《渺小一生》:他的眼睛看起来死气沉沉

　 And he did. For the next few weeks, when he woke in the night, or after they’d had sex and he was waiting for Willem to fall asleep so he could go to the bathroom, he instead made himself lie still, his hands in fists, counting his breaths, the back of his neck perspiring, his mouth dry. He pictured one of the motels’ stairwells, and throwing himself against it, the thud he would make, how satisfyingly tiring it would be, how much it would hurt. He both wished Willem knew how hard he was trying and was grateful that he didn’t.

于是他试了。接下来几个星期，他半夜醒来时，或者他们做爱后、他等着威廉睡着以便去浴室时，他就改逼自己躺着不动，双手握拳，数着自己的呼吸，颈背冒汗，嘴巴发干。他想象某个汽车旅馆的楼梯间，想象自己摔下去，发出“砰”的一声，那是多么令人满足又疲倦，那会多么的痛。他真希望威廉知道他多么努力尝试，同时很庆幸他不知道。

　 But sometimes this wasn’t enough, and on those nights, he would skulk down to the ground floor, where he would swim, trying to exhaust himself. In the mornings, Willem demanded to look at his arms, and they had fought over that as well, but in the end it had been easier to just let Willem look. “Happy?” he barked at him, jerking his arms back from Willem’s hands, rolling his sleeves back down and buttoning the cuffs, unable to look at him.

但有时这样还不够。于是在那样的夜里，他会轻手轻脚到一楼去游泳，设法把自己累到筋疲力尽。到了早上，威廉要求看他的手臂，他们曾因此吵架，但最后还是乖乖让威廉看比较简单。“高兴了没？”他会凶巴巴地说，从威廉手里拽回手臂，把袖子放下来，扣好袖扣，没法抬头看威廉。

　 “Jude,” Willem said, after a pause, “come lie down next to me before you go,” but he shook his head and left, and all day he had regretted it, and with every passing day that Willem didn’t ask him again, he hated himself more. Their new morning ritual was Willem examining his arms, and every time, sitting next to Willem in bed as Willem looked for evidence of cuts, he felt his frustration and humiliation increase.

“裘德，”威廉暂停一下说，“出门前先过来陪我躺一下吧。”但他摇摇头就离开了，接着一整天都很后悔。随着每一天过去，威廉没再要求他陪他躺一下，他就更加怨恨自己。他们新的早晨例行仪式，就是威廉检查他的手臂。而每一回，坐在床上、在威廉旁边，让威廉检查他是否有割伤的痕迹，他就觉得懊恼与羞辱感更增一分。

　 One night a month after he had promised Willem he would try harder, he had known that he was in trouble, that there would be nothing he could do to quell his desires. It had been an unexpectedly, peculiarly memory-rich day, one in which the curtain that separated his past from his present had been oddly gauzy. All evening he had seen, as if in peripheral vision, fragments of scenes drifting before him, and over dinner he had fought to stay rooted, to not let himself wander into that frightening, familiar shadow world of memories. That night was the first night he had almost told Willem he didn’t want to have sex, but in the end he had managed not to, and they had.

他答应威廉他会更努力的一个月后，有一天晚上，他知道自己惨了，无论做什么都平息不了他想割自己的渴望。那是意外的、特别充满回忆的一天，隔开过去和现在的那面纱帘变得非常薄。整个晚上，仿佛在视野边缘，他不断看到片段画面浮现眼前，晚餐时他一直努力不要脱离现实，不让自己陷入充满回忆的阴影世界中。那一夜是他第一次差点告诉威廉他不想做爱，但最后还是设法忍住。他们做爱了。

　 Afterward, he was exhausted. He always struggled to remain present when they were having sex, to not let himself float away. When he was a child and had learned that he could leave himself, the clients had complained to Brother Luke. “His eyes look dead,” they had said; they hadn’t liked it. Caleb had said the same thing to him. “Wake up,” he’d once said, tapping him on the side of his face. “Where are you?” And so he worked to stay engaged, even though it made the experience more vivid. That night he lay there, watching Willem asleep on his stomach, his arms tucked under his pillow, his face more severe in sleep than it was in wakefulness. He waited, counting to three hundred, and then three hundred again, until an hour had passed. He snapped on the light next to his side of the bed and tried to read, but all he could see was the razor, and all he could feel was his arms tingling with need, as if he had not veins but circuitry, fizzing and blipping with electricity.

事后，他筋疲力尽。他们做爱时，他总得艰难地设法让自己专注在当下，不让自己飘离。他小时候就学会脱离自己，客人会跟卢克修士抱怨。“他的眼睛看起来死气沉沉。”他们说，他们不喜欢这样。凯莱布也说过类似的话。“醒醒吧。”他有回说，拍拍他的侧脸，“你跑去哪里啦？”于是他努力投入，即使这样会让整个经验更鲜明。那一夜他躺在那儿，看着威廉趴在旁边，手臂塞在枕头底下，睡觉时，那张脸比醒着时更严肃。他等着，数到三百，然后又数了三百，直到一小时过去了。他打开自己那一侧的床头灯，试着看书，但是他唯一能看到的就是刮胡刀片，唯一感觉到的就是双臂因为需要而刺痛，仿佛全身的血管都化为电路，随着通电发出嘶嘶声和哔哔声。

　 “Willem,” he whispered, and when Willem didn’t answer, he placed his hand on Willem’s neck, and when Willem didn’t move, he finally got out of bed and walked as softly as he could into their closet, where he retrieved his bag, which he had learned to store in the interior pocket of one of his winter coats, and then out of the room and across the apartment to the bathroom at the opposite end, where he closed the door. Here too there was a large shower, and he sat down inside of it and took off his shirt and leaned his back against the cool stone. His forearms were now so thickened from scar tissue that from a distance, they appeared to have been dipped in plaster, and you could barely distinguish where he had made the cuts in his suicide attempt: he had cut between and around each stripe, layering the cuts, camouflaging the scars. Lately he had begun concentrating more on his upper arms (not the biceps, which were also scarred, but the triceps, which were somehow less satisfying; he liked to see the cuts as he made them without twisting his neck), but now he made long, careful cuts down his left tricep, counting the seconds it took to make each one—one, two, three—against his breaths.

“威廉。”他轻声喊，威廉没回应，他一手放在威廉的脖子上，威廉也没动。最后他终于下床，尽可能轻手轻脚走进衣帽间，把他藏在一件冬天大衣内侧口袋的刀片袋拿出来，走出房间，到公寓另一头的浴室里，关上门。这里的淋浴间比较大，他坐在里头，脱掉上衣，背靠着冰冷的大理石。他的前臂现在盖满了厚厚的疤痕，从远处看，他的手臂就像浸了灰泥，几乎看不出他企图自杀时割下的伤痕。他在每一刀之间和周围又割下新的刀痕，一层又一层，掩盖了那些疤。最近，他更常割在上臂（不是疤痕也很多的二头肌，而是三头肌，那里感觉比较没那么满足，因为他喜欢不必转头就看到自己割下的刀痕），但现在他小心翼翼沿着左三头肌割下长长的痕迹，憋气数着每割一道要花的时间——一秒、两秒、三秒。

　 Down he cut, four times on his left, and three times on his right, and as he was making the fourth, his hands fluttery from that delicious weakness, he had looked up and had seen Willem in the doorway, watching him. In all his decades of cutting himself, he had never been witnessed in the act itself, and he stopped, abruptly, the violation as shocking as if he had been slugged.

他左臂割了四道，右臂割了三道，正在割第四道时，双手因为虚弱而不稳。他一抬头忽然看到威廉站在门口盯着他。在他割自己的三十多年来，从来没让人见过他进行中的样子，他猛然停下，被人侵犯的感觉让他很震惊，像是挨了一记重拳。

　 Willem didn’t say anything, but as he walked toward him, he cowered, pressing himself against the shower wall, mortified and terrified, waiting for what might happen. He watched Willem crouch, and gently remove the razor from his hand, and for a moment they remained in those positions, both of them staring at the razor. And then Willem stood and, without preamble or warning, sliced the razor across his own chest.

威廉什么也没说，但是当他走向他时，他畏缩了，往后紧靠着淋浴间的墙壁，难堪又恐惧，等着接下来可能会发生的事。他看着威廉蹲下来，温柔地拿走他手上的刮胡刀片，一时之间两人都没动，只是瞪着那刀片。然后威廉站起来，毫无前奏和预警，就用刀片划过胸部。

　 He snapped alive, then. “No!” he shouted, and tried to get up, but he didn’t have the strength, and he fell back. “Willem, no!”

他整个人猛然醒觉。“不要！”他大喊，想站起来，但是没那个力气，于是又往后坐回去。“威廉，不要！”

　 “Fuck!” Willem yelled. “Fuck!” But he made a second cut anyway, right under the first.

“妈的！”威廉喊道，“妈的！”但他还是划了第二刀，就在第一刀的下方。

　 “Stop it, Willem!” he shouted, almost in tears. “Willem, stop it! You’re hurting yourself!”

“别割了，威廉！”他喊，差点掉泪，“威廉，别割了！你弄伤自己了！”

　 “Oh, yeah?” asked Willem, and he could tell by how bright Willem’s eyes were that he was almost crying himself. “You see what it feels like, Jude?” And he made a third cut, cursing again.

“哦，是吗？”威廉问，他看得出来威廉的眼睛有多亮，知道他几乎也要哭出来了。“裘德，你明白这是什么感觉了吗？”然后他划了第三刀，又骂了粗话。

　 “Willem,” he moaned, and lunged for his feet, but Willem stepped out of his way. “Please stop. Please, Willem.”

“威廉，”他呻吟着，扑向他的双脚，但威廉往后退开，“拜托别割了。拜托，威廉。”

　 He had begged and begged, but it was only after the sixth cut that Willem stopped, slumping down against the opposite wall. “Fuck,” he said, quietly, bending over at the waist and wrapping his arms around himself. “Fuck, that hurts.” He scooted over to Willem with his bag to help clean him up, but Willem moved away from him. “Leave me alone, Jude,” he said.

他求了又求，但威廉割了六刀才停下，垮坐在对面墙底。“妈的，”他低声说，弯下腰，双手抱住自己，“妈的，好痛。”他赶紧拿着袋子过去，想帮忙清洁伤口，但威廉躲开了。“别管我，裘德。”他说。

　 “But you need to bandage them,” he said.

“但是你得包扎伤口啊。”他说。

　 “Bandage your own goddamn arms,” Willem said, still not looking at him. “This isn’t some fucked-up ritual we’re going to share, you know: bandaging each other’s self-inflicted cuts.”

“包扎你自己的吧。”威廉说，还是不肯看他。“你知道，这可不是我们以后要一起共享的病态仪式：各自割伤，然后互相包扎。”

　 He shrank back. “I wasn’t trying to suggest that,” he said, but Willem didn’t answer him, and finally, he did clean off his cuts, and then slid the bag over toward Willem, who at last did the same, wincing as he did.

他往后瑟缩。“我没有那个意思。”他说，但威廉没回答他。终于，他清理完自己的伤口，然后把袋子推向威廉。威廉也清理了伤口，边弄边皱起脸。

　 They sat there in silence for a long, long time, Willem still bent over, he watching Willem. “I’m sorry, Willem,” he said.

他们沉默地坐了好久好久，威廉还是弯着腰。他看着威廉。“对不起，威廉。”他说。

　 “Jesus, Jude,” Willem said, a while later. “This really hurts.” He finally looked at him. “How can you stand this?”

“天哪，裘德，”威廉过了一会儿说，“这真的很痛，”他终于肯看他了，“你怎么受得了？”

　 He shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said, and Willem shook his head.

他耸耸肩，说：“会习惯的。”威廉摇头。