《渺小一生》:“我决定动手术了。”

　 “But you can’t guarantee me that I’ll even keep the knees this time,” he says, petulant. “You can’t guarantee I won’t develop sepsis in the future.”

“但是现在，你也没办法保证我能保住膝盖。”他任性地说，“你没办法担保我以后就不会有败血症啊。”

　 “No,” Andy admits. “But as I said, I think there’s a very good chance you will keep them. And I think if we remove this part of your body that’s so gravely infected that it’ll help prevent further disease.”

“没错，”安迪承认，“不过就像我之前说的，我觉得保住你膝盖的机会很大。另外我觉得，如果我们把你严重感染的这部分身体去掉，可以预防其他疾病。”

　 They are all quiet again. “This sounds like a choice that isn’t a choice,” he mutters.

他们又沉默下来。“这个选择听起来根本就是没得选择。”他喃喃说。

　 Andy sighs. “As I said, Jude,” he says, “it is a choice. It’s your choice. You don’t have to make it tomorrow, or even this week. But I want you to think about it, carefully.”

安迪叹气。“裘德，就像我之前说的，”他说，“这确实是一个选择。是你的选择。你不必明天就决定，甚至不必这个星期决定。不过我希望你慎重考虑一下。”

　 He leaves, and he and Willem are left alone. “Do we have to talk about it now?” he asks, when he can finally look at Willem, and Willem shakes his head. Outside the sky is turning rose-colored; the sunset will be long and beautiful. But he doesn’t want beauty. He wishes, suddenly, that he could swim, but he hasn’t swum since the first bone infection. He hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t gone anywhere. He has had to turn his London clients over to a colleague, because his IV has tethered him to New York. His muscles have disappeared: he is soft flesh on bone; he moves like an old man. “I’m going to bed,” he tells Willem, and when Willem says, quietly, “Yasmin’s coming in a couple of hours,” he wants to cry. “Right,” he says, to the floor. “Well. I’m going to take a nap, then. I’ll wake up for Yasmin.”

安迪离开了，只剩他和威廉。“我们非得现在谈这件事吗？”他问。此时他终于有办法看威廉了，威廉摇摇头。外头的天空已转成粉红色，日落将会漫长而美丽。但他不想要美丽。他突然好希望自己可以游泳，但自从第一次骨头感染以来，他就没再游过了。他什么都没做，哪里都没去。他必须把伦敦的客户转给同事，因为点滴注射把他绑在纽约。他身上的肌肉都流失了：现在他只有骨头上松软的肉；移动时像个老人。“我要去睡觉了。”他告诉威廉。威廉低声说：“雅思敏再过两小时就要过来了。”他听了好想哭。“没错，”他低头看着地板说，“好吧，那我去小睡一下。等雅思敏来了我再起床。”

　 That night, after Yasmin has left, he cuts himself for the first time in a long time; he watches the blood weep across the marble and into the drain. He knows how irrational it seems, his desire to keep his legs, his legs that have caused him so many problems, that have cost him how many hours, how much money, how much pain to maintain? But still: They are his. They are his legs. They are him. How can he willingly cut away a part of himself? He knows that he has already cut away so much of himself over the years: flesh, skin, scars. But somehow this is different. If he sacrifices his legs, he will be admitting to Dr. Traylor that he has won; he will be surrendering to him, to that night in the field with the car.

那天夜里，雅思敏离开后，他割了自己，他好久没割了；他看着血流过大理石，进入排水口。他知道自己想保住两腿有多么不理性，这两条腿给他惹了这么多麻烦，花了那么多时间，消耗了那么多金钱，引起那么多痛苦，而他还想保住？然而，这是他的，是他的腿。这两条腿就是他。他怎么可能乐意切掉自己的一部分？他知道多年来他已经切掉过太多部分的自己了：肉、皮肤、伤疤。但不知怎的，眼前这件事不一样。如果他牺牲掉他的双腿，他就是承认特雷勒医生赢了；他就是向特雷勒医生投降，向那一夜那片田野的那辆车投降。

　 And it is also different because he knows that once he loses them, he will no longer be able to pretend. He will no longer be able to pretend that someday he will walk again, that someday he will be better. He will no longer be able to pretend that he isn’t disabled. Up, once more, will go his freak-show factor. He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

而且这回不一样，因为他知道一旦失去两条腿，他就再也没办法假装了。他再也不能假装有一天他又可以走路，有一天他会好转。他再也不能假装他不是残障。他的怪胎秀元素又会增加一个。他所失去的部分，将成为他这个人第一个、也是永远的定义。

　 And he is tired. He doesn’t want to have to learn how to walk again. He doesn’t want to work at regaining weight he knows he will lose, weight on top of the weight he has struggled to replace from the first bone infection, weight that he has re-lost with the second. He doesn’t want to go back into the hospital, he doesn’t want to wake disoriented and confused, he doesn’t want to be visited by night terrors, he doesn’t want to explain to his colleagues that he is sick yet again, he doesn’t want the months and months of being weak, of fighting to regain his equilibrium. He doesn’t want Willem to see him without his legs, he doesn’t want to give him one more challenge, one more grotesquerie to overcome. He wants to be normal, he has only ever wanted to be normal, and yet with each year, he moves further and further from normalcy. He knows it is fallacious to think of the mind and the body as two separate, competing entities, but he cannot help it. He doesn’t want his body to win one more battle, to make the decision for him, to make him feel so helpless. He doesn’t want to be dependent on Willem, to have to ask him to lift him in and out of bed because his arms will be too useless and watery, to help him use the bathroom, to see the remains of his legs rounded into stumps. He had always assumed that there would be some sort of warning before this point, that his body would alert him before it became seriously worse. He knows, he does, that this past year and a half was his warning—a long, slow, consistent, unignorable warning—but he has chosen, in his arrogance and stupid hope, not to see it for what it is. He has chosen to believe that because he had always recovered, that he would once again, one more time. He has given himself the privilege of assuming that his chances are limitless.

而且他累了。他不想重新学习如何走路。他不想努力增加失去的体重，他很清楚，除了补回第一次和第二次骨头感染失去的，现在还要多补一些回来。他不想又去住院，他不想醒来后茫然又困惑，他不想再经历夜间来袭的恐惧，他不想向同事解释他又病了，他不想一个月又一个月地虚弱下去，一再奋战重回平衡的状态。他不想让威廉看到他没有腿，他不想多给他一项挑战、多一个要克服的怪诞状态。他想当个正常人，他唯一想要的就是正常，然而随着每一年过去，他都离正常状态越来越远。他知道把心灵和身体想成是两个分开的、互不兼容的个体是不对的，但他就是会这样想。他不希望他的身体又赢了一场战役，又为他做了决定，让他很无能为力。他不想依赖威廉，不想请威廉抱着他上床或下床，只因为他的手软绵绵的根本没用，不想拜托威廉帮他上厕所，不想让威廉看到他只剩两截尾端圆圆的残肢。他总是假设这个时刻到来之前会有某种警告，他的身体会在严重恶化之前发出警告。他知道，他真的知道，过去这一年半就是在警告他；这是一个漫长、缓慢、持续、无法忽视的警告。但在他的狂妄和愚蠢的期望之下，他选择不去正视那些警告，而是选择相信过去的自己都复原了，所以这回也一样。他给自己这项特权，假设自己拥有无限多的机会。

　 Three nights later he wakes again with a fever; again he goes into the hospital; again he is discharged. This fever has been caused by an infection around his catheter, which is removed. A new one is inserted into his internal jugular vein, where it forms a bulge that not even his shirt collars can wholly camouflage.

三天之后的晚上，他又发烧醒来，被送进医院，然后又出院。这回发烧是因为导管附近的感染所引起的，于是那根导管被拿掉了。新的中央静脉导管从他的内颈静脉插入，那里鼓起一块，连衬衫领子都无法完全遮住。

　 His first night back home, he is coasting through his dreams when he opens his eyes and sees that Willem isn’t in bed next to him, and he works himself into his wheelchair and glides out of the room.

他回家的第一夜，从梦境中醒来，睁开眼睛发现威廉不在床上，于是设法坐上轮椅，滑出房间。

　 He sees Willem before Willem sees him; he is sitting at the dining table, the light on above him, his back to the bookcases, staring out into the room. There is a glass of water before him, and his elbow is resting on the table, his hand supporting his chin. He looks at Willem and sees how exhausted he is, how old, his bright hair gone whitish. He has known Willem for so long, has looked at his face so many times, that he is never able to see him anew: his face is better known to him than his own. He knows its every expression. He knows what Willem’s different smiles mean; when he is watching him being interviewed on television, he can always tell when he is smiling because he’s truly amused and when he is smiling to be polite. He knows which of his teeth are capped, and he knows which ones Kit made him straighten when it was clear that he was going to be a star, when it was clear that he wouldn’t just be in plays and independent films but would have a different kind of career, a different kind of life. But now he looks at Willem, at his face that is still so handsome but also so tired, the kind of tiredness he thought only he was feeling, and realizes that Willem is feeling it as well, that his life—Willem’s life with him—has become a sort of drudgery, a slog of illnesses and hospital visits and fear, and he knows what he will do, what he has to do.

在威廉看到他之前，他先看到他；威廉坐在餐桌旁，头上亮着灯，他背对着书架，望着前方广阔的空间。他面前放着一杯水，一边手肘架在桌上，手撑着下巴。他看着威廉，看到他有多疲倦、多苍老，他明亮的头发开始泛白了。他认识威廉这么久，看过他的脸这么多次了，所以始终无法以新的眼光看他。对他而言，威廉的脸比他自己的脸还熟悉。他知道那张脸的每个表情。他知道威廉每种不同的微笑代表什么意思；看到威廉在电视上受访时，他总能分辨那微笑是真的愉快，或只是出于礼貌。他知道威廉的哪颗牙齿装了牙套，哪几颗是当年被基特逼着去矫正的；当时威廉显然即将成为明星，不会一直只演舞台剧和独立影片，而是开始另一种生涯、另一种人生。但现在他看着威廉，看着他的脸依然很俊美，但也很疲倦，此时他才领悟到，他原以为只有自己才感觉到的那种疲倦，其实威廉也感觉到了。同时他也领悟到，他的人生，以及威廉和他在一起的人生，已经变成了一种苦力，艰辛地在病痛、进出医院和恐惧中跋涉，于是他知道自己将怎么做、必须怎么做了。

　 “Willem,” he says, and watches Willem jerk out of his trance and look at him.

“威廉。”他说，看着威廉迅速回过神来，转头看他。

　 “Jude,” Willem says. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick? Why are you out of bed?”

“裘德，”威廉说，“怎么了？你不舒服吗？你下床来做什么？”

　 “I’m going to do it,” he says, and he thinks that they are like two actors on a stage, talking to each other across a great distance, and he wheels himself close to him. “I’m going to do it,” he repeats, and Willem nods, and then they lean their foreheads into each other’s, and both of them start crying. “I’m sorry,” he tells Willem, and Willem shakes his head, his forehead rubbing against his.

“我决定动手术了。”他说，来到威廉旁边，想到他们就像舞台上的两个演员。“我决定动手术了。”他又说了一次。威廉点点头，接着两人向彼此凑近，额头贴在一起，都开始哭了。“对不起。”他告诉威廉，而威廉摇摇头，额头摩擦着他的。

　 “I’m sorry,” Willem tells him back. “I’m sorry, Jude. I’m so sorry.”

“我很遗憾。”威廉也跟他说，“我很遗憾，裘德。我真的很遗憾。”

　 “I know,” he says, and he does.

“我知道。”他说，他真的知道。

　 The next day he calls Andy, who is relieved but also muted, as if out of respect to him. Things move briskly after that. They pick a date: the first date Andy proposes is Willem’s birthday, and even though he and Willem have agreed that they’ll celebrate Willem’s fiftieth birthday once he’s better, he doesn’t want to have the surgery on the actual day. So instead he’ll have it at the end of August, the week before Labor Day, the week before they usually go to Truro. In the next management committee meeting, he makes a brief announcement, explaining that this is a voluntary operation, that he’ll only be out of the office for a week, ten days at the most, that it isn’t a big deal, that he’ll be fine. Then he announces it to his department; he normally wouldn’t, he tells them, but he doesn’t want their clients to worry, he doesn’t want them to think that it’s something more serious than it is, he doesn’t want to be the subject of rumors and chatter (although he knows he will be). He reveals so little about himself at work that whenever he does, he can see people sit up and lean forward in their seats, can almost see their ears lift a little higher. He has met all of their wives and husbands and girlfriends and boyfriends, but they have never met Willem. He has never invited Willem to one of the company’s retreats, to their annual holiday parties, to their annual summer picnics. “You’d hate them,” he tells Willem, although he knows that isn’t really the case: Willem can have a good time anywhere. “Believe me.” And Willem has always shrugged. “I’d love to come,” he has always said, but he has never let him. He has always told himself that he is protecting Willem from a series of events that he would surely find tedious, but he has never considered that Willem might be hurt by his refusal to include him, might actually want to be a part of his life beyond Greene Street and their friends. He flushes now, realizing this.

次日他打电话给安迪。安迪听了很放心，但也保持沉默，仿佛是出于对他的尊敬。接下来事情进展得很快。他们挑了日期：一开始安迪提议的日期是威廉的生日。虽然他和威廉之前说好，一等他好转，就要好好庆祝威廉的50岁生日，但他不希望就在那一天动手术。所以他们改成八月底，就在往常九月初劳动节连休去特鲁罗的前一个星期。在下一次律师事务所里的管理委员会议上，他简短地宣布了这件事，解释这是自愿性手术，他只会休假一星期，顶多十天，还说没什么大不了，他不会有事的。然后他也在自己的部门宣布了；他告诉同事们，通常这种事他是不会讲的，但他不希望客户担心，不希望他们把事情想得更严重，或是成为谣言和闲聊的目标（虽然他知道还是会）。他在工作上很少透露自己的私人生活，偶尔透露一点，他都看得出大家坐直身子，身体前倾，简直可以看到他们的耳朵抬得更高一点。他见过所有同事的太太或丈夫、女友或男友，但他们从来没见过威廉。他从来不邀威廉去公司旅游，或是每年的假日派对、每年夏天的野餐。“你会很讨厌他们的。”他总是这样告诉威廉，虽然他知道其实不是这么回事，威廉到哪里都玩得很愉快。“相信我，”威廉总是耸耸肩，说，“我很愿意去。”但他从来不让他去。他告诉自己他是在保护威廉，免得害他要面对一连串他一定觉得很无聊的场合，但他从来没想过，他拒绝让威廉参与可能会伤了他的心，威廉可能会希望除了格林街和他们的朋友之外，也能加入他生活的其他部分。这会儿他恍然大悟，于是脸红了。

　 “Any questions?” he asks, not really expecting any, when he sees one of the younger partners, a callous but scarily effective man named Gabe Freston, raise his hand. “Freston?” he says.

“有任何问题吗？”他问，其实不期待有人发问。结果一个比较年轻、冷酷但很有效率的合伙律师加布·弗雷斯顿举了手。“弗雷斯顿？”他说。

　 “I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry, Jude,” says Freston, and around him, everyone murmurs their agreement.

“我只是想说，我真的很遗憾，裘德。”弗雷斯顿说，周围每个人都喃喃表示赞同。

　 He wants to make the moment light, to say—because it is true—“That’s the first time I’ve heard you be so sincere since I told you what your bonus would be last year, Freston,” but he doesn’t, just takes a deep breath. “Thank you, Gabe,” he says. “Thanks, all of you. Now everyone—back to work,” and they scatter.

他想让气氛轻松一点，说（反正也是实话）：“弗雷斯顿，打从我去年跟你说你的红利是多少之后，这是我第一次听到你讲话这么诚恳。”结果他没说，只是深吸一口气。“谢了，加布。”他说，“谢了，各位。现在回去工作吧。”大家就散开了。