William Styron - Lie Down in Darkness (Excerpt) 汉译

I was naked, clean if sweating, just as I had come. Something seems to hurry me through space. I heard that thunder again, on the remotest horizon, guns perhaps, something; above Java or palms on the Laccadives, in the profoundest sunlit sea. Something hurried me through memory, too, but I can’t pause to remember, for a guilt past memory or dreaming, much darker, impels me on. I pray but my prayer climbs up like a broken wisp of smoke: oh my Lord, I am dying, is all I know, and oh my father, oh my darling, longingly, lonesomely, I fly into your arms! Peyton you must be proper nice girls don’t. Peyton. Me? Myself all shattered, this lovely shell? Perhaps I shall rise at another time, though I lie down in darkness and have my light in ashes. I turn in the room, see them coming across the tiles, dimly prancing, fluffing up their wings. I think: my poor flightless birds, have you suffered without soaring on this earth? Come then and fly. And they move on past me through the darkening sands, awkward and gentle, rustling their feathers: come then and fly. And so it happens treading past to touch my boiling skin—one whisper of feathers is all—and so I see them go—oh my Christ! –one by one ascending my flightless birds through the suffocating night, toward paradise. I am dying. Bunny, dying.

我全身赤裸，虽淌着汗，但很清洁，就像我刚生下来的时候一样。好像有什么东西，把我向太空推去。我再度听到遥远的地平线上的雷声，也许是炮声，或是别的什么声音。那是在阳光灿烂的海域中的爪哇上空呢，还是在拉卡代夫群岛的棕榈树的上空，不得而知。又有什么东西驱赶着我向记忆中去，但是我不能从容地来回想，因为超过记忆或梦想，一种更黑暗的犯罪意识驱使着我向前迈进。我祷告，但我的祷词，像一缕破碎的轻烟向天上升去：“啊，主啊，我要死了”，这便是我所知道的一切。还有“啊，我的父亲；啊，我的爱人”，满怀渴望，孑然一身，我要飞去投入你的怀抱！“蓓顿，你一定要检点些，好女孩子都不是这样的。蓓顿。”是我吗？是损毁不堪的这个我，这个可爱的贝壳？虽则我躺下在黑暗中，要到骨灰中去求取我的光明，也许有朝一日我会苏醒过来的。我在房间里回头一看，便看见一些小鸟松开着翅膀，糊里糊涂地在跳跃这，跳过花砖来了。我想：我可怜的不能飞的小鸟啊，你们不能高飞入云，在这地上很受了苦吧？那么，来起飞呀。于是小鸟们经过我的身边，羽毛沙沙作响，笨拙而又温柔地向前移动：来起飞呀。就是这样，小鸟们偶尔想要接触到我的滚烫的皮肤，而贴近我走将过来——羽毛一度发出小声，如是而已——随即我看见它们飞走——啊，我的救主！——一只一只地我那些不能飞的小鸟，突破窒息的夜晚，向天国飞升而去。我要死了，朋宜，就要死了。