《渺小一生》:“跟一般的数学有什么不一样？”
Harold was quiet. “But I’ll bet they were proud of you,” he said, finally.
哈罗德沉默了。“可是我敢说，他们以你为荣。”最后他终于说。
Whenever Harold asked him questions about himself, he always felt something cold move across him, as if he were being iced from the inside, his organs and nerves being protected by a sheath of frost. In that moment, though, he thought he might break, that if he said anything the ice would shatter and he would splinter and crack. So he waited until he knew he would sound normal before he asked Harold if he needed him to find the rest of the articles now or if he should do it in the morning. He didn’t look at Harold, though, and spoke only to his notebook.
每回哈罗德问起有关他个人的问题时，他总觉得一股寒意袭来，仿佛从体内开始结冰，器官和神经罩上一层寒霜。那一刻，他觉得自己可能要崩溃了，如果他开口说话，那些冰就会破碎，让他整个人碎裂开来。所以他等了一会儿，直到确定自己能用正常的声音说话，才询问哈罗德剩下的文章要他现在找，还是等到明天早上。可是他没看哈罗德，只是低头对着自己的笔记本讲话。
Harold took a long time to reply. “Tomorrow,” Harold said, quietly, and he nodded, and gathered his things to go home for the night, aware of Harold’s eyes following his lurching progress to the door.
哈罗德沉默了好一会儿才回答，“明天吧。”哈罗德低声说。于是他点点头，收拾东西回家，知道哈罗德的双眼一路跟着他一跛一跛地走到门口。
Harold wanted to know how he had been raised, and if he had any siblings, and who his friends were, and what he did with them: he was greedy for information. At least he could answer the last questions, and he told him about his friends, and how they had met, and where they were: Malcolm in graduate school at Columbia, JB and Willem at Yale. He liked answering Harold’s questions about them, liked talking about them, liked hearing Harold laugh when he told him stories about them. He told him about CM, and how Santosh and Federico were in some sort of fight with the engineering undergrads who lived in the frat house next door, and how he had awoken one morning to a fleet of motorized dirigibles handmade from condoms floating noisily up past his window, up toward the fourth floor, each dangling signs that read SANTOSH JAIN AND FEDERICO DE LUCA HAVE MICRO-PENISES.
哈罗德想知道他是怎么长大的、是否有兄弟姐妹，还想知道他有些什么朋友，跟朋友们一起做些什么，他渴望信息。至少他可以回答最后一题，所以就告诉哈罗德朋友们的事情，他们怎么认识的、现在他们在哪里：马尔科姆在哥伦比亚大学读研究生，杰比和威廉在耶鲁。他喜欢回答哈罗德关于这些朋友的问题，喜欢谈起他们，喜欢听到哈罗德为这些朋友的故事开心大笑的声音。他告诉他CM的事情，还有桑托什和费德里科如何跟隔壁栋兄弟会会馆的计算机系大学生闹不和，有天早上他醒来，看到一串用避孕套做成的机动飞船嘈杂地飘过他的窗前，向上飘往四楼，每架飞船底下都有个标语，上头写着：桑托什·贾殷和费德里科·德卢卡有超袖珍老二。
But when Harold was asking the other questions, he felt smothered by their weight and frequency and inevitability. And sometimes the air grew so hot with the questions Harold wasn’t asking him that it was as oppressive as if he actually had. People wanted to know so much, they wanted so many answers. And he understood it, he did—he wanted answers, too; he too wanted to know everything. He was grateful, then, for his friends, and for how relatively little they had mined from him, how they had left him to himself, a blank, faceless prairie under whose yellow surface earthworms and beetles wriggled through the black soil, and chips of bone calcified slowly into stone.
但是当哈罗德问起其他问题时，他就觉得那些问题的重量、出现的频率和必然性简直压得他喘不过气。有时他觉得，哈罗德那些没有问出口的问题把空气变得好热好闷，简直跟问了没两样。人们想知道那么多，想得到那么多答案。他了解，他真的了解，他自己也很想得到答案，他也很想知道一切。然后他就会很庆幸自己有那些朋友，庆幸他们相较之下很少试图从他身上挖出什么，庆幸他们不打扰他，让他像一片空旷无名的大草原，黄色的表面之下有蚯蚓和甲虫在黑色土壤中钻动，让一片片碎骨缓缓钙化为岩石。
“You’re really interested in this,” he snapped at Harold once, frustrated, when Harold had asked him whether he was dating anyone, and then, hearing his tone, stopped and apologized. They had known each other for almost a year by then.
“你真的对这个很感兴趣。”他有次烦得这么回哈罗德。哈罗德问他有没有在跟谁交往，然后他听到了自己的口气，就停下来道歉。当时他们认识快一年了。
“This?” said Harold, ignoring the apology. “I’m interested in you. I don’t see what’s strange about that. This is the kind of stuff friends talk about with each other.”
“为了这个？”哈罗德说，没理会他的道歉，“我是对你有兴趣，这没什么好奇怪的，朋友间本来就会聊这类事情。”
And yet despite his discomfort, he kept coming back to Harold, kept accepting his dinner invitations, even though at some point in every encounter there would be a moment in which he wished he could disappear, or in which he worried he might have disappointed.
尽管他觉得不自在，还是持续回到哈罗德身边，持续接受他的晚餐邀约。尽管每回碰面，总有那么一刻他希望自己消失，或者担心他会让哈罗德失望。
One night he went to dinner at Harold’s and was introduced to Harold’s best friend, Laurence, whom he had met in law school and who was now an appellate court judge in Boston, and his wife, Gillian, who taught English at Simmons. “Jude,” said Laurence, whose voice was even lower than Harold’s, “Harold tells me you’re also getting your master’s at MIT. What in?”
某天晚上，他去哈罗德家吃晚餐，认识了哈罗德最要好的朋友劳伦斯，还有他太太吉莉安。劳伦斯是哈罗德读法学院时认识的，现在是波士顿上诉法庭的法官，吉莉安则在西蒙斯女子学院教英文。“裘德，”劳伦斯说，他的声音比哈罗德还低沉，“哈罗德跟我说，你同时也在麻省理工学院念硕士，是什么硕士？”
“Pure math,” he replied.
“纯数学。”他回答。
“How is that different from”—she laughed—“regular math?” Gillian asked.
“纯数学跟……”吉莉安笑了一声，“跟一般的数学有什么不一样？”她问。
“Well, regular math, or applied math, is what I suppose you could call practical math,” he said. “It’s used to solve problems, to provide solutions, whether it’s in the realm of economics, or engineering, or accounting, or what have you. But pure math doesn’t exist to provide immediate, or necessarily obvious, practical applications. It’s purely an expression of form, if you will—the only thing it proves is the almost infinite elasticity of mathematics itself, within the accepted set of assumptions by which we define it, of course.”
“这个嘛，一般数学或应用数学，我认为可以算是实用数学，”他说，“是用来解决问题、提供解答的，无论是在经济学、工程学、会计学，或任何方面。但纯数学不是用来提供直接、明显、能实际被应用的解答的，那纯粹是一种形式的表达。它唯一证明的，就是数学本身几乎无穷无尽的弹性。当然了，是在我们定义的那套假设里。”
“Do you mean imaginary geometries, stuff like that?” Laurence asked.
“你是指，比如虚数几何学那一类的？”劳伦斯问。
“It can be, sure. But it’s not just that. Often, it’s merely proof of—of the impossible yet consistent internal logic of math itself. There’s all kinds of specialties within pure math: geometric pure math, like you said, but also algebraic math, algorithmic math, cryptography, information theory, and pure logic, which is what I study.”
“当然，包括在内，但不只是那些。纯数学往往只是……只是证明了数学本身那种不可能存在、却始终一致的内在逻辑而已。纯数学领域里还有各式各样的专业，比如你刚刚提到的几何纯数学，但还有代数数学、程序化数学、密码学、信息论，以及我在学的纯逻辑。”
“Which is what?” Laurence asked.
“那是什么？”劳伦斯问。
He thought. “Mathematical logic, or pure logic, is essentially a conversation between truths and falsehoods. So for example, I might say to you ‘All positive numbers are real. Two is a positive number. Therefore, two must be real.’ But this isn’t actually true, right? It’s a derivation, a supposition of truth. I haven’t actually proven that two is a real number, but it must logically be true. So you’d write a proof to, in essence, prove that the logic of those two statements is in fact real, and infinitely applicable.” He stopped. “Does that make sense?”
他思索着：“数学逻辑，或者纯逻辑，基本上是真与假之间的对话。比方说，我可能跟你说‘所有正数都是实数。2是正数，因此2就一定是实数。’但这不见得确实为真，对吧？这是从逻辑上去推演、去假设的。我其实没有实际证明2是实数，但逻辑上这必然为真。所以你就会写出一份证明，从本质上去证明这两种陈述的逻辑确实为真，而且适用于其他无穷尽的情况。”他停下来，“你觉得这样有道理吗？”
“Video, ergo est,” said Laurence, suddenly. I see it, therefore it is.
“我看到，所以它存在。”劳伦斯忽然用拉丁语说。
He smiled. “And that’s exactly what applied math is. But pure math is more”—he thought again—“Imaginor, ergo est.”
他微笑：“那正是应用数学的意义。但纯数学要更……”他又想了一下，然后用拉丁语说，“我想象，所以它存在。”
Laurence smiled back at him and nodded. “Very good,” he said.
劳伦斯也朝他微笑点头。“非常好。”他说。
“Well, I have a question,” said Harold, who’d been quiet, listening to them. “How and why on earth did you end up in law school?”
“唔，我有个问题。”哈罗德说，之前他一直默默在旁边听，“你怎么会来读法学院？到底是为什么？”
