2012诺贝尔文学获得者 诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第7章Part 4

诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第7章Part 4  

"Is that damn dog lost his mind?" shouted Baby Suggs.
"He's on the porch
" said Sethe. "See for yourself."
"Well
what's that I'm hearing then?"
Sethe slammed the stove lid. "Buglar! Buglar! I told you all not to use that ball in here." Shelooked at the white stairs and saw Denver at the top.
"She was trying to get upstairs."
"What?" The cloth she used to handle the stove lid was balled in Sethe's hand.
"The baby
" said Denver. "Didn't you hear her crawling?"
What to jump on first was the problem: that Denver heard anything at all or that the crawling-already? baby girl was still at it but more so.
The return of Denver's hearing
cut off by an answershe could not hear to hear
cut on by the sound of her dead sister trying to climb the stairs
signaledanother shift in the fortunes of the people of 124. From then on the presence was full of spite.
Instead of sighs and accidents there was pointed and deliberate abuse. Buglar and Howard grewfurious at the pany of the women in the house
and spent in sullen reproach any time they hadaway from their odd work in town carrying water and feed at the stables. Until the spite became sopersonal it drove each off. Baby Suggs grew tired
went to bed and stayed there until her big oldheart quit. Except for an occasional request for color she said practically nothing — until theafternoon of the last day of her life when she got out of bed
skipped slowly to the door of thekeeping room and announced to Sethe and Denver the lesson she had learned from her sixty yearsa slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but white people. "They don'tknow when to stop
" she said
and returned to her bed
pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.
Shortly afterward Sethe and Denver tried to call up and reason with the babyghost
but got nowhere. It took a man
Paul D
to shout it off
beat it off and take its place forhimself. And carnival or no carnival
Denver preferred the venomous baby to him any day. Duringthe first days after Paul D moved in
Denver stayed in her emerald closet as long as she could
lonely as a mountain and almost as big
thinking everybody had somebody but her; thinking even aghost's pany was denied her. So when she saw the black dress with o unlaced shoes beneathit she trembled with secret thanks. Whatever her power and however she used it
Beloved was hers.
Denver was alarmed by the harm she thought Beloved planned for Sethe
but felt helpless to thwartit
so unrestricted was her need to love another. The display she witnessed at the Clearing shamedher because the choice beeen Sethe and Beloved was without conflict.
Walking toward thestream
beyond her green bush house
she let herself wonder what if Beloved really decided tochoke her mother. Would she let it happen? Murder
Nelson Lord had said. "Didn't your motherget locked away for murder? Wasn't you in there with her when she went?"