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(20)

残忍而美丽的情谊:The Kite Runner 追风筝的人(20)  

That same night
I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup
his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor
he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up
so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls
knife in hand
weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.
That evening
I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba's smoking room
in my hands the o sheets of paper on which I had scribbled the story. Baba and Rahim Khan were smoking pipes and sipping brandy when I came in.
"What is it
Amir?"Baba said
reclining on the sofa and lacing his hands behind his head. Blue smoke swirled around his face. His glare made my throat feel dry. I cleared it and told him I'd written a story.
"那是什么，阿米尔?"爸爸说，他斜靠在沙发上，双手放在脑后。蓝色的烟雾环绕着他的脸庞，他的眼光让我唇干舌燥。我清清喉咙，告诉他我创作了一篇小说。
Baba nodded and gave a thin smile that conveyed little more than feigned interest. "Well
that's very good
isn't it?" he said. Then nothing more. He just looked at me through the cloud of smoke.
I probably stood there for under a minute
but
to this day
it was one of the longest minutes of my life. Seconds plodded by
each separated from the next by an eternity. Air grew heavy damp
almost solid. I was breathing bricks. Baba went on staring me down
and didn't offer to read.
As always
it was Rahim Khan who rescued me. He held out his hand and favored me with a smile that had nothing feigned about it. "May I have it
Amir jan? I would very much like to read it."Baba hardly ever used the term of endearment "jan" when he addressed shrugged and stood up. He looked relieved
as if he too had been rescued by Rahim Khan. "Yes
give it to Kaka Rahim. I'm going upstairs to get ready.?And with that
he left the room. Most days I worshiped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then
I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.