《渺小一生》:但接着，狂喜的一个月过去了
“I mean, it’s not common, but you can. As long as both parties consent. It’s mostly done for purposes of inheritance.” He made another attempt at a laugh. (Stop trying to laugh, he scolded himself.) “I don’t remember much from when I studied this in family law, but I do know that I get a new birth certificate with their names on it.”
“可以的。我的意思是，这种事情不常见，不过可以的。只要双方同意。这类收养的目的大都是为了继承。”他设法再度挤出笑声（他暗骂自己，别再试着发出笑声了），“我以前修过的家庭法都快忘光了，不过我知道我会拿到一张新的出生证明，上头有他们的名字。”
“Wow,” said Willem.
“哇。”威廉说。
“I know,” he said.
“我知道。”他说。
He heard someone calling Willem’s name, commandingly, in the background. “You have to go,” he told Willem.
他听到电话那头有人在喊威廉的名字，口气很威严。“你该挂电话了。”他告诉威廉。
“Shit,” said Willem. “But Jude? Congratulations. No one deserves it more.” He called back at whoever was yelling for him. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Do you mind if I write Harold and Julia?”
“该死。”威廉说，“不过裘德，恭喜你。没人比你更有资格了。”然后朝吼他的人喊了一声。“我得挂电话了。”他说，“我想写信给哈罗德和朱丽娅，你不介意吧？”
“Sure,” he said. “But Willem, don’t tell the others, okay? I just want to sit with it for a while.”
“当然没问题。”他说，“不过威廉，先别跟其他人说，好吗？我想自己先沉淀一下。”
“I won’t say a word. I’ll see you tomorrow. And Jude—” But he didn’t, or couldn’t, say anything else.
“我一个字都不会说。明天见。还有裘德……”但他没说完，或是没办法说下去。
“I know,” he said. “I know, Willem. I feel the same way.”
“我知道，”他说，“我知道，威廉。我也有同样的感觉。”
“I love you,” said Willem, and then he was gone before he had to respond. He never knew what to say when Willem said that to him, and yet he always longed for him to say it. It was a night of impossible things, and he fought to stay awake, to be conscious and alert for as long as possible, to enjoy and repeat to himself everything that had happened to him, a lifetime’s worth of wishes coming true in a few brief hours.
“我爱你。”威廉说。他还没回应，威廉就挂断电话了。每回威廉跟他说这句话，他都不知道该说什么，但他总是渴望听到威廉这么说。这是个不可思议的夜晚，他挣扎着不想睡，尽可能保持清醒和警觉，好好享受并一再回忆刚刚发生的事情——一辈子的向往，在短短几小时内成真了。
Back in the apartment the next day, there was a note from Willem telling him to wait up, and when Willem came home, he had ice cream and a carrot cake, which the two of them ate even though neither of them particularly liked sweets, and champagne, which they drank even though he had to wake up early the following morning. The next few weeks slid by: Harold was handling the paperwork, and sent him forms to sign—the petition for adoption, an affidavit to change his birth certificate, a request for information about his potential criminal record—which he took to the bank at lunch to have notarized; he didn’t want anyone at work to know beyond the few people he told: Marshall, and Citizen, and Rhodes. He told JB and Malcolm, who on the one hand reacted exactly as he’d anticipated—JB making a lot of unfunny jokes at an almost tic-like pace, as if he might eventually land on one that worked; Malcolm asking increasingly granular questions about various hypotheticals that he couldn’t answer—and on the other had been genuinely thrilled for him. He told Black Henry Young, who had taken two classes with Harold when he was in law school and had admired him, and JB’s friend Richard, to whom he’d grown close after one particularly long and tedious party at Ezra’s a year ago when the two of them had had a conversation that had begun with the French welfare state and then had moved on to various other topics, the only two semi-sober people in the room. He told Phaedra, who had started screaming, and another old college friend, Elijah, who had screamed as well.
次日回到纽约的公寓，看到威廉留下的字条，要他晚上等着，先别去睡。威廉回到家时带着冰淇淋和胡萝卜蛋糕，两个人不是特别喜欢甜食，但他们都吃了；还有香槟，虽然他隔天得早起，但他们也喝了。接下来几个星期飞逝而过。哈罗德负责处理文书部分，寄来了一些表格要他签字，包括收养申请书、更改出生证明的宣誓作证书、查询他潜在犯罪记录信息的请求书，这些文件他趁午餐时间带到法院公证了；同事间，他只告诉了马歇尔、西提任、罗兹，他不希望其他任何人知道。他也告诉了杰比和马尔科姆，他们的反应一方面跟他预期的一模一样：杰比讲了一连串不好笑的笑话，速度快得简直像抽筋，好像最后总会有一个好笑的；马尔科姆则提出了各种他无法回答的假设性问题，一个比一个粗糙。另一方面，他们也真心为他兴奋不已。他告诉了黑亨利·杨，他在法学院时修过哈罗德的两门课，一直很佩服他；还告诉了杰比的朋友理查德，他和理查德相熟是因为一年前埃兹拉家一个漫长无聊的派对，当时他们两个从法国的福利制度聊起，然后转入各式各样的话题，成了派对上仅有的两个没醉倒的人。另外，他也告知大学时代认识的菲德拉，她听了开始尖叫；还有另一个大学时代的老友伊莱贾，也是听了直尖叫。
And, of course, he told Andy, who at first had just stared at him and then nodded, as if he had asked if Andy had an extra bandage he could give him before he left for the night. But then he began making a series of bizarre seal-like sounds, half bark, half sneeze, and he realized that Andy was crying. The sight of it made him both horrified and slightly hysterical, unsure of what to do. “Get out of here,” Andy commanded him between sounds. “I mean it, Jude, get the fuck out,” and so he did. The next day at work, he received an arrangement of roses the size of a gardenia bush, with a note in Andy’s angry blocky handwriting that read:
当然，他告诉了安迪。安迪一开始只是瞪着他，然后点点头，好像他在问安迪有没有多的绷带好让他带回去备用。但接着安迪开始发出一连串海豹似的怪异声音，既像吠叫，又像在打喷嚏，不久他才明白安迪在哭。那幅景象让他又惊骇又有点歇斯底里，不确定该怎么办。“你出去吧。”安迪哭到一半命令他，“我说真的，裘德，他妈的滚出去。”他照做了。次日上班时，他收到一大把像栀子花灌木的玫瑰花束，上面附了一张短笺，是安迪愤怒的粗体手写字：
JUDE—I’M SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED I CAN BARELY WRITE THIS NOTE. PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR YESTERDAY. I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER FOR YOU AND THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHAT TOOK HAROLD SO FUCKING LONG. I HOPE YOU’LL TAKE THIS AS A SIGN THAT YOU NEED TO TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF SO SOMEDAY YOU’LL HAVE THE STRENGTH TO CHANGE HAROLD’S ADULT DIAPERS WHEN HE’S A THOUSAND YEARS OLD AND INCONTINENT, BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE’S NOT GOING TO MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU BY DYING AT A RESPECTABLE AGE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. BELIEVE ME, PARENTS ARE PAINS IN THE ASS LIKE THAT. (BUT GREAT TOO, OF COURSE.) LOVE, ANDY
裘德，我他妈的糗到简直没法写这张字条了。拜托原谅我昨天的表现。我真是太为你高兴了，唯一的问题是他妈的哈罗德怎么会拖到现在。我希望你把这件事看作一个讯号，务必更认真地照顾自己。这样等到哈罗德一千岁又失禁的时候，你才会有力气帮他换成人尿布。因为你知道，他才不会像正常人那样死在一个体面的年纪好让你轻松。相信我，父母就是这样烦死人了（不过当然，他们也很棒）。爱你的，安迪。
It was, he and Willem agreed, one of the best letters they’d ever read.
他和威廉一致同意，这是他们看过写得最棒的信之一。
But then the ecstatic month passed, and it was January, and Willem left for Bulgaria to film, and the old fears returned, accompanied now by new fears. They had a court date for February fifteenth, Harold told him, and with a little rescheduling, Laurence would be presiding. Now that the date was so close, he was sharply, inescapably aware that he might ruin it for himself, and he began, at first unconsciously and then assiduously, avoiding Harold and Julia, convinced that if they were reminded too much, too actively of what they were in fact getting that they would change their minds. And so when they came into town for a play the second week in January, he pretended he was in Washington on business, and on their weekly phone calls, he tried to say very little, and to keep the conversations brief. Every day the improbability of the situation seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his mind; every time he glimpsed the reflection of his ugly zombie’s hobble in the side of a building, he would feel sickened: Who, really, would ever want this? The idea that he could become someone else’s seemed increasingly ludicrous, and if Harold saw him just once more, how could he too not come to the same conclusion? He knew it shouldn’t matter so much to him—he was, after all, an adult; he knew the adoption was more ceremonial than truly sociologically significant—but he wanted it with a steady fervor that defied logic, and he couldn’t bear it being taken away from him now, not when everyone he cared about was so happy for him, not when he was so close.
但接着，狂喜的一个月过去了。到了一月，威廉去保加利亚拍戏，古老的恐惧又回来了，还伴随新的恐惧。他们预定二月十五日要到法院完成正式的收养程序。哈罗德告诉他，经过一些安排，劳伦斯会负责主持。现在时间这么接近了，他清楚地意识到自己可能会无法避免地毁掉这件事，于是他开始回避哈罗德和朱丽娅，一开始是不自觉的，然后是刻意的。因为他相信如果他们太常被提醒、太认真去思考自己到底在做什么，他们就会改变心意。于是一月的第二周，他们来纽约看一场表演时，他假装去华盛顿出差；每个月通电话时他的话都很少，而且尽量简短。在他心中，每天的情势似乎变得越来越消极，而且越来越真实；每回他经过建筑物侧面，看到玻璃上映出自己丧尸般丑陋的跛行身影，就觉得很想吐。真的，谁会想要这个？自己可能成为别人的儿子，这个念头似乎越来越荒唐可笑，只要哈罗德多看他一眼，怎么可能不得出同样的结论？他知道这件事对他的影响不该这么大——毕竟，他是成年人了，他知道收养的仪式性质大过实际的社会意义——但他是这么想被收养，简直违反逻辑。现在，他受不了这个机会被夺走，不只因为每个他在乎的人都这么替他开心，也是因为他已如此接近了。
He had been close before. The year after he arrived in Montana, when he was thirteen, the home had participated in a tristate adoption fair. November was National Adoption Month, and one cold morning, they had been told to dress neatly and had been hurried onto two school buses and driven two hours to Missoula, where they were herded off the buses and into the conference room of a hotel. Theirs had been the last buses to arrive, and the room was already filled with children, boys on one side, girls on the other. In the center of the room was a long stripe of tables, and as he walked over to his side, he saw that they were stacked with labeled binders: Boys, Babies; Boys, Toddlers; Boys, 4–6; Boys, 7–9; Boys, 10–12; Boys, 13–15; Boys, 15+. Inside, they had been told, were pieces of paper with their pictures, and names, and information about themselves: where they were from, what ethnicity they were, information about how they did in school and what sports they liked to play and what talents and interests they had. What, he wondered, did his sheet of paper say about him? What talents might have been invented for him, what race, what origins?
之前他也曾接近过，就在他抵达蒙大拿州那一年。当时他13岁，少年之家参加了一个三州合办的领养会。十一月是全国领养月。于是一个寒冷的早晨，他们被命令穿得干净整齐，搭上两辆校车巴士，坐了两小时的车到米苏拉市。下车后，他们被带到一家饭店的会议厅。他们的巴士是最晚到的，整个会议厅里已经坐满了儿童，男生在一边，女生在另一边。会议厅中央是一排长桌，他走到男生那一边时，看到桌上堆着贴了标识的活页文件夹：男，婴孩；男，学步幼童；男，4－6岁；男，7－9岁；男，10－12岁；男，13－15岁；男，15岁以上。他们得知，文件夹里是每个人的简介，有照片、姓名，还有他们的资料：来自哪里、族裔、在校成绩、喜欢的运动、才华和兴趣等。他很好奇，他那张纸上写了些什么？他们会编出他有什么才华，是什么族裔跟什么出身？
The older boys, the ones whose names and faces were in the 15+ binder, knew they would never be adopted, and when the counselors turned away, they snuck out through the back exit to, they all knew, get high. The babies and toddlers had only to be babies and toddlers; they would be the first to be chosen, and they didn’t even know it. But as he watched from the corner he had drifted toward, he saw that some of the boys—the ones old enough to have experienced one of the fairs before, but still young enough to be hopeful—had strategies. He watched as the sullen became smiling, as the rough and bullying became jocular and playful, as boys who hated one another in the context of the home played and bantered in a way that appeared convincingly friendly. He saw the boys who were rude to the counselors, who cursed at one another in the hallways, smile and chat with the adults, the prospective parents, who were filing into the room. He watched as the toughest, the meanest of the boys, a fourteen-year-old named Shawn who had once held him down in the bathroom, his knees digging into his shoulder blades, pointed at his name tag as the man and woman he had been talking with walked toward the binders. “Shawn!” he called after them, “Shawn Grady!” and something about his hoarse hopeful voice, in which he could hear the effort, the strain, to not sound hopeful at all, made him feel sorry for Shawn for the first time, and then angry at the man and woman, who, he could tell, were actually paging through the “Boys, 7–9” binder. But those feelings passed quickly, because he tried not to feel anything those days: not hunger, not pain, not anger, not sadness.
年纪较大的男孩，被归在“15岁以上”的活页夹里面，知道他们永远不会被收养，所以等到育幼院的辅导员一转身，他们就从后门溜了出去，大家都知道他们去嗑药了。婴儿和学步幼童就继续当婴儿和学步幼童，他们会是最先被挑走的，但他们自己根本不知道。当他慢慢退到角落观察，看到某些男孩——那些年纪够大、参加过至少一次收养会，但还小得足以抱有希望的——就很有策略。他看着他们阴郁的脸转为笑脸，粗暴和霸道变成逗乐和玩闹，在少年之家彼此痛恨的男孩，现在玩耍逗趣的方式看起来很友善。他看到那些平时对辅导员很粗鲁、总是在走廊上彼此骂粗话的男生，现在满脸笑容地和穿梭在会议厅里的养父母候选人聊天。他看到男孩中最凶悍、最残忍的那个（是个14岁、名叫肖恩的，有回他在浴室里把他按在地上，膝盖用力压进他的肩胛骨）对着刚刚讲过话、这会儿正走向活页夹的那对男女指着自己的名牌。“肖恩！”他在他们身后喊道，“肖恩·格雷迪！”从那充满希望的沙哑声音，他听得出来肖恩竭力让自己不要听起来抱有任何希望，他头一次为肖恩感到难过，也很气那对男女。他看得出来，他们其实在翻“男，7－9岁”的档案夹。但那些感觉很快就过去了，因为那些日子里他设法不要有任何感觉：不要有饥饿，不要有疼痛，不要有愤怒，不要有忧伤。
He had no tricks, he had no skills, he couldn’t charm. When he had arrived at the home, he had been so frozen that they had left him behind the previous November, and a year later, he wasn’t sure that he was any better. He thought less and less frequently of Brother Luke, it was true, but his days outside the classroom smeared into one; most of the time he felt he was floating, trying to pretend that he didn’t occupy his own life, wishing he was invisible, wanting only to go unnoticed. Things happened to him and he didn’t fight back the way he once would have; sometimes when he was being hurt, the part of him that was still conscious wondered what the brothers would think of him now: gone were his rages, his tantrums, his struggling. Now he was the boy they had always wished him to be. Now he hoped to be someone adrift, a presence so thin and light and insubstantial that he seemed to displace no air at all.
他没有花招，不会讨人欢心。他刚到少年之家时，整个人还很麻木，所以前一年十一月院方没带他出席领养会。但是一年之后，他不确定自己有任何好转。没错，他越来越少想到卢克修士，但他在教室外的日子一片模糊；大部分时间他觉得自己像在飘浮，只希望没有人注意到他。好多事发生在他身上，他不像以前那样会反抗；有时他被伤害，身上仍有意识的那部分会很好奇以前那些修士现在会怎么想他：他的暴怒、乱发脾气、挣扎全消失了。现在他成了当年他们一直期盼的乖小孩。现在他希望成为一个飘浮的人，又薄又轻又不重要，仿佛毫无实体。
So he was surprised—as surprised as the counselors—when he learned that night that he was one of the children chosen by a couple: the Learys. Had he noticed a woman and man looking at him, maybe even smiling at him? Maybe. But the afternoon had passed, as most did, in a haze, and even on the bus ride home, he had begun the work of forgetting it.
所以当天晚上，当他得知有一对黎瑞夫妇选中他时，觉得很惊讶，辅导员们也很惊讶。他注意到一对男女看着他，甚至朝他微笑吗？或许吧。但那天下午就像大部分下午，过去后一片模糊，甚至在回程的巴士上，他已经开始忘却一切。
He would spend a probationary weekend—the weekend before Thanksgiving—with the Learys, so they could see how they liked each other. That Thursday he was driven to their house by a counselor named Boyd, who taught shop and plumbing and whom he didn’t know very well. He knew Boyd knew what some of the other counselors did to him, and although he never stopped them, he never participated, either.
感恩节假期前的那个周末，他会去黎瑞夫妇家试住，让他们看看彼此是否适合。那个星期四，一个叫博伊德的辅导员载他去黎瑞家；博伊德平常负责教工艺和水管配修，跟他不太熟。他知道博伊德了解某些辅导员对他做的事情，尽管他从没阻止他们，但也没参与。
But as he was getting out of the car in the Learys’ driveway—a one-story brick house, surrounded on all sides by fallow, dark fields—Boyd snatched his forearm and pulled him close, startling him into alertness.
当他在黎瑞家（一栋砖造平房，四面是休耕的黑暗田野）的车道下车时，博伊德抓住他的前臂，把他拉近，吓得他警觉起来。
