内容发布更新时间 : 2024/5/6 8:21:43星期一 下面是文章的全部内容请认真阅读。

All this I did without you

(摘自 Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting

-1999)：

My darling McGeorge, You said that things seemed clearer when they were written down. Well, herewith a very boring letter in which I will try and put everything down so that you may read and re-read it in horror at your folly in getting involved with me. Deep breath.

To begin with I love you with a depth and passion that I have felt for no one else in this life and if it astonishes you it astonishes me as well. Not, I hasten to say, because you are not worth loving. Far from it. It’s just that, first of all, I swore I would not get involved with another woman. Secondly, I have never had such a feeling before and it is almost frightening. Thirdly, I would never have thought it possible that another human being could occupy my waking (and sleeping) thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else. Fourthly, I never thought that – even if one was in love – one could get so completely besotted with another person, so that a minute away from them felt like a thousand years. Fifthly, I never hoped, aspired, dreamed that one could find everything one wanted in one person. I was not such an idiot as to believe this was possible. Yet in you I have found everything I want: you are

beautiful, gay, giving, gentle, idiotically and deliciously feminine, sexy, wonderfully intelligent and wonderfully silly as well. I want nothing else in this life than to be with you, to listen and watch you (your beautiful voice, your beauty), to argue with you, to laugh with you, to show you things and share things with you, to explore your magnificent mind, to explore your wonderful body, to help you, protect you, serve you, and bash you on the head when I think you are wrong … Not to put too fine a point on it I consider that I am the only man outside mythology to have found the crock of gold at the rainbow’s end. But – having said all that – let us consider things in detail. Don’t let this become public but … well, I have one or two faults. Minor ones, I hasten to say. For example, I am inclined to be overbearing. I do it for the best possible motives (all tyrants say that) but I do tend (without thinking) to tread people underfoot. You must tell me when I am doing it to you, my sweet, because it can be a very bad thing in a marriage. Right. Second blemish. This, actually, is not so much a blemish of character as a blemish of circumstance. Darling I want you to be you in your own right and I will do everything I can to help you in this. But you must take into consideration that I am also me in my own right and that I have a headstart on you … What I am trying to say is that you must not feel offended if you are sometimes treated simply as my wife. Always

remember that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. But I am an established ‘creature’ in the world, and so – on occasions – you will have to live in my shadow. Nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that has to be faced. Third (and very important and nasty) blemish: jealousy. I don’t think you know what jealousy is (thank God) in the real sense of the word. I know that you have felt jealousy over Lincoln’s wife and child, but this is what I call normal jealousy, and this – to my regret – is not what I’ve got.

What I have got is a black monster that can pervert my good sense, my good humour and any goodness that I have in my make-up. It is really a Jekyll and Hyde situation … my Hyde is stronger than my good sense and defeats me, hard though I try. As I told you, I have always known that this lurks within me, but I could control it, and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it. Then I met you and I felt my monster stir and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you have known, and with your letter my monster came out of its lair, black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, malevolent. You will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is; it is a physical pain as though you had swallowed acid or red hot coals. It is the most terrible of feelings. But you can’t help it – at least I can’t, and God knows I’ve tried. I