《雨伞下》

　　张爱玲

　　下大雨，有人打着伞，有人没带伞。没伞的挨着有伞的，钻到伞底下去躲雨，多少有点掩蔽，可是伞的边缘滔滔流下水来，反而比外面的雨更来得凶。挤在伞沿下的人，头上淋得稀湿。

　　当然这是说教式的寓言，意义很明显：穷人结交富人，往往要赔本，某一次在雨天的街头想到这一节，一直没有写出来，因为太像讷厂先生茶话的作风了。

　　Under an Umbrella

　　Eileen Chang

　　It’s pouring. Some people are carrying umbrellas and some people are not. Those who don’t have an umbrella press against those who do, squeezing beneath the edges of passing umbrellas to avoid the rain and afford themselves a little shelter. But the water cascading from the umbrellas turns out to be worse than the rain itself, and the heads of the people squeezed in between are soaked to the skin.

　　This is a parable, of course, the moral of which is perfectly clear: when poor folks associate with the rich, they usually get soaked. I thought of it one rainy day but never wrote it down, because it sounds too much like the style of the tabloid “tea talks” of Mr. Nachang (1).

　　(1) A celebrated columnist in the Shanghai tabloids of the 1930s and 1940s.

　　（Andrew F. Jones 译）