评论
打印
Two Cities
两个纽约
Stanley Kauffmann
斯坦利·考夫曼
A young friend asked me recently what it's like to live in the city where I grew up.The question startled me. I never think of New York that way. True, when I walk along certain streets, I remember things that happened there, but the same city?
最近有一位年轻朋友问我，生活在从小长大的城市有何感受。这个问题使我大吃一惊，我还从未从这个方面想过纽约。说真的，我沿着几条街道漫步的时候，便回想起这里发生的历历往事，可这是同一座城市吗？
When I went to grammar school in the mid-1920s on 63rd Street between Second and Third Avenues—now a chic residential neighborhood bristling with high apartment houses—I passed a blacksmith shop on the way from the corner to the middle of the block. I can still hear the hiss of the white-hot horseshoes being plunged into a bucket of water, can still sniff the burny smell of the hoof to which a warm shoe was fixed. I used to hitch rides to and from school on the back step of horse-drawn ice wagons. I used to go shopping with my mother in the pushcart markets that lined both sides of Second Avenue from 70th Street to 76th. Those pushcarts were under the Second Avenue El. We lived on 68th Street near the corner of Second, and if one of us was on the phone when an El train came along, we had to halt the conversation until it passed. (Other boroughs still have Els, but people under 50 can't imagine one in mid-Manhattan.)
20世纪20年代中期，我去位于第二和第三大道之间的第63街上的小学上学——现在是公寓楼林立的雅致居民区——在从街角到街区之间的马路上，我要经过一家铁匠铺。现在，我似乎仍然能听到烧得白热的马蹄铁被投入水桶时所发出的咝咝声，仍能闻得到马蹄钉上热蹄铁时所发出的糊味。当时，我常常在往返学校的途中搭乘在拉冰马车的后面。我还常常和母亲一道去位于第70和76街之间的第二大道两边的手推货车市场买东西。这些手推货车停在第二大道上的高架铁路下面。我们住在靠近第二大道街角的第68街上，如果有人在打电话恰巧赶上高架铁路上火车隆隆经过，就只好等火车通过后才继续通话。（其他行政区仍然有高架铁路，可是50岁以下的人无法想象在曼哈顿区中心区曾有过一条这样的铁路。）
