Smiley's People汉译23

agent124

Now, suddenly, there were no more forms to fill in, no more hurdles to be cleared, and Ostrakova waited without knowing what she was waiting for.
然后，突然间，再没有表格要填，再没有阻碍办手续的问题要解决，剩下能做的只有等待。但奥斯特拉科娃不知道自己在等待什么。

For the gingery stranger to reappear? He no longer existed.
等那个姜黄色脸的陌生人再次出现么？他不再存在了。

One ham omelette and frites, some Alsatian beer, two pieces of crusty bread had satisfied all his needs, apparently.
显然，一份火腿煎蛋和炸薯条，一点阿尔萨斯啤酒和两块硬皮面包就满足了他的所有需求。

What he was in relation to the Embassy she could not imagine: he had told her to present herself there, and that they would be expecting her; he was right.
她无法想象他与大使馆有什么关系。他说过让她去大使馆，说他们在那儿等她。他没说错。

But when she referred to “your gentleman,” even “your blond, large gentleman who first approached me,” she met with smiling incomprehension.
但当她提到 "你们那位先生"，或者更详细地问到“你们那位白皮肤，金发碧眼，身材魁梧，第一次找我的那位先生”时，人家只是对她笑笑，不明白她在说什么。

Thus gradually whatever she was waiting for ceased to exist. First it was ahead of her, then it was behind her, and she had had no knowledge of its passing, no moment of fulfilment.
于是，不管她在等什么，渐渐地就等不到了。仿佛在等待的事情先是存在于她前方的时空，然后就变成在她身后的时空，而她一点都不知道是怎么变过去的，什么时候变过去的。

Had Alexandra already arrived in France? Obtained her papers, moved on or gone to ground? Ostrakova began to think she might have done.
亚历山德拉已经到法国了吗？是拿到了证件，还是继续前行，抑或躲起来了？奥斯特拉科娃开始想象她是躲起来了。

Abandoned to a new and inconsolable sense of disappointment, she peered at the faces of young girls in the street, wondering what Alexandra looked like.
她陷入了一种新的失望情绪，不能自拔。她仔细看街上年轻女孩的脸，想着亚历山德拉该长个什么样。

Returning home, her eyes would fall automatically to the doormat in the hope of seeing a handwritten note or a pneumatique: “Mama, it is I. I am staying at the so-and-so hotel. . . .”A cable giving a flight number, arriving Orly tomorrow, tonight; or was it not Orly Airport but Charles de Gaulle? She had no familiarity with airlines, so she visited a travel agent, just to ask. It was both.
每次回到家，她的目光自动就落在门垫上，希望能在上面见到一张手写的便条或是一封气流输送的快信（法国巴黎各邮局间用气流管式输送系统传送信件————译注），上写：“妈妈，是我。我在某某旅馆......”或是封电报，上有明天或者今晚到奥利机场（巴黎第二大机场————译注）的航班号，要么不是奥利机场，而是戴高乐机场（巴黎第一大机场————译注）？她不熟悉航线，问了几家旅行社，得到的回答是两个机场都有航班。

She considered going to the expense of having a telephone installed so that Alexandra could ring her up.
她考虑花钱安装一部电话，这样亚历山德拉就可以打电话给她了。

Yet what on earth was she expecting after all these years? Tearful reunions with a grown child to whom she had never been united?
然而，这么多年过去了，她到底还在期待什么呢？与一个从未团聚过的成年孩子泪流满面地重逢？

The wishful remaking, more than twenty years too late, of a relationship she had deliberately turned her back on?
二十多年前，她决意抛弃骨肉亲情，如今想重新找回来，是否已是一厢情愿，为时已晚？

I have no right to her, Ostrakova told herself severely; I have only my debts and my obligations.
我没有权利要求她怎样，奥斯特拉科娃这样严厉地告诉自己：我对她只有负债，只有义务。

She asked at the Embassy but they knew nothing more. The formalities were complete, they said. That was all they knew. And if Ostrakova wished to send her daughter money? she asked cunningly—for her fares, for instance, for her visa?—could they give her an address perhaps, an office that would find her?
她向大使馆询问，但他们一无所知。只是说，手续已经办完了，他们也就知道这么多。她耍了个小诡计，问他们，如果奥斯特拉科娃想给她女儿寄钱，比如车费、签证费，他们能不能给她一个地址，一个能找到她的办公室？

We are not a postal service, they told her. Their new chilliness scared her. She did not go any more.
他们告诉她，我们不是邮局。这种新的冷淡态度吓着了她。她不再去那里了。

After that, she fell once more to worrying about the several muddy photographs, each the same, which they had given her to pin to her application forms.
这之后，她又开始因为那几张模糊不清的照片而忧烦，他们给了她这些照片，每张都一样，让她别在申请表上。

The photographs were all she had ever seen. She wished now that she had made copies, but she had never thought of it; stupidly, she had assumed she would soon be meeting the original.
关于成年亚历山德拉，这些照片是她唯一见过的形象。她现在多希望能复印几张，当时却没想到。真蠢，她以为很快就会见到真人。

She had not had them in her hand above an hour! She had hurried straight from the Embassy to the Ministry with them, and by the time she left the Ministry the photographs were already working their way through another bureaucracy.
这些照片她拿在手里连一个小时都不到！从大使馆出来，她就急忙带着照片去移民局。离开时，这些照片已经送去另外一个官僚机构了。

But she had studied them! My Lord, how she had studied those photographs, whether they were each the same or not!
但她的确仔仔细细地端详过照片！我的上帝，不管每张照片是否一样，她是多么仔细地一张张摩挲过啊！

On the Métro, in the Ministry waiting-room, even on the pavement before she went in, she had stared at the lifeless depiction of her child, trying with all her might to see in the expressionless grey shadows some hint of the man she had adored.
在地铁上，在移民局的等候室里，甚至在进入等候室前的人行道上，她都目不转睛地看着她孩子没有生气的照片，竭尽全力想从面无表情的灰暗阴影中捕捉到几丝她钟爱的男人的痕迹。

And failing. Always, till then, whenever she had dared to wonder, she had imagined Glikman’s features as clearly written on the growing child as they had been on the new-born baby.
结果一无所获。在此之前，每当她有猜测的勇气时，每一次她总是想象格利克曼的特征清晰地写在成长中的孩子身上，就像当初写在刚出生的婴儿身上一样。

It had seemed impossible that a man so vigorous would not plant his imprint deeply and for good.
一个如此生气勃勃的人竟然没有深深地、永远地打上他的烙印，似乎是不可能的。

Yet Ostrakova saw nothing of Glikman in that photograph.
然而，奥斯特拉科娃在照片上没有找到任何格利克曼的影子。

He had worn his Jewishness like a flag. It was part of his solitary revolution.
他把自己的犹太人身份当作对抗当局的个人革命的一面旗帜。

He was not Orthodox, he was not even religious, he disliked Ostrakova’s secret piety nearly as much as he disliked the Soviet bureaucracy—yet he had borrowed her tongs to curl his sideburns like the Hasidim, just to give focus, as he put it, to the anti-Semitism of the authorities.
他不是东正教徒，什么教都不信。他简直像讨厌苏联官僚机构一样讨厌奥斯特拉科娃偷偷的信教行为--但他借了她的钳子，卷起了鬓角，把自己弄得像哈西德派（犹太教中的一种宗教运动，于18世纪在当代西乌克兰境内作为一场精神复兴运动兴起，并迅速传遍整个东欧。————译注）教徒一样。用他的话说，只是为了让人们关注当局的反犹太主义做法。

But in the face in the photograph she recognised not a drop of his blood, not the least spark of his fire—though his fire, according to the stranger, burned in her amazingly.
但是，从照片上的那张脸上，孩子和他的血缘关系她一点都认不出来，连来自他一腔热血的一星半点都找不到--虽然据那个陌生人说，他的一腔热血在她身上沸腾，令人惊叹。

“If they had photographed a corpse to get that picture,” thought Ostrakova aloud in her apartment, “I would not be surprised.”
“如果照片是他们给死尸拍的，”奥斯特拉科娃在公寓里自言自语，“我也不奇怪。”

And with this downright observation, she gave her first outward expression of the growing doubt inside her.
她通过这样直截了当的说法第一次把内心不断加深的疑虑表达出来。

Toiling in her warehouse, sitting alone in her tiny apartment in the long evenings, Ostrakova racked her brains for someone she could trust; who would not condone and not condemn; who would see round the corners of the route she had embarked on; above all, who would not talk and thus wreck—she had been assured of it—wreck her chances of being reunited with Alexandra.
奥斯特拉科娃日思夜想。不管是在仓库做苦工的时候，还是漫漫长夜独自坐在狭小的居室里的时候，她都绞尽脑汁搜寻可以信任的人。这个人必须不宽恕她，也不谴责她，能够了解她路走来的坎坷经历。最重要的是，这个人必须守口如瓶，否则（别人警告过她）就会破坏和亚历山德拉团聚的机会。

Then one night, either God or her own striving memory supplied her with an answer: The General!
终于，一天晚上，要么是上帝，要么是她自己苦思冥想找出了一个答案：将军！

she thought, sitting up in bed and putting on the light.
她想到了就从床上坐起来，开了灯。

Ostrakov himself had told her of him! Those émigré groups are a catastrophe, he used to say, and you must avoid them like the pest.
奥斯特拉科夫亲口跟她提起过他！他常说，那些流亡移民团体只会以惨败告终，你必须像躲避瘟疫一样躲开他们。

The only one you can trust is Vladimir the General; he is an old devil, and a womaniser, but he is a man, he has connections and knows how to keep his mouth shut.
你唯一可以信任的人只有弗拉基米尔将军。他是个老魔鬼，也是个好色之徒，但他是个男子汉，有很多人员关系，知道如何守口如瓶。

But Ostrakov had said this some twenty years ago, and not even old generals are immortal.
但这话奥斯特拉科夫是二十几年前说的，老将军也不是永生的。

And besides—Vladimir who? She did not even know his other name. Even the name Vladimir—Ostrakov had told her—was something he had put on for his military service; since his real name was Estonian, and not suitable for Red Army usage.
再说弗拉基米尔姓什么？她都不知道他的姓。甚至弗拉基米尔都不是他的真名，奥斯特拉科夫跟她说过，那是他服兵役时用的名字。因为他的真名是个爱沙尼亚名字，不适合在红军使用。

Nevertheless, next day she went down to the bookshop beside the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, where information about the dwindling Russian population was often to be had, and made her first enquiries.
尽管如此，第二天她还是去了圣亚历山大·涅夫斯基大教堂（俄国东正教教堂，1861年建立————译注）旁边的书店，在那里经常可以获得有关人数越来越少的苏联流亡者的信息，她在那里做了初步咨询。

She got a name and even a phone number, but no address. The phone was disconnected. She went to the Post Office, cajoled the assistants, and finally came up with a 1966 telephone directory listing the Movement for Baltic Freedom, followed by an address in Montparnasse.
她拿到了一个名字，还有电话号码，但是没有地址。电话已经拆机了。她去了邮局，用了点哄骗的手段，终于从工作人员那里搞到了1966年的电话号簿，上面有波罗的海自由运动（作者杜撰的组织————译注），后面有位于蒙帕纳斯（巴黎南部的一个地区，位于塞纳河左岸————译注）的地址。

She was not stupid. She looked up the address and found no less than four other organisations listed there also: the Riga Group, the Association of Victims of Soviet Imperialism, the Forty-Eight Committee for a Free Latvia, the Tallinn Committee of Freedom.
她并不笨，查了这个地址，发现还有四个其他组织也用的同一个地址：里加小组，苏联帝国主义受害者协会，自由拉脱维亚48委员会，塔林自由委员会（都是作者杜撰的组织————译注）

She remembered vividly Ostrakov’s scathing opinions of such bodies, even though he had paid his dues to them.
她清楚地记得奥斯特拉科夫对这些组织的尖刻评价，尽管他还是向这些组织支付会费。

All the same, she went to the address and rang the bell, and the house was like one of her little churches: quaint, and very nearly closed for ever.
尽管如此，她还是去了那个地址，按响了门铃。那所房子就像她去过的小教堂，古色古香，几乎是永远关闭了。

Eventually an old White Russian opened the door wearing a cardigan crookedly buttoned, and leaning on a walking-stick, and looking superior.
最终一个白俄老人开了门，他穿了件羊毛衫，扣子扣得歪歪扭扭，拄着一根拐杖，有点高傲的样子。

They’ve gone, he said, pointing his stick down the cobbled road. Moved out. Finished. Bigger outfits put them out of business, he added with a laugh. Too few of them, too many groups, and they squabbled like children. No wonder the Czar was defeated!
他用拐杖点着鹅卵石路说：他们走了。搬走了。完蛋了。他笑着补充道，更大的团体让他们没立脚之地了。他们人太少，派别太多，像孩子一样争吵不休。难怪沙皇会被打败！

The old White Russian had false teeth that didn’t fit, and thin hair plastered all over his scalp to hide his baldness.
这个白俄老人戴了副不太合适的假牙，头上稀疏的头发平铺开以掩盖秃顶。

But the General? she asked. Where was the General? Was he still alive, or had he—?
The old Russian smirked and asked whether it was business.
那么将军呢？她问道。将军去哪啦？他还活着吗，还是......？
老将军假笑着问她是不是公事。

It was not, said Ostrakova craftily, remembering the General’s reputation for philandering, and contrived a shy woman’s smile.
不是。奥斯特拉科娃别有心计地说。她想起来老将军有拈花惹草的名声，就装作害羞地笑了笑。

The old Russian laughed, and his teeth rattled. He laughed again and said, “Oh, the General!” Then he came back with an address in London, stamped in mauve on a bit of card, and gave it to her.
白俄老人大笑起来，牙齿咯咯作响。他又笑了一阵，说：“哦，那个老将军呀！”接着他找来一张明信片给了她，上面有个伦敦的地址，盖着淡紫色的邮戳。