第六届“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛原文

AGarden That Welcomes Strangers

By Allen Lacy

I donot know what became of her, and I never learned her name. But I feel that Iknew her from the garden she had so lovingly made over many decades.

Thehouse she lived in lies two miles from mine – a simple, two-story structurewith the boxy plan, steeply-pitched roof and unadorned lines that are typicalof houses built in the middle of the nineteenth century near the New Jerseyshore.

Hergarden was equally simple. She was not a conventional gardener who dideverything by the book, following the common advice to vary her plantings sothere would be something in bloom from the first crocus in the spring to thelast chrysanthemum in the fall. She had no respect for the rule that says thattall-growing plants belong at the rear of a perennial border, low ones in thefront and middle-sized ones in the middle, with occasional exceptions fordramatic accent.

In hergarden, everything was accent, everything was tall, and the evidence was plainthat she loved three kinds of plant and three only: roses, clematis and lilies,intermingled promiscuously to pleasant effect but no apparent design.

Shegrew a dozen sorts of clematis, perhaps 50 plants in all, trained and tied sothat they clambered up metal rods, each rod crowned intermittently throughoutthe summer by a rounded profusion of large blossoms of dark purple, richcrimson, pale lavender, light blue and gleaming white.

Hertaste in roses was old-fashioned. There wasn’t a single modern hybrid tea roseor floribunda in sight. Instead, she favored the roses of other ages – the Yorkand Lancaster rose, the cabbage rose, the damask and the rugosa rose in severalvarieties. She propagated her roses herself from cuttings stuck directly in theground and protected by upended gallon jugs.

Lilies,I believe were her greatest love. Except for some Madonna lilies it isimpossible to name them, since the wooden flats stood casually here and therein the flower bed, all thickly planted with dark green lily seedlings. Theoccasional paper tag fluttering from a seed pod with the date and record of across showed that she was an amateur hybridizer with some special fondness forlilies of a warm muskmelon shade or a pale lemon yellow.

Shebelieved in sharing her garden. By her curb there was a sign: “This is mygarden, and you are welcome here. Take whatever you wish with your eyes, butnothing with your hand.”

Untilfive years ago, her garden was always immaculately tended, the lawn keptfertilized and mowed, the flower bed free of weeds, the tall lilies carefullystaked. But then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but the lawn wasmowed less frequently, then not at all. Tall grass invaded the roses, theclematis, the lilies. The elm tree in her front yard sickened and died, andwhen a coastal gale struck, the branches that fell were never removed.

Withevery year, the neglect has grown worse. Wild honeysuckle and bittersweet runrampant in the garden. Sumac, ailanthus, poison ivy and other uninvited thingsthreaten the few lilies and clematis and roses that still struggle forsurvival.

Lastyear the house itself went dead. The front door was padlocked and the windowscovered with sheets of plywood. For many months there has been a for sale signout front, replacing the sign inviting strangers to share her garden.

I driveby that house almost daily and have been tempted to load a shovel in my cartrunk, stop at her curb and rescue a few lilies from the smothering thicket ofweeds. The laws of trespass and the fact that her house sits across the streetfrom a police station have given me the cowardice to resist temptation. But hergarden has reminded me of mortality; gardeners and the gardens they make arefragile things, creatures of time, hostages to chance and to decay.

Lastweek, the for sale sign out front came down and the windows were unboarded. Acrew of painters arrived and someone cut down the dead elm tree. This morningthere was a moving van in the driveway unloading a swing set, a barbecue grill,a grand piano and a houseful of sensible furniture. A young family is movinginto that house.

I hopethat among their number is a gardener whose special fondness for old roses andclematis and lilies will see to it that all else is put aside until that flowerbed is restored to something of its former self.

(选自Patterns: A Short Prose Reader, by Mary Lou Conlin, published by HoughtonMifflin Company, 1983.)