《渺小一生》:让我好起来吧，他央求着
As he stands on the roof, he considers what he has done: He has been irrational. He has gotten angry at someone who has, once again, offered to help him, someone he is grateful for, someone he owes, someone he loves. Why am I acting like this, he thinks. But there’s no answer.
他站在屋顶时，想着自己刚刚做了些什么。他不理性，他再度对一个想帮忙的人生气，是一个他庆幸拥有、亏欠许多，而且深爱的人。为什么我要这样？他心想，但没有答案。
Let me get better, he asks. Let me get better or let me end it. He feels that he is in a cold cement room, from which prong several exits, and one by one, he is shutting the doors, closing himself in the room, eliminating his chances for escape. But why is he doing this? Why is he trapping himself in this place he hates and fears when there are other places he could go? This, he thinks, is his punishment for depending on others: one by one, they will leave him, and he will be alone again, and this time it will be worse because he will remember it had once been better. He has the sense, once again, that his life is moving backward, that it is becoming smaller and smaller, the cement box shrinking around him until he is left with a space so cramped that he must fold himself into a crouch, because if he lies down, the ceiling will lower itself upon him and he will be smothered.
让我好起来吧，他央求着。让我好起来，不然就让我结束吧。他觉得自己仿佛在一个冰冷的水泥房间内，对外有好几个出口，但一扇接一扇，他在把那些门逐一关上，把自己封闭在里面，放弃了脱逃的机会。但他为什么要这样做？为什么他明明有其他地方可去，还要把自己困在这个他既痛恨又害怕的地方？这个，他心想，就是依赖他人的惩罚：一个接一个，他们都会离他而去，他又会再度孤单，而且这回会更糟，因为他会想起以前更美好的时光。他再度觉得自己的人生在往后退，变得越来越小，他置身的水泥房间缩得好小，最后他只能蹲着蜷缩在里面，如果他躺下，天花板就会朝他降下，把他压得窒息。
Before he goes to bed he writes Harold a note apologizing for his behavior. He works through Saturday; he sleeps through Sunday. And a new week begins. On Tuesday, he gets a message from Todd. The first of the lawsuits are being settled, for massive figures, but even Todd knows enough not to ask him to celebrate. His messages, by phone or by e-mail, are clipped and sober: the name of the company that is ready to settle, the proposed amount, a short “congratulations.”
上床睡觉前，他写了一张字条给哈罗德，为自己的行为道歉。他星期六工作一整天，星期天睡一整天。然后又是新的一周开始。星期二，他收到托德的消息，说他们那些官司中的第一宗和解了，拿到一个很大的数字，但就连托德都知道不能要他庆祝。他的留言和电子邮件短促而冷静：说了那家准备和解的公司名称、他们提出的数字，然后一个简短的“祝贺”。
On Wednesday, he is meant to stop by the artists’ nonprofit where he still does pro bono work, but he instead meets JB downtown at the Whitney, where his retrospective is being hung. This show is another souvenir from the ghosted past: it has been in the planning stages for almost two years. When JB had told them about it, the three of them had thrown a small party for him at Greene Street.
星期三，他本来想去他一直在做义工的非营利艺术家团体，结果却改去了下城的惠特尼美国艺术博物馆，跟正在那为回顾展布展的杰比碰面。这个展览是纠缠不放的过去留下的另一个纪念品，展览已经筹划了将近两年。当初杰比跟他们说起获邀的消息时，他们三人还在格林街帮杰比办了个小派对。
“Well, JB, you know what this means, right?” Willem had asked, gesturing toward the two paintings—Willem and the Girl and Willem and Jude, Lispenard Street, II, from JB’s first show, which hung, side by side, in their living room. “As soon as the show comes down, all of these pieces are going straight to Christie’s,” and everyone had laughed, JB hardest of all, proud and delighted and relieved.
“唔，杰比，你知道这代表什么吧？”威廉当时问，指着并排挂在他们客厅里的两件画作《威廉与女孩》《威廉与裘德，利斯本纳街，Ⅱ》，都是杰比第一次个展的作品，“一等你的回顾展结束，这些作品就会直接送去佳士得拍卖公司。”每个人都大笑起来，杰比笑得最大声，又骄傲又开心又放松。
Those pieces, along with Willem, London, October 8, 9:08 a.m., from “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days,” which he had bought, and Jude, New York, October 14, 7:02 a.m., which Willem had, along with the ones they owned from “Everyone I’ve Ever Known” and “The Narcissist’s Guide to Self-Hatred” and “Frog and Toad,” and all the drawings, the paintings, the sketches of JB’s that the two of them had been given and had kept, some since college, will be in the Whitney exhibit, as well as previously unshown work.
那两件作品，连同“秒，分，时，日”那次个展他买下的《威廉，伦敦，十月八日，上9点08分》、威廉买的《裘德，纽约，十月十四日，上午7点02分》，还有他们在“我认识的每个人”“自恋者的自我憎恨指南”“青蛙与蟾蜍”这些展览购得的作品，加上他们两个获赠、保留的所有杰比的素描、画作、速写，有的还是大学时代的创作，外加一些没展出过的作品，都会在惠特尼的回顾展展出。
There will also be a concurrent show of new paintings at JB’s gallery, and three weekends before, he had gone to JB’s studio in Greenpoint to see them. The series is called “The Golden Anniversary,” and it is a chronicle of JB’s parents’ lives, both together, before he was born, and in an imagined future, the two of them living on and on, together, into old age. In reality, JB’s mother is still alive, as are his aunts, but in these paintings, so too is JB’s father, who had actually died at the age of thirty-six. The series is just sixteen paintings, many of them smaller in scale than JB’s previous works, and as he walked through JB’s studio, looking at these scenes of domestic fantasy—his sixty-year-old father coring an apple while his mother made a sandwich; his seventy-year-old father sitting on the sofa reading the paper, while in the background, his mother’s legs can be seen descending a flight of stairs—he couldn’t help but see what his life too was and might have been. It was precisely these scenes he missed the most from his own life with Willem, the forgettable, in-between moments in which nothing seemed to be happening but whose absence was singularly unfillable.
杰比的代理画廊同时也会推出一个新作的个展。三个星期前，他去杰比位于布鲁克林绿点区的工作室看那些作品。这个系列叫作“金婚”，描绘他父母历年的人生，从交往时期、他出生前，到想象的未来。两个人一起生活，一起变老。现实中，杰比的母亲和两个阿姨都还在世，但在画作中，杰比的父亲也还活着（其实他早已在36岁时过世了）。这个系列只有十六幅作品，很多都比杰比以前的作品尺寸要小。他走在杰比的工作室里，看着这些幻想中家庭生活的场景——他60岁的父亲在帮一个苹果去核，同时他母亲在做三明治；他70岁的父亲坐在沙发上看报，背景中可以看到他母亲的双腿走下楼梯——他也不禁看到自己过去的人生，以及原本可能有的未来。和威廉在一起的时光中，最令他想念的，就是这类场景。这些容易忘记、容易变成空白的时刻，好像什么都没有发生，但要是缺失了，却格外难以填补。
Interspersing the portraits were still lifes of the objects that had made JB’s parents’ lives together: two pillows on a bed, both slightly depressed as if someone had dragged the back of a spoon through a bowl of clotted cream; two coffee cups, one’s edge faintly pinked with lipstick; a single picture frame containing a photograph of a teenaged JB with his father: the only appearance JB made in these paintings. And seeing these images, he once again marveled at how perfect JB’s understanding was of a life together, of his life, of how everything in his apartment—Willem’s sweatpants, still slung over the edge of the laundry hamper; Willem’s toothbrush, still waiting in the glass on the bathroom sink; Willem’s watch, its face splintered from the accident, still sitting untouched on his nightstand—had become totemic, a series of runes only he could read. The table next to Willem’s side of the bed at Lantern House had become a sort of unintentional shrine to him: there was the mug he had last drunk from, and the black-framed glasses he’d recently started wearing, and the book he was reading, still splayed, facedown, in the position he’d left it.
穿插在这些画像间的，是一些静物画，描绘杰比父母共同生活中的种种对象：一张床上的两个枕头，两个都微微凹陷，仿佛有人用一根汤匙的底部压下一碗浓缩奶油；两个咖啡杯，其中一个的边缘被唇膏沾上模糊的粉红色；一个相框里有一张十来岁的杰比和父亲的合照，是杰比在这些画作中唯一出现的一次。看到这些画面，他再度惊叹于杰比完全了解共同生活是怎么回事，也想到自己的生活、他公寓里的一切——威廉的运动长裤依然挂在洗衣篮边缘；威廉的牙刷依然放在浴室洗脸台的玻璃杯里；威廉的手表，表面已经在那次车祸中破裂，但还是放在他那一侧的床头桌上。这些都已经图腾化，像是一连串只有他能解读的神秘记号。灯笼屋那边，威廉那一侧的桌子无意间已经成为某种威廉的神龛：上头有他最后一次喝水的马克杯，他近年开始戴的黑框眼镜，他当时正在读的书，还是打开的，面朝下，就摆在他最后留下的地方。
“Oh, JB,” he had sighed, and although he had wanted to say something else, he couldn’t. But JB had thanked him anyway. They were quieter around each other now, and he didn’t know if this was who JB had become or if this was who JB had become around him.
“啊，杰比。”他叹息，他想说些别的，却说不出来。不过杰比还是谢谢他。现在他们在一起比较少讲话了，他不知道是因为杰比整个人变了样，还是因为跟他在一起的缘故。
Now he knocks on the museum’s doors and is let in by one of JB’s studio assistants, who is waiting for him and who tells him that JB is overseeing the installation on the top floor, but says he should start on the sixth floor and work his way up to meet him, and so he does.
这会儿他敲了敲博物馆的门。杰比工作室的一名助理开门让他进去，说杰比在顶楼监督布展。不过那助理又说，他应该从六楼开始看起，一路走到顶楼去找杰比。他照做了。
The galleries on this floor are dedicated to JB’s early works, including juvenilia; there is a whole grid of framed drawings from JB’s childhood, including a math test over which JB had drawn lovely little pencil portraits of, presumably, his classmates: eight- and nine-year-olds bent over their desks, eating candy bars, feeding birds. He had neglected to solve any of the problems, and at the top of the page was a bright red “F,” along with a note: “Dear Mrs. Marion—you see what the problem is here. Please come see me. Sincerely, Jamie Greenberg. P.S. Your son is an immense talent.” He smiles looking at this, the first time he can feel himself smiling in a long time. In a lucite cube on a stand in the middle of the room are a few objects from “The Kwotidien,” including the hair-covered hairbrush that JB had never returned to him, and he smiles again, looking at them, thinking of their weekends devoted to searching for clippings.
六楼的几个展览室展出的是杰比的早年作品，包括少年时代。有一整批杰比童年的裱框图画，有一张数学考卷，杰比用铅笔在上头画了几个可爱的人像，应该是他的同学：八九岁的小孩低头对着课桌，在吃巧克力棒或是喂鸟。考卷上的问题杰比一题都没写，考卷顶端是个鲜红色的零分，老师还在旁边写了字：“亲爱的马里恩太太，你看到哪里有问题了。请来跟我谈。诚挚的杰米·格林伯格。又及，令郎太有才华了。”他看着微笑起来，这是他好久以来第一次感觉自己在微笑。展览室中央有一个罩着树脂玻璃的平面展示柜，里面是几件“日常”系列的作品，包括杰比始终没有还给他的那支黏满头发的梳子。他再度微笑，看着这些作品，他想到他们陪杰比到处去找头发的那些周末。
The rest of the floor is given over to images from “The Boys,” and he walks slowly through the rooms, looking at pictures of Malcolm, of him, of Willem. Here are the two of them in their bedroom at Lispenard Street, both of them sitting on their twin beds, staring straight into JB’s camera, Willem with a small smile; here they are again at the card table, he working on a brief, Willem reading a book. Here they are at a party. Here they are at another party. Here he is with Phaedra; here Willem is with Richard. Here is Malcolm with his sister, Malcolm with his parents. Here is Jude with Cigarette, here is Jude, After Sickness. Here is a wall with pen-and-ink sketches of these images, sketches of them. Here are the photographs that inspired the paintings. Here is the photograph of him from which Jude with Cigarette was painted: here he is—that expression on his face, that hunch of his shoulders—a stranger to himself and yet instantly recognizable to himself as well.
这层楼的其他展览室展出的是“男孩们”系列的作品。他缓缓走过那些展览室，看着马尔科姆的、他的、威廉的画像。这一幅，他和威廉在利斯本纳街的卧室里，两个人坐在各自的单人床上，看着杰比的照相机，威廉脸上一抹淡淡的微笑。下一幅是他们在派对上。再下一幅是他们在另一个派对上。接着他看到他和菲德拉；然后是威廉和理查德。再过来是马尔科姆和他姐姐，马尔科姆和他的父母。他还看到《拿着香烟的裘德》，还有《裘德，病后》。接下来是一整墙这些人像画作的钢笔画草稿，以及启发这些画作的照片。有一张照片是《拿着香烟的裘德》的原照：他在里面，那脸上的表情、那驼背的双肩——对他来说很陌生，但也一眼就认得出是他。
The stairwells between the floors are densely hung with interstitial pieces, drawings and small paintings, studies and experimentations, that JB made between bodies of work. He sees the portrait JB made of him for Harold and Julia, for his adoption; he sees drawings of him in Truro, of him in Cambridge, of Harold and Julia. Here are the four of them; here are JB’s aunts and mother and grandmother; here is the Chief and Mrs. Irvine; here is Flora; here is Richard, and Ali, and the Henry Youngs, and Phaedra.
各个楼层之间的楼梯间里密密麻麻挂着杰比在各个系列之间的过渡作品，素描和小幅彩色画作、习作和实验性作品。他看到自己当初被收养时，杰比送给哈罗德和朱丽娅的那幅画像；他看到素描中画着他在特鲁罗、他在剑桥市，以及哈罗德和朱丽娅。还有的画着他们四个；画着杰比的两个阿姨、母亲和外婆；画着酋长和欧文太太；画着弗洛拉；画着理查德；画着阿里；画着两个亨利·杨；还有菲德拉。
The next floor: “Everyone I’ve Ever Known Everyone I’ve Ever Loved Everyone I’ve Ever Hated Everyone I’ve Ever Fucked”; “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days.” Behind him, around him, installers mill, making small adjustments with their white-gloved hands, standing back and staring at the walls. Once again he enters the stairwell. Once again he looks up, and there he sees, again and again, drawings of him: of his face, of him standing, of him in his wheelchair, of him with Willem, of him alone. These are pieces that JB had made when they weren’t speaking, when he had abandoned JB. There are drawings of other people as well, but they are mostly of him: him and Jackson. Again and again, Jackson and him, a checkerboard of the two of them. The images of him are wistful, faint, pencils and pen-and-inks and watercolors. The ones of Jackson are acrylics, thick-lined, looser and angrier. There is one drawing of him that is very small, on a postcard-size piece of paper, and when he examines it more closely, he sees that something had been written on it, and then erased: “Dear Jude,” he makes out, “please”—but there is nothing more after that word. He turns away, his breathing quick, and sees the watercolor of a camellia bush that JB had sent him when he was in the hospital, after he had tried to kill himself.
往上一层楼是“我认识的每个人、我爱过的每个人、我恨过的每个人、我上过的每个人”“秒，分，时，日”。在他身后及周围是徘徊来去的布展人员。戴着白手套，帮作品做一些小调整，再后退看着墙壁评估。然后他又到了楼梯间，看到了一幅又一幅他的素描像：他的脸、他站着、他坐在轮椅上、他和威廉、他独自一人。这些作品是杰比在他们不讲话那段期间画的，那阵子他放弃了杰比。另外也有其他人的素描，但大部分都是画他和杰克森。一件又一件，像是杰克森和他两人构成的棋盘。画作中的他伤感而模糊，用铅笔、钢笔和水彩画成。杰克森则是以亚克力颜料和粗笔画成，比较松散也比较愤怒。有一张他的画像非常小，画在明信片大小的纸上，他更仔细观察，发现上头本来写着字，然后用橡皮擦擦掉了“亲爱的裘德”，他辨认出来，“拜托”，但接下来就没有其他字了。他转身，呼吸加快，然后看着一幅山茶花树丛的水彩画，那是他自杀未遂住院时杰比送给他的。
The next floor: “The Narcissist’s Guide to Self-Hatred.” This had been JB’s least commercially successful show, and he can understand why—to look at these works, their insistent anger and self-loathing, was to be both awed and made almost unbearably uncomfortable. The Coon, one painting was called; The Buffoon; The Bojangler; The Steppin Fetchit. In each, JB, his skin shined and dark, his eyes bulging and yellowed, dances or howls or cackles, his gums awful and huge and fish-flesh pink, while in the background, Jackson and his friends emerge half formed from a gloom of Goyan browns and grays, all crowing at him, clapping their hands and pointing and laughing. The last painting in this series was called Even Monkeys Get the Blues, and it was of JB wearing a pert red fez and a shrunken red epauletted jacket, pantsless, hopping on one leg in an empty warehouse. He lingers on this floor, staring at these paintings, blinking, his throat shutting, and then slowly moves to the stairs a final time.
往上一层楼是“自恋者的自我憎恨指南”。这是杰比商业上最不成功的展览，他明白为什么——看着这些作品，那种显著的愤怒和自我厌恶，简直令人敬畏又不安得难以忍受。《蠢黑佬》是其中一件作品的标题，还有《丑角》《懒惰虫》《斯泰平·费奇[2]》。在每件作品中，皮肤黑亮的杰比眼睛暴凸而发黄，正在跳舞或号叫或大笑，鱼肉似的粉红色牙龈又大又丑。背景中的杰克森和他的朋友们半成形地从一片戈雅式的褐色与灰色中浮现，全都朝他拍着手、指指点点或大笑。这个系列的最后一件作品叫《就连猴子也懂得忧郁》，里头的杰比戴着一顶俏皮的土耳其红毡帽，身穿一件有吊穗肩章的紧身外套，没穿长裤，单脚在一个空荡的仓库里跳。他在画前逗留，瞪着这些画，眨着眼睛，喉咙发紧，这才缓缓登上了最后一层阶梯。
Then he is on the top floor, and here there are more people, and for a while he stands to the side, watching JB talking to the curators and his gallerist, laughing and gesturing. These galleries are hung, mostly, with images from “Frog and Toad,” and he moves from each to each, not really seeing them but rather remembering the experience of viewing them for the first time, in JB’s studio, when he and Willem were new to each other, when he felt as if he was growing new body parts—a second heart, a second brain—to accommodate this excess of feeling, the wonder of his life.
他来到顶楼，这里有更多人，一时间他站在一边，看着杰比跟策展人，还有他的代理画廊经理讲话，大笑并比划着。这几个展览室展出的大都是“青蛙与蟾蜍”系列作品，他一幅接一幅欣赏，没有真正看进去，而是在回忆第一次看到这些画作的情景。那是在杰比的工作室，他和威廉才刚在一起不久，当时他感觉自己身上似乎长出了新的部分，第二颗心脏、第二个脑子，以容纳这种丰沛的感情，他生命中的奇迹。
He is staring at one of the paintings when JB finally sees him and comes over, and he hugs JB tightly and congratulates him. “JB,” he says. “I’m so proud of you.”
他盯着其中一幅画的时候，杰比终于看到了他，走了过来。他紧拥杰比，向他道贺。“杰比，”他说，“我真是以你为荣。”
“Thanks, Judy,” JB says, smiling. “I’m proud of me too, goddammit.” And then he stops smiling. “I wish they were here,” he says.
“小裘，谢谢你，”杰比微笑着说，“我也很以我自己为荣，真是要命。”然后他收起笑容，“我真希望他们也在。”他说。
He shakes his head. “I do too,” he manages to say.
他摇摇头。“我也是。”他勉强说。
For a while they are silent. Then, “Come here,” JB says, and grabs his hand and pulls him to the far side of the floor, past JB’s gallerist, who waves at him, past a final crate of framed drawings that are being unboxed, to a wall where a canvas is having its skin of bubble wrap carefully cut away from it. JB positions them before it, and when the plastic is unpeeled, he sees it is a painting of Willem.
有一会儿，两人都不说话。之后杰比说：“来这里。”他牵起他的手，拉着他到这层楼的另一头，经过了朝杰比挥手的画廊经理、装着裱框画作的最后一个条板箱，来到一面墙壁前，那里有一幅画，工作人员正小心翼翼地把外头包裹的气泡布割开。杰比带着他站在那幅画前面，等到气泡布被拆掉，他看到那是一幅威廉的画像。
