莫言什么时候获得诺贝尔文学 诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第7章Part 3

诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第7章Part 3  

So she had almost a wholeyear of the pany of her peers and along with them learned to spell and count. She was seven
and those o hours in the afternoon were precious to her. Especially so because she had done it onher own and was pleased and surprised by the pleasure and surprise it created in her mother andher brothers. For a nickel a month
Lady Jones did what whitepeople thought unnecessary if notillegal: crowded her little parlor with the colored children who had time for and interest in booklearning. The nickel
tied to a handkerchief knot
tied to her belt
that she carried to Lady Jones
thrilled her. The effort to handle chalk expertly and avoid the scream it would make; the capital w
the little i
the beauty of the letters in her name
the deeply mournful sentences from the BibleLady Jones used as a textbook. Denver practiced every morning; starred every afternoon. She wasso happy she didn't even know she was being avoided by her classmates — that they made excusesand altered their pace not to walk with her. It was Nelson Lord — the boy as smart as she was —who put a stop to it; who asked her the question about her mother that put chalk
the little i and allthe rest that those afternoons held
out of reach forever. She should have laughed when he said it
or pushed him down
but there was no meanness in his face or his voice. Just curiosity. But thething that leapt up in her when he asked it was a thing that had been lying there all along.
She never went back. The second day she didn't go
Sethe asked her why not. Denver didn't answer.
She was too scared to ask her brothers or anyone else Nelson Lord's question because certain oddand terrifying feelings about her mother were collecting around the thing that leapt up inside her. Later on
after Baby Suggs died
she did not wonder why Howard and Buglar had run away. Shedid not agree with Sethe that they left because of the ghost. If so
what took them so long? Theyhad lived with it as long as she had. But if Nelson Lord was right — no wonder they were sulky
staying away from home as much as they could.
Meanwhile the monstrous and unmanageable dreams about Sethe found release in theconcentration Denver began to fix on the baby ghost. Before Nelson Lord
she had been barelyinterested in its antics. The patience of her mother and grandmother in its presence made herindifferent to it. Then it began to irritate her
wear her out with its mischief. That was when shewalked off to follow the children to Lady Jones' house-school. Now it held for her all the anger
love and fear she didn't know what to do with. Even when she did muster the courage to askNelson Lord's question
she could not hear Sethe's answer
nor Baby Suggs' words
nor anything atall thereafter. For o years she walked in a silence too solid for peration but which gave hereyes a power even she found hard to believe. The black nostrils of a sparrow sitting on a branchsixty feet above her head
for instance. For o years she heard nothing at all and then she heardclose thunder crawling up the stairs. Baby Suggs thought it was Here Boy padding into places henever went. Sethe thought it was the India-rubber ball the boys played with bounding down the stairs.