《渺小一生》:但他沒(méi)想到是他們拋棄了他

　 And then, with each year, they abandoned him further. He had always known he would be the first among the four of them to be a success. This wasn’t arrogance: he just knew it. He worked harder than Malcolm, he was more ambitious than Willem. (He didn’t count Jude in this race, as Jude’s profession was one that operated on an entirely different set of metrics, one that didn’t much matter to him.) He was prepared to be the rich one, or the famous one, or the respected one, and he knew, even as he was dreaming about his riches and fame and respect, that he would remain friends with all of them, that he would never forsake them for anyone else, no matter how overwhelming the temptation might be. He loved them; they were his.

然后，隨著每一年過(guò)去，他們就把他拋得更遠(yuǎn)。他一直知道自己會(huì)是四個(gè)人之中最先成功的。這不是狂妄，他就是知道。他工作比馬爾科姆努力，也比威廉更有野心（在這個(gè)競(jìng)賽中，他沒(méi)把裘德算在內(nèi)，因?yàn)轸玫碌膶I(yè)自有一套完全不同的衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，而那套標(biāo)準(zhǔn)他并不關(guān)心）。他早就準(zhǔn)備好成為富有的那個(gè)，或是成名的那個(gè)，或是受尊敬的那個(gè)，而且他知道，即使當(dāng)他夢(mèng)想著自己變得富有、知名、受尊重時(shí)，他依然會(huì)是他們?nèi)齻€(gè)人的朋友，他永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)為了其他人而拋棄他們，無(wú)論誘惑有多么大。他愛(ài)他們；他們是他的。

　 But he hadn’t counted on them abandoning him, on them outgrowing him through their own accomplishments. Malcolm had his own business. Jude was doing whatever he did impressively enough so that when he was representing JB in a silly argument he’d had the previous spring with a collector he was trying to sue to reclaim an early painting that the collector had promised he could buy back and then reneged on, the collector’s lawyer had raised his eyebrows when JB had told him to contact his lawyer, Jude St. Francis. “St. Francis?” asked the opposing lawyer. “How’d you get him?” He told Black Henry Young about this, who wasn’t surprised. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Jude’s known for being icy, and vicious. He’ll get it for you, JB, don’t worry.” This had startled him: His Jude? Someone who literally hadn’t been able to lift his head and look him in the eye until their sophomore year? Vicious? He simply couldn’t imagine it. “I know,” said Black Henry Young, when he expressed his disbelief. “But he becomes someone else at work, JB; I saw him in court once and he was borderline frightening, just incredibly relentless. If I hadn’t known him, I’d’ve thought he was a giant asshole.” But Black Henry Young had turned out to be right—he got his painting back, and not only that, but he got a letter of apology from the collector as well.

但他沒(méi)想到是他們拋棄了他，沒(méi)想到他們因?yàn)樽约旱某删投阉麃G在后頭。馬爾科姆自己創(chuàng)業(yè)。裘德在工作上也非常厲害，有回還當(dāng)了他的代表律師。前一個(gè)春天，他和某收藏家之間發(fā)生了愚蠢的爭(zhēng)執(zhí)，他想告對(duì)方，好討回一件早期的畫(huà)作。當(dāng)初那收藏家承諾他隨時(shí)可以買回去，結(jié)果卻食言了。收藏家的律師聽(tīng)到杰比叫他聯(lián)絡(luò)自己的律師裘德·圣弗朗西斯時(shí)，抬起了眉毛?！笆ジダ饰魉梗俊睂?duì)方律師問(wèn)，“你怎么請(qǐng)得到他？”他后來(lái)跟黑亨利·楊講起這件事，但黑亨利·楊并不驚訝?！鞍](méi)錯(cuò)，”他說(shuō)，“裘德是出了名的冰冷無(wú)情，而且殘酷。他會(huì)幫你把畫(huà)討回來(lái)的，杰比，別擔(dān)心。”他很吃驚：他的裘德？大二之前根本沒(méi)法抬頭看著你眼睛的裘德？殘酷？他實(shí)在無(wú)法想象。“我知道，杰比，”黑亨利·楊聽(tīng)了他表達(dá)自己的難以置信之后說(shuō)，“不過(guò)他工作時(shí)就變了一個(gè)人。我有回在法庭上看到他，他簡(jiǎn)直令人害怕，無(wú)情得不得了。要不是之前就認(rèn)識(shí)他，我會(huì)以為他是個(gè)超級(jí)大混蛋?！苯Y(jié)果黑亨利·楊說(shuō)得沒(méi)錯(cuò)，他拿回了那幅畫(huà)，不僅如此，還收到了那個(gè)收藏家的一封道歉信。

　 And then, of course, there was Willem. The horrible, petty part of him had to admit that he had never, ever expected Willem to be as successful as he was. Not that he hadn’t wanted it for him—he had just never thought it would happen. Willem, with his lack of competitive spirit; Willem, with his deliberateness; Willem, who in college had turned down a starring role in Look Back in Anger to go tend to his sick brother. On the one hand, he had understood it, and on the other hand—his brother hadn’t been fatally ill, not then; even his own mother had told him not to come—he hadn’t. Where once his friends had needed him—for color, for excitement—they no longer did. He didn’t like to think of himself as someone who wanted his friends to be, well, not unsuccessful, but in thrall to him, but maybe he was.

當(dāng)然，還有威廉。他心底糟糕的、小氣的那個(gè)部分必須承認(rèn)，他從來(lái)、從來(lái)沒(méi)想到威廉會(huì)這么成功。他也不是不希望他成功，只不過(guò)從來(lái)沒(méi)想到會(huì)真的發(fā)生。缺乏好勝心的威廉、從容不迫的威廉，大學(xué)時(shí)代還曾放棄主演《怒回首》的機(jī)會(huì)，好回家照顧生病的哥哥。一方面他懂，但另一方面他也不懂——他哥哥當(dāng)時(shí)又沒(méi)病危，就連威廉的母親也叫他不要回去。以前，他的朋友需要他的活潑和興奮，但現(xiàn)在不再是如此了。他不喜歡把自己想成一個(gè)希望朋友受他控制的人，但或許他就是這樣。

　 The thing he hadn’t realized about success was that success made people boring. Failure also made people boring, but in a different way: failing people were constantly striving for one thing—success. But successful people were also only striving to maintain their success. It was the difference between running and running in place, and although running was boring no matter what, at least the person running was moving, through different scenery and past different vistas. And yet here again, it seemed that Jude and Willem had something he didn’t, something that was protecting them from the suffocating ennui of being successful, from the tedium of waking up and realizing that you were a success and that every day you had to keep doing whatever it was that made you a success, because once you stopped, you were no longer a success, you were becoming a failure. He sometimes thought that the real thing that distinguished him and Malcolm from Jude and Willem was not race or wealth, but Jude’s and Willem’s depthless capacity for wonderment: their childhoods had been so paltry, so gray, compared to his, that it seemed they were constantly being dazzled as adults. The June after they graduated, the Irvines had gotten them all tickets to Paris, where, it emerged, they had an apartment—“a tiny apartment,” Malcolm had clarified, defensively—in the seventh. He had been to Paris with his mother in junior high, and again with his class in high school, and between his sophomore and junior years of college, but it wasn’t until he had seen Jude’s and Willem’s faces that he was able to most vividly realize not just the beauty of the city but its promise of enchantments. He envied this in them, this ability they had (though he realized that in Jude’s case at least, it was a reward for a long and punitive childhood) to still be awestruck, the faith they maintained that life, adulthood, would keep presenting them with astonishing experiences, that their marvelous years were not behind them. He remembered too watching them try uni for the first time, and their reactions—like they were Helen Keller and were just comprehending that that cool splash on their hands had a name, and that they could know it—made him both impatient and intensely envious. What must it feel like to be an adult and still discovering the world’s pleasures?

關(guān)于成功，有一點(diǎn)他以前一直不明白，那就是成功會(huì)讓人變得無(wú)趣。失敗也會(huì)讓人無(wú)趣，但無(wú)趣的方式不同。失敗的人會(huì)不斷努力追求一件事：成功。但成功的人也只會(huì)努力維持他們的成功。跑步和原地跑步是不一樣的。盡管跑步無(wú)論如何都很無(wú)聊，但至少是在移動(dòng)，會(huì)經(jīng)過(guò)不同的風(fēng)景，看到不同的景象。同樣的，裘德和威廉似乎擁有一些他沒(méi)有的東西，能讓他們遠(yuǎn)離成功所帶來(lái)的那種令人窒息的倦怠，遠(yuǎn)離那種單調(diào)乏味：你一覺(jué)醒來(lái)明白自己成功了，但接著你每天都要繼續(xù)做那些讓你成功的事情，因?yàn)橐坏┠阃Ｏ聛?lái)，你就再也不是成功人士，而是失敗人士了。他有時(shí)覺(jué)得他和馬爾科姆真正與裘德和威廉的差異，不是他們的種族或財(cái)富，而是裘德和威廉所擁有的無(wú)窮的感知驚奇的能力；比起他來(lái)，他們的童年過(guò)得太可憐、太無(wú)趣了，成年后他們似乎長(zhǎng)年處于一種眼花繚亂的狀態(tài)中。他們畢業(yè)后的那年六月，歐文夫婦買機(jī)票送他們四個(gè)去巴黎玩，原來(lái)他們家在巴黎第七區(qū)有一間公寓?！昂苄〉墓??！瘪R爾科姆當(dāng)時(shí)忙著澄清。他初中時(shí)跟母親去過(guò)巴黎，高中又跟同學(xué)去過(guò)，大二升大三的暑假也去了。不過(guò)直到他看到裘德和威廉的臉，他才強(qiáng)烈地體會(huì)到這個(gè)城市的美，和它充滿希望的魔力。他羨慕他們依然擁有這種被驚呆的能力（不過(guò)他也明白，至少對(duì)裘德而言，那是經(jīng)歷了漫長(zhǎng)而苛刻的童年所得到的回報(bào)），羨慕他們一直相信在成年后的人生中會(huì)持續(xù)地體驗(yàn)到種種驚奇，相信最神奇的歲月還在前面等著他們。他也記得他們第一次吃海膽，他們那種反應(yīng)讓他在不耐煩之余又羨慕得要命（好像他們是海倫·凱勒，才剛明白手上那一攤冰涼的玩意兒有個(gè)名字，而他們竟然有幸認(rèn)識(shí)）。身為成人還能發(fā)現(xiàn)這個(gè)世界的種種愉悅，會(huì)是什么樣的感覺(jué)??？

　 And that, he sometimes felt, was why he loved being high so much: not because it offered an escape from everyday life, as so many people thought, but because it made everyday life seem less everyday. For a brief period—briefer and briefer with each week—the world was splendid and unknown.

他有時(shí)覺(jué)得，這就是為什么他這么喜歡嗑藥的原因。不像很多人以為的，是因?yàn)樗幬锟梢宰屇闾颖苋粘Ｉ睿撬幬镒屓粘Ｉ钏坪醪荒敲慈粘Ａ?。嗑了藥之后，在短暫的一段時(shí)間內(nèi)（每個(gè)星期漸漸縮短），整個(gè)世界會(huì)變得美妙而未知。

　 At other times, he wondered whether it was the world that had lost its color, or his friends themselves. When had everyone become so alike? Too often, it seemed that the last time people were so interesting had been college; grad school. And then they had, slowly but inevitably, become like everyone else. Take the members of Backfat: in school, they had marched topless, the three of them fat and luscious and jiggly, all the way down the Charles to protest cutbacks to Planned Parenthood (no one had been sure how the toplessness had been relevant, but whatever), and played amazing sets in the Hood Hall basement, and lit an effigy of an antifeminist state senator on fire in the Quad. But now Francesca and Marta were talking about having babies, and moving from their Bushwick loft into a Boerum Hill brownstone, and Edie was actually, actually starting a business for real this time, and last year, when he’d suggested they stage a Backfat reunion, they had all laughed, although he hadn’t been joking. His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn’t stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in fluorescents, were gone. Everyone had been so much more entertaining then. What had happened?

但其他時(shí)候他會(huì)很納悶：到底是這個(gè)世界失去了色彩，還是他的朋友失去了色彩？從什么時(shí)候開(kāi)始，每個(gè)人都變得這么相似？他常常覺(jué)得，上回人們這么有趣是在大學(xué)時(shí)代、研究生時(shí)代，然后他們就緩慢但不可避免地變得跟其他人一樣了。就拿“背脂”樂(lè)團(tuán)那三個(gè)女同志來(lái)說(shuō)吧，在學(xué)校的時(shí)候，她們?nèi)齻€(gè)曾光著上身，晃著肥大又肉感的胸脯一路走到查爾斯河，抗議政府削減了對(duì)“計(jì)劃生育聯(lián)盟”的補(bǔ)助（沒(méi)人確定裸身跟這個(gè)抗議有什么關(guān)系，但管他的）；她們?cè)诨⒌吗^地下室演唱了很棒的歌曲，還曾在宿舍外頭的方院點(diǎn)火燒掉了某個(gè)反女權(quán)主義的州參議員的畫(huà)像。但現(xiàn)在弗朗西斯卡和馬爾塔在談?wù)撘『?，還從布什維克的工業(yè)風(fēng)公寓搬到波倫丘的褐石公寓。而伊迪這回是真的、真的自己創(chuàng)業(yè)了。去年，他建議她們辦個(gè)重新合體的紀(jì)念演唱會(huì)，她們?nèi)看笮?，但他并沒(méi)有開(kāi)玩笑的意思。這種執(zhí)著的懷舊讓他沮喪，感覺(jué)自己老了。然而，他忍不住覺(jué)得，最光輝燦爛、一切都是熒光色的年代已經(jīng)過(guò)去了。以前每個(gè)人都有趣多了。到底發(fā)生了什么事？

　 Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one’s relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content. The march forward, one dictated by biology and convention, that not even the most irreverent mind could withstand.

老了，他猜想。隨之而來(lái)的，就是工作、金錢、子女。預(yù)防死亡的事物，確保人生有意義的事物，提供撫慰、背景與內(nèi)容的事物。大家就這樣被生物學(xué)和傳統(tǒng)習(xí)俗支配著往前走，就連最心懷不敬的人都無(wú)法抵抗。

　 But those were his peers. What he really wanted to know was when his friends had become so conventional, and why he hadn’t noticed earlier. Malcolm had always been conventional, of course, but he had expected, somehow, more from Willem and Jude. He knew how awful this sounded (and so he never said it aloud), but he often thought that he had been cursed with a happy childhood. What if, instead, something actually interesting had happened to him? As it was, the only interesting thing that had happened to him was that he had attended a mostly white prep school, and that wasn’t even interesting. Thank god he wasn’t a writer, or he’d have had nothing to write about. And then there was someone like Jude, who hadn’t grown up like everyone else, and didn’t look like everyone else, and yet who JB knew was constantly trying to make himself exactly like everyone else. He would have taken Willem’s looks, of course, but he would have killed something small and adorable to have looked like Jude, to have had a mysterious limp that was really more of a glide and to have the face and body that he did. But Jude spent most of his time trying to stand still and look down, as if by doing so, no one would notice he existed. This had been sad and yet somewhat understandable in college, when Jude had been so childlike and bony that it made JB’s joints hurt to look at him, but these days, now that he’d grown into his looks, JB found it simply enraging, especially as Jude’s self-consciousness often interfered with his own plans.

但那是他的同伴。他真正想知道的是他的朋友們?cè)趺磿?huì)變得這么傳統(tǒng)，而且為什么他沒(méi)有更早留意到。當(dāng)然了，馬爾科姆一直很傳統(tǒng)，但不知怎的，他對(duì)威廉和裘德的期望更高。他知道這聽(tīng)起來(lái)有多可怕（所以他從沒(méi)說(shuō)出口），但他常想自己是因?yàn)榭鞓?lè)的童年而遭殃的。如果他童年有過(guò)什么真正有趣的遭遇呢？唯一發(fā)生在他身上有趣的事情，就是讀了一所大部分是白人的預(yù)備學(xué)校，但根本不有趣。感謝老天他不是作家，不然他就沒(méi)有東西可以寫(xiě)了。像裘德，成長(zhǎng)的過(guò)程不像其他人，看起來(lái)也不像其他人，然而杰比知道，裘德一直努力讓自己看起來(lái)跟其他人沒(méi)有兩樣。如果可以交換，他當(dāng)然很愿意擁有威廉的容貌；他愿意殺掉某個(gè)可愛(ài)的小動(dòng)物，以換取裘德的外形——那種神秘的跛行（其實(shí)比較像滑行），還有他的臉和身體。但裘德大部分時(shí)間都設(shè)法挺直身子并低著頭，好像這么一來(lái)，就不會(huì)有人注意到他的存在。這樣真的很可惜，在大學(xué)時(shí)代還可以理解，當(dāng)時(shí)的裘德像個(gè)小孩，瘦巴巴的，光是看著他都會(huì)讓杰比覺(jué)得關(guān)節(jié)發(fā)疼。但現(xiàn)在，裘德已經(jīng)長(zhǎng)大成人，杰比看他還那樣就會(huì)很生氣，尤其是裘德的難為情往往跟他自己的計(jì)劃相沖突。

　 “Do you want to spend your life just being completely average and boring and typical?” he’d once asked Jude (this was during their second big fight, when he was trying to get Jude to pose nude, an argument he’d known even before he’d begun it that he had no chance at all of winning).

“你這輩子想永遠(yuǎn)當(dāng)個(gè)一般、無(wú)聊、典型的人嗎？”他有回問(wèn)裘德。（這是在他們第二度大吵期間，當(dāng)時(shí)他想說(shuō)服裘德讓他畫(huà)裸像，但在開(kāi)口前就明白自己完全沒(méi)有勝算。）

　 “Yes, JB,” Jude had said, giving him that gaze he sometimes summoned, which was intimidating, even slightly scary, in its flat blankness. “That’s in fact exactly what I want.”

“是的，杰比?！濒玫庐?dāng)時(shí)回答他，用那種偶爾刻意表現(xiàn)出來(lái)的空蕩、平靜的眼神看他，令人生畏，甚至有點(diǎn)可怕，“其實(shí)那恰恰就是我想要的?！?

　 Sometimes he suspected that all Jude really wanted to do in life was hang out in Cambridge with Harold and Julia and play house with them. Last year, for example, JB had been invited on a cruise by one of his collectors, a hugely wealthy and important patron who had a yacht that plied the Greek islands and that was hung with modern masterpieces that any museum would have been happy to own—only they were installed in the bathroom of a boat.

有時(shí)他懷疑裘德這輩子唯一想要的，就是在劍橋市跟哈羅德、朱麗婭一起玩扮家家酒。比如去年，杰比的一個(gè)收藏家邀請(qǐng)他參加巡航之旅，那位收藏家非常有錢，而且是重要的藝術(shù)贊助人，有艘游艇定期往返于希臘諸島間，船上還有博物館級(jí)的現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)大師作品，雖然都放在船上的洗手間里。

　 Malcolm had been working on his project in Doha, or somewhere, but Willem and Jude had been in town, and he’d called Jude and asked him if he wanted to go: The collector would pay their way. He would send his plane. It would be five days on a yacht. He didn’t know why he even needed to have a conversation. “Meet me at Teterboro,” he should’ve just texted them. “Bring sunscreen.”

馬爾科姆當(dāng)時(shí)在多哈或哪里忙他的案子，但威廉和裘德在紐約，于是他打電話給裘德，問(wèn)他要不要一起去：全部由那個(gè)收藏家出錢，他會(huì)派私人飛機(jī)來(lái)接他們，然后一起在游艇上過(guò)五天。他不知道自己為什么還要打電話問(wèn)，其實(shí)發(fā)條短信給他們就行了：跟我在泰特伯洛機(jī)場(chǎng)碰面，要帶防曬油。

　 But no, he had asked, and Jude had thanked him. And then Jude had said, “But that’s over Thanksgiving.”

但是，他問(wèn)了。裘德謝謝他，接著說(shuō)：“可是那是感恩節(jié)?！?

　 “So?” he’d asked.

“所以呢？”他問(wèn)。

　 “JB, thank you so much for inviting me,” Jude had said, as he listened in disbelief. “It sounds incredible. But I have to go to Harold and Julia’s.”

“杰比，很謝謝你邀請(qǐng)我，”裘德說(shuō)，他不敢置信地聽(tīng)著，“聽(tīng)起來(lái)好像很棒，但是我得去哈羅德和朱麗婭家?！?

　 He had been gobsmacked by this. Of course, he too was very fond of Harold and Julia, and like the others, he too could see how good they were for Jude, and how he’d become slightly less haunted with their friendship, but come on! It was Boston. He could always see them. But Jude said no, and that was that. (And then, of course, because Jude said no, Willem had said no as well, and in the end, he had ended up with the two of them and Malcolm in Boston, seething at the scene around the table—parental stand-ins; friends of the parental stand-ins; lots of mediocre food; liberals having arguments with one another about Democratic politics that involved a lot of shouting about issues they all agreed on—that was so clichéd and generic that he wanted to scream and yet held such bizarre fascination for Jude and Willem.)

他完全目瞪口呆。當(dāng)然，他也很喜歡哈羅德和朱麗婭，而且跟其他人一樣，他看得出來(lái)他們對(duì)裘德多么有益，讓裘德變得沒(méi)那么依賴他們的友誼，但是拜托！那是波士頓，他隨時(shí)都可以去看他們。但是裘德說(shuō)不，沒(méi)得商量。（然后，當(dāng)然，因?yàn)轸玫抡f(shuō)不，于是威廉也說(shuō)不。到最后，他只好跟著他們兩個(gè)和馬爾科姆去了波士頓，看著晚餐桌上的場(chǎng)景生悶氣——替身父母，替身父母的朋友，一大堆平庸的食物，自由派爭(zhēng)執(zhí)著民主黨的政治，為了一些他們?nèi)纪獾淖h題而大聲叫嚷。這一切真是老套平凡得讓他想尖叫，不過(guò)對(duì)裘德和威廉卻有種異乎尋常的魅力。）

　 So which had come first: becoming close to Jackson or realizing how boring his friends were? He had met Jackson after the opening of his second show, which had come almost five years after his first. The show was called “Everyone I’ve Ever Known Everyone I’ve Ever Loved Everyone I’ve Ever Hated Everyone I’ve Ever Fucked” and was exactly that: a hundred and fifty fifteen-by-twenty-two-inch paintings on thin pieces of board of the faces of everyone he had ever known. The series had been inspired by a painting he had done of Jude and given to Harold and Julia on the day of Jude’s adoption. (God, he loved that painting. He should have just kept it. Or he should have exchanged it: Harold and Julia would’ve been happy with a less-superior piece, as long as it was of Jude. The last time he had been in Cambridge, he had seriously considered stealing it, slipping it off its hook in the hallway and stuffing it into his duffel bag before he left.) Once again, “Everyone I’ve Ever Known” was a success, although it hadn’t been the series he had wanted to do; the series he had wanted to do was the series he was working on now.

所以哪個(gè)先發(fā)生：是先跟杰克遜走得近，還是先領(lǐng)悟到他的好友們有多么無(wú)趣？他是在第二次個(gè)展開(kāi)幕時(shí)認(rèn)識(shí)杰克遜的，也就是他舉辦第一次個(gè)展將近五年后。那次個(gè)展的標(biāo)題是“我認(rèn)識(shí)的每個(gè)人、我愛(ài)過(guò)的每個(gè)人、我恨過(guò)的每個(gè)人、我上過(guò)的每個(gè)人”，而且展覽內(nèi)容就是如此：一百五十幅十五乘二十二英寸的畫(huà)作，上面是一張張畫(huà)在薄紙板上的臉，都是他認(rèn)識(shí)的人。激發(fā)這個(gè)系列的靈感，是他在裘德被收養(yǎng)那天送給哈羅德和朱麗婭的一幅裘德畫(huà)像。（老天，他好愛(ài)那幅畫(huà)。他真該自己留著的?；蛘邞?yīng)該用另一幅比較不那么出色的去交換：反正只要是畫(huà)裘德，哈羅德和朱麗婭都會(huì)很高興。上回他去劍橋市的時(shí)候，還認(rèn)真考慮要偷走那幅畫(huà)，趁離開(kāi)前從門廳的掛鉤上拿下來(lái)，塞進(jìn)他的大旅行袋里。）再一次，“我認(rèn)識(shí)的每個(gè)人”個(gè)展很成功，雖然那個(gè)系列并不是他真正想做的；他真正想做的，是他手頭正在進(jìn)行的系列。

　 Jackson was another of the gallery’s artists, and although JB had known of him, he had never actually met him before, and was surprised, after being introduced to him at the dinner after the opening, how much he had liked him, how unexpectedly funny he was, because Jackson was not the type of person he’d normally gravitate toward. For one thing, he hated, really hated Jackson’s work: he made found sculptures, but of the most puerile and obvious sort, like a Barbie doll’s legs glued to the bottom of a can of tuna fish. Oh god, he’d thought, the first time he’d seen that on the gallery’s website. He’s being represented by the same gallery as I am? He didn’t even consider it art. He considered it provocation, although only a high-school student—no, a junior-high student—would consider it provocative. Jackson thought the pieces Kienholzian, which offended JB, and he didn’t even like Kienholz.

杰克遜也是那個(gè)畫(huà)廊代理的藝術(shù)家。杰比知道這個(gè)人，但是之前從沒(méi)見(jiàn)過(guò)，在開(kāi)幕后的例行晚宴上經(jīng)人介紹認(rèn)識(shí)后，他很驚訝自己那么喜歡他，也驚訝他居然這么有趣。杰克遜不是平常會(huì)吸引他的那一型。首先，他非常、非常討厭杰克遜的作品，他做的是現(xiàn)成物雕塑，但都使用了最愚蠢又明顯的那類現(xiàn)成物，比如，把芭比娃娃的兩條腿粘在一個(gè)鮪魚(yú)罐頭的底部。啊老天，他第一次在畫(huà)廊網(wǎng)站上看到那件作品時(shí)心想，他跟我是同一間畫(huà)廊代理的？他甚至不覺(jué)得那是藝術(shù)，而是挑釁，不過(guò)只有高中生——不，初中生——才會(huì)認(rèn)為那是挑釁。杰克遜認(rèn)為自己的作品有金霍爾茲（Edward Kienholz）的特征，讓杰比覺(jué)得被冒犯了，而且他根本不喜歡金霍茲。

　 For another, Jackson was rich: so rich that he had never worked a single day in his life. So rich that his gallerist had agreed to represent him (or so everyone said, and god, he hoped it was true) as a favor to Jackson’s father. So rich that his shows sold out because, it was rumored, his mother—who had divorced Jackson’s father, a manufacturer of some sort of essential widget of airplane machinery, when Jackson was young and married an inventor of some sort of essential widget of heart transplant surgeries—bought out all his shows and then auctioned the pieces, driving up the prices and then buying them back, inflating Jackson’s sales record. Unlike other rich people he knew—including Malcolm and Richard and Ezra—Jackson only rarely pretended not to be rich. JB had always found the others’ parsimoniousness put-on and irritating, but seeing Jackson once smack down a hundred-dollar bill for two candy bars when they were both high and giggly and starving at three in the morning, telling the cashier to keep the change, had sobered him. There was something obscene about how careless Jackson was with money, something that reminded JB that as much as he thought of himself otherwise, he too was boring, and conventional, and his mother’s son.

第二，杰克遜很有錢，有錢到他這輩子沒(méi)有上過(guò)一天班。有錢到他的畫(huà)廊經(jīng)理會(huì)同意代理他（每個(gè)人都是這樣說(shuō)，老天，他希望這是真的）是為了給杰克遜父親一個(gè)人情。有錢到他的展覽作品全部賣光光，謠傳是因?yàn)樗哪赣H（某種飛機(jī)基本機(jī)械零件的生產(chǎn)商，她在杰克遜很小的時(shí)候就和他父親離婚了，嫁給了一個(gè)投資心臟移植手術(shù)所需的某種基本小裝置的商人）買下了所有作品，然后送去拍賣，把價(jià)錢頂高后再買回來(lái)，好抬高杰克遜的成交價(jià)紀(jì)錄。跟他所認(rèn)識(shí)的其他有錢人（包括馬爾科姆、理查德、埃茲拉）不同，杰克遜很少假裝自己不是有錢人。每次杰比發(fā)現(xiàn)其他的有錢朋友假裝節(jié)省，就覺(jué)得這些人很煩；但有回清晨3點(diǎn)他們嗑多了藥咯咯傻笑，又餓得半死，跑去雜貨店買兩條巧克力棒，他看到杰克遜拿出一張百元大鈔拍在桌面，跟店員說(shuō)不用找了，這讓他當(dāng)場(chǎng)清醒過(guò)來(lái)。杰克遜對(duì)錢的漫不經(jīng)心有種令人厭惡的特質(zhì)，提醒杰比：盡管他不這么認(rèn)為，但其實(shí)他自己也很無(wú)趣、很傳統(tǒng)，而且是他母親的乖兒子。

　 For a third, Jackson wasn’t even good-looking. He supposed he was straight—at any rate, there were always girls around, girls whom Jackson treated disdainfully and yet who drifted after him, lint-like, their faces smooth and empty—but he was the least sexy person JB had ever met. Jackson had very pale hair, almost white, and pimple-stippled skin, and teeth that were clearly once expensive-looking but had gone the color of dust and whose gaps were grouted with butter-yellow tartar, the sight of which repulsed JB.

第三點(diǎn)，杰克遜甚至長(zhǎng)得不好看。他猜想他是異性戀者，無(wú)論如何，他身邊總是圍繞著年輕女人，杰克遜對(duì)待她們的態(tài)度很輕蔑，但那些皮膚光滑、表情空虛的女人還是老纏著他，像甩不掉的線頭似的。他是杰比見(jiàn)過(guò)最不性感的人了。杰克遜的頭發(fā)是淺黃色，幾近純白的，一臉痘疤，牙齒看起來(lái)顯然很昂貴，但已經(jīng)轉(zhuǎn)為臟灰色，牙縫間結(jié)了一道道奶油黃的牙結(jié)石，讓杰比看了就惡心。