《渺小一生》:“你要讲的，其实是干瘪吧？

　 “No,” he said.

“不会。”他说。

　 Another silence, in which Lucien stared at the ceiling. “You’ve never brought anyone to one of these events, have you?” asked Lucien, his voice carefully casual.

又是一阵沉默，卢西恩只是盯着天花板。“这些场合，你从来没携伴参加过，对吧？”卢西恩问，声音刻意装得很轻松。

　 “No,” he said, and then, when Lucien didn’t say anything, “Are you trying to tell me something, Lucien?”

“对。”他说，看卢西恩没再说话，他主动问了，“卢西恩，你想跟我讲什么吗？”

　 “No, of course not,” Lucien said, looking back at him. “This isn’t the sort of firm where we keep track of those kinds of things, Jude, you know that.”

“没有，当然没有。”卢西恩说，目光又回到他身上，“我们事务所不会管这种事情，裘德，你知道的。”

　 He had felt a flush of anger and embarrassment. “Except it clearly is. If the management committee is saying something, Lucien, you have to tell me.”

他忽然感觉到一股愤怒和难堪：“只不过事实是显然会管。如果管理委员会说了什么，卢西恩，那你可得告诉我。”

　 “Jude,” said Lucien. “We’re not. You know how much everyone here respects you. I just think—and this is not the firm talking, just me—that I’d like to see you settled down with someone.”

“裘德，”卢西恩说，“我们没有。你明知道这里的每个人有多么尊敬你。我只是觉得——这可不代表事务所的意见，纯粹只是我个人的——很想看到你跟某个人定下来。”

　 “Okay, Lucien, thanks,” he’d said, wearily. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“好吧，卢西恩，谢了。”他厌倦地说，“我会好好考虑的。”

　 But as self-conscious as he is about appearing normal, he doesn’t want a relationship for propriety’s sake: he wants it because he has realized he is lonely. He is so lonely that he sometimes feels it physically, a sodden clump of dirty laundry pressing against his chest. He cannot unlearn the feeling. People make it sound so easy, as if the decision to want it is the most difficult part of the process. But he knows better: being in a relationship would mean exposing himself to someone, which he has still never done to anyone but Andy; it would mean the confrontation of his own body, which he has not seen unclothed in at least a decade—even in the shower he doesn’t look at himself. And it would mean having sex with someone, which he hasn’t done since he was fifteen, and which he dreads so completely that the thought of it makes his stomach fill with something waxy and cold. When he first started seeing Andy, Andy would occasionally ask him if he was sexually active, until he finally told Andy that he would tell him when and if it ever happened, and until then, Andy could stop asking him. So Andy never asked again, and he has never had to volunteer the information. Not having sex: it was one of the best things about being an adult.

他总是刻意表现得很正常，但却不会因此想要一个伴。他想要，是因为他明白自己很孤单。严重到有时觉得那孤单简直是有形的，像是一堆湿透的脏衣服压在他的胸口。他无法抛开那种感觉。其他人讲起来好像很简单，仿佛整个过程中最困难的部分，就是决定想要个伴。但他知道不是如此：有了伴就意味着要把自己袒露在某个人面前，但除了安迪之外，他从来没有对任何人做过；有了伴就意味着他要面对自己的身体，他已经至少十年没看过自己脱光衣服的模样——即使在冲澡时，他也不看自己。而且有了伴就表示要跟某个人性交，这部分他15岁以后就没有做过，而且害怕得要命，光是想想就觉得整个胃填满某种蜡般的冰冷物质。他刚开始找安迪看诊时，安迪偶尔会问他是否有性行为，到最后他告诉安迪，如果他哪天真有性行为就会告诉他，所以安迪可以不必再问了。于是安迪再也没问，他也从来不会主动告诉他这项信息。

　 But as much as he fears sex, he also wants to be touched, he wants to feel someone else’s hands on him, although the thought of that too terrifies him. Sometimes he looks at his arms and is filled with a self-hatred so fiery that he can barely breathe: much of what his body has become has been beyond his control, but his arms have been all his doing, and he can only blame himself. When he had begun cutting himself, he cut on his legs—just the calves—and before he learned to be organized about how he applied them, he swiped the blade across the skin in haphazard strokes, so it looked as if he had been scratched by a crosshatch of grasses. No one ever noticed—no one ever looks at a person’s calves. Even Brother Luke hadn’t bothered him about them. But now, no one could not notice his arms, or his back, or his legs, which are striped with runnels where damaged tissue and muscle have been removed, and indentations the size of thumbprints, where the braces’ screws had once been drilled through the flesh and into the bone, and satiny ponds of skin where he had sustained burns in the injury, and the places where his wounds have closed over, where the flesh now craters slightly, the area around them tinged a permanent dull bronze. When he has clothes on, he is one person, but without them, he is revealed as he really is, the years of rot manifested on his skin, his own flesh advertising his past, its depravities and corruptions.

但尽管他那么害怕性行为，他也希望被碰触，他想要感觉到另一个人的手抚摸他。这个想法让他吓坏了。有时他看着自己的手臂，满心的自我厌恶顿时涌上来，强烈得让他快没法呼吸。他的身体会变成这个样子，很多是他无法控制的，但两只手臂就完全是他自己造成的了，只能怪自己。他刚开始割自己时，是割在腿上，只有小腿，而且原先还没学到要安排位置，只是随意用刀片划过皮肤，看起来就像一堆交叉的刮痕。没有人注意过，因为不会有人看别人的小腿，就连卢克修士也没提过。但现在，没有人不会注意到他的手臂、他的背部、他的双腿，上头遍布各种疤痕；小溪般的纹路是移除毁坏组织和肌肉时形成的，而大如拇指指纹的凹陷则是以前两腿撑架的螺丝钻入肉和骨头所留下的，一片片光滑如缎的皮肤是车祸灼伤留下的痕迹，还有一些两腿生疮后愈合的伤口，现在像是微微隆起的火山口，周围永远染上了一种暗铜的色泽。穿着衣服时，他是一个人，但没了衣服，他就露出了真正的模样，堕落的那几年清楚地显示在他的皮肤上，他自己的肉身宣传着他的过去，宣传着其中的腐化和败德。

　 Once, in Texas, one of his clients had been a man who was grotesque—so fat that his stomach had dropped into a pendant of flesh between his legs, and covered everywhere with floes of eczema, the skin so dry that when he moved, small ghostly strips of it floated from his arms and back and into the air. He had been sickened, seeing the man, and yet they all sickened him, and so in a way, this man was no better or worse than the others. As he had given the man a blow job, the man’s stomach pressing against his neck, the man had cried, apologizing to him: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he said, the tips of his fingers on the top of his head. The man had long fingernails, each as thick as bone, and he dragged them over his scalp, but gently, as if they were tines of a comb. And somehow, it is as if over the years he has become that man, and he knows that if anyone were to see him, they too would feel repulsed, nauseated by his deformities. He doesn’t want someone to have to stand before the toilet retching, as he had done afterward, scooping handfuls of liquid soap into his mouth, gagging at the taste, trying to make himself clean again.

有一次在得克萨斯，他的一名顾客是个怪诞的男子——胖到肚子的肉像钟摆似的垂在两腿间，而且全身都是湿疹，皮肤非常干燥，只要一移动，就会有鬼影似的小片皮屑从他的手臂和背部浮起来，飘到空中。他看到那男人就觉得恶心，但反正所有顾客都很恶心，就某个方面来说，这个胖男人并不比其他人更好或更差。他帮那男人吹箫时，那个大肚子就压住他的脖子，那男人边叫边跟他道歉：对不起，对不起，他说，用指尖摸着他的头顶。那男人的指甲很长，厚得像骨头，刮过他的头皮，但是很轻柔，像一把扁梳的叉齿。不知怎的，仿佛这几年来他也变成了那个男子，他知道要是有人看到他，也会觉得厌恶，被他的种种畸形搞得想吐。他不希望有人得站在马桶前干呕，就像他帮那男人服务过后，捧着洗手液塞进嘴里，想把自己洗干净，又被那洗手液的味道弄得作呕。

　 So he will never have to do anything he doesn’t want to for food or shelter: he finally knows that. But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he’s built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he ready to endure? He doesn’t know; he is afraid of discovering the answer.

所以，现在他终于明白，他再也不必为了食物或住处去做他不想做的事情了。但他愿意做什么，让自己不那么孤单呢？为了得到亲密关系，他有可能会摧毁自己努力建立且保护的一切吗？他打算忍受多大的羞辱？他不知道，他很怕知道答案。

　 But increasingly, he is even more afraid that he will never have the chance to discover it at all. What does it mean to be a human, if he can never have this? And yet, he reminds himself, loneliness is not hunger, or deprivation, or illness: it is not fatal. Its eradication is not owed him. He has a better life than so many people, a better life than he had ever thought he would have. To wish for companionship along with everything else he has seems a kind of greed, a gross entitlement.

但是逐渐的，他更怕自己永远不会有机会知道答案。如果永远没有亲密关系，当个人又有什么意义呢？但是他提醒自己，孤单不是饥饿、贫困或疾病；孤单是不会致命的，也不是非得消除不可。他现在的生活已经比太多人好，也比他以往所能预料的好。除了眼前的一切，还想要拥有伴侣关系，似乎有点太贪婪、太奢侈了。

　 The weeks pass. Willem’s schedule is erratic, and he calls him at odd hours: at one in the morning, at three in the afternoon. He sounds tired, but it isn’t in Willem’s nature to complain, and he doesn’t. He tells him about the scenery, the archaeological sites they’ve been given permission to shoot in, the little mishaps on set. When Willem is away, he is increasingly inclined to stay indoors and do nothing, which he knows isn’t healthy, and so he has been vigilant about filling his weekends with events, with parties and dinners. He goes to museum shows, and to plays with Black Henry Young and to galleries with Richard. Felix, whom he tutored so long ago, now helms a punk band called the Quiet Amerikans, and he makes Malcolm come with him to their show. He tells Willem about what he’s seen and what he’s read, about conversations with Harold and Julia, about Richard’s latest project and his clients at the nonprofit, about Andy’s daughter’s birthday party and Phaedra’s new job, about people he’s talked to and what they’ve said.

几个星期过去了。威廉的作息非常不规律，会在各式各样的时间打电话来：凌晨1点，或是下午3点。他听起来很疲倦，但从不抱怨，因为那不是威廉的本性。他告诉他当地的风景，他们获准拍摄的一些考古遗址，还有拍片现场的一些小事故。威廉不在时，他愈发倾向于待在屋里什么都不做，但他也知道这样不健康，于是警觉地在周末排满活动，参加派对或晚宴。他去博物馆看展览，跟黑亨利·杨去看舞台剧，跟理查德去逛画廊。他多年前的家教学生菲利克斯现在组了一个叫“沉静的美国人”的朋克乐团，于是他找马尔科姆一起去看他们的表演。他跟威廉说起自己看了什么、读了什么，说起他和哈罗德、朱丽娅聊了些什么，说起理查德最新的作品计划，还说起他在那个非营利组织的客户，说起安迪女儿的生日派对和菲德拉的新工作，说起他跟其他人的谈话。

　 “Five and a half more months,” Willem says at the end of one conversation.

“再过五个半月。”威廉在一次通话结束时这么说。

　 “Five and a half more,” he repeats.

“再过五个半月。”他跟着复述。

　 That Thursday he goes to dinner at Rhodes’s new apartment, which is near Malcolm’s parents’ house, and which Rhodes had told him over drinks in December is the source of all his nightmares: he wakes at night with ledgers scrolling through his mind, the stuff of his life—tuition, mortgages, maintenances, taxes—reduced to terrifyingly large figures. “And this is with my parents’ help,” he’d said. “And Alex wants to have another kid. I’m forty-five, Jude, and I’m already beat; I’m going to be working until I’m eighty if we have a third.”

那个星期四，他去罗兹的新公寓吃晚餐，那里离马尔科姆父母家很近。去年十二月他们碰面喝酒时，罗兹谈起这间新公寓成了他所有梦魇的源头：他半夜醒来，满脑子都是各种账单 ——学费、房屋贷款、维修保养、税——最后汇聚成一个吓死人的巨大数字。“这还是有我爸妈帮忙。”他说，“现在亚历克丝还想再生个小孩。我现在45岁，裘德，可是已经累垮了，要是再生一个，我就得工作到80岁了。”

　 Tonight, he is relieved to see, Rhodes seems more relaxed, his neck and cheeks pink. “Christ,” Rhodes says, “how do you stay so thin year after year?” When they had met at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, fifteen years ago, Rhodes had still looked like a lacrosse player, all muscle and sinew, but since joining the bank, he has thickened, grown abruptly old.

今天晚上罗兹似乎比较镇定，脖子和脸颊呈粉红色，他看了也比较放心。“天啊，”罗兹说，“你怎么一直这么苗条啊？”十五年前，他们在联邦检察官办公室刚认识时，罗兹看起来还像个曲棍球选手，一身精瘦的肌肉，但自从跳槽到银行后，他越来越胖，而且老得很快。

　 “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘scrawny,’ ” he tells Rhodes.

“你要讲的，其实是干瘪吧？”他告诉罗兹。

　 Rhodes laughs. “I don’t think so,” he says, “but I’d take scrawny at this point.”

罗兹大笑，“我可没那么想，”他说，“不过我就暂时接受你的诠释吧。”

　 There are eleven people at dinner, and Rhodes has to retrieve his desk chair from his office, and the bench from Alex’s dressing room. He remembers this about Rhodes’s dinners: the food is always perfect, there are always flowers on the table, and yet something always goes wrong with the guest list and the seating—Alex invites someone she’s just met and forgets to tell Rhodes, or Rhodes miscounts, and what is intended as a formal, organized event becomes instead chaotic and casual. “Shit!” Rhodes says, as he always does, but he’s always the only one who minds.

这顿晚餐有十一个人，罗兹得把书房的办公椅、亚历克丝梳妆台的凳子都搬出来。他记得罗兹家的晚餐有个特色：食物总是很完美，桌上总是有鲜花，但是宾客名单和座位安排总是出状况。有时是亚历克丝邀请了个刚认识的人却没告诉罗兹，有时是罗兹算错人数，于是他们原先精心策划的正式晚宴，就会变得混乱而随意。“狗屎！”罗兹每次都这么说，但每次也只有他在意而已。