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双语·返老还童:菲茨杰拉德短篇小说选 离岸的海盗 三

所属教程:译林版·返老还童:菲茨杰拉德短篇小说选

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2022年05月18日

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THE OFFSHORE PIRATE III

Within ten minutes after Curtis Carlyle's interview with a very frightened engineer the yacht Narcissus was under way, steaming south through a balmy tropical twilight. The little mulatto, Babe, who seems to have Carlyle's implicit confidence, took full command of the situation. Mr. Farnam's valet and the chef, the only members of the crew on board except the engineer, having shown fight, were now reconsidering, strapped securely to their bunks below. Trombone Mose, the biggest negro, was set busy with a can of paint obliterating the name Narcissus from the bow, and substituting the name Hula Hula, and the others congregated aft and became intently involved in a game of craps.

Having given order for a meal to be prepared and served on deck at seven-thirty, Carlyle rejoined Ardita, and, sinking back into his settee, half closed his eyes and fell into a state of profound abstraction.

Ardita scrutinized him carefully—and classed him immedialely as a romantic figure. He gave the effect of towering self-confidence erected on a slight foundation—just under the surface of each of his decisions she discerned a hesitancy that was in decided contrast to the arrogant curl of his lips.

“He's not like me,” she thought. “There's a difference somewhere.”

Being a supreme egotist Ardita frequently thought about herself; never having had her egotism disputed she did it entirely naturally and with no detraction from her unquestioned charm. Though she was nineteen she gave the effect of a high-spirited precocious child, and in the present glow of her youth and beauty all the men and women she had known were but driftwood on the ripples of her temperament. She had met other egotists—in fact she found that selfish people bored her rather less than unselfish people—but as yet there had not been one she had not eventually defeated and brought to her feet.

But though she recognized an egotist in the settee next to her, she felt none of that usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing ship for action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this man was somehow completely pregnable and quite defenseless. When Ardita defied convention—and of late it had been her chief amusement—it was from an intense desire to be herself, and she felt that this man, on the contrary, was preoccupied with his own defiance.

She was much more interested in him than she was in her own situation, which affected her as the prospect of a matineé might affect a ten-year-old child. She had implicit confidence in her ability to take care of herself under any and all circumstances.

The night deepened. A pale new moon smiled misty-eyed upon the sea, and as the shore faded dimly out and dark clouds were blown like leaves along the far horizon a great haze of moonshine suddenly bathed the yacht and spread an avenue of glittering mail in her swift path. From time to time there was the bright flare of a match as one of them lighted a cigarette, but except for the low undertone of the throbbing engines and the even wash of the waves about the stern the yacht was quiet as a dream boat star-bound through the heavens. Round them bowed the smell of the night sea, bringing with it an infinite languor.

Carlyle broke the silence at last.

“Lucky girl,” he sighed, “I've always wanted to be rich—and buy all this beauty.”

Ardita yawned.

“I'd rather be you,” she said frankly.

“You would—for about a day. But you do seem to possess a lot of nerve for a flapper.”

“I wish you wouldn't call me that.”

“Beg your pardon.”

“As to nerve,” she continued slowly, “it's my one redeemiug feature. I'm not afraid of anything in heaven or earth.”

“Hm, I am.”

“To be afraid,” said Ardita, “a person has either to be very great and strong—or else a coward. I'm neither.” She paused for a moment, and eagerness crept into her tone. “But I want to talk about you. What on earth have you done—and how did you do it?”

“Why?” he demanded cynically. “Going to write a movie, about me?”

“Go on,” she urged. “Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”

A negro appeared, switched on a string of small lights under the awning, and began setting the wicker table for supper. And while they ate cold sliced chicken, salad, artichokes and strawberry jam from the plentiful larder below, Carlyle began to talk, hesitatingly at first, but eagerly as he saw she was interested. Ardita scarcely touched her food as she watched his dark young face—handsome, ironic, faintly ineffectual.

He began life as a poor kid in a Tennessee town, he said, so poor that his people were the only white family in their street. He never remembered any white children—but there were inevitably a dozen pickaninnies streaming in his trail, passionate admirers whom he kept in tow by the vividness of his imagination and the amount of trouble he was always getting them in and out of. And it seemed that this association diverted a rather unusual musical gift into a strange channel.

There had been a colored woman named Belle Pope Calhoun who played the piano at parties given for white children—nice white children that would have passed Curtis Carlyle with a sniff. But the ragged little“poh white”used to sit beside her piano by the hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafés round Nashville. Eight years later the ragtime craze hit the country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever dreamed of.

It was about then that a change began in his whole attitude, a rather curious, embittering change. It was when he realized that he was spending the golden years of his life gibbering round a stage with a lot of black men. His act was good of its kind—three trombones, three saxaphones, and Carlyle's flute—and it was his own peculiar sense of rhythm that made all the difference; but he began to grow strangely sensitive about it, began to hate the thought of appearing, dreaded it from day to day.

They were making money—each contract he signed called for more—but when he went to managers and told them that he wanted to separate from his sextet and go on as a regular pianist, they laughed at him aud told him he was crazy—it would he an artistic suicide. He used to laugh afterward at the phrase“artistic suicide.” They all used it.

Half a dozen times they played at private dances at three thousand dollars a night, and it seemed as if these crystallized all his distaste for his mode of livlihood. They took place in clubs and houses that he couldn't have gone into in the daytime. After all, he was merely playing to r?le of the eternal monkey, a sort of sublimated chorus man. He was sick of the very smell of the theatre, of powder and rouge and the chatter of the greenroom, and the patronizing approval of the boxes. He couldn't put his heart into it any more. The idea of a slow approach to the luxury of liesure drove him wild. He was, of course, progressing toward it, but, like a child, eating his ice-cream so slowly that he couldn't taste it at all.

He wanted to have a lot of money and time and opportunity to read and play, and the sort of men and women round him that he could never have—the kind who, if they thought of him at all, would have considered him rather contemptible; in short he wanted all those things which he was beginning to lump under the general head of aristocracy, an aristocracy which it seemed almost any money could buy except money made as he was making it. He was twenty-five then, without family or education or any promise that he would succeed in a business career. He began speculating wildly, and within three weeks he had lost every cent he had saved.

Then the war came. He went to Plattsburg, and even there his profession followed him. A brigadier-general called him up to headquarters and told him he could serve his country better as a band leader—so he spent the war entertaining celebrities behind the line with a headquarters band. It was not so bad—except that when the infantry came limping back from the trenches he wanted to be one of them. The sweat and mud they wore seemed only one of those ineffable symbols of aristocracy that were forever eluding him.

“It was the private dances that did it. After I came back from the war the old routine started. We had an offer from a syndicate of Florida hotels. It was only a question of time then.”

He broke off and Ardita looked at him expectantly, but he shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I'm going to tell you about it. I'm enjoying it too much, and I'm afraid I'd lose a little of that enjoyment if I shared it with anyone else. I want to hang on to those few breathless, heroic moments when I stood out before them all and let them know I was more than a damn bobbing, squawking clown.”

From up forward came suddenly the low sound of singing. The negroes had gathered together on the deck and their voices rose together in a haunting melody that soared in poignant harmonics toward the moon. And Ardita listens in enchantment.

“Oh down—

Oh down,

Mammy wanna take me downa milky way,

Oh down—

Oh down,

Pappy say to-morra-a-a-ah

But mammy say to-day,

Yes—mammy say to-day!”

Carlyle sighed and was silent for a moment looking up at the gathered host of stars blinking like arc-lights in the warm sky. The negroes' song had died away to a plaintive humming and it seemed as if minute by minute the brightness and the great silence were increasing until he could almost hear the midnight toilet of the mermaids as they combed their silver dripping curls under the moon and gossiped to each other of the fine wrecks they lived on the green opalescent avenues below. “You see,” said Carlyle softly, “this is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding—it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.”

He turned to her, but she was silent.

“You see, don't you, Anita—I mean, Ardita?”

Again she made no answer. She had been sound asleep for some time.

离岸的海盗 三

柯蒂斯·卡莱尔和吓破了胆的轮机手谈了不到十分钟的话,“水仙花号”游艇便鸣着汽笛,在清香四溢的热带暮色中朝着南方出发了。那个小黑白混血儿贝比似乎是卡莱尔的心腹,局势完全由他掌控。法纳姆先生的贴身侍从和厨师被结结实实地捆在船舱里的铺位上。他们是船上除了轮机手之外仅有的船员,他们曾经反抗过,然而现在,他们正在进行重新权衡。块头儿最大的那个黑人特罗姆博恩·摩斯,提着一桶漆,正忙着把船头的“水仙花号”涂掉,用“呼啦呼啦号”取而代之,其他几个人聚集在船尾,开始起劲地玩起了双骰子游戏。

卡莱尔命人准备晚饭,并吩咐他们七点半在甲板上开饭。然后,他又来到阿蒂塔身边,躺进藤椅里,半闭着眼睛,开始恍恍惚惚地出起神来。

阿蒂塔仔细打量着他——她很快就认定他是个浪漫的人。他给人的感觉是,他那高度的自信是建立在微不足道的基础之上的——他的每一个决定背后恰恰暴露了他的犹豫不决,这与他的嘴唇那不可一世的曲线形成了鲜明的对比。

“他和我不是一类人,”她想,“反正有什么地方不一样。”

作为一个极端的利己主义者,阿蒂塔常常只考虑自己;她的利己主义从来都不容争辩,完全出于天性,而且完全无损于她那毫无争议的魅力。尽管十九岁了,但是她给人的印象却是一个早熟的神采飞扬的孩子,而且她目前的青春气息和美丽气质使所有认识她的男男女女倾倒,毫无例外地在她那一颦一笑的涟漪上随波逐流。她遇到过其他利己主义者——事实上,她发现,自私的人反而没有无私的人那么讨厌——然而,到目前为止,还没有一个人最终不被她征服,没有一个人最终不是服服帖帖地拜倒在她的石榴裙下。

然而,虽然她发现坐在旁边那把藤椅上的人是个自私的家伙,但是她却丝毫没有如平常那样要将其拒之门外的想法,没想到要采取行动来保卫船只;相反,本能告诉她,这个人在某种程度上完全处于弱势地位,非常不堪一击。当阿蒂塔向传统习俗发起挑战的时候——而且这是她近来最主要的乐趣所在——这主要是缘于她急于证明自我的强烈愿望,她反而觉得这个人也在一门心思地挑战着什么。

她对他的兴趣远远超出了她对自己的处境的关心,而她对他的兴趣就像一个十岁的孩子对一场午后的演出所可能产生的渴望。她对自己的处境毫不担心,她在任何情况下都可以把自己照顾好,她对自己的能力拥有无可置疑的自信。

夜深了。海上升起一轮苍白的新月,眼神迷离地微笑着,海岸的轮廓变得越来越模糊,最后渐渐地消失了。乌云像树叶一样在遥远的天边翻飞,朦胧的月光突然倾泻在乘风破浪的游艇上,将它的航线扩展成一条银光闪闪的大道。偶尔有人擦燃火柴点烟,明亮的火光一闪而逝。然而,除了引擎的转动声和海浪拍打船尾的哗啦声,游艇安静得仿佛一个梦,在群星闪耀的天庭里穿行。夜空中弥散着海的味道,营造出一种浩瀚无边的似水柔情。

终于,卡莱尔打破了沉寂。

“幸运的姑娘,”他叹口气,“我一直都想发财——然后来赢得这所有的美妙享受。”

阿蒂塔打了个哈欠。

“我宁可是你。”她坦率地说。

“你已经和我一样了——差不多一天了。不过,作为一个小丫头,你看起来的确很有胆量。”

“希望你别那么叫我。”

“抱歉。”

“关于胆量,”她从容地接着说道,“这可是我性格当中的一个可取之处。我天不怕地不怕。”

“嗯,我也是。”

“一般而言,”阿蒂塔说,“一个人要么非常伟大,非常坚强——要么就非常怯懦。可我两者都不是。”她顿了顿,语气开始变得热切起来。“但是我想谈谈你。你到底干了什么——你是怎么做到的?”

“为什么?”他以嘲弄的语气问道,“准备为我写部电影吗?”

“说说吧,”她催促道,“在这月光下,向我撒谎吧,编得精彩点。”

一个黑人来了,他把凉棚下面的一串小灯打开,开始摆放柳条桌,为晚饭作准备。食物是从下面应有尽有的食橱里拿上来的,他们吃着冷切鸡肉、沙拉、法国百合和草莓酱,卡莱尔开始打开话匣子。一开始,他显得迟疑不定,然而,他发现她听得津津有味,就兴致勃勃地讲起来。阿蒂塔几乎没怎么吃东西,她望着他那黝黑、青春的脸庞——帅气,带着嘲弄的表情,显得有些软弱。

他出生在田纳西州的一个贫困家庭,他说,家里一贫如洗,他们是那条街上唯一的白人家庭。他连一个白人孩子都不记得——但是,总是有十几个黑人小孩屁颠屁颠地追着他跑。他拥有生动、丰富的想象力,带着他们不断地招惹是非,然后再为他们平息事端,让他们逢凶化吉、摆脱危险。他凭着这些能力让这些孩子寸步不离地追随着他,热情洋溢地崇拜着他。似乎他们的这种友谊将他那不同凡响的音乐才华引到了一个奇异的轨道上。

有个黑人女士名叫贝尔·波普·卡尔霍恩,她在聚会上为白人孩子弹钢琴——这些白人孩子都出身良好,他们经过卡莱尔身边的时候,都对他嗤之以鼻。但是这个衣衫褴褛的“白人穷小子”常常坐在她的钢琴边,一坐就是很长时间,用一只别的孩子只能吹出一点声响的笛子努力吹出高亢的声音。十三岁前,他就开始在纳什维尔附近的小餐厅里用破烂的小提琴奏出生动而妙趣横生的雷格泰姆音乐。八年后,国内掀起了雷格泰姆热,他就带着六个黑人跟随奥芬马戏团巡回演出。其中有五个是和他一起长大的发小;另一个就是矮个子的黑白混血儿贝比·狄万,很久以前他在百慕大种植园里干活,后来他把一把八英寸长的匕首插进了庄园主的后背里,然后就逃到纽约附近的码头上干活。卡莱尔来到百老汇的时候才意识到自己的运气有多好,各方人士争相与他签约,他做梦都没想到能挣那么多的钱。

大约就在那时,他的整个心态发生了变化,这个变化非常奇特,非常痛苦。他意识到他和那几个黑人在舞台上叽里呱啦地浪费着人生的大好年华。他的表演算得上是出类拔萃了——三只长号,三只萨克斯管,还有卡莱尔的笛子——他拥有超常的节奏感,他的乐队正是因为这一点而变得不同凡响;然而他却产生了莫名其妙的厌恶情绪,他开始讨厌登台演出,而且厌恶之情与日俱增。

他们很能挣钱——他签订合同时,一次比一次要钱多。然而,当他去找经理人,告诉他们,他想与其他六个人分开而做一个普通的钢琴演奏者时,他们却嘲笑他,并对他说他疯了——这意味着艺术性自杀。事后他总是嘲笑所谓的“艺术性自杀”的说法。这个说法在当时很普遍。

有时候他们在私人舞会上演奏,一晚上能挣三千美元,可是似乎正是这些让他产生了对这种谋生方式的厌恶。他们去俱乐部和私人会所里演出,而他们在白天是登不了这些大雅之堂的。毕竟,他永远只是一个跳梁小丑,一个被艺术化了的乐队的乐手而已。他一闻到剧院和脂粉的味道,一听到演员休息室里的闲言碎语,一看到包厢里那些看客高高在上的恭维之态,他就觉得恶心。他再也无法心无旁骛地演奏了。他想慢慢过上休闲的豪华生活,这个想法使他发疯。当然,他正在朝这个目标努力。不过,这个过程太漫长了,就像小孩子吃雪糕,因为吃得太慢,所以根本无法享受到它的美味。

他想有很多钱、很多时间,想有机会读书和消遣,想成为他周围那些他以前从来都无法跻身其中的男男女女——这些人就算是曾经想到过他的话,也认为他是个无足轻重的卑劣之人。简单地说,他想拥有那些贵族们才能享有的东西,这样的贵族似乎是可以用金钱来交换的,只是他辛苦演出赚来的钱除外。那时他二十五岁,没有成家,没有上过学,也没有希望在生意上取得成功。他开始疯狂地做投机生意,不到三个礼拜,便把所有积蓄败得精光。

然后,战争爆发了。他去了普拉茨堡。即使到了那里,他也摆脱不掉自己的职业。一位陆军准将把他叫到军部,告诉他,如果他去当军乐团的团长,可以为国家做出更大的贡献——于是,整个战争期间,他和军乐团一起待在后方为各类社会名流演出。这也没什么不好——然而,当步兵们一瘸一拐地从战壕里回来的时候,他很想成为其中的一员。他们身上的泥土和汗水散发着永恒的魅力,对他而言,这似乎是不可企及的贵族品质的一种象征。

“是私人舞会造成的。我从战争中归来以后,又开始重操旧业。我们收到了佛罗里达酒店财团的邀请。当时,这只是迟早的问题。”

他停下不说了,阿蒂塔满怀期待地望着他,然而,他摇摇头。

“不,”他说,“我不打算给你讲了。我非常珍惜这些经历,生怕与别人分享后会有损它带给我的快乐。我想把这些惊心动魄的英勇时刻埋藏在心底,等我在他们面前出人头地的时候,我要让他们知道,我不只是个上蹿下跳、扯着嗓子吼叫的小丑。”

忽然甲板上传来一阵低回的歌声,黑人们聚集在甲板上齐声歌唱,旋律令人难忘,尖锐的和声飞向了月亮。阿蒂塔听得如痴如醉。

哦,走吧——

哦,走吧,

妈咪要带我看银河,

哦,走吧,

哦,走吧,

爸比说明天去,

妈咪说今天去,

没错——妈咪说今天去!

卡莱尔叹了口气,沉默了一会儿,抬头望着温暖的天空下那如弧光灯般闪烁的点点繁星。黑人们浑厚的歌声渐渐变成如泣如诉的哼唱,而天地似乎越来越寂静,光明也在分分秒秒地迫近。他几乎可以听见美人鱼夜半梳妆的声音,她们在月光下梳着湿漉漉的、闪着银光的鬈发,聊着她们的住所,聊着在泛着清辉的大道下面那艘精致的沉船。

“你看,”卡莱尔轻轻地说,“这就是我想要的美妙享受。必须是那种令人吃惊、令人震撼的美——必须像梦、像少女动人的眼眸一样,突然闯入你的生活。”

他转过身来望着她,而她却默默无语。

“你明白,不是吗,阿蒂塔——我的意思是,阿蒂塔?”

她依然没有回应。她已经不知在什么时候睡熟了。

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