《渺小一生》:大部分都是理查德的功劳

　 But the other reason he was worried about being seen with Willem was because of the exposure it entailed. Ever since his first day of college, he had feared that someday someone from his past—a client; one of the boys from the home—would try to contact him, would try to extort something from him for their silence. “No one will, Jude,” Ana had assured him. “I promise. To do so would be to admit how they know you.” But he was always afraid, and over the years, there had been a few ghosts who had announced themselves. The first arrived shortly after he’d started at Rosen Pritchard: just a postcard, from someone who claimed he had known him from the home—someone with the unhelpfully indistinct name of Rob Wilson, someone he didn’t remember—and for a week, he had panicked, barely able to sleep, his mind scrolling through scenarios that seemed as terrifying as they were inevitable. What if this Rob Wilson contacted Harold, contacted his colleagues at the firm, and told them who he was, told them about the things he had done? But he made himself not react, not do what he wanted to do—write a near-hysterical cease-and-desist letter that would prove nothing but his own existence, and the existence of his past—and he never heard from Rob Wilson again.

但他担心被人看到自己和威廉在一起还有另一个理由，那就是随之而来的曝光。从上大学的第一天起，他就担心有一天某个来自他过去的人，某个顾客或少年之家的某个男孩——会想联络他，会想跟他勒索封口费。“不会有人这样做的，裘德，”安娜曾安慰他，“我保证。如果他们去找你，就得先承认他们是怎么认识你的。”但他一直很害怕，而这些年来，曾经有少数几个鬼魂出现。第一个是他刚去罗森·普理查德律师事务所后不久，只是一张明信片，寄信人宣称在少年之家认识他，这个人有个大众化的名字罗伯·威尔森，他根本完全不记得。接下来一星期他都很恐慌，几乎无法睡觉，心里想象着各式各样的剧本，每一个都恐怖，但又避免不了。要是这个罗伯·威尔森联络哈罗德和他事务所的同事，跟他们说他以前是什么样子、做过什么事呢？但他逼自己不要有反应，不要做他想做的事情，例如写一封近乎歇斯底里的制止信，那只会证明他自己的存在，以及他的过去——而他再也没有接到罗伯·威尔森的消息。

　 But after a few pictures of him with Willem had appeared in the press, he received two more letters and an e-mail, all sent to his work. One of the letters and the e-mail were again from men who claimed they had been at the home with him, but once again, he hadn’t recognized their names, and he never responded, and they never contacted him again. But the second letter had contained a copy of a photograph, black-and-white, of an undressed boy on a bed, and of such low quality that he couldn’t tell if it was him or not. And with this letter, he had done what he had been told to do all those years ago, when he was a child in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, should any of the clients figure out who he was and try to establish communication with him: he had put the letter in an envelope and had sent it to the FBI. They always knew where he was, that office, and every four or five years an agent would appear at his workplace to show him pictures, to ask him if he remembered one man or another, men who were decades later still being uncovered as Dr. Traylor’s, Brother Luke’s, friends and fellow criminals. He rarely had advance warning before these visits, and over the years he had learned what he needed to do in the days afterward in order to neutralize them, how he needed to surround himself with people, with events, with noise and clamor, with evidence of the life he now inhabited.

但少数几张他和威廉的合照在媒体刊登后，他又收到了两封信和一封电子邮件，都是寄到办公室的。其中一封信和电子邮件，寄来的人都是宣称跟他一起在少年之家待过的，但再一次，他还是不认得他们的名字，也从没回信，于是他们没再联络他。但第二封信里有一张黑白照片，里头是一个没穿衣服的男孩躺在床上，照片质量差到他根本看不出那是不是自己。收到这封信之后，他做了多年前未成年、还在费城医院的病床上时被交代过的事情：万一有顾客猜出他的身份，想跟他联系，他就把那封信放进一个信封，寄去联邦调查局的一个小组。那个小组的人一直知道他在哪里，每隔四五年，都会有探员到他工作的地方拜访他，拿一些照片给他看，问他是否记得某个男人；即使过了几十年，他们还是陆续查出当年特雷勒医生或卢克修士的朋友与同党。除了这些拜访，他很少接到进一步的警告，而且多年来，他已经逐渐学会如何在探员来访后消除他们带来的影响。他会让自己置身于人群中，置身于社交场合、噪音和嘈杂的环境中，那些都是眼前生活的种种证据。

　 In this period, the one in which he had received and disposed of the letter, he had felt vividly ashamed and intensely alone—this had been before he had told Willem about his childhood, and he had never given Andy enough context so that he would appreciate the terror that he was experiencing—and after, he had finally made himself hire an investigative agency (though not the one that Rosen Pritchard used) to uncover everything they could about him. The investigation had taken a month, but at its end, there was nothing conclusive, or at least nothing that could conclusively identify him as who he had been. It was only then that he allowed himself to relax, to believe, finally, that Ana had been right, to accept that, for the most part, his past had been erased so completely that it was as if it had never existed. The people who knew the most about it, who had witnessed and made it—Brother Luke; Dr. Traylor; even Ana—were dead, and the dead can speak to no one. You’re safe, he would remind himself. And although he was, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still cautious; it didn’t mean that he should want to have his photograph in magazines and newspapers.

在他收到那封附照片的信、将之转寄给联邦调查局期间，他感觉到强烈的羞愧和孤单。这时他还没告诉威廉他的童年，而且他从来没告诉安迪足够的背景信息，所以安迪也不清楚他经历过的种种恐怖状况。然后，他终于下定决心，找了一家侦探社（但不是罗森·普理查德习惯找的那家），查出他的一切。那个调查进行了一个月，最后查不到任何决定性的信息，至少没查出确实能把他这个人和他童年联系起来的证据。这以后他才终于放心，相信安娜说得没错，接受他过往的大部分事迹都已被彻底抹去，仿佛从来不曾存在过。知道最多的人、曾经见证或促成事情发生的人，包括卢克修士、特雷勒医生，甚至安娜全都死了，而死人不会说话。你安全了，他会提醒自己。虽然他安全了，但并不表示他失去警觉，也不表示他想让自己的照片登上杂志和报纸。

　 He accepted that this was what his life with Willem would be, of course, but sometimes he wished it could be different, that he could be less circumspect about claiming Willem in public the way Willem had claimed him. In idle moments, he played the clip of Willem making his speech over and over, feeling that same giddiness he had when Harold had first named him as his son to another person. This has really happened, he had thought at the time. This isn’t something I’ve made up. And now, the same delirium: he really was Willem’s. He had said so himself.

他当然知道，和威廉在一起的生活就是这样，也可以接受，但有时他真希望可以有所不同，不必那么小心谨慎，可以像威廉那样公开地提起自己的伴侣。空闲的时候，他会一次又一次在计算机上播放威廉的得奖感言片段，感到一种晕眩，就像哈罗德第一次跟别人说他是自己的儿子那样。这真的发生了，当时他心想。这不是我自己想象出来的。现在，他感觉到同样的兴奋：他真的是威廉的伴侣了。他对自己说。

　 In March, at the end of awards season, he and Richard had thrown Willem a party at Greene Street. A large shipment of carved-teak doorways and benches had just been moved out of the fifth floor, and Richard had strung the ceiling with ropes of lights and had lined every wall with glass jars containing candles. Richard’s studio manager had brought two of their largest worktables upstairs, and he had called the caterers and a bartender. They had invited everyone they could think of: all of their friends in common, and all of Willem’s as well. Harold and Julia, James and Carey, Laurence and Gillian, Lionel and Sinclair had come down from Boston; Kit had come out from L.A., Carolina from Yountville, Phaedra and Citizen from Paris, Willem’s friends Cressy and Susannah from London, Miguel from Madrid. He made himself stand and walk through that party, at which people he knew only from Willem’s stories—directors and actors and playwrights—approached him and said they’d been hearing about him for years, and that it was so nice to finally meet him, that they’d been thinking that Willem had invented him, and although he had laughed, he had been sad as well, as if he should have ignored his fears and involved himself more in Willem’s life.

三月时，颁奖旺季的尾声，他和理查德在格林街帮威廉办了一个派对。五楼存放的一大批柚木雕花门框和长椅刚运走，理查德在天花板上用绳子吊起成串的灯泡，每面墙上都排列着装了蜡烛的玻璃罐。理查德的工作室主任把他们最大的两张工作台搬上来，他打电话找来外烩厨师和调酒师。他们邀请了他们能想到的每个人：所有共同的朋友，还有威廉所有的朋友。哈罗德和朱丽娅、詹姆斯和凯瑞、劳伦斯和吉莉安；莱昂内尔和辛克莱从波士顿南下，基特从洛杉矶过来，卡罗莱纳从北加州纳帕郡的扬特维尔镇过来，菲德拉和西提任从巴黎过来；威廉的朋友包括从伦敦赶来的克雷西和苏珊娜，以及从马德里来的米盖尔。那天他逼自己站着，在派对上走动，很多他只听威廉说过的人，那些导演、演员和编剧，都走过来跟他说他们多年来听了他很多事情，很高兴终于能见到他，因为他们一直都认为他是威廉捏造出来的。他听了大笑，但同时也很难过，觉得好像应该抛开自己的恐惧，多参与威廉的生活。

　 So many people there hadn’t seen one another in so many years that it was a very busy party, the kind of party they had gone to when they were young, with people shouting at one another over the music that one of Richard’s assistants, an amateur DJ, was playing, and a few hours into it he was exhausted, and leaned against the northern wall of the space to watch everyone dance. In the middle of the scrum he could see Willem dancing with Julia, and he smiled, watching them, before noticing that Harold was standing on the other side of the room, watching them as well, smiling as well. Harold saw him, then, and raised his glass to him, and he raised his in return, and then watched as Harold worked his way toward him.

派对上的好多人都已经多年不见，派对非常忙碌热闹，就是他们年轻时会参加的那种，大家都在音乐声中互相大吼（理查德的一个助理是业余DJ，负责播放音乐）。派对进行几小时后，他累坏了，靠着北边的墙面看大家跳舞。在空间中央起舞的人群中，他看到威廉跟朱丽娅共舞，他微笑地看着，接着注意到哈罗德站在房间的另一头，也看着他们，露出微笑。此时哈罗德看到他，朝他举起玻璃杯，而他也举杯回应，看着哈罗德挤过人群走向他。

　 “Good party,” Harold shouted into his ear.

“这是很棒的派对。”哈罗德朝着他的耳边喊。

　 “It’s mostly Richard’s doing,” he shouted back, but as he was about to say something else, the music became louder, and he and Harold looked at each other and laughed and shrugged. For a while they simply stood, both of them smiling, watching the dancers heave and blur before them. He was tired, he was in pain, but it didn’t matter; his tiredness felt like something sweet and warm, his pain was familiar and expected, and in those moments he was aware that he was capable of joyfulness, that life was honeyed. Then the music turned, grew dreamy and slow, and Harold yelled that he was going to reclaim Julia from Willem’s clutches.

“大部分都是理查德的功劳。”他也喊回去，但他正要说些别的话时，音乐变得更大声了，于是他和哈罗德看着对方，大笑并耸耸肩。有一会儿他们就站在那，两人都在微笑，看着眼前起舞的人群。他累了，身上很痛，但是无所谓；感觉他的疲倦像是某种甜蜜而温暖的东西，他的疼痛熟悉且在预期之中。在这些时刻，他意识到自己有办法快乐，人生是甜美的。然后音乐换了，变得梦幻而缓慢，哈罗德大吼说他要去把朱丽娅抢过来。

　 “Go,” he told him, but before Harold left him, something made him reach out and put his arms around him, which was the first time he had voluntarily touched Harold since the incident with Caleb. He could see that Harold was stunned, and then delighted, and he felt guilt course through him, and moved away as quickly as he could, shooing Harold onto the dance floor as he did.

“去吧。”他告诉他，但哈罗德离开他之前，他伸手抱住哈罗德，这是凯莱布事件后他第一次主动碰触哈罗德。他看得出哈罗德很惊讶，接着也很开心。他觉得内疚极了，赶紧放开手，催促哈罗德进入舞池。

　 There was a nest of cotton-stuffed burlap sacks in one of the corners, which Richard had put down for people to lounge against, and he was headed toward them when Willem appeared, and grabbed his hand. “Come dance with me,” he said.

这层空间的一个角落放着几个塞满棉花的麻布袋，是理查德布置让大家坐的位子。他朝那里走，此时威廉忽然出现了，抓住他的手。“来跟我跳舞。”他说。

　 “Willem,” he admonished him, smiling, “you know I can’t dance.”

“威廉，”他微笑着提醒他，“你知道我不会跳舞。”

　 Willem looked at him then, appraisingly. “Come with me,” he said, and he followed Willem toward the east end of the loft, and to the bathroom, where Willem pulled him inside and closed and locked the door behind them, placing his drink on the edge of the sink. They could still hear the music—a song that had been popular when they were in college, embarrassing and yet somehow moving in its unapologetic sentimentalism, in its syrup and sincerity—but in the bathroom it was dampened, as if it was being piped in from some far-off valley. “Put your arms around me,” Willem told him, and he did. “Move your right foot back when I move my left one toward it,” he said next, and he did.

威廉打量着他。“跟我来。”他说。他跟着威廉朝仓库空间的东端走去，来到浴室，威廉把他拉进去，关上门锁住，把他手上的酒杯放在水槽边缘。他们还听得到音乐（是他们大学时代很流行的一首歌，现在听起来很难为情，但不知怎么仍会让人融入那种没有歉意的伤感、那种甜美与诚挚中），但是浴室里的声音减弱了，好像是从某个遥远的谷地用管子传送过来的。“手臂抱着我。”威廉告诉他，他照做了。“我左脚朝你前进的时候，你右脚就往后退。”威廉接着说，他又照做。

　 For a while they moved slowly and clumsily, looking at each other, silent. “See?” Willem said, quietly. “You’re dancing.”

有那么一会儿，他们移动得很缓慢，有点笨拙。他们看着彼此，不说话。“看吧？”威廉静静地说，“你在跳舞。”

　 “I’m not good at it,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“我这方面不太行。”他喃喃说着，很不好意思。

　 “You’re perfect at it,” Willem said, and although his feet were by this point so sore that he was beginning to perspire from the discipline it was taking not to scream, he kept moving, but so minimally that toward the end of the song they were only swaying, their feet not leaving the ground, Willem holding him so he wouldn’t fall.

“你跳得很完美。”威廉说。他两脚此时已经酸痛得要命，为了忍住不叫，他全身开始冒汗，但他还是持续移动，只是动作非常小，小到这首歌接近尾声时，他的脚没再离地，两人只是站在原地摇晃，威廉抱着他，免得他倒下来。

　 When they emerged from the bathroom, there was a whooping from the groups of people nearest to them, and he blushed—the last, the final, time he’d had sex with Willem had been almost sixteen months ago—but Willem grinned and raised his arm as if he was a prizefighter who had just won a bout.

他们从浴室出来时，最近的人群中爆发出一阵欢呼，他脸红了。他和威廉上一次、最后一次做爱已经是十六个月以前的事情了。但威廉咧嘴笑着举起一只手，像个刚赢得一回合的拳击手。

　 And then it was April, and his forty-seventh birthday, and then it was May, and he developed a wound on each calf, and Willem left for Istanbul to shoot the second installment in his spy trilogy. He had told Willem about the wounds—he was trying to tell him things as they happened, even things he didn’t consider that important—and Willem had been upset.

接着是四月，他的47岁生日，然后是五月，他两边小腿各长了一个疮，威廉去土耳其伊斯坦布尔拍那部间谍片三部曲的第二部。他跟威廉提了脚上的疮，威廉很烦恼；他现在尽量在事情发生时就告诉威廉，即使是他觉得不重要的事。

　 But he hadn’t been concerned. How many of these wounds had he had over the years? Tens; dozens. The only thing that had changed was the amount of time he spent trying to resolve them. Now he went to Andy’s office twice a week—every Tuesday lunchtime and Friday evening—once for debriding and once for a wound vacuum treatment, which Andy’s nurse performed. Andy had always thought that his skin was too fragile for that treatment, in which a piece of sterile foam was fitted above the open sore and a nozzle moved above it that sucked the dead and dying tissues into the foam like a sponge, but in recent years he had tolerated it well, and it had proven more successful than simply debriding alone.

但是他不担心。多年来，这种疮他长过多少个了？几十个；上百个。唯一改变的，就是他设法解决这些疮的时间。现在他每星期去安迪的诊所两次：每个星期二的中午和星期五晚上，一次去清创，一次去让安迪的护士帮他做负压伤口治疗。这种治疗必须先把一片消过毒的泡棉盖在疮口上，然后用一个真空吸尘的管口在泡棉上方移动，把坏死的组织往上吸入泡棉里。安迪觉得他的皮肤太脆弱，不适合做这种治疗，但最近几年他似乎都可以承受，而且结果证明，这比纯粹清创效果更好。

　 As he had grown older, the wounds—their frequency, their severity, their size, the level of discomfort that attended them—had grown steadily worse. Long gone, decades gone, were the days in which he was able to walk any great distance when he had them. (The memory of strolling from Chinatown to the Upper East Side—albeit painfully—with one of these wounds was so strange and remote that it didn’t even seem to belong to him, but to somebody else.) When he was younger, it might take a few weeks for one to heal. But now it took months. Of all the things that were wrong with him, he was the most dispassionate about these sores; and yet he was never able to accustom himself to their very appearance. And although of course he wasn’t scared of blood, the sight of pus, of rot, of his body’s desperate attempt to heal itself by trying to kill part of itself still unsettled him even all these years later.

随着他的年纪变大，那些疮也持续恶化，这包括了出现频率、严重等级、伤口大小、不舒服和需要照料的程度。二十年前，他腿上长疮照样能走很长的路，但那样的日子早已远去（尽管很痛，腿上有个疮，仍从唐人街漫步到上东城的记忆如今陌生又遥远，简直不属于他，而是别人的）。他年轻时，一个疮痊愈可能要花几个星期，但现在就要拖上好几个月。在他身上所有的毛病中，他最冷静对待的就是这些疮，然而他还是没法习惯这些疮的出现。他当然不怕血，但是多年下来，看到脓或伤口溃烂，看到自己的身体为了痊愈拼命设法杀掉一部分的自己，他还是会心神不宁。

　 By the time Willem came home for good, he wasn’t better. There were now four wounds on his calves, the most he had ever had at one time, and although he was still trying to walk daily, it was sometimes difficult enough to simply stand, and he was vigilant about parsing his efforts, about determining when he was trying to walk because he thought he could, and when he was trying to walk to prove to himself that he was still capable of it. He could feel he had lost weight, he could feel he had gotten weaker—he could no longer even swim every morning—but he knew it for sure once he saw Willem’s face. “Judy,” Willem had said, quietly, and had knelt next to him on the sofa. “I wish you had told me.” But in a funny way, there had been nothing to tell: this was who he was. And besides his legs, his feet, his back, he felt fine. He felt—though he hesitated to say this about himself: it seemed so bold a statement—mentally healthy. He was back to cutting himself only once a week. He heard himself whistling as he removed his pants at night, examining the area around the bandages to make sure none of them were leaking fluids. People got used to anything their bodies gave them; he was no exception. If your body was well, you expected it to perform for you, excellently, consistently. If your body was not, your expectations were different. Or this, at least, was what he was trying to accept.

等到威廉拍完戏回家，他的状况还没有好转。现在他的小腿上有四个疮了，他头一回同时有这么多疮。他还是设法每天走点路，但有时连站着都很困难。他很警觉地剖析自己的努力，想判定自己想走路是以为自己可以走，还是想借由走路向自己证明他办得到。他感觉自己瘦了，而且日益虚弱（他现在连每天的晨泳都办不到），但直到目睹威廉的表情，他才确定。“小裘，”威廉低声说，然后跪在他旁边的沙发上，“真希望你早点告诉我。”但好笑的是，实在没什么好告诉他的，他一直有这些病痛。除了双腿、两脚、背部以外，他觉得还好。他觉得精神上很健康——他不愿意这样讲自己，好像脸皮太厚了。他每星期只割自己一次。夜里他会不自觉地吹起口哨，脱掉长裤，检查绷带周围，确定伤口没有渗出液体。人们会习惯自己身体所给予的，他也不例外。如果你的身体很好，你就会期望身体出色、持续地运转。如果你的身体不好，你的期望就不同了。至少，这是他设法接受的。