魔法师的外甥

　　The Wrong Door
进错门
This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.
In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.
She lived in one of a long row of houses which were all joined together. One morning she was out in the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the garden next door and put his face over the wall. Polly was very surprised because up till now there had never been any children in that house, but only Mr. Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old bachelor and old maid, living together. So she looked up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was very grubby. It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As a matter of fact, this was very nearly what he had been doing.
“Hullo,” said Polly.
“Hullo,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Polly,” said Polly. “What’s yours?”
“Digory,” said the boy.
“I say, what a funny name!” said Polly.
“It isn’t half so funny as Polly,” said Digory.
“Yes it is,” said Polly.
“No, it isn’t,” said Digory.
“At any rate I do wash my face,” said Polly. “Which is what you need to do; especially after—” and then she stopped. She had been going to say “After you’ve been blubbing,” but she thought that wouldn’t be polite.
“All right, I have then,” said Digory in a much louder voice, like a boy who was so miserable that he didn’t care who knew he had been crying. “And so would you,” he went on, “if you’d lived all your life in the country and had a pony, and a river at the bottom of the garden, and then been brought to live in a beastly Hole like this.”
“London isn’t a Hole,” said Polly indignantly. But the boy was too wound up to take any notice of her, and he went on—
“And if your father was away in India—and you had to come and live with an Aunt and an Uncle who’s mad (who would like that?)—and if the reason was that they were looking after your Mother—and if your Mother was ill and was going to—going to—die.” Then his face went the wrong sort of shape as it does if you’re trying to keep back your tears.
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” said Polly humbly. And then, because she hardly knew what to say, and also to turn Digory’s mind to cheerful subjects, she asked:
“Is Mr Ketterley really mad?”
“Well, either he’s mad,” said Digory, “or there’s some other mystery. He has a study on the top floor and Aunt Letty says I must never go up there. Well, that looks fishy to begin with. And then there’s another thing. Whenever he tries to say anything to me at meal times—he never even tries to talk to her—she always shuts him up. She says,
‘Don’t worry the boy, Andrew’ or ‘I’m sure Digory doesn’t want to hear about that’ or else ‘Now, Digory, wouldn’t you like to go out and play in the garden?’”
“What sort of things does he try to say?”
“I don’t know. He never gets far enough. But there’s more than that. One night—it was last night in fact—as I was going past the foot of the attic stairs on my way to bed (and I don’t much care for going past them either) I’m sure I heard a yell.”
“Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that.”
“Or perhaps he’s a coiner.”
“Or he might have been a pirate, like the man at the beginning of Treasure Island, and be always hiding from his old shipmates.”
“How exciting!” said Polly, “I never knew your house was so interesting.”
“You may think it interesting,” said Digory. “But you wouldn’t like it if you had to sleep there. How would you like to lie awake listening for Uncle Andrew’s step to come creeping along the passage to your room? And he has such awful eyes.”
That was how Polly and Digory got to know one another: and as it was just the beginning of the summer holidays and neither of them was going to the sea that year, they met nearly every day.
Their adventures began chiefly because it was one of the wettest and coldest summers there had been for years. That drove them to do indoor things: you might say, indoor exploration. It is wonderful how much exploring you can do with a stump of candle in a big house, or in a row of houses. Polly had discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little door in the box-room attic of her house you would find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you could get into by a little careful climbing. The dark place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one side and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there were little chunks of light between the slates. There was no floor in this tunnel: you had to step from rafter to rafter, and between them there was only plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself falling through the ceiling of the room below. Polly had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern as a smugglers’ cave.
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这个故事讲述的事情发生在很久以前，那时候你的祖父还是个孩子。这个故事非常重要，因为它讲述了我们的世界和纳尼亚大陆之间的来往是如何开始的。那时候，夏洛克·福尔摩斯先生还住在贝克街，巴斯特布尔一族还在刘易舍姆路寻找宝藏a。那时候，如果你是个男孩子，必须每天戴着浆过的伊顿宽硬衣领；那时候的学校通常也比现在的学校更令人讨厌。不过那时候的饭菜却比较可口。至于糖果嘛，我不必告诉你，那时候有多么物美价廉，因为这只会让你白白地流口水。在那些日子里，有一个名叫波利·普卢默的小女孩住在伦敦。
她家的房子与一大排房屋彼此相连。一天早上，她走出房屋，来到后花园，突然看见一个小男孩爬上隔壁花园的墙头，把脑袋探了过来。波利非常吃惊，因为隔壁那幢房子里从来都没有小孩子，只住着凯特利先生和凯特利小姐两个人，他们是一对兄妹，一个是老单身汉，一个是老处女。波利充满好奇地抬头观看，只见那个陌生男孩的脸脏兮兮的。即便他先玩了一通泥巴，接着又嚎啕大哭，然后再用手去抹眼泪，他的脸也不可能更脏了。事实上，他刚才差不多就是这么做的。
“你好！”波利说。
“你好！”那个男孩问，“你叫什么名字？”
“波利。”波利说，“你呢？”
“迪戈里。”男孩答道。
“哎呀，这个名字可真好笑！”波利说。
“还没有波利这个名字一半好笑。”迪戈里说。
“你这个名字是很可笑。”波利说。
“不，一点儿也不可笑。”迪戈里说。
“ 起码我洗过脸了。” 波利说， “ 那可是你要做的， 尤其是在刚刚——”她一下子打住了话头。她本来想说“刚刚嚎啕大哭之后”，但她感到那样说不太礼貌。
“好吧，我确实哭过。”迪戈里提高了嗓门说道，就像是一个特别伤心的男孩子，根本不在乎别人知道他曾经哭过。“你一定也会哭的，”他继续说着，“如果你一直住在乡村，有一匹小马，在花园的尽头还有一条河，而你却被带到这种讨厌的洞窟一样的地方居住。”
“伦敦才不是洞窟呢。”波利愤怒地说。可那个男孩实在是太激动了，根本没有理会她，接着说道——
“如果你爸爸远在印度——你只好过来跟姨妈和一个疯疯癫癫的舅舅住在一起（有谁会喜欢这个？）——就因为他们可以照顾你的妈妈——而你的妈妈病了，而且病得要——要——死。”说到这里，他的脸变得有点痉挛，就像是拼命在忍住泪水的那种样子。
“我不知道这些事情。对不起。”波利愧疚地说。然后，由于不知道该说些什么，同时也想把迪戈里的注意力转移到愉快的话题上，她问道：
“凯特利先生真的疯了么？”
“嗯，他要不是疯了，”迪戈里说，“就是还有些别的秘密。他在顶楼有一个书房，莱蒂姨妈告诫我，绝对不要上那儿去。好吧，这看起来已经很可疑了。但还有另外一件事。每次吃饭时，当他想要对我说些什么——他历来都不怎么跟她说话——她总是让他闭嘴。她说：‘不要打扰这个孩子，安德鲁。’或者是，‘我相信，迪戈里并不想听那件事。’再不就是，‘迪戈里，你想不想出去，到花园里去玩？’”
“他想要说的是什么事儿呢？”
“我不知道。他从来都不多说。但还不止这些。一天晚上——其实就是昨天晚上——我要回卧室去，打顶楼楼梯底下经过（我可不太乐意从那儿经过），我相信自己听到了一声尖叫。”
“没准儿他把发疯的妻子关在上面了。”
“是啊，我也这么想过。”
“说不定他是个造假币的人。”
“也许他曾经当过海盗，就像《金银岛》开头所写的那个海盗，总是在躲避他以前的同伙。”
“真够刺激的！”波利说，“我还不知道你们的房子这么有趣。”
“你可能觉得那很有趣，”迪戈里说，“如果你必须睡在那里，就不会喜欢那个房子了。当躺在床上，听见安德鲁舅舅蹑手蹑脚地走过你房间外面的走廊，你会有什么感觉？再说他的眼睛非常吓人。”
这就是波利和迪戈里初次相识的经过。那时暑假才刚刚开始，那一年他们又都不去海边度假，于是他们俩几乎天天见面。
他们之所以开始探险，主要是由于那个暑假赶上了多年来最多雨阴冷的一个夏天。这迫使他们待在室内活动，你也可以称之为室内探险。拿上一截蜡烛头，就能在一座大房子，或者一大排房子中，进行那么多的探险活动，可真是美妙无比。波利早就发现，如果打开她家顶楼储藏室的一道小门，就能发现蓄水池，还有蓄水池后面那块漆黑的地方。只要小心地攀爬，就能够钻进去。
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