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| 2009/03/03 08:06:14瀏覽831｜回應6｜推薦6 | |
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【前文提到大哥和Ken在補給站上了滿載食物的軍卡，往山裡的單位出發。接下來的幾段描寫顛簸於山路的經驗，是我極為喜歡的段落，也是我覺得此文最出色之處。因為乘過軍卡上下山的人都知道這是挺不舒服的事，可是如何把顛簸的經驗寫得傳神？大哥以直筆和側筆交織，處理得很官能卻不過度。】 I looked around for a place to sit down. The bench seats were all taken and the floor remained available from being occupied by all the crates, bags and baskets looked very dirty with muddy footprints all over it; but to remain standing up and trying to balance myself on top of a truck running at full speed for another 8 hours wasn’t really an option either. Finally a private (I guessed that and I got it right) moved out two crates from the bottom of a pile and offered them as seats to me and Ken. We thanked him and took our places; it was nice and gave a simulated feeling of sitting over a cushion. I caught the sight of my college from the corner of my eye as our truck blew by it; I was only too glad to have a place to sit rather than to drive myself nut about what I must leave behind in the past, for the next two years at least. Further away from the city the truck started picking up speed and my heart began to feel light again. Even though you’re getting closer to losing your freedom as every minute went by, puffing on a cigarette so you could watch the smoke blew past and shot behind you as if you were dumping a lifetime worth of emotional waste under a sunny blue sky and knowing you're still young and healthy really wasn’t too bad a feeling. I amused myself with the above thoughts for approximately another hour after we embarked before the truck pulled into the center of a pretty lively town where I found all sorts of vendors forming a good size fleas market. The truck slowed down and stopped to park a bit beyond the threshold of that market and everybody got out. I asked the guy who let me the crate for sitting what this place was about and he said the truck always made a final stop here for half an hour before heading into the mountains; a last chance for people to buy the stuffs they needed before hitting the road again because from this point on there's nothing but badlands and hardly any people lived beyond the river cross. ... 【上車後發現無處可坐。總不能站他八小時吧？正不知如何是好時，一個兵挪出兩個貨箱讓大哥和Ken坐在上頭。不知箱子裡裝了什麼，仿佛坐在軟墊上 - 這是個含有觸感和動感的側筆。他點了根煙，看著煙圈在艷陽藍天下飄逝於車後，想到自己目前有個座位、又還年輕健康，感覺還挺不賴的 - 這是認命之後只顧今朝的一種類似自我放逐的輕鬆感，我完全可以認同；沒這層心理建設，怎麼熬過當兵的日子、怎能忍受生命的虛耗？ 不久車子駛入一個小鎮的市集，暫停半小時，讓大伙補貨；過了這鎮進入險惡的大山，就鮮有人煙了。】 ... Ken and I also jumped off and wandered around the market together. He asked me if I spoke Taiwanese and I said yes, fluently too. He was impressed, thinking few Mainlanders could have managed that. He asked me could I help him looking for a rice bowl and a plate as he didn't like the idea of sharing it with the public. I said sure and went with him to talk to some local shop owner; only to find out that this was actually a Haga town where Taiwanese wasn’t the dominating dialect and since almost everyone spoke Mandarin my service was rendered useless. While he was cherry picking his bowl and plate, another guy from our truck walked by, seeing what Ken was trying to get he started to laugh. We asked him what was the big idea and he said my old boys that baby won’t last a night on the base and we better bought something that wouldn’t break so easily (I will tell you why later, if you remember to remind me). I was planning on using whatever military was going to issue me but hearing this changed my mind into buying my own set, too. After much browsing and knocking around, Ken bought a set made out of hard-pressed plastics, something used by many parents to train-feed their toddlers and I got myself a spoon, a pair of chopsticks and a bowl, all made out of stainless steel. The owner told me the bowl was originally intended for dog feeding but it bothered me not and I ate all my three square meals off that doggy-bowl for the next 22 months. 【大哥和Ken也隨著下車，原來小鎮是個客家庒。Ken 要帶一組個人的餐具上山，大哥也跟進。（我當初怎就沒想到？可見 Ken 果有精明處）。有人見他們在精挑細選陶瓷的碗盤，哈哈大笑，勸他們最好買耐砸一點的，否則這些家當在山上的基地撐不過一個晚上。這是個充滿音響訴諸感官的側筆（也是伏筆）：碗盤砸破的聲音，暗示軍卡裡三個菜鳥全身骨節散動互擊的聲音。 結果Ken挑了一套硬塑膠製的，大哥則選了一匙一筷一缽，皆為精鋼打造。“那鋼碗是餵狗的盆子啦”，店家告訴他。可是大哥毫不在乎，用那狗食盆子一天三餐吃了22個月的軍糧。】 Scared of being left behind, we hurried back to the truck; only to find that most people were still out there shopping or fooling around with local girls. We threw our purchases into the truck over the back board and climbed in from the side. Before we settled down to our seats I got curious about what I had been sitting on for the past hour so I lifted up the board and inspected what’s underneath it. They were tofu, layers and layers of tofu on top of each other; no wonder it felt like sitting on cushions. Ken thought we should keep it down and I kind of in agreement with him. But when everybody’s back and the truck got moving again, I felt the urge to tell the guy (the private) that he had let me sit on a crate full of Tofu and I wanted to know whether he or I (in particular) would get into any trouble for doing that. Ken tried to stop me but to no avail. The guy laughed humorously and showed me what he was sitting on, Tofu, layers and layers of tofu; and his buddy next to him also showed me his; again, tofu, nothing but tofu. It turned out more than 50% of the passengers on that truck were sitting on them fucking tofu and everybody knew about it except us three. 【補貨已畢，Ken和大哥怕掉隊，先回到車上。禁不住好奇心，他們掀開所坐的貨箱的蓋子一看，赫然發現底下是一層又一層的豆腐！難怪坐起來像軟墊了。其他人上車後，大哥詢問究竟。那個幫他們安排座位的兵咧嘴而笑，把屁股下頭一掀，原來也是豆腐。他旁邊的死黨也掀開屁股，竟又是豆腐。搞到後來，原來車上大半的人的屁股都坐在豆腐上。 山路顛簸，坐在豆腐上可以稍減不適。這些兵其實挺能隨機應變、挺可愛的。讀書人為禮法所拘，反而不如他們靈活。】 My good mood ended soon after the paved road disappeared, some 30 minutes or so after we crossed the river via an unsafe looking bridge that complained about our weight by giving out a loud groan when we drove across it. The ride became unpleasant yet tolerable for another hour before it turned really ugly. The dusty unpaved gravel road gave way to what must have been a pool of mud created by all the heavy winter rains a few weeks ago. As it was drying up all those ruts previously cut deep by heavy trucks such as ours got even deeper as the tracks overlapped one another, or worse even – to run across each other randomly that scared the surface of earth into a checker board from hell. The truck slowed down significantly as the road became very bumpy, to the point you no longer felt you’re in a truck moving on dry land. Tilting left and right by steep angles and bopping up and down while throwing its passenger off their seats, the truck gave me this surreal sense of being in a tiny boat thrown around by an angry sea. Ken’s face turned white and I guess mine probably wasn't any prettier. I asked him how’s he holding and he shook his head slightly, clenched down his teeth and gave me a forced smile. No one was joking or horsing around now because the road had become quite narrow; as a matter a fact, it wasn’t much of a road but an extended path chipped away from the side of mountain. On one side was an erected wall where you had to keep ducking away form the branches flying at you against the moving truck. On the other side there was nothing, nothing but the edge of the cliff and few hundred feet of nothingness straight down. We had been climbing for some times and I started seeing trees that I had never seen before–tall and straight pine as if I had walked into a Christmas card. For every half-turn we had to make as we zigzagged our way up from one ridge to another–now you see the sun and now you don’t, the air got colder and the sky darker. 【山路從柏油路面變成碎石路的時候，輕鬆的時光就結束了。後來連碎石路也沒了，成了泥巴路。幾個星期前山中大雨，過往的卡車在泥路上切割出一道道縱橫交錯的車轍；雨停後泥巴乾掉，留下深溝高壘般的路面。此時卡車如行於怒海之中，車上的人被上下左右拋擲，大哥見Ken臉色刷白，想像自己也好不到哪去。 一路上爬，愈爬愈高，路愈行愈窄，一邊是陡直的山壁，一邊是百丈懸崖，車上再無人說笑。山路蜿蜒而上，車隨之而轉，這一轉看到日頭，下一轉日頭又不見。大哥眼前出現前所未見的自然景象，就是一株株高聳筆直的松樹；他覺得好像走進了聖誕卡片裡。】 Before reaching a fork of the road where bearing right would lead you to a famous mountain for climbers and turning left to our base, our driver slammed on the brake, sending everybody and all the crates into a complete chaos. People were yelling and cussing and I stretched my neck out over the guarding rails to take a peek; we almost had a head-on collision with a 10-wheeler carrying a gigantic piece of timber – must be 20 feet in diameter and one hundred feet in stretch. The two drivers were yelling at each other, wanting the other guy’s truck to back its way to a place wide enough for both trucks to squeeze past. I didn’t know how it was decided but our truck lost the argument and had to back down inch by inch for a mile or so. A senior-looking officer came out from the driver’s cabinet and ordered everyone to get off the truck and formed two guiding lines along each side of the road to watch out for our driver while he backed his way down. It wasn’t easy as the road was narrow and winding and you could tell that the driver was really scared too; he had the door held opened by an assistant and ready to jump at the earliest sign showing that the truck would be slipping off the edge. 【開到一條岔路前，岔路右邊是登山客用的產業道理，左邊是通往空軍基地的管制道路。軍卡忽然緊急剎車，弄得車內人仰馬翻。原來當頭一輛十輪大卡，載著百尺長、20尺粗細的巨木。兩個卡車司機對罵了一陣，結果軍卡輸了，只好一寸一寸的倒車，足足倒了一哩，步步驚險，連司機也叫一人打開車門，準備情況不妙就跳車逃生。】 Ken was assigned to the side (of the road) edging over the cliff, right across from me and backing up to the sun so I couldn't really see his face with the setting sunlight still brightly shinning at my face. After almost one full hour of tweaking and adjusting the truck finally backed its way down to a place where an extra piece of mountain was carved away to serve as a passing lane. We all got back on the truck so our nemesis could pass. While watching it went by us, I suddenly realized that these people were stealing that tree. We were deep inside the reservation with the only way in and out guarded by a police check-point right before we crossed the river; I guess these people had their ways to make the tree disappeared under the watchful eyes of the authority. As our truck got moving again, I sit down and noticed Ken was awfully quiet. Actually, he was just sitting there lowering his head down in between his legs with both his hands wrapping around covering the back of his head and his entire upper body supported by his elbows resting on each of his knees, as if he was in some deep thoughts. Some guy said (to me) that I better moved my friend over to the side because from what he could tell, Ken was about to throw up big time. The man was right; no sooner had I got him to the side, holding his shoulder and waist while letting his head go over the rail, he erupted. That caused some minor complains from people who sit at the tail end of the wind and rendered some reshuffling in seating orders. Fortunately it was getting dark so I couldn't see what he had dumped out or sensed its smell; otherwise, given the fragile state I myself was in, we would probably have a twin eruptions there. 【折騰了一個小時，好不容易回到一個可以會車之處。盯著十輪大卡經過時，大哥忽有所悟：這裡是國家山林保留地，這些傢伙幹的是盜採林木的勾當！ 保國衛民的軍人，見到盜採林木的國賊，竟是退避三舍由之揚長而去。可知原始森林中的競爭生態，不足為外人道也，連軍隊也不敢檔強盜的財路。 大家上車繼續往基地前進。Ken坐在大哥旁邊，一言不發。別人要大哥趕快扶他到車子旁邊，果不其然，Ken 終於忍不住一吐為快。有人坐在下風處聞到味道，頗不爽快。還好天色已黑，大哥啥也沒看到、啥也沒聞到，否則鐵定撐不住，與 Ken 一同吐槽。】 The remaining part of the trip was still unpleasant but at least uneventful; we lost almost an hour trying to back down for that other truck and now everyone, Ken excluded, was hungry. The same negative emotion must also have been brewing inside the driver's cabinet as the truck suddenly sped up, rushing alone in darkness following the narrow winding mountain path traced out only by its headlights. Bopping up and down with the erratically moving truck, one after another people’s stomachs, mine included, gave away until collectively we looked like a boatload of dead fish slipping from starboard to port while the truck bullied its way through the dark sea of rolling hills. 【接下來的行程再無特殊狀況。除了Ken，大家都餓了。這時司機驀然加速起來，靠著車頭燈照路，在漆黑蜿蜒的山路上狂飆。這可把每個人的胃搞得翻江倒海，直到人人都癱了，活像一船死魚，在卡車的乘風破浪中從左舷滑到右舷。】 ----- 待續 ----- |
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