2012诺贝尔文学获得者 诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第1章Part 24

诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第1章Part 24  

Easily she stepped into the told story that lay before her eyes on the path she followed away fromthe window. There was only one door to the house and to get to it from the back you had to walkall the way around to the front of 124
past the storeroom
past the cold house
the privy
the shed
on around to the porch. And to get to the part of the story she liked best
she had to start way back:
hear the birds in the thick woods
the crunch of leaves underfoot; see her mother making her wayup into the hills where no houses were likely to be. How Sethe was walking on o feet meant forstanding still. How they were so swollen she could not see her arch or feel her ankles. Her leg shaftended in a loaf of flesh scalloped by five toenails. But she could not
would not
stop
for when shedid the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatienthooves. While she was walking
it seemed to graze
quietly — so she walked
on o feet meant
inthis sixth month of pregnancy
for standing still. Still
near a kettle; still
at the churn; still
at thetub and ironing board. Milk
sticky and sour on her dress
attracted every small flying thing fromgnats to grasshoppers. By the time she reached the hill skirt she had long ago stopped waving themoff. The clanging in her head
begun as a churchbell heard from a distance
was by then a tight capof pealing bells around her ears. Shesank and had to look down to see whether she was in a holeor kneeling. Nothing was alive but her nipples and the little antelope. Finally
she was horizontal— or must have been because blades of wild onion were scratching her temple and her cheek.
Concerned as she was for the life of her children's mother
Sethe told Denver
she rememberedthinking:
"Well
at least I don't have to take another step." A dying thought if ever there was one
and she waited for the little antelope to protest
and why she thought of an antelope Sethe could notimagine since she had never seen one. She guessed it must have been an invention held on to frombefore Sweet Home
when she was very young. Of that place where she was born (Carolinamaybe? or was it Louisiana?) she remembered only song and dance. Not even her own mother
who was pointed out to her by the eight-year-old child who watched over the young ones —pointed out as the one among many backs turned away from her
stooping in a watery ently Sethe waited for this particular back to gain the row's end and stand. What she saw was acloth hat as opposed to a straw one
singularity enough in that world of cooing women each ofwhom was called Ma'am.