《渺小一生》:他是在偷他最大的目标
It was shortly after Brother Peter accused him of stealing his comb that he actually stole his first item: a package of crackers from the kitchen. He was passing by one morning on the way to the room they had set aside for his schooling, and no one was there, and the package was on the countertop, just within his reach, and he had, on impulse, grabbed it and run, stuffing it under the scratchy wool tunic he wore, a miniature version of the brothers’ own. He had detoured so he could hide it under his pillow, which had made him late for class with Brother Matthew, who had hit him with a forsythia switch as punishment, but the secret of its existence filled him with something warm and joyous. That night, alone in bed, he ate one of the crackers (which he didn’t even really like) carefully, breaking it into eight sections with his teeth and letting each piece sit on his tongue until it became soft and gluey and he could swallow it whole.
在彼得修士指控他偷了梳子之后不久，他第一次真正偷了东西：厨房里的一包饼干。那天早上，他正要去专门供他上课的房间，经过厨房，里头没人，那包饼干就放在料理台上，他刚好拿得到。于是他一时冲动拿了，抓了就跑，把它塞在身上穿的粗羊毛长袍里（是其他修士穿的袖珍版）。他绕回自己的房间，把饼干藏在枕头下，因此马修修士的课他迟到了，作为惩罚，修士用连翘树枝打他，但那包饼干的秘密让他觉得温暖又喜悦。那天晚上，他独自躺在床上，小心翼翼吃了一片（其实他根本不喜欢），把那饼干用牙齿分成八小片，每一小片都含在舌头上，直到又软又黏，才有办法吞下去。
After that, he stole more and more. There was nothing in the monastery he really wanted, nothing that was really worth having, and so he simply took what he came across, with no real plan or craving: food when he could find it; a clacky black button he found on the floor of Brother Michael’s room in one of his post-breakfast prowlings; a pen from Father Gabriel’s desk, snatched when, mid-lecture, the father had turned from him to find a book; Brother Peter’s comb (this last was the only one he planned, but it gave him no greater thrill than the others). He stole matches and pencils and pieces of paper—useless junk, but someone else’s junk—shoving them down his underwear and running back to his bedroom to hide them under his mattress, which was so thin that he could feel its every spring beneath his back at night.
之后，他偷得越来越多了。修道院里没有什么他真正想要，也没有什么真正值得拥有的东西。于是他随机偷拿他所看到的物品，没有真正的计划或渴望，通常是能找到的食物。有回早餐后他到处游荡，在迈克修士房间的地板上发现一颗脆硬的黑色纽扣；还有一次，加布里埃尔神父训话训到一半，转身去找一本书，他就伸手摸走了神父桌上的一支笔；而彼得修士的梳子是他真正计划要偷的，不过给他的快感没有更大。他偷火柴、铅笔和纸片（没有用的垃圾，不过是别人的垃圾），塞在内衣底下跑回卧室，藏在床垫下，那床垫好薄，他夜里都能感觉到背部底下的每个弹簧。
“Stop that running around or I’ll have to beat you!” Brother Matthew would yell at him as he hurried to his room.
“别再跑来跑去，不然我就要打你了！”他匆忙冲向房间时，马修修士会这样吼他。
“Yes, Brother,” he would reply, and make himself slow to a walk.
“是的，修士。”他会回答，然后逼自己慢下脚步。
It was the day he took his biggest prize that he was caught: Father Gabriel’s silver lighter, stolen directly off his desk when he’d had to interrupt his lecturing of him to answer a phone call. Father Gabriel had bent over his keyboard, and he had reached out and grabbed the lighter, palming its cool heavy weight in his hand until he was finally dismissed. Once outside the father’s office, he had hurriedly pushed it into his underwear and was walking as quickly as he could back to his room when he turned the corner without looking and ran directly into Brother Pavel. Before the brother could shout at him, he had fallen back, and the lighter had fallen out, bouncing against the flagstones.
他是在偷他最大的目标——加布里埃尔神父的银制打火机时被抓到的。他是趁他训诫到一半，必须中途停止，去接一通电话时，从他桌上偷走的。当时加布里埃尔神父弯腰越过电话键盘，他就伸手抓了打火机，握着那冰凉沉重的金属，直到终于下课。他一走出神父的办公室，就匆忙把打火机塞进内衣里，尽快走回房间。结果转弯时没看路，跟帕维尔修士撞了个满怀。修士还来不及吼他，他就往后倒下，打火机也摔出来，砸在石板地上。
He had been beaten, of course, and shouted at, and in what he thought was a final punishment, Father Gabriel had called him into his office and told him that he would teach him a lesson about stealing other people’s things. He had watched, uncomprehending but so frightened that he couldn’t even cry, as Father Gabriel folded his handkerchief to the mouth of a bottle of olive oil, and then rubbed the oil into the back of his left hand. And then he had taken his lighter—the same one he had stolen—and held his hand under the flame until the greased spot had caught fire, and his whole hand was swallowed by a white, ghostly glow. Then he had screamed and screamed, and the father had hit him in the face for screaming. “Stop that shouting,” he’d shouted. “This is what you get. You’ll never forget not to steal again.”
当然，他被揍了，还被骂了，而且在他以为是最后一次的惩罚中，加布里埃尔神父把他叫进办公室，说要教他有关偷别人东西的一堂课。他看着，不明白什么意思，但是害怕得连哭都哭不出来。加布里埃尔神父折起手帕，凑到一瓶橄榄油的瓶口，然后把油抹在他左手背上。接着，神父拿了打火机——就是他偷的那一个——抓着他的手凑在火焰下，直到那油点燃，烧起来，整只手被一片幽灵似的白光吞没。他尖叫又尖叫，神父因为他尖叫而打他耳光。“别叫了。”他吼道，“这就是给你的教训，你以后绝对不会忘记不可偷窃。”
When he regained consciousness, he was back in his bed, and his hand was bandaged. All of his things were gone: the stolen things, of course, but the things he had found on his own as well—the stones and feathers and arrowheads, and the fossil that Brother Luke had given him for his fifth birthday, the first gift he had ever received.
等到他恢复意识时，发现自己躺在床上，左手被绷带包扎起来。他所有的东西都不见了，偷来的东西当然没了，但他自己找到的东西也不见了，那些石头、羽毛和箭镞，还有卢克修士送给他当5岁生日礼物的化石。那是他有生以来的第一个礼物。
After that, after he was caught, he was made to go to Father Gabriel’s office every night and take off his clothes, and the father would examine inside him for any contraband. And later, when things got worse, he would think back to that package of crackers: if only he hadn’t stolen them. If only he hadn’t made things so bad for himself.
自从被抓之后，他被规定每晚要去加布里埃尔神父的房间，把衣服脱掉，由神父检查他身上是否藏了违禁品。后来事情一路恶化时，他会回想起那包饼干，真希望他当初没偷，真希望他没有把自己害得这么惨。
His rages began after his evening examinations with Father Gabriel, which soon expanded to include midday ones with Brother Peter. He would have tantrums, throwing himself against the stone walls of the monastery and screaming as loudly as he could, knocking the back of his damaged ugly hand (which, six months later, still hurt sometimes, a deep, insistent pulsing) against the hard, mean corners of the wooden dinner tables, banging the back of his neck, his elbows, his cheeks—all the most painful, tender parts—against the side of his desk. He had them in the day and at night, he couldn’t control them, he would feel them move over him like a fog and let himself relax into them, his body and voice moving in ways that excited and repelled him, for as much as he hurt afterward, he knew it scared the brothers, that they feared his anger and noise and power. They hit him with whatever they could find, they started keeping a belt looped on a nail on the schoolroom wall, they took off their sandals and beat him for so long that the next day he couldn’t even sit, they called him a monster, they wished for his death, they told him they should have left him on the garbage bag. And he was grateful for this, too, for their help exhausting him, because he couldn’t lasso the beast himself and he needed their assistance to make it retreat, to make it walk backward into the cage until it freed itself again.
他的暴怒始于加布里埃尔神父的夜间检查。不久后，连彼得修士也在白天检查他。他会乱发脾气，去撞修道院的石墙，用尽力气放声尖叫。他会用烧伤的丑陋手背（直到六个月后，他的手背有时还是会痛，那是一种持续的深层抽痛）去敲木餐桌坚硬的角落，把他的颈背、手肘、脸颊——所有最容易痛、最柔软的部位——对着书桌的边缘撞去。他白天和黑夜都会这样暴怒，自己也控制不了。他感觉到那股怒气像一阵浓雾笼罩他，让他在其中放松，而他的身体和声音的种种活动方式，让他同时感到刺激和反感。尽管事后很痛，但他知道自己把修士们吓坏了，他们害怕他的怒气、大吼和力量。他们用任何能找到的东西打他，他们开始在上课房间墙壁的钉子上挂一根皮带，他们会脱下凉鞋打他个不停，害他次日连坐都没办法坐，他们说他是怪物，希望他死掉，说当初应该把他留在那个垃圾袋里不予理会。他也很感激他们这样对待他，那样就可以让他累得筋疲力尽，因为他自己控制不了心底的那头野兽，所以需要他们帮忙击退它，让它往后退回笼子里，直到下次又跑出来为止。
He started wetting his bed and was made to go visit the father more often, for more examinations, and the more examinations the father gave him, the more he wet the bed. The father began visiting him in his room at night, and so did Brother Peter, and later, Brother Matthew, and he got worse and worse: they made him sleep in his wet nightshirt, they made him wear it during the day. He knew how badly he stank, like urine and blood, and he would scream and rage and howl, interrupting lessons, pushing books off tables so that the brothers would have to start hitting him right away, the lesson abandoned. Sometimes he was hit hard enough so that he lost consciousness, which is what he began to crave: that blackness, where time passed and he wasn’t in it, where things were done to him but he didn’t know it.
他开始尿床，被迫要更频繁地去找加布里埃尔神父，接受更多的检查，而神父检查他的次数越多，他尿床就越频繁。神父开始在夜里去他房间找他，还有彼得修士，后来又多了马修修士，于是他的状况越来越糟糕：他们逼他穿着尿湿的长睡衣睡觉，逼他白天也穿着那身衣服。他知道自己身上很臭，闻起来像尿和血，他会尖叫、暴怒、哭号，上课上到一半，他会把桌上的书扫下桌，修士们就立刻开始打他，不再上课。有时他被打得失去意识，后来他开始想念这种滋味：时间在那片黑暗中流逝，但他不在其中，他也不知道别人对他做了什么事。
Sometimes there were reasons behind his rages, although they were reasons known only to him. He felt so ceaselessly dirty, so soiled, as if inside he was a rotten building, like the condemned church he had been taken to see in one of his rare trips outside the monastery: the beams speckled with mold, the rafters splintered and holey with nests of termites, the triangles of white sky showing immodestly through the ruined rooftop. He had learned in a history lesson about leeches, and how many years ago they had been thought to siphon the unhealthy blood out of a person, sucking the disease foolishly and greedily into their fat wormy bodies, and he had spent his free hour—after classes but before chores—wading in the stream on the edge of the monastery’s property, searching for leeches of his own. And when he couldn’t find any, when he was told there weren’t any in that creek, he screamed and screamed until his voice deserted him, and even then he couldn’t stop, even when his throat felt like it was filling itself with hot blood.
有时他暴怒的背后有些原因，不过只有他自己知道。他觉得自己永远很脏、很龌龊，仿佛他体内有一座破败的建筑物，就像他有回难得离开修道院，被带去看的那座废弃的教堂：屋梁上生着点点霉斑，木椽裂开，上面布满了被白蚁蛀食的孔洞，毁坏的屋顶难堪地露出一块块三角形的白色天空。他在一堂历史课中学到水蛭，知道古时候人们认为水蛭可以从人类身上吸出不健康的血液，愚蠢而贪婪地把疾病吸入肥胖蠕动的身躯中，于是他在自己的闲暇时间——上完课之后，开始做杂务之前——走进修道院产业边缘的那条小溪，寻找自己的水蛭。但他一条都找不到，听修士说那条溪中没有水蛭，他尖叫又尖叫，叫到声音都没了，还是停不下来，即使那时他感觉喉咙里仿佛充满滚烫的血液。
Once he was in his room, and both Father Gabriel and Brother Peter were there, and he was trying not to shout, because he had learned that the quieter he was, the sooner it would end, and he thought he saw, passing outside the doorframe quick as a moth, Brother Luke, and had felt humiliated, although he didn’t know the word for humiliation then. And so the next day he had gone in his free time to Brother Luke’s garden and had snapped off every one of the daffodils’ heads, piling them at the door of Luke’s gardener’s shed, their fluted crowns pointing toward the sky like open beaks.
有回他在自己的房间，加布里埃尔神父和彼得修士也都在。他设法不要叫出声，因为他已经学会只要他越安静，事情就会越快结束。此时，他仿佛看见卢克修士像一只蛾似的飞快掠过门框外，他觉得受到了羞辱，尽管当时他还不认识羞辱这个字。于是第二天，他在闲暇时间溜到卢克修士的花园，把每一株黄水仙的花朵都摘下来，堆在卢克修士的园艺工具小屋门口。那管状的花冠指向天空，像一张张打开的鸟喙。
Later, alone again and moving through his chores, he had been regretful, and sorrow had made his arms heavy, and he had dropped the bucket of water he was lugging from one end of the room to the other, which made him toss himself to the ground and scream with frustration and remorse.
稍后，独自忙着做杂务时，他觉得很后悔，悲伤令他双手沉重。当他把水提到房间的另一头时，水桶落地，他整个人扑在地上，懊恼又自责地尖叫。
At dinner, he was unable to eat. He looked for Luke, wondering when and how he would be punished, and when he would have to apologize to the brother. But he wasn’t there. In his anxiety, he dropped the metal pitcher of milk, the cold white liquid splattering across the floor, and Brother Pavel, who was next to him, yanked him from the bench and pushed him onto the ground. “Clean it up,” Brother Pavel barked at him, throwing a dishrag at him. “But that’ll be all you’ll eat until Friday.” It was Wednesday. “Now go to your room.” He ran, before the brother changed his mind.
晚餐时他吃不下。他寻找卢克修士的身影，想知道自己什么时候会被处罚、怎么处罚，想知道什么时候他得向卢克修士道歉。但是他不在。焦虑之下，他手上的金属牛奶壶掉在地上，冷白的液体泼溅在地板上，于是坐在他旁边的帕维尔修士把他从长椅上抓起来，推到地板上。“清理干净。”帕维尔修士朝他咆哮，把一条抹布朝他丢去，“星期五前你都不能再吃东西了。”那天是星期三。“回你的房间去吧。”趁修士改变心意之前，他赶紧跑回房间。
The door to his room—a converted closet, windowless and wide enough for only a cot, at one end of the second story above the dining hall—was always left open, unless one of the brothers or the father were with him, in which case it was usually closed. But even as he rounded the corner from the staircase, he could see the door was shut, and for a while he lingered in the quiet, empty hallway, unsure what might be waiting for him: one of the brothers, probably. Or a monster, perhaps. After the stream incident, he occasionally daydreamed that the shadows thickening the corners were giant leeches, swaying upright, their glossy segmented skins dark and greasy, waiting to smother him with their wet, soundless weight. Finally he was brave enough and ran straight at the door, opening it with a slam, only to find his bed, with its mud-brown wool blanket, and the box of tissues, and his schoolbooks on their shelf. And then he saw it in the corner, near the head of the bed: a glass jar with a bouquet of daffodils, their bright funnels frilled at their tops.
他的房间位于餐厅上方的二楼一角，原来是一间小储藏室，没有窗子，而且窄得只放得下一张行军床。他的房门向来开着，除非有修士或神父在里头，门才会关上。当他上了楼、绕过转角，远远就看到门关着。有一会儿，他默默地在空荡的走廊上逗留，不确定里头有什么等着他：大概是某个修士吧，或是一个怪物。没在小溪找到水蛭，他有时会幻想角落里深暗的阴影就是巨大的水蛭，摇晃着竖直身体，发亮的环状皮肤是油腻的黑色，等着用潮湿无声的重量闷死他。最后他终于鼓起勇气跑向那扇门，砰一声打开来，里头只有他的床和泥褐色的羊毛毯子，还有纸巾盒，以及书架上的课本。然后他看到房间的角落里，靠近床头处，有一个玻璃瓶插着一把黄水仙，顶端是鲜黄色有褶边的漏斗状花冠。
He sat on the floor near the jar and rubbed one of the flowers’ velvet heads between his fingers, and in that moment his sadness was so great, so overpowering, that he wanted to tear at himself, to rip the scar from the back of his hand, to shred himself into bits as he had done to Luke’s flowers.
他坐在瓶子旁的地上，手指抚摸着那天鹅绒质感的花冠。那一刻他的忧伤很庞大、很强烈，他真想把自己给撕开，把手臂的伤疤扯掉，把自己撕成一片片的，就像他对卢克的花做过的那样。
But why had he done such a thing to Brother Luke? It wasn’t as if Luke was the only one who was kind to him—when he wasn’t being made to punish him, Brother David always praised him and told him how quick he was, and even Brother Peter regularly brought him books from the library in town to read and discussed them with him afterward, listening to his opinions as if he were a real person—but not only had Luke never beaten him, he had made efforts to reassure him, to express his allegiance with him. The previous Sunday, he was to recite aloud the pre-supper prayer, and as he stood at the foot of Father Gabriel’s table, he was suddenly seized by an impulse to misbehave, to grab a handful of the cubed potatoes from the dish before him and fling them around the room. He could already feel the scrape in his throat from the screaming he would do, the singe of the belt as it slapped across his back, the darkness he would sink into, the giddy bright of day he would wake to. He watched his arm lift itself from his side, watched his fingers open, petal-like, and float toward the bowl. And just then he had raised his head and had seen Brother Luke, who gave him a wink, so solemn and brief, like a camera’s shutter-click, that he was at first unaware he had seen anything at all. And then Luke winked at him again, and for some reason this calmed him, and he came back to himself, and said his lines and sat down, and dinner passed without incident.
但他为什么要对卢克修士做那样的事？卢克并不是唯一对他好的人。不惩罚他的时候，戴维修士总是赞美他，说他脑子动得很快。就连彼得修士都常常从镇上的图书馆借书给他阅读，等他看完了再一起讨论，认真听他的意见，好像他是个真正的人。但是卢克修士不仅仅是没打过他，而且会努力让他安心，表现出对他的忠诚。前一个星期天，他站在加布里埃尔神父那一桌的桌尾，正要念餐前祷辞时，忽然被一股捣蛋的冲动攫住了，想从面前抓起一把马铃薯块，在餐厅里乱丢。他几乎可以感觉到喉咙叫得沙哑的刺痛、皮带抽着背部的灼痛，还有他即将沉入的黑暗，以及醒来时将会看到白昼的炫目天光。他看着自己一手抬起来，看着手指张开有如花瓣，移向那个大钵。就在此时，他抬头看到了卢克修士。他朝他眨了一下眼睛，严肃而短暂，像照相机的快门般一闪，一开始他完全没意识到自己看到了什么。然后，卢克又朝他眨了一下眼睛，出于某个原因，这个动作让他冷静下来。他控制住自己，说了餐前祷辞后坐下，平静无事地吃完晚餐。
And now there were these flowers. But before he could think about what they might mean, the door opened, and there was Brother Peter, and he stood, waiting in that terrible moment that he could never prepare for, in which anything might happen, and anything might come.
现在又有了这些花。但他还没想到这些花可能代表什么意义，门就打开了，是彼得修士。他站起来，在那可怕的一刻等待着他的，是他永远没准备好面对的事情，任何事都可能发生，任何事都可能降临在他身上。
The next day, he had left directly after his classes for the greenhouse, determined that he should say something to Luke. But as he drew closer, his resolve deserted him, and he dawdled, kicking at small stones and kneeling to pick up and then discard twigs, throwing them toward the forest that bordered the property. What, really, did he mean to say? He was about to turn back, to retreat toward a particular tree on the north edge of the grounds in whose cleft of roots he had dug a hole and begun a new collection of things—though these things were only objects he had discovered in the woods and were safely nobody’s: little rocks; a branch that was shaped a bit like a lean dog in mid-leap—and where he spent most of his free time, unearthing his possessions and holding them in his hands, when he heard someone say his name and turned and saw it was Luke, holding his hand up in greeting and walking toward him.
次日，他上完课后直接跑去玻璃温室，决心要和卢克说些什么。但当他走近时，决心就消失了。于是他磨蹭着，踢着路上的小石头，跪下去捡起小树枝，丢向修道院外围的树林。他到底打算说什么？他转身准备离开，走向修道院北端的一棵树，他在那棵树根部的裂缝间挖了个洞，放入一批新的收藏，不过都是他在树林里捡到的东西，不属于任何人：小石头、一根形状有点像瘦狗跃起的树枝。平常他大部分闲暇时间都在这里度过，挖出自己拥有的这些东西，拿在手里。此时他忽然听到有人叫他的名字，转身发现是卢克。卢克举起一只手打招呼，朝他走来。
“I thought it was you,” Brother Luke said as he neared him (disingenuously, it would occur to him much later, for who else would it have been? He was the only child at the monastery), and although he tried, he was unable to find the words to apologize to Luke, unable in truth to find the words for anything, and instead he found himself crying. He was never embarrassed when he cried, but in this moment he was, and he turned away from Brother Luke and held the back of his scarred hand before his eyes. He was suddenly aware of how hungry he was, and how it was only Thursday afternoon, and he wouldn’t have anything to eat until the next day.
“我就觉得是你。”卢克修士说着走近他（太不诚实了，很久以后他才想到，不然还会有谁？他是修道院里唯一的小孩）。无论怎么努力想，他还是想不出该怎么向卢克道歉，真的什么话都想不出来，不知不觉他哭了起来。他以前哭时从不觉得难堪，但那一刻却很难为情，于是他转身背对卢克修士，用有伤疤的那只手背遮着双眼。他忽然意识到自己好饿，而那时还只是星期四下午，他要等到第二天才有东西吃。
