[美]威廉·福克纳

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I

（1）WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.

艾米莉·格雷尔森小姐死了。我们全镇人都参加了她的葬礼。男人们带着缅怀的心，瞻仰这座倒塌的丰碑；而女人们的出席，大多是因为她们很好奇这座常年封闭的旧宅里，到底是什么样子。因为这座房子已经闭锁了近十年，只有一位年迈的男仆进进出出，这个家里，他既是园丁，又是厨子。

（2）It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

这座大房子四四方方，由于风吹日晒，年代久远，外墙已不再洁白，装点着19世纪70年代风格的圆形屋顶、尖塔和涡形花纹阳台，轻盈之中也透着历史的沉重。这里以前曾是富人区，但在北方文明的新式生活方式进入以来，这里最德高望重的大户人家也禁不住它们的蚕食，纷纷被同化。唯有艾米莉不愿妥协，她的房子仍旧在众多新式工厂中傲然挺立，显得格格不入。工厂本就缺乏美感，她的房子放在其间更是丑中之丑。而如今艾米莉已经离开人世，追随已故的贵族们去了。他们的名字刻在陵园的纪念碑上供人瞻仰，这座肃穆的陵园里还埋葬着其他在杰斐逊战役中阵亡的将士们。

（3）Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron--remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

艾米莉生前非常守旧，坚持传统，不愿妥协的性格让当地政府很是头疼，而她也因此被视为镇上旧派的“活化石”。1894年，市长萨托里斯上校制定了一条奇特规定：所有黑人妇女上街都必须穿围裙。也正是这位市长，免去了艾米莉家的税，从她父亲去世起开始执行。他给出的理由大约是艾米莉父亲曾经给这里借过一笔钱，所以作为回报，她不必缴税。只有上校这样的人会编出这么荒诞的理由，也只有一个女人才会相信他。

（4）When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

当下一代市长和参议院，怀着现代的理念上台后，这个旧例便引发了不小的争议。第一年，她只是收到了一张催税的邮件；她到第二年都没回信。于是他们又写了一封正式通知，叫她有空给警察办公室打个电话说明情况。依然石沉大海。于是市长亲自给她写信，说要电话解决或者上门服务。她的回信写在一张发黄的旧纸上，书法流利，字迹细小，墨水颜色很浅，应该是放了很久了。收税通知也原封不动的装在信封里。

（5）They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.

他们召开了一场特殊的议员会议。一个代表在她门口等她，这扇门自从八九年前她不教水墨画后就再也没人进去过。黑人男仆让他们进去，大厅暗淡无光，透过走廊，楼上更是昏暗无比，阴森森的。整个地方都弥漫着一种密不透风，令人作呕的霉味。仆人让他们到客厅见她，客厅的家具大多罩着皮套，沉重而压抑。仆人拉开窗帘，光投了进来，照在家具开裂的皮套上。这些家具由于闲置已久，积了一层灰，他们坐下时便扬起一小团烟雾，阳光都变成了一束光线。火炉前摆着一幅油画，画的是艾米莉的父亲，框的镀金已经斑驳。

（6）They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

艾米莉走进房间，他们一致起立致意。她是个小个子，有些臃肿，拄着一根乌黑的手杖，把手已经掉色了。一根细细的金的怀表链垂到腰上，在衣带间若隐若现。她的头不大，所以别人身上的微胖到她这里就已经算是丰满了。她整个人都有些浮肿，肤色也很苍白，像是在死水潭里泡了很久。她的眼睛在整张脸的映衬下，像是一大坨面团里按上去的两个小煤块，在来客发言的时候来回扫视着他们。

（7）She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.

她并不请他们坐下，她只是独自倚着门，静静听他们说完，始终不置一词，房间里只有她身上怀表的滴答声。

（8）Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

她的声音冰冷无情，“萨托里斯就这么跟我说的，我在杰斐逊镇从来不用缴税，想知道来龙去脉自己去档案室查就行了，别来烦我。”

（9）"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"

“可我们已经查过了，我们就是政府的人，小姐，你应该收到了警长的通知了吧？上面有他签名的。”

（10）"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."

“收到了，嗯，”艾米莉答道，“可能他觉得自己很牛…但我还是那句话，这里我从来不用缴税，多少年了都这样！”

（11）"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go, by the--"

“但文件上没有说你不用缴税啊，我们现在得走了…”

（12）"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

“你们怎么不找萨托里斯问问？他在这他也会挺我的。”

（13）"But, Miss Emily--"

“可是…”

（14）"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."

“你们找他去啊，我根本不用缴税”她喊道“托比！”仆人走了过来，“送客！”（萨托里斯十几年前就死了。）

II

（1）So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.

于是她毫不留情的把他们轰出家门。三十年前她也干过类似的事，把他们的父辈轰了出去，不过那一次是因为她家传出了一阵奇怪的味道。

（2）That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man then--going in and out with a market basket.

那时她父亲已经过世两年，她男朋友也刚去世。我们都以为他俩会结婚的，没想到他背叛了。她父亲去世后她就很少出门了；她男朋友离开后，我们连她的面都见不着。几个胆大的女人曾去敲门，但都没进得去，唯一里面还有人住的迹象就是那个黑人了，当时还只是个年轻小伙子，只看见他每天往返于家和菜场。

（3）"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

“感觉他并不会打扫卫生，收拾厨房啊，”几个妇女议论着，所以她们并不奇怪这里散发出的刺鼻气味。这只是繁华尘世与高不可攀的格里尔森家族之间，另一道可感的联系罢了。

（4）A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.

她的邻居实在受不了了，于是去找市长投诉，市长叫斯蒂文森，八十岁了，以前当过法官。

（5）"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.

“可我能怎么办？”老市长摇摇头。

（6）"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "

“何出此言啊？你就直接告诉她不就得了？实在不行就用法律手段解决嘛”

（7）"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."

“大可不必，”老头说“我估计就是那个仆人打死了什么老鼠或者蛇，腐烂发臭的味道。我会跟他讲的。”

（8）The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

第二天他又收到两条投诉。一个男人小心翼翼的说：“我们得采取行动了，我一半都不会管艾米莉的闲事，但我这次是真的吃不消了。”当晚市长召集了议员会议，三个白胡子老头，一个稍微年轻点，他代表新生一代。

（9）"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. .."

“简单的很，叫她打扫一下不就得了？限个时间什么的…”

（10）"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"

“简直一派胡言！你当面指责一位小姐说她家味道难闻试试?”

（11）So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

于是第二天深夜，四个男人穿过草坪，像贼一样悄无声息的在墙根那嗅着什么，然后在地窖的开口处，把扛着的袋子打开，破开地窖的大门，把石灰撒进去，又在外围撒了一圈。当他们完成任务，准备离开的时候，有一间的灯亮了，艾米莉正襟危坐，身后是灯光，一动不动的像是一张画像。他们来不及多想便蹑手蹑脚的爬进了街边的槐树林里。一两周之后，味道便消散了。

（12）That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

打那时候起，我们就有些惋惜她。我们镇的人都认识她大姨，维亚特太太，以前有过精神病史。她就觉得这家人有点太自命不凡了，其实也没高贵到哪去。而且我们都觉得没有哪个小伙子配得上艾米莉，毕竟她也是含着金钥匙出生的。照片里，艾米莉站在后排，身材苗条，一袭白衣，很有气质。她父亲在前排，叉开腿站着。他背对着她，持着一根鞭子，一扇向后开的前门，定格两人的身影。她三十岁的时候还没结婚，我们都觉得奇怪，但还是觉得：就算是她家人有精神病，她也不至于拒绝所有出现的机会吧。

（13）When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

她父亲去世的时候，她继承了这栋房子，其实我们挺为她高兴的。最后人们开始同情她。独自一人，无依无靠，只剩一个仆人，她的形象也变得亲切了许多。她也终于能体会到多一分钱少一分钱带来的情绪波动。

（14）The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

她父亲去世当天，按照惯例，全镇妇女都准备给她吊唁，叫她节哀。她把她们堵在门口，硬说自己父亲还活着，穿着平常的衣服，脸上没有一点悲伤。她连续三天都重复着这个，直到政府来找她，医生来找她，希望能带走遗体处理掉。当他们准备诉诸法律时，她突然崩溃了，人们才得以埋葬她父亲。

（15）We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

那时候我们都没说她疯了，我们理解她，记得她父亲赶走了所有提亲的小伙子，于是在彻底失望之后，她选择依靠那个夺去她一切的人。

III

（1）SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.

她郁郁寡欢了很久。当她再次出现在人们面前，她原来秀丽的长发已经剪去，短发的她卸去了旧时的束缚，看上去更年轻了，就像是教堂彩窗上画的天使，美丽之中也带着几分幽怨。

（2）The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.

她父亲去世后，小镇与公司签约，修建人行道。建筑队里有新式机器，也有旧时的骡马，工头叫霍默·拜伦，是个北方佬，身材魁梧，说话风趣幽默。他是个大嗓门的粗人，常年干体力活，皮肤黑黝黝的。他们干活会引来一群小孩围观，看他驱使那些黑人，黑人们也抑扬顿挫的唱着。霍默很快就和镇上的每一个人都熟络了，镇上你听到哪里传来笑声啊，那准是一群人围着霍默，听他讲笑话。不久，他也和艾米莉熟了起来，经常能看见周日下午，他俩坐着黄轮轻便马车，套着一对栗色马，从马厩里出去。

（3）At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.

一开始我们还挺支持他俩这种关系发展的，至少艾米莉多了个伴，不用再孤苦伶仃的了，女人们总觉得“格里尔森家的人肯定不可能当真和一个北方佬发展关系的，他只是一个做苦工的。”也有人认为，一个贵族，到骨子里都不会忘记贵族那一套，什么经历都不会改变她。这些人是年龄稍大，较为保守的一些人。他们只会说，“唉，可怜的艾米莉，应该叫她家人来陪陪她的。”她的亲戚都住在阿拉巴马，但这些年家庭也因为遗产而分崩离析，她的父亲为了维亚特，就是那个有精神病史的大姨，为了她的财产，在家里大闹一番，从此两家就不再来往了。连她父亲的葬礼都没有出席。

（4）And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."

当守旧的人们觉得她堕落，有辱于贵族身份时，闲言碎语就开始了。“真的是这样吗？”有人问。“那必然的啊，不然还能…”另一个人接过话。不过这些都是背后的嚼舌头了。每当周日下午，他们看见那架马车，嗒嗒的在街上驶过，车上的丝带随风飘扬，看着紧闭的百叶窗，他们仍要唉声叹气一番，“唉，可怜的艾米莉。”

（5）She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.

就是这样，她依然昂首挺胸，完全不在乎别人的看法，就像她极力要维护自己贵族的尊严一样；就像她需要同世俗接触，来重新肯定她那不易屈服的性格；就像她买砒霜时的决绝。当两个亲戚来探望她时，她和霍默已经发展一年多了。

（6）"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.

“来点老鼠药。”她告诉柜台。那时候她三十多了，身材依旧瘦削，冷冷的眼神带着傲气，紧绷着脸，脸上带着一种因紧张而扭曲的表情。“我买老鼠药。”

（7）"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"

“嗯嗯，艾米莉小姐，你要哪种的？是毒老鼠的还是…”

（8）"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

“给我来最好的，哪种都行。”

（9）The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"

药店店主说了几种“这几种下至老鼠上至大象，吃了就死，但你要的是…”

（10）"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"

“砒霜”她答道，“我就要这个。”

（11）"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"

“砒霜吗？嗯…但…”

（12）"I want arsenic."

“给我就行了，别废话。”

（13）The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."

两人就这么僵持着，她的脸色严厉而紧张，丝毫不肯让步。“行吧，如果你非要买，告诉我你的目的，这是法律要求的。”

（14）Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."

艾米莉盯着他，仰着头，紧盯着他的眼睛。店主终于受不了了，给她包了一袋砒霜。拿货的是个黑人男孩，店主并没有亲自出来送。她回到家，打开包装，剧毒的标识下写着“老鼠药”。

【未完待续】