《渺小一生》:可是到了夜晚，他太害怕

　 He is enjoying the dinner, amused even by how people keep adding scoops of different food to his plate, even though he hasn’t eaten much of his first serving, but he is so sleepy, and eventually he burrows back into the chair and closes his eyes, smiling as he listens to the familiar conversation, the familiar voices, fill the air around him.

他很享受这顿晚餐，甚至看大家一直夹菜到他盘子里都觉得很好玩，即使他第一次分到的菜根本没吃多少。可是他太困了，最后就往后靠回椅子上，闭上眼睛，微笑听着周围空气中充满那些熟悉的交谈、熟悉的声音。

　 Eventually Willem notices that he is falling asleep, and he hears him stand. “Okay,” he says, “time for your diva exit,” and turns the chair from the table and begins pushing it away toward their bedroom, and he uses the last of his strength to answer everyone’s laughter, their song of goodbyes, to peek out around the wing of the chair and smile at them, letting his fingers trail behind him in an airy, theatrical wave. “Stay,” he calls out as he is taken from them. “Please stay. Please stay and give Willem some decent conversation,” and they agree they will; it isn’t even seven, after all—they have hours and hours. “I love you,” he calls to them, and they shout it back at him, all of them at once, although even in their chorus, he can still distinguish each individual voice.

最后威廉注意到他快睡着了，他听到威廉站起来。“好吧，”威廉说，“天后要退场了。”然后把椅子从桌前转开，推向他们的卧室。他用残存的一丝力气回应大家的笑声和道别，转头探出椅子的翼背外看了一下，朝大家微笑，同时手指往后轻快地、戏剧化地挥动。“留下，”他离开时喊道，“请留下。请留下跟威廉聊个痛快。”他们说会的；毕竟，此时还不到7点，他们还有很多时间。“我爱你们。”他朝他们大喊，他们也一起朝他喊出同样的话。虽然齐声喊着，他还是分辨得出每个人的声音。

　 At the doorway to their bedroom, Willem lifts him—he has lost so much weight, and without his prostheses is so less storklike a form, that now even Julia can lift him—and carries him to their bed, helps him undress, helps him remove his temporary prostheses, folds the covers back over him. He pours him a glass of water, hands him his pills: an antibiotic, a fistful of vitamins. He swallows them all as Willem watches, and then for a while Willem sits on the bed next to him, not touching him, but simply near.

到了卧室门口，威廉抱起他，把他放上床。他瘦了很多，如果没有那对害他看起来像只鹳鸟的义肢，现在连朱丽娅都能抱得动他。威廉帮着他脱掉衣服，拆掉临时义肢，又用床单盖住他。最后帮他倒了杯水，递给他药丸：一颗抗生素，几颗维生素。他全部吞下，威廉注视着他，有一会儿，威廉就坐在旁边的床上，没碰他，只是靠得很近。

　 “Promise me you’ll go out there and stay up late,” he tells Willem, and Willem shrugs.

“答应我，你会出去陪他们待到很晚。”他告诉威廉，威廉耸耸肩。

　 “Maybe I’ll just stay here with you,” he says. “They seem to be having a fine time without me.” And sure enough, there is a burst of laughter from the dining room, and they look at each other and smile.

“或许我就在这里陪你。”威廉说，“没了我，他们好像照样玩得很高兴。”果然，这时餐厅刚好传来一阵爆笑声，他们相视微笑起来。

　 “No,” he says, “promise me,” and finally, Willem does. “Thank you, Willem,” he says, inadequately, his eyes closing. “This was a good day.”

“不，”他说，“答应我。”威廉终于答应了。“谢谢你，威廉。”他无力地说，闭上眼睛，“这是美好的一天。”

　 “It was, wasn’t it?” he hears Willem say, and then he begins to say something else, but he doesn’t hear it because he has fallen asleep.

“是啊，可不是吗？”他听到威廉说，而且又说了些话，但是他没听到，因为他睡着了。

　 That night his dreams wake him. It is one of the side effects of the particular antibiotic he is on, these dreams, and this time, they are worse than ever. Night after night, he dreams. He dreams that he is in the motel rooms, that he is in Dr. Traylor’s house. He dreams that he is still fifteen, that the previous thirty-three years haven’t even happened. He dreams of specific clients, specific incidents, of things he hadn’t even known he remembered. He dreams that he has become Brother Luke himself. He dreams, again and again, that Harold is Dr. Traylor, and when he wakes, he feels ashamed for attributing such behavior to Harold, even in his subconscious, and at the same time fearful that the dream might be real after all, and he has to remind himself of Willem’s promise: Never, ever, Jude. He would never do that to you, not for anything.

那一夜，他从梦境中惊醒。做这些梦是他吃的这种抗生素的副作用之一，而且这一回是史无前例的糟。他每一夜都做梦，梦到自己在汽车旅馆房间里，在特雷勒医生的房子里。他梦到自己只有15岁，之后的三十三年都还没发生。他梦到一些特定的顾客、特定的事件，梦到一些他都不知道自己记得的事情。他梦到自己变成卢克修士。他一次又一次梦到哈罗德就是特雷勒医生，醒来时，他觉得很羞愧，居然把这类行为派给哈罗德，即使是在潜意识里；同时他又很怕那个梦是真的，于是不得不提醒自己威廉跟他保证过：绝对、绝对不会，裘德。他永远不会那样对你的，绝对不可能。

　 Sometimes the dreams are so vivid, so real, that it takes minutes, an hour for him to return to his life, for him to convince himself that the life of his consciousness is in fact real life, his real life. Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?”

有时那些梦很鲜明、很真实，他要花好多分钟，甚至一小时，才能回过神来，相信他清醒过来的生活的确是真实的人生，他的真实人生。有时醒来时，他离自己好远，甚至不记得自己是谁了。“我在哪里？”他绝望地问，又问，“我是谁？我是谁？”

　 And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs.

然后他听到，离他耳边好近，仿佛那声音发自自己的脑袋，威廉念咒语似的低声说：“你是裘德·圣弗朗西斯。你是我最老、最亲的朋友。你是哈罗德·斯汀和朱丽娅·阿特曼的儿子。你是马尔科姆·欧文、让·巴蒂斯特·马里恩的朋友，你是理查德·戈德法布、安迪·康垂克特、吕西安·福格特、西提任·范·史特拉顿、罗兹·阿罗史密斯的朋友，你是伊利亚·科兹马、菲德拉·德·洛斯·桑托斯，还有两个亨利·杨的朋友。

　 “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen.

“你是纽约人。你住在苏荷区。你是一个艺术组织和一间食物厨房的义工。

　 “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.

“你很会游泳。你很会烘焙。你很会做菜。你爱阅读。你的嗓子很美，不过你现在都不唱了。你钢琴弹得很好。你收藏艺术品。我出远门时，你会写很棒的短信给我。你很有耐心。你很大方。你是我认识最棒的倾听者。你是我认识最聪明的人，各方面都是。你是我认识最勇敢的人，每一件事都很勇敢。

　 “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it.

“你是律师。你是罗森·普理查德律师事务所诉讼部门的主任。你热爱你的工作；你工作时非常认真。

　 “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again.

“你是数学家。你是逻辑学家。你一直设法教我，一次又一次。

　 “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”

“你曾被很可怕地对待过。你熬过来了。你永远都是你。”

　 On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the daytime—sometimes days later—he remembers pieces of what Willem has said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what he didn’t, for how he hadn’t defined him.

威廉一直说一直说，反复说到他回过神来。在白天，有时要几天之后，他想起威廉说过的片段，在心里紧紧握住不放，不光是他说的内容，同样重要的是他没说出来的，威廉没用那些事情定义他。

　 But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His panic is too real, too consuming. “And who are you?” he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn’t recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person. “Who are you?”

可是到了夜晚，他太害怕、太迷失，根本不记得这些了。他的恐慌很真实，又很消耗精力。“那你是谁？”他问，看着眼前这个人抱住他，描述某个他不认得的人，某个似乎拥有很多、很值得羡慕、讨人喜欢的人。“你是谁？”

　 The man has an answer to this question as well. “I’m Willem Ragnarsson,” he says. “And I will never let you go.”

这个问题，眼前这个人也有答案。“我是威廉·拉格纳松。”他说，“我永远不会让你离开。”

　 “I’m going,” he tells Jude, but then he doesn’t move. A dragonfly, as shiny as a scarab, hums above them. “I’m going,” he repeats, but he still doesn’t move, and it is only the third time he says it that he’s finally able to stand up from the lounge chair, drunk on the hot air, and shove his feet back into his loafers.

“我要走了。”他告诉裘德，但他没动。一只闪亮如金龟子的蜻蜓出现，在他们上方发出飞行的嗡响。“我要走了。”他又说了一次，但还是没动，直到他说了第三次，才有办法从躺椅上站起身，在热空气中懒洋洋地将双脚塞进平底便鞋里。

　 “Limes,” says Jude, looking up at him and shielding his eyes against the sun.

“记得买青柠。”裘德说，抬头看着他，脸上戴着太阳眼镜，以抵挡阳光。