离开埃塞俄比亚35年之后,我父亲在伊利诺伊州皮奥里亚①的一间公寓房里死了。从那个房间可以看到一点河面上的水景。在他活着的时候,我们之间从来没有多少话,但是,在他死后不久,纽约一个温暖的十月的早晨,我沿着阿姆斯特丹大道向北走到学校去的时候,却和父亲有了一场对话。在过去的三年里,我一直在这所中学给那些幸运的新生讲授“美国早期文学”课程。“那边是‘科学院’。”我告诉父亲。“从树林间看过去,你可以看见钟楼的顶部。只有我把这个学校称作‘科学院’。这并不是它的真名。这个名字是从我上大学时看的卡夫卡的一个短篇小说里借用来的②。小说 Thirty-five years after leaving Ethiopia, my father died in an apartment in Peoria, Illinois. From that room you can see a little water view on the river. There was never much between us when he was alive, but shortly after he died, on a warm October morning in New York, I walked north along Amsterdam Avenue to school with my father A conversation. For the past three years, I’ve been teaching ”Fortress American Literature“ to those lucky new students in this middle school. ”There’s the Academy of Sciences. “ I told my father. ”You can see the top of the clock tower from the woods, and only I call this school ’Academies’, this is not its real name, it’s a short story from Kafka when I was in college In the borrowed ②. Fiction