2016年5月7日新
第一篇文学的文章不难，难度可以参考新psat的文学文章，而且句子相对更简单，主要介绍一个仆人忠心努力为主人干活，前几段在主要叙述的都是他做的工作，但其实他的工作成效并不好，然后在主人去他负责管理的地方的时候，他卖力地表现，让主人感觉不错，在这时他提出要一个摩托车，本来主人不在意，听他说完可能会影响自己的利益，就同意了，此后别人对他的评价变好，他也感觉自己地位提升了，一系列的好处，最好的还是有更多时间陪妻子了，这个地方还出了一个细节题。
选自：《Nawab din Electrician》-- DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN
Unfortunately or fortunately, Nawab had marriedearly in life a sweet woman of unsurpassed fertility, whom he adored, and sheproceeded to bear him children spaced, if not less than nine months apart, thennot that much more. And all daughters, one after another after another, untilfinally the looked-for son arrived, leaving Nawab with acomplete set of twelvegirls, ranging from toddler to age eleven, and one odd piece. If he had beengovernor of the Punjab, their dowries would have beggared him. For anelectrician and mechanic, no matter how light-fingered, there seemed noquestion of marrying them all off. No moneylender in his right mind would, atany rate of interest, advance a sufficient sum to buy the necessary items foreach daughter: beds, a dresser, trunks, electric fans, dishes, six suits ofclothes for the groom, six for the bride, perhaps a television, and on and onand on.
Another man might have thrown up his hands—but not Nawab din. Thedaughters acted as a spur to his genius, and helooked with satisfaction in themirror each morning at the face of a warriorgoing out to do battle. Nawab ofcourse knew that he must proliferate his sources of revenue—the salary he received from K. K. Harouni for tending thetube wellswould not even begin to suffice. He set up a one-room flour mill, run off acondemned electric motor—condemned by him. He tried hishand atfish-farming in a pond at the edge of one of his master’s fields. He bought broken radios, fixed them, and resold them. Hedid not demur even when asked to fix watches, although that enterprise didspectacularly badly, and earned him more kicks than kudos, for no watch he tookapart ever kept time again.
K. K. Harouni lived mostly in Lahore andrarely visited his farms. Whenever the old man did visit, Nawab would place himselfnight and day at the door leading from the servants’ sitting area into thewalled grove of ancient banyan trees where the old farmhouse stood. Grizzled,his peculiar aviator glasses bent and smudged, Nawab tended the householdmachinery, the air-conditioners, water heaters, refrigerators, and pumps, likean engineer tending the boilers on a foundering steamer in an Atlantic gale. Byhis superhuman efforts, he almost managed to maintain K. K. Harouni in the samemechanical cocoon, cooled and bathed and lighted and fed, that the landownerenjoyed in Lahore.
Harouni, of course, became familiar withthis ubiquitous man, who not only accompanied him on his tours of inspectionbut could be found morning and night standing on the master bed rewiring thelight fixture or poking at the water heater in the bathroom. Finally, oneevening atte a time, gauging the psychological moment, Nawab asked if he mightsay a word. The landowner, who was cheerfully filing his nails in front of acracklingrose wood fire, told him to go ahead.
“Sir, as you know, your lands stretchfrom here to the Indus, and on these lands are fully seventeen tube wells, andto tend these seventeen tube wells there is but one man, me, your servant. Inyour service I have earned these gray hairs”—here hebowed his head to show the gray—“and now I cannotfulfill my duties as I should. Enough, sir, enough. I beg you, forgive me myweakness. Better a darkened house and proud hunger within than disgrace in thelight of day. Release me, I ask you, I beg you.”
The old man, well accustomed to thesesorts of speeches, though not usually this florid, filed away at his nails andwaited for the breeze to stop.
“What’s thematter, Nawabdin?”
“Matter, sir? Oh, what could be thematter in your service? I’ve eaten your salt for all myyears. But, sir, on the bicycle now, with my old legs, and with the manyinjuries I’ve received when heavy machinery fell on me—I cannot any longer bicycle about like a bridegroom from farm tofarm, as I could when I first had the good fortune to enter your service. I begyou, sir, let me go.”
“And what is the solution?” Harouni asked, seeing that they had come to the crux. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other, except that it touched onhis comfort—a matter of great interest to him.
“Well, sir, if I had a motorcycle, thenI could somehow limp along, at least until I train up some younger man.”
The crops that year had been good,Harouni felt expansive in front of the fire, and so, much to the disgust of thefarm managers, Nawab received a brand-new motorcycle, a Honda 70. He evenmanaged to extract an allowance for gasoline.
The motorcycle increased his status,gave him weight, so that people began calling him Uncle and asking his opinionon world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing. He could now rangefarther, doing much wider business. Best of all, now he could spend every nightwith his wife, who early in the marriage had begged to live not in Nawab’s quarters in thevillage but with her family in Firoza, near the only girls’ school in the area. A long straight road ran from the canal head worksnear Firoza all the way to the Indus, through the heart of the K. K. Harounilands. The road ran on the bed of an old highway built when these lands laywithin a princely state. Some hundred and fifty years ago, one of the princeshad ridden that way, going to a wedding or a funeral in this remote district,felt hot, and ordered that rose wood trees be planted to shade the passersby.Within a few hours, he forgot that he had given the order, and in a few dozenyears he in turn was forgotten, but these trees still stood, enormous now, someof them dead and looming without bark, white and leafless. Nawab would fly downthis road on his new machine, with bags and streamers hanging from every knoband brace, so that the bike, when he hit a bump, seemed to be flapping numeroussmall vestigial wings; and with his grinning face, as he rolled up to whichevertube well needed servicing, with his ears almost blown off, he shone with thespeed of his arrival.