《渺小一生》:“但是我真的认为你应该去做心理咨询。”

　 He couldn’t remember when he had been angrier on his own behalf. Lots of things made him angry—general injustice, incompetence, directors who didn’t give Willem a part he wanted—but he rarely got angry about things that happened or had happened to him: his pains, past and present, were things he tried not to brood about, were not questions to which he spent his days searching for meaning. He already knew why they had happened: they had happened because he had deserved them.

他记忆中，从来不曾为了自己这么生气过。让他生气的事情很多（一般的不公平、无能，还有没选中威廉去演戏的那些导演），但他很少为了自己的事情而生气，他的疼痛、过去和现在，他都设法不去担忧，不花时间去想其中的意义。他已经知道为什么那些事会发生在自己身上了，因为他活该。

　 But he knew too that his anger was unjustified. And as much as he resented his dependence upon Andy, he was grateful for him as well, and he knew Andy found his behavior illogical. But Andy’s job was to make people better: Andy saw him the way he saw a mangled tax law, as something to be untangled and repaired—whether he thought he could be repaired was almost incidental. The thing he was trying to fix—the scars that raised his back into an awful, unnatural topography, the skin stretched as glossy and taut as a roasted duck’s: the reason he was trying to save money—was not, he knew, something Andy would approve of. “Jude,” Andy would say if he ever heard what he was planning, “I promise you it’s not going to work, and you’re going to have wasted all that money. Don’t do it.”

但他也知道，自己的愤怒并不理直气壮。虽然他很气自己这么依赖安迪，但也很感激他，同时他也知道，安迪觉得他的行为莫名其妙。安迪的工作是让人好过一点：安迪看他，就像他看着一份乱七八糟的税法，是必须被理清、被修复的，而他自己是否觉得被修复几乎是不重要的。其实他真正试着修复的东西，就是他背上那些隆起的疤痕。那些疤痕形成一幅可怕、不自然的样貌，皮肤紧绷又发亮，活像只烤鸭。他存钱就是为了这个，但他知道安迪不会赞成的。“裘德，”要是安迪听了他的计划，一定会说，“我跟你保证不会有用的，你只会把那些钱浪费掉而已。别去做。”

　 “But they’re hideous,” he would mumble.

“可是那些疤好丑。”他会嗫嚅着说。

　 “They’re not, Jude,” Andy would say. “I swear to god they’re not.”

“才不丑，裘德。”安迪会说，“我跟上帝发誓根本不丑。”

　 (But he wasn’t going to tell Andy anyway, so he would never have to have that particular conversation.)

（反正他不打算告诉安迪，他永远不必跟他进行这段对话。）

　 The days passed and he didn’t call Andy and Andy didn’t call him. As if in punishment, his wrist throbbed at night when he was trying to sleep, and at work he forgot and banged it rhythmically against the side of his desk as he read, a longtime bad tic he’d not managed to erase. The stitches had seeped blood then, and he’d had to clean them, clumsily, in the bathroom sink.

过了几天，他一直没有打电话给安迪，安迪也没打给他。但好像是上天要惩罚他似的，晚上入睡前，他的手腕就不断抽痛。但是工作时他又忘了，还边阅读边用手腕规律地敲着桌侧。这是他一直戒除不了的恶习。然后他手臂的缝线就会渗出血来，他就得在浴室的水槽里笨拙地清理。

　 “What’s wrong?” Willem asked him one night.

“怎么了？”威廉有天晚上问他。

　 “Nothing,” he said. He could tell Willem, of course, who would listen and say “Hmm” in his Willem-ish way, but he knew he would agree with Andy.

“没事。”他说。当然，他可以告诉威廉，他会倾听，然后老样子地说“嗯”，但他知道威廉会同意安迪的意见。

　 A week after their fight, he came home to Lispenard Street—it was a Sunday, and he had been walking through west Chelsea—and Andy was waiting on the steps before their front door.

在他们吵架一星期后，他晚上回到利斯本纳街。那是星期天，他一路穿过西切尔西走回来，发现安迪在大楼前的台阶上等他。

　 He was surprised to see him. “Hi,” he said.

他看到他很惊讶。“嗨。”他说。

　 “Hi,” Andy had replied. They stood there. “I wasn’t sure if you’d take my call.”

“嗨，”安迪回答，他们站在那儿，“我不确定你会不会接我的电话。”

　 “Of course I would’ve.”

“我当然会接啊。”

　 “Listen,” Andy said. “I’m sorry.”

“听我说，”安迪说，“我很抱歉。”

　 “Me too. I’m sorry, Andy.”

“我也是。对不起，安迪。”

　 “But I really do think you should see someone.”

“但是我真的认为你应该去做心理咨询。”

　 “I know you do.”

“我知道。”

　 And somehow they managed to leave it at that: a fragile and mutually unsatisfying cease-fire, with the question of the therapist the vast gray demilitarized zone between them. The compromise (though how this had been agreed upon as such was unclear to him now) was that at the end of every visit, he had to show Andy his arms, and Andy would examine them for new cuts. Whenever he found one, he would log it in his chart. He was never sure what might provoke another outburst from Andy: sometimes there were many new cuts, and Andy would merely groan and write them down, and sometimes there were only a few new cuts and Andy would get agitated anyway. “You’ve fucking ruined your arms, you know that, right?” he would ask him. But he would say nothing, and let Andy’s lecture wash over him. Part of him understood that by not letting Andy do his job—which was, after all, to heal him—he was being disrespectful, and was to some degree making Andy into a joke in his own office. Andy’s tallies—sometimes he wanted to ask Andy if he would get a prize once he reached a certain number, but he knew it would make him angry—were a way for him to at least pretend he could manage the situation, even if he couldn’t: it was the accrual of data as a small compensation for actual treatment.

总之，他们设法到此为止：一个双方都不满意的、脆弱的停火，心理咨询的问题是他们两人之间一片广大的灰色非军事区。两人的妥协方式（虽然他也搞不清是如何达成这个一致意见的）就是每次看诊过后，他得让安迪检查两只手臂，安迪会察看上头有没有新的割痕。只要发现一道，安迪就会在病历上记下来。他从来不确定什么又会引起安迪的暴怒：有时新割痕很多，但安迪只是咕哝着写下来；有时只有一道新割痕，安迪还是因此发脾气。“你他妈的把你的手臂都毁掉了，你知道吧？”他会问他。一部分的他明白，如果不让安迪做他的工作——说到底，就是治愈他——是对安迪的不尊重，也害安迪成为他专业上的笑话。对安迪来说，那些割伤的纪录（有时他想问安迪，如果达到某个数字，他是不是能得到奖品，但他知道安迪听了会生气）是假装自己至少能控制状况的一种方式，尽管他根本控制不了。这项信息的累积，是对真正治疗的一种小小弥补。

　 And then, two years later, another wound had opened on his left leg, which had always been the more troublesome one, and his cuttings were set aside for the more urgent matter of his leg. He had first developed one of these wounds less than a year after the injury, and it had healed quickly. “But it won’t be the last,” the Philadelphia surgeon had said. “With an injury like yours, everything—the vascular system, the dermal system—has been so compromised that you should expect you might get these now and again.”

过了两年，他的左腿上又出现了一个疮，左腿的伤口向来比较棘手，于是他的割伤就被暂时搁置一旁，先处理腿上更紧急的问题。他第一次长这种疮是被车子撞伤后不到一年，很快就痊愈了。“但这不会是最后一次。”那个费城的外科医生说，“像你受了这种大伤，身上的一切，血管系统、皮肤系统，都受到了损伤，所以你偶尔就会生这种疮。”

　 This was the eleventh he’d had, so although he was prepared for the sensation of it, he was never to know its cause (An insect bite? A brush against the edge of a metal filing cabinet? It was always something so gallingly small, but still capable of tearing his skin as easily as if it had been made of paper), and he was never to cease being disgusted by it: the suppuration, the sick, fishy scent, the little gash, like a fetus’s mouth, that would appear, burbling viscous, unidentifiable fluids. It was unnatural, the stuff of monster movies and myths, to walk about with an opening that wouldn’t, couldn’t be closed. He began seeing Andy every Friday night so he could debride the wound, cleaning it and removing the dead tissue and examining the area around it, looking for new skin growth, as he held his breath and gripped the side of the table and tried not to scream.

这回是第十一个了。尽管他有准备，但他从来不知道成因是什么（昆虫咬伤？刮到金属档案柜的边缘？这类伤口一开始总是小得烦人，但还是有本事轻易地撕开他的皮肤，仿佛他的皮肤是纸做的），而且每次都很扰人：伤口化脓，令人作呕，还带着鱼腥味，小小的切口像个胚胎的嘴巴，里头会冒出黏稠的不明液体。腿上带着这么个怪物和神话电影里才会出现的开口走来走去实在很反常，而且这伤口怎么都不肯愈合。他开始每星期五都去安迪那，好让他帮忙清创、清理伤口并除去坏死组织，检查周围的区域，寻找新长出来的皮肤。他得憋着气抓住检查台边缘，尽量忍着不要大叫。

　 “You have to tell me when it’s painful, Jude,” Andy had said, as he breathed and sweated and counted in his head. “It’s a good thing if you can feel this, not a bad thing. It means the nerves are still alive and still doing what they’re supposed to.”

“裘德，你痛了要说。”安迪说过。他满头大汗地吸气吐气，在心里数着数字。“你会痛是好事，不是坏事。这表示你的神经没坏死，还在发挥功能。”