那些无法抗拒的名篇38:Catch-22第二十二条军规(节选)MP3和文本下载

38 Catch-22

38 第二十二条军规

      The Texan

    得克萨斯人

      It was love at fist sight.

    这可是实实在在的一见钟情。

      The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.

    初次相见，约塞连便疯狂地恋上了随军牧师。约塞连因肝痛住在医院，不过，他这肝痛还不是黄疸病的征兆，正因为如此，医生们才伤透了脑筋。如果它转成黄疸病，他们就有办法对症下药;如果他不是黄疸病而且症状又消失了，那么他们就可以让他出院。可是他这肝痛老是拖着，怎么也变不成黄疸病，实在让他们不知所措。

      Each morning they came around，three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same.

    每天早晨，总有三个男医生来查房，他们个个精力充沛，一本正经，尽管眼力不好，一开口却总是滔滔不绝。随同他们一起来的是同样精力充沛、不苟言笑的达克特护士。她就是讨厌约塞连的病房护士中的一个。他们看了看挂在约塞连病床上的病况记录卡，不耐烦地问了向肝痛的情况。听他说一切还是老样子，他们似乎很是恼怒。

     "Still no movement?" the full colonel demanded.

    “还没有通大便?”那位上校军医问道。

    The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head.

    见他摇了摇头，三个医生互换了一下眼色。

    "Give him another pill." Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.

    “再给他服一粒药。”达克特护士用笔记下医嘱，然后他们四人便朝另一张病床走去。没有一个病房护士喜欢约塞连。其实，约塞连的肝早就不疼了，不过他什么也没说，而那些医生也从来不曾起过疑心。他们只是猜疑他早就通了大便，却不愿告诉任何人。

    Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn't too bad, and his meals were brought to him in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit juice or chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest  of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and it was easy to stay on because he always ran a temperature of 101.

    约塞连住在医院里什么都不缺。伙食还算不错，每夭都有专人送餐，而且还外送一份肉。在下午很热的时候，他和其他病号还能喝到冰果汁或是冰巧克力牛奶。除了医生和护士，没人来打扰他。每天上午，他得去检查信件，之后便无所事事，整日躺在病床上消磨时光，倒亦心安理得。在医院里他过得相当舒坦，而且要这么住下去也挺容易，因为他的体温一直在华氏101度。

    After he had made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital，Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.

    约塞连打定主意要留在医院，不再上前线打仗，自此以后，他便去信告知所有熟人，说自己住进了医院，不过从未提及个中缘由。有一天，他心生妙计，写信给每一个熟人，告知他要执行一项相当危险的飞行任务。“他们在征募志愿人员。任务很危险，但总得有人去干，等我一完成任务回来，就给你去信。”从那以后，他再也没有给谁写过一封信。

    All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers.After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you tragically.R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U. S. Army." R.O. Shipman was the group chaplain's name.

    依照规定，病房里的每个军官病员都得检查所有士兵病员的信件，士兵病员只能呆在自己的病房里。检查信件实在是枯燥得很，得知士兵的生活只不过比军官略多些许趣味而已，约塞连很是失望。第一天下来，他便兴味索然了。于是，他就别出心裁地发明了种种把戏，给这乏味单调的差事添些情趣。有一天，他宣布要“处决”信里所有的修饰语，这一来，凡经他审查过的每一封信里的副词和形容词便统统消失了。第二天，他又向冠词开战。第三天，他的创意达到了制高点，把信里的一切全给删了，只留下冠词。他觉得玩这种游戏引起了更多力学上的线性内张力，差不多能使每一封信的要旨更为普遍化。没隔多久，他又涂掉了落款部分，正文则一字不动。有一次，他删去了整整一封信的内容，只保留了上款“亲爱的玛丽”，并在信笺下方写上，“我苦苦地思念着你。美国随军牧师A·T·塔普曼。”A·T·塔普曼是飞行大队随军牧师的姓名。

    When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters，he  began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets，annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn’t read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote，"Washington Irving".When that grew monotonous he wrote，"Irving Washington".Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn’t censor letters. He found them too monotonous.

    当他再也想不出什么点子在这些信上面搞鬼时，又将注意力转移到信封上的姓名和地址，随手漫不经心地一挥，就抹去了所有的住宅和街道名称，好比让一座座大都市消失，仿佛他是上帝一般。第二十二条军规规定，审查官必须在自己检查过的每封信上署上自己的姓名。大多数信约塞连看都没看过。凡是没看过的信，他就签上自己的姓名。要是看过了的，他则写上“华盛顿·欧文”。后来这名字写烦了，他便改用“欧文·华盛顿”。审查信件一事引起了强烈反响，令某些养尊处优的高层将领产生了焦虑情绪。结果，刑事调查部派了一名工作人员装作病人，住进病房。军官们都知道他是刑事调查部的人，因为他老是打听一个名叫欧文或是华盛顿的军官，而且第一天下来，他就不愿再审查信件了。他觉得那些信实在是太枯燥无味了。

    It was a good ward this time, one of the best he and Dunbar had ever enjoyed. With them this time was the twenty-four- year-old fighter-pilot captain with the sparse golden mustache who had been shot into the Adriatic Sea in midwinter and not even caught cold. Now the summer was upon them, the captain had not been shot down, and he said he had the grippe. In the bed on Yossarian's right, still lying amorously on his belly, was the startled captain with malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ass. Across the aisle from Yossarian was Dunbar, and next to Dunbar was the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess. The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so  interesting they were foolish. Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means—decent folk—should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk—people without means.

    约塞连这次住的病房挺不错，是他和邓巴住过的最好的病房之一。同病房里有一名战斗机上尉飞行员，24岁，蓄着稀稀拉拉的金黄色八字须。这家伙曾在隆冬时节执行飞行任务时被击中，飞机坠入亚得里亚海，但他竟安然无事，都没有感冒。时下己是夏天，他没让人从飞机上给击落，反倒得了流行性感冒。约塞连右侧病床的主人是一名身患疟疾而吓得半死的上尉，这家伙的屁股被蚊子叮了一口，此刻正脉脉含情地趴在床上。约塞连和邓巴中间隔着通道。紧挨邓巴的是一名炮兵上尉，现在约塞连再也不跟他下棋了。这家伙棋技极高，每回跟他对弈总是趣味无穷，然而，正因为趣味无穷，反而让人有种被愚弄的感觉，所以约塞连后来就不再跟他下棋了。再过去便是那个颇有教养的得克萨斯人，看上去很像电影里的明星。他有一颗爱国心，他认为较之于无产者—流浪汉、娼妓、罪犯、堕落分子、无神论者和粗鄙下流的人，有产者，亦即上等人，理应获得更多的选票。
 

作者介绍：
    约瑟夫·海勒(1923-1999)，美国小说家，“黑色幽默”的代表作家之一约瑟夫·海勒可谓是多产的作家，主要作品有《第二十二条军规》、《并非笑话》、《悠悠岁月》以及两个剧本《我们轰炸纽黑文》和《克莱文杰的审判》。海勒的幽默、讽刺把荒诞与严肃、夸张与真实、闹剧与正经调和起来，以阴冷的、玩世不恭的幽默来嘲笑一切，表达对现实世界的不满和抗议，使人在震颤中去思索，在喜剧中去悲袁。

  故事发生在第二次世界大战期间，美国空军的一支飞行大队驻守在意大利以南地中海上的一个小岛上。主人公约塞连是这支飞行大队的上尉轰炸手。他本来是一个正直勇敢、富有爱国心的青年。起初，他抱着为祖国而战的信念，出色地完成了任务，因而被提拔为上尉，还获得了一枚勋章。后来他发现周围的人都在暗算他，企图置他于死地。他竭力要保全自己的生命，他要逃离这个“世界”。最后，约塞连恍然大悟，第二十二条军规原来是一个骗局，他临阵逃脱，跑到瑞典去寻找避难所。