《渺小一生》:他有时很想故意弄脏东西

　 “Oh, Jude,” Willem said, and he saw that Willem was crying, silently. “Are you even happy with me?”

“啊，裘德，”威廉说，他看到威廉默默哭了，“你跟我在一起到底快乐吗？”

　 He felt something in him break and fall. “Willem,” he began, and then started again. “You’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

他觉得心中有个什么破掉且开始崩塌。“威廉，”他开口，顿了一下继续说，“你让我很快乐，这辈子从来没有这么快乐过。”

　 Willem made a sound that he later realized was a laugh. “Then why are you cutting yourself so much?” he asked. “Why has it gotten so bad?”

威廉发出一个声音，他后来才明白那是笑声。“那为什么你还割自己割得那么凶？”他问，“为什么状况变得这么糟糕？”

　 “I don’t know,” he said, softly. He swallowed. “I guess I’m afraid you’re going to leave.” It wasn’t the entire story—the entire story he couldn’t say—but it was part of it.

“我不知道。”他轻声说，吞下口水。“我猜我怕你会离开我。”这不是完整的说法（但完整的说法他说不出来），只是一部分而已。

　 “Why am I going to leave?” Willem asked, and then, when he couldn’t answer, “So is this a test, then? Are you trying to see how far you can push me and whether I’ll stay with you?” He looked up, wiping his eyes. “Is that it?”

“我为什么要离开？”威廉问，看他没回答，“所以这是个测试了？你想看能把我推得多远，看我还会不会跟你在一起？”威廉抬起头，擦擦眼睛，“是这样吗？”

　 He shook his head. “Maybe,” he said, to the marble floor. “I mean, not consciously. But—maybe. I don’t know.”

他摇头。“或许吧。”他低头对着大理石地面说，“我的意思是，不是有意识的。但——或许吧，我不知道。”

　 Willem sighed. “I don’t know what I can say to convince you I’m not going to leave, that you don’t need to test me,” he said. They were quiet again, and then Willem took a deep breath. “Jude,” he said, “do you think you should maybe go back to the hospital for a while? Just to, I don’t know, sort things out?”

威廉叹气：“我不知道要说什么，才能让你相信我不会离开，让你相信你不必测试我。”他说。两人又沉默了一会儿，威廉深吸一口气。“裘德，”他说，“你觉得你或许该回医院一阵子吗？我不知道，只是去把事情弄清楚？”

　 “No,” he said, his throat tightening with panic. “Willem, no—you won’t make me, will you?”

“不要，”他说，喉咙因为恐慌而发紧，“威廉，不要——你不会逼我吧？”

　 Willem looked at him. “No,” he said. “No, I won’t make you.” He paused. “But I wish I could.”

威廉看着他。“不，”他说，“不会，我不会逼你，”他暂停一下，“但我真希望我可以。”

　 Somehow, the night ended, and somehow, the next day began. He was so tired he was tipsy, but he went to work. Their fight had never ended in any conclusive way—there were no promises extracted, there were no ultimatums given—but for the next few days, Willem didn’t speak to him. Or rather: Willem spoke, but he spoke about nothing. “Have a good day,” he’d say when he left in the morning, and “How was your day?” when he came home at night.

不知怎的，这一夜结束了。不知怎的，下一天开始了。他累得整个人有点恍惚，但还是去上班了。他们吵架从来没有结论性的收场——没做任何保证，也没发出最后通牒——但接下来几天，威廉都没跟他说话。应该说，威廉说了话，但等于没说。他早上离开时，威廉会说：“祝你一天顺利。”他晚上回家时，则说：“你今天过得怎么样？”

　 “Fine,” he’d say. He knew Willem was wondering what to do and how he felt about the situation, and he tried to be as unobtrusive as possible in the meantime. At night they lay in bed, and where they usually talked, they were both quiet, and their silence was like a third creature in bed between them, huge and furred and ferocious when prodded.

“很好。”他会说。他知道威廉在想该怎么办，在想他对这个状况的感觉，与此同时，他尽量试着不要打扰。夜里他躺在床上，平常两人会交谈，但现在都很安静，他们的沉默像是躺在床上的第三只生物，夹在两人之间，巨大而毛茸茸，一戳弄就会变得凶猛起来。

　 On the fourth night, he couldn’t tolerate it any longer, and after lying there for an hour or so, both of them silent, he rolled over the creature and wrapped his arms around Willem. “Willem,” he whispered, “I love you. Forgive me.” Willem didn’t answer him, but he plowed on. “I’m trying,” he told him. “I really am. I slipped up; I’ll try harder.” Willem still didn’t say anything, and he held him tighter. “Please, Willem,” he said. “I know it bothers you. Please give me another chance. Please don’t be mad at me.”

到了第四夜，他再也无法忍受了，于是两人安静地躺在那里约一小时后，他翻身越过了那生物，双手抱住威廉。“威廉，”他低声说，“我爱你。原谅我。”威廉没回应，但他坚持下去。“我在试了，”他告诉他，“我真的在试了。这回我失手了；我会更努力的。”威廉还是什么都没说。他抱得更紧。“拜托，威廉，”他说，“我知道你很心烦。拜托再给我一次机会。拜托不要生我的气。”

　 He could feel Willem sigh. “I’m not mad at you, Jude,” he said. “And I know you’re trying. I just wish you didn’t have to try; I wish this weren’t something you had to fight against so hard.”

他可以感觉到威廉叹气。“我没生你的气，裘德，”他说，“而且我知道你在努力尝试。我只是真心希望你不必试；我真心希望这件事不是你必须这么努力奋战去抗拒的。”

　 Now it was his turn to be quiet. “Me too,” he said, at last.

接下来轮到他沉默了。“我也希望。”最后他说。

　 Since that night, he has tried different methods: the swimming, of course, but also baking, late at night. He makes sure there’s always flour in the kitchen, and sugar, and eggs and yeast, and as he waits for whatever’s in the oven to finish, he sits at the dining-room table working, and by the time the bread or cake or cookies (which he has Willem’s assistant send to Harold and Julia) are done, it’s almost daylight, and he slips back into bed for an hour or two of sleep before his alarm wakes him. For the rest of the day, his eyes burn with exhaustion. He knows that Willem doesn’t like his late-night baking, but he also knows he prefers it to the alternative, which is why he says nothing. Cleaning is no longer an option: since moving to Greene Street, he has had a housekeeper, a Mrs. Zhou, who now comes four times a week and is depressingly thorough, so thorough that he is sometimes tempted to dirty things up intentionally, only so he can clean them. But he knows this is silly, and so he doesn’t.

那一夜之后，他开始尝试别的方法，游泳当然也包括在内，另外还有深夜烘焙。他会确定厨房里总是有面粉、糖、鸡蛋、酵母，而他等着烤箱里的东西完成时，就会坐在餐桌旁工作，等到面包、蛋糕或饼干烤好了（他都请威廉的助理送去给哈罗德和朱丽娅），天几乎亮了，他会溜回床上睡一两个小时，直到闹钟吵醒他。接下来的白天，他的双眼因为疲倦而灼痛。他知道威廉不喜欢他在深夜烘焙，但他也知道威廉宁可他这样而不要去割自己，所以什么都没说。他现在没办法打扫了：自从搬进格林街以来，他就雇用了管家周太太，她每星期来四次，打扫得彻底到令人沮丧，彻底到他有时很想故意弄脏东西，让自己可以打扫。但他知道这样太傻了，于是什么也没做。

　 “Let’s try something,” Willem says one evening. “When you wake up and want to cut yourself, you wake me up, too, all right? Whatever time it is.” He looks at him. “Let’s try it, okay? Just humor me.”

“我们来试试别的吧。”有天晚上威廉说，“你半夜醒来想割自己的时候，就把我也叫醒，好吗？不管几点。”他看着他，“我们来试试看，好吗？迁就我一下吧。”

　 So he does, mostly because he is curious to see what Willem will do. One night, very late, he rubs Willem’s shoulder and when Willem opens his eyes, he apologizes to him. But Willem shakes his head, and then moves on top of him, and holds him so tightly that he finds it difficult to breathe. “You hold me back,” Willem tells him. “Pretend we’re falling and we’re clinging together from fear.”

他照办了，主要是因为很好奇，想看看威廉会怎么做。有天夜里，非常晚了，他轻拍威廉的肩膀，威廉睁开眼睛时，他跟他道歉。但威廉摇摇头，然后爬到他上方，把他抱得好紧，令他难以呼吸。“你也抱住我，”威廉告诉他，“假装我们在往下掉，我们害怕得紧抱对方。”

　 He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from his back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem’s heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his stomach deflating and inflating with air. “Harder,” Willem tells him, and he does until his arms grow first fatigued and then numb, until his body is sagging with tiredness, until he feels that he really is falling: first through the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then the floor itself, until he is sinking in slow motion through all the floors of the building, which yield and swallow him like jelly. Down he goes through the fifth floor, where Richard’s family is now storing stacks of Moroccan tiles, down through the fourth floor, which is empty, down through Richard and India’s apartment, and Richard’s studio, and then to the ground floor, and into the pool, and then down and down, farther and farther, past the subway tunnels, past bedrock and silt, through underground lakes and oceans of oil, through layers of fossils and shale, until he is drifting into the fire at the earth’s core. And the entire time, Willem is wrapped around him, and as they enter the fire, they aren’t burned but melted into one being, their legs and chests and arms and heads fusing into one. When he wakes the next morning, Willem is no longer on top of him but beside him, but they are still intertwined, and he feels slightly drugged, and relieved, for he has not only not cut himself but he has slept, deeply, two things he hasn’t done in months. That morning he feels fresh-scrubbed and cleansed, as if he is being given yet another opportunity to live his life correctly.

他紧拥着威廉，紧得他感觉到自己从背部到指尖的肌肉都苏醒过来，紧得他感觉到威廉的心跳紧贴着他的，感觉到他的胸廓抵着他的，还有他的腹部随着呼吸膨胀又消下。“更紧一点。”威廉告诉他，于是他抱得更紧，直到双臂开始疲劳，然后麻痹，直到身体因为疲倦而松垮，直到他感觉自己真的在往下掉：首先穿过床垫，接着是床架，然后是地板，直到他慢动作落下整栋大楼，每一层的楼面像果冻似的下陷、吞下他。他往下经过五楼，现在理查德家族用来存放摩洛哥瓷砖，往下经过四楼，现在是空的，往下经过理查德和印蒂亚住的三楼，接着是二楼理查德的工作室，然后来到一楼，进入游泳池，往下又往下，越来越远，经过了地铁隧道，经过岩床和粉沙土，经过石油在地下构成的湖泊和海洋，经过一层层化石和页岩，直到他飘进地核的大火中。从头到尾，威廉都紧拥着他，他们进入大火中，两人没有燃烧，而是融为一体，双腿、胸部、双臂、头都合而为一。次日早晨他醒来时，威廉没趴在他上方，而是在他旁边，但他们还是彼此相拥，他觉得有点迷糊而且放松，因为他不只是没有割自己，还熟睡了许久，这两件事是他好几个月来不曾有过的。那天早上，他觉得自己被洗涤得神清气爽，好像又得到了一个机会，得以正确过着自己的人生。

　 But of course he can’t wake Willem up whenever he feels he needs him; he limits himself to once every ten days. The other six or seven bad nights in those ten-day periods he gets through on his own: swimming, baking, cooking. He needs physical work to stave off the craving—Richard has given him a key to his studio, and some nights he heads downstairs in his pajamas, where Richard has left him a task that is both helpfully, mindlessly repetitive and at the same time utterly mysterious: he sorts bird vertebrae by sizes one week, and separates a stack of gleaming and faintly greasy ferret pelts by color another. These tasks remind him of how, years ago, the four of them would spend their weekends untangling hair for JB, and he wishes he could tell Willem about them, but he can’t, of course. He has made Richard promise not to say anything to Willem either, but he knows Richard isn’t exactly comfortable with the situation—he has noticed that he is never given jobs that involve razors or scissors or paring knives, which is significant considering how much of Richard’s work demands sharp edges.

但当然，他不能每回觉得需要威廉就叫醒他；他规定自己每十天一次。在这十天期间，其他六七个糟糕的夜晚他就靠自己撑过去：游泳、烘焙、做菜。他需要肢体活动以赶走那种渴望。理查德给了他一把工作室的钥匙，有些夜晚，他就穿着睡衣裤下楼，理查德会留一份既能帮助他又不必花脑力、同时充满神秘的重复性任务给他：一个星期是按照大小整理鸟类的脊椎骨，另一个星期是把一堆发着微光、略带油腻的雪貂毛皮按照颜色整理好。这些任务让他想到多年前，他们四个人花了整个周末帮杰比梳整那些头发。他真希望能告诉威廉这些事，但当然不行。他已经要理查德答应不会跟威廉提，但他知道理查德对这个状况有点不自在——他也注意到理查德从不派给他要用到刮胡刀片、剪刀或水果刀的工作，真的蛮明显的，因为理查德的作品常常会用到这些锋利的刀剪。

　 One night, he peers into an old coffee can that has been left out on Richard’s desk and sees that it is full of blades: small angled ones, large wedge-shaped ones, and plain rectangles of the sort he prefers. He dips his hand cautiously into the can, scoops up a loose fistful of the blades, watches them pour from his palm. He takes one of the rectangular blades and slips it into his pants pocket, but when he’s finally ready to leave for the night—so exhausted that the floor tilts beneath him—he returns it gently to the can before he goes. In those hours he is awake and prowling through the building, he sometimes feels he is a demon who has disguised himself as a human, and only at night is it safe to shed the costume he must wear by daylight, and indulge his true nature.

有天夜里，他去看理查德留在书桌上的一个旧咖啡罐，发现里头装满了刀片：弯曲的小刀、大的楔形刀刃，还有他偏爱的一般长方形刀片。他小心翼翼地把手伸到罐子里，捞出一把刀片，看着它们落回罐中。他拿了一片长方形的刀片，放在裤子口袋里，但就在准备离开时，他累得感觉脚下的地板都倾斜了，最后还是把刀子轻轻放回罐子里。在那几个小时，他醒着在大楼里四处游荡，他有时觉得自己像伪装成人类的魔鬼，白天必须穿着人类的衣服，只有在夜里才能安全脱掉，当真正的自己。