Unit 8 The Discus Thrower课文翻译综合教程四.docVIP

Unit 8 The Discus Thrower Richard Selzer 1 I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients by any means and from any stance that he might take for the more fully assemble evidence? So I stand in the doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need only look up to discover me. But they never do. 2 From the doorway of Room 542 the man in the bed seems deeply tanned. Blue eyes and close-cropped white hair give him the appearance of vigor and good health. But I know that his skin is not brown from the sun. It is rusted, rather, in the last stage of containing the vile repose within. And the blue eyes are frosted, looking inward like the windows of a snowbound cottage. This man is blind. This man is also legless ― the right leg missing from midthigh down, the left from just below the knee. It gives him the look of a bonsai, roots and branches pruned into the dwarfed facsimile of a great tree. 3 Propped on pillows, he cups his right thigh in both hands. Now and then he shakes his head as though acknowledging the intensity of his suffering. In all of this he makes no sound. Is he mute as well as blind? 4 The room in which he dwells is empty of all possessions ― no get-well cards, small, private caches of food, day-old flowers, slippers, all the usual kickshaws of the sick room. There is only the bed, a chair, a nightstand, and a tray on wheels that can be swung across his lap for meals. 5 “What time is it?” he asks. “Three o’clock.” “Morning or afternoon?” “Afternoon.” He is silent. There is nothing else he wants to know. “How are you?” I say. “Who are you?” he asks. “It’s the doctor. How do you feel?” He does not answer right away. “Feel?” he says. “I hope you feel better,” I say. I press the button at the side of the bed. “Down you go,” I say. “Yes, down,” he says. 6 He falls back upon the bed awkwardly. His stumps, unweighted by legs and feet, rise in the air, presenting themselves. I