经济学人逝者 || 二战时日军“慰安妇”制度的受害者扬·鲁夫·奥赫恩

Cries from a handkerchief

素帕之呼

英文部分选自经济学人20190907期Obituary版块

Obituary：Jan Ruff O’Herne

讣告：扬·鲁夫·奥赫恩

Cries from a handkerchief

素帕之呼

Jan Ruff O’Herne, war-rape victim of the Imperial Japanese Army, died on August 19th, aged 96

二战时日军“慰安妇”制度的受害者，扬·鲁夫·奥赫恩，于8月19日逝世，享年96岁

All sorts of obcts lay in Jan Ruff O’Herne’s dressing table drawer. A necklace of dark amber beads. Silver work from Java where she had been brought up, the daughter of Dutch colonialists. A belt embroidered with tulips from the country she had never seen until after the war. Costume jewellery, gloves, lotions and potions. Her daughters Eileen and Carol loved to riffle through the drawer as children, and she gladly let them. The things often summoned up her Java stories of gamelans, sate-sellers, cicadas and warm rain. But when one day they found the embroidered white handkerchief folded at the bottom she snatched it away.

扬·鲁夫·奥赫恩出身于荷兰一个殖民者家庭，从小在爪哇岛长大，直到二战结束才首次回到祖国。她的梳妆台抽屉里摆着各种各样的东西：一条深琥珀色珠子项链、爪哇岛的银器、一条绣有荷兰郁金香的腰带、廉价珠宝、手套、乳液和药水。女儿艾琳和卡罗尔打小就喜欢翻妈妈的这个抽屉，她也任由着孩子们翻。抽屉里的东西总是会勾起她对爪哇岛的回忆：甘美兰音乐、沙嗲小贩、鸣蝉和温暖的雨水。可当有一天两个女儿在抽屉底部发现一条叠好的绣花白手帕时，她却一把抢过手帕。

注：

1. 沙嗲（sate/satai）是传统马来美食——腌好的牛肉、羊肉、鸡肉串成串以适度的火候炭烤后，最重要的就是要蘸一层厚厚的沙嗲酱一起入口。（维基百科和百度百科）

2. 甘美兰（Gamelan），为印度尼西亚历史最悠久的一种民族音乐形式，爪哇岛的甘美兰合奏尤为著名。

https://baike.so.com/doc/5773998-5986772.html

That was a rare moment, in 50 years of silence, when her secret was almost out. Other things she could disguise as phobias. Her unease when night fell, and she had to draw the living-room curtains. Her terror of going to doctors, even when she was quite ill. And, perhaps hardest to explain, her dislike of flowers. On her birthday she would beg friends and family not to give her any. They were such a waste of money, so soon over.

她沉默了整整50年。50年来，这样险些暴露秘密的时刻少之又少。一般的事儿，她尚可以用恐惧症掩盖：比如，每当夜幕降临，她就会感到不安，必须拉下客厅的窗帘；她害怕看医生，即使病得很厉害也不愿去。不过，或许最难以解释的是，她讨厌鲜花。过生日时，她对亲人朋友千叮咛万嘱咐，哪怕是一枝花都不要送给她。她会说买花太浪费钱，而且花很快就枯萎了。

But this was not the reason. Flowers reminded her of the day in 1944, in a rambling house in Semarang, when she and six other Dutch-Indonesian girls realised that the place they had been abducted to was a Japanese military brothel. The Japanese had invaded Indonesia two years before, driving all the Dutch settlers into labour camps where they were kept in squalor, close to starvation. But this degradation was new. She and her companions, all virgins, so innocent, had been plucked from their camp to service queues of impatient army officers. To aid selection in the brothel, the names of flowers were pinned to their bedroom doors. She was also given a vase of white orchids which, in fear and disgust, she threw away. Ever after, she hated to be given flowers.

但这并不是她讨厌花真正的原因。花总是让她想起1944年的那一天，她和其他六名荷兰裔印尼女孩被强行带到三宝垄一间凌乱的房子后才意识到，这是一家日本慰安所。两年前，日本入侵印度尼西亚。日军把所有的荷兰裔居民赶进了劳动集中营，虐待囚犯，还令他们食不果腹。从那天开始，这些女孩遭遇的凌辱则更为卑劣。她和她的同伴都还是处女之身，清白纯洁，却被人从集中营里拖出来，当那些暴躁军官们的性奴隶。为了方便军官选择，在慰安所里，她们的隔间门上钉了各种花名。他们给她一瓶洁白的兰花，在恐惧和厌恶中，被她扔掉。自那以后，她就讨厌别人送她鲜花。

As night fell, the first officer came to her room. He was bald, fat and repulsively ugly. When she wept, screamed and kicked him, crying “Don’t!” in all the languages she knew, he simply laughed. Then he unsheathed his sword. As she huddled and prayed, expecting to be killed at any moment, he let the sword-tip wander over her body, up and down, up and down, before ripping off what was left of her clothes and raping her.

夜幕降临，第一位军官来到她的房中。那人相貌丑陋、大腹便便，还有些秃顶。当她尖叫着反抗，拼命踢打，用自己所知的所有语言哀嚎着“不要”的时候，那人只是哈哈大笑。随后他拔出了刀，刀尖在她身上游走，上上下下，来来回回，把那些为数不多的蔽体衣物统统剥去，然后强奸了她。

She never imagined suffering like this. It seemed he would never stop. But physical hurt was only part of it. Far worse was the shame. She could not have helped it, he was too heavy. But her pure young body, the body she had been planning to dedicate to Christ as a Catholic nun, had been destroyed. Her dignity and self-esteem were lost. In the bathroom afterwards, with the other sobbing and destroyed girls, she tried to wash off the soiling, but it stayed. Desperate, the girls tried to hide in the garden, but they were dragged out to be raped by more officers. It might have been ten times that night, and the next night, for three months. The brothel doctor raped them, too. Ever after, she feared both doctors and the dark.

她从未想过自己会遭此虐待。没完没了的欺辱摧残着她的身体，然而，身体遭受的苦难是次要的，内心的耻辱才是真正的煎熬。硕大的身躯压在身上，令她无法反抗。可怜她那年轻纯洁的身体，原本准备成为天主教修女，把它献给基督，却惨遭玷污。她的尊严和自尊荡然无存。事后在卫生间，其他被糟蹋的女孩也在那里怆然泪下；她拼命想要冲走那种羞耻脏污，却怎么也洗不掉。绝望无助的女孩们躲在花园里，却又被拽出来，来满足更多军官的兽欲。那一晚，同样的戕害也许发生了十次，而后的每一晚，一连三个月都是如此。就连那里的医生也强奸了她们。从那之后，她就害怕黑暗，也害怕医生。

Yet she also feared the light. It was too hard to reveal this. She buried it deep in shame, and so did those closest to her. When she was reunited with her mother in the labour camp, lying tearful with relief in the hollow of her arms, and her mother stroked her bald head, bald because she had cut off her hair in a bid to make the officers avoid her, she briefly told her. Her mother could not cope with it, and they said nothing more. She told a priest, since she still hoped to be a nun, but he deflected her as something sullied. When she met Tom Ruff, the British soldier who became her husband, she spoke of it once, then never again. She longed to scream out the details of what had been done to her, but instead she was expected to get on with life as though nothing had.

然而，她也害怕光明。这段经历实在太难启齿。她将它深深地埋在心底，那些她最亲近的人也一样。当她回到集中营，与母亲团聚时，她如释重负般地倒在母亲怀里，泪如雨下。母亲轻抚她的光头。曾经的秀发早已不见，是她自己剪的。她想要通过这种方式让那些军官远离她。她简要跟母亲谈了自己的遭遇，母亲不知怎么回答，于是她们再也没提起这件事。她内心仍想成为一名修女，便向一位牧师倾诉了自己的遭遇，牧师却因她的不洁之身而对她敬而远之。后来，扬遇到了汤姆•拉夫（Tom Ruff），并与这名英国士兵结了婚。她向自己的丈夫也提起过一次自己的遭遇，从此闭口不谈。在她内心，她想要怒吼，揭露那些禽兽的暴行，然而世人却希望她当作什么事也没有发生。

In a way, she succeeded. She and Tom married and moved happily to Adelaide. She did not want sex, but bore it, and after surgery to mend her she had her daughters. Their house was full of music, and she sang in choirs. When Tom became an invalid, her faith helped her bear that. Outwardly she was smiling and serene. Inside was another story. All kinds of things reminded her, but especially the handkerchief in the drawer. A woman at the camp had passed it to her as she left for Semarang, and on the veranda of the brothel one evening, as they waited for that dreaded dark, she had asked the six other girls to sign it. Miep, Gerda, Els, Annie, Betty and Lies had written their names in pencil and she had sewn over them. Sometimes she would hold it to her face and cry.

在某种程度上，她的这种愿望实现了。结婚后，她和汤姆搬到了阿德莱德（澳大利亚联邦南澳大利亚州的首府），过上了幸福的生活。她畏惧床笫之欢，但还是勉为其难，经过生殖器官修复手术后还生下了两个女儿。他们的家总是充满音乐，她自己也在唱诗班里唱歌。之后她的丈夫身患残疾，是信仰帮她渡过难关。对外人，她总是面带微笑，面容平静，但她的内心深处却是另一番景象。所有的事情都会让她想起那段可怕的往事，尤其是抽屉里的那块方手帕。手帕是她离开集中营去三宝垄时一位营中妇女给她的。有天晚上，她和其他六个女孩在慰安所的长廊等待那可怕的黑暗时刻，她请她们用铅笔把名字签在手帕上：米尔普、格尔达、埃尔斯、安妮、贝蒂、莱斯。之后她用针线按字迹绣了一遍。有时候，她会捧着这块手帕掩面痛哭。

Then in 1992, when she was almost 70, God suddenly set her life-task before her. Three elderly Korean war-rape victims spoke out on television and inspired her to do the same. If she backed them up, adding her European voice to theirs, they might together get Japan’s attention. The only hard part of her decision was that she had to tell her daughters the secret first. She could not do so face to face. Instead she wrote two copies of what she called “Cry of the Raped”, stuffed them into envelopes and left them to be read. But the deed was done. She could let her awful secret out to the world now, not as a “comfort woman”—how she hated that insulting, cuddly name—not as an angry victim seeking revenge, but as a calmly spoken witness who wanted Japan to admit what its soldiers had done to perhaps 200,000 women like herself.

时间到了1992年，上帝忽然派给了年近70的她一项终生使命。三位年岁已高的韩国慰安妇受害者在电视上讲述了她们的遭遇，这让她备受鼓舞。如果她这个欧洲人的声音加入其中，声援那三位受害者，也许就能引起日本的注意。唯一阻碍她下定决心的是她得先向自己的女儿袒露秘密。她没法当面告诉两个女儿，转而写了两份她称之为“受强奸者的控诉”的信，塞进了信封，让女儿们以这种方式了解她的过去。木已成舟。现在，她可以向世人公开那个可怕的秘密了，不是作为一名“慰安妇”——她讨厌这个侮辱暧昧的称呼——也不是作为一名寻求复仇的愤怒受害者，而是作为一名冷静的见证者，希望日本能够承认当年日军对20万像她一样的妇女犯下的罪行。

Released and relieved, she addressed a war-crimes hearing in Tokyo, gave testimony to Congress and, whenever victims gathered, hugged and encouraged them. They won some compensation, though she herself would not accept it, since Japan’s right-wing government still refused to make a full apology. Now that the story was out, the case for one was overwhelming.

如释重负的她在东京的战争罪行听证会上发言，向日本国会作证。每当受害者们发起集会，她也会给予他们鼓励和拥抱。听证会的结果是她们获得了些许赔偿，但她个人却不能接受，因为日本右翼政府仍然拒绝正式道歉。这个秘密既然已经公之于众，要求日本政府正式道歉的呼声不绝于耳。

Time and again she thought of the passage from Ephesians 5 which Sister Xavier had made her learn at school, when she had tried to cheat in an exam: “The things which are done in secret are things that people are ashamed even to speak of; but anything exposed by the light will be illuminated, and anything illuminated turns into light.” So it had proved. And the white handkerchief, too, had left the darkness of the drawer. She had given it to the Australian War Memorial, where it stood on display and shone: seven testifying, suffering names to speak for all the others.

她时常会想起《以弗所书》第五章中的一段。那是上学的时候，她考试想作弊时泽维尔修女命令她学习的：“因为他们暗中所行的，就是提起来也是可耻的。凡事受了责备，就被光显明出来，因为一切能显明的就是光。”事实证明，的确如此。那方白手帕也离开了黑暗的抽屉。它被交给了澳大利亚战争纪念馆，作为一项展品闪闪发光：七个受害者的亲笔签名，为所有慰安妇作证。

注：《圣经》段落译文参考中文版《圣经》。

翻译组：

Kemay，决心练好笔译的未来口译员

Liv，上海打怪奋斗小青年，英专本科生

Sheri，坚信可以forever young的老年人

校对组：

Mona，悦读悦译，以译会友

Nikolai，子承父业，蛋糕厂员工，AKB49

Dave，实力校对，肌肉男大学教师，文学翻译+CATTI一笔二口