麦琪的礼物(中英文剧本)

中文版本：
第一场
人物：安琪、德拉、莎弗朗尼娅夫人
地点：小街的拐角处
[安琪上，背景音乐<爱情万岁>缓缓响起]
安琪：（面向观众，微笑）我是爱心天使，今天是圣诞前夕，我继承麦琪的使命来到人间，我要将最珍贵的礼物馈赠凡间有爱心的人。（神秘地）嘘——有人来了！
[德拉静静地上]
德拉：（走到一块招牌前停住）莎弗朗尼娅夫人--经营各种头发用品。（走进店里，定神望着一个坐着的妇女）请问--你是莎弗朗尼娅夫人吗？
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：（冷冰冰地）是的，我就是。
德拉：那么，您要买我的头发吗？
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：我买头发。（抬头）把你的帽子脱下来，让我看看你的头发什么样儿！
德拉：（脱下旧帽子，小心翼翼地泻下了那光灿灿如小瀑布似的头发，直到膝盖）您要买么？
安琪：（旁白）Oh，my God!想不到人间有如此美丽的头发，简直就像瀑布一样！
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：（盯着头发，惊谔地）你确定--要卖掉它？
德拉：（眷恋地，摸了摸头发）呃--（转而坚决地）是的，我要卖掉它。告诉我，它值多少钱？
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：（绕着德拉的头发转了一圈，强压住兴奋）那，给你开个高价吧！二十块钱，很多了。
德拉：赶快把钱给我。
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：让我先把你的头发剪掉。（拿出剪刀）那么——我开始动手了？
德拉：（闭上眼，干脆地）剪吧！
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：（熟练地剪完了头发）喏，钱给你。
德拉：谢谢！（谨慎地接过钱，没再看一眼那落下的头发）谢谢！（揣着钱急匆匆地下）
安琪：哦，多么可怜的女人！她为什么要这样做呢？为什么要卖掉她那连皇后见了都会相形见绌的美丽的秀发？太不可思议了—
莎弗朗尼娅夫人：哦，我的天！多么美丽绝伦的头发！二十块钱远远配不上它！哦，太美了——我要把圣诞前夕上帝给我的恩赐带回家喽！（捧着头发下）

第二场
人物：安琪、杰姆、营业小姐
地点：百老汇路上的一家商店
安琪：（边走）人间为什么会有那么多割舍？割舍——又为了什么？
[杰姆上]
杰姆：（进了一家商店，走向一位营业小姐）请问，这里要买手表么？
营业小姐：（上下打量的眼神）你？卖表？对不起，稍微有经济头脑的人自然都不需要卖不出去的废品。
杰姆：（诚恳又着急地）不是的，这是一块金表。（脱下手腕上的表）它是我现在身上唯一最值钱的东西了。
营业小姐：（不屑一顾地）哦？最值钱的？我倒要看看

，你这样一个穷酸的人能有多名贵的东西。
杰姆：（递表）它是我三代祖传的金表。
安琪：（旁白）哦！又是一段多么忍痛的割舍！
营业小姐：（接过表，眼忽地放亮）嗯，的确是金表，那个，你准备卖它多少钱？
杰姆：（走到柜台前，指着里面的一套发梳）我不要钱。我，我只想要那套美丽的发梳。
营业小姐：你说的是它？（拿起发梳）你只要这套发梳吗？
杰姆：没错，这是我太太渴望已久的东西。
安琪：（旁白）他太太？发梳？……
营业小姐：哦！你看看，这是套多么美丽的发梳啊！瞧瞧，两鬓用的，后面用的，应有尽有！还有，你看，这是纯玳瑁做的、边上还镶着晶莹的珠宝呢！
杰姆：（自言自语）是的，它很美，一定配得上我太太德拉那头金光灿灿的秀发！（停顿）可是，小姐，你同意做这笔买卖吗？
营业小姐：呃--（故作忧郁）让我考虑考虑。
杰姆：我用我祖传的金表来换它，可是我很乐意。我知道，我太太是多么喜欢这套发梳啊！
营业小姐：那--看在你那么诚恳的份上，我与心不忍拒绝你啊--好吧！
杰姆：哦--谢谢！（兴奋地接过发梳）谢谢！（捧着发梳下）
营业小姐：（细看金表）哦，好家伙，这真的是块名副其实的金表啊！（窃喜）再美的一套发梳也抵不上一块金表啊！哈哈——带回去过个快乐的圣诞喽！（揣着金表下）
安琪：（旁白）他绝对不是一个愚蠢的男子！可是，他却用一块金表甘愿换一套发梳--哦！她的太太是个多么幸福的女人啊！
第三场
人物：安琪、杰姆、德拉
地点：德拉与杰姆的家中
[德拉带上紧贴头皮的发鬈，在壁镜面前照了又照，火炉烧着，正煮着咖啡，煎锅在炉子后面热着，随时准备煎肉排]
安琪：（旁白）瞧，这位可怜的女人，现在变得活像一个逃学的小学生！可是，她又是多么幸福的女子啊，他的丈夫是那么的爱他！
德拉：（对着镜子自言自语）如果杰姆看见我不把我杀死才怪呢！他会说我是康奈岛游戏场里的卖唱姑娘。但是我有什么办法呢？——唉，要是不卖了头发我只有一块八角钱，叫我有什么办法呢？
[德拉把给杰姆买的表链对折了握在手里，在他进来必经的桌子角上坐下来等着他，外面响起他的脚步声]
德拉：（脸色变白）求求上帝，让他认为我是最美的！
[敲门声响起，门开，杰姆迈步走进来关上了门，轻音乐〈罗曼蒂〉缓缓响起]
杰姆：（一进门，愣住，带着奇怪的神情死死盯着她）——德拉！
德拉：（从桌上跳下，走到他身边，

忐忑不安地）杰姆，亲爱的，别那样盯着我看。我把头发剪掉卖了，因为我不送你一件礼物，我过不了圣诞节——你不会在意吧，是不是？我实在没办法才这么做的。我的头发长得快得要命，说句“恭贺圣诞”吧！杰姆，让我们高高兴兴的。你猜不到我给你买了一件多么好——多么美丽的礼物！
杰姆：（似乎没有反应过来，吃力地）你把头发剪掉了？
德拉：非但剪了，而且卖了！（握着他的手）不管怎样，你还是一样地喜欢我，是不是？没有了头发，我还是我，是不是？
杰姆：（四下张望着屋子，既而又近乎白痴的神情）你说你的头发没有了？
德拉：你不用找了，我告诉你。已经卖了，没有了。今天是圣诞前夜，亲爱的。（温柔、神情地）好好地待我，好吗？我剪掉头发为的是你呀。我的头发可能数得清，但是我对你的爱情谁也数不清。（指着炉子旁的牛排）我把肉排烧上好吗？杰姆！
[杰姆好象忽然从恍惚中醒过来，他把德拉搂在了怀里，德拉感动得流泪，音乐〈dying in the sun〉响起]
安琪：（旁白）哦，看看吧！看看这破旧的房子，每周八块钱的房租，或者每年一百万快钱的房租——其中又有什么区别呢？
杰姆：（从大衣口袋里掏出一包东西，扔在桌上）不要对我有任何误会，德拉。不管是剪发、修脸、洗头，我对我的姑娘的爱情是不会减低一分的。（指着桌上的那包东西）但是，你一打开那包东西，就会明白，刚才你为什么把我愣住了！
德拉：（敏捷地打开盒子，一阵狂喜，而后神经质地）哦！天啊——（紧紧的把它抱在怀中。好久，才抬起迷蒙的泪眼，含笑）我的头发长得多快啊，杰姆！（把掌心中的手表递给他，热诚地）漂亮吗？把你的表拿给我。我要看看它配上是什么样子！
杰姆：（倒在沙发上，双手枕着头，微笑）德拉，让我们把圣诞节的礼物搁在一边，暂时保存起来。它们实在太好了，现在用了未免可惜。我卖了金表给你换了发梳——（站起）现在，我们一起煎肉排吧！
[音乐〈dying in the sun〉再次响起，幸福的他们依偎在一起，在火炉前煎着肉排，圣诞前夕的夜晚温馨而美丽]
安琪：（旁白）看来，我这个爱心天使，没有必要馈赠给这对幸福的人儿什么珍贵的礼物了。他们互相都送给了对方最最无价最最珍贵的礼物，这也正是我想给的——用爱编织成的礼物！
[幕落]
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英文版本：
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two

at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window

some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready

to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and the

n, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.