这期的地道英文栏目选文题材很“敏感”,可能会引起你的厌恶和不安。你可以选择直接跳过整个栏目,也可以选择撇开一切偏见,静下心来读完整个精彩选段。无论你是否看过或听过这个故事或据其改编而成的同名电影,请不要戴着“有色眼镜”去看这个“另类”却感人的爱情故事。对于“同性恋”这个时至今日在国内外仍很敏感的话题,小编想说,也许你不提倡,但你应该学着去理解。
以下是这个故事的梗概:1963年的夏天,为同一个牧场主打工的健谈的年轻农夫杰克与少言寡语的牛仔恩尼斯邂逅于美国怀俄明州西部人迹罕至的断背山。高山牧场的工作单调而艰苦,两人起初各自放牧,少有交流,然而久而久之,他们彼此相爱了。在断背山上,两人度过了人生中最美好的时光。季节性放牧结束后,迫于世俗压力,杰克和恩尼斯依依不舍地分离,而后来两人亦有了各自的家庭。转眼四年过去了,饱受相思之苦的杰克终于给恩尼斯寄去贺卡,相约见面。重逢后,两人意识到了一直压抑在心底的炽热情感,于是在随后的十几年中,都定期约会。两人忍受着巨大的世俗压力。最终,两人厮守一生的愿望因杰克的意外身亡而落空。后来,恩尼斯在杰克的房间里发现了两件“相依相守”的衬衣,他潸然泪下……
1994年普利策文学奖得主、美国作家Annie Proulx(1935- )凭借着这部作品获得了1998年美国国家杂志奖以及欧·亨利小说奖,而由华人导演李安执导的改编自此书的同名电影获得了第78届奥斯卡最佳导演、最佳配乐、最佳改编剧本三项大奖。
文字难度：★★★☆
What Jack remembered and 1)craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.
They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing 2)ruddy 3)chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the spark light and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else 4)drowsy and 5)tranced until Ennis, 6)dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to 7)hit the hay, cowboy. I 8)got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin’ on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off into the darkness. Jack heard his 9)spurs tremble as he 10)mounted, the words “see you tomorrow,” and the horse’s 11)shuddering snort, 12)grind of 13)hoof on stone.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.
…
在断背山上度过的那个已远去的夏天,有一段记忆令杰克念念不忘,那股渴望既难以压抑也无法理解。当时,恩尼斯走到他身后,把他拉近,无言的拥抱满足了某种双方都有的无关性爱的渴望。
两人如此在营火前站了许久,红彤彤的火焰摇曳着,他俩的影子如一根柱子,合映在岩石上。恩尼斯口袋里的圆形手表滴答作响,火堆里的树枝渐变成碳,时间一分一秒地流逝。星光穿透了营火上方的层层热流。恩尼斯的呼吸平静而缓慢,嘴里轻轻哼着什么。杰克靠在他身上感受着那稳定而有力的心跳,恩尼斯的低哼带来的震动仿若一道微弱的电流,令他似睡非睡,如痴如醉,直到恩尼斯道出童年时期,母亲在世时常对自己说的那句老套却在这场合仍适用的话:“该睡觉了,牛仔。我得走了。快,你都像马一样站着就睡着了。”说着,他摇了摇他,推开他,便消失在黑暗之中。当他跳上马时,杰克听到他那马刺的颤抖声,他那句“明天见”,那马儿颤抖的鼻息,和那马蹄踏过石头的声音。
后来,那个让杰克迷醉的拥抱在杰克记忆中凝结成他们各自艰难生活中朴实无华而又魔幻般美好的唯一瞬间。那是完美无暇的一刻,即使他知道,恩尼斯当时不愿面对面地拥抱他,是不想看到或感觉到拥抱的对象是他。或许,他想,他们之间的关系永不会有更进一步的发展了。就这样吧,就这样吧。
……
The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbing rhythm, was tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the west window, hitting the narrow boy’s bed against the wall, an ink-stained desk and wooden chair. The window looked down on the gravel road stretching south. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone 14)magenta.
The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod 15)braced across, a faded 16)cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans 17)crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn 18)packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny 19)jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack’s old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their 20)contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard with his knee. He had 21)staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve.
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own 22)plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain 23)sage and salty sweet 24)stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
Bumping down the 25)washboard road Ennis passed the country cemetery fenced with sagging sheep wire, a tiny fenced square on the 26)welling 27)prairie, a few graves bright with plastic flowers, and didn’t want to know Jack was going in there, to be buried on the grieving plain.
A few weeks later, on the Saturday, he threw all Stoutamire’s dirty horse blankets into the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to turn the high-pressure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed in the28)truck bed he stepped into Higgins’s gift shop and busied himself with the postcard rack.
杰克的卧房在一段险陡的楼梯顶端,上那段楼梯,步伐节奏与别不同。他的房间狭小闷热,下午的阳光从西边的窗倾泻进来,照在杰克那张靠墙的窄窄的床、沾有墨水的书桌以及木椅上。窗外,一条碎石路向南延伸。床边贴着一些从旧杂志上剪下来的照片,照片上某个黑发影星,其肤色泛红。
衣柜不深,里面横支着一根木挂杆,一块褪色印花棉布由绳子串吊起来成了衣柜的帘子。衣柜里的铁衣架上挂着两条被熨出摺边,整齐折好的牛仔裤,柜底有一双破旧的牧人靴,他隐约有些印象。衣柜北端墙壁有个小小的凹陷处,可以藏些东西。那里挂着一件衬衫,因长久挂在一枚钉上而显得僵直。他从钉上取下它,那是杰克在断背山的那段日子里穿的旧衬衫。衣袖上的血迹是恩尼斯的鼻血。在断背山的最后一个下午,两人扭打时,杰克用膝盖狠狠撞击恩尼斯的鼻子,弄得他鼻血四溅,溅得他俩全身都是。杰克用他的袖子止住恩尼斯的鼻血。
那衬衣拿在手中感觉很重,他这才发现里面还套着另外一件,袖子被仔细地塞在外面杰克那衬衣的袖子里。那是恩尼斯自己的一件格子衬衣。那件脏衬衣口袋裂开了,扣子也不全,他很久以前就以为是在某个该死的洗衣店里弄丢了,却是被杰克偷了,藏在他自己这件衬衣里。两件衬衣宛若两层皮肤,一层裹住另一层,合为一体。他把脸埋进那两件衬衣里,用嘴和鼻子缓慢地呼吸,盼能嗅到微乎其微的烟味与高山鼠尾草,以及杰克咸咸的汗香味,然而气味早已消散,唯有记忆中的气息,来自凭空想象的断背山的一种力量。关于断背山的一切都已消逝,剩下的仅有他手里的这两件衬衣。
回去的路上,恩尼斯开着车颠簸着经过村里的墓地。那只不过是连绵起伏的草原牧场里用松垮的铁丝网围成的一小块广场。有几座墓前搁着塑料假花,显得格外突出。恩尼斯不愿知道杰克就埋在那块伤心地上。
几周后的一个周六,他把斯图特埃米尔家那些鞍褥扔进卡车尾箱,拉到快捷洗车店用高压水枪冲洗。在工人们将洗干净的湿毯子往车尾箱里搬的那空当儿,他走进了希金斯礼品店,忙着挑选明信片。
“Ennis, what are you lookin’ for rootin’ through them postcards?” said Linda Higgins, throwing a sopping brown coffee 29)filter into the garbage can.
“Scene a Brokeback Mountain.”
“Over in Fremont County?”
“No, 30)north a here.”
“I didn’t order 31)none a them. Let me get the order list. (If) They got it, I can get you a hundred. I 32)got a order some more cards anyway.”
“One’s enough,” said Ennis.
When it came—thirty cents—he pinned it up in his 33)trailer, 34)brass-headed35)tack in each corner. Below it he 36)drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the 37)ensemble through a few stinging tears.
“Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.
Around that time, Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and 38)bucktoothed, talking about 39)getting up off his pockets and into the 40)control zone. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.
“恩尼斯,你把明信片都翻了一通,你在找什么呢?”琳达·希金斯一边问,一边把一张湿透了的褐色咖啡过滤纸扔进垃圾桶里。
“断背山的风景明信片。”
“在弗里蒙特县的那座?”
“不是,北面那座。”
“我没进这种明信片,不过我可以把它列在进货单上。如果他们有,我可以给你进上一百张,反正我也得进点儿明信片。”
“一张就够了。”恩尼斯说。
明信片到了,三十美分。他把它钉在自己的拖车屋里,四个角用黄铜大头钉钉住,又在下面钉了枚钉子。他把那个挂着两件旧衬衣的铁衣架挂在钉子上。他后退几步,端详着两件套在一起的衬衣,炽热的泪水夺眶而出。
“杰克,我发誓……(编者注:恩尼斯发誓要一辈子守护杰克,守护他们之间的感情)”他说。尽管杰克从没要求过他发什么誓,杰克自己就不是那种会发誓的人。
从那时起,杰克开始出现在他的梦里。他还像恩尼斯初次见到时的那样,头发卷曲,微笑着露出虎牙来,说着他要起身,去放牧区干活。一觉醒来,他有时伤心,有时像往常一样喜悦舒心;有时枕头会湿,有时床单会湿。
他知道发生了什么事,却无法相信它。但已于事无补,如果你回天乏力,那么只好默默承受。
