【饥饿游戏】08

 “Peeta Mellark.”

Peeta Mellark!

Oh, no, I think. Not him. Because I recognize this name, although

I have never spoken directly to its owner. Peeta Mellark.

No, the odds¹ are not in my favor today. I watch him as he

makes his way toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build,

ashy blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead. 

The shock of the moment is registering on his

face, you can see his struggle to remain emotionless, but his

blue eyes show the alarm I’ve seen so often in prey². Yet he

climbs steadily³ onto the stage and takes his place.

Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward.

He has two older brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery,

but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other

won’t. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far

for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical⁴

thing.

The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason

as he does every year at this point — it’s required — but I’m

not listening to a word.

Why him? I think. Then I try to convince myself it doesn’t

matter. Peeta Mellark and I are not friends. Not even neighbors.

We don’t speak. Our only real interaction happened

years ago. He’s probably forgotten it. But I haven’t and I know

I never will. . . .

It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in

the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January

anyone could remember. The numbness⁵ of his loss had

passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling

me over, racking my body with sobs⁶. Where are you? I would

cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there

was never any answer.

The district had given us a small amount of money as 

compensation for his death, enough to cover one month 

of grieving at which time my mother would be expected to get 

a job. Only she didn’t. She didn’t do anything but sit propped⁷

up in a chair or, more often, huddled⁸ under the blankets on her 

bed, eyes fixed⁹ on some point in the distance. Once in a while, 

she’d stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to 

then collapse¹⁰ back into stillness. No amount of pleading from 

Prim¹¹ seemed to affect her.

I was terrified. I suppose now that my mother was locked

in some dark world of sadness, but at the time, all I knew was

that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well. At eleven

years old, with Prim just seven, I took over as head of the

family. There was no choice. I bought our food at the market

and cooked it as best I could and tried to keep Prim and myself

looking presentable. Because if it had become known that

my mother could no longer care for us, the district would have

taken us away from her and placed us in the community

home. I’d grown up seeing those home kids at school. The

sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the 

hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. I could never 

let that happen to Prim. Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I 

cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited 

my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished 

my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the

layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The

community home would crush her like a bug¹². So I kept our

predicament a secret.

But the money ran out and we were slowly starving to

death. There’s no other way to put it. I kept telling myself if 

I could only hold out until May, just May 8th, I would turn

twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that

precious grain and oil to feed us. Only there were still several

weeks to go. We could well be dead by then.

Starvation’s not an uncommon¹³ fate in District 12. Who

hasn’t seen the victims? Older people who can’t work. Children

from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the

mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come

upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the

Meadow, you hear the wails¹⁴ from a house, and the 

Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve¹⁵ the body. Starvation is 

never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or 

exposure, or pneumonia¹⁶. But that fools no one.

On the afternoon of my encounter with Peeta Mellark, the

rain was falling in relentless¹⁷ icy sheets. I had been in town,

trying to trade some threadbare old baby clothes of Prim’s in

the public market, but there were no takers. Although I had

been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too

frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone. 

1 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

2 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

3 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

4 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

5 numbness   

n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆

参考例句：

• She was fighting off the numbness of frostbite. 她在竭力摆脱冻僵的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sometimes they stay dead, causing' only numbness. 有时，它们没有任何反应，只会造成麻木。 来自时文部分

6 sobs   

啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She was struggling to suppress her sobs. 她拼命不让自己哭出来。
• She burst into a convulsive sobs. 她突然抽泣起来。

7 propped   

支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He sat propped up in the bed by pillows. 他靠着枕头坐在床上。
• This fence should be propped up. 这栅栏该用东西支一支。

8 huddled   

挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• We huddled together for warmth. 我们挤在一块取暖。
• We huddled together to keep warm. 我们挤在一起来保暖。

9 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

10 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

11 prim   

adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地

参考例句：

• She's too prim to enjoy rude jokes!她太古板，不喜欢听粗野的笑话！
• He is prim and precise in manner.他的态度一本正经而严谨

12 bug   

n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器

参考例句：

• There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
• The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。

13 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

14 wails   

痛哭，哭声( wail的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The child burst into loud wails. 那个孩子突然大哭起来。
• Through this glaciated silence the white wails of the apartment fixed arbitrary planes. 在这冰封似的沉寂中，公寓的白色墙壁构成了一个个任意的平面。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

15 retrieve   

vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索

参考例句：

• He was determined to retrieve his honor.他决心恢复名誉。
• The men were trying to retrieve weapons left when the army abandoned the island.士兵们正试图找回军队从该岛撤退时留下的武器。

16 pneumonia   

n.肺炎

参考例句：

• Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
• Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。

17 relentless   

adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的

参考例句：

• The traffic noise is relentless.交通车辆的噪音一刻也不停止。
• Their training has to be relentless.他们的训练必须是无情的。