《渺小一生》:我不认为快乐适合我

　 Back in his apartment, he shuffled quickly through his mail—he rarely got anything of any interest: everything business-related went to his agent or lawyer; anything personal went to Jude’s—found the copy of the script he’d forgotten there the week before when he stopped by the apartment after the gym, and left again; he didn’t even take off his coat.

这会儿回到公寓，他迅速检查了一下邮件（他很少收到什么有趣的，所有工作相关的信件都会寄给经纪人或律师；个人邮件则会寄到裘德的公寓），找到他上星期去完健身房回公寓时落下的剧本，然后连大衣都没脱，又匆匆离开。

　 Since he’d bought the apartment a year ago, he’d spent a total of six weeks there. There was a futon in the bedroom, and the coffee table from Lispenard Street in the living room, and the scuffed Eames fiberglass chair that JB had found in the street, and his boxes of books. But that was it. In theory, Malcolm was meant to be renovating the space, converting the airless little study near the kitchen into a dining alcove and addressing a list of other issues as well, but Malcolm, as if sensing Willem’s lack of interest, had made the apartment his last priority. He complained about this sometimes, but he knew it wasn’t Malcolm’s fault: after all, he hadn’t answered Malcolm’s e-mails about finishes or tiles or the dimensions of the built-in bookcase or banquette that Malcolm needed him to approve before he ordered the millwork. It was only recently that he’d had his lawyer’s office send Malcolm the final paperwork he needed to begin construction, and the following week, they were finally going to sit down and he was going to make some decisions, and when he returned home in mid-January, the apartment would be, Malcolm promised him, if not totally transformed, then at least greatly improved.

自从一年前买下这间公寓以来，他总共只在里面待过六星期。卧室里有张日式床垫，客厅里放着利斯本纳街搬来的茶几，还有杰比在街上捡来的那把埃姆斯玻璃纤维椅子，以及他的几箱书，就这样。理论上，马尔科姆打算帮他重新装修，把厨房边没窗子的小书房改为用餐空间，同时处理其他问题。但马尔科姆好像感觉到威廉缺乏兴趣，就一直没把整修这间公寓列入优先待办事项。他有时会抱怨一下，但他知道这不是马尔科姆的错。毕竟，是他自己一直没回复马尔科姆的电子邮件，包括收尾、瓷砖、嵌入式书柜的尺寸，还有马尔科姆订制前要他同意的长沙发。直到最近，他才请律师把动工前必须签订的文件寄给马尔科姆。下星期，他和马尔科姆要碰面做一些决定，等到他一月中拍完戏回来，公寓应该就会像马尔科姆保证过的，就算不是改头换面，也大有改善。

　 In the meantime, he still more or less lived with Jude, into whose apartment on Greene Street he’d moved directly after he and Philippa had broken up. He used his unfinished apartment, and the promise he’d made to Andy, as the reasons for his apparently interminable occupancy of Jude’s extra bedroom, but the fact was that he needed Jude’s company and the constancy of his presence. When he was away in England, in Ireland, in California, in France, in Tangiers, in Algeria, in India, in the Philippines, in Canada, he needed to have an image of what was waiting for him back home in New York, and that image never included Perry Street. Home for him was Greene Street, and when he was far away and lonely, he thought of Greene Street, and his room there, and how on weekends, after Jude finished working, they would stay up late, talking, and he would feel time slow and expand, letting him believe the night might stretch out forever.

同时，他多多少少还是跟裘德一起住。当初跟菲莉帕一分手，他就直接搬进了裘德格林街的公寓。他的理由是，自己的公寓还没装修，而且基于他对安迪的承诺，他一直霸占裘德家多出来的卧室不走。但其实是他需要裘德的陪伴，需要裘德稳定不变的存在感。当他去英格兰、爱尔兰、加州、法国、摩洛哥的丹吉尔、阿尔及利亚、印度、菲律宾、加拿大时，他需要有个家的形象在纽约等着他，而那个形象从来不包括佩里街。对他来说，家就是格林街。当他远离纽约且寂寞时，他就会想到格林街的公寓，他在那里的房间，周末裘德结束工作后，他们会熬夜聊到很晚，觉得时光缓慢而悠长，相信这一夜会持续到永远。

　 And now he was finally going home. He ran down the stairs and out the front door and onto Perry Street. The evening had turned cold, and he walked quickly, almost trotting, enjoying as he always did the pleasure of walking by himself, of feeling alone in a city of so many. It was one of the things he missed the most. On film sets, you were never alone. An assistant director walked you to your trailer and back to the set, even if the trailer and the set were fifty yards away. When he was getting used to sets, he was first startled, then amused, and then, finally, annoyed by the culture of actor infantilization that moviemaking seemed to encourage. He sometimes felt that he had been strapped, upright, to a dolly and was being wheeled from place to place: he was walked to the makeup department and then to the costume department. Then he was walked to the set, and then he was walked back to his trailer, and then, an hour or two later, he would be collected from the trailer and escorted to the set once again.

而现在，他终于要回家了。他跑下楼梯，出了前门，来到佩里街上。傍晚天气转冷了，他走得很快，几乎是在小跑，如往常一般享受着独自走路的愉悦，享受在一个这么多人的城市里落单的感觉。这是他最想念的事情之一。在拍片现场，你从来不会落单。会有一名副导演陪你走回休息的房车，再陪你走回拍片现场，即使房车和现场距离只有五十码。当初他逐渐熟悉拍片现场的状况时，对于拍电影时似乎鼓励把演员当小孩看的文化，首先觉得震惊，继而觉得好笑，最后觉得厌烦。他有时觉得自己像是被直立绑在一个玩偶身上，被用轮子推着移动，有人陪他走到化妆部门，然后到服装部门。又有人陪他走到现场，再走回房车。一两个小时后，又会有人来房车里接他，护送他到拍片现场去。

　 “Don’t let me ever get used to this,” he’d instruct Jude, begging him, almost. It was the concluding line to all his stories: about the lunches at which everyone segregated themselves by rank and caste—actors and the director at one table, cameramen at another, electricians at a third, the grips at a fourth, the costume department at a fifth—and you made small talk about your workouts, and restaurants you wanted to try, and diets you were on, and trainers, and cigarettes (how much you wanted one), and facials (how much you needed one); about the crew, who both hated the actors and yet were embarrassingly susceptible to even the slightest attention from them; about the cattiness of the hair and makeup team, who knew an almost bewildering amount of information about all the actors’ lives, having learned to keep perfectly quiet and make themselves perfectly invisible as they adjusted hairpieces and dabbed on foundation and listened to actresses screaming at their boyfriends and actors whisperingly arranging late-night hookups on their phones, all while sitting in their chairs. It was on these sets that he realized he was more guarded than he’d always imagined himself, and also how easy, how tempting, it was to begin to believe that the life of the set—where everything was fetched for you, and where the sun could literally be made to shine on you—was actual life.

“绝对不要让我习惯这种事。”他有回跟裘德说，几乎是恳求。这是他所有拍片故事的收尾台词：有关午餐时每个人照职位和阶级自动分开——演员和导演一桌，摄影组另一桌，器械组第三桌，服装组第四桌，道具组第五桌——大家都只聊一些小事，比如你的健身房、你想去的餐厅、你正进行的特殊饮食计划、健身教练，还有香烟（你有多想抽一根），以及做脸（你有多么需要）；有关剧组人员，他们痛恨演员的同时，碰到演员对他们最细微的关注却又在意得不得了，实在令人羞愧；化妆组爱搬弄是非，关于所有演员的生活，他们的信息量简直多到吓人，他们早就学会在帮演员调整假发和扑粉时保持绝对的安静，让自己完全隐形，同时倾听椅子上的演员们打电话，无论是女演员大吼男朋友，还是男演员低声安排深夜的一夜情对象。就是在这些拍片现场，他才明白自己被监视的程度比想象中更严重，而且自己很容易就相信，拍片现场的生活就是实际的生活——一切都有人帮你准备好，而且真的可以制造出太阳照耀你的效果。

　 Once he had been standing on his mark as the cinematographer made a last adjustment, before coming over and cupping his head gently—“His hair!” barked the first assistant director, warningly—and tilting it an inch to the left, and then to the right, and then to the left again, as if he was positioning a vase on a mantel.

有回他站在自己的标记上，等着摄影师做最后的调整。这时第一副导大声警告：“他的头发！”摄影师只得走过来轻轻捧着他的头，往左倾斜一英寸，再往右，又往左，好像在壁炉台上放一个花瓶一般。

　 “Don’t move, Willem,” he’d cautioned, and he’d promised he wouldn’t, barely breathing, but really he had wanted to break into giggles. He suddenly thought of his parents—whom, disconcertingly, he thought of more and more as he grew older—and of Hemming, and for half a second, he saw them standing just off the set to his left, just far enough out of range so he couldn’t see their faces, whose expressions he wouldn’t have been able to imagine anyway.

“别动，威廉。”摄影师警告，他保证他不会动，连呼吸都放到最轻，但其实他很想傻笑。他忽然想到他的父母（令他不安的是，随着年纪渐长，他越来越少想到他们），还有亨明。有半秒钟，他看到他们就站在左边，在拍片现场外头，正好远得让他无法看清他们的脸，反正他再也想象不出他们的表情了。

　 He liked telling Jude all of these things, making his days on set something funny and bright. This was not what he thought acting would be, but what had he known about what acting would be? He was always prepared, he was always on time, he was polite to everyone, he did what the cinematographer told him to do and argued with the director only when absolutely necessary. But even all these films later—twelve in the past five years, eight of them in the past two—and through all of their absurdities, he finds most surreal the minute before the camera begins rolling. He stands at his first mark; he stands at his second mark; the cameraman announces he’s ready.“Vanities!” shouts the first assistant director, and the vanities—hair, makeup, costume—hurry over to descend upon him as if he is carrion, plucking at his hair and straightening his shirt and tickling his eyelids with their soft brushes. It takes only thirty seconds or so, but in those thirty seconds, his lashes lowered so stray powder doesn’t float into his eyes, other people’s hands moving possessively over his body and head as if they’re no longer his own, he has the strange sensation that he is gone, that he is suspended, and that his very life is an imagining. In those seconds, a whirl of images whips through his mind, too quickly and jumblingly to effectively identify each as it occurs to him: there is the scene he’s about to shoot, of course, and the scene he’d shot earlier, but also all the things that occupy him, always, the things he sees and hears and remembers before he falls asleep at night—Hemming and JB and Malcolm and Harold and Julia. Jude.

他喜欢告诉裘德这些事，把自己在拍片现场的日子讲得好笑又欢乐。他原先没想到演戏会是这样，但他以前哪里懂得演戏会是什么样？他总是做好准备，总是准时，对每个人都很有礼貌，乖乖听摄影师的指示，除非有绝对的必要，否则从不跟导演争执。但即使拍过这么多电影（过去五年拍了十二部，其中八部是最近两年拍的），经历了种种荒谬，他发现最超现实的时刻，就是在摄影机开拍之前。当他站在第一个标记处、第二个标记处，或是摄影师宣布准备好了，“化妆服装组！”第一副导喊道，然后化妆和服装人员就匆忙朝他俯冲过来，好像他是一块腐肉，那些人拨弄他的头发，拉直他的衬衫，用软刷子搔过他的眼皮。这个过程通常只有三十秒左右，但在这三十秒的时间里，他垂下眼皮免得粉粒飘进眼睛，其他人的手霸道地在他的身体和头上触摸，好像身体不再是他的。此时他会有种奇怪的感觉，觉得自己死了，飘在半空中，他的生命不过是一段想象。在那些时刻，一串旋风似的影像掠过他的心头，太快又太混乱，无法实际看清每一个画面：其中当然有他正要拍摄的场景，以及他稍早拍过的场景，但也有总是盘踞在他心头的场景，那些他夜里睡着前会看到、听到、记得的事情——亨明、杰比、马尔科姆、哈罗德、朱丽娅、裘德。

　 Are you happy? he once asked Jude (they must have been drunk).

你快乐吗？他有回问裘德（当时他们一定是喝醉了）。

　 I don’t think happiness is for me, Jude had said at last, as if Willem had been offering him a dish he didn’t want to eat. But it’s for you, Willem.

我不认为快乐适合我，裘德最后终于说，好像威廉给了他一盘他不想吃的东西。但是适合你，威廉。

　 As Vanities tug and yank at him, it occurs to him that he should have asked Jude what he meant by that: why it was for him and not for Jude. But by the time he’s finished shooting the scene, he won’t remember the question, or the conversation that inspired it.

当化妆和服装人员对着他又拉又抓，他想到他当时应该问裘德这句话是什么意思：为什么适合他，但不适合裘德。等到他拍完那场戏，他就忘了这个问题，也忘了之前的那段对话。

　 “Roll sound!” yells the first A.D., and Vanities scatter.

“音效开动！”第一副导喊道，化妆和服装人员赶紧散开。

　 “Speed,” the sound person answers, which means he’s rolling.

“开了。”音效人员回答。

　 “Roll camera,” calls the cameraman, and then there’s the announcement of the scene, and the clap.And then he opens his eyes.

“摄影机准备。”摄影师喊道，接着有人宣布第几场戏，打板。然后他睁开眼睛。

　 2

2

　 ONE SATURDAY MORNING shortly after he turns thirty-six, he opens his eyes and experiences that strange, lovely sensation he sometimes has, the one in which he realizes that his life is cloudless. He imagines Harold and Julia in Cambridge, the two of them moving dozily through the kitchen, pouring coffee into their stained and chipped mugs and shaking the dew off of the plastic newspaper bags, and, in the air, Willem flying toward him from Cape Town. He pictures Malcolm pressed against Sophie in bed in Brooklyn, and then, because he feels hopeful, JB safe and snoring in his bed on the Lower East Side. Here, on Greene Street, the radiator releases its sibilant sigh. The sheets smell like soap and sky. Above him is the tubular steel chandelier Malcolm installed a month ago. Beneath him is a gleaming black wood floor. The apartment—still impossible in its vastness and possibilities and potential—is silent, and his.

刚过36岁生日的一个星期六早晨，他睁开眼睛，体验到那种偶尔会感受到的奇怪、美妙的感觉：发现自己的人生晴朗无云。他想象哈罗德和朱丽娅在剑桥市，两个人困倦地在厨房里走动，将咖啡倒进他们有着缺角和咖啡渍的马克杯里，把装报纸的塑料袋外头的露水甩掉。在空中，威廉正从南非开普敦飞向他。他想象马尔科姆在布鲁克林家里的床上紧靠着苏菲，然后，因为他觉得充满希望，便想象杰比安全地在下东城的床上打呼。在格林街这里，暖气散发出轻微的嘶嘶声。床单闻起来像肥皂和天空。他的上方是马尔科姆一个月前装的钢管枝形吊灯。他的下方是一片发亮的黑色木地板。这间公寓一片寂静，而且是他的（还是觉得它很大，充满种种可能性和潜力）。

　 He points his toes toward the bottom of the bed and then flexes them toward his shins: nothing. He shifts his back against the mattress: nothing. He draws his knees toward his chest: nothing. Nothing hurts, nothing even threatens to hurt: his body is his again, something that will perform for him whatever he can imagine, without complaint or sabotage. He closes his eyes, not because he’s tired but because it is a perfect moment, and he knows how to enjoy them.

他把脚趾伸向床尾，然后往回缩向小腿：没事。他移动躺在床垫上的背部：没事。他把两边膝盖朝胸口缩起：没事。没有任何地方痛，连一点痛的迹象都没有。他的身体又是他的了，可以帮他执行他想象中的任何动作，不会抱怨或搞破坏。他闭上双眼，不是因为累了，而是因为这是完美的一刻，他知道该如何享受。

　 These moments never last for long—sometimes, all he has to do is sit up, and he will be reminded, as if slapped across the face, that his body owns him, not the other way around—but in recent years, as things have gotten worse, he has worked very hard to give up the idea that he will ever improve, and has instead tried to concentrate on and be grateful for the minutes of reprieve, whenever and wherever his body chooses to bestow them. Finally he sits, slowly, and then stands, just as slowly. And still, he feels wonderful. A good day, he decides, and walks to the bathroom, past the wheelchair that sulks, a sullen ogre, in a corner of his bedroom.

这些时刻从来不会持续太久（有时候，只要坐起身，他就像脸上挨了一记耳光似的被提醒，是他的身体在控制他，不是他控制他的身体），但最近几年状况恶化后，他每天都很努力地放弃自己会再好转的想法，试着专注于暂时摆脱痛苦的那些时刻，并且感激自己的身体饶过了他。最后他缓缓坐起身，同样缓慢地站起来，一切还是很棒。他判定这是美好的一天，然后走到浴室，略过卧室角落里仿佛在生闷气的轮椅。

　 He gets ready and then sits down with some papers from the office to wait. Generally, he spends most of Saturday at work—that at least hasn’t changed from the days he used to take his walks: oh, his walks! Was that once him, someone who could trip, goatlike, to the Upper East Side and home again, all eleven miles on his own?—but today he’s meeting Malcolm and taking him to his suitmaker’s, because Malcolm is going to get married and needs to buy a suit.

他准备好，然后拿着办公室带回来的一些文件坐下来等。通常碰到星期六，他的时间大都用在工作上——从他走遍纽约的时期以来，这个习惯没有改变过。啊，他那些长途步行之旅！他真的一度可以像山羊似的走到上东城，然后走回来，靠自己就走上十一英里吗？——但今天他要跟马尔科姆碰面，带他去找自己的西装师傅，因为马尔科姆要结婚了，需要买一套西装。