雙語名著·追風(fēng)箏的人 The Kite Runner(71)

12歲的阿富汗富家少爺阿米爾與仆人哈桑情同手足。然而，在一場風(fēng)箏比賽后，發(fā)生了一件悲慘不堪的事，阿米爾為自己的懦弱感到自責(zé)和痛苦，逼走了哈桑，不久，自己也跟隨父親逃往美國。

成年后的阿米爾始終無法原諒自己當(dāng)年對哈桑的背叛。為了贖罪，阿米爾再度踏上暌違二十多年的故鄉(xiāng)，希望能為不幸的好友盡最后一點(diǎn)心力，卻發(fā)現(xiàn)一個驚天謊言，兒時的噩夢再度重演，阿米爾該如何抉擇?

故事如此殘忍而又美麗，作者以溫暖細(xì)膩的筆法勾勒人性的本質(zhì)與救贖，讀來令人蕩氣回腸。

下面就跟小編一起來欣賞雙語名著·追風(fēng)箏的人 The Kite Runner(71)的精彩內(nèi)容吧！

March 1981 A young woman sat across from us. She was dressed in an olive green dress with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face against the night chill. She burst into prayer every time the truck jerked or stumbled into a pothole, her “Bismillah!” peaking with each of the truck’s shudders and jolts. Her husband, a burly man in baggy pants and sky blue turban, cradled an infant in one arm and thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in silent prayer. There were others, in all about a dozen, including Baba and me, sitting with our suitcases between our legs, cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-covered cab of an old Russian truck.
My innards had been roiling since we’d left Kabul just after two in the morning. Baba never said so, but I knew he saw my car sickness as yet another of my array of weakness--I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the beads--the praying woman’s husband--asked if I was going to get sick, I said I might. Baba looked away. The man lifted his corner of the tarpaulin cover and rapped on the driver’s window, asked him to stop. But the driver, Karim, a scrawny dark-skinned man with hawk-boned features and a pencil-thin mustache, shook his head.
“We are too close to Kabul,” he shot back. “Tell him to have a strong stomach.”
Baba grumbled something under his breath. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but suddenly I was salivating, the back of my throat tasting bile. I turned around, lifted the tarpaulin, and threw up over the side of the moving truck. Behind me, Baba was apologizing to the other passengers. As if car sickness was a crime. As if you weren’t supposed to get sick when you were eighteen. I threw up two more times before Karim agreed to stop, mostly so I wouldn’t stink up his vehicle, the instrument of his livelihood. Karim was a people smuggler--it was a pretty lucrative business then, driving people out of Shorawi-occupied Kabul to the relative safety of Pakistan. He was taking us to Jalalabad, about 170 kilometers southeast of Kabul, where his brother, Toor, who had a bigger truck with a second convoy of refugees, was waiting to drive us across the Khyber Pass and into Peshawar.
We were a few kilometers west of Mahipar Falls when Karim pulled to the side of the road. Mahipar--which means “Flying Fish”--was a high summit with a precipitous drop overlooking the hydro plant the Germans had built for Afghanistan back in 1967. Baba and I had driven over the summit countless times on our way to Jalalabad, the city of cypress trees and sugarcane fields where Afghans vacationed in the winter.
I hopped down the back of the truck and lurched to the dusty embankment on the side of the road. My mouth filled with saliva, a sign of the retching that was yet to come. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep valley that was shrouded in dark ness. I stooped, hands on my kneecaps, and waited for the bile. Somewhere, a branch snapped, an owl hooted. The wind, soft and cold, clicked through tree branches and stirred the bushes that sprinkled the slope. And from below, the faint sound of water tumbling through the valley.
Standing on the shoulder of the road, I thought of the way we’d left the house where I’d lived my entire life, as if we were going out for a bite: dishes smeared with kofta piled in the kitchen sink; laundry in the wicker basket in the foyer; beds unmade; Baba’s business suits hanging in the closet. Tapestries still hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books still crowded the shelves in Baba’s study. The signs of our elopement were subtle: My parents’ wedding picture was gone, as was the grainy photograph of my grandfather and King Nader Shah standing over the dead deer. A few items of clothing were missing from the closets. The leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me five years earlier was gone.
In the morning, Jalaluddin--our seventh servant in five years--would probably think we’d gone out for a stroll or a drive. We hadn’t told him. You couldn’t trust anyone in Kabul any more--for a fee or under threat, people told on each other, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent, brother on brother, servant on master, friend on friend. I thought of the singer Ahmad Zahir, who had played the accordion at my thirteenth birthday. He had gone for a drive with some friends, and someone had later found his body on the side of the road, a bullet in the back of his head. The rafiqs, the comrades, were everywhere and they’d split Kabul into two groups: those who eavesdropped and those who didn’t. The tricky part was that no one knew who belonged to which. A casual remark to the tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the dungeons of Poleh-charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next thing you knew, you were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner table, in the privacy of their home, people had to speak in a calculated manner--the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they’d taught children to spy on their parents, what to listen for, whom to tell.
What was I doing on this road in the middle of the night? I should have been in bed, under my blanket, a book with dog-eared pages at my side. This had to be a dream. Had to be. Tomorrow morning, I’d wake up, peek out the window: No grim-faced Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks, no tanks rolling up and down the streets of my city, their turrets swiveling like accusing fingers, no rubble, no curfews, no Russian Army Personnel Carriers weaving through the bazaars. Then, behind me, I heard Baba and Karim discussing the arrangement in Jalalabad over a smoke. Karim was reassuring Baba that his brother had a big truck of “excellent and first-class quality,” and that the trek to Peshawar would be very routine. “He could take you there with his eyes closed,” Karim said. I overheard him telling Baba how he and his brother knew the Russian and Afghan soldiers who worked the checkpoints, how they had set up a “mutually profitable” arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue, a MiG suddenly screamed past overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a hand gun from his waist. Pointing it to the sky and making shooting gestures, he spat and cursed at the MiG.
I wondered where Hassan was. Then the inevitable. I vomited on a tangle of weeds, my retching and groaning drowned in the deafening roar of the MiG. WE PULLED UP to the checkpoint at Mahipar twenty minutes later. Our driver let the truck idle and hopped down to greet the approaching voices. Feet crushed gravel. Words were exchanged, brief and hushed. A flick of a lighter. “Spasseba.”
Another flick of the lighter. Someone laughed, a shrill cackling sound that made me jump. Baba’s hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man broke into song, a slurring, off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song, delivered with a thick Russian accent:
Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro.(Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.)

1981年3月有個年輕的婦女坐在我們對面。她穿著一身橄欖綠服裝，黑色的披肩將面部包得嚴(yán)嚴(yán)實實，以抵御深夜的寒意。每逢卡車急剎或顛簸過路面的凹陷，她就會出聲祈禱，每次汽車的高低起伏總伴隨著她的“奉安拉之名”。她的丈夫身材矮壯，穿著破舊的褲子、天藍(lán)色的長袍，一手抱著嬰兒，空出來的那只手用拇指轉(zhuǎn)動著念珠。他嘴唇開合，默默祈禱。同行的還有其他人，總共十來個，包括爸爸跟我，行李箱放在我們兩腿之間，盤膝坐在被帆布包起來的后斗上，跟這些陌生人擠在一起，搭乘這輛破舊的俄國卡車。
我們凌晨兩點(diǎn)離開喀布爾，自那時起我的內(nèi)臟就已經(jīng)翻江倒海。雖然爸爸沒有說什么，但我知道在他眼里，暈車是孱弱無能的表現(xiàn)——這可以從他的臉色看出來，有好幾次，我的胃收縮得厲害，忍不住呻吟，他的表情很尷尬。那個拿著念珠的矮壯男人——在祈禱的那個婦女的丈夫——問我是不是要吐了，我說可能是。爸爸把頭別開。那男人掀起帆布的一角，敲敲駕駛室的窗門，要求司機(jī)停下來。司機(jī)卡林是個黑瘦的漢子，一張老鷹般的臉上留著小胡子，他搖搖頭。
“我們離喀布爾太近了?！彼蠛?，“讓他撐住?！?br />爸爸低聲咕噥了幾句。我想告訴他我很抱歉，但剎那間我滿嘴唾液，喉底嘗到膽汁的苦味。我轉(zhuǎn)過身，揭起帆布，在行進(jìn)的卡車一邊嘔吐起來。在我身后，爸爸正向其他乘客賠不是，仿佛暈車是犯罪，仿佛人們到了十八歲就不應(yīng)該暈車。我又吐了兩次，卡林這才同意停車，大部分原因還是因為擔(dān)心我弄臟他的車，他賴以謀生的工具。卡林是個蛇頭，從被俄國人占領(lǐng)的喀布爾，將人們偷偷運(yùn)到相對安全的巴基斯坦，這在當(dāng)時可是日進(jìn)斗金的生意。他把我們載往喀布爾西南170公里外的賈拉拉巴特，他的堂兄圖爾在那邊接應(yīng)，負(fù)責(zé)再送逃難的人一程，他有一輛更大的卡車，會載著我們通過開伯爾隘口 。
卡林把車停在路旁，這時我們在瑪希帕瀑布以西數(shù)公里的地方?，斚Ｅ痢囊馑际恰帮w翔的魚兒”——是一處山峰，壁立千仞，俯覽著下面1967年德國人為阿富汗援建的水電站。數(shù)不清有多少次，爸爸跟我路過那座山峰，前往賈拉拉巴特，那個遍地柏樹和甘蔗的城市是阿富汗人過冬的勝地。
我從卡車后面跳下去，跌跌撞撞走到路邊布滿塵灰的護(hù)欄。我嘴里漲滿了唾液，那是快要嘔吐的征兆。我蹣跚著走近懸崖邊，下面的深淵被黑暗吞噬了。我彎下腰，雙手撐在膝蓋上，做好嘔吐的準(zhǔn)備。在某個地方傳來樹枝劈啪作響的聲音，還有貓頭鷹的叫聲。寒風(fēng)微微拂動樹枝，吹過山坡上的灌木叢。而下面，水流在山谷淌動，傳來陣陣微弱的聲音。
我站在路肩上，想起我們?nèi)绾坞x開家園，那個我生活了一輩子的地方。仿佛我們只是外出下館子：廚房的洗碗盆堆放著沾有肉丸夾餅殘渣的盤子，盛滿衣物的柳條籃子擺在門廊，被褥還沒疊好，衣櫥里掛著爸爸做生意穿的套裝。起居室的墻上仍掛著壁毯，我媽媽的圖書仍擁擠地占據(jù)著爸爸書房里的架子。我們出逃的跡象很微妙：我父母的結(jié)婚照不見了，爺爺跟納達(dá)爾國王站在死鹿之前合影的那張老照片杳然無蹤。衣櫥里少了幾件衣服。五年前拉辛汗送我的那本皮面筆記本也消失了。
早晨，賈拉魯丁——五年來的第七個仆人——興許會以為我們出去散步或者兜風(fēng)。我們沒有告訴他。在喀布爾，你再不能相信任何人——為了獲得懸賞或者因為受到威脅，人們彼此告密：鄰居告發(fā)鄰居，兒童揭發(fā)父母，兄弟陷害兄弟，仆人背叛主人，朋友出賣朋友。我想起歌手艾哈邁德?查希爾，他在我13歲生日那天彈奏手風(fēng)琴。他和幾個朋友開車去兜風(fēng)，隨后有人在路邊發(fā)現(xiàn)他的尸體，有顆子彈射中他的后腦。那些人無所不在，他們將喀布爾人分成兩派：告密的和沒有告密的。最麻煩的是，沒有人知道誰屬于哪一派。裁縫給你量身時，你幾句無心快語可能會讓你身處波勒卡其區(qū)的黑牢。對賣肉的老板抱怨幾句宵禁，你的下場很可能是在牢欄之后望著俄制步槍的槍管。甚至在吃晚飯的桌子上，在自家的屋子里，人們說話也得深思熟慮——教室里面也有這樣的人，他們教小孩監(jiān)視父母，該監(jiān)聽些什么，該向誰告發(fā)。
我三更半夜在這路邊干什么呢?我應(yīng)當(dāng)躺在床上，蓋著毯子，身旁放著一本毛邊的舊書。這肯定是一場夢，肯定是。明天早晨，我會醒來，朝窗外望出去：人行道上沒有那些陰沉著臉的俄國士兵在巡邏；沒有坦克在我的城市里面耀武揚(yáng)威，它們的炮塔活像責(zé)難的手指那樣轉(zhuǎn)動；沒有斷壁殘垣，沒有宵禁，沒有俄國軍隊的運(yùn)兵車在市場上迂回前進(jìn)。這時，我聽到爸爸和卡林在我身后討論到了賈拉拉巴特的安排，持續(xù)了一根煙的時間?？忠辉傧虬职直ＷC，他的兄弟有輛“很棒的、質(zhì)量一流的”大卡車，到白沙瓦去可謂輕車熟路。“他閉上眼也能把你們送到那兒?！笨终f。我聽見他跟爸爸說，他和他的兄弟認(rèn)識把守關(guān)卡的俄國和阿富汗士兵，他們建立了一種“互惠互利”的關(guān)系。這不是夢。一架“米格”戰(zhàn)斗機(jī)突然從頭頂呼嘯而過，仿佛在提醒這一切都是真的?？秩拥羰掷锏南銦?，從腰間掏出一把手槍，指向天空，做出射擊的姿勢，他朝那架米格吐口水，高聲咒罵。
我想知道哈桑在哪里。跟著，不可避免地，我對著雜草叢吐出來，我的嘔吐聲和呻吟聲被米格震耳欲聾的轟鳴淹沒了。過了二十分鐘，我們停在瑪希帕的檢查站。司機(jī)沒熄火，跳下車去問候走上前來的聲音。鞋子踏上沙礫。短促的低聲交談?；饳C(jī)打火的聲音?！爸x謝?！庇腥擞枚碚Z說。
又一聲打火的火機(jī)聲。有人大笑，一陣令人毛骨悚然的劈啪聲讓我跳起來。爸爸伸手按住我的大腿。發(fā)笑的那個男人哼起歌來，帶著厚厚的俄國口音，含糊走調(diào)地唱著一首古老的阿富汗婚禮歌謠：
慢慢走，我心愛的月亮，慢慢走。