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战争之殇,救赎之光

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安东尼・多尔(Anthony Doerr) 1973年出生于美国俄亥俄州的克利夫兰。1995年,他毕业于鲍登学院,获得学士学位。1999年,他毕业于鲍林格林州立大学,获得创作艺术硕士学位。他曾经游历非洲和新西兰,后在爱达荷州的博伊西城定居。2002年,他出版了短篇小说集《捡贝壳的人》(The Shell Collector),随后又发表了《关于恩典》(About Grace)、《罗马四季》(Four Seasons in Rome)、《记忆墙》(Memory Wall)、《所有我们看不见的光》(All the Light We Cannot See)等作品。多尔的文字如散文诗般优美,他擅长对人物的内心进行精妙的刻画,对环境进行细腻的营造。他的短篇小说《猎手的妻子》(The Hunter’s Wife)、《捡贝壳的人》等曾获得欧・亨利短篇小说奖,长篇小说《所有我们看不见的光》于2015年获得普利策奖。

Excerpts1)

The Girl

In a corner of the city, inside a tall, narrow house at Number 4 rue2) Vauborel, on the sixth and highest floor, a sightless sixteen-year-old named Marie-Laure LeBlanc kneels over a low table covered entirely with a model. The model is a miniature of the city she kneels within, and contains scale replicas of the hundreds of houses and shops and hotels within its walls. There’s the cathedral with its perforated spire3), and the bulky old Ch?teau4) de Saint-Malo, and row after row of seaside mansions studded with chimneys.

Marie-Laure runs her fingertips along the centimeter-wide parapet5) crowning the ramparts6), drawing an uneven star shape around the entire model. She finds the opening atop the walls where four ceremonial cannons point to sea.

In a corner of the room stand two galvanized7) buckets filled to the rim with water. Fill them up, her great-uncle has taught her, whenever you can. The bathtub on the third floor too. Who knows when the water will go out again.

Her fingers travel back to the cathedral spire. South to the Gate of Dinan. All evening she has been marching her fingers around the model, waiting for her great-uncle Etienne, who owns this house, who went out the previous night while she slept, and who has not returned. And now it is night again, another revolution of the clock, and the whole block is quiet, and she cannot sleep.

She can hear the bombers when they are three miles away. A mounting static8). The hum inside a seashell.

When she opens the bedroom window, the noise of the airplanes becomes louder. Otherwise, the night is dreadfully silent: no engines, no voices, no clatter9). No sirens. No footfalls on the cobbles. Not even gulls. Just a high tide, one block away and six stories below, lapping at the base of the city walls.

And something else.

Something rattling softly, very close. She eases open the left-hand shutter and runs her fingers up the slats10) of the right. A sheet of paper has lodged there.

She holds it to her nose. It smells of fresh ink. Gasoline, maybe. The paper is crisp; it has not been outside long.

Marie-Laure hesitates at the window in her stocking feet, her bedroom behind her, seashells arranged along the top of the armoire11), pebbles along the baseboards. Her cane stands in the corner; her big Braille novel waits facedown on the bed. The drone of the airplanes grows.

The Boy

Five streets to the north, a white-haired eighteen-year-old German private12) named Werner Pfennig wakes to a faint staccato13) hum. Little more than a purr14). Flies tapping at a far-off windowpane.

Where is he? The sweet, slightly chemical scent of gun oil; the raw wood of newly constructed shell crates; the mothballed odor of old bedspreads―he’s in the hotel. Of course. L’h?tel des Abeilles, the Hotel of Bees.

Still night. Still early.

From the direction of the sea come whistles and booms; flak15) is going up.

An anti-air corporal16) hurries down the corridor, heading for the stairwell. “Get to the cellar,” he calls over his shoulder, and Werner switches on his field light, rolls his blanket into his duffel17), and starts down the hall.

Not so long ago, the Hotel of Bees was a cheerful address, with bright blue shutters on its facade and oysters on ice in its café and Breton waiters in bow ties polishing glasses behind its bar. It offered twenty-one guest rooms, commanding sea views, and a lobby fireplace as big as a truck. Parisians on weekend holidays would drink aperitifs18) here.

Over the past four weeks, the hotel has become something else: a fortress. A detachment of Austrian anti-airmen has boarded up every window, overturned every bed. They’ve reinforced the entrance, packed the stairwells with crates of artillery shells. The hotel’s fourth floor, where garden rooms with French balconies open directly onto the ramparts, has become home to an aging high-velocity19) anti-air gun called an 88 that can fire twenty-one-and-a-half-pound shells nine miles.

Werner is in the stairwell, halfway to the ground floor, when the 88 fires twice in quick succession. It’s the first time he’s heard the gun at such close range, and it sounds as if the top half of the hotel has torn off. He stumbles and throws his arms over his ears. The walls reverberate all the way down into the foundation, then back up.

Werner can hear the Austrians two floors up scrambling, reloading, and the receding screams of both shells as they hurtle above the ocean, already two or three miles away. One of the soldiers, he realizes, is singing. Or maybe it is more than one. Maybe they are all singing.

Werner chases the beam of his field light through the lobby. The big gun detonates a third time, and glass shatters somewhere close by, and torrents of soot rattle down the chimney, and the walls of the hotel toll like a struck bell. Werner worries that the sound will knock the teeth from his gums.

He drags open the cellar door and pauses a moment, vision swimming. “This is it?” he asks. “They’re really coming?”

But who is there to answer?

1. 节选部分选自小说开头,主要介绍了在战争期间,两位主人公(法国少女Marie-Laure LeBlanc与德国少年Werner Pfennig)所处的环境。节选有删节。

2. rue:〈法〉街道,马路

3. spire [?spa??(r)] n. 尖塔,尖顶

4. ch?teau:〈法〉(法国的)城堡,豪宅

5. parapet [?p?r?pet] n. 矮护墙

6. rampart [?r?m?p?(r)t] n. (城市、城堡等周围的)防御土墙,壁垒

7. galvanized [??lv?na?zd] adj. 镀锌的

8. static [?st?t?k] n. 静电干扰

9. clatter [?kl?t?(r)] n. 哗啦声;咔嗒声

10. slat [sl?t] n. 板条;狭板

11. armoire:〈法〉大型衣橱

12. private [?pra?v?t] n. 二等兵;列兵

13. staccato [st??k?t??] adj. 断奏的;断音的

14. purr [p??(r)] n. 咕噜咕噜声

15. flak [fl?k] n. 高射炮

16. corporal [?k??(r)p(?)r?l] n. 下士

17. duffel [?d?f(?)l] n. 圆筒包,收口提袋

18. aperitif [??per??ti?f] n. 开胃酒

19. velocity [v??l?s?ti] n. 速率;速度

作品赏析

圣马洛是坐落在英法海峡之间的花岗岩礁盘上的一座古城,曾被誉为“法国布列塔尼翡翠海岸上最璀璨的明珠”。1944年盟军在法国诺曼底登陆后,对在这里负隅顽抗的德军进行了毁灭性的轰炸,圣马洛小城几乎被夷为平地。安东尼・多尔的《所有我们看不见的光》的叙述就是从盟军轰炸机进入圣马洛上空的隆隆声中开始的。

在轰炸机机翼投下的阴影之下,有被困的德军,还有滞留城中的法国平民,其中有小说的两位主人公――玛丽洛尔・勒布朗(Marie-Laure LeBlanc)和维尔纳・普芬尼希(Werner Pfennig)。玛丽洛尔16岁,先天双目失明,由父亲独自抚养长大。1940年战争爆发后,她的父亲被德国人带走,生死不明。玛丽洛尔只能寄住在圣马洛的叔祖父家。叔祖父参加抵抗运动被捕后,她独居老宅,用叔祖父留下的电台设备播放她朗读的《海底两万里》。与此同时,数条街外,德国士兵维尔纳躲在当地一家酒店的地下室。维尔纳虽然只有18岁,但已是一名老兵,他自幼父母双亡,和妹妹尤塔一起在德国贫困的矿区长大。因为数学方面的天分,他考入了“国家政治教育学院”,在那里接受军事化训练。他毕业后参军,曾经转战于俄国和中欧战场,目前驻扎在法国,负责搜索抵抗组织的电台。

《所有我们看不见的光》的写作契机来自于作者多尔2004年的一次旅行。在火车上,他注意到一名乘客因手机通话中断而发脾气。这令他联想到了无线电的发展历史,于是决定“尝试用魔法召唤出你在家里能够收听陌生人的声音是一种奇迹的那个时代”。没想到,为了在纸上捕捉这个时代,多尔用了十年的时间。随着他对无线电发展史料的深入阅读,他发现在第二次世界大战中,电台曾经发挥过巨大的作用。德国政府利用电台对德国民众进行政治动员。法国抵抗组织则利用电台传递抗击德国人的消息。为了捕捉无线电波这一我们人类所看不到的光线,多尔创造出了维尔纳的形象。表面上看,玛丽洛尔和维尔纳是在1944年的轰炸中相识,维尔纳发现了玛丽洛尔的电台,寻踪而来。其实,他们的相识在十年前就埋下了伏笔。玛丽洛尔的祖父死于第一次世界大战,他在战前曾经录制了部分科普节目。他的弟弟,也就是玛丽洛尔的叔祖父,为了纪念哥哥特地建立了无线电台,播放哥哥的节目。而十年前,维尔纳曾经通过自己翻修组装的收音机,和妹妹一起入迷地听过这些节目。到圣马洛后,他识别出了玛丽洛尔现在播报的频道就是当年他所听过的频道。冒着大轰炸的威险,通过对无线电信号的甄别,他找到了玛丽洛尔的家,救出了被困的玛丽洛尔,目送她走向安全区,然后默默转身离开。不久后,他被盟军俘虏,在战俘营死去。

多尔写小说的起点是对一段科技史的关注,然而,当他真正动笔,却在无线电的光线之外加上了更为重要的人性和道德之光,使小说成为一部可以触动灵魂的反战作品。小说没有简单地站在意识形态的立场上区分非此即彼的正邪黑白,而是写出了战争对参战双方的伤害。作为被占领一方的法国的创伤自不待言。建一座古镇,需要上千年时光的积累,摧毁它,却只需代表现代技术的飞机几天的轰炸即可。残垣断壁之下天天上演着生离死别的剧目。小说中,玛丽洛尔的父亲生死不明,叔祖父被带走,剩下她自己独困于残宅,生命岌岌可危。其实,作为侵略方的德国也不是这场战争的赢家。为了自己所挑起的这场侵略战争,他们付出了惨重的代价。以小说中的维尔纳为例,他被吸纳为“青年先锋团”的一员,接受洗脑式的教育。他最好的朋友弗雷德里克就是因为具有自己独立的思想,受到了教官所支持的同学的欺凌,被打成了傻子。而维尔纳毕业后则顺从地应征入伍,变成了战争机器上的一枚小齿轮,丧生异乡,尸骨无存。在学校时,“青年先锋团”的热血少年们高唱着:“啊,带上我吧,带我走进部队/我不要平凡地死去!/我不要平庸的死亡,我要/我要倒在英雄的高地上。”而残酷的事实却以无情的反讽回应他们:他们将死亡带给了其他国家的无辜百姓,自己也成为战争的炮灰,得到的只有侵略者的恶名,即便将生命捐出,也换不回英雄的荣耀,得到的只是无意义的卑微。

小说《所有我们看不见的光》的篇幅很长,有五百多页,而且作者没有采用时间顺序,而是以1944年8月这个时间为主线,采用倒叙的方式,中间不断闪回到战争爆发前,同时还采用了平行的双主人公双线叙述,从20世纪30年代两位主人公的童年开始,一直讲到1944年两人相遇。小说的结构复杂,然而阅读体验却非常流畅。多尔是一位高妙的文体家,他的文字闪耀着诗意,充满了富有灵性的意象,不做作、不拖沓。他在行文中大量使用短句,各个章节大都是十页之内的短篇幅,叙述节奏感强。读者很容易被小说中的悬念所深深吸引,渴望随着故事的推进,了解主人公们的历史,以及在战火纷飞的背景下,等待他们的又是什么样的命运。

等待他们的是什么样的命运?小说的主体叙述以二战终结落幕,以玛丽洛尔的生、玛丽洛尔的叔祖父的回归、维尔纳的死、维尔纳的妹妹被攻入德国的俄国人作为复仇对象为结局。这个结局见证了战争的残酷,也见证了和平的终于来临。小说的结尾,时间线快进到了2014年,玛丽洛尔已经是年近九旬的老人,在3月的植物园里,坐在长椅上,沐浴着阳光和微风,身边坐着她12岁的外孙米歇尔。这是一幅幸福祥和的图景。

多尔却在这幅如世外桃源般宁静的画面上,加上了发人深思的一笔:玛丽洛尔休息时,外孙米歇尔在忙着用游戏机打在线的战争游戏。他没有见证过战争的残酷,于是把战争理解为一场令人激动的冒险。殊不知战争真的会吞噬生命,吞噬光线,将祥和的人间变成黑暗的废墟。只有人性的光芒才能救赎这黑暗。是维尔纳不曾失落本性的善良才使米歇尔的外祖母活了下来,才有了他母亲以及他这一代的传承。米歇尔对战争游戏的迷恋是一种年少的好奇,也是一种令人不安的隐喻。或许,战争的怪兽并没有远离,这值得我们警惕,再警惕。