《渺小一生》:接下來的事情他不太記得了

　 And then everything seemed to move very slowly and very fast, both at the same time. He hadn’t moved, he had been too petrified, but then there was the splintering of wood, and the room was filled with men holding flashlights high by their heads, so that he couldn’t see their faces. One of them came over to him and said something to him—he couldn’t hear for the noise, for his panic—and pulled up his underwear and helped him to his feet. “You’re safe now,” someone told him.

然后一切似乎變得很慢，同時又變得很快。他沒動，整個人嚇呆了，但接著是木頭碎裂聲，房間里充滿了男人，他們把手電筒高高舉在頭旁邊，他看不見他們的臉。其中一個走向他說了一些話（聲音太吵，他恐慌極了，根本聽不到），然后幫他拉起內(nèi)褲，幫著他站起來?！澳悻F(xiàn)在安全了?！庇袀€人告訴他。

　 He heard one of the men swear, and shout from the bathroom, “Get an ambulance right now,” and he wrestled free from the man who was holding him and ducked under another man’s arm and made three fast leaps to the bathroom, where he had seen Brother Luke with an extension cord around his neck, hanging from the hook in the center of the bathroom ceiling, his mouth open, his eyes shut, his face as gray as his beard. He had screamed, then, screamed and screamed, and then he was being dragged from the room, screaming Brother Luke’s name again and again.

他聽到其中一個男人咒罵，從浴室里大喊：“馬上叫救護車?！庇谑撬麙昝摿俗ブ哪莻€男人，從另一個人手臂底下鉆過去，迅速沖了三步來到浴室門口，看到一根長長的繩子繞著盧克修士的脖子，他嘴巴張開，眼睛緊閉，那張臉和他的胡子一樣灰。他尖叫起來，一次又一次地尖叫，接著他被拖出房間，仍叫著盧克修士的名字，一遍又一遍。

　 He remembers little of what followed. He was questioned again and again; he was taken to a doctor at a hospital who examined him and asked him how many times he had been raped, but he hadn’t been able to answer him: Had he been raped? He had agreed to this, to all of this; it had been his decision, and he had made it. “How many times have you had sex?” the doctor asked instead, and he said, “With Brother Luke, or with the others?” and the doctor had said, “What others?” And after he had finished telling him, the doctor had turned away from him and put his face in his hands and then looked back at him and had opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. And then he knew for certain that what he had been doing was wrong, and he felt so ashamed, so dirty that he had wanted to die.

接下來的事情他不太記得了。他被一再詢問；他被帶到醫(yī)院，有個醫(yī)生給他檢查，問他被強暴了多少次，但他沒辦法回答，他被強暴過嗎？是他同意做這個的，全都同意過。那是他的決定，是他做的決定?！澳阈越贿^多少次？”那個醫(yī)生改問。于是他說：“跟盧克修士，還是跟其他人？”那醫(yī)生說：“什么其他人？”等他講完，那個醫(yī)生轉(zhuǎn)過身，把臉埋在雙手里，等到醫(yī)生轉(zhuǎn)身回來看他，張開嘴巴要說話，卻一個字都沒吐出來。他很確定地知道他一直在做的那些事情是不對的，覺得很羞愧、很骯臟，簡直想死。

　 They took him to the home. They brought him his things: his books, the Navajo doll, the stones and twigs and acorns and the Bible with its pressed flowers he had carried with him from the monastery, his clothes that the other boys made fun of. At the home, they knew what he was, they knew what he had done, they knew he was ruined already, and so he wasn’t surprised when some of the counselors began doing to him what people had been doing to him for years. Somehow, the other boys also knew what he was. They called him names, the same names the clients had called him; they left him alone. When he approached a group of them, they would get up and run away.

他們送他去少年之家，把他的東西還給他：他的書，從修道院帶出來的納瓦霍玩偶、石頭、樹枝、橡實、那本夾著壓花的《圣經(jīng)》，還有害他被其他男生取笑的衣服。在少年之家，他們知道他以前是什么樣，知道他以前做過什么，知道他已經(jīng)被毀掉了，所以當某些輔導員開始對他做人們多年來對他做的事情時，他并不吃驚。不知怎的，其他男孩也知道他以前是什么樣。他們用難聽的話罵他，就跟顧客罵他的一樣；他們還孤立他，每回他走向一群人，他們就會散開來跑掉。

　 They hadn’t brought him his bag with razors, and so he had learned to improvise: he stole an aluminum can lid from the trash and sterilized it over the gas flame one afternoon when he was on kitchen duty and used that, stuffing it under his mattress. He stole a new lid every week.

他們沒把裝了刮胡刀片的袋子還給他，于是他學會就地取材：有天下午他在廚房幫忙時，從垃圾桶里偷來一個空罐頭的鋁蓋，在瓦斯火焰上消毒，用完就塞在床墊下。他每星期都偷一個新的鋁蓋。

　 He thought of Brother Luke every day. At the school, he skipped four grades; they allowed him to attend classes in math, in piano, in English literature, in French and German at the community college. His teachers asked him who had taught him what he knew, and he said his father had. “He did a good job,” his English teacher told him. “He must have been an excellent teacher,” and he had been unable to respond, and she had eventually moved on to the next student. At night, when he was with the counselors, he pretended that Brother Luke was standing right behind the wall, waiting to spring out in case things got too awful, which meant that everything that was happening to him were things Brother Luke knew he could bear.

他每天都想到盧克修士。在學校里，他跳了四級；他們讓他上數(shù)學課、鋼琴課、英國文學課，還去社區(qū)大學上法語和德語課。他的老師問他是誰教他這些的，他說是他父親?！八痰谜婧?，”他的英語老師告訴他，“他一定是個很棒的老師。”他不知道該怎么回應(yīng)，她只好接著轉(zhuǎn)向下一個學生。到了夜里，當他和輔導員在一起時，他會假裝盧克修士就站在墻后頭，萬一事情變得太可怕就會跳出來；這表示發(fā)生在他身上的所有事情，盧克修士知道他都能承受。

　 After he had come to trust Ana, he told her a few things about Brother Luke. But he was unwilling to tell her everything. He told no one. He had been a fool to follow Luke, he knew that. Luke had lied to him, he had done terrible things to him. But he wanted to believe that, through everything, in spite of everything, Luke really had loved him, that that part had been real: not a perversion, not a rationalization, but real. He didn’t think he could take Ana saying, as she said of the others, “He was a monster, Jude. They say they love you, but they say that so they can manipulate you, don’t you see? This is what pedophiles do; this is how they prey on children.” As an adult, he was still unable to decide what he thought about Luke. Yes, he was bad. But was he worse than the other brothers? Had he really made the wrong decision? Would it really have been better if he had stayed at the monastery? Would he have been more or less damaged by his time there? Luke’s legacies were in everything he did, in everything he was: his love of reading, of music, of math, of gardening, of languages—those were Luke. His cutting, his hatred, his shame, his fears, his diseases, his inability to have a normal sex life, to be a normal person—those were Luke, too. Luke had taught him how to find pleasure in life, and he had removed pleasure absolutely.

后來他逐漸信賴安娜，曾告訴她幾件盧克修士的事情。但他不愿意告訴她一切。誰都沒說。他跟著盧克太傻了，他知道。盧克跟他撒謊，對他做了很可怕的事情。但他想要相信，即使經(jīng)歷這一切，盧克還是真的愛他的，這一部分是真的：不是歪曲，不是合理化，而是真的。他不認為自己受得了安娜所說的（就像她說其他人那樣）：“裘德，他是惡魔。他們說他們愛你，但那樣說只是為了要操縱你，你還不明白嗎？戀童癖都是這樣；他們就是這樣拐騙小孩?！背赡旰?，他還是無法判定自己對盧克的想法。沒錯，他很壞。但他比其他修士壞嗎？他當初真的做錯決定了嗎？如果他留在修道院，真的會比較好嗎？他繼續(xù)待在修道院里，會被毀得更嚴重還是輕微一點？盧克影響了他所做的一切、影響了他整個人：他對閱讀、對音樂、對數(shù)學、對園藝、對語文的喜好，都是盧克遺留給他的。他割自己、他的怨恨、他的羞愧、他的恐懼，還有他的疾病，他沒有辦法有正常性生活，沒能力當個正常人，這些也是盧克給他的。盧克教他如何從生活中找到愉悅，也把愉悅?cè)繆Z走。

　 He was careful never to say his name aloud, but sometimes he thought it, and no matter how old he got, no matter how many years had passed, there would appear Luke’s face, smiling, conjured in an instant. He thought of Luke when the two of them were falling in love, when he was being seduced and had been too much of a child, too na?ve, too lonely and desperate for affection to know it. He was running to the greenhouse, he was opening the door, the heat and smell of flowers were surrounding him like a cape. It was the last time he had been so simply happy, the last time he had known such uncomplicated joy. “And here’s my beautiful boy!” Luke would cry. “Oh, Jude—I’m so happy to see you.”

他很小心不要說出盧克的名字，但有時他會想到這個名字，無論他變得多老、過去了多少年，只要一想到，剎那間眼前就浮現(xiàn)出盧克微笑的臉。他想到他和盧克“相愛”時，想到他被誘騙時，他年紀太小、太天真、太孤單、太想獲得關(guān)愛，什么都不懂。那時他奔向溫室，打開門，那熱氣和花香像斗篷般圍繞他。那是他最后一次擁有這么單純的快樂，最后一次領(lǐng)略到這么不復雜的歡欣?！拔移恋哪泻砹耍　北R克會喊道，“喔，裘德——真高興看到你?！?

　 [ V ]

第五部分

　 The Happy Years

快樂年代

　 1

1

　 THERE HAD BEEN a day, about a month after he turned thirty-eight, when Willem realized he was famous. Initially, this had fazed him less than he would have imagined, in part because he had always considered himself sort of famous—he and JB, that is. He’d be out downtown with someone, Jude or someone else, and somebody would come over to say hello to Jude, and Jude would introduce him: “Aaron, do you know Willem?” And Aaron would say, “Of course. Willem Ragnarsson. Everyone knows Willem,” but it wouldn’t be because of his work—it would be because Aaron’s former roommate’s sister had dated him at Yale, or he had two years ago done a reading for Aaron’s friend’s brother’s friend who was a playwright, or because Aaron, who was an artist, had once been in a group show with JB and Asian Henry Young, and he’d met Willem at the after-party. New York City, for much of his adulthood, had simply been an extension of college, where everyone had known him and JB, and the entire infrastructure of which sometimes seemed to have been lifted out of Boston and plunked down within a few blocks’ radius in lower Manhattan and outer Brooklyn. The four of them talked to the same—well, if not the same people, the same types of people at least, that they had in college, and in that realm of artists and actors and musicians, of course he was known, because he always had been. It wasn’t such a vast world; everyone knew everyone else.

有一天，就在滿38歲后大約一個月，威廉忽然發(fā)現(xiàn)自己成名了。一開始，他沒有原先想象中的那么慌亂，一部分原因是他一直覺得自己已經(jīng)算名人了（他和杰比都算是）。有時他跟誰一起出門，裘德或其他人，在曼哈頓下城熱鬧的市中心，有人走過來跟裘德打招呼，然后裘德介紹他：“艾倫，你認識威廉嗎？”艾倫說：“當然了。威廉·拉格納松。大家都認識威廉?！钡皇且驗樗墓ぷ?，而是因為艾倫以前室友的妹妹在耶魯時跟他交往過，或者他兩年前幫艾倫朋友哥哥的劇作家朋友演出過劇本朗讀會，或者因為艾倫是藝術(shù)家，曾跟杰比和亞裔亨利·楊一起辦過聯(lián)展，在開幕會后的派對上認識了威廉。在他成年以后的大部分時間，紐約市只不過是大學時代的延伸，每個人都認識他和杰比，而且有時候，好像他們大學的整個基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施都被從波士頓搬起來，“砰”的一聲放在曼哈頓下城和布魯克林周邊的那幾個街區(qū)內(nèi)似的。他們四個人平常來往的，還是跟大學時代同樣的人（好吧，如果不是同樣的人，至少是同類型的人），而在那個藝術(shù)家、演員和音樂家的圈子里，大家當然都認識他，因為本來就是這樣。那個世界并不大；大家都認識彼此。

　 Of the four of them, only Jude, and to some degree Malcolm, had experience living in another world, the real world, the one populated with people who did the necessary stuff of life: making laws, and teaching, and healing people, and solving problems, and handling money, and selling and buying things (the bigger surprise, he always thought, was not that he knew Aaron but that Jude did). Just before he turned thirty-seven, he had taken a role in a quiet film titled The Sycamore Court in which he played a small-town Southern lawyer who was finally coming out of the closet. He’d taken the part to work with the actor playing his father, who was someone he admired and who in the film was taciturn and casually vituperative, a man disapproving of his own son and made unkind by his own disappointments. As part of his research, he had Jude explain to him what, exactly, he did all day, and as he listened, he found himself feeling slightly sad that Jude, whom he considered brilliant, brilliant in ways he would never understand, was spending his life doing work that sounded so crushingly dull, the intellectual equivalent of housework: cleaning and sorting and washing and tidying, only to move on to the next house and have to begin all over. He didn’t say this, of course, and on one Saturday he met Jude at Rosen Pritchard and looked through his folders and papers and wandered around the office as Jude wrote.

在他們四個里頭，只有裘德，還有馬爾科姆（在某種程度上），體驗過在另一個世界、真實的世界生活，里頭的人從事生活必需的各種工作：制定法律、教書、治病、解決問題，還有管理金錢跟買賣東西（他總覺得，他認識艾倫并不讓人驚訝，裘德認識艾倫才比較讓人驚訝）。就在他滿37歲前夕，他接了一部內(nèi)斂的電影《梧桐法院》，飾演一名最后出柜的南方小城律師。演他父親的那位演員他很欣賞，片中的父親不茍言笑，常會出言斥責，他對自己的兒子不滿，且因為自己的挫折而變得刻薄。為了準備自己的演出，他請裘德解釋自己每天到底在做什么，他聽的時候，不自覺地有點為裘德難過起來，因為他覺得裘德很聰明，而且是他永遠無法理解的那種聰明，但裘德把人生花在這些聽起來乏味至極、簡直像智慧版女傭的工作上：打掃、分類、洗滌、收納，做完了再到下一家重新開始。他當然沒把這想法說出來。有個星期六，他去羅森·普理查德找裘德，瀏覽他的檔案夾和文件，然后趁著裘德在寫東西時，在他的辦公室閑逛。

　 “Well, what do you think?” Jude asked, and leaned back in his chair and grinned at him, and he smiled back and said, “Pretty impressive,” because it was, in its own way, and Jude had laughed. “I know what you’re thinking, Willem,” he’d said. “It’s okay. Harold thinks it, too. ‘Such a waste,’ ” he said in Harold’s voice. “ ‘Such a waste, Jude.’ ”

“好吧，你覺得怎么樣？”裘德問，在椅子上往后靠，朝他咧嘴笑。他也露出微笑說：“令人刮目相看?！币驗樵谀硞€方面的確是，裘德大笑。“我知道你在想什么，威廉，”他說，“沒關(guān)系，哈羅德也是這樣想的。‘太浪費了，’”他模仿哈羅德的口氣，“‘太浪費了，裘德?！?

　 “That’s not what I’m thinking,” he protested, although really, he had been: Jude was always bemoaning his own lack of imagination, his own unswervable sense of practicality, but Willem had never seen him that way. And it did seem a waste: not that he was at a corporate firm but that he was in law at all, when really, he thought, a mind like Jude’s should be doing something else. What, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t this. He knew it was ridiculous, but he had never truly believed that Jude’s attending law school would actually result in his becoming a lawyer: he had always imagined that at some point he’d give it up and do something else, like be a math professor, or a voice teacher, or (although he had recognized the irony, even then) a psychologist, because he was such a good listener and always so comforting to his friends. He didn’t know why he clung to this idea of Jude, even after it was clear that he loved what he did and excelled at it.

“我不是那樣想的?！彼棺h，但其實他就是這樣想的。裘德總是為自己缺乏想象力惋惜，為自己改不掉的務(wù)實惋惜，但威廉從來沒這么看他。而且的確是很浪費：不是他待在一家大型律師事務(wù)所，而是他居然會從事法律方面的工作。其實，他心想，像裘德這么聰明的人，實在應(yīng)該做點別的工作。他不知道做什么，但不會是這個。他知道這樣想很荒謬，但他原先一直不太相信裘德讀了法學院之后，到頭來會變成律師。他一直想象裘德讀到某個時候就會放棄、改做別的，比如當數(shù)學教授，或是歌唱老師，或是精神科醫(yī)生（雖然他當時就覺得很諷刺），因為他很善于傾聽，而且總是很會安慰朋友。他不明白自己為什么總是有這個想法，即使顯然后來裘德很熱愛自己的工作，也做得很出色。

　 The Sycamore Court had been an unexpected hit and had won Willem the best reviews he’d ever had, and award nominations, and its release, paired with a larger, flashier film that he had shot two years earlier but had been delayed in postproduction, had created a certain moment that even he recognized would transform his career. He had always chosen his roles wisely—if he could be said to have superior talent in anything, he always thought it was that: his taste for parts—but until that year, there had never been a time in which he felt that he was truly secure, that he could talk about films he’d like to do when he was in his fifties or sixties. Jude had always told him that he had an overdeveloped sense of circumspection about his career, that he was far better along than he thought, but it had never felt that way; he knew he was respected by his peers and by critics, but a part of him always feared that it would end abruptly and without warning. He was a practical person in the least practical of careers, and after every job he booked, he would tell his friends he would never book another, that this was certain to be the last, partly as a way of staving off his fears—if he acknowledged the possibility, it was less likely to happen—and partly to give voice to them, because they were real.

結(jié)果《梧桐法院》意外地大受歡迎，為威廉贏得史無前例的好評和獎項提名。再加上電影上映時，他兩年前拍攝的另一部較大、較炫的電影，因為后期制作拖延，竟碰巧同時上映，讓他頗出風頭，連他自己都看得出來這會改變他的演員生涯。他接戲向來很謹慎——如果硬要說他有什么過人的才華，他覺得就是他對角色的品位——但在那一年之前，他從來不曾擁有真正的安全感，不覺得自己到五六十歲還有機會演戲。裘德總跟他說他對自己的事業(yè)有種過分的謹慎，其實他比他自以為的要好太多了，但他從來不這么覺得；他知道自己很受同行和評論家尊重，但他心中有一部分始終擔心自己的演員生涯會毫無預(yù)警地突然告終。他是個實際的人，卻身在一個最不實際的行業(yè)，每次接到一個角色后，他就會告訴朋友他永遠接不到下一個，說他很確定這是最后一次了，一部分是為了暫時推遲他的恐懼（如果他說出這個可能性，那事情就比較不會發(fā)生），一部分則是表達自己的恐懼，因為那種感覺是真的。

　 Only later, when he and Jude were alone, would he allow himself to truly worry aloud. “What if I never work again?” he would ask Jude.

不過后來，他只有在和裘德獨處時，才敢把自己的憂慮說出來?！叭绻以僖步硬坏焦ぷ髁四?？”他會問裘德。

　 “That won’t happen,” Jude would say.

“不會的?！濒玫聲f。

　 “But what if it does?”

“如果會呢？”

　 “Well,” said Jude, seriously, “in the extraordinarily unlikely event that you never act again, then you’ll do something else. And while you figure it out, you’ll move in with me.”

“這個嘛，”裘德認真地說，“這個情況極度不可能，但如果你再也不能演戲，那你可以去做別的。而且在你摸索的時候，你就搬來跟我住。”