07 Frizzled Like a Fritter

Frizzled Like a Fritter All the women, or rather the witches, were now sitting motionless in their chairs and staring as though hypnotized at somebody who had suddenly appeared on the platform. That somebody was another woman. The first thing I noticed about this woman was her size. She was tiny, probably no more than four and a half feet tall. She looked quite young, I guessed about twenty-five or six, and she was very pretty. She had on a rather stylish long black dress that reached right to the ground and she wore black gloves that came up to her elbows. Unlike the others, she wasn't wearing a hat.

所有的女人，或者更确切地说，是女巫们，现在都一动不动地坐在椅子上，盯着台上突然出现的什么人，好像被催眠了似的。 那个人是另一个女人。 我注意到这个女人的第一件事就是她的身材。 她个子很小，大概不超过四英尺半高。 她看上去很年轻，我猜大概25岁或6岁，而且非常漂亮。 她穿着一件相当时髦的黑色长裙，一直拖到地面，戴着一双长到手肘的黑色手套。 不像其他人，她没有戴帽子。

She didn't look to me like a witch at all, but she couldn't possibly not be one, otherwise what on earth was she doing up there on the platform? And why, for heaven's sake, were all the other witches gazing at her with such a mixture of adoration, awe and fear? Very slowly, the young lady on the platform raised her hands to her face. I saw her gloved fingers unhooking something behind her ears, and

在我看来，她一点也不像个女巫，但她也不可能不是，否则她到底在站台上干什么呢? 看在上帝的份上，为什么其他女巫都带着这样一种既崇拜又敬畏又害怕的混合心情盯着她呢? 站台上的那位年轻女士慢慢地举起双手捂着脸。 我看见她戴着手套的手指在解开耳朵后面的东西，然后

then… then she caught hold of her cheeks and lifted her face clean away! The whole of that pretty face came away in her hands! It was a mask! As she took off the mask, she turned sideways and placed it carefully upon a small table near by, and when she turned round again and faced us, I very nearly screamed out loud. That face of hers was the most frightful and frightening thing I have ever seen. Just looking at it gave me the shakes all over. It was so crumpled and wizened, so shrunken and shrivelled, it looked as though it had been pickled in vinegar. It was a fearsome and ghastly sight. There was something terribly wrong with it, something foul and putrid and decayed. It seemed quite literally to be rotting away at the edges, and in the middle of the face, around the mouth and cheeks, I could see the skin all cankered and worm-eaten, as though maggots were working away in there. There are times when something is so frightful you become mesmerized by it and can't look away. I was like that now. I was transfixed. I was

然后……然后她抓住她的脸颊，把脸抬起来干净!那张漂亮的脸在她的手里完全消失了!那是一个面具!当她摘下面具时，她转过身来，小心地把它放在旁边的一张小桌子上，当她再次转过身来面对我们时，我几乎大声尖叫起来。 她那张脸是我见过的最可怕、最可怕的东西。 光是看着它，我就浑身发抖。 它皱巴巴的，干瘪的，像在醋里泡过一样。 这是一幅可怕而可怕的景象。 它有什么可怕的毛病，有什么恶臭、腐烂和腐烂的东西。 它的边缘似乎真的在腐烂，在脸的中间，嘴巴和脸颊周围，我可以看到皮肤都腐烂了，被虫子咬了，好像蛆虫在那里工作。 有些时候，有些事情是如此可怕，你会被它迷住，无法转移视线。 我现在就是那样。我愣住了。 我是

numbed. I was magnetized by the sheer horror of this woman's features. But there was more to it than that. There was a look of serpents in those eyes of hers as they flashed around the audience. I knew immediately, of course, that this was none other than The Grand High Witch herself. I knew also why she had worn a mask. She could never have moved around in public, let alone book in at a hotel, with her real face. Everyone who saw her would have run away screaming.

麻木了。我被这个女人可怕的容貌吸引住了。 但事情远不止于此。 当她的眼睛在观众周围闪烁时，她的眼睛里有一种蛇的表情。 当然，我马上就知道，这不是别人，正是大女巫本人。 我也知道她为什么戴着面具。 她不可能在公共场合走动，更不用说用她的真实面孔预订酒店了。 所有看到她的人都会尖叫着跑开。

'The doors!' shouted The Grand High Witch in a voice that filled the room and bounced around the walls. 'Are they chained and bolted?' 'The doors are chained and bolted, Your Grandness,' answered a voice in the audience. The brilliant snake's eyes that were set so deep in that dreadful rotting worm-eaten face glared unblinkingly at the witches who sat facing her. 'You may rrree-moof your gloves!' she shouted. Her voice, I noticed, had that same hard metallic quality as the voice of the witch I had met under the conker tree, only it was far louder and much much harsher. It rasped. It grated. It snarled. It scraped. It shrieked. And it growled.

“门!大女巫喊道，声音充满了整个房间，在墙壁间来回回荡。 “它们被锁上了吗?”“门上了锁，上了闩，陛下，”听众中有人回答。 那条明亮的蛇眼睛深深地嵌在那张可怕的、腐烂的、被虫蛀了的脸上，目不转睛地盯着坐在她对面的女巫们。 “你可以脱掉手套了!”她喊道。 我注意到，她的声音和我在栎树下遇到的那个女巫的声音一样，有一种坚硬的金属质感，只是声音要响亮得多，严厉得多。 它发出刺耳的声音。它磨碎。它咆哮着。 它刮。它尖叫起来。它咆哮着。

Everyone in the room was peeling off her gloves. I was watching the hands of those in the back row. I wanted very much to see what their fingers looked like and whether my grandmother had been right. Ah!… Yes!… I could see several of them now! I could see the brown claws curving over the tips of the fingers! They were about two inches long, those claws, and sharp at the ends! 'You may rrree-moof your shoes!' barked The Grand High Witch. I heard a sigh of relief going up from all the witches in the room as they kicked off their narrow high-heeled shoes, and then I got a glimpse under the chairs of several pairs of stockinged feet, square and completely toeless. Revolting they were, as though the toes had been sliced away from the feet with a carving-knife.

房间里的每个人都在脱下她的手套。 我看着后排同学的手。 我很想看看他们的手指长什么样，看看祖母说得对不对。 啊!…是的!我现在可以看到好几个了!我能看到棕色的爪子在指尖上弯曲!它们的爪子大约有两英寸长，末端很锋利!“你可以把鞋脱下来!”大女巫吼道。 我听到房间里所有的女巫都松了一口气，她们踢掉了狭窄的高跟鞋，然后我瞥见椅子下面有几双穿着长袜的脚，方方正正，完全没有脚趾。 它们令人作呕，仿佛是用切肉刀从脚上切下来的脚趾。