わからない個所を教えてください。1
After a moment’s hesitation, he sits down on the flat rock beside me. ‘What were you thinking about?’
Now it is my turn to hesitate. I have become used to what to say to my parents, but perhaps this is not the right thing to say to Jamie. I look at him, and his brown eyes are interested, not suspicious. I say, ‘I was thinking with Lena.’ ‘Who’s Lena?’ (前回の終わりの部分です）
‘She’s our cook. And she looks after me, sometimes.’ He nods, and I am encouraged by the way he accepts what I’ve told him. ‘We’re going for a walk up that way, and we see a bridge, and a chapel where a man used to live. A hermit,’ I add. ‘He went away, though, into the hills.’
Jamie is frowning. ‘When?’
‘When what?’ ‘When do you go on the walk?’
I am thrown into confusion. I don’t want Jamie to know that I used to be a liar, but the conversation is becoming like the ones I used to have – back then, when I was a liar – with my parents. I don’t know what to say. But Jamie is still looking at me, his face open and waiting for me to say something, and in the end I just say it. ‘Just now.’
‘This morning?’
‘Just now. Before you came.’ Suddenly I want him very much to understand. ‘That was what I was doing. Staring into space.’
‘You mean you were imagining it?’
‘No …’
‘What, then?’
It is the tone of his voice that makes the difference: not impatient, just curious. I try to find the words. ‘You know when – you go somewhere—’
He nods.
‘And then you come back.’
Now he is looking puzzled. ‘What, like a walk?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Like that. That’s what I was doing.’
He is quiet for a time, then he says, ‘So you’d gone with Lena and then you came back and then you came here and I found you?’
＊That’s what I was doing.のThatは斜体になっています。
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主人公のAlexはartistで、展示会に備えるために、幼い頃過ごしたイタリアに戻ってきています。この英文は回想シーンだと思われます。
‘That was what I was doing. Staring into space.’
‘You mean you were imagining it?’
‘No …’
ここのやり取りの意味が掴めません。
「それは僕がしていたことだったんだ。空間を見つめていたんだ」
「それを想像していたっていうこと？」
「違うよ」
？？
教えてください。お願いします。
お礼
とてもわかりやすく説明してくださりどうもありがとうございました。