《渺小一生》:幾個月過去，他的背部痊愈了

　 But one afternoon—this was in March, shortly before he turned fourteen—he had turned the corner and had seen the counselor, a man named Rodger who was the cruelest, the most demanding, the most vicious of them all, and he had stopped. For the first time in a long time, something in him resisted, and instead of continuing toward Rodger, he had crept backward down the hallway, and then, once he was certain he was safely out of sight, he had run.

但是有天下午（那是三月，在他滿14歲前不久），他走過轉角，看到那個來接他的輔導員，是個叫羅杰的，也是所有輔導員里最殘忍、最苛刻、最惡毒的，于是他停下腳步。好久以來第一次，他心里開始抗拒，他沒繼續(xù)走向羅杰，而是悄悄往后退回走廊。然后，一確定沒有人看到他，他就跑了。

　 He hadn’t prepared for this, he had no plan, but some hidden, fiery part of him had, it seemed, been making observations as the rest of his mind sat cocooned in its thick, cottony slumber, and he found himself running toward the science lab, which was being renovated, and then under a curtain of blue plastic tarp that shielded one exposed side of the building, and then worming into the eighteen inches of space that separated the decaying interior wall from the new cement exterior that they were building around it. There was just enough room for him to wedge himself in, and he burrowed himself as deep into the space as he could, carefully working himself into a horizontal position, making sure his feet weren’t visible.

他沒有準備，沒有計劃。但長期以來，當他心靈的大部分都被隔絕在厚厚的、大繭般的休止狀態(tài)里時，他心底某個隱秘的、熱烈的部分似乎一直在觀察，于是他不自覺地跑向正在整修的實驗室，進入遮蓋裸露側墻的藍色塑料布后頭。他看到爛掉的內墻和新建的水泥外墻之間，有一道十八英寸寬的空間，就往里面鉆。那個空間只夠他勉強進去，他盡可能地往里面擠，小心翼翼地讓自己躺平，確保自己的腳不會露出來。

　 As he lay there, he tried to decide what he could do next. Rodger would wait for him and then, when he didn’t appear, they would eventually look for him. But if he could last here for the night, if he could wait until everything was silent around him, then he could escape. This was as far as he could think, although he was cognizant enough to realize that his chances were poor: he had no food, no money, and although it was only five in the afternoon, it was already very cold. He could feel his back and legs and palms, all the parts pressed against the stone, numbing themselves, could feel his nerves turning to thousands of pinpricks. But he could also feel, for the first time in months, his mind coming alert, could feel, for the first time in years, the giddy thrill of being able to make a decision, however poor or ill-conceived or unlikely. Suddenly, the pinpricks felt like not a punishment but a celebration, like hundreds of miniature fireworks exploding within him and for him, as if his body were reminding him of who he was and of what he still owned: himself.

他躺在那，試圖決定接下來該怎么辦。羅杰會在那里等他，等不到的話，他們就會開始找他。但如果他可以在這里撐過一夜，等到周圍安靜下來，他就可以逃走了。他只能想到這里，不過他的腦子還夠清楚，知道這個機會很渺茫：他沒有食物，沒有錢，盡管現在才下午5點，但已經非常冷了。他可以感覺到自己的背部、雙腿、手掌，所有抵著水泥墻面或地面的部分，全都麻了，他可以感覺自己的神經變成千萬個針孔。但他也同時感覺到，幾個月以來第一次，他的心神警覺起來，可以運轉了；幾年來第一次，他感覺到那種可以自己做決定的狂喜，盡管這個決定有多么糟糕、多么欠考慮、多么不可能。忽然間，那些針孔就像是幾百支袖珍煙火，在體內為他綻開，好像他的身體在提醒他是誰，提醒他還擁有什么：他自己。

　 He lasted two hours before the security guard’s dog found him and he was dragged out by his feet, his palms scraping against the cement blocks he clung to even then, by this time so cold that he tripped as he walked, that his fingers were too iced to open the car door, and as soon as he was inside, Rodger had turned around and hit him in the face, and the blood from his nose was thick and hot and reassuring and the taste of it on his lips oddly nourishing, like soup, as if his body were something miraculous and self-healing, determined to save itself.

他撐了兩個小時就被警衛(wèi)的狗找到了，兩腳被人抓著硬拖出來時，雙手還是猛扒著水泥磚不肯放棄。此時，他已經冷到走路都走不穩(wěn)，手指冰得沒法打開車門。一上車，羅杰就轉向他，一拳打到他臉上。他鼻子流出來的血又濃又熱，令人安心，嘴唇嘗到的血出奇的營養(yǎng)，像濃湯，好像他的身體里發(fā)生了奇跡，可以自我療愈，決定要救活自己。

　 That evening they had taken him to the barn, where they sometimes took him at night, and beat him so badly that he had blacked out almost immediately after it had begun. He had been hospitalized that night, and then again a few weeks later, when the wounds had gotten infected. For those weeks, he had been left alone, and although they had been told at the hospital that he was a delinquent, that he was troubled, that he was a problem and a liar, the nurses were kind to him: there was one, an older woman, who had sat by his bed and held a glass of apple juice with a straw in it so he could sip from it without lifting his head (he’d had to lie on his side so they could clean his back and drain the wounds).

那天傍晚他們帶他去谷倉（之前有時他們夜里也會帶他去那里），狠狠地痛打他，狠到才剛動手，他幾乎就立刻失去意識。那天晚上他被送去醫(yī)院，過了兩三個星期傷口感染，又進了醫(yī)院。那幾個星期，他被獨自留在醫(yī)院里。盡管醫(yī)院的人都被告知他是不良少年，說他很會闖禍，說他有毛病，而且愛撒謊，但護士們都對他很好。有一個年紀較長的護士會坐在他床邊，拿著一瓶蘋果汁插一根吸管，好讓他不必抬頭也可以喝（他只能側躺，好讓人清理他的背部，同時讓傷口干燥）。

　 “I don’t care what you did,” she told him one night, after she had changed his bandages. “No one deserves this. Do you hear me, young man?”

“我不管你做了什么，”她有天晚上幫他換完了繃帶后說，“沒有人應該被打成這樣。你聽到沒，小伙子？”

　 Then help me, he wanted to say. Please help me. But he didn’t. He was too ashamed.

那就幫我，他想說。拜托幫幫我。但他沒說，他太羞愧了。

　 She sat next to him again and put her hand on his forehead. “Try to behave yourself, all right?” she had said, but her voice had been gentle. “I don’t want to see you back here.”

她又在他旁邊坐下，一手放在他額頭上?！氨M量乖一點，好嗎？”她說，但她的聲音一直很溫柔，“我不希望又看到你回來這里。”

　 Help me, he wanted to say again, as she left the room. Please. Please. But he couldn’t. He never saw her again.

幫幫我，她離開病房，他又想這么說。拜托。拜托。但他說不出口。從此他再也沒見過她。

　 Later, as an adult, he would wonder if he had invented this nurse, if he had conjured her out of desperation, a simulacrum of kindness that was almost as good as the real thing. He would argue with himself: If she had existed, truly existed, wouldn’t she have told someone about him? Wouldn’t someone have been sent to help him? But his memories from this period were something slightly blur-edged and unreliable, and as the years went by, he was to come to realize that he was, always, trying to make his life, his childhood, into something more acceptable, something more normal. He would startle himself from a dream about the counselors, and would try to comfort himself: There were only two of them who used you, he would tell himself. Maybe three. The others didn’t. They weren’t all cruel to you. And then he would try, for days, to remember how many there had actually been: Was it two? Or was it three? For years, he couldn’t understand why this was so important to him, why it mattered to him so much, why he was always trying to argue against his own memories, to spend so much time debating the details of what had happened. And then he realized that it was because he thought that if he could convince himself that it was less awful than he remembered, then he could also convince himself that he was less damaged, that he was closer to healthy, than he feared he was.

后來，成年以后，他會好奇這個護士是不是自己想象出來的，他是不是出于絕望憑空變出了這個人，她只是個仁慈的幻影，好得簡直像真人一樣。他會跟自己爭辯：如果她存在、真的存在，她難道不會把他的事告訴其他人嗎？相關單位不會派個人來幫他嗎？但他這段時期的記憶有點模糊且不可靠，隨著一年年過去，他逐漸明白，他一直都在試圖把自己的人生、自己的童年改造得更容易接受、更正常一點。他會夢到那些輔導員而驚醒，然后試著安撫自己：利用你的只有其中兩個，他會告訴自己。或許三個，其他人沒有。并不是每個輔導員都對你很壞。接下來好幾天，他會設法回憶到底有幾個：是兩個？或是三個？有好幾年，他都不懂為什么這一點對他這么重要，為什么他要這么在乎，為什么他總是反駁自己的記憶，花那么多時間去爭辯往事的種種細節(jié)。然后他明白，那是因為他以為，如果他能說服自己事情不像他記得的那么可怕，他也就可以說服自己：他沒有損傷得那么嚴重，他比自己擔心的更健康一點。

　 Finally he was sent back to the home, and the first time he had seen his back, he had recoiled, moving so quickly away from the bathroom mirror that he had slipped and fallen on a section of wet tile. In those initial weeks after the beating, when the scar tissue was still forming, it had made a puffed mound of flesh on his back, and at lunch he would sit alone and the older boys would whip damp pellets of napkin at it, trying to get them to ping off of it as against a target, cheering when they hit him. Until that point, he had never thought too specifically about his appearance. He knew he was ugly. He knew he was ruined. He knew he was diseased. But he had never considered himself grotesque. But now he was. There seemed to be an inevitability to this, to his life: that every year he would become worse—more disgusting, more depraved. Every year, his right to humanness diminished; every year, he became less and less of a person. But he didn’t care any longer; he couldn’t allow himself to.

最后，他終于出院，被送回了少年之家。他第一次看到自己的背部時，嚇得整個人往后縮，迅速從浴室的鏡子前退開，在一片濕漉漉的瓷磚上滑倒。剛挨打后的幾個星期，那些疤痕組織還沒定型，在他的背部形成一片膨脹的肉丘。午餐時他獨坐著，比較年長的男孩就會用濕紙巾捏成的小球朝他背部扔，就像對著靶子般，擊中了就歡呼。在此之前，他從沒仔細想過自己的外貌。他知道自己很丑，他知道自己毀了，他知道自己染了病，但他從來不覺得自己怪誕?？墒乾F在他是了。他的人生似乎必然如此：每一年他都變得更糟糕、更令人厭惡、更墮落。每一年，他身而為人的權利就減少一點；每一年，他都變得越來越不像個人。但他再也不在乎了；他不能容許自己在乎。

　 It was difficult to live without caring, however, and he found himself curiously unable to forget Brother Luke’s promise, that when he was sixteen, his old life would stop and his new life would begin. He knew, he did, that Brother Luke had been lying, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Sixteen, he would think to himself at night. Sixteen. When I am sixteen, this will end.

無論如何，沒人照顧的生活很艱難，于是他發(fā)現自己很古怪，無法忘記盧克修士的承諾。他曾說滿16歲時，他舊的人生就會停止，新的人生將會展開。16歲，他夜里會告訴自己。16歲。等我16歲，這些就會停止了。

　 He had asked Brother Luke, once, what their life would be like after he turned sixteen. “You’ll go to college,” Luke had said, immediately, and he had thrilled to this. He had asked where he would go, and Luke had named the college he had attended as well (although when he had gotten to that college after all, he had looked up Brother Luke—Edgar Wilmot—and had realized there was no record of him having ever attended the school, and he had been relieved, relieved to not have something in common with the brother, although it was he who had let him imagine that he might someday be there). “I’ll move to Boston, too,” Luke said. “And we’ll be married, so we’ll live in an apartment off campus.” Sometimes they discussed this: the courses he would take, the things Brother Luke had done when he was at college, the places they would travel to after he graduated. “Maybe we’ll have a son together one day,” Luke said once, and he had stiffened, for he knew without Luke saying so that Luke would do to this phantom son of theirs what had been done to him, and he remembered thinking that that would never happen, that he would never let this ghost child, this child who didn’t exist, ever exist, that he would never let another child be around Luke. He remembered thinking that he would protect this son of theirs, and for a brief, awful moment, he wished he would never turn sixteen at all, because he knew that once he did, Luke would need someone else, and that he couldn’t let that happen.

以前有回他問盧克修士，滿16歲以后，他們的生活會是什么樣?！澳銜ド洗髮W?！北R克當時立刻說。他聽了很興奮。還問他會去哪里，于是盧克說出他讀過的那所大學的名字（他后來上了這所大學，還特別去查盧克修士的名字，埃德加·威爾默特，才發(fā)現根本沒有他就讀的紀錄。他松了一口氣，因為這件事他們沒有共通點，不過當初的確是盧克修士讓他得以想象自己會到波士頓念書）?！拔乙矔岬讲ㄊ款D，”盧克說，“我們會結婚，住在校園外的公寓里?！庇袝r他們會討論這件事：他會上什么課，他去上課時，盧克修士會做什么事，他畢業(yè)后他們會去哪里旅行?！耙苍S有一天我們會有個兒子?！庇谢乇R克說，他聽后全身僵住，因為盧克不必說出來，他就知道盧克會對他們這個孩子做出以前對他做過的事。他還記得當時想著，這種事情絕不能發(fā)生，他絕對不會讓這個幽靈孩子、這個不存在的孩子有機會存在，他絕對不會讓另一個孩子接近盧克。他還記得當時他想著會保護他們這個兒子，然后有個短暫、可怕的片刻，他真希望自己永遠不會滿16歲，因為他知道一旦自己滿16歲，盧克就會需要另一個孩子，他不能讓這種事情發(fā)生。

　 But now Luke was dead. The phantom child was safe. He could safely turn sixteen. He could turn sixteen and be safe.

但現在盧克死了。那個幽靈孩子安全了。他可以放心地滿16歲。他可以滿16歲，而且很安全。

　 The months passed. His back healed. Now a security guard waited for him after his classes and walked him to the parking lot to wait for the counselor on duty. One day at the end of the fall semester, his math professor talked to him after class had ended: Had he thought about college yet? He could help him; he could help him get there—he could go somewhere excellent, somewhere top-flight. And oh, he wanted to go, he wanted to get away, he wanted to go to college. He was tugged, in those days, between trying to resign himself to the fact that his life would forever more be what it was, and the hope, small and stupid and stubborn as it was, that it could be something else. The balance—between resignation and hope—shifted by the day, by the hour, sometimes by the minute. He was always, always trying to decide how he should be—if his thoughts should be of acceptance or of escape. In that moment he had looked at his professor, but as he was about to answer—Yes; yes, help me—something stopped him. The professor had always been kind to him, but wasn’t there something about that kindness that made him resemble Brother Luke? What if the professor’s offer of help cost him? He argued with himself as the professor waited for his answer. One more time won’t hurt you, said the desperate part of him, the part that wanted to leave, the part that was counting every day until sixteen, the part the other part of him jeered at. It’s one more time. He’s another client. Now is not the time to start getting proud.

幾個月過去，他的背部痊愈了?，F在他去社區(qū)大學上完課后，會有一個安全警衛(wèi)等著他，陪他走到停車場，把他交給當天負責接送的輔導員。有一天，秋季學期的最后一天，他的數學教授下課后找他談：他有沒有想過上大學的事？他可以幫忙；他可以幫他申請到學校——他可以去一家頂尖的學校。啊，他好想去，他好想離開，他想要去上大學。那陣子他很糾結，想設法接受現實，看清他的人生往后只會跟以前一樣；但同時心底又有個小小、愚蠢、頑固的希望，希望以后會有所改變。放棄與希望，這兩者之間的態(tài)勢強弱，每天、每小時都在改變，有時甚至每分鐘都會改變。他總是設法決定自己該怎么做，想著自己該接受現實，或是設法逃走。那一刻，他看著數學教授，正當他要回答是的——“是的，請你幫我”時，有個什么阻止了他。那教授向來很關心他，但那種關懷不就跟盧克修士一樣嗎？如果教授的幫助會需要他付出代價呢？他在心里跟自己爭辯著，同時教授等著他回答。再試一次不會有什么影響的，他絕望的那部分、想離開的那部分、每天數著還有幾天滿16歲的那部分說。但另外一部分嘲笑他，又要來一次了。他只是另一個顧客。可別又得意忘形了。

　 But in the end, he had ignored that voice—he was so tired, he was so sore, he was so exhausted from being disappointed—and had shaken his head. “College isn’t for me,” he told the professor, his voice thin from the strain of lying. “Thank you. But I don’t need your help.”

但最后，他沒理會那個聲音。他很累，全身酸痛，被失望搞得精疲力竭了。他搖搖頭?！按髮W不適合我?！彼嬖V教授，因為努力撒謊，聲音變得尖細，“謝謝你。但是我不需要你的幫助?！?

　 “I think you’re making a big mistake, Jude,” said his professor, after a silence. “Promise me you’ll reconsider?” and he had reached out and touched his arm, and he had jerked away, and the professor had looked at him, strangely, and he had turned and fled the room, the hallway blurring into planes of beige.

“裘德，我想你犯了一個大錯。”他的教授沉默了一會兒說，“答應我你會再考慮？”他伸手要摸他的手臂，他猛地閃身躲開，那教授看著他，表情怪怪的。他隨即轉身跑出教室，經過的走廊模糊成一片片米色的平面。

　 That night he was taken to the barn. The barn was no longer a working barn, but a place to store the shop class’s and the auto repair class’s projects—in the stalls were half-assembled carburetors, and hulls of half-repaired trucks, and half-sanded rocking chairs that the home sold for money. He was in the stall with the rocking chairs, and as one of the counselors seesawed into him, he left himself and flew above the stalls, to the rafters of the barn, where he paused, looking at the scene below him, the machinery and furniture like alien sculpture, the floor dusty with dirt and the stray pieces of hay, reminders of the barn’s original life that they never seemed able to fully erase, at the two people making a strange eight-legged creature, one silent, one noisy and grunting and thrusting and alive. And then he was flying out of the round window cut high into the wall, and over the home, over its fields that were so beautiful and green and yellow with wild mustard in the summer, and now, in December, were still beautiful in their own way, a shimmering expanse of lunar white, the snow so fresh and new that no one had yet trampled it. He flew above this all, and across landscapes he had read about but had never seen, across mountains so clean that they made him feel clean just to contemplate them, over lakes as big as oceans, until he was floating above Boston, and circling down and down to that series of buildings that trimmed the side of the river, an expansive ring of structures punctuated by squares of green, where he would go and be remade, and where his life would begin, where he could pretend that everything that had come before had been someone else’s life, or a series of mistakes, never to be discussed, never to be examined.

那天夜里他被帶去谷倉。那個谷倉不再被當作谷倉使用，而被用來儲存工藝課和汽車修理課的物品，眾多小隔間內放著組合到一半的汽車化油器、修理到一半的卡車、打磨到一半的搖椅，完成后院方就會賣掉賺錢。他在放搖椅的那個小隔間里，一個輔導員正朝他不斷推進時，他離開了自己，飛到小隔間上方，飛到谷倉的斜椽，暫停下來，看著下方的景象。那些機械和家具看起來像外星雕塑，地板上有泥土和零星的干草，讓人想起這個谷倉的原始用途似乎無法被完全抹去，他看著底下的兩個人形成一個奇怪的八腳獸，一個沉默，一個聒噪、悶哼、沖刺、活躍。然后他飛出墻壁高處的圓窗，飛過少年之家，飛過那片美麗的田野，夏天會被野芥菜花染成一片綠與黃。而現在，十二月，依然有另一種美，一片月白色的廣闊大地閃著微光，那些雪好新好鮮，還沒有人踩上去過。他高飛到這一切之上，飛越他讀過、但未曾親眼見識的風景，飛越那些潔凈到光是注視都令他感到潔凈的高山，飛越大如海洋的湖泊，直到他飄浮在波士頓上空，盤旋著越來越低，來到沿著河流整齊排列的建筑物，像一個巨大的環(huán)形結構，中間點綴著四方形的綠地。那就是他要去的地方，在那里，他將會重生；在那里，他的人生將會開始；在那里，他可以假裝以前碰到的一切都是發(fā)生在別人身上的事，或只是一連串錯誤，從不討論，也不檢視。

　 When he came back to himself, the counselor was on top of him, asleep. His name was Colin, and he was often drunk, as he was tonight, his hot yeasty breath puffing against his face. He was naked; Colin was wearing a sweater but nothing else, and for a while he lay there under Colin’s weight, breathing too, waiting for him to wake so he could be returned to his bedroom and cut himself.

他神游回來之后，那個輔導員還壓在他身上，睡著了。他名叫柯林，總是喝得醉醺醺的，今夜也是，酸熱的氣息吹在他臉上。他全身赤裸，柯林則只穿著一件襯衫，他躺在那兒一會兒，呼吸著，等待柯林醒來，好送他回自己的臥室割自己。

　 And then, unthinkingly, almost as if he was a marionette, his limbs moving without thought, he was wriggling out from beneath Colin, quiet and quick, and hurrying his clothes back on, and then, again before he knew it, grabbing Colin’s puffed coat from the hook on the inside of the stall and shrugging it on. Colin was much larger than he was, fatter and more muscular, but he was almost as tall, and it was less wieldy than it looked. And then he was grabbing Colin’s jeans from the ground, and snatching out his wallet, and then the money within it—he didn’t count how much it was, but he could tell by how thin a sheaf it was that it wasn’t much—and shoving that into his own jeans pocket, and then he was running. He had always been a good runner, swift and silent and certain—watching him at the track, Brother Luke had always said he must be part Mohican—and now he ran out of the barn, its doors open to the sparkling, hushed night, looking about him as he left, and then, seeing no one, toward the field behind the home’s dormitory.

這時，他想都沒想，簡直像一具懸絲人偶似的，他的四肢不經思考就動了起來，扭動著從柯林下頭脫身，安靜而迅速，接著匆忙穿上自己的衣服。然后，同樣是在他意識到之前，他就抓起小隔間內鉤子上柯林那件厚厚的大衣穿上?？铝謮K頭大他很多，比較胖也比較壯，但幾乎一樣高，穿上去并沒有看起來那么累贅。接著，他從地上抓起柯林的牛仔褲，抽出皮夾，拿出里頭的錢（他沒去算有多少，但感覺得到那一沓有多么薄，金額不多），塞進牛仔褲口袋，然后就跑了。他向來很會跑，靈活、安靜又堅定。當年看著他在跑道上奔跑的樣子，盧克修士總說他一定有原住民莫西干族的血統?，F在他跑出谷倉，進入安靜、閃耀的夜晚，四下張望，發(fā)現沒有人，于是跑向少年之家宿舍后方的田野。