Smiley's People汉译67

agent124

第8章



He stood at the mouth of the avenue, gazing into the ranks of beech trees as they sank away from him like a retreating army into the mist. The darkness had departed reluctantly, leaving an indoor gloom. It could have been dusk already: tea-time in an old country house. The street lights either side of him were poor candles, illuminating nothing. The air felt warm and heavy. He had expected police still, and a roped-off area. He had expected journalists or curious bystanders. It never happened, he told himself, as he started slowly down the slope. No sooner had I left the scene than Vladimir clambered merrily to his feet, stick in hand, wiped off the gruesome make-up, and skipped away with his fellow actors for a pot of beer at the police station.
Stick in hand, he repeated to himself, remembering something the Superintendent had said to him. Left hand or right hand? “There’s yellow chalk powder on his left hand too,” Mr. Murgotroyd had said inside the van. “Thumb and first two fingers.”
He advanced and the avenue darkened round him, the mist thickened. His footsteps echoed tinnily ahead of him. Twenty yards higher, brown sunlight burned like a slow bonfire in its own smoke. But down here in the dip the mist had collected in a cold fog, and Vladimir was very dead after all. He saw tyre marks where the police cars had parked. He noticed the absence of leaves and the unnatural cleanness of the gravel. What do they do? he wondered. Hose the gravel down? Sweep the leaves into more plastic pillowcases?
他站在林荫道口，凝视着一排排山毛榉树，它们像一支退却的军队，离他而去，沉入薄雾之中。黑夜依依不舍地离去，留下一个半明半暗的世界。简直像是已经到了黄昏，也就是乡村老宅的下午茶时间一样。两边的路灯跟可怜的蜡烛差不多，什么也照不亮。空气温暖而沉重。他本以为警察还在，会有一个封锁区。他原来还以为会有记者或好奇的旁观者。当他开始慢慢下坡时，他告诉自己，这一切都没有发生。我刚离开现场，弗拉基米尔就欢快地站了起来，手里拿着棍子，擦掉了可怕的妆容，和他的演员们一起跳着去警察局喝了一壶啤酒。
他拿着手杖，想起了警司对他说过的话，自言自语地重复着。左手还是右手？“他的左手上也有黄色粉笔粉末，”穆戈特罗伊德先生在面包车里说。“拇指，食指和中指。”
他向前走着，周围的林荫道越来越暗，雾气越来越浓。他的脚步声在前方发出微弱的回响。在高出二十码的地方，棕色的阳光像一团被烟雾包围的燃烧缓慢的篝火。但在下面的洼地里，雾气聚集成了冷雾。弗拉基米尔到底还是真地死了。他看到了警车停过的轮胎印。他注意到没有树叶，路上的砂砾也干净得不自然。他在想，他们干了什么？用水冲洗砂砾？把树叶扫进更多的塑料枕头套里？

His tiredness had given way to a new and mysterious clarity. He continued up the avenue wishing Vladimir good morning and good night and not feeling a fool for doing so, thinking intently about drawing-pins and chalk and French cigarettes and Moscow Rules, looking for a tin pavilion by a playing field. Take it in sequence, he told himself. Take it from the beginning. Leave the Caporals on their shelf. He reached an intersection of paths and crossed it, still climbing. To his right, goal-posts appeared, and beyond them a green pavilion of corrugated iron, apparently empty. He started across the field, rain-water seeping into his shoes. Behind the hut ran a steep mud bank scoured with children’s slides. He climbed the bank, entered a coppice, and kept climbing. The fog had not penetrated the trees and by the time he reached the brow it had cleared. There was still no one in sight. Returning, he approached the pavilion through the trees. It was a tin box, no more, with one side open to the field. The only furniture was a rough wood bench slashed and written on with knives, the only occupant a prone figure stretched on it, with a blanket pulled over his head and brown boots protruding. For an undisciplined moment Smiley wondered whether he too had had his face blown off. Girders held up the roof; earnest moral statements enlivened the flaking green paint. “Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.” The assertion caused him a moment’s indecision. “Oh, but society does,” he wanted to reply; “society is an association of minorities.” The drawing-pin was where Mostyn had said it was, at head height exactly, in the best Sarratt tradition of regularity, its Circus-issue brass head as new and as unmarked as the boy who had put it there.
他的疲惫已经被一种全新的、神秘的清醒所取代。他继续沿着林荫道向前走，向弗拉基米尔道早安和晚安，并不觉得这样做很傻。他专注地想着图钉、粉笔、法国香烟和莫斯科规则，寻找运动场边的一个铁皮亭子。他告诉自己，要按顺序来。从头开始。先把架子上的凯普罗香烟放一放。他走到一条小路的交叉口，穿过小路，继续往高处走。他的右边出现了门柱，门柱后面是一个绿色的波纹铁皮盖的亭子，显然里面没人。他开始穿过运动场，雨水渗进了他的鞋子。亭子后面是一个陡峭的泥坡，上面铺满了儿童滑梯。他爬上泥坡，进入一片灌木丛，继续往高处走。雾还没有穿透树林，当他爬到坡顶时，雾已经散去。还是没有看到人。他返回来，穿过树林走近亭子。那是一个铁皮盒子，没有更多的东西，开口朝向运动场。唯一的家具是一张粗糙的木凳，上面用刀划过，写满了字，只有一个人俯卧在上面，头上盖着一条毯子，棕色的靴子露了出来。有那么一瞬间，史迈利怀疑这个人的脸是不是也被枪打烂了。大梁撑起了屋顶；恳切的道德宣言和剥落的绿色油漆形成鲜明对照，给亭子增加了活力。“朋克是破坏性的。社会不需要它”。这句话让他犹豫了片刻。“哦，但社会需要，”他想回答，“社会是少数人的联合体。”圆场发的图钉就在莫斯廷说的地方，正好与头顶齐高，秉承了萨拉特遵守指令的优良传统，它的黄铜头很新，没有多次使用的痕迹。放图钉的男孩也是这样。

Proceed to the rendezvous, it said; no danger sighted.
Moscow Rules, thought Smiley yet again. Moscow, where it could take a fieldman three days to post a letter to a safe address. Moscow, where all minorities are punk.
Tell him I have two proofs and can bring them with me. . . .
Vladimir’s chalked acknowledgment ran close beside the pin, a wavering yellow worm of a message scrawled all down the post. Perhaps the old man was worried about rain, thought Smiley. Perhaps he was afraid it could wash his mark away. Or perhaps in his emotional state he leaned too heavily on the chalk, just as he had left his Norfolk jacket lying on the floor. A meeting or nothing, he had told Mostyn . . . Tonight or nothing . . . Tell him I have two proofs and can bring them with me. . . . Nevertheless only the vigilant would ever have noticed that mark, heavy though it was, or the shiny drawing-pin either, and not even the vigilant would have found them odd, for on Hampstead Heath people post bills and messages to each other ceaselessly, and not all of them are spies. Some are children, some are tramps, some are believers in God, some have lost pets, and some are looking for variations of love and having to proclaim their needs from a hilltop. And not all of them, by any means, get their faces blown off at point-blank range by a Moscow Centre assassination weapon.
它说，前往会合地点；没有发现危险。
莫斯科规则，斯迈利再次想到。在莫斯科，一个外勤特工可能要花三天时间才能把一封信寄到一个安全的地址。在莫斯科，所有的少数民族都是朋克。
告诉他我有两份证据，可以带去......
弗拉基米尔用粉笔写的回执紧挨着图钉，就好像是柱子上爬了一条弯弯曲曲的黄色小虫子。也许老人担心下雨，斯迈利想。也许他担心雨水会冲走他的标记。又或者，在他情绪激动的时候，他把粉笔按得太重了，就像他把诺福克夹克掉落在衣柜底板上一样。他对莫斯廷说，马上会面，否则啥都没有......今晚会面，否则啥都没有......告诉他我有两份证据，可以带去......然而，只有警觉的人才会注意到那个印记，尽管粉笔痕迹很重，也只有警觉的人才会注意到那个闪闪发光的图钉，甚至警觉的人都不会觉得不对劲，因为在汉普斯特德石南园，人们不停地互相邮寄账单和发信息，而且并不都是间谍。他们有的是孩子，有的是流浪汉，有的是上帝的信徒，有的是丢失了宠物，有的是在寻找各种爱，不得不在山顶上发布自己的需求。无论如何，也不是所有人都会被莫斯科中心的暗杀武器近距离爆头。

And the purpose of this acknowledgment? In Moscow, when Smiley from his desk in London had had the ultimate responsibility for Vladimir’s case—in Moscow these signs were devised for agents who might disappear from hour to hour; they were the broken twigs along a path that could always be their last. I see no danger and am proceeding as instructed to the agreed rendezvous, read Vladimir’s last—and fatally mistaken—message to the living world.
Leaving the hut, Smiley moved a short distance back along the route he had just come. And as he walked, he meticulously called to mind the Superintendent’s reconstruction of Vladimir’s last journey, drawing upon his memory as if it were an archive.
Those rubber overshoes are a Godsend, Mr. Smiley, the Superintendent had declared piously: North British Century, diamond-pattern soles, sir, and barely walked on—why, you could follow him through a football crowd if you had to!
“I’ll give you the authorised version,” the Superintendent had said, speaking fast because they were short of time. “Ready, Mr. Smiley?”
Ready, Smiley had said.
The Superintendent changed his tone of voice. Conversation was one thing, evidence another. As he spoke, he shone his torch in phases onto the wet gravel of the roped-off area. A lecture with magic lantern, Smiley had thought; at Sarratt I’d have taken notes. “Here he is, coming down the hill now, sir. See him there? Normal pace, nice heel and toe movement, normal progress, everything above-board. See, Mr. Smiley?”
Mr. Smiley had seen.
“And the stick mark there, do you, in his right hand, sir?”
这种回执的目的是什么？在莫斯科，当斯迈利在伦敦的办公桌前对弗拉基米尔负最终责任时，这些信号是为那些随时随刻都可能消失的特工设计的；它们是林间小路上的断枝，随时有可能是他们丢下的最后一根。我没有看到任何危险，正按指示前往约定的会面地点，"弗拉基米尔向世界发出了最后的信息，也是致命的错误信息。
离开亭子后，斯迈利沿着来时的路线往回走了一小段路。他一边走，一边仔细地回想着警司还原弗拉基米尔最后一段行程的描述，像提取档案一样在记忆中寻觅。
这双橡胶套鞋真是天赐之物，斯迈利先生，警司虔诚地说：北英世纪公司生产的，菱形花纹的鞋底，先生，几乎没怎么穿过——你知道吗，如果有人穿着这样一双鞋，如果有必要的话，你跟在他后面穿过看足球赛的人群都不会跟丢！
“我给你讲的东西是经过授权的，”警司是这么说的，因为时间紧迫，他的语速很快。“准备好了吗，斯迈利先生？”
准备好了，斯迈利说。
警司改变了语气。随便聊聊是一回事，证据又是另一回事。他一边说，一边用手电筒照着湿漉漉的沙砾路，那块地方已经用绳子围起来，作为限制区域。斯迈利想，这是在用幻灯讲课；要是在萨拉特，我肯定会做笔记。“他来了，正在走下坡路，先生。看到了吗？正常的步伐，脚跟和脚趾的动作都很清楚，正常的进度，一切都很正常。看到了吗，斯迈利先生？”
斯迈利先生看到了
“看到那个手杖标记吗，手杖在他右手上，先生？”