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双语·钟形罩 3

所属教程:译林版·钟形罩

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2022年04月22日

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Arrayed on the Ladies' Day banquet table were yellow-green avocado pear halves stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise, and platters of rare roast beef and cold chicken, and every so often a cut-glass bowl heaped with black caviar. I hadn't had time to eat any breakfast at the hotel cafeteria that morning, except for a cup of overstewed coffee so bitter it made my nose curl, and I was starving.

Before I came to New York I'd never eaten out in a proper restaurant. I don't count Howard Johnson's, where I only had french fries and cheeseburgers and vanilla frappes with people like Buddy Willard. I'm not sure why it is, but I love food more than just about anything else. No matter how much I eat, I never put on weight. With one exception I've been the same weight for ten years.

My favorite dishes are full of butter and cheese and sour cream. In New York we had so many free luncheons with people on the magazine and various visiting celebrities I developed the habit of running my eye down those huge handwritten menus, where a tiny side dish of peas cost fifty or sixty cents, until I'd picked the richest, most expensive dishes and ordered a string of them.

We were always taken out on expense accounts, so I never felt guilty. I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef's salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce.

“I want to welcome the prettiest, smartest bunch of young ladies our staff has yet had the good luck to meet,” the plump, bald master-of-ceremonies wheezed into his lapel microphone. “This banquet is just a small sample of the hospitality our Food Testing Kitchens here on Ladies' Day would like to offer in appreciation for your visit.”

A delicate, ladylike spatter of applause, and we all sat down at the enormous linen-draped table.

There were eleven of us girls from the magazine, together with most of our supervising editors, and the whole staff of the Ladies' Day Food Testing Kitchens in hygienic white smocks, neat hairnets and flawless makeup of a uniform peach-pie color.

There were only eleven of us, because Doreen was missing. They had set her place next to mine for some reason, and the chair stayed empty. I saved her placecard for her—a pocket mirror with “Doreen” painted along the top of it in lacy script and a wreath of frosted daisies around the edge, framing the silver hole where her face would show.

Doreen was spending the day with Lenny Shepherd. She spent most of her free time with Lenny Shepherd now.

In the hour before our luncheon at Ladies' Day—the big women's magazine that features lush double-page spreads of Technicolor meals, with a different theme and locale each month—we had been shown around the endless glossy kitchens and seen how difficult it is to photograph apple pie à la mode under bright lights because the ice cream keeps melting and has to be propped up from behind with toothpicks and changed every time it starts looking too soppy.

The sight of all the food stacked in those kitchens made me dizzy. It's not that we hadn't enough to eat at home, it's just that my grandmother always cooked economy joints and economy meat loafs and had the habit of saying, the minute you lifted the first forkful to your mouth, “I hope you enjoy that, it cost forty-one cents a pound,” which always made me feel I was somehow eating pennies instead of Sunday roast.

While we were standing up behind our chairs listening to the welcome speech, I had bowed my head and secretly eyed the position of the bowls of caviar. One bowl was set strategically between me and Doreen's empty chair.

I figured the girl across from me couldn't reach it because of the mountainous centerpiece of marzipan fruit, and Betsy, on my right, would be too nice to ask me to share it with her if I just kept it out of the way at my elbow by my bread-and-butter plate. Besides, another bowl of caviar sat a little way to the right of the girl next to Betsy, and she could eat that.

My grandfather and I had a standing joke. He was the head waiter at a country club near my home town, and every Sunday my grandmother drove in to bring him home for his Monday off. My brother and I alternated going with her, and my grandfather always served Sunday supper to my grandmother and whichever of us was along as if we were regular club guests. He loved introducing me to special tidbits, and by the age of nine I had developed a passionate taste for cold vichyssoise and caviar and anchovy paste.

The joke was that at my wedding my grandfather would see I had all the caviar I could eat. It was a joke because I never intended to get married, and even if I did, my grandfather couldn't have afforded enough caviar unless he robbed the country club kitchen and carried it off in a suitcase.

Under cover of the clinking of water goblets and silverware and bone china, I paved my plate with chicken slices. Then I covered the chicken slices with caviar thickly as if I were spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. Then I picked up the chicken slices in my fingers one by one, rolled them so the caviar wouldn't ooze off and ate them.

I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.

I learned this trick the day Jay Cee took me to lunch with a famous poet. He wore a horrible, lumpy, speckled brown tweed jacket and gray pants and a red-and-blue checked open-throated jersey in a very formal restaurant full of fountains and chandeliers, where all the other men were dressed in dark suits and immaculate white shirts.

This poet ate his salad with his fingers, leaf by leaf, while talking to me about the antithesis of nature and art. I couldn't take my eyes off the pale, stubby white fingers traveling back and forth from the poet's salad bowl to the poet's mouth with one dripping lettuce leaf after another. Nobody giggled or whispered rude remarks. The poet made eating salad with your fingers seem to be the only natural and sensible thing to do.

None of our magazine editors or the Ladies' Day staff members sat anywhere near me, and Betsy seemed sweet and friendly, she didn't even seem to like caviar, so I grew more and more confident. When I finished my first plate of cold chicken and caviar, I laid out another. Then I tackled the avocado and crabmeat salad.

Avocados are my favorite fruit. Every Sunday my grandfather used to bring me an avocado pear hidden at the bottom of his briefcase under six soiled shirts and the Sunday comics. He taught me how to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and french dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce. I felt homesick for that sauce. The crabmeat tasted bland in comparison.

“How was the fur show?” I asked Betsy, when I was no longer worried about competition over my caviar. I scraped the last few salty black eggs from the dish with my soup spoon and licked it clean.

“It was wonderful,” Betsy smiled. “They showed us how to make an all-purpose neckerchief out of mink tails and a gold chain, the sort of chain you can get an exact copy of at Woolworth's for a dollar ninety-eight, and Hilda nipped down to the wholesale fur warehouses right afterward and bought a bunch of mink tails at a big discount and dropped in at Woolworth's and then stitched the whole thing together coming up on the bus.”

I peered over at Hilda, who sat on the other side of Betsy. Sure enough, she was wearing an expensive-looking scarf of furry tails fastened on one side by a dangling gilt chain.

I never really understood Hilda. She was six feet tall, with huge, slanted green eyes and thick red lips and a vacant, Slavic expression. She made hats. She was apprenticed to the Fashion Editor, which set her apart from the more literary ones among us like Doreen and Betsy and I myself, who all wrote columns, even if some of them were only about health and beauty. I don't know if Hilda could read, but she made startling hats. She went to a special school for making hats in New York and every day she wore a new hat to work, constructed by her own hands out of bits of straw or fur or ribbon or veiling in subtle, bizarre shades.

“That's amazing,” I said. “Amazing.” I missed Doreen. She would have murmured some fine, scalding remark about Hilda's miraculous furpiece to cheer me up.

I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn't hide the truth much longer. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.

“Why didn't you come along to the fur show with us?” Betsy asked. I had the impression she was repeating herself, and that she'd asked me the same question a minute ago, only I couldn't have been listening. “Did you go off with Doreen?”

“No,” I said, “I wanted to go to the fur show, but Jay Cee called up and made me come into the office.” That wasn't quite true about wanting to go to the show, but I tried to convince myself now that it was true, so I could be really wounded about what Jay Cee had done.

I told Betsy how I had been lying in bed that morning planning to go to the fur show. What I didn't tell her was that Doreen had come into my room earlier and said, “What do you want to go to that assy show for, Lenny and I are going to Coney Island, so why don't you come along? Lenny can get you a nice fellow, the day's shot to hell anyhow with that luncheon and then the film première in the afternoon, so nobody'll miss us.”

For a minute I was tempted. The show certainly did seem stupid. I have never cared for furs. What I decided to do in the end was lie in bed as long as I wanted to and then go to Central Park and spend the day lying in the grass, the longest grass I could find in that bald, duck-ponded wilderness.

I told Doreen I would not go to the show or the luncheon or the film première, but that I would not go to Coney Island either, I would stay in bed. After Doreen left, I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.

I didn't know what time it was, but I'd heard the girls bustling and calling in the hall and getting ready for the fur show, and then I'd heard the hall go still, and as I lay on my back in bed staring up at the blank, white ceiling the stillness seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt my eardrums would burst with it. Then the phone rang.

I stared at the phone for a minute. The receiver shook a bit in its bone-colored cradle, so I could tell it was really ringing. I thought I might have given my phone number to somebody at a dance or a party and then forgotten about it. I lifted the receiver and spoke in a husky, receptive voice.

“Hello?”

“Jay Cee here,” Jay Cee rapped out with brutal promptitude. “I wondered if you happened to be planning to come into the office today?”

I sank down into the sheets. I couldn't understand why Jay Cee thought I'd be coming into the office. We had these mimeographed schedule cards so we could keep track of all our activities, and we spent a lot of mornings and afternoons away from the office going to affairs in town. Of course, some of the affairs were optional.

There was quite a pause. Then I said meekly, “I thought I was going to the fur show.” Of course I hadn't thought any such thing, but I couldn't figure out what else to say.

“I told her I thought I was going to the fur show,” I said to Betsy. “But she told me to come into the office, she wanted to have a little talk with me, and there was some work to do.”

“Oh-oh!” Betsy said sympathetically. She must have seen the tears that plopped down into my dessert dish of meringue and brandy ice cream, because she pushed over her own untouched dessert and I started absently on that when I'd finished my own. I felt a bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough. Jay Cee had said some terrible things to me.

When I made my wan entrance into the office at about ten o'clock, Jay Cee stood up and came round her desk to shut the door, and I sat in the swivel chair in front of my typewriter table facing her, and she sat in the swivel chair behind her desk facing me, with the window full of potted plants, shelf after shelf of them, springing up at her back like a tropical garden.

“Doesn't your work interest you, Esther?”

“Oh, it does, it does,” I said. “It interests me very much.” I felt like yelling the words, as if that might make them more convincing, but I controlled myself.

All my life I'd told myself studying and reading and writing and working like mad was what I wanted to do, and it actually seemed to be true, I did everything well enough and got all A's, and by the time I made it to college nobody could stop me.

I was college correspondent for the town Gazette and editor of the literary magazine and secretary of Honor Board, which deals with academic and social offenses and punishments—a popular office-and I had a well-known woman poet and professor on the faculty championing me for graduate school at the biggest universities in the east, and promises of full scholarships all the way, and now I was apprenticed to the best editor on an intellectual fashion magazine, and what did I do but balk and balk like a dull cart horse?

“I'm very interested in everything.” The words fell with a hollow flatness on to Jay Cee's desk, like so many wooden nickels.

“I'm glad of that,” Jay Cee said a bit waspishly. “You can learn a lot in this month on the magazine, you know, if you just roll up your shirtsleeves. The girl who was here before you didn't bother with any of the fashion-show stuff. She went straight from this office onto Time.”

“My!” I said, in the same sepulchral tone. “That was quick!”

“Of course, you have another year at college yet,” Jay Cee went on a little more mildly. “What do you have in mind after you graduate?”

What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue.

“I don't really know,” I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.

It sounded true, and I recognized it, the way you recognize some nondescript person that's been hanging around your door for ages and then suddenly comes up and introduces himself as your real father and looks exactly like you, so you know he really is your father, and the person you thought all your life was your father is a sham.

“I don't really know.”

“You'll never get anywhere like that.” Jay Cee paused. “What languages do you have?”

“Oh, I can read a bit of French, I guess, and I've always wanted to learn German.” I'd been telling people I'd always wanted to learn German for about five years.

My mother spoke German during her childhood in America and was stoned for it during the First World War by the children at school. My German-speaking father, dead since I was nine, came from some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia. My younger brother was at that moment on the Experiment in International Living in Berlin and speaking German like a native.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

“I've always thought I'd like to go into publishing.” I tried to recover a thread that might lead me back to my old, bright salesmanship. “I guess what I'll do is apply at some publishing house.”

“You ought to read French and German,” Jay Cee said mercilessly, “and probably several other languages as well, Spanish and Italian—better still, Russian. Hundreds of girls flood into New York every June thinking they'll be editors. You need to offer something more than the run-of-the-mill person. You better learn some languages.”

I hadn't the heart to tell Jay Cee there wasn't one scrap of space on my senior year schedule to learn languages in. I was taking one of those honors programs that teach you to think independently, and except for a course in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and a seminar in advanced poetry composition, I would spend my whole time writing on some obscure theme in the works of James Joyce. I hadn't picked out my theme yet, because I hadn't got round to reading Finnegans Wake, but my professor was very excited about my thesis and had promised to give me some leads on images about twins.

“I'll see what I can do,” I told Jay Cee. “I probably might just fit in one of those double-barreled accelerated courses in elementary German they've rigged up.” I thought at the time I might actually do this. I had a way of persuading my Class Dean to let me do irregular things. She regarded me as a sort of interesting experiment.

At college I had to take a required course in physics and chemistry. I had already taken a course in botany and done very well. I never answered one test question wrong the whole year, and for a while I toyed with the idea of being a botanist and studying the wild grasses in Africa or the South American rain forests, because you can win big grants to study offbeat things like that in queer areas much more easily than winning grants to study art in Italy or English in England; there's not so much competition.

Botany was fine, because I loved cutting up leaves and putting them under the microscope and drawing diagrams of bread mold and the odd, heart-shaped leaf in the sex cycle of the fern, it seemed so real to me.

The day I went into physics class it was death.

A short dark man with a high lisping voice, named Mr. Manzi, stood in front of the class in a tight blue suit holding a little wooden ball. He put the ball on a steep grooved slide and let it run down to the bottom. Then he started talking about let a equal acceleration and let t equal time and suddenly he was scribbling letters and numbers and equals signs all over the blackboard and my mind went dead.

I took the physics book back to my dormitory. It was a huge book on porous mimeographed paper—four hundred pages long with no drawings or photographs, only diagrams and formulas—between brick-red cardboard covers. This book was written by Mr. Manzi to explain physics to college girls, and if it worked on us he would try to have it published.

Well, I studied those formulas, I went to class and watched balls roll down slides and listened to bells ring and by the end of the semester most of the other girls had failed and I had a straight A. I heard Mr. Manzi saying to a bunch of the girls who were complaining that the course was too hard, “No, it can't be too hard, because one girl got a straight A.” “Who is it? Tell us,” they said, but he shook his head and didn't say anything and gave me a sweet little conspiring smile.

That's what gave me the idea of escaping the next semester of chemistry. I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn't stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi's special red chalk.

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them. If I had to strain my brain with any more of that stuff I would go mad. I would fail outright. It was only by a horrible effort of will that I had dragged myself through the first half of the year.

So I went to my Class Dean with a clever plan.

My plan was that I needed the time to take a course in Shakespeare, since I was, after all, an English major. She knew and I knew perfectly well I would get a straight A again in the chemistry course, so what was the point of my taking the exams; why couldn't I just go to the classes and look on and take it all in and forget about marks or credits? It was a case of honor among honorable people, and the content meant more than the form, and marks were really a bit silly anyway, weren't they, when you knew you'd always get an A? My plan was strengthened by the fact that the college had just dropped the second year of required science for the classes after me anyway, so my class was the last to suffer under the old ruling.

Mr. Manzi was in perfect agreement with my plan. I think it flattered him that I enjoyed his classes so much I would take them for no materialistic reason like credit and an A, but for the sheer beauty of chemistry itself. I thought it was quite ingenious of me to suggest sitting in on the chemistry course even after I'd changed over to Shakespeare. It was quite an unnecessary gesture and made it seem I simply couldn't bear to give chemistry up.

Of course, I would never have succeeded with this scheme if I hadn't made that A in the first place. And if my Class Dean had known how scared and depressed I was, and how I seriously contemplated desperate remedies such as getting a doctor's certificate that I was unfit to study chemistry, the formulas made me dizzy and so on, I'm sure she wouldn't have listened to me for a minute, but would have made me take the course regardless.

As it happened, the Faculty Board passed my petition, and my Class Dean told me later that several of the professors were touched by it. They took it as a real step in intellectual maturity.

I had to laugh when I thought about the rest of that year. I went to the chemistry class five times a week and didn't miss a single one. Mr. Manzi stood at the bottom of the big, rickety old amphitheater, making blue flames and red flares and clouds of yellow stuff by pouring the contents of one test tube into another, and I shut his voice out of my ears by pretending it was only a mosquito in the distance and sat back enjoying the bright lights and the colored fires and wrote page after page of villanelles and sonnets.

Mr. Manzi would glance at me now and then and see me writing, and send up a sweet little appreciative smile. I guess he thought I was writing down all those formulas not for exam time, like the other girls, but because his presentation fascinated me so much I couldn't help it.

在《淑女生活》的宴会桌上,摆着对半切好、中间填满蟹肉和蛋黄酱的黄绿色鳄梨,还有一盘盘烤得半熟的嫩牛排和鸡肉冷盘,不时端上的雕花玻璃碗里盛满了黑色的鱼子酱。刚好那天早上我没时间到旅馆的自助餐厅吃早饭,只喝了杯煮过头的咖啡,苦得要死,这会儿正饥肠辘辘。

来纽约之前,我还没在像样的餐馆吃过饭。我和巴迪·威拉德之类的朋友去的豪沃·强森餐厅当然不能算数,那里只能点点炸薯条、奶酪汉堡和香草刨冰。也不知道为什么,我就是热爱食物胜过一切。而且不管怎么吃,我都不发胖,十年来体重始终不变,只有一次例外。

我喜欢满是黄油、奶酪和酸奶油的食物。在纽约,我们和杂志社的同事以及来访的名人一起吃了很多免费的午餐,所以我养成了一个习惯:拿到手写的大菜单后,一定要把这些连一小碟豌豆配菜都开价五六十美分的菜单浏览一遍,挑出最丰盛、最昂贵的菜品,点它一大串。

带我们出去的这种应酬通常可以报销,所以我点得心安理得。我很上道,总是吃得很快,免得那些为了减肥只敢点主厨沙拉或葡萄柚汁的人久等。我在纽约遇到的每个人几乎都在拼命减肥。

“我谨代表《淑女生活》欢迎各位才貌双全、青春洋溢的女士,本社能够认识诸位,实在深感荣幸。”发福又秃头的主持人对着衣襟上的小麦克风呼哧呼哧地说道,“今天的宴会,是《淑女生活》的‘食品检测厨房’部门专为欢迎各位而准备的,聊表诚意。”

现场响起淑女特有的优雅而疏落的掌声。随后大家于铺有亚麻桌巾的大桌前纷纷落座。

杂志社共有十一个女孩赴宴,指导我们的编辑也大多一同出席。《淑女生活》“食品检测厨房”部门的员工一律穿着洁白的卫生罩衫,头罩发网,脸上是标准的蜜桃派色的无瑕妆容。

我们这群女孩也只来了十一人,因为朵琳不见了。出于某种原因,他们把她的座位安排在我旁边,而那张椅子就那么空着。我帮她把席位卡保留了下来——所谓席位卡,就是一小面镜子,顶端以花体写着“朵琳”,镜边上一圈霜状雏菊,框住中间银色的镜面,那里会照出朵琳的脸。

朵琳那天和伦尼·谢泼德在一起。她现在一有空就和伦尼·谢泼德腻在一起。

《淑女生活》是一本大型女性杂志,以豪华全彩的跨页美食图为特色,每月还推出不同的主题和场所。杂志社主办的这场午宴开始前一小时,工作人员先带着我们参观了好几间光可鉴人的厨房,让我们见识了在强光下拍摄不断融化的苹果派冰激凌有多难,他们不得不用牙签从后面撑住冰激凌,要是化得太厉害了就得赶紧换。

眼见每间厨房里的食物都堆积如山,我觉得头晕眼花。倒不是因为在家没吃饱,而是我的祖母通常只会煮便宜的大骨肉和肉糜。她还有个习惯,在我们叉起第一口食物送到嘴边时,总是会说:“但愿你们喜欢吃,这东西一磅可要四十一美分呢。”这么一来,我觉得自己吃下去的不是星期日烤肉,而是一分一分的硬币了。

当大家都站在各自的椅子后面听欢迎辞时,我低下头偷偷地觑着一碗碗的鱼子酱。有一碗就刚好摆在我和朵琳的空位之间。

我盘算着,对面的女孩应该够不着这碗鱼子酱,因为餐桌中间堆满了小山一样的杏仁味水果造型软糖,而我右侧的贝琪总是那么客气,如果我把鱼子酱挪到我手肘边的面包碟旁,让她拿不到,她肯定不好意思要我分给她。况且,有一碗鱼子酱就摆在她邻座女孩的右侧不远处,她可以吃那一碗。

我和祖父之间有个常说的笑话。我的祖父在家乡附近的乡村俱乐部当领班,每周一休假,所以每个周日祖母都会开车去接他回家,弟弟和我交替陪着祖母。不论是谁去,祖父总会把我们当作俱乐部的常客,为我们端上周日大餐。他喜欢介绍我吃些特别的珍馐美味,所以我九岁时就养成了对冷奶油浓汤、鱼子酱和鳀鱼泥的狂热的爱好。

这个常说的笑话就是,祖父保证在我的婚宴上我可以吃鱼子酱吃到饱。之所以说它是个笑话是因为我压根没想过结婚,而且就算我哪天真的结婚了,祖父也无力提供那么多的鱼子酱,除非他洗劫乡村俱乐部的厨房,偷走一整个手提箱的鱼子酱。

在水杯、银器和骨瓷餐具的觥筹交错声的掩护下,我用鸡肉片铺满盘子,然后像在面包片上抹花生酱一样,在鸡肉上面厚厚地盖上一层鱼子酱。接着,我用手拿起一片片鸡肉,把鱼子酱分毫不漏地卷在里面,放进嘴里。

我多次为各种汤匙的用法绞尽脑汁,后来却发现,即使在餐桌上举止不当,只要表现出倨傲的态度,仿佛自己做得无可挑剔,那么你就没事了,没有人会认为你举止失仪或没有教养。人们只会觉得你独树一帜,聪明有趣。

这一招是我从一位著名诗人那儿学到的。那天,杰·茜带我与他共进午餐。在那间满是喷泉和吊灯的高级餐厅里,其他男士都身着深色西装和洁白的衬衫,唯独他上身穿着一件难看、笨重、带斑点的棕色斜纹软呢夹克,里面搭配红蓝格子的敞领运动衫,下身穿一条灰色裤子。

这位大诗人一边徒手抓起一片一片沙拉当中的菜叶子吃着,一边跟我谈论着自然与艺术的对立。看着那苍白而又粗短的手指,拈着湿淋淋的生菜,一片接一片,在沙拉碗和嘴巴之间来来回回,我简直挪不开眼睛。可是,这番粗野之举并未在餐厅里引来讪笑或私语,这位诗人把用手抓沙拉吃变成了一件再自然而合理不过的事。

我的座位附近没有《淑女生活》的工作人员,或是我们杂志的编辑,亲切友好的贝琪似乎对鱼子酱没有兴趣,所以我的信心愈发足了。吃完了第一盘冷鸡肉卷鱼子酱,我又如法炮制了第二盘。接着又消灭了鳄梨和蟹肉沙拉。

鳄梨是我最喜欢的水果。以前每个周日,祖父都会带一颗鳄梨给我,藏在公文包的下层,上面盖着六件脏衬衫和周日版漫画。他还教我吃鳄梨的法子:用炖锅把葡萄果酱和法式沙拉酱熬煮成深红色的酱汁,再把酱汁盛入鳄梨的中空部分。我对那酱汁产生了一种乡愁似的思念。相较之下,鳄梨蟹肉沙拉尝起来已是索然无味。

“皮草秀好看吗?”我问贝琪,此时我已不再担心有人跟我抢鱼子酱了。盘子上残留着最后几粒咸咸的黑色鱼卵,我用汤匙刮了下来,舔个干净。

“很棒。”贝琪笑答,“他们还教我们如何用貂尾和金链子制作多用途的围巾。那种金链子在伍尔沃斯百货商店就可以买到一模一样的,只要一美元九十八美分。皮草秀一结束,希尔达就直奔批发皮草的仓储商店用超低折扣价买了一堆貂尾。然后她又去了伍尔沃斯买金链子。坐在来这儿的公交车上,她就把貂尾和金链子缝成围巾了。”

我觑了眼希尔达。她坐在贝琪的另一侧,果然披着条看起来很贵的貂尾围巾,用一根垂着的金链子系着。

我并不太了解希尔达。她足有六英尺高,绿色的大眼睛,眼角上斜,厚厚的红唇,带着斯拉夫人特有的茫然表情。她会做帽子,跟着时尚编辑见习,所以她与拿笔杆的朵琳、贝琪和我这类姑娘比较疏远,即便有时我们只是写写健康和美容方面的内容,那也是专栏。我不知道希尔达是不是文盲,但她做的帽子很棒。她就读于纽约的一所制帽专科学校,每天见习时戴来的新帽子全出自她的巧手,以稻草、皮毛、缎带或颜色难以捉摸的薄纱制成。

“真厉害。”我说,“厉害。”我开始想念起朵琳来。她要是在这儿,一定会跟我咬耳朵,毒舌揶揄希尔达那条宝贝围巾,逗我开心。

我变得情绪低落。早上杰·茜已经撕下了我的假面具,现在之前那些令人难受的自我怀疑都一一应验,事实再也无法隐瞒。十九年来,我不断追逐着一个又一个的好成绩、奖项、奖学金,而今我想要放慢脚步,彻底退出这样的人生竞赛。

“你怎么没和我们一起去看皮草秀?”贝琪问。我隐约觉得她是在问第二遍,就在一分钟前她才问过我同样的问题,只是我没有认真听。“你和朵琳出去了吗?”

“没有。”我答道,“我想去看皮草秀的,但是杰·茜打电话来,要我去趟办公室。”其实我压根没打算去看秀,但是我努力说服自己,我是想去的,这样一来,就能让杰·茜做的事真正伤害到我。

我跟贝琪说,早上我躺在床上就想着去看皮草秀的事。但我没告诉她,早前朵琳来我房间,说:“干吗去看那傻帽的秀啊,伦尼和我要去科尼岛,你干吗不一起来?伦尼会给你安排一个棒小伙子。反正这顿午宴和下午的电影首映已经把一天给毁了,没人会在意我们的。”

一时之间,我还真有点动心。皮草秀听起来当然很无聊,而且我向来对皮草没兴趣。可是,最终我还是决定赖床,赖到心满意足,再去中央公园,在有鸭子戏水的池塘附近的光秃荒野中,找片杂草最长的地方,躺上一天。

我告诉朵琳,我不去皮草秀,不去午宴和首映会,但我也不去科尼岛,我只想躺在床上。朵琳走了之后,我在想,为什么我不再像以前一样为该做的事勇往直前。想到这里,我顿生悲情倦意。然后我又想,为什么我不能像朵琳一样,不顾一切去做不该做的事。这个念头让我更加悲颓且疲惫。

我不知道当时是几点了,只听得外面走廊满是女孩们喧闹叫喊的声音,她们正准备出发去看皮草秀。不久,走廊归于宁静。我躺在床上,凝视着空荡荡的白色天花板,阒寂愈发膨胀,似乎要胀破我的耳膜。此时,电话响了。

我定定地瞅着电话不动。听筒在骨白色的电话机上微颤,我看都看得出来,它是真的在响。我想,大概是自己在舞会或派对上把电话号码给过谁,之后又忘了个一干二净。我拿起听筒,开口说话,声音沙哑但还听得下去。

“喂?”

“我是杰·茜。”杰·茜果决无情的声音传来,“你今天是不是刚好要来办公室?”

我倒回床上,我真不明白,为什么杰·茜会认为我要去办公室。我们都领到了那种油印卡纸,这样就能清楚所有的活动,我们很多上午和下午都不会在办公室,而是去城里参加各种各样的活动。当然,有些活动并非非去不可。

停了好一会儿,我才小心翼翼地回了一句:“我今天打算去看皮草秀。”我当然不想去看什么秀,但是除此之外找不出什么好借口。

“我跟她讲了,我想去看皮草秀。”我对贝琪说,“可她还是要我去办公室,说要和我谈谈,还有些活儿要我做。”

“哦——哦!”贝琪很是同情。她一定看见我的泪珠簌簌滚落,滴落在我面前那盘蛋白糖饼和白兰地冰激凌里,因为她把她那份没动过的甜点推给了我。我吃完了自己那份后,开始心不在焉地吃她的那份。在她面前掉眼泪,我觉得有点不好意思,但这些泪水都是货真价实的。杰·茜对我说了一些很可怕的事情。

约莫十点钟的时候,我没精打采地走进办公室。杰·茜起身,绕过她的桌子,关上门。我坐在我办公桌前的旋转椅上,面向她。她坐在她桌子后方的旋转椅上,面向我。她背后的窗边摆满了盆栽,一架子又一架子,欣欣向荣,像个热带花园。

“埃斯特,这里的工作你不感兴趣?”

“啊,有兴趣,我有兴趣的。”我说,“我对这份工作很感兴趣。”我很想喊着说出这几句话,仿佛这样会更有说服力,但我还是忍住了。

这十几年我一直告诉自己,我的人生理想就是疯狂地学习、读书、写作和工作。事实似乎确实如此,我样样做到最好,门门功课拿A,一路所向披靡地跨进大学的门槛。

我是镇公报的校内通讯记者,一份文学刊物的编辑,还担任备受肯定的校园惩戒会的秘书——这个机构负责处理学生在校内外的违规和惩处事宜。有位享誉诗界的女教授力荐我到东部最大的大学的研究生院深造,还允诺我全额奖学金。如今,我正跟随这家知性时尚杂志社里最好的编辑学习。但我像匹拉货的蠢驴,除了犹疑畏怯,我还干了什么?

“我对这里的每件事都很有兴趣。”这话从我嘴里蹦出来,好似一堆木头做的硬币,落在杰·茜的桌面上,空洞而单调。

“很高兴听你这么说。”杰·茜的语气略显尖刻,“你要明白,如果你卷起袖子好好干,在杂志社的这一个月你能学到很多东西。之前坐你位子的那个女孩,完全不理会那些时尚秀展,从这间办公室离开后,直接进了《时代》杂志社。”

“天!”我的声音还是死气沉沉的,“速度真快!”

“当然了。你还有一年才毕业。”杰·茜的语气略有缓和,“你毕业后想做什么?”

我心里一直希望能拿到一大笔奖学金读研究生,或者争取公费留学欧洲,然后成为教授,再出几本诗集;或是出几本诗集,然后当个编辑什么的。这些计划我早已有之,张口就能说出。

“我不太确定。”我听到自己这么说。当我听见自己这么说时,吓了一大跳,因为话一出口我就知道确实如此。

这话听起来很真实,而我也承认这一点。就像有个很难形容的人在你家门口徘徊良久,有一天突然上前说他才是你的生父,你俩长得极像,那一刻你知道他果真是你的父亲,而那个你叫了一辈子父亲的人,其实是个冒牌货。

“我不太确定。”

“这样下去,你会一事无成。”杰·茜沉吟片刻,“你会哪几种语言?”

“哦,我懂一点法语,我还一直想学德语来着。”我跟人说想学德语,说了有五年。

我的母亲小时候来了美国,结果一战期间因为说德语,在学校被同学扔石头。我的父亲在我九岁时去世了,他来自普鲁士王国黑色心脏地带的一个令人躁郁癫狂的小村庄,也说德语。我最小的弟弟德语说得像母语一样流利,此时正在柏林参加国际生活体验营。

我没说出口的是,每当我拿起德语字典或德语书籍时,那些密密麻麻、如带刺铁丝般的字母一跃入眼帘,我的脑袋就像蚌壳一样,闭得严丝合缝。

“我一直想进入出版业。”我设法找回一些线索,好让我像从前一样推销有术。“我想,毕业后我会去应聘一些出版社。”

“你应该学好法语和德语。”杰·茜毫不留情,“或者还要再学几门外语,西班牙语和意大利语——俄语最好也要学。每年六月都有数以百计想要成为编辑的女孩涌入纽约,你得比那些平庸之辈多点本事才行。最好多学几种语言。”

我没胆子告诉杰·茜,大学的最后一年我根本挤不出时间来学外语。我选修了一门教人如何独立思考的优等生荣誉课程,一门研究托尔斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基的课,还有一门高级诗歌创作研讨课,其他时间都要花在写詹姆斯·乔伊斯作品的晦涩主题的论文上。我还没选定论文主题,因为我还没读过乔伊斯的那本《芬尼根守灵夜》,但是教授对我的论文寄予厚望,还答应给我些提示,帮助我理解这部大作里那对双胞胎所代表的意象。

“我会尽我所能。”我告诉杰·茜,“也许会去报一个他们开设的那种适合双重需要的基础德语速成班。”当时我觉得自己还真可以这么做,因为我有办法说服班主任为我破例,她一向把我当成某种有趣的试验品。

物理和化学是我大学里的必修课。我已经修完了植物学,而且成绩优异,一整学年下来,我没有答错一道题。有一阵子我甚至心血来潮,想当一名植物学家,研究非洲的野生禾本科植物或者南美的雨林。因为研究冷门领域中的奇怪主题,比去意大利研究艺术或去英国研究英语文学,更容易获得大笔补助,毕竟前者少了很多竞争。

植物学挺好的,因为我喜欢切碎叶片,把它们放在显微镜下观察,也喜欢画出面包上的霉菌和蕨类植物繁殖周期中出现的奇异心形叶子。对我来说,这些东西都很真实。

至于物理,上课的第一天就要了我的命。

曼基先生,矮小黝黑,嗓门很高,口齿不清,穿着紧绷的蓝色西装,手里拿着颗小木球,站在教室的前端。他先把小木球放在一条带凹槽的陡斜滑道上,让它一滚到底,说若以a为加速度,以t为时间,然后,他突然开始龙飞凤舞地书写,黑板上一堆的字母、数字和等号看得我只想死。

我把物理课本带回宿舍。这本大部头以吸墨性良好的油印纸装订而成——足足四百页全是图表和公式,一张插图或照片都没有——封面和封底是砖红色的硬皮。这本教材是曼基先生的大作,专门用来跟大学女生讲解物理学,如果我们能读得懂,他就打算正式出版。

好吧,我研读公式,乖乖听课,盯着那些球滚下滑道,期待下课铃声。就这么撑到期末,多数女生都不及格,我得了全A。我听见曼基先生对一群抱怨物理太难的女生说:“不难,应该不会太难。有个女生从头到尾都拿了A。”“是谁?快说。”她们追问,但他摇摇头,什么也没说,只对我露出“你知我知”的迷人微笑。

这让我萌生了逃掉下学期化学课的念头。拼死拼活拿了物理课的全A,我算是学怕了,拿起物理书我就反胃,我受不了它把一切都浓缩成字母和数字。黑板上出现的不是缤纷各异的叶片形状,叶片呼吸气孔的放大图,叶红素和叶黄素之类可爱的词汇,而是曼基先生特有的红色粉笔书写的蛇蝎公式,每个字母都面目可憎、艰涩难辨。

我知道,化学会更要命,因为我在化学实验室见过一张列了九十几种化学元素的巨大周期表,表里的金、银、钴、铝等美好的词汇皆被缩写成不同的丑陋的符号。若再为这些东西绞尽脑汁,我肯定会发疯,彻底垮掉。上学期的物理课,我耗尽全部的意志力才勉强撑过去。

于是,我心生一计,去找班主任。

我的借口是,我需要时间选修一门莎士比亚的课程,毕竟我的专业是英语。班主任和我都知道,化学我也能拿全A,既然如此,参加考试有什么意义?何不让我抛开分数和学分,只需旁听就好?这是有荣誉感的人才会想到的荣誉问题,因为内容重于形式嘛,明知会拿A,成绩只是个没有意义的形式罢了,对吧?我的这番论点又借着学校的一条新政而更具说服力:我这届之后的大二学生取消了选修理科的要求,也就是说,我们这届是旧规定的最后受害者。

曼基先生完全同意我的说法。我那么喜欢上他的课,甘愿放弃学分和全A的功利考量,只求旁听课程,体会化学之美,他对此一定极为满足。我真是天才,才能想出把学分用来修莎士比亚,但依然坚持旁听化学课的妙招。看似多此一举,却恰恰让人觉得我对化学无法割舍。

当然,要不是我的物理成绩先拿到A,这一招也不会奏效。如果班主任知道我有多害怕多沮丧,冥思苦想到狗急跳墙,差点要出绝招了——比如找医生开证明,说我不适合上化学课,一见公式我就头晕之类的——她一定一秒都不愿听我废话,不管三七二十一要逼我修这门课。

如我所愿,教务委员会批准了我的请求。事后班主任告诉我,有好几位教授深为感动,将之视为我智识成熟的一大表现。

想到接下来半年的日子,我就忍不住要发笑。我一周上五次化学课,雷打不动。曼基先生站在朽旧摇晃的阶梯大教室的底部,把试管里的东西倒来倒去,生出红红蓝蓝的火焰和黄色的烟雾。我当他的声音是远处的蚊子叫,摒除在耳外,往椅背上一靠,欣赏着绚烂缤纷的火焰,写下一页页的十九行诗和十四行诗。

曼基先生不时看我一眼,见我奋笔疾书,便抛来一个赞赏有加的笑容。我猜他必定以为我抄下了所有公式,不像其他女生一样是为了考试,乃是被他的课堂所深深吸引而情不自禁的缘故。

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