第六章（第7/12页）

If you were young, you just set your teeth, and bit on and held on, till the money began to flow from the invisible; it was a question of power. It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle, powerful emanation of will out of yourself brought back to you the mysterious nothingness of money a word on a bit of paper. It was a sort of magic, certainly it was triumph. The bitch-goddess! Well, if one had to prostitute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess! One could always despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which was good.

若你正青春年少，只需咬紧牙关，坚持到底，财富便会从天而降，这与你的才能息息相关。这同样与决心有关，意志力散发的过程难以捉摸，却又立竿见影，为你带回神秘虚无的金钱——那印有文字的小纸片。金钱拥有某种魔力，当然也意味着成功。那堕落女神！唉，如果卖身已经不可避免，那么就选择堕落女神好了！即使卖身于她，仍可以保留着心中的那份蔑视，这确实是理想的选择。

Clifford, of course, had still many childish taboos and fetishes. He wanted to be thought "really good", which was all cock-a-hoopy nonsense. What was really good was what actually caught on. It was no good being really good and getting left with it. It seemed as if most of the "really good" men just missed the bus. After all you only lived one life, and if you missed the bus, you were just left on the pavement, along with the rest of the failures.

克利福德当然仍保留着许多孩子气的忌讳和情结。他期望跻身“杰出”的行列，但这一自负的想法显然只是痴人说梦。真正的杰出意味着受到公众的广泛认可。才华出众却无人问津，是件糟糕的事情。似乎绝大多数的真正杰出人士都与机遇擦肩而过。人生苦短，若错失良机，就只能与其他失败者一道，体味被遗弃的苦涩。

Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clifford, next winter. He and she had caught the bus all right, so they might as well ride on top for a bit, and show it.

康妮打算来年冬天与克利福德共赴伦敦。他俩都已将机遇握在手中，因此或许可能体验到那居高临下的畅快瞬间，并且大肆炫耀一番。

The worst of it was, Clifford tended to become vague, absent, and to fall into fits of vacant depression. It was the wound to his psyche coming out. But it made Connie want to scream. Oh God, if the mechanism of the consciousness itself was going to go wrong, then what was one to do? Hang it all, one did one's bit! Was one to be let down ABSOLUTELY? Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even as she wept she was saying to herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As if that would get you anywhere!

可糟糕的是，克利福德逐渐变得迷惘，心不在焉，时常堕入空虚与抑郁之中，不可自拔。这是心灵的创伤慢慢在显现。但这一切逼得康妮想要尖叫。噢，上帝，如果意识运行机制出现偏差，该怎么办才好呢？真是活见鬼，但也只能尽人事听天命。难道还能彻底放弃不成？有时她也会痛哭流涕，但就算泪流满面，她也会提醒自己：傻瓜，把手帕都沾湿了！流泪根本无济于事！

Since Michaelis, she had made up her mind she wanted nothing. That seemed the simplest solution of the otherwise insoluble. She wanted nothing more than what she'd got; only she wanted to get ahead with what she'd got: Clifford, the stories, Wragby, the Lady-Chatterley business, money and fame, such as it was...she wanted to go ahead with it all. Love, sex, all that sort of stuff, just water-ices! Lick it up and forget it. If you don't hang on to it in your mind, it's nothing. Sex especially...nothing! Make up your mind to it, and you've solved the problem. Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the same thing.

自从与米凯利斯决裂，她已下定决心杜绝任何欲求。这似乎是唯一行之有效的解决方法。她不再奢求其他任何东西，只会好好珍惜目前拥有的：克利福德，小说，拉格比，从男爵夫人的地位，金钱与名誉，诸如此类……她想将这一切都好好经营下去。爱情，性爱，这些都只是爽口的冰糕！浅尝过后便可尽数遗忘。若不为之牵肠挂肚，它就无足轻重。性爱尤其如此……根本无关紧要！只要下定决心，所有问题都会迎刃而解。性爱像杯鸡尾酒，两者持续的时间大致相当，起到的效果也不相上下，因此没什么本质区别。

But a child, a baby! That was still one of the sensations. She would venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to consider, and it was curious, there wasn't a man in the world whose children you wanted. Mick's children! Repulsive thought! As lief have a child to a rabbit! Tommy Dukes? he was very nice, but somehow you couldn't associate him with a baby, another generation. He ended in himself. And out of all the rest of Clifford's pretty wide acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse her contempt, when she thought of having a child by him. There were several who would have been quite possible as lover, even Mick. But to let them breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.