原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
此必是妖精 This Must Be Her Dwelling
又想道：「此必是妖精的住處了。我且到裡邊去打聽打聽。且住。又想道：「此必是妖精的住处了。我且到里边去打听打听。且住。
逐句解 Line by line
又想道：「此必是妖精的住處了。
又想道：「此必是妖精的住处了。
He thought again: "This must be where the fiend lives."
The narration slips into Pilgrim's head without warning and stays there for three short beats. 住處 is simply a dwelling-place, and the flatness of the word is the point after all that scenery.
我且到裡邊去打聽打聽。
我且到里边去打听打听。
"Let me go inside and listen about a little."
The same enquiring verb he used on the hillside, doubled again to make it casual. He is still scouting.
且住。
且住。
"But wait."
Two characters, and they stop the sentence dead. 且住 is the vernacular hold on a moment, and in a novel this fond of momentum it is nearly always the signal that somebody has just thought of a complication.
Three sentences of a character thinking, and the third one interrupts the first two. It is a small piece of technique that this novel does better than almost anything else written in the sixteenth century: interior speech that behaves like speech, complete with self-correction.
The complication he has thought of is the obvious one, and it is the same one Bajie raised at the well. If he walks in as himself, they will know him. Pilgrim is about to take his own advice.