《渺小一生》:朱麗婭和我決定收養(yǎng)他之后，

　 When we first realized that Jacob was sick, that there was something wrong with him, we both tried very hard to recalibrate, and quickly. We had never said that we wanted him to go to college, for example; we simply assumed he would, and to graduate school as well, because we both had. But that first night we spent in the hospital, after his first seizure, Liesl, who was always a planner, who had a brilliant ability to see five steps, ten steps, ahead, said, “No matter what this is, he can still live a long and healthy life, you know. There are great schools we can send him to. There are places where he can be taught to be independent.” I had snapped at her: I had accused her of writing him off so quickly, so easily. Later, I felt ashamed about this. Later, I admired her: I admired how rapidly, how fluidly, she was adjusting to the fact that the child she thought she would have was not the child she did have. I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in your name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognizable as pleasure at all—and, more important, the pleasure you will be privileged to bring him. For the rest of Jacob’s life, I lagged one step behind Liesl: I kept dreaming he would get better, that he would return to what he had been; she, however, thought only about the life he could have given the current realities of his situation. Maybe he could go to a special school. Okay, he couldn’t go to school at all, but maybe he could be in a playgroup. Okay, he wouldn’t be able to be in a playgroup, but maybe he would be able to live a long life anyway. Okay, he wouldn’t live a long life, but maybe he could live a short happy life. Okay, he couldn’t live a short happy life, but maybe he could live a short life with dignity: we could give him that, and she would hope for nothing else for him.

我們剛發(fā)現(xiàn)雅各布病了，有哪里不對勁的時(shí)候，我和莉柔很努力地重新調(diào)整，而且很快。比方說，我們從來沒說我們希望他讀大學(xué)；我們只是假設(shè)他會，而且也會讀研究生，因?yàn)槲液屠蛉岫甲x了。但雅各布第一次發(fā)作后，我們在醫(yī)院待的第一夜，向來擅長計(jì)劃、總是提早五步十步看到事態(tài)發(fā)展的莉柔說：“無論這是什么病，他還是可以活得長壽又健康，你知道。他可以去很多很棒的學(xué)校讀書。有很多地方會教他怎么獨(dú)立生活?！蔽夷菚r(shí)說了她一頓，我指控她這么快、這么輕易地就放棄他。事后，我很羞愧。后來的她讓我佩服：面對這個(gè)孩子不如她預(yù)期的事實(shí)，她調(diào)整得快速而順暢。我佩服她早就知道（比我早太多了），擁有孩子的重點(diǎn)不在于你希望他達(dá)到什么成就，而是他帶給你的愉悅，無論是以什么形式，即使那種形式幾乎不會被當(dāng)成愉悅。更重要的是，你有幸能帶給他愉悅。在雅各布剩下的人生中，我總是落后莉柔一步：我一直夢想他會好轉(zhuǎn)，夢想他會回到原來的樣子；而她，只想著以他當(dāng)時(shí)的狀況，可以過什么樣的人生。或許他可以去讀特殊學(xué)校。好吧，他根本不可能去上學(xué)，或許他可以去參加托兒游戲班。好吧，他不能去托兒游戲班，但或許還可以活很久。好吧，他沒辦法活很久，但或許他可以擁有短暫而快樂的一生。好吧，他沒辦法擁有短暫而快樂的一生，但或許他這短暫的一生可以過得有尊嚴(yán)：這個(gè)我們可以給他，而她對他別無所求。

　 I was thirty-two when he was born, thirty-six when he was diagnosed, thirty-seven when he died. It was November tenth, just less than a year after his first seizure. We had a service at the university, and even in my deadened state, I saw all the people—our parents, our friends and colleagues, and Jacob’s friends, first graders now, and their parents—who had come, and had cried.

雅各布出生時(shí)我32歲，被確診時(shí)我36歲，過世時(shí)我37歲。那是十一月十日，離他第一次發(fā)作將近一年。我們在大學(xué)里舉行了儀式，即使在麻木的狀態(tài)中，我也看到所有人都來了，也都哭了，包括我們的父母、朋友和同事，還有雅各布的朋友（當(dāng)時(shí)上一年級了），以及那些朋友的父母。

　 My parents went home to New York. Liesl and I eventually went back to work. For months, we barely spoke. We couldn’t even touch each other. Part of it was exhaustion, but we were also ashamed: of our mutual failure, of the unfair but unshakable feeling that each of us could have done better, that the other person hadn’t quite risen to the occasion. A year after Jacob died, we had our first conversation about whether we should have another child, and although it began politely, it ended awfully, in recriminations: about how I had never wanted Jacob in the first place, about how she had never wanted him, about how I had failed, about how she had. We stopped talking; we apologized. We tried again. But every discussion ended the same way. They were not conversations from which it was possible to recover, and eventually, we separated.

我父母回到紐約的家，莉柔和我最后又各自回去忙工作。有好幾個(gè)月，我們幾乎不說話，也沒辦法碰觸對方。一部分原因是筋疲力盡，但我們也很羞愧：羞愧我們共同的失敗，羞愧我們可以做得更好，卻沒有為彼此挺身而出（這種感覺不合理，卻揮之不去）。雅各布過世后一年，我們第一次談到是不是該再生個(gè)孩子。一開始兩個(gè)人很客氣，但談話結(jié)束得非常糟糕，我們互相指責(zé)：關(guān)于我從一開始就不想要雅各布、她從來不想要生他，以及我怎么失敗、她怎么失敗。我們冷戰(zhàn)，接著道歉。再試一次。但每次討論到最后都是以同樣的方式收場。那些談話很傷人，無法彌補(bǔ)。到最后，我們分居了。

　 It amazes me now how thoroughly we stopped communicating. The divorce was very clean, very easy—perhaps too clean, too easy. It made me wonder what had brought us together before Jacob—had we not had him, how and for what would we have stayed together? It was only later that I was able to remember why I had loved Liesl, what I had seen and admired in her. But at the time, we were like two people who’d had a single mission, difficult and draining, and now the mission was over, and it was time for us to part and return to our regular lives.

現(xiàn)在回想起來很不可思議，我們完全停止溝通。我們離婚離得干凈利落，很順利——或許太干凈利落、太順利了。這讓我好奇，在雅各布之前，是什么讓我們在一起的——如果沒有他的話，我們還會在一起嗎？直到后來，我才有辦法想起當(dāng)初我為什么會愛上莉柔，我從她身上看到什么、欣賞什么。但當(dāng)時(shí)，我們就像負(fù)責(zé)同一項(xiàng)任務(wù)的兩個(gè)人，任務(wù)困難、令人精疲力竭，而現(xiàn)在任務(wù)結(jié)束了，我們就該分開，回到各自的正常生活。

　 For many years, we didn’t speak—not out of acrimony, but out of something else. She moved to Portland. Shortly after I met Julia, I ran into Sally—she had moved as well, to Los Angeles—who was in town visiting her parents and who told me that Liesl had remarried. I told Sally to send her my best, and Sally said she would.

有很多年我們都沒聯(lián)系——不是因?yàn)闀臣?，而是有別的原因。她搬到波特蘭。我認(rèn)識朱麗婭之后沒多久，有天碰到薩莉（她也搬家了，搬到洛杉磯）剛好來波士頓看她父母，她告訴我莉柔再婚了。我請薩莉轉(zhuǎn)達(dá)我的祝福，薩莉說她會的。

　 Sometimes I would look her up: she was teaching at the medical school at the University of Oregon. Once I had a student who looked so much like what we had always imagined Jacob would look like that I nearly called her. But I never did.

有時(shí)我會查一下莉柔的現(xiàn)況：她在奧瑞岡大學(xué)的醫(yī)學(xué)院教書。有回我有個(gè)學(xué)生，看起來好像我們想象中雅各布長大后的樣子，像到我差點(diǎn)打電話跟她說，但我始終沒這么做。

　 And then, one day, she called me. It had been sixteen years. She was in town for a conference, and asked if I wanted to have lunch. It was strange, both foreign and instantly familiar, to hear her voice again, that voice with which I’d had thousands of conversations, about things both important and mundane. That voice I had heard sing to Jacob as he juddered in her arms, that voice I had heard say “This is the best one yet!” as she took a picture of the day’s tower of blocks.

然后有一天，她打電話給我。那是十六年后了。她剛好來波士頓參加會議，問我要不要一起吃個(gè)中飯。再度聽到她的聲音，感覺很奇怪，既陌生又立刻變得熟悉起來，那個(gè)聲音跟我談過幾千幾萬次話，談過各種重要和平凡的事。我聽過那聲音對她抱在懷里搖晃的雅各布唱歌，聽過那聲音說：“這是有史以來最棒的一個(gè)！”同時(shí)拍下當(dāng)天的積木塔照片。

　 We met at a restaurant near the medical college’s campus that had specialized in what it had called “upscale hummus” when she was a resident and which we had considered a special treat. Now it was a place that specialized in artisanal meatballs, but it still smelled, interestingly, of hummus.

我們約在醫(yī)學(xué)院附近的一家餐廳見面。她在當(dāng)住院醫(yī)生時(shí)，那家餐廳專門賣所謂的“高檔鷹嘴豆泥”，我們都覺得很好吃。但現(xiàn)在那家餐廳改賣手工肉丸，有趣的是，餐廳里還有一股鷹嘴豆泥的氣味。

　 We saw each other; she looked as I had remembered her. We hugged and sat. For a while we spoke of work, of Sally and her new girlfriend, of Laurence and Gillian. She told me about her husband, an epidemiologist, and I told her about Julia. She’d had another child, a girl, when she was forty-three. She showed me a picture. She was beautiful, the girl, and looked just like Liesl. I told her so, and she smiled. “And you?” she asked. “Did you ever have another?”

我們見了面，她看起來就跟我記憶中一樣。我們擁抱后坐下來。有一會兒，我們談著工作，談薩莉和她的新女友，談勞倫斯和吉莉安。她告訴我她丈夫是流行病學(xué)專家，我則告訴她有關(guān)朱麗婭的事。她43歲時(shí)又生了個(gè)女孩。她拿照片給我看，很漂亮，看起來很像莉柔。我這么告訴她，她微笑?！澳悄隳?？”她問，“你有了另一個(gè)孩子嗎？”

　 I did, I said. I had just adopted one of my former students. I could see she was surprised, but she smiled, and congratulated me, and asked me about him, and how it had happened, and I told her.

是的，我說。我剛剛收養(yǎng)了一個(gè)以前的學(xué)生。我看得出來她很驚訝，但還是露出微笑，恭喜我，又問我他的事情，以及是怎么發(fā)生的。我告訴了她。

　 “That’s great, Harold,” she said, after I’d finished. And then, “You love him a lot.”

“那太好了，哈羅德。你很愛他?！?

　 “I do,” I said.

“是的?！蔽艺f。

　 I would like to tell you that it was the beginning of a sort of second-stage friendship for us, that we stayed in touch and that every year, we would talk about Jacob, what he could have been. But it wasn’t, though not in a bad way. I did tell her, in that meeting, about that student of mine who had so unnerved me, and she said that she understood exactly what I meant, and that she too had had students—or had simply passed young men in the street—whom she thought she recognized from somewhere, only to realize later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that we might have been searching for him all this time.

我很想告訴你，那是我們某種第二階段友誼的開始，我們一直保持聯(lián)絡(luò)，而且每一年我們都會談到雅各布，談他如果在世會是什么樣子。但事情并非如此，不過我們也沒有交惡。那次碰面時(shí)，我終于告訴她那個(gè)讓我很不安、很像長大后的雅各布的學(xué)生。她說她完全明白我的意思，說她也碰到過一些學(xué)生，或只是在街上擦肩而過的青年，她覺得在哪里見過，后來才明白她曾想象我們的兒子就是那個(gè)樣子，好好活著，離開了我們，也不再是我們的，但自由自在地生活在這世界里，不知道我們一直在找他。

　 I hugged her goodbye; I wished her well. I told her I cared about her. She said all the same things. Neither of us offered to stay in touch with the other; both of us, I like to think, had too much respect for the other to do so.

臨別時(shí)我跟她擁抱道別，祝福她一切安好。我告訴她我很關(guān)心她。她也跟我說了同樣的話。我們都沒提出要跟對方保持聯(lián)絡(luò)；我愿意想成是因?yàn)槲覀兌继鹬乇舜肆?，不會去提這種事情。

　 But over the years, at odd moments, I would hear from her. I would get an e-mail that read only “Another sighting,” and I would know what she meant, because I sent her those e-mails, too: “Harvard Square, appx 25-y-o, 6′2″, skinny, reeking of pot.” When her daughter graduated from college, she sent me an announcement, and then another for her daughter’s wedding, and a third when her first grandchild was born.

但這些年來，在一些零星的時(shí)刻，我會接到她的消息。我會收到一封電子郵件，里面只寫著“又看到另一個(gè)了”，而我明白她是什么意思，因?yàn)槲乙矔l(fā)這類電子郵件給她，“哈佛廣場，大約25歲，六英尺二英寸，瘦巴巴，一身大麻味?！彼畠捍髮W(xué)畢業(yè)時(shí)，她發(fā)電子郵件通知我；然后是她女兒辦婚禮；第三次是她的第一個(gè)孫子出生。

　 I love Julia. She was a scientist too, but she was always so different from Liesl—cheery where Liesl was composed, expressive where Liesl was interior, innocent in her delights and enthusiasms. But as much as I love her, for many years a part of me couldn’t stop feeling that I had something deeper, something more profound with Liesl. We had made someone together, and we had watched him die together. Sometimes I felt that there was something physical connecting us, a long rope that stretched between Boston and Portland: when she tugged on her end, I felt it on mine. Wherever she went, wherever I went, there it would be, that shining twined string that stretched and pulled but never broke, our every movement reminding us of what we would never have again.

我愛朱麗婭。她也是科學(xué)家，但她始終跟莉柔截然不同。她樂觀活潑，莉柔鎮(zhèn)靜；她感情外露，莉柔內(nèi)斂，開朗熱情中帶著純真。盡管我這么愛朱麗婭，有很多年，一部分的我始終覺得我跟莉柔有種更深、更難以解釋的情感。我們一起生了個(gè)小孩，我們一起看著他死去。有時(shí)我覺得我們之間有種實(shí)體的連接，一條長長的繩子從波士頓連接到波特蘭：當(dāng)她扯動她那一頭，我就會感覺到。無論她去哪里，無論我去哪里，都會有一條發(fā)亮的繩子在我們之間，不時(shí)被扯一下，永遠(yuǎn)不會斷掉。我們的每個(gè)動作，都會讓對方想起我們再也無法擁有的一切。

* * *

　 After Julia and I decided we were going to adopt him, about six months before we actually asked him, I told Laurence. I knew Laurence liked him a great deal, and respected him, and thought he was good for me, and I also knew that Laurence—being Laurence—would be wary.

朱麗婭和我決定收養(yǎng)他之后，大約在我們告訴他之前六個(gè)月，我先告訴了勞倫斯。我知道勞倫斯非常喜歡他，也尊敬他，認(rèn)為他對我有好處。此外，我也知道勞倫斯生性謹(jǐn)慎，比較小心。

　 He was. We had a long talk. “You know how much I like him,” he said, “but really, Harold, how much do you actually know about this kid?”

的確，我們長談了一番。“你知道我有多喜歡他。”他說，“可是真的，哈羅德，你對這個(gè)孩子實(shí)際了解多少？”

　 “Not much,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t Laurence’s worst possible scenario: I knew he wasn’t a thief, that he wasn’t going to come kill me and Julia in our bed at night. Laurence knew this, too.

“不多?！蔽艺f，但我知道他不是勞倫斯能想到最壞的那些狀況：我知道他不是盜賊，不會趁夜里我和朱麗婭睡在床上時(shí)殺掉我們。這一點(diǎn)勞倫斯也知道。