《渺小一生》:胰腺癌的死法很痛苦

　 He remembered a conversation he’d had with Robin when he had been preparing to shoot The Odyssey and was rereading it and The Iliad, neither of which he had looked at since he was a freshman in college. This was when they had first begun dating, and were both still trying to impress each other, when a sort of giddiness was derived from deferring to the other’s expertise. “What’re the most overrated lines from the poem?” he’d asked, and Robin had rolled her eyes and recited: “ ‘We have still not reached the end of our trials. One more labor lies in store—boundless, laden with danger, great and long, and I must brave it out from start to finish.’ ” She made some retching noises. “So obvious. And somehow, that’s been co-opted by every losing football team in the country as their pregame rallying cry,” she added, and he’d laughed. She looked at him, slyly. “You played football,” she said. “I’ll bet those’re your favorite lines as well.”

他還記得自己以前跟羅賓的一段談話。當時他在為《奧德賽》和《伊利亞特》的拍攝做準備，正在重讀這兩部史詩，他大一時讀過，但之后就沒再碰了。此時他和羅賓才剛開始交往，還試著要給對方好印象，而且因為想順從對方的專長，把彼此弄得有點暈頭轉向?！斑@部史詩里，最被過譽的是哪幾句？”他問。羅賓翻著白眼背出來：“‘我們的考驗還沒結束。前面還有一個辛苦任務在等著——廣闊無邊，充滿危險，重大又漫長，而我必須從一開始就勇敢面對，奮戰(zhàn)到結束?！彼l(fā)出干嘔的聲音，“太夸張了。而且不知道為什么，全國每一個輸多勝少的美式橄欖球隊，賽前都要念出這幾句為自己打氣?！彼a充道，他聽了大笑。她狡黠地看著他?！澳愦蜻^美式橄欖球，”她說，“我敢說這幾句也是你最喜歡的?！?

　 “Absolutely not,” he’d said, in mock outrage. This was part of their game that wasn’t always a game: he was the dumb actor, the dumber jock, and she was the smart girl who went out with him and taught him what he didn’t know.

“絕對不是。”他說，假裝不高興。這是他們之間的一種游戲，但有時未必是游戲：他是笨演員，還是更笨的體育選手，而她是跟他交往的聰明女生，會教他一些他不懂的事情。

　 “Then tell me what they are,” she’d challenged him, and after he did, she’d looked at him, intently. “Hmm,” she said. “Interesting.”

“那告訴我，你認為最被過譽的句子是什么。”她向他挑戰(zhàn)。他背出來之后，她目不轉睛地看著他。“嗯，”她說，“很有趣?！?

　 Now he got out of bed and wrapped his blanket around himself, yawning. That evening, he’d talk to Jude. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he would be safe; he would keep them both safe. He went to the kitchen to make himself coffee, and as he did, he whispered the lines back to himself, those lines he thought of whenever he was coming home, coming back to Greene Street after a long time away—“And tell me this: I must be absolutely sure. This place I’ve reached, is it truly Ithaca?”—as all around him, the apartment filled with light.

這會兒他下了床，身上裹著毯子，打著呵欠。今天晚上，他會跟裘德談談。雖然不知道接下來會怎么樣，但他知道自己會很安全；他會讓彼此都很安全。他到廚房去沖咖啡，一邊低聲背出那些句子，每回他離開很久回到家、回到格林街時，總會想到這些句子——“那么告訴我：我必須完全確定。我來到的這個地方，真的是伊薩卡嗎？”——同時在他周圍，整戶公寓充滿了光。

　 Every morning he gets up and swims two miles, and then comes back upstairs and sits down and has breakfast and reads the papers. His friends make fun of him for this—for the fact that he actually prepares a meal instead of buying something on the way to work; for the fact that he actually still gets the papers delivered, in paper form—but the ritual of it has always calmed him: even in the home, it was the one time when the counselors were too mild, the other boys too sleepy to bother him. He would sit in the corner of the dining area and read and eat his breakfast, and for those minutes he would be left alone.

每天早晨他會起床去游個兩英里，然后上樓坐下來，邊吃早餐邊看報紙。他的朋友因此取笑他（因為他自己做早餐，不是上班途中買的；而且他還訂報紙，是紙質的），但其中的儀式感總是令他平靜：即使是在少年之家的時候，早餐時間輔導員總是很溫和，而其他男孩也太困了，所以都不會來煩他。他可以坐在食堂的角落閱讀、吃他的早餐，在那短短的時刻里，他可以獨自清靜一下。

　 He is an efficient reader, and he skims first through The Wall Street Journal, and then the Financial Times, before beginning with The New York Times, which he reads front to back, when he sees the headline in Obituaries: “Caleb Porter, 52, Fashion Executive.” Immediately, his mouthful of scrambled eggs and spinach turns to cardboard and glue, and he swallows hard, feeling sick, feeling every nerve ending thrumming alive. He has to read the article three times before he can make sense of any of the facts: pancreatic cancer. “Very fast,” said his colleague and longtime friend. Under his stewardship, emerging fashion label Rothko saw aggressive expansion into the Asian and Middle Eastern markets, as well as the opening of their first New York City boutique. Died at his home in Manhattan. Survived by his sister, Michaela Porter de Soto of Monte Carlo, six nieces and nephews, and his partner, Nicholas Lane, also a fashion executive.

他閱讀很有效率，首先瀏覽《華爾街日報》，然后是《金融時報》，這才開始從頭到尾閱讀《紐約時報》。就是在此時，他看到訃聞版的標題：“凱萊布·波特，52歲，時裝界高級經(jīng)理人”。突然間，滿嘴的炒蛋和菠菜變成了硬紙板和膠水，他艱難地咽下，覺得很想吐，覺得每根神經(jīng)末梢都在抖動著蘇醒過來。他還得連看那則訃聞三遍，才有辦法搞懂一切：胰腺癌?！胺浅？??！彼耐录骈L年老友說。在他的管理之下，新崛起的時裝品牌羅斯科積極拓展亞洲與中東市場，同時也開設了第一家紐約市精品店。他病逝于曼哈頓家中。遺屬包括他住在蒙地卡羅的妹妹米凱拉·波特·德索托、六名外甥子女，以及伴侶尼古拉斯·蘭恩，也是時裝界高級經(jīng)理人。

　 He is still for a moment, staring at the page until the words rearrange themselves into an abstraction of gray before his eyes, and then he hobbles as fast as he can to the bathroom near the kitchen, where he vomits up everything he’s just eaten, gagging over the toilet until he’s coughing up long strands of saliva. He lowers the toilet seat and sits, resting his face in his hands, until he feels better. He wishes, desperately, for his razors, but he has always been careful not to cut himself during the day, partly because it feels wrong and partly because he knows he has to impose limits upon himself, however artificial, or he’d be cutting himself all day. Lately, he has been trying very hard not to cut himself at all. But tonight, he thinks, he will grant himself an exception. It is seven a.m. In around fifteen hours, he’ll be home again. All he has to do is make it through the day.

他呆坐了一會兒，看著報紙，直到那些字在眼前成了一片抽象的灰色，然后他盡快跛行沖到靠近廚房的浴室，抱著馬桶，把剛剛吃下的東西吐出來，吐得最后只?？谒Ｋ畔埋R桶蓋坐上去，臉埋進雙手里，直到自己好過些。他極度渴望他的刮胡刀片，但他向來很小心不在白天割自己，一部分原因是感覺不對，另一部分原因是他知道必須給自己設下限制，無論是多么虛假的限制，否則他就會成天都在割自己了。最近他還非常努力試著完全不要割自己。但今晚，他心想，他會允許自己破例?，F(xiàn)在是早上7點，再過十五小時左右，他就會再回到家里。他現(xiàn)在唯一要做的，就是熬過這個白天。

　 He puts his plate in the dishwasher and walks quietly through the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he showers and shaves and then gets dressed in the closet, first making sure that the door between the closet and the bedroom is completely closed. At this point, he has added a new step to his morning routine: now, if he were to do what he has been for the past month, he would open the door and walk over to the bed, where he’d perch on its left side and put his hand on Willem’s arm, and Willem would open his eyes and smile at him.

他把臟盤子放進洗碗機，悄悄走過臥室，進入浴室，沖了澡、刮過胡子后，到衣帽間穿好衣服，還先確定衣帽間通往臥室的門完全關好。此時，他每天早上的例行公事多加了一個步驟：現(xiàn)在，如果按照過去一個月的慣例，他會打開門，走到床邊，坐在左邊床沿，把一只手放在威廉的手臂上，然后威廉會睜開眼睛朝他微笑。

　 “I’m off,” he’d say, smiling back, and Willem would shake his head. “Don’t go,” Willem would say, and he’d say, “I have to,” and Willem would say, “Five minutes,” and he’d say, “Five.” And then Willem would lift his end of the blanket and he’d crawl beneath it, with Willem pressed against his back, and he would close his eyes and wait for Willem to wrap his arms around him and wish he could stay forever. And then, ten or fifteen minutes later, he would at last, reluctantly, get up, and kiss Willem somewhere near, but not on, his mouth—he is still having trouble with this, even four months later—and leave for the day.

“我要出門了?！彼麜f，也露出微笑。威廉會搖搖頭說：“不要走?！倍麜f：“我非走不可。”威廉又說：“五分鐘。”他說：“就五分鐘。”接下來，威廉會拉起毯子的一角讓他鉆進去，威廉會貼著他的背，他則閉上眼睛等威廉的雙手抱住他，希望自己永遠留下來。十分鐘或十五分鐘后，他會很不情愿地起來，在威廉身上最近的地方吻一下，但是不吻嘴（即使到現(xiàn)在四個月了，要他吻嘴還是有困難），然后出門去上班。

　 This morning, however, he skips this step. He instead pauses at the dining-room table to write Willem a note explaining that he had to leave early and didn’t want to wake him, and then, as he’s walking to the door, he comes back and grabs the Times off the table and takes it with him. He knows how irrational it is, but he doesn’t want Willem to see Caleb’s name, or picture, or any evidence of him. Willem still doesn’t know about what Caleb did to him, and he doesn’t want him to. He doesn’t even want him to be aware of Caleb’s very existence—or, he realizes, his once-existence, for Caleb no longer exists. Beneath his arm, the paper feels almost alive with heat, Caleb’s name a dark knot of poison cradled inside its pages.

但今天早上，他跳過了這個步驟。只是在餐桌前暫停一下，寫張便條給威廉，解釋自己得早點去上班，不想吵醒他，走向門時，又回頭抓起桌上的《紐約時報》帶走。他知道這個舉動有多么不理性，但他不想讓威廉看到凱萊布的名字、照片，或任何有關他的痕跡。威廉還不知道凱萊布對他做過的事，他也不想讓他知道。他甚至不希望他意識到凱萊布的存在——或者應該說曾經(jīng)存在，因為凱萊布現(xiàn)在不存在了。在他的手臂底下，那份報紙簡直像活生生、有熱度的一樣，凱萊布的名字是一團深色的毒藥，就藏在那些紙頁間。

　 He decides to drive to work so he’ll be able to be alone for a little while, but before he leaves the garage, he takes out the paper and reads the article one more time before folding it up again and shoving it into his briefcase. And then suddenly, he is crying, frantic, breathy sobs, the kind that come from his diaphragm, and as he leans his head on the steering wheel, trying to regain control, he is finally able to admit to himself how plainly, profoundly relieved he is, and how frightened he has been for the past three years, and how humiliated and ashamed he is still. He retrieves the paper, hating himself, and reads the obituary again, stopping at “and by his partner, Nicholas Lane, also a fashion executive.” He wonders: Did Caleb do to Nicholas Lane what he did to him, or is Nicholas—as he must be—someone undeserving of such treatment? He hopes that Nicholas never experienced what he had, but he’s also certain he hasn’t, and the knowledge of that makes him cry harder. That had been one of Harold’s arguments when he was trying to get him to report the attack; that Caleb was dangerous, and that by reporting him, by having him arrested, he would be protecting other people from him. But he had known that wasn’t true: Caleb wouldn’t do to other people what he did to him. He hadn’t hit and hated him because he hit and hated other people; he had hit and hated him because of who he was, not because of who Caleb was.

他決定開車去上班，以便獨處一會兒，但車子離開車庫前，他把報紙拿出來，又讀了一遍那篇訃聞，才折起來塞進公文包。突然間他哭了起來，猛烈、帶著呼吸聲的啜泣，是那種源自橫膈膜的哭法。當他把頭靠在方向盤上，試圖恢復控制時，他終于有辦法跟自己承認他是多么明確、深刻地感到如釋重負，也承認過去三年來他有多么害怕，至今依然覺得羞辱和慚愧。他拿出報紙，好恨自己又讀了一遍那篇訃聞，停在“以及伴侶尼古拉斯·蘭恩，也是時裝界高級經(jīng)理人”這句。他很好奇：凱萊布對他做過的事情，也會對尼古拉斯·蘭恩做嗎？或者尼古拉斯一定不是活該要遭受這樣對待的人？他希望尼古拉斯從沒經(jīng)歷過自己的遭遇，但他也確信他沒有，這一點讓他哭得更厲害。當初哈羅德勸他報案時，提出的理由之一就是這個，說凱萊布很危險，如果報案了，讓警方逮捕他，他就保護了其他人不會再受到凱萊布的傷害。但他知道其實不是這樣的，凱萊布不會對其他人做那類事。凱萊布打他、恨他，不是因為他會毆打、痛恨其他人，凱萊布毆打又痛恨他，只因為是他，不是凱萊布的關系。

　 Finally, he’s able to compose himself, and he wipes his eyes and blows his nose. The crying: another leftover from his time with Caleb. For years and years he was able to control it, and now—ever since that night—it seems he is always crying, or on the verge of it, or actively trying to stop himself from doing it. It’s as if all his progress from the past few decades has been erased, and he is again that boy in Brother Luke’s care, so teary and helpless and vulnerable.

最后，他終于恢復鎮(zhèn)定，擦干眼淚，擤了鼻涕。愛哭是他跟凱萊布交往時期殘留的習慣之一。多年來，他一直有辦法控制，而現(xiàn)在——自從那一夜后——他好像總是在哭，瀕臨哭的邊緣，或者很努力地阻止自己哭出來。那就像是把他過去二三十年來的進展全部一筆勾銷，他再度成為盧克修士照顧的那個小男孩，愛哭，無助，又脆弱。

　 He’s about to start the car when his hands begin shaking. Now he knows he can do nothing but wait, and he folds them in his lap and tries to make his breaths deep and regular, which sometimes helps. By the time his phone rings a few minutes later, they’ve slowed somewhat, and he hopes he sounds normal as he answers. “Hi, Harold,” he says.

他正要發(fā)動車子時，雙手顫抖了起來?，F(xiàn)在他知道自己做什么都沒用，只能等待，于是把雙手壓在大腿下，設法逼自己以平穩(wěn)的節(jié)奏深呼吸，有時這樣會有幫助。幾分鐘后手機響起時，顫抖稍微減輕了，他希望自己接電話時聲音正常?！班耍_德。”他說。

　 “Jude,” says Harold. His voice is flattened, somehow. “Have you read the Times today?”

“裘德，”哈羅德說，不知怎的，他的聲音沒什么起伏，“你看了今天的《紐約時報》了嗎？”

　 Immediately, the shaking intensifies. “Yes,” he says.

他的顫抖立刻加劇?！翱戳?。”他說。

　 “Pancreatic cancer is a terrible way to go,” says Harold. He sounds grimly satisfied. “Good. I’m glad.” There’s a pause. “Are you all right?”

“胰腺癌的死法很痛苦?！惫_德說，聲音聽起來冷酷而滿足，“很好，我很高興?！彼麜和Ａ艘幌?，“你還好吧？”

　 “Yes,” he says, “yes, I’m fine.”

“很好，”他說，“很好，我很好。”

　 “The connection keeps cutting out,” says Harold, but he knows it’s not: it’s because he’s shaking so badly that he can’t hold the phone steady.

“電話信號不太穩(wěn)，”哈羅德說。但他知道不是，而是他的手抖得太厲害，根本沒法拿穩(wěn)手機。

　 “Sorry,” he says. “I’m in the garage. Look, Harold, I’d better get up to work. Thanks for calling.”

“對不起，”他說，“我在車庫里。聽我說，哈羅德，我最好趕緊去上班了，謝謝你打來。”

　 “Okay.” Harold sighs. “You’ll call me if you want to talk, right?”

“好吧，”哈羅德嘆口氣，“你想談的話，就打電話給我，好嗎？”