雅思课外读物--Next Door（英汉对照）

[11] I look at the TV guide. “A bunch of people I never heard of.” I read off their names. My wife hasn't heard of them either. She wants to know what else is on. “‘EI Dorado,’” I read. “‘Brisk adventure yarn about a group of citizens in search of the legendary city of gold.’ It's got two-and-a-half stars beside it.”

“Citizens of what?” my wife asks.

“It doesn't say.”

[11] 我看了看收视指南。“一帮从没听说过的人。”我把那些名字一一读出。妻子也没有听说过这些人。她想知道还有什么可看的。“‘《厄尔多拉多》’，”我读道，“‘火爆的探险传说，一群平民寻找传说中的黄金之城。’这节目旁边有两颗半星。”

“哪儿的平民?”妻子问道。

“上面没说。”

[12] Finally we watch the movie. A blind man comes into a small town. He says that he has been to El Dorado, and that he will lead an expedition there for a share of the proceeds. He can't see, but he will call out the landmarks one by one as they ride. At first people make fun of him, but eventually all the leading citizens get together and decide to give it a try. Right away they get attacked by Apaches and some of them want to turn back, but every time they get ready the blind man gives them another landmark, so they keep riding.

[12] 最后我们看了这部电影。一个瞎子来到一个小镇。他说自己去过厄尔多拉多，还说只要有他的一份好处，他愿意带路去探险。他虽然看不见，但在前行的路上，他会把路标一个一个叫出来。开始的时候，人们讥笑他，但最后所有领头的人聚在一起商量，决定试一试。上路不久他们就受到阿帕契斯人的攻击，有些人想打道回府，但是每当他们准备回头时，瞎子就给他们指出另一个路标，就这样，他们一直往前走。

[13] Next door the woman is going crazy. She is saying things to him that no person should ever say to another person. It makes my wife restless. She looks at me. “Can I come over?” she says. “Just for a visit?”

I pull down the blankets and she gets in. The bed is just fine for one, but with two of us it's a tight fit. We are lying on our sides with me in back. I don't mean for it to happen but before long old Florida begins to stiffen up on me. I put my arms around my wife. I move my hands up onto the Rockies, then on down across the Plains, heading South.

[13] 隔壁的女人简直要疯了。她正对他说的那些话，任何人都无法对别人说出口。妻子变得不安起来。她看着我。“我可以去你那边吗?”她说，“就待一会儿?”

我掀开毛毯，她钻了进来。我这床一人睡刚好，两个人就显得太窄了。我俩侧卧着，我被挤在里面。我本不想的，但没过多久，我下面的老佛罗里达开始硬起来。我双臂拥住妻子，把手移到她的落基山脉，往下穿越大平原，一路向南。

[14] “Hey,” she says. “No Geography. Not tonight.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“Can't I just visit?”

“Forget it. I said I was sorry.”

[14]“喂，”她说，“甭画地图了。今晚不行。”

“不好意思。”我说。

“我只是在这儿待会儿，成吗?”

“算了。我说了，刚才不好意思。”

[15] The citizens are crossing a desert. They have just about run out of water, and their lips are cracked. Though the blind man has delivered a warning, someone drinks from a poisoned well and dies horribly. That night, around the campfire, the others begin to quarrel. Most of them want to go home. “This is no country for a white man,” one says, “and if you ask me nobody has ever been here before.” But the blind man describes a piece of gold so big and pure that it will burn your eyes out if you look directly at it. “I ought to know,” he says. When he is finished the citizens are silent: one by one they move away and lie down on their bedrolls. They put their hands behind their heads and look up at the stars. A coyote howls.

[15] 那些人正在穿越沙漠。水快喝完了，他们嘴唇干裂。虽然瞎子发出过警告，但还是有人在毒井里取水喝，死状恐怖。那晚，活下来的人们围着篝火，争执起来。多数人想回家。“这不是白人待的地方，”一个人说，“依我看，以前压根儿就没人来过这儿。”但瞎子描绘的金块又大又纯，如果直视它，眼睛都会给灼瞎。“我早该知道的。”他说。他说完后，人们沉默了：他们一个个走开，在各自的铺盖上躺下来。他们头枕着手，望着满天星斗。一头郊狼在嚎叫。

[16] Hearing the coyote, I remember why my wife doesn't feel sorry for the woman next door. It was a Monday evening, about a month ago, right after I got home from work. The man next door started to beat the dog, and I don't mean just smacking him once or twice. He was beating him, and he kept beating him until the dog couldn't even cry any more; you could hear the poor creature's voice breaking. It made us very upset, especially my wife, who is an animal lover from way back. Finally it stopped. Then, a few minutes later, I heard my wife say, “Oh!” and I went into the kitchen to find out what was wrong. She was standing by the window, which looks into the kitchen next door. The man had his wife backed up against the fridge. He had his knee between her legs and she had her knee between his legs and they were kissing, really hard, not just with their lips but rolling their faces back and forth one against the other. My wife could hardly speak for a couple of hours afterwards. Later she said that she would never waste her sympathy on that woman again.

[16] 听到狼嚎，我记起妻子为什么不再同情隔壁的女人了。大约一个月前的某个周一晚上，我刚下班回家。隔壁的男人开始打狗，我的意思不是打一两巴掌那种，而是用力揍，一直揍到那条狗再也叫不出声来，能听到那可怜的小东西的声音都嘶哑了。这让我们很难受，尤其是我妻子，她一向都非常喜爱动物。终于，那个男人不打了。几分钟后，我听见妻子“啊!”地一声，便走进厨房去看发生了什么事。她站在窗户旁，窗户正对着隔壁家的厨房。那男人把他妻子顶靠在冰箱上，一个膝盖夹在她两腿之间，而她的一个膝盖也夹在他双腿之间，两人正在接吻，非常用力的那种，不只是用嘴唇，两张脸也紧贴着一来一往地扭动着。之后两三个小时，我妻子连话都说不出来。后来她说，她再也不会对那女人浪费同情了。

[17] It's quiet over there. My wife has gone to sleep and so has my arm, which is under her head. I slide it out and open and close my fingers, considering whether to wake her up. I like sleeping in my own bed, and there isn't enough room for the both of us. Finally I decide that it won't hurt anything to change places for one night.

[17] 那边静了下来。我妻子睡着了，我垫在她头下的那只手臂也麻木了。我将手臂抽出，手指一开一合活动了几下，心想要不要唤醒她。我喜欢在自己的床上睡觉，但这床不够我俩用。最后我决定换个地方睡，就一晚，没什么大碍。

[18] I get up and fuss with the plants for a while, watering them and moving some to the window and some back. I trim the coleus, which is starting to get leggy, and put the cuttings in a glass of water on the sill. All the lights are off next door except the one in their bedroom window. I think about the life they have, and how it goes on and on, until it seems like the life they were meant to live. Everybody is always saying how great it is that human beings are so adaptable, but I don't know. A friend of mine was in the Navy and he told me that in Amsterdam, Holland, they have a whole section of town where you can walk through and from the street you can see women sitting in rooms, waiting. If you want one of them you just go in and pay, and they close the drapes. This is nothing special to the people who live in Holland. In Istanbul, Turkey, my friend saw a man walking down the street with a grand piano on his back. Everyone just moved around him and kept going. It's awful, what we get used to.

[18] 起床后，我摆弄了一会儿花草：给它们浇浇水，移一些到窗台上，又搬些回来。我修剪了锦紫苏——它们变得高挑起来——并把剪下的枝叶放到窗台上盛着水的玻璃杯里。隔壁家的灯都灭了，只有卧室窗户上的灯还亮着。我思考着他们拥有的生活，那种生活怎样日复一日地延续，直到看起来那就是他们想过的生活。人们总说，人类适应能力很强是一件非常好的事情，但我不敢苟同。我有个朋友在海军服役，他告诉我，荷兰的阿姆斯特丹有一整条街，你可以步行穿过，在街上能看到女人们坐在房间内等着。如果你看中了一个，径直走进去付钱，她们就会放下帘子。住在荷兰的人对此一点儿也不感到稀奇。在土耳其的伊斯坦布尔，我朋友曾看到一个男人背负一架大钢琴在街上行走。所有人都只是绕开他，继续赶路。有些事我们见惯不惊，这太可怕了。

[19] I turn off the television and get into my wife's bed. A sweet, heavy smell rises off the sheets. At first it makes me dizzy but after that I like it. It reminds me of gardenias.

The reason I don't watch the rest of the movie is that I can already see how it will end. The citizens will kill each other off, probably about ten feet from the legendary city of gold, and the blind man will stumble in by himself, not knowing that he has made it back to El Dorado.

[19] 我关掉电视，躺到妻子那张床上。一股浓郁好闻的味道从被单中飘出。一开始这味道让我眩晕，但后来我就喜欢上了这种香味。它让我想起栀子花。

那部电影我没有看完，因为我已经能够预见到它的结局。那些寻宝人将自相残杀，很可能就在离传说中的黄金之城约十英尺的地方;瞎子会一个人撞进城去，却不知道他已经成功回到了厄尔多拉多这座黄金之城。

[20] I could write a better movie than that. My movie would be about a group of explorers, men and women, who leave behind their homes and their jobs and their families – everything they have known. They cross the sea and are shipwrecked on the coast of a country which is not on their maps. One of them drowns. Another gets attacked by a wild animal, and eaten. But the others want to push on. They ford rivers and cross an enormous glacier by dog sled. It takes months. On the glacier they run out of food, and for a while there it looks like they might turn on each other, but they don't. Finally they solve their problem by eating the dogs. That's the sad part of the movie.

[20] 我能写出一部比这更好的电影来。我的电影里有一群探险者，有男有女，他们离乡背井，撇下工作和家庭——他们熟知的一切。他们漂洋过海，在地图上没有标注的某个国家的海岸，船只失事。一人溺水而亡，另一人遭野兽攻击被吃掉。但其余的人想继续前进。他们趟过河流，坐着狗拉的雪橇穿越一座巨大的冰川。穿越冰川要花几个月时间。在冰川上，他们食物耗尽，一度看起来他们会相互残杀取食，但并没那样做。最后，他们把狗吃掉，解决了难题。这是这部电影中令人伤心的部分。

[21] At the end we see the explorers sleeping in a meadow filled with white flowers. The blossoms are wet with dew and stick to their bodies, petals of columbine, clematis, blazing star, baby's breath, larkspur, iris, rue – covering them completely, turning them white so that you cannot tell one from another, man from woman, woman from man. The sun comes up. They stand and raise their arms, like white trees in a land where no one has ever been.

[21] 在影片结尾，我们看到探险者们在长满白花的草地上睡觉。花朵湿漉漉的，沾满露水，贴在他们身上。耧斗菜、铁线莲、矮百合、满天星、翠雀草、鸢尾、芸香的花瓣完全盖住他们，将他们变成白色，你分不清谁是谁，也分不清男女。太阳升起来。他们站起身，高举手臂，就像无人到过的土地上生长的白树。

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