我的表 马克土温着 江铭辉译

图：当十月间树叶还在变红的时候，它就已经进入了赏雪的十一月了

我那只漂亮的新怀表，己经走了18个月，不慢也不快，机件没有出过毛病，也不曾停过。我已经确信用这只表来判断一天的所有时间是绝对正确，也认为它的构造和零件永远不会坏。但是有一天晚上，我终于把它弄坏了。我对这件事感到悲伤，因为它彷佛告知大灾难来临的征兆。但不久，我鼓起勇气，把大灾难来临的恶兆控制和赶走了迷信，决定按照自己的意思调整怀表时间。
第二天我走进一家第一流的珠宝钟表店，想对准正确时间。这时，店老板从我手里把表拿去，替我对准时间。随后他说:「这只表慢了四分，得把它拨快些。」我想阻止他，让他知道表的时间非常准确，但是没有用。那个笨家伙只知道表慢四分，非把拨快一些不可，所以不管我焦急地在他的周围转来转去，要求他不要动这只表，但他冷酷地作了这该死的事。
我的表开始走快了，一天快过一天，不到一星期，它生了猛烈的热病，甚至在荫凉的地方，它的脉搏也升到一百五十。两个月过后，街上的所有表都远远落在它的后面，比日历快了十三天以上。当十月间树叶还在变红的时候，它就已经进入了赏雪的十一月了。其他催我急速付房租和账单等等……此类导致破产的方式，使我无法忍受。
于是我把表送给另一个修表师傅修理。他问我以前有没有修理过。我说没有，它过去不曾作过任何修理。他浮起不怀好意的幸福表情，急迫地将我的表援开，再把眼睛凑在小小的筒管镜上检视着机件。然后他说，只是修理还不行，还得清洗和加油，一星期后来拿。
图：当十月间树叶还在变红的时候，它就已经进入了赏雪的十一月了
经过清洗、加油和修理过之后，我的表走慢了，像教堂的敲钟一般，慢吞吞地走着。于是，我搭不上火车，赶不上所有的约会，连晚餐也来不及去吃。为了表，我的表将3天的期限宽延到4天，我还为此去抗议；我慢慢退回到昨天，再退回到前天，又退回到了前一星期；不久，我发现到，这个世界消失了，只剩我一个人徘徊在上上星期中。我偷偷摸摸的感到自己与博物馆中的木乃伊是同类，并且渴望与他互通消息。
我又找到一个钟表师傅，在我等待的时候，师傅把我表的全部零件拆开，然后说:发条的盒于「膨胀」了。他说，三天之内就可以复原。这样修理以后，怀表平均起来走得很好，但仅只如此。那就是上半天胡闹地跑个不停，不停的喘气、咳嗽、打喷嚏、吸鼻子的声音，吵得我不能静下来想自己的事情。照这样速度维持下去，恐怕全世界没有一只表有机会能赶上它。但后半天，它的动作慢慢迟滞，停停歇歇的，直到所有落后的表都赶上它。这样到了二十四小时将结束的时候，它却及时快步准时赶到终点站。不错，它指出了不偏不移的平均值，有人能说它多多少少没有尽到责任吗？
但一只表仅是平均准确，也并不能算是什么优点，于是我又把这个「定时器」送给另一个钟表师傅修理，他说大螺丝钉断了。我说，我很高兴听到它没有重大毛病。但平实说，我对大螺丝钉一点概念都没有，但我不愿让陌生人认为自己无知。钟表师傅虽然把大螺丝钉修好了，但是有得，也有失。也就是走一会儿停一会儿，然后再走一会儿……等等，且要走多久或停歇多久完全随心所欲。另外每次停下来，它就像射枪般地向后反弹一下。
我忍耐了几天，终于又把它送给另一个钟表师傅修理。他挑出所有零件，在筒管镜下翻来覆去把「残骸」看了好几次，然后，他说好像是小扳机出现一些问题。他已修好，让它重新出发。这次我的表走得很好，但走到九点五十分的时候，长短二针像剪刀一般迭在一起，以后两根针便迭着一起走了。即使是世界上年纪最大的人也不能从如此的怀表看出白天或晚上时间。我不得不把这个东西又送去修埋。
这个表匠说，水晶盖已经弯了，主发条也不正。他又说，机件的一部分也需要半角衬垫。他把这些都修好了。于是除了偶尔之外，我的表走得已经无懈可击。但是，在静静向前走了将近8小时之后，内部的机件就突然全部松开，发出蜜蜂般的嗡嗡声，随后，两根针便急速地转起来，快得完全分辨不出长短针，简直像是表盘上罩了一层精密的螂蛛网。这样，只花了六、七分钟，我的表就转完了二十四小时，然后「砰」得一声，停止了。我心情沉重地找另一位钟表师傅，他将表分解得支离破碎查看。我下定决心这次非好好地质问不可，因为这个问题已相当严重了。这个表最初是二百元买的，但我已经付出了二、三千元的修理费。我边看边等待时，我认出这个表匠以前就认识的，他过去是轮船上的技师，而且技术
并不怎么高明。他也同别的钟表师傅一样，仔细检查过所有的零件之后，充满自信地下了判断。他说:「这东西的蒸气太多了，得用活动板钳去固定安全瓣!」我当场敲碎了他的脑壳，自已花钱把他埋葬掉了。
我的威廉叔叔 (可惜已经过世)经常说，好马就是好马，一旦逃出去了以后就再也不是好马了，好表就是好表，一旦经过钟表匠的手就完蛋了。他也时常怀疑那些半吊子的修补匠、枪炮匠、鞋匠、机械匠或铁匠，最后不知会变成什么样子，但始终没有人能回答这个问题。

MY WATCH AN INSTRUCTIVE TALE

MY beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact
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time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -- come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the
world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair-trigger. He
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fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the
face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.
He said:
"She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!"
I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.
My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.
My Watch: An Instructive Little Tale
Written in 1870 by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
This version originally published in 2005 by Infomotions, Inc. It was derived from the Internet Wiretap Edition of My Watch by Mark Twain From "Sketches New and Old", Copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens. It was placed in the Public Domain (June 1993, #16). (Written about 1870.) This document is distributed under the GNU Public License.
My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the
watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and
then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.
He said:
"She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!"
I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.
My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.