2006年NPR美国国家公共电台八月-Novelist Lee, Playing with Three 'Lost He

Zenin has brought her to the hotel in C, the Vyborg L, the classic bedecked hotel where rich friends of Nicholson Mira's parents stay. But Zenin and Mira meet no one because they've entered through a side door where an elevator leads to a small one-room apartment lined in red velvet 1.

A big low bed with a formal cover of red damask, gold-framed botanical prints that no one has ever looked at. Dark 19th century cupboards where no one ever puts away anything. A slippery empire couch that no one ever uses except to fling clothes onto or to perform sexual acrobatics 2 too complicated for the bed. A seventieth-looking giant television and a glistening 3 wide marble bathroom. Windows, shutter 4 bolted, draped blind with silk.

It's a kind of room Mira and Nick would giggle 5 at. Trade ironic 6 comments about Victorian porn, jokes to disguise their uneasiness to straightforward 7 eroticism of the suite 8. It's been our power. It exists for one purpose only and it is the color of blood of Valentines of Babylon.

It lies hidden deep in Rome, like a heart in a human breast. And faintly from the cobblestone maze 9 of shopping streets outside, rises the sound of the river of tourists flowing by. Zenin who has chosen the place because none of his friends go there, thinks it's overpriced but correct.

Calmly, without theatricality 10, she takes off the linen 11 dress, the small undergarment that she knew would be seen when she put them on,and stands naked in front of him, in her high-heeled shoes, doesn't pose just stands. And as she does so, a strange thing happens to Zenin, something that never happens else to do his business deals.

He sees things through her eyes as well as his own, feels her mixture of excitement and shame, extending their strip in front of the tall man with the expensive badly fitting suit. How brazenly 12 pleased, she has to show her body, feels just for a second, how much she has set aside to come to him. She knows that there will never be another moment like this when she stands presented and beheld 13, that she will never be as powerful. And that part of the reason is that she is doing something she thinks is wrong. Mira feels as if she has come to the center of her life, to the center of a wood in which all the leaves on the trees are eyes. Or to the hidden center, the secret heart she's been searching for in the labyrinth 14 of Rome.

She puts out a hand and touches his face and Zenin feels himself tremble. He shuts off the light and in the hotel blackout, begins to tear his clothes. And making love to her is, as he knew it would be, like a reconciliation 15, like two enemies surrendering in the same instant. Violent and silent recognition there in the dark. Her body is so young, so smooth, like a weapon or a piece of perfect machinery 16. And Zenin who's begun to brood about middle age, about his miserable 17 stressful tycoon's life, to worry about impotence, realizes that deep inside without even knowing it Mira loathes 18 him. And because of this, he will be able to be excited by her for a long time.
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bedeck
[transitive usually passive] literary
to decorate something such as a building or street by hanging things all over it
be bedecked with something
a balcony bedecked with hanging baskets
damask
缎子
theatricality
戏剧风格, 不自然
brazenly
adv.
厚脸皮地