2-47

 

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 chubby²⁴ face.

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

参考例句：

• She raves about that singer. 她醉心地谈论那位歌手。 来自辞典例句
• His new play received raves in the paper. 他的新剧本在报纸上受到赞扬。 来自辞典例句

2 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

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

参考例句：

• De-leveraging is a painful process: it has barely begun. 去杠杆化是个痛苦的过程：它才刚刚开始。
• Archimedes said, saying: Give me a fulcrum, I can leveraging the Earth. 阿基米德说过一句话：给我一个支点，我可以撬动地球。

6 idiocy   

n.愚蠢

参考例句：

• Stealing a car and then driving it drunk was the ultimate idiocy.偷了车然后醉酒开车真是愚蠢到极点。
• In this war there is an idiocy without bounds.这次战争疯癫得没底。

7 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

8 doughy   

adj.面团的，苍白的，半熟的；软弱无力

参考例句：

• The cake fell; it's a doughy mess. 蛋糕掉在地上，粘糊糊的一团。 来自互联网
• Soon the mixture was doughy. 很快，混合物成了面团状。 来自互联网

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

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 apprentice   

n.学徒，徒弟

参考例句：

• My son is an apprentice in a furniture maker's workshop.我的儿子在一家家具厂做学徒。
• The apprentice is not yet out of his time.这徒工还没有出徒。

11 tormenting   

使痛苦的，使苦恼的

参考例句：

• He took too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban. 他喜欢一味捉弄一个名叫凯列班的丑妖怪。
• The children were scolded for tormenting animals. 孩子们因折磨动物而受到责骂。

12 taunt   

n.辱骂，嘲弄；v.嘲弄

参考例句：

• He became a taunt to his neighbours.他成了邻居们嘲讽的对象。
• Why do the other children taunt him with having red hair?为什么别的小孩子讥笑他有红头发？

13 tussle   

n.&v.扭打，搏斗，争辩

参考例句：

• They began to tussle with each other for the handgun.他们互相扭打起来，抢夺那支手枪。
• We are engaged in a legal tussle with a large pharmaceutical company.我们正同一家大制药公司闹法律纠纷。

14 fabulous   

adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的

参考例句：

• We had a fabulous time at the party.我们在晚会上玩得很痛快。
• This is a fabulous sum of money.这是一笔巨款。

15 captivity   

n.囚禁；被俘；束缚

参考例句：

• A zoo is a place where live animals are kept in captivity for the public to see.动物园是圈养动物以供公众观看的场所。
• He was held in captivity for three years.他被囚禁叁年。

16 fathom   

v.领悟，彻底了解

参考例句：

• I really couldn't fathom what he was talking about.我真搞不懂他在说些什么。
• What these people hoped to achieve is hard to fathom.这些人希望实现些什么目标难以揣测。

17 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

18 barons   

男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨

参考例句：

• The barons of Normandy had refused to countenance the enterprise officially. 诺曼底的贵族们拒绝正式赞助这桩买卖。
• The barons took the oath which Stephen Langton prescribed. 男爵们照斯蒂芬？兰顿的指导宣了誓。

19 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

20 desecration   

n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱

参考例句：

• Desecration, and so forth, and lectured you on dignity and sanctity. 比如亵渎神圣等。想用尊严和神圣不可侵犯之类的话来打动你们。
• Desecration: will no longer break stealth. 亵渎：不再消除潜行。

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)

参考例句：

• Some people like to strip themselves naked while they have a swim in a secluded place. 一些人当他们在隐蔽的地方游泳时，喜欢把衣服脱光。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This charming cottage dates back to the 15th century and is as pretty as a picture, with its thatched roof and secluded garden. 这所美丽的村舍是15世纪时的建筑，有茅草房顶和宁静的花园，漂亮极了，简直和画上一样。 来自《简明英汉词典》

22 whoosh   

v.飞快地移动，呼

参考例句：

• It goes whoosh up and whoosh down.它呼一下上来了，呼一下又下去了。
• Whoosh!The straw house falls down.呼！稻草房子倒了。

23 soothing   

adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的

参考例句：

• Put on some nice soothing music.播放一些柔和舒缓的音乐。
• His casual, relaxed manner was very soothing.他随意而放松的举动让人很快便平静下来。

24 chubby   

adj.丰满的，圆胖的

参考例句：

• He is stocky though not chubby.他长得敦实，可并不发胖。
• The short and chubby gentleman over there is our new director.那个既矮又胖的绅士是我们的新主任。