Unit Six The Telephone

Period 9-10: Exercises

1. Translate the following paragraphs (para.9-10) into Chinese.

The year ofthe fish-bearing twister, however, was not the last remarkable year. Manyothers followed in which strange and wonderful things happened: milestonesadded by the hand of Allah to Magdaluna'scalendar. There was, for instance, the year of the drought, when theheavens were shut for months and the spring from which the entire village gotits drinking water slowed to a trickle. The spring was about a mile from thevillage, in a ravine that opened at one end into a small, flat clearing coveredwith fine gray dust and hard, marble-sized goat droppings, because everyafternoon the goatherds brought their flocks there to water them. In the yearof the drought, that little clearing was always packed full of noisy kids withbig brown eyes and sticky hands, and their mothers—sinewy, overworked youngwomen with portruding collarbones and cracked, callusedbrown heels. Childrenran around playing tag or hide-and-seek while the women talked, shooed flies,and awaited their turns to fill up their jars with drinking water to bring hometo their napping men and wet babies. There were days when we had to wait fromsunup until late afternoon just to fill a small clay jar with precious, coolwater.

Sometimes,amid the long wait and the heat and the flies and the smell of goat dung,tempers flared, and the younger women, anxious about their babies, argued overwhose turn it was to fill up her jar. And sometimes the arguments escalatedinto full-blown, knockdown-dragout fights; the women would grab each other bythe hair and curse and scream and spit and call each other names that made myears tingle. We little brown boys who went with our mothers to fetch waterloved these fights, because we got to see the women's legs and their coloredpanties as they grappled and rolled around in the dust. Once in a while, we got lucky and saw much more, because some of the women wore nothing at all undertheir long dresses. God, how I used to look forward to those fights. I remember the rush, the excitement, the sun dancing on the dust clouds as a dress ripped anda young white breast was revealed, then quickly hidden. In my calendar, that year of drought will always be one of the best years of my childhood, because it was then, in a dusty clearing by a trickling mountain spring, I got my first glimpses of the wonders, the mysteries, and the promises hidden beneath thefolds of a woman's dress. Fish and oranges from heaven … you can't get over that.

Reference:

旋风中夹带着鱼的那年还不是最后一个不同寻常的年份。随后多年也都发生过奇妙的事情。比如说那个干旱年。那年老天一连好几个月滴雨未下，为全村提供饮用水的唯一山泉成了一条涓涓细流。这山泉在离村子约有一英里的狭窄的山沟里，山沟的一头是一小块平坦的空地，上面覆盖着细细的灰土和坚硬的、玻璃弹子般大小的羊粪蛋。那个干旱年，那块小小的空地老是挤满了长着褐色大眼睛的、双手黠糊糊的、叽叽喳喳的孩子和他们的母亲一一那些精瘦强健的、劳累不堪的、脚跟黝黑干裂的年轻妇女。孩子们跑来跑去，玩捉人游戏，或藏猫猫;而他们的妈妈则一边聊天，轰赶苍蝇，一边排队，等着把自己的罐子装满饮水，带回家给正在午睡的男人和尿湿了的婴儿。有些时候我们不得不从太阳一出来一直等到下午很晚才能得到一小罐珍贵的、清凉的水。

有时候，在这漫长的等待中，加上酷热，苍蝇以及羊粪的气味，人们的脾气变得暴躁起来。年轻一点的女人因为担心她们的婴儿，开始为该轮到谁接水争吵起来。有时，争吵升级，女人们大打出手；她们扯着对方的头发、吐着口水、诅咒着、尖叫着、谩骂着，把我的耳朵刺得嗡嗡作响。我们这些和母亲一道去取水的被晒得黝黑的小男孩喜欢这样的打斗，因为女人们扭打着在沙地里打滚的时候，我们可以看到她们的大腿和花内裤。偶尔，我们幸运地可以看到更多，因为有些女人在长裙下面根本什么都没穿。上帝呀，我曾经多么盼望这样的打斗。我现在还记得那种冲动、那种兴奋，连阳光都在滚滚的尘土上跳舞，当一条裙子被扯破了，年轻女人的一只白皙的乳房漏了出来，旋即又被遮了起来。在我的日历上，大旱的那一年将永远是我孩提时代最美妙的年份之一。

2. Reading