《渺小一生》:“真希望我能说不是。”

　 But the odd thing was this: by his story morphing into one about a car accident, he was being given an opportunity for reinvention; all he had to do was claim it. But he never could. He could never call it an accident, because it wasn’t. And so was it pride or stupidity to not take the escape route he’d been offered? He didn’t know.

但奇怪的是，因为他的故事演变成车祸意外，他有了重新创造的机会，只要承认这个说法就好了。但他从来办不到。他永远也没办法说那是意外，因为明明就不是。所以他不把握这个送上门来的脱逃路径，是傲慢还是愚蠢？他不知道。

　 And then he noticed something else. He was in the middle of another episode—a highly humiliating one, it had taken place just as he was coming off of his shift at the library, and Willem had just happened to be there a few minutes early, about to start his own shift—when he heard the librarian, a kind, well-read woman whom he liked, ask why he had these. They had moved him, Mrs. Eakeley and Willem, to the break room in the back, and he could smell the burned-sugar tang of old coffee, a scent he despised anyway, so sharp and assaultive that he almost vomited.

后来他注意到另一件事。当时他的疼痛正好发作（那回特别丢脸，发生在他图书馆打工的交班之后，当时威廉刚好提早几分钟到，正要开始值班），听到一个他很喜欢、很和善而博学的女图书馆员伊克里太太在跟威廉说话，问他为什么会有这种疼痛发作。当时他们两个已经把他搬到后面的休息室，他闻得到咖啡加热过久所发出的焦臭，总之是他很讨厌的气味，鲜明又凶猛，让他差点吐出来。

　 “A car injury,” he heard Willem’s reply, as from across a great black lake.

“是车祸受伤。”他听到威廉回答，好像从一座黑色的大湖对面传来。

　 But it wasn’t until that night that he registered what Willem had said, and the word he had used: injury, not accident. Was it deliberate, he wondered? What did Willem know? He was so addled that he might have actually asked him, had Willem been around, but he wasn’t—he was at his girlfriend’s.

直到那天夜里，他才注意到威廉说的话，还有他用的词汇：受伤，不是意外。那是刻意的吗？他很好奇。威廉知道些什么？他整个人昏乱到极点，要是威廉在场，他可能会开口问他。但威廉不在，去他女朋友那儿了。

　 No one was there, he realized. The room was his. He felt the creature inside him—which he pictured as slight and raggedy and lemurlike, quick-reflexed and ready to sprint, its dark wet eyes forever scanning the landscape for future dangers—relax and sag to the ground. It was at these moments that he found college most enjoyable: he was in a warm room, and the next day he would have three meals and eat as much as he wanted, and in between he would go to classes, and no one would try to hurt him or make him do anything he didn’t want to do. Somewhere nearby were his roommates—his friends—and he had survived another day without divulging any of his secrets, and placed another day between the person he once was and the person he was now. It seemed, always, an accomplishment worthy of sleep, and so he did, closing his eyes and readying himself for another day in the world.

他发现，没人在，整个房间只有他一个人。他感觉到心底的那个活物松懈下来，垮在地上。他想象那是只瘦小又蓬乱、像狐猴似的生物，反应灵敏，随时准备好要冲刺，深色的湿眼睛永远搜索着四周，寻找任何危险的迹象。在这些时刻，他觉得大学生活最让他享受的是：他在一个温暖的房间，次日他会吃三顿饭，想吃多少都行，另外他会去上课，没有人会想伤害他或逼他做任何他不想做的事。他的室友、他的朋友就在附近不远处，他又度过了一天，不必暴露自己的任何秘密，同时，他的过去和现在之间又多加了一天。感觉上，这永远是一项值得睡觉的成就，于是他睡了，闭上眼睛，准备好迎接下一天。

　 It had been Ana, his first and only social worker, and the first person who had never betrayed him, who had talked to him seriously about college—the college he ended up attending—and who was convinced that he would get in. She hadn’t been the first person to suggest this, but she had been the most insistent.

安娜是他第一个、也是唯一的社工人员，同时她也是第一个不曾背叛他的人。当初就是安娜认真跟他谈到去读大学，还说服他相信自己能被录取。她不是第一个建议他读大学的人，但她最坚持。

　 “I don’t see why not,” she said. It was a favorite phrase of hers. The two of them were sitting on Ana’s porch, in Ana’s backyard, eating banana bread that Ana’s girlfriend had made. Ana didn’t care for nature (too buggy, too squirmy, she always said), but when he made the suggestion that they go outdoors—tentatively, because at the time he was still unsure where the boundaries of her tolerance for him lay—she’d slapped the edges of her armchair and heaved herself up. “I don’t see why not. Leslie!” she called into the kitchen, where Leslie was making lemonade. “You can bring it outside!”

“我看不出有什么不可以。”她说。这是她最爱讲的句子。当时他们两人坐在安娜家后院的门廊，吃着安娜的女朋友烤的香蕉面包。安娜不喜欢大自然（太多小虫、太多蠕虫了，她总是这么说），但是当他提议去室外时（试探性地，因为当时他还不确定她对他的容忍极限在哪里），她拍了一下安乐椅的边缘，站起来。“我看不出有什么不可以。莱斯莉！”她朝厨房喊道。莱斯莉正在弄柠檬水。“你可以端到外头来！”

　 Hers was the first face he saw when he had at last opened his eyes in the hospital. For a long moment, he couldn’t remember where he was, or who he was, or what had happened, and then, suddenly, her face was above his, looking at him. “Well, well,” she said. “He awakes.”

当初他终于在医院睁开眼睛时，看到的第一个人就是她。有好一会儿，他想不起自己在哪里、自己是谁、发生了什么事，突然间，她的脸出现在他上方，看着他。“哎呀，”她说，“他醒了。”

　 She was always there, it seemed, no matter what time he woke. Sometimes it was day, and he heard the sounds of the hospital—the mouse squeak of the nurses’ shoes, and the clatter of a cart, and the drone of the intercom announcements—in the hazy, half-formed moments he had before shifting into full consciousness. But sometimes it was night, when everything was silent around him, and it took him longer to figure out where he was, and why he was there, although it came back to him, it always did, and unlike some realizations, it never grew easier or fuzzier with each remembrance. And sometimes it was neither day nor night but somewhere in between, and there would be something strange and dusty about the light that made him imagine for a moment that there might after all be such a thing as heaven, and that he might after all have made it there. And then he would hear Ana’s voice, and remember again why he was there, and want to close his eyes all over again.

无论他什么时间醒来，她似乎总是在那儿。有时是白天，他在完全恢复意识前那些朦胧、半成形的时刻，听到医院的种种声音（护士们的鞋子发出老鼠般的吱吱声，推车的哗啦声，还有医院内广播的嗡响）。有时是夜晚，周围的一切沉寂下来，他就得花更多时间搞清身在何处、为什么会在这里，不过最后他总会想起来，而且不像某些领悟，他每次想起来的过程从来不会变得更加容易或更加模糊。有时不是白天也不是黑夜，而是介于两者之间，光线会变得有点奇怪且灰暗，让他一时之间想着天堂可能是存在的，他可能是来到了天堂。然后他会听到安娜的声音，再次想起自己为什么来到这里，只想再闭上眼睛。

　 They talked of nothing in those moments. She would ask him if he was hungry, and no matter his answer, she would have a sandwich for him to eat. She would ask him if he was in pain, and if he was, how intense it was. It was in her presence that he’d had the first of his episodes, and the pain had been so awful—unbearable, almost, as if someone had reached in and grabbed his spine like a snake and was trying to loose it from its bundles of nerves by shaking it—that later, when the surgeon told him that an injury like his was an “insult” to the body, and one the body would never recover from completely, he had understood what the word meant and realized how correct and well-chosen it was.

在那些时刻，他们会说些不重要的小事。她会问他饿不饿，而不管回答是什么，她都会拿出一个三明治让他吃。她会问他身上痛不痛，如果痛，就问他有多痛。他第一次疼痛发作就是在她面前，那种痛太可怕了——几乎无法忍受，好像有个人伸手到他体内，像抓住一条蛇似的抓住他的脊椎，然后一直猛摇，想甩掉上头的神经束——之后，那名外科医师跟他说，他的这种伤是对身体的一种“损伤”，而且他的身体将永远无法完全复原。他听了，很清楚那个字眼的意思，也明白那个字眼挑选得有多精准。

　 “You mean he’s going to have these all his life?” Ana had asked, and he had been grateful for her outrage, especially because he was too tired and frightened to summon forth any of his own.

“你的意思是，他这辈子都会有这种疼痛？”安娜当时问，他一直很感激她当时的愤慨，尤其是他太累又太害怕，根本无法发脾气。

　 “I wish I could say no,” said the surgeon. And then, to him, “But they may not be this severe in the future. You’re young now. The spine has wonderful reparative qualities.”

“真希望我能说不是。”那医师对他说，“不过以后有可能不会那么严重。你现在还很年轻，脊椎有很神奇的恢复能力。”

　 “Jude,” she’d said to him when the next one came, two days after the first. He could hear her voice, but as if from far away, and then, suddenly, awfully close, filling his mind like explosions. “Hold on to my hand,” she’d said, and again, her voice swelled and receded, but she seized his hand and he held it so tightly he could feel her index finger slide oddly over her ring finger, could almost feel every small bone in her palm reposition themselves in his grip, which had the effect of making her seem like something delicate and intricate, although there was nothing delicate about her in either appearance or manner. “Count,” she commanded him the third time it happened, and he did, counting up to a hundred again and again, parsing the pain into negotiable increments. In those days, before he learned it was better to be still, he would flop on his bed like a fish on a boat deck, his free hand scrabbling for a halyard line to cling to for safety, the hospital mattress unyielding and uncaring, searching for a position in which the discomfort might lessen. He tried to be quiet, but he could hear himself making strange animal noises, so that at times a forest appeared beneath his eyelids, populated with screech owls and deer and bears, and he would imagine he was one of them, and that the sounds he was making were normal, part of the woods’ unceasing soundtrack.

第一次的两天之后，疼痛再度发作，安娜对他说：“裘德，握着我的手。”他听得到她的声音，好像是从远处传来，又忽然近得可怕，像爆炸般填满他的心。“握着我的手。”她又说了一次。她的声音忽大忽小，她抓住他的手，而他握得好紧，都可以感觉到她的食指奇怪地滑到无名指上方，也几乎可以感觉到她的每块小骨头被他握得重组位置，使她显得娇弱而精致，尽管她的外貌或态度一点都不娇弱。“数数字吧。”第三次发作时，她命令他。他照做了，数到一百，一遍又一遍，把那疼痛分割成可以忍受的小片段。在那些日子里，他还没学会疼痛发作时最好不要动。他会在床上翻跳，像一只被扔在甲板上的鱼，可以动的那只手乱扒，想抓住一根保命的绳索。医院的床垫坚硬而顽强，他躺在上头，努力寻找一个可以舒缓疼痛的姿势。他想保持安静，却听到自己发出奇怪的动物叫声，所以有时候他眼皮底下会出现一片森林，里头有叫声刺耳的猫头鹰、鹿和熊，而他想象自己是其中之一，他发出的声音很正常，属于森林里持续不断的那片声响。

　 When it had ended, she would give him some water, a straw in the glass so he wouldn’t have to raise his head. Beneath him, the floor tilted and bucked, and he was often sick. He had never been in the ocean, but he imagined this was what it might feel like, imagined the swells of water forcing the linoleum floor into quavering hillocks. “Good boy,” she’d say as he drank. “Have a little more.”

等到疼痛结束，安娜会给他一杯水，里头插着吸管，免得他还要抬起头来喝。在他下方，地板歪斜又起伏，他常常吐。他从来没乘船出海过，但他想象眼下就是那种感觉，想象涌起的海水逼得油布地板变成颤抖的小丘。“好孩子。”他喝水时，安娜会说，“再多喝一点。”

　 “It’ll get better,” she’d say, and he’d nod, because he couldn’t begin to imagine his life if it didn’t get better. His days now were hours: hours without pain and hours with it, and the unpredictability of this schedule—and his body, although it was his in name only, for he could control nothing of it—exhausted him, and he slept and slept, the days slipping away from him uninhabited.

“以后会好转的。”她说。他点点头，因为他不敢想象如果没有好转，自己的人生会是什么样子。现在他的日子是以小时计算：几小时不痛、几小时会痛，而且这个时间表的不可预测性（他的身体也不可预测，只有名义上是他的，因为他根本控制不了自己的身体）令他精疲力竭。他睡了又睡，一天天就这样浑浑噩噩地过去。

　 Later, it would be easier to simply tell people that it was his legs that hurt him, but that wasn’t really true: it was his back. Sometimes he could predict what would trigger the spasming, that pain that would extend down his spine into one leg or the other, like a wooden stake set aflame and thrust into him: a certain movement, lifting something too heavy or too high, simple tiredness. But sometimes he couldn’t. And sometimes the pain would be preceded by an interlude of numbness, or a twinging that was almost pleasurable, it was so light and zingy, just a sensation of electric prickles moving up and down his spine, and he would know to lie down and wait for it to finish its cycle, a penance he could never escape or avoid. But sometimes it barged in, and those were the worst: he grew fearful that it would arrive at some terribly inopportune time, and before each big meeting, each big interview, each court appearance, he would beg his own back to still itself, to carry him through the next few hours without incident. But all of this was in the future, and each lesson he learned he did so over hours and hours of these episodes, stretched out over days and months and years.

后来，比较简单的方法就是和别人说这是腿痛，但其实不是这样：痛的是他的背部，沿着脊椎往下延伸到其中一条腿，像是有一根点了火的木棒插进他体内。有时他可以预测什么会触发疼痛发作，某种动作，搬太重或太高的东西，或者纯粹因为太累了。但有时候他无法预测。有时候，那疼痛会有预兆，先是一阵短暂的麻痹，或是一阵近乎愉快的痛感，轻微又迅速，只是一种触电般的刺痛在他的脊椎上下移动。这时他就明白要躺下来，等它发作完毕，那是他永远无法逃避或躲开的苦行。有时它会忽然硬闯进来，那是最糟糕的，他越来越害怕疼痛会在某些极度不适当的时候出现，因此每次重大会议、每次重大面试、每次出庭，他都会乞求自己的背部乖一点，撑过接下来几个小时，不要出事。但这一切都是未来的事情了，他从经验中学会撑过几小时，然后延长为几天、几个月、几年。

　 As the weeks passed, she brought him books, and told him to write down titles he was interested in and she would go to the library and get them—but he was too shy to do so. He knew she was his social worker, and that she had been assigned to him, but it wasn’t until more than a month had passed, and the doctors had begun to talk about his casts being removed in a matter of weeks, that she first asked him about what had happened.

过了几个星期后，安娜带了书来给他，还叫他写下他有兴趣读的书，她可以去图书馆帮他借。但他太害羞了，不好意思写下来。他知道她是他的社工人员，被指派来照顾他，但直到一个多月后，医师开始谈到再过几个星期就可以拆掉他身上的石膏时，她才第一次问他发生了什么事。

　 “I don’t remember,” he said. It was his default answer for everything back then. It was a lie as well; in uninvited moments, he’d see the car’s headlights, twinned glares of white, rushing toward him, and recall how he’d shut his eyes and jerked his head to the side, as if that might have prevented the inevitable.

“我不记得了。”他说。这是他当时面对一切问题的预设答案；其实他在撒谎。在一些时刻，回忆中的画面会不请自来，他会看到那辆车的车头灯，两道炽亮的白光，冲向他，然后他想起自己是怎么闭上眼睛，把头扭到一边，好像这样就可以防止那件不可避免的事情发生。

　 She waited. “It’s okay, Jude,” she said. “We basically know what happened. But I need you to tell me at some point, so we can talk about it.” She had interviewed him earlier, did he remember? There had apparently been a moment soon after he’d come out of the first surgery that he had woken, lucid, and answered all her questions, not only about what had happened that night but in the years before it as well—but he honestly didn’t remember this at all, and he fretted about what, exactly, he had said, and what Ana’s expression had been when he’d told her.

安娜等着：“裘德，没关系的。”她说，“我们基本上知道发生了什么事。但是等到某个时间，我要你告诉我，这样我们才可以好好谈谈。”她说她稍早给他做过访谈了，他记得吗？显然是他动过第一次手术不久后醒来时神志清醒，回答了她所有的问题，不光是那一夜发生的事情，连之前好几年的事情都讲了。但他实在什么都不记得了，他很苦恼自己到底说了什么，也担心当时安娜听到时脸上有什么表情。

　 How much had he told her? he asked at one point.

有回他问她他告诉了她多少。