I could have denied so many things—that I longed to touch his knees and wrists when they glistened in the sun with that viscous sheen I’ve seen in so very few; that I loved how his white tennis shorts seemed perpetually stained by the color of clay, which, as the weeks wore on, became the color of his skin; that his hair, turning blonder every day, caught the sun before the sun was completely out in the morning; that his billowy blue shirt, becoming ever more billowy when he wore it on gusty days on the patio by the pool, promised to harbor a scent of skin and sweat that made me hard just thinking of it. All this I could have denied. And believed my denials.
 
我大可否認許多事。否認我渴望碰觸他在太陽下會閃光的膝蓋和手腕，我很少見到那樣黏膩的光澤；否認我愛他的白色網(wǎng)球褲上似乎總有土色污漬，而幾周過去，那污漬仿佛已與他的膚色化為一體；否認他每一天都愈發(fā)金黃的發(fā)色，在早晨太陽完全升起之前已經(jīng)閃耀著陽光的金色；否認大風吹起時，他在游泳池畔的露臺處穿起來更顯波瀾壯闊的那件大波浪藍色寬襯衫，那下面肯定隱藏著只是一想到就令我硬起來的體味和汗味。我可以否認這一切，自欺欺人地相信這一切都不是真的。
 
But it was the gold necklace and the Star of David6 with a golden mezuzah7 on his neck that told me here was something more compelling than anything I wanted from him, for it bound us and reminded me that, while everything else conspired to make us the two most dissimilar beings, this at least transcended all differences. I saw his star almost immediately during his first day with us. And from that moment on I knew that what mystified me and made me want to seek out his friendship, without ever hoping to find ways to dislike him, was larger than anything either of us could ever want from the other, larger and therefore better than his soul, my body, or earth itself. Staring at his neck with its star and telltale amulet was like staring at something timeless, ancestral, immortal in me, in him, in both of us, begging to be rekindled and brought back from its millenary sleep.
 
是他脖子上的金項鏈和帶有金門柱圣卷的大衛(wèi)之星，告訴我存在著比我對他的任何渴望還要吸引人的東西，因為這條項鏈將我們聯(lián)結(jié)在一起，提醒著我就算其他的一切都在合力證明我們倆是最不相似的兩種存在，但至少，至少這一點超越了一切差異。幾乎是他來到的第一天，我就看見了他脖子上那個大衛(wèi)之星。從那一刻起，我就知道是什么令我迷惑不解、令我渴求他的友誼，甚至從來不希望找到他惹人討厭的毛??；這個“什么”比我們渴望從彼此身上得到的任何東西還要廣大、深遠而重要，所以也遠凌駕于他的靈魂、我的身體或塵世本身之上。凝視他戴著星形項鏈及泄露秘密的護身符的脖頸。就像凝視我的、他的以及我們體內(nèi)共同的承繼先祖、永恒不朽，祈求著從千年沉睡中被重燃、被召回的部分。
 
What baffled me was that he didn’t seem to care or notice that I wore one too. Just as he probably didn’t care or notice each time my eyes wandered along his bathing suit and tried to make out the contour of what made us brothers in the desert.
 
令我不解的是，他似乎絲毫不在乎或者根本沒發(fā)覺我也戴了一個大衛(wèi)之星。就像他或許不在乎或者從沒注意到我的眼神總是在他的泳衣上游移，想要弄明白究竟是什么使我們成為荒漠里的兄弟。

《請以你的名字呼喚我》