雙語·當呼吸化為空氣 晚上媽媽經(jīng)常默默流淚

晚上，媽媽經(jīng)常默默流淚，獨自在床上啜泣。她害怕這里落后的教育條件會讓她的孩子變成“廢人”，于是不知從哪里找來了“大學學前書單”。她在印度主修的是生理學，二十三歲就結(jié)了婚，來到這個陌生的國家，生活的重心完全轉(zhuǎn)移到三個孩子身上，所以書單上很多書她自己也沒讀過。但她絕不會讓自己的孩子輸在這上面。十歲的時候，她就讓我讀《1984》，里面關(guān)于性的描寫讓我震驚不已，然而，也是這樣點點滴滴的潛移默化，讓我深深地愛上了語言文字。
At night, she broke into tears, sobbing alone in her bed. My mother, afraid the impoverished school system would hobble her children, acquired, from somewhere, a “college prep reading list.” Trained in India to be a physiologist, married at twenty-three, and preoccupied with raising three kids in a country that was not her own, she had not read many of the books on the list herself. But she would make sure her kids were not deprived. She made me read 1984 when I was ten years old; I was scandalized by the sex, but it also instilled in me a deep love of, and care for, language.

《1984》之后，我們按照書單，非常系統(tǒng)地讀了無數(shù)作家的作品：《基督山伯爵》、埃德加·愛倫·坡的作品、《魯濱孫漂流記》、《艾凡赫》、果戈理的戲劇、《最后的莫希干人》、狄更斯、馬克·吐溫、簡·奧斯丁、《水手比利·巴德》……十二歲的時候，我開始自己挑書看了。哥哥蘇曼又給我寄來大學里讀的書：《君主論》、《堂·吉訶德》、《老實人》、《亞瑟之死》、《貝奧武甫》以及梭羅、薩特、加繆等人的作品，等等。有的印象不深，有的則對我產(chǎn)生了很大的影響。《美麗新世界》奠定了我初期的道德哲學，還成為我申請大學時論述文的主題，我在文中提出，快樂幸福并非生命的意義。在必經(jīng)的青春期煩惱中，《哈姆雷特》無數(shù)次陪伴著我走過。《致羞澀的情人》和其他浪漫的詩歌讓我和我的朋友在整個高中生涯經(jīng)歷了不少“快樂的倒霉事”。比如，晚上，我們經(jīng)常偷偷溜出去，在啦啦隊隊長的窗戶下面唱《美國派》。（我們理直氣壯地認為，她爸爸是當?shù)匾幻翈?，不大可能貿(mào)然開槍。）搞完這種深夜惡作劇回去的時候，要是被抓住了，我憂心忡忡的母親就會詳細地盤問我是否吸毒，把每種青少年可能吸食的毒品都細細數(shù)過一遍。但她從未意識到，于我而言，毒品沒有吸引力，最最令人上癮的，是上周她遞給我的那套浪漫詩歌選集。書籍成為我最形影不離的密友，就像精心制作的鏡頭，為我展開新世界的大好風景。
Endless books and authors followed, as we worked our way methodically down the list: The Count of Monte Cristo, Edgar Allan Poe, Robinson Crusoe, Ivanhoe, Gogol, The Last of the Mohicans, Dickens, Twain, Austen, Billy Budd. . . By the time I was twelve, I was picking them out myself, and my brother Suman was sending me the books he had read in college: The Prince, Don Quixote, Candide, Le Morte D’Arthur, Beowulf, Thoreau, Sartre, Camus. Some left more of a mark than others. Brave New World founded my nascent moral philosophy and became the subject of my college admissions essay, in which I argued that happiness was not the point of life. Hamlet bore me a thousand times through the usual adolescent crises.“To His Coy Mistress” and other romantic poems led me and my friends on various joyful misadventures throughout high school—we often sneaked out at night to, for example, sing “American Pie”beneath the window of the captain of the cheerleading team. (Her father was a local minister and so, we reasoned, less likely to shoot.)After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

為了讓自己的孩子都受到良好的教育，媽媽開車帶我們來到位于金曼北邊將近兩百公里，也是離金曼最近的大城市拉斯維加斯，我們在那里進行了“學業(yè)能力傾向初步測驗”（PSAT）、“學術(shù)能力評估測試”（SAT）和“大學入學考試”（ACT）。她加入學校董事會，重整了教師隊伍，要求課程設(shè)置加入大學預(yù)修課程。她在這方面實在太出色了，視改革金曼教育系統(tǒng)為己任，并且付諸實踐。突然間，我們那所高中就感覺視野開闊了，不再局限于那兩道山脊之間，而是翻山越嶺，向外探索。
In her quest to see that her children were educated, my mom drove us more than a hundred miles north, to the nearest big city, Las Vegas, so we could take our PSATs, SATs, and ACTs. She joined the school board, rallied teachers, and demanded that AP classes be added to the curriculum. She was a phenom: she took it upon herself to transform the Kingman school system, and she did. Suddenly there was a feeling in our high school that the two mountain ranges that bounded the town no longer defined the horizon: it was what lay beyond them.