【连载】《美食、祈祷和恋爱》至86节_派派后花园

用户中心 游戏论坛 社区服务
发帖 回复
倒序阅读 最近浏览的帖子最近浏览的版块
« 返回列表
阅读：9419 回复：49

[Novel] 【连载】《美食、祈祷和恋爱》至86节

 刷新数据 楼层直达
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 20楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 24 (47):努力学习意大利语


I am learning about twenty new Italian words a day. I'm always studying, flipping through myindex cards while I walk around the city, dodging local pedestrians. Where am I getting the brain space to store these words? I'm hoping that maybe my mind has decided to clear out some oldnegative thoughts and sad memories and replace them with these shiny new words.
我每天新学二十个左右的意大利字。我总是在学习；在城里漫步时，一边翻阅我的单字卡，闪避街头行人。我的脑子怎么有储存这些生字的空间？或许我内心已决定清除旧有的负面想法和哀伤回忆，用这些闪亮的新字眼取而代之。


I work hard at Italian, but I keep hoping it will one day just be revealed to me, whole, perfect. One day I will open my mouth and be magically fluent. Then I will be a real Italian girl, instead of a total American who still can't hear someone call across the street to his friend Marco without wanting instinctively to yell back "Polo!" I wish that Italian would simply take up residence within me, but there are so many glitches in this language. Like, why are the Italian words for "tree" and "hotel" (albero vs. albergo) so very similar? This causes me to keep accidentally telling people that I grew up on "a Christmas hotel farm" instead of the more accurate and slightly less surrealdescription: "Christmas tree farm." And then there are words with double or even triple meanings. For instance: tasso. Which can mean either interest rate, badger, or yew tree. Depending on the context, I suppose. Most upsetting to me is when I stumble on Italian words that are actually—I hate to say it—ugly. I take this as almost a personal affront. I'm sorry, but I didn't come all the way to Italy to learn how to say a word like schermo (screen).
我用功学习意大利语，但我不断希望有一天意大利语能完整而完美地展现给我。让我有一天张开嘴巴时口若悬河。那时我将是一位道地的意大利女子，而不是一个听见有人在对街叫朋友“马可”的时候，直觉想回喊“波罗”的彻底美国人。我希望意大利语能在我内心定居，可是这语言有这么多变化，比方，为什么“树”（albero）和“旅馆”（albergo）的意大利用词如此相似？这使我不断在无意中告诉他人，我在“圣诞旅馆农场”长大，而不是较为精确、较不超现实的描述：“圣诞树农场”。还有些用词具有双重、甚至三重含意。譬如，“tasso”的意思可以是利率、獾或紫杉。我想得视内文而定。对我来说最惹人烦的，是碰上——我很不情愿这么说——很难听的用词。我几乎把这当做一种个人的侮辱。很抱歉，我一路来到意大利，不是为了学怎么念“schermo”（荧幕 ）。


Still, overall it's so worthwhile. It's mostly a pure pleasure. Giovanni and I have such a good time teaching each other idioms in English and Italian. We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, "I've been there." This was unclear to him at first—I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
话虽如此，整体来说却很值得。大半是一种纯粹的快乐。乔凡尼和我教给彼此英语和意大利语惯用语时，度过十分愉快的时光。有一天傍晚，我们说起尝试安慰悲苦之人时所用的短语。我告诉他，在英语中，我们时而说：“我到过那里。”（I'have been there.）一开始他并不懂——“我到过哪里”？但我解释说，悲痛有时宛如一个特定地点，时间地图上的一个坐标。当你站在悲伤之林，你无法想象自己走出林子，去到某个更好的地方。但若有人告诉你，他们自己曾站在相同的地方，而今已走向新的生活，这有时会带来希望。


"So sadness is a place?" Giovanni asked.
“所以悲伤是一个地方？”乔凡尼问道。


"Sometimes people live there for years," I said.
“有时，人们在那儿居住多年。”我说。


In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means "I have experienced that on my own skin." Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you're going through.
乔凡尼回过来告诉我，意大利人表示同情的时，意思是“我的皮肤领教过”。其意味，我曾受过这样的伤或留下这样的疤，我完全清楚你内心的挣扎。


So far, though, my favorite thing to say in all of Italian is a simple, common word:
不过，到目前为止，我最喜欢说的意大利语是一个简单平常的用词：


Attraversiamo.
Attraversiamo。


It means, "Let's cross over." Friends say it to each other constantly when they're walking down the sidewalk and have decided it's time to switch to the other side of the street. Which is to say, this is literally a pedestrian word. Nothing special about it. Still, for some reason, it goes right through me. The first time Giovanni said it to me, we were walking near the Colosseum. I suddenly heard him speak that beautiful word, and I stopped dead, demanding, "What does that mean? What did you just say?"
意思是“我们过街吧！”当朋友走在人行道上、决定该换到对街的时候，经常对彼此说这句话。也就是说，基本上这是行人用词，没什么特别之处。 但不知何故，它就是深得我心。乔凡尼头一次跟我 说起这个用词时，我们正走在竞技场附近。我忽然听见他讲出这个好听的字眼，我突然站住，要求道：“这字是什么意思？你刚刚说什么？”


"Attraversiamo."
“Attraversiamo。”


He couldn't understand why I liked it so much. Let's cross the street? But to my ear, it's the perfect combination of Italian sounds. The wistful ah of introduction, the rolling trill, thesoothing s, that lingering "ee-ah-moh" combo at the end. I love this word. I say it all the time now. I invent any excuse to say it. It's making Sofie nuts. Let's cross over! Let's cross over! I'mconstantly dragging her back and forth across the crazy traffic of Rome. I'm going to get us both killed with this word.
他不明白我为何这么喜欢这个词。我们过街吧？在我听来，它完美地结合了意大利语音。起头是哀 怨的“ah”，途经颤动、舒缓的“s”，结尾结合了萦回不散的“依阿莫”。我爱这字。现在我一天到晚讲它。我为了讲它而编造借口，这让苏菲抓狂。我们过街吧！我们过街吧！我经常拉着她来回穿越罗马疯狂的车潮。这字会让我俩丢了小命。


Giovanni's favorite word in English is half-assed.
乔凡尼最爱的英文字“half-assed”（不称职）。


Luca Spaghetti's is surrender.
Eat, Pray, Love
卢卡则是“surrender”（投降）。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 21楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 25 (48):徘徊在意大利街头



There's a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the great twenty-first-century European metropolis. Will it be London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed, exuding an air like: Hey—do whatever you want, but I'm still Rome. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this town, so grounded and rounded, soamused and monumental, knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.
近来整个欧洲正在进行某种权力斗争。几个城市彼此竞争，看谁将成为21世纪的欧洲最大都会。是伦敦？巴黎？柏林？苏黎世？或是成立不久的欧盟中心布鲁塞尔？每一个都力求在文化、建筑、政治、财政方面胜过对方。然而对于罗马而言，可说尚未费心加入地位之争。罗马不去竞争。罗马只是冷眼旁观这些小题大做，全然无动于衷，表现出一副“随你们做什么吧，我仍是罗马”的姿态。这城市的从容自信令我感动，如此稳固而完美，如此有趣而不朽，知道自己被牢牢地握在历史之掌中。我年老的时候也想和罗马一样。


I take myself on a six-hour walk through town today. This is easy to do, especially if you stop frequently to fuel up on espresso and pastries. I start at my apartment door, then wanderthrough the cosmopolitan shopping center that is my neighborhood. (Though I wouldn't exactly call this a neighborhood, not in the traditional sense. I mean, if it is a neighborhood, then my neighbors are those just-plain-regular-folk with names like the Valentinos, the Guccis and the Armanis.) This has always been an upscale district. Rubens, Tennyson, Stendhal, Balzac, Liszt, Wagner, Thackeray, Byron, Keats—they all stayed here.
今天我在城里走了六小时的路。这并不难，尤其如果你不时停下来喝杯浓咖啡，吃些糕点。我从公寓门口出发，而后漫步于邻近街坊的都市商业区。（尽管我不太精确地把它叫作传统意义上的街坊，但此处的街坊邻居，可都是那些名叫华伦天奴、古琦、乔治•阿玛尼的凡夫俗子。这儿始终是高级区，鲁本斯（Rubens）、丁尼生（Tennyson）、司汤达、巴尔扎克、李斯特、瓦格纳（Wagner）、萨克莱、拜伦、济慈——他们都待过这里。


I live in what they used to call "The English Ghetto," where all the posh aristocrats rested on their European grand tours. One London touring club was actually called "The Society of Dilettanti"—imagine advertising that you're a dilettante! Oh, the glorious shamelessness of it . . .
我住的地区从前叫“英国区”，即上流贵族在欧洲长 途旅行期间的休憩处。有个伦敦旅游俱乐部竟然叫作“半瓶醋社团 ”（The  Society of Dilettanti）——真想不到，拿你是半瓶醋做广告宣传！喔，脸皮厚得如此理直气壮……


I walk over to the Piazza del Popolo, with its grand arch, carved by Bernini in honor of the historic visit of Queen Christina of Sweden (who was really one of history's neutron bombs. Here's how my Swedish friend Sofie describes the great queen: "She could ride, she could hunt, she was a scholar, she became a Catholic and it was a huge scandal. Some say she was a man, but at least she was probably a lesbian. She dressed in pants, she went on archaeological excavations, she collected art and she refused to leave an heir"). Next to the arch is a church where you can walk in for free and see two paintings by Caravaggio depicting the martyrdom of Saint Peter and theconversion of Saint Paul (so overcome by grace that he has fallen to the ground in holyrapture; not even his horse can believe it). Those Caravaggio paintings always make me feel weepy and overwhelmed, but I cheer myself up by moving to the other side of the church and enjoying a fresco which features the happiest, goofiest, giggliest little baby Jesus in all of Rome.
我走到人民广场去，壮丽的拱门是贝尔尼尼（Bernini）的雕塑作品，为了纪念瑞典女皇克莉丝汀的历史性访问（她确实是历史上的一名秀异人物。我的瑞典朋友苏菲如此描述这位伟大的女皇“她能骑马打猎，是位学者；她改信天主教，成了一大丑闻。有人说她是男人，但至少她可能是女同志 。她穿长裤，从事遗址发掘工作，收藏艺术 ，拒绝留下继承人。”）拱门旁边有一所教堂，可免费进入参观卡拉瓦乔（Caravaggio）的两幅画作，其描绘着圣彼得殉道以及圣保罗皈依场景（蒙受恩典的圣保罗在神圣狂喜中扑倒在地，连他的马也无法置信）。卡拉瓦乔的画作向来使我感动得想哭。为了让自己快乐起来，于是我走到教堂另一边，去欣赏一幅壁画，画中是全罗马最快乐、最傻头傻脑、笑得最开心的小婴孩耶稣。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 22楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 25 (49):游走于罗马的名胜古迹




I start walking south again. I pass the Palazzo Borghese, a building that has known many famous tenants, including Pauline, Napoleon's scandalous sister, who kept untold numbers of lovers there. She also liked to use her maids as footstools. (One always hopes that one has read this sentencewrong in one's Companion Guide to Rome, but, no—it is accurate. Pauline also liked to be carried to her bath, we are told, by "a giant Negro.") Then I stroll along the banks of the great, swampy,rural-looking Tiber, all the way down to the Tiber Island, which is one of my favorite quiet places in Rome. This island has always been associated with healing. A Temple of Aesculapius was built there after a plague in 291 BC; in the Middle Ages a hospital was constructed there by a group of monks called the Fatebene-fratelli (which can groovily be translated as "The Do-Good Brothers"); and there is a hospital on the island even to this day.
我开始往南持续走去。我经过博盖塞宫，许多名人曾住过此地，包括拿破仑恶名远播的妹妹宝琳（Pauline），她不知让多少情人住过这里。她还喜欢把她的侍女当脚凳用。（你始终希望自己误读《罗马随身指南》当中这句话，然而这却是千真万确的事。我们还得知，宝琳喜欢让“一名高壮的黑人”抱去洗浴。）而后我沿着宽大、泥泞、乡村风情的台伯河沿岸漫步，一路走到台伯岛（Tiber Island），这儿是我在罗马最喜爱的僻静地区之一。这座岛向来与“治愈”的意象相连在一起。公元前291年，在一场瘟疫过后，这儿盖了一座医神殿；中世纪有一群名叫“行善弟兄”的修士在此处盖医院；即使到今天，这座岛上仍有一家医院。


I cross over the river to Trastevere—the neighborhood that claims to be inhabited by the truest Romans, the workers, the guys who have, over the centuries, built all the monuments on the other side of the Tiber. I eat my lunch in a quiet trattoria here, and I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in Trastevere is ever going to stop you from lingering over your meal if that's what you would like to do. I order an assortment of bruschette, some spaghetti cacio e pepe (that simple Roman specialty of pasta served with cheese and pepper) and then a small roast chicken, which I end up sharing with the stray dog who has been watching me eat my lunch the way only a stray dog can.
我过河到达特拉斯特维雷区（Trastevere）——此区声称是原汁原味的罗马人所居住，而且是在台伯河对岸建造所有历史建筑的工人聚居的地方。我在一家安静的小餐馆吃午饭，拖拖拉拉地吃饭喝酒，持续数个小时，因为在特拉斯特维雷，没有人会阻止你慢吞吞吃饭，只要你自己喜欢。我点了各式“bruschette（面包）“spaghetti cacio e pepe”（简单的罗马特色菜，添加起司与胡椒），以及一小只烤鸡。烤鸡最后我和一条盯着我吃午饭的野狗分享了。


Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto, a sorely tearful place that survived for centuries until it was emptied by the Nazis. I head back north, past the Piazza Navona with its mammoth fountain honoring the four great rivers of Planet Earth (proudly, if not totallyaccurately, including the sluggish Tiber in that list). Then I go have a look at the Pantheon. I try to look at the Pantheon every chance I get, since I am here in Rome after all, and an old proverbsays that anyone who goes to Rome without seeing the Pantheon "goes and comes back an ass."
而后我过桥往回走，经过犹太区，这历尽沧桑的地方存留了数个世纪，直到被纳粹扫除尽净。我朝北走回去，经过纳佛那广场（Piazza  Navona）；广场上的巨大喷泉是为了纪念地球上的四条大河（他们引以为傲地——尽管不完全正确——将台伯河列入名单之中）。接着我去观看万神殿。我一有机会就去看万神殿，毕竟我就在罗马；有句古老谚语说，去罗马不看万神殿，“回去的时候就是蠢驴”。


On my way back home I take a little detour and stop at the address in Rome I find most strangely affecting—the Augusteum. This big, round, ruined pile of brick started life as a glorious mausoleum, built by Octavian Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his family for all of eternity. It must have been impossible for the emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus-worshipping empire. How could he possibly have foreseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aqueducts destroyed by barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would empty of citizens, and it would take almost twenty centuries before Rome ever recovered the population she had boasted during her height of glory?
回家途中，我绕道而行，造访我认为罗马最令人出奇感动的地点——奥古斯都庙。这座砖头堆建的巨大圆形遗迹，最早是壮观的陵墓，由屋大维•奥古斯都所建，用以永生永世存放他的遗骨以及他的家族的遗骸。这位皇帝肯定不曾想象过罗马除了崇拜奥古斯都的强大帝国外，会有其他面目的存在。他怎可能预见帝国的瓦解？或预知蛮族摧毁罗马所有的水道桥，条条大道皆成废墟，市民净空，几乎在经过20个世纪后，这座城市才得以恢复其盛世时期的人口？
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 23楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 25 (50):走进奥古斯都庙




Augustus's mausoleum fell to ruins and thieves during the Dark Ages. Somebody stole the emperor's ashes—no telling who. By the twelfth century, though, the monument had beenrenovated into a fortress for the powerful Colonna family, to protect them from assaults by various warring princes. Then the Augusteum was transformed somehow into a vineyard, then aRenaissance garden, then a bullring (we're in the eighteenth century now), then a fireworksdepository, then a concert hall. In the 1930s, Mussolini seized the property and restored it down to its classical foundations, so that it could someday be the final resting place for his remains. (Again, it must have been impossible back then to imagine that Rome could ever be anything but a Mussolini-worshipping empire.) Of course, Mussolini's fascist dream did not last, nor did he get the imperial burial he'd anticipated.
奥古斯都的陵墓在黑暗时代惨遭毁坏盗窃。有人偷走皇帝的骨灰——盗者何人，并未可知。12世纪时，这座遗迹经过翻修，成为科洛纳（Colonna）望族的堡垒，抵御各交战诸侯的袭击。而后奥古斯都庙不知何故，变成了葡萄园，接着成为文艺复兴庭园，接着是斗牛场（此时是19世纪），而后成了烟火仓库，之后是演奏厅。20世纪30年代被墨索里尼占为己有，将之整个连同古代地基都修复起来，以便成为他的最后安息地（当时肯定同样难以想象，罗马除了崇拜墨索里尼的帝国之外会有其他面目。）当然，墨索里尼的法西斯美梦未能持久，也未能得到他期待的帝王安葬规模。


Today the Augusteum is one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome, buried deep in the ground. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. (One inch a year is the general rule ofthumb for the accumulation of time's debris.) Traffic above the monument spins in a hecticcircle, and nobody ever goes down there—from what I can tell—except to use the place as a public bathroom. But the building still exists, holding its Roman ground with dignity, waiting for its next incarnation.
今日的奥古斯都庙是罗马最寂静的地方之一， 深埋在土中。数世纪以来，罗马城在它周围成长。（时间瓦砾的累积，大致一年三厘米。）遗迹上方车水马龙，不见任何人走下来——就我所见——除了作为公共厕所之用。但建筑物依然存在，坚守其罗马的立场，等候下一个轮回。


I find the endurance of the Augusteum so reassuring, that this structure has had such anerratic career, yet always adjusted to the particular wildness of the times. To me, the Augusteum is like a person who's led a totally crazy life—who maybe started out as a housewife, then unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national politics—yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval.
奥古斯都庙的耐力与任性使我觉得安心，此建筑一生多舛，却始终适应着时代的狂风暴雨。对我而言，奥古斯都庙好比一个毕生生活动荡的人——或许一开始是家庭主妇，而后意外成了寡妇，而后靠跳扇子舞赚钱谋生，最后不知怎么当上外太空第一位女牙医，最后尝试涉足国内政治——然而却能 在经历每次的变动后毫发无伤。


I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could haveanticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough—but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. Eat, Pray, Love
我看着奥古斯都庙，我想，或许我的生活毕竟不是真的那么混乱不堪。混乱的是这个世界，给我们带来无人能够预期的变化。奥古斯都庙告诫我， 切勿死守我是什么人、我代表什么、我属于谁，或我曾想让自己有什么表现的固执想法。昨天我对某人来说或许是壮丽的古迹，这也是真的——但明天我可能成为烟火仓库。即使在这座“永恒之城”中，沉默的奥古斯都庙告诉我，一个人始终必须为动荡骚乱的变化作好准备。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 24楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 26 (51):遗失的箱子



I had shipped ahead a box of books to myself, right before I left New York to move to Italy. The box was guaranteed to arrive at my Roman apartment within four to six days, but I think the Italian post office must have misread that instruction as "forty-six days," for two months have passed now, and I have seen no sign of my box. My Italian friends tell me to put the box out of my mind completely. They say that the box may arrive or it may not arrive, but such things are out of our hands.
在我离开纽约、移居意大利之前，我事先运去一箱书给自己。这箱书担保四至六天内抵达我的罗马公寓，但我想意大利邮局肯定把指示误解成“四十六天”，因为两个月过去了，却不见箱子的踪影。 我的意大利朋友告诉我，把箱子一事抛诸脑后吧。 他们说箱子或许会寄达或许不会寄达，这类事情不在你的掌控之中。


"Did someone maybe steal it?" I ask Luca Spaghetti. "Did the post office lose it?"
“或许被人偷了？”我问卢卡“邮局搞丢了？”


He covers his eyes. "Don't ask these questions," he says. "You'll only make yourself upset."
他蒙住眼睛。“别问这些问题，”他说，“只会让自己心烦罢了。”


The mystery of my missing box prompts a long discussion one night between me, my American friend Maria and her husband, Giulio. Maria thinks that in a civilized society one should be able to rely on such things as the post office delivering one's mail in a prompt manner, but Giulio begs to differ. He submits that the post office belongs not to man, but to the fates, and that delivery of mail is not something anybody can guarantee. Maria, annoyed, says this is only furtherevidence of the Protestant-Catholic divide. This divide is best proven, she says, by the fact that Italians—including her own husband—can never make plans for the future, not even a week in advance. If you ask a Protestant from the American Midwest to commit to a dinner date next week, that Protestant, believing that she is the captain of her own destiny, will say, "Thursday night works fine for me." But if you ask a Catholic from Calabria to make the same commitment, he will only shrug, turn his eyes to God, and ask, "How can any of us know whether we will be free for dinner next Thursday night, given that everything is in God's hands and none of us can know our fate?"
关于我遗失箱子之谜，有天晚上引发了我、我的美国朋友玛莉亚和她先生朱利欧之间的长篇议论。玛莉亚认为在一个文明社会，你理当能仰赖邮局尽速递送邮件这类事情，朱利欧则不以为然。他辩称，邮局不属于人，而是属于命运，邮件的递送不是任何人能担保的事情。玛莉亚颇是生气，她说这只是进一步证明新教徒和天主教徒的分歧。她说，此一分歧的最佳明证是意大利人——包括她自己的丈夫在内——永远无法做未来的计划，即使仅仅是一个礼拜后的事情。如果你请求美国中西部的新教徒答应下礼拜选一天吃晚饭，相信自己是自身命运主宰的新教徒会说：“周四晚上我方便。”但如果你请求卡拉布里亚（Calabria）的天主教徒做出相同承诺，他只会耸耸肩，抬头仰望上帝，问道：“我们怎能知道下周四晚间是否有空一起吃饭？既然一切都在上帝掌控中，我们谁也不会晓得自己的命运。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 25楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 26 (52):真的丢了,我的箱子



Still, I go to the post office a few times to try to track down my box, to no avail. The Roman postal employee is not at all happy to have her phone call to her boyfriend interrupted by mypresence. And my Italian—which has been getting better, honestly—fails me in such stressfulcircumstances. As I try to speak logically about my missing box of books, the woman looks at me like I'm blowing spit bubbles.
尽管如此，我仍去了邮局几次，试图追踪我的箱子，却徒劳无功。那名罗马邮局员工很不高兴和男朋友的通话被我的出现打断。而我的意大利语——已经愈来愈好，说老实话——在这种紧急状况下辜负了我。我尝试条理分明地说明遗失一箱书，这女人看着我的样子就像我在吹泡泡。


"Maybe it will be here next week?" I ask her in Italian.
“也许下礼拜会寄到这儿？”我用意大利语问她。


She shrugs: "Magari."
她耸肩说：“Magari。”


Another untranslatable bit of Italian slang, meaning something between "hopefully" and "in your dreams, sucker."
又是一个无从翻译的意大利俚语，意思介于“但愿如此”和“做你的白日梦，蠢蛋”之间。


Ah, maybe it's for the best. I can't even remember now what books I'd packed in the box in the first place. Surely it was some stuff I thought I should study, if I were to truly understand Italy. I'd packed that box full of all sorts of due-diligence research material about Rome that just seems unimportant now that I'm here. I think I even loaded the complete unabridged text of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire into that box. Maybe I'm happier without it, after all. Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?
Eat, Pray, Love
呵，或许这是最好的结果。我现在甚至记不起一开始在箱子里装了哪些书。肯定是我认为自己若想真正了解意大利，就该读的一些东西。我在箱子里装满各式各样应当用功研读的罗马研究资料，如今既已身在此地，这些东西似乎不再重要。我想我甚至把整册爱德华•吉本（Edward  Gibbon）的《罗马帝国衰亡史》的完整版装进箱子里。或许没有它，我会比较快乐。毕竟人生如此短暂，我果真想把我在世间余下的九十分之一的日子，花在阅读吉本上吗？
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 26楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 27 (53):我羡慕行者



I met a young Australian girl last week who was backpacking through Europe for the first time in her life. I gave her directions to the train station. She was heading up to Slovenia, just to checkit out. When I heard her plans, I was stricken with such a dumb spasm of jealousy, thinking, I want to go to Slovenia! How come I never get to travel anywhere?
上个星期我遇上一位澳洲姑娘，背着背包从事她有生以来的头一次欧洲之旅。我为她指点去火车站的路。她正要前往斯洛文尼亚游览。我听到她谈及她的计划时，心中一阵妒忌，心想：“我也想去斯洛文尼亚！为什么我从没去任何地方旅行？”


Now, to the innocent eye it might appear that I already am traveling. And longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness. It's kind of like fantasizing about having sex with your favorite movie star while you're having sex with your other favorite movie star. But the fact that this girl asked directions from me (clearly, in her mind, a civilian) suggests that I am not technically traveling in Rome, but living here. However temporary it may be, I am a civilian. When I ran into the girl, in fact, I was just on my way to pay my electricity bill, which is not something travelers worry about. Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies, and something about meeting this Australian girl on her way to Slovenia just gave me such a jones to hit the road.
以简单的眼光来看，我已正在旅行。已经在旅行的时候渴望旅行，我承认是一种贪婪的疯狂行为。就像和你爱慕的电影明星做爱的同时，又幻想和另一个你爱慕的电影明星做爱。但这名女孩向我问路（显然，在她心目中，我是罗马市民）的事实说明，实际上我并非在罗马旅行，而是在罗马定居。无论时间多么短暂，我都是市民了。事实上，碰上这位姑娘时，我正要去付电费，这可不是旅人担心的事情“在某地旅行”的精力和“在某地定居”的精力，基本上是不同的精力，遇上这位即将前往斯洛文尼亚的姑娘，刺激了我上路的瘾头。


And that's why I called my friend Sofie and said, "Let's go down to Naples for the day and eat some pizza!"
于是我打电话给苏菲，说：“我们今天往南去那不勒斯吃比萨饼吧。”


Immediately, just a few hours later, we are on the train, and then—like magic—we are there. I instantly love Naples. Wild, raucous, noisy, dirty, balls-out Naples. An anthill inside a rabbit warren, with all the exoticism of a Middle Eastern bazaar and a touch of New Orleans voodoo. A tripped-out, dangerous and cheerful nuthouse. My friend Wade came to Naples in the 1970s and was mugged . . . in a museum. The city is all decorated with the laundry that hangs from every window and dangles across every street; everybody's fresh-washed undershirts and brassieres flapping in the wind like Tibetan prayer flags. There is not a street in Naples in which some tough little kid in shorts and mismatched socks is not screaming up from the sidewalk to some other tough little kid on a rooftop nearby. Nor is there a building in this town that doesn't have at least one crooked old woman seated at her window, peering suspiciously down at the activity below.
才几个小时后，我们立即搭上火车，而后——像变魔术似的——我们到了那不勒斯。我立即爱上那不勒斯。狂放、刺耳、嘈杂、肮脏、享乐的那不勒斯。兔子窝里的蚁冢，混杂中东市集的异国情调，以及新奥尔良的巫毒魅力。古怪、危险、兴高采烈的疯人院。我的朋友伟德在20世纪70年代到过那不勒斯，遭人袭击抢劫……在博物馆里。洗好的衣物晾在每一扇窗口，悬荡在每一条街上，妆点这座城市；大家刚刚洗好的内衣内裤随风飘扬，犹如西藏的经幡。那不勒斯的每条街都看得见身穿短裤、袜子不相配的狠小子，向人行道上朝邻近屋顶的另一个狠小子高声叫喊。每一栋建筑物至少有一位佝偻老妇坐在窗边，狐疑地凝视底下进行的活动。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 27楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 27 (54):那不勒斯的披萨




The people here are so insanely psyched to be from Naples, and why shouldn't they be? This is a city that gave the world pizza and ice cream. The Neapolitan women in particular are such a gang of tough-voiced, loud-mouthed, generous, nosy dames, all bossy and annoyed and right up in your face and just trying to friggin' help you for chrissake, you dope—why they gotta do everything around here? The accent in Naples is like a friendly cuff on the ear. It's like walking through a city of short-order cooks, everybody hollering at the same time. They still have their own dialect here, and an ever-changing liquid dictionary of local slang, but somehow I find that the Neapolitans are the easiest people for me to understand in Italy. Why? Because they want you to understand, damn it. They talk loud and emphatically, and if you can't understand what they're actually saying out of their mouths, you can usually pick up the inference from thegesture. Like that punk little grammar-school girl on the back of her older cousin's motorbike, who flipped me the finger and a charming smile as she drove by, just to make me understand, "Hey, no hard feelings, lady. But I'm only seven, and I can already tell you're a complete moron, but that's cool—I think you're halfway OK despite yourself and I kinda like your dumb-ass face. We both know you would love to be me, but sorry—you can't. Anyhow, here's my middle finger, enjoy your stay in Naples, and ciao!"
这里的人对自己的那不勒斯出身大感兴奋，这也难怪。这城市把比萨饼和冰淇淋给了全世界。那不勒斯的女人尤其是一群粗声粗气、满嘴粗话、落落大方、好管闲事的女士，一副专横、气恼的架子，看在上帝的面子上，拼命要帮你这白痴的忙。那不勒斯口音就像友善的耳铐。就像走在快餐厨子的城市中，大家在同一时刻大喊大叫。他们这儿仍有自己的方言，还有千变万化的当地俚语，但不知怎么的，我发现那不勒斯人对我而言是我在意大利最容易了解的人。原因为何？因为他们就是他妈的要你了解！他们说话大声，语气强烈，假使不了解他们嘴里讲出来的话，通常也能从他们的手势推断三分。比方那名坐在表哥摩托车后座的文法学校庞克小姑娘，从我身边呼啸而过的时候，朝我比手指，露出迷人的笑容，只为了让我明了：“别埋怨吧，女士。我才七岁呢，但我已经可以告诉你，你是大傻瓜，不过这很酷——我想你还算可以，我也还算喜欢你的土包子脸。我们俩都知道你很想换作我，可是抱歉——你没有办法。反正，瞧瞧我的中指吧，希望你在那不勒斯玩得愉快，再会啦！”


As in every public space in Italy, there are always boys, teenagers and grown men playing soccer, but here in Naples there's something extra, too. For instance, today I found kids—I mean, a group of eight-year-old boys—who had gathered up some old chicken crates to create makeshift chairs and a table, and they were playing poker in the piazza with such intensity I feared one of them might get shot.
就像在意大利所有的公共场所，始终看得见男孩、青少年、成年男子踢足球，而那不勒斯却还有另外的娱乐。比方今天我看见孩子们——我是说，一群八岁男孩——收集几个旧鸡笼，充当桌椅，在广场上玩扑克牌，其专注程度使我害怕他们有人会中弹身亡。


Giovanni and Dario, my Tandem Exchange twins, are originally from Naples. I cannot picture it. I cannot imagine shy, studious, sympathetic Giovanni as a young boy amongst this—and I don't use the word lightly—mob. But he is Neapolitan, no question about it, because before I left Rome he gave me the name of a pizzeria in Naples that I had to try, because, Giovanni informed me, it sold the best pizza in Naples. I found this a wildly exciting prospect, given that the best pizza in Italy is from Naples, and the best pizza in the world is from Italy, which means that this pizzeria must offer . . . I'm almost too superstitious to say it . . . the best pizza in the world? Giovanni passed along the name of the place with such seriousness and intensity, I almost felt I was being inducted into a secret society. He pressed the address into the palm of my hand and said, in gravest confidence, "Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me later and tell me that you did."
我的串连交流双胞胎乔凡尼和达里奥出身于那不勒斯。这完全无法想象。我无法想象害羞、勤奋、和善的乔凡尼，在少年时代属于这个——我用这词儿可一点也不夸张——匪帮。但他确实是那不勒斯人，因为在我离开罗马前，他给了我那不勒斯一家比萨饼店的名字，要我非去尝尝不可。乔凡尼告知我，因为这家店卖的比萨饼在那不勒斯无出其右。这使我十二万分期待，鉴于意大利最好的比萨饼来自那不勒斯，而全世界最好的比萨饼来自意大利，这意味着这家比萨饼店肯定提供……我几乎迷信得说不出来……“全世界最好的比萨饼？”乔凡尼递店名给我时，态度严肃热烈，我几乎觉得自己正闯进一个秘密会社。他把住址塞入我手中，悄悄地说：“请去这家比萨饼店。点玛格丽特比萨加双份起司。如果你去那不勒斯没吃这种比萨，请骗我说你去吃了。”


So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria da Michele, and these pies we have just ordered—one for each of us—are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"
于是苏菲和我来到米凯尔比萨店（Pizzeria da）我们刚刚点的一人一份的饼，使我们为之疯狂。事实上，我对这份比萨饼的爱使我热昏了头，我相信我的比萨饼也回敬了我的爱。我和这份比萨建立了关系，几乎是一场恋情。同时，苏菲简直吃得“涕泗纵横”，发生某种形而上的危机，她频频向我探问“斯德哥尔摩干嘛还费心做比萨？我们在斯德哥尔摩干嘛费心吃东西？”
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 28楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 27 (55):神奇的披萨饼皮




Pizzeria da Michele is a small place with only two rooms and one nonstop oven. It's about a fifteen-minute walk from the train station in the rain, don't even worry about it, just go. You need to get there fairly early in the day because sometimes they run out of dough, which will break your heart. By 1:00 PM, the streets outside the pizzeria have become jammed with Neapolitans trying to get into the place, shoving for access like they're trying to get space on a lifeboat. There's not amenu. They have only two varieties of pizza here—regular and extra cheese. None of this new age southern California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle. The dough, it takes me half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I ever tried. It's soft and chewy and yielding, but incredibly thin. I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise. On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one sprig of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings a contact high of glamour to everyone around her. It's technically impossible to eat this thing, of course. You try to take a bite off your slice and the gummy crust folds, and the hot cheese runs away like topsoilin a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it.
米凯尔比萨店地方不大，仅两个房间和一个烘烤不停的烤炉。在雨中从火车站走去，约十五分钟的路程，根本连担心也不用担心，走就是了。你得及早到那儿，因为有时他们用完面皮，会使你伤心欲绝。午后一点，比萨店外头的街道已挤满想进店里的那不勒斯人，推推搡搡，仿佛尝试挤上救生船。店里没有菜单。这里的比萨饼只有两种——普通口味和双份起司，没有所谓新时代南加州的橄榄加番茄干的梦幻比萨。进餐中途，我才琢磨出面皮尝起来不像我吃过的任何比萨面皮，倒像是印度面包（nan），柔软耐嚼，却特别薄。我一向认为谈到比萨饼皮，我们一生只有两种选择——薄而脆，或者厚而软。怎知这世上有一种薄而软的饼皮？神圣的上帝！薄、软、韧、黏、好吃、耐嚼、咸味的比萨天堂。最上面放的甜味番茄酱汁，让新鲜起司溶解时溢出泡沫乳脂；中央的一枝罗勒叶，让香草芬芳充满整个比萨，就像闪闪发光的电影明星，在派对中给周围每个人带来迷人陶醉的感觉。就技术而言，吃这东西当然不可能。你试着咬一口软黏的脆褶皮，热起司排山倒海般地散开，把你和周围的一切弄得一团糟，不过，就随遇而安吧。


The guys who make this miracle happen are shoveling the pizzas in and out of the wood burning oven, looking for all the world like the boilermen in the belly of a great ship who shovel coal into the raging furnaces. Their sleeves are rolled up over their sweaty forearms, their faces red withexertion, one eye squinted against the heat of the fire and a cigarette dangling from the lips. Sofie and I each order another pie—another whole pizza each—and Sofie tries to pull herself together, but really, the pizza is so good we can barely cope.
创造这项奇迹的人，把比萨饼从燃烧木头的烤炉中铲进铲出，酷似在船腹工作的锅炉工，把煤炭铲入熊熊燃烧的火炉里。他们的袖子卷在流汗的前臂，脸部因费劲而发红，嘴里叼着香烟，眯着一只眼抵挡炉子的高温。苏菲和我每人又点了一份饼——每个人又吃了一整个比萨——苏菲尝试控制自己，但比萨实在太棒，几乎使我们无法应付。


A word about my body. I am gaining weight every day, of course. I am doing rude things to my body here in Italy, taking in such ghastly amounts of cheese and pasta and bread and wine and chocolate and pizza dough. (Elsewhere in Naples, I'd been told, you can actually get something called chocolate pizza. What kind of nonsense is that? I mean, later I did go find some, and it's delicious, but honestly—chocolate pizza?) I'm not exercising, I'm not eating enough fiber, I'm not taking any vitamins. In my real life, I have been known to eat organic goat's milk yoghurt sprinkled with wheat germ for breakfast. My real-life days are long gone. Back in America, my friend Susan is telling people I'm on a "No Carb Left Behind" tour. But my body is being such a good sport about all this. My body is turning a blind eye to my misdoings and my overindulgences, as if to say, "OK, kid, live it up, I recognize that this is just temporary. Let me know when your little experiment with pure pleasure is over, and I'll see what I can do about damage control."
顺带说说我的身体。我当然每天都在增加体重。在意大利，我粗鲁地对待自己的身体，消耗数量惊人的起司、面食、面包、美酒、巧克力和比萨饼。（有人告诉我，在那不勒斯另一个地方，竟吃得到所谓“巧克力比萨饼”。无聊透顶！我是说，我之后确实找到、吃到，很美味，只不过说实话——巧克力比萨？）我没运动，我没吃足够的纤维，我没吃维他命。现实生活中，我早餐吃的是撒了小麦胚芽的有机羊乳优格，不过我的现实生活早已远去。我在美国的朋友苏珊告诉大家，我正在从事“完全摄取碳水化合物”之旅。但我的身体却对这一切极富雅量。我的身体对于我的罪恶与放纵视而不见，仿佛在说：“没事，孩子，尽情地享受生活吧，我看得出这只是暂时的。让我知道你小纯粹快乐的小小试验何时结束，再看看如何采取防治损害措施。”


Still, when I look at myself in the mirror of the best pizzeria in Naples, I see a bright-eyed, clear-skinned, happy and healthy face. I haven't seen a face like that on me for a long time.
尽管如此，当我在那不勒斯最佳比萨店的镜子里睇见自己时，我看到一个眼神喜悦、气色明亮、快乐健康的脸蛋。我有好长一段时间没看见过这样的脸蛋了。


"Thank you," I whisper. Then Sofie and I run out in the rain to look for pastries. Eat, Pray, Love
“谢谢你。”我低声说。而后苏菲和我冒着雨跑出去找糕饼吃。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 29楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 28 (56):我想David了




It is this happiness, I suppose (which is really a few months old by now), that gets me to thinking upon my return to Rome that I need to do something about David. That maybe it's time for us to end our story forever. We were already separated, that was official, but there was still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday (maybe after my travels, maybe after a year apart) we could give things another try. We loved each other. That was never the question. It's just that we couldn't figure out how to stop making each other desperately, shriekingly, soul-punishinglymiserable.
这样的喜悦（事实上至今已有数个月之久），使我在返回罗马时，考虑该与大卫做个了断。或许该让我们的故事画上句点。我们已正式分开，却仍开着一扇希望之窗，期待有一天（或许在我的旅行过后，或许在分开一年后）我们能重新来过，我们彼此相爱。这从无疑问。只不过我们不明白如何不让对方痛苦得绝望、尖叫、痛彻心扉。


Last spring David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest: "What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together—in misery, but happy to not be apart."
上个春天，大卫为我们的苦难提出疯狂的解决方法，只不过有点半开玩笑：“如果我们承认我们关系恶劣，却硬着头皮撑下去，会有什么结果？如果我们承认我们让彼此发狂，我们一天到晚吵架，几乎不再做爱，却无法离开彼此而生活，于是应付下去，会有什么结果？然后我们可以白头偕老、共度一生——悲惨度日，但庆幸没分道扬镳。”


Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration.
我认真考虑过这项提议，由此可见这个与我共处十个月的男人让我爱得多痴狂。


The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to . . . stop trying to eat his soul.
我们脑海中的另一个解决办法，当然是我们其中一人可能改变。他可能变得更开明、更温柔，不再因为恐惧被爱他的人吞噬灵魂而退避三舍。或者我可能学会如何……不再尝试吞噬他的灵魂。


So many times I had wished with David that I could behave more like my mother does in her marriage—independent, strong, self-sufficient. A self-feeder. Able to exist without regular doses of romance or flattery from my solitary farmer of a father. Able to cheerfully plant gardens of daisies among the inexplicable stone walls of silence that my dad sometimes builds up around himself. My dad is quite simply my favorite person in the world, but he is a bit of an odd case. An ex-boyfriend of mine once described him this way: "Your father only has one foot on this earth. And really, really long legs . . ."
我时常希望和大卫在一起的时候，举止多像一点我母亲在婚姻中的独立、坚强、自主的态度，一个自给自足的人。无须从我那孤寂农人的父亲那儿定期服用浪漫或赞美，即可安然存活。她在我父亲有时给自己筑起的沉默之墙当中，仍能欢欢喜喜地栽种雏菊。我父亲是世界上我最喜爱的人，但他有点古怪。我的一个前男友曾如此描述过他：“你爹只有一只脚踩在地面上，而且腿很长很长……”


What I grew up watching in my household was a mother who would receive her husband's love and affection whenever he thought to offer it, but would then step aside and take care of herself whenever he drifted off into his own peculiar universe of low-grade oblivious neglect. This is how it looked to me, anyway, taking into account that nobody (and especially not the children) ever knows the secrets of a marriage. What I believed I grew up seeing was a mother who asked nothing of anybody. This was my mom, after all—a woman who had taught herself how to swim as an adolescent, alone in a cold Minnesota lake, with a book she'd borrowed from the local libraryentitled How to Swim. To my eye, there was nothing this woman could not do on her own.
在我成长的家，我看着母亲在她丈夫想到给予爱与感情的时候接受他的爱，在他沉浸于自己、罔顾一切的世界时，则避向一旁照顾自己。总之，这是我的看法，如果还考虑到没有人（尤其是小孩）知道婚姻的秘诀的话。我成长期间所看见的母亲，对任何人皆无所求。这毕竟是我的母亲——青春期的她，独自在明尼苏达的寒冷湖泊中自学游泳，带着她从当地图书馆借来的《学游泳》一书。在我看来，没有一件事是这女人无法独力完成的。


But then I'd had a revelatory conversation with my mother, not long before I'd left for Rome. She'd come into New York to have one last lunch with me, and she'd asked me frankly—breaking all the rules of communication in our family's history—what had happened between me and David. Further disregarding the Gilbert Family Standard Communications Rule-book, I actually told her. I told her everything. I told her how much I loved David, but how lonely and heartsick it made me to be with this person who was always disappearing from the room, from the bed, from theplanet.
然而，在我动身前往罗马前不久，我和我母亲进行了一场启示性的对谈。她到纽约和我吃最后一餐午饭，她坦白问我——打破我们家族史上所有的沟通规范——我和大卫之间出了什么问题。我又一次无视于“吉尔伯特家族标准沟通手册”，竟然告诉了她，我一五一十地告诉了她。我跟她说我深爱大卫，但这个老是从房间、床上、地球上销声匿迹的人，让我多么孤单消沉。


"He sounds kind of like your father," she said. A brave and generous admission.
“听来起他和你父亲有点像。”她说。一种勇敢而宽容的供认。


"The problem is," I said, "I'm not like my mother. I'm not as tough as you, Mom. There's aconstant level of closeness that I really need from the person I love. I wish I could be more like you, then I could have this love story with David. But it just destroys me to not be able to count on that affection when I need it."
“问题是，”我说，“我不像我的母亲。妈，我不像你那么坚强。我需要从我爱的人身上得到一定程度的亲。我希望自己能多像你一点，那我就能和大卫拥有这段爱情故事。可是在我需要的时候，无法仰赖这份感情，这简直要毁了我。”


Then my mother shocked me. She said, "All those things that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things, too."
接着，我的母亲的话使我大吃一惊。她说：“小莉，你想从两人关系中得到的一切，也是我一直想要的东西。”


In that moment, it was as if my strong mother reached across the table, opened her fist and finally showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she is happily married, all considerations weighed) to my father. I had never seen this side of her before, not ever. I had never imagined what she might have wanted, what she might have been missing, what she might have decided not to fight for in the larger scheme of things. Seeing all this, I could feel my worldview start to make a radical shift.
那一刻，仿佛我坚强的母亲伸出手来打开拳头， 让我终于看见她几十年来为了和我父亲维持快乐的婚姻（若基于种种考虑，她确实婚姻快乐）而承受的伤痕。我从未见过她这一面，从来不曾。我未曾想象过她要什么，她错失了什么，在为大局着想而决定不去争取的东西。看见的这一切，使我感到我的世界观开始发生急剧变化。


If even she wants what I want, then . . .?
倘若连母亲都需要我要的东西，那么……？
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 30楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 28 (57):和David说再见



Continuing with this unprecedented string of intimacies, my mother said, "You have tounderstand how little I was raised to expect that I deserved in life, honey. Remember—I come from a different time and place than you do."
接连这一连串前所未有的亲密对谈，我的母亲继续说道：“亲爱的，你得了解，我成长的环境使我不去期待自己应当过什么样的日子。别忘了——我的成长时代与环境，和你不同。”


I closed my eyes and saw my mother, ten years old on the family farm in Minnesota, working like a hired hand, raising her younger brothers, wearing the clothes of her older sister, saving dimes to get herself out of there . . .
我闭上眼睛，看见的我母亲十岁的时候待在明尼苏达的家族农场，如雇佣似的劳动，养育她的弟弟们，穿她姐姐的旧衣裳，存钱让自己离开那里……


"And you have to understand how much I love your father," she concluded.
“你得了解，我很爱你父亲。”她总结道。


My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive—a long, stablemarriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too—but who amongst us lives without sacrifice?
我母亲做了她的人生抉择，如同我们每个人，而她处之泰然。我看得见她的安详。她并未给自己找借口。她的抉择有莫大的效益：和她依然称作好友的男人，保持稳定长久的婚姻；受儿孙爱戴的大家庭；对自身力量的肯定。或许她牺牲了一些东西，而我父亲也做出种种牺牲——然而我们当中有谁一生中不曾做过牺牲？


And the question now for me is, What are my choices to be? What do I believe that I deserve in this life? Where can I accept sacrifice, and where can I not? It has been so hard for me to imagine living a life without David in it. Even just to imagine that there will never be another road trip with my favorite traveling companion, that I will never again pull up at his curb with the windows down and Springsteen playing on the radio, a lifetime supply of banter and snacks between us, and an ocean destination looming down the highway. But how can I accept that bliss when it comes with this dark underside—bone-crushing isolation, corrosive insecurity, insidious resentment and, of course, the complete dismantling of self that inevitably occurs when David ceases to giveth, and commences to taketh away. I can't do it anymore. Something about my recent joy in Naples has made me certain that I not only can find happiness without David, but must. No matter how much I love him (and I do love him, in stupid excess), I have to say goodbye to this person now. And I have to make it stick.
对我来说，现在的问题是——我的抉择是什么？我相信这一生该过怎样的生活？我何时愿意、何时不愿意牺牲？想象没有大卫的生活，对我来说很不容易。即使只是想象跟我最爱的旅伴不再有另一次旅行，再也不能在路边停下车来，摇下车窗，聆听收音机上播放着的史普林斯汀（Springsteen），两人之间摆着一辈子的玩笑和零食，公路尽头的海洋终点若隐若现——都太困难了。然而我哪能享受这样的欢乐，假使随之而来的是潜藏的黑暗面——令人粉身碎骨的孤立，侵心的不安，隐藏的怨恨，以及每当大卫停止付出、开始遁走时，终要瓦解的自我。我再也走不下去。不久前在那不勒斯的快乐使我确信，没有大卫，我不仅“能够”、也“必须”找到快乐。无论我多么爱他（我确实爱他，爱得过分发痴），我现在不得不向此人道别，而且必须坚持到底。


So I write him an e-mail.
于是我写了封电子邮件给他。


It's November. We haven't had any communication since July. I'd asked him not to get in touch with me while I was traveling, knowing that my attachment to him was so strong it would beimpossible for me to focus on my journey if I were also tracking his. But now I'm entering his life again with this e-mail.
这是11月的事。打从7月，我们就未再联络。我要他在我旅行期间不要与我联系，因为我明白，假使与他联系，我对他的强烈爱恋将使自己无法专心旅行。可是现在，这封电子邮件让我再次走入他的生活。


I tell him that I hope he's well, and I report that I am well. I make a few jokes. We always were good with the jokes. Then I explain that I think we need to put an end to this relationship for good. That maybe it's time to admit that it will never happen, that it should never happen. Thenote isn't overly dramatic. Lord knows we've had enough drama together already. I keep it short and simple. But there's one more thing I need to add. Holding my breath, I type, "If you want to look for another partner in your life, of course you have nothing but my blessings." My hands are shaking. I sign off with love, trying to keep as cheerful a tone as possible.
我跟他说希望他一切安好，我告知他我很好。我开了几个玩笑，我们向来擅于开玩笑。接着我解释说，我认为我们应该永久结束这段关系。或许我们应该承认我们永远不可能在一起，也不该在一起。这不是一封过分戏剧化的信件。天晓得我们已共同走过够多的戏剧。我写得很简短。但还有件事我得加上去。我屏住气，在键盘上打下：“你若想寻找生命中的另一个伴侣，我会全心祝福你。”我的手在发抖。我在信尾签上“爱”，尽可能保持愉快的语气。


I feel like I just got hit in the chest with a stick.
我觉得胸口像被棍子击了一记。


I don't sleep much that night, imagining him reading my words. I run back to the Internet café a few times throughout the next day, looking for a response. I'm trying to ignore the part of me that is dying to find that he has replied: "COME BACK! DON'T GO! I'LL CHANGE!" I'm trying todisregard the girl in me who would happily drop this whole grand idea of traveling around the world in simple exchange for the keys to David's apartment. But around ten o'clock that night, I finally get my answer. A wonderfully written e-mail, of course. David always wrote wonderfully. He agrees that, yes, it's time we really said good-bye forever. He's been thinking along the same lines himself, he says. He couldn't be more gracious in his response, and he shares his own feelings of loss and regret with that high tenderness he was sometimes so achingly capable of reaching. He hopes that I know how much he adores me, beyond even his ability to find words to express it. "But we are not what the other one needs," he says. Still, he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday. He's sure of it. After all, he says, "beauty attracts beauty."
当晚我没怎么睡，想象他阅读我的来信。隔天我来回跑了几趟网吧，期待回音。我试着忽视一部分自己渴望他回信说“ 回来吧！别走！我会改变！”我尝试忽视自己心中的那个女孩，快乐地丢下这整个环游世界的伟大主意，只为换取大卫公寓的钥匙。然而当晚十点钟左右，我终于收到了回信。当然这是一封文笔很好的信。大卫向来有一手好文笔。他同意，是的，该是永远告别的时候了。他自己也同样想过这件事，他说。他的回复婉转和蔼，分享自己的失落与感伤，带着他时而得以达到的高度温柔。他希望我知道他对我的爱慕，超乎语言所能表达。“然而我们并非彼此的需要。”他说。尽管如此，他确定有一天我会找到一生的挚爱，他确信无疑。他说，毕竟“美吸引美”。


Which is a lovely thing to say, truly. Which is just about the loveliest thing that the love of your life could ever possibly say, when he's not saying, "COME BACK! DON'T GO! I'LL CHANGE!"
这么说真好。这是你的爱人所能跟你讲的最好的话，即使他没说：回来吧！别走！我会改变！


I sit there staring at the computer screen in silence for a long, sad time. It's all for the best, I know it is. I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for theunknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises. I know all this. But still . . .
我坐在那儿盯着电脑屏幕，持续一段长而悲伤的时间。这是最好的结果，我明白。我选择快乐，而非受苦。我晓得。我给未知的将来留下空间，让自己的生命充满即将来临的惊喜。这些我都晓得。然而……


It's David. Lost to me now.
是大卫。我失去了他。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 31楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 28 (58):遇到乔凡尼




I drop my face in my hands for a longer and even sadder time. Finally I look up, only to see that one of the Albanian women who work at the Internet café has paused from her nightshift mopping of the floor to lean against the wall and watch me. We hold our tired gazes on each other for a moment. Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, "This blows ass." She nodssympathetically. She doesn't understand, but of course, in her way, she understands completely.
我把头埋在手中，持续一段更长、更悲伤的时间。终于抬起头来的时候，我看见在网吧工作的一名阿尔巴尼亚妇女，停下手边的夜班拖地工作，靠在墙上看着我。我们疲倦的眼神望着彼此一会儿，然后我对她郑重摇摇头，大声说：“倒胃口！”她同情地点点头。即使她听不懂，却以她自己的方式完全明白。


My cell phone rings.
我的手机响了。


It's Giovanni. He sounds confused. He says he's been waiting for me for over an hour in the Piazza Fiume, which is where we always meet on Thursday nights for language exchange. He's bewildered, because normally he's the one who's late or who forgets to show up for our appointments, but he got there right on time tonight for once and he was pretty sure—didn't we have a date?
是乔凡尼。他听起来很困惑。他说已在河流广场（Piazza Fiume）等了我一个多小时，那是我们每周四晚间会面做语言交流的地方。他感到迷惘，因为通常迟到或忘记赴约的人总是他。可是今晚他一反平常，准时到达那里，而且他十分肯定——我们不是有约吗？


I'd forgotten. I tell him where I am. He says he'll come pick me up in his car. I'm not in the mood for seeing anybody, but it's too hard to explain this over the telefonino, given our limitedlanguage skills. I go wait outside in the cold for him. A few minutes later, his little red car pulls up and I climb in. He asks me in slangy Italian what's up. I open my mouth to answer and collapseinto tears. I mean—wailing. I mean—that terrible, ragged breed of bawling my friend Sally calls "double-pumpin' it," when you have to inhale two desperate gasps of oxygen with every sob. I never even saw this griefquake coming, got totally blindsided by it.
我忘记我们有约。我跟他说我在何处。他说他会开车过来接我。我没心情见任何人，但透过“迷你电话”很难说明，鉴于我们有限的语言能力。我在寒冷的户外等候他。几分钟过后，他的红色小车停了下来，我爬进车里。他用意大利俚语问我怎么回事。我张嘴回答却潸然泪下。我是说——嚎啕大哭。我是说，如我朋友莎莉所谓“双重抽吸”的可怕哀号——在你每次啜泣之时，都得使劲儿吸两口氧气。我在全然毫无防备的情况下，从未见识过这惊天动地的悲痛乍然来临。


Poor Giovanni! He asks in halting English if he did something wrong. Am I mad at him, maybe? Did he hurt my feelings? I can't answer, but only shake my head and keep howling. I'm so mortified with myself and so sorry for dear Giovanni, trapped here in this car with this sobbing,incoherent old woman who is totally a pezzi—in pieces.
可怜的乔凡尼！他用结结巴巴的英语问我他是否做错了什么事。我在生他的气吗？他是否伤了我的感情？我回答不了，只能摇摇头，继续嚎哭。我对自己感到懊恼，对亲爱的乔凡尼深感抱歉，他和我这个啜泣、神智不清、完全粉身碎骨的老女人被困在这辆车里。


I finally manage to rasp out an assurance that my distress has nothing to do with him. I chokeforth an apology for being such a mess. Giovanni takes charge of the situation in a manner far beyond his years. He says, "Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots." He gives me some tissues from a box in the back of the car. He says, "Let's drive."
最后我以粗嘎的嗓门一再表示，我的悲痛与他无关。我为自己的失态哽咽着向他致歉。乔凡尼以远超过自己年纪的态度控制住场面。他说：“别因为哭泣而道歉。若没有这样的情绪，我们就只是机器人罢了。”他从后座的面纸盒里拿了几张面纸给我。 他说：“我们开车吧。”
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 32楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (59):我的姐姐来了



My sister's arrival in Rome a few days later helped nudge my attention away from lingering sadness over David and bring me back up to speed. My sister does everything fast, and energy twists up around her in miniature cyclones. She's three years older than me and three inches taller than me. She's an athlete and a scholar and a mother and a writer. The whole time she was in Rome, she was training for a marathon, which means she would wake up at dawn and run eighteen miles in the time it generally takes me to read one article in the newspaper and drink two cappuccinos. She actually looks like a deer when she runs. When she was pregnant with her first child, she swam across an entire lake one night in the dark. I wouldn't join her, and I wasn't even pregnant. I was too scared. But my sister doesn't really get scared. When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby—such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, "My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican."
我的姐姐几天后来到罗马，帮我把注意力从对大卫的悲伤中牵引出来，带我走回正途。我姐姐手脚利落，浑身充满精力。她比我大三岁，高三吋。她身兼运动员、学者、母亲、作家。在罗马整段期间，她都在做马拉松训练，也就是黎明起身，跑九公里路，大约是我阅读报上的一篇文章、喝两杯卡布奇诺的时间。她跑起来简直像头鹿。她怀第一个孩子时，有天在黑夜中游过一整座湖。我没陪她去，而我甚至没怀孕。我太害怕，但我的姐姐不害怕。她怀第二个孩子时，助产士问凯瑟琳是否对婴儿可能发生的任何闪失，有任何无法言说的恐惧——比方先天缺陷或生产途中的并发症。我姐姐说：“我只担心他长大后加入共和党。”
That's my sister's name—Catherine. She's my one and only sibling. When we were growing up in rural Connecticut, it was just the two of us, living in a farmhouse with our parents. No other kids nearby. She was mighty and domineering, the commander of my whole life. I lived in awe and fear of her; nobody else's opinion mattered but hers. I cheated at card games with her in order to lose, so she wouldn't get mad at me. We were not always friends. She was annoyed by me, and I was scared of her, I believe, until I was twenty-eight years old and got tired of it. That was the year I finally stood up to her, and her reaction was something along the lines of, "What took you so long?"
我姐姐的名字就叫凯瑟琳。她是我唯一的兄弟姐妹。我们在康乃狄克州郊区长大，就我们两人，和我们的父母亲住在一间农舍，附近没有其他小孩。她盛气凌人，指挥我的整个生活。我对她又敬又怕；除了她以外，谁的想法都不重要。和她玩牌的时候，如果我作弊，只为了输给她，以免她跟我发脾气。我们未必时时友好。我让她不耐烦，她使我恐惧，我相信自己直到二十八岁才对这样的关系感到厌倦。那年我终于起而反抗，她的反应大约是说：“你干嘛憋这么久才说？”
We were just beginning to hammer out the new terms of our relationship when my marriage went into a skid. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have gained victory from my defeat. I'd always been the loved and lucky one, the favorite of both family and destiny. The world had always been a more comfortable and welcoming place for me than it was for my sister, who pressed so sharply against life and who was hurt by it fairly hard sometimes in return. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have responded to my divorce and depression with a: "Ha! Look at Little Mary Sunshine now!" Instead, she held me up like a champion. She answered the phone in the middle of the night whenever I was in distress and made comforting noises. And she came along with me when I went searching for answers as to why I was so sad. For the longest time, my therapy was almost vicariously shared by her. I'd call her after every session with a debriefing of everything I'd realized in my therapist's office, and she'd put down whatever she was doing and say, "Ah . . . that explains a lot." Explains a lot about both of us, that is.
我的婚姻失控时，我们才开始为我们的关系制定新条款。凯瑟琳原本可以轻而易举地从我的失败取得胜利。我向来是受宠的幸运儿，受家庭和命运眷顾。世界对我来说向来比对我姐姐来说更舒适；她紧贴生命，有时反倒伤得很严重。凯瑟琳可以很轻易地对我的离婚和忧郁回以“哈！瞧瞧阳光小姐现在的下场！”然而，她却把我推举为优胜者。在我身陷悲苦时，她三更半夜接我的电话，发出慰藉的声音。在我寻找为什么如此哀伤的答案时，她会助我一臂之力。很长一段时间，她几乎以共鸣的方式分享我的治疗。每次疗程结束，我即致电给她报告我在治疗师那里了解的一切，她于是放下手边的事情，说：“啊……这说明了许多事。”是的，也说明了许多有关我们两人的事。
Now we speak to each other on the phone almost every day—or at least we did, before I moved to Rome. Before either of us gets on an airplane now, the one always calls the other and says, "I know this is morbid, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you. You know . . . just in case . . ." And the other one always says, "I know . . . just in case."
现在我们几乎天天通电话——至少在我迁居罗马之前。现在我们其中一个搭飞机前，一个人总要 打电话给另一个人说：“我知道这有点神经，我只想告诉你，我爱你。你知道……以防万一……”另一个人总会说：“我知道……以防万一 。”
She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented before she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 percent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister's eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to the cookbooks—and reads it, for pleasure.
她一如往常，万事俱备地抵达罗马。她带了五本指南，每一本都已读过，她脑子里已预先画好这座城市的地图。即使在离开费城之前，她即已完全搞清楚了东南西北。这是典型的例子，说明我们之间的差异。我在罗马的头几个星期到处漫游，百分之九十迷路，百分之百快乐，将周遭一切看作不可解释的美丽之谜。我也一向如此看待世界。在我姐姐看来，只要善加利用图书馆，就不存在任何无法解释的事情。这名女子把《哥伦比亚百科全书》摆在厨房的食谱旁边——只是为了消遣而阅读。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 33楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (60):带着姐姐游罗马




There's a game I like to play with my friends sometimes called "Watch This!" Whenever anybody's wondering about some obscure fact (for instance: "Who was Saint Louis?") I will say, "Watch this!" then pick up the nearest phone and dial my sister's number. Sometimes I'll catch her in the car, driving her kids home from school in the Volvo, and she will muse: "Saint Louis . . . well, he was a hairshirt-wearing French king, actually, which is interesting because . . ."
我喜欢和朋友玩一种叫“看我的”的游戏。每当有人对某个模糊的事实——比方对“圣路易是什么人？”有疑问，我就说“看我的”！然后拿起距离我最近的电话，拨我姐的号码。有时碰上她在开车，去接她孩子放学回家，她便沉思道：“圣路易……这个嘛，他是穿粗毛衬衣的法国国王，这很有趣，因为……”


So my sister comes to visit me in Rome—in my new city—and then shows it to me. This is Rome, Catherine-style. Full of facts and dates and architecture that I do not see because my mind does not work in that way. The only thing I ever want to know about any place or any person is the story, this is the only thing I watch for—never for aesthetic details. (Sofie came to my apartment a month after I'd moved into the place and said, "Nice pink bathroom," and this was the first time I'd noticed that it was, indeed, pink. Bright pink, from floor to ceiling, bright pink tile everywhere—I honestly hadn't seen it before.) But my sister's trained eye picks up the Gothic, or Romanesque, or Byzantine features of a building, the pattern of the church floor, or the dimsketch of the unfinished fresco hidden behind the altar. She strides across Rome on her long legs (we used to call her "Catherine-of-the-Three-Foot-Long-Femurs") and I hasten after her, as I have since toddlerhood, taking two eager steps to her every one.
于是我姐姐来罗马——我的新城市——探望我，然后带领我参观这座城市。这是凯瑟琳风格的罗马。充满我未看见的数据、年代和建筑，因为我的脑子并非如此运作。我只想知道任何地方或任何人的“故事”，我只关心这个，从不关心美学细节。（苏菲在我搬进公寓一个月后来访，说“粉红色浴室，不错。”这是我头一次留意到浴室确实是粉红色的。鲜粉红色，从地板到天花板，处处都是鲜粉红色磁砖——老实说，我之前完全没留意。）但我姐姐老练的眼睛看见了哥德式、罗马式或拜占庭式的建筑特点，教堂地板的图案，或者隐藏在祭坛后方未完成的昏暗壁画。她登着两条长腿大步走过罗马（我们过去叫她“腿节一米长的凯瑟琳”），我急忙跟在她后头，因为打从幼时，她每走一步路都得花我激烈的两步。


"See, Liz?" she says, "See how they just slapped that nineteenth-century façade over that brickwork? I bet if we turn the corner we'll find . . . yes! . . . see, they did use the original Roman monoliths as supporting beams, probably because they didn't have the manpower to move them . . . yes, I quite like the jumble-sale quality of this basilica. . ."
“瞧，小莉？”她说“看那栋砖造建筑的正面，弄成19世纪的样子。我敢说，我们在转角看得见……没错！瞧，他们采用原来的罗马石柱作支撑梁柱，可能因为缺乏人力搬动……是的，我很喜欢这座教堂的多种风格，仿佛旧货拍卖场……”


Catherine carries the map and her Michelin Green Guide, and I carry our picnic lunch (two of those big softball-sized rolls of bread, spicy sausage, pickled sardines wrapped around meaty green olives, a mushroom paté that tastes like a forest, balls of smoked mozzarella, peppered and grilled arugula, cherry tomatoes, pecorino cheese, mineral water and a split of cold white wine), and while I wonder when we're going to eat, she wonders aloud, "Why don't people talk more about the Council of Trent?"
凯瑟琳带着地图和她的米其林绿色指南，我则带着我们的野餐（两个大圆面包、辣味腊肠、盘绕在绿橄榄上的腌沙丁鱼、尝起来有森林风味的磨菇馅饼、几团烟熏乳酪、加胡椒的烤芝麻菜、小番茄、佩科里诺〔Pecorino〕乳酪、矿泉水和半瓶冰白酒），我想知道何时该吃午饭，她则大声地想知道：“为什么人们不多谈谈天特会议 （Council of Trent）？”


She takes me into dozens of churches in Rome, and I can't keep them straight—St. This and St. That, and St. Somebody of the Barefoot Penitents of Righteous Misery . . . but just because I cannot remember the names or details of all these buttresses and cornices is not to say that I do not love to be inside these places with my sister, whose cobalt eyes miss nothing. I don't remember the name of the church that had those frescoes that looked so much like American WPA New Deal heroic murals, but I do remember Catherine pointing them out to me and saying, "You gotta love those Franklin Roosevelt popes up there . . ." I also remember the morning we woke early and went to mass at St. Susanna, and held each other's hands as we listened to the nuns there chanting their daybreak Gregorian hymns, both of us in tears from the echoing haunt of their prayers. My sister is not a religious person. Nobody in my family really is. (I've taken to calling myself the "white sheep" of the family.) My spiritual investigations interest my sister mostly from a point of intellectual curiosity. "I think that kind of faith is so beautiful," she whispers to me in the church, "but I can't do it, I just can't . . ."
她带我进十几家罗马教堂，我分不清哪座是哪座——圣此，圣彼，赤足苦行僧会的圣某某……但尽管我记不住一大堆扶壁与横檐的名称或细节，这并不表示我不喜欢和姐姐进这些地方，她那双钴蓝色的眼睛不错过任何东西。有一所教堂，里头的壁画很像美国的英雄式壁画，我虽不记得教堂名称，却记得凯瑟琳指着壁画对我说“你不得不喜欢那些罗斯福教宗……”我也记得我们起大早去圣苏撒纳（St.Susanna）做弥撒的那个早晨，握着彼此的手聆听修女们吟唱黎明圣歌，余音绕梁的祷告声使我们俩泪流满面。我的姐姐并非信教之人。我们家没有人真的是（我称自己是家里的“白羊”）。我的心灵探索引发姐姐的兴趣，大半出于满足知识的好奇。“我认为这种信仰很美，”她在教堂内低声对我说：“但我没法办到，我就是没办法……”
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 34楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (61):姐姐离开了




Here's another example of the difference in our worldviews. A family in my sister's neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace." She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.
另有一个例子可以说明我们之间不同的世界观。 我姐姐家附近有一户人家最近遭受双重悲剧的打击，年轻的母亲和她三岁的儿子两人被诊断罹患癌症。凯瑟琳告知我此事时，我只能吃惊地说：“天啊，这家人需要恩典。”她坚定地回答：“这家人需要烧锅炖菜。”而后着手把整个街坊邻居组织起来，每个晚上轮流带晚餐给这家人，持续一整年。我不清楚我姐姐承不承认这正是恩典。


We walk out of St. Susanna, and she says, "Do you know why the popes needed city planning in the Middle Ages? Because basically you had two million Catholic pilgrims a year coming from all over the Western World to make that walk from the Vatican to St. John Lateran—sometimes on their knees—and you had to have amenities for those people."
我们走出圣苏撒纳的时候，她说：“你可知道为什么中世纪的教宗需要都市计划？因为，基本上每一年有两百万名天主教朝圣者从西方世界各地前来，从梵蒂冈徒步走到圣若望拉特朗（St John Lateran）大殿——有时跪着走——你需要为这些人提供设施。”


My sister's faith is in learning. Her sacred text is the Oxford English Dictionary. As she bows her head in study, fingers speeding across the pages, she is with her God. I see my sister in prayeragain later that same day—when she drops to her knees in the middle of the Roman Forum, clears away some litter off the face of the soil (as though erasing a blackboard), then takes up a small stone and draws for me in the dirt a blueprint of a classic Romanesque basilica. She points from her drawing to the ruin before her, leading me to understand (even visually challenged me can understand!) what that building once must have looked like eighteen centuries earlier. She sketches with her finger in the empty air the missing arches, the nave, the windows long gone. Like Harold with his Purple Crayon, she fills in the absent cosmos with her imagination and makes whole the ruined.
我姐姐的信仰是学习。她的圣经是牛津英语辞典。当她埋头读书，手指快速翻阅书页时，她正与她的上帝同在。该日傍晚，我再一次看见我姐姐祈祷——她在罗马古墟（Roman Forum）中央跪了下来，清除地面上的废弃物（犹如擦黑板），而后拿起一块小石子，在泥土上为我画下古典罗马教堂的蓝图。她指着图画前方的废墟，引导我了解（甚至用视觉形象挑战我去了解！）1800年前的建筑物是何种光景。她在空气中比画，画出不复存在的拱门、中殿、窗户，就像拿着神仙棒，用想象力填满缺席的宇宙，使废墟变得完整。


In Italian there is a seldom-used tense called the passato remoto, the remote past. You use this tense when you are discussing things in the far, far distant past, things that happened so long ago they have no personal impact whatsoever on you anymore—for example, ancient history. But my sister, if she spoke Italian, would not use this tense to discuss ancient history. In her world, the Roman Forum is not remote, nor is it past. It is exactly as present and close to her as I am.
意大利语当中有个不常使用的时态，叫（遥远的过去 ）。在讨论遥不可及的往事，很久以前发生但对你不再有任何个人冲击的事情时，使用此一时态——比方说，古代历史。然而我的姐姐若说意大利语，绝不会用这时态讨论古代历史。在她的世界中，罗马古墟并不遥远，也不是往事。而是处于当下而且近在咫尺的事情，就像我在她眼前一般真实。


She leaves the next day.
她隔天离开了。


"Listen," I say, "be sure to call me when your plane lands safely, OK? Not to be morbid, but . . ."
“听着，”我说，“在你的飞机安全降落后，一定得打电话给我，好吗？我知道这有点神经，只不过……”


"I know, sweetie," she says. "I love you, too."
Eat, Pray, Love
“我了解，亲爱的，”她说，“我也爱你。”
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 35楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 30 (62):没有小孩的生活





I am so surprised sometimes to notice that my sister is a wife and a mother, and I am not. Somehow I always thought it would be the opposite. I thought it would be me who would end up with a houseful of muddy boots and hollering kids, while Catherine would be living by herself, asolo act, reading alone at night in her bed. We grew up into different adults than anyone might have foretold when we were children. It's better this way, though, I think. Against all predictions, we've each created lives that tally with us. Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness; my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone, even when I am single. I'm happy that she's going back home to her family and also happy that I have another nine months of traveling ahead of me, where all I have to do is eat and read andpray and write.有时候我很讶异为人妻母的是我姐姐，而不是我。我一直认为应当反过来才是。我以为有一屋子小孩叫叫嚷嚷的人应当是我，凯瑟琳则是独自一人过日子，晚上一个人躺在床上读书。我们与小时候所有人所预期的完全相反。尽管如此，我认为这样比较好。违反一切预期，我们各自创造出符合自己的生活。她的孤寂天性，意味着需要家庭让她免于寂寞；而我的群居天性，则意味着永远无须担心孤单一个人，即使单身未婚。我很高兴她回到家人身边，也很高兴我还有九个月的旅行在等待我，而在这整段期间内，我只须吃饭、读书、祈祷、写作。
I still can't say whether I will ever want children. I was so astonished to find that I did not want them at thirty; the remembrance of that surprise cautions me against placing any bets on how I will feel at forty. I can only say how I feel now—grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won't go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don't think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth. Though I suppose people doreproduce sometimes for that reason—for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons—sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.我依然不能断言自己想不想生孩子。我在三十岁的时候，讶异地发现我不要孩子；回顾当时的讶异，让我也不敢担保四十岁时的感觉。我只能说当下的感觉——衷心感谢今天的我是独自一人。我还知道我不会因为害怕晚年后悔，而勇往直前去生孩子；我认为这个动机并不够强大到让这个世界有更多的孩子。尽管我猜想人们有时为了这个理由而生孩子——确保将来不后悔。我想人们生孩子有各式各样的理由——有时纯粹想要养育、目睹生命，有时出于缺乏选择，有时为了抓住伴侣或延续香火，有时并不特别考虑任何理由。生孩子的理由并非都相同，也不尽然都是无私的理由。不生孩子的理由也并非都相同，也不尽然都是自私的理由。
I say this because I'm still working out that accusation, which was leveled against me many times by my husband as our marriage was collapsing—selfishness. Every time he said it, I agreed completely, accepted the guilt, bought everything in the store. My God, I hadn't even had the babies yet, and I was already neglecting them, already choosing myself over them. I was already a bad mother. These babies—these phantom babies—came up a lot in our arguments. Who would take care of the babies? Who would stay home with the babies? Who would financially support the babies? Who would feed the babies in the middle of the night? I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, "I don't want my children growing up in a household like this." Susan said, "Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet, Liz. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore? That neither of you does. And it's better to realize it now, by the way, than in the delivery room when you're at five centimeters."我之所以这么说，是因为我仍持续思考，在婚姻日渐崩溃的时候，我先生多次针对我提出的控诉——自私。每回他这么说，我都完全同意，承认罪过，买全部的账。天啊，我甚至还没生孩子，却已在忽略他们，已决定不选择他们 ，而去选择自己。我已经是个坏母亲。这些孩子——这些有名无实的孩子——经常出现在我们的争论中。谁来照顾这些孩子？谁和这些孩子待在家中？谁来赚钱养这些孩子？谁半夜起床喂孩子？我记得在我的婚姻已叫人难以忍受的时候，我曾对我的朋友苏珊说：“我不想让我的孩子在这样的家庭长大。”苏珊说：“为什么不把这些所谓的孩子排除在讨论之外？他们根本还不存在呀，小莉。为什么不承认你只是不想再过不快乐的生活？你们两人都不想过啊。而且最好现在就搞清楚，而不是进产房的时候才恍然大悟。”
I remember going to a party in New York around that time. A couple, a pair of successful artists, had just had a baby, and the mother was celebrating a gallery opening of her new paintings. I remember watching this woman, the new mother, my friend, the artist, as she tried to be hostess to this party (which was in her loft) at the same time as taking care of her infant and trying to discuss her work professionally. I never saw somebody look so sleep-deprived in my life. I can never forget the image of her standing in her kitchen after midnight, elbows-deep in a sink full of dishes, trying to clean up after this event. Her husband (I am sorry to report it, and I fully realize this is not at all representational of every husband) was in the other room, feet literally on the coffee table, watching TV. She finally asked him if he would help clean the kitchen, and he said, "Leave it, hon—we'll clean up in the morning." The baby started crying again. My friend was leaking breast milk through her cocktail dress.我记得大约在那段时间，我去了纽约的一场派对。有一对夫妻，是一对成功的艺术家，刚生小孩，母亲正庆祝新作品在画廊开幕。我记得看着这个女人，这初为人母的女人，这位我的画家朋友在招呼派对（在她的顶楼画室），同时照顾她的初生儿，并讨论她的专业工作。我这辈子没见过看起来如此没睡够的人。我永远忘不了午夜过后她站在厨房，双手浸泡在堆满碗盘的水槽，尝试在派对过后收拾残局。她的老公（做这样的描述令我遗憾，我完全了解这不能代表所有的老公）在另一个房间，双脚搁在咖啡桌上看电视。她最后问他能不能帮忙清理厨房时，他说“别理了，甜心——我们早上再收拾吧。”婴儿又开始大哭。我朋友的乳汁从她的派对礼服漏出来。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 36楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 30 (63):我不走寻常路



Almost certainly, other people who attended this party came away with different images than I did. Any number of the other guests could have felt great envy for this beautiful woman with her healthy new baby, for her successful artistic career, for her marriage to a nice man, for her lovely apartment, for her cocktail dress. There were people at this party who would probably have traded lives with her in an instant, given the chance. This woman herself probably looks back on that evening—if she ever thinks of it at all—as one tiring but totally worth-it night in her overallsatisfying life of motherhood and marriage and career. All I can say for myself, though, is that I spent that whole party trembling in panic, thinking, If you don't recognize that this is your future, Liz, then you are out of your mind. Do not let it happen.
几乎可以肯定的是，参加这场派对的其他人带着和我不同的印象离开。许多客人都会羡慕这位生了一个健康新生儿的美丽女子，她成功的艺术事业、嫁给了一个好男人、她漂亮的公寓、她的派对礼服。只要有一丁点机会，派对上有人会很愿意和她易地而处。这名女子自己回顾这一夜——倘若她曾想起来的话——的时候，或许看作是她整个满意的母亲、婚姻、事业生涯当中，一个劳累却完全值得的夜晚。然而对于我自己，我只能说，我在整场派对上因恐慌而颤抖，心想：倘若你看不出这就是你的将来，小莉，那么你真是头脑有问题。别让它发生。


But did I have a responsibility to have a family? Oh, Lord—responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond. And what I ultimately had to respond to was the reality that every speck of my being was telling me to get out of my marriage. Somewhere inside me an early-warning system was forecasting that if I kept trying to whiteknuckle my way through this storm, I would end up getting cancer. And that if I brought children into the world anyway, just because I didn't want to deal with the hassle or shame of revealing some impractical facts about myself—this would be an act of grievous irresponsibility.
但我是否有责任成立一个家？天啊——责任。这字眼在我身上下功夫，直到我对它下功夫，仔细研究它，把它拆解成“回应”（respond）的“能力”（ability），这两个真正定义它的字。而我终须回应的事实是，我的每个细胞都叫我摆脱婚姻。我心中某个预警系统正在预报，假使我持续握紧拳头穿越这场风暴，最后我会罹患癌症。假使我不顾一切把孩子带到世界上，只因为我对揭发自己某些不切实际的真相感到麻烦或耻辱而不愿想办法处理的话——这将是一种严重的不负责任之举。


In the end, though, I was most guided by something my friend Sheryl said to me that very night at that very party, when she found me hiding in the bathroom of our friend's fancy loft, shaking in fear, splashing water on my face. Sheryl didn't know then what was going on in my marriage. Nobody did. And I didn't tell her that night. All I could say was, "I don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth."
但是最后，是我的朋友雪柔对我说的一席话指引了我。就在那一晚的派对上，就在她发现我躲在我们的朋友那层顶楼画室的浴室里吓得发抖，朝脸上泼水的时候。雪柔当时不清楚我的婚姻状况，没有任何人清楚。那天晚上我并未告诉她，我只说：“我不知如何是好。”我记得她握着我的肩，笑容平和地看着我的眼睛，只说：“说实话，说实话，说实话。”


So that's what I tried to do.
于是我试着去做。


Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal/ financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off thetrack of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever. To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent — at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. You sit with the other children, or teenagers, or young parents, or retirees. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety year-olds in the shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem—you're the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and moreover, it's universally recognized. How many people have I heard claim their children as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It's the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy—If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.
然而，摆脱婚姻很不好过，不止因为法律与财务纠葛，或生活方式的剧变，（如同我朋友黛博拉的英明指点：“从未有人因为平分家具而丧命。”）而是情感的退缩，走出传统的生活方式，失去原本拥有的所有安慰，而使你丧命。与配偶成立一个家庭，是一个人在美国 （或任何）社会找到延续和意义的最基本方式之一。每回去母亲在明尼苏达的娘家聚会，我便重新发现此一事实，看见每个人都在自己的岗位上坚守多年。首先你是个孩子，而后成为青少年，而后结婚，而后生子，然后退休，然后为人祖父母——你在每一阶段都清楚自己的身份，清楚自己的职责，清楚家庭聚会时坐在哪个地方。你和其他的孩子、青少年、父母或退休人士坐在一起。直到最后，你和一群九十岁老者坐在树阴下，心满意足地照看你的子孙后代。你是什么人？没问题——你是创造“这一切”的人。这种认知带来的满足感是即时性的，而且举世公认。有多少人说过，他们的孩子是自己生命中最大的成就与安慰？这是在危机时期或犹豫时刻得以仰赖的东西——我这辈子倘若什么也没做，至少把孩子抚养得很好。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 37楼  发表于: 2012-08-23 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (66):品味意大利



Florence is just a weekend, a quick train ride up on a Friday morning to visit my Uncle Terry and Aunt Deb, who have flown in from Connecticut to visit Italy for the first time in their lives, and to see their niece, of course. It is evening when they arrive, and I take them on a walk to look at the Duomo, always such an impressive sight, as evidenced by my uncle's reaction:我在佛罗伦萨待了一个周末；周五早晨搭火车北上花不了太多时间，去探望我的泰瑞伯父和黛比伯母，他们从康州飞过来，有生以来头一次来意大利，顺便看看我这个侄女。他们在晚间抵达，我带他们参观主教堂（Duomo），这始终是令人印象深刻的景点，这可从我伯父的反应看出来：



"Oy vey!" he says, then pauses and adds, "Or maybe that's the wrong word for praising a Catholic church . . ."“赞！”他说，然后停顿一下，又说，“或许这么赞美天主教堂有点用词失当……”



We watch the Sabines getting raped right there in the middle of the sculpture garden with nobody doing a damn thing to stop it, and pay our respects to Michelangelo, to the science museum, to the views from the hillsides around town. Then I leave my aunt and uncle to enjoy the rest of their vacation without me, and I go on alone to wealthy, ample Lucca, that little Tuscan town with its celebrated butcher shops, where the finest cuts of meat I've seen in all of Italy are displayed with a "you know you want it" sensuality in shops across town. Sausages of everyimaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed like ladies' legs into provocative stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in the windows, beckoning like Amsterdam's high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and contented even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly, after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest. But it's not just the meat that's wonderful in Lucca; it's the chestnuts, the peaches, the tumbling displays of figs, dear God, the figs . . .我们在雕塑庭园中央观看萨宾人（Sabines）遭掠夺，却没有人能做半点儿事阻止；我们向米开朗基罗致敬，去科学博物馆，从城市周围的山坡观景。而后我留伯母和伯父独自享受他们剩下的假期，我则继续单人行，去了富庶的卢卡（Lucca）；这个托斯卡纳小镇以肉铺闻名，意大利最好的肉片在全镇各处的店家展现其"你明白自己想要它"的肉感。各种你能想象的尺寸、颜色、来历的腊肠，就像女士的腿穿上撩人裤袜般丰满迷人，悬挂在肉铺天花板。性感的火腿挂在橱窗内，犹如阿姆斯特丹的高级娼妓向人招手。死去的鸡看起来丰腴而满足，使你想象它们在世时彼此争相成为最肥嫩的鸡，然后 引以为傲地献出自己。然而卢卡最让人叫好的不单是肉，还有栗子、桃子、满坑满谷的无花果，天啊，无花果……



The town is famous, too, of course, for having been the birthplace of Puccini. I know I should probably be interested in this, but I'm much more interested in the secret a local grocer has shared with me—that the best mushrooms in town are served in a restaurant across from Puccini's birth-place. So I wander through Lucca, asking directions in Italian, "Can you tell me where is the house of Puccini?" and a kind civilian finally leads me right to it, and then is probably very surprised when I say "Grazie," then turn on my heel and march in the exact opposite direction of the museum's entrance, entering a restaurant across the street and waiting out the rain over my serving of risotto ai funghi.当然，卢卡以普契尼的出生地而闻名。我知道我该对这点感兴趣，但我更着迷于当地一家杂货商跟我分享的秘密——全镇煮得最好的草菇位于普契尼出生地对街的餐厅。于是我在卢卡到处逛，说意大利语问路：“请告诉我普契尼之家在哪？”一位亲切的市民最后直接领我去那里，他肯定大吃一惊，因为我道过谢后，转身朝博物馆入口的反方向走去，进了街对面的餐厅点了risotto ai funghi（野菇炖饭）等雨停。



I don't recall now if it was before or after Lucca that I went to Bologna—a city so beautiful that I couldn't stop singing, the whole time I was there: "My Bologna has a first name! It's P-R-E-T-T-Y." Traditionally Bologna—with its lovely brick architecture and famous wealth—has been called "The Red, The Fat and The Beautiful." (And, yes, that was an alternate title for this book.) The food is definitely better here than in Rome, or maybe they just use more butter. Even the gelato in Bologna is better (and I feel somewhat disloyal saying that, but it's true). The mushrooms here are like big thick sexy tongues, and the prosciutto drapes over pizzas like a fine lace veil draping over a fancy lady's hat. And of course there is the Bolognese sauce, which laughs disdainfully at any other idea of a ragù.我现在记不得是在去卢卡之前或之后才前往博洛尼亚——此城之美，使我在那里的整段时间都不断在哼歌："波隆那的姓氏，叫作美丽！"传统上，波隆那——拥有漂亮的砖造建筑以及闻名的财富——被称作"红色、肥胖、美丽"的城市（这三个形容词，也可以拿来当做本书的书名）。这儿的食物比 罗马明显好得多，或者只是奶油用得较多的关系。甚至博洛尼亚的冰也好得多（这么说使我觉得有点对不住，但这是事实）。这里的草菇就像厚大的性感舌头，烟熏火腿覆盖在比萨饼上，就像精致的蕾丝面纱掩在漂亮的女帽上。当然还有波隆那肉酱，不屑地嘲笑其他任何一种肉酱。



It occurs to me in Bologna that there is no equivalent in English for the term buon appetito. This is a pity, and also very telling. It occurs to me, too, that the train stops of Italy are a tour through the names of the world's most famous foods and wines: next stop, Parma . . . next stop, Bologna . . . next stop, approaching Montepulciano . . . Inside the trains there is food, too, of course—little sandwiches and good hot chocolate. If it's raining outside, it's even nicer to snack and speed along. For one long ride, I share a train compartment with a good-looking young Italian guy who sleeps for hours through the rain as I eat my octopus salad. The guy wakes up shortly before we arrive in Venice, rubs his eyes, looks me over carefully from foot to head and pronounces under his breath: "Carina." Which means: Cute.我在博洛尼亚突然想到，英语中没有相当于“buon appetito”的用词。这很可惜，也很说明问题所在。我还想到，意大利的火车停靠站带你经过全世界最出名的食物名与酒名：下一站，帕尔玛（Parma）……下一站，博洛尼亚……下一站，即将抵达蒙特普齐亚诺（Montepulciano）……火车内当然也有食物——小三明治和好喝的热可可。若窗外下雨，吃着点心全速前进更是一大快事。有回搭长途火车，我和一个好看的意大利年轻男子同坐一个包厢，他在雨中睡了好几个小时，我则吃着我的章鱼沙拉。男子在我们即将抵达威尼斯的时候醒来，揉揉眼睛，把我从头到脚仔细看了一遍，低声说“Carina”。是“可爱”的意思。



"Grazie mille," I tell him with exaggerated politeness. A thousand thanks.“我以夸大的客气语调回应他。”万分感谢。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 38楼  发表于: 2012-08-24 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (67):意大利语突飞猛进


He's surprised. He didn't realize I spoke Italian. Neither did I, actually, but we talk for about twenty minutes and I realize for the first time that I do. Some line has been crossed and I'm actually speaking Italian now. I'm not translating; I'm talking. Of course, there's a mistake in everysentence, and I only know three tenses, but I can communicate with this guy without much effort. Me la cavo, is how you would say it in Italian, which basically means, "I can get by," but comes from the same verb you use to talk about uncorking a bottle of wine, meaning, "I can use this language to extract myself from tight situations."他吃了一惊，没想到我会讲意大利语。事实上，我也没想到，但我们讲了大约二十分钟后，才第一次明白自己会讲呢。我已跨越某条界线，现在我竟然讲着意大利语。我不在翻译，而在讲话。当然，每一句都容有错误之处，而我只知道三种时态，却没费多少劲就能和这家伙沟通。意大利语“me la”，基本上是“混得过去”的意思，跟谈论拔开酒瓶塞时用的是同一个动词，意即“我可以用这个语言让自己从紧绷的状况抽身而出”。我摆脱尴尬局面。



He's hitting on me, this kid! It's not entirely unflattering. He's not entirely unattractive. Though he's not remotely uncocky, either. At one point he says to me in Italian, meaning to becomplimentary, of course, "You're not too fat, for an American woman."他在招惹我，这小子！这并非不讨人喜欢。他并非不迷人。尽管他显得太自信。他一度用意大利语告诉我，尽管本意是恭维：“就美国女人而言，你不太胖。”



I reply in English, "And you're not too greasy, for an Italian man."我用英语回答：“就意大利男人而言，你不太奉承。”



"Come?"“Come？”



I repeat myself, in slightly modified Italian: "And you're so gracious, just like all Italian men."我重复一次，用稍作修正过的意大利语说：“你很殷勤，就像所有的意大利男人。”



I can speak this language! The kid thinks I like him, but it's the words I'm flirting with. My God—I have decanted myself! I have uncorked my tongue, and Italian is pouring forth! He wants me to meet him later in Venice, but I don't have the first interest in him. I'm just lovesick over the language, so I let him slide away. Anyhow, I've already got a date in Venice. I'm meeting my friend Linda there.我能讲这语言！这小子以为我喜欢他，然而我是在和文字调情。我的天——我正在沥干自己！我已拔掉舌头的瓶塞，意大利语滔滔不绝地冒了出来！他要我之后和他在威尼斯会面，但他已经不像一开始让我感兴趣。我只为语言害了相思病，因此我让他脱逃而去。无论如何，我在威尼斯已经有约。我在那儿将和我的朋友琳达见面。



Crazy Linda, as I like to call her, even though she isn't, is coming to Venice from Seattle, anotherdamp and gray town. She wanted to come see me in Italy, so I invited her along on this leg of my trip because I refuse—I absolutely decline—to go to the most romantic city on earth by myself, no, not now, not this year. I could just picture myself all alone, in the butt end of a gondola, getting dragged through the mist by a crooning gondolier as I . . . read a magazine? It's a sad image, rather like the idea of humping up a hill all by yourself on a bicycle-built-for-two. So Linda will provide me with company, and good company, at that.狂人琳达——我喜欢这么叫她，尽管她并不疯狂——从另一个潮湿灰暗的城市西雅图来到威尼斯。她要来意大利看我，因此我邀她参与这一段旅程，因为我拒绝——绝对不愿——独自前往世上最浪漫的城市，现在可不行，今年不行。我想象孤伶伶一人坐在平底船的一端，由哼着小曲的船夫在雾中载着前进，而我则……阅读杂志？这是一幅可悲的画面，好比独自一人骑着双人脚踏车使劲儿爬上山。因此琳达陪伴我，而且是绝佳的伴儿。



I met Linda (and her dreadlocks, and her piercings) in Bali almost two years ago, when I went for that Yoga retreat. Since then, we've done a trip to Costa Rica together, too. She's one of my favorite traveling companions, an unflappable and entertaining and surprisingly organized little pixie in tight red crushed-velvet pants. Linda is the owner of one of the world's more intactpsyches, with an incomprehension for depression and a self-esteem that has never even considered being anything but high. She said to me once, while regarding herself in a mirror, "Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself." She's got this ability to shut me up when I start fretting over metaphysical questions, such as, "What is the nature of the universe?" (Linda's reply: "My only question is: Why ask?") Linda would like to someday grow her dreadlocks so long she could weave them into a wire-supported structure on the top of her head "like a topiary" and maybe store a bird there. The Balinese loved Linda. So did the Costa Ricans. When she's not taking care of her pet lizards and ferrets, she is managing a software development team in Seattle and making more money than any of us.大约两年前，我在巴厘岛参加瑜伽训练营时遇上琳达（留着细发辫，在身上穿洞）。在那之后，我们还一起去哥斯达黎加旅游。她是我最喜爱的旅伴，一个冷静、有趣、井井有条、身穿红色紧身天鹅绒长裤的小精灵。她是世界上心灵较健康的人之一，无法理解抑郁是什么，还拥有高得不能再高的自尊。她曾看着镜子里的自己，对我说：“我固然不是什么了不起的人，却还是禁不住爱上自己。”当我为形而上的问题，比方说"宇宙的本质是什么？而忧心忡忡时，她总有法子让我闭嘴（琳达答道：“我唯一的问题是：何必问？”）。琳达希望把发辫留长，有一天能在头顶编成钢丝支撑的结构，“类似树雕”，或许在里头摆只鸟。巴厘人爱琳达。哥斯达黎加人也爱她。她不在照顾自己的宠物蜥蜴和白鼬时，就在西雅图管理一个软件开发小组，赚的钱比我们任何人都多。



So we find each other there in Venice, and Linda frowns at our map of the city, turns it upside down, locates our hotel, orients herself and announces with characteristic humility: "We are the mayors of this town's ass."于是我们在威尼斯碰面，琳达瞪了瞪我们的市区地图，把地图倒过来寻找我们的旅馆位置，确定自己的方位，以特有的谦虚态度宣布：“我们是城市屁股的市长。”
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
舞矽

ZxID：12778187

101546鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 39楼  发表于: 2012-08-24 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (68):欣赏威尼斯



Her cheer, her optimism—they in no way match this stinky, slow, sinking, mysterious, silent, weird city. Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place. Seeing Venice, I'm grateful that I chose to live in Rome instead. I don't think I would have gotten off the antidepressants quite so quick here. Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.她的振奋，她的乐观——与这座发臭、缓慢、逐日下陷、神秘、沉默、古怪的城市毫不搭调。威尼斯似乎是个适合慢慢酒精中毒身亡，或失去爱人，或爱人遇难后丢弃凶器的城市。玩过威尼斯，我很庆幸选择了罗马。若住在此地，我想我无法那么快摆脱抗忧郁剂。威尼斯很美，但就像柏格曼电影的美；你虽喜欢，却不想住在其中。



The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families willbarricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep themaintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side—this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment—Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?整座城市正在剥落、衰退，仿若家道中落的大宅后面上锁的房间，因维修过于昂贵，倒不如把门钉死，忘却门后陈旧的宝藏——这就是威尼斯。亚德里亚海的油污反流推向这些深受磨难的建筑物地基，考验着这项十四世纪科学博览会的实验——“喂，我们若建造一座自始至终坐落在水里的城市，会有怎样的结果？”——撑得了多久。



Venice is spooky under its grainy November skies. The city creaks and sways like a fishing pier. Despite Linda's initial confidence that we can govern this town, we get lost every day, and most especially at night, taking wrong turns toward dark corners that dead-end dangerously and directly into canal water. One foggy night, we pass an old building that seems to actually be groaning in pain. "Not to worry," chirps Linda. "That's just Satan's hungry maw." I teach her my favorite Italian word—attraversiamo ("let's cross over")—and we backtrack nervously out of there.威尼斯在11月的粒状天空下让人毛骨悚然，像渔船码头般嘎嘎响，东摇西晃。尽管琳达一开始相信我们支配得了这座城市，我们却天天迷路，尤其夜间，朝直接通往运河的死巷转错弯。某个雾蒙蒙的夜晚，我们经过一栋简直像在痛苦呻吟的老建筑。“用不着担心，”琳达吭声说，“只是撒旦饥饿的胃罢 了。”我教给她我最爱的意大利用词——（我们过街吧）——我们紧张兮兮地退出那里。



The beautiful young Venetian woman who owns the restaurant near where we are staying ismiserable with her fate. She hates Venice. She swears that everyone who lives in Venice regards it as a tomb. She'd fallen in love once with a Sardinian artist, who'd promised her another world of light and sun, but had left her, instead, with three children and no choice but to return to Venice and run the family restaurant. She is my age but looks even older than I do, and I can't imagine the kind of man who could do that to a woman so attractive. ("He was powerful," she says, "and I died of love in his shadow.") Venice is conservative. The woman has had some affairs here, maybe even with some married men, but it always ends in sorrow. The neighbors talk about her. People stop speaking when she walks into the room. Her mother begs her to wear a wedding ring just for appearances—saying, Darling, this is not Rome, where you can live as scandalously as you like. Every morning when Linda and I come for breakfast and ask our sorrowful young/old Venetian proprietress about the weather report for the day, she cocks the fingers of her right hand like a gun, puts it to her temple, and says, "More rain."我们旅馆附近的餐厅老板娘是个威尼斯美少妇，她为自己的命运感到悲哀。她讨厌威尼斯。她发誓住在威尼斯的每个人都觉得像住在坟墓里一般。她曾爱上一位撒丁艺术家，他答应给她阳光灿烂的另一种世界，却离开了她。带了三名孩子的她别无选择，只能回到威尼斯经营家庭餐馆。她跟我年纪相当，看起来却比我老，我无法想象哪种男人会对如此迷人的女子做这种事。（“他是强者，”她说，“我在他的阴影下因爱而死。”）威尼斯是座保守的城市。这女子有几段情事，甚至和已婚男人发生婚外情，却始终以哀伤作结。邻居议论她。人们在她走进屋里的时候停止说话。她的母亲求她戴上结婚戒指做做样子，说：“亲爱的女儿，这里不是罗马，让你能随心所欲地过丢人现眼的生活。”每天早上琳达和我来吃早饭，向这位悲愁的老板娘询问当天的天气预 报时，她便竖起右手指头，像拿熗一样，对准她的太阳穴，说：“又是雨天。”



Yet I don't get depressed here. I can cope with, and even somehow enjoy, the sinkingmelancholy of Venice, just for a few days. Somewhere in me I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city's own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it. This is a sign, I cannot help but think, ofhealing, of the coagulation of my self. There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, when I used to experience all the world's sadness as my own. Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind.然而我在这儿并不忧郁。我有办法应付，甚至有办法享受几天忧郁的威尼斯。我心中某处分辨出这并非我的忧郁，而是这座城市本身固有的忧郁；我近来很健康，感觉得出自己和这座城市的不同。我禁不住想，这是伤口愈合的证据，代表着我不再四散纷飞。有好几年的时间，我沉浸在无边无际的抑郁中，独自经历全世界的哀伤。一切的哀伤从我身上漏出来，留下斑斑痕迹。



Anyhow, it's hard to be depressed with Linda babbling beside me, trying to get me to buy a giant purple fur hat, and asking of the lousy dinner we ate one night, "Are these called Mrs.Paul's Veal Sticks?" She is a firefly, this Linda. In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega—a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets. This is Linda—my temporary, special-order, travel-sized Venetian codega.
Eat, Pray, Love无论如何，有琳达在身边念念叨叨，很难沮丧得起来，她要我买一顶紫色大毛帽，还谈起我们某天晚上吃的差劲晚饭“那东西是不是叫保罗太太的小牛肉条？”琳达是萤火虫：中世纪的威尼斯曾有一种职业，称为“codega”——你雇用这种职业的人，晚上提着灯笼走在你前面带路，吓跑小偷和魔鬼，在黑暗的街道保护你，使你安心。这就是琳达——我临时性、特别订制、旅行携带用的威尼斯。
回复 引用 新鲜事
顶端
« 返回列表
发帖 回复