5.The Man in Asbestos(1855)

Passage Five

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was born in England, but at the age of 7, moved with his parents to Canada, where he spent most of his life. But it was in America at the University of Chicago that he completed his formal education in economics and political science before returning to Canada to begin his career as a professor at McGill University. During his lifetime, he wrote over 40 books, half of which were on serious matters. But it was the other half that won him the fame as one of the outstanding humorists of the English-speaking world.

斯蒂芬·利科克(1869-1944)出生于英国，7岁时随父母移居加拿大，并在那里度过了大半生。但正是在美国的芝加哥大学，他完成了经济学和政治学的正规教育，然后回到加拿大，开始了他在麦吉尔大学的教授生涯。在他的一生中，他写了40多本书，其中一半是关于严肃问题的。但他的另一半才华使他成为英语世界杰出的幽默家之一。

The Man in Asbestos

Stephen Leacock

【1】To begin with, let me admit that I did it partly from jealousy. It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge headfirst into a distant future and be a witness of its marvels. I wanted to do that too. I made preparations for the sleep. It was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it. I could feel my senses leaving me. I fell into the deep immeasurable sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was hushed.

【2】Dimly I could feel the days go past, then years, and then the long passage of the centuries. Then quite suddenly, I woke up, and looked about me. Where was I? I found myself sitting on a broad couch in some kind of museum. Beside me sat a man. His face was hairless, but neither old nor young. He wore clothes that looked like the grey ashes of paper that had burned and kept its shape. He was looking at me quietly, but with no particular surprise or interest.

【3】"Quick," I said, eager to begin. "Where am I? Who are you?"

"What a queer, excited way you have of speaking," he looked annoyed.

"Tell me," I said again. "Is this the year 3000?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," he said.

"Don't you keep track of them any more?" I gasped.

"We used to," said the man. "But it died out. Why," he continued, "after we eliminated death..."

【4】"Eliminated death!" I cried, sitting upright.

"I was saying," he continued, "after we had eliminated death, and food, and..."

"Stop!" I said, my brain reeling. "Tell me one thing at a time."

"Humph!" he ejaculated. "I see, you must have been asleep a long time. Go on then and ask questions."

Oddly enough, the first question that sprang to my lips was, "What are those clothes made of?"

"Asbestos," answered the man.

"Thank you," I answered. "Now tell me where I am."

【5】"You are in a museum. The figures in the cases are specimens like yourself. But here," he said, "if you want really to find out about what is evidently a new epoch to you, get off your platform and come out on Broadway."

【6】I got down. But the moment we came out upon the street, I stood riveted in astonishment. Broadway! Was it possible? The change was absolutely appalling! In place of the roaring thoroughfare that I had known, this silent, moss-grown desolation. Great buildings had fallen into ruin.

【7】The place was soundless. Not a vehicle moved. There were no wires overhead—no sound of life or movement except, here and there, there passed slowly to and fro human figures dressed in the same asbestos clothes as my acquaintance, with the same hairless faces, and the same look of infinite age upon them.

【8】Good heavens! And was this the era of the conquest that I had hoped to see? I had always taken for granted that humanity was destined to move forward. This picture of desolation rendered me almost speechless. I gasped out a question.

【9】"Where are the streetcars and the motors?"

"Oh, done away with long ago," he said.

"But how do you get about?"

"We don't," he answered. "Why should we? It's just the same being here as being anywhere else."

【10】A thousand questions surged into my mind at once. I asked one of the simplest.

"But how do you get back and forth to your work?"

"Work!" he said. "There isn't any work."

【11】I looked at him a moment open-mouthed. I tried to pull my senses together. I realized that if I was to find out about this new and undreamed-of future, I must go at it systematically.

【12】"I see," I said after a pause, "that momentous things have happened since my time. I wish you would explain to me bit by bit. First, what do you mean by saying that there is no work?"

【13】"Why," answered my strange acquaintance, "it died out of itself. Machinery killed it. If I remember rightly, you had a certain amount of machinery even in your time. I nodded assent.

【14】"But you found it did you no good. The better your machines, the harder you worked. The more things you had, the more things you wanted. You were all caught in the cogs of your own machines."

【15】"That is quite true," I said.

"Well, then, there came the Era of the Great Conquest of Nature, the final victory of Man and Machinery.

"They did conquer it?" I asked quickly, with a thrill of the old hope in my veins again.

【16】"Conquered it," he said, "beat it out! Things came one by one. In a hundred years it was all done. In fact, just as soon as mankind turned its energy to decreasing its needs instead of increasing its desires, the whole thing was easy. Chemical Food came first. Heavens! The simplicity of it, Agriculture went overboard.

【17】Eating and all that goes with it, domestic labor, housework—all ended. Nowadays one takes a concentrated pill every year or so, that's all. Then came the Asbestos Clothes. In one year humanity made enough suits to last forever and ever. That, of course, could never have been if it hadn't been connected with the revolt of women and the fall of Fashion."

【18】"Have the fashions gone," I asked, "that insane, extravagant idea of—?" I was about to launch into one of my old-time harangues about the sheer vanity of decorative dress, when my eyes rested on the moving figures in asbestos, and I stopped.

【19】"All gone," said the Man in Asbestos. "Then next to that we killed the change of climate. I don't think that in your day you properly understood how much of your work was due to the shifts of what you called the weather.

【20】It meant the need of all kinds of special clothes and houses and shelters, a wilderness of work. How dreadful it must have been in your day—wind and storms, clouds flying through the air, the ocean tossed and torn by the wind, snow thrown all over everything."

【21】"So," I said, "the Conquest of Nature meant that presently there was no more work to do?"

"Exactly," he said, "nothing left."

"Food enough for all?"

"Too much," he answered.

"Houses and clothes?"

"All you like."

【22】Then I realized for the first time, just what work had meant in the old life, and how much of the texture of life had been bound up in the keen effort of it. Presently my eyes looked upward: dangling at the top of a building I saw what seemed to be the remains of telephone wires.

【23】"What became of all the system of communication?" I asked.

"Ah," said the Man in Asbestos, "all cut out. You see, when work stopped and commerce ended, and food was needless, and the weather killed, there was nothing to communicate and it was foolish to move about. Besides, it was dangerous!"

【24】"So!" I said. "You still have danger?"

"Why, yes," he said. "No," said the Man in Asbestos, "there's been no death for centuries past; we cut that out. Disease and death were simply a matter of germs. Well, we hunted them down one by one and destroyed them."

【25】"And you mean to say," I ejaculated in amazement, "that nowadays you live forever?"

"Yes," he said, "unless, of course, we get broken. Therefore, we took steps to cut out all accidents. We forbid all streetcars, street traffic, airplanes, and so on."

【26】We sat silent for a long time. I looked about me at the crumbling buildings, the unchanging sky, and the dreary, empty street. Here, then, was the fruit of the Conquest, the elimination of work, the end of hunger and cold, the cessation of the hard struggle, the downfall of change and death—nay, the very millennium of happiness. And yet, somehow, there seemed something wrong with it all. I pondered, then I put two or three rapid questions, hardly waiting to reflect upon the answers.

【27】"Is there any war now?"

"Done away with centuries ago."

"Do you still have newspapers?"

"Newspapers! What on earth would we want them for? What is in them, anyway? Only things that happen, wars and accidents and work and death.

【28】When these went, newspapers went too. Listen," continued the Man in Asbestos, "you still don't seem to understand the new life at all. How used your people to spend all the early part of their lives?"

"Why," I said, "our first fifteen years or so were spent in getting education."

【29】"Exactly," he answered, "now notice how we've improved on all that. Education in our day is done by surgery. Strange that in your time nobody realized that education was simply a surgical operation of opening the skull and engrafting into it a piece of prepared brain. Well, then, to continue, what used to occupy your time and effort after your education?"

【30】"Why," I said, "one had, of course, to work, and then, to tell the truth, a great part of one's time and feeling was devoted toward the other sex, toward falling in love and finding some woman to share one's life."

【31】"Ah," said the Man in Asbestos, "I've heard about your arrangements with the women, but never quite understood them."

Then it suddenly struck me that of the figures on the street, all had looked alike.

"Tell me," I said, "are there no women now? Are they gone too?"

【32】"Oh, no," answered the Man in Asbestos, "they're here just the same. Some of those are women. Only, you see, everything has been changed now. It all came as part of their great revolt, their desire to be like men."

"This, then, is your millennium," I said, as I turned on him in anger, "this dull, dead thing, with the work and the burden gone out of life, and with them all the joy and the sweetness of it. For the old struggle—mere stagnation; and in place of danger and death, the dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay!

【33】Give me back," I cried, "the old life of danger and stress, with its hard toil and its bitter changes, and its heartbreaks. Give me no rest," I cried aloud.

"Yes, but give a rest to the rest of the corridor!" cried an angered voice.

Suddenly my sleep had gone.

I was back again in the room of my hotel.

穿石棉的人

斯蒂芬·利科克

【1】首先，让我承认我这样做部分是出于嫉妒。其他作家可以随心所欲地睡上四五百年，然后一头冲进遥远的未来，见证它的奇迹，这似乎是不公平的。我也想这么做。我为睡觉做了准备。在某种程度上，这显然是直接自杀，但我还是这么做了。我能感觉到我失去了知觉。我陷入了无法估量的沉睡之中，在这种沉睡中，外部世界的存在都是寂静的。

【2】我隐约感觉到日子过去了，然后是岁月，然后是漫长的世纪。突然间，我醒了过来，环顾四周。我说到哪儿了?我发现自己坐在某个博物馆里的一张大沙发上。我旁边坐着一个男人。他的脸上没有胡子，但既不老也不年轻。他穿的衣服看起来就像烧过的灰纸，还保持着原来的形状。他静静地看着我，但没有特别的惊讶或感兴趣。

【3】“快，”我说，急切地想开始。“我在哪儿?”你是谁?”

“你说话的方式真奇怪，真激动，”他显得很恼火。

“告诉我。”我又说。“现在是3000年吗?”

“我一点也不知道，”他说。

“你不再跟踪他们了吗?”我喘息着说道。

“我们以前是这样，”那人说。“但它消失了。为什么，”他接着说，“在我们消灭了死亡之后……”

【4】“消灭死亡!”我哭着，坐直了身子。

“我是说，”他继续说，“在我们消灭了死亡、食物和……”

“住手!”我说，脑子里一阵晕眩。“一次只告诉我一件事。”

“哼!”“我明白了，你一定睡了很久。继续提问吧。”

奇怪的是，我脱口而出的第一个问题是:“这些衣服是什么做的?”

“石棉，”那人回答。

“谢谢你，”我回答。“现在告诉我我在哪儿。”

【5】“你在博物馆里。箱子里的人都是和你一样的标本。但在这里，”他说，“如果你真的想了解对你来说显然是一个新时代的东西，那就离开你的讲台，到百老汇来。”

【6】我下来了。但当我们走到街上的那一刻，我惊讶地站在那里。百老汇!这可能吗?这种变化简直骇人听闻!取代了我所熟悉的咆哮的大道，这寂静的、长满青苔的荒凉。宏伟的建筑物已沦为废墟。

【7】这地方寂静无声。一辆车也没动。头顶上没有电线，没有生命的声音，也没有活动的声音，只是时不时地有一些人慢慢地来回走动，他们穿着和我认识的人一样的石棉衣服，脸上也长着同样的光秃秃的脸，脸上也带着同样的老气。

【8】天哪!这是我所希望看到的征服时代吗?我一直理所当然地认为人类注定要向前发展。这凄凉的景象使我几乎说不出话来。我喘着气问了一个问题。

【9】“有轨电车和汽车在哪里?”

“哦，很久以前就被扔掉了，”他说。

“可是你怎么出行呢?”

“我们不知道，”他回答。“我们为什么要这么做?”在这里和在其他地方是一样的。”

【10】一千个问题一下子涌上我的脑海。我问了一个最简单的问题。

“但是你是怎么往返于工作的呢?”

“工作!”他说。“没有工作。”

【11】我张着嘴看了他一会儿。我试着恢复理智。我意识到，如果我要发现这个全新的、做梦也想不到的未来，我必须有系统地去探索。

【12】“我明白了，”我停了一下说，“自从我的时代以来，发生了许多重大的事情。我希望你能一点一点地给我解释。首先，你说没有工作是什么意思?”

【13】“为什么，”我那位陌生的熟人回答说，“它是自行消亡的。机器扼杀了它。如果我没记错的话，即使在你那个时代，你也有一定数量的机器。我点头表示同意。

【14】“但你发现这对你没有好处。你的机器越好，你工作就越努力。你拥有的东西越多，你想要的东西就越多。你们都被自己机器的齿轮缠住了。”

【15】“那倒是真的，”我说。

“那么，伟大征服自然的时代就到来了，人类和机器取得了最后的胜利。

“他们真的征服了吗?”我赶紧问道，血管里又涌起了往日的希望。

【16】“征服它，”他说，“打败它!事情一个接一个地来了。一百年后，一切都完成了。事实上，只要人类把精力转向减少需求，而不是增加欲望，整个事情就容易了。首先是化学食品。天啊!简单来说，农业做得太过火了。

【17】吃饭和与之相关的一切，家务劳动，家务劳动，都结束了。现在，人们大约每年吃一次浓缩药片，仅此而已。然后是石棉衣服。在一年的时间里，人类制造了足够的宇航服，可以永远使用下去。当然，如果不是与女性的反抗和时尚的衰落联系在一起，这是不可能发生的。”

【18】“时尚消失了吗，”我问，“那种疯狂的、奢侈的，想法?”我正准备继续老一套的长篇大论，抱怨装饰服装纯粹是虚荣心，这时我的目光停在了用石棉做成的活动人物身上，我停住了。

【19】“都没了，”穿石棉衣服的人说。“其次，我们扼杀了气候变化。我认为在你们那个时代，你们没有正确地理解你们的工作有多少是由于你们所谓的天气变化决定的。

【20】这意味着需要各种特殊的衣服，房子和住所，大量的工作。在你的日子里，那该是多么可怕啊，狂风暴雨，云在空中飞舞，大海被风翻腾撕裂，到处都是雪。”

【21】“那么，”我说，“征服自然意味着现在没有更多的工作要做了?”

“没错，”他说，“什么都没留下。”

“食物够大家吃吗?”

“太多了，”他回答。

“房子和衣服?”

“随你的便。”

【22】这时，我第一次意识到，工作在过去的生活中意味着什么，生活的质感有多少是与工作的强烈努力紧密联系在一起的。不一会儿，我抬头看了看，在一座建筑物的顶上，我看到了一些似乎是电话线的残骸。

【23】“所有的通讯系统都变成了什么?”我问。

“啊，”穿石棉衣服的人说，“全都剪掉了。你知道，当工作停止，商业停止，食物不再需要，天气也变得恶劣，人们就没有什么可交流的了，四处走动是愚蠢的。而且，这很危险!”

【24】“那么!”我说。“还有危险吗?”

“啊，是的，”他说。“不，”穿石棉衣服的人说，“几百年来没有人死亡;我们把它剪掉。疾病和死亡只是细菌的问题。嗯，我们一个接一个地追捕他们，把他们消灭了。”

【25】“你的意思是说，”我惊奇地叫道，“你现在长生不老?”

“是的，”他说，“当然，除非我们被撞死了。因此，我们采取措施杜绝一切事故。我们禁止一切有轨电车、街道交通、飞机等等。”

【26】我们沉默地坐了很长时间。我环顾四周，看着摇摇欲坠的建筑物，不变的天空和沉闷、空荡荡的街道。因此，这就是征服的成果:劳动的消除，饥饿和寒冷的终结，艰苦斗争的结束，变化和死亡的终结，不，这就是千年的幸福。然而，不知何故，这一切似乎有些不对劲。我思索了一会儿，然后迅速地问了两三个问题，几乎不等考虑答案。

【27】“现在有战争吗?”

“几百年前就被废除了。”

“你们还有报纸吗?”

“报纸!我们要他们做什么?到底里面有什么?只有发生的事情，战争，事故，工作和死亡。

【28】这些东西没了，报纸也没了。“听着，”穿石棉衣服的人继续说，“你似乎还是一点也不了解新生活。你们的人是怎样度过他们生命的早期的?”

“为什么，”我说，“我们最初的15年左右都花在接受教育上了。”

【29】“没错，”他回答说，“现在请注意我们是如何改进这些的。今天的教育是通过外科手术完成的。奇怪的是，在你们那个时代，没有人意识到教育只不过是一种外科手术，打开颅骨，把一块准备好的大脑移植进去。好吧，那么，我继续问下去，在你接受教育之后，你的时间和精力都用来做什么呢?”

【30】“为什么，”我说，“一个人当然要工作，然后，说实话，一个人的大部分时间和感情都投入到异性身上，投入到恋爱中，寻找一个女人来分享自己的生活。”

【31】“啊，”穿石棉衣服的男人说，“我听说过你和那些女人的安排，但我一直不太明白。”

这时我突然意识到，街上的人影都长得一模一样。

“告诉我，”我说，“现在没有女人了吗?他们也走了吗?”

【32】“哦，不，”穿石棉衣服的人回答说，“他们还是在这里。其中一些是女性。只是，你看，现在一切都变了。这一切都是她们反抗的一部分，她们渴望像男人一样。”

“那么，这就是你的千禧年了，”我说，愤怒地转向他，“这是一个乏味的、死气沉沉的东西，生活中没有了工作和负担，也没有了生活中的欢乐和甜蜜。对于旧的挣扎，仅仅是停滞;代替了危险和死亡的，是单调乏味的安全和永无止境的衰败的恐怖!

【33】还给我，”我大声说，“那充满危险和压力的旧生活，那艰辛的劳动、痛苦的变化和心碎的生活。不要让我休息，”我大声喊道。

“是的，但是让走廊里的其他人休息一下吧!”一个愤怒的声音喊道。

突然间我的睡眠消失了。

我又回到了旅馆的房间里。