《渺小一生》:空氣很冷，但他幾乎沒注意。

　 “There’s just a short walk to the car,” Luke whispered to him, and then, when he stopped, “Jude, what’s wrong?”

“只要走一小段路，就到車子那了?！北R克低聲說，這時他站住了，“裘德，怎么了？”

　 “My bag,” he said, “my bag from the greenhouse.”

“我的袋子，”他說，“我放在溫室的那個袋子?！?

　 And then Luke smiled his kind smile, and put his hand on his head. “I put it in the car already,” he said, and he smiled back, so grateful to Luke for remembering.

盧克露出和藹的微笑，一手放在他頭上?！拔乙呀?jīng)放到車上了。”他說，然后他也微笑響應，很感激盧克沒忘記。

　 The air was cold, but he hardly noticed. On and on they walked, down the monastery’s long graveled driveway, and past the wooden gates, and up the hill that led to the main road, and then down the main road itself, the night so silent it hummed. As they walked, Brother Luke pointed out different constellations and he named them, he got them all right, and Luke murmured in admiration and stroked the back of his head. “You’re so smart,” he said. “I’m so glad I picked you, Jude.”

空氣很冷，但他幾乎沒注意。他們一直走，沿著修道院長長的碎石子車道，過了木柵門，爬上通往公路的小丘，來到公路上，夜晚安靜得發(fā)出一片嗡嗡聲。他們走路時，盧克修士指著不同的星座，要他說出星座名，他全都說對了，盧克修士就低聲贊美他，摸著他的后腦勺?！澳阏媛斆?，”他說，“我很高興我挑了你，裘德。”

　 Now they were on the road, which he had only been on a few times in his life—to go to the doctor, or to the dentist—although now it was empty, and little animals, muskrats and possums, gamboled before them. Then they were at the car, a long maroon station wagon piebald with rust, its backseat filled with boxes and black trash bags and some of Luke’s favorite plants—the Cattleya schilleriana, with its ugly speckled petals; the Hylocereus undatus, with its sleepy drooping head of a blossom—in their dark-green plastic nests.

現(xiàn)在他們走在公路上，他這輩子只來過幾次，在去看醫(yī)生或看牙的時候，但此時路上一片空蕩，一些麝鼠和負鼠之類的小動物在前方蹦蹦跳跳。他們來到汽車旁，那是一輛長長的、褐紅色的旅行車，上頭生著銹斑，后座塞滿箱子和黑色塑料袋，還有一些盧克最喜歡的植物，裝在深綠色塑料網(wǎng)里，像是有著丑陋斑點花瓣的西蕾麗嘉德麗亞蘭（Cattleya schilleriana）和枝節(jié)低垂的尾端開出一朵花的火龍果（Hylocereus undatus）。

　 It was strange to see Brother Luke in a car, stranger than being in the car itself. But stranger than that was the feeling he had, that everything had been worth it, that all his miseries were going to end, that he was going to a life that would be as good as, perhaps better than, anything he had read about in books.

在汽車里看到盧克修士很奇怪，比坐在汽車里更奇怪。不過更加奇怪的是他此時的感覺：一切都值得了，他所有的悲慘都要結束了，他就要迎接一種新生活，像他在書上讀到過的那么美好，說不定還要更美好。

　 “Are you ready to go?” Brother Luke whispered to him, and grinned.

“準備要走了嗎？”盧克修士低聲問他，咧嘴笑了。

　 “I am,” he whispered back. And Brother Luke turned the key in the ignition.

“準備好了?！彼驳吐暬卮?。然后盧克修士轉動了引擎鑰匙。

　 There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them.

忘記有兩種方式。有很多年，他都在心里模擬（以缺乏想象力的方式）一個地窖的畫面。每天結束時，他會收集起自己不愿回想的影像、片段和字句，把沉重的鋼制門打開一條縫，把它們趕緊塞進去，再盡快關上，關得牢牢的。但這個方法沒什么用，那些記憶還是會滲出來。他逐漸明白，重要的是消除那些記憶，而不是把它們儲藏起來。

　 So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone.

于是他又發(fā)明了其他的解決辦法。小的記憶（小小的輕蔑、侮辱），你就一次又一次重溫，直到它們失效，直到它們被重復到幾乎失去意義，或者直到你相信它們是發(fā)生在別人身上，你只是聽說而已。比較大的記憶，你就在腦袋里想著那個場景，固定住，像一段影片一樣，然后開始刪除它，一幀接著一幀。這兩個步驟都不容易。比方說，你不能在刪除的中途停下來檢視那些內(nèi)容；你不能開始瀏覽某些片段，期望自己不會陷入其中的細節(jié)，因為你當然會。你必須每天晚上努力刪除，直到最后完全刪光。

　 Though they never disappeared completely, of course. But they were at least more distant—they weren’t things that followed you, wraithlike, tugging at you for attention, jumping in front of you when you ignored them, demanding so much of your time and effort that it became impossible to think of anything else. In fallow periods—the moments before you fell asleep; the minutes before you were landing after an overnight flight, when you weren’t awake enough to do work and weren’t tired enough to sleep—they would reassert themselves, and so it was best to imagine, then, a screen of white, huge and light-lit and still, and hold it in your mind like a shield.

當然，那些記憶從來不會完全消失。但至少會變得比較遙遠——不會像鬼魂似的糾纏著你，拽著你要你注意，你不理會時還跳到你面前，占用掉你那么多時間和心力，搞得你簡直沒法思考別的事情。在空余的時間里——在你睡著之前，在你坐了一夜的飛機、就要降落之前，此時你不夠清醒，難以工作，也沒累到能睡著——它們就再次出現(xiàn)騷擾你，所以你最好想象出一塊白色屏幕，又大又亮、靜止不動，像一面盾牌在腦海中豎起。

　 In the weeks following the beating, he worked on forgetting Caleb. Before going to bed, he went to the door of his apartment and, feeling foolish, tried forcing his old set of keys into the locks to assure himself that they didn’t fit, that he really was once again safe. He set, and reset, the alarm system he’d had installed, which was so sensitive that even passing shadows triggered a flurry of beeps. And then he lay awake, his eyes open in the dark room, concentrating on forgetting. But it was so difficult—there were so many memories from those months that stabbed him that he was overwhelmed. He heard Caleb’s voice saying things to him, he saw the expression on Caleb’s face as he had stared at his unclothed body, he felt the horrid blank airlessness of his fall down the staircase, and he crunched himself into a knot and put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. Finally he would get up and go to his office at the other end of the apartment and work. He had a big case coming up, and he was grateful for it; his days were so occupied that he had little time to think of anything else. For a while he was hardly going home at all, just two hours to sleep and an hour to shower and change, until one evening he’d had an episode at work, a bad one, the first time he ever had. The night janitor had found him on the floor, and had called the building’s security department, who had called the firm’s chairman, a man named Peterson Tremain, who had called Lucien, who was the only one he had told what to do in case something like this should happen: Lucien had called Andy, and then both he and the chairman had come into the office and waited with him for Andy to arrive. He had seen them, seen their feet, and even as he had gasped and writhed on the ground, he had tried to find the energy to beg them to leave, to reassure them that he was fine, that he just needed to be left alone. But they hadn’t left, and Lucien had wiped the vomit from his mouth, tenderly, and then sat on the floor near his head and held his hand and he had been so embarrassed he had almost cried. Later, he had told them again and again that it was nothing, that this happened all the time, but they had made him take the rest of the week off, and the following Monday, Lucien had told him that they were making him go home at a reasonable hour: midnight on the weekdays, nine p.m. on the weekends.

挨揍后的接下來幾個星期，他努力想忘掉凱萊布。去睡覺前，他會先走到公寓的前門。他覺得自己很蠢，竟然用舊的鑰匙插入鎖孔，好讓自己相信門沒法開，自己真的安全了。他會設定并重設自己安裝的警報系統(tǒng)，那系統(tǒng)敏感到連影子經(jīng)過都能引發(fā)一連串的嗶嗶聲。然后他會躺著，但睡不著，雙眼在黑暗的房間里睜開，專注著想忘記一切。但是很難——那幾個月有好多記憶糾纏著他，搞得他快崩潰了。他聽到凱萊布對他講著種種難聽的話，他看到凱萊布凝視赤裸身體的自己時的表情，他感覺到自己摔下樓梯時那種空白而令人討厭的窒息感，于是他縮成一團，雙手捂住耳朵并閉上眼睛。最后他終于起床，走到公寓另一頭的辦公室去工作。他很慶幸手上有個大案子快要開庭了，讓他白天忙得沒空去想別的。有一陣子他根本很少回家，只回去睡兩小時，再花一小時沖澡、換衣服。直到一天晚上，他首度在事務所疼痛發(fā)作，還很嚴重。夜班管理員發(fā)現(xiàn)他躺在地板上，打電話給大樓的安保部門，接著安保部門打給他們事務所的主席彼得森·特里梅因，特里梅因再打電話給呂西安（他唯一交代過萬一這樣的事情發(fā)生時該怎么辦的人）。呂西安打電話告知安迪，然后和特里梅因趕到辦公室等安迪過來。他看到他們了，看到他們的腳，即使他猛吸氣、在地板上扭動，還是試著擠出力氣求他們離開，跟他們保證自己沒事，說他只是需要獨處。但他們沒離開，呂西安輕柔地擦掉他嘴邊的嘔吐物，坐在他頭旁邊的地上握住他的手，他難為情得都要哭出來了。事后，他一次又一次地告訴他們沒什么，這種事情常常發(fā)生，但他們逼他那一周在家休息，而且下個星期一，呂西安跟他說，他們規(guī)定他要在合理的時間回家：周一到周五是晚上12點，周末是晚上9點。

　 “Lucien,” he’d said, frustrated, “this is ridiculous. I’m not a child.”

“呂西安，”他懊惱地說，“這太荒謬了。我又不是小孩?！?

　 “Believe me, Jude,” Lucien had said. “I told the rest of the management committee I thought we should ride you like you were an Arabian at the Preakness, but for some strange reason, they’re worried about your health. Also, the case. For some reason, they think if you get sick, we won’t win the case.” He had fought and fought with Lucien, but it hadn’t made a difference: at midnight, his office lights abruptly clicked off, and he had at last resigned himself to going home when he had been told.

“相信我，裘德?！眳挝靼舱f，“我告訴管理委員會的其他人，說我認為我們應該把你當成參加普里克尼斯錦標賽的阿拉伯馬，但出于某個奇怪的原因，他們很擔心你的健康，同時也擔心那個案子。因為某個理由，他們認為如果你生病了，我們就贏不了那個案子。”他跟呂西安爭了又爭，但是沒有用，到夜里12點，他辦公室的燈就會忽然熄掉，他只好乖乖回家。

　 Since the Caleb incident, he had barely been able to talk to Harold; even seeing him was a kind of torture. This made Harold and Julia’s visits—which were increasingly frequent—challenging. He was mortified that Harold had seen him like that: when he thought of it, Harold seeing his bloody pants, Harold asking him about his childhood (How obvious was he? Could people actually tell by talking to him what had happened to him so many years ago? And if so, how could he better conceal it?), he was so sharply nauseated that he had to stop what he was doing and wait for the moment to pass. He could feel Harold trying to treat him the same as he had, but something had shifted. No longer did Harold harass him about Rosen Pritchard; no longer did he ask him what it was like to abet corporate malfeasance. And he certainly never mentioned the possibility that he might settle down with someone. Now his questions were about how he felt: How was he? How was he feeling? How were his legs? Had he been tiring himself out? Had he been using the chair a lot? Did he need help with anything? He always answered the exact same way: fine, fine, fine; no, no, no.

凱萊布事件后，他幾乎沒法跟哈羅德談話，就連看到他都成了一種折磨。這使得哈羅德和朱麗婭頻繁的來訪成了一種挑戰(zhàn)。他覺得很難堪，居然讓哈羅德看到他那樣。他一想到哈羅德看到他染血的長褲、問起他的童年（到底有多明顯？人們真能從跟他的談話中得知多年前發(fā)生在他身上的事情嗎？如果是，他要怎么做才能隱瞞得更好？），就覺得嚴重反胃，使得他必須停下手邊的事情，等那一刻過去。他感覺到哈羅德試著像以往那樣對待他，但有些狀況改變了。哈羅德再也不會為了羅森·普理查德相關的事情騷擾他，也不會問他去當大企業(yè)非法行為的幫兇是什么滋味，當然再也不會提到他什么時候要找個伴安定下來?，F(xiàn)在哈羅德都是問他的感覺：他還好嗎？他覺得怎么樣？他的腿情況如何？他是不是累壞了？他最近是不是常用輪椅？他需要別人幫忙做什么嗎？而他每次的回答都一模一樣：還好，還好，還好；不用，不用，不用。

　 And then there was Andy, who had abruptly reinitiated his nightly phone calls. Now he called at one a.m. every night, and during their appointments—which Andy had increased to every other week—he was un-Andyish, quiet and polite, which made him anxious. He examined his legs, he counted his cuts, he asked all the questions he always did, he checked his reflexes. And every time he got home, when he was emptying his pockets of change, he found that Andy had slipped in a card for a doctor, a psychologist named Sam Loehmann, and on it had written FIRST VISIT’S ON ME. There was always one of these cards, each time with a different note: DO IT FOR ME, JUDE, or ONE TIME. THAT’S IT. They were like annoying fortune cookies, and he always threw them away. He was touched by the gesture but also weary of it, of its pointlessness; it was the same feeling he had whenever he had to replace the bag under the sink after Harold’s visits. He’d go to the corner of his closet where he kept a box filled with hundreds of alcohol wipes and bandages, stacks and stacks of gauze, and dozens of packets of razors, and make a new bag, and tape it back in its proper place. People had always decided how his body would be used, and although he knew that Harold and Andy were trying to help him, the childish, obdurate part of him resisted: he would decide. He had such little control of his body anyway—how could they begrudge him this?

還有安迪，他忽然重新開始那些深夜來電?，F(xiàn)在他每天夜里1點會打來，而且每次約診時（安迪增加到每兩周一次）他不再像以前那樣大呼小叫，而是變得安靜客氣，搞得他很緊張。安迪會檢查他的雙腿，細數(shù)他的割傷，問所有他平常問的問題，檢查他的反射。每次他回家，清空口袋里的零錢時，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)安迪偷塞了一張心理醫(yī)生山姆·婁曼的名片，上頭寫著：第一次看診我出錢。總是有同樣的名片，但每回寫了不同的句子：為我去吧，裘德。或者：去一次就好。這些名片就像煩人的幸運簽餅，他總是丟掉。這個舉動令他感動，也令他覺得厭煩，因為根本沒意義；同樣的感覺發(fā)生在每回哈羅德來訪后，他得放個新的袋子在水槽底下；他得去衣柜間角落找一個盒子，里面放了幾百個小包裝的酒精棉片和繃帶，一沓沓的紗布，還有幾十包刮胡刀片，然后做一個新的袋子，貼回原來的地方。人們總是決定他的身體該怎么用。盡管他知道哈羅德和安迪想幫他，但是他幼稚、執(zhí)拗的那一部分就是很抗拒：他要自己決定?？傊?，他對自己的身體能控制的部分已經(jīng)這么少了，他們怎么能連這一點都要奪走？

　 He told himself he was fine, that he had recovered, that he had regained his equilibrium, but really, he knew something was wrong, that he had been changed, that he was slipping. Willem was home, and even though he hadn’t been there to witness what had happened, even though he didn’t know about Caleb, about his humiliation—he had made certain of this, telling Harold and Julia and Andy that he’d never speak to them again if they said anything to anyone—he was still somehow ashamed to be seen by him. “Jude, I’m so sorry,” Willem had said when he had returned and seen his cast. “Are you sure you’re okay?” But the cast was nothing, the cast was the least shameful part, and for a minute, he had been tempted to tell Willem the truth, to collapse against him the way he never had and start crying, to confess everything to Willem and ask him to make him feel better, to tell him that he still loved him in spite of who he was. But he didn’t, of course. He had already written Willem a long e-mail full of elaborate lies detailing his car accident, and the first night they were reunited, they had stayed up so late talking about everything but that e-mail that Willem had slept over, the two of them falling asleep on the living-room sofa.

他告訴自己他沒事，他已經(jīng)復原了，他已經(jīng)重新取得平衡了，但其實，他知道有什么不對勁，知道自己變了，也退步了。威廉回家了，即使他沒在場看到發(fā)生了什么事，也不知道凱萊布這個人和他的羞辱（為了確保不讓威廉得知，他事先跟哈羅德、朱麗婭和安迪交代過，如果他們敢泄漏給任何人，他就跟他們絕交），不知怎的，他看到威廉還是很羞愧?！棒玫拢液苓z憾。”威廉回來后看到他身上打的石膏，說，“你確定你沒事嗎？”但石膏根本沒什么，石膏是最不可恥的部分，一時間，他很想告訴威廉真相，破例倒在他懷里痛哭，向威廉坦白一切，請求他讓自己好過一點；而且他希望威廉告訴他，即使他以前是那樣的，但他依然愛他。當然，他沒有。他給威廉寫過一封很長的電子郵件，里頭充滿了精心編造的謊言，詳述他的車禍。他們重逢的第一夜，兩個人熬夜到很晚，什么都聊，就是不聊威廉之前收到的那封郵件，最后兩個人精疲力竭地倒在起居間的沙發(fā)上過夜。

　 But he kept his life moving along. He got up, he went to work. He simultaneously craved company, so he wouldn’t think of Caleb, and dreaded it, because Caleb had reminded him how inhuman he was, how deficient, how disgusting, and he was too embarrassed to be around other people, normal people. He thought of his days the way he thought of taking steps when he was experiencing the pain and numbness in his feet: he would get through one, and then the next, and then the next, and eventually things would get better. Eventually he would learn how to fold those months into his life and accept them and keep going. He always had.

但他繼續(xù)過日子。他起床，去上班。他渴望有人做伴，這樣他就不會想到凱萊布；同時他又很怕有人做伴，因為凱萊布曾令他想到自己多么不像個人，多么不健全，多么令人作嘔，于是他實在不好意思跟其他正常人在一起。他想著自己的每一天，就像他以前走路時雙腳疼痛和麻木時會有的想法：他會熬過這一步，然后下一步，到頭來事情總會好轉。最后他將學到如何把這幾個月納入自己的人生，予以接受，然后繼續(xù)走下去。他向來可以的。

　 The court case came, and he won. It was a huge win, Lucien kept telling him, and he knew it was, but mostly he felt panic: Now what was he going to do? He had a new client, a bank, but the work there was of the long, tedious, fact-gathering sort, not the kind of frantic work that required twenty-hour days. He would be at home, by himself, with nothing but the Caleb incident to occupy his mind. Tremain congratulated him, and he knew he should be happy, but when he asked the chairman for more work, Tremain had laughed. “No, St. Francis,” he said. “You’re going on vacation. That’s an order.”

那個案子上了法庭，他獲得勝訴。這是大勝，呂西安一直這么告訴他，他也知道是這樣沒錯，但他最大的感覺是恐慌：現(xiàn)在他要做什么？他有個新客戶，是一家銀行，但這份工作的內(nèi)容是冗長的數(shù)據(jù)收集，不需要一天二十四小時瘋狂地工作。他會在家里，只有自己一個人，腦袋里只盤踞著凱萊布事件。特里梅因向他道賀，他知道自己應該開心，但他跟特里梅因要求更多工作時，特里梅因大笑。“不，圣弗朗西斯，”他說，“你得去度假。這是命令?！?

　 He didn’t go on vacation. He promised first Lucien, and then Tremain, he would, but that he couldn’t at the moment. But it was as he had feared: he would be at home, making himself dinner, or at a movie with Willem, and suddenly a scene from his months with Caleb would appear. And then there would be a scene from the home, and a scene from his years with Brother Luke, and then a scene from his months with Dr. Traylor, and then a scene from the injury, the headlights’ white glare, his head jerking to the side. And then his mind would fill with images, banshees demanding his attention, snatching and tearing at him with their long, needley fingers. Caleb had unleashed something within him, and he was unable to coax the beasts back into their dungeon—he was made aware of how much time he actually spent controlling his memories, how much concentration it took, how fragile his command over them had been all along.

他沒去度假。他先答應了呂西安，然后是特里梅因，說他會去，但眼前沒辦法。正如他之前所擔心的：他休假待在家里，自己做晚餐，或是跟威廉去看電影，忽然間，過去幾個月跟凱萊布交往的某一幕會出現(xiàn)。接下來是少年之家的一幕，還有他和盧克修士那幾年的一幕、他和特雷勒醫(yī)生那幾個月的一幕，然后是他車禍受傷的一幕，車頭大燈的炫目白光，他的頭猛地往旁邊扭。他的腦袋里充滿各種影像，像一群愛爾蘭神話中的報喪女妖非要引起他的注意不可，用她們尖尖的長指甲對著他又抓又扯。凱萊布釋放了他心中的那些野獸，他再也無法哄騙它們回到原來的地牢，他被迫意識到自己究竟花了多少時間、多少注意力去控制那些回憶，也意識到他多么無力駕馭這些回憶。