《渺小一生》:“可是——严重吗？”
And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, not his traitorous racial tendencies, not his inability to separate himself from his parents or make his own money or behave like an autonomous creature. It was that, when he and his colleagues sat there at night, the group of them burrowed deep into their own ambitious dream-structures, all of them drawing and planning their improbable buildings, he was doing nothing. He had lost the ability to imagine anything. And so every evening, while the others created, he copied: he drew buildings he had seen on his travels, buildings other people had dreamed and constructed, buildings he had lived in or passed through. Again and again, he made what had already been made, not even bothering to improve them, just mimicking them. He was twenty-eight; his imagination had deserted him; he was a copyist.
但是本质上，他觉得最难为情的事情也是这个：不是他对性的贫乏知识，不是他背离自己的种族倾向，不是他无法脱离父母、自食其力、表现得像个独立自主的人。而是当他和同事晚上加班时，大家都在深入探索自己心目中的梦幻结构、描绘或规划那些不太可能实现的建筑物时，他却什么也没做。他已经失去想象的能力了。于是每天晚上，当其他人在创作时，他只是在抄袭：他画出在旅途中看过的建筑物，以及其他人梦想并建造的建筑物，还有他住过或参观过的建筑物。一次又一次，他只是去做别人已经做出来的东西，甚至懒得改善，只是模仿而已。他28岁了，他的想象力已经弃他而去，他只是个抄袭者。
It frightened him. JB had his series. Jude had his work, Willem had his. But what if Malcolm never again created anything? He longed for the years when it was enough to simply be in his room with his hand moving over a piece of graph paper, before the years of decisions and identities, when his parents made his choices for him, and the only thing he had to concentrate on was the clean blade stroke of a line, the ruler’s perfect knife edge.
这把他给吓坏了。杰比有他的作品，裘德有他的工作，威廉也有他的梦想。如果马尔科姆再也无法创造出任何东西呢？他好想回到童年时代，只要在自己的房间，在一张纸上画画就够了。那时他不必做决定，不必管身份认同，他的父母会替他选择。他唯一要专心做的，就是用手上的建筑角尺，画出干净利落的一条线。
3
IT WAS JB who decided that Willem and Jude should host a New Year’s Eve party at their apartment. This was resolved at Christmas, which was a three-part affair: Christmas Eve was held at JB’s mother’s place in Fort Greene, and Christmas dinner itself (a formal, organized event, at which suits and ties were required) was at Malcolm’s house, and succeeded a casual lunch at JB’s aunts’ house. They had always followed this ritual—four years ago, they had added Thanksgiving at Jude’s friends Harold and Julia’s house in Cambridge to the lineup—but New Year’s Eve had never been assigned. The previous year, the first post-school-life New Year’s that they had all been in the same city at the same time, they had all ended up separate and miserable—JB lodged at some lame party at Ezra’s, Malcolm stuck at his parents’ friends’ dinner uptown, Willem trapped by Findlay into a holiday shift at Ortolan, Jude mired in bed with the flu at Lispenard Street—and had resolved to actually make plans for the next year. But they hadn’t, and hadn’t, and then it was December and they still hadn’t done anything.
当初是杰比决定，威廉和裘德应该在他们的公寓办新年派对。事情在圣诞假期间确定下来，而他们的圣诞假期分成三部分：平安夜去布鲁克林格林堡的杰比母亲家吃晚餐，次日去杰比的两个阿姨家吃一顿轻松的午餐，然后圣诞节的晚餐（精心安排的正式晚餐，要穿西装、打领带）则是在马尔科姆家。他们向来遵循这套老规矩，四年前，他们的规矩又加入了另一条：到波士顿北边的剑桥市、裘德的朋友哈罗德和朱丽娅夫妇的房子过感恩节，但是跨年夜一直没安排过。前一年是他们离开校园且同时在同一个城市度过的第一个新年，四个人各自过节，结果都过得很悲惨。杰比被困在埃兹拉家一个很逊的派对上，马尔科姆被抓去参加父母朋友在上城的一个晚宴，威廉被芬德利排在了奥尔托兰餐厅值班，裘德则因为流行性感冒躺在利斯本纳街的公寓床上。于是他们打定主意来年要一起跨年，可是一直没安排，拖了又拖，到了十二月还是什么节目也没有。
So they didn’t mind JB deciding for them, not in this case. They figured they could accommodate twenty-five people comfortably, or forty uncomfortably. “So make it forty,” said JB, promptly, as they’d known he would, but later, back at their apartment, they wrote up a list of just twenty, and only their and Malcolm’s friends, knowing that JB would invite more people than were allotted him, extending invitations to friends and friends of friends and not-even friends and colleagues and bartenders and shop clerks, until the place grew so dense with bodies that they could open all the windows to the night air and still not dispel the fog of heat and smoke that would inevitably accumulate.
所以这一回，他们不介意杰比替大家做决定。他们估计这间公寓可以舒服地容纳二十五人，但四十人就不太舒适了。“那就邀四十人吧。”杰比很快就说，其他三人也早就料到。但稍后威廉和裘德回到公寓后，拟了一份只有二十人的客人名单，只有他们两个和马尔科姆的朋友，因为他们知道杰比会邀请超过他配额的客人，不止朋友，还有朋友的朋友，甚至延伸到不是朋友的同事和酒保、店员，最后会把整个地方挤得满满的，就算把所有窗子都打开，也无法驱散里头的热气和烟雾。
“Don’t make this complicated,” was the other thing JB had said, but Willem and Malcolm knew that was a caution meant solely for Jude, who had a tendency to make things more elaborate than was necessary, to spend nights making batches of gougères when everyone would have been content with pizza, to actually clean the place beforehand, as if anyone would care if the floors were crunchy with grit and the sink was scummed with dried soap stains and flecks of previous days’ breakfasts.
“不要搞得太复杂。”这是杰比说的另一件事，但威廉和马尔科姆知道这个警告只针对裘德，他总是做没必要的精心安排：比如花好几个晚上做一大堆法式咸味奶酪泡芙，但其实大家吃披萨就很高兴了；比如事先打扫公寓，但根本没人在乎地板上有小沙砾，或水槽里有干掉的肥皂痕和几天前的早餐碎屑。
The night before the party was unseasonably warm, warm enough that Willem walked the two miles from Ortolan to the apartment, which was so thick with its rich butter scents of cheese and dough and fennel that it made him feel he had never left work at all. He stood in the kitchen for a while, pinching the little tumoric blobs of pastry off their cooling racks to keep them from sticking, looking at the stack of plastic containers with their herbed shortbreads and cornmeal gingersnaps and feeling slightly sad—the same sadness he felt when he noticed that Jude had cleaned after all—because he knew they would be devoured mindlessly, swallowed whole with beer, and that they would begin the New Year finding crumbs of those beautiful cookies everywhere, trampled and stamped into the tiles. In the bedroom, Jude was already asleep, and the window was cracked open, and the heavy air made Willem dream of spring, and trees afuzz with yellow flowers, and a flock of blackbirds, their wings lacquered as if with oil, gliding soundlessly across a sea-colored sky.
派对的前一天晚上，天气异常温暖，暖得威廉从奥尔托兰餐厅走了两英里路[1]回公寓时，发现里头充满奶酪、面团、茴香加上奶油的浓郁气味，搞得他觉得自己好像还在餐厅里工作。他站在厨房里好一会儿，把那些酥皮面团小球一个个从冷却架上拿起又放下，免得变黏，然后看着一堆塑料保鲜盒，里头是玉米粉姜饼和加了香草植物的苏格兰奶油厚酥饼，觉得有点难过（就像他发现裘德最后还是打扫过公寓的那种难过）。因为他知道大家会漫不经心地狼吞虎咽，把这些食物配着啤酒吞下肚，然后新的一年开始，他们会发现到处都是那些漂亮饼干的碎屑，被踩了又踩，嵌进了瓷砖缝隙里。在卧室里，裘德已经睡着了，威廉把窗子推开，自己也睡下。那浓重的空气让威廉梦到春天，树上开着成簇的黄花，还有一群翅膀油亮的黑鸟，无声地飞过一片海蓝色的天空。
When he woke, though, the weather had turned again, and it took him a moment to realize that he had been shivering, and that the sounds in his dream had been of wind, and that he was being shaken awake, and that his name was being repeated, not by birds but by a human voice: “Willem, Willem.”
但他醒来时，天气已经再度转变了，他还迷糊了一会儿，才发现自己在发抖。他梦中的那个声音是风声，原来他是冻醒的，同时有个声音一直在重复，不是鸟叫，而是人声：“威廉，威廉。”
He turned over and propped himself up on his elbows, but was able to register Jude only in segments: his face first, and then the fact that he was holding his left arm before him with his right hand, and that he had cocooned it with something—his towel, he realized—which was so white in the gloom that it seemed a source of light itself, and he stared at it, transfixed.
他翻身，双肘撑起身体，不过只能一点一点认出裘德：先是他的脸，然后发现他的右手抓着被毛巾层层包住的左手臂。在昏暗的光线中，那毛巾好白，白得就像会发光，他呆呆地瞪着那毛巾看。
“Willem, I’m sorry,” said Jude, and his voice was so calm that for a few seconds, he thought it was a dream, and stopped listening, and Jude had to repeat himself. “There’s been an accident, Willem; I’m sorry. I need you to take me to Andy’s.”
“威廉，对不起。”裘德说，他的声音很冷静，因而有几秒钟，威廉以为那只是个梦，根本没专心听。裘德不得不重复好几次：“威廉，发生了意外。对不起，我需要你陪我去安迪那里。”
Finally he woke. “What kind of accident?”
最后他终于醒了：“什么意外？”
“I cut myself. It was an accident.” He paused. “Will you take me?”
“我割伤自己了。不小心的。”他暂停一下，“你可以陪我去吗？”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, but he was still confused, still asleep, and it was without understanding that he fumblingly dressed, and joined Jude in the hallway, where he was waiting, and then walked with him up to Canal, where he turned for the subway before Jude pulled him back: “I think we need a cab.”
“可以，当然可以。”他说，但他还是很困惑，没完全苏醒，于是糊里糊涂地摸索着穿好衣服，到走廊跟裘德会合。他们两人一起走到坚尼路，当他转弯正要走向地铁站时，裘德把他拉回来：“我们应该搭出租车。”
In the taxi—Jude giving the driver the address in that same crushed, muted voice—he at last gave in to consciousness, and saw that Jude was still holding the towel. “Why did you bring your towel?” he asked.
上了出租车，裘德用同样虚弱无力的声音把地址告诉司机，威廉整个人终于清醒了，看到裘德依然握着那条毛巾：“你为什么要带毛巾？”
“I told you—I cut myself.”
“我跟你说过，我割伤自己了。”
“But—is it bad?”
“可是——严重吗？”
Jude shrugged, and Willem noticed for the first time that his lips had gone a strange color, a not-color, although maybe that was the streetlights, which slapped and slid across his face, bruising it yellow and ocher and a sickly larval white as the cab pushed north. Jude leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes, and it was then that Willem felt the beginnings of nausea, of fear, although he was unable to articulate why, only that he was in a cab heading uptown and something had happened, and he didn’t know what but that it was something bad, that he wasn’t comprehending something important and vital, and that the damp warmth of a few hours ago had vanished and the world had reverted to its icy harshness, its raw end-of-year cruelty.
裘德耸耸肩，威廉这才头一次注意到他的双唇变成了一种奇怪的颜色，像是没有颜色。或许是路灯的关系，随着出租车往北行驶，灯光迅速掠过裘德的脸，将它染成一块块黄色、赭色和病态的蠕虫白。裘德的头靠向车窗，闭上眼睛。此时威廉才开始觉得反胃又害怕，虽然他讲不清为什么，只知道出租车正往上城方向开，而且出了事情；他不知道是什么事，只知道是重大且性命攸关的。几小时前的潮湿温暖消失了，整个世界又充满原先那种刺骨的寒意，那种年底的阴冷严酷。
Andy’s office was on Seventy-eighth and Park, near Malcolm’s parents’ house, and it was only once they were inside, in the true light, that Willem saw that the dark pattern on Jude’s shirt was blood, and that the towel had become sticky with it, almost varnished, its tiny loops of cotton matted down like wet fur. “I’m sorry,” Jude said to Andy, who had opened the door to let them in, and when Andy unwrapped the towel, all Willem saw was what looked like a choking of blood, as if Jude’s arm had grown a mouth and was vomiting blood from it, and with such avidity that it was forming little frothy bubbles that popped and spat as if in excitement.
安迪的诊所位于78街和公园大道交叉口，离马尔科姆父母的房子很近。他们一进门，在里面的灯光下，威廉才看到裘德衬衫上的深色花样原来是血，而且毛巾已经被血染得黏黏的，几乎发亮，上头的小棉线圈像湿毛皮般盘结成团。“对不起。”裘德对开门让他们进去的安迪说。等安迪把毛巾拿开，威廉只看到多得吓人的血，仿佛裘德的手臂上生出一张嘴，不断吐出血来，同时那涌出的鲜血形成一堆小泡沫，不断破碎喷溅，好像处于兴奋状态。
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jude,” said Andy, and steered him back to the examining room, and Willem sat down to wait. Oh god, he thought, oh god. But it was as if his mind was a bit of machinery caught uselessly in a groove, and he couldn’t think beyond those two words. It was too bright in the waiting room, and he tried to relax, but he couldn’t for the phrase beating its rhythm like a heartbeat, thudding through his body like a second pulse: Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
“他妈的老天啊，裘德。”安迪说，带他到后头的检查室，威廉则坐下来等。啊老天，他心想，啊老天。但他的脑袋仿佛有点机械故障，在同样的轨道上不断空转，害他想不出其他字句。等候室太亮了，他设法放松，但是没办法。“啊老天”有如心跳般不断敲打出自己的节奏，像是另一种脉搏穿透他全身。
He waited a long hour before Andy called his name. Andy was eight years older than he, and they had known him since their sophomore year, when Jude had had an episode so sustained that the three of them had finally decided to take him to the hospital connected with the university, where Andy had been the resident on call. He had been the only doctor Jude agreed to see again, and now, even though Andy was an orthopedic surgeon, he still treated Jude for anything that went wrong, from his back to his legs to flu and colds. They all liked Andy, and trusted him, too.
他等了漫长的一小时才听到安迪喊他的名字。安迪比他大八岁，他们大二时就认识他了。当时裘德因为疼痛发作得太严重，痛了很久，他们三个人决定带他去学校旁边的那家医院，安迪当时是待命的住院医师。后来裘德只肯让他看诊，直到现在，即使安迪开了整形外科诊所，只要裘德有什么不舒服，他还是会帮裘德诊疗，从背部、两腿到流感、风寒。他们都很喜欢安迪，也很信赖他。
