*5*
......
Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell. It is a question of focal adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life. We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open, and soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.
更进一步的讲，时间的概念在这里有着魔法般的作用。诸位学生们请不要惊讶：小妖精的魔法如要显效的话，女孩和男人之间必须要有一定的年龄差距，至少十年，因该说，一般是二十年或者三十年，有的时候可以达到九十年。这是一个“对焦问题”：透过这段距离你内心的眼睛才会激动得发抖；感受这种反差你的思想才会堕落的愉悦。当我还是和她一样的小孩时，安娜贝尔对我来说没有法力，因为我和她一样，也是这座时间之岛上的妖精，一个小男妖。但是今天，1952年的九月，在二十六年过去之后，我想我能够分辨出藏在她身体里的，我此生第一个命中注定的妖精。我很坚强的幸存了下来，但是毒液已经浸透了我的伤口，它永远也不会愈合了。渐渐的我发现我成熟了，在这个允许向十六岁女孩，而不是十二岁女孩求婚的社会中。
No wonder, then, that my adult life during the European period of my existence proved monstrously twofold. Overtly, I had so-called normal relationships with a number of terrestrial women having pumpkins or pears for breasts; inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach. The human females I was allowed to wield were but palliative agents. I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm which shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I had, caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine. My world was split. I was aware of not one but two sexes, neither of which was mine; both would be termed female by the anatomist. But to me, through the prism of my senses, "they were as different as mist and mast." All this I rationalize now. In my twenties and early thirties, I did not understand my throes quite so clearly. While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The fact that to me the only object of amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel's, her handmaids and girl-pages, appeared to me at times as a forerunner of insanity. At other times I would tell myself that it was all a question of attitude, that there was really nothing wrong in being moved to distraction by girl-children. Let me remind my reader that in England, with the passage of the Children and Young Person Act in 1933, the term "girl-child" is defined as "a girl who is over eight but under fourteen years" (after that, from fourteen to seventeen, the statutory definition is "young person"). In Massachusetts, U.S., on the other hand, a "wayward child" is, technically, one "between seven and seventeen years of age" (who, moreover, habitually associates with vicious or immoral persons). Hugh Broughton, a writer of controversy in the reign of James the First, has proved that Rahab was a harlot at ten years of age. This is all very interesting, and I daresay you see me already frothing at the mouth in a fit; but no, I am not; I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup. Here are some more pictures. Here is Virgil who could the nymphet sing in a single tone, but probably preferred a lad's perineum. Here are two of King Akhnaten's and Queen Nefertiti's pre-nubile Nile daughters (that royal couple had a litter of six), wearing nothing but many necklaces of bright beads, relaxed on cushions, intact after three thousand years, with their soft brown puppybodies, cropped hair and long ebony eyes. Here are some brides of ten compelled to seat themselves on the fascinum, the virile ivory in the temples of classical scholarship. Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all, Dante fell madly in love with Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May. And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was a fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as descried from the hills of Vaucluse.
如此想来，怪不得我成年后在欧洲的生活是如此难以置信的双重化。公开的场合，我与一些有着南瓜或者梨形胸部的人间女子保持着所谓的正常关系；但是私下地，每一个从眼前飘过的小妖精都勾引着我那地狱炼炉般火热的欲望。但是作为一个遵纪守法的胆小鬼，我从来没敢主动去接近；而那些我可以合法享用的人间女子，仅仅是代用品而已。我几乎相信，我从普通的性行为中体味到的感觉，与那些正常的成年男女之间的，全世界时刻都在进行的有规律，有节奏的活动中的差不多。但是问题在于，我曾经拥有过那一瞬无与伦比的痛楚的快乐，而那些绅士们并没有。在我那有污染性的梦想中，就算是最不起眼的一个细节，也比那最有性欲的天才作家或最有智商的性无能所能想象的淫秽情结强上一千倍。我的世界被撕裂了：在我看来，有两种异性，哪一种我都无法拥有。尽管解剖学上，两种都被叫做女性，但是透过我的感官的分光镜，她们有着癞蛤蟆和天鹅一般的区别。尽管现在我理性的认识到了这一切，但是在我二十岁到三十多岁的这段时间，我并不明白这痛苦的源头。尽管我的身体需要被满足，但是我的精神却一直拒绝着生理上的欲求，以至于我时而羞愧害怕，时而盲目的乐观；我快要被道德的禁忌勒死了。心理分析医生用“伪自我放纵”和“伪性取向”来哄骗我；但是，我不时地认为，我心中仅有的色欲对象是安娜贝尔的姐姐，她的女仆和女书童这个问题，是我精神错乱的先兆。
有的时候，我会为安慰自己想：喜欢女童并不是罪恶的，仅仅是个人喜好不同而已。哦，让我先提醒一下我的读者们，在英国，依据1933年通过的《儿童和青少年法案》，“女童”指“八岁以上十四岁以下的女孩”（接下来，十四岁到十七岁，法定称谓为“青少年”）。然而，在美国的马萨诸塞州，“任性小孩”，认真地说，是指“七到十七岁这个年龄段”（进一步讲，比较惯用于形容堕落放荡的人）。休•布洛顿，一个詹姆斯一世时期的擅长辩论的作家，曾经论证了蕾哈卜十岁时就成了妓女。这些事实都很有趣的，而且我猜你已经看到我神情激动唾沫横飞的样子了；不过事实上我仅仅是在把我的快乐的想法轻轻的弹进玩具小杯中而已。（语源：Tiddlywinks，一个在十九世纪末风靡欧洲的小游戏。道具为大小两个圆片和一个小杯，目标是用大圆片压小圆片的边缘，使起弹起，落入小杯中。译者注：因为此游戏已久不流行，与之对应的wink, teddy cup等词的意思在生僻词意中也难找到，故此处为翻译难点）有一个叫维吉尔的人（古罗马诗人，译者注），尽管他能够让小妖精为他唱歌，但可能更喜欢少年的小腹。阿肯那顿王（古埃及阿孟和蒂四法老的第四个）和奈费尔提蒂王后的两位未到婚嫁年龄的女儿（那个贵族夫妇生了一窝六个），有着修剪整齐的头发和乌黑的大眼睛，她们细小松软的棕色躯体仅挂着闪亮的珠子和链子，舒坦的躺在座垫上，三千年来一直如此。（典故：阿肯那顿王曾经娶他的大女儿和三女儿为妻，译者注）还有一些十岁的小新娘们，被迫坐在古代学术神殿中象征着男子气概的象牙符咒上。即使现在，在东印度的一些地方，发育前就结婚或者同居也并不少见。雷布查人中（锡丹土著，译者注），八十岁的老翁与八岁的幼女发生关系也没人介意。除此之外，但丁（意大利诗人，译者注）疯狂的爱上比阿特丽斯（后成为但丁名作《神曲》中人物，译者注）时，她才九岁，一个美丽可爱，穿者镶嵌着珠宝的深红色裙衫的靓丽的少女——那是在1274年的愉快地的五月，佛罗伦萨（意大利，文艺复兴的发源地，译者注）的一个私人宴会上。还有，彼特拉克疯狂的爱上他的劳琳时，她正是一个十二岁的金发小妖；在沃克吕兹山脚下群花怒放的草原上（估计是指普罗旺斯，法国，译者注），风中奔跑着的她，就像一朵飞舞的花。
