现代大学英语精读第六册 的第四课和第九课课文 原文

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Nettles

Our farm was small-nine acres. It was small enough for me to have explored every part of it. Each of the trees on the place had an attitude and a presence-the elm looked serene and the oak threatening, the maples friendly, the hawthorn old and crabby. Even the pits on the river flats had their flats had their distinct character.

The girls as well as the boys were divided into two sides. Each girl had her own pile of balls and was working for paticular soldiers, and when a soldier fell wounded he would call out a girl’s name, so that she could drag him away and dress his wounds as quickly as possible. I made weapons for Mike, and mine ws the name he called. There was a keen alarm when the cry came, a wire zinging through your whole body, a fanatic feeling of devotion. When Mike was wounded he never opened his eyes. He lay limp and still while I pressed slimy large leaves to his forehead and throat and-pulling out his shirt-to his pale tender stomach, with its sweet and vulnerable belly button.

One morning, of course, the job was all finished, the well capped, the pump reinstated, the fresh water marvelled at. And the truck did not come. There were two fewer chairs at the table for the noon meal. Mike and I had barely looked at each other during those meals. He liked to put ketcup on his bread. His father talked to my father, and the talk was mostly about well, accidents, water tables. A serious man. All work, my father said. Yet- he-Mike’s father-ended nearly every speech with a laugh. The laugh had a lonely boom in it, as if he were still down the well.

Sunny and I had been friends in Vancouver years before. Our pregnancies had dovetailed, so that we had managed with one set of maternity clothes. In my kitchen or in hers, once a week or so, distracted by our children and sometimes reeling for lack of sleep, we stoked ourselves up on strong coffee and cigarettes and launched out on a rampage of talk about our marriages, our personal deficiencies, our interesting and discreditable motives, and our forgone ambitions. We read Jung at the same time and tried to keep track of our dreams. During that time of life that is supposed to be a reproductive daze, with the woman’s mind all swamped by maternal juices, we were still compelled to discuss Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler and “The Cocktail Party”.

He had slept in the guest bedroom the night before but tonight he’d moved downstairs to the fold-out sofa in the front room. Sunny had given him fresh sheets rather than unmarking and making up again the bed he had left for me.

Lying in those same sheets did not make for a peaceful night. I knew that he wouldn’t come to see, no matter how small the risk was. It would be a sleazy thing to do, in the house of his friends. And how could he be sure that it was what I wanted? Or that it was what he really wanted? Even I was not sure of it. Up till now, I had always been able to think of myself as a woman who was faithful to the person who she was sleeping with at any given time. My sleep was shallow, my dreams monotonously lustful, with irritating and unpleasant subplots. All night-or at least whenener I woke up-the crickets wre singing outside my windows. At first I thought it was birds. I had lived in cities long enough to have forgotten how crickets can make a perfect waterfall of noise.

The bushes right at the edge of the grass looked impenetrable, but close up there were little openings, the narrow paths that animals or people looking for golf balls had made. The ground sloped slightly downward, and we could see a bit of the river. The water was steel gray, and lookedto be rolling. Between it and us there was a meadow of weeds, all in bloom-goldenrod, jewelweed with its red-and-yellow bells, and what I thought were flowering nettles with

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pinkish-purple clusters, and wild asters. Even the most frail-stemmed, delicate-looking plants had grown up almost as high as, or higher than, our heads. When we stopped and looked up through them we could see something coming, from the direction of the midnight clouds. It was the real rain, coming at us behind the splatter we were getting. It looked as if a large portion of the sky had detached itself and was bearing down, bustling and resolute, taking a not quite recognizable but animate shape. Curtains of rain-not veils but really thick and wildly slapping curtains-were deiven ahead of it. We could see them distinctly, when all we were feeling were light were light, lazy drops. It was almost as if we were looking through a window, and not quite believing that the window would shatter, until it did, and rain and wind hit us, all together, and my hair was lifted an fanned out above my head. I felt as if my skin might do that next.

We remained like this until the wind passed over. That could not have been more than five minutes, perhaps onlu two or three. Tain still fell, but now it was ordinary heavy rain. He took his hands away, and we stood up, shakly. Our shirts and slacks were stuck fast to our bodie. We tried to simle, but had hardly the strength for it. Then we kissed and pressed together briefly. This was more of a ritual, a recognition of survival rather than of our bodies’ inclinations. Our lips slid against each other, slick and cool, and the pressure of the embrace made us slightly chilly, as fresh water was squished out of our clothing.

The bluest eye

They have the eyes of people who can tell what time it is by the color of the sky. Such girls live in quiet black neighborhoods where everybody is gainfully employed. Where there are porch swings hanging from chains. Where the grass is cut with a scythe, where the grass is cut with a scythe, where rooster combs and sunflowers grow in the yards and pots of bleeding hearts, ivy, and mother-in-law tongue line the steps and windowsills. Such girls have bought watermelon and snap beans from the fruit man’s wagon. They have put in the window the cardboard sigh that has a pound measure printed on each of three edges-qo lbs., 25lbs., 50ibs. –and NO ICE on the fourth. These paticular brown girls from Mobil and Ailen are not like some of their sisters. They are not fretful, nervous, or shrill; they do not have lovely black necks that stretch as though against and invisible collar; their eyes do not bite. These sugar-brown Mobil girls move through the streets without a stir. They are as sweet and plain as buttercake.

They go to land-grant colleges, normal schools, and learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement: home economics to prepare his food; teacher education to instruct black children in obedience; music to soothe the weary master and entertain his blunted soul. Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.

What they do not know is that this plain brown girl will build her nest stick by stick, make it her own inviolable world, and stand guard over its every plant, weed, and doily, even against him. In silence will she return the lamp to where she put it in the first place; remove the dishes from the table as soon as the last bite is taken; wipe the doornob after a greasy hand has torched it. A sidelong look will be enough to tell him to smoke on the back porch. Children will sense instantly that they cannot come into her yard to retrieve a ball. But the men do not know these things. Nor do they know that she will give him her body sparingly and partially.

The cat will settle quietly on the windowsill and earess her with his eyes. She can hold him in

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her arms, letting his back paws stuggle for footing on her breast and his forepaws cling to her shoulder. She can rub the smooth fur and feel the unresisting flesh underneath. At her gentlest touch he will preen, stretch, and open his mouth. And she will accept the strangely pleasant sensation that comes when he writhes beneath her hand and flattens his eyes with a surfeit of sensual delight. When she stands cooking at the table, he will circle about her fingers tremble a little in the pie dough.

Junior used to long to play with the black boys. More than anything in the world he wanted to play King of the Mountain and have them pish him down th mound of dirt and roll over him. He wanted to feel their hardness pressing on him. Smell their wild blackness, and say “Fuck you” with that lovely casualness. He wanted to sit with them on curbstones and compare the shapeness of jackknives, the distance and crcs of spitting. In the toilet he wanted to share with them the laurels of being able to pee far and long.

He oulled her into another room, even more beautiful than the first. More doilies, a big lamp with green-and-gold base and white shade. There was even a rug on the floor, with enormous dark-red flowers. She was deep in admiration of the flowers when Junior said, “here!” Pecola turned. “Here is your kitten!” he screeched. And he threw a big black cat right in her face. She sucked in her breath in fear and surprise and felt fur in her mouth. The cat clawed her face and chest in an effort to right itself, then leaped nimbly to the floor.

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