《渺小一生》:“这部电影要叫什么？”

　 “Then I’ll carry you,” Jude had said promptly, and Willem had smiled. “Or we’ll get a donkey, and he’ll carry you. But really, Willem, the point is to walk the road, not ride it.”

“那我就背你。”裘德立刻说，威廉露出微笑。“或者我们弄一头驴子来，让它驮着你。不过真的，威廉，这条路的重点就是要用走的，不是用骑的。”

　 As they grew older, as it became clearer and clearer that this dream of Jude’s would forever remain simply that, their fantasies of the Camino became more elaborate. “Here’s the pitch,” Jude would say. “Four strangers—a Chinese Daoist nun coming to terms with her sexuality; a recently released British convict who writes poetry; a Kazakhstani former arms dealer grieving his wife’s death; and a handsome and sensitive but troubled American college dropout—that’s you, Willem—meet along the Camino and develop friendships of a lifetime. You’ll shoot in real time, so the shoot will only last as long as the walk does. And you’ll have to walk the entire time.”

后来随着他们年纪渐长，事情变得越来越明显，裘德的这个梦终将是个梦，他们编织的圣雅各布之路幻想故事也变得更加复杂。“我想到一个了，”裘德会说，“四个陌生人：一个逐渐接受自己性倾向的华人道姑；一个刚出狱的英国诗人囚犯；一个刚遭受丧妻之痛的哈萨克斯坦前任军火贩子；还有一个英俊、善感但烦恼的美国大学辍学生——威廉，这个就是你——在圣雅各布之路相遇，发展出一生的友谊。你们会实时拍摄，所以这段路走多久，拍摄时间就有多久。而且你从头到尾都得用走的。”

　 By this time, he would always be laughing. “What happens in the end?” he asked.

讲到这里，他通常已经大笑起来。“最后的结局是什么？”他问。

　 “The Daoist nun ends up falling in love with an ex–Israeli Army officer she meets along the way, and the two of them return to Tel Aviv to open a lesbian bar called Radclyffe’s. The convict and the arms dealer end up together. And your character will meet some virginal but, it turns out, secretly slutty Swedish girl along the route and open a high-end B&B in the Pyrenees, and every year, the original group will gather there for a reunion.”

“那个道姑最后爱上一个前以色列女军官，两人回到特拉维夫开了一家叫拉德克利夫的女同性恋酒吧[5]。那个前科犯和军火贩子最后在一起了。你的角色会在路上认识一个貌似纯洁、但私底下很淫荡的瑞典少女，最后在比利牛斯山区开了一家高档民宿，每一年，你们原班人马都会去那边团聚。”

　 “What’s the movie called?” he asked, grinning.

“这部电影要叫什么？”他咧嘴笑着问。

　 Jude thought. “Santiago Blues,” he said, and Willem laughed again.

裘德想了一下说：“《圣雅各布蓝调》。”威廉又大笑起来。

　 Ever since, they had referred in passing to Santiago Blues, whose cast morphed to accommodate him as he grew older, but whose premise and location never did. “How’s the script?” Jude would ask him whenever something new came in, and he would sigh. “Okay,” he would say. “Not Santiago Blues good, but okay.”

从此以后，他们偶尔就会随口提起《圣雅各布蓝调》，随着他年纪渐长，里头的角色也跟着调整，但设定和拍摄地点还是一样。“那个剧本怎么样？”每回他拿到一个新剧本，裘德就会这样问他，而他会叹气。“还好，”他说，“不像《圣雅各布蓝调》那么好，不过还可以。”

　 And then, shortly after that pivotal Thanksgiving, Kit, whom Willem had at one point told of his and Jude’s interest in the Camino, had sent him a script with a note that read only “Santiago Blues!” And while it wasn’t exactly Santiago Blues—thank god, he and Jude agreed, it was far better—it was in fact set on the Camino, it would in fact be shot partly in real time, and it did in fact begin in the Pyrenees, at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and ended in Santiago de Compostela. The Stars Over St. James followed two men, both named Paul, both of whom would be played by the same actor: the first was a sixteenth-century French monk traveling the route from Wittenberg on the eve of the Protestant Reformation; the second was a contemporary-day pastor from a small American town who was beginning to question his own faith. Aside from a few minor characters, who would drift in and out of the two Pauls’ lives, his would be the only role.

就在那个关键的感恩节假期，基特（威廉跟他提过自己和裘德对圣雅各布之路的兴趣）寄了一个剧本过来，附上的字条只写着：“《圣雅各布蓝调》！”虽然那剧本不太像《圣雅各布蓝调》——感谢老天，他和裘德都同意，这剧本好太多了——不过设定的场景在圣雅各布之路，而且一部分是实时拍摄，起点在比利牛斯山区的圣让皮耶德波尔，终点是加利西亚的首府圣地亚哥孔波斯特拉。这部名为《星光下的圣雅各布》的电影讲述两个男人的故事，他们都叫保罗，由同一个演员饰演：第一个保罗是16世纪的法兰西隐修士，在宗教改革前夕从威登堡出发，走上这条朝圣之路；第二个保罗活在今天，是一个开始质疑自己信仰的美国小城牧师。除了两个保罗人生中偶尔穿插的几个小角色之外，主角就是唯一的角色。

　 He gave Jude the script to read, and after he finished, Jude had sighed. “Brilliant,” he said, sadly. “I wish I could come on this with you, Willem.”

他把剧本给裘德阅读。看完之后，裘德叹气。“太厉害了。”他哀伤地说，“威廉，真希望我可以跟你一起去。”

　 “I wish you could, too,” he said, quietly. He wished Jude had easier dreams for himself, dreams he could accomplish, dreams Willem could help him accomplish. But Jude’s dreams were always about movement: they were about walking impossible distances or traversing impossible terrains. And although he could walk now, and although he felt less of it than Willem could remember him feeling for years, he would, they knew, never live a life without pain. The impossible would remain the impossible.

“我也希望。”他低声说。他真希望裘德有容易一点的梦，是他自己可以达成，而威廉可以帮助他的。但裘德的梦总是有关移动：走不可能的长距离，穿越不可能的地形。尽管他现在可以走路，尽管威廉觉得他的疼痛比记忆中多年来的要轻，但他们都知道，裘德的生活中永远都会有疼痛。不可能的事还是不可能。

　 He had dinner with the Spanish director, Emanuel, who was young but already highly acclaimed and who, despite the complexity and melancholy of his script, was buoyant and bright, and kept repeating his astonishment that he, Willem, was going to be in his film, that it was his dream to work with him. He, in turn, told Emanuel of Santiago Blues (Emanuel had laughed when Willem described the plot. “Not bad!” he said, and Willem had laughed, too. “It’s supposed to be bad!” he corrected Emanuel). He told him about how Jude had always wanted to walk this path; how humbled he was that he would get to do it for him.

他和这部电影的西班牙导演伊曼纽尔吃晚餐。伊曼纽尔很年轻，但已经颇受赞誉，尽管他写的剧本复杂而忧郁，他本人却活泼开朗，一直说他很惊讶威廉要演他的电影，说他一直梦想着要跟他合作。于是威廉也告诉伊曼纽尔《圣雅各布蓝调》的事情（威廉描述剧情时，伊曼纽尔大笑。“不差嘛！”他说。威廉也大笑。“它本来应该很差的！”他纠正伊曼纽尔）。他还告诉他，裘德一直想去走这条路；现在他很荣幸能有机会代他去走一趟。

　 “Ah,” Emanuel said, teasingly. “I think this is the man for whom you ruined your career, am I right?”

“啊，”伊曼纽尔取笑地说，“我想，让你不惜牺牲自己事业的就是这个人吧？”

　 He had smiled back. “Yes,” he said. “That’s him.”

他也微笑。“是的。”他说，“就是他。”

　 The days on The Stars Over St. James were very long and, as Jude had promised, there was lots of walking (and a caravan of slow-moving trailers instead of donkeys). The cell-phone reception was patchy in parts, and so he would instead write Jude messages, which seemed more appropriate anyway, more pilgrim-like, and in the morning, he sent him pictures of his breakfast (black bread with caraway seeds, yogurt, cucumbers) and of the stretch of road he would walk that day. Much of the road cut through busy towns, and so in places they were rerouted into the countryside. Each day, he chose a few white pebbles from the side of the road and put them in a jar to take home; at night, he sat in his hotel room with his feet wrapped in hot towels.

《星光下的圣雅各布》的拍摄时间很长，而且一如裘德保证过的，要走很多路（另外有一列长长的拖车队取代了驴子）。某些地方的手机信号不良，他就改发文字信息给裘德，感觉发消息似乎更适合，比较像朝圣客。每天早上，他会把早餐的照片（加葛缕子的黑面包、酸奶、小黄瓜）和这一天要走的路程发给他。这条路沿途经过许多热闹的城镇，所以有些地方他们会改道进入乡间。每一天，他都会从路边捡几块小石头，放在一个罐子里准备带回家；夜里，他坐在旅馆房间，用热毛巾热敷双脚。

　 They finished filming two weeks before Christmas, and he flew to London for meetings, and then back to Madrid to meet Jude, where they rented a car and drove south, through Andalusia. In a town on a cliff high above the sea they stopped to meet Asian Henry Young, whom they watched trudging uphill, waving at them with both arms when he saw them, and finishing the last hundred yards in a sprint. “Thank god you’re giving me an excuse to get the fuck out of that house,” he said. Henry had been living for the past month at an artists’ residency down the hill, in a valley filled with orange trees, but unusually for him, he hated the other six people at the colony, and as they ate dishes of orange rounds floating in a liqueur of their own juice and topped with cinnamon and pulverized cloves and almonds, they laughed at Henry’s stories about his fellow artists. Later, after telling him goodbye and that they’d see him next month in New York, they walked slowly together through the medieval town, whose every structure was a glittering white salt cube, and where striped cats lay in the streets and flicked the tips of their tails as people with wheel carts ground slowly around them.

他们在圣诞节前两周结束拍摄。他先飞到伦敦开会，接着飞回马德里和裘德会合，租一辆车往南开到安达卢西亚。他们开到一个位于海边高崖上的小镇，停下来跟约好的亚裔亨利·杨碰面。他们看着亨利·杨慢吞吞地往上坡爬，一看到他们就兴奋地挥动双臂，最后一百码是用冲的。“感谢老天，你们让我有借口离开那栋该死的房子。”他说。亨利过去那个月都住在坡下的一座艺术村，那个谷地种满了柳橙树，但他痛恨驻村的其他六个艺术家，这对他来说很少见。他们吃着点心，柳橙香甜酒里浮着切成圆片的柳橙，上头撒了肉桂、丁香粉和杏仁。亨利讲起另外六个艺术家的故事，他们听了大笑。最后道别时，他们跟亨利说下个月在纽约见，然后两人一起在那个中世纪小镇散步，镇上每一栋建筑都像发亮的白色盐块，几只虎斑猫躺在马路上，偶尔有人推着推车缓缓经过，那些猫的尾巴尖端就轻轻甩动。

　 The next evening, outside Granada, Jude said he had a surprise for him, and they got into the car that was waiting for them in front of the restaurant, Jude with the brown envelope he’d kept by his side all through dinner.

次日晚上，在格拉纳达市外，裘德说他有个惊喜要给他。他们上了那辆等在餐厅门口的车，裘德带着一个褐色信封袋，整顿晚餐都放在身旁。

　 “Where’re we going?” he asked. “What’s in the envelope?”

“我们要去哪里？”他问，“那个信封里装了什么？”

　 “You’ll see,” Jude said.

“等着看就知道了。”裘德说。

　 Up and downhill they swooped, until the car stopped before the arched entryway to the Alhambra, where Jude handed the guard a letter, which the guard studied and then nodded at, and the car slid through the doorway and stopped and the two of them got out and stood there in the quiet courtyard.

他们的车子迅速开上坡又开下坡，最后停在阿尔罕布拉宫[6]的拱门入口前。裘德递给警卫一封信，警卫仔细看了一下，点点头，车子就开进门停下来。他们两个下了车，站在安静的庭院里。

　 “Yours,” Jude said, shyly, nodding at the buildings and gardens below. “For the next three hours, anyway,” and then, when Willem couldn’t say anything, he continued, quietly, “Do you remember?”

“都是你的了。”裘德害羞地对着下方的建筑物和庭园说，“总之是接下来的三个小时。”威廉说不出话来。他又小声地说：“你还记得吗？”