《渺小一生》:她叹气：“我知道。”

　 He took the L to Eighth Avenue and then walked the few blocks south to his apartment. Late October was his favorite time in the city, and he was always sad to miss it. He lived on the corner of Perry and West Fourth, in a third-floor unit whose windows were just level with the tops of the gingko trees; before he’d moved in, he’d had a vision that he would lie in bed late on the weekends and watch the tornado the yellow leaves made as they were shaken loose from their branches by the wind. But he never had.

他坐L线地铁到第八大道，然后往南走几个街区回公寓。在纽约，十月下旬是他最喜欢的时节，错过了总令他伤心。他住在佩里街和西4街交叉口，是一间位于三楼的公寓，屋里的窗子刚好跟外头的银杏树顶齐高。他搬进去时总想象他周末会赖在床上，看着满树银杏的黄叶被风吹得纷纷掉落。但他其实从来没看过。

　 He had no special feelings for the apartment, other than it was his and he had bought it, the first and biggest thing he had ever bought after paying off the last of his student loans. When he had begun looking, a year and a half ago, he had known only that he wanted to live downtown and that he needed a building with an elevator, so that Jude would be able to visit him.

他对这间公寓没有特殊感情，除了这是属于他的、是他自己花钱买的，而且是他还清了学生贷款后买的第一个、也是最重大的物品。一年半前，他刚开始找房子时，只知道他想住在下城，而且要有电梯，这样裘德就可以来拜访他。

　 “Isn’t that a little codependent?” his girlfriend at the time, Philippa, had asked him, teasing but also not teasing.

“这样不是有点关系成瘾吗？”他当时的女友菲莉帕曾取笑地问他，但同时也不算取笑。

　 “Is it?” he had asked, understanding what she meant but pretending not to.

“是吗？”他问，明白她的意思，但假装不懂。

　 “Willem,” Philippa had said, laughing to conceal her irritation. “It is.”

“威廉，”菲莉帕说，大笑着掩饰自己的不高兴，“就是啦。”

　 He had shrugged, unoffended. “I can’t live somewhere he can’t come visit,” he said.

他耸耸肩，没生气：“我不能住在一个他没办法来拜访的地方。”他说。

　 She sighed. “I know.”

她叹气：“我知道。”

　 He knew that Philippa had nothing against Jude; she liked him, and Jude liked her as well, and had even one day gently told Willem that he thought he should spend more time with Philippa when he was in town. When he and Philippa had begun dating—she was a costume designer, mostly for theater—she had been amused, charmed even, by his friendships. She had seen them, he knew, as proof of his loyalty, and dependability, and consistency. But as they continued dating, as they got older, something changed, and the amount of time he spent with JB and Malcolm and, especially, Jude became evidence instead of his fundamental immaturity, his unwillingness to leave behind the comfort of one life—the life with them—for the uncertainties of another, with her. She never asked him to abandon them completely—indeed, one of the things he had loved about her was how close she was to her own group of friends, and that the two of them could spend a night with their own people, in their own restaurants, having their own conversations, and then meet at its end, two distinct evenings ending as a single shared one—but she wanted, finally, a kind of surrender from him, a dedication to her and their relationship that superseded the others.

他知道菲莉帕不是反对裘德什么；她喜欢他，而且裘德也喜欢菲莉帕，甚至有天裘德还轻声告诉威廉，说他觉得威廉回纽约时应该多花点时间陪菲莉帕。当初他和菲莉帕开始交往时（她是服装设计师，大部分是舞台剧的设计），她觉得他跟朋友的友谊很有趣，甚至很有魅力。他知道，她把这些友谊视为他忠诚、可靠、执着的证据。但他们继续交往下去，两人年纪大一些，有些事情就改变了，他花在杰比和马尔科姆，尤其是裘德身上的时间，转而成了他根本不成熟、不愿意为了与另一个人（也就是她）种种不确定的未来，抛弃眼前舒适生活（与他朋友的生活）的证据。她从没要求他完全舍弃他们——的确，他很喜欢她的一点，就是她跟自己的朋友关系很亲密，而且他们两个可以一整晚跟各自的朋友相处，在不同的餐厅进行不同的谈话，结束后再会合，两个截然不同的夜晚最后成了一个共享的夜晚——但终究，她希望他屈服，专注于她和他的感情，以取代其他人的。

　 Which he couldn’t bring himself to do. But he felt he had given more to her than she recognized. In their last two years together, he hadn’t gone to Harold and Julia’s for Thanksgiving nor to the Irvines’ at Christmas, so he could instead go to her parents’ in Vermont; he had forgone his annual vacation with Jude; he had accompanied her to her friends’ parties and weddings and dinners and shows, and had stayed with her when he was in town, watching as she sketched designs for a production of The Tempest, sharpening her expensive colored pencils while she slept and he, his mind still stuck in a different time zone, wandered through the apartment, starting and stopping books, opening and closing magazines, idly straightening the containers of pasta and cereal in the pantry. He had done all of this happily and without resentment. But it still hadn’t been enough, and they had broken up, quietly and, he thought, well, the previous year, after almost four years together.

这一点他做不到。但他觉得自己的付出比她意识到的要多。他们在一起的最后两年，他没去哈罗德和朱丽娅家过感恩节，也没去欧文家过圣诞节，而是去了她佛蒙特州的父母家。他放弃跟裘德每年一度的度假之旅，陪她去她朋友的派对、婚礼、晚宴及演出，而且回纽约时都陪着她，看她为《暴风雨》的戏服画草图，帮她把那些昂贵的彩色铅笔削尖。她睡觉时，他时差还没调过来，就在公寓里漫游，翻翻书，看看杂志，把食品柜里装意大利面和麦片的盒子排正。他开开心心地做了这一切，毫无怨尤。但这样还是不够，于是去年，在交往将近四年后，他们平静地分手了，而他心想，好吧。

　 Mr. Irvine, hearing that they had broken up, shook his head (this had been at Flora’s baby shower). “You boys are really turning into a bunch of Peter Pans,” he said. “Willem, what are you? Thirty-six? I’m not sure what’s going on with you lot. You’re making money. You’ve achieved something. Don’t you think you guys should stop clinging to one another and get serious about adulthood?”

欧文先生在弗洛拉的产前送礼会上听到他们分手的消息，摇摇头：“你们这些小子真的成了一群不想长大的彼得·潘。”他说，“威廉，你几岁了？36？我不晓得你们是怎么回事。你们赚了钱，有了一些成就。你们不觉得自己应该认真当个大人，别总是黏在一起吗？”

　 But how was one to be an adult? Was couplehood truly the only appropriate option? (But then, a sole option was no option at all.) “Thousands of years of evolutionary and social development and this is our only choice?” he’d asked Harold when they were up in Truro this past summer, and Harold had laughed. “Look, Willem,” he said, “I think you’re doing just fine. I know I give you a hard time about settling down, and I agree with Malcolm’s dad that couplehood is wonderful, but all you really have to do is just be a good person, which you already are, and enjoy your life. You’re young. You have years and years to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live.”

但是要怎么当大人？配偶关系真的是唯一合理的选项吗？（然而，只有一个选项就等于没选项了。）“几千年的演化和社会发展下来，这是我们唯一的选择吗？”今年夏天他们去特鲁罗度假时，他这样问哈罗德，哈罗德大笑起来：“威廉，听我说，”他说，“我觉得你过得很好。我知道我总是啰唆要你定下来，而且我也同意马尔科姆的老爸说伴侣关系很棒，但你唯一真正要做的，就是当个好人，而你已经是了，还有享受人生。你还年轻，还有很多年可以搞清楚自己想做什么、想过什么样的生活。”

　 “And what if this is how I want to live?”

“那如果现在这样就是我想过的生活呢？”

　 “Well, then, that’s fine,” said Harold. He smiled at Willem. “You boys are living every man’s dream, you know. Probably even John Irvine’s.”

“唔，那也很好啊。”哈罗德说。他朝威廉微笑，“你们这几个小子实现了每个男人的梦想，你知道，甚至包括了约翰·欧文的梦想。”

　 Lately, he had been wondering if codependence was such a bad thing. He took pleasure in his friendships, and it didn’t hurt anyone, so who cared if it was codependent or not? And anyway, how was a friendship any more codependent than a relationship? Why was it admirable when you were twenty-seven but creepy when you were thirty-seven? Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.

最近他一直在想，关系成瘾是否真的有那么糟。他从友谊中得到快乐，也没有伤害到任何人，谁在乎是不是关系成瘾？不管怎样，友谊怎么可能比伴侣关系更让人相互成瘾？你27岁时受到欣赏的事情，为什么到了37岁就变得怪异了？为什么友情就不如伴侣关系好，难道不是更好吗？两个人一直在一起，日复一日，不是被性爱或身体的吸引力、金钱、子女或财产绑在一起，而是凭借彼此的共识走下去，为一个从未签订契约的同盟关系付出。友谊是见证另一个人在人生中缓慢滴流的悲伤，以及种种漫长的无聊，加上偶尔的成功。友谊是你能有幸在场见识另一个人最悲惨的时刻，懂得这是一种荣幸，而且知道你同样可以在他身边悲伤。

　 More troubling to him than his possible immaturity, though, were his capabilities as a friend. He had always taken pride in the fact that he was a good friend; friendship had always been important to him. But was he actually any good at it? There was the unresolved JB problem, for example; a good friend would have figured something out. And a good friend would certainly have figured out a better way to deal with Jude, instead of telling himself, chantlike, that there simply was no better way to deal with Jude, and if there was, if someone (Andy? Harold? Anyone?) could figure out a plan, then he’d be happy to follow it. But even as he told himself this, he knew that he was just making excuses for himself.

然而，比起自己可能的不成熟，他更困扰的是他身为朋友的能力。他向来自认是个不错的朋友，友谊对于他向来很重要。但他真的擅长当个好朋友吗？比方说，杰比的问题一直没解决，好朋友会想出办法的。而且一个好的朋友会想出更好的办法处理裘德的事，而不是像念经似的告诉自己，就是没更好的办法，如果有，如果某个人（安迪？哈罗德？任何人？）能想出一个计划，他很乐意照做。但即使他这么告诉自己，也知道他只是在为自己找借口。

　 Andy knew it, too. Five years ago, Andy had called him in Sofia and yelled at him. It was his first shoot; it had been very late at night, and from the moment he answered the phone and heard Andy say, “For someone who claims to be such a great friend, you sure as fuck haven’t been around to prove it,” he had been defensive, because he knew Andy was right.

安迪也很清楚这一点。五年前，安迪打电话到索非亚吼他。那时他第一次拍电影，已经很晚了，他一接起电话就听到安迪说：“对于一个自称是个很棒的朋友来说，你他妈的根本没有拿出证据来。”他开始自我防卫，因为他知道安迪说得没错。

　 “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting upright, fury and fear clearing away any residual sleepiness.

“慢着。”他说，坐直身子，愤怒与害怕赶跑了残留的睡意。

　 “He’s sitting at home fucking cutting himself to shreds, he’s essentially all scar tissue now, he looks like a fucking skeleton, and where are you, Willem?” asked Andy. “And don’t say ‘I’m on a shoot.’ Why aren’t you checking in on him?”

“他坐在家里，他妈的都把自己割成碎片了，现在全身都是疤痕组织，看起来像具他妈的骷髅，威廉，你人呢？”安迪问，“别跟我说‘我在拍戏’。你为什么没打电话问问他的情况？”

　 “I call him every single day,” he began, yelling himself.

“我每一天都打电话给他。”他说，也吼了起来。

　 “You knew this was going to be hard for him,” Andy continued, talking over him. “You knew the adoption was going to make him feel more vulnerable. So why didn’t you put any safeguards in place, Willem? Why aren’t your other so-called friends doing anything?”

“你明知道这件事对他来说很难熬。”安迪继续说，声音盖过他的，“你明知道收养这件事会让他更脆弱。为什么你没采取好保护措施，威廉？为什么你其他所谓的朋友不做点事？”