老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
III
It was night. She lay in the narrow, crimson-draped bed. The heavycrimson curtains had been drawn across the dirty lace curtains ofthe window, but the lights of the little square faintly penetratedthrough chinks into the room. The sounds of the square alsopenetrated, extraordinarily loud and clear, for the unabated heathad compelled her to leave the window open. She could not sleep.Exhausted though she was, there was no hope of her being able tosleep.
Once again she was profoundly depressed. She remembered the dinnerwith horror. The long, crowded table, with semi-circular ends, inthe oppressive and reeking dining-room lighted by oil-lamps! Theremust have been at least forty people at that table. Most of themate disgustingly, as noisily as pigs, with the ends of the largecoarse napkins tucked in at their necks. All the service was doneby the fat woman whom she had seen at the window with Gerald, anda young girl whose demeanour was candidly brazen. Both thesecreatures were slatterns. Everything was dirty. But the food wasgood. Chirac and Gerald were agreed that the food was good, aswell as the wine. "Remarquable!" Chirac had said, of the wine.Sophia, however, could neither eat nor drink with relish. She wasafraid. The company shocked her by its gestures alone. It was veryheterogeneous in appearance, some of the diners being welldressed, approaching elegance, and others shabby. But all thefaces, to the youngest, were brutalized, corrupt, and shameless.The juxtaposition of old men and young women was odious to her,especially when those pairs kissed, as they did frequently towardsthe end of the meal. Happily she was placed between Chirac andGerald. That situation seemed to shelter her even from theconversation. She would have comprehended nothing of theconversation, had it not been for the presence of a middle-agedEnglishman who sat at the opposite end of the table with ayoungish, stylish Frenchwoman whom she had seen at Sylvain's onthe previous night. The Englishman was evidently under a promiseto teach English to the Frenchwoman. He kept translating for herinto English, slowly and distinctly, and she would repeat thephrases after him, with strange contortions of the mouth.
Thus Sophia gathered that the talk was exclusively aboutassassinations, executions, criminals, and executioners. Some ofthe people there made a practice of attending every execution.They were fountains of interesting gossip, and the lions of themeal. There was a woman who could recall the dying words of allthe victims of justice for twenty years past. The table roaredwith hysteric laughter at one of this woman's anecdotes. Sophialearned that she had related how a criminal had said to the priestwho was good-naturedly trying to screen the sight of theguillotine from him with his body: "Stand away now, parson.Haven't I paid to see it?" Such was the Englishman's rendering.The wages of the executioners and their assistants were discussed,and differences of opinions led to ferocious arguments. A youngand dandiacal fellow told, as a fact which he was ready to vouchfor with a pistol, how Cora Pearl, the renowned English courtesan,had through her influence over a prefect of police succeeded invisiting a criminal alone in his cell during the night precedinghis execution, and had only quitted him an hour before the finalsummons. The tale won the honours of the dinner. It was regardedas truly impressive, and inevitably it led to the general inquiry:what could the highest personages in the empire see to admire inthat red-haired Englishwoman? And of course Rivain himself, thehandsome homicide, the centre and hero of the fete, was never longout of the conversation. Several of the diners had seen him; oneor two knew him and could give amazing details of his prowess as aman of pleasure. Despite his crime, he seemed to be the object ofsincere idolatry. It was said positively that a niece of hisvictim had been promised a front place at the execution.
Apropos of this, Sophia gathered, to her intense astonishment andalarm, that the prison was close by and that the execution wouldtake place at the corner of the square itself in which the hotelwas situated. Gerald must have known; he had hidden it from her.She regarded him sideways, with distrust. As the dinner finished,Gerald's pose of a calm, disinterested, scientific observer ofhumanity gradually broke down. He could not maintain it in frontof the increasing license of the scene round the table. He was atlength somewhat ashamed of having exposed his wife to the view ofsuch an orgy; his restless glance carefully avoided both Sophiaand Chirac. The latter, whose unaffected simplicity of interest inthe affair had more than anything helped to keep Sophia incountenance, observed the change in Gerald and Sophia's excessivediscomfort, and suggested that they should leave the table withoutwaiting for the coffee. Gerald agreed quickly. Thus had Sophiabeen released from the horror of the dinner. She did notunderstand how a man so thoughtful and kindly as Chirac--he hadbidden her good night with the most distinguished courtesy--couldtolerate, much less pleasurably savour, the gluttonous, drunken,and salacious debauchery of the Hotel de Vezelay; but his theorywas, so far as she could judge from his imperfect English, thatwhatever existed might be admitted and examined by serious personsinterested in the study of human nature. His face seemed to say:"Why not?" His face seemed to say to Gerald and to herself: "Ifthis incommodes you, what did you come for?"
Gerald had left her at the bedroom door with a self-conscious nod.She had partly undressed and lain down, and instantly the hotelhad transformed itself into a kind of sounding-box. It was as if,beneath and within all the noises of the square, every movement inthe hotel reached her ears through cardboard walls: distantshoutings and laughter below; rattlings of crockery below;stampings up and down stairs; stealthy creepings up and downstairs; brusque calls; fragments of song, whisperings; long sighssuddenly stifled; mysterious groans as of torture, broken by agiggle; quarrels and bickering,--she was spared nothing in thestrangely resonant darkness.
Then there came out of the little square a great uproar andcommotion, with shrieks, and under the shrieks a confused din. Invain she pressed her face into the pillow and listened to theirregular, prodigious noise of her eyelashes as they scraped therough linen. The thought had somehow introduced itself into herhead that she must arise and go to the window and see all that wasto be seen. She resisted. She said to herself that the idea wasabsurd, that she did not wish to go to the window. Nevertheless,while arguing with herself, she well knew that resistance to thethought was useless and that ultimately her legs would obey itscommand.
When ultimately she yielded to the fascination and went to thewindow and pulled aside one of the curtains, she had a feeling ofrelief. The cool, grey beginnings of dawn were in the sky, andevery detail of the square was visible. Without exception all thewindows were wide open and filled with sightseers. In thebackground of many windows were burning candles or lamps that thefar distant approach of the sun was already killing. In front ofthese, on the frontier of two mingling lights, the attentivefigures of the watchers were curiously silhouetted. On the red-tiled roofs, too, was a squatted population. Below, a troop ofgendarmes, mounted on caracoling horses stretched in line acrossthe square, was gradually sweeping the entire square of a packed,gesticulating, cursing crowd. The operation of this immense besomwas very slow. As the spaces of the square were cleared they beganto be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law officers ortheir friends, who walked to and fro in conscious pride; amongthem Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, strolling arm-in-arm andtalking to two elaborately clad girls, who were also arm-in-arm.
Then she saw a red reflection coming from one of the side streetsof which she had a vista; it was the swinging lantern of a waggondrawn by a gaunt grey horse. The vehicle stopped at the end of thesquare from which the besom had started, and it was immediatelysurrounded by the privileged, who, however, were soon persuaded tostand away. The crowd amassed now at the principal inlets of thesquare, gave a formidable cry and burst into the refrain--
"Le voila! Nicolas! Ah! Ah! Ah!"
The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in blue blousesdrew piece by piece all the components of the guillotine from thewaggon and laid them carefully on the ground, under thesuperintendence of a man in a black frock-coat and a silk hat withbroad flat brims; a little fussy man of nervous gestures. Andpresently the red columns had risen upright from the ground andwere joined at the top by an acrobatic climber. As each part wasbolted and screwed to the growing machine the man in the high hatcarefully tested it. In a short time that seemed very long, theguillotine was finished save for the triangular steel blade whichlay shining on the ground, a cynosure. The executioner pointed toit, and two men picked it up and slipped it into its groove, andhoisted it to the summit of the machine. The executioner peered atit interminably amid a universal silence. Then he actuated themechanism, and the mass of metal fell with a muffled,reverberating thud. There were a few faint shrieks, blendedtogether, and then an overpowering racket of cheers, shouts,hootings, and fragments of song. The blade was again lifted,instantly reproducing silence, and again it fell, liberating a newbedlam. The executioner made a movement of satisfaction. Manywomen at the windows clapped enthusiastically, and the gendarmeshad to fight brutally against the fierce pressure of the crowd.The workmen doffed their blouses and put on coats, and Sophia wasdisturbed to see them coming in single file towards the hotel,followed by the executioner in the silk hat.