Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro. He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He
walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre, and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road, but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
献给爱米丽小姐的一朵玫瑰
[美国] 威廉·福克纳
威廉·福克纳（1897-1962），20世纪前半期美国最伟大的作家之一，他的作品被批评家看成是20世纪美国南方文学发展的顶峰。他于1949年获得诺贝尔文学奖，1950年获国家图书奖，1954年和1963年两次获普利策奖。他的作品几乎概括了整个美国南方社会，涉及各个阶级、阶层的人。代表作有《圣殿》《声音与疯狂》《八月之光》等。
爱米丽·格里尔生小姐去世的时候，我们镇上所有的人都去参加了她的葬礼：男人们是因为对这座纪念碑的倒下怀着某种敬意；女人们则大部分是出于好奇，想看看她的房子里面，那里除了一个老仆人——花匠兼厨子之外，近十多年来，没有一个人进去过。
这是一幢四方形的大木屋，过去曾漆成白色，装点着炮台和尖顶，配上带涡形花纹的阳台，透出一股浓厚的19世纪70年代的风格。它位于我们镇上当时最考究的街道上，但是，车库和轧棉机甚至与之类似的有损名誉的东西，都被驱逐出境，抹得没有留下一丝痕迹，只留下爱米丽小姐的房子，兀自耸立在棉花车和汽油泵中，衰败的风姿高踞于上，显得顽固不化——简直是丑中之丑。现在，爱米丽小姐也加入了这些庄严人物的行列，他们躺在这些显得困惑无比的雪松群中——这里一排排的墓地都是南北战争时期在杰斐逊战役中阵亡的无名军人的。
爱米丽小姐在世时，始终是传统和义务的化身，备受人们关注。她在镇上享有一种世袭权利，从1894年那天开始，也就是镇长沙多里斯上校颁布了一道法令：黑人妇女必须系围裙上街时，便永久豁免了她的税收，从她父亲去世开始。爱米丽小姐并不是很愿意接受施舍，沙多里斯上校编了个谎言，说她父亲曾借给镇里一笔钱，所以，作为某种交易，用这种方式来偿还。这只有沙多里斯这代人和他这样的头脑才编得出来，也只有妇人才会相信。
当下一代人中更具现代意识的镇长和参议员上任时，这种安排引起了一些小小的不满。那年元旦，他们寄了一张纳税通知单给她，到了二月份，也没见任何回复。他们又给她写了公函，让她方便时去一趟治安官办公室。又过了一个星期，镇长亲自写信给她，提出愿意登门拜访或者派车来接她，结果收到了一张古香古色的信笺便条，上面用褪了色的墨水写着细小、流畅的笔迹。大意是说，她根本不再外出，纳税通知单原样返回，没有任何评论。
参议员召开了一次特殊会议，派出一个代表团去访问她。他们敲了敲门，这扇门自从八年或十年前，她停止教瓷器彩绘课以后，就再也没有人进来过。他们被一个黑人男仆领进幽暗的大厅，再从楼梯上去，显得更加阴暗。屋子里有一股封闭已久的灰尘和废弃物的气味——窒息而又阴冷、潮湿。黑人引着他们进入客厅，里面摆着的笨重家具都用皮革包裹着，黑人打开一扇窗帘后，他们看见皮革已经裂开了。当他们坐下来时，臀下缓缓升起一阵灰尘，在光束下飞舞旋转。壁炉前挂着爱米丽小姐父亲的蜡笔画像，画架已经失去了金色的光泽。
她一进屋，他们都站了起来。她是一个矮小且肥胖的女人，一袭黑衣，带着一条细细的金链垂到了腰部，隐在腰带里，手里拄着一根乌木拐杖，拐杖头已经失去了金属光泽。她骨骼瘦小、削弱，也许，这就是为什么在别的女人身上看来是丰满的，而在她身上则显得肥胖的原因。她看上去臃肿无比，就像一具长时间泡在水里的尸体，肤色也那样惨白。她的眼睛凹陷在脸上肥肉的褶皱里，活像两个小煤块挤进生面团。当他们开始说明来意时，那两个小煤块便不断地从这张脸移到那张脸。
她没有让他们坐下来，只是站在门口，默默地听着，直到发言人结结巴巴地说完，才听见金链子另一端隐藏着的一块手表的滴答声。
她的声音冷若冰霜，“我在杰弗逊没有税。沙多里斯上校早就跟我说过了，你们任何人都可以去查镇政府档案，自己去弄清楚。”
“可我们已经查过了，我们就是政府权力部门，爱米丽小姐。镇长亲自签署的通知，您没有收到吗？”
“我是收到了一份通知，”爱米丽小姐说道，“也许，他自认为是镇长……我在杰弗逊没有税要纳。”
“但是，纳税册上完全没有任何记录，您知道，我们必须根据……”
“去找沙多里斯上校，在杰弗逊我无税可纳。”
“可是，爱米丽小姐……”
“去找沙多里斯上校（沙多里斯上校已经死了差不多十年了），在杰弗逊我无税可纳，托比！”黑人出现了，“送这些先生们出去！”
就这样，她打败了他们，打得他们人仰马翻，就像三十年前，为了那股气味，她打败了他们的父辈一样。那是她父亲去世两年后，不久，她的心上人——我们都以为他会跟她结婚——抛弃了她。她父亲死后，她就很少出门；她的心上人离开她后，人们根本就看不见她了。有几个妇女卤莽地去拜访她，但被她拒绝。那个地方唯一的生命迹象就是黑人男子，那时他还是个年轻人——挎着一个篮子进进出出。