諾貝爾文學經典:《寵兒》第2章Part 8

The crickets were screaming on Thursday and the sky, stripped of blue, was white hot at eleven in the morning. Sethe was badly dressed for the heat, but this being her first social outing in eighteen years, she felt obliged to wear her one good dress, heavy as it was, and a hat. Certainly a hat. She didn't want to meet Lady Jones or Ella with her head wrapped like she was going to work.
The dress, a good-wool castoff, was a Christmas present to Baby Suggs from Miss Bodwin, thewhitewoman who loved her. Denver and Paul D fared better in the heat since neither felt theoccasion required special clothing. Denver's bonnet knocked against her shoulder blades; Paul Dwore his vest open, no jacket and his shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows. They were not holdinghands, but their shadows were. Sethe looked to her left and all three of them were gliding over thedust holding hands. Maybe he was right. A life. Watching their hand holding shadows, she was embarrassed at being dressed for church.
The others, ahead and behind them, would think she was putting on airs, letting them know thatshe was different because she lived in a house with two stories; tougher, because she could do andsurvive things they believed she should neither do nor survive. She was glad Denver had resistedher urgings to dress up — rebraid her hair at least.
But Denver was not doing anything to make this trip a pleasure. She agreed to go — sullenly —but her attitude was "Go 'head. Try and make me happy." The happy one was Paul D. He saidhowdy to everybody within twenty feet. Made fun of the weather and what it was doing to him,yelled back at the crows, and was the first to smell the doomed roses. All the time, no matter what they were doing — whether Denver wiped perspiration from her forehead or stooped to retie hershoes; whether Paul D kicked a stone or reached over to meddle a child's face leaning on its mother's shoulder — all the time the three shadows that shot out of their feet to the left held hands.
Nobody noticed but Sethe and she stopped looking after she decided that it was a good sign. A life. Could be.
Up and down the lumberyard fence old roses were dying. The sawyer who had planted themtwelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel — something to take the sin out of slicingtrees for a living — was amazed by their abundance; how rapidly they crawled all over the stakeand-post fence that separated the lumberyard from the open field next to it where homeless menslept, children ran and, once a year, carnival people pitched tents. The closer the roses got to death,the louder their scent, and everybody who attended the carnival associated it with the stench of therotten roses. It made them a little dizzy and very thirsty but did nothing to extinguish the eagernessof the coloredpeople filing down the road. Some walked on the grassy shoulders, others dodged thewagons creaking down the road's dusty center. All, like Paul D, were in high spirits, which thesmell of dying roses (that Paul D called to everybody's attention) could not dampen. As theypressed to get to the rope entrance they were lit like thless with the excitement ofseeing white people loose: doing magic, clowning, without heads or with two heads, twenty feettall or two feet tall, weighing a ton, completely tattooed, eating glass, swallowing fire, spittingribbons, twisted into knots, forming pyramids, playing with snakes and beating each other up.
All of this was advertisement, read by those who could and heard by those who could not, and thefact that none of it was true did not extinguish their appetite a bit. The barker called them and theirchildren names ("Pickaninnies free!") but the food on his vest and the hole in his pants rendered itfairly harmless. In any case it was a small price to pay for the fun they might not ever have again.
Two pennies and an insult were well spent if it meant seeing the spectacle of whitefolks making aspectacle of themselves. So, although the carnival was a lot less than mediocre (which is why itagreed to a Colored Thursday), it gave the four hundred black people in its audience thrill uponthrill upon thrill.

星期四，蟋蟀鼓譟着，剝去了藍色的天空在上午十一點是白熱的。天氣這麼熱，塞絲的穿着特別不舒服，可這是她十八年來頭一回外出社交，她覺得有必要穿上她唯一的一條好裙子，儘管它沉得要命；還要戴上一頂帽子。當然要戴帽子。她不想在遇見瓊斯女士或艾拉時還包着頭，像是去上班。
這條純羊毛收針的裙子是貝比?薩格斯的一件聖誕禮物，那個熱愛她的白女人鮑德溫小姐送的。丹芙和保羅?D誰也沒覺得這種場合需要特別的衣着，所以在大熱天裏還好受些。丹芙的軟帽總是碰着墊肩；保羅?D敞開馬甲，沒穿外套，把襯衫袖子捲到胳膊肘上。他們並沒有彼此拉着手，可是他們的影子卻拉着。塞絲朝左看了看，他們三個是手拉着手滑過灰塵的。也許他是對的。一種生活。她看着他們攜手的影子，爲自己這身去教堂的打扮而難爲情。
前前後後的人會認爲她是在擺架子，是讓大家知道自己與衆不同，因爲她住在一棟兩層樓房裏；讓大家知道自己更不屈不撓，因爲她既能做又能經受他們認爲她不能做也不能經受的事情。她很高興丹芙拒絕了打扮一番的要求———哪怕重新編一下辮子。
然而丹芙不願付出任何努力，給這次出行增加一點愉快氣氛。她同意去了———悶悶不樂地———但她的態度是“去唄。試試哄我高興起來”。高興的是保羅?D。他向二十英尺之內的每一個人打招呼，拿天氣以及天氣對他的影響開玩笑，向烏鴉們呱呱回嘴大叫，並且頭一個去嗅凋萎的玫瑰花。自始至終，不論他們在幹什麼———無論是丹芙在擦額頭上的汗、停下來繫鞋帶，還是保羅?D在踢石子、伸手去捏一個媽媽肩上的娃娃的臉蛋———從他們腳下向左投射的三個人影都一直拉着手。
除了塞絲，沒有人注意到，而她一旦認定了那是個好兆頭，便停下來看了又看。一種生活。也許吧。
貯木場圍欄的上上下下有玫瑰在衰敗。十二年前種下它們的那個鋸木工———也許是爲了讓他的工作場所顯得友好，爲了消除以鋸樹爲生的罪惡感———對它們的繁榮感到震驚；它們如此迅速地爬滿了柵欄，把貯木場同旁邊開闊的田野隔開；田野上，無家可歸的人在那裏過夜，孩子們在那裏跑來跑去，一年一度，雜耍藝人在那裏搭起帳篷。玫瑰愈臨近死亡，氣味便愈發濃烈，所有參加狂歡節的人都把節日同腐敗玫瑰的臭氣聯繫起來。這氣味讓他們有點頭暈，而且異常乾渴，卻絲毫沒有熄滅大路上絡繹不絕的黑人們的熱情。有的走在路肩的青草上，其餘的則躲閃着路中央那些揚起灰塵、吱吱扭扭的大車。所有人都像保羅?D一樣情緒高漲，連瀕死玫瑰的氣味（保羅?D使之引人注目）都不能抑制。他們擠進欄索入口的時候，像燈一樣被點着了，都激動得屏住了呼吸，因爲就要無拘無束地觀看白人了：變魔術的、當小丑的、無頭的或是雙頭的、二十英尺高或是二十英寸高的、一噸重的、全部文身的、吃玻璃的、吞火的、吐出打結的綢帶的、築金字塔的、耍蛇的，還有練把式的。
這一切都寫在廣告上，識字的念出來，不識字的就在一旁聽着；儘管事實上都是些胡說八道，他們的興致依然絲毫不減。招徠生意的罵着他們和他們的孩子（“小黑鬼免費!”），然而他馬甲上的食物和褲子上的窟窿使得那些叫罵顯得無傷大雅。無論如何，爲了他們也許再不會得到的樂趣，這個代價太小了。
如果是爲了觀看白人們大出自己的洋相，兩分錢加上一次侮辱花得值。所以，雖然這次狂歡節連平庸都夠不上（那就是爲什麼一個“黑星期四”得到認可），它還是給了四百名黑人觀衆一個一個又一個的刺激。