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and I said, in high Afrikaans, with a smile and a bow too, "Ek is u dankbaar, Mevrou."
我微笑着欠了欠身，用上等人说的南非荷兰语说：“非常感谢，夫人。”
But nobody knocked me down. The woman smiled and bowed, and van Rensburg, in a strained voice that suddenly came out of nowhere, said, "Our land is beautiful. But it breaks my heart."
不过，并没有人将我击倒。这位妇女微笑着点点头。而范兰斯堡突然以很不自然的声音冒出一句：“我们的国家很美丽，但她让我心碎。”
The woman put her hand on his arm, and said, "Jannie, Jannie."
这位妇女将手放在他的手臂上，说杰尼，杰尼。”
Then another woman and a man, all about the same age, came up and stood behind van Rensburg.
之后，又出来一位男子和一位妇女，年龄和前面那位妇女相仿，他们站在了范兰斯堡的身后。
He's a B.A., van Rensburg told them.
“他是一位文学学士，”范兰斯堡告诉他们说。
The first woman smiled and bowed to me again, and van Rensburg said, as though it were a matter for grief, "I wanted to give him brandy, but there's only wine."
第一位妇女再次冲我微笑并点头致意，范兰斯堡说我本想请他喝白兰地，但只有葡萄酒了。”就好像这是一件不幸的事。
The second woman said, "I remember, Jannie. Come with me."
另一位妇女说我想起来了，杰尼，跟我来。”
She went back into the room, and he followed her. The first woman said to me, "Jannie's a good man. Strange, but good."
她回到了房间，他跟着她去了。第一位妇女对我说：“杰尼是个好人，有些古怪，但人不错。”
And I thought the whole thing was mad, and getting beyond me, with me a black stranger being shown a testimonial for the son of the house, with these white strangers standing and looking at me in the passage, as though they wanted for God's sake to touch me somewhere and didn't know how, but I saw the earnestness of the woman who had smiled and bowed to me, and I said to her, "I can see that, Mevrou."
我想这一切都错乱了，真是不可思议：她一个白人妇女向我这个陌生黑人夸耀这个家里的孩子。这些陌生白人都站在走廊里看着我这个陌生的黑人，好像他们真的非常想和我交流，但又不知从哪儿谈起。但我能从那位冲我微笑并点头致意的妇女身上看到她的真诚，于是我对她说我能看得出来，夫人。”
He goes down every night to look at the statue, she said. "He says only God could make something so beautiful, therefore God must be in the man who made it, and he wants to meet him and talk out his heart to him."
“他每天晚上都去看那座雕塑，”她说，“他说只有上帝才能创造出如此美丽的东西，因此，上帝一定就在创作那座雕塑的人心里，他想见到这个人，和他说说心里话。”
