【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 95

 He reached the shallow well named Ain Dua. He removed all of his clothes and soaked them in the well, put his head and then his thin body into the blue water. His limbs exhausted¹ from the four nights of walking. He left his clothes spread on the rocks and climbed up higher into the boulders², climbed out of the desert, which was now, in 1942, a vast battlefield, and went naked into the darkness of the cave. He was among the familiar paintings he had found years earlier. Giraffes. Cattle. (The man with his arms raised, in a plumed³ headdress. )

Several figures in the unmistakable posture⁴ of swimmers.( Bermann had been right about the presence of an ancient lake.) He walked farther into the coldness, into the Cave of Swimmers, where he had left her. She was still there. She had dragged herself into a corner, had wrapped herself tight in the parachute material. He had promised to return for her. He himself would have been happier to die in a cave, with its privacy, the swimmers caught in the rock around them.( Hermann had told him that in Asian gardens you could look at rock and imagine water, you could gaze at a still pool and believe it had the hardness of rock.) But she was a woman who had grown up within gardens, among moistness, (with words like trellis and hedgehog.) Her passion for the desert was temporary. 

1 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

2 boulders   

n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾

参考例句：

• Seals basked on boulders in a flat calm. 海面风平浪静，海豹在巨石上晒太阳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The river takes a headlong plunge into a maelstrom of rocks and boulders. 河水急流而下，入一个漂砾的漩涡中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 plumed   

饰有羽毛的

参考例句：

• The knight plumed his helmet with brilliant red feathers. 骑士用鲜红的羽毛装饰他的头盔。
• The eagle plumed its wing. 这只鹰整理它的翅膀。

4 posture   

n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势

参考例句：

• The government adopted an uncompromising posture on the issue of independence.政府在独立这一问题上采取了毫不妥协的态度。
• He tore off his coat and assumed a fighting posture.他脱掉上衣，摆出一副打架的架势。