[11] I look at the TV guide. “A bunch of people I never heard of.” I read off their names. My wife hasn't heard of them either. She wants to know what else is on. “‘EI Dorado,’” I read. “‘Brisk adventure yarn about a group of citizens in search of the legendary city of gold.’ It's got two-and-a-half stars beside it.”

“Citizens of what?” my wife asks.

“It doesn't say.”

[11] 我看了看收視指南。“一幫從沒聽說過的人。”我把那些名字一一讀出。妻子也沒有聽說過這些人。她想知道還有什么可看的。“‘《厄爾多拉多》’，”我讀道，“‘火爆的探險(xiǎn)傳說，一群平民尋找傳說中的黃金之城。’這節(jié)目旁邊有兩顆半星。”

“哪兒的平民?”妻子問道。

“上面沒說。”

[12] Finally we watch the movie. A blind man comes into a small town. He says that he has been to El Dorado, and that he will lead an expedition there for a share of the proceeds. He can't see, but he will call out the landmarks one by one as they ride. At first people make fun of him, but eventually all the leading citizens get together and decide to give it a try. Right away they get attacked by Apaches and some of them want to turn back, but every time they get ready the blind man gives them another landmark, so they keep riding.

[12] 最后我們看了這部電影。一個(gè)瞎子來到一個(gè)小鎮(zhèn)。他說自己去過厄爾多拉多，還說只要有他的一份好處，他愿意帶路去探險(xiǎn)。他雖然看不見，但在前行的路上，他會(huì)把路標(biāo)一個(gè)一個(gè)叫出來。開始的時(shí)候，人們譏笑他，但最后所有領(lǐng)頭的人聚在一起商量，決定試一試。上路不久他們就受到阿帕契斯人的攻擊，有些人想打道回府，但是每當(dāng)他們準(zhǔn)備回頭時(shí)，瞎子就給他們指出另一個(gè)路標(biāo)，就這樣，他們一直往前走。

[13] Next door the woman is going crazy. She is saying things to him that no person should ever say to another person. It makes my wife restless. She looks at me. “Can I come over?” she says. “Just for a visit?”

I pull down the blankets and she gets in. The bed is just fine for one, but with two of us it's a tight fit. We are lying on our sides with me in back. I don't mean for it to happen but before long old Florida begins to stiffen up on me. I put my arms around my wife. I move my hands up onto the Rockies, then on down across the Plains, heading South.

[13] 隔壁的女人簡直要瘋了。她正對(duì)他說的那些話，任何人都無法對(duì)別人說出口。妻子變得不安起來。她看著我。“我可以去你那邊嗎?”她說，“就待一會(huì)兒?”

我掀開毛毯，她鉆了進(jìn)來。我這床一人睡剛好，兩個(gè)人就顯得太窄了。我倆側(cè)臥著，我被擠在里面。我本不想的，但沒過多久，我下面的老佛羅里達(dá)開始硬起來。我雙臂擁住妻子，把手移到她的落基山脈，往下穿越大平原，一路向南。

[14] “Hey,” she says. “No Geography. Not tonight.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“Can't I just visit?”

“Forget it. I said I was sorry.”

[14]“喂，”她說，“甭畫地圖了。今晚不行。”

“不好意思。”我說。

“我只是在這兒待會(huì)兒，成嗎?”

“算了。我說了，剛才不好意思。”

[15] The citizens are crossing a desert. They have just about run out of water, and their lips are cracked. Though the blind man has delivered a warning, someone drinks from a poisoned well and dies horribly. That night, around the campfire, the others begin to quarrel. Most of them want to go home. “This is no country for a white man,” one says, “and if you ask me nobody has ever been here before.” But the blind man describes a piece of gold so big and pure that it will burn your eyes out if you look directly at it. “I ought to know,” he says. When he is finished the citizens are silent: one by one they move away and lie down on their bedrolls. They put their hands behind their heads and look up at the stars. A coyote howls.

[15] 那些人正在穿越沙漠。水快喝完了，他們嘴唇干裂。雖然瞎子發(fā)出過警告，但還是有人在毒井里取水喝，死狀恐怖。那晚，活下來的人們圍著篝火，爭執(zhí)起來。多數(shù)人想回家。“這不是白人待的地方，”一個(gè)人說，“依我看，以前壓根兒就沒人來過這兒。”但瞎子描繪的金塊又大又純，如果直視它，眼睛都會(huì)給灼瞎。“我早該知道的。”他說。他說完后，人們沉默了：他們一個(gè)個(gè)走開，在各自的鋪蓋上躺下來。他們頭枕著手，望著滿天星斗。一頭郊狼在嚎叫。

[16] Hearing the coyote, I remember why my wife doesn't feel sorry for the woman next door. It was a Monday evening, about a month ago, right after I got home from work. The man next door started to beat the dog, and I don't mean just smacking him once or twice. He was beating him, and he kept beating him until the dog couldn't even cry any more; you could hear the poor creature's voice breaking. It made us very upset, especially my wife, who is an animal lover from way back. Finally it stopped. Then, a few minutes later, I heard my wife say, “Oh!” and I went into the kitchen to find out what was wrong. She was standing by the window, which looks into the kitchen next door. The man had his wife backed up against the fridge. He had his knee between her legs and she had her knee between his legs and they were kissing, really hard, not just with their lips but rolling their faces back and forth one against the other. My wife could hardly speak for a couple of hours afterwards. Later she said that she would never waste her sympathy on that woman again.

[16] 聽到狼嚎，我記起妻子為什么不再同情隔壁的女人了。大約一個(gè)月前的某個(gè)周一晚上，我剛下班回家。隔壁的男人開始打狗，我的意思不是打一兩巴掌那種，而是用力揍，一直揍到那條狗再也叫不出聲來，能聽到那可憐的小東西的聲音都嘶啞了。這讓我們很難受，尤其是我妻子，她一向都非常喜愛動(dòng)物。終于，那個(gè)男人不打了。幾分鐘后，我聽見妻子“啊!”地一聲，便走進(jìn)廚房去看發(fā)生了什么事。她站在窗戶旁，窗戶正對(duì)著隔壁家的廚房。那男人把他妻子頂靠在冰箱上，一個(gè)膝蓋夾在她兩腿之間，而她的一個(gè)膝蓋也夾在他雙腿之間，兩人正在接吻，非常用力的那種，不只是用嘴唇，兩張臉也緊貼著一來一往地扭動(dòng)著。之后兩三個(gè)小時(shí)，我妻子連話都說不出來。后來她說，她再也不會(huì)對(duì)那女人浪費(fèi)同情了。

[17] It's quiet over there. My wife has gone to sleep and so has my arm, which is under her head. I slide it out and open and close my fingers, considering whether to wake her up. I like sleeping in my own bed, and there isn't enough room for the both of us. Finally I decide that it won't hurt anything to change places for one night.

[17] 那邊靜了下來。我妻子睡著了，我墊在她頭下的那只手臂也麻木了。我將手臂抽出，手指一開一合活動(dòng)了幾下，心想要不要喚醒她。我喜歡在自己的床上睡覺，但這床不夠我倆用。最后我決定換個(gè)地方睡，就一晚，沒什么大礙。

[18] I get up and fuss with the plants for a while, watering them and moving some to the window and some back. I trim the coleus, which is starting to get leggy, and put the cuttings in a glass of water on the sill. All the lights are off next door except the one in their bedroom window. I think about the life they have, and how it goes on and on, until it seems like the life they were meant to live. Everybody is always saying how great it is that human beings are so adaptable, but I don't know. A friend of mine was in the Navy and he told me that in Amsterdam, Holland, they have a whole section of town where you can walk through and from the street you can see women sitting in rooms, waiting. If you want one of them you just go in and pay, and they close the drapes. This is nothing special to the people who live in Holland. In Istanbul, Turkey, my friend saw a man walking down the street with a grand piano on his back. Everyone just moved around him and kept going. It's awful, what we get used to.

[18] 起床后，我擺弄了一會(huì)兒花草：給它們澆澆水，移一些到窗臺(tái)上，又搬些回來。我修剪了錦紫蘇——它們變得高挑起來——并把剪下的枝葉放到窗臺(tái)上盛著水的玻璃杯里。隔壁家的燈都滅了，只有臥室窗戶上的燈還亮著。我思考著他們擁有的生活，那種生活怎樣日復(fù)一日地延續(xù)，直到看起來那就是他們想過的生活。人們總說，人類適應(yīng)能力很強(qiáng)是一件非常好的事情，但我不敢茍同。我有個(gè)朋友在海軍服役，他告訴我，荷蘭的阿姆斯特丹有一整條街，你可以步行穿過，在街上能看到女人們坐在房間內(nèi)等著。如果你看中了一個(gè)，徑直走進(jìn)去付錢，她們就會(huì)放下簾子。住在荷蘭的人對(duì)此一點(diǎn)兒也不感到稀奇。在土耳其的伊斯坦布爾，我朋友曾看到一個(gè)男人背負(fù)一架大鋼琴在街上行走。所有人都只是繞開他，繼續(xù)趕路。有些事我們見慣不驚，這太可怕了。

[19] I turn off the television and get into my wife's bed. A sweet, heavy smell rises off the sheets. At first it makes me dizzy but after that I like it. It reminds me of gardenias.

The reason I don't watch the rest of the movie is that I can already see how it will end. The citizens will kill each other off, probably about ten feet from the legendary city of gold, and the blind man will stumble in by himself, not knowing that he has made it back to El Dorado.

[19] 我關(guān)掉電視，躺到妻子那張床上。一股濃郁好聞的味道從被單中飄出。一開始這味道讓我眩暈，但后來我就喜歡上了這種香味。它讓我想起梔子花。

那部電影我沒有看完，因?yàn)槲乙呀?jīng)能夠預(yù)見到它的結(jié)局。那些尋寶人將自相殘殺，很可能就在離傳說中的黃金之城約十英尺的地方;瞎子會(huì)一個(gè)人撞進(jìn)城去，卻不知道他已經(jīng)成功回到了厄爾多拉多這座黃金之城。

[20] I could write a better movie than that. My movie would be about a group of explorers, men and women, who leave behind their homes and their jobs and their families – everything they have known. They cross the sea and are shipwrecked on the coast of a country which is not on their maps. One of them drowns. Another gets attacked by a wild animal, and eaten. But the others want to push on. They ford rivers and cross an enormous glacier by dog sled. It takes months. On the glacier they run out of food, and for a while there it looks like they might turn on each other, but they don't. Finally they solve their problem by eating the dogs. That's the sad part of the movie.

[20] 我能寫出一部比這更好的電影來。我的電影里有一群探險(xiǎn)者，有男有女，他們離鄉(xiāng)背井，撇下工作和家庭——他們熟知的一切。他們漂洋過海，在地圖上沒有標(biāo)注的某個(gè)國家的海岸，船只失事。一人溺水而亡，另一人遭野獸攻擊被吃掉。但其余的人想繼續(xù)前進(jìn)。他們趟過河流，坐著狗拉的雪橇穿越一座巨大的冰川。穿越冰川要花幾個(gè)月時(shí)間。在冰川上，他們食物耗盡，一度看起來他們會(huì)相互殘殺取食，但并沒那樣做。最后，他們把狗吃掉，解決了難題。這是這部電影中令人傷心的部分。

[21] At the end we see the explorers sleeping in a meadow filled with white flowers. The blossoms are wet with dew and stick to their bodies, petals of columbine, clematis, blazing star, baby's breath, larkspur, iris, rue – covering them completely, turning them white so that you cannot tell one from another, man from woman, woman from man. The sun comes up. They stand and raise their arms, like white trees in a land where no one has ever been.

[21] 在影片結(jié)尾，我們看到探險(xiǎn)者們?cè)陂L滿白花的草地上睡覺。花朵濕漉漉的，沾滿露水，貼在他們身上。耬斗菜、鐵線蓮、矮百合、滿天星、翠雀草、鳶尾、蕓香的花瓣完全蓋住他們，將他們變成白色，你分不清誰是誰，也分不清男女。太陽升起來。他們站起身，高舉手臂，就像無人到過的土地上生長的白樹。

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