登陆注册
10069900000009

第9章

Carcassonne

AND ME ON A BUCKSKIN PONY with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world.

His skeleton lay still. Perhaps it was thinking about this.Anyway, after a time it groaned.But it said nothing, which is certainly not like you he thought you are not like yourself, but I can't say that a little quiet is not pleasant.

He lay beneath an unrolled strip of tarred roofing made of paper. All of him that is, save that part which suffered neither insects nor temperature and which galloped unflagging on the destinationless pony, up a piled silver hill of cumulae where no hoof echoed nor left print, toward the blue precipice never gained.This part was neither flesh nor unflesh and he tingled a little pleasantly with its lackful contemplation as he lay beneath the tarred paper bedclothing.

So were the mechanics of sleeping, of denning up for the night, simplified. Each morning the entire bed rolled back into a spool and stood erect in the corner.It was like those glasses, reading glasses which old ladies used to wear, attached to a cord that rolls onto a spindle in a neat case of unmarked gold;a spindle, a case, attached to the deep bosom of the mother of sleep.

He lay still, savoring this. Beneath him Rincon followed its fatal, secret, nightly pursuits, where upon the rich and inert darkness of the streets lighted windows and doors lay like oily strokes of broad and overladen brushes.From the docks a ship's siren unsourced itself.For a moment it was sound, then it compassed silence, atmosphere, bringing upon the eardrums a vacuum in which nothing, not even silence, was.Then it ceased, ebbed;the silence breathed again with a clashing of palm fronds like sand hissing across a sheet of metal.

Still his skeleton lay motionless. Perhaps it was thinking about this and he thought of his tarred paper bed as a pair of spectacles through which he nightly perused the fabric of dreams:

Across the twin transparencies of the spectacles the horse still gallops with its tangled welter of tossing flames. Forward and back against the taut roundness of its belly its legs swing, rhythmically reaching and over-reaching, each spurning over-reach punctuated by a flicking limberness of shod hooves.He can see the saddlegirth and the soles of the rider's feet in the stirrups.The girth cuts the horse in two just back of the withers, yet it still gallops with rhythmic and unflagging fury and without progression, and he thinks of that riderless Norman steed which galloped against the Saracen Emir, who, so keen of eye, so delicate and strong the wrist which swung the blade, severed the galloping beast at a single blow, the several halves thundering on in the sacred dust where him of Bouillon and Tancred too clashed in sullen retreat;thundering on through the assembled foes of our meek Lord, wrapped still in the fury and the pride of the charge, not knowing that it was dead.

The ceiling of the garret slanted in a ruined pitch to the low eaves. It was dark, and the body consciousness, assuming the office of vision, shaped in his mind's eye his motionless body grown phosphorescent with that steady decay which had set up within his body on the day of his birth.The flesh is dead living on itself subsisting consuming itsetf thriftily in its own renewal will never die for I am the Resurrection and the Life Of a man, the worm should be lusty, lean, hairedover.Of women, of delicate girls briefly like heard music in tune, it should be suavely shaped, falling feeding into prettinesses, feeding, what though to Me but as a seething of new milk Who am the Resurrection and the Life.

It was dark. The agony of wood was soothed by these latitudes;empty rooms did not creak and crack.Perhaps wood was like any other skeleton though, after a time, once reflexes of old compulsions had spent themselves.Bones might lie under seas, in the caverns of the sea, knocked together by the dying echoes of waves.Like bones of horses cursing the inferior riders who bestrode them, bragging to one another about what they would have done with a first-rate rider up.But somebody always crucified the first-rate riders.And then it's better to be bones knocking together to the spent motion of falling tides in the caverns and the grottoes of the sea.where him of Bouillon and Tancred too.

His skeleton groaned again. Across the twin transparencies of the glassy floor the horse still galloped, unflagging and without progress, its destination the barn where sleep was stabled.It was dark.Luis, who ran the cantina downstairs, allowed him to sleep in the garret.But the Standard Oil Company, who owned the garret and the roofing paper, owned the darkness too;it was Mrs Widdrington's, the Standard Oil Company's wife's, darkness he was using to sleep in.She'd make a poet of you too, if you did not work anywhere.She believed that, if a reason for breathing were not acceptable to her, it was no reason.With her, if you were white and did not work, you were either a tramp or a poet.Maybe you were.Women are so wise.They have learned how to live unconfused by reality, impervious to it.It was dark.

and knock my bones together and together It was dark, a darkness filled with a fairy pattering of small feet, stealthy and intent. Sometimes the cold patter of them on his face waked him in the night, and at his movement they scurried invisibly like an abrupt disintegration of dead leaves in a wind, in whispering arpeggios of minute sound, leaving a thin but definite effluvium of furtiveness and voracity.At times, lying so while daylight slanted grayly along the ruined pitch of the eaves, he watched their shadowy flickings from obscurity to obscurity, shadowy and huge as cats, leaving along the stagnant silences those whisperings gusts of fairy feet.

Mrs Widdrington owned the rats too. But wealthy people have to own so many things.Only she didn't expect the rats to pay for using her darkness and silence by writing poetry.Not that they could not have, and pretty fair verse probably.Something of the rat about Byron:allocutions of stealthful voracity;a fairy pattering of little feet behind a bloody arras where fell where jell where I was King of Kings but the woman with the woman with the dogs eyes to knock my bones together and together.

"I would like to perform something,"he said, shaping his lips soundlessly in the darkness, and the galloping horse filled his mind again with soundless thunder. He could see the saddlegirth and the soles of the rider's stirruped feet, and he thought of that Norman steed, bred of many fathers to bear iron mail in the slow, damp, green valleys of England, maddened with heat and thirst and hopeless horizons filled with shimmering nothingness, thundering along in two halves and not knowing it, fused still in the rhythm of accrued momentum.Its head was mailed so that it could not see forward at all, and from the center of the plates projected a projected a—

"Chamfron,"his skeleton said.

"Chamfron."He mused for a time, while the beast that did not know that it was dead thundered on as the ranks of the Lamb's foes opened in the sacred dust and let it through."Chamfron,"he repeated. Living, as it did, a retired life, his skeleton could know next to nothing of the world.Yet it had an astonishing and exasperating way of supplying him with bits of trivial information that had temporarily escaped his mind."All you know is what I tell you,"he said.

"Not always,"the skeleton said."I know that the end of life is lying still. You haven't learned that yet.Or you haven't mentioned it to me, anyway."

"Oh, I've learned it,"he said."I've had it dinned into me enough. It isn't that.It's that I don't believe it's true."

The skeleton groaned.

"I don't believe it, I say,"he repeated.

"All right, all right,"the skeleton said testily."I shan't dispute you. I never do.I only give you advice."

"Somebody has to, I guess,"he agreed sourly."At least, it looks like it."He lay still beneath the tarred paper, in a silence filled with fairy patterings. Again his body slanted and slanted downward through opaline corridors groined with ribs of dying sunlight upward dissolving dimly, and came to rest at last in the windless gardens of the sea.About him the swaying caverns and the grottoes, and his body lay on the rippled floor, tumbling peacefully to the wavering echoes of the tides.

I want to perform something bold and tragical and austere he repeated, shaping the soundless words in the pattering silence me on a buckskin pony with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world Still galloping, the horse soars outward;still galloping, it thunders up the long blue hill of heaven, its tossing mane in golden swirls like fire. Steed and rider thunder on, thunder punily diminishing:a dying star upon the immensity of darkness and of silence within which, steadfast, fading, deepbreasted and grave of flank, muses the dark and tragic figure of the Earth, his mother.

10

同类推荐
  • 当英语成为时尚:我与妈妈有个约会

    当英语成为时尚:我与妈妈有个约会

    有一种语言,无处不在,它被用来撰写了大多数对人类文明产生过影响的重要文献,它不仅成为全球沟通中被一致认可的明星品牌,更是当今社会深受追捧的时尚.它的名字叫英语。
  • 娱乐休闲英语口语即学即用

    娱乐休闲英语口语即学即用

    在当今紧张的工作之余,人们总是争取大量的空闲时间来休闲娱乐。在各种娱乐场合,人与人之间容易增进感情,加深关系,促进交往。书中每个单元都设有与内容相关的简单句型结构和短语,并配有多个例句和汉语翻译,便于读者套用和练习。每章开篇都为读者提供了该主题所蕴含的文化背景,方便读者对语言文化的学习。
  • 鲁滨逊漂流记(纯爱·英文馆)

    鲁滨逊漂流记(纯爱·英文馆)

    《鲁滨逊漂流记》是英国作家丹尼尔·笛福的一部小说作品,主要讲述了主人公鲁滨逊因多出海遇难,先被海盗攻击,再到种植园,最后漂流到无人小岛,并坚持在岛上生活,最后回到原来所生活的社会的故事。
  • 终极英语日常用语1980句

    终极英语日常用语1980句

    本书内容包括:用餐宴请;居家交流;职场办公;校园求学;旅游出行;逛街购物等基本交际口语。
  • 365天日常口语放口袋

    365天日常口语放口袋

    《365天日常口语放口袋》以简单、实用作为选材标准,内容取材十分广泛,均以生活中真实发生的实景为蓝本。以句型为基础,将各个单元主题中常见的句型进行归纳和讲解。
热门推荐
  • 亲爱的宝贝

    亲爱的宝贝

    梅影给丁点儿换了尿不湿。丁点儿只是哼哼两声又睡着了。梅影把丁点儿的手放在脸上,来回摩挲。丁点儿的小手激起她无限的母性。她给安哲打电话,说她梦见了孩子。亲爱的宝贝,也许你还住在星空,隔着万里看我。爸爸说,他也梦见你了。他就是那个站在岸上的英俊男子,是他才能赐我宝宝。可我相信,你与我早就是缘定了的。你必然在某一天,住进我的身体。再在某一天,来到这个世上。又会在某一天看到我给你写的信。叶胖子来找她,问他老婆怎么不疼了?是不是出了问题。梅影说宝宝累了,要休息一会儿才赶路。梅影给产妇做了检查,她的手抚摸产妇的腹部,胎儿反抗似的动了一阵,又睡了,好像说别动我,我还不想出来。梅影听了听胎心,像时钟的钟摆平静而有节律。梅影安慰叶胖子:“别着急,等待越久喜悦越多。”
  • 太平天国的历史和思想

    太平天国的历史和思想

    本书围绕太平天国的重大事件、政治社会制度、政治观念展开研究;善于从历史的细微处进行深入探讨,对太平天国史上一系列重要问题提出了新的见解;并就太平天国史研究的思路进行探索,开拓了太平天国史研究的领域;新收几篇文章是作者近几年的相关研究成果。本书内容充实,文字精当,考证细密,是太平天国史研究中的经典性著作。
  • 为霖道霈禅师秉拂语录

    为霖道霈禅师秉拂语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 劝学篇

    劝学篇

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 帝少万安夫人重生了

    帝少万安夫人重生了

    一生平平淡淡的安玖玖竟、然、重、生、了?!玖玖表示“我也很蒙逼,难道是自己人品大爆发了吗?”事实证明并没有,只是以彗星撞地球的几率让玖玖继承了某仙人的空间而已。原本玖玖以为自己会种田发家致富,不想这空间的功能牛逼哄哄,玖玖本想凭着自己的努力走上人生巅峰,不想捡了一个牛掰的师傅不够,又撩了一位腹黑少爷。这是一个女孩子成长为女王的过程。夺得各种奖项,之后宠宠宠超级宠的故事。(1v1,盛世甜宠,女强,男更强的故事,女主可能会心软,但绝不白莲,绝不白莲,绝不白莲。)
  • 痴缠不休

    痴缠不休

    昏暗的街道,身与心,在那一瞬间,一起破碎。一夜珠胎暗结,却引来致命的伤害。情景一圣洁庄严的婚礼,雪白的婚纱,新娘娇羞动人,新郎剑眉星目、俊逸尊贵,所有人见证这幸福的一刻,屏息等候新郎的回答,但是——“我不愿意!”简短的四字,清晰残忍的话从他的薄唇逸出,目光如炬,冷漠坚定的告诉牧师,他不愿意!“为——为什么?”所有的期待化作伤心的低语,心眉不敢置信的瞪大眼睛,脑海一片空白,愣愣的脱口而出。“我不是傻子,我—不—会—替——别—人—养—野—种。”说完,扔掉戒指,大踏步离开神圣的殿堂。心眉弯身,捡起了那枚闪耀的戒指,刺痛了泪眼。原来,他早就知道,所有的甜言蜜语甚至神圣的婚礼,只是他布置的陷井,就等着她傻傻的跳下去,瞬间摧毁了她所有的信念期待。野种,她的孩子,不是野种。情景二订婚宴上,她携夫带儿,美丽自信的向他道贺。“为什么你的儿子跟我长的这么相似?”他紧紧的盯着帅气的小男孩问道,眸光顿时充满惊骇、不安、狼狈。她淡笑不语,一旁的小家伙却护住母亲,傲气的开口:“不要看我长得帅,就说我和你像。”×××××××××××
  • 绝剑与幽灵子弹

    绝剑与幽灵子弹

    活下去的后续外传。它存在的意义在于…弥补你们的遗憾,以及他们的遗憾。
  • 魔法与剑与笑语

    魔法与剑与笑语

    风,火,水,电,大地与天空,光明与黑暗,八大魔法的梦幻时间。
  • 明伦汇编人事典十七岁部

    明伦汇编人事典十七岁部

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 文娱教父

    文娱教父

    网文至高、纯爱教父、推理大师、童话大王、科幻大神乃至武侠皇帝,别人是文以载道,他却在以文证道!