“Okay, Oliver, later, okay,” said my mother, trying to speak his lingo, having even grown to accept her new title as Mrs. P. There was always something abrupt about that word. It wasn’t “See you later” or “Take care, now,” or even “Ciao.” Later! was a chilling, slam-dunk salutation that shoved aside all our honeyed European niceties. Later! always left a sharp aftertaste to what until then may have been a warm, heart-to-heart moment. Later! didn’t close things neatly or allow them to trail off. It slammed them shut.
 
“好，奧利弗，回頭見，好。”母親試著講他特有的口頭禪，甚至學(xué)著接受她的新頭銜“教授太太”。那句話總有些唐突的成分，不是“再見”或“請保重”，甚至不是“拜拜”。“回頭再說”是個冷眼鷹、給人一記重拳般的招呼，褪去了所有甜美親昵的歐式優(yōu)雅。“回頭再說”總是為原本溫馨美好、親密無間的時刻留下一道尖銳苦澀的余韻。“回頭再說”讓事情不能靈巧利落地結(jié)束或是漸漸消失，而是戛然而止。
 
But Later! was also a way of avoiding saying goodbye, of making light of all goodbyes. You said Later! not to mean farewell but to say you’d be back in no time. It was the equivalent of his saying “Just a sec” when my mother once asked him to pass the bread and he was busy pulling apart the fish bones on his plate. “Just a sec.” My mother, who hated what she called his Americanisms, ended up calling him Il cauboi—the cowboy. It started as a putdown and soon enough became an endearment, to go along with her other nickname for him, conferred during his first week, when he came down to the dinner table after showering, his glistening hair combed back. La star, she had said, short for la muvi star. My father, always the most indulgent among us, but also the most observant, had figured the cauboi out. “É un timido, he’s shy, that’s why,” he said when asked to explain Oliver’s abrasive Later!
 
不過，“回頭再說”也是一種避免說再見、淡化所有道別的方式。“回頭再說”也并不算道別，而意味著立刻回來，就像有一回我母親讓奧利弗幫忙遞面包，而他正忙著剔盤里的魚刺時說的“等一下”。“等一下。”母親很討厭他的“美式作風(fēng)”，于是喚他為“牛仔”。起初是種奚落，但不多久就變成疼愛他的表現(xiàn)，跟她給取的另一個外號“大明星”交替著使用。這是在他來的第一周取的，當(dāng)時他剛洗完澡下樓吃晚餐，頭發(fā)閃閃發(fā)亮，往后梳成大背頭，母親看到便說：“好像大明星呀！”父親一向是我們之中最寬厚也是觀察力最敏銳的，他早就看透這個“牛仔”。有人要他解釋奧利弗粗魯?shù)?ldquo;回頭再說”時，他是這么說的：“他害羞，就是這么回事。”
 
Oliver timido? That was new. Could all of his gruff Americanisms be nothing more than an exaggerated way of covering up the simple fact that he didn’t know—or feared he didn’t know—how to take his leave gracefully? It reminded me of how for days he had refused to eat soft-boiled eggs in the morning. By the fourth or fifth day, Mafalda insisted he couldn’t leave the region without tasting our eggs. He finally consented, only to admit, with a touch of genuine embarrassment that he never bothered to conceal, that he didn’t know how to open a soft-boiled egg. “Lasci fare a me, Signor Ulliva, leave it to me,” she said. From that morning on and well into his stay with us, she would bring Ulliva two eggs and stop serving everyone until she had sliced open the shell of both his eggs.
 
奧利弗害羞？這可真新鮮。有沒有可能他粗魯?shù)拿朗阶黠L(fēng)只是為了掩飾他不知道或生怕自己不知道如何優(yōu)雅地告別？這讓我想起，好幾天早上他都不肯吃水煮溏心蛋。但到了第四或第五天，瑪法爾達堅持說沒嘗過她煮的蛋不準(zhǔn)離開。他終于答應(yīng)了，卻帶著一點他懶得掩飾、真真切切的難為情，承認(rèn)他其實不知道怎么剝開半熟蛋。“讓我來吧，奧立法先生。”從那天早上起，在他與我們同住的這段期間，瑪法爾達總為“奧立法”準(zhǔn)備兩顆蛋，先幫他敲開那兩顆蛋的蛋殼后，才為其他人上菜。

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