Smiley's People汉译22

agent124

She knew only that to save herself and be reunited with her beloved Ostrakov, she had committed a great sin, the greatest a mother can commit.
她只知道，为了拯救自己，为了与心爱的奥斯特拉科夫团聚，她犯下了一个大罪，一个母亲所能犯下的最大的罪。

The stranger had begun threatening her, but for once the threat seemed meaningless.
陌生人已经在开始威胁她，但这一次，威胁似乎毫无意义。

In the event of her non-collaboration—he was saying—a copy of her signed undertaking to the Soviet authorities would find its way to the French police.
他说，如果她不合作，她向苏联当局签署的承诺书副本就会交给法国警方。

Copies of her useless two reports (done, as he well knew, solely in order to keep the brigands quiet) would be circulated among the surviving Paris émigrés—though, God knows, there were few enough of them about these days!
她那两份毫无用处的报告（他很清楚，这样做只是为了让强盗们闭嘴）将在幸存的巴黎流亡者中传阅--虽然，天知道，现在这样的人还有几个！

Yet why should she have to submit to pressure in order to accept a gift of such immeasurable value—when, by some inexplicable act of clemency, this man, this system, was holding out to her the chance to redeem herself, and her child?
然而，她为什么要屈从于压力，接受这样一份价值无法估量的礼物--而这个人，这个体制，却通过某种莫名其妙的宽大行为，为她提供了赎回自己和孩子的机会？

She knew that her nightly and daily prayers for forgiveness had been answered, the thousands of candles, the thousands of tears.
她知道，夜以继日的求主宽恕的祷告，那无数的蜡烛，那无数的眼泪，终于得到了回应。

She made him say it a third time. She made him pull his notebook away from his gingery face, and she saw that his weak mouth had lifted into a half smile and that, idiotically, he seemed to require her absolution, even while he repeated his insane, God-given question.
她让他重复了三遍。她让他把笔记本从他姜黄色的脸上拿开，看到他虚弱的嘴角露出一丝微笑。当他重复他的问题时，甚至竟然像是傻乎乎地在要求她的宽恕。这个问题太不可思议了，像是从神而来的：

“Assuming it has been decided to rid the Soviet Union of this disruptive and unsocial element, how would you like your daughter Alexandra to follow your footsteps here to France?”
"假如苏联已经决定清除这个搞破坏的反社会分子，你觉得你的女儿亚历山德拉跟你来法国怎么样？"



For weeks after that encounter, and through all the hushed activities that accompanied it—furtive visits to the Soviet Embassy, form-filling, signed affidavits, certificats d’hébergement, the laborious trail through successive French ministries—Ostrakova followed her own actions as if they were someone else’s.
这次会面之后的几个星期里，是一系列悄悄的活动--偷偷去苏联大使馆，填表，签宣誓书，开居住证明，在法国政府各部委中费尽周折--奥斯特拉科娃一直在关注着自己的一举一动，就像这些不是她自己的事，而是别人的事。

She prayed often, but even with her prayers she adopted a conspiratorial attitude, dividing them among several Russian Orthodox churches so that in none would she be observed suffering an undue assault of piety.
她经常祷告，但即使是祷告这种事，她也担心背后有什么阴谋诡计，所以分别在几个俄罗斯东正教教堂做，这样在任何一个教堂都不会有人注意到她过于虔诚的异常行为。

Some of the churches were no more than little private houses scattered round the 15th and 16th districts, with distinctive twice-struck crosses in plywood, and old, rain-sodden Russian notices on the doors, requesting cheap accommodation and offering instruction in the piano.
有些教堂不过是散落在15区和16区的民居，胶木板做的十字架上有独特的两道横杠（东正教的十字架和基督教的不同，有一长一短两道横杠————译注），门上贴着被雨水打湿的陈旧俄文小广告，内容有寻找廉价住宿和提供钢琴教学等。

She went to the Church of the Russian Abroad, and the Church of the Apparition of the Holy Virgin, and the Church of St. Seraphin of Sarov.
她去过俄国海外教会，圣母显灵教会（1968年4月2日成立，属于科普特(Coptic)教会这个派别————译注），还有萨罗夫的圣塞拉芬教会（1911年成立，总部在罗斯托夫。和前面几个一样，都是东正教会的不同派别。————译注）。

She went everywhere. She rang the bells till someone came, a verger or a frail-faced woman in black; she gave them money, and they let her crouch in the damp cold before candle-lit icons, and breathe the thick incense till it made her half drunk.
她哪儿都去，按门铃，直到有人来开门，有时候是个教堂司事（教会中从事组织、服务和接待工作的平信徒————译注），有时候是个面容羸弱的黑衣女人。她给他们钱，他们就让她跪在潮湿阴冷的地上祷告。圣像前点着蜡烛，发出浓郁的香气，熏得她迷迷糊糊为止。

She made promises to the Almighty, she thanked Him, she asked Him for advice, she practically asked Him what He would have done if the stranger had approached Him in similar circumstances, she reminded Him that anyway she was under pressure, and they would destroy her if she did not obey.
她向万能的主许下诺言，感谢祂，请祂指引，实际上是在问祂，如果那个陌生人在类似的情况下接近祂，祂会怎么做，让上帝知道，她毕竟承受着压力，如果不服从，他们就会毁了她。

Yet at the same time, her indomitable common sense asserted itself, and she asked herself over and again why she of all people, wife of the traitor Ostrakov, lover of the dissident Glikman, mother—so she was given to believe—of a turbulent and anti-social daughter, should be singled out for such untypical indulgence?
然而，与此同时，常识的力量同样不依不饶。她一遍又一遍地问自己，她是叛徒奥斯特拉科夫的妻子，是持不同政见者格利克曼的情人，是一个不安分的反社会分子的母亲（至少当局给她的是这种说法）这么多人，为什么偏偏选中了她，给予了如此异乎寻常的恩惠？

In the Soviet Embassy, when she made her first formal application, she was treated with a regard she would never have dreamed possible, which was suited neither to a defector and renegade spy nor to the mother of an untamable hell-raiser.
在苏联大使馆，当她第一次正式提出申请时，受到了做梦也想不到的礼遇，这种礼遇既不合乎一个叛逃者和叛变的间谍身份，也不合乎一个桀骜不驯的破坏分子的母亲的身份。

She was not ordered brusquely to a waiting-room, but escorted to an interviewing-room, where a young and personable official showed her a positively Western courtesy, even helping her, where her pen or courage faltered, to a proper formulation of her case.
没有人粗暴地命令她去等候室，而是将她接到一间面谈室，接着一位讨人喜欢的年轻官员向她展示了良好的西方礼仪，甚至在她的笔不听使唤，畏缩不前时，帮助她适当地陈述她的情况。

And she told nobody, not even her nearest—though her nearest was not very near.
这件事她没有跟任何人讲，甚至没有跟最亲近的人讲，虽然她最亲近的人其实也没那么亲近。

The gingery man’s warning rang in her ears day and night: any indiscretion and your daughter will not be released.
那个姜黄色脸的男人给她的警告日夜在她耳边回响：如果有任何不当行为，就不放你女儿。

And who was there, after all, apart from God, to turn to?
那么，除了上帝，还有谁可以求助呢？

To her half-sister Valentina, who lived in Lyons and was married to a car salesman?
向瓦伦蒂娜求助吗？瓦伦蒂娜不是她的亲妹妹，住在里昂，嫁了个汽车销售员。

The very thought that Ostrakova had been consorting with a secret official from Moscow would send her rushing for her smelling-salts.
光是想到奥斯特拉科娃和莫斯科的秘密人员有来往，就足以让她差点昏过去，得赶紧去找嗅盐救急。

In a café, Maria? In broad daylight, Maria? Yes, Valentina, and what he said is true. I had a bastard daughter by a Jew.
在咖啡馆，玛丽亚？光天化日之下，玛丽亚？是的，瓦伦蒂娜，他说的都是真的，我有个犹太人的私生女。

It was the nothingness that scared her most. The weeks passed; at the Embassy they told her that her application was receiving “favoured attention”; the French authorities had assured her that Alexandra would quickly qualify for French citizenship.
最让她害怕的是什么都没发生。几个星期过去了；大使馆告诉她，她的申请得到了 "优先照顾"；法国当局向她保证，亚历山德拉很快就能获得法国公民身份。

The gingery stranger had persuaded her to backdate Alexandra’s birth so that she could be represented as an Ostrakova, not a Glikman; he said the French authorities would find this more acceptable; and it seemed that they had done so, even though she had never so much as mentioned the child’s existence at her naturalisation interviews.
那个姜黄色脸的陌生人劝她把亚历山德拉的出生日期写得提前一点，这样就可以说成是奥斯特拉科夫，而不是格里克曼的孩子。他说这样法国当局会容易接受些。看来正像他说的那样，尽管她在入籍面谈时从未提到过这个孩子的存在。