文字难度：★★☆
I didn’t used to believe in ghosts, but I was trained to talk to them. My mother reminded me many times that I had the gift. It all stemmed from a lie I told when I was four. The way my mother remembered it, I refused to get ready for bed one night, claiming that there was a ghost in the bathroom. She was delighted to learn that I was a 1)spirit medium.
过去,我并不相信“鬼”的存在,但我被训练成能与其交谈。我母亲多次提醒我——我有那种天赋。这一切全起因于我四岁时说的一个谎。我母亲回忆道,一天晚上,我不愿上床睡觉,声称浴室里有只鬼。得知我是个“通灵者”,她那时很高兴。
Thereafter, she questioned anything unusual—a sudden gust of wind, a vase that fell and shattered. She would ask me, “She here?” She meant my grandmother.
此后,任何不寻常的事发生,她都会疑神疑鬼——突然而至的一阵风、摔个粉碎的花瓶。她会问我:“她在这里吗?”她指的是我外婆。
When I was a child, my mother told me that my grandmother died in great 2)agony after she accidentally ate too much 3)opium. My mother was nine years old when she watched this happen.
我还小的时候,我母亲告诉我,我外婆是意外吃下太多鸦片后痛苦地死去的。目睹那一切发生时,我母亲只有9岁。
When I was 14, my older brother was stricken with a brain 4)tumor. My mother begged me to ask my grandmother to save him. When he died, she asked me to talk to him as well. “I don’t know how,” I protested. When my father died of a brain tumor six months after my brother, she made me use a 5)Ouija board. She wanted to know if they still loved her. I spelled out the answer I knew she wanted to hear: Yes. Always.
当我14岁时,我哥哥患了脑瘤。我母亲求我让我外婆救救他。哥哥死后,她还让我和哥哥交谈。“我不知道该怎么做,”我反抗道。当我父亲在哥哥去世后六个月也因脑瘤去世后,母亲让我使用显灵板。她想知道他们是否依然爱她。我写出了她想听到的回答:当然,永远爱你。
When I became a fiction writer in my 30s, I wrote a story about a woman who killed herself eating too much opium. After my mother read a draft of that story, she had tears in her eyes. Now she had proof: My grandmother had talked to me and told me her true story. How else could I have known my grandmother had not died by accident but with the fury of suicide? She asked me, “She here now?” I answered honestly, “I don’t know.”
在我30多岁时,我开始写小说。我写了篇短篇小说,讲一个女人因进食过量鸦片而致死的故事。我母亲看了那小说的草稿后,眼里泛起了泪花。现在,她有证据了:我外婆跟我聊过,和我讲了她的真实故事。不然我怎么知道我外婆不是死于意外而是满腔愤恨自杀而死呢?她问我:“她现在在这里吗?”我老实地回答说:“我不知道。”
Over the years, I have included other details in my writing I could not possibly have known on my own: a place, a character, a song. I have come to feel differently about my ghostwriters. Sometimes their clues have come so plentifully, they’ve made me laugh like a child who can’t open birthday presents fast enough. I must say thanks, not to blind luck but to my ghosts.
过去这些年里,我在写作中加入了其他一些本来我自己不太可能会知道的故事细节:某个地点,某个人物,某首歌。我开始对我的那些“鬼作家”们有着不同的感受。有时,它们的线索是那么的丰富,使得我像个迫不及待地打开生日礼物的孩子那般傻笑。我必须对我的那些“鬼”表示感谢,而非归功于走大运。
Ten years ago, I clearly saw a ghost, and she talked to me. It was my mother. She had died just 24 hours before. Her face was 10 times larger than life, in the form of a moving, pulsing 6)hologram of sparkling lights. My mother was laughing at my surprise. She drew closer, and when she reached me, I felt as if I had been physically punched in the chest. It took my breath away and filled me with something absolute: love, but also joy and peace—and with that, understanding that love and joy and peace are all the same thing. Joy comes from love. Peace comes from love. “Now you know,” my mother said.
10年前,我清楚地看见了一只“鬼”,她还和我说话。那是我母亲。她一天前去世了。她的面孔比生前要大上十倍,以光点闪耀的动态跳跃全息摄影图像的形式出现。对于我的惊讶,我母亲报以嘲笑。她靠近我,当她碰到我时,我感觉自己像是被人往胸口打了一锤。那使我感到窒息,也使我全身心都感觉到爱,还有喜悦和平静——因此,我理解到爱、喜悦和平静是同样的东西。喜悦源自爱,平静源自爱。“现在,你明白了吧,”我母亲说道。
I believe in ghosts. Whenever I want, they will always be there: my mother, my grandmother, my ghosts.
我相信“鬼”的存在。只要我需要,它们总会出现在我的身边:我的母亲,我的外婆,我的那些“鬼”。
