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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Unit4b The bench Richard Rive
“We form an integral part of a complex society, a society complex in that a vast proportion of the population are denied the very basic privileges of existence, a society that condemns2 a man to an inferior position because he has the misfortune to be born black, a society that can only retain its precarious3 social and economic position at the expense of an enormous oppressed proletariat!”
Karlie’s eyes shone as he watched the speaker. Those were great words, he thought, great words and true. The speaker paused for a moment and sipped4 some water from a glass. Karlie sweated. The hot October sun beat down mercilessly on the gathering5. The trees on the Grand Parade afforded very shelter and his handkerchief was already soaked where he had placed it between his neck and shirt collar. Karlie stared round him at the sea of faces.every shade of colour was represented, from shimmy ebony to the one or two whites in the crowd. He started at the two detectives who were busily making shorthand notes of the speeches, and then turned to stare back at the speaker.
It is up to us to challenge the rights of any groups who willfully and deliberately6 condemn1 a fellow group the rights of any groups who willfully and deliberately condemn a fellow group to a servile position. We must challenge the rights of any people who see fit to segregate7 human beings solely8 on grounds of pigmentation. Your children are denied the rights which are theirs by birth. They are segregated9 socially, economically…
Ah, thought Karlie, that man knows what he is speaking about. He says I am as good as any other man, even a white man. That needs much thinking. I wonder if he thinks I have the right to go into any bioscope or eat in any restaurant, or that my children can go to any school? These are dangerous ideas and need much thing; I wonder what Ou Klass would say to this. Ou Klass said God made the white man and the black man separately and the one must always be “baas” and the other “jong.” But this man says different things and somehow they seem true.
Karlie’s brow was knitted as he thought. On the platform were many speakers, both white and black, and they were behaving as if there were no difference of colour between them. There was a white woman in a blue dress offering a cigarette to Nxeli. That could never happen at Bietjiesvlei. Old Lategan at the store would have fainted if his Annatjie had offered Witbooi a cigarette. And Annatjie had no such pretty dress. These were new things, and he, Karlie, had to be careful before he accepted them. But why shouldn’t he accept them? He was not coloured any more, he was a human being. The speaker had said so. He remembered seeing pictures in the newspaper of people who defied laws which relegated10 them to a particular class, and those people were smiling as they went to prison. This was strange world.
The speaker continued and Karlie listened intently. His speech was obviously carefully prepared and he spoke11 slowly, choosing his words. This is a great man, Karlie thought.
The last speaker was the white lady in the blue dress, who asked them to challenge any discriminatory laws or measures in every possible manner. Why should she speak like that? thought Karlie. She could go to the best bioscopes, and swim at the best beaches. Why, she was even more beautiful than Annatjie Lategan. They had warned him in Bietjiesvlei about coming to the city. He had seen the Skollies in District Six and knew what to expect there. Hanover Street held no terrors for him. But no one had told him about this. This was new, this set one’s mind thinking, yet he felt it was true. She said one should challenge. He would challenge. He, Karlie, would astound12 old Lategan and Balie at the dairy farm. They could do what they liked to him after that. He would smile like those people in the newspaper.
The meeting was almost over when Karlie threaded his way through the crowd. The words of the speakers were still milling through his head. It could never happen in Bietjiesvlei, he thought, or could it? The sudden screech13 of a car pulling to a hurried stop whirled him back to his senses. A white head was angrily thrust through the window. “Look where you’re going, you black bastard14!”
Karlie stared dazedly15 at him. Surely this white man had never heard what the speakers had said. He could never have seen the white woman offering Nxeli a cigarette. Karlie could never imagine the white lady shouting those words at him. It would be best to catch a train and think these things over.
He saw the station in a new light. Here was a mass of human beings, some black, some white, and some brown like himself. Here they mixed with one another, yet each mistrusted the other with an unnatural16 fear. Each treated the other with suspicion, each moved in a narrow, haunted pattern of its own manufacture. One must challenge these things the speaker had said… in one’s own way. Yet how in one’s own way? How was one to challenge? slowly it dawned upon him. Here was his chance, the bench. The railway bench with the legend “Europeans Only” neatly17 painted on it in white. For one moment it symbolized18 all the misery19 of the plural20 south African society. Here was a challenge to his rights as a man. There it stood, a perfectly21 ordinary wooden railway bench, like hundreds of thousands of others in south Africa. His challenge. That bench, now, had concentrated in it all the evils of a system he could not understand.It was the obstacle between himself and humanity. If he sat on it he was a man. If he was afraid he denied himself membership as a human in a human society. He almost had visions of righting the pernicious system if only he sat on that bench. Here was his chance. He, Karlie, would challenge.
He seemed perfectly calm when he sat down on the bench, but inside his heart was thumping22 wildly. Two conflicting ideas now throbbed23 through him. The one said, “I have no right to sit on this bench?” the one voice spoke of the past, of the servile position he had occupied on the farms, of his father and his father’s father who were born black, lived like blacks and died lide oxen. The other voice spoke of the future and said, “Karlie, you are a man died like oxen. The other voice spoke of the future and said, “Karlie, you are a man. You have dared what your father would not have dared. You will die like a man!”
Karlie took out a cigarette and smoked. Nobody seemed to notice his sitting there. This was an anti-climax. The world still pursued its monotonous24 way. No voice shouted “Karlie has conquered!” he was a normal human being sitting on a bench in a busy station, smoking a cigarette. Or was this his victory, the fact that he was a normal human being? A well-dressed white woman walked down the platform. Would she sit on the bench, Karlie wondered. And then that gnawing25 voice, “You should stand and let the white woman sit.” Karlie narrowed his eyes and gripped tighter at his cigarette. She swept past him without the slightest twitch26 of an eyelid27 and walked on down the platform. Was she afraid to challenge, to challenge his right to be human? Karlie now felt tired. A third conflicting emotion was now creeping in, a compensatory emotion which said, “You do not sit on this bench to challenge, you sit there because you are tired. You are tired; therefore you sit.” He would not move, because he was tired, or was it because he wanted to sit where he liked?
People were now pouring out of a train that had pulled into the station. There were so many people pushing and jostling one another that nobody noticed him. This was his train. It would be quite easy to step into the train and ride off home, but that would be giving in, suffering defeat, refusing the challenge, in fact admitting that he was not a human being. He sat on. Lazily he blew the cigarette smoke into the air, thinking… his mind was far from the meeting and the bench, he was thinking of Bietjiesvlei and Ou Klaas knew everything. He said god made us white or black and we must therefore keep our places.
“Get off this seat!”
Karlie did not hear the gruff voice. Ou Klaas would be on the land now, waiting for his tot of cheap wine.
“I said get off the bench, you swine!”
Karlie suddenly shipped back to reality. For a moment he was going to jump up, then he remembered who he was and why he was sitting there. Suddenly he felt very tired. He looked up slowly into a very red face that stared down at him.
“Get up! I said. There are benches down there for you!”
Karlie asared up and said nothing. He stared up and said nothing. He stared up into very sharp, cold gray eyes.
“Can’t you hear me speaking to you, you black swine!”
Slowly and deliberately Karlie puffed28 at his cigarette. So this was his test. They both stared at each other, challenged with the eyes, like two boxers29, each knowing that they must eventually trade blows yet each afraid to strike first.
“Must I dirty my hands on scum like you?”
Karlie said nothing. To speak would be to break the spell, the supremacy30 he felt he was slowly gaining. An uneasy silence. Then,
“I will call a policeman rather than kick a Hotnot like you! You can’t even open your black jaw31 when a white man speaks to you!”
Karlie saw the weakness. The white youth was afraid to take action himself. He, Karlie, had won the first round of the bench dispute!
A crowd now collected. “Afrika!” shouted one joker. Karlie ignored the remark. People were now milling around, staring at the unusual sight of a black man sitting on a white man’s bench. Karlie merely puffed on.
“Look at the black ape! That’s the worst of giving these Kaffirs too much rope!”
“I can’t understand it, they have their own benches!”
“Don’t get up, you have every right to sit there!”
“He’ll get hell when a policeman comes!”
“Mind you, I can’t see why they shouldn’t sit where they please!”
“I’ve said before, I’ve had a native servant, and a more impertinent…”
Karlie sat and heard nothing. Irresolution32 had now turned to determination under no condition was he going to rise. They could do what they liked.
“So this is the fellow. Hey, get up there! Can’t you read?” The policeman was towering over him. Karlie could see the crest33 on his buttons and thin wrinkles on his neck. “What is your name and address?”
Karlie still maintained his obstinate34 silence. It took the policeman rather unawares. The crowd was growing every minute.
“You have no right to speak to this in such a manner!” It was the white lady in the blue dress.
“Mind your own business! I’ll ask your help when I need it. It is people like you who make Kaffirs think they’re as good as white people!” Then, addressing Karlie, “Get up, you!”
“I insist that treat him with proper respect!”
The policeman turned red. “This … this …” He was at a loss for words.
“Kick up the Hotnot if he won’t get up!” shouted a spectator.
“Rudely a white man laid hands on Karlie. Get up, you bloody35 bastard!”
Karlie turned to resist, to cling to the bench, his bench. There were more than one man now pulling at him. He hit out wildly and then felt a dull pain as somebody rammed36 a first into his face. He was now bleeding and wild-eyed. He would fight for it. The constable37 clapped a pair of handcuffs round Karlie’s wrists and tried to clear a way through the crowd. Karlie was still struggling. A blow or two landed on him. Suddenly he relaxed and slowly struggled to his feet. It was useless fighting any longer. Now it was his turn to smile. He had challenged and won. Who cared at the result?
“Come on, you swine!” said the policeman, forcing Karlie through the crowd.
“Certainly,” said Karlie for the first time, and stared at the policeman with the arrogance38 of one who dared to sit on a “European”bench.
收听单词发音 |
1
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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segregate
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| adj.分离的，被隔离的；vt.使分离，使隔离 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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segregated
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| 分开的； 被隔离的 | |
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relegated
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| v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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astound
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| v.使震惊，使大吃一惊 | |
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screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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dazedly
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| 头昏眼花地，眼花缭乱地，茫然地 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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symbolized
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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plural
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| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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22
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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24
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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eyelid
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| n.眼睑，眼皮 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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29
boxers
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| n.拳击短裤；（尤指职业）拳击手( boxer的名词复数 )；拳师狗 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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32
irresolution
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| n.不决断，优柔寡断，犹豫不定 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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rammed
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| v.夯实（土等）( ram的过去式和过去分词 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输 | |
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37
constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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38
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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