英语PK台 第881期: 世界尽头 她寻找真正的蓝

 1. There once was an immensely rich old Englishman who had been a courier and a councillor to the Queen and who now, in his old age, cared for nothing but collecting ancient blue china. To that end he travelled to Persia, Japan and China, and he was everywhere accompanied by his daughter, the Lady Helena.

英国一位富有的老先生，年轻时任过内阁大臣，也当选过议会议员；如今年纪大了，无欲无求，独爱搜藏青瓷老古董。为此他偕同女儿海琳娜，不惜远渡重洋到波斯，日本还有中国寻觅爱物。

2. It happened, as they sailed in the China Sea, that the ship caught fire on a still night, and everybody went into the lifeboats and left her. In the dark and confusion the old peer was separated from his daughter. Lady Helena got up on deck late, and found the ship quite deserted 1. In the last moment a young English sailor carried her down into a lifeboat that had been forgotten. To the two fugitives 2 it seemed as if fire was following them from all sides, for the phosphorescence played in the dark sea, and, as they looked up, a falling star ran across the sky, as if it was going to drop into the boat. They sailed for nine days, till they were picked up by a Dutch merchantman, and came home to England.

一个寂静之夜，这对父女坐的轮船进入中国海域时意外失火了。漆黑和混乱之中，别的乘客很快转移到救生船中，海琳娜却还在着火的船上，就这样与老父亲断了联系。等她逃上甲板，整艘船已被烧毁得差不多了，眼看就要将她葬身火海。这时一位年轻的英国水手出现了，二话不说背起她，安全登上最后那只被逃生者们慌乱之下遗忘的救生船。黑暗的海面泛起大片磷光，犹如大火从四面八方涌来，追赶吞噬着这两个亡命者。彼时，二人仰起头，一颗流星划过夜空，好像瞬间就要落入他们船里一样。整整九天过去，两人才被救上一条荷兰商船，最后总算回到了英国。

3. The old lord had believed his daughter to be dead. He now wept with joy, and at once he took her off to a fashionable watering-place so that she might recover from the hardships she had gone through. And as he thought it must be unpleasant to her that a young sailor, who made his bread in the merchant service, should tell the world that he had sailed for nine days alone with a peer's daughter, he paid the boy a fine sum, and made him promise to go shipping 3 in the other hemisphere and never come back. "For what," said the old nobleman, "would be the good of that?"

原以为女儿早已葬身火海的老爵士这会是喜极而泣，不能自已。为了让身心受难的女儿尽早康复，老先生匆匆将她安顿在一个温泉疗养胜地。他还想到，万一这个在航海业谋生的年轻水手大嘴巴，全世界都会知道海伦娜和一个陌生男人孤男寡女在海上漂了九天，这肯定会让女儿很不开心。于是老爵士给了水手一大笔钱，并让他承诺只在另一个半球继续航海，永远不再回英国。老先生说，这不正是好人做到底吗？

4. When Lady Helena recovered, and they gave her the news of the Court and of her family, and in the end also told her how the young sailor had been sent away never to come back, they found that her mind had suffered from the trials, and that she cared for nothing in all the world. She would not go back to her father's castle in its park, nor go to Court, nor travel to any gay town of the continent. The only thing which she now wanted to do was to go, like her father before her, to collect rare blue china. So she began to sail, from one country to the other, and her father went with her.

海伦娜身体恢复得差不多时，旁人给她讲王宫和家族的动态，最后还说了那个救她的年轻水手永远离开英国的来龙去脉，他们发现海伦娜精神上依旧受那次大难折磨着，而且她变得对世间一切事都不在乎了。她不想回到父亲大庄园的城堡，也不想去宫里，或游览任何一个欧洲怡人小镇。她唯一想要做的事就是和父亲以前一样，去搜集珍稀青瓷。于是海琳娜开始航海旅行，从一个国家到另一个国家，这次是父亲一直陪在左右。

5. In her search she told people, with whom she dealt, that she was looking for a particular blue color, and would pay any price for it. But although she bought many hundred blue jars and bowls, she would always after a time put them aside and say: "Alas 4, alas, it is not the right blue." Her father, when they had sailed for many years, suggested to her that perhaps the color which she sought did not exist. "O God, Papa," said she, "how can you speak so wickedly? Surely there must be some of it left from the time when all the world was blue."

寻找青瓷时，海琳娜跟卖瓷器的人说，她正在找一种特别的蓝色，愿意为之付出任何代价。她买过数千只青瓷罐和瓷碗，但过一段时间就搁到一旁，叹道：“唉，这不是我想要的那种蓝呢。” 陪她航行多年的父亲劝道：也许根本就没有这种颜色存在吧。“天啊，爸爸，你怎能说这种丧气话呢？曾几何时我们的世界一切都是蓝蓝的，肯定会有那么一些遗留下来啊。”海琳娜十分坚定地说。

6. Her two old aunts in England implored 5 her to come back, still to make a great match. But she answered them: "Nay 6, I have got to sail. For you must know, dear aunts, that it is all nonsense when learned people tell you that the seas have got a bottom to them. On the contrary, the water, which is the noblest of elements, does, of course, go all through the earth, so that our planet really floats in the ether, like a soap bubble. And there, on the other hemisphere, a ship sails, with which I have got to keep pace.

远在英国的两位姑妈都恳求外甥女回家，并要给她介绍好人家。但海琳娜回答说：“不不不，我必须去航行。亲爱的姑姑啊，你们一定都知道，有学之士宣扬大海是有底的，那是谬论胡说。正好相反，大自然中最高贵的海水，肯定是贯通大地的，所以我们的地球实际上像一个肥皂泡般浮在宇宙之中。而在另一个半球有这么一艘船航行着，我的船必须跟它齐驱并驾。

7. We two are like the reflection of one another, in the deep sea, and the ship of which I speak is always exactly beneath my own ship, upon the opposite side of the globe. You have never seen a big fish swimming underneath 7 a boat, following it like a dark-blue shade in the water. But in that way this ship goes, like the shadow of my ship, and I draw it to and for wherever I go, as the moon draws the tides, all through the bulk of the earth. If I stopped sailing, what would those poor sailors who made their bread in the merchant service do? But I shall tell you a secret," she said. "In the end my ship will go down, to the centre of the globe, and at the very same hour the other ship will sink as well--for people call it sinking, although I can assure you that there is no up and down in the sea--and there, in the midst of the world, we two shall meet."

在深海之中，两只船像是彼此的倒影。我乘的船正下方就是前面所说的那艘船，它就在地球的另一面行驶着。你们从没见过会有一条很大很大的鱼在船底之下，如一个暗黑的影子在海里随船而行吧。但我们这两艘船恰恰就是这样，不管我坐的船在地球大部分区域穿行到哪，另一个半球那只船就像影子一样，被牵引着来回移动，这和潮水在月亮的引力下涨起退去是差不多的道理。如果我停止航行，那些靠航海谋生的出身不好的水手怎么办？” 海琳娜还说：“我得告诉你们一个秘密，在最后的最后，我坐的船会下沉，直到地球中心，另一只船也会在同一时间沉下来，就如通常人们说的沉没。但我可以向你们保证，在海里没有沉沉浮浮，因为在世界的最中心，我们两只船会相遇在一起。

8. Many years passed, the old lord died and Lady Helena became old and deaf, but she still sailed. Then it happened, after the plunder 8 of the summer palace of the Emperor of China, that a merchant brought her a very old blue jar. The moment she set eyes on it she gave a terrible shriek 9. "There it is!" she cried. "I have found it at last. This is the true blue. Oh, how light it makes one. Oh, it is as fresh as a breeze, as deep as a deep secret, as full as I say not what." With trembling hands, she held the jar to her bosom 10, and sat for six hours sunk in contemplation of it.

一年又一年过去，老爵士作古了，海伦娜也变成失聪的老太太，却未曾停止航行。大清帝国的颐和园被入侵洗劫后，有位商人给她带来了一个古老的青瓷罐。一看到它海琳娜就发出一声可怕的尖叫：“就是它！”她哭喊着：“我总算找到了！这是真正的蓝！瞧，它真让人晕眩！天啊，它清新得像一阵柔美的微风，又深邃得好如一个玄妙的秘密，还圆润得像我说过的什么来着？”海琳娜双手颤颤巍巍，将瓷罐捧入怀里，静静凝思着，六个小时就这么过去了。

9. Then she said to her doctor and her lady-companion: "Now I can die. And when I am dead you will cut out my heart and lay it in the blue jar. For then everything will be as it was then. All shall be blue around me, and in the midst of the blue world my heart will be innocent and free, and will beat gently, like a wake that sings, like the drops that fall from an oar 11 blade." A little later she asked them: "Is it not a sweet thing to think that, if only you have patience, all that has ever been, will come back to you?" Shortly afterwards the old lady died.

其后她对私人医生和女伴说：“现在我可以死去了。到时请把我的心取出来，安放在这个青瓷罐里，那样一切都回到最初的模样。我的世界会化作蓝色，在这个纯蓝天地的最中心，我的心纯洁而自由，还会温柔地跳动，像轮船航海的尾波轻轻哼唱，像桨叶划动的水滴盈盈滑落。”一小会儿后她问到：“相信只要怀着耐心，一切美好都能重现——这不是一件很幸福的事吗？” 不久之后，老太太离开了人世。