The Garden of Forking Paths
小徑分岔的花園
Jorge Luis Borges[阿根廷]豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯To Victoria Ocampo
獻(xiàn)給維多利亞·奧坎波①小徑分岔的花園》，花園似乎是一個(gè)實(shí)際的迷宮，迷宮與彭口的書原為一體，是象征著的迷宮，真正的時(shí)間迷宮。這是以第一人稱敘述的關(guān)于迷宮的偵探故事，發(fā)生在第一次世界大戰(zhàn)期間。它的篇幅很短，但內(nèi)容豐富充實(shí)，耐人尋味，情節(jié)在跌宕起伏中本身就有了分岔：既是表層上一個(gè)德國(guó)間諜巧妙地傳遞情報(bào)，更是深層的對(duì)于時(shí)間無(wú)限這一主題的探討。能與作者在數(shù)千字的文章里交流文學(xué)、哲學(xué)、自然科學(xué)，實(shí)是一件快樂而有益的事。
In his A History of the World War (page 212), Captain Liddell Hart reports that a planned offensive by thirteen British divisions, supported by fourteen hundred artillery pieces, against the German line at Serre-Montauban, scheduled for July 24, 1916, had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. He comments that torrential rain caused this delay一which lacked any special significance. The following deposition, dictated by, read over, and then signed by Dr. Yu Tsun, former teacher ofEnglish at the Tsingtao Hochschule, casts unsuspected light upon this event. The first two pages are missing.
利德爾·哈特寫的《歐洲戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)史》第二百一十二頁(yè)有段記載，說是十三個(gè)英國(guó)師(有一千四百門大炮支援)對(duì)塞爾一蒙托邦防線的進(jìn)攻原定于1916年7月24日發(fā)動(dòng)，后來推遲到29日上午。利德爾·哈特上尉解釋說延期的原因是滂沱大雨，當(dāng)然并無(wú)出奇之處。青島大學(xué)前英語(yǔ)教師余準(zhǔn)博士的證言，經(jīng)過記錄、復(fù)述、由本人簽名核實(shí)，卻對(duì)這一事件提供了始料不及的說明。證言記錄缺了前兩頁(yè)。
…and I hung up the phone. Immediately I recollected the voice that had spoken in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden, in Viktor Runeberg’s office, meant the end of all our work and一though this seemed a secondary matter, or should have seemed so to me一of our lives also. His being there meant that Runeberg had been arrested or murdered.② Before the sun set on this same day, I ran the same risk. Madden was implacable. Rather, to be more accurate, he was obliged to be implacable. An Irishman in the service of England, a man suspected of equivocal feelings if not of actual treachery, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon this extraordinary piece of luck: the discovery, capture and perhaps the deaths of two agents of Imperial Germany?
我掛上電話聽筒。我隨即辨出那個(gè)用德語(yǔ)接電話的聲音。是理查德·馬登的聲音。馬登在維克多·魯納伯格的住處，這意味著我們的全部辛勞付諸東流，我們的生命也到了盡頭——但是這一點(diǎn)是次要的，至少在我看來如此。這就是說，魯納伯格已經(jīng)被捕，或者被殺。②在那天日落之前，我也會(huì)遭到同樣的命運(yùn)。馬登毫不留情。說得更確切一些，他非心狠手辣不可。作為一個(gè)聽命于英國(guó)的愛爾蘭人，他有辦事不熱心甚至叛賣的嫌疑，如今有機(jī)會(huì)挖出日耳曼帝國(guó)的兩名間諜，拘捕或者打死他們，他怎么會(huì)不抓住這個(gè)天賜良機(jī)，感激不盡呢?
