2014年考研英语阅读精选:想哭就哭

Crying freedom

Dec 17th 2011, 19:21 by E.F.

CROSSING an Athens street by foot on a warm spring afternoon in1985, I checked a taxi waiting at the light to make sure it was not going tojump the red. In the back seat I spied the unmistakeable figure of ChristopherHitchens, larger than when I’d last seen him, larger than anyone in their mid-30s ought to be,made larger still by an unnecessary overcoat thrown over the shoulders in themanner of a ballet impresario from an earlier time. He saw me, called my name,threw open the door and stepped into the street. The light was now green andtraffic was hooting. Heedless as ever to context but wholly in role, he let goan uncounted shower of drachma notes into the grateful driver’s hand andgreeted me theatrically with a kiss on both cheeks. Like me, he was in Athensto write about the Greek elections. The previous day, Andreas Papandreou—the fatherof the recently replaced prime minister—had handily won asecond parliamentary term as leader of his country’s SocialDemocrats. Though not like me, because Christopher was not like otherjournalists. “I didn’t see you at the Press centre last night,” I said. “No,” he replied,“I was at the Papandreous.”

How the next hours unfolded, I don’t recall. I dovividly remember that around two in the morning, Christopher was entertaining asmall group of us at a restaurant—quoting, parrying, recounting, provoking. His speed of memory wasdaunting. He always seemed able to cite what an opponent in argument had saidor written years earlier, deploying it quickly and wittily at the surest momentto expose them as fools, ditherers or hypocrites. That essentially 18th-centuryskill made him as lethal on television as he was on the page. He wrote the wayhe spoke, in boutades and in paragraphs, often with a blood-level of alcoholthat would leave most of us speechless. He was catholic in his love andknowledge of the written word, but on the whole stayed off movies, theatre,visual arts and music. Had he a trace of Puritan suspicion that such arts wereelite, effete and not morally serious? I suspect it was more that each of thosearts has its standards of performance and he was a performer in a competingmedium—his own words. You had to hear him in real time, and I rate myselflucky that on a few occasions I did hear him at table—usually lateon when everyone else had stopped talking, not because they were silenced orbested but because there and then it was simply more satisfying to listen tohim.

I don’t know, and who does, if his copious writing will stand up in theway that the work of his politico-literary hero George Orwell has stood up.Those who found little to admire or agree with in Christopher, especially afterhe backed the Iraq War in 2003, will laugh at the comparison. Even those whoenjoyed his overflowing talents as journalist and talker may find it a stretch.Differences of water level and achievement stand out. Yet there are likenesses,too. Neither could tolerate camps, least of all their own: like Orwell,Christopher kept his harshest barbs for the left. Neither were doctrinal and,though Christopher took on big topics—notably religiousbelief, of which he claimed to have none—his small-motorskills with tricky ideas were no finer than Orwell’s. Neitherwere really interested in policy or government, though from sheer forensicbravado Christopher would happily take on the best-briefed wonk. Both wrotefrom an essentially emotional perception about the moral condition of theworld. Orwell once praised Charles Dickens for the “vagueness” of hisradicalism. He did not mean evasiveness or lack of clarity, but a deepconviction that something was wrong with society and that the only constructivesuggestion was: “Behave decently”. Christopher’s constructive suggestions were never so clear, but his negativedrive was unmistakeable and gave him a consistency his detractors wrongly saidhe lacked: locate power, distrust it and take it down a peg, even if you can’t knock itoff its perch. Odd as it sounds, somewhere in Christopher was a backwoods Toryanarchist.

Status and power fascinated him as targets, not as ways todiscrimate among people. He was open to everyone and called all comers by firstname—that memory again!—even if they were not near friends. My calling him “Christopher” repays thecompliment. “Hitchens” would sound both too distant and too knowing.

Now I think about it, at that restaurant in Athens it was probablycloser to three in the morning. Holding up an empty bottle, Christopher wavedit back and forth to get the attention of a waiter, slumped against a far wall.When the waiter came over with a fresh bottle, Christopher raised an emptyglass to him and cried with a Byronic flourish, “Eleftheria!”—which meansfreedom or liberty in Greek. In perfect English the waiter shot back, “We’ve alreadygot that”. The exhausted man had made his point and for once Christopher hadno comeback. He’s silent now for good, and, agree with him or disagree, it’s a loss tous all.

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