《渺小一生》:勞倫斯沒查到任何資料

　 Of course, I also knew, without knowing for certain, without any real evidence, that something had gone very wrong for him at some point. That first time you were all up in Truro, I came down to the kitchen late one night and found JB sitting at the table, drawing. I always thought JB was a different person when he was alone, when he was certain he didn’t have to perform, and I sat and looked at what he was sketching—pictures of all of you—and asked him about what he was studying in grad school, and he told me about people whose work he admired, three-fourths of whom were unknown to me.

當然，我也知道（雖然不確定，也沒有任何實際證據(jù)）他小時候發(fā)生過非常糟糕的事情。他們四個第一次來特魯羅時，有天夜里很晚我下樓到廚房，發(fā)現(xiàn)杰比坐在餐桌前畫畫。我一直覺得杰比獨處時，確定自己不必表演了，就會變成另外一個人。于是我坐下來看他畫什么，都是你們其他三個人，我又問他在研究生院上些什么課。他還告訴我他欣賞哪些人的作品，其中四分之三我都沒聽說過。

　 As I was leaving to go upstairs, JB called my name, and I came back. “Listen,” he said. He sounded embarrassed. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but you should lay off asking him so many questions.”

我正要離開上樓時，杰比喊了我的名字，我又回來?！奥犖艺f，”杰比的口氣很難為情，“我不想沒禮貌或什么的，不過你別再問他那么多問題了?！?

　 I sat down again. “Why?”

我又坐了下來：“為什么？”

　 He was uncomfortable, but determined. “He doesn’t have any parents,” he said. “I don’t know the circumstances, but he won’t even discuss it with us. Not with me, anyway.” He stopped. “I think something terrible happened to him when he was a kid.”

杰比很不自在，同時也很堅決?！八麤]有父母?！彼f，“我不知道情況，但他跟我們都不肯談?？傊疀]跟我談過?！彼Ａ艘幌拢拔蚁胨r候發(fā)生過一些很可怕的事情。”

　 “What kind of terrible?” I asked.

“哪種可怕的事？”我問。

　 He shook his head. “We’re not really certain, but we think it must be really bad physical abuse. Haven’t you noticed he never takes off his clothes, or how he never lets anyone touch him? I think someone must have beat him, or—” He stopped. He was loved, he was protected; he didn’t have the courage to conjure what might have followed that or, and neither did I. But I had noticed, of course—I hadn’t been asking to make him uncomfortable, but even when I saw that it did make him uncomfortable, I hadn’t been able to stop.

杰比搖搖頭：“我們不確定，不過我們覺得一定是非常糟糕的身體虐待。你沒注意到他從來不脫衣服，也不讓任何人碰他？我想一定有人毒打過他，或者……”杰比停了下來。杰比從小備受關愛和保護，他沒有勇氣去想那個或者之后會是什么，我也沒有勇氣。但我當然注意到了。我之前問他問題，并不是故意要讓他不安，但即使我看到那些問題確實讓他不安，還是沒法停止。

　 “Harold,” Julia would say after he left at night, “you’re making him uneasy.”

“哈羅德，”晚上他離開后，朱麗婭會說，“你搞得他很不安?！?

　 “I know, I know,” I’d say. I knew nothing good lay behind his silence, and as much as I didn’t want to hear what the story was, I wanted to hear it as well.

“我知道，我知道?！蔽視f。我知道他的沉默背后不是什么好事。我不想聽那些故事，卻又想聽聽看。

　 About a month before the adoption went through, he turned up at the house one weekend, very unexpectedly: I came in from my tennis game, and there he was on the couch, asleep. He had come to talk to me, he had come to try to confess something to me. But in the end, he couldn’t.

大約在去法院辦收養(yǎng)手續(xù)的一個月前，某天周末他突然跑到我們家，我們完全沒料想到。當時我打完例行的網(wǎng)球賽回來，發(fā)現(xiàn)他躺在沙發(fā)上睡著了。他是來找我談的，想設法跟我坦白一些事。但到最后，他還是說不出口。

　 That night Andy called me in a panic looking for him, and when I asked Andy why he was calling him at midnight anyway, he quickly turned vague. “He’s been having a really hard time,” he said.

那一夜安迪打電話給我想找他，非?？只拧Ｎ覇柊驳蠟槭裁窗胍?2點打給他，他只是含糊其詞地帶過：“他最近很不好過?！?

　 “Because of the adoption?” I asked.

“因為收養(yǎng)的事情嗎？”我問。

　 “I can’t really say,” he said, primly—as you know, doctor-patient confidentiality was something Andy adhered to irregularly but with great dedication when he did. And then you called, and made up your own vague stories.

“我真的不能說?！彼槐菊?jīng)地回答——你也知道，安迪不見得遵守醫(yī)生和病人之間的保密協(xié)議，但如果他要遵守，那就會堅持到底。然后你也打來了，講了你自己的含糊說法。

　 The next day, I asked Laurence if he could find out if he had any juvenile records in his name. I knew it was unlikely that he’d discover anything, and even if he did, the records would be sealed.

次日，我問勞倫斯能不能幫忙查一下，看是否有他名字的未成年犯罪記錄。我知道不太可能發(fā)現(xiàn)什么，就算發(fā)現(xiàn)了，檔案也是封存的狀態(tài)。

　 I had meant what I told him that weekend: whatever he had done didn’t matter to me. I knew him. Who he had become was the person who mattered to me. I told him that who he was before made no difference to me. But of course, this was na?ve: I adopted the person he was, but along with that came the person he had been, and I didn’t know who that person was. Later, I would regret that I hadn’t made it clearer to him that that person, whoever he was, was someone I wanted as well. Later, I would wonder, incessantly, what it would have been like for him if I had found him twenty years before I did, when he was a baby. Or if not twenty, then ten, or even five. Who would he have been, and who would I have been?

那個周末我跟他說的話，都是認真的：他以前做過什么，我都無所謂。我了解他。對我來說，重要的是他現(xiàn)在的樣子。我告訴他，以前他是什么樣子對我來說都沒區(qū)別。但當然，這個想法太天真了，我收養(yǎng)了當時的他，就連帶收養(yǎng)了以前的他，只不過我不認識以前的他。后來，我很后悔自己當時沒跟他講得更清楚：以前的他，不管是什么樣，也是我想要收養(yǎng)的。后來，我越來越納悶，如果我早個二十年、在他還是嬰孩的時候就發(fā)現(xiàn)他，那他會怎么樣？如果不是二十年，那么早個十年、甚至五年呢？后來他會變成什么樣，我會變成什么樣？

　 Laurence’s search turned up nothing, and I was relieved and disappointed. The adoption happened; it was a wonderful day, one of the best. I never regretted it. But being his parent was never easy. He had all sorts of rules he’d constructed for himself over the decades, based on lessons someone must have taught him—what he wasn’t entitled to; what he mustn’t enjoy; what he mustn’t hope or wish for; what he mustn’t covet—and it took some years to figure out what these rules were, and longer still to figure out how to try to convince him of their falsehood. But this was very difficult: they were rules by which he had survived his life, they were rules that made the world explicable to him. He was terrifically disciplined—he was in everything—and discipline, like vigilance, is a near-impossible quality to get someone to abandon.

勞倫斯沒查到任何資料。我松了一口氣，但也覺得失望。我們辦了收養(yǎng)的法定手續(xù)；那天很棒，是我人生中最開心的日子之一。我始終沒后悔過。但身為他的父親從來不容易。幾十年來，他為自己制定出各式各樣的規(guī)則，而且一定是根據(jù)某個人的教導——他沒有資格做什么，不能享受、期盼或奢望什么，不能渴求什么。我花了好幾年才搞清這些規(guī)則，又花了更長的時間去說服他這些規(guī)則的謬誤。他極度自律，各方面都是；而自律這種特質(zhì)就像警惕性，要讓某個人放棄幾乎是不可能的。

　 Equally difficult was my (and your) attempts to get him to abandon certain ideas about himself: about how he looked, and what he deserved, and what he was worth, and who he was. I have still never met anyone as neatly or severely bifurcated as he: someone who could be so utterly confident in some realms and so utterly despondent in others. I remember watching him in court once and feeling both awed and chilled. He was defending one of those pharmaceutical companies in whose care and protection he had made his name in a federal whistle-blower suit. It was a big suit, a major suit—it is on dozens of syllabi now—but he was very, very calm; I have rarely seen a litigator so calm. On the stand was the whistle-blower in question, a middle-aged woman, and he was so relentless, so dogged, so pointed, that the courtroom was silent, watching him. He never raised his voice, he was never sarcastic, but I could see that he relished it, that this very act, catching that witness in her inconsistencies—which were slight, very slight, so slight another lawyer might have missed them—was nourishing to him, that he found pleasure in it. He was a gentle person (though not to himself), gentle in manners and voice, and yet in the courtroom that gentleness burned itself away and left behind something brutal and cold. This was about seven months after the incident with Caleb, five months before the incident to follow, and as I watched him reciting the witness’s own statements back to her, never glancing down at the notepad before him, his face still and handsome and self-assured, I kept seeing him in the car that terrible night, when he had turned from me and had protected his head with his hands when I reached out to touch the side of his face, as if I were another person who would try to hurt him. His very existence was twinned: there was who he was at work and who he was outside of it; there was who he was then and who he had been; there was who he was in court and who he had been in the car, so alone with himself that I had been frightened.

同樣困難的是我（和你）嘗試要讓他拋開某些關于他自己的想法：他的外貌、他應得的事物、他的價值，以及他這個人。我至今沒碰到過一個像他這么兩極化的人：他可以在某些領域這么充滿自信，在其他領域卻又毫無信心。我還記得有回看到他出庭，讓我心存敬畏又膽寒。他幫一間大型制藥公司辯護，之前他幫這些大藥廠處理了吹哨人舉報的聯(lián)邦起訴案，已經(jīng)建立了名聲。那是個大案子、一個重要的案子——現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)成了法學院里的重要案例——但他非常非常冷靜，我很少看到這么冷靜的辯護律師。證人席上就是那位內(nèi)部吹哨人，是個中年女性。他表現(xiàn)得十分冷酷、頑強、一針見血，因而整個法庭都安靜下來，專心看著他。他從頭到尾沒有提高嗓門，毫無冷嘲熱諷，但我看得出他很享受。我看得出他在法庭上逮到那個證人前后說辭不一致，讓他精神大振，而且從中獲得滿足。其實說辭不一的程度非常輕微，輕微到換成另一個律師可能就會忽略。他平常是個溫和的人（對他自己則不是），舉止和聲音都很溫和，但是在法庭上，那種溫和卻自行燒毀，只留下了殘忍和冷酷。這是在凱萊布事件過后約七個月，后續(xù)事件的五個月前，當我看著他把那個證人講過的證詞念給她聽、完全不必低頭看面前的筆記本，他的臉平靜、英俊又充滿自信。而我卻總是看到那個可怕的夜晚他坐在車上的樣子，當時我伸手要摸他的側臉，他躲開，舉起雙手護著頭，好像我只是另一個想傷害他的人。他的存在是雙重性的：有工作中的他以及工作外的他；有當時的他以及平常的他；有法庭上的他，以及車子里那個孤立得令我害怕的他。

　 That night, uptown, I had paced in circles, thinking about what I had learned about him, what I had seen, how hard I had fought to keep from howling when I heard him say the things he had—worse than Caleb, worse than what Caleb had said, was hearing that he believed it, that he was so wrong about himself. I suppose I had always known he felt this way, but hearing him say it so baldly was even worse than I could have imagined. I will never forget him saying “when you look like I do, you have to take what you can get.” I will never forget the despair and anger and hopelessness I felt when I heard him say that. I will never forget his face when he saw Caleb, when Caleb sat down next to him, and I was too slow to understand what was happening. How can you call yourself a parent if your child feels this way about himself? That was something I would never be able to recalibrate. I suppose—having never parented an adult myself—that I had never known how much was actually involved. I didn’t resent having to do it: I felt only stupid and inadequate that I hadn’t realized it earlier. After all, I had been an adult with a parent, and I had turned to my father constantly.

那一夜，我待在上城的公寓，不斷兜著圈子踱步，想著我所了解的他，我眼中看到的一切，還有我聽到他說起自己經(jīng)歷的事情，要多么努力才能忍著不要咆哮。比凱萊布以及凱萊布說的話還要糟的，就是聽到他所相信的就是那樣，他對自己的判斷這么大錯特錯。我想其實我一直知道他是這么想的，但聽到他這么赤裸裸地說出來，比我原先想象的更糟糕。我永遠忘不了他說的：“長得像我這樣，你就沒得挑了。”我永遠忘不了他說這句話時，我感到的絕望和憤怒。我永遠忘不了他看到凱萊布，還有凱萊布在他一旁坐下時，他臉上的表情。我的腦筋轉得太慢，一時搞不清楚是怎么回事。如果你的小孩對自己有這樣的看法，你怎么能算是稱職的父母？那是我永遠無法重新調(diào)整的。我從來沒當過成年人的父母，我猜想我始終不了解要花多大的力氣。這么辛苦，我并不怨恨，我只覺得自己愚蠢又不夠格，居然沒有更早了解這一點。畢竟，我也是個有父母的成年人，以前也常常去找我父親求助啊。

　 I called Julia, who was in Santa Fe at a conference about new diseases, and told her what had happened, and she gave a long, sad sigh. “Harold,” she began, and then stopped. We’d had conversations about what his life had been before us, and although both of us were wrong, her guesses would turn out to be more accurate than mine, although at the time I had thought them ridiculous, impossible.

我打電話給朱麗婭，她當時正在圣塔菲參加有關新疾病的學術會議，我跟她說了發(fā)生的事情，她難過地長嘆一聲：“哈羅德……”她開口，然后又停下。我們以前談過認識我們之前他是什么樣。我們兩個都猜錯了，但結果證明她猜得比我準確，盡管當時我覺得太荒謬、太不可能了。

　 “I know,” I said.

“我知道?！蔽艺f。

　 “You have to call him.”

“你得打電話給他?！?