英文
Come Along with Me 4
I have a real feeling for shapes; I like things square, and my room was finely square. Even though I couldn't cook there I thought I could be happy. I wanted the barest rock bottom of a room I could have, I wanted nothing but a place to sleep and a place to sit and a place to put my things; any decorating done to my environment is me.
One reason is, the first time it happened was in a square room, my own room when I was about twelve. Before then, most of it was just whisperings and little half-thoughts, the way a child almost notices something, almost remembers, but this time it was real and I was not dreaming; I know when I'm dreaming. I sat up in bed in the middle of the night, and heard my own voice saying “What? What?” and then I heard another voice, not coming out of my own head—I know what comes out of my own head—saying “Find Rosalind Bleeker. Tell her Sid says hello.” Three times I heard that crazy voice say “Tell her Sid says hello.”
I knew Rosalind Bleeker—in all the years since I've never forgotten her name—and because she was four or five years older and in high school I had a little trouble finding her the next day, but I caught her when she was walking home. I remember I had trouble getting her attention; I was just a little kid, and she was popular and pretty and always laughing. She was wearing a white blouse and a blue skirt and a charm bracelet. Her hair was curly. She was carrying her biology textbook and a blue-covered notebook. Her shoes were white. Her eyes were blue. She wore a little lipstick. I pulled at her sleeve and said “Rosalind, hey, Rosalind,” not very loud because she was a high-school girl. She turned around and looked down at me and frowned, because I was a kid and she was a high-school girl and here I was pulling at her sleeve. “Listen, Rosalind,” I said, “listen. I'm supposed to tell you Sid says to say hello.” “What?” she said. “Sid says to say hello,” I said, and then ran, because I had nothing more to say and I felt silly. I heard later she went home and hanged herself. I don't know.
Anyway, that was the first time. After that there were lots more, some more real than others. There was the time I said to my mother, “Grandma just picked up the phone to call you,” and she said, “That's nice,” just as the phone rang. She looked at me funny; they always did after a while.
“I dabble in the supernatural,” I told Mrs. Faun; she thought I was making some kind of a joke.
I quit when I married Hughie; you'd have to.
I remember another time when I sat by the window and my mother, who ought to have known better by then, said to me, “Why are you always brooding, staring out the window, never doing anything?”
“I'm watching the peacocks walking on the lawn,” I said.
“But you ought to be out playing with the other children; why do you suppose we moved here to a nice neighborhood, so you could always sit looking out the window instead of playing with the other kids? Haven't you got any friends? Doesn't anyone like you?”
“I'm watching the peacocks,” I tried to tell her. “They're walking on the lawn and I'm watching them.”
“You ought to be out with your friends. What are peacocks doing on our lawn, ruining the grass?” and she came over to look out the window; as I say, she ought to have known better.
Sometimes I knew and sometimes I didn't; there would be times when I lay on my stomach on the floor watching creatures playing under the dining-room table, and I knew then of course that my mother wasn't going to see them and was maybe going to put her foot through one when she came by to say why did they move to a nice neighborhood and I wouldn't go out and make friends. Sometimes my good square room would be so full I just lay in bed and laughed. Sometimes weeks would go by and I would be reading some specially interesting book, or painting, or following people every day after school, and nothing would come at all; sometimes they followed me; once an old man followed me, but he turned out to be real. I could see what the cat saw.
When I was about sixteen I began to get self-conscious about all of it; it wasn't that I minded them coming around asking and following me everywhere I went; most sixteen-year-old girls like to be followed, but by then I knew no one else was going to see them and sometimes I felt like a fool; you don't go around staring at empty air all the time, not when you're sixteen years old you don't, not without people beginning to notice. “Do you need glasses?” my mother used to ask me, or “Can't you for heaven's sake stop gawking at nothing and shut your mouth and comb your hair and get out with the other kids?” Then sometimes for weeks at a time I would think that they had gone away, maybe for good, and I'd start taking care of my hair and putting polish on my nails and hanging around the soda shop or going to a football game, and then first thing I knew I'd be talking to someone and a face would come between us and a mouth would open saying some crazy thing, and I'd be watching and listening and whomever I had been talking to would wait for a few minutes and then get edgy and walk away while I was still listening to some other voice. After a while I just stopped talking to anybody.
That's not a good way for a girl to grow up. It's easy to say that if I knew then what I know now I could have handled it better; how can anyone handle things if her head is full of voices and her world is full of things no one else can see? I'm not complaining.
I sat in my pleasant square room at Mrs. Faun's house and thought about it all. Ever since I can remember, I thought as quietly as I could, I have been seeing and hearing things no one else could see and hear. By now I can control the nuisance to some extent. It disappeared entirely when I married Hughie; I have reason to believe now that it is coming back. I sat in Mrs. Faun's house and thought what good did it do to sell the house and find a new name; they don't care what your name is when they come around asking.
At first I tried to point them out to people; I was even foolish enough at first to think other people just hadn't noticed; “Look at that,” I would say, “look, right over there, it's a funny man.” It didn't take long for my mother to put a stop to that; “There isn't any funny man anywhere,” she would say, and jerk on my arm, “what kind of a sewer do you have for a mind?” Once I tried to tell a neighbor about it; it was quite accidental, because I rarely told anyone anything. He was sitting on his front porch one evening in summer and I had been lying on the grass on our lawn, watching small lights go and come among the grass blades, and listening to a kind of singing—sometimes, especially in summer, it was a kind of pleasant world I lived in—and he heard me laughing. He asked me to come and sit on his front porch and he gave me a glass of lemonade, and when he asked me what I had been doing I went ahead and told him. I told him about seeing and hearing, and he listened, which is more than anyone else ever did. “You're clairvoyant,” he told me, and I always remembered that; he probably knew less than nothing about it, but he listened and said I was clairvoyant; later he told my mother I ought to be taken to some special clinic and examined, and for about three days she decided I was pregnant. I never talked to him again; I wanted to, once in a while, but he never spoke to me after that.
I knew a lot about people, a lot that they never knew I knew, but I never seemed to have much sense, probably because one thing I never really knew was whether what I was doing was real or not.
The house, I later found out, was almost all square. It had three floors and a basement, and neat trim porches on three sides; whoever built that house had either very little imagination or a mind much like mine, because everything was neatly cornered and as near as possible the same size; that is, one door matched the next almost perfectly and where there were doors they were as often as possible right in the middle of the wall, with an equal space on either side of them. The windows were perfectly correct.
When I asked Mrs. Faun later she told me that there were five people renting rooms in the house; I thought it was wrong that they should be an odd number, but since I was the fifth I could hardly protest, and in any case she had only six rooms to rent. On the top floor were a Mr. Brand who was a bookkeeper, and a Mr. Cabot who was, Mrs. Faun believed, in merchandising. On the second floor were old Mrs. Flanner, who kept a bookshop, Mr. Campbell, who was in transit, and me. Mrs. Faun kept the ground floor for herself. “I always wanted it that way,” she told me, “I always used to dream of the time when I could live on the ground floor; I had it planned for years. I always thought the dining room would work out better as a bedroom, and I hated the idea of going upstairs every night and leaving it behind. It's more comfortable, it's more convenient, and it's perfectly safe.”
“Safe?”
“In case of fire. I can get out.”
I may say that in all the time I was in that house I never met Mr. Campbell, who was in transit.
We were a gay crew, I soon discovered. Here I was, with one suitcase and a fur stole and a pocketbook with plenty of money, but old Mrs. Flanner had had her same room for nine years and she had a television set, all her own furniture, including a Chinese lacquer table, purple drapes on the windows, and a silver tea service. Brand and Cabot on the top floor took cocktails in one another's room every day at six. Mrs. Faun was apt to invite anyone at random to Sunday dinner; she was almost as good a cook as I am. Brand played the cello, and Mrs. Flanner used to sing at one time before her voice cracked. Mrs. Flanner also played the dirtiest game of bridge that Mrs. Faun had ever seen. Brand had a small mustache, Cabot collected Coalport china, Mrs. Faun disliked garlic and consequently never made a decent salad dressing until the day she died; Brand fell over the bottom step of the staircase every night regularly, coming home at five-thirty. He was neither drunk nor clumsy, he never fell over anything else that anyone ever knew of, he never dropped anything or spilled anything, but every night at five-thirty Mr. Brand tripped over the bottom step of the staircase. You could set your clock by Brand falling over the bottom step of the staircase, Mrs. Faun used to say, if it was important to you to set your clock at five-thirty. Brand and Cabot and Flanner and I usually took most of our meals at a little restaurant around the corner, but every Friday night Brand went to his mother's and every Saturday night Cabot took out a girl; he had been taking her out for four years now, Mrs. Faun said, but thought marriage was too confining. I liked Mrs. Faun. I had almost nothing to do, so I got to helping with the housework and we'd knock off and sit around the kitchen drinking coffee and eating cookies; Mrs. Faun baked every second morning, before anyone was up, and one thing I did like about living in that house was waking up to the smell of cookies baking.
My room, as I say, was absolutely, perfectly square; I measured it. I admire a house with a good square room, and when I unpacked I knew I was going to stay. First I unpacked my picture, my painting; it had been painted with Hughie's paints but I painted it myself. “Keep it around if you like,” Hughie said, “you're proud of it, all right. Don't think I hate all painting styles but my own.” So my own painting went on the wall, although Mrs. Faun said that it would cost to repair the hole. Cabot liked my painting, and Brand. Mrs. Flanner poked it with her finger and said it took her back. Mrs. Faun said it would cost to repair the hole.
“What do you do, Mrs. Motorman?” Brand asked me.
“A little shoplifting, sometimes,” I told him. “Some meddling.”
“What brought you to our city?”
“Curiosity,” I told him.
Brand and Cabot asked me up for cocktails, and Mrs. Faun asked me for Sunday dinner, and Mrs. Flanner asked me if I played bridge and I said no. I walked to the end of Smith Street and around in the little park, under the trees. One day I went back to the streetcar and got on and went into the center of the city, where I went into the first large store and looked at blouses.
“If you don't have this blouse in a size forty-four,” I told the salesgirl, “I'll just run across the street and look.” I didn't go across the street, actually; I spoke to a lady in a drugstore where I stopped to have a sandwich and a milk shake. “They're all chemicals now,” she said to me. “You can't even buy pure vanilla. All chemicals.”
“In a drugstore you'd expect chemicals.”
“Everywhere. You think you're drinking chocolate in that milk shake? Nothing but chemicals.”
“I didn't actually come into the city for a milk shake, though; I came to buy a blouse.”
“Well, they're chemical. Clothes, food, drink, plants growing in nothing but water, laboratories overcrowded, it's a bad world.”
“Bourbon—”
“It's all this mad race into space,” she said, and went away.
When I got onto the streetcar to go back, it said SMITH STREET in big letters on the front; “Does this streetcar go to Smith Street?” I asked the motorman, and he looked at me for a minute and then he said very quietly, “Yes, ma'am, it surely does.”
“Thank you,” I said. “How is your wife's asthma?”
“I am not married,” he said, “thank God.”
中文
跟我来 4
我对形状的感觉很敏锐，我喜欢四四方方的东西，而我的房间正好是正方形的，即使我不能在房间里做饭，我想也能生活得很开心。我能接受哪怕是最简陋的房间，我别无所求，只要能有个地儿睡觉，有个地儿坐着，有个地方放东西就行。对我周围环境所有的装饰就是我自己。
这么说的一个理由是，我第一次有这种感觉就是在一个四四方方的房间里。我自己的房间，那时我大约十二岁。而在那之前，大多数的这种感觉都好像耳边轻声低语，记忆非常模糊，好像一个孩子注意某件东西的方式，并不能完全记住，但这次它是真实的，我也不是在做梦，我知道什么时候我会做梦。我半夜在床上坐起来，听见我自己的声音在问道：“什么？什么？”然后我听见了另一个声音，不是来自我自己的大脑——我知道什么会来自我自己的大脑——在说：“找到罗莎琳德·布里克尔。告诉她席德在向她问好。”我听见那个疯狂的声音说了三次，“告诉她席德在向她问好。”
我认识罗莎琳德·布里克尔——这些年来我从未忘记她的名字——因为她在高中时比我大四五岁，第二天我找她还真费了点儿周折，但在她回家的路上我最终找到了她。我记得我费了好大劲才引起了她的注意，我那时不过是个小孩子，而她很受欢迎，漂亮，总爱哈哈大笑。她穿着一件白色的衬衫，一条蓝色的裙子，还戴着一个迷人的手镯。她的头发拳曲着，拿着她的生物课本，还有一个蓝色封皮笔记本。她的鞋是白色的，眼睛是蓝色的，抹着淡淡的口红。我拽着她的袖子说：“罗莎琳德，嗨，罗莎琳德。”声音不是很大，因为她是个高中生了。她转过身低头看着我，皱着眉，因为我还是个孩子，她是个高中生，我拽着她的袖子。“听着，罗莎琳德，”我说，“听着，我应该告诉你席德想向你问好。”“什么？”她说道。“席德说要向你问好。”我说道，说完就跑了，因为我没别的什么可说了，我也觉得很傻。我后来听说，她回到家里就悬梁自尽了。我不知道为什么。
毕竟，这是第一次。从那以后，又有好几次，有几次相比其他几次比较真实。有一次，我对我母亲说：“姥姥要拿起电话跟你通话。”她随口说道：“那好吧。”就在这时电话铃响了。她看着我的样子很好玩，以后这样的事又出现了多次。
“我涉足的领域是超自然。”我告诉弗恩太太。她觉得我在跟她开玩笑。
当我嫁给休伊以后，我就不再涉足超自然领域了，那也是不得已的。
我记得还有一次，当我坐在窗户边的时候，我妈妈——她那个时候对我应该更了解了——对我说：“你为什么总是盯着窗外沉思默想，什么事也不做呢？”
“我正在看那些孔雀走过草坪。”我说道。
“但是你应该出去和其他的孩子一块儿玩，要不你以为我们搬到这个良好的社区是为了什么，所以你干吗总是坐在这里看着窗外而不去跟其他孩子一块儿玩呢？你难道没有朋友吗？没人喜欢你吗？”
“我正在看孔雀呢，”我试图告诉她，“它们正在草坪上溜达，我在观察它们。”
“你应该和你的朋友们出去玩。那些孔雀在我们的草坪上做什么呢，把青草毁掉吗？”她也走上前往窗外看。正如我所说的，她应该早就知道她其实什么也看不到。
有时我能通灵，有时又不能。有很多次我趴在地板上观察小生物在餐厅桌子下的地板上玩耍，我知道我妈妈当然看不见它们，当她过来跟我说为什么要搬到一个好点儿的社区去，还有我为什么不出门去交朋友之类的话的时候，也许她还会踩着它们。有时，我的这个方形房间会挤得满满当当，我只能躺在床上笑着。有时，好几周就这样过去了，我会读某本特别有趣的书，或者画画，或者每天放学后跟在人们的后面，根本什么事也没发生。有时，他们跟着我。有一次，一个老男人跟着我，但是结果证明他是真实的。我能看见猫所看见的东西。
当我大约十六岁的时候，我开始对一切有了自我意识，那倒不是说我开始介意他们老是在各处尾随我。大多数十六岁的女孩喜欢被人尾随，但是随后我知道没有别的人可以看见他们，有时我觉得自己像个傻瓜。你不能一直茫然地盯着空气四处走动，你十六岁时往往会这样，有人会注意到这一点。“你需要眼镜吗？”我妈妈常常这样问我，或者“看在老天的分上，你就不能别再傻呆呆地愣着，闭上你的嘴，梳梳你的头发，出去和别的孩子一起玩玩好吗？”有时一连几周我会想他们已经走了，这也许是好的，我得开始自己梳理我的头发，自己抹指甲油，自己去汽水店，或者去看足球比赛了，我知道接下来的第一件事，是我需要和别人聊天，一张脸可能会隔在我们之间，一张嘴可能会说疯狂的事，我愿意观察和聆听我一直与之聊天的人，愿意等上好一阵子，然后变得紧张不安，当我还听见别的什么声音的时候，就赶紧走开。再过段日子，我跟谁都不说话了。
对于一个女孩子的成长来说，这不是好的方式。如果那时我知道现在所知道的事情，我可能会处理得更好一些，这话说起来倒是容易。如果一个人的脑袋里充满了声音，这些声音没别的人知道，她怎么可能处理得好？我不是在抱怨。
我坐在弗恩太太房子的一个令人愉快的正方形房间里，想着这些事情。自从我能记事起，我就尽可能安静地思索，我一直能看见和听见别人看不见和听不见的东西。现在我能在某种程度上控制这讨厌的事了。当我嫁给休伊以后，它们就完全消失了。我有理由相信现在它们又回来了。我坐在弗恩太太的房子里，在考虑我卖了房子，给自己改名换姓到底有什么好处。当他们凑上来问你话的时候，他们才不管你叫什么名字呢。
刚开始的时候，我想把这些事指给别人。起初我甚至傻到以为别人仅仅是没有注意到。“看那个，”我会说，“看，就在那儿，一个可笑的男人。”对我妈妈来说，她没有花很长时间停下脚步去注意。“根本没有什么可笑的男人，”她会说，并猛地拽一下我的胳膊，“你脑袋里净想什么乱七八糟的东西呢？”还有一次我想告诉一位邻居关于我的见闻，也是很偶然的事，因为我很少告诉任何人。在夏季的某个晚上，他正坐在前门的门廊上。我一直趴在草坪上，仔细观察着草叶间来来去去的萤火虫的亮光，倾听着某种昆虫的歌唱——尤其是在夏季时节，那是我生活的美好世界——他听见我在笑。他让我过去，坐在他的前门门廊上，并递给我一杯柠檬水，然后问我在干什么呢，我走过去告诉了他。我告诉他我所看到的和听到的，他也倾听着，比别的人听到的都多。“你是千里眼，”他跟我说，我会永远记住这句话，他可能对此一无所知，但是他也倾听了，并说我是千里眼。后来，他告诉我妈妈应该带我去某个专科诊所好好检查一下，大约三天以后，她明白我怀孕了。我从未告诉他，其实，曾经一度我还想过告诉他，但是从那以后，他再也没跟我说过话。
我了解很多关于人类的事，很多他们从来不了解的事。但是我从来没有太多的感觉，可能是我从来没有真正地了解我做的一件事是真实的还是虚幻的。
我后来找的这个房子，也几乎是正方形的。它有三层，还有一个地下室，三面是干净整齐的门廊，不管当初是谁修建了这栋房子，要么是太缺乏想象力，要么是脑袋里想的跟我一样，因为每件东西都整齐地摆放在角落里，相同大小的东西会尽量靠在一起。那就是说，一扇门的旁边会是几乎一模一样的另一扇门，只要是有门的地方，门通常都会开在墙的中间位置，在门的两边会留出完全相同的空间。窗户也是同样的设计。
我后来问过弗恩太太，她告诉我这栋房子里的租客共有五人，我想奇数是不对的，但是鉴于我是第五位租户，我就没法再说什么了。不管怎样，她有六个房间可以出租。顶层的租户是个会计，叫布朗德先生；还有一位是卡伯特先生，弗恩太太认为他是做推销的。在第二层，是一名叫弗莱纳太太的老妇人，她经营着一家书店。坎普贝尔先生在运输业工作，还有我。弗恩太太自己住在一楼。“我就想住一层，”她告诉我说，“我过去常常梦想我能住在一层，我盘算了好几年了。我总是想如果把餐厅改成卧室会更好些，我讨厌每天爬楼梯上下楼。一层更加舒服，更加方便，也更加安全。”
“安全？”
“万一着火了，我更容易跑出去。”
我得说在这栋楼房里，我还一直没与那位在运输业工作的坎普贝尔先生会过面。
我很快就发现，我们是一群快活的租客。来这儿时，我只带着一个行李箱、一个皮毛披肩和一个装着很多钱的手袋。而老弗莱纳太太已经在这儿住了九年了，她有一台电视机，家具也是自己的，包括一个中式漆器的桌子、紫色的窗帘和一套银茶具。住在顶层的布朗德和卡伯特每天六点会在彼此的房间里喝上几杯鸡尾酒。弗恩太太往往会在周日时随意地邀上某个客人和她共进晚餐，她跟我差不多都属于擅长做饭弄菜的一类人。布朗德拉大提琴，而弗莱纳太太会一边高声唱歌直到把嗓子唱哑为止。弗莱纳太太还经常玩桥牌，但弗恩太太从未见过还有那样肮脏的作弊手法。布朗德留着一撇小胡子，卡伯特收藏科尔波特瓷器，弗恩太太不喜欢大蒜，结果直到她死那天也做不好美味的色拉汁。布朗德每天晚上铁定会被楼梯的最下面一级的台阶绊倒，他每天凌晨五点半回到家里。他既不是喝醉了，也不是笨手笨脚。据大家所知，他在别处从来没摔倒过，他也从不掉东西和洒东西，但是在每天凌晨五点三十分的时候，布朗德先生就会被楼梯的最下面一级的台阶绊倒。弗恩太太常说，如果把五点三十分设定为闹铃时间对你来说很重要，你可以把布朗德被楼梯的最下面一级的台阶绊倒当作你的闹钟。布朗德、卡伯特、弗莱纳和我通常在街角的一个小饭馆里解决吃饭的问题，但是每个周五晚上，布朗德会去他母亲家里；每个周六晚上，卡伯特会带一个女孩外出，目前为止，他已经和这个女孩交往四年了，弗恩太太说。但是，一想到结婚，他就会觉得太受约束。我喜欢弗恩太太，我几乎没事可干，所以我经常帮她做些家务，歇口气时，我们会坐在厨房喝咖啡和吃些小点心。弗恩太太每隔一天的早上，在每个人起床之前，会烘焙一些小点心，我喜欢住在这栋房子的原因之一就是，在清晨醒来的时候会闻到一股烘焙点心的味道。
我住的房间，正如我所说，绝对是四四方方、方方正正的，我测量过它。我非常喜欢带有方正形房间的楼房，所以当初我放下行囊时，我知道自己会留下来的。我首先拿出了我的照片和我自己的画作。这些画作是与休伊的画作同时完成的，但是是我自己创作的。“如果你喜欢，把它们挂起来吧，”休伊说道，“好吧，你会很自豪的。别以为除了我自己的画，我会讨厌所有的画。”虽然弗恩太太说以后修补墙上的洞会破费的，但我还是把自己的画挂在了墙上。卡伯特和布朗德都喜欢我的画。弗莱纳太太用手指指着画说，它们会吸引她回来的。而弗恩太太说以后修补墙上的洞会破费的。
“您是做哪一行的，摩妥尔曼太太？”布莱德问我。
“有时，干点儿入店行窃的事，”我告诉他，“还管点儿闲事。”
“什么风把你吹到这个城市来了？”
“好奇。”我告诉他。
布莱德和卡伯特邀请我上楼喝鸡尾酒，弗恩太太也邀请我跟她共进周日的晚餐，弗莱纳太太则问我是否会玩桥牌，我说不会。我走到史密斯大街的尽头，拐弯进了那家小公园，坐在了树下。有一天，我去坐有轨电车，电车沿街而行，到了市中心，下车后我进了第一家大商店，想买一件罩衫。
“如果这件罩衫没有四十四码的，”我跟导购小姐说，“我就到街对过的商店看看。”我实际上没穿过大街，我在一家药店停了下来，和店内的一位女士要了一个三明治和一杯奶昔。“现在店里几乎都是药品了。”她对我说，“你甚至不能买到纯香草了，都是药品了。”
“在一家药店，你只能指望买到药品。”
“到处都是这样。你认为你喝的奶昔中真的加了巧克力吗？其实什么都没有，只是些化学品。”
“但我实际上不是来城里买奶昔喝的，我是来买罩衫的。”
“呃，它们都是化学品。衣服、食物、饮料，植物生长不需要别的，只需要水，可实验室现在到处泛滥，这个世界变坏了。”
“波旁威士忌……”
“都是疯狂的太空竞赛。”她撂下一句话，然后走开了。
当我坐上有轨电车回家时，车头上用大写字母写着史密斯大街。“这趟电车是开往史密斯大街的吗？”我问司机，他看了我有一分钟，然后很快地说道：“是的，女士，千真万确。”
“谢谢你，”我说道，“你太太的哮喘病怎么样了？”
“我还没结婚呢，”他说道，“感谢上帝。”
