第三章（第4/12页）

"Oh, probably not! I may be a good writer or I may be a bad one, but a writer and a writer of plays is what I am, and I've got to be. There's no question of that.” "And you think it's a writer of popular plays that you've got to be?" asked Connie. "There, exactly!" he said, turning to her in a sudden flash. "There's nothing in it! There's nothing in popularity. There's nothing in the public, if it comes to that. There's nothing really in my plays to make them popular. It's not that. They just are like the weather...the sort that will have to be...for the time being.” He turned his slow, rather full eyes, that had been drowned in such fathomless disillusion, on Connie, and she trembled a little. He seemed so old...endlessly old, built up of layers of disillusion, going down in him generation after generation, like geological strata; and at the same time he was forlorn like a child. An outcast, in a certain sense; but with the desperate bravery of his rat-like existence.

“哦，或许没有吧！拥有生花妙笔也好，作品不堪卒读也罢，都无法改变我身为剧作家的事实，而且这也是我唯一的出路。这一点毋庸置疑。”“那你觉得自己注定会成为尽人皆知的剧作家么？”康妮问道。“没错，千真万确！”他答道，霍地把脸扭向康妮。“其实也算不得什么！家喻户晓也没有什么了不起。说白了，广大观众也就是那么回事。其实我的剧本并无出众之处。受欢迎的关键不在于此。一切就好似天气……不过是水到渠成的事情……至少目前看来是这样。”他那对迟钝的大眼睛凝视着康妮，眼神中饱含着无穷无尽的幻灭，四目相对，康妮不禁微微战栗了一下。他看上去如此苍老……久历岁月的沧桑，经年累月的幻灭层叠起来，在他身上沉积汇聚，如同地层的形成过程；但与此同时，他又像个孤立无助的孩子。某种意义上，一个被抛弃者，却有着老鼠般抗争的勇敢气概。

"At least it's wonderful what you've done at your time of life," said Clifford contemplatively.

“至少你年纪轻轻就有如此成就，仅这一点就令人叹服。”克利福德若有所思地说。

"I'm thirty...yes, I'm thirty!" said Michaelis, sharply and suddenly, with a curious laugh, hollow, triumphant, and bitter.

“我30岁了……的确，我已过而立之年！”米凯利斯的声调突然拔高，嘴角流露出诡异的笑容，虚伪空洞，志得意满，却又渗透着丝丝苦涩。

"And are you alone?" asked Connie.

“你独身一人？”康妮问。

"How do you mean?

“你的意思是？

Do I live alone? I've got my servant. He's a Greek, so he says, and quite incompetent. But I keep him. And I'm going to marry. Oh, yes, I must marry.” "It sounds like going to have your tonsils cut," laughed Connie. "Will it be an effort?" He looked at her admiringly. "Well, Lady Chatterley, somehow it will! I find…excuse me…I find I can't marry an Englishwoman, not even an Irishwoman...” "Try an American," said Clifford.

我独自过活？我有个仆人。他自称来自希腊，什么都做不好。但我还是没有解雇他。我已经有结婚的打算。嗯，没错，我必须结婚。”“听你的口气，就像要去割扁桃体，”康妮调侃道，“成家真的就那么艰难？”他望着康妮，倾慕之情溢于言表。“怎么说呢，查泰莱夫人，确实有些困难。我发觉……请恕我冒昧……我发觉自己没办法娶位英国妻子，甚至连爱尔兰姑娘也不太合适……”“试试美国妞。”克利福德提议道。

"Oh, American!" He laughed a hollow laugh.

“噢，美国妞！”米凯利斯挤出干巴巴的笑容。

"No, I've asked my man if he will find me a Turk or something...something nearer to the Oriental.” Connie really wondered at this queer, melancholy specimen of extraordinary success; it was said he had an income of fifty thousand dollars from America alone. Sometimes he was handsome: sometimes as he looked sideways, downwards, and the light fell on him, he had the silent, enduring beauty of a carved ivory Negro mask, with his rather full eyes, and the strong queerly-arched brows, the immobile, compressed mouth; that momentary but revealed immobility, an immobility, a timelessness which the Buddha aims at, and which Negroes express sometimes without ever aiming at it; something old, old, and acquiescent in the race! Aeons of acquiescence in race destiny, instead of our individual resistance. And then a swimming through, like rats in a dark river. Connie felt a sudden, strange leap of sympathy for him, a leap mingled with compassion, and tinged with repulsion, amounting almost to love. The outsider! The outsider! And they called him a bounder! How much more bounderish and assertive Clifford looked! How much stupider!