【时间旅行者的妻子】04

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

I find myself in crowds, audiences, mobs. Just as often I am alone, in a field, house, car, on a beach, in a grammar school in the middle of the night. I fear finding myself in a prison cell, an elevator full of people, the middle of a highway. I appear from nowhere, naked. How can I explain? I have never been able to carry anything with me. No clothes, no money, no ID. I spend most of my sojourns² acquiring clothing and trying to hide. Fortunately I don’t wear glasses.

　It’s ironic³, really. All my pleasures are homey ones: armchair splendor⁴, the sedate⁵ excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble⁶ delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare’s long red-gold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing⁷ into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare’s breasts, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked⁸. I love meandering⁹ through the stacks at the library after the patrons have gone home, lightly touching¹⁰ the spines¹¹ of the books. These are the things that can pierce me with longing¹² when I am displaced from them by Time’s whim¹³.

　And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and crumple-faced. Clare with her arms plunging¹⁴ into the papermaking vat¹, pulling up the mold and shaking it so, and so, to meld the fibers¹⁵. Clare reading, with her hair hanging over the back of the chair, massaging¹⁶ balm into her cracked red hands before bed. Clare’s low voice is in my ear often.

　I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.

分享到：