乔布斯传 第277期:寻找乔安妮和莫娜(1)

 　　Finding Joanne and Mona

　　寻找乔安妮和莫娜

　　When Jobs was thirty-one, a year after his ouster from Apple, his mother Clara, who was a smoker¹, was stricken with lung cancer.

　　乔布斯的母亲克拉拉是一个吸烟者。他31岁时，也就是在他离开苹果公司一年之后，母亲患上了肺癌。

　　He spent time by her deathbed, talking to her in ways he had rarely done in the past

　　在她弥留之际，他陪在她的病床边，用以往少有的方式跟她聊天，

　　and asking some questions he had refrained from raising before.

　　问了一些一直压在心底的问题。

　　"When you and Dad got married, were you a virgin²?" he asked.

　　“跟爸爸结婚的时候，你是处女吗？ ”他问道。

　　It was hard for her to talk, but she forced a smile.

　　她虽然难以启齿，却还是努力地给了他一个微笑。

　　That's when she told him that she had been married before, to a man who never made it back from the war.

　　她这才告诉他，之前她结过婚，她的前夫上了战场就再没回来。

　　She also filled in some of the details of how she and Paul Jobs had come to adopt him.

　　她还透露了一些她和保罗·乔布斯如何领养他的细节。

　　Soon after that, Jobs succeeded in tracking down the woman who had put him up for adoption³.

　　大概就是在那个时候，乔布斯找到了他生母的下落。

　　His quiet quest to find her had begun in the early 1980s, when he hired a detective who had failed to come up with anything.

　　从20世纪80年代初开始，他就聘用了一个侦探，开始悄悄地寻找他的生母，但什么线索都没有找到。

　　双语有声读物 乔布斯传

　　Then Jobs noticed the name of a San Francisco doctor on his birth certificate.

　　后来乔布斯注意到他出生证上一个旧金山医生的名字。

　　"He was in the phone book, so I gave him a call," Jobs recalled.

　　“他的姓名在电话簿上可以查到，所以我给他打了个电话。”乔布斯回忆说。

　　The doctor was no help. He claimed that his records had been destroyed in a fire. That was not true.

　　那个医生没帮上忙。他声称他的记录在一场火灾中全被烧毁了。不过那不是真的。

　　In fact, right after Jobs called, the doctor wrote a letter,

　　事实上，就在接到乔布斯的电话后，这个医生写了一封信，

　　sealed it in an envelope, and wrote on it, "To be delivered to Steve Jobs on my death."

　　装在信封里封好，上面写着“我死后交给史蒂夫·乔布斯”。

　　When he died a short time later, his widow sent the letter to Jobs.

　　不久后他就去世了，他的遗孀把这封信寄给了乔布斯。

　　In it, the doctor explained that his mother had been an unmarried graduate student from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble.

　　信中，医生说他的母亲是来自威斯康星州一个未婚的研究生，名字叫乔安妮·席贝尔。

1 smoker   

n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室

参考例句：

• His wife dislikes him to be a smoker.他妻子不喜欢他当烟民。
• He is a moderate smoker.他是一个有节制的烟民。

2 virgin   

n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的

参考例句：

• Have you ever been to a virgin forest?你去过原始森林吗？
• There are vast expanses of virgin land in the remote regions.在边远地区有大片大片未开垦的土地。

3 adoption   

n.采用，采纳，通过；收养

参考例句：

• An adoption agency had sent the boys to two different families.一个收养机构把他们送给两个不同的家庭。
• The adoption of this policy would relieve them of a tremendous burden.采取这一政策会给他们解除一个巨大的负担。