《渺小一生》:然后：我该怎么办？

　 “No,” Andy says. “If you ruin this, Jude—if you keep lying to someone who loves you, who really loves you, who has only ever wanted to see you exactly as you are—then you will only have yourself to blame. It will be your fault. And it’ll be your fault not because of who you are or what’s been done to you or the diseases you have or what you think you look like, but because of how you behave, because you won’t trust Willem enough to talk to him honestly, to extend to him the same sort of generosity and faith that he has always, always extended to you. I know you think you’re sparing him, but you’re not. You’re selfish. You’re selfish and you’re stubborn and you’re proud and you’re going to ruin the best thing that has happened to you. Don’t you understand that?”

“不，”安迪说，“如果你毁掉这段关系，裘德，如果你继续对一个爱你的人撒谎，那你只能怪自己了；他真的很爱你，只想看到你真正的、本来的样子。这会是你的错。而且这个错不是因为你这个人、你遭受过的经历、你得过的病，或是你自认的长相，而是因为你的行为，因为你不够信任威廉，不肯老实跟他谈。他一直、一直对你那么慷慨、那么有信心，你却不肯给他同样的慷慨和信心。我知道你以为你放过他，但其实没有。你很自私。你不但自私，还顽固又骄傲，你就要搞砸你这辈子碰到过的最美好的事情了。你还不明白吗？”

　 He is speechless for the second time that evening, and it is only when he begins, finally, to fall, so tired is he, that Andy reaches out and grabs him around his waist and the conversation ends.

他这天晚上第二度哑口无言，直到他累得要命，终于要倒下，安迪才伸手抱住他的腰。他们的谈话到此结束。

　 He spends the next three nights in the hospital, at Andy’s insistence. During the day, he goes to work, and then he comes back in the evening and Andy readmits him. There are two plastic bags dangling above him, one for each arm. One, he knows, has only glucose in it. The second has something else, something that makes the pain furry and gentle and that makes sleep something inky and still, like the dark blue skies in a Japanese woodblock print of winter, all snow and a silent traveler wearing a woven-straw hat beneath.

接下来三个夜晚，在安迪的坚持下，他都在医院度过。白天他去上班，晚上回到医院，安迪重新帮他办理住院。他上方挂着两个输液袋，分别输入两只手臂里。他知道其中一袋是葡萄糖，另一袋是别的，让他的疼痛模糊并减轻，让他的睡眠墨黑而安稳，就像一幅日本木刻版画中冬日的深蓝色天空，大雪茫茫，下方有一个戴着草编帽的沉默旅人。

　 It is Friday. He returns home. Willem will be arriving at around ten that night, and although Mrs. Zhou has already cleaned, he wants to make certain there is no evidence, that he has hidden every clue, although without context, the clues—salt, matches, olive oil, paper towels—are not clues at all, they are symbols of their life together, they are things they both reach for daily.

星期五，他回到家。威廉会在晚上10点左右抵达。尽管周太太打扫过了，他还是想确认没有任何证据、确认自己把所有的线索都藏好了。少了脉络背景，各种线索（盐、火柴、橄榄油、厨房纸巾）就根本不是线索了，只是他们共同生活的象征，是他们两个人日常都可以拿到的东西而已。

　 He still hasn’t decided what he will do. He has until the following Sunday—he has begged nine extra days from Andy, has convinced him that because of the holidays, because they are driving to Boston next Wednesday for Thanksgiving, that he needs the time—to either tell Willem, or (although he doesn’t say this) to convince Andy to change his mind. Both scenarios seem equally impossible. But he will try anyway. One of the problems with having slept so much these past few nights is that he has had very little time to think about how he can negotiate this situation. He feels he has become a spectacle to himself, with all the beings who inhabit him—the ferret-like creature; the hyenas; the voices—watching to see what he will do, so they can judge him and scoff at him and tell him he’s wrong.

他还没决定要怎么做。他跟安迪哀求多给他九天，说服他说因为假期，下周三他们就要开车去波士顿过感恩节，他需要多九天的时间。他还可以拖到下个星期天，要不告诉威廉，要不就说服安迪改变心意（他自然没说出来）。两种方案似乎同样不可行，但总之他会尝试。过去三个晚上睡得那么饱的麻烦之一，就是他没有什么时间思索要怎么解决这个状况。他觉得自己成了一副奇观，所有寄居在他体内的活物——那个雪貂般的野兽、那些鬣狗、那些声音——都等着看他会怎么做，然后它们就可以批判他、嘲笑他，跟他说他错了。

　 He sits down on the living-room sofa to wait, and when he opens his eyes, Willem is sitting next to him, smiling at him and saying his name, and he puts his arms around him, careful not to let his left arm exert any pressure, and for that one moment, everything seems both possible—and indescribably difficult.

他坐在起居室的沙发上等待。当他睁开眼睛时，威廉坐在他旁边微笑，轻唤他的名字。他伸出双臂抱住他，小心地让左手完全不要用力。那一刻一切似乎都有可能，但同时又困难得难以言喻。

　 How could I go on without this? he asks himself.

没有这个，我怎么有办法继续下去？他问自己。

　 And then: What am I going to do?

然后：我该怎么办？

　 Nine days, the voice inside him nags. Nine days. But he ignores it.

九天，他心里的声音唠叨着。九天。但是他不理会。

　 “Willem,” he says aloud, from within the huddle of Willem’s arms. “You’re home, you’re home.” He gives a long exhalation of air; hopes Willem doesn’t hear its shudder. “Willem,” he says again and again, letting his name fill his mouth. “Willem, Willem—you don’t know how much I missed you.”

“威廉，”他说，依然跟威廉相拥。“你回来了，你回来了。”他吐出一口长气；希望威廉没听到其中的颤抖。“威廉，”他说了一遍又一遍，让那名字充满他的口腔，“威廉，威廉——你不知道我有多么想念你。”

　 The best part about going away is coming home. Who said that? Not him, but it might as well have been, he thinks as he moves through the apartment. It is noon: a Tuesday, and tomorrow they will drive to Boston.

离家外出最棒的一点，就是回家。这是谁说的？不是他，但是他也会说出同样的话，他在公寓里走动时这么想。现在是星期二中午，明天他们就要开车去波士顿了。

　 If you love home—and even if you don’t—there is nothing quite as cozy, as comfortable, as delightful, as that first week back. That week, even the things that would irritate you—the alarm waahing from some car at three in the morning; the pigeons who come to clutter and cluck on the windowsill behind your bed when you’re trying to sleep in—seem instead reminders of your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it or how long you have left it.

如果你爱家（即使你不爱），再也没有什么比得上归来的第一个星期了——那么温馨舒适、那么自在开心。那个星期，就连平常会让他火大的事情——凌晨3点某辆汽车警报器的噪音；想睡觉时，床后头那群挤在窗台上咕咕叫的鸽子——似乎都转为种种对你的提醒，让你想到无论你原先离你的生活有多远、离开多久，这不变的生活永远会仁慈地允许你回来。

　 Also that week, the things you like anyway seem, in their very existence, to be worthy of celebration: the candied-walnut vendor on Crosby Street who always returns your wave as you jog past him; the falafel sandwich with extra pickled radish from the truck down the block that you woke up craving one night in London; the apartment itself, with its sunlight that lopes from one end to the other in the course of a day, with your things and food and bed and shower and smells.

在这个星期，你本来就喜欢的那些事物，只因为它们存在，就值得庆祝：克罗斯比街那个卖糖衣核桃的小贩，每次你慢跑经过时总会回应你的挥手；同一个街区上那辆快餐车卖的中东炸肉丸三明治夹着超多的腌白萝卜，害你有天在伦敦半夜醒来想念得不得了；还有这间公寓本身，整个白天，阳光从这一头缓缓移向另一头，里面有你的东西、食物、床、淋浴间、气味。

　 And, of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body and voice and scent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever you’re saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back. Then there are the things, if you are particularly lucky, that this person has done for you while you’re away: how in the pantry, in the freezer, in the refrigerator will be all the food you like to eat, the scotch you like to drink. There will be the sweater you thought you lost the previous year at the theater, clean and folded and back on its shelf. There will be the shirt with its dangling buttons, but the buttons will be sewn back in place. There will be your mail stacked on one side of his desk; there will be a contract for an advertising campaign you’re going to do in Germany for an Austrian beer, with his notes in the margin to discuss with your lawyer. And there will be no mention of it, and you will know that it was done with genuine pleasure, and you will know that part of the reason—a small part, but a part—you love being in this apartment and in this relationship is because this other person is always making a home for you, and that when you tell him this, he won’t be offended but pleased, and you’ll be glad, because you meant it with gratitude. And in these moments—almost a week back home—you will wonder why you leave so often, and you will wonder whether, after the next year’s obligations are fulfilled, you ought not just stay here for a period, where you belong.

当然，还有等着你的那个人：他的脸、身体、声音、气味、触摸，他会等你讲完你想讲的事情（无论多长），才会开口，他脸上缓缓绽开的微笑让你想起月亮的升起，他多么清楚无疑地想念你，看到你回来又多么清楚无疑地开心。然后，如果你特别幸运的话，这个人还会在你离家时帮你做很多事：食品储藏室、冷冻柜、冰箱里会充满你爱吃的东西、你爱喝的苏格兰威士忌。你以为前一年在戏院搞丢的毛衣，会洗好、折好摆在你的衣柜里。那件扣子松掉的衬衫，上头的扣子又缝得牢牢的。你的信件成叠摆在书桌的一端；你要去德国帮一个奥地利啤酒品牌代言的广告活动合约帮你看好了，合约旁的空白处写着一些给你律师的建议注记。而且不必提，你就知道这些事情都是他开开心心做好的，你会知道你喜欢住在这间公寓、喜欢这段伴侣关系的一部分原因（虽然只是一小部分，但也是一部分），是因为另一个人总是替你营造出家的感觉。当你这样告诉他，他不会生气而是开心，你也会很高兴，因为你是真心感激。在这些时刻（回家近一星期了），你搞不懂自己为什么这么常离开，你会思忖，等下一年的合约履行完毕后，是否该多花点时间留在这个让你有归属感的地方。

　 But you will also know—as he knows—that part of your constant leaving is reactive. After his relationship with Jude was made public, while he and Kit and Emil were waiting to see what would happen next, he had experienced that same insecurity that had visited him as a younger man: What if he never worked again? What if this was it? And although things had, he could now see, continued with almost no discernible hitch at all, it had taken him a year to be reassured that his circumstances hadn’t changed, that he was still as he had been, desirable to some directors and not to others (“Bullshit,” Kit had said, and he was grateful for him; “anyone would want to work with you”), and at any rate, the same actor, no better or worse, that he had been before.

但你也知道（他也知道），你总是离开的部分原因，是某种应变的对策。自从他和裘德的恋情公开后，虽然他、基特、埃米尔都等着看接下来会怎么样，但他重新体会到年轻时代常有的那种不安全感：要是他再也接不到工作了呢？要是一切到此为止呢？尽管现在回头看，他发现自己的事业其实还在继续发展，几乎看不出有任何影响，但他还是花了一年，才确定自己的处境没有改变：跟以前一样，有的导演喜欢找他，有的不喜欢（“狗屁，任何导演都想找你合作。”基特总是这样说，他很感激他）。无论如何，他还是原来的那个演员，没有比以往更好或更差。

　 But if he was allowed to be the same actor, he was not allowed to be the same person, and in the months after he was declared gay—and never refuted it; he didn’t have a publicist to issue these sorts of denials and avowals—he found himself in possession of more identities than he’d had in a very long time. For much of his adult life, he had been placed in circumstances that required the shedding of selves: no longer was he a brother; no longer was he a son. But with a single revelation, he had now become a gay man; a gay actor; a high-profile gay actor; a high-profile, nonparticipating gay actor; and, finally, a high-profile traitorous gay actor. A year or so ago he had gone to dinner with a director named Max whom he’d known for many years, and over dinner Max had tried to get him to give a speech at a gala dinner benefiting a gay-rights organization at which he would announce himself as gay. Willem had always supported this organization, and he told Max that although he would be pleased to present an award or sponsor a table—as he had every year for the past decade—he wouldn’t come out, because he didn’t believe there was anything to come out of: he wasn’t gay.

如果他被公认还是同样的演员，但他并没有被公认还是同样的那个人。在他表明自己是同性恋之后（他从未否认，他没有公关人员帮他发出这类否认或公开声明），他发现自己好久没有拥有这么多身份了。在成年的大部分时间里，他的处境让他去除自己的种种身份：不再是一个兄弟；不再是一个儿子。但这回才揭露了一件私事，他就成了同性恋男子、同性恋演员、知名的同性恋演员，最后还成为知名又不忠的同性恋演员。大约一年前，他跟一个名叫麦克斯的导演吃晚餐，他们认识很多年了，晚餐时麦克斯想说服他在一个同性恋权利组织的慈善晚宴上演讲，正式宣布自己是同性恋者。威廉向来支持这个组织，他告诉麦克斯，他很乐于颁奖或出钱赞助一桌（一如过去十年的每一年），但他不会公开出柜，因为他不认为这有什么好公开的——他不是同性恋者。

　 “Willem,” Max said, “you’re in a relationship, a serious relationship, with a man. That is the very definition of gay.”

“威廉，”麦克斯说，“你在谈恋爱，很认真地跟一个男人交往。这就是同性恋的定义啊。”

　 “I’m not in a relationship with a man,” he said, hearing how absurd the words were, “I’m in a relationship with Jude.”

“我没在跟一个男人交往。”他说，连自己都听得出这话有多么荒谬，“我是在跟裘德交往。”

　 “Oh my god,” Max muttered.

“啊，老天。”麦克斯喃喃说。

　 He’d sighed. Max was sixteen years older than he; he had come of age in a time when identity politics were your very identity, and he understood Max’s—and the other people who pecked at and pleaded with him to come out, and then accused him of self-loathing, and cowardice, and hypocrisy, and denial, when he didn’t—arguments; he understood that he had come to represent something he had never asked to represent; he understood that whether he wanted this representation or not was almost incidental. But he still couldn’t do it.

他叹气。麦克斯比他大十六岁；在麦克斯成年的那个时代，身份政治就是你这个人，他也了解麦克斯的论点，还有其他人的论点，他们不断抨击或恳求他出柜，看他不出柜，就指控他自我厌恶，还有懦弱、伪善、否认；他领悟到自己开始代表他从来不想代表的身份；他领悟到，无论他想或不想要这种代表权，几乎都是次要的。但他还是做不到。