《渺小一生》:但接著，狂喜的一個月過去了

　 “I mean, it’s not common, but you can. As long as both parties consent. It’s mostly done for purposes of inheritance.” He made another attempt at a laugh. (Stop trying to laugh, he scolded himself.) “I don’t remember much from when I studied this in family law, but I do know that I get a new birth certificate with their names on it.”

“可以的。我的意思是，這種事情不常見，不過可以的。只要雙方同意。這類收養(yǎng)的目的大都是為了繼承?！彼O(shè)法再度擠出笑聲（他暗罵自己，別再試著發(fā)出笑聲了），“我以前修過的家庭法都快忘光了，不過我知道我會拿到一張新的出生證明，上頭有他們的名字?！?

　 “Wow,” said Willem.

“哇?！蓖f。

　 “I know,” he said.

“我知道?！彼f。

　 He heard someone calling Willem’s name, commandingly, in the background. “You have to go,” he told Willem.

他聽到電話那頭有人在喊威廉的名字，口氣很威嚴(yán)。“你該掛電話了?！彼嬖V威廉。

　 “Shit,” said Willem. “But Jude? Congratulations. No one deserves it more.” He called back at whoever was yelling for him. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Do you mind if I write Harold and Julia?”

“該死。”威廉說，“不過裘德，恭喜你。沒人比你更有資格了。”然后朝吼他的人喊了一聲?！拔业脪祀娫捔??！彼f，“我想寫信給哈羅德和朱麗婭，你不介意吧？”

　 “Sure,” he said. “But Willem, don’t tell the others, okay? I just want to sit with it for a while.”

“當(dāng)然沒問題?！彼f，“不過威廉，先別跟其他人說，好嗎？我想自己先沉淀一下?！?

　 “I won’t say a word. I’ll see you tomorrow. And Jude—” But he didn’t, or couldn’t, say anything else.

“我一個字都不會說。明天見。還有裘德……”但他沒說完，或是沒辦法說下去。

　 “I know,” he said. “I know, Willem. I feel the same way.”

“我知道，”他說，“我知道，威廉。我也有同樣的感覺。”

　 “I love you,” said Willem, and then he was gone before he had to respond. He never knew what to say when Willem said that to him, and yet he always longed for him to say it. It was a night of impossible things, and he fought to stay awake, to be conscious and alert for as long as possible, to enjoy and repeat to himself everything that had happened to him, a lifetime’s worth of wishes coming true in a few brief hours.

“我愛你?！蓖f。他還沒回應(yīng)，威廉就掛斷電話了。每回威廉跟他說這句話，他都不知道該說什么，但他總是渴望聽到威廉這么說。這是個不可思議的夜晚，他掙扎著不想睡，盡可能保持清醒和警覺，好好享受并一再回憶剛剛發(fā)生的事情——一輩子的向往，在短短幾小時內(nèi)成真了。

　 Back in the apartment the next day, there was a note from Willem telling him to wait up, and when Willem came home, he had ice cream and a carrot cake, which the two of them ate even though neither of them particularly liked sweets, and champagne, which they drank even though he had to wake up early the following morning. The next few weeks slid by: Harold was handling the paperwork, and sent him forms to sign—the petition for adoption, an affidavit to change his birth certificate, a request for information about his potential criminal record—which he took to the bank at lunch to have notarized; he didn’t want anyone at work to know beyond the few people he told: Marshall, and Citizen, and Rhodes. He told JB and Malcolm, who on the one hand reacted exactly as he’d anticipated—JB making a lot of unfunny jokes at an almost tic-like pace, as if he might eventually land on one that worked; Malcolm asking increasingly granular questions about various hypotheticals that he couldn’t answer—and on the other had been genuinely thrilled for him. He told Black Henry Young, who had taken two classes with Harold when he was in law school and had admired him, and JB’s friend Richard, to whom he’d grown close after one particularly long and tedious party at Ezra’s a year ago when the two of them had had a conversation that had begun with the French welfare state and then had moved on to various other topics, the only two semi-sober people in the room. He told Phaedra, who had started screaming, and another old college friend, Elijah, who had screamed as well.

次日回到紐約的公寓，看到威廉留下的字條，要他晚上等著，先別去睡。威廉回到家時帶著冰淇淋和胡蘿卜蛋糕，兩個人不是特別喜歡甜食，但他們都吃了；還有香檳，雖然他隔天得早起，但他們也喝了。接下來幾個星期飛逝而過。哈羅德負(fù)責(zé)處理文書部分，寄來了一些表格要他簽字，包括收養(yǎng)申請書、更改出生證明的宣誓作證書、查詢他潛在犯罪記錄信息的請求書，這些文件他趁午餐時間帶到法院公證了；同事間，他只告訴了馬歇爾、西提任、羅茲，他不希望其他任何人知道。他也告訴了杰比和馬爾科姆，他們的反應(yīng)一方面跟他預(yù)期的一模一樣：杰比講了一連串不好笑的笑話，速度快得簡直像抽筋，好像最后總會有一個好笑的；馬爾科姆則提出了各種他無法回答的假設(shè)性問題，一個比一個粗糙。另一方面，他們也真心為他興奮不已。他告訴了黑亨利·楊，他在法學(xué)院時修過哈羅德的兩門課，一直很佩服他；還告訴了杰比的朋友理查德，他和理查德相熟是因為一年前埃茲拉家一個漫長無聊的派對，當(dāng)時他們兩個從法國的福利制度聊起，然后轉(zhuǎn)入各式各樣的話題，成了派對上僅有的兩個沒醉倒的人。另外，他也告知大學(xué)時代認(rèn)識的菲德拉，她聽了開始尖叫；還有另一個大學(xué)時代的老友伊萊賈，也是聽了直尖叫。

　 And, of course, he told Andy, who at first had just stared at him and then nodded, as if he had asked if Andy had an extra bandage he could give him before he left for the night. But then he began making a series of bizarre seal-like sounds, half bark, half sneeze, and he realized that Andy was crying. The sight of it made him both horrified and slightly hysterical, unsure of what to do. “Get out of here,” Andy commanded him between sounds. “I mean it, Jude, get the fuck out,” and so he did. The next day at work, he received an arrangement of roses the size of a gardenia bush, with a note in Andy’s angry blocky handwriting that read:

當(dāng)然，他告訴了安迪。安迪一開始只是瞪著他，然后點點頭，好像他在問安迪有沒有多的繃帶好讓他帶回去備用。但接著安迪開始發(fā)出一連串海豹似的怪異聲音，既像吠叫，又像在打噴嚏，不久他才明白安迪在哭。那幅景象讓他又驚駭又有點歇斯底里，不確定該怎么辦?！澳愠鋈グ伞！卑驳峡薜揭话朊钏拔艺f真的，裘德，他媽的滾出去?！彼兆隽?。次日上班時，他收到一大把像梔子花灌木的玫瑰花束，上面附了一張短箋，是安迪憤怒的粗體手寫字：

　 JUDE—I’M SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED I CAN BARELY WRITE THIS NOTE. PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR YESTERDAY. I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER FOR YOU AND THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHAT TOOK HAROLD SO FUCKING LONG. I HOPE YOU’LL TAKE THIS AS A SIGN THAT YOU NEED TO TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF SO SOMEDAY YOU’LL HAVE THE STRENGTH TO CHANGE HAROLD’S ADULT DIAPERS WHEN HE’S A THOUSAND YEARS OLD AND INCONTINENT, BECAUSE YOU KNOW HE’S NOT GOING TO MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU BY DYING AT A RESPECTABLE AGE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. BELIEVE ME, PARENTS ARE PAINS IN THE ASS LIKE THAT. (BUT GREAT TOO, OF COURSE.) LOVE, ANDY

裘德，我他媽的糗到簡直沒法寫這張字條了。拜托原諒我昨天的表現(xiàn)。我真是太為你高興了，唯一的問題是他媽的哈羅德怎么會拖到現(xiàn)在。我希望你把這件事看作一個訊號，務(wù)必更認(rèn)真地照顧自己。這樣等到哈羅德一千歲又失禁的時候，你才會有力氣幫他換成人尿布。因為你知道，他才不會像正常人那樣死在一個體面的年紀(jì)好讓你輕松。相信我，父母就是這樣煩死人了（不過當(dāng)然，他們也很棒）。愛你的，安迪。

　 It was, he and Willem agreed, one of the best letters they’d ever read.

他和威廉一致同意，這是他們看過寫得最棒的信之一。

　 But then the ecstatic month passed, and it was January, and Willem left for Bulgaria to film, and the old fears returned, accompanied now by new fears. They had a court date for February fifteenth, Harold told him, and with a little rescheduling, Laurence would be presiding. Now that the date was so close, he was sharply, inescapably aware that he might ruin it for himself, and he began, at first unconsciously and then assiduously, avoiding Harold and Julia, convinced that if they were reminded too much, too actively of what they were in fact getting that they would change their minds. And so when they came into town for a play the second week in January, he pretended he was in Washington on business, and on their weekly phone calls, he tried to say very little, and to keep the conversations brief. Every day the improbability of the situation seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his mind; every time he glimpsed the reflection of his ugly zombie’s hobble in the side of a building, he would feel sickened: Who, really, would ever want this? The idea that he could become someone else’s seemed increasingly ludicrous, and if Harold saw him just once more, how could he too not come to the same conclusion? He knew it shouldn’t matter so much to him—he was, after all, an adult; he knew the adoption was more ceremonial than truly sociologically significant—but he wanted it with a steady fervor that defied logic, and he couldn’t bear it being taken away from him now, not when everyone he cared about was so happy for him, not when he was so close.

但接著，狂喜的一個月過去了。到了一月，威廉去保加利亞拍戲，古老的恐懼又回來了，還伴隨新的恐懼。他們預(yù)定二月十五日要到法院完成正式的收養(yǎng)程序。哈羅德告訴他，經(jīng)過一些安排，勞倫斯會負(fù)責(zé)主持?，F(xiàn)在時間這么接近了，他清楚地意識到自己可能會無法避免地毀掉這件事，于是他開始回避哈羅德和朱麗婭，一開始是不自覺的，然后是刻意的。因為他相信如果他們太常被提醒、太認(rèn)真去思考自己到底在做什么，他們就會改變心意。于是一月的第二周，他們來紐約看一場表演時，他假裝去華盛頓出差；每個月通電話時他的話都很少，而且盡量簡短。在他心中，每天的情勢似乎變得越來越消極，而且越來越真實；每回他經(jīng)過建筑物側(cè)面，看到玻璃上映出自己喪尸般丑陋的跛行身影，就覺得很想吐。真的，誰會想要這個？自己可能成為別人的兒子，這個念頭似乎越來越荒唐可笑，只要哈羅德多看他一眼，怎么可能不得出同樣的結(jié)論？他知道這件事對他的影響不該這么大——畢竟，他是成年人了，他知道收養(yǎng)的儀式性質(zhì)大過實際的社會意義——但他是這么想被收養(yǎng)，簡直違反邏輯?，F(xiàn)在，他受不了這個機會被奪走，不只因為每個他在乎的人都這么替他開心，也是因為他已如此接近了。

　 He had been close before. The year after he arrived in Montana, when he was thirteen, the home had participated in a tristate adoption fair. November was National Adoption Month, and one cold morning, they had been told to dress neatly and had been hurried onto two school buses and driven two hours to Missoula, where they were herded off the buses and into the conference room of a hotel. Theirs had been the last buses to arrive, and the room was already filled with children, boys on one side, girls on the other. In the center of the room was a long stripe of tables, and as he walked over to his side, he saw that they were stacked with labeled binders: Boys, Babies; Boys, Toddlers; Boys, 4–6; Boys, 7–9; Boys, 10–12; Boys, 13–15; Boys, 15+. Inside, they had been told, were pieces of paper with their pictures, and names, and information about themselves: where they were from, what ethnicity they were, information about how they did in school and what sports they liked to play and what talents and interests they had. What, he wondered, did his sheet of paper say about him? What talents might have been invented for him, what race, what origins?

之前他也曾接近過，就在他抵達(dá)蒙大拿州那一年。當(dāng)時他13歲，少年之家參加了一個三州合辦的領(lǐng)養(yǎng)會。十一月是全國領(lǐng)養(yǎng)月。于是一個寒冷的早晨，他們被命令穿得干凈整齊，搭上兩輛校車巴士，坐了兩小時的車到米蘇拉市。下車后，他們被帶到一家飯店的會議廳。他們的巴士是最晚到的，整個會議廳里已經(jīng)坐滿了兒童，男生在一邊，女生在另一邊。會議廳中央是一排長桌，他走到男生那一邊時，看到桌上堆著貼了標(biāo)識的活頁文件夾：男，嬰孩；男，學(xué)步幼童；男，4－6歲；男，7－9歲；男，10－12歲；男，13－15歲；男，15歲以上。他們得知，文件夾里是每個人的簡介，有照片、姓名，還有他們的資料：來自哪里、族裔、在校成績、喜歡的運動、才華和興趣等。他很好奇，他那張紙上寫了些什么？他們會編出他有什么才華，是什么族裔跟什么出身？

　 The older boys, the ones whose names and faces were in the 15+ binder, knew they would never be adopted, and when the counselors turned away, they snuck out through the back exit to, they all knew, get high. The babies and toddlers had only to be babies and toddlers; they would be the first to be chosen, and they didn’t even know it. But as he watched from the corner he had drifted toward, he saw that some of the boys—the ones old enough to have experienced one of the fairs before, but still young enough to be hopeful—had strategies. He watched as the sullen became smiling, as the rough and bullying became jocular and playful, as boys who hated one another in the context of the home played and bantered in a way that appeared convincingly friendly. He saw the boys who were rude to the counselors, who cursed at one another in the hallways, smile and chat with the adults, the prospective parents, who were filing into the room. He watched as the toughest, the meanest of the boys, a fourteen-year-old named Shawn who had once held him down in the bathroom, his knees digging into his shoulder blades, pointed at his name tag as the man and woman he had been talking with walked toward the binders. “Shawn!” he called after them, “Shawn Grady!” and something about his hoarse hopeful voice, in which he could hear the effort, the strain, to not sound hopeful at all, made him feel sorry for Shawn for the first time, and then angry at the man and woman, who, he could tell, were actually paging through the “Boys, 7–9” binder. But those feelings passed quickly, because he tried not to feel anything those days: not hunger, not pain, not anger, not sadness.

年紀(jì)較大的男孩，被歸在“15歲以上”的活頁夾里面，知道他們永遠(yuǎn)不會被收養(yǎng)，所以等到育幼院的輔導(dǎo)員一轉(zhuǎn)身，他們就從后門溜了出去，大家都知道他們?nèi)ム舅幜?。嬰兒和學(xué)步幼童就繼續(xù)當(dāng)嬰兒和學(xué)步幼童，他們會是最先被挑走的，但他們自己根本不知道。當(dāng)他慢慢退到角落觀察，看到某些男孩——那些年紀(jì)夠大、參加過至少一次收養(yǎng)會，但還小得足以抱有希望的——就很有策略。他看著他們陰郁的臉轉(zhuǎn)為笑臉，粗暴和霸道變成逗樂和玩鬧，在少年之家彼此痛恨的男孩，現(xiàn)在玩耍逗趣的方式看起來很友善。他看到那些平時對輔導(dǎo)員很粗魯、總是在走廊上彼此罵粗話的男生，現(xiàn)在滿臉笑容地和穿梭在會議廳里的養(yǎng)父母候選人聊天。他看到男孩中最兇悍、最殘忍的那個（是個14歲、名叫肖恩的，有回他在浴室里把他按在地上，膝蓋用力壓進他的肩胛骨）對著剛剛講過話、這會兒正走向活頁夾的那對男女指著自己的名牌?！靶ざ?！”他在他們身后喊道，“肖恩·格雷迪！”從那充滿希望的沙啞聲音，他聽得出來肖恩竭力讓自己不要聽起來抱有任何希望，他頭一次為肖恩感到難過，也很氣那對男女。他看得出來，他們其實在翻“男，7－9歲”的檔案夾。但那些感覺很快就過去了，因為那些日子里他設(shè)法不要有任何感覺：不要有饑餓，不要有疼痛，不要有憤怒，不要有憂傷。

　 He had no tricks, he had no skills, he couldn’t charm. When he had arrived at the home, he had been so frozen that they had left him behind the previous November, and a year later, he wasn’t sure that he was any better. He thought less and less frequently of Brother Luke, it was true, but his days outside the classroom smeared into one; most of the time he felt he was floating, trying to pretend that he didn’t occupy his own life, wishing he was invisible, wanting only to go unnoticed. Things happened to him and he didn’t fight back the way he once would have; sometimes when he was being hurt, the part of him that was still conscious wondered what the brothers would think of him now: gone were his rages, his tantrums, his struggling. Now he was the boy they had always wished him to be. Now he hoped to be someone adrift, a presence so thin and light and insubstantial that he seemed to displace no air at all.

他沒有花招，不會討人歡心。他剛到少年之家時，整個人還很麻木，所以前一年十一月院方?jīng)]帶他出席領(lǐng)養(yǎng)會。但是一年之后，他不確定自己有任何好轉(zhuǎn)。沒錯，他越來越少想到盧克修士，但他在教室外的日子一片模糊；大部分時間他覺得自己像在飄浮，只希望沒有人注意到他。好多事發(fā)生在他身上，他不像以前那樣會反抗；有時他被傷害，身上仍有意識的那部分會很好奇以前那些修士現(xiàn)在會怎么想他：他的暴怒、亂發(fā)脾氣、掙扎全消失了。現(xiàn)在他成了當(dāng)年他們一直期盼的乖小孩?，F(xiàn)在他希望成為一個飄浮的人，又薄又輕又不重要，仿佛毫無實體。

　 So he was surprised—as surprised as the counselors—when he learned that night that he was one of the children chosen by a couple: the Learys. Had he noticed a woman and man looking at him, maybe even smiling at him? Maybe. But the afternoon had passed, as most did, in a haze, and even on the bus ride home, he had begun the work of forgetting it.

所以當(dāng)天晚上，當(dāng)他得知有一對黎瑞夫婦選中他時，覺得很驚訝，輔導(dǎo)員們也很驚訝。他注意到一對男女看著他，甚至朝他微笑嗎？或許吧。但那天下午就像大部分下午，過去后一片模糊，甚至在回程的巴士上，他已經(jīng)開始忘卻一切。

　 He would spend a probationary weekend—the weekend before Thanksgiving—with the Learys, so they could see how they liked each other. That Thursday he was driven to their house by a counselor named Boyd, who taught shop and plumbing and whom he didn’t know very well. He knew Boyd knew what some of the other counselors did to him, and although he never stopped them, he never participated, either.

感恩節(jié)假期前的那個周末，他會去黎瑞夫婦家試住，讓他們看看彼此是否適合。那個星期四，一個叫博伊德的輔導(dǎo)員載他去黎瑞家；博伊德平常負(fù)責(zé)教工藝和水管配修，跟他不太熟。他知道博伊德了解某些輔導(dǎo)員對他做的事情，盡管他從沒阻止他們，但也沒參與。

　 But as he was getting out of the car in the Learys’ driveway—a one-story brick house, surrounded on all sides by fallow, dark fields—Boyd snatched his forearm and pulled him close, startling him into alertness.

當(dāng)他在黎瑞家（一棟磚造平房，四面是休耕的黑暗田野）的車道下車時，博伊德抓住他的前臂，把他拉近，嚇得他警覺起來。