星火30篇文章贯通考研词汇文本.doc

unit 1
The Permit
I think the building must have been used as a farmer's winter store; I found piles of forgotten dried chestnuts and grain in rotting barrels. I tried the chestnuts but they tasted sour and sharp, and some of them had small teeth-marks in their dark, peeling skins. Paulo said he would bring me food, but that was three days ago.
Yesterday, I heard a car engine getting closer, and climbed up to hide in the rafters of the patched roof, but the Guardia Civil men just looked in quickly through the smashed windows and broken doors before they left. I clung to the dusty wooden rafter, feeling it creak and bend under my weight, and tried to make no noise. My arms and legs grew numb, then began to tremble, and I longed to move, but I waited until I heard the policemen drive off.  
I know that Paulo would not have told them about me.
And I know that they will return. When we began the final part of our journey, we were warned that the police patrol the land around here regularly. They are always searching for us, or others like us; the coast of o and the Presidio of Ceuta are only ten miles away across the Straits.
That is how I got here: squeezed in with fifteen other men in a shallow boat meant for eight, with the cold waves reaching over the sides and the night deep and black as a tomb. I have never been more scared. I prayed all the way across, and thought about my family. I told myself, over and over, that I was doing it for them. That trip took almost all of my money. All of the money I had saved back home in Ecuador, all of the money I had worked for on the way. The boatmen left us on a beach in the middle of the night. We lost sight of them but we could still hear their small engine across the waves. Six of us started walking inland but the others waited for the contact, the friends of the boatmen, as they had been told, and met the Guardia Civil instead.
We were lucky: we met Paulo. We found the town and waited until the first bar opened;