《渺小一生》:“你认为他们会收我这样的人吗？”

　 “Enough,” she said, “to convince me that there’s a hell and those men need to be in it.” She didn’t sound angry, but her words were, and he closed his eyes, impressed and a little scared that the things that had happened to him—to him!—could inspire such passion, such vitriol.

“够多了，”她说，“足以让我相信地狱的存在。那些男人都该待在里头。”她的口气并不愤怒，但她的用字很愤怒。于是他闭上眼睛，很感动，还有点害怕，那些曾经发生在他身上（在他身上！）的事情竟能引起这样的愤怒、这样的刻薄和无情。

　 She oversaw his transfer into his new home, his final home: the Douglasses’. They had two other fosters, both girls, both young—Rosie was eight and had Down syndrome, Agnes was nine and had spina bifida. The house was a maze of ramps, unlovely but sturdy and smooth, and unlike Agnes, he could wheel himself around without asking for assistance.

她负责监督他转到新家去，这也是他最后一个家：道格拉斯家。他们还有另外两个寄养儿童，都是女孩，年纪很小。萝西是8岁的唐氏儿，阿格尼丝是9岁的脊柱裂患者。那栋房子里面充满了坡道，不怎么好看，但平滑结实，而且他可以自己操纵轮椅行动，不像阿格尼丝需要别人的协助。

　 The Douglasses were evangelical Lutherans, but they didn’t make him attend church with them. “They’re good people,” Ana said. “They won’t bother you, and you’ll be safe here. You think you can manage grace at the table for a little privacy and guaranteed security?” She looked at him and smiled. He nodded. “Besides,” she continued, “you can always call me if you want to talk sin.”

道格拉斯夫妇是福音路德会教友，但他们没逼他一起上教堂。“他们是好人。”安娜说，“他们不会烦你，你在这里会很安全。你觉得你可以接受饭前祷告，换来一点隐私和安全的保障吗？”她看着他微笑，他点点头。“何况，”她继续说，“如果你想谈罪行，随时都可以打电话给我。”

　 And indeed, he was in Ana’s care more than in the Douglasses’. He slept in their house, and ate there, and when he was first learning how to move on his crutches, it was Mr. Douglass who sat on a chair outside the bathroom, ready to enter if he slipped and fell getting into or out of the bathtub (he still wasn’t able to balance well enough to take a shower, even with a walker). But it was Ana who took him to most of his doctor’s appointments, and Ana who waited at one end of her backyard, a cigarette in her mouth, as he took his first slow steps toward her, and Ana who finally got him to write down what had happened with Dr. Traylor, and kept him from having to testify in court. He had said he could do it, but she had told him he wasn’t ready yet, and that they had plenty of evidence to put Dr. Traylor away for years even without his testimony, and hearing that, he was able to admit his own relief: relief at not having to say aloud words he didn’t know how to say, and mostly, relief that he wouldn’t have to see Dr. Traylor again. When he at last gave her the statement—which he’d written as plainly as possible, and had imagined while writing it that he was in fact writing about someone else, someone he had known once but had never had to talk to again—she read it through once, impassive, before nodding at him. “Good,” she said briskly, and refolded it and placed it back in its envelope. “Good job,” she added, and then, suddenly, she began to cry, almost ferociously, unable to stop herself. She was saying something to him, but she was weeping so hard he couldn’t understand her, and she had finally left, though she had called him later that night to apologize.

的确，安娜给他的照顾远超过道格拉斯夫妇。他在道格拉斯家睡觉、吃饭，他第一次学习怎么使用两根拐杖行动时，道格拉斯先生就坐在浴室外头的椅子上守着，要是他进出浴缸时滑倒，可以马上进去（他还是站不太稳，即使用助行支架，还是没办法冲澡）。不过，是安娜带着他去大部分的约诊；是安娜等在她家后院的一角，嘴里衔着香烟，看着他第一次开始走路，缓缓走向她；是安娜最后终于让他写下有关特雷勒医师的事，而且让他不必上法庭作证。他说过他可以，但她说他还没准备好，还说就算他不作证，他们也有很多证据可以把特雷勒医师关上很多年。听到这里，他才有办法承认自己松了一口气，因为可以不必说出那些他不知道该怎么说的话，更主要的是，这么一来他就不必再看到特雷勒医师了。当他终于把自己写下来的证词交给她——他尽量写得平铺直叙，想象他在写另外一个人，是他曾经认识、但永远不必再跟他说话的人——她从头到尾看了一次，面无表情，然后对他点点头，“很好。”她干练地说，然后把那份证词折回去，放回信封里。“你做得很好。”她补了一句，然后忽然间哭了起来，简直是痛哭，完全停不下来。她跟他说了一些话，但因为哭得太凶了，他根本听不懂她在说什么。最后她终于离开了，不过那天晚上稍晚的时候，她打电话来跟他道歉。

　 “I’m sorry, Jude,” she said. “That was really unprofessional of me. I just read what you wrote and I just—” She was silent for a period, and then took a breath. “It won’t happen again.”

“对不起，裘德。”她说，“我那样真是太不专业了。只是看了你写的，我就……”她沉默了一会儿，然后吸口气，“这种事不会再发生了。”

　 It was also Ana who, after the doctors determined he wouldn’t be strong enough to go to school, found him a tutor so he could finish high school, and it was she who made him discuss college. “You’re really smart, did you know that?” she asked him. “You could go anywhere, really. I talked to some of your teachers in Montana, and they think so as well. Have you thought about it? You have? Where would you want to go?” And when he told her, preparing himself for her to laugh, she instead only nodded: “I don’t see why not.”

也是安娜在医师们判定他身体太虚弱、没办法上学时，帮他找了家教，让他完成了高中学业，而且也是安娜逼着他讨论上大学的事情。“你真的很聪明，你知道吗？”她问他，“你想去哪所大学都可以，真的。我跟你在蒙大拿州的一些老师谈过，他们也这么认为。你有没有想过上大学？想过吗？你想去哪里？”等到他说出来，以为她会大笑，没想到她只是点点头：“我看不出有什么不可以。”

　 “But,” he began, “do you think they’d take someone like me?”

“可是，”他开口说，“你认为他们会收我这样的人吗？”

　 Once again, she didn’t laugh. “It’s true, you haven’t had the most—traditional—of educations”—she smiled at him—“but your tests are terrific, and although you probably don’t think so, I promise you know more than most, if not all, kids your age.” She sighed. “You may have something to thank Brother Luke for after all.” She studied his face. “So I don’t see why not.”

再一次，她没有嘲笑。“没错，你没怎么受过正规教育，”她露出微笑，“但是你的考试成绩好极了，而且就算你不这么想，我保证你懂得的事情可能比这个年龄所有的小孩都要多，至少是大部分的小孩。”她叹了口气，“或许卢克修士毕竟做了点让你可以感谢的事情。”她审视他的脸，“所以我看不出有什么不可以。”

　 She helped him with everything: she wrote one of his recommendations, she let him use her computer to type up his essay (he didn’t write about the past year; he wrote about Montana, and how he’d learned there to forage for mustard shoots and mushrooms), she even paid for his application fee.

她帮他处理一切：她写了其中一封推荐信，让他用她的电脑写自我介绍短文（他没写过去一年的事；只写有关蒙大拿，还有他在那里如何学会寻找野生油菜和菇类），她甚至帮他出了申请费。

　 When he was accepted—with a full scholarship, as Ana had predicted—he told her it was all because of her.

他被录取了，而且一如安娜的预测，拿到了全额奖学金。他那时跟她说，一切都是有她帮忙的缘故。

　 “Bullshit,” she said. She was so sick by that point that she could only whisper it. “You did it yourself.” Later he would scan through the previous months and see, as if spotlit, the signs of her illness, and how, in his stupidity and self-absorption, he had missed one after the next: her weight loss, her yellowing eyes, her fatigue, all of which he had attributed to—what? “You shouldn’t smoke,” he’d said to her just two months earlier, confident enough around her now to start issuing orders; the first adult he’d done so to. “You’re right,” she’d said, and squinted her eyes at him while inhaling deeply, grinning at him when he sighed at her.

“胡说。”她说。那时，她已经病得只能发出气音，“是你自己办到的。”日后他仔细回顾前几个月，才看出种种她生病的迹象，清楚得有如聚光灯照射，也看出他有多愚蠢，只关心自己，竟然一个接一个错过了：她迅速消瘦、她发黄的双眼、她的疲倦，他原先竟然把这一切都归因于——“你不该抽烟的。”两个月前他这么跟她说，那时他跟她相处已经够放心，还会指挥她这个那个，这是他生平头一回敢这么对待成人。“你说得对。”她说，眯着眼睛看他，同时深深吸一口烟，看到他对她叹气，她咧嘴笑了。

　 Even then, she didn’t give up. “Jude, we should talk about it,” she’d say every few days, and when he shook his head, she’d be silent. “Tomorrow, then,” she’d say. “Do you promise me? Tomorrow we’ll talk about it.”

即使在那时，她还是没有放弃。“裘德，我们应该谈谈你的过去了。”她每隔几天就会说，而当他摇头，她就打住。“那就明天吧。”她会说，“你答应我了喔，明天我们要谈谈。”

　 “I don’t see why I have to talk about it at all,” he muttered at her once. He knew she had read his records from Montana; he knew she knew what he was.

“我不懂为什么要谈。”他有回低声跟她抱怨。他知道她看过他在蒙大拿的档案，他知道她了解他的过去。

　 She was quiet. “One thing I’ve learned,” she said, “you have to talk about these things while they’re fresh. Or you’ll never talk about them. I’m going to teach you how to talk about them, because it’s going to get harder and harder the longer you wait, and it’s going to fester inside you, and you’re always going to think you’re to blame. You’ll be wrong, of course, but you’ll always think it.” He didn’t know how to respond to that, but the next day, when she brought it up again, he shook his head and turned away from her, even though she called after him. “Jude,” she said, once, “I’ve let you go on for too long without addressing this. This is my fault.”

她沉默了一会儿。“我学到的一件事，”她说，“就是你要趁这些事情还新鲜的时候谈，否则就永远不会谈了。我一定要教你怎么谈这些事情，因为你拖得越久，就会越难开口，那些事就会在你心底溃烂化脓，而且你总会觉得一切都该怪自己。当然，这是不对的，但你会一直这么想。”他不知道该如何回答，但次日当她再度提起，他摇摇头转身离开，即使她在他后头喊。“裘德，”有次她说，“我让你拖太久都没有处理这件事。这是我的错。”

　 “Do it for me, Jude,” she said at another point. But he couldn’t; he couldn’t find the language to talk about it, not even to her. Besides, he didn’t want to relive those years. He wanted to forget them, to pretend they belonged to someone else.

“那就为了我吧，裘德。”又有一回她这么说。但他没办法，即使是对她，他都找不出谈那些事的语言。何况，他不想重温那些年的经历。他想忘掉那一切，假装那些都是别人的记忆。

　 By June she was so weak she couldn’t sit. Fourteen months after they’d met, she was the one in bed, and he was the one next to her. Leslie worked the day shift at the hospital, and so often, it was just the two of them in the house. “Listen,” she said. Her throat was dry from one of her medications, and she winced as she spoke. He reached for the jug of water, but she waved her hand, impatiently. “Leslie’s going to take you shopping before you leave; I made a list for her of things you’ll need.” He started to protest, but she stopped him. “Don’t argue, Jude. I don’t have the energy.”

到了六月，她虚弱得连坐起来都没办法。两人认识十四个月后，现在换她躺在床上，他在床边陪伴。莱斯莉白天在医院值班，因此屋里常常只有他们两个人。“听我说，”她说，她的喉咙因为服用的某种药物而发干，讲话时难受得皱起脸。他伸手去拿水壶，但她不耐烦地挥挥手，“你离开之前，莱斯莉会带你去买东西，我帮她写了张单子，列出你会需要的东西。”他开口想反对，但她阻止了，“别跟我争，裘德。我没那个力气。”

　 She swallowed. He waited. “You’re going to be great at college,” she said. She shut her eyes. “The other kids are going to ask you about how you grew up, have you thought about that?”

她吞咽着，他只能等待。“你在大学里会表现得很好。”她说，闭上眼睛，“其他小孩会问你是怎么长大的。你想过这个问题吗？”

　 “Sort of,” he said. It was all he thought about.

“算是想过吧。”他说，其实他满脑子都在想。

　 “Mmph,” she grunted. She didn’t believe him either. “What are you going to tell them?” And then she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“嗯。”她咕哝了一声，她也不相信他，“那你打算怎么说？”她睁开眼睛看着他。

　 “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“我不晓得。”他承认。