第十七章（第10/13页）

她对梅勒斯的丑闻极为关注，只要打开话匣子，她便会让我了解到事情的全貌。她表现出的强烈愤慨，矛头直指梅勒斯的妻子，也就是她自始至终称之为贝莎·库茨的女人，那愤怒的情绪仿佛简直可以跟女演员的演绎媲美。通过她的描述，让我身临其境，深切地了解到贝莎·库茨那污秽不堪的生活。而当我从流言的洪流中解脱出来，慢慢浮出水面，我仰望灿烂的日光，不禁倍感惊异，原来我们的生活如此美好。

It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish.

对我而言，呈现在眼前的世界似乎是深不可测的海底，所有的树木花草都是深海植物，而我们人类则是长相怪异、身披鳞甲的海洋生物，终日以小鱼小虾为食，这一切似乎都是千真万确的事实。我们都居住在无底的深渊之中，只有灵魂偶尔能够勉强上浮，浮到以太表面，呼吸到真正的空气。我确信，我们平时呼吸的空气其实是种水体，而世间男女不过是种鱼类。

But sometimes the soul does come up, shoots like a kittiwake into the light, with ecstasy, after having preyed on the submarine depths. It is our mortal destiny, I suppose, to prey upon the ghastly subaqueous life of our fellow-men, in the submarine jungle of mankind. But our immortal destiny is to escape, once we have swallowed our swimmy catch, up again into the bright ether, bursting out from the surface of Old Ocean into real light. Then one realizes one's eternal nature.

可灵魂完成深海捕食行动后，有时也会如同海鸥般忘我高飞，直奔光明的所在。我想，置身于人类的深海丛林，以掠杀形如鬼魅的同类为食，这或许就是我们的宿命。但我们永恒的命数却是逃离，一旦将海底的猎物吞噬，就会从古老的海洋冲出，再度回归光辉灿烂的以太，拥抱真正的光明。到那时，人类便会真正了解到自己永恒的天性。

When I hear Mrs. Bolton talk, I feel myself plunging down, down, to the depths where the fish of human secrets wriggle and swim. Carnal appetite makes one seize a beakful of prey: then up, up again, out of the dense into the ethereal, from the wet into the dry. To you I can tell the whole process. But with Mrs. Bolton I only feel the downward plunge, down, horribly, among the sea-weeds and the pallid monsters of the very bottom.

我听着博尔顿太太的讲述，感觉自己正不断下坠，下坠到海底，在那里，人类的私隐如同鱼类在翻滚游动。肉欲的驱使让人猛地啄食一口猎物，然后便上浮，再上浮，冲出潮湿的深海，回归干爽的以太。对你，我可以倾诉来龙去脉。而与博尔顿太太共处，我只感觉自己在下沉，沉到令人毛骨悚然的海底，与海藻及病态的怪兽为伍。

I am afraid we are going to lose our game-keeper. The scandal of the truant wife, instead of dying down, has reverberated to greater and greater dimensions. He is accused of all unspeakable things and curiously enough, the woman has managed to get the bulk of the colliers' wives behind her, gruesome fish, and the village is putrescent with talk.

恐怕我们不得不另找位守林人了。他那位去而复返的妻子始终没有消停，制造出的丑闻仍在不断地蔓延。种种莫可名状的罪恶都被扣在他头上，说来也怪，那女人居然能够煽动多数矿工家的婆娘为她摇旗呐喊，可怕的鱼群，整个村落充斥着流言蜚语。

I hear this Bertha Coutts besieges Mellors in his mother's house, having ransacked the cottage and the hut. She seized one day upon her own daughter, as that chip of the female block was returning from school; but the little one, instead of kissing the loving mother's hand, bit it firmly, and so received from the other hand a smack in the face which sent her reeling into the gutter: whence she was rescued by an indignant and harassed grandmother.

我听说贝莎·库茨先把农舍和林间小屋翻了个底朝天，又跑去梅勒斯母亲家纠缠不休。某天，适逢他们的女儿放学回家，那小家伙长得跟其母一般无二。库茨本打算将她拐走，可没想到，女儿非但没吻慈母的手，反倒结结实实地狠咬一口，结果，被她老妈赏了重重一记耳光，摇晃着跌进阴沟里。多亏其祖母即使赶来搭救，老太太见此情形，也是义愤填膺。

The woman has blown off an amazing quantity of poison-gas. She has aired in detail all those incidents of her conjugal life which are usually buried down in the deepest grave of matrimonial silence, between married couples. Having chosen to exhume them, after ten years of burial, she has a weird array. I hear these details from Linley and the doctor: the latter being amused. Of course there is really nothing in it. Humanity has always had a strange avidity for unusual sexual postures, and if a man likes to use his wife, as Benvenuto Cellini says, "in the Italian way", well that is a matter of taste. But I had hardly expected our game-keeper to be up to so many tricks. No doubt Bertha Coutts herself first put him up to them. In any case, it is a matter of their own personal squalor, and nothing to do with anybody else.

那女人散发出不可估量的毒气。她将床笫之事的种种细节都透漏出来，而这些原本应该被深埋在婚姻的静默之墓里，只有夫妻俩才清楚。而深埋十载之后，她却选择将它们全部挖出，不可思议地铺排开来。我从林利和医生那里听到事情的细节，而医生对此很感兴趣。当然，其实也没什么大不了的。人们本就喜好尝试林林总总的性交体位，如果某男人愿意如本韦努托·切利尼（注：1500-1571，意大利雕刻家）所说，跟妻子“来个意大利式”，那只不过是个人嗜好问题。但我的确没想到，咱们的守林人居然也能玩出那么多花招。毫无疑问，贝莎·库茨扮演着启蒙者的角色。无论如何，这只不过是他们恶俗的私事，跟其他人毫无干系。

However, everybody listens: as I do myself. A dozen years ago, common decency would have hushed the thing. But common decency no longer exists, and the colliers' wives are all up in arms and unabashed in voice. One would think every child in Tevershall, for the last fifty years, had been an immaculate conception, and every one of our nonconformist females was a shining Joan of Arc. That our estimable game-keeper should have about him a touch of Rabelais seems to make him more monstrous and shocking than a murderer like Crippen. Yet these people in Tevershall are a loose lot, if one is to believe all accounts.