《渺小一生》:他很努力地不要在夜里哭，但

　 He knew how to cook. He could only make a dozen or so dishes from start to finish, but he knew how to clean and peel potatoes, carrots, rutabaga. He could chop hills of onions and never cry. He could debone a fish and knew how to pluck and clean a chicken. He knew how to make dough, he knew how to make bread. He knew how to whip egg whites until they transformed from liquid to solid to something better than solid: something like air given form.

他會做菜。雖然只會十幾道菜，但他知道如何清洗馬鈴薯、胡蘿卜、蕪菁甘藍并削皮，也能切出一堆洋蔥而不掉淚。他會去魚骨頭，也懂得拔雞毛并清理。他會做生面團、烤面包，還會把蛋白從液體打成固體、再打成某種比固體更好的形態(tài)，就像有形的空氣一樣。

　 And he knew how to garden. He knew which plants craved sun and which shied from it. He knew how to determine whether a plant was parched or drowning in too much water. He knew when a tree or bush needed to be repotted, and when it was hardy enough to be transferred into the earth. He knew which plants needed to be protected from cold, and how to protect them. He knew how to make a clipping and how to make the clipping grow. He knew how to mix fertilizer, how to add eggshells into the soil for extra protein, how to crush an aphid without destroying the leaf it was perched on. He could do all of these things, although he was hoping he would get to garden, because he wanted to work outside, and on his morning runs, he could feel that summer was coming, and on their drives to the track, he had seen fields in bloom with wildflowers, and he wanted to be among them.

而且他會園藝。他知道哪種植物喜歡陽光，哪一種又不喜歡。他可以判定一棵植物是太干還是澆了太多水。他知道一棵喬木或灌木什么時候需要換盆，什么時候又強壯到可以移植到土地上。他知道哪種植物要防寒、如何防寒。他知道如何剪枝、插枝。他知道如何混合肥料，在土里加上蛋殼好增加蛋白質(zhì)，如何掐死一只蚜蟲而不傷到底下的葉子。他可以做這一切，雖然他比較希望是和園藝相關(guān)的，因為他想在戶外工作，而且早晨跑步時，他可以感覺到夏天快來了，開車去田徑場時，他看到了田野間開著野花，真想置身其中。

　 Brother Luke knelt by him. “You’re going to do what you did with Father Gabriel and a couple of the brothers,” he said, and then, slowly, he understood what Luke was saying, and he stepped back toward the bed, everything within him seizing with fear. “Jude, it’s going to be different now,” Luke said, before he could say anything. “It’ll be over so fast, I promise you. And you’re so good at it. And I’ll be waiting in the bathroom to make sure nothing goes wrong, all right?” He stroked his hair. “Come here,” he said, and held him. “You are a wonderful kid,” he said. “It’s because of you and what you’re doing that we’re going to have our cabin, all right?” Brother Luke had talked and talked, and finally, he had nodded.

盧克修士跪在他旁邊。“你要做你跟蓋柏瑞神父和其他兩個修士做過的那些事。”修士說。然后緩緩地，他明白盧克的意思了。他往后退向床邊，忽然滿心恐懼?！棒玫?，現(xiàn)在會不一樣的。”盧克沒等他回答就說，“會結(jié)束得很快，我保證。而且你很擅長的。我會在浴室等著，確保不會出錯，好嗎？”他摸著他的頭發(fā)。“過來這里，”他說，然后抱著他，“你是個很棒的孩子，”他說，“因為你和你所做的一切，我們就能擁有我們的小木屋了，好嗎？”盧克修士說了又說，他終于點頭。

　 The man had come in (many years later, his would be one of the very few of their faces he would remember, and sometimes, he would see men on the street and they would look familiar, and he would think: How do I know him? Is he someone I was in court with? Was he the opposing counsel on that case last year? And then he would remember: he looks like the first of them, the first of the clients) and Luke had gone to the bathroom, which was just behind his bed, and he and the man had had sex and then the man had left.

那個男人走進來（多年后，這會是那些人里頭極少數(shù)他記得的臉之一，有時他在路上看到某個男人，覺得眼熟，便想：我怎么會認識他？是我在法庭見過的人嗎？是去年那個案子的對手律師嗎？然后他會想起來：他看起來就像第一個顧客），盧克則去緊臨他床鋪后方的浴室里。接下來他和那男人性交，之后那男人便離開了。

　 That night he was very quiet, and Luke was gentle and tender with him. He had even brought him a cookie—a gingersnap—and he had tried to smile at Luke, and tried to eat it, but he couldn’t, and when Luke wasn’t looking, he wrapped it in a piece of paper and threw it away. The next day he hadn’t wanted to go to the track in the morning, but Luke had said he’d feel better with some exercise, and so they had gone and he had tried to run, but it was too painful and he had eventually sat down and waited until Luke said they could leave.

那天夜里他很安靜，盧克對他和善又溫柔，甚至拿了一塊餅干給他，是一塊脆姜餅干。他設(shè)法對盧克微笑，設(shè)法吃下去，但他沒有辦法。于是他趁盧克沒注意時，用一張紙把餅干包起來丟掉。次日早上他不想去田徑場跑步，但盧克說他運動一下會覺得比較好過，于是他去了，試著跑步，但實在太痛了，最后他就坐下來，直到盧克說他們可以離開了。

　 Now their routine was different: they still had classes in the mornings and afternoons, but now, some evenings, Brother Luke brought back men, his clients. Sometimes there was just one; sometimes there were several. The men brought their own towels and their own sheets, which they fitted over the bed before they began and unpeeled and took with them when they left.

現(xiàn)在他們的每日固定作息不一樣了：上午和下午還是會上課，但現(xiàn)在某些夜晚，盧克修士會帶男人回來，那是他的顧客。那些男人會帶著自己的毛巾和床單，開始之前先鋪在床上，離開時再帶走。

　 He tried very hard not to cry at night, but when he did, Brother Luke would come sit with him and rub his back and comfort him. “How many more until we can get the cabin?” he asked, but Luke just shook his head, sadly. “I won’t know for a while,” he said. “But you’re doing such a good job, Jude. You’re so good at it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” But he knew there was something shameful about it. No one had ever told him there was, but he knew anyway. He knew what he was doing was wrong.

他很努力地不要在夜里哭，但有時忍不住，盧克修士會坐在他旁邊，撫著他的背安慰他?！斑€要多少，我們才能蓋小木屋？”他問，但盧克只是哀傷地搖頭?！皶簳r還不知道?！彼f，“但你做得很好，裘德。你很擅長這個。沒什么好羞愧的。”但他知道這事情就是有什么可恥的地方。沒有人跟他說過，但他就是知道。他知道自己做的是錯的。

　 And then, after a few months—and many motels; they moved every ten days or so, all around east Texas, and with every move, Luke took him to the forest, which really was beautiful, and to the clearing where they’d have their cabin—things changed again. He was lying in his bed one night (a night during a week in which there had been no clients. “A little vacation,” Luke had said, smiling. “Everyone needs a break, especially someone who works as hard as you do”) when Luke asked, “Jude, do you love me?”

然后，過了幾個月（中間他們換了很多汽車旅館；每十天左右就會搬一次，全都在東德州。每次搬家，盧克就會帶他去森林里，那里真的很美，然后到他們要蓋小木屋的那片林間空地），事情又改變了。有天夜里他躺在床上（他每周有一天晚上不必接客?！岸葌€小假期吧。每個人都需要休息一下，尤其是像你這么努力工作的人?！北R克微笑著說），盧克忽然說，“裘德，你愛我嗎？”

　 He hesitated. Four months ago, he would’ve said yes immediately, proudly and unthinkingly. But now—did he love Brother Luke? He often wondered about this. He wanted to. The brother had never hurt him, or hit him, or said anything mean to him. He took care of him. He was always waiting just behind the wall to make sure nothing bad happened to him. The week before, a client had tried to make him do something Brother Luke said he never had to do if he didn’t want to, and he had been struggling and trying to cry out, but there had been a pillow over his face and he knew his noises were muffled. He was frantic, almost sobbing, when suddenly the pillow had been lifted from his face, and the man’s weight from his body, and Brother Luke was telling the man to get out of the room, in a tone he had never before heard from the brother but which had frightened and impressed him.

他猶豫了。四個月前，他會驕傲又不假思索地立刻說是的。但現(xiàn)在，他愛盧克修士嗎？他常常想這個問題。他想要愛他。修士從不傷害他，也不打他，更不會對他說刻薄話。他照顧他。他總是在墻后守著，好確定他沒事。上個星期，一個顧客想逼他做一些事情，但盧克修士說那些事他如果不愿意就永遠不必做，于是他掙扎著想叫，但他臉上蒙著枕頭，知道自己的聲音被悶住了。他慌了，差點哭出來。忽然間臉上的枕頭被拿開，那男人壓在他身上的重量不見了，他看到盧克修士叫那男人滾出房間，用一種他從沒聽過修士用的口氣，讓他害怕又佩服。

　 And yet something else told him that he shouldn’t love Brother Luke, that the brother had done something to him that was wrong. But he hadn’t. He had volunteered for this, after all; it was for the cabin in the woods, where he would have his own sleeping loft, that he was doing this. And so he told the brother he did.

但有別的事情讓他覺得自己不該愛盧克修士，讓他覺得修士對他做了非常糟糕的事情。但畢竟這是他自愿的，他會這么做是為了森林里的小木屋，為了他自己的閣樓臥室。于是他告訴修士他愛他。

　 He was momentarily happy when he saw the smile on the brother’s face, as if he had presented him with the cabin itself. “Oh, Jude,” he said, “that is the greatest gift I could ever get. Do you know how much I love you? I love you more than I love my own self. I think of you like my own son,” and he had smiled back, then, because sometimes, he had privately thought of Luke as his father, and he as Luke’s son. “Your dad said you’re nine, but you look older,” one of the clients had said to him, suspiciously, before they had begun, and he had answered what Luke had told him to say—“I’m tall for my age”—both pleased and oddly not-pleased that the client had thought Luke was his father.

他看到修士臉上的笑容時，一時間也很開心，好像看到了小木屋似的。“啊，裘德，”修士說，“這是我這輩子所得到最棒的禮物了。你知道我有多愛你嗎？我愛你超過愛我自己。我把你當成是親生兒子?！比缓笏参⑿α?，因為有時候，他會偷偷把盧克想成他父親，而他是盧克的兒子?！澳惆终f你9歲了，但是你看起來不止。”一個顧客開始之前曾疑心地跟他說，于是他照盧克教他的說：“我的個子比較高?！彼芨吲d那個顧客以為盧克是他父親，但同時又覺得不高興。

　 Then Brother Luke had explained to him that when two people loved each other as much as they did, that they slept in the same bed, and were naked with each other. He hadn’t known what to say to this, but before he could think of what it might be, Brother Luke was moving into bed with him and taking off his clothes and then kissing him. He had never kissed before—Brother Luke didn’t let the clients do it with him—and he didn’t like it, didn’t like the wetness and the force of it. “Relax,” the brother told him. “Just relax, Jude,” and he tried to as much as he could.

然后盧克修士跟他解釋，當兩個人像他們這么相愛時，就會睡在同一張床上，而且會赤裸相對。他聽了不知該說什么，但他還來不及思考那是什么狀況，盧克修士就移到他床上，脫掉他的衣服吻他。他從來沒接吻過（盧克修士不準顧客吻他），而且他也不喜歡，不喜歡那種潮濕和力量?！胺潘?，”修士告訴他，“放松就好，裘德。”他努力地盡量放松。

　 The first time the brother had sex with him, he told him it would be different than with the clients. “Because we’re in love,” he’d said, and he had believed him, and when it had felt the same after all—as painful, as difficult, as uncomfortable, as shameful—he assumed he was doing something wrong, especially because the brother was so happy afterward. “Wasn’t that nice?” the brother asked him, “didn’t it feel different?,” and he had agreed, too embarrassed to admit that it had been no different at all, that it had been just as awful as it had been with the client the day before.

修士第一次要他性交時，跟他說這跟他和顧客做不一樣?！耙驗槲覀兿鄲邸！彼f。起初他相信了，等到最后他卻發(fā)現(xiàn)感覺是一樣的——同樣疼痛，同樣難熬，同樣不舒服，同樣可恥——他猜想自己的感受不對，尤其因為修士事后那么開心。“那不是很美好嗎？”修士問他，“感覺不是很不一樣嗎？”于是他附和了。要他承認根本沒什么不同，就跟前一天和顧客做一樣糟糕，實在太難為情了。

　 Brother Luke usually didn’t have sex with him if he’d seen clients earlier in the evening, but they always slept in the same bed, and they always kissed. Now one bed was used for the clients, and the other was theirs. He grew to hate the taste of Luke’s mouth, its old-coffee tang, his tongue something slippery and skinned trying to burrow inside of him. Late at night, as the brother lay next to him asleep, pressing him against the wall with his weight, he would sometimes cry, silently, praying to be taken away, anywhere, anywhere else. He no longer thought of the cabin: he now dreamed of the monastery, and thought of how stupid he’d been to leave. It had been better there after all. When they were out in the mornings and would pass people, Brother Luke would tell him to lower his eyes, because his eyes were distinctive and if the brothers were looking for them, they would give them away. But sometimes he wanted to raise his eyes, as if they could by their very color and shape telegraph a message across miles and states to the brothers: Here I am. Help me. Please take me back. Nothing was his any longer: not his eyes, not his mouth, not even his name, which Brother Luke only called him in private. Around everyone else, he was Joey. “And this is Joey,” Brother Luke would say, and he would rise from the bed and wait, his head bent, as the client inspected him.

如果他當晚接了客，盧克修士通常就不會要他性交，但他們總是睡在同一張床上，總是會接吻。現(xiàn)在他們的一張床用來接客，而另一張床是屬于他們的。他逐漸痛恨起盧克嘴里的味道，那種不新鮮的咖啡臭，他舌頭又滑又濕，猛地往他嘴里鉆。到了深夜，修士在他旁邊睡著，擠得他整個人緊挨在墻上。他有時會哭，但沒哭出聲，暗自祈禱被帶走，帶到其他地方，哪里都好。他再也不會想到小木屋了；現(xiàn)在他夢想著修道院，想著當初自己離開是多么愚蠢。那里畢竟好一點。他們早晨出門時會經(jīng)過其他人，盧克修士總是叫他垂下眼睛，因為他的眼睛太特別了，要是那些修士們在找他們，他的眼睛就會泄底。但有時他想抬起眼睛，好像光憑他眼睛的顏色和形狀，就可以發(fā)出訊息，跨越幾千里、幾個州傳給修士們：我在這里。救我。拜托帶我回去。再也沒有什么是屬于他的了：他的眼睛、他的嘴巴，甚至他的名字，盧克修士只有私下才喊他，在別人面前，他是喬伊?！斑@位是喬伊?！北R克修士會這么說，而他會從床上站起身等待，垂著頭，讓顧客打量他。

　 He cherished his lessons, because they were the one time Brother Luke didn’t touch him, and in those hours, the brother was who he remembered, the person he had trusted and followed. But then the lessons would end for the day, and every evening would conclude the same as the evening before.

他珍惜上課的時間，因為上課的時候盧克修士不會碰他，而且在那些時間里，盧克修士一如他所記得的那樣，是他信任而遵從的人。但之后一天的課上完了，每天晚上又會跟前一晚一樣。

　 He grew more and more silent. “Where’s my smiley boy?” the brother would ask him, and he would try to smile back at him. “It’s okay to enjoy it,” the brother would say, sometimes, and he would nod, and the brother would smile at him and rub his back. “You like it, don’t you?” he would ask, and wink, and he would nod at him, mutely. “I can tell,” Luke would say, still smiling, proud of him. “You were made for this, Jude.” Some of the clients would say that to him as well—You were born for this—and as much as he hated it, he also knew that they were right. He was born for this. He had been born, and left, and found, and used as he had been intended to be used.

他變得越來越沉默?！拔覑坌Φ男∧泻⒛睦锶チ四兀俊北R克會微笑地問他。他會試著報以微笑?！跋硎苓@個沒關(guān)系的?！毙奘坑袝r會說，而他會點點頭。修士就朝他微笑，撫摸他的背。“你喜歡做這個吧？”他會問，然后擠一下眼睛。他點頭，不講話?！拔铱吹贸鰜?，”盧克會說，還是微笑，很以他為榮，“你是天生好手，裘德?！庇械念櫩鸵矔f，你生來就是要做這個的。盡管他很討厭聽到這句話，但他知道他們說得沒錯。他生來就是要做這個的。他出生了，被遺棄，被發(fā)現(xiàn)，然后就被拿來做他生來該做的事情。

　 In later years, he would try to remember when exactly it was that he must have realized that the cabin was never going to be built, that the life he had dreamed of would never be his. When he had begun, he had kept track of the number of clients he had seen, thinking that when he reached a certain number—forty? fifty?—he would surely be done, he would surely be allowed to stop. But then the number grew larger and larger, until one day he had looked at it and realized how large it was and had started crying, so scared and sick of what he had done that he had stopped counting. So was it when he reached that number? Or was it when they left Texas altogether, Luke promising him that the forests were better in Washington State anyway, and they drove west, through New Mexico and Arizona, and then north, stopping for weeks in little towns, staying in little motels that were the twins of that very first motel they had ever stayed in, and that no matter where they stopped, there were always men, and on the nights there weren’t men, there was Brother Luke, who seemed to crave him the way he himself had never craved anything? Was it when he realized that he hated his weeks off even more than the normal weeks, because the return to his regular life was so much more terrible than if he had never had a vacation at all? Was it when he began noticing the inconsistencies in Brother Luke’s stories: how sometimes it wasn’t his son but a nephew, who hadn’t died but had in fact moved away, and Brother Luke never saw him again; or how sometimes, he stopped teaching because he had felt the calling to join the monastery, and sometimes it was because he was weary from having to constantly negotiate with the school’s principal, who clearly didn’t care for children the way the brother did; or how in some stories, he had grown up in east Texas, but in others, he had spent his childhood in Carmel, or Laramie, or Eugene?

很多年后，他會試著回想自己到底什么時候才真正明白，永遠不會蓋那個小木屋，他夢想的生活永遠不會是他的。剛開始，他會記錄他接了多少客，想著等達到某個數(shù)字（四十？五十？）時就一定夠了，一定可以停止。但接著那數(shù)字越來越大，大到有一天他看著那數(shù)字，明白有多么大，開始哭了起來，對自己做的事既害怕又作嘔，從此再也不算了。所以是他達到那個數(shù)字的時候嗎？或是他們一起離開德州的時候？（當時盧克跟他保證華盛頓州的森林更棒，于是他們開車往西，經(jīng)過新墨西哥州和亞利桑那州，然后往北，中途在一些小鎮(zhèn)停留幾星期，住在小汽車旅館里，跟他們住過的第一家旅館一模一樣。無論他們在哪里停留，總是有男人；夜里沒有男人時，就有盧克修士，修士對他的那種渴望，是他自己對任何事物都不曾有過的。）或是當他明白自己痛恨每周的休息日更甚于正常工作日，因為回到正常生活比沒有假日更可怕？是他開始注意到盧克修士故事中的不一致的時候嗎？有時修士以前深愛的不是兒子，而是外甥，也沒有死掉，而是搬走了，從此盧克修士沒再見過他；有時他說他教書教到一半放棄，是因為他感覺到上帝召喚他加入修道院，但有時又因為他厭倦總是得跟校長談判，因為校長顯然不像修士那么關(guān)心學(xué)生；在某些故事里，他在東德州長大，在其他故事里，他的童年又是在加州卡梅爾，或是懷俄明州拉勒米，或是奧瑞岡州尤金市度過的。

　 Or was it the day that they were passing through Utah to Idaho, on their way to Washington? They rarely ventured into actual towns—their America was denuded of trees, of flowers, theirs was just long stretches of roadway, the only green thing Brother Luke’s lone surviving cattleya, which continued to live and leaf, though not bud—but this time they had, because Brother Luke had a doctor friend in one of the towns, and he wanted him to be examined because it was clear he had picked up some sort of disease from one of the clients, despite the precautions Brother Luke made them take. He didn’t know the name of the town, but he was startled at the signs of normalcy, of life around him, and he stared out of his window in silence, looking at these scenes that he had always imagined but rarely saw: women standing on the street with strollers, talking and laughing with one another; a jogger panting by; families with dogs; a world made of not just men but also of children and women. Normally on these drives he would close his eyes—he slept all the time now, waiting for each day to end—but this day, he felt unusually alert, as if the world was trying to tell him something, and all he had to do was listen to its message.

或者是在他們要去華盛頓州途中，經(jīng)過猶他州、進入愛達荷州那天？他們很少冒險進入真正的市區(qū)（他們的美國沒有樹、沒有花，只有漫長延伸的公路，唯一的綠色就是盧克修士當初帶出來唯一存活的那株洋蘭，一直活著，還長著葉子，但是不開花），但這回他們破例了，因為盧克修士在某個鎮(zhèn)上有個醫(yī)生朋友，要帶他去檢查。他顯然被某個顧客傳染了某種疾病，盡管盧克修士要求他們采取預(yù)防措施。他不知道那個鎮(zhèn)的名字，但種種正常的跡象和周遭的生活讓他很驚訝。他沉默地注視車窗外，看著那些他總在想象但很少親眼看到的景象：女人們推著折疊式嬰兒車站在街上，彼此談笑；一個慢跑者喘著氣跑過去；牽著狗的家庭；這個世界不光是由男人組成，還有兒童和女人。通常在這些車程中，他會閉上眼睛——現(xiàn)在他隨時都在睡覺，等著每天告終——但這一天，他卻異常地警覺，好像這個世界正設(shè)法告訴他什么，而他唯一要做的就是傾聽這個訊息。

　 Brother Luke was trying to read the map and drive at the same time, and finally he pulled over, studying the map and muttering. Luke had stopped across the street from a baseball field, and he watched as, if at once, it began to fill with people: women, mostly, and then, running and shouting, boys. The boys wore uniforms, white with red stripes, but despite that, they all looked different—different hair, different eyes, different skin. Some were skinny, like he was, and some were fat. He had never seen so many boys his own age at one time, and he looked and looked at them. And then he noticed that although they were different, they were actually the same: they were all smiling, and laughing, excited to be outside, in the dry, hot air, the sun bright above them, their mothers unloading cans of soda and bottles of water and juice from plastic carrying containers.

盧克修士一邊開車，一邊試著搞清楚地圖，最后把車停在路邊，審視地圖，念念有詞。此處街道對面就是一個棒球場，他觀察著，仿佛突然間，球場里頭開始充滿人群：大部分是女人，還有奔跑大叫的男孩。那些男孩身穿白底紅條紋的制服，除此之外，他們看起來都不一樣——不同的頭發(fā)、不同的眼睛、不同的皮膚。有些很瘦，跟他一樣，有些則胖胖的。他從來沒有一口氣看到這么多跟自己同齡的男孩，于是朝著他們看了又看。然后他注意到，盡管不一樣，他們其實也有共通點：他們都在笑，很興奮能在戶外活動，在這干熱的空氣中，頭上有晴朗的太陽，他們的母親從塑料置物盒里拿出一罐罐汽水、一瓶瓶水和果汁。

　 “Aha! We’re back on track!” he heard Luke saying, and heard him fold up the map. But before he started the engine again, he felt Luke follow his gaze, and for a moment the two of them sat staring at the boys in silence, until at last Luke stroked his hair. “I love you, Jude,” he said, and after a moment, he replied as he always did—“I love you, too, Brother Luke”—and they drove away.

“啊哈！找到地方了！”他聽到盧克說，然后聽到他折起地圖。但發(fā)動引擎前，他感覺盧克順著他的目光看過去，一時之間兩個人只是默默望著那些男孩，直到最后盧克撫摸他的頭發(fā)?！拔覑勰?，裘德。”他說。過了一會兒，他如?；卮穑骸拔乙矏勰?，盧克修士?！敝笏麄兙烷_車離開了。