介绍:
Briony sat on the floor with her back to one of the tall built-in toy cupboards and fanned
her face with the pages of her play. The silence in the house was complete—no voices or
footfalls downstairs, no murmurs from the plumbing; in the space between one of the open
sash windows a trapped fly had abandoned its struggle, and outside, the liquid birdsong had
evaporated in the heat. She pushed her knees out straight before her and let the folds of
her white muslin dress and the familiar, endearing, pucker of skin about her knees fill her
view. She should have changed her dress this morning. She thought how she should take more
care of her appearance, like Lola. It was childish not to. But what an effort it was. The
silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted—her hands in her lap
appeared unusually large and at the same time remote, as though viewed across an immense
distance. She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes
before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm,
came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She
bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the
dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a
wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the
secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger
closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was
pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to
move it, was not the same as actually moving it. And when she did crook it finally, the
action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. When did it know
to move, when did she know to move it? There was no catching herself out. It was either-or.
There was no stitching, no seam, and yet she knew that behind the smooth continuous fabric
was the real self—was it her soul?—which took the decision to cease pretending, and gave
the final command.
These thoughts were as familiar to her, and as comforting, as the precise configuration of
her knees, their matching but competing, symmetrical and reversible, look. A second thought
always followed the first, one mystery bred another: Was everyone else really as alive as
she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to
herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her
sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time
thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face? Did everybody, including her father,
Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably
complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance
and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no
one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was
surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the
bright and private inside feeling she had. This was sinister and lonely, as well as
unlikely. For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly
probable that everyone else had thoughts like hers. She knew this, but only in a rather arid
way; she didn’t really feel it.
The rehearsals also offended her sense of order. The self-contained world she had drawn with
clear and perfect lines had been defaced with the scribble of other minds, other needs; and
time itself, so easily sectioned on paper into acts and scenes, was even now dribbling
uncontrollably away. Perhaps she wouldn’t get Jackson back until after lunch. Leon and his
friend were arriving in the early evening, or even sooner, and the performance was set for
seven o’clock. And still there had been no proper rehearsal, and the twins could not act,
or even speak, and Lola had stolen Briony’s rightful role, and nothing could be managed,
and it was hot, ludicrously hot. The girl squirmed in her oppression and stood. Dust from
along the skirting board had dirtied her hands and the back of her dress. Away in her
thoughts, she wiped her palms down her front as she went toward the window.
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