《渺小一生》:這是真心話，真的沒什么好抱歉的。

　 “Jude?” he whispered, knocking on the stall door, and when there was no answer, “I’m coming in.” He pulled open the door and found Jude on the floor, one leg tucked up against his chest. He had vomited, and some of it had pooled on the ground before him, and some of it was scabbed on his lips and chin, a stippled apricot smear. His eyes were shut and he was sweaty, and with one hand he was holding the curved end of his crutch with an intensity that, as Willem would later come to recognize, comes only with extreme discomfort.

“裘德？”他輕聲說，敲了敲淋浴間的門，沒人應(yīng)，“我進(jìn)來了。”他拉開門，發(fā)現(xiàn)裘德倒在地板上，一腳縮起來抵著胸口。他吐了，身前有一攤嘔吐物，嘴唇和下巴也沾著點狀的杏黃色污斑。他雙眼閉著，滿身大汗，一手緊緊握著拐杖的弧狀握把。后來威廉才逐漸了解，只有在極度不舒服的時候，他的手才會握得那么緊。

　 At the time, though, he was scared, and confused, and began asking Jude question after question, none of which he was in any state to answer, and it wasn’t until he tried to hoist Jude to his feet that Jude gave a shout and Willem understood how bad his pain was.

但當(dāng)時他很害怕，也很困惑，開始問裘德一個接一個的問題，但裘德都沒法回答，直到他試著把裘德扶著站起來時，裘德大喊一聲，威廉才明白他痛得有多嚴(yán)重。

　 He somehow managed to half drag, half carry Jude to their room, and fold him into his bed and inexpertly clean him up. By this time the worst of the pain seemed to have passed, and when Willem asked him if he should call a doctor, Jude shook his head.

他還是設(shè)法半拖半抱，把裘德弄回寢室床上，笨手笨腳地幫他清理干凈。等到最厲害的痛楚過去之后，威廉問他是不是該找醫(yī)生來，裘德?lián)u搖頭。

　 “But Jude,” he said, quietly, “you’re in pain. We have to get you help.”

“可是裘德，”他輕聲說，“你很痛，我們得找人幫你啊。”

　 “Nothing will help,” he said, and was silent for a few moments. “I just have to wait.” His voice was whispery and faint, unfamiliar.

“什么都幫不了我，”裘德說，然后沉默了一會兒，“我只能等。”他的聲音輕而微弱，感覺上很陌生。

　 “What can I do?” Willem asked.

“我能做什么？”威廉問。

　 “Nothing,” Jude said. They were quiet. “But Willem—will you stay with me for a little while?”

“什么都不用做。”裘德說，他們相對沉默，“可是威廉——你能不能再陪我一會兒？”

　 “Of course,” he said. Beside him, Jude trembled and shook as if chilled, and Willem took the comforter off his own bed and wrapped it around him. At one point he reached under the blanket and found Jude’s hand and prised open his fist so he could hold his damp, callused palm. It had been a long time since he had held another guy’s hand—not since his own brother’s surgery many years ago—and he was surprised by how strong Jude’s grip was, how muscular his fingers. Jude shuddered and chattered his teeth for hours, and eventually Willem lay down beside him and fell asleep.

“當(dāng)然可以。”他說。裘德在他身旁顫抖又搖晃，好像很冷，于是威廉拿自己床上的被子把他裹住。期間他一度伸手到被子底下找裘德的手，扳開他的拳頭，好握住他潮濕、生繭的手掌。自從多年前他哥哥開刀以來，他已經(jīng)好久沒握住另一個男生的手了。他很驚訝裘德的手勁這么大，手指這么強(qiáng)壯。裘德全身顫抖，牙齒格格作響了好幾個鐘頭，最后威廉在他旁邊躺下來睡著了。

　 The next morning, he woke in Jude’s bed with his hand throbbing, and when he examined the back of it he saw bruised smudges where Jude’s fingers had clenched him. He got up, a bit unsteadily, and walked into the common area, where he saw Jude reading at his desk, his features indistinguishable in the bright late-morning light.

次日早晨，他在裘德的床上醒來，覺得手上陣陣抽痛。他檢查手背，看到之前被裘德手指鉗住的地方有瘀青。他有點搖晃不穩(wěn)地起床，走進(jìn)起居室，看到裘德坐在他的書桌前讀書，他的臉在接近中午的明亮光線中模糊不清。

　 He looked up when Willem came in and then stood, and for a while they merely looked at each other in silence.

威廉進(jìn)來時，裘德抬起頭，然后站起來，有那么一會兒，他們只是沉默地注視彼此。

　 “Willem, I’m so sorry,” Jude said at last.

“威廉，我很抱歉。”最后裘德終于說。

　 “Jude,” he said, “there’s nothing to be sorry for.” And he meant it; there wasn’t.

“裘德，沒什么好抱歉的。”這是真心話，真的沒什么好抱歉的。

　 But “I’m sorry, Willem, I’m so sorry,” Jude repeated, and no matter how many times Willem tried to reassure him, he wouldn’t be comforted.

“可是，對不起，威廉，我很抱歉。”裘德又說了一次，無論威廉怎么安慰，都不能讓他安心。

　 “Just don’t tell Malcolm and JB, okay?” he asked him.

“拜托不要告訴馬爾科姆和杰比，好嗎？”他問他。

　 “I won’t,” he promised. And he never did, although in the end, it didn’t make a difference, for eventually, Malcolm and JB too would see him in pain, although only a few times in episodes as sustained as the one Willem witnessed that night.

“我不會說的。”他保證。而且他說到做到，不過最后也沒區(qū)別了，后來馬爾科姆和杰比也都看到裘德疼痛發(fā)作，只是很少像威廉那一夜看到的那么久。

　 He had never discussed it with Jude, but in the years to come, he would see him in all sorts of pain, big pains and little ones, would see him wince at small hurts and occasionally, when the discomfort was too profound, would see him vomit, or pleat to the ground, or simply blank out and become insensate, the way he was doing in their living room now. But although he was a man who kept his promises, there was a part of him that always wondered why he had never raised the issue with Jude, why he had never made him discuss what it felt like, why he had never dared to do what instinct told him to do a hundred times: to sit down beside him and rub his legs, to try to knead back into submission those misfiring nerve endings. Instead here he was hiding in the bathroom, making busywork for himself as, a few yards away, one of his dearest friends sat alone on a disgusting sofa, making the slow, sad, lonely journey back to consciousness, back to the land of the living, without anyone at all by his side.

他從來沒跟裘德談過他的疼痛，但接下來幾年，他會看到他經(jīng)歷各式各樣的痛，有大有小。他會看到他在小痛時皺起臉，或偶爾實在太痛了，他會看到他嘔吐或蜷縮在地上，或是腦袋一片空白，整個人奄奄一息，就像他現(xiàn)在在客廳里的樣子。盡管他是信守承諾的人，他總有點不明白自己為什么沒跟裘德談過這個話題，為什么他從不逼他談?wù)勀鞘鞘裁锤杏X，為什么他從來不敢去做直覺告訴他一百遍的事情：坐在他旁邊，按摩他的雙腿，設(shè)法把那些失控的神經(jīng)末梢揉得平靜一點。相反，就像眼前這樣，他躲在浴室里，沒事找事做，而幾碼之外，他最要好的朋友之一獨自坐在一張破沙發(fā)上，進(jìn)行一段緩慢、悲慘、孤單的旅程，以便回到清醒狀態(tài)，回到日常生活，而一路上沒有任何人陪在他身邊。

　 “You’re a coward,” he said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face looked back at him, tired with disgust. From the living room, there was only silence, but Willem moved to stand unseen at its border, waiting for Jude to return to him.

“你好懦弱。”他對著浴室鏡子中的自己說。他鏡子里的臉也回瞪著他，疲倦而厭煩?？蛷d里還是一片沉默，威廉來到客廳邊緣不會被發(fā)現(xiàn)的地方，站在那里等著裘德的疼痛過去，恢復(fù)正常。

　 “The place is a shithole,” JB had told Malcolm, and although he wasn’t wrong—the lobby alone made Malcolm’s skin prickle—he nevertheless returned home feeling melancholy, and wondering yet again whether continuing to live in his parents’ house was really preferable to living in a shithole of his own.

“那地方是個破爛狗窩。”杰比已經(jīng)告訴過馬爾科姆，盡管杰比沒說錯（光是一樓那個大廳就讓馬爾科姆皮膚發(fā)麻），他回家時還是覺得好難過，再次思索自己繼續(xù)住父母的房子是不是真的比住在自己的破爛狗窩里好。

　 Logically, of course, he should absolutely stay where he was. He made very little money, and worked very long hours, and his parents’ house was large enough so that he could, in theory, never see them if he chose. Aside from occupying the entire fourth floor (which, to be honest, wasn’t much better than a shithole itself, it was so messy—his mother had stopped sending the housekeeper up to clean after Malcolm had yelled at her that Inez had broken one of his model houses), he had access to the kitchen, and the washing machine, and the full spectrum of papers and magazines that his parents subscribed to, and once a week he added his clothes to the drooping cloth bag that his mother dropped off at the dry cleaners on the way to her office and Inez picked up the following day. He was not proud of this arrangement, of course, nor of the fact that he was twenty-seven and his mother still called him at the office when she was ordering the week’s groceries to ask him if he would eat extra strawberries if she bought them, or to wonder whether he wanted char or bream for dinner that night.

邏輯上，當(dāng)然，他絕對應(yīng)該繼續(xù)住下去。他賺的錢很少，工作時間很長，而他爸媽的房子夠大，所以理論上，如果愿意的話，他可以完全不跟他們打照面。除了占據(jù)整個四樓（老實說，這個四樓也不比破爛狗窩好到哪里去，里頭太亂了，自從有回馬爾科姆跟母親大吼說，管家弄壞了他的一座模型屋，他母親就不再派伊涅絲上來打掃了），他可以使用廚房、洗衣機(jī)，還能閱讀各種父母訂閱的雜志，而且每周一次，他可以把臟衣服丟進(jìn)全家共享的松垮布袋里，母親上班途中會把它送去干洗店，次日由伊涅絲取回。當(dāng)然，他并不滿意這樣的安排，也不喜歡自己27歲了，母親每星期訂雜貨時還會打電話去他辦公室，問他如果她多買草莓，他會不會幫忙吃，或者問他晚餐想吃紅點鮭還是海鯛魚。

　 Things would be easier, however, if his parents actually respected the same divisions of space and time that Malcolm did. Aside from expecting him to eat breakfast with them in the morning and brunch every Sunday, they also frequently dropped by his floor for a visit, preceding their social calls with a simultaneous knock and doorknob-turn that Malcolm had told them time and again defeated the purpose of knocking at all. He knew this was a terribly bratty and ungrateful thing to think, but at times he dreaded even coming home for the inevitable small talk that he would have to endure before he was allowed to scruff upstairs like a teenager. He especially dreaded life in the house without Jude there; although the basement apartment had been more private than his floor, his parents had also taken to blithely dropping by when Jude was in residence, so that sometimes when Malcolm went downstairs to see Jude, there would be his father sitting in the basement apartment already, lecturing Jude about something dull. His father in particular liked Jude—he often told Malcolm that Jude had real intellectual heft and depth, unlike his other friends, who were essentially flibbertigibbets—and in his absence, it would be Malcolm whom his father would regale with his complicated stories about the market, and the shifting global financial realities, and various other topics about which Malcolm didn’t much care. He in fact sometimes suspected that his father would have preferred Jude for a son: He and Jude had gone to the same law school. The judge for whom Jude had clerked had been his father’s mentor at his first firm. And Jude was an assistant prosecutor in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the exact same place his father had worked at when he was young.

如果他父母能像他一樣，尊重彼此的空間和時間分配，那他就會輕松一點。然而，他們除了期望他每天早上一起吃早餐、每個星期天一起吃早午餐之外，還常常跑去他那層樓突襲，在敲門的同時轉(zhuǎn)開門把；盡管馬爾科姆一再向他們抗議，說這樣敲門就毫無意義了。他知道自己這樣很惡劣，而且有些不知感激，但有時他很怕回家，因為無可避免，總得勉強(qiáng)跟父母閑聊幾句，才能像個青少年般溜回樓上。他尤其擔(dān)心裘德搬走之后的生活。盡管地下室比四樓更有隱私，但裘德住在那里時，他父母也總是滿不在乎地忽然跑去。有時候馬爾科姆下樓去看裘德時，會發(fā)現(xiàn)父親已經(jīng)坐在地下室里，跟裘德講一堆無聊的事情。他父親尤其喜歡裘德——他常告訴馬爾科姆，說裘德真的很聰明、很有深度，不像他其他的朋友，基本上都很輕浮。而裘德搬走之后，他父親就只能找他講那些關(guān)于市場的復(fù)雜故事，以及變動中的全球金融實況，還有各式各樣他不怎么關(guān)心的話題。他有時還懷疑他父親比較想要裘德當(dāng)兒子：他父親和裘德是同一所法學(xué)院的校友。裘德之前擔(dān)任書記工作時的上司法官，就是他父親在第一間律師事務(wù)所工作時期的導(dǎo)師。后來裘德在聯(lián)邦檢察官辦公室的刑事部門當(dāng)助理檢察官，也正是他父親年輕時擔(dān)任過的職務(wù)。