【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 20

“You've tied yourself to a corpse¹ for some reason.” 

 

 

“He is a saint. I think. A despairing saint. Are there such things? Our desire is to protect them.” 

 

 

“He doesn't even care!” Caravaggio said.

“I can love him.” 

 

 

“A twenty-year-old who throws herself out of the world to love a ghost!” 

 

 

Caravaggio paused. “You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison— thinking you can cure them by sharing it—you will instead store it within you. Those men in the desert were smarter than you. They assumed he could be useful. So they saved him, but when he was no longer useful they left him.”

 

 

“Leave me alone.” Hana said.

 

 

In her childhood her classroom had been Caravaggio. He had taught her the somersault. Now, with his hands always in his pockets, he just gestures with his shoulders. Who knew what country the war had made him live in. She herself had been trained at Women’s College Hospital and then sent overseas during the Sicilian invasion. That was in 1943. The First Canadian Infantry² Division worked its way up Italy, and the destroyed bodies were fed back to the field hospitals like mud passed back by tunnellers in the dark. After the battle of Arezzo, when the first barrage³ of troops recoiled⁴, she was surrounded day and night by their wounds. After three full days without rest, she finally lay down on the floor beside a mattress⁵ where someone lay dead, and slept for twelve hours, closing her eyes against the world around her. 

When she woke, she picked up a pair of scissors out of the porcelain bowl, leaned over and began to cut her hair, 

1 corpse   

n.尸体，死尸

参考例句：

• What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
• The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。

2 infantry   

n.[总称]步兵(部队)

参考例句：

• The infantry were equipped with flame throwers.步兵都装备有喷火器。
• We have less infantry than the enemy.我们的步兵比敌人少。

3 barrage   

n.火力网，弹幕

参考例句：

• The attack jumped off under cover of a barrage.进攻在炮火的掩护下开始了。
• The fierce artillery barrage destroyed the most part of the city in a few minutes.猛烈的炮火几分钟内便毁灭了这座城市的大部分地区。

4 recoiled   

v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回

参考例句：

• She recoiled from his touch. 她躲开他的触摸。
• Howard recoiled a little at the sharpness in my voice. 听到我的尖声，霍华德往后缩了一下。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 mattress   

n.床垫，床褥

参考例句：

• The straw mattress needs to be aired.草垫子该晾一晾了。
• The new mattress I bought sags in the middle.我买的新床垫中间陷了下去。