《渺小一生》:他第一次获邀去哈罗德家吃晚饭

　 Harold sighed dramatically, grabbed the dictionary off his desk, flipped it open, and studied it for a moment. “Okay, fine,” he said, tossing it back onto a heap of papers, which slid toward the edge of the surface. “The third definition. But I meant the first definition: the leftovers, the detritus—the remains of politics past. Happy?”

哈罗德夸张地叹了口气，抓起桌上的字典，打开来翻找，研究了一会儿。“好吧，”他说，把字典扔回桌上的一堆纸上，任它滑到书桌边缘，“第三个定义是垃圾没错。但是我指的是第二个定义：剩余物、残屑——过往政治的残余物。这样你高兴了吧？”

　 “Yes,” he said, trying not to smile.

“是的。”他说，设法憋住笑意。

　 He began working for Harold on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons and evenings, when his course load was lightest—on Tuedays and Thursdays he had afternoon seminars at MIT, where he was getting his master’s, and worked in the law library at night, and on Saturdays he worked in the library in the morning and in the afternoons at a bakery called Batter, which was near the medical college, where he had worked since he was an undergraduate and where he fulfilled specialty orders: decorating cookies and making hundreds of sugar-paste flower petals for cakes and experimenting with different recipes, one of which, a ten-nut cake, had become the bakery’s best seller. He worked at Batter on Sundays as well, and one day Allison, the bakery’s owner, who entrusted him with many of the more complicated projects, handed him an order form for three dozen sugar cookies decorated to look like various kinds of bacteria. “I thought you of all people might be able to figure this out,” she said. “The customer’s wife’s a microbiologist and he wants to surprise her and her lab.”

每星期一、三、五的下午和晚上，他开始帮哈罗德工作，这三天他的课最轻松——星期二和星期四下午他要去麻省理工学院（他在那里拿到硕士学位）上专题研讨课，晚上在法律图书馆打工。每个星期六，他上午去图书馆工作，下午去医学院附近一家叫“烘焙工房”的面包店工作，他从大学时代就在那里打工，现在负责特殊订单，比如装饰饼干、做几百个装饰蛋糕的翻糖花瓣，以及试验不同的新配方，其中一款以十种坚果为原料的蛋糕后来成为店里的畅销产品。他星期天也在烘焙工房工作。老板艾莉森常把一些比较复杂的订单交给他。有天艾莉森递给他一张订单，上头写着要三打糖霜饼干，还要装饰得像各式各样的细菌。“我想所有人里头，大概只有你能想出办法了。”她说，“那个顾客的太太是微生物学家，他想给她跟她的实验室一个惊喜。”

　 “I’ll do some research,” he said, taking the page from her, and noting the customer’s name: Harold Stein. So he had, asking CM and Janusz for their advice, and had made cookies shaped like paisleys, like mace balls, like cucumbers, using different-colored frosting to draw their cytoplasms and plasma membranes and ribosomes and fashioning flagella from strands of licorice. He typed up a list identifying each and folded it into the box before closing it and tying it with twine; he didn’t know Harold very well then, but he liked the idea of making something for him, of impressing him, even if anonymously. And he liked wondering what the cookies were meant to celebrate: A publication? An anniversary? Or was it simple uxoriousness? Was Harold Stein the sort of person who showed up at his wife’s lab with cookies for no reason? He suspected he perhaps was.

“我会研究一下。”他说，接过那张订单，注意到顾客的名字：哈罗德·斯坦。于是他就问了CM和雅努什的意见，做出像涡轮图形、流星槌球、小黄瓜的图案，利用不同颜色的糖霜画出上头的细胞质、细胞膜和核糖体，还用甘草糖绳做出鞭毛。他印出一张清单，标明每一种是什么细菌，折起来放进盒子里，盖上盒盖，用绳子绑好。他当时和哈罗德还不熟，但他很乐于替他做些事情，让他印象深刻，即使是匿名。而且他乐于猜测这些饼干是要庆祝什么：论文发表？周年纪念？或者只是宠爱妻子而已？哈罗德·斯坦是那种会无缘无故带着饼干出现在太太实验室的人吗，他猜想说不定真是。

　 The following week, Harold told him about the amazing cookies he’d gotten at Batter. His enthusiasm, which just a few hours ago in class had been directed at the Uniform Commercial Code, had found a new subject in the cookies. He sat, biting the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile, listening to Harold talk about how genius they’d been and how Julia’s lab had been struck speechless by their detail and verisimilitude, and how he had been, briefly, the hero of the lab: “Not an easy thing to be with those people, by the way, who secretly think everyone involved in the humanities is something of a moron.”

隔周，哈罗德跟他提起在烘焙工房订的饼干太惊人了。几个小时前他在课堂上对统一商业法的热情，这会儿落在了那些饼干上。他坐在那里咬住脸颊内侧，免得笑出来，听哈罗德谈起那些饼干多么天才，还有朱丽娅的实验室被那些饼干的细节和逼真弄得哑口无言，一时间他成了实验室的英雄。“顺便说一声，要让那些人这么惊讶可不是件简单的事情。他们暗地里都认为念人文学科的都是智障。”

　 “Sounds like those cookies were made by a real obsessive,” he said. He hadn’t told Harold he worked at Batter, and didn’t plan on doing so, either.

“听起来，那个饼干师傅真的有强迫症。”他说。他没跟哈罗德提过他在烘焙工房打工，也不打算告诉他。

　 “Then that’s an obsessive I’d like to meet,” said Harold. “They were delicious, too.”

“那我还真想见见这位强迫症患者。”哈罗德说，“而且那些饼干很好吃。”

　 “Mmm,” he said, and thought of a question to ask Harold so he wouldn’t keep talking about the cookies.

“嗯。”他说，想着要问哈罗德什么问题，免得他一直谈那些饼干。

　 Harold had other research assistants, of course—two second-years and a third-year he knew only by sight—but their schedules were such that they never overlapped. Sometimes they communicated with one another by notes or e-mail, explaining where they’d left off in their research so the next person could pick it up and carry it forward. But by the second semester of his first year, Harold had assigned him to work exclusively on the fifth amendment. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Incredibly sexy.” The two second-year assistants were assigned the ninth amendment, and the third-year, the tenth, and as much as he knew it was ridiculous, he couldn’t help but feel triumphant, as if he had been favored with something the others hadn’t.

当然，哈罗德还有别的研究助理，两个法学院二年级生和一个三年级生，他都见过，不过他们的上班时间没有重叠。有时他们会用纸条或电子邮件沟通，解释手上的研究进行到哪里，好让下一个人接手继续做。但是到了他一年级的第二个学期，哈罗德派他专门研究第五修正案。“那条修正案很棒，”他说，“性感得不得了。”两个二年级助理被分配到第九修正案，三年级的助理则是第十修正案。他知道这么想很荒谬，但他不禁有种胜利感，好像他得到其他人没有的东西。

　 The first invitation to dinner at Harold’s house had been spontaneous, at the end of one cold and dark March afternoon. “Are you sure?” he asked, tentative.

他第一次获邀去哈罗德家吃晚饭，是三月一个冰冷而灰暗的傍晚，哈罗德临时起意邀请他。“你确定吗？”他迟疑地问。

　 Harold had looked at him, curiously. “Of course,” he said. “It’s just dinner. You have to eat, right?”

哈罗德诧异地看着他。“当然确定。”他说，“只是吃顿饭而已。你总得吃饭吧？”

　 Harold lived in a three-story house in Cambridge, at the edge of the undergraduate campus. “I didn’t know you lived here,” he said, as Harold pulled into the driveway. “This is one of my favorite streets. I used to walk down it every day as a shortcut to the other side of campus.”

哈罗德住在剑桥市一栋三层楼房里，位于大学校园的边缘。“我都不知道你住在这里。”他说，看着哈罗德把车子开入车道，“这是我最喜欢的街道之一。我以前每天都会经过，抄近路去校园的另一头。”

　 “You and everybody else,” Harold replied. “When I bought it just before I got divorced, all these houses were occupied by grad students; all the shutters were falling off. The smell of pot was so thick you could get stoned just driving by.”

“不光是你，每个人都这样。”哈罗德说，“我是在离婚前不久买下这栋房子的。当时这一带房子里住的都是研究生，所有的护窗板都快掉光了，大麻的气味浓得要命，光是开车经过都可能会吸到。”

　 It was snowing, just lightly, but he was grateful that there were only two steps leading up to the door, and that he wouldn’t have to worry about slipping or needing Harold’s help. Inside, the house smelled of butter and pepper and starch: pasta, he thought. Harold dropped his briefcase on the floor and gave him a vague tour—“Living room; study behind it; kitchen and dining room to your left”—and he met Julia, who was tall like Harold, with short brown hair, and whom he liked instantly.

当时下着小雪，但他很庆幸门前的台阶只有两级，这样他就不必担心会滑倒，或者需要哈罗德帮忙。进屋之后，他闻到奶油、胡椒和淀粉的气味，猜想是在做意大利面。哈罗德把公文包扔在地板上，稍微跟他介绍了屋子：“客厅，后头是书房，厨房和餐厅在你左边。”然后把他介绍给朱丽娅，她跟哈罗德一样是高个子，一头褐色短发，他立刻喜欢上了她。

　 “Jude!” she said. “Finally! I’ve heard so much about you; I’m so happy to be meeting you at last.” It sounded, he thought, like she really was.

“裘德！”她说，“终于！我听说了你好多事，真高兴终于看到你了。”他觉得她的口气好像真的很高兴。

　 Over dinner, they talked. Julia was from an academic family from Oxford and had lived in America since graduate school at Stanford; she and Harold had met five years ago through a friend. Her lab studied a new virus that appeared to be a variant of H5N1 and they were trying to map its genetic code.

晚餐时，他们边吃边聊。朱丽娅出生于英国牛津的学者家庭，来美国斯坦福大学读完研究生后就留了下来。她和哈罗德是五年前经由一个朋友介绍而认识的。她的实验室正在研究一种新病毒，显然是H5N1流感病毒的变种，他们正在想办法绘制出这种病毒的基因图谱。

　 “Isn’t one of the concerns in microbiology the potential weaponization of these genomes?” he asked, and felt, rather than saw, Harold turn toward him.

“微生物学界不是很担心这类基因组有武器化的可能吗？”他问，然后感觉到（而不是看到）哈罗德的目光转向自己。

　 “Yes, that’s right,” Julia said, and as she explained to him the controversies surrounding her and her colleagues’ work, he glanced over at Harold, who was watching him, and who raised an eyebrow at him in a gesture that he couldn’t interpret.

“是啊，没错。”朱丽娅说，然后跟他解释她和同事们工作上的种种争议。他看了哈罗德一眼，他正抬起一边眉毛看着他，那个表情不知是什么意思。

　 But then the conversation shifted, and he could almost watch as the discussion moved steadily away from Julia’s lab and inexorably toward him, could see how good a litigator Harold would be if he wanted to, could see his skill in redirecting and repositioning, almost as if their conversation were something liquid, and he was guiding it through a series of troughs and chutes, eliminating any options for its escape, until it reached its inevitable end.

接着话题转移，他几乎可以看到讨论逐渐离开朱丽娅的实验室，势不可挡地朝他的方向移动，看得出如果哈罗德愿意的话，会是一位多么出色的诉讼律师。他看得出他在引导方向和改变位置方面的技巧，他们的谈话简直是某种液体，他要引导它穿过一连串的水槽和滑道，消除掉任何漏水的可能，直到这些液体达到不可避免的终点。

　 “So, Jude,” Julia asked, “where did you grow up?”

“那么，裘德，”朱丽娅问，“你是在哪里长大的？”