旅行的藝術:風景 Ⅴ 鄉(xiāng)村與城市-1

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我們乘坐一輛下午的火車離開倫敦。我和M約好在伊斯頓車站的發(fā)車月臺下層見面。望著自動扶梯上和大廳里熙來攘往的人群，我覺得若能找到她的影子必定是個奇跡。但我卻必須找到她，這說明了欲望的奇特之處。

We left London by an afternoon train. I had arranged to meet M below the departure board at Euston Station. Watching crowds step off the escalators and on to the concourse, I thought it miraculous that, in the midst of so many people, I should ever be able to find her-as well as testimony to the strange particularities of desire that it should have been precisely her I needed to find.

我們沿著英格蘭的山脊前進。夜幕低垂，我們嗅到了鄉(xiāng)間的氣息。車窗已逐漸變成長長的一面墨鏡，望著它，我們越來越清楚地能看到自己的臉頰。當火車開到靠近特倫特河畔的斯托克時，我決定去餐車一趟，于是跌跌撞撞地穿梭于一節(jié)又一節(jié)搖晃的車廂，如同醉漢似的。但是對于能吃到在行進的火車上烹出的食物，我卻特別興奮。微波爐的計時器發(fā)出厚重的機械聲，如同舊戰(zhàn)爭片中發(fā)出的響聲一樣，接著是清脆的鈴聲，示意我可以過來取烘好的熱狗。這時火車開過一個道口，路的后方我隱約見到牛群的影子。

We travelled up the spine of England and, as night fell, there were intimations of countryside, though gradually all we could see was our own faces in windows that had turned into long black mirrors. Somewhere above Stoke-on-Trent, I visited the buffet car, sensing once again, on my way through a succession of carriages that swayed as if I were drunk, the excitement caused by the prospect of eating something cooked in a moving train. The timer on the microwave gave off a chunky mechanical sound, like a detonator in an old war film, then rang a dainty bell to signal that it had finished with my hot dog-just as the train went over a level crossing, behind which I could make out the shadow of a group of cows.

我們在將近9點的時候抵達奧克森霍爾姆站，站名邊還附加了一個地名標示：湖區(qū)。只有少數(shù)幾位乘客與我們一同下車。我們靜悄悄地走在月臺上，在寒夜中可以清楚看到我們呼出的熱氣。我們看到車廂里的乘客或在打盹兒、或在看書。“湖區(qū)”對他們而言不過是漫長火車旅途中的一站，他們可以暫且放下手上的書，四處張望一下，比如瞧瞧月臺上對稱排列的罐子，或者瞄一眼火車站里的時鐘，又或者隨意地打個哈欠。一旦這趟前往格拉斯哥的火車開動，再度穿越黑暗，他們便又將翻開手中的書。

We arrived at Oxenholme Station, subtitled 'The Lake District', shortly before nine. Only a few others alighted with us and we walked silently along the platform, our breaths visible in the night chill. Back inside the train, passengers were dozing or reading. The Lake District would, for them, be one stop among many, somewhere to look up from their book for a moment and take in the concrete pots arranged symmetrically along the platform, check the station clock and perhaps let out an uninhibited yawn-before the Glasgow train pulled off again into the darkness and they returned to a new paragraph.

火車站像被人遺棄似的冷清得很，但我想它不可能一直都是這樣，要不然指示牌上就不會加上日文翻譯。我們在倫敦時曾打電話來過，預租了一輛車。在停車場尾端的一盞路燈下，我們找到了它。我們原本向出租公司租一輛小型轎車，但因為這類車全租出去了，他們于是送來了一輛深紫色大型房車。它的新車氣味還很濃，灰色的地毯潔凈如新，地毯上還留下吸塵機劃過的痕跡。

The station was deserted, though it could not always have been thus, for, remarkably, many of the signs were translated into Japanese. We had called from London to rent a car and found it at the end of a parking bay under a street-lamp. The rental company had evidently run out of the small models we had asked for and had delivered instead a large burgundy family saloon, which had a heady new-car smell to it and an immaculate grey carpet, across which the marks of a vacuum cleaner were still visible.