诺贝尔文学经典:《宠儿》第10章Part 3

Denver watches as Beloved bends over, curls up and rocks. Her eyes go to no place; her moaningis so small Denver can hardly hear it.
"You all right? Beloved?"
Beloved focuses her eyes. "Over there. Her face."
Denver looks where Beloved's eyes go; there is nothing but darkness there.
"Whose face? Who is it?"
"Me. It's me."
She is smiling again.
THE LAST of the Sweet Home men, so named and called by one who would know, believed it.
The other four believed it too, once, but they were long gone. The sold one never returned, the lostone never found. One, he knew, was dead for sure; one he hoped was, because butter and clabberwas no life or reason to live it. He grew up thinking that, of all the Blacks in Kentucky, only thefive of them were men. Allowed, encouraged to correct Garner, even defy him. To invent ways ofdoing things; to see what was needed and attack it without permission. To buy a mother, choose ahorse or a wife, handle guns, even learn reading if they wanted to — but they didn't want to sincenothing important to them could be put down on paper.

丹芙看见宠儿弯下身去，蜷缩成一团晃动着。她的眼里空洞无物；她的呻吟这样轻，丹芙几乎听不见。
"你没事吧？宠儿？"
宠儿调整着眼睛的焦点。"在那儿。她的脸。"
丹芙跟着宠儿的眼睛走；除了黑暗什么也没有。
"谁的脸？是谁？"
"我。是我。"
她又笑起来。
最后一个"甜蜜之家"的男人，被如此命名、而且被相识者如此称呼的那个人，曾经笃信这个名字。
其他四个也曾经笃信过，可是他们早已不在了。卖掉的那个再没回来，丢掉的那个再没找到。有一个，他知道，肯定死了；另一个，他希望也死了，因为牛油和酸奶疙瘩不是生活，也不是生活的理由。他从小到大，一直有这个想法，那就是，在肯塔基所有的黑人当中，只有他们五个是男子汉。加纳允许和鼓励他们纠正他，甚至可以反对他。他们能够发明干活的方法；看看需要什么，不用批准就着手去办。可以赎出一个母亲，挑选一匹马或者一个妻子，摆弄枪支；要是他们愿意的话，甚至可以学习读书——可他们并不愿意，因为对于他们来说，任何重要的事情都不能写在纸上。