介绍:
(点击右边黑三角下拉有中英配文）
Singh touched her arm and let the machine roll away, down the slope, and only then revved it to life.
Halfway down the path to the gate, Caravaggio was waiting for him, carrying the gun. He didn’t even lift it formally towards the motorbike when the boy slowed down, as Caravaggio walked into his path. Caravaggio came up to him and put his arms around him. A great hug. The sapper felt the stubble against his skin for the first time. He felt drawn in, gathered into the muscles. “I shall have to learn how to miss you,” Caravaggio said. Then the boy pulled away and Caravaggio walked back to the house.
基普摸了一下她的手臂，就骑着摩托车走了。他冲下斜坡，这时引擎才急速转动起来。
在通往大门的小路上，卡拉瓦焦在等着他，他带着那枝枪走下小径，当那男孩的车速慢下来时，他甚至没有正式举枪对那辆摩托车示意。卡拉瓦焦向他走去，张开双臂拥抱他——一个紧紧的拥抱。工兵第一次知道胡须扎在脸上的感觉，他觉得那胡须扎进了他的肌肉。“我会想念你的。”卡拉瓦焦说。那男孩离去了，卡拉瓦焦转身走回了那间屋子。
The villa drifts in darkness. In the hallway by the English patient’s bedroom the last candle burns, still alive in the night.
Whenever he opens his eyes out of sleep, he sees the old wavering yellow light.
For him now the world is without sound, and even light seems an unneeded thing. He will tell the girl in the morning he wants no candle flame to accompany him while he sleeps.
别墅陷人黑暗之中。在英国病人房门外的走廊上，最后一根蜡烛在燃烧着，在黑夜里依然充满生气。任何时候，他从睡梦中醒来，一睁眼，就看到黄色的烛光忽明忽暗。
对他来说，现在的世界是没有声音的，甚至光线似乎也是没有必要存在的。他明早要告诉那个女孩，当他睡觉的时候，他不需要烛光陪伴着他。
Around three a.m. he feels a presence in the room. He sees, for a pulse of a moment, a figure at the foot of his bed, against the wall or painted onto it perhaps, not quite discernible in the darkness of foliage beyond the candlelight. He mutters something, something he had wanted to say, but there is silence and the slight brown figure, which could be just a night shadow, does not move. A poplar. A man with plumes. A swimming figure. And he would not be so lucky, he thinks, to speak to the young sapper again.
大约凌晨三点钟的时候，他感觉到房间里有个人影。他看了看，一段沉默之后，一个身影出现在他的床脚，抵着墙，也许是在上面作画，在烛火那边，叶子的阴影下，看不太清楚。他嘟哝着什么，一些他想说的东西，但是那儿一片沉寂，而那略发棕色的身影，也许只是夜晚的影子，一动不动。一棵杨树，一个带着羽毛饰物的人，一个游泳者的身影。而他不会这么走运，能再和年轻的工兵说话了，他想。
He stays awake in any case this night, to see if the figure moves towards him. Ignoring the tablet that brings painless-ness, he will remain awake till the light dies out and the smell of candle smoke drifts into his room and into the girl’s room farther down the hall. If the figure turns around there will be paint on his back, where he slammed in grief against the mural of trees. When the candle dies out he will be able to see this. His hand reaches out slowly and touches his book and returns to his dark chest. Nothing else moves in the room.
无论如何，他今晚得保持清醒，看看这个身影是否向他走来。他不吃止痛药，他要保持清醒，直到烛光消失，蜡烛熄灭的烟味会飘进他的房间，又飘进那女孩的房间，飘向走廊那头。如果那身影转过身来，他一定会看到他背上沾着漆，因为他在那儿悲伤地使劲靠着树墙。等蜡烛熄灭了，他就能看见了。他把手慢慢伸出去，摸到他的书，又收回来放在他黑色的胸脯上。房间里没有别的动静。
Now where does he sit as he thinks of her? These years later. A stone of history skipping over the water, bouncing up so she and he have aged before it touches the surface again and sinks.
现在基普坐在哪里想她?这些年以后。历史的石头在记忆的水面跳跃，于是她和他在石头落到水面，并沉下去之前就老了。
Where does he sit in his garden thinking once again he should go inside and write a letter or go one day down to the telephone depot, fill out a form and try to contact her in another country. It is this garden, this square patch of dry cut grass that triggers him back to the months he spent with Hana and Caravaggio and the English patient north of Florence in the Villa San Girolamo.
基普坐在他的花园里的某个地方，又想到应该走进屋内写封信，或找一天到电信局，填写表格，想办法和另一个国家里的她取得联系。就是这个花园，这块修剪过的方形草地，把他带回了哈纳、卡拉瓦焦，还有英国病人住在佛罗伦萨北面的圣吉洛拉莫别墅的日子。
He is a doctor, has two children and a laughing wife. He is permanently busy in this city. At six p.m. he removes his white lab coat. Underneath he wears dark trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. He closes up the clinic, where all the paperwork has weights of various kinds—stones, inkpots, a toy truck his son no longer plays with—to keep it from being blown away by the fan. He climbs onto his bicycle and pedals the four miles home, through the bazaar.
他是个医生，有两个孩子和一个爱笑的妻子。他在这座城市里终日忙碌。下午六点，他脱下他的白色工作服，里面穿着暗色的长裤和短袖上衣。他关上诊所的门，在那儿，所有的书面文件被各式各样的东西压住——石头、墨水瓶、一个他儿子再也不玩的玩具卡车——这样那些文件就不会被电扇吹走。他骑上自行车，穿过市场，骑四英里路回家。
He glides under the willows by the canal and then stops at a small neighbourhood of houses, removes his cycle clips and carries the bicycle down the steps into the small garden his wife has nurtured.
他沿着运河边的柳树滑行，然后停在一小块住宅区前，移动车轮，提起来，扛着它走下台阶，到了他妻子照料的小花园。
And something this evening has brought the stone out of the water and allowed it to move back within the air towards the hill town in Italy. It was perhaps the chemical burn on the arm of the girl he treated today.
今天晚上有些事情使记忆的石头浮上了水面，并使它回到了意大利的小山城里。这也许是因为他今天诊治一个手臂被化学品烧伤的女孩引起的。
He had been carrying his bicycle and was halfway up the steps before he remembered.
This had been on the way to work, so the trigger of memory was postponed when he got to the hospital and ran into seven hours of constant patients and administration. Or it might have been the burn on the young girl’s arm.
今早当他扛着自行车沿着楼梯走时，又沉人回忆中，到了半路才想起这是在去上班的路上，于是勾起的回忆被延缓了。他一到医院，整整七个小时被接连不断的病人和行政工作缠住了。也或许是因为那女孩手臂上的那块烧伤。
----每周一/三/五晚更----
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