The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

By: Earnest Hemingway (海明威) (1899-1961)

弗朗西斯。麦康伯的短暂快乐生活 (一)

导读

恩格斯认为，没有爱情的婚姻是不道德的。海明威描写的这对夫妻，男的贪恋女色，以其为彰显社会地位的工具；女的贪恋男方的财势，并且欺负男方为了面子以及懦弱的个性，不断地红杏出墙，大胆妄为。他们的婚姻是建筑在不道德的基础上，在极度不稳定的状态下维持着平衡。故事以狩猎为背景描写男主角Francis Macomber懦弱的个性因杀红了眼而变得勇猛果断，当他抛弃了恐惧的阴霾，展现目空一切的欢愉时，他们极度不稳定的婚姻，被打破了。女方为了自保，Francis Macomber的快乐时光就如此短暂悲剧式的结束了。

It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly (General Purpose Tent or Double Fly Tent. These tents are used for accommodating 4-12 individuals and can withstand extreme weather conditions.)of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.

“Will you have lime (酸橙) juice or lemon squash(果汁汽水)?” Macomber asked.

“I’ll have a gimlet (一种鸡尾酒),” Robert Wilson told him.

“I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.

“I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.” (Macomber原先的意思是想喝酸橙汁或果汁汽水，可是一旦别人想喝gimlet他就立刻改变主意也跟着别人一起喝gimlet了。海明威一开头就将男主角的个性清楚地介绍给读者认识，这种单刀直入的手法，让人印象深刻。)

The mess (不整洁)boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.

“What had I ought to give them?” Macomber asked.

“A quid (一英镑) would be plenty,” Wilson told him. “You don’t want to spoil them.”

“Will the headman distribute it?”

“Absolutely.”

Francis Macomber had, half an hour before, been carried to his tent from the edge of the camp in triumph on the arms and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner (剥皮工人) and the porters ( 搬运工人). The gun-bearers(挑夫,搬运工) had taken no part in the demonstration. When the native boys put him down at the door of his tent, he had shaken all their hands, received their congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the bed until his wife came in. She did not speak to him when she came in and he left the tent at once to wash his face and hands in the portable wash basin outside and go over to the dining tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the breeze and the shade.

“You’ve got your lion,” Robert Wilson said to him, “and a damned fine one too.”

Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an extremely handsome and well kept woman of the beauty and social position which had, five years before, commanded five thousand dollars as the price of endorsing, with photographs, a beauty product which she had never used. She had been married to Francis Macomber for eleven years.

“He is a good lion, isn’t he?” Macomber said. His wife looked at him now. She looked at both these men as though she had never seen them before.

One, Wilson, the white hunter, she knew she had never truly seen before. He was about middle height with sandy (浅棕色的) hair, a stubby (短而粗的) mustache, a very red face and extremely cold blue eyes with faint white wrinkles at the corners that grooved merrily ( 快乐地,愉快地;兴高采烈地) when he smiled. He smiled at her now and she looked away from his face at the way his shoulders sloped in the loose tunic (束腰宽松外衣) he wore with the four big cartridges (子弹; 弹药筒，弹夹; 弹壳) held in loops (圈, 环, 环状物) where the left breast pocket should have been, at his big brown hands, his old slacks (宽松裤), his very dirty boots and back to his red face again. She noticed where the baked red of his face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his Stetson hat that hung now from one of the pegs (挂钉, 挂钩。系帐篷的桩) of the tent pole.

“Well, here’s to the lion,” Robert Wilson said. He smiled at her again and, not smiling, she looked curiously at her husband.

Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did not mind that length of bone, dark, his hair cropped (剪) like an oarsman (划手,划桨者), rather thin-lipped, and was considered handsome. He was dressed in the same sort of safari (非洲的(狩猎)旅行) clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new, he was thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was good at court games, had a number of big-game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very publicly, to be a coward.

“Here’s to the lion,” he said. “I can’t ever thank you for what you did.”

Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.

“Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.

Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.

“It’s been a very strange day,” she said. “Hadn’t you ought to put your hat on even under the canvas at noon? You told me that, you know.”

“Might put it on,” said Wilson.

“You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,” she told him and smiled again.

“Drink,” said Wilson.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.”

“It’s red today,” Macomber tried a joke.

“No,” said Margaret. “It’s mine that’s red today. But Mr. Wilson’s is always red.

“Must be racial,” said Wilson. “I say, you wouldn’t like to drop my beauty as a topic, would you?”

“I’ve just started on it.”

“Let’s chuck (终止) it,” said Wilson.

“Conversation is going to be so difficult,” Margaret said.

“Don’t be silly, Margot,” her husband said.

“No difficulty,” Wilson said. “Got a damn fine lion.”

Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she was going to cry. Wilson had seen it coming for a long time and he dreaded (担忧)it. Macomber was past dreading it.

“I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said and started for her tent. She made no noise of crying but they could see that her shoulders were shaking under the rose-colored, sun-proofed shirt she wore.

“Women upset,” said Wilson to the tall man. “Amounts to nothing. Strain on the nerves and one thing’n another.”

“No,” said Macomber. “I suppose that I rate that for the rest of my life now.”

“Nonsense. Let’s have a spot (位置)of the giant killer,” said Wilson. “Forget the whole thing. Nothing to it anyway.”

“We might try,” said Macomber. “I won’t forget what you did for me though.”

“Nothing,” said Wilson. All nonsense.”

So they sat there in the shade where the camp was pitched (把…定于特定角度；使倾斜) under some wide-topped acacia (阿拉伯树胶) trees with a boulder-strewn (散布着砾石的) cliff behind them, and a stretch of grass that ran to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front with forest beyond it, and drank their just-cool lime drinks and avoided one another’s eyes while the boys all knew about it now and when he saw Macomber’s personal boy looking curiously at his master while he was putting dishes on the table he snapped (厉声地说) at him in Swahili. The boy turned away with his face blank.

“What were you telling him?” Macomber asked.

“Nothing. Told him to look alive (快点儿) or I’d see he got about fifteen of the best.”

“What’s that? Lashes?”

“It’s quite illegal,” Wilson said. “You’re supposed to fine them.”

“Do you still have them whipped (受到鞭打的)?”

“Oh, yes. They could raise a row (发脾气) if they chose to complain. But they don’t. They prefer it to the fines (罚款).”

“How strange!” said Macomber.

“Not strange, really,” Wilson said. “Which would you rather do? Take a good birching ( (用桦条)抽打, 鞭挞)or lose your pay?”

Then he felt embarrassed at asking it and before Macomber could answer he went on, “We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.”

This was no better. “Good God,” he thought. “I am a diplomat, aren’t I?”

“Yes, we take a beating,” said Macomber, still not looking at him. “I’m awfully sorry about that lion business. It doesn’t have to go any further, does it? I mean no one will hear about it, will they?”

“You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?” Wilson looked at him now coldly. He had not expected this. So he’s a bloody four-letter man (可轻蔑的;可鄙的;卑劣的人) as well as a bloody coward, he thought. I rather liked him too until today. But how is one to know abut an American?

“No,” said Wilson. “I’m a professional hunter. We never talk about our clients. You can be quite easy on that. It’s supposed to be bad form to ask us not to talk though.”

He had decided now that to break (间断；暂停) would be much easier. He would eat, then, by himself and could read a book with his meals. They would eat by themselves. He would see them through the safari on a very formal basis—what was it the French called it? Distinguished consideration—and it would be a damn sight easier than having to go through this emotional trash (没出息的人). He’d insult (侮辱, 冒犯) him and make a good clean break. Then he could read a book with his meals and he’d still be drinking their whisky. That was the phrase for it when a safari went bad. You ran into another while hunter and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot. (In the days of the industrial revolution and early mass-production, assembly workers would occasionally find a defective or out-of-tolerance part which was not suitable for use. This part would be sent back to the smelting room to be melted down and re-cast a second time. Since the smelting was done in a giant pot, these defective parts had "gone to pot".)