《渺小一生》:“迪——安。她的名字应该念‘迪——安’。”

　 They were all bored with the hair project, although Jude—alone among them—thought that the pieces were lovely and would someday be considered significant. In thanks, JB had given Jude a hair-covered hairbrush, but then had reclaimed the gift when it looked like Ezra’s father’s friend might be interested in buying it (he didn’t, but JB never returned the hairbrush to Jude). The hair project had proved difficult in other ways as well; another evening, when the three of them had somehow been once again conned into going to Little Italy and combing out more hair, Malcolm had commented that the hair stank. Which it did: not of anything distasteful but simply the tangy metallic scent of unwashed scalp. But JB had thrown one of his mounting tantrums, and had called Malcolm a self-hating Negro and an Uncle Tom and a traitor to the race, and Malcolm, who very rarely angered but who angered over accusations like this, had dumped his wine into the nearest bag of hair and gotten up and stamped out. Jude had hurried, the best he could, after Malcolm, and Willem had stayed to handle JB. And although the two of them reconciled the next day, in the end Willem and Jude felt (unfairly, they knew) slightly angrier at Malcolm, since the next weekend they were back in Queens, walking from barbershop to barbershop, trying to replace the bag of hair that he had ruined.

他们全都对这个头发计划感到厌烦，只有裘德觉得这些东西很不错，有一天会成为重要作品。为了答谢，杰比给了裘德一个黏满头发的梳子，可是后来他又把这个礼物收回了，因为埃兹拉老爸的一个朋友似乎有兴趣买（结果他没买，杰比也没把梳子还给裘德）。头发计划在其他方面也遇到了困难。有天晚上，他们三个人又去了杰比在小意大利的住处，帮他整理头发，当时，马尔科姆说那些头发好臭。这话没错：他完全没有说作品烂的意思，纯粹是指那种没洗的头发所散发的金属性刺鼻气味。但杰比因此乱发脾气，骂马尔科姆是自我厌弃的黑鬼、汤姆叔叔、自己种族的叛徒，向来很少生气的马尔科姆听到这些指控也发火了，把自己的葡萄酒倒进旁边一袋头发里，站起来气冲冲地走了。裘德赶紧尽力追出去，威廉则留下来安抚杰比。尽管这两个人次日就和好了，但是到头来，威廉和裘德对马尔科姆更不满一些（这不公平，他们知道），因为第二个周末，他们又去了皇后区，一家接着一家拜访理发店，好补偿那袋被马尔科姆毁掉的头发。

　 “How’s life on the black planet?” Willem asked JB now.

“黑色星球的生活怎么样了？”这会儿威廉问杰比。

　 “Black,” said JB, stuffing the plait he was untangling back into the bag. “Let’s go; I told Annika we’d be there at one thirty.” The phone on his desk began to ring.

“黑色的。”杰比说，把他正在梳理的黑色辫子塞回袋子里，“走吧，我跟安妮卡说我们1点半会到。”他桌上的电话响了。

　 “Don’t you want to get that?”

“你不想接吗？”

　 “They’ll call back.”

“他们会再打来的。”

　 As they walked downtown, JB complained. So far, he had concentrated most of his seductive energies on a senior editor named Dean, whom they all called DeeAnn. They had been at a party, the three of them, held at one of the junior editor’s parents’ apartment in the Dakota, in which art-hung room bled into art-hung room. As JB talked with his coworkers in the kitchen, Malcolm and Willem had walked through the apartment together (Where had Jude been that night? Working, probably), looking at a series of Edward Burtynskys hanging in the guest bedroom, a suite of water towers by the Bechers mounted in four rows of five over the desk in the den, an enormous Gursky floating above the half bookcases in the library, and, in the master bedroom, an entire wall of Diane Arbuses, covering the space so thoroughly that only a few centimeters of blank wall remained at the top and bottom. They had been admiring a picture of two sweet-faced girls with Down syndrome playing for the camera in their too-tight, too-childish bathing suits, when Dean had approached them. He was a tall man, but he had a small, gophery, pockmarked face that made him appear feral and untrustworthy.

他们边在市区走，杰比边抱怨。到目前为止，他施展魅力的主要对象，是一个名叫迪安的资深编辑，他们背后喊他“迪——安”。之前，他们三个人曾去参加一个初级编辑在父母家办的派对。那是位于达科他大楼的一间公寓，每个房间都挂着艺术品。杰比跟他的同事在厨房里聊天时，马尔科姆和威廉就一起在公寓里逛（裘德那天晚上在哪里？大概是在加班吧），欣赏客房里一系列爱德华·伯汀斯基（Edward Burtynsky）的作品；休息室书桌后方五横排、每排四帧，由贝歇尔（Becher）夫妇所拍摄的水塔照片；书房矮书柜上方一幅巨大的安德烈亚斯·古尔斯基（Andreas Gursky）作品；以及主卧墙上戴安娜·阿尔比丝（Diane Arbus）的摄影作品，密密麻麻，几乎盖满了墙面，只剩上下各几厘米的空白。他们正在欣赏其中一张照片，里面是两个容貌甜美的唐氏征少女，身穿过于孩子气的紧身泳装，正对着镜头摆姿势。此时迪安向他们走来，他个子很高，却有一张鼓得像囊鼠的痘疤小脸，让他看起来显得野蛮而不可信任。

　 They introduced themselves, explained that they were here because they were JB’s friends. Dean told them that he was one of the senior editors at the magazine, and that he handled all the arts coverage.

他们自我介绍，解释他们是以杰比朋友的身份来参加派对的。迪安则说自己是杂志的资深编辑之一，负责所有的艺术报道。

　 “Ah,” Willem said, careful not to look at Malcolm, whom he did not trust not to react. JB had told them that he had targeted the arts editor as his potential mark; this must be him.

“啊。”威廉说，刻意不看马尔科姆，怕他会有什么反应。杰比跟他们说过他已经把目标对准艺术编辑了，想必就是眼前这位。

　 “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Dean asked them, waving a hand at the Arbuses.

“你们见过这样的作品吗？”迪安问他们，一手挥向那些阿尔比丝的作品。

　 “Never,” Willem said. “I love Diane Arbus.”

“从来没有。”威廉说，“我好爱戴安娜·阿尔比丝。”

　 Dean stiffened, and his little features seemed to gather themselves into a knot in the center of his little face. “It’s DeeAnn.”

迪安整个人僵住了，小小的五官似乎在那张小脸中央挤成一团：“是迪——安。”

　 “What?”

“什么？”

　 “DeeAnn. You pronounce her name ‘DeeAnn.’ ”

“迪——安。她的名字应该念‘迪——安’。”

　 They had barely been able to get out of the room without laughing. “DeeAnn!” JB had said later, when they told him the story. “Christ! What a pretentious little shit.”

他们一走出房间就开始大笑，“迪——安”！后来他们告诉杰比这件事，杰比说：“老天！真是个做作的小混蛋。”

　 “But he’s your pretentious little shit,” Jude had said. And ever since, they had referred to Dean as “DeeAnn.”

“不过他可是你的做作小混蛋。”裘德说。从此以后，他们提到迪安，都故意念成“迪——安”。

　 Unfortunately, however, it appeared that despite JB’s tireless cultivation of DeeAnn, he was no closer to being included in the magazine than he had been three months ago. JB had even let DeeAnn suck him off in the steam room at the gym, and still nothing. Every day, JB found a reason to wander back into the editorial offices and over to the bulletin board on which the next three months’ story ideas were written on white note cards, and every day he looked at the section dedicated to up-and-coming artists for his name, and every day he was disappointed. Instead he saw the names of various no-talents and overhypes, people owed favors or people who knew people to whom favors were owed.

然而，不幸的是，尽管杰比努力不懈地想跟迪——安搞好关系，但他登上杂志的机会并不比三个月前大。杰比甚至让迪——安在健身房的蒸汽室里帮他做，结果还是没用。每一天，杰比都会找个借口溜进编辑室，看看公布栏上贴的那些白色笔记纸，上头写着往后三个月的报道构想。他每天都在报道新人艺术家的那一区寻找自己的名字，但次次都失望了。他只看到一堆没有才华、被过度宣传的名字，都是搞关系，或是有背景的人。

　 “If I ever see Ezra up there, I’m going to kill myself,” JB always said, to which the others said: You won’t, JB, and Don’t worry, JB—you’ll be up there someday, and What do you need them for, JB? You’ll find somewhere else, to which JB would reply, respectively, “Are you sure?,” and “I fucking doubt it,” and “I’ve fucking invested this time—three whole months of my fucking life—I better be fucking up there, or this whole thing has been a fucking waste, just like everything else,” everything else meaning, variously, grad school, moving back to New York, the hair series, or life in general, depending on how nihilistic he felt that day.

“要是哪天在上头看到埃兹拉的名字，我就毙了自己。”杰比总是这么说，其他人就会说：不会的，杰比，或别担心，杰比，有一天你的名字会在上头的，又或你根本不需要他们，杰比。别的杂志会报道你的。而杰比听了，会分别回答：“你确定吗？”“我他妈的很怀疑”，还有“我他妈的投资了这么多时间，我人生他妈的整整三个月。我最好能登上那个他妈的公布栏，不然这整件事真他妈的浪费时间，就跟其他事情一样”。所谓的其他事情，每回指的可能都不一样，研究生院、搬回纽约、头发系列，或者泛指他的生活，要依他当天的心情有多么虚无而定。

　 He was still complaining when they reached Lispenard Street. Willem was new enough to the city—he had only lived there a year—to have never heard of the street, which was barely more than an alley, two blocks long and one block south of Canal, and yet JB, who had grown up in Brooklyn, hadn’t heard of it either.

来到利斯本纳街时，他还在抱怨。威廉搬到纽约不算太久（只住了一年），所以完全没听说过这条街，其实这里几乎只能算是一条巷子，两个街区长，往北一个街区就是坚尼路。不过杰比从小在布鲁克林长大，也没听说过这条街。

　 They found the building and punched buzzer 5C. A girl answered, her voice made scratchy and hollow by the intercom, and rang them in. Inside, the lobby was narrow and high-ceilinged and painted a curdled, gleaming shit-brown, which made them feel like they were at the bottom of a well.

他们找到那栋楼，按了5C的电铃。一个年轻女子接了，对讲机使她的声音发出沙沙的杂音，显得很空洞，她按了开门钮。里头的大厅很窄，挑高天花板漆成了一种黏糊糊的、大便似的褐色，害他们觉得自己像是在一口井底。

　 The girl was waiting for them at the door of the apartment. “Hey, JB,” she said, and then looked at Willem and blushed.

那年轻女子站在5C门口等他们。“嘿，杰比。”她说，然后看着威廉，脸红了。