晚听英语 | 一封写给你的不二情书

信是千里之外的一双眼睛

文丨杰拉尔德·达雷尔  声丨陈杰瑞

他能看见你的心

Letter of love

不二情书

by Gerald Durrell

My darling McGeorge,

You said that things seemed clearer when they were written down. Well, here with a very boring letter in which I will try and put everything down so that you may read and re-read it in horror at your folly in getting involved with me. Deep breath.

我亲爱的麦乔治：

你说有些事情要写成文字才能让人更明白。那好吧，在这封无聊的信中，我会试着把我的所想都写下来，因此你可能会反复阅读，为和我相爱感到愚蠢感到恐惧。先让我深吸口气。

To begin with I love you with a depth and passion that I have felt for no one else in this life and if it astonishes you, it astonishes me as well. Not, I hasten to say, because you are not worth loving. Far from it. It's just that, first of all, I swore I would not get involved with another woman. Secondly, I have never had such a feeling before and it is almost frightening. Thirdly, I would never have thought it possible that another human being could occupy my waking (and sleeping) thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else. Fourthly, I never thought that – even if one was in love – one could get so completely besotted with another person, so that a minute away from them felt like a thousand years. Fifthly, I never hoped, aspired, dreamed that one could find everything one wanted in one person. I was not such an idiot as to believe this was possible. Yet in you I have found everything I want: you are beautiful, gay, giving, gentle, idiotically and deliciously feminine, sexy, wonderfully intelligent and wonderfully silly as well. I want nothing else in this life than to be with you, to listen and watch you (your beautiful voice, your beauty), to argue with you, to laugh with you, to show you things and share things with you, to explore your magnificent mind, to explore your wonderful body, to help you, protect you, serve you, and bash you on the head when I think you are wrong … Not to put too fine a point on it I consider that I am the only man outside mythology to have found the crock of gold at the rainbow's end.

首先，我深情热烈的爱着你，生活中已经对其他人不再感兴趣。如果这让你惊讶，其实我自己也很惊讶。不得不说的是，不是你不值得爱，恰恰相反，首先我要发誓我不会再爱上其它女性其次，我从未曾有这种感觉，这感觉有些吓着我了。第三，我从来没想过可能会有人可以让我无时不刻的想念，茶饭不思。第四，我从没想过一个人即使在爱情中，可以为另一个人如此神魂颠倒，以至于一日不见如隔三秋。第五，我从未企望、渴求、梦想过可以在一个人的身上获得几乎所有想要的东西。我以前从来没有愚蠢到觉得那是可能的。而我在你身上发现了我所有想要的：你美丽，开朗，乐施，优雅，你是天真诱人的女性，你性感，高知，还有让人喜爱的傻萌。我想和你在一起胜过一切，聆听你动人的声音，欣赏你美丽的容颜，与你争论，与你嬉笑，带你看世界，与你分享，探索你高贵的内心和美妙的身躯，帮助你，保护你，伺候你，当然也在你犯错之时敲打你敲打你。并非想给自己脸上贴金，我觉得我是唯一活在神话中感觉自己在彩虹的尽头找到了一大罐黄金的人。

But – having said all that – let us consider things in detail. Don't let this become public but … well, I have one or two faults. Minor ones, I hasten to say. For example, I am inclined to be overbearing. I do it for the best possible motives (all tyrants say that) but I do tend (without thinking) to tread people underfoot. You must tell me when I am doing it to you, my sweet, because it can be a very bad thing in a marriage.

然后，说完这些，也让我们来看看细节部分。别让别人知道……但是，嗯，我其实是有些缺点的。我不得不说，那是一些小小缺点。比如，我有时候会有些过于蛮横。我那样时候总是出于好意（所有的暴君都这么说），但是我确实会（不加思考）对人高高在上。亲爱你，当我对你那么做的时候，你必须要告诉我，因为对于婚姻来说，这是非常糟糕的事情。

Right. Second blemish. This, actually, is not so much a blemish of character as a blemish of circumstance. Darling I want you to be you in your own right and I will do everything I can to help you in this. But you must take into consideration that I am also me in my own right and that I have a headstart on you … What I am trying to say is that you must not feel offended if you are sometimes treated simply as my wife. Always remember that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. But I am an established ‘creature' in the world, and so – on occasions – you will have to live in my shadow. Nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that has to be faced.

嗯，来说说第二个缺点。这其实是一个看情况而言的缺点，并非性格缺陷。亲爱的，我希望你保持自己的个性，保持自己的权利，在这点上我会尽力帮你。但同样的你必须考虑到，我也有自己的个性和权利，而我比成名更早……我想说的是，如果有时候我只是把你当我妻子对待了，请不要感觉受到冒犯。要记住，失之桑榆，收之东隅。然而我是个全球“知名”人物，所以，有时候你会不得不活在我的身影中。这是让我最不开心的一件事，但我们在生活中不得不去面对。

Third (and very important and nasty) blemish: jealousy. I don't think you know what jealousy is (thank God) in the real sense of the word. I know that you have felt jealousy over Lincoln's wife and child, but this is what I call normal jealousy, and this – to my regret – is not what I've got. What I have got is a black monster that can pervert my good sense, my good humour and any goodness that I have in my make-up. It is really a Jekyll and Hyde situation … my Hyde is stronger than my good sense and defeats me, hard though I try. As I told you, I have always known that this lurks within me, but I could control it, and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it. Then I met you and I felt my monster stir and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you have known, and with your letter my monster came out of its lair, black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, malevolent. You will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is; it is a physical pain as though you had swallowed acid or red hot coals. It is the most terrible of feelings. But you can't help it – at least I can't, and God knows I've tried. I don't want any ex-boyfriends sitting in church when I marry you. On our wedding day I want nothing but happiness, both for you and me, and I know I won't be happy if there is a church full of your ex-conquests. When I marry you I will have no past, only a future: I don't want to drag my past into our future and I don't want you to do it, either. Remember I am jealous of you because I love you. You are never jealous of something you don't care about.

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