鳳來峰
試在網絡虛擬世界裏留下一片真誠.
遠與近
托馬斯沃爾夫 ( 美國 1900-1938)
在小鎮郊外離鐵路不遠的土坡上，有一所裝有別致的綠色百葉窗的潔白小木屋。屋子的一側是個園子，裏麵幾塊菜地構成整齊的圖案，還有一個八月末結著熟葡萄的 架子。屋前有三棵大橡樹，夏天以它濃鬱的樹蔭遮蔽著小屋。另一側，生機盎然地長著一溜鮮花，與鄰居為界。整個環境彌漫著一種整齊、節儉而又樸素的舒適氣 氛。
每天下午兩點過幾分，就有一輛區間特快列車路過這裏。這時，這個龐然大物，剛在附近的小鎮上停下喘了口氣，正開始有節奏地伸展開身體，但還沒有達到它全速 前進的可怕程度。它從從容容地躍入視野，隨著蒸氣機強有力的轉動，它一掠而過，沉重的車廂壓在鐵軌上，發出一陣低沉平和的隆隆聲，然後便消失在遠處的彎道 上了。每隔一段距離，火車便將濃煙噴向道旁草地的上方。起先，從它噴出濃煙的吼叫聲中可以聽出它在前進。最後，一切都聽不見了，隻有那速度穩定而有節奏的 車輪聲，漸漸消失在下午令人困倦的寂靜中。
二十多年來，每當這列火車駛近小屋時，司機就拉響汽笛，聽見這信號，便有一個女人出現在小屋後麵的門廊裏並向他揮手。最初，她身邊偎依著一個很小的孩子，現在這孩子已經長成一個體態豐滿的姑娘。每天，她仍舊和母親一塊到門廊去向他招手。
司機就這樣常年開著車。他老了，頭發變得灰白。他曾經駕駛他那重載滿員的巨大火車，上萬次地穿越大地。他自己的孩子已經長大成人，而且結了婚。曾有四次， 在前方的軌道上，他看見釀成悲劇的可怕的黑點，凝聚著恐懼的陰影，像炮彈一樣朝著車頭直射過來 —— 一次是一輛輕便馬車，車上擠滿一排排麵容驚恐的孩子；另 一次，一輛蹩腳的汽車在鐵軌上拋錨，車上的人都嚇得呆若木雞；還有一次，一個衣衫襤褸的流浪漢走在鐵路邊，他又老又聾，完全聽不見鳴笛的警告；又一次窗內 有人忽然尖叫一聲跳了出去 —— 這一切他都看見了，懂得了，凡是像他這樣的人所能了解的悲哀、歡樂、危險以及勞累，他都遇到過。在那忠實的服務中，他飽經風 霜，變得滿臉皺紋。他的工作使他養成了盡忠職守、勇敢和謙恭的品質。現在他老了，具備了他這一類人特有的那種尊嚴和智慧。
但是，不管他見過什麽樣的危險和悲劇，在他腦海裏留下的印象都不如那座小屋和那揮動胳膊大膽而自由地向他招手的女人來得深刻。這印象美好而持久，超然於一切變更和毀滅之上，不管遇到什麽樣的不幸、悲哀和過失，打破他日複一日鐵一般的時間表，它總是永恒不變的。
一看見這座小屋和兩個女人，他就體驗到一種從未有過的極不尋常的幸福。他曾在一千種光線、一百種天氣裏見過她們。他在冬天灰白而刺目的陽光下，隔著遍布凝霜覆蓋的棕色短茬的田野，遠望過她們：他也在魔術般誘人的綠色四月裏看見過她們。
在她們身上，在她們所居住的那間小屋上，他懷著一種父親對親生孩子才有的那種柔情。她們生活的圖景如此鮮明地刻印在他的心中，終於他認為自己已完全了解了 她們的生活，直至她們一天中的每一小時，每一分，每一秒。最後他決定將來當他退休時，他一定要去尋找她們，對她們說說話兒。因為他和她們之間，生活上已經 如此地融成一體了。
這一天來到了。司機終於走下火車，踏上月台，到達了那兩個女人居住的小鎮。他在鐵軌上往返的歲月終結了。他現在隻是鐵路公司裏享受養老金的職工，沒有什麽 工作要做了。他慢慢地踱出車站走到街上。小鎮裏的一切都顯得這麽不熟悉，就像他以前從未見過它一樣。他走著走著，漸漸生出一種困惑慌亂的感覺。這果真是他 經過了上萬次的那個小鎮嗎？這些房屋難道真是他從駕駛室的高窗向外看到的那些房屋嗎？一切就像夢中的城市那樣生疏，嘈雜。他走著，精神上茫然失措的感覺愈 加強烈了。
突然，房屋漸漸稀疏了，四散成小鎮邊區的村落，大街也消失為村道了 —— 那兩個女人就住在這條路邊。他在炎熱和塵土中拖著沉重的腳步緩慢地走著，最後終於站 在他所搜尋的那所房屋麵前了。他一看就知道自己找對了地方。他看到屋前那高大的橡樹、花壇、菜園和葡萄架，以及遠處閃光的鐵軌。
是的，這正是他所要找尋的那幢房子，他開車多次經過的那塊地方，他懷著如此幸福的感情所一心向往的目的地。那麽現在，他既然已經找到了它，他既然已經來到 這兒，為什麽他的手還畏縮著不敢推門？為什麽這城鎮，這道路，這土地，這通往他熱愛之地的入口，卻變成像某些醜惡的夢境中的景色一樣那麽陌生呢？為什麽現 在他感到這麽彷徨懷疑和絕望呢？
最後，他走進籬門，慢慢地沿小路走著，不久便登上了通往門廊的三級矮石階。他敲了敲門。很快便聽見大廳裏有腳步聲，門開了，一個女人站在他的麵前。
頃刻間，他感到一陣極度的失望和傷心，而且後悔來到這兒。他一眼就認出：現在站在麵前以一種不信任的目光看著自己的女人正是原來那個曾經向他招過千萬次手 的女人。但她的麵容卻是生硬而消瘦，臉上的肌肉無力地鬆垂著，形成黃黃的 ”“ 皺褶，兩隻小眼睛充滿猜疑，膽怯地，惴惴不安地打量著他。看到這般情景，聽到 那不友好的言語，所有那一切，那種他從她的招手中所領悟到的那股大膽、自由和親熱勁兒，立即消失得無影無蹤。
現在，他試圖解釋，告訴她自己是誰，為什麽會來到這兒。他覺得自己的聲音聽上去既不真實而且可怕。但他還是支支吾吾地說下去，頑固地抑製著湧上心頭的那種 悔恨、慌亂和疑懼交集之感。這種恐懼感在他的心中不斷地上湧。淹沒了他當初的全部歡樂，並使得他為自己那充滿希望和溫情的舉動感到羞愧。
最後，這女人幾乎是不情願地邀請他進屋，高聲刺耳地叫進了她的女兒。他感到一陣難堪，坐在一間又小又醜的客廳裏，竭力找一些話說，而兩個女人看著他，目光裏含有呆滯的、困惑不解的敵意和陰沉的、畏怯的拘謹。
後來他結結巴巴地簡單說了聲再見，便離開了。他沿著小路走了，再順著大道走到鎮上。突然間他意識到自己已經是一個老人了。對著那伸向遠方的、熟悉的鐵軌 時，他內心曾是那樣勇敢，充滿自信，現在，在這片陌生而又不容置疑的大地麵前，他心裏充滿了懷疑、恐懼和厭倦。那塊土地離他不過一箭之遙，然而他沒有看過 一眼，也不了解。他明白了，他剛失去了光閃閃的鐵路的一切魔力，那條明亮的鐵軌引向的遠景，還有他懷著希望追求著的美好的小小世界裏那一塊幻想的角落，也 都一去不複返，再也得不到了。
,<<<<<<<<<<<
（英文）
《The Far and the Near 》 by Thomas Wolfe
On the outskirts of a little town upon a rise of land that swept back from the railway there was a tidy little cottage of white boards, trimmed vividly with green blinds. To one side of the house there was a garden neatly patterned with plots of growing vegetables, and an arbor for the grapes which ripened late in August. Before the house there were three mighty oaks which sheltered it in their clean and massive shade in summer, and to the other side there was a border of gay flowers. The whole place had an air of tidiness, thrift, and modest comfort.
Every day, a few minutes after two o’clock in the afternoon, the limited express between two cities passed this spot. At that moment the great train, having halted for a breathing-space at the town near by, was beginning to lengthen evenly into its stroke, but it had not yet reached the full drive of its terrific speed. It swung into view deliberately, swept past with a powerful swaying motion of the engine, a low smooth rumble of his heavy cars upon pressed steel, and then it vanished in the cut. For a moment the progress of the engine could be marked by heavy bellowing puffs of smoke that burst at spaced intervals above the edges of the meadow grass, and finally nothing could be heard but the solid clacking tempo of the wheels receding into the drowsy stillness of the afternoon.
Every day for more than twenty years, as the train had approached this house, the engineer had blown on the whistle, and every day, as soon as she heard this signal, a woman had appeared on the back porch of the little house and waved to him. At first she had a small child clinging to her skirts, and now this child had grown to full womanhood, and every day she, too, came with her mother to the porch and waved.
The engineer had grown old and gray in service. He had driven his great train, loaded with its weight of lives, across the land ten thousand times. His own children had grown up, and married, and four times he had seen before him on the tracks the ghastly dot of tragedy converging like a cannon ball to its eclipse of horror at the boiler head—a light spring wagon filled with children, with its clustered row of small stunned faces; a cheap automobile stalled up the tracks, set with the wooden figures of people paralyzed with fear; a battered hobo walking by the rail, too deaf and old to hear the whistle’s warning; and a form flung pas his window with a scream—all this he had seen and known. He had known all the grief, the joy, the peril and the labor such a man could know; he had grown seamed and weathered in his loyal service, and now, schooled by the qualities of faith and courage and humbleness that attended his labor, he had grown old, and had the grandeur and the wisdom these men have.
But no matter what peril or tragedy he had known, the vision of the little house and the women waving to him with a brave free motion of the arm had become fixed in the mind of the engineer as something beautiful and enduring, something beyond all change and ruin, and something that would always be the same, no matter what mishap, grief or error might break the iron schedule of his days.
The sight of this little house and these two women gave him the most extraordinary happiness he had ever known. He had seen them in a thousand lights, a hundred weathers. He had seen them through the harsh light of wintry gray across the brown and frosted stubble of the earth, and he had seen them again in the green luring sorcery of April.
He felt for them and for the little house in which they lived such tenderness as a man might feel for his own children, and at length the picture of their lives was carved so sharply in his heart that he felt that he knew their lives completely, to every hour and moment of the day, and he resolved that one day, when his years of service should be ended, he would go and find these people and speak at last with them whose lives had been so wrought into his own.
That day came. At last the engineer stepped from a train onto the station platform of the town where these two women lived. His years upon the rail had ended. He was a pensioned servant of his company, with no more work to do. The engineer walked slowly through the station and out into the streets of the town. Everything was as strange to him as if he had never seen this town before. As he walked on, his sense of bewilderment and confusion grew. Could this be the town he had passed ten thousand times? Were these the same houses he had seen so often from the high windows of his cab? It was all as unfamiliar, as disquieting as a city in a dream, and the perplexity of his spirit increased as he went on.
Presently the houses thinned into the straggling outposts of the town, and the street faded into a country road—the one on which the women lived. And the man plodded on slowly in the heat and dust. At length he stood before the house he sought. He knew at once that he had found the proper place. He saw the lordly oaks before the house, the flower beds, the garden and the arbor, and farther off, the glint of rails.
Yes, this was the house he sought, the place he had passed so many times, the destination he had longed for with such happiness. But now that he had found it, now that he was here, why did his hand falter on the gate; why had the town, the road, the earth, the very entrance to this place he loved turned unfamiliar as the landscape of some ugly dream? Why did he now feel this sense of confusion, doubt and hopelessness? At length he entered by the gate, walked slowly up the path and in a moment more had mounted three short steps that led up to the porch, and was knocking at the door. Presently he heard steps in the hall, the door was opened, and a woman stood facing him.
And instantly, with a sense of bitter loss and grief, he was sorry he had come. He knew at once that the woman who stood there looking at him with a mistrustful eye was the same woman who had waved to him so many thousand times. But her face was harsh and pinched and meager; the flesh sagged wearily in sallow folds, and the small eyes peered at him with timid suspicion and uneasy doubt. All the brave freedom, the warmth and the affection that he had red into her gesture, vanished in the moment that he saw her and heard her unfriendly tongue.
And now his own voice sounded unreal and ghastly to him as he tried to explain his presence, to tell her who he was and the reason he had come. But he faltered on, fighting stubbornly against the horror of regret, confusion, disbelief that surged up in his spirit, drowning all his former joy and making his act of hope and tenderness seem shameful to him.
At length the woman invited him almost unwillingly into the house, and called her daughter in a harsh shrill voice. Then, for a brief agony of time, the man sat in an ugly little parlor, and he tried to talk while the two women stared at him with a dull, bewildered hostility, a sullen, timorous restraint.
And finally, stammering a crude farewell, he departed. He walked away down the path and then along the road toward town, and suddenly he knew that he was an old man. His heart, which had been brave and confident when it looked along the familiar vista of the rails, was now sick with doubt and horror as it saw the strange and unsuspected visage of the earth which had always been within a stone’s throw of him, and which he had never seen or known. And he knew that all the magic of that bright lost way, the vista of that shining line, the imagined corner of that small good universe of hope’s desire, could never be got again
人生常常這樣殘酷的，還真是相見不如思念呢，至少還有希望。。。
燕子，我讀到這樣一段文字似乎很能解釋中篇小說裏火車司機的感受：‘和陌生女人調情，在陌生國度觀光，我們所感受到的隻是一種新奇的刺激，這種感覺無關乎存在的本質，相反，當我們麵對一個朝夕相處的女人，一片熟門熟路的鄉土，日常生活中一些自以為熟稔的人與事，突然產生一種陌生感和疏遠感的時候，我們便瞥見了存在的令人震驚的本質了。此時此刻，我們一向借之生存的根據突然瓦解了，存在向我們展現了它可怕的虛無本相。’---人性的觀察BY周國平
我想周國平大概是不是也讀了這篇小說受了啟發啊？：））
走近了，看透了，身在其中，近在眼前，卻不能接受。想到我們自己的故鄉。“霧”裏看花，理想與現實在那一瞬間交錯。
問好心姐，鬆，桐，共勉。
謝謝正午的城，RANCHO，小薇，桐兒，謝謝你們也喜歡。他的短篇小說影響了很多現在的小說家。
的確，很多事物，遠遠地看很美好，而離近了卻發現其醜陋難看。找個時間一定細讀一下英語原文：）
好感動，我把閱讀的重點放在這個老司機的人生路程，而非他和那女人的關係。從他人眼裏他看到自己的人生旅途。