Difficult sentence with wisteria and shadows chained to one another

[Lu]

I'm editing a translation of a short story. The entire story is not too easy, but the difficulty is dialed up to about 12 in the last paragraph.

 

Young girl has been deceived by older man. They meet on top of a building. She proposes they jump off to die together, he says no, but she manages to wrestle him to the edge and over the parapet of the roof. Then follows a looong sentence:

 

女儿墙的外面，那白晃晃的半空中，像摆着一张天底下最高级的鸳鸯眠床，心意已决的多情少女痴缠着要共赴云雨，老练的男子则固执地吊着胃口、故作正经地要与她划清界限、分榻独处，而关于这一点，他们显然难以达成一致的意见。远远地从空中俯看，他们好像不是在跟生死搏击，而是在一起玩人体骰子——骨碌碌的转动中，在一个似乎是不够小心、用力过猛的跃动中，纯真的情欲侥幸获得了胜利，这两条藤萝附身互为镣锁的影子最终共同升腾起来，一半是惊骇一半是喜悦地越过女儿墙，升腾到半空，继而消失在天台之外。

 

Here is my understanding:

Outside the parapet was the white sky, like the most comfortable bed in the world, ready for a couple of mandarin ducks: the besotted young girl who has decided to come to an intimate intercourse, and the experienced man who stubbornly keeps his lust in check and wants to draw a clear line between him and this girl, doesn't want to share this deathbed with her. At this point, they clearly have trouble coming to an understanding. If you saw them from a distance from the sky, it would seem they weren't fighting on life and death, but were playing with each other like human dice. In a whirl of bones, with a jump that seemed careless, seemed a little too wild, simple lust was lucky enough to gain the upper hand. The two tendrils of wisteria shadows chained to one another, eventually rose up together, half in fright and half in joy they go over the parapet, rose to the sky, and continued to disappear away from the rooftop.

 

(Please don't mind the style too much; the translation is into Dutch, not English.)

 

Any pointers are more than welcome, but especially about the bolded sentence, which I can't figure out. Thanks in advance!

[Publius]

无非是说两人一个要跳一个不要跳，在纠缠扭打中一不小心，男子惊恐地发现自己与女子一起越过围墙掉下了楼顶。

 

“这两条”指的是“影子”。

[anonymoose]

I think it's difficult to translate it literally without sounding a bit odd. I'd say something like, "the two shadows, locked together like tendrils of wisteria, eventually rose up together".

[Moshen]

Quote

"the two shadows, locked together like tendrils of wisteria, eventually rose up together".

 

That's really good, but based on my observation of wisteria that we have right behind our house, I'd tweak it to "...entwined like tendrils of wisteria..."

 

It's quite a nice image.

 

Here's a (lousy) photo of two stalks of wisteria entwined around each other to show what the author meant.  You may need to enlarge the photo to pick out the two strands...

 

[TheBigZaboon]

I hesitate to open my mouth here as I will only display my ignorance, but...

 

Images I find standing out, but difficult to integrate are Mandarin ducks, often seen as the perfect couple (I think that they mate for life), so they're aways drawn/painted/represented in pairs, almost never alone or as a single fowl. These two don't seem like the perfect couple to me. Sarcasm perhaps...

 

And secondly, the wisteria image: the purple color of wisteria is often (aways???) used as the color of the cloud the Bhudda floats on in painted statues or wall hangings here in Japan. Again, to me, the image seems out of place. 

 

Well, you said anything would be helpful...

 

TBZ

[Lu]

Thank you all! With this help, I finally got it:

这两条((藤萝附身)(互为镣锁))的影子

藤萝附身 and 互为镣锁 are two things that are said about the pair of 影子. A comma in the middle would have been useful here.