追风筝的人经典书评 残忍而美丽的情谊:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(3)

残忍而美丽的情谊:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(3)  

成年后的阿米尔始终无法原谅自己当年对哈桑的背叛。为了赎罪，阿米尔再度踏上暌违二十多年的故乡，希望能为不幸的好友尽最后一点心力，却发现一个惊天谎言，儿时的噩梦再度重演，阿米尔该如何抉择？小说如此残忍而又美丽，作者以温暖细腻的笔法勾勒人性的本质与救赎，读来令人荡气回肠。
Upstairs was my bedroom
Baba's room
and his study
also known as "the smoking room"
which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. Baba and his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner. They stuffed their pipes—except Baba always called it "fattening the pipe"—and discussed their favorite three topics: politics
Business
soccer. Sometimes I asked Baba if I could sit with them
but Baba would stand in the doorway. "Go on
now
" he'd say. "This is grown-ups time. Why don't you go read one of those books of yours?" He'd close the door
leave me to wonder why it was always grown-ups? time with him. I'd sit by the door
knees drawn to my chest. Sometimes I sat there for an hour
sometimes o
listening to their laughter
their chatter.
The living room downstairs had a curved wall with custombuilt cabis. Inside sat framed family pictures: an old
grainy photo of my grandfather and King Nadir Shah taken in 1931
o years before the king's assassination; they are standing over a dead deer
dressed in knee-high boots
rifles slung over their shoulders. There was a picture of my parents' wedding night
Baba dashing in his black suit and my mother a smiling young princess in white. Here was Baba and his best friend and Business partner
Rahim Khan
standing outside our house
neither one smiling—I am a baby in that photograph and Baba is holding me
looking tired and grim. I'm in his arms
but it's Rahim Khan's pinky my fingers are curled around.
The curved wall led into the dining room
at the center of which was a mahogany table that could easily sit thirty guests—and
given my father's taste for extravagant parties
it did just that almost every week. On the other end of the dining room was a tall marble fireplace
always lit by the orange glow of a fire in the wintertime.
A large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular terrace that overlooked o acres of backyard and rows of cherry trees. Baba and Ali had planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall: tomatoes
mint
peppers
and a row of corn that never really took. Hassan and I used to call it "the Wall of Ailing Corn".
On the south end of the garden
in the shadows of a loquat tree
was the servants' Home
a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father.
It was there
in that little shack
that Hassan was born in the winter of 1964
just one year after my mother died giving birth to me.

重点精讲：
perpetually adv. 永恒地，持久地，不断地
perpetual adj.
He was perpetual president of the country.
他是该国的终身总统。
She's tired of their perpetual chatter.
她对他们没完没了的闲谈感到厌倦。
recline v. 躺，靠在，斜倚，倚靠，依赖
She reclined her head against my shoulder.
她把头倚在我的肩上。
curved adj. 弯曲的
assassination n. 暗杀
The press disclosed an assassination attempt.
报界披露了一暗杀企图。
dashing adj. 时髦的
She put the glasses on and felt very dashing
like an actress in the movies.
她戴上眼镜
觉得时髦得很，很象电影里的女明星。
grim adj. 严厉的，冷酷的，可怕的，不愉快的
His expression was grim when he told them they had lost their job.
当他告诉他们说他们已被解雇时，他的表情十分冷酷。
extravagant adj. 奢侈的，浪费的，过度的，大量的
She was pilloried in the press for her extravagant parties.
她的聚会十分铺张，新闻界对她大加嘲弄。
overlook vt. 俯瞰，远眺，没注意到，忽视
My room overlooked the garden.
我的房间俯瞰花园。
He overlooked a spelling error on the first page.
他没有看出第一页中有个拼写错误。
modest adj. 谦虚的，适度的，端庄的，有节制的
She continued to lead a quiet and modest life.
她仍然过着安静、有节制的生活。

楼下的起居室有一面凹壁，摆着专门订做的橱柜。里面陈列着镶框的家庭照片：有张模糊的老照片，是我祖父和纳迪尔国王NadirShah（1883～1933，阿富汗国王，1929年登基，1933年11月8日被刺杀。）在1931年的合影，两年后国王遇刺，他们穿着及膝的长靴，肩膀上扛着来复枪，站在一头死鹿前。有张是在我父母新婚之夜拍的，爸爸穿着黑色的套装，朝气蓬勃，脸带微笑的妈妈穿着白色衣服，宛如公主。还有一张照片，爸爸和他最好的朋友和生意伙伴拉辛汗站在我们的房子外面，两人都没笑，我在照片中还是婴孩，爸爸抱着我，看上去疲倦而严厉。我在爸爸怀里，手里却抓着拉辛汗的小指头。
凹壁可通往餐厅，餐厅正中摆着红木餐桌，坐下三十人绰绰有余。由于爸爸热情好客，确实几乎每隔一周就有这么多人坐在这里用膳。餐厅的另一端有高大的大理石壁炉，每到冬天总有橙色的火焰在里面跳动。
拉开那扇玻璃大滑门，便可走上半圆形的露台；下面是占地两英亩的后院和成排的樱桃树。爸爸和阿里在东边的围墙下辟了个小菜园，种着西红柿、薄荷和胡椒，还有一排从未结实的玉米。哈桑和我总是叫它“病玉米之墙”。
花园的南边种着枇杷树，树阴之下便是仆人的住所了。那是一座简陋的泥屋，哈桑和他父亲住在里面。
在我母亲因为生我死于难产之后一年，也即1964年冬天，哈桑诞生在那个小小的窝棚里面。