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Did the narrator find is mother's grave?
I stopped to let the car cool off and to study the map. I had expected to
be near my objective by now, but everything still seemed alien to me. I was only
five when my father had taken me abroad, and that was 18 years ago. When my
mother had died after a tragic accident, he did not quickly recover from the
shock and loneliness. Everything around him was full of her presence,
continually reopening the wound. So he decided to emigrate. In the new country
he became absorbed in making a new life for the two of us, so that he gradually
ceased to grieve. He did not marry again and I was brought up without a woman's
care; but I lacked for nothing, for he was both father and mother to me. He
always meant to go back one day, but not to stay. His roots and mine had become
too firmly embedded in the new land. But he wanted to see the old folk again and
to visit my mother's grave. He became mortally ill a few months before we had
planned to go and, when he knew that he was dying, he made me promise to go on
my own.
I hired a car the day after landing and bought a comprehensive book of
maps, which I found most helpful on the cross-country journey, but which I did
not think I should need on the last stage. It was not that I actually remembered
anything at all. But my father had described over and over again what we should
see at every milestone, after leaving the nearest town, so that I was positive I
should recognize it as familiar territory. Well, I had been wrong, for I was now
lost.
I looked at the map and then at the milometer. I had come ten miles since
leaving the town, and at this point, according to my father, I should be looking
at farms and cottages in a valley, with the spire of the church of our village
showing in the far distance. I could see no valley, no farms, no cottages and no
church spire -- only a lake. I decided that I must have taken a wrong turning
somewhere. So I drove back to the town and began to retrace the route, taking
frequent glances at the map. I landed up at the same corner. The curious thing
was that the lake was not marked on the map. I felt as if I had stumbled into a
nightmare country, as you sometimes do in dreams. And, as in a nightmare, there
was nobody in sight to help me. Fortunately for me, as I was wondering what to
do next, there appeared on the horizon a man on horseback, riding in my
direction. I waited till he came near, then I asked him the way to our old
village. He said that there was now no village. I thought he must have
misunderstood me, so I repeated its name. This time he pointed to the lake. The
village no longer existed because it had been submerged, and all the valley too.
The lake was not a natural one, but a man-made reservoir.
New words and expressions 生词与短语
alien
adj. 异国的，外国的
emigrate
v. 移居(国外)
absorb
v. 全神贯注于
embedded
adj. 扎牢的
mortally
adv. 致命地
comprehensive
adj. 广泛的;丰富的
milestone
n. 里程碑
territory
n. 领地;地区
milometer
n. 计程表
spire
n. (教堂的)塔尖
retrace
v. 返回，重走
stumble
v. 趔趄地走
horizon
n. 地平线
reservoir
n. 水库
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发表于 2016-7-11 23:04:30