殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(103)

Chapter 21
The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation, and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago, and there has been no follow-up.
The mess is extraordinary, and has to be seen to be believed, but if you don’t have any particular need to believe it, then don’t go and look, because you won’t enjoy it.
There have recently been some bangs and flashes up in the clouds, and there is one theory that this is a battle being fought between the fleets of several rival carpet-cleaning companies who are hovering over the thing like vultures, but you shouldn’t believe anything you hear at parties, and particularly not anything you hear at this one.
One of the problems, and it’s one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn’t leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both.
Either way, it means that, genetically speaking, each succeeding generation is now less likely to leave than the preceding one.
So other factors come into operation, like when the drink is going to run out.
Now, because of certain things which have happened which seemed like a good idea at the time (and one of the problems with a party which never stops is that all the things which only seem like a good idea at parties continue to seem like good ideas), that point seems still to be a long way off.
One of the things which seemed like a good idea at the time was that the party should fly not in the normal sense that parties are meant to fly, but literally.

21
史上最爲冗長、最具破壞性的派對，如今已進入其第四個世代，且依然無人願意離開。雖然有人看過表——那是十一年前的事了，從那以後再也沒人看過。
那真是巨大的災難，若非親眼見到，簡直難以相信。但是，如果你不是真想相信的話，還是別去見吧。真的不好受。
有時，雲層裏會傳出轟隆隆的聲音，還有閃光。有人說，那是幾個相互競爭的地毯清潔公司在打仗，他們平時就在天上盤旋。當然，派對上的話是信不得的；而這個派對上的話，尤其信不得。
有一種現象日趨嚴重：派對上的所有人，要麼是第一代參加者的兒子，要麼是孫子，要麼是曾孫。考慮到選擇性繁殖和基因退化的原因，我們有理由相信，現在派對上的人們要麼是狂熱的派對迷，要麼是誇誇其談的白癡，要麼——可能性越來越大——兩者皆是。
一句話，這意味着：總的來講，每一代人都比上一代更不想離開這兒。
於是其他問題接踵而至。比如酒快喝完了。
於是，有些事情，就因爲聽起來是不錯的主意（對於一個永無止境的派對來講，一個重要問題就是：那些僅僅在派對上聽起來還不錯的主意，到了這兒，卻永遠會被認爲是不錯的主意），就掩蓋了一些更重要的東西。
比如，有個聽起來還不錯的主意是：派對應該飛起來——不是通常所說的“快樂得像飛起來”，而是真正的飛起來。