章节正文
when the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars
of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay,
and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists
to unload the cargoes.
And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,
with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek,
she told him another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing
in the world that did not die at night, and it was water.
That was because water was the way from heaven to earth.
It went up into the mountains and over them into the air
until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His angels came
and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters
were always making a noise, and were never silent like the grass.
Sometimes their song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad,
and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with the angels,
and that was when the waters were terrible. Every time the sea
made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.
The angel was glad.
Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.
Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out
these beautiful dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come
upon the joy of hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was
and what life was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided
for him.
Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her.
Alone, without help, she had found a boat on the beach
and had pushed off on to the water. It was a double-pronged boat,
light as a nutshell, made of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin,
and lined with bark. In this frail craft she was afloat,
and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting quietly,
and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind was rising,
and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers.
Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
began to fill when she heard his voice.
"My darling, my darling!" cried Israel; "where did you think
you were going?"
"To heaven," she answered.
And truly she had all but gone there.
Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart
of this creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril.
Naomi was no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone,
but in more danger from herself than any child before her,
because deprived of two of her senses until she had grown to be a maid,
and no control could be imposed upon her.
At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting,
and there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people
shuffling back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind.
The word made no impression upon her mind at first. She had heard
it before, and it had passed her by like a sound that she did not know.
She had been born blind, and therefore could not realise
what it was to see. To open a way for the awful truth was difficult,
and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted. Naomi laughed
as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her.
She laughed again when he asked if she could see the people
whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque
in the Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man
in the minaret, where he was crying, "God is great! God is great!"
"Can you see him, little one?" said Israel.
"See him?" said Naomi; "why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
see him. Listen," she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
and holding her head aslant, "listen: God is great! God is great!
There--I saw him then."
"That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--
with this ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?"
Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin
in his minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant.
There was a pause, and then she cried impulsively--
"Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I?
He is too far away."
Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
"There," she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences,
"I have seen my _father_ anyway."
It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it.
He told her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like
other maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah;
that she was a being afflicted of God; that there was something
she had not got, something she could not do, a world she did not know,
and had never yet so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than
cold and quiet, and light was more than warmth and noise.
The one was day--day ruled by the fiery sun in the sky--and the other
was night, lit by the pale moon and the bright stars in heaven.
And the face of man and the eyes of woman were more than features
to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to follow and to love
without any hand being near them.
"There is a great world about you, little one," he said,
"which you have never seen, though you can hear it and feel it
and speak to it. Yes, it is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen
the mountains and the dangerous gullies on their rocky sides.
You have never seen the mighty deep, and the storms that heave and swell
in it. You have never seen man or woman or child. Is that very strange,
little one? Listen: your mother died nine years ago, and you had never
seen her. Your father is holding your head in his hands at this moment,
but you have never seen his face. And if the dark curtains were to fall
from your eyes, and you were to see him now, you would not know him
from another man, or from woman, or from a tree. You are blind, Naomi,
you are blind."
Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested nervously
on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
and then filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her
of all this, though he must needs do it for her safety,
was like reproaching her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble
in her father's voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber
of Naomi's mind. The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later
to her consciousness" target="_blank" title="n.意识；觉悟；知觉">consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer
and lighter hand.
She had always loved little children, and since the: coming
of her hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues,
their pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts,
all fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children
those she loved best were not the children of the Jews,
nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged,
barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan
with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings.
They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest,
and they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up
in twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays,
from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home
by the hand.
And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope,
suspended from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this
Naomi would sport with her little ones. She would be swinging
in the midst of them, with one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her,
and one little black man with high stomach and shaven poll holding
on to the rope behind her, and another mighty Moor in a diminutive
white jellab pushing at their feet in front, and all laughing together,
or the children singing as the swing rose, and she herself listening
with head aslant and all her fair hair rip-rip-rippling down her back
and over her neck, and her smiling white face resting on her shoulder.
It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it
came the first great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced
one day that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice
of the woman in her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's
market-basket. It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew
only in the distant mountains where lay the little black one's home.
Naomi passed her fingers over it, and she did not know it.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's blue," said the child.
"What is blue?" said Naomi
"Blue--don't you know?--blue!" said the child.
"But what is blue?" Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her restless fingers.
"Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know," said the child, in her artless way.
Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's relief. "Blue is a colour," he
said.
"A colour?" said Naomi.
"Yes, like--like the sea," he added.
"The sea? Blue? How?" Naomi asked.
Ali tried again. "Like the sky," he said simply.
Naomi's face looked perplexed. "And what is the sky like?" she asked.
At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face,
and her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes.
The lad was pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer
that leapt up to his tongue. "Like," he said--"like--"
"Well?"
"Like your own eyes, Naomi."
By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes
with her hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her
what her other senses could not tell. But the solemn mystery
had dawned on her mind at last: that she was unlike others;
that she was lacking something that every one else possessed;
that the little children who played with her knew what she could
never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off;
that there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying
round about her, where every one else might sport and find delight,
but that her spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off
from it by the great hand of God.
From that time forward everything seemed to remind her
of her affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times.
Even her dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices
that told of them. If a bird sang in the air above her,
she lifted her sightless eyes. If she walked in the town
on market morning and heard the din of traffic--the cries of the dealers,
the "Balak!" of the camel-men, the "Arrah!" of the muleteers,
and the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers--she sighed
and dropped her head into her breast. Listening to the wind,
she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and hearing of the mountains
that their snowy heads rose into the clouds, she inquired
if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the sky.
But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more
of the world than in all the years of her life before.
She was no longer a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy,
but a weak, patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity,
humbled by it, and thinking shame of it.
One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out
with the children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered
far down the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced,
the little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called
to the cattle and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets
that whistled to their young.
Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening,
the evening into twilight, the twilight into early night.
Then the air grew empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell
upon the children, and they crept to Naomi's side in fear,
and took her hands and clung to her gown. She turned back
towards the town, and as they walked in the double silence
of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay,
and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists
to unload the cargoes.
And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,
with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek,
she told him another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing
in the world that did not die at night, and it was water.
That was because water was the way from heaven to earth.
It went up into the mountains and over them into the air
until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His angels came
and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters
were always making a noise, and were never silent like the grass.
Sometimes their song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad,
and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with the angels,
and that was when the waters were terrible. Every time the sea
made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.
The angel was glad.
Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.
Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out
these beautiful dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come
upon the joy of hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was
and what life was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided
for him.
Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her.
Alone, without help, she had found a boat on the beach
and had pushed off on to the water. It was a double-pronged boat,
light as a nutshell, made of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin,
and lined with bark. In this frail craft she was afloat,
and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting quietly,
and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind was rising,
and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers.
Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
began to fill when she heard his voice.
"My darling, my darling!" cried Israel; "where did you think
you were going?"
"To heaven," she answered.
And truly she had all but gone there.
Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart
of this creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril.
Naomi was no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone,
but in more danger from herself than any child before her,
because deprived of two of her senses until she had grown to be a maid,
and no control could be imposed upon her.
At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting,
and there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people
shuffling back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind.
The word made no impression upon her mind at first. She had heard
it before, and it had passed her by like a sound that she did not know.
She had been born blind, and therefore could not realise
what it was to see. To open a way for the awful truth was difficult,
and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted. Naomi laughed
as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her.
She laughed again when he asked if she could see the people
whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque
in the Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man
in the minaret, where he was crying, "God is great! God is great!"
"Can you see him, little one?" said Israel.
"See him?" said Naomi; "why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
see him. Listen," she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
and holding her head aslant, "listen: God is great! God is great!
There--I saw him then."
"That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--
with this ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?"
Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin
in his minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant.
There was a pause, and then she cried impulsively--
"Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I?
He is too far away."
Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
"There," she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences,
"I have seen my _father_ anyway."
It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it.
He told her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like
other maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah;
that she was a being afflicted of God; that there was something
she had not got, something she could not do, a world she did not know,
and had never yet so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than
cold and quiet, and light was more than warmth and noise.
The one was day--day ruled by the fiery sun in the sky--and the other
was night, lit by the pale moon and the bright stars in heaven.
And the face of man and the eyes of woman were more than features
to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to follow and to love
without any hand being near them.
"There is a great world about you, little one," he said,
"which you have never seen, though you can hear it and feel it
and speak to it. Yes, it is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen
the mountains and the dangerous gullies on their rocky sides.
You have never seen the mighty deep, and the storms that heave and swell
in it. You have never seen man or woman or child. Is that very strange,
little one? Listen: your mother died nine years ago, and you had never
seen her. Your father is holding your head in his hands at this moment,
but you have never seen his face. And if the dark curtains were to fall
from your eyes, and you were to see him now, you would not know him
from another man, or from woman, or from a tree. You are blind, Naomi,
you are blind."
Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested nervously
on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
and then filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her
of all this, though he must needs do it for her safety,
was like reproaching her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble
in her father's voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber
of Naomi's mind. The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later
to her consciousness" target="_blank" title="n.意识；觉悟；知觉">consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer
and lighter hand.
She had always loved little children, and since the: coming
of her hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues,
their pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts,
all fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children
those she loved best were not the children of the Jews,
nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged,
barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan
with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings.
They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest,
and they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up
in twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays,
from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home
by the hand.
And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope,
suspended from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this
Naomi would sport with her little ones. She would be swinging
in the midst of them, with one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her,
and one little black man with high stomach and shaven poll holding
on to the rope behind her, and another mighty Moor in a diminutive
white jellab pushing at their feet in front, and all laughing together,
or the children singing as the swing rose, and she herself listening
with head aslant and all her fair hair rip-rip-rippling down her back
and over her neck, and her smiling white face resting on her shoulder.
It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it
came the first great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced
one day that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice
of the woman in her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's
market-basket. It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew
only in the distant mountains where lay the little black one's home.
Naomi passed her fingers over it, and she did not know it.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's blue," said the child.
"What is blue?" said Naomi
"Blue--don't you know?--blue!" said the child.
"But what is blue?" Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her restless fingers.
"Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know," said the child, in her artless way.
Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's relief. "Blue is a colour," he
said.
"A colour?" said Naomi.
"Yes, like--like the sea," he added.
"The sea? Blue? How?" Naomi asked.
Ali tried again. "Like the sky," he said simply.
Naomi's face looked perplexed. "And what is the sky like?" she asked.
At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face,
and her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes.
The lad was pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer
that leapt up to his tongue. "Like," he said--"like--"
"Well?"
"Like your own eyes, Naomi."
By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes
with her hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her
what her other senses could not tell. But the solemn mystery
had dawned on her mind at last: that she was unlike others;
that she was lacking something that every one else possessed;
that the little children who played with her knew what she could
never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off;
that there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying
round about her, where every one else might sport and find delight,
but that her spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off
from it by the great hand of God.
From that time forward everything seemed to remind her
of her affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times.
Even her dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices
that told of them. If a bird sang in the air above her,
she lifted her sightless eyes. If she walked in the town
on market morning and heard the din of traffic--the cries of the dealers,
the "Balak!" of the camel-men, the "Arrah!" of the muleteers,
and the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers--she sighed
and dropped her head into her breast. Listening to the wind,
she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and hearing of the mountains
that their snowy heads rose into the clouds, she inquired
if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the sky.
But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more
of the world than in all the years of her life before.
She was no longer a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy,
but a weak, patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity,
humbled by it, and thinking shame of it.
One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out
with the children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered
far down the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced,
the little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called
to the cattle and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets
that whistled to their young.
Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening,
the evening into twilight, the twilight into early night.
Then the air grew empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell
upon the children, and they crept to Naomi's side in fear,
and took her hands and clung to her gown. She turned back
towards the town, and as they walked in the double silence
- rattle [´rætl]
n.嘎吱声 (初中英语单词) - fierce [fiəs] a.残忍的；强烈的 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- darling [´dɑ:liŋ] n.爱人 a.亲爱的 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- warmth [wɔ:mθ] n.温暖；热情；激动 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- childish [´tʃaildiʃ] a.孩子的；幼稚的 (初中英语单词)
- maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
- stomach [´stʌmək] n.胃；胃口，食欲 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- unlike [,ʌn´laik] a.不同的 prep.不象... (初中英语单词)
- remind [ri´maind] vt.提醒；使记(想)起 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
- startling [´stɑ:tliŋ] a.惊人的 (高中英语单词)
- joyful [´dʒɔifəl] a.高兴的，充满快乐的 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- israel [´izreiəl] n.以色列 (高中英语单词)
- jewish [´dʒu:iʃ] a.犹太人(似)的 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- consciousness [´kɔnʃəsnis] n.意识；觉悟；知觉 (高中英语单词)
- revelation [,revə´leiʃən] n.展现；揭露(的事物) (高中英语单词)
- thereafter [ðeə´rɑ:ftə] adv.此后，其后 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- reckless [´rekləs] a.不注意的；鲁莽的 (高中英语单词)
- boatman [´bəutmən] n.船夫；出租游艇者 (英语四级单词)
- merriment [´merimənt] n.欢乐 (英语四级单词)
- intently [in´tentli] ad.专心地 (英语四级单词)
- blindness [´blaindnis] n.失明；愚味，文盲 (英语四级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- infirmity [in´fə:miti] n.虚弱；意志薄弱 (英语六级单词)
- lacking [´lækiŋ] a.缺少的，没有的 (英语六级单词)
- affliction [ə´flikʃən] n.痛苦，苦恼；折磨 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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