《渺小一生》:在某些方面，聯(lián)邦檢察官辦公室會讓他回想起少年之家

　 The holiday ended and the fall semester began, and it didn’t take him long to realize that over that weekend, one of his friends must have said something to Harold, although he was certain it wasn’t Willem, who was the only one to whom he’d finally told something of his past—and even then, not very much at all: three facts, each more slender than the last, all meaningless, all of which combined to make not even a beginning of a story. Even the first sentences of a fairy tale had more detail than what he had told Willem: Once upon a time, a boy and a girl lived with their father, a woodcutter, and their stepmother, deep in a cold forest. The woodcutter loved his children, but he was very poor, and so one day … So whatever Harold had learned had been speculation, buttressed by their observations of him, their theories and guesses and fictions. But whatever it was, it had been enough to make Harold’s questions to him—about who he had been and where he had come from—stop.

假期結(jié)束，秋天的新學(xué)期開始。沒多久他就明白，那個周末，他的某個朋友一定跟哈羅德說了些什么，不過他確定不是威廉，他只跟威廉稍微提到一點自己的過去。即使在當時，提到的事情也很少，只有三項事實，一個比一個微小，全都沒有意義，加起來連一個故事的開頭都湊不出來。就連童話故事的第一句，都比他告訴威廉的三件事要更詳盡：從前有一個小男孩和一個小女孩，跟他們的伐木工父親和繼母，住在一片寒冷的森林深處。伐木工父親很疼愛子女，但他非常窮，于是有一天……所以，不管哈羅德得知了什么，都是其他人憑著觀察而推測的，只是一些推理、猜想和虛構(gòu)。但不管是什么，都足以讓哈羅德對他的提問（關(guān)于他的過去和他的家鄉(xiāng)）就此停止。

　 As the months and then the years passed, they developed a friendship in which the first fifteen years of his life remained unsaid and unspoken, as if they had never happened at all, as if he had been removed from the manufacturer’s box when he reached college, and a switch at the base of his neck had been flipped, and he had shuddered to life. He knew that those blank years were filled in by Harold’s own imaginings, and that some of those imaginings were worse than what had actually happened, and some were better. But Harold never told him what he supposed for him, and he didn’t really want to know.

隨著幾個月過去，然后是幾年，他們發(fā)展出了一種默契，從不談他15歲之前的事情，好像那十五年根本不存在。到了他去讀大學(xué)時，有人把他從工廠的箱子里拿出來，按下他頸部的開關(guān)，他就顫抖著活起來。他知道哈羅德僅憑自己的想象，去填補那空白的十五年，某些想象的片段比他真正經(jīng)歷過的更糟，某些則更好。但哈羅德從沒把自己想象的內(nèi)容告訴他，他也不想知道。

　 He had never considered their friendship contextual, but he was prepared for the likelihood that Harold and Julia did. And so when he moved to Washington for his clerkship, he assumed that they would forget him, and he tried to prepare himself for the loss. But that didn’t happen. Instead, they sent e-mails, and called, and when one or the other was in town, they would have dinner. In the summers, he and his friends visited Truro, and over Thanksgiving, they went to Cambridge. And when he moved to New York two years later to begin his job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Harold had been almost alarmingly excited for him. They had even offered to let him live in their apartment on the Upper West Side, but he knew they used it often, and he wasn’t sure how real their offer was, and so he declined.

他從不覺得他們的友誼是因為環(huán)境而形成的，但他覺得哈羅德和朱麗婭可能會這么想，也有心理準備。于是他搬去華盛頓當法官助理時，以為他們會忘了他，也試著做好失去這對朋友的準備。結(jié)果這并沒有發(fā)生。反之，他們寫電子郵件、打電話給他，每次其中一人到華盛頓時就會找他一起吃晚餐。夏天，他和朋友會去特魯羅度假；感恩節(jié)，他們會去劍橋市拜訪。兩年后他搬到紐約，開始在聯(lián)邦檢察官辦公室工作，哈羅德簡直替他興奮到不行，甚至提議讓他住他們夫婦在上西城的公寓，但他知道他們常去那里小住，而且他不確定這個提議有多認真，于是就婉拒了。

　 Every Saturday, Harold would call and ask him about work, and he’d tell him about his boss, Marshall, the deputy U.S. Attorney, who had the unnerving ability to recite entire Supreme Court decisions from memory, closing his eyes to summon a vision of the page in his mind, his voice becoming robotic and dull as he chanted, but never dropping or adding a word. He had always thought he had a good memory, but Marshall’s amazed him.

每個星期六，哈羅德會打電話問起他的工作，他會聊起他的上司，副聯(lián)邦檢察官馬歇爾。他的記憶力好得嚇人，能背出所有最高法院的決議，閉著眼睛就能隨便念上一段，念誦時聲音變得呆板而沉悶，但從來不會多一個字或少一個字。他總以為自己的記性很好，但馬歇爾的記憶力令他驚奇。

　 In some ways, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reminded him of the home: it was largely male, and the place fizzed with a particular and constant hostility, the kind of hissing acrimony that naturally arises whenever a group of highly competitive people who are all evenly matched are housed in the same small space with the understanding that only some of them would have the opportunity to distinguish themselves. (Here, though, they were matched in accomplishments; at the home, they were matched in hunger, in want.) All two hundred of the assistant prosecutors, it seemed, had attended one of five or six law schools, and virtually all of them had been on the law review and moot court at their respective schools. He was part of a four-person team that worked mostly on securities fraud cases, and he and his teammates each had something—a credential, an idiosyncrasy—that they hoped lifted them above the others: he had his master’s from MIT (which no one cared about but was at least an oddity) and his circuit court clerkship with Sullivan, with whom Marshall was friendly. Citizen, his closest friend at the office, had a law degree from Cambridge and had practiced as a barrister in London for two years before moving to New York. And Rhodes, the third in their trio, had been a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina after college. (The fourth on their team was a profoundly lazy guy named Scott who, it was rumored, had only gotten the job because his father played tennis with the president.)

在某些方面，聯(lián)邦檢察官辦公室會讓他回想起少年之家，大部分是男性，整個地方有一種特殊而持續(xù)的敵對氣氛。只要有一群不相上下、好勝心強的人待在同一個空間，而且明白其中只有少數(shù)人有機會脫穎而出，自然就會出現(xiàn)那種隱隱的唇槍舌劍（不過在這里，他們不相上下的是成就；在少年之家，他們不相上下的是饑渴和向往）。兩百個助理檢察官似乎都出自同樣的五六所法學(xué)院，差不多每個人都是各校的法學(xué)評論學(xué)刊編輯，當過模擬法庭辯論賽的代表。他這個小組有四個人，主要負責(zé)證券詐欺案件。他和組員各自有著不同的資歷和特質(zhì)，期望能憑借它們略勝別人一籌。他擁有麻省理工學(xué)院的碩士學(xué)位（就算沒人在乎，好歹也讓他與眾不同），曾擔(dān)任巡回法庭沙利文法官的助理，而馬歇爾和沙利文法官是好友。辦公室里他最要好的朋友西提任則在英國劍橋大學(xué)拿到法律學(xué)位，搬到紐約前曾在倫敦擔(dān)任兩年出庭律師。他們?nèi)私M里頭的第三人羅茲，大學(xué)畢業(yè)后拿了阿根廷的富布賴特獎學(xué)金赴美深造。（他們小組里的第四人是個很懶的家伙斯科特，謠傳他能得到這份工作，是因為他父親是總統(tǒng)的網(wǎng)球球友）

　 He was usually at the office, and sometimes, when he and Citizen and Rhodes were there late, eating takeout, he was reminded of being with his roommates in their suite at Hood. And although he enjoyed Citizen’s and Rhodes’s company, and the specificity and depth of their intelligence, he was in those moments nostalgic for his friends, who thought so differently than he did and who made him think differently as well. In the middle of one conversation with Citizen and Rhodes about logic, he recalled, suddenly, a question Dr. Li had asked him his freshman year, when he was auditioning to be accepted into his pure math seminar: Why are manhole covers round? It was an easy question, and easy to answer, but when he’d returned to Hood and had repeated Dr. Li’s question to his roommates, they were silent. And then finally JB had begun, in the dreamy tones of a wandering storyteller, “Once, very long ago, mammoths roamed the earth, and their footprints left permanent circular indentations in the ground,” and they had all laughed. He smiled, remembering it; he sometimes wished he had a mind like JB’s, one that could create stories that would delight others, instead of the mind he did have, which was always searching for an explanation, an explanation that, while perhaps correct, was empty of romance, of fancy, of wit.

他平常都待在辦公室。有時，跟西提任和羅茲加班到很晚，吃著外賣食物時，他會想起在虎德館的套房里和室友共度的日子。盡管他也很喜歡跟西提任和羅茲在一起，而且很尊敬他們獨特的、具有深度的智慧，但那些時刻，他總會懷念起他的好友。他們的想法跟他截然不同，讓他也跟著跳脫框架去思考。有回他跟西提任和羅茲討論邏輯到一半，忽然想起他碩一那年，為了參加李博士開的純數(shù)學(xué)專題研討課前去面試時，被問到一個問題：為什么人孔蓋是圓的？這是個簡單的問題，很容易回答，但是當他回到虎德館，把李博士的問題轉(zhuǎn)述給室友聽時，他們?nèi)汲聊徽Z。最后杰比終于開口，用流浪說書人那種柔和的口吻說：“很久很久以前，長毛象在地球到處漫步，它們的腳印在地上留下了永恒的圓形凹印。”他們?nèi)即笮ζ饋?。想到這件事，他露出微笑，有時他真希望自己有個像杰比一樣的腦子，可以編出讓別人開心的故事，而不是像他自己這樣，總是在尋找解釋。解釋可能是對的，卻缺乏浪漫、想象力，以及才思。

　 “Time to whip out the credentials,” Citizen would whisper to him on the occasions that the U.S. Attorney himself would emerge onto the floor and all the assistant prosecutors would buzz toward him, mothlike, as a multitude of gray suits. They and Rhodes would join the hover, but even in those gatherings he never mentioned the one credential he knew could have made not only Marshall but the U.S. Attorney as well stop and look at him more closely. After he’d gotten the job, Harold had asked him if he could mention him to Adam, the U.S. Attorney, with whom Harold was, it happened, longtime acquaintances. But he’d told Harold he wanted to know he could make it on his own. This was true, but the greater reason was that he was tentative about naming Harold as one of his assets, because he didn’t want Harold to regret his association with him. And so he’d said nothing.

“該去秀一下我們的資歷了?！泵糠曷?lián)邦檢察官本人來到這一樓，西提任就會偷偷這么跟他咬耳朵。此時，所有助理檢察官都會匆忙涌上去，一大群灰色西裝像飛蛾見到火似的。他們兩個和羅茲也會加入，但即使在那些時候，他也從來不曾提起他的王牌資歷，明知這資歷不但可以讓馬歇爾印象深刻，也會讓聯(lián)邦檢察官停下來多看他兩眼。在他得到這份工作后，哈羅德曾問他可否在亞當（也就是聯(lián)邦檢察官）面前提起他，因為哈羅德碰巧跟亞當認識很久了。但他跟哈羅德說他想靠自己。這是實話，但更重要的理由是，他不確定該把哈羅德的名字當成自己的資產(chǎn)，因為他不希望讓哈羅德后悔跟他來往。于是他什么都沒提。

　 Often, however, it felt as if Harold was there anyway. Reminiscing about law school (and its attendant activity, bragging about one’s accomplishments in law school) was a favorite pastime in the office, and because so many of his colleagues had gone to his school, quite a few of them knew Harold (and the others knew of him), and he’d sometimes listen to them talk about classes they’d taken with him, or how prepared they’d had to be for them, and would feel proud of Harold, and—though he knew it was silly—proud of himself for knowing him. The following year, Harold’s book about the Constitution would be published, and everyone in the office would read the acknowledgments and see his name and his affiliation with Harold would be revealed, and many of them would be suspicious, and he’d see worry in their faces as they tried to remember what they might have said about Harold in his presence. By that time, however, he would feel he had established himself in the office on his own, had found his own place alongside Citizen and Rhodes, had made his own relationship with Marshall.

然而，感覺上哈羅德好像還是在他身旁。辦公室里大家最喜歡的娛樂，就是回憶法學(xué)院（還有他們當時參加的活動，吹噓著各自在法學(xué)院的成就）。由于很多同事都跟他上過同一所法學(xué)院，其中不少人也認識哈羅德（還有一些人認識他），有時就會聽見他們談到自己修過哈羅德的課，或是為了這門課要做多少準備，聽到這些他深以哈羅德為榮，也以自己認識他為榮（雖然他覺得這樣很傻氣）。次年，哈羅德有關(guān)憲法的那本書即將出版，辦公室每個人都會讀到致謝辭，看到他的名字，知道他當過哈羅德的研究助理，很多人會開始起疑心，他會看到他們一臉擔(dān)心，努力回想曾在他面前說過哈羅德什么。然而到那時，他會覺得已經(jīng)靠自己在這個辦公室鞏固了地位，跟西提任和羅茲找到了自己的位置，和馬歇爾建立了關(guān)系。

　 But as much as he would have liked to, as much as he craved it, he was still cautious about claiming Harold as his friend: sometimes he worried that he was only imagining their closeness, inflating it hopefully in his mind, and then (to his embarrassment) he would have to retrieve The Beautiful Promise from his shelf and turn to the acknowledgments, reading Harold’s words again, as if it were itself a contract, a declaration that what he felt for Harold was at least in some degree reciprocated. And yet he was always prepared: It will end this month, he would tell himself. And then, at the end of the month: Next month. He won’t want to talk to me next month. He tried to keep himself in a constant state of readiness; he tried to prepare himself for disappointment, even as he yearned to be proven wrong.

他很愿意、也很渴望成為哈羅德的朋友，但他還是很謹慎地避免這么宣稱。有時他擔(dān)心兩人之間的親近根本是他自己想象出來的。因為太過期望，才會在心里讓這份交情膨脹，這時他就會（很尷尬地）把哈羅德《美麗的承諾》這本書從書架上抽出來，翻到致謝辭那一頁再讀一次，好像那致謝辭本身就是一份契約，宣告他對哈羅德的感覺至少在某種程度上是相互的。然而他一直準備著：這個月就會結(jié)束了，他會告訴自己。然后，到了月底：下個月，他下個月就不會想再理我了。他設(shè)法讓自己持續(xù)處于準備好的狀態(tài)，他設(shè)法讓自己做好失望的準備，即使他很渴望最后證明自己是錯的。

　 And still, the friendship spooled on and on, a long, swift river that had caught him in its slipstream and was carrying him along, taking him somewhere he couldn’t see. At every point when he thought that he had reached the limits of what their relationship would be, Harold or Julia flung open the doors to another room and invited him in. He met Julia’s father, a retired pulmonologist, and brother, an art history professor, when they visited from England one Thanksgiving, and when Harold and Julia came to New York, they took him and Willem out to dinner, to places they had heard about but couldn’t afford to visit on their own. They saw the apartment at Lispenard Street—Julia polite, Harold horrified—and the week that the radiators mysteriously stopped working, they left him a set of keys to their apartment uptown, which was so warm that for the first hour after he and Willem arrived, they simply sat on the sofa like mannequins, too stunned by the sudden reintroduction of heat into their lives to move. And after Harold witnessed him in the middle of an episode—this was the Thanksgiving after he moved to New York, and in his desperation (he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it upstairs), he had turned off the stove, where he had been sauteeing some spinach, and pulled himself into the pantry, where he had shut the door and laid down on the floor to wait—they had rearranged the house, so that the next time he visited, he found the spare bedroom had been moved to the ground-floor suite behind the living room where Harold’s study had been, and Harold’s desk and chair and books moved to the second floor.

然而，這份友誼一直持續(xù)下去，像一條湍急漫長的河，把他卷入水流中，帶著他往下，來到預(yù)想不到的地方。每當他覺得到達兩人關(guān)系的極限時，哈羅德和朱麗婭就會打開另一個房間的門，邀請他進入。有一年的感恩節(jié)，朱麗婭的家人從英格蘭來訪，他因此認識了朱麗婭的父親（一位退休的胸腔內(nèi)科醫(yī)生），以及哥哥（一位藝術(shù)史教授）。而哈羅德和朱麗婭來紐約時，會帶他和威廉出去吃晚餐，去一些他們聽過但吃不起的餐廳。他們夫婦也看過利斯本納街那間公寓（朱麗婭的態(tài)度保持禮貌，哈羅德則嚇壞了），恰好那個星期，公寓暖氣不知為何剛好壞了，他們把上西城公寓的鑰匙給了他一份。他和威廉一進去，就發(fā)現(xiàn)里頭實在太溫暖，剛到的第一個小時，他們就像兩個假人似的坐在沙發(fā)上，因為暖氣重回他們的生活而驚訝得無法動彈。而在哈羅德目睹他疼痛發(fā)作的樣子之后——事情發(fā)生在他搬回紐約后的那個感恩節(jié)，當時他正在廚房炒菠菜，絕望中（心知自己絕對沒法爬上二樓）他關(guān)掉爐火，拖著身子進入食品貯藏室，關(guān)上門躺在地板上等待——他們夫婦就重新安排了房子的格局，下回他去拜訪，發(fā)現(xiàn)樓上客房的家具被移到了一樓客廳后方的套房里，那原先是哈羅德的書房，而那里面的桌椅和書都被搬到了二樓。

　 But even after all of this, a part of him was always waiting for the day he’d come to a door and try the knob and it wouldn’t move. He didn’t mind that, necessarily; there was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return. He tried to give them what he could; he was aware it wasn’t much. And the things Harold gave him so easily—answers, affection—he couldn’t reciprocate.

即使在這一切之后，一部分的他還總是等待有一天自己會被關(guān)在一扇門外，門把轉(zhuǎn)不開。那樣他也未必會太介意，因為置身在一個毫無禁區(qū)、為他提供一切卻不要求回報的空間里，其實有點可怕，又讓人焦慮。他設(shè)法盡可能地對他們付出，但能給的實在不多。而哈羅德那么輕易地給予他的一切，無論是答案或關(guān)愛，都是他無法回報的。

　 One day after he’d known them for almost seven years, he was at the house in springtime. It was Julia’s birthday; she was turning fifty-one, and because she had been at a conference in Oslo for her fiftieth birthday, she’d decided that this would be her big celebration. He and Harold were cleaning the living room—or rather, he was cleaning, and Harold was plucking books at random from the shelves and telling him stories about how he’d gotten each one, or flipping back the covers so he could see other people’s names written inside, including a copy of The Leopard on whose flyleaf was scrawled: “Property of Laurence V. Raleigh. Do not take. Harold Stein, this means you!!”

認識他們將近七年的那個春天，有一天他在他們家。那是朱麗婭51歲的生日，前一年她50歲生日時去了奧斯陸參加學(xué)術(shù)會議，于是決定今年要好好慶祝一番。那天他和哈羅德正在打掃客廳，其實是他在打掃，哈羅德任意從書架上抽出一本書來，告訴他那本書是怎么得到的，或是翻開封面，讓他看看其他人寫在里頭的名字。其中有一本《豹》，書前的扉頁寫著“勞倫斯·瑞里的財產(chǎn)。不準拿走。哈羅德·斯坦，我就是在說你！！”

　 He had threatened to tell Laurence, and Harold had threatened him back. “You’d better not, Jude, if you know what’s good for you.”

當時他威脅要告訴勞倫斯，哈羅德也威脅他：“你最好不要，裘德。這樣對你可沒有好處?！?

　 “Or what?” he’d asked, teasing him.

“不然呢？”他問，逗著他。

　 “Or—this!” Harold had said, and had leaped at him, and before he could recognize that Harold was just being playful, he had recoiled so violently, torquing his body to avoid contact, that he had bumped into the bookcase and had knocked against a lumpy ceramic mug that Harold’s son, Jacob, had made, which fell to the ground and broke into three neat pieces. Harold had stepped back from him then, and there was a sudden, horrible silence, into which he had nearly wept.

“不然——這個！”哈羅德說著便朝他撲過去，他還沒來得及搞清楚哈羅德只是在玩鬧，就猛然往后縮，轉(zhuǎn)身想避開哈羅德，卻不小心撞上了書架，撞到一個凹凸不平的瓷杯，那是哈羅德的兒子雅各布做的。結(jié)果杯子掉到地上，摔成干凈利落的三片。哈羅德往后退，接著是一段可怕的沉默，他差點哭了出來。

　 “Harold,” he said, crouching to the ground, picking up the pieces, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” He wanted to beat himself against the floor; he knew this was the last thing Jacob had made Harold before he got sick. Above him, he could hear only Harold’s breathing.

“哈羅德，”他說，蹲在地上，撿起那些碎片，“我好抱歉，我好抱歉。請原諒我。”他真想把自己打趴在地板上，他知道這是雅各布生病之前幫哈羅德做的最后一件東西。在他上方，他只聽到哈羅德的呼吸聲。

　 “Harold, please forgive me,” he repeated, cupping the pieces in his palms. “I think I can fix this, though—I can make it better.” He couldn’t look up from the mug, its shiny buttered glaze.

“哈羅德，請你原諒我?！彼终f了一次，手里捧著那些碎片，“不過我想我可以修好，我可以弄得好一點?！彼粗R克杯發(fā)亮的乳白色釉面，不敢抬頭。

　 He felt Harold crouch beside him. “Jude,” Harold said, “it’s all right. It was an accident.” His voice was very quiet. “Give me the pieces,” he said, but he was gentle, and he didn’t sound angry.

他感覺到哈羅德蹲在他旁邊?！棒玫?，”哈羅德說，“沒關(guān)系，這是意外?！彼穆曇艉茌p，“把碎片給我?！彼f，但他的動作很輕柔，聽起來也不像生氣。

　 He did. “I can leave,” he offered.

他照做了?！拔铱梢噪x開?！彼f。

　 “Of course you’re not going to leave,” Harold said. “It’s okay, Jude.”

“你當然不能離開?！惫_德說，“沒事的，裘德?！?