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①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 artillery pieces, against the German line at Serre-Montauban, scheduled for July 24, 1916, had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. He comments that torrential rain caused this delay一which lacked any special significance. The following deposition, dictated 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 recollected the voice that had spoken in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden, in Viktor Runeberg 8217;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?