4.The Man in the Water(1147)

Passage Four

Roger Rosenblatt is a writer and teacher who studied at New York University and Harvard. He was an editor and essayist at big media companies and won an award for his magazine writing. He wrote about a plane crash in Washington, D.C. in 1982.

罗杰·罗森布拉特是一名作家和教师，曾在纽约大学和哈佛大学学习。他是大型媒体公司的编辑和散文家，并因杂志写作而获奖。他写了1982年在华盛顿特区发生的一次飞机失事。

The Man in the Water

Roger Rosenblatt

【1】As disasters go, this one was terrible, but not unique; certainly not among the worst US air crashes on record. There was the unusual element of the bridge, of course, and the fact that the plane hit it at a moment of high traffic. Then, too, there was the location of the event. Washington, the city of form and rules, turned chaotic by a blast of real winter and a single slap of metal on metal.

【2】The jets from Washington National Airport that normally fly around the presidential monuments like hungry gulls are, for the moment, represented by the one that fell. And there was the aesthetic clash as well—blue-and-green Air Florida, the name of a flying garden, sunk down among gray chunks of ice in a black river.

【3】All that was worth noticing, to be sure. Still, there was nothing very special in any of it, except death, which, while always special, does not necessarily bring the nation to tears or to attention.

【4】Why, then, the shock here? Perhaps because the nation saw in this disaster something more than a failure. Perhaps because people saw in it no failure at all, but rather something successful about themselves.

【5】Here, after all, were two forms of nature in collision, the elements and human character. Last Wednesday, the elements, indifferent as ever, brought down Flight 90. And on that same afternoon, human nature—groping and struggling—rose to the occasion.

【6】Of the four heroes of the event, three are able to account for their behavior. Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor, a park police helicopter team, risked their lives every time they dipped their skids into the water to pick up survivors.

【7】On television, side by side, they described their courage as all in the line of duty. Lenny Skutnik, a 28-year-old employee of the Congressional Budget Office, said: "It's something I never thought I would do"—referring to his jumping into the water to drag an injured woman to shore.

【8】Skutnik added that "somebody had to go in the water," delivering every hero's line that is no less admirable for being repeated. In fact, nobody had to go into the water. That somebody actually did so is part of the reason this particular tragedy sticks in the mind.

【9】But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known at first simply as "the man in the water." Balding, probably in his 50s, a huge mustache. He was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane.

【10】This man was described by Usher and Windsor as appearing alert and in control. Every time they lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another of the passengers. "In a mass casualty, you'll find people like him," said Windsor. "But I've never seen one with that commitment."

【11】When the helicopter came back for him, the man had gone under. His selflessness was one reason the story held national attention, his anonymity another. The fact that he went unidentified gave him a universal character. For a while, he was Everyman, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.

【12】Still, he could never have imagined such a capacity in himself. Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the "no smoking" sign.

【13】So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly, he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.

【14】For at some moment in the water, he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how slow the effect of the cold. He felt he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he let it happen.

【15】Yet, there was something else about our man that kept our thoughts on him, and which keeps our thoughts on him still. He was there, in the essential, classic circumstance—man in nature. The man in the water. For its part, nature cared nothing about the five passengers.

【16】Our man, on the other hand, cared totally. So the age-old battle began again in the Potomac. For as long as that man could last, they went at each other, nature and man; the one making no distinction of good and evil, acting on no principles, offering no lifelines; the other acting on distinctions, principles, and, perhaps, on faith.

【17】Since it was he who lost the fight, we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the opposite, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in the matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did, or as did Usher, Windsor, and Skutnik. Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them.

【18】Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the enduring wonder of the story. That is why we would not let go of it. If the man in the water gave a lifeline to the people gasping for survival, he was likewise giving a lifeline to those who watched him.

【19】The odd thing is that we do not even really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. "Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature," said Emerson. Exactly. The man in the water had his own natural powers. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood.

【20】But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water set himself against an immovable, impersonal enemy, he fought it with kindness; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do.

第四课

水里的人

罗杰·罗森布拉特

【1】就灾难而言，这次是可怕的，但不是独一无二的;当然不是美国有史以来最严重的空难之一。当然，这座桥的不寻常之处在于，飞机在交通繁忙的时候撞上了它。然后，还有事件发生的地点。华盛顿，这座有规则和规矩的城市，在一场真正的冬天的狂风和金属撞击金属的一声巨响中变得混乱不堪。

【2】从华盛顿国家机场起飞的飞机通常会像饥饿的海鸥一样在总统纪念碑周围飞行，而此刻，这架坠落的飞机却代表了它们。还有一种审美上的冲突，蓝色和绿色的佛罗里达空气，一个飞行花园的名字，沉入黑色河流中的灰色冰块之中。

【3】毫无疑问，这一切都值得注意。不过，除了死亡之外，这一切都没有什么特别之处。死亡虽然总是特别的，但并不一定会让整个国家为之流泪或引起关注。

【4】那么，为什么这里令人震惊呢?也许是因为这个国家在这场灾难中看到的不仅仅是失败。也许是因为人们根本没有看到失败，而是看到了自己成功的一面。

【5】在这里，自然的两种形式，自然元素和人的性格，发生了碰撞。上周三，与以往一样冷漠的恶劣天气导致了90航班的坠毁。就在那个下午，人类的本性，摸索和斗争，在这种情况下表现出来了。

【6】事件中的四位英雄中，有三位能够解释他们的行为。公园警察直升机小组唐纳德·亚瑟和尤金·温莎每次都冒着生命危险将滑橇放入水中打捞幸存者。

【7】在电视上，他们肩并肩地把自己的勇气描述为恪尽职守。28岁的国会预算办公室雇员莱尼·斯库特尼克说:“我从没想过自己会这么做。”他指的是自己跳进水里，把一名受伤的女子拖到岸边。

【8】斯库特尼克补充说，“总得有人下水”，这句话道出了每一个英雄的台词，即使不断重复，也同样令人钦佩。事实上，没有人需要下水。有人真的这么做了，这是这场悲剧让人印象深刻的部分原因。

【9】但对这场灾难的情感冲击负有最大责任的人，是最初被简单称为“水里的人”的那个人。秃顶，大概50多岁，留着大胡子。有人看到他和其他五名幸存者紧紧抓住飞机尾部。

【10】亚瑟和温莎形容这个人看起来很警觉，很有控制力。每次他们放下救生索和救生圈给他时，他都会把它传给另一个乘客。“在大规模伤亡中，你会发现像他这样的人，”温莎说。“但我从来没见过像他这样有决心的人。”

【11】当直升机回来接他时，那个人已经沉下去了。他的无私是这个故事引起全国关注的一个原因，他的匿名是另一个原因。他的身份不明给了他一个普遍的特征。有一段时间，他是普通人，因此证明(好像人们需要证明)没有人是平凡的。

【12】然而，他从来没有想象过自己有这样的能力。就在他的性格受到考验的几分钟前，他坐在一架普通的飞机上，与普通乘客坐在一起，听空姐告诉他系好安全带，并告诉他“禁止吸烟”的标志。

【13】于是我们的男人和其他人一起放松，其中一些人欠他一条命。也许他开始看书，或者打瞌睡，或者后悔那天早上在办公室里说了一些刺耳的话。突然间，他意识到这次旅行不寻常。就像那架飞机上的其他人一样，他不顾一切地想活下去，这使得他最后的举动如此令人震惊。

【14】因为在水中的某个时刻，他肯定意识到如果继续把绳子和救生圈交给别人，他就活不下去了。他必须知道这一点，不管寒冷的影响有多缓慢。他觉得自己别无选择。当直升机载着最后一名幸存者起飞时，他看着世界上的一切都离他远去，他任由这一切发生。

【15】然而，关于我们的人，还有一些别的事情使我们一直思念着他，而且一直思念着他。他就在那里，在一个基本的、经典的环境中，人在自然界。水里的那个人。大自然对这五个乘客毫不关心。

【16】另一方面，这个男人完全关心。于是，古老的战争在波托马克河又开始了。只要那个人还活着，自然和人就会互相攻击;不区分善恶，不按原则行事，不提供救生索;另一种是根据区别、原则，或许还有信仰行事。

【17】既然是他输了这场战斗，我们应该再次得出这样的结论:人在这个世界上是无能为力的。在现实中，我们相信的恰恰相反，水里那个人的行为提醒了我们对这件事的真实感受。这并不是说每个人都会像他那样，或者像亚瑟、温莎和斯库特尼克那样。然而，促使这些人代表他们的同伴挑战死亡的，并不是他们所特有的。

【18】每个人都觉得自己有这种可能性。这就是这个故事经久不衰的奇迹。这就是为什么我们不会放手的原因。如果水里的人给了那些奄奄一息的人一根救生索，他也同样给了那些看着他的人一根救生索。

【19】奇怪的是，我们甚至不真正相信水中的那个人输了。“自然界的一切都蕴含着大自然的全部力量，”爱默生说。完全正确。水里的人有他自己的自然力量。他不能制造冰风暴，也不能把水冻到让血液凝固。

【20】但他可以把生命交给陌生人，这也是一种自然的力量。水里的人同一个不可动摇的、没有人情味的敌人作斗争，他和蔼可亲地同它作斗争;他与之对峙。他是我们能找到的最好的了。