《渺小一生》:今天星期五，是第一天

　 THE LAST TIME JB tried—really tried—to stop doing drugs, it was Fourth of July weekend. No one else was in the city. Malcolm was with Sophie visiting her parents in Hamburg. Jude was with Harold and Julia in Copenhagen. Willem was shooting in Cappadocia. Richard was in Wyoming, at an artists’ colony. Asian Henry Young was in Reykjavík. Only he remained, and if he hadn’t been so determined, he wouldn’t have been in town, either. He’d have been in Beacon, where Richard had a house, or in Quogue, where Ezra had a house, or in Woodstock, where Ali had a house, or—well. There weren’t that many other people who would give him their house nowadays, and besides, he wasn’t talking to most of them because they were getting on his nerves. But he hated summer in New York. All fat people hated summer in New York: everything was always sticking to everything else, flesh to flesh, flesh to fabric. You never felt truly dry. And yet there he was, unlocking the door of his studio on the third floor of the white brick building in Kensington, glancing involuntarily toward the end of the hall, where Jackson’s studio was, before he let himself in.

上回杰比嘗試停止嗑藥（真正努力嘗試），是七月四日國慶節(jié)的那個(gè)周末。其他人都不在紐約市。馬爾科姆陪蘇菲去德國漢堡拜訪父母，裘德陪哈羅德和朱麗婭去丹麥哥本哈根，威廉正在土耳其的卡帕多西亞地區(qū)拍戲，理查德去了懷俄明州的一個(gè)藝術(shù)村，亞洲亨利·楊在冰島的雷克雅未克。只有他留下來，要不是他這么堅(jiān)定，他也會(huì)離開。他會(huì)去紐約州的比肯市，理查德在那有一棟房子，或者去長島南岸的闊克村，埃茲拉在那有一棟房子，或者去紐約州的伍德斯托克，阿里在那有一棟房子，或者——算了，現(xiàn)在其他人不太會(huì)把房子借給他住了，何況他跟大部分人都不來往了，因?yàn)樗麄兏愕盟軣?。但他討厭紐約的夏天。所有胖子都討厭紐約的夏天：每樣?xùn)|西都黏在其他東西上，肉黏著肉，肉黏著布料，你從來不會(huì)真的覺得干爽。然而，他來到布魯克林區(qū)肯辛頓一棟白色磚砌樓房三樓的工作室，打開前門的鎖，不由自主地朝走廊盡頭杰克遜的工作室瞥了一眼，這才進(jìn)了門。

　 JB was not an addict. Yes, he did drugs. Yes, he did a lot of them. But he wasn’t an addict. Other people were addicts. Jackson was an addict. So was Zane, and so was Hera. Massimo and Topher: also addicts. Sometimes it felt like he was the only one who hadn’t slipped over the edge.

他沒有藥癮。沒錯(cuò)，他嗑藥。沒錯(cuò)，他嗑很多，但他沒上癮。其他人都上癮了。杰克遜就是一個(gè)，還有贊恩，還有埃拉。馬西摩和托佛也都上癮了。有時(shí)他感覺他是唯一還沒越界掉下去的人。

　 And yet he knew that a lot of people thought he had, which is why he was still in the city when he should be in the country: four days, no drugs, only work—and then no one would be able to say anything ever again.

但是他知道很多人都以為他上癮了。這就是為什么他該去鄉(xiāng)下的時(shí)候卻偏偏待在紐約：四天，不嗑藥，只工作，這樣就沒有人敢再啰唆了。

　 Today, Friday, was day one. The air-conditioning unit in his studio was broken, so the first thing he did was open all the windows and then, once he had knocked, lightly, on Jackson’s door to make sure he wasn’t inside, the door as well. Normally he never opened the door, both because of Jackson and because of the noise. His studio was one of fourteen rooms on the third floor of a five-story building. The rooms were meant to be used only as studio space, but he guessed about twenty percent of the building’s occupants actually lived there illegally. On the rare occasions he had arrived at his studio before ten in the morning, he would see people shuffling through the corridors in their boxers, and when he went to the bathroom at the end of the hall, there’d be someone in there taking a sponge bath in the sink or shaving or brushing his teeth, and he’d nod at them—“Whassup, man?”—and they’d nod back. Sadly, however, the overall effect was less collegiate and more institutional. This depressed him. JB could have found studio space elsewhere, better, more private studio space, but he’d taken this one because (he was embarrassed to admit) the building looked like a dormitory, and he hoped it might feel like college again. But it didn’t.

今天星期五，是第一天。他工作室的冷氣壞了，所以他進(jìn)門的第一件事就是打開所有窗子，然后出去輕輕敲了一下杰克遜的門，確定他不在之后，把自己工作室的門也打開。平常他從不開門，既是因?yàn)榻芸诉d，也是因?yàn)樵胍?。他的工作室是這棟五層樓房三樓的十四個(gè)房間中的一個(gè)。這些房間本來只能當(dāng)成工作室使用，但他猜想，整棟樓大概有百分之二十的人其實(shí)都在這里非法居住。他偶爾在早上10點(diǎn)前抵達(dá)工作室時(shí)，會(huì)看到有人穿著四角內(nèi)褲在走廊上拖著腳步走動(dòng)，而且去大廳盡頭的洗手間時(shí)，有人會(huì)在那里的水槽擦澡、刮胡子或是刷牙。他會(huì)跟他們點(diǎn)個(gè)頭，對(duì)方也會(huì)點(diǎn)頭響應(yīng)一下。然而悲慘的是，那整體的效果不像大學(xué)，而像監(jiān)獄。這讓他很沮喪。杰比大可在別處找到更好、更有隱私的工作室，但他選中這里，是因?yàn)椋ㄋ疾缓靡馑汲姓J(rèn)）這棟樓看起來像宿舍，而他希望它能給他重回大學(xué)時(shí)代的感覺。但結(jié)果并沒有。

　 The building was also supposed to be a “l(fā)ow noise density” site, whatever that meant, but along with the artists, a number of bands—ironic thrasher bands, ironic folk bands, ironic acoustic bands—had also rented studios there, which meant that the hallway was always jumbled with noise, all of the bands’ instruments melding together to make one long whine of guitar feedback. The bands weren’t supposed to be there, and once every few months, when the owner of the building, a Mr. Chen, stopped by for a surprise inspection, he would hear the shouts bouncing through the hallways, even through his closed door, each person’s call of alarm echoed by the next, until the warning had saturated all five floors—“Chen!” “Chen!” “Chen!”—so by the time Mr. Chen stepped inside the front door, all was quiet, so unnaturally quiet that he imagined he could hear his next-door neighbor grinding his inks against his whetstone, and his other neighbor’s spirograph skritching against canvas. And then Mr. Chen would get into his car and drive away, and the echoes would reverse themselves—“Clear!” “Clear!” “Clear!”—and the cacophony would rise up again, like a flock of screeching cicadas.

這棟樓房同時(shí)應(yīng)該屬于“低噪音密度”（管他是什么意思）的區(qū)域，但除了藝術(shù)家之外，還有很多樂團(tuán)也租了這里的工作室，包括很爛的鞭擊金屬樂團(tuán)、很爛的民謠樂團(tuán)、很爛的不插電樂團(tuán)。所有的樂器聲混合成一種吉他試音時(shí)的噪音所發(fā)出的漫長哀鳴。那些樂團(tuán)不該在這里的。所以每隔幾個(gè)月，屋主陳先生過來突擊檢查時(shí)，他就會(huì)聽到走廊里回蕩著叫喊聲，連關(guān)著門都聽得到。每個(gè)人奔走相告，直到五層樓全充滿了“陳！”“陳！”“陳！”的警告，所以等到陳先生走進(jìn)樓下大門時(shí)，整棟樓一片寂靜，不自然得讓他想象可以聽到隔壁鄰居的刀摩擦著磨刀石的聲音，還有另一邊鄰居的萬花尺在畫布上刮出輕輕的刮擦聲。然后陳先生會(huì)回到他的車上，離開，于是相應(yīng)的呼喊聲此起彼落，“解除！”“解除！”“解除！”不和諧的樂器噪音再度響起，像聒噪的蟬鳴。

　 Once he was certain he was alone on the floor (god, where was everyone? Was he truly the last person left on earth?), he took off his shirt and then, after a moment, his pants, and began cleaning his studio, which he hadn’t done in months. Back and forth he walked to the trash cans near the service elevator, stuffing them full of old pizza boxes and empty beer cans and scraps of paper with doodles on them and brushes whose bristles had gone strawlike because he hadn’t cleaned them and palettes of watercolors that had turned to clay because he hadn’t kept them moist.

一旦他確定這層樓只有他一個(gè)人（老天，大家都跑哪里去了，地球上真的只剩下他了嗎？），他就脫掉襯衫，過了一會(huì)兒，又脫掉長褲，開始收拾好幾個(gè)月沒打掃的工作室。他一趟又一趟地走到貨運(yùn)電梯旁的垃圾桶，在里頭塞滿披薩盒、空啤酒罐、亂涂畫過的碎紙張、筆毛因沒清洗而硬得像干草的畫筆，還有荒廢已久、顏料硬得像黏土的水彩調(diào)色盤。

　 Cleaning was boring; it was particularly boring while sober. He reflected, as he sometimes did, that none of the supposedly good things that were supposed to happen to you when you were on meth had happened to him. Other people he knew had grown gaunt, or had nonstop anonymous sex, or had binges in which they cleaned or organized their apartments or studios for hours. But he remained fat. His sex drive had vanished. His studio and apartment remained disasters. True, he was working remarkably long stretches—twelve, fourteen hours at a time—but he couldn’t attribute that to the meth: he had always been a hard worker. When it came to painting or drawing, he had always had a long attention span.

打掃很無聊，清醒時(shí)打掃尤其無聊。于是就像他有時(shí)會(huì)做的那樣，他認(rèn)真想著吸冰毒時(shí)那些應(yīng)該發(fā)生在他身上，但結(jié)果全沒發(fā)生的美好事情。他認(rèn)識(shí)的其他人吸了冰毒后都消瘦了，他們不停地跟陌生人性交，或者連續(xù)打掃、整理公寓，或者在工作室干上好幾個(gè)小時(shí)。但他還是很胖，他的性交欲望消失了，他的工作室和公寓還是一塌糊涂。沒錯(cuò)，因?yàn)樗偸且豢跉夤ぷ骱芫茫看问r(shí)），但不是因?yàn)楸镜年P(guān)系，而是因?yàn)樗ぷ飨騺砼?。只要是繪畫或素描，他總是可以保持長時(shí)間的專注。

　 After an hour or so of picking things up, the studio looked exactly the same as it had when he began, and he was craving a cigarette, which he didn’t have, or a drink, which he also didn’t have, and shouldn’t have anyway, as it was still only noon. He knew he had a ball of gum in his jeans pocket, which he dug around for and found—it was slightly damp from the heat—and stuffed into his mouth, chewing it as he lay supine, his eyes closed, the cement floor cool beneath his back and thighs, pretending he was elsewhere, not in Brooklyn in July in the ninety-degree heat.

收拾了約一個(gè)小時(shí)后，工作室看起來還是跟他剛進(jìn)門時(shí)沒兩樣。他好想抽根煙，但是他沒煙，或是喝點(diǎn)酒，但是他沒酒，也不該有，現(xiàn)在只是中午而已。他知道牛仔褲口袋里有一顆口香糖球，于是翻找出因?yàn)樘鞜岫兊糜悬c(diǎn)潮濕的口香糖，塞進(jìn)嘴里，躺在那咀嚼著，閉上雙眼。他背部和大腿底下的水泥地涼涼的，他假裝自己在別的地方，而不是在布魯克林三十二攝氏度的七月天。

　 How am I feeling? he asked himself.

我現(xiàn)在覺得怎么樣？他問自己。

　 Okay, he answered himself.

還好，他回答自己。

　 The shrink he had started seeing had told him to ask himself that. “It’s like a soundcheck,” he’d said. “Just a way to check in with yourself: How am I feeling? Do I want to use? If I do want to use, why do I want to use? It’s a way for you to communicate with yourself, to examine your impulses instead of simply giving in to them.” What a moron, JB had thought. He still thought this. And yet, like many moronic things, he was unable to expunge the question from his memory. Now, at odd, unwelcome moments, he would find himself asking himself how he felt. Sometimes, the answer was, “Like I want to do drugs,” and so he’d do them, if only to illustrate to his therapist just how moronic his method was. See? he’d say to Giles in his head, Giles who wasn’t even a PhD, just an MSW. So much for your self-examination theory. What else, Giles? What’s next?

他開始看的那個(gè)心理咨詢師曾要他這樣問自己?！熬拖袷且繇懙脑囈簟！彼f，“只是檢查自己的方式：我現(xiàn)在覺得怎么樣？我想嗑藥嗎？如果我想，那是為什么？你可以用這個(gè)方式跟自己溝通，分析一下你的沖動(dòng)，而不是投降算了?！闭鎵蛑钦系?，杰比當(dāng)時(shí)心想。他現(xiàn)在還是這么想。然而就像很多智障的事情一樣，他沒法把這問題從記憶中抹去?，F(xiàn)在，偶爾碰到一些討厭的時(shí)刻，他會(huì)不自覺地問自己感覺怎么樣。有時(shí)答案是：“覺得想嗑藥?！庇谑撬袜玖?，即使只為了向那個(gè)心理咨詢師證明他的方法有多智障。看到?jīng)]？他在心里跟他的心理咨詢師賈爾思說。賈爾思還不是醫(yī)學(xué)博士呢，只是社工碩士。你的自我檢驗(yàn)理論就這么點(diǎn)用。接下來呢，賈爾思你還有什么招數(shù)？

　 Seeing Giles had not been JB’s idea. Six months ago, in January, his mother and aunts had had a mini-intervention with him, which had begun with his mother sharing memories of what a bright and precocious boy JB had been, and look at him now, and then his aunt Christine, literally playing bad cop, yelling at him about how he was wasting all the opportunities that her sister had provided him and how he had become a huge pain in the ass, and then his aunt Silvia, who had always been the gentlest of the three, reminding him that he was so talented, and that they all wanted him back, and wouldn’t he consider getting treatment? He had not been in the mood for an intervention, even one as low-key and cozy as theirs had been (his mother had provided his favorite cheesecake, which they all ate as they discussed his flaws), because, among other things, he was still angry at them. The month before, his grandmother had died, and his mother had taken a whole day to call him. She claimed it was because she couldn’t find him and he wasn’t picking up his phone, but he knew that the day she had died he had been sober, and his phone had been on all day, and so he wasn’t sure why his mother was lying to him.

去看賈爾思不是杰比自愿的。六個(gè)月前，一月的時(shí)候，他母親和阿姨們對(duì)他采取了小型的干預(yù)行動(dòng)，一開始是他母親說起杰比以前是個(gè)多開朗又早熟的孩子，結(jié)果看看他現(xiàn)在變成什么樣。然后，他的親阿姨克麗絲汀名副其實(shí)地扮演起了壞警察，朝他大吼說他如何浪費(fèi)了她姐姐給他提供的所有機(jī)會(huì)，還有他怎么變成一個(gè)超級(jí)討厭鬼，接著三人中向來最溫和的席薇亞阿姨提醒他，說他這么有才華，她們都希望他回頭，而且他不考慮去治療嗎？他當(dāng)時(shí)沒有接受干預(yù)的心情，即便是這么溫和又令人舒適的干預(yù)（他母親還做了他最喜歡的奶酪蛋糕，大家邊吃邊討論他的缺點(diǎn)），因?yàn)槌似渌虑橹?，他還在生她們的氣。前一個(gè)月，他外婆過世了，他母親花了一整天打電話給他。她宣稱找不到他是因?yàn)樗唤与娫?。但他知道外婆過世的那一天他沒嗑藥，他的手機(jī)也一整天開著，所以他不確定母親為什么要撒謊。

　 “JB, Grandma would have been heartbroken if she knew what you’ve become,” his mother said to him.

“杰比，外婆要是知道你變成這樣，一定會(huì)傷心死。”他母親這么告訴他。

　 “God, Ma, just fuck off,” he’d said, wearily, sick of her wailing and quivering, and Christine had popped up and slapped him across the face.

“老天，媽，滾蛋啦。”他厭倦地說，受不了她這樣哭得全身打戰(zhàn)，結(jié)果克麗絲汀沖過來甩了他一巴掌。

　 After that, he’d agreed to go see Giles (some friend of a friend of Silvia’s) as a way of apologizing to Christine and, of course, to his mother. Unfortunately, Giles truly was an idiot, and during their sessions (paid for by his mother: he wasn’t going to waste his money on therapy, especially bad therapy), he would answer Giles’s uninventive questions—Why do you think you’re so attracted to drugs, JB? What do you feel they give you? Why do you think your use of them has accelerated so much over the past few years? Why do you think you’re not talking to Malcolm and Jude and Willem as much?—with answers he knew would excite him. He would slip in mentions of his dead father, of the great emptiness and sense of loss his absence had inspired in him, of the shallowness of the art world, of his fears that he would never fulfill his promise, and watch Giles’s pen bob ecstatically over his pad, and feel both disdain for stupid Giles as well as disgust for his own immaturity. Fucking with one’s therapist—even if one’s therapist truly deserved to be fucked with—was the sort of thing you did when you were nineteen, not when you were thirty-nine.

之后，他就同意去看賈爾思（是席薇亞一個(gè)朋友的朋友），算是跟克麗絲汀和他母親道歉。不幸的是，賈爾思真是個(gè)白癡，而且每次去做心理咨詢（由他母親出錢，他才不要把錢浪費(fèi)在心理咨詢上頭，尤其是爛的咨詢），他就要回答賈爾思各式各樣了無新意的問題，而且知道自己的答案一定會(huì)讓他很興奮——杰比，為什么你覺得自己這么受藥物吸引？你覺得藥物給了你什么？你覺得為什么過去短短幾年你嗑藥嗑得這么兇？你覺得你為什么不像以前那樣常跟馬爾科姆、裘德和威廉談話？他會(huì)故意提到死去的父親，提到父親缺席引發(fā)了巨大的空虛感和失落感，談到藝術(shù)圈的膚淺，談到他擔(dān)心自己永遠(yuǎn)無法出人頭地的恐懼，然后看著賈爾思在筆記本上狂寫。他既瞧不起賈爾思的愚蠢，也覺得自己的幼稚令人作嘔。惡搞心理咨詢師（即使是個(gè)活該被惡搞的咨詢師）這種事，是你19歲的時(shí)候才會(huì)干的，不是39歲。

　 But although Giles was an idiot, JB did find himself thinking about his questions, because they were questions that he had asked himself as well. And although Giles posed each as a discrete quandary, he knew that in reality each one was inseparable from the last, and that if it had been grammatically and linguistically possible to ask all of them together in one big question, then that would be the truest expression of why he was where he was.

盡管賈爾思是白癡，但杰比發(fā)現(xiàn)自己真的會(huì)思考他問的那些問題，因?yàn)槟切﹩栴}他也問過自己。盡管賈爾思提出的每個(gè)問題像是各自獨(dú)立的，但他知道其實(shí)每個(gè)問題都跟上一個(gè)有關(guān)。如果有可能在文法上和語言學(xué)上把所有問題融合成一個(gè)大問題，就能真正表明他為什么會(huì)是現(xiàn)在這個(gè)樣子。

　 First, he’d say to Giles, he hadn’t set out to like drugs as much as he did. That sounded like an obvious and even silly thing to say, but the truth was that JB knew people—mostly rich, mostly white, mostly boring, mostly unloved by their parents—who had in fact started taking drugs because they thought it might make them more interesting, or more frightening, or more commanding of attention, or simply because it made the time go faster. His friend Jackson, for example, was one of those people. But he was not. Of course, he had always done drugs—everyone had—but in college, and in his twenties, he had thought of drugs the way he thought of desserts, which he also loved: a consumable that had been forbidden to him as a child and which was now freely available. Doing drugs, like having post-dinner snacks of cereal so throat-singeingly sweet that the leftover milk in the bowl could be slurped down like sugarcane juice, was a privilege of adulthood, one he intended to enjoy.

關(guān)于第一個(gè)問題，他會(huì)跟賈爾思說，他一開始沒那么喜歡嗑藥。這種話聽起來好像很顯而易見，甚至很傻氣，但事實(shí)上，杰比知道很多人（大都很有錢，白人，覺得生活無聊，不受父母疼愛）一開始會(huì)嗑藥，就是因?yàn)樗麄円詾樗幬锬茏屪约鹤兊酶腥?、更令人畏懼、更引人注意，或只是因?yàn)樗幬锬茏寱r(shí)間過得更快。比如，他的朋友杰克遜就是這種人，但他不是。當(dāng)然，他向來會(huì)嗑藥，每個(gè)人都會(huì)，但在大學(xué)時(shí)代、二十來歲時(shí)，藥物之于他就跟甜點(diǎn)一樣（他也很喜歡甜點(diǎn)），是他小時(shí)候不被允許接觸的一種消耗品，但現(xiàn)在他可以任意取用了。嗑藥就像晚餐后吃谷物片泡牛奶一樣，雖然喉嚨會(huì)甜得發(fā)干，但仍可以像喝甘蔗汁一樣把碗里剩下的牛奶啜飲而盡，這是身為成人的特權(quán)，也是他打算好好享受的。

　 Questions two and three: When and why had drugs become so important to him? He knew the answers to those as well. When he was thirty-two, he’d had his first show. Two things had happened after that show: The first was that he had become, genuinely, a star. There were articles written about him in the art press, and articles written about him in magazines and newspapers read by people who wouldn’t know their Sue Williams from their Sue Coe. And the second was that his friendship with Jude and Willem had been ruined.

問題二和問題三：藥物什么時(shí)候變得這么重要？為什么？他也知道答案。那時(shí)他32歲，開了第一次個(gè)展。展覽后發(fā)生了兩件事：第一件是他真的變成明星了，不但藝術(shù)媒體上有寫他的文章，連一般的非藝術(shù)讀者看的雜志和報(bào)紙也有關(guān)于他的報(bào)道。第二件就是他跟裘德和威廉的友誼毀了。

　 Perhaps “ruined” was too strong a word. But it had changed. He had done something bad—he could admit it—and Willem had taken Jude’s side (and why should he have been surprised at all that Willem had taken Jude’s side, because really, when he reviewed their entire friendship, there was the evidence: time after time after time of Willem always taking Jude’s side), and although they both said they forgave him, something had shifted in their relationship. The two of them, Jude and Willem, had become their own unit, united against everyone, united against him (why had he never seen this before?): We two form a multitude. And yet he had always thought that he and Willem had been a unit.

或許“毀”這個(gè)字眼太強(qiáng)烈了，但總之是變了。他承認(rèn)自己做了很不好的事，威廉站到了裘德那一邊（關(guān)于這一點(diǎn)，他為什么要覺得驚訝？回顧他們的友誼，事實(shí)早就一再證明：威廉總是一次又一次地站在裘德那一邊）。就算后來他們都說原諒他，但他們的關(guān)系起了根本的改變。裘德和威廉兩個(gè)人自成一組，聯(lián)合起來對(duì)抗其他人，甚至對(duì)抗他（為什么他以前都沒看出來）：我們兩人同心協(xié)力。然而，他一直以為他和威廉才是一組。

　 But all right, they weren’t. So who was he left with? Not Malcolm, because Malcolm had eventually started dating Sophie, and they made their own unit. And so who would be his partner, who would make his unit? No one, it often seemed. They had abandoned him.

好吧，結(jié)果不是。那他還能跟誰一組呢？不會(huì)是馬爾科姆，因?yàn)轳R爾科姆后來開始跟蘇菲交往，他們自成一組了。那么誰是他的伙伴？誰會(huì)跟他一組？沒有人，看起來往往就是這樣。他們拋棄了他。