SUPERMAN超 人
1. The year the war began I was in the fifth grade at the Annie F. Warren Grammar School in Winthrop, and that was the winter I won the prize for drawing the best Civil Defense signs. That was also the winter of Paula Brown's new snowsuit, and even now, 13 years later, I can recall the changing colors of those days, clear and definite as a pattern seen through a kaleidoscope.
战争爆发的那一年,我在温斯罗普的安妮·F.沃伦文法学校读五年级,那年冬天我获得了民防图标设计赛冠军。也就是在那个冬天,波拉·布朗买了新的防雪服,即便是13年后的今天,我仍然能清晰地记起那些精彩纷呈的日子,它们历历在目,犹如万花筒里看到的图案那样色彩斑斓。
2. I lived on the bay side of town, on Johnson Avenue, opposite the Logan Airport, and before I went to bed each night, I used to kneel by the west window of my room and look over the lights of Boston that blazed and blinked far off across the darkening water. The sunset flaunted its pink flag above the airport, and the sound of waves was lost in the perpetual droning of the planes. I marveled at the moving beacons on the runway and watched, until it grew completely dark, the flashing red and green lights that rose and set in the sky like shooting stars. The airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem. All night I dreamed of flying.
我的家位于城里靠海湾的一侧,在洛根机场对面的约翰逊大道上。每天晚上睡觉前,我都会跪在卧室朝西的窗户旁,眺望黑幽幽的海水那边波士顿城明亮闪烁的灯光。
夕阳将粉色的余晖洒在机场上空,浪涛的声音永远淹没在一架架飞机永无休止的嗡嗡声中。我惊奇地望着跑道上的移动信标,看着那些闪烁的红灯、绿灯像流星般升起、降落,直到机场变得一片漆黑为止。机场就是我的麦加,我的耶路撒冷。我整夜都在做梦,梦见自己在空中飞行。
were the days of my technicolor dreams. Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to bed. This was the best time of the day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they should go. My flying dreams were believable as a landscape by Dali, so real that I would awake with a sudden shock, a breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky and caught myself on the soft bed just in time. These nightly adventures in space began when Superman started invading my dreams and teaching me how to fly. He used to come roaring by in his shining blue suit with his cape whistling in the wind, looking remarkably like my Uncle Frank who was living with mother and me. In the magic whirling of his cape I could hear the wings of a hundred seagulls, the motors of a thousand planes.
那正是我梦想斑斓的岁月。妈妈认为我需要大量的睡眠,所以我每天上床睡觉时一点儿都不觉得累。那是一天中最美好的时光,我可以躺下,在昏暗的暮色中慢慢进入梦乡,脑子里制造出许多奇异的梦来。我的飞行梦像达利的风景画那么真实可信,以致于自己常常会在一阵惊吓中醒来,好像伊卡罗斯那样从天空中摔下来,虽然发现自己刚好掉到软软的床上,但也被吓得喘不过气来。
当超人开始侵入我的梦乡,并教给我飞行的技巧之后,我每夜的太空冒险便开始了。
超人身着耀眼的蓝色衣服,肩披随风飕飕作响的斗篷,经常从我身边呼啸而过。他长得太像我的舅舅弗兰克了,舅舅那会儿正跟妈妈和我住在一起。超人的斗篷神奇地旋转时,我好像能听见上百只海鸥的振翅声,上千架飞机的马达轰鸣声。
4. I was not the only worshipper of Superman in our block. David Stirling, a pale, bookish boy who lived down the street, shared my love for the sheer poetry of flight. Before supper every night, we listened to Superman together on the radio, and during the day we made up our own adventures on the way to school.
我不是这个街区里唯一的超人崇拜者,在街另一头,那个脸色苍白、有点书呆子气的男孩儿戴维·斯特令和我一样,热爱飞行的纯粹的诗意。每天晚饭前,我们一起收听电台的超人故事,白天在上学的路上,我们自己设计出各种各样的冒险活动。
5. The Annie F. Warren Grammar School was a red-brick building, set back from the main highway on a black tar street, surrounded by barren gravel playgrounds. Out by the parking lot David and I found the perfect alcove for our Superman dramas. The dingy back entrance to the school was deep-set in a long passageway which was an excellent place for surprise captures and sudden rescues.
安妮·F.沃伦文法学校是一座红砖楼,座落在远离主干道的一条黑色柏油街道上,学校四周是光秃秃的铺着碎石的操场。戴维和我发现学校外面停车场附近有一个角落,那里是我们玩超人游戏的绝佳场所。那条长长的过道通向学校又黑又脏的后门,非常适合玩意外抓捕和快速解救的游戏。
recess, David and I came into our own. We ignored the boys playing baseball on the gravel court and the girls giggling at dodge-ball in the dell. Our Superman games made us outlaws, yet gave us a sense of windy superiority. We even found a stand-in for a villain in Sheldon Fein, the sallow mamma's boy on our block who was left out of the boys' games because he cried whenever anybody tagged him and always managed to fall down and skin his fat knees.
课间休息时,我和戴维可以大展身手了。我们对在碎石操场上打棒球的男孩儿们视而不见,也不搭理那些在小山谷里一边玩躲球游戏一边咯咯傻笑的女孩儿们。超人游戏让我们变得像两个逃犯似的,但也给了我们一种虚幻的优越感,我们甚至找谢尔登·费恩来充当恶棍。他是街区里一个脸色苍白、胆小怕事的孩子,没有男孩儿愿意和他玩,因为一有人追他他就哭,而且老是自己摔倒在地,擦伤他那胖胖的膝盖。
7. At first, we had to prompt Sheldon in his part, but after a while he became an expert on inventing tortures and even carried them out in private, beyond the game. He used to pull the wings from flies and the legs off grasshoppers, and keep the broken insects captive in a jar hidden under his bed where he could take them out in secret and watch them struggling. David and I never played with Sheldon except at recess. After school we left him to his mamma and his bonbons and his helpless insects.
一开始我们还得教谢尔登怎么扮演他的角色,可没过多久他就变成了一位发明虐刑的专家,甚至私下里悄悄实施他的刑罚。他常常扯下苍蝇的翅膀,揪掉蚱蜢的腿,并把这些残废了的昆虫囚禁在瓶子里,藏到床底下,这样他就可以偷偷把它们拿出来,看着它们痛苦挣扎的样子。戴维和我只在课间休息的时候和谢尔登玩,放学后我们就让他回家跟他的
妈妈、棒棒糖以及那些无助的昆虫为伴。
8. At the time my Uncle Frank was living with us while waiting to be drafted, and I was sure that he bore an extraordinary resemblance to Superman incognito. David couldn't see the likeness as clearly as I did, but he admitted that Uncle Frank was the strongest man he had ever known, and could do lots of tricks like making caramels disappear under napkins and walking on his hands.
那时候,弗兰克舅舅住在我们家,等着参军。我肯定他和隐姓埋名的超人长得特别像。戴维却看不出我舅舅和超人有多么相像,但他承认弗兰克舅舅是他这辈子所见过的最强壮的人,而且他会变很多戏法,比如用餐巾一盖上糖果,糖就没了,他还能倒立行走。
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