[2008.09.27] 逝者：弗兰克•蒙杜斯

Frank Mundus
弗兰克•蒙杜斯

Sep 25th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Frank Mundus, shark fisherman, died on September 10th, aged 82
弗兰克•蒙杜斯，鲨鱼猎手，逝于9月10日，享年82岁

HIS boat was called Cricket II, not the Orca. But when you climbed on board, mentally noting the lumpy cushions, the rods trailing wires at the stern and the swivel fish-fighting chair bolted to the deck, you knew you were in the same place. His fishing methods were different: he used aluminium beer barrels as floats because wooden ones would break up in a minute, and rather than harpoons, with their stainless-steel darts that folded back and slipped right out of the fish, he preferred hand-held gaffs with a three-inch hook that went in and stayed there. But as you watched him work, dipping the ladle into a garbage pail of bloody chum and spreading a slick of it into the sea, or listened to him snapping at his customers to tighten the drag and hit the brake, you knew this was the same man. Frank Mundus was convinced he was Captain Quint, the fisher of monster sharks from Peter Benchley’s “Jaws”. And if Benchley denied it, as he always did, Mr Mundus was still determined to make a splash of his own.
他的船叫Cricket II号，而不是Orca号。不过，当来到船上，看到那些高低不平的气垫，那些船尾的钓竿拖曳线，以及那些固定在甲板上的旋转斗鱼椅时，就会发现这和 Orca号一样。他捕鱼的方法与众不同：用铝质啤酒桶而不是木桶作为浮子，因为木桶会瞬间破裂；不用鱼叉，因为鱼叉的不锈钢镖头会折回，从鱼身上滑下，他更喜欢用带有三英寸鱼钩的手钩，鱼钩进入鱼身后就固定在那里了。此外，看他工作时，用勺子从装满血淋淋鱼饵的垃圾桶里舀出一些鱼饵洒在海里，或者听他厉声让其客户拉紧打捞器，踩下制动器时，就会发现这和Orca号船长一样。弗兰克•蒙杜斯坚信他就是昆特船长，彼得•本切利小说《大白鲨》里的鲨鱼杀手。即使彼得•本切利不承认（他经常这样做），蒙杜斯自己也注定会引起轰动。

The stories surrounding him were legion. That he had danced on the floating carcass of a dead whale while blue sharks, in a frenzy, foamed round it. (“I was the first one to stand on the whale and see if you could…get the sharks to take the bait; that whale was fresh, blood was still coming out of its mouth.”) That he had grabbed a thresher by the tail and pulled it into his boat. (“That tail is all muscle, and it knows how to use it. It can give you a bruise that looks as though you’ve been run over by a truck.”) That he had fed live kittens to sharks. (“No kittens. We tried ’em with a dead cat that we found on the road, but they didn’t want it.”) It was true, however, that he once grabbled a shark by the dorsal as it swam past the boat, and that another crashed up over the side and snapped its jaws three feet from his head. He was close enough to see the serrated edges on every three-inch tooth.
关于蒙杜斯的故事很多。他曾在死鲸的尸体上跳舞，而周围是一群发狂的蓝鲨在咆哮。（”我最先站到鲸鱼上，看看是否能引诱鲨鱼上钩，这条鲸鱼很新鲜，嘴里还在淌血”）。他曾抓住一条长尾鲨的尾巴，把它拖到了船上（”它的尾巴肌肉非常发达，并且非常灵活。人被抽打上就像被一辆卡车辗过一样”）。他曾用活猫来喂鲨鱼。（”小猫不行。我们用路边捡回的死猫喂鲨鱼，但鲨鱼不感兴趣”）。不过，千真万确的是，有一次，他抓住了正游过船边一条鲨鱼的背鳍，而另一侧的船边另一条鲨鱼的嘴巴离他的头只有三英尺，近得他都能看到里面每颗牙齿。

He had also caught, off Long Island, some of the largest sharks ever landed: a 4,500lb (2,000kg) great white harpooned in 1964, and a 3,400lb one, big as a Volkswagen, caught with rod and reel in 1986. The 4,500-pounder had swum up just after he had landed two sharks and was battling a third; it then took off for the horizon, needing five more irons to kill it. The 3,500-pounder resisted the first gaff for an hour and a half and thrashed for another hour before they got the tail-rope round it. Mr Mundus towed it into Amagansett at midnight to find crowds already waiting.
他在长岛捕到的鲨鱼是所捕获鲨鱼中最大的几个：1964年叉到一条4,500英镑（2,000千克）的大白鲨；1986年用钓竿和钓丝螺旋轮捕到一条 3,400英镑的鲨鱼。他在把两条鲨鱼弄到岸上，准备进军第三条时，这条4,500英镑的大鲨鱼出现了，之后游向了远处，又用了5个鱼叉才把它杀死。这条 3,500英镑的鲨鱼先是与手钩抗争了一个半小时，又挣扎了一个小时，之后才被尾绳套住。蒙杜斯把它拖到哈得逊的时候已是半夜，有好多人都在等待。

He wore a tooth from that shark round his neck ever after, as well as one big hoop earring and an Australian hat. Quint, who in the book wore a T-shirt and faded jeans and in the film had a beard and a bandanna , was a plainer dresser. But his “short, derisive bark” of a laugh, his Roman nose, and most of all his life with sharks, were just the same. Mr Mundus, too, once made the centrepiece of a classic “Jaws” scene, harpooning a great white in 75 feet of water off a beach where children played.
自那以后，他就把这条鲨鱼的一颗牙齿戴在脖子上，此外，还戴了一个环形大耳环和一顶澳大利亚的帽子。昆特船长在书里穿着T恤和褪了色的牛仔裤，在屏幕上则以大胡子和印花大手帕示人。虽然昆特船长的穿着比蒙杜斯更简朴，但是带有嘲讽意味的短笑，罗马鼻子，以及一生与鲨鱼的缠绵，这两人是完全一样的。蒙特斯也曾经上演过《大鲨鱼》里的经典镜头，把一条长75英尺的大白鲨叉到了孩子们正在游玩的海滩上。

Poor man’s big game
穷人的大游戏

Mr Mundus cared so much about Quint because he had helped Benchley with material, taking him out in Cricket II for weeks, and because a proper “Jaws” connection-though he thought the film “the funniest and stupidest movie I’ve ever seen”-would have brought in business. His charter-fishing enterprise, run for 40 years out of Montauk in Long Island, had started the sport of baiting and running sharks. They had been considered garbage before, but he promoted them as “fun”: a poor man’s big game at $400 a time, wily, beautiful and dangerous.
蒙杜斯很在乎昆特船长这个人物，因为他曾向本切利提供过素材，带本切利在Cricket II号上过了几个星期，因为和”大白鲨”电影相关联将带来商机，尽管他认为”这是我看过的最好笑、最愚蠢的电影”。他的包船捕鱼公司在长岛的 Montauk运营了四十年，开展引诱并追逐鲨鱼的业务。以前人们认为鲨鱼是垃圾，但是他把他们称作”乐趣”：400美元就可以玩一次巧妙、有趣、刺激的游戏，穷人的大游戏。

He knew their ways. They would haunt any place in the open ocean, but it was impossible to hunt one specific shark: “They don’t stay in the same place, they move. They got tails.” A 50-pound rod, his usual, would “just about handle anything that comes along”. It was nonsense to think that any fish could pull a heavy boat of the Cricket II’s size either forwards or backwards, as happened in the film of “Jaws”, though you needed a lot of line, double the depth of the water, when a baited shark dived to the bottom. Each fish he caught he said he felt sorry for, even though it was his opponent, and even though he had his own handicap, a left arm withered since childhood, which ached with the effort of keeping a taut （拉紧的）drag on a line.
他了解鲨鱼的习性。他们会在海洋里任何地方出没，但不可能捕获某一条特定的鲨鱼：”他们不在同一个地方逗留，他们会游来游去，他们有尾巴。”他常用的工具是一根50镑的钓竿，能”应对一切。”任何鱼也不可能把像Cricket II这样的大船拖动（如电影”大白鲨”里的镜头），但是，当上钩的鲨鱼向水底潜游时，需把水加深一倍。蒙杜斯说他为捕到的每条鱼都感到难过，虽然这些鱼都是他的对手，虽然他的身体障碍（自童年起左臂就萎缩了）在每次控制紧绷的探海钩时都会疼痛。

His critics, and he had many, doubted that he felt much regret. For years, before environmentalism made it illegal, he ground up small whales and basking sharks to make the best bait. Sometimes he shot sharks to finish them off. His boat would come into Montauk braying with victory and strung with the corpses of huge fish. But when the sharks themselves became endangered he began to use circle hooks, which caught in the jaw and let the fish be released, rather than gut-hooks which slowly killed it. And though his haul of dead sea beasts was immense, only seven great whites fell victim to him.
他的批评者（数量很多）质疑他有多少难过。有好多年，他都会圈捕小鲸鱼和姥鲨来做最好的鱼饵，有时还会射杀鲨鱼，环保主义后来把这些行为定为违法行为。他的船来到Montauk时会满载着条条死去的大鱼。当鲨鱼这个种类濒危时，他用了嘴钩（钩在嘴里，鱼可以被放掉），不再用肠钩（这会把鱼慢慢杀死）。尽管他捕获了大量的海洋生物，但是只捕获了七条大白鲨。

He survived his life almost uninjured, pesky and abrasive, full of advice about ways of fishing that were no longer allowed. And he could count himself lucky to die at 82 of heart trouble in his bed, not, like the Quint of the book, trailed behind a shark underwater, arms out and mouth open “in mute protest”; or, like the Quint of the film, chomped in half at the trouser-line, spouting scarlet blood like a whale.
经过了这一切，他竟然几乎毫发未伤，只是性格粗暴恼人。他知道捕鱼的各种方法，这些方法现在都被禁止了。在82岁的时候因心脏病逝于病床上，他应该称自己是幸运之人，因为书中的昆特船长去逝时，正在水下追猎一条鲨鱼，胳膊伸开，嘴张着，似乎在”无言的抗议”；或者电影里的昆特船长被烫裤机拦腰截断，鲜血喷涌而出，如鲸鱼一般。

[NOTES](英汉大词典 陆谷孙; Google)
1 stern n.船尾
2 swivel n.（常做定语）转体
3 harpoon n.鱼叉
4 gaff n.手钩
5 hook n.鱼钩
6 chum n.鱼饵
7 drag n.打捞器，探海钩
8 pail n.桶
9 make a splash 引起轰动，惹人注意
10 legion adj.众多的，大量的
11 frenzy n.发狂
12 foam v. 吐白沫，（发怒时）唾沫四溅
13 thresher n.长尾鲨
14 dorsal n.背鳍
15 serrated adj.锯齿的
16 rod n.钓竿
17 reel n.钓丝螺旋轮
18 iron n.鱼叉
19 tail-rope n.尾绳
20 bandanna n.印花大手帕
21 centrepiece n.最引人注目的部分
22 taut adj.拉紧的
23 basking sharks n.姥鲨（一种不伤害人的大鲨鱼，常浮出水面晒太阳）
24 trouser-line n.烫裤机

译者：王乙任   http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=14325&extra=page%3D1