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To Make Papa Proud
为了让父亲高兴
Gregory H. Hemingway
格雷戈里·H·海明威
That summer in Havana I read papa's favorites, from Huckleberry Finn to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: like him, I sometimes had two or three books going at the same time. Then papa steered me to the short story masters, Maupassant and Chekhov. “Don't try to analyze — just relax and enjoy them.”
那年夏天在哈瓦那，我读了爸爸最爱看的那些小说，从《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》到《一位青年艺术家的肖像》。像他一样，有时我两三部小说同时看。后来爸爸指导我阅读短篇小说大师莫伯桑和契诃夫。“不要劳神去作分析—只管身心放松，好好欣赏就行。”
“Now,” papa said one morning. “Try writing a short story yourself. And don't expect it to be any good.”
“听着，”一天上午爸爸说。“你自己试着写一篇短篇小说。可别指望会写得怎么好。”
I sat down at a table with one of papa's fine-pointed pencils and thought and thought. I looked out the window, and listened to the birds, to a cat crying to join them, and to the scratch of my pencil, doodling. I let the cat out. Another wanted in.
我拿起爸爸的一支笔头尖尖的铅笔，在桌前坐了下来，想了又想。我望着窗外，听着鸟儿鸣唱，听着一只想要和鸟儿待在一起的猫拼命叫着；还听着铅笔在纸上乱涂乱画的磨擦声。我把猫放出去。另有一只猫想进来。
I went to papa's typewriter. He'd finished with it for the day. Slowly I typed out a story and then took it to him.
我走到爸爸的打字机旁。那天他已经用过打字机，不会再用了。我慢慢地打出了一篇小说，随后拿去给他看。
Papa put his glasses on, poured himself another drink, and read, as I waited. He finished it and looked up at me. “It's excellent, Gig. Much better than anything I could do at your age. Only change I'd make is here,” and he pointed to the line about a bird falling from its nest and finding, miraculously, that if it flapped its wings, it wouldn't crash on the rocks below.
爸爸戴上眼镜，给自己又倒了杯饮料，接着读小说，我等在一旁。他读完小说，抬头看着我。“太棒了，吉格。比我在你这个年龄时能写的任何东西都好得多。我想改的唯一地方在这儿，”我指着一行文字，描写的是一只鸟从巢里跌落下来，却惊奇地发现只要振动双翅，就不会撞落在下面的岩石上。
