《渺小一生》:胰腺癌的死法很痛苦

　 He remembered a conversation he’d had with Robin when he had been preparing to shoot The Odyssey and was rereading it and The Iliad, neither of which he had looked at since he was a freshman in college. This was when they had first begun dating, and were both still trying to impress each other, when a sort of giddiness was derived from deferring to the other’s expertise. “What’re the most overrated lines from the poem?” he’d asked, and Robin had rolled her eyes and recited: “ ‘We have still not reached the end of our trials. One more labor lies in store—boundless, laden with danger, great and long, and I must brave it out from start to finish.’ ” She made some retching noises. “So obvious. And somehow, that’s been co-opted by every losing football team in the country as their pregame rallying cry,” she added, and he’d laughed. She looked at him, slyly. “You played football,” she said. “I’ll bet those’re your favorite lines as well.”

他还记得自己以前跟罗宾的一段谈话。当时他在为《奥德赛》和《伊利亚特》的拍摄做准备，正在重读这两部史诗，他大一时读过，但之后就没再碰了。此时他和罗宾才刚开始交往，还试着要给对方好印象，而且因为想顺从对方的专长，把彼此弄得有点晕头转向。“这部史诗里，最被过誉的是哪几句？”他问。罗宾翻着白眼背出来：“‘我们的考验还没结束。前面还有一个辛苦任务在等着——广阔无边，充满危险，重大又漫长，而我必须从一开始就勇敢面对，奋战到结束。’”她发出干呕的声音，“太夸张了。而且不知道为什么，全国每一个输多胜少的美式橄榄球队，赛前都要念出这几句为自己打气。”她补充道，他听了大笑。她狡黠地看着他。“你打过美式橄榄球，”她说，“我敢说这几句也是你最喜欢的。”

　 “Absolutely not,” he’d said, in mock outrage. This was part of their game that wasn’t always a game: he was the dumb actor, the dumber jock, and she was the smart girl who went out with him and taught him what he didn’t know.

“绝对不是。”他说，假装不高兴。这是他们之间的一种游戏，但有时未必是游戏：他是笨演员，还是更笨的体育选手，而她是跟他交往的聪明女生，会教他一些他不懂的事情。

　 “Then tell me what they are,” she’d challenged him, and after he did, she’d looked at him, intently. “Hmm,” she said. “Interesting.”

“那告诉我，你认为最被过誉的句子是什么。”她向他挑战。他背出来之后，她目不转睛地看着他。“嗯，”她说，“很有趣。”

　 Now he got out of bed and wrapped his blanket around himself, yawning. That evening, he’d talk to Jude. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he would be safe; he would keep them both safe. He went to the kitchen to make himself coffee, and as he did, he whispered the lines back to himself, those lines he thought of whenever he was coming home, coming back to Greene Street after a long time away—“And tell me this: I must be absolutely sure. This place I’ve reached, is it truly Ithaca?”—as all around him, the apartment filled with light.

这会儿他下了床，身上裹着毯子，打着呵欠。今天晚上，他会跟裘德谈谈。虽然不知道接下来会怎么样，但他知道自己会很安全；他会让彼此都很安全。他到厨房去冲咖啡，一边低声背出那些句子，每回他离开很久回到家、回到格林街时，总会想到这些句子——“那么告诉我：我必须完全确定。我来到的这个地方，真的是伊萨卡吗？”——同时在他周围，整户公寓充满了光。

　 Every morning he gets up and swims two miles, and then comes back upstairs and sits down and has breakfast and reads the papers. His friends make fun of him for this—for the fact that he actually prepares a meal instead of buying something on the way to work; for the fact that he actually still gets the papers delivered, in paper form—but the ritual of it has always calmed him: even in the home, it was the one time when the counselors were too mild, the other boys too sleepy to bother him. He would sit in the corner of the dining area and read and eat his breakfast, and for those minutes he would be left alone.

每天早晨他会起床去游个两英里，然后上楼坐下来，边吃早餐边看报纸。他的朋友因此取笑他（因为他自己做早餐，不是上班途中买的；而且他还订报纸，是纸质的），但其中的仪式感总是令他平静：即使是在少年之家的时候，早餐时间辅导员总是很温和，而其他男孩也太困了，所以都不会来烦他。他可以坐在食堂的角落阅读、吃他的早餐，在那短短的时刻里，他可以独自清静一下。

　 He is an efficient reader, and he skims first through The Wall Street Journal, and then the Financial Times, before beginning with The New York Times, which he reads front to back, when he sees the headline in Obituaries: “Caleb Porter, 52, Fashion Executive.” Immediately, his mouthful of scrambled eggs and spinach turns to cardboard and glue, and he swallows hard, feeling sick, feeling every nerve ending thrumming alive. He has to read the article three times before he can make sense of any of the facts: pancreatic cancer. “Very fast,” said his colleague and longtime friend. Under his stewardship, emerging fashion label Rothko saw aggressive expansion into the Asian and Middle Eastern markets, as well as the opening of their first New York City boutique. Died at his home in Manhattan. Survived by his sister, Michaela Porter de Soto of Monte Carlo, six nieces and nephews, and his partner, Nicholas Lane, also a fashion executive.

他阅读很有效率，首先浏览《华尔街日报》，然后是《金融时报》，这才开始从头到尾阅读《纽约时报》。就是在此时，他看到讣闻版的标题：“凯莱布·波特，52岁，时装界高级经理人”。突然间，满嘴的炒蛋和菠菜变成了硬纸板和胶水，他艰难地咽下，觉得很想吐，觉得每根神经末梢都在抖动着苏醒过来。他还得连看那则讣闻三遍，才有办法搞懂一切：胰腺癌。“非常快。”他的同事兼长年老友说。在他的管理之下，新崛起的时装品牌罗斯科积极拓展亚洲与中东市场，同时也开设了第一家纽约市精品店。他病逝于曼哈顿家中。遗属包括他住在蒙地卡罗的妹妹米凯拉·波特·德索托、六名外甥子女，以及伴侣尼古拉斯·兰恩，也是时装界高级经理人。

　 He is still for a moment, staring at the page until the words rearrange themselves into an abstraction of gray before his eyes, and then he hobbles as fast as he can to the bathroom near the kitchen, where he vomits up everything he’s just eaten, gagging over the toilet until he’s coughing up long strands of saliva. He lowers the toilet seat and sits, resting his face in his hands, until he feels better. He wishes, desperately, for his razors, but he has always been careful not to cut himself during the day, partly because it feels wrong and partly because he knows he has to impose limits upon himself, however artificial, or he’d be cutting himself all day. Lately, he has been trying very hard not to cut himself at all. But tonight, he thinks, he will grant himself an exception. It is seven a.m. In around fifteen hours, he’ll be home again. All he has to do is make it through the day.

他呆坐了一会儿，看着报纸，直到那些字在眼前成了一片抽象的灰色，然后他尽快跛行冲到靠近厨房的浴室，抱着马桶，把刚刚吃下的东西吐出来，吐得最后只剩口水。他放下马桶盖坐上去，脸埋进双手里，直到自己好过些。他极度渴望他的刮胡刀片，但他向来很小心不在白天割自己，一部分原因是感觉不对，另一部分原因是他知道必须给自己设下限制，无论是多么虚假的限制，否则他就会成天都在割自己了。最近他还非常努力试着完全不要割自己。但今晚，他心想，他会允许自己破例。现在是早上7点，再过十五小时左右，他就会再回到家里。他现在唯一要做的，就是熬过这个白天。

　 He puts his plate in the dishwasher and walks quietly through the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he showers and shaves and then gets dressed in the closet, first making sure that the door between the closet and the bedroom is completely closed. At this point, he has added a new step to his morning routine: now, if he were to do what he has been for the past month, he would open the door and walk over to the bed, where he’d perch on its left side and put his hand on Willem’s arm, and Willem would open his eyes and smile at him.

他把脏盘子放进洗碗机，悄悄走过卧室，进入浴室，冲了澡、刮过胡子后，到衣帽间穿好衣服，还先确定衣帽间通往卧室的门完全关好。此时，他每天早上的例行公事多加了一个步骤：现在，如果按照过去一个月的惯例，他会打开门，走到床边，坐在左边床沿，把一只手放在威廉的手臂上，然后威廉会睁开眼睛朝他微笑。

　 “I’m off,” he’d say, smiling back, and Willem would shake his head. “Don’t go,” Willem would say, and he’d say, “I have to,” and Willem would say, “Five minutes,” and he’d say, “Five.” And then Willem would lift his end of the blanket and he’d crawl beneath it, with Willem pressed against his back, and he would close his eyes and wait for Willem to wrap his arms around him and wish he could stay forever. And then, ten or fifteen minutes later, he would at last, reluctantly, get up, and kiss Willem somewhere near, but not on, his mouth—he is still having trouble with this, even four months later—and leave for the day.

“我要出门了。”他会说，也露出微笑。威廉会摇摇头说：“不要走。”而他会说：“我非走不可。”威廉又说：“五分钟。”他说：“就五分钟。”接下来，威廉会拉起毯子的一角让他钻进去，威廉会贴着他的背，他则闭上眼睛等威廉的双手抱住他，希望自己永远留下来。十分钟或十五分钟后，他会很不情愿地起来，在威廉身上最近的地方吻一下，但是不吻嘴（即使到现在四个月了，要他吻嘴还是有困难），然后出门去上班。

　 This morning, however, he skips this step. He instead pauses at the dining-room table to write Willem a note explaining that he had to leave early and didn’t want to wake him, and then, as he’s walking to the door, he comes back and grabs the Times off the table and takes it with him. He knows how irrational it is, but he doesn’t want Willem to see Caleb’s name, or picture, or any evidence of him. Willem still doesn’t know about what Caleb did to him, and he doesn’t want him to. He doesn’t even want him to be aware of Caleb’s very existence—or, he realizes, his once-existence, for Caleb no longer exists. Beneath his arm, the paper feels almost alive with heat, Caleb’s name a dark knot of poison cradled inside its pages.

但今天早上，他跳过了这个步骤。只是在餐桌前暂停一下，写张便条给威廉，解释自己得早点去上班，不想吵醒他，走向门时，又回头抓起桌上的《纽约时报》带走。他知道这个举动有多么不理性，但他不想让威廉看到凯莱布的名字、照片，或任何有关他的痕迹。威廉还不知道凯莱布对他做过的事，他也不想让他知道。他甚至不希望他意识到凯莱布的存在——或者应该说曾经存在，因为凯莱布现在不存在了。在他的手臂底下，那份报纸简直像活生生、有热度的一样，凯莱布的名字是一团深色的毒药，就藏在那些纸页间。

　 He decides to drive to work so he’ll be able to be alone for a little while, but before he leaves the garage, he takes out the paper and reads the article one more time before folding it up again and shoving it into his briefcase. And then suddenly, he is crying, frantic, breathy sobs, the kind that come from his diaphragm, and as he leans his head on the steering wheel, trying to regain control, he is finally able to admit to himself how plainly, profoundly relieved he is, and how frightened he has been for the past three years, and how humiliated and ashamed he is still. He retrieves the paper, hating himself, and reads the obituary again, stopping at “and by his partner, Nicholas Lane, also a fashion executive.” He wonders: Did Caleb do to Nicholas Lane what he did to him, or is Nicholas—as he must be—someone undeserving of such treatment? He hopes that Nicholas never experienced what he had, but he’s also certain he hasn’t, and the knowledge of that makes him cry harder. That had been one of Harold’s arguments when he was trying to get him to report the attack; that Caleb was dangerous, and that by reporting him, by having him arrested, he would be protecting other people from him. But he had known that wasn’t true: Caleb wouldn’t do to other people what he did to him. He hadn’t hit and hated him because he hit and hated other people; he had hit and hated him because of who he was, not because of who Caleb was.

他决定开车去上班，以便独处一会儿，但车子离开车库前，他把报纸拿出来，又读了一遍那篇讣闻，才折起来塞进公文包。突然间他哭了起来，猛烈、带着呼吸声的啜泣，是那种源自横膈膜的哭法。当他把头靠在方向盘上，试图恢复控制时，他终于有办法跟自己承认他是多么明确、深刻地感到如释重负，也承认过去三年来他有多么害怕，至今依然觉得羞辱和惭愧。他拿出报纸，好恨自己又读了一遍那篇讣闻，停在“以及伴侣尼古拉斯·兰恩，也是时装界高级经理人”这句。他很好奇：凯莱布对他做过的事情，也会对尼古拉斯·兰恩做吗？或者尼古拉斯一定不是活该要遭受这样对待的人？他希望尼古拉斯从没经历过自己的遭遇，但他也确信他没有，这一点让他哭得更厉害。当初哈罗德劝他报案时，提出的理由之一就是这个，说凯莱布很危险，如果报案了，让警方逮捕他，他就保护了其他人不会再受到凯莱布的伤害。但他知道其实不是这样的，凯莱布不会对其他人做那类事。凯莱布打他、恨他，不是因为他会殴打、痛恨其他人，凯莱布殴打又痛恨他，只因为是他，不是凯莱布的关系。

　 Finally, he’s able to compose himself, and he wipes his eyes and blows his nose. The crying: another leftover from his time with Caleb. For years and years he was able to control it, and now—ever since that night—it seems he is always crying, or on the verge of it, or actively trying to stop himself from doing it. It’s as if all his progress from the past few decades has been erased, and he is again that boy in Brother Luke’s care, so teary and helpless and vulnerable.

最后，他终于恢复镇定，擦干眼泪，擤了鼻涕。爱哭是他跟凯莱布交往时期残留的习惯之一。多年来，他一直有办法控制，而现在——自从那一夜后——他好像总是在哭，濒临哭的边缘，或者很努力地阻止自己哭出来。那就像是把他过去二三十年来的进展全部一笔勾销，他再度成为卢克修士照顾的那个小男孩，爱哭，无助，又脆弱。

　 He’s about to start the car when his hands begin shaking. Now he knows he can do nothing but wait, and he folds them in his lap and tries to make his breaths deep and regular, which sometimes helps. By the time his phone rings a few minutes later, they’ve slowed somewhat, and he hopes he sounds normal as he answers. “Hi, Harold,” he says.

他正要发动车子时，双手颤抖了起来。现在他知道自己做什么都没用，只能等待，于是把双手压在大腿下，设法逼自己以平稳的节奏深呼吸，有时这样会有帮助。几分钟后手机响起时，颤抖稍微减轻了，他希望自己接电话时声音正常。“嗨，哈罗德。”他说。

　 “Jude,” says Harold. His voice is flattened, somehow. “Have you read the Times today?”

“裘德，”哈罗德说，不知怎的，他的声音没什么起伏，“你看了今天的《纽约时报》了吗？”

　 Immediately, the shaking intensifies. “Yes,” he says.

他的颤抖立刻加剧。“看了。”他说。

　 “Pancreatic cancer is a terrible way to go,” says Harold. He sounds grimly satisfied. “Good. I’m glad.” There’s a pause. “Are you all right?”

“胰腺癌的死法很痛苦。”哈罗德说，声音听起来冷酷而满足，“很好，我很高兴。”他暂停了一下，“你还好吧？”

　 “Yes,” he says, “yes, I’m fine.”

“很好，”他说，“很好，我很好。”

　 “The connection keeps cutting out,” says Harold, but he knows it’s not: it’s because he’s shaking so badly that he can’t hold the phone steady.

“电话信号不太稳，”哈罗德说。但他知道不是，而是他的手抖得太厉害，根本没法拿稳手机。

　 “Sorry,” he says. “I’m in the garage. Look, Harold, I’d better get up to work. Thanks for calling.”

“对不起，”他说，“我在车库里。听我说，哈罗德，我最好赶紧去上班了，谢谢你打来。”

　 “Okay.” Harold sighs. “You’ll call me if you want to talk, right?”

“好吧，”哈罗德叹口气，“你想谈的话，就打电话给我，好吗？”