《渺小一生》:这是真心话，真的没什么好抱歉的。

　 “Jude?” he whispered, knocking on the stall door, and when there was no answer, “I’m coming in.” He pulled open the door and found Jude on the floor, one leg tucked up against his chest. He had vomited, and some of it had pooled on the ground before him, and some of it was scabbed on his lips and chin, a stippled apricot smear. His eyes were shut and he was sweaty, and with one hand he was holding the curved end of his crutch with an intensity that, as Willem would later come to recognize, comes only with extreme discomfort.

“裘德？”他轻声说，敲了敲淋浴间的门，没人应，“我进来了。”他拉开门，发现裘德倒在地板上，一脚缩起来抵着胸口。他吐了，身前有一摊呕吐物，嘴唇和下巴也沾着点状的杏黄色污斑。他双眼闭着，满身大汗，一手紧紧握着拐杖的弧状握把。后来威廉才逐渐了解，只有在极度不舒服的时候，他的手才会握得那么紧。

　 At the time, though, he was scared, and confused, and began asking Jude question after question, none of which he was in any state to answer, and it wasn’t until he tried to hoist Jude to his feet that Jude gave a shout and Willem understood how bad his pain was.

但当时他很害怕，也很困惑，开始问裘德一个接一个的问题，但裘德都没法回答，直到他试着把裘德扶着站起来时，裘德大喊一声，威廉才明白他痛得有多严重。

　 He somehow managed to half drag, half carry Jude to their room, and fold him into his bed and inexpertly clean him up. By this time the worst of the pain seemed to have passed, and when Willem asked him if he should call a doctor, Jude shook his head.

他还是设法半拖半抱，把裘德弄回寝室床上，笨手笨脚地帮他清理干净。等到最厉害的痛楚过去之后，威廉问他是不是该找医生来，裘德摇摇头。

　 “But Jude,” he said, quietly, “you’re in pain. We have to get you help.”

“可是裘德，”他轻声说，“你很痛，我们得找人帮你啊。”

　 “Nothing will help,” he said, and was silent for a few moments. “I just have to wait.” His voice was whispery and faint, unfamiliar.

“什么都帮不了我，”裘德说，然后沉默了一会儿，“我只能等。”他的声音轻而微弱，感觉上很陌生。

　 “What can I do?” Willem asked.

“我能做什么？”威廉问。

　 “Nothing,” Jude said. They were quiet. “But Willem—will you stay with me for a little while?”

“什么都不用做。”裘德说，他们相对沉默，“可是威廉——你能不能再陪我一会儿？”

　 “Of course,” he said. Beside him, Jude trembled and shook as if chilled, and Willem took the comforter off his own bed and wrapped it around him. At one point he reached under the blanket and found Jude’s hand and prised open his fist so he could hold his damp, callused palm. It had been a long time since he had held another guy’s hand—not since his own brother’s surgery many years ago—and he was surprised by how strong Jude’s grip was, how muscular his fingers. Jude shuddered and chattered his teeth for hours, and eventually Willem lay down beside him and fell asleep.

“当然可以。”他说。裘德在他身旁颤抖又摇晃，好像很冷，于是威廉拿自己床上的被子把他裹住。期间他一度伸手到被子底下找裘德的手，扳开他的拳头，好握住他潮湿、生茧的手掌。自从多年前他哥哥开刀以来，他已经好久没握住另一个男生的手了。他很惊讶裘德的手劲这么大，手指这么强壮。裘德全身颤抖，牙齿格格作响了好几个钟头，最后威廉在他旁边躺下来睡着了。

　 The next morning, he woke in Jude’s bed with his hand throbbing, and when he examined the back of it he saw bruised smudges where Jude’s fingers had clenched him. He got up, a bit unsteadily, and walked into the common area, where he saw Jude reading at his desk, his features indistinguishable in the bright late-morning light.

次日早晨，他在裘德的床上醒来，觉得手上阵阵抽痛。他检查手背，看到之前被裘德手指钳住的地方有瘀青。他有点摇晃不稳地起床，走进起居室，看到裘德坐在他的书桌前读书，他的脸在接近中午的明亮光线中模糊不清。

　 He looked up when Willem came in and then stood, and for a while they merely looked at each other in silence.

威廉进来时，裘德抬起头，然后站起来，有那么一会儿，他们只是沉默地注视彼此。

　 “Willem, I’m so sorry,” Jude said at last.

“威廉，我很抱歉。”最后裘德终于说。

　 “Jude,” he said, “there’s nothing to be sorry for.” And he meant it; there wasn’t.

“裘德，没什么好抱歉的。”这是真心话，真的没什么好抱歉的。

　 But “I’m sorry, Willem, I’m so sorry,” Jude repeated, and no matter how many times Willem tried to reassure him, he wouldn’t be comforted.

“可是，对不起，威廉，我很抱歉。”裘德又说了一次，无论威廉怎么安慰，都不能让他安心。

　 “Just don’t tell Malcolm and JB, okay?” he asked him.

“拜托不要告诉马尔科姆和杰比，好吗？”他问他。

　 “I won’t,” he promised. And he never did, although in the end, it didn’t make a difference, for eventually, Malcolm and JB too would see him in pain, although only a few times in episodes as sustained as the one Willem witnessed that night.

“我不会说的。”他保证。而且他说到做到，不过最后也没区别了，后来马尔科姆和杰比也都看到裘德疼痛发作，只是很少像威廉那一夜看到的那么久。

　 He had never discussed it with Jude, but in the years to come, he would see him in all sorts of pain, big pains and little ones, would see him wince at small hurts and occasionally, when the discomfort was too profound, would see him vomit, or pleat to the ground, or simply blank out and become insensate, the way he was doing in their living room now. But although he was a man who kept his promises, there was a part of him that always wondered why he had never raised the issue with Jude, why he had never made him discuss what it felt like, why he had never dared to do what instinct told him to do a hundred times: to sit down beside him and rub his legs, to try to knead back into submission those misfiring nerve endings. Instead here he was hiding in the bathroom, making busywork for himself as, a few yards away, one of his dearest friends sat alone on a disgusting sofa, making the slow, sad, lonely journey back to consciousness, back to the land of the living, without anyone at all by his side.

他从来没跟裘德谈过他的疼痛，但接下来几年，他会看到他经历各式各样的痛，有大有小。他会看到他在小痛时皱起脸，或偶尔实在太痛了，他会看到他呕吐或蜷缩在地上，或是脑袋一片空白，整个人奄奄一息，就像他现在在客厅里的样子。尽管他是信守承诺的人，他总有点不明白自己为什么没跟裘德谈过这个话题，为什么他从不逼他谈谈那是什么感觉，为什么他从来不敢去做直觉告诉他一百遍的事情：坐在他旁边，按摩他的双腿，设法把那些失控的神经末梢揉得平静一点。相反，就像眼前这样，他躲在浴室里，没事找事做，而几码之外，他最要好的朋友之一独自坐在一张破沙发上，进行一段缓慢、悲惨、孤单的旅程，以便回到清醒状态，回到日常生活，而一路上没有任何人陪在他身边。

　 “You’re a coward,” he said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face looked back at him, tired with disgust. From the living room, there was only silence, but Willem moved to stand unseen at its border, waiting for Jude to return to him.

“你好懦弱。”他对着浴室镜子中的自己说。他镜子里的脸也回瞪着他，疲倦而厌烦。客厅里还是一片沉默，威廉来到客厅边缘不会被发现的地方，站在那里等着裘德的疼痛过去，恢复正常。

　 “The place is a shithole,” JB had told Malcolm, and although he wasn’t wrong—the lobby alone made Malcolm’s skin prickle—he nevertheless returned home feeling melancholy, and wondering yet again whether continuing to live in his parents’ house was really preferable to living in a shithole of his own.

“那地方是个破烂狗窝。”杰比已经告诉过马尔科姆，尽管杰比没说错（光是一楼那个大厅就让马尔科姆皮肤发麻），他回家时还是觉得好难过，再次思索自己继续住父母的房子是不是真的比住在自己的破烂狗窝里好。

　 Logically, of course, he should absolutely stay where he was. He made very little money, and worked very long hours, and his parents’ house was large enough so that he could, in theory, never see them if he chose. Aside from occupying the entire fourth floor (which, to be honest, wasn’t much better than a shithole itself, it was so messy—his mother had stopped sending the housekeeper up to clean after Malcolm had yelled at her that Inez had broken one of his model houses), he had access to the kitchen, and the washing machine, and the full spectrum of papers and magazines that his parents subscribed to, and once a week he added his clothes to the drooping cloth bag that his mother dropped off at the dry cleaners on the way to her office and Inez picked up the following day. He was not proud of this arrangement, of course, nor of the fact that he was twenty-seven and his mother still called him at the office when she was ordering the week’s groceries to ask him if he would eat extra strawberries if she bought them, or to wonder whether he wanted char or bream for dinner that night.

逻辑上，当然，他绝对应该继续住下去。他赚的钱很少，工作时间很长，而他爸妈的房子够大，所以理论上，如果愿意的话，他可以完全不跟他们打照面。除了占据整个四楼（老实说，这个四楼也不比破烂狗窝好到哪里去，里头太乱了，自从有回马尔科姆跟母亲大吼说，管家弄坏了他的一座模型屋，他母亲就不再派伊涅丝上来打扫了），他可以使用厨房、洗衣机，还能阅读各种父母订阅的杂志，而且每周一次，他可以把脏衣服丢进全家共享的松垮布袋里，母亲上班途中会把它送去干洗店，次日由伊涅丝取回。当然，他并不满意这样的安排，也不喜欢自己27岁了，母亲每星期订杂货时还会打电话去他办公室，问他如果她多买草莓，他会不会帮忙吃，或者问他晚餐想吃红点鲑还是海鲷鱼。

　 Things would be easier, however, if his parents actually respected the same divisions of space and time that Malcolm did. Aside from expecting him to eat breakfast with them in the morning and brunch every Sunday, they also frequently dropped by his floor for a visit, preceding their social calls with a simultaneous knock and doorknob-turn that Malcolm had told them time and again defeated the purpose of knocking at all. He knew this was a terribly bratty and ungrateful thing to think, but at times he dreaded even coming home for the inevitable small talk that he would have to endure before he was allowed to scruff upstairs like a teenager. He especially dreaded life in the house without Jude there; although the basement apartment had been more private than his floor, his parents had also taken to blithely dropping by when Jude was in residence, so that sometimes when Malcolm went downstairs to see Jude, there would be his father sitting in the basement apartment already, lecturing Jude about something dull. His father in particular liked Jude—he often told Malcolm that Jude had real intellectual heft and depth, unlike his other friends, who were essentially flibbertigibbets—and in his absence, it would be Malcolm whom his father would regale with his complicated stories about the market, and the shifting global financial realities, and various other topics about which Malcolm didn’t much care. He in fact sometimes suspected that his father would have preferred Jude for a son: He and Jude had gone to the same law school. The judge for whom Jude had clerked had been his father’s mentor at his first firm. And Jude was an assistant prosecutor in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the exact same place his father had worked at when he was young.

如果他父母能像他一样，尊重彼此的空间和时间分配，那他就会轻松一点。然而，他们除了期望他每天早上一起吃早餐、每个星期天一起吃早午餐之外，还常常跑去他那层楼突袭，在敲门的同时转开门把；尽管马尔科姆一再向他们抗议，说这样敲门就毫无意义了。他知道自己这样很恶劣，而且有些不知感激，但有时他很怕回家，因为无可避免，总得勉强跟父母闲聊几句，才能像个青少年般溜回楼上。他尤其担心裘德搬走之后的生活。尽管地下室比四楼更有隐私，但裘德住在那里时，他父母也总是满不在乎地忽然跑去。有时候马尔科姆下楼去看裘德时，会发现父亲已经坐在地下室里，跟裘德讲一堆无聊的事情。他父亲尤其喜欢裘德——他常告诉马尔科姆，说裘德真的很聪明、很有深度，不像他其他的朋友，基本上都很轻浮。而裘德搬走之后，他父亲就只能找他讲那些关于市场的复杂故事，以及变动中的全球金融实况，还有各式各样他不怎么关心的话题。他有时还怀疑他父亲比较想要裘德当儿子：他父亲和裘德是同一所法学院的校友。裘德之前担任书记工作时的上司法官，就是他父亲在第一间律师事务所工作时期的导师。后来裘德在联邦检察官办公室的刑事部门当助理检察官，也正是他父亲年轻时担任过的职务。