english/polish to chinese translation help?
Friday, April 23rd, 2010This short story was written by Bruno Schulz, a polish writter. It is about: Father’s last escape. I found it from here:http://www.brunoschulz.org/13-ostatnia-eng.htm
Here’s the text:
It happened in the late and forlorn period of complete disruption, at the time of the liquidation of our business. The signboard had been removed from over our shop, the shutters were halfway down, and inside the shop my mother was conducting and unauthorized trade in remnants. Adela had gone to America, and it was said that the boat on which she had sailed had sunk and that all the passengers had lost their lives. We were unable to verify this rumour, but all trace of the girl was lost and we never heard of her again. A new age began – empty, sober and joyless, like a sheet of white paper. A new servant girl, Genya, anaemic, pale, and boneless, mooned about the rooms. When one patted her on the back, she wriggled, stretched like a snake, or purred like a cat. She had a dull white complexion, and even the insides of her eyelids were white. She was so absent-minded that she sometimes made a white sauce from old letters and invoices: it was sickly and inedible.
At that time my father was definitely dead. He had been dying a number of times, always with some reservations that forced us to revise our attitude towards the fact of death. This had its advantages. By dividing his death into instalments, Father had familiarized us with his demise. We became gradually indifferent to his returns – each one shorter, each one more pitiful. His features were already dispersed throughout the room in which he had lived, and were sprouting in it, creating at some points strange knots of likenesses that were most expressive. The wallpaper began in certain places to imitate his habitual nervous tic; the flower designs arranged themselves into the doleful element of his smile, symmetrical as the fossilized imprint of a trilobite. For a time, we gave wide berth to his fur coat lined with polecat skins. The fur coat breathed. The panic of small animals sewn together and biting into one another passed through it in helpless currents and lost itself in the folds of the fur. Putting one’s ear against it, one could hear the melodious purring unison of the animals’ sleep. In this well-tanned form, amid the faint smell of polecat, murder, and the nighttime matings, my father might have lasted for many years. But he did not last.
One day, Mother returned from town with a preoccupied face. "Look, Joseph," she said, "what a lucky coincidence. I caught him on the stairs, jumping from step to step" – and she lifted a handkerchief that covered something on a plate. I recognized him at once. The resemblance was striking, although now he was a crab or a large scorpion. Mother and I exchanged looks: in spite of the metamorphosis, the resemblance was incredible. "Is he alive?" I asked. "Of course. I can hardly hold him," Mother said. "Shall I place him on the floor. She put the plate down, and leaning over him we observed him closely. There was a hollow place between his numerous curved legs, which he was moving slightly. His uplifted pincers and feelers seemed to be listening. I tipped the plate, and Father moved cautiously and with a certain hesitation to the floor. Upon touching the flat surface under him, he gave a sudden start with all of his legs, while his arthropod joints made a clacking sound. I barred his way. He hesitated, investigated the obstacle with his feelers, then lifted his pincers and turned aside. We let him run in his chosen direction, where there was no furniture to give him shelter. Running in wavy jerks on his many legs, he reached the wall and, before we could stop him, ran lightly up it, not pausing anywhere. I shuddered with instinctive revulsion as I watched his progress up the wallpaper. Meanwhile, Father reached a small built-in kitchen cupboard, hung for a moment on its edge, testing the terrain with his pincers, and then crawled into it.
He was discovering the apartment afresh from the new point of view of a crab; evidently, he perceived all objects by his sense of smell, for, in spite of careful checking, I could not find on him any organ of sight. He seemed to consider carefully the objects he encountered in his path, stopping and feeling them with his antennae, then embracing them with his pincers, as if to test them and make their acquaintance; after a time, he left them and continued on his run, pulling his abdomen behind him, lifted slightly from the floor. He acted the same way with the pieces of bread and meat that we threw on the floor for him, hoping he would eat them. He gave them a perfunctory examination and ran on, not recognizing that they were edible.
Watching these patient surveys of the room, one could assume that he was obstinately and indefatigably looking for something. From time to time he ran to a corner of the kitchen, crept under a barrel of water that was leaking, and, upon reaching the p
It’s a joke??
