Chapter 21 appendix

appendix The Compson House: 1699 - 1945 Ikemopeb, a deposed King of America.He was called "lHOmme①" (sometimes "de lhomme②") by his adopted brother.This righteous brother is a "knight" conferred by the King of France. If he had been born earlier, he would have become one of the brilliant constellations composed of Napoleon's famous villains, that is to say, those marshals. The brightest star.In this way, the righteous brother simply translated a title of the Chikasu tribe into "person", and Ikemotabo was not a fool without a mind. Including his character—with a fairly thorough recognition ability, he went a step further and Englishized the name, turning it into "Doom④".Out of his vast dominion he gifted to the grandson of a Scotch fugitive a whole square mile of virgin land north of the Mississippi, as square as the corners of a card table, then covered with primeval forest , for that was before 1833, when the star of fortune was falling, and Jefferson, Mississippi, was nothing more than a rambling row of mud-cauled log bungalows, the houses of which the tenant The official residence of the small official of the Kasuo people is also his trading warehouse.The Scottish fugitive in question lost all his birthrights by linking his fate with that of another deposed king in a political game.Ikemotab's generosity was rewarded with a safe march into the Wild West, either on foot or on horseback, at his and his people's discretion, but if on horseback, it was only on Cheka Claim your own pony.They went to a place that would soon be called Oklahoma, and they didn't know that there was oil in the ground there.

①French: people, ②French: human. ③A tribe of North American Indians who originally lived in northern Mississippi and moved to the "Indian Reservation" (in Oklahoma) in 1832. ④ English: bad luck. Jackson ① a "great white father" with a sword in his hand. (Here is a battle-hardened duelist, a quarrelsome old lion, lean, vicious, filthy, tough before being strong. He puts the welfare of the country above the interests of the White House, and puts his newfound party The sanity of the man was valued above both. It was not his wife's honor that stood above all three, but the principle that "honor must be preserved." The thing is that it is indeed maintained. He personally approved, sealed and sub-heated a document in the golden Indian tent in the town of Washi. At that time, he did not know that there was oil under the land assigned to the Indians. One day in the future, the homeless descendants of those who have lost their land will lie unconscious and sprawled on red painted special corpse cars and fire engines, driving in the dusty, designated as the place where their bones were buried.

These are the Compsons: Quentin McClarchan, the son of a Glasgow printer, was orphaned and brought up by his mother's family in Perth Heights.He fled to the Carolinas from the Croton Moor with nothing but a broadsword and a tartan skirt which he wore by day and which he spread under him as a bedding by night. ① Refers to Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), who served as the seventh president of the United States. He once fought a war with an English king and lost the battle. At the age of eighty, he did not want to repeat the mistakes of the past, so he escaped again one night in 1779, taking his infant grandson and the flower Tarleton (as for the broadsword, which had disappeared with his son, the baby's father, with a regiment of Tarleton's on a field in Georgia about a year before) fled to Kentucky. Base, where a neighbor named Bonn or Boone had established a colony.

Charles Steinert was part of a British team before he was stripped and removed from the ranks.Lying in a swamp in Georgia, the retreating unit he was part of and the advancing American unit thought he was dead, but they were wrong.Four years later, dragging his own wooden leg, he finally caught up with his father and son in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. The Scotch knife was still with him, but when he arrived, his father was dead. He was just in time for his father's funeral.After that, for a long time, he became a person with a dual personality: on the one hand, he still struggled to be his teacher, believing that he liked being a teacher, but finally gave up this plan and became a A gambler, in fact, from his nature, he was a gambler.The members of the Compson family are actually gamblers, but they don't seem to realize this, especially when the chess game is very risky and the possibility of winning is extremely small.The risk he took in the end was enormous. Not only did he bet his own head on it, but he also bet on the safety of his family and the reputation behind him.

① Banaster Tarleton (1754-1833), a British general who participated in the war against the American Revolution. ② refers to Daniel Boone (1734-1820), the pioneer of the American frontier. He lived in the Carolinas as a child, explored Kempegee in 1764, and established a colony in 1775.Added a conspiracy to separate the entire Mississippi valley from the United States of America for Spain, headed by an acquaintance named Wilkinson ).When disillusioned (there is only one schoolteacher named Compson in the world who does not see that this day must come), this time it is his turn to escape, and among the conspirators, he just happens to be the only one who needs to flee the country again. This is not because the government he plots to divide punishes him and punishes him, but because his former accomplices regard him as a thorn in the side for their own safety.He was not expelled from the country. He often said that he had no country. He was exiled not because of his treason, but because he was too ostentatious and too ostentatious when he plotted against the country. He yelled and yelled and demolished the bridge he had just passed.So it was neither the Gendarmerie Commander nor the Civil Service that planned to expel him from Kentucky, from America, and perhaps from Earth if he was caught, but his former associates in the conspiracy.So he fled Guiye in a hurry, and following his family tradition, he took his son, the old broadsword and the tartan skirt with him.

Jason Lycurgus, whose father was that indomitable wooden-legged man who complained and hurt others, may still think that a teacher of classical languages ​​is more suitable for him in his heart.Driven perhaps by the pressure of the illustrious name that Woodlegs' father had given him, this Jason Lycurgus, one day in 1811, brought with him two well-made pistols and a flat In the saddlebags, I sat on a mare with a thin waist and thick legs, and walked on the Narcissus Trail②. ① This name is composed of two Greek names.Jason is the hero in Greek mythology who seeks the golden fleece.Lycurgus was a famous law maker in ancient Greece.

②A small road from Nashville, Tennessee to Nazis, Mississippi, where most of the passage is inhabited by Chickasaw people. The horse on his lap would certainly not take half a minute to cover two furlongs, and another two furlongs would not be too slow, but it would not be safe if the distance was longer.It was enough, though, because Jason Lycurgus came to the Chickasaw in Okatopo (which was still called Old Jefferson as late as 1860) After entering the People's Management Office, they stopped moving forward.In less than six months he was assistant to the administrator, and in less than a year he was a partner in the administrator, and although he was an assistant in name, he was actually a trading warehouse--now a fairly well-to-do business. The company's name is now—half of the company's owner.His warehouse was filled with all kinds of things he won when he raced the mare with the boys of Ikemotabo; every race, he, "Compson, always took care to limit the distance to a quarter Not more than three furlongs within a mile. The next year, the filly became the property of Ikemotabo, but Compson got a whole square mile, which later occupied almost The very center of Jefferson. At the time, the land was covered with virgin forest. Twenty years later, there were still trees, but it was more of a park than a forest. There were cabins for slaves , with stables, vegetable gardens, regular lawns, avenues, and pavilions, all designed by the same architect who built the mansion with its pillared porch, and all equipped by steamer from France and New Orleans. By 1840, the land was still intact. (At this time, it not only began to be surrounded by a small white village called Jefferson, but also set out to become a purely Part of the county of the white people. Because within a few years, the descendants and kinsmen of Ikemotabo will leave this place, and the remaining Indians will no longer be warriors and hunters, but learn to be white. Farmers, or as owners of scattered patches of "estates"--they even used such a name--have a few passable niggers. These Indians are dirtier, lazier, and crueler than the whites Some eventually even traces of barbarian blood were almost gone, except occasionally on the nose of a negro on a cotton wagon, in a white worker at a sawmill, in a facility. from the nose of a trapper or some motor-boy.) At that time, this land was legally known as "Compson's Land," and from then on it seemed qualified to breed princes, statesmen, generals and bishop.

① One furlong is one-eighth of a mile or 201.167 meters. The Compsons were penniless pariahs in Coloton, Carolina, and Kentucky, and now they could turn around.Afterwards, the place became known as the "Governor's House", because it was not long before it actually gave birth to, or at least it could be said to have produced a governor - the name was still Quentin McClachhan, in honor of Cloton The grandfather who came—later (1861) a general came along, but the place is still called "Old Governor's House." (This name seems to have been unanimously agreed in advance by the whole town and county, as if even at that time, everyone already knew that the old governor was the last Compson who could not fail in anything. Of course, the two things of longevity and suicide are not here Example.) Saying that Brigadier General Jason Liculgs II lost a battle at Hilo in 1862 and another at Resaga in 1864, though this time he lost Not too bad.In 1866 he began to mortgage a piece of the hitherto intact square mile to an upstart from New England.At that time, the old town had been razed to the ground by General Smith of the Northern Army, and the new town—the main residents here in the future would not be the descendants of the Compson family, but those surnamed Snopes— —had begun to squeeze the square mile, and then bit by bit to swallow it up, and the perpetually defeated general had to spend the next forty years of his life selling it piecemeal, piece by piece, so as not to The mortgaged land was confiscated.This process continued until one day in 1900, when the Commodore died peacefully on a camp bed in the fishing and hunting camp on the Pelahatchie Riverbed, where most of the twilight years of the strong man were spent.

Today even the old Governor is forgotten; what remains of that square mile is now known simply as "Compson's House"--the lawns and avenues where weeds grew, The mansion had not been painted for a long time, and the pillars were peeling off. Here, Jason III sat all day, accompanied by a jug of whiskey and a few worn-out Horace books with curled corners scattered here and there. , Livy, and Catullus, and while drinking he was said to be composing acerbic odes to the dead and living of the townspeople. (Jason III studied law, and he does have a law firm upstairs from a house on the town square. In his dusty filing cabinets are buried the oldest family in the county—Her The Alstons, the Sedpans, the Greniers, the Buckchamps, and the Cofields—the materials that change color every year in a maze of old litigation files The year is even darker: alas, who knows how his father's heart that never obeys the old dreamed, the old man has successfully achieved the third of the three identities - the first identity is to be a shrewd and capable political man. The son of the family, the second is to be a soldier who can gallop on the battlefield, and the third is to play the role of a blessed fake Daniel Boonega Robinson Crusoe. The father did not regenerate at that time, because He never left his childhood at all—he must have hoped that the attorney's office would become a passageway to the governor's mansion and its former glory again.) All that remains of the Compson family is the house, the vegetable garden, the crumbling stables and A servants' log cabin now occupied by the Dilsey family.The last piece of land in the family was sold by Jason III to a golf club who needed cash for the decent wedding of his daughter Cadance in April 1910 , and also in order to enable his son Quentin to complete a year of studies at Harvard, and then, in June of that year, end his own life.By 1928, the place was known as "Compson's Old Home," although the family still lived there.One evening in the spring of this year, the old governor's doomed sixteen-year-old surnameless granddaughter stole the secret treasure of her last sane male elder (her uncle Jason IV) Money, down the downpipe, down the stairs, eloped with a peddler traveling with a traveling troupe, and further on, although no trace of the Compson home remains, people still call the place "Compson's old home."

①These three are all Latin writers in ancient Rome. ②The protagonist in "Lu Shixun Crusoe". After the widowed old mother died, Jason IV no longer had any scruples about Dilsey, and sent the idiot brother Benjimin to the state mental hospital in Jackson, and sold the ancestral home to the villagers. It was converted into a pension for jurors and cattle dealers, and when the apartment (and the golf club after that) closed, the grounds were densely covered with rows of private hustles. While the semi-urban bungalows were busy building, that square mile of land was still intact.Even then, people still refer to it as "Compson's old home".

The Compson family also has these people: Quentin III did not love his sister's body, but the Compson family's conception of honor, which was now determined by his sister's fragile, precarious chastity, no less precarious than a placed A globe on top of a trained seal's nose.He didn't like incest either, and of course he wouldn't do it, but the preaching of the eternal condemnation of the Presbyterian Church attracted him deeply.He thought: by this means, without trouble to God, he himself can cast his sister and himself into hell, where he can watch over her forever and keep her innocent in the eternal fire.However, what he loves most is death. He only loves death, and while loving, he is looking forward to death.It is a deliberate, almost morbid expectation, like a person in love who, while anticipating, deliberately restrains himself from accepting his lover's waiting, welcoming, friendly, tender, irreverent love. flesh.Until one day he could bear it no longer, not tirelessly of the delay, but of the restraint, and simply jumped, abandoned everything, and sank into the bottomless abyss. ①In the novel it is a pear tree, and the vendor in the next sentence is an actor in the novel.The appendix is ​​inconsistent with the main text in some places in terms of facts and time, because the authors wrote in different periods, so I will not indicate them one by one. In June 1910, he drowned himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts.This was two months after his sister's wedding, and he had to wait until the end of the school year to kill himself so as not to waste the tuition he had paid in advance.It wasn't because he had the blood of the old Clotons, the Carolinas, the Kentuckies, but the last remnant of old Compson's square mile that the family had sold to arrange his sister's marriage and finance his education. That piece, and this pasture was his idiot little brother's favorite, and besides this pasture, Benji's favorite thing was his sister Katie and a roaring fire. Cadance (Katie) She is destined to be a fallen woman, and she knows it.She accepts this fate, neither actively welcoming nor avoiding it.She loves her brother for who he is.She loved him not only but for the quality of a bitter prophet and unselfish judge in his dealings with the honor of the family and the fact that it was bound to be lost.The same is true of his attitude towards her.He thought he loved her (he hated her)--for she was the fragile, crumbling vessel of the family's pride, the filthy instrument of its disgrace.Not only that, she loves him, even though he is not capable of loving himself, she loves him precisely because of this.She accepts the fact that in his eyes, it is not her who is supreme, but her chastity, and she herself is only the custodian of chastity. In fact, she doesn't think chastity has any value at all. Skin membrane, in her mind, is not as good as even a barb on the skin around the fingernail.She knew that her brother loved death above all else, and she was not jealous, but was quite willing to offer him, let us suppose, a poisonous weed. (Perhaps her carefully planned and arranged marriage did.) She was two months pregnant with another man's child.She did not know at that time whether the child in her womb was a boy or a girl, so she named it Quentin in honor of her brother, for they--she and her brother--knew that he was alive and in effect It's like dying.She married—it was in 1910—a well-off Indiana young man whom she had met the previous summer when she and her mother had vacationed in Frank Rick.In 1911, she was divorced by this person.In 1920, married a small film giant in Hollywood, California.In 1925, the two parties divorced by agreement in Luxigo.In 1940, with the German occupation of Paris, she disappeared.At that time she was still charming, and probably rich, because she looked at least fifteen years younger than her actual age of forty-eight.No one has heard of her since, except for a woman in Jefferson, the custodian of the county library, an old lady who is as small as a mouse and the color of a rat. , a classmate of Cadance Compson in middle school.The rest of her life was spent in such things as wrapping the volumes in neat, dignified covers, and placing Jurgen and Tom Jones on remote shelves so that they would not be disturbed. Middle and high school students get it. In fact, these children can get it without tiptoe, but when they are on the strings, they have to use a wooden box to prop up it. ①A historical romance novel popular in the 1940s, which contained pornographic descriptions. ②A fantasy novel written by the American writer Kebbel (James Branch, 1879-1958), which contains some pornographic descriptions. ③ A novel written by the British writer Henry Fielding (Henry Fielding, 1707-1754), written very frankly. For a whole week in 1943, she seemed distraught, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and library visitors found her hastily closing the desk drawer and turning the key to lock it. (Thus, the housewives, the wives of the bankers, doctors, and lawyers, some of whom were also in the middle school class, came to the library in the afternoons and packed their newspapers with Memphis Soup and Jackson. and the works of Thorn Smith, so that no one should see what books they borrowed, and they believed that the old lady was going to be ill soon, and even going insane.) At three o'clock one afternoon, she closed the prison The door of the library was locked, and the handbag was tucked under his arm. Two pools of flushed halos appeared on his usually pale face due to his determination to do something.She went into the store that supplied agricultural production tools. Jason IV used to work here as a clerk, but now he is the boss. He is in the business of buying and selling cotton in bulk.The old lady strode through the dark, cavernous shop that only men had ever entered--here plowshares, rakes, ropes, chains, poles, and The yokes, as well as the bacon, the bad shoes, the horse linen, the flour, the molasses, etc., were all dark, for these goods in the shop were more stored than exhibited.Those who provide Mississippi farmers (or at least black Mississippi farmers) with supplies to share in the harvest, are reluctant to remind the farmers of what they need until a good harvest is actually in sight and they can be estimated. Provide farmers with the essentials they specifically request.It is said that the old lady continued to walk in, until she reached Jason's special territory in the depths of the store: this is a corner surrounded by a fence, and there are many shelves and cabinets divided into many small compartments, which are placed in the Cotton gin receipts, account books and cotton samples on rusty picks, all covered with dust and fluff.There was a mingled stench of cheese, kerosene, harness grease, and the big iron stove, with a hundred-year-old chewing tobacco residue clinging to it.The old lady came to the tall and long counter with a sloping countertop. Jason was standing behind the counter. The old lady stopped looking at the men in overalls. They stopped when she walked in. Chatting, even the tobacco in his mouth stopped chewing.With a determination that almost made her faint, the old lady opened her handbag, took something out of it, and spread it out on the counter. ① Thorne Smith (Thorne Smith, 1892-1934), an American humorist.Often writes erotic stories in a playful tone. When Jason looked down, she trembled and breathed heavily—it was a picture, a color photograph, apparently cut from a well-printed illustrated magazine—one of those ostentatious, A photo of money and sunshine—with a tourist destination like Cannes in the background, with mountains, palm trees, cypress trees, and the sea, and a high-powered chrome-plated high-end roadster.The woman in the photo didn't wear a hat, a noble turban on her head, and a sealskin coat on her body. Her face didn't make people see how old she was, but she was gorgeous, indifferent, and calm. She seemed indifferent; standing next to her was a handsome, thin middle-aged man, whose military uniform was embellished with the medals and collar patches of the German General Staff. —this mouse-like, mouse-coloured old lady trembling and dazed at her recklessness, her eyes looking over the colored photographs at the childless old bachelor in whom an ancient family was coming to an end , the men of this family are very self-respecting and proud, even when their personalities are no longer intact, and pride has basically become vanity and self-pity: the family began with the exile who fled his homeland, He has almost nothing but his own life, but he still refuses to admit defeat; then there is the man who bet his life and his name twice, and he still refuses to admit defeat after losing twice; The man who won a fief entirely with a smart pony that could only run a quarter of a mile, who at last avenged his father and grandfather who had nothing, and then the man The shrewd and capable governor and the valiant general, although this warrior was defeated in the battle leading the brave and heroic Hao Erlang, at least he risked his life to do it; after that is the drunkard who has read poetry and books In fact, he sold the last piece of his ancestral property not to get drunk, but to give one of his descendants the best chance of life in his mind. "It's Katie!" whispered the librarian. "We must save her!" "It's Kate, that's right," Jason said.Then he laughed.He stood there laughing at the picture, at the impassive, gorgeous face that had taken the picture, and the face on it, from a week of tossing in desk drawers and purses. It's all a little wrinkled and curled up.The librarian knew exactly why he was laughing.In 1911, Cadence was abandoned by her husband and took the doll home, put the doll down, left Jefferson on the next train, and never came back. Since then, for thirty-two years, the old lady has been nothing but He was never called by any other name than Mr. Compson.And since 1928, when little Quentin climbed down the drain and eloped with the vendor, she never spoke a word to Jason.Other than Dilsey, the black cook, and the librarian, who saw that Jason was up to no good, she realized that Jason was using the existence of the child and the identity of his illegitimate daughter to restrain him. The child's mother not only prevented her from returning to Jefferson for the rest of her life, but also made herself a unique and permanent financial manager, controlling the monthly maintenance payments she sent to the child. "Jason!" she shouted, "We have to save her! Jason! Jason!"—she was still shouting, but Jason was already holding the photo between his thumb and forefinger and throwing it over the counter in her face . "That's Caydance?" he said. "Don't be funny. This bitch isn't even thirty. Ours is fifty now." So the next day the library doors were still locked, and at three o'clock that afternoon our old lady, in spite of her sore legs and exhausted spirits, was still in high spirits, with her handbag still tightly tucked under her arm, and she entered He walked out of a neat little yard in the black part of Memphis, climbed the steps of a neat little house, and rang the doorbell.The door opened, and a black woman about her age looked out at her calmly. "You're Frony, aren't you?" said the librarian. "You don't remember me—my name is Melissa Meeker, from Jefferson—" ①Kate (Cad), short for Katie. ②It means to deliberately alienate him and show his contempt. "Remember," said the black person woman, "come in. You want to see mother." So she went in, and it was a clean but overstuffed bedroom for an old nigger with a smell of The smell of old people, old ladies, old niggers, the old black person herself sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace, where a fire was still slightly smoldering even though it was June—this old tall woman in a dry suit Clean faded calico dress, spotless turban, her eyes were blurred and dimmed, obviously not seeing much—the librarian put the curled-up newspaper clipping on the black These hands are still very soft and delicate, as if she was thirty, twenty or even sixteen years old. Black women's hands are very old. "It's Katie!" said the librarian. "It's her! Dilsey! Dilsey!" "What did he say?" asked the old black lady.The librarian knew who she was referring to by "he" as soon as she heard it, and the old lady was not surprised. Not only did the black old woman expect that she (the librarian) would understand who she meant by "he" , and immediately guessed that she had shown the picture to Jason. "Can't you guess what he's going to say?" she cried. "He'll say it's her when he finds out she's in a bad situation, and he'll say that even if I can't show him a picture. But once he knows someone, whoever it is, even if it's just me to save her, and he said it wasn't her. But it was her! Look!" "Look at my eyes," said the black old lady. "How can I see the picture clearly?" "Call Frony!" cried the librarian, "she'll recognize it!" But the black old lady, who was already carefully folding the newspaper clippings in their original creases, handed the papers back to the librarian. "My eyes aren't working," she said. "I can't see." That's how it happened.At six o'clock, she squeezed back and forth in the crowded long-distance bus terminal, the bag under one arm, and the half of the round-trip ticket that was torn out was held in the other hand.She was squeezed onto the noisy platform by the crowds of the periodic bus rush every day.Only a few of the hitchhikers were middle-aged civilians, and most of them were soldiers and sailors. They were either going on vacation, dying, or looking for young women without homes, who were their companions. If you are lucky, you will spend the night in prisons and hotels on trains. If you are unlucky, you will have to spend the night in bunks, coaches, stations, hotel foyers, and public lounges.They only occasionally stay for a few days in the ward of the charity organization to let the evil species fall to the ground and when they are detained by the Police Bureau. On other days, they are always on the road.The old lady managed to squeeze into the car, she was smaller than anyone else, so she basically couldn't touch the ground, until finally there was someone (a man in a khaki uniform, she couldn't see who it was because she was already in tears Wang crazy) stood up from the seat, picked her up, and pressed her on a seat by the window.She was still weeping silently, but she was in a better mood, and was already looking out the window at the street scene flying back.After a while, the car left the city behind, and it wasn't long before she was home, safe and secure in Jefferson, despite all the unreasonable love, chaos, sorrow, anger and disappointment, but there, as soon as six o'clock comes, you can cover all these kinds of life with a cloth.Even a child could return the bundle with his weak hands to the quiet, eternal shelf among its nondescript kin, and turn the key to put it back Locked in the storage room, so that I can spend a whole night without dreams in peace.By the way, she thought, crying silently, that's all she Don't look at the picture She knows whether it's Katie or not Katie doesn't need someone to save her There's nothing of value anymore Things are worth saving because now all she can lose is not worth losing ① Dilsey. Jason the Fourth was the first of the Compsons to be sane, and since he was a bachelor without heir, he was the last.He has a logical and rational side with self-control in his character, and he can even be regarded as a philosopher in the ancient Stoic tradition: he doesn't take God's teachings in one way or another at all, and only considers that the police will How to say.There is only one person he secretly fears, and that is the black woman who cooks for him, who has been his sincerity and his sworn enemy since that day in 1911 when she was Relying on his own insight, he realized that Jason was using his little niece's illegitimate daughter status as an excuse to blackmail the child's mother.Jason not only draws a clear line with the Compson family and is independent, but also unique, competing with the Snopes family②. Since the decline of the ancient families such as Compson and Sartoris at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the Snopes family has gradually In this small town prevailed. (But it wasn't the Snopeses who made it happen, it was Jason himself, because when his mother died--the niece had slipped down the sewer and gone) So Dilsey lost both A big stick to use against Jason - he immediately threw the burden of his idiot brother on the state government, moved out of the old house himself, and divided the once magnificent large room into small rooms he called apartments. , then simply sold the whole house to a countryman who opened a boarding house here. ① refers to Katie. ②福克纳虚构的约克纳帕塔法县里的一家穷白人，他们利用南北战争后的形势，使自己成为暴发户。他们的故事主要见之于"斯诺普斯"三部曲，即《村子》（1940）、《小镇》（1957）与《大宅》（1959）。apartment. ）不过要这样做也并不困难，因为在他看来，除了他自己之外，全镇、全世界、全人类都是康普生①，反正都是完全无法信赖的人，至于为什么，那是不言自明的。家中变卖牧场的钱都让姐姐办了婚事，让哥哥上哈佛交了学费，他只好从做店伙挣来的微薄工资里一个子儿一个子儿地省下一笔钱，让自己进了盂菲斯的一所学校，学会了鉴定棉花的档级，从而建立起自己的买卖。在他那位嗜酒如命的父亲故世后，他靠这项买卖，挑起了摇摇欲坠的祖宅里这摇摇欲坠的家庭的全副担子。他看在母亲的份上继续供养白痴弟弟，牺牲了一个三十岁的单身汉有权并理应也有必要享受的一切欢乐，使母亲的生活不致有太大的变化。他之所以这样做，倒不是因为他爱母亲，仅仅是因为（一个心智健全的人往往如此）他惧怕那个黑人厨娘，他没法赶她走，他甚至试过停发她每周的工资，即使这样她也不走。不过尽管有以上所说的种种情况，他还是设法积下了近三千块钱（外甥女把钱偷走的那天晚上他报警时说是2840.50元），都是些抠抠索索硬省下来令人心酸的分币和毛票，他不把这钱存进银行，因为在他眼里银行家也都是些康普生，而是把它藏在卧室一只锁上的橱柜的抽屉里。卧室的床从来都是他自己铺的，床单也是自己换的，房门除了他进去出来那片刻也总是锁上的。有一回他的白痴弟弟想拦截一个在大门外经过的小女孩，他借此机会不禀明母亲就使自己当了这白痴的监护人，而且在母亲连白痴有没有出家门都不知道的情况下，让弟弟作了去势手术。这样，一九三三年等他母亲一死，他就可以不但永远地摆脱掉弟弟和祖宅，也摆脱了那个黑人厨娘。 ①在小说正文中，康普生太太经常说康普生一家都是疯疯癫癫，无法信赖的。只有杰生一人象她自己，象她娘家姓巴斯康的人。 他搬到他那家存有棉花账本与样品的农具店楼上的一套办公室里去住，他把这儿改成了一间带厨房和浴室的卧室。每到周未，人们可以看到有个女人在这里进进出出，她胖胖大大的，相貌平常，脾气和顺，老是笑眯眯的。她头发黄褐色，年纪已经不轻，戴一顶花哨的宽边圆帽，天冷时总穿一件充皮大衣。人们总在星期六晚上看见这两位，这中年的棉花商和这个妇女——镇上干脆管她叫"杰生的孟菲斯朋友"——一起在当地的电影院里看电影，在星期天早上又看见他们从食品店里买回一级包，一纸包的面包、鸡蛋、橘子和汤菜罐头，登上楼梯，倒很有点家庭气氛、惧内气氛和正式夫妻的气氛，一直到星期天黄昏，长途汽车又把她带回孟菲斯去。他现在总算是解放了，自由了。他总是说："一八六五年，亚伯·林肯从康普生一家手里解放了黑鬼。一九三三年，杰生·康普生从黑鬼手里解放了康普生一家。" 班吉明生下来的时候跟着舅舅（他母亲只有这么一个弟弟）的名字叫，当时的名字是毛莱。 （这个舅舅长得挺英俊，但是很浅薄，又爱吹，是个无业的单身汉。他几乎是向谁都借钱，连迪尔西这个黑女人的钱他也借。他把借到的钱塞进口袋，一边把手往外抽一边向她解释说：在他看来，她等于是他姐姐家中的一员，而且在世界上所有的人看来，她的风度气派简直就是一位天主的贵妇人，）到最后，连孩子的母亲也终于相信这孩子的确不大正常，他一边哭泣一边坚持要给孩子改名时，孩子的哥哥昆丁就给他重新起名为班吉明（班吉明，我们被卖到埃及去的最小的孩子）。他爱三样东西：那片为了给凯丹斯办婚事、给昆丁交哈佛学费而卖掉的牧场、他的姐姐凯丹斯还有火光。这三样东西他都没有失去，因为他并不记得姐姐，仅仅是感到自己若有所失；火光嘛，现在的炉火里仍然跳动着他昏昏欲睡时所见到的亮光；至于牧场，卖掉以后反倒比以前更有趣了，现在他与T·P·不仅可以无休无止地随着人们的活动（他根本不管那是人们在抡高尔夫球棒）在栅栏后面跑来跑去，T． P．还可以带领他们到野草荆棘丛去，在这里一些白色的圆圆的东西会突然出现在T·P·的手里，当你把它们朝地板、熏房墙壁或水泥人行道上扔去时，它们会抗衡甚至制服万有引力和所有别的亘古不变的定律——当然，这一套班吉是连听都没有听说过的。一九一三年，他被作了去势手术。一九三三年，被送进杰克逊的州立精神病院。即使这时候，他仍然什么也没有失去，因为正如他不记得姐姐一样，他也不记得那片牧场了，仅仅是感到自己若有所失。至于炉火，它仍然是他昏昏欲睡时所见到的亮光。 昆丁最后的一个。凯蒂的女儿。出生前九个月就失去了父亲，生下来便没有姓氏，从卵子分裂决定性别的那一刻起便注定将没有合法的丈夫。十六岁那年，在主耶稣复活一千八百九十五年周年纪念日①的前一天，她从中午时被舅舅锁上了门的房间窗子里爬出来，拉住水落管子，身子一悠，攀住舅舅那个锁上没人的寝室的窗子，打碎插紧的窗子的玻璃，爬了进去，用舅舅的拨火棍撬开锁住的抽屉，取走了钱（数目也不是2840.50元，而是近七千元，这件事使杰生火冒三丈，怒不可遏，以至在那天晚上以及以后五年中每当他想起这件事的那一刻，他都相信他真的会事先毫无迹象地突然暴毙，就象中了子弹或挨了雷殛一样，因为虽然他给抢走的数目不仅仅是三千元，而是近七千元之多，可他却有苦难言、没法跟任何人说，因为他被抢走的是七千元而不是仅仅三千元，但他不但不能听到别人——当然是那些跟他一样倒霉的、姐姐不规矩连外甥女也不规矩的男人——说一句公道话，——别人的同情他倒并不需要——而且，他甚至都没法上警察局去报案；由于他失去了不属于他的四千元，连那属于他的三千元他也要不回来了， ①1928年4月8日，因为据《圣经》说耶稣是三十三岁时被处死并复活的。 那四千元不仅是他外甥女的合法财产，是过去十六年她母亲寄来的赡养费的一部分，而且从法律上说，是根本不存在的；作为监护人和委托管理人，为了满足保证人的要求，他每年都要向地区平衡法院递交一份年度报告，在这些报告里他早就正式宣称这些钱已经用去了，因此他给抢走的不仅有他吞没的不义之财，而且也有他省吃俭用节余下来的钱，再说抢走他钱的竟然就是他的受害者；他被抢走的不仅有他冒了蹲监狱的危险弄到手的四千元，而且还有他自我克制、自我牺牲、将近二十年来一角两角地省下来的三千元，更何况抢劫者不仅是他的受害者，而且还是一个毛丫头，她一下子抄去了他的老本，没有计划，也并非预谋，在她撬抽屉的时候甚至都不知道里面有多少钱，也不在乎里面有多少钱，现在，他甚至都没法到警察那里去请求帮助；他一直是对警察很尊重的，从来不去麻烦他们，多年来老老实实地交纳税款，使他们过着一种寄生的、虐待狂的懒散生活；不仅如此，他也不敢自己去追捕那个姑娘、生怕万一捉住了她，她会一五一十把事情都说出来，因此他惟一的出路就是做一个自我安慰的梦，在事情发生后的两年、三年甚至四年里，他本应早把这件事置之脑后了，可是他常常半夜在床上辗转反侧，盗汗不已；他梦见自己猛古丁地捉住了她，在黑暗中跳出来扑在她的身上，乘她还没把所有的钱都花掉，不给她开口说话的机会就立时把她杀了）。小昆丁取走了钱，在昏黑中顺着那条水落管子爬下来，跟一个摊贩逃跑了，而这个摊贩是犯过重婚罪被判过刑的。从此，她杳无音信，不管她干的是什么营生，反正不会坐了一辆镀铬的"梅塞德斯"牌汽车回来；不管她拍了怎么样的照片，反正上面不会有参谋都的将军。 这就是康普生一家的故事。还有一些不是康普生家的人。他们是黑人： T． P．他在孟菲斯城比尔街上溜溜达达，穿的是芝加哥和纽约血汗工厂的老板们特地为他这号人制作的漂亮、鲜艳、俗气、咄咄逼人的衣服。 弗洛尼她嫁给了一个在火车卧车里当差的待者，搬到圣路易去住了，后来又搬回到孟菲斯。她把母亲接来在这里安了家，因为她母亲无论如何不愿搬到更远的地方去。 勒斯特一个十四岁的小伙子。他不仅能够把一个年纪是他两倍、个头是他三倍的白痴照顾好，保证他的安全，而且还能不断地给他解闷。 迪尔西 他们①艰辛地活着。 ①指以上所提到的所有的黑人。