【英文读物】Gigolo.docx

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1、【英文读物】GigoloTHE AFTERNOON OF A FAUNThough he rarely heeded its summonscagy boy that he wasthe telephone rang oftenest for Nick. Because of the many native noises of the place, the telephone had a special bell that was a combination buzz and ring. It sounded above the roar of outgoing cars, the splas

2、h of the hose, the sputter and hum of the electric battery in the rear. Nick heard it, unheeding. A voiceSmittys or Mikes or Elmersanswering its call. Then, echoing through the grey, vaulted spaces of the big garage: Nick! Oh, Ni-ick!From the other side of the great cement-floored enclosure, or in m

3、uffled tones from beneath a car: Whatcha want?Dame on the wire.I aint in.The obliging voice again, dutifully repeating the message: He aint in. Well, its hard to say. He might be in in a couple hours and Pg 2then again he might not be back till late. I guess hes went to Hammond on a job (Warming to

4、his task now.) Say, wont I do?. Whos fresh! Aw, say, lady!Youd think, after repeated rebuffs of this sort, she could not possibly be so lacking in decent pride as to leave her name for Smitty or Mike or Elmer to bandy about. But she invariably did, baffled by Nicks elusiveness. She was likely to be

5、any one of a number. Miss Bauers phoned: Will you tell him, please? (A nasal voice, and haughty, with the hauteur that seeks to conceal secret fright.) Tell him its important. Miss Ahearn phoned: Will you tell him, please? Just say Miss Ahearn. A-h-e-a-r-n. Miss Olson: Just Gertie. But oftenest Miss

6、 Bauers.Cupids messenger, wearing grease-grimed overalls and the fatuous grin of the dalliant male, would transmit his communication to the uneager Nick.S wonder you wouldnt answer the phone once yourself. Says you was to call Miss Bauers any time you come in between one and six at Hyde Parkwait a m

7、intyehHyde Park 6079, and any time after six atWhad she want?Well, how the hell should I know! Says call Miss Bauers any time between one and six at Hyde Park 6Pg 3Swell chanst. Swell chanst!Which explains why the calls came oftenest for Nick. He was so indifferent to them. You pictured the patient

8、and persistent Miss Bauers, or the oxlike Miss Olson, or Miss Ahearn, or just Gertie hovering within hearing distance of the telephone listening, listeningwhile one oclock deepened to sixfor the call that never came; plucking up fresh courage at six until six oclock dragged on to bedtime. When next

9、they met: I bet you was there all the time. Pity you wouldnt answer a call when a person leaves their name. You could of give me a ring. I bet you was there all the time.Well, maybe I was.Bewildered, she tried to retaliate with the boomerang of vituperation.How could she know? How could she know tha

10、t this slim, slick young garage mechanic was a woodland creature in disguisea satyr in store clothesa wild thing who perversely preferred to do his own pursuing? How could Miss Bauers knowshe who cashiered in the Green Front Grocery and Market on Fifty-third Street? Or Miss Olson, at the Rialto tick

11、et window? Or the Celtic, emotional Miss Ahearn, the manicure? Or Gertie the goof? They knew nothing of mythology; of pointed ears and pug noses and goats feet. Nicks ears, to their fond gaze, presented an honest red surface proPg 4truding from either side of his head. His feet, in tan laced shoes,

12、were ordinary feet, a little more than ordinarily expert, perhaps, in the convolutions of the dance at Englewood Masonic Hall, which is part of Chicagos vast South Side. No; a faun, to Miss Bauers, Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, and just Gertie, was one of those things in the Lincoln Park Zoo.Perhaps, som

13、etimes, they realized, vaguely, that Nick was different. When, for example, they triedand failedto picture him looking interestedly at one of those three-piece bedroom sets glistening like pulled taffy in the window of the installment furniture store, while they, shy yet proprietary, clung to his ar

14、m and eyed the price ticket. Now $98.50. You couldnt see Nick interested in bedroom sets, in price tickets, in any of those settled, fixed, everyday things. He was fluid, evasive, like quicksilver, though they did not put it thus.Miss Bauers, goaded to revolt, would say pettishly: Youre like a mosqu

15、ito, thats what. Person never knows from one minute to the other where youre at.Yeh, Nick would retort. When you know where a mosquitos at, what do you do to him? Plenty. I aint looking to be squashed.Miss Ahearn, whose public position (the Hygienic Barber Shop. Gents manicure, 50c.) offered unPg 5l

16、imited social opportunities, would assume a gay indifference. Theys plenty boys begging to take me out every hour in the day. Swell lads, too. I aint waiting round for any greasy mechanic like you. Dont think it. Say, lookit your nails! Theyd queer you with me, let alone what else all is wrong with

17、you.In answer Nick would put one handone broad, brown, steel-strong hand with its broken discoloured nailson Miss Ahearns arm, in its flimsy georgette sleeve. Miss Ahearns eyelids would flutter and close, and a little shiver would run with icy-hot feet all over Miss Ahearn.Nick was like that.Nicks r

18、eal name wasnt Nick at allor scarcely at all. His last name was Nicholas, and his parents, long before they became his parents, traced their origin to some obscure Czechoslovakian provincelong before we became so glib with our Czechoslovakia. His first name was Dewey, knowing which you automatically

19、 know the date of his birth. It was a patriotic but unfortunate choice on the part of his parents. The name did not fit him; was too mealy; not debonair enough. Nick. Nicky in tenderer moments (Miss Bauers, Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, just Gertie, et al.).His method with women was firm and somewhat ste

20、rn, but never brutal. He never waited for themPg 6 if they were late. Any girl who assumed that her value was enhanced in direct proportion to her tardiness in keeping an engagement with Nick found herself standing disconsolate on the corner of Fifty-third and Lake trying to look as if she were mere

21、ly waiting for the Lake Park car and not peering wistfully up and down the street in search of a slim, graceful, hurrying figure that never came.It is difficult to convey in words the charm that Nick possessed. Seeing him, you beheld merely a medium-sized young mechanic in reasonably grimed garage c

22、lothes when working; and in tight pants, tight coat, silk shirt, long-visored green cap when at leisure. A rather pallid skin due to the nature of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him at work, a wire-netted ele

23、ctric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round skullcaps characteristic of his craft (the brimless crown of an old felt hat). He would deftly remove the transmis

24、sion case and plunge his hand deep into the cars guts, feeling expertly about with his engine-wise fingers as a surgeon feels for liver, stomach, gall bladder, intestines, appendix. When he brought up his hand, all dripping with grease (which is the warmPg 7 blood of the car), he invariably had put

25、his finger on the sore spot.All this, of course, could not serve to endear him to the girls. On the contrary, you would have thought that his hands alone, from which he could never quite free the grease and grit, would have caused some feeling of repugnance among the lily-fingered. But they, somehow

26、, seemed always to be finding an excuse to touch him: his tie, his hair, his coat sleeve. They seemed even to derive a vicarious thrill from holding his hat or cap when on an outing. They brushed imaginary bits of lint from his coat lapel. They tried on his seal ring, crying: Oo, lookit, how big it

27、is for me, even my thumb! He called this pawing a guy over; and the lint ladies he designated as thread pickers.No; it cant be classified, this powerful draw he had for them. His conversation furnished no clue. It was commonplace conversation, limited, even dull. When astonished, or impressed, or ho

28、rrified, or amused, he said: Ken yuh feature that! When emphatic or confirmatory, he said: You tell em!It wasnt his car and the opportunities it furnished for drives, both country and city. That motley piece of mechanism represented such an assemblage of unrelated parts as could only have been made

29、to co?rdinate under Nicks expert guidance. It was out of commission more than half the time, andPg 8 could never be relied upon to furnish a holiday. Both Miss Bauers and Miss Ahearn had twelve-cylinder opportunities that should have rendered them forever unfit for travel in Nicks one-lung vehicle o

30、f locomotion.It wasnt money. Though he was generous enough with what he had, Nick couldnt be generous with what he hadnt. And his wage at the garage was $40 a week. Miss Ahearns silk stockings cost $4.50.His unconcern should have infuriated them, but it served to pique. He wasnt actually as unconcer

31、ned as he appeared, but he had early learned that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their me

32、thod of driving a car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation of the wheel was nothing short of wizardry.He played the harmonica.Each Thursday afternoon was Nicks half day off. From twelve until seven-thirty he was free to range the bosky highways of Chicago. When his carhe call

33、ed it the buswas agreeable, he went awheel in search of amusement. The bus being indisposed, he went afoot. He rarely made plans in advance; usually was accompanied by some successPg 9ful telephonee. He rather liked to have a silken skirt beside him fluttering and flirting in the breeze as he broke

34、the speed regulations.On this Thursday afternoon in July he had timed his morning job to a miraculous nicety so that at the stroke of twelve his workaday garments dropped from him magically, as though he were a male (and reversed) Cinderella. There was a wash room and a rough sort of sleeping room c

35、ontaining two cots situated in the second story of the Ideal Garage. Here Nick shed the loose garments of labour for the fashionably tight habiliments of leisure. Private chauffeurs whose employers housed their cars in the Ideal Garage used this nook for a lounge and smoker. Smitty, Mike, Elmer, and

36、 Nick snatched stolen siestas there in the rare absences of the manager. Sometimes Nick spent the night there when forced to work overtime. His home life, at best, was a sketchy affair. Here chauffeurs, mechanics, washers lolled at ease exchanging soft-spoken gossip, motor chat, speculation, comment

37、, and occasional verbal obscenity. Each possessed a formidable knowledge of that neighbourhood section of Chicago known as Hyde Park. This knowledge was not confined to car costs and such impersonal items, but included meals, scandals, relationships, finances, love affairs, quarrels, peccadillos. He

38、re Nick often played his harmonica, his lips sweeping the metalPg 10 length of it in throbbing rendition of such sure-fire sentimentality as The Long, Long Trail, or Mammy, while the others talked, joked, kept time with tapping feet or wagging heads.To-day the hot little room was empty except for Ni

39、ck, shaving before the cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of yesterdays newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer was thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old Elmers conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen resentment. Old El

40、mer was a family man. His talk was all of his familythe wife, the kids, the flat. A garrulous person, lank, pasty, dish-faced, and amiable. His half day off was invariably spent tinkering about the stuffy little flatpainting, nailing up shelves, mending a broken window shade, puttying a window, play

41、ing with his pasty little boy, aged sixteen months, and his pasty little girl, aged three years. Next day he regaled his fellow workers with elaborate recitals of his holiday hours.Believe me, that kids a caution. Sixteen months old, and what does he do yesterday? He unfastens the ketch on the back-

42、porch gate. We got a gate on the back porch, see. (This frequent see which interlarded Elmers verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflecPg 11tion as he uttered it.) What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and th

43、e wife says to me: Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, hed got it open to-day and was crawling out almost. Say, can you beat that for a kid sixteen monthsNick had finished shaving, had donned his clean white soft shirt. His s

44、oft collar fitted to a miracle about his strong throat. Nicks sartorial effects were a triumphon forty a week. Say, cant you talk about nothing but that kid of yours? I bet hes a bum specimen at that. Runt, like his pa.Elmer flung down his newspaper in honest indignation as Nick had wickedly meant h

45、e should. Is that so! Why, we was wrastling roundme and him, seelast night on the floor, and what does he do, he raises his mitt and hands me a wallop in the stomick it like to knock the wind out of me. Thats all. Sixteen monthsYeh. I suppose this time next year hell be boxing for money.Elmer resume

46、d his paper. What do you know. His tone mingled pity with contempt.Nick took a last critical survey of the cracked mirrors reflection and found it good. Nothing, only this: you make me sick with your kids and your missus and your place. Say, dont you never have no fun?Pg 12Fun! Why, say, last Sunday

47、 we was out to the beach, and the kid swum out first thing you knowOh, shut up! He was dressed now. He slapped his pockets. Harmonica. Cigarettes. Matches. Money. He was off, his long-visored cloth cap pulled jauntily over his eyes.Elmer, bearing no rancour, flung a last idle query: Where you going?

48、How should I know? Just bumming around. Bus is outa commission, and Im outa luck.He clattered down the stairs, whistling.Next door for a shine at the Greek bootblacks. Enthroned on the dais, a minion at his feet, he was momentarily monarchial. Hows the boy? Good? Same here. Down, his brief reign ended. Out into the bright noon-day glare of Fifty-third Street.A fried-egg sandwich. Two blocks down and into the white-tiled lunchroom. He took his place in the row perched on stools in front of the white slab