Smiley's People汉译91
And with Karla, he thought; with my black Grail.He could not help himself: his restless mind would not leave him alone. Staring ahead of him into the gloom, he imagined he saw Karla standing before him, breaking and reforming in the shifting specks of dark. He saw the brown, attendant eyes appraising him, as once they had appraised him from the darkness of the interrogation cell in Delhi jail a hundred years before: eyes that at first glance were sensitive and seemed to signal companionship; then like molten glass slowly hardened till they were brittle and unyielding. He saw himself stepping onto the dust-driven runway of Delhi airport, and wincing as the Indian heat leapt up at him from the tarmac: Smiley alias Barraclough, or Standfast, or whatever name he had fished from the bag that week—he forgot. A Smiley of the Sixties, anyway, Smiley the commercial traveller, they called him, charged by the Circus to quarter the globe, offering resettlement terms to Moscow Centre officers who were thinking of jumping ship. Centre was holding one of its periodical purges at the time, and the woods were thick with Russian field officers scared of going home. A Smiley who was Ann’s husband and Bill Haydon’s colleague, whose last illusions were still intact. A Smiley close to inner crisis all the same, for it was the year Ann lost her heart to a ballet dancer: Haydon’s turn was yet to come.
他想，跟我作伴的还有卡拉，我的黑色圣杯（黑圣杯暗示了一种黑暗而神秘的东西，类似于传说中的圣杯，在中世纪文学作品中经常被描绘成人们渴望和追求的对象。——译注）。
他不禁心潮澎湃，无法平静下来。他凝视着黑乎乎的远方，仿佛看见卡拉站在面前，在变幻的黑暗中时而完整，时而化成碎片。那双棕色的眼睛正打量着他，就像在德里监狱的审讯室里的那双眼睛一样。这仿佛已经是一个世纪以前的事了。那双眼睛乍看之下很敏感，似乎表示愿意合作；然后就像熔化的玻璃一样慢慢变硬，直到变得冷冰冰的，不屈不挠。他看到自己踏上了德里机场尘土飞扬的跑道，印度的热浪从停机坪上扑面而来，让他不禁皱眉蹙额。斯迈利，化名班勒克勒夫，或者斯坦德法斯特，或者那个星期他信手拈来的什么名字——他都忘了什么名字。人们称他为“六十年代的斯迈利”、“商业旅行家斯迈利”，圆场派他在全球各地巡视，为那些想跳槽的莫斯科中心官员提供安置条件。当时莫斯科中心正在进行定期大清洗，间谍丛林里到处都是害怕回家的苏联特工。当时的斯迈利是安的丈夫，也是比尔·海登的同事，他最后的幻想还没有破灭。同样，斯迈利也面临着个人危机，因为就在那一年，安的心被一位芭蕾舞演员夺走了，还没轮到海登。
Still in the darkness of Ann’s bedroom, he relived the rattling, honking jeep-ride to the jail, the laughing children hanging to the tailboard; he saw the ox-carts and the eternal Indian crowds, the shanties on the brown river bank. He caught the smells of dung and ever-smouldering fires—fires to cook and fires to cleanse; fires to remove the dead. He saw the iron gateway of the old prison engulf him, and the perfectly pressed British uniforms of the warders as they waded kneedeep through the prisoners:
“This way, your honour, sir! Please be good enough to follow us, your excellency!”
One European prisoner, calling himself Gerstmann.
One grey-haired little man with brown eyes and a red calico tunic, resembling the sole survivor of an extinguished priesthood.
With his wrists manacled: “Please undo them, officer, and bring him some cigarettes,” Smiley had said.
One prisoner, identified by London as a Moscow Centre agent, and now awaiting deportation to Russia. One little cold war infantryman, as he appeared, who knew—knew for certain—that to be repatriated to Moscow was to face the camps or the firing squad or both; that to have been in enemy hands was in Centre’s eyes to have become the enemy himself: to have talked or kept his secrets was immaterial.
还是在安的黑暗的卧室中，他重温了嘎吱嘎吱鸣笛的吉普车驶向监狱的情景，孩子们挂在车尾板上的笑声；他看到了牛车和永远是一个样的印度人群，看到了棕色河岸上的棚屋。他闻到了粪便和不断燃烧的火堆的气味——煮饭的火堆、搞卫生的火堆、清除死人的火堆。他看到旧监狱的铁门将他吞没，狱警穿着熨烫得体的英式制服，趟过囚犯的海洋。
“这边请，阁下，长官！请跟我们走，阁下！”
一个自称格斯特曼的欧洲囚犯。
一个白发苍苍的小个子，棕色的眼睛，穿着红色花布长衫，就像一个行将消亡的教派的唯一神职人员。
他的手上了铐。斯迈利说：”请解开它们，警官，给他拿几根香烟来。”
一个被伦敦认定为莫斯科中心特工的囚犯，现在正等待被驱逐回苏联。他是一名冷战时期的小步兵，他知道——他肯定知道——被遣送回莫斯科意味着将面临集中营或行刑队，或者两者兼而有之；在莫斯科中心看来，落入敌人之手就等于自己成为了敌人：坦白了什么或保守了什么秘密都无关紧要。
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