样的题材震住了。”那女人说，“我一看你，就敢说你一定没有去过裸泳海滩。”

"No," said Tereza.

“没有。”特丽莎说。

The editor smiled. "You see how easy it is to guess where you're from? The Communist countries are awfully puritanical."

编辑笑道：“你看，多容易猜出你是从哪里来的。共产主义国家都是极端清教徒的。”

"There's nothing wrong with the naked body," the woman said with maternal affection.

“裸体可没有错，”这位女人带着母性的柔情说。

"It's normal." And everything normal is beautiful!

“这是正常的。一切正常的东西都是美的。”

The image of her mother marching through the flat naked flashed through Tereza's mind. She could still hear the laughter behind her back when she ran and pulled the curtains to stop the neighbors from seeing her naked mother.

特丽莎的脑子里突然闪现出母亲光着身子在屋里走来走去的情景，还有她自己跑过去拉窗帘以免邻居看到她裸身的母亲。

她仍然能听到身后的哈哈大笑。

The woman photographer invited Tereza to the magazine's cafeteria for a cup of coffee. "Those pictures of yours, they're very interesting. I couldn't help noticing what a terrific sense of the female body you have. You know what I mean. The girls with the provocative poses!"

女摄影师邀特丽莎去杂志社的自助餐厅喝咖啡：“你那些照片，真有趣，我不得不注意到你拍女人身体时了不起的感觉，你知道我说的是什么，那些女孩子的挑逗姿态！”

"The ones kissing passersby in front of the Russian tanks?"

“在俄国坦克前吻着行人的姑娘？”

"Yes. You'd be a top-notch fashion photographer, you know? You'd have to get yourself a model first, someone like you who's looking for a break. Then you could make a portfolio of photographs and show them to the agencies. It would take some time before you made a name for yourself, naturally, but I can do one thing for you here and now: introduce you to the editor in charge of our garden section. He might need some shots of cactuses and roses and things."

“是的。你应该是第一流的时髦摄影家，知道吗？你最好首先得当当模特儿，象你这样的人就该碰碰运气。接下去，你可以拍一夹子照片，给新闻部门看看。当然，要出名还得一段时间。但现在我可以为你做点事：把你推荐给花卉栏目的主编，他也许需要一些仙人球、玫瑰什么的照片。”

"Thank you very much," Tereza said sincerely, because it was clear that the woman sitting opposite her was full of good will.

“非常谢谢你。”特丽莎真心地说。很明显，坐在对面的女人一片好心。

But then she said to herself, Why take pictures of cactuses? She had no desire to go through in Zurich what she'd been through in Prague: battles over job and career, over every picture published. She had never been ambitious out of vanity. All she had ever wanted was to escape from her mother's world. Yes, she saw it with absolute clarity: no matter how enthusiastic she was about taking pictures, she could just as easily have turned her enthusiasm to any other endeavor. Photography was nothing but a way of getting at "something higher" and living beside Tomas.

但她随后又问自已，为什么要去拍那些那些仙人球？她无意象在布拉格那样来闯遍苏黎世，为职业和事业奋斗，为每一幅作品的发表面努力。她也从无出自虚荣的野心。她所希望的一切，只是逃离母亲的世界。是的，她看得绝对清楚；无论她是多么热衷于拍照，把这种热情转向别的行当也是同样容易的。摄影只是她追求 “上进”以及能留在托马斯身边的一种手段。

She said, "My husband is a doctor. He can support me. I don't need to take pictures."

她说：“我丈夫是位大夫，能够养活我。我并不需要摄影。”

The woman photographer replied, "I don't see how you can give it up after the beautiful work you've done."

女摄影师回答：“我看不出你拍下这么美的照片之后，能放弃这个行当。”

Yes, the pictures of the invasion were something else again.

是的，关于入侵的照片又是另一回事了。

She had not done them for Tomas. She had done them out of passion. But not passion for photography. She had done them out of passionate hatred.

她不是为托马斯而拍的，而是出于激情。不是对于摄影本身的激情，而是一种激越的憎恨。

The situation would never recur. And these photographs, which she had made out of passion, were the ones nobody wanted because they were out of date.

时过境迁了，她出于激情拍下的这些照片任何人也不会再要它们了，因为它们不入时。

Only cactuses had perennial appeal.

只有仙人球的照片才是永远有吸引力的。

And cactuses were of no interest to her.

可仙人球对她来说，不能引起丝毫兴趣。

She said, "You're too kind, really, but I'd rather stay at home. I don't need a job."

她说：“你太好了，真的。可我宁愿呆在家里，我不需要工作。”

The woman said, "But will you be fulfilled sitting at home?"

那女人说；“你坐在家里，会感到充实吗？”

Tereza said, "More fulfilled than by taking pictures of cactuses."

特丽莎说：“比拍仙人球更充实。”

The woman said:"Even if you take pictures of cactuses, you're leading your life. If you live only for your husband, you have no life of your own."

那女人说：“即便是拍仙人球，你也支配着你自已的生活。如果你只是为了丈夫生活，你就没有你自己的生活。”

All of a sudden Tereza felt annoyed: "My husband is my life, not cactuses."

特丽莎突然生气了：“我丈夫是我的生活，仙人球不是。”

The woman photographer responded in kind: "You mean you think of yourself as happy?"

女摄影师好心地说：“你的意思是你觉得自己快乐？”

Tereza, still annoyed, said, "Of course I'm happy!"

特丽莎还在生气，说：“当然，我快乐！”

The woman said, "The only kind of woman who can say that is very …" She stopped short.

那女人说：“只有一种女人能这么说，这种人过于……”她停了停。

Tereza finished it for her: "... limited. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

特丽莎替她说完：“被束缚。这就是你的意思，是不是？”

The woman regained control of herself and said, "Not limited. Anachronistic."

那女人一再控制着自己，说：“不是被束缚，是生错了时代。”

"You're right," said Tereza wistfully. "That's just what my husband says about me."

“你说得对，”特丽莎若有所思地说，“我丈夫正是这样说我的。”

But Tomas spent days on end at the hospital, and she was at home alone. At least she had Karenin and could take him on long walks! Home again, she would pore over her German and French grammars. But she felt sad and had trouble concentrating. She kept coming back to the speech Dubcek had given over the radio after his return from Moscow. Although she had completely forgotten what he said, she could still hear his quavering voice. She thought about how foreign soldiers had arrested him, the head of an independent state, in his own country, held him for four days somewhere in the Ukrainian mountains, informed him he was to be executed—as, a decade before, they had executed his Hungarian counterpart Imre Nagy—then packed him off to Moscow, ordered him to have a bath and shave, to change his clothes and put on a tie, apprised him of the decision to commute his execution, instructed him to consider himself head of state once more, sat him at a table opposite Brezhnev, and forced him to act.

托马斯整天都呆在医院，把她孤单单地留在家里。不过，她至少还有卡列宁，可以带着他一起去久久地散步！又回到家里了，她想埋头啃啃德文和法文语法，但她感到沮丧，注意力也集中不了，老是回想起杜布切克从莫斯科回来后的广播演说。她完全忘记了他的话，却仍然记得他那战战兢兢的声音。她想着那些俄国士兵怎样在他自己的国家里逮捕了他，一个独立国家的领袖，把他扣押在乌克兰的山里达四天之久，扬言要处死他——正如十年前他们也要处死匈牙利的纳吉——然后把他赶到莫斯科，命令他洗澡，修脸，换衬衫戴领带，告诉他作出决定方免一死，训示他再三考虑自己国家首脑的地位，逼他坐在勃列日涅夫的桌子对面，难命是从。

He returned, humiliated, to address his humiliated nation. He was so humiliated he could not even speak. Tereza would never forget those awful pauses in the middle of his sentences. Was he that exhausted? 111? Had they drugged him? Or was it only despair? If nothing was to remain of Dubcek, then at least those awful long pauses when he seemed unable to breathe, when he gasped for air before a whole nation glued to its radios, at least those pauses would remain. Those pauses contained all the horror that had befallen their country.

他回来了，带着耻辱，对他羞耻的民族讲话。如此羞辱不堪以至说不出话来。特丽莎总是忘不了他讲话中那些可怕的停顿。他是太累了？是病了？是他们麻醉了他？还是仅仅没有了信心？如果说杜布切克没有给人们留下什么，至少那些上气不接下气的可怕的停顿，那些面对着全国听众的喘息，留在人们心中了。这些停顿记下了降临这个国家的全部恐惧。

It was the seventh day of the invasion. She heard the speech in the editorial offices of a newspaper that had been transformed overnight into an organ of the resistance. Everyone present hated Dubcek at that moment. They reproached him for compromising; they felt humiliated by his humiliation; his weakness offended them.

入侵后的第七天，她在某报编辑部里听到了逐个讲话。编辑部一夜之间便变成了一个抵抗组织。在场的每个人都恨杜布切克，谴责他的妥协，为他的耻辱感到耻辱，被他的软弱所激怒。

Thinking in Zurich of those days, she no longer felt any aversion to the man. The word "weak" no longer sounded like a verdict. Any man confronted with superior strength is weak, even if he has an athletic body like Dubcek's. The very weakness that at the time had seemed unbearable and repulsive, the weakness that had driven Tereza and Tomas from the country, suddenly attracted her. She realized that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences.

但这几天在苏黎世的思索，使特丽莎不再对他反感了，“软弱”这个词听起来也不再成其为结论。任何人面对强手都是软弱的，即便象杜布切克那样体魄强壮的人。那种看来无法忍受、令人反感的一时极端软弱，那种格特丽莎与托马斯赶到这个国家来的软弱，现在突然吸引着她。她知道自己是软弱的，她的营垒是软弱的，她的祖国是软弱的，她不得不忠于它们，准确地说就因为它们软弱，软弱得讲话时上气不接下气地呼呼喘息。

She felt attracted by their weakness as by vertigo. She felt attracted by it because she felt weak herself. Again she began to feel jealous and again her hands shook. When Tomas noticed it, he did what he usually did: he took her hands in his and tried to calm them by pressing hard. She tore them away from him.

她发现自己象被晕眩征服一样，又被这种软弱征服了。而她被征服是因为感到自己软弱。她又开始嫉妒，手又开始颤抖。托马斯注意到了，象往常一样握住她的手，用力抚摸着使它们平静。她却把手抽出来。

"What's the matter?" he asked.

“怎么啦？”他问。

"Nothing."

“没什么。”

"What do you want me to do for you?"

“你要我怎么办？”

"I want you to be old. Ten years older. Twenty years older!"

“我要你变老一些。老十岁。老二十岁！”

What she meant was: I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.

她的意思是：我希望你变得虚弱一些，与我一样虚弱。

Karenin was not overjoyed by the move to Switzerland. Karenin hated change. Dog time cannot be plotted along a straight line; it does not move on and on, from one thing to the next. It moves in a circle like the hands of a clock, which—they, too, unwilling to dash madly ahead—turn round and round the face, day in and day out following the same path. In Prague, when Tomas and Tereza bought a new chair or moved a flower pot, Karenin would look on in displeasure. It disturbed his sense of time. It was as though they were trying to dupe the hands of the clock by changing the numbers on its face.

卡列宁不喜欢变动，对搬往瑞士并不欢天喜地。狗的时间不能标绘成直线，不是连续运动依次前推，倒象钟表时针那样绕圆圈推移——它们也都不愿意圈狂地向前跳跃——只是一圈又一圈，一天接一天，依循着同一轨迹运行。在布拉格，托马斯与特丽莎，每添置一把新椅子或搬动一下花瓶，卡列宁都显得不高兴，因为这打乱了他的时间感觉，正如随意改变钟面刻度来愚弄指针一样。

Nonetheless, he soon managed to reestablish the old order and old rituals in the Zurich flat. As in Prague, he would jump up on their bed and welcome them to the day, accompany Tereza on her morning shopping jaunt, and make certain he got the other walks coming to him as well.

不过，他还是在苏黎世的住宅里很快重新建立了他的老秩序和旧程式。如同在布拉格；他跳到床上向他们问候早安，上午陪特丽莎逛商店，还要露一手显出它走另外的路也同样胜任。

He was the timepiece of their lives. In periods of despair, she would remind herself she had to hold on because of him, because he was weaker than she, weaker perhaps even than Dubcek and their abandoned homeland.

他是他们生活的计时器。绝望的时候，她总是提醒自己，为了他也必须挺下去。因为他比她更软弱，甚至比杜布切克以及他们离弃了的家园更软弱。

One day when they came back from a walk, the phone was ringing. She picked up the receiver and asked who it was.

有一天他们散步回家。电话铃响了，她拿起话筒问是谁，

It was a woman's voice speaking German and asking for Tomas. It was an impatient voice, and Tereza felt there was a hint of derision in it. When she said that Tomas wasn't there and she didn't know when he'd be back, the woman on the other end of the line started laughing and, without saying goodbye, hung up.

是一个女人的声音，用德语找托马斯，语气不耐烦，特丽莎感到有一种嘲弄的味道。她说托马斯不在家而且不知道他什么时候回来，电话那一头的女人笑了，连再见也没说就接上了话筒。

Tereza knew it did not mean a thing. It could have been a nurse from the hospital, a patient, a secretary, anyone. But still she was upset and unable to concentrate on anything. It was then that she realized she had lost the last bit of strength she had had at home: she was absolutely incapable of tolerating this absolutely insignificant incident.

特丽莎知道这说明不了什么。这也许是医院的一个护士，一个病人，一个秘书或别的什么人。但她仍然心烦意乱，不能集中精力做任何事情。随后，她明白自己已失去了呆在家里的最后一点气力：绝对不能忍受这绝对无所谓的枝节。

Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood. In Prague she was dependent on Tomas only when it came to the heart; here she was dependent on him for everything. What would happen to her here if he abandoned her? Would she have to live her whole life in fear of losing him?

在一个陌生国家里生活就意味着在离地面很高的空中踩钢丝，没有他自己国土之网来支撑他：家庭，朋友，同事。还有从小就熟悉的语言可帮助他轻易地说他想说的话。在布拉格，只有在某种心灵需要时，她才依靠托马斯；可现在事事都得依靠他。如果在这里他抛弃了她，她怎么办？她一辈子都要在失去他的恐惧中生活吗？

She told herself: Their acquaintance had been based on an error from the start. The copy of Anna Karenina under her arm amounted to false papers; it had given Tomas the wrong idea. In spite of their love, they had made each other's life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak. She was like Dubcek, who made a thirty-second pause in the middle of a sentence; she was like her country, which stuttered, gasped for breath, could not speak.

她对自己说：他们的结识一开始就是一种错误。腋下的那本《安娜·卡列尼娜》不过是一个假证件，它使托马斯想入非非。他们相爱，但他们都使对方的生活如地狱一般。相爱的事实，仅仅能证明这不是他们的错，不是他们的行为，以及变化无常的感情的错，而是他们不相配：他是强壮的，她是虚弱的。她就象杜布切克说一个句子停三十秒。她就象自己的祖国，结结巴巴，气喘吁吁，说不出话。

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

可是，当这位强者都弱得不能伤害这位弱者时，弱者也就不得不强起来以离去。

And having told herself all this, she pressed her face against Karenin's furry head and said, "Sorry, Karenin. It looks as though you're going to have to move again."

她对自己说着这些，把脸贴在卡列宁毛茸茸的头上说：“对不起，卡列宁，看来你不得不又要搬家了。”

Sitting crushed into a corner of the train compartment with her heavy suitcase above her head and Karenin squeezed against her legs, she kept thinking about the cook at the hotel restaurant where she had worked when she lived with her mother. The cook would take every opportunity to give her a slap on the behind, and never tired of asking her in front of everyone when she would give in and go to bed with him. It was odd that he was the one who came to mind. He had always been the prime example of everything she loathed. And now all she could think of was looking him up and telling him, You used to say you wanted to sleep with me. "Well, here I am."

她挤进火车厢的一个角落里，把大箱子放在头顶的行李架上，然后坐下来，卡列宁就靠着她的腿蹲着。这时，她老想着她和母亲住在一起时，她供职的那个餐厅里的厨师。那人总是抓住每一个机会在背后侮辱她，不厌其烦地当着每一个人的面问她打算什么时候跟他去睡觉。想起这样一个人真是奇怪。他一直是她最厌恶的典型。可现在，她能想象的，就是仰视着他，对他说：“你总是说想和我睡觉，行，我在这里呢。”

She longed to do something that would prevent her from turning back to Tomas. She longed to destroy brutally the past seven years of her life. It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall.

她希望做点什么事以防自己回到托马斯那儿去，希望残酷地毁掉这七年的生活。这是晕眩，一种猛烈的、不可抑制的倒下去的欲望。

We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

我们也许可以称这种晕眩为一种虚弱的自我迷醉。一个人自觉软弱质，决定宁可屈从而不再坚挺，就是被这种软弱醉倒了，甚至会希望变得更加软弱，希望在大庭广众中倒下，希望倒下去，再倒下去。

She tried to talk herself into settling outside of Prague and giving up her profession as a photographer. She would go back to the small town from which Tomas's voice had once lured her.

她试图劝说自己搬出布拉格，放弃摄影师的工作，回到托马斯的声音曾经引诱过她的小镇去。

But once in Prague, she found she had to spend some time taking care of various practical matters, and began putting off her departure.

可一到布拉格，她发现自己不得不花些时间处置各种现实问题，只得推迟离去的日子。

On the fifth day, Tomas suddenly turned up. Karenin jumped all over him, so it was a while before they had to make any overtures to each other.

第五天，托马斯突然回来了，卡列宁向他猛扑过去。这一刻，他们还来不及互相作出必要的表示。

They felt they were standing on a snow-covered plain, shivering with cold.

他们都感到象站在冰雪覆盖的草原上，冷得直哆嗦。

Then they moved together like lovers who had never kissed before.

然后，他们就象两个从未吻过的恋人那样相互靠近。

"Has everything been all right?" he asked.

“一切都好吗？”他问。

"Yes," she answered.

“是的。”她回答。

"Have you been to the magazine?"

“你去过杂志社啦？”

"I've given them a call."

“打了一个电话。”

"Well?"

“是吗？”

"Nothing yet. I've been waiting."

“没有什么事干，我在等着。”

"For what?"

“为什么？”

She made no response. She could not tell him that she had been waiting for him.

她没有回答。她不能告诉他，她一直在等着他．

Now we return to a moment we already know about. Tomas was desperately unhappy and had a bad stomachache. He did not fall asleep until very late at night.

现在，我们回到了我们已经知道的时刻了。托马斯烦闷得要命而且胃痛得厉害，直到深夜都未能入睡。

Soon thereafter Tereza awoke. (There were Russian airplanes circling over Prague, and it was impossible to sleep for the noise.) Her first thought was that he had come back because of her; because of her, he had changed his destiny. Now he would no longer be responsible for her; now she was responsible for him.

特丽莎很快也醒了（俄国飞机在布拉格盘旋，噪音使人无法安眠）。她首先想到他是因为她而回来的，因为她，他改变了自己的命运。现在，他再也不要对她负责了，而她要对他负责。

The responsibility, she felt, seemed to require more strength than she could muster.

她感到，她似乎还不能把握更多的力量，来胜任地肩负这种责任。

But all at once she recalled that just before he had appeared at the door of their flat the day before, the church bells had chimed six o'clock. On the day they first met, her shift had ended at six. She saw him sitting there in front of her on the yellow bench and heard the bells in the belfry chime six.

但她立即回想起前一天他出现在房门口之前，教堂的钟正敲六点。而他们第一次见面那天，她下班也是六点。她看到他坐在前面一条黄色的凳子上，也听到钟楼里的钟正敲六点。

No, it was not superstition, it was a sense of beauty that cured her of her depression and imbued her with a new will to live. The birds of fortuity had alighted once more on her shoulders. There were tears in her eyes, and she was unutterably happy to hear him breathing at her side.

不，这不是什么迷信，是一种美感，治疗着她的沈郁，给了她继续生活的新的意志。机缘之鸟再一次飞落肩头闪闪发光。她眼含泪花，倾听着身边的呼吸声，感到说不出的抉乐。