《渺小一生》:朱丽娅和我决定收养他之后，

　 When we first realized that Jacob was sick, that there was something wrong with him, we both tried very hard to recalibrate, and quickly. We had never said that we wanted him to go to college, for example; we simply assumed he would, and to graduate school as well, because we both had. But that first night we spent in the hospital, after his first seizure, Liesl, who was always a planner, who had a brilliant ability to see five steps, ten steps, ahead, said, “No matter what this is, he can still live a long and healthy life, you know. There are great schools we can send him to. There are places where he can be taught to be independent.” I had snapped at her: I had accused her of writing him off so quickly, so easily. Later, I felt ashamed about this. Later, I admired her: I admired how rapidly, how fluidly, she was adjusting to the fact that the child she thought she would have was not the child she did have. I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in your name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognizable as pleasure at all—and, more important, the pleasure you will be privileged to bring him. For the rest of Jacob’s life, I lagged one step behind Liesl: I kept dreaming he would get better, that he would return to what he had been; she, however, thought only about the life he could have given the current realities of his situation. Maybe he could go to a special school. Okay, he couldn’t go to school at all, but maybe he could be in a playgroup. Okay, he wouldn’t be able to be in a playgroup, but maybe he would be able to live a long life anyway. Okay, he wouldn’t live a long life, but maybe he could live a short happy life. Okay, he couldn’t live a short happy life, but maybe he could live a short life with dignity: we could give him that, and she would hope for nothing else for him.

我们刚发现雅各布病了，有哪里不对劲的时候，我和莉柔很努力地重新调整，而且很快。比方说，我们从来没说我们希望他读大学；我们只是假设他会，而且也会读研究生，因为我和莉柔都读了。但雅各布第一次发作后，我们在医院待的第一夜，向来擅长计划、总是提早五步十步看到事态发展的莉柔说：“无论这是什么病，他还是可以活得长寿又健康，你知道。他可以去很多很棒的学校读书。有很多地方会教他怎么独立生活。”我那时说了她一顿，我指控她这么快、这么轻易地就放弃他。事后，我很羞愧。后来的她让我佩服：面对这个孩子不如她预期的事实，她调整得快速而顺畅。我佩服她早就知道（比我早太多了），拥有孩子的重点不在于你希望他达到什么成就，而是他带给你的愉悦，无论是以什么形式，即使那种形式几乎不会被当成愉悦。更重要的是，你有幸能带给他愉悦。在雅各布剩下的人生中，我总是落后莉柔一步：我一直梦想他会好转，梦想他会回到原来的样子；而她，只想着以他当时的状况，可以过什么样的人生。或许他可以去读特殊学校。好吧，他根本不可能去上学，或许他可以去参加托儿游戏班。好吧，他不能去托儿游戏班，但或许还可以活很久。好吧，他没办法活很久，但或许他可以拥有短暂而快乐的一生。好吧，他没办法拥有短暂而快乐的一生，但或许他这短暂的一生可以过得有尊严：这个我们可以给他，而她对他别无所求。

　 I was thirty-two when he was born, thirty-six when he was diagnosed, thirty-seven when he died. It was November tenth, just less than a year after his first seizure. We had a service at the university, and even in my deadened state, I saw all the people—our parents, our friends and colleagues, and Jacob’s friends, first graders now, and their parents—who had come, and had cried.

雅各布出生时我32岁，被确诊时我36岁，过世时我37岁。那是十一月十日，离他第一次发作将近一年。我们在大学里举行了仪式，即使在麻木的状态中，我也看到所有人都来了，也都哭了，包括我们的父母、朋友和同事，还有雅各布的朋友（当时上一年级了），以及那些朋友的父母。

　 My parents went home to New York. Liesl and I eventually went back to work. For months, we barely spoke. We couldn’t even touch each other. Part of it was exhaustion, but we were also ashamed: of our mutual failure, of the unfair but unshakable feeling that each of us could have done better, that the other person hadn’t quite risen to the occasion. A year after Jacob died, we had our first conversation about whether we should have another child, and although it began politely, it ended awfully, in recriminations: about how I had never wanted Jacob in the first place, about how she had never wanted him, about how I had failed, about how she had. We stopped talking; we apologized. We tried again. But every discussion ended the same way. They were not conversations from which it was possible to recover, and eventually, we separated.

我父母回到纽约的家，莉柔和我最后又各自回去忙工作。有好几个月，我们几乎不说话，也没办法碰触对方。一部分原因是筋疲力尽，但我们也很羞愧：羞愧我们共同的失败，羞愧我们可以做得更好，却没有为彼此挺身而出（这种感觉不合理，却挥之不去）。雅各布过世后一年，我们第一次谈到是不是该再生个孩子。一开始两个人很客气，但谈话结束得非常糟糕，我们互相指责：关于我从一开始就不想要雅各布、她从来不想要生他，以及我怎么失败、她怎么失败。我们冷战，接着道歉。再试一次。但每次讨论到最后都是以同样的方式收场。那些谈话很伤人，无法弥补。到最后，我们分居了。

　 It amazes me now how thoroughly we stopped communicating. The divorce was very clean, very easy—perhaps too clean, too easy. It made me wonder what had brought us together before Jacob—had we not had him, how and for what would we have stayed together? It was only later that I was able to remember why I had loved Liesl, what I had seen and admired in her. But at the time, we were like two people who’d had a single mission, difficult and draining, and now the mission was over, and it was time for us to part and return to our regular lives.

现在回想起来很不可思议，我们完全停止沟通。我们离婚离得干净利落，很顺利——或许太干净利落、太顺利了。这让我好奇，在雅各布之前，是什么让我们在一起的——如果没有他的话，我们还会在一起吗？直到后来，我才有办法想起当初我为什么会爱上莉柔，我从她身上看到什么、欣赏什么。但当时，我们就像负责同一项任务的两个人，任务困难、令人精疲力竭，而现在任务结束了，我们就该分开，回到各自的正常生活。

　 For many years, we didn’t speak—not out of acrimony, but out of something else. She moved to Portland. Shortly after I met Julia, I ran into Sally—she had moved as well, to Los Angeles—who was in town visiting her parents and who told me that Liesl had remarried. I told Sally to send her my best, and Sally said she would.

有很多年我们都没联系——不是因为会吵架，而是有别的原因。她搬到波特兰。我认识朱丽娅之后没多久，有天碰到萨莉（她也搬家了，搬到洛杉矶）刚好来波士顿看她父母，她告诉我莉柔再婚了。我请萨莉转达我的祝福，萨莉说她会的。

　 Sometimes I would look her up: she was teaching at the medical school at the University of Oregon. Once I had a student who looked so much like what we had always imagined Jacob would look like that I nearly called her. But I never did.

有时我会查一下莉柔的现况：她在奥瑞冈大学的医学院教书。有回我有个学生，看起来好像我们想象中雅各布长大后的样子，像到我差点打电话跟她说，但我始终没这么做。

　 And then, one day, she called me. It had been sixteen years. She was in town for a conference, and asked if I wanted to have lunch. It was strange, both foreign and instantly familiar, to hear her voice again, that voice with which I’d had thousands of conversations, about things both important and mundane. That voice I had heard sing to Jacob as he juddered in her arms, that voice I had heard say “This is the best one yet!” as she took a picture of the day’s tower of blocks.

然后有一天，她打电话给我。那是十六年后了。她刚好来波士顿参加会议，问我要不要一起吃个中饭。再度听到她的声音，感觉很奇怪，既陌生又立刻变得熟悉起来，那个声音跟我谈过几千几万次话，谈过各种重要和平凡的事。我听过那声音对她抱在怀里摇晃的雅各布唱歌，听过那声音说：“这是有史以来最棒的一个！”同时拍下当天的积木塔照片。

　 We met at a restaurant near the medical college’s campus that had specialized in what it had called “upscale hummus” when she was a resident and which we had considered a special treat. Now it was a place that specialized in artisanal meatballs, but it still smelled, interestingly, of hummus.

我们约在医学院附近的一家餐厅见面。她在当住院医生时，那家餐厅专门卖所谓的“高档鹰嘴豆泥”，我们都觉得很好吃。但现在那家餐厅改卖手工肉丸，有趣的是，餐厅里还有一股鹰嘴豆泥的气味。

　 We saw each other; she looked as I had remembered her. We hugged and sat. For a while we spoke of work, of Sally and her new girlfriend, of Laurence and Gillian. She told me about her husband, an epidemiologist, and I told her about Julia. She’d had another child, a girl, when she was forty-three. She showed me a picture. She was beautiful, the girl, and looked just like Liesl. I told her so, and she smiled. “And you?” she asked. “Did you ever have another?”

我们见了面，她看起来就跟我记忆中一样。我们拥抱后坐下来。有一会儿，我们谈着工作，谈萨莉和她的新女友，谈劳伦斯和吉莉安。她告诉我她丈夫是流行病学专家，我则告诉她有关朱丽娅的事。她43岁时又生了个女孩。她拿照片给我看，很漂亮，看起来很像莉柔。我这么告诉她，她微笑。“那你呢？”她问，“你有了另一个孩子吗？”

　 I did, I said. I had just adopted one of my former students. I could see she was surprised, but she smiled, and congratulated me, and asked me about him, and how it had happened, and I told her.

是的，我说。我刚刚收养了一个以前的学生。我看得出来她很惊讶，但还是露出微笑，恭喜我，又问我他的事情，以及是怎么发生的。我告诉了她。

　 “That’s great, Harold,” she said, after I’d finished. And then, “You love him a lot.”

“那太好了，哈罗德。你很爱他。”

　 “I do,” I said.

“是的。”我说。

　 I would like to tell you that it was the beginning of a sort of second-stage friendship for us, that we stayed in touch and that every year, we would talk about Jacob, what he could have been. But it wasn’t, though not in a bad way. I did tell her, in that meeting, about that student of mine who had so unnerved me, and she said that she understood exactly what I meant, and that she too had had students—or had simply passed young men in the street—whom she thought she recognized from somewhere, only to realize later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that we might have been searching for him all this time.

我很想告诉你，那是我们某种第二阶段友谊的开始，我们一直保持联络，而且每一年我们都会谈到雅各布，谈他如果在世会是什么样子。但事情并非如此，不过我们也没有交恶。那次碰面时，我终于告诉她那个让我很不安、很像长大后的雅各布的学生。她说她完全明白我的意思，说她也碰到过一些学生，或只是在街上擦肩而过的青年，她觉得在哪里见过，后来才明白她曾想象我们的儿子就是那个样子，好好活着，离开了我们，也不再是我们的，但自由自在地生活在这世界里，不知道我们一直在找他。

　 I hugged her goodbye; I wished her well. I told her I cared about her. She said all the same things. Neither of us offered to stay in touch with the other; both of us, I like to think, had too much respect for the other to do so.

临别时我跟她拥抱道别，祝福她一切安好。我告诉她我很关心她。她也跟我说了同样的话。我们都没提出要跟对方保持联络；我愿意想成是因为我们都太尊重彼此了，不会去提这种事情。

　 But over the years, at odd moments, I would hear from her. I would get an e-mail that read only “Another sighting,” and I would know what she meant, because I sent her those e-mails, too: “Harvard Square, appx 25-y-o, 6′2″, skinny, reeking of pot.” When her daughter graduated from college, she sent me an announcement, and then another for her daughter’s wedding, and a third when her first grandchild was born.

但这些年来，在一些零星的时刻，我会接到她的消息。我会收到一封电子邮件，里面只写着“又看到另一个了”，而我明白她是什么意思，因为我也会发这类电子邮件给她，“哈佛广场，大约25岁，六英尺二英寸，瘦巴巴，一身大麻味。”她女儿大学毕业时，她发电子邮件通知我；然后是她女儿办婚礼；第三次是她的第一个孙子出生。

　 I love Julia. She was a scientist too, but she was always so different from Liesl—cheery where Liesl was composed, expressive where Liesl was interior, innocent in her delights and enthusiasms. But as much as I love her, for many years a part of me couldn’t stop feeling that I had something deeper, something more profound with Liesl. We had made someone together, and we had watched him die together. Sometimes I felt that there was something physical connecting us, a long rope that stretched between Boston and Portland: when she tugged on her end, I felt it on mine. Wherever she went, wherever I went, there it would be, that shining twined string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement reminding us of what we would never have again.

我爱朱丽娅。她也是科学家，但她始终跟莉柔截然不同。她乐观活泼，莉柔镇静；她感情外露，莉柔内敛，开朗热情中带着纯真。尽管我这么爱朱丽娅，有很多年，一部分的我始终觉得我跟莉柔有种更深、更难以解释的情感。我们一起生了个小孩，我们一起看着他死去。有时我觉得我们之间有种实体的连接，一条长长的绳子从波士顿连接到波特兰：当她扯动她那一头，我就会感觉到。无论她去哪里，无论我去哪里，都会有一条发亮的绳子在我们之间，不时被扯一下，永远不会断掉。我们的每个动作，都会让对方想起我们再也无法拥有的一切。

* * *

　 After Julia and I decided we were going to adopt him, about six months before we actually asked him, I told Laurence. I knew Laurence liked him a great deal, and respected him, and thought he was good for me, and I also knew that Laurence—being Laurence—would be wary.

朱丽娅和我决定收养他之后，大约在我们告诉他之前六个月，我先告诉了劳伦斯。我知道劳伦斯非常喜欢他，也尊敬他，认为他对我有好处。此外，我也知道劳伦斯生性谨慎，比较小心。

　 He was. We had a long talk. “You know how much I like him,” he said, “but really, Harold, how much do you actually know about this kid?”

的确，我们长谈了一番。“你知道我有多喜欢他。”他说，“可是真的，哈罗德，你对这个孩子实际了解多少？”

　 “Not much,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t Laurence’s worst possible scenario: I knew he wasn’t a thief, that he wasn’t going to come kill me and Julia in our bed at night. Laurence knew this, too.

“不多。”我说，但我知道他不是劳伦斯能想到最坏的那些状况：我知道他不是盗贼，不会趁夜里我和朱丽娅睡在床上时杀掉我们。这一点劳伦斯也知道。