【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 99（在线收听）

 And three years later, in 1942, I walked with her towards the buried plane, carrying her body as if it was the armour of a knight. In the desert the tools of survival are underground—troglodyte caves, water sleeping within a buried plant, weapons, a plane. At longitude 25, latitude 23, I dug down towards the tarpaulin, and Madox’s old plane gradually emerged. It was night and even in the cold air I was sweating. (I carried the naphtha lantern over to her and sat for a while, beside the silhouette of her nod. Two lovers and desert—starlight or moonlight, I don’t remember. Everywhere else out there was a war. )The plane came out of the sand. There had been no food and I was weak. The tarp so heavy I couldn’t dig it out but had simply to cut it away. In the morning, after two hours’ sleep, I carried her into the cockpit. I started the motor and it rolled into life. We moved and then slipped, years too late, into the sky. The voice stops. The burned man looks straight ahead in his morphine focus. The plane is now in his eye. The slow voice carries it with effort above the earth, the engine missing turns as if losing a stitch, her shroud unfurling in the noisy air of the cockpit, noise terrible after his days of walking in silence. He looks down and sees oil pouring onto his knees. A branch breaks free of her shirt. (Acacia and bone. How high is he above the land? How low is he in the sky? )The undercarriage brushes the top of a palm and he pivots up, and the oil slides over the seat, her body slipping down into it.