《渺小一生》:“唔，他的确长得很帅。”

　 Unsurprisingly, Smegma Cake 2 wasn’t very good. It wasn’t even hard core, really; more ska-like, bouncy and meandering (“Something happened to their sound!” JB yelled into his ear during one of the more prolonged numbers, “Phantom Snatch 3000.” “Yeah,” he yelled back, “it sucks!”). Midway through the concert (each song seeming to last twenty minutes) he grew giddy, at both the absurdity of the band and the crammedness of the space, and began inexpertly moshing with JB, the two of them sproinging off their neighbors and bystanders until everyone was crashing into one another, but cheerfully, like a bunch of tipsy toddlers, JB catching him by the shoulders and the two of them laughing into each other’s faces. It was in these moments that he loved JB completely, his ability and willingness to be wholly silly and frivolous, which he could never be with Malcolm or Jude—Malcolm because he was, for all his talk otherwise, interested in propriety, and Jude because he was serious.

不意外，包皮垢二号不怎么行。他们演奏的甚至不是硬核舞曲，而更像牙买加的斯卡曲风，欢快而悠闲。（“他们的音响出了问题！”杰比在他们表演一首特别长的歌《抓鬼三千》时，在他耳边大喊。“是啊，”他也喊回去，“烂透了！”）演唱会中途（每首歌似乎都有二十分钟长），因为那个乐团太荒谬，加上场地太挤，他开始头昏眼花，于是跟着杰比一起乱跳乱扭，两个人感染了周围的人，最后大家撞来撞去，开心得不得了，像是一群摇摆学步的小孩。杰比两手抓住他的肩膀，两个人相对大笑。在这些时刻，他真是爱死了杰比，爱他那种乐意显得彻底愚蠢又可笑的本事，那是他无法跟马尔科姆或裘德共享的——马尔科姆其实很在乎得体与否，即使他嘴上不承认；裘德则是本来就很严肃。

　 Of course, this morning he had suffered. He woke in JB’s corner of Ezra’s loft, on JB’s unmade mattress (nearby, on the floor, JB himself snored juicily into a pile of peaty-smelling laundry), unsure how, exactly, they’d gotten back over the bridge. Willem wasn’t normally a drinker or a stoner, but around JB he occasionally found himself behaving otherwise. It had been a relief to return to Lispenard Street, its quiet and clean, the sunlight that baked his side of the bedroom hot and loafy between eleven a.m. and one p.m. already slanting through the window, Jude long gone for the day. He set his alarm and fell instantly asleep, waking with enough time only to shower and swallow an aspirin before hurrying to the train.

当然，今天早上他就惨了。他在埃兹拉那层楼的杰比住处醒来，躺在杰比乱糟糟的床垫上（旁边的地板上，杰比正朝着一堆有泥煤味的脏衣服起劲地打鼾），不确定他们到底是怎么过桥回到曼哈顿的。威廉通常不喝酒也不嗑药，但跟杰比在一起，他偶尔会不知不觉破例。回到利斯本纳街真是让人松了一口气，里头安静又整洁，中午的两小时把他那一侧卧室烤得又热又昏的阳光已经西斜，照进窗子来，裘德早已出门上班。他设了闹钟，上床立刻睡着，醒来时只来得及冲澡、吞下一颗阿司匹林，就匆匆赶去搭乘地铁。

　 The restaurant where he worked had made its reputation on both its food—which was complicated without being challenging—and the consistency and approachability of its staff. At Ortolan they were taught to be warm but not familiar, accessible but not informal. “It’s not Friendly’s,” his boss, Findlay, the restaurant’s general manager, liked to say. “Smile, but don’t tell people your name.” There were lots of rules such as these at Ortolan: Women employees could wear their wedding rings, but no other jewelry. Men shouldn’t wear their hair longer than the bottom of their earlobes. No nail polish. No more than two days’ worth of beard. Mustaches were to be tolerated on a case-by-case basis, as were tattoos.

他工作的奥尔托兰餐厅，以食物（复杂而毫无挑战性）和员工水平整齐划一又亲切而闻名。在这里，他们被教导要温暖但不过分亲昵，亲切但不随便。“我们这里可不是友善连锁餐馆。”他的上司、餐厅的总经理芬利喜欢说，“保持微笑，但不要告诉客人你的名字。”奥尔托兰有很多类似的规定：女性员工可以戴婚戒，但是其他珠宝不行；男性员工的头发长度不能超过耳垂；不准涂指甲油；胡子不能超过两天没刮；唇上的小胡子可以留，但也得看情况；刺青也是视情况而定。

　 Willem had been a waiter at Ortolan for almost two years. Before Ortolan, he had worked the weekend brunch and weekday lunch shift at a loud and popular restaurant in Chelsea called Digits, where the customers (almost always men, almost always older: forty, at least) would ask him if he was on the menu, and then laugh, naughty and pleased with themselves, as if they were the first people to ever ask him that, instead of the eleventh or twelfth that shift alone. Even so, he always smiled and said, “Only as an appetizer,” and they’d retort, “But I want an entrée,” and he would smile again and they would tip him well at the end.

威廉在奥尔托兰当侍者快两年了。来奥尔托兰之前，他曾在切尔西一家很吵、很受欢迎的“数字”餐厅待过，当班时段是周末早午餐和工作日午餐期间，那里的顾客（几乎全是男性，年纪偏大，至少40岁）会问他在不在菜单上，然后放肆地大笑，很自得其乐，以为自己是第一个问他这种问题的人，其实他光是那天就已经被问了超过十次。即使如此，他总是微笑说：“只能当开胃菜。”然后顾客会回答：“可是我想要主菜。”他听了再度微笑，最后顾客会给他很多小费。

　 It had been a friend of his from graduate school, another actor named Roman, who’d recommended him to Findlay after he’d booked a recurring guest role on a soap opera and had quit. (He was conflicted about accepting the gig, he told Willem, but what could he do? It was too much money to refuse.) Willem had been glad for the referral, because besides its food and service, the other thing that Ortolan was known for—albeit among a much smaller group of people—was its flexible hours, especially if Findlay liked you. Findlay liked small flat-chested brunette women and all sorts of men as long as they were tall and thin and, it was rumored, not Asian. Sometimes Willem would stand on the edge of the kitchen and watch as mismatched pairs of tiny dark-haired waitresses and long skinny men circled through the main dining room, skating past one another in a weirdly cast series of minuets.

当初，他一个研究生时期的朋友罗曼被一个肥皂剧找去演常驻的小配角，辞掉了侍者工作（他告诉威廉，他本来很犹豫要不要接这个演出工作，但是他还能怎样？这个戏的报酬实在太多了，让人无法拒绝）。于是，他把威廉推荐给芬德利。威廉很高兴换到这里来上班，因为除了食物和服务，奥尔托兰餐厅还有一个圈内人才知道的特色，就是上班时间很有弹性，尤其是芬德利喜欢你的话。芬德利喜欢娇小平胸的褐发女子，以及任何高瘦的男人，此外还有谣传说他不喜欢亚裔人。有时威廉会站在厨房边，看着那些不协调的、娇小、深色头发的女侍者和高瘦的男侍者在主餐厅里穿梭，像在跳着诡异的小步舞曲。

　 Not everyone who waited at Ortolan was an actor. Or to be more precise, not everyone at Ortolan was still an actor. There were certain restaurants in New York where one went from being an actor who waited tables to, somehow, being a waiter who was once an actor. And if the restaurant was good enough, respected enough, that was not only a perfectly acceptable career transition, it was a preferable one. A waiter at a well-regarded restaurant could get his friends a coveted reservation, could charm the kitchen staff into sending out free dishes to those same friends (though as Willem learned, charming the kitchen staff was less easy than he’d thought it would be). But what could an actor who waited tables get his friends? Tickets to yet another off-off-Broadway production for which you had to supply your own suit because you were playing a stockbroker who may or may not be a zombie, and yet there was no money for costumes? (He’d had to do exactly that last year, and because he didn’t have a suit of his own, he’d had to borrow one of Jude’s. Jude’s legs were about an inch longer than his, and so for the duration of the run he’d had to fold the pants legs under and stick them in place with masking tape.)

奥尔托兰餐厅的侍者并非都是演员。说得更精确一点，奥尔托兰餐厅的侍者并不全是现役演员。纽约的一些餐厅里，去工作的人刚开始是兼差端盘子的演员，后来不知怎的，就成了以前演过戏的侍者了。如果餐厅够好、够受尊重，那么改行不光完全可以接受，还非常理想。在一家评价很好的餐厅当侍者，可以帮朋友弄到他们渴望的座位，还可以巴结厨房人员送免费的菜色招待这些朋友（不过威廉后来发现，巴结厨房人员没他原先以为的那么容易）。但一个端盘子的演员能帮他的朋友弄到什么？一出外外百老汇的戏票？你在里头演戏，还得自己掏腰包买西装，因为你演的是股票经纪人，可能是僵尸也可能不是，却连西装都穿不起（他去年就遇到一次这样的状况，因为他没有西装，只好跟裘德借。裘德的腿比他长了大约一英寸，演出期间他只得把裤脚折起来，用胶带黏住）。

　 It was easy to tell who at Ortolan was once an actor and was now a career waiter. The careerists were older, for one, and precise and fussy about enforcing Findlay’s rules, and at staff dinners they would ostentatiously swirl the wine that the sommelier’s assistant poured them to sample and say things like, “It’s a little like that Linne Calodo Petite Sirah you served last week, José, isn’t it?” or “Tastes a little minerally, doesn’t it? This a New Zealand?” It was understood that you didn’t ask them to come to your productions—you only asked your fellow actor-waiters, and if you were asked, it was considered polite to at least try to go—and you certainly didn’t discuss auditions, or agents, or anything of the sort with them. Acting was like war, and they were veterans: they didn’t want to think about the war, and they certainly didn’t want to talk about it with naïfs who were still eagerly dashing toward the trenches, who were still excited to be in-country.

在奥尔托兰，很容易看出谁以前当过演员，现在改行当侍者。首先，放弃演戏的专职侍者年纪较长，严格遵守芬德利的规则，很把它们当回事，而且员工晚餐时，他们会奢华地转着侍酒师助理倒给他们试喝的葡萄酒，说些评语，类似“有点像上星期那瓶Linne Calodo酒庄的小西拉。何塞，对吧？”或是“喝起来有点矿石味，不是吗？这是新西兰的酒？”可想而知，你不会邀请他们去看你的戏，你只会邀请端盘子的演员同行，因为如果你邀请了，他们至少要想办法去，否则显得没礼貌。你自然不会跟他们讨论选角试演或经纪人，或任何这类事情。演戏这一行就像打仗，而他们是退休老兵，不愿再想战争的事情，而且铁定不想跟那些还起劲地朝壕沟里冲、还因为来到战场而兴奋的天真之辈讨论战争。

　 Findlay himself was a former actor, but unlike the other former actors, he liked to—or perhaps “liked” was not the word; perhaps the more accurate word would be simply “did”—talk about his past life, or at least a certain version of it. According to Findlay, he had once almost, almost booked the second lead in the Public Theater production of A Bright Room Called Day (later, one of the waitresses had told them that all of the significant roles in the play were for women). He had understudied a part on Broadway (for what production was never made clear). Findlay was a walking career memento mori, a cautionary tale in a gray wool suit, and the still-actors either avoided him, as if his particular curse were something contagious, or studied him closely, as if by remaining in contact with him, they could inoculate themselves.

芬德利自己以前也是演员，但不像其他前演员，他喜欢（或许不该说“喜欢”，更精确的字眼是“会”）谈论以前的生活，或至少某种版本的生活。根据芬德利的说法，他有回差点拿到在纽约公共剧院演出《一个叫白昼的明亮房间》（A Bright Room Called Day）的第二主角（稍后，一名女侍跟他们说，这出戏的所有重要角色都是女人）。他在一出百老汇舞台剧当过替补演员（至于是哪出戏，他从来没讲）。芬德利是个活生生的演员生涯死亡警告，一则穿着灰色羊毛西装的警世故事，那些还在当演员的不是避开他，好像他的诅咒有传染性，就是仔细研究他，似乎只要跟他保持接触，自己就能免疫。

　 But at what point had Findlay decided he would give up acting, and how had it happened? Was it simply age? He was, after all, old: forty-five, fifty, somewhere around there. How did you know that it was time to give up? Was it when you were thirty-eight and still hadn’t found an agent (as they suspected had happened to Joel)? Was it when you were forty and still had a roommate and were making more as a part-time waiter than you had made the year you decided to be a full-time actor (as they knew had happened to Kevin)? Was it when you got fat, or bald, or got bad plastic surgery that couldn’t disguise the fact that you were fat and bald? When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop? In earlier, more rigid, less encouraging (and ultimately, more helpful) decades, things would be much clearer: you would stop when you turned forty, or when you got married, or when you had kids, or after five years, or ten years, or fifteen. And then you would go get a real job, and acting and your dreams for a career in it would recede into the evening, a melting into history as quiet as a briquette of ice sliding into a warm bath.

但芬德利究竟是在哪个时间点决定放弃表演，又是怎么决定的呢？只是因为年纪到了吗？毕竟他老了：45、50岁之类的。你怎么知道放弃的时候到了？会是因为你38岁，还没找到经纪人吗（他们怀疑乔尔就是这样）？会是因为你40岁了，还在跟别人合租公寓，而且兼差当侍者一年赚的钱比你当全职演员还要多吗（他们都知道凯文就是这样）？会是因为你胖了或秃了，或整形手术做得太差，掩饰不了你又胖又秃的事实？你胸怀野心一路追逐，到哪个时间点会变得不再勇敢，或只是有勇无谋？你怎么知道什么时候该停下来？在二三十年前，在那些比较僵化、比较不鼓励人（到头来比较有帮助）的年代，状况会清楚得多：你年过四十就会停下来，可能是结婚了、有了子女，或是你已经入行五年、十年、十五年，然后你会找个真正的工作。表演和你成为演员的梦想就遁入夜晚，融入历史，安静得就像一块冰砖滑入一池温暖的浴缸水中。

　 But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. Would Willem work for year upon year at Ortolan, catching the same trains to auditions, reading again and again and again, one year maybe caterpillaring an inch or two forward, his progress so minute that it hardly counted as progress at all? Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be?

但现在是讲求自我实现的时代，勉强接受现状、不去追求你人生的最爱，好像意志太薄弱、太堕落了。不知怎的，屈服于你看似注定的命运不再是有尊严的事情，而只显得你很懦弱。有些时候，要得到幸福的压力简直是沉重的，仿佛幸福是每个人都应该也可以获得的，任何中途的妥协都是你的错。威廉也会一年接一年在奥尔托兰餐厅工作，搭同样的几班地铁去参加选角试演，一次又一次念着台词，每年或许往前迈进了一或两英寸，进展微小到根本很难算得上是进展？他有一天也会鼓起勇气放弃，意识到那个时刻的来临？还是有一天醒来，看着镜子，发现自己已经是个老头，却还自称是演员，只因为他太害怕，不敢承认他可能不是，并且永远都不会是一个演员？

　 According to JB, the reason Willem wasn’t yet successful was because of Willem. One of JB’s favorite lectures to him began with “If I had your looks, Willem,” and ended with, “And now you’ve been so fucking spoiled by things coming to you so easily that you think everything’s just going to happen for you. And you know what, Willem? You’re good-looking, but everyone here is good-looking, and you’re just going to have to try harder.”

根据杰比的说法，威廉还没成功的原因，在于威廉自己。杰比最爱教训他的说辞，一开始总是：“威廉，如果我长得像你这么帅……”最后总是这么结束：“结果你现在他妈的被惯坏了，因为你从小就太顺利了，搞得你以为一切都可以凭空得到。可是你知道吗，威廉，虽然你长得帅，可是这个圈子里头每个人都长得很帅，所以你得更努力才行。”

　 Even though he thought this was sort of ironic coming from JB (Spoiled? Look at JB’s family, all of them clucking after him, pushing on him his favorite foods and just-ironed shirts, surrounding him in a cloud of compliments and affection; he once overheard JB on the phone telling his mother he needed her to get him more underwear, and that he’d pick it up when he went to see her for Sunday dinner, for which, by the way, he wanted short ribs), he understood what he meant as well. He knew he wasn’t lazy, but the truth was that he lacked the sort of ambition that JB and Jude had, that grim, trudging determination that kept them at the studio or office longer than anyone else, that gave them that slightly faraway look in their eyes that always made him think a fraction of them was already living in some imagined future, the contours of which were crystallized only to them. JB’s ambition was fueled by a lust for that future, for his speedy arrival to it; Jude’s, he thought, was motivated more by a fear that if he didn’t move forward, he would somehow slip back to his past, the life he had left and about which he would tell none of them. And it wasn’t only Jude and JB who possessed this quality: New York was populated by the ambitious. It was often the only thing that everyone here had in common.

虽然他觉得这种话从杰比口中说出来，实在有点讽刺（惯坏了？看看杰比的家人，全都围着他打转，送上他最爱吃的菜和刚烫好的衬衫，用种种赞美和爱意包围他。他有回不小心听到杰比在电话上告诉他母亲，要她去帮他买些内裤，等他星期天回去看她时跟她拿，顺便告诉她星期天的晚餐他想吃牛小排），但是他也明白杰比的意思。他知道自己并不是懒，但他就是缺乏杰比和裘德的那种野心，那种坚定、不辞辛劳的决心，让他们在工作室或办公室待得比任何人都久，让他们眼中有那种微微的心不在焉。威廉觉得，仿佛有一部分的他们已经活在想象的未来中，而那个未来的轮廓，只有他们才看得见。杰比的野心源自他渴求那个未来，渴望自己赶紧抵达；而裘德的野心，威廉觉得，是因为害怕自己如果不奋力往前，就会不小心退回过去那段他已经离开、从此绝口不提的人生。拥有这种特性的人不光是裘德和杰比而已，有野心的人都会来纽约。这往往是纽约人的唯一共同点。

　 Ambition and atheism: “Ambition is my only religion,” JB had told him late one beery night, and although to Willem this line sounded a little too practiced, like he was rehearsing it, trying to perfect its careless, throwaway tone before he someday got to say it for real to an interviewer somewhere, he also knew that JB was sincere. Only here did you feel compelled to somehow justify anything short of rabidity for your career; only here did you have to apologize for having faith in something other than yourself.

除了野心，还有无神论。“野心是我唯一的宗教。”有回喝啤酒喝到半夜，杰比这么告诉他。尽管威廉觉得这句话听起来太顺，好像他一直在排练，设法要把那种不在意、顺口说出的口气练到完美，以便有朝一日受访时可以真的说出来，但威廉也知道杰比说这句话是真心的。只有在纽约，你才会觉得，如果自己没为事业发疯似的拼命，多少得辩驳一下；只有在纽约，你才要为自己不够自我中心、不够目中无人而道歉。

　 The city often made him feel he was missing something essential, and that that ignorance would forever doom him to a life at Ortolan. (He had felt this in college as well, where he knew absolutely that he was the dumbest person in their class, admitted as a sort of unofficial poor-white-rural-dweller-oddity affirmative-action representative.) The others, he thought, sensed this as well, although it seemed to truly bother only JB.

这个城市常常让他觉得自己缺少某些基本要素，而这会害他注定一辈子待在奥尔托兰餐厅（他大学时也有这种感觉，当时他知道自己一定是同届最笨的学生，学校录取他是因为某种非正式的保障弱势群体的措施，把他当成“少数农村贫穷白人居民”的代表）。他觉得其他人也感觉到了，虽然唯一不满的人只有杰比。

　 “I don’t know about you sometimes, Willem,” JB once said to him, in a tone that suggested that what he didn’t know about Willem wasn’t good. This was late last year, shortly after Merritt, Willem’s former roommate, had gotten one of the two lead roles in an off-Broadway revival of True West. The other lead was being played by an actor who had recently starred in an acclaimed independent film and was enjoying that brief moment of possessing both downtown credibility and the promise of more mainstream success. The director (someone Willem had been longing to work with) had promised he’d cast an unknown as the second lead. And he had: it was just that the unknown was Merritt and not Willem. The two of them had been the final contenders for the part.

“威廉，我有时候真搞不懂你。”杰比有回跟他说，口气暗示他搞不懂的部分不是什么好事。那是去年年底，之前不久，威廉的前任室友梅里特拿到一出外百老汇重演旧剧《真实的西部》（True West）的第二主角。演第一主角的男演员才刚主演了一部备受赞誉的独立电影，短期内享受着他在百老汇拥有的权力，同时拥有着获得更多主流成功的希望。导演（威廉一直渴望跟他合作）向那位演员保证，会找个没有名气的演员当第二主角，也说到做到：只不过这个没名气的演员是梅里特，而非威廉。两个人在争取这个角色时，都进入了最后决选。

　 His friends had been outraged on his behalf. “But Merritt doesn’t even know how to act!” JB had groaned. “He just stands onstage and sparkles and thinks that’s enough!” The three of them had started talking about the last thing they had seen Merritt in—an all-male off-off-Broadway production of La Traviata set in nineteen-eighties Fire Island (Violetta—played by Merritt—had been renamed Victor, and he had died of AIDS, not tuberculosis)—and they all agreed it had been barely watchable.

他的好友很替他愤慨。“可是梅里特根本不会演戏！”杰比抱怨，“他只会站在舞台上发亮，以为这样就够了！”他们三人开始说起上一回他们看梅里特演戏——那是一出外外百老汇的实验剧作《茶花女》，改编为清一色男性演出，背景设定在20世纪80年代的法尔岛（女主角维奥莉塔由梅里特饰演，改名为维克托，最后死于艾滋病而非肺结核）——大家公认这出戏几乎不值得看。

　 “Well, he does have a good look,” he’d said, in a weak attempt to defend his absent former roommate.

“唔，他的确长得很帅。”威廉当时说，有点想为不在场的前任室友辩护。

　 “He’s not that good-looking,” Malcolm said, with a vehemence that surprised all of them.

“没帅到那个地步。”马尔科姆说，那种强烈的口气把大家都吓到了。

　 “Willem, it’ll happen,” Jude consoled him on the way back home after dinner. “If there’s any justice in the world, it’ll happen. That director’s an imbecile.” But Jude never blamed Willem for his failings; JB always did. He wasn’t sure which was less helpful.

“威廉，总有一天会实现的。”晚餐后，裘德在回家的路上安慰他，“如果世界上有公平正义，那么总会实现的。那个导演是笨蛋。”裘德从来不会责怪威廉失败，但杰比会。他不知道哪个人讲的比较没帮助。

　 He had been grateful for their anger, naturally, but the truth was, he didn’t think Merritt was as bad as they did. He was certainly no worse than Willem himself; in fact, he was probably better. Later, he’d told this to JB, who responded with a long silence, stuffed with disapproval, before he started lecturing Willem. “I don’t know about you sometimes, Willem,” he began. “Sometimes I get the sense you don’t even really want to be an actor.”

当然，他一直很感激他们替他打抱不平，但其实他认为梅里特不像他们讲的那么糟糕。他当然不会比威廉差；事实上，大概还更好。稍后，他在电话里这么告诉杰比，而杰比的反应是先沉默许久，满肚子不满，然后才又开始教训威廉。“有时候我真搞不懂你，威廉。”他说，“有时候我觉得，你根本就不是真心想当演员。”