双语 ● A Beautiful Memory 美好的回忆
A Beautiful Memory 美好的回忆
◎ Michelle
Err...the loveliest house that I’ve ever lived in was one that I lived in with my grandparents when I was a child. And the name of the house was Crosslands. And I have some very happy memories of Crosslands. It was, it seemed, so huge to me as a child. And it had a lovely living room with a piano in it and a lovely sort of hall with lots of carpets and chests and antiques and so on. And there was a mysterious room, it was the drawing room, and we only used it on Sundays, or when the vicar came for tea, or Christmas Day or Easter Day, and I was used to be amazed about this room because it had the best furniture in it but it was covered up with sheets—it was as if all the furniture was wearing clothes—and it seemed to me ridiculous that we couldn’t enjoy this beautiful furniture all the week through really.
呃……我住过的最可爱的房子，要数小时候和爷爷奶奶一起住的那座房子了。那座房子名叫克罗斯兰。它给了我许多美好的回忆。在儿时的我眼中，它是那样的高大。可爱的起居室里放着一架钢琴。漂亮的大厅里放着地毯、柜子和古董等许多东西。那个充满神秘气息的房间就是会客厅了。只有周日、牧师来喝茶、圣诞节或复活节的时候，我们才能用它。那时候，我一直觉得这个房间很奇怪，那里面放着最好的家具，可总是盖着床单——就像所有的家具都穿着衣服一样。更可笑的是，这么精美的家具，我们却不曾连续使用超过一周时间。
And probably my favorite room was the kitchen. It had a lovely red flagstone floor, which was always highly polished, and an Aga, you know, one of those big cookers that heats the whole room so it was always warm there, and there was a kind of clothes horse above it that we used to hang all our clothes on, and it was just lovely. It was a very warm room with baked bread and my grandmother used to make ice cream and we’d eat it in there and... there was a vegetable garden leading from there so I spent a lot of time in the vegetable garden picking peas and eating them—my grandmother used to get really cross with me because I used to pick all the vegetables and the fruit for our meals and then I’d eat half of them, because they tasted so delicious coming fresh from the garden.
我最喜欢的房间也许就是厨房了。讨喜的红色石地板总是被擦得亮亮的。厨房里有一个大壁炉，把房间烤得暖和极了。壁炉上有一个衣架，我们用它挂衣服，真是合适又美观。这个温暖的房间里正烤着面包呢！奶奶有时也会自己制作冰激凌，我们就在这里吃……厨房望出去是一片菜园，我经常在那儿摘豌豆吃。我曾摘光花园里的所有蔬菜瓜果，做好饭菜后我吃掉了一大半，因为这些蔬菜瓜果实在太新鲜了。奶奶就因为这件事，真的生气了。
Now, I went back to it a few years ago and it was a big mistake. They’ve modernized it inside, they’ve got rid of those lovely old fire-places... have just gone. And they’ve knocked a wall down so the drawing room and the living room have become one big modern plastic kind of room.
如今，当我再次回到这里时，我发现他们犯了一个大错——房内被装修得极富现代气息。那些可爱的老壁炉都已经被拆掉——都不存在了。会客厅和起居室之间的墙也被拆了，成了一个很大、很现代化的可塑型房间。
But I think what upset me most about it was the feeling that the house had shrunk, it had become smaller and that my memory of this lovely large warm comfortable house had turned into an old house with modernized rooms inside it. And it taught me a lesson really, that you can’t go back on the past and recapture it. But there’s a beautiful memory there.
可最让我伤心的是，我感到房子好像变小了。它变得越来越小，我记忆中的这个漂亮、宽敞、温暖舒适的房子，成了一座房间装修很现代的老房子。它让我明白了一个道理：你无法回到过去，也无法重新抓住逝去的美好。不过，老房子给你的美好回忆还在！
