首页 -> 2006年第20期

美丽的蝴蝶

作者：张　玮

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　　在我的生命里，有那么一段时光，美，对我而言，是别有一番滋味在心头。估摸那时我才六七岁。
　　有个星期六，我吃完早餐回来，看见宿舍管理员正在追捕美丽的黑脉金斑蝶。几百只这样的蝴蝶出没在孤儿院各处零星的杜鹃花丛里。
　　我仔细地看着他如何一只又一只地捕捉这些美丽的生灵，如何把它们从网兜里取出来，如何用细长的直针穿过它们的头部和翅膀，如何把它们钉在一张厚重的卡板纸上。
　　这时电话铃响了，宿舍管理员放下宽大的卡板纸，进屋去接电话。我走上前看着一只刚被他钉在卡板纸上的蝴蝶。它还在动，于是我把它拿下来，它马上扑闪着翅膀飞呀飞呀，想要飞走。可是它的另一只翅膀还被另一根针钉着。结果翅膀断了，蝴蝶掉落地面，颤抖着。
　　我捧起断了的翅膀和蝴蝶，把口水吐在断翅上想把它粘回去。指望蝴蝶可以趁宿舍管理员没回来的时候飞走，重获自由。然而断翅再也长不回它的身上了。
　　我所记得的下一件事便是宿舍管理员从垃圾房旁边的后门走了回来，开始冲我大骂。我告诉他我什么也没有做，但是他不相信。他抓起卡板纸往我的头顶打来，打得到处都是蝴蝶的残肢断翅。末了，他把卡板纸扔在地上，命令我捡起来丢进宿舍后屋的垃圾桶里去。
　　我坐在泥地里，在一棵古老的大树旁边，花了好长好长的时间，尝试着把所有蝴蝶的残肢断翅一一对上，好给它们全尸以葬。然而，这太难做到了。于是，我为他们做完祷告，把它们装进一个又旧又破的鞋盒里，埋在了地堡的底部。地堡是我事先建好的，外面傍着大株大株的竹子，离丛丛的黑莓不远。
　　每年蝴蝶回到孤儿院想要停在我身上的时候，我总要想办法把它们嘘跑。因为它们不知道孤儿院是个生存的坏地方，也是个不得好死的去处。
　　
　　There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old.
　　After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea bushes strewn around the orphanage.
　　I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.
　　When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally it's wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and quivered.
　　I picked up the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on it's wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.
　　The next thing I knew the house parent came walking back out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and then he left.
　　I sat there in the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.
　　Every year when the butterflies would return to the orphanage and try to land on me I would try and shoo them away because they did not know that the orphanage was a bad place to live and a very bad place to die.