介绍:
(点击右边黑三角下拉有中英配文）
In the apartment there is light only from the river and the desert beyond it. It falls upon her neck her feet the vaccination scar he loves on her right arm. She sits on the bed hugging. He slides his open palm along the sweat of her shoulder. This is my shoulder, he thinks, not her husband’s, this is my shoulder.
在这间套房里，仅有的光线是来自河水和河对岸沙漠的反光。光照在她的颈上、脚上和他喜欢的右臂的牛痘疤上。她光果果地坐在床上，他张开的手滑过她满是汗水的肩头。这是我的肩膀，他想着，不是她丈夫的，这是我的。
“We will never love each other again. We can never see each other again.”
“I know,” he says.
The night of her insistence on parting.
She sits, enclosed within herself, in the armour of her terrible conscience. He is unable to reach through it.
“我们不要再相爱了，我们不要再相见了。”
“我知道。”他说。
这一夜她坚持要分手。
她坐下来，用她可怕的良心盔甲把自己包裹起来。他无法穿透它。
“Never again. Whatever happens.”
“Yes.”
“I think he will go mad. Do you understand?”
He says nothing, abandoning the attempt to pull her within him.
An hour later they walk into a dry night. They can hear the gramophone songs in the distance from the Music for All cinema, its windows open for the heat. They will have to part before that closes up and people she might know emerge from there.
“无论发生什么事，再也不要见面了。”
“好。”
“我想他会发疯的，你明白吗?”
他什么也没说，放弃了拥抱她的念头。
一个小时之后，他们走进雨后的夜，他们能听见不远处的大众音乐电影院传出留声机播放的歌声。因为天气热，电影院的窗户敞开着。他们必须在电影散场前离开，以免碰上她认识的人从电影院里面出来。
They are in the botanical garden, near the Cathedral of All Saints. She sees one tear and leans forward and licks it, taking it into her mouth. He feels everything is missing from his body, feels he contains smoke. All that is alive is the knowledge of future desire and want. What he would say he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet.
他们待在圣徒大教堂附近的植物园里，那里长满了各种植物。她看见叶子上有一滴泪水，于是倾身向前，用舌头将它舔进嘴里。鲜血、泪水……他觉得他身上所有的一切都流失了，只剩下一缕青烟。脑子里只在想未来的欲望和需要。
There is no kiss. Just one embrace. He untugs himself from her and walks away, then turns. She is still there. He comes back within a few yards of her, one finger raised to make a point.
“I just want you to know. I don’t miss you yet.” His face awful to her, trying to smile.
“You will,” she says.
他们没有吻，只有一次拥抱。他轻易地从她的怀抱里摆脱出来，走开，然后转身。她仍然站在那儿。他往回走了几步，离她只有几码远，然后用手指指着她说：
“我只是想让你知道，我再也不会想你。”
他努力想强颜欢笑，她却觉得他的神色恐怖。
“你会的。”她说。
The long Cairo evenings. The sea of night sky, hawks in rows until they are released at dusk, arcing towards the last colour of the desert. A unison of performance like a handful of thrown seed.
“开罗的漫长下午。夜空如海，鹰群成行地飞翔，直到薄暮时分获得释放，它们才朝着沙漠边缘的太阳余晖盘旋而去。那情景就像一把种子迎风飞扬。
In that city in 1936 you could buy anything—from a dog or a bird that came at one pitch of a whistle, to those terrible leashes that slipped over the smallest finger of a woman so she was tethered to you in a crowded market.
“一九三六年的时候，在那座城里你什么都能买到……一条狗或一只小鸟，只要吹声口哨就来了。还有女人，她们的小拇指上捆着皮绳，你可以拴着她，穿过拥挤的市场。
In the northeast section of Cairo was the great courtyard of religious students, and beyond it the Khan el Khalili bazaar. Above the narrow streets we looked down upon cats on the corrugated tin roofs who also looked down the next ten feet to the street and stalls. Above all this was our room. Windows open to minarets, feluccas, cats, tremendous noise. She spoke to me of her childhood gardens. When she couldn’t sleep she drew her mother’s garden for me, word by word, bed by bed, the December ice over the fish pond, the creak of rose trellises. She would take -my wrist at the confluence of veins and guide it onto the hollow indentation at her neck.
开罗东北区是著名的神学院学生的院子，院子外面是汗阿尔卡里里市场。我们在狭窄的街道上方，向下俯视，看到猫儿待在波浪状的铁皮屋顶上，它们也正在打量下方十英尺处的街道和摊位。我们的房间居高临下。窗外可见清真寺的尖塔、小帆船和猫，不时还会传来扰人的喧嚣。她对我提起儿时的花园。她睡不着的时候，一字一句地对我描述她母亲的花园。我们的床挨着床。十二月的薄冰覆盖了鱼池。玫瑰花架会吱嗄作响。她会捉住我的手腕，把我的手放在血管汇流处，引导着它，把它放在她脖子上的凹处。
March 1937, Uweinat. Madox is irritable because of the thinness in the air. Fifteen hundred feet above sea level and he is uncomfortable with even this minimal height. He is a desert man after all, having left his family’s village of Marston Magna, Somerset, altered all customs and habits so he can have the proximity to sea level as well as regular dryness.
一九三七年三月，乌怀拿德。因为空气稀薄，马多克斯的脾气变得很暴躁。虽然只是在海拔一千五百英尺处，这样的高度也会使他感到不舒服。他毕竟是个在沙漠里生活的人，离开了位于索美塞得郡马斯顿马格纳村的老家后，改变了所有的习惯，因此海平面的高度可能会和常年的干燥—样，让他觉得较有亲切感。
“Madox, what is the name of that hollow at the base of a woman’s neck? At the front. Here. What is it, does it have an official name? That hollow about the size of an impress of your thumb?”
Madox watches me for a moment through the noon glare.
“Pull yourself together,” he mutters.
“马多克斯，女人颈子下面的那个凹处叫什么?在前面。这儿。那叫什么?它有正式的名称吗?那个凹处有没有你的拇指那么大?’
马多克斯在正午的阳光下看了我一会儿。
“振作点。’他小声地嘟哝着”。
----每周一/三/五晚更---- 【文本翻译均为电台英伦好声音读给你听所有，转载请联系播主并注明】
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