评论
打印
"She told me," he wrote, "to come back in five years, and that stared me thinking. In five year I'd be 42, and what would a girl of 21 want with a man twice as old as her?"
"她要我五年之后再回来找她，"他写道，"这话使我认真思考了起来：五年之后，我就四十二岁了，一个二十一岁的姑娘要一个是她两倍年纪的男人干什么?"
John Monahan moved in circles where the work of the Zeritskys was well known. Not only did he see an opportunity of being still only 37 when his darling reached 21, but he foresaw a painless way of passing the years which he must endure without her. Accordingly, he presented himself for the deep-freeze, paid his $3000 and the $500 storage charge in advance, and left, he claimed, "written instructions to let me out in five years, so there'd be no mistakes."
约翰·莫纳汉经常活动的那个圈子里的人，都很了解齐氏兄弟干的行当。莫纳汉不仅看到一个机会，能使他的心上人长到二十一岁时，他自己仍保持三十七岁，而且他预见到一个无痛苦的方法，可使他度过没有姑娘陪伴的那难熬的五个年头。因此，他前去申请冷冻，预付了三千美元和五百美元的储存费，他还声称留下了"书面指示，五年解冻，以防差错。"
Nobody knows how the slip happened, but somehow John A. Monahan, or rather the number assignedto him, was entered on the books for 25 years instead of five years. Upon being defrosted, and discovering that a quarter of a century had elapsed, his rage was awesome. Along with everything else, his love for his sweetheart had been perfectly preserved, but she had given up waiting for him and was a happy mother of two boys and six girls.
谁也不知道疏忽怎么发生的，不知怎的，约翰·A·莫纳汉，确切地说是指定给他的那个代号，在簿子上登记的是冷冻二十五年而不是五年。解冻之后，他发现四分之一世纪已经过去了，于是大发雷霆。他对情人的爱，与其他一切一起完好地保存了下来，可是她早已放弃了等他的念头，已经成了一个有二子六女的幸福母亲。
Monahan's accusation that the Zeritskys had "ruined his life" may be taken with a grain of salt. He was still a young man, and the rumor that he got a hundred thousand for the magazinerights to his story was true.
莫纳汉指控齐里茨基兄弟"毁了他的一生"，这未必可以全信。他依然是个年轻人，况且杂志付给他十万美元的文章版权税的传说也是真的。
