A Rose for Emily

By: William Faulkner (1897-1962)

爱与执着(五)

    The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed (肃静, 安静, 沉默), sibilant (窃窃私语) voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.

    The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon(蜡笔, 蜡笔画) face of her father musing (沉思的,  冥想的) profoundly above the bier (棺材(架), 尸体架) and the ladies sibilant and macabre (恐怖的, 令人毛骨悚然的, 以死亡为主题的); and the very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing (减小,  削弱)road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.

    Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.

    The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading (弥漫, 遍及, 蔓延) dust. A thin, acrid pall (遮盖物, 幕, 棺罩) as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked (装了甲板的,  装饰的,  分层的) and furnished as for a bridal (新娘的, 婚礼的): upon the valence curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram (由姓与名的第一个字母编制而成的图案) was obscured (遮住). Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent ( 新月, 新月形之物) in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute ( 定制的) shoes and the discarded (丢弃的)socks.

    The man himself lay in the bed.

    For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin(露齿而笑). The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts (较……耐久) love, that conquers even the grimace (面部的歪扭,  鬼脸,  痛苦的表情) of love, had cuckolded(背叛, 出卖) him. What was left of him, rotted ( 腐烂, 腐蚀, 败坏) beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable (无法摆脱的, 分不开的) from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.

    Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation (刻痕,  印压,  缩进,  凹进处)of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair.
(1930)