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双语·杰克·伦敦短篇小说选 墨西哥人 4

所属教程:译林版·热爱生命:杰克·伦敦短篇小说选

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2022年06月14日

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The Mexican IV

Barely noticed was Rivera as he entered the ring.Only a very slight and very scattering ripple of half-hearted hand-clapping greeted him.The house did not believe in him.He was the lamb led to slaughter at the hands of the great Danny.Besides,the house was disappointed.It had expected a rushing battle between Danny Ward and Billy Carthey,and here it must put up with this poor little tyro.Still further,it had manifested its disapproval of the change by betting two,and even three,to one on Danny.And where a betting audience's money is,there is its heart.

The Mexican boy sat down in his corner and waited.The slow minutes lagged by.Danny was making him wait.It was an old trick,but ever it worked on the young,new fighters.They grew frightened,sitting thus and facing their own apprehensions and a callous,tobacco-smoking audience.But for once the trick failed.Roberts was right.Rivera had no goat.He,who was more delicately co?rdinated,more finely nerved and strung than any of them,had no nerves of this sort.The atmosphere of foredoomed defeat in his own corner had no effect on him.His handlers were Gringos and strangers.Also they were scrubs—the dirty driftage of the fight game,without honor,without efficiency.And they were chilled,as well,with certitude that theirs was the losing corner.

“Now you gotta be careful,”Spider Hagerty warned him.Spider was his chief second.“Make it last as long as you can—them's my instructions from Kelly.If you don't,the papers'll call it another bum fight and give the game a bigger black eye in Los Angeles.”

All of which was not encouraging.But Rivera took no notice.He despised prize-fighting.It was the hated game of the hated Gringo.He had taken up with it,as a chopping block for others in the training quarters,solely because he was starving.The fact that he was marvelously made for it,had meant nothing.He hated it.Not until he had come in to the Junta,had he fought for money,and he had found the money easy.Not first among the sons of men had he been to find himself successful at a despised vocation.

He did not analyze.He merely knew that he must win this fight.There could be no other outcome.For behind him,nerving him to this belief,were profounder forces than any the crowded house dreamed.Danny Ward fought for money,and for the easy ways of life that money would bring.But the things Rivera fought for burned in his brain—blazing and terrible visions,that,with eyes wide open,sitting lonely in the corner of the ring and waiting for his tricky antagonist,he saw as clearly as he had lived them.

He saw the white-walled,water-power factories of Rio Blanco.He saw the six thousand workers,starved and wan,and the little children,seven and eight years of age,who toiled long shifts for ten cents a day.He saw the perambulating corpses,the ghastly death's heads of men who labored in the dye-rooms.He remembered that he had heard his father call the dye-rooms the “suicide-holes,”where a year was death.He saw the little patio,and his mother cooking and moiling at crude housekeeping and finding time to caress and love him.And his father he saw,large,big-moustached and deep-chested,kindly above all men,who loved all men and whose heart was so large that there was love to overflowing still left for the mother and the little muchacho playing in the corner of the patio.In those days his name had not been Felipe Rivera.It had been Fernandez,his father's and mother's name.Him had they called Juan.Later,he had changed it himself,for he had found the name of Fernandez hated by prefects of police,jefes politicos,and rurales.

Big,hearty Joaquin Fernandez!A large place he occupied in Rivera's visions.He had not understood at the time,but looking back he could understand.He could see him setting type in the little printery,or scribbling endless hasty,nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk.And he could see the strange evenings,when workmen,coming secretly in the dark like men who did ill deeds,met with his father and talked long hours where he,the muchacho,lay not always asleep in the corner.

As from a remote distance he could hear Spider Hagerty saying to him:“No layin' down at the start.Them's instructions.Take a beatin' an'earn your dough.”

Ten minutes had passed,and he still sat in his corner.There were no signs of Danny,who was evidently playing the trick to the limit.

But more visions burned before the eye of Rivera's memory.The strike,or,rather,the lockout,because the workers of Rio Blanco had helped their striking brothers of Puebla.The hunger,the expeditions in the hills for berries,the roots and herbs that all ate and that twisted and pained the stomachs of all of them.And then,the nightmare;the waste of ground before the company's store;the thousands of starving workers;General Rosalio Martinez and the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz;and the death-spitting rifles that seemed never to cease spitting,while the workers' wrongs were washed and washed again in their own blood.And that night!He saw the flat cars,piled high with the bodies of the slain,consigned to Vera Cruz,food for the sharks of the bay.Again he crawled over the grisly heaps,seeking and finding,stripped and mangled,his father and his mother.His mother he especially remembered—only her face projecting,her body burdened by the weight of dozens of bodies.Again the rifles of the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz cracked,and again he dropped to the ground and slunk away like some hunted coyote of the hills.

To his ears came a great roar,as of the sea,and he saw Danny Ward,leading his retinue of trainers and seconds,coming down the center aisle.The house was in wild uproar for the popular hero who was bound to win.Everybody proclaimed him.Everybody was for him.Even Rivera's own seconds warmed to something akin to cheerfulness when Danny ducked jauntily through the ropes and entered the ring.His face continually spread to an unending succession of smiles,and when Danny smiled he smiled in every feature,even to the laughter-wrinkles of the corners of the eyes and into the depths of the eyes themselves.Never was there so genial a fighter.His face was a running advertisement of good feeling,of good fellowship.He knew everybody.He joked,and laughed,and greeted his friends through the ropes.Those farther away,unable to suppress their admiration,cried loudly:“Oh,you Danny!”It was a joyous ovation of affection that lasted a full five minutes.

Rivera was disregarded.For all that the audience noticed,he did not exist.Spider Hagerty's bloated face bent down close to his.“No gettin' scared,”the Spider warned.“An'remember instructions.You gotta last.No layin' down.If you lay down,we got instructions to beat you up in the dressing rooms.Savve?You just gotta fight.”

The house began to applaud.Danny was crossing the ring to him.Danny bent over,caught Rivera's right hand in both his own and shook it with impulsive heartiness.Danny's smile-wreathed face was close to his.The audience yelled its appreciation of Danny's display of sporting spirit.He was greeting his opponent with the fondness of a brother.Danny's lips moved,and the audience,interpreting the unheard words to be those of a kindly-natured sport,yelled again.Only Rivera heard the low words.

“You little Mexican rat,”hissed from between Danny's gaily smiling lips,“I'll fetch the yellow outa you.”

Rivera made no move.He did not rise.He merely hated with his eyes.

“Get up,you dog!”some man yelled through the ropes from behind.

The crowd began to hiss and boo him for his unsportsmanlike conduct,but he sat unmoved.Another great outburst of applause was Danny's as he walked back across the ring.

When Danny stripped,there was ohs!and ahs!of delight.His body was perfect,alive with easy suppleness and health and strength.The skin was white as a woman's,and as smooth.All grace,and resilience,and power resided therein.He had proved it in scores of battles.His photographs were in all the physical culture magazines.

A groan went up as Spider Hagerty peeled Rivera's sweater over his head.His body seemed leaner,because of the swarthiness of the skin.He had muscles,but they made no display like his opponent's.What the audience neglected to see was the deep chest.Nor could it guess the toughness of the fiber of the flesh,the instantaneousness of the cell explosions of the muscles,the fineness of the nerves that wired every part of him into a splendid fighting mechanism.All the audience saw was a brown-skinned boy of eighteen with what seemed the body of a boy.With Danny it was different.Danny was a man of twenty-four,and his body was a man's body.The contrast was still more striking as they stood together in the center of the ring receiving the referee's last instructions.

Rivera noticed Roberts sitting directly behind the newspaper men.He was drunker than usual,and his speech was correspondingly slower.

“Take it easy,Rivera,”Roberts drawled.“He can't kill you,remember that.He'll rush you at the go-off,but don't get rattled.You just cover up,and stall,and clinch.He can't hurt you much.Just make believe to yourself that he's choppin' out on you at the trainin' quarters.”

Rivera made no sign that he had heard.

“Sullen little devil,”Roberts muttered to the man next to him.“He always was that way.”

But Rivera forgot to look his usual hatred.A vision of countless rifles blinded his eyes.Every face in the audience,far as he could see,to the high dollar-seats,was transformed into a rifle.And he saw the long Mexican border arid and sun-washed and aching,and along it he saw the ragged bands that delayed only for the guns.

Back in his corner he waited,standing up.His seconds had crawled out through the ropes,taking the canvas stool with them.Diagonally across the squared ring,Danny faced him.The gong struck,and the battle was on.The audience howled its delight.Never had it seen a battle open more convincingly.The papers were right.It was a grudge fight.Three-quarters of the distance Danny covered in the rush to get together,his intention to eat up the Mexican lad plainly advertised.He assailed with not one blow,nor two,nor a dozen.He was a gyroscope of blows,a whirlwind of destruction.Rivera was nowhere.He was overwhelmed,buried beneath avalanches of punches delivered from every angle and position by a past master in the art.He was overborne,swept back against the ropes,separated by the referee,and swept back against the ropes again.

It was not a fight.It was a slaughter,a massacre.Any audience,save a prize-fighting one,would have exhausted its emotions in that first minute.Danny was certainly showing what he could do—a splendid exhibition.Such was the certainty of the audience,as well as its excitement and favoritism,that it failed to take notice that the Mexican still stayed on his feet.It forgot Rivera.It rarely saw him,so closely was he enveloped in Danny's man-eating attack.A minute of this went by,and two minutes.Then,in a separation,it caught a clear glimpse of the Mexican.His lip was cut,his nose was bleeding.As he turned and staggered into a clinch,the welts of oozing blood,from his contacts with the ropes,showed in red bars.across his back.But what the audience did not notice was that his chest was not heaving and that his eyes were coldly burning as ever.Too many aspiring champions,in the cruel welter of the training camps,had practiced this man-eating attack on him.He had learned to live through for a compensation of from half a dollar a go up to fifteen dollars a week—a hard school,and he was schooled hard.

Then happened the amazing thing.The whirling,blurring mix-up ceased suddenly.Rivera stood alone.Danny,the redoubtable Danny,lay on his back.His body quivered as consciousness strove to return to it.He had not staggered and sunk down,nor had he gone over in a long slumping fall.The right hook of Rivera had dropped him in midair with the abruptness of death.The referee shoved Rivera back with one hand,and stood over the fallen gladiator counting the seconds.It is the custom of prize-fighting audiences to cheer a clean knock-down blow.But this audience did not cheer.The thing had been too unexpected.It watched the toll of the seconds in tense silence,and through this silence the voice of Roberts rose exultantly:

“I told you he was a two-handed fighter!”

By the fifth second,Danny was rolling over on his face,and when seven was counted,he rested on one knee,ready to rise after the count of nine and before the count of ten.If his knee still touched the floor at “ten,”he was considered “down,”and also “out.”The instant his knee left the floor,he was considered “up,”and in that instant it was Rivera's right to try and put him down again.Rivera took no chances.The moment that knee left the floor he would strike again.He circled around,but the referee circled in between,and Rivera knew that the seconds he counted were very slow.All Gringos were against him,even the referee.

At “nine”the referee gave Rivera a sharp thrust back.It was unfair,but it enabled Danny to rise,the smile back on his lips.Doubled partly over,with arms wrapped about face and abdomen,he cleverly stumbled into a clinch.By all the rules of the game the referee should have broken it,but he did not,and Danny clung on like a surf-battered barnacle and moment by moment recuperated.The last minute of the round was going fast.If he could live to the end,he would have a full minute in his corner to revive.And live to the end he did,smiling through all desperateness and extremity.

“The smile that won't come off!”somebody yelled,and the audience laughed loudly in its relief.

“The kick that Greaser's got is something God-awful,”Danny gasped in his corner to his adviser while his handlers worked frantically over him.

The second and third rounds were tame.Danny,a tricky and consummate ring general,stalled and blocked and held on,devoting himself to recovering from that dazing first-round blow.In the fourth round he was himself again.Jarred and shaken,nevertheless his good condition had enabled him to regain his vigor.But he tried no man-eating tactics.The Mexican had proved a tartar.Instead,he brought to bear his best fighting powers.In tricks and skill and experience he was the master,and though he could land nothing vital,he proceeded scientifically to chop and wear down his opponent.He landed three blows to Rivera's one,but they were punishing blows only,and not deadly.It was the sum of many of them that constituted deadliness.He was respectful of this two-handed dub with the amazing short-arm kicks in both his fists.

In defense,Rivera developed a disconcerting straight-left.Again and again,attack after attack he straight-lefted away from him with accumulated damage to Danny's mouth and nose.But Danny was protean.That was why he was the coming champion.He could change from style to style of fighting at will.He now devoted himself to infighting.In this he was particularly wicked,and it enabled him to avoid the other's straight-left.Here he set the house wild repeatedly,capping it with a marvelous lock-break and lift of an inside uppercut that raised the Mexican in the air and dropped him to the mat.Rivera rested on one knee,making the most of the count,and in the soul of him he knew the referee was counting short seconds on him.

Again,in the seventh,Danny achieved the diabolical inside uppercut.He succeeded only in staggering Rivera,but,in the ensuing moment of defenseless helplessness,he smashed him with another blow through the ropes.Rivera's body bounced on the heads of the newspaper men below,and they boosted him back to the edge of the platform outside the ropes.Here he rested on one knee,while the referee raced off the seconds.Inside the ropes,through which he must duck to enter the ring,Danny waited for him.Nor did the referee intervene or thrust Danny back.

The house was beside itself with delight.

“Kill 'm,Danny,kill 'm!”was the cry.

Scores of voices took it up until it was like a war-chant of wolves.

Danny did his best,but Rivera,at the count of eight,instead of nine,came unexpectedly through the ropes and safely into a clinch.Now the referee worked,tearing him away so that he could be hit,giving Danny every advantage that an unfair referee can give.

But Rivera lived,and the daze cleared from his brain.It was all of a piece.They were the hated Gringos and they were all unfair.And in the worst of it visions continued to flash and sparkle in his brain—long lines of railroad track that simmered across the desert;rurales and American constables;prisons and calabooses;tramps at water tanks—all the squalid and painful panorama of his odyssey after Rio Blanca and the strike.And,resplendent and glorious,he saw the great,red Revolution sweeping across his land.The guns were there before him.Every hated face was a gun.It was for the guns he fought.He was the guns.He was the Revolution.He fought for all Mexico.

The audience began to grow incensed with Rivera.Why didn't he take the licking that was appointed him?Of course he was going to be licked,but why should he be so obstinate about it?Very few were interested in him,and they were the certain,definite percentage of a gambling crowd that plays long shots.Believing Danny to be the winner,nevertheless they had put their money on the Mexican at four to ten and one to three.More than a trifle was up on the point of how many rounds Rivera could last.Wild money had appeared at the ringside proclaiming that he could not last seven rounds,or even six.The winners of this,now that their cash risk was happily settled,had joined in cheering on the favorite.

Rivera refused to be licked.Through the eighth round his opponent strove vainly to repeat the uppercut.In the ninth,Rivera stunned the house again.In the midst of a clinch he broke the lock with a quick,lithe movement,and in the narrow space between their bodies his right lifted from the waist.Danny went to the floor and took the safety of the count.The crowd was appalled.He was being bested at his own game.His famous right-uppercut had been worked back on him.Rivera made no attempt to catch him as he arose at “nine.”The referee was openly blocking that play,though he stood clear when the situation was reversed and it was Rivera who desired to rise.

Twice in the tenth,Rivera put through the right-uppercut,lifted from waist to opponent's chin.Danny grew desperate.The smile never left his face,but he went back to his man-eating rushes.Whirlwind as he would,he could not damage Rivera,while Rivera,through the blur and whirl,dropped him to the mat three times in succession.Danny did not recuperate so quickly now,and by the eleventh round he was in a serious way.But from then till the fourteenth he put up the gamest exhibition of his career.He stalled and blocked,fought parsimoniously,and strove to gather strength.Also,he fought as foully as a successful fighter knows how.Every trick and device he employed,butting in the clinches with the seeming of accident,pinioning Rivera's glove between arm and body,heeling his glove on Rivera's mouth to clog his breathing.Often,in the clinches,through his cut and smiling lips he snarled insults unspeakable and vile in Rivera's ear.Everybody,from the referee to the house,was with Danny and was helping Danny.And they knew what he had in mind.Bested by this surprise-box of an unknown,he was pinning all on a single punch.He offered himself for punishment,fished,and feinted,and drew,for that one opening that would enable him to whip a blow through with all his strength and turn the tide.As another and greater fighter had done before him,he might do—a right and left,to solar plexus and across the jaw.He could do it,for he was noted for the strength of punch that remained in his arms as long as he could keep his feet.

Rivera's seconds were not half-caring for him in the intervals between rounds.Their towels made a showing,but drove little air into his panting lungs.Spider Hagerty talked advice to him,but Rivera knew it was wrong advice.Everybody was against him.He was surrounded by treachery.In the fourteenth round he put Danny down again,and himself stood resting,hands dropped at side,while the referee counted.In the other corner Rivera had been noting suspicious whisperings.He saw Michael Kelly make his way to Roberts and bend and whisper.Rivera's ears were a cat's,desert-trained,and he caught snatches of what was said.He wanted to hear more,and when his opponent arose he maneuvered the fight into a clinch over against the ropes.

“Got to,”he could hear Michael,while Roberts nodded.“Danny's got to win—I stand to lose a mint—I've got a ton of money covered—my own—If he lasts the fifteenth I'm bust—The boy'll mind you.Put something across.”

And thereafter Rivera saw no more visions.They were trying to job him.Once again he dropped Danny and stood resting,his hands at his side.Roberts stood up.

“That settled him,”he said.“Go to your corner.”

He spoke with authority,as he had often spoken to Rivera at the training quarters.But Rivera looked hatred at him and waited for Danny to rise.Back in his corner in the minute interval,Kelly,the promoter,came and talked to Rivera.

“Throw it,damn you,”he rasped in a harsh low voice.“You gotta lay down,Rivera.Stick with me and I'll make your future.I'll let you lick Danny next time.But here's where you lay down.”

Rivera showed with his eyes that he heard,but he made neither sign of assent nor dissent.

“Why don't you speak?”Kelly demanded angrily.

“You lose,anyway,”Spider Hagerty supplemented.“The referee'll take it away from you.Listen to Kelly,and lay down.”

“Lay down,kid,”Kelly pleaded,“and I'll help you to the championship.”

Rivera did not answer.

“I will,so help me,kid.”

At the strike of the gong Rivera sensed something impending.The house did not.Whatever it was it was there inside the ring with him and very close.Danny's earlier surety seemed returned to him.The confidence of his advance frightened Rivera.Some trick was about to be worked.Danny rushed,but Rivera refused the encounter.He side-stepped away into safety.What the other wanted was a clinch.It was in some way necessary to the trick.Rivera backed and circled away,yet he knew,sooner or later,the clinch and the trick would come.Desperately he resolved to draw it.He made as if to effect the clinch with Danny's next rush.Instead,at the last instant,just as their bodies should have come together,Rivera darted nimbly back.And in the same instant Danny's corner raised a cry of foul.Rivera had fooled them.The referee paused irresolutely.The decision that trembled on his lips was never uttered,for a shrill,boy's voice from the gallery piped,“Raw work!”

Danny cursed Rivera openly,and forced him,while Rivera danced away.Also,Rivera made up his mind to strike no more blows at the body.In this he threw away half his chance of winning,but he knew if he was to win at all it was with the outfighting that remained to him.Given the least opportunity,they would lie a foul on him.Danny threw all caution to the winds.For two rounds he tore after and into the boy who dared not meet him at close quarters.Rivera was struck again and again;he took blows by the dozens to avoid the perilous clinch.During this supreme final rally of Danny's the audience rose to its feet and went mad.It did not understand.All it could see was that its favorite was winning after all.

“Why don't you fight?”it demanded wrathfully of Rivera.“You're yellow!You're yellow!”“Open up,you cur!Open up!”“Kill 'm,Danny!Kill 'm!”“You sure got 'm!Kill 'm!”

In all the house,bar none,Rivera was the only cold man.By temperament and blood he was the hottest-passioned there;but he had gone through such vastly greater heats that this collective passion of ten thousand throats,rising surge on surge,was to his brain no more than the velvet cool of a summer twilight.

Into the seventeenth round Danny carried his rally.Rivera,under a heavy blow,drooped and sagged.His hands dropped helplessly as he reeled backward.Danny thought it was his chance.The boy was at,his mercy.Thus Rivera,feigning,caught him off his guard,lashing out a clean drive to the mouth.Danny went down.When he arose,Rivera felled him with a down-chop of the right on neck and jaw.Three times he repeated this.It was impossible for any referee to call these blows foul.

“Oh,Bill!Bill!”Kelly pleaded to the referee.

“I can't,”that official lamented back.“He won't give me a chance.”

Danny,battered and heroic,still kept coming up.Kelly and others near to the ring began to cry out to the police to stop it,though Danny's corner refused to throw in the towel.Rivera saw the fat police captain starting awkwardly to climb through the ropes,and was not sure what it meant.There were so many ways of cheating in this game of the Gringos.Danny,on his feet,tottered groggily and helplessly before him.The referee and the captain were both reaching for Rivera when he struck the last blow.There was no need to stop the fight,for Danny did not rise.

“Count!”Rivera cried hoarsely to the referee.

And when the count was finished,Danny's seconds gathered him up and carried him to his corner.

“Who wins?”Rivera demanded.

Reluctantly,the referee caught his gloved hand and held it aloft.

There were no congratulations for Rivera.He walked to his corner unattended,where his seconds had not yet placed his stool.He leaned backward on the ropes and looked his hatred at them,swept it on and about him till the whole ten thousand Gringos were included.His knees trembled under him,and he was sobbing from exhaustion.Before his eyes the hated faces swayed back and forth in the giddiness of nausea.Then he remembered they were the guns.The guns were his.The Revolution could go on.

墨西哥人 4

利维拉上台的时候,几乎没有人注意。欢迎他的,只是稀稀拉拉的几声鼓掌,冷淡、勉强。没有观众相信他会赢,都觉得他只不过是一只落在强大的丹尼手中的待宰羔羊。另一方面,观众们感到有点失望。他们原本指望能看到丹尼·沃德和比利·卡瑟的激烈对决,而今却必须委屈自己,看这个初出茅庐的小孩子出洋相。还有,他们在丹尼身上押了二对一,甚至三对一的赌注,以此表示他们对这种变动的不满。观众下赌注,历来都是投在自己喜欢的选手身上。

这个墨西哥小子坐在他的那个角落里等待开场。时间在一分钟一分钟地被拖延着。丹尼故意让他等着,虽说是老把戏了,但用在初上场的新手身上却屡试不爽。新手傻坐在那里,焦虑油然而生,看着那些冷酷无情、吞云吐雾的观众,心里的恐惧感会一点点增加。但这一次,这种老把戏却失败了。罗伯兹说得对,利维拉可不是好对付的。他比任何一个选手都从容不迫、泰然自若,比任何一个选手都有胆量,压根就没有慌乱的迹象。连他自己的那个角落里也弥漫着他必败的气息,可这些对他毫无影响。他的助手是几个素不相识的美国佬,都是些窝囊废,拳击赛上的不得志者,既无尊严又无本事。他们一个个垂头丧气,铁了心认为他们这一方必输无疑。

“现在你可要当心点,”领头的助手斯巴德·哈格蒂提醒他说,“凯利交代过,让你尽量把时间拖长一些。要不然,媒体会大做文章,说这又是一场狗屁比赛,在洛杉矶抹黑这场比赛。”

当时的情况没有一样对利维拉是有利的,但他全然不当回事。他鄙视拳击赛,认为这是可恶的美国人搞的一种可恨的把戏。他初入此行,在训练场给别人当“剁肉的砧板”(3),只是因为肚子饿的缘故。后来参加比赛取得了骄人的战绩,他也全然不当回事。他痛恨拳击比赛。直到加入了委员会以后,他才为了筹集资金乐于与人交手,因为他觉得这样挣钱比较容易。按说,在自己厌恶的行业取得成功者,他并非第一人。

对于这场比赛,他没有考虑过多,只知道必须取胜,不允许有其他的后果。在他的身后有一种力量在推动着他,使他抱有必胜的信心,而这种力量是在场的观众做梦也想不到的。丹尼·沃德参加比赛是为了赚钱,因为钱能够使他在生活中顺风顺水。而利维拉则是为了一种在心里熊熊燃烧的愿望和可怕的幻象。此刻,他孤单单地坐在赛台的角落里,眼睛睁得大大的,一面等着他的那个诡计多端的对手,一面清清楚楚看到了一幕幕幻象,就好像是他已经亲身经历过此时此刻。

他看见了粉墙围起的里奥布兰科(4)水力发电站;看见了发电站的六千个工人,一个个忍饥挨饿、满脸菜色,其中有七八岁的童工,每天要干很长时间的活,却只能挣十美分;看见了脸色惨白如死人一般的染坊里的工人,记起曾听父亲把这种染房叫作“自杀洞”,进去做一年工就会死掉;看见了他家的那个小庭院,母亲在那里煮饭和操持繁重的家务,还会抽空跑过来搂搂他、亲亲他;看见了他那大胡子、虎背熊腰的父亲——天下最慈爱的父亲,他心胸开阔,爱所有的人,心里充溢着对母亲以及在庭院墙角玩耍的小家伙们的爱。想当年,他的姓名并不是菲力普·利维拉,而是随父母的姓费尔南德斯,名叫胡安。后来,他自己把姓名改了,因为他发现费尔南德斯是那些警察局长和宪兵所痛恨的姓。

魁梧的、好心肠的华金·费尔南德斯父亲呀!这位父亲在利维拉看到的幻象里占有重要的位置。当年,利维拉并不了解自己的父亲,后来回忆往事,才对父亲产生了深刻的理解。他仿佛看见父亲在那个小印刷所里排文字,看见他趴在堆满杂物的桌子旁奋笔疾书,写下一行行充满激情的文字;看见工人们在天黑的时候借着夜色摸到他家来,偷偷摸摸的,像干什么坏事似的,跟他的父亲促膝交谈,谈上很长时间,而他这个少不更事的孩子则躺在角落里,时常偷听他们的谈话。

此时,斯巴德·哈格蒂的话似从很远的地方飘了过来:“千万不要一开局就被打趴下。这是老板的命令。挨打就挨打,坚持住,最后才能有点钱挣。”

时间过去十分钟了,他仍坐在他的那个角落里,还是不见丹尼的身影——看来,丹尼要把他的那套鬼把戏玩到极致。

利维拉记忆的长河开了闸门,往事如河水涌现而来。那一次,里奥布兰科的工人为了声援在普埃布拉(5)举行罢工的兄弟们,自己也举行了罢工,或者说是老板不愿满足工人们的要求而导致了停工。工人们饥饿难忍,纷纷进山找野果、树根和野菜充饥,结果吃得肚子疼,胃如刀绞。接着,噩梦接踵而至——就在公司仓库门前的空地上,成千上万饥饿的工人遭到枪击。罗萨里奥·马蒂尼兹将军率领迪亚斯的军队对工人大开杀戒,枪口不停喷出死亡的火焰,似乎永远也不会停止似的,工人血流成河,仿佛只有用鲜血才能洗刷掉这些工人所造下的“罪孽”。那是一个多么可怕的夜晚啊!他看见一辆辆敞篷车上,遇害工人的尸体堆积如山,准备运往韦拉克鲁斯(6),抛进海里喂鲨鱼。他爬到恐怖的死人堆上,寻呀找呀,终于找见了他的父母,发现他们被剥光了衣服,浑身血肉模糊。母亲当时的样子他记得尤其清楚——母亲被几十具尸体压在底下,只露出来一张脸。耳边又响起了迪亚斯士兵的枪声,他急忙跳到地上,就像一只遭到猎人追赶的幼兽一样跑掉了。

正在遐想之际,他的耳边响起了山呼海啸般的欢呼声,只见丹尼·沃德在一群训练员和助手的簇拥下从中央通道正走过来。全场观众为之沸腾,热烈欢迎他们这位必胜无疑的英雄。人们一边倒,都拥护他、赞美他。当他得意扬扬地钻过绳子走上比赛台时,就连利维拉的助手也兴奋了起来,甚至说见到他有点高兴。他脸上挂着永不消失的招牌式微笑,笑啊笑的,鼻子、眼全在笑,就连眼角的鱼尾纹和眼珠子都在笑。如此和蔼可亲的拳击手,你就是找遍天下恐怕也找不到第二个。他的脸仿佛就是一幅宣扬善心和友谊的流动广告牌。他好像跟所有的人都认识,隔着绳子和他的朋友们说笑,打招呼。那些坐得远一点的,也都抑制不住崇拜的心情,高声喊着:“你好,丹尼!”这一充溢着欢快气氛的欢迎式足足持续了五分钟。

利维拉被冷落在那里,观众谁也不去注意他,仿佛他不存在似的。斯巴德·哈格蒂俯下身子,把他那张浮肿的脸凑到利维拉的跟前说:“别害怕。记住老板的命令,必须挺住,万不可倒下去。假如你倒下去,我们奉命在身,非得在更衣室里揍死你不可。明白吗?你必须拼死一搏。”

比赛场响起了雷鸣般的掌声。但见丹尼横穿台子朝着利维拉走了过来。他弯下腰,用双手握住利维拉的右手,热忱地摇了几下,把他那张笑开了花的脸和利维拉的脸贴得很近。他落落大方的运动员风范赢得了观众阵阵的喝彩——他向对手表现出的是兄弟般的友谊。随后,他的嘴唇动了几下,观众听不见他说的是什么,都以为他在善意地鼓励对方,于是又是一阵喝彩。只有利维拉听见了他那张挂满了笑容的嘴压低声音恶狠狠地说出的话:

“你这个墨西哥小兔崽子,我要把你的屎都打出来。”

利维拉纹丝不动,他甚至都没有站起来,只是用眼神表达着内心的仇恨。

“站起来,你这条狗!”身后有个人隔着绳子喊道。

观众嫌他缺乏运动员的风度,发出了一阵嘘声,可他依旧一动不动。丹尼穿过台子回到自己的角落时,人群又爆发出了欢呼喝彩声。

丹尼一脱下衣服,便引来了一片兴奋的赞叹声。他的身体堪称完美,柔韧性十足,强健而有力,显得精神抖擞,皮肤白嫩、细腻,跟女人一样。动作优雅,富于弹性,拥有强大的力量。他前后参赛几十场,已展示了自己的虎威。几乎所有的体育杂志都刊登过他的照片。

而斯巴德·哈格蒂扒下利维拉的套头毛衣时,听到的则是一片嘘声。由于皮肤黝黑,利维拉显得很瘦。他也有肌肉,但是和对手的肌肉相比,是不具可比性的。但观众疏于观察,看不到他厚实的胸膛,也想象不到他那肌肉的纤维是何等坚韧,想象不到那肌肉瞬间会产生怎样的爆发力,不知道他身体的每一个部分都受到精密的神经系统的操纵,可以在赛场上将他变为一台出色的战斗机器。在观众的眼里,他只是一个棕色皮肤的十八岁的年轻人,一副孩子似的身材。丹尼则完全不同,他是一个二十四岁的男子汉,呈现的是成年人的身材。裁判一声令下,二人走到台子中央,站在一起,这时这种对比就更加鲜明了。

利维拉注意到罗伯兹就坐在报社记者的背后,好像比平日醉得还厉害,舌头僵硬,说话更慢了。

“你可别乱了方寸,利维拉,”罗伯兹慢声慢调地说,“他打不死你,记住就是了。一开始,他会猛攻猛打,你可别乱了阵脚。你只需稳住阵脚,扭住他,由他打吧,反正也要不了你的性命。你就权当自己是训练场上的陪练员,挨几下打怕什么。”

利维拉就像是没听见似的。

“这个小东西老是阴沉着脸,”罗伯兹对坐在他旁边的一个男子嘟哝了一句,“对人总是爱答不理的。”

利维拉沉浸在回忆中,面无表情,没有显露出往常的那种仇恨神色。他眼睛里只看得到无数的来复枪——一眼望去,从跟前一直到贵宾席,观众的每一张面孔都幻化成了一支来复枪。接着,他又看见了漫长的墨西哥边境,那儿寸草不生,烈日当空,热得难受,聚集着一群群衣衫褴褛的人,眼巴巴盼望着拿到枪支。

他回到自己的那个角落,站在那儿等待着。他的助手钻过绳子下了台子,顺手将帆布矮凳也拿了下去。在四方形的拳击台的对角,丹尼正虎视眈眈地看着他。锣声一响,战斗拉开了序幕。观众高兴得大呼小叫。他们从未见过如此激动人心的序幕。报纸上说得很对:这是一场复仇之战。丹尼求战心切,三步两步就蹿过了四分之三的距离,恨不得一口将这个墨西哥小屁孩吞进肚里。他左一拳右一拳,不知打了多少拳,双臂挥动如飞轮在转,大有摧枯拉朽的架势。利维拉无处躲藏,全无招架之功,被那位拳坛老将从四面八方打来的暴风骤雨般的拳头所淹没。他立脚不稳,被打得靠在了绳子上,裁判将他们分开,紧接着又被打得靠在了上面。

这不像是拳击赛,简直就是杀戮,一场血腥的屠杀。任何观众,特别是那些下赌注的人,一开局就激动到了极点。丹尼的确拿出了看家本事,表现出了他的八面威风。可能是

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