《渺小一生》:現(xiàn)在他累了。他早就累了

　 When he woke early the next morning, he was still on the sofa, and the television was turned off, and he was under his duvet. And there was Jude, huddled into the cushions on the other end of the sectional, still asleep. Some part of him had always been insulted by Jude’s unwillingness to divulge anything of himself to them, by his furtiveness and secretiveness, but in that moment he felt only gratitude toward and admiration for him, and had sat on the chair next to him, studying his face, which he so loved to paint, his sweep of complicated-colored hair that he could never see without remembering how much mixing, the number of shades it took to accurately represent it.

次日早晨他很早醒來，發(fā)現(xiàn)自己還在沙發(fā)上，電視已經(jīng)關(guān)掉了，身上蓋著羽絨被。而裘德蜷縮在組合沙發(fā)另一頭的椅墊上，還在睡。他心底有一部分總覺得裘德很過分，因?yàn)樗豢舷蛩麄兺嘎蹲约旱氖虑椋偸钦谡谘谘谟稚裆衩孛?，但那一刻，他對他只有感激和欣賞，于是他坐在旁邊的椅子上，審視那張他很愛畫的臉，還有那顏色復(fù)雜的頭發(fā)，他每次看到都會想，那么多深淺不同的色調(diào)，要調(diào)色調(diào)好久，才能準(zhǔn)確描繪。

　 I can do this, he told Jude, silently. I can do this.

這回我做得到，他默默告訴裘德。這回我做得到。

　 Except he clearly couldn’t. He was in his studio, and it was still only one p.m., and he wanted to smoke so badly, so badly that in his head all he could see was the pipe, its glass frosted with leftover white powder, and it was only day one of his attempt not to do drugs, and already it was making—he was making—a mockery of him. Surrounding him were the only things he cared about, the paintings in his next series, “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days,” for which he had followed Malcolm, Jude, and Willem around for an entire day, photographing everything they did, and then chose eight to ten images from each of their days to paint. He had decided to document a typical workday for each of them, all from the same month of the same year, and had labeled each painting with their name, location, and time of day he had shot the image.

只不過他顯然做不到。他在他的工作室里，現(xiàn)在才下午1點(diǎn)，他好想吸大麻，滿腦子想到的只有煙斗，玻璃內(nèi)壁上結(jié)了一層殘余的白色粉末，而這只是他試著停止嗑藥的第一天而已，他已經(jīng)在嘲弄自己了。周圍環(huán)繞著的是他唯一在乎的東西，他下一個(gè)系列的畫作“秒，分，時(shí)，日”。在這個(gè)系列里，他跟著馬爾科姆、裘德、威廉各一整天，拍下他們的一舉一動(dòng)，然后從每天各挑出八到十張來畫。他已經(jīng)決定好要畫下他們每個(gè)人典型的工作日，都在同一年的同一個(gè)月，然后每張畫標(biāo)上他們的名字、地點(diǎn)及拍照日期。

　 Willem’s series had been the most far-flung: he had gone to London, where Willem had been on location filming something called Latecomers, and the images he had chosen were a mix of Willem off and on the set. He had favorites from each person’s take: for Willem, it was Willem, London, October 8, 9:08 a.m., an image of him in the makeup artist’s chair, staring at his reflection in the mirror, while the makeup artist held his chin up with the fingertips of her left hand and brushed powder onto his cheeks with her right. Willem’s eyes were lowered, but it was still clear that he was looking at himself, and his hands were gripping the chair’s wooden arms as if he was on a roller coaster and was afraid he’d fall off if he let go. Before him, the counter was cluttered with wood-shaving curls from freshly sharpened eyebrow pencils that looked like tatters of lace, and open makeup palettes whose every hue was a shade of red, all the reds you could imagine, and wads of tissue with more red smeared on them like blood. For Malcolm, he had taken a long shot of him late at night, sitting at his kitchen counter at home, making one of his imaginary buildings out of squares of rice paper. He liked Malcolm, Brooklyn, October 23, 11:17 p.m. not so much for its composition or color but for more personal reasons: in college, he had always made fun of Malcolm for those small structures he built and displayed on his windowsill, but really he had admired them and had liked watching Malcolm compose them—his breaths slowed, and he was completely silent, and his constant nervousness, which at times seemed almost physical, an appendage like a tail, fell away.

威廉的系列是最遙遠(yuǎn)的：他跑去倫敦，威廉在那拍一部叫《新來者》的電影。他挑的照片包括了電影場景內(nèi)和場景外的威廉。每個(gè)人都有他最喜歡的一幅畫：威廉的是《威廉，倫敦，十月八日，上午9點(diǎn)08分》，里面是他坐在化妝師面前的椅子上，凝視著鏡子里的自己，同時(shí)化妝師用左手指尖抬起他的下巴，右手拿著化妝刷在他臉頰上刷粉。威廉的雙眼低垂，但顯然還在看鏡中的自己，雙手緊握椅子的木頭扶手，仿佛坐在云霄飛車上，很怕放了手就會飛出去。他面前的臺面上堆得亂七八糟，有眉筆剛削下來的一條條有如蕾絲碎片的卷曲薄木屑；還有打開的化妝盤內(nèi)各種深淺不同的紅色，所有你能想象的紅色；一團(tuán)團(tuán)面紙上沾了更多的紅色，像血一樣。而馬爾科姆，他最喜歡的是深夜拍下的一張遠(yuǎn)景畫面，他坐在他家廚房的料理臺前，用四方形的米紙做出他想象中的建筑物?！恶R爾科姆，布魯克林，十月二十三日，下午11點(diǎn)17分》，他喜歡這件作品不是因?yàn)闃?gòu)圖或顏色，而是因?yàn)閭€(gè)人的原因：在大學(xué)時(shí)代，他總是拿馬爾科姆做好的陳列在窗臺上的那些小小模型開玩笑，其實(shí)他很欣賞那些模型，也很喜歡看馬爾科姆制作——他的呼吸會減緩，整個(gè)人完全安靜下來，而他慣常的神經(jīng)質(zhì)（有時(shí)簡直是有形的，像是尾巴之類的附屬肢體）也消失了。

　 He worked on all of them out of sequence, but he couldn’t quite get the colors the way he wanted them for Jude’s installment, and so he had the fewest and least of these paintings done. As he’d gone through the photos, he’d noticed that each of his friends’ days was defined, glossed, by a certain tonal consistency: he had been following Willem on the days he was shooting in what was supposed to be a large Belgravia flat, and the lighting had been particularly golden, like beeswax. Later, back in the apartment in Notting Hill that Willem was renting, he had taken pictures of him sitting and reading, and there, too, the light had been yellowish, although it was less like syrup and instead crisper, like the skin of a late-fall apple. By contrast, Malcolm’s world was bluish: his sterile, white-marble-countertopped office on Twenty-second Street; the house he and Sophie had bought in Cobble Hill after they had gotten married. And Jude’s was grayish, but a silvery gray, a shade particular to gelatin prints that was proving very difficult to reproduce with acrylics, although for Jude’s he had thinned the colors considerably, trying to capture that shimmery light. Before he began, he had to first find a way to make gray seem bright, and clean, and it was frustrating, because all he wanted to do was paint, not fuss around with colors.

他不按順序同時(shí)進(jìn)行三個(gè)人的作品，但裘德的部分他總是調(diào)不出想要的顏色，因此完成得最少，也最不完整。他仔細(xì)審視那些照片時(shí)，注意到每個(gè)朋友的一天都有某種一致的色調(diào)，清晰且?guī)в泄鉂?。他跟著威廉拍攝的那幾天，他拍片的場景是貝爾格維亞的一間公寓，那里的光線特別金黃，像是蜂蠟。稍后，回到威廉在諾丁山租的公寓，他拍了威廉坐著閱讀的照片，那里的光線也是黃色調(diào)，不過不太像糖漿，比較清新，像深秋時(shí)蘋果的皮。對照之下，馬爾科姆的世界是藍(lán)色調(diào)。他在22街那個(gè)乏味的、有白色大理石柜臺的辦公室，在他和蘇菲結(jié)婚后在布魯克林科布爾山買的那棟房子里。裘德的世界則是灰色，不過是一種銀灰色，像黑白照片特有的色澤，結(jié)果證明，這種顏色很難用亞克力顏料復(fù)制，雖然在描繪裘德的畫作中他已經(jīng)大幅調(diào)淡色彩，試圖描繪那種閃爍的光。在開始畫之前，他得先找出辦法讓灰色發(fā)亮，而且保持干凈，這個(gè)過程讓人感到很挫敗，因?yàn)樗幌氘嫯?，而不是為了顏色瞎忙一氣?

　 But getting frustrated with your paintings—and it was impossible not to think of your work as your colleague and co-participant, as if it was something that sometimes decided to be agreeable and collaborate with you, and sometimes decided to be truculent and unyielding, like a grouchy toddler—was just what happened. You had to just keep doing it, and doing it, and one day, you’d get it right.

但是為了你的畫而沮喪是正常的事——你不可能不把你的作品想成你的同事和共同參與者，仿佛那作品有時(shí)會決定要討人喜歡、跟你一起合作，有時(shí)又決定要很好斗、寸步不讓，像個(gè)壞脾氣又愛抱怨的學(xué)步小孩。你就是得繼續(xù)做下去，試了又試，然后有一天，你就會弄對了。

　 And yet like his promise to himself—You’re not going to make it! squealed the taunting, dancing imp in his head; You’re not going to make it!—the paintings were making a mockery of him as well. For this series, he had decided he was going to paint a sequence of one of his days, too, and yet for almost three years, he had been unable to find a day worth documenting. He had tried—he had taken hundreds of pictures of himself over the course of dozens of days. But when he reviewed them, they all ended the same way: with him getting high. Or the images would stop in the early evening, and he’d know it was because he had gotten high, too high to keep taking pictures. And there were other things in those photographs that he didn’t like, either: he didn’t want to include Jackson in a documentation of his life, and yet Jackson was always there. He didn’t like the goofy smile he saw on his face when he was on drugs, he didn’t like seeing how his face changed from fat and hopeful to fat and avaricious as the day sank into night. This wasn’t the version of himself he wanted to paint. But increasingly, he had begun to think this was the version of himself he should paint: this was, after all, his life. This was who he now was. Sometimes he would wake and it would be dark and he wouldn’t know where he was or what time it was or what day it was. Days: even the very concept of a day had become a mockery. He could no longer accurately measure when one began or ended. Help me, he’d say aloud, in those moments. Help me. But he didn’t know to whom he was addressing his plea, or what he expected to happen.

然而，就像他向自己承諾過的——你做不到的！他腦袋里跳著舞的小惡魔尖叫著嘲笑他，你做不到的！那些畫也在嘲弄他。因?yàn)檫@個(gè)系列本來也包括他自己的一天，但將近三年來，他都找不出值得記錄的一天。他試過，花過幾十天，拍過幾百張自己的照片。但事后去看，會發(fā)現(xiàn)每一天都是同樣的收尾：嗑藥嗑到茫然?；蛘吣切┯跋駮牡桨砭屯Ｖ?，他知道那是因?yàn)樗Ｈ涣?，茫然到?jīng)]辦法繼續(xù)拍照。而且這些照片里還有其他東西是他不喜歡的：他不想把杰克遜納入自己生活的紀(jì)錄中，杰克遜卻總是出現(xiàn)。他不喜歡照片中自己嗑藥后臉上的那種傻笑，他不喜歡照片中自己的臉從白天的胖而充滿希望，變成晚上的胖而貪婪。這不是他想畫的自己。但他越來越覺得，這就是他應(yīng)該畫的自己，畢竟這就是他的生活，他現(xiàn)在就是這樣。有時(shí)醒來，四周一片黑暗，他不知道自己身在何處、現(xiàn)在是幾點(diǎn)，也不知道今天是星期幾。就連“一天”這個(gè)概念都變得像是一種嘲笑。他再也無法清楚判斷一天的結(jié)束和開始。幫幫我，在那些時(shí)刻，他會說出聲來，幫幫我。但他不知道自己是在向誰懇求，也不知道自己期望接下來發(fā)生什么事。

　 And now he was tired. He had tried. It was one thirty p.m. on Friday, the Friday of July Fourth weekend. He put on his clothes. He closed his studio’s windows and locked the door and walked down the stairs of the silent building. “Chen,” he said, his voice loud in the stairwell, pretending he was broadcasting a warning to his fellow artists, that he was communicating to someone who might need his help. “Chen, Chen, Chen.” He was going home, he was going to smoke.

現(xiàn)在他累了。他早就累了?，F(xiàn)在是星期五的下午1點(diǎn)半，七月四日國慶節(jié)周末的星期五。他穿上衣服，關(guān)上工作室的窗子，鎖好門，走下這棟寂靜樓房的樓梯?！瓣?。”他說，聲音在樓梯間里好大，假裝自己在對其他藝術(shù)家同行發(fā)出警示，假裝他在跟某個(gè)可能需要幫忙的人溝通?！瓣?，陳，陳?！彼丶?，他要回去吸大麻。

　 He woke to a horrible noise, the noise of machinery, of metal grinding against metal, and started screaming into his pillow to drown it out until he realized it was the buzzer, and then slowly brought himself to his feet, and slouched over to the door. “Jackson?” he asked, holding down the intercom button, and he heard how frightened he sounded, how tentative.

他在一個(gè)可怕的噪音聲中醒來，那是機(jī)器的聲音，金屬磨著金屬，于是他開始對著枕頭大叫，好讓枕頭悶住他的聲音，叫到最后，他才發(fā)現(xiàn)那是門鈴聲。于是他慢吞吞地爬起來，無精打采地走到門邊?！敖芸诉d？”他問，按著對講機(jī)按鈕，聽到自己的聲音有多害怕、多緊張。

　 There was a pause. “No, it’s us,” said Malcolm. “Let us in.” He did.

對方頓了一下?！安皇?，是我們，”馬爾科姆說，“讓我們進(jìn)去?！庇谑撬戳碎_門鈕。

　 And then there they all were, Malcolm and Jude and Willem, as if they had come to see him perform a show. “Willem,” he said. “You’re supposed to be in Cappadocia.”

他們?nèi)紒砹耍R爾科姆、裘德、威廉，好像要來看他表演似的?！巴?，”他說，“你應(yīng)該在卡帕多西亞拍片的?！?

　 “I just got back yesterday.”

“我昨天才回來?！?

　 “But you’re supposed to be gone until”—he knew this—“July sixth. That’s when you said you’d be back.”

“但是你應(yīng)該要到……”他記得的，“要到七月六日，你說你要到那一天才會回來的?！?

　 “It’s July seventh,” Willem said, quietly.

“今天是七月七日?！蓖p聲說。

　 He started to cry, then, but he was dehydrated and he didn’t have any tears, just the sounds. July seventh: he had lost so many days. He couldn’t remember anything.

一聽這話，他開始哭，但他脫水了，哭不出眼淚，只有聲音。七月七日：他失去了好多天。他什么都不記得了。

　 “JB,” said Jude, coming close to him, “we’re going to get you out of this. Come with us. We’re going to get you help.”

“杰比，”裘德說，走近他，“我們會帶你脫離這個(gè)。跟我們走吧。我們會帶你去找專業(yè)協(xié)助?！?

　 “Okay,” he said, still crying. “Okay, okay.” He kept his blanket wrapped around him, he was so cold, but he allowed Malcolm to lead him to the sofa, and when Willem came over with a sweater, he held his arms up obediently, the way he had when he was a child and his mother had dressed him. “Where’s Jackson?” he asked Willem.

“好吧?！彼f，還在哭，“好吧，好吧?！彼砩线€裹著毯子，他覺得好冷，但他讓馬爾科姆帶他走到沙發(fā)前坐下，等到威廉拿著一件毛衣過來時(shí)，他順從地舉高雙手，就像小時(shí)候母親幫他穿衣服時(shí)那樣。“杰克遜人呢？”他問威廉。

　 “Jackson’s not going to bother you,” he heard Jude say, somewhere above him. “Don’t worry, JB.”

“杰克遜不會來煩你了。”他聽到裘德說，就在他上方某處，“別擔(dān)心，杰比?！?

　 “Willem,” he said, “when did you stop being my friend?”

“威廉，”他說，“你是什么時(shí)候停止當(dāng)我的朋友的？”

　 “I’ve never stopped being your friend, JB,” Willem said, and sat down next to him. “You know I love you.”

“我從來沒有停止當(dāng)你的朋友，杰比?！蓖f，在他旁邊坐下來，“你知道我是愛你的?！?