回到綠色世界是重新開花的關(guān)鍵

My interview with Justin McLeod was winding down when I tossed out one last question: “Have you ever been in love?”

當(dāng)我拋出最后一個問題時，我對賈斯汀·麥克勞德(Justin McLeod)的采訪輕松了下來。我問他：“你愛過嗎?”

The baby-faced chief executive had designed Hinge, which was a new dating app. My question was an obvious throwaway.

這位長著一張娃娃臉的首席執(zhí)行官設(shè)計了一款新的約會應(yīng)用Hinge。我的問題顯然是脫口而出的。

Justin looked stricken. No one, he said, had ever asked him that in an interview. “Yes,” he finally answered. “But I didn’t realize it until it was too late.” Then he asked me to stop recording. I hit Stop.

賈斯汀一臉惶恐。他說，從來沒有人在采訪中問過這個問題。“是的，”他終于回答道。“但我意識到時，已經(jīng)太晚了。”然后他要求我停止錄音。我點了停止按鈕。

Off the record, he looked relieved to unburden himself. Her name was Kate. They were college sweethearts. He kept breaking her heart. (Tears now swelled in his eyes.) He wasn’t the best version of himself back then. He had since made amends to everyone, including Kate. But she was now living abroad, engaged to someone else.

關(guān)掉錄音后，他看起來松了一口氣。她的名字叫凱特(Kate)，兩人是大學(xué)校園情侶，他總是傷她的心(此時此刻，他的眼里含著淚水)。他當(dāng)時還不是最好的自己。后來他向每一個人都彌補了虧欠，包括凱特。但她現(xiàn)在生活在國外，已經(jīng)跟別人訂婚。

“Does she know you still love her?” I asked.

“她知道你還愛她嗎?”我問。

“No,” he said. “She’s been engaged for two years now.”

“不知道，”他說。“她已經(jīng)訂婚兩年了。”

“Two years?” I said. “Why?”

“兩年?”我說。“為什么?”

“I don’t know.”

“我不知道。”

I was by then a year into a separation from a two-decade marriage. I had been doing a lot of thinking about the nature of love, its rarity. The reason I was interviewing Justin, in fact, was that his app had helped facilitate a post-separation blind date, my first ever, with an artist for whom I had fallen at first sight.

那時候距離我走出一段20年的婚姻已有一年的時間，我對愛情是罕有的這一本質(zhì)，進(jìn)行了很多思考。實際上，我之所以采訪賈斯汀，是因為他研發(fā)的應(yīng)用，幫助我在分居后進(jìn)行第一次相親，對方是一名藝術(shù)家，我對他一見鐘情。

That had never happened to me, the at-first-sight part. He was also the first man to pop up on my screen after I downloaded Justin’s app.

我從未遇到過一見鐘情的情況。他也是我下載賈斯汀的應(yīng)用之后，第一個出現(xiàn)在我屏幕上的男性。

For those keeping score at home, those are a lot of firsts: first dating app, first man on my screen, first blind date, first love at first sight. I was interested in understanding the app’s algorithm, how it had come about, how it had guessed, by virtue of our shared Facebook friends, that this particular man, a sculptor with a focus on the nexus between libidinal imagery and blossoms, would take root in my heart.

對于那些喜歡在家做記錄的人來說，這件事里有很多個第一：第一款約會應(yīng)用，第一個出現(xiàn)在屏幕上的男性，第一次相親，第一次一見鐘情。我很想了解這款應(yīng)用的算法，它是如何憑借我們共同的Facebook好友發(fā)現(xiàn)、推測這個男人會占據(jù)我的心。他是一名雕塑家，關(guān)注情欲意象與花之間的關(guān)系。

“You have to tell her,” I said to Justin. “Listen —— ” and I told him the story of the boy I had loved just before meeting my husband.

“你得告訴她，”我對賈斯汀說。“聽著……”于是，我給他講了我在遇到我丈夫之前，愛過的那個男孩。

He was a senior in college, studying Shakespeare abroad. I was a 22-year-old war photographer based in Paris. We had met on a beach in the Caribbean, then I visited him in London, shell-shocked, after having covered the end of the Soviet-Afghan war.

他當(dāng)時是一名大四學(xué)生，在國外研究莎士比亞。我當(dāng)時22歲，在做戰(zhàn)地攝影師，常駐巴黎，我們在加勒比海的海灘上相識。在報道完蘇聯(lián)與阿富汗之間結(jié)束戰(zhàn)爭之后，精疲力竭的我前往倫敦找他。

I thought of him every day I was covering that war. When I was sleeping in caves, so sick from dysentery and an infected shrapnel wound on my hand that I had to be transported out of the Hindu Kush by Doctors Without Borders, my love for him is what kept me going.

在報道戰(zhàn)爭期間，我每天都會想他。我當(dāng)時深受痢疾和手部彈片傷感染的折磨，因此不得不被“無國界醫(yī)生”(Doctors Without Borders)運出興都庫什山脈，當(dāng)我在洞穴里睡覺時，對他的愛促使我堅持了下去。

But a few weeks after my trip to London, he stood me up. He said he would visit me at my apartment in Paris one weekend and never showed. Or so I thought.

但我到倫敦幾周之后，他卻失約了。他說他會在某個周末到我在巴黎的公寓找我，然后就再也沒有出現(xiàn)。至少我當(dāng)時是這么認(rèn)為的。

Two decades later, I learned that he actually had flown to Paris that weekend but had lost the piece of paper with my address and phone number. I was unlisted. He had no answering machine. We had no friends in common. He wound up staying in a hostel, and I wound up marrying and having three children with the next man I dated. And so life goes.

但20年后，我得知他那個周末確實飛來巴黎，但丟掉了那張寫著我的地址和電話的紙。他的通訊錄里沒有我的號碼。他沒有錄音電話。我們也沒有共同的朋友。他最終待在了酒店里，我則與下一個約會對象結(jié)了婚，生了三個孩子。生活就是如此。

By the time Google was invented, the first photo of me to appear on his screen was of my children and me from an article someone had written about my first book, a memoir of my years as a war photographer. Soon after, he married and had three children with the next woman he dated. And so life goes.

到Google問世的時候，我第一次出現(xiàn)在他的屏幕上，是在我跟我小孩的一張照片里。那是某人對我的第一本書寫的評論，那本書回顧了當(dāng)戰(zhàn)地攝影師的經(jīng)歷。不久，他就跟下一個約會的女人結(jié)婚了，有了三個小孩。生活就是如此。

I found him by accident, doing research on theater companies for my last novel. There he was above his too-common name. I composed the email: “Are you the same man who stood me up in Paris?”

我意外地找到了他。我在寫我最新的小說時，做了一番關(guān)于劇團(tuán)的研究，在他那個大眾名上面，我看到他的照片。我寫了封電子郵件：“你是在巴黎放我鴿子的那個人嗎?”

That’s how I learned what had happened that weekend and began to digest the full impact of our missed connection.

我這才得知那個周末發(fā)生了什么，也才開始思忖，當(dāng)年的錯失有多大的后果。

His work brought him to New York a few months later, and we met for a springtime lunch on a bench in Central Park. I was so flummoxed, I kicked over my lemonade and dropped my egg salad sandwich: Our long-lost love was still there.

幾個月之后，他因公到紐約出差，那時是春天，我們在中央公園里的長椅上吃了午餐。我感到相當(dāng)慌亂，我踢倒了檸檬汁，也把蛋沙拉掉在地上：我們消失已久的那份愛仍然存在。

In fact, the closure provided by our reunion and the shock of recognition of a still-extant love that had been deprived of sun and water would thereafter affect both of our marriages, albeit in different ways. He realized how much he needed to work on tending to his marriage. I realized I had given mine all the nutrients and care I could — 23 years of tilling that soil — but the field was fallow.

我們?yōu)橹胤旮械结寫眩l(fā)覺那個沒有陽光也沒了水的愛仍然存在，也讓我們都很詫異。事實上，這種情緒之后還將影響我們兩個的婚姻。他意識到，自己維護(hù)婚姻時，需要付出多大的努力;我也意識到，我付出了全心全力的關(guān)懷跟養(yǎng)分來照顧，花了23年耕種，但土壤貧瘠。

Hearing of Justin’s love for Kate while seated on another New York City bench four years later, I felt a fresh urgency. “If you still love her,” I told him, “and she’s not yet married, you have to tell her. Now. You don’t want to wake up in 20 years and regret your silence. But you can’t do it by email or Facebook. You actually have to show up in person and be willing to have the door slammed in your face.”

四年之后，我在紐約的另一張長椅上聽賈斯汀講述對凱特的愛之后，我突然感到有一種急迫性。“如果你還愛她，”我跟他講，“而且她還沒結(jié)婚的話，你應(yīng)該讓她知道。就是現(xiàn)在。你不會想要20年后醒來，再后悔自己當(dāng)時保持沉默。但你不能用電子郵件或Facebook告訴她，你必須本人出現(xiàn)，也寧愿被當(dāng)著面甩上門。”

He laughed wistfully: “I can’t do that. It’s too late.”

他苦笑：“辦不到，已經(jīng)太遲了。”

Three months later, he emailed an invitation to lunch. The article I wrote about him and his company, in which he had allowed me to mention Kate (whom I had called his “Rosebud”), had generated interest in his app, and he wanted to thank me.

三個月之后，他發(fā)來一封電子郵件，邀我共進(jìn)午餐。那篇我寫他還有他的應(yīng)用的文章——里頭他讓我提到了凱特(我以“玫瑰蓓蕾”[Rosebud]代稱)——讓人們對他的應(yīng)用很感興趣，他想謝謝我。

On the appointed day, I showed up at the restaurant and found the hostess. “Justin McLeod, table for two,” I said.

在我們約好的那一天，我到了餐廳，找到了服務(wù)員。“賈斯汀·麥克勞德，兩位，”我說。

“No,” he said, suddenly behind me. “For three.”

“不是，”他突然出現(xiàn)在我身后說。“是三位。”

“Three? Who’s joining us?”

“三位?有誰要跟我們一起吃?”

“She is,” he said, pointing to a wisp of a woman rushing past the restaurant’s window, a blur of pink coat, her strawberry blond hair trailing behind her.

“是她，”他指著餐廳窗外的一瞥急忙的身影說。粉色的大衣一閃而過，她草莓金色的頭發(fā)在身后飄呀飄。

“What the —— ? Is that Rosebud?”

“是怎么……?她是玫瑰蓓蕾嗎?”

“Yes.”

“對。”

Kate burst in and embraced me in a hug. Up close she resembled another Kate — Hepburn, who had appeared in the comedies of remarriage I had studied in college with Stanley Cavell.

凱特突然進(jìn)來，一把抱住了我。近距離看她，她很像另一個凱特——凱特·赫本(Kate Hepburn)。我在大學(xué)里師從斯坦利·卡維爾(Stanley Cavell)，研究過再婚喜劇，凱特·赫本就常常在這種劇中出演。

These films, precursors to today’s rom-coms, were made in America in the 1930s and ’40s, when showing adultery or illicit sex wasn’t allowed. To pass the censors, the plots were the same: A married couple divorced, flirted with others, then remarried. The lesson? Sometimes you have to lose love to refind it, and a return to the green world is the key to reblossoming.

這些電影是今天浪漫喜劇的前身，在美國攝制于1930年代和1940年代，當(dāng)時通奸或不正當(dāng)?shù)男孕袨槭遣辉试S展示的。為通過審查，情節(jié)千篇一律：一對已婚夫婦離婚，與其他人調(diào)情，然后再婚。故事的教訓(xùn)?有時候你不得不失去愛情，才能找回它，回到綠色世界是重新開花的關(guān)鍵。