旅行的艺术:对旅行的期待-1

1

1

时序之入冬，一如人之将老，徐缓渐近，每日变化细微，殊难确察，日日累叠，终成严冬，因此，要具体地说出冬天来临之日，并非易事。先是晚间温度微降，接着连日阴雨，伴随来自大西洋捉摸不定的阵风、潮湿的空气、纷落的树叶，白昼亦见短促。其间也许会有短暂的风雨间歇，天气晴好，万里无云，人们不穿大衣便可一早出门。但这些都只是一种假象，是病入膏肓者临终前的“回光返照”，于事无补。到了12月，冬日已森然盘踞，整座城市每天为铁灰色的天空所笼罩，给人以不祥之兆，极类曼特尼亚 [1] 或韦罗内塞 [2] 的绘画作品中晦暗的天空，是基督耶稣遇难图的绝佳背景，也是在家赖床的好天气。邻近的公园在雨夜的路灯下，满眼泥泞和积水，甚是荒凉。有一晚，大雨滂沱，我从公园走过，忽地记起刚刚逝去的夏日，在酷暑中，我曾如何躺在草地上，伸展四肢，任光脚从鞋中溜出，轻抚嫩草；我还记起那种和大地的直接接触如何让我觉得自由舒展：夏日里没有惯常的室内、户外之别，置身大自然时，我有如在卧室里一般自在。

It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established relentless reality. First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks-though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has passed its sentence. By December, the new season was entrenched and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steely-grey sky, like one in a painting by Mantegna or Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became a desolate spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked lamps. Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip from my shoes to caress the grass and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out, and allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.

威廉·霍奇斯：《重游塔希提岛》，1776年

但现在，眼前的公园再次变得陌生，连绵的阴雨中，草地已无从涉足。此时，任何的哀愁，任何得不到快乐和理解的担忧，似乎都能在那些暗红砖石外墙、浸得透湿的建筑，以及城市街灯映照下略泛橙色的低沉的夜空中找到佐证。

But now the park was foreign once more, the grass a forbidding arena in the incessant rain. Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's street-lights.

这样的天气，以及这个时节发生的一系列的事件（似乎应验了詹佛 [3] 的名言，一个人每天早晨都得吞食一只癞蛤蟆，这样才能保证他在日间不会遇上更恶心的事），使我很自然地想起了一件事：一天下午，几近黄昏，我意外地收到了一大本色彩亮丽、名为《冬日艳阳》的画册。画册的封面是一大片的沙滩，还可以看见沙滩边缘湛蓝的海。沙滩另一边，是一排棕榈树，多数斜立着，再往后，是画面中作为背景的群山；我能想象那山中有瀑布，想象得出山中飘香果树下的荫凉，体会从酷热中解脱的惬意。画册里的摄影图片让我不禁想起描绘塔希提岛的油画——那是威廉·霍吉斯和库克船长一起旅行时创作的作品，画面中，夜色轻柔，热带礁湖边，土著少女在繁茂的簇叶中无忧无虑地（赤脚）欢跳。1776年严冬，霍奇斯首次在伦敦皇家学院展出这些油画，引起了人们对美景的好奇和向往，而且，从那以后，这类图景一直都是热带风情画的范本；自然，这本《冬日艳阳》也不例外。

Such climatic circumstances, together with a sequence of events that occurred at around this time (and seemed to confirm Chamfort's dictum that a man must swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead), conspired to render me intensely susceptible to the unsolicited arrival one late afternoon of a large, brightly illustrated brochure entitled 'Winter Sun'. Its cover displayed a row of palm trees, many of them growing at an angle, on a sandy beach fringed by a turquoise sea, set against a backdrop of hills, where I imagined there to be waterfalls and relief from the heat in the shade of sweet-smelling fruit trees. The photographs reminded me of the paintings of Tahiti that William Hodges had brought back from his journey with Captain Cook, showing a tropical lagoon in soft evening light where smiling local girls cavorted carefree (and barefoot) through luxuriant foliage, images that had provoked wonder and longing when Hodges first exhibited them at the Royal Academy in London in the sharp winter of 1776and that continued to provide a model for subsequent depictions of tropical idylls, including the pages of 'Winter Sun'.

那些设计和制作这份画册的人也许还不知道画册的读者是多么容易为那些摄影图片所俘虏，因为这些亮彩的图片，如棕榈树、蓝天和银色沙滩等，有一种力量，使读者理解力受挫，并完全丧失其自由意志。在生活中别的场合，他们原本谨慎，敢于质疑，但在阅读这些图片时，他们却不假思索，变得异常的天真和乐观。这本画册所引发出的令人感动，同时让人伤感的向往便是一个例子，它说明了人生中许许多多的事件（甚至是整个人生）是如何为一些最简单、最经不起推敲的快乐图景所影响；而一次开销巨大，超出经济承受能力的旅程的起因又如何可能仅仅只是因为瞥见了一张摄影图片：图片里，一棵棕榈树在热带微风中轻摇曼舞。

Those responsible for the brochure had darkly intuited how easily their readers might be turned into prey by photographs whose power insulted the intelligence and contravened any notions of free will: over-exposed photographs of palm trees, clear skies and white beaches. Readers who would have been capable of scepticism and prudence in other areas of their lives reverted in contact with these elements to a primordial innocence and optimism. The longing provoked by the brochure was an example, at once touching and bathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives) might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined images of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set into motion by nothing more than the sight of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze.

我决定到巴巴多斯岛旅行。

I resolved to travel to the island of Barbados.