《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版

[2007.3.15]A memoir of Zimbabwe: The house that Bob burned down

[2007.3.15][Books and arts]A memoir of Zimbabwe: The house that Bob burned down
津巴布韦回忆录：鲍勃烧了那间房

Books and arts
A memoir of Zimbabwe
津巴布韦回忆录
The house that Bob burned down
鲍勃烧了那间房

Mar 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition

WHAT is there new to say about the hell Robert Mugabe has visited upon Zimbabwe? Inflation exceeds 1,700%. Three million of Zimbabwe's 13m people have fled. Most of the remainder have been reduced to penury. Among them are 700,000 homeless, mostly opposition supporters, whose shacks Mr Mugabe's goons bulldozed in 2005.
对于罗伯特·穆加贝(Robert Mugabe)统治下地域一般的津巴布韦还有什么新鲜的可说？超过1700%的通货膨胀率，1300万的国民逃了300万，剩下的人也多是一身赤贫，而且其中70万由于支持反对党，他们本就破败的屋子在2005年又被穆加贝的土匪团破坏，现在是无家可归。

It is an old story in Africa, where Mr Mugabe is but the latest model of a powerdemented tyrant. His madness became clear in 2000, when, to his amazement, he lost what amounted to a referendum on his two-decade rule. Mr Mugabe turned wrecker. He promised land redistribution on a huge scale, with a programme to transfer commercial farms, mostly owned by wealthy opposition supporters, to his political base of engorged relatives, cronies and shoeless mobs-for-hire.
其实这种被权力迷乱心智的暴君在非洲由来已久，穆加贝不过是一个最新的例子。二十年的统治最终把他带到了2000年的全民公投，而这一次的挫败让他的疯狂昭然若揭,开始大肆破坏。他许诺大规模重新分配土地，想要将富有的反对者手中的商业农场转给他那些已经富得流油的亲信和恶穷的雇佣暴徒，因为这些人才是他的政治基础。

Commercial agriculture, which had earned about 50% of Zimbabwe's foreign currency, collapsed. Capital fled. Economic meltdown bred state thuggery and crime. The big man's solution? Last month, celebrating his 83rd birthday, Mr Mugabe pledged to remain in power at 100.
此后，原本占据津巴布韦50%外币的商业农业轰然崩溃。资本开始外流。经济上的彻底垮台也滋生了国家的政治谋杀以及犯罪。那这位大人物将如何解决呢？我们的穆加贝先生在上月83岁生日庆典时提出了办法，他将承诺将一直当权到100岁。

However familiar its condition, Zimbabwe's demise has grabbed the world's attention, attracting much more media coverage than bigger, concurrent crises around the continent. One reason is the tragedy of it: Zimbabwe has fallen much further than most African countries, and in a fashion of misrule that many in Africa, especially its leaders, had claimed was over. Indeed, Zimbabwe has become a litmus test of that boast. The refusal of many African leaders, especially South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, to condemn Mr Mugabe augurs ill for the continent's revival.
尽管这种情况在津巴布韦已是见怪不怪，尽 管在非洲大陆现在有更严重的危机发生，但是这里还是吸引了全世界的注意，招来了比其它地方更多的媒体报道。原因之一也许是跟大部分非洲国家相比津巴布韦陷 得更深，而这一悲剧正是缘于统治者的暴政。虽然多数非洲国家，尤其是领导人，都认为暴政已不存在，而这一夸口似乎很难经受津巴布韦的检验。许多非洲领导 人，特别是南非的塔博·姆贝基(Thabo Mbeki)，不愿谴责穆加贝，而且他们预言非洲复兴前途不妙。

Another reason Zimbabwe has caught the world's eye—the main reason, most Africans would say—is that the dispossessed farmers are white. Acres of newsprint have been devoted to their troubles, even though, at around 4,000 families, they represent a small, and still privileged, minority of Zimbabwe's victims.
津巴布韦吸引世界眼球还有一个原因，就是被剥夺土地的农民是白人，大部分非洲人更视此为主要原因。尽管4000户特权人家只是所有受害者中的很小部分，但是关于他们问题的报道却总是铺天盖地。

Peter Godwin, a Zimbabwean journalist, brings little new to their story, which dominates the first third of his book. It is rather an irritating read, often falling into the self-glamorising and self-pity that can be a feature of white Africans. “Is this how it ends?” he muses after the murder of a white farmer. “Will we be picked off one by one until those who remain just run?”
彼得·戈德温(Peter Godwin)是津巴布韦的记者，这个故事占了他全书内容的三分之一，而且全无新意。非洲白人的特性在书中清晰可见，经常不自觉地自我吹捧或是顾影自怜。看到一个白人农民被谋杀后，他思索道：“事情会就这样结束吗？还是我们会被一个一个地干掉，活着的人只能不断逃亡？”

As that example might suggest, Mr Godwin is not a sufficiently original writer to give new life to an old story. With a new story, however, which he finds in his own family history, he becomes good indeed.
从上面的例子能看出，戈德温的原创能力还不够给这个故事注入新的活力。但是讲到自己家的新故事时，戈德温确实有两手。

He discovers that his father, George, a retired engineer in Harare, is not the British émigré he has always claimed to be. He was born Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb, a Polish Jew, who was sent to a summer school in England in 1939, leaving behind his mother and a sister who died in Treblinka, and a father he never saw again. The book becomes Mr Godwin's quest to uncover their history, interspersed with the narrative of his parents' decline.
他的父亲叫乔治(George)，是一个退休的哈拉雷工程师，他一直都告诉戈德温他是英国移民，而后来发现事实并非如此。他的父亲出生时叫卡兹密尔兹·泽西·戈尔法布(Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb)是一个波兰犹太人，1939年离开父母和姐姐被送到英国参加一个暑假学校，后来姐姐在特雷布林卡逝世，而父亲再没见到过。戈德温希望通过这本书揭开这一段历史，书中穿插了不少内容记叙他父母的衰败。

After decades of toil, they are ruined, their pensions and few assets worthless in Zimbabwe's collapse. Trusted servants turn on them; carjackers and thieves line up outside their gate. Their health collapses, as does the health-care system that Mr Godwin's mother, a doctor, laboured to create. The grave of Mr Godwin's elder sister, shot dead in the independence war, becomes a slum-dwellers' toilet.
他们几十年来辛勤劳作，搞垮了身体，面对津巴布韦经济的崩溃他们的养老金和一点点财产又变得一文不值。信赖的仆人告发了他们，劫车贼和小偷成群结队地后在门外。他们的健康崩塌了，随之崩塌的还有他做医生的母亲倾力创造的医保体系。戈德温的姐姐在独立战争饮弹身亡，可她的墓现在却成了贫民窟的方便之处。

Shining amid these sorrows is the aged couple's patience and great humour. After his father dies, Mr Godwin struggles with his dying wish to be cremated: the crematoriums are out of butane gas, the morgues are out of diesel. So the author has his father, a Polish Jew turned British Anglican, posthumously converted to Hinduism, and burned by the local Indian community. His mother responds to the news of this conversion: “I've always liked the Hindus,” and then wanders off to see if she has any books on Hinduism. And so, after its unpromising beginning, this ends as a rather beautiful book—about Africans.
在这悲伤之时能让人得到点慰藉的便是这对 老夫妇的耐心与幽默感。父亲死后，戈德温尽力满足他的遗愿，进行火葬，而且火葬时不能有丁烷气，太平间不能有汽油。这样作者的父亲就从一个波兰犹太人变成 了英国国教徒，死后又转为印度教徒，而且是当地的印度人燃起的火堆。丈夫皈依了印度教，戈德温的母亲说到：“我一直都喜欢印度教徒，”然后走到一边看能否 找到本有关印度教的书。就这样，即便开头不被看好，但终究本书不失为写非洲人的佳作。

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