Burmese Days 缅甸岁月 Chapter 11

Flory and Elizabeth walked down the bazaar ¹ road. It was morning, but the air was so hot that to walk in it was like wading ² through a torrid sea. Strings ⁴ of Burmans passed, coming from the bazaar, on scraping sandals, and knots of girls who hurried by four and five abreast ⁵, with short quick steps, chattering ⁶, their burnished ⁷ hair gleaming. By the roadside, just before you got to the jail, the fragments of a stone pagoda ⁸ were littered, cracked and overthrown ⁹ by the strong roots of a peepul tree. The angry carved faces of demons ¹⁰ looked up from the grass where they had fallen. Near by another peepul tree had twined itself round a palm, uprooting ¹¹ it and bending it backwards ¹² in a wrestle ¹³ that had lasted a decade., ,They walked on and came to the jail, a vast square block, two hundred yards each way, with shiny concrete walls twenty feet high. A peacock, pet of the jail, was mincing ¹⁴ pigeon-toed along the parapet. Six convicts came by, head down, dragging two heavy handcarts piled with earth, under the guard of Indian warders. They were long-sentence men, with heavy limbs, dressed in uniforms of coarse white cloth with small dunces' caps perched on their shaven crowns. Their faces were greyish, cowed and curiously ¹⁵ flattened ¹⁶. Their leg-irons jingled ¹⁷ with a clear ring. A woman came past carrying a basket of fish on her head. Two crows were circling round it and making darts ¹⁸ at it, and the woman was flapping one hand negligently ¹⁹ to keep them away., ,There was a din ³ of voices a little distance away. 'The bazaar's just round the corner,' Flory said. 'I think this is a market morning. It's rather fun to watch.', , ,Flory and Elizabeth stood watching for a moment. Files of women passed balancing vegetable baskets on their heads, and pop-eyed children who stared at the Europeans. An old Chinese in dungarees faded to sky-blue hurried by, nursing some unrecognizable, bloody ²³ fragment of a pig's intestines ²⁴., ,'Let's go and poke ²⁵ around the stalls a bit, shall we?' Flory said., ,We bargained for a beautiful rug in the bazaar.我们在集市通过讨价还价买到了一条很漂亮的地毯 。,The man tucked up his trousers for wading. 那人卷起裤子 ，准备涉水
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