天涯过客简介

月华

斯塔福德·奈爵士出身高贵，在外交部供职。虽然身世显赫，又刚刚步入中年，斯塔福德爵士仍保留一份童心和顽皮。衣着方面他喜欢标新立异，尤其出门旅行时爱披海盗式的斗篷。这两样都叫他那些循规道矩的同事们皱眉头，也使得他的上级有些担心他对于敏感的外交事务的认真程度是否足够。尽管如此.斯塔福德爵士依然自得其乐。他身上那种十八世纪贵族特有的自信和闲情逸致将别人的侧目转变成他日常生活中别样的乐趣。外交部的职务使得他长年累月在各国间穿梭，新闻媒介对于他的一举一动都相当敏感。爵士乐得偶尔让他们胡乱猜疑他的行踪而不去多加解释。一方面对于外交事务的官僚与呆板有些厌倦，另一方面他那颗不安稳的心也时时期待着新的体验。
这一天斯塔福德刚从马来西亚出使归来，在法兰克福转机时，很偶然的一位陌生的女客请他帮忙。她不光看中他身上那件招摇的斗篷，还想要借用他的机票和护照；并且说如果斯塔福德不出手相救的话她会有生命危险。好奇心终究占了上风，斯塔福德喝下神秘女客的迷药，让她取代自己登机。
回到伦敦后，斯塔福德在法兰克福的遭遇一下子传了开来，有人认为他是遇着小偷，有人认为是他一贯的吊儿郎当作风，也有人开始怀疑他的忠诚。外交部的高级官员担心这不是单纯的普通盗窃，安全部门也开始严密调查他的行踪。斯塔福德发现自己的公寓被搜查，衣物被人盗去；走在路上几次被人跟踪、并险被行刺。这种种、种种反而教他亦发得意自己当时的决定。不久他开始挂念起那位神秘的女客，对她的安危、行踪念念不忘。他希望这次遭遇并不就此结束，他希望她并非就此从他的生命中消失。他急切地盼望着能和她再次相遇。然而，他的生活好象日渐朝着老样子恢复。闲来探望一下上了年纪的玛蒂尔达姑婆，听她讲述古老家族的逸事。或是和朋友共进晚餐；再就是没完没了的外交晚宴。
在一次美国大使馆的晚宴上，斯塔福德认识了高贵的雷纳塔·泽科夫斯基女伯爵。女伯爵将他引见给几位神秘人物，从此他的平静生活被搅乱。从英国的乡村到巴伐利亚的古堡，到南美洲，到美国，他和女伯爵一起周游各国、拜见各种各样的人。他如愿以尝开始了一种从未尝试过的冒险，但另一方面心中的疑惑也日深。究竟那位神秘女客是什么人，女伯爵又要向他展现一个怎样的世界。玛丽安到底是谁，富裕的古堡主人夏洛特对他又有什么样的安排和期待。还有年轻英俊的约瑟夫和他的崇拜者。为什么无论他走到哪里身边的人都向他提及瓦格纳的《年轻的齐格菲》……这一切将怎样影响他的生活和事业？ 这一切对于英国以及欧洲其它国家又有什么样的影响……

几点建议：
以下几类人不必浪费时间读这部小说
1. 看书一向以“多”为目标，看一本丢一本，还没看到最后一页就忘了手里是什么、眼睛早已盯着下一本的人。——想快就得看水平如何了，恐怕会寸步难行啊。此书人物、情节的跳跃转移尤其会将那些一向一目十行、不理会内容的人弄得头昏眼花。
2. 看侦探小说只重情节。尤其喜欢作者有意刁难读者的那种，越是离奇越是满地皆是接不上的线头就越崇拜那写的人能唬得了自己。——线头不少，但恐怕小说的整体情节太过松散，拾得累死也派不上用。
3. 看推理小说强调一个“纯”字。最好是如同IQ测验题，每一句都不带丁点人情世故。人物、情节、文笔都不重要。重要的是借用文字串连起来的难题是否让大脑绞汁得透彻、过瘾，叫人大呼“痛快。——此书涉及现实太多，尤其当时的政局。人物众多，各类对话、描写也不少。推理味道淡得几乎没有。
4. 读AC认为她的小说大都一个风格，稍有异类就不能接受。——此书风格不属AC的大众派。
5. 对AC绝对崇拜，容不得一点不完美，尤其注重个人心目中定的那份完美标准。—— 同2。注定会有意外的感受，所以无需破坏美好印象了。就当是“眼不见，心不烦”。
6. 对于欧洲近代史一无所知、也无心去了解的人，千万千万避而远之。—— 同3。中国人对于七十年代的西方社会现实了解甚少。自己家里正轰轰烈烈闹革命，又还没有恢复和其它国家的邦交，所以对于国门之外的风风雨雨不大知道。就算后来开放了，也没有谁会以为这样一段日子有补课的需要，除了大家早已熟悉的七十年代国内和国外的几桩大事外。这是此书上手头一难。
7. 对政治不感兴趣的人。—— 同6。有关政治的描写、对话太多。实际上整本书以政事、政客为中心。
8. 对文学不太感冒的人。—— 此书的精髓不光在于作者对于现实生活中诸事（偏向于比较严肃的一些话题）的看法和讨论，还有就是语言文字的流畅和诙谐。读的时候如果是读一章节就注重那一章节，会发现有的章节单独挑出来还不错，风格一致，情节也没有太突兀的地方。

此书中涉及的人物和情节与<<命运之门>>相似，个别人物在后者中也有出现。如果读过<<命运之门>>,会发现<<天涯>>其实更容易上手。第九章类似<<命运之门>>中汤米与上校、罗宾生先生的几段会谈，但只是那么一章而已。这也是全书最难的一章，因为是初次涉及当时政事，有关各人又言尤未尽、愈言又止地含含糊糊，叫人读了摸不着东西南北，也会胃口倒尽。不过熬过了这一章后面就容易了。

几段英文节选，有的中文版省略了：

He was a little - just a little - tired of wild flowers and, fond as he was of deal Lucy, her ability, despite her sixty-odd years, to race up hills at top speed easily outpacing him, sometimes annoyed him. Always just in front of him he saw the seat of those bright royal-blue trousers and Lucy, though scraggy enough elsewhere, goodness knows, was decidedly too broad in the beam to wear royal-blue corduroy trousers. [Ch.1]

"It's not a question of what you want！ it's a question of what we've got. Everything we've got is terrifically lethal. If you want everybody under thirty wiped off the map, I expect you could do it. Mind you, you'd have to take a lot of the older ones as well. It's difficult to segregate one lot from the other, you know. Personally, I should be against that. We've got some very good young research fellows. Bloody-minded, but clever." [Ch.14]

"People of ill-will ——"
"Well, you could put it like that. Ill-will for ill-will's sake, or ill-will for the sake of money or power. Difficult, you know, to get at the point of it all. The poor dogs-bodies themselves don't know. They want violence and they like violence. They don't like the world, they don't like our materialistic attitude. They don't like a lot of our nasty ways of making money, they don't like a lot of the fiddles we do. They don't like seeing poverty. They want a better world. Well, you could make a better world, perhaps, if you thought about it long enough. Bur the trouble is, if you insist on taking away something first, you've got to put something back in its place. Nature won't have a vacuum——an old saying, but true. Dash it all, it's like a heart transplant. You take one heart away but you've got to put another one there. One that works. And you've got to arrange about the heart you're going to put there before you take away the faulty heart that somebody's got at present. Matter of fact, I think a lot of those things are better left alone altogether, but nobody would listen to me, I suppose. And, anyway, it's not my subject. " [Ch. 14]

"All alike, these scientists," he said bitterly. "Never any practical good. Never come up with anything sensible. All they can do is split the atom - and then tell us not to mess about with it！" [Ch.14]

He gave no sense of being a brilliant man, and that in itself was reassuring. Brilliant politicians had been responsible for about two thirds of the national states of crisis in more countries than one. The other third of trouble had been caused by those politicians who were unable to conceal the fact that although duly elected by democratic governments, they had been unable to conceal their remarkably poor powers of judgment, common sense and, in fact, any noticeable brainy qualities. [Ch.17]

"I never tell all I know to politicians - not until I can't avoid it, or until I'm quite sure they'll do the right thing." [Ch.18]

"Of course not. But I used to try and put a little common sense into people's brains. The cleverer they are, the less common sense they have. I mean, really, the people who matter are the people who thought of simple things like perforations on postage stamps, ... ... I mean, they do much more good than all the high-powered scientists do. Scientists can only think of things for destroying you. Well, that's the sort of thing I said to Robbie." ... [Ch. 20]

"It's not every day," said Professor Gottlieb, "that a young lady brings me a letter from the President of the United States. However," he said cheerfully, "presidents don't always know exactly what they're doing. ..." [Ch. 21]

英文简介

The Author speaks：

The first question put to an author, personal, or through the post, is：
"Where do you get your ides from？"
The temptation is great to reply： "I always go to Harrods," or "I get them mostly at the Army & Navy Stores," or, snappily, "Try Marks and Spencer."
The universal opinion seems firmly established that there is a magic source of ides which authors have discovered how to tap.
One can hardly send one's questioners back to Elizabethan times, which Shakespeare's：
Tell me, where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head,
How begot, how nourished？
Reply, reply.
You merely say firmly： "My own head."
That, of course, is no help to anybody. If you like the look of your questioner, you relent and go a little further.
"If one idea in particular seems attractive, and you feel you could do something with it, then you toss it around, play tricks with it, work it up, tone it down, and gradually get it into shape. Then, of course, you have to start writing it. That's not nearly such fun——it becomes hard work. Alternatively, you can tuck it carefully away, in storage, for perhaps using in a year or two years' times."
A second question – or rather a statement – is then likely to be：
“I supposed you take most of your characters from real life？”
An indignant denial to that monstrous suggestion.
“No, I don’t. I invent them. They are mine. They’ve got to be my characters – doing what I want them to do, being what I want them to be – coming alive for me, having their own ideas sometimes, but only because I’ve made them become real.”
So the author has produced the idea, and the characters – but now comes the third necessity – the setting. The first two come from inside sources, but the third is——it must be there – waiting——in existence already. You don’t invent that – it’s there – it’s real.
You have been perhaps for cruise on the Nile – you remember it all – just the setting you want for this particular story. You have had a mea at a Chelsea café. A quarrel was going on – one girl pulled out a handful of another girl’s hair. An excellent start for the book you are going to write next. You travel on the Orient Express. What fun to make it the scene for a plot you are considering. You go to tea with a friend. As you arrive, her brother closes a book he is reading – throws it aside, says： “Not bad, but why on earth didn’t they ask Evans？”
So you decide immediately a book of yours shortly to be written will bear the title, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans？
You don’t know yet who Evans is going to be. Never mind. Evans will come in due course – the title is fixed.
So, in a sense, you don’t invent your settings. They are outside you, all around you, in existence – you have only to stretch out you hand and pick and choose. A railway train, a hospital, a London hotel, a Caribbean beach, a country village, a cocktail party, a girls’ school.
But one thing only applies – they must be there – in existence. Real people, real places. A definite place in time and space. If here and now – how shall you get full information – apart from the evidence of your own eyes and ears？ The answer is frighteningly simple.
It is what the press brings to you every day, served up in your morning paper under the general heading of News. Collect it from the front page. What is going on in the world today？ What is everyone saying, thinking, doing？ Hold up a mirror to 1970 in England.
Look at that front page every day for a month, make notes, consider and classify.
Every day there is a killing.
A girl is strangled.
Elderly woman attacked and robbed of her meager savings.
Young men or boys – attacking or attacked.
Buildings and telephone kiosks smashed and gutted.
Drug smuggling.
Robbery and assault.
Children missing and children’s murdered bodies found not far from their homes.
Can this be England？ Is England really like this？ One feels – no——not yet, but it could be.
Fear is awakening – fear of what may be. Not so much because of actual happenings but because of the possible causes behind them. Some known, some unknown, but felt. And not only in our own country. There are smaller paragraphs on other pages – giving news from Europe – from Asia – from the America – worldwide news.
Hijacking of planes.
Kidnapping.
Violence.
Riots.
Hate.
Anarchy – all growing stronger.
All seeming to lead to worship of destruction, pleasure in cruelty.
What does it all mean？ Again an Elizabethan phrase echoes from the past, speaking of life：
... it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
And yet one knows – of one’s own knowledge – how much goodness there is in this world of ours – the kindnesses done, the goodness of heart, the acts of compassion, the kindness of neighbor to neighbor, the helpful actions of girls and boys.
Then why this fantastic atmosphere of daily news – of things that happen – that are actual facts？
To write a story in this year of Our Lord 1970 – you must come to terms with your background. If the background is fantastic, then the story must accept its background. It, too, must be a fantasy – an extravaganza. The setting must include the fantastic facts of daily life.
Can one envisage a fantastic cause？ A secret Campaign for Power？ Can a maniacal desire for destruction create a new world？ Can one go a step further and suggest deliverance by fantastic and impossible-sounding means？
Nothing is impossible！ science had taught us that.
This story is in essence a fantasy. It pretends to be nothing more.
But most of the things that happened in it are happening, or gibing promise of happening in the world of today.
It’s is not an impossible story – it is only a fantastic one.

英文简介翻译

作者本人说道：

一个作家首先被问及的问题，或者是当面提出，或者是通过邮件书面提出，是：
“您的灵感是从何而来？”
几乎要冲口而出“我总是去哈洛德”或者“大多数是在海军商场”，更或者，不屑一顾地回答：“试试马克和斯班瑟商店”。
公众理所当然地以为有那么一个蓄满灵感的神奇宝藏、而作家找到了如何轻轻一敲来开启大门的秘诀。
一个人不可能让时间倒流，以莎翁的名言将她的提问人送回到伊丽莎白的时代，
告诉我，爱情生长在何方，
是在心房还是在脑海？
如何发生，如何成长？
回答我，回答呀。
你唯一能做到，是语气坚定地回答：“我自己的头脑里”。
当然，这样的答案是不能满足任何人的好奇心的。如果你不讨厌你的发问人的尊容，你也许会解释得稍稍详细些。
“如果某个主意看上去不错，并且你也认为你可以将它派上用场，那么你就把它翻来复去、添油加醋一番，扔上抛下直到它慢慢成形。这时候，当然你就要开始写它了。这并不似想像中的那么有意思——写作是很辛苦的劳动。另一种方式则是将这主意束之高阁，小心翼翼地保存起来，放上一年、两年的再取出来。”
第二个问题——或者更恰当地，断言——是这样的：
“我猜，您小说里的角色大多是以生活中的人物为原型的？”
对于这样恐怖的建议你只能报以坚决的否认。
“不是的。我才不呢。我发明了他们。他们是我的。他们非得是我的不可——做我要他们做的事，成为我要他们成为的人——为我而活生生地具有了生命，偶尔地有时也会有他们自己的思想；但那只是因为我使他们显得真实了。”
如此地，作者创造了情节和人物角色——紧接着第三个必要——背景。前面两个是由内生成，这第三个则是来自外界的——它一定要已经在那儿——正在那里等候——已然存在了。你不必凭空捏造——它已经发生——它是真实的。
你也许曾经沿着尼罗河泛舟游览——你记忆尤新——正好适合于你的某个故事。你曾去切尔西咖啡厅吃饭。当时邻座有场争执——一个女孩狠狠一把拉扯着另一个女孩的头发。你想，不错，正好可以做你的下一部书的开头。你乘坐过东方快车。你正在构思某段故事情节。难道这不是个绝妙的好主意，让你的故事发生在这列车上！你去朋友家饮茶。刚一进门，正巧她的哥哥合上手中的书——将它扔在一旁，说道：“不赖。不过为什么他们不请教艾文斯？”
那一瞬间，你马上决定了不久的将来你所要写的书就叫<<为什么他们不请教艾文斯？>>
你还不知道艾文斯将是什么样的呢。不过没关系。时候到了，艾文斯自然会出场——关键是书名定了。
所以从某种程度而言，你没有凭空捏造你的故事背景。它们在你之外，真实地存在着，举目皆是——你只要伸出手去就可以随心所欲地选择。一列火车，一座医院，一家伦敦的旅馆，加勒比海的沙滩，田园乡村，鸡尾酒会，一所女子学校。
但是有一样先决条件必须符合——它们必须在那儿——真实地存在。真实的人，真实的地方。一个时间和空间可以确切定义的地方。如果它们是你的耳听目视达不到的，那么你要如何去收集第一手的资料呢？答案是如此令人心惊的简单。
每日新闻。每天由你的晨报送来的头版头条。世界现在正在发生什么？其他的每个人在说什么、想什么，做什么？这些你都可以在头版中找到答案。看看镜子里映射的1970年的英国。
坚持阅读一个月的头版头条，每天做好笔记，分文别类。
每天里都有杀戮。
一个女孩被掐死。
一个上了年纪的女人受到袭击，养老金被抢走。
年轻的男子或是男孩子——不是攻击别人就是被人袭击。
公用电话被砸烂。
毒品被走私。
盗窃和人身攻击。
小孩子失踪和失踪孩子的尸体在离家不远的地方被人发现。
难道这就是英格兰？难道英国真是这样的？人禁不住会觉得——不——还没有，但是有可能。
恐惧被唤醒——对于将来的恐惧。真实的发生并非那么的恐怖，而是那些隐藏其后的未知的可能更叫人心惊肉跳。有的知道，有的还没有，但是已经叫人有所察觉了、感受到了。不仅仅在我们自己的国家内部，报上一小段这里一小段那里、还有其它的报章杂志上、来自欧洲、美洲、亚洲的新闻，世界新闻。
劫持飞机。
绑架。
暴力。
动乱。
仇恨。
反政府——各式各样愈演愈烈。
所有所有的一切都朝着一个方向，对于毁灭的崇拜和在残酷中生成的乐趣。
这一切都意味着什么？伊丽莎白时代另一句有关生命的名言响辙耳际：
……这只是个故事，
出自一个愚人之口，充满喧哗和骚动，
却没有一点意义
与此同时大家心里很明白——根据一个人自己的常识——我们的世界充满了好心美意。世上有多少慈善的事，有多少善意的心，有多少充满同情的行为，邻里间的友好和谐，男孩女孩的乐于助人。
那么为什么报章杂志渲染着一股这样不可思议的气氛——这些发生的事——它们是事实吗？
在这样的1970年写一个故事——你一定要尊重你所处的时代背景。如果背景是不可思议的，那么故事一定要接受这样的设计并与之相符合。故事本身也要是不可思议的——并且有所夸张。背景一定要反映现实生活中的不可思议。
一个人真能想像出一个令人不可思议的缘由吗？一场秘密的争权夺利的运动？一个想要毁灭世界的疯狂野心是否真能创造一个新世界？一个人能不能再更进一步发明出听起来完全不可能的方式呢？
世上没有什么是完全不可能的，科学早就教会了我们这一条。
这个故事的主要内容是虚构的。这一点是没有丝毫的遮遮掩掩。
但是这个故事里发生的很多事早已在现实生活中真实地发生了，或是正要发生。
这不是个不可能的故事——这只是个虚构的故事。