《渺小一生》:有时他很好奇
In the cab, he finds he really is tired, and he leans his forehead against the greased window and closes his eyes. By the time he reaches home, he feels as leaden as a corpse, and in the apartment, he starts taking off his clothes—shoes, sweater, shirt, undershirt, pants—as soon as he’s locked the door behind him, leaving them littering the floor in a trail as he makes his way to the bathroom. His hands tremor as he unsticks the bag from beneath the sink, and although he hadn’t thought he’d need to cut himself that night—nothing that day or early evening had indicated he might—he is almost ravenous for it now. He has long ago run out of blank skin on his forearms, and he now recuts over old cuts, using the edge of the razor to saw through the tough, webby scar tissue: when the new cuts heal, they do so in warty furrows, and he is disgusted and dismayed and fascinated all at once by how severely he has deformed himself. Lately he has begun using the cream that Andy gave him for his back on his arms, and he thinks it helps, a bit: the skin feels looser, the scars a little softer and more supple.
在出租车上，他发现自己真的累了，就把前额靠在油腻的玻璃隔板上，闭上眼睛。到家时，他觉得整个身躯沉重得像一具尸体。回到他那层公寓后，一锁上前门，他就开始脱衣服：鞋子、毛衣、衬衫、汗衫、长裤，边走边丢在地板上，一路走到了浴室。他双手颤抖着，把黏在水槽底下的那个小袋子拿出来。尽管他之前没想到这天晚上会有割自己的必要——一整个白天和傍晚都没有任何迹象——但他现在几乎是饥渴起来。他两边前臂上的皮肤早就没有空白的地方了，他就在旧的割痕上再割，用刮胡刀片的边缘割过那粗糙、网状的疤痕组织。当新的割痕愈合，就会形成多疣的皱痕，他看到自己把自己毁得多严重，既令他厌恶、惊愕，同时也令他着迷。最近他开始用安迪开给他擦背的那种药膏擦手臂，他觉得有点帮助：那些皮肤变得比较松弛，疤痕也变得柔软有弹性。
The shower area Malcolm has created in this bathroom is enormous, so large he now sits within it when he’s cutting, his legs stretched out before him, and after he’s done, he’s careful to wash away the blood because the floor is a great plain of marble, and as Malcolm has told him again and again, once you stain marble, there’s nothing that can be done. And then he is in bed, light-headed but not quite sleepy, staring at the dark, mercury-like gleam the chandelier makes in the shadowy room.
马尔科姆为他在浴室隔出的淋浴区非常大，大到他现在坐在里头割自己时，双腿可以往前伸直。等到他割完，就会仔细把血冲掉，因为淋浴区的地板是一整块大理石，马尔科姆一再交代他，要是大理石染了色，就没有办法补救了。然后他回卧室躺在床上，头晕晕的，但是不太困，他只是瞪着吊灯在黑暗的房间里形成水银般的光泽。
“I’m lonely,” he says aloud, and the silence of the apartment absorbs the words like blood soaking into cotton.
“我很孤单。”他说出声来，公寓的静默吸走了那些话，就像棉花吸了血。
This loneliness is a recent discovery, and is different from the other lonelinesses he has experienced: it is not the childhood loneliness of not having parents; or of lying awake in a motel room with Brother Luke, trying not to move, not to rouse him, while the moon threw hard white stripes of light across the bed; or of the time he ran away from the home, the successful time, and spent the night wedged into the cleft of an oak tree’s buckling roots that spread open like a pair of legs, making himself as small as he could. He had thought he was lonely then, but now he realizes that what he was feeling was not loneliness but fear. But now he has nothing to fear. Now he has protected himself: he has this apartment with its triple-locked doors, and he has money. He has parents, he has friends. He will never again have to do anything he doesn’t want to for food, or transportation, or shelter, or escape.
这种孤单是他最近才发现的，不同于他以前体验过的任何孤单：不是童年时没有父母的那种；也不是跟卢克修士躺在汽车旅馆房间里睡不着，忍着不动以免吵醒他，望着亮白的月光照在床上的那种。他成功逃离少年之家那回，有一夜来到了一棵橡树下，两道隆起的树根有如两条腿岔开，他就缩在树根间的空隙里，尽量缩得小小的。当时他也觉得很孤单，但现在他明白当时那种感觉不是孤单，而是害怕。现在他没什么好怕了。现在他已经保护好自己了：他有这间公寓，门上有三道锁，而且他有钱了。他有父母，有朋友。他再也不必为了食物、交通、住处、逃跑，而去做任何他不想做的事情。
He hadn’t been lying to Willem: he is not meant for a relationship and has never thought he was. He has never envied his friends theirs—to do so would be akin to a cat coveting a dog’s bark: it is something that would never occur to him to envy, because it is impossible, something that is simply alien to his very species. But recently, people have been behaving as if it is something he could have, or should want to have, and although he knows they mean it in part as a kindness, it feels like a taunt: they could be telling him he could be a decathlete and it would be as obtuse and as cruel.
他之前没跟威廉撒谎：他不适合有伴侣，也没想要过。他从不羡慕朋友们有伴侣，就像是一只猫不会羡慕狗的叫声。他从来没想到要羡慕，因为那是不可能的，和他这个物种完全不兼容的。但最近，很多人表现得好像那是他可以拥有，或是应该想要拥有的。就算他知道他们多半出于善意，但仍感觉像是在嘲弄他。那种迟钝、残忍的程度，简直像在告诉他，他可以成为十项全能选手。
He expects it from Malcolm and Harold; Malcolm because he is happy and sees a single path—his path—to happiness, and so therefore occasionally asks him if he can set him up with someone, or if he wants to find someone, and then is bewildered when he declines; Harold because he knows that the part of the parental role Harold most enjoys is inserting himself into his life and rooting about in it as best as he can. He has grown to enjoy this too, sometimes—he is touched that someone is interested enough in him to order him around, to be disappointed by the decisions he makes, to have expectations for him, to assume the responsibility of ownership of him. Two years ago, he and Harold were at a restaurant and Harold was giving him a lecture about how his job at Rosen Pritchard had made him essentially an accessory to corporate malfeasance, when they both realized that their waiter was standing above them, holding his pad before him.
他早就料到马尔科姆和哈罗德会来劝他。马尔科姆是因为自己很快乐，看到一条通往快乐的路（自己走过的那条），偶尔就会来问能不能帮他介绍某个人，或问他想不想找个伴。当他拒绝时，马尔科姆就不知所措。而哈罗德，则是因为他知道哈罗德最喜欢父母角色的原因，就是可以闯入他的生活，而且在里头尽可能地查探。有时候，他也渐渐享受这部分——他很感动有人对他兴趣大到会支持他，会对他的决定感到失望，会对他抱着期待，会假设自己对他有责任。两年前，他和哈罗德去一家餐厅，哈罗德批评他说，罗普克的工作害他成了企业不法行为的帮凶，批评到一半时，他们发现侍者站在桌旁，手里拿着菜单。
“Pardon me,” said the waiter. “Should I come back?”
“打扰一下，”那个侍者说，“要我晚一点再过来吗？”
“No, don’t worry,” Harold said, picking up his menu. “I’m just yelling at my son, but I can do that after we order.” The waiter had given him a commiserating smile, and he had smiled back, thrilled to have been claimed as another’s in public, to finally be a member of the tribe of sons and daughters. Later, Harold had resumed his rant, and he had pretended to be upset, but really, he had been happy the entire night, contentment saturating his every cell, smiling so much that Harold had finally asked him if he was drunk.
“不，没关系。”哈罗德说，拿起他的菜单，“我只是在骂我的儿子，不过我可以点完菜再继续骂。”那侍者给了他一个同情的微笑，他也微笑以对，心里其实很兴奋能当众被称为儿子，很兴奋终于为人子女了。稍后，哈罗德又继续责备他，他就假装被骂得很不高兴，但其实，他整个晚上都很开心，满足感渗透到了他的每个细胞里，让他一直忍不住微笑，笑到最后哈罗德都问他是不是喝醉了。
But now Harold too has started to ask him questions. “This is a terrific place,” he said when he was in town the previous month for the birthday dinner he’d commanded Willem not to throw for him and which Willem had done anyway. Harold had stopped by the apartment the next day, and as he always did, rambled about it admiringly, saying the same things he always did: “This is a terrific place”; “It’s so clean in here”; “Malcolm did such a good job”; and, lately, “It’s massive, though, Jude. Don’t you get lonely in here by yourself?”
但现在哈罗德也开始问他一些问题。“这个地方太棒了。”他上回来纽约市区时说。当时他来参加他的生日晚宴，他已经叫威廉别办了，但威廉没听他的话。哈罗德次日来到他的公寓，就像每次来一样，一进门就夸赞个不停，说他每回都会说的话，“这个地方太棒了”，“这里真是太干净了”，“马尔科姆真是做得太好了”，最近又加了别的，“不过裘德，这个地方好大。你自己一个人不觉得孤单吗？”
“No, Harold,” he said. “I like being alone.”
“不会，哈罗德，”他说，“我喜欢一个人独处。”
Harold had grunted. “Willem seems happy,” he said. “Robin seems like a nice girl.”
哈罗德咕哝着，“威廉好像很快乐，”他说，“罗宾好像是个好姑娘。”
“She is,” he said, making Harold a cup of tea. “And I think he is happy.”
“她的确很好。”他说，帮哈罗德泡茶，“我也觉得他很快乐。”
“Jude, don’t you want that for yourself?” Harold asked.
“裘德，你不希望自己也像那样快乐吗？”哈罗德问。
He sighed. “No, Harold, I’m fine.”
他叹气：“不希望，哈罗德。我很好。”
“Well, what about me and Julia?” asked Harold. “We’d like to see you with someone.”
“唔，那我和朱丽娅呢？”哈罗德问，“我们希望看到你有个伴。”
“You know I want to make you and Julia happy,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “But I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help you on this front. Here.” He gave Harold his tea.
“你知道我想让你和朱丽娅开心。”他说，试着保持声音的平稳，“但这方面我恐怕帮不了忙。来。”他把茶递给哈罗德。
Sometimes he wonders whether this very idea of loneliness is something he would feel at all had he not been awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that there is something strange and unacceptable about the life he has. Always, there are people asking him if he misses what it had never occurred to him to want, never occurred to him he might have: Harold and Malcolm, of course, but also Richard, whose girlfriend, a fellow artist named India, has all but moved in with him, and people he sees less frequently as well—Citizen and Elijah and Phaedra and even Kerrigan, his old colleague from Judge Sullivan’s chambers, who had looked him up a few months ago when he was in town with his husband. Some of them ask him with pity, and some ask him with suspicion: the first group feels sorry for him because they assume his singlehood is not his decision but a state imposed upon him; and the second group feels a kind of hostility for him, because they think that singlehood is his decision, a defiant violation of a fundamental law of adulthood.
有时他很好奇，要是他没意识到自己应该觉得孤单的事实，没意识到自己的生活有些奇怪、不够满意之处，那么他还会觉得孤单吗？总是有人问他是否想要那些自己根本从没想要、从不认为自己可能拥有的东西。哈罗德和马尔科姆当然会问，但还有理查德（他女朋友印蒂亚也是艺术家，两人就差没同居了），以及他越来越不常见到的朋友们，包括西提任、伊莱贾和菲德拉。甚至当年一起当沙利文法官助理的同事克里根，几个月前跟他丈夫来纽约时来拜访他，也问了同样的问题。有些人问起时带着怜悯，有些人则带着怀疑：第一种人替他感到遗憾，因为他们假设他单身不是出于自己的选择，而是无奈接受的；第二种人则对他怀有某种敌意，因为他们认为单身是他的选择，公然违抗了成人的基本法则。
Either way, being single at forty is different from being single at thirty, and with every year it becomes less understandable, less enviable, and more pathetic, more inappropriate. For the past five years, he has attended every partners’ dinner alone, and a year ago, when he became an equity partner, he attended the partners’ annual retreat alone as well. The week before the retreat, Lucien had come into his office one Friday night and sat down to review the week’s business, as he often did. They talked about the retreat, which was going to be in Anguilla, and which the two of them genuinely dreaded, unlike the other partners, who pretended to dread it but actually (he and Lucien agreed) were looking forward to it.
不管是哪种，40岁单身跟30岁单身是不一样的，每增加一岁，单身这事就更加无法理解、更不值得羡慕，也更可悲、更不适当。过去五年，他都独自参加各种晚宴，一年前，他在公司升为权益合伙人后，也是独自参加合伙人的年度旅游。旅游前的那个星期，卢西恩在星期五晚上来他的办公室，像平常那样坐下来跟他探讨这个星期的事务。他们谈到年度旅游，这回要去加勒比海的安圭拉，他们两个都很怕年度旅游，不像其他合伙人，嘴上说害怕，但他和卢西恩都认为他们其实很期待。
“Is Meredith coming?” he asked.
“梅瑞迪丝会去吗？”他问起卢西恩的太太。
“She is.” There was a silence, and he knew what was coming next. “Are you bringing anyone?”
“会。”卢西恩回答，沉默了一下，他知道接下来他会说什么了，“你会带谁去吗？”
