爱华网
“前天，我看见一只兔子，昨天我看见了一头鹿，今天我就看见了你。”
「おとといは兎をみたの。昨日は鹿。今日はあなた」 这句话引用自一部外国小说「The DandelionGirl」（作者是美国人Robert·Franklin·Young，标题译为“蒲公英少女”） 原文： 「 Day beforeyesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer,and today, you .」
The Dandelion Girlby Robert F. Young The girl on the hill made Mark think of Edna St. VincentMillay. Perhaps it was because of the way she was standing there inthe afternoon sun, her dandelion-hued hair dancing in the wind;perhaps it was because of the way her old-fashioned white dress wasswirling around her long and slender legs. In any event, he got thedefinite impression that she had somehow stepped out of the pastand into the present; and that was odd, because as things turnedout, it wasn't the past she had stepped out of, but thefuture. He paused some distance behind her, breathing hard from theclimb. She had not seen him yet, and he wondered how he couldapprise her of his presence without alarming her. While he wastrying to make up his mind, he took out his pipe and filled andlighted it, cupping his hands over the bowl and puffing till thetobacco came to glowing life. When he looked at her again, she hadturned around and was regarding him curiously. He walked toward her slowly, keenly aware of the nearness ofthe sky, enjoying the feel of the wind against his face. He shouldgo hiking more often, he told himself. He had been tramping throughwoods when he came to the hill, and now the woods lay behind andfar below him, burning gently with the first pale fires of fall,and beyond the woods lay the little lake with its complement ofcabin and fishing pier. When his wife had been unexpectedlysummoned for jury duty, he had been forced to spend alone the twoweeks he had saved out of his summer vacation and he had beenleading a lonely existence, fishing off the pier by day and readingthe cool evenings away before the big fireplace in the rafteredliving room; and after two days the routine had caught up to him,and he had taken off into the woods without purpose or directionand finally he had come to the hill and had climbed it and seen thegirl.Her eyes were blue, he saw when he came up to her—as blue asthe sky that framed her slender silhouette. Her face was oval andyoung and soft and sweet. It evoked a déjà vu so poignant that hehad to resist an impulse to reach out and touch her wind-kissedcheek; and even though his hand did not leave his side, he felt hisfingertips tingle. Why, I'm forty-four, he thought wonderingly, and she'shardly more than twenty. What in heaven's name has come over me?"Are you enjoying the view?" he asked aloud. "Oh, yes," she said and turned and swept her arm in anenthusiastic semicircle. "Isn't it simply marvelous!" He followed her gaze. "Yes," he said, "it is." Below themthe woods began again, then spread out over the lowlands in warmSeptember colors, embracing a small hamlet several miles away,finally bowing out before the first outposts of the suburbanfrontier. In the far distance, haze softened the serratedsilhouette of Cove City, lending it the aspect of a sprawlingmedieval castle, making it less of a reality than a dream. "Are youfrom the city too?" he asked. "In a way I am," she said. She smiled at him. "I'm from theCove City of two hundred and forty years from now." The smile told him that she didn't really expect him tobelieve her, but it implied that it would be nice if he wouldpretend. He smiled back. "That would be A.D. twenty-two hundred andone, wouldn't it?" he said. "I imagine the place has grownenormously by then.""Oh, it has," she said. "It's part of a megalopolis now andextends all the way to there." She pointed to the fringe of theforest at their feet. "Two Thousand and Fortieth Street runsstraight through that grove of sugar maples," she went on, "and doyou see that stand of locusts over there?" "Yes," he said, "I see them." "That's where the new plaza is. Its supermarket is so bigthat it takes half a day to go through it, and you can buy almostanything in it from aspirins to aerocars. And next to thesupermarket, where that grove of beeches stands, is a big dressshop just bursting with the latest creations of the leadingcouturiers. I bought this dress I'm wearing there this verymorning. Isn't it simply beautiful?" If it was, it was because she made it so. However, he lookedat it politely. It had been cut from a material he was unfamiliarwith, a material seemingly compounded of cotton candy, sea foam,and snow. There was no limit any more to the syntheses that couldbe created by the miracle-fiber manufacturers—nor, apparently, tothe tall tales that could be created by young girls. "I suppose youtraveled here by time machine," he said. "Yes. My father invented one." He looked at her closely. He had never seen such a guilelesscountenance. "And do you come here often?" "Oh, yes. This is my favorite space-time coordinate. I standhere for hours sometimes and look and look and look. Day beforeyesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today,you." "But how can there be a yesterday," Mark asked, "if youalways return to the same point in time?" "Oh, I see what you mean," she said. "The reason is becausethe machine is affected by the passage of time the same as anythingelse, and you have to set it back every twenty-four hours if youwant to maintain exactly the same co-ordinate. I never do because Imuch prefer a different day each time I come back." "Doesn't your father ever come with you?" Overhead, a V of geese was drifting lazily by, and shewatched it for some time before she spoke. "My father is an invalidnow," she said finally. "He'd like very much to come if he onlycould. But I tell him all about what I see," she added hurriedly,"and it's almost the same as if he really came. Wouldn't you say itwas?" There was an eagerness about the way she was looking at himthat touched his heart. "I'm sure it is," he said—then, "It must bewonderful to own a time machine." She nodded solemnly. "They're a boon to people who like tostand on pleasant leas. In the twenty-third century there aren'tvery many pleasant leas left." He smiled. "There aren't very many of them left in thetwentieth. I guess you could say that this one is sort of acollector's item. I'll have to visit it more often." "Do you live near here?" she asked. "I'm staying in a cabin about three miles back. I'm supposedto be on vacation, but it's not much of one. My wife was called tojury duty and couldn't come with me, and since I couldn't postponeit, I've ended up being a sort of reluctant Thoreau. My name isMark Randolph." "I'm Julie," she said. "Julie Danvers." The name suited her. The same way the white dress suitedher—the way the blue sky suited her, and the hill and the Septemberwind. Probably she lived in the little hamlet in the woods, but itdid not really matter. If she wanted to pretend she was from thefuture, it was all right with him. All that really mattered was theway he had felt when he had first seen her, and the tenderness thatcame over him every time he gazed upon her gentle face. "What kindof work do you do, Julie?" he asked. "Or are you still inschool?" "I'm studying to be a secretary," she said. She took a halfstep and made a pretty pirouette and clasped her hands before her."I shall just love to be a secretary," she went on. "It must besimply marvelous working in a big important office and taking downwhat important people say. Would you like me to be your secretary,Mr. Randolph?" "I'd like it very much," he said. "My wife was my secretaryonce—before the war. That's how we happened to meet." Now, why hadhe said that? he wondered. "Was she a good secretary?" "The very best. I was sorry to lose her; but then when Ilost her in one sense, I gained her in another, so I guess youcould hardly call that losing her." "No, I guess you couldn't. Well, I must be getting back now,Mr. Randolph. Dad will be wanting to hear about all the things Isaw, and I've got to fix his supper." "Will you be here tomorrow?" "Probably. I've been coming here every day. Good-bye now,Mr. Randolph." "Good-bye, Julie," he said. He watched her run lightly down the hill and disappear intothe grove of sugar maples where, two hundred and forty years hence,Two Thousand and Fortieth Street would be. He smiled. What acharming child, he thought. It must be thrilling to have such anirrepressible sense of wonder, such an enthusiasm for life. Hecould appreciate the two qualities all the more fully because hehad been denied them. At twenty he had been a solemn young manworking his way through law school; at twenty-four he had had hisown practice, and small though it had been, it had occupied himcompletely—well, not quite completely. When he had married Anne,there had been a brief interim during which making a living hadlost some of its immediacy. And then, when the war had come along,there had been another interim—a much longer one this time—whenmaking a living had seemed a remote and sometimes even acontemptible pursuit. After his return to civilian life, though,the immediacy had returned with a vengeance, the more so because henow had a son as well as a wife to support, and he had beenoccupied ever since, except for the four vacation weeks he hadrecently been allowing himself each year, two of which he spentwith Anne and Jeff at a resort of their choosing and two of whichhe spent with Anne, after Jeff returned to college, in their cabinby the lake. This year, though, he was spending the second twoalone. Well, perhaps not quite alone. His pipe had gone out some time ago, and he had not evennoticed. He lighted it again, drawing deeply to thwart the wind,then he descended the hill and started back through the woodstoward the cabin. The autumnal equinox had come and the days wereappreciably shorter. This one was very nearly done, and thedampness of evening had already begun to pervade the hazyair. He walked slowly, and the sun had set by the time he reachedthe lake. It was a small lake, but a deep one, and the trees camedown to its edge. The cabin stood some distance back from the shorein a stand of pines, and a winding path connected it with the pier.Behind it a gravel drive led to a dirt road that gave access to thehighway. His station wagon stood by the back door, ready to whiskhim back to civilization at a moment's notice. He prepared and ate a simple supper in the kitchen, thenwent into the living room to read. The generator in the shed hummedon and off, but otherwise the evening was unsullied by the usualsounds the ears of modern man are heir to. Selecting an anthologyof American poetry from the well-stocked bookcase by the fireplace,he sat down and thumbed through it to Afternoon on a Hill. He readthe treasured poem three times, and each time he read it he saw herstanding there in the sun, her hair dancing in the wind, her dressswirling like gentle snow around her long and lovely legs; and alump came into his throat, and he could not swallow. He returned the book to the shelf and went out and stood onthe rustic porch and filled and lighted his pipe. He forced himselfto think of Anne, and presently her face came into focus—the firmbut gentle chin, the warm and compassionate eyes with that odd hintof fear in them that he had never been able to analyze, thestill-soft cheeks, the gentle smile—and each attribute was mademore compelling by the memory of her vibrant light brown hair andher tall, lithe gracefulness. As was always the case when hethought of her, he found himself marveling at her agelessness,marveling how she could have continued down through the years aslovely as she had been that long-ago morning when he had looked up,startled, and seen her standing timidly before his desk. It wasinconceivable that a mere twenty years later he could be lookingforward eagerly to a tryst with an overimaginative girl who wasyoung enough to be his daughter. Well, he wasn't—not really. He hadbeen momentarily swayed—that was all. For a moment his emotionalequilibrium had deserted him, and he had staggered. Now his feetwere back under him where they belonged, and the world had returnedto its sane and sensible orbit. He tapped out his pipe and went back inside. In his bedroomhe undressed and slipped between the sheets and turned out thelight. Sleep should have come readily, but it did not; and when itfinally did come, it came in fragments interspersed withtantalizing dreams. "Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit," she had said, "andyesterday a deer, and today, you."
· · · · ·
On the second afternoon she was wearing a blue dress, andthere was a little blue ribbon to match tied in herdandelion-colored hair. After breasting the hill, he stood for sometime, not moving, waiting till the tightness of his throat wentaway; then he walked over and stood beside her in the wind. But thesoft curve of her throat and chin brought the tightness back, andwhen she turned and said, "Hello, I didn't think you'd come," itwas a long while before he was able toanswer. "But I did," he finally said, "and so did you." "Yes," she said. "I'm glad." A nearby outcropping of granite formed a bench of sorts, andthey sat down on it and looked out over the land. He filled hispipe and lighted it and blew smoke into the wind. "My father smokesa pipe too," she said, "and when he lights it, he cups his handsthe same way you do, even when there isn't any wind. You and he arealike in lots of ways.""Tell me about your father," he said. "Tell me about yourselftoo." And she did, saying that she was twenty-one, that her fatherwas a retired government physicist, that they lived in a smallapartment on Two Thousand and Fortieth Street, and that she hadbeen keeping house for him ever since her mother had died fouryears ago. Afterward he told her about himself and Anne andJeff—about how he intended to take Jeff into partnership with himsomeday, about Anne's phobia about cameras and how she had refusedto have her picture taken on their wedding day and had gone onrefusing ever since, about the grand time the three of them had hadon the camping trip they'd gone on last summer. When he had finished, she said, "What a wonderful familylife you have. Nineteen-sixty-one must be a marvelous year in whichto live!" "With a time machine at your disposal, you can move here anytime you like." "It's not quite that easy. Even aside from the fact that Iwouldn't dream of deserting my father, there's the time police totake into consideration. You see, time travel is limited to themembers of government-sponsored historical expeditions and is outof bounds to the general public." "You seem to have managed all right." "That's because my father invented his own machine, and thetime police don't know about it." "But you're still breaking the law." She nodded. "But only in their eyes, only in the light oftheir concept of time. My father has his own concept." It was so pleasant hearing her talk that it did not matterreally what she talked about, and he wanted her to ramble on, nomatter how farfetched her subject. "Tell me about it," hesaid. "First I'll tell you about the official concept. Those whoendorse it say that no one from the future should participatephysically in anything that occurred in the past, because his verypresence would constitute a paradox, and future events would haveto be altered in order for the paradox to be assimilated.Consequently the Department of Time Travel makes sure that onlyauthorized personnel have access to its time machines, andmaintains a police force to apprehend the would-begeneration-jumpers who yearn for a simpler way of life and who keepdisguising themselves as historians so they can return permanentlyto a different era. "But according to my father's concept, the book of time hasalready been written. From a macrocosmic viewpoint, my father says,everything that is going to happen has already happened. Therefore,if a person from the future participates in a past event, hebecomes a part of that event—for the simple reason that he was apart of it in the first place—and a paradox cannot possiblyarise." Mark took a deep drag on his pipe. He needed it. "Yourfather sounds like quite a remarkable person," he said. "Oh, he is!" Enthusiasm deepened the pinkness of her cheeks,brightened the blueness of her eyes. "You wouldn't believe all thebooks he's read, Mr. Randolph. Why, our apartment is bursting withthem! Hegel and Kant and Hume; Einstein and Newton and Weizs?cker.I've—I've even read some of them myself." "I gathered as much. As a matter of fact, so have I." She gazed raptly up into his face. "How wonderful, Mr.Randolph," she said. "I'll bet we've got just scads of mutualinterests!" The conversation that ensued proved conclusively that theydid have—though the transcendental esthetic, Berkeleianism andrelativity were rather incongruous subjects for a man and a girl tobe discussing on a September hilltop, he reflected presently, evenwhen the man was forty-four and the girl was twenty-one. Buthappily there were compensations—their animated discussion of thetranscendental esthetic did more than elicit a priori and aposteriori conclusions, it also elicited microcosmic stars in hereyes; their breakdown of Berkeley did more than point up theinherent weaknesses in the good bishop's theory, it also pointed upthe pinkness of her cheeks; and their review of relativity did morethan demonstrate that E invariably equals mc2; it also demonstratedthat far from being an impediment, knowledge is an asset tofeminine charm. The mood of the moment lingered far longer than it had anyright to, and it was still with him when he went to bed. This timehe didn't even try to think of Anne; he knew it would do no good.Instead he lay there in the darkness and played host to whateverrandom thoughts came along—and all of them concerned a Septemberhilltop and a girl with dandelion-colored hair.Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, andtoday, you. Next morning he drove over to the hamlet and checked at thepost office to see if he had any mail. There was none. He was notsurprised. Jeff disliked writing letters as much as he did, andAnne, at the moment, was probably incommunicado. As for hispractice, he had forbidden his secretary to bother him with any butthe most urgent of matters. He debated on whether to ask the wizened postmaster if therewas a family named Danvers living in the area. He decided not to.To have done so would have been to undermine the elaboratemake-believe structure which Julie had built, and even though hedid not believe in the structure's validity, he could not find itin his heart to send it toppling. That afternoon she was wearing a yellow dress the same shadeas her hair, and again his throat tightened when he saw her, andagain he could not speak. But when the first moment passed andwords came, it was all right, and their thoughts flowed togetherlike two effervescent brooks and coursed gaily through the arroyoof the afternoon. This time when they parted, it was she who asked,"Will you be here tomorrow?"—though only because she stole thequestion from his lips—and the words sang in his ears all the wayback through the woods to the cabin and lulled him to sleep afteran evening spent with his pipe on the porch. Next afternoon when he climbed the hill it was empty. Atfirst his disappointment numbed him, and then he thought, She'slate, that's all. She'll probably show up any minute. And he satdown on the granite bench to wait. But she did not come. Theminutes passed—the hours. Shadows crept out of the woods andclimbed partway up the hill. The air grew colder. He gave up,finally, and headed miserably back toward the cabin.The next afternoon she did not show up either. Nor the next.He could neither eat nor sleep. Fishing palled on him. He could nolonger read. And all the while, he hated himself—hated himself forbehaving like a lovesick schoolboy, for reacting just like anyother fool in his forties to a pretty face and a pair of prettylegs. Up until a few days ago he had never even so much as lookedat another woman, and here in the space of less than a week he hadnot only looked at one but had fallen in love with her. Hope was dead in him when he climbed the hill on the fourthday—and then suddenly alive again when he saw her standing in thesun. She was wearing a black dress this time, and he should haveguessed the reason for her absence; but he didn't—not till he cameup to her and saw the tears start from her eyes and the telltaletrembling of her lip. "Julie, what's the matter?" She clung to him, her shoulders shaking, and pressed herface against his coat. "My father died," she said, and somehow heknew that these were her first tears, that she had sat tearlessthrough the wake and funeral and had not broken down tillnow. He put his arms around her gently. He had never kissed her,and he did not kiss her now, not really. His lips brushed herforehead and briefly touched her hair—that was all. "I'm sorry,Julie," he said. "I know how much he meant to you." "He knew he was dying all along," she said. "He must haveknown it ever since the strontium 90 experiment he conducted at thelaboratory. But he never told anyone—he never even told me … Idon't want to live. Without him there's nothing left to livefor—nothing, nothing, nothing!" He held her tightly. "You'll find something, Julie. Someone.You're young yet. You're still a child, really." Her head jerked back, and she raised suddenly tearless eyesto his. "I'm not a child! Don't you dare call me a child!" Startled, he released her and stepped back. He had neverseen her angry before. "I didn't mean—" he began. Her anger was as evanescent as it had been abrupt. "I knowyou didn't mean to hurt my feelings, Mr. Randolph. But I'm not achild, honest I'm not. Promise me you'll never call me oneagain." "All right," he said. "I promise." "And now I must go," she said. "I have a thousand things todo." "Will—will you be here tomorrow?" She looked at him for a long time. A mist, like theaftermath of a summer shower, made her blue eyes glisten. "Timemachines run down," she said. "They have parts that need to bereplaced—and I don't know how to replace them. Ours—mine may begood for one more trip, but I'm not sure." "But you'll try to come, won't you?" She nodded. "Yes, I'll try. And Mr. Randolph?" "Yes, Julie?" "In case I don't make it—and for the record—I loveyou."She was gone then; running lightly down the hill, and a momentlater she disappeared into the grove of sugar maples. His handswere trembling when he lighted his pipe, and the match burned hisfingers. Afterward he could not remember returning to the cabin orfixing supper or going to bed, and yet he must have done all ofthose things, because he awoke in his own room, and when he wentinto the kitchen, there were supper dishes standing on thedrainboard. He washed the dishes and made coffee. He spent the morningfishing off the pier, keeping his mind blank. He would face realitylater. Right now it was enough for him to know that she loved him,that in a few short hours he would see her again. Surely even arun-down time machine should have no trouble transporting her fromthe hamlet to the hill.He arrived there early and sat down on the granite bench andwaited for her to come out of the woods and climb the slope. Hecould feel the hammering of his heart and he knew that his handswere trembling. Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterdaya deer, and today, you.He waited and he waited, but she did not come. She did notcome the next day either. When the shadows began to lengthen andthe air grow chill, he descended the hill and entered the grove ofsugar maples. Presently he found a path, and he followed it intothe forest proper and through the forest to the hamlet. He stoppedat the small post office and checked to see if he had any mail.After the wizened postmaster told him there was none, he lingeredfor a moment. "Is—is there a family by the name of Danvers livinganywhere around here?" he blurted.The postmaster shook his head. "Never heard of them." "Has there been a funeral in town recently?" "Not for nigh onto a year." After that, although he visited the hill every afternoontill his vacation ran out, he knew in his heart that she would notreturn, that she was lost to him as utterly as if she had neverbeen. Evenings he haunted the hamlet, hoping desperately that thepostmaster had been mistaken; but he saw no sign of Julie, and thedescription he gave of her to the passersby evoked only negativeresponses. Early in October he returned to the city. He did his best toact toward Anne as though nothing had changed between them; but sheseemed to know the minute she saw him that something had changed.And although she asked no questions, she grew quieter and quieteras the weeks went by, and the fear in her eyes that had puzzled himbefore became more and more pronounced. He began driving into the country Sunday afternoons andvisiting the hilltop. The woods were golden now, and the sky waseven bluer than it had been a month ago. For hours he sat on thegranite bench, staring at the spot where she had disappeared. Daybefore yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today,you.Then, on a rainy night in mid-November, he found the suitcase.It was Anne's, and he found it quite by accident. She had gone intotown to play bingo, and he had the house to himself; and afterspending two hours watching four jaded TV programs, he rememberedthe jigsaw puzzles he had stored away the previous winter. Desperate for something—anything at all—to take his mind offJulie, he went up to the attic to get them. The suitcase fell froma shelf while he was rummaging through the various boxes piledbeside it, and it sprang open when it struck the floor. He bent over to pick it up. It was the same suitcase she hadbrought with her to the little apartment they had rented aftertheir marriage, and he remembered how she had always kept it lockedand remembered her telling him laughingly that there were somethings a wife had to keep a secret even from her husband. The lockhad rusted over the years, and the fall had broken it. He started to close the lid, paused when he saw theprotruding hem of a white dress. The material was vaguely familiar.He had seen material similar to it not very long ago—material thatbrought to mind cotton candy and sea foam and snow.He raised the lid and picked up the dress with tremblingfingers. He held it by the shoulders and let it unfold itself, andit hung there in the room like gently falling snow. He looked at itfor a long time, his throat tight. Then, tenderly, he folded itagain and replaced it in the suitcase and closed the lid. Hereturned the suitcase to its niche under the eaves. Day beforeyesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today,you.Rain thrummed on the roof. The tightness of his throat was soacute now that he thought for a moment that he was going to cry.Slowly he descended the attic stairs. He went down the spiralstairway into the living room. The clock on the mantel saidten-fourteen. In just a few minutes the bingo bus would let her offat the corner, and she would come walking down the street and upthe walk to the front door. Anne would … Julie would.Julianne? Was that her full name? Probably. People invariably retainedpart of their original names when adopting aliases; and havingcompletely altered her last name, she had probably thought it safeto take liberties with her first. She must have done other things,too, in addition to changing her name, to elude the time police. Nowonder she had never wanted her picture taken! And how terrifiedshe must have been on that long-ago day when she had steppedtimidly into his office to apply for a job! All alone in a strangegeneration, not knowing for sure whether her father's concept oftime was valid, not knowing for sure whether the man who would loveher in his forties would feel the same way toward her in histwenties. She had come back all right, just as she had said shewould. Twenty years, he thought wonderingly, and all the while shemust have known that one day I'd climb a September hill and see herstanding, young and lovely, in the sun, and fall in love with herall over again. She had to know because the moment was as much apart of her past as it was a part of my future. But why didn't shetell me? Why doesn't she tell me now? Suddenly he understood. He found it hard to breathe, and he went into the hall anddonned his raincoat and stepped out into the rain. He walked downthe walk in the rain, and the rain pelted his face and ran in dropsdown his cheeks, and some of the drops were raindrops, and some ofthem were tears. How could anyone as agelessly beautiful as Anne—asJulie—was, be afraid of growing old? Didn't she realize that in hiseyes she couldn't grow old—that to him she hadn't aged a day sincethe moment he had looked up from his desk and seen her standingthere in the tiny office and simultaneously fallen in love withher? Couldn't she understand that that was why the girl on the hillhad seemed a stranger to him? He had reached the street and was walking down it toward thecorner. He was almost there when the bingo bus pulled up andstopped, and the girl in the white trench coat got out. Thetightness of his throat grew knife-sharp, and he could not breatheat all. The dandelion-hued hair was darker now, and the girlishcharm was gone; but the gentle loveliness still resided in hergentle face, and the long and slender legs had a grace and symmetryin the pale glow of the November street light that they had neverknown in the golden radiance of the September sun. She came forward to meet him, and he saw the familiar fearin her eyes—a fear poignant now beyond enduring because heunderstood its cause. She blurred before his eyes, and he walkedtoward her blindly. When he came up to her, his eyes cleared, andhe reached out across the years and touched her rain-wet cheek. Sheknew it was all right then, and the fear went away forever, andthey walked home hand in hand in the rain.
The End
