《渺小一生》:“你读过柏拉图吗？”

　 He knew French and German. He knew the periodic table. He knew—as much as he didn’t care to—large parts of the Bible almost by memory. He knew how to help birth a calf and rewire a lamp and unclog a drain and the most efficient way to harvest a walnut tree and which mushrooms were poisonous and which were not and how to bale hay and how to test a watermelon, an apple, a squash, a muskmelon for freshness by thunking it in the right spot. (And then he knew things he wished he didn’t, things he hoped never to have to use again, things that, when he thought of them or dreamed of them at night, made him curl into himself with hatred and shame.)

他会法语和德语，他懂化学周期表，而且尽管很不喜欢，他几乎记得《圣经》里的大部分内容。他知道如何接生小牛，如何修好电灯的电线，如何疏通堵塞的排水管，如何用最有效率的方法采收核桃，如何辨认菇类有没有毒，如何把干草打包成一大捆，也知道挑西瓜、苹果、胡瓜、香瓜时，该敲哪个部位来测试其新鲜程度（另外有些事情他但愿自己不知道，有些事他希望永远不会再用上，还有些事，当他夜里想到或梦到时，会憎恨或羞愧得蜷缩起身子）。

　 And yet it often seemed he knew nothing of any real value or use, not really. The languages and the math, fine. But daily he was reminded of how much he didn’t know. He had never heard of the sitcoms whose episodes were constantly referenced. He had never been to a movie. He had never gone on vacation. He had never been to summer camp. He had never had pizza or popsicles or macaroni and cheese (and he had certainly never had—as both Malcolm and JB had—foie gras or sushi or marrow). He had never owned a computer or a phone, he had rarely been allowed to go online. He had never owned anything, he realized, not really: the books he had that he was so proud of, the shirts that he repaired again and again, they were nothing, they were trash, the pride he took in them was more shameful than not owning anything at all. The classroom was the safest place, and the only place he felt fully confident: everywhere else was an unceasing avalanche of marvels, each more baffling than the next, each another reminder of his bottomless ignorance. He found himself keeping mental lists of new things he had heard and encountered. But he could never ask anyone for the answers. To do so would be an admission of extreme otherness, which would invite further questions and would leave him exposed, and which would inevitably lead to conversations he definitely was not prepared to have. He felt, often, not so much foreign—for even the foreign students (even Odval, from a village outside Ulaanbaatar) seemed to understand these references—as from another time altogether: his childhood might well have been spent in the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first, for all he had apparently missed, and for how obscure and merely decorative what he did know seemed to be. How was it that apparently all of his peers, whether they were born in Lagos or Los Angeles, had had more or less the same experience, with the same cultural landmarks? Surely there was someone who knew as little as he did? And if not, how was he ever to catch up?

然而他常常觉得，自己好像不懂任何真正有价值或实用的事情。好吧，他很擅长语文和数学。但每一天总有事情提醒他自己是多么无知。大家总是提起剧情的某某情境喜剧，他从没听说过。他从来没看过电影，从来没度过假，从来没参加过夏令营。他没吃过披萨、棒冰或奶酪通心粉（而且不像马尔科姆和杰比，他当然也没吃过鹅肝、寿司或牛骨髓）。他从来没有电脑或手机，也很少能上网。然后他发现，自己没真正拥有过任何东西。他曾经很得意拥有的那些书、他补了又补的衬衫，这些根本没什么，都是垃圾；他因为拥有这些东西而生出的得意比一无所有更丢脸。教室是最安全的地方，也是唯一让他觉得信心满满的地方。其他地方，不管在哪里，都有不断的惊讶接连而来，一个比一个难对付，每一个都在提醒他有多么无知。他发现自己总在心里记下他所听到、碰到的新事物，但永远没法拿去找谁问出答案。因为去问就等于承认自己跟其他人极其不同，这样会招来别人进一步的问题，让他毫无保障，而且无可避免地要开启一些他绝对没有准备要进行的对话。他常常觉得，眼前的一切陌生得像是从一个截然不同的时代跑来的（就连外国学生，甚至来自蒙古乌兰巴托市外一个小村子的奥得瓦，都懂得这些事物的含义）。显然他错过了好多事情，而他真正知道的事情都冷僻又不实用，他的童年像是在19世纪，而非21世纪度过的。他所有的同辈，无论是生于美国洛杉矶或非洲拉各斯，多少有着相同的经验，也有相同的文化里程碑。一定有人知道的跟他一样少吧？如果没有，那他怎么可能追赶得上？

　 In the evenings, when a group of them lay splayed in someone’s room (a candle burning, a joint burning as well), the conversation often turned to his classmates’ childhoods, which they had barely left but about which they were curiously nostalgic and certainly obsessed. They recounted what seemed like every detail of them, though he was never sure if the goal was to compare with one another their similarities or to boast of their differences, because they seemed to take equal pleasure in both. They spoke of curfews, and rebellions, and punishments (a few people’s parents had hit them, and they related these stories with something close to pride, which he also found curious) and pets and siblings, and what they had worn that had driven their parents crazy, and what groups they had hung out with in high school and to whom they had lost their virginity, and where, and how, and cars they had crashed and bones they had broken, and sports they had played and bands they had started. They spoke of disastrous family vacations and strange, colorful relatives and odd next-door neighbors and teachers, both beloved and loathed. He enjoyed these divulgences more than he expected—these were real teenagers who’d had the sorts of real, plain lives he had always wondered about—and he found it both relaxing and educational to sit there late at night and listen to them. His silence was both a necessity and a protection, and had the added benefit of making him appear more mysterious and more interesting than he knew he was. “What about you, Jude?” a few people had asked him, early in the term, and he knew enough by then—he was a fast learner—to simply shrug and say, with a smile, “It’s too boring to get into.” He was astonished but relieved by how easily they accepted that, and grateful too for their self-absorption. None of them really wanted to listen to someone else’s story anyway; they only wanted to tell their own.

有些夜晚，当他们一群人躺在某个人的房间里（点着一根蜡烛，也点了一根大麻）谈话时，往往会谈起各自的童年。童年时代才刚结束，他们却异常怀念，而且绝对痴迷。他们叙述童年的各种细节，但他从来不确定目的是要比较其中的相似程度，还是吹嘘自己的与众不同，因为这两种带给他们的乐趣似乎是相同的。他们谈到父母规定他们几点要回家，以及他们的反叛行为与受到的惩罚（少数几个人的父母会打他们，而他们讲起挨打的故事简直是得意，这点也令他想不透）；他们谈到宠物和兄弟姐妹，谈到穿戴什么惹得父母气疯了，谈到中学时代跟哪些人玩在一起，他们破处的对象、地点、前后过程，以及撞坏的车、断掉的骨头、玩过的运动和组过的乐团。他们谈到灾难性的家庭度假、各式各样奇怪的亲戚、诡异的隔壁邻居，还有喜欢跟讨厌的老师。他没想到自己这么爱听同学的这类倾诉——这些是真实的十来岁青少年，他们经历过他向来好奇的那种真实、平凡的生活——而且他觉得坐在那里听他们聊到深夜，既轻松又学到好多。他的沉默既是必要的，也是一种保护，额外的好处是让他显得更神秘、更有趣。“那裘德你呢？”一开始少数几个人问过他，而向来学得很快的他，此时已经懂得够多，只是耸耸肩微笑说：“太无聊了，没什么好说的。”他很惊讶，但放心地发现他们很轻易地就接受了这个说法，也很庆幸他们只关心自己。总之，没有一个人真想听其他人的故事，他们只想讲自己的。

　 And yet his silence did not go unnoticed by everyone, and it was his silence that had inspired his nickname. This was the year Malcolm discovered postmodernism, and JB had made such a fuss about how late Malcolm was to that particular ideology that he hadn’t admitted that he hadn’t heard of it either.

但他的沉默不是没有人注意到，也因此替他取了绰号。这是马尔科姆发现后现代主义那一年，杰比对于马尔科姆这么晚才知道大惊小怪，搞得他不敢承认自己也没听过。

　 “You can’t just decide you’re post-black, Malcolm,” JB had said. “And also: you have to have actually been black to begin with in order to move beyond blackness.”

“马尔科姆，你不能就这样决定你是后黑人。”杰比当时说，“而且呢，你得先实际当过黑人，才能进入到后面的阶段。”

　 “You’re such a dick, JB,” Malcolm had said.

“你真的很烦，杰比。”马尔科姆说。

　 “Or,” JB had continued, “you have to be so genuinely uncategorizable that the normal terms of identity don’t even apply to you.” JB had turned toward him, then, and he had felt himself freeze with a momentary terror. “Like Judy here: we never see him with anyone, we don’t know what race he is, we don’t know anything about him. Post-sexual, post-racial, post-identity, post-past.” He smiled at him, presumably to show he was at least partly joking. “The post-man. Jude the Postman.”

“或者呢，”杰比继续说，“你必须真的无法归类，一般的身份词汇无法适用在你身上。”然后杰比转向他，害他一时之间吓得整个人僵住，“比方裘德，我们从来没看他跟任何人交往，不不知道他的种族，我们对他一无所知。后性别、后种族、后身份、后经历，”他朝他微笑，应该是想表示他多少是在开玩笑，“后男人[2]。后男人裘德。”

　 “The Postman,” Malcolm had repeated: he was never above grabbing on to someone else’s discomfort as a way of deflecting attention from his own. And although the name didn’t stick—when Willem had returned to the room and heard it, he had only rolled his eyes in response, which seemed to remove some of its thrill for JB—he was reminded that as much as he had convinced himself he was fitting in, as much as he worked to conceal the spiky odd parts of himself, he was fooling no one. They knew he was strange, and now his foolishness extended to his having convinced himself that he had convinced them that he wasn’t. Still, he kept attending the late-night groups, kept joining his classmates in their rooms: he was pulled to them, even though he now knew he was putting himself in jeopardy by attending them.

“后男人。”马尔科姆跟着说了一遍。裘德从来就不擅长抓住别人的弱点，以便转移自己身上的注意力。而且尽管这个绰号没跟着他——威廉回到房间听到时，只翻了个白眼，杰比似乎就没那么起劲了——但他因此想到，尽管他极力说服自己他已经融入大家，努力隐藏自己种种古怪的部分，他其实瞒不了任何人。他们早就知道他很怪，他还以为他已经让他们相信自己并不奇怪，这才更加愚蠢。但他还是继续参加那些深夜聚会，继续去同学房间。他深受吸引，尽管现在他知道，去参加这些聚会是置自己于险境。

　 Sometimes during these sessions (he had begun to think of them this way, as intensive tutorials in which he could correct his own cultural paucities) he would catch Willem watching him with an indecipherable expression on his face, and would wonder how much Willem might have guessed about him. Sometimes he had to stop himself from saying something to him. Maybe he was wrong, he sometimes thought. Maybe it would be nice to confess to someone that most of the time he could barely relate to what was being discussed, that he couldn’t participate in everyone else’s shared language of childhood pratfalls and frustrations. But then he would stop himself, for admitting ignorance of that language would mean having to explain the one he did speak.

在这些聚会中（他逐渐觉得就像在找家教进行考前恶补，以掩饰自己的文化匮乏），有时他会看到威廉盯着自己，脸上的表情高深莫测，于是很好奇自己的事情威廉猜到了多少。有时他还得阻止自己去跟他说什么。有时他心想，也许他错了。也许找人坦白也不错，可以承认他大部分时候都不了解他们在谈的话题，承认他没有其他人都有的童年丢脸事和困惑事。但接着他会阻止自己，因为承认他不懂这些，就意味着他必须解释自己懂哪些。

　 Although if he were to tell anyone, he knew it would be Willem. He admired all three of his roommates, but Willem was the one he trusted. At the home, he had quickly learned there were three types of boys: The first type might cause the fight (this was JB). The second type wouldn’t join in, but wouldn’t run to get help, either (this was Malcolm). And the third type would actually try to help you out (this was the rarest type, and this was obviously Willem). Maybe it was the same with girls as well, but he hadn’t spent enough time around girls to know this for sure.

如果真要找个人说，他知道他会找威廉。不过三个室友他都很欣赏，只是威廉是他唯一信赖的人。在少年之家时，他很快就发现男生分成三种：第一种可能会引起打架（这是杰比）；第二种不会加入，但也不会跑去找大人帮忙（这是马尔科姆）；第三种则会设法帮你脱身（这种人最稀少，显然就是威廉）。或许女生也可以如此分类，但他跟女生相处的时间不够多，无法确知。

　 And increasingly he was certain Willem knew something. (Knows what? he’d argue with himself, in saner moments. You’re just looking for a reason to tell him, and then what will he think of you? Be smart. Say nothing. Have some self-control.) But this was of course illogical. He knew even before he got to college that his childhood had been atypical—you had only to read a few books to come to that conclusion—but it wasn’t until recently that he had realized how atypical it truly was. Its very strangeness both insulated and isolated him: it was near inconceivable that anyone would guess at its shape and specificities, which meant that if they did, it was because he had dropped clues like cow turds, great ugly unmissable pleas for attention.

而且他越来越确定，威廉知道些什么（知道什么？比较清醒时，他会在心里反驳自己。你只是想找理由告诉他，然后他会怎么想你？放聪明点，什么都别说，控制一下自己吧）。但这当然说不通。他上大学之前就知道自己的童年很反常——只要读几本书就可以得出这个结论——但直到最近，他才明白到底有多反常。这种奇异性保护了他，同时也孤立了他，他简直无法想象任何人能猜到那种状况和独特性。这表示如果他们猜到了，那是因为他留下了线索，就像一团团巨大而丑陋的牛屎，不可能没被注意到。

　 Still. The suspicion persisted, sometimes with an uncomfortable intensity, as if it was inevitable that he should say something and was being sent messages that took more energy to ignore than they would have to obey.

总之，那种疑心持续着，有时还强烈得令人难受，仿佛他无可避免地应该说一些话，而要他忽略接收到的信息反倒更累，还不如干脆顺其自然。

　 One night it was just the four of them. This was early in their third year, and was unusual enough for them all to feel cozy and a little sentimental about the clique they had made. And they were a clique, and to his surprise, he was part of it: the building they lived in was called Hood Hall, and they were known around campus as the Boys in the Hood. All of them had other friends (JB and Willem had the most), but it was known (or at least assumed, which was just as good) that their first loyalties were to one another. None of them had ever discussed this explicitly, but they all knew they liked this assumption, that they liked this code of friendship that had been imposed upon them.

某天晚上只有他们四个人。这是在他们刚升大三那年，四个人都颇为难得地对他们形成的小圈子感到舒适，还有一点感伤。他们的确是个小圈子，而且让他惊讶的是，他竟是其中之一：他们住的那栋宿舍叫虎德馆（Hood Hall），校园里大家都说他们是“虎德小子”。他们有各自的朋友（杰比和威廉的朋友最多），但大家知道（至少是如此假设，这样也不错）他们对彼此最忠心。他们四个从来没有明确谈过这件事，但心里都明白他们喜欢这个假设，喜欢这个硬加在他们身上的友谊准则。

　 The food that night had been pizza, ordered by JB and paid for by Malcolm. There had been weed, procured by JB, and outside there had been rain and then hail, the sound of it cracking against the glass and the wind rattling the windows in their splintered wooden casements the final elements in their happiness. The joint went round and round, and although he didn’t take a puff—he never did; he was too worried about what he might do or say if he lost control over himself—he could feel the smoke filling his eyes, pressing upon his eyelids like a shaggy warm beast. He had been careful, as he always was when one of the others paid for food, to eat as little as possible, and although he was still hungry (there were two slices left over, and he stared at them, fixedly, before catching himself and turning away resolutely), he was also deeply content. I could fall asleep, he thought, and stretched out on the couch, pulling Malcolm’s blanket over him as he did. He was pleasantly exhausted, but then he was always exhausted those days: it was as if the daily effort it took to appear normal was so great that it left energy for little else. (He was aware, sometimes, of seeming wooden, icy, of being boring, which he recognized that here might have been considered the greater misfortune than being whatever it was he was.) In the background, as if far away, he could hear Malcolm and JB having a fight about evil.

那天晚上的食物是披萨，是杰比订的，马尔科姆付钱。还有大麻，是杰比弄来的。屋外下着雨，接着又降下冰雹。冰雹敲着窗玻璃，加上大风摇撼着破旧木头窗框的声音，让他们觉得幸福极了。大麻传了一圈又一圈，他没吸（他从来不吸，因为太担心自己如果失去控制，可能会做出或说出什么），但他可以感觉那烟雾充满自己的双眼，像一头毛茸茸的温暖野兽压着他的眼皮。一如往常，每次有其他人出钱买吃的，他就会留神要少吃一点，尽管他还是饿（他紧盯着只剩两片的披萨，然后才想起来，坚决地别开眼睛），但同时他也深觉满足。我可以睡觉了，他心想，然后在沙发上躺下，拉了马尔科姆的毯子盖好。愉快而精疲力竭，但那几年他总是精疲力竭，仿佛每天光是要表现正常，就已经累得半死，实在没力气多做别的（有时他发现，不管他的真面目是什么，在他人眼中当个看似呆板、冰冷、无趣的人，才是更大的不幸）。背景声中，仿佛在很远的地方，他可以听到马尔科姆和杰比在吵有关邪恶的事情。

　 “I’m just saying, we wouldn’t be having this argument if you’d read Plato.”

“我只是说，如果你读过柏拉图，我们就不会吵这个了。”

　 “Yeah, but what Plato?”

“是吗，柏拉图的什么？”

　 “Have you read Plato?”

“你读过柏拉图吗？”

　 “I don’t see—”

“我看不出……”

　 “Have you?”

“你读过吗？”

　 “No, but—”

“没有，可是……”