01 Kindergarten, 1922-3

Kindergarten, 1922–3 (age 6–7) In 1920, when I was still only three, my mother's eldest child, my own sister Astri, died from appendicitis. She was seven years old when she died, which was also the age of my own eldest daughter, Olivia, when she died from measles forty-two years later. Astri was far and away my father's favourite. He adored her beyond measure and her sudden death left him literally speechless for days afterwards. He was so overwhelmed with grief that when he himself went down with pneumonia a month or so afterwards, he did not much care whether he lived or died. If they had had penicillin in those days, neither appendicitis nor pneumonia would have been so much of a threat, but with no penicillin or any

一九二二年，当我还只有三岁的时候，我母亲的大孩子，也就是我的亲妹妹阿斯特里，死于阑尾炎。 她去世时才7岁，和我的大女儿奥利维亚42年后死于麻疹一样大。 阿斯特里无疑是我父亲的最爱。 他对她的爱无以言表，而她的突然离世让他后来好几天都说不出话来。 一个多月后，他自己得了肺炎，也不太在乎自己是死是活。 如果当时有青霉素，阑尾炎和肺炎就不会有这么大的威胁，但没有青霉素或任何东西

other magical antibiotic cures, pneumonia in particular was a very dangerous illness indeed. The pneumonia patient, on about the fourth or fifth day, would invariably reach what was known as 'the crisis'. The temperature soared and the pulse became rapid. The patient had to fight to survive. My father refused to fight. He was thinking, I am quite sure, of his beloved daughter, and he was wanting to join her in heaven. So he died. He was fifty-seven years old. My mother had now lost a daughter and a husband all in the space of a few weeks. Heaven knows what it must have felt like to be hit with a double catastrophe like this. Here she was, a young Norwegian in a foreign land, suddenly having to face all alone the very gravest problems and responsibilities. She had five children to look after, three of her own and two by her husband's first wife, and to make matters worse, she herself was expecting another baby in two months' time. A less courageous woman would almost certainly have sold the house and packed her bags and headed straight

其他神奇的抗生素疗法，尤其是肺炎，确实是一种非常危险的疾病。 肺炎患者，大约在第四天或第五天，总是会到达所谓的“危机”。 体温飙升，脉搏加快。 病人不得不为生存而斗争。 我父亲拒绝战斗。 我敢肯定，他在想他心爱的女儿，他想和她一起去天堂。 于是他死了。他57岁。 我母亲在几周内失去了女儿和丈夫。 天知道遭遇这样的双重灾难是什么感觉。 她在这里，一个年轻的挪威人在异国他乡，突然不得不独自面对最严重的问题和责任。 她有五个孩子要照顾，三个是她自己的，两个是她丈夫的第一任妻子的，更糟糕的是，她自己两个月后就要怀上另一个孩子了。 一个没那么勇敢的女人几乎肯定会卖掉房子，收拾好行李，径直走了

back to Norway with the children. Over there in her own country she had her mother and father willing and waiting to help her, as well as her two unmarried sisters. But she refused to take the easy way out. Her husband had always stated most emphatically that he wished all his children to be educated in English schools. They were the best in the world, he used to say. Better by far than the Norwegian ones. Better even than the Welsh Me and Mama Radyr ones, despite the fact that he lived in Wales and had his business there. He maintained that there was some kind of magic about English schooling and that the education it provided had caused the

带着孩子们回挪威。 在她自己的国家里，她有愿意帮助她的父母，还有她的两个未婚姐妹。 但她拒绝走捷径。 她丈夫总是强调说，他希望他所有的孩子都在英国学校接受教育。 他们是世界上最好的，他常说。 比挪威的好多了。 甚至比威尔士的Me和Mama Radyr还要好，尽管他住在威尔士，在那里做生意。 他坚持认为英国学校教育有某种魔力，它所提供的教育导致了