《渺小一生》:他露出微笑。“可不是吗？”

　 “What do you mean?” he asked.

“什么意思？”他问。

　 “Well, I go,” Jude said, “but then—then I sit outside in the car and read through the session, and then when the session’s over, I drive back to the office.”

“唔，我去了，”裘德说，“但是在该进去的时间，我坐在外头的车子上读书，然后等到时间结束，我就开车回办公室。”

　 He was quiet, and so was Jude, and then they both started laughing. “What’re you reading?” he asked when he could finally speak again.

他没吭声，裘德也没说话，然后两个人开始大笑。“你读什么？”等到他终于有办法说话，他问。

　 “On Narcissism,” Jude admitted, and they both started laughing again, so hard that Willem had to sit down.

“《论自恋》[1]。”裘德说。两个人又大笑起来，笑到威廉根本站不住，还得坐下来。

　 “Jude—” he began at last, and Jude interrupted him. “I know, Willem,” he said, “I know. I’ll go back. It was stupid. I just couldn’t bring myself to go in these past few times; I’m not sure why.”

“裘德……”他终于又开口，裘德却打断他。“我知道，威廉，”他说，“我知道，我会回去的。那真的太蠢了。我这几次都没办法鼓起勇气走进去，也不知道为什么。”

　 When he hung up, he was still smiling, and when he heard Idriss’s voice in his head—“And Willem, what do you think about the fact that Jude isn’t going when he said he would?”—he waved his hand before his face, as if fanning the words away. Jude’s lying; his own self-deceptions—both, he realized, were forms of self-protection, practiced since childhood, habits that had helped them make the world into something more digestible than it sometimes was. But now Jude was trying to lie less, and he was trying to accept that there were certain things that would never conform to his idea of how life should be, no matter how intensely he hoped or pretended they might. And so really, he knew that therapy would be of limited use to Jude. He knew Jude would keep cutting himself. He knew he would never be able to cure him. The person he loved was sick, and would always be sick, and his responsibility was not to make him better but to make him less sick. He was never to make Idriss understand this shift in perspective; sometimes, he could hardly understand it himself.

他挂断电话时，脸上还带着微笑，脑中浮现出伊德里斯的声音——“还有，威廉，裘德说他会去却没去，你有什么感觉？”他的手在脸前挥一挥，好像要把那些话赶跑。他现在明白，裘德撒谎，以及他自己的自我欺骗，都是自我保护的手段，从童年开始就经常被演练。这些习惯帮助他们，把这个有时太不堪的世界变得比较容易理解。但现在裘德试着减少撒谎，他也试着接受人生有些事永远不会符合他理想中应有的样子，无论他多么期盼，也无论他怎么假装。所以老实说，他知道心理咨询对裘德的作用有限，知道裘德还会继续割自己，知道他永远没法治愈他。他爱的人病了，而且会永远病下去，他的责任不是让他好转，而是让他的病情减缓一些。他从来没办法让伊德里斯了解这个观点的转变；有时，连他自己也不太了解。

　 That night he’d had a woman over, the deputy production designer, and as they lay there, he answered all the same questions: he explained how he had met Jude; he explained who he was, or at least the version of who he was that he had created for answers such as these.

那天夜里他找了个女人过来，是副美术指导伊莎贝尔。他们躺在床上时，他回答了那些老问题：解释他是怎么认识裘德的，解释他是什么样的人，至少是他面对这类状况创造出来的版本。

　 “This is a lovely space,” said Isabel, and he glanced at her, a little suspiciously; JB, upon seeing the flat, had said it looked like it had been raped by the Grand Bazaar, and Isabel, he had heard the director of photography proclaim, had excellent taste. “Really,” she said, seeing his face. “It’s pretty.”

“这个地方真不错。”伊莎贝尔说，他有点疑心地看了她一眼；杰比看到这间公寓后，曾说这里看起来就像被伊斯坦布尔的大市集给强暴了。而伊莎贝尔，他听摄影指导宣称她的品位绝佳。“真的，”她说，看到他脸上的表情。“这里很漂亮。”

　 “Thanks,” he said. He owned the flat—he and Jude. They had bought it only two months ago, when it had become evident that both of them would be doing more work in London. He had been in charge of finding something, and because it had been his responsibility, he had deliberately chosen quiet, deeply dull Marylebone—not for its sober prettiness or convenience but because of the neighborhood’s surplus of doctors. “Ah,” Jude had said, studying the directory of the building’s tenants as they waited for the estate agent to show them the apartment Willem had settled on, “look at what’s downstairs from the unit: an orthopedic surgeon’s clinic.” He looked at Willem, raised an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

“谢了。”他说。这间公寓是他的，他和裘德的。他们两个月前才买下来，因为这两年的状况越来越明显，他们两个为了工作会更常待在伦敦。他负责找房子，因为那是他的责任。他刻意挑了安静、非常乏味的马里波恩，不是因为这里冷静的美感或便利，而是因为这一带有很多医生。威廉终于选定这间公寓后，某天他们来到楼下，等着房地产经纪人带他们上去看房子。“啊，”裘德当时说，一面研究这栋建筑物的住户名录，“看看楼下是什么：一家整形外科诊所呢。”他看着威廉，挑起一边眉毛，“这真是有趣的巧合啊，不是吗？”

　 He had smiled. “Isn’t it?” he asked. But beneath their joking was something that neither of them had been able to discuss, not just in their relationship but almost in their friendship as a whole—that at some point, they didn’t know when but that it would happen, Jude would get worse. What that might mean, specifically, Willem wasn’t certain, but as part of his new dedication to honesty, he was trying to prepare himself, themselves, for a future he couldn’t predict, for a future in which Jude might not be able to walk, might not be able to stand. And so finally, the fourth-floor Harley Street space had been the only possible option; of all the flats he had seen, this had been the one that had best approximated Greene Street: a single-story apartment with large doors and wide hallways, big square rooms, and bathrooms that could be converted to accommodate a wheelchair (the downstairs orthopedist’s office had been the final, unignorable argument that this apartment should be theirs). They bought the flat; he had moved into it all the rugs and lamps and blankets that he had spent his working life accumulating and that had been packed in boxes in the Greene Street basement; and before he returned to New York after the shoot ended, one of Malcolm’s young former associates who had moved back to London to work in Bellcast’s satellite office would begin renovating it.

他露出微笑。“可不是吗？”他说。但在他们的玩笑之下，是两个人都无法讨论的事情，不光是在他们的伴侣关系中，甚至在他们多年的友谊中几乎都没讨论过——到某个时间（他们不知道什么时候，但早晚会发生），裘德将会恶化。到底会是什么样的恶化，威廉也不确定，但他现在决定要诚实，所以他试着让自己、让他们两人都做好准备，去面对他无法预知的未来，面对有一天裘德可能没有办法走路、没有办法站起来。于是最后，这栋哈利街上的四层楼建筑成了唯一可能的选项；在他看过的所有房子里，这里最近似格林街：一户占据整层楼的公寓，有大大的门和宽敞的走廊，房间都很大，浴室改装得可供轮椅出入（楼下的整形外科诊所是最后的、不可忽略的理由，说服他这间公寓应该由他们买下）。他们买下那间公寓；他把历年到各地拍戏时买来、长年装箱堆积在格林街地下室的地毯、灯和毯子运来；而且在他拍戏结束回纽约前，马尔科姆以前的一个年轻同事、现在搬回伦敦且在“钟模”伦敦分公司上班的建筑师维克拉姆，就要开始装修了。

　 Oh, he thought whenever he looked at the plans for Harley Street, it was so difficult, it was so sad sometimes, living in reality. He had been reminded of this the last time he had met with the architect, when he had asked Vikram why they weren’t retaining the old wood-framed windows in the kitchen that overlooked the brick patio, with its views of the rooftops of Weymouth Mews beyond it. “Shouldn’t we keep them?” he’d wondered. “They’re so beautiful.”

啊，每回他看到哈利街的设计图都会想，活在现实世界有时好困难、好可悲。他总是回想起他上次跟维克拉姆碰面时，曾问起为什么不保留厨房原来的木框窗子，通过窗外俯瞰天井还可看到外头韦茅斯马厩街上的屋顶。“我们不是该保留吗？”他纳闷地问，“那些窗子那么美。”

　 “They are beautiful,” Vikram agreed, “but these windows are actually very difficult to open from a sitting position—they demand a good amount of lift from the legs.” He realized then that Vikram had taken seriously what he had instructed him to do in their initial conversation: to assume that eventually one of the people who lived in the apartment might have a very limited range of motion.

“是很美没有错，”维克拉姆赞同道，“不过这些窗子坐着很难打开——得用上双腿的力量才能拉起来。”他这才明白，他和维克拉姆第一次谈话时提到的，维克拉姆都很当回事。他那时交代他们要假设：住在这间公寓的其中一人，肢体活动的范围最后可能会非常有限。

　 “Oh,” he’d said, and had blinked his eyes, rapidly. “Right. Thanks. Thanks.”

“啊，”他说，迅速眨眨眼，“没错。谢谢。谢谢。”

　 “Of course,” Vikram had said. “I promise you, Willem, it’s going to feel like home for both of you.” He had a soft, gentle voice, and Willem had been unsure whether the sorrow he had felt in that moment was from the kindness of what Vikram said, or the kindness with which he said it.

“没问题，”维克拉姆说，“威廉，我跟你保证，这里一定会给你们两位家的感觉。”他的声音柔软而温和，威廉不确定他那一刻感受到的哀伤是源自维克拉姆的那些体贴话，还是他体贴的口气。

　 He remembers this now, back in New York. It is the end of July; he has convinced Jude to take a day off, and they have driven to their house upstate. For weeks, Jude had been tired and unusually weak, but then, suddenly, he hadn’t been, and it was on days like this—the sky above them vivid with blue, the air hot and dry, the fields around their house buttery with clumps of yarrow and cowslip, the stones around the pool cool beneath his feet, Jude singing to himself in the kitchen as he made lemonade for Julia and Harold, who had come to stay with them—that Willem found himself slipping back into his old habit of pretending. On these days, he succumbed to a sort of enchantment, a state in which his life seemed both unimprovable and, paradoxically, perfectly fixable: Of course Jude wouldn’t get worse. Of course he could be repaired. Of course Willem would be the person to repair him. Of course this was possible; of course this was probable. Days like this seemed to have no nights, and if there were no nights, there was no cutting, there was no sadness, there was nothing to dismay.

这会儿回到纽约，他想起了这件事。现在是七月底，他说服裘德休假一天，他们开车到纽约州北部的房子去。有好几星期，裘德都很疲倦，又非常虚弱，忽然间，他又好了起来，就在这样的日子里——天空是鲜明的蓝，空气热而干燥，他们房子四周的田野里散布着一丛丛的蓍草和黄花九轮草，围绕池塘的石头在脚下很冰凉，裘德在厨房里兀自唱着歌，一边帮他们邀请来的朱丽娅和哈罗德做柠檬水。这时威廉就会发现自己又不小心掉回到假装的老习惯里。在这样的日子，他会屈服于某种着魔的状态，在其中，他的人生似乎无法改善，同时又矛盾地可以完全修好：当然裘德不会恶化。当然他可以被治好。当然威廉会是那个治好他的人。当然这是可能的。当然这是有希望的。这样的日子似乎没有黑夜，而没有黑夜，就不会有割伤，不会有忧愁，没有什么能让人沮丧的。

　 “You’re dreaming of miracles, Willem,” Idriss would say if he knew what he was thinking, and he knew he was. But then again, he would think, what about his life—and about Jude’s life, too—wasn’t it a miracle? He should have stayed in Wyoming, he should have been a ranch hand himself. Jude should have wound up—where? In prison, or in a hospital, or dead, or worse. But they hadn’t. Wasn’t it a miracle that someone who was basically unexceptional could live a life in which he made millions pretending to be other people, that in that life that person would fly from city to city, would spend his days having his every need fulfilled, working in artificial contexts in which he was treated like the potentate of a small, corrupt country? Wasn’t it a miracle to be adopted at thirty, to find people who loved you so much that they wanted to call you their own? Wasn’t it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable? Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn’t this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle? And so who could blame him for hoping for one more, for hoping that despite knowing better, that despite biology, and time, and history, that they would be the exception, that what happened to other people with Jude’s sort of injury wouldn’t happen to him, that even with all that Jude had overcome, he might overcome just one more thing?

“威廉，你是在梦想奇迹发生。”伊德里斯如果知道他在想什么，就会这么说，他也知道自己在做梦。但是他会想，他的人生（还有裘德的人生）不就是奇迹吗？他本来应该待在怀俄明州，成为一名牧场雇工。裘德最后应该会在——哪里？监狱、医院，死掉或更糟。但结果他们都没有。像他这样一个基本上平凡无奇的人，居然能靠着扮演别人赚进几百万元，可以坐飞机到各个城市，每天生活所需都能得到满足，在人工的场景里工作，被伺候得像一个腐败小国的君主，这不是个奇迹吗？在30岁时被收养，遇到爱你爱到要把你正式收为儿子的父母，这不是奇迹吗？能够克服种种不可能存活的境况存活下来，这不是奇迹吗？而友谊本身，让你能找到另一个人，使整个孤单的世界不那么孤单，不就是奇迹吗？这栋房子、这片美景、这种舒适、这种生活，不就是奇迹吗？所以谁能怪他期望再多一个奇迹，尽管明知道不可能，尽管违背生物学、时间、历史的法则，他还是期望他们会是例外，期望发生在有同样伤势的人身上的事，不会发生在裘德身上，期望即使裘德已经克服那么多困难，他还是有可能再克服一件事？

　 He is sitting by the pool and talking to Harold and Julia when abruptly, he feels that strange hollowing in his stomach that he occasionally experiences even when he and Jude are in the same house: the sensation of missing him, an odd sharp desire to see him. And although he would never say it to him, this is the way in which Jude reminds him of Hemming—that awareness that sometimes touches him, as lightly as wings, that the people he loves are more temporal, somehow, than others, that he has borrowed them, and that someday they will be reclaimed from him. “Don’t go,” he had told Hemming in their phone calls, back when Hemming was dying. “Don’t leave me, Hemming,” even though the nurses who were holding the receiver to Hemming’s ear hundreds of miles away had instructed him to tell Hemming exactly the opposite: that it was all right for him to leave; that Willem was releasing him. But he couldn’t.

这会儿，他坐在池塘边跟哈罗德和朱丽娅聊天。忽然间，他感觉到了偶尔会体验到的、胃里一种奇怪的空荡，即使他和裘德就在同一栋房子里，那种想念他的感觉，一种好想看到他的渴望，奇异又强烈。他永远不会跟裘德提，不过就像这样，裘德让他想起亨明——那种感觉有时会触碰他，轻如鸟翼，感觉到自己深爱的人不知怎的就是比其他人短暂，感觉他们是自己借来的，有一天他们会被收回去。“别走，”他曾在电话里告诉亨明，当时亨明快死了，“别离开我，亨明。”即使几百英里外帮忙拿话筒凑在亨明耳边的护士曾交代他要讲恰恰相反的话：说他离开没关系的，说威廉会放他走。但他做不到。

　 And he hadn’t been able to either when Jude was in the hospital, so delirious from the drugs that his eyes had skittered back and forth with a rapidity that had frightened him almost more than anything else. “Let me go, Willem,” Jude had begged him then, “let me go.”

之前裘德住院时，他也做不到。当时裘德因为药物语无伦次，双眼不断转来转去，那个状况给他带来的恐惧，几乎超过了一切。“让我走，威廉。”当时裘德求他，“让我走。”

　 “I can’t, Jude,” he had cried. “I can’t do that.”

“我做不到，裘德，”他哭着说，“我没办法。”

　 Now he shakes his head to clear the memory. “I’m going to go check on him,” he tells Harold and Julia, but then he hears the glass door slide open, and all three of them turn and look up the sloping hill to see Jude holding a tray of drinks, and all three of them stand to go help him. But there is a moment before they begin heading uphill and Jude begins walking toward them in which they all hold their positions, and it reminds him of a set, in which every scene can be redone, every mistake can be corrected, every sorrow reshot. And in that moment, they are on one edge of the frame, and Jude is on the other, but they are all smiling at one another, and the world seems to hold nothing but sweetness.

现在他摇摇头，摆脱思绪。“我去看看他怎么样了。”他告诉哈罗德和朱丽娅。接着他听到玻璃滑门拉开，他们三个人转头朝山坡上方看去，看到裘德拿着一个装了饮料的托盘，他们三个都站起来要去帮他。但在他们朝上坡走去、裘德往下走来之前，有那么一刻，大家都停住不动。那让他想到在拍片现场，每一个布景都可以重新安排，每一个错误都可以修正，每一种忧伤都可以重来。而在那一刻，他们三个在画面的这一端，裘德在另一端，但他们相视微笑，整个世界似乎只有甜美。