《渺小一生》:“你知道我其實(shí)不欠你什么?！?/h1>

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2020年03月25日

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　 From the return address, he knew what it was, but he still felt that reflexive curiosity one does when unwrapping anything, even something unwanted. Inside the box were layers of brown paper, and then layers of bubble wrap, and then, wrapped in sheets of white paper, the painting itself.

看到寄件地址，他就知道里頭是什么了。即使是你不想要的東西，拆開包裹時(shí)你還是會(huì)有那種不由自主的好奇。箱子里是幾層厚厚的褐色紙，接著是幾層氣泡墊，然后包著幾層白紙，最后才是那幅畫。

　 He turned it over. “To Jude with love and apologies, JB,” JB had scribbled on the canvas, directly above his signature: “Jean-Baptiste Marion.” There was an envelope from JB’s gallery taped to the back of the frame, inside of which was a letter certifying the painting’s authenticity and date, addressed to him and signed by the gallery’s registrar.

他把畫轉(zhuǎn)到正面?！矮I(xiàn)給裘德，致上我的愛與歉意，杰比?！苯鼙仍诋嫴忌线@么寫著，就在他的簽名“讓·巴蒂斯特·馬里昂”的上方。畫框背面貼著一封杰比代理畫廊的信封，里頭的信件證明這幅畫是真跡，并附上日期，信上還印了畫廊的地址，以及登記員簽名。

　 He called Willem, who he knew would have already left the theater and was probably on his way home. “Guess what I got today?”

他打電話給威廉，知道他已經(jīng)離開戲院，大概正在回家的路上：“猜猜我今天收到什么？”

　 There was only the slightest of pauses before Willem answered. “The painting.”

威廉只稍微頓一下，就回答：“那幅畫?！?

　 “Right,” he said, and sighed. “So I suppose you’re behind this?”

“沒錯(cuò)?！彼f，然后嘆了口氣，“所以我想，這件事是你在背后操縱的？”

　 Willem coughed. “I just told him he didn’t have a choice in the matter any longer—not if he wanted you to talk to him again at some point.” Willem paused, and he could hear the wind whooshing past him. “Do you need help getting it home?”

威廉咳嗽：“我只是跟他說，這件事他已經(jīng)沒別的辦法了——如果他希望你以后還會(huì)跟他講話的話?！蓖畷和Ｒ幌?，他聽得到呼嘯的風(fēng)聲，“你需要人幫忙把畫搬回家嗎？”

　 “Thanks,” he said. “But I’m just going to leave it here for now and pick it up later.” He re-clad the painting in its layers and replaced it in its box, which he shoved beneath his console. Before he shut off his computer, he began a note to JB, but then stopped, and deleted what he’d written, and instead left for the night.

“謝了?！彼f，“我打算把畫暫時(shí)留在這里，以后再搬?！彼旬嫲卦瓉淼膶訉影b里，放進(jìn)木箱，然后推到辦公桌底下。關(guān)掉電腦前，他開始給杰比寫一條短信，但是又停下來，刪掉原來寫的，收拾東西回家。

　 He was both surprised and not that JB had sent him the painting after all (and not at all surprised to learn that it had been Willem who had convinced him to do so). Eighteen months ago, just as Willem was beginning his first performances in The Malamud Theorem, JB had been offered representation by a gallery on the Lower East Side, and the previous spring, he’d had his first solo show, “The Boys,” a series of twenty-four paintings based on photographs he’d taken of the three of them. As he’d promised years ago, JB had let him see the pictures of him that he wanted to paint, and although he had approved many of them (reluctantly: he had felt queasy even as he did so, but he knew how important the series was to JB), JB had ultimately been less interested in the ones he’d approved than in the ones he wouldn’t, a few of which—including an image in which he was curled into himself in bed, his eyes open but scarily unseeing, his left hand stretched open unnaturally wide, like a ghoul’s claw—he alarmingly had no memory of JB even taking. That had been the first fight: JB wheedling, then sulking, then threatening, then shouting, and then, when he couldn’t change his mind, trying to convince Willem to advocate for him.

杰比最后還是把這幅畫送給他了。他很驚訝，但同時(shí)也不驚訝（而且一點(diǎn)都不奇怪是威廉說服杰比這么做的）。十八個(gè)月前，就在威廉開始演出《馬拉穆定理》之前，杰比接到上東城一家畫廊的代理邀約，并在今年春天推出了首次個(gè)展“男孩們”。那一系列共有二十四幅畫，是根據(jù)杰比拍攝他們?nèi)齻€(gè)人的照片畫出來的。杰比遵守幾年前的承諾，讓他先看了打算畫的那些照片。他同意了其中很多張（很不情愿，同意時(shí)還難受得反胃，但他知道這個(gè)系列對杰比有多么重要），但結(jié)果杰比對他不同意的那些照片反倒更有興趣，其中少數(shù)幾張（有一張他蜷縮在床上，雙眼睜著但看不見，很可怕，左手很不自然地張得很開，像食尸鬼的爪子），他驚慌地發(fā)現(xiàn)自己根本不記得杰比拍過那些。那時(shí)他們第一次吵架：杰比一直哄他，接著發(fā)脾氣，又威脅，又大吼，看他不肯改變心意，就試圖說服威廉支持他。

　 “You realize I don’t actually owe you anything,” JB had told him once he realized his negotiations with Willem weren’t progressing. “I mean, I don’t technically have to ask your permission here. I could technically just paint whatever the fuck I want. This is a courtesy I’m extending you, you know.”

“你知道我其實(shí)不欠你什么?！苯鼙劝l(fā)現(xiàn)說服不了威廉時(shí)，這么告訴裘德，“我的意思是，嚴(yán)格來說，我根本不必征求你的同意。嚴(yán)格來說，我他媽的可以愛畫什么就畫什么。問你一聲只是禮貌，你知道?！?

　 He could’ve swamped JB with arguments, but he was too angry to do so. “You promised me, JB,” he said. “That should be enough.” He could have added, “And you owe me as my friend,” but he had a few years ago come to realize that JB’s definition of friendship and its responsibilities was different than his own, and there was no arguing with him about it: you either accepted it or you didn’t, and he had decided to accept it, although recently, the work it took to accept JB and his limitations had begun to feel more enraging and wearisome and arduous than seemed necessary.

他可以說一大堆理由來駁倒杰比，但他實(shí)在氣得不想說了：“你答應(yīng)過我的，杰比?！彼f，“這樣應(yīng)該就夠了?！彼€可以補(bǔ)上一句：“你是我的朋友，你本該這么做?！钡麕啄昵熬兔靼?，杰比對友誼和隨之而來的責(zé)任的定義跟他不一樣，而且這件事沒有討論的空間：要么你就接受，不然就拉倒，而他當(dāng)時(shí)決定接受。但是最近他開始覺得，要接受杰比和他的種種限制很吃力，似乎讓人憤怒、疲倦、辛苦得沒有必要了。

　 In the end, JB had had to admit defeat, although in the months before his show opened, he had made occasional allusions to what he called his “l(fā)ost paintings,” great works he could’ve made had he, Jude, been less rigid, less timid, less self-conscious, and (this was his favorite of JB’s arguments) less of a philistine. Later, though, he would be embarrassed by his own gullibility, by how he had trusted that his wishes would be respected.

到最后，杰比不得不認(rèn)輸。展覽開幕前的幾個(gè)月，他偶爾會(huì)暗示被他稱為“失去的畫作”的那幾件作品很偉大，把裘德畫得不那么僵硬、膽怯或害羞，而且沒那么庸俗（這是杰比最喜歡的論點(diǎn)）。后來，他覺得很難堪，因?yàn)樽约壕谷贿@么好騙，相信杰比會(huì)尊重他的意愿。

　 The opening had been on a Thursday in late April shortly after his thirtieth birthday, a night so unseasonably cold that the plane trees’ first leaves had frozen and cracked, and rounding the corner onto Norfolk Street, he had stopped to admire the scene the gallery made, a bright golden box of light and shimmered warmth against the chilled flat black of the night. Inside, he immediately encountered Black Henry Young and a friend of theirs from law school, and then so many other people he knew—from college, and their various parties at Lispenard Street, and JB’s aunts, and Malcolm’s parents, and long-ago friends of JB’s that he hadn’t seen in years—that it had taken some time before he could push through the crowd to look at the paintings themselves.

畫展開幕日是四月下旬的一個(gè)星期四，就在他30歲生日過后不久。那天晚上冷得反常，梧桐樹剛冒出來的嫩葉都被凍得碎裂。他轉(zhuǎn)過街角來到諾?？私郑Ｏ聛硇蕾p那家燈火通明的畫廊，它像個(gè)明亮的金色箱子似的，在寒冷單調(diào)的黑夜里散發(fā)暖意。才剛進(jìn)去，他就碰到了黑亨利·楊和他們在法學(xué)院認(rèn)識(shí)的一個(gè)朋友，接著又碰到好多熟人，有大學(xué)時(shí)代的舊識(shí)，也有去利斯本納街參加派對認(rèn)識(shí)的人，還有杰比的兩個(gè)阿姨，馬爾科姆的父母，以及他好幾年沒見的杰比老友。因此他花了好多時(shí)間才擠過人群，看到那些畫。

　 He had always known that JB was talented. They all did, everyone did: no matter how ungenerously you might occasionally think of JB as a person, there was something about his work that could convince you that you were wrong, that whatever deficiencies of character you had ascribed to him were in reality evidence of your own pettiness and ill-temper, that hidden within JB was someone of huge sympathies and depth and understanding. And that night, he had no trouble at all recognizing the paintings’ intensity and beauty, and had felt only an uncomplicated pride in and gratitude for JB: for the accomplishment of the work, of course, but also for his ability to produce colors and images that made all other colors and images seem wan and flaccid in comparison, for his ability to make you see the world anew. The paintings had been arranged in a single row that unspooled across the walls like a stave, and the tones JB had created—dense bruised blues and bourbonish yellows—were so distinctly their own, it was as if JB had invented a different language of color altogether.

他一直都知道杰比很有才華。他們每個(gè)人都知道：無論你偶爾覺得杰比這個(gè)人有多么不厚道，他的作品還是可以讓你相信你錯(cuò)了，所有你曾認(rèn)定是他性格上的缺點(diǎn)，都反過來證明了你自己的小心眼和壞脾氣，而且你還會(huì)相信杰比其實(shí)是個(gè)非常有同情心、有深度而寬容的人。那一夜，他毫無困難地看到了那些畫的強(qiáng)度與美感，對杰比只有單純的引以為榮和感激：當(dāng)然是因?yàn)檫@些作品的成就，也因?yàn)榻鼙扔心芰Ξ嫵瞿欠N色彩和影像，讓其他的色彩和影像變得黯淡、貧弱，此外杰比也有能力讓你用全新的眼光看這個(gè)世界。那些畫排成長長的一列，像五線譜般延伸過幾面墻，而杰比創(chuàng)造出的色調(diào)——濃密的瘀血藍(lán)和波本黃，仿佛發(fā)明了一套截然不同的色彩語言。

　 He stopped to admire Willem and the Girl, one of the pictures he had already seen and had indeed already bought, in which JB had painted Willem turned away from the camera but for his eyes, which seemed to look directly back at the viewer, but were actually looking at, presumably, a girl who had been standing in Willem’s exact sightline. He loved the expression on Willem’s face, which was one he knew very well, when he was just about to smile and his mouth was still soft and undecided, somehow, but the muscles around his eyes were already pulling themselves upward. The paintings weren’t arranged chronologically, and so after this was one of himself from just a few months ago (he hurried past the ones of himself), and following that an image of Malcolm and his sister, in what he recognized from the furniture was Flora’s long-departed first West Village apartment (Malcolm and Flora, Bethune Street).

他停下來欣賞《威廉與女孩》，這幅他在展前已經(jīng)看過，而且已經(jīng)買下。畫中的威廉并沒有面對鏡頭，雙眼似乎轉(zhuǎn)過來直視觀者，不過想必是看著照相機(jī)后頭的一個(gè)女孩。他很愛威廉臉上的表情，那是他非常熟悉的：正要微笑、嘴巴還很柔軟且尚未啟動(dòng)，但眼睛周圍的肌肉已經(jīng)開始往上拉了。那些畫沒有按照時(shí)間順序排列，所以排在這幅之后的是幾個(gè)月前的他（他碰到畫自己的作品就快步略過），再下一幅是《馬爾科姆與弗洛拉，柏森街》，馬爾科姆和他姐姐，他從里頭的家具認(rèn)出這是弗洛拉在西村的第一間公寓，不過她早就搬走了。

　 He looked around for JB and saw him talking to the gallery director, and at that moment, JB straightened his neck and caught his eye, and gave him a wave. “Genius,” he mouthed to JB over people’s heads, and JB grinned at him and mouthed back, “Thank you.”

他四處看了一圈要找杰比，發(fā)現(xiàn)他在和畫廊經(jīng)理交談。那一刻，杰比拉長脖子看到他，朝他揮了揮手?！疤觳?。”他隔著人群用嘴型向杰比示意。杰比咧嘴笑了，也用嘴型回他：“謝謝?！?

　 But then he had moved to the third and final wall and had seen them: two paintings, both of him, neither of which JB had ever shown him. In the first, he was very young and holding a cigarette, and in the second, which he thought was from around two years ago, he was sitting bent over on the edge of his bed, leaning his forehead against the wall, his legs and arms crossed and his eyes closed—it was the position he always assumed when he was coming out of an episode and was gathering his physical resources before attempting to stand up again. He hadn’t remembered JB taking this picture, and indeed, given its perspective—the camera peeking around the edge of the doorframe—he knew that he wasn’t meant to remember, because he wasn’t meant to be aware of the picture’s existence at all. For a moment, the noise of the space blotted out around him, and he could only look and look at the paintings: even in his distress, he had the presence of mind to understand that he was responding less to the images themselves than to the memories and sensations they provoked, and that his sense of violation that other people should be seeing these documentations of two miserable moments of his life was a personal reaction, specific only to himself. To anyone else, they would be two contextless paintings, meaningless unless he chose to announce their meaning. But oh, they were difficult for him to see, and he wished, suddenly and sharply, that he was alone.

接著，他轉(zhuǎn)到第三面、也是最后一面墻，看到那兩幅畫，都是畫他的，兩件杰比都沒先讓他看過。第一幅里面的他非常年輕，手拿一根香煙。第二幅他覺得是根據(jù)兩年前拍的照片畫的，他坐在床沿彎著腰，前額靠墻，雙腿和雙腳交叉，眼睛閉著——每次他疼痛發(fā)作結(jié)束都是這個(gè)姿勢，集中全身的力氣，設(shè)法再站起來。他不記得杰比拍了這張照片，也的確，這幅畫的角度（相機(jī)從門框邊緣往內(nèi)窺看）說明杰比不打算讓人記得他拍了照，因?yàn)楦臼峭蹬?。一時(shí)之間，整個(gè)展覽空間的聲音籠罩在他周圍，他只能盯著那兩幅畫看了又看：即使心里很痛苦，他還是明白自己的反應(yīng)主要不是因?yàn)檫@兩個(gè)畫面，而是畫面勾起的回憶和感覺，也明白他因?yàn)槠渌司鼓芸吹剿松袃蓚€(gè)悲慘時(shí)刻的記錄而產(chǎn)生的被侵犯感，只是個(gè)人的感受，只對他自己有意義。對其他任何人來說，這只是兩件沒有背景的畫作，毫無意義，除非他公然說出其中的含義。但是啊，看到這兩幅畫讓他很難受，他忽然急切地希望旁邊沒有人，只有他自己。

　 He made it through the post-opening dinner, which was endless and at which he missed Willem intensely—but Willem had a show that night and hadn’t been able to come. At least he hadn’t had to speak to JB at all, who was busy holding court, and to the people who approached him—including JB’s gallerist—to tell him that the final two pictures, the ones of him, were the best in the show (as if he were somehow responsible for this), he was able to smile and agree with them that JB was an extraordinary talent.

他設(shè)法撐過開幕之后的例行晚宴，感覺時(shí)間漫長得永無止境，他好想念威廉，但威廉那天晚上有表演，沒辦法來參加。至少他完全不必跟杰比講話，反正杰比一直忙著招呼大家。對那些走過來找他——包括代理杰比的畫廊老板——跟他說最后那兩幅以他為主角的畫是全場最佳作品的人（不知怎的，好像他也有貢獻(xiàn)），至少他還能微笑以對，說杰比的確是了不起的天才。

　 But later, at home, after regaining control of himself, he was at last free to articulate to Willem his sense of betrayal. And Willem had taken his side so unhesitatingly, had been so angry on his behalf, that he had been momentarily soothed—and had realized that JB’s duplicity had come as a surprise to Willem as well.

但稍后回到家，可以重新控制自己之后，他終于能夠跟威廉清楚表達(dá)自己遭到背叛的感覺。威廉毫不猶豫地站在他那一邊，替他抱不平。因此他暫時(shí)消了點(diǎn)氣，然后才明白，連威廉都對杰比的欺騙行為感到訝異。

　 This had begun the second fight, which had started with a confrontation with JB at a café near JB’s apartment, during which JB had proven maddeningly incapable of apologizing: instead, he talked and talked, about how wonderful the pictures were, and how someday, once he had gotten over whatever issues he had with himself, he’d come to appreciate them, and how it wasn’t even that big a deal, and how he really needed to confront his insecurities, which were groundless anyway, and maybe this would prove helpful in that process, and how everyone except him knew how incredibly great-looking he was, and so shouldn’t that tell him something, that maybe—no, definitely—he was the one who was wrong about himself, and finally, how the pictures were already done, they were finished, and what did he expect should happen? Would he be happier if they were destroyed? Should he rip them off the wall and set them on fire? They had been seen and couldn’t be un-seen, so why couldn’t he just accept it and get over it?

這引發(fā)了第二次爭執(zhí)。他們在杰比公寓附近的一家小餐館碰面，談話證明杰比就是不肯道歉，頑固得令人火大。杰比只是說了又說，說那兩幅畫有多棒；說有一天等他克服了自己的那些問題，就會(huì)懂得欣賞這兩件作品；還說這件事根本沒什么大不了；說他真的得面對自己的不安全感，那種不安全感根本毫無根據(jù)，在這個(gè)過程中，說不定會(huì)證明這件事對他有所幫助；又說除了他之外，每個(gè)人都知道他長得有多好看，這一切難道不能讓他明白，或許——不，鐵定——他才是錯(cuò)估自己的那個(gè)人；最后，杰比還說那兩幅畫都畫出來、完成了，他覺得應(yīng)該怎么做？把畫毀掉他會(huì)比較高興嗎？難道要把畫從墻上拆下來，拿去燒掉嗎？反正大家已經(jīng)看過了，時(shí)間也不可能倒退，為什么他不能干脆接受，別再計(jì)較了呢？

　 “I’m not asking you to destroy them, JB,” he’d said, so furious and dizzied by JB’s bizarre logic and almost offensive intractability that he wanted to scream. “I’m asking you to apologize.”

“我沒要求你毀掉它們，杰比?！彼f，被杰比怪異的邏輯和簡直就是冒犯人的詭辯氣得腦袋發(fā)昏，想大叫，“我是要你道歉?！?