【有声英语文学名著】英国病人 06

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(The staircase had lost its lower steps during the fire that was set before the soldiers left. She had gone into the library, removed twenty books and nailed them to the floor and then onto each other, in this way rebuilding the two lowest steps. Most of the chairs had been used for fires. The armchair in the library was left there because it was always wet, drenched¹ by evening storms that came in through the mortar² hole. Whatever was wet escaped burning during that April of 1945. )

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There were few beds left. She herself preferred to be nomadic³ in the house with her pallet or hammock, sleeping sometimes in the English patient’s room, sometimes in the hall, depending on temperature or wind or light. (In the morning she rolled up her mattress⁴ and tied it into a wheel with string. Now it was warmer and she was opening more rooms, airing the dark reaches, letting sunlight dry all the dampness. Some nights she opened doors and slept in rooms that had walls missing. She lay on the pallet on the very edge of the room, facing the drifting landscape of stars, moving clouds, wakened by the growl⁵ of thunder and lightning. )

She was twenty years old and mad and unconcerned with safety during this time, having no qualms⁶ about the dangers of the possibly mined library or the thunder that startled her in the night.( She was restless after the cold months, when she had been 

limited to dark, protected spaces. ) She entered rooms that had been soiled by soldiers, rooms whose furniture had been burned within them. She cleared out leaves and shit and urine and charred⁷ tables. She was living like a vagrant⁸, while elsewhere the 

English patient reposed⁹ in his bed like a king. From outside, the place seemed devastated¹⁰. An outdoor staircase disappeared in midair, its railing hanging off. Their life was foraging¹¹ and tentative safety. They used only essential candlelight at night because of the brigands¹² who annihilated¹³ everything they came across. They were protected by the simple fact that the villa¹⁴ seemed a ruin. But she felt safe here, half adult and half child. Coming out of what had happened to her during the war, she drew her own few rules to herself. She would not be ordered again or carry out duties for the greater good. She would care only for the burned patient. She would read to him and bathe him and give him his doses of morphine—her only communication was with him. （She worked in the garden and orchard¹⁵. She carried the six-foot crucifix from the bombed chapel¹⁶ and used it to build a scarecrow above her seedbed, hanging empty sardine¹⁷ cans from it which clattered¹⁸ and clanked whenever the wind lifted. Within the villa she would step from rubble¹⁹ to a candlelit alcove²⁰ where there was her neatly²¹ packed suitcase, which held little besides some letters, a few rolled-up clothes, a metal box of medical supplies. She had cleared just small sections of the villa, and all this she could burn down if she wished. She lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs²² and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she also breathes in light. She moves backwards²³ a few feet and with a piece of white chalk draws a rectangle onto the wood floor.

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