《渺小一生》:“他要到晚上才会回来。”

　 “But Jude,” Malcolm had begun, and then stopped. He knew what Malcolm wanted to say: But you have been. And you will be again. But he didn’t. “These are standard ADA guidelines,” he said instead.

“可是裘德……”马尔科姆开口，然后又停下。他知道马尔科姆想说什么：可是你以前坐过轮椅，以后也会重演的。但马尔科姆没这么说，而是说：“这些是美国残疾人法案的参考原则。”

　 “Mal,” he’d said, chagrined by how upset he was. “I understand. But I don’t want this to be some cripple’s apartment.”

“小马，”他说，因为自己动气而懊恼，“我明白。但我不希望这里变成那种残障公寓。”

　 “It won’t be, Jude. It’ll be yours. But don’t you think, maybe, just as a precaution—”

“不会的，裘德。这里会是你的公寓。但是你不觉得，或许预防一下……”

　 “No, Malcolm. Get rid of them. I mean it.”

“不，马尔科姆。拿掉这些东西。我说真的。”

　 “But don’t you think, just as a matter of practicality—”

“可你不觉得，为了实用性起见……”

　 “Now you’re interested in practicalities? The man who wanted me to live in a five-thousand-square-foot space with no walls?” He stopped. “I’m sorry, Mal.”

“现在你倒是对实用性有兴趣了？你之前不是希望我住在这个五千平方英尺[1]、没有墙壁隔间的空间里？”他停下来，“对不起，小马。”

　 “It’s okay, Jude,” Malcolm said. “I understand. I do.”

“没关系，裘德。”马尔科姆说，“我了解。我真的了解。”

　 Now, Malcolm stands before him, grinning. “I have something to show you,” he says, waving the baton of rolled-up paper in his hand.

这会儿，马尔科姆站在他面前咧嘴笑着：“我有个东西要给你看。”他说，挥着手上那根卷成棒状的纸。

　 “Malcolm, thank you,” he says. “But should we look at them later?” He’d had to schedule an appointment with the tailor; he doesn’t want to be late.

“马尔科姆，谢谢你，”他说，“但是我们晚一点再来看吧？”他之前已经跟西装裁缝师约好了时间，不希望迟到。

　 “It’ll be fast,” Malcolm says, “and I’ll leave them with you.” He sits next to him and smooths out the sheaf of pages, giving him one end to hold, explaining things he’s changed and tweaked. “Counters back up to standard height,” says Malcolm, pointing at the kitchen. “No grab bars in the shower area, but I gave you this ledge that you can use as a seat, just in case. I swear it’ll look nice. I kept the ones around the toilet—just think about it, okay? We’ll install them last, and if you really, really hate them, we’ll leave them off, but … but I’d do it, Judy.” He nods, reluctantly. He won’t know it then, but years later, he will be grateful that Malcolm has prepared for his future, even when he hadn’t wanted to: he will notice that in his apartment, the passages are wider, that the bathroom and kitchen are oversize, so a wheelchair can make a full, clean revolution in them, that the doorways are generous, that wherever possible, the doors slide instead of swing, that there is no cabinetry under the master bathroom sink, that the highest-placed closet rods lower with the touch of a pneumatic button, that there is a benchlike seat in the bathtub, and, finally, that Malcolm won the fight about the grab bars around the toilet. He’ll feel a sort of bitter wonderment that yet another person in his life—Andy, Willem, Richard, and now Malcolm—had foreseen his future, and knew how inevitable it was.

“很快的，”马尔科姆说，“我会留下来让你仔细看。”他在他旁边坐下，解释他修改、调整过的地方。“料理台回到原先的标准高度。”马尔科姆说，指着厨房，“淋浴区没有安全扶手，但我加了这个壁架，你可以用来当座位，以防万一。我发誓看起来会很棒。我也保留了马桶旁边的扶手——你还是考虑一下，好吗？我们最后才会装。如果你真的、真的很讨厌，我们可以拿掉，可是——可是，小裘，我还是要装上。”他很不情愿地点头。当时他并不知道，多年后，他会很感激马尔科姆为他的未来做好准备。即使当时他不想要，他仍会注意到他公寓里的通道比较宽，浴室和厨房特别大，轮椅可以利落顺畅地旋转；所有的门都很宽，而且尽可能用横向拉门取代转动式推门；主浴室水槽底下没有储藏柜；最高的衣橱杆只要按一个气动按钮就可以下降；而且马尔科姆赢了有关马桶周围安全扶手的那场争执。他会感觉到一种略带苦涩的惊讶，没想到他人生中又有另一个人预见到了他的未来（先是安迪、威廉、理查德，现在是马尔科姆），而且知道会有什么必然的结果。

　 After their appointment, where Malcolm is measured for a navy suit and a dark gray one, and where Franklin, the tailor, greets him and asks why he hasn’t seen him for two years—“I’m pretty sure that’s my fault,” Malcolm says, smiling—they have lunch. It’s nice taking a Saturday off, he thinks, as they drink rosewater lemonade and eat za’atar-dusted roasted cauliflower at the crowded Israeli restaurant near Franklin’s shop. Malcolm is excited to start work on the apartment, and he is, too. “This is such perfect timing,” Malcolm keeps saying. “I’ll have the office submit everything to the city on Monday, and by the time it’s approved, I’ll be done with Doha and be able to get started right away, and you can move into Willem’s while it’s being done.” Malcolm has just finished the final pieces of work on Willem’s apartment, which he has supervised more of than Willem has; by the end of the process, he was making decisions for Willem on paint colors. Malcolm did a beautiful job, he thinks; he won’t mind at all staying there for the next year.

接着他们去西装店，马尔科姆量身定做了一套海军蓝西装和一套深灰色西装。裁缝师富兰克林跟他打招呼，问他为什么两年没来了。“我很确定是我的错。”马尔科姆微笑着说。然后他们一起来到西装店附近一家客满的以色列餐厅吃中饭，喝着玫瑰柠檬水、吃着中东香料烤花椰菜。他心想，星期六能休息真好。马尔科姆对就要开始装修那间公寓感到很兴奋，他也很兴奋。“这个时机真是太完美了。”马尔科姆一直说，“我星期一就让办公室把所有的申请数据送去市政府，等许可下来，我多哈那边的工作也完成了，可以马上动工。施工期间，你可以搬去威廉那边。”马尔科姆才刚完成威廉公寓的装修工作，而且施工期间大都是他在监工，而不是威廉。到了施工末期，连油漆颜色都是他帮威廉决定的。他觉得马尔科姆的工作成果完美极了，他不介意接下来一年都住在那里。

　 It is early when they finish lunch, and they linger on the sidewalk outside. For the past week it’s been raining, but today the skies are blue and he is still feeling strong, and even a little restless, and he asks Malcolm if he wants to walk for a bit. He can see Malcolm hesitate, flicking his gaze up and down his body as if trying to determine how capable he is, but then he smiles and agrees, and the two of them start heading west, and then north, toward the Village. They pass the building on Mulberry Street that JB used to live in before he moved farther east, and they are quiet for a minute, both of them, he knows, thinking about JB and wondering what he’s doing, and knowing but also not knowing why he hasn’t answered their and Willem’s calls, their texts, their e-mails. The three of them have had dozens of conversations with one another, with Richard, with Ali and the Henry Youngs about what to do, but with every attempt they have made to find JB, he has eluded them, or barred their way, or ignored them. “We just have to wait until it gets worse,” Richard had said at one point, and he fears that Richard is correct. It is, sometimes, as if JB is no longer theirs at all, and they can do nothing but wait for the moment in which he will have a crisis only they can solve, and they will be able to parachute into his life once again.

吃过中饭后时间还早，于是他们在餐厅外的人行道上逗留。过去一星期都在下雨，但今天的天空是蓝色的，而且他觉得精神还很好，甚至有点坐立不安，便问马尔科姆要不要散步。他看得出来马尔科姆迟疑了，目光上下打量他，好像想确认他到底有没有办法走，但接着就微笑地答应了。他们两个人开始往西走，然后向北，朝格林威治村走去。他们经过马尔伯里街以前杰比住过的那栋楼房（杰比后来搬到更东边去了），同时沉默了一会儿，他知道两人都想起了杰比，很纳闷他现在怎么样了，同时知道、但也不知道为什么他不肯回复他们和威廉的电话、短信和电子邮件。他们三个谈过几十次，还跟理查德、阿里和两个亨利·杨商量过该怎么办，但每回他们想找杰比，他都躲着他们，拒绝碰面，或是根本不理会。“我们也只能等到状况恶化了。”理查德有回说。他担心理查德的判断是对的。有时候，杰比好像再也不是他们当初那位好友了，而他们什么也做不了，只能等到他碰上足够大的危机，大到只有他们能解决时，他才会再度空降到他们的生活里。

　 “Okay, Malcolm, I’ve got to ask you,” he says, as they walk up the stretch of Hudson Street that is deserted on the weekends, its sidewalks treeless and empty of people, “are you getting married to Sophie or not? We all want to know.”

“好吧，马尔科姆，有件事我得问清楚。”他说。他们走在哈德逊街上，这一个路段周末时一片荒凉，人行道上没有行道树，路上也空荡荡的，没什么行人，“你到底要不要跟苏菲结婚？我们都很想知道。”

　 “God, Jude, I just don’t know,” Malcolm begins, but he sounds relieved, as if he’s been waiting to be asked the question all along. Maybe he has. He lists the potential negatives (marriage is so conventional; it feels so permanent; he’s not really interested in the idea of a wedding but fears Sophie is; his parents are going to try to get involved; something about spending the rest of his life with another architect depresses him; he and Sophie are cofounders of the firm—if something happens between them, what will happen to Bellcast?) and the positives, which also sound like negatives (if he doesn’t propose, he thinks Sophie will leave; his parents have been bothering him about it nonstop and he’d like to shut them up; he really does love Sophie, and knows he won’t be able to do better than her; he’s thirty-eight, and feels he has to do something). As he listens to Malcolm, he tries not to smile: he has always liked this about Malcolm, how he can be so decisive on the page and in his designs, and yet in the rest of his life so in a dither, and so unself-conscious about sharing it. Malcolm has never been someone who pretended he was cooler, or more confident, or silkier than he actually is, and as they grow older, he appreciates and admires more and more his sweet guilelessness, his complete trust in his friends and their opinions.

“老天，裘德，我真的不知道。”马尔科姆说，但听起来他像是松了一口气，好像一直等着有人问起这个问题。他举出潜在的缺点（婚姻太传统；感觉上过于永久；他其实对婚礼没兴趣，但担心苏菲想要举办；他父母一定会设法插手；接下来的人生要跟另一个建筑师共度害他沮丧；他和苏菲是“钟模”建筑师事务所的共同创办人，要是两个人之间出了什么状况，那事务所会怎么样？），还有优点，但听起来也像缺点（如果他不求婚，他觉得苏菲会离开他；他父母一直跟他啰唆个不停，他很想结婚好让他们闭嘴；他真的很爱苏菲，也知道他不可能找到比她更好的对象了；他现在38岁，觉得自己必须做个决定了）。他听着马尔科姆倾诉，忍着不要露出笑容。他一直很喜欢马尔科姆这一点，在纸上规划设计时可以这么果断，但在生活的其他部分中却又这么犹豫不决，而且这么毫不害羞地就讲出来。马尔科姆从来不会假装自己比实际上更酷、更有自信或更圆滑。随着年纪渐长，他越来越欣赏且佩服马尔科姆可爱的坦诚性格，以及对朋友和朋友意见的完全信赖。

　 “What do you think, Jude?” Malcolm asks at last. “I’ve actually really wanted to talk to you about this. Should we sit down somewhere? Do you have time? I know Willem’s on his way back home.”

“裘德，你觉得呢？”马尔科姆最后终于问，“我其实一直很想找你谈谈。我们要不要找个地方坐下来？你有时间吗？我知道威廉正在飞回来的途中。”

　 He could be more like Malcolm, he thinks; he could ask his friends for help, he could be vulnerable around them. He has been before, after all; it just hasn’t been by choice. But they have always been kind to him, they have never tried to make him feel self-conscious—shouldn’t that teach him something? Maybe, for instance, he will ask Willem if he could help him with his back: if Willem is disgusted by his appearance, he’ll never say anything. And Andy was right—it is too difficult to apply the creams by himself, and eventually he stopped, although he didn’t throw any of them away, either.

他可以更像马尔科姆一点，他心想，他可以向朋友寻求帮助，在朋友面前显露自己的脆弱。毕竟，他以前就显露出过脆弱的一面，只不过都不是自愿的。他们一直对他很好，从来不会让他难为情——这不该让他有所领悟吗？比方说，他可以问威廉能不能帮他按摩背部，如果威廉看了很反感，他以后再也不提就是了。而且安迪说得没错，他自己实在没办法擦那些按摩药膏，最后就没擦了，但是他也没把药膏丢掉。

　 He tries to think how he might begin the conversation with Willem, but he finds he can’t move beyond the first word—Willem—even in his imaginings. And in that moment, he knows he won’t be able to ask Willem after all: Not because I don’t trust you, he says to Willem, with whom he will never have this conversation. But because I can’t bear to have you see me as I really am. Now when he imagines himself as an old man, he is still alone, but on Greene Street, and in these wanderings, he sees Willem in a house somewhere green and tree-filled—the Adirondacks, the Berkshires—and Willem is happy, he is surrounded by people who love him, and maybe a few times a year he comes into the city to visit him on Greene Street, and they spend the afternoon together. In these dreams, he is always sitting down, so he’s uncertain if he can still walk or not, but he knows that he is delighted to see Willem, always, and that at the end of all their meetings, he is able to tell him not to worry, that he can take care of himself, giving him that assurance like a benediction, pleased that he has had the strength to not spoil Willem’s idyll with his needs, his loneliness, his wants.

他思索着自己可以怎么跟威廉谈这件事，却发现即使用想的，他才说出威廉，就再也说不下去了。于是那一刻，他知道自己终究没办法拜托威廉帮忙：不是因为我不信任你，而是我受不了让你看到真正的我。他想象自己跟威廉说，但这段对话永远不会发生。现在他想象自己是个老人，仍是孤单一人，在格林街上，在这些漫游中，他看到威廉在一处有浓密绿树环绕的房子里（纽约州东北部的阿第伦达克山脉，或是佛蒙特州的伯克希尔地区）过得很快乐，周围是爱他的人。或许一年有几次，他会进城来格林街看他，共度一个下午。在这些白日梦中，他总是坐着，所以他不确定自己是不是还能走路，但他知道自己很高兴看到威廉，而且每次碰面结束，他都可以告诉他不必担心，说他可以照顾自己，像祝祷般向威廉保证，同时很高兴自己够坚强，不会用他的需求、他的孤单、他的向往，去破坏威廉的田园牧歌生活。

　 But that, he reminds himself, is many years in the future. Right now there is Malcolm, and his hopeful, anxious face, waiting to hear his reply.

但他提醒自己，那是很多年以后的事了。眼前是马尔科姆和他充满希望、期待的脸，等着听他的回答。

　 “He’s not back until this evening,” he tells Malcolm. “We’ve got all afternoon, Mal. I’ve got as much time as you need.”

“他要到晚上才会回来。”他告诉马尔科姆，“我们有一整个下午，小马。你要谈多久，我都奉陪。”

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