Autumn
Night
Lu Xun
Behind the wall of my backyard
you can see two trees: one is a date tree, the other is also a date tree.
The night sky above them is
strange and high. I have never seen such a strange, high sky. It seems to want
to leave this world of men, so that when folk look up they won’t be able to see
it. For the moment, though, it is singularly blue; and its scores of starry
eyes are blinking coldly. A faint smile plays round its lips, a smile which it
seems to think highly significant; and it dusts the wild plants in my courtyard
with heavy frost.
I have no idea what these plants
are called, what names they are commonly known by. One of them, I remember, has
minute pink flowers, and its flowers are still lingering on, although more
minute than ever. Shivering in the cold night air they dream of the coming of
spring, of the coming of autumn, of the lean poet wiping his tears upon their
last petals, who tells them autumn will come and winter will come, yet spring
will follow when butterflies flit to and fro, and all the bees start humming
songs of spring. Then the little pink flowers smile, though they have turned a
mournful crimson with cold and are shivering still.
As for the date trees, they have
lost absolutely all their leaves. Before, one or two boys still came to beat
down the dates other people had missed. But now not one date is left, and the
trees have lost all their leaves as well. They know the little pink flowers’
dream of spring after autumn; and they know the dream of the fallen leaves of
autumn after spring. They may have lost all their leaves and have only their
branches left; but these, no longer weighed down with fruit and foliage, are
stretching themselves luxuriously. A few boughs, though, are still drooping,
nursing the wounds made in their bark by the sticks which beat down the dates;
while, rigid as iron, the straightest and longest boughs silently pierce the
strange, high sky, making it blink in dismay. They pierce even the full moon in
the sky, making it pale and ill at ease.
Blinking in dismay, the sky
becomes bluer and bluer, more and more uneasy, as if eager to escape from the
world of men and avoid the date trees, leaving the moon behind. But the moon,
too, is hiding itself in the east; while, silent still and as rigid as iron,
the bare boughs pierce the strange, high sky, resolved to inflict on it a
mortal wound, no matter in how many ways it winks all its bewitching eyes.
With a shriek, a fierce
night-bird passes.
All of a sudden, I hear midnight
laughter. The sound is muffled, as if not to wake those who sleep; yet all
around the air resounds to this laughter. Midnight, and no one else is by. At once
I realize it is I who am laughing, and at once I am driven by this laughter
back to my room. At once I turn up the wick of my paraffin lamp.
A pit-a-pat sounds from the glass
of the back window, where swarms of insects are recklessly dashing themselves
against the pane. Presently some get in, no doubt through a hole in the window
paper. Once in, they set up another pit-a-pat by dashing themselves against the
chimney of the lamp. One hurls itself into the chimney from the top, falling
into the flame, and I fancy the flame is real. On the paper shade two or three
others rest, panting. The shade is a new one since last night. Its snow white
paper is pleated in wave-like folds, and painted in one corner is a spray of
blood-red gardenias.
When the blood-red gardenias
blossom, the date trees, weighed down with bright foliage, will dream once more
the dream of the little pink flowers and I shall hear the midnight laughter
again. I hastily break off this train of thought to look at the small green
insects still on the paper. Like sunflower seeds with their large heads and
small tails, they are only half the size of a grain of wheat, the whole of them
an adorable, pathetic green.
I yawn, light a cigarette, and
puff out the smoke, paying silent homage before the lamp to these green and
exquisite heroes.
September
15, 1924.
（杨宪益、戴乃迭 译） |
