自译 契诃夫短篇小说 A TRIFLE FROM REAL LIFE 家长里短
原作契诃夫 Translated by Marian Fell 1915
NIKOLAI ILITCH BIELAYEFF was a young gentleman of St. Petersburg, aged thirty-two, rosy, well fed, and a patron of the race-tracks. Once, toward evening, he went to pay a call on Olga Ivanovna with whom, to use his own expression, he was dragging through a long and tedious love-affair. And the truth was that the first thrilling, inspiring pages of this romance had long since been read, and that the story was now dragging wearily on, presenting nothing that was either interesting or novel.
石克廉是位年轻的先生,三十二岁,衣食富足,气色红润,开着一家赛马场。有天晚上,他去一位杨玉兰杨女士家串门,用他自己的话说,他和这位杨女士谈的不是恋爱,完全是没完没了的折磨。其实他俩曾经也挺恩爱,只是开头那几页的澎湃早已翻过,现在只剩下了又臭又长的续集,让人昏昏欲睡。
Not finding Olga at home, my hero threw himself upon a couch and prepared to await her return.
到家一看玉兰不在,小石找了张沙发坐下,想等她回来。
“Good evening, Nikolai Ilitch!” he heard a child’s voice say. “Mamma will soon be home. She has gone to the dressmaker’s with Sonia.”
“石叔叔,晚上好!”他听到一个稚嫩的声音,“我妈妈马上就回来。她陪蓉蓉买裙子去了。”
On the divan in the same room lay Aliosha, Olga’s son, a small boy of eight, immaculately and picturesquely dressed in a little velvet suit and long black stockings. He had been lying on a satin pillow, mimicking the antics of an acrobat he had seen at the circus. First he stretched up one pretty leg, then another; then, when they were tired, he brought his arms into play, and at last jumped up galvanically, throwing himself on all fours in an effort to stand on his head. He went through all these motions with the most serious face in the world, puffing like a martyr, as if he himself regretted that God had given him such a restless little body.