The weather was unusually warm for the last day of October. We didn’t even need jackets. The wind was growing stronger, and Jem said it might be raining before we got home. There was no moon.
The street light on the corner cast sharp shadows on the Radley house. I heard Jem laugh softly. "Bet nobody bothers them tonight," he said. Jem was carrying my ham costume, rather awkwardly, as it was hard to hold. I thought it gallant of him to do so.
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“这地方有点吓人,你说是吗?”我对他说,“虽然布?拉德和不会害人,你到来我还是十分高兴的。”
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"It is a scary place though, ain’t it?" I said. "Boo doesn’t mean anybody any harm, but I’m right glad you’re along."
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“你知道,阿迪克斯不让你独自去学校。”杰姆说。
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"You know Atticus wouldn’t let you go to the schoolhouse by yourself," Jem said.
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5
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“我不明白这是为什么,只需要拐一个弯,再过一片空地就到了。”
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"Don’t see why, it’s just around the corner and across the yard."
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“那片空地要让小姑娘晚上去走,可算很长很长的路了。”杰姆取笑我,“你不怕鬼吗?”
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"That yard’s a mighty long place for little girls to cross at night," Jem teased. "Ain’t you scared of haints?"
We laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our years as mist with sunrise. "What was that old thing," Jem said, "Angel bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don’t suck my breath."
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“别说了。”我叫道。已经到了拉德利家门前。
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"Cut it out, now," I said. We were in front of the Radley Place.
High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his repertoire in blissfulunawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging from the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower bird to the irascible qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will, Poor Will.
We turned the corner and I tripped on a root growing in the road. Jem tried to help me, but all he did was drop my costume in the dust. I didn’t fall, though, and soon we were on our way again.
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转弯离开大路,进了校园,一片漆黑。
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We turned off the road and entered the schoolyard. It was pitch black.
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“怎样辨别现在是在哪儿,杰姆?”走了几步,我问。
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"How do you know where we’re at, Jem?" I asked, when we had gone a few steps.
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“现在一定在大橡树下,因为这个地方清凉。当心别又摔倒了。”
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"I can tell we’re under the big oak because we’re passin’ through a cool spot. Careful now, and don’t fall again."
We had slowed to a cautious gait, and were feeling our way forward so as not to bump into the tree. The tree was a single and ancient oak; two children could not reach around its trunk and touch hands. It was far away from teachers, their spies, and curious neighbors: it was near the Radley lot, but the Radleys were not curious. A small patch of earth beneath its branches was packed hard from many fights and furtivecrap games.
The lights in the high school auditorium were blazing in the distance, but they blinded us, if anything. "Don’t look ahead, Scout," Jem said. "Look at the ground and you won’t fall."
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“你要是带了手电筒就好了,杰姆。”
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"You should have brought the flashlight, Jem."
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“先头不知道天这么黑。天刚黑时看不出会这么漆黑。也难怪,这么厚的云层。不过暂时不会下雨就是了。”
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"Didn’t know it was this dark. Didn’t look like it’d be this dark earlier in the evening. So cloudy, that’s why. It’ll hold off a while, though."
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有个人一下子蹿到我们面前。
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Someone leaped at us.
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“天啊!”杰姆叫起来。
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"God amighty!" Jem yelled.
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一圈亮光猛地照射在我们脸上,塞西尔?雅各布在这道亮光后面欢乐地跳着。
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A circle of light burst in our faces, and Cecil Jacobs jumped in glee behind it.
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“哈哈,抓到你们了!”他尖声叫道,“就知道你们会从这儿走。”
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"Ha-a-a, gotcha!" he shrieked. "Thought you’d be comin’ along this way!"
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“你一个人在这儿干吗,伙计?你不怕布?拉德利吗?”
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"What are you doin’ way out here by yourself, boy? Ain’t you scared of Boo Radley?"
Cecil had ridden safely to the auditorium with his parents, hadn’t seen us, then had ventured down this far because he knew good and well we’d be coming along. He thought Mr. Finch’d be with us, though.
"Shucks, ain’t much but around the corner," said Jem. "Who’s scared to go around the corner?" We had to admit that Cecil was pretty good, though. He had given us a fright, and he could tell it all over the schoolhouse, that was his privilege.
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“喂,”我说,“你今晚不是要演奶牛吗?你的戏装呢?”
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"Say," I said, "ain’t you a cow tonight? Where’s your costume?"
"It’s up behind the stage," he said. "Mrs. Merriweather says the pageant ain’t comin’ on for a while. You can put yours back of the stage by mine, Scout, and we can go with the rest of ’em."
This was an excellent idea, Jem thought. He also thought it a good thing that Cecil and I would be together. This way, Jem would be left to go with people his own age.
When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins. Most of the county, it seemed, was there: the hall was teeming with slicked-up country people. The high school building had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled around booths that had been installed along each side.
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“哦,杰姆,我忘记带钱来了。”看到那些摊子,我叹气说。
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"Oh Jem, I forgot my money," I sighed, when I saw them.
"Okay," I said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil. I went with Cecil down to the front of the auditorium, through a door on one side, and backstage. I got rid of my ham costume and departed in a hurry, for Mrs. Merriweather was standing at a lectern in front of the first row of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes in the script.
"How much money you got?" I asked Cecil. Cecil had thirty cents, too, which made us even. We squandered our first nickels on the House of Horrors, which scared us not at all; we entered the black seventh-grade room and were led around by the temporary ghoul in residence and were made to touch several objects alleged to be the component parts of a human being. "Here’s his eyes," we were told when we touched two peeled grapes on a saucer. "Here’s his heart," which felt like raw liver. "These are his innards," and our hands were thrust into a plate of cold spaghetti.
Cecil and I visited several booths. We each bought a sack of Mrs. Judge Taylor’s homemadedivinity. I wanted to bob for apples, but Cecil said it wasn’t sanitary. His mother said he might catch something from everybody’s heads having been in the same tub. "Ain’t anything around town now to catch," I protested. But Cecil said his mother said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked Aunt Alexandra about this, and she said people who held such views were usually climbers.
We were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs. Merriweather’s runners appeared and told us to go backstage, it was time to get ready. The auditorium was filling with people; the Maycomb County High School band had assembled in front below the stage; the stage footlights were on and the red velvet curtain rippled and billowed from the scurrying going on behind it.
Backstage, Cecil and I found the narrow hallway teeming with people: adults in homemade three-corner hats, Confederate caps, Spanish-American War hats, and World War helmets. Children dressed as various agricultural enterprises crowded around the one small window.
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“有人把我的戏装给压扁了。”我吃惊地哭着说。梅里韦瑟太太飞跑过来,把戏装的铁丝整理好,套在我身上。
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"Somebody’s mashed my costume," I wailed in dismay. Mrs. Merriweather galloped to me, reshaped the chicken wire, and thrust me inside.
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“在里面舒服吗,斯各特?”塞西尔说:“你的声音昕起来很远,好像你在山的那边讲话。”
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"You all right in there, Scout?" asked Cecil. "You sound so far off, like you was on the other side of a hill."
The band played the national anthem, and we heard the audience rise. Then the bass drum sounded. Mrs. Merriweather, stationed behind her lectern beside the band, said: "Maycomb County: Ad Astra Per Aspera." The bass drum boomed again. "That means," said Mrs. Merriweather, translating for the rustic elements, "from the mud to the stars." She added, unnecessarily it seemed to me, "A pageant."
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“我想,她不解释,观众可能听不懂。”塞西尔低声说。立刻有人“嘘”的一声要他静下来。
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“全城的人都懂。”我轻声说。
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“但是观众中有很多乡下人。”塞西尔说。
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“那边的孩子,安静一点。”一个男人命令道。我们不出声了。
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"Be quiet back there," a man’s voice ordered, and we were silent.
The bass drum went boom with every sentence Mrs. Merriweather uttered. She chanted mournfully about Maycomb County being older than the state, that it was part of the Mississippi and Alabama Territories, that the first white man to set foot in the virgin forests was the Probate Judge’s great-grandfather five times removed, who was never heard of again. Then came the fearless Colonel Maycomb, for whom the county was named.