《渺小一生》:他繼續(xù)往下看這些人生紀(jì)錄

　 He is aware, dimly, that his friends are watching him, that they are worried about him. At some point it had emerged that one of the reasons he remembers so little from the days after the accident was because he had been in the hospital, on a suicide watch. Now he stumbles through his days and wonders why he isn’t, in fact, killing himself. This is, after all, the time to do it. No one would blame him. And yet he doesn’t.

他模糊地感覺到朋友都在留心他、擔(dān)心他。到了一個時間，他逐漸想起，那場意外車禍后的日子他記得的這么少，是因為他被送到醫(yī)院監(jiān)控，防止他自殺。現(xiàn)在他辛苦地度過每一天，搞不懂自己怎么沒有真的自殺。畢竟，現(xiàn)在就是該動手的時候了。不會有人怪他。但他卻沒有。

　 At least no one tells him that he should move on. He doesn’t want to move on, he doesn’t want to move into something else: he wants to remain exactly at this stage, forever. At least no one tells him he’s in denial. Denial is what sustains him, and he is dreading the day when his delusions will lose their power to convince him. For the first time in decades, he isn’t cutting himself at all. If he doesn’t cut himself, he remains numb, and he needs to remain numb; he needs the world to not come too close to him. He has finally managed to achieve what Willem had always hoped for him; all it took was Willem being taken from him.

至少沒有人跟他說他該往前走，進(jìn)入下一個階段。他不想進(jìn)入下一個階段，他不想做別的，他想永遠(yuǎn)待在這個階段。至少沒有人跟他說他還處在否認(rèn)的階段。否認(rèn)是支撐他的力量，他很擔(dān)心有一天他的那些妄想失去了讓他相信的魔力。幾十年來第一次，他完全不割自己了。如果不割自己，他就保持麻木，而他需要麻木下去；他需要這個世界不要靠他太近。他終于實現(xiàn)了威廉一直希望他做到的；唯一的代價就是威廉被奪走了。

　 In January he had a dream that he and Willem were in the house upstate making dinner and talking: something they’d done hundreds of times. But in the dream, although he could hear his own voice, he couldn’t hear Willem’s—he could see his mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear anything he was saying. He had woken, then, and had thrown himself into his wheelchair and moved as quickly as he could into his study, where he scrolled through all of his old e-mails, searching and searching until he found a few voice messages from Willem that he had forgotten to delete. The messages were brief, and unrevealing, but he played them over and over, weeping, bent double with grief, the messages’ very banality—“Hey. Judy. I’m going to the farmers’ market to pick up those ramps. But do you want anything else? Let me know”—something precious, because it was proof of their life together.

一月時他做了一個夢，夢到他和威廉在加里森的房子里，邊做晚飯邊聊天。這樣的事情他們做過幾百次了。但在夢里，他聽得到自己的聲音，卻聽不到威廉的——他可以看到他的嘴巴在動，但是完全聽不到他說的話。然后他醒來，爬上輪椅盡快趕到書房，在他的舊電子郵件里搜尋，終于找到幾則威廉以前的語音消息，是他忘記刪掉的。那些訊息很簡短，毫無啟發(fā)性，但他一遍又一遍地播放，流著淚，悲慟得彎著腰。“嘿，小裘。我要去農(nóng)夫市集買熊蔥。你還需要別的嗎？再跟我說。”那些訊息的平凡反倒顯得格外珍貴，因為那是他們共同生活的證據(jù)。

　 “Willem,” he said aloud to the apartment, because sometimes, when it was very bad, he spoke to him. “Come back to me. Come back.”

“威廉，”他對著空蕩的公寓說。有時狀況非常糟，他會對著威廉講話，“回來我身邊?；貋?。”

　 He feels no sense of survivor’s guilt but rather survivor’s incomprehension: he had always, always known he would predecease Willem. They all knew it. Willem, Andy, Harold, JB, Malcolm, Julia, Richard: he would die before all of them. The only question was how he would die—it would be by his own hand, or it would be by infection. But none of them had ever thought that Willem, of all people, would die before he did. There had been no plans made for that, no contingencies. Had he known this was a possibility, had it been less absurd a concept, he would have stockpiled. He would have made recordings of Willem’s voice talking to him and kept them. He would have taken more pictures. He would have tried to distill Willem’s very body chemistry. He would have taken him, just-woken, to the perfumer in Florence. “Here,” he would’ve said. “This. This scent. I want you to bottle this.” Jane had once told him that as a girl she had been terrified her father would die, and she had secretly made digital copies of her father’s dictation (he had been a doctor as well) and stored them on flash drives. And when her father finally did die, four years ago, she had rediscovered them, and had sat in a room playing them, listening to her father dictating orders in his calm, patient voice. How he envied Jane this; how he wished he had thought to do the same.

他沒感覺到幸存者的內(nèi)疚，只有幸存者的不解：他以前一直、一直知道他會比威廉早死。他們?nèi)贾?。威廉、安迪、哈羅德、杰比、馬爾科姆、朱麗婭、理查德，他會比他們都早死。唯一的問題就是怎么死，會是他自己動手，還是因為感染。但他們沒有人想過，威廉竟然會比他早死。他從來沒有預(yù)先計劃，也沒有應(yīng)變的對策。要是他早知道有這個可能性，要是這個可能性不那么荒謬的話，他就會先囤積需要的東西。他會錄下威廉跟他講話的聲音，保存起來。他會拍更多的照片。他會設(shè)法蒸餾威廉的體味。他會帶著剛睡醒的威廉去佛羅倫薩那家香水工坊。“來，”他會說，“這個。就是這個氣味。我要把這個氣味裝瓶。”安迪的太太簡有回跟他說，她小時候很怕父親會死掉，于是偷偷復(fù)制了父親口述病歷的音像資料（她父親也是醫(yī)生），存在U盤里。一直到她父親四年前過世，她才又把這些資料找出來，坐在房間里播放，聽著她父親以冷靜、耐心的聲音口述那些醫(yī)囑。他好羨慕簡這一點(diǎn)，他真希望自己之前想到要這么做。

　 At least he had Willem’s films, and his e-mails, and letters he had written him over the years, all of which he had saved. At least he had Willem’s clothes, and articles about Willem, all of which he had kept. At least he had JB’s paintings of Willem; at least he had photographs of Willem: hundreds of them, though he only allotted himself a certain number. He decided he would allow himself to look at ten of them every week, and he would look and look at them for hours. It was his decision whether he wanted to review one a day or look at all ten in a single sitting. He was terrified his computer would be destroyed and he would lose these images; he made multiple copies of the photographs and stored the discs in various places: in his safe at Greene Street, in his safe at Lantern House, in his desk at Rosen Pritchard, in his safe-deposit box at the bank.

至少他還有威廉拍的電影，有威廉歷年來寫給他的電子郵件和信，他全部保存著。至少他還有威廉的衣服、關(guān)于威廉的報道文章，他都沒丟。至少他還有杰比畫的威廉畫像；至少他還有威廉的照片：幾百張，不過他謹(jǐn)慎地分配，只準(zhǔn)自己每周看十張，他會看了又看，看上好幾個小時。他可以決定每天只看一張，或是一次看十張。他很怕自己的計算機(jī)會出事，把所有的照片檔案毀掉；于是他復(fù)制了好幾份，存放在幾個不同的地方：格林街公寓的保險箱、燈籠屋的保險箱、羅森·普理查德的辦公桌抽屜，還有銀行的保險箱。

　 He had never considered Willem a thorough cataloger of his own life—he isn’t either—but one Sunday in early March he skips his drugged slumber and instead drives to Garrison. He has only been to the house twice since that September day, but the gardeners still come, and the bulbs are beginning to bud around the driveway, and when he steps inside, there is a vase of cut plum branches on the kitchen counter and he stops, staring at them: Had he texted the housekeeper to tell her he was coming? He must have. But for a moment he fancies that at the beginning of every week someone comes and places a new arrangement of flowers on the counter, and at the end of every week, another week in which no one comes to see them, they are thrown away.

他從不認(rèn)為威廉會仔細(xì)整理自己的人生紀(jì)錄，他也不會，但是三月初的一個星期天，他沒有如常吃安眠藥，睡上一整天，而是開車去了加里森的房子。自從九月那一天以來，他只回去過兩次，但園丁還是會來整理，車道兩旁的球根植物開始發(fā)芽。他走進(jìn)屋里，廚房料理臺上有個花瓶插了一整枝梅花，他停下腳步瞪著看：他有發(fā)短信給管家說他要來嗎？一定是有。但一時間他寧可想象，每個星期的第一天都有人過來，在料理臺上換上新的花，到了每周最后一天，又一個星期沒人看這些花，于是就被扔掉了。

　 He goes to his study, where they had installed extra cabinetry so Willem could store his files and paperwork there as well. He sits on the floor, shrugging off his coat, then takes a breath and opens the first drawer. Here are file folders, each labeled with the name of a play or movie, and inside each folder is the shooting version of the script, with Willem’s notes on them. Sometimes there are call sheets from days when an actor he knew Willem particularly admired was going to be filming with him: he remembers how excited Willem had been on The Sycamore Court, how he had sent him a photo of that day’s call sheet with his name typed directly beneath Clark Butterfield’s. “Can you believe it?!” his message had read.

他去他的書房，之前他們加了一個檔案柜，好讓威廉存放檔案和文件數(shù)據(jù)。他坐在地上，脫掉大衣，然后吸一口氣，拉開第一個抽屜。里頭放著懸掛式檔案夾，上頭的標(biāo)簽寫了電影名或舞臺劇名，每個檔案夾里是拍攝版的劇本，上頭有威廉寫的筆記。有時還有一些特別值得紀(jì)念的通告表。他還記得當(dāng)年威廉拍《梧桐法院》時有多興奮，因為能跟克拉克·巴特菲爾德合作，他知道威廉非常欣賞這位男演員。當(dāng)時威廉還把那天的通告表拍下來傳給他，照片上威廉的名字就打在巴特菲爾德下方。“你相信嗎？！”他發(fā)來的信息中寫著。

　 I can totally believe it, he’d written back.

我完全可以相信，他回短信說。

　 He flips through these files, lifting them out at random and carefully sorting through their contents. The next three drawers are all the same things: films, plays, other projects.

他翻著這些檔案，隨機(jī)抽出來，小心翼翼地翻看里頭的內(nèi)容。接下來的三個抽屜里也是同樣的檔案夾：電影、舞臺劇、其他工作計劃。

　 In the fifth drawer is a file marked “Wyoming,” and in this are mostly photos, most of which he has seen before: pictures of Hemming; pictures of Willem with Hemming; pictures of their parents; pictures of the siblings Willem never knew: Britte and Aksel. There is a separate envelope with a dozen pictures of just Willem, only Willem: school photos, and Willem in a Boy Scout uniform, and Willem in a football uniform. He stares at these pictures, his hands in fists, before placing them back in their envelope.

第五個抽屜有個檔案夾標(biāo)示著“懷俄明”，里頭大部分是照片，很多他都看過了，有亨明的照片、威廉和亨明的合影、他父母的照片、威廉沒見過的姐姐布麗特和哥哥阿克塞爾的照片。里頭還有另一個信封，裝著十來張威廉的獨(dú)照：學(xué)校的照片、威廉穿童子軍制服的照片，還有威廉穿美式橄欖球球衣的照片。他凝視這些照片，雙手握拳，然后把照片放回信封里。

　 There are a few other things in the Wyoming file as well: a third-grade book report, written in Willem’s careful cursive, on The Wizard of Oz that makes him smile; a hand-drawn birthday card to Hemming that makes him want to cry. His mother’s death announcement; his father’s. A copy of their will. A few letters, from him to his parents, from his parents to him, all in Swedish—these he sets aside to have translated.

懷俄明的檔案夾里還有其他幾樣?xùn)|西：一份小學(xué)三年級的讀書報告，威廉小心翼翼用草寫體寫著《綠野仙蹤》的讀后感，他看著看著笑起來；一張送給亨明的手繪生日卡，讓他很想哭。還有他母親的訃告、父親的訃告、一份父母遺囑的復(fù)印件。幾封信，有他寫給他父母的，也有他父母寫給他的，全是瑞典文。他把這些信拿出來放在一邊，打算拿去找人翻譯。

　 He knows Willem had never kept a journal, and yet when he looks through the “Boston” file, he thinks for some reason he might find something. But there is nothing. Instead there are more pictures, all of which he has seen before: of Willem, so shiningly handsome; of Malcolm, looking suspicious and slightly feral, with the stringy, unsuccessful Afro he had tried to cultivate throughout college; of JB, looking essentially the same as he does now, merry and fat-cheeked; of him, looking scared and drowned and very skinny, in his awful too-big clothes and with his awful too-long hair, in his braces that imprisoned his legs in their black, foamy embrace. He stops at a picture of the two of them sitting on the sofa in their suite in Hood, Willem leaning into him and looking at him, smiling, clearly saying something, and him, laughing with his hand over his mouth, which he had learned to do after the counselors at the home told him he had an ugly smile. They look like two different creatures, not just two different people, and he has to quickly refile the picture before he tears it in half.

他知道威廉從不寫日記，然而他抽出標(biāo)示著“波士頓”的檔案夾時，不知怎的覺得自己可能發(fā)現(xiàn)了什么。結(jié)果沒有。里頭只是一些照片，全是他以前看過的：威廉的照片，俊美又醒目；馬爾科姆的照片，表情疑心，有點(diǎn)桀驁不馴，頂著一頭油膩、不太成功的爆炸頭（他大學(xué)四年一直留這個發(fā)型）；杰比的照片，看起來基本上跟現(xiàn)在一樣，歡樂的胖臉頰；他的照片，表情驚恐，非常瘦，穿著太大的衣服，留著太長的頭發(fā)，兩腿裝著金屬支撐架，外頭包著黑色泡沫海綿。他停下來看著一張他們兩人坐在虎德館宿舍沙發(fā)上的照片，威廉靠向他，看著他微笑，顯然正在說話，他則是掩著嘴巴大笑。之前在少年之家時期，有個輔導(dǎo)員說他笑起來很丑，從此他就學(xué)會笑的時候要掩住嘴巴。他們看起來不光是不同的兩個人，而是兩種不同的生物，他趕緊把照片放回檔案夾里，免得自己撕爛。

　 Now it is becoming difficult to breathe, but he keeps going. In the “Boston” file, in the “New Haven” file, are reviews from the college newspapers of plays Willem had been in; there is the story about JB’s Lee Lozano–inspired performance art piece. There is, touchingly, the one calculus exam on which Willem had made a B, an exam he had coached him on for months.

現(xiàn)在他開始覺得難以呼吸，但還是繼續(xù)翻下去。在“波士頓”和“紐黑文”的檔案夾里，有威廉參與戲劇演出的大學(xué)報評論；有一篇報道是關(guān)于杰比受到李·洛扎諾啟發(fā)而進(jìn)行的行為藝術(shù)作品。另外，令人感動的是一份微積分考卷，威廉拿到了B，那是他幫威廉惡補(bǔ)好幾個月的成果。

　 And then he reaches into the drawer again, most of which is occupied not by a hanging file but by a large, accordion-shaped one, the kind they use at the firm. He hefts it out and sees that it is marked only with his name, and slowly opens it.

他把檔案放回那個抽屜，繼續(xù)檢視，里頭占據(jù)最大空間的不是懸掛式檔案夾，而是一個風(fēng)琴狀的大檔案夾，就是他在事務(wù)所常用的那種。他把那個檔案夾拿出來，看到上頭的標(biāo)示只有他的名字，于是緩緩打開來。

　 Inside it is everything: every letter he had ever written Willem, every substantial e-mail printed out. There are birthday cards he’d given Willem. There are photographs of him, some of which he has never seen. There is the Artforum issue with Jude with Cigarette on the cover. There is a card from Harold written shortly after the adoption, thanking Willem for coming and for the gift. There is an article about him winning a prize in law school, which he certainly hadn’t sent Willem but someone clearly had. He hadn’t needed to catalog his life after all—Willem had been doing it for him all along.

里頭是所有的一切：他寫給威廉的每一封信、每一封重要電子郵件的打印稿、他送給威廉的生日賀卡。一些他的照片，有的他自己都沒看過。以《拿著香煙的裘德》為封面的那期《藝術(shù)論壇》。還有一張哈羅德寫的卡片，是收養(yǎng)剛辦完后沒多久寫給威廉的，謝謝威廉的禮物和出席。有一篇文章報道他在法學(xué)院得了一個獎；他很確定不是他寄給威廉的，顯然是別人給他的。到頭來，他不必整理自己的人生了，因為威廉一直在幫他記錄。

　 But why had Willem cared about him so much? Why had he wanted to spend so much time around him? He had never been able to understand this, and now he never will.

但為什么威廉這么關(guān)心他？為什么要花這么多時間跟他在一起？他從來不明白，現(xiàn)在他永遠(yuǎn)不會明白了。

　 I sometimes think I care more about your being alive than you do, he remembers Willem saying, and he takes a long, shuddering breath.

有時候，我覺得我比你還在乎要保住你這條命，他記得威廉這么說過。然后他顫抖著吸了一口長氣。

　 On and on it goes, this detailing of his life, and when he looks in the sixth drawer, there is another accordion file, the same as the first, marked “Jude II,” and behind it, “Jude III” and “Jude IV.” But by this point he can no longer look. He gently replaces the files, closes the drawers, relocks the cabinets. He puts Willem’s and his parents’ letters into an envelope, and then another envelope, for protection. He removes the plum branches, wraps their cut ends in a plastic bag, dumps the water from their vase into the sink, locks up the house, and drives home, the branches on the seat next to him. Before he goes up to his apartment, he lets himself into Richard’s studio, fills one of the empty coffee cans with water and inserts the branches, leaves it on his worktable for him to find in the morning.

他繼續(xù)往下看這些人生紀(jì)錄，等他看到第六個抽屜，又有另一個風(fēng)琴檔案夾，跟第一個一樣，標(biāo)示著“裘德II”，后頭還有“裘德III”和“裘德IV”。但此時他已經(jīng)沒辦法看下去了。他把那些檔案夾輕輕歸位，關(guān)上抽屜，鎖好檔案柜。他把威廉和他父母的通信放進(jìn)一個信封里，再套進(jìn)一個更大的信封里保護(hù)著。他拿了那枝梅花，把切掉的那一端包在塑料袋里，把花瓶里剩下的水倒進(jìn)水槽，然后出去鎖上前門，開車回家，那枝梅花一直就放在他旁邊的座位上。到了格林街，他先自己用鑰匙進(jìn)入理查德的工作室，找了一個空咖啡罐裝滿水，把那枝梅花放進(jìn)去，擺在他的工作臺上，讓理查德明天早上能一眼看到。

　 Then it is the end of March; he is at the office. A Friday night, or rather, a Saturday morning. He turns away from his computer and looks out the window. He has a clear view to the Hudson, and above the river he can see the sky turning white. For a long time he stands and stares at the dirty gray river, at the wheeling flocks of birds. He returns to his work. He can feel, these past few months, that he has changed, that people are frightened of him. He has never been a jolly presence in the office, but now he can tell he is mirthless. He can feel he has become more ruthless. He can feel he has become chillier. He and Sanjay used to have lunch together, the two of them griping about their colleagues, but now he cannot talk to anyone. He brings in business. He does his job, he does more than he needs to—but he can tell no one enjoys being around him. He needs Rosen Pritchard; he would be lost without his work. But he no longer derives any pleasure from it. That’s all right, he tries to tell himself. Work is not for pleasure, not for most people. But it had been for him, once, and now it no longer is.

然后是三月底；有個星期五夜里，或者應(yīng)該說星期六凌晨，在辦公室里。他離開電腦前，轉(zhuǎn)身望著窗外。這里可以看到哈德遜河，視線毫無阻礙，河面上方的天空正在轉(zhuǎn)白。于是他站在那里，凝視臟灰的河水良久，看著盤旋的鳥群。之后他又回頭工作。他可以感覺到，過去這幾個月他改變了，同事們很怕他。他在辦公室里從來不是歡樂的人，但現(xiàn)在他感覺到自己非常憂郁。他可以感覺到自己變得更無情、更冷酷。他和桑杰以前總是一起吃午餐，兩個人會對同事發(fā)發(fā)牢騷，但現(xiàn)在他沒辦法跟任何人說話了。他持續(xù)帶進(jìn)業(yè)務(wù)，也盡責(zé)做好分內(nèi)的工作，做得遠(yuǎn)超過他該做的——但他看得出來，沒有人喜歡跟他相處。他需要羅森·普理查德；要是沒有工作，他會茫然不知所措，但他再也無法從工作中得到任何快樂了。這樣也沒關(guān)系，他告訴自己。對大部分人來說，工作本來就不是為了快樂。但對他來說本來是的，現(xiàn)在卻再也不是了。