第四回 想云游四方的男孩

Paulo Coelho

陰森的教堂，熾熱的太陽，寒冷的夜晚，厚重的夾克，熟悉的環境，無聊的生活，躁動的青春，一切都使得少年那顆孤獨的心無處安放。 成長的季節中你的想法是否會和父母的期待發生沖突？ 這種成長的陣痛與羈絆你是否也會感同身受？

Track 01

The boy was surprised at his thoughts.Maybe the church, with the sycamore （西卡莫槭） growing from within, had been haunted（鬧鬼的）. It had caused him to have the same dream for a second time, and it was causing him to feel anger toward his faithful companions. He drank a bit from the wine that remained from his dinner of the night before, and he gathered his jacket closer to his body. He knew that a few hours from now, with the sun at its zenith（頂點）, the heat would be so great that he would not be able to lead his flock across the fields.It was the time of day when all of Spain slept during the summer. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time he had to carry his jacket. But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn.

We have to be prepared for change, he thought, and he was grateful for the jacket's weight and warmth.

The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy. His purpose in life was to travel, and, after two years of walking the Andalusian terrain, he knew all the cities of the region. He was planning, on this visit, to explain to the girl how it was that a simple shepherd knew how to read and that he had attended a seminary（神學院） until he was sixteen. His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and thereby a source of pride for a simple farm family. They worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep. He had studied Latin, Spanish, and theology （神學）. But ever since he had been a child,he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man's sins （罪惡）. One afternoon, on a visit to his family, he had summoned up the courage to tell his father that he didn't want to become a priest.

He wanted to travel.

1. Find out the things that the boy disliked or was reluctant to be faced with in this chapter. Try to find as many as possible.

2. What can be used to describe the boy's emotion according to this chapter?

3. What do you think would happen to the boy according to the underlined sentence? Why?