《渺小一生》:當時，他不相信這些臺詞

　 He thought frequently these days of a play he had done in graduate school, by a beetley, plodding woman in the playwriting division who had gone on to have great success as a writer of spy movies but who in graduate school had tried to write Pinteresque dramas about unhappy married couples. If This Were a Movie was about an unhappy married couple—he was a professor of classical music; she was a librettist—who lived in New York. Because the couple was in their forties (at the time, a gray-colored land, impossibly far and unimaginably grim), they were devoid of humor and in a constant state of yearning for their younger selves, back when life had actually seemed so full of promise and hope, back when they had been romantic, back when life itself had been a romance. He had played the husband, and while he had long ago realized that it had been, really, an awful play (it had included lines like “This isn’t Tosca, you know! This is life!”), he had never forgotten the final monologue he had delivered in the second act, when the wife announces that she wants to leave, that she doesn’t feel fulfilled in their marriage, that she’s convinced that someone better awaits her:

最近他常常想起研究生時期演的一出戲，是戲劇寫作系一個像甲蟲一樣單調(diào)乏味的女生寫的。她后來成為非常成功的間諜片編劇，但她在研究生時期寫的都關(guān)于不快樂的夫妻，是帶有品特風格的劇本?！度绻@是電影》這出戲中的先生是古典音樂教授，太太是音樂劇的詞作者。兩夫妻住在紐約，都四十來歲（當時那是一片灰色的土地，遠得不得了且難以想象地黯淡），兩人都缺乏幽默感，且長期懷念年輕時的自己，回想當時人生充滿前途與希望，兩人都很浪漫，而人生本身就是一部浪漫傳奇。他演那位丈夫，他早就知道這出戲很爛（里頭的臺詞如：“這不是《托斯卡》，你知道！這是人生！”），但他始終忘不了他在第二幕最后的那段獨白。當時那位太太宣布她想離開，說她不認為自己在這段婚姻里得到了滿足，她相信還有更好的人在等著她：

　 SETH: But don’t you understand, Amy? You’re wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that’s it. Maybe four, if you’re very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.

賽斯：難道你不明白嗎，艾美？你錯了，伴侶關(guān)系從來不會提供一切，而是提供某些東西。一個人身上可能有你想要的，比方說性愛的吸引力、美好的對話、財務(wù)上的資助、思想的契合，或善意、忠實。你可以挑選三種。三種——就這樣。如果你很幸運，或許可以挑四種。其他的你得去別處尋找。只有在電影里，你才會找到一個提供一切的人。但現(xiàn)在我們不是在演電影。在真實世界里，你得搞清楚哪三樣特質(zhì)是你想共度一生的，然后你從另一個人身上找尋其他的特質(zhì)。這才是真實的人生。你不明白這是個陷阱嗎？如果你想找到一切都有的，最后你就什么都沒有了。

　 AMY: [crying] So what did you pick?

艾美：[哭著]那你挑了哪些？

　 SETH: I don’t know. [beat] I don’t know.

賽斯：我不知道。[捶桌子]我不知道。

　 At the time, he hadn’t believed these words, because at the time, everything really did seem possible: he was twenty-three, and everyone was young and attractive and smart and glamorous. Everyone thought they would be friends for decades, forever. But for most people, of course, that hadn’t happened. As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren’t necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm, he thought, had chosen reliability, and competence (Sophie was intimidatingly efficient), and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness. Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people’s relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What’s going on there? Now, though, as an almost-forty-eight-year-old, he saw people’s relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples—in restaurants, on the street, at parties—and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What’s missing in you that you want someone else to provide? He now viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had to offer and had chosen to value it as well.

當時，他不相信這些臺詞，因為在當時，要找到具備一切的人似乎是可能的；他才23歲，身邊的每個人都年輕、有吸引力、聰明又迷人。每個人都認為他們會是幾十年的朋友、永遠的朋友。但對大部分人來說，這樣的事情當然不曾發(fā)生。當你年紀漸長，就知道你在挑一起睡覺或交往的人時所重視的特質(zhì)，未必是你想要一起生活、相處、天天與之共度的人的特質(zhì)。如果你很聰明、很幸運，你會學到這點并接受它。你摸清什么對你是最重要的并設(shè)法尋找，你學會了務(wù)實。他們每個人的選擇都不一樣：羅蒙選擇了美貌、貼心、順從；馬爾科姆，在他看來，選擇了可靠、能力（蘇菲的效率很嚇人），以及審美觀的契合。他呢？他選擇了友誼、對話、善良、思想。三十多歲時，他看著某些人的伴侶關(guān)系，提出一個曾在無數(shù)晚餐派對上激起討論的問題：為什么他們會在一起？不過現(xiàn)在，他快要48歲了，他覺得伴侶關(guān)系反映了每個人最強烈、但無法清楚表達的渴望，他們的希望和不安全感化為實體，成了另一個人。現(xiàn)在，他在餐廳、在街上、在派對中看著一對對伴侶，會很好奇：為什么你們兩個會在一起？你覺得你最不可或缺的是什么？你缺了什么是你希望另一個人提供的？現(xiàn)在他認為，成功的伴侶關(guān)系，就是雙方都能看出對方最能提供、也是自己最重視的特質(zhì)。

　 And perhaps not coincidentally, he also found himself doubting therapy—its promises, its premises—for the first time. He had never before questioned that therapy was, at worst, a benign treatment: when he was younger, he had even considered it a form of luxury, this right to speak about his life, essentially uninterrupted, for fifty minutes proof that he had somehow become someone whose life deserved such lengthy consideration, such an indulgent listener. But now, he was conscious of his own impatience with what he had begun to see as the sinister pedantry of therapy, its suggestion that life was somehow reparable, that there existed a societal norm and that the patient was being guided toward conforming to it.

或許這并非出于巧合，他發(fā)現(xiàn)自己生平第一次懷疑心理咨詢的效果及假設(shè)。之前，他向來認為心理咨詢至少是一種溫和的治療，不曾質(zhì)疑。他年輕時，甚至認為心理咨詢是一種奢侈，因為這是一種權(quán)利，能讓你暢談自己的人生五十分鐘，基本上不會被打斷，這證明他已經(jīng)成為一個人物，他的人生值得這樣花時間思考、值得有人寬容地傾聽。但現(xiàn)在，他意識到自己的不耐煩，覺得心理咨詢有一種陰險的迂腐，暗示人生是可以補救的，而且有一種社會常態(tài)存在，要引導病人符合這樣的常態(tài)。

　 “You seem to be holding back, Willem,” said Idriss—his shrink now for years—and he was quiet. Therapy, therapists, promised a rigorous lack of judgment (but wasn’t that an impossibility, to talk to a person and not be judged?), and yet behind every question was a nudge, one that pushed you gently but inexorably toward a recognition of some flaw, toward solving a problem you hadn’t known existed. Over the years, he’d had friends who had been convinced that their childhoods were happy, that their parents were basically loving, until therapy had awakened them to the fact that they had not been, that they were not. He didn’t want that to happen to him; he didn’t want to be told that his contentment wasn’t contentment after all but delusion.

“威廉，你好像有所隱瞞。”他看了好幾年的心理咨詢師伊德里斯說，他沒回應(yīng)。心理咨詢、心理咨詢師，都保證了絕少的批判（但是去跟一個人談，卻不被批判，不是根本不可能嗎？）。然而，在每個問題后面都是一個小小的督促，輕推你一下，無可避免地促使你認知到某些缺陷，解決一個你原先不知道存在的問題。多年來，他有些朋友一直相信自己的童年很快樂，父母基本上很慈愛，直到心理咨詢喚醒他們，讓他們認識到自己并不快樂，父母也并不慈愛。他不希望這樣的事情發(fā)生在自己身上，他不想讓人告訴他說他的滿足根本不是滿足，而是錯覺。

　 “And how do you feel about the fact that Jude doesn’t ever want to have sex?” Idriss had asked.

“那你對于裘德根本不想做愛的事實，有什么感覺？”伊德里斯問。

　 “I don’t know,” he’d said. But he did know, and he said it: “I wish he wanted to, for his sake. I feel sad that he’s missing one of life’s greatest experiences. But I think he’s earned the right not to.” Across from him, Idriss was silent. The truth was, he didn’t want Idriss to try to diagnose what was wrong with his relationship. He didn’t want to be told how to repair it. He didn’t want to try to make Jude, or himself, do something neither of them wanted to because they were supposed to. Their relationship was, he felt, singular but workable: he didn’t want to be taught otherwise. He sometimes wondered if it was simple lack of creativity—his and Jude’s—that had made them both think that their relationship had to include sex at all. But it had seemed, then, the only way to express a deeper level of feeling. The word “friend” was so vague, so undescriptive and unsatisfying—how could he use the same term to describe what Jude was to him that he used for India or the Henry Youngs? And so they had chosen another, more familiar form of relationship, one that hadn’t worked. But now they were inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt truer and less constraining.

“我不知道?！彼f。其實他知道，于是他說，“我真希望他想要，為了他自己好。我很難過他失去人生最棒的體驗之一。但我想，他已經(jīng)得到了不做愛的權(quán)利?！痹谒麑γ妫恋吕锼贡３殖聊?。其實他不希望伊德里斯試圖診斷他的伴侶關(guān)系有什么問題。他不想要別人告訴他如何修補。他不想逼裘德或他自己去做他們兩個都不想做的事情，只因為他們應(yīng)該這么做。他們的伴侶關(guān)系，他覺得，是獨特而可行的；他不想要別人來指手畫腳地跟他說不行。他有時很好奇，會不會只是因為他和裘德缺乏創(chuàng)意，才會讓兩人都覺得“朋友”這個字眼太模糊、太難以描述、太難滿足了。他怎么有辦法將用在印蒂亞或兩個亨利·楊身上的字眼，拿來描述裘德對他的意義？所以他們選擇了另一個、一般人比較熟悉的伴侶形式，但是行不通?，F(xiàn)在他們發(fā)明了自己的伴侶形態(tài)，沒有被歷史正式承認，也不是詩歌中傳誦不朽的，但感覺上更真實，也更不受限。

　 He didn’t, however, mention his growing skepticism about therapy to Jude, because some part of him did still believe in it for people who were truly ill, and Jude—he was finally able to admit to himself—was truly ill. He knew that Jude hated going to the therapist; after the first few sessions he had come home so quiet, so withdrawn, that Willem had to remind himself that he was making Jude go for his own good.

不過，他沒有跟裘德提起他對心理咨詢越來越存疑，因為一部分的他還是相信心理咨詢對真正心理有問題的人管用，而裘德是真的心理有問題（他終于可以跟自己承認了）。他知道裘德痛恨做心理咨詢；他前幾次去過之后，回家總是很安靜、很沉默寡言，搞得威廉還得提醒自己，他是為了裘德好，才逼他去的。

　 Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. “How’s it been with Dr. Loehmann?” he asked one night about a month after Jude had begun.

最后他終于憋不住了?！澳愀鷬渎t(yī)生談得怎么樣了？”他有天晚上問他，那是裘德開始做心理咨詢的一個月后。

　 Jude sighed. “Willem,” he said, “how much longer do you want me to go?”

裘德嘆氣?！巴彼f，“你希望我繼續(xù)去多久？”

　 “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“不知道，”他說，“我其實沒想過這個問題?！?

　 Jude had studied him. “So you were thinking I’d go forever,” he said.

裘德審視著他，“所以你覺得我得一直去?！彼f。

　 “Well,” he said. (He actually had been thinking that.) “Is it really so awful?” He paused. “Is it Loehmann? Should we get you someone else?”

“這個嘛，”他說（他的確是這么想的），“狀況真有那么可怕嗎？”他暫停了一下，“是因為婁曼醫(yī)生嗎？我們要不要找別的心理醫(yī)生？”

　 “No, it’s not Loehmann,” Jude said. “It’s the process itself.”

“不，不是婁曼的問題，”裘德說，“是那個過程本身?！?

　 He sighed, too. “Look,” he said. “I know this is hard for you. I know it is. But—give it a year, Jude, okay? A year. And try hard. And then we’ll see.” Jude had promised.

他也嘆氣了?！奥犖艺f，”他開口，“我知道這對你來說很困難。我知道。但是，裘德，先試個一年好嗎？一年。努力看看。然后我們再來評估?！濒玫麓饝?yīng)了。

　 And then in the spring he had been away, filming, and he and Jude had been talking one night when Jude said, “Willem, in the interest of full disclosure, I have something I have to tell you.”

到了春天，他又出遠門拍戲。某天晚上他和裘德通電話，裘德說：“威廉，為了完全坦白，我有件事情要告訴你。”

　 “Okay,” he said, gripping the phone tighter. He had been in London, shooting Henry & Edith. He was playing—twelve years too early and sixty pounds too thin, Kit pointed out, but who was counting?—Henry James, at the beginning of his friendship with Edith Wharton. The film was actually something of a road-trip movie, shot mostly in France and southern England, and he was working his way through his final scenes.

“好。”他說，將手上的電話抓得更緊。他當時在倫敦拍《亨利與伊迪絲》。他飾演剛開始與伊迪絲·華頓展開友誼的亨利·詹姆斯（基特指出，年輕了十二歲，體重輕了快六十磅，但誰會去算呢？）。這部電影其實算公路電影，大部分在法國和英格蘭南部拍攝，他當時正在拍最后幾場戲。

　 “I’m not proud of this,” he heard Jude say. “But I’ve missed my last four sessions with Dr. Loehmann. Or rather—I’ve been going, but not going.”

“我并不引以為榮，”他聽到裘德說，“不過之前跟婁曼醫(yī)生的四次約診，我都沒去。或者應(yīng)該說——我去了，但是沒去?！?