《渺小一生》:這是個很棒的故事

　 “It wasn’t that bad, Harold,” he smiled. “I have very fond memories of this place, actually.” And then the mood turned again, and we both stood there staring at the building and thinking of you, and him, and all the years between this moment and the one in which I had met him, so young, so terribly young, and at that time just another student, terrifically smart and intellectually nimble, but nothing more, not the person I could have ever imagined him becoming for me.

“沒有那么糟糕啦，哈羅德，”他微笑，“其實呢，這個地方有我非常珍愛的回憶。”他的心情又轉(zhuǎn)變了，我們站在那里，瞪著那棟大樓，想到你，想到他，還從這一刻往前推、直到我認識他的那一刻。當時他那么年輕，年輕得不得了，只是我眾多學生之一，超級聰明，腦子靈光，但也就如此而已。我絕對想象不到他有一天會變得對我這么重要。

　 And then he said—he was trying to make me feel better, too; we were each performing for the other—“Did I ever tell you about the time we jumped off the roof to the fire escape outside our bedroom?”

然后他也想讓我開心一點，我們都在為對方表演。他說：“我跟你說過那回我們從屋頂跳下來，跳到臥室外頭的防火梯上嗎？”

　 “What?” I asked, genuinely appalled. “No, you never did. I think I would have remembered that.”

“什么？”我問，真的嚇到了，“沒有，你沒說過。要是說過的話，我想我會記得的?！?

　 But although I could never have imagined the person he would become for me, I knew how he would leave me: despite all my hopes, and pleas, and insinuations, and threats, and magical thoughts, I knew. And five months later—June twelfth, a day with no significant anniversaries associated with it, a nothing day—he did. My phone rang, and although it wasn’t a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew. And on the other end was JB, and he was breathing oddly, in rapid bursts, and even before he spoke, I knew. He was fifty-three, fifty-three for not even two months. He had injected an artery with air, and had given himself a stroke, and although Andy had told me his death would have been quick, and painless, I later looked it up online and found he had lied to me: it would have meant sticking himself at least twice, with a needle whose gauge was as thick as a hummingbird’s beak; it would have been agonizing.

盡管我從沒想到他會變得對我這么重要，但我知道他會怎么離開我：就算我一再希望、一再懇求、一再暗示，還有威脅和異想天開，但我就是知道。五個月后，六月十二日（不是什么特殊的周年紀念日，就只是一個不重要的日子），他離開了。我的電話響起，時間不是晚得離譜，事后回想起來也看不出任何預兆，但當時我知道，我就是知道。電話另一頭是杰比，他呼吸不穩(wěn)，非常急促，而他還沒開口，我就知道了。他死于53歲，離滿53歲還不到兩個月。他把空氣注射到動脈里，讓自己中風。雖然安迪跟我說他應該死得非常快，沒有痛苦，但我后來上網(wǎng)查，發(fā)現(xiàn)安迪沒跟我說實話：那表示他用一根針頭粗得像蜂鳥喙的注射針，朝自己扎了至少兩次，而且會痛苦不堪。

　 When I went to his apartment, finally, it was so neat, with his office boxed up and the refrigerator emptied and everything—his will, letters—tiered on the dining-room table, like place cards at a wedding. Richard, JB, Andy, all of your and his old friends: they were all around, constantly, all of us moving about and around one another, shocked but not shocked, surprised only that we were so surprised, devastated and beaten and mostly, helpless. Had we missed something? Could we have done something different? After his service—which was crowded, with his friends and your friends and their parents and families, with his law school classmates, with his clients, with the staff and patrons of the arts nonprofit, with the board of the food kitchen, with a huge population of Rosen Pritchard employees, past and present, including Meredith, who came with an almost completely discombobulated Lucien (who lives, cruelly, to this day, although in a nursing home in Connecticut), with our friends, with people I wouldn’t have expected: Kit and Emil and Philippa and Robin—Andy came to me, crying, and confessed that he thought things had started really going wrong for him after he’d told him he was leaving his practice, and that it was his fault. I hadn’t even known Andy was leaving—he had never mentioned it to me—but I comforted him, and told him it wasn’t his fault, not at all, that he had always been good to him, that I had always trusted him.

最后我終于去了他那間公寓，里頭很整潔，他的書房里堆著一箱箱東西，冰箱被清空了，他的遺囑和留下的信件疊放在餐廳的桌上，像是婚禮的座位卡。理查德、杰比、安迪，你和他所有的老朋友都陸續(xù)趕來。我們走來走去，彼此招呼、交談，震驚卻又不是那么震驚，只驚訝我們居然會這么驚訝、這么難過、這么挫敗，尤其是這么無助。我們漏掉了什么嗎？我們可以做什么改變這個結(jié)果嗎？他的葬禮來了好多人，有他的朋友、你的朋友和這些朋友的父母及家人，有他的法學院同學，有他的客戶，有那個非營利藝術(shù)團體的員工和贊助人，有那個慈善廚房的委員會成員，有一大堆羅森·普理查德律師事務所過去跟現(xiàn)任員工。梅瑞迪絲也帶著幾乎完全糊涂的呂西安過來（殘酷的是，他還活到現(xiàn)在，不過已經(jīng)住進康涅狄格州的一家老人院），還有我們的朋友，以及我沒想到的一些人，像基特、埃米爾、菲麗帕和羅賓。葬禮過后，安迪過來找我，哭著坦承，他覺得事情真正不對勁，是從他告訴他自己準備退休開始的，說都是他的錯。我之前根本不知道安迪打算退休，他從來沒跟我說過，但我安慰他，說不是他的錯，完全不是，說他一直對他很好，而我一直信任他。

　 “At least Willem isn’t here,” we said to one another. “At least Willem isn’t here to see this.”

“至少威廉不在了，”我們彼此安慰，“至少威廉不會看到這個?！?

　 Though, of course—if you were here, wouldn’t he still be as well?

當然——如果你還在的話，他不也還會活著？

　 But if I cannot say that I didn’t know how he would die, I can say that there was much I didn’t know, not at all, not after all. I didn’t know that Andy would be dead three years later of a heart attack, or Richard two years after that of brain cancer. You all died so young: you, Malcolm, him. Elijah, of a stroke, when he was sixty; Citizen, when he was sixty as well, of pneumonia. In the end there was, and is, only JB, to whom he left the house in Garrison, and whom we see often—there, or in the city, or in Cambridge. JB has a serious boyfriend now, a very good man named Tomasz, a specialist in Japanese medieval art at Sotheby’s, whom we like very much; I know both you and he would have as well. And although I feel bad for myself, for us—of course—I feel most bad most often for JB, deprived of you all, left to live the beginnings of old age by himself, with new friends, certainly, but without most of his friends who had known him since he was a child. At least I have known him since he was twenty-two; off and on, perhaps, but neither of us count the off years.

我沒辦法說我沒想到他會死，但我可以說，當時有太多我沒想到的事情，一點都沒想到。我沒想到安迪會在三年后死于心臟病發(fā)，也沒想到過了兩年，理查德會死于腦腫瘤。你們都那么年輕就死了：你、馬爾科姆、他。伊利亞是60歲中風過世；西提任也是60歲，死于肺炎。到最后只剩下杰比，加里森的房子留給了他，現(xiàn)在我們還常見面——在加里森、紐約市區(qū)或劍橋市。杰比現(xiàn)在有一個認真交往的男朋友，是個很好的人，叫托馬斯，是蘇富比拍賣公司的日本中世紀美術(shù)專家，我們非常喜歡他；我知道你和他也會非常喜歡他的。我當然為自己、為我們夫妻難過，但我最常為杰比感到難過。他失去了你們?nèi)齻€，只剩他自己面對老年的開始，他當然有新朋友，但大多數(shù)成年前認識的朋友都沒了。至少我是在他22歲認識他的；或許中間有時疏遠，但那些疏遠的年代，我們都不去算了。

　 And now JB is sixty-one and I am eighty-four, and he has been dead for six years and you have been dead for nine. JB’s most recent show was called “Jude, Alone,” and was of fifteen paintings of just him, depicting imagined moments from the years after you died, from those nearly three years he managed to hang on without you. I have tried, but I cannot look at them: I try, and try, but I cannot.

現(xiàn)在杰比61歲，我84歲了。而他已經(jīng)過世六年，你也過世九年了。杰比最近的一次個展名叫“裘德，孤單”，里頭有十五件畫作，只畫了他，描繪杰比想象中、你死后那段時間的一些時刻：在那近三年里，他設(shè)法在沒有你的世界撐下去。我試過了，但我實在沒辦法看那些作品；我試了又試，但就是沒辦法。

　 And there were still more things I didn’t know. He was right: we had only moved to New York for him, and after we had settled his estate—Richard was his executor, though I helped him—we went home to Cambridge, to be near the people who had known us for so long. I’d had enough of cleaning and sorting—we had, along with Richard and JB and Andy, gone through all of his personal papers (there weren’t many), and clothes (a heartbreak itself, watching his suits get narrower and narrower) and your clothes; we had looked through your files at Lantern House together, which took many days because we kept stopping to cry or exclaim or pass around a picture none of us had seen before—but when we were back home, back in Cambridge, the very movement of organizing had become reflexive, and I sat down one Saturday to clean out the bookcases, an ambitious project that I soon lost interest in, when I found, tucked between two books, two envelopes, our names in his handwriting. I opened my envelope, my heart thrumming, and saw my name—Dear Harold—and read his note from decades ago, from the day of his adoption, and cried, sobbed, really, and then I slipped the disc into the computer and heard his voice, and although I would have cried anyway for its beauty, I cried more because it was his. And then Julia came home and found me and read her note and we cried all over again.

還有其他事情是我原先沒想到的。他當初猜得沒錯，我們搬到紐約完全是為了他，所以處理完他的遺產(chǎn)后（理查德是他的遺囑執(zhí)行人，我也幫了忙），我們就搬回劍橋市的家，離我們的老友近一點。之前我做了太多整理和分類的工作——我和理查德、杰比、安迪一起處理了他所有的私人文件（并不多）和衣服（看著他的西裝越來越窄，真是讓人心碎），還有你的衣服；我們一起看過你在燈籠屋的檔案，花了很多天，因為我們總是停下來哭或大喊或傳閱一張我們沒人看過的照片。等我們回到劍橋市的家，整理東西成了一種本能。有個星期六，我坐下來清理書柜，這個計劃一開始充滿野心，但很快我就失去了興趣。此時我發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個信封，塞在兩本書之間，上頭是他的筆跡，寫著我們夫妻各自的名字。我打開我的信封，心跳加速，然后看到我的名字——親愛的哈羅德。閱讀他二十幾年前在收養(yǎng)那天寫的短箋，我哭了，其實是啜泣。然后我把那張光碟放進電腦里，聽著他的聲音。光是聽到那么美的聲音，我無論如何就會哭了，但我主要是因為聽到他的聲音而哭。后來朱麗婭回家看到我，也讀了她的那張短箋，我們又哭了一次。

　 And it wasn’t until a few weeks after that that I was able to open the letter he had left us on his table. I hadn’t been able to bear it earlier; I wasn’t sure I would be able to bear it now. But I did. It was eight pages long, and typed, and it was a confession: of Brother Luke, and Dr. Traylor, and what had happened to him. It took us several days to read, because although it was brief, it was also endless, and we had to keep putting the pages down and walking away from them, and then bracing each other—Ready?—and sitting down and reading some more.

又過了幾個星期，我才打開他放在格林街公寓餐桌上留給我們夫妻的那封信。之前我實在沒辦法鼓起勇氣；其實現(xiàn)在我也不確定自己受得了。但我還是打開來讀。那封信有八頁，是打字機打印的，那是一份告解：有關(guān)盧克修士，有關(guān)特雷勒醫(yī)生，還有曾經(jīng)發(fā)生在他身上的事情。我們花了好幾天才看完。雖然他寫得很簡略，但同時也漫長得仿佛永無止境，我們不時得放下來離開，然后彼此打氣——準備好了嗎？坐下來再看一點。

　 “I’m sorry,” he wrote. “Please forgive me. I never meant to deceive you.”

“對不起，”他寫道，“請原諒我。我從來無意欺瞞你們?！?

　 I still don’t know what to say about that letter, I still cannot think of it. All those answers I had wanted about who and why he was, and now those answers only torment. That he died so alone is more than I can think of; that he died thinking that he owed us an apology is worse; that he died still stubbornly believing everything he was taught about himself—after you, after me, after all of us who loved him—makes me think that my life has been a failure after all, that I have failed at the one thing that counted. It is then that I talk to you the most, that I go downstairs late at night and stand before Willem Listening to Jude Tell a Story, which now hangs above our dining-room table: “Willem,” I ask you, “do you feel like I do? Do you think he was happy with me?” Because he deserved happiness. We aren’t guaranteed it, none of us are, but he deserved it. But you only smile, not at me but just past me, and you never have an answer. It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one’s mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

關(guān)于那封信，我至今還是不知道要說些什么，還是無法去想。所有關(guān)于他是什么樣的人、為什么，現(xiàn)在都有了答案，而那些答案只會折磨人罷了。他死時孤單得遠超過我所能想象的；他死時還覺得該向我道歉，這是最糟糕的；盡管你、我、我們所有愛他的人多年來這么努力，他死時依然固執(zhí)地相信他小時候被教導的、關(guān)于他的一切，這一點讓我覺得自己的人生還是失敗了，在最重要的事情上失敗了。此時是我最經(jīng)常找你講話的時候，我會在深夜下樓，站在《威廉聽裘德說故事》面前，這幅畫現(xiàn)在掛在我們餐桌旁的墻上?！巴?，”我問你，“你的感覺跟我一樣嗎？你認為他跟我在一起快樂嗎？”他有資格得到快樂的。我們沒有一個人能保證，但他實在有資格得到快樂。可是你只是微笑，不是對著我，而是掠過我，從不回答。此時，我真希望自己相信死后會有某種生活，相信在另一個宇宙里，或許是個小小的紅色星球，那里的人沒有雙腿，只有尾巴，大家都像海豹一樣在大氣中劃著水，那里的空氣就能提供我們所需的養(yǎng)分，含有無數(shù)蛋白質(zhì)和糖的分子，我們只要張開嘴巴吸入，就可以健康地生存下去，或許你們兩個就在那里團聚，在那里漂浮著。也或許他離我更近：或許他是最近開始坐在我鄰居房子外頭的那只灰貓，我一朝它伸手，它就發(fā)出滿足的呼嚕聲?；蛟S他是我另一個鄰居最近新養(yǎng)的那只幼犬，在牽繩的一端拉扯著；或許他是我?guī)讉€月前看到、跑過廣場的那個學步小孩，他父母氣呼呼地追在后頭，他則興奮地尖叫；或許他是我早以為枯死的那叢杜鵑里忽然綻放出來的那朵花；或許他是那朵云、那道海浪、那場大雨、那陣薄霧。重要的不光是他死了，也不光是他的死法，而是他至死仍然相信的。于是我設(shè)法對我見到的萬事萬物心懷善意，而在我看到的每件事物中，我都看見了他。

　 But back then, back on Lispenard Street, I didn’t know so much of this. Then, we were only standing and looking up at that red-brick building, and I was pretending that I never had to fear for him, and he was letting me pretend this: that all the dangerous things he could have done, all the ways he could have broken my heart, were in the past, the stuff of stories, that the time that lay behind us was scary, but the time that lay ahead of us was not.

但回到當時，我們站在利斯本納街那天，有太多事情我還不明白。當時，我們只是站在那里，抬頭看著那棟紅磚樓房，我假裝我從來不必替他擔心，他也讓我假裝，包括他可能做出的種種危險行徑，他可能讓我心碎的種種方式，那些都過去了，都成了故事的材料；過去的時光雖然可怕，但眼前的歲月并不可怕。

　 “You jumped off the roof?” I repeated. “Why on earth would you have done such a thing?”

“你們從屋頂跳下來？”我又問了一次。“你們到底為什么要做這種事？”

　 “It’s a good story,” he said. He even grinned at me. “I’ll tell you.”

“這是個很棒的故事，”他說，甚至朝我咧嘴笑了，“我會告訴你的?！?

　 “Please,” I said.

“說吧?！蔽艺f。

　 And then he did.

然后，他說了。