《渺小一生》:空气很冷，但他几乎没注意。
“There’s just a short walk to the car,” Luke whispered to him, and then, when he stopped, “Jude, what’s wrong?”
“只要走一小段路，就到车子那了。”卢克低声说，这时他站住了，“裘德，怎么了？”
“My bag,” he said, “my bag from the greenhouse.”
“我的袋子，”他说，“我放在温室的那个袋子。”
And then Luke smiled his kind smile, and put his hand on his head. “I put it in the car already,” he said, and he smiled back, so grateful to Luke for remembering.
卢克露出和蔼的微笑，一手放在他头上。“我已经放到车上了。”他说，然后他也微笑响应，很感激卢克没忘记。
The air was cold, but he hardly noticed. On and on they walked, down the monastery’s long graveled driveway, and past the wooden gates, and up the hill that led to the main road, and then down the main road itself, the night so silent it hummed. As they walked, Brother Luke pointed out different constellations and he named them, he got them all right, and Luke murmured in admiration and stroked the back of his head. “You’re so smart,” he said. “I’m so glad I picked you, Jude.”
空气很冷，但他几乎没注意。他们一直走，沿着修道院长长的碎石子车道，过了木栅门，爬上通往公路的小丘，来到公路上，夜晚安静得发出一片嗡嗡声。他们走路时，卢克修士指着不同的星座，要他说出星座名，他全都说对了，卢克修士就低声赞美他，摸着他的后脑勺。“你真聪明，”他说，“我很高兴我挑了你，裘德。”
Now they were on the road, which he had only been on a few times in his life—to go to the doctor, or to the dentist—although now it was empty, and little animals, muskrats and possums, gamboled before them. Then they were at the car, a long maroon station wagon piebald with rust, its backseat filled with boxes and black trash bags and some of Luke’s favorite plants—the Cattleya schilleriana, with its ugly speckled petals; the Hylocereus undatus, with its sleepy drooping head of a blossom—in their dark-green plastic nests.
现在他们走在公路上，他这辈子只来过几次，在去看医生或看牙的时候，但此时路上一片空荡，一些麝鼠和负鼠之类的小动物在前方蹦蹦跳跳。他们来到汽车旁，那是一辆长长的、褐红色的旅行车，上头生着锈斑，后座塞满箱子和黑色塑料袋，还有一些卢克最喜欢的植物，装在深绿色塑料网里，像是有着丑陋斑点花瓣的西蕾丽嘉德丽亚兰（Cattleya schilleriana）和枝节低垂的尾端开出一朵花的火龙果（Hylocereus undatus）。
It was strange to see Brother Luke in a car, stranger than being in the car itself. But stranger than that was the feeling he had, that everything had been worth it, that all his miseries were going to end, that he was going to a life that would be as good as, perhaps better than, anything he had read about in books.
在汽车里看到卢克修士很奇怪，比坐在汽车里更奇怪。不过更加奇怪的是他此时的感觉：一切都值得了，他所有的悲惨都要结束了，他就要迎接一种新生活，像他在书上读到过的那么美好，说不定还要更美好。
“Are you ready to go?” Brother Luke whispered to him, and grinned.
“准备要走了吗？”卢克修士低声问他，咧嘴笑了。
“I am,” he whispered back. And Brother Luke turned the key in the ignition.
“准备好了。”他也低声回答。然后卢克修士转动了引擎钥匙。
There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them.
忘记有两种方式。有很多年，他都在心里模拟（以缺乏想象力的方式）一个地窖的画面。每天结束时，他会收集起自己不愿回想的影像、片段和字句，把沉重的钢制门打开一条缝，把它们赶紧塞进去，再尽快关上，关得牢牢的。但这个方法没什么用，那些记忆还是会渗出来。他逐渐明白，重要的是消除那些记忆，而不是把它们储藏起来。
So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone.
于是他又发明了其他的解决办法。小的记忆（小小的轻蔑、侮辱），你就一次又一次重温，直到它们失效，直到它们被重复到几乎失去意义，或者直到你相信它们是发生在别人身上，你只是听说而已。比较大的记忆，你就在脑袋里想着那个场景，固定住，像一段影片一样，然后开始删除它，一帧接着一帧。这两个步骤都不容易。比方说，你不能在删除的中途停下来检视那些内容；你不能开始浏览某些片段，期望自己不会陷入其中的细节，因为你当然会。你必须每天晚上努力删除，直到最后完全删光。
Though they never disappeared completely, of course. But they were at least more distant—they weren’t things that followed you, wraithlike, tugging at you for attention, jumping in front of you when you ignored them, demanding so much of your time and effort that it became impossible to think of anything else. In fallow periods—the moments before you fell asleep; the minutes before you were landing after an overnight flight, when you weren’t awake enough to do work and weren’t tired enough to sleep—they would reassert themselves, and so it was best to imagine, then, a screen of white, huge and light-lit and still, and hold it in your mind like a shield.
当然，那些记忆从来不会完全消失。但至少会变得比较遥远——不会像鬼魂似的纠缠着你，拽着你要你注意，你不理会时还跳到你面前，占用掉你那么多时间和心力，搞得你简直没法思考别的事情。在空余的时间里——在你睡着之前，在你坐了一夜的飞机、就要降落之前，此时你不够清醒，难以工作，也没累到能睡着——它们就再次出现骚扰你，所以你最好想象出一块白色屏幕，又大又亮、静止不动，像一面盾牌在脑海中竖起。
In the weeks following the beating, he worked on forgetting Caleb. Before going to bed, he went to the door of his apartment and, feeling foolish, tried forcing his old set of keys into the locks to assure himself that they didn’t fit, that he really was once again safe. He set, and reset, the alarm system he’d had installed, which was so sensitive that even passing shadows triggered a flurry of beeps. And then he lay awake, his eyes open in the dark room, concentrating on forgetting. But it was so difficult—there were so many memories from those months that stabbed him that he was overwhelmed. He heard Caleb’s voice saying things to him, he saw the expression on Caleb’s face as he had stared at his unclothed body, he felt the horrid blank airlessness of his fall down the staircase, and he crunched himself into a knot and put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. Finally he would get up and go to his office at the other end of the apartment and work. He had a big case coming up, and he was grateful for it; his days were so occupied that he had little time to think of anything else. For a while he was hardly going home at all, just two hours to sleep and an hour to shower and change, until one evening he’d had an episode at work, a bad one, the first time he ever had. The night janitor had found him on the floor, and had called the building’s security department, who had called the firm’s chairman, a man named Peterson Tremain, who had called Lucien, who was the only one he had told what to do in case something like this should happen: Lucien had called Andy, and then both he and the chairman had come into the office and waited with him for Andy to arrive. He had seen them, seen their feet, and even as he had gasped and writhed on the ground, he had tried to find the energy to beg them to leave, to reassure them that he was fine, that he just needed to be left alone. But they hadn’t left, and Lucien had wiped the vomit from his mouth, tenderly, and then sat on the floor near his head and held his hand and he had been so embarrassed he had almost cried. Later, he had told them again and again that it was nothing, that this happened all the time, but they had made him take the rest of the week off, and the following Monday, Lucien had told him that they were making him go home at a reasonable hour: midnight on the weekdays, nine p.m. on the weekends.
挨揍后的接下来几个星期，他努力想忘掉凯莱布。去睡觉前，他会先走到公寓的前门。他觉得自己很蠢，竟然用旧的钥匙插入锁孔，好让自己相信门没法开，自己真的安全了。他会设定并重设自己安装的警报系统，那系统敏感到连影子经过都能引发一连串的哔哔声。然后他会躺着，但睡不着，双眼在黑暗的房间里睁开，专注着想忘记一切。但是很难——那几个月有好多记忆纠缠着他，搞得他快崩溃了。他听到凯莱布对他讲着种种难听的话，他看到凯莱布凝视赤裸身体的自己时的表情，他感觉到自己摔下楼梯时那种空白而令人讨厌的窒息感，于是他缩成一团，双手捂住耳朵并闭上眼睛。最后他终于起床，走到公寓另一头的办公室去工作。他很庆幸手上有个大案子快要开庭了，让他白天忙得没空去想别的。有一阵子他根本很少回家，只回去睡两小时，再花一小时冲澡、换衣服。直到一天晚上，他首度在事务所疼痛发作，还很严重。夜班管理员发现他躺在地板上，打电话给大楼的安保部门，接着安保部门打给他们事务所的主席彼得森·特里梅因，特里梅因再打电话给吕西安（他唯一交代过万一这样的事情发生时该怎么办的人）。吕西安打电话告知安迪，然后和特里梅因赶到办公室等安迪过来。他看到他们了，看到他们的脚，即使他猛吸气、在地板上扭动，还是试着挤出力气求他们离开，跟他们保证自己没事，说他只是需要独处。但他们没离开，吕西安轻柔地擦掉他嘴边的呕吐物，坐在他头旁边的地上握住他的手，他难为情得都要哭出来了。事后，他一次又一次地告诉他们没什么，这种事情常常发生，但他们逼他那一周在家休息，而且下个星期一，吕西安跟他说，他们规定他要在合理的时间回家：周一到周五是晚上12点，周末是晚上9点。
“Lucien,” he’d said, frustrated, “this is ridiculous. I’m not a child.”
“吕西安，”他懊恼地说，“这太荒谬了。我又不是小孩。”
“Believe me, Jude,” Lucien had said. “I told the rest of the management committee I thought we should ride you like you were an Arabian at the Preakness, but for some strange reason, they’re worried about your health. Also, the case. For some reason, they think if you get sick, we won’t win the case.” He had fought and fought with Lucien, but it hadn’t made a difference: at midnight, his office lights abruptly clicked off, and he had at last resigned himself to going home when he had been told.
“相信我，裘德。”吕西安说，“我告诉管理委员会的其他人，说我认为我们应该把你当成参加普里克尼斯锦标赛的阿拉伯马，但出于某个奇怪的原因，他们很担心你的健康，同时也担心那个案子。因为某个理由，他们认为如果你生病了，我们就赢不了那个案子。”他跟吕西安争了又争，但是没有用，到夜里12点，他办公室的灯就会忽然熄掉，他只好乖乖回家。
Since the Caleb incident, he had barely been able to talk to Harold; even seeing him was a kind of torture. This made Harold and Julia’s visits—which were increasingly frequent—challenging. He was mortified that Harold had seen him like that: when he thought of it, Harold seeing his bloody pants, Harold asking him about his childhood (How obvious was he? Could people actually tell by talking to him what had happened to him so many years ago? And if so, how could he better conceal it?), he was so sharply nauseated that he had to stop what he was doing and wait for the moment to pass. He could feel Harold trying to treat him the same as he had, but something had shifted. No longer did Harold harass him about Rosen Pritchard; no longer did he ask him what it was like to abet corporate malfeasance. And he certainly never mentioned the possibility that he might settle down with someone. Now his questions were about how he felt: How was he? How was he feeling? How were his legs? Had he been tiring himself out? Had he been using the chair a lot? Did he need help with anything? He always answered the exact same way: fine, fine, fine; no, no, no.
凯莱布事件后，他几乎没法跟哈罗德谈话，就连看到他都成了一种折磨。这使得哈罗德和朱丽娅频繁的来访成了一种挑战。他觉得很难堪，居然让哈罗德看到他那样。他一想到哈罗德看到他染血的长裤、问起他的童年（到底有多明显？人们真能从跟他的谈话中得知多年前发生在他身上的事情吗？如果是，他要怎么做才能隐瞒得更好？），就觉得严重反胃，使得他必须停下手边的事情，等那一刻过去。他感觉到哈罗德试着像以往那样对待他，但有些状况改变了。哈罗德再也不会为了罗森·普理查德相关的事情骚扰他，也不会问他去当大企业非法行为的帮凶是什么滋味，当然再也不会提到他什么时候要找个伴安定下来。现在哈罗德都是问他的感觉：他还好吗？他觉得怎么样？他的腿情况如何？他是不是累坏了？他最近是不是常用轮椅？他需要别人帮忙做什么吗？而他每次的回答都一模一样：还好，还好，还好；不用，不用，不用。
And then there was Andy, who had abruptly reinitiated his nightly phone calls. Now he called at one a.m. every night, and during their appointments—which Andy had increased to every other week—he was un-Andyish, quiet and polite, which made him anxious. He examined his legs, he counted his cuts, he asked all the questions he always did, he checked his reflexes. And every time he got home, when he was emptying his pockets of change, he found that Andy had slipped in a card for a doctor, a psychologist named Sam Loehmann, and on it had written FIRST VISIT’S ON ME. There was always one of these cards, each time with a different note: DO IT FOR ME, JUDE, or ONE TIME. THAT’S IT. They were like annoying fortune cookies, and he always threw them away. He was touched by the gesture but also weary of it, of its pointlessness; it was the same feeling he had whenever he had to replace the bag under the sink after Harold’s visits. He’d go to the corner of his closet where he kept a box filled with hundreds of alcohol wipes and bandages, stacks and stacks of gauze, and dozens of packets of razors, and make a new bag, and tape it back in its proper place. People had always decided how his body would be used, and although he knew that Harold and Andy were trying to help him, the childish, obdurate part of him resisted: he would decide. He had such little control of his body anyway—how could they begrudge him this?
还有安迪，他忽然重新开始那些深夜来电。现在他每天夜里1点会打来，而且每次约诊时（安迪增加到每两周一次）他不再像以前那样大呼小叫，而是变得安静客气，搞得他很紧张。安迪会检查他的双腿，细数他的割伤，问所有他平常问的问题，检查他的反射。每次他回家，清空口袋里的零钱时，就会发现安迪偷塞了一张心理医生山姆·娄曼的名片，上头写着：第一次看诊我出钱。总是有同样的名片，但每回写了不同的句子：为我去吧，裘德。或者：去一次就好。这些名片就像烦人的幸运签饼，他总是丢掉。这个举动令他感动，也令他觉得厌烦，因为根本没意义；同样的感觉发生在每回哈罗德来访后，他得放个新的袋子在水槽底下；他得去衣柜间角落找一个盒子，里面放了几百个小包装的酒精棉片和绷带，一沓沓的纱布，还有几十包刮胡刀片，然后做一个新的袋子，贴回原来的地方。人们总是决定他的身体该怎么用。尽管他知道哈罗德和安迪想帮他，但是他幼稚、执拗的那一部分就是很抗拒：他要自己决定。总之，他对自己的身体能控制的部分已经这么少了，他们怎么能连这一点都要夺走？
He told himself he was fine, that he had recovered, that he had regained his equilibrium, but really, he knew something was wrong, that he had been changed, that he was slipping. Willem was home, and even though he hadn’t been there to witness what had happened, even though he didn’t know about Caleb, about his humiliation—he had made certain of this, telling Harold and Julia and Andy that he’d never speak to them again if they said anything to anyone—he was still somehow ashamed to be seen by him. “Jude, I’m so sorry,” Willem had said when he had returned and seen his cast. “Are you sure you’re okay?” But the cast was nothing, the cast was the least shameful part, and for a minute, he had been tempted to tell Willem the truth, to collapse against him the way he never had and start crying, to confess everything to Willem and ask him to make him feel better, to tell him that he still loved him in spite of who he was. But he didn’t, of course. He had already written Willem a long e-mail full of elaborate lies detailing his car accident, and the first night they were reunited, they had stayed up so late talking about everything but that e-mail that Willem had slept over, the two of them falling asleep on the living-room sofa.
他告诉自己他没事，他已经复原了，他已经重新取得平衡了，但其实，他知道有什么不对劲，知道自己变了，也退步了。威廉回家了，即使他没在场看到发生了什么事，也不知道凯莱布这个人和他的羞辱（为了确保不让威廉得知，他事先跟哈罗德、朱丽娅和安迪交代过，如果他们敢泄漏给任何人，他就跟他们绝交），不知怎的，他看到威廉还是很羞愧。“裘德，我很遗憾。”威廉回来后看到他身上打的石膏，说，“你确定你没事吗？”但石膏根本没什么，石膏是最不可耻的部分，一时间，他很想告诉威廉真相，破例倒在他怀里痛哭，向威廉坦白一切，请求他让自己好过一点；而且他希望威廉告诉他，即使他以前是那样的，但他依然爱他。当然，他没有。他给威廉写过一封很长的电子邮件，里头充满了精心编造的谎言，详述他的车祸。他们重逢的第一夜，两个人熬夜到很晚，什么都聊，就是不聊威廉之前收到的那封邮件，最后两个人精疲力竭地倒在起居间的沙发上过夜。
But he kept his life moving along. He got up, he went to work. He simultaneously craved company, so he wouldn’t think of Caleb, and dreaded it, because Caleb had reminded him how inhuman he was, how deficient, how disgusting, and he was too embarrassed to be around other people, normal people. He thought of his days the way he thought of taking steps when he was experiencing the pain and numbness in his feet: he would get through one, and then the next, and then the next, and eventually things would get better. Eventually he would learn how to fold those months into his life and accept them and keep going. He always had.
但他继续过日子。他起床，去上班。他渴望有人做伴，这样他就不会想到凯莱布；同时他又很怕有人做伴，因为凯莱布曾令他想到自己多么不像个人，多么不健全，多么令人作呕，于是他实在不好意思跟其他正常人在一起。他想着自己的每一天，就像他以前走路时双脚疼痛和麻木时会有的想法：他会熬过这一步，然后下一步，到头来事情总会好转。最后他将学到如何把这几个月纳入自己的人生，予以接受，然后继续走下去。他向来可以的。
The court case came, and he won. It was a huge win, Lucien kept telling him, and he knew it was, but mostly he felt panic: Now what was he going to do? He had a new client, a bank, but the work there was of the long, tedious, fact-gathering sort, not the kind of frantic work that required twenty-hour days. He would be at home, by himself, with nothing but the Caleb incident to occupy his mind. Tremain congratulated him, and he knew he should be happy, but when he asked the chairman for more work, Tremain had laughed. “No, St. Francis,” he said. “You’re going on vacation. That’s an order.”
那个案子上了法庭，他获得胜诉。这是大胜，吕西安一直这么告诉他，他也知道是这样没错，但他最大的感觉是恐慌：现在他要做什么？他有个新客户，是一家银行，但这份工作的内容是冗长的数据收集，不需要一天二十四小时疯狂地工作。他会在家里，只有自己一个人，脑袋里只盘踞着凯莱布事件。特里梅因向他道贺，他知道自己应该开心，但他跟特里梅因要求更多工作时，特里梅因大笑。“不，圣弗朗西斯，”他说，“你得去度假。这是命令。”
He didn’t go on vacation. He promised first Lucien, and then Tremain, he would, but that he couldn’t at the moment. But it was as he had feared: he would be at home, making himself dinner, or at a movie with Willem, and suddenly a scene from his months with Caleb would appear. And then there would be a scene from the home, and a scene from his years with Brother Luke, and then a scene from his months with Dr. Traylor, and then a scene from the injury, the headlights’ white glare, his head jerking to the side. And then his mind would fill with images, banshees demanding his attention, snatching and tearing at him with their long, needley fingers. Caleb had unleashed something within him, and he was unable to coax the beasts back into their dungeon—he was made aware of how much time he actually spent controlling his memories, how much concentration it took, how fragile his command over them had been all along.
他没去度假。他先答应了吕西安，然后是特里梅因，说他会去，但眼前没办法。正如他之前所担心的：他休假待在家里，自己做晚餐，或是跟威廉去看电影，忽然间，过去几个月跟凯莱布交往的某一幕会出现。接下来是少年之家的一幕，还有他和卢克修士那几年的一幕、他和特雷勒医生那几个月的一幕，然后是他车祸受伤的一幕，车头大灯的炫目白光，他的头猛地往旁边扭。他的脑袋里充满各种影像，像一群爱尔兰神话中的报丧女妖非要引起他的注意不可，用她们尖尖的长指甲对着他又抓又扯。凯莱布释放了他心中的那些野兽，他再也无法哄骗它们回到原来的地牢，他被迫意识到自己究竟花了多少时间、多少注意力去控制那些回忆，也意识到他多么无力驾驭这些回忆。
