Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944), "手" @ 蔗尾蜂房

Eunice Tietjens

手
--Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944)，羅浩原譯

你坐著，映著火光，你的手
色澤如新鑄的銅器
我的目光無法離開你的手
在其中，一個小宇宙，那浩瀚又
幽暗的東方為之立現
誰該來為我讀讀你的手？

一個大男人，手卻小而窄得
像個女人
或黑猩猩的指掌
你柔韌無骨的手宛如
塗了層顏料，由時髦的
肖像家勾畫而成，長而尖細的手指
向上翻翹
指間燃著裊裊的捲菸，你
姿勢中有說不盡的倜儻，像一位
在愛人注視下的女子
你修長捲曲的指甲
是精雕細琢的鮮活寫照
你的手，很靈巧
用毛筆就能創出細若羽毛的線條
難以言喻的遐想，浮光掠影的隱匿
美感，用小工具就能雕出
象牙與白玉間的奇夢
你的手，亦殘酷
用同樣冷峻的倜儻與靈巧
設計出精美的酷刑、直到永遠
難以想像的痛苦，就連托爾克馬達*
都見所未見
你的手，又縱情女色，擅長感知
觸摸
能細膩地愛撫顫抖的肌膚
能輕柔地滑過金色的腿間
……就連比利蒂斯**亦無如此修長的指甲

誰能來為我讀讀你的手？
煙霧在火光中繚繞到不可思議
那捲菸夾在你的指間
膚色如新鑄的
銅器
房間此際佈滿奇異的影子
你的手，令我生畏…….

* 托爾克馬達：托馬斯‧德‧托爾克馬達（Tomas de Torquemada, 1420-1498），天主教多明我會僧侶，西班牙宗教裁判所首任大法官，以火刑處死數千名異教徒。

** 比利蒂斯：法國作家皮耶‧路易斯（Pierre Louÿs, 1870–1925）在1894年出版的情色詩集《比利蒂斯之歌》（Les Chansons Bilitis）中所塑造的古希臘女性角色。

Eunice Tietjens, Profiles from China: Sketches in Verse of People & Things Seen in the Interior, Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1917, p.11.

The Hand
--Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944)

As you sit so, in the firelight, your hand is the
color of new bronze.
I cannot take my eyes from your hand;
In it, as in a microcosm, the vast and
shadowy Orient is made visible.
Who shall read me your hand?

You are a large man, yet it is small and nar-
row, like the hand of a woman and the
paw of a chimpanzee.
It is supple and boneless as the hands
wrought in pigment by a fashionable
portrait painter. The tapering fingers
bend backward.
Between them burns a scented cigarette. You
poise it with infinite daintiness, like a
woman under the eyes of her lover.
The long line of your curved nail is
fastidiousness made flesh.
Very skilful is your hand.
With a tiny brush it can feather lines of
ineffable suggestion, glints of hidden
beauty. With a little tool it can carve
strange dreams in ivory and milky jade.
And cruel is your hand.
With the same cold daintiness and skill it
can devise exquisite tortures, eternities
of incredible pain, that Torquemada
never glimpsed.
And voluptuous is your hand, nice in its sense
of touch.
Delicately it can caress a quivering skin,
softly it can glide over golden thighs
..... Bilitis had not such long nails.

Who can read me your hand?
In the firelight the smoke curls up fantasti-
cally from the cigarette between your
fingers which are the color of new
bronze.
The room is full of strange shadows.
I am afraid of your hand......