《渺小一生》:“你這個計劃會進(jìn)行多久？”

　 Ali was a photographer who was working on a series called “The History of Asians in America,” for which he created a photograph to represent every decade of Asians in America since 1890. For each image, he made a different diorama representing an epochal event or theme in one of the three-foot-square pine boxes that Richard had built for him, which he populated with little plastic figures he bought at the craft store and painted, and trees and roads that he glazed from potter’s clay, and backdrops he rendered with a brush whose bristles were so fine they resembled eyelashes. He then shot the dioramas and made C-prints. Of the four of them, only Ali was represented, and he had a show in seven months about which the other three knew never to ask because any mention of it made him start bleating with anxiety. Ali wasn’t progressing in historical order—he had the two thousands done (a stretch of lower Broadway thick with couples, all of whom were white men and, walking just a few steps behind them, Asian women), and the nineteen-eighties (a tiny Chinese man being beaten by two tiny white thugs with wrenches, the bottom of the box greased with varnish to resemble a parking lot’s rain-glossed tarmac), and was currently working on the nineteen-forties, for which he was painting a cast of fifty men, women, and children who were meant to be prisoners in the Tule Lake internment camp. Ali’s work was the most laborious of all of theirs, and sometimes, when they were procrastinating on their own projects, they would wander into Ali’s cube and sit next to him, and Ali, barely lifting his head from the magnifying mirror under which he held a three-inch figure on whom he was painting a herringbone skirt and saddle shoes, would hand them a snarl of steel wool that he needed shredded to resemble tumbleweeds, or some fine-gauge wire that he wanted punctuated with little ties so that it would look barbed.

阿里是攝影藝術(shù)家，正在完成“亞裔人在美國的歷史”系列，他選取了從1890年開始的每個十年中具有代表性的亞裔人在美國的照片，然后針對每一張影像中某個劃時代的事件或主題制作立體透視模型，放在理查德幫他做的三英尺見方的松木箱子里。模型中有他從工藝店買來并涂上顏色的塑料小人偶，還有他用陶土上釉后做成的樹和馬路，他還用一支筆毛細(xì)得像眼睫毛的超細(xì)畫筆畫了背景。然后，他會拍下這個立體透視模型，做彩色沖印。他們四人之中，只有阿里有代理畫廊，而且他七個月后有個展覽。其他三人知道最好完全不要去問展覽的事，因為只要一提到，就會讓他焦慮得碎碎念。阿里并沒有按照歷史順序制作，他已經(jīng)做完2000年的作品（下城百老匯大道的一段路，有一對對男女，全是白種男人，落后幾步的則是亞裔女人），以及20世紀(jì)80年代的（兩個白人流氓小人偶正在用扳手痛毆一個華人男子小人偶，木箱底部涂了厚厚的清漆，模仿雨后濕得發(fā)亮的停車場柏油路面），現(xiàn)在他正在創(chuàng)作20世紀(jì)40年代的那張，里頭有五十個小假人，男人、女人、兒童都有，代表二次大戰(zhàn)期間圖利湖拘留營的日裔人。阿里的作品是他們四人里頭最費(fèi)工夫的，有時候，他們自己的案子卡住了，就會晃進(jìn)阿里的區(qū)域，坐在他旁邊。阿里一直湊在他的放大鏡面前，放大鏡下是個三英寸[2]高的小人偶，他正在給它畫人字呢裙子和馬鞍鞋。他們進(jìn)去時，阿里幾乎頭也不抬，只遞給他們一團(tuán)鋼絲絨，要他們撕開來做成袖珍版風(fēng)滾草，或是某一面細(xì)目鐵絲網(wǎng)，他們需要綁上小結(jié)，看起來才會像帶刺的鐵絲網(wǎng)。

　 But it was Richard’s work that JB admired the most. He was a sculptor too, but worked with only ephemeral materials. He’d draw on drafting paper impossible shapes, and then render them in ice, in butter, in chocolate, in lard, and film them as they vanished. He was gleeful about witnessing the disintegration of his works, but JB, watching just last month as a massive, eight-foot-tall piece Richard had made—a swooping sail-like batwing of frozen grape juice that resembled coagulated blood—dripped and then crumbled to its demise, had found himself unexpectedly about to cry, though whether from the destruction of something so beautiful or the mere everyday profundity of its disappearance, he was unable to say. Now Richard was less interested in substances that melted and more interested in substances that would attract decimators; he was particularly interested in moths, which apparently loved honey. He had a vision, he told JB, of a sculpture whose surface so writhed with moths that you couldn’t even see the shape of the thing they were devouring. The sills of his windows were lined with jars of honey, in which the porous combs floated like fetuses suspended in formaldehyde.

但杰比最欣賞的是理查德的作品。理查德也是雕塑家，但他只用短暫性的材料。他會在草稿紙上畫出不可思議的形狀，然后用冰塊、奶油、巧克力或豬油做出雕塑，同時拍攝這些作品消失的過程。見證自己作品的消融，讓他很開心，但杰比上個月看理查德一件八英尺[3]高的巨大作品（用有如凝固血液的冷凍葡萄汁，做出一對俯沖而下、有如風(fēng)帆的蝙蝠翅膀）一路融化滴落，最后垮下來時，他發(fā)現(xiàn)自己無由地想哭，不過到底是因為一件這么美麗的作品瓦解了，還是因為作品消失時所具有的那種尋常的深奧性，他也說不上來。現(xiàn)在，理查德對融化的物質(zhì)沒太大興趣了，但開始對引發(fā)毀滅的物質(zhì)有了興趣，尤其是蛾，而蛾顯然喜歡蜂蜜。理查德跟杰比提過，他想做出一件雕塑，表面密密麻麻擠滿了在吃蜂蜜的蛾，根本看不出底下雕塑的形狀。他那邊的窗臺上排著一罐罐蜂蜜，里頭浮著小片蜂巢，仿佛泡在福爾馬林里的胚胎。

　 JB was the lone classicist among them. He painted. Worse, he was a figurative painter. When he had been in graduate school, no one really cared about figurative work: anything—video art, performance art, photography—was more exciting than painting, and truly anything was better than figurative work. “That’s the way it’s been since the nineteen-fifties,” one of his professors had sighed when JB complained to him. “You know that slogan for the marines? ‘The few, the brave …’? That’s us, we lonely losers.”

杰比是四人之中唯一的古典派。他是畫家，更糟糕的是，他是具象畫家。他在研究生院時，根本沒人在乎具象作品。其他的任何東西，不管是錄像藝術(shù)、行為藝術(shù)，還是攝影，都比繪畫更令人興奮，而且真的，任何東西都好過具象作品?！皬?0世紀(jì)50年代以來就是這樣了?！庇谢亟鼙雀粋€教授抱怨，那教授嘆氣說道：“你知道海軍陸戰(zhàn)隊那句格言嗎，‘少數(shù)的，勇敢的’，我們就是這樣，孤單的失敗者?！?

　 It was not as if, over the years, he hadn’t attempted other things, other mediums (that stupid, fake, derivative Meret Oppenheim hair project! Could he have done anything cheaper? He and Malcolm had gotten into a huge fight, one of their biggest, when Malcolm had called the series “ersatz Lorna Simpson,” and of course the worst thing was that Malcolm had been completely right), but although he would never have admitted to anyone else that he felt there was something effete, girlish almost and at any rate certainly not gangster, about being a figurative painter, he had recently had to accept that it was what he was: he loved paint, and he loved portraiture, and that was what he was going to do.

這些年來，他不是沒試過其他東西、其他材質(zhì)。（那個愚蠢、冒牌、衍生自梅雷·奧本海姆的頭發(fā)計劃真是廉價無比！他和馬爾科姆還因此大吵一架，是他們吵得最兇的一次。當(dāng)時馬爾科姆把那個系列稱作“人造洛娜·辛普森”，更糟糕的是，馬爾科姆說得一點(diǎn)也沒錯。）盡管他絕不會承認(rèn)，但他其實(shí)覺得具象畫家的身份有點(diǎn)軟弱、甚至有點(diǎn)女孩子氣，而且一點(diǎn)也不像黑幫分子。不過最近，他接受了自己就是具象畫家：他喜歡畫畫，而且熱愛畫人像，所以那就是他要走的路。

　 So: Then what? He had known people—he knew people—who were, technically, much better artists than he was. They were better draftsmen, they had better senses of composition and color, they were more disciplined. But they didn’t have any ideas. An artist, as much as a writer or composer, needed themes, needed ideas. And for a long time, he simply didn’t have any. He tried to draw only black people, but a lot of people drew black people, and he didn’t feel he had anything new to add. He drew hustlers for a while, but that too grew dull. He drew his female relatives, but found himself coming back to the black problem. He began a series of scenes from Tintin books, with the characters portrayed realistically, as humans, but it soon felt too ironic and hollow, and he stopped. So he lazed from canvas to canvas, doing paintings of people on the street, of people on the subway, of scenes from Ezra’s many parties (these were the least successful; everyone at those gatherings were the sort who dressed and moved as if they were constantly being observed, and he ended up with pages of studies of posing girls and preening guys, all of their eyes carefully averted from his gaze), until one night, he was sitting in Jude and Willem’s depressing apartment on their depressing sofa, watching the two of them assemble dinner, negotiating their way through their miniature kitchen like a bustling lesbian couple. This had been one of the rare Sunday nights he wasn’t at his mother’s, because she and his grandmother and aunts were all on a tacky cruise in the Mediterranean that he had refused to go on. But he had grown accustomed to seeing people and having dinner—a real dinner—made for him on Sundays, and so had invited himself over to Jude and Willem’s, both of whom he knew would be home because neither of them had any money to go out.

那么，接下來呢？他人面廣，認(rèn)識一些技藝比他好很多的藝術(shù)家。他們的素描更厲害，對構(gòu)圖和色彩的感受更敏銳，工作起來也更有紀(jì)律。但他們沒有任何創(chuàng)意。就像作家和作曲家一樣，藝術(shù)家也需要主題，需要創(chuàng)意。有很長一段時間，他什么創(chuàng)意也沒有。他試過只畫黑人，但很多人畫過黑人，他覺得自己不能增添什么新意。有一陣子，他又畫阻街女郎，但后來也覺得沒意思。他畫過他的女性親戚，但發(fā)現(xiàn)自己又回到了黑人的老問題上。他畫過一系列《丁丁歷險記》漫畫里的場景，把里頭的角色畫得非常寫實(shí)，像真人，但很快就覺得這太過諷刺且空洞，就不畫了。于是，他很沒勁地畫了一張又一張，畫街上的人，畫地鐵里的人，畫埃茲拉眾多派對中的場景（這批最不成功：在那些聚會上，每個人的打扮和舉止都一副隨時要讓人觀察的模樣，最后他的素描本子上只有一堆擺姿勢的年輕女郎和精心打扮的男子，所有人的眼睛都刻意避開他的目光），直到一天晚上，他坐在裘德和威廉那間悲慘公寓的悲慘沙發(fā)上，看著兩人張羅晚餐，像一對忙亂的女性伴侶似的在袖珍廚房里閃來躲去。那是星期天，他難得沒去他母親家，因為他母親和外婆、兩個阿姨都去參加一趟很遜的地中海郵輪之旅，他拒絕加入。但他從小就習(xí)慣星期天有人做一頓像樣的晚餐給他吃，就自己跑去裘德和威廉那里。他知道他們會在家，因為這兩人都沒錢出去吃飯。

　 He had his sketch pad with him, as he always did, and when Jude sat down at the card table to chop onions (they had to do all their prep work on the table because there was no counter space in the kitchen), he began drawing him almost unthinkingly. From the kitchen came a great banging, and the smell of smoking olive oil, and when he went in to discover Willem whacking at a piece of butterflied chicken with the bottom of an omelet pan, his arm raised over the meat as if to spank it, his expression oddly peaceful, he drew him as well.

他向來隨身帶著素描本，那天晚上裘德坐在餐廳那張小牌桌前開始切洋蔥時（他們不得不在那張桌子上備料，因為廚房沒有料理臺），杰比幾乎想都沒想就開始畫他。這時廚房傳來巨大的敲擊聲，還有橄欖油冒煙的氣味。他跑進(jìn)去看，發(fā)現(xiàn)威廉拿著一只小煎鍋，正用鍋底拍打一塊剪掉背骨、攤平了的全雞，他的手臂揚(yáng)起，像是在打那塊肉的屁股，他的表情出奇的平靜，于是杰比也畫了他。

　 He wasn’t sure, then, that he was really working toward anything, but the next weekend, when they all went out to Pho Viet Huong, he brought along one of Ali’s old cameras and shot the three of them eating and then, later, walking up the street in the snow. They were moving particularly slowly in deference to Jude, because the sidewalks were slippery. He saw them lined up in the camera’s viewfinder: Malcolm, Jude, and Willem, Malcolm and Willem on either side of Jude, close enough (he knew, having been in the position himself) to catch him if he skidded but not so close that Jude would suspect that they were anticipating his fall. They had never had a conversation that they would do this, he realized; they had simply begun it.

當(dāng)時杰比并不確定自己接下來的創(chuàng)作方向，但下一個周末，他們?nèi)ピ洁l(xiāng)餐館聚餐時，他帶了一臺阿里的舊相機(jī)，拍下了三個人吃飯，以及在下雪的紐約街道走路的照片。因為人行道很滑，為了尊重裘德，他們走得特別慢。杰比從相機(jī)取景窗里看著他們?nèi)艘蛔峙砰_：馬爾科姆、裘德、威廉，馬爾科姆和威廉走在裘德兩邊，夠近（他知道，因為他自己也曾站在那樣的位置），如果裘德腳下打滑就可以抓住他們；但又不要太近，免得裘德疑心他們認(rèn)定他會摔倒。杰比忽然意識到，他們從沒談過他們要做這件事，而是直接就去做了。

　 He took the picture. “What’re you doing, JB?” asked Jude, at the same time as Malcolm complained, “Cut it out, JB.”

他拍了照。“杰比，你在干嗎？”裘德問，同時馬爾科姆也抱怨：“杰比，別拍了。”

　 The party that night was on Centre Street, in the loft of an acquaintance of theirs, a woman named Mirasol whose twin, Phaedra, they knew from college. Once inside, everyone dispersed into their different subgroups, and JB, after waving at Richard across the room and noting with irritation that Mirasol had provided a whole tableful of food, meaning that he’d just wasted fourteen dollars at Pho Viet Huong when he could’ve eaten here for free, found himself wandering toward where Jude was talking with Phaedra and some fat dude who might have been Phaedra’s boyfriend and a skinny bearded guy he recognized as a friend of Jude’s from work. Jude was perched on the back of one of the sofas, Phaedra next to him, and the two of them were looking up at the fat and skinny guys and all of them were laughing at something: He took the picture.

那天晚上的派對在中央街一間LOFT改裝的公寓舉行，主人他們都認(rèn)識，一個叫米拉索爾的女人，他們大學(xué)時就認(rèn)識她的雙胞胎姐妹菲德拉。一進(jìn)門，他們四個人就各自散開，加入了不同的小團(tuán)體。杰比跟房間對面的理查德?lián)]揮手后，發(fā)現(xiàn)米拉索爾提供了滿桌子的食物，很是懊惱，這表示他明明可以來這里吃免費(fèi)的食物，卻硬生生在越鄉(xiāng)餐館浪費(fèi)了十四元。然后，杰比不自覺地走向和裘德對話的那一小群人，一個是菲德拉，一個可能是菲德拉男朋友的胖子，還有個瘦巴巴的胡須男，他認(rèn)出這是裘德工作上的朋友。裘德靠在一張沙發(fā)的背后，菲德拉在他旁邊，兩人往上看著胖子和瘦子，四個人同時在大笑：他拍下了那個畫面。

　 Normally at parties he grabbed or was grabbed by a group of people, and spent the night as the nuclei for a variety of three- or foursomes, bounding from one to the next, gathering the gossip, starting harmless rumors, pretending to share confidences, getting others to tell him who they hated by divulging hatreds of his own. But this night, he traveled the room alert and purposeful and largely sober, taking pictures of his three friends as they moved in their own patterns, unaware that he was trailing them. At one point, a couple of hours in, he found them by the window with just one another, Jude saying something and the other two leaning in close to hear him, and then in the next moment, the three of them leaning back and all laughing, and although for a moment he felt both wistful and slightly jealous, he was also triumphant, as he had gotten both shots. Tonight, I am a camera, he told himself, and tomorrow I will be JB again.

通常在派對中，他會吸引一小群人，或者被一小群人吸引，成為那三四個人的核心，然后又跑到另一群人中去，花蝴蝶似的到處收集八卦，散播一些無傷的流言，假裝分享秘密，借著說出自己恨什么人來誘使別人說出他們恨誰。但這天晚上，他機(jī)警而目標(biāo)堅定地在派對上游走，幾乎沒喝酒，悄悄拍攝他的三個朋友，而他們?nèi)齻€各自移動來去，完全沒意識到有人在關(guān)注他們。進(jìn)去大約兩小時后，他一度發(fā)現(xiàn)他們剛好彼此緊挨著站在窗邊，裘德在說話，其他兩個傾身聆聽，下一刻，三個人又直起身子大笑。他雖然一時間感到渴望，有點(diǎn)嫉妒，但同時又有種勝利感，因為兩個畫面他都拍到了。今夜，我就是一臺照相機(jī)，他告訴自己，明天，我又會變回杰比了。

　 In a way, he had never enjoyed a party more, and no one seemed to notice his deliberate rovings except for Richard, who, as the four of them were leaving an hour later to go uptown (Malcolm’s parents were in the country, and Malcolm thought he knew where his mother hid her weed), gave him an unexpectedly sweet old-man clap on the shoulder. “Working on something?”

在某種意義上，他從來沒有這么享受一個派對，而且似乎沒人注意到他刻意的行動，除了理查德。一個小時后，他們四個要離開派對去上城時（馬爾科姆的爸媽去鄉(xiāng)下度假了，而馬爾科姆覺得他知道母親把大麻藏在哪里），理查德意外得像老男人那樣親切地拍拍他的肩膀：“在進(jìn)行什么計劃嗎？”

　 “I think so.”

“我想是的?！?

　 “Good for you.”

“太好了?！?

　 The next day he sat at his computer looking at the night’s images on the screen. The camera wasn’t a great one, and it had hazed every picture with a smoky yellow light, which, along with his poor focusing skills, had made everyone warm and rich and slightly soft-edged, as if they had been shot through a tumblerful of whiskey. He stopped at a close-up of Willem’s face, of him smiling at someone (a girl, no doubt) off camera, and at the one of Jude and Phaedra on the sofa: Jude was wearing a bright navy sweater that JB could never figure out belonged to him or to Willem, as both of them wore it so much, and Phaedra was wearing a wool dress the shade of port, and she was leaning her head toward his, and the dark of her hair made his look lighter, and the nubbly teal of the sofa beneath them made them both appear shining and jewel-like, their colors just-licked and glorious, their skin delicious. They were colors anyone would want to paint, and so he did, sketching out the scene first in his book in pencil, and then again on stiffer board in watercolors, and then finally on canvas in acrylics.

次日他坐在電腦前，看著屏幕上前一夜的影像。那臺相機(jī)不是太好，每張照片都蒙著一層霧黃的光，再加上他拙劣的對焦技術(shù)，使每個人都顯得溫暖又飽滿，而且輪廓稍微有些柔和，仿佛照片是隔著一杯威士忌拍下的。他停在一張威廉臉部特寫的照片上，他正朝畫面外的某個人微笑（當(dāng)然了，是個年輕女郎），然后又看另一張裘德和菲德拉靠著沙發(fā)的照片：裘德穿著一件亮藍(lán)色的毛衣（杰比一直搞不清那是他的還是威廉的，因為兩個人都穿過好多次），菲德拉則穿著一件酒紅色的羊毛洋裝；她的頭正湊近他，一頭深色的頭發(fā)把裘德的發(fā)色襯得更淡，他們下方的藍(lán)綠色粗紋布面沙發(fā)襯托得兩人散發(fā)光芒，有如珠寶。他們身上的種種顏色明亮燦爛，皮膚細(xì)致宜人。那些顏色任誰都會想畫下來，于是他畫了，先用鉛筆在素描本上速寫，再用水彩畫在較硬的紙板上，最后才用亞克力顏料畫在畫布上。

　 That had been four months ago, and he now had almost eleven paintings completed—an astonishing output for him—all of scenes from his friends’ lives. There was Willem waiting to audition, studying the script a final time, the sole of one boot pressed against the sticky red wall behind him; and Jude at a play, his face half shadowed, at the very second he smiled (getting that shot had almost gotten JB thrown out of the theater); Malcolm sitting stiffly on a sofa a few feet away from his father, his back straight and his hands clenching his knees, the two of them watching a Bu?uel film on a television just out of frame. After some experimentation, he had settled on canvases the size of a standard C-print, twenty by twenty-four inches, all horizontally oriented, and which he imagined might someday be displayed in a long snaking single layer, one that would wrap itself around a gallery’s walls, each image following the next as fluidly as cells in a film strip. The renderings were realistic, but photo-realistic; he had never replaced Ali’s camera with a better one, and he tried to make each painting capture that gently fuzzed quality the camera gave everything, as if someone had patted away the top layer of clarity and left behind something kinder than the eye alone would see.

那已經(jīng)是四個月前的事情了。至今他完成了將近十一幅畫，對他來說是很驚人的產(chǎn)量，十一幅全部取材自這些朋友的生活場景。有威廉在試鏡等待時最后一次研究劇本，一只靴子的鞋底抵著身后黏答答的紅色墻面。有裘德去看戲，臉部半籠罩在陰影中，就在那一刻他露出微笑（為了拍那張照片，杰比差點(diǎn)被趕出戲院）。還有馬爾科姆僵硬地坐在一張沙發(fā)上，離他父親幾英尺遠(yuǎn)，他的背部挺直，雙手緊抓著膝蓋，兩人看著畫面外的電視機(jī)播放西班牙名導(dǎo)演布努埃爾（Luis Bu?uel）的電影。經(jīng)過幾次試驗后，杰比把畫布的尺寸固定在標(biāo)準(zhǔn)彩色沖印的二十乘二十四英寸，一律橫向，而且他想象著有一天展覽時，這些畫作會排列成一整排，像一條帶子一樣在畫廊的墻面上繞一圈，一張接一張，有如膠卷上的小格子一般流暢。他的筆法是寫實(shí)的，不過是照相寫實(shí)；他始終用阿里的那部相機(jī)，沒換成更好的，而且他試圖讓每幅畫呈現(xiàn)出那部相機(jī)拍攝出來的柔和與模糊質(zhì)感，仿佛有人撫去了表面那層清晰，留下了比肉眼所見更溫柔的特質(zhì)。

　 In his insecure moments, he sometimes worried the project was too fey, too inward—this was where having representation really helped, if only to remind you that someone liked your work, thought it important or at the very least beautiful—but he couldn’t deny the pleasure he got from it, the sense of ownership and contentment. At times he missed being part of the pictures himself; here was a whole narrative of his friends’ lives, his absence an enormous missing part, but he also enjoyed the godlike role he played. He got to see his friends differently, not as just appendages to his life but as distinct characters inhabiting their own stories; he felt sometimes that he was seeing them for the first time, even after so many years of knowing them.

有時杰比心里會沒把握，擔(dān)心這個計劃太古怪、太隱秘了——這就是代理畫廊能幫上忙的時候，他們會提醒你有人喜歡你的作品，覺得你的作品很重要，或至少很美——但他無法否認(rèn)自己從這個計劃中獲得的愉悅，那種擁有和滿足的感覺。有時他會遺憾自己不是畫中的一部分，這一系列作品描述了他好友的生活，而他的缺席會讓整個故事少一大塊；但同時他也很享受自己扮演這種類似神的角色。他有機(jī)會用另一種眼光看他的好友，他們不光是他的人生附屬品，而且是他們自己故事中清楚分明的角色。有時他覺得，雖然認(rèn)識三個好友這么多年，但他好像到現(xiàn)在才第一次看清楚他們。

　 About a month into the project, once he knew that this was what he was going to concentrate on, he’d of course had to explain to them why he kept following them around with a camera, shooting the mundane moments of their lives, and why it was crucial that they let him keep doing so and provide him with as much access as possible. They had been at dinner at a Vietnamese noodle shop on Orchard Street that they hoped might be a Pho Viet Huong successor, and after he’d made his speech—uncharacteristically nervous as he did so—they all found themselves looking toward Jude, who he’d known in advance would be the problem. The other two would agree, but that didn’t help him. They all needed to say yes or it wouldn’t work, and Jude was by far the most self-conscious among them; in college, he turned his head or blocked his face whenever anyone tried to take his picture, and whenever he had smiled or laughed, he had reflexively covered his mouth with his hand, a tic that the rest of them had found upsetting, and which he had only learned to stop doing in the past few years.

這個計劃進(jìn)行了約一個月后，他意識到一旦確定要認(rèn)真做下去，他當(dāng)然得跟他們解釋自己為什么老帶相機(jī)跟著他們，拍攝他們生活中那些平淡無奇的時刻，還有他們?yōu)槭裁幢仨氉屗南氯?，并且讓他自由地進(jìn)行。他們當(dāng)時跑去果園街一家越南面店吃晚餐，希望這家能代替越鄉(xiāng)餐館。他說明了自己的計劃，講的時候很反常，相當(dāng)緊張。他講完后，他們不自覺地看向裘德，杰比事前就知道問題會出在裘德身上。其他兩人會同意，但這幫不了他，他們每個人都得同意才行，而裘德顯然是他們四個里面最容易難為情的。讀大學(xué)時，每次有人想給他拍照片，他就會轉(zhuǎn)開頭或遮住臉，而且他每次笑的時候，總是下意識地用手遮住嘴巴，其他三個人都很受不了他這樣。直到最近兩三年，他才改掉這個習(xí)慣。

　 As he’d feared, Jude was suspicious. “What would this involve?” he kept asking, and JB, summoning all his patience, had to reassure him numerous times that of course his goal wasn’t to humiliate or exploit him but only to chronicle in pictures the drip of all of their lives. The others said nothing, letting him do the work, and Jude finally consented, although he didn’t sound too happy about it.

一如杰比所擔(dān)心的，裘德非常疑心?！斑@個計劃里頭包括什么？”他一直問。杰比拿出最大的耐心，跟他保證了幾百次，說他的目的當(dāng)然不是要羞辱他或剝削他，只是以畫作記錄他們生活的點(diǎn)點(diǎn)滴滴。其他兩人什么都沒說，讓他去勸說，最后裘德終于答應(yīng)了，盡管聽起來不太樂意。

　 “How long is this going to go on for?” Jude asked.

“你這個計劃會進(jìn)行多久？”裘德問。

　 “Forever, I hope.” And he did. His one regret was that he hadn’t begun earlier, back when they were all young.

“我希望是永遠(yuǎn)?！彼拇_這么希望。他只后悔自己沒趁著他們更年輕時早點(diǎn)開始。