IN MOULMEIN, IN LOWER BURMA, I was hated by large numbers of people--the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

在下缅甸，在毛淡棉，憎恶我的人不计其数——我竟然如此引人注目，这倒是一生中的绝无仅有。我当时是城里一个片区的警官，当地人对欧洲人怀有强烈的敌意，常常毫没来由地使一些下三滥的手段。要说聚众闹事，他们倒也没那个种，但要是看见有位欧洲妇女独自在市集上转悠，有人就会忍不住要往她身上吐点儿槟榔汁什么的。虽说我是位警官，可也是个诱人的目标，总有人想方设法要作弄我一下。有回踢球的时候，某个腿脚灵光的缅甸人给我使了个绊子，裁判（另一个缅甸人）却适时把脸转向另一边，假装没看见，于是看球的人群爆发出放肆的哄笑。这种事情发生了不止一次。到后来不管我走到哪里，都能遇上小年青们那种挂满鄙视、嘲笑的黄种面孔，他们冲着我的后脑勺嘀嘀咕咕，嘴里不干不净的，我离得越远这声音就越响，简直叫我忍无可忍。最恶心的要数城里那好几千佛门弟子了，年纪轻轻的，成天不务正业，就知道站在街角拿欧洲人寻开心。

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically--and secretly, of course--I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos--all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

这种处境让我既窘困又苦恼。因为我当时认准帝国主义是种邪恶的事物，恨不能早点儿辞职卷铺盖走人。理论上说——当然也是私底下说说——我是完全站在缅甸人一边的，我完全反对他们的压迫者：英国人。我痛恨我所从事的工作，恨到我自己都说不清究竟有多恨的地步。这工作让你对帝国的肮脏勾当看得一清二楚：臭气熏天的牢笼；挤成一堆的、可怜巴巴的囚犯；服长期徒刑者有惶恐却没有血色的面孔；还有一些被竹子打烂又结起血痂的男性屁股；凡此种种，无不将强烈的犯罪感压在我心头，压得我透不过气来。但我又理不出个头绪。我涉世不深、受不良教育毒害，还不得不在一片缄默之中尝试厘清我的问题——这种缄默每一个在东方呆过的英国人都有切身体会。甚至，对于大英帝国，我既不知道它已经日渐式微，更不知道它大大好过那些正在力争后来居上的新生帝国。我只知道我被两种情绪夹在中间：既对我为之服务的帝国深恶痛绝，又对那些让我交不了差的无赖瘪三气急败坏。我一方面把英国殖民统治看作无法打破的暴政，某种永远永远践踏臣民意志的东西；另一方面又觉得世界上最痛快的事情就是在哪个和尚肚子上捅一刺刀。这些情绪是帝国主义的常见副产品，你随便找个英裔印度官员聊聊就知道了——如果你能让他抛开职务身份跟你说心里话。

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism--the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must." It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

有一天发生了一件事，很有一点转弯抹角的启发性。这件事原本是小事一桩，但却给了我一个从没有过的好机会，让我在惊鸿一瞥之间看到了帝国主义的真实本性，或者说，专制政府行使权利的真实动机。这天一大早，我被城区另一头派出所巡警打来的电话闹醒，他说有头大象在集市上闹事儿，问我能不能过去看看，采取点措施什么的。我也不知道我能采取点什么措施，但我想还是应该去看看情况，于是我骑了匹小马出发了。我带着我那把0.44口径的老式温彻斯特步枪，这东西拿来对付大象实在太小了，但我寻思枪声多少能发挥一点威慑作用吧。一路上有各式各样的缅甸人拦住我，向我投诉那头大象的罪行。那家伙显然不是一头野象，它只是一头发了情的驯象。驯象发情期间统统是用链条拴着的，免得它们搞破坏，这一头也一样，但头天晚上它挣断链条跑掉了。驯象人连夜出去追，可又追错了方向，也就是说，唯一能制止它发飙的人这当口远在十二个小时的路程以外，而逃走的大象一清早却突然闯回城里来了。缅甸老百姓没什么武器，对这家伙简直束手无策。它已经毁掉了什么人家的竹屋、弄死了一头牛、捣翻了几个水果摊、还把人家的存货全给糟踏了；之后迎头撞上市政垃圾车，司机见状跳车，还没等他站稳呢，车子就被大象掀翻在地一顿狂踩。

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of "Go away, child! Go away this instant!" and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

缅甸巡警和几个印度裔巡官在现场恭候我光临呢，据说大象方才在这里露过面。那是一片陡峭的山坡，密密麻麻扎满脏兮兮的竹屋，屋顶上铺的是棕榈叶子，可真够穷的。印象中那天早晨是个阴天，有点闷，好像就要下雨的样子。我们开始找人询问大象的下落，结果和平常一样，得不到任何明确的信息。在东方办案总是如此，事情在远处听着还条理清晰，反倒越接近事发地情节就越模糊不清。有人说大象往这个方向去了，又有人说大象往那个方向去了，甚至还有人表示没听说有什么大象来过。我都差不多要认准这事儿是彻头彻尾的一堆谎言了，忽然听到不远处响起一阵喧闹声。一个老婆子挥着手里的枝条，正在哄赶一群围在一间竹屋拐角处的光腚小屁孩儿：“走啊，小东西们！马上给我走啊！”，嗓门大得让人生厌。她身后的几个妇人也跟着七嘴八舌地嚷嚷，看来那里有什么小孩子见不得的东西。我绕过那间竹屋，看见一个男人四肢伸展趴在烂泥里，已经死了。那是个印度人，一个衣不蔽体、黑皮肤的德拉维苦力，看样子才死时间不长。有人说那头大象突然从棚屋后面冲出来，用鼻子卷走这个苦力，然后在这里把他踩进泥巴地里。适逢雨季，地面稀软，他的脸在地上划出一道没过脚踝的深沟，足有两码长。他肚皮紧贴地面，双臂反剪张开，脑袋不可思议地拧向一边，脸上糊满泥浆，双目圆睁、呲牙咧嘴的，显然是承受着难以言传的痛苦。（所以，别跟我说什么死人看上去很安详的话。我见过的尸体多半面目狰狞。）那畜生巨大的脚掌撕裂了他的后背，好像是什么人娴熟地剥开一只兔子的皮。看到这些，我马上吩咐勤务兵到附近的朋友家去借一管猎象步枪。那会儿已经把我的小马打发回去了，我可不想让它闻着什么大象的味道，然后惊慌失措，一屁股把我撅下马来。

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant--I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary--and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

没过多久勤务兵就带回来一管步枪和五发子弹，其间有几个缅甸人来向我们报告，说大象就在山坡下的一片稻田里，离这儿只有几百码远。我于是动身前往，这下几乎所有住在附近的人都跑出屋子来跟在我后面。他们看见我手里的步枪，吵吵着说我要去打死大象，场面称得上是群情激奋。当那头大象在他们的家园里横行霸道时，他们对它不曾表现出这样浓厚的兴趣，但现在那家伙要被打死了，情况就有些不同了。这对他们来说可以算是个乐子，在英国人伙里其实也差不多；除此之外他们就光惦记大象的肉了。这局面让我心里隐约有些忐忑不安。我并没有要打死大象的企图——借来猎枪只是为了在必要的时候进行自卫——但是屁股后面有帮人跟着总归会让你生出些人在江湖身不由己的感觉。我肩扛猎枪，阔步下山，一队不断壮大的人马挤挤撞撞地紧跟在我身后，我自己觉得特傻，想必别人看我也特傻。到了山坡下，在远离这片竹屋区的地方有条石子儿路，路那边是一块开阔的稻田，有一千多码宽，眼下还没到耕种季节，这块地泡在早春的雨水里，满是泥泞，星星点点地生着些杂草。那头大象就站在地里，离开路面有八码远，它的左侧朝向我们，对我们这一大群人的靠近根本不屑一顾，只管从地上拔下一束束青草，在膝盖上拍打干净，然后再填到嘴巴里。

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant--it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery--and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

我在路上停下。看到这头象，我就非常确定地知道不能开枪打它。射杀一头能干活的大象可是件非常严重的事——相当于毁掉一台昂贵的重型机械——很明显，应该尽力避免此类事情的发生。这家伙这会儿只是在安静地吃东西，而且隔开这么远，它对人的威胁不会超过一头母牛。我当时认为，而且现在还是这样认为：这头象的发情期反应已经过去了；这种情况下它顶多也就是随便溜达溜达，不会再祸害乡里，只消等驯象人回来把它带走就是了。更何况我根本就没打算把它打死。于是我决定稍事观察，如果能确定它不会再次发飙，那我就打道回府。

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd--seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing--no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

但就在那一刻我回头扫了一眼，发现我身后已经是人山人海，少说有两千人，而且人数每分钟都在继续增加，他们挤在路面上，沿着这条路向两端站出去很远。我望着一片花花绿绿装束的汪洋，还有浮现其间的那些黄种人面孔，每张脸上都满带着幸福和激动，就因为这一点点乐趣：这头大象在劫难逃了！他们也望着我，就像是在等着看什么魔术师施展戏法。他们本来不喜欢我，但现在我手里多了一把神奇的步枪，于是我就立刻变得有观赏性了。忽然之间我意识到我恐怕不得不打死这头大象了。人人都巴望我这么干，那我就只能这么干了；我能感觉得到这两千多人的意愿在顶着我，让我无法抗拒，只能向前。也正是在那一刻，当我握着枪站在人群前面的时候，我第一次认识到了白人在东方的统治是多么虚无和徒劳无益。我，一个白人，手里端把枪，站在一群手无寸铁的当地人前面，貌似是这出戏的主角；但实际上却只不过是一个可笑的木偶，被身后那些黄种面孔的意志来回摆布。我深深体会到，在白人当上暴君的同时，他也就葬送了自己的自由。他将成为某种虚伪的、装腔作势的傀儡，徒以老爷的身份示人耳。他终其一生都得争取镇住当地人，这是他维系统治的先决条件，所以每逢紧要关头他都得干出点当地人希望他干的事情。就好象他戴了副面具，慢慢他的脸就长得和这幅面具严丝合缝了。我必须打死这头大象了。当我派人去借猎枪的时候就已经注定了这个结果。老爷的作为就得有个老爷的样子；他得表现出言行坚决，头脑清楚，一不做二不休。事已至此，既有步枪在握，又有两千多人给我压住阵脚，我却当众下个软蛋，什么也不干吗？不！那绝对不可能！那岂不是要被人笑话死啊！要知道我的全部生活，每一个在东方的白人男子的生活，都不外乎是一次只求不被人耻笑的、长时期的拼争而已。

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