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1、【国外文学】哈尔的移动城堡 Howls Moving CastleChapter 1 Sophie talks to hatsIn the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three
2、of you set out to seek your fortunes. Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success. Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mot
3、her died when Sophie was just two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact
4、all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least. Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Sophie was the
5、 most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in the s
6、hop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.“Its not fair!” Lettie would shout. “Why should Mar
7、tha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needl
8、e. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Wa
9、ste again. It was said that the Witch had threatened the life of the Kings daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself ki
10、lled by her.So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the
11、 way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly, at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to
12、the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the v
13、alley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help. But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himse
14、lf by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, w
15、ere warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter had died suddenly just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then a
16、ppeared that Mr. Hatter had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation. “Youll all have to leave that s
17、chool, Im afraid,” she said. “Ive been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. It isnt practical to have you all in the shop. I cant afford it. S
18、o this is what Ive decided. Lettie first-“Lettie looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.“So you shall, love,” said Fanny. “Ive arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesaris, the pastry cook in Market Square.
19、Theyve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs.Cesaris a good customer and a good friend, and shes agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”Lettie laughed in a way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well,
20、 thank you,” she said. “Isnt it lucky that I like cooking?”Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times. “Now Martha,” she said. “I know youre full young to go out and work, so Ive thought around for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on bein
21、g useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Annabel Fairfax?”Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big gray eyes on Fanny almost as strong-mindedly as Lettie. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isnt she a witch?”“Yes, with a lovely house
22、 and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Fanny said eagerly. “Shes a good woman, Martha. Shell introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. Youll be all set up in life when shes done with you.”“Shes a nice lady,” Martha conceded. “All right.”Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked e
23、verything out just as it should be. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to
24、 help her. As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Fanny said, “Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So Ive decided to take you on as an apprentice myself, to g
25、ive you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?” Sophie could hardly say that she simple felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Fanny gratefully.“So thats settled then!” Fanny said.The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all
26、saw her off on the carriers cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howls moving castle. Martha was understandably scared.“ Shell be all right,” said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the packing. When the
27、 carriers cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbors bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheelbarrow to Cesaris in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the wheelbarrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed. She had the air of s
28、haking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had put her things in the girls dormitory and Cesaris seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was
29、 “a great dear and used honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left. Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and
30、out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assist
31、ant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could teach her, except per
32、haps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said. “Show them the ones that wont quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed,
33、 and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchants with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outside
34、s. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt so isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessies only talk anyway was ab
35、out the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted. The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitc
36、hed and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Howls castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper. The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley la
37、st month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the
38、Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Lett
39、ie. Cesaris, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Lettie. She had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayors son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was
40、too young to make up her mind yet. “I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to the bonnet she was pleating silk into.Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew shed be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.“Letties bad for custom,” she t
41、old the bonnet, pleating away at the mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair.”Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip
42、up custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on the stand as she finished it, where it sat almost looking like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be
43、 like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim, she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a c
44、urly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.”
45、This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chose
46、n that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Fannys sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldnt have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie pl
47、aced out. At this rate we might have managed.” There was so much custom as April drew on towards May Day that Sophie had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door
48、to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayors wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats lik
49、e the one Jane Farrier had been wearing when she ran off with the Count of Catterack.That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and, since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar-gr