《渺小一生》:“你不热吗？”
He let the silence pull between them until he imagined he could hear it come alive. There had been a girl in their dorm who had cut herself as well. She had been with them freshman year, but, he realized, he hadn’t seen her at all this past year.
威廉还是保持沉默，直到他想象自己可以听到那沉默像活物般苏醒过来。他们宿舍里有个女生也曾用刀子割自己。他们大一那年还会碰到她，但是这会儿他才想到，过去这一年没再看到她了。
“Why?” he asked Malcolm. On the sand, Jude had worked up to JB’s waist. JB was singing something meandering and tuneless.
“为什么？”他问马尔科姆。沙滩上，裘德把沙子堆到杰比的腰部了。杰比正散漫地唱着不成调的歌。
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “She had a lot of problems.”
“不晓得。”马尔科姆说，“她有很多心烦的问题。”
He waited, but it seemed Malcolm had nothing more to say. “What happened to her?”
他等着，但马尔科姆似乎没其他话可说了。“那她后来怎么样了？”
“I don’t know. They lost touch when Flora went to college; she never spoke about her again.”
“不晓得。弗洛拉上大学之后，她们就失联了。她再也没提到她。”
They were quiet again. Somewhere along the way, he knew, it had been silently decided among the three of them that he would be primarily responsible for Jude, and this, he recognized, was Malcolm’s way of presenting him with a difficulty that needed a solution, although what, exactly, the problem was—or what the answer might be—he wasn’t certain, and he was willing to bet that Malcolm didn’t know, either.
他们又沉默下来。他知道，认识到现在，他们三个在某个时刻达成无言的共识，他是主要照顾裘德的人，而且他明白，眼前马尔科姆正在以自己的方式，提出一个必须解决的难题。虽然威廉并不确定问题究竟是什么，也不知道答案可能是什么，但他敢打赌马尔科姆也不知道。
For the next few days he avoided Jude, because he knew if he were alone with him, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from having a conversation with him, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to, or what that conversation would be. It wasn’t hard to do: in the daytime, they were together as a group, and at night, they were each in their own rooms. But one evening, Malcolm and JB left together to pick up the lobsters, and he and Jude were left on their own in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes and washing lettuce. It had been a long, sunny, sleepy day, and Jude was in one of his light moods, when he was almost carefree, and even as he asked, Willem experienced a predictive melancholy at ruining such a perfect moment, one in which everything—the pink-bled sky above them and the way the knife sliced so cleanly through the vegetables beneath them—had conspired to work so well, only to have him upset it.
接下来几天，他一直躲着裘德，因为他知道如果自己单独跟他在一起，他会忍不住跟他谈，可是他不确定自己想这么做，也不清楚会谈到什么。要避免跟他单独在一起并不难：白天时，他们都是四人一起行动，到了夜里，他们回到各自的房间里。可是有天傍晚，马尔科姆和杰比一起出去拿龙虾了，只剩他和裘德待在厨房里切西红柿、洗莴苣。那是漫长、晴朗、懒洋洋的一天，裘德正好心情不错，几乎是无忧无虑。当威廉开口问他时，他体会到一种哀愁的预感，觉得自己即将毁掉这完美的时刻。这一刻所有的一切（头上有泛着粉红色的天空，手中的刀子干净利落地切过蔬菜）都联合起来运作得如此完美，却让他给毁了。
“Don’t you want to borrow one of my T-shirts?” he asked Jude.
“要不要我借你一件T恤？”他问裘德。
He didn’t answer until he had finished coring the tomato before him, and then gave Willem a steady, blank gaze. “No.”
裘德没回答，直到把手上那颗西红柿去了籽，才镇静而茫然地望着威廉：“不用了。”
“Aren’t you hot?”
“你不热吗？”
Jude smiled at him, faintly, warningly. “It’s going to be cold any minute now.” And it was true. When the last daub of sun vanished, it would be chilly, and Willem himself would have to go back to his room for a sweater.
裘德朝他微微一笑，很微弱的笑，带着警告意味。“现在随时就会转冷。”的确没错。等到最后一丝阳光消失，天气就会变得很冷，威廉自己都得回房间加件针织衫了。
“But”—and he heard in advance how absurd he would sound, how the confrontation had wriggled out of his control, catlike, as soon as he had initiated it—“you’re going to get lobster all over your sleeves.”
“可是……”他还没说出口，就知道这些话听来有多荒谬，知道自己一旦开口，这场正面对质就会像一只猫般脱离他的控制，“你的袖子会沾到一堆龙虾渣。”
At this, Jude made a noise, a funny kind of squawk, too loud and too barky to be a real laugh, and turned back to the cutting board. “I think I can handle it, Willem,” he said, and although his voice was mild, Willem saw how tightly he was holding the knife’s handle, almost squeezing it, so that the bunch of his knuckles tinged a suety yellow.
裘德听了，只发出一种滑稽的惊笑声，太大声又太刺耳，不可能是真笑。然后他转身回去对着砧板，说：“威廉，我想我应付得了。”虽然他的声音很柔和，但是威廉看到他把菜刀握得很紧，像是要拧出水来，指节都泛白了。
They were lucky then, both of them, that Malcolm and JB returned before they had to continue talking, but not before Willem heard Jude begin to ask “Why are—” And although he never finished his sentence (and indeed, didn’t speak to Willem once throughout dinner, through which he kept his sleeves perfectly neat), Willem knew that his question would not have been “Why are you asking me this?” but “Why are you asking me this?” because Willem had always been careful not to express too much interest in exploring the many cupboarded cabinet in which Jude had secreted himself.
当时他们两个人都很幸运，就在他们继续往下谈之前，马尔科姆和杰比回来了，不过威廉已经听到裘德开口问：“为什么你……”他始终没讲完（而且整顿晚餐都没跟威廉说话，从头到尾袖子保持得干干净净），但威廉知道他的问题不会是“你为什么问我这个？”而是“为什么问我这个的是你？”因为裘德有很多秘密，威廉向来很小心，避免显露太多想要探索那些秘密的兴趣。
If it had been anyone else, he told himself, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have demanded answers, he would have called mutual friends, he would have sat him down and yelled and pleaded and threatened until a confession was extracted. But this was part of the deal when you were friends with Jude: he knew it, Andy knew it, they all knew it. You let things slide that your instincts told you not to, you scooted around the edges of your suspicions. You understood that proof of your friendship lay in keeping your distance, in accepting what was told you, in turning and walking away when the door was shut in your face instead of trying to force it open again. The war-room discussions the four of them had had about other people—about Black Henry Young, when they thought the girl he was dating was cheating on him and were trying to decide how to tell him; about Ezra, when they knew the girl he was dating was cheating on him and were trying to decide how to tell him—they would never have about Jude. He would consider it a betrayal, and it wouldn’t help, anyway.
威廉告诉自己，如果是其他人，他一定不会迟疑。他会要求知道答案，他会找共同的朋友过来，大家坐下来，又谩骂又恳求又威胁，直到他和盘托出。但是要成为裘德的好友，这是条件的一部分：他知道，安迪知道，他们全都知道。你放过了直觉告诉你不该放过的事情，你回避着不去猜疑。你明白若要证明你的友谊，你必须保持距离，接受他告诉你的事情；如果那扇门在你面前关上，你就必须转身离去，而非强行把门打开。他们四个人讨论策略时都是关于其他人的——关于黑亨利·杨，当时他们怀疑与他交往的女生背着他劈腿，于是商量该怎么告诉他；关于埃兹拉，当时他们知道与他交往的那个女生背着他劈腿，于是商量该怎么告诉他——他们永远不会讨论裘德。裘德会认为那是背叛，而且反正也不会有帮助。
For the rest of the night, they avoided each other, but on his way to bed, he found himself standing outside Jude’s room, his hand hovering above the door, ready to knock, before he returned to himself: What would he say? What did he want to hear? And so he left, continued on, and the next day, when Jude made no mention of the previous evening’s almost-conversation, he didn’t either, and soon that day turned to night, and then another, and another, and they moved further and further from his ever trying, however ineffectively, to make Jude answer a question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
这一夜接下来的时间里他们一直回避彼此，但是回房睡觉前，威廉不自觉地来到裘德房门口。他举起手停在门前，准备敲门，然后自问：他会说什么？他想听到什么？于是他离开了，回自己房间睡觉。次日，裘德完全没提前一天傍晚几乎要发生的对话，威廉也没提。于是白天转为夜晚，然后又过一天，再过一天，他们越来越远离那时的状态。他曾经尝试让裘德回答一个他鼓不起勇气问的问题，却徒劳无功。
But it was always there, that question, and in unexpected moments it would muscle its way into his consciousness, positioning itself stubbornly at the forefront of his mind, as immovable as a troll. Four years ago, he and JB were sharing an apartment and attending graduate school, and Jude, who had remained in Boston for law school, had come down to visit them. It had been night then, too, and there had been a locked bathroom door, and him banging on it, abruptly, inexplicably terrified, and Jude answering it, looking irritated but also (or was he imagining this?) strangely guilty, and asking him “What, Willem?” and he once again being unable to answer, but knowing that something was amiss. Inside the room had smelled sharply tannic, the rusted-metal scent of blood, and he had even picked through the trash can and found a curl of a bandage wrapper, but was that from dinner, when JB had cut himself with a knife while trying to chop a carrot in his hand (Willem suspected he exaggerated his incompetency in the kitchen in order to avoid having to do any prep work), or was it from Jude’s nighttime punishments? But again (again!), he did nothing, and when he passed Jude (feigning sleep or actually asleep?) on the sofa in the living room, he said nothing, and the next day, he again said nothing, and the days unfurled before him as clean as paper, and with each day he said nothing, and nothing, and nothing.
可是那个问题一直存在，而且会在预期之外的时刻硬闯进他脑海里，坚决地霸住位子不走，像钓饵似的动也不动。四年前，他和杰比读研究生时合租公寓，留在波士顿读法学院的裘德曾南下来拜访他们。当时也是夜晚，裘德把自己锁在浴室里，他忽然跑去猛敲浴室门，无来由地恐惧极了。裘德开了门，看起来很不高兴，但同时（还是他想象出来的）又有种奇怪的羞愧表情，然后问他：“威廉，什么事？”他无法回答，但心知有事情出了差错，浴室里一股浓烈的酸涩，是鲜血的生锈金属气味。他去翻垃圾桶时甚至还找到一长条绷带，但那是源自晚餐前杰比切胡萝卜时不小心切到手（威廉怀疑他故意夸大自己在厨房的无能，好避免做任何备菜工作），还是裘德夜间的自我惩罚？但是再一次（再一次！），他什么都没做。他经过睡在客厅沙发上的裘德时（他是装睡，还是真的睡了？），什么也没说。次日，还是什么都没说。往后的日子像干净的白纸在他面前展开，随着每一天过去，他什么都没说，没说，没说。
And now there was this. If he had done something (what?) three years ago, eight years ago, would this have happened? And what exactly was this?
然后是现在这件事。如果他三年前、八年前做点事（什么事？），这件事会发生吗？而且这到底是什么事？
But this time he would say something, because this time he had proof. This time, to let Jude slip away and evade him would mean that he himself would be culpable if anything happened.
这回他要说话了，因为这回他有了证据。这回，让裘德再躲着溜掉，就表示如果出了什么事，他就难辞其咎了。
After he had resolved this, he felt the fatigue overwhelm him, felt it erase the worry and anxiety and frustration of the night. It was the last day of the year, and as he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, the last thing he remembered feeling was surprise that he should be falling asleep so fast.
他下定决心之后，觉得一股疲倦的大浪袭来，抹去了这一夜的焦虑和困惑。这是今年的最后一天，当他躺在自己的床上、闭上眼睛时，他记得的最后一个感觉，就是很惊讶自己居然这么快就睡着了。
