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《渺小一生》:他一说出口就后悔了

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2020年04月04日

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  “Because he doesn’t want them to know that he cuts himself, that’s why! And I didn’t know it was going to be this hard for him, Andy,” he said. “He never tells me anything! How was I supposed to know?”

“因为他不想让他们知道他在割自己,这就是为什么!而且安迪,我不知道这件事会让他这么难熬。”他说,“他从来没跟我提过!我怎么会晓得?”

  “Because! You’re supposed to! Fucking use your brain, Willem!”

“因为!你应该要晓得的!他妈的用用你的脑子,威廉!”

  “Don’t you fucking shout at me,” he shouted. “You’re just mad, Andy, because he’s your patient and you can’t fucking figure out a way to make him better and so you’re blaming me.”

“你他妈的不要跟我吼。”他吼回去,“安迪,你只是在生气,因为他是你的病人。你想不出办法让他好过一点,你就来怪我。”

  He regretted it the moment he said it, and in that instant they were both silent, panting into their phones. “Andy,” he began.

他一说出口就后悔了。那一刻,他们两人都沉默下来,对着电话喘气。“安迪。”他先开口。

  “Nope,” said Andy. “You’re right, Willem. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“不,”安迪说,“威廉,你说得没错。对不起,我很抱歉。”

  “No,” he said, “I’m sorry.” He was abruptly miserable, thinking of Jude in the ugly Lispenard Street bathroom. Before he had left, he had looked everywhere for Jude’s razors—beneath the toilet tank lid; in the back of the medicine cabinet; even under the drawers in the cupboard, taking each out and examining them from all angles—but couldn’t find them. But Andy was right—it was his responsibility. He should have done a better job. And he hadn’t, so really, he had failed.

“不,是我很抱歉。”他忽然很难过,想到裘德坐在利斯本纳街丑陋的浴室里。他离开前,曾到处寻找裘德的刮胡刀片——找了水箱盖底下、浴室医药柜后头,甚至找过碗橱抽屉底下,每一个抽屉都拉出来,检查过各种角度——还是找不到。但安迪说得没错,这的确是他的责任。他应该做得更好。结果没有,所以没错,他失败了。

  “No,” said Andy. “I’m really sorry, Willem; it’s totally inexcusable. And you’re right—I don’t know what to do.” He sounded tired. “It’s just that he’s had—he’s had such a shitty life, Willem. And he trusts you.”

“不,”安迪说,“威廉,我真的很抱歉,我完全没有借口。而且你说得没错——我不知道该怎么办。”他的口气好疲倦,“只不过威廉,他以前——他以前过得那么糟,而且他信赖你。”

  “I know,” he mumbled. “I know he does.”

“我知道。”他喃喃地说,“我知道他信赖我。”

  So they’d worked out a plan, and when he got back home, he’d monitored Jude more closely than he had before, a process that had proved singularly unrevealing. Indeed, in the month or so after the adoption, Jude was different than he’d seen him before. He couldn’t exactly define how: except on rare occasions, he wasn’t ever able to determine the days Jude was unhappy and the days he wasn’t. It wasn’t as if he normally moped around and was unemotive and then, suddenly, wasn’t—his fundamental behavior and rhythms and gestures were the same as before. But something had changed, and for a brief period, he had the strange sensation that the Jude he knew had been replaced by another Jude, and that this other Jude, this changeling, was someone of whom he could ask anything, who might have funny stories about pets and friends and scrapes from childhood, who wore long sleeves only because he was cold and not because he was trying to hide something. He was determined to take Jude at his word as often and as much as he could: after all, he wasn’t his doctor. He was his friend. His job was to treat him as he wanted to be treated, not as a subject to be spied on.

于是他们拟出一个计划。后来他回到纽约,就比以前更严密地监视裘德,结果一无所获。被收养后的那一个月左右,裘德跟以前很不一样。他也说不上来是哪里不一样。除了很偶尔的状况,他难以判定裘德那天开心或不开心。裘德平常并不会无精打采、不露情绪,然后忽然间就变了个人——他的基本行为模式、节奏、姿势还是跟以前一样。但有些什么改变了。很短的一阵子,他有种奇怪的感觉,他认识的裘德换成另一个裘德,而这个新的、被偷换过来的裘德,他可以向他询问任何事;这个裘德可能会讲起宠物和朋友的趣事,以及童年的片段;这个裘德穿长袖是因为怕冷,而不是为了遮掩什么。他决心尽可能多相信裘德说的话:毕竟,他不是裘德的医生,他只是裘德的朋友。他的任务是以裘德希望的方式对待他,而不是把他当成暗中监视的对象。

  And so, after a certain point, his vigilance diminished, and eventually, that other Jude departed, back to the land of fairies and enchantments, and the Jude he knew reclaimed his space. But then, every once in a while, there would be troubling reminders that what he knew of Jude was only what Jude allowed him to know: he called Jude daily when he was away shooting, usually at a prearranged time, and one day last year he had called and they’d had a normal conversation, Jude sounding no different than he always did, and the two of them laughing at one of Willem’s stories, when he heard in the background the clear and unmistakable intercom announcement of the sort one only hears at hospitals: “Paging Dr. Nesarian, Dr. Nesarian to OR Three.”

于是过了一阵子,他的警觉性逐渐消失了,但最终,另一个裘德离开了,回到童话和魔法的世界中去了,原先他认识的裘德回来了。每隔一阵子,就会有一些麻烦的状况出现,提醒他:他认识的裘德,不过是裘德允许他知道的部分。他到外地拍戏时,每天都会打电话给裘德,通常是事先讲好的时间。去年有一天,他们在电话中如常地聊天,裘德讲话跟平常没有两样,就在两人为了威廉拍戏的趣事大笑时,他听到背景中清楚无误的广播声,只有医院才会有:“呼叫纳撒瑞安医师。纳撒瑞安医师请到三号手术室。”

  “Jude?” he’d asked.

“裘德?”他问。

  “Don’t worry, Willem,” he’d said. “I’m fine. I just have a slight infection; I think Andy’s gone a little crazy.”

“别担心,威廉。”他说,“我没事,只是有一点轻微的感染。我觉得安迪有点太紧张了。”

  “What kind of infection? Jesus, Jude!”

“什么样的感染?老天啊,裘德!”

  “A blood infection, but it’s nothing. Honestly, Willem, if it was serious, I would’ve told you.”

“血液感染,但是没什么。老实说,威廉,如果真的严重,我会告诉你的。”

  “No, you fucking wouldn’t have, Jude. A blood infection is serious.”

“不,你他妈的才不会告诉我,裘德。血液感染就很严重了。”

  He was silent. “I would’ve, Willem.”

他沉默了一会儿:“威廉,我会告诉你的。”

  “Does Harold know?”

“哈罗德知道吗?”

  “No,” he said, sharply. “And you’re not to tell him.”

“不,”他说,忽然很凶,“你不可以告诉他。”

  Exchanges like this left him stunned and bothered, and he spent the rest of the evening trying to remember the previous week’s conversations, picking through them for clues that something might have been amiss and he might have simply, stupidly overlooked it. In more generous, wondering moments, he imagined Jude as a magician whose sole trick was concealment, but every year, he got better and better at it, so that now he had only to bring one wing of the silken cape he wore before his eyes and he would become instantly invisible, even to those who knew him best. But at other times, he bitterly resented this trick, the year-after-year exhaustion of keeping Jude’s secrets and yet never being given anything in return but the meanest smidges of information, of not being allowed the opportunity to even try to help him, to publicly worry about him. This isn’t fair, he would think in those moments. This isn’t friendship. It’s something, but it’s not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play. Everything Jude communicated to them indicated that he didn’t want to be helped. And yet he couldn’t accept that. The question was how you ignored someone’s request to be left alone—even if it meant jeopardizing the friendship. It was a wretched little koan: How can you help someone who won’t be helped while realizing that if you don’t try to help, then you’re not being a friend at all? Talk to me, he sometimes wanted to shout at Jude. Tell me things. Tell me what I need to do to make you talk to me.

这类对话事后总让他震惊而困扰。接下来整个傍晚,他都在努力回想上星期的对话,仔细寻找任何不对劲,任何因为自己的愚蠢而忽略掉的线索。在比较宽容而好奇的时刻,他会把裘德想象成一个魔术师,唯一的招数就是隐瞒,但随着每一年过去,他的本事越来越厉害,现在他只要拉起丝制斗篷的一角遮在眼前,整个人就会立刻隐形,就连最了解他的人都看不到。但在其他时候,他好恨这个招数,一年又一年费心地帮裘德保密,除了极少的信息,他从来没能得到什么重大消息,连试着帮他、公然表示忧虑的机会都没有。这样不公平,在那些时候他会想,这不是友谊。这是某种别的东西,但不是友谊。他觉得自己被硬推进某个他从来不想玩的共谋游戏里。裘德跟他们沟通的一切,都显示他不想接受帮忙。然而,他无法接受。问题在于,某个人要求你别烦他,你要如何置之不理,即使这会危及你们的友谊。这是个棘手的两难问题:你要怎么帮助一个不想被帮助的人,同时明白如果你不试着帮忙,那么你根本算不上朋友?他有时真想朝裘德大吼,跟我谈一谈。把事情告诉我,告诉我该怎么做,才能让你跟我谈。

  Once, at a party, he had overheard Jude tell someone that he told him, Willem, everything, and he had been both flattered and perplexed, because really: he knew nothing. It was sometimes incredible to him how much he cared about someone who refused to tell him any of the things friends shared with each other—how he had lived before they met, what he feared, what he craved, who he was attracted to, the mortifications and sadnesses of daily life. In the absence of talking to Jude himself, he often wished he could talk to Harold about Jude, and figure out how much he knew, and whether, if they—and Andy—braided together all their knowledge, they might be able to find some sort of solution. But this was dreaming: Jude would never forgive him, and instead of the connection he did have with him, he would have none at all.

有回在派对上,他无意间听到裘德跟某个人说他会告诉威廉所有事,当时他一方面觉得很得意,一方面又很困惑,因为其实他什么都不知道。有时他觉得不可思议,他居然会这么关心一个人,即使他拒绝说出朋友间会分享的事情——他们认识前他过着什么样的生活、他害怕什么、他渴望什么、他受什么样的人吸引、日常生活的烦恼和悲伤。因为裘德自己不肯谈,有时他真希望跟哈罗德谈谈裘德,搞清楚他知道多少,同时看他们和安迪能不能把各自了解的事情拼凑起来,或许可以得到一些解答。但这只是梦想:要是真这么做,裘德永远不会原谅他,他们之间原本的联系也会消失殆尽。


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