Traveller_Levin's Blog

A Raven on the Snow

by Patricio Pron translated by Kathleen Heil

That winter the city was full of ravens. They usually gathered in the parks, where they could be found in little groups of three or four, inspecting their surroundings with a wicked stare. If they noticed something shiny in the snow—a wrapper or a scrap of paper—they'd land on it, grabbing it with their beaks, and then spit it out in contempt. Sometimes the ravens would fight over the object, thereby sharing the confusion and disappointment their find created. Then, still united in some way by their defeat, they'd move away from each other slightly before going after the object again with little hops that were both ridiculous and threatening.

He became obsessed with the ravens as soon as he noticed them on the campus of the university he attended. Around town, people were speculating as to why the ravens—which normally arrive in the summer—had arrived so early, and he began taking part in these discussions, usually by pretending to be a disinterested bystander, enjoying his beer while eavesdropping on the polemicists at the bar, or by acting as if he were evaluating the quality of a certain pencil in a store in order to overhear the employees' conversations, but sometimes he'd also speak up, as if he—who came from a city with no ravens at all, from a country in which ravens were only mythical creatures like Simurgh or the bird who told the tale of the end of the world—had something to say about the matter. He'd lean forward on the table—as though this afforded him some kind of authority, or were a necessary requirement in order to be better understood, like those insufferable speakers who spend the whole time clearing their throats—and would explain his findings, which were generally limited to things that his audience, having grown up in a city with ravens, already knew; but he, with the innocence of someone who finds everything about his surroundings unfamiliar (the innocence of the ethnologist who can only comprehend that which he names), considered these remarks revelatory and crucial.

In the weeks following the ravens' arrival he neglected his schoolwork in order to spend more time observing them. He'd sit in a park wearing a coat over every sweater he owned, taking notes while studying the birds' movements. Sometimes when one got too close he'd kick the air in a way that, inevitably, didn't scare the bird at all; with a hop, it would move away a few steps, resuming its watch after a reasonable interval. His notebook was full of entries, but they were practically illegible since he wrote with his gloves on and shivered the whole time.

The Third Bank of the River

 João Guimarães Rosa

My father was a dutiful, orderly, straightforward man. And according to several reliable people of whom I inquired, he had had these qualities since adolescence or even childhood. By my own recollection, he was neither jollier nor more melancholy than the other men we knew. Maybe a little quieter. It was mother, not father, who ruled the house. She scolded us daily – my sister, my brother, and me. But it happened one day that father ordered a boat.

He was very serious about it. It was to be made specially for him, of mimosa wood. It was to be sturdy enough to last twenty or thirty years and just large enough for one person. Mother carried on plenty about it. Was her husband going to become a fisherman all of a sudden? Or a hunter? Father said nothing. Our house was less than a mile from the river, which around there was deep, quiet, and so wide you couldn’t see across it.

I can never forget the day the rowboat was delivered. Father showed no joy or other emotion. He just put on his hat as he always did and said goodbye to us. He took along no food or bundle of any sort. We expected mother to rant and rave, but she didn’t. She looked very pale and bit her lip, but all she said was:“If you go away. Don’t ever come back!”

Snow

Ann Beattie

Ann Beattie (1947~)，出生於美國華盛頓D.C.。1972年，她在The Western Humanities Review,發表第一篇短篇小說"A Rose for Judy Garland's Casket"，1973年於The Atlantic Monthly發表第二個短篇，並獲得該刊年度一等獎。1974年起於英語世界短篇小說重鎮The New Yorker陸續發表作品，被譽為“新一代唯一的名作家”、“是當今美國小說界最值得慶賀的聲音”，其聲譽主要來自短篇小說。Ann Beattie以通俗易懂，活潑流暢的語言，新穎、簡約、冷靜、獨具一格的寫作風格，加上靈巧的反諷筆法，深刻反映1980年代之思緒氛圍，評者甚至稱1980年代為Ann Beattie的年代。當時，其文名鼎盛到家喻戶曉的程度，唯少數幾位作家如Norman Mailer、Susan Sontag及Joan Didion差堪比擬。迄今Ann Beattie共計出版9本短篇小說集和8本長篇小說。獲頒Rea短篇小說獎及PEN/Malamud獎，2004年榮膺美國藝術與人文學院院士。

I remember the cold night you brought in a pile of logs and a chipmunk1 jumped off as you lowered your arms. "What do you think you're doing in here?" you said, as it ran through the living room. It went through the library and stopped at the front door as though it knew the house well. This would be difficult for anyone to believe, except perhaps as the subject of a poem2. Our first week in the house was spent scraping3, finding some of the house's secrets, like wallpaper underneath wallpaper. In the kitchen, a pattern of white-gold trellises4 supported purple grapes as big and round as ping-pong balls. When we painted the walls yellow, I thought of the bits of grape that remained underneath and imagined the vine popping through, the way some plants can tenaciously push through anything.5 The day of the big snow, when you had to shovel the walk and couldn't find your cap and asked me how to wind a towel so that it would stay on your head6—you, in the white towel turban, like a crazy king of snow. People liked the idea of our being together, leaving the city for the country. So many people visited, and the fireplace made all of them want to tell amazing stories7: the child who happened to be standing on the right corner when the door of the ice cream truck came open and hundreds of popsicles crashed out8; the man standing on the beach, sand sparkling in the sun, one bit glinting more than the rest, stooping to find a diamond ring9. Did they talk about amazing things because they thought we'd turn into one of them? Now I think they probably guessed it wouldn't work.10 It was as hopeless as giving a child a matched cup and saucer. Remember the night out on the lawn, knee deep in snow, chins pointed at the sky as the wind whirled down all that whiteness? It seemed that the world had been turned upside down, and we were looking into an enormous field of Queen Anne's lace11. Later, headlights off, our car was the first to ride through the newly fallen snow. The world outside the car looked solarized. 12

Ash

by Roddy Doyle May 24, 2010

Roddy Doyle  (1958 – )愛爾蘭小說作家、戲劇作家、電影編劇。已出版10本小說、7本童書、7個電視影集劇本還有許多短篇小說。他的幾本作品拍成電影十分叫座，1993年以小說Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.（中譯：童年往事）奪下曼‧布克獎（the Man Booker Prize），被譽為愛爾蘭當代最傑出小說家。以哈利‧波特系列出名的女作家ＪＫ‧羅琳在接受亞馬遜網路書店專訪時提到活著的作家當中，她最喜歡Roddy Doyle。

Roddy Doyle的創作一般取材於都柏林的市井生活，通過描寫小人物的悲歡離合，來反映社會的變遷。他在作品當中大量使用俚語及愛爾蘭式英語的對話，且擅長用戲謔的筆調製造黑色幽默效果，採用非情節化的敘述結構，顯現魔幻現實的獨特手法。他使用文字及方言深具個人獨特風格與魅力，近年來獲得極高評價與矚目。

想飛的肥貓

有一隻貓很肥，他想飛。

貓很肥，他總是將蛋糕和櫻桃吃光光，糧倉的清單登錄的永遠是吐司和芭樂。

他想飛，起初是想想而已，後來那念頭越來越強烈，當他一天比一天發福。

有一天，他在菜市場看見人群圍觀著蛤蟆將自己膨脹了三、四倍，吐出一口氣，朝天空的方向上衝了六、七公尺。

Life In An Isolated Island

我愛妳絕對不是開玩笑

一大早就聽到伙房火生跟文書龔舒懷在爭吵。

“文書，央你幫我寫封信都沒有？”

“我沒有說不幫你寫。”

Life In An Isolated Island

你永遠不知道誰是敵人

基本上，我們阿兵哥與島上居民接觸的機會少之又少，除非你是採買，但我不是。我們日常活動的範圍都在營區裡面，而居民不得擅闖軍區。況且據我所知，島上的居民數目非常少，大約只有軍人的十分之一。那天我碰到一位島上的老居民，卻無法與她溝通。

營部作戰官是連長的陸官學長，當他打電話跟連長說要我過去幫忙，連長叫我放下所有勤務，立即前往營部。我抵達戰情室時，作戰官悠哉坐在靠背座椅上，手上拿著一本綠色的軍事書籍。窗外的陽光打在他肩膀上的那顆梅花，熠熠閃亮。作戰官從桌上拿一張紙條給我，上面寫著六個英文的軍事術語，要我翻成中文。我問他能不能讓我看下這些軍事術語的出處，作戰官說礙於軍事機密，不行。我解釋若無上下文指涉，怕無法確切掌握其意義。作戰官告訴我軍人經常必須在未知或有限的條件下達成任務。我畢恭畢敬答道：「是，長官。」

事實上我只花了三分鐘就搞定，我故意磨蹭了十幾分鐘。當然我不在意翻譯的對不對，反正軍人管他正確或不正確，幹了就對。

Life In An Isolated Island

半夜叫起來尿尿

我們下船登岸，天已經整個黑了。

後面的手觸接著前頭的背包或肩膀，二十一個新兵緊緊跟在帶隊官後頭。山路狹窄，昏暗看不清周遭，深怕走錯步伐，跌墜受傷。我們緩緩朝上坡行進，腳步摩擦地面野草的聲音，還有隱約傳來海浪的喧騰。想到要在這麼一座連個像樣的路都沒有的島居住一年三個月，大家對未來的日子很難感覺輕鬆。

－你娘的，走路不帶眼睛啊。

Axolotl 

by Julio Cortazar

       There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.

       I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent. I was heading down tbe boulevard Port-Royal, then I took Saint-Marcel and L'Hôpital and saw green among all that grey and remembered the lions. I was friend of the lions and panthers, but had never gone into the dark, humid building that was the aquarium. I left my bike against tbe gratings and went to look at the tulips. The lions were sad and ugly and my panther was asleep. I decided on the aquarium, looked obliquely at banal fish until, unexpectedly, I hit it off with the axolotls. I stayed watching them for an hour and left, unable to think of anything else.

       In the library at Sainte-Geneviève, I consulted a dictionary and learned that axolotls are the larval stage (provided with gills) of a species of salamander of the genus Ambystoma. That they were Mexican I knew already by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the placard at the top of the tank. I read that specimens of them had been found in Africa capable of living on dry land during the periods of drought, and continuing their life under water when the rainy season came. I found their Spanish name, ajolote, and the mention that they were edible, and that their oil was used (no longer used, it said ) like cod-liver oil.

Ever After

Kim Addonizio

The loft where the dwarves lived had a view of the city and hardwood floors and skylights, but it was overpriced, and too small now that there were seven of them. It was a fifth-floor walkup, one soaring, track-lighted room. At the far end was the platform where Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy, and Bashful slept side by side on futons. Beneath them, Happy and Dopey shared a double bed. Grumpy, who pretty much stayed to himself, kept his nylon sleeping bag in a corner during the day and unrolled it at night on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. The kitchen was two facing zinc counters, a built-in range and microwave, and a steel refrigerator, all hidden behind a long bamboo partition that Doc had bought and Sneezy had painted a color called Cherry Jubilee. The kitchen and bathroom were the only places any sort of privacy was possible. To make the rent they all pooled their money from their jobs at the restaurant, except for Dopey, who didn’t have a job unless you counted selling drugs when he wasn’t running them up his arm; and Grumpy, who panhandled every day for spare change and never came up with more than a few wrinkled dollar bills when the first of the month rolled around. Sometimes the rest of them talked about kicking out Dopey and Grumpy, but no one quite had the heart. Besides, the Book said there were seven when she arrived, seven disciples of the goddess who would come with the sacred apple and transform them. How, exactly, they would be transformed was a mystery that would be revealed when she got there. In the meantime, it was their job to wait.

“When she comes, she’ll make us big,”said Sneezy. He had the comics section of the Sunday paper, and an egg of Silly Putty, and was flattening a doughy oval onto a panel of Calvin and Hobbes.

“Oh, bullshit,” said Grumpy. “It’s about inner transformation, man. That’s the whole point. Materialism is a trap. Identifying with your body is a trap. All this shit”—Grumpy swept his arm to indicate not just their loft but the tall downtown buildings beyond the windows, and maybe more—“is an illusion. Maya. Samsara.” He shook out the last Marlboro from a pack, crumpled the pack and tried a hook shot into a wicker wastebasket by the window, but missed. He looked around. “Matches? Lighter? Who’s going for more cigs?”