《渺小一生》:但总之，次日他出现了
And he begins to say something else, but as he does, the elevator doors close—and he is left alone at last.
之后他又开口说些别的。正当此时，电梯门关上了——终于只剩他一个人了。
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HE DIDN’T BEGIN it consciously, he really didn’t, and yet when he comprehends what he is doing, he doesn’t stop it, either. It is the middle of November, and he is getting out of the pool after his morning swim, and as he’s lifting himself up on the metal bars that Richard had had installed around the pool to help him get in and out of his wheelchair, the world disappears.
他不是刻意开始的，真的不是。然而当他理解自己在做什么的时候，他也没有停止。那是十一月中，某天他晨泳完要爬出泳池，拉着理查德沿泳池安装的、协助他上下轮椅的铁栏杆，要把自己往上抬起时，整个世界消失了。
When he wakes again, it’s only ten minutes later. One moment it was six forty-five a.m., and he was pulling himself up; the next it is six fifty-five a.m., and he is prone on the black rubber floor, his arms reaching forward for the chair, his torso leaving a wet splotch on the ground. He groans, moving into a sitting position, and waits until the room rights itself again, before attempting—and this time, succeeding—to hoist himself up.
他再度醒来时，才过了十分钟。这一刻是早晨6点45分，他正拉着自己往上；下一刻就是6点55分，他趴在泳池边的黑色橡胶地垫上，双臂往前伸向轮椅，躯干在地板上留下一块湿湿的印记。他呻吟着，挪动着坐起身，等到整个房间转正，才试着把自己拖上去。这回他成功了。
The second time comes a few days later. He has just gotten home from the office, and it is late. Increasingly, he has begun to feel as if Rosen Pritchard supplies him with his very energy, and once he leaves its premises, so too does his strength: the moment Mr. Ahmed shuts the back door of the car, he is asleep, and he doesn’t wake until he is delivered to Greene Street. But as he walks into the dark, quiet apartment that night, he is overcome by a sense of displacement, one so debilitating that for a moment he stops, blinking and confused, before he moves to the sofa in the living room and lies down. He means to just rest, just for a few minutes, just until he can stand again, but when he opens his eyes next it is day, and the living room is gray with light.
第二次发作是几天后。他刚从办公室回到家，当时很晚了。最近他越来越觉得罗森·普理查德为他提供所有的精力，只要一离开事务所，他就失去了力气：艾哈迈德先生关上后车门的那一刻，他就立刻睡着，一路睡到格林街才醒来。但那天晚上，当他走进那间黑暗、安静的公寓里，忽然被一种错置感压垮，整个人虚弱得停下来，眨着眼睛，觉得很困惑，之后才走到起居室的沙发躺下来。他本来只想休息一下，过几分钟就站起来，但等到他再度睁开眼睛，已经是次日了，整个起居室充满了灰白的天光。
The third time is Monday morning. He wakes before his alarm, and although he is lying down, he feels everything around and within him roiling, as if he is a bottle half filled with water set adrift on an ocean of clouds. In recent weeks, he hasn’t had to drug himself at all on Sundays: he gets home from dinner with JB on Saturday, and climbs into bed, and only wakes when Richard comes to find him the next day. When Richard doesn’t come—as he hadn’t this Sunday; he and India are visiting her parents in New Mexico—he sleeps through the entire day, through the entire night. He dreams of nothing, and nothing wakes him.
第三次是星期一早晨。他在闹钟响起之前就醒了。虽然他躺在床上，却感觉周围和体内的一切都在翻搅，好像他是一瓶装得半满的水，飘浮在一片云海间。最近几个星期，他星期天根本不必吃安眠药：星期六和杰比吃完晚餐回来后，一爬上床就睡着，直到理查德次日来找他才会醒来。如果理查德不来的话（就像这个星期天，他陪印蒂亚回新墨西哥州的娘家），他就睡掉一整天，睡掉一整夜。他什么都不会梦到，也不会中途醒来。
He knows what is happening, of course: he isn’t eating enough. He hasn’t been for months. Some days he eats very little—a piece of fruit; a piece of bread—and some days he eats nothing at all. It isn’t as if he has decided to stop eating—it is simply that he is no longer interested, that he no longer can. He isn’t hungry, so he doesn’t eat.
当然，他知道这是怎么回事：他吃得不够多。好几个月都是这样了。有些日子他吃得非常少，只吃一片水果、一片面包，有些日子完全没吃。他没有决定停止进食，纯粹是再也没有兴趣吃，吃不下了。他不饿，所以就不吃。
That Monday, though, he does. He gets up, he totters downstairs. He swims, but poorly, slowly. And then he comes back upstairs, he makes himself breakfast. He sits and eats it, staring into the apartment, the newspapers folded on the table beside him. He opens his mouth, he inserts a forkful of food, he chews, he swallows. He keeps his movements mechanical, but suddenly he thinks of how grotesque a process it is, putting something into his mouth, moving it around with his tongue, swallowing down the saliva-clotted plug of it, and he stops. Still, he promises himself: I will eat, even if I don’t want to, because I am alive and this is what I am to do. But he forgets, and forgets again.
不过那个星期一，他吃了东西。起床后，踉跄地下楼游泳，但是游得很辛苦、很慢。接着他回到楼上，给自己做早餐，然后坐下来吃。他边吃边瞪着公寓，折起的报纸放在旁边的桌上。他张开嘴巴，放进一口食物，咀嚼，吞咽。他保持机械化的动作，但忽然间想到这个过程有多怪诞：把东西放进嘴里、用舌头搅拌、咽下那一整团黏着口水的食物，于是他停下。可是他还是向自己承诺：我会吃的，即使我不想吃，因为我还活着，就要吃东西。但是他一忘再忘。
And then, two days later, something happens. He has just come home, so exhausted that he feels soluble, as if he is evaporating into the air, so insubstantial that he feels made not of blood and bone but of vapor and fog, when he sees Willem standing before him. He opens his mouth to speak to him, but then he blinks and Willem is gone, and he is teetering, his arms stretched before him.
接着，两天后，有事情发生了。他才刚到家，累到觉得自己好像是可溶解的物质，仿佛他整个人就要蒸发掉，虚无到宛如自己不是由血和骨头，而是由蒸气和烟雾构成的，此时他看到威廉站在他面前。他张嘴要跟威廉说话，但他眨了眨眼，威廉就不见了。他摇摇晃晃，双臂往前伸。
“Willem,” he says aloud into the empty apartment. “Willem.” He closes his eyes, as if he might conjure him that way, but Willem doesn’t reappear.
“威廉，”他对着空荡的公寓说，“威廉。”他闭上眼睛，仿佛这样就可以召唤他，但威廉没再出现。
The next day, however, he does. He is once again at home. It is once again night. He has once again not eaten anything. He is lying in bed, he is staring into the dark of the room. And there, abruptly, is Willem, shimmery as a hologram, the edges of him blurring with light, and although Willem isn’t looking at him—he is looking elsewhere, looking toward the doorway, looking so intently that he wants to follow Willem’s sightline, to see what Willem sees, but he knows he mustn’t blink, he mustn’t turn away, or Willem will leave him—it is enough to see him, to feel that he in some way still exists, that his disappearance might not be a permanent state after all. But finally, he has to blink, and Willem vanishes once more.
但总之，次日他出现了。这回又是在家，也是在夜里，而且他又是一整天没吃饭。他躺在床上，望着一片黑暗。突然间，威廉就在那里，像立体投影般透着微光，边缘发亮而模糊。威廉没在看他——他看着别的地方，朝着门口，看起来很专注，他想跟随威廉的视线，瞧瞧威廉正在看什么，但他知道自己不能眨眼，不能别开眼睛，否则威廉就会离开他。不过能够看到他，感觉到他依然以某种方式存在，感觉到他的消失或许不是永远的，这样就足够了。但最后，他不得不眨眼，于是威廉又不见了。
However, he isn’t too upset, because now he knows: if he doesn’t eat, if he can last to the point just before collapse, he will begin having hallucinations, and his hallucinations might be of Willem. That night he falls asleep contented, the first time he has felt contentment in nearly fifteen months, because now he knows how to recall Willem; now he knows his ability to summon Willem is within his control.
总之他没有太难过，因为现在他明白了：如果他不吃东西，撑到快昏倒的那一刻，他就会开始产生幻觉，而他的幻觉中可能会有威廉。那天夜里他满足地睡着了，是近十五个月来第一次觉得满足，因为现在他知道如何召唤威廉，知道自己可以控制召唤威廉的能力。
He cancels his appointment with Andy so he can stay home and experiment. This is the third consecutive Friday he hasn’t seen Andy. Since that night at the restaurant, the two of them have been polite with each other, and Andy hasn’t mentioned Linus, or any other doctor, again, although he has said he’ll raise the subject anew in six months. “It’s not a matter of wanting to get rid of you, Jude,” he said. “And I’m sorry, I really am, if that’s how it sounded. I’m just worried. I just want to make sure we find someone you like, someone I know you’ll be comfortable with.”
他取消了和安迪的约诊，待在家里实验。这是他连续第三个星期五没去看安迪。自从餐厅里的那一晚，他们两个对彼此都很客气。安迪再也没提到莱纳斯或其他医生，但是他说六个月后会再讨论这件事。“我不是想摆脱你，裘德。”安迪说，“如果你的感觉是这样，那么我很抱歉，真的。我只是担心。我只是想确定我们能找到一个你喜欢的人，让你自在相处的人。”
“I know, Andy,” he said. “And I appreciate it; I do. I’ve been behaving badly, and I took it out on you.” But he knows now that he has to be careful: he has tasted anger, and he knows he has to control it. He can feel it, waiting to burst from his mouth in a swarm of stinging black flies. Where has this rage been hiding? he wonders. How can he make it disappear? Lately his dreams have been of violence, of terrible things befalling the people he hates, the people he loves: he sees Brother Luke being stuffed into a sack full of squealing, starved rats; he sees JB’s head being slammed against a wall, his brain splashing out in a gray slurry. In the dreams he is always there, dispassionate and watchful, and after witnessing their destruction, he turns and walks away. He wakes with his nose bleeding the way it had when he was a child and was suppressing a tantrum, with his hands shaking, with his face contorted into a snarl.
“安迪，我知道。”他说，“而且我很感激你，真的。我表现得太没礼貌了，还对你出气。”现在他知道自己得小心：他已经尝到愤怒的滋味了，他知道自己必须控制。他可以感觉到怒气就等着从他嘴里冲出来，化为一群带刺的黑蝇。以前这股愤怒都躲在哪里呢？他很好奇。他要怎么让这种怒气消失？最近他的梦都很暴力，梦到可怕的事情降临在他怨恨和钟爱的人身上：他梦到卢克修士被塞进一个大麻布袋，里面充满饥饿得尖叫的老鼠；他梦到杰比的脑袋被砸到墙上，溅出一片灰色的脑浆。在梦中他总是在场，无动于衷地看着，目睹这些人毁灭后，他就转身离开。他醒来时在流鼻血，就像小时候忍着不乱发脾气时那样，双手颤抖，面孔扭曲。
That Friday Willem doesn’t come to him after all. But the next evening, as he is leaving the office to meet JB for dinner, he turns his head to the right and sees, sitting next to him in the car, Willem. This time, he fancies, Willem is a little harder-edged, a little more solid, and he stares and stares until he blinks and Willem once again dissolves.
那个星期五，威廉还是没出现。次日傍晚，他离开办公室坐上车，正要去跟杰比碰面吃晚餐。他头转向右边，看到坐在他旁边的是威廉。这回，他觉得威廉更具体一点、更结实一点。他盯着一直看、一直看，直到他眨眼，威廉再度消失。
After these episodes he is depleted, and the world around him dims as if all its power and electricity has gone toward creating Willem. He instructs Mr. Ahmed to take him home instead of to the restaurant; as he is driven south, he texts JB to tell him he’s feeling sick and can’t make it. He is doing this more and more: canceling plans with people, shoddily and usually unforgivably late—an hour before a hard-to-secure dinner reservation, minutes after a scheduled meeting time at a gallery, seconds before the curtain rises above a stage. Richard, JB, Andy, Harold and Julia: these are the final people who still contact him, persistently, week after week. He can’t remember when he last heard from Citizen or Rhodes or the Henry Youngs or Elijah or Phaedra—it has been weeks, at least. And although he knows he should care, he doesn’t. His hope, his energy are no longer replenishable resources; his reserves are limited, and he wants to spend them trying to find Willem, even if the hunt is elusive, even if he is likely to fail.
每回看到威廉之后，他就力气用尽，整个世界黯淡下来，仿佛他所有的能量和电力都因为创造威廉被用光了。他叫艾哈迈德先生改送他回家，不要去餐厅了。车子往南时，他发了短信给杰比，跟他说自己身体不舒服，没办法去了。这种事他越来越常做：恶劣地取消约会，经常迟到，不可原谅。在一个小时前取消很难订到位子的餐厅晚餐；过了约定时间几分钟，才通知别人不去画廊跟他们碰面；舞台剧开演前几秒钟才说自己不去看了。理查德、杰比、安迪、哈罗德和朱丽娅，现在只剩这些人每星期还会跟他联系，坚持不懈。他不记得上回西提任、罗兹、两个亨利·杨、伊利亚或菲德拉跟他联系是什么时候的事，至少有好几个星期了。他知道自己应该在乎，但他并不在乎。他的希望、精力不再是可以补足的资源，而是数量有限的，所以他只想用它们来设法寻找威廉，即使这个猎物出没不定，即使他很可能会失败。
And so home he goes, and he waits and waits for Willem to appear to him. But he doesn’t, and finally he sleeps.
他回家等了又等，希望威廉出现在他面前。结果没等到，于是他睡了。
The next day he waits in bed, trying to suspend himself between alertness and dazedness, for that (he thinks) is the state in which he is most likely to summon Willem.
次日他躺在床上等，设法让自己维持处于警觉和晕眩之间的状态，因为他觉得这个状态最可能成功召唤威廉。
On Monday he wakes, feeling foolish. This has got to stop, he tells himself. You have got to rejoin the living. You’re acting like an insane person. Visions? Do you know what you sound like?
星期一他醒来，觉得自己好傻。这种事情必须停止，他告诉自己。你必须重新回到活人的世界。你这样像个疯子。幻象？你知道这听起来有多疯狂吗？
He thinks of the monastery, where Brother Pavel liked to tell him the story of an eleventh-century nun named Hildegard. Hildegard had visions; she closed her eyes and illuminated objects appeared before her; her days were aswim with light. But Brother Pavel was less interested in Hildegard than in Hildegard’s instructor, Jutta, who had forsaken the material world to live as an ascetic in a small cell, dead to the concerns of the living, alive but not alive. “That’s what will happen to you if you don’t obey,” Pavel would say, and he would be terrified. There was a small toolshed on the monastery’s grounds, dark and chilly and jumbled with malevolent-looking iron objects, each of them ending in a spike, a spear, a scythe, and when the brother told him of Jutta, he imagined he would be forced into the toolshed, fed just enough to survive, and on and on and on he would live, almost forgotten but not completely, almost dead but not completely. But even Jutta had had Hildegard for company. He would have no one. How frightened he had been; how certain he was that this, someday, would come to pass.
他想到修道院，小时候帕维尔修士喜欢跟他讲一个11世纪修女赫德嘉的故事。赫德嘉有灵视；她闭上眼睛，眼前就会出现发光的东西；她每天都像是沐浴在光亮中。帕维尔修士对赫德嘉的兴趣不如对她的老师尤塔来得大，尤塔弃绝了物质世界，关在一个小房间里苦修，不再关心活人，活着却犹如行尸走肉。“如果你不听话，就会变成这样。”帕维尔这样说，害他吓得要命。修道院有个小小的工具小屋，黑暗而寒冷，里面乱七八糟地塞着一些看起来很可怕的铁器，每个尾端都是尖刺或矛，还有长柄大镰刀。帕维尔修士告诉他尤塔的故事后，他就想象自己被关进那个工具小屋，给他的食物只够勉强存活，然后他会一直活下去，几乎被遗忘但又没被完全忘记，快要死但还没死。即使尤塔都还有赫德嘉做伴，他却一个伴都没有。他一直很害怕，很确定这样的事情总有一天会发生。
