【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 18

 The way Hana broke in Santa Chiara Hospital when an official walked down the space between a hundred beds and gave her a letter that told her of the death of her father. 

 

A white lion. 

 

It was sometime after this that she had come across the English patient—someone who looked like a burned animal, taut¹ and dark, a pool for her. And now, months later, he is her last patient in the Villa² San Girolamo, their war over, both of them refusing to return with the others to the safety of the Pisa hospitals. Hana was warned of the uncleared mines, lack of water and food. She came upstairs to the burned man, the English patient, and told him she would stay as well. 

 

He said nothing, unable even to turn his head towards her, but his fingers slipped into her white hand, and when she bent³ forward to him he put his dark fingers into her hair and felt it cool within the valley of his fingers. 

 

How old are you? 

 

Twenty. 

She does not know anything about him. Even after a month or so of caring for him and allotting⁴ him the needles of morphine. There was shyness at first within both of them, made more evident by the fact that they were now alone. Then it was suddenly overcome. The patients and doctors and nurses and equipment and sheets and towels—all went back down the hill into Florence and then to Pisa. She had salted away codeine tablets, as well as the morphine. She watched the departures, the line of trucks. Good-bye, then. She waved from his window, bringing the shutters⁵ to a close. 

 

1 taut   

adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的

参考例句：

• The bowstring is stretched taut.弓弦绷得很紧。
• Scarlett's taut nerves almost cracked as a sudden noise sounded in the underbrush near them. 思嘉紧张的神经几乎一下绷裂了，因为她听见附近灌木丛中突然冒出的一个声音。

2 villa   

n.别墅，城郊小屋

参考例句：

• We rented a villa in France for the summer holidays.我们在法国租了一幢别墅消夏。
• We are quartered in a beautiful villa.我们住在一栋漂亮的别墅里。

3 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

4 allotting   

分配，拨给，摊派( allot的现在分词 )

参考例句：

5 shutters   

百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门

参考例句：

• The shop-front is fitted with rolling shutters. 那商店的店门装有卷门。
• The shutters thumped the wall in the wind. 在风中百叶窗砰砰地碰在墙上。