《渺小一生》:这是今年第一个天气温和的夜

　 Now he drops his mouth open. Now he hops in a little circle. Now he drags his leg behind him. His moans fill the air in the quiet, still house.

现在他嘴巴松垮地张开，绕着小圈单脚跳，右脚拖在后方。在这个安静、死寂的房子里，空气中充满了他的呜咽声。

　 The first Saturday in May, he and Willem have what they’ve been calling the Last Supper at a tiny, very expensive sushi restaurant near his office on Fifty-sixth Street. The restaurant has only six seats, all at a wide, velvety cypress counter, and for the three hours they spend there, they are the only patrons.

五月的第一个星期六，他和威廉去56街他办公室附近一家很小、很贵的寿司店，吃了一顿他们所谓的“最后的晚餐”。那个餐厅只有六个座位，全部面对着一排宽敞、柔滑的柏木吧台。而且用餐的三个小时里，只有他们两个客人。

　 Although they both knew how much the meal would cost, they’re both stunned when they look at the check, and then both start laughing, though he’s not sure if it’s the absurdity of spending so much on a single dinner, or the fact that they have, or the fact that they can that is to blame.

他们都明白这一顿有多贵，但看到账单时，两个人还是当场吓呆，又开始大笑。他不确定笑的原因是花这么多钱吃一顿晚餐很荒谬，还是他们花得起。

　 “I’ll get it,” Willem says, but as he’s reaching for his wallet, the waiter comes over to him with his credit card, which he’d given to him when Willem was in the bathroom.

“我来吧。”威廉说，但是当他要伸手掏皮夹时，侍者正拿着裘德的信用卡过来还他，因为他趁威廉去洗手间时，已经把信用卡交给侍者了。

　 “Goddammit, Jude,” Willem says, and he grins.

“该死，裘德。”威廉说，他咧嘴笑了。

　 “It’s the Last Supper, Willem,” he says. “You can get me a taco when you come back.”

“这是最后的晚餐，威廉。”他说，“等你回来，可以请我吃一顿墨西哥塔可卷饼。”

　 “If I come back,” Willem says. It has been their running joke. “Jude, thank you. You weren’t supposed to pay for this.”

“如果我能回来的话。”威廉说。这是他们两人最近常开的笑话，“裘德，谢了。这一顿不该由你付的。”

　 It’s the first warm night of the year, and he tells Willem that if he really wants to thank him for dinner, he’ll walk with him. “How far?” asks Willem, warily. “We’re not going to walk all the way down to SoHo, Jude.”

这是今年第一个天气温和的夜晚。他告诉威廉如果他真想为这顿晚餐表示感谢，就陪他走走路。“多远？”威廉警觉地问，“裘德，我们可不能一路走回苏荷区。”

　 “Not far.”

“又不远。”

　 “It’d better not be,” Willem says, “because I’m really tired.” This is Willem’s new strategy, and he is very fond of it: instead of telling him he can’t do certain things because it’s not good for his legs or back, Willem instead tries to make himself sound incapable in order to dissuade him. These days, Willem is always too tired to walk, or too achey, or too hot, or too cold. But he knows that these things are untrue. One Saturday afternoon after they’d gone to some galleries, Willem had told him he couldn’t walk from Chelsea to Greene Street (“I’m too tired”), and so they had taken a cab instead. But then the next day at lunch, Robin had said, “Wasn’t it a beautiful day yesterday? After Willem got home, we ran for—what, eight miles, right, Willem?—all the way up and down the highway.”

“最好不要，”威廉说，“因为我真的很累了。”这是威廉的新招数，而且正合他意。威廉不会叫他不要做某些事情，因为对他的腿或背部不好，而是设法讲得好像自己没办法去做，好让他打消念头。最近这阵子，威廉总是太累没法走路，或是身子太酸痛、太热、太冷。但他知道这些都不是真的。有个星期六下午，他们去逛了几家画廊后，威廉跟他说他没办法从切尔西走回格林街（“我太累了”），于是他们坐出租车回家。次日午餐时，罗宾说：“昨天天气真好不是吗，威廉回家后，我们还出去慢跑呢——多远？八英里吧，是吧，威廉？——一路沿着西城高速公路往北再回来。”

　 “Oh, did you?” he asked her, looking at Willem, who smiled sheepishly at him.

“哦，是吗？”他问她，看着威廉露出尴尬的微笑。

　 “What can I say?” he said. “I unexpectedly got a second wind.”

“我能说什么？”威廉说，“没想到我又恢复精力了。”

　 They start walking south, first veering east from Broadway so they won’t have to cross through Times Square. Willem’s hair has been colored dark for his next role, and he has a beard, so he’s not instantly recognizable, but neither of them want to get stuck in a scrum of tourists.

这会儿他们开始朝南走，不过先往东离开百老汇大道，免得等一下还要经过时代广场。威廉已经为下一个角色而把头发染成了深色，还留了大胡子，不太会被认出来。不过他们两个都不想被堵在观光人潮中。

　 This is the last time he will see Willem for what will likely be more than six months. On Tuesday, he leaves for Cyprus to begin work on The Iliad and The Odyssey; he will play Odysseus in both. The two films will be shot consecutively and released consecutively, but they will have the same cast and the same director, too. The shoot will take him all across southern Europe and northern Africa before moving to Australia, where some of the battle scenes are being shot, and because the pace is so intense and the distances he has to travel so far, it’s unclear whether he’ll have much time, if any, to come home on breaks. It is the most elaborate and ambitious shoot Willem has been on, and he is nervous. “It’s going to be incredible, Willem,” he reassures him.

这是威廉远行前最后一次见他了，接下来可能超过六个月都没法见面。星期二，威廉就要离开纽约去塞浦路斯，开始拍《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》，他在片中饰演主角奥德修斯。这两部电影将连续拍摄并依序上映，不过它们的卡司和导演都一样。拍片地点遍及欧洲和北非各地，还要到澳洲拍摄几场战争戏。因为拍片行程紧凑，又要跑那么多地方，所以还不确定中间有没有空档回纽约。这是威廉参与过最复杂、野心最大的拍片计划，他很紧张。“一定会是非常不可思议的经历，威廉。”他向他保证。

　 “Or an incredible disaster,” Willem says. He isn’t glum, he never is, but he can tell Willem is anxious, and eager to do well, and worried that he will somehow disappoint. But he is worried before every film, and yet—as he reminds Willem—every one has turned out fine, better than fine. However, he thinks, this is one of the reasons that Willem will always have work, and good work: because he does take it seriously, because he does feel so responsible.

“或是一场不可思议的灾难。”威廉说。威廉并不悲观，从来不会，但他看得出来，威廉很焦虑，急着想把工作做好，同时担心最后的表现不尽如人意。不过威廉每次开拍前都会担心，但就如同他提醒威廉的那样，每部片子的结果都很不错，而且还不光是不错而已。总之，他想，这就是威廉一直能接到工作，而且都是好工作的原因：因为他确实认真对待自己的工作，也自觉责任重大。

　 He, though, is dreading the next six months, especially because Willem has been so present for the last year and a half. First he was shooting a small project, one based in Brooklyn, that lasted just a few weeks. And then he was in a play, a production called The Maldivian Dodo, about two brothers, both ornithologists, one of whom is slowly tipping into an uncategorizable madness. The two of them had a late dinner every Thursday night for the entire run of the play, which he saw—as he has with all of Willem’s plays—multiple times. On his third viewing, he spotted JB with Oliver, just a few rows ahead of him but on the left side of the theater, and throughout the show he kept glancing over at JB to see if he was laughing at or concentrating on the same lines, aware that this was the first of Willem’s productions that the three of them hadn’t seen together, as a group, at least once.

不过他很忧心接下来的六个月，尤其因为过去一年半威廉总是待在纽约。首先他拍了一部小成本电影，主要在布鲁克林拍摄，只拍了几个星期就杀青了。然后他演了一出舞台剧《马尔代夫渡渡鸟》，描述了两个鸟类学家兄弟，其中一人缓慢地陷入一种无法归类的疯狂。演出期间，他们两人每周四夜里都会一起吃迟来的晚餐。一如威廉的每一出戏，这一出他也看了好几回。第三次去看时，他发现杰比和奥利弗也去了，就坐在他前面几排，不过是在靠戏院的左侧。整出戏期间，他的视线总是飘到杰比那里，看他是不是也被同样的台词逗得大笑或被吸引得全神贯注。他同时想到，以前只要是威廉的演出，他们三个至少会结伴看一次，而这回是第一次没约。

　 “So, listen,” Willem says as they move down Fifth Avenue, which is empty of people, just bright-lit windows and stray bits of garbage twirling in the light, soft breeze—plastic bags, puffed up with air into jellyfish, and twists of newspaper—“I told Robin I’d talk to you about something.”

两人沿着第五大道往南走。此时路上没有什么行人，只剩明亮的橱窗，还有灯光下零星的垃圾在微风中翻滚——被吹鼓后活像水母的垃圾袋和皱巴巴的报纸。“好吧，听我说。”威廉说，“有件事我跟罗宾说我会跟你谈。”

　 He waits. He has been conscious of not making the same mistake with Robin and Willem that he made with Philippa and Willem—when Willem asks him to accompany them anywhere, he makes sure that he’s cleared it with Robin first (finally Willem had told him to stop asking, that Robin knew how much he meant to him and she was fine with it, and if she wasn’t fine with it, she’d have to get fine with it), and he has tried to present himself to Robin as someone independent and not likely to move in with them when he’s old. (He’s not sure exactly how to communicate this message, however, and so is therefore unsure if he’s been successful or not.) But he likes Robin—she’s a classics professor at Columbia who was hired to serve as a consultant on the films two years ago, and she has a spiky sense of humor that reminds him of JB, somehow.

他等着。对罗宾和威廉他一直很留意，不想犯当初菲莉帕和威廉在一起时同样的错误。所以每回威廉找他一起去哪里，他都会先确认威廉问过罗宾了（最后威廉叫他别再问了，说罗宾知道他对他有多重要，她完全能接受，还说如果她不能接受，那她就要想办法接受），而且在罗宾面前，他都设法表现出自己是个很独立的人，老年时不可能搬去跟他们一起住（不过他不太清楚到底该怎么传达这个讯息，也不确定自己传达得成功不成功）。他喜欢罗宾，她是哥伦比亚大学的古希腊罗马文化教授，两年前曾受邀担任电影顾问，她有一种带刺的幽默感，不知怎的老让他想到杰比。

　 “Okay,” says Willem, and takes a deep breath, and he steadies himself. Oh no, he thinks. “Do you remember Robin’s friend Clara?”

“好吧。”威廉说，深吸一口气，让自己平静下来。啊，不会吧，他心想。“你还记得罗宾的朋友克拉拉吗？”

　 “Sure,” he says. “The one I met at Clementine.”

“当然记得。”他说，“就是在克莱芒蒂娜餐厅见过的那个。”