名篇背诵：Night Fell 夜幕降临

Night Fell 夜幕降临

尤多拉·韦尔蒂(Eudora Welty)

Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn for many winters and always lets the cold through to the bones. Then the moon rose. A farm lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaves. By a closer and more searching eye than the moon's, everything belonging to the Mortons' might have been seen — even to the tiny tomato plants in their neat rows closest to the house, gray and feather-like, appalling in their exposed fragility . The moonlight covered everything, and lay upon the darkest shape of all, the farmhouse where the lamp had just been blown out.

- sleazy [ˈslɪːzɪ] a. (织物等)质地薄的

- appalling [əˈpɔːlɪŋ] a. 令人震惊的

- fragility [frəˈdʒɪlətɪ] n. 脆弱

夜幕降临了。黑暗并不深沉，像穿了许多季的单薄衣裳，总是让严寒透过并钻进肌肤骨肉。接着，月亮升起了。可以看见一个农场，如同水中的一块白石，在一丛丛树林的深处，树上全是枯萎得失去色彩的树叶。不过，如果你用比月亮更仔细的目光搜寻，就看到了莫顿一家的家园，甚至可以看到这家住房附近一排排整齐矮小的西红柿植物，灰色的，呈羽毛状，看上去脆弱得可怕。月光照在所有的东西上，照在最阴暗的地方，照在刚熄灯的农舍上。

尤多拉·韦尔蒂(1909—2001)，美国南方女作家，出生于密西西比州。作品包括已知的五部小说和四十多个短篇故事，其中有《绿色帷幕》(A Curtain of Green ，1941)，《强盗新郎》(The Robber Bridegroom ，1942)，《德尔塔婚礼》(Delta Wedding ，1946)，《乐观者的女儿》(The Optimist's Daughter ，1972，获普利策小说奖)，《韦尔蒂短篇小说集》(Collected Stories ，1980)等。韦尔蒂有“南方奥斯汀”之称。