第3巻第2章 国の内外で私は,自分の年齢と健康状態のせいで,この最初の会議に出かけることができなかった。1957年(ラッセル85歳の時)の私の時間の大部分は,自分の咽喉の障害の原因が何かをはっきりさせるための各種の医学的検査に費やされた。2月に,咽喉癌ができているかどうかはっきりさせるため,短期間ではあるが入院しなければならなかった。私が入院した日の夕べ,私はBBC放送でダウンサイド修道院のバトラー院長(Abbot Butler of Downside)と討論(対論)を行い(テレビ討論終了後,そのまま病院に向かったのか?),大いに楽しんだ。彼も同様楽しんだと思う。その出来事は,そういったつらいことの成就がそうであるように,終わったときには楽しくなった。そうして結論として癌ではないということがわかった。しかし,それならいかなる病気にかかっていたのか? そこで検査が続けられ,私は乳幼児食やその他の同じような(味気ない)物を食べて暮らし続けなければならなかった。 |
v.3,chap.2: At home and abroad
Since that time I have made several journeys abroad, though none so long as that to Pugwash. I fight shy of longer journeys partly because I fear if I go to one country people in other countries who have pressed me to go there will be affronted. The only way around this, for one who is not an official personage, is to renounce distant travels. In 1958, however, I journeyed to a Pugwash conference in Austria. I stayed on after the meetings and, with my wife, made a journey by motor car. We drove along the Danube to Durnstein which I had wished to see ever since my boyhood delight in Richard Coeur de Lion. I was greatly impressed by the magnificent bleak grandeur of Melk on its bluff about the river and by the beauty of its library. Then we drove in a large circle through the mountains back to Vienna. The air was delicious and spicy. It seemed like a journey into the story books of my youth, both in the countryside, which is that of fairy books, and in the kindness and simplicity and gaiety of the people. Above one little village there was a great lime tree where the villagers gathered to gossip of an evening and on Sunday. It was a magical tree in a magical meadow, calm and sweet and full of peace. Once, as we drove along a narrow lane beside a dashing stream at the foot of a mountain, we were held up by a landslide. Great trunks of fir trees were piled up across the road. We stopped, wondering how to turn or to pass it. Suddenly, men and women appeared, as if sprung from the ground, from the nearby farms and set to work, laughing and joking, to move the obstruction. In a trice, it seemed to me, the road was free and we were being waved on by smiling people. |