Stories by Doris Lessing 精彩片段：
MYSELF AS SPORTSMAN
THE NEW YORKER FICTION by Doris Lessing January 21, 1956
Nowadays, when I meet types who flush grouse or work salmon (I think these are the correct terms), I can more often than not be heard saving, “All the same, for good, clean sport give me a flock of guinea fowl in open country.” From there, I pass on to casual mention of the higher fauna—deer and lions, and so on—and in no time the most hardened sportsmen are oozing envy of what sounds like a girlhood spent on perpetual safari. I keep the truth to myself.
Not that I haven’t seen lions. I have encountered them, and other interesting animals, in the London Zoo, where I go to look at them from time to time. And on my home ground, which is Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia, fauna of every kind used to flourish and, for all I know, flourish yet. I do not care. I never did.
Along with my indifference toward big and little game goes the fact that this whole complex is linked irretrievably with my sibling rivalry (for my brother) and my masculine protest (against practically everything). It all started very, early, when my brother was given a .22 rifle— But perhaps it would be best to go even further back, to his bicycle, which he rode perfectly at the first attempt, whereas I could only look at it and shudder with fear. I decided it was not becoming for a girl to ride a boy’s bicycle, and stuck out for one of my own, knowing full well that the state of the family’s finances would put off the evil hour indefinitely.
In the light of this discreditable and evasive behavior, it is easy to understand what happened when the .22 rifle appeared, during one of my brother’s holidays from school. He picked it up, took aim at a small bird sitting on a twig a hundred yards away, judiciously pressed the trigger, and the bird fell dead. I remember he felt bad because the shot had not gone through the eye. To him, therefore, sport immediately took on its proper colors; to fire at a sitting bird was altogether beneath him, and unless he could get in a good oblique shot at a bird hovering widdershins a hundred and fifty yards off, with a strong wind between him and it, he would not shoot. As for duikerbok—small antelope, which are not only plentiful in our parts but very good to eat—he would not kill one unless he had first arranged an exhausting crawl through thick bush, preferably in heavy mud.
When, one day, he handed the rifle to me, I said I did not care for it. Why I did not stick to this simple truth I cannot imagine. I did point out that even people like Hunter Jim and Elephant Bill used shotguns for birds on the wing and deer on the run, and that it would never have entered their heads to use a .22 rifle, but my brother was not moved. I did not expect him to be.
After he had gone back to school, I crept to his room and took the .22 from the bed of oiled waste in which he had laid it away for the duration of the term. I spent a week or more gingerly opening and shutting the thing, and putting bullets in and taking them out. When I could do this without flinching, I went out into the bush with it.
There was a lot of bush all around our house—in fact, miles of it in every direction, wild, uninhabited, a perfect paradise for sportsmen. I remember clearly how, that first day, I mooned along, thinking about Guinevere and Anne of Green Gables, until a fine kudu bull (fauna of the most covetable sort, antelope the size of a horse) that had apparently been scrutinizing me from an anthill took to its hoofs and fled. I watched it go. (My brother, needless to say, had already shot half a dozen kudu through the eye under impossible handicaps.)
Next appeared a duiker, and I put the gun to my shoulder and fired repeatedly but without result, since the creature had vanished before I could manage to sight it.
That was a discouraging day, and those that followed it were no better. One day, I was sitting on a rock in a clearing when a guinea fowl trotted past, followed soon by about twenty other guinea fowl, in single file. I lifted my gun and shot at each of them. It was exactly like shooting in a fun fair, with rabbits, or what you like, moving before you on a band. I missed all twenty of the guinea fowl, and thought how much easier it would be if only they were prepared to keep still. From this thought my success was born, and since it was based entirely on the habits of guinea fowl, I shall now describe them—from a sportsman’s, not a naturalist’s, point of view.
Guinea fowl move in flocks of anywhere from ten to two hundred. They can be heard a long way off, because of a chink, chink, chinking sound they make, like stones rubbing together under water. When disturbed, which they regularly are, since this chinking advertises their presence to every enemy for miles around, they set up a raucous complaint and run extremely fast in all directions. If they stuck to doing this, they would be practically invulnerable, but, no—curiosity is their downfall. More often than not, before they have run any distance they fly up into trees to see what is going on. Their wings are weak, and once in the trees they are reluctant to launch themselves into space.
Having considered these facts and all their implications, I set out one day with the rifle and wandered around until I heard the “chink, chink.” I crept toward it. Then I heaved a large stone at it. There was a scurrying, and presently seventy-four guinea fowl flew up into trees all around me. I knew there were seventy-four because I sat on a log counting them and deciding which looked the youngest and fattest. I then carefully aimed at this one and fired. The bird started perceptibly, and settled back and watched a leaf that had been dislodged from a frond three feet above its head float down to my feet. I tried again. How difficult it is to keep a gun barrel still became apparent to me only now that I had all the time in the world to practice it. I walked to a nearby tree and laid the barrel against its trunk for support.
The bird I had chosen was about four yards away. I kept the rifle steady long enough to shoot it in the crop. It fell, and I dispatched it with another shot, in the eye, and went home with it. The family, naturally, assumed it had been shot on the wing, and in the eye at that—the first shot going unnoticed—and a letter with this news was at once sent to my brother.
Thereafter, my technique, while remaining substantially the same, developed small refinements. For instance, though a properly trained dog would have been useless to me, we did have a dog perfect for my purposes. I took him along. He went full pelt toward the “chink, chink” as soon as he heard it, and by the time I arrived, dozens of guinea fowl were already perched on every tree, watching the dog, who was bouncing and yelling below them, satisfactorily distracting their attention from me while I arranged myself and chose my bird at leisure.