介绍:
(点击右边黑三角下拉有中英配文）
When the Cliftons were not with us they were based in Cairo. Clifton doing other work for the English, God knows what, an uncle in some Jovernment office. All this was before the war. But at that time the city had every nation swimming in it. They were a popular young couple with honour between them, and I was on the periphery of Cairo society. They lived well. A ceremonial life that I would slip into now and then. Dinners, garden parties. Events I would not normally have been interested in but now went to because she was there. I am a man who fasts until I see what I want.
不和我们住在一起时，杰弗里•克利夫顿夫妇住在开罗。杰弗里•克利夫顿也为英国人——一个在正府部门工作的叔叔——做事情，天知道做些什么，这都是战前的事。但是那时来自各个国家的人都聚集到这座城市。他们是一对受欢迎的年轻夫妇，相互引以为荣。我处于开罗社交圈的边缘地带。他们生活得很好。一种讲究礼仪的生活，我偶尔会去体验一下。晚宴，花园聚会。我以前通常对这种事不感兴趣，但是现在我会参加，因为她也在。我这人一看到想要的东西，就会勇往直前。
How do I explain her to you? With the use of my hands? She had been part of the expedition for almost a year. I saw her, conversed with her. We had each been continually in the presence of the other. Later, when we were aware of mutual desire, these previous moments flooded back into the heart, now suggestive, that nervous grip of an arm on a cliff, looks that had been missed or misinterpreted.
我该怎么向你介绍她呢?她加入勘探队几乎有一年了。我看到她，和她交谈。我们不断出现在对方面前。后来，我们察觉到彼此的渴求，过往的一切再次涌上心头。曾经伸出颤抖的手抓住悬崖上的手臂，曾经错过或被误解的眼神，现在都得到了解释。
I was at that time seldom in Cairo, there about one month in three. I worked in the Department of Egyptology on my own book, Recentes Explorations dans le Desert Libyque, as the days progressed, coming closer and closer to the text as if the desert were there somewhere on the page, so I could even smell the ink as it emerged from the fountain pen. And simultaneously struggled with her nearby presence, more obsessed if truth be known with her possible mouth, the tautness behind the knee, the white plain of stomach, as I wrote my brief book, seventy pages long, succinct and to the point, I wished to dedicate the monograph to her, to her voice, to her body that I imagined rose white out of a bed like a long bow, but it was a book I dedicated to a king. Believing such an obsession would be mocked, patronized by her polite and embarrassed shake of the head.
“那时我很少待在开罗，大概隔两个月住在那儿一个月。我在埃及学系工作；撰写我自己的书——(利比亚沙漠之最新探究)。随着时间的推移，我越来越投入，似乎沙漠就在书中的某处，在墨水从钢笔中流泄出来时，我甚至都能闻到气味。我撰写着那本薄书，七十页，简明扼要，并附有地图。我在撰写的同时，念念不忘就在附近的她，越发着迷，想着能否见识她的嘴巴、绷紧的膝盖、白皙而平坦的腹部。我无法抹去她浮现在书页上的身影。我希望把这本书献给她，献给她的声音，献给她的身子。我想象她那洁白的身体下了床，像一把长弓。但这本书是献给一位国王的。我相信她会嘲笑我这般着迷，带着礼貌而尴尬的神情摇摇头。
I began to be doubly formal in her company. A characteristic of my nature. As if awkward about a previously revealed n@kedness. It is a European habit. It was natural for me—having translated her strangely into my text of the desert—now to step into metal clothing in her presence.
与她在一起时，我言谈举止更加谨慎。我本性如此。就好像是在先前果露过身体一样，因而觉得难为情。这是欧洲人的习惯。对我来说自然不过——莫名其妙将她融入了我那本谈及沙漠的书中——现在当着她的面裹上了铠甲。
The wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.
‘狂野的诗篇是所爱的女人
或应爱的女人之替代而已，
一篇狂诗是另一篇狂诗的伪作。’
On Hassanein Bey’s lawn—the grand old man of the 1923 expedition—she walked over with the government aide Roun-dell and shook my hand, asked him to get her a drink, turned back to me and said, “I want you to ravish me.” Roundell returned. It was as if she had handed me a knife. Within a month I was her lover.
“在哈桑尼老先生——一九二三年探险的老者——的草坪上，她和政府助理朗德尔走了过来，与我握了手，她叫朗德尔帮她拿点喝的，然后又转过身对我说：‘我要你把我抢走。’朗德尔回来了。她好像递给了我一把刀。一个月里，我成了她的青人。
I sank to my knees in the mosaic-tiled hall, my face in the curtain of her gown, the salt taste of these fingers in her mouth. We were a strange statue, the two of us, before we began to unlock our hunger. Her fingers scratching against the sand in my thinning hair. Cairo and all her deserts around us.
我跪在铺了马赛克的走廊里，•脸贴着她那睡衣的下摆，她的嘴尝着我手指上的咸味。我们组成一尊奇怪的雕像，我们两个人，在我们开始释放欲望之前。她的手指拨弄我那越发稀疏的头发中的沙子。我们的周围是开罗和她所有的沙漠。
Was it desire for her youth, for her thin adept boyishness? Her gardens were the gardens I spoke of when I spoke to you of gardens.
是渴求她的年轻?是渴求她那少许的男孩气质?我对你提起的花园就是她的花园。
There was that small indentation at her throat we called the Bosphorus. I would dive from her shoulder into the Bos-phorus. Rest my eye there. I would kneel while she looked down on me.
她喉咙下方有块小小的凹处，我们叫它博斯普鲁斯海峡。我会从她的肩膀看到博斯普鲁斯海峡。将眼光停在那里徜徉休息。我跪下身来。
----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】
大家还在听
