English Original
"What d'you think?" Ross asked eventually.
"It's obvious," I replied, "There must have been a hole in the rain clouds - probably one, oh - a foot by a foot and a half, what you saw ..."
But I didn't get chance to complete my smart response. He switched on his bedside lamp, and was sitting up looking at me, a furrow of concern on his forehead.
"Stop it! I know what I saw, I'm not making this up! It can't do that. Rain just can't leave a patch of dry!" Ross stood up, and walked slowly to the window, his hand near his mouth.
"When I knocked on Bill's door, I looked around, and this patch started to get spattered. By the time Bill actually opened the door, it was wet, just like all the rest of the yard."
"Did you tell Bill about it?" I asked, serious because of his agitation.
"No."
There was little further comment, it was late, and we both had to be up early next day. The business was forgotten, I gave it no more thought until perhaps two years later.
Part of my degree course was to interview people I knew, and try to create a documentary radio programme using my source material. As ever, I left it very late to attend to, and finally found my way to Bill's house in Victoria Street, armed with tape recorder and microphone.
After an initial wariness, and several times being told that I wasn't recording when in fact I was, Bill relaxed a little, and started into his stories. I knew many of these almost by heart, and was able to coax him into telling familiar ones. Including the one about the shooting incident.
When he was a boy, Bill's family had a dog, a mongrel - no one in Basford in the early 1920s could have had any other sort of dog. It had been his older brother's originally, but his brother joined up to fight the Kaiser, and never returned from Flanders, so the dog had to adapt to Bill as a new companion.
Here it came, the story I was seeking - Bill's stories of the dog, how he had been hunting, shooting rabbits, and the dog had gone with him, how the dog had been present when, on an estate nearby, Bill had shot at a rabbit moving in long grass, only to see a cat leap several feet into the air. To his horror, when the dead creature was found Bill realised that he had in fact shot dead the local vicar's cat. How the dog had won the day by the way it sat on the doorstep of the Parsonage as Bill made his explanation, how it looked more sorry than him. It had caught the eye of the vicar's wife, and had somehow softened the blow of the cat's death. The woman had commented, 'I could swear that dog is in mourning for our cat. If a dog could weep, well, you'd swear that 'un is weeping right now.'
中文翻译
“你觉得呢？”罗斯最终问道。
“很明显，”我回答，“雨云上肯定有个洞——大概一个，哦，一英尺乘一英尺半，就是你看到的那个……”
但我没机会说完我那自作聪明的回答。他打开床头灯，坐起来看着我，额头上带着一道忧虑的皱纹。
“别说了！我知道我看到了什么，我不是在编造！雨不可能那样。雨水不可能留下一块干的地方！”罗斯站起来，慢慢走到窗边，手放在嘴边。
“我敲比尔的门时，我环顾四周，那块干地开始被雨点打湿。等到比尔真正打开门时，它已经湿了，就像院子里其他地方一样。”
“你告诉比尔这件事了吗？”我问道，因为他的激动而变得严肃起来。
“没有。”
之后没什么进一步的评论，天色已晚，我们第二天都得早起。这件事被遗忘了，我直到大约两年后才再次想起它。
我学位课程的一部分是采访我认识的人，并尝试用我的原始材料制作一个纪录片广播节目。和往常一样，我拖到很晚才着手处理，最终带着录音机和麦克风找到了位于维多利亚街的比尔家。
经过最初的谨慎，以及几次被告知我没有在录音（实际上我在录）之后，比尔放松了一点，开始讲他的故事。其中许多故事我几乎都能背下来，并能哄着他讲那些熟悉的故事。包括那个关于枪击事件的故事。
比尔小时候，家里养了一只杂种狗——在20世纪20年代初的巴斯福德，没人能养其他种类的狗。它原本是他哥哥的，但他哥哥参军去对抗德皇，再也没有从弗兰德斯回来，所以这只狗不得不适应比尔这个新伙伴。
它来了，我一直在寻找的故事——比尔关于这只狗的故事，他如何去打猎、射兔子，狗如何陪伴着他，狗如何在附近庄园里，当比尔向长草中移动的兔子开枪时在场，结果却看到一只猫跳到了几英尺高的空中。令他惊恐的是，当找到那只死去的动物时，比尔意识到他实际上射死了当地牧师的猫。这只狗如何通过在牧师住宅门口台阶上的坐姿赢得了局面，当时比尔正在解释，而狗看起来比他还要难过。它引起了牧师妻子的注意，并缓和了猫死亡的打击。那位女士评论道：“我敢发誓那只狗在为我们家的猫哀悼。如果狗会哭，嗯，你会发誓那只狗现在就在哭。”