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Eudora Welty (1909—2001)
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本文是尤多拉·韦尔蒂所著短篇小说首集《绿幕》（A Curtain of Green）里的一篇。韦尔蒂女士是美国南部密西西比州人，著有多种长篇小说，短篇小说已集于Collected Stories（1980）。她的短篇小说剪裁经济，勾画生动，笔触轻灵，含意丰富，堪入世界名作之列。
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Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn for many winters and always lets the cold through to the bones. Then the moon rose. A farm lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaf. By a closer and more searching eye than the moon’s everything belonging to the Mortons’ might have been seen—even to the tiny tomato plants in their neat rows closest to the house, gray and featherlike, appalling in their exposed fragility. The moonlight covered everything, and lay upon the darkest shape of all, the farmhouse where the lamp had just been blown out.
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● sleazy：稀薄的。黑夜比作一件不能御寒的敝衣。lets的主语是关系代名词that，the cold是它的宾语。through是副词，作用和pass through相同，“让它穿过”，to是介词。
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● visible（清楚可辨）是complement，形容主语farm（田庄）。田庄之在月色之中，犹如水中白石，这样比说“月色如水”要高明一筹。
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● stretch原意是一长条，stretches并不是几条，而是绵延不断的一块或一片：一片深林。leaf在这里是collective noun，即等于leaves。colorless：黑、白、灰，皆为无色。
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● the Mortons’在文法上称为absolute genitive，把后面应该跟的名词house（莫顿夫妇的家）省掉了。这一句是被动语态，又是虚拟式。我们不知道有没有一只眼睛，可以比月亮看得更仔细，更能洞察一切，假如有的话，莫顿家每一样东西都可“被”（即句首之By）它看见了。这只眼睛应该是小说家的眼睛。
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● 但是作者并没有列举他们家里的东西，在横线之后只举了一件东西：番茄田。替番茄防冻是本篇的主题，别的东西自可以不提，写短篇小说不得不注意描写上的经济。
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● even to的to=as far as：每样东西都可以看见，即小至小小的番茄秧，也可以看见。后面跟着几个形容tomato plants的字。featherlike：像羽毛似的，指番茄的茎叶而言。fragility：脆弱。exposed：暴露（在寒夜中）的，番茄这样暴露着，使人惊心（appalling）。
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● the farmhouse是the shape的同位语。
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Inside, Jason and Sara Morton were lying between the quilts of a pallet which had been made up close to the fireplace. A fire still fluttered in the grate, making a drowsy sound now and then, and its exhausted light beat up and down the wall, across the rafters, and over the dark pallet where the old people lay, like a bird trying to find its way out of the room.
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● quilt：一床被。pallet：稻草所铺成的床。铺（made up）在火炉附近（close）。
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● grate：火炉里的铁格子。drowsy：催眠的。exhausted：无力的。把火炉里的光比作一只寻出路的鸟，可称妙绝。动词用beat也妙，譬喻还没有点明以前，单凭这个动词，已经显出有一样东西在东碰西撞了。fluttered：跳动，用于火可以，用于鸟也可以。rafters：屋椽。
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The long-spaced, tired breathing of Jason was the only noise besides the flutter of the fire. He lay under the quilt in a long shape like a bean, turned on his side to face the door. His lips opened in the dark, and in and out he breathed, in and out, slowly and with a rise and fall, over and over, like a conversation or a tale—a question and a sigh.
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● long-spaced：两声鼾声之间停顿得很长。bean：这里是附有豆荚的豆子。turned on his side：侧着身。turned是过去分词。
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● in and out he breathed=he breathed in and out。rise and fall：起伏。最后一句句子的节奏，也模仿鼾声的起伏。
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Sara lay on her hack with her mouth agape, silent, but not asleep. She was staring at the dark and indistinguishable places among the rafters. Her eyes seemed opened too wide, the lids strained and limp, like openings which have been stretched shapeless and made of no more use. Once a hissing yellow flame stood erect in the old log, and her small face and pale hair, and one hand holding to the edge of the cover, were illuminated for a moment, with shadows bright blue. Then she pulled the quilt clear over her head.
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● lay on her back：仰天而卧。agape：张着（嘴）。indistinguishable：分辨不清楚的。opened是过去分词，形容主语。the lids strained and limp是nominative absolute phrase。“眼皮绷紧的又是软软的（limp）”。她的眼睛就“像两个眶眶，张大得已经不成形状，而且给弄得不再有什么用处了”。在“which”clause里，有两个动词：have been stretched和（have been）made；shapeless和of no more use都形容主语which。
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● 第四句又是描写火光：一下子她的脸、头发和捏住被单边缘的一只手都给照亮了。火是嘶嘶作响（hissing）的黄色火焰，笔直地（erect）立在（炉子里的）陈旧的木柴（log）上。
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● hold作不及物动词用，有cling（紧附）的意义，所以holding to比holding（及物动词）可能捏得更紧。末一句的clear是副词，解作completely，把被单拉上，把头全盖没了。
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Every night they lay trembling with cold, but no more communicative in their misery than a pair of window shutters beaten by a storm. Sometimes many days, weeks went by without words. They were not really old—they were only fifty; still, their lives were filled with tiredness, with a great lack of necessity to speak, with poverty which may have bound them like a disaster too great for discussion but left them still separate and undesirous of sympathy. Perhaps, years ago, the long habit of silence may have been started in anger or passion. Who could tell now?
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● communicative：喜与人交谈的，形容主语they。受暴风雨打击的两扇百叶窗，即使有个别的反应，也不会互相交谈，这一对老夫妇虽然生活困苦，也不互相交谈，两个活人的话并不比两扇窗的话更多一些（no more…than）。went by=passed。
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● 他们的生命充满了三件东西：第一是“疲倦”；第二是“没有说话的需要”（filled with a lack：充满了一种缺乏——好像是不通的，这样把两个意义相反的字联在一起，修辞学上称为“矛盾修饰法”[oxymoron]，中文也有这种说法，例如“公开的秘密”）；第三是“贫穷”。
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● poverty后跟着一个adjective clause。在这个子句里，作者就她写作的时候（故用现在式的辅助动词may），去猜想当时的情形（故用完成式不定词have bound和have left）。贫穷把他们老夫妻俩联系（bound是bind的过去分词）在一起，可能如同一个灾祸一样（同受灾者命运相同），灾祸太大了，用不着再去讨论它。但是贫穷使得他们俩仍旧是彼此分离的，而且是不希望别人来同情的。（separate和undesirous两个形容词都是objective complements。）
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● 末一句，作者猜想他们什么时候开始互相不交谈的。这个沉默的习惯可能很多年（years前面不必加many也可表示很多年）前就开始了。怎样开始的呢？可能有一次在生气的时候，两人不说话，以后就一直不说话了（passion=violent anger）。但是现在谁知道呢？
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