一个土生子的札记

Notes of a Native Son 一个土生子的札记

The year which preceded my father's death had made a great change in my life. I had been living in New Jersey, working in defense plants, working and living among southerners, white and black. I knew about the south, of course, and about how southerners treated Negroes and how they expected them to behave, but it had never entered my mind that anyone would look at me and expect me to behave that way. I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one's skin caused in other people. I acted in New Jersey as I had always acted, that is as though I thought a great deal of myself----I had to act that way----with results that were, simply, unbelievable. I had scarcely arrived before I had earned the enmity, which was extraordinarily ingenious, of all my superiors and nearly all my co-workers. In the beginning, to make matters worse, I simply did not know what was happening. I did not know what I had done, and I shortly began to wonder what anyone could possibly do, to bring about such unanimous, active, and unbearably vocal hostility. I knew about jim-crow but I had never experienced it. I went to the same self-service restaurant three times and stood with all the Princeton boys before the counter, waiting for a hamburger and coffee; it was always an extraordinarily long time before anything was set before me; but it was not until the fourth visit that I learned that, in fact, nothing had ever been set before me: I had simply picked something up. Negroes were not served here, I was told, and they had been waiting for me to realize that I was the only Negro present. Once I was told this, I determined to go there all the time. But now they were ready for me and, though some dreadful scenes were subsequently enacted in that restaurant, I never ate there again.

在我父亲去世的前一年，我的生活发生了巨大变化。我一直住在新泽西，在兵工厂上班，与南方的黑人和白人一起工作和生活。我熟知南方的一切，当然，这其中包括南方人是如何对待黑人，以及他们如何期望黑人能举止得当，但我从未想到会有人那样看待我，还期望我也能那样做。我在新泽西明白了做个黑人的确切含义：那就是决不会有人正眼看你，单凭你的肤色就条件反射式地对待你。我在新泽西的行为一如往常，仿佛以为自己很了不起——我不得不这样做——其结果简直令我难以相信。我一到厂里，就招来所有上司和几乎所有同事的敌意，这种情况十分罕见少见。更糟糕的是，我开始不知道发生了什么，也不知道自己做了什么，很快就想，一个人要做出怎样的事才会引发众怒，招致难以忍受的敌意。我深知何为种族歧视，但从未亲身体验过。我曾三次去过同一家餐厅，和一群普林斯顿的男孩们站在柜台前，等着买一份汉堡包和咖啡。每次我总得等很久才会有东西递到我面前。但直到第四次我才明白，事实上从未有东西递到我面前，不过是我自己伸手去拿罢了。别人告诉我，黑人在那里不能算作服务对象，他们在等着我意识到自己是那堆人中唯一的黑人。一旦明白真相后，我决意以后就要经常去那里。可现在他们对我已经有所防备，加之后来那家餐馆上演了一些闹剧，我便再也不去那儿用餐了。（出于逻辑感我觉得though翻译成尽管整个句子始终不对——同感！）

（注：上文删去的多半都是比较累赘的词或者重复表达的词，跟对错无关。）

It was the same story all over New Jersey, in bars, bowling alleys, diners, places to live. I was always being forced to leave, silently, or with mutual imprecations.It began to seem that the machinery of the organization I worked for was turning over, day and night, with but one aim: to eject me. I was fired once, and contrived, with the aid of a friend from New York, to get back on the pay

roll; was fired again, and bounced back again. It took a while to fire me for the third time, but the third time took. There were no loopholes anywhere. There was not even any way of getting back inside the gates.

不管是在新泽西的酒吧、保龄球馆、小饭馆，还是在住宅区，情况都是这样。我总是被迫默默地或者在吵架声中离开。我开始想，我工作单位的机器之所以日以继夜地运转，是因为为了达到一个目标：将我赶走。我被解雇过一次，在我的一个来自纽约的朋友帮助下重新受雇；但随即再次被解雇，接着回头再受雇。第三次解雇时间来得比较慢，但第三次我是彻底被解雇了。并不是到处都有空子可钻的，此后我甚至连再进大门的机会都没了。 （注：问题同上。

授

——译文 夏亚 ——改译高黎平教

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