《渺小一生》:他继续往下看这些人生纪录

　 He is aware, dimly, that his friends are watching him, that they are worried about him. At some point it had emerged that one of the reasons he remembers so little from the days after the accident was because he had been in the hospital, on a suicide watch. Now he stumbles through his days and wonders why he isn’t, in fact, killing himself. This is, after all, the time to do it. No one would blame him. And yet he doesn’t.

他模糊地感觉到朋友都在留心他、担心他。到了一个时间，他逐渐想起，那场意外车祸后的日子他记得的这么少，是因为他被送到医院监控，防止他自杀。现在他辛苦地度过每一天，搞不懂自己怎么没有真的自杀。毕竟，现在就是该动手的时候了。不会有人怪他。但他却没有。

　 At least no one tells him that he should move on. He doesn’t want to move on, he doesn’t want to move into something else: he wants to remain exactly at this stage, forever. At least no one tells him he’s in denial. Denial is what sustains him, and he is dreading the day when his delusions will lose their power to convince him. For the first time in decades, he isn’t cutting himself at all. If he doesn’t cut himself, he remains numb, and he needs to remain numb; he needs the world to not come too close to him. He has finally managed to achieve what Willem had always hoped for him; all it took was Willem being taken from him.

至少没有人跟他说他该往前走，进入下一个阶段。他不想进入下一个阶段，他不想做别的，他想永远待在这个阶段。至少没有人跟他说他还处在否认的阶段。否认是支撑他的力量，他很担心有一天他的那些妄想失去了让他相信的魔力。几十年来第一次，他完全不割自己了。如果不割自己，他就保持麻木，而他需要麻木下去；他需要这个世界不要靠他太近。他终于实现了威廉一直希望他做到的；唯一的代价就是威廉被夺走了。

　 In January he had a dream that he and Willem were in the house upstate making dinner and talking: something they’d done hundreds of times. But in the dream, although he could hear his own voice, he couldn’t hear Willem’s—he could see his mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear anything he was saying. He had woken, then, and had thrown himself into his wheelchair and moved as quickly as he could into his study, where he scrolled through all of his old e-mails, searching and searching until he found a few voice messages from Willem that he had forgotten to delete. The messages were brief, and unrevealing, but he played them over and over, weeping, bent double with grief, the messages’ very banality—“Hey. Judy. I’m going to the farmers’ market to pick up those ramps. But do you want anything else? Let me know”—something precious, because it was proof of their life together.

一月时他做了一个梦，梦到他和威廉在加里森的房子里，边做晚饭边聊天。这样的事情他们做过几百次了。但在梦里，他听得到自己的声音，却听不到威廉的——他可以看到他的嘴巴在动，但是完全听不到他说的话。然后他醒来，爬上轮椅尽快赶到书房，在他的旧电子邮件里搜寻，终于找到几则威廉以前的语音消息，是他忘记删掉的。那些讯息很简短，毫无启发性，但他一遍又一遍地播放，流着泪，悲恸得弯着腰。“嘿，小裘。我要去农夫市集买熊葱。你还需要别的吗？再跟我说。”那些讯息的平凡反倒显得格外珍贵，因为那是他们共同生活的证据。

　 “Willem,” he said aloud to the apartment, because sometimes, when it was very bad, he spoke to him. “Come back to me. Come back.”

“威廉，”他对着空荡的公寓说。有时状况非常糟，他会对着威廉讲话，“回来我身边。回来。”

　 He feels no sense of survivor’s guilt but rather survivor’s incomprehension: he had always, always known he would predecease Willem. They all knew it. Willem, Andy, Harold, JB, Malcolm, Julia, Richard: he would die before all of them. The only question was how he would die—it would be by his own hand, or it would be by infection. But none of them had ever thought that Willem, of all people, would die before he did. There had been no plans made for that, no contingencies. Had he known this was a possibility, had it been less absurd a concept, he would have stockpiled. He would have made recordings of Willem’s voice talking to him and kept them. He would have taken more pictures. He would have tried to distill Willem’s very body chemistry. He would have taken him, just-woken, to the perfumer in Florence. “Here,” he would’ve said. “This. This scent. I want you to bottle this.” Jane had once told him that as a girl she had been terrified her father would die, and she had secretly made digital copies of her father’s dictation (he had been a doctor as well) and stored them on flash drives. And when her father finally did die, four years ago, she had rediscovered them, and had sat in a room playing them, listening to her father dictating orders in his calm, patient voice. How he envied Jane this; how he wished he had thought to do the same.

他没感觉到幸存者的内疚，只有幸存者的不解：他以前一直、一直知道他会比威廉早死。他们全都知道。威廉、安迪、哈罗德、杰比、马尔科姆、朱丽娅、理查德，他会比他们都早死。唯一的问题就是怎么死，会是他自己动手，还是因为感染。但他们没有人想过，威廉竟然会比他早死。他从来没有预先计划，也没有应变的对策。要是他早知道有这个可能性，要是这个可能性不那么荒谬的话，他就会先囤积需要的东西。他会录下威廉跟他讲话的声音，保存起来。他会拍更多的照片。他会设法蒸馏威廉的体味。他会带着刚睡醒的威廉去佛罗伦萨那家香水工坊。“来，”他会说，“这个。就是这个气味。我要把这个气味装瓶。”安迪的太太简有回跟他说，她小时候很怕父亲会死掉，于是偷偷复制了父亲口述病历的音像资料（她父亲也是医生），存在U盘里。一直到她父亲四年前过世，她才又把这些资料找出来，坐在房间里播放，听着她父亲以冷静、耐心的声音口述那些医嘱。他好羡慕简这一点，他真希望自己之前想到要这么做。

　 At least he had Willem’s films, and his e-mails, and letters he had written him over the years, all of which he had saved. At least he had Willem’s clothes, and articles about Willem, all of which he had kept. At least he had JB’s paintings of Willem; at least he had photographs of Willem: hundreds of them, though he only allotted himself a certain number. He decided he would allow himself to look at ten of them every week, and he would look and look at them for hours. It was his decision whether he wanted to review one a day or look at all ten in a single sitting. He was terrified his computer would be destroyed and he would lose these images; he made multiple copies of the photographs and stored the discs in various places: in his safe at Greene Street, in his safe at Lantern House, in his desk at Rosen Pritchard, in his safe-deposit box at the bank.

至少他还有威廉拍的电影，有威廉历年来写给他的电子邮件和信，他全部保存着。至少他还有威廉的衣服、关于威廉的报道文章，他都没丢。至少他还有杰比画的威廉画像；至少他还有威廉的照片：几百张，不过他谨慎地分配，只准自己每周看十张，他会看了又看，看上好几个小时。他可以决定每天只看一张，或是一次看十张。他很怕自己的计算机会出事，把所有的照片档案毁掉；于是他复制了好几份，存放在几个不同的地方：格林街公寓的保险箱、灯笼屋的保险箱、罗森·普理查德的办公桌抽屉，还有银行的保险箱。

　 He had never considered Willem a thorough cataloger of his own life—he isn’t either—but one Sunday in early March he skips his drugged slumber and instead drives to Garrison. He has only been to the house twice since that September day, but the gardeners still come, and the bulbs are beginning to bud around the driveway, and when he steps inside, there is a vase of cut plum branches on the kitchen counter and he stops, staring at them: Had he texted the housekeeper to tell her he was coming? He must have. But for a moment he fancies that at the beginning of every week someone comes and places a new arrangement of flowers on the counter, and at the end of every week, another week in which no one comes to see them, they are thrown away.

他从不认为威廉会仔细整理自己的人生纪录，他也不会，但是三月初的一个星期天，他没有如常吃安眠药，睡上一整天，而是开车去了加里森的房子。自从九月那一天以来，他只回去过两次，但园丁还是会来整理，车道两旁的球根植物开始发芽。他走进屋里，厨房料理台上有个花瓶插了一整枝梅花，他停下脚步瞪着看：他有发短信给管家说他要来吗？一定是有。但一时间他宁可想象，每个星期的第一天都有人过来，在料理台上换上新的花，到了每周最后一天，又一个星期没人看这些花，于是就被扔掉了。

　 He goes to his study, where they had installed extra cabinetry so Willem could store his files and paperwork there as well. He sits on the floor, shrugging off his coat, then takes a breath and opens the first drawer. Here are file folders, each labeled with the name of a play or movie, and inside each folder is the shooting version of the script, with Willem’s notes on them. Sometimes there are call sheets from days when an actor he knew Willem particularly admired was going to be filming with him: he remembers how excited Willem had been on The Sycamore Court, how he had sent him a photo of that day’s call sheet with his name typed directly beneath Clark Butterfield’s. “Can you believe it?!” his message had read.

他去他的书房，之前他们加了一个档案柜，好让威廉存放档案和文件数据。他坐在地上，脱掉大衣，然后吸一口气，拉开第一个抽屉。里头放着悬挂式档案夹，上头的标签写了电影名或舞台剧名，每个档案夹里是拍摄版的剧本，上头有威廉写的笔记。有时还有一些特别值得纪念的通告表。他还记得当年威廉拍《梧桐法院》时有多兴奋，因为能跟克拉克·巴特菲尔德合作，他知道威廉非常欣赏这位男演员。当时威廉还把那天的通告表拍下来传给他，照片上威廉的名字就打在巴特菲尔德下方。“你相信吗？！”他发来的信息中写着。

　 I can totally believe it, he’d written back.

我完全可以相信，他回短信说。

　 He flips through these files, lifting them out at random and carefully sorting through their contents. The next three drawers are all the same things: films, plays, other projects.

他翻着这些档案，随机抽出来，小心翼翼地翻看里头的内容。接下来的三个抽屉里也是同样的档案夹：电影、舞台剧、其他工作计划。

　 In the fifth drawer is a file marked “Wyoming,” and in this are mostly photos, most of which he has seen before: pictures of Hemming; pictures of Willem with Hemming; pictures of their parents; pictures of the siblings Willem never knew: Britte and Aksel. There is a separate envelope with a dozen pictures of just Willem, only Willem: school photos, and Willem in a Boy Scout uniform, and Willem in a football uniform. He stares at these pictures, his hands in fists, before placing them back in their envelope.

第五个抽屉有个档案夹标示着“怀俄明”，里头大部分是照片，很多他都看过了，有亨明的照片、威廉和亨明的合影、他父母的照片、威廉没见过的姐姐布丽特和哥哥阿克塞尔的照片。里头还有另一个信封，装着十来张威廉的独照：学校的照片、威廉穿童子军制服的照片，还有威廉穿美式橄榄球球衣的照片。他凝视这些照片，双手握拳，然后把照片放回信封里。

　 There are a few other things in the Wyoming file as well: a third-grade book report, written in Willem’s careful cursive, on The Wizard of Oz that makes him smile; a hand-drawn birthday card to Hemming that makes him want to cry. His mother’s death announcement; his father’s. A copy of their will. A few letters, from him to his parents, from his parents to him, all in Swedish—these he sets aside to have translated.

怀俄明的档案夹里还有其他几样东西：一份小学三年级的读书报告，威廉小心翼翼用草写体写着《绿野仙踪》的读后感，他看着看着笑起来；一张送给亨明的手绘生日卡，让他很想哭。还有他母亲的讣告、父亲的讣告、一份父母遗嘱的复印件。几封信，有他写给他父母的，也有他父母写给他的，全是瑞典文。他把这些信拿出来放在一边，打算拿去找人翻译。

　 He knows Willem had never kept a journal, and yet when he looks through the “Boston” file, he thinks for some reason he might find something. But there is nothing. Instead there are more pictures, all of which he has seen before: of Willem, so shiningly handsome; of Malcolm, looking suspicious and slightly feral, with the stringy, unsuccessful Afro he had tried to cultivate throughout college; of JB, looking essentially the same as he does now, merry and fat-cheeked; of him, looking scared and drowned and very skinny, in his awful too-big clothes and with his awful too-long hair, in his braces that imprisoned his legs in their black, foamy embrace. He stops at a picture of the two of them sitting on the sofa in their suite in Hood, Willem leaning into him and looking at him, smiling, clearly saying something, and him, laughing with his hand over his mouth, which he had learned to do after the counselors at the home told him he had an ugly smile. They look like two different creatures, not just two different people, and he has to quickly refile the picture before he tears it in half.

他知道威廉从不写日记，然而他抽出标示着“波士顿”的档案夹时，不知怎的觉得自己可能发现了什么。结果没有。里头只是一些照片，全是他以前看过的：威廉的照片，俊美又醒目；马尔科姆的照片，表情疑心，有点桀骜不驯，顶着一头油腻、不太成功的爆炸头（他大学四年一直留这个发型）；杰比的照片，看起来基本上跟现在一样，欢乐的胖脸颊；他的照片，表情惊恐，非常瘦，穿着太大的衣服，留着太长的头发，两腿装着金属支撑架，外头包着黑色泡沫海绵。他停下来看着一张他们两人坐在虎德馆宿舍沙发上的照片，威廉靠向他，看着他微笑，显然正在说话，他则是掩着嘴巴大笑。之前在少年之家时期，有个辅导员说他笑起来很丑，从此他就学会笑的时候要掩住嘴巴。他们看起来不光是不同的两个人，而是两种不同的生物，他赶紧把照片放回档案夹里，免得自己撕烂。

　 Now it is becoming difficult to breathe, but he keeps going. In the “Boston” file, in the “New Haven” file, are reviews from the college newspapers of plays Willem had been in; there is the story about JB’s Lee Lozano–inspired performance art piece. There is, touchingly, the one calculus exam on which Willem had made a B, an exam he had coached him on for months.

现在他开始觉得难以呼吸，但还是继续翻下去。在“波士顿”和“纽黑文”的档案夹里，有威廉参与戏剧演出的大学报评论；有一篇报道是关于杰比受到李·洛扎诺启发而进行的行为艺术作品。另外，令人感动的是一份微积分考卷，威廉拿到了B，那是他帮威廉恶补好几个月的成果。

　 And then he reaches into the drawer again, most of which is occupied not by a hanging file but by a large, accordion-shaped one, the kind they use at the firm. He hefts it out and sees that it is marked only with his name, and slowly opens it.

他把档案放回那个抽屉，继续检视，里头占据最大空间的不是悬挂式档案夹，而是一个风琴状的大档案夹，就是他在事务所常用的那种。他把那个档案夹拿出来，看到上头的标示只有他的名字，于是缓缓打开来。

　 Inside it is everything: every letter he had ever written Willem, every substantial e-mail printed out. There are birthday cards he’d given Willem. There are photographs of him, some of which he has never seen. There is the Artforum issue with Jude with Cigarette on the cover. There is a card from Harold written shortly after the adoption, thanking Willem for coming and for the gift. There is an article about him winning a prize in law school, which he certainly hadn’t sent Willem but someone clearly had. He hadn’t needed to catalog his life after all—Willem had been doing it for him all along.

里头是所有的一切：他写给威廉的每一封信、每一封重要电子邮件的打印稿、他送给威廉的生日贺卡。一些他的照片，有的他自己都没看过。以《拿着香烟的裘德》为封面的那期《艺术论坛》。还有一张哈罗德写的卡片，是收养刚办完后没多久写给威廉的，谢谢威廉的礼物和出席。有一篇文章报道他在法学院得了一个奖；他很确定不是他寄给威廉的，显然是别人给他的。到头来，他不必整理自己的人生了，因为威廉一直在帮他记录。

　 But why had Willem cared about him so much? Why had he wanted to spend so much time around him? He had never been able to understand this, and now he never will.

但为什么威廉这么关心他？为什么要花这么多时间跟他在一起？他从来不明白，现在他永远不会明白了。

　 I sometimes think I care more about your being alive than you do, he remembers Willem saying, and he takes a long, shuddering breath.

有时候，我觉得我比你还在乎要保住你这条命，他记得威廉这么说过。然后他颤抖着吸了一口长气。

　 On and on it goes, this detailing of his life, and when he looks in the sixth drawer, there is another accordion file, the same as the first, marked “Jude II,” and behind it, “Jude III” and “Jude IV.” But by this point he can no longer look. He gently replaces the files, closes the drawers, relocks the cabinets. He puts Willem’s and his parents’ letters into an envelope, and then another envelope, for protection. He removes the plum branches, wraps their cut ends in a plastic bag, dumps the water from their vase into the sink, locks up the house, and drives home, the branches on the seat next to him. Before he goes up to his apartment, he lets himself into Richard’s studio, fills one of the empty coffee cans with water and inserts the branches, leaves it on his worktable for him to find in the morning.

他继续往下看这些人生纪录，等他看到第六个抽屉，又有另一个风琴档案夹，跟第一个一样，标示着“裘德II”，后头还有“裘德III”和“裘德IV”。但此时他已经没办法看下去了。他把那些档案夹轻轻归位，关上抽屉，锁好档案柜。他把威廉和他父母的通信放进一个信封里，再套进一个更大的信封里保护着。他拿了那枝梅花，把切掉的那一端包在塑料袋里，把花瓶里剩下的水倒进水槽，然后出去锁上前门，开车回家，那枝梅花一直就放在他旁边的座位上。到了格林街，他先自己用钥匙进入理查德的工作室，找了一个空咖啡罐装满水，把那枝梅花放进去，摆在他的工作台上，让理查德明天早上能一眼看到。

　 Then it is the end of March; he is at the office. A Friday night, or rather, a Saturday morning. He turns away from his computer and looks out the window. He has a clear view to the Hudson, and above the river he can see the sky turning white. For a long time he stands and stares at the dirty gray river, at the wheeling flocks of birds. He returns to his work. He can feel, these past few months, that he has changed, that people are frightened of him. He has never been a jolly presence in the office, but now he can tell he is mirthless. He can feel he has become more ruthless. He can feel he has become chillier. He and Sanjay used to have lunch together, the two of them griping about their colleagues, but now he cannot talk to anyone. He brings in business. He does his job, he does more than he needs to—but he can tell no one enjoys being around him. He needs Rosen Pritchard; he would be lost without his work. But he no longer derives any pleasure from it. That’s all right, he tries to tell himself. Work is not for pleasure, not for most people. But it had been for him, once, and now it no longer is.

然后是三月底；有个星期五夜里，或者应该说星期六凌晨，在办公室里。他离开电脑前，转身望着窗外。这里可以看到哈德逊河，视线毫无阻碍，河面上方的天空正在转白。于是他站在那里，凝视脏灰的河水良久，看着盘旋的鸟群。之后他又回头工作。他可以感觉到，过去这几个月他改变了，同事们很怕他。他在办公室里从来不是欢乐的人，但现在他感觉到自己非常忧郁。他可以感觉到自己变得更无情、更冷酷。他和桑杰以前总是一起吃午餐，两个人会对同事发发牢骚，但现在他没办法跟任何人说话了。他持续带进业务，也尽责做好分内的工作，做得远超过他该做的——但他看得出来，没有人喜欢跟他相处。他需要罗森·普理查德；要是没有工作，他会茫然不知所措，但他再也无法从工作中得到任何快乐了。这样也没关系，他告诉自己。对大部分人来说，工作本来就不是为了快乐。但对他来说本来是的，现在却再也不是了。