丑石

　　An Ugly Stone

　　賈平凹

　　By Jia Pingwa

　　我常常遺憾我家門前的那塊丑石呢：它黑黝黝地臥在那里，牛似的模樣；誰也不知道是什么時候留在這里的.誰也不去理會它。只是麥收時節(jié)，門前攤了麥子，奶奶總是要說：這塊丑石，多礙地面喲，多時把它搬走吧。

　　I used to feel sorry for that ugly black piece of stone lying like an ox in front of our door; none knew when it was left there and none paid any attention to it, except at the time when wheat was harvested and my grandma, seeing the grains of wheat spread all over the ground in the front yard of the house, would grumble: "This ugly stone takes so much space. Move it away someday.

　　"于是，伯父家蓋房，想以它壘山墻，但苦于它極不規(guī)則，沒棱角兒，也沒平面兒；用贅破開吧，又懶得花那么大氣力，因為河灘并不甚遠.隨便去掬一塊回來，哪一塊也比它強。

　　Thus my uncle had wanted to use it for the gable when he was building a house, but he was troubled to find it of very irregular shape, with no edges nor corners, nor a flat plane on it. And he wouldn't bother to break it in half with a chisel because the river bank was nearby, where he could have easily fetched a much better stone instead.

　　房蓋起來，壓鋪臺階，伯父也沒有看上它。有一年，來了一個石匠，為我家洗一臺石磨，奶奶又說：用這塊五石吧，省得從遠處搬動。石匠看了看，搖著頭，嫌它石質太細，也不采用。

　　Even when my uncle was busy with the flight of steps leading to the new house he didn't take a fancy to the ugly stone. One year when a mason came by, we asked him to snake us a stone mill with it. As my grandma put it: "Why net take this one, so you worst have to fetch one from afar." But the arson took a look and shook his head; he wouldn't take it for it was of too fine a quality.