Smiley's People汉译90

agent124

He saw the little photograph again, printed, like the little stranger himself, in his sinking memory. A small man, with a big shadow. He remembered Villem’s description of the little figure on the Hamburg ferry, the horns of flicked-up hair, the grooved face, the warning eyes. General, he thought chaotically, will you not send me your magic friend once more?
Maybe. Everything is maybe.
Hamburg, he thought, and got quickly out of bed and put on his dressing-gown. Back at Ann’s desk, he set to work seriously to study the breakdown of Vladimir’s telephone account, rendered in the copperplate script of a post-office clerk. Taking a sheet of paper, he began jotting down dates and notes.
Fact: in early September, Vladimir receives the Paris letter, and removes it from Mikhel’s grasp.
Fact: at about the same date, Vladimir makes a rare and costly trunk-call to Hamburg, operator-dialled, presumably so that he can later claim the cost.
Fact: three days after that again, the eighth, Vladimir accepts a reverse-charge call from Hamburg at a cost of two pounds eighty, origin, duration, and time all given, and the origin is the same number that Vladimir had called three days before.
Hamburg, Smiley thought again, his mind flitting once more to the imp in the photograph. The reversed telephone traffic had continued intermittently till three days ago; nine calls, totalling twenty-one pounds, and all of them from Hamburg to Vladimir. But who was calling him? From Hamburg? Who?
他又看到了那张小照片，照片上的小个子陌生人已经印在他深深的记忆里。一个小个子，一个大影子。他想起了维廉对汉堡渡轮上那个小个子的描述，那根根竖起的头发，像动物的角，凹凸不平的脸，充满警示的眼睛。将军，他胡思乱想着，您能不能再把您的魔法师朋友给我派来？
也许吧。一切都有可能。
汉堡，他想，然后迅速下床，穿上睡衣。回到安的书桌前，他开始认真研究弗拉基米尔电话账户的明细，这些明细是邮局职员写的，字写得很工整。他拿起一张纸，开始记下日期和笔记。
事实：9月初，弗拉基米尔收到了巴黎的信，并从米克尔手中取走了这封信。
事实：大约在同一天，弗拉基米尔给汉堡打了一个罕见的，昂贵的长途电话，是接线员拨的，大概是为了以后可以报销这笔费用。
事实：又过了三天，也就是第八天，弗拉基米尔接了汉堡打来的一个受话人付费的电话，费用是2英镑80便士，拨出地、持续时间和时间都有说明，拨出地就是弗拉基米尔三天前打的那个号码。
汉堡，斯迈利又想，他的思绪再次飞到照片上的小妖精身上。直到三天前，受话人付费的电话通话一直断断续续地进行着；九个电话，总共二十一英镑，都是从汉堡打给弗拉基米尔的。但谁给他打的电话呢？从汉堡给他打？谁？

Then suddenly he remembered.
The looming figure in the hotel room, the imp’s vast shadow, was Vladimir himself. He saw them standing side by side, both in black coats, the giant and the midget. The vile hotel with Muzak and tartan wallpaper was near Heathrow Airport, where the two men, so ill-matched, had flown in for a conference at the very moment of Smiley’s life when his professional identity was crashing round his ears. Max, we need you. Max, give us the chance.
Picking up the telephone, Smiley dialled the number in Hamburg, and heard a man’s voice at the other end: the one word “Yes,” spoken softly in German, followed by a silence.
“I should like to speak to Herr Dieter Fassbender,” Smiley said, selecting a name at random. German was Smiley’s second language, and sometimes his first.
“We have no Fassbender,” said the same voice coolly after a moment’s pause, as if the speaker had consulted something in the meantime. Smiley could hear faint music in the background.
“This is Leber,” Smiley persisted. “I want to speak to Herr Fassbender urgently. I’m his partner.”
There was yet another delay.
“Not possible,” said the man’s voice flatly after another pause—and rang off.
然后他突然想起来了。
旅馆房间里那个若隐若现的身影，那个小妖精的巨大影子，就是弗拉基米尔本人。他看到他们并肩站在一起，都穿着黑色大衣，巨人和侏儒。这两个人如此不般配，却在斯迈利身败名裂的时刻，飞到希思罗机场旁的一家播放米尤扎克（饭馆等的背景音乐——译注），糊着花格子墙纸的下等旅馆会面。马克斯，我们需要你。马克斯，给我们一个机会。
拿起电话，斯迈利拨通了汉堡的号码，听到电话那头传来一个男人的声音：用德语轻声说了一个字 “是”，然后是一阵沉默。
“我想找迪特尔·法斯宾德先生，”斯迈利随口说了一个名字。德语是斯迈利的第二语言，有时也是他的第一语言。
“我们没有法斯宾德，”停顿了一会儿，同一个声音冷冷地说，好像说话的人在这期间咨询了什么。斯迈利听到了背景声音中微弱的音乐声。
“我是雷伯，”斯迈利坚持说。“我有急事找法斯宾德先生。我是他的搭档。”
又是一阵耽搁。
“不可能，”又一次停顿之后，那个男人的声音平淡地说，然后挂断了电话。

Not a private house, thought Smiley, hastily jotting down his impressions—the speaker had too many choices. Not an office, for what kind of office plays soft background music and is open at midnight on a Saturday? A hotel? Possibly, but a hotel, if it was of any size, would have put him through to reception, and displayed a modicum of civility. A restaurant? Too furtive, too guarded—and surely they would have announced themselves as they picked up the phone?
Don’t force the pieces, he warned himself. Store them away. Patience. But how to be patient when he had so little time?
Returning to bed, he opened a copy of Cobbett’s Rural Rides and tried to read it while he loosely pondered, among other weighty matters, his sense of civitas and how much, or how little, he owed to Oliver Lacon: “Your duty, George.” Yet who could seriously be Lacon’s man? he asked himself. Who could regard Lacon’s fragile arguments as Caesar’s due?
“?migrés in, émigrés out. Two legs good, two legs bad,” he muttered aloud.
All his professional life, it seemed to Smiley, he had listened to similar verbal antics signalling supposedly great changes in Whitehall doctrine; signalling restraint, self-denial, always another reason for doing nothing. He had watched Whitehall’s skirts go up, and come down again, her belts being tightened, loosened, tightened. He had been the witness, or victim—or even reluctant prophet—of such spurious cults as lateralism, parallelism, separatism, operational devolution, and now, if he remembered Lacon’s most recent meanderings correctly, of integration. Each new fashion had been hailed as a panacea: “Now we shall vanquish, now the machine will work!” Each had gone out with a whimper, leaving behind it the familiar English muddle, of which, more and more, in retrospect, he saw himself as a lifelong moderator. He had forborne, hoping others would forbear, and they had not. He had toiled in back rooms while shallower men held the stage. They held it still. Even five years ago he would never have admitted to such sentiments. But today, peering calmly into his own heart, Smiley knew that he was unled, and perhaps unleadable; that the only restraints upon him were those of his own reason, and his own humanity. As with his marriage, so with his sense of public service. I invested my life in institutions—he thought without rancour—and all I am left with is myself.
不是私人住宅，斯迈利想，匆匆记下了他的印象——说话人有太多的选择。不是办公室，因为什么样的办公室会播放轻柔的背景音乐，并且在周六午夜开门呢？酒店？有可能，但有一定规模的酒店会把他转接到前台，说话也会礼貌些。餐馆？太鬼鬼祟祟，太小心翼翼了——而且他们肯定会在接电话的时候自报家门。
他告诫自己，不要勉强把所有的头绪都理清楚。先把这些头绪放一放。要有耐心。但他的时间太紧迫了，如何能做到耐心？
他回到床上，翻开科贝特（英国19世纪政论家——译注）的《骑马乡行记》（采用王佐良先生译法，参见《英国文学名篇选注》p.872——译注），试着一边读一边思考，除了其他重要的问题，他对公民责任的认识，以及他对奥利弗·雷肯到底应尽多少责任。雷肯对他说过：“这是你的职责，乔治。”然而，谁又能真地成为雷肯的人？谁会把雷肯脆弱的论点视为和凯撒的法令一样必须遵守的东西？（这里用了圣经的典。《马太福音》22章21节云：“凯撒的归凯撒，上帝的归上帝。”——译注）
“一会儿让移民进来，一会儿又让移民出去。一会儿两条腿的是好的，一会儿两条腿的又是坏的。（这里借用了乔治·奥威尔《动物农场》的“四条腿的好，两条腿的不好”。）"他大声嘀咕道。
斯迈利觉得，他在职业生涯中，似乎一直都听闻类似的荒唐可笑的名词，预示着白厅政策所谓的巨大变化；预示着限制、自我否定，总是为无所作为找理由。他看着白厅的裙子撩起又落下，她的腰带收紧、松开、收紧，一会儿开放，一会儿保守。横向主义、平行主义、分离主义、业务下放，等等，对这些虚头巴脑的东西的狂热崇拜，他曾是见证者和受害者，甚至是不情愿的预言家，而现在，如果他对雷肯最近的胡言乱语没有记错的话，又多了一个这样的东西：一体化。每一种新时尚都被奉为灵丹妙药：“现在我们将战胜一切，现在机器将运转起来！”每一次都是搞了一半就黯然退场，留下的是司空见惯的英国式混乱的泥沼，现在回想起来，他越来越觉得自己终生试图调和这种泥潭。他一向克制隐忍，希望别人也如此，但别人并没有这样做。他在幕后辛勤劳作，而不学无术之辈却占据了舞台。他们仍在把持。如果是在五年前，他不会承认自己有这样的想法。但今天，斯迈利冷静地扪心自问，他知道自己没有被人牵着鼻子走，也许别人根本牵不动他；对他唯一的约束就是他自己的理智和人性。他的婚姻如此，他的公共服务意识也是如此。他不无愤懑地想，我把自己的一生都献给了大小政府机构，到头来却除了孑然一身之外，什么也没有。