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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
47.
When I got home, the reviews were raves1. I’d represented the Crown well, according to courtiers. Ireported back to Granny, told her about the tour.
Marvelous. Well done, she said.
I wanted to celebrate, felt I deserved to celebrate. Also, with war in the offing, it was celebratenow or maybe never.
Parties, clubs, pubs, I went out a lot that spring, and tried not to care that, no matter where Iwent, two paps were always present. Two sorry-looking, extremely terrible paps: Tweedle Dumband Tweedle Dumber.
For much of my adult life there had been paps waiting for me outside public places.
Sometimes a mob of them, sometimes a handful. The faces always varied2, and often I couldn’teven see the faces. But now there were always these two faces, and always clearly visible. Whenthere was a mob, they were right in the middle. When there was no one else, they were there all bythemselves.
But it wasn’t just public places. I’d be walking down a side street, which I’d only decided3 towalk down seconds before, and they’d leap from a phone box or from under a parked car. I’dleave a friend’s apartment, certain that no one knew I’d been there, and they’d be standing4 outsidethe building, in the middle of the street.
Besides being everywhere, they were ruthless, much more aggressive than other paps. They’dblock my path, they’d chase me to my police car. They’d block me from getting into the car, thenchase the car down the street.
Who were they? How were they doing this? I didn’t think they had any kind of sixth sense orextrasensory perception. On the contrary, they looked as if they didn’t possess one full frontalcortex between them. So, what hidden trick were they leveraging5? An invisible tracker? A sourceinside the police?
They were after Willy too. He and I talked about them a lot that year, talked about theirunsettling appearance, their complementary ruthlessness and idiocy6, their take- no- prisonersapproach. But mainly we discussed their omnipresence.
How do they know? How do they always know?
Willy had no idea, but was determined7 to find out.
Billy the Rock was determined as well. He walked up to the Tweedles several times,interrogated them, looked deep into their eyes. He managed to get a sense of them. The older,Tweedle Dumb, was doughy8, he reported, with close-cropped black hair and a smile that chilledthe blood. Tweedle Dumber, on the other hand, never smiled, and rarely spoke9. He seemed to besome sort of apprentice10. Mostly he just stared.
What was their game? Billy didn’t know.
Following me everywhere, tormenting11 me, getting rich off me, even that wasn’t enough forthem. They also liked to rub my nose in it. They’d run alongside me, taunt12 me, while pressing thebuttons on their cameras, reeling off two hundred photos in ten seconds. Many paps wanted areaction, a tussle13, but what Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber seemed to want was a fight to thedeath. Blinded, I’d fantasize about punching them. Then I’d take deep breaths, remind myself:
Don’t do it. That’s just what they want. So they can sue and become famous.
Because, in the end, I decided that was their game. That was what it was all about: two fellaswho weren’t famous, thinking it must be fabulous14 to be famous, trying to become famous byattacking and ruining the life of someone famous.
Why did they want to be famous? That was the thing I never understood. Because fame is theultimate freedom? What a joke. Some kinds of fame provide extra freedom, maybe, I suppose, butroyal fame was fancy captivity15.
The Tweedles couldn’t fathom16 this. They were children, incapable17 of understanding anythingnuanced. In their simplified cosmology: You’re royal. So. This is the price you pay for living in acastle.
Sometimes I wondered how it might go if I could just talk to them, calmly, explain that Ididn’t live in a castle, my grandmother lived in a castle, that in fact Tweedle Dumb and TweedleDumber both had far grander lifestyles than mine. Billy had done a deep dive on their finances, soI knew. Each Tweedle owned multiple houses, and several luxury cars, purchased with proceedsfrom their photos of me and my family. (Offshore bank accounts too, like their sponsors, themedia barons18 who funded them, chiefly Murdoch and the impossibly Dickensian- soundingJonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere.)It was around this time that I began to think Murdoch was evil. No, strike that. I began toknow that he was. Firsthand. Once you’ve been chased by someone’s henchmen through thestreets of a busy modern city you lose all doubt about where they stand on the Great MoralContinuum. All my life I’d heard jokes about the links between royal misbehavior and centuries ofinbreeding, but it was then that I realized: Lack of genetic19 diversity was nothing compared to pressgaslighting. Marrying your cousin is far less dicey than becoming a profit center for Murdoch Inc.
Of course I didn’t care for Murdoch’s politics, which were just to the right of the Taliban’s.
And I didn’t like the harm he did each and every day to Truth, his wanton desecration20 of objectivefacts. Indeed, I couldn’t think of a single human being in the 300,000-year history of the specieswho’d done more damage to our collective sense of reality. But what really sickened andfrightened me in 2012 was Murdoch’s ever-expanding circle of flunkies: young, broken, desperatemen willing to do whatever was necessary to earn one of his Grinchy smiles.
And at the center of that circle…were these two mopes, the Tweedles.
There were so many nightmarish run-ins with Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, but onestands out. A friend’s wedding. Walled garden, totally secluded21. I was chatting with severalguests, listening to the birdsong, the whoosh22 of wind in the leaves. Within these soothing23 sounds,however, I became aware of one small…click.
I turned. There, in the hedgerow. One eye. And one glassy lens.
Then: that demonic rictus.
Tweedle Dumb.
1 raves | |
n.狂欢晚会( rave的名词复数 )v.胡言乱语( rave的第三人称单数 );愤怒地说;咆哮;痴心地说 | |
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2 varied | |
adj.多样的,多变化的 | |
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3 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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4 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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5 leveraging | |
促使…改变( leverage的现在分词 ); [美国英语]杠杆式投机,(使)举债经营,(使)利用贷款进行投机 | |
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6 idiocy | |
n.愚蠢 | |
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7 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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8 doughy | |
adj.面团的,苍白的,半熟的;软弱无力 | |
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9 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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10 apprentice | |
n.学徒,徒弟 | |
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11 tormenting | |
使痛苦的,使苦恼的 | |
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12 taunt | |
n.辱骂,嘲弄;v.嘲弄 | |
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13 tussle | |
n.&v.扭打,搏斗,争辩 | |
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14 fabulous | |
adj.极好的;极为巨大的;寓言中的,传说中的 | |
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15 captivity | |
n.囚禁;被俘;束缚 | |
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16 fathom | |
v.领悟,彻底了解 | |
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17 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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18 barons | |
男爵( baron的名词复数 ); 巨头; 大王; 大亨 | |
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19 genetic | |
adj.遗传的,遗传学的 | |
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20 desecration | |
n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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21 secluded | |
adj.与世隔绝的;隐退的;偏僻的v.使隔开,使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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22 whoosh | |
v.飞快地移动,呼 | |
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23 soothing | |
adj.慰藉的;使人宽心的;镇静的 | |
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24 chubby | |
adj.丰满的,圆胖的 | |
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