《渺小一生》:这两种跟威廉的谈话他都喜欢

　 And so Jude began, and he followed, and he made it through without going sharp. And at the end of the song, just after the last note, Jude immediately began singing the next song on the list, “For Unto Us a Child Is Born,” and after that, “Good King Wenceslas,” and again and again, Willem followed. His voice wasn’t as full as Jude’s, but he could tell in those moments that it was good enough, that it was maybe better than good enough: he could tell it sounded better with Jude’s, and he closed his eyes and let himself appreciate it.

于是裘德开始唱，他跟着，一路唱完都没有走音。才唱完最后一个音符，裘德立刻又开始唱歌单上的下一首《圣婴为我们降生》，之后是《好国王文萨雷斯》，威廉一次又一次跟着唱。他的嗓音不像裘德那么圆润，但在那些时刻他听起来也算及格，说不定还超过了及格：他听得出自己的嗓音伴随着裘德的，听起来更好了，于是他闭上眼睛专心享受。

　 They were still singing when the doorbell chimed with their breakfast, but as he was standing, Jude put his hand on his wrist, and they remained there, Jude sitting, he standing, until they had sung the last words of the song, and only after they had finished did he go to answer the door. Around him, the room was redolent of the unknown herb he’d found, green and fresh and yet somehow familiar, like something he hadn’t known he had liked until it had appeared, suddenly and unexpectedly, in his life.

送早餐来的门铃响时，他们还在唱，但他站在那里，裘德一手按着他的手腕，于是他们留在原处，裘德坐着，他站着，继续唱完那首歌的最后几个字，直到唱完了，他才去开门。在他周围，房间里充满了那不知名香草的芳香，翠绿而新鲜，但很熟悉，就像某种他原先没意识到自己喜欢的东西突如其来地出现在他的生命中。

　 2

2

　 THE FIRST TIME Willem left him—this was some twenty months ago, two Januarys ago—everything went wrong. Within two weeks of Willem’s departure to Texas to begin filming Duets, he’d had three episodes with his back (including one at the office, and another, this one at home, that had lasted a full two hours). The pain in his feet returned. A cut (from what, he had no idea) opened up on his right calf. And yet it had all been fine. “You’re so damn cheerful about all of this,” Andy had said, when he was forced to make his second appointment with him in a week. “I’m suspicious.”

威廉第一次离开他时（大约是二十个月前、前年的一月），一切都出了错。那时威廉去德州拍《二重唱》，才走了两个星期，他的背痛就发作了三次（一次在办公室，另一次在家里，持续了整整两小时）；他的脚痛又回来了，右小腿出现了一道疮（哪里来的他也不知道）。然而之前一切都好好的。他不得不在一星期内去看安迪两趟。“我怀疑，”安迪说，“你就是太得意忘形了。”

　 “Oh, well,” he’d said, even though he could hardly speak because the pain was so intense. “It happens, right?” That night, though, as he lay in bed, he thanked his body for keeping itself in check, for controlling itself for so long. For those months he secretly thought of as his and Willem’s courtship, he hadn’t used his wheelchair once. His episodes had been seldom, and brief, and never in Willem’s presence. He knew it was silly—Willem knew what was wrong with him, he had seen him at his worst—but he was grateful that as the two of them were beginning to view each other in a different way, he had been allowed a period of reinvention, a spell of being able to impersonate an able-bodied person. So when he was returned to his normal state, he didn’t tell Willem about what had been happening to him—he was so bored by the subject that he couldn’t imagine anyone else wouldn’t be as well—and by the time Willem came home in March, he was more or less better, walking again, the wound once again mostly under control.

“啊，这……”他说，几乎痛得讲不出话来，“这难免吧？”那天晚上躺在床上时，他感谢自己的身体一直很乖，按捺了这么久。他私下认定，在和威廉谈恋爱的这几个月，自己一次轮椅都没用过。这段时间他的背痛很少发作，就算发作也很短暂，而且从来没在威廉面前。他知道这样很傻，因为威廉知道他有什么毛病，见过他最惨的那一面；但他还是很庆幸在两个人开始用不同的方式看待彼此时，自己能有一段重新创造的时期，扮演一个身体健全的人。所以他恢复正常状态后，也没告诉威廉自己发生了什么事（他太厌倦这个话题了，无法想象其他人不会有同样的感觉）。等到威廉三月回纽约时，他多多少少好转了，又能走路，小腿上的疮也再度获得控制了。

　 Since that first time, Willem has been gone for extended periods four additional times—twice for shooting, twice for publicity tours—and each time, sometimes the very day Willem left, his body had broken itself somehow. But he had appreciated its sense of timing, its courtesy: it was as if his body, before his mind, had decided for him that he should pursue this relationship, and had done its part by removing as many obstacles and embarrassments as possible.

自从那次去德州拍片，威廉又四度离家多日，两次去拍片，两次去巡回宣传。每一次，有时甚至就在威廉离开那天，他的身体就会出状况。但他很感谢自己的身体这么好心、这么会抓时机：仿佛他的身体抢在他的脑子之前，先替他决定他应该经营这段感情，而且尽责地设法移除种种障碍和尴尬。

　 Now it is mid-September, and Willem is preparing to leave again. As has become their ritual—ever since the Last Supper, a lifetime ago—they spend the Saturday before Willem’s departure having dinner somewhere extravagant and then the rest of the night talking. Sunday they sleep late into the morning, and Sunday afternoon, they review practicalities: things to be done while Willem is away, outstanding matters to be resolved, decisions to be made. Ever since their relationship has changed from what it had been into what it now is, their conversations have become both more intimate and more mundane, and that final weekend is always a perfect, condensed reflection of that: Saturday is for fears and secrets and confessions and remembrances; Sunday is for logistics, the daily mapmaking that keeps their life together inching along.

现在是九月中，威廉又准备离开了。自从许久以前的“最后晚餐”之后，这就变成他们的例行仪式：每回威廉离开前的那个星期六，他们会找个奢华的地方吃晚餐，接下来聊一整晚。星期天早上他们会睡到很晚，下午会检查一些实际的事务：威廉不在时要完成的事情，没解决的事情要解决掉，还要做一些决定。他们的关系一路发展到今天，两人之间的谈话变得更亲密，也变得更世俗，而离别前的最后一个周末总是能简单扼要而完美地反映这种状况：星期六是用于恐惧、秘密、告白和回忆，星期天则是用于后勤、日常筹划，让他们共同的生活正常运转。

　 He likes both types of conversations with Willem, but he appreciates the mundane ones more than he’d imagined he would. He had always felt bound to Willem by the big things—love; trust—but he likes being bound to him by the small things as well: bills and taxes and dental checkups. He is always reminded of a visit to Harold and Julia’s he’d made years ago, when he had come down with a terrible cold and had wound up spending most of the weekend on the living-room sofa, wrapped in a blanket and sliding in and out of sleep. That Saturday evening, they had watched a movie together, and at one point, Harold and Julia had begun talking about the Truro house’s kitchen renovation. He half dozed, listening to their quiet talk, which had been so dull that he couldn’t follow any of the details but had also filled him with a great sense of peace: it had seemed to him the ideal expression of an adult relationship, to have someone with whom you could discuss the mechanics of a shared existence.

这两种跟威廉的谈话他都喜欢，但他对世俗部分的欣赏程度远超过他原先的想象。他总是觉得自己在一些大事上和威廉紧密相连，例如爱情、信赖，但他也喜欢在小事上面和他紧密相连，像是账单、税务、定期看牙医。他总是想起几年前有次去哈罗德和朱丽娅家，当时他严重感冒，那个周末大部分的时间都倒在客厅沙发上，裹着毯子断断续续睡觉。那个星期六晚上，他们一起看电影，中间哈罗德和朱丽娅讨论起特鲁罗房子的厨房整修工程。他半瞌睡、半清醒地听着他们小声交谈，那些内容无聊到他根本听不懂大部分细节，但也感觉到一种莫大的平静。对他而言，这似乎就是成年伴侣关系的理想表现，有个人可以跟你讨论共同生活中的种种例行琐事。

　 “So I left a message with the tree guy and told him you’re going to call this week, right?” Willem asks. They are in the bedroom, doing the last of Willem’s packing.

“我留话给那个园艺公司了，跟他说你这星期会打电话过去，对吧？”威廉问。此时他们在卧室帮威廉收拾最后一批行李。

　 “Right,” he says. “I wrote myself a note to call him tomorrow.”

“对，”他说，“我也写了字条。提醒自己明天打给他。”

　 “And I told Mal you’d go up with him to the site next weekend, you know.”

“另外我跟马尔说你下个周末会跟他一起北上去工地那边，你知道。”

　 “I know,” he says. “I have it in my schedule.”

“我知道，”他说，“我已经排进行事历了。”

　 Willem has been dropping stacks of clothes into his bag as he talks, but now he stops and looks at him. “I feel bad,” he says. “I’m leaving you with so much stuff.”

威廉本来一边讲话，还一边把一堆堆衣服放进旅行袋，但这会儿他停下来看着他。“我感觉好糟糕，”他说，“把这么多事情丢给你。”

　 “Don’t,” he says. “It’s not a problem, I swear.” Most of the scheduling in their lives is handled by Willem’s assistant, by his secretaries: but they are managing the details of the house upstate themselves. They never discussed how this happened, but he senses it’s important for them both to be able to participate in the creation and witness of this place they are building together, the first place they will have built together since Lispenard Street.

“别这样，”他说，“一点也不麻烦，我发誓。”他们生活中大部分的行程都是由威廉的助理和他的秘书们安排；但是纽约州北部那栋房子的种种细节，则是由他们亲自打理。他们从没讨论过要这样，但他感觉两人都参与建造这栋房子、见证他们一起建立这个地方是很重要的，这是从利斯本纳街的那户公寓之后，他们联手打造的第一个地方。

　 Willem sighs. “But you’re so busy,” he says.

威廉叹气。“可是你这么忙。”他说。

　 “Don’t worry,” he says. “Really, Willem. I can handle it,” although Willem continues to look worried.

“别担心，”他说，“真的，威廉。我应付得来。”威廉还是一脸忧虑。

　 That night, they lie awake. For as long as he has known Willem, he has always had the same feeling the day before he leaves, when even as he speaks to Willem he is already anticipating how much he’ll miss him when he’s gone. Now that they are actually, physically together, that feeling has, curiously, intensified; now he is so used to Willem’s presence that his absence feels more profound, more debilitating. “You know what else we have to talk about,” Willem says, and when he doesn’t say anything, Willem pushes down his sleeve and holds his left wrist, loosely, in his hand. “I want you to promise me,” Willem says.

那天夜里，他躺在床上没睡着。打从他认识威廉以来，每回他要离开，他总有同样的感觉，就连跟威廉讲话时，他都能预料到他离开后自己会多想念他。现在他们真的、实际在一起了，奇怪的是，那种感觉反倒更为强烈；如今他已经很习惯有威廉在场，所以他的缺席变得更巨大，更令人软弱无力。“你知道我们还有件事情要谈。”威廉说，等到他不吭声，威廉就拉下他的袖子，轻轻握住他的左手腕。“我要你答应我。”威廉说。

　 “I swear,” he says. “I will.” Next to him, Willem releases his arm and rolls onto his back, and they are quiet.

“我发誓，”他说，“我会的。”在他身旁，威廉放开他的手，翻身仰躺，两人都不说话。

　 “We’re both tired,” Willem yawns, and they are: in less than two years, Willem has been reclassified as gay; Lucien has retired from the firm and he has taken over as the chair of the litigation department; and they are building a house in the country, eighty minutes north of the city. When they are together on the weekends—and when Willem is home, he too tries to be, going into the office even earlier on the weekdays so he doesn’t have to stay as late on Saturdays—they sometimes spend the early evening simply lying together on the sofa in the living room, not speaking, as around them the light leaves the room. Sometimes they go out, but far less frequently than they used to.

“我们都累了。”威廉打了个呵欠说。的确，才不到两年，威廉被重新归类为同性恋者；吕西安从事务所退休，他接任了诉讼部门的主管位置；而他们要在纽约州北边、离纽约市八十分钟车程的乡下盖一栋房子。他们一起共度周末时（威廉在家时，他也设法留在家里，工作日更早去上班，这样周末就不必留到那么晚了），有些傍晚，他们只是一起躺在起居室的沙发上，不讲话，看着周围的光线逐渐消失。有时他们会出门，但频率远比以前低。

　 “The transition to lesbiandom took much less time than I anticipated,” JB observed one evening when they had him and his new boyfriend, Fredrik, over for dinner, along with Malcolm and Sophie and Richard and India and Andy and Jane.

“转到女同性恋领域所花的时间，比我预期的短很多。”杰比有天晚上这么评论道。那天，他们邀请他和他的新男友弗雷德里克过来吃晚餐，另外还有马尔科姆和苏菲、理查德和印蒂亚，以及安迪和简。