《渺小一生》:“又一項隱藏的才華?！?/h1>

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2020年07月22日

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　 “Not then,” Jude reminded him. “Not actively, at least.”

“當時還沒有，”裘德提醒他，“至少還沒發(fā)病。”

　 “No, maybe not,” he said. “But he was dying.”

“是啊，或許吧，”他說，“可是他快死了?！?

　 Jude had smiled at him. “Oh, dying,” he said dismissively. “We’re all dying. He just knew his death would come sooner than he had planned. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t happy years, that it wasn’t a happy life.”

裘德對他微笑。“啊，死?！彼p蔑地說，“我們全都會死。他只是知道他的死亡會比他計劃的早一些。但那不表示那不是快樂年代，不是快樂的一生?！?

　 He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn’t a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn’t know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It’s so sad, and yet we all do it. We all cling to it; we all search for something to give us solace.

然后他看著裘德，有時，包括現(xiàn)在，當他真正思索裘德和他的人生時，總會產(chǎn)生一種感覺。或許可以稱之為一種悲傷，但不是憐憫的，而是更大的悲傷。那種悲傷似乎是為了所有努力奮斗的可憐人，那幾十億他不認識、過著各自生活的人；那是一種混合了驚奇與敬畏的悲傷?？吹绞澜绺鞯氐娜诉@么奮力求生，即使他們每天都過得非常辛苦，即使環(huán)境這么惡劣。人生如此悲傷，在那些時刻，他會這樣想。太悲傷了，然而我們都在繼續(xù)活，我們都緊抓著不放，我們都在尋求某種慰藉。

　 But he didn’t say this, of course, just sat up and grabbed Jude’s face and kissed him and then fell back against the pillows. “How’d you get so smart?” he asked Jude, and Jude grinned at him.

但他當然沒說這些，只是坐起來捧住裘德的臉吻他一記，然后又往后倒在枕頭上。“你怎么會這么聰明？”他問裘德。裘德對他咧嘴笑了。

　 “Too hard?” he asked in response, still kneading Willem’s foot.

“太用力了嗎？”裘德只是問，手還按著他的雙腳。

　 “Not hard enough.”

“還不夠用力?！?

　 Now he turned Jude around to face him in bed. “I think we have to stick with The Happy Years,” he told him. “We’ll just have to risk your arms falling off,” and Jude laughed.

這會兒他把裘德轉過來面對自己?！拔蚁胛覀冞€是用’快樂年代’吧。”他告訴他，“我們得冒著你兩只手臂掉下來的危險?！濒玫麓笮?。

　 The next week, he left for Paris. It was one of the most difficult shoots he’d ever done; he had a double, an actual dancer, for the more elaborate sequences, but he did some of his own dancing as well, and there were days—days spent lifting real ballerinas into the air, marveling at how dense, how ropy with muscle they were—that were so exhausting that by the evening he had only the energy to drop himself into the bathtub and then lift himself out of it. In the past few years, he had found himself subconsciously drawn to ever-more physical roles, and he was always astonished by, and appreciative of, how heroically his body met its every demand. He had been given a new awareness of it, and now, as he stretched his arms behind him as he leaped, he could feel how every sore muscle came alive for him, how it allowed him to do whatever he wanted, how nothing within him ever broke, how it indulged him every time. He knew he wasn’t alone in feeling this, this gratitude: when they visited Cambridge, he and Harold would play tennis every day, and he knew without them ever discussing it how grateful they had both become for their own bodies, how much the act of smacking heavily, unthinkingly across the court to lunge for a ball had come to mean to them both.

下一個星期，他出發(fā)去巴黎。那是他拍過最辛苦的電影之一；他有個舞者替身，可以負責舞步比較復雜的鏡頭，但有些他還是要自己跳才行。有些日子，他一整天都在把真正的芭蕾女伶舉到空中，驚嘆她們身上的肌肉有多結實、多強壯，晚上他累得只剩進入浴缸和爬出來的力氣。過去幾年，他發(fā)現(xiàn)自己下意識地會想接一些挑戰(zhàn)身體難度的角色，而且他總是很驚訝、也很感激自己的身體像超人一般，總是能達到每一個要求。他對自己的身體有了新的認識，而現(xiàn)在，當他躍起，向后伸展雙臂時，他可以感到每塊酸痛的肌肉都為他活了過來，讓他做任何他想要的動作，而且他的身體從來沒有損傷，每回都縱容了他。他知道自己不是唯一為這感到慶幸的人：每次他們去劍橋市，他和哈羅德天天都會打網(wǎng)球，雖然他們不曾談過，但他知道兩人現(xiàn)在都很感激自己的身體，知道用力擊球、毫不思索就沖到球場另一頭救球，對他們的意義是什么。

　 Jude came to visit him in Paris at the end of April, and although Willem had promised him that he wouldn’t do anything elaborate for his fiftieth birthday, he had arranged a surprise dinner anyway, and in addition to JB and Malcolm and Sophie, Richard and Elijah and Rhodes and Andy and Black Henry Young and Harold and Julia had all come over, along with Phaedra and Citizen, who had helped him with the planning. The next day Jude had come to watch him on set, one of the very few times he had ever done so. The scene they were working on that morning was one in which Nureyev was trying to correct a young dancer’s cabriole, and after instructing him again and again, finally demonstrates how to do it; but in an earlier scene, one they hadn’t yet shot but that would directly precede this one, he has just been diagnosed with HIV, and as he jumps, scissoring his legs, he falls, and the studio goes quiet around him. The scene ended on his face, a moment in which he had to convey Nureyev’s sudden recognition that he understood how he would die and then, just a second later, his decision to ignore that understanding.

裘德四月底來巴黎探望他。盡管威廉已經(jīng)答應不會為他的50歲生日大費周章，但他還是安排了一個驚喜晚餐，參加的人除了杰比、馬爾科姆和蘇菲之外，理查德、伊利亞、羅茲、安迪、黑人亨利·楊、哈羅德和朱麗婭也都趕到巴黎，外加住在當?shù)亍退邉澋姆频吕臀魈崛?。次日，裘德難得來拍攝現(xiàn)場探班。他們那天早上拍的戲，是努里耶夫想糾正一個年輕舞者的羚躍動作，教了一回又一回之后，終于自己親身示范；但在更早的一場戲里（他們還沒拍，但劇情順序正好就是前一場），他才剛被診斷出有艾滋病。于是當他跳起，兩腳像剪刀般在空中互碰時，他摔倒了，整個工作室都安靜下來。這場戲最后終止在他的臉部特寫，那一刻他必須表達出努里耶夫忽然意識到他知道自己將怎么死，然后才一秒鐘，他就決定不予理會。

　 They shot take after take of this scene, and after each take, Willem would have to step away and wait until he could breathe normally again, and hair and makeup would flutter around him, blotting the sweat from his face and neck, and when he was ready, back to his mark he would step. By the time the director was satisfied, he was panting but satisfied as well.

這場戲他們拍了一個又一個鏡頭，每拍完一個，威廉就必須退到一旁，等自己恢復正常呼吸，同時服化人員會手忙腳亂地圍著他，吸掉他臉上、脖子上的汗水。等他準備好重來，就回到剛剛開始的記號位置。最后導演滿意了，他喘著氣，自己也很滿意。

　 “Sorry,” he apologized, going over to Jude at last. “The tedium of filmmaking.”

“對不起。”他道歉，走向裘德。“拍電影真的很無聊。”

　 “No, Willem,” Jude said. “It was amazing. You were so beautiful out there.” He looked tentative for a moment. “I almost couldn’t believe it was you.”

“不會，威廉。”裘德說，“太了不起了。你在那里太完美了。”他看起來猶豫了片刻，“我簡直不敢相信那是你。”

　 He took Jude’s hand and clasped it in his, which he knew was the most affection Jude would tolerate in public. But he never knew how Jude felt about witnessing such displays of physicality. The previous spring, during one of his breakups with Fredrik, JB had dated a principal in a well-known modern dance company, and they had all gone to see his performance. During Josiah’s solo, he had glanced over at Jude and had seen that he was leaning forward slightly, resting his chin in his hand, and watching the stage so intently that when Willem put his hand on his back, he startled. “Sorry,” Willem had whispered. Later, in bed, Jude had been very quiet, and he had wondered what he was thinking: Was he upset? Wistful? Sorrowful? But it had seemed unkind to ask Jude to say aloud what he might not have been able to articulate to himself, and so he hadn’t.

他抓住裘德的手，緊緊握住，他知道這是裘德在公共場合所能忍受的最親昵的舉動。但他從來不知道裘德親眼看到這樣身體動作的展示，會有什么感想。前一年春天，在杰比跟弗雷德里克多次分手中的其中一次期間，杰比跟一個知名現(xiàn)代舞團的首席舞者約西亞交往，于是他們四個都去看那個舞團的表演。約西亞獨舞時，他偷偷看了裘德一眼，發(fā)現(xiàn)他身體微微前傾，一手托著下巴，非常專注地看著舞臺，當威廉把手放在他的背上時，裘德驚跳起來?！皩Σ黄??！蓖敃r低聲說?；丶液?，夜里躺在床上，裘德一直很安靜。他很好奇他在想什么：他心煩嗎？渴望嗎？悲傷嗎？但是要裘德說出他可能無法清楚表達的事情，好像太殘忍了，于是他沒再問。

　 It was the middle of June by the time he returned to New York, and in bed Jude had looked at him, closely. “You have a ballet dancer’s body now,” he said, and the next day, he’d examined himself in the mirror and realized that Jude was correct. Later that week, they had dinner on the roof, which they and Richard and India had finally renovated, and which Richard and Jude had planted with grasses and fruit trees, and he had shown them some of what he’d learned, feeling his self-consciousness change to giddiness as he jetéed across the decked surface, his friends applauding behind him, the sun bleeding into nighttime above them.

等他回到紐約，已經(jīng)是六月中了。某天夜里在床上，裘德仔細地看著他說：“你現(xiàn)在有芭蕾舞者的身體了。”次日，他在鏡中打量自己，才明白裘德說得沒錯。那星期稍晚，他們在屋頂吃晚餐（他們和理查德、印蒂亞終于整修了屋頂，理查德和裘德在那里種了一些草和果樹），他秀了一些學到的舞步給他們看。當他在屋頂?shù)钠脚_上跳躍時，覺得自己的難為情變成了一股暈眩。他的朋友在后面鼓掌，天空中血紅的太陽正要沉入黑夜。

　 “Another hidden talent,” Richard had said afterward, and had smiled at him.

“又一項隱藏的才華。”理查德看完后說，露出微笑。

　 “I know,” Jude had said, smiling at him, too. “Willem is full of surprises, even all these years later.”

“我知道。”裘德說，也朝他微笑，“威廉真是充滿驚奇，即使認識他那么多年了。”

　 But they were all full of surprises, he had come to learn. When they were young, they had only their secrets to give one another: confessions were currency, and divulgences were a form of intimacy. Withholding the details of your life from your friends was considered first a sort of mystery and then a kind of stinginess, one that it was understood would preclude true friendship. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Willem,” JB would occasionally accuse him, and, “Are you keeping secrets from me? Don’t you trust me? I thought we were close.”

但他逐漸明白，他們全都充滿驚奇。年輕時，他們能給彼此的只有秘密：告解就是他們的通行貨幣，透露是一種親密的形式。對好友隱瞞你人生的細節(jié)，一開始會讓人覺得很神秘，然后會被視為某種吝嗇，還會阻礙真正的友誼?！巴?，有些事你沒告訴我喔。”杰比偶爾會指控他，又說，“你有秘密瞞著我嗎？你不信任我嗎？我還以為我們很要好呢?！?

　 “We are, JB,” he’d said. “And I’m not keeping anything from you.” And he hadn’t been: there was nothing to keep. Of all of them, only Jude had secrets, real secrets, and while Willem had in the past been frustrated by what had seemed his unwillingness to reveal them, he had never felt that they weren’t close because of that; it had never impaired his ability to love him. It had been a difficult lesson for him to accept, this idea that he would never fully possess Jude, that he would love someone who would remain unknowable and inaccessible to him in fundamental ways.

“我們是很要好啊，杰比?！彼麜f，“我沒有瞞著什么不說啊?！笔钦娴?，他沒有什么好隱瞞的。他們四個之中，只有裘德有秘密，真正的秘密。盡管威廉以前也對裘德不肯透露秘密覺得不滿，但他從不覺得他們因此不要好；這件事從來不曾減損自己愛他的能力。這對他是艱難的一課，要去接受他永遠無法完全了解裘德，接受他會愛上一個從根本上不可知、難以觸及的人。

　 And yet Jude was still being discovered by him, even thirty-four years after they had met, and he was still fascinated by what he saw. That July, for the first time, he invited him to Rosen Pritchard’s annual summer barbeque. “You don’t have to come, Willem,” Jude had added immediately after asking him. “It’s going to be really, really boring.”

即使認識了三十四年，他依然能從裘德身上發(fā)現(xiàn)新的東西，而且一直對這些新的認知深感著迷。那個七月，生平第一次，他受邀去參加羅森·普理查德律師事務所的夏日烤肉會?！澳悴皇欠侨ゲ豢桑?，”裘德問過他之后，立刻補充，“那一定會非常、非常無聊?！?