雙語(yǔ) ● A Beautiful Memory　美好的回憶

A Beautiful Memory　美好的回憶

◎ Michelle

Err...the loveliest house that I’ve ever lived in was one that I lived in with my grandparents when I was a child. And the name of the house was Crosslands. And I have some very happy memories of Crosslands. It was, it seemed, so huge to me as a child. And it had a lovely living room with a piano in it and a lovely sort of hall with lots of carpets and chests and antiques and so on. And there was a mysterious room, it was the drawing room, and we only used it on Sundays, or when the vicar came for tea, or Christmas Day or Easter Day, and I was used to be amazed about this room because it had the best furniture in it but it was covered up with sheets—it was as if all the furniture was wearing clothes—and it seemed to me ridiculous that we couldn’t enjoy this beautiful furniture all the week through really.

呃……我住過(guò)的最可愛(ài)的房子，要數(shù)小時(shí)候和爺爺奶奶一起住的那座房子了。那座房子名叫克羅斯蘭。它給了我許多美好的回憶。在兒時(shí)的我眼中，它是那樣的高大?？蓯?ài)的起居室里放著一架鋼琴。漂亮的大廳里放著地毯、柜子和古董等許多東西。那個(gè)充滿神秘氣息的房間就是會(huì)客廳了。只有周日、牧師來(lái)喝茶、圣誕節(jié)或復(fù)活節(jié)的時(shí)候，我們才能用它。那時(shí)候，我一直覺(jué)得這個(gè)房間很奇怪，那里面放著最好的家具，可總是蓋著床單——就像所有的家具都穿著衣服一樣。更可笑的是，這么精美的家具，我們卻不曾連續(xù)使用超過(guò)一周時(shí)間。

And probably my favorite room was the kitchen. It had a lovely red flagstone floor, which was always highly polished, and an Aga, you know, one of those big cookers that heats the whole room so it was always warm there, and there was a kind of clothes horse above it that we used to hang all our clothes on, and it was just lovely. It was a very warm room with baked bread and my grandmother used to make ice cream and we’d eat it in there and... there was a vegetable garden leading from there so I spent a lot of time in the vegetable garden picking peas and eating them—my grandmother used to get really cross with me because I used to pick all the vegetables and the fruit for our meals and then I’d eat half of them, because they tasted so delicious coming fresh from the garden.

我最喜歡的房間也許就是廚房了。討喜的紅色石地板總是被擦得亮亮的。廚房里有一個(gè)大壁爐，把房間烤得暖和極了。壁爐上有一個(gè)衣架，我們用它掛衣服，真是合適又美觀。這個(gè)溫暖的房間里正烤著面包呢！奶奶有時(shí)也會(huì)自己制作冰激凌，我們就在這里吃……廚房望出去是一片菜園，我經(jīng)常在那兒摘豌豆吃。我曾摘光花園里的所有蔬菜瓜果，做好飯菜后我吃掉了一大半，因?yàn)檫@些蔬菜瓜果實(shí)在太新鮮了。奶奶就因?yàn)檫@件事，真的生氣了。

Now, I went back to it a few years ago and it was a big mistake. They’ve modernized it inside, they’ve got rid of those lovely old fire-places... have just gone. And they’ve knocked a wall down so the drawing room and the living room have become one big modern plastic kind of room.

如今，當(dāng)我再次回到這里時(shí)，我發(fā)現(xiàn)他們犯了一個(gè)大錯(cuò)——房?jī)?nèi)被裝修得極富現(xiàn)代氣息。那些可愛(ài)的老壁爐都已經(jīng)被拆掉——都不存在了。會(huì)客廳和起居室之間的墻也被拆了，成了一個(gè)很大、很現(xiàn)代化的可塑型房間。

But I think what upset me most about it was the feeling that the house had shrunk, it had become smaller and that my memory of this lovely large warm comfortable house had turned into an old house with modernized rooms inside it. And it taught me a lesson really, that you can’t go back on the past and recapture it. But there’s a beautiful memory there.

可最讓我傷心的是，我感到房子好像變小了。它變得越來(lái)越小，我記憶中的這個(gè)漂亮、寬敞、溫暖舒適的房子，成了一座房間裝修很現(xiàn)代的老房子。它讓我明白了一個(gè)道理：你無(wú)法回到過(guò)去，也無(wú)法重新抓住逝去的美好。不過(guò)，老房子給你的美好回憶還在！

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