第13封信 - 1950.04.10
“如果你路过书店，请替我献上一吻，因为我亏欠它良多。”
寄语
《84, Charing Cross Road》
从前的日色变得慢
车、马、邮件都慢
一生只够爱一个人
细品每一封信
感受书信的缓慢
感受人类的长情
英文原文
14 East 95th St. April 10, 1950
Dear Cecily—
And a very bad cess to Old Mr. Martin, tell him I’m so unstudious I never even vs^ent to college. I just happen to have peculiar taste in books, thanks to a Cambridge professor named Quiller-Couch, known as Q, whom I fell over in a library when I was 17. And I’m about as smart-looking as a Broadway panhandler.
I live in moth-eaten sweaters and wool slacks, they don’t give us any heat here in the daytime. It’s a 5-story brownstone and all the other tenants go out to work at 9 a.m. and don’t come home till 6— and why should the landlord heat the build-ing for one small -reader /writer working at home on the ground floor?
Poor Frank, I give him such a hard time, I’m always bawling him out for something. I’m only teasing, but I know he’ll take me seriously. I keep trying to puncture that proper
British reserve, if he gets ulcers I did it.
Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off^ the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul’s where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:
“Then it’s there.”
Regards—
Helene Banff
中文翻译
东九十五大街14号 1950年4月10日
亲爱的塞西莉： 真是让老马丁先生大失所望了，请转告他：我非但一丁点儿学问都没有，连大学也没上过哩！我只不过碰巧喜欢看书罢了。说起来还得感谢一位剑桥的学者奎勒—库奇(一般都称他为Q)，是他让我在十七岁那一年一头栽进书堆里，从此不可自拔。至于我的长相，大概就跟百老汇街上的叫化子一样吧！
我住在一幢白蚁丛生、摇摇欲坠、白天不供应暖气的老公寓里。整幢五层楼的其他住户早上九点出门，不到晚上六点不会回来，房东认为他犯不着为了一个窝在家里摇笔杆的小作家，而整天开着暖气。
可怜的弗兰克，真是难为他了，我老是对他颐指气使的。我只是在打趣，不过就知道他会当真。我一直想要戳穿他那英国式的矜持。要是哪天他得了胃溃疡，都是我害的。
请多来信告诉我关于伦敦的一切。我幻想着那一天快点到来——我步下轮船、火车，踩上布着尘灰的人行道……我要走遍柏克莱广场，逛尽温柏街；我要置身在约翰·多恩布道的圣保罗大教堂；我要趺坐在伊丽莎白拒不阶下为囚的伦敦塔前台阶上……我有一位战时派驻在伦敦的记者朋友，他曾经对我说：游客往往带着先入之见，所以他们总能在英国瞧见他们原先想看的。我告诉他，我到英国是为了探寻英国文学。而他这么告诉我：
“去那儿准没错。”
祝一切安好
海莲·汉芙
原文图片
结尾
二十年间缘悭一面
相隔万里莫逆于心
致敬经典，《查令十字街84号》
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