介绍:
(点击右边黑三角下拉有中英配文）
During those final nights in Cairo, months after the affair was over, we had finally persuaded Madox into a zinc bar for his farewell. She and her husband were there. One last night. One last dance. Almasy was drunk and attempting an old dance step he had invented called the Bosphorus hug, lifting Katharine Clifton into his wiry arms and traversing the floor until he fell with her across some Nile-grown aspidistras.
在那段风流韵事结束几个月以后，在告别开罗的最后几夜，我们终于劝动了马多克斯去一趟小酒吧，为他饯行。她和她的丈夫都在。最后一夜。最后一曲。奥尔马希喝醉了，尝试跳他所发明的一种老式舞步，叫作博斯普鲁斯拥抱。他用瘦长而结实的手臂托起了凯瑟琳•克利夫顿，滑过舞池，最后与她一起擦着生长在尼罗河的叶兰，摔倒在地上。
Almasy was drunk and his dancing seemed to the others a brutal series of movements. In those days he and she did not seem to be getting on well. He swung her from side to side as if she were some anonymous doll.
奥尔马希喝醉了。他的舞步在别人看来像是一连串的野蛮动作。在那些日子里，他和她的关系好像不太好。他把她转来转去，仿佛她是个没有名字的玩具娃娃。
Caravaggio is still amazed at the clarity of discipline in the man, who speaks sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third person, who still does not admit that he is Almasy.
“Who was talking, back then?”
“ ‘Death means you are in the third person. The English patient replies
卡拉瓦焦仍然惊赞那人思维清晰，说话一会儿用第一人称，一会儿用第三人称，他仍然不承认他是奥尔马希。
“刚才谁在说话?”
“‘死亡意味着你变成第三人。”’英国病人回答道。
All day they have shared the ampoules of m@rphine. To unthread the story out of him, Caravaggio travels within the code of signals. When the burned man slows down, or when Caravaggio feels he is not catching everything—the love affair, the death of Madox—he picks up the syringe from the kidney-shaped enamel tin, breaks the glass tip off an ampoule with the pressure of a knuckle and loads it. He is blunt about all this now with Hana, having ripped the sleeve off his left arm completely. Almasy wears just a grey singlet, so his black arm lies bare under the sheet.
一整天，他们分享马啡。为了串起他的经历，卡拉瓦焦讲起了他所熟悉的事情。当这个烧伤的患者放松下来时，或者当卡拉瓦焦感觉到他对一切——风流韵事、马多克斯之死——无法了解时，他就从肾形搪瓷罐里拿起注射器，用指关节压碎一个壶腹玻璃管的玻璃口，把吗啡装进注射器。现在有哈纳，他对这一切都变得迟钝了，他把左袖子完全撕了下来。奥尔马希只穿了一件汗衫，他那黝黑的手臂就放在床单下面。
Each swallow of m@rphine by the body opens a further door, or he leaps back to the cave paintings or to a buried plane or lingers once more with the woman beside him under a fan, her cheek against his stomach. When Almasy speaks he stays alongside him reordering the events.
往身上注入一针马啡就是打开了另一扇门，也许是让他的思绪跳回洞穴的岩画，也许是跳回一架掩埋的飞机。或者再次和女人一起躺在风扇下，她的面颊贴着他的肚子。在奥尔马希说话时，他待在旁边，重新理清这些事件的先后顺序。
On the floor of the Cave of Swimmers, after her husband had crashed their plane, he had cut open and stretched out the parachute she had been carrying. She lowered herself onto it, grimacing with the pain of her injuries. He placed his fingers gently into her hair, searching for other wounds, then touched her shoulders and her feet.
在游泳者洞穴的底部，在凯瑟琳的丈夫驾驶飞机坠落后，奥尔马希割开绳子，扯开她背上的降落伞。她皱着眉头，伤口痛得她直咧嘴。他温柔地抚着她的头发，寻找别的伤口，然后将手伸进她的双肩和双脚，将她抱了起来。
It was already cold in the cave. He wrapped the parachute around her for warmth. He lit one small fire and burned the acacia twigs and waved smoke into all the corners of the cave. He found he could not speak directly to her, so he spoke formally, his voice against the bounce of the cave walls. I’m going for help now, Katharine. Do you understand? There is another plane nearby, but there is no petrol. I might meet a caravan or a jeep, which means I will be back sooner. I don’t know. He pulled out the copy of Herodotus and placed it beside her. It was September 1939. He walked out of the cave, out of the flare of firelight, down through darkness and into the desert full of moon.
洞穴的温度已经降了下来。他用降落伞裹住她，为她保暖。他燃起一小堆火，燃烧着刺槐枝，让烟雾弥漫了洞穴的每一个角落。他发现无法直接对她讲话，于是说话一本正经，他的声音回荡在洞壁间。我现在去找人帮忙，凯瑟琳。你明白吗?附近有一架飞机，但是没有汽油。如果我遇到了一个商队或一辆吉普车，那样我很快就能回来。可是我也说不准。他掏出了那本希罗多德的书，放在她的身边。那是一九三九年九月。他走出洞穴，走出火光所及的范围，走进黑暗，走进满月下的沙漠。
He climbed down the boulders to the base of the plateau and stood there.
No truck. No plane. No compass. Only moon and his shadow. He found the old stone marker from the past that located the direction of El Taj, north-northwest. He memorized the angle of his shadow and started walking.
他踩着鹅卵石，爬到了高地底部，站在那里。
没有卡车，没有飞机，没有指南针。只有月亮和他的影子。他发现了古老的石头标记，那是过去留下的。石头指明了通往厄塔吉的方向，西北偏北。他记下了他影子的角度，开始走了起来。
A man walks as fast as a camel. Two and a half miles an hour. If lucky, he would come upon ostrich eggs. If unlucky, a sandstorm would erase everything. He walked for three days without any food. He refused to think about her.
一个走得像骆驼一样快的人，每小时走两英里半。如果走运的话，他能找到驼鸟蛋。如果倒楣的话，一场沙暴会吞噬一切。他走了三天，没吃任何东西。他拒绝想起她。
He was in broken country, had moved from sand to rock. He refused to think about her. Then hills emerged like mediaeval castles. He walked till he stepped with his shadow into the shadow of a mountain.
他走在崎岖不平的大地上，从沙漠走到岩石地。他拒绝想起她。接着出现了像中世纪城堡的丘陵。他走啊走啊，最后他和他的影子步人了高山的影子。
Then there was El Taj. He had imagined the street of mirrors for most of his journey. When he got to the outskirts of the settlements, English military jeeps surrounded him and took him away, not listening to his story of the woman injured at Uweinat, just seventy miles away, listening in fact to nothing he said.
“Are you telling me the English did not believe you? No one listened to you?”
“No one listened.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t give them a right name.”
“Yours?”
“I gave them mine.”
“Then what—”
“Hers. Her name. The name of her husband.”
“What did you say?”
He says nothing.
“Wake up! What did you say?”
随后到了厄塔吉。在旅途的大部分时间里，他想象卖镜子的大街。当他来到了居民区的外围时，英军的吉普车包围了他，带走了他，不听他讲有个受了伤的女人留在仅仅七十英里开外的乌怀拿德，事实上什么都不听他说。
“你说英国人不相信你，是吗?没人听你说话?”
“没人听。”
“为什么?”
“我给错了名字。”
“你的名字吗?”
“我对他们说了我的名字。”
“那么，谁的?”
“她的，她的姓，她丈夫的姓。”
“你说什么?”．
他什么也没说。
“醒醒!你说什么?”
“I said she was my wife. I said Katharine. Her husband was dead. I said she was badly injured, in a cave in the Gilf Kebir, at Uweinat, north of the Ain Dua well. She needed water. She needed food. I would go back with them to guide them. I said all I wanted was a jeep. One of their damn jeeps... Perhaps I seemed like one of those mad desert prophets after the journey, but I don’t think so. The war was beginning already. They were just pulling spies in out of the desert. Everyone with a foreign name who drifted into these small oasis towns was suspect. She was just seventy miles away and they wouldn’t listen.
“我当时说她是我妻子。我说叫凯瑟琳。她的丈夫死了。我说她的伤势严重，在基尔夫•克尔比尔高地的一个洞穴里，在乌怀拿德，爱因•杜阿的北面。她需要水，需要食物。我要和他们一起去，担任他们的向导。我说我只想要一辆吉普车，一辆他们该死的吉普车……也许经过长途的跋涉，我像是一个疯狂的沙漠预言家，但我并不这么认为。战争已经开始了。他们只是追捕来自沙漠的间谍。每一个流荡到这些绿洲小镇的人，只要他们有个外国的名字，就会受到怀疑。她仅在七十英里开外，可是他们不听。
I must have gone berserk then. They were using these wicker prisons, size of a shower. I was put into one and moved by truck. I was flailing around in there until I fell off onto the street, still in it. I was yelling Katharine’s name. Yelling the Gilf Kebir. Whereas the only name I should have yelled, dropped like a calling card into their hands, was Clifton’s.
“They hauled me up into the truck again. I was just another possible second-rate spi. Just another international bastard.”
我一定是十分狂暴。他们用上了那些柳条牢笼，和洗澡间一样大。我被关进其中一间，然后被卡车运走了。我在里面敲打，直到我掉到街上，仍关在牢里面。我喊着凯瑟琳的名字，喊着基尔夫•克尔比尔。然而我应该喊的名字却是杰弗里•克利夫顿，那无疑像是往他们的手里塞进一张名片。
“他们又把我拖进卡车。我可能是另一个次等间蝶，另一个国际混淡。”
----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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