欧·亨利/O.Henry
欧·亨利（O.Henry，1862-1910），20世纪初美国著名短篇小说家，美国现代短篇小说创始人，批判现实主义作家，被誉为“美国的莫泊桑”。他一生极富传奇色彩，当过药房学徒、牧羊人、办事员、新闻记者、银行出纳员。1898年2月，他因贪污银行公款罪被判处五年徒刑，后提前获释。他的作品贴近百姓生活，结局往往出人意料，以“含泪微笑”的风格被誉为“美国生活的幽默百科全书”。代表作有《麦琪的礼物》《警察与赞美诗》《最后一片叶》等。
Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever-transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing“Home, Sweet Home”in ragtime;they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox;their vine is entwined about a picture hat;a rubber plant is their fig tree.
Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt;but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.
One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.
He asked if there was a room to let.
“Come in,”said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat;her throat seemed lined with fur.“I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?”
The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable;to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.
“This is the room,”said the housekeeper, from her furry throat.“It’s a nice room. It isn’t often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer-no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water’s at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B’retta Sprowls-you may have heard of her-Oh, that was just the stage names-right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It’s a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long.”
“Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?”asked the young man.
“They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes.”
He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue.
“A young girl-Miss Vashner-Miss Eloise Vashner-do you remember such a one among your lodgers?She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.”
“No, I don’t remember the name. The stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don’t call that one to mind.”
No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses;by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.
The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner.
The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry.
A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered rectangular, tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house-The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel’s chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room’s marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port-a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck.
One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room’s procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name“Marie.”It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury-perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness-and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised;the couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home;and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish. The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft-shod, through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter;in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully;above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere;the elevated trains roared intermittently;a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the house-a dank savour rather than a smell-a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork.
Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud:“What, dear?”as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odour?Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed him?
“She has been in this room,”he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the odour that she had loved and made her own-whence came it?
The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins-those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope;he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker’s card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman’s black satin hair bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hairbow also is femininity’s demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales.
And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangngs, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognisant of the call. Once again he answered loudly:“Yes, dear!”and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour of mnignonette. Oh, God!whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to call?Thus he groped.
He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant;but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace.
And then he thought of the housekeeper.
He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could.
“Will you tell me, madam,”he besought her,“who occupied the room I have before I came?”
“Yes, sir. I can tell you again.’Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B’retta Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over-”
“What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls-in looks, I mean?”
“Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday.”
“And before they occupied it?”
“Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months;and back of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember.”
He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage.
The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.
It was Mrs. McCool’s night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.
“I rented out my third floor, back, this evening,”said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam.“A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago.”
“Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am?”said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration.“You do be a wonder for rentin’rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then?”she concluded in a husky whisper, laden with mystery.
“Rooms,”said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones,“are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool.”
“This right ye are, ma’am;this by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma’am. There be many people will rayjict the renting of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dying in the bed of it.”
“As you say, we has our living to be making,”remarked Mrs. Purdy.
“Yis, ma’am;that’s true. That just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killing herself wid the gas-a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am.”
“She’d a-been called handsome, as you say,”said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical,“but for that mole she had a-growing by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.”
在纽约西区南部的红砖房一带，大多数居民都像时间一样动**、漂泊、变幻不定。他们无家可归，但也可以说有无数个家。他们从一间客房搬到另一间客房，永远那么飘忽不定——住所飘忽不定，情感和理智同样飘忽不定。他们用拉格泰姆的调子唱着“家，甜蜜的家”，用硬纸盒装着全部家当。印花帽上盘旋环绕的装饰是他们的葡萄藤，而橡胶树杖则是他们的无花果树。
既然这一带的房屋中有成千上百个住户，理所当然就有了成百上千个故事，但其中的大部分都平淡乏味。如果说，在这一波又一波涌现的流浪客中找不到一两个幽灵，那就奇怪了。
一天，天色刚暗下来，一个年轻人在这些年久失修的红砖大房子中穿来穿去，不时地按着门铃。当他来到第十二家门口时，他把空空的手袋放在台阶上，又擦了擦帽沿和额上的尘土。门铃声很微弱，就像从某个遥远而空旷的深渊传来。
这是第十二家了，随着门铃的响声，门开了，女房东走了出来。她的样子让他想起那病态的、恶心的蛆虫，它们把坚果啃得只剩一层空壳，现在又寻思着可以充饥的房客来填充空间。
年轻人问还有没有房间出租。
“进来，”女房东说，声音从她那好像蒙了张毛皮的喉咙里钻出来，“三楼还有个后间，空了一星期，来看看吧。”
年轻人跟着她上了楼。一束不知从哪儿射出的微弱光线冲淡了走廊的阴暗。他们无声地走在破旧不堪的地毯上，那地毯让编织它的织布机都羞于承认那是自己的产物。它好像已经变成了植物，已经在这阴暗恶臭的空气中退化成繁茂的地衣或蔓延的苔藓，左一块右一块，粘在楼梯上，踩上去就像踏着粘糊糊的有机物。楼梯每个转角处的墙上都有一个空着的壁龛，里面也许放置过花草。要是这样的话，那些花草也早已被这污浊肮脏的空气窒息死了。里面也有可能放过圣像。但不难想象，黑暗中，圣灵们早被大鬼小妖拖出来，一直拖到下面某间放过家具的地窖中的邪恶深渊了。
“就是这间，”女房东用那副蒙了皮毛的嗓子说道，“房间不错，难得有空着的时候。去年夏天还曾经住过一些高雅的人——他们从不找麻烦，按时交房租。水龙头在走廊尽头。斯普罗丝和穆尼曾在这里住了三个月，他们演过轻松喜剧。布蕾塔·斯普罗丝小姐——你也许听说过——哦，那是她的艺名——她的结婚证书原来就挂在那张梳妆台上，还镶了框呢！煤气在这儿。你看这壁橱，也很宽敞。这房间人人喜欢，所以从来没有长久闲置过。”
“许多艺人在这儿住过吗？”年轻人问道。
“他们来的来，去的去，我的房客中有相当一部分都和戏剧这一行有关。不错，先生，这一带属于艺人区，演员从不在任何地方长住。他们有的住在我这儿。可都是这个来那个走。”
他要了那间房，预付了一周的房钱。他数清了租金，说他累了，要马上住下。房东说房子早就收拾过，甚至连水和毛巾都已经备好。房东正要离开时，他又提出了那个挂在嘴边的问题——这个问题他已经问了上千遍。
“一个年轻姑娘——瓦西娜小姐——艾露易丝·瓦西娜——你记不记得你的房客中有这么个人？她多半会在台上唱歌。她是一个漂亮的姑娘，中等身材，瘦瘦的，一头金红色的头发，左眉梢上还有一颗黑痣。”
“不，我不记得这个名字。那些台上的人换名字就像换房间一样。他们来来去去的，我可记不起来了。”
没有！总是没有！五个月来不间断地打听，而回答总是否定。已经花了这么多时间，白天去问剧院经理、代理人、剧校与合唱团；晚上则挤在观众群中找，从明星荟萃的剧院一直到下流污秽的音乐厅——尽管他害怕在这类地方找到他心爱的人。他真心爱她，努力想找到她。他确信，自从她离家失踪以后，这个四面环水的大城市肯定会把她留在某个地方，但这城市就像一片巨大的流沙，无根无基，不停地卷着它里面的每一颗沙粒。今天还在上面的沙粒，明天或许就被淤泥和粘土埋在了下面。
这间配备了家具的客房，用假惺惺的热情迎接着它的新房客，就像娼妇满脸潮红却憔悴无神，敷衍地迎接她的嫖客一样。破烂绸套的沙发、两把椅子、窗子间一码宽的廉价穿衣镜、一两个烫金像框、角落里的铜床架——所有这些破旧家具折射出一丝微弱的光，给人一种虚假的安慰。
房客无精打采地躺到椅子上，而房间则竭力向他讲述它形形色色的房客——尽管语言混乱得像巴比伦通天塔里的套间。
一张色彩班驳的地毯铺在脏兮兮的地板上，像热带地区的一个盛开着鲜花的矩形小岛被波涛汹涌的大海包围着。灰纸裱过的墙上贴着几张追随无家者流浪漂泊的图片——“胡格诺情人”、“第一次争吵”、“婚礼早餐”、“泉边美女”。壁炉架轮廓简洁庄重，外面却歪歪斜斜地挂起了花哨的布帘，像亚马逊芭蕾舞女的腰带。壁炉架上还残留着一些零碎物品，都是些困顿受苦的房客在幸运之帆把他们载到新码头时抛弃的东西：一两个无关紧要的花瓶、几张女演员的相片、一个药瓶和一副缺七少八的扑克牌。
渐渐地，像密码被破解一样，前后一连串房客留下的细小痕迹也都显现出它所具有的意义来。梳妆台前的地毯已经磨光了绒毛，诉说着这上面曾走过多少可爱的女人，墙上细小的指纹表明，这些小囚犯们曾在这里摸索过通往阳光和空气的道路。一团泼溅的污迹，放射成爆炸的形状，见证了杯子或瓶子连同它所盛之物一起砸到墙上时的壮观景象。穿衣镜上被人用钻刀歪歪扭扭地刻着“玛丽”两个字，显示某一位房客曾在愤怒中辗转反侧，把自已的愤怒尽情发泄在房子上——也许是因为无法忍受房间那俗艳的冷漠。家具伤痕斑斑，被凸起的弹簧扭曲的沙发像是在痛苦而怪异的**中被宰杀的可怖的怪兽。某次更大的剧变劈裂了大理石壁炉架的一大块。地板的每块拼板都有自己独特的斜面，并从各自的痛苦中发出尖叫声。难以置信的是，那些曾把这一切恶意和伤害加于这间客房的人竟一度把这里它称为自己的家，然而，也许正是这不经意间存在的、屡遭欺骗的恋家本能和对虚伪的护家神的愤恨点燃了他们的怒火。一间棚屋只要属于自己，我们就会去打扫它、装点它、爱惜它。年轻的房客在椅子上任思绪漂游萦绕。其间，一缕触手可及的声音和味道飘进房中。他听到一间房中传来嗤笑和**无度的大笑，别的房间则是独自的谩骂声、骰子滚动的撞击声、催眠曲声和沉闷的号哭声，而头顶上的卓班琴则兴致勃勃地弹个不停。某处的门砰地一声关上了，电梯不时地呼啸而过，后面的篱笆上，一只猫凄惨的嚎叫着。他呼吸着这间房子的气息——是阴冷的潮气，而非其他什么气味——如同潮湿地窖中的破布和朽木混在一起蒸发的霉臭。
他正在那儿休息时，房间突然间充满了木犀草浓烈的芳香，它乘风而来，鲜活、香甜而真切，几乎是活脱脱的来访贵宾。他大叫：“什么，亲爱的？”就像有人喊他一样，他一跃而起，四下张望。浓烈的香味扑面而来，包围了他。他伸出手去触摸它。一时间，他的感觉乱作一团。怎么可能？人怎么会被气味断然唤醒呢？肯定是声音。可这难道就是那个触摸过、抚慰过他的声音？
“她曾来过这个房间！”他叫道，跳起来想揪出什么证据，因为他知道他能辨认出她或她摸过的哪怕最细微的东西。这弥漫萦绕的木犀花香是她所钟爱的，她独有的气息——究竟来自何处呢？
房间被草草收拾过。梳妆台薄薄的台布上零星散落着几只发卡——都是女性们精心别致但毫无特征的物件，阴性的、不定式的、不知是何时态。他知道这类东西显然缺乏个性，就没去理睬它们。他把梳妆台抽屉翻了个遍，发现一条被遗弃的劣质小手帕。他把它蒙到脸上，一股刺鼻的芥菜怪味冲鼻而来，他马上把手绢甩在地上。在另一个抽屉里，他发现几颗零星的纽扣、一张剧目单、一张当铺商的名片、两颗吃剩的果酱软糖和一本解梦书。最后一个抽屉中，他发现了一个女人用的黑蝴蝶结，他突然愣住了，身上忽冷忽热。但黑缎发结也只是女性端庄典雅的普通装饰，不具任何个性，不能说明任何问题。
他像猎狗一样在房中四处搜寻。他环视四壁，趴在地上仔细检查地毯上凹凸不平的每一个角落。他翻遍了壁炉架、桌子、帷幔、窗帘和角落里那醉歪歪的柜子，想找出明显的迹象证明她就在身旁、在周围、在对面、在心中、在头上，偎依着、爱恋着他，并用她微妙的感官发出痛苦的呼唤，让他那迟钝的感官都能感觉得到。他再次大声回答：“是的，亲爱的！”然后转过身，瞪大了眼睛，盯着跟前的一片空旷，他不能从木犀草的香气中看到形状、色彩、爱情和伸展的双臂。啊，天啊！香味在哪啊？从何时起，香味有了声音，能够呼喊？他就这样摸索着。
他又在裂缝和墙角认认真真地挖掘了一遍，找到了一些软木塞和烟头。他对这些毫不在意。但有一次，他在地毯的折叠处找到半只雪茄，他愤恨恶毒地咒骂起来，把它狠狠地碾碎在脚下。他又从头到尾把房间细细地搜罗了一遍，发现许多漂泊房客留下的烦人的、不光彩的丝丝缕缕的记录。但是他要找的那个人可能就在这儿住过，她的灵魂似乎在这儿盘旋过，而他找不到任何痕迹。
这时，他想起了女房东。
他从那令人困苦不堪的房间冲了下来，在一扇透着光线的门前停下。听到敲门声，房东打开门。他努力控制着过分激动的心情。
“夫人，能告诉我吗？”他恳切地说，“谁在我前面住过这间房子？”
“好吧，先生，我可以再给你说一次，斯普罗丝和穆尼，像我说过的，布蕾塔·斯普罗丝小姐是她的艺名，她是穆尼夫人。我的房子向来都以好的声誉著称。那个镶了金框的，挂在墙上的结婚证可以说明——”
“斯普罗丝小姐是怎么一种人？——长相，我是说。”
“哦，先生，黑头发，矮矮的，胖胖的，还长了一张滑稽的脸。他们是上周搬走的，哦，上周二。”
“那他们以前呢？”
“呕，一个单身男人，搞运输的。他还欠我一周房钱呢。在他之前是克罗德夫人和她的两个孩子，住了四个月，再往前呢，是多伊尔老先生，房租是他儿子付的，他住了六个月。都是一年前的事了，先生，再以前的事我就记不得了。”
他向她道了谢，爬回房间。屋子里死气沉沉的。那些曾赋予它精神的精髓都消失了。木犀花香已经离去，剩下的是地窖中发霉的家具那陈腐、老朽的恶臭。
希望的破灭耗尽了他全部的信心。他坐在那儿，盯着那黄色的咝咝作响的煤气。片刻之后，他走到床边，把床单撕成长条，用刀片把布条紧紧塞入窗户和门的每一条缝隙里。这一切收拾妥当以后，他关上灯，把煤气开足，满怀感激地躺在**。
今晚轮到迈克库尔太太拿罐子去打啤酒了。取酒回来后，她和珀迪太太在一间房东们聚会的地下室坐下。这是个蛆虫猖獗的地方。
“今晚我把三楼后间租了出去，”珀迪太太说，面前是一圈细细的啤酒泡沫，“一个年轻人租了它，两小时前他就上床睡了。”
“啊？真有你的，珀迪太太！”迈克库尔太太由衷地羡慕着说，“那种房子你都租得出去，真是个奇迹。那你告诉他那件事了吗？”结束时她的声音像山谷中的低语，充满了神秘。
“房间，”珀迪太太用她那蒙着皮毛的嗓音说，“装了家具，就是为了租出去，迈克库尔太太。我可没有告诉他！”
“就该这样嘛，太太，我们就是靠出租房子为生的！你可真有生意头脑！如果知道有人在那间房里自杀，谁还会去租那间房呢？”
“就是啊，我们总得挣钱活命啊。”珀迪太太说。
“是的，太太，是这个理儿。就是上周的这一天，我帮你把三楼后间收拾干净的。那俊俏的小姑娘竟开煤气把自己弄死了——她的小脸儿多甜啊，珀迪太太。”
“可不是嘛，都说她长得俊，”珀迪太太说，既赞同，又挑剔，“只可惜左眉梢上长了颗痣。再来一杯，迈克库尔太太。”
词汇笔记
fugacious[fju'ɡe??s]adj.短暂的；易逃逸的；难捕捉的；无常的
After a period of fugacious excited time, I still feel solitude.
短暂的亢奋过后，我依旧感到孤单。
surfeit['s?：f?t]v.吃得过多；由于过量而厌腻
A surfeit of food makes one sick.
饮食过量使人生病。
quicksand['kw?k, s?nd]n.流沙，敏捷，危险而捉摸不定的事物；悬浮体；流砂
Conceit is the quicksand of success.
自负是成功的流沙。
garish['ɡ?r??]adj.炫耀的，过于艳丽的；响亮的，浮华的；刺眼的；令人眩晕的
You might think this is a bit garish.
你也许会觉得这一切都有点太花哨了。
小试身手
门开了，女房东走了出来。
所有这些破旧家具折射出一丝微弱的光，给人一种虚假的安慰。
他努力控制着过分激动的心情。
……surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers……
fill with：（使）充[挤]满；使满怀（某种情感等）
Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief.
come upon：突然产生；要求；成为……负担；偶遇