07 The magic island

The magic island The next morning, everyone got up early and eager to continue the journey. There was another full day's travelling to be done before we reached our final destination, most of it by boat. So after a rapid breakfast, our cavalcade left the Grand Hotel in three more taxis and headed for Oslo docks. There we went on board a small coastal steamer, and Nanny was heard to say, 'I'm sure it leaks! We shall all be food for the fishes before the day is out!' Then she would disappear below for the rest of the trip.

第二天早上，每个人都起得很早，渴望继续旅行。 在到达最终目的地之前，我们还有整整一天的行程要走，大部分时间要乘船。 匆匆吃完早餐后，我们的车队又乘了三辆出租车离开大饭店，前往奥斯陆码头。 在那里，我们登上了一艘沿海的小汽船，有人听到保姆说:“我敢肯定它会漏水!”天亮之前，我们都要成为鱼的食物了!”然后她会在接下来的旅程中消失在下面。

We loved this part of the journey. The splendid little vessel with its single tall funnel would move out into the calm waters of the fjord and proceed at a leisurely pace along the coast, stopping every hour or so at a small wooden jetty where a group of villagers and summer people would be waiting to welcome friends or to collect parcels and mail. Unless you have sailed down the Oslo-fjord like this yourself on a tranquil summer's day, you cannot imagine what it is like. It is impossible to describe the sensation of absolute peace and beauty that surrounds you. The boat weaves in and out between countless tiny islands, some with small brightly painted wooden houses on them, but many with not a house or a tree on the bare

我们喜欢这段旅程。 这艘只有一个高高的漏斗的漂亮小船会驶进峡湾平静的海水中，沿着海岸悠闲地行驶，每隔一小时左右就会在一个木制的小码头停一下，那里有一群村民和夏天的人在等着欢迎朋友，或者收包裹和邮件。 除非你曾经在一个宁静的夏日里像这样沿着奥斯陆峡湾航行，否则你无法想象它是什么样子。 这是不可能描述绝对的和平和美丽的感觉包围着你。 这艘船在无数小岛之间穿梭，有些小岛上有色彩鲜艳的小木屋，但许多小岛上没有房子，也没有树

rocks. These granite rocks are so smooth that you can lie and sun yourself on them in your bathingcostume without putting a towel underneath. We would see long-legged girls and tall boys basking on the rocks of the islands. There are no sandy beaches on the fjord. The rocks go straight down to the water's edge and the water is immediately deep. As a result, Norwegian children all learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe. Sometimes when our little vessel slipped between two small islands, the channel was so narrow we could almost touch the rocks on either side. We would pass row-boats and canoes with flaxen-haired children in them, their skins browned by the sun, and we would wave to them and watch their tiny boats rocking violently in the swell that our larger ship left behind. Late in the afternoon, we would come finally to the end of the journey, the island of Tj.me. This was where our mother always took us. Heaven knows how she found it, but to us it was the greatest place on earth. About two hundred yards

岩石。这些花岗岩非常光滑，你可以穿着泳衣躺在上面晒太阳，而不用在里面放毛巾。 我们会看到长腿女孩和高个子男孩在岛上的岩石上晒太阳。 峡湾上没有沙滩。 岩石一直延伸到水边，水马上就深了。 因此，挪威的孩子们都在很小的时候就学会游泳，因为如果你不会游泳的话，很难找到一个洗澡的地方。 有时，当我们的小船在两个小岛之间滑行时，海峡非常狭窄，我们几乎可以碰到两边的岩石。 我们会经过划艇和独木舟，上面坐着亚麻色头发的孩子，他们的皮肤被太阳晒成了棕色。我们会向他们挥手，看着他们的小船在我们的大船留下的巨浪中猛烈地摇晃。 傍晚时分，我们终于来到了旅程的终点，Tj.me岛。 妈妈总是带我们去这里。 天知道她是怎么找到的，但对我们来说，那是世界上最伟大的地方。 大约两百码

from the jetty, along a narrow dusty road, stood a simple wooden hotel painted white. It was run by an elderly couple whose faces I still remember vividly, and every year they welcomed us like old friends. Everything about the hotel was extremely primitive, except the dining-room. The walls, the ceiling and the floor of our bedrooms were made of plain unvarnished pine planks. There was a washbasin and a jug of cold water in each of them. The lavatories were in a rickety wooden outhouse at the back of the hotel and each cubicle contained nothing more than a round hole cut in a piece of wood. You sat on the hole and what you did there dropped into a pit ten feet below. If you looked down the hole, you would often see rats scurrying about in the gloom. All this we took for granted.

从码头出来，沿着一条狭窄的尘土飞扬的道路，矗立着一家简单的白色木制旅馆。 它是由一对老夫妇经营的，他们的面孔我至今记忆犹新，每年他们都像老朋友一样欢迎我们。 除了餐厅外，这家旅馆的一切都极其简陋。 我们卧室的墙壁、天花板和地板都是用朴素的、没有上过漆的松木木板做成的。 每个箱子里都有一个脸盆和一壶冷水。 厕所在旅馆后面的一间摇摇欲坠的木制外屋里，每个小隔间只不过是在一块木头上切了一个圆洞。 你坐在洞上，你在那里做的事掉进了十英尺以下的一个坑里。 如果你往洞里看，你会经常看到老鼠在黑暗中跑来跑去。 这一切我们都认为是理所当然的。

Breakfast was the best meal of the day in our hotel, and it was all laid out on a huge table in the middle of the dining-room from which you helped yourself. There were maybe fifty different dishes to choose from on that table. There were large jugs of milk, which all Norwegian children drink at every meal. There were plates of cold beef, veal, ham and pork. There was cold boiled mackerel submerged in aspic. There were spiced and pickled herring fillets, sardines, smoked eels and cod's roe. There was a large bowl piled high with hot boiled eggs. There were cold omelettes with chopped ham in them, and cold chicken and hot coffee for the grown-ups, and hot crisp rolls baked in the hotel kitchen, which we ate with butter and cranberry jam. There were stewed apricots and five or six different cheeses including of course the ever-present gjetost, that tall brown rather sweet Norwegian goat's cheese which you find on just about every table in the land. After breakfast, we collected our bathing things and the whole party, all ten of us, would pile into our boat.

早餐是我们旅馆一天中最美味的一餐，所有的东西都摆在餐厅中央的一张大桌子上，你可以随意取用。 那张桌子上大概有50种不同的菜可供选择。 有大壶的牛奶，挪威的孩子们每餐都要喝。 盘子里有冷牛肉、小牛肉、火腿和猪肉。 有浸在冻肉里的冷煮鲭鱼。 有五香腌鲱鱼片、沙丁鱼、烟熏鳗鱼和鳕鱼子。 有一个大碗，上面高高的堆着热煮鸡蛋。 有冷煎蛋卷和火腿碎，有给大人的冷鸡肉和热咖啡，还有旅馆厨房里烤的热脆卷，我们就着黄油和蔓越莓果酱吃。 有炖杏和五、六种不同的奶酪，当然包括一直存在的gjetost，那是一种又高又甜的挪威山羊奶酪，你可以在这片土地上的每一张桌子上找到。 早饭后，我们收拾好洗浴用品，我们一行十个人就涌上我们的小船。

Everyone has some sort of a boat in Norway. Nobody sits around in front of the hotel. Nor does anyone sit on the beach because there aren't any beaches to sit on. In the early days, we had only a row-boat, but a very fine one it was. It carried all of us easily, with places for two rowers. My mother took one pair of oars and my fairly ancient half-brother took the other, and off we would go. My mother and the half-brother (he was somewhere around eighteen then) were expert rowers. They kept in perfect time and the oars went click-click, click-click in their wooden rowlocks, and the rowers never paused once during the long forty-minute journey. The rest of us sat in the boat trailing our fingers in the clear water and looking for jellyfish. We skimmed across the sound and went whizzing through narrow channels with rocky islands on either side, heading as always for a very secret tiny patch of sand on a distant island that only we knew about. In the early days we needed a place like this where we could paddle and play about because my youngest sister was only one, the next sister was

在挪威，每个人都有一艘船。 没有人坐在酒店前面。 也没有人坐在海滩上，因为没有海滩可以坐。 在最初的日子里，我们只有一条划艇，但那是一条非常好的划艇。 它轻松地载着我们所有人，有两个桨手的位置。 我母亲拿着一对桨，我那年纪相当大的同父异母的哥哥拿着另一只桨，我们就这样出发了。 我母亲和同父异母的弟弟(当时他大约18岁)都是划船能手。 他们保持着完美的时间，桨在木船闸里咔嗒、咔嗒、咔嗒地响着，在长达四十分钟的漫长旅程中，桨手们一次也没停过。 我们其余的人坐在船上，用手指在清澈的水中摸索着寻找水母。 我们掠过海峡，嗖嗖地穿过狭窄的海峡，两边都是岩石岛屿，像往常一样，驶向一个只有我们知道的遥远岛屿上的一个非常秘密的小沙滩。 在早期，我们需要一个这样的地方，我们可以在那里划船和玩耍，因为我最小的妹妹只有1岁，第二个姐姐也只有1岁