有多遠/How far? II

早兒喜歡閱讀, 讀完了村裏唯一圖書館裡的所有書籍, 雖然不太多, 奧斯汀、勃朗特、狄更斯、勞倫斯、喬伊斯、伍爾夫、托爾斯泰、陀斯妥耶夫斯基、巴爾扎克、卡夫卡等, 其中的一些她不明白的, 但她都讀了。每天晚上她的祖母都要提醒她放下書去睡覺。有時候她上山去或坐在海邊岩石上, 能靜靜地讀書。她沒有朋友, 因為她所有的空餘時間都用來讀書。
早兒從來沒有跟她的母親頂嘴, 她完成了每日的工作, 仍然有時間替其他孩子的補習功課, 為老人家寫信件和設計戲院的海報, 只要能夠賺取多一些額外的錢。生活平靜的過了幾年, 除了她推掉了兩個求婚, 她的母親固然忿怒, 她生氣早兒的反叛多過擔心女兒的將來。
在早兒最小的弟弟入了初中後不久, 她告訴家人, 她要離開去北美洲, 她的父親以為她瘋了, 她的母親大發雷霆, 她的祖母哭了, 她的弟弟求她不要走。她時年二十歲, 那是一個混亂的時代, 越南戰爭、嬉皮士、胡士托音樂節、馬丁路德京黑人民權運動、肯尼迪暗殺陰謀和水門事件。

Joey loved to read and finished all the books in the village library, although there weren’t too many. Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Kafka etc., she read them all. She didn’t understand some of them but she read them anyway. Every night her grandmother had to order her to put down the book and go to sleep. Sometimes she went up into the hills or sat on the rocks by the sea, places where she could read in peace. She had no friends, since she spent all her spare time reading.

Joey never argued with her mother. She finished all her daily work and still found time to tutor the other children’s homework, to write letters for the elderly and to paint posters for the theatre. Anything to make some extra money. Life was going on quietly for a few years, except that she turned down two marriage proposals. Her mother was quite upset, more about Joey’s rebellion than about her daughter’s future.

Not long after her youngest brother entered high school, Joey told her family that she’s leaving to North America. Her father thought she was crazy. Her mother was furious. Her grandmother cried and her brothers begged her not to leave.
She was twenty. It was a chaotic era, the Vietnam-war, the hippies, Woodstock, the civil right movement, the assassinations and the Watergate conspiracy.