英譯現(xiàn)代散文●宰 牛 ◎ 王蒙

宰 牛

Ox-Slaughtering

◎　王蒙

◎　Wang Meng

“它知道的，它要挨刀了!”房東說。

“The cow is expecting itself to be knifed soon,”said my landlord.

納賽爾江拿出刀來，喊一聲“安拉，艾斯敏拉”(以真主的名義)，照準(zhǔn)牛脖子飛快地一下，樣子一點也不兇惡。牛“哞”地一聲悶叫，血噴如注，牛的眼睛在這一瞬間突然睜大，應(yīng)該說是突然放出了痛苦的強光，旋即暗淡、固定，變成兩枚烏溜溜的玻璃珠子。

Nasser took out a knife and shouted,“In the name of Allah!”Thereupon he plunged the knife right into the neck of the animal. He did it agilely without showing nastiness. The animal uttered a muffled moo as blood started gushing out of the cut. Its eyes, ablaze with acute pain, suddenly dilated and then turned dim and static, like two black glass balls.

穆斯林是嚴(yán)禁食用動物的血的，他把牛血放凈、埋好，用了不多的時間就宰好了牛，倒掛在房檐上，開始按1塊錢1公斤的價格出售了。

As it was strictly banned among Moslems to eat animal blood, Nasser had the cow's blood buried underground. It took him only a short time to finish the butchering. He then had the slaughtered cow hung upside down under the eaves and began selling the beef at one Yuan per kilo.

空氣里充滿了牛血牛肉的腥氣。雖然用土掩埋了牛血，仍然立即引來了許多只烏鴉，真是不祥的鳥。

The air was full of the rank smell of the slaughtered animal and its blood. Although the blood had been buried, flocks of crows nevertheless appeared on the scene by following up the scent. O ill-omened birds!

這天晚上海麗琪罕熬了一大鍋牛雜碎湯，我只覺得腥，勉強吃了半碗就不肯再吃，使房東二老頗覺疑惑。第二天一早，我腹痛如絞，腹瀉如注。從這一件事上，我已經(jīng)看準(zhǔn)了自己的無用。

That evening, Hailiqi prepared a potful of chopped beef tripe stew. It was too smelly for me, so I managed to eat only half a bowl. That very much perplexed my landlord and his wife. Early the next morning, I suffered from a severe stomach-ache and diarrhoea. I blamed myself for being so fragile.

后來隊里有一次宰牛，我也看到了，印象要淡得多。那是為了迎接夏收開鐮吧，隊里組織了農(nóng)忙地頭食堂，宰牛開張。宰牛本身已無所謂，令人難忘的是日落西山放牧的牛群回村里時，經(jīng)過村口宰過牛的地方，牛群彳亍不前，吼聲大作，悲愴鳴叫，牛蹄踏踏不已。老鄉(xiāng)們說，牛是聞得出味道來的，一旦“得知”一位同類歸西，呼天喚地之狀，令人震驚。

Later, I witnessed ox-slaughtering again, this time at my Team, but I was no longer impressed. By order of our Team leaders, we had a temporary kitchen set up at the edge of the field, probably in anticipation of the busy season of wheat harvest. Ox-slaughtering was commonplace. But something most unforgettable happened one afternoon when a herd of cattle were returning to the village from the grazing ground in the setting sun. At the village entrance, the animals slowed down and then stopped moving ahead, meanwhile bellowing loudly and mournfully and thumping the ground again and again with their hooves. The villagers told us that the cattle had found their way to the spot by scenting out the blood of the slaughtered cow, and then lamented loudly, to our astonishment, over the death of an animal of their kind.

王蒙(1934—　)，著名作家，祖籍河北南皮，生于北京，著述頗豐，1953年創(chuàng)作長篇小說《青年萬歲》，1956年發(fā)表短篇小說《組織部新來的年輕人》，有《王蒙文集》行世。1986—1989年任中華人民共和國文化部部長?！对着！肥撬麑懹?991年3月19日的一篇散文，文字雋永精練。