Summer Before Air-Conditioning

Arthur Miller

∷莘綺 選 劉宇佳 注

酷日炎炎的日子總讓人們不由地想起空調(diào)、電扇、冷飲等一系列可以去涼消暑的必備品。人們熱到極致的時候，哪怕想想這些東西，或許也能感受到一絲絲涼意襲面而來。然而，空調(diào)尚未發(fā)明和流行之前，人們是如何度過夏天的呢？你能忍受汗水打濕全身，整個人熱到似乎都要發(fā)霉的日子嗎？

Exactly what year it was I can no longer recall—probably 1927 or ’28—there was an extraordinarily hot September, which hung on even after school had started and we were back from our Rockaway Beach bungalow.1. extraordinarily: 非常地；hang on: 持續(xù)下去；bungalow: 平房。Every window in New York was open, and on the streets venders manning little carts chopped ice and sprinkled colored sugar over mounds of it for a couple of pennies.2. 紐約所有的窗戶都打開著，街道上的小販們推著手推車叫賣東西，車上堆滿了碎冰，上面散放著彩糖，售價幾個便士。vender: 小販；man: v. 操縱；mounds of: 成堆的。We kids would jump onto the back steps of the slow-moving, horse-drawn ice wagons and steal a chip or two; the ice smelled vaguely of manure but cooled palm and tongue.3. wagon: 四輪馬車；manure: 糞肥。

People on West 110th Street, where I lived, were a little too bourgeois to sit out on their fire escapes, but around the corner on 111th and farther uptown mattresses were put out as night fell, and whole families lay on those iron balconies in their underwear.4. 在我所居住的西110號街里，人們或多或少有些小資性格，不會坐到安全出口的外面。然而，在111號街的拐角處以及更遠(yuǎn)的住宅區(qū)里，隨著夜幕降臨，人們便把床墊鋪在鐵陽臺上，全家人穿著內(nèi)衣躺在上面乘涼。bourgeois: 資產(chǎn)階級的； fire escape: 防火梯，安全出口；uptown: 住宅區(qū)；mattress: 床墊。

Even through the nights, the pall5. pall: 幕，遮蓋物。of heat never broke. With a couple of other kids, I would go across 110th to the Park and walk among the hundreds of people, singles and families, who slept on the grass, next to their big alarm clocks, which set up a mild cacophony of the seconds passing, one clock’s ticks syncopating with another’s.6. cacophony: 刺耳的音調(diào)；syncopate: 切分（節(jié)拍、音符等）。Babies cried in the darkness, men’s deep voices murmured7. murmur: 低聲說。, and a woman let out an occasional high laugh beside the lake. I can recall only white people spread out on the grass;Harlem8. Harlem: 哈萊姆區(qū)，是紐約黑人住宅區(qū)。began above 116th Street then.

Later on, in the Depression9. the Depression: 大蕭條，指1929年至1933年間源起于美國的經(jīng)濟(jì)危機(jī)。thirties, the summers seemed even hotter. Out West, it was the time of the red sun and the dust storms,when whole desiccated farms blew away and sent the Okies, whom Steinbeck immortalized, out on their desperate treks toward the Paci fic.10. desiccated: 干燥的；Okie: 俄克拉荷馬州民，該地為印第安人聚集地；Steinbeck: 斯坦貝克（1902—1968），美國作家； immortalize: 使名垂千古； trek: 艱苦跋涉。My father had a small coat factory on Thirty-ninth Street then, with about a dozen men working sewing machines11. sewing machine: 縫紉機(jī)。. Just to watch them handling thick woollen winter coats in that heat was, for me, a torture12. torture: 折磨，煎熬。. The cutters were on piecework, paid by the number of seams they finished,13. cutter: 裁剪者；piecework:計(jì)件工作；seam: 縫合線，接縫。so their lunch break was short—fifteen or twenty minutes. They brought their own food: bunches of radishes14. radish: 蘿卜。, a tomato perhaps, cucumbers, and a jar of thick sour cream, which went into a bowl they kept under the machines. A small loaf of pumpernickel also materialized, which they tore apart and used as a spoon to scoop up the cream and vegetables.15. pumpernickel: 裸麥粉粗面包；tear apart: 攪拌；scoop up: 舀起。

The men sweated a lot in those lofts, and I remember one worker who had a peculiar way of dripping.16. loft: 閣樓；peculiar: 特別的。He was a tiny fellow, who disdained scissors, and, at the end of a seam,always bit off the thread instead of cutting it, so that inch-long strands stuck to his lower lip, and by the end of the day he had a multicolored beard.17. 他個子不高，不喜歡用剪刀，總是用牙咬斷接縫處的線，導(dǎo)致一英寸長的線頭總是黏在他的下嘴唇上。一天下來，他便“長出”了彩色的胡須。disdain: 鄙視；thread: 線；multicolored：彩色的；beard: 胡須。His sweat poured onto those thread ends and dripped down onto the cloth, which he was constantly blotting with a rag.18. blot: 吸干；rag: 抹布。

Given the heat, people smelled, of course, but some smelled a lot worse than others. One cutter in my father’s shop was a horse in this respect19. respect: 方面。, and my father, who normally had no sense of smell—no one understood why—claimed that he could smell this man and would address him only from a distance. In order to make as much money as possible, this fellow would start work at half past five in the morning and continue until midnight. He owned Bronx20. Bronx: 布朗克斯區(qū)，紐約五個區(qū)中最北的地區(qū)，是紐約市有名的貧民區(qū)。apartment houses and land in Florida and Jersey,and seemed half mad with greed. He had a powerful physique,a very straight spine, a tangle of hair, and a black shadow on his cheeks.21. 他體格強(qiáng)大，頭發(fā)亂糟糟的，腰板筆直，臉上有片黑影（疤痕）。physique: 體格；spine: 脊椎；tangle:亂作一團(tuán)。He snorted22. snort: 呼哧呼哧的噴氣聲。like a horse as he pushed the cutting machine, following his patterns through some eighteen layers of winter-coat material. One late afternoon, he blinked his eyes hard against the burning sweat as he held down the material with his left hand and pressed the vertical, razor-sharp reciprocating blade with his right.23. 一天午后，他左手拿著布料，右手按著鋒利的刀片，上下來回剪裁，滾燙的汗水滴答落下，他猛眨眼睛（咬牙）堅(jiān)持著工作。razor-sharp: 鋒利的；reciprocating: 往返的；blade: 刀片。The blade sliced through his index finger at the second joint.24. slice through: 割穿；index finger: 食指；joint: 關(guān)節(jié)。Angrily refusing to go to the hospital, he ran tap water over the stump, wrapped his hand in a towel, and went right on cutting, snorting, and stinking.25. tap water: 自來水；stump: 殘肢；stink:散發(fā)臭味。When the blood began to show through the towel’s bunched layers, my father pulled the plug on26. pull the plug on: 突然中斷。the machine and ordered him to the hospital. But he was back at work the next morning, and worked right through the day and into the evening, as usual, piling up his apartment houses.

There were still elevated trains27. elevated train: 高架列車。then, along Second, Third,Sixth, and Ninth Avenues, and many of the cars were wooden,with windows that opened. Broadway had open trolleys with no side walls, in which you at least caught the breeze, hot though it was, so that desperate people, unable to endure their apartments,would simply pay a nickel and ride around aimlessly for a couple of hours to cool off.28. 百老匯提供了周圍不封閉的有軌電車，僅需五美分，那些無法忍受公寓里酷熱天氣的絕望的人們便可漫無目的地坐在上面乘涼，花上幾個小時享受著車開動后帶來的微風(fēng)，盡管這些風(fēng)是熱風(fēng)。trolley:（美國）有軌電車；nickel: 五分鎳幣，五美分。As for Coney Island29. Coney Island: 康尼島，位于紐約市布魯克林區(qū)南部，是美國最早的大型游樂城。on weekends,block after block of beach was so jammed with people that it was barely possible to find a space to sit or to put down your book or your hot dog.

My first direct contact with an air-conditioner came only in the sixties, when I was living in the Chelsea Hotel30. Chelsea Hotel: 切爾西旅館，美國紐約市一家以眾多作家、哲學(xué)家、作曲家、歌手和電影藝術(shù)家曾居住而聞名的旅館。. The so-called management sent up a machine on casters which rather aimlessly cooled and sometimes heated the air, relying, as it did, on pitchers of water that one had to pour into it.31. 所謂的管理人員用腳輪上送來一臺機(jī)器，這臺機(jī)器不受控制地時而冷卻時而加熱，靠人們往水罐里倒水來運(yùn)作。caster: 腳輪；pitcher:水罐。On the initial filling, it would spray water all over the room, so one had to face it toward the bathroom rather than the bed.

人們到有軌電車上乘涼

A South African gentleman once told me that New York in August was hotter than any place he knew in Africa,yet people here dressed for a northern city. He had wanted to wear shorts but feared that he would be arrested for indecent exposure.32. indecent: 不得體的；exposure: 暴露。

High heat created irrational solutions: linen suits that collapsed into deep wrinkles when one bent an arm or a knee, and men’s straw hats as stiff as matzohs, which, like some kind of hard yellow flower, bloomed annually all over the city on a certain sacred date—June 1st or so.33. 人們應(yīng)對高溫也有了荒謬的解決辦法：亞麻西裝，當(dāng)人們彎曲手臂或膝蓋時，便會出現(xiàn)深深的褶皺。男士草帽像無酵餅?zāi)菢拥挠?，就像黃花一樣，在每年某個神圣日——六月1號左右，盛開全城。wrinkle: 褶皺；irrational: 荒謬的； linen: 亞麻的。Those hats dug deep pink creases around men’s foreheads, and the wrinkled suits, which were supposedly cooler, had to be pulled down and up and sidewise to make room for the body within.34. crease: 褶皺；sidewise: 向一邊的。

The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting “Hot enough for ya? Ha-ha!”35. 夏天的城市在恍惚間浮游，原本理智的人們沒頭沒腦地不停地相互問道：“夠熱嗎？哈哈！”in a daze: 恍惚中；ya: you的口語用法。It was like the final joke before the meltdown36. meltdown: 融化。of the world in a pool of sweat.ELL