《渺小一生》:她年紀比我父親大

　 We lived on West End, at Eighty-second Street, and his practice was in our building, on the ground floor, and I used to come by to visit after school. All his patients knew me, and I was proud to be the doctor’s son, to say hello to everyone, to watch the babies he had delivered grow into kids who looked up to me because their parents told them I was Dr. Stein’s son, that I went to a good high school, one of the best in the city, and that if they studied hard enough, they might be able to as well. “Darling,” my father called me, and when he saw me after school on those visits, he would place his palm on the back of my neck, even when I grew taller than he, and kiss me on the side of my head. “My darling,” he’d say, “how was school?”

我們住在西端大道，靠82街，他的診所就在我們住的那棟樓的一樓，我放學后常常會進去轉一下。他的病人都認識我，我也以身為醫(yī)生的兒子為榮，跟每個人打招呼，看著他接生的嬰兒變成小孩，抬頭看著我，因為他們的父母告訴他們我是斯坦醫(yī)生的兒子，說我在一所很好的中學讀書，是全紐約市最好的中學之一，還說如果他們夠用功，說不定以后也可以去讀?！坝H愛的，”我父親會這么喊我。即使我后來長得比他高了，每次放學后去診所里，他一看到我，就把手掌放在我的后頸，吻一下我的臉頰。“我親愛的，”他會說，“今天在學校過得怎么樣？”

　 When I was eight, he married his office manager, Adele. There was never a moment in my childhood in which I was not aware of Adele’s presence: it was she who took me shopping for new clothes when I needed them, she who joined us for Thanksgiving, she who wrapped my birthday presents. It was not so much that Adele was a mother to me; it’s that to me, a mother was Adele.

我8歲時，他娶了他的辦公室主任阿黛兒。我童年的每個時刻她都不曾缺席：她總是帶著我去買需要的新衣服，陪著我們父子過感恩節(jié)，準備好我的生日禮物。對我而言，不是阿黛爾像母親，而是母親就該像阿黛爾。

　 She was older, older than my father, and one of those women whom men like and feel comfortable around but never think of marrying, which is a kind way of saying she wasn’t pretty. But who needs prettiness in a mother? I asked her once if she wanted children of her own, and she said I was her child, and she couldn’t imagine having a better one, and it says everything you need to know about my father and Adele and how I felt about them and how they treated me that I never even questioned that claim of hers until I was in my thirties and my then-wife and I were fighting about whether we should have another child, a child to replace Jacob.

她年紀比我父親大，是男人會很喜歡、相處自在，但從來不會想娶回家的那種女人。說得直白一點，就是她長得不漂亮。誰需要母親漂亮呢？我有回問她是不是想要自己的孩子，她說我就是她的孩子，還說她無法想象能有更好的孩子。這說明了你需要知道的一切：關于我父親、阿黛爾，以及我對他們的感覺。他們對待我的方式使得我從來不曾質疑她那番話，直到我三十幾歲，跟我當時的太太為了該不該再生一個孩子（取代雅各布）而爭吵。

　 She was an only child, as I was an only child, and my father was an only child, too: a family of onlys. But Adele’s parents were living—my father’s were not—and we used to travel out to Brooklyn, to what has now been swallowed by Park Slope, to see them on weekends. They had lived in America for almost five decades and still spoke very little English: the father, timidly, the mother, expressively. They were blocky, like she was, and kind, like she was—Adele would speak to them in Russian, and her father, whom I called Grandpa by default, would unclench one of his fat fists and show me what was secreted within: a wooden birdcall, or a wodge of bright-pink gum. Even when I was an adult, in law school, he would always give me something, although he no longer had his store then, which meant he must have bought them somewhere. But where? I always imagined there might be a secret shop full of toys that went out of fashion generations ago, and yet was patronized, faithfully, by old immigrant men and women, who kept them in business by buying their stocks of whorl-painted wooden tops and little metal soldiers and sets of jacks, their rubber balls sticky with grime even before their plastic wrap had been torn.

阿黛爾是獨生女，而我是獨生子，我父親也是：一家三口都是唯一的孩子。但阿黛爾的父母當時還健在（我父親的父母則不在了），我們周末常常到布魯克林去拜訪他們，現(xiàn)在那一帶已經(jīng)被納入公園坡了。他們住在美國近五十年，還是不太會講英文，阿黛爾的父親很害羞，母親則很勇于表達情感。他們跟阿黛爾一樣身材矮壯，而且跟她一樣很和藹。阿黛爾會跟他們講俄語，然后她父親（我理所當然喊他爺爺）會張開胖胖的拳頭，給我看里頭有什么秘密：一只木制鳥笛，或是一大塊鮮艷的粉紅色口香糖。即使我成年了，讀法學院了，他照樣會給我一些小玩意兒。他的雜貨店老早就關了，這表示他那些玩意兒一定是從別處買來的。但是哪里呢？我一直想象有間秘密商店，里面都是幾十年前流行過的玩具，但一些老移民還是忠實地光顧，買店家囤積的那些漆著螺紋的木陀螺、金屬玩具兵和拋接沙包，里頭的橡膠球在沒拆開的塑料袋里就已經(jīng)黏著污垢了。

　 I had always had a theory—born of nothing—that men who had been old enough to witness their father’s second marriage (and, therefore, old enough to make a judgment) married their stepmother, not their mother. But I didn’t marry someone like Adele. My wife, my first wife, was cool and self-contained. Unlike the other girls I knew, who were always minimizing themselves—their intelligence, of course, but also their desires and anger and fears and composure—Liesl never did. On our third date, we were walking out of a café on MacDougal Street, and a man stumbled from a shadowed doorway and vomited on her. Her sweater was chunky with it, that pumpkin-bright splatter, and I remember in particular the way a large globule clung to the little diamond ring she wore on her right hand, as if the stone itself had grown a tumor. The people around us gasped, or shrieked, but Liesl only closed her eyes. Another woman would have screeched, or squealed (I would have screeched or squealed), but I remember she only gave a great shudder, as if her body were acknowledging the disgust but also removing itself from it, and when she opened her eyes, she was recovered. She peeled off her cardigan, chucked it into the nearest garbage can. “Let’s go,” she told me. I had been mute, shocked, throughout the entire episode, but in that moment, I wanted her, and I followed her where she led me, which turned out to be her apartment, a hellhole on Sullivan Street. The entire time, she kept her right hand slightly aloft from her body, the blob of vomit still clinging to her ring.

我以前一直有個毫無根據(jù)的理論，認為男生如果年紀夠大（因為此年紀足以做出判斷），目睹了他父親的第二段婚姻，那么他日后娶的太太就會像繼母，而非母親。結果我娶的人并不像阿黛爾。我的第一任太太莉柔，冷靜又獨立自主。她不像我認識的其他女生，總是把自己縮到最小（包括她們的才智，這是當然了，還包括她們的愿望、憤怒、恐懼與沉著），但莉柔從來不會。我們第三次約會時，才剛走出麥克杜格爾街的一家小餐館，忽然有一名男子從旁邊一處陰暗的走道踉蹌走來，吐在她身上。她的毛衣沾了厚厚的橘黃色嘔吐物，我清晰地記得其中一大團黏在她右手的那枚小鉆戒上頭，好像鉆石上長出了腫瘤。周圍的人猛吸一口氣或驚叫起來，但莉柔只是閉上眼睛。換作別的女人，一定會尖叫（換作是我也會尖叫），但我記得她只是打了個明顯的寒戰(zhàn)，好像她的身體承認那很惡心，也同時擺脫了那種惡心。等到睜開眼睛，她就恢復了。她脫掉那件開襟毛衣，扔進最近的垃圾桶?！白甙?。”她告訴我。我震驚得說不出話來，但是那一刻，我想要她，于是我跟著她一直走，最后走到她的公寓，是沙利文街的一個爛地方。從頭到尾，她的右手一直微微舉著，而那團嘔吐物還黏在她的戒指上面。

　 Neither my father nor Adele particularly liked her, although they never told me so; they were polite, and respectful of my wishes. In exchange, I never asked them, never made them lie. I don’t think it was because she wasn’t Jewish—neither of my parents were religious—but, I think, because they thought I was too much in awe of her. Or maybe this is what I’ve decided, late in life. Maybe it was because what I admired as competence, they saw as frigidity, or coldness. Goodness knows they wouldn’t have been the first to think that. They were always polite to her, and she reasonably so to them, but I think they would have preferred a potential daughter-in-law who would flirt with them a little, to whom they could tell embarrassing stories about my childhood, who would have lunch with Adele and play chess with my father. Someone like you, in fact. But that wasn’t Liesl and wouldn’t ever be, and once they realized that, they too remained a bit aloof, not to express their displeasure but as a sort of self-discipline, a reminder to themselves that there were limits, her limits, that they should try to respect. When I was with her, I felt oddly relaxed, as if, in the face of such sturdy competence, even misfortune wouldn’t dare try to challenge us.

我父親跟阿黛爾都不是特別喜歡她，雖然他們從來沒這么跟我說；他們很有禮貌，也尊重我的意愿。為了禮尚往來，我也從來沒問過他們，免得逼他們撒謊。我不認為是因為莉柔不是猶太人（我父母并不虔誠），但是我想他們覺得我太敬畏她了。這也可能是我年老后才判定的?；蛟S我佩服莉柔的那種能干，在他們眼里卻是冷淡或冷漠。天曉得他們不是第一個這樣想的人。他們對她總是很有禮貌，她對他們也相當客氣，但我想，他們比較想要的媳婦，應該會稍微跟他們撒撒嬌，讓他們講些我小時候丟臉的故事，可以跟阿黛爾吃午餐，跟我爸下西洋棋。事實上，就像你。但莉柔不是那樣的人，也永遠不會是。一旦我父母理解到這點，他們就保持一些距離，不是要顯示他們不高興，而是某種自律，好提醒自己應該試著尊重某些界限，比如她的界限。我跟她在一起時總覺得異常放松，仿佛面對她那樣強悍的能力，連厄運都不敢來挑戰(zhàn)我們。

　 We had met in New York, where I was in law school and she was in medical school, and after graduating, I got a clerkship in Boston, and she (one year older than I) started her internship. She was training to be an oncologist. I had been admiring of that, of course, because of what it suggested: there is nothing more soothing than a woman who wants to heal, whom you imagine bent maternally over a patient, her lab coat white as clouds. But Liesl didn’t want to be admired: she was interested in oncology because it was one of the harder disciplines, because it was thought to be more cerebral. She and her fellow oncological interns had scorn for the radiologists (too mercenary), the cardiologists (too puffed-up and pleased with themselves), the pediatricians (too sentimental), and especially the surgeons (unspeakably arrogant) and the dermatologists (beneath comment, although they of course worked with them frequently). They liked the anesthesiologists (weird and geeky and fastidious, and prone to addiction), the pathologists (even more cerebral than they), and—well, that was about it. Sometimes a group of them would come over to our house, and would linger after dinner discussing cases and studies, while their partners—lawyers and historians and writers and lesser scientists—were ignored until we slunk off to the living room to discuss the various trivial, less-interesting things with which we occupied our days.

我們是在紐約認識的，她比我大一歲。當時我在上法學院，她在讀醫(yī)學院。畢業(yè)后，我在波士頓找到法官助理的工作，她則開始實習。她專攻腫瘤科。當然，我一直很佩服，因為這會讓人想到：再也沒有什么比一個想治愈你的女醫(yī)生更撫慰人心了，你想象她像個母親般彎腰察看病人，身上的醫(yī)生袍潔白如云。但莉柔不想被人佩服，她對腫瘤科有興趣是因為這一科比較難，大家公認比較花腦筋。她和其他的腫瘤科實習生非常瞧不起放射科醫(yī)生（太唯利是圖）、心臟科醫(yī)生（太趾高氣揚且自鳴得意）、小兒科醫(yī)生（太多愁善感），尤其是外科醫(yī)生（極度傲慢）和皮膚科醫(yī)生（不值一評，盡管他們常常和皮膚科醫(yī)生合作）。他們喜歡麻醉科醫(yī)生（詭異的書呆子、吹毛求疵，而且有上癮傾向）、病理學醫(yī)生（比他們還花腦筋），還有……唔，大概就這樣了。有時他們一群人來我們家，吃過晚餐后會一起討論病例和研究，而他們的伴侶（律師、歷史學者、作家和比較次要的科學家）就被冷落在一旁。最后，我們便溜到客廳，討論日常生活里各式瑣碎、比較無趣的事情。

　 We were two adults, and it was a happy enough life. There was no whining that we didn’t spend enough time with each other, from me or from her. We remained in Boston for her residency, and then she moved back to New York to do her fellowship. I stayed. By that time I was working at a firm and was an adjunct at the law school. We saw each other on the weekends, one in Boston, one in New York. And then she completed her program and returned to Boston; we married; we bought a house, a little one, not the one I have now, just at the edge of Cambridge.

我們是兩個成年人，那樣的生活也夠快樂。我們從不抱怨相處的時間不夠多，無論是她還是我。她當住院醫(yī)生期間，我們繼續(xù)住在波士頓，然后她在研究生期間搬回紐約，我則留下。當時我一面在一家律師事務所工作，一面在法學院兼課。我們每個周末會輪流在波士頓和紐約碰面。她完成醫(yī)生訓練后搬回波士頓，我們結婚，買了棟房子（不是我現(xiàn)在那棟），小小的，就在劍橋市的邊緣。

　 My father and Adele (and Liesl’s parents, for that matter; mysteriously, they were considerably more emotive than she was, and on our infrequent trips to Santa Barbara, while her father made jokes and her mother placed before me plates of sliced cucumbers and peppered tomatoes from her garden, she would watch with a closed-off expression, as if embarrassed, or at least perplexed by, their relative expansiveness) never asked us if we were going to have children; I think they thought that as long as they didn’t ask, there was a chance we might. The truth was that I didn’t really feel the need for it; I had never envisioned having a child, I didn’t feel about them one way or another. And that seemed enough of a reason not to: having a child, I thought, was something you should actively want, crave, even. It was not a venture for the ambivalent or passionless. Liesl felt the same way, or so we thought.

我父親和阿黛爾從來沒問我們是否打算生小孩（說起來，莉柔的父母也是；難以理解的是，他們都比她容易動感情得多，我們少數(shù)幾次去加州圣巴巴拉看他們，她父親會跟我說笑打趣，她母親則端上一盤盤切成薄片的小黃瓜和撒了胡椒的西紅柿片，都是他們自己菜園里種的，而莉柔會以一臉保持距離的表情看著我們，好像很難為情，至少被他們相對的開朗弄得不知所措。），我想他們以為只要不過問，就還有一點機會。但事實是，我覺得沒有生小孩的必要；我從沒想過要有小孩，甚至對小孩沒特別的感覺。這個理由似乎足夠讓我們不要生了。我覺得，要生小孩，就應該很想要，甚至很渴望才行。這種事可不是懷著矛盾心理或毫無熱情就能去試試看的。莉柔的感覺也一樣，或者我是這么以為的。

　 But then, one evening—I was thirty-one, she was thirty-two: young—I came home and she was already in the kitchen, waiting for me. This was unusual; she worked longer hours than I did, and I usually didn’t see her until eight or nine at night.

但接著，在我31歲、她32歲那年，有一天晚上我回到家，發(fā)現(xiàn)她已經(jīng)在廚房里等著我。這很不尋常，她的工作時間比我長，通常要晚上8、9點才會到家。

　 “I need to talk to you,” she said, solemnly, and I was suddenly scared. She saw that and smiled—she wasn’t a cruel person, Liesl, and I don’t mean to give the impression that she was without kindness, without gentleness, because she had both in her, was capable of both. “It’s nothing bad, Harold.” Then she laughed a little. “I don’t think.”

“我得跟你談一談?！彼f，很嚴肅，我忽然害怕起來。她看到我的表情，露出微笑；她不是個冷酷的人，我也不想讓你以為她沒有關懷和柔情，她其實都有。“不是什么壞事，哈羅德?！比缓笏α艘宦?，“我想不是?！?

　 I sat. She inhaled. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know how it happened. I must’ve skipped a pill or two and forgotten. It’s almost eight weeks. I had it confirmed at Sally’s today.” (Sally was her roommate from their med-school days, her best friend, and her gynecologist.) She said all this very quickly, in staccato, digestible sentences. Then she was silent. “I’m on a pill where I don’t get my periods, you know, so I didn’t know.” And then, when I said nothing, “Say something.”

我坐下來，她吸了口氣：“我懷孕了。我不知道是怎么發(fā)生的，一定是有一兩次忘了吃避孕藥?？彀酥芰恕Ｎ医裉烊ニ_莉那確認了?！保ㄋ_莉是她醫(yī)學院時期的室友，也是她最要好的朋友兼婦科醫(yī)生。）她說得很快，用不連貫、摘要式的句子。接著她沉默了一會兒：“之前我還吃了催經(jīng)藥，你知道，所以我不知道自己懷孕了?！比缓?，看我沒吭聲，“你說點話吧。”

　 I couldn’t, at first. “How do you feel?” I asked.

一開始我沒辦法開口，好一會兒才問：“你覺得怎么樣？”

　 She shrugged. “I feel fine.”

她聳聳肩：“我覺得還好?！?

　 “Good,” I said, stupidly.

“很好?！蔽矣薮赖卣f。

　 “Harold,” she said, and sat across from me, “what do you want to do?”

“哈羅德，”她說，在我對面坐下來，“你想怎么做？”

　 “What do you want to do?”

“那你想怎么做？”

　 She shrugged again. “I know what I want to do. I want to know what you want to do.”“You don’t want to keep it.”

她又聳聳肩：“我知道我想怎么做，但我想知道你的想法?！薄澳悴幌肓粝隆！?

　 She didn’t disagree. “I want to hear what you want.”

她沒有反駁：“我想聽聽你的意見?！?

　 “What if I say I want to keep it?”

“如果我想留下呢？”