第十七章（第13/18页）

I am assiduously, admirably looked after by Mrs. Bolton. She is a queer specimen. The more I live, the more I realize what strange creatures human beings are. Some of them might Just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. The human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-men seem actually nonexistent. One doubts if they exist to any startling degree even is oneself.

博尔顿太太任劳任怨，无微不至地照顾着我。她是个奇怪的生物。随着岁月的流逝，我越来越感觉人类是如此奇异的生物。有些人或许真能像蜈蚣那样，拥有百只足，或者像龙虾那样，生有六条腿。人类希望彼此身上体现出诚信和尊严，但其实那并不存在。就连我们，也不禁要怀疑，自己的这些品质是否还明显地存在着。

The scandal of the keeper continues and gets bigger like a snowball. Mrs. Bolton keeps me informed. She reminds me of a fish which, though dumb, seems to be breathing silent gossip through its gills, while ever it lives. All goes through the sieve of her gills, and nothing surprises her. It is as if the events of other people's lives were the necessary oxygen of her own.

守林人的丑事愈演愈烈，好像雪球般越滚越大。从博尔顿太太那里，我随时能够得知最新的消息。她让我联想起鱼类，虽然不会说话，但只要活着，就能在呼吸时，通过两腮传播无声的流言。流言蜚语都经过她两腮的过滤，没什么新闻能令她感到讶异。似乎别人的家长里短，就是她生存必须的氧气。

She is preoccupied with tie Mellors scandal, and if I will let her begin, she takes me down to the depths. Her great indignation, which even then is like the indignation of an actress playing a role, is against the wife of Mellors, whom she persists in calling Bertha Courts. I have been to the depths of the muddy lies of the Bertha Couttses of this world, and when, released from the current of gossip, I slowly rise to the surface again, I look at the daylight its wonder that it ever should be.

她对梅勒斯的丑闻极为关注，只要打开话匣子，她便会让我了解到事情的全貌。她表现出的强烈愤慨，矛头直指梅勒斯的妻子，也就是她自始至终称之为贝莎·库茨的女人，那愤怒的情绪仿佛简直可以跟女演员的演绎媲美。通过她的描述，让我身临其境，深切地了解到贝莎·库茨那污秽不堪的生活。而当我从流言的洪流中解脱出来，慢慢浮出水面，我仰望灿烂的日光，不禁倍感惊异，原来我们的生活如此美好。

It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish.

对我而言，呈现在眼前的世界似乎是深不可测的海底，所有的树木花草都是深海植物，而我们人类则是长相怪异、身披鳞甲的海洋生物，终日以小鱼小虾为食，这一切似乎都是千真万确的事实。我们都居住在无底的深渊之中，只有灵魂偶尔能够勉强上浮，浮到以太表面，呼吸到真正的空气。我确信，我们平时呼吸的空气其实是种水体，而世间男女不过是种鱼类。

But sometimes the soul does come up, shoots like a kittiwake into the light, with ecstasy, after having preyed on the submarine depths. It is our mortal destiny, I suppose, to prey upon the ghastly subaqueous life of our fellow-men, in the submarine jungle of mankind. But our immortal destiny is to escape, once we have swallowed our swimmy catch, up again into the bright ether, bursting out from the surface of Old Ocean into real light. Then one realizes one's eternal nature.

可灵魂完成深海捕食行动后，有时也会如同海鸥般忘我高飞，直奔光明的所在。我想，置身于人类的深海丛林，以掠杀形如鬼魅的同类为食，这或许就是我们的宿命。但我们永恒的命数却是逃离，一旦将海底的猎物吞噬，就会从古老的海洋冲出，再度回归光辉灿烂的以太，拥抱真正的光明。到那时，人类便会真正了解到自己永恒的天性。

When I hear Mrs. Bolton talk, I feel myself plunging down, down, to the depths where the fish of human secrets wriggle and swim. Carnal appetite makes one seize a beakful of prey: then up, up again, out of the dense into the ethereal, from the wet into the dry. To you I can tell the whole process. But with Mrs. Bolton I only feel the downward plunge, down, horribly, among the sea-weeds and the pallid monsters of the very bottom.