介绍:
（下拉有中英配文）
In her childhood her classroom had been Caravaggio. He had taught her the somersault. Now, with his hands always in his pockets, he just gestures with his shoulders. Who knew what country the war had made him live in. She herself had been trained at Women’s College Hospital and then sent overseas during the Sicilian invasion. That was in 1943. The First Canadian Infantry Division worked its way up Italy, and the destroyed bodies were fed back to the field hospitals like mud passed back by tunnellers in the dark. After the battle of Arezzo, when the first barrage of troops recoiled, she was surrounded day and night by their wounds. After three full days without rest, she finally lay down on the floor beside a mattress where someone lay dead, and slept for twelve hours, closing her eyes against the world around her.
在她童年的时候，卡拉瓦焦就是她的老师。他教会了她翻筋斗。现在，他总是把手插在口袋里，只能扭动肩膀做个样子。谁知道战争迫使他住在哪个国家。她在女子医学院接受过训练，然后在入侵西西里时被派到海外。那是一九四三年。加拿大第一步兵师一路远征到意大利，不停地有伤员被送到野战医院，像是在黑暗之中挖掘隧道的工人运回的泥巴。在阿雷佐战役打响以后，当第一批部队撤下时，她日夜照料那些伤员。整整三天没有休息，最后她躺在地上，一个人死在身旁的席子上。她睡了十二个小时，闭上眼睛，无视周围的一切。
When she woke, she picked up a pair of scissors out of the porcelain bowl, leaned over and began to cut her hair, not concerned with shape or length, just cutting it away—the irritation of its presence during the previous days still in her mind—when she had bent forward and her hair had touched blood in a wound. She would have nothing to link her, to lock her, to death. She gripped what was left to make sure there were no more strands and turned again to face the rooms full of the wounded.
等她醒来时，她从瓷碗里拿出一把剪刀，弯腰剪下她的头发，不在乎式样和长短，只想剪掉头发。想到前几天头发飘来荡去，她的心中就气恼不已。那时，当她伏下身时，她的头发就会碰到伤口流出的血。她绝不愿把自己与死亡连在一起，锁在一起。她抓抓剩下的头发，确信再也没有散发，然后转身面对满是伤员的病房。
She never looked at herself in mirrors again. Nothing in her spirit or past had taught her to be a nurse. But cutting her hair was a contract, and it lasted until they were bivouacked in the Villa San Girolamo north of Florence. Here there were four other nurses, two doctors, one hundred patients. The war in Italy moved farther north and they were what had been left behind.
她后来再也没有照过镜子，看护的时间不长，这是到死便解除的契约。她的精神或她的过去没有教会她如何成为一名护士，但是剪去头发就是一个契约，它一直生效，直到他们搬进了佛罗伦萨以北的圣吉洛拉莫别墅。除了她，这里另有四位护士、两位医生和一百多名伤员。在意大利进行的战斗再次北移，他们已被抛在后面。
Then, during the celebrations of some local victory, somewhat plaintive in this hill town, she had said she was not going back to Florence or Rome or any other hospital, her war was over. She would remain with the one burned man they called “the English patient,” who, it was now clear to her, should never be moved because of the fragility of his limbs. Till the nuns reclaimed it she would sit in this villa with the Englishman. There was something about him she wanted to learn, grow into, and hide in, where she could turn away from being an adult. There was some little waltz in the way he spoke to her and the way he thought. She wanted to save him, this nameless, almost faceless man who had been one of the two hundred or so placed in her care during the invasion north.
后来，在当地某次战斗获胜的庆祝期间——在这个山镇举行这样的活动有些令人感到哀伤——她说她不会返回佛罗伦萨，不会返回罗马，或其它的医院，她的战争已经结束了。她会和英国病人一同留下来。她后来明白，那人四肢几乎不能动，因而永远无法被移动。直到修女们把它索回。她想了解他，融进他的思绪，深藏其中，那样她就可以逃避成人的世界。他对她说话的方式和他思维的方式有一种飘忽的感觉。她想救他，这个无名无姓，几乎面目全非的人，在军队往北进攻时，他曾是她所照料的两百来人当中的一个。
Darkness between Hana and Caravaggio as they walk in the garden. Now he begins to talk in his familiar slow drawl.
“It was someone’s birthday party late at night on Danforth Avenue. The Night Crawler restaurant. Do you remember, Hana? Everyone had to stand and sing a song. Your father, me, Giannetta, friends, and you said you wanted to as well— for the first time. You were still at school then, and you had learned the song in a French class.
“You did it formally, stood on the bench and then one more step up onto the wooden table between the plates and the candles burning.
“ ‘Alonson fon!’
“You sang out, your left hand to your heart. Alonson fon! Half the people there didn’t know what the hell you were singing, and maybe you didn’t know what the exact words meant, but you knew what the song was about.
哈纳和卡拉瓦焦在花园里散步，黑暗笼罩了他们。这会儿他开始用他熟悉的语调，慢吞吞地拖长了声音说话。
“不知道是在谁的生日聚会上，到了深夜，在丹福斯大街。夜爬虫餐厅。哈纳，你记得吗?每个人都得站着唱歌。你的父亲、我、齐安妮塔和朋友们都一样，你说你也想唱歌——那还是破天荒第一次。你那时还在上学，你在上法语课时学会了那首歌。
“你一本正经，站到板凳上，然后一脚踩到桌子上，旁边有着盘子、碟子和燃烧的蜡烛。
“Alonson fon!’
“你放声歌唱，左手按着胸前。Alonson fon!那里有一半的人不知道你到底在唱些什么。也许你不知道歌词的确切含义，但是你了解那首歌。
“The breeze from the window was swaying your skirt over so it almost touched a candle, and your ankles seemed fire-white in the bar. Your father’s eyes looking up at you, miraculous with this new language, the cause pouring out so distinct, flawless, no hesitations, and the candles swerving away, not touching your dress but almost touching. We stood up at the end and you walked off the table into his arms.”
“从窗口刮来的轻风吹起你的裙子，裙子几乎碰到了蜡烛，你的脚踝在酒吧里好像变得炽白。你的父亲抬头注视着你，惊叹你会用另一种语言唱歌，而且吐字那么清楚，挑不出一点毛病，没有口吃。你的裙子在烛光中摇曳。等你唱完歌的时候，我们站了起来。你走下桌子，投入了他的怀抱。”
“I would remove those bandages on your hands. I am a nurse, you know.”
“They’re comfortable. Like gloves.”
“How did this happen.”
“I was caught jumping from a woman’s window. That woman I told you about, who took the photograph. Not her fault.”
She grips his arm, kneading the muscle. “Let me do it.” She pulls the bandaged hands out of his coat pockets.
“我帮你取下手上的绷带吧。我是护士，这你知道。”
“这些绷带挺舒服的，就像手套一样。”
“发生了什么事?”
“我跳下女人的窗口，当场就被抓了。我跟你提过她，就是那个拍照的女人。可是不能怪她。”
哈纳抓住卡拉瓦焦的手臂，抚摸手臂的肌肉。 “让我来吧。”她从他的外套口袋里拉出了缠着绷带的手。
As she loosens the bandages he steps backwards, the white coming out of his arms as if he were a magician, till he is free of them. She walks towards the uncle from childhood, sees his eyes hoping to catch hers to postpone this, so she looks at nothing but his eyes.
她松开绷带，他退后几步，白色的绷带自手臂上盘旋而出，似乎他是个魔术师。绷带完全解开了。她走近他，想寻找儿时记忆中的叔叔。她看见他的眼睛希望捕捉到她的目光，为了延迟这一刻的到来，所以她直视他的眼睛。
His hands held together like a human bowl. She reaches for them while her face goes up to his cheek, then nestles in his neck. What she holds seems firm, healed.
He raises his hands up as if to cup the quarter-moon.
“They removed both thumbs, Hana. See. They handcuffed me to the table legs. When they cut off my thumbs my hands slipped out of them without any power. Like a wish in a dream.”
他的双手捧在一起，像是一只血肉做成的碗。她迎了上去，抬起脸，贴上他的面颊，然后依偎在他的肩上。她抓住了那双手，它们似乎结实、痊愈了。
他举起双手，仿佛准备捧起一轮弦月。
“他们砍下了两个大拇指，哈纳，瞧!”
我的手腕被绑在桌脚。他们砍下了我的大拇指，我的手无力地滑了出来。像是梦中许了一个愿。
----每周一/三/五晚更----
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