The Monkey Garden 1 (带文本）

The Monkey Garden 1 

       The monkey doesn’t live there anymore. The monkey moved—to Kentucky—and took his people with him. And I was glad because I couldn’t listen anymore to his wild screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people who owned him. The green metal cage, the porcelain table top, the family that spoke like guitars. Monkey, family, table. All gone.

       猴子再也不住那里了。猴子搬走了，去了肯塔基，带着它的家人。我很开心，因为晚上再也不用听它的狂嘶乱叫，听它的主任们嘭嚓嚓摇滚乐般的动静。那绿色的金属笼子，陶瓷桌面，那说话声音跟吉他似的一家人。猴子，一家人，桌子。都消失了。

       And it was then we took over the garden we had been afraid to go into when the monkey screamed and showed its yellow teeth.

       从那时起我们接管了花园。以前我们不敢走进去，因为猴子在那里尖叫，并且龇出它黄黄的牙齿。

       There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies turning somersault and humming in the air. Sweet sweet peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles itch and itch until you washed with soap and water. There were big green apples hard as knees. And everywhere the sleepy smell of rotting wood, damp earth and dusty hollyhocks thick and perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead.

       那里有向日葵，大得像火星上的花儿；还有肥厚的鸡冠，花朵漫溢出来像剧院帷幔上深红的裙边。那里有令人头晕的蜜蜂和打着领结的果蝇翻着跟头，在空中嗡嗡鸣唱。还有很甜很甜的桃树。还有刺玫瑰、大蓟和梨树。野草多得像眯眼睛的星星，蹭得你脚踝痒痒的，直到你用肥皂和水洗净。还有大个青苹果，硬的像膝盖。到处都是那种令人昏昏欲睡的气味：腐烂的木头、潮湿的泥土，以及那蒙了灰尘的蜀葵，像老去的人那白到发蓝的金发一样浓密而馥郁。

       Yellow spiders ran when we turned rocks over and pale worms blind and afraid of light rolled over in their sleep. Poke a stick in the sandy soil and a few blue-skinned beetles would appear, an avenue of ants, so many crusty lady bugs. This was a garden, a wonderful thing to look at in the spring. But bit by bit, after the monkey left, the garden began to take over itself. Flowers stopped obeying the little bricks that kept them from growing beyond their paths. Weeds mixed in. dead cars appeared overnight like mushrooms. First one and then another and then a pale blue pickup with the front windshield missing. Before you knew it, the monkey garden became filled with sleepy cars.

       翻开石头，就会有黄色的蜘蛛逃窜出去，畏光且无明的苍白蠕虫在它们的沉睡中翻卷起来。用一根小棍插进沙土里，就会出来几只蓝色的甲虫。还有一路蚂蚁，还有那么多的壳儿脆脆的瓢虫。这是一个花园，看着它，是春天里的一件赏心乐事。可是，慢慢地，从猴子走后，花园就开始自作主张了。花儿不再规矩地待在防止它们长过小径的小砖头后面，野草混了进来。废弃的小汽车像蘑菇一样一夜之间就冒了出来。先是一辆，又来了一辆，然后是那辆没了挡风玻璃的浅蓝色皮卡车。不知不觉，猴子花园里充满了沉睡的汽车。

       Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them. Nenny found a dollar and a dead mouse between two rocks in the stone wall where the morning glories climbed, and once when we were playing hide-and-seek, Eddie Vargas laid his head beneath a hibiscus tree and fell asleep there like a Rip Van Winkle until somebody remembered he was in the game and went back to look for him.

       花园里的东西在以某种方式消失，好像是花园自己把它们给吃了，要不就是它的老头记性，把东西收起来就忘掉了。在牵牛花爬过的那面石墙下的两块石头中间，蕾妮发现了一元钱和一只死老鼠。有一次，我们捉迷藏时，埃迪·法加斯头枕在一棵木槿树下，像瑞普·凡·温克尔那样睡了过去，直到有人想起来他还在躲迷藏，才回去找他。

       This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us. We and a few old dogs who lived inside the empty cars. We made a clubhouse once on the back of that old blue pickup. And besides, we liked to jump from the roof of one car to another and pretend they were giant mushrooms.

       这个，我想，就是我们去那里的原因。远得让妈妈找不到我们。我们，还有几条住在空车子里的老狗。有一次，我们在那辆蓝色旧皮卡车的后斗里设了个俱乐部。还有，我们喜欢从一辆车顶跳到另一辆车顶，家装它们是巨大的蘑菇。

       Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything. We liked to think the garden could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal.

       渐渐起来一种传言，说别的事物都还没出现之前，这里便有了猴子花园。我们很乐意去想，这个花园可以把东西藏上一千年。在湿漉漉的花儿的根下面，躺着被谋杀的海盗和恐龙的骨头，而独角兽的眼睛变成了煤。