现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——6A - The Telephone（电话）

Unit 6A - The Telephone

The Telephone

Anwar F.Accawi

When I was growing up in Magdaluna, a small Lebanese village in the terraced, rocky mountains east of Sidon, time didn't mean much to anybody, except maybe to those who were dying. In those days, there was no real need for a calendar or a watch to keep track of the hours, days, months, and years. We knew what to do and when to do it, just as the Iraqi geese knew when to fly north, driven by the hot wind that blew in from the desert. The only timepiece we had need of then was the sun. It rose and set, and the seasons rolled by and we sowed seed and harvested and ate and played and married our cousins and had babies who got whooping cough and chickenpox—and those children who survived grew up and married their cousins and had babies who got whooping cough and chickenpox. We lived and loved and toiled and died without ever needing to know what year it was, or even the time of day.

It wasn't that we had no system for keeping track of time and of the important events in our lives. But ours was a natural or, rather, a divine—calendar, because it was framed by acts of God: earthquakes and droughts and floods and locusts and pestilences. Simple as our calendar was, it worked just fine for us.

Take, for example, the birth date of Teta Im Khalil, the oldest woman in Magdaluna and all the surrounding villages. When I asked Grandma, "How old is Teta Im Khalil?"

Grandma had to think for a moment; then she said, "I've been told that Teta was born shortly after the big snow that caused the roof on the mayor's house to cave in."

"And when was that?" I asked.

"Oh, about the time we had the big earthquake that cracked the wall in the east room."

Well, that was enough for me. You couldn't be more accurate than that, now, could you?

And that's the way it was in our little village for as far back as anybody could remember. One of the most unusual of the dates was when a whirlwind struck during which fish and oranges fell from the sky. Incredible as it may sound, the story of the fish and oranges was true, because men who would not lie even to save their own souls told and retold that story until it was incorporated into Magdaluna's calendar.

The year of the fish-bearing whirlpool was not the last remarkable year. Many others followed in which strange and wonderful things happened. There was, for instance, the year of the drought, when the heavens were shut for months and the spring from which the entire village got its drinking water slowed to a trickle. The spring was about a mile from the village, in a ravine that opened at one end into a small, flat clearing covered with fine gray dust and hard, marble-sized goat droppings. In the year of the drought, that little clearing was always packed full of noisy kids with big brown eyes and sticky hands, and their mothers—sinewy, overworked young women with cracked, brown heels. The children ran around playing tag or hide-and-seek while the women talked, shooed flies, and awaited their turns to fill up their jars with drinking water to bring home to their napping men and wet babies. There were days when we had to wait from sunup until late afternoon just to fill a small clay jar with precious, cool water.

Sometimes, amid the long wait and the heat and the flies and the smell of goat dung, tempers flared, and the younger women, anxious about their babies, argued over whose turn it was to fill up her jar. And sometimes the arguments escalated into full-blown, knockdown-dragout fights; the women would grab each other by the hair and curse and scream and spit and call each other names that made my ears tingle. We little brown boys who went with our mothers to fetch water loved these fights, because we got to see the women's legs and their colored panties as they grappled and rolled around in the dust. Once in a while, we got lucky and saw much more, because some of the women wore nothing at all under their long dresses. God, how I used to look forward to those fights. I remember the rush, the excitement, the sun dancing on the dust clouds as a dress ripped and a young white breast was revealed, then quickly hidden. In my calendar, that year of drought will always be one of the best years of my childhood.

But, in another way, the year of the drought was also one of the worst of my life, because that was the year that Abu Raja, the retired cook, decided it was time Magdaluna got its own telephone. Every civilized village needed a telephone, he said, and Magdaluna was not going to get anywhere until it had one. A telephone would link us with the outside world. A few men—like the retired Turkish-army drill sergeant, and the vineyard keeper—did all they could to talk Abu Raja out of having a telephone brought to the village. But they were outshouted and ignored and finally shunned by the other villagers for resisting progress and trying to keep a good thing from coming to Magdaluna.

One warm day in early fall, many of the villagers were out in their fields repairing walls or gathering wood for the winter when the shout went out that the telephone-company truck had arrived at Abu Raja's dikkan, or country store. When the truck came into view, everybody dropped what they were doing and ran to Abu Raja's house to see what was happening.

It did not take long for the whole village to assemble at Abu Raja's dikkan. Some of the rich villagers walked right into the store and stood at the elbows of the two important-looking men from the telephone company, who proceeded with utmost gravity, like priests at Communion, to wire up the telephone. The poorer villagers stood outside and listened carefully to the details relayed to them by the not-so-poor people who stood in the doorway and could see inside.

"The bald man is cutting the blue wire," someone said.

"He is sticking the wire into the hole in the bottom of the black box," someone else added.

"The telephone man with the mustache is connecting two pieces of wire. Now he is twisting the ends together," a third voice chimed in.

Because I was small, I wriggled my way through the dense forest of legs to get a firsthand look at the action. Breathless, I watched as the men in blue put together a black machine that supposedly would make it possible to talk with uncles, aunts, and cousins who lived more than two days' ride away.

It was shortly after sunset when the man with the mustache announced that the telephone was ready to use. He explained that all Abu Raja had to do was lift the receiver, turn the crank on the black box a few times, and wait for an operator to take his call. Abu Raja grabbed the receiver and turned the crank forcefully. Within moments, he was talking with his brother in Beirut. He didn't even have to raise his voice or shout to be heard.

And the telephone, as it turned out, was bad news. With its coming, the face of the village began to change. One of the fast effects was the shifting of the village's center. Before the telephone's arrival, the men of the village used to gather regularly at the house of Im Kaleem, a short, middle-aged widow with jet-black hair and a raspy voice that could be heard all over the village, even when she was only whispering. She was a devout Catholic and also the village whore. The men met at her house to argue about politics and drink coffee and play cards or backgammon. Im Kaleem was not a true prostitute, however, because she did not charge for her services—not even for the coffee and tea that she served the men. She did not need the money; her son, who was overseas in Africa, sent her money regularly. Im Kaleem loved all the men she entertained, and they loved her, every one of them. In a way, she was married to all the men in the village. Everybody knew it but nobody objected. Actually I suspect the women did not mind their husbands' visits to Im Kaleem. Oh, they wrung their hands and complained to one another about their men's unfaithfulness, but secretly they were relieved, because Im Kaleem took some of the pressure off them and kept the men out of their hair while they attended to their endless chores. Im Kaleem was also a kind of confessor and troubleshooter, talking sense to those men who were having family problems, especially the younger ones.

Before the telephone came to Magdaluna, Im Kaleem's house was bustling at just about any time of day, especially at night, when the loud voices of the men talking, laughing, and arguing could be heard in the street below—a reassuring, homey sound. Her house was an island of comfort, an oasis for the weary village men, exhausted from having so little to do.

But it wasn't long before many of those men—the younger ones especially—started spending more of their days and evenings at Abu Raja's dikkan. There, they would eat and drink and talk and play checkers and backgammon, and then lean their chairs back against the wall—the signal that they were ready to toss back and forth, like a ball, the latest rumors going around the village. And they were always looking up from their games and drinks and talk to glance at the phone in the corner, as if expecting it to ring any minute and bring news that would change their lives and deliver them from their aimless existence. In the meantime, they smoked cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes, dug dirt out from under their fingernails with big pocketknives, and drank lukewarm sodas that they called Kacula, Seffen-Ub, and Bebsi.

The telephone was also bad news for me personally. It took away my lucrative business—a source of much-needed income. Before, I used to hang around Im Kaleem's courtyard and play marbles with the other kids, waiting for some man to call down from a window and ask me to run to the store for cigarettes or liquor, or to deliver a message to his wife, such as what he wanted for supper. There was always something in it for me: a ten or even a twenty-five-piaster piece. On a good day, I ran nine or ten of those errands, which assured a steady supply of marbles that I usually lost to other boys. But as the days went by fewer and fewer men came to Im Kaleem's, and more and more congregated at Abu Raja's to wait by the telephone. In the evenings, the laughter and noise of the men trailed off and finally stopped.

At Abu Raja's dikkan, the calls did eventually come, as expected, and men and women started leaving the village the way a hailstorm begins: first one, then two, then bunches.

The army took them. Jobs in the cities lured them. And ships and airplanes carried them to such faraway places as Australia and Brazil and New Zealand. My friend Kameel, his cousin Habeeb, and their cousins and my cousins all went away to become ditch diggers and mechanics and butcher-shop boys and deli owners who wore dirty aprons sixteen hours a day, all looking for a better life than the one they had left behind. Within a year, only the sick, the old, and the maimed were left in the village. Magdaluna became a skeleton of its former self, desolate and forsaken, like the tombs, a place to get away from.

Finally, the telephone took my family away, too. My father got a call from an old army buddy who told him that an oil company in southern Lebanon was hiring interpreters and instructors. My father applied for a job and got it, and we moved to Sidon, where I went to a Presbyterian missionary school and graduated in 1962. Three years later, having won a scholarship, I left Lebanon for the United States. Like the others who left Magdaluna before me, I am still looking for that better life.

参考译文——电话

电话

安瓦尔·F.阿卡维

我是在黎巴嫩的马格达路纳长大的，那是西顿东部梯田环绕的多石的村庄，那里，除了那些将要死亡的人，时间对于所有的人来说都是无关紧要的。那时候，人们根本不需要日历或者钟表来计时、计日、计月、计年。我们知道什么时候该做什么事情，就像伊拉克雁群一样，在从沙漠刮来的热风的推动下，它们知道何时飞往北方。那时，我们需要的唯一计时器就是太阳。日升日落，冬去春来，我们播种、收获、吃饭、玩耍，与表兄妹结婚生子，孩子患了百日咳和水痘——存活下来的孩子长大后又与他们的表兄妹结婚生子，他们的孩子又患了百日咳和水痘。我们过日子、相爱，辛勤劳作，直到最后生命结束，都不需要知道这是哪一年，甚至哪一天。

这并不是说我们没有记录时间和生活中大事的方法。只是我们是用一种自然的，确切来说是一个天赐的日程表，因为它是根据上帝的行动来制订的，比如说：地震、旱灾、水灾、蝗灾和瘟疫。尽管我们的日历很简单，但对于我们来说已经足够了。

我们拿台塔·伊姆·卡利尔的出生日期来举例说明吧。她是马格达路纳以及周围村庄中最年长的妇女，我问祖母：“台塔·伊姆·卡利尔多大年纪了？”

祖母得要想一会儿，然后才说：“有人说台塔是在一场大雪后不久出生的，那场大雪把市长家的屋顶都压塌了。”

“那又是什么时候呢？”我问。

“哦，大约是在那场大地震发生的时候，东屋的墙都震出裂缝了。”

好了，对于我来说，这已经足够了，这就说得够准了，是吧？

打人们记事以来我们小村庄就是使用这种方法来回忆过去曾发生的事情的。一个不同寻常的日子就是有一次龙卷风袭击时，鱼和柑橘从天而降。尽管这听起来让人难以置信，但是天上掉鱼和柑橘的故事的确是真的，因为人们一遍又一遍地讲这个故事，他们即便是为了挽救自己的灵魂也不会撒谎。就这样，这件事被记入了马格达路纳的日历。

刮风下鱼的年头还不是最后一个令人难忘的年头。后来几年又有许多奇怪而又精彩的事情发生。比如，旱灾那年，老天连续几个月没有下雨，整个村庄赖以生存的泉眼变成了涓涓细流。泉眼位于离村庄大约一英里的山沟里，沟的一头是一小块平地，上面布满尘土和坚硬的弹子大小的羊粪蛋。干旱那年，这小块平地上总是挤满了打闹的孩子和他们的母亲，孩子们都长着褐色的大眼睛，小手黏糊糊的，母亲们都还年轻，她们身体结实，因为过分劳累，脚后跟被晒得又黑又裂。孩子们跑来跑去，玩着老鹰捉小鸡或捉迷藏的游戏，而女人们则闲聊着，“嘘嘘”地驱赶苍蝇，排队等着轮到自己用水罐装满饮水，然后带回家给打着瞌睡的丈夫和尿湿了的婴儿。有时候，我们从日出一直等到日落，才能盛上一小罐珍贵、清凉的泉水。

有时候，漫长的等待，炎热的天气，嗡嗡的苍绳和羊粪的臭味，都足以使人脾气暴躁起来，比较年轻的妇女，因为担心家里嗷嗷待哺的婴儿，往往为该轮到谁打水争吵起来。有时候，这种争吵会逐步升级以致于大打出手；她们互相撕扯着头发、吐唾沬、诅咒着、尖叫着、谩骂着，把我的耳朵刺得嗡嗡作响。我们这些和母亲一块来打水的哂得黑黝黝的小男孩们，喜欢这样的打斗，因为当她们厮打着，在尘土中滚作一团时，我们可以看到女人的大腿和她们的花内裤。偶尔运气好的时候，我们还可以看见更多，因为有些女人在长裙下面什么也没有穿。上帝呀，那时我是多么盼望这些打斗呀！当一条裙子被撕破，年轻女人那白皙的乳房暴露出来，随即很快又被遮盖住。我记得当时那种冲动、兴奋，连阳光都在滚滚的尘土上跳舞。在我的日历中，大旱那年将永远是我童年时期最快乐的年头之一。

但是，从另一方面来看，大旱的那一年也是我一生中最糟糕的一年，因为，就是在那一年,退休厨师阿布·拉贾决定在马格达路纳安装电话，他说，每个文明的村庄都应该安装电话，马格达路纳如果不安装的话，它永远都不会进步。电话可以将我们与外部世界连接起来。一些人——如退役的土耳其军队中的操练军士和葡萄园的管理员——都竭力劝阿布·拉贾不要在村里安装电话。但是，他们微弱的反对声被淹没在拥护的声浪中，其他村民对他们罝之不理，最后都躲避他们，说他们反对进步，阻止先进事物进入马格达路纳。

初秋一个暖和的日子，许多村民都在田间劳作，有的在维修墙面，有的在为过冬准备柴火，就在这时突然有人高喊着说，电话公司的卡车已到了阿布·拉贾的小店了。当看到卡车时，所有的人都放下了手中的活，然后跑到阿布·拉贾家去看热闹。

一会儿工夫全村的人都聚在了阿布·拉贾的小店前。小店里，从电话公司来的两个人看上去像是很有身份的人，他们像圣餐仪式上的牧师一样，在极其严肃地接通电话，一些富有的村民径直走到店里，站在这两人旁边观看。穷村民们站在店外边，用心听着不太穷的那些人传出来的细节，这些村民站在过道里，能看到店内的情况。

“那个秃顶的人正在割蓝色电线。”有人说。

“他正在把线插到黑色盒子底部的孔里。”又有人补充着。

“留着胡子的装电话的人正在连接两根线。现在他把两根线头扭在一起。”又有一个人插话道。

因为那时我还很小，所以为了亲眼看清整个过程，我穿过大人们密密麻麻的大腿，目睹了整个安装过程。我屏住呼吸，看着那两个穿蓝色衣服的人把一个黑色机器装配好，有了这个东西，我们大概就能和叔叔、舅舅、姑妈、姨妈和表兄妹讲话了，他们住在骑牲口都要超过两天才能到达的地方。

太阳刚下山，留胡子的那人就宣布，电话已经安装完毕。他解释说，阿布·拉贾要做的只是拿起那个话筒，转动几圈黑盒子上面的摇柄，就可以等候话务员接通电话了。阿布·拉贾拿起话筒，用力地转动摇柄。一会儿工夫，他就和在贝鲁特的兄弟聊了起来。他甚至都不需要提高声音或大喊对方就能听得见。

电话的到来，最终证明不是一件好事。随着它的到来，整个村庄的面貌开始发生变化。最快的一个就是村子的中心发生了转移。以前，村里的男人们经常聚在伊姆·卡里姆家里，她是一个身材矮小的中年寡妇，头发乌黑，嗓音低沉刺耳，即使她低声说话，全村的人都能听见。她是个虔诚的天主教徒，也是村里的娼妓。男子们聚在她家高谈政治，喝咖啡，玩扑克和下十五子棋。然而，伊姆·卡里姆不是真正的娼妓，因为她从来不收服务费，甚至不收招待男人们的咖啡和茶钱。她不需要钱，她儿子在非洲定期寄钱给她。伊姆·卡里姆爱她招待的所有男人，所有的男人也爱她。可以说，她嫁给了村里所有的男人。所有人都明白这一点，但是没有人反对。事实上，我怀疑女人们是不是真的不介意自己的男人到伊姆·卡里姆家里去。哦！她们急得直搓手，相互抱怨他们男人的不忠，但是私底下又感到如释重负，因为伊姆·卡里姆帮他们减轻了部分压力，在她们忙于没完没了的家务时，让男人们不致于添乱。伊姆·卡里姆也是一个善于倾听忏悔和解决麻烦问题的能手。她能对那些家庭出现问题的男人，尤其是那些年轻的，说出一大堆的道理来。

马格达路纳安装电话之前，伊姆·卡里姆家一天到晚都是热热闹闹的，尤其是晚上，男人们的谈话声、笑声以及争论声在楼下的街道上都可以听得见，这是一种令心情放松的、使人感到在家里一般无拘无束的声音。对于村里那些因无所事事而筋疲力尽的男人们来说,卡里姆的家是个舒适的小岛，沙漠里的绿洲。

但没有过多久，男人们，尤其是年轻的，开始整日整夜地呆在阿布·拉贾的店里。在那里，他们吃喝、谈论、玩西洋棋和十五子棋，然后把椅子往后一仰，靠在墙上，这表明他们要向传接球一样，热烈讨论村子里的最新传闻。他们总是在玩游戏、喝酒、谈论的时候抬头瞥一眼角落里的电话，好像在期盼电话随时响起，为他们带来好消息，来改变他们的无聊生活，把他们从毫无目标的生活状态中解脱出来。与此同时，他们吸着廉价的手卷烟，用随身携带的小折刀抠着指甲里的泥，喝着不冷不热被他们称为可酷乐、七启和伯事可乐的苏打水。

电话的到来对于我个人来说也是个坏消息。它夺走了我有利可图的生意——一种我非常需要的收入来源。以前，我常常在伊姆·卡里姆家的院子里闲逛，和其他孩子们玩弹子，等着有某个男人从窗口喊我，要我跑腿去商店买烟、买酒，或者给家里老婆捎话，比如说晚饭他想吃什么之类的。我总能从中得到一点报酬：10比索甚至25比索的硬帀。运气好的话我一天能跑上九到十次，这就会保证稳定地供应我常输给别的孩子们的弹子。但是，随着时间的推移，到伊姆·卡里姆家里的男人们越来越少了，越来越多的人聚集在阿布·拉贾的店里，等在电话旁。晚上，男人们的笑声和喧闹声越来越轻，最终安静了。

在阿布·拉贾的店里，正如人们所期盼的，电话终于来了，男人们和女人们纷纷离开村子，就像天降冰雹一般，先是一个人，然后两个，然后成群结队，他们都加入了外出务工大军。

军队召唤着他们。城里的工作在诱惑着他们。他们乘船乘飞机到了遥远的地方，比如澳大利亚、巴西和新西兰。我的朋友卡米勒，他的表兄哈比卜以及他们的表兄弟和我的表兄弟都离开了家，当上了挖沟渠工、技工和一天十六小时穿着脏围裙的肉铺伙计和熟食店老板。所有人都在寻求一种比过去更好的生活方式。不到一年，村里只剩下老弱病残了。马格达路纳只剩下了一个空架子，像墓地一样孤独凄凉，成了一个人们纷纷逃离的地方。

最终，电话把我的家人也带走了。父亲接到了一个老战友的电话，说黎巴嫩南部的一个石油公司正在招聘翻译和教师。父亲申请了一个工作并被录用，后来我们全家搬到了西顿，在那里我进了一所长老会教会办的学校，并于1962年毕业。三年后我获得奖学金，离开黎巴嫩来到美国。像在我之前离开马格达路纳的人们一样，我仍在追求一种更加美好的生活。

Key Words:

rocky ['rɔki]

adj. 岩石的，像岩石的，坚硬的，麻木的，困难重重的

incredible [in'kredəbl]

adj. 难以置信的，惊人的

whirlpool ['hwə:lpu:l]

n. 漩涡，涡流；混乱，纷乱

trickle ['trikl]

vi. 滴流，慢慢移动 n. 细流，徐徐地流

sinewy ['sinju:i]

adj. 多肌腱的，强壮有力的

sergeant ['sɑ:dʒənt]

n. 中士，巡佐，军士（法庭或议会等地的）警卫官

doorway ['dɔ:wei]

n. 门口

devout [di'vaut]

adj. 虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的

toss [tɔs]

n. 投掷，震荡

v. 投掷，摇荡，辗转

lukewarm ['lu:k'wɔ:m]

adj. 微温的，不热的

weary ['wiəri]

adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的

bustling ['bʌsliŋ]

adj. 忙乱的；熙熙攘攘的

参考资料：