[2008.06.21] Hot love in the cold war 冷战中的热恋

Russia
俄罗斯

Hot love in the cold war
冷战中的热恋

Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition

TERROR, stagnation, exile, hope and disillusion are the fabric of Russian history in the last century. These are also the backdrop for Owen Matthews’s poignant history of his family’s battle with Soviet bureaucracy at its most callous and Western officialdom at its most complacent.
恐怖、萧条、放逐、希望和觉醒，构成了俄国上世纪历史的主旋律。而就在这样的背景下，Owen Matthews的家族，书写着他们那充满心酸的，不断地跟苏联那些冷酷无情的干部们和西方诸多傲慢自大的官员们斗争的历史。

His father Mervyn was one of the earliest British graduates allowed to study in Russia in the 1950s. This changed his life. First, he fell in love with Lyudmila, the frail, brainy daughter of a senior communist purged in the 1930s. Second, he flirted with the KGB. They insisted that he work for them. When he refused, he was expelled, permanently, from the Soviet Union. Lyudmila’s repeated applications for an exit visa were denied.
Owen的父亲，Mervyn，是20世纪50年代最早一批被允许去苏联深造的英国留学生之一。这次留学改变了他的一生。首先，他爱上了一位瘦弱而聪明的姑娘，Lyudmila，一位30年代苏联大清洗运动中遭受迫害的资深共产党员的女儿。其次，他又跟克格勃（苏联国家安全委员会）纠缠不清。克格勃坚持要他为他们工作。当拒绝之后，他便被苏联永久驱逐出境了。问题是，Lyudmila的出境签证却屡遭拒绝。

That could have been the end, among millions of other commonplace tragedies in the decades that the Kremlin devoted to creating paradise on earth. But it wasn’t. Showing great reserves of determination, Mervyn Matthews spent the next five years running a threadbare but relentless campaign to get Lyudmila to Britain. He buttonholed any public figure who could help, harassed the press and infuriated Foreign Office mandarins who regarded the whole affair as an irrelevant nuisance. He travelled round Europe to try to lobby visiting Soviet bigwigs, and even managed twice to slip into the Soviet Union on visa-free day trips from Finland to see her.
本来，到这里就该划上一个句号了，正如在克里姆林宫着手建设人间天堂的时代，那千千万万的人间惨剧一样。然而，故事并未就此结束。Mervyn Matthews在此时表现出了巨大的决心，为了把Lyudmila带到英国，他接下来进行了五年虽微不足道却不屈不挠的抗争。他向任何一位可能会有所帮助的公众人物求助；他不断地烦扰新闻媒体；他还激怒了外交部的官员，他们说这事儿跟他们毫无关系。他周游欧洲，设法游说来访的苏联官员；他甚至两次跑到芬兰，通过免签旅行偷偷进入苏联跟她相会。

In between he wrote daily to Lyudmila in spare but affectionate prose. He carefully kept copies of his own letters and of her replies, which are steeped with frustrated uxoriousness (love mixed with fussing about his diet and clothes). Through these extracts the reader can almost smell the longing and the willpower. They also show how the couple’s unhappy families-Mervyn’s father is absent because he disliked his relations, Lyudmila’s because he died in the Gulag-made them seem to match each other so neatly.
在此期间，Mervyn每天都会给Lyudmila写信，用简洁而深情的散文。他小心翼翼地保存着自己信的复印件和她的回信。在她的回信里，充满了带着失落感的爱妻情怀（那种混合着爱恋和对他衣食的关切的感情）。通过这本书中的选摘，相信读者可以感受到其中的渴望与坚强。同时，我们也可以看到这一对恋人不幸的家庭–Mervyn的父亲因为不满意他们两人这种关系而与其疏远，Lyudmila的父亲则死于古拉格（苏联劳改集中营）–这使他们看起来更加需要对方。

The campaign for Lyudmila cost Mervyn his academic career. He did not publish his work on Soviet sociology for fear of offending the Kremlin. After lobbying a visitor to his Oxford college too brusquely, he was eased out and took a job at another university which he despised. In Moscow, Lyudmila was hounded for her love affair with someone from the enemy camp.
这场为了Lyudmila而进行的抗争也使Mervyn的学业付诸流水。因为怕得罪克里姆林宫，他没敢发表自己关于苏联的社会学论文。由于过于唐突地游说一位牛津大学的访客，他被牛津大学解雇，只得去了一所他原来不屑一顾的学校任教。在莫斯科，Lyudmila则因这段与敌对阵营中人的恋情而遭受攻击。

Astonishingly, the sacrifices were vindicated. In 1969 the Matthews case and that of two other couples were bundled up with an East-West spy swap. Lyudmila came to Britain. The marriage proved less than blissful, although it was saved by dogged loyalty on both sides. Lyudmila adapted poorly to English life; her shy, spartan husband’s grit in adversity proved greater than his husbandly capabilities.
不过，叫人惊喜的是，他们的付出总算得到了回报。1969年，在一起人质交换事件中，他们和另外两对夫妇的问题一起得到了解决，Lyudmila来到了英国。然而，他们的婚姻虽然在双方忠贞的感情下没有破裂，却也并不见得有多幸福。 Lyudmila对英国生活极为不适应；她那位害羞而刚毅的丈夫，相对于其在困境中的勇敢坚定，他在婚姻生活中的表现却并不能令人满意。

But the marriage did produce the author, a legendary hellraiser in Moscow in the 1990s, and now a respectable foreign correspondent. The crisp and admirably self-deprecating vignettes of his own life, both emotional and professional, give his parents’ story a fitting perspective. Few books say so much about Russia then and now, and its effect on those it touches.
当然，本书的作者也是这段婚姻的产物，一个90年代莫斯科传奇般的叛逆者，现在则是一位受人尊敬的驻外记者。作为小插曲，书中也描写了作者自己的生活，用了令人愉快的自嘲式笔调；书中还有对他父母这段故事的恰当透析，充满感情却又非常地道。没有几本书会像本书这样，详尽地描述了俄国的过去与现在，以及相关的影响。

译者: being    http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12197&extra=page%3D1
本文同样优秀的另一篇译文版本为： http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12196&extra=page%3D1