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双语·流动的盛宴 第十八章 鹰,不与人分享秘密

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2022年05月02日

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Hawks Do Not Share

Scott Fitzgerald invited us to have lunch with his wife Zelda and his little daughter at the furnished flat they had rented at 14 rue de Tilsitt. I cannot remember much about the flat except that it was gloomy and airless and that there was nothing in it that seemed to belong to them except Scott’s first books bound in light blue leather with the titles in gold. Scott also showed us a large ledger with all of the stories he had published listed in it year after year with the prices he had received for them and also the amounts received for any motion picture sales, and the sales and royalties of his books. They were all noted as carefully as the log of a ship and Scott showed them to both of us with impersonal pride as though he were the curator of a museum. Scott was nervous and hospitable and he showed us his accounts of his earnings as though they had been the view. There was no view.

Zelda had a very bad hangover. They had been up on Montmartre the night before and had quarreled because Scott did not want to get drunk. He had decided, he told me, to work hard and not to drink and Zelda was treating him as though he were a kill-joy or a spoilsport. Those were the two words she used to him and there was recrimination and Zelda would say, “I did not. I did no such thing. It’s not true, Scott.” Later she would seem to recall something and would laugh happily.

On this day Zelda did not look her best. Her beautiful dark blonde hair had been ruined temporarily by a bad permanent she had gotten in Lyon, when the rain had made them abandon their car, and her eyes were tired and her face was too taut and drawn.

She was formally pleasant to Hadley and me but a big part of her seemed not to be present but to still be on the party she had come home from that morning. She and Scott both seemed to feel that Scott and I had enjoyed a great and wonderful time on the trip up from Lyon and she was jealous about it.

“When you two can go off and have such simply wonderful times together, it only seems fair that I should have just a little fun with our good friends here in Paris,” she said to Scott.

Scott was being the perfect host and we ate a very bad lunch that the wine cheered a little but not much. The little girl was blonde, chubby-faced, well built, and very healthy looking and spoke English with a strong Cockney accent. Scott explained that she had an English nanny because he wanted her to speak like Lady Diana Manners when she grew up.

Zelda had hawk’s eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent. Watching her face you could see her mind leave the table and go to the night’s party and return with her eyes blank as a cat’s and then pleased, and the pleasure would show along the thin line of her lips and then be gone. Scott was being the good cheerful host and Zelda looked at him and she smiled happily with her eyes and her mouth too as he drank the wine. I learned to know that smile very well. It meant she knew Scott would not be able to write.

Zelda was jealous of Scott’s work and as we got to know them, this fell into a regular pattern. Scott would resolve not to go on all-night drinking parties and to get some exercise each day and work regularly. He would start to work and as soon as he was working well Zelda would begin complaining about how bored she was and get him off on another drunken party. They would quarrel and then make up and he would sweat out the alcohol on long walks with me, and make up his mind that this time he would really work, and would start off well. Then it would start all over again.

Scott was very much in love with Zelda and he was very jealous of her. He told me many times on our walks of how she had fallen in love with the French navy pilot. But she had never made him really jealous with another man since. This spring she was making him jealous with other women and on the Montmartre parties he was afraid to pass out and he was afraid to have her pass out. Becoming unconscious when they drank had always been their great defense. They went to sleep on drinking an amount of liquor or champagne that would have little effect on a person accustomed to drinking, and they would go to sleep like children. I have seen them become unconscious not as though they were drunk but as though they had been anesthetized and their friends, or sometimes a taxi-driver, would get them to bed, and when they woke they would be fresh and happy, not having taken enough alcohol to damage their bodies before it made them unconscious.

Now they had lost this natural defense. At this time Zelda could drink more than Scott could and Scott was afraid for her to pass out in the company they kept that spring and the places they went to. Scott did not like the places nor the people and he had to drink more than he could drink and be in any control of himself, to stand the people and the places, and then he began to have to drink to keep awake after he would usually have passed out. Finally he had few intervals of work at all.

He was always trying to work. Each day he would try and fail. He laid the failure to Paris, the town best organized for a writer to write in that there is, and he thought always that there would be someplace where he and Zelda could have a good life together again. He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer.

Scott told me about the Riviera and how my wife and I must come there the next summer and how we would go there and how he would find a place for us that was not expensive and we would both work hard every day and swim and lie on the beach and be brown and only have a single apéritif before lunch and one before dinner. Zelda would be happy there, he said. She loved to swim and was a beautiful diver and she was happy with that life and would want him to work and everything would be disciplined. He and Zelda and their daughter were going to go there that summer.

I was trying to get him to write his stories as well as he could and not trick them to conform to any formula, as he had explained that he did.

“You’ve written a fine novel now,” I told him. “And you mustn’t write slop.”

“The novel isn’t selling,” he said. “I must write stories and they have to be stories that will sell.”

“Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.”

“I’m going to,” he said.

But the way things were going, he was lucky to get any work done at all. Zelda did not encourage the people who were chasing her and she had nothing to do with them, she said. But it amused her and it made Scott jealous and he had to go with her to the places. It destroyed his work, and she was more jealous of his work than anything.

All that late spring and early summer Scott fought to work but he could only work in snatches. When I saw him he was always cheerful, sometimes desperately cheerful, and he made good jokes and was a good companion. When he had very bad times, I listened to him about them and tried to make him know that if he could hold onto himself he would write as he was made to write, and that only death was irrevocable. He would make fun of himself then, and as long as he could do that I thought that he was safe. Through all of this he wrote one good story, “The Rich Boy,” and I was sure that he could write better than that as he did later.

During the summer we were in Spain and I started the first draft of a novel and finished it back in Paris in September. Scott and Zelda had been at Cap d’Antibes, and that fall when I saw him in Paris he was very changed. He had not done any sobering up on the Riviera and he was drunk now in the day time as well as nights. It did not make any difference any more to him that anyone was working and he would come to 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs any time he was drunk either in the day time or at night. He had begun to be very rude to his inferiors or anyone he considered his inferior.

One time he came in through the sawmill gate with his small daughter—it was the English nurse’s day off and Scott was caring for the child—and at the foot of the stairs she told him she needed to go to the bathroom. Scott started to undress her and the proprietor,who lived on the floor below us, came in and said, “Monsieur, there is a cabinet de toilette just ahead of you to the left of the stairs.”

“Yes, and I’ll put your head in it too, if you’re not careful,” Scott told him.

He was very difficult all that fall but he had begun to work on a novel when he was sober. I saw him rarely when he was sober, but when he was sober he was always pleasant and he still made jokes and sometimes he would still make jokes about himself. But when he was drunk he would usually come to find me and, drunk, he took almost as much pleasure interfering with my work as Zelda did interfering with his. This continued for years but, for years too, I had no more loyal friend than Scott when he was sober.

That fall of 1925 he was upset because I would not show him the manuscript of the first draft of The Sun Also Rises. I explained to him that it would mean nothing until I had gone over it and rewritten it and that I did not want to discuss it or show it to anyone first. We were going down to Schruns in the Vorarlberg in Austria as soon as the first snowfall there.

I rewrote the first half of the manuscript there, finished it in January, I think. I took it to New York and showed it to Max Perkins of Scribners and then went back to Schruns and finished rewriting the book. Scott did not see it until after the completed rewritten and cut manuscript had been sent to Scribners at the end of April. I remembered joking with him about it and him being worried and anxious to help as always once a thing was done. But I did not want his help while I was rewriting.

While we were living in the Vorarlberg and I was finishing rewriting the novel, Scott and his wife and child had left Paris for a watering place in the lower Pyrénées. Zelda had been ill with that familiar intestinal complaint that too much champagne produces and which was then diagnosed as colitis. Scott was not drinking, and starting to work and he wanted us to come to Juan-les-Pins in June. They would find an inexpensive villa for us and this time he would not drink and it would be like the old good days and we would swim and be healthy and brown and have one apéritif before lunch and one before dinner. Zelda was well again and they were both fine and his novel was going wonderfully. He had money coming in from a dramatization of The Great Gatsby which was running well and it would sell to the movies and he had no worries. Zelda was really fine and everything was going to be disciplined.

I had been down in Madrid in May working by myself and I came by train from Bayonne to Juan-les-Pins third class and quite hungry because I had run out of money stupidly and had eaten last in Hendaye at the French-Spanish frontier. It was a nice villa and Scott had a very fine house not far away and I was very happy to see my wife who had the villa running beautifully, and our friends, and the single apéritif before lunch was very good and we had several more. That night there was a party to welcome us at the Casino, just a small party, the Mac Leishes, the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds and we who were living at the villa. No one drank anything stronger than champagne and it was very gay and obviously a splendid place to write. There was going to be everything that a man needed to write except to be alone.

Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold color and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk’s eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, “Ernest, don’t you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?”

Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda’s secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.

第十八章 鹰,不与人分享秘密

司各特·菲茨杰拉德邀请我们去他家,跟他的妻子塞尔达及小女儿一道吃午餐。他们家租住了一套带家具的公寓,位于蒂尔西特路14号。那套公寓房我记不清是什么样子了,只记得里面阴暗、密不透风——那儿几乎可以说是家徒四壁,只摆放着一些司各特早期的作品,裹着浅蓝色的皮革封面,书名是烫金字体。司各特还给我们看了厚厚的一个账簿,上面记载着他每一年发表的短篇小说以及拿到手的稿酬,记载着他的作品拍成电影所得的版权税,还有他单行本书籍的销售所得和版税数额。各条各款都记载得一清二楚,就像轮船上的航海日志一样。司各特出示账簿时显得很自豪,但那种自豪感却是非个人的,宛若博物馆的馆长在出示馆里的宝贝。司各特情绪激动、热情,让我们看他的进项,就好像让我们欣赏一道迷人的风景。其实,他家的风景并不迷人。

塞尔达宿醉未消,状况很差。头天夜里他们去蒙马特尔参加晚会,结果吵了一架,起因是司各特不愿开怀痛饮。他告诉我他决心好好写东西,写出点名堂来,所以不能痛饮,可是塞尔达却觉得他大煞风景、败坏兴致。塞尔达当时就用这两个词损他,于是他揭了塞尔达的短。塞尔达矢口否认说:“没有的事,纯属子虚乌有,完全是捕风捉影,司各特。”可后来,她好像想起了什么,便哈哈付之一笑。

我们去做客的这一天,塞尔达看上去状态不太好。前一阵到里昂遇雨抛车,她到发廊烫头发,结果把漂漂亮亮的一头深金色的头发给烫坏了。这时的她眼神疲惫,一张脸绷得紧紧的、拉得长长的。

她对我和哈德莉表面上和蔼可亲,实则心不在焉——她早晨才离开那个晚会的会场,而现在她的一大半心思好像还在那儿。她和司各特似乎都以为我和司各特从里昂回巴黎的途中玩得非常愉快,这叫她感到眼红。

“你们俩出去,过的是神仙一样的日子,我留在巴黎和朋友们一起高兴高兴也是天经地义的事情。”她对司各特说。

司各特是个无可挑剔的东道主,但饭菜味如嚼蜡,虽说有葡萄酒能烘托一点气氛,然而情况并没有多大改善。他家的小囡金发碧眼,脸蛋胖嘟嘟的,体态匀称,看上去十分健康,说的英语带有浓重的伦敦口音。司各特解释说给她请了个英国保姆,希望她长大了能像黛安娜·曼纳斯夫人[1]那样说话温文尔雅。

塞尔达有一双鹰一样的眼睛,嘴唇薄薄的,举止和口音带着南方腹地的色彩。你注意观察她的脸,就会发现她的一颗心已经离开了餐桌,去了那场晚会的会场——当她的心思又回到餐桌时,目光茫然,眼神像一只打瞌睡的猫一样,接着便强装笑颜(笑意由嘴角的细纹显露出来,但瞬间便消失了)。司各特热情洋溢,高高兴兴地款待客人,塞尔达望着他,见他在喝酒,不由笑容可掬,眉眼都是笑的。后来我才明白她为什么那样笑了——她情知司各特一喝酒便写不成东西了。

塞尔达妒忌司各特的成就,随着我们跟他们熟识,便看出这种情况形成了一种固定不变的模式。司各特决心不去参加那些通宵达旦的酒会,每天做些体育锻炼,有规律地写作。可是,他一旦专心写作,写得顺风顺水的时候,塞尔达就会发牢骚,说日子过得枯燥乏味,接着便拉他去参加聚饮的晚会。他们会吵嘴,然后又和好。喝了酒,他便和我一起长途散步,出一身汗使酒性发散出来。他倒是蛮有决心的,说一定要脚踏实地干一场,重打鼓另开张。可是,旧戏又会重演。

他非常爱塞尔达,同时也吃塞尔达的醋。我们俩散步的时候,他屡次三番地跟我讲述塞尔达和那个法国海军飞行员的爱情故事。不过,自那以后,塞尔达再也没有过风流事件,他的醋意也就不那么浓了。今年春天,塞尔达交上了一些女朋友,这使他心里又醋意大发。去蒙马特尔参加酒会,他生怕自己喝得人事不省,也怕塞尔达迷醉于酒乡。其实,“人事不省”一直就是他们的护身符。久经酒场的他们喝一点烈酒或者香槟,全然不在话下,可是他们会装着醉倒,睡得像孩子一样香甜。我亲眼见过他们“人事不省”的样子——不像喝醉了,倒像是被麻醉了。遇到这种情况,他们的朋友(有时会是出租车司机),就把他们扶到床上去。小两口醒来时,会显得容光焕发、兴高采烈,因为他们没有喝多少酒便“人事不省”,身体并没有受到伤害。

如今,他们已经丧失了这种“护身符”。塞尔达的酒量现在比司各特的大。不管是在这年春天结识的朋友们面前,还是到什么地方去,司各特生怕她醉倒。司各特并不喜欢到那些场所去,也不喜欢那儿的人。跟那些人在一起,他必须过量饮酒,必须控制自己的情绪,姑息迁就、忍气吞声。有时他喝酒是为了保持清醒,可末了还是会烂醉如泥,弄得他根本没有时间写作。

他一次又一次想振作起来投入写作之中,可每一次都会以失败告终。他将自己的失败归咎于巴黎(其实,这座城市是作家从事创作的最理想的地方),认为他和塞尔达应该到一个别的什么地方去,在那儿重新开始生活,过上幸福的日子。他想到了里维埃拉[2]。那时的里维埃拉还没有大兴土木,到处是风光旖旎的蔚蓝色海洋和连绵的海滩,一片片松林以及埃斯泰雷勒山脉的群山紧紧依偎在大海的旁边。他记忆中的里维埃拉就是这个样子(他和塞尔达最初发现那个地方时,避暑的人群还没有蜂拥而至)。

接下来,他向我鼓吹里维埃拉,推荐我们两口子来年去那儿消暑,告诉我们行程应该怎么安排,还说要为我们找一个价钱便宜的住处。他说到了那里,我们每天可以发奋写作,休息时游游泳,躺在沙滩上晒晒太阳,把皮肤晒成古铜色,午餐和晚餐前各来一杯开胃酒。他说塞尔达在那一定会过得很开心。塞尔达喜欢游泳,潜水潜得特别棒——那样的日子哪会不开心!塞尔达开心了,就会允许他写作,生活就会走上正轨。反正夏天一旦来临,他和塞尔达就带上女儿到那里去。

关于他的写作,我劝他要写就写好东西,千万不要委曲求全去迎合低俗的要求(他亲口对我说他曾这么做过)。

“你已经写出了一部优秀的长篇,”我对他说,“就不要再写乱七八糟的东西了。”

“那部长篇小说销路不好,”他说,“我必须写短篇小说,而且必须是能畅销的短篇小说。”

“那就尽量写优秀的短篇,叙事尽量开门见山。”

“这正是我努力的目标。”他说。

但事与愿违——他要真能写出点东西来,就算他走运的了。塞尔达不愿招蜂引蝶,自称不屑搭理那些献殷勤的男子,可又对这种事情很感兴趣,这就叫司各特吃醋了,弄得他只好寸步不离跟着她。这样的生活毁掉了他的写作,而塞尔达最妒忌的正是他的写作。

那年的暮春和初夏,司各特殚精竭虑想写出东西来,但也只能断断续续地写一点。我每次见到他,他总是笑容满面,有时显得有点过于高兴,幽默风趣、妙语连珠。遇到烦心的事,他就讲给我听,我劝他一定要坚持写作,因为他生来就是当作家的料,写作就是天命,至死方休。他听后就自我解嘲,说点俏皮话。我觉得他只要能持之以恒,便不会有什么问题。经过努力,他终于写出了一篇佳作《阔少爷》。我坚信他能写出更好的东西,后来这一点果然应验了。

那年夏天我们去了西班牙。我动手写一部长篇小说的初稿,九月回到巴黎后完稿。司各特和塞尔达一直待在昂蒂布海角[3]。那年秋天我在巴黎见到他时,他大大变了样。他在里维埃拉没有做到使自己清醒起来,而今不论白天还是夜晚都喝得醉醺醺的。对他来说,写不写东西已经无所谓了。喝醉了,他就跑到圣母院大街113号[4]去——白天喝醉白天去,夜里喝醉夜里去。他开始以非常粗鲁的态度对待地位比他低的人或者他认为比他低的人。

一天,他带着小女儿来我家串门(那位英国保姆休假,由司各特照料女儿)。走进锯木厂的大门,来到公寓楼的楼梯前时,那孩子说她想小解,于是司各特帮她脱裤子。公寓楼的房东住在我们下面的一层,见状便走过来说:“先生,前面楼梯的左边有一个厕所。”

“那又怎么样!小心别让我把你的脑袋塞进便池里!”司各特厉声说。

那年整个秋天他都非常难于相处,不过在没喝酒的情况下,他总算开始写作了,写一部长篇小说。我难得看到他不喝酒——但只要他没喝,就总是那么和蔼可亲,乐呵呵地开开玩笑,有时还拿自己当笑柄。一旦灌几口黄汤,他便跑来拿我寻开心,以干扰我的写作为乐,就像塞尔达对待他那样。这种情况持续了好多年,而在那许多年里我没有比司各特(不喝酒时的司各特)更忠诚的朋友了。

1925年秋季,他想看我的长篇小说《太阳照常升起》的初稿,我不愿让他看,结果惹恼了他。我解释说我必须通篇改写一遍,否则狗屁都算不上;在这之前,不便谈论和展示。我们准备去奥地利福拉尔贝格州的施伦斯,等那儿一下雪就去。

在施伦斯,我修改了前半部手稿,大概是在第二年的一月修改了后半部。之后,我把稿子拿到纽约让斯克里布纳出版公司的主编麦克斯韦·帕金斯过目,而后返回施伦斯对全书进行润色。直至四月底我完成了修改润色,把经过删减的稿子寄往斯克里布纳出版公司,司各特才得以见到了这部书稿。记得为此我还跟他开过玩笑,说他一旦遇事就焦虑不安,非得帮人一把才行,可我润色稿件并不需要人帮忙。

住在福拉尔贝格州,我专心修改《太阳照常升起》的手稿时,司各特他们一家离开巴黎,去了下比利牛斯山的一个矿泉疗养地。塞尔达病了,因为喝了过多的香槟而引起常见的肠道不适,当时被诊断为结肠炎。司各特停止了喝酒,开始着手写作。他邀请我们六月份去朱安雷宾[5],说要给我们找一座租金不贵的别墅,声称这一次绝不会再酗酒。他说我们将会像过去那样过快活日子,一起游泳,保持身体健康,皮肤晒得黑黑的,午餐前喝一杯开胃酒,晚餐前也喝一杯。他说塞尔达的身体已康复,他们一家都很好,他那部小说进展顺利;《了不起的盖茨比》改编成话剧上演,卖座不错,他由此拿到了一笔钱,还会卖给电影制片厂,所以他无忧无虑;塞尔达成了贤妻良母,一切都将会井然有序。

五月,我独自一人南下去马德里写书稿,后来去巴约讷[6]搭乘火车,坐在三等车厢里返回朱安雷宾,路上饿得心发慌——都怪我把钱挥霍一空,最后一顿饭是在法国和西班牙边境线上的昂代伊吃的。司各特为我们租的别墅很雅致,他家的租屋就在不远处,非常漂亮。看见妻子把房间布置得漂漂亮亮,家里高朋满座,我心里乐开了花。原先饭前只饮一杯开胃酒,这次连饮数杯。当天晚上,别墅管理方为我们举办了一个欢迎晚宴,规模很小,只有麦克利什[7]夫妇、墨菲[8]夫妇、菲茨杰拉德夫妇以及住在别墅的我们俩。晚宴上没人喝烈性酒,只饮香槟,气氛非常欢快。这儿显然是个写作的好地方,应有的都有了,只差静下心来了。

塞尔达有着闭月羞花的容貌,皮肤晒成了金色,妩媚非常,一头秀发呈深金色,待人接物热情友好。她那鹰一般的眼睛清澈而静谧。看得出他们家风平浪静,最终一切都会转好。谁知就在这时,她朝我欠过身,说出了心中的一个秘密:“欧内斯特,你不认为阿尔·乔森[9]比基督还伟大吗?”

当时谁也没有拿这当回事,觉得这不过是塞尔达与我分享了一个秘密而已,就像一只鹰与人分享什么东西那样。岂不知鹰是不与人共享秘密的!司各特再没有写出好作品来,直到他发现塞尔达精神错乱,情况才有所改观。

注释:

[1] 美国女演员。

[2] 南欧地中海沿岸区域,旅游和度假的胜地。

[3] 法国旅游胜地。

[4] 埃兹拉·庞德的工作室所在地。

[5] 法国东南部的疗养胜地。

[6] 法国西南部的一个城镇,位于比斯开湾和西班牙边界附近。

[7] 美国诗人。

[8] 美国影星。

[9] 美国歌手、电影演员和喜剧演员。

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