《渺小一生》:现在他累了。他早就累了

　 When he woke early the next morning, he was still on the sofa, and the television was turned off, and he was under his duvet. And there was Jude, huddled into the cushions on the other end of the sectional, still asleep. Some part of him had always been insulted by Jude’s unwillingness to divulge anything of himself to them, by his furtiveness and secretiveness, but in that moment he felt only gratitude toward and admiration for him, and had sat on the chair next to him, studying his face, which he so loved to paint, his sweep of complicated-colored hair that he could never see without remembering how much mixing, the number of shades it took to accurately represent it.

次日早晨他很早醒来，发现自己还在沙发上，电视已经关掉了，身上盖着羽绒被。而裘德蜷缩在组合沙发另一头的椅垫上，还在睡。他心底有一部分总觉得裘德很过分，因为他不肯向他们透露自己的事情，总是遮遮掩掩又神神秘秘，但那一刻，他对他只有感激和欣赏，于是他坐在旁边的椅子上，审视那张他很爱画的脸，还有那颜色复杂的头发，他每次看到都会想，那么多深浅不同的色调，要调色调好久，才能准确描绘。

　 I can do this, he told Jude, silently. I can do this.

这回我做得到，他默默告诉裘德。这回我做得到。

　 Except he clearly couldn’t. He was in his studio, and it was still only one p.m., and he wanted to smoke so badly, so badly that in his head all he could see was the pipe, its glass frosted with leftover white powder, and it was only day one of his attempt not to do drugs, and already it was making—he was making—a mockery of him. Surrounding him were the only things he cared about, the paintings in his next series, “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days,” for which he had followed Malcolm, Jude, and Willem around for an entire day, photographing everything they did, and then chose eight to ten images from each of their days to paint. He had decided to document a typical workday for each of them, all from the same month of the same year, and had labeled each painting with their name, location, and time of day he had shot the image.

只不过他显然做不到。他在他的工作室里，现在才下午1点，他好想吸大麻，满脑子想到的只有烟斗，玻璃内壁上结了一层残余的白色粉末，而这只是他试着停止嗑药的第一天而已，他已经在嘲弄自己了。周围环绕着的是他唯一在乎的东西，他下一个系列的画作“秒，分，时，日”。在这个系列里，他跟着马尔科姆、裘德、威廉各一整天，拍下他们的一举一动，然后从每天各挑出八到十张来画。他已经决定好要画下他们每个人典型的工作日，都在同一年的同一个月，然后每张画标上他们的名字、地点及拍照日期。

　 Willem’s series had been the most far-flung: he had gone to London, where Willem had been on location filming something called Latecomers, and the images he had chosen were a mix of Willem off and on the set. He had favorites from each person’s take: for Willem, it was Willem, London, October 8, 9:08 a.m., an image of him in the makeup artist’s chair, staring at his reflection in the mirror, while the makeup artist held his chin up with the fingertips of her left hand and brushed powder onto his cheeks with her right. Willem’s eyes were lowered, but it was still clear that he was looking at himself, and his hands were gripping the chair’s wooden arms as if he was on a roller coaster and was afraid he’d fall off if he let go. Before him, the counter was cluttered with wood-shaving curls from freshly sharpened eyebrow pencils that looked like tatters of lace, and open makeup palettes whose every hue was a shade of red, all the reds you could imagine, and wads of tissue with more red smeared on them like blood. For Malcolm, he had taken a long shot of him late at night, sitting at his kitchen counter at home, making one of his imaginary buildings out of squares of rice paper. He liked Malcolm, Brooklyn, October 23, 11:17 p.m. not so much for its composition or color but for more personal reasons: in college, he had always made fun of Malcolm for those small structures he built and displayed on his windowsill, but really he had admired them and had liked watching Malcolm compose them—his breaths slowed, and he was completely silent, and his constant nervousness, which at times seemed almost physical, an appendage like a tail, fell away.

威廉的系列是最遥远的：他跑去伦敦，威廉在那拍一部叫《新来者》的电影。他挑的照片包括了电影场景内和场景外的威廉。每个人都有他最喜欢的一幅画：威廉的是《威廉，伦敦，十月八日，上午9点08分》，里面是他坐在化妆师面前的椅子上，凝视着镜子里的自己，同时化妆师用左手指尖抬起他的下巴，右手拿着化妆刷在他脸颊上刷粉。威廉的双眼低垂，但显然还在看镜中的自己，双手紧握椅子的木头扶手，仿佛坐在云霄飞车上，很怕放了手就会飞出去。他面前的台面上堆得乱七八糟，有眉笔刚削下来的一条条有如蕾丝碎片的卷曲薄木屑；还有打开的化妆盘内各种深浅不同的红色，所有你能想象的红色；一团团面纸上沾了更多的红色，像血一样。而马尔科姆，他最喜欢的是深夜拍下的一张远景画面，他坐在他家厨房的料理台前，用四方形的米纸做出他想象中的建筑物。《马尔科姆，布鲁克林，十月二十三日，下午11点17分》，他喜欢这件作品不是因为构图或颜色，而是因为个人的原因：在大学时代，他总是拿马尔科姆做好的陈列在窗台上的那些小小模型开玩笑，其实他很欣赏那些模型，也很喜欢看马尔科姆制作——他的呼吸会减缓，整个人完全安静下来，而他惯常的神经质（有时简直是有形的，像是尾巴之类的附属肢体）也消失了。

　 He worked on all of them out of sequence, but he couldn’t quite get the colors the way he wanted them for Jude’s installment, and so he had the fewest and least of these paintings done. As he’d gone through the photos, he’d noticed that each of his friends’ days was defined, glossed, by a certain tonal consistency: he had been following Willem on the days he was shooting in what was supposed to be a large Belgravia flat, and the lighting had been particularly golden, like beeswax. Later, back in the apartment in Notting Hill that Willem was renting, he had taken pictures of him sitting and reading, and there, too, the light had been yellowish, although it was less like syrup and instead crisper, like the skin of a late-fall apple. By contrast, Malcolm’s world was bluish: his sterile, white-marble-countertopped office on Twenty-second Street; the house he and Sophie had bought in Cobble Hill after they had gotten married. And Jude’s was grayish, but a silvery gray, a shade particular to gelatin prints that was proving very difficult to reproduce with acrylics, although for Jude’s he had thinned the colors considerably, trying to capture that shimmery light. Before he began, he had to first find a way to make gray seem bright, and clean, and it was frustrating, because all he wanted to do was paint, not fuss around with colors.

他不按顺序同时进行三个人的作品，但裘德的部分他总是调不出想要的颜色，因此完成得最少，也最不完整。他仔细审视那些照片时，注意到每个朋友的一天都有某种一致的色调，清晰且带有光泽。他跟着威廉拍摄的那几天，他拍片的场景是贝尔格维亚的一间公寓，那里的光线特别金黄，像是蜂蜡。稍后，回到威廉在诺丁山租的公寓，他拍了威廉坐着阅读的照片，那里的光线也是黄色调，不过不太像糖浆，比较清新，像深秋时苹果的皮。对照之下，马尔科姆的世界是蓝色调。他在22街那个乏味的、有白色大理石柜台的办公室，在他和苏菲结婚后在布鲁克林科布尔山买的那栋房子里。裘德的世界则是灰色，不过是一种银灰色，像黑白照片特有的色泽，结果证明，这种颜色很难用亚克力颜料复制，虽然在描绘裘德的画作中他已经大幅调淡色彩，试图描绘那种闪烁的光。在开始画之前，他得先找出办法让灰色发亮，而且保持干净，这个过程让人感到很挫败，因为他只想画画，而不是为了颜色瞎忙一气。

　 But getting frustrated with your paintings—and it was impossible not to think of your work as your colleague and co-participant, as if it was something that sometimes decided to be agreeable and collaborate with you, and sometimes decided to be truculent and unyielding, like a grouchy toddler—was just what happened. You had to just keep doing it, and doing it, and one day, you’d get it right.

但是为了你的画而沮丧是正常的事——你不可能不把你的作品想成你的同事和共同参与者，仿佛那作品有时会决定要讨人喜欢、跟你一起合作，有时又决定要很好斗、寸步不让，像个坏脾气又爱抱怨的学步小孩。你就是得继续做下去，试了又试，然后有一天，你就会弄对了。

　 And yet like his promise to himself—You’re not going to make it! squealed the taunting, dancing imp in his head; You’re not going to make it!—the paintings were making a mockery of him as well. For this series, he had decided he was going to paint a sequence of one of his days, too, and yet for almost three years, he had been unable to find a day worth documenting. He had tried—he had taken hundreds of pictures of himself over the course of dozens of days. But when he reviewed them, they all ended the same way: with him getting high. Or the images would stop in the early evening, and he’d know it was because he had gotten high, too high to keep taking pictures. And there were other things in those photographs that he didn’t like, either: he didn’t want to include Jackson in a documentation of his life, and yet Jackson was always there. He didn’t like the goofy smile he saw on his face when he was on drugs, he didn’t like seeing how his face changed from fat and hopeful to fat and avaricious as the day sank into night. This wasn’t the version of himself he wanted to paint. But increasingly, he had begun to think this was the version of himself he should paint: this was, after all, his life. This was who he now was. Sometimes he would wake and it would be dark and he wouldn’t know where he was or what time it was or what day it was. Days: even the very concept of a day had become a mockery. He could no longer accurately measure when one began or ended. Help me, he’d say aloud, in those moments. Help me. But he didn’t know to whom he was addressing his plea, or what he expected to happen.

然而，就像他向自己承诺过的——你做不到的！他脑袋里跳着舞的小恶魔尖叫着嘲笑他，你做不到的！那些画也在嘲弄他。因为这个系列本来也包括他自己的一天，但将近三年来，他都找不出值得记录的一天。他试过，花过几十天，拍过几百张自己的照片。但事后去看，会发现每一天都是同样的收尾：嗑药嗑到茫然。或者那些影像会拍到傍晚就停止，他知道那是因为他茫然了，茫然到没办法继续拍照。而且这些照片里还有其他东西是他不喜欢的：他不想把杰克逊纳入自己生活的纪录中，杰克逊却总是出现。他不喜欢照片中自己嗑药后脸上的那种傻笑，他不喜欢照片中自己的脸从白天的胖而充满希望，变成晚上的胖而贪婪。这不是他想画的自己。但他越来越觉得，这就是他应该画的自己，毕竟这就是他的生活，他现在就是这样。有时醒来，四周一片黑暗，他不知道自己身在何处、现在是几点，也不知道今天是星期几。就连“一天”这个概念都变得像是一种嘲笑。他再也无法清楚判断一天的结束和开始。帮帮我，在那些时刻，他会说出声来，帮帮我。但他不知道自己是在向谁恳求，也不知道自己期望接下来发生什么事。

　 And now he was tired. He had tried. It was one thirty p.m. on Friday, the Friday of July Fourth weekend. He put on his clothes. He closed his studio’s windows and locked the door and walked down the stairs of the silent building. “Chen,” he said, his voice loud in the stairwell, pretending he was broadcasting a warning to his fellow artists, that he was communicating to someone who might need his help. “Chen, Chen, Chen.” He was going home, he was going to smoke.

现在他累了。他早就累了。现在是星期五的下午1点半，七月四日国庆节周末的星期五。他穿上衣服，关上工作室的窗子，锁好门，走下这栋寂静楼房的楼梯。“陈。”他说，声音在楼梯间里好大，假装自己在对其他艺术家同行发出警示，假装他在跟某个可能需要帮忙的人沟通。“陈，陈，陈。”他要回家，他要回去吸大麻。

　 He woke to a horrible noise, the noise of machinery, of metal grinding against metal, and started screaming into his pillow to drown it out until he realized it was the buzzer, and then slowly brought himself to his feet, and slouched over to the door. “Jackson?” he asked, holding down the intercom button, and he heard how frightened he sounded, how tentative.

他在一个可怕的噪音声中醒来，那是机器的声音，金属磨着金属，于是他开始对着枕头大叫，好让枕头闷住他的声音，叫到最后，他才发现那是门铃声。于是他慢吞吞地爬起来，无精打采地走到门边。“杰克逊？”他问，按着对讲机按钮，听到自己的声音有多害怕、多紧张。

　 There was a pause. “No, it’s us,” said Malcolm. “Let us in.” He did.

对方顿了一下。“不是，是我们，”马尔科姆说，“让我们进去。”于是他按了开门钮。

　 And then there they all were, Malcolm and Jude and Willem, as if they had come to see him perform a show. “Willem,” he said. “You’re supposed to be in Cappadocia.”

他们全都来了，马尔科姆、裘德、威廉，好像要来看他表演似的。“威廉，”他说，“你应该在卡帕多西亚拍片的。”

　 “I just got back yesterday.”

“我昨天才回来。”

　 “But you’re supposed to be gone until”—he knew this—“July sixth. That’s when you said you’d be back.”

“但是你应该要到……”他记得的，“要到七月六日，你说你要到那一天才会回来的。”

　 “It’s July seventh,” Willem said, quietly.

“今天是七月七日。”威廉轻声说。

　 He started to cry, then, but he was dehydrated and he didn’t have any tears, just the sounds. July seventh: he had lost so many days. He couldn’t remember anything.

一听这话，他开始哭，但他脱水了，哭不出眼泪，只有声音。七月七日：他失去了好多天。他什么都不记得了。

　 “JB,” said Jude, coming close to him, “we’re going to get you out of this. Come with us. We’re going to get you help.”

“杰比，”裘德说，走近他，“我们会带你脱离这个。跟我们走吧。我们会带你去找专业协助。”

　 “Okay,” he said, still crying. “Okay, okay.” He kept his blanket wrapped around him, he was so cold, but he allowed Malcolm to lead him to the sofa, and when Willem came over with a sweater, he held his arms up obediently, the way he had when he was a child and his mother had dressed him. “Where’s Jackson?” he asked Willem.

“好吧。”他说，还在哭，“好吧，好吧。”他身上还裹着毯子，他觉得好冷，但他让马尔科姆带他走到沙发前坐下，等到威廉拿着一件毛衣过来时，他顺从地举高双手，就像小时候母亲帮他穿衣服时那样。“杰克逊人呢？”他问威廉。

　 “Jackson’s not going to bother you,” he heard Jude say, somewhere above him. “Don’t worry, JB.”

“杰克逊不会来烦你了。”他听到裘德说，就在他上方某处，“别担心，杰比。”

　 “Willem,” he said, “when did you stop being my friend?”

“威廉，”他说，“你是什么时候停止当我的朋友的？”

　 “I’ve never stopped being your friend, JB,” Willem said, and sat down next to him. “You know I love you.”

“我从来没有停止当你的朋友，杰比。”威廉说，在他旁边坐下来，“你知道我是爱你的。”