GOADED BY restlessness and the delusion of greener pastures, we vacated an apartment where we had lived a long time. Four ape men, appearing in the steamy dawn, rolled up the mattresses, collapsed the beds, and with catlike tread removed all our effects, and our ineffects, to the inquisitive street and there wedged them into a red-devil horseless van. They stripped the place clean, to the eye. But as we sat on an empty fruit crate in the living-room, staring at the beloved walls with their unbleached rectangles where the pictures and mirrors had been, staring at the radiators whose first winter whisperings we will not hear this year, we knew that not even the stalwart movers could wrench loose something that was still there, invisible and ineradicable; we knew that people must inevitably leave something of themselves behind----something besides the mere residue of dust and bent paper clips and fallen coat hangers. We felt we should post a warning to the new tenants that there was something in the walls, musky and pervasive, as when a skunk vacates a nest under a summer cottage. There is sponginess about plaster, absorbing love. Not even a repaint job can quite rid a place of the people who once lived there.
为焦躁不安的心绪所左右，怀揣着对更为宜居的居所之想入非非，我们从那间已居住了许久的公寓搬了出来。在雾气缭绕的拂晓，四名热血的汉子，卷起床垫，折叠床铺，恰似猫咪一般，蹑手蹑脚地将我们所有的财物与废物，一股脑儿地搬到了马路上，并在那儿，将其塞进了一辆红魔自力车。大白天的马路上，投来无数好奇的目光。从表面上看，此地被洗劫地空空荡荡。但当我们在客厅里的一个空水果箱上安坐下来，双眸凝视着那些曾挂立着照片和镜子的、还未褪色的长方形的可爱墙壁，凝望着那些暖气片——我们再也听不到会在今年冬天发出第一声低语的暖气片。我们清楚，即便是体力最为充沛的搬运工，也难以拆散那些仍在那儿、看不见却又无法被毁尸灭迹的物件；我们知晓，人们不可避免地会留下一些自己的东西——除了灰尘、弯曲的回形针与掉落的衣架之外的物品。我们觉得应该张贴告示，告知新房客墙体中都有什么什物。公寓内弥漫着麝香味，宛若一只臭鼬从盛夏的小屋腾出来巢穴一般。石膏有一种柔软的感觉，吮吸着爱。即使是重新粉刷一次墙体，也还是无法彻底消弥一个容留人们居住过的地方。
Possessions breed like mice. A man forgets what a raft of irrelevant junk he has collected about him till he tries to move it. We found ourself one afternoon smothered at the bottom of a pile of ghastly miscellany: envelopes engraved with the wrong address, snapshots that had never been pasted up, a mahogany chip belonging to a broken chair, some high-school examination papers, a can of ski wax, several programs of the Millrose games, a sneaker for the left foot, a build-it- yourself airplane that had never been built, some samples of curtain material, a catcher’s mitt, and a red-and-silver ashtray made from the head of a piston. These objects suddenly seemed to be the possessor, ourself the possessed. An hour later we were wandering dully in the streets seeking lodging in a hotel and passed a little old fellow with all his worldly goods slung on his back in a burlap sack. In his face was written a strange peace.
财物若老鼠一样生生不息。一个人只有在试图搬走一堆无关紧要的垃圾时，才会回忆起当初收集它们的点点滴滴。某日下午，我们发现自己被一堆可怕的杂物压得喘不过气：写错地址的信封、从来都没有贴上墙的快照、一把破椅上的红木碎片、几张高中试卷、一罐滑雪蜡、几张米尔罗斯运动会的节目单、一只左脚穿的运动鞋、一架从未建造过的私人定制飞机、一些窗帘材料的样品、一副接球手的手套和一个用活塞头做成的红银双色烟灰缸。须臾之间，这些物品俨然成了主人，而我们却成了客人。一小时后，我们在街上无精打采地徘徊着，欲寻觅一家旅馆住宿。迎面撞上一个瘦骨嶙峋的老头，他背着一口粗麻袋，里面装着他所有的家当。他的脸上泛着一丝奇异的平静。---From E. B. White, “Moving,” Writings from the New Yorker.
——节选自E.B.怀特《纽约客》文章之“搬家”
