高级英语 12 Why I Write

The LoonsMargarel Laurence1、Just below Manawaka, where the Wachakwa River ran brown and noisy over the pebbles , the scrub oak and grey-green willow and chokecherry bushes grew in a dense thicket . In a clearing at the centre of the thicket stood the Tonnerre family's shack. The basis at this dwelling was a small square cabin made of poplar poles and chinked with mud, which had been built by Jules Tonnerre some fifty years before, when he came back from Batoche with a bullet in his thigh, the year that Riel was hung and the voices of the Metis entered their long silence. Jules had only intended to stay the winter in the Wachakwa Valley, but the family was still there in the thirties, when I was a child. As the Tonnerres had increased, their settlement had been added to, until the clearing at the foot of the town hill was a chaos of lean-tos, wooden packing cases, warped lumber, discarded car types, ramshackle chicken coops , tangled strands of barbed wire and rusty tin cans.2、The Tonnerres were French half breeds, and among themselves they spoke a patois that was neither Cree nor French. Their English was broken and full of obscenities. They did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation, further north, and they did not belong among theScots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka, either. They were, as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring . When their men were not working at odd jobs or as section hands onthe C.P. R. they lived on relief. In the summers, one of the Tonnerre youngsters, with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter, would knock at the doors of the town's brick houses and offer for sale a lard -pail full of bruised wild strawberries, and if he got as much as a quarter he would grab the coin and run before the customer had time to change her mind. Sometimes old Jules, or his son Lazarus, would get mixed up in a Saturday-night brawl , and would hit out at whoever was nearest or howl drunkenly among the offended shoppers on Main Street, and then the Mountie would put them for the night in the barred cell underneath the Court House, and the next morning they would be quiet again.3、PiquetteTonnerre, the daughter of Lazarus, was in my class at school. She was older than I, but she had failed several grades, perhaps because her attendance had always been sporadic and her interest in schoolwork negligible . Part of the reason she had missed a lot of school was that she had had tuberculosis of the bone, and had once spent many months in hospital. I knew this because my father was the doctor who had looked after her. Her sickness was almost the only thing I knew about her, however. Otherwise, she existed for me only as a vaguely embarrassing presence, with her hoarse voice and her clumsy limping walk and her grimy cotton dresses that were always miles too long. I was neither friendly nor unfriendly towards her. She dwelt and moved somewhere within my scope of vision, but I did not actually notice her very much until that peculiar summer when I was eleven.4、"I don't know what to do about that kid." my father said at dinner one evening. "PiquetteTonnerre, I mean. The damn bone's flared up again. I've had her in hospital for quite a while now, and it's under control all right, but I hate like the dickens to send her home again."5、"Couldn't you explain to her mother that she has to rest a lot?" my mother said.6、"The mother's not there" my father replied. "She took off a few years back. Can't say I blame her. Piquette cooks for them, and she says Lazarus would never do anything for himself as long as she's there. Anyway, I don't think she'd take much care of herself, once she got back. She's only thirteen, after all. Beth, I was thinking—What about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer?A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance."7、My mother looked stunned.8、"But Ewen -- what about Roddie and Vanessa?"9、"She's not contagious ," my father said. "And it would be company for Vanessa."10、"Oh dear," my mother said in distress, "I'll bet anything she has nits in her hair."11、"For Pete's sake," my father said crossly, "do you think Matron would let her stay in the hospital for all this time like that? Don't be silly, Beth. "12、Grandmother MacLeod, her delicately featured face as rigid as a cameo , now brought her mauve -veined hands together as though she were about to begin prayer.13、"Ewen, if that half breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going," she announced. "I'll go to Morag's for the summer."14、I had trouble in stifling my urge to laugh, for my mother brightened visibly and quickly tried to hide it. If it came to a choice between Grandmother MacLeod and Piquette, Piquette would win hands down, nits or not.15、"It might be quite nice for you, at that," she mused. "You haven't seen Morag for over a year, and you might enjoy being in the city for a while. Well, Ewen dear, you do what you think best. If you think it would do Piquette some good, then we' II be glad to have her, as long as she behaves herself."16、So it happened that several weeks later, when we all piled into my father's old Nash, surrounded by suitcases and boxes of provisions and toys for my ten-month-old brother, Piquette was with us and Grandmother MacLeod, miraculously, was not. My father would only be staying at the cottage for a couple of weeks, for he had to get back to his practice, but the rest of us would stay at Diamond Lake until the end of August.17、Our cottage was not named, as many were, "Dew Drop Inn" or "Bide-a-Wee," or "Bonnie Doon〞. The sign on the roadway bore in austere letters only our name, MacLeod. It was not a large cottage, but it was on the lakefront. You could look out the windows and see, through the filigree of the spruce trees, the water glistening greenly as the sun caught it. All around the cottage were ferns, and sharp-branched raspberrybushes, and moss that had grown over fallen tree trunks, If you looked carefully among the weeds and grass, you could find wild strawberry plants which were in white flower now and in another month would bear fruit, the fragrant globes hanging like miniaturescarlet lanterns on the thin hairy stems. The two grey squirrels were still there, gossiping at us from the tall spruce beside the cottage, and by the end of the summer they would again be tame enough to take pieces of crust from my hands. The broad mooseantlers that hung above the back door were a little more bleached and fissured after the winter, but otherwise everything was the same. I raced joyfully around my kingdom, greeting all the places I had not seen for a year. My brother, Roderick, who had not been born when we were here last summer, sat on the car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce cone, meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands. My mother and father toted the luggage from car to cottage, exclaiming over how well the place had wintered, no broken windows, thank goodness, no apparent damage from storm felled branches or snow.18、Only after I had finished looking around did I notice Piquette. She was sitting on the swing her lame leg held stiffly out, and her other foot scuffing the ground as she swung slowly back and forth. Her long hair hung black and straight around her shoulders, and her broad coarse-featured face bore no expression -- it was blank, as though she no longer dwelt within her own skull, as though she had gone elsewhere.I approached her very hesitantly.19、"Want to come and play?"20、Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn.21、"I ain't a kid," she said.22、Wounded, I stamped angrily away, swearing I would not speak to her for the rest of the summer. In the days that followed, however, Piquette began to interest me, and l began to want to interest her. My reasons did not appear bizarre to me. Unlikely as it may seem, I had only just realised that the Tonnerre family, whom I had always heard Called half breeds, were actually Indians, or as near as made no difference. My acquaintance with Indians was not expensive. I did not remember ever having seen a real Indian, and my new awareness that Piquette sprang from the people of Big Bear and Poundmaker, of Tecumseh, of the Iroquois who had eaten Father Brébeuf's heart--all this gave her an instant attraction in my eyes. I was devoted reader of Pauline Johnson at this age, and sometimes would orate aloud and in an exalted voice, West Wind, blow fromyour prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west--and so on. It seemed to me that Piquette must be in some way a daughter of the forest, a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds, who might impart to me, if I took the right approach, some of the secrets which she undoubtedly knew --where the whippoorwill made her nest, how the coyote reared her young, or whatever it was that it said in Hiawatha.23、I set about gaining Piquette's trust. She was not allowed to go swimming, with her bad leg, but I managed to lure her down to the beach-- or rather, she came because there was nothing else to do. The water was always icy, for the lake was fed by springs, but I swam like a dog, thrashing my arms and legs around at such speed and with such an output of energy that I never grew cold. Finally, when I had enough, I came out and sat beside Piquette on the sand. When she saw me approaching, her hands squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sullenly, without speaking.24、"Do you like this place?" I asked, after a while, intending to lead on from there into the question of forest lore .25、Piquette shrugged. "It's okay. Good as anywhere."26、"I love it, "1 said. "We come here every summer."27、"So what?" Her voice was distant, and I glanced at her uncertainly, wondering what I could have said wrong.28、"Do you want to come for a walk?" I asked her. "We wouldn't need to go far. If you walk just around the point there, you come to a bay where great big reeds grow in the water, and all kinds of fish hang around there. Want to? Come on."29、She shook her head.30、"Your dad said I ain't supposed to do no more walking than I got to." I tried another line.31、"I bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh?" I began respectfully.32、Piquette looked at me from her large dark unsmiling eyes.33、"I don't know what in hell you're talkin' about," she replied. "You nuts or somethin'? If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear?"34、I was startled and my feelings were hurt, but I had a kind of dogged perseverance. I ignored her rebuff.35、"You know something, Piquette? There's loons here, on this lake. You can see their nests just up the shore there, behind those logs. At night, you can hear them even from the cottage, but it's better to listen from the beach. My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a fewyears when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away."36、Piquette was picking up stones and snail shells and then dropping them again.37、"Who gives a good goddamn?" she said.38、It became increasingly obvious that, as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss. That evening I went out by myself, scrambling through the bushes that overhung the steep path, my feet slipping on the fallen spruce needles that covered the ground. When I reached the shore, I walked along the firm damp sand to the small pier that my father had built, and sat down there. I heard someone else crashing through the undergrowth and the bracken, and for a moment I thought Piquette had changed her mind, but it turned out to be my father. He sat beside me on the pier and we waited, without speaking.38、At night the lake was like black glass with a streak of amber which was the path of the moon. All around, the spruce trees grew tall and close-set, branches blackly sharp against the sky, which was lightened by a cold flickering of stars. Then the loons began their calling. They rose like phantom birds from the nests on the shore, and flew out onto the dark still surface of the water.40、No one can ever describe that ululating sound, the crying of the loons, and no one who has heard it can ever forget it. Plaintive , and yet with a qualityof chilling mockery , those voices belonged to a world separated by aeon from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home.41、"They must have sounded just like that," my father remarked, "before any person ever set foot here." Then he laughed. "You could say the same, of course, about sparrows or chipmunk, but somehow it only strikes you that way with the loons."42、"I know," I said.43、Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening. We stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then we went back to the cottage. My mother was reading beside the fireplace. Piquette was looking at the burning birch log, and not doing anything.44、"You should have come along," I said, although in fact I was glad she had not.45、"Not me", Piquette said. "You wouldn’ catch me walkin' way down there jus' for a bunch of squawkin' birds."46、Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she Would not or could not respond when I suggested exploring the woods or Playing house. I thought it was probably her slow and difficult walking that held her back. Shestayed most of the time in the cottage with my mother, helping her with the dishes or with Roddie, but hardly ever talking. Then the Duncans arrived at their cottage, and I spent my days with Mavis, who was my best friend. I could not reach Piquette at all, and I soon lost interest in trying. But all that summer she remained as both a reproach and a mystery to me.47、That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week's illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain and my mother's. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that PiquetteTonnerre was no longer at school. I do not remember seeing her at all until four years later, one Saturday night when Mavis and I were having Cokes in the Regal Café. The jukebox was booming like tuneful thunder, and beside it, leaning lightly on its chrome and its rainbow glass, was a girl.48、Piquette must have been seventeen then, although she looked about twenty. I stared at her, astounded that anyone could have changed so much. Her face, so stolidand expressionless before, was animated now with a gaiety that was almost violent. She laughed and talked very loudly with the boys around her. Her lipstick was bright carmine, and her hair was cut Short and frizzilypermed . She had not been pretty as a child, and she was not pretty now, for her features were still heavy and blunt. But her dark and slightly slanted eyes were beautiful, and her skin-tight skirt and orange sweater displayed to enviable advantage a soft and slender body.49、She saw me, and walked over. She teetered a little, but it was not due to her once-tubercular leg, for her limp was almost gone.50、"Hi, Vanessa," Her voice still had the same hoarseness . "Long time no see, eh?"51、"Hi," I said "Where've you been keeping yourself, Piquette?"52、"Oh, I been around," she said. "I been away almost two years now. Been all over the place--Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon. Jesus, what I could tell you! I come back this summer, but I ain'tstayin'. You kids go in to the dance?"53、"No," I said abruptly, for this was a sore point with me. I was fifteen, and thought I was old enough to go to the Saturday-night dances at the Flamingo. My mother, however, thought otherwise.54、"Y'oughta come," Piquette said. "I never miss one. It's just about the on'y thing in this jerkwater55、town that's any fun. Boy, you couldn' catch me stayin' here. I don' givea shit about this place. It stinks."56、She sat down beside me, and I caught the harsh over-sweetness of her perfume.57、"Listen, you wanna know something, Vanessa?" she confided , her voice only slightly blurred. "Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me."58、I nodded speechlessly. I was certain she was speaking the truth. I knewa little more than I had that summer at Diamond Lake, but I could not reach her now any more than I had then, I was ashamed, ashamed of my own timidity, the frightened tendency to look the other way. Yet I felt no real warmth towards her-- I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. At this moment, meeting her again, I had to admit that she repelled and embarrassed me, and I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another.59、"I'll tell you something else," Piquette went on. "All the old bitches an' biddies in this town will sure be surprised. I'm gettin' married this fall -- my boy friend, he's an English fella, works in the stockyards in the city there, a very tall guy, got blond wavy hair. Gee, is he ever handsome. Got this real Hiroshima name. Alvin Gerald Cummings--some handle, eh? They call him Al."60、For the merest instant, then I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiantface, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope.61、"Gee, Piquette --" I burst out awkwardly, "that's swell. That's really wonderful. Congratulations—good luck--I hope you'll be happy--"62、As l mouthed the conventional phrases, I could only guess how great her need must have been, that she had been forced to seek the very things she so bitterly rejected.63、When I was eighteen, I left Manawaka and went away to college. At the end of my first year, I came back home for the summer. I spent the first few days in talking non-stop with my mother, as we exchanged all the news that somehow had not found its way into letters-- what had happened in my life and what had happened here in Manawaka while I was away. My mother searched her memory for events that concerned people I knew.64、"Did I ever write you about PiquetteTonnerre, Vanessa?" she asked one morning.65、"No, I don't think so," I replied. "Last I heard of her, she was going to marry some guy in the city. Is she still there?"66、My mother looked Hiroshima , and it was a moment before she spoke, as though she did not know how to express what she had to tell and wished she did not need to try.67、"She's dead," she said at last. Then, as I stared at her, "Oh, Vanessa, when it happened, I couldn't help thinking of her as she was that summer--so sullen and gauche and badly dressed. I couldn't help wondering if we could have done something more at that time--but what could we do? She used to be around in the cottage there with me all day, and honestly it was all I could do to get a word out of her. She didn't even talk to your father very much, althoughI think she liked him in her way."68、"What happened?" I asked.69、"Either her husband left her, or she left him," my mother said. "I don't know which. Anyway, she came back here with two youngsters, both only babies--they must have been born very close together. She kept house, I guess, for Lazarus and her brothers, down in the valley there, in the old Tonnerre place.I used to see her on the street sometimes, but she never spoke to me. She'd put on an awful lot of weight, and she looked a mess, to tell you the truth, a real slattern , dressed any old how. She was up in court a couple of times--drunk and disorderly, of course. One Saturday night last winter, during the coldest weather, Piquette was alone in the shack with the children. The Tonnerres made home brew all the time, so I've heard, and Lazarus said later she'd beendrinking most of the day when he and the boys went out that evening. They had an old woodstove there--you know the kind, with exposed pipes. The shack caught fire. Piquette didn't get out, and neither did the children."70、I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say. There was a kind of silence around the image in my mind of the fire and the snow, and I wished I could put from my memory the look thatI had seen once in Piquette's eyes.71、I went up to Diamond Lake for a few days that summer, with Mavis and her family. The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father's death, and I did not even go to look at it, not wanting to witness my long-ago kingdom possessed now by strangers. But one evening I went clown to the shore by myself.72、The small pier which my father had built was gone, and in its place there was a large and solid pier built by the government, for Galloping Mountain was now a national park, and Diamond Lake had been re-named Lake Wapakata, for it was felt that an Indian name would have a greater appeal to tourists. The one store had become several dozen, and the settlement had all the attributes of a flourishing resort--hotels, a dance-hall, cafes with neon signs, the penetrating odoursof potato chips and hot dogs.73、I sat on the government pier and looked out across the water. At night the lake at least was the same as it had always been, darkly shining and bearing within its black glass the streak of amber that was the path of the moon. There was no wind that evening, and everything was quiet all around me. It seemed too quiet, and then I realized that the loons were no longer here. I listened for some time, to make sure, but never once did I hear that long-drawn call, half mocking and half plaintive, spearing through the stillness across the lake.74、I did not know what had happened to the birds. Perhaps they had gone away to some far place of belonging. Perhaps they had been unable to find such a place, and had simply died out, having ceased to care any longer whether they lived or not.75、I remembered how Piquette had scorned to come along, when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognized way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons.第十二课潜水鸟玛格丽特劳伦斯马纳瓦卡山下有一条小河,叫瓦恰科瓦河,浑浊的河水沿着布满鹅卵石的河床哗哗地流淌着,河边谷地上长着无数的矮橡树、灰绿色柳树和野樱桃树,形成一片茂密的丛林.坦纳瑞家的棚屋就座落在丛林中央的一片空地上.这住所的主体结构是一间四方形木屋,系用一根根白杨木涂以灰泥建成,建造者是儒勒?坦纳瑞.大约五十年前,也就是里尔被绞杀、法印混血族遭到彻底失败的那一年,儒勒?坦纳瑞大腿上带着一颗枪弹从巴托什战场回到这里后便建造了那间小木屋.儒勒当初只打算在瓦恰科瓦河谷里度过当年的那个冬天,但直到三十年代,他们家仍住在那儿,当时我还是个孩子.坦纳瑞家人丁兴旺,他们的木屋慢慢地扩建,越来越大,到后来,那片林中空地上小披屋林立,到处乱七八糟地堆放着木板包装箱、晒翘了的木材、废弃的汽车轮胎、摇摇欲坠的鸡笼子、一卷一卷的带刺的铁丝和锈迹斑斑的洋铁罐.坦纳瑞一家是法裔混血儿,他们彼此之间讲话用的是一种土话,既不像克里印第安语,也不像法语.他们说的英语字不成句,还尽是些低级下流的粗话.他们既不属于北方跑马山保留地上居住的克里族,也不属于马纳瓦卡山上居住的苏格兰爱尔兰人和乌克兰人群体.用我祖母爱用的词来说,他们简直就是所谓的"四不像〞.他们的生计全靠家里的壮丁外出打零工或是在加拿大太平洋铁路上当养路工来维持；没有这种打工机会时,他们一家便靠吃救济粮过日子.到了夏天,坦纳瑞家的一个长着一X从来不会笑的脸的小孩就会用一个猪油桶提一桶碰得伤痕累累的野草莓,挨家挨户地敲开镇上那些砖砌房屋的门叫卖.只要卖得一枚二角五分的硬币,他就会迫不与待地将那硬币抓到手中,然后立即转身跑开,生怕顾客会有时间反悔.有时候,在星期六晚上,老儒勒或是他的儿子拉扎鲁会酗酒闹事,不是发疯似地见人就打,就是挤到大街上购物逛街的行人之中狂呼乱叫,让人恼怒,于是骑警队就会将他们抓去,关进法院楼下的铁牢里,到第二天早上,他们便会恢复常态.拉扎鲁的女儿皮格特?坦纳瑞在学校读书时与我同班.她年纪比我大几岁,但由于成绩不好留了几级,这也许怪她经常旷课而且学习劲头不大.她掉课次数多的部分原因是她患有骨节炎,有一次一连住了好几个月的医院.我之所以知道这一情况是因为我父亲正好是为她治过病的医生.不过,我对她的了解几乎只限于她的病情.除此之外,我就只知道她是一个让人一见就觉得不舒服的人：说话时声音沙哑,走起路来踉踉跄跄,身上穿着的棉布衣裙总是脏兮兮的,而且总是长大得极不合体.我对她的态度谈不上友好,也谈不上不友好.她的住处和活动X 围都在我的眼前,但直到我十一岁那年的夏季到来之前,我还从来没有太多地注意到她的存在."我真不知道该怎样去帮助那孩子,〞我父亲有一天吃晚饭的时候说,"我指的是皮格特?坦纳瑞.她的骨结核又恶化了,我在医院里给她治疗好长一段时间了,病情自然是控制住了,但我真他妈不愿打发她回到她那个家里去.〞"你难道就不会对她妈妈说说她应该好好保养吗?〞我母亲问道."她妈妈不在了,〞我父亲回答说."几年前她就离家出走了.也不能怪她.皮格特为他们烧火做饭,她说只要她在家拉扎鲁便什么也不干.不管怎么说,只要她一回到家里,我看她就很难保养好自己的身体了.毕竟她才十三岁呀.贝丝,我在想——咱们全家去钻石湖避暑时把她也一道带去,你看怎么样?好好休养两个月会使她的骨病治愈的希望大大增加.〞我母亲满脸惊讶的神色."可是艾文——罗迪和凡乃莎怎么办呢?〞"她的病并不是传染性的,〞我父亲说."这样凡乃莎还会多一个伙伴.〞"天哪!〞我母亲无可奈何地说,"我敢保证她头上一定有虱子.〞"看在圣彼得的份上,〞我父亲生气地说,"你以为护士长会让她一直那样在医院里住下去吗?别太天真了,贝丝.〞麦克里奥祖母那清秀的脸上此时显得像玉石雕像般的冷峻,她那紫红色血管鼓起的双手此时也合到一起,像是准备做祷告的样子."艾文,如果那个混血儿要去钻石湖的话,那我就不去了,〞她声明说."我要去莫拉格家度夏.〞我几乎忍不住要哈哈大笑了,因为我看到我母亲突然面露喜色但马上又极力加以掩饰.如果要我母亲在麦克里奥祖母和皮格特之间选择一个的话,那中选的毫无疑问就是皮格特,不管她头上是否有虱子."说起来,那样对您老人家也是好事,〞她若有所思地说."您已有一年多没见过莫拉格了,而且,到大城市里去住一阵子也是一种享受.好吧,亲爱的艾文,你认为怎么好就怎么着吧.假如你认为同我们一起住一段日子对皮格特有好处,那我们欢迎她,只要她能守规矩就行.〞于是,几个星期以后,当我们全家带着一箱箱的衣物、食品以与给我那才满十个月的小弟弟玩的玩具挤进父亲那辆旧"纳什〞轿车时,皮格特也同我们在一起,而麦克里奥祖母却奇迹般地没有同我们在一起.我父亲只能在别墅里住两个星期,因为他要回去上班,但我其余的人却要在钻石湖一直住到八月底.我们的湖边别墅不像许多其他别墅一样取了诸如"露珠客栈〞或"小憩园〞或"怡神居〞之类的名字.立于马路边的标牌上只用朴素的字体写着我们的姓氏"麦克里奥〞.别墅的房子不算大,但占着正对着湖面的有利位置.从别墅的窗户往外看,透过一层云杉树叶织成的丝帘,可以看见碧绿的湖面在太阳的映照下波光粼粼.别墅的四周长满了凤尾草、悬钩子藤,还有断落的树枝上长出的青苔；若是细心地在草丛里寻找,你还会找到一些野草莓藤,上面已经开了白花,再过一个月便会长出野草莓来,到时候,散发出芬芳气息的草莓果便会像一个个微型的红灯笼一般悬挂在毛茸茸的细茎上.别墅旁边的一棵高大的云杉树上的那对灰色小松鼠还在,此时正朝着我们嘁嘁喳喳地乱叫,到夏天快过完的时候,它们又会变得驯驯服服,敢从我手上叼取面包屑了.别墅后门上挂的一对鹿角经过一个冬天的风吹雨淋之后又多褪了一些颜色,增加了一些裂纹,其余一切都还是原样.我兴高采烈地在我的小王国里跑来跑去,和所有阔别了一年的地方一一去打招呼.我的小弟弟罗德里克,去年夏天我们来这儿避暑时他还没有出生,此时正坐在放在太阳底下晒着的汽车座垫上,埋头玩赏着一个黄褐色的云杉球果,用他那双好奇的小手小心翼翼地抓着那颗球果,把它搓得团团转.我母亲和父亲忙着将行李从车上搬进别墅,连声惊叹着,这地方经过一个冬天后竞如此完好,窗户玻璃没破一块,真是谢天谢地,房屋也没有受到被暴风吹断的树枝或冰雪砸损的痕迹.我忙着把所有的地方都看了一遍之后才回头注意到皮格特.她正坐在秋千上缓缓地荡来荡去,她的那只跛腿直挺挺地向前伸着,另一只脚却垂拖到地上,并随着秋千的摆动而摩擦着地面.她那又黑又直的长发垂披到肩上,那皮肤粗糙的宽脸上毫无表情——一副茫然的样子,似乎她已经没有了灵魂,又似乎她的灵魂已脱离了躯体.我犹犹豫豫地向她走近."想过来玩吗?〞皮格特突然以一种不屑一顾的神色看着我."我不是小孩,〞她说.我自觉感情受到伤害,气得一跺脚跑开了,并发誓整个夏天不同她讲一句话.可是,在后来的日子里,皮格特却开始引起我的兴趣,而且我也开始有了要提起她的兴趣的愿望.我并不觉得这有什么奇怪.看起来可能有些不合情理,我直到这时才开始认识到,那总被人们称作混血儿的坦纳瑞一家其实是印第安人,或者说很接近印第安人.我和印第安人接触得不多,好像还从来没见过一个真正的印第安人,现在认识到皮格特的祖先就是大熊和庞德梅克的族人,是特库姆塞的族人,是那些吃过布雷伯夫神父心脏的易洛魁人——这使她在我眼中突然产生了魅力.我那时很爱读波琳?约翰逊的诗,有时候还扯开嗓门拿腔拿调地背诵,"西风啊,从原野上吹来；从高山上吹来；从西边吹来〞等诗句.在我看来,皮格特一定可以算是森林的女儿,是蛮荒世界的小预言家.只要我用适当的方法向她请教,她一定可以对我讲解一些她自己无疑知道的大自然的奥秘——如夜鹰在哪儿做窝,郊狼是如何育雏的,或是《海华沙之歌》之中提到的任何事情.我开始努力博取皮格特的信任.她因为瘸腿的关系不能下湖游泳,但我还是设法把她引诱到湖边沙滩上去了——不过,也许是因为她没别的可干才去的.钻石湖的水源自。

unit12.我头顶烈日站在一艘渔船的滚烫的钢甲板上。

这艘渔船在丰收季节一天所处理加工的鱼可达15吨。

但现在可不是丰收季节。

这艘渔船此时此刻停泊的地方虽说曾是整个中亚地区最大的渔业基地，但当我站在船头向远处眺望时，却看出渔业丰收的希望非常渺茫。

1极目四顾，原先那种湛蓝色海涛轻拍船舷的景象已不复存在，取而代之的是茫茫的一片干燥灼热的沙漠。

渔船队的其他渔船也都搁浅在沙漠上，散见于陂陀起伏、绵延至天边的沙丘间。

十年前，咸海还是世界上第四大内陆湖泊，可与北美大湖区五大湖中的最大湖泊相媲美。

而今，由于兴建了一项考虑欠周的水利工程，原来注入此湖的水被引入沙漠灌溉棉田，咸海这座大湖的水面已渐渐变小，新形成的湖岸距离这些渔船永远停泊的位置差不多有40公里远。

与此同时，这儿附近的莫里那克镇上人们仍在生产鱼罐头，但所用的鱼已不是咸海所产，而是从一千多英里以外的太平洋渔业基地穿越西伯利亚运到这儿来的。

我因要对造成环境危机的原因进行调查而得以周游世界，考察和研究许多类似这样破坏生态环境的事例。

一九八八年深秋时节，我来到地球的最南端。

高耸的南极山脉中太阳在午夜穿过天空中的一个孔洞照射着地面，我站在令人难以置信的寒冷中，与一位科学家进行着一场谈话，内容是他正在挖掘的时间隧道。

这位科学家一撩开他的派克皮大衣，我便注意到他脸上因烈日的曝晒而皮肤皲裂，干裂的皮屑正一层层地剥落。

他一边讲话一边指给我看, 从我们脚下的冰川中挖出的一块岩心标本上的年层。

他将手指到二十年前的冰层上，告诉我说，“这儿就是美国国会审议通过化空气法案的地方。

”这里虽处地球之顶端，距美国首都华盛顿两大洲之遥，但世界上任何一个国家只要将废气排放量减少一席在空气污染程度上引起的相应变化便能在南极这个地球上最偏而人迹难至的地方反映出来。

迄今为止，地球大气层最重要的变化始于上世纪初的工业命，变化速度自那以后逐渐加快。

工业意味着先是煤、后是石油消耗。

我们燃烧了大量的煤和石油——导致大气层二氧化碳含的增加，这就使更多的热量得以留存在大气层中，从而使地球的候逐渐变暖。

Lesson 1: Rock Superstars: What Do They Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society?How do you feel about all this adulation and hero worship? When Mick Jagger’s fans look at him as a high priest or a god, are you with them or against them? Do you share Chris Singer’s almost religious reverence for Bob Dylan? Do you think he – or Dylan – is misguided? Do you reject Alice Cooper as sick? Or are you drawn somehow to this strange clown, perhaps because he acts out your wildest fantasies?Lesson 2: Four Choices for Young PeopleThe trouble with this solution is that it no longer is practical on a large scale. Our planet, unfortunately, is running out of noble savages and unsullied landscaped; except for the polar regions, the frontiers are gone. A few gentleman farmers with plenty of money can still escape to the bucolic life – but in general the stream of migration is flowing the other way.Lesson 4: Die as You ChooseIn January the Journal of the American Medical Association published a bizarre letter, in which an anonymous doctor claimed to have killed a 20-year-old cancer patient at her own request. This started a debate that will rumble on into the autumn, when Californians may vote on a proposed law legalizing euthanasia. The letter was probably written for polemical impact. It is scarcely credible. It’s author claims that he met the cancer patient for the first time, heard five words from her – “Let’s get this over with” – then killer her. Even the most extreme proponents of euthanasia do not support such an action in those circumstances.Lesson 5: I’d Rather Be Black than FemaleIt is still women – about three million volunteers – who do most of this work in the American political world. The best any of them can hope for is the honor of being district or county vice-chairman, a kind of separate-but-equal position with which a woman is rewarded for years of faithful envelope stuffing and card-party organizing. I n such a job, she gets a number of free trips to state and sometimes national meetings and conventions, where her role is supposed to be to vote the way her male chairman votes.Lesson 6: A Good Chancethe back door which hung open, we saw people standing in the kitchen. I asked carefully, “What’s wrong?”Nobody spoke but Elgie came over, his bloodshot eyes filled with sorrow and misery. He stood in front of us for a moment and then gestured us to go into the living room. The room was filled with people sitting in silence, and finally Elgie said, quietly, “They shot him.”Lesson 7: Miss BrillAlthough it was so brilliantly fine – the blue sky powdered with gold and the great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques – Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting – from nowhere, from they sky. Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! I t was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box tat afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes. “What has been happening to me?” said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown! …But the nose, which was of some black composition, wasn’t at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never mind – a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came – when it was absolutely necessary. … Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in her hands and arms. But that came from walking, she supposed. And when she breathed, something light and sad – no, not sad, exactly – something gentle seemed to move in her bosom.Lesson 8: A Lesson in Living"It was the best of times and the worst of times. . ." Her voice slid in and curved down through and over the words. She was nearly singing. I wanted to look at the pages. Were they the same that I had read? Or were there notes, music, lined on the pages, as in a hymn book? Her sounds began cascading gently. I knew from listening; to a thousand preachers that she was nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn't really heard, heard to understand, a single word.I have tried often to search behind the sophistication of years for the enchantment I so easilyI said aloud, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…" tears of love filled my eyes at my selflessness.Lesson 9: The Trouble with TelevisionEverything about this nation—the structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world— has become more complex, not less. Yet its dominating communications instrument, its principal form of national linkage, is one that sells neat resolutions to human problems that usually have no neat resolutions. It is all symbolized in my mind by the hugely successful art form that television has made central to the culture, the 30-second commercial: the tiny drama of the earnest housewife who finds happiness in choosing the right toothpaste.When before in human history has so much humanity collectively surrendered so much of its leisure to one toy, one mass diversion? When before has virtually an entire nation surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling?Lesson 11: On Getting Off to SleepWhat a bundle of contradictions is a man! Surety, humour is the saving grace of us, for without it we should die of vexation. With me, nothing illustrates the contrariness of things better than the matter of sleep. If, for example, my intention is to write an essay, and 1 have before me ink and pens and several sheets of virgin paper, you may depend upon it that before I have gone very far I feel an overpowering desire for sleep, no matter what time of the day it is. I stare at the reproachfully blank paper until sights and sounds become dim and confused, and it is only by an effort of will that I can continue at all. Even then, I proceed half-heartedly, in a kind of dream. But let me be between the sheets at a late hour, and I can do anything but sleep. Between chime and chime of the clock I can write essays by the score. Fascinating subjects and noble ideas come pell-mell, each with its appropriate imagery and expression. Nothing stands between me and half-a-dozen imperishable masterpieces but pens, ink, and paper.Lesson 12: Why I Writeof good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience whichvaluable and ought not to be missed…Lesson 14: I Would Like to Tell You SomethingThe investigation was not staged so that veterans could spill out their hearts or purge their souls; it was done to prove that the policy of the United States in Indochina is tantamount to genocide, and that not only the soldiers are responsible for what is happening, but that everyone here in America who has allowed the brutalization and de-personalization to go on is responsible. It was done also to show that you don't start making things right by prosecuting William Galley, no matter how guilty he may be; you also prosecute the men who encouraged the situation. It was done to show that there is not just one Mylai but countless Mylais and they are continuing every single day. There was an almost total press blackout on the testimony of those veterans.Lesson 15: The Beauty IndustryWomen, it is obvious, are freer than in the past. Freer not only to perform the generally unenviable social functions hitherto reserved to the male, but also freer to exercise the more pleasing, feminine privilege of being attractive. They have the right, if not to be less virtuous than their grandmothers, at any rate to look less virtuous. The British Matron, not long since a creature of austere and even terrifying aspect, now does her best to achieve and perennially preserve the appearance of what her predecessor would have described as a Lost Woman. She often succeeds. But we are not shocked—at any rate, not morally shocked. Aesthetically shocked—yes; we may sometimes be that. But morally, no. We concede that the Matron is morally justified in being preoccupied with her personal appearance. This concession depends on another of a more general nature—a concession to the Body, with a large B, to the Manichaean principle of evil. For we have now come to admit that the body has its rights. And not only rights—duties, actually duties. It has, for example, a duty to do the best it can for itself in the way of strength and beauty. Christian-ascetic ideas no longer trouble us. We demand justice for the body as well as for the soul. Hence, among other things, the fortunes made by face-cream manufacturers and beauty-specialists, by the vendors of rubber reducing belts and massage machines, by the patentees of hair-lotions and the authors of books on the culture of the abdomen.下册Lesson One The Company in Which I workOn days when I ‘m especially melancholy , I began constructing tables of organization….classifying people in the company on the basis of envy , hope , fear , ambition , frustration, rivalry , hatred , or disappointment . I call these charts my Happiness Charts . These exercises in malice never fail to boost my spirits ----but only for a while . I rank pretty high when the company is analyzed this way , because I ‘m not envious or disappointed , and I have no expectations . At the very top , of course , are those people , mostly young and without dependents , to whom the company is not yet an institution of any sacred merit but still only a place to work , and who regard their present association with it as something temporary . I put these people at the top because if you asked any one of them if he would choose to spend the rest of his life working for the company , he would give you a resounding No ! , regardless of what inducements were offered . I was that high once . if you asked me that same question today, I would also give you a resounding No ! and add:Lesson Two EvelineBut in her new home , in a distant unknown country , it would not be like that . Then she would be married ---she , Eveline . People would treat her with respect then . She would not be treated as her mother had been . Even now , though she was over nineteen , she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence . She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations . When they were growing up he had never gone for her , like he used to go for Harry and Ernest , because she was a girl ; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake . And now she had nobody to protect her , Ernest was dead and Harry ,who was in the church decorating business , was nearly always down somewhere in the country . Besides , the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably . She always gave her entire wages ----seven shillings ----and Harry always sent up what he could , but the trouble was to get any money from her father . He said she used to squander the money , that she had no head , that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets ,elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions . She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly . It was hard work ----a hard life ----but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life .She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall .He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her , saying something about the passage over and over again . The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages . Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat , lying in beside the quay wall , with illumined portholes . She answered nothing . She felt her cheek pale and cold and , out of a maze of distress , she prayed to God to direct her , to show her what was her duty . The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist . If she went , tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank , steaming towards Buenos Ayres . Their passage had been booked . Could she still draw back after all he had done for her ? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer .Lesson Three What’s Wrong With Our Press ?The fact is that although network television still allots too little time to the vital service of informing the public , it does a better job in that little time than the nation’s press as a whole . And when I speak of the nation’s press as a whole , I am not speaking of the five or six splendid newspapers ----and the one great newspaper -----which serve the world as models of responsible public information . I am speaking of the local press which in hundreds of American communities is the only news available , aside from those recitals of ticker tape that pass for radio news .Fortunately for the American public , television does not tolerate the kind of distortion of fact , the kind of partisan virulence and personal peeve , that many newspapers not only welcome but encourage . In its entertainment , television caters far too much to the lowest instincts of man , particularly the lust for violence . But there is one appetite it does not feed and which the partisan newspapers of the nation do : the appetite for hate ---hate of whatever is different . I do not find on televison the kind of editorials chronic in the New York tabloids as well as in many local papers across the country .that elevates news above dogfood . it is easier to write editorial copy that appeal to emotion rather than reason .Lesson Four The Tragedy of Old Age in AmericaWhat can we possibly conclude from these discrepant points of view ? Our popular attitudes could be summed up as a combination of wishful thinking and stark terror . We base our feelings on primitive fears , prejudice and stereotypes rather than on knowledge and insight . In reality , the way one experiences old age is contingent upon physical health , personality , earlier-life experiences , the actual circumstances of late –life events ( in what order they occur , how they occur , when they occur ) and the social supports one receives : adequate finances , shelter, medical care , social roles , religious support , recreation . All of these are crucial and interconnected elements which together determine the quality of late life .Lesson Seven Ace in the HoleNo sooner did his car touch the boulevard heading home than Ace flicked on the radio . He needed the radio , especially today . In the seconds before the tubes warmed up , he said aloud , doing it just to hear a human voice , “ Jesus . She ‘ll pop her lid . “ His voice , though familiar , irked him ; it sounded thin and scratchy . In a deeper register Ace added , “ She’ll murder me . “ Then the radio came on , warm and strong , so he stopped worrying . The five Kings were doing “ Blueberry Hill “ ; to hear them made Ace feel so sure inside that from the pack pinched between the car roof and the sun shield he plucked a cigarette , hung it on his lower lip , snapped a match across the rusty place on the dash . He rolled down the window and snapped the match so it spun end-over-end into the gutter . “ Two points , “ he said , and cocked the cigarette toward the roof of the car , sucked powerfully , and exhaled two plumes through his nostrils . He was beginning to feel like himself , Ace Anderson , for the first time that whole day , a bad day . He beat time on the accelerator . The car jerked crazily .The run must have tuned Bonnie up . When they got back home , as soon as he lowered her into the crib , she began to shout and wave her arms . He didn’t want to play with her . He tossed some blocks and rattle into the crib an walked into the bathroom , where he turned on the hot water andwent bald first . He remembered reading somewhere , though , that baldness shows virility .Lesson Eight Science Has Spoiled My SupperEconomics entered . It is possible to turn out in quantity a bland , impersonal , practically imperishable substance more or less resembling , say cheese ---at lower cost than cheese . Chain groceries shut out the independent stores and “ standardization “ became a principal means of cutting cost .Lesson Ten How Market Leaders Keep Their EdgeThe third value discipline we have named customer intimacy . Its adherents focus on delivering not what the market wants but what specific customers want . Customer-intimate companies do not pursue one-time transactions ; they cultivate relationships . They specialize in satisfying unique needs , which often only they recognize , through a close relationship with ---and intimate knowledge of ----the customer . Their proposition to the customer: We have the best solution for you , and we provide all the support you need to achieve optimum results , or value , or both , from whatever products you buy . Long distance telephone carrier Cable& Wireless , , for example , practices customer intimacy with a vengeance , achieving success in a highly competitive market by consistently going the extra mile for its selectively chosen , small-business customers .Lesson Eleven On Human Nature and PoliticsBut great as is the influence of the motives we have been considering , there is one which outweighs them all... Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the casual efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates. In the happy days before 1914,when well-to-do ladies could acquire a host of servants, their pleasure in exercising power over the domestics steadily increased with age. Similarly, in any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford. Since power over human beings is shown inconsent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying "No" than from saying "Yes". It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive . But it has other sides which are more desirable . The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot . It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.Lesson Twelve The Everlasting WitnessThe three were eating breakfast on the terrace, a thousand and one felicitous birds in the garden trees. In unsullied damp brown circles of soft earth the roses bloomed serenely against the pink Mexican wall. Marian's brother-in-law read the English page, as dedicated as a nice little boy reading the funnies, and Theresa, Marian's sister, chatted softly and merrily about their next week-end holiday. Theresa's bright smile had always been her mark and now, childless and with a husband beyond war age, and a life both ordered and gay, it looked as if that smile had justified itself.Lesson Thirteen Selected SnobberiesAll men are snobs about something. One is almost tempted to add : There is nothing about which men cannot feel snobbish. But this would doubtless be an exaggeration. There are certain disfiguring and mortal diseases about which there has probably never been any snobbery. I cannot imagine, for exam4ple, that there are any leprosy-snobs. More picturesque diseases, even when they are dangerous, and less dangerous diseases, particularly when they are the diseases of the rich, can be and very frequently are a source of snobbish self-importance. I have met several adolescent consumption-snobs , who thought that it would be romantic to fade away in the flower of youth , like Keats or Marie Bashkirtseff. Alas, the final stages of the consumptive fading are generally a good deal less romantic than these ingenuous young tubercle-snobs seem to imagine . To anyone who has actually witnessed these final stages, the complacent poeticizings of these adolescents must seem as exasperating as they are profoundly pathetic. In the case ofexasperation is not tempered by very much sympathy. People who possesssufficient wealth, not to mention sufficient health, to go travelling from spa to spa. from doctor to fashionable doctor, in search of cures from problematical diseases (which, in so far as they exist at all. probably have their source in overeating) cannot expect us to be .very lavish in our solicitude and pity.lesson fourteen Saturday Night and Sunday MorningHe sat by the canal fishing on a Sunday morning in spring, at an elbow where alders dipped over the water like old men on their last legs, pushed by young sturdy oaks from behind. He straightened his back, his fingers freeing nylon line from a speedily revolving reel. Around him lay knapsack and jacket, an empty catch-net, his bicycle, and two tins of worms dug from the plot of garden at home before setting out. Sun was breaking through clouds, releasing a smell of earth to heaven. Birds sang. A soundless and minuscular explosion of water caught his eye. He moved nearer the edge, stood up, and with a vigorous sweep of his arm, cast out the line.Lesson Fifteen Is America Falling Apart?During my year's stay in New Jersey I let my appetite flower into full Americanism except for one thing. I did not possess an automobile. This self-elected deprivation was a way into the nastier side of the consumer society. Where private ownership prevails, public amenities decay or are prevented from coming into being. The rundown rail services of America are something I try, vainly, to forget. The nightmare of filth, outside and in, that enfolds the trip from Springfield, Mass., to Grand Central Station would not be accepted in backward Europe. But far worse is the nightmare of travel in and around Los Angeles, where public transport does not exist and people are literally choking to death in their exhaust fumes . This is part of the price of individual ownership.Lesson sixteen Through the TunnelAs for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her beach , he began the steep descent to the bay . From where he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of moving bluish green fringed with white. As he went lower, he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface showed stains of purple and darkerblue.。

The LoonsMargarel LaurenceJust below Manawaka, where the Wachakwa Riverran brown and noisy over the pebbles , the scrub oak and grey-green willow and chokecherry bushes grew in a dense thicket . In a clearing at the centre of the thicket stood the Tonnerre family's shack. The basis at this dwelling was a small square cabin made of poplar poles and chinked with mud, which had been built by Jules Tonnerre some fifty years before, when he came back from Batoche with a bullet in his thigh, the year that Riel was hung and the voices of the Metis entered their long silence. Jules had only intended to stay the winter in the Wachakwa Valley, but the family was still there in the thirties, when I was a child. As the Tonnerres had increased, their settlement had been added to, until the clearing at the foot of the town hill was a chaos of lean-tos, wooden packing cases, warped lumber, discarded car types, ramshackle chicken coops , tangled strands of barbed wire and rusty tin cans.The Tonnerres were French half breeds, and among themselves they spoke a patois that was neither Cree nor French. Their English was broken and full of obscenities . They did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation, further north, and they did not belong among the Scots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka, either. They were, as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring . When their men were not working at odd jobs or as section hands on the C.P. R. they lived on relief. In the summers, one of the Tonnerre youngsters, with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter, would knock at the doors of the town's brick houses and offer for sale a lard -pail full of bruised wild strawberries, and if he got as much as a quarter he would grab the coin and run before the customer had time to change her mind. Sometimes old Jules, or his son Lazarus, would get mixed up in a Saturday-night brawl , and would hit out at whoever was nearest or howl drunkenly among the offended shoppers on Main Street, and then the Mountie would put them for the night in the barred cell underneath the Court House, and the next morning they would be quiet again.Piquette Tonnerre, the daughter of Lazarus, was inmy class at school. She was older than I, but she had failed several grades, perhaps because her attendance had always been sporadic and her interest in schoolwork negligible . Part of the reason she had missed a lot of school was that she had had tuberculosis of the bone, and had once spent many months in hospital. I knew this because my father was the doctor who had looked after her. Her sickness was almost the only thing I knew about her, however. Otherwise, she existed for me only as a vaguely embarrassing presence, with her hoarse voice and her clumsy limping walk and her grimy cotton dresses that were always miles too long. I was neither friendly nor unfriendly towards her. She dwelt and moved somewhere within my scope of vision, but I did not actually notice her very much until that peculiar summer when I was eleven."I don't know what to do about that kid." my father said at dinner one evening. "Piquette Tonnerre, I mean. The damn bone's flared up again. I've had her in hospital for quite a while now, and it's under control all right, but I hate like the dickens to send her home again.""Couldn't you explain to her mother that she has to rest a lot?" my mother said."The mother's not there" my father replied. "She took off a few years back. Can't say I blame her. Piquette cooks for them, and she says Lazarus would never do anything for himself as long as she's there. Anyway, I don't think she'd take much care of herself, once she got back. She's only thirteen, after all. Beth, I was thinking—What about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance."My mother looked stunned."But Ewen -- what about Roddie and Vanessa?""She's not contagious ," my father said. "And it would be company for Vanessa.""Oh dear," my mother said in distress, "I'll bet anything she has nits in her hair.""For Pete's sake," my father said crossly, "do you think Matron would let her stay in the hospital for all this time like that? Don't be silly, Beth. "Grandmother MacLeod, her delicately featured face as rigid as a cameo , now brought her mauve -veined hands together as though she were about to begin prayer."Ewen, if that half breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going," she announced. "I'll go toMorag's for the summer."I had trouble in stifling my urge to laugh, for my mother brightened visibly and quickly tried to hide it. If it came to a choice between Grandmother MacLeod and Piquette, Piquette would win hands down, nits or not."It might be quite nice for you, at that," she mused. "You haven't seen Morag for over a year, and you might enjoy being in the city for a while. Well, Ewen dear, you do what you think best. If you think it would do Piquette some good, then we' II be glad to have her, as long as she behaves herself."So it happened that several weeks later, when we all piled into my father's old Nash, surrounded by suitcases and boxes of provisions and toys for my ten-month-old brother, Piquette was with us and Grandmother MacLeod, miraculously, was not. My father would only be staying at the cottage for a couple of weeks, for he had to get back to his practice, but the rest of us would stay at Diamond Lake until the end of August.Our cottage was not named, as many were, "Dew Drop Inn" or "Bide-a-Wee," or "Bonnie Doon”. The sign on the roadway bore in austere letters only our name, MacLeod. It was not a large cottage, but it was on the lakefront. You could look out the windows and see, through the filigree of the spruce trees, the water glistening greenly as the sun caught it. All around the cottage were ferns, and sharp-branched raspberry bushes, and moss that had grown over fallen tree trunks, If you looked carefully among the weeds and grass, you could find wild strawberry plants which were in white flower now and in another month would bear fruit, the fragrant globes hanging like miniature scarlet lanterns on the thin hairy stems. The two grey squirrels were still there, gossiping at us from the tall spruce beside the cottage, and by the end of the summer they would again be tame enough to take pieces of crust from my hands. The broad moose antlers that hung above the back door were a little more bleached and fissured after the winter, but otherwise everything was the same. I raced joyfully around my kingdom, greeting all the places I had not seen for a year. My brother, Roderick, who had not been born when we were here last summer, sat on the car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce cone, meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands. My mother and father toted the luggage from car to cottage, exclaiming over how well the place had wintered, no broken windows, thank goodness, no apparent damage from storm felled branches orsnow.Only after I had finished looking around did I notice Piquette. She was sitting on the swing her lame leg held stiffly out, and her other foot scuffing the ground as she swung slowly back and forth. Her long hair hung black and straight around her shoulders, and her broad coarse-featured face bore no expression -- it was blank, as though she no longer dwelt within her own skull, as though she had gone elsewhere.I approached her very hesitantly."Want to come and play?"Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn."I ain't a kid," she said.Wounded, I stamped angrily away, swearing I would not speak to her for the rest of the summer. In the days that followed, however, Piquette began to interest me, and l began to want to interest her. My reasons did not appear bizarre to me. Unlikely as it may seem, I had only just realised that the Tonnerre family, whom I had always heard Called half breeds, were actually Indians, or as near as made no difference. My acquaintance with Indians was not expensive. I did not remember ever having seen a real Indian, and my new awareness that Piquette sprang from the people of Big Bear and Poundmaker, of Tecumseh, of the Iroquois who had eaten Father Brébeuf's heart--all this gave her an instant attraction in my eyes. I was devoted reader of Pauline Johnson at this age, and sometimes would orate aloud and in an exalted voice, West Wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west--and so on. It seemed to me that Piquette must be in some way a daughter of the forest, a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds, who might impart to me, if I took the right approach, some of the secrets which she undoubtedly knew --where the whippoorwill made her nest, how the coyote reared her young, or whatever it was that it said in Hiawatha.I set about gaining Piquette's trust. She was not allowed to go swimming, with her bad leg, but I managed to lure her down to the beach-- or rather, she came because there was nothing else to do. The water was always icy, for the lake was fed by springs, but I swam like a dog, thrashing my arms and legs around at such speed and with such an output of energy that I never grew cold. Finally, when I had enough, I came out and sat beside Piquette on the sand. When she saw me approaching, her hands squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sullenly, without"Do you like this place?" I asked, after a while, intending to lead on from there into the question of forest lore .Piquette shrugged. "It's okay. Good as anywhere.""I love it, "1 said. "We come here every summer.""So what?" Her voice was distant, and I glanced at her uncertainly, wondering what I could have said wrong."Do you want to come for a walk?" I asked her. "We wouldn't need to go far. If you walk just around the point there, you come to a bay where great big reeds grow in the water, and all kinds of fish hang around there. Want to? Come on."She shook her head."Your dad said I ain't supposed to do no more walking than I got to." I tried another line."I bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh?" I began respectfully.Piquette looked at me from her large dark unsmiling eyes."I don't know what in hell you're talkin' about," she replied. "You nuts or somethin'? If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear?"I was startled and my feelings were hurt, but I had a kind of dogged perseverance. I ignored her rebuff."You know something, Piquette? There's loons here, on this lake. You can see their nests just up the shore there, behind those logs. At night, you can hear them even from the cottage, but it's better to listen from the beach. My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away."Piquette was picking up stones and snail shells and then dropping them again."Who gives a good goddamn?" she said.It became increasingly obvious that, as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss. That evening I went out by myself, scrambling through the bushes that overhung the steep path, my feet slipping on the fallen spruce needles that covered the ground. When I reached the shore, I walked along the firm damp sand to the small pier that my father had built, and sat down there. I heard someone else crashing through the undergrowth and the bracken, and for a moment I thought Piquette had changed her mind, but it turned out to be my father. He sat beside me on the pier and we waited, withoutAt night the lake was like black glass with a streak of amber which was the path of the moon. All around, the spruce trees grew tall and close-set, branches blackly sharp against the sky, which was lightened by a cold flickering of stars. Then the loons began their calling. They rose like phantom birds from the nests on the shore, and flew out onto the dark still surface of the water.No one can ever describe that ululating sound, the crying of the loons, and no one who has heard it can ever forget it. Plaintive , and yet with a quality of chilling mockery , those voices belonged to a world separated by aeon from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home."They must have sounded just like that," my father remarked, "before any person ever set foot here." Then he laughed. "You could say the same, of course, about sparrows or chipmunk, but somehow it only strikes you that way with the loons.""I know," I said.Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening. We stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then we went back to the cottage. My mother was reading beside the fireplace. Piquette was looking at the burning birch log, and not doing anything."You should have come along," I said, although in fact I was glad she had not."Not me", Piquette said. "You wouldn’ catch me walkin' way down there jus' for a bunch of squawkin' birds."Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she Would not or could not respond when I suggested exploring the woods or Playing house. I thought it was probably her slow and difficult walking that held her back. She stayed most of the time in the cottage with my mother, helping her with the dishes or with Roddie, but hardly ever talking. Then the Duncans arrived at their cottage, and I spent my days with Mavis, who was my best friend. I could not reach Piquette at all, and I soon lost interest in trying. But all that summer she remained as both a reproach and a mystery to me.That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week's illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain and my mother's. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed thatPiquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. I do not remember seeing her at all until four years later, one Saturday night when Mavis and I were having Cokes in the Regal Café. The jukebox was booming like tuneful thunder, and beside it, leaning lightly on its chrome and its rainbow glass, was a girl.Piquette must have been seventeen then, although she looked about twenty. I stared at her, astounded that anyone could have changed so much. Her face, so stolid and expressionless before, was animated now with a gaiety that was almost violent. She laughed and talked very loudly with the boys around her. Her lipstick was bright carmine, and her hair was cut Short and frizzily permed . She had not been pretty as a child, and she was not pretty now, for her features were still heavy and blunt. But her dark and slightly slanted eyes were beautiful, and her skin-tight skirt and orange sweater displayed to enviable advantage a soft and slender body.She saw me, and walked over. She teetered a little, but it was not due to her once-tubercular leg, for her limp was almost gone."Hi, Vanessa," Her voice still had the same hoarseness . "Long time no see, eh?""Hi," I said "Where've you been keeping yourself, Piquette?""Oh, I been around," she said. "I been away almost two years now. Been all over the place--Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon. Jesus, what I could tell you! I come back this summer, but I ain't stayin'. You kids go in to the dance?""No," I said abruptly, for this was a sore point with me. I was fifteen, and thought I was old enough to go to the Saturday-night dances at the Flamingo. My mother, however, thought otherwise."Y'oughta come," Piquette said. "I never miss one. It's just about the on'y thing in this jerkwatertown that's any fun. Boy, you couldn' catch me stayin' here. I don' give a shit about this place. It stinks."She sat down beside me, and I caught the harshover-sweetness of her perfume."Listen, you wanna know something, Vanessa?" she confided , her voice only slightly blurred. "Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me."I nodded speechlessly. I was certain she was speaking the truth. I knew a little more than I had that summer atDiamond Lake, but I could not reach her now any more than I had then, I was ashamed, ashamed of my own timidity, the frightened tendency to look the other way. Yet I felt no real warmth towards her-- I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. At this moment, meeting her again, I had to admit that she repelled and embarrassed me, and I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another."I'll tell you something else," Piquette went on. "All the old bitches an' biddies in this town will sure be surprised. I'm gettin' married this fall -- my boy friend, he's an English fella, works in the stockyards in the city there, a very tall guy, got blond wavy hair. Gee, is he ever handsome. Got this real Hiroshima name. Alvin Gerald Cummings--some handle, eh? They call him Al."For the merest instant, then I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope."Gee, Piquette --" I burst out awkwardly, "that's swell. That's really wonderful. Congratulations—good luck--I hope you'll be happy--"As l mouthed the conventional phrases, I could only guess how great her need must have been, that she had been forced to seek the very things she so bitterly rejected.When I was eighteen, I left Manawaka and went away to college. At the end of my first year, I came back home for the summer. I spent the first few days in talking non-stop with my mother, as we exchanged all the news that somehow had not found its way into letters-- what had happened in my life and what had happened here in Manawaka while I was away. My mother searched her memory for events that concerned people I knew."Did I ever write you about Piquette Tonnerre, Vanessa?" she asked one morning."No, I don't think so," I replied. "Last I heard of her, she was going to marry some guy in the city. Is she still there?"My mother looked Hiroshima , and it was a moment before she spoke, as though she did not know how to expresswhat she had to tell and wished she did not need to try."She's dead," she said at last. Then, as I stared at her, "Oh, Vanessa, when it happened, I couldn't help thinking of her as she was that summer--so sullen and gauche and badly dressed. I couldn't help wondering if we could have done something more at that time--but what could we do? She used to be around in the cottage there with me all day, and honestly it was all I could do to get a word out of her. She didn't even talk to your father very much, although I think she liked him in her way.""What happened?" I asked."Either her husband left her, or she left him," my mother said. "I don't know which. Anyway, she came back here with two youngsters, both only babies--they must have been born very close together. She kept house, I guess, for Lazarus and her brothers, down in the valley there, in the old Tonnerre place. I used to see her on the street sometimes, but she never spoke to me. She'd put on an awful lot of weight, and she looked a mess, to tell you the truth, a real slattern , dressed any old how. She was up in court a couple of times--drunk and disorderly, of course. One Saturday night last winter, during the coldest weather, Piquette was alone in the shack with the children. The Tonnerres made home brew all the time, so I've heard, and Lazarus said later she'd been drinking most of the day when he and the boys went out that evening. They had an old woodstove there--you know the kind, with exposed pipes. The shack caught fire. Piquette didn't get out, and neither did the children."I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say. There was a kind of silence around the image in my mind of the fire and the snow, and I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette's eyes.I went up to Diamond Lake for a few days that summer, with Mavis and her family. The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father's death, and I did not even go to look at it, not wanting to witness my long-ago kingdom possessed now by strangers. But one evening I went clown to the shore by myself.The small pier which my father had built was gone, and in its place there was a large and solid pier built by the government, for Galloping Mountain was now a national park, and Diamond Lake had been re-named Lake Wapakata, for it was felt that an Indian name would have a greater appeal totourists. The one store had become several dozen, and the settlement had all the attributes of a flourishing resort--hotels, a dance-hall, cafes with neon signs, the penetrating odours of potato chips and hot dogs.I sat on the government pier and looked out across the water. At night the lake at least was the same as it had always been, darkly shining and bearing within its black glass the streak of amber that was the path of the moon. There was no wind that evening, and everything was quiet all around me. It seemed too quiet, and then I realized that the loons were no longer here. I listened for some time, to make sure, but never once did I hear that long-drawn call, half mocking and half plaintive, spearing through the stillness across the lake.I did not know what had happened to the birds. Perhaps they had gone away to some far place of belonging. Perhaps they had been unable to find such a place, and had simply died out, having ceased to care any longer whether they lived or not. I remembered how Piquette had scorned to come along, when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognized way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons.NOTES1) Margaret Laurence: Born in Neepawa, Manitoba in Canada in 1926.Her publications include This Side of Jordan (1960), The Stone Angle(1964), A Jest of God (1966), The First Dwellers (1969), and The Diviners (1974).2) Rid: Louis Rid (1844-85) led two rebellions of Indians and Metis (people of mixed French and Indian blood) in 1869-70 and 1884-85.The latter rebellion was crushed in the battle of Batoehe, Manitoba, and Riel was executed.3) patois: dialect4) broken English: English that is imperfectly spoken with mistakes in grammar and syntax5) neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring; also 'neither fish, flesh, nor fowl' meaning 'not anything definite or recognizable'6) C. P. R. : Canadian Pacific Railroad7) Mountie: a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police8) Nash: a former make of automobiles9) Big Bear and Poundmaker: leaders of the Cree10) Tecumseh (1768-1813): chief of the Shawnee11) Father Brebeuf: Jean de Brebeuf (1593-1649), Jesuit missionary to the Hurons12) Hurons, Shawnee, Cree and Troquois: Indian tribes13)West Wind ...the west: the first two lines from "The Song My Pad die Sings" by Pauline Johnson (1861-1913), Canadian poet who was the daughter of an English woman and a Mohawk chief14) Hiawatha: romantic poem about Indians by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow15) Cokes: a popular shortened form for Coca-Cola, a carbonated soft drink manufactured in the U. S.16) I don't give a shit: once taboo but now a colloquial slang, meaning' I don't care a bit'。

ADV ANCED ENGLISH(Book I)Lesson Twelve The LoonsbyMargarel Laurence1Lesson 12 The LoonsMargarel Laurence1. Just below Manawaka, where the Wachakwa River ran brown andnoisy over the pebbles, the scrub oak and grey-green willow and chokecherry bushes grew in a dense thicket. In a clearing at the centre of the thicket stood the Tonnerre family's shack. The basis at this dwelling was a small square cabin made of poplar poles and chinked with mud, which had been built by Jules Tonnerre some fifty years before, when he came back from Batoche with a bullet in his thigh, the year that Riel was hung and the voices of the Metis entered their long silence. Jules had only intended to stay the winter in the Wachakwa Valley, but the family was still there in the thirties, when I was a child. As the Tonnerres had increased, their settlement had been added to, until the clearing at the foot of the town hill was a chaos of lean-tos, wooden packing cases, warped lumber, discarded car types, ramshackle chicken coops, tangled strands of barbed wire and rusty tin cans.2. The Tonnerres were French halfbreeds, and among themselves they spokea patois that was neither Cree nor French. Their English was broken and full of obscenities. They did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation, further north, and they did not belong among the Scots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka, either. They were, as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring. When their men were not working at odd jobs or as section hands on the C.P. R. they lived on relief. In the summers, one of the Tonnerre youngsters,①with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter, would knock at the doors of the town's brick houses and offer for sale a lard-pail full of bruised wild strawberries, and if he got as much as a quarter he would grab the coin and run before the customer had time to change her mind. ②Sometimes old Jules, or his son Lazarus, would get mixed up in a Saturday-night brawl, and would hit out at whoever was nearest or howl drunkenlyamong the offended shoppers on Main Street, and then the Mountie would put them for the night in the barred cell underneath the Court House, and the next morning they would be quiet again.3. Piquette Tonnerre, the daughter of Lazarus, was in my class at school.She was older than I, but she had failed several grades, perhaps because ③her attendance had always been sporadic and her interest in schoolwork negligible. Part of the reason she had missed a lot of school was that she had had tuberculosis of the bone, and had once spent many months in hospital. I knew this because my father was the doctor who had looked after her. Her sickness was almost the only thing I knew about her, however. Otherwise,④she existed for me only as a vaguely embarrassing presence, with her hoarse voice and her clumsy limping walk and her grimy cotton dresses that were always miles too long. I was neither friendly nor unfriendly towards her. ⑤She dwelt and moved somewhere within my scope of vision, but I did not actually notice her very much until that peculiar summer when I was eleven.4. "I don't know what to do about that kid." my father said at dinner one evening. "Piquette Tonnerre, I mean. The damn bone's flared up again. I've had her in hospital for quite a while now, and it's under control all right, but I hate like the dickens to send her home again.5. "Couldn't you explain to her mother that she has to rest a lot?" my mother said.6. "The mother's not there" my father replied. "She took off a few years back. Can't say I blame her. Piquette cooks for them, and she says Lazarus would never do anything for himself as long as she's there. Anyway, I don't think she'd take much care of herself, once she got back. She's only thirteen, after all. Beth, I was thinking—What about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance."7. My mother looked stunned.8. "But Ewen -- what about Roddie and Vanessa?"9. "She's not contagious," my father said. "And it would be company forVanessa."10. "Oh dear," my mother said in distress, "I'll bet anything she has nits in her hair."11. "For Pete's sake," my father said crossly, "do you think Matron would let her stay in the hospital for all this time like that? Don't be silly, Beth. "12. Grandmother MacLeod, her delicately featured face as rigid as a cameo, now brought her mauve-veined hands together as though she were about to begin prayer.13. "Ewen, if that halfbreed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going," she announced. "I'll go to Morag's for the summer."14. I had trouble in stifling my urge to laugh, for my mother brightened visibly and quickly tried to hide it. ⑥If it came to a choice between Grandmother MacLeod and Piquette, Piquette would win hands down, nits or not.15. " It might be quite nice for you, at that," she mused. "You haven't seen Morag for over a year, and you might enjoy being in the city for a while. Well, Ewen dear, you do what you think best. If you think it would do Piquette some good, then we' II be glad to have her, as long as she behaves herself.16. So it happened that several weeks later, when we all piled into my father's old Nash, surrounded by suitcases and boxes of provisions and toys for myten-month-old brother, Piquette was with us and Grandmother MacLeod, miraculously, was not. My father would only be staying at the cottage for a couple of weeks, for he had to get back to his practice, but the rest of us would stay at Diamond Lake until the end of August.17. Our cottage was not named, as many were, "Dew Drop Inn" or"Bide-a-Wee," or "Bonnie Doon‖. The sign on the roadway bore in austere letters only our name, MacLeod. It was not a large cottage, but it was on the lakefront. You could look out the windows and see, through the filigree of the spruce trees, the water glistening greenly as the sun caught it. All around the cottage were ferns, andsharp-branched raspberry bushes, and moss that had grown over fallen tree trunks, Ifyou looked carefully among the weeds and grass, you could find wild strawberry plants which were in white flower now and in another month would bear fruit, the fragrant globes hanging like miniature scarlet lanterns on the thin hairy stems. The two grey squirrels were still there, gossiping at us from the tall spruce beside the cottage, and by the end of the summer they would again be tame enough to take pieces of crust from my hands. The broad moose antlers that hung above the back door were a little more bleached and fissured after the winter, but otherwise everything was the same. I raced joyfully around my kingdom, greeting all the places I had not seen for a year. My brother, Roderick, who had not been born when we were here last summer, sat on the car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce cone, meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands. My mother and father toted the luggage from car to cottage, exclaiming over how well the place had wintered, no broken windows, thank goodness, no apparent damage from storm felled branches or snow.18. Only after I had finished looking around did I notice Piquette. She was sitting on the swing her lame leg held stiffly out, and her other foot scuffing the ground as she swung slowly back and forth. Her long hair hung black and straight around her shoulders, and her broad coarse-featured face bore no expression -- it was blank, as though she no longer dwelt within her own skull, as though she had gone elsewhere. I approached her very hesitantly.19. "Want to come and play?"20. Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn.21. "I ain't a kid," she said.22. Wounded, I stamped angrily away, swearing I would not speak to her for the rest of the summer. In the days that followed, however, Piquette began to interest me, and l began to want to interest her. My reasons did not appear bizarre to me. Unlikely as it may seem, I had only just realised that the Tonnerre family, whom I had always heard Called half breeds, were actually Indians, or as near as made no difference. My acquaintance with Indians was not expensive. I did not remember everhaving seen a real Indian, and my new awareness that Piquette sprang from the people of Big Bear and Poundmaker, of Tecumseh, of the Iroquois who had eaten FatherBrébeuf's heart--all this gave her an instant attraction in my eyes. I was devoted reader of Pauline Johnson at this age, and sometimes would orate aloud and in an exalted voice, West Wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west--and so on. It seemed to me that Piquette must be in some way a daughter of the forest, a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds, who might impart to me, if I took the right approach, some of the secrets which she undoubtedly knew --where the whippoorwill made her nest, how the coyote reared her young, or whatever it was that it said in Hiawatha.23. I set about gaining Piquette's trust. She was not allowed to go swimming, with her bad leg, but I managed to lure her down to the beach-- or rather, she came because there was nothing else to do. The water was always icy, for the lake was fed by springs, but I swam like a dog, thrashing my arms and legs around at such speed and with such an output of energy that I never grew cold. Finally, when I had enough, I came out and sat beside Piquette on the sand. When she saw me approaching, her hands squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sullenly, without speaking.24. "Do you like this place?" I asked, after a while, intending to lead on from there into the question of forest lore.25. Piquette shrugged. "It's okay. Good as anywhere."26. "I love it, "1 said. "We come here every summer."27. "So what?" Her voice was distant, and I glanced at her uncertainly, wondering what I could have said wrong.28. "Do you want to come for a walk?" I asked her. "We wouldn't need to go far. If you walk just around the point there, you come to a bay where great big reeds grow in the water, and all kinds of fish hang around there. Want to? Come on."29. She shook her head.30. "Your dad said I ain't supposed to do no more walking than I got to." Itried another line.31. "I bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh?" I began respectfully.32. Piquette looked at me from her large dark unsmiling eyes.33. "I don't know what in hell you're talkin' about," she replied. "You nuts or somethin'? If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear?"34. I was startled and my feelings were hurt, but I had a kind of dogged perseverance. I ignored her rebuff.35. "You know something, Piquette? There's loons here, on this lake. You can see their nests just up the shore there, behind those logs. At night, you can hear them even from the cottage, but it's better to listen from the beach. My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away."36. Piquette was picking up stones and snail shells and then dropping them again.37. "Who gives a good goddamn?" she said.38. It became increasingly obvious that, as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss. That evening I went out by myself, scrambling through the bushes that overhung the steep path, my feet slipping on the fallen spruce needles that covered the ground. When I reached the shore, I walked along the firm damp sand to the small pier that my father had built, and sat down there. I heard someone else crashing through the undergrowth and the bracken, and for a moment I thought Piquette had changed her mind, but it turned out to be my father. He sat beside me on the pier and we waited, without speaking.39. At night the lake was like black glass with a streak of amber which was the path of the moon. All around, the spruce trees grew tall and close-set, branches blackly sharp against the sky, which was lightened by a cold flickering of stars. Then the loons began their calling. They rose like phantom birds from the nests on theshore, and flew out onto the dark still surface of the water.40. No one can ever describe that ululating sound, the crying of the loons, and no one who has heard it can ever forget it. Plaintive, and yet with a quality of chilling mockery, those voices belonged to a world separated by aeon from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home.41. "They must have sounded just like that," my father remarked, "before any person ever set foot here."42. Then he laughed. "You could say the same, of course, about sparrows or chipmunk, but somehow it only strikes you that way with the loons.43. "I know," I said.44. Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening. We stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then we went back to the cottage. My mother was reading beside the fireplace. Piquette was looking at the burning birch log, and not doing anything.45. "You should have come along," I said, although in fact I was glad she had not.46. "Not me", Piquette said. "You wouldn’ catch me walkin' way down there jus' for a bunch of squawkin' birds."47. Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. I felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she Would not or could not respond when I suggested exploring the woods or Playing house. I thought it was probably her slow and difficult walking that held her back. She stayed most of the time in the cottage with my mother, helping her with the dishes or with Roddie, but hardly ever talking. Then the Duncans arrived at their cottage, and I spent my days with Mavis, who was my best friend. I could not reach Piquette at all, and I soon lost interest in trying. But all that summer she remained as both a reproach and a mystery to me.48. That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week's illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own painand my mother's. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that Piquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. I do not remember seeing her at all until four years later, one Saturday night when Mavis and I were having Cokes in the Regal Café. The jukebox was booming like tuneful thunder, and beside it, leaning lightly on its chrome and its rainbow glass, was a girl.49. Piquette must have been seventeen then, although she looked about twenty. I stared at her, astounded that anyone could have changed so much. Her face, so stolid and expressionless before, was animated now with a gaiety that was almost violent. She laughed and talked very loudly with the boys around her. Her lipstick was bright carmine, and her hair was cut Short and frizzily permed. She had not been pretty as a child, and she was not pretty now, for her features were still heavy and blunt. But her dark and slightly slanted eyes were beautiful, and her skin-tight skirt and orange sweater displayed to enviable advantage a soft and slender body.50. She saw me, and walked over. She teetered a little, but it was not due to her once-tubercular leg, for her limp was almost gone.51. "Hi, Vanessa," Her voice still had the same hoarseness."Long time no see, eh?"52. "Hi," I said "Where've you been keeping yourself, Piquette?"53. "Oh, I been around," she said. "I been away almost two years now. Been all over the place--Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon. Jesus, what I could tell you! I come back this summer, but I ain't stayin'. You kids go in to the dance?"54. "No," I said abruptly, for this was a sore point with me. I was fifteen, and thought I was old enough to go to the Saturday-night dances at the Flamingo. My mother, however, thought otherwise.55. "Y'oughta come," Piquette said. "I never miss one. It's just about the on'y thing in this jerkwater town that's any fun. Boy, you couldn' catch me stayin' here. I don' give a shit about this place. It stinks."56. She sat down beside me, and I caught the harsh over-sweetness of her perfume.57. "Listen, you wanna know something, Vanessa?" she confided, her voice only slightly blurred. "Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me."58. I nodded speechlessly. I was certain she was speaking the truth. I knew a little more than I had that summer at Diamond Lake, but I could not reach her now any more than I had then, I was ashamed, ashamed of my own timidity, the frightened tendency to look the other way. Yet I felt no real warmth towards her-- I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. At this moment, meeting her again, I had to admit that she repelled and embarrassed me, and I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another.59. "I'll tell you something else," Piquette went on. "All the old bitches an' biddies in this town will sure be surprised. I'm gettin' married this fall -- my boy friend, he's an English fella, works in the stockyards in the city there, a very tall guy, got blond wavy hair. Gee, is he ever handsome. Got this real classy name. Alvin Gerald Cummings--some handle, eh? They call him Al."60. For the merest instant, then I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. ⑦Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope.61. "Gee, Piquette --" I burst out awkwardly, "that's swell. That's really wonderful. Congratulations—good luck--I hope you'll be happy--"62. As l mouthed the conventional phrases, I could only guess how great her need must have been, that she had been forced to seek the very things she so bitterly rejected.63. When I was eighteen, I left Manawaka and went away to college. At the end of my first year, I came back home for the summer. I spent the first few days intalking non-stop with my mother, as we exchanged all the news that somehow had not found its way into letters-- what had happened in my life and what had happened here in Manawaka while I was away. My mother searched her memory for events that concerned people I knew.64. "Did I ever write you about Piquette Tonnerre, Vanessa?" she asked one morning.65. "No, I don't think so," I replied. "Last I heard of her, she was going to marry some guy in the city. Is she still there?"66. My mother looked perturbed, and it was a moment before she spoke, as though she did not know how to express what she had to tell and wished she did not need to try.67. "She's dead," she said at last. Then, as I stared at her, "Oh, Vanessa, when it happened, I couldn't help thinking of her as she was that summer--so sullen and gauche and badly dressed. I couldn't help wondering if we could have done something more at that time--but what could we do? She used to be around in the cottage there with me all day, and honestly it was all I could do to get a word out of her. She didn't even talk to your father very much, although I think she liked him in her way."68. "What happened?" I asked.69. "Either her husband left her, or she left him," my mother said. "I don't know which. Anyway, she came back here with two youngsters, both onlybabies--they must have been born very close together. She kept house, I guess, for Lazarus and her brothers, down in the valley there, in the old Tonnerre place. I used to see her on the street sometimes, but she never spoke to me. She'd put on an awful lot of weight, and ⑧she looked a mess, to tell you the truth, a real slattern, dressed any old how. ⑨She was up in court a couple of times--drunk and disorderly, of course. One Saturday night last winter, during the coldest weather, Piquette was alone in the shack with the children. The Tonnerres made home brew all the time, so I've heard, and Lazarus said later she'd been drinking most of the day when he and the boys wentout that evening. They had an old woodstove there--you know the kind, with exposed pipes. The shack caught fire. Piquette didn't get out, and neither did the children."70. I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say. There was a kind of silence around the image in my mind of the fire and the snow, and I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette's eyes.71. I went up to Diamond Lake for a few days that summer, with Mavis and her family. The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father's death, and I did not even go to look at it, not wanting to witness my long-ago kingdom possessed now by strangers. But one evening I went clown to the shore by myself.72. The small pier which my father had built was gone, and in its place there was a large and solid pier built by the government, for Galloping Mountain was now a national park, and Diamond Lake had been re-named Lake Wapakata, for it was felt that an Indian name would have a greater appeal to tourists. The one store had become several dozen, and the settlement had all the attributes of a flourishing resort--hotels, a dance-hall, cafes with neon signs, the penetrating odours of potato chips and hot dogs.73. I sat on the government pier and looked out across the water. At night the lake at least was the same as it had always been, darkly shining and bearing within its black glass the streak of amber that was the path of the moon. There was no wind that evening, and everything was quiet all around me. It seemed too quiet, and then I realized that the loons were no longer here. I listened for some time, to make sure, but never once did I hear that long-drawn call, half mocking and half plaintive, spearing through the stillness across the lake.74. I did not know what had happened to the birds. Perhaps they had gone away to some far place of belonging. Perhaps they had been unable to find such a place, and had simply died out, having ceased to care any longer whether they lived or not.75. I remembered how Piquette had scorned to come along, when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in someunconscious and totally unrecognized way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons.Notes:1.Margaret Laurence: Born in Neepawa, Manitoba in Canada in 1926.Herpublications include This Side of Jordan (1960), The Stone Angle(1964), A Jest of God (1966), The First Dwellers (1969), and The Diviners (1974)2.Rid: Louis Rid (1844-85) led two rebellions of Indians and Metis (people ofmixed French and Indian blood) in 1869-70 and 1884-85.The latter rebellion was crushed in the battle of Batoehe, Manitoba, and Riel was executed3.patois: dialect4.broken English: English that is imperfectly spoken with mistakes in grammar andsyntax5.neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring; also 'neither fish, flesh, nor fowl'meaning 'not anything definite or recognizable'6. C. P. R. : Canadian Pacific Railroad7.Mountie: a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police8.Nash: a former make of automobiles9.Big Bear and Poundmaker: leaders of the Cree10.Tecumseh (1768-1813): chief of the Shawnee11.Father Brebeuf: Jean de Brebeuf (1593-1649), Jesuit missionary to the Hurons12.Hurons, Shawnee, Cree and Troquois: Indian tribes13.West Wind ...the west: the first two lines from "The Song My Pad die Sings" byPauline Johnson (1861-1913), Canadian poet who was the daughter of an English woman and a Mohawk chief14.Hiawatha: romantic poem about Indians by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow15.Cokes: a popular shortened form for Coca-Cola, a carbonated soft drinkmanufactured in the U. S.16.I don't give a shit: once taboo but now a colloquial slang, meaning' I don't care abit'Structural and stylistic analysis:Part I. Paras 1 - 2Introduction of the novel, when, where, who, etc. The general background.Part II. Para.3 – 70 The whole storySection 1. Para.3 – Para.16 Introducing Piquette.Section 2. Para.17 – Para.47 Days together with Piquette at Diamond LakeSection 3. Para.48 – Para.62 Second meeting with Piquette several years later Section 4. Para.63 – Para.70 Piquette’s deathPart III. Para.71 – end.RHETORICS：1.Hyperbole…dresses that were always miles too long.…those voices belonged to a world separated by aeons from our neat worldA. Exaggeration by using numerals:Thanks a million.The middle eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds even thousands of years.I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil.B. Exaggeration by using comparative and superlative degrees of adjectivesSherlock Holmes is considered by many people as the greatest detective in fictional literature.There was never a child who loved her father more than I do.I never saw a prettier sight.You write ten times better than any man in the class.C. Exaggeration by using extravagant adjectives:… where goods of every conceivable kind are sold.The burnished copper containers catches the light of innumerable lamps and braziers.The apprentices were incredibly young.D. Exaggeration by using noun or verb phrases:It is a vast cavern of a room, so thick with the dust of centuries that the mud-brick walls and vaulted roof are only dimly visible.I am already in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction.我又负了许多债，于是就得想尽一切办法，不露出马脚，不把自己毁掉。

00600 高级英语课程考试说明一、本课程使用的教材、大纲高级英语课程指定使用的教材为《高级英语》（上、下）（附考试大纲），全国高等教育自学考试指导委员会组编，张中载主编，外语教学与研究出版社，2000年版。

二、本课程的试卷题型及试题难易程度本课程考试的命题，是根据所附课程考试大纲所规定的各章学习（考试）内容和考核目标，来确定考试范围的考核标准，不扩大或缩小考试范围，也不提高或降低考核标准。

考试内容全面覆盖课程内容，并适当突出课程的重点内容，难易程度适中。

1.试卷题型结构表2.试卷合理地安排了题目的能力层次结构。

本课程在试题中对不同能力层次要求的分数比例，一般为：识记占30%，领会占20%，简单应用占10%，综合应用占40%。

3.试卷合理地安排了题目的难度结构。

题目难易度大致可分为容易、中等偏易、中等偏难、难四个等级，试卷中不同难易度试题所占的分数比例，大致为容易占20%，中等偏易占30%，中等偏难占30%，难占20%。

三、各章内容分数和大致分布根据自学考试大纲的要求，试卷在命题内容的分布上，兼顾考核的覆盖面和课程重点，力求点面结合。

每份试卷包括两大部分：第一部分考核课程内容，占总分的60%；第二部分是水平考试，使用课程以外的一篇短文，占总分的40%。

教材具体各章所占分值情况如下：四、考核重点及难点1、课程内容考核重点及难点：（1）课文内容的掌握；（2）语法和词汇的运用；（3）课文难句的理解及翻译。

2、水平考试考核重点及难点：（1）短文内容的掌握；（2）短文难句的翻译；（3）对课文主题的理解与阐述。

五、各题型试题范例及解题要求Ⅰ.按课文填空（每小题1分，共25分）解题要求：下面共有5个段落，每个有5个空缺，在题后的25个备选答案中选出正确的答案，并将其字母标号填入下面方框中。

范例：They are always on trial, always on the 1 of failure, collectively and 2 . They strain, even the most secure and self-assured of them, to look good on paper; and there is much paper for them tolook good on. Each week, for example, a 3 of the sales results of the preceding week for eachsales office and for the Sales Department as a whole for each 4 of the company is kept andcompared to the sales results for the 5 week of the year before.解答：Ⅱ.词汇语法选择题（每小题1分，共15分）解题要求：在下列每小题的四个备选答案中选出一个正确的答案，并将其字母标号填入下面方框中。

(多选题) 1: Which of the sentences below apply the rhetorical device of rhetorical question? A: Was that wise?B: What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? C: Why should she be unhappy?D: He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him.正确答案:(多选题) 2: Which of the following sentences use the rhetorical device of hyperbole?A: Death would be too kind and brief.B: I wanted to gobble up the room entire and take it to Bailey, who would help me analyze and enjoy it.C: With the cold lemonade they were sufficient for childhood’s lifelong diet.D: I knew from listening to a thousand preachers that she was nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn’t really heard, heard to understand, a single word.正确答案:(多选题) 3: Hyperbole is NOT used in ________.A: Surely, humor is the saving grace of us, for without it we should die of vexation.B: I must confess that I always … those “as soon as my head touches the pillow” fellows. C: I used to read, …thanks to their “iron wills,”could lie down and plunge themselves immediately into deep sleep, …D: I had overlooked the necessity of having an “iron will,”… this peculiar metallic quality. 正确答案:(多选题) 4: Parallelism is used in ________.A: It sells us instant gratification. It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain.B: Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precisio is an anachronism. C: Television’s variety becomes a narcotic, not a stimulus.D: Everything about this nation –the structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world – has become more complex, not less.正确答案:(判断题) 1: The sentiment that justifies cruelty to beasts leads to persecution of men of other race, class or religion.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 2: Mrs. Flowers was from an aristocratic family and enjoyed respect of both the white and black folks in the town.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 3: (The Trouble with Television) The American public is not well aware of the adverse effects of television.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 4: Shirly Chisholm (the author) loves teaching and is waiting anxiously to go back to her job in school.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 5: (Why I Write) For fifteen years or more, Orwell wrote a story about himself.B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 6: Successful matadors are even more idolized than film stars.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 7: When the male gorilla discovered the author and his party, he suddenly rose and was ready to charge at them.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 8: Eveline was not respected at the shop she worked, nor was she at home, though she was a hard-working girl.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 9: The Watts riots gave rise to a flourishing of ghetto literature and art.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 10: Huge clouds usually hide the peaks of these volcanoes from view.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 11: (On Human Nature and Politics) The sons of a sultan fought because they were by different mothers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 12: (Eveline) What made Eveline pluck up her courage and leave for the station was that she didn’t want to live her mother.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 13: (A Most Forgiving Ape) When the author and his party se out that morning, he was quite certain that he would meet the gorillas.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 14: Though the infliction of pain in itself is an evil act, it requires no justification if it can be done for a good purpose.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 15: Besides political issues, rock music also deals with the emotional life of the American people.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 16: (Four Choices for Young People) Few unspoiled places remain in our world where the escapists can practice plain-living and high thinking.A: 错误正确答案:(判断题) 17: Ernest, Harry and Little Keogh were all Eveline‘s brothers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 18: According to Orwell, all writers, even writers of railway guides, have aesthetic considerations.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 19: American food is tasteless and innutritious.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 20: (I’d Rather Be Black Than Female) It was difficult for the author to win the election due not so much to her racial background as to her sex.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 21: When he saw the gorilla, the author was so fascinated by its charming appearance that he forgot to use his binoculars.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 22: One of the African guides could tell that these nests had been abandoned by the gorillas long before.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 23: Protest against vivisection used to be strong, but today no one dare show any opposition. A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 24: She thinks, however, that most white Americans are now truly aware of prejudice against the black Americans.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 25: Television gets much of its financial source from advertising and is by nature more Republican than the newspapers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 26: Mr. H. does not have very interesting ideas.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 27: (The Trouble with Television) News on TV is read very fast and made too brief and incoherent to be comprehensive.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 29: Orwell believes that talented people have individual ambition which is a motive to drive them on.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 30: Eveline didn‘t go with Frank because she was afraid the boat would sink and she would be drowned.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 31: British high school students wore uniforms provided by the government.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 32: In New York, and in a couple of other cities in the U.S., the newspapers have ceased to play a significant role as a medium.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 33: (A Most Forgiving Ape) The author found the area very disturbing because the equator sun was beating down him mercilessly.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 34: While at Wittier college, Sanders (the author of "I‘ll Never Escape the Ghetto") felt ashamed of telling people that he was from "A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 35: (A Lesson in Living) Mrs. Flowers’ approval told Marguerite that she had made the right choice of her dress.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 36: (Why I Write) According to Orwell, all writers, even writers of railway guides, have aesthetic considerations.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(多选题) 1: Which of the sentences below apply the rhetorical device of rhetorical question? A: Was that wise?B: What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? C: Why should she be unhappy?D: He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him.正确答案:(多选题) 2: Which of the following sentences use the rhetorical device of hyperbole?A: Death would be too kind and brief.B: I wanted to gobble up the room entire and take it to Bailey, who would help me analyze and enjoyC: With the cold lemonade they were sufficient for childhood’s lifelong diet.D: I knew from listening to a thousand preachers that she was nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn’t really heard, heard to understand, a single word.正确答案:(多选题) 3: Hyperbole is NOT used in ________.A: Surely, humor is the saving grace of us, for without it we should die of vexation.B: I must confess that I always … those “as soon as my head touches the pillow” fellows. C: I used to read, … thanks to their “iron wills,” could lie down and plunge themselves immediately into deep sleep, …D: I had overlooked the necessity of having an “iron will,”… this peculiar metallic quality. 正确答案:(多选题) 4: Parallelism is used in ________.A: It sells us instant gratification. It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain.B: Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precisio is an anachronism. C: Television’s variety becomes a narcotic, not a stimulus.D: Everything about this nation – the structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world – has become more complex, not less.正确答案:(判断题) 1: The sentiment that justifies cruelty to beasts leads to persecution of men of other race, class or religion.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 2: Mrs. Flowers was from an aristocratic family and enjoyed respect of both the white and black folks in the town.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 3: (The Trouble with Television) The American public is not well aware of the adverse effects of television.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 4: Shirly Chisholm (the author) loves teaching and is waiting anxiously to go back to her job in school.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 5: (Why I Write) For fifteen years or more, Orwell wrote a story about himself.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 6: Successful matadors are even more idolized than film stars.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 7: When the male gorilla discovered the author and his party, he suddenly rose and was ready to charge at them.A: 错误B: 正确(判断题) 8: Eveline was not respected at the shop she worked, nor was she at home, though she was a hard-working girl.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 9: The Watts riots gave rise to a flourishing of ghetto literature and art.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 10: Huge clouds usually hide the peaks of these volcanoes from view.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 11: (On Human Nature and Politics) The sons of a sultan fought because they were by different mothers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 12: (Eveline) What made Eveline pluck up her courage and leave for the station was that she didn’t want to live her mother.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 13: (A Most Forgiving Ape) When the author and his party se out that morning, he was quite certain that he would meet the gorillas.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 14: Though the infliction of pain in itself is an evil act, it requires no justification if it can be done for a good purpose.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 15: Besides political issues, rock music also deals with the emotional life of the American people.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 16: (Four Choices for Young People) Few unspoiled places remain in our world where the escapists can practice plain-living and high thinking.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 17: Ernest, Harry and Little Keogh were all Eveline‘s brothers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 18: According to Orwell, all writers, even writers of railway guides, have aesthetic considerations.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 20: (I’d Rather Be Black Than Female) It was difficult for the author to win the election due not so much to her racial background as to her sex.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 21: When he saw the gorilla, the author was so fascinated by its charming appearance that he forgot to use his binoculars.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 22: One of the African guides could tell that these nests had been abandoned by the gorillas long before.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 23: Protest against vivisection used to be strong, but today no one dare show any opposition. A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 24: She thinks, however, that most white Americans are now truly aware of prejudice against the black Americans.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 25: Television gets much of its financial source from advertising and is by nature more Republican than the newspapers.A: 错误B: 正确正确答案:(判断题) 26: Mr. H. does not have very interesting ideas.A: 错误。

Lesson 12 The LoonsObjectives of Teaching1) Improving students’ ability to read between lines and understand the text properly;2) Cultivating students’ ability to make a creative reading;3) Enhancing students’ ability to appreciate the text4) Helping students to understanding rhetorical devices;5)Encouraging students to voice their own viewpoint fluently and accurately. Important and difficult points1)understanding the theme of this passage;2)appreciating the writing style.I. Background information about the author:Margaret Laurence is one of the major contemporary Canadian writers. After her marriage, she lived in Africa for a number of years.Her works include A Tree of Poverty(1954), This Side of Jordan(1960), The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963), The Prophet’s Camel Bell(1963), The Stone Angel(1964) and The Fire Dwellers (1969), A Bird in the House (1970), The Diveners (1974).II. Type of writing: short fiction“The Loons” (1970) is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd ed., 1981.III. Background of the story:This touching story tells of the plight of a girl from a native Indian family. Her people were marginalized by the white-dominating society. They were unable to exist independently in a respectable and dignified way. They found it impossible to fit into the main currents of culture and difficult to be assimilated comfortably. At school, the girl felt out of place and ill at ease with the white children. When she had grown up she didn’t have any chance to improve her life. In fact her situation became more and more messed up. In the end she was killed in a fire.IV. Detailed study of the text1. shack: a small roughly built house, hut2. dwelling: n (fml) place of residence; house, flat, etcEg: my dwelling in Kaifengdwelling-house(esp. law): house used as a residence, not as a place of work3.belong: to be suitable or advantageous, be in the right placeeg: I don't belong in a big city like this.He doesn't belong in the advanced learners’ class.She refuses to go abroad: She belongs here.4.odd: not regular, occasional, casual, occasional, randomeg: odd jobsHis life was not dull with the odd adventure now and then.5. relief: aid in the form of goods, coupon or money given, as by a government agency,to persons unable to support themselveseg: a relief lawyeron relief: receiving government aid because of poverty, unemployment, etc.6. …with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter, would knock at the doors of the town’s brick houses…This suggests that the Tonnerres had lived a very miserable life. They had never experienced happiness in their whole life. The “brick houses” indicates the wealthy people’s home.7. flare:1) burn brightly but briefly or unsteadilyEg: The match flared in the darkness.flare up: burn suddenly more intenselyThe fire flared up as I put more logs on it.2) reach a more violent state; suddenly become angryeg:Violence has flared up again.He flares up at the slightest provocation.3) (of an illness)recur, happen againMy back trouble has flared up again.8. dogged: determined; not giving up easilyEg: a dogged defence of the cityAlthough he's less talented, he won by sheer dogged persistence.V. Organization of the storyPart I. (Paras 1-2): Introduction of the novel---the general background.Part II. (Para.3-4) The whole storySection 1. Para.3 (p.206) – Para.6 (p.208) Introducing the heroine Piquette.Section 2. Para.7 (p.208) – Para.2 (p.214) Days together with Piquette at Diamond LakeSection 3. Para.3 (p. 214) – Para.2 (p.217) Second meeting with Piquette several years laterSection 4. Para.3 (p.217) – Para.4 (p.218) Piquette’s deathPart III. (Para. 5 on page 218 – end). AnalogyVI. Rhetorical devices1)Hyperbole…dresses that were always miles too long.…those voices belo nged to a world separated by aeons from our neat world2)Metaphor…the filigree of the spruce treesdaughter of the forestI tried another lineA streak of amber3) PersonificationThe two grey squirrels were still there, gossiping…The news that somehow had not found its way into letters.I tried another linea streak of amber4) Transferred epithetAll around, the spruce trees grew tall and close-set, branches blackly sharp against the sky which was lightened by a cold flickering of stars.I was ashamed, ashamed of my own timidity, the frightened tendency to look the other way.My brother, Roderick, who had not been born when we were here last summer, sat on the car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce core, meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands.5) MetonymyThose voices belonged to a world separated by aeons from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home. (our modern civilization)6) Synecdochethe damn bone’s flared up againVII. The theme of the story:The death of the heroine is like the disappearance of the loons on Diamond Lake. Just as the narrator’s father predicted, the loons would go away when more cottages were built at the Lake with more people moving in. The loons disappeared as nature was ruined by civilization. In a similar way, the girl and her people failed to find their positions in modern society.VIII. Questions for discussion:How is the diasappearance of the loons related to the theme of this story?。

The LoonsMargarel Laurence1、Just below Manawaka, where the Wachakwa River ran brown and noisy over the pebbles , the scrub oak and grey-green willow and chokecherry bushes grew in a dense thicket . In a clearing at the centre of the thicket stood the Tonnerre family's shack. The basis at this dwelling was a small square cabin made of poplar poles and chinked with mud, which had been built by Jules Tonnerre some fifty years before, when he came back from Batoche with a bullet in his thigh, the year that Riel was hung and the voices of the Metis entered their long silence. Jules had only intended to stay the winter in the Wachakwa Valley, but the family was still there in the thirties, when I was a child. As the Tonnerres had increased, their settlement had been added to, until the clearing at the foot of the town hill was a chaos of lean-tos, wooden packing cases, warped lumber, discarded car types, ramshackle chicken coops , tangled strands of barbed wire and rusty tin cans.2、The Tonnerres were French half breeds, and among themselves they spoke a patois that was neither Cree nor French. Their English was broken and full of obscenities. They did not belong among the Cree of the Galloping Mountain reservation, further north, and they did not belong among the Scots-Irish and Ukrainians of Manawaka, either. They were, as my Grandmother MacLeod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring . When their men were not working at odd jobs or as section hands on the C.P. R. they lived on relief. In the summers, one of the Tonnerre youngsters, with a face that seemed totally unfamiliar with laughter, would knockat the doors of the town's brick houses and offer for sale a lard -pail full of bruised wild strawberries, and if he got as much as a quarter he would grab the coin and run before the customer had time to change her mind. Sometimes old Jules, or his son Lazarus, would get mixed up in a Saturday-night brawl , and would hit out at whoever was nearest or howl drunkenly among the offended shoppers on Main Street, and then the Mountie would put them for the night in the barred cell underneath the Court House, and the next morning they would be quiet again.3、Piquette Tonnerre, the daughter of Lazarus, was in my class at school. She was older than I, but she had failed several grades, perhaps because her attendance had always been sporadic and her interest in schoolwork negligible . Part of the reason she had missed a lot of school was that she had had tuberculosis of the bone, and had once spent many months in hospital. I knew this because my father was the doctor who had looked after her. Her sickness was almost the only thing I knew about her, however. Otherwise, she existed for me only as a vaguely embarrassing presence, with her hoarse voice and her clumsy limping walk and her grimy cotton dresses that were always miles too long. I was neither friendly nor unfriendly towards her. She dwelt and moved somewhere within my scope of vision, but I did not actually notice her very much until that peculiar summer when I was eleven.4、"I don't know what to do about that kid." my father said at dinner one evening. "Piquette Tonnerre, I mean. The damn bone's flared up again. I've had her in hospitalfor quite a while now, and it's under control all right, but I hate like the dickens to send her home again."5、"Couldn't you explain to her mother that she has to rest a lot?" my mother said.6、"The mother's not there" my father replied. "She took off a few years back. Can't say I blame her. Piquette cooks for them, and she says Lazarus would never do anything for himself as long as she's there. Anyway, I don't think she'd take much care of herself, once she got back. She's only thirteen, after all. Beth, I was thinking—What about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance."7、My mother looked stunned.8、"But Ewen -- what about Roddie and Vanessa?"9、"She's not contagious ," my father said. "And it would be company for Vanessa."10、"Oh dear," my mother said in distress, "I'll bet anything she has nits in her hair."11、"For Pete's sake," my father said crossly, "do you think Matron would let her stay in the hospital for all this time like that? Don't be silly, Beth. "12、Grandmother MacLeod, her delicately featured face as rigid as a cameo , now brought her mauve -veined hands together as though she were about to begin prayer.13、"Ewen, if that half breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going," she announced. "I'll go to Morag's for the summer."14、I had trouble in stifling my urge to laugh, for my mother brightened visibly and quickly tried to hide it. If it came to a choice between Grandmother MacLeod and Piquette, Piquette would win hands down, nits or not.15、"It might be quite nice for you, at that," she mused. "You haven't seen Morag for over a year, and you might enjoy being in the city for a while. Well, Ewen dear, you do what you think best. If you think it would do Piquette some good, then we' II be glad to have her, as long as she behaves herself."16、So it happened that several weeks later, when we all piled into my father's old Nash, surrounded by suitcases and boxes of provisions and toys for myten-month-old brother, Piquette was with us and Grandmother MacLeod, miraculously, was not. My father would only be staying at the cottage for a couple of weeks, for he had to get back to his practice, but the rest of us would stay at Diamond Lake until the end of August.17、Our cottage was not named, as many were, "Dew Drop Inn" or "Bide-a-Wee," or "Bonnie Doon”. The sign on the roadway bore in austere letters only our name, MacLeod. It was not a large cottage, but it was on the lakefront. You could lookout the windows and see, through the filigree of the spruce trees, the water glistening greenly as the sun caught it. All around the cottage were ferns, and sharp-branched raspberrybushes, and moss that had grown over fallen tree trunks, If you looked carefully among the weeds and grass, you could find wild strawberry plants which were in white flower now and in another month would bear fruit, the fragrant globes hanging like miniaturescarlet lanterns on the thin hairy stems. The two grey squirrels were still there, gossiping at us from the tall spruce beside the cottage, and by the end of the summer they would again be tame enough to take pieces of crust from my hands. The broad mooseantlers that hung above the back door were a little more bleached and fissured after the winter, but otherwise everything was the same. I raced joyfully around my kingdom, greeting all the places I had not seen for a year. My brother, Roderick, who had not been born when we were here last summer, sat on the car rug in the sunshine and examined a brown spruce cone, meticulously turning it round and round in his small and curious hands. My mother and father toted the luggage from car to cottage, exclaiming over how well the place had wintered, no broken windows, thank goodness, no apparent damage from storm felled branches or snow.18、Only after I had finished looking around did I notice Piquette. She was sitting on the swing her lame leg held stiffly out, and her other foot scuffing the ground as she swung slowly back and forth. Her long hair hung black and straight around her shoulders, and her broad coarse-featured face bore no expression -- itwas blank, as though she no longer dwelt within her own skull, as though she had gone elsewhere.I approached her very hesitantly.19、"Want to come and play?"20、Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn.21、"I ain't a kid," she said.22、Wounded, I stamped angrily away, swearing I would not speak to her for the rest of the summer. In the days that followed, however, Piquette began to interest me, and l began to want to interest her. My reasons did not appear bizarre to me. Unlikely as it may seem, I had only just realised that the Tonnerre family, whom I had always heard Called half breeds, were actually Indians, or as near as made no difference. My acquaintance with Indians was not expensive. I did not remember ever having seen a real Indian, and my new awareness that Piquette sprang from the people of Big Bear and Poundmaker, of Tecumseh, of the Iroquois who had eaten Father Brébeuf's heart--all this gave her an instant attraction in my eyes. I was devoted reader of Pauline Johnson at this age, and sometimes would orate aloud and in an exalted voice, West Wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west--and so on. It seemed to me that Piquette must be in some way a daughter of the forest, a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds, who might impart to me, if I took the right approach, some of the secrets which she undoubtedly knew --wherethe whippoorwill made her nest, how the coyote reared her young, or whatever it was that it said in Hiawatha.23、I set about gaining Piquette's trust. She was not allowed to go swimming, with her bad leg, but I managed to lure her down to the beach-- or rather, she came because there was nothing else to do. The water was always icy, for the lake was fed by springs, but I swam like a dog, thrashing my arms and legs around at such speed and with such an output of energy that I never grew cold. Finally, when I had enough, I came out and sat beside Piquette on the sand. When she saw me approaching, her hands squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sullenly, without speaking.24、"Do you like this place?" I asked, after a while, intending to lead on from there into the question of forest lore .25、Piquette shrugged. "It's okay. Good as anywhere."26、"I love it, "1 said. "We come here every summer."27、"So what?" Her voice was distant, and I glanced at her uncertainly, wondering what I could have said wrong.28、"Do you want to come for a walk?" I asked her. "We wouldn't need to go far. If you walk just around the point there, you come to a bay where great big reeds grow in the water, and all kinds of fish hang around there. Want to? Come on."29、She shook her head.30、"Your dad said I ain't supposed to do no more walking than I got to." I tried another line.31、"I bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh?" I began respectfully.32、Piquette looked at me from her large dark unsmiling eyes.33、"I don't know what in hell you're talkin' about," she replied. "You nuts or somethin'? If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear?"34、I was startled and my feelings were hurt, but I had a kind of dogged perseverance. I ignored her rebuff.35、"You know something, Piquette? There's loons here, on this lake. You can see their nests just up the shore there, behind those logs. At night, you can hear them even from the cottage, but it's better to listen from the beach. My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away."36、Piquette was picking up stones and snail shells and then dropping them again.37、"Who gives a good goddamn?" she said.38、It became increasingly obvious that, as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss. That evening I went out by myself, scrambling through the bushes that overhung the steep path, my feet slipping on the fallen spruce needles that covered the ground. When I reached the shore, I walked along the firm damp sand to the small pier that my father had built, and sat down there. I heard someone else crashing through the undergrowth and the bracken, and for a moment I thought Piquette had changed her mind, but it turned out to be my father. He sat beside me on the pier and we waited, without speaking.38、At night the lake was like black glass with a streak of amber which was the path of the moon. All around, the spruce trees grew tall and close-set, branches blackly sharp against the sky, which was lightened by a cold flickering of stars. Then the loons began their calling. They rose like phantom birds from the nests on the shore, and flew out onto the dark still surface of the water.40、No one can ever describe that ululating sound, the crying of the loons, and no one who has heard it can ever forget it. Plaintive , and yet with a quality of chilling mockery , those voices belonged to a world separated by aeon from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home.41、"They must have sounded just like that," my father remarked, "before any person ever set foot here." Then he laughed. "You could say the same, of course, about sparrows or chipmunk, but somehow it only strikes you that way with the loons."42、"I know," I said.43、Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening. We stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then we went back to the cottage. My mother was reading beside the fireplace. Piquette was looking at the burning birch log, and not doing anything.44、"You should have come along," I said, although in fact I was glad she had not.45、"Not me", Piquette said. "You wouldn’ catch me walkin' way down there jus' for a bunch of squawkin' birds."46、Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she Would not or could not respond when I suggested exploring the woods or Playing house. I thought it was probably her slow and difficult walking that held her back. She stayed most of the time in the cottage with my mother, helping her with the dishes or with Roddie, but hardly ever talking. Then the Duncans arrived at their cottage, and I spent my days with Mavis, who was my best friend. I could not reach Piquette at all, and I soon lost interest in trying. But all that summer she remained as both a reproach and a mystery to me.47、That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week's illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain andmy mother's. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that Piquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. I do not remember seeing her at all until four years later, one Saturday night when Mavis and I were having Cokes in the Regal Café. The jukebox was booming like tuneful thunder, and beside it, leaning lightly on its chrome and its rainbow glass, was a girl.48、Piquette must have been seventeen then, although she looked about twenty.I stared at her, astounded that anyone could have changed so much. Her face, so stolidand expressionless before, was animated now with a gaiety that was almost violent. She laughed and talked very loudly with the boys around her. Her lipstick was bright carmine, and her hair was cut Short and frizzily permed . She had not been pretty as a child, and she was not pretty now, for her features were still heavy and blunt. But her dark and slightly slanted eyes were beautiful, and her skin-tight skirt and orange sweater displayed to enviable advantage a soft and slender body.49、She saw me, and walked over. She teetered a little, but it was not due to her once-tubercular leg, for her limp was almost gone.50、"Hi, Vanessa," Her voice still had the same hoarseness . "Long time no see, eh?"51、"Hi," I said "Where've you been keeping yourself, Piquette?"52、"Oh, I been around," she said. "I been away almost two years now. Been all over the place--Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon. Jesus, what I could tell you! I come back this summer, but I ain't stayin'. You kids go in to the dance?"53、"No," I said abruptly, for this was a sore point with me. I was fifteen, and thought I was old enough to go to the Saturday-night dances at the Flamingo. My mother, however, thought otherwise.54、"Y'oughta come," Piquette said. "I never miss one. It's just about the on'y thing in this jerkwater55、town that's any fun. Boy, you couldn' catch me stayin' here. I don' givea shit about this place. It stinks."56、She sat down beside me, and I caught the harsh over-sweetness of her perfume.57、"Listen, you wanna know something, Vanessa?" she confided , her voice only slightly blurred. "Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me."58、I nodded speechlessly. I was certain she was speaking the truth. I knew a little more than I had that summer at Diamond Lake, but I could not reach her now any more than I had then, I was ashamed, ashamed of my own timidity, the frightened tendency to look the other way. Yet I felt no real warmth towards her-- I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped shewould be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. At this moment, meeting her again, I had to admit that she repelled and embarrassed me, and I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another.59、"I'll tell you something else," Piquette went on. "All the old bitches an' biddies in this town will sure be surprised. I'm gettin' married this fall -- my boy friend, he's an English fella, works in the stockyards in the city there, a very tall guy, got blond wavy hair. Gee, is he ever handsome. Got this real Hiroshima name. Alvin Gerald Cummings--some handle, eh? They call him Al."60、For the merest instant, then I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope.61、"Gee, Piquette --" I burst out awkwardly, "that's swell. That's really wonderful. Congratulations—good luck--I hope you'll be happy--"62、As l mouthed the conventional phrases, I could only guess how great her need must have been, that she had been forced to seek the very things she so bitterly rejected.63、When I was eighteen, I left Manawaka and went away to college. At the end of my first year, I came back home for the summer. I spent the first few days in talking non-stop with my mother, as we exchanged all the news that somehow had not found its way into letters-- what had happened in my life and what had happened here in Manawaka while I was away. My mother searched her memory for events that concerned people I knew.64、"Did I ever write you about Piquette Tonnerre, Vanessa?" she asked one morning.65、"No, I don't think so," I replied. "Last I heard of her, she was going to marry some guy in the city. Is she still there?"66、My mother looked Hiroshima , and it was a moment before she spoke, as though she did not know how to express what she had to tell and wished she did not need to try.67、"She's dead," she said at last. Then, as I stared at her, "Oh, Vanessa, when it happened, I couldn't help thinking of her as she was that summer--so sullen and gauche and badly dressed. I couldn't help wondering if we could have done something more at that time--but what could we do? She used to be around in the cottage there with me all day, and honestly it was all I could do to get a word out of her. She didn't even talk to your father very much, although I think she liked him in her way."68、"What happened?" I asked.69、"Either her husband left her, or she left him," my mother said. "I don't know which. Anyway, she came back here with two youngsters, both only babies--they must have been born very close together. She kept house, I guess, for Lazarus and her brothers, down in the valley there, in the old Tonnerre place. I used to see her on the street sometimes, but she never spoke to me. She'd put on an awful lot of weight, and she looked a mess, to tell you the truth, a real slattern , dressed any old how. She was up in court a couple of times--drunk and disorderly, of course. One Saturday night last winter, during the coldest weather, Piquette was alone in the shack with the children. The Tonnerres made home brew all the time, so I've heard, and Lazarus said later she'd been drinking most of the day when he and the boys went out that evening. They had an old woodstove there--you know the kind, with exposed pipes. The shack caught fire. Piquette didn't get out, and neither did the children."70、I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say. There was a kind of silence around the image in my mind of the fire and the snow, and I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette's eyes.71、I went up to Diamond Lake for a few days that summer, with Mavis and her family. The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father's death, and I did not even go to look at it, not wanting to witness my long-ago kingdom possessed now by strangers. But one evening I went clown to the shore by myself.72、The small pier which my father had built was gone, and in its place there was a large and solid pier built by the government, for Galloping Mountain was now a national park, and Diamond Lake had been re-named Lake Wapakata, for it was felt that an Indian name would have a greater appeal to tourists. The one store had become several dozen, and the settlement had all the attributes of a flourishingresort--hotels, a dance-hall, cafes with neon signs, the penetrating odoursof potato chips and hot dogs.73、I sat on the government pier and looked out across the water. At night the lake at least was the same as it had always been, darkly shining and bearing within its black glass the streak of amber that was the path of the moon. There was no wind that evening, and everything was quiet all around me. It seemed too quiet, and then I realized that the loons were no longer here. I listened for some time, to make sure, but never once did I hear that long-drawn call, half mocking and half plaintive, spearing through the stillness across the lake.74、I did not know what had happened to the birds. Perhaps they had gone away to some far place of belonging. Perhaps they had been unable to find such a place, and had simply died out, having ceased to care any longer whether they lived or not.75、I remembered how Piquette had scorned to come along, when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognized way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons.第十二课潜水鸟玛格丽特劳伦斯马纳瓦卡山下有一条小河，叫瓦恰科瓦河，浑浊的河水沿着布满鹅卵石的河床哗哗地流淌着，河边谷地上长着无数的矮橡树、灰绿色柳树和野樱桃树，形成一片茂密的丛林。