I shall never forget watching him from my table as he climbed the small ladder wearing his red bathing trunks, taking forever to pick the ripest apricots. On his way to the kitchen—wicker basket, espadrilles, billowy shirt, suntan lotion, and all—he threw me a very large one, saying, “Yours,” in just the same way he’d throw a tennis ball across the court and say, “Your serve.” Of course, he had no idea what I’d been thinking minutes earlier, but the firm, rounded cheeks of the apricot with their dimple in the middle reminded me of how his body had stretched across the boughs of the tree with his tight, rounded ass echoing the color and the shape of the fruit. Touching the apricot was like touching him. He would never know, just as the people we buy the newspaper from and then fantasize about all night have no idea that this particular inflection on their face or that tan along their exposed shoulder will give us no end of pleasure when we’re alone.
 
我永遠無法忘記這一幕：我坐在我那張桌邊看他穿著紅色泳褲爬上小梯子，慢條斯理地挑出熟透了的杏。他提著柳條籃，穿著布面平底涼鞋、寬襯衫、涂著防曬乳液，在回廚房的路上撿一顆很大的丟給我，說聲“給你的。”就跟他從球網(wǎng)對面把網(wǎng)球扔給我，說聲“該你發(fā)球”時沒什么兩樣。當然，他不可能知道我?guī)追昼娗霸谙胄┦裁?，但杏那圓潤、中間一道凹弧的形狀，讓我想起他爬上樹干伸手摘杏時，那緊實圓潤的臀部與果子的顏色和形狀彼此呼應。觸摸那顆杏就像觸摸他，他永遠不會知道。就像賣報紙給我們，任我們整夜遐想的人也不知道，他們臉上某個特定的表情變化，或裸露肩膀上曬出的褐色肌膚，給予了我們獨處時的無窮樂趣。
 
Yours, like Later!, had an off-the-cuff, unceremonious, here, catch quality that reminded me how twisted and secretive my desires were compared to the expansive spontaneity of everything about him. It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricated—and near it, if I dared to bite that far, his apricock.
 
“給你的”和“回頭再說”、“拿去”、“接著”一樣，都有種即興不拘禮節(jié)的感覺，提醒著我：比起他熱情奔放、隨性所至的一切，我的欲望是多么曲曲折折、遮遮掩掩。他絕對想不到他把杏放到我手心里，其實是讓我撫著他的臀；咬果子的同時，我也在咬他身上那個從未曬過太陽、一定特別白皙的部位——還有他的“杏器”，如果我敢那么放肆的話。
 
In fact, he knew more about apricots than we did—their grafts, etymology, origins, fortunes in and around the Mediterranean. At the breakfast table that morning, my father explained that the name for the fruit came from the Arabic, since the word—in Italian, albicocca, abricot in French, aprikose in German, like the words “algebra,” “alchemy,” and “alcohol”—was derived from an Arabic noun combined with the Arabic article al- before it. The origin of albicocca was al-birquq. My father, who couldn’t resist not leaving well enough alone and needed to top his entire performance with a little fillip of more recent vintage, added that what was truly amazing was that, in Israel and in many Arab countries nowadays, the fruit is referred to by a totally different name: mishmish.
 
其實他比我們更了解杏，包括杏的嫁接方法、詞源、起源、在地中海地區(qū)的生長情況。那天吃早餐的時候，父親解釋這種水果的名稱源于阿拉伯語，因為“杏”的意大利語是?albicocca、法語是?abricot、德語是?aprikose ，跟“代數(shù)”(algebra)、“煉金術”(alchemy)、“酒精”(alcohol) 這幾個詞一樣，皆源于阿拉伯語，并在前面加上阿拉伯語的冠詞?al-。albicocca?的字源是?al-birquq。一向無法見好就收，總忍不住要再來段最新消息錦上添花的父親又補充說，真正令人驚訝的是，目前在以色列和許多阿拉伯國家，這種水果的名稱竟是毫無類似之處的?mishimish。

《請以你的名字呼喚我》