The Garden of Forking Paths

小径分岔的花园

Jorge Luis Borges[阿根廷]豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯To Victoria Ocampo

献给维多利亚·奥坎波小径分岔的花园》，花园似乎是一个实际的迷宫，迷宫与彭口的书原为一体，是象征着的迷宫，真正的时间迷宫。这是以第一人称叙述的关于迷宫的侦探故事，发生在第一次世界大战期间。它的篇幅很短，但内容丰富充实，耐人寻味，情节在跌宕起伏中本身就有了分岔：既是表层上一个德国间谍巧妙地传递情报，更是深层的对于时间无限这一主题的探讨。能与作者在数千字的文章里交流文学、哲学、自然科学，实是一件快乐而有益的事。

In his A History of the World War (page 212), Captain Liddell Hart reports that a planned offensive by thirteen British divisions, supported by fourteen hundred artillery¹ pieces, against the German line at Serre-Montauban, scheduled for July 24, 1916, had to be postponed² until the morning of the 29th. He comments that torrential rain caused this delay一which lacked any special significance. The following deposition³, dictated⁴ by, read over, and then signed by Dr. Yu Tsun, former teacher ofEnglish at the Tsingtao Hochschule, casts unsuspected light upon this event. The first two pages are missing.

利德尔·哈特写的《欧洲战争史》第二百一十二页有段记载，说是十三个英国师(有一千四百门大炮支援)对塞尔一蒙托邦防线的进攻原定于1916年7月24日发动，后来推迟到29日上午。利德尔·哈特上尉解释说延期的原因是滂沱大雨，当然并无出奇之处。青岛大学前英语教师余准博士的证言，经过记录、复述、由本人签名核实，却对这一事件提供了始料不及的说明。证言记录缺了前两页。

…and I hung up the phone. Immediately I recollected⁵ the voice that had spoken in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden, in Viktor Runeberg's office, meant the end of all our work and一though this seemed a secondary matter, or should have seemed so to me一of our lives also. His being there meant that Runeberg had been arrested or murdered.② Before the sun set on this same day, I ran the same risk. Madden was implacable. Rather, to be more accurate, he was obliged to be implacable. An Irishman in the service of England, a man suspected of equivocal feelings if not of actual treachery, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon this extraordinary piece of luck: the discovery, capture and perhaps the deaths of two agents of Imperial Germany?

我挂上电话听筒。我随即辨出那个用德语接电话的声音。是理查德·马登的声音。马登在维克多·鲁纳伯格的住处，这意味着我们的全部辛劳付诸东流，我们的生命也到了尽头——但是这一点是次要的，至少在我看来如此。这就是说，鲁纳伯格已经被捕，或者被杀。②在那天日落之前，我也会遭到同样的命运。马登毫不留情。说得更确切一些，他非心狠手辣不可。作为一个听命于英国的爱尔兰人，他有办事不热心甚至叛卖的嫌疑，如今有机会挖出日耳曼帝国的两名间谍，拘捕或者打死他们，他怎么会不抓住这个天赐良机，感激不尽呢?