《渺小一生》:之后，杰比的心情似乎好些了

　 “JB!”

“杰比！”

　 After that, JB’s mood seemed to improve. Even his final salvos were somewhat listless, as if he were delivering them out of obligation rather than true depth of feeling. “In ten years, I’ll bet you two will have made the full transition to lesbiandom. I predict cats,” was one, and “Watching you two in the kitchen is like watching a slightly more racially ambiguous version of that John Currin painting. Do you know what I’m talking about? Look it up,” was another.

之后，杰比的心情似乎好些了。就連他最后的開炮都有點無精打采，好像他只是出于義務，而不是真有這種感覺。“十年內，我敢說你們兩個就會完全轉到女同性戀的領域去了。走著瞧好了?！边@是一個。還有，“看你們兩個在廚房，就像看著約翰·柯林[3]的畫作，只是人種稍微曖昧一點的版本。你們知道我在說什么嗎？自己去查?！边@是另一個。

　 “Are you going to come out or keep it quiet?” JB asked over dinner.

“你打算出柜，還是要保密？”晚餐時杰比問。

　 “I’m not sending out a press release, if that’s what you mean,” Willem said. “But I’m not going to hide it, either.”

“我不會發(fā)新聞稿，如果你的意思是這個，”威廉說，“可是我也不打算隱瞞?！?

　 “I think it’s a mistake,” Jude added, quickly. Willem didn’t bother answering; they had been having this argument for a month.

“我想這是個錯誤?！濒玫铝⒖萄a充。威廉懶得回答；這件事他們已經(jīng)爭執(zhí)了一個月。

　 After dinner, he and JB lounged on the sofa and drank tea and Jude loaded the dishwasher. By this time, JB seemed almost appeased, and he recalled that this was the arc of most dinners with JB, even back at Lispenard Street: he began the evening as something sharp and tart, and ended it as something soothed and gentled.

晚餐后，他和杰比坐在沙發(fā)上喝茶，裘德則在廚房整理臟碗盤，放進洗碗機。此時，杰比看起來幾乎已經(jīng)被成功地安撫了，而他想起杰比大部分晚餐前后的心情變化就是這樣，即使早在利斯本納街時期：傍晚一開始，他銳利又尖酸，結束時則是平靜又溫和。

　 “How’s the sex?” JB asked him.

“你們的性生活如何？”杰比問。

　 “Amazing,” he said, immediately.

“很棒。”他立刻說。

　 JB looked glum. “Dammit,” he said.

杰比看起來很不高興?！霸撍馈！彼f。

　 But of course, this was a lie. He had no idea if the sex was amazing, because they hadn’t had sex. The previous Friday, Andy had come over, and they’d told him, and Andy had stood and hugged them both very solemnly, as if he was Jude’s father and they had told him that they had just gotten engaged. Willem had walked him to the door, and as they were waiting for the elevator, Andy said to him, quietly, “How’s it going?”

但是這自然是謊話。他不知道他們的性生活是否很棒，因為他們還沒有過。上個星期五，安迪過來，他們告訴了他，安迪站起來鄭重地擁抱兩人，好像他是裘德的父親，而他們剛跟他說他們訂婚了。離開時，威廉送他到門口。兩人等電梯時，安迪低聲跟他說：“進行得還順利嗎？”

　 He paused. “Okay,” he said at last, and Andy, as if he could discern everything he wasn’t saying, squeezed his shoulder. “I know it’s not easy, Willem,” he said. “But you must be doing something right—I’ve never seen him more relaxed or happier, not ever.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but what could he say? He couldn’t say, Call me if you want to talk about him, or Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with, and so instead he left, giving Willem a little salute as the elevator sank out of sight.

他頓了一下?！斑€好?！彼K于說。安迪好像察覺出他沒說的一切，捏了一下他的肩膀?！拔抑啦蝗菀祝?，”他說，“但你一定做對了什么事，我從來沒見過他這么輕松、這么愉快，真的從來沒有。”他的表情似乎想再說些什么，但還能說什么？他不能說，“如果你想談談他，就打電話給我”，或“需要任何幫助就跟我說一聲”，然后他離開了，電梯下降時他朝威廉敬了個禮。

　 That night, after JB had gone home, he thought of the conversation he and Andy had had in the café that day, and how even as Andy had been warning him how difficult it would be, he hadn’t fully believed him. In retrospect, he was glad he hadn’t: because believing Andy might have intimidated him, because he might have been too scared to try.

那天夜里，杰比離開后，他想著當初和安迪在小餐館里的對話，連安迪都警告過他這會有多困難，當時他沒完全相信?；仡櫰饋?，他很高興自己當時沒相信。要是相信了安迪，他可能會畏縮，可能就害怕得不敢試了。

　 He turned and looked at Jude, who was asleep. This was one of the nights he’d taken off his clothes, and he was lying on his back, one of his arms crooked near his head, and Willem, as he often did, ran his fingers down the inside of this arm, its scars rendering it into a miserable terrain, a place of mountains and valleys singed by fire. Sometimes, when he was certain Jude was very deeply asleep, he would switch on the light near his side of the bed and study his body more closely, because Jude refused to let himself be examined in daylight. He would uncover him and move his palms over his arms, his legs, his back, feeling the texture of the skin change from rough to glossy, marveling at all the permutations flesh could take, at all the ways the body healed itself, even when attempts had been made to destroy it. He had once shot a film on the Big Island of Hawaii, and on their day off, he and the rest of the cast had trekked across the lava fields, watching the land change from rock as porous and dry as petrified bone into a gleaming black landscape, the lava frozen into exuberant swirls of frosting. Jude’s skin was as diverse, as wondrous, and in places so unlike skin as he had felt or understood it that it too seemed something otherworldly and futuristic, a prototype of what flesh might look like ten thousand years from now.

他翻身看著睡著的裘德。今天晚上他脫了衣服，此刻正仰天躺著，一邊手臂彎曲放在頭旁邊，而威廉一如他常做的那樣，手指沿著他的手臂內側往下拂過，上頭的疤痕形成一片悲慘的地形，像是一片被大火燒過的高山和谷地。有時，確定裘德熟睡后，他會打開自己那一側的床頭燈，更仔細地審視他的身體，因為裘德拒絕在大白天讓人看到。他會掀開他身上的被子，手掌撫過他的手臂、雙腿、背部，感覺那皮膚的質地在他手掌下從粗糙變?yōu)楣饣@嘆著皮肉能形成的各種排列組合，驚嘆著身體即使碰到刻意摧毀它的企圖，也有種種自愈的方式。他曾去夏威夷大島拍過一部電影。某個休息日，他和其他演員就到熔巖區(qū)徒步旅行，看著地表從多孔且干燥如石化骨頭的巖石，轉為一片微微發(fā)亮的黑色地景，那些熔巖凝結為一道道結霜的奔流漩渦。裘德的皮膚也同樣變化多端、同樣不可思議，有些地方看起來或感覺起來一點也不像皮膚，簡直是超越塵世的未來幻想，好像是一萬年后皮肉的樣貌。

　 “You’re repulsed,” Jude had said, quietly, the second time he had taken his clothes off, and he had shaken his head. And he hadn’t been: Jude had always been so secretive, so protective of his body that to see it for real was somehow anticlimactic; it was so normal, finally, so less dramatic than what he had imagined. But the scars were difficult for him to see not because they were aesthetically offensive, but because each one was evidence of something withstood or inflicted. Jude’s arms were for that reason the part of his body that upset him the most. At nights, as Jude slept, he would turn them over in his hands, counting the cuts, trying to imagine himself in a state in which he would willingly inflict pain on himself, in which he would actively try to erode his own being. Sometimes there were new cuts—he always knew when Jude had cut himself, because he slept in his shirt on those nights, and he would have to push up his sleeves as he slept and feel for the bandages—and he would wonder when Jude had made them, and why he hadn’t noticed. When he had moved in with Jude after the suicide attempt, Harold had told him where Jude hid his bag of razors, and he, like Harold, had begun throwing them away. But then they had disappeared entirely, and he couldn’t figure out where Jude was keeping them.

“你很反感吧?！濒玫碌诙蚊摰粢路r曾低聲說，他聽了搖搖頭。是真的：裘德總是隱藏、保護他的身體，因而親眼看到時，不知怎的還有點掃興；比起他曾想象的，實在太普通、太缺乏戲劇性了。但看到那些疤讓他很難受，不是因為審美上的不舒服，而是每道疤都是承受痛苦或遭受凌虐的證據(jù)。因為這個原因，裘德的手臂是最令他難過的部分。好幾個夜里，當裘德睡著時，他會抬起他的手臂，數(shù)著那些割痕，設法想象自己處在一種故意讓自己疼痛、主動想傷害自己的情境里。有時那手臂上有新的割痕（他總是知道裘德什么時候割自己，因為那些夜晚裘德會穿著襯衫睡覺，他得趁他熟睡時推高他的袖子，摸著那些繃帶），他想不通裘德是什么時候割的，為什么自己都沒注意到。裘德自殺未遂后他搬進來住時，哈羅德曾告訴他裘德把裝有刮胡刀片的袋子藏在哪里，于是他就像哈羅德那樣，開始把那些袋子丟掉。但后來那些袋子就完全消失了，他猜不到裘德藏在哪里。

　 Other times, he would feel not curiosity, but awe: he was so much more damaged than Willem had comprehended. How could I have not known this? he would ask himself. How could I not have seen this?

但有時候，他完全沒有好奇之感，只有敬畏：裘德身上的損傷比威廉原先理解的要更嚴重。我怎么可能都不曉得？他會問自己。我怎么可能都沒看到？

　 And then there was the matter of sex. He knew Andy had warned him about sex, but Jude’s fear of and antipathy toward it disturbed and occasionally frightened him. One night toward the end of November, after they’d been together six months, he had reached his hands down Jude’s underwear and Jude had made a strange, strangled noise, the kind of noise an animal makes when it’s being caught in another animal’s jaws, and had jerked himself away with such violence that he had cracked his head against his nightstand. “I’m sorry,” they had apologized to each other, “I’m sorry.” And that was the first moment that Willem, too, had felt a certain fear. All along he had assumed that Jude was shy, profoundly so, but that eventually, he would abandon some of his self-consciousness, that he would feel comfortable enough to have sex. But in that moment, he realized that what he had thought was a reluctance to have sex was actually a terror of it: that Jude would perhaps never be comfortable, that if and when they did eventually have sex, it would be because Jude decided he had to or Willem decided he had to force him. Neither option appealed to him. People had always given themselves to him; he had never had to wait, never had to try to convince someone that he wasn’t dangerous, that he wasn’t going to hurt them. What am I going to do? he asked himself. He wasn’t smart enough to figure this out on his own—and yet there was no one else he could ask. And then there was the fact that with every week, his desire grew sharper and less ignorable, his determination greater. It had been a long time since he had wanted to have sex with anyone so keenly, and the fact that it was someone he loved made the waiting both more unbearable and more absurd.

然后是性愛的事情。安迪警告過他，但裘德對性愛的恐懼及反感還是讓他很煩惱，偶爾還會被嚇壞。接近十一月底，他們在一起六個月后，某天晚上他把雙手探入裘德的內褲里，裘德發(fā)出一個奇怪、哽住的聲音，就像一只動物被另一只動物咬住時發(fā)出的那種聲音，同時猛地往后掙開，力道之大使他的腦袋撞到了床頭柜?！皩Σ黄?，”他們同時向對方道歉，“對不起。”頭一回，威廉也感覺到某種恐懼。一直以來，他都假設裘德是極度害羞，但總有一天，他會把難為情拋開，自在得足以有性愛生活。但在那一刻，他明白自己原先以為是不好意思的部分，其實是一種恐懼，他明白裘德或許永遠不會自在，也明白如果有一天他們終于有性行為，那是因為裘德決定自己非做不可，或威廉決定自己非逼他不可。這兩種選項都不是他喜歡的。其他人對他總是主動投懷送抱；他從來不必等，從來不必試著說服某個人他不危險、不會傷害他們。我該怎么辦？他問自己。他沒聰明到可以自己想出辦法，但又沒有人可以問。隨著每個星期過去，他的欲望越加強烈、越加無法忽視，他的決心也更強大。他已經(jīng)好久沒有這么想跟一個人做愛，而這又是他所深愛的人，讓整個等待過程更難以忍受也更荒謬。

　 As Jude slept that night, he watched him. Maybe I made a mistake, he thought.

那天晚上裘德睡著后，他看著他?；蛟S我犯了錯，他心想。

　 Aloud, he said, “I didn’t know it was going to be this complicated.” Next to him, Jude breathed, ignorant of Willem’s treachery.

他說出聲來：“我不知道事情會這么復雜?！痹谒赃?，裘德呼吸著，對威廉的背叛渾然不覺。

　 And then the morning arrived and he was reminded why he had decided to pursue this relationship to begin with, his own na?veté and arrogance aside. It was early, but he had woken anyway, and he watched as, through the half-open closet door, Jude got dressed. This had been a recent development, and Willem knew how difficult it was for him. He saw how hard Jude tried; he saw how everything he and everyone he knew took for granted—getting dressed in front of someone; getting undressed in front of someone—were things Jude had to practice again and again: he saw how determined he was, he saw how brave he was being. And this reminded him that he, too, had to keep trying. Both of them were uncertain; both of them were trying as much as they could; both of them would doubt themselves, would progress and recede. But they would both keep trying, because they trusted the other, and because the other person was the only other person who would ever be worth such hardships, such difficulties, such insecurities and exposure.

到了早晨醒來，他想起當初除了自己的天真和傲慢之外，他為什么想追求這段感情。當時還很早，但他已經(jīng)醒了，他隔著衣帽間半開的門，觀察裘德穿衣服。這是最近的新發(fā)展，他知道這對裘德來說有多不容易。他看到裘德多么努力嘗試，看到他和他認識的人都視為理所當然的事情（在別人面前穿衣服；在別人面前脫衣服），都是裘德必須一再練習的。他看到他有多么堅決，有多么勇敢。這提醒了他，他也得繼續(xù)嘗試下去。他們兩個人都不確定；兩個人都在盡力嘗試；兩個人都會懷疑自己，都會前進與倒退。但他們都會持續(xù)嘗試，因為他們信賴對方，也因為只有對方才值得這樣的辛苦、這樣的困難、這樣的不安和暴露。

　 When he opened his eyes again, Jude was sitting on the edge of the bed and smiling at him, and he was filled with affection for him: for how beautiful he was, for how dear he was, for how easy it was to love him. “Don’t go,” he said.

他再度睜開眼睛時，裘德坐在床沿對他微笑。他心中充滿對他的深情：因為他這么美，這么寶貴，這么容易就讓人愛上他?！安灰?。”他說。