英美文学名篇阅读与欣赏之一:詹姆斯.乔伊斯之《阿拉比》（原文）
2007-03-16 16:52阅读：
Araby
James
Joyce
North Richmond Street , being
blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christmas
Brother’s School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two
storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a
square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent
lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable
faces.
The former tenant of our house,
a priest, had died in the back drawing –room . air , musty from
having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste
room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among
these I fo
und a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and
damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The
Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were
yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central
apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found
the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable
priest; in his will hw had left all his money to institutions and
the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter
came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in
the street the houses had grown somber. The space of sky above us
was the color of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of
the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and
we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent
street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy
lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough
tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping
gardens where odours arose from ashpits, to the dark odorous
stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook
music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street,
light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle
was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen
him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep
to call her brother in to his tea we watched her from our shadow
peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would
remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked
up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure
deceased by the light from the half –opened door. Her brother
always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the railings
looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft
rope her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the
floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled
down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen.
When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the
hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure
always in my eye and, when we came hear the point at which our ways
diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning
after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual
words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish
blood.
Her image accompanied me even
in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my
aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We
walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and
bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies
of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the
nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you
about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about sensation of life for me:
I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.
Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and
praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full
of tears ( I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart
seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the
future. I did not know whether I would ever tell her of my confused
adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures
were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the
back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy
evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the
broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine
incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant
lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I
could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil
themselves and, feeling that I was about t slip from them, I
pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled,
murmuring:“ O love! O Love!” many times.
At last she spoke to me. When
she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did
not know what to answer. She asked me whether I was going to
Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. it would be a
splendid bazaar, she said she would love to go.
“And why can’t you?” I
asked.
While she spoke she turned a
silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she
said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent.
Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I
was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her
head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught
the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and,
falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of
her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible
as she stood at ease.
“It’s well for you,”she
said.
“If I go,”I said ,“I will bring
you something.”
What innumerable follies laid
waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished
to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the
work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom
her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The
syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence
in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over
me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My
aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I
answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass
from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle.
I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any
patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood
between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly
monotonous child’s play.
On Saturday morning I reminded
my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was
fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered
me curtly:
“Yes, boy, I
know.”
As he was in the hall I could
not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I left the
house in bad humour and walked slowly toward the school. The air
was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my
uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat staring at
the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me,
I left the room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part
of the house. The high cold empty gloomy rooms liberated me and I
went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my
companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me
weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool
glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have
stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure
cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the
curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below
the dress.
When I came downstairs again I
found Mrs. Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old garrulous
woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected used stamps for some
pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The
meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not come.
Mrs. Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait any
longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be
out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I
began to walk up and down the room, cleaning my fists. My aunt
said:
“I’m afraid you may put off
your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.”
At nine o’clock I heard my
uncle’s latchkey in the halldoor. I heard him talking to himself
and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of
his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway
through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go the
bazaar. He had forgotten.
“The people are in bed and
after their first sleep now,”he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said
to him energetically:
“Can’t you give him the money
and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.”
My uncle said he was very sorry
he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying:“All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” He asked me where I was going
and, when I had told him a second time he asked me did I know
The Arab’s Farewell to His Steed. When I left the kitchen he
was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my
aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my
hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The
sight of the trees thronged with buyers and glaring with gas
recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my seat I a
third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable
delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward
among ruinous houses and the twinkling river. At Westland Row
Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the
porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the
bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the
train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on
to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten
minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed
the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny
entrance and , fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in
quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking
man. I found myself in a big hall girdled at half its height by
gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of
the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which
pervades a church after a service. I walked into the center of the
bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which
were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café
Chantant were written in colored lamps, two men were counting money
on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why
I had come I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain
vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady
was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their
English accents and listened vaguely to their
conversation.
“O, I never said such a
thing!”
“O, but you did!”
“O, but I didn’t!”
“Didn’t she say
that?”
“Yes. I heard
her.”
“O, there’s a
…fib!”
Observing me the young lady
came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her
voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a
sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like
eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and
murmured:
“No, thank you.”
The young lady changed the
position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men.
They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young
lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall,
though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares
seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the
middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the
sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the
gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now
completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I
saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes
burned with anguish and anger.
