《渺小一生》:“我不能让你这样对自己。”

　 “It’s over, Willem,” he said at last. “It was a long time ago. I don’t need help.”

“那些都过去了，威廉，”他最后终于说，“那是很久以前的事了。我不需要帮助。”

　 There was another silence. “Was Brother Luke the person who hurt you?” Willem asked, and then, when he was quiet, the seconds ticking past, “Do you like having sex, Jude?”

两人又沉默了一会儿。“卢克修士就是伤害你的人吗？”威廉问。他没吭声，几秒钟过去。“裘德，你喜欢做爱吗？”

　 If he spoke, he would cry, and so he didn’t speak. The word no, so short, so easy to say, a child’s sound, a noise more than a word, a sharp exhalation of air: all he had to do was part his lips, and the word would come out, and—and what? Willem would leave, and take everything with him. I can endure this, he would think when they had sex, I can endure this. He could endure it for every morning he woke next to Willem, for every affection Willem gave him, for the comfort of his company. When Willem was watching television in the living room and he was walking by, Willem would reach out his hand and he would take it, and they would remain there, Willem watching the screen and sitting, he standing, their hands in each other’s, and finally he would let go and continue moving. He needed Willem’s presence; every day since Willem had moved back in with him, he had experienced that same feeling of calm he had when Willem had stayed with him before he left to shoot The Prince of Cinnamon. Willem was his ballast, and he clung to him, even though he was always aware of how selfish he was being. If he truly loved Willem, he knew, he would leave him. He would allow Willem—he would force him, if he had to—to find someone better to love, someone who would enjoy having sex with him, someone who actually desired him, someone with fewer problems, someone with greater charms. Willem was good for him, but he was bad for Willem.

如果他开口，就会哭出来，因此他无法回答。“不”这个字这么短、这么容易说出口，连小孩都可以，比较像个声音而非文字，只是用力吐出一口气。他唯一要做的就是张开嘴唇，那个字就能吐出来。然后——然后怎样？威廉会离开，带走一切。我可以忍受这个，他们做爱时他会想，我可以忍受这个。他可以忍受这个，以换取每天早晨在威廉旁边醒来，换取威廉给他的种种关爱，换取有他做伴的舒适。威廉在起居室看电视而他经过时，威廉会伸出一只手，他会握住，两个人就保持那样的姿势，威廉坐着看电视，他站着，两个人握着手，最后他会放开，继续往前走。他需要威廉在场；自从威廉搬进来跟他住以后，每一天他都体验到威廉去拍《肉桂王子》之前跟他同住的那种平静感。威廉是他的稳定力量，他想抓紧不放，即使他知道自己有多么自私。如果他真的爱威廉，他就该离开他，让威廉找一个更好的人去爱（必要的话，还会逼他），一个可以享受跟他做爱、真正对他有欲望、毛病比较少、更有魅力的人。威廉对他有好处，他对威廉却有坏处。

　 “Do you like having sex with me?” he asked when he could finally speak.

“你喜欢跟我做爱吗？”他最后终于开口问。

　 “Yes,” said Willem, immediately. “I love it. But do you like it?”

“喜欢，”威廉立刻说，“我很爱，但是你喜欢吗？”

　 He swallowed, counted to three. “Yes,” he said, quietly, furious at himself and relieved as well. He had won himself more time: of Willem’s presence, but also of sex. What, he wonders, if he had said no?

他咽下口水，数到三。“喜欢。”他低声说，很生自己的气，但同时也放心了。他又为自己争取到更多时间：让威廉留在身边的时间，但也是做爱的时间。他很好奇，如果他说不，那会怎样呢？

　 And so on they went. But in compensation for the sex, there is the cutting, which he has been doing more and more: to help ease the feelings of shame, and to rebuke himself for his feelings of resentment. For so long, he had been so disciplined: once a week, two cuts each time, no more. But in the past six months, he has broken his rules again and again, and now he is cutting himself as much as he had when he was with Caleb, as much as he had in the weeks before the adoption.

于是他们继续过下去。但为了弥补性交，他就割自己，割得越来越凶，好帮自己减轻羞愧的感觉，也惩罚自己产生怨恨之感。好长一段时间以来，他一直严格遵守纪律：每周只割一次，每次只割两道，绝不超过。但过去六个月，他一再打破规则，现在他割得跟当初和凯莱布在一起时一样多，跟他被收养前那几个星期一样多。

　 His accelerated cutting was the topic of their first truly awful fight, not only as a couple but ever, in their entire twenty-nine years of friendship. Sometimes the cutting has no place in their relationship. And sometimes it is their relationship, their every conversation, the thing they are discussing even when they’re not saying anything. He never knows when he’ll come to bed in his long-sleeved T-shirt and Willem will say nothing, or when Willem will begin interrogating him. He has explained to Willem so many times that he needs it, that it helps him, that he is unable to stop, but Willem cannot or will not comprehend him.

他这样加速割自己，也成了他们第一次真正大吵的主题，不光是两人谈恋爱以来，也是他们认识二十九年来仅有的一次。有时，他的割伤在两人的伴侣关系中根本不存在。但有时，这些割伤好像是他们关系的全部，所有的对话都离不开，即使不说话也在无言地讨论。他穿长袖T恤上床时，从来不知道威廉什么时候不会吭声，什么时候又会开始质问他。他跟威廉解释过很多次了，说他需要割自己，说这样能帮助他，说他没办法停止，但威廉就是不能了解，或者不肯了解。

　 “Don’t you understand why this upsets me so much?” Willem asks him.

“你难道不明白，这为什么会让我如此心烦吗？”威廉问他。

　 “No, Willem,” he says. “I know what I’m doing. You have to trust me.”

“不，威廉，”他说，“我知道自己在做什么。你必须信任我。”

　 “I do trust you, Jude,” Willem says. “But trust is not the issue here. The issue is you hurting yourself.” And then the conversation deadends itself.

“我是信任你啊，裘德，”威廉说，“但现在的问题不是信任，而是你在伤害自己。”然后对话就自行结束。

　 Or there is the conversation that leads to Willem saying, “Jude, how would you feel if I did this to myself?” and him saying, “It’s not the same thing, Willem,” and Willem saying, “Why?” and him saying, “Because, Willem—it’s you. You don’t deserve it,” and Willem saying, “And you do?” and him being unable to answer, or at least not able to provide an answer that Willem would find adequate.

或者有的对话会让威廉说：“裘德，如果我对自己这样，你会有什么感觉？”他说：“不一样的，威廉。”威廉就说：“为什么？”而他说：“因为，威廉——因为是你，你不应该遭受这些。”威廉则说：“那你就应该？”他没办法回答，至少想不出一个能让威廉接受的答案。

　 About a month before the fight, they’d had a different fight. Willem had, of course, noticed that he was cutting himself more, but he hadn’t known why, only that he was, and one night, after he was certain Willem was asleep, he was creeping toward the bathroom, when suddenly, Willem had grabbed him hard around the wrist, and he had gasped from fright. “Jesus, Willem,” he’d said. “You scared me.”

他们大吵前一个月左右，曾经吵过一架。威廉当然注意到他割自己割得更凶了，但不知道为什么。有一晚，他确定威廉睡着后，蹑手蹑脚要去浴室。忽然间，威廉用力握住他的手腕，他吓得倒抽一口气。“天啊，威廉，”他说，“你吓了我一跳。”

　 “Where are you going, Jude?” Willem had asked, his voice tense.

“裘德，你要去哪里？”威廉问，声音很紧张。

　 He’d tried to pull his arm free, but Willem’s grip was too strong. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Let go, Willem, I’m serious.” They had stared at each other in the dark until finally Willem had released him, and then had gotten out of bed as well.

他试着抽出手臂，但威廉抓太牢了。“我得去浴室，”他说，“放开我，威廉。我说真的。”他们在黑暗中凝视彼此，最后威廉总算放开他，自己也下了床。

　 “Let’s go, then,” he’d said. “I’m going to watch you.”

“那走吧，”他说，“我跟你去。”

　 They had quarreled, then, hissing at each other, each of them furious at the other, each of them feeling betrayed, he accusing Willem of treating him like a child, Willem accusing him of keeping secrets from him, each as close as they had ever been to yelling at the other. It had ended with him wrenching out of Willem’s grasp and trying to run toward his study so he could lock himself in and cut himself with a pair of scissors, but in his panic he had stumbled and fallen and split his lip, and Willem had hurried over with a bag of ice and they had sat there on the living-room floor, halfway between their bedroom and his study, their arms around each other, apologizing.

于是他们开始拌嘴，对彼此恶声恶气，生对方的气，觉得自己被背叛。他指控威廉拿他当小孩，威廉指控他有秘密瞒着不让他知道，几乎就要吼起来了。最后是他挣脱威廉的手，想跑向书房，把自己关在里面，用一把剪刀割自己，但恐慌中，他绊倒了，跌在地上，嘴唇碰破了。威廉赶紧拿一袋冰块过来，两个人坐在起居室的地板上，在卧室和书房之间，彼此相拥着道歉。

　 “I can’t have you doing this to yourself,” Willem had said the next day.

“我不能让你这样对自己。”威廉次日这么说。

　 “I can’t not,” he said, after a long silence. You don’t want to see me without it, he wanted to tell Willem, as well as: I don’t know how I’d make my way through life without it. But he didn’t. He was never able to explain to Willem what the cutting did for him in a way he’d understand: how it was a form of punishment and also of cleansing, how it allowed him to drain everything toxic and spoiled from himself, how it kept him from being irrationally angry at others, at everyone, how it kept him from shouting, from violence, how it made him feel like his body, his life, was truly his and no one else’s. Certainly he could never have sex without it. Sometimes he wondered: If Brother Luke hadn’t given it to him as a solution, who would he have become? Someone who hurt other people, he thought; someone who tried to make everyone feel as terrible as he did; someone even worse than the person he was.

“我不能不做。”他沉默许久后说。你不会想看到我不割自己的，他想告诉威廉，还有：我不知道没了这个，我要怎么活下去。但他什么都没说。他从来没办法用威廉可以理解的方式，去解释割自己对他的效果：它是一种惩罚，也是一种净化的形式，它让他得以排掉身上各种有毒或腐坏的东西，让他不会对其他每个人产生无理的愤怒，让他不会大叫、使用暴力，让他觉得自己的身体、自己的人生都真正属于他，而不是别人的。如果不割自己，他当然也绝对没有办法性交。有时他很纳闷，如果卢克修士没有给他这个药方，他会变成什么样的人？一个总是伤害别人的人，他心想；一个设法让每个人感觉跟他一样糟糕的人；那样的人，甚至比现在的他还差劲。

　 Willem had been silent for even longer. “Try,” he said. “For me, Judy. Try.”

威廉沉默了更久。“试试看吧，”他说，“为了我，小裘。试试看吧。”