《渺小一生》:大部分都是理查德的功勞

　 But the other reason he was worried about being seen with Willem was because of the exposure it entailed. Ever since his first day of college, he had feared that someday someone from his past—a client; one of the boys from the home—would try to contact him, would try to extort something from him for their silence. “No one will, Jude,” Ana had assured him. “I promise. To do so would be to admit how they know you.” But he was always afraid, and over the years, there had been a few ghosts who had announced themselves. The first arrived shortly after he’d started at Rosen Pritchard: just a postcard, from someone who claimed he had known him from the home—someone with the unhelpfully indistinct name of Rob Wilson, someone he didn’t remember—and for a week, he had panicked, barely able to sleep, his mind scrolling through scenarios that seemed as terrifying as they were inevitable. What if this Rob Wilson contacted Harold, contacted his colleagues at the firm, and told them who he was, told them about the things he had done? But he made himself not react, not do what he wanted to do—write a near-hysterical cease-and-desist letter that would prove nothing but his own existence, and the existence of his past—and he never heard from Rob Wilson again.

但他擔(dān)心被人看到自己和威廉在一起還有另一個理由，那就是隨之而來的曝光。從上大學(xué)的第一天起，他就擔(dān)心有一天某個來自他過去的人，某個顧客或少年之家的某個男孩——會想聯(lián)絡(luò)他，會想跟他勒索封口費。“不會有人這樣做的，裘德，”安娜曾安慰他，“我保證。如果他們?nèi)フ夷?，就得先承認(rèn)他們是怎么認(rèn)識你的。”但他一直很害怕，而這些年來，曾經(jīng)有少數(shù)幾個鬼魂出現(xiàn)。第一個是他剛?cè)チ_森·普理查德律師事務(wù)所后不久，只是一張明信片，寄信人宣稱在少年之家認(rèn)識他，這個人有個大眾化的名字羅伯·威爾森，他根本完全不記得。接下來一星期他都很恐慌，幾乎無法睡覺，心里想象著各式各樣的劇本，每一個都恐怖，但又避免不了。要是這個羅伯·威爾森聯(lián)絡(luò)哈羅德和他事務(wù)所的同事，跟他們說他以前是什么樣子、做過什么事呢？但他逼自己不要有反應(yīng)，不要做他想做的事情，例如寫一封近乎歇斯底里的制止信，那只會證明他自己的存在，以及他的過去——而他再也沒有接到羅伯·威爾森的消息。

　 But after a few pictures of him with Willem had appeared in the press, he received two more letters and an e-mail, all sent to his work. One of the letters and the e-mail were again from men who claimed they had been at the home with him, but once again, he hadn’t recognized their names, and he never responded, and they never contacted him again. But the second letter had contained a copy of a photograph, black-and-white, of an undressed boy on a bed, and of such low quality that he couldn’t tell if it was him or not. And with this letter, he had done what he had been told to do all those years ago, when he was a child in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, should any of the clients figure out who he was and try to establish communication with him: he had put the letter in an envelope and had sent it to the FBI. They always knew where he was, that office, and every four or five years an agent would appear at his workplace to show him pictures, to ask him if he remembered one man or another, men who were decades later still being uncovered as Dr. Traylor’s, Brother Luke’s, friends and fellow criminals. He rarely had advance warning before these visits, and over the years he had learned what he needed to do in the days afterward in order to neutralize them, how he needed to surround himself with people, with events, with noise and clamor, with evidence of the life he now inhabited.

但少數(shù)幾張他和威廉的合照在媒體刊登后，他又收到了兩封信和一封電子郵件，都是寄到辦公室的。其中一封信和電子郵件，寄來的人都是宣稱跟他一起在少年之家待過的，但再一次，他還是不認(rèn)得他們的名字，也從沒回信，于是他們沒再聯(lián)絡(luò)他。但第二封信里有一張黑白照片，里頭是一個沒穿衣服的男孩躺在床上，照片質(zhì)量差到他根本看不出那是不是自己。收到這封信之后，他做了多年前未成年、還在費城醫(yī)院的病床上時被交代過的事情：萬一有顧客猜出他的身份，想跟他聯(lián)系，他就把那封信放進(jìn)一個信封，寄去聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局的一個小組。那個小組的人一直知道他在哪里，每隔四五年，都會有探員到他工作的地方拜訪他，拿一些照片給他看，問他是否記得某個男人；即使過了幾十年，他們還是陸續(xù)查出當(dāng)年特雷勒醫(yī)生或盧克修士的朋友與同黨。除了這些拜訪，他很少接到進(jìn)一步的警告，而且多年來，他已經(jīng)逐漸學(xué)會如何在探員來訪后消除他們帶來的影響。他會讓自己置身于人群中，置身于社交場合、噪音和嘈雜的環(huán)境中，那些都是眼前生活的種種證據(jù)。

　 In this period, the one in which he had received and disposed of the letter, he had felt vividly ashamed and intensely alone—this had been before he had told Willem about his childhood, and he had never given Andy enough context so that he would appreciate the terror that he was experiencing—and after, he had finally made himself hire an investigative agency (though not the one that Rosen Pritchard used) to uncover everything they could about him. The investigation had taken a month, but at its end, there was nothing conclusive, or at least nothing that could conclusively identify him as who he had been. It was only then that he allowed himself to relax, to believe, finally, that Ana had been right, to accept that, for the most part, his past had been erased so completely that it was as if it had never existed. The people who knew the most about it, who had witnessed and made it—Brother Luke; Dr. Traylor; even Ana—were dead, and the dead can speak to no one. You’re safe, he would remind himself. And although he was, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still cautious; it didn’t mean that he should want to have his photograph in magazines and newspapers.

在他收到那封附照片的信、將之轉(zhuǎn)寄給聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局期間，他感覺到強烈的羞愧和孤單。這時他還沒告訴威廉他的童年，而且他從來沒告訴安迪足夠的背景信息，所以安迪也不清楚他經(jīng)歷過的種種恐怖狀況。然后，他終于下定決心，找了一家偵探社（但不是羅森·普理查德習(xí)慣找的那家），查出他的一切。那個調(diào)查進(jìn)行了一個月，最后查不到任何決定性的信息，至少沒查出確實能把他這個人和他童年聯(lián)系起來的證據(jù)。這以后他才終于放心，相信安娜說得沒錯，接受他過往的大部分事跡都已被徹底抹去，仿佛從來不曾存在過。知道最多的人、曾經(jīng)見證或促成事情發(fā)生的人，包括盧克修士、特雷勒醫(yī)生，甚至安娜全都死了，而死人不會說話。你安全了，他會提醒自己。雖然他安全了，但并不表示他失去警覺，也不表示他想讓自己的照片登上雜志和報紙。

　 He accepted that this was what his life with Willem would be, of course, but sometimes he wished it could be different, that he could be less circumspect about claiming Willem in public the way Willem had claimed him. In idle moments, he played the clip of Willem making his speech over and over, feeling that same giddiness he had when Harold had first named him as his son to another person. This has really happened, he had thought at the time. This isn’t something I’ve made up. And now, the same delirium: he really was Willem’s. He had said so himself.

他當(dāng)然知道，和威廉在一起的生活就是這樣，也可以接受，但有時他真希望可以有所不同，不必那么小心謹(jǐn)慎，可以像威廉那樣公開地提起自己的伴侶?？臻e的時候，他會一次又一次在計算機上播放威廉的得獎感言片段，感到一種暈眩，就像哈羅德第一次跟別人說他是自己的兒子那樣。這真的發(fā)生了，當(dāng)時他心想。這不是我自己想象出來的?，F(xiàn)在，他感覺到同樣的興奮：他真的是威廉的伴侶了。他對自己說。

　 In March, at the end of awards season, he and Richard had thrown Willem a party at Greene Street. A large shipment of carved-teak doorways and benches had just been moved out of the fifth floor, and Richard had strung the ceiling with ropes of lights and had lined every wall with glass jars containing candles. Richard’s studio manager had brought two of their largest worktables upstairs, and he had called the caterers and a bartender. They had invited everyone they could think of: all of their friends in common, and all of Willem’s as well. Harold and Julia, James and Carey, Laurence and Gillian, Lionel and Sinclair had come down from Boston; Kit had come out from L.A., Carolina from Yountville, Phaedra and Citizen from Paris, Willem’s friends Cressy and Susannah from London, Miguel from Madrid. He made himself stand and walk through that party, at which people he knew only from Willem’s stories—directors and actors and playwrights—approached him and said they’d been hearing about him for years, and that it was so nice to finally meet him, that they’d been thinking that Willem had invented him, and although he had laughed, he had been sad as well, as if he should have ignored his fears and involved himself more in Willem’s life.

三月時，頒獎旺季的尾聲，他和理查德在格林街幫威廉辦了一個派對。五樓存放的一大批柚木雕花門框和長椅剛運走，理查德在天花板上用繩子吊起成串的燈泡，每面墻上都排列著裝了蠟燭的玻璃罐。理查德的工作室主任把他們最大的兩張工作臺搬上來，他打電話找來外燴廚師和調(diào)酒師。他們邀請了他們能想到的每個人：所有共同的朋友，還有威廉所有的朋友。哈羅德和朱麗婭、詹姆斯和凱瑞、勞倫斯和吉莉安；萊昂內(nèi)爾和辛克萊從波士頓南下，基特從洛杉磯過來，卡羅萊納從北加州納帕郡的揚特維爾鎮(zhèn)過來，菲德拉和西提任從巴黎過來；威廉的朋友包括從倫敦趕來的克雷西和蘇珊娜，以及從馬德里來的米蓋爾。那天他逼自己站著，在派對上走動，很多他只聽威廉說過的人，那些導(dǎo)演、演員和編劇，都走過來跟他說他們多年來聽了他很多事情，很高興終于能見到他，因為他們一直都認(rèn)為他是威廉捏造出來的。他聽了大笑，但同時也很難過，覺得好像應(yīng)該拋開自己的恐懼，多參與威廉的生活。

　 So many people there hadn’t seen one another in so many years that it was a very busy party, the kind of party they had gone to when they were young, with people shouting at one another over the music that one of Richard’s assistants, an amateur DJ, was playing, and a few hours into it he was exhausted, and leaned against the northern wall of the space to watch everyone dance. In the middle of the scrum he could see Willem dancing with Julia, and he smiled, watching them, before noticing that Harold was standing on the other side of the room, watching them as well, smiling as well. Harold saw him, then, and raised his glass to him, and he raised his in return, and then watched as Harold worked his way toward him.

派對上的好多人都已經(jīng)多年不見，派對非常忙碌熱鬧，就是他們年輕時會參加的那種，大家都在音樂聲中互相大吼（理查德的一個助理是業(yè)余DJ，負(fù)責(zé)播放音樂）。派對進(jìn)行幾小時后，他累壞了，靠著北邊的墻面看大家跳舞。在空間中央起舞的人群中，他看到威廉跟朱麗婭共舞，他微笑地看著，接著注意到哈羅德站在房間的另一頭，也看著他們，露出微笑。此時哈羅德看到他，朝他舉起玻璃杯，而他也舉杯回應(yīng)，看著哈羅德擠過人群走向他。

　 “Good party,” Harold shouted into his ear.

“這是很棒的派對。”哈羅德朝著他的耳邊喊。

　 “It’s mostly Richard’s doing,” he shouted back, but as he was about to say something else, the music became louder, and he and Harold looked at each other and laughed and shrugged. For a while they simply stood, both of them smiling, watching the dancers heave and blur before them. He was tired, he was in pain, but it didn’t matter; his tiredness felt like something sweet and warm, his pain was familiar and expected, and in those moments he was aware that he was capable of joyfulness, that life was honeyed. Then the music turned, grew dreamy and slow, and Harold yelled that he was going to reclaim Julia from Willem’s clutches.

“大部分都是理查德的功勞。”他也喊回去，但他正要說些別的話時，音樂變得更大聲了，于是他和哈羅德看著對方，大笑并聳聳肩。有一會兒他們就站在那，兩人都在微笑，看著眼前起舞的人群。他累了，身上很痛，但是無所謂；感覺他的疲倦像是某種甜蜜而溫暖的東西，他的疼痛熟悉且在預(yù)期之中。在這些時刻，他意識到自己有辦法快樂，人生是甜美的。然后音樂換了，變得夢幻而緩慢，哈羅德大吼說他要去把朱麗婭搶過來。

　 “Go,” he told him, but before Harold left him, something made him reach out and put his arms around him, which was the first time he had voluntarily touched Harold since the incident with Caleb. He could see that Harold was stunned, and then delighted, and he felt guilt course through him, and moved away as quickly as he could, shooing Harold onto the dance floor as he did.

“去吧。”他告訴他，但哈羅德離開他之前，他伸手抱住哈羅德，這是凱萊布事件后他第一次主動碰觸哈羅德。他看得出哈羅德很驚訝，接著也很開心。他覺得內(nèi)疚極了，趕緊放開手，催促哈羅德進(jìn)入舞池。

　 There was a nest of cotton-stuffed burlap sacks in one of the corners, which Richard had put down for people to lounge against, and he was headed toward them when Willem appeared, and grabbed his hand. “Come dance with me,” he said.

這層空間的一個角落放著幾個塞滿棉花的麻布袋，是理查德布置讓大家坐的位子。他朝那里走，此時威廉忽然出現(xiàn)了，抓住他的手。“來跟我跳舞。”他說。

　 “Willem,” he admonished him, smiling, “you know I can’t dance.”

“威廉，”他微笑著提醒他，“你知道我不會跳舞。”

　 Willem looked at him then, appraisingly. “Come with me,” he said, and he followed Willem toward the east end of the loft, and to the bathroom, where Willem pulled him inside and closed and locked the door behind them, placing his drink on the edge of the sink. They could still hear the music—a song that had been popular when they were in college, embarrassing and yet somehow moving in its unapologetic sentimentalism, in its syrup and sincerity—but in the bathroom it was dampened, as if it was being piped in from some far-off valley. “Put your arms around me,” Willem told him, and he did. “Move your right foot back when I move my left one toward it,” he said next, and he did.

威廉打量著他。“跟我來。”他說。他跟著威廉朝倉庫空間的東端走去，來到浴室，威廉把他拉進(jìn)去，關(guān)上門鎖住，把他手上的酒杯放在水槽邊緣。他們還聽得到音樂（是他們大學(xué)時代很流行的一首歌，現(xiàn)在聽起來很難為情，但不知怎么仍會讓人融入那種沒有歉意的傷感、那種甜美與誠摯中），但是浴室里的聲音減弱了，好像是從某個遙遠(yuǎn)的谷地用管子傳送過來的。“手臂抱著我。”威廉告訴他，他照做了。“我左腳朝你前進(jìn)的時候，你右腳就往后退。”威廉接著說，他又照做。

　 For a while they moved slowly and clumsily, looking at each other, silent. “See?” Willem said, quietly. “You’re dancing.”

有那么一會兒，他們移動得很緩慢，有點笨拙。他們看著彼此，不說話。“看吧？”威廉靜靜地說，“你在跳舞。”

　 “I’m not good at it,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“我這方面不太行。”他喃喃說著，很不好意思。

　 “You’re perfect at it,” Willem said, and although his feet were by this point so sore that he was beginning to perspire from the discipline it was taking not to scream, he kept moving, but so minimally that toward the end of the song they were only swaying, their feet not leaving the ground, Willem holding him so he wouldn’t fall.

“你跳得很完美。”威廉說。他兩腳此時已經(jīng)酸痛得要命，為了忍住不叫，他全身開始冒汗，但他還是持續(xù)移動，只是動作非常小，小到這首歌接近尾聲時，他的腳沒再離地，兩人只是站在原地?fù)u晃，威廉抱著他，免得他倒下來。

　 When they emerged from the bathroom, there was a whooping from the groups of people nearest to them, and he blushed—the last, the final, time he’d had sex with Willem had been almost sixteen months ago—but Willem grinned and raised his arm as if he was a prizefighter who had just won a bout.

他們從浴室出來時，最近的人群中爆發(fā)出一陣歡呼，他臉紅了。他和威廉上一次、最后一次做愛已經(jīng)是十六個月以前的事情了。但威廉咧嘴笑著舉起一只手，像個剛贏得一回合的拳擊手。

　 And then it was April, and his forty-seventh birthday, and then it was May, and he developed a wound on each calf, and Willem left for Istanbul to shoot the second installment in his spy trilogy. He had told Willem about the wounds—he was trying to tell him things as they happened, even things he didn’t consider that important—and Willem had been upset.

接著是四月，他的47歲生日，然后是五月，他兩邊小腿各長了一個瘡，威廉去土耳其伊斯坦布爾拍那部間諜片三部曲的第二部。他跟威廉提了腳上的瘡，威廉很煩惱；他現(xiàn)在盡量在事情發(fā)生時就告訴威廉，即使是他覺得不重要的事。

　 But he hadn’t been concerned. How many of these wounds had he had over the years? Tens; dozens. The only thing that had changed was the amount of time he spent trying to resolve them. Now he went to Andy’s office twice a week—every Tuesday lunchtime and Friday evening—once for debriding and once for a wound vacuum treatment, which Andy’s nurse performed. Andy had always thought that his skin was too fragile for that treatment, in which a piece of sterile foam was fitted above the open sore and a nozzle moved above it that sucked the dead and dying tissues into the foam like a sponge, but in recent years he had tolerated it well, and it had proven more successful than simply debriding alone.

但是他不擔(dān)心。多年來，這種瘡他長過多少個了？幾十個；上百個。唯一改變的，就是他設(shè)法解決這些瘡的時間?，F(xiàn)在他每星期去安迪的診所兩次：每個星期二的中午和星期五晚上，一次去清創(chuàng)，一次去讓安迪的護(hù)士幫他做負(fù)壓傷口治療。這種治療必須先把一片消過毒的泡棉蓋在瘡口上，然后用一個真空吸塵的管口在泡棉上方移動，把壞死的組織往上吸入泡棉里。安迪覺得他的皮膚太脆弱，不適合做這種治療，但最近幾年他似乎都可以承受，而且結(jié)果證明，這比純粹清創(chuàng)效果更好。

　 As he had grown older, the wounds—their frequency, their severity, their size, the level of discomfort that attended them—had grown steadily worse. Long gone, decades gone, were the days in which he was able to walk any great distance when he had them. (The memory of strolling from Chinatown to the Upper East Side—albeit painfully—with one of these wounds was so strange and remote that it didn’t even seem to belong to him, but to somebody else.) When he was younger, it might take a few weeks for one to heal. But now it took months. Of all the things that were wrong with him, he was the most dispassionate about these sores; and yet he was never able to accustom himself to their very appearance. And although of course he wasn’t scared of blood, the sight of pus, of rot, of his body’s desperate attempt to heal itself by trying to kill part of itself still unsettled him even all these years later.

隨著他的年紀(jì)變大，那些瘡也持續(xù)惡化，這包括了出現(xiàn)頻率、嚴(yán)重等級、傷口大小、不舒服和需要照料的程度。二十年前，他腿上長瘡照樣能走很長的路，但那樣的日子早已遠(yuǎn)去（盡管很痛，腿上有個瘡，仍從唐人街漫步到上東城的記憶如今陌生又遙遠(yuǎn)，簡直不屬于他，而是別人的）。他年輕時，一個瘡痊愈可能要花幾個星期，但現(xiàn)在就要拖上好幾個月。在他身上所有的毛病中，他最冷靜對待的就是這些瘡，然而他還是沒法習(xí)慣這些瘡的出現(xiàn)。他當(dāng)然不怕血，但是多年下來，看到膿或傷口潰爛，看到自己的身體為了痊愈拼命設(shè)法殺掉一部分的自己，他還是會心神不寧。

　 By the time Willem came home for good, he wasn’t better. There were now four wounds on his calves, the most he had ever had at one time, and although he was still trying to walk daily, it was sometimes difficult enough to simply stand, and he was vigilant about parsing his efforts, about determining when he was trying to walk because he thought he could, and when he was trying to walk to prove to himself that he was still capable of it. He could feel he had lost weight, he could feel he had gotten weaker—he could no longer even swim every morning—but he knew it for sure once he saw Willem’s face. “Judy,” Willem had said, quietly, and had knelt next to him on the sofa. “I wish you had told me.” But in a funny way, there had been nothing to tell: this was who he was. And besides his legs, his feet, his back, he felt fine. He felt—though he hesitated to say this about himself: it seemed so bold a statement—mentally healthy. He was back to cutting himself only once a week. He heard himself whistling as he removed his pants at night, examining the area around the bandages to make sure none of them were leaking fluids. People got used to anything their bodies gave them; he was no exception. If your body was well, you expected it to perform for you, excellently, consistently. If your body was not, your expectations were different. Or this, at least, was what he was trying to accept.

等到威廉拍完戲回家，他的狀況還沒有好轉(zhuǎn)?，F(xiàn)在他的小腿上有四個瘡了，他頭一回同時有這么多瘡。他還是設(shè)法每天走點路，但有時連站著都很困難。他很警覺地剖析自己的努力，想判定自己想走路是以為自己可以走，還是想借由走路向自己證明他辦得到。他感覺自己瘦了，而且日益虛弱（他現(xiàn)在連每天的晨泳都辦不到），但直到目睹威廉的表情，他才確定。“小裘，”威廉低聲說，然后跪在他旁邊的沙發(fā)上，“真希望你早點告訴我。”但好笑的是，實在沒什么好告訴他的，他一直有這些病痛。除了雙腿、兩腳、背部以外，他覺得還好。他覺得精神上很健康——他不愿意這樣講自己，好像臉皮太厚了。他每星期只割自己一次。夜里他會不自覺地吹起口哨，脫掉長褲，檢查繃帶周圍，確定傷口沒有滲出液體。人們會習(xí)慣自己身體所給予的，他也不例外。如果你的身體很好，你就會期望身體出色、持續(xù)地運轉(zhuǎn)。如果你的身體不好，你的期望就不同了。至少，這是他設(shè)法接受的。