Part 2, Chapter 3

11 我们是死者

'We can come here once again,' said Julia. 'It's generally safe to use any hide-out twice. But not for another month or two, of course.'

“这里我们可以再来一次。”裘莉亚说。“随便哪个地方只用两次还是安全的。不过当然,在一两个月之内却不能用。”

As soon as she woke up her demeanour had changed. She became alert and business-like, put her clothes on, knotted the scarlet sash about her waist, and began arranging the details of the journey home. It seemed natural to leave this to her. She obviously had a practical cunning which Winston lacked, and she seemed also to have an exhaustive knowledge of the countryside round London, stored away from innumerable community hikes. The route she gave him was quite different from the one by which he had come, and brought him out at a different railway station. 'Never go home the same way as you went out,' she said, as though enunciating an important general principle. She would leave first, and Winston was to wait half an hour before following her.

她一醒来,神情就不同了。她又变得动作干净利落起来。她穿上了衣服,腰上系起了猩红的腰带,开始安排回去的行程。把这种事情交她去办,似乎很自然。她显然在实际生活方面很有办法,而这正是温斯顿所欠缺的。而且她对伦敦周围的乡间十分熟悉,了若指掌,这是她从无数次集体郊游中积累起来的知识。她给他安排的路线与他来的路线大不相同,要他到另外一个车站去伦敦。她说,“千万不要走同一条路线回家,”好象是阐明一条重要的原理似的。她先走,温斯顿等半小时以后才在她后面走。

She had named a place where they could meet after work, four evenings hence. It was a street in one of the poorer quarters, where there was an open market which was generally crowded and noisy. She would be hanging about among the stalls, pretending to be in search of shoelaces or sewing-thread. If she judged that the coast was clear she would blow her nose when he approached; otherwise he was to walk past her without recognition. But with luck, in the middle of the crowd, it would be safe to talk for a quarter of an hour and arrange another meeting.

她还说了一个地方,他们可以在四天以后下班时在那里相会。那是一条比较穷苦住宅区的街道,那里有一个露天市场,一般都很拥挤喧闹。她将在那里的货摊之间徘徊,假装是寻找鞋带或者线团。如果她认为平安无事,她见他走近就擤鼻子;否则他就得装着不认识走过去。但是如果运气好,他们就可以在人群中间太平无事地说上一刻钟的话,安排下一次的约会。

'And now I must go,' she said as soon as he had mastered his instructions. 'I'm due back at nineteen-thirty. I've got to put in two hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League, handing out leaflets, or something. Isn't it bloody? Give me a brush-down, would you? Have I got any twigs in my hair? Are you sure? Then good-bye, my love, good-bye!'

“现在我得走了,”一等到他记住了她的吩咐,她就说道。“我得在十九点三十分回去。我要为少年反性同盟尽两小时的义务,发传单等等的事情,你说可恶不可恶?给我梳一下头发好不好?头发里有树叶吗?肯定没有?那么再见,亲爱的,再见!”

She flung herself into his arms, kissed him almost violently, and a moment later pushed her way through the saplings and disappeared into the wood with very little noise. Even now he had not found out her surname or her address. However, it made no difference, for it was inconceivable that they could ever meet indoors or exchange any kind of written communication.

她投在他怀里,狠狠地吻他,一会儿后她就推开幼树,无声无息地消失在树林中了。到现在他还不知道她姓什么,往在哪里。不过,没有关系,因为他们不可能在室内相会,或者交换什么信件。

As it happened, they never went back to the clearing in the wood. During the month of May there was only one further occasion on which they actually succeeded in making love. That was in another hidlng-place known to Julia, the belfry of a ruinous church in an almost-deserted stretch of country where an atomic bomb had fallen thirty years earlier. It was a good hiding-place when once you got there, but the getting there was very dangerous. For the rest they could meet only in the streets, in a different place every evening and never for more than half an hour at a time. In the street it was usually possible to talk, after a fashion. As they drifted down the crowded pavements, not quite abreast and never looking at one another, they carried on a curious, intermittent conversation which flicked on and off like the beams of a lighthouse, suddenly nipped into silence by the approach of a Party uniform or the proximity of a telescreen, then taken up again minutes later in the middle of a sentence, then abruptly cut short as they parted at the agreed spot, then continued almost without introduction on the following day. Julia appeared to be quite used to this kind of conversation, which she called 'talking by instalments'. She was also surprisingly adept at speaking without moving her lips. Just once in almost a month of nightly meetings they managed to exchange a kiss. They were passing in silence down a side-street (Julia would never speak when they were away from the main streets) when there was a deafening roar, the earth heaved, and the air darkened, and Winston found himself lying on his side, bruised and terrified. A rocket bomb must have dropped quite near at hand. Suddenly he became aware of Julia's face a few centimetres from his own, deathly white, as white as chalk. Even her lips were white. She was dead! He clasped her against him and found that he was kissing a live warm face. But there was some powdery stuff that got in the way of his lips. Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.

后来他们一直没有再到树林中那块空地里去过。五月份他们只有一次机会真的作了爱。那是在裘莉亚告诉他的另外一个隐蔽的地方,在三十年前曾经有颗原子弹掉在那里的几乎成了一片荒野的所在,有一个炸毁的教堂,那地方就在教堂的钟楼里。只要你能走到那里,那个地方很不错,但是要到那里却很危险。其余的时间,他们只能在街上相会,每次都换地方,每次都从来没有超过半小时。在街上,一般是能够说些话的。他们在人头济济的人行道上慢慢走,一前一后,从来不互相看一眼,却能奇怪地进行时断时续的谈话,就象灯塔一亮一灭一样,如果看到有穿党员制服的人定近或者附近出现一个电幕,就突然哑声不言,几分钟以后又把刚才说的半句话继续说下去,但是到了约定分手的地方又突然中断,到了第二天晚上又没头没脑地继续下去。裘莉亚似乎很习惯于这种谈话方式,她称为“分期谈话”。她说话不动嘴皮,技巧娴熟,令人惊奇。他们每天晚上见面,几乎快有一个月,在这过程中,他们只有一次做到了亲个吻。那是他们在一条横街上不言不语地走着的时候(裘莉亚一离开大街就从来不说话),突然响起一声震耳的轰鸣,地面震动,空中一片乌黑,温斯顿跌到在地,又痛又怕。一定是附近掉了一个火箭。突然之间他发现裘莉亚的脸就近在几厘米旁边,面无血色,象白粉一样。甚至她的嘴唇也发白。她已经死了!他把她搂过来,却发现自己吻的是个活人的温暖的脸。但是他的嘴唇接触到一种粉末状的东西。原来两人的脸上尽是厚厚的一层灰泥。

There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past one another without a sign, because a patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous, it would still have been difficult to find time to meet. Winston's working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer, and their free days varied according to the pressure of work and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones. She even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-time munition work which was done voluntarily by zealous Party members. So, one evening every week, Winston spent four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in a draughty, ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.

也有一些晚上,他们到了约好的地方,却不得不连招呼也不打就走开了,因为正好街角有个巡逻队过来,或者头顶上有直升飞机巡逻。即使不那么危险,要找时间相会也很困难。因为温斯顿一周工作六十小时,裘莉亚的工作时间更长,他们倒休的日子因工作忙闲而异,并不经常吻合,反正裘莉亚从来没有一个晚上是完全有空的。她花了不少时间参加听报告和游行,为少年反性同盟散发传单,为仇恨周做旗帜,为节约运动募捐,以及诸如此类的活动。她说这样做有好处;这是一种伪装。小地方你如果守规矩,大地方你就能打破规矩。她甚至说服温斯顿参加那些热心的党员都尽义务参加的加班军火生产,这样又牺牲了他的一个晚上的时间。因此每星期有一个晚上,温斯顿就得化四个小时干令人厌倦的工作,在一个灯光暗淡的透风的车间里,在电幕音乐和锤子敲打的单调声中,把小零件旋在一起,这大概是炸弹的导管。

When they met in the church tower the gaps in their fragmentary conversation were filled up. It was a blazing afternoon. The air in the little square chamber above the bells was hot and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon dung. They sat talking for hours on the dusty, twig-littered floor, one or other of them getting up from time to time to cast a glance through the arrowslits and make sure that no one was coming.

他们在教堂的钟楼相会时,若断若续的谈话所遗留的空隙就填满了。那是个炎热的下午。钟楼上那间四方的小房子里空气闷热停滞,有股强烈的鸽屎味。他们坐在尘土很厚、嫩枝遍地的地板上谈了好几小时的话,过一会儿两人之中就有一个人站了起来到窗缝里去了望一眼,看有没有人走近。

Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a hostel with thirty other girls ('Always in the stink of women! How I hate women!' she said parenthetically), and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor. She was 'not clever', but was fond of using her hands and felt at home with machinery. She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

裘莉亚二十六岁,同其他三十个姑娘一起住在一个宿舍里(“总是生活在女人臭里!我真恨女人!”她补充说。)不出他的所料,她在小说司管小说写作器。她很喜欢她的工作,这主要是管理维修一台功率很大但很不易伺候的电机。她并不“聪明”,但是喜欢动手,搞机器就感到自在。她能够介绍给你怎样创作一部小说的全部过程,从计划委员会发出的总指示到改写小组的最后润饰。但是她对成品没有兴趣。她说,她“不怎么喜欢读书”。书本只不过是要生产的商品,就象果酱或鞋带一样。

She had no memories of anything before the early sixties and the only person she had ever known who talked frequently of the days before the Revolution was a grandfather who had disappeared when she was eight. At school she had been captain of the hockey team and had won the gymnastics trophy two years running. She had been a troop-leader in the Spies and a branch secretary in the Youth League before joining the Junior Anti-Sex League. She had always borne an excellent character. She had even (an infallibIe mark of good reputation) been picked out to work in Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the proles. It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who worked in it, she remarked. There she had remained for a year, helping to produce booklets in sealed packets with titles like Spanking Stories or One Night in a Girls' School, to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal.

她对六十年代早期以前的事都记不得什么了,她所认识的人中,唯一经常谈到革命前日子的人是她八岁时不再见到的爷爷。她上学时是曲棍球队队长,连续两年获得体操奖杯,当过少年侦察队的小队长,青年团支部书记,最后参加了少年反性同盟。她得到的鉴定一直很出色。她甚至被送到小说司里的色情文学处工作,这是某人名声可靠的毫无置疑的标志,因为该处的工作就是为无产者生产廉价的色情文学。据她说,在里面的工作人员称它为垃圾场。她在那里工作了一年,协助生产象《最佳故事选》或《女学校的一夜》等密封寄发的书籍,无产者青少年偷偷摸摸地买去消遣,象买禁书一样。

'What are these books like?' said Winston curiously.

“这些书写些什么?”温斯顿好奇地问。

'Oh, ghastly rubbish. They're boring, really. They only have six plots, but they swap them round a bit. Of course I was only on the kaleidoscopes. I was never in the Rewrite Squad. I'm not literary, dear -- not even enough for that.'

“哦,完全是胡说八道。实际上都很无聊。他们一共只有六种情节,互相抄来抄去。当然我只是在管万花筒。我从来没有参加过改写组。要我动笔可不行,亲爱的——水平不够。”

He learned with astonishment that all the workers in Pornosec, except the heads of the departments, were girls. The theory was that men, whose sex instincts were less controllable than those of women, were in greater danger of being corrupted by the filth they handled.

他惊异地获悉,除了头头以外,色情文学处的工作人员全是姑娘。他们所根据的理论是,男人的性本能比女人不易控制,因此更有可能遭到他们自己所制造的淫诲作品的腐蚀。

'They don't even like having married women there,' she added. 'Girls are always supposed to be so pure. Here's one who isn't, anyway.'

“他们甚至不要已婚的女人到那里去工作,”她还说。“一般总认为姑娘都很纯洁。这里却有一个不是那样。”

She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to avoid arrest. 'And a good job too,' said Julia, 'otherwise they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed.'

她第一次同男人发生关系是在十六岁的时候,对象是个六十岁的党员,他后来怕遭到逮捕便自杀了。“他干得很干净,”袭莉亚说。“否则,他一招供,他们就会知道我的名字。”

Since then there had been various others. Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you couId. She seemed to think it just as natural that 'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine.

从此以后,她又有过好几起。在她看来,生活很简单。你想快快活活过日子,“他们”——指的是党——都不让你快活,你就尽量打破它的规矩。她似乎认为,“他们”要剥夺你的快活,就象你要避免被逮住一样,是很自然的事。她憎恨党,而且用很粗的话这么说,但是她对党却没有一般的批评。对于党的理论,除非触及她的生活,她一概没有兴趣。

He noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog. They did not discuss the possibility of getting married. It was too remote to be worth thinking about. No imaginable committee would ever sanction such a marriage even if Katharine, Winston's wife, could somehow have been got rid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream.

他注意到,她从来不用新话,只有一两句在日常生活中已经流行的除外。她从来没有听到过兄弟会,不相信有这个组织的存在。任何有组织的反叛党的尝试都注定要失败的,因此她认为都是愚蠢之极。聪明人该做的事是打破它的规矩而不危及你的生命。他隐隐地想,在年轻一代中间不知有多少象她那样的人。这一代人是在革命后的世界中长大的,不知有别的世界,把党视为万世不易的东西,就象头上的天空一样,对它的权威绝不反抗,只是千方百计加以回避,就象兔子躲开猎狗一样,他们没有谈到结婚的可能性。这事太渺茫了,连想也不值一想。即使能有办法除掉温斯顿的妻子凯瑟琳,也没有一个委员会会批准这样一桩婚事。即使做白日梦,也是没有希望的。

'What was she like, your wife?' said Julia.

“她是怎么样的一个人,你的妻子?”裘莉亚问。

'She was -- do you know the Newspeak word goodthinkful? Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of thinking a bad thought?'

“她是——你知道新话中有个词儿叫‘思想好’的吗?那是说天生的正经派,根本不可能有坏思想的念头。”

'No, I didn't know the word, but I know the kind of person, right enough.'

“我不知道这个词儿,不过我知道那号人,太知道了。”

He began telling her the story of his married life, but curiousIy enough she appeared to know the essential parts of it already. She described to him, almost as though she had seen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon as he touched her, the way in which she still seemed to be pushing him from her with all her strength, even when her arms were clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt no difficulty in talking about such things: Katharine, in any case, had long ceased to be a painful memory and became merely a distasteful one.

他就把他婚后生活情况告诉她,奇怪的是,她似乎早已知道了其中的主要环节。她好象亲眼看到过或者亲身经历过的一样,向他一一描述他一碰到凯瑟琳,凯瑟琳的身体就僵硬起来,即使她的胳膊紧紧地搂住了他,她似乎仍在使劲推开他。同裘莉亚在一起,他觉得谈到这种事情一点也不感到困难,反正凯瑟琳早已不再是一种痛苦的记忆,而成了一种可厌的记忆了。

'I could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing,' he said. He toId her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every week. 'She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing it. She used to call it -- but you'll never guess.'

“要不是为了这一点,我还是可以忍受的,”他说。接着他把凯瑟琳每星期一次在同一天的晚上迫着他象办例行公事似地干那件事的情况告诉她。“她不愿干这件事,但又没有什么东西能使她不这么干。她曾经把它叫做——你猜也猜不到。”

'Our duty to the Party,' said Julia promptly.

“咱们对党的义务,”裘莉亚脱口而出。

'How did you know that?'

“你怎么知道的?”

'I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you can never tell; peopIe are such hypocrites.'

“亲爱的,我也上过学。在学校里对十六岁以上的姑娘每个月有一次性教育讲座。在青年团里也有。他们长年累月地这样向你灌输。在许多人身上大概生了效。但是,当然,谁也说不准;人人都是伪君子。”

She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

她开始在这个题目上发挥起来。在裘莉亚身上,一切的事情都要推溯到她自己在性方面的强烈意识。不论在什么情况下,一触及到这个问题,她就显得特别敏锐。不象温斯顿,她了解党在性方面搞禁欲主义的内在原因。这只是因为性本能创造了它自己的天地,非党所能控制,因此必须尽可能加以摧毁。尤其重要的是,性生活的剥夺能够造成歇斯底里,而这是一件很好的事,因为可以把它转化为战争狂热和领袖崇拜。她是这么说的:

'When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simpIy sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?'

“你作爱的时候,你就用去了你的精力;事后你感到愉快,天塌下来也不顾。他们不能让你感到这样。他们要你永远充满精力。什么游行,欢呼,挥舞旗帜,都只不过是变了质、发了酸的性欲。要是你内心感到快活,那么你有什么必要为老大哥、三年计划、两分钟仇恨等等他们这一套名堂感到兴奋?”

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.

他想,这话说得有理,在禁欲和政治上的正统性之间,确有一种直接的紧密的关系。因为,除了抑制某种强烈的本能,把它用来作为推动力以外,还有什么别的办法能够把党在党员身上所要求的恐惧、仇恨、盲目信仰保持在一定的水平呢?性的冲动,对党是危险的,党就加以利用。他们对人们要想做父母的本能,也耍弄了同样的手段。要废除家庭是实际做不到的,相反,还鼓励大家要钟爱自己的子女,这种爱护几乎是一种极其老式的方式。另外一方面,却有计划地教子女反对父母,教他们侦察他们的言行,密告他们的偏离正统的倾向。家庭实际上成了思想警察的扩大,用这种方法可以用同你十分接近的人做告密者,日日夜夜地监视着你。

Abruptly his mind went back to Katharine. Katharine would unquestionably have denounced him to the Thought Police if she had not happened to be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of his opinions.

他又突然想到了凯瑟琳。凯瑟琳太愚蠢,没有识破他的见解的不合正统,要不然的话,早就会向思想警察揭发他了。

But what really recalled her to him at this moment was the stifling heat of the afternoon, which had brought the sweat out on his forehead. He began telling Julia of something that had happened, or rather had failed to happen, on another sweltering summer afternoon, eleven years ago.

但在这当儿使他想起它来的还是由于下午空气的闷热,使他额上冒了汗。他就开始向袭莉亚说到十一年前也是在一个炎热的夏日下午所发生的事,或者不如说所没有能够发生的事。

It was three or four months after they were married. They had lost their way on a community hike somewhere in Kent. They had only lagged behind the others for a couple of minutes, but they took a wrong turning, and presently found themselves pulled up short by the edge of an old chalk quarry. It was a sheer drop of ten or twenty metres, with boulders at the bottom. There was nobody of whom they could ask the way. As soon as she realized that they were lost Katharine became very uneasy. To be away from the noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of wrong-doing. She wanted to hurry back by the way they had come and start searching in the other direction. But at this moment Winston noticed some tufts of loosestrife growing in the cracks of the cliff beneath them. One tuft was of two colours, magenta and brick-red, apparently growing on the same root. He had never seen anything of the kind before, and he called to Katharine to come and look at it.

那是在他们婚后三、四个月的时候。他们到肯特去集体远足迷了路。他们掉在大队的后面只不过几分钟,不过拐错了一个弯,到了一个以前的白垩土矿场的边缘上,悬崖有十公尺到二十公尺深,底下尽是大石块。附近没有人可以问路。凯瑟琳一发现迷了路就十分不安起来。离开吵吵嚷嚷的远足伙伴哪怕只有一会儿,也使她感到做了错事。她要顺着原路走回去,朝别的方向去寻找别人。但是这时温斯顿看到他们脚下悬崖的石缝里长着几簇黄莲花。其中一簇有品红和橘红两种颜色,显然出于同根。他从来没有见过这样的事,因此他把凯瑟琳叫过来看。

'Look, Katharine! Look at those flowers. That clump down near the bottom. Do you see they're two different colours?'

“瞧,凯瑟琳!瞧这几朵花。靠近矿底的那一簇。你瞧清楚了没有,是两种颜色?”

She had already turned to go, but she did rather fretfully come back for a moment. She even leaned out over the cliff face to see where he was pointing. He was standing a little behind her, and he put his hand on her waist to steady her. At this moment it suddenly occurred to him how completely alone they were. There was not a human creature anywhere, not a leaf stirring, not even a bird awake. In a place like this the danger that there would be a hidden microphone was very small, and even if there was a microphone it would only pick up sounds. It was the hottest sleepiest hour of the afternoon. The sun blazed down upon them, the sweat tickled his face. And the thought struck him...

她本来已经转了身要走了,这时勉强回来看了一眼。她甚至在悬崖上伸出脖子去看他指的地方。他站在她后面不远,把手扶着她的腰。这时他忽然想到附近没有一个人影,只有他们两个,连树叶也纹丝不动,更没有一声鸟语。在这样一个地方,装有窃听器的可能性是极小的,即使有,也只能录到声音。这时是下午最热最困的时候。阳光向他们直晒,他的脸上流下了汗珠。他突然想到了这个念头……

'Why didn't you give her a good shove?' said Julia. 'I would have.'

“你为什么不推她一把?”裘莉亚说。“换了我就会推的。”

'Yes, dear, you would have. I would, if I'd been the same person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would -- I'm not certain.'

“是的,你会推的。要是换了现在的我,我也会推的。也许——不过我说不好。”

'Are you sorry you didn't?'

“你后悔没有推吗?”

'Yes. On the whole I'm sorry I didn't.'

“是的,可以说我后悔没有推。”

They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He pulled her closer against him. Her head rested on his shoulder, the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon dung. She was very young, he thought, she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.

他们并排坐在尘土厚积的地板上。他把她拉得近一些。她的脑袋偎在他的肩上,她头发上的香气盖过了鸽子屎臭。他想,她很年轻,对生活仍有企望,她不懂得,把一个碍事朋人推下悬崖去不解决任何问题,“实际上不会有什么不同,”他说。

'Actually it would have made no difference,' he said.

“那么你为什么后悔没有推呢?”

'Then why are you sorry you didn't do it?'

“那只是因为我赞成积极的事情,不赞成消极的事情。

'Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.'

在我们参加的这场比赛里,我们是无法取胜的。只不过有几种失败比别几种失败好一些,就此而已。”

He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent. She always contradicted him when he said anything of this kind. She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated. In a way she realized that she herself was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you could live as you chose. All you needed was luck and cunning and boldness. She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse.

他感到她的肩膀因为不同意而动了一下。他说这种话时,她总是不同意的。她不能接受个人总要失败乃是自然规律的看法。她在一定程度上也认识到,她本人命运已经注定,思想警察迟早就要逮住她,杀死她,但是她的心里又认为,仍有可能构筑一个秘密的天地,按你的意愿生活。你所需要的不过是运气,狡猾、大胆。她不懂得,世界上没有幸福这回事儿,唯一的胜利在于你死了很久以后的遥远的将来,而从你向党宣战开始,最好把自己当作一具尸体。

'We are the dead,' he said.

“我们是死者,”他说。

'We're not dead yet,' said Julia prosaically.

“我们还没有死,”裘莉亚具体地说。

'Not physically. Six months, a year -- five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.'

“肉体上还没有死。六个月,一年——五年。这是可以想象的。我害怕死。你年青,所以大概比我还害怕死。显然,我们要尽量把死推迟。但是没有什么不同。只要人仍保持人性,死与生是一回事。”

'Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with, me or a skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive! Don't you like this?'

“哦,胡说八道!你愿意同谁睡觉,同我还是同一具骷髅?你不喜欢活着吗?你不喜欢这种感觉吗:这是我,这是我的手,这是我的腿,我是真实的,实在的,活着的!你不喜欢吗?”

She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom against him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet firm, through her overalls. Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigour into his.

她转过身来把胸脯压着他。隔着制服,他感到她的Rx房,丰满而结实。她的身体好象把青春和活力灌注到了他的身上。

'Yes, I like that,' he said.

“是啊,我喜欢这个,”他说。

'Then stop talking about dying. And now listen, dear, we've got to fix up about the next time we meet. We may as well go back to the place in the wood. We've given it a good long rest. But you must get there by a different way this time. I've got it all planned out. You take the train -- but look, I'll draw it out for you.'

“那么不要再说死了。现在听我说,亲爱的,我们得安排下次的约会。我们也可以回到树林中的那个地方去,因为我们已经长久没有去那里了。但是这次你一定得走另外一条路。我已经计划好了。你搭火车——你瞧,我给你画出来。”

And in her practical way she scraped together a small square of dust, and with a twig from a pigeon's nest began drawing a map on the floor.

她以她特有的实际作风,把一些尘土扫在一起,用鸽子窝里的一根小树枝,开始在地上画出一张地图来。