这是一个没有阳光的上午，推开窗，清冷的空气扑面。

弥漫着浓浓的雾。

收回目光，窝在沙发上，阅读老师布置的作业。

故事发生在金星上。整整七年，那儿是一个阴雨连绵的世界。那群九岁的孩子们只在没有任何记忆的两岁时见过阳光，因此，他们不知道太阳的样子，甚至连回忆也没有。

除了Margot---这个四岁才从地球来到这里，像是从一个老相簿中走出的的女孩。湛蓝、嫩红、鹅黄是她五官与头发的颜色，脆弱敏感地犹如一个幽灵。

她的美丽与孤独让所有孩子远离了她，最不可原谅的是，她对太阳的记忆，是那么鲜明：“太阳如花，绽放片刻！”

在这样一个见不到阳光的世界里，人们的内心比眼睛更黯淡，哪怕是孩子。他们嘲笑、鄙视、怒吼，真实的谎言变得虚弱。

然而，终于有那么一天，太阳到临。甚至在到临前，没有人相信这是真的。

Margot被锁在衣橱里了。我无法想象这一章节的情形，在这种情形下选择一种立场是艰难的，局中人，局外人，都如此。

外面的孩子在阳光中呼喊欢腾，直到两个小时后，雨，再次降临。

经过阳光的孩子们，突然记起Margot的存在。那一刻，时光凝固，我仿佛听见心的外围，那层冰墙慢慢裂开，既而轰响倒地。阳光做为正义与善良的侵略者，与良心碰起了酒杯。

结局并不很清晰，但我相信，他们已经从这个群体沦陷的墙内脱身出来，再以一种逃亡者的优越，去观看墙内的他们。

All Summer in a Day

by

Ray Bradbury

No one in the class could remember

a time when there wasn't rain.

“Ready?"

"Ready."

   "Now?"

   "Soon."

   "Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?"

   "Look, look; see for yourself!"

   The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

   It rained.

   It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

   "It's stopping, it's stopping!"

   "Yes, yes!"

   Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering and old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

   All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:

  I think the sun is a flower,

  That blooms for just one hour.

   That was Margot's poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was
falling outside.

   "Aw, you didn't write that!" protested one of the boys.

   "I did," said Margot. "I did."

   "William!" said the teacher.

   But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

   "Where's teacher?"

   "She'll be back."

   "She'd better hurry, we'll miss it!"

   They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.

   Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

   "What're you looking at?" said William.

   Margot said nothing.

   ":Speak when you're spoken to." He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself by moved only by him and nothing else.

   They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.

And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered.

   "It's like a penny," she said once, eyes closed.

   "No it's not!" the children cried.

   "It's like a fire," she said, "in the stove."

   "You're lying, you don't remember!" cried the children.

   But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head.

So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.

   There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.

   "Get away!" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?"

   Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

   "Well, don't wait around here!" cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!"

   Her lips moved.