旅行的藝術(shù):對旅行的期待-4

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實地的旅行同我們對它的期待是有差異的，對此觀點，我們并不陌生。對旅行持悲觀態(tài)度的人——德埃桑迪斯應該是一個極佳的典范——因此認為現(xiàn)實總是讓人失望。也許，承認實地的旅行和期待中的旅行之間的基本“差異”，這樣才會更接近真實，也更有益。

We are familiar with the notion that the reality of travel is not what we anticipate. The pessimistic school, of which Des Esseintes might be an honorary patron, therefore argues that reality must always be disappointing. It may be truer and more rewarding to suggest that it is primarily different .

經(jīng)歷了兩個月的期待，在2月的一個晴朗的下午，我和我的同伴抵達了巴巴多斯的格蘭特利·亞當斯機場。從下飛機到低矮機場大廳間的距離很短，但卻足以讓我感到氣候的劇烈轉(zhuǎn)變。才幾個小時，我就從我所居住的地方來到了一個悶熱潮濕的所在，這種天氣，在我所居住的地方，五個月后方會來臨，而且，悶熱潮濕的程度也不會如此難耐。

After two months of anticipation, on a cloudless February mid-afternoon, I touched down, along with my travelling companion, M, at Barbados's Grantley Adams Airport. It was a short walk from the plane to the low airport buildings, but long enough to register a revolution in the climate. In only a few hours, I had travelled to a heat and a humidity that at home would not have occurred for another five months, and even then would never have achieved such intensity.

一切都和想象相異——相形于我的想象，這里的一切簡直就讓我吃驚。在這之前的幾周里，只要想到巴巴多斯島，縈繞腦際的不外乎是三種恒定的意象，它們是我在閱讀一本相關(guān)的宣傳冊和航空時刻表時開始構(gòu)想并凝固成型的：其一是夕陽下挺立著棕櫚樹的海灘；其二是一處別墅式的酒店，從落地窗看過去，是鋪著木質(zhì)地板、有著潔白的亞麻床罩的房間；其三呢，則是湛藍無云的天空。

Nothing was as I had imagined-surprising only if one considers what I had imagined. In the preceding weeks, the thought of the island had circled exclusively around three immobile mental images, assembled during the reading of a brochure and an airline timetable. The first was of a beach with a palm tree against the setting sun. The second was of a hotel bungalow with a view through French doors into a room decorated with wooden floors and white bedlinen. And the third was of an azure sky.

如果有人要問，我自然會承認島上還有別的東西，只是我無需它們來構(gòu)建我對巴巴多斯島的印象。我的行為就像是經(jīng)常到劇院看演出的觀眾，僅從背景畫布上的一棵橡樹或一根陶立克式的柱子便能自然地想象劇臺上的一切都發(fā)生在舍伍德森林或古羅馬。

If pressed, I would naturally have recognized that the island had to include other elements, but I had not needed them in order to build an impression of it. My behaviour was like that of theatre-goers who imagine without difficulty that the actions on stage are unfolding in Sherwood Forest or ancient Rome because the backdrop has been painted with a single branch of an oak or one Doric pillar.

然而，一踏上巴巴多斯島，我就意識到“巴巴多斯”這一詞還應包含太多的內(nèi)涵。譬如說，一個巨型的儲油設(shè)施，上面印著英國石油公司的黃綠兩色的標志；穿著一塵不染的褐色制服的移民局工作人員坐在用夾板釘起來的箱子上，帶著一點好奇，漫不經(jīng)心地翻閱入境游客的護照（有如一個學者在翻閱圖書館閉架書庫里的手稿），而等候入境的游客隊伍已排出機場大廳之外，延伸到飛機跑道的邊緣；在行李傳送帶上方印著朗姆酒的廣告，在海關(guān)的過道上掛著總理像，在迎賓大廳有外幣兌換處，在機場大廳之外是成群的出租車司機和導游……如此繁復的景象撲面而來，如果說它們可能對我產(chǎn)生什么影響，那就是它們奇怪地讓我更難看到我本想來此一睹的巴巴多斯島。

But on arrival, a range of things insisted that they too deserved to be included within the fold of the word Barbados. For example, a large petrol storage facility, decorated with the yellow and green logo of British Petroleum, and a small plywood box where an immigration official sat in an immaculate brown suit and gazed with an air of curiosity and unhurried wonder (like a scholar scanning the pages of a manuscript in the stacks of a library) at the passports of a line of tourists that began to stretch out of the terminal and on to the edge of the airfield. There was an advertisement for rum above the baggage carousel, a picture of the Prime Minister in the customs corridor, a bureau de change in the arrivals hall and a confusion of taxi drivers and tour guides outside the terminal building. And if there was a problem with this profusion of images, it was that they made it strangely harder to see the Barbados I had come to find.

在我的預期中，機場與飯店之間是一段空白。從行程安排表的最后一行（很押韻的一句“15點35抵達巴巴多斯2155”）到酒店房間之間本應空無一物。我的腦子里本來空空的，可現(xiàn)在心里卻涌起對一些景象的不滿，如塑料墊已破爛的行李傳送帶，堆滿煙灰的煙缸上兩只翻飛的蒼蠅，迎賓廳里轉(zhuǎn)動著的巨型電扇，儀表板有假豹皮鑲邊的白色出租車，機場外大片荒地上一只無家可歸的狗，環(huán)形交叉路口立著的“豪華公寓”的廣告，一個叫“巴達克電子公司”的工廠，一排用紅、綠色鐵皮做屋頂?shù)慕ㄖ?，一輛車子前后車窗間立柱的橡皮上寫著的小小的“大眾汽車公司，沃爾夫斯堡”的字樣，一處不知名的色彩艷麗的灌木叢，一個酒店的接待前臺，顯示著6個不同地方的時間，墻上還用圖釘固定著一張寫有“圣誕快樂”的賀卡，而圣誕節(jié)已過去了兩個月……到達幾個小時后，我才慢慢將自己和想象中的酒店房間聯(lián)系起來，只是我先前沒有想到房間里的空調(diào)機是如此龐大，也沒有料到洗手間只是用塑料貼面板分隔而成，上面還貼著告示，正告客人節(jié)約用水。

In anticipation, there had simply been a vacuum between the airport and my hotel. Nothing had existed in my mind between the last line on the itinerary (the beautifully rhythmic 'Arrival BA 2155 at 15.35') and the hotel room. I had had no thought of, and now protested inwardly at the appearance of, a luggage carousel with a frayed rubber mat, two flies dancing above an overflowing ashtray, a giant fan turning inside the arrivals hall, a white taxi with a fake leopard-skin-lined dashboard, a stray dog in a stretch of waste ground beyond the airport, an advertisement for 'Luxury condos' at a roundabout, a factory called 'Bardak Electronics', a row of buildings with red and green tin roofs, a rubber strap in the central pillar of the car upon which was written in very small print 'Volkswagen, Wolfsburg', a brightly coloured bush whose name I didn't know, a hotel reception area which showed the time in six different locations and a card pinned on the wall nearby that read, with two months' delay, 'Merry Christmas'. Only several hours after my arrival did I find myself united with my imagined room, though I had had no prior mental image of its vast air-conditioning unit nor, even if it was welcome, its bathroom, which was made of Formica panels and sternly advised residents not to waste water.

如果說我們往往樂于忘卻生活中還有眾多的我們期待以外的東西，那么，藝術(shù)作品恐怕難逃其咎，因為同我們的想象一樣，藝術(shù)作品在構(gòu)型的過程中也有簡單化和選擇的過程。藝術(shù)描述帶有極強的簡括性，而現(xiàn)實生活中，我們還必須承受那些為藝術(shù)所忽略的環(huán)節(jié)。一本游記，譬如說，可能會告訴我們敘述者“旅行”了一個下午趕到了山城X，而后在山城里的一座建于中世紀的修道院里住了一宿，醒來時已是迷霧中的拂曉。事實上，我們從不可能“旅行”一個下午。我們坐在火車上，腹中剛吃過的午餐在翻騰。座位的罩布顏色發(fā)灰。我們看著車窗外的田野，然后又回視車廂內(nèi)。一種焦慮在我們的意識里盤旋。我們注意到對面座位的行李架上一個行李箱上的標簽。我們用一個手指輕輕地敲打窗沿。食指的指甲開裂處勾住了一個線頭。天開始下雨了。一顆雨滴沿著蒙滿灰塵的車窗玻璃滑下，留下一道泥痕。我們在尋思車票放在哪里。我們又看著窗外的田野。雨還在下。火車終于啟動了?；疖嚱?jīng)過了一座鐵橋，然后不明緣故地停了下來。車窗上停著一只蒼蠅……所有這些，可能還只不過是“他‘旅行’了一個下午”這一意蘊繁雜卻讓人誤解的句子中的“下午”的第一分鐘里發(fā)生的一些事件。

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find the same process of simplification or selection at work as in the imagination. Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us. A travel book may tell us, for example, that a narrator journeyed through the afternoon to reach the hill town of X and, after a night in its medieval monastery, awoke to a misty dawn. But we never simply journey through an afternoon. We sit in a train. Lunch digests awkwardly within us. The seat cloth is grey. We look out of the window at a field. We look back inside. A drum of anxieties revolves in consciousness. We notice a luggage label affixed to a suitcase in a rack above the opposing seats. We tap a finger on the window-ledge. A broken nail on an index finger catches a thread. It starts to rain. A drop wends a muddy path down the dust-coated window. We wonder where the ticket might be. We look back out at the field. It continues to rain. At last the train starts to move. It passes an iron bridge, after which it stops inexplicably. A fly lands on the window. And still we might only have reached the end of the first minute of a comprehensive account of the events lurking within the deceptive sentence 'he journeyed through the afternoon'.

如果要求一個講故事的人給我們提供如此瑣屑的細節(jié)，他必定很快惱怒不已。遺憾的是，現(xiàn)實生活就像是用這種方式講故事，用一些重復、不著邊際的強調(diào)和沒有條理的情節(jié)惹我們厭煩。它堅持要向我們展示巴達克電子公司，向我們展示車廂里的安全扶桿、無家可歸的狗、圣誕卡，還有那只先是停在那個堆滿煙灰的煙灰缸邊緣，進而停落在煙灰之中的蒼蠅。

A story-teller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of story-telling, wearing us with repetitions, misleading emphases and inconsequential plotlines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the safety handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of a laden ashtray.

知曉了這些事實，我們便不難解釋此種怪現(xiàn)狀了，那就是在藝術(shù)作品和期待中找尋有價值的因素遠比從現(xiàn)實生活中找尋來得容易。期待和藝術(shù)的想象省略、壓縮，甚至切割掉生活中無聊的時段，把我們的注意力直接導向生活中的精彩時分而毋須潤飾或造假，結(jié)果是，它們所展現(xiàn)的生活氣韻生動、井然有序。這種氣韻和秩序是我們紛擾錯亂的現(xiàn)實生活所不能呈現(xiàn)的。

Which explains the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress, they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments and, without either lying or embellishing, thus lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.

在加勒比海海島上的第一個晚上，我躺在床上不能入眠，開始回顧自己的旅程（在房間外的小樹叢里有蟋蟀的鳴叫，還有蟲子活動時發(fā)出的聲音），現(xiàn)時的紛擾迷亂居然已經(jīng)開始淡逝，而有些事件則變得明晰起來：原來，在這種意義上，回憶和期待一樣，是一種簡化和剪輯現(xiàn)實的工具。

As I lay awake in bed on my first Caribbean night looking back on my journey (there were crickets and shufflings in the bushes outside), already the confusion of the present moment began to recede and certain events to assume prominence, for memory was in this respect similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

現(xiàn)時的生活正像是纏繞在一起的長長的膠卷，我們的回憶和期待只不過是選擇其中的精彩圖片。在我飛往巴巴多斯島長達九個半小時的旅程中，保存下來的記憶只不過六七個靜止的畫面。今天仍然留存的畫面，便是飛行過程中支在座位上的小餐板。我在機場所有的經(jīng)歷，記憶中留存下來的也不過是手持護照等候?qū)彶槿腙P(guān)的長長的隊伍。我的各種經(jīng)歷已經(jīng)壓縮成一種清晰無誤的敘述：我成了一位從倫敦飛來此島并入住島上酒店的旅客。

The present might be compared to a long-winded film from which memory and anticipation select photographic highlights. Of my nine-and-a-half-hour flight to the island, active memory retained only six or seven static images. Just one survives today: the in-flight tray. Of my experience at the airport, only an image of the passport line remained accessible. My layers of experience settled into a compact and well-defined narrative: I became a man who had flown in from London and checked into his hotel.

我早早地酣然入睡了，醒來時已是我在加勒比海邊的第一個清晨——當然，在這簡括的詞句背后肯定會有許許多多并不簡括的事實。

I fell asleep early and the next morning awoke to my first Caribbean dawn-though there was, inevitably, a lot more beneath these brisk words than that.