雙語·當呼吸化為空氣 我和伙伴們也熱愛這里的自由

我和伙伴們也熱愛這里的自由。下午的時候，我們經(jīng)常四處探索、漫步，到處搜尋動物的骨頭和沙漠里少見的溪流。生命的頭十年我都是在東北部一個綠化很好的郊區(qū)里度過的，主街兩旁綠樹成蔭，糖果店里甜甜蜜蜜，這風沙肆虐的狂野沙漠既奇異又誘人。十歲的我第一次出門遠足，發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個老舊的灌溉爐箅，用手指撬開蓋子，抬起來，就在我眼前，出現(xiàn)了三張網(wǎng)，像白絲線編織的一樣。每張網(wǎng)上都有黑色球狀的蟲子，邁著細長的腿前進。這些蜘蛛的外殼黑得發(fā)亮，體內似乎有個閃亮的血紅色沙漏，十分可怕。每只蜘蛛旁邊都有一個跳動著的蒼白液囊，不斷鼓脹，馬上就將有無數(shù)“黑寡婦”幼蟲降臨世界?？謶忠u來，我猛地蓋上爐箅，踉蹌后退?？謶值脑蚴嵌喾矫娴?，首先，我學到的“鄉(xiāng)村生存知識”告訴我，被黑寡婦蜘蛛咬一口，就別想活命了。還有蜘蛛那種駭人的可怕姿態(tài)，黑亮的外殼，體內的血紅色沙漏。多年后，這個場景還不時進入我的噩夢中。
My friends and I loved the freedom, too, and we spent our afternoons exploring, walking, scavenging for bones and rare desert creeks. Having spent my previous years in a lightly forested suburb in the Northeast, with a tree-lined main street and a candy store, I found the wild, windy desert alien and alluring. On my first trek alone, as a ten-year-old, I discovered an old irrigation grate. I pried it open with my fingers, lifted it up, and there, a few inches from my face, were three white silken webs, and in each, marching along on spindled legs, was a glistening black bulbous body, bearing in its shine the dreaded blood-red hourglass. Near to each spider a pale, pulsating sac breathed with the imminent birth of countless more black widows. Horror let the grate crash shut. I stumbled back. The horror came in a mix of “country facts” (Nothing is more deadly than the bite of the black widow spider) and the inhuman posture and the black shine and the red hourglass. I had nightmares for years.

沙漠堪稱是一個“恐怖萬神殿”：毒蛛、狼蛛、提琴背蜘蛛、木蝎子、鞭尾蝎、蜈蚣、菱背響尾蛇、側進蛇、莫哈維綠蛇，等等。漸漸地，我和它們都熟悉起來，甚至習慣這些小東西的存在。我和伙伴們喜歡以此為樂子，只要找到狼蛛的窩，就逮只螞蟻丟在窩邊，看它在那錯綜復雜之間掙扎著逃跑，讓那綢線一般的蜘蛛絲顫抖起來，延伸到蜘蛛黑洞的中央。蜘蛛會從那空洞里沖出來，逮住那螞蟻的下頜，后者是必死無疑。我們都很期待緊張刺激的高潮時刻。在我心里，“鄉(xiāng)村生存知識”變得跟城市里那些傳奇差不多。一開始聽別人叮囑這些事情，那些沙漠里的生物仿佛有無邊的魔力，讓之前在城里聽到的什么鬼啊怪啊相形見絀。只有在沙漠里生活了一段時間之后，我們才意識到，有些話真的是危言聳聽，就像說“鹿角兔子”是真的一樣，都是當?shù)厝斯室饩幊鰜眚_“城里人”，給自己找找樂子的。
The desert offered a pantheon of terrors: tarantulas, wolf spiders, fiddlebacks, bark scorpions, whip scorpions, centipedes, diamondbacks, sidewinders, Mojave greens. Eventually we grew familiar, even comfortable, with these creatures. For fun, when my friends and I discovered a wolf spider’s nest, we’d drop an ant onto its outer limits and watch as its entangled escape attempts sent quivers down the silk strands, into the spider’s dark central hole, anticipating that fatal moment when the spider would burst from its hollows and seize the doomed ant in its mandibles. “Country facts” became my term for the rural cousin of the urban legend. As I first learned them, country facts granted fairy powers to desert creatures, making, say, the Gila monster no less an actual monster than the Gorgon. Only after living out in the desert for a while did we realize that some country facts, like the existence of the jackalope, had been delib-erately created to confuse city folk and amuse the locals.

我曾經(jīng)費了一個小時的口舌，對一群來自柏林的交換生說，仙人掌叢中住著一種特別的野狼，會跳個將近十米去攻擊獵物（嗯，就像德國人似的，出其不意，攻其不備）。然而，也沒有誰真正知道，那漫天飛沙背后的真相究竟如何。有多少荒誕無稽的鄉(xiāng)村知識，就有多少聽上去十分真實可信的。比如，穿鞋之前一定要看看里面有沒有蝎子，這聽上去就是個能保命的好習慣。
I once spent an hour convincing a group of exchange students from Berlin that, yes, there was a particular species of coyote that lived inside cacti and could leap ten yards to attack its prey (like, well, unsuspecting Germans). Yet no one precisely knew where the truth lay amid the whirling sand; for every country fact that seemed preposterous, there was one that felt solid and true. Always check your shoes for scorpions, for example, seemed plain good sense.