《渺小一生》:人们也想看我们的作品啊。

　 Now, as he lies in bed, he hears the old lied murmur to him. “I have become lost to the world,” he sings, quietly, “in which I otherwise wasted so much time.”

现在他躺在床上，听着那首古老的德语独唱曲在他耳边低吟。“我逐渐被世界遗弃，”他低声唱起来，“我已浪费了太多光阴。”

　 But although he knows how foolish he is being, he still cannot bring himself to eat. The very act of it now repels him. He wishes he were above want, above need. He has a vision of his life as a sliver of soap, worn and used and smoothed into a slender, blunt-ended arrowhead, a little more of it disintegrating with every day.

他知道自己这样有多傻，却还是没有办法逼自己吃东西。吃东西这件事现在令他厌恶。他真希望无欲无求。他想象自己的人生是一小片肥皂，使用到只剩下光滑的一片，像薄薄的、尖端圆钝的箭镞，每一天都被磨蚀掉一些。

　 And then there is what he doesn’t like to admit to himself but is conscious of thinking. He cannot break his promise to Harold—he won’t. But if he stops eating, if he stops trying, the end will be the same anyway.

而这时，还有他不愿向自己承认、但是意识到了的想法。他无法打破对哈罗德的承诺——他不会的。反正，如果他停止进食，如果他不勉强自己，最后他照样会死。

　 Usually he knows how melodramatic, how narcissistic, how unrealistic he is being, and at least once a day he scolds himself. The fact is, he finds himself less and less able to summon Willem’s specifics without depending on props: He cannot remember what Willem’s voice sounds like without first playing one of the saved voice messages. He can no longer remember Willem’s scent without first smelling one of his shirts. And so he fears he is grieving not so much for Willem but for his own life: its smallness, its worthlessness.

通常他知道自己这样有多戏剧化、有多自恋，而且每天至少都会痛骂自己一次。但事实上，他发现如果不借助道具，他越来越想不起关于威廉的种种细节：如果不先听一下他保存的语音留言，他就想不起威廉的声音是什么样。如果不先去闻一下威廉的衬衫，他就想不起威廉的气味。他担心自己的悲恸不是为了威廉，而是为了他自己的人生：如此渺小，如此毫无价值。

　 He has never been concerned with his legacy, or never thought he had been. And it is a helpful thing that he isn’t, for he will leave nothing behind: not buildings or paintings or films or sculptures. Not books. Not papers. Not people: not a spouse, not children, probably not parents, and, if he keeps behaving the way he is, not friends. Not even new law. He has created nothing. He has made nothing, nothing but money: the money he has earned; the money given to him to compensate for Willem being taken from him. His apartment will revert to Richard. The other properties will be given away or sold and their proceeds donated to charities. His art will go to museums, his books to libraries, his furniture to whoever wants it. It will be as if he has never existed. He has the feeling, unhappy as it is, that he was at his most valuable in those motel rooms, where he was at least something singular and meaningful to someone, although what he had to offer was being taken from him, not given willingly. But there he had at least been real to another person; what they saw him as was actually what he was. There, he was at his least deceptive.

他从不关心自己死后的遗赠，至少不觉得自己关心。幸好是这样，因为他什么都不会留下：没有建筑物、画作、电影、雕塑。没有书。没有论文。没有人：没有配偶或子女，大概也没有父母，而且，如果他继续这个样子，也不会有朋友了。就连新的法律都没有留下。他没有创造出什么，也没有制作出什么，除了钱：有的是他赚来的；有的是别人给他，以补偿夺走威廉的损失的。他的公寓会归还给理查德。其他财产会送掉或卖掉，得到的钱捐给慈善机构。他收藏的艺术品会捐给博物馆，他的书会捐给图书馆，他的家具看谁想要就给谁。最后他就像不曾存在过。他有种感觉，即使很不愉快，但在那些汽车旅馆房间里的时候，是他最有价值的时候，至少他对某个人是特别的、有意义的，尽管他是被迫提供服务，而非自愿的。在那些房间里，至少他对另一个人来说是真实的；他们眼中的他就是真正的他。在那些房间里，他是最没有伪装的。

　 He had never been able to truly believe Willem’s interpretation of him, as someone who was brave, and resourceful, and admirable. Willem would say those things and he would feel ashamed, as if he’d been swindling him: Who was this person Willem was describing? Even his confession hadn’t changed Willem’s perception of him—in fact, Willem seemed to respect him more, not less, because of it, which he had never understood but in which he had allowed himself to find solace. But although he hadn’t been convinced, it was somehow sustaining that someone else had seen him as a worthwhile person, that someone had seen his as a meaningful life.

他从来无法真正相信威廉对他的诠释，说他是个勇敢、足智多谋、令人钦佩的人。威廉说那些话的时候，他觉得很羞愧，好像自己欺骗了他。威廉描述的这个人是谁？即使他跟威廉坦白了过去的一切，也没能改变威廉对他的看法——事实上，威廉不但没有因此看轻他，还更尊敬他。这点他一直无法了解，但他允许自己从中得到安慰。他始终不相信威廉的说法，然而不知怎的，他相信有这么一个人把他视为一个有价值的人、把他的人生视为有意义的。

　 The spring before Willem died, they’d had some people over for dinner—just the four of them and Richard and Asian Henry Young—and Malcolm, in one of the occasional spikes of regret he had been experiencing over his and Sophie’s decision not to have children, even though, as they all reminded him, they hadn’t wanted children to begin with, had asked, “Without them, I just wonder: What’s been the point of it all? Don’t you guys ever worry about this? How do any of us know our lives are meaningful?”

威廉死前的那年春天，他们邀请了一些人来家里吃晚餐，只有他们四个，理查德和亚裔亨利·杨。那天，马尔科姆又忽然后悔他和苏菲不生小孩的决定；他偶尔会来这么一下，即使他们所有人都提醒他，他们从一开始就不想要小孩。他问：“因为我没有小孩，我很好奇：一切是为了什么？你们难道没担心过这个？我们怎么知道我们的人生是有意义的？”

　 “Excuse me, Mal,” Richard had said, pouring him the last of the wine from one bottle as Willem uncorked another, “but I find that offensive. Are you saying our lives are less meaningful because we don’t have kids?”

“对不起，马尔。”理查德当时说，把一瓶葡萄酒最后的一点倒进自己的杯子里，威廉在旁边又打开一瓶，“可我觉得这话有点冒犯人。你是在说，因为我们没有小孩，所以我们的人生比较没意义？”

　 “No,” Malcolm said. Then he thought. “Well, maybe.”

“不是，”马尔科姆说，他想一想，“唔，或许吧。”

　 “I know my life’s meaningful,” Willem had said, suddenly, and Richard had smiled at him.

“我知道我的人生是有意义的。”威廉忽然说，理查德微笑地看着他。

　 “Of course your life’s meaningful,” JB had said. “You make things people actually want to see, unlike me and Malcolm and Richard and Henry here.”

“你的人生当然有意义。”杰比说，“你的作品是人们实际想要看的，不像我和马尔科姆、理查德，还有亨利。”

　 “People want to see our stuff,” said Asian Henry Young, sounding wounded.

“人们也想看我们的作品啊。”亚裔亨利·杨说，口气很受伤。

　 “I meant people outside of New York and London and Tokyo and Berlin.”

“我指的是除了纽约、伦敦、东京、柏林以外的人。”

　 “Oh, them. But who cares about those people?”

“喔，那些人啊。可是谁在乎他们呢？”

　 “No,” Willem said, after they’d all stopped laughing. “I know my life’s meaningful because”—and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued—“because I’m a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.”

“不，”威廉在众人大笑完毕之后说，“我知道我的人生有意义，因为……”他暂停一下，露出害羞的表情，沉默了片刻才说，“……因为我是个好朋友。我爱我的朋友们，我关心他们，我想我也让他们快乐。”

　 The room became quiet, and for a few seconds, he and Willem had looked at each other across the table, and the rest of the people, the apartment itself, fell away: they were two people on two chairs, and around them was nothingness. “To Willem,” he finally said, and raised his glass, and so did everyone else. “To Willem!” they all echoed, and Willem smiled back at him.

大家都沉默了，有几秒钟，他和威廉隔着桌面看着彼此，其他人和整个公寓似乎消失了：就只有他们两人坐在两把椅子上，周围的一切都不存在。“敬威廉。”最后他说，举起酒杯，其他人也跟着举杯。“敬威廉！”大家齐声说。威廉对着他微笑。

　 Later that evening, when everyone had left and they were in bed, he had told Willem that he was right. “I’m glad you know your life has meaning,” he told him. “I’m glad it’s not something I have to convince you of. I’m glad you know how wonderful you are.”

那天夜里稍晚，大家都离开后，他们两个躺在床上，他告诉威廉他说得没错。“我很高兴你知道你的人生是有意义的，”他告诉他，“我很高兴这种事不必我说服你。我很高兴你知道自己有多了不起。”

　 “But your life has just as much meaning as mine,” Willem had said. “You’re wonderful, too. Don’t you know that, Jude?”

“但是你的人生跟我一样很有意义啊。”威廉说，“你也很了不起。你难道不明白吗，裘德？”

　 At the time, he had muttered something, something that Willem might interpret as an agreement, but as Willem slept, he lay awake. It had always seemed to him a very plush kind of problem, a privilege, really, to consider whether life was meaningful or not. He didn’t think his was. But this didn’t bother him so much.

当时，他喃喃说了些什么，威廉可能以为是赞同，但威廉睡着后，他醒着躺在那。思索人生是否有意义，对他来说似乎是一件非常奢侈的事情，甚至是一种特权。他不认为自己的人生有意义，似乎也不太因此而困扰。

　 And although he hadn’t fretted over whether his life was worthwhile, he had always wondered why he, why so many others, went on living at all; it had been difficult to convince himself at times, and yet so many people, so many millions, billions of people, lived in misery he couldn’t fathom, with deprivations and illnesses that were obscene in their extremity. And yet on and on and on they went. So was the determination to keep living not a choice at all, but an evolutionary implementation? Was there something in the mind itself, a constellation of neurons as toughened and scarred as tendon, that prevented humans from doing what logic so often argued they should? And yet that instinct wasn’t infallible—he had overcome it once. But what had happened to it after? Had it weakened, or become more resilient? Was his life even his to choose to live any longer?

尽管他不会为他的人生是否有价值而烦恼，但他总是很好奇，为什么他和其他这么多人，还是继续活下去；有时他很难说服自己这一点，但是有这么多人，几百几千万人、几十亿人，活在他无法想象的悲惨中，面对种种极其贫困和可怕的疾病。然而他们都继续活下去。所以求生的决心根本不是一种选择，而是一种演化出来的本能？在人类的脑子中是否有一连串的神经元，如肌腱般坚韧而饱经折磨，能防止人类做出逻辑上往往应该做的？那种本能并非万无一失——他就战胜过它一次。但之后发生了什么事？这种本能减弱了，还是更强韧呢？他真的能选择要不要活下去吗？