【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 17

Caravaggio watches Hana, who sits across from him looking into his eyes, trying to read him, trying to figure the flow of thought the way his wife used to do. 

   He watches her darkness against the brown-and-red walls, her skin, her cropped dark hair. He had known her and her father in Toronto before the war. Then he had been a thief, a married man, slipped through his chosen world with a lazy confidence, brilliant in deceit¹ against the rich,But now there is hardly a world around them and they are forced back on themselves.

   During these days in the hill town near Florence,he has no plots to set in motion², is interested only in Hana. And it seems she has chained herself to the dying³ man upstairs.

 Half a year earlier, from a window at the end of the long hall in Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa, Hana had been able to see a white lion. It stood alone on top of the battlements, Like some gift from the past that had to be accepted. Yet she accepted it most of all among the things surrounding this hospital. At midnight she would look through the window and know it stood within the curfew blackout and that it would emerge⁴ like her into the dawn shift⁵. She would look up at five or five-thirty and then at six to see its silhouette⁶ and growing detail. Every night it was her sentinel while she moved among patients.Nurses too became shell-shocked from the dying around them.They would carry a severed⁷ arm down a hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in nothing, trusted nothing. They broke the way a man dismantling⁸ a mine broke the second his geography exploded.

1 deceit   

n.不老实，欺骗，欺诈，欺骗行为

参考例句：

• The boy's deceit made his mother very unhappy.这小孩的欺骗行为使他母亲非常不愉快。
• The trader was truthful and without deceit.这位商人很可信，童叟无欺。

2 motion   

n.打手势，示意，移动，动作，提议，大便；v.运动，向...打手势，示意

参考例句：

• She could feel the rolling motion of the ship under her feet.她能感觉到脚下船在晃动。
• Don't open the door while the train is in motion.列车运行时，请勿打开车门。

3 dying   

adj.垂死的，临终的

参考例句：

• He was put in charge of the group by the dying leader.他被临终的领导人任命为集团负责人。
• She was shown into a small room,where there was a dying man.她被领进了一间小屋子，那里有一个垂死的人。

4 emerge   

vi.（从水中等）出来，出现，浮现，形成

参考例句：

• The baby's head was starting to emerge from the womb.婴儿的头开始从母亲的子宮中露出来。
• It's still hard to tell who will emerge victorious.鹿死谁手尚难逆料。

5 shift   

n.交换，变化，移动，接班者；vt.更替，移转，变声；vi.改变，定责，更衣

参考例句：

• Lend me a hand to shift this box,will you?来帮一下忙，把这箱子搬开，好吗？
• A sudden shift in the wind warned of the coming storm.风向的突然改变预示暴风雨来临。

6 silhouette   

n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓

参考例句：

• I could see its black silhouette against the evening sky.我能看到夜幕下它黑色的轮廓。
• I could see the silhouette of the woman in the pickup.我可以见到小卡车的女人黑色半身侧面影。

7 severed   

v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂

参考例句：

• The doctor said I'd severed a vessel in my leg. 医生说我割断了腿上的一根血管。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We have severed diplomatic relations with that country. 我们与那个国家断绝了外交关系。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 dismantling   

（枪支）分解

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。
• The dismantling of a nuclear reprocessing plant caused a leak of radioactivity yesterday. 昨天拆除核后处理工厂引起了放射物泄漏。