感谢大耳朵网友“dingwangfeng”提供听力原文



Bed-time reading:

A Farewell to Arms

Book 1

chapter 1

One summer we lived in a home which had water and hills out and front. The river was very clean. You could see through to the stones at the bottom. Soldiers often pass by our house kicking up dust which turned the trees grey. The mountains looked empty except some fruit trees at the bottom. Further up was where many battles were fought during the night. Some nights we could hear viechles moving weapons pass the house under the cover of leaves and branches of the trees on the front yard. On another mountain to the north, a similar fight was taking place. However, our side was loosing. In the autumn, the rains took all the leaves away, making the villege look empty and colorless. Every thing was wet, the roads, the trees and the soldiers. Sometimes the king would come from Wuddine in a car to find out what was happening with the war. He never liked what he saw. Winter brought with it both rain and diseases, killing thousands of soldiers. The following year we had many successful battles and we managed to push the enemy back up into the mountains. In the summer , we moved to the other side of the river to a town called Gorrisier. There we stayed in a pleasant house surrounded by trees. The Austrian did not ** too heavily there. I guessed that was because they liked Gorrisier and wanted to come back in the future after the war finished. Our time in the town was quit different from the early part of the war, even though the town had been damaged in recent fighting. The town's people still lived there. Business remained open. Even the sex houses welcomed customers. And of course the king continued his drive through town, while fighting could be heared at distant mountains. One day as my friends and I were enjoying some wine in one of the local bars, it began to snow outside. We knew then that the fighting would stop untill spring. Momments later, a priest passed by and my friend invited him to join us. He politely refused and kept walking. Later that evening at the army dinning hall, the same priest appeared and my friend started to joke with him.

"Priest likes to be with women now, isn't that right?" he said, looking at both the priest and me. The priest's face turned red full of embarrassment. He was young and shy.

"No, it's not true." said the priest.

The captain laughed, and then looked at me and said, "Not true he says, but I know he always have five women every evening." Everyone in the hall laughed loudly at this. The priest just simled without saying anything. It was best just to be silent and let them have their laugh. Then the conversation changed and people began to persuade me to take a vacation now that the fighting would stop for a while. Everyone had his own idea about where I should go in Italy. Some said Rome, well others said Napples. The priest, however, insisted that I visit his family in the town of Appruzie.

"You will like there very much. My family would take good care of you." he said.

"Yes, just like they took care of you and your five women, Ha-ha! " my friend joked again to the priest.

Then the time came for us to leave, for some of the men wanted to visit the sex houses that night. I said good night to the priest and he said the same to me.