(完整版)Thechrysanthemums原文

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2024年4月25日发(作者：)

The Chrysanthemums

by John Steinbeck

Elisa is a young married lady working on an isolated farm and proud of her

skills in growing flowers. One day, she suddenly feels a desire to communicate with

the outside world. What happens to her? Please read the following story.

The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky

and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains

and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang

plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut.

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On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed

to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in

December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive

yellow leaves.

It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind

blew up from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain

before long; but fog and rain do not go together.

Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch there was little work to be done,

for the hay was cut and stored and the orchards were plowed up to receive the rain

deeply when it should come. The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming

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shaggy and rough-coated.

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Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across the yard and saw

Henry, her husband, talking to two men in business suits. The three of them stood

by the tractor shed, each man with one foot on the side of the little Fordson. They

smoked cigarettes and studied the machine as they talked.

Elisa watched them for a moment and then went back to her work. She was

thirty-five. Her face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her

figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat

pulled low down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost

completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the

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snips, the trowel and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore

heavy leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked.

She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum stalks with a pair of short

and powerful scissors. She looked down toward the men by the tractor shed now

and then. Her face was eager and mature and handsome; even her work with the

scissors was over-eager, over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too

small and easy for her energy.

She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left

a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it. Behind her stood the neat white farm

house with red geraniums close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a

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hard-swept looking little house with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat

on the front steps.

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