Sarah Conlon
萨拉•康伦
Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Sarah Conlon, campaigner for the innocent, died on July 19th, aged 82
萨拉•康伦，捍卫无辜者的活动家，于7月19日逝世，享年82岁
GOD knows she did what she could to keep her son Gerry safe. She called him to be in by seven for his tea, to stop him thinking he might wander down to Gilmartin’s pub or to the card-schools on the corner, where a lucky coin or two might fall off the box in front of him. Each evening, until he was 15 and wouldn’t do it any more, they would say the rosary together as a family. She taught him his prayers, and made sure that in their house it was Jesus with his Sacred Heart who looked down from the wall, rather than Patrick Pearse or James Connolly. For a household in the Lower Falls, in West Belfast, they were not especially Republican. Sarah Conlon wanted their life to be respectable, holy, and quiet.
她竭尽所能让她的儿子格里能够安全地生活。七点叫他进来吃茶点，不让他有去Gilmartin酒吧或拐角的牌室的念头。因为在那里，一两枚的硬币可能会从盒子里溜出来掉到他的面前。每个晚上，他们会一起念诵玫瑰经，直至格里已经15岁，再也不会有什么非份之想。康伦教会儿子念祷文，确保他们房内的墙上挂的是耶稣及其圣心，而不是爱尔兰国家主义者Patrick Pearse或者爱尔兰社会党领袖 James Connolly。对于居住在西贝尔法斯特 Lower Falls的一家来说，他们不算是真正的共和主义者。萨拉•康伦希望他们能过一种受人尊敬、神圣而平静的生活。
It was her graft that held the family together. Up in the morning at seven to scrub the step and their own little section of pavement with scalding water, before she went to work. For years she sorted old clothes at Harry Kane’s scrapyard, amazed at the fine stuff people would throw away, jumpers and T-shirts perfectly good enough to pass on to someone needy; later she worked in the kitchens at the Royal Victoria Hospital, dishing out food to patients and mopping the floors. The hours were long, the pay poor; but work was hard to come by for Catholics in Belfast.
正是她的辛苦劳作让这个家庭得以延续。每天早上七点起床，之后即用热水擦洗台阶及家里的一小段甬路，之后上班。数年，她在Harry Kane废品场整理旧衣服，很惊讶人们把这么好的东西都扔掉，那些毛线衣和T恤衫都还很好，可以供需要的人穿。后来，她在皇家维多利亚医院的厨房工作，给患者送饭，擦洗地板。工作时间很长，工资很低，但是对于居住在贝尔法斯特的天主教徒来说，这份工作来之不易。
Guiseppe, her husband, was too ill to do much. He had worked at Harland & Wolf red-leading the hulls of ships, but the lead had got into his lungs and damaged them. The damp and condensation in the house didn’t help, with the steam from the kettle running down the walls and taking off the wallpaper. He had been a strong young man when she first went out with him, fit enough to leap from a ship into Belfast Lough and swim for the shore when they tried to make him, a pacifist, fight in the war. But he was soon coughing with TB and emphysema, and though he went to the sanatorium and she took healthy fruit to him, grapes and pears they could hardly afford, he was never well again.
她的丈夫Guiseppe由于患病基本不能劳作。Guiseppe曾在沃尔夫船厂工作，给船体刷漆，但后来肺里进了铅，得了肺病。他们的房子又潮又小，水壶冒出的蒸汽顺墙而下，把壁纸都弄掉了。这些于病情的恢复也不利。他们第一次约会时他非常强壮。战争期间，他是一个不抵抗主义者，当他们想抓他时，他能强壮得从船上跳进贝尔法斯特湾游到岸上。但很快他就得了肺结核和肺气肿，咳嗽不止。虽然也去疗养院疗养，而且她也带有利健康的水果给他，比如他们几乎买不起的葡萄和梨。不过，他的身体却从此再也没有好起来。
When she last saw him in 1980 he was in Hammersmith hospital, dying. But he was handcuffed to a bed like a cage, with two warders guarding him. He had been in prison for five years, sentenced because the British police believed he had something to do with the IRA bombings at Guildford and Woolwich in 1974. In truth he had had nothing to do with it at all. He had been in England to get Gerry out of trouble, and it was not the first occasion.
她最后一次见他是在1980年，当时他在汉默史密斯医院，濒临死亡。但是，他被手锆锁在像笼子一样的病床上，床边有两位守卫在看着他。他在狱中关了五年，因为英国警方认为他与1974年吉尔弗德和沃尔威治的爱尔共和军爆炸案有关。实际上他与此毫无瓜葛。他曾去过英格兰以让Gerry不致染上麻烦，这不是第一次了。
Mrs Conlon’s efforts to keep Gerry on the straight and narrow had failed completely. By 14 he was playing truant and pilfering. He went to England at last to get away from the sectarian fighting, a good idea she thought; but he got into bad company, gambled too much on the horses, and kept on stealing. He turned up once back at home in a shaggy Afghan coat that made him look like the wild man of Borneo; he said it had cost him a fortune. And almost the next time she saw him he too was in prison in England, not for burglary, which he deserved, but for five counts of murder and conspiracy. Her son was now one of the “Guildford Four”, her sick husband one of the “Maguire Seven”, together with her brother Paddy, her sister-in-law Annie and her two schoolboy nephews. The British police, desperate to frame whoever they could, said Annie had a bomb-making factory in her kitchen in Kilburn. But Mrs Conlon knew how tidy she was, her house impeccable, and with a picture of the Queen on the wall.
康伦希望她的儿子过着严守道德戒律的生活，但她完全失败了。14岁时Gerry 即逃学并染上小偷小摸的恶习。他后来去了英格兰，以远离教派冲突。当时康伦认为这个主意不错，不过，Gerry却结交了坏朋友，沉迷于赛马并继续偷窃。他曾回过一次家，当时穿着很夸张的阿富汗外套，看起来像是婆罗州岛的野人。他说花大价钱才买了这件外套。下次康伦再见儿子时，他也是在英格兰的狱中，不是因为罪有应得的盗窃，而是因为五起谋杀和密谋。她儿子现在是”吉尔福德四人案”被告之一，她生病的丈夫是”马圭尔七人案”被告之一，其他被告还包括她的兄弟 Paddy,弟媳Annie以及她两个上学的侄子。英国警方一心捏造罪名，说Annie位于Kilburn的厨房有制造炸弹的工厂。但是康伦知道 Annie是一个受干净的人，她的房子一尘不染，墙上挂着一幅女王像。
All the years that Gerry and Guiseppe were in jail she tried to do what she could. She sent weekly parcels, thoroughly packed for fear of damage in the post, of cigarettes and sweets and clippings from the Irish newspapers. She saved up her prison visits for the two weeks of her annual holiday, often spending it in stilted and awkward conversation, with the warder noting down every word of it in case they talked about bombs. Her regular letters always ended the same way: “Pray for the ones who told lies against you… It’s them who needs help as well as yourself.”
Gerry 和 Guiseppe在狱中的这些年，她竭尽全力做力所能及的事。她每周都邮寄包裹（有香烟、糖和爱尔兰报纸的剪报），把包裹仔细地包装好以防路上损坏。她把探监时间攒起来，以便在休两周的年假时集中使用。探监时的对话常常是不自然和尴尬的，看守在边上记录下每一个字，以防他们谈论炸弹。她定期写信，结尾常常是：”为那些给你们捏造罪名的人祈祷，他们才正需要帮助，和你们一样”
Prayer definitely helped. Had she not been doing the Stations of the Cross in the cathedral three nights a week, and had a priest there, Father McKinley, not noticed her crying when the 1977 appeal was turned down, she might never have been able to get her campaign going to free her relations and the others. But within a short time, many others helping, she was harrying MPs and ministers, the taoiseach and Cardinal Basil Hume himself, until in 1989 she was at the Old Bailey, a white carnation in her hand, to see the Guildford Four’s convictions quashed as unsound. The Maguires’ were overturned two years later. And she was not done yet. She had always wanted the British government to apologise, and in 2005 a petition was signed by more than 10,000 people. Tony Blair said sorry, and sent her a copy; and though she never sought the cameras, she posed for them with Gerry and the letter.
毫无疑问，祈祷发挥了作用。如果她不是每周三次在教堂内走十字架苦路，如果不是那里的牧师Father McKinley注意到1977年上诉被驳回后她在教堂内哭泣，她可能永远也不能把她的亲戚和其他人释放出来。但是在很短的时间内，很多人伸出的援助之手。她不断地向各议员、部长、(爱尔兰共和国的)总理和Cardinal Basil Hume本人提出请求，直至1989年，她来到伦敦最高刑事法院，手里拿着白色的康乃馨，听法官宣判”吉尔福德四人案”的定罪毫无根据。”马圭尔七人案” 的定罪在两年后被推翻。她还不满足。她一直想让英国政府道歉，2005年，10,000多人签署了一份请愿书。托尼•布莱尔说”对不起”，并向她发送了一份副本；虽然她从来没有找过相机，她还是和Gerry手拿着道歉信摆了个姿势。
Not all her ambitions were fulfilled by the time she died. She wanted a medical centre built, to help the victims of miscarriages of justice recover from the trauma of it. In her own family there had been several breakdowns. Gerry himself still suffered nightmares and stress from the beatings in custody, and could not work. Of course, some might suppose there was not much she could do from Heaven to keep him safe. But she believed she could.
她死时还有愿望没有实现。她想建一个医疗中心，帮助司法误判的受害者从创伤中恢复。她的家里就有七人遭遇不幸。Gerry还在因为狱中的暴打而做恶梦，并且压力重重，以致不能工作。当然，有些人会想她在天堂可能没有能力帮助他安全地生活了，但是她相信她能够。
译者：王乙任 http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13020&extra=page%3D1