【有声英语文学名著】夜色温柔 Book 1（13）

 Tender Is the Night - Book One

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chapter 13

Dick turned the corner of the traverse and continued along the trench¹ walking on the duckboard. He came to a periscope², looked through it a moment; then he got up on the step and peered over the parapet. In front of him beneath a dingy³ sky was Beaumont Hamel; to his left the tragic⁴ hill of Thiepval. Dick stared at them through his field glasses, his throat straining with sadness.

He went on along the trench, and found the others waiting for him in the next traverse. He was full of excitement and he wanted to communicate it to them, to make them understand about this, though actually Abe North had seen battle service and he had not.

"This land here cost twenty lives a foot that summer," he said to Rosemary. She looked out obediently at the rather bare green plain with its low trees of six years' growth. If Dick had added that they were now being shelled she would have believed him that afternoon. Her love had reached a point where now at last she was beginning to be unhappy, to be desperate. She didn't know what to do—she wanted to talk to her mother.

"There are lots of people dead since and we'll all be dead soon," said Abe consolingly.

Rosemary waited tensely for Dick to continue.

"See that little stream—we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it—a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody⁵ rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation."

"Why, they've only just quit over in Turkey," said Abe. "And in Morocco—"

"That's different. This western-front business couldn't be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn't. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren't any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental⁶ equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den⁷ Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather's whiskers."

"General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty-five."

"No, he didn't—he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling⁸ and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced⁹ in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle—there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle."

"You want to hand over this battle to D. H. Lawrence," said Abe.

"All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust¹⁰ of high explosive love," Dick mourned persistently¹¹. "Isn't that true, Rosemary?"

"I don't know," she answered with a grave face. "You know everything."

They dropped behind the others. Suddenly a shower of earth gobs and pebbles¹² came down on them and Abe yelled from the next traverse:

"The war spirit's getting into me again. I have a hundred years of Ohio love behind me and I'm going to bomb out this trench." His head popped up over the embankment. "You're dead—don't you know the rules? That was a grenade."

Rosemary laughed and Dick picked up a retaliatory¹³ handful of stones and then put them down.

"I couldn't kid here," he said rather apologetically. "The silver cord is cut and the golden bowl is broken and all that, but an old romantic like me can't do anything about it."

"I'm romantic too."

They came out of the neat restored trench, and faced a memorial to the Newfoundland dead. Reading the inscription¹⁴ Rosemary burst into sudden tears. Like most women she liked to be told how she should feel, and she liked Dick's telling her which things were ludicrous and which things were sad. But most of all she wanted him to know how she loved him, now that the fact was upsetting everything, now that she was walking over the battlefield in a thrilling dream.

After that they got in their car and started back toward Amiens. A thin warm rain was falling on the new scrubby woods and underbrush and they passed great funeral pyres of sorted duds, shells, bombs, grenades, and equipment, helmets, bayonets, gun stocks and rotten leather, abandoned six years in the ground. And suddenly around a bend the white caps of a great sea of graves. Dick asked the chauffeur¹⁵ to stop.

"There's that girl—and she still has her wreath."

They watched as he got out and went over to the girl, who stood uncertainly by the gate with a wreath in her hand. Her taxi waited. She was a red-haired girl from Tennessee whom they had met on the train this morning, come from Knoxville to lay a memorial on her brother's grave. There were tears of vexation on her face.

"The War Department must have given me the wrong number," she whimpered. "It had another name on it. I been lookin' for it since two o'clock, and there's so many graves."

"Then if I were you I'd just lay it on any grave without looking at the name," Dick advised her.

"You reckon that's what I ought to do?"

"I think that's what he'd have wanted you to do."

It was growing dark and the rain was coming down harder.

She left the wreath on the first grave inside the gate, and accepted Dick's suggestion that she dismiss her taxi-cab and ride back to Amiens with them.

Rosemary shed tears again when she heard of the mishap—altogether it had been a watery¹⁶ day, but she felt that she had learned something, though exactly what it was she did not know. Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy—one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.

Amiens was an echoing purple town, still sad with the war, as some railroad stations were:—the Gare du Nord and Waterloo station in London. In the daytime one is deflated¹⁷ by such towns, with their little trolley¹⁸ cars of twenty years ago crossing the great gray cobble-stoned squares in front of the cathedral, and the very weather seems to have a quality of the past, faded weather like that of old photographs. But after dark all that is most satisfactory in French life swims back into the picture—the sprightly¹⁹ tarts²⁰, the men arguing with a hundred Voilàs in the cafés, the couples drifting, head to head, toward the satisfactory inexpensiveness of nowhere. Waiting for the train they sat in a big arcade²¹, tall enough to release the smoke and chatter²² and music upward and obligingly the orchestra launched into "Yes, We Have No Bananas,"—they clapped, because the leader looked so pleased with himself. The Tennessee girl forgot her sorrow and enjoyed herself, even began flirtations of tropical eye-rollings and pawings, with Dick and Abe. They teased her gently.

Then, leaving infinitesimal sections of Wurtemburgers, Prussian Guards, Chasseurs Alpins, Manchester mill hands and old Etonians to pursue their eternal dissolution under the warm rain, they took the train for Paris. They ate sandwiches of mortadel sausage and bel paese cheese made up in the station restaurant, and drank Beaujolais. Nicole was abstracted, biting her lip restlessly and reading over the guide-books to the battle-field that Dick had brought along—indeed, he had made a quick study of the whole affair, simplifying it always until it bore a faint resemblance to one of his own parties.

1 trench   

n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕

参考例句：

• The soldiers recaptured their trench.兵士夺回了战壕。
• The troops received orders to trench the outpost.部队接到命令在前哨周围筑壕加强防卫。

2 periscope   

n. 潜望镜

参考例句：

• The captain aligned the periscope on the bearing.船长使潜望镜对准方位。
• Now,peering through the periscope he remarked in businesslike tones.现在，他一面从潜望镜里观察，一面用精干踏实的口吻说话。

3 dingy   

adj.昏暗的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• It was a street of dingy houses huddled together. 这是一条挤满了破旧房子的街巷。
• The dingy cottage was converted into a neat tasteful residence.那间脏黑的小屋已变成一个整洁雅致的住宅。

4 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

5 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

6 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

7 den   

n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室

参考例句：

• There is a big fox den on the back hill.后山有一个很大的狐狸窝。
• The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into tiger's den.不入虎穴焉得虎子。

8 bowling   

n.保龄球运动

参考例句：

• Bowling is a popular sport with young and old.保龄球是老少都爱的运动。
• Which sport do you 1ike most,golf or bowling?你最喜欢什么运动，高尔夫还是保龄球？

9 seduced   

诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷

参考例句：

• The promise of huge profits seduced him into parting with his money. 高额利润的许诺诱使他把钱出了手。
• His doctrines have seduced many into error. 他的学说把许多人诱入歧途。

10 gust   

n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发

参考例句：

• A gust of wind blew the front door shut.一阵大风吹来，把前门关上了。
• A gust of happiness swept through her.一股幸福的暖流流遍她的全身。

11 persistently   

ad.坚持地；固执地

参考例句：

• He persistently asserted his right to a share in the heritage. 他始终声称他有分享那笔遗产的权利。
• She persistently asserted her opinions. 她果断地说出了自己的意见。

12 pebbles   

[复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The pebbles of the drive crunched under his feet. 汽车道上的小石子在他脚底下喀嚓作响。
• Line the pots with pebbles to ensure good drainage. 在罐子里铺一层鹅卵石，以确保排水良好。

13 retaliatory   

adj.报复的

参考例句：

• The process can take years before the WTO approves retaliatory action. 在WTO通过此行动之前，这个程序恐怕要等上一阵子了。 来自互联网
• Retaliatory tariffs on China are tantamount to taxing ourselves as a punishment. 将惩罚性关税强加于中国相当于对我们自己实施课税惩罚。 来自互联网

14 inscription   

n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文

参考例句：

• The inscription has worn away and can no longer be read.铭文已磨损，无法辨认了。
• He chiselled an inscription on the marble.他在大理石上刻碑文。

15 chauffeur   

n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车

参考例句：

• The chauffeur handed the old lady from the car.这个司机搀扶这个老太太下汽车。
• She went out herself and spoke to the chauffeur.她亲自走出去跟汽车司机说话。

16 watery   

adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的

参考例句：

• In his watery eyes there is an expression of distrust.他那含泪的眼睛流露出惊惶失措的神情。
• Her eyes became watery because of the smoke.因为烟熏，她的双眼变得泪汪汪的。

17 deflated   

adj. 灰心丧气的

参考例句：

• I was quite deflated by her lack of interest in my suggestions.他对我的建议兴趣不大，令我感到十分气馁。
• He was deflated by the news.这消息令他泄气。

18 trolley   

n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车

参考例句：

• The waiter had brought the sweet trolley.侍者已经推来了甜食推车。
• In a library,books are moved on a trolley.在图书馆，书籍是放在台车上搬动的。

19 sprightly   

adj.愉快的，活泼的

参考例句：

• She is as sprightly as a woman half her age.她跟比她年轻一半的妇女一样活泼。
• He's surprisingly sprightly for an old man.他这把年纪了，还这么精神，真了不起。

20 tarts   

n.果馅饼( tart的名词复数 )；轻佻的女人；妓女；小妞

参考例句：

• I decided to make some tarts for tea. 我决定做些吃茶点时吃的果馅饼。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They ate raspberry tarts and ice cream. 大家吃着木莓馅饼和冰淇淋。 来自辞典例句

21 arcade   

n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道

参考例句：

• At this time of the morning,the arcade was almost empty.在早晨的这个时候，拱廊街上几乎空无一人。
• In our shopping arcade,you can find different kinds of souvenir.在我们的拱廊市场，你可以发现许多的纪念品。

22 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。