音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.33]Passage 11. A Summer Day

[00:03.72]One day thirty years ago Marseilles lay in the burning sun.

[00:09.08]A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France

[00:15.43]than at any other time before or since.

[00:18.71]Everything in Marseilles and about Marseilles had stared at the fervid sun,

[00:23.63]and had been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there.

[00:30.64]Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses,

[00:36.11]staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away.

[00:44.75]The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring

[00:50.11]were the vines drooping under their loads of grapes.

[00:53.50]These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.

[01:00.50]The universal stare made the eyes ache.

[01:04.55]Towards the distant blue of the Italian coast, indeed,

[01:08.60]it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist

[01:12.65]slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea,

[01:15.82]but it softened nowhere else.

[01:18.56]Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages,

[01:23.59]and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade,

[01:28.73]dropped beneath the stare of earth and sky.

[01:32.12]So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts,

[01:37.81]creeping slowly towards the interior;

[01:40.54]so did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened;

[01:46.56]so did the exhausted laborers in the fields.

[01:50.06]Everything that lived or grew was oppressed by the glare;

[01:54.23]except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls,

[01:59.26]and cicada, chirping its dry hot chirp, like a rattle.

[02:04.29]The very dust was scorched brown,

[02:07.14]and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.

[02:12.06]Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to deep out the stare.

[02:20.27]Grant it but a chink or a keyhole,

[02:23.55]and it shot in like a white-hot arrow.