《渺小一生》:“因为那就太疯狂了，即使是你。”

　 “It’s painful,” he managed to choke out.

“很痛。”他勉强说了一声。

　 “Scale of one to ten?”

“从一分到十分，有几分呢？”

　 “Seven. Eight.”

“七八分。”

　 “I’m sorry,” Andy replied. “I’m almost done, I promise. Five more minutes.”

“对不起。”安迪回答，“我快弄完了，我保证。再五分钟。”

　 When it was over, he would sit, and Andy would sit with him and give him something to drink: a soda, something sugary, and he’d feel the room begin to clarify itself around him, bit by blurry bit. “Slowly,” Andy would say, “or you’ll be sick.” He would watch as Andy dressed the wound—he was always at his calmest when he was stitching or sewing or wrapping—and in those moments, he would feel so vulnerable and weak that he would have agreed to anything Andy might have suggested.

等到结束了，他会坐下来，安迪会陪他一起坐着，给他一点喝的，一瓶汽水之类的甜饮料，慢慢地他会觉得朦胧的房间逐渐清晰起来，一点接一点。“慢慢喝。”安迪会说，“不然你会吐出来。”他看着安迪包扎伤口——他在缝合或包扎伤口时向来最冷静——在那些时刻，他觉得自己好容易受伤、好虚弱，不论安迪要求什么，他都会答应。

　 “You’re not going to cut yourself on your legs,” Andy would say, more a statement than a question.

“你不能再割在两腿上了。”安迪会说，比较像警告，而不是建议。

　 “No, I won’t.”

“对，我不会的。”

　 “Because that would be too insane, even for you.”

“因为那就太疯狂了，即使是你。”

　 “I know.”

“我知道。”

　 “Your anatomy is so degraded that it’d get really infected.”

“你的身体结构退化得太厉害，所以伤口感染得很严重。”

　 “Andy. I know.”

“安迪，我知道。”

　 He had, at various points, suspected that Andy was talking to his friends behind his back, and there were times when they would use Andy-like language and turns of phrase, and even four years after “The Incident,” as Andy had begun calling it, he suspected that Willem was going through the bathroom trash in the morning, and he’d had to take extra cautions disposing of his razors, bundling them in tissue and duct tape and throwing them into garbage cans on the way to work. “Your crew,” Andy called them: “What’ve you and your crew been up to these days?” (when he was in a good mood) and “I’m going to tell your fucking crew they’ve got to keep their eyes on you” (when he wasn’t).

他曾在几个不同的时间点，怀疑安迪背着他跟他的朋友谈话，因为有几次，他的朋友会用类似安迪的词汇和措辞讲话。即使在安迪所谓的“严重事件”发生四年后，他怀疑威廉还会在早上翻浴室的垃圾桶，害他在丢刮胡刀片时得采取额外的措施，把它们包在卫生纸和胶带里，带出去丢进上班途中的垃圾桶。“你的组员”，安迪如此称呼他们。心情好的时候，他会问：“你和你的组员最近怎么样？”，心情不好的时候，会说：“我他妈的要告诉你的组员，让他们好好看着你。”

　 “Don’t you dare, Andy,” he’d say. “And anyway, it’s not their responsibility.”

“安迪，我不准你说。”他会说，“总之，这不是他们的责任。”

　 “Of course it is,” Andy would retort. As with other issues, they couldn’t agree on this one.

“当然是他们的责任。”安迪会反驳。就像很多其他问题，在这件事上他们也无法达成共识。

　 But now it was twenty months after the appearance of this most recent wound and it still hadn’t healed. Or rather, it had healed and then broken again and then healed again, and then he had woken on Friday and felt something damp and gummy on his leg—the lower calf, right above the ankle—and had known it had split. He hadn’t called Andy yet—he would do so on Monday—but it had been important to him to take this walk, which he feared would be his last for some time, maybe months.

但最近的这个疮出现至今已经是第二十个月了，一直没有愈合。或者应该说，它愈合了又破开，然后又愈合。他这星期五醒来时，觉得腿上有什么湿湿黏黏的，就在小腿下部、脚踝上方，显然是那道伤口又裂开了。他还没打电话给安迪（他打算星期一再打），但走这趟路对他来说很重要，因为他担心自己可能有一阵子没办法再走那么远了，说不定会有好几个月。

　 He was on Madison and Seventy-fifth now, very near Andy’s office, and his leg was hurting him so much that he crossed to Fifth and sat on one of the benches near the wall that bordered the park. As soon as he sat, he experienced that familiar dizziness, that stomach-lifting nausea, and he bent over and waited until the cement became cement again and he would be able to stand. He felt in those minutes his body’s treason, how sometimes the central, tedious struggle in his life was his unwillingness to accept that he would be betrayed by it again and again, that he could expect nothing from it and yet had to keep maintaining it. So much time, his and Andy’s, was spent trying to repair something unfixable, something that should have wound up in charred bits on a slag heap years ago. And for what? His mind, he supposed. But there was—as Andy might have said—something incredibly arrogant about that, as if he was saving a jalopy because he had a sentimental attachment to its sound system.

他来到麦迪逊大道和75街交叉口，离安迪的诊所很近。他的腿很痛，痛到他不得不走到第五大道，坐在中央公园外墙边的长椅上。他一坐下就体验到那种熟悉的晕眩感和反胃的恶心感，于是他弯腰等着水泥地不再起伏旋转，才有办法站起来。在那几分钟里，他感觉到自己的身体在闹叛变，如同他人生最核心、最乏味的挣扎，就是不愿意接受自己会一次又一次地遭到背叛。他根本不能指望自己的身体，但还是要持续维修它。这具躯壳多年前早该烧成一堆炭化的渣滓堆了，但他和安迪还是花了那么多时间，试着修理这无法修复的东西。为了什么？想必是为了他的心灵吧。但这其中有种不可思议的傲慢（就像安迪可能会说的），仿佛他在抢救一辆破车，只因为他对车子的音响系统有特别的感情。

　 If I walk just a few more blocks, I can be at his office, he thought, but he never would have. It was Sunday. Andy deserved some sort of respite from him, and besides, what he was feeling now was not something he hadn’t felt before.

我只要再走几个街区就会抵达安迪的诊所了，他心想，但他绝不会走过去。这是星期天，安迪不必受他打扰，何况他现在的感觉以前也不是没有过。

　 He waited a few more minutes and then heaved himself to his feet, where he stood for half a minute before dropping to the bench again. Finally he was able to stand for good. He wasn’t ready yet, but he could imagine himself walking to the curb, raising his arm to hail a cab, resting his head against the back of its black vinyl banquette. He would count the steps to get there, just as he would count the steps it would take him to get from the cab and to his building, from the elevator to the apartment, and from the front door to his room. When he had learned to walk the third time—after his braces had come off—it had been Andy who had helped instruct the physical therapist (she had not been pleased, but had taken his suggestions), and Andy who had, as Ana had just four years before, watched him make his way unaccompanied across a space of ten feet, and then twenty, and then fifty, and then a hundred. His very gait—the left leg coming up to make a near-ninety-degree angle with the ground, forming a rectangle of negative space, the right listing behind—was engineered by Andy, who had made him work at it for hours until he could do it himself. It was Andy who told him he thought he was capable of walking without a cane, and when he finally did it, he’d had Andy to thank.

他又等了几分钟，然后吃力地站起来，站了半分钟，又跌坐回去。最后，他终于可以站起来了。他还没准备好，但他可以想象自己走到人行道边缘，举手招一辆出租车，脑袋靠在后座的黑色塑料椅面上休息。他会数着上车要几步，就像他会数着下车到他那栋公寓要几步，然后从电梯走到公寓要几步，进门后到他房间又要几步一样。他这辈子第三次学走路，是在他腿上的撑架拆掉后。当时是安迪帮忙指导物理治疗师（她并不情愿，但还是听从了他的建议），而且就像安娜四年前所做的一样，安迪看着他走过一段十英尺的路，然后是二十英尺、五十英尺、一百英尺。他走路的步态——左脚抬起来跟地面成将近九十度角，胯下形成一个矩形空间，右脚在后头倾斜——也是安迪设计的。他逼他练习了好几个小时，直到可以自己行走为止。当初也是安迪告诉他，说他觉得他可以不用手杖走路。等到他终于办到的时候，他非常感激安迪。

　 Monday was not very many hours away, he told himself as he struggled to stay standing, and Andy would see him as he always did, no matter how busy he was. “When did you notice the break?” Andy would say, nudging gently at it with a bit of gauze. “Friday,” he’d say. “Why didn’t you call me then, Jude?” Andy would say, irritated. “At any rate, I hope you didn’t go on your stupid fucking walk.” “No, of course not,” he’d say, but Andy wouldn’t believe him. He sometimes wondered whether Andy thought of him as only a collection of viruses and malfunctions: If you removed them, who was he? If Andy didn’t have to take care of him, would he still be interested in him? If he appeared one day magically whole, with a stride as easy as Willem’s and JB’s complete lack of self-consciousness, the way he could lean back in his chair and let his shirt hoist itself from his hips without any fear, or with Malcolm’s long arms, the skin on their insides as smooth as frosting, what would he be to Andy? What would he be to any of them? Would they like him less? More? Or would he discover—as he often feared—that what he understood as friendship was really motivated by their pity of him? How much of who he was was inextricable from what he was unable to do? Who would he have been, who would he be, without the scars, the cuts, the hurts, the sores, the fractures, the infections, the splints, and the discharges?

现在离星期一没几个小时，他告诉自己，同时努力保持站立的姿势。而且安迪不管多忙，一定会像往常那样帮他看诊。“你什么时候发现伤口又破了？”安迪会问，轻轻用一块纱布按着伤口。“星期五。”安迪会很不高兴地说：“那你那时为什么不打电话给我，裘德？无论如何，我都希望你不要再继续进行你那些愚蠢的走路行程了。”“不了，当然不会了。”他会说，但安迪不会相信。他有时很好奇，安迪会不会觉得他只是一个病毒和疾病的组合，如果把这些病痛拿掉，他会变成什么？如果安迪不必照顾他，还会对他有兴趣吗？如果有一天他的身体神奇地健全了，出现在安迪面前，走起路来像威廉和杰比那样毫无窘迫不安，可以靠坐在椅子上让衬衫往上滑，露出后腰也不害怕，或者有马尔科姆的长手臂，手臂内侧光滑得像撒了糖霜，那么，他对安迪来说会是什么？他对其他任何一个朋友来说会是什么？他们会比较不喜欢他吗？或是更喜欢他？或者他会发现——就像他常常害怕的——他以为是友情的东西，其实只是出于他们对他的怜悯？他这个人有多少是源于他的身体障碍？如果没有那些疤痕、割伤、疼痛、伤口、断裂、感染、夹板，以及分泌物，他现在会是什么样？未来又会变成什么样？

　 But of course he would never know. Six months ago, they had managed to get the wound under control, and Andy had examined it, checking and rechecking, before issuing a fleet of warnings about what he should do if it reopened.

当然，他永远不会知道了。六个月前，他们设法把那个伤口控制住。安迪检查过，确认再确认，才发出一连串警告，伤口万一再裂开，他该怎么处理。