《渺小一生》:“你不熱嗎？”

　 He let the silence pull between them until he imagined he could hear it come alive. There had been a girl in their dorm who had cut herself as well. She had been with them freshman year, but, he realized, he hadn’t seen her at all this past year.

威廉還是保持沉默，直到他想象自己可以聽到那沉默像活物般蘇醒過來。他們宿舍里有個女生也曾用刀子割自己。他們大一那年還會碰到她，但是這會兒他才想到，過去這一年沒再看到她了。

　 “Why?” he asked Malcolm. On the sand, Jude had worked up to JB’s waist. JB was singing something meandering and tuneless.

“為什么？”他問馬爾科姆。沙灘上，裘德把沙子堆到杰比的腰部了。杰比正散漫地唱著不成調的歌。

　 “I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “She had a lot of problems.”

“不曉得。”馬爾科姆說，“她有很多心煩的問題。”

　 He waited, but it seemed Malcolm had nothing more to say. “What happened to her?”

他等著，但馬爾科姆似乎沒其他話可說了。“那她后來怎么樣了？”

　 “I don’t know. They lost touch when Flora went to college; she never spoke about her again.”

“不曉得。弗洛拉上大學之后，她們就失聯了。她再也沒提到她。”

　 They were quiet again. Somewhere along the way, he knew, it had been silently decided among the three of them that he would be primarily responsible for Jude, and this, he recognized, was Malcolm’s way of presenting him with a difficulty that needed a solution, although what, exactly, the problem was—or what the answer might be—he wasn’t certain, and he was willing to bet that Malcolm didn’t know, either.

他們又沉默下來。他知道，認識到現在，他們三個在某個時刻達成無言的共識，他是主要照顧裘德的人，而且他明白，眼前馬爾科姆正在以自己的方式，提出一個必須解決的難題。雖然威廉并不確定問題究竟是什么，也不知道答案可能是什么，但他敢打賭馬爾科姆也不知道。

　 For the next few days he avoided Jude, because he knew if he were alone with him, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from having a conversation with him, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to, or what that conversation would be. It wasn’t hard to do: in the daytime, they were together as a group, and at night, they were each in their own rooms. But one evening, Malcolm and JB left together to pick up the lobsters, and he and Jude were left on their own in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes and washing lettuce. It had been a long, sunny, sleepy day, and Jude was in one of his light moods, when he was almost carefree, and even as he asked, Willem experienced a predictive melancholy at ruining such a perfect moment, one in which everything—the pink-bled sky above them and the way the knife sliced so cleanly through the vegetables beneath them—had conspired to work so well, only to have him upset it.

接下來幾天，他一直躲著裘德，因為他知道如果自己單獨跟他在一起，他會忍不住跟他談，可是他不確定自己想這么做，也不清楚會談到什么。要避免跟他單獨在一起并不難：白天時，他們都是四人一起行動，到了夜里，他們回到各自的房間里?？墒怯刑彀?，馬爾科姆和杰比一起出去拿龍蝦了，只剩他和裘德待在廚房里切西紅柿、洗萵苣。那是漫長、晴朗、懶洋洋的一天，裘德正好心情不錯，幾乎是無憂無慮。當威廉開口問他時，他體會到一種哀愁的預感，覺得自己即將毀掉這完美的時刻。這一刻所有的一切（頭上有泛著粉紅色的天空，手中的刀子干凈利落地切過蔬菜）都聯合起來運作得如此完美，卻讓他給毀了。

　 “Don’t you want to borrow one of my T-shirts?” he asked Jude.

“要不要我借你一件T恤？”他問裘德。

　 He didn’t answer until he had finished coring the tomato before him, and then gave Willem a steady, blank gaze. “No.”

裘德沒回答，直到把手上那顆西紅柿去了籽，才鎮(zhèn)靜而茫然地望著威廉：“不用了。”

　 “Aren’t you hot?”

“你不熱嗎？”

　 Jude smiled at him, faintly, warningly. “It’s going to be cold any minute now.” And it was true. When the last daub of sun vanished, it would be chilly, and Willem himself would have to go back to his room for a sweater.

裘德朝他微微一笑，很微弱的笑，帶著警告意味。“現在隨時就會轉冷。”的確沒錯。等到最后一絲陽光消失，天氣就會變得很冷，威廉自己都得回房間加件針織衫了。

　 “But”—and he heard in advance how absurd he would sound, how the confrontation had wriggled out of his control, catlike, as soon as he had initiated it—“you’re going to get lobster all over your sleeves.”

“可是……”他還沒說出口，就知道這些話聽來有多荒謬，知道自己一旦開口，這場正面對質就會像一只貓般脫離他的控制，“你的袖子會沾到一堆龍蝦渣。”

　 At this, Jude made a noise, a funny kind of squawk, too loud and too barky to be a real laugh, and turned back to the cutting board. “I think I can handle it, Willem,” he said, and although his voice was mild, Willem saw how tightly he was holding the knife’s handle, almost squeezing it, so that the bunch of his knuckles tinged a suety yellow.

裘德聽了，只發(fā)出一種滑稽的驚笑聲，太大聲又太刺耳，不可能是真笑。然后他轉身回去對著砧板，說：“威廉，我想我應付得了。”雖然他的聲音很柔和，但是威廉看到他把菜刀握得很緊，像是要擰出水來，指節(jié)都泛白了。

　 They were lucky then, both of them, that Malcolm and JB returned before they had to continue talking, but not before Willem heard Jude begin to ask “Why are—” And although he never finished his sentence (and indeed, didn’t speak to Willem once throughout dinner, through which he kept his sleeves perfectly neat), Willem knew that his question would not have been “Why are you asking me this?” but “Why are you asking me this?” because Willem had always been careful not to express too much interest in exploring the many cupboarded cabinet in which Jude had secreted himself.

當時他們兩個人都很幸運，就在他們繼續(xù)往下談之前，馬爾科姆和杰比回來了，不過威廉已經聽到裘德開口問：“為什么你……”他始終沒講完（而且整頓晚餐都沒跟威廉說話，從頭到尾袖子保持得干干凈凈），但威廉知道他的問題不會是“你為什么問我這個？”而是“為什么問我這個的是你？”因為裘德有很多秘密，威廉向來很小心，避免顯露太多想要探索那些秘密的興趣。

　 If it had been anyone else, he told himself, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have demanded answers, he would have called mutual friends, he would have sat him down and yelled and pleaded and threatened until a confession was extracted. But this was part of the deal when you were friends with Jude: he knew it, Andy knew it, they all knew it. You let things slide that your instincts told you not to, you scooted around the edges of your suspicions. You understood that proof of your friendship lay in keeping your distance, in accepting what was told you, in turning and walking away when the door was shut in your face instead of trying to force it open again. The war-room discussions the four of them had had about other people—about Black Henry Young, when they thought the girl he was dating was cheating on him and were trying to decide how to tell him; about Ezra, when they knew the girl he was dating was cheating on him and were trying to decide how to tell him—they would never have about Jude. He would consider it a betrayal, and it wouldn’t help, anyway.

威廉告訴自己，如果是其他人，他一定不會遲疑。他會要求知道答案，他會找共同的朋友過來，大家坐下來，又謾罵又懇求又威脅，直到他和盤托出。但是要成為裘德的好友，這是條件的一部分：他知道，安迪知道，他們全都知道。你放過了直覺告訴你不該放過的事情，你回避著不去猜疑。你明白若要證明你的友誼，你必須保持距離，接受他告訴你的事情；如果那扇門在你面前關上，你就必須轉身離去，而非強行把門打開。他們四個人討論策略時都是關于其他人的——關于黑亨利·楊，當時他們懷疑與他交往的女生背著他劈腿，于是商量該怎么告訴他；關于埃茲拉，當時他們知道與他交往的那個女生背著他劈腿，于是商量該怎么告訴他——他們永遠不會討論裘德。裘德會認為那是背叛，而且反正也不會有幫助。

　 For the rest of the night, they avoided each other, but on his way to bed, he found himself standing outside Jude’s room, his hand hovering above the door, ready to knock, before he returned to himself: What would he say? What did he want to hear? And so he left, continued on, and the next day, when Jude made no mention of the previous evening’s almost-conversation, he didn’t either, and soon that day turned to night, and then another, and another, and they moved further and further from his ever trying, however ineffectively, to make Jude answer a question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

這一夜接下來的時間里他們一直回避彼此，但是回房睡覺前，威廉不自覺地來到裘德房門口。他舉起手停在門前，準備敲門，然后自問：他會說什么？他想聽到什么？于是他離開了，回自己房間睡覺。次日，裘德完全沒提前一天傍晚幾乎要發(fā)生的對話，威廉也沒提。于是白天轉為夜晚，然后又過一天，再過一天，他們越來越遠離那時的狀態(tài)。他曾經嘗試讓裘德回答一個他鼓不起勇氣問的問題，卻徒勞無功。

　 But it was always there, that question, and in unexpected moments it would muscle its way into his consciousness, positioning itself stubbornly at the forefront of his mind, as immovable as a troll. Four years ago, he and JB were sharing an apartment and attending graduate school, and Jude, who had remained in Boston for law school, had come down to visit them. It had been night then, too, and there had been a locked bathroom door, and him banging on it, abruptly, inexplicably terrified, and Jude answering it, looking irritated but also (or was he imagining this?) strangely guilty, and asking him “What, Willem?” and he once again being unable to answer, but knowing that something was amiss. Inside the room had smelled sharply tannic, the rusted-metal scent of blood, and he had even picked through the trash can and found a curl of a bandage wrapper, but was that from dinner, when JB had cut himself with a knife while trying to chop a carrot in his hand (Willem suspected he exaggerated his incompetency in the kitchen in order to avoid having to do any prep work), or was it from Jude’s nighttime punishments? But again (again!), he did nothing, and when he passed Jude (feigning sleep or actually asleep?) on the sofa in the living room, he said nothing, and the next day, he again said nothing, and the days unfurled before him as clean as paper, and with each day he said nothing, and nothing, and nothing.

可是那個問題一直存在，而且會在預期之外的時刻硬闖進他腦海里，堅決地霸住位子不走，像釣餌似的動也不動。四年前，他和杰比讀研究生時合租公寓，留在波士頓讀法學院的裘德曾南下來拜訪他們。當時也是夜晚，裘德把自己鎖在浴室里，他忽然跑去猛敲浴室門，無來由地恐懼極了。裘德開了門，看起來很不高興，但同時（還是他想象出來的）又有種奇怪的羞愧表情，然后問他：“威廉，什么事？”他無法回答，但心知有事情出了差錯，浴室里一股濃烈的酸澀，是鮮血的生銹金屬氣味。他去翻垃圾桶時甚至還找到一長條繃帶，但那是源自晚餐前杰比切胡蘿卜時不小心切到手（威廉懷疑他故意夸大自己在廚房的無能，好避免做任何備菜工作），還是裘德夜間的自我懲罰？但是再一次（再一次?。?，他什么都沒做。他經過睡在客廳沙發(fā)上的裘德時（他是裝睡，還是真的睡了？），什么也沒說。次日，還是什么都沒說。往后的日子像干凈的白紙在他面前展開，隨著每一天過去，他什么都沒說，沒說，沒說。

　 And now there was this. If he had done something (what?) three years ago, eight years ago, would this have happened? And what exactly was this?

然后是現在這件事。如果他三年前、八年前做點事（什么事？），這件事會發(fā)生嗎？而且這到底是什么事？

　 But this time he would say something, because this time he had proof. This time, to let Jude slip away and evade him would mean that he himself would be culpable if anything happened.

這回他要說話了，因為這回他有了證據。這回，讓裘德再躲著溜掉，就表示如果出了什么事，他就難辭其咎了。

　 After he had resolved this, he felt the fatigue overwhelm him, felt it erase the worry and anxiety and frustration of the night. It was the last day of the year, and as he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, the last thing he remembered feeling was surprise that he should be falling asleep so fast.

他下定決心之后，覺得一股疲倦的大浪襲來，抹去了這一夜的焦慮和困惑。這是今年的最后一天，當他躺在自己的床上、閉上眼睛時，他記得的最后一個感覺，就是很驚訝自己居然這么快就睡著了。