A Dill Pickle

A Dill Pickle by Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) From: Bliss, and Other Stories New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. pp. 228-238. [Page 228] A DILL PICKLE AND then, after six years, she saw him again. He was seated at one of those little bamboo tables decorated with a Japanese vase of paper daffodils. There was a tall plate of fruit in front of him, and very carefully, in a way she recognized immediately as his "special" way, he was peeling an orange. He must have felt that shock of recognition in her for he looked up and met her eyes. Incredible! He didn't know her! She smiled; he frowned. She came towards him. He closed his eyes an instant, but opening them his face lit up as though he had struck a match in a dark room. He laid down the orange and pushed back his chair, and she took her little warm hand out of her muff and gave it to him. "Vera!" he exclaimed. "How strange. Really, for a moment I didn't know you. Won't you sit down? You've had lunch? Won't you have some coffee?" She hesitated, but of course she meant to. "Yes, I'd like some coffee." And she sat down opposite him. "You've changed. You've changed very much," he said, staring at her with that eager, lighted look. [Page 229] "You look so well. I've never seen you look so well before." "Really?" She raised her veil and unbuttoned her high fur collar. "I don't feel very well. I can't bear this weather, you know." "Ah, no. You hate the cold. . . . " "Loathe it." She shuddered. "And the worst of it is that the older one grows . . . " He interrupted her. "Excuse me," and tapped on the table for the waitress. "Please bring some coffee and cream." To her: "You are sure you won't eat anything? Some fruit, perhaps. The fruit here is very good." "No, thanks. Nothing." "Then that's settled." And smiling just a hint too broadly he took up the orange again. "You were saying–the older one grows–" "The colder," she laughed. But she was thinking how well she remembered that trick of his–the trick of interrupting her–and of how it used to exasperate her six years ago. She used to feel then as though he, quite suddenly, in the middle of what she was saying, put his hand over her lips, turned from her, attended to something different, and then took his hand away, and with just the same slightly too broad smile, gave her his attention again. . . . Now we are ready. That is settled. "The colder!" He echoed her words, laughing too. "Ah, ah. You still say the same things. And there is another thing about you that is not changed [Page 230] at all–your beautiful voice–your beautiful way of speaking." Now he was very grave; he leaned towards her, and she smelled the warm, stinging scent of the orange peel. "You have only to say one word and I would know your voice among all other voices. I don't know what it is–I've often wondered–that makes your voice such a–haunting memory. . . . Do you remember that first afternoon we spent together at Kew Gardens? You were so surprised because I did not know the names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant for all your telling me. But whenever it is very fine and warm, and I see some bright colours–it's awfully strange–I hear your voice saying: 'Geranium, marigold, and verbena.' And I feel those three words are all I recall of some forgotten, heavenly language. . . . You remember that afternoon?" "Oh, yes, very well." She drew a long, soft breath, as though the paper daffodils between them were almost too sweet to bear. Yet, what had remained in her mind of that particular afternoon was an absurd scene over the tea table. A great many people taking tea in a Chinese pagoda, and he behaving like a maniac about the wasps–waving them away, flapping at them with his straw hat, serious and infuriated out of all proportion to the occasion. How delighted the sniggering tea drinkers had been. And how she had suffered. But now, as he spoke, that memory faded. His was the truer. Yes, it had been a wonderful [Page 231] afternoon, full of geranium and marigold and verbena, and–warm sunshine. Her thoughts lingered over the last two words as though she sang them. In the warmth, as it were, another memory unfolded. She saw herself sitting on a lawn. He lay beside her, and suddenly, after a long silence, he rolled over and put his head in her lap. "I wish," he said, in a low, troubled voice, "I wish that I had taken poison and were about to die–here now!" At that moment a little girl in a white dress, holding a long, dripping water lily, dodged from behind a bush, stared at them, and dodged back again. But he did not see. She leaned over him. "Ah, why do you say that? I could not say that." But he gave a kind of soft moan, and taking her hand he held it to his cheek. "Because I know I am going to love you too much–far too much. And I shall suffer so terribly, Vera, because you never, never will love me." He was certainly far better looking now than he had been then. He had lost all that dreamy vagueness and indecision. Now he had the air of a man who has found his place in life, and fills it with a confidence and an assurance which was, to say the least, impressive. He must have made money, too. His clothes were admirable, and at that moment he pulled a Russian cigarette case out of his pocket. [Page 232] "Won't you smoke?" "Yes, I will." She hovered over them. "They look very good." "I think they are. I get them made for me by a little man in St. James's Street. I don't smoke very much. I'm not like you–but when I do, they must be delicious, very fresh cigarettes. Smoking isn't a habit with me; it's a luxury–like perfume. Are you still so fond of perfumes? Ah, when I was in Russia . . . " She broke in: "You've really been to Russia?" "Oh, yes. I was there for over a year. Have you forgotten how we used to talk of going there?" "No, I've not forgotten." He gave a strange half laugh and leaned back in his chair. "Isn't it curious. I have really carried out all those journeys that we planned. Yes, I have been to all those places that we talked of, and stayed in them long enough to–as you used to say, 'air oneself' in them. In fact, I have spent the last three years of my life travelling all the time. Spain, Corsica, Siberia, Russia, Egypt. The only country left is China, and I mean to go there, too, when the war is over." As he spoke, so lightly, tapping the end of his cigarette against the ash-tray, she felt the strange beast that had slumbered so long within her bosom stir, stretch itself, yawn, prick up its ears, and suddenly bound to its feet, and fix its longing, hungry stare upon those far away places. But all [Page 233] she. said was, smiling gently: "How I envy you." He accepted that. "It has been," he said, "very wonderful–especially Russia. Russia was all that we had imagined, and far, far more. I even spent some days on a river boat on the Volga. Do you remember that boatman's song that you used to play?" "Yes." It began to play in her mind as she spoke. "Do you ever play it now?" "No, I've no piano." He was amazed at that. "But what has become of your beautiful piano?" She made a little grimace. "Sold. Ages ago." "But you were so fond of music," he wondered. "I've no time for it now," said she. He let it go at that. "That river life," he went on, "is something quite special. After a day or two you cannot realize that you have ever known another. And it is not necessary to know the language–the life of the boat creates a bond between you and the people that's more than sufficient. You eat with them, pass the day with them, and in the evening there is that endless singing." She shivered, hearing the boatman's song break out again loud and tragic, and seeing the boat floating on the darkening river with melancholy trees on either side. . . . "Yes, I should like that," said she, stroking her muff. [Page 234] "You'd like almost everything about Russian life," he said warmly. "It's so informal, so impulsive, so free without question. And then the peasants are so splendid. They are such human beings–yes, that is it. Even the man who drives your carriage has–has some real part in what is happening. I remember the evening a party of us, two friends of mine and the wife of one of them, went for a picnic by the Black Sea. We took supper and champagne and ate and drank on the grass. And while we were eating the coachman came up. 'Have a dill pickle,' he said. He wanted to share with us. That seemed to me so right, so–you know what I mean?" And she seemed at that moment to be sitting on the grass beside the mysteriously Black Sea, black as velvet, and rippling against the banks in silent, velvet waves. She saw the carriage drawn up to one side of the road, and the little group on the grass, their faces and hands white in the moonlight. She saw the pale dress of the woman outspread and her folded parasol, lying on the grass like a huge pearl crochet hook. Apart from them, with his supper in a cloth on his knees, sat the coachman. "Have a dill pickle," said he, and although she was not certain what a dill pickle was, she saw the greenish glass jar with a red chili like a parrot's beak glimmering through. She sucked in her cheeks; the dill pickle was terribly sour. . . . "Yes, I know perfectly what you mean," she said. [Page 235] In the pause that followed they looked at each other. In the past when they had looked at each other like that they had felt such a boundless understanding between them that their souls had, as it were, put their arms round each other and dropped into the same sea, content to be drowned, like mournful lovers. But now, the surprising thing was that it was he who held back. He who said: "What a marvellous listener you are. When you look at me with those wild eyes I feel that I could tell you things that I would never breathe to another human being." Was there just a hint of mockery in his voice or was it her fancy? She could not be sure. "Before I met you," he said, "I had never spoken of myself to anybody. How well I remember one night, the night that I brought you the little Christmas tree, telling you all about my childhood. And of how I was so miserable that I ran away and lived under a cart in our yard for two days without being discovered. And you listened, and your eyes shone, and I felt that you had even made the little Christmas tree listen too, as in a fairy story." But of that evening she had remembered a little pot of caviare. It had cost seven and sixpence. He could not get over it. Think of it–a tiny jar like that costing seven and sixpence. While she ate it he watched her, delighted and shocked. "No, really, that is eating money. You could not [Page 236] get seven shillings into a little pot that size. Only think of the profit they must make. . . . " And he had begun some immensely complicated calculations. . . . But now good-bye to the caviare. The Christmas tree was on the table, and the little boy lay under the cart with his head pillowed on the yard dog. "The dog was called Bosun," she cried delightedly. But he did not follow. "Which dog? Had you a dog? I don't remember a dog at all." "No, no. I meant the yard dog when you were a little boy." He laughed and snapped the cigarette case to. "Was he? Do you know I had forgotten that. It seems such ages ago. I cannot believe that it is only six years. After I had recognized you today–I had to take such a leap–I had to take a leap over my whole life to get back to that time. I was such a kid then." He drummed on the table. "I've often thought how I must have bored you. And now I understand so perfectly why you wrote to me as you did–although at the time that letter nearly finished my life. I found it again the other day, and I couldn't help laughing as I read it. It was so clever–such a true picture of me." He glanced up. "You're not going?" She had buttoned her collar again and drawn down her veil. "Yes, I am afraid I must," she said, and [Page 237] managed a smile. Now she knew that he had been mocking. "Ah, no, please," he pleaded. "Don't go just for a moment," and he caught up one of her gloves from the table and clutched at it as if that would hold her. "I see so few people to talk to nowadays, that I have turned into a sort of barbarian," he said. "Have I said something to hurt you?" "Not a bit," she lied. But as she watched him draw her glove through his fingers, gently, gently, her anger really did die down, and besides, at the moment he looked more like himself of six years ago. . . . "What I really wanted then," he said softly, "was to be a sort of carpet–to make myself into a sort of carpet for you to walk on so that you need not be hurt by the sharp stones and mud that you hated so. It was nothing more positive than that–nothing more selfish. Only I did desire, eventually, to turn into a magic carpet and carry you away to all those lands you longed to see." As he spoke she lifted her head as though she drank something; the strange beast in her bosom began to purr . . . "I felt that you were more lonely than anybody else in the world," he went on, "and yet, perhaps, that you were the only person in the world who was really, truly alive. Born out of your time," he murmured, stroking the glove, "fated." Ah, God! What had she done! How had she [Page 238] dared to throw away her happiness like this. This was the only man who had ever understood her. Was it too late? Could it be too late? She was that glove that he held in his fingers. . . . "And then the fact that you had no friends and never had made friends with people. How I understood that, for neither had I. Is it just the same now?" "Yes," she breathed. "Just the same. I am as alone as ever." "So am I," he laughed gently, "just the same." Suddenly with a quick gesture he handed her back the glove and scraped his chair on the floor. "But what seemed to me so mysterious then is perfectly plain to me now. And to you, too, of course. . . . It simply was that we were such egoists, so self-engrossed, so wrapped up in ourselves that we hadn't a corner in our hearts for anybody else. Do you know," he cried, naive and hearty, and dreadfully like another side of that old self again, "I began studying a Mind System when I was in Russia, and I found that we were not peculiar at all. It's quite a well-known form of . . . " She had gone. He sat there, thunder-struck, astounded beyond words. . . . And then he asked the waitress for his bill. "But the cream has not been touched," he said. "Please do not charge me for it." [Page 239] 莳萝泡菜- -- - 六年了，又碰到他了，他坐在小竹桌旁，桌上放着一个装着纸质的水仙花的花瓶。他正剥着 橙子。 我震惊了，看到他眼神的那一刹那，不可能，眼神里居然有一丝陌生的冰冷。他看着我,皱 着眉头思索了一会,然后就象是在黑暗的屋子中划着一根火柴一般的明朗起来。“嗨。罗斯，真没想到是你～”他从痛苦的思索中回复到惊喜中。 我佯装无所谓。“可以坐下吗,” “请。”他拉开椅子，“要什么饮料,还是摩卡,” “恩。”六年了，他还没忘记。 “别的不要了,” “不要了，谢谢。” “那就这样吧。”他面带笑容，对侍者说，接着剥橙子。 “你过的好么,哦，看起来你很不错～”他说到。 “是啊，不错。”我整了整大衣的领子，“只是，你知道，我讨厌这样糟糕的天气„„” “哦，对不起”他打断了我的话“waiter?来一些奶油。你刚才说什么,糟糕的淘气,” “不，是天气”他淡淡的笑了一下 “你知道么,我一直在想，为什么你的声音对我而言是这样的难以忘记。到现在你的声音依旧甜美如当年。还记得六年前我们第一次相遇的下午吗,在星巴克里。你当时那么惊讶因为我几乎不认识所有的花，你那么温柔的用另人着迷的声音一一细述那些花的名字。看到你的时候，冷静忧郁散发着让人进而远之的气息。 “记得，记得很清楚，”我深深的，轻轻的吸了一口气，然而，留在我记忆中的那个特别的下午却是深刻的，外面的阳光和别人的嬉笑都无视存在，品着摩卡，心里是绝望的心碎。 现在听着他的描绘，记忆渐渐的消失了。他所说的是真的，是的，那个下午，到处都是咖啡的浓香，而且?阳光明媚。思绪在后面几个字间徘徊，想到当时的阳光明媚，另一扇记忆的大门被打开了。木制的地板上坐着我和他，他拥着我沐浴在阳光，他忽然把我翻转过来，“我希望。”他用低沉而忧虑的声音说:“我多希望能永远这样啊。'”啊,为什么这样说,“我靠近他。 他轻柔的悲叹了一声，拿起我的手，贴在他的脸上。 “因为我知道自己很爱你，但是你永远都不会爱上我。”他现在看上去比那时精神多了。从前的梦幻般的迷惑和优柔寡断从他身上消失了，取而代之的是生活的独立，成熟的气质。他一定过的不错，记得他说过:“外面阳光明媚，我不会疯掉的，我会一直好好的。”“抽烟吗,”他从口袋里掏出。 “好吧，”我抽出一根。“看上去还不错。”“哦，我抽的不多，所以要求比较高一点。对我而言，抽烟还没成瘾，而是一件奢侈品，象?D?D香水。你还是偏爱香水吗,啊，当我在云南时`````````”“你是真的去了云南,”我打断他。 “是的。我在那住了一年多，你还记得我们过去常常提起的云南吗,”“当然记得。”他奇怪的似笑非笑了一下，然后倚向后面。8“多让人感到好奇啊，我们以前计划过的地方我都走遍了。”在他说话的时候，他轻轻的，在烟灰缸上弹着烟灰。 “很羡慕你。”“那儿很令人心旷神怡，我曾在船上度过了几天，还记得帕格尼尼那首曲子吗,”“记得。”乐曲已开始在我脑中荡然回旋了。 “你现在还弹钢琴吗,”“不了，卖了。”他脸上带着苦相。“但是你对音乐是如此情有独钟。”他漠然的说到。 “我现在没多少时间去顾及。”他没追问下去。'水上的生活很独特，记得有一个晚上，有个船夫在夜宵时问我要不要点莳萝泡菜，他想和我一起分享，这对我来说是非常合适的?D?D你知道他是代 表 关于同志近三年现实表现材料材料类招标技术评分表图表与交易pdf视力表打印pdf用图表说话 pdf 什么意思吧。“”是的。“我说。 在停顿的那一刻，我们彼此都在注视着对方，在过去，躺在他的身边，任他泛黄的手指在身体上游走，看着柜子上的一个有点绿色的玻璃瓶子，点缀着红色的辣椒，象鹦鹉的嘴，他说那是个象征，但此刻，他说:“你真是一个杰出的听众。当你用那双狂热的眼睛看着我 的时候，我感到我要向你倾诉我不会对别人说的话。”他的言谈中带有嘲笑的口气吗,我不敢肯定，但有想走的冲动。 我系上围巾。 “你不是想走吧,”“是的，我必须走。' '我感到你比世上任何人都孤独。”他继续道，“然而，或许你是唯一真真实实在在活着的人。”上帝，我究竟在做什么。我怎么能敢如此的抛弃我的幸福呢,这是唯一一个曾经真正了解我的人，是不是太迟了, '事实上，你从来不与人交朋友，我知道这个事实是因为我也是如此，我们两个现在一样是不是,“”是的，“我喘了口气，'完全一样，我还是和以前一样的孤独。”'我也是如此。“他轻轻的笑到，”完全一样。“猛然间，一直令我迷惑不解的事情现在我完全明白了，问 题 快递公司问题件快递公司问题件货款处理关于圆的周长面积重点题型关于解方程组的题及答案关于南海问题 在于我们过于自我，封闭在自我天地之间，而在彼此的心中无法给对方留一席之地。 生命里总有什么是不会再来的，无法重复的。 如果爱和痛都曾刻骨铭心，那已经是一种幸福，。，我承认在看到真相时，我是脆弱的，我可以在流泪的时候，努力转过头，不让他看见，但我真的脆弱了„„ 这是一种与生具来的缺陷。