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The General would never change, he said; when he got to Heaven, he’d be chasing after the angels and trying to up-end them, no question.
将军本性难移,他说。到了天堂,他也会追逐天使,努力把她们一个个放倒,肯定是这样。
And that night while the whole neighbourhood slept, Ostrakova sat at her dead husband’s desk and wrote to the General with the frankness which lonely people reserve for strangers, using French rather than Russian as an aid to greater detachment.
那天晚上,邻居都睡着后,奥斯特拉科娃坐在亡夫的写字台前给将军写信,字里行间露出孤独的人面对陌生人特有的那份坦率。她用法语而不是俄语写,目的是为了叙述时更加客观。
She told him about her love for Glikman and took comfort from the knowledge that the General himself loved women just as Glikman had.
她谈了对格利克曼的爱,还说知道将军也和格利克曼一样爱女人,这让她稍稍好受一点。
She admitted immediately that she had come to France as a spy, and she explained how she had assembled the two trivial reports that were the squalid price of her freedom.
她随即坦白当初是作为间谍来法国的,并解释说拼凑那两份无关紧要的报告,只是为了换取自由所付出的代价,尽管确实卑劣。
It was à contre-cœur, she said; invention and evasion, she said; a nothing.
她说,那是违心的。又说,那是胡编乱造瞎说的。又说,其实啥都没说。
But the reports existed, so did her signed undertaking, and they placed grave limits on her freedom.
但报告毕竟存在,她签过字的承诺书也在,严重限制了她的自由。
Then she told him of her soul, and of her prayers to God all round the Russian churches.
接着她向他袒露了心声,说了她在各个俄罗斯教堂对上帝的祷告。
Since the gingery stranger’s approach to her, she said, her days had become unreal; she had a feeling of being denied a natural explanation of her life, even if it had to be a painful one.
她说,自从那个姜黄色脸的陌生人和她接触后,她感觉不能面对现实,仿佛无法对生活给出一个自然的解释,即使解释使她痛苦。
She kept nothing back from him, for whatever guilty feelings she had, they did not relate to her efforts to bring Alexandra to the West, but rather to her decision to stay in Paris and take care of Ostrakov until he died—after which event, she said, the Soviets would not let her come back anyway; she had become a defector herself.
她对他毫无保留,因为无论她有什么负罪感,都与努力把亚历山德拉带到西方无关,而是与决定留在巴黎照顾奥斯特拉科夫直到他去世有关。她说,在那之后,苏联反正不会让她回去了;她也成了一个叛逃者。
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