麦田里的守望者——外文翻译

The Catcher in the Rye

By Jerome David Salinger

Mr. and Mrs. Antolini had this very swanky apartment over on Sutton Place, with two steps that you go down to get in the living room, and a bar and all. I’d been there quite a few times, because after I left Elkton Hills Mr. Antoilni came up to our house for dinner quite frequently to find out how I was getting along. He wasn’t married then. Then when he got married, I used to play tennis with him and Mrs. Antolini quite frequently, out at the West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, Long Island Mrs. Antolini, belonged there. She was lousy with dough. She was about six years older than Mr. Antolini , but they seemed to get along quite well. For one thing, they were both very intellectual, especially Mr. Antolini except that he was more witty than intellectual when you were with him, sort of like D.B. Mrs. Antolini was mostly serious. She had asthma pretty bad. They both read all D.B.’s stories─Mrs. Antolini, too─and when D.B. went to Hollywood; Mr. Antolini phoned him up and told him not to go He went anyway, though. Mr. Antolini said that anybody that could write like D.B. had no business going out to Hollywood. That’s exactly what I said, practically. I would have walked down to their house, because I didn’t want to spend any of Phoebe’s Christmas dough that I didn’t have to, but I felt funny when I got outside. Sort of dizzy. So I took a cab. I didn’t want to, but I did. I had a helluva time even finding a cab.

Old Mr. Antolini answered the door when I rang the bell—after the elevator boy finally let me up, the bastard. He had on his bathrobe and slippers, and he had a high ball in one hand. He was a pretty sophisticated guy, and he was a pretty heavy drinker. “Holden, m’ boy!” he said. “My God, he’s grown another twenty inches. Fine to see you.”

“How are you, Mr. Antolini? How’s Mrs. Antolini?” “We’re both jus t dandy. Let’s have that coat.” He took my coat off me and hung it up. “I expected to see a day-old infant in your arms. Nowhere to turn. Snowflakes in your eye lashes.” He’s a very witty guy sometimes. He turned around and yelled out to the kitchen, “Lillian! How’s the coffee coming?” Lillian was Mrs. Antolini’s first name.

“It’s all ready,” she yelled back. “Is that Ho lden? Hello, Holden!” “Hello, Mrs. Antolini!”

You were always yelling when you were there. That’s because the both of them were never in the same room at the same time. It was sort of funny.

“Sit down, Holden,” Mr. Antolini said. You could tell he was a little oiled up. The room looked like they’d just had a party. Glasses were all over the place, and dishes with pe anuts in them. “Excuse the appearance of the place, “he said “We’ve been entertaining some Buffalo friend of Mrs. Antolini’s…Somebuffaloes, as a matter of fact.”

I laughed, and Mrs. Antolini yelled something in to me from the kitchen, but I couldn’t hear her. “What’d she say?” I asked Mr. Antolini.

She said not to look at her when she comes in. She just arose from the sack. Have a cigarette. Are you smoking now?”

“Thanks,” I said. I took a cigarett e from the box he offered me. “Just once in a while. I’m a moderate smoker.”

“I’ll bet you are,” he said. He gave me a light from this big lighter off the table. “So, y ou and Pencey are no longer one,” he said. He always said things that way. Sometimes it amused me a lot and sometimes it didn’t. He sort of did it a little bit too much. I don’t mean he wasn’t witty or anything─he was—but sometimes it gets on your nerves when somebody’s always say in things like “So you and Pencey are no longer one.” D.B. does it too much sometimes, too.

“What was the trou ble?” Mr. Antolini asked me. “How’d you do in English?” I’ll show you the door in short order if you flunked English, you little ace composition writer. “Oh, I passed English all right. It was mostly literature, though. I only wrote about two compositions the whole term,” I said. “I flunked Oral Expression, though. They had this course you had to take, Oral Expression. That I flunked.”

“Why?” “Oh, I don’t know.” I didn’t feel much like going into it. I was still feeling sort of dizzy or something, and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. I really did. But you could tell he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it. “It’s this course where each boy in class has to get up in class and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all. And if the boy digresses at all, you’re supposed to yell ‘Digression!’ at him as fast as you can. It just a bout drove me crazy. I got an F in it.”“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It’s more interesting and all.”“You don’t care to have somebody stick to the point when he tells you