10 The Family Begins to Starve

10 The Family Begins to Starve During the next two weeks, the weather turned very cold. First came the snow. It began very suddenly one morning just as Charlie Bucket was getting dressed for school. Standing by the window, he saw the huge flakes drifting slowly down out of an icy sky that was the colour of steel. By evening, it lay four feet deep around the tiny house, and Mr Bucket had to dig a path from the front door to the road. After the snow, there came a freezing gale that blew for days and days without stopping. And oh, how bitter cold it was! Everything that Charlie touched seemed to be made of ice, and each time he stepped outside the door, the wind was like a knife on his cheek. Inside the house, little jets of freezing air came rushing in through the sides of the windows and under the doors, and there was no place to go to escape them. The four old ones lay silent and huddled in their bed, trying to keep the cold out of their bones. The excitement over the Golden Tickets had long since been forgotten. Nobody in the family gave a

一家人开始挨饿在接下来的两个星期里，天气变得非常寒冷。 首先是下雪。一天早上，就在查理·巴克特准备穿衣服去上学的时候，事情突然发生了。 站在窗边，他看到巨大的雪花从钢铁般冰冷的天空中缓缓飘落。 到了晚上，雪已经在小房子周围埋了四英尺深，巴克特先生不得不从前门挖出一条路通往大路。 雪过后，又来了一阵寒风，一连几天不停地刮着。 哦，天气是多么寒冷啊!查理摸到的一切似乎都是冰做的，每次他踏出门外，风就像一把刀刺在他的脸颊上。 屋子里，冰冷的空气从窗户边和门缝里涌了进来，没有地方可以躲避。 四个老人静静地躺在床上，挤成一团，试图驱走骨头里的寒冷。 金奖券带来的兴奋早已被遗忘。 家里没人在乎

thought now to anything except the two vital problems of trying to keep warm and trying to get enough to eat. There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we usually get what we want – or near enough. But Charlie Bucket never got what he wanted because the family couldn't afford it, and as the cold weather went on and on, he became ravenously and desperately hungry. Both bars of chocolate, the birthday one and the one Grandpa Joe had bought, had long since been nibbled away, and all he got now were those thin, cabbagy meals three times a day. Then all at once, the meals became even thinner. The reason for this was that the toothpaste factory, the place where Mr Bucket worked, suddenly went bust and had to close down. Quickly, Mr Bucket tried to get another job. But he had no luck. In the end, the only way in which he managed to earn a few pennies was by shovelling snow in the streets. But it wasn't enough to buy even a quarter of the food that seven people needed. The situation became desperate. Breakfast was a single slice of bread for each person now, and lunch was maybe half a boiled potato. Slowly but surely, everybody in the house began to starve. And every day, little Charlie Bucket, trudging

除了保暖和吃饱这两个至关重要的问题，现在什么都不想了。 非常寒冷的天气会使人食欲大增。 我们大多数人发现自己开始渴望丰盛的热气腾腾的炖菜、热苹果派和各种美味的热菜;因为我们都比我们意识到的幸运得多，我们通常会得到我们想要的——或者接近。 但是查理·巴克特从来没有得到他想要的东西，因为家里负担不起。随着寒冷的天气持续下去，他变得饥肠辘辘，饥肠辘辘。 生日那天的巧克力和乔爷爷买的巧克力，早就被啃光了，现在他只能吃一天三顿薄薄的白菜饭。 突然之间，饭菜变得更薄了。 原因是巴克特先生工作的牙膏厂突然破产，不得不关闭。 巴克特先生很快又找了一份工作。 但他运气不好。最后，他唯一能挣到几分钱的办法就是在街上铲雪。 但这些钱连七个人所需食物的四分之一都不够。 形势变得令人绝望。 现在早餐是每人一片面包，午餐可能是半个煮土豆。 慢慢地，房子里的每个人都开始挨饿。 小查理·巴克特每天都在艰难地前行

through the snow on his way to school, would have to pass Mr Willy Wonka's giant chocolate factory. And every day, as he came near to it, he would lift his small pointed nose high in the air and sniff the wonderful sweet smell of melting chocolate. Sometimes, he would stand motionless outside the gates for several minutes on end, taking deep swallowing breaths as though he were trying to eat the smell itself. 'That child,' said Grandpa Joe, poking his head up from under the blanket one icy morning, 'that child has got to have more food. It doesn't matter about us. We're too old to bother with. But a growing boy! He can't go on like this! He's beginning to look like a skeleton!' 'What can one do?' murmured Grandma Josephine miserably. 'He refuses to take any of ours. I hear his mother tried to slip her own piece of bread on to his plate at breakfast this morning, but he wouldn't touch it. He made her take it back.' 'He's a fine little fellow,' said Grandpa George. 'He deserves better than this.' The cruel weather went on and on. And every day, Charlie Bucket grew thinner and thinner. His face became frighteningly white and pinched. The skin was drawn so tightly over the cheeks that you could see the shapes of the bones underneath. It seemed doubtful whether he could go on much longer like this without becoming dangerously ill.

在去学校的路上，他必须经过威利旺卡先生的巨型巧克力工厂。 每天，当他走近它的时候，他就会把他的小尖鼻子高高抬起，嗅着融化巧克力的美妙甜味。 有时，他会一动不动地站在大门外好几分钟，深吸一口气，好像要把气味本身吃掉似的。 “那个孩子，”一个寒冷的早晨，乔爷爷从毯子下面探出头来说，“那个孩子得多吃点东西。 这与我们无关。 我们太老了，不需要操心了。 但是一个正在成长的男孩!他不能这样下去!他开始变得像个骷髅了!“有什么办法呢?”约瑟芬奶奶痛苦地低声说。 “他拒绝接受我们的任何东西。 我听说今天早上吃早饭时，他妈妈想把自己的那块面包塞到他的盘子里，但他就是不碰。 他让她收回了。“他是个可爱的小家伙，”乔治爷爷说。 “他应该得到更好的待遇。”恶劣的天气一直持续着。 每一天，查理·巴克特变得越来越瘦。 他的脸变得可怕地苍白和憔悴。 脸颊上的皮肤被拉得很紧，你可以看到下面骨头的形状。 他是否还能这样继续下去而不生重病，这似乎令人怀疑。

And now, very calmly, with that curious wisdom that seems to come so often to small children in times of hardship, he began to make little changes here and there in some of the things that he did, so as to save his strength. In the mornings, he left the house ten minutes earlier so that he could walk slowly to school, without ever having to run. He sat quietly in the classroom during break, resting himself, while the others rushed outdoors and threw snowballs and wrestled in the snow. Everything he did now, he did slowly and carefully, to prevent exhaustion. Then one afternoon, walking back home with the icy wind in his face (and incidentally feeling hungrier than he had ever felt before), his eye was caught suddenly by something silvery lying in the gutter, in the snow. Charlie stepped off the kerb and bent down to examine it. Part of it was buried under the snow, but he saw at once what it was. It was a fifty-pence piece! Quickly he looked around him. Had somebody just dropped it? No – that was impossible because of the way part of it was buried. Several people went hurrying past him on the pavement, their chins sunk deep in the collars of their coats, their feet crunching in the snow. None of them was searching for any money; none of them was taking the slightest notice of the small boy crouching in the gutter. Then was it his, this fifty pence?

现在，他非常平静地，带着小孩子在困难时期往往会有的那种奇特的智慧，开始在他所做的一些事情上做一些小小的改变，以保存他的力量。 在早晨，他提前十分钟离开家，这样他就可以慢慢地走到学校，而不必跑。 课间休息时，他安静地坐在教室里休息，而其他同学则跑到外面扔雪球，在雪地里摔跤。 他现在做的每一件事，都是慢慢地、小心翼翼地做，以免精疲力竭。 一天下午，寒风吹着他的脸，他走在回家的路上(顺便说一下，他感到前所未有的饥饿)，他的目光突然被雪中阴沟里的一个银色的东西吸引住了。 查理走下路边，弯下腰仔细检查。 它的一部分被埋在雪下，但他立刻看出了那是什么。 那是一枚50便士的硬币!他迅速环顾四周。 是不是有人把它掉了? 不——那是不可能的，因为它的一部分被埋了。 人行道上有几个人匆匆从他身边走过，他们的下巴深深陷在大衣的领子里，脚在雪地里嘎吱作响。 他们没有一个人在寻找钱;他们谁也没有注意到那个蹲在阴沟里的小男孩。 那么，这五十便士是他的吗?

Could he have it? Carefully, Charlie pulled it out from under the snow. It was damp and dirty, but otherwise perfect. A WHOLE fifty pence! He held it tightly between his shivering fingers, gazing down at it. It meant one thing to him at that moment, only one thing. It meant FOOD. Automatically, Charlie turned and began moving towards the nearest shop. It was only ten paces away… it was a newspaper and stationery shop, the kind that sells almost everything, including sweets and cigars… and what he would do, he whispered quickly to himself… he would buy one luscious bar of chocolate and eat it all up, every bit of it, right then and there… and the rest of the money he would take straight back home and give to his mother.

他会得到它吗?查理小心翼翼地把它从雪下拉了出来。 它又湿又脏，但其他方面都很完美。 整整五十便士!他用颤抖的手指紧紧握住它，低头凝视着它。 那一刻对他来说只有一件事，只有一件事。 它的意思是食物。查理不由自主地转身向最近的商店走去。 只有十步远……那是一家报纸和文具店，几乎什么都卖，包括糖果和雪茄……他会怎么做，他飞快地自言自语……他会买一块美味的巧克力，然后当场把它吃光，一点也不剩……剩下的钱他会直接带回家给他母亲。