《渺小一生》:“三十年的不服从。”

　 When he wakes again, he realizes he doesn’t know what day it is, and when Willem tells him it’s Monday, he panics. “Work,” he says, “I have to go.”

他再度醒来时，发现自己不知道今天星期几，威廉跟他说是星期一，他恐慌起来。“上班。”他说，“我得去上班了。”

　 “No fucking way,” Willem says, sharply. “I called them, Jude. You’re not going anywhere, not until Andy figures out what’s going on.”

“妈的不要想了，”威廉凶巴巴地说，“我打电话去事务所了，裘德。你哪里都不能去，先等安迪搞清楚是怎么回事再说。”

　 Harold and Julia arrive later, and he makes himself return Harold’s embrace, although he cannot look at him. Over Harold’s shoulder, he sees Willem, who nods at him reassuringly.

哈罗德和朱丽娅稍后也赶到了。他逼自己响应哈罗德的拥抱，尽管他根本不敢正眼瞧他。隔着哈罗德的肩膀，他看到威廉朝他安慰地点着头。

　 They are all together when Andy comes in. “Osteomyelitis,” he says to him, quietly. “A bone infection.” He explains what will happen: he will have to stay in the hospital for at least a week—“A week!” he exclaims, and the four of them start shouting at him before he has a chance to protest further—or possibly two, until they get the fever under control. The antibiotics will be dispensed through a central line, but the remaining ten to eleven weeks of treatment will be given to him on an outpatient basis. Every day, a nurse will come administer the IV drip: the treatment will take an hour, and he is not to miss a single one of these. When he tries, again, to protest, Andy stops him. “Jude,” he says. “This is serious. I mean it. I don’t fucking care about Rosen Pritchard. You want to keep your legs, you do this and you follow my instructions, do you understand me?”

安迪进来时，他们都在。“是骨髓炎。”他低声对他说，“一种骨头的感染。”他解释接下来会发生什么事：他得住院至少一星期。“一星期！”他大叫，他还没来得及进一步抗议，其他四个人就开始吼他。也可能住两周，直到控制住发烧为止。他们会用中央静脉导管为他打抗生素，但接下来十到十一周，还是得在家治疗。每天都会有护士过去帮他注射点滴：总共需要一小时，他一次都不能漏掉。他又试着抗议，安迪阻止了他。“裘德，”安迪说，“情况很严重，我是说真的。我他妈的才不管罗森·普理查德。你想保住两条腿，就要乖乖治疗，而且要听我的话，懂了没？”

　 Around him, the others are silent. “Yes,” he says, at last.

他周围的其他人都闷不吭声。“懂了。”最后他终于说。

　 A nurse comes to prep him so Andy can administer the central venous catheter, which will be inserted into the subclavian vein, directly beneath his right collarbone. “This is a tricky vein to access because it’s so deep,” the nurse says, pulling down the neck of his gown and cleaning a square of his skin. “But you’re lucky to have Dr. Contractor. He’s very good with needles; he never misses.” He isn’t worried, but he knows Willem is, and he holds Willem’s hand as Andy first pierces his skin with the cold metal needle and then threads the coil of guide wire into him. “Don’t look,” he tells Willem. “It’s okay.” And so Willem stares instead at his face, which he tries to keep still and composed until Andy is finished and is taping the catheter’s length of slender plastic tubing to his chest.

一个护士进来帮他准备，好让安迪置入中央静脉导管；导管将从他右边锁骨下方的锁骨下静脉插入。“这根血管很不好找，因为非常深。”那个护士说，拉下他病人袍的领口，用酒精棉擦拭了皮肤上的一块地方。“但是你很幸运碰到康垂克特医生。他很会用那些针，一次失误都没有过。”他不担心，但他知道威廉很担心，两人握着手，让安迪把那根冰冷的金属针插入他的皮肤，接着是成卷导线穿入他体内。“不要看。”他告诉威廉，“没事的。”于是威廉改盯着他的脸，他设法保持表情镇定不动，直到安迪弄完，贴好那根连到他胸部的塑料细导管。

　 He sleeps. He had thought he might be able to work from the hospital, but he is more exhausted than he thought he would be, cloudier, and after talking to the chairs of the various committees and some of his colleagues, he doesn’t have the strength to do anything else.

他睡去了。本来他以为可以在医院工作，但是他身体疲累、头脑昏沉的情况远远超过预期。他跟事务所各个委员会的主席及一些同事开完会之后，体力已所剩无几。

　 Harold and Julia leave—they have classes and office hours—but except for Richard and a few people from work, they don’t tell anyone he’s hospitalized; he won’t be there for long, and Willem has decided he needs sleep more than he needs visitors. He is still febrile, but less so, and there have been no further episodes of delirium. And strangely, for all that is happening, he feels, if not optimistic, then at least calm. Everyone around him is so sober, so thin-lipped, that he feels determined to defy them somehow, to defy the severity of the situation they keep telling him he’s in.

哈罗德和朱丽娅离开了，各自回去上课和上班，但除了理查德和少数工作上的人，他们没告诉任何人他住院了；反正他不会待太久，而且威廉判定他需要睡眠，胜于接受探病。他还在发烧，不过温度没那么高了，也没再出现谵妄。奇怪的是，发生了这一切，但他觉得自己即使不乐观，至少也算冷静。他身边的每个人都很清醒，沉默不语，他决心违抗他们，违抗每个人一直告诉他的那种严重状况。

　 He can’t remember when he and Willem started referring to the hospital as the Hotel Contractor, in honor of Andy, but it seems they always have. “Watch out,” Willem would say to him even back at Lispenard Street, when he was hacking at a piece of steak some enraptured sous-chef at Ortolan had sneaked Willem at the end of his shift, “that cleaver’s really sharp, and if you chop off a thumb, we’ll have to go to the Hotel Contractor.” Or once, when he was hospitalized for a skin infection, he had sent Willem (away somewhere, shooting) a text reading “At Hotel Contractor. Not a big deal, but didn’t want you to hear through M or JB.” Now, though, when he tries to make Hotel Contractor jokes—complaining about the Hotel’s increasingly poor food and beverage services; about its poor quality of linens—Willem doesn’t respond.

不记得从什么时候开始，他和威廉就把医院讲成康垂克特酒店，借此向安迪致意，感觉上他们好像一直都这么讲。早在利斯本纳街时代，有一回奥特伦餐厅的一个副主厨心情很好，值班结束时偷拿了一块牛排给威廉。当他回家切那块牛排时，“小心点。”威廉跟他说，“那把切肉刀利得很，要是你把大拇指切下来，我们又得去康垂克特酒店了。”还有一回，他因为皮肤感染住院，发短信给威廉（当时他在外地拍戏）：“我在康垂克特酒店。没什么大不了的，只是不希望你从马尔科姆或杰比那边听到。”但现在，当他试着拿康垂克特酒店开玩笑，抱怨酒店的供餐和饮料越来越差，床单的质量很烂时，威廉都没反应。

　 “This isn’t funny, Jude,” he snaps on Friday evening, as they wait for Harold and Julia to arrive with dinner. “I wish you’d fucking stop kidding around.” He is quiet then, and they look at each other. “I was so scared,” Willem says, in a low voice. “You were so sick and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I was so scared.”

“裘德，这不好笑。”他在星期天晚上厉声说。当时他们正在等哈罗德和朱丽娅带晚餐过来。“我希望你他妈的别再开玩笑了。”他沉默下来，两个人看着彼此。“我好害怕。”威廉低声说，“你病得这么重，我都不晓得接下来会怎样，我好害怕。”

　 “Willem,” he says, gently, “I know. I’m so grateful for you.” He hurries on before Willem can tell him he doesn’t need him to be grateful, he needs him to take the situation seriously. “I’m going to listen to Andy, I promise. I promise you I’m taking this seriously. And I promise you I’m not in any discomfort. I feel fine. It’s going to be fine.”

“威廉，”他柔声说，“我知道。我很感激你。”他赶紧说出口，趁威廉还来不及说他不需要他的感激、只需要他把这个情况当回事之前。“我会听安迪的话的，我保证。我保证我会把这当一回事，而且我保证我现在没有任何不舒服。我觉得很好。一切都会没事的。”

　 After ten days, Andy is satisfied that the fever has been eliminated, and he is discharged and sent home for two days to rest; he is back at the office on Friday. He had always resisted having a driver—he liked to drive himself; he liked the independence, the solitude—but now Willem’s assistant has hired a driver for him, a small, serious man named Mr. Ahmed, and on his way to and from the office, he sleeps. Mr. Ahmed also picks up his nurse, a woman named Patrizia who rarely speaks but is very gentle, and every day at one p.m., she meets him at Rosen Pritchard. His office there is all glass and looks out onto the floor, and he lowers the shades for privacy and takes off his jacket and tie and shirt, and lies down on the sofa in his undershirt and covers himself with a blanket, and Patrizia cleans the catheter and checks the skin around it to make sure there are no signs of infection—no swelling, no redness—and then inserts the IV and waits as the medicine drips into the catheter and slides into his veins. As they wait, he works and she reads a nursing journal or knits. Soon this too becomes normal: every Friday he sees Andy, who debrides his wounds and then examines him, sending him to the hospital after their session for X-rays so he can track the infection and make sure it isn’t spreading.

十天后，安迪很满意他的烧退了。于是他出院，回家休息两天，星期五就回去上班了。他以前一直抗拒雇用司机。他喜欢自己开车，喜欢那种独立和隔绝。但现在威廉的助理帮他雇了司机，是个严肃的小个子男人艾哈迈德先生，于是他上下班途中，就在车上睡觉。另外，艾哈迈德先生每天下午1点还会去接护士到罗森·普理查德律师事务所。那名护士叫帕特里齐亚，话很少，但非常温柔。他的办公室全是玻璃墙，外头是大办公厅。他会放下窗帘，脱下西装外套、领带、衬衫，只穿汗衫躺在沙发上，盖着毯子。帕特里齐亚会帮导管消毒，检查周围的皮肤，确定没有感染的迹象（没有肿起，没有发红），然后帮他做静脉注射，等药物滴入导管，再进入他的血管。他等待的时候，仍然照样工作；护士则会阅读一本护理学报，或是打毛线。很快地，这变成他的日常：每周五他会去看安迪，让他为那些疮清创，检查他的状况，然后送他到医院拍X光片，以便追踪他的感染情形，确保没有扩散。

　 They cannot go away on the weekends because he needs to have his treatment, but in early October, after four weeks of antibiotics, Andy announces that he’s been talking to Willem, and if he doesn’t mind, he and Jane are going to come up to stay with them in Garrison for the weekend, and he’ll administer the drip himself.

他们没办法出城度周末，因为他需要持续治疗。到了十月初，他打抗生素四周后，安迪宣布他跟威廉谈过了，如果他不介意，他和简打算跟他们一起去加里森村过下个周末，他会亲自帮他打点滴。

　 It is wonderful, and rare, being out of the city, being back at their house, and the four of them enjoy one another’s company. He even feels well enough to give Andy an abbreviated tour of the property, which Andy has visited only in springtime or summer, but which is different in autumn: raw, sad, lovely, the barn’s roof plastered with fallen yellow gingko leaves that make it look as if it’s been laid with sheets of gold leaf.

难得能离开纽约市，回到他们那栋房子，真是太棒了，而且他们四个很乐于有彼此为伴。他甚至觉得好多了，带着安迪在整片产业转了一圈，做个简略的介绍。之前安迪只有春天或夏天来过，秋天的景色完全不同：粗犷、哀愁、动人，谷仓屋顶黏着落下的黄色银杏叶，看起来像是铺了一层层金箔。

　 Over dinner that Saturday night, Andy asks him, “You do realize we’ve now known each other for thirty years, right?”

那个星期六用晚餐时，安迪问他：“你知道我们已经认识三十年了吧？”

　 “I do,” he smiles. He has in fact bought Andy something—a safari vacation for him and his family, to go on whenever he wants—for their anniversary, although he hasn’t told him about it yet.

“我知道。”他微笑。其实他还为了相识三十周年，买了礼物要送安迪，只是还没告诉他而已——出钱让他们全家参加非洲狩猎之旅，随时都可以去。

　 “Thirty years of being disobeyed,” Andy moans, and the rest of them laugh. “Thirty years of dispensing priceless medical advice gleaned from years of experience and training at top institutions, only to have it ignored by a corporate litigator, who’s decided his understanding of human biology is superior to my own.”

“三十年的不服从。”安迪哀叹，其他人都大笑起来。“我在各个顶尖机构累积了多年的经验和训练，三十年来提供各种珍贵的医学建议，结果被一个企业律师置之不理，因为他判定他比我还了解人类生物学。”

　 After they’ve stopped laughing, Jane says, “But you know, Andy, if it weren’t for Jude, I never would have married you.” To him, she says, “In medical school, I always thought Andy was sort of a self-absorbed douche bag, Jude; he was so arrogant, so borderline callow”—“What!” Andy says, feigning injury—“that I assumed he was going to be one of those typical surgeons—you know, ‘not always right, but always certain.’ But then I heard him talk about you, how much he loved and respected you, and I thought there might be something more to him. And I was right.”

他们笑声停止后，简说：“不过安迪，你知道，如果不是因为裘德，我绝对不会嫁给你的。”简对着他说，“读医学院的时候，我老觉得安迪是那种自我中心的讨厌鬼；他太狂妄了，简直是目中无人……”“什么！”安迪说，假装很受伤。“我以为他会变成那种典型的外科医生，你知道，‘不见得永远正确，但是永远很有把握。’但后来我听他谈起你，知道他有多么喜欢你、多么尊敬你，于是我想，他身上或许还有其他的优点。结果我想得没错。”

　 “You were,” he tells her, after they all laugh again. “You were right,” and they all look at Andy, who gets embarrassed and pours himself another glass of wine.

“你的确想得没错。”大家又大笑完毕后，他告诉简，“一点都没错。”然后大家都看着安迪，害他不好意思起来，又给自己倒了一杯葡萄酒。

　 The week after that, Willem begins rehearsals for his new film. A month ago, when he got sick, he had backed out of the project, and then it had been delayed to wait for him, and now things are stable enough that he has signed on again. He doesn’t understand why Willem had backed out in the first place—the film is a remake of Desperate Characters, and most of the filming will be done just across the river, in Brooklyn Heights—but he is relieved to have Willem at work again and not hovering over him, looking worried and asking him if he’s sure he has the energy to do any of the very basic things (going to the grocery store; making a meal; staying late at work) that he wants to do.

隔周，威廉开始排练新戏。一个月前他生病时，威廉退出了那部电影，制片方因此延期，现在他状况够稳定了，威廉又答应回去。那部电影是《绝望的性格》旧片新拍，大部分在隔了一条河的布鲁克林高地拍摄。他不明白威廉一开始为什么要退出，但他很开心看到威廉又开始工作，而不是成天守着他，一脸忧虑地问他是否确定自己有力气做一些非常基本的、他想要做的事，比方去杂货店，做一顿饭，或是工作到很晚。