《渺小一生》:这就是他想要的吗？赦免？
He finished the last tie and brought himself to his feet, Harold deliberately not helping him. “I don’t want to tell you this,” he said, and looked down at the forsythia, its bare twiggy ugliness. “But I have to because—because I don’t want to be deceitful with you. But Harold—I think you think I’m one kind of person, and I’m not.”
他绑完了最后一个结，吃力地站起身子，哈罗德刻意不帮他。“我不想跟你说这件事。”他说，低头看着连翘，那些光秃而细瘦的树枝好丑，“但是我一定得讲，因为，因为我不想欺骗你。哈罗德，我想你以为我是某一种人，而我不是。”
Harold was quiet. “What kind of person do I think you are?”
哈罗德沉默了一会：“我认为你是哪一种人？”
“A good person,” he said. “Someone decent.”
“好人。”他说，“像样的人。”
“Well,” said Harold, “you’re right. I do.”
“唔，”哈罗德说，“没错，我是这样想的。”
“But—I’m not,” he said, and could feel his eyes grow hot, despite the cold. “I’ve done things that—that good people don’t do,” he continued, lamely. “And I just think you should know that about me. That I’ve done terrible things, things I’m ashamed of, and if you knew, you’d be ashamed to know me, much less be related to me.”
“但——我不是。”他说，可以感觉到自己的双眼发热，尽管天气很冷，“我做过一些事情是，是好人不会做的。”他小声地说，“我只是觉得你应该知道关于我的这一点。我做过很可怕的事，让我羞愧的事。你要是知道了，会很后悔认识我，更别说跟我扯上关系了。”
“Jude,” Harold said at last. “I can’t imagine anything you might have done that would change the way I feel about you. I don’t care what you did before. Or rather—I do care; I would love to hear about your life before we met. But I’ve always had the feeling, the very strong feeling, that you never wanted to discuss it.” He stopped and waited. “Do you want to discuss it now? Do you want to tell me?”
“裘德，”哈罗德终于说，“我无法想象你做过的任何事会改变我对你的感觉。我不在乎你以前做过什么。或者应该说，我其实在乎，我很想听听你认识我以前的人生。但我总有个感觉，非常强烈的感觉，就是你绝对不想谈。”他停下来等着，“你想现在谈吗？你想告诉我吗？”
He shook his head. He wanted to and didn’t want to, both. “I can’t,” he said. Beneath the small of his back, he felt the first unfurlings of discomfort, a blackened seed spreading its thorned branches. Not now, he begged himself, not now, a plea as impossible as the plea he really meant: Not now, not ever.
他摇摇头。他想谈，也不想谈。“我做不到。”他说。在他后腰下方，他感到第一股不舒服开始出现，一颗发黑的种子伸出它带刺的树枝。不要现在发作，他向自己哀求，现在不要。那恳求就像他真正的意思一样不可能：现在不要，永远都不要。
“Well,” Harold sighed, “in the absence of specifics, I won’t be able to reassure you specifically, so I’m just going to give you a blanket, all-encompassing reassurance, which I hope you’ll believe. Jude: whatever it is, whatever you did, I promise you, whether you someday tell me or not, that it will never make me regret wanting or having you as a member of my family.” He took a deep breath, held his right hand before him. “Jude St. Francis, as your future parent, I hereby absolve you of—of everything for which you seek absolution.”
“唔，”哈罗德说，“因为缺乏确切的细节，我也没法确切跟你保证，所以我就给你一个概括性、全方位的保证好了，而且我希望你能相信。裘德：无论是什么事，无论你做过什么，我跟你保证，无论你以后会不会告诉我，我想让你成为我家里的一分子，绝对不会后悔。”他深吸一口气，举起右手，“裘德·圣弗朗西斯，我以你未来父亲的身份，在此赦免你——赦免所有你想寻求赦免的事情。”
And was this what he in fact wanted? Absolution? He looked at Harold’s face, so familiar he could remember its every furrow when he closed his eyes, and which, despite the flourishes and formality of his declaration, was serious and unsmiling. Could he believe Harold? The hardest thing is not finding the knowledge, Brother Luke once said to him after he’d confessed he was having difficulty believing in God. The hardest thing is believing it. He felt he had failed once again: failed to confess properly, failed to determine in advance what he wanted to hear in response. Wouldn’t it have been easier in a way if Harold had told him that he was right, that they should perhaps rethink the adoption? He would have been devastated, of course, but it would have been an old sensation, something he understood. In Harold’s refusal to let him go lay a future he couldn’t imagine, one in which someone might really want him for good, and that was a reality that he had never experienced before, for which he had no preparation, no signposts. Harold would lead and he would follow, until one day he would wake and Harold would be gone, and he would be left vulnerable and stranded in a foreign land, with no one there to guide him home.
这就是他想要的吗？赦免？他看着哈罗德的脸，熟悉得连闭上眼都记得他脸上的每道沟纹；尽管刚刚的宣告那么夸张又那么正式、严肃、毫无新意。他能相信哈罗德吗？最难的事情不是找到答案，卢克修士有回跟他坦承自己很难相信上帝之后这么说，而是找到之后要相信。他觉得自己再度失败了：他没有适当地坦白一切，没有事先确定自己想要听到哪种答案。如果哈罗德跟他说他是对的，说他们或许应该重新考虑收养的事情，那么就某种意义而言，他不是会比较好过吗？当然，他会非常震惊，但那是以前就体验过、已经了解的感觉。哈罗德不肯放开他，就等于提出一个他无法想象的未来；在那个未来中，某个人可能真的希望永远接纳他。但那种现实是他从来不曾体验过的，所以他毫无准备，没有路标可以参考。于是哈罗德走在前面领路，他跟在后面。直到有一天他醒来，哈罗德不见了，他会毫无防备地被困在一片陌生的土地中，没有人可以指引他回家。
Harold was waiting for his reply, but the pain was now unignorable, and he knew he had to rest. “Harold,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I think—I think I’d better go lie down for a while.”
哈罗德等待他的回答，但他已经痛到无法忍受，也知道自己必须休息。“哈罗德，”他说，“对不起，我想，我想我最好去躺一会儿。”
“Go,” said Harold, unoffended, “go.”
“去吧。”哈罗德说，并没有不高兴，“去吧。”
In his room, he lies down atop the comforter and closes his eyes, but even after the episode ends, he’s exhausted, and tells himself he’ll nap for just a few minutes and then get up again and see what Harold has in the house: if he has brown sugar, he’ll bake something—there was a bowl of persimmons in the kitchen, and maybe he’ll make a persimmon cake.
他回到自己的房间，躺在薄被上，闭上眼睛，但直到疼痛发作结束，他还是筋疲力尽。他告诉自己只能小睡几分钟，就要起来看哈罗德家里有什么材料，如果有红糖，他就要烘焙点心，厨房里有一钵柿子，或许他可以烤个柿子蛋糕。
But he doesn’t wake up. Not when Harold comes to check on him in the next hour and places the back of his hand against his cheek and then drapes a blanket over him; not when Harold checks on him again, right before dinner. He sleeps through his phone ringing at midnight and again at six a.m., and through the house phone ringing at twelve thirty and then at six thirty, and Harold’s conversations with first Andy and then Willem. He sleeps into the morning, and through lunch, and only wakes when he feels Harold’s hand on his shoulder and hears Harold saying his name, telling him his flight’s leaving in a few hours.
但是他没有醒来。一个小时后，哈罗德进来查看，把手背贴在他脸颊，然后帮他盖了条毯子，他没有醒；晚餐过后，哈罗德又进来查看了一次，他也没有醒。他一直没有醒来，半夜12点电话响了，然后是清晨6点，同时固定电话在12点半和清晨6点半也都响过，于是哈罗德先是跟安迪、接着跟威廉讲了电话。他一直睡，睡过了上午，睡过了午餐时间，直到最后，他感觉到哈罗德的手放在他肩膀上喊他的名字，跟他说他的航班再过两三个小时就要起飞，这才醒来。
Before he wakes, he dreams of a man standing in a field. He can’t see the man’s features, but he is tall and thin, and he’s helping another, older man hitch the hulk of a tractor carapace to the back of a truck. He knows he’s in Montana from the whitened, curved-bowl vastness of the sky, and from the particular kind of cold there, which is completely without moisture and which feels somehow purer than cold he’s felt anywhere else.
醒来之前，他梦到一个男人站在一片田野里。他看不到那个男人的脸，但是那人高而瘦，正在帮另一个比较老的男人把一台曳引机的笨重车壳钩在一辆卡车后头。他知道地点是在蒙大拿州，因为有一片发白、圆碗状的辽阔天空，还有那种独有的寒冷：完全没有湿气，比他去过所有地方的冷都更纯粹。
He still can’t see the man’s features, but he thinks he knows who he is, recognizes his long strides and his way of crossing his arms in front of him as he listens to the other man. “Cody,” he calls out in his dream, and the man turns, but he’s too far away, and so he can’t quite tell if, under the brim of the man’s baseball cap, they share the same face.
他还是看不到那个男人的脸，但他觉得自己知道他是谁，认出了他长长的步伐和双臂交抱听老男人讲话的姿势。“科迪。”他在梦中喊道。那男人转身，但他离得太远了，不太确定那男人棒球帽的帽檐底下，是不是一张跟他一样的脸。
The fifteenth is a Friday, which he takes off from work. There had been some talk of a dinner party on Thursday night, but in the end, they settle on an early lunch the day of the ceremony (as JB calls it). Their court appointment is at ten, and after it’s over, everyone will come back to the house to eat.
二月十五日是星期五，这一天他请了假。本来大家考虑在星期四晚上举行晚餐派对，但最后还是决定在仪式（杰比这么称呼）之后再办一场早午宴。法院排定的时间是10点，等程序结束，大家就回到哈罗德家吃饭。
Harold had wanted to call a caterer, but he insisted he’d cook, and he spends the remains of Thursday evening in the kitchen. He does the baking that night—the chocolate-walnut cake Harold likes; the tarte tatin Julia likes; the sourdough bread they both like—and picks through ten pounds of crab and mixes the meat with egg and onion and parsley and bread crumbs and forms them into patties. He cleans the potatoes and gives the carrots a quick scrub, and chops the ends off the brussels sprouts, so that the next day all he’ll have to do is toss them in oil and shove them into the oven. He shakes the cartons of figs into a bowl, which he’ll roast and serve over ice cream topped with honey and balsamic vinaigrette. They are all of Harold and Julia’s favorite dishes, and he is glad to make them, glad to have something to give them, however small. Throughout the evening, Harold and Julia wander in and out, and although he tells them not to, they wash dishes and pans as he dirties them, pour him glasses of water and wine, and ask if they can help him, even though he tells them they should relax. Finally they leave for bed, and although he promises them that he will as well, he instead stays up, the kitchen bright and silent around him, singing quietly, his hands moving to keep the mania at bay.
哈罗德本来想找外烩厨师，但他坚持要做菜，于是整个星期四傍晚他都在厨房里忙。当天晚上他做了烘焙——哈罗德喜欢的巧克力核桃蛋糕；朱丽娅喜欢的反转苹果塔；酸面团面包则是他们夫妇两个都爱的——然后把十磅螃蟹的蟹肉剔出来，加上鸡蛋、洋葱、西芹和面包丁，做成蟹肉饼。他把马铃薯洗干净，又迅速刷好胡萝卜，切掉抱子甘蓝的梗，这样次日他只要用油拌过、放进烤箱就好了。他把几盒无花果倒进一个大钵，打算烤过后，放在冰淇淋上，再淋上蜂蜜和意大利陈年酒醋酱。这些都是哈罗德和朱丽娅最喜欢吃的，他很高兴能准备这些，很高兴自己有东西可以送给他们，无论是多小的东西。一整夜，哈罗德和朱丽娅不时走进厨房逗留。尽管他叫他们不要管，他们还是在旁边帮忙洗他用过的盘子和锅子，倒水或葡萄酒给他，还问能不能帮上忙，不管他一直要他们放轻松。最后他们终于去睡觉，他保证他也会去睡。结果他继续熬夜，在明亮寂静的厨房里小声唱着歌，双手忙碌着，防止自己陷入疯狂。
The past few days have been very difficult, some of the most difficult he can remember, so difficult that one night he even called Andy after their midnight check-in, and when Andy offered to meet him at a diner at two a.m., he accepted the offer and went, desperate to get himself out of the apartment, which suddenly seemed full of irresistible temptations: razors, of course, but also knives and scissors and matches, and staircases to throw himself down. He knows that if he goes to his room now, he won’t be able to stop himself from heading directly to the bathroom, where he has long kept a bag, its contents identical to the one at Lispenard Street, taped to the sink’s undercarriage: his arms ache with yearning, and he is determined not to give in. He has both dough and batter left over, and decides he’ll make a tart with pine nuts and cranberries, and maybe a round flat cake glazed with slices of oranges and honey: by the time both are done baking, it will almost be daylight and he will be past danger and will have sucessfully saved himself.
过去几天非常难熬，有些甚至可以列入他记忆中最难熬的时刻。他难受到有天夜里接到安迪12点的查勤电话后，又打过去。安迪提议凌晨2点跟他在一家小餐馆碰面，他接受了，只想赶紧逃离他的公寓，因为里头忽然充满种种无法抗拒的诱惑：当然有刮胡刀片，但也有刀子、剪刀、火柴，还有可以让自己摔下去的楼梯。眼前是在哈罗德的厨房里，他知道如果回到自己的房间，他就无法阻止自己直接进入浴室。他一直在里头藏了一个袋子，里头装的东西跟利斯本纳街那个袋子一模一样，就贴在水槽的底架上。他的手臂渴望得发痛，但他决心不要投降。他还剩下一些面团和面糊，决定加上松子和蔓越莓做一个水果塔，或许再做个圆形海绵蛋糕，覆上柳橙片和蜂蜜。等两个都烤好，应该就快天亮了。那样他就可以度过危险，成功拯救自己。
Malcolm and JB will both be at the courthouse the next day; they’re taking the morning flight. But Willem, who was supposed to be there, won’t; he called the week before to say filming had been delayed, and he’ll now be coming home on the eighteenth, not the fourteenth. He knows there’s nothing to be done about this, but still, he mourns Willem’s absence almost fiercely: a day like this without Willem won’t be a day at all. “Call me the second it’s over,” Willem had said. “It’s killing me I can’t be there.”
马尔科姆和杰比明天都会搭早班飞机去法院跟他们会合。倒是本来该到场的威廉却不会来了，他上星期打电话来，说拍片进度延迟，要十八日才能回家，而不是原定的十四日。他知道这是没办法的事，但威廉的缺席还是让他难过得要命：这么重大的一天却少了威廉，一切简直变得无意义了。“结束后马上打电话给我。”之前威廉跟他说，“真受不了，我居然没办法赶到。”
He did, however, invite Andy in one of their midnight conversations, which he grew to enjoy: in those talks, they discussed everyday things, calming things, normal things—the new Supreme Court justice nominee; the most recent health-care bill (he approved of it; Andy didn’t); a biography of Rosalind Franklin they’d both read (he liked it; Andy didn’t); the apartment that Andy and Jane were renovating. He liked the novelty of hearing Andy say, with real outrage, “Jude, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!,” which he was used to hearing when being confronted about his cutting, or his amateurish bandaging skills, instead applied to his opinions about movies, and the mayor, and books, and even paint colors. Once he learned that Andy wouldn’t use their talks as an occasion to reprimand him, or lecture him, he relaxed into them, and even managed to learn some more things about Andy himself: Andy spoke of his twin, Beckett, also a doctor, a heart surgeon, who lived in San Francisco and whose boyfriend Andy hated and was scheming to get Beckett to dump; and how Jane’s parents were giving them their house on Shelter Island; and how Andy had been on the football team in high school, the very Americanness of which had made his parents uneasy; and how he had spent his junior year abroad in Siena, where he dated a girl from Lucca and gained twenty pounds. It wasn’t that he and Andy never spoke of Andy’s personal life—they did to some extent after every appointment—but on the phone he talked more, and he was able to pretend that Andy was only his friend and not his doctor, despite the fact that this illusion was belied by the call’s very premise.
不过，他有次在午夜的谈话开口邀请了安迪。他逐渐喜欢上这段时光：在那些谈话里，他们会讨论日常、平静、普通的事情，例如刚被提名的最高法院大法官候选人、最近的医疗法案（他赞成，安迪则不）、一本他们都读过的罗莎琳德·富兰克林（Rosalind Franklin）传记（他喜欢，安迪则不）、安迪和简正在重新装潢的公寓。他喜欢听到安迪带着真正的愤慨说“裘德，你他妈的一定是在跟我开玩笑”，感觉很新奇，因为他以前听到安迪讲这句话，总是在质问他的割伤，或是看到他外行的包扎技巧，而不是听到他发表关于电影、市长、书籍，甚至油漆颜色的意见。一旦他知道安迪不会利用这段谈话时间斥责他，或跟他说教，他就放松了，甚至得知了更多安迪本人的事情：安迪谈到他的双胞胎兄弟贝克特也是医生，心脏外科医生，住在旧金山；安迪很讨厌他的男朋友，正在设计甩掉贝克特；谈到简的父母要把长岛东端谢尔特岛的房子送给他们；谈到安迪高中时加入美式橄榄球校队，这种极富美国人风格的运动使他爸妈很不安；还谈到他大三时曾到意大利锡耶纳当交换学生，他在那里跟一个来自卢卡的女孩交往，胖了二十磅。他们以前不是没谈过安迪的私生活——每次约诊都会聊——但通过电话，他们谈得更多，也可以假装安迪只是他的朋友而非他的医生，即使安迪打电话来的前提恰恰可以推翻这个错觉。
