白小琦《巧克力英语》第15课:想知道为什么

2016-08-26 来源：巧克力英语评论0条

Sherwood Anderson(1876-)

We got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of the town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the racetrack and the stables at once. Then we knew we were all right. Hanley Turner right away found a nigger we knew. It was Bildad Johnson who in the winter works at Ed Becker’s livery barn[注1] in our hometown, Beckersville. Bildad is a good cook as almost all our niggers are and of course he, like everyone in our part of Kentucky who is anyone at all, likes the horses. In the spring Bildad begin to scratch around[注2]. A nigger from our country can flatter and wheedle anyone into letting him do most anything he wants. Bildad wheedles the stable men and the trainers from the horse farms in our country around Lexington[注3]. The trainers come into town in the evening to stand around and talk and maybe get into a poker game. Bildad gets in with them. He is always doing little favors and telling about things to eat, chicken browned in a pan, and how is the best way to cook sweet potatoes and corn bread. It makes your mouth water to hear him.

When the racing season comes on and the horses go to the races and there is all the talk on the streets in the evenings about the new colts, and everyone says when they are going over to Lexington or to the spring meeting at Churchill Downs or to Latonia, and the horsemen that have been down to New Orleans or maybe at the winter meeting at Havana in Cuba come home to spend a week before they start out again, at such a time when everything talked about in Beckersville is just horses and nothing else and the outfits[注4] start out and horse racing is in every breath of air you breathe, Bildad shows up with a job as cook for some outfit. Often when I think about it, his always going all season to the races and working in the livery barn in the winter where horses are and where men like to come and talk about horses, I wish I was a nigger. It’s a foolish thing to say, but that’s the way I am about being around horses, just crazy. I can’t help it.

Well, I must tell you about what we did and let you in on what I’m talking about. Four of us boys from Beckersville, all whites and sons fo men who live in Beckersville regular, made up our minds we were going to the races, not just to Lexington or Louisville, I don’t mean, but to the big eastern track we were always hearing our Beckersville men talk about, to Saratoga. We were all pretty young then. I was just turned fifteen and I was the oldest of the four. It was my scheme. I admit that and I talked the others into trying it. There was Hanley Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumberton and myself. I had thirty-seven dollars I had earned during the winter working nights and Saturdays in Enoch Myer’s grocery. Henry Rieback had eleven dollars and the others, Hanley and Tom, had only a dollar or two each. We fixed it all up and laid low[注5] until the Kentucky spring meetings were over and some of our men, the sportiest ones, the ones we envied the most, had cut out[注6]—then we cut out too.

I won’t tell you the trouble we had beating our way on freights and all. We went through Cleverland and Buffalo and other cities and saw Niagara Falls. We bought things there, souvenirs and spoons and cards and shells with pictures of the falls on them for our sisters and mothers, but thought we had better not send any of the things home. We didn’t want to put the folks on our trail and maybe be nabbed.

We got into Saratoga as I said at night and went to the track. Bildad fed us up. He showed us a place to sleep in hay over a shed and promised to keep still. Nigers are all right about things like that. They won’t squeal on you. Often a white man you might meet, when you had run away from home like that, might appear to be all right and give you a quarter or a half dollar or something, and then go right and give you away. White men will do that, but not a nigger. You can trust them. They are squarer with kids. I don’t know why.

At the Saratoga meeting that year there were a lot of men from home. Dave Williams and Arthur Mulford and Jerry Myers and others. Then there was a lot from Louisville and Lexington Henry Rieback knew but I didn’t. They were professional gamblers and Henry Rieback’s father is one too. He is what is called a sheet writer[注7] and goes away most of the year to tracks. In the winter when he is home in Beckersville he don’t stay there much but goes away to cities and deals faro[注8]. He is a nice man and generous, is always sending Henry presents, a bicycle and a gold watch and a boy scout suit of clothes and things like that.

My own father is a lawyer. He’s all right, but don’t make much money and can’t buy me things and anyway I’m getting so old now I don’t expect it. He never said nothing to me against Henry, but Hanley Turner and Tom Tumberson’s fathers did. They said to their boys money so come by is no good and they didn’t want their boys brought up to hear gamblers’ talk and be thinking about such things and maybe embrace them.

That’s all right and I guess the men know what they are talking about, but I don’t’ see what it’s got to do with Henry or with horses either. That’s what I’m writing this story about. I’m puzzled. I’m getting to be a man and want to think straight and be O.K., and there’s something I saw at the race meeting at the eastern track I can’t figure out.

I can’t help it; I’m crazy about the thoroughbred horses[注9]. I’ve always been that way. When I was ten years old and saw I was growing to be big and couldn’t be rider I was so sorry I nearly died. Harry Hellinfinger in Beckersville, whose father is Postmaster, is grown up and too lazy to work, but likes to stand around in the street and get up jokes on boys like sending them to a hardware store for a gimlet to bore square holes and other jokes like that. He played one on me. He told me that if I would eat a half a cigar I would be stunted and not grow any more and maybe could be rider. I did it. When father wasn’t looking I took a cigar out of his pocket and gagged it down some way. It made me awful sick and the doctor had to be sent for, and then it did no good. I kept right on growing. It was a joke. When I told what I had done and why most fathers would have whipped me but mine didn’t.

Well, I didn’t get stunted and didn’t die. It served Harry Hellinfinger right. Then I made up my mind I would like to be a stable boy, but had to give up that too. Most niggers do that work and I knew father wouldn’t let me go into it. No use to ask him.

If you’ve never been crazy about thoroughbreds it’s because you’ve never been around where they are much and don’t know any better. They’re beautiful. There isn’t anything so lovely and clean and full of spunk and honest and everything as some racehorses. On the big horse farms that are all around our town Beckersville there are tracks and the horses run in the early morning. More than a thousand times I’ve got out of bed before daylight and walked two or three miles to the tracks. Mother wouldn’t let me go but father always says, “Let him alone.” So I got some bread out of the bread box and some butter and jam, goblet it and lit out.

At the tracks you sit on the fence with men, whites and niggers, and they chew tobacco and talk, and then the colts are brought out. It’s early and the grass is covered with shiny dew and in another field a man is plowing and they are frying things in a shed where the track niggers sleep, and you know how a nigger can giggle and laugh and say things that make you laugh. A white man can’t do it and some niggers can’t but a track nigger can every time.

And so the colts are brought out and some are just galloped by stable boys, but almost every morning on a big track owned by a rich man who lives maybe in New York, there are always, nearly every morning, a few colts and some of the old race horses and geldings and mares that are cut loose.

It brings a lump into my throat when a horse runs. I don’t mean all horses but some. I can pick them nearly every time. It’s in my blood like in the blood of race-track niggers and trainers. Even when they just go slop-jogging along with a little nigger on their backs I can tell a winner. If my throat hurts and it’s hard for me to swallow, that’s him. He’ll run like Sam Hill when you let him out. If he doesn’t win every time it’ll be wonder and because they’ve got him in a pocket behind another or he was pulled or got off bad at the post or something. If I wanted to be a gambler like Henry Rieback’s father I could get rich. I know I could and Henry says too. All I would have to do is to wait ’til that hurt comes when I see a horse and then bet every cent. That’s what I would do if I wanted to be a gambler, but I don’t.

When you’re at the tracks in the morning—not the race tracks but the training tracks around Beckersville—you don’t see a horse, the kind I’ve been talking about, very often, but it’s nice anyway. Any thoroughbred, that is said right and out of a good mare and trained by a man that knows how, can run. If he couldn’t what would he be there for and not pulling a plow?

Well, out of stables they come and the boys are on their backs and it’s lovely to be there. You hunch down on top of the fence and itch inside you. Over in the sheds the niggers giggle and sing. Bacon is being fried and coffee made. Everything smells lovely. Nothing smells better than coffee and manure and horses and niggers and bacon frying and pipes being smoked out doors on a morning like that. It just gets you, that’s what it does.

But about Saratoga. We was there six days and not a soul from home seen us and everything came off just as we wanted it to, fine weather and horses and races and all. We beat our way home and Bildad gave us a bascket with fried checken and bread and other eatables in, and I had eighteen dollars when we got back to Beckersville. Mother jawed and cried but Pop didn’t say much. I told everything we done except one thing. I did and saw that alone. That’s what I’m writing about. It got me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.

At Saratoga we laid up nights in the hay in the shed Bildad had showed us and ate with the niggers early and at night when the race people had all gone away. Then men from home stayed mostly in the grandstand and betting field, and didn’t come out around the places where the horses are kept in except to the paddocks just before a race when horses are saddled. At Saratoga they don’t have paddocks under an open shed as at Lexington and Churchill Downs and other tracks down in our country, but saddle the horses right out in an open place under trees on a lawn as smooth and nice as Banker Bohon’s front yard here in Beckersville. It’s lovely. The horses are sweaty and nervous and shine and the men come out and smoke cigars and look at them and the trainers are there and the owners, and your heart thumps so you can hardly breathe.

Then the bugle blows for post[注10] and the boys that ride come running out with their silk clothes on and you run to get a place by the fence with niggers. I always am wanting to be a trainer or owner, and at the risk of being seen and caught and and sent home I went to the paddocks before every race. The other boys didn’t but I did.

We got to Saratoga on a Friday and on Wednesday the next week the big Mullford Handicap[注11] was to be run. Middlestride was in it and Sunstreak. The weather was fine and the track fast. I couldn’t sleep the night before.

What had happened was that both these horses are the kind it makes my throat hurt to see. Middlestride is long and looks awkward and is a gelding[注12]. He belongs to Joe Thompson, a little owner from home who only has a half dozen horses. The Mullford Handicap is for a mile and Middlestride can’t untrack fast. He goes away slow and is always way back at the half, then he begins to run and if the race is a mile and a quarter he’ll just eat up everything[注13] and get there.

Sunstreak is different. He is a stallion[注14] and nervous and belongs on the biggest farm we’ve got in our country, the Van Riddle place that belongs to Mr. Van Riddle of New York. Sunstreak is like a girl you think about sometimes but never see. He is hardly all over and lovely too. When you look at his head you want to kiss him. He is trained by Jerry Tillford who knows me and has been good to me lots of times, lets me walks into a horse’s stall to look at him close and other things. There isn’t anything as sweet as that horse. He stands at the post quiet and not letting on, but he is just burning up inside. Then when the barrier goes up he is off like his name, Sunstreak. It makes you ache to see him. It hurts you. He just lays down and runs like a bird dog. There can’t anything I ever see run like him except Middlestride when he gets untracked and stretches himself.

Gee! I ached to see that race and those two horses run, ached and dreaded it too. I didn’t want to see either of our horses beaten. We had never sent a pair like that to the races before. Old men in Beckersville said so and the niggers said so. It was a fact.

Before the race I went over to the paddocks to see. I looked a last look at Middlestride, who isn’t such a much standing in a paddock that way, then I went to see Sunstreak.

It was his day. I knew when I see him. I forgot all about being seen myself and walked right up. All the men from Beckersville were there and no one noticed me except Jerry Tillford. He saw me and something happened. I’ll tell you about that.

I was sending looking at that horse and aching. In some way, I can’t tell how, I knew just how Sunstreak fell inside. He was quiet and letting the niggers rub his legs and Mr. Van Riddle himself put the saddle on, but he was just a raging torrent inside. He was like the water in the river at Niagara Falls just before it goes plunk down. That horse wasn’t thinking about running. He don’t have to think about that. He was just thinking about holding himself back ’til the time for the running came. I knew that. I could just in a way see right inside him. He was going to do some awful running and I knew it. He wasn’t bragging or letting on much or prancing or making a fuss, but just waiting. I knew it and Jerry Tillford his trainer knew. I looked up and then that men and I looked into each other’s eyes. Something happened to me. I guess I loved the man as much as I did the horse because he knew what I knew. Seemed to me there wasn’t anything in the world but that man and the horse and me. I cried and Jerry Tillford had a shine in his eyes. Then I came away to the fence to wait for the race. The horse was better than me, more steadier, and now I know better than Jerry. He was the quietest and he had to do the running.

Sunstreak ran first of course and he busted the world’s record for a mile. I’ve seen that if I never see anything more. Everything came out just as I expected. Middlestride got left at the post and was back and closed up to be the second, just as I knew he would. He’ll get a world’s record too someday. They can’t skin the Beckersville country on horses[注15]. I watched the race calm because I knew what would happen. I was sure. Hanley Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumpton were all more excited than me.

A funny thing had happened to me. I was thinking about Jerry Tillford the trainer and how happy he was all through the race. I like him that afternoon even more than I ever liked my own father. I almost forgot the horses thinking that way about him. It was because of what I had seen in his eyes as he stood in the paddocks beside Sunstreak before the race started. I knew he had been watching and working with Sunstreak since the horse was a baby colt, had taught him to run and be patient and when to let himself out and not to quit, never. I knew that for him it was like a mother seeing her child do something brave or wonderful. It was the first time I ever felt for a man like that. After the race that night I cut out from Tom and Hanley and Henry. I wanted to be by myself and I wanted to be near Jerry Tillford if I could work it. Here is what happened.

The track in Saratoga is near the edge of town. It is all polished up and trees around, the evergreen kind, and grass and everything painted and nice. If you go past the track you get to a hard road made of asphalt for automobiles, and if you go along this for a few miles there is a road runs off to a little rummy-looking farmhouse set in a yard.

That night after the race I went along that road because I had seen Jerry and some other men go that way in an automobile. I didn’t expect to find them. I walked for a ways and then sat down by a fence to think. It was the direction they went in. I wanted to be as near Jerry as I could. I felt close to him. Pretty soon I went up the side road—I didn’t know why—and came to the rummy farmhouse. I was just lonesome to see Jerry, like wanting to see your father at night when you are a young kid. Just then an autombile came along and turned in. Jerry was in it and Hery Rieback’s father, and Arthur Bedford from home, and Dave Williams and two other men I didn’t know. They got out of the car and went to the house, all but Henry Rieback’s father who quarreled with them and said he wouldn’t go. It was only about nine o’clock, but they were all drunk and the rummy looking farmhouse was a place for bad women to stay in. That’s what it was. I crept up along a fence and looked through a window and saw.

It’s what give me the fantods. I can’t make it out. The women in the house were all ugly mean-looking women, not nice to look at or be near. They were homely too, except one who was tall and looked a little like the gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, but with a hard ugly mouth. She had red hair. I saw everything plain. I got up by an old rosebush by an open window and looked. The women had on loose dresses and sat around in chairs. The men came in and some sat on the women’s laps. The place smelled rotten and there was rotten talk, the kind a kid hears around livery stable in a town like Beckersville in the winter but don’t ever expect to hear talked when ther are women around. It was rotten. A nigger wouldn’t go into such a place.

I looked at Jerry Tillford. I’ve told you how I had been feeling about him on account of his knowing what was going on inside of Sunstreak in the minute before he went to the post for the race in which he made a world’s record.

Jerry bragged in that bad woman’s house as I know Sunstreak wouldn’t never have bragged. He said that he made that horse, that it was him that won the race and made the record. He lied and bragged like a fool. I never heard such silly talk. And then, what do you suppose he did! He looked at the woman in there, the one that was lean and hard-mouthed and looked a little like the gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, and his eyes began to shine just as they did when he looked at me and at Sunstreak in the paddocks at the track in the afternoon. I stood there by the window—gee! —but I wish I hadn’t gone away from the tracks, but had stayed with the boys and the niggers and the horses. The tall rotten looking woman was between us just as Sunstreak was in the paddocks in the afternoon. Then, all of a sudden, I began to hate that man. I wanted to scram and rush in the room and kill him. I never had such a feeling before. I was so mad clean through that I cried and my fists were doubled up so my fingernails cut my hands. And Jerry’s eyes kept shining and he waved back and forth, and then he went and kissed that woman and I crept away and went back to the tracks and to bed and didn’t sleep hardly any, and then the next day I got the other kids to start home with me and never told them anything I seen.

I been thinking about it ever since. I can’t make it out. Spring has come again and I’m nearly sixteen and go to the tracks mornings same as always, and I see Sunstreak and Middlestride and a new colt named Strident I’ll bet will lay them all out[注16], but no one think so but me and two or three niggers. But things are different. At the tracks the air don’t taste as good or smell as good. It’s because a man like Jerry tillford, who knows what he does, could see a horse like Sunstreek run, and kiss a woman like that the same day. I can’t make it out. Darn him, what did he want to do like that for? I keep thinking about it and it spoils looking at horses and smelling things and hearing niggers laugh and everything. Sometimes I’m so mad about it I want to fight someone. It gives me the fantods. What did he do it for? I want to know why.

课文注释:

[注1] 1 livery barn:代人养马的马棚、马厩。

[注2] scratch around:外出挣钱糊口。

[注3] Lexington:列克星顿，肯塔基州城镇。

[注4] outfits:指赛马班子的全班人马。

[注5] laid low:潜伏隐藏。

[注6] cut out:退场离开。

[注7] sheet writer:赌注登记人，是簿记员bookmaker的副手。

[注8] deals faro:一种牌戏，类似于我国旧社会的牌九，一人当庄，数人下注，是一种游戏。

[注9] Thoroughbred horse:纯种马。

[注10] The bugle blows for post:准备起跑的号角响了。

[注11] handicap:障碍赛。

[注12] gelding:去势的雄马，阉割了的马。

[注13] eat up everything:猛冲最后一段距离。

[注14] stallion:未阉割的雄马，种马。

[注15] 在马的问题上谁也敌不过贝克斯维尔。

[注16] lay…out:击败。

日常会话

A: What did you do for recreation when you were a kid?
B: I just liked watching TV for recreation when I was small.
A: What channel did you like to watch on television then?
B: I watched Mickey mouse a lot on channel 6.
A: What did you like best about the show?
B: I thought it was just very interesting.
A: How long did the show usually last?
B: I can’t remember how long the show lasted because I gave it up for a long time.
A: Writing is my favorite spare-time activity. What’s yours?
B: It is mine also. I wrote a lot of prose in my spare-time. What do you like writing best?
A: I wrote many poems. I have no idea why I’m so crazy about the poems.
B: Have you ever thought about becoming a professional writer?
A: No, never. That would be too tough.
B: Who would you name as the best writer of our times?
A: Oh, it’s hard to say.

英语故事

1987年，笔者在美国UCLA读书。暑假期间，我们住的宿舍大楼来了很多外国学生。我的好朋友Chris问我：Can you tell French from them? 你能分出哪些是法国人吗？我说：不能。Chris告诉我：Those with sharp noses are French. (长着尖鼻子的都是法国人。)

nose鼻子这个单词可以造出很多有趣的英语句子。我们汉语说，敌人被我们牵着鼻子走。牵着鼻子走的英文是to be led by the nose. Shakespeare说: There are many who are led by the nose by the gold（世界上有很多人被金钱牵着鼻子走）。汉语说：某某东西就在你眼皮底下。而英语却说：Something is just under your nose.

Nose dive相当于汉语中的俯冲。当一架飞机nose dive时, 这架飞机就是在做俯冲动作。当股票价格大副下降时，我们可以说：The stock market took a nosedive.

影片《Ghost(人鬼情未了)》中有这样一段对话： Carl: The Mac code isn’t working. Sam: Oh, I changed it. Carl: You changed it. Why? Sam: Nothing. I want to nose around a bit. 这里，nose around是打听、寻找和刺探的意思。

pay through the nose的字面意思是通过鼻子来付钱, 这肯定是一件很痛苦的事情。Pay through the nose的确切意思是付出比真正的价格高得多的钱，或者说付出的钱实在太多而感到心痛。例如，Mr. Wang borrowed the money to open his restaurant five years ago when the interest rate was so high, so he’s been paying through the nose ever since. (王先生五年前借钱开了他那个饭馆的时候正好利率非常高。所以，打那以后就一直大笔大笔地还债。)

当有老外问你：Where is the nearest WC? 你可以这样回答： Follow the nose。这句话有两重意思。一个意思是一直往前走，跟着鼻子走难道不是一直往前走吗？另一个意思是跟着鼻子走，那里臭那里就是厕所。

课后练习：请正确朗读、理解以下日常会话

A: What did you do for recreation when you were a kid?
当你是孩子的时候，你娱乐活动做什么？
B: I just liked watching TV for recreation when I was small.
我小的时候，娱乐活动就喜欢看电视。
A: What channel did you like to watch on television then?
那个时候你喜欢看什么频道？
B: I watched Mickey mouse a lot on channel 6.
我经常看6频道上的米老鼠节目。
A: What did you like best about the show?
你最喜欢那节目的什么？
B: I thought it was just very interesting.
我就是觉得那节目非常有趣。
A: How long did the show usually last?
那节目通常持续多长时间？
B: I can’t remember how long the show lasted because I gave it up for a long time.
因为很久不看了，我记不起来那节目的持续时间了。
A: Writing is my favorite spare-time activity. What’s yours?
写作是我最喜欢的业余活动。你的是什么？
B: It is mine also. I wrote a lot of prose in my spare-time. What do you like writing best?
写作也是我最喜欢的业余活动。我在业余时间里写了很多散文。你最喜欢写什么？
A: I wrote many poems. I have no idea why I’m so crazy about the poems.
我写了很多诗歌。我不知道我为什么对诗歌如此狂热。
B: Have you ever thought about becoming a professional writer?
你想没想过做一个专业作家？
A: No, never. That would be too tough.
没，从来没有。那可太难了。
B: Who would you name as the best writer of our times?
你认为谁是我们这个时代最好的作家？
A: Oh, it’s hard to say.
奥，那可难说了。

本课要求：

1 正确朗读、理解课文；
2 熟记课中的英语故事；
3 熟读日常会话。

白小琦《巧克力英语》第15课:想知道为什么 - 1

作者白小琦，陕西省清涧县人，中国首支国家柔道队队员，教育学硕士学位，美国UCLA访问学者，Concordia College汉语及中国文化学分老师，现定居悉尼。

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