A Journey (1)

A Journey (1)
어떤 여행

* First published in The Greater Inclination (1899).

-

-
As she lay in her berth(기차의 침대), staring at the shadows overhead, the rush of the wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles of wakeful lucidity(명료함). The sleeping-car had sunk into its night-silence.

Through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of hurrying blackness(긴 어둠 간간히 스치는 빛). Now and then she turned her head and looked through the opening in the hangings at her husband’s curtains across the aisle.

She wondered restlessly if he wanted anything and if she could hear him if he called. His voice had grown very weak within the last months and it irritated(짜증나게하다) him when she did not hear. This irritability, this increasing childish petulance(토라짐) seemed to give expression to their imperceptible estrangement(소원해짐).

그가 부를때 알아듣지 못할까봐 조바심이 났다(wondered restlessly). 지난 몇달간 그의 목소리는 병약해졌고 그때문에 그는 짜증을 냈다. 그 짜증으로 인해 (부부사이가) 소원해진듯 했다.

Like two faces looking at one another through a sheet of glass they were close together, almost touching, but they could not hear or feel each other: the conductivity between them was broken.

마주보고 있어도 둘사이에 유리로 막혀있는 듯 했다. 서로 들을 수도 느낄 수도 없었다. 둘 사이에 공감통로(conductivity)가 없어졌다.

She, at least, had this sense of separation, and she fancied sometimes that she saw it reflected in the look with which he supplemented his failing words.

결국 그녀는 둘 사이가 멀어졌다는 것을 깨닳았고 그가 내뱉는(he supplemented) 비관적인 말들(failing words)이 그것(둘 사이의 소원함)을 반영하는 것이라고 생각했다(fancied).

Doubtless the fault was hers. She was too impenetrably(관통할 수 없이) healthy to be touched by the irrelevancies(분별없음) of disease.

* impenetrably; 관통할 수 없이 < im+penetrate+ly
* the irrelevancies of disease; 병이 어떻든 관계없음 <> ir+relevance

의심할 것도 없이 상황이 이렇게 된것은 그녀탓이다. 그녀가 너무 건강한 탓에 어떤 병도 그녀를 건들일수 없었다.

Her self-reproachful tenderness was tinged with the sense of his irrationality: she had a vague feeling that there was a purpose in his helpless tyrannies.

* was tinged with~; ~으로 변질되다.
* tyranny;폭정 < tyrant; 폭군

그의 비이성적 행동으로 인해 그녀의 성격이 자책하는 경향이 생겼다. 그의 못말릴 폭력적인 행동(helpless tyrannies)의 목적이 무었인지 막연히 짐작했다. (병든 남편은 건강한 아내가 부럽다 못해 화가나 있음. 그 화남의 목적이 아내도 함께 무너뜨리려는 이기적 심사일지도 모른다고 생각함)

The suddenness of the change had found her so unprepared. A year ago their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both had the same prodigal(풍부한) confidence in an exhaustless(지칠줄 모르는) future.

예상치 못한 변화가 일어났다. 일년전만 해도 그들의 미래는 하나의 맥박(부부일심)처럼 강력하게(robust measure) 뛰었다. 지칠줄 모르는 자신감에 가득찬 미래였다. (둘이라면 못할게 없다는 확신으로 가득찼었다.)

Now their energies no longer kept step: hers still bounded ahead of life, preempting unclaimed regions of hope and activity, while his lagged behind, vainly struggling to overtake her.

* preempting unclaimed regions; 아무에게도 선점되지 않은 지역=신세계

지금은 그둘의 같은 길을 걷지 않고있다(no keep steps). 그녀는 앞으로 남은 생에 대한 희망과 활력을 가지고 있지만 그녀의 남편이 뒤에 메달려 헛되이(vainly) 끌어당기고 있었다. (남편은 짐만 되고 있다. 차라리 죽었으면 하는 심정일게다. 그런데...)

When they married, she had such arrears of living to make up: her days had been as bare as the white-washed schoolroom where she forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children.

* arrears; 지연.지체. (경제용어로) 임금 채불;
* make up; 해결하다

결혼할 당시 그녀는 살아내기에 급급했다. 그녀의 생활은 배우기 싫어하는 아이들에게 영양가 없는 사실들을 강요하던 흰 회벽칠을 한 교실 만큼이나 보잘게 없었다(as bare as ~).

* 곤궁했다는 뜻인지 지루했다는 뜻인지 알 수 없음.

His coming had broken in on the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest chances.

* slumber; 침체, 선잠

그의 등장은 그녀가 (처한) 지루한 삶(slumber of circumstance)에서 깨어나게(break in) 했고, 멀게 느껴지던 희망(기회)이 주변으로 느껴질만큼 현재의 지평이 넓어졌다.

But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her wings.

하지만 모르는 사이에(imperceptibly) 지평이 좁아졌다. 삶이 그녀의 뒤통수를 쳤다(grudge; 뒤끝, 원한). 그녀에게 날개를 펼칠 기회가 전혀 주어지지 않았다.
-

-
At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild air would set him right; but when he came back this assurance was explained as having of course included a winter in a dry climate.

처음에 의사는 온화한 기후에서 6주간 쉬면 회복하기 충분하다고 했다. (하지만 회복되지 않았기 때문에) 돌아와서 물어보니 그때의 장담은 건조한 기후에서 겨울을 보내는 것도 포함된다고 설명하는 것이었다.

(6개월 지나서 딴소리하는 의사라니. 남편은 결국 차가운 지방에서 병이 악화되고 돌아오는 기차안에서 죽는다.)

They gave up their pretty house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, and went to Colorado.

결혼 후 일년도 채 넘지 않았으니 결혼선물, 신접살림을 다 포기하고 콜로라도로 갔다. (의사가 건조한 겨울날씨를 권했으니까)

She had hated it there from the first. Nobody knew her or cared about her; there was no one to wonder at the good match she had made, or to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards which were still a surprise to her. And he kept growing worse.

여자는 아무도 알아봐 주는이가 없다는 이유로 콜로라도가 싫다. 남편은 병세가 악화 되기만 했다. (도데체 여자는 뭘 하고 있었을까?)

She felt herself beset with difficulties too evasive to be fought by so direct a temperament. She still loved him, of course; but he was gradually, undefinably ceasing to be himself.

The man she had married had been strong, active, gently masterful: the male whose pleasure it is to clear a way through the material obstructions of life; but now it was she who was the protector, he who must be shielded from importunities and given his drops or his beef-juice though the skies were falling.

The routine of the sick-room bewildered her; this punctual administering of medicine seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious mummery.

There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of pity swept away her instinctive resentment of his condition, when she still found his old self in his eyes as they groped for each other through the dense medium of his weakness. But these moments had grown rare.

Sometimes he frightened her: his sunken expressionless face seemed that of a stranger; his voice was weak and hoarse; his thin-lipped smile a mere muscular contraction. Her hand avoided his damp soft skin, which had lost the familiar roughness of health: she caught herself
furtively watching him as she might have watched a strange animal.

It frightened her to feel that this was the man she loved; there were hours when to tell him what she suffered seemed the one escape from her fears. But in general she judged herself more leniently, reflecting that she had perhaps been too long alone with him, and that she would feel differently when they were at home again, surrounded by her robust and buoyant family.

-

-
How she had rejoiced when the doctors at last gave their consent to his going home! She knew, of course, what the decision meant; they both knew. It meant that he was to die; but they dressed the truth in hopeful euphuisms, and at times, in the joy of preparation, she really
forgot the purpose of their journey, and slipped into an eager allusion to next year’s plans.

At last the day of leaving came. She had a dreadful fear that they would never get away; that somehow at the last moment he would fail her; that the doctors held one of their accustomed treacheries in reserve; but nothing happened.

They drove to the station, he was installed in a seat with a rug over his knees and a cushion at his back, and she hung out of the window waving unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she had really never liked till then.

The first twenty-four hours had passed off well. He revived a little and it amused him to look out of the window and to observe the humours of the car.

The second day he began to grow weary and to chafe under the dispassionate stare of the freckled child with the lump of chewing-gum. She had to explain to the child’s mother that her husband was too ill to be disturbed: a statement received by that lady with a resentment visibly supported by the maternal sentiment of the whole car.

That night he slept badly and the next morning his temperature frightened her: she was sure he was growing worse.

The day passed slowly, punctuated by the small irritations of travel. Watching his tired face, she traced in its contractions every rattle and jolt of the train, till her own body vibrated with sympathetic fatigue. She felt the others observing him too, and hovered restlessly between him and the line of interrogative eyes.

The freckled child hung about him like a fly; offers of candy and picture-books failed to dislodge her: she twisted one leg around the other and watched him imperturbably.

-

-
The porter, as he passed, lingered with vague proffers of help, probably inspired by philanthropic passengers swelling with the sense that “something ought to be done;” and one nervous man in a skull-cap was audibly concerned as to the possible effect on his wife’s health.

The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. Towards dusk she sat down beside him and he laid his hand on hers. The touch startled her. He seemed to be calling her from far off.

She looked at him helplessly and his smile went through her like a physical pang.

"Are you very tired?" she asked.
"No, not very."
"We’ll be there soon now."
"Yes, very soon."
"This time to-morrow---"

He nodded and they sat silent. When she had put him to bed and crawled into her own berth she tried to cheer herself with the thought that in less than twenty-four hours they would be in New York.

Her people would all be at the station to meet her—she pictured their round unanxious faces pressing through the crowd. She only hoped they would not tell him too loudly that he was looking splendidly and would be all right in no time: the subtler sympathies developed by long contact with suffering were making her aware of a certain coarseness of texture in the family sensibilities.

Suddenly she thought she heard him call. She parted the curtains and listened. No, it was only a man snoring at the other end of the car. His snores had a greasy sound, as though they passed through tallow. She lay down and tried to sleep.

Had she not heard him move? She started up trembling...

The silence frightened her more than any sound. He might not be able to make her hear—he might be calling her now...

What made her think of such things? It was merely the familiar tendency of an over-tired mind to fasten itself on the most intolerable chance within the range of its forebodings.
-
---------------------------------
[다음]