PART FOUR Soul and Body

四、灵与肉

When Tereza came home, it was almost half past one in the morning. She went into the bathroom, put on her pajamas, and lay down next to Tomas. He was asleep.

特丽莎回到家中差不多已是早晨一点半了。她走进浴室，穿上睡衣，在托马斯身边躺下来。他睡着了。

She leaned over his face and, kissing it, detected a curious aroma coming from his hair. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman's sex organs.

她俯下身子去吻他，察觉他头发里有一股奇怪的气味；又吸了一口气，结果还是一样。她象一条狗上上下下嗅了个遍才确定异物是什么：一种女人下体的气味。

At six the alarm went off. Karenin's great moment had arrived. He always woke up much earlier than they did, but did not dare to disturb them. He would wait impatiently for the alarm, because it gave him the right to jump up on their bed, trample their bodies, and butt them with his muzzle. For a time they had tried to curb him and pushed him off the bed, but he was more headstrong than they were and ended by defending his rights. Lately, Tereza realized, she positively enjoyed being welcomed into the day by Karenin. Waking up was sheer delight for him: he always showed a naive and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased. She, on the other hand, awoke with great reluctance with a desire to stave off the day by keeping her eyes closed.

六点钟，闹钟响了，带来了卡列宁最辉煌的时刻。他总是比他们起得早，但不敢搅扰他们，耐心地等待闹钟的铃声，等待铃声赐给他权利，好跳到床上去用脚踩他们以及用鼻子拱他们。偶尔，他们也企图限制他，推他下床，但他比他们任性得多，总是以维护自己的权利而告结束。特丽莎后来也明白了，她的确也乐意由卡列宁把她带进新的一天。对他来说，醒来是绝对令人高兴的，发现自己又回到了人世时，他总是显露出一种天真纯朴的惊异以及诚心诚意的欢喜。而在她那一方面，醒得极不情愿，醒来时总有一种闭合双限以阻挡白昼到来的愿望。

Now he was standing in the entrance hall, gazing up at the hat stand, where his leash and collar hung ready. She slipped his head through the collar, and off they went together to do the shopping. She needed to pick up some milk, butter, and bread and, as usual, his morning roll. Later, he trotted back alongside her, roll in mouth, looking proudly from side to side, gratified by the attention he attracted from the passersby.

现在，他立在门厅口凝视着衣帽架，那里接着他的皮带和项圈。她给他套上项圈系好皮带，带他一起去买东西。她要买点牛奶、黄油、面包，同往常一样，还有他早餐用的面包圈。他贴在她身边跑着，嘴里叼着面包，吸引旁人的注意之后洋洋自得为之四顾。

Once home, he would stretch out with his roll on the threshold of the bedroom and wait for Tomas to take notice of him, creep up to him, snarl at him, and make believe he was trying to snatch his roll away from him. That was how it went every day. Not until they had chased each other through the flat for at least five minutes would Karenin scramble under a table and gobble up the roll.

一到家，他叼着面包围躺在卧房门口，等待托马斯对他的关注，向托马斯爬过去，冲他狺狺地叫，假定他要把那面包圈儿夺走。每天都如此一番。他们在屋子里至少要互相追逐五分钟之久，卡列宁才爬到桌子底下去狼吞虎咽消受他的面包圈。

This time, however, he waited in vain for his morning ritual. Tomas had a small transistor radio on the table in front of him and was listening to it intently.

这一次，他白白地等候着这一套早晨的仪礼。托马斯面前的桌上有一台小小的晶体管收音机，他正在专心听着。

It was a program about the Czech emigration, a montage of private conversations recorded with the latest bugging devices by a Czech spy who had infiltrated the emigre community and then returned in great glory to Prague. It was insignificant prattle dotted with some harsh words about the occupation regime, but here and there one emigre would call another an imbecile or a fraud. These trivial remarks were the point of the broadcast. They were meant to prove not merely that emigres had bad things to say about the Soviet Union (which neither surprised nor upset anyone in the country), but that they call one another names and make free use of dirty words. People use filthy language all day long, but when they turn on the radio and hear a well-known personality, someone they respect, saying fuck in every sentence, they feel somehow let down.

这是一个有关捷克移民的节目，一段私人对话的录音剪辑，由一个打入移民团体后又荣归布拉格的特务最近窃听到的。都是些无意义的瞎扯，夹杂着一些攻击占领当局的粗话，不时还能听到某位移民骂另一位是低能儿或者骗子。这些正是广播的要害所在。它不仅证明移民在说苏联的坏话（这已经不会使任何捷克人惊讶不安），而且还表明他们在互相骂娘，随便使用脏字眼。人们乎常可以整日讲脏话，在打开收音机听到某位众所周知令人肃然的角色在每句话里也夹一个“他娘的”，他们毕竟会大为失望。

"It all started with Prochazka," said Tomas.

“都是从普罗恰兹卡开的头。”托马斯说。

Jan Prochazka, a forty-year-old Czech novelist with the strength and vitality of an ox, began criticizing public affairs vociferously even before 1968. He then became one of the best-loved figures of the Prague Spring, that dizzying liberalization of Communism which ended with the Russian invasion. Shortly after the invasion the press initiated a smear campaign against him, but the more they smeared, the more people liked him. Then (in 1970, to be exact) the Czech radio broadcast a series of private talks between Prochazka and a professor friend of his which had taken place two years before (that is, in the spring of 1968). For a long time, neither of them had any idea that the professor's flat was bugged and their every step dogged. Prochazka loved to regale his friends with hyperbole and excess. Now his excesses had become a weekly radio series. The secret police, who produced and directed the show, took pains to emphasize the sequences in which Prochazka made fun of his friends—Dubcek, for instance. People slander their friends at the drop of a hat, but they were more shocked by the much-loved Prochazka than by the much-hated secret police.

普罗恰兹卡是位四十岁的捷克小说家，精神充沛，力大如牛，在1968年以前就大叫大嚷公开批评时政。后来，他成为“布拉格之春”中最受人喜爱的人物，把那场随着入侵而告结束的共产主义自由化搞得轰轰烈烈。入侵后不久，报界发起了一场攻击他的运动，但越玷污他，人们倒越喜欢他。后来（确切地说是1970年），电台播出了一系列他与某位教授朋友两年前的私人谈话（即1968年春）。他们俩很长的时间都没有发现，教授的住宅已被窃听，他们每一行动都受到监视。普罗情兹卡喜欢用夸张、过激的话与朋友逗乐，而现在这些过激的话成了每周电台的连续节目。秘密警察制造并导演了这一节目，费尽心机向人们强调普罗恰兹卡取笑朋友们的插料打浑——比如说，对杜布切克。人们一有机会就要挖苦朋友的，但现在与其说他们被十分可恨的秘密警察吓住了，还不如说他们是被他们十分喜爱的普罗恰兹卡给惊呆了。

Tomas turned off the radio and said, Every country has its secret police. But a secret police that broadcasts its tapes over the radio—there's something that could happen only in Prague, something absolutely without precedent!

托马斯关了收音机说：“每个国家都有秘密警察，在电台播放录音的秘密警察，只可能在布拉格有，绝对史无前例！”

"I know a precedent, said Tereza. When I was fourteen I kept a secret diary. I was terrified that someone might read it so I kept it hidden in the attic. Mother sniffed it out. One day at dinner, while we were all hunched over our soup, she took it out of her pocket and said, 'Listen carefully now, everybody!' And after every sentence, she burst out laughing. They all laughed so hard they couldn't eat."

“我知道一个前例，”特丽莎说，“我十四岁的时候写了一本秘密日记。我怕有人看到它，把它藏在顶楼上。妈妈嗅出了它。有一天吃饭，我们都埋头喝着汤，她从口袋里拿出日记说：‘好了，诸位现在仔细听一听。’她读了几句，就哈哈大笑。他们都笑得无法吃饭。”

He always tried to get her to stay in bed and let him have breakfast alone. She never gave in. Tomas was at work from seven to four, Tereza from four to midnight. If she were to miss breakfast with him, the only time they could actually talk together was on Sundays. That was why she got up when he did and then went back to bed.

他总是让她躺在床上，自己独自去吃早饭，可她不服从。托马斯工作从早上七点到下午四点，而她工作则从下午四点到半夜。如果她不与他一道吃早饭，两人能一块儿谈话的时间便只有星期天了。正因为如此，她早上总要跟着他起身宁可以后再去睡觉。

This morning, however, she was afraid of going back to sleep, because at ten she was due at the sauna on Zofin Island. The sauna, though coveted by the many, could accommodate only the few, and the only way to get in was by pull. Luckily, the cashier was the wife of a professor removed from the university after 1968 and the professor a friend of a former patient of Tomas's. Tomas told the patient, the patient told the professor, the professor told his wife, and Tereza had a ticket waiting for her once a week.

这天早上，她恐怕不能再睡下了，十点钟她得去佐芬岛的蒸汽浴室。蒸汽浴室是众人向往之地，但只能容纳少许人，想进去的唯一办法是拉关系。谢天谢地，托马斯从前一个病人的朋友是一位1968年后从大学迁来的教授，他妻子便是浴室的出纳。于是，托马斯拜托那病人，病人拜托教授，教授又托付妻子，特丽莎每周便可轻易地得到一张票了。

She walked there. She detested the trams constantly packed with people pushing into one another's hate-filled embraces, stepping on one another's feet, tearing off one another's coat buttons, and shouting insults.

她走着去的。她恨车上总是挤满了人，挤得一个挨一个互相仇恨地拥抱，你踩了我的脚，我扯掉你的衣扣，哇哇地嚷着粗话。

It was drizzling. As people rushed along, they began opening umbrellas over their heads, and all at once the streets were crowded, too. Arched umbrella roofs collided with one another. The men were courteous, and when passing Tereza they held their umbrellas high over their heads and gave her room to go by. But the women would not yield; each looked straight ahead, waiting for the other woman to acknowledge her inferiority and step aside. The meeting of the umbrellas was a test of strength. At first Tereza gave way, but when she realized her courtesy was not being reciprocated, she started clutching her umbrella like the other women and ramming it forcefully against the oncoming umbrellas. No one ever said Sorry. For the most part no one said anything, though once or twice she did hear a "Fat cow"! or "Fuck you"!

天下着毛毛细雨，人们撑开伞遮住脑袋匆匆走着。一下子，圆拱形的伞篷互相碰撞，街上拥挤起来。特丽莎前面的男人都高高把伞举起给她让路，女人们却不肯相让，人人都直视前方，让别的女人甘拜下风退缩一旁。这种雨伞的会集是一场力量的考验。特丽莎开始都让路，意识到自己的好心得不到好报时，也开始象其他的女人紧抓住伞柄，用力猛撞别人的伞篷。没有人说“对不起”，大多数时候人们都不说话，尽管有一两次她也听到有人骂“肥猪”，或“操你娘！”

The women thus armed with umbrellas were both young and old, but the younger among them proved the more steeled warriors. Tereza recalled the days of the invasion and the girls in miniskirts carrying flags on long staffs. Theirs was a sexual vengeance: the Russian soldiers had been kept in enforced celibacy for several long years and must have felt they had landed on a planet invented by a science fiction writer, a planet of stunning women who paraded their scorn on beautiful long legs the likes of which had not been seen in Russia for the past five or six centuries.

老少娘们儿都用伞武装起来了，年轻一些的更象铁甲武士。特丽莎回想起入侵的那些天，身穿超短裙手持长杆旗帜的姑娘们，对入侵者进行性报复：那些被迫禁欲多年的入侵士兵，想必以为自己登上了某个科幻小说家创造出来的星球，绝色女郎用美丽的长腿表示着蔑视，这在入侵者国家里是五六百年来不曾见过的。

She had taken many pictures of those young women against a backdrop of tanks. How she had admired them! And now these same women were bumping into her, meanly and spitefully. Instead of flags, they held umbrellas, but they held them with the same pride. They were ready to fight as obstinately against a foreign army as against an umbrella that refused to move out of their way.

她给那些坦克背景前面的年轻姑娘拍过许多照片，她是多么钦佩她们！而现在这些同样的姑娘却在与她撞击，恶意昭昭，她们准备用抗击外国军队的顽强精神来反击一把不愿给她们让路的雨伞。

She came out into Old Town Square—the stern spires of Tyn Church, the irregular rectangle of Gothic and baroque houses. Old Town Hall, which dated from the fourteenth century and had once stretched over a whole side of the square, was in ruins and had been so for twenty-seven years. Warsaw, Dresden, Berlin, Cologne, Budapest—all were horribly scarred in the last war. But their inhabitants had built them up again and painstakingly restored the old historical sections. The people of Prague had an inferiority complex with respect to these other cities. Old Town Hall was the only monument of note destroyed in the war, and they decided to leave it in ruins so that no Pole or German could accuse them of having suffered less than their share. In front of the glorious ruins, a reminder for now and eternity of the evils perpetrated by war, stood a steel-bar reviewing stand for some demonstration or other that the Communist Party had herded the people of Prague to the day before or would be herding them to the day after.

她来到古城广场。这里有梯思教堂严峻的塔尖，哥特式建筑的不规则长方形，以及巴罗克式的建筑。古城的市政厅建于十四世纪，曾一度占据了整个广场的一侧，现在却一片废墟已有二十七年。华沙、德累斯顿、柏林、科隆以及布达佩斯，在第二次大战中都留下了可怕的伤痕。但这些地方的城民们都重建了家园，辛勤地恢复了古老历史的遗存。布拉格的人民对那些城市的人民怀着一种既尊敬又自卑的复杂心理。古城市政厅旧址只是战争毁灭的唯一标志了。他们决定保留这片废墟，是为了使波兰人或德国人无法指责他们比其它民族受的苦难少些。在这光荣的废墟前面，在战争留给今天和永恒的罪恶遗迹面前，立着一座钢筋水泥的检阅台，供某种示威集会用，或方便于共产党过去或将来召集布拉格的群众。

Gazing at the remains of Old Town Hall, Tereza was suddenly reminded of her mother: that perverse need one has to expose one's ruins, one's ugliness, to parade one's misery, to uncover the stump of one's amputated arm and force the whole world to look at it. Everything had begun reminding her of her mother lately. Her mother's world, which she had fled ten years before, seemed to be coming back to her, surrounding her on all sides. That was why she told Tomas that morning about how her mother had read her secret diary at the dinner table to an accompaniment of guffaws. When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?

看着古城市政厅的残迹，特丽莎突然想起了母亲，想起她那反常的需要：揭露人家的灾难和人家的丑陋，展示人家的悲惨，亮出别人断臂的残胶并强迫全世界都来围观。最近的一切都使她想起母亲。她逃离出来已逾七年的母亲世界似乎又卷士重来，前后左右把她团团围位。正因为如此，那天早上她对托马斯谈起，母亲如何在饭桌前边读她的秘密日记边发出狂笑。当一种茶余饭后的私下交谈都拿到电台广播时，这说明什么呢？不说明这个世界正在变成一个集中营吗？

Almost from childhood, Tereza had used the term to express how she felt about life with her family. A concentration camp is a world in which people live crammed together constantly, night and day. Brutality and violence are merely secondary (and not in the least indispensable) characteristics. A concentration camp is the complete obliteration of privacy. Prochazka, who was not allowed to chat with a friend over a bottle of wine in the shelter of privacy, lived (unknown to him—a fatal error on his part!) in a concentration camp. Tereza lived in the concentration camp when she lived with her mother. Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts.

几乎从孩提时代起，特丽莎就用这个词来表达她对家庭生活的感觉。集中营是一个人们常常日夜挤在一堆的世界。粗野与强暴倒只是第二特征（而且不是完全不可缺少的）。集中营是个人私生活的完全灭绝。普罗恰兹卡就住在集中营里，因此不能有私生活的掩体供他酒后与朋友闲谈。（他的致命错误是自己居然不知道2）特丽莎与母亲佐在一起时，也是在集中营里。她几乎从小就知道集中营，既不特别异常也不令人吃惊，倒是个很基本的什么东西，我们在给定购这里出生，而且只有花最大的努力才能从这里逃出去。

The women sitting on the three terraced benches were packed in so tightly that they could not help touching. Sweating away next to Tereza was a woman of about thirty with a very pretty face. She had two unbelievably large, pendulous breasts hanging from her shoulders, bouncing at the slightest movement. When the woman got up, Tereza saw that her behind was also like two enormous sacks and that it had nothing in common with her fine face.

女人们坐在三条成梯形排列的长凳上，挤得那么紧，不碰着是不行的。特丽莎旁边是一位三十来岁的女人，一个劲出汗，有十分漂亮的脸蛋，从双肩垂下一对大得难以置信的奶子，身子稍一动，它们就晃荡个不停。那女人站起来时，特丽莎看见她的屁股也象是两个大麻袋，与漂亮的脸丝毫接不上边。

Perhaps the woman stood frequently in front of the mirror observing her body, trying to peer through it into her soul, as Tereza had done since childhood. Surely she, too, had harbored the blissful hope of using her body as a poster for her soul. But what a monstrous soul it would have to be if it reflected that body, that rack for four pouches.

也许这个女人也常常站在镜子前看自己的身体，如同特丽莎从小就想从那里窥视自己的灵魂。她一定也怀着巨大的希望，想把自己的身体当作灵魂的显示。不过，这接着四个皮囊的躯壳反射出来的灵魂，将是多么骇人可怕呵。

Tereza got up and rinsed herself off under the shower. Then she went out into the open. It was still drizzling. Standing just above the Vltava on a slatted deck, and sheltered from the eyes of the city by a few square feet of tall wooden panel, she looked down to see the head of the woman she had just been thinking about. It was bobbing on the surface of the rushing river.

特丽莎站起来，在喷头下把自己冲洗干净，走到外边去。天还下着毛毛细雨。她站在瓦塔瓦河面一块啪啪作响的甲板上，一块几平方英尺的高木板，让她逃避了城市的眼睛。她朝下看见了刚才一直想着的那女人的头，正在奔腾的江面上起伏浮动。

The woman smiled up at her. She had a delicate nose, large brown eyes, and a childish glance.

女人朝她笑了笑。她有精巧的鼻子，棕色的大眼睛和带孩子气的眼被。

As she climbed the ladder, her tender features gave way to two sets of quivering pouches spraying tiny drops of cold water right and left.

她爬下梯子时，苗条的身貌让路绘两套颤抖着的大皮爱，还有皮爱左右两边甩出的一颖颖冰凉水殊。

Tereza went in to get dressed and stood in front of the large mirror.

特丽莎进屋去穿衣，站在大镜子前面。

No, there was nothing monstrous about her body. She had no pouches hanging from her shoulders; in fact, her breasts were quite small. Her mother used to ridicule her for having such small breasts, and she had had a complex about them until Tomas came along.

不，她的身体没有什么可怕的东西，胸前也没洼什么大皮爱。事实上，她的乳房很小，母亲就常常嘲笑她只有这样小的乳房。直到托马斯来以前，她一直对自己的小乳房心情复杂。

But reconciled to their size as she was, she was still mortified by the very large, very dark circles around her nipples. Had she been able to design her own body, she would have chosen inconspicuous nipples, the kind that scarcely protrude from the arch of the breast and all but blend in color with the rest of the skin. She thought of her areolae as big crimson targets painted by a primitivist of pornography for the poor.

大小倒无所谓，只是乳头周围又黑又大的一圈使她感到屈辱。假使她能设计自己的身体的话，她会选择那种不打眼的乳头，拱弧线上的乳头不要挺突，颜色也要同皮肤色混为一体。她想她的乳晕就象原始主义画家为客人画的色情画中的深红色大目标一样。

Looking at herself, she wondered what she would be like if her nose grew a millimeter a day. How long would it take before her face began to look like someone else's?

瞧着自己，她想知道，如果她的鼻子一天长一毫米的话她会是个什么样子，要多久她的脸才能变得象别人的一样？

And if various parts of her body began to grow and shrink and Tereza no longer looked like herself, would she still be herself, would she still be Tereza?

如果她身体的各个部分有的长大，有的缩小，那么特丽莎看上去就不再象她自己了，她还会是自己吗？她还是特丽莎吗？

Of course. Even if Tereza were completely unlike Tereza, her soul inside her would be the same and look on in amazement at what was happening to her body.

当然，即使特丽莎完全不象特丽莎，体内的灵魂将依然如故，而且会惊讶地注视着身体的每个变化。

Then what was the relationship between Tereza and her body? Had her body the right to call itself Tereza? And if not, then what did the name refer to? Merely something incorporeal, intangible?

那么，特丽莎与她身体之间有什么关系呢？她的身体有权利称自己为特丽莎吗？如果不可以，这个名字是指谁呢？仅仅是某种非物质和无形的东西吗？

(These are questions that had been going through Tereza's head since she was a child. Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.)

（特丽莎从儿时起就思考着这些问题。的确，只有真正严肃的问题才是一个孩子能提出的问题，只有最孩子气的问题才是真正严肃的问题。这些问题是没有答案的。一个没有答案的问题就是一道不可逾越的障碍，换一句话说，正是这些无解的问题限制了人类的可能性，描划了人类生存的界线。）

Tereza stood bewitched before the mirror, staring at her body as if it were alien to her, alien and yet assigned to her and no one else. She felt disgusted by it. It lacked the power to become the only body in Tomas's life. It had disappointed and deceived her. All that night she had had to inhale the aroma of another woman's groin from his hair!

特丽莎站在镜子前面迷惑不解，看着自己的身体象看一个异物，一个指定是她而非别人的异物。她对此厌恶。这个身体无力成为托马斯生活中唯一的身体，它挫伤和欺骗了她。整整一夜她不得不嗅着他头发里其他女人下体的气味！

Suddenly she longed to dismiss her body as one dismisses a servant: to stay on with Tomas only as a soul and send her body into the world to behave as other female bodies behave with male bodies. If her body had failed to become the only body for Tomas, and thereby lost her the biggest battle of her life, it could just as well go off on its own!

她突然希望，能象辞退一个佣人那样来打发自己的身体：仅仅让灵魂与托马斯呆在一起好了，把自已的身体送到世间去，表现得象其他女性身体一样，表现在男性身体旁边。她的身体不能成为托马斯唯一的身体，那么在她一生最大的战役中已经败北，只好自个儿一走了之！

She went home and forced herself to eat a stand-up lunch in the kitchen. At half past three, she put Karenin on his leash and walked (walking again) to the outskirts of town where her hotel was. When they fired Tereza from her job at the magazine, she found work behind the bar of a hotel. It happened several months after she came back from Zurich: they could not forgive her, in the end, for the week she spent photographing Russian tanks. She got the job through friends, other people who had taken refuge there when thrown out of work by the Russians: a former professor of theology in the accounting office, an ambassador (who had protested against the invasion on foreign television) at the reception desk.

她回到家，逼着自己站在厨房里随意吃了点午饭，已是三点半了。她给卡列宁套上皮带，走着去城郊（又是走！）她工作的旅店。她被杂志社解雇以后就在这家旅店的酒吧干活。那是她从苏黎世回来后几个月的事了：他们终究不能原谅她，因为她曾经拍了一个星期的入侵坦克。她通过朋友找到了这份工作，那里的其他人都是被入侵者砸了饭碗的人，暂时在这里避避风：会计是一位前神学教授，服务台里坐着一位大使（他在外国电视里抗议入侵）。

She was worried about her legs again. While working as a waitress in the small-town restaurant, she had been horrified at the sight of the older waitresses' varicose veins, a professional hazard that came of a life of walking, running, and standing with heavy loads. But the new job was less demanding: although she began each shift by dragging out heavy cases of beer and mineral water, all she had to do then was stand behind the bar, serve the customers their drinks, and wash out the glasses in the small sink on her side of the bar. And through it all she had Karenin lying docilely at her feet.

她又一次为自己的腿担忧。还在小镇餐馆里当女招待时，她看到那些老招待员腿上都是静脉曲张，就吓坏了。这种职业病源是每天端着沉重的碗碟，走，跑，站。但新工作没有那么多要求。每次接班，她把一箱箱沉重的啤酒和矿泉水拖出来，以后要做的事就只是站在餐柜后面，给顾客上上酒，在餐柜旁边的小水槽里洗洗酒杯。做这一切的时候，卡列宁驯服地躺在她脚旁。

It was long past midnight before she had finished her accounts and delivered the cash receipts to the hotel director. She then went to say good-bye to the ambassador, who had night duty. The door behind the reception desk led to a tiny room with a narrow cot where he could take a nap. The wall above the cot was covered with framed photographs of himself and various people smiling at the camera or shaking his hand or sitting next to him at a table and signing something or other. Some of them were autographed. In the place of honor hung a picture showing, side by side with his own face, the smiling face of John F. Kennedy.

她结完帐，把现金收据交给旅馆头头，已经过半夜了。她去向那位值夜班的大使告别。服务台后面的门通向一间小屋，还有一张他可以打个腕的窄床。值班床上的墙上方贴着他自己和许多人的镶边照片，那些人冲着镜头笑，跟他握手，或者伴他坐在桌子边上签写什么东西。有些照片附有亲笔签名。这个光荣角里还陈列着一张照片，那是他自己与面带微笑的肯尼迪。

When Tereza entered the room that night, she found him talking not to Kennedy but to a man of about sixty whom she had never seen before and who fell silent as soon as he saw her.

这天晚上，特丽莎走进这间屋子，发现他的交谈者并非肯尼迪，而是一位六旬老翁。她从未见过此入，那老头一见她也立即住了嘴。

"It's all right, said the ambassador. She's a friend. You can speak freely in front of her." Then he turned to Tereza. His son got five years today.

“没关系，”大使说，“她是朋友，在她面前你尽可随便说话。”然后又对她说，“他儿子今天给判了五年。”

During the first days of the invasion, she learned, the man's son and some friends had stood watch over the entrance to a building housing the Russian army special staff. Since any Czechs they saw coming or going were clearly agents in the service of the Russians, he and his friends trailed them, traced the number plates of their cars, and passed on the information to the pro-Dubcek clandestine radio and television broadcasters, who then warned the public. In the process the boy and his friends had given one of the traitors a thorough going over.

她后来才知道，在入侵开始的那几天，这老头的儿子和一些朋友一直监视着入侵特种兵部队的某所大楼，看见有些捷克人在那里进进出出，显然是为入侵者服务的特务，他和朋友们就跟踪那些人，查清他们的汽车牌号，把情报通知前杜布切克的秘密电台和电视台，再由他们警告公众。在这一过程中，孩子与他的朋友曾彻底搜查过一个叛国贼。

The boy's father said, "This photograph was the only corpus delicti. He denied it all until they showed it to him."

孩子的父亲说：“这张片子是唯一罪证，他们亮出来以前，他什么也不承认。”

He took a clipping out of his wallet. "It came out in the Times in the autumn of 1968."

他从钱包里取出一张报纸的剪样：“这是从1968年的《时报》上剪下来的。”

It was a picture of a young man grabbing another man by the throat and a crowd looking on in the background. Collaborator Punished read the caption.

照片是一个小伙子掐着另一个人的喉头，后面有围观的人群。照片标题是：《惩办勾结者》。

Tereza let out her breath. No, it wasn't one of hers.

特丽莎松了口气，那不是她拍的照片。

Walking home with Karenin through nocturnal Prague, she thought of the days she had spent photographing tanks. How naive they had been, thinking they were risking their lives for their country when in fact they were helping the Russian police.

她带着卡列宁回家，步行穿过夜幕下的布拉格，想着她那些拍摄坦克的日子。他们是多么天真，以为自己拍照是冒着性命为祖国而战，事实上这些照片却帮了警察局的忙。

She got home at half past one. Tomas was asleep. His hair gave off the aroma of a woman's groin.

她一点半才到家。托马斯睡着了，头发散发出女人下体的气味。

What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

什么是调情？有人可能会说，调情就是勾引另一个人使之相信有性交的可能，同时又不让这种可能成为现实。换句话说，调情便是允诺无确切保证的性交。

When Tereza stood behind the bar, the men whose drinks she poured flirted with her. Was she annoyed by the unending ebb and flow of flattery, double entendres, off-color stories, propositions, smiles, and glances? Not in the least. She had an irresistible desire to expose her body (that alien body she wanted to expel into the big wide world) to the undertow.

特丽莎站在酒柜后，那些要她斟酒的男人都与她调情。她对那些潮水般涌来没完没了的奉承话、下流双关语、低级故事、猥亵要求、笑脸和挤眉弄眼……生气吗？一点儿也不。她怀着不可抑制的欲望，要在社会底层暴露自己的身体（那个她想驱逐到大千世界里的异体）。

Tomas kept trying to convince her that love and lovemaking were two different things. She refused to understand. Now she was surrounded by men she did not care for in the slightest. What would making love with them be like? She yearned to try it, if only in the form of that no-guarantee promise called flirting.

托马斯总是努力使她相信，爱情与做爱是两回事。她当时拒绝理解这一点，而现在，她周围全是她毫不在乎的男人，与他们做爱会怎么样呢？如果只以那种称为调情的、即无保证的允诺形式，她渴望一试。

Let there be no mistake: Tereza did not wish to take revenge on Tomas; she merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell.

不要误会，特丽莎并不希望报复托马斯，只是希望为自己的混乱找条出路。她知道自己已成了他的负担：看待事物太严肃，把一切都弄成了悲剧，捕捉不住生理之爱的轻松和消遣乐趣。她多么希望能学会轻松！她期望有人帮助她去掉这种不合时代新潮的态度。

If for some women flirting is second nature, insignificant, routine, for Tereza it had developed into an important field of research with the goal of teaching her who she was and what she was capable of. But by making it important and serious, she deprived it of its lightness, and it became forced, labored, overdone. She disturbed the balance between promise and lack of guarantee (which, when maintained, is a sign of flirtistic virtuosity); she promised too ardently, and without making it clear that the promise involved no guarantee on her part. Which is another way of saying that she gave everyone the impression of being there for the taking. But when men responded by asking for what they felt they had been promised, they met with strong resistance, and their only explanation for it was that she was deceitful and malicious.

对某些女人来说，如果调情只是她们的第二天性，是不足道的日常惯例；对特丽莎来说，调情则上升为一个重要的研究课题，目的是告诉她：她是谁，她能做些什么。她把这一问题变得重要而严肃，使之失去了轻松，变得有逼迫感，变得费劲，力不胜任。她打破了允诺和不给保证之间的平衡（谁能保持平衡即说明他有调情的精湛技巧）；过分热情地允诺，却没表达清楚这个允诺中包含着她未作保证的另一方面。换一句话说，她绘每一个人的印象就是她准备接受任何人。男人们感到已被允诺，一旦他们向她要求允诺兑现，却遭到强烈的反抗。他们对此的唯一解释只能是，她是狡诈的，蓄谋害人。

One day, a boy of about sixteen perched himself on a bar stool and dropped a few provocative phrases that stood out in the general conversation like a false line in a drawing, a line that can be neither continued nor erased.

一天，一个约摸十六岁的少年坐在柜前的凳子上，好生生的谈话中不时跳出一些挑逗字眼，如同作画时画错了一条线，既不能继续画下去又不能抹掉。

"That's some pair of legs you've got there."

“那是你的一双腿。”

"So you can see through wood!" she fired back.

“你的眼睛能看透木头嘛！”她回敬道。

"I've watched you in the street," he responded, but by then she had turned away and was serving another customer. When she had finished, he ordered a cognac. She shook her head.

“我在街上就看见你了。”他回答。这时她转身去侍候别人。等她忙完了，他要一杯白兰地。她摇了摇头。

"But I'm eighteen!" he objected.

“我十八岁了！”他抗议。

"May I see your identification card?" Tereza said.

“把身份证给我看看。”特丽莎说。

"You may not," the boy answered.

“不！”少年回答。

"Then how about a soft drink?" said Tereza.

“那么来点软饮料？”特丽莎说。

Without a word, the boy stood up from the bar stool and left. He was back about a half hour later. With exaggerated gestures, he took a seat at the bar. There was enough alcohol on his breath to cover a ten-foot radius. "Give me that soft drink," he commanded.

少年一言不发起身就走了。约半个小时之后，他又转来，动作夸张地找了张凳子坐下，十步之内都能嗅到他口里的酒气。“软饮料拿来！”他命令。

"Why, you're drunk!" said Tereza.

“怎么啦，你醉了！”特丽莎说。

The boy pointed to a sign hanging on the wall behind Tereza's back: Sale of Alcoholic Beverages to Minors Is Strictly Prohibited. You are prohibited from serving me alcohol, he said, sweeping his arm from the sign to Tereza, but I am not prohibited from being drunk.

少年指着特丽莎身后墙上接的一块牌子：严禁供应未成年孩子酒精饮料，说：“禁止你们卖酒给我，但禁不住我喝酒。”

"Where did you get so drunk?" Tereza asked.

“你在哪儿喝醉的？”特丽莎问。

"In the bar across the street," he said, laughing, and asked again for a soft drink.

“对门的酒吧。”他哈哈大笑，再一次要软饮料。

"Well, why didn't you stay there?"

“你干嘛不在那儿喝？”

"Because I wanted to look at you, he said. I love you!"

“因为我想看见你，我爱你。”

His face contorted oddly as he said it, and Tereza had trouble deciding whether he was sneering, making advances, or joking. Or was he simply so drunk that he had no idea what he was saying?

他的脸古怪地扭曲着，特丽莎很难断定他是讥笑、是求爱、还是开玩笑。或者他纯粹只是醉得不知自己在胡说些什么。

She put the soft drink down in front of him and went back to her other customers. "The I love you!" seemed to have exhausted the boy's resources. He emptied his glass in silence, left money on the counter, and slipped out before Tereza had time to look up again.

她把软饮料放在他面前，回到别的顾客那里去了。“我爱你”这句话似乎使少年用尽了力气，他默默地喝光了酒，把钱放在柜台上，没等特丽莎有机会看他便溜走了。

A moment after he left, a short, bald-headed man, who was on his third vodka, said, "You ought to know that serving young people alcohol is against the law. "

他走了一会儿，一个秃顶的矮个子喝着他的第三杯伏特加说：“你应该知道，给年轻人喝酒是犯法的。”

"I didn't serve him alcohol! That was a soft drink!"

“我没给他酒，那是软饮料！”

"I saw what you slipped into it!"

“我看见你倒了什么！”

"What are you talking about?"

“你说什么？”

"Give me another vodka," said the bald man, and added, "I've had my eye on you for some time now."

“再给我一杯伏特加，”秃头又加了—句，“我已经看你有一阵子啦。”

"Then why not be grateful for the view of a beautiful woman and keep your mouth shut?" interjected a tall man who had stepped up to the bar in time to observe the entire scene.

“闭嘴！也不感谢一个漂亮姑娘给你的眼福？”一个正好走近酒柜的高个头男人，见此情景插了进来。

"You stay out of this!" shouted the bald man. "What business is it of yours? "

“站一边去吧！”秃子叫道，“关你什么事？”

"And what business is it of yours, if I may ask?" the tall man retorted.

“那我又问一句，关你什么事？”高个头反驳。

Tereza served the bald man his vodka. He downed it at one gulp, paid, and departed.

待特丽莎端上伏特加，秃子一饮而尽，付上钱，走了。

"Thank you," said Tereza to the tall man.

“谢谢你。”特丽莎对高个头说。

"Don't mention it," said the tall man, and went his way, too.

“不用谢。”高个头说完也走了。

A few days later, he turned up at the bar again. When she saw him, she smiled at him like a friend. "Thanks again. That bald fellow comes in all the time. He's terribly unpleasant."

几天后，他又到酒吧来了。她看见他便象老朋友一样冲他笑笑：“再一次谢谢你，那个秃顶家伙老是来这里，太讨厌了。”

"Forget him."

“忘了他吧。”

"What makes him want to hurt me?"

“他为哪桩要害我？”

"He's a petty little drunk. Forget him."

“他是个小小的醉鬼，忘了他。”

“好吧。

"If you say so."

既然你这样说。”

The tall man looked in her eyes." Promise? "

高个头看着她的眼睛：“答应啦？”

"I promise."

“答应。”

"I like hearing you make me promises," he said, still looking in her eyes.

“我喜欢听到你的许诺。”他仍然看着她的眼睛。

The flirtation was on: the behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, even though the possibility itself remains in the realm of theory, in suspense.

调情开始了：这是勾引另一个人使之相信有性交的可能，虽然可能性本身还停留在理论范畴和悬念之中。

"What's a beautiful girl like you doing in the ugliest part of Prague?"

“象你这样漂亮的姑娘，怎么在布拉格最丑陋的地方工作？”

"And you? she countered. What are you doing in the ugliest part of Prague?"

“你呢，你到布拉格这个最丑陋的地方来干什么？”

He told her he lived nearby. He was an engineer and had stopped off on his way home from work the other day by sheer chance.

他告诉她，他就住在附近，是个工程师，下班回家顺路经过这里，那一天在这里也是纯属碰巧。

When Tereza looked at Tomas, her eyes went not to his eyes but to a point three or four inches higher, to his hair, which gave off the aroma of other women's groins.

特丽莎看着托马斯，没有看他的眼睛，而是看着比眼睛高三、四英寸的地方，看着他那散发出另一个女人下体气味的头发。

"I can't take it anymore, Tomas. I know I shouldn't complain. Ever since you came back to Prague for me, I've forbidden myself to be jealous. I don't want to be jealous. I suppose I'm just not strong enough to stand up to it. Help me, please!"

“托马斯，我再也受不了啦。我知道我不该报怨。既然你是为了我才回布拉格的，我已经禁止我自己嫉妒。我不想嫉妒。我猜想自己只不过是不够强悍，受不了它。救救我吧！求你！”

He put his arm in hers and took her to the park where years before they had gone on frequent walks. The park had red, blue, and yellow benches. They sat down.

他拥抱了她，把她带到他们以前经常散步的公园。公园里有红、蓝、黄色的长凳，他们坐下来。

"I understand you. I know what you want, said Tomas. I've taken care of everything. All you have to do is climb Petrin Hill."

“我理解你，我知道你需要什么，”托马斯说：“我留心了一切，你所需要做的，只是去爬一爬佩特林山。”

"Petrin Hill?" She felt a surge of anxiety. "Why Petrin Hill?"

“佩特林山？”她心里一紧，“为什么要爬佩特林山？”

"You'll see when you get up there."

“你爬上去就知道了。”

She was terribly upset about the idea of going. Her body was so weak that she could scarcely lift it off the bench. But she was constitutionally unable to disobey Tomas. She forced herself to stand.

她一想到走就极度不安，身体如此虚弱，连离开凳子的力气似乎都没有了。但她天经地义地不能违抗他，强迫自己站了起来。

She looked back. He was still sitting on the bench, smiling at her almost cheerfully. With a wave of the hand he signaled her to move on.

她回头看了看，见他仍然坐在凳子上，几乎是兴高采烈地笑了，挥挥手，示意她继续前进。

Coming out at the foot of Petrin Hill, that great green mound rising up in the middle of Prague, she was surprised to find it devoid of people. This was strange, because at other times half of Prague seemed to be milling about. It made her anxious. But the hill was so quiet and the quiet so comforting that she yielded fully to its embrace. On her way up, she paused several times to look back: below her she saw the towers and bridges; the saints were shaking their fists and lifting their stone eyes to the clouds. It was the most beautiful city in the world.

来到佩特林山脚，那壮美的绿色山峦在布技格中部拔地面起。她惊奇地发现山里悄无人影。真是怪事，因为在平常似乎总有一半布拉格人在到处乱转的，而眼下的反常使她不安。但山里如此宁静，宁静得如此给人慰藉，以致她完全倾倒在它的怀抱中。她走着走着，多次停下来回首眺望，看到了脚下的塔楼和桥梁，圣徒们舞着拳头，指起石头的眼睛凝望云端。这是世界上最美的城市。

At last she reached the top. Beyond the ice-cream and souvenir stands (none of which happened to be open) stretched a broad lawn spotted here and there with trees. She noticed several men on the lawn. The closer she came to them, the slower she walked. There were six in all. They were standing or strolling along at a leisurely pace like golfers looking over the course and weighing various clubs in their hands, trying to get into the proper frame of mind for a match.

最后，她到达顶峰。在冰激淋和纪念品的小摊子（它们从来不曾营业）那边，展开着一片广阔的草地，星星点点生着一些树。她注意到草地上有几个人，越走近他们，她的脚步就越慢。那里一共六个，有的站着，有的悠闲地溜达，如同高尔夫球手在查看球场掂量各种高尔夫球的球棒，努力思索取胜的方安

She finally came near them. Of the six men, three were there to play the same role as she: they were unsettled; they seemed eager to ask all sorts of questions, but feared making nuisances of themselves and so held their tongues and merely looked about inquisitively.

她终于走近了池们。六个人中间有三位象她扮演的角色一样：惶惶不安，看来急于要问个明白，又怕自讨没趣，只得封住口好奇地四下张望张望而已。

The other three radiated condescending benevolence. One of them had a rifle in his hand. Spotting Tereza, he waved at her and said with a smile, "Yes, this is the place."

另外三个人流露出恩赐别人的仁慈宽厚，其中一位手里提着步枪，认出特丽莎后朝她笑着挥了挥手：“是啊，就是这里。”

She gave a nod in reply, but still felt extremely anxious.

她点头作答，仍感到极度惶恐。

The man added: "To avoid an error, this was your choice, wasn t it?"

那人又说：“别出什么错，这可是你自己的选择，对吧？”

It would have been easy to say, "No, no! It wasn't my choice at all!" but she could not imagine disappointing Tomas. What excuse, what apology could she find for going back home? And so she said, "Yes, of course. It was my choice."

她本该很容易地说：“不，不！这根本不是我的选择！”但她不能想象托马斯的失望。如果她回去的话，她将怎样解释？怎样道歉？于是她说：“当然，是我自己的选择。”

The man with the rifle continued: "Let me explain why I wish to know. The only time we do this is when we are certain that the people who come to us have chosen to die of their own accord. We consider it a service."

拿枪的人又说：“我想解释一下为什么我想知道这一点。只有我们确认来的人是自己选择死亡，我们才这么做。我们把这看成一种服务。”

He gave her so quizzical a glance that she had to assure him once more: "No, no, don't worry. It was my choice."

他古怪地盯了她一眼，她只好再一次向他证实：“不，不，不用担心，是我自己的选择。”

"Would you like to go first?" he asked.

“你愿意第一个来吗？”他问。

Because she wanted to put off the execution as long as she could, she said, "No, please, no. If it's at all possible, I'd like to be last."

她想尽量推迟自己的死刑，便说：“不，不要，如果可能，我想作最后一个。”

"As you please," he said, and went off to the others. Neither of his assistants was armed; their sole function was to attend to the people who were to die. They took them by the arms and walked them across the lawn. The grassy surface proved quite an expanse; it ran as far as the eye could see. The people to be executed were allowed to choose their own trees. They paused at each one and looked it over carefully, unable to make up their minds. Two of them eventually chose plane trees, but the third wandered on and on, no tree apparently striking him as worthy of his death. The assistant who held him by the arm guided him along gently and patiently until at last the man lost the courage to go on and stopped at a luxuriant maple.

“随你的便。”他向其他人走去。他的两个助手都没有武器，唯一职责是陪伴要死的人。他们挽着那些人的手臂，走过草地。草场广阔无际，一直铺向肉眼不可及的远方。等待死刑的人得到自己可以选择一棵树的许可，在每颗树下都停一停，仔细打量，拿不定主意。有两位最终选择了梧桐树，第三位走了又走，看来他感到没有一棵树能与自己的死相称。挟着他的助手和蔼而耐心地引导他，直到最后，他失去了继续走下去的勇气，在一棵繁茂的枫树下停了下来。

Then the assistants blindfolded all three men.

助手们给他们蒙上眼睛。

And so three men, their eyes blindfolded, their heads turned to the sky, stood with their backs against three trees on the endless lawn.

于是，这三个人，被蒙着眼，仰面朝天，背靠无际草地上的三棵树。

The man with the rifle took aim and fired. There was nothing to be heard but the singing of birds: the rifle was equipped with a silencing device. There was nothing to be seen but the collapse of the man who had been leaning against the maple.

拿枪的人瞄准目标开火了。什么声音也没有，只有鸟儿在歌唱：原来枪上装了消声器。什么东西也看不见，只有那靠着枫树的人沉沉倒下。

Without taking a step, the man with the rifle turned in a different direction, and one of the other men silently crumpled. And seconds later (again the man with the rifle merely turned in place), the third man sank to the lawn.

拿枪的人原地不动，把枪移向另一个方向。第二个人静静地扭动了一下。一秒钟以后（拿枪的人只转了个方向），第三个人也裁倒在草地上。

One of the assistants went up to Tereza; he was holding a dark-blue ribbon.

一个助手朝特丽莎走过来，手里拿着一条深蓝色的眼罩。

She realized he had come to blindfold her. "No," she said, shaking her head, "I want to watch."

她意识到对方是来蒙眼睛的，摇摇头说：“不用，我要看。”

But that was not the real reason why she refused to be blindfolded. She was not one of those heroic types who are determined to stare down the firing squad. She simply wanted to postpone death. Once her eyes were covered, she would be in death's antechamber, from which there was no return.

但这不是她拒绝蒙眼的真正理由。她不是那种英雄气质的人，决心盯得射手们甘拜下风。她只是想推迟死的来临。一旦蒙上眼睛，她就踏进死亡的大门不可能返回了。

The man did not force her; he merely took her arm. But as they walked across the open lawn, Tereza was unable to choose a tree. No one forced her to hurry, but she knew that in the end she would not escape. Seeing a flowering chestnut ahead of her, she walked up and stopped in front of it. She leaned her back against its trunk and looked up. She saw the leaves resplendent in the sun; she heard the sounds of the city, faint and sweet, like thousands of distant violins.

那人没有逼她，只是扶住她的手臂。他们走到开阔的草地时，特丽莎无法选出一棵树。没人催促她，但她知道自己最终也无法逃脱。她看见前面有棵开着花的栗树，走了过去，在它前面停下来。靠着树干向上看去，看见了太阳下灿烂的叶片，还听到了这座城市的声音，柔和而甜美，象远处演奏着的万把提琴。

The man raised his rifle.

那人举起了枪。

Tereza felt her courage slipping away. Her weakness drove her to despair, "but she could do nothing to counteract it. But it wasn't my choice," she said.

特丽莎感到自己的勇气都没有了，虚弱使她绝望，一种根本无法排拒的绝望。“但这不是我自己的选择。”她说。

He immediately lowered the barrel of his rifle and said in a gentle voice, "If it wasn't your choice, we can't do it. We haven't the right."

对方立刻把枪放下，用温和的声音说：“既然不是你的选择，我们不能这么做。我们没有权利。”

He said it kindly, as if apologizing to Tereza for not being able to shoot her if it was not her choice. His kindness tore at her heartstrings, and she turned her face to the bark of the tree and burst into tears.

他说得很和善，象在对特丽莎道歉，他们不能射杀一个自己没有选择死亡的人。他的和善震荡着特丽莎的心弦，她转身把脸紧贴着树干，突然放声大哭起来。

Her whole body racked with sobs, she embraced the tree as if it were not a tree, as if it were her long-lost father, a grandfather she had never known, a great-grandfather, a great-great-grandfather, a hoary old man come to her from the depths of time to offer her his face in the form of rough tree bark.

她哭得全身都在颤抖，紧紧抱着那棵树，好象不是一颗树，而是她失散多年的父亲，一位她不曾认识的祖父，一位老祖父，一位祖父的祖父的祖父，一个满头自发的老爷爷从时间的深处走来，把树皮一般粗糙的脸交给她。

Then she turned her head. The three men were far off in the distance by then, wandering across the greensward like golfers. The one with the rifle even held it like a golf club.

她转过头来。这时那三个人已走得远远的了，就象高尔夫球手走过一片翠绿，拿枪的人象是握着一根球棒。

Walking down the paths of Petrin Hill, she could not wean her thoughts from the man who was supposed to shoot her but did not. Oh, how she longed for him! Someone had to help her, after all! Tomas wouldn't. Tomas was sending her to her death. Someone else would have to help her!

走下佩特林山，她老忘不了那个要开枪杀她但最终没那样做的人。呵，她多么想念他！毕竟还有人能够帮助她！托马斯不能够，托马斯在送她走向死亡。别的人来帮助她了！

The closer she got to the city, the more she longed for the man with the rifle and the more she feared Tomas. He would never forgive her for failing to keep her word. He would never forgive her her cowardice, her betrayal. She had come to the street where they lived, and knew she would see him in a minute or two. She was so afraid of seeing him that her stomach was in knots and she thought she was going to be sick.

她越走近城市，就越想念那个拿枪的人，越怕托马斯。他绝不会原谅她的自食其言，绝不会原谅她的儒弱和她的反叛！她回到他们住的街上，知道一两分钟以后就要看见他了。她如此害怕见他以至胃又隐隐闹腾起来了，她想自己是要病了。

The engineer started trying to lure her up to his flat. She refused the first two invitations, but accepted the third.

工程师开始劝诱她去他的住宅，前两次邀请她一一回绝，第三次却答应了。

After her usual stand-up lunch in the kitchen, she set off. It was just before two.

象往常一样站在厨房里吃了午饭，她便出发，这时还不到两点。

As she approached his house, she could feel her legs slowing down of their own accord.

快到他的房子时，她感到自己的腿自然放慢了脚步。

But then it occurred to her that she was actually being sent to him by Tomas. Hadn't he told her time and again that love and sexuality had nothing in common? Well, she was merely testing his words, confirming them. She could almost hear him say, "I understand you. I know what you want. I've taken care of everything. You'll see when you get up there."

她突然想起，事实上是托马斯把她送到这里来的。难道不是他反复地对她说爱情与性交毫无共同之处吗？好吧，她只是实践一下他的话，证实一下他的话而已。她差不多能听到他在说：“我理解你。我知道你需要什么。我留心了一切。你爬上去就知道了。”

Yes, all she was doing was following Tomas's commands.

是的，她所做的一切都是遵循托马斯的指示。

She wouldn't stay long; long enough for a cup of coffee; long enough to feel what it was like to reach the very border of infidelity. She would push her body up to the border, let it stand there for a moment as at the stake, and then, when the engineer tried to put his arms around her, she would say, as she said to the man with the rifle on Petrin Hill, "It wasn't my choice."

她不会在那里呆很久，不超过喝杯咖啡的时间；仅仅是去体验一下涉足不忠的边缘是什么滋味。她把自己的身体推向那个边缘，让它在那里如同标桩立一会儿，然后，当工程师企图拥抱她时，她就会象对佩特林山上的拿枪人那样，说：“这不是我自己的选择。”

Whereupon the man would lower the barrel of his rifle and say in a gentle voice, "If it wasn't your choice, I can't do it. I haven't the right."

于是，那人会放下枪，用温和的声音说：“既然不是你的选择，我不能这么做。我没有权利。”

And she would turn her face to the bark of the tree and burst into tears.

而她，将转身把脸紧贴着树干突然放声大哭。

The building had been constructed at the turn of the century in a workers' district of Prague. She entered a hall with dirty whitewashed walls, climbed a flight of worn stone stairs with iron banisters, and turned to the left. It was the second door, no name, no bell. She knocked.

这座房子于本世纪初建在布拉格的工人区。她进了一间白粉墙脏兮兮的厅屋，爬了一截带铁栏杆的破旧石梯，往左转，第二个门，没有门牌也没有门铃。她敲了敲门。

He opened the door.

他开了门。

The entire flat consisted of a single room with a curtain setting off the first five or six feet from the rest and therefore forming a kind of makeshift anteroom. It had a table, a hot plate, and a refrigerator. Stepping beyond the curtain, she saw the oblong of a window at the end of a long, narrow space, with books along one side and a daybed and armchair against the other.

整个房子只有一间，前面五六英尺的地方挂了一个帘子，形成了一间临时的小客厅。有桌子、电炉和一个冰箱。走到帘子那边，她看见窄长的空间尽头是一个长方形的窗子，窗子一边码着书，另一边放着一张小床和一把椅子。

"It's a very simple place I have here," said the engineer. "I hope you don't find it depressing."

“我这里非常简陋，”工程师说，“但愿你不要扫兴。”

"No, not at all," said Tereza, looking at the wall covered with bookshelves. He had no desk, but hundreds of books. She liked seeing them, and the anxiety that had plagued her died down somewhat. From childhood, she had regarded books as the emblems of a secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.

“不，一点儿也不。”特丽莎看了看几乎遮去一面墙的书架。他没有书桌，只有数以百计的书。她喜欢看书，从小就把书视为友谊默契的象征，一个有这种图书馆的人是不可能伤害她的，折磨她的惶恐感已经消失得无影无踪。

He asked her what she'd like to drink. Wine?

他问她想喝点什么，酒吗？

No, no, no wine. Coffee, if anything.

不，不，不要酒。只要点咖啡。

He disappeared behind the curtain, and she went over to the bookshelves. One of the books caught her eye at once. It was a translation of Sophocles' Oedipus. How odd to find it here! Years ago, Tomas had given it to her, and after she had read it he went on and on about it. Then he sent his reflections to a newspaper, and the article turned their life upside down.

他在帘子后面消失了。她继续打量书架，一眼就看到了一本书，索福克勒斯《俄狄浦斯》的译本。在这里找到了它是太奇怪了！几年前，托马斯把这本书给她，她读过之后，他继续一读再读。他给一家报纸送去对这本书的读后感，这篇文章把他们的生活搞得翻天覆地。

But now, just looking at the spine of the book seemed to calm her. It made her feel as though Tomas had purposely left a trace, a message that her presence here was his doing. She took the book off the shelf and opened it. When the tall engineer came back into the room, she would ask him why he had it, whether he had read it, and what he thought of it. That would be her ruse to turn the conversation away from the hazardous terrain of a stranger's flat to the intimate world of Tomas's thoughts.

可现在，看着这书脊似乎也是她的一种安慰。她觉得似乎是托马斯有意留下这一丝痕迹，一点信息：她在这里出现都是他安排的。她从书架上取出书，打开来，等高个头工程师进房来，就可以问问他为什么有这本书，读过没有，对此书有什么看法。她可以设法将这场谈话从一个陌生人房子里的危险话题，引向熟悉的托马斯思维领域。

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder. The man took the book out of her hand, put it back on the shelf without a word, and led her over to the daybed.

她感到一只手搭在她肩上。那人从她手里拿走了书，不吭一声地放回书架，把她带到床边。

Again she recalled the words she had used with the Petrin executioner, and said them aloud: "But it wasn't my choice!"

她再次回想起在佩特林死刑中说过的那句话，大声说：“这可不是我自己的选择！”

She believed them to be a miraculous formula that would instantly change the situation, but in that room the words lost their magic power. I have a feeling they even strengthened the man in his resolve: he pressed her to himself and put his hand on her breast.

她相信这神奇的符咒会立即改变局势，可是在这间屋里，它失去了魔力。我甚至有一种感觉，它更坚定了那男人的决心：把她拉到自己怀里，把手放在她的乳房上。

Oddly enough, the touch of his hand immediately erased what remained of her anxiety. For the engineer's hand referred to her body, and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone. The body that had betrayed her and that she had sent out into the world among other bodies.

太奇怪了，手的接触立刻消除了她最后的一丝惶恐。她意识到工程师的手只涉及到她的身体，她自己（即她的灵魂）完全置之度外。只是身体，仅仅是身体，是背叛了她的身体，是被她送入世界与其它身体并存的身体。

He undid the first button on her blouse and indicated she was to continue. She did not comply. She had sent her body out into the world, and refused to take any responsibility for it. She neither resisted nor assisted him, her soul thereby announcing that it did not condone what was happening but had decided to remain neutral.

他解开她的第一颗衬衣纽扣，暗示她自己继续下去。她没有服从。她把自己的身体送入了那个世界，但拒绝对它负任何责任。她既不反抗也不协助他，于是灵魂宣布它不能宽恕这一切但决意保持中立。

She was nearly immobile while he undressed her. When he kissed her, her lips failed to react. But suddenly she felt her groin becoming moist, and she was afraid.

他脱她的衣服时，她几乎一动不动。他吻她时，她的嘴唇没有反应。她突然感到自己的下身开始潮润起来，她害怕了。

The excitement she felt was all the greater because she was excited against her will. In other words, her soul did condone the proceedings, albeit covertly. But she also knew that if the feeling of excitement was to continue, her soul's approval would have to keep mute. The moment it said its yes aloud, the moment it tried to take an active part in the love scene, the excitement would subside. For what made the soul so excited was that the body was acting against its will; the body was betraying it, and the soul was looking on.

她兴奋地反抗自己的意志，并感到兴奋因此而更加强烈。换句话说，她的灵魂尽管是偷偷地但的确宽恕了这些举动。她还知道，如果这种兴奋继续下去，灵魂的赞许将保持缄默。一旦它大声叫好，就会积极参加爱的行动，那么兴奋感反而会减退。所以，使灵魂如此兴奋的东西是自己的身体正在以行动反抗灵魂的意志。灵魂在看着背叛灵魂的肉体。

Then he pulled off her panties and she was completely naked. When her soul saw her naked body in the arms of a stranger, it was so incredulous that it might as well have been watching the planet Mars at close range. In the light of the incredible, the soul for the first time saw the body as something other than banal; for the first time it looked on the body with fascination: all the body's matchless, inimitable, unique qualities had suddenly come to the fore. This was not the most ordinary of bodies (as the soul had regarded it until then); this was the most extraordinary body. The soul could not tear its eyes away from the body's birthmark, the round brown blemish above its hairy triangle. It looked upon that mark as its seal, a holy seal it had imprinted on the body, and now a stranger's penis was moving blasphemously close to it.

他已经脱了她的短裤，让她完全光着身子了。她的灵魂看到了她赤裸的身体在一个陌生人的臂膀之中，如同在近距离观察火星时一样感到如此难以置信。这种难以置信，是因为灵魂第一次看到肉体并非俗物，第一次用迷恋惊奇的目光来触抚肉体：肉体那种无与伦比、不可仿制、独一无二的特质突然展现出来。这不是那种最为普遍平凡的肉体（如同灵魂以前认为的那样），是最为杰出非凡的肉体。灵魂无法使自己的眼睛离开那身体的胎记，圆圆的、棕色的、在须毛三角区上方的黑痣。它把那颗黑痣当作自己的印记，曾被刻入肉体的神圣印戳。而现在，一个陌生人的生殖器正朝它逼近褒渎着它。

Peering into the engineer's face, she realized that she would never allow her body, on which her soul had left its mark, to take pleasure in the embrace of someone she neither knew nor wished to know. She was filled with an intoxicating hatred. She collected a gob of saliva to spit in the stranger's face. He was observing her with as much eagerness as she him, and noting her rage, he quickened the pace of his movements on her body. Tereza could feel orgasm advancing from afar, and shouted "No, no, no!" to resist it, but resisted, constrained, deprived of an outlet, the ecstasy lingered all the longer in her body, flowing through her veins like a shot of morphine. She thrashed in his arms, swung her fists in the air, and spat in his face.

她盯着工程师的脸，意识到她决不会允许自己的肉体——灵魂留下了印戳的肉体，由一个她一无所知也不希望有所知的人来拥抱，不允许自己的肉体从中取乐。她沉浸在仇恨的迷醉中，集了一口痰，朝陌生人脸上吐去。他正热切地看着她，注意到了她的愤怒，加快了在她肉体上的动作。特丽莎感到高潮正在远远到来，她大叫大喊以作反抗：“不，不，不！”但反抗也好，压抑也好，不允许发泄也好，一种狂迷久久地在她肉体里回荡，在她血管里流淌，如同一剂吗啡。她狠狠地捶打他的手臂，在空中挥舞着拳头，朝他脸上吐口水。

Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like white water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.

现代抽水马桶从地上升起，象一朵朵洁白的水白合。建筑师尽其所能使人的身体忘记自己的微不足道，使人不去在意自己肠中的废物，让水箱里的水将其冲入地下水道。尽管废水管道的触须已深入我们的房屋，但它们小心翼翼避开了人们的视线。于是，我们很高兴自己对这些看不见的大粪的威尼斯水城一无所知，这大粪的水城就在我们的浴室、卧室、舞厅，甚至国会大厦的底下。

The bathroom in the old working-class flat on the outskirts of Prague was less hypocritical: the floor was covered with gray tile and the toilet rising up from it was broad, squat, and pitiful. It did not look like a white water lily; it looked like what it was: the enlarged end of a sewer pipe. And since it lacked even a wooden seat, Tereza had to perch on the cold enamel rim.

这间处于布拉格郊区的老式工人住宅，浴室没有那么虚伪：地面铺着灰砖，地面拱出来的便池是敞露的，蹲式的，可怜巴巴。一点不象白色的水百合；就象它本身：一根废水管道放大了的终端。它连一个木垫座都没有，特丽莎只好蹭栖在冰冷的搪瓷沿上。

She was sitting there on the toilet, and her sudden desire to void her bowels was in fact a desire to go to the extreme of humiliation, to become only and utterly a body, the body her mother used to say was good for nothing but digesting and excreting. And as she voided her bowels, Tereza was overcome by a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness. Nothing could be more miserable than her naked body perched on the enlarged end of a sewer pipe.

她蹲坐在厕所里，突然想要大便，实际上是想尝尝极端羞辱的滋味，使自己成为一个完全面纯粹的肉体，一个她母亲以前老说的除了吃喝拉撤就别无益处的肉体。她大便了，一种极大的悲伤和孤独征服了她，再没有什么比她裸身蹲在废水管道放大了的终端上更可悲的了。

Her soul had lost its onlooker's curiosity, its malice and pride; it had retreated deep into the body again, to the farthest gut, waiting desperately for someone to call it out.

她的灵魂已失了旁观音的好奇，怨恨，以及自豪，又退入深深的体内，直到最深处的内脏，渴望某人去唤它出来。

She stood up from the toilet, flushed it, and went into the anteroom. The soul trembled in her body, her naked, spurned body. She still felt on her anus the touch of the paper she had used to wipe herself.

她站了起来，冲了便池，走进小客厅。灵魂在她裸露的、被抛弃了的肉体中哆嗦颤抖。肛门上一直还有刚才用手纸揩擦的感觉。

And suddenly something unforgettable occurred: suddenly she felt a desire to go in to him and hear his voice, his words. If he spoke to her in a soft, deep voice, her soul would take courage and rise to the surface of her body, and she would burst out crying. She would put her arms around him the way she had put her arms around the chestnut tree's thick trunk in her dream.

将来不可忘怀的事出现了：她猛地感到—种要奔向他的欲望，想听到他的声音，他的言语。如果他送来温和而低沉的声音，她的灵魂将鼓足勇气升出体外，她将大哭一场，将象梦中抱着那栗树的粗树干一样去抱着他。

Standing there in the anteroom, she tried to withstand the strong desire to burst out crying in his presence. She knew that her failure to withstand it would have ruinous consequences. She would fall in love with him.

她站在小客厅里，极力抑制自己当着他的面大哭一场的欲望。她知道，如果抑制不住的话，将有灾难性的后果。她会爱上他的。

Just then, his voice called to her from the inner room. Now that she heard that voice by itself (divorced from the engineer's tall stature), it amazed her: it was high-pitched and thin. How could she have ignored it all this time?

正在这时，他在里屋里叫她。她听到了那声音本身（已从工程师的高大个头中分离出来），声音使她惊讶：又尖细又单薄，她怎么这么久一直没注意到呢？

Perhaps the surprise of that unpleasant voice was what saved her from temptation. She went inside, picked up her clothes from the floor, threw them on, and left.

也许正是对这种令人不快的声音的惊讶，把她从欲念中救了出来。她进去，从地上拾起衣服，穿上，走了。

She had done her shopping and was on her way home. Karenin had the usual roll in his mouth. It was a cold morning; there was a slight frost. They were passing a housing development, where in the spaces between buildings the tenants maintained small flower and vegetable gardens, when Karenin suddenly stood stock still and riveted his eyes on something. She looked over, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Karenin gave a tug, and she followed along behind. Only then did she notice the black head and large beak of a crow lying on the cold dirt of a barren plot. The bodiless head bobbed slowly up and down, and the beak gave out an occasional hoarse and mournful croak.

她买了东西往回走。卡列宁象通常那样嘴里叼着面包圈。这是一个寒冷的早晨，结了薄薄的冰。他们经过一片居民新开发区，那里有房客们在楼房之间种上的花卉和蔬菜。卡列宁突然站着不动了，眼睛盯着什么东西。她仔细看了看，还和原来一样，什么也没看见。卡列宁拉了一下绳子，带着她走过去。直到这时，她才发现一个黑色的鸟头和一张乌鸦的大嘴，埋在荒芜而冰凉的泥土里。身子不见后剩下的鸟头缓慢移动，鸟嘴间或嘶哑地发出喳喳叫喊。

Karenin was so excited he dropped his roll. Tereza tied him to a tree to prevent him from hurting the crow. Then she knelt down and tried to dig up the soil that had been stamped down around the bird to bury it alive. It was not easy. She broke a nail. The blood began to flow.

特丽莎发现卡列宁兴奋得把面包圈都丢了，便把他系在一棵树上，以防他伤害那乌鸦。随后，她跪下来，想挖出乌鸦周围活活埋着它的泥土。这并不容易，她的一片指甲给挖裂了，流了血。

All at once a rock landed nearby. She turned and caught sight of two nine- or ten-year-old boys peeking out from behind a wall. She stood up. They saw her move, saw the dog by the tree, and ran off.

突然，一块石头落在附近。她转过身来，看见两个十来岁大小的男孩，从墙背后朝这边偷看。她站了起来。他们看见她有所行动，又看见树旁的狗，便跑开去。

Once more she knelt down and scratched away at the dirt. At last she succeeded in pulling the crow out of its grave. But the crow was lame and could neither walk nor fly. She wrapped it up in the red scarf she had been wearing around her neck, and pressed it to her body with her left hand. With her right hand she untied Karenin from the tree. It took all the strength she could muster to quiet him down and make him heel.

她再次跪下来，扒开了泥土，终于把乌鸦成功地救出了坟墓。但乌鸦跛了，不能走也不能飞。她取下一直系在脖子上的红围巾将它包起来，用左手把它搂在怀里，再用右手帮卡列宁解开系在树上的皮带。她使了全身力气才使他安安分分地跟她走。

She rang the doorbell, not having a free hand for the key. Tomas opened the door. She handed him the leash, and with the words:"Hold him!" took the crow into the bathroom. She laid it on the floor under the washbasin. It flapped its wings a little, but could move no more than that. There was a thick yellow liquid oozing from it. She made a bed of old rags to protect it from the cold tiles. From time to time the bird would give a hopeless flap of its lame wing and raise its beak as a reproach.

没有空手来掏钥匙，她按了按门铃，让托马斯把门打开。她把狗的皮带交给他并嘱咐：“管住他！”然后把乌鸦带到浴室，把它放在地面与水盆之间。它只是轻轻拍了拍翅膀，没有更多的动作。洗过它的水成了黄浆。特丽莎用破布给它铺了个床，使它不沾染砖块的凉气。鸟儿一次次无望地扑动受伤的翅膀，翘翘嘴，象是在责备。

She sat transfixed on the edge of the bath, unable to take her eyes off the dying crow. In its solitude and desolation she saw a reflection of her own fate, and she repeated several times to herself, I have no one left in the world but Tomas.

她呆呆地坐在浴盆沿上，眼睛老盯着这只正在死去的乌鸦。她看出它的孤独与凄凉也是自己命运的反照，一次又一次对自己说，除了托马斯，我在这个世界上什么也没留下。

Did her adventure with the engineer teach her that casual sex has nothing to do with love? That it is light, weightless? Was she calmer now?

她与工程师的冒险告诉了她什么？轻浮的性爱与爱情毫不相关吗？那是一种无所负担的轻松吗？她现在已经平静多了吗？

Not in the least.

一点也没有。

She kept picturing the following scene: She had come out of the toilet and her body was standing in the anteroom naked and spurned. Her soul was trembling, terrified, buried in the depths of her bowels. If at that moment the man in the inner room had addressed her soul, she would have burst out crying and fallen into his arms.

她老是想象着以下的情景：她从厕所出来，赤裸的和被摈弃的肉体在小客厅里。被惊吓的灵魂在颤抖，埋葬于体内深处。如果那一刻，内屋里的男人呼唤她的灵魂，她会大哭着扑进他的怀抱。

She imagined what it would have been like if the woman standing in the anteroom had been one of Tomas's mistresses and if the man inside had been Tomas. All he would have had to do was say one word, a single word, and the girl would have thrown her arms around him and wept.

她设想，如果站在那屋子里的女人是托马斯的一个情人，而那男人是托马斯，那又会是怎样的情景呢？他所要做的只是说一个宇，仅仅一个字，那姑娘就会抱着他哭起来。

Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice. Tomas had no defense against the lure of love, and Tereza feared for him every minute of every hour.

特丽莎知道爱情产生的一瞬间将会发生什么：女人无力抗拒任何呼唤着她受惊灵魂的声音，而男人则无力阻挡任何灵魂正在响应呼唤的女人。托马斯抵制不住爱情的诱惑，而特丽莎每一个小时的每一分钟都在为他担忧。

What weapons did she have at her disposal? None but her fidelity. And she offered him that at the very outset, the very first day, as if aware she had nothing more to give. Their love was an oddly asymmetrical construction: it was supported by the absolute certainty of her fidelity like a gigantic edifice supported by a single column.

她还有什么储存的武器可以使用呢？没有，她只有忠诚。从一开始，从第一天起，她似乎就明白自己没有别的可以给予，唯有一片忠诚可以奉献。他们的爱是一个不对称的畸形建筑：支撑着建筑的是她绝对可靠的忠诚，象一座大厦只有一根柱子支撑。

Before long, the crow stopped flapping its wings, and gave no more than the twitch of a broken, mangled leg. Tereza refused to be separated from it. She could have been keeping vigil over a dying sister. In the end, however, she did step into the kitchen for a bite to eat.

没多久，乌鸦不再扇动它的翅膀。一条血肉模糊的断腿抽搐了一下，再也没有动静。特丽莎不愿意离弃它，她会象看护一个行将死去的妹妹一样照顾它的。最后，她进厨房去找一口吃的。

When she returned, the crow was dead.

她回来时，乌鸦已经死了。

In the first year of her love, Tereza would cry out during intercourse. Screaming, as I have pointed out, was meant to blind and deafen the senses. With time she screamed less, but her soul was still blinded by love, and saw nothing. Making love with the engineer in the absence of love was what finally restored her soul's sight.

她爱情生活的第一个年头里，特丽莎在交合时叫出声来。尖叫，如我前面所述，尖叫是为了使自己对一切情景耳聋目盲。随着时间推移，她叫得少些了，但她的灵魂仍然被爱情所蒙惑，什么也看不见。同工程师没有爱的交合，终于恢复了她灵魂的视觉。

During her next visit to the sauna, she stood before the mirror again and, looking at herself, reviewed the scene of physical love that had taken place in the engineer's flat.

她再去蒸汽浴室时，又站在镜子前面看着自己，重温在工程师家里做爱的情景。

It was not her lover she remembered. In fact, she would have been hard put to describe him. She may not even have noticed what he looked like naked. What she did remember (and what she now observed, aroused, in the mirror) was her own body: her pubic triangle and the circular blotch located just above it. The blotch, which until then she had regarded as the most prosaic of skin blemishes, had become an obsession. She longed to see it again and again in that implausible proximity to an alien penis.

她没有记住她的情人，事实上，她简直很难去描绘他，甚至当初就根本没有注意他裸体时是什么样子。她能记得（她现在在镜子里所观察的，能引起她回想的）的是自己的肉体：她的须毛三角区以及上方的那颗圆痣。她在那以前一直认为这是最平凡不过的斑点，眼下却为之着迷。她渴望再看到它，再看到它，看它与陌生的生殖器那么难以置信地亲近。

Here I must stress again: She had no desire to see another man's organs. She wished to see her own private parts in close proximity to an alien penis. She did not desire her lover's body. She desired her own body, newly discovered, intimate and alien beyond all others, incomparably exciting.

这里，我必须再强调—下：她并不想去看男人其他的器官，只是希望看到自己的私处与陌生生殖器的亲近。她不想看情人的肉体，希望看自己的肉体，看看这个新发现的肉体，自藏自珍的肉体，有别有异于所有他人的肉体，无比亢奋的肉体。

Looking at her body speckled with droplets of shower water, she imagined the engineer dropping in at the bar. Oh, how she longed for him to come, longed for him to invite her back! Oh, how she yearned for it!

看着自己在淋浴水珠冲刷下的身子，她想象那工程师又到酒吧去了。哦，她多么希望他来，希望他邀请她回去！哦，她多么渴望！

Every day she feared that the engineer would make his appearance and she would be unable to say no. But the days passed, and the fear that he would come merged gradually into the dread that he would not.

她每天都害怕工程师的出现，害怕自己没有力量说一个不字。几天过去了，害怕他来的担忧逐渐变成了害怕他不来的恐惧。

A month had gone by, and still the engineer stayed away. Tereza found it inexplicable. Her frustrated desire receded and turned into a troublesome question: Why did he fail to come?

一个月以后，工程师仍然音信全无。特丽莎觉得有点费解。她的灰心失意逐渐消退，变成了一个恼人的疑问：他为什么不来？

Waiting on customers one day, she came upon the bald-headed man who had attacked her for serving alcohol to a minor. He was telling a dirty joke in a loud voice. It was a joke she had heard a hundred times before from the drunks in the small town where she had once served beer. Once more, she had the feeling that her mother's world was intruding on her. She curtly interrupted the bald man.

这天她正在侍候顾客，朝那个曾经攻击她卖酒给孩子喝的秃头走去。他正在大声讲一个肮脏的笑话。笑话是老调重弹，她从前在小城里端啤酒时就从醉鬼们那里听过上百遍了。她又一次感到母亲的世界在闯入她的生活，于是粗鲁地打断了秃头。

"I don't take orders from you," the man responded in a huff. You ought to thank your lucky stars we let you stay here in the bar.

“不要你指手划脚，”那男人怒气冲冲，“我们还让你呆在这酒吧店里，算是你福星高照！”

"We? Who do you mean by we?"

“我们？你说的我们是指谁？”

"Us," said the man, holding up his glass for another vodka. "I won't have any more insults out of you, is that clear? Oh, and by the way," he added, pointing to Tereza's neck, which was wound round with a strand of cheap pearls, "where did you get those from? You can't tell me your husband gave them to you. A window washer! He can't afford gifts like that. It's your customers, isn't it? I wonder what you give them in exchange?"

“就是我们，”那人举起手里的酒杯，“再要一杯伏特加。我可不愿你这样的人对我顶撞，明白吗？哦，顺便说吧，”他指着特丽莎脖子上一串廉价的珍珠项链，“这是从哪里来的？你不能说是你丈夫给的吧？一个擦窗户的！他送不起这样的礼物！是你的顾容，是不是？我想知道你用什么来回报他们？”

"You shut your mouth this instant!" she hissed.

“马上闭嘴！”她叫道。

"Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense," he went on, trying to grab hold of the necklace.

“别忘了，卖淫也是犯法的。”他继续说，企图抓住那项链。

Suddenly Karenin jumped up, leaned his front paws on the bar, and began to snarl.

卡列宁突然跳出来，把前爪搭在酒柜上，开始叫起来。

The ambassador said: "He's with the secret police."

大使说：“他是个秘密警察。”

"Then why is he so open about it? What good is a secret police that can't keep its secrets?"

“那他为什么这样公开？一个秘密警察不秘密了有什么好处呢？”

The ambassador positioned himself on the cot by folding his legs under his body, as he had learned to do in yoga class. Kennedy, beaming down on him from the frame on the wall, gave his words a special consecration.

大使盘腿坐在帆布床上，象在学练瑜珈功。肯尼迪从墙上的相片框子里朝他微笑，使他的话有一种特殊的威严。

"The secret police have several functions, my dear, he began in an avuncular tone. The first is the classical one. They keep an ear out for what people are saying and report it to their superiors."

“秘密警察有几种职能，亲爱的，”他开始用长辈人的语气说，“第一种是旧式的，他们只是听听人们说些什么，向上司汇报。”

"The second function is intimidatory. They want to make it seem as if they have us in their power; they want us to be afraid. That is what your bald-headed friend was after.

“第二种职能就是威吓人。他们要人们明白我们都在他们的股掌之中，要让我们害怕。你那秃头朋友就属于这一类。

"The third function consists of staging situations that will compromise us. Gone are the days when they tried to accuse us of plotting the downfall of the state. That would only increase our popularity. Now they slip hashish in our pockets or claim we've raped a twelve-year-old girl. They can always dig up some girl to back them. "

“第三种职能就是制造假象来损害我们的名声。几天前，他们试图指控我们阴谋颠覆国家，当然这只会使我们增加声望。现在，他们往我们口袋里塞麻醉毒品，声称我们强奸了一个十二岁的女孩，他们总能找到什么姑娘跟在后面。”

The engineer immediately popped back into Tereza's mind. Why had he never come?

特丽莎立即联想起那个工程师，他为什么再不来了？

They need to trap people, the ambassador went on, to force them to collaborate and set other traps for other people, so that gradually they can turn the whole nation into a single organization of informers.

“他们需要设陷断，”大使继续说，“强迫人们与他们合作，给另一些人设陷阱。这样，他们就能慢慢地把整个民族变成一个纯粹的告密者组织。”

Tereza could think of nothing but the possibility that the engineer had been sent by the police. And who was that strange boy who drank himself silly and told her he loved her? It was because of him that the bald police spy had launched into her and the engineer stood up for her. So all three had been playing parts in a prearranged scenario meant to soften her up for the seduction!

特丽莎此刻只想到一件事：工程师有可能是警察局派来的。那么，把自己灌醉又宣称他爱她的那个少年又是谁？正是因为他，秃头特务才攻击她，工程师才为她辩护。那么，这三个人都在预先安排的方案中扮演着不同的角色，目的是软化她，使她上钩！

How could she have missed it? The flat was so odd, and he didn't belong there at all! Why would an elegantly dressed engineer live in a miserable place like that? Was he an engineer? And if so, how could he leave work at two in the afternoon? Besides, how many engineers read Sophocles? No, that was no engineer's library! The whole place had more the flavor of a flat confiscated from a poor imprisoned intellectual. Her father was put in prison when she was ten, and the state had confiscated their flat and all her father's books. Who knows to what use the flat had then been put?

她怎么能没想到这一点呢？那住宅是那么奇怪，根本不可能是他的家呀！一个穿着华贵的工程师怎么会住在一个那样的破地方？他是工程师吗？如果是，他怎么可以在午后两点的时候下班？另外，有多少工程师读索福克勒斯的书？不！那不是工程师的图书馆！那地方总的来看更象是某个穷知识分子的住宅，是把他抓进监狱以后没收来的。十岁那年，她父亲被抓进了监狱，国家没收了他们的住宅和父亲所有的书，谁知道那房子后来作什么用了？

Now she saw clearly why the engineer had never returned: he had accomplished his mission. What mission? The drunken undercover agent had inadvertently given it away when he said, "Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense." Now that self-styled engineer would testify that she had slept with him and demanded to be paid! They would threaten to blow it up into a scandal unless she agreed to report on the people who got drunk in her bar.

现在她明白了，为什么工程师不再来了：他完成了使命。什么使命呢？秘密特务喝醉时已经粗心地泄露出来了：“别忘了，卖淫也是犯法的。”现在，自称工程师的人可以证实她跟他睡了觉，还向他勒索了钱！他们将威胁她，将她的丑闻公之于众，除非她同意向他们报告在酒吧里喝酒人的情况。

"Don't worry," the ambassador comforted her. "Your story doesn't sound the least bit dangerous."

“别着急，”大使安慰她，“你的事听起来没有什么危险。”

"I suppose it doesn't," she said in a tight voice, as she walked out into the Prague night with Karenin.

“我想也是。”她用僵硬异样的声音说。然后带着卡列宁，朝布拉格的夜晚走去。

People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits of Prague.

人们通常从灾难中逃向未来，用一条拟想的线截断时间的轨道，眼下的灾难在线的那一边将不复存在。但特丽莎在自己的未来里还看不到这样的线。只有往回看才能给她一些安慰。又是星期天了，他们坐上车，远离布拉格的束缚。

Tomas was at the wheel, Tereza next to him, and Karenin in the back, occasionally leaning over to lick their ears. After two hours, they came to a small town known for its spa where they had been for several days six years earlier. They wanted to spend the night there.

托马斯开车，特丽莎坐在旁边，卡列宁坐在后面，偶尔伸过头舔舔他们的耳朵。两小时后，他们来到一个以矿泉水出名的小镇上。六年前他们在这里住过几天。他们想在这里过夜。

They pulled into the square and got out of the car. Nothing had changed. They stood facing the hotel they had stayed at. The same old linden trees rose up before it. Off to the left ran an old wooden colonnade culminating in a stream spouting its medicinal water into a marble bowl. People were bending over it, the same small glasses in hand.

他们开进广场，下了车，面对曾经住过的旅馆站着。这里没有什么变化，一棵老椴树还象以前一样挺立在旅馆前面。一座古老的木制柱廊往左边转去，最高处止于溪流之中。溪流把带有疗效的泉水溅落在大理石的盆内。人们都纷纷探身弯腰，手里持有相同的小玻璃杯。

When Tomas looked back at the hotel, he noticed that something had in fact changed. What had once been the Grand now bore the name "Baikal". He looked at the street sign on the corner of the building: Moscow Square. Then they took a walk (Karenin tagged along on his own, without a leash) through all the streets they had known, and examined all their names: Stalingrad Street, Leningrad Street, Rostov Street, Novosibirsk Street, Kiev Street, Odessa Street. There was a Tchaikovsky Sanatorium, a Tolstoy Sanatorium, a Rimsky-Korsakov Sanatorium; there was a Hotel Suvorov, a Gorky Cinema, and a Cafe Pushkin. All the names were taken from Russian geography, from Russian history.

托马斯再看那旅馆时，发现事实上有些东西还是变了。原来称为格兰特的旅馆现在更名为“贝加尔”。他看了看大楼转弯处的街名牌：莫斯科广场。随后，他们在熟悉的街道上走了一圈（没套皮带的卡列宁紧随其后），查看了所有的街名：斯大林格勒街，列宁格勒街，罗斯托夫街，诺沃西比斯克街，基辅街，熬德萨街；还有柴可夫斯基疗养院，托尔斯泰疗养院，柯萨科夫疗养院；还有苏沃洛夫旅馆，高尔基剧院，普西金酒吧。所有这一些名字都来自俄国的地理和俄国的历史。

Tereza suddenly recalled the first days of the invasion. People in every city and town had pulled down the street signs; sign posts had disappeared. Overnight, the country had become nameless. For seven days, Russian troops wandered the countryside, not knowing where they were. The officers searched for newspaper offices, for television and radio stations to occupy, but could not find them. Whenever they asked, they would get either a shrug of the shoulders or false names and directions.

特丽莎突然记起俄国入侵的那几天，每个城镇的人都把街道路牌拔掉了，住宅号牌也不见了。整个国家一夜之间成了无名的世界。俄国部队在乡下转了整整几天，不知自己来到了哪里。军官们搜寻并企图占领报社、电视台、电台，但没能找到它们。无论什么时候他们问路，人们不是对他们耸耸肩，就是告诉他们错误的地名和方向。

Hindsight now made that anonymity seem quite dangerous to the country. The streets and buildings could no longer return to their original names. As a result, a Czech spa had suddenly metamorphosed into a miniature imaginary Russia, and the past that Tereza had gone there to find had turned out to be confiscated. It would be impossible for them to spend the night.

现在看来，失去名字对于一个国家来说是相当危险的。那些街道和建筑再也不能恢复它们原来的名字了。结果，一个捷克小矿泉突然演变为一个虚构的袖珍俄罗斯，特丽莎寻找着的往昔已被人没收。他们不可能在这里过夜。

They started back to the car in silence. She was thinking about how all things and people seemed to go about in disguise. An old Czech town was covered with Russian names. Czechs taking pictures of the invasion had unconsciously worked for the secret police. The man who sent her to die had worn a mask of Tomas's face over his own. The spy played the part of an engineer, and the engineer tried to play the part of the man from Petrin. The emblem of the book in his flat proved a sham designed to lead her astray.

他们默默地走回汽车。她想着一切人与一切事看来都伪装起来了。一个古老的捷克城镇竞被众多俄国名字淹没。拍摄入侵照片的捷克人竞无意中为秘密警察效劳。送她去死的人脸上戴的面具竞象托马斯。一个特务扮演着工程师而一个工程师竞想扮演佩特林山上的人。还有他房里那本有象征意义的书，原来也只不过是蓄意引她走入迷途的赝品。

Recalling the book she had held in her hand there, she had a sudden flash of insight that made her cheeks burn red. What had been the sequence of events? The engineer announced he would bring in some coffee. She walked over to the bookshelves and took down Sophocles' Oedipus. Then the engineer came back. But without the coffee!

想到她在那里拿着那本书，她心里突然一亮，两颊都红了。事情经过到底是怎么回事呢？当时工程师说他去取咖啡，她走向书架去取索福克勒斯的《俄狄浦斯》，随后工程师回来了，可没有什么咖啡呀！

Again and again she returned to that situation: How long was he away when he went for the coffee? Surely a minute at the least. Maybe two or even three. And what had he been up to for so long in that miniature anteroom? Or had he gone to the toilet? She tried to remember hearing the door shut or the water flush. No, she was positive she'd heard no water; she would have remembered that. And she was almost certain the door hadn't closed. What had he been up to in that anteroom?

她一遍又一遍回想那些场景；他去取咖啡去了多久？肯定至少有一分钟，也许有两分钟，甚至三分钟。那么他在那间小客厅里磨磨蹭蹭干了些什么？他上厕所了？她竭力回忆当时是否听到了关门声或冲水声。没有，她肯定没有听到水声，要不然她会记得的。而且她几乎能肯定那门已经关了。那么他在那间客厅里干了些什么呢？

It was only too clear. If they meant to trap her, they would need more than the engineer's testimony. They would need incontrovertible evidence. In the course of his suspiciously long absence, the engineer could only have been setting up a movie camera in the anteroom. Or, more likely, he had let in someone with a still camera, who then had photographed them from behind the curtain.

再清楚不过了：他们要让她上圈套，需要除工程师以外的更多确切铁证。在他不见了的那一段长长而可疑的时间内，他只可能是去那间屋里安放电影摄影机；或者有更大的可能，他把某个带有照相机的人放进来，让他从帘子后面给他们拍照。

Only a few weeks earlier, she had scoffed at Prochazka for failing to see that he lived in a concentration camp, where privacy ceased to exist. But what about her? By getting out from under her mother's roof, she thought in all innocence that she had once and for all become master of her privacy. But no, her mother's roof stretched out over the whole world and would never let her be. Tereza would never escape her.

仅仅几周前，她还嘲笑普罗恰兹卡不知道自己是生活在集中营里，不知道私人生活是不存在的。那么她自己呢？她天真过分，以为自己从母亲屋顶下逃脱出来，已成为自己私生活的主人。可是，不，母亲的屋顶延展着以至遮盖了整个世界，使她永远也当不了主人。特丽莎永远也逃脱不了她。

As they walked down the garden-lined steps leading back to the square, Tomas asked her, "What's wrong?"

他们走下花草镶嵌的台阶，折回广场。托马斯问：“怎么啦？”

Before she could respond, someone called out a greeting to Tomas.

她还没来得及答话，便听到有人跟托马斯打招呼。

He was a man of about fifty with a weather-beaten face, a farm worker whom Tomas had once operated on and who was sent to the spa once a year for treatment. He invited Tomas and Tereza to have a glass of wine with him. Since the law prohibited dogs from entering public places, Tereza took Karenin back to the car while the men found a table at a nearby cafe. When she came up to them, the man was saying, "We live a quiet life. Two years ago they even elected me chairman of the collective."

是一个五十来岁的饱经风霜的男人，一位农场工。托马斯曾经给他动过手术。这人每年一次被送到矿泉来疗养。他邀请托马斯与特丽莎去与他喝一杯。考虑到法令不允许狗进入公共场所，特丽莎便把卡列宁送回汽车。她转来时，那人已在附近一个酒吧找了张桌子，正在说：“我们的生活平平静静的，两年前他们甚至还选我当了集体农庄主席呢。”

"Congratulations, "said Tomas.

“恭喜你。”托马斯说。

"You know how it is. People are dying to move to the city. The big shots, they're happy when somebody wants to stay put. They can't fire us from our jobs."

“你知道怎么着，人们死活都要往城里搬。头儿们，当然喜欢有人愿意留下。他们不可能开除我们。”

"It would be ideal for us, said Tereza."

“这是我们向往的。”特丽莎说

"You'd be bored to tears, ma'am. There's nothing to do there. Nothing at all."

“姑娘，你会闷得哭鼻子的。那里没什么可干的，什么也没有。”

Tereza looked into the farm worker's weather-beaten face. She found him very kind. For the first time in ages, she had found someone kind! An image of life in the country arose before her eyes: a village with a belfry, fields, woods, a rabbit scampering along a furrow, a hunter with a green cap. She had never lived in the country. Her image of it came entirely from what she had heard. Or read. Or received unconsciously from distant ancestors. And yet it lived within her, as plain and clear as the daguerreotype of her great-grandmother in the family album.

特丽莎注视着农场工晒得黑黝黝的脸庞，觉得他非常和善可亲。她有生以来第一次发现有人和善可亲！她眼前浮现出一片乡村生活的幻景：有钟楼的村庄，田野，树林，顺着沟渠奔跑的小兔，以及戴着绿色帽子的猎手。她从未到农村住过，对乡下的想象都是听说来的，或许是从书中读到的，还或许是无意识地从古老祖先那里承袭下来的。这些幻景在她脑子里栩栩如生，如同家庭影集中老祖母的旧式照片，明白而清晰。

"Does it give you any trouble?"

“你还有什么不舒服吗？”

Tomas asked. The farmer pointed to the area at the back of the neck where the brain is connected to the spinal cord. "I still have pains here from time to time."

那人指着脖子后面脑神经与脊髓相连的部分：“这儿还是经常痛。”

Without getting out of his seat, Tomas palpated the spot and put his former patient through a brief examination. "I no longer have the right to prescribe drugs, he said after he had finished, but tell the doctor taking care of you now that you talked to me and I recommended you use this." And tearing a sheet of paper from the pad in his wallet, he wrote out the name of a medicine in large letters.

他仍然坐着，托马斯摸了摸那儿，简单地给这位从前的病人检查了一遍：“我再没权利开处方了。不过，去告诉现在给你看病的医生，就说你跟我谈过了，我建议你用这个药。”他从皮包里的便笺本上撕下一页，用大写字母写了那种药的药名。

They started back to Prague.

他们动身回布拉格。

All the way Tereza brooded about the photograph showing her naked body embracing the engineer. She tried to console herself with the thought that even if the picture did exist, Tomas would never see it. The only value it had for them was as a blackmailing device. It would lose that value the moment they sent it to Tomas.

一路上，特丽莎郁郁沉思着工程师怀里的她那张裸体照片，努力想安慰自己，即使那张照片确实存在，托马斯也永远不会看见的。它对他们仅有的价值无非是讹诈她的资本。他们把它寄给托马斯的话，这一价值就随之消失了。

But what if the police decided somewhere along the way that they couldn't use her? Then the picture would become a mere plaything in their hands, and nothing would prevent them from slipping it in an envelope and sending it off to Tomas. Just for the fun of it.

但是，如果那些警察不能利用她，他们会决定再干些什么呢？照片只会成为他们手中的玩物，可保不住他们也许仅仅为了开个玩笑，把它用个信封寄给托马斯。

What would happen if Tomas were to receive such a picture? Would he throw her out? Perhaps not. Probably not. But the fragile edifice of their love would certainly come tumbling down. For that edifice rested on the single column of her fidelity, and loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

托马斯收到这样一张照片又会怎么样？会把她赶走吗？也许不会，很可能不会的。但他们那易垮的爱情大厦必然会摇摇欲坠，因为大厦只有她忠诚的柱子作为唯一支撑，因为爱就象众多帝权：一旦他们建立的信念崩溃了，自己也就随之消亡。

And now she had an image before her eyes: a rabbit scampering along a furrow, a hunter with a green cap, and the belfry of a village church rising up over the woods.

现在，幻景又出现在她眼前：一只沿着沟渠奔跑的兔子，一个戴绿色帽子的猎手，以及乡村教堂的钟楼，高高地升起在树林之上。

She wanted to tell Tomas that they should leave Prague. Leave the children who bury crows alive in the ground, leave the police spies, leave the young women armed with umbrellas. She wanted to tell him that they should move to the country. That it was their only path to salvation.

她想告诉托马斯，他们应该离开布拉格，离开这些把乌鸦活活埋在地里的孩子，离开这些警察特务，离开这些用伞武装起来的妇女。她想告诉他，他们应该搬到乡下去，那是挽救他们的唯一出路。

She turned to him. But Tomas did not respond. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. Having thus failed to scale the fence of silence between them, she lost all courage to speak. She felt as she had felt when walking down Petrin Hill. Her stomach was in knots, and she thought she was going to be sick. She was afraid of Tomas. He was too strong for her; she was too weak. He gave her commands that she could not understand; she tried to carry them out, but did not know how.

她转向他，但托马斯没有反应，两眼直视前面的路。就这样，因为她未能逾越他们之间沉默的屏障，她失去了说话的勇气。她又一次体验了从佩特林山上下来时的感觉，胃在收缩，以为自己要生病了。对她来说，他太强壮，自己太柔弱。他发出那些她不能理解的命令，她努力奉命执行，却不知道为什么。

She wanted to go back to Petrin Hill and ask the man with the rifle to wind the blindfold around her eyes and let her lean against the trunk of the chestnut tree. She wanted to die.

她想回到佩特林山上去，要求带枪人用眼罩蒙住她的双眼，让她靠在那棵栗树的树干上。她想死。

Waking up, she realized she was at home alone.

醒来时，她发现自己一个人在家。

She went outside and set off in the direction of the embankment. She wanted to see the Vltava. She wanted to stand on its banks and look long and hard into its waters, because the sight of the flow was soothing and healing. The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

她走到外面，开始朝堤岸那边走去，想去看看瓦塔瓦河。她要站在它的岸边，久久地狠狠地看着河水。漫漫水流的壮景将会抚慰她的灵魂，平息她的心境。河水从一个世纪到另一个世纪，不停地流淌，纷坛世事就在它的两岸一幕幕演出，演完了，明天就会被人忘却，而只有滔滔江河还在流淌。

Leaning against the balustrade, she peered into the water. She was on the outskirts of Prague, and the Vltava had already flowed through the city, leaving behind the glory of the Castle and churches; like an actress after a performance, it was tired and contemplative; it flowed on between its dirty banks, bounded by walls and fences that themselves bounded factories and abandoned playgrounds.

她凭栏凝望河水。她是在布拉格的郊外，瓦塔瓦河已流过了市区，把光荣的城堡和那些教堂留在身后；就象一位演完下台的女伶，疲乏不堪，仍在恍惚沉思。它从肮脏的堤岸之间穿过，被墙垣和栅栏所束缚，而墙垣栅栏还约束着众多的工厂和遗弃了的运动场。

She was staring at the water—it seemed sadder and darker here—when suddenly she spied a strange object in the middle of the river, something red—yes, it was a bench. A wooden bench on iron legs, the kind Prague's parks abound in. It was floating down the Vltava. Followed by another. And another and another, and only then did Tereza realize that all the park benches of Prague were floating downstream, away from the city, many, many benches, more and more, drifting by like the autumn leaves that the water carries off from the woods—red, yellow, blue.

她凝望着河水——它显得更凄凉更暗淡——她突然看见河的中部漂着一个异物，红色的，对了——是一条板凳，一张带着铁支架的木板凳，布拉格的公园里多的是。木凳正往瓦特瓦下游流去，后面接着又是一张。一张又一张。特丽莎只能这样猜想，布拉格公园里所有的凳子都流入了这滔滔河水，远远地离开城市。好多好多的凳子，越来越多，象秋日的落时被流水从树林里洗刷出来，零落漂去——红的，黄的，蓝的。

She turned and looked behind her as if to ask the passersby what it meant. Why are Prague's park benches floating downstream? But everyone passed her by, indifferent, for little did they care that a river flowed from century to century through their ephemeral city.

她转过身，朝身后看去，象是要问路上行人这是为什么，为什么布拉格公园里的凳子都漂到河里去了？但每个擦身而过的人都很冷漠，对多少世纪以来一直流经他们短命之城的河流，毫不关心。

Again she looked down at the river. She was grief-stricken. She understood that what she saw was a farewell.

她再一次俯脚河水，心中悲伤如割，她知道自己看到的是一次告别。

When most of the benches had vanished from sight, a few latecomers appeared: one more yellow one, and then another, blue, the last.

大多数的板凳已经看不见了，只有几张后来的凳子隐隐浮现：几张黄色的，最后一张，是蓝色。