《渺小一生》:庭审开始，他表现得很好

　 He had known, ever since the hospital, that it was impossible to convince someone to live for his own sake. But he often thought it would be a more effective treatment to make people feel more urgently the necessity of living for others: that, to him, was always the most compelling argument. The fact was, he did owe Harold. He did owe Willem. And if they wanted him to stay alive, then he would. At the time, as he slogged through day after day, his motivations had been murky to him, but now he could recognize that he had done it for them, and that rare selflessness had been something he could be proud of after all. He hadn’t understood why they wanted him to stay alive, only that they had, and so he had done it. Eventually, he had learned how to rediscover contentment, joy, even. But it hadn’t begun that way.

自从那次自杀未遂住院后，他就知道，要说服某个人为了自己活下去是不可能的。不过他常常觉得，更有效的方法，就是让一个人更迫切地感觉到为别人活下去的必要：这一点对他向来最有说服力。事实上，他的确欠哈罗德。他的确欠威廉。如果他们希望他活着，他就会照办。那段时间，他一天接一天熬过去，实在不明白有什么理由活下去，但现在他看出自己是为他们而活，这种难得的无私，其实是值得他骄傲的。他一直不明白为什么他们希望他活下去，只知道他们就是这么希望，于是他为他们活下去了。到最后，他逐渐学会如何重新发现活着的满足感，甚至是喜悦。但一开始并不是这样的。

　 And now he is once again finding life more and more difficult, each day a little less possible than the last. In his every day stands a tree, black and dying, with a single branch jutting to its right, a scarecrow’s sole prosthetic, and it is from this branch that he hangs. Above him a rain is always misting, which makes the branch slippery. But he clings to it, as tired as he is, because beneath him is a hole bored into the earth so deep that he cannot see where it ends. He is petrified to let go because he will fall into the hole, but eventually he knows he will, he knows he must: he is so tired. His grasp weakens a bit, just a little bit, with every week.

现在他再度发现人生越来越艰难，每一天都比前一天更困难一点。他的每一天里都有一棵树站在那，黑色、垂死的树，树上只有一根树枝往右突出，像是支撑稻草人的单脚，而他就抓着这根树枝悬吊在那。他上方总是下着蒙蒙细雨，让那根树枝滑溜溜的。他好累，却还是紧抓着不放，因为在他下方的地面上有一个深不见底的洞。他害怕放手，一放手就会掉进洞里，但最后他知道自己将会放手，他知道自己非放手不可：他太累了。随着每星期过去，他抓住树枝的力道都减弱一点点。

　 So it is with guilt and regret, but also with a sense of inevitability, that he cheats on his promise to Harold. He cheats when he tells Harold he is being sent away to Jakarta for business and will miss Thanksgiving. He cheats when he begins growing a beard, which he hopes will disguise the gauntness in his face. He cheats when he tells Sanjay he’s fine, he’s just had an intestinal flu. He cheats when he tells his secretary she doesn’t need to get him lunch because he picked something up on the way into the office. He cheats when he cancels the next month’s worth of dates with Richard and JB and Andy, telling them he has too much work. He cheats every time he lets the voice whisper to him, unbidden, It won’t be long now, it won’t be long. He isn’t so deluded that he thinks he will be able to literally starve himself to death—but he does think that there will be a day, closer now than ever before, in which he will be so weak that he will stumble and fall and crash his head against the Greene Street lobby’s cement floors, in which he will contract a virus and not have the resources to make it retreat.

所以他怀着内疚和歉意，但同时也是无可避免地开始偷偷不遵守他对哈罗德的承诺。他骗哈罗德说他被派去雅加达出差，没办法回美国过感恩节。他开始留大胡子，希望遮掩瘦削憔悴的脸。他跟桑杰谎称他很好，只是得了肠胃型流感。他跟秘书撒谎说不必帮他买午餐，因为他上班途中已经买了吃的。他取消了下个月和理查德、杰比、安迪的约，说他工作太忙了。他每回都让那个不请自来的声音对他低语，现在不会太久了，不会太久了。他不会妄想能真的把自己饿死——但他的确想着，很快，有一天，他会虚弱得踉跄绊倒，脑袋砸在格林街一楼大厅的水泥地板上，感染一种无药可医的病毒。

　 At least one of his lies is true: he does have too much work. He has an appellate argument in a month, and he is relieved to be able to spend so much time at Rosen Pritchard, where nothing bad has ever befallen him, where even Willem knows not to disturb him with one of his unpredictable appearances. One night he hears Sanjay muttering to himself as he hurries past his office—“Fuck, she’s going to kill me”—and looks up and sees it is no longer night, but day, and the Hudson is turning a smeary orange. He notes this, but he feels nothing. Here, his life suspends itself; here, he might be anyone, anywhere. He can stay as late as he likes. No one is waiting for him, no one will be disappointed if he doesn’t call, no one will be angry if he doesn’t go home.

他的种种谎言中，至少有一点是真的：他的工作真的太多了。一个月后，他有一个上诉案要出庭，他很放心可以花那么多时间在罗森·普理查德。这里从来没有坏事降临到他身上，就连威廉也知道不能忽然跑来这里打扰他。有天晚上，他听到桑杰匆忙经过他的办公室，一边喃喃自语：“妈的，她会杀了我。”一抬头，他才发现已经不是夜晚，天已经亮了，哈德逊河正转为一片脏兮兮的橘色。他注意到这个，但心里毫无感觉。在这里，他的人生暂停了；在这里，他可能是任何人，去任何地方。在这里，他留到多晚都没关系。没有人在等他，没有人会因为他没打电话而失望，没有人会因为他没回家而生气。

　 The Friday before the trial, he is working late when one of his secretaries looks in to tell him he has a visitor in the lobby, a Dr. Contractor, and would he like him sent up? He pauses, unsure of what to do; Andy has been calling him, but he hasn’t been returning his calls, and he knows he won’t simply leave.

开庭日之前那个星期五，他加班到很晚。一位秘书忽然探头进来，跟他说大厅里有他的访客，一位康垂克特医生，问要不要让他上来。他犹豫了一下，不知道该怎么做；安迪这阵子一直打电话给他，但他都没回电。他知道安迪不会轻易离开的。

　 “Yes,” he tells her. “Bring him to the southeastern conference room.”

“好。”他告诉她，“带他到东南角的会议室吧。”

　 He waits in this conference room, which has no windows and is the most private, and when Andy comes in, he sees his mouth tighten, but they shake hands like strangers, and it’s not until his secretary leaves that Andy gets up and walks over to him.

他去那个会议室等着，里头没有窗子，隐秘性最高。他看到安迪进来时嘴巴紧绷，但两人还是像陌生人似的握了手。直到他的秘书离开，安迪才起身走向他。

　 “Stand up,” he commands.

“站起来。”安迪命令道。

　 “I can’t,” he says.

“我没办法。”他说。

　 “Why not?”

“为什么？”

　 “My legs hurt,” he says, but this isn’t true. He cannot stand because his prostheses no longer fit. “The good thing about these prostheses is that they’re very sensitive and lightweight,” the prosthetist had told him when he was fitted for them. “The bad thing is that the sockets don’t allow you very much give. You lose or gain more than ten percent of your body weight—so for you, that’s plus or minus fourteen, fifteen pounds—and you’re either going to need to adjust your weight or have a new set made. So it’s important you stay at weight.” For the past three weeks, he has been in his wheelchair, and although he continues to wear his legs, they are only for show, something to fill his pants with; they are too ill-fitting for him to actually use, and he is too weary to see the prosthetist, too weary to have the conversation he knows he’ll need to have with him, too weary to conjure explanations.

“我的腿很痛。”他说，但其实不是。他无法站起来，是因为他的义肢不合身了。“这些义肢的优点是敏感又轻盈。”当初试用时，义肢矫具师这么告诉他：“缺点是义肢托座能迁就的范围不大。你如果体重增加或减少超过百分之十——对你来说，就是十四五磅——你就得调整体重，或者重新订一套义肢。所以你得注意保持体重。”过去三个星期，他都坐在轮椅上。他还是会装上义肢，但只是做做样子，放在长裤里；因为实在太不合适了，根本没办法用。而且他实在疲倦得没办法去找义肢矫具师，疲倦得不想去面对势必要进行的对话，疲倦得不想找理由解释了。

　 “I think you’re lying,” Andy says. “I think you’ve lost so much weight that your prostheses are sliding off of you, am I right?” But he doesn’t answer. “How much weight have you lost, Jude?” Andy asks. “When I last saw you, you were already twelve pounds down. How much is it now? Twenty? More?” There’s another silence. “What the hell are you doing?” Andy asks, lowering his voice further. “What’re you doing to yourself, Jude?

“我觉得你在撒谎。”安迪说，“我想你是体重掉太多，义肢根本不合适了，对不对？”但他没回答。“裘德，你到底瘦了多少？”安迪问，“我上回看到你的时候，你已经瘦了十二磅，那现在呢？二十磅？更多？”他还是没吭声。“你他妈的到底在搞什么？”安迪问，声音压得更低了，“你对自己做了什么，裘德？

　 “You look like hell,” Andy continues. “You look terrible. You look sick.” He stops. “Say something,” he says. “Say something, goddammit, Jude.”

“你的气色糟透了。”安迪继续说，“你看起来一塌糊涂，一副生了病的样子。”安迪停下。“你说话啊，”安迪说，“说话啊，该死，裘德。”

　 He knows how this interaction is meant to go: Andy yells at him. He yells back at Andy. A détente, one that ultimately changes nothing, one that is a piece of pantomime, is reached: he will submit to something that isn’t a solution but that makes Andy feel better. And then something worse will happen, and the pantomime will be revealed to be just that, and he will be coerced into a treatment he doesn’t want. Harold will be called. He will be lectured and lectured and lectured and he will lie and lie and lie. The same cycle, the same circle, again and again and again, a churn as predictable as the men in the motel rooms coming in, fitting their sheets over the bed, having sex with him, leaving. And then the next one, and the next one. And the next day: the same. His life is a series of dreary patterns: sex, cutting, this, that. Visits to Andy, visits to the hospital. Not this time, he thinks. This is when he does something different; this is when he escapes.

他知道这段对话会演变成什么样：安迪吼他，他吼回去。然后他们会达成一个暂缓的协议。这个协议最终改变不了什么，只是一出哑剧罢了：他会答应一些事情，其实无法解决问题，但是会让安迪感觉好过一点。之后又会发生更糟的事，这出哑剧又会继续上演，他会被迫去做他不想做的治疗。哈罗德会被通知。这些人会不断对他说教、说教再说教，他则会撒谎、撒谎又撒谎。同样的循环，同样兜着圈子，一次一次又一次。完全可以预测这些折腾，就像走进汽车旅馆房间里的那些男人，把带来的床单铺在床上，跟他性交，离开。然后下一个，然后再下一个。然后下一天，还是一样。他的人生就是一连串枯燥乏味的模式：性交，割自己，这个，那个。去找安迪，去医院。这回不了，他心想。现在他要做点不一样的；这回他要脱逃了。

　 “You’re right, Andy,” he says, in as calm and unemotive a voice as he can summon, the voice he uses in the courtroom. “I’ve lost weight. And I’m sorry I haven’t come in earlier. I didn’t because I knew you’d get upset. But I’ve had a really bad intestinal flu, one I just can’t shake, but it’s ended. I’m eating, I promise. I know I look terrible. But I promise I’m working on it.” Ironically, he has been eating more in the past two weeks; he needs to get through the trial. He doesn’t want to faint while he’s in court.

“安迪，你说得没错，”他说，尽力拿出他在法庭上那种冷静、不带感情的声音，“我瘦了。我很抱歉我没有早点去找你看诊，因为我知道你会生气。但是我之前得了很严重的肠胃型流感，一直好不了，不过现在好了。我有在吃东西，我保证。我知道我气色很差，但是我保证我会努力改善。”讽刺的是，过去两周他真的一直有吃东西；他得撑过这回的出庭。他不希望在法庭上晕倒。

　 And after that, what can Andy say? He is suspicious, still. But there is nothing for him to do. “If you don’t come see me next week, I’m coming back,” Andy tells him before his secretary sees him out.

他讲完之后，安迪还能说什么？他还是很疑心，但也没法做什么。“如果你下星期不来看诊，我还会过来。”安迪在秘书送他离开之前说。

　 “Fine,” he says, still pleasantly. “The Tuesday after next. The trial’ll be over by then.”

“好，”他说，还是一副和善的模样，“下下个星期二吧。到时庭审就会结束了。”

　 After Andy leaves, he feels momentarily triumphant, as if he is a hero in a fairy tale and has just vanquished a dangerous enemy. But of course Andy isn’t his enemy, and he is being ridiculous, and his sense of victory is followed by despair. He feels, as he increasingly does, that his life is something that has happened to him, rather than something he has had any role in creating. He has never been able to imagine what his life might be; even as a child, even as he dreamed of other places, of other lives, he wasn’t able to visualize what those other places and lives would be; he had believed everything he had been taught about who he was and what he would become. But his friends, Ana, Lucien, Harold and Julia: They had imagined his life for him. They had seen him as something different than he had ever seen himself as; they had allowed him to believe in possibilities that he would never have conceived. He saw his life as the axiom of equality, but they saw it as another riddle, one with no name—Jude = x—and they had filled in the x in ways Brother Luke, the counselors at the home, Dr. Traylor had never written for him or encouraged him to write for himself. He wishes he could believe their proofs the way they do; he wishes they had shown him how they had arrived at their solutions. If he knew how they had solved the proof, he thinks, he would know why to keep living. All he needs is one answer. All he needs is to be convinced once. The proof needn’t be elegant; it need only be explicable.

安迪离开后，他感到短暂的胜利，好像他是童话故事里的英雄，刚刚击败一个危险的敌人。安迪当然不是他的敌人，他这样想很荒谬，并且紧接着胜利感而来的就是绝望。他现在越来越觉得，他的人生是被动接受，而不是自己开创出来的。他从来无法想象自己的人生会是什么样；即使是小时候，即使他梦想着会去其他地方，过另一种生活，他都无法想象其他地方或其他生活的画面；从小他就被教导他是什么样的人、未来会变成什么样，他也一直相信这些说法。但后来，他的朋友，还有安娜、吕西安、哈罗德和朱丽娅，帮他想象他的人生。他们看待他的眼光和他自己的想法截然不同；他们让他相信自己原来不可能想到的种种机会，他把自己的人生视为相等公理，但他们把他的人生视为另一个无名的谜语——裘德＝x。他们让这个x代表各式各样的事物，那是卢克修士、少年之家的辅导员、特雷勒医生从来不会替他写、也不会鼓励他自己写的。他真希望自己能像他们那样，相信他们的种种证明；他真希望他们演算给他看，看他们是如何解开这个题目的。如果他知道他们是怎么解开这个证明题，他心想，他就会知道该如何活下去。他唯一需要的就是一个解答。他唯一需要的就是被说服一次。这个证明的过程不必很厉害，只要可以理解就好了。

　 The trial arrives. He does well. At home that Friday, he wheels himself into the bedroom, into bed. He spends the entire weekend in a sleep that is unfamiliar and eerie, less a sleep than a glide, weightlessly moving between the realms of memory and fantasy, unconsciousness and wakefulness, anxiety and hopefulness. This is not the world of dreams, he thinks, but someplace else, and although he is aware at moments of waking—he sees the chandelier above him, the sheets around him, the sofa with its wood-fern print across from him—he is unable to distinguish when things have happened in his visions from when they have actually happened. He sees himself lifting a blade to his arm and slicing it down through his flesh, but what springs from the slit are coils of metal and stuffing and horsehair, and he realizes that he has undergone a mutation, that he is no longer even human, and he feels relief: he won’t have to break his promise to Harold after all; he has been enchanted; his culpability has vanished with his humanity.

庭审开始，他表现得很好。那个星期五他回家，坐在轮椅上进入卧室，爬到床上。整个周末他陷入一种不熟悉又怪异的睡眠中，不大像在睡觉，而是在滑翔，轻飘飘地在回忆和幻想的领域间移动，无知觉却又警觉不安，焦虑又充满希望。这不是梦的世界，他心想，而是别的地方。他知道自己有时会醒来片刻，看到头上的枝状吊灯、身上的床单、房间另一头有鳞毛蕨印花的沙发，但他无法辨识自己看到的事物是幻觉，还是确实存在。他看到自己拿刀片往手臂的肉割下去，但切口涌出来的是金属弹簧、填充物和马毛，然后他明白自己产生了突变。他现在不再是人类了，觉得松了一口气：他总算不必打破他对哈罗德的承诺了；他被施了魔法；随着他失去人类的身份，他的罪责也跟着消失了。

　 Is this real? the voice asks him, tiny and hopeful. Are we inanimate now?

这是真的吗？那个声音问他，小声而充满希望。我们现在是无生命的物体了吗？