No Other Choice—别无选择（乔治·布莱克）（第二章）
The first change in my life came when I was twelve. My father died. Up to then our family, consisting of my parents, my two younger sisters and myself had lived in comfortable circumstances in Rotterdam and later in Scheveningen, a fashionable seaside resort near The Hague. My father was the owner of a small factory manufacturing leather gloves, used by the riveters in the Rotterdam shipyards. The last years of his life were dogged by ill health and financial worries due to the heavy slump in shipbuilding following the Wall Street crash. These worries had hastened his end. We children had been little affected, however, by these gathering clouds as my mother, in spite of all the difficulties, had always managed to keep our home a haven of cosy security.
【我生命中的第一次改变是在我12岁的时候。我的父亲去世了。在那之前，我们一家，包括父母、两个妹妹和我，一直住在鹿特丹，生活条件舒适，后来又住在海牙附近的一个时尚的海滨度假胜地斯海弗宁根。我父亲是一家生产皮手套的小工厂的老板，鹿特丹造船厂的铆工就用这种手套。在他生命的最后几年，由于华尔街金融危机后造船业的严重衰退，他的健康状况不佳，财务状况也不佳。这些忧虑加速了他的死亡。然而，我们这些孩子几乎没有受到这些乌云的影响，因为尽管困难重重，我的母亲总是设法使我们的家成为一个舒适安全的避风港。】
My father, Albert Behar, was Jewish and born in Constantinople, where his ancestors found refuge after their expulsion from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. My grandfather was a wealthy carpet merchant who had many sons and daughters. The family's affluence lasted till my grandfather's death after which his elder sons managed to squander rapidly a considerable fortune. In my father's home on the Bosphorus Spanish was spoken and my grandmother in her letters to her many children, who, after the First World War, settled in various parts of Europe and the Middle East, would write in Spanish, but in Hebrew script.
【我的父亲阿尔伯特·贝哈尔(Albert Behar)是犹太人，出生在君士坦丁堡。15世纪末，他的祖先被西班牙驱逐后，就在那里找到了避难所。我的祖父是一个富有的地毯商人，他有很多儿子和女儿。这个家的富裕一直持续到我祖父去世，他的几个大儿子很快就挥霍掉了一大笔钱。在我父亲位于博斯普鲁斯海峡的家里，人们说西班牙语，祖母在给她的许多孩子的信中，这些孩子在第一次世界大战后，定居在欧洲和中东的不同地区，他们会用西班牙语写作，但用的是希伯来语。】
Like most wealthy and educated oriental Jews my father's family looked to France as the fount of civilisation, culture and good taste. They were in love with all things French and while they might be indifferent or feel superior to the country in which they happened to live, they were ready to make any sacrifice for the country they idealised. But my grandfather, who died before the First World War, was evidently a prudent man who liked to hedge his bets. No doubt bearing in mind the German ascendancy in Turkey at that time, he sent some of his sons to study at German universities and some, because of his attachment to France, to French universities. My father, who was one of the younger sons, was sent to the Sorbonne. What exactly he studied there I never learnt. He had not been there very long when the First World War broke out. Passionately pro-French, he at once gave up his studies and volunteered for the Foreign Legion. Being a Turkish subject, I suppose this was the only way he could join the French Army. Much of this is surmise on my part as he never talked to us much about his background and early life. I know he served in the Foreign Legion because he told my mother and there was a photograph of him in a Legionnaire's uniform. How or why he subsequently transferred to the British Army, I do not know because he never told us. But I do know that at one time during the war he served with the British Army in Mesopotamia. Again I can only surmise that as a fluent Turkish speaker his knowledge of that language must have been required in that theatre of war in some intelligence function or other. He had a distinguished war record and when the war ended he had accumulated an impressive row of medals among them the MC and the French Croix de Guerre. He had also acquired British nationality. On several occasions he had been severely wounded and subsequently he never fully recovered his health. He was entitled to an invalid pension which he collected every month at the British Consulate in Rotterdam. His last posting before being demobilised had been with an army unit sent there to supervise the transit of British POWs passing through Holland on their way home from German prison camps. It was there that he met my mother, fell in love with her and decided to marry her.
【像大多数富有、受过教育的东方犹太人一样，我父亲的家族将法国视为文明、文化和高雅品味的源泉。他们热爱法国的一切，虽然他们可能对自己碰巧生活的国家漠不关心，或者觉得自己比这个国家优越，但他们愿意为自己理想中的国家做出任何牺牲。但我的祖父在第一次世界大战之前去世，他显然是一个谨慎的人，喜欢两面下注。毫无疑问，考虑到当时德国在土耳其的统治地位，他把他的一些儿子送到德国的大学学习，也把他的一些儿子送到法国的大学，因为他对法国的依恋。我的父亲，他是一个小儿子，被送到了索邦大学。他到底在那里学了什么，我从来没听说过。他在那里没待多久，第一次世界大战就爆发了。他热情地支持法国，立即放弃学业，志愿加入外国军团。作为一个土耳其人，我想这是他加入法国军队的唯一途径。这在很大程度上是我的猜测，因为他从来没有跟我们谈过他的背景和早年生活。我知道他在外国军团服役，因为他告诉了我母亲，还有一张他穿着军团制服的照片。我不知道他后来是如何或为什么转到英国军队的，因为他从来没有告诉过我们。但我知道战争期间他曾在美索不达米亚的英国军队服役。我只能再次猜测，作为一名流利的土耳其语使用者，他对这门语言的了解一定是在战场上从事某种情报工作或其他工作所必需的。他有杰出的战争记录，当战争结束时，他积累了一系列令人印象深刻的勋章，其中包括法国十字勋章。他还获得了英国国籍。有几次他受了重伤，后来也没有完全恢复。他有资格领取一笔每月在英国驻鹿特丹领事馆领取的退休金。在被遣散之前，他的最后一份工作是跟随一个军队单位，负责监督英国战俘从德国战俘营返回荷兰途中的过境情况。就在那里，他遇见了我的母亲，爱上了她，并决定娶她为妻。】
My mother came from quite a different background. She belonged to a Dutch family which in the seventeenth century had moved from Westfalia to Rotterdam and, though originally engaged in trade, had later supplied many civil servants, doctors and ministers of the Church. Her father had been an architect in the service of the Rotterdam municipality and her maternal grandfather, who was of Huguenot descent, an architect in government service. Ironically, he had been in charge of the building of a number of prisons in various parts of Holland and as a result his children were all born in different towns which are now known for their large prisons. My grandfather died in the last year of the war, a victim of the epidemic of Spanish flu which was then sweeping Europe. My grandmother was left with five children: three daughters, the eldest of whom was my mother, and two boys, who were still in their teens. It was the eldest of my uncles, who, anxious to practise his English, struck up a casual acquaintanceship with my father and in due course invited him home for tea. This first visit was followed by many others and soon he was considered a friend of the family. My grandmother must have felt sorry for this lonely soldier in a foreign land while to the boys and girls he must have been a rather romantic figure. He was slightly built with a dark, handsome face which was marred, however, by two deep scars, one on each cheek, the result of flying shrapnel. This disfigurement was redeemed by his eyes which were large and dark and extremely beautiful. It was not surprising therefore that the three girls secretly fell in love with him. Of the three my mother was undoubtedly the most attractive. Aged twenty-three at the time she was tall and good looking with regular features framed in an abundance of fair hair. She had also great charm which throughout her life served her well as it disposed people of the most different kind well to her. She was exactly the type of woman oriental men fall for and, given the situation, it was almost inevitable that my father should fall in love with her. He started to ask her out and before long proposed to her. He still had some money left of his share in his father's inheritance and decided to use it to set up business in Rotterdam and settle there.
【我的母亲来自一个完全不同的背景。她属于一个荷兰家庭，在17世纪从威斯特法利亚搬到鹿特丹，虽然最初从事贸易，后来又当过公务员、医生和教会牧师。她的父亲是鹿特丹市政府的建筑师，她的外祖父是胡格诺派后裔，是政府部门的建筑师。具有讽刺意味的是，他曾负责建造荷兰各地的许多监狱，因此他的孩子都出生在不同的城镇，这些城镇现在以大型监狱而闻名。我的祖父死于战争的最后一年，他是当时席卷欧洲的西班牙流感的受害者。我的祖母留下了五个孩子:三个女儿，最大的是我的母亲，还有两个男孩，他们才十多岁。我这个叔叔是其中的老大，他急于练习英语，偶然结识了我父亲，并在适当的时候邀请他回家喝茶。在第一次拜访之后，有很多人来拜访他，很快他就被视为这家人的朋友。我的祖母一定为这个在异国他乡的孤独士兵感到难过，而在男孩和女孩们看来，他一定是一个相当浪漫的人物。他身材瘦小，长着一张黝黑而英俊的脸，但脸上却留下了两道深深的伤疤，都是弹片炸出来的。这一缺陷被他那双又大又黑又美丽的眼睛弥补了。因此，三个女孩偷偷地爱上了他也就不足为奇了。在这三个人中，我母亲无疑是最有魅力的。她当时23岁，身材高挑，五官端正，一头浓密的金发。她也很有魅力，这在她的一生中对她很有好处，因为她能使不相识的人对她很好。她正是东方男人喜欢的那种女人，在这种情况下，我父亲几乎不可避免地会爱上她。他开始约她出去，不久就向她求婚了。他父亲留给他的遗产中还剩下一些钱，他决定用这些钱在鹿特丹做生意并在那里定居下来。】
My grandmother had watched these developments with growing alarm. She naturally expected her daughters to marry Dutchmen of a solid background and was not at all keen on the idea of having as a son-in-law this dark foreigner about whom she knew very little and whose prospects seemed at the best uncertain. She would have been even more alarmed and her opposition to a marriage even stronger if she had known that my father was Jewish. Compared to some countries there is very little anti-semitism in Holland. This does not mean, however, that people of my grandmother's background were free of a certain amount of prejudice towards this ancient nation or above making the occasional snide remark when the talk was about Jews. Certainly she would not have welcomed a Jew with open arms as a member of the family. My father must have been aware of this and, realising that he was up against enough opposition as it was, decided not to make it worse by telling anyone, even my mother, that he was Jewish. Having set out on this course, he must have found it more and more difficult as time went on to broach the subject and so he kept silent. We only learned that he was Jewish after his death when I went to Egypt to live with his sister.
【我的祖母越来越警觉地看着这些事态的发展。她自然希望她的女儿们嫁给一个有扎实背景的荷兰人，而她一点也不愿意让这个黝黑的外国人做她的女婿，因为她对这个外国人了解甚少，而且他的前途也不太确定。如果她知道我父亲是犹太人，她会更加警觉，对婚姻的反对会更加强烈。与一些国家相比，荷兰的反犹太主义很少。然而，这并不意味着，我祖母这种背景的人对这个古老的民族就没有一定的偏见，或者在谈到犹太人的时候偶尔会说些挖苦的话。她当然不会张开双臂欢迎一个犹太人成为家里的一员。我父亲一定已经意识到了这一点，他意识到自己已经遇到了足够多的反对，于是决定不把事情搞得更糟，不告诉任何人，甚至包括我母亲，他是犹太人。当他开始保守这个秘密的时候，他一定会发现随着时间的推移，这个话题越来越难提了，所以他保持沉默。直到他死后，我才知道他是犹太人，当时我去埃及和他姐姐住在一起。】
In view of my grandmother's opposition to the marriage and in order to avoid any awkward situations, the young couple went to London where they got married in the Chelsea register office in the presence of a few of my father's friends and without a religious ceremony. On their return to Rotterdam they settled in a large house in the oldest part of the town, a stone's throw away from the statue of Erasmus. I remember this statue well since as a small boy I watched it carefully on many occasions while playing in the little square in which it stood, having been told that he turned a page of the book he was holding every time the clock on the St Lawrence church nearby struck the hour. But however attentively I watched, I never caught him doing it. That part of the town, with its narrow alleys and small squares, has now disappeared having been entirely destroyed in the German bombardment of May 1940. The old house in which I was born and of which I remember very little was divided in two parts: on the ground floor was my father's office and the workshop, where the leather articles in which he traded were manufactured, while the upper floors were used as living quarters.
【由于我祖母反对这桩婚事，也为了避免任何尴尬的局面，这对年轻夫妇前往伦敦，在切尔西的婚姻登记处举行了婚礼，我父亲的一些朋友在场，没有举行宗教仪式。回到鹿特丹后，他们在鹿特丹最古老的地方的一所大房子里安顿下来，离伊拉斯谟的雕像只有一箭之遥。我记得这个雕像被雕刻成一个小男孩,我被告知,他在用手里这本书记录每次轰炸的时间。但是，不管我多么用心地观察，我始终没有发现他在做这件事。在1940年5月德国的轰炸中，城镇的那部分小巷和小广场已经完全被摧毁，现在已经消失了。我出生的那幢老房子，我对它的记忆很少，它分为两部分:一楼是我父亲的办公室，二楼是我父亲的作坊，他在那里制造皮革制品，楼上则是住人的地方。】
My grandmother was at first very angry at what amounted to an elopement and for a while even forbade her other children to visit my mother. But soon she relented and resigned herself to an accomplished fact especially when about a year later I, her first grandchild of whom from the very beginning she was very proud and fond, was born.
【我的祖母一开始对这等于是私奔的事情非常生气，有一段时间甚至禁止她的其他孩子来看我母亲。但很快她就妥协了，接受了一个既成事实，尤其是大约一年后，我——她的第一个外孙——出生了，她从一开始就为此骄傲和喜欢我。】
