《渺小一生》:总是想让自己变得更好

　 But his mind is also full of what he is about to do, and when Andy asks him, “And what does your better half have to say for himself these days?” he snaps at him: “What do you mean by that?” and Andy stops and looks at him, curiously. “Nothing,” he says. “I just wanted to know how Willem’s doing.”

但同时，他心里满是他打算要做的事情，所以当安迪问他：“那你另一半最近说了些什么吗？”他凶巴巴地说：“你这话什么意思？”安迪停下手，好奇地看着他。“没什么，”他说，“我只是想知道威廉的近况怎么样。”

　 Willem, he thinks, and simply hearing his name said aloud fills him with anguish. “He’s great,” he says, quietly.

威廉，他心想，光是听到他的名字被人说出来，就让他痛苦不堪。“他很好。”他低声说。

　 At the end of the appointment, as always, Andy examines his arms, and this time, as he has for the last few times, grunts his approval. “You’ve really cut back,” he says. “No pun intended.”

看诊的最后，一如往常，安迪检查了他的手臂，这回就像前两三次，安迪咕哝着赞许他。“你真的克制了，”他说，“绝对没有讽刺的意思。”

　 “You know me—always trying to better myself,” he says, keeping his tone jocular, but Andy looks him in the eyes. “I know,” he says, softly. “I know it must be hard, Jude. But I’m glad, I really am.”

“你也知道我这个人——总是想让自己变得更好嘛。”他说，保持打趣的口吻，但安迪看着他的眼睛。“我知道，”他柔声说，“我知道一定很辛苦，裘德。但是我很高兴，真的。”

　 Over dinner, Andy complains about his brother’s new boyfriend, whom he hates. “Andy,” he tells him, “you can’t hate all of Beckett’s boyfriends.”

晚餐时，安迪抱怨他双胞胎兄弟新交的男朋友，说很讨厌他。“安迪，”他告诉他，“你不能恨贝克特所有的男朋友啊。”

　 “I know, I know,” Andy says. “It’s just that he’s such a lightweight, and Beckett could do so much better. I did tell you he pronounced Proust as Prowst, right?”

“我知道，我知道，”安迪说，“只不过他实在太平庸了，贝克特可以找到好太多的对象。他把普鲁斯特念成普劳斯特，这个我跟你说过吧？”

　 “Several times,” he says, smiling to himself. He had met this new reviled boyfriend of Beckett’s—a sweet, jovial aspiring landscape architect—at a dinner party at Andy’s three months ago. “But Andy—I thought he was nice. And he loves Beckett. And anyway, are you really going to sit around having conversations about Proust with him?”

“好几次了。”他说，兀自微笑。三个月前他在安迪家用晚餐，见过贝克特这位新男友，是个贴心、快活、充满抱负的景观建筑师。“可是安迪——我觉得他人很好。而且他爱贝克特。总之，你打算没事成天跟他聊普鲁斯特吗？”

　 Andy sighs. “You sound like Jane,” he says, grouchily.

安迪叹气。“你讲话就跟简一样。”他抱怨地说。

　 “Well,” he says, smiling again. “Maybe you should listen to Jane.” He laughs, then, feeling lighter than he has in weeks, and not just because of Andy’s sulky expression. “There are worse crimes than not being fully conversant with Swann’s Way, you know.”

“这个嘛，”他说，又露出微笑，“也许你该听简的话。”他又大笑，觉得好几个星期没这么轻松过了，不光是因为安迪那张闷闷不乐的臭脸，“你知道，这世上还有比不熟悉《在斯万家那边》[2]更糟糕的罪行呢。”

　 As he drives home, he thinks of his plan, but then realizes he will have to wait, because he is going to claim that he has burned himself in a cooking accident, and if something goes wrong and he has to see Andy, Andy will ask him why he was cooking on the same night they were eating dinner. Tomorrow, then, he thinks; I’ll do it tomorrow. That way, he can write an e-mail to Willem tonight in which he’ll mention that he’s going to try to make the fried plantains JB likes: a semi-spontaneous decision that will go terribly wrong.

他开车回家时想着自己的计划，但接着才想到他还得等，因为他打算宣称自己做菜时不小心烧伤，如果出了错，得去安迪那里，安迪就会问他为什么今晚才跟他吃过晚餐，回家还要做菜。那就明天吧，他心想；我明天就会做。这么一来，他今天晚上就可以写一封电子邮件给威廉，提到他打算做杰比喜欢吃的炸芭蕉：是个有点临时起意的决定，结果出了大错。

　 You do know that this is how mentally ill people make their plans, says the dry and belittling voice inside him. You do know that this planning is something only a sick person would do.

你很清楚，有精神疾病的人就会这样拟定计划，他心中那个冷冰冰又轻蔑的声音说。你很清楚，有病的人才会这样事先筹备。

　 Stop it, he tells it. Stop it. The fact that I know this is sick means I’m not. At that, the voice hoots with laughter: at his defensiveness, at his six-year-old’s illogic, at his revulsion for the word “sick,” his fear that it might attach itself to him. But even the voice, its mocking, swaggering distaste for him, isn’t enough to stop him.

别说了，他告诉那个声音。别说了。我知道这很病态，这表示我没病。那声音冷笑一声，笑他的辩护，笑他6岁小孩的逻辑，笑他对“有病”这个字眼的深恶痛绝，还有他生怕这个字眼被贴在他身上。但即使那个声音对他表达嘲弄和不屑的厌恶，也不足以阻止他。

　 The next evening he changes into a short-sleeve T-shirt, one of Willem’s, and goes to the kitchen. He arranges everything he needs: the olive oil; a long wooden match. He places his left forearm in the sink, as if it’s a bird to be plucked, and chooses an area a few inches above where his palm begins, before taking the paper towel he’s wet with oil and rubbing it onto his skin in an apricot-sized circle. He stares for a few seconds at the gleaming grease stain, and then he takes a breath and strikes the match against the side of its box and holds the flame to his skin until he catches on fire.

次日晚上，他换上一件威廉的短袖T恤，来到厨房。他安排好自己需要的一切：橄榄油、一根长长的木火柴。他把左手臂放在水槽里，好像那是一只等着要拔毛的鸡，然后挑了掌根往上两三英寸处的区域，拿沾了橄榄油的厨房纸巾在皮肤上抹，抹出一块杏仁大小的圆形。他看着那块发亮的油渍几秒钟，吸了口气，拿起火柴朝火柴盒侧边一擦，将火焰凑向皮肤，直到着火。

　 The pain is—what is the pain? Ever since the injury, there has not been a single day in which he is not in some sort of pain. Sometimes the pain is infrequent, or mild, or intermittent. But it is always there. “You have to be careful,” Andy is always telling him. “You’ve gotten so inured to it that you’ve lost the ability to recognize when it’s a sign of something worse. So even if it’s only a five or a six, if it looks like this”—they had been speaking about one of the wounds on his legs around which he had noticed that the skin was turning a poisonous blackish gray, the color of rot—“then you have to imagine that for most people it would be a nine or a ten, and you have to, have to come see me. Okay?”

这个痛是——是什么？自从车祸受伤以来，他身上没有一天是不痛的。有时疼痛的频率比较低、比较轻微，或者断断续续，但总是在。“你得小心，”安迪总是这么告诉他：“你已经太习惯疼痛了，碰到更糟糕的征兆时，就会失去辨认的能力。即使只是五分六分的痛，看起来像这样……”他们那时谈到他腿上的一个疮，他注意到那个疮周围的皮肤已经转成一种毒黑的灰，是腐烂的颜色，“那你得想象，对大部分人来说，这已经是九分、十分的痛了，那你一定、一定要来找我，好吗？”

　 But this pain is a pain he has not felt in decades, and he screams and screams. Voices, faces, scraps of memories, odd associations whir through his mind: the smell of smoking olive oil leads him to a memory of a meal of roasted funghi he and Willem had had in Perugia, which leads him to a Tintoretto exhibit that he and Malcolm had seen in their twenties at the Frick, which leads him to a boy in the home everyone called Frick, but he never knew why, as the boy’s name was Jed, which leads him to the nights in the barn, which leads him to a bale of hay in an empty, fog-smeared meadow outside Sonoma against which he and Brother Luke had once had sex, which leads him to, and to, and to, and to, and to. He smells burning meat, and he breaks out of his trance and looks wildly at the stove, as if he has left something there, a slab of steak seething to itself in a pan, but there is nothing, and he realizes he is smelling himself, his own arm cooking beneath him, and this makes him turn on the faucet at last and the water splashing against the burn, the oily smoke rising from it, makes him scream again. And then he is reaching, again wildly, with his right arm, his left still lying useless in the sink, an amputation in a kidney-shaped metal bowl, and he is grabbing the container of sea salt from the cupboard above the stove, and he is sobbing, rubbing a handful of the sharp-edged crystals into the burn, which reactivates the pain into something whiter than white, and it is as if he is staring into the sun and he is blinded.

但眼前的这种痛是他二十多年来不曾感觉过的，他尖叫又尖叫。种种声音、面孔、回忆的片段、古老的联想，一口气急速掠过他的脑海：冒烟的橄榄油气味令他想起和威廉在佩鲁贾吃过的一顿烤野菇大餐，进而联想到他和马尔科姆二十几岁时去弗里克收藏馆看过的一场丁托列托[3]作品展。接着联想到在少年之家时有个男孩，大家都喊他弗里克，但他从来不明白为什么，因为那男孩真正的名字叫杰德。再联想到在谷仓的那些夜晚，继而联想到北加州索诺马郡外，在一片空荡的草地上有一大捆干草，他靠在上头和卢克修士性交。就这么一路联想、联想、联想、联想、联想下去。他忽然闻到肉烧焦的气味，他冲出神游状态，慌张地看着炉子，好像他把东西落在那了，比方一块牛排，正在平底锅里煎着，但炉子上什么都没有，他这才明白他闻到的是自己的肉，他的手臂正烧着。于是他终于打开水龙头，把水泼溅在烧伤处，冒出油腻的烟，他再度尖叫起来。然后他慌乱地伸出右手臂（左手臂仍无力地放在水槽里，像一只切下的截肢放在肾形金属盘内），从炉子上方的碗橱里拿出一罐海盐，啜泣着抓起一把粗糙的结晶，抹在伤口上，让那稍微平息的疼痛重新复活，转为某种比白更白的东西，好像他直视着太阳，并因而目盲。

　 When he wakes, he is on the floor, his head against the cupboard beneath the sink. His limbs are jerking; he is feverish, but he is cold, and he presses himself against the cupboard as if it is something soft, as if it will consume him. Behind his closed eyelids he sees the hyenas, licking their snouts as if they have literally fed upon him. Happy? he asks them. Are you happy? They cannot answer, of course, but they are dazed and satiated; he can see their vigilance waning, their large eyes shutting contentedly.

他醒来时，发现自己躺在地板上。头顶着水槽下的碗橱。他的四肢正在抽搐；他发烧了，同时又觉得很冷。他的身体靠向碗橱，仿佛那是某种柔软的东西，会将他吞没。在他闭着的眼皮后方，他看到那些鬣狗舔着口鼻，好像真的狠狠吃了他一顿。高兴了吗？他问它们。你们高兴了吗？它们当然无法回答，但眼神茫然而满足；他看得出它们的警惕性降低，心满意足地闭上了大眼睛。

　 The next day he has a fever. It takes him an hour to get from the kitchen to his bed; his feet are too sore, and he cannot pull himself on his arms. He doesn’t sleep so much as move in and out of consciousness, the pain sloshing through him like a tide, sometimes receding enough to let him wake, sometimes consuming him beneath a grayed, filthy wave. Late that night he rouses himself enough to look at his arm, where there is a large crisped circle, black and venomous, as if it is a piece of land where he has been practicing a terrifying occult ritual: witch-burning, perhaps. Animal sacrifice. A summoning of spirits. It looks not like skin at all (and indeed, it no longer is) but like something that never was skin: like wood, like paper, like tarmac, all burned to ash.

次日他发烧了。他花了一小时才从厨房回到床上；他的腿很酸痛，而且还没法用手臂拖行自己的身子。他断断续续失去意识，没睡多少，疼痛就像浪潮拍打着他，有时潮水退得够远让他醒来，有时又把他淹没在灰色的肮脏潮水中。那天深夜，他逼自己清醒一点，检视手臂，那里有一块表皮发脆的大圆形，又黑又毒，像是一块他用来进行某种可怕而神秘的仪式的土地：或许是烧女巫、献祭动物，或者召唤鬼魂。那看起来一点也不像皮肤（的确，现在已经不是了），而是某种从来不是皮肤的东西：像木头，像纸，像柏油路面，全都烧成了灰。

　 By Monday, he knows it will become infected. At lunchtime he changes the bandage he had applied the night before, and as he eases it off, his skin tears as well, and he stuffs his pocket square into his mouth so he won’t scream out loud. But things are falling out of his arm, clots with the consistency of blood but the color of coal, and he sits on the floor of his bathroom, rocking himself back and forth, his stomach heaving forth old food and acids, his arm heaving forth its own disease, its own excretia.

到了星期一，他知道伤口会感染。午餐时间他换掉前一夜包扎的绷带，揭开纱布时，表皮也跟着被撕了下来，他抓起西装胸袋里的方巾捂住嘴，免得叫出声来。上头凝结的东西有血块的黏稠度，但是颜色像煤炭。他坐在浴室的地板上，一阵又一阵地吐出消化到一半的食物和胃酸，他的手臂也吐出自己的疾病、自己的排泄物。

　 The next day the pain is worse, and he leaves work early to go see Andy. “My god,” Andy says, seeing the wound, and for once, he is silent, utterly, which terrifies him.

次日疼痛加剧，他提早下班去安迪那。“老天。”安迪看了伤口说。难得一次，安迪沉默了，完全沉默了，这把他吓坏了。

　 “Can you fix it?” he whispers, because until that point, he had never thought himself capable of hurting himself in a way that couldn’t be fixed. He has, suddenly, a vision of Andy telling him he will lose the arm altogether, and the next thing he thinks is: What will I tell Willem?

“你能治好吗？”他轻声问。直到此时，他从没想过他有办法把自己伤到无法修复的地步。他忽然想到安迪有回跟他说，有一天他会把自己割到失去整只手臂。接下来他又想到：我要怎么告诉威廉？