《渺小一生》:他愿意等待。他已經等了許久。
He expected it would be awful to spend his summer around people who might remind him of Hemming, but it was actually pleasant, helpful even. His class had seven students, all around eight years old, all severely impaired, none very mobile, and although part of the day was ostensibly devoted to trying to teach them colors and shapes, most of the time was spent playing with them: reading to them, pushing them around the grounds, tickling them with feathers. During recess all the classrooms opened their doors to the school’s central courtyard, and the space filled with children on such a variety of wheeled contraptions and vessels and vehicles that it sometimes sounded as if it was populated by mechanical insects, all of them squeaking and whirring and clucking at once. There were children in wheelchairs, and children on small, scaled-down mopeds that putted and clicked along the flagstones at a tortoise’s speed, and children strapped prone atop smooth lengths of wood that resembled abbreviated surfboards on wheels, and who pulled themselves along the ground with their elbowed stumps, and a few children with no means of conveyance at all, who sat in their minders’ laps, the backs of their necks cupped in their minders’ palms. Those were the ones who reminded him most keenly of Hemming.
他本來以為，一整個夏天都要和一堆令他想起亨明的人在一起，一定會很痛苦，但結果卻很愉快，甚至很有幫助。他帶的那一班有七個學生，都是8歲左右，重度身心障礙、行動不便。盡管表面上有一部分時間是用來教他們認識顏色和形狀的，但其實大部分時間都是在跟他們玩：念書給他們聽，推著他們的輪椅到游樂場，用羽毛搔他們癢。下課時，所有教室都打開朝向中庭的門，整個空間都是兒童，乘坐各式各樣有輪子的奇特機械和交通工具，有時聽起來仿佛充滿了機械昆蟲，發(fā)出吱嘎聲、呼呼聲或咕嚕聲。有的小孩坐輪椅，有的小孩乘坐小型的機器腳踏車沿石板路龜速前進，還有的小孩趴著，被皮帶綁在一段光滑的木板上（看起來像裝了輪子的小型沖浪板），然后用他們只到手肘的殘肢在地上推著前進。另外還有少數幾個小孩完全沒有運輸工具，他們坐在看護的膝上，看護的雙掌托著他們的頸背。這些小孩最容易讓他想起亨明。
Some of the children on the motorcycles and the wheeled boards could speak, and he would toss, very gently, large foam balls to them and organize races around the courtyard. He would always begin these races at the head of the pack, loping with an exaggerated slowness (though not so exaggerated that he appeared too broadly comic; he wanted them to think he was actually trying), but at some point, usually a third of the way around the square, he would pretend to trip on something and fall, spectacularly, to the ground, and all the kids would pass him and laugh. “Get up, Willem, get up!” they’d cry, and he would, but by that point they would have finished the lap and he would come in last place. He wondered, sometimes, if they envied him the dexterity of being able to fall and get up again, and if so, if he should stop doing it, but when he asked his supervisor, he had only looked at Willem and said that the kids thought he was funny and that he should keep falling. And so every day he fell, and every afternoon, when he was waiting with the students for their parents to come pick them up, the ones who could speak would ask him if he was going to fall the next day. “No way,” he’d say, confidently, as they giggled. “Are you kidding? How clumsy do you think I am?”
有些坐機器腳踏車和輪椅的小孩會說話，威廉會輕輕朝他們丟海綿發(fā)泡大球，或在中庭里組織賽跑。開跑時，他總是跑第一，用夸張的慢速大步向前（不過也不能太夸張，像在搞笑，他希望他們認為他真的很努力想跑贏），但是在中途，通常是跑到三分之一，他會假裝絆到什么，很壯觀地摔倒在地，所有的小孩就會大笑著超過他?！捌饋恚?，起來！”他們喊道。他會起來，但此時他們已經跑到終點，他就成了最后一名。有時他很好奇，他們是否羨慕他有這樣靈巧的身手，跌倒了可以再爬起來。若是如此，那他是不是不該再這樣跌倒了？可是當他問主管時，主管只是看著威廉，說那些小孩覺得他很滑稽，他應該繼續(xù)跌倒才對。于是他每天都會跌倒，而且每天傍晚，他陪著學生等家長來接時，可以講話的學生會問他明天是不是還會跌倒?！安豢赡?。”他會充滿信心地說，“你開什么玩笑？你以為我有多笨手笨腳？”那些小孩咯咯笑。
It was, in many ways, a good summer. The apartment was near MIT and belonged to Jude’s math professor, who was in Leipzig for the season, and who was charging them such a negligible rent that the two of them found themselves making small repairs to the place in order to express their gratitude: Jude organized the books that were stacked into quavering, precarious skyscrapers on every surface and spackled a section of wall that had gone puddingy with water damage; Willem tightened doorknobs, replaced a leaky washer, changed the ballcock in the toilet. He started hanging out with another of the teacher’s aides, a girl who went to Harvard, and some nights she would come over to the house and the three of them would make large pots of spaghetti alle vongole and Jude would tell them about his days with the professor, who had decided to communicate with Jude in only Latin or ancient Greek, even when his instructions were things like, “I need more binder clips,” or “Make sure you get an extra shot of soy milk in my cappuccino tomorrow morning.” In August, their friends and acquaintances from college (and from Harvard, and MIT, and Wellesley, and Tufts) started drifting back to the city, and stayed with them for a night or two until they could move into their own apartments and dorm rooms. One evening toward the end of their stay, they invited fifty people up to the roof and helped Malcolm make a sort of clambake on the grill, blanketing ears of corn and mussels and clams under heaps of dampened banana leaves; the next morning the four of them scooped up the shells from the floor, enjoying the castanety clatter they made as they were tossed into trash bags.
從很多角度來看，那都是一個美好的夏天。他住在麻省理工學院附近，那是裘德的數學教授的公寓（教授暑假去了德國萊比錫）。因為教授收的房租實在太少，他和裘德就忍不住替那房子做一些小小的整修工作，以示感激。裘德把四處堆得老高、搖搖欲墜的書整理好，又用補墻粉把一塊因漏水而爛糊的墻面補好；他把松掉的門鈕拴緊，還修好漏水的洗衣機，換掉馬桶水箱里的浮球閥。他開始跟那個老師的另一個助理交往，是個哈佛的女生。有些夜晚她會過來，他們三人會做一大鍋白酒蛤蜊意大利面，裘德會聊起他跟那位教授白天工作的狀況。那位教授決定只跟裘德講拉丁語或古希臘語，即使他要說的只是“我需要更多長尾夾”，或是“明天早上我的卡布奇諾一定要多加一份豆奶”。到了八月，他們在學校認識的朋友（還有哈佛的、麻省理工學院的、韋斯利學院的、塔夫茨大學的）陸續(xù)回到紐約市，會先跑來跟他們住一兩晚，直到可以搬進自己的公寓或宿舍。他們住在那間公寓的日子即將結束，有天晚上他們邀請了五十個人來公寓屋頂開派對，同時幫馬爾科姆弄了某種烤蚌野宴：在整根的玉米、貽貝和蛤蜊上頭堆了潮濕的香蕉葉，然后拿去烤。次日早晨，他們四個好友撿起地上的貝殼，丟進垃圾袋，享受那種響板似的嘩啦聲。
But it was also that summer that he realized he wouldn’t go home again, that somehow, without Hemming, there was no point in him and his parents pretending they needed to stay together. He suspected they felt the same way; there was never any conversation about this, but he never felt any particular need to see them again, and they never asked him. They spoke every now and again, and their conversations were, as always, polite and factual and dutiful. He asked them about the ranch, they asked him about school. His senior year, he got a role in the school’s production of The Glass Menagerie (he was cast as the gentleman caller, of course), but he never mentioned it to them, and when he told them that they shouldn’t bother to come east for graduation, they didn’t argue with him: it was nearing the end of foal season anyway, and he wasn’t sure they would have been able to come even if he hadn’t excused them. He and Jude had been adopted by Malcolm’s and JB’s families for the weekend, and when they weren’t around, there were plenty of other people to invite them to their celebratory lunches and dinners and outings.
但也是那個夏天，他明白自己不會再回家了。不知怎的，沒了亨明之后，他和父母就沒必要假裝他們該齊聚一堂。他懷疑父母也有同樣的感覺，他們從沒談過，但他從不覺得需要回去看他們，他們也沒要求過。他們偶爾會通一下電話，對話一如往常，禮貌、實際而盡責。他向他們問起牧場如何，他們問他學校如何。大四那一年，他拿到了學校舞臺劇《玻璃動物園》（The Glass Menagerie）的一個角色（當然了，他演的是來訪的紳士），但他從沒跟父母提過。后來畢業(yè)時，他跟他們說不必費事來東岸參加畢業(yè)典禮，他們也沒跟他爭，反正此時是母馬生產的季節(jié)，就算沒勸阻他們，他也不確定他們是不是有空來。那個周末，他和裘德被馬爾科姆和杰比的家人收留，就算馬爾科姆和杰比不在，還有很多同學邀請他們一起吃慶祝午餐、晚餐，或是出去玩。
“But they’re your parents,” Malcolm said to him once a year or so. “You can’t just stop talking to them.” But you could, you did: he was proof of that. It was like any relationship, he felt—it took constant pruning, and dedication, and vigilance, and if neither party wanted to make the effort, why wouldn’t it wither? The only thing he missed—besides Hemming—was Wyoming itself, its extravagant flatness, its trees so deeply green they looked blue, the sugar-and-turd apple-and-peat smell of a horse after it had been rubbed down for the night.
“可是他們是你的爸媽啊。”馬爾科姆每隔一年左右就會這么跟他說，“你不可能就這樣再也不跟他們講話?！钡梢?，可以做到：他就是個活生生的證明。他覺得，親子關系就像任何人際關系：你要時時修剪、奉獻、保持警覺，如果雙方都不想付出努力，那怎么會不枯萎呢？除了亨明之外，他唯一懷念的就是懷俄明州，那種奢侈的單純，那種近乎藍色的深綠色樹林，還有晚上幫馬兒擦干身子后，它們身上散發(fā)出糖和糞便、蘋果和泥炭混合的氣味。
When he was in graduate school, they died, in the same year: his father of a heart attack in January, his mother of a stroke the following October. Then he had gone home—his parents were older, but he had forgotten how vivid, how tireless, they had always been, until he saw how diminished they had become. They had left everything to him, but after he had paid off their debts—and then he was unsettled anew, for all along he had assumed most of Hemming’s care and medical treatments had been covered by insurance, only to learn that four years after his death, they were still writing enormous checks to the hospital every month—there was very little left: some cash, some bonds; a heavy-bottomed silver mug that had been his long-dead paternal grandfather’s; his father’s bent wedding ring, worn smooth and shiny and pale; a black-and-white portrait of Hemming and Aksel that he’d never seen before. He kept these, and a few other things, too. The rancher who had employed his parents had long ago died, but his son, who now owned the ranch, had always treated them well, and it had been he who employed them long after he might reasonably be expected to, and he who paid for their funerals as well.
他讀研究生時，他的父母死了，在同一年：父親在一月心臟病發(fā)，母親在同年十月中風。那時他回家了——他的父母老了，他已經忘記他們以前多么有活力，多么勤奮不懈，直到他看到他們衰老了好多。他們把所有一切都留給他了，但他還得還清他們的債務——這件事讓他生出新的不安，因為長久以來，他一直以為亨明大部分的照護和醫(yī)療費用都是保險公司支付的，但他回去后才發(fā)現(xiàn)，亨明死后四年，他們每個月還得付醫(yī)院一大筆錢，之后就沒剩什么了：一些現(xiàn)金，一些債券；一個他過世許久的爺爺傳下來的厚底銀杯；他父親折彎的婚戒，磨得光滑而白亮；一張亨明和阿克塞爾的黑白照片，他以前從沒看過。他留著這些和其他少數幾樣東西。雇用他父母的牧場主早就過世了，但主人的兒子接手牧場，一直待他們很好，他已經雇用他們太久，可能遠超過合理的程度，而且兩場葬禮的錢也是他付的。
In their deaths, Willem was able to remember that he had loved them after all, and that they had taught him things he treasured knowing, and that they had never asked from him anything he wasn’t able to do or provide. In less-charitable moments (moments from just a few years prior), he had attributed their lassitude, their unchallenging acceptance of whatever he might or might not do, to a lack of interest: what parent, Malcolm had asked him, half jealously, half pityingly, says nothing when their only child (he had apologized later) tells them he wants to be an actor? But now, older, he was able to appreciate that they had never even suggested he might owe them a debt—not success, or fealty, or affection, or even loyalty. His father, he knew, had gotten into some sort of trouble in Stockholm—he was never to know what—that had in part encouraged his parents’ move to the States. They would never have demanded he be like them; they hardly wanted to be themselves.
父母過世后，威廉終于想起他畢竟還是愛他們的，還想起他們曾教導他許多他珍愛的知識，而且他們從來不會跟他提出他做不到或滿足不了的要求。在比較不厚道的時刻（就在幾年前），他把他們無精打采、毫無異議就接受他對未來選擇的事歸因于缺乏興趣。馬爾科姆曾經半嫉妒、半同情地問他，什么樣的父母，在他們唯一的孩子說他想當演員后，會什么反應都沒有？（他后來道歉了。）但現(xiàn)在，年紀較長之后，他終于懂得感激他們，他們甚至從沒暗示過他該回報些什么，例如他的成功、忠誠或關愛，甚至是忠實。他知道父母移民到美國來的原因之一，就是父親曾在斯德哥爾摩惹上一些麻煩（他再也無從得知是什么樣的麻煩）。他們絕不會要求他像他們一樣，連他們都不太想當自己。
And so he had begun his adulthood, the last three years spent bobbing from bank to bank in a muck-bottomed pond, the trees above and around him blotting out the light, making it too dark for him to see whether the lake he was in opened up into a river or whether it was contained, its own small universe in which he might spend years, decades—his life—searching bumblingly for a way out that didn’t exist, had never existed.
于是他開始了成年生活，過去三年就像在一個爛泥水塘中浮沉摸索，頭上和周圍的樹遮住了光，使得眼前太暗，讓他看不清自己置身的水塘是否有一條河流通往下游，還是座封閉的內陸湖，他可能在這個湖里耗上好幾年、幾十年或一輩子，跌跌撞撞地尋找一條從來不存在的出路。
If he had an agent, someone to guide him, she might be able to show him how to escape, how to find his way downstream. But he didn’t, not yet (he had to be optimistic enough to think it was still a matter of “yet”), and so he was left in the company of other seekers, all of them looking for that same elusive tributary, through which few left the lake and by which no one ever wanted to return.
如果有個指引他的經紀人，或許可以告訴他如何逃離這座湖，找到通往下游的路。但他還沒有經紀人（他得夠樂觀，才能想著只是“還沒有”），于是他被留在這里，跟其他的尋覓者在一起，尋找那條難以捉摸的支流，少數找到的人可以離開這個湖，而離開后沒人想再回來。
He was willing to wait. He had waited. But recently, he could feel his patience sharpening itself into something splintery and ragged, chipping into dry little bits.
他愿意等待。他已經等了許久。但最近，他可以感覺到自己的耐心變得尖銳，成為某種裂開的、粗糙不平的東西，甚至裂成一堆碎片。
Still—he was not an anxious person, he was not inclined toward self-pity. Indeed, there were moments when, returning from Ortolan or from a rehearsal for a play in which he would be paid almost nothing for a week’s work, so little that he wouldn’t have been able to afford the prix fixe at the restaurant, he would enter the apartment with a feeling of accomplishment. Only to him and Jude would Lispenard Street be considered an achievement—for as much work as he had done to it, and as much as Jude had cleaned it, it was still sad, somehow, and furtive, as if the place was embarrassed to call itself a real apartment—but in those moments he would at times find himself thinking, This is enough. This is more than I hoped. To be in New York, to be an adult, to stand on a raised platform of wood and say other people’s words!—it was an absurd life, a not-life, a life his parents and his brother would never have dreamed for themselves, and yet he got to dream it for himself every day.
然而，他不是個容易焦慮的人，也沒有自憐自艾的傾向。的確，有些時刻，當他從奧爾托蘭餐廳回家，或是去排練一出戲回來（他演一星期的酬勞近乎為零，少到連去餐廳點個套餐都不夠），走進公寓時，他會有一種成就感。只有對他和裘德而言，利斯本納街的公寓才可視為一種成就——盡管他努力整修，裘德努力打掃，這里看起來還是一副凄慘模樣，而且有種鬼鬼祟祟的感覺，好像連這地方都不好意思自稱是一間真正的公寓——但在那些時刻，他偶爾發(fā)現(xiàn)自己想著，“這樣就夠了。這樣已經超過我的期望了?！眮淼郊~約，長大成人，站在舞臺上說著別人的話！那是一種荒謬的人生，一種非人生，一種他父母和哥哥絕不會夢想擁有的人生，然而他現(xiàn)在每天都可以夢想這樣的人生了。
But then the feeling would dissipate, and he would be left alone to scan the arts section of the paper, and read about other people who were doing the kinds of things he didn’t even have the expansiveness, the arrogance of imagination to dream of, and in those hours the world would feel very large, and the lake very empty, and the night very black, and he would wish he were back in Wyoming, waiting at the end of the road for Hemming, where the only path he had to navigate was the one back to his parents’ house, where the porch light washed the night with honey.
但接著，那種感覺會消散，留下他獨自一人看著報紙的文藝版，閱讀其他人做著的那些事，而他根本沒有那么寬廣、那么傲慢的想象力去夢想。在這些時刻，他感覺整個世界好大，他所置身的這個湖好空，夜里好黑，他會希望自己回到懷俄明，站在車道的盡頭等待亨明。在那里，他唯一要找到的路，就是回他父母木屋的那條小徑，門廊上的昏黃燈光猶如蜂蜜，洗去了黑夜。
First there was the life of the office you saw: forty of them in the main room, each with their own desk, Rausch’s glass-walled room at one end, closest to Malcolm’s desk, Thomasson’s glass-walled room at the other. Between them: two walls of windows, one that looked over Fifth Avenue, toward Madison Square Park, the other of which peered over Broadway, at the glum, gray, gum-stamped sidewalk. That life existed officially from ten a.m. until seven p.m., Monday through Friday. In this life, they did what they were told: they tweaked models, they drafted and redrew, they interpreted Rausch’s esoteric scribbles and Thomasson’s explicit, block-printed commands. They did not speak. They did not congregate. When clients came in to meet with Rausch and Thomasson at the long glass table that stood in the center of the main room, they did not look up. When the client was famous, as was more and more the case, they bent so low over their desks and stayed so quiet that even Rausch began whispering, his voice—for once—accommodating itself to the office’s volume.
你看到的辦公室生活是第一種：他們四十個人在主辦公區(qū)里，每個人都有一張辦公桌，勞施的玻璃墻辦公室在一端，離馬爾科姆的辦公桌最近，而托馬森的玻璃墻辦公室則在另一頭。他們兩人之間的主辦公區(qū)有兩面玻璃墻，一面俯瞰著第五大道，面向麥迪遜廣場公園；另一面墻則面對百老匯大道，可以看到底下那條死氣沉沉、黏著口香糖渣的灰色人行道。這種辦公室生活從每星期一到星期五的早上10點正式開始，直到下午7點。在這種生活里，他們奉命做事：調整模型，草圖一畫再畫，解譯勞施那難認的潦草字跡以及托馬森明確得像是印出來的指示。他們不講話，也不湊在一起。每當客戶進來，跟勞施和托馬森到主辦公區(qū)正中央那張玻璃長桌開會時，他們也不會抬頭看。如果客戶很有名（現(xiàn)在這樣的狀況越來越多了），他們就把頭埋得極低，靜悄悄的，靜得連勞施都開始講悄悄話，難得地配合起了辦公室的音量。
Then there was the second life of the office, its real life. Thomasson was less and less present anyway, so it was Rausch whose exit they awaited, and sometimes they had to wait for a long time; Rausch, for all his partygoing and press-courting and opining and traveling, was in reality a hard worker, and although he might go out to an event (an opening, a lecture), he might also return, and then things would have to be hastily reassembled, so that the office he walked back into would resemble the office he had left. It was better to wait for the nights he would disappear completely, even if it meant waiting until nine or ten o’clock. They had cultivated Rausch’s assistant, brought her coffees and croissants, and knew they could trust her intelligence on Rausch’s arrivals and departures.
然后還有辦公室的第二種生活——真正的生活。反正托馬森已經出現(xiàn)得越來越少，所以他們期待的是勞施離開。有時他們要等好久，勞施這個人，盡管總是到處參加派對、巴結媒體、發(fā)表意見、觀光旅行，但他工作其實很賣力。雖然他可能會出去參加一些公開活動（開幕酒會或是演講），但他還是有可能回來，于是大家得趕緊匆忙收拾，好讓他回來時看到的辦公室和離開時的一樣。但最好是等到他徹底離開，即使這表示要等到9點或10點。他們長期跟勞施的助理打好關系，常常幫她買咖啡和可頌面包，知道他們可以相信她所掌握的關于勞施進出的情報。
But once Rausch was definitively gone for the day, the office transformed itself as instantaneously as a pumpkin into a carriage. Music was turned on (they rotated among the fifteen of them who got to choose), and takeout menus materialized, and on everyone’s computers, work for Ratstar Architects was sucked back into digital folders, put to sleep, unloved and forgotten, for the night. They allowed themselves an hour of waste, of impersonating Rausch’s weird Teutonic boom (some of them thought he was secretly from Paramus and had adopted the name—Joop Rausch, how could it not be fake?—and the extravagant accent to obscure the fact that he was boring and from Jersey and his name was probably Jesse Rosenberg), of imitating Thomasson’s scowl and way of marching up and down the length of the office when he wanted to perform for company, barking at no one in particular (them, they supposed), “It’s ze vurk, gentlemen! It’s ze vurk!” They made fun of the firm’s most senior principal, Dominick Cheung, who was talented but who was becoming bitter (it was clear to everyone but him that he would never be made a partner, no matter how often Rausch and Thomasson promised him), and even of the projects they worked on: the unrealized neo-Coptic church wrought from travertine in Cappadocia; the house with no visible framework in Karuizawa that now wept rust down its faceless glass surfaces; the museum of food in Seville that was meant to win an award but didn’t; the museum of dolls in Santa Catarina that never should’ve won an award but did. They made fun of the schools they’d gone to—MIT, Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia, Harvard—and how although they’d of course been warned that their lives would be misery for years, how they had all of them, to a one, assumed they’d be the exception (and now all, to a one, secretly thought they still would be). They made fun of how little money they made, how they were twenty-seven, thirty, thirty-two, and still lived with their parents, a roommate, a girlfriend in banking, a boyfriend in publishing (a sad thing, when you had to sponge off of your boyfriend in publishing because he made more than you). They bragged of what they would be doing if they hadn’t gone into this wretched industry: they’d be a curator (possibly the one job where you’d make even less than you did now), a sommelier (well, make that two jobs), a gallery owner (make it three), a writer (all right, four—clearly, none of them were equipped to make money, ever, in any imagining). They fought about buildings they loved and buildings they hated. They debated a photography show at this gallery, a video art show at another. They shouted back and forth at one another about critics, and restaurants, and philosophies, and materials. They commiserated with one another about peers who had become successes, and gloated over peers who had quit the business entirely, who had become llama farmers in Mendoza, social workers in Ann Arbor, math teachers in Chengdu.
一旦勞施下班、不再回來，整個辦公室立刻從南瓜變成了馬車。音樂打開（他們十五個人輪流放自己喜歡的），外賣餐廳的菜單拿出來，每個人的電腦上為瑞司塔建筑師事務所進行的工作被收回電子檔案夾中，進入休眠模式，那一晚不再被理睬。他們任由自己浪費一小時，模仿勞施那種奇怪的日耳曼人式的低沉聲音（他們有些人認為他其實是新澤西州帕拉默斯人，后來改了這個名字——約普·勞施，怎么可能不是假的？——又裝出一副濃重的口音，好隱瞞他是個無趣的新澤西人的事實，而且他的本名大概是杰西·羅森堡）；而模仿托馬森，就會學他不甘寂寞時，氣呼呼地從辦公室這頭走到那頭，沒有特定對象地咆哮：“這是工作，各位！這是工作啊！”他們取笑事務所里最資深的主任建筑師多米尼克·張，他很有才華，但逐漸變得憤世嫉俗（除了他自己之外，每個人都覺得他顯然當不上合伙人了，無論勞施和托馬森怎么一再跟他保證）；他們甚至取笑他們做過的設計方案：那座以卡帕多西亞的石灰華所建造的新科普特教堂，后來沒蓋成；日本輕井澤那棟沒有明顯結構的房子，如今缺乏特征的玻璃表面上流淌著銹斑；西班牙塞維利亞那座食物博物館，本來有希望得獎，結果沒得；圣卡塔琳娜那座玩偶博物館，根本不該得獎的，卻得了。他們取笑自己上過的學校（麻省理工學院、耶魯大學、羅得島設計學院、哥倫比亞大學、哈佛大學），取笑盡管他們都曾被警告，說他們的人生會慘上好幾年，但他們所有人都一致假設自己會是例外（而且現(xiàn)在仍然一致暗自這么以為）。他們取笑自己賺的錢好少，取笑自己27歲、30歲或32歲了，還跟父母住、跟室友住、跟從事金融業(yè)的女友住、跟從事出版業(yè)的男友?。ㄟ€得壓榨你從事出版業(yè)的男友，因為他賺得比你還多，真是太慘了）。他們吹噓如果當初沒進悲慘的建筑業(yè)，他們會做哪一行：他們會成為策展人（大概是唯一賺得比現(xiàn)在少的工作）、葡萄酒侍酒師（好吧，唯二）、畫廊老板（唯三）、作家（好吧，唯四——顯然他們沒有一個有賺錢的能力，再怎么想象都沒用）。他們?yōu)榱俗约合矚g的建筑物和討厭的建筑物而吵架。他們?yōu)榱诉@個畫廊的攝影展和另一個畫廊的錄像藝術展而爭執(zhí)。他們大聲討論評論家，還有餐廳、哲學、材質。他們同情彼此有同輩獲得成功，也對于有同輩完全離開這一行，跑去門多薩養(yǎng)駱馬，去安娜堡當社工人員，或去成都當數學老師而幸災樂禍。
During the day, they played at being architects. Every now and then a client, his gaze helicoptering slowly around the room, would stop on one of them, usually either Margaret or Eduard, who were the best-looking among them, and Rausch, who was unusually attuned to shifts in attention away from himself, would call the singled-out over, as if beckoning a child to the adults’ dinner party. “Ah, yes, this is Margaret,” he’d say, as the client looked at her appraisingly, much as he had minutes before been looking at Rausch’s blueprints (blueprints finished in fact by Margaret). “She’ll be running me out of town someday soon, I’m sure.” And then he’d laugh his sad, contrived, walrus-bark laugh: “Ah! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
白天時，他們扮演建筑師。有時會有客戶來，目光緩緩在辦公室里打轉，然后停留在其中一人身上，通常不是瑪格麗特就是愛德華，這兩個是俊男美女，而不習慣目光焦點被人搶走的勞施，就會把客戶注意的那個人叫過來，好像把一個小孩叫到成人的晚餐席上?！鞍。堑?，這位是瑪格麗特?！彼f，此時客戶打量著她，就像幾分鐘前他打量著勞施的藍圖一樣（那藍圖其實是瑪格麗特完成的）?！八芸炀蜁盐医o干掉啦，我很確定?！比缓笏麜笮?，笑得很悲慘、很刻意，像是海象在叫，“啊——哈——哈——哈！”
Margaret would smile and say hello, and roll her eyes at them the moment she turned around. But they knew she was thinking what they were all thinking: Fuck you, Rausch. And: When? When will I replace you? When will it be my turn?
瑪格麗特會微笑著打招呼，然后一轉身就朝他們翻白眼。但他們知道她想的跟他們所有人都一樣：去你的，勞施。還有：什么時候？什么時候我會取代你？什么時候輪到我？
In the meantime, all they had was play: after the debating and the shouting and the eating, there was silence, and the office filled with the hollow tappings of mice being clicked and personal work being dragged from folders and opened, and the grainy sound of pencils being dragged across paper. Although they all worked at the same time, using the same company resources, no one ever asked to see anyone else’s work; it was as if they had collectively decided to pretend it didn’t exist. So you worked, drawing dream structures and bending parabolas into dream shapes, until midnight, and then you left, always with the same stupid joke: “See you in ten hours.” Or nine, or eight, if you were really lucky, if you were really getting a lot done that night.
同時，他們也只能繼續(xù)扮演建筑師：在辯論、大喊、吃東西之后，大家安靜下來，辦公室充滿點擊鼠標、把各自的工作從檔案夾里拖出來打開的空洞聲響，還有鉛筆畫過紙張的沙沙聲。雖然他們的上班時間都一樣，也使用同樣的公司資源，但從來沒有人要求看別人的工作，仿佛他們一起決定要假裝別人的工作不存在。于是你工作，畫出你夢想中的結構，把一道道拋物線彎成夢想的形狀，直到半夜12點，然后你離開，總是開著同樣的蠢玩笑：“十個小時后見啦。”或者九個小時，或者八個小時——如果你運氣真的不錯，如果你這一晚真的完成了很多工作。
Tonight was one of the nights Malcolm left alone, and early. Even if he walked out with someone else, he was never able to take the train with them; they all lived downtown or in Brooklyn, and he lived uptown. The benefit to walking out alone was that no one would witness him catching a cab. He wasn’t the only person in the office with rich parents—Katharine’s parents were rich as well, as, he was pretty sure, were Margaret’s and Frederick’s—but he lived with his rich parents, and the others didn’t.
今晚馬爾科姆獨自離開辦公室，而且頗早。即使他跟其他同事一起走出去，他也沒辦法跟他們一起去搭乘地鐵，其他人都住在下城或布魯克林，而他住在上城。獨自走出來的好處就是不會有人看到他攔出租車。他不是辦公室里唯一有富爸爸的人，凱瑟琳的爸媽也很有錢，此外他很確定瑪格麗特和弗雷德里克家境也不錯。但他還跟他的富爸爸住在一起，其他人則沒有。
He hailed a taxi. “Seventy-first and Lex,” he instructed the driver. When the driver was black, he always said Lexington. When the driver wasn’t, he was more honest: “Between Lex and Park, closer to Park.” JB thought this was ridiculous at best, offensive at worst. “You think they’re gonna think you’re any more gangster because they think you live at Lex and not Park?” he’d ask. “Malcolm, you’re a dumbass.”
他招了輛出租車?！?1街和列克星敦大道交叉口?！彼嬖V司機。碰到司機是黑人時，他總是說列克星敦大道。如果司機不是黑人，他就會比較誠實：“在列克星敦大道和公園大道之間，靠公園大道?！苯鼙扔X得他這樣，說好聽一點是荒謬，說難聽一點就是侮辱人?！澳阋詾樗麄円钦J為你住列克星敦大道，而不是公園大道，就會覺得你比較像幫派分子嗎？”他問，“馬爾科姆，你也太蠢了?！?
