《渺小一生》:来到纽约之前，是法学院时期

　 He had been only half listening. He was feeling light that day for some reason, but Andy was querulous, and along with a lecture about his leg, he had also endured another about his cutting (too much, Andy thought), and his general appearance (too thin, Andy thought).

他没怎么认真听，那天他出于某些原因觉得整个人很轻盈，安迪却猛发牢骚，除了针对他那条腿的长篇训话之外，还因为他的割伤（安迪认为太多了）以及他的整体外貌（安迪认为太瘦了）而教训他。

　 He had admired his leg, pivoting it and examining the place where the wound had at last closed over, as Andy talked and talked. “Are you listening to me, Jude?” he had finally demanded.

他当时正在欣赏自己那条腿，转来转去，检查那个终于愈合的地方，同时安迪在旁边讲了又讲。“裘德，你有在认真听吗？”最后他终于问。

　 “It looks good,” he told Andy, not answering him, but wanting his reassurance. “Doesn’t it?”

“我的腿看起来很好。”他说，没回答安迪的问题，只想要他的保证，“对不对？”

　 Andy sighed. “It looks—” And then he stopped, and was quiet, and he had looked up, had watched Andy shut his eyes, as if refocusing himself, and then open them again. “It looks good, Jude,” he’d said, quietly. “It does.”

安迪叹气：“看起来……”然后停下，沉默片刻。于是他抬头，看到安迪闭上眼睛，好像要重新对焦，才又睁开来。“看起来很好，裘德。”他轻声说，“的确很好。”

　 He had felt, then, a great surge of gratitude, because he knew Andy didn’t think it looked good, would never think it looked good. To Andy, his body was an onslaught of terrors, one against which the two of them had to be constantly attentive. He knew Andy thought he was self-destructive, or delusional, or in denial.

当时他觉得心中涌起满满的感激，因为他知道安迪不觉得他的腿看起来很好，永远不会。对安迪来说，他的身体随时会遭受种种恐怖袭击，他们两个得时刻集中注意才行。他知道安迪觉得他有自毁倾向，或只会妄想，或总是拒绝。

　 But what Andy never understood about him was this: he was an optimist. Every month, every week, he chose to open his eyes, to live another day in the world. He did it when he was feeling so awful that sometimes the pain seemed to transport him to another state, one in which everything, even the past that he worked so hard to forget, seemed to fade into a gray watercolor wash. He did it when his memories crowded out all other thoughts, when it took real effort, real concentration, to tether himself to his current life, to keep himself from raging with despair and shame. He did it when he was so exhausted of trying, when being awake and alive demanded such energy that he had to lie in bed thinking of reasons to get up and try again, when it would be much easier to go to the bathroom and untape the plastic zipped bag containing his cotton pads and loose razors and alcohol wipes and bandages from its hiding place beneath the sink and simply surrender. Those were the very bad days.

但安迪永远不明白的一点是：他是个乐观主义者。每个月、每个星期，他都选择睁开眼睛，在这个世上再活一天。他选择再活一天，即使他觉得糟糕透顶，有时那疼痛像是把他放逐到另一个状态中，里头的一切，包括他努力想要忘记的过去，仿佛全褪成一片灰色的水彩。他选择再活一天，即使他的种种回忆把其他思绪都挤了出去，他必须很努力、很专心，才能让自己活在当下，尽量不要满怀绝望与羞愧。他选择再活一天，即使尝试让他筋疲力尽，光是醒来和活着就那么费力，因而他必须躺在床上思考要起床再尝试的理由。他选择再活一天，即使他有一个装了棉垫、刮胡刀片、酒精棉和绷带的塑料拉链袋，用胶带贴在水槽底下。他只要投降，去把那个袋子拆下来，一切都会容易太多。那些是非常糟糕的日子。

　 It really had been a mistake, that night before New Year’s Eve when he sat in the bathroom drawing the razor across his arm: he had been half asleep still; he was normally never so careless. But when he realized what he had done, there had been a minute, two minutes—he had counted—when he genuinely hadn’t known what to do, when sitting there, and letting this accident become its own conclusion, seemed easier than making the decision himself, a decision that would ripple past him to include Willem, and Andy, and days and months of consequences.

跨年夜前一天晚上真的是个错误，通常他不会这么不小心。当时他坐在浴室里，用刮胡刀片割手臂。他其实已经半睡着了，但等到他发现自己做了什么，有一分钟或两分钟（他没算），他真的完全不知道该怎么办，只是坐在那里，觉得让这个意外自然发展下去好像比较简单，免得还要自己做决定，还要把威廉、安迪扯进来，还要牵连到往后的几天、几个月。

　 He hadn’t known, finally, what had compelled him to grab his towel from its bar and wrap it around his arm, and then pull himself to his feet and wake Willem up. But with each minute that passed, he moved further and further from the other option, the events unfolding themselves with a speed he couldn’t control, and he longed for that year right after the injury, before he met Andy, when it seemed that everything might be improved upon, and that his future self might be something bright and clean, when he knew so little but had such hope, and faith that his hope might one day be rewarded.

他不知道最后是什么让他抓下毛巾架上的毛巾，包住自己的手臂，然后挣扎着拖起身子去叫醒威廉。但随着每一分钟过去，他离那个抉择就越来越远，之后种种事件的发展速度快得让他无法控制。他好怀念刚被车子撞伤的那一年，在认识安迪之前，当时一切似乎都有可能好转，未来的自己可能开朗而干净。当时他知道的那么少，却怀着那么大的希望，相信他的希望有朝一日可能会实现。

　 Before New York there had been law school, and before that, college, and before that, there was Philadelphia, and the long, slow trip across country, and before that, there was Montana, and the boys’ home, and before Montana was the Southwest, and the motel rooms, and the lonely stretches of road and the hours spent in the car. And before that was South Dakota and the monastery. And before that? A father and a mother, presumably. Or, more realistically, simply a man and a woman. And then, probably, just a woman. And then him.

来到纽约之前，是法学院时期。在那之前，是大学时期。然后在那之前，是费城，以及那段漫长、缓慢的横跨全国之旅。再之前，是蒙大拿州的少年之家，而在蒙大拿之前，是西南部，还有汽车旅馆的房间，以及寂寞漫长的公路和待在车上的时光。再之前，则是南达科他州和修道院。再之前呢？想必有一个父亲和一个母亲吧。或者更真实一点，只有一个男人和一个女人。然后，大概只有一个女人。然后是他。

　 It was Brother Peter, who taught him math, and was always reminding him of his good fortune, who told him he’d been found in a garbage can. “Inside a trash bag, stuffed with eggshells and old lettuce and spoiled spaghetti—and you,” Brother Peter said. “In the alley behind the drugstore, you know the one,” even though he didn’t, as he rarely left the monastery.

当初是教他数学，而且总是要他别忘记自己有多么幸运的彼得修士告诉他，他们是在一个垃圾桶里发现他的。“就在一个垃圾袋里，里头有蛋壳、枯黄的莴苣和烂掉的意大利面条，还有你。”彼得修士说，“就在那家药房后头的巷子里，你知道的那家。”其实他不知道，他很少离开修道院。

　 Later, Brother Michael claimed this wasn’t even true. “You weren’t in the trash bin,” he told him. “You were next to the trash bin.” Yes, he conceded, there had been a trash bag, but he had been atop it, not in it, and at any rate, who knew what was in the trash bag itself, and who cared? More likely it was things thrown away from the pharmacy: cardboard and tissues and twist ties and packing chips. “You mustn’t believe everything Brother Peter says,” he reminded him, as he often did, along with: “You mustn’t indulge this tendency to self-mythologize,” as he said whenever he asked for details of how he’d come to live at the monastery. “You came, and you’re here now, and you should concentrate on your future, and not on the past.”

稍后，迈克修士说根本不是这么回事。“你才不是在垃圾桶里面。”他告诉他，“而是在垃圾桶旁边。”没错，迈克修士勉强承认，的确有个垃圾袋，但他是在垃圾袋上头，不是里边。无论如何，谁晓得垃圾袋里有什么？而且谁在乎？里头的垃圾更可能是药房扔掉的：纸盒、卫生纸、包装绳和用来缓冲的小块塑料泡沫。“彼得修士讲的话，你绝不能全信。”迈克修士常常提醒他，“你绝对不能沉迷于这种自我神话的倾向。”每回他问起自己来到修道院的种种细节，他就会这样说：“你来了，现在住在这里，然后你应该专注于你的未来，而不是过去。”

　 They had created the past for him. He was found naked, said Brother Peter (or in just a diaper, said Brother Michael), but either way, it was assumed he’d been left to, as they said, let nature have its way with him, because it was mid-April and still freezing, and a newborn couldn’t have survived for long in that weather. He must have been there for only a few minutes, however, because he was still almost warm when they found him, and the snow hadn’t yet filled the car’s tire tracks, nor the footprints (sneakers, probably a woman’s size eight) that led to the trash bin and then away from it. He was lucky they had found him (it was fate they had found him). Everything he had—his name, his birthday (itself an estimate), his shelter, his very life—was because of them. He should be grateful (they didn’t expect him to be grateful to them; they expected him to be grateful to God).

他们为他创造出过去。彼得修士说，他被发现时光着身子（迈克修士说，只穿了尿布）。无论是哪种，他们都说，应该是有人把他丢在那里听天由命，因为那是四月中，天气非常冷，一个新生儿在那种天气里活不了多久。总之，他被放在那只有几分钟，因为他们发现他的时候，他身体几乎还是暖的，雪花还没填满旁边的轮胎印，或是走到垃圾桶旁又离开的那些脚印（球鞋印，大概是女人的八号鞋）。他很幸运地被他们发现（他们会发现他真是天意）。他所有的一切——他的名字、他的生日（是推估的）、他的住所、他的这条命——都是因为他们而来。他应该心存感激（他们并不期望他感激他们，而是期望他感激上帝）。

　 He never knew what they might answer and what they might not. A simple question (Had he been crying when they found him? Had there been a note? Had they looked for whoever had left him?) would be dismissed or unknown or unexplained, but there were declarative answers for the more complicated ones.

他从来不知道他们可能回答什么、不回答什么。面对一个简单的问题（他们发现他时，他在哭吗？他身上有纸条吗？他们找过是谁丢下他的吗？），他们可能置之不理或说不知道、不解释；但面对更复杂的问题，他们却会有更具叙述性的解释。

　 “The state couldn’t find anyone to take you.” (Brother Peter, again.) “And so we said we’d keep you here as a temporary measure, and then months turned into years and here you are. The end. Now finish these equations; you’re taking all day.”

“州政府找不到任何人收养你。”（又是彼得修士说的。）“所以我们决定把你暂时留在这里，然后几个月过去，接下来是几年，然后就是现在了。故事结束了。现在赶紧算完这些方程式，你这样会拖上一整天。”

　 But why couldn’t the state find anyone? Theory one (beloved of Brother Peter): There were simply too many unknowns—his ethnicity, his parentage, possible congenital health problems, and on and on. Where had he come from? Nobody knew. None of the local hospitals had recorded a recent live birth that matched his description. And that was worrisome to potential guardians. Theory two (Brother Michael’s): This was a poor town in a poor region in a poor state. No matter the public sympathy—and there had been sympathy, he wasn’t to forget that—it was quite another thing to add an extra child to one’s household, especially when one’s household was already so stretched. Theory three (Father Gabriel’s): He was meant to stay here. It had been God’s will. This was his home. And now he needed to stop asking questions.

但是为什么州政府找不到任何收养人？理论一（这是彼得修士最喜欢的）：实在有太多未知的状况，包括他的种族、父母身份、可能有的先天疾病，等等。他是哪里来的？没有人知道。当地医院都没有符合他外形的婴儿出生纪录。这一点让想要收养的人很不放心。理论二（迈克修士的）：这是一个贫穷的镇，位于一个贫穷的州的贫穷区域。无论一般大众多么有同情心（大家的确很有同情心，他不会忘记这点），要一户人家再多收养一个小孩，就是另一回事了，尤其是一户已经很拮据的人家。理论三（盖柏瑞神父的）：他注定要待在这里。这是上帝的旨意。这里就是他的家。现在他得停止问这些问题了。

　 Then there was a fourth theory, invoked by almost all of them when he misbehaved: He was bad, and had been bad from the beginning. “You must have done something very bad to be left behind like that,” Brother Peter used to tell him after he hit him with the board, rebuking him as he stood there, sobbing his apologies. “Maybe you cried so much they just couldn’t stand it any longer.” And he’d cry harder, fearing that Brother Peter was correct.

然后是第四个理论，几乎是他们所有人在他不乖时一致会讲的：他很坏，从出生就坏。“你一定是做了很坏的事情，才会像那样被丢掉。”彼得修士每次用木条打过他之后，总会这么说，看着他站在那啜泣着道歉时，还会斥责他，“或许是你哭得太凶，他们再也受不了。”于是他哭得更凶，害怕彼得修士说得没有错。

　 For all their interest in history, they were collectively irritated when he took interest in his own, as if he was persisting in a particularly tiresome hobby that he wasn’t outgrowing at a fast enough rate. Soon he learned not to ask, or at least not to ask directly, although he was always alert to stray pieces of information that he might learn in unlikely moments, from unlikely sources. With Brother Michael, he read Great Expectations, and managed to misdirect the brother into a long segue about what life for an orphan would be like in nineteenth-century London, a place as foreign to him as Pierre, just a hundred-some miles away. The lesson eventually became a lecture, as he knew it would, but from it he did learn that he, like Pip, would have been given to a relative if there were any to be identified or had. So there were none, clearly. He was alone.

那些修士们都对历史颇感兴趣，但每回他对自己的历史感兴趣时，他们就会很烦躁，好像他一直长不大，坚守着一个特别无聊幼稚的嗜好，不肯放弃。很快，他学会不要问，至少不要直接问。不过他总是保持警觉，提醒自己可能在看似不可能的时机，通过不同的来源获得信息。他跟着迈克修士阅读小说《远大前程》时，设法引导修士絮絮叨叨地讲起一个孤儿在19世纪的伦敦生活会是什么样，对他而言，伦敦陌生得就跟一百多英里外的南达科他首府皮埃尔市没两样。那堂课最后演变成一场说教。他早料到了，但在那堂课上，他的确学到自己就像《远大前程》里的孤儿皮普，如果查得到他的任何一位亲戚，他们就会把他送去给亲戚抚养了。显然他没有亲戚，只有孤身一人。

　 His possessiveness was also a bad habit that needed to be corrected. He couldn’t remember when he first began coveting something that he could own, something that would be his and no one else’s. “Nobody here owns anything,” they told him, but was that really true? He knew that Brother Peter had a tortoiseshell comb, for example, the color of freshly tapped tree sap and just as light-filled, of which he was very proud and with which he brushed his mustache every morning. One day the comb disappeared, and Brother Peter had interrupted his history lesson with Brother Matthew to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, yelling that he had stolen the comb and had better return it if he knew what was good for him. (Father Gabriel later found the comb, which had slipped into the shallow wedge of space between the brother’s desk and the radiator.) And Brother Matthew had an original clothbound edition of The Bostonians, which had a soft-rubbed green spine and which he once held before him so he could look at its cover (“Don’t touch! I said don’t touch!”). Even Brother Luke, his favorite of the brothers, who rarely spoke and never scolded him, had a bird that all the others considered his. Technically, said Brother David, the bird was no one’s, but it had been Brother Luke who had found it and nursed it and fed it and to whom it flew, and so if Luke wanted it, Luke could have it.

他的占有欲也是个需要矫正的恶习。他不记得自己什么时候开始想拥有东西，而且希望只有他有、别人都没有。“这里没有人拥有任何东西。”他们告诉他，但这是真的吗？比方说，他知道彼得修士有一把玳瑁梳子，颜色像是树皮上刚流下来的树汁，充满光亮。彼得修士很得意拥有这把梳子，每天早上都要用来梳他的小胡子。有一天那把梳子不见了，彼得修士就闯进他跟马修修士正在上课的房间，抓住他的双肩摇个不停，吼着说他偷走了那把梳子，最好赶紧交出来，否则要给他好看（加布里埃尔神父后来找到了那把梳子，原来滑进了彼得修士的书桌和暖气散热片之间的狭小缝隙里）。马修修士有一本《波士顿人》，是初版的布面精装本，有着磨得柔软的绿色书脊。有回，修士把书举在他面前让他看封面（“不要摸！我叫你不要摸！”）。即使是他最喜欢、很少讲话也从不骂他的卢克修士，都有一只鸟，是大家公认归他的。按照戴维修士的说法，严格说来，那只鸟不属于任何人，但当初是卢克发现那只鸟，予以照料、喂食，而且那只鸟总是飞向他，所以如果卢克想要那只鸟，就可以拥有它。

　 Brother Luke was responsible for the monastery’s garden and greenhouse, and in the warm months, he would help him with small tasks. He knew from eavesdropping on the other brothers that Brother Luke had been a rich man before he came to the monastery. But then something happened, or he had done something (it was never clear which), and he either lost most of his money or gave it away, and now he was here, and just as poor as the others, although it was Brother Luke’s money that had paid for the greenhouse, and which helped defray some of the monastery’s operating expenses. Something about the way the other brothers mostly avoided Luke made him think he might be bad, although Brother Luke was never bad, not to him.

卢克修士负责照料修道院的花园、菜园，还有玻璃温室。在温暖的季节里，他会帮他做些小差事。他偷听其他修士的谈话得知，卢克修士来到修道院之前很有钱。后来发生了一些事，或是他做了某件事（谁也不清楚），让他失去或是送掉了大部分的钱。现在他来到这里，跟其他人一样穷，不过卢克修士出钱盖了玻璃温室，也帮忙付了一些修道院的营运费用。从其他修士大半躲着卢克修士的样子，他觉得卢克修士可能是坏人，尽管他一点都不凶恶，至少没对他凶过。