Chiara, I could tell, was equally smitten. Her sister as well. Even the crowd of tennis bums who for years had come early every afternoon before heading out to the beach for a late swim would stay much later than usual hoping to catch a quick game with him.
我看得出奇亞拉對奧利弗也同樣癡迷。她妹妹也是。數(shù)年來每天下午早早就來,然后去海邊晚泳的那群網(wǎng)球迷也逗留得比平常晚些,希望跟他打上幾手。
With any of our other summer residents I would have resented it. But seeing everyone take such a liking to him, I found a strange, small oasis of peace. What could possibly be wrong with liking someone everyone else liked? Everyone had fallen for him, including my first and second cousins as well as my other relatives, who stayed with us on weekends and sometimes longer. For someone known to love spotting defects in everyone else, I derived a certain satisfaction from concealing my feelings for him behind my usual indifference, hostility, or spite for anyone in a position to outshine me at home. Because everyone liked him, I had to say I liked him too. I was like men who openly declare other men irresistibly handsome the better to conceal that they’re aching to embrace them. To withhold universal approval would simply alert others that I had concealed motives for needing to resist him. Oh, I like him very much, I said during his first ten days when my father asked me what I thought of him. I had used words intentionally compromising because I knew no one would suspect a false bottom in the arcane palette of shadings I applied to everything I said about him. He’s the best person I’ve known in my life, I said on the night when the tiny fishing boat on which he had sailed out with Anchise early that afternoon failed to return and we were scrambling to find his parents’ telephone number in the States in case we had to break the terrible news.
換作其他任何一個夏季住客,我一定會對此深惡痛絕??吹矫總€人都這么喜歡他,我卻感到一種奇異、微小的平和與欣慰。喜歡一個大家都喜歡的人,怎么可能有錯?人人傾心于他,包括我那些來度周末或做客的遠近親戚。我愛挑人毛病是出了名的,因此,我把對他的感情隱藏在慣有的冷淡、敵意或刻意刁難家里每一個地位凌駕于我之上的人之下,反而從中獲得一些滿足感。因為每個人都喜歡他,所以我也必須說我喜歡他。我就像那種公開宣稱其他男人帥得不得了,以便更好地隱藏自己太想擁抱他們的渴望的男人。如果大家都予以認可而我卻不,只會讓別人警覺我肯定暗藏了某種不得不抗拒他的動機。喔,我非常喜歡他——在他到訪的最初十天,父親問我對他有何看法,我說這么說的。我用詞刻意折中,因為我知道沒有人會懷疑在我談論他時所使用的晦澀語調(diào)下隱藏了什么。“他是我這輩子認識的人當中最好的。”——有天下午他和安喀斯開小船出海,到了晚上還沒回來;當晚我們忙著翻找他父母在美國的電話號碼,以防不幸需要通報噩耗,我當時這么說。
《請以你的名字呼喚我》