I fled the mountain with my bags half packed and did not retrieve anything that was left behind. I went to Salt Lake and spent the rest of the holidays with Drew.
我带着未打包好的一半行李匆忙逃离了大山，没有回去取其余的东西。我去了盐湖城，和德鲁度过了剩下的假期。
I tried to forget that night. For the first time in fifteen years, I closed my journal and put it away. Journaling is contemplative, and I didn’t want to contemplate anything.
我试图忘记那个夜晚。十五年来，我第一次合上日记，把它收了起来。写日记是一种沉思，而我不想思考任何事情。
It was early March when it happened. Shawn sent me an email. It contained no greeting, no message whatsoever. Just a chapter from the Bible, from Matthew, with a single verse set apart in bold: O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? It froze my blood.
事情发生在三月初。肖恩给我发了一封电子邮件，里面没有问候，也没有任何信息，只有《圣经·马太福音》的一章，其中一节用粗体显示：毒蛇的种类！你们既是恶人，怎能说出好话来呢？这句话让我血液凝固。
After the New Year I returned to Cambridge, but I withdrew from my friends. I had seen the earth tremble, felt the preliminary shock; now I waited for the seismic event that would transform the landsape. I knew how it would begin. Shawn would think about what Dad had told him on the phone, and sooner or later he would realize that my denial — my claim that Dad had misunderstood me — was a lie. When he realized the truth, he would despise himself for perhaps an hour. Then he would transfer his loathing to me.
新年过后，我回到剑桥，但我与朋友们疏远了。我曾见过大地颤动，感受过最初的震颤；现在我等待着一场将要改变地貌的大地震。我知道它将如何开始。肖恩会思考爸爸在电话里告诉他的话，他迟早会意识到我的否认——我声称爸爸误会了我——是一个谎言。等他明白过来，一小时内他可能会鄙视自己，接着他会把他的厌恶转移到我身上。
“I can’t decide,” he said. He paused, and I thought perhaps the connection had failed. “Whether I should kill you myself, or hire an assassin.” There was a static-filled silence. “It might be cheaper to hire someone, when you figure in the cost of the flight.”
“我拿不准主意，”他停顿了一下，我还以为也许是信号断了，“是亲手杀掉你呢，还是雇个杀手。”一片死寂。“如果算上坐飞机的费用，雇个人可能更便宜。”
Shawn called an hour later. His tone was casual, and we talked for twenty minutes about Peter, about how his lungs were developing. Then he said, “I have a decision to make, and I’d like your advice.”
一小时后肖恩打来电话。他语气随意，我们聊了二十分钟彼得，谈论他的肺发育得怎么样了。然后他说：“我要做一个决定，想听听你的意见。”
“Sure.”
“当然。”
I pretended I hadn’t understood, but this only made him aggressive. Now he was hurling insults, snarling. I tried to calm him but it was pointless. We were seeing each other at long last. I hung up on him but he called again, and again and again, each time repeating the same lines, that I should watch my back, that his assassin was coming for me. I called my parents.
我假装没听懂，但这只让他更咄咄逼人。他开始辱骂和咆哮。我试着让他平静下来，但没有成功。我们终于露出了本来面目。我挂断电话，但他一次又一次打过来，每次都重复同样的话，说我该小心点，说他雇的杀手会来找我。于是我打电话给父母。
“He didn’t mean it,” Mother said. “Anyway, he doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“他不是那个意思，”母亲说，“不管怎样，他没有那么多钱。”
“Not the point,” I said.
“这不是重点。”我说。
Dad wanted evidence. “You didn’t record the call?” he said. “How am I supposed to know if he was serious?”
爸爸想要证据。“你没把通话录下来？”他说，“我怎么知道他是不是认真的？”
The phone calls stopped, eventually, but not because of anything my parents did. They stopped when Shawn cut me out of his life. He wrote, telling me to stay away from his wife and child, and to stay the hell away from him. The email was long, a thousand words of accusation and bile, but by the end his tone was mournful. He said he loved his brothers, that they were the best men he knew. I loved you the best of all of them, he wrote, but you had a knife in my back the whole time.
电话最终不再打过来，但并不是因为我父母做了什么，而是肖恩将我从他的生活中彻底清除了。他写道，让我离他的妻子和孩子远点，滚得越远越好。邮件很长，有上千句指责和怒气冲冲的话，但到最后，他的语气是伤感的。他说他爱兄弟们，他们是他认识的最好的人。我爱你胜过爱他们，他写道，但你一直在我背后捅刀子。
“Well, he wasn’t serious about that.”
“那么他不是认真的。”
“Not the point,” I said again.
“这不是重点。”我又说了一遍。
“He sounded like he did when he threatened me with the bloody knife,” I said.
“他听上去和拿那把带血的刀威胁我时一样。”我说。
It had been years since I’d had a relationship with my brother, but the loss of it, even with months of foreknowledge, stunned me.
我已经好多年没和这个哥哥联系了，但即便几个月前就料到了这个结局，失去他仍然让我不知所措。
My parents said he was justified in cutting me off. Dad said I was hysterical, that I’d thrown thoughtless accusations when it was obvious my memory couldn’t be trusted. Mother said my rage was a real threat and that Shawn had a right to protect his family. “Your anger that night,” she told me on the phone, meaning the night Shawn had killed Diego, “was twice as dangerous as Shawn has ever been.”
父母说他与我断绝关系合情合理。爸爸说我歇斯底里，当我的记忆显然不可信时，我便轻率地指控别人。母亲说我的愤怒才是真正的威胁，而肖恩有权保护他的家人。“那天晚上你的愤怒，”她在电话里告诉我，就是指肖恩杀死迭戈的那晚，“比任何时候的肖恩都要危险两倍。”
I agreed. It was exactly like that.
我同意她的话。的确如此。
“Talking to you,” she said, “your reality is so warped. It’s like talking to someone who wasn’t even there.”
“你的现实如此扭曲。”她说，“跟你说话，就像和一个甚至不在现场的人说话一样。”
Reality became fluid. The ground gave way beneath my feet, dragging me downward, spinning fast, like sand rushing through a hole in the bottom of the universe. The next time we spoke, Mother told me that the knife had never been meant as a threat. “Shawn was trying to make you more comfortable,” she said. “He knew you’d be scared if he were holding a knife, so he gave it to you.” A week later she said there had never been any knife at all.
现实变成了液体。我脚下的地面塌陷了，拖着我下坠，飞快地旋转着，就像沙子从宇宙底部的一个洞里漏出来。下一次我们交谈时，母亲告诉我，那把刀从来就没有威胁的意思。“肖恩想让你更舒服些，”她说，“他知道如果他拿着刀会吓到你，所以才把刀递给了你。”一周后，她说根本就没有刀。
I had a grant to study that summer in Paris. Drew came with me. Our flat was in the sixth arrondissement, near the Luxembourg Gardens. My life there was entirely new, and as near to a cliché as I could make it. I was drawn to those parts of the city where one could find the most tourists so I could throw myself into their center. It was a hectic form of forgetting, and I spent the summer in pursuit of it: of losing myself in swarms of travelers, allowing myself to be wiped clean of all personality and character, of all history. The more crass the attraction, the more I was drawn to it.
那年夏天，我拿到了去巴黎学习的助学金。德鲁与我同去。我们住在第六区靠近卢森堡公园的公寓。在那里我开始了崭新的生活，这句话说起来几乎是陈词滥调。我被城市里游客最多的地方所吸引，这样我就可以加入其中。那是一种狂热的遗忘方式，整个夏天我都在追逐它：在成群的游客中忘记自我，允许自己抹去全部的个性、性格和历史。景点越是有粗鲁的吸引力，我就越被其吸引。
My father had visited her — this I understood immediately — but I had to read the message several times before I understood what exactly had taken place. Our father had testified to her that Shawn had been cleansed by the Atonement of Christ, that he was a new man. Dad had warned Audrey that if she ever again brought up the past, it would destroy our entire family. It was God’s will that Audrey and I forgive Shawn, Dad said. If we did not, ours would be the greater sin.
父亲去过她那里了——仅凭这一点我便立刻明白了——但我读了几遍才弄清楚到底发生了什么。父亲向她证实，肖恩已经被基督的赎罪所洁净，成了一个新人。他警告奥黛丽，要是她再提过去的事，会把我们一家人都毁了。爸爸说，我和奥黛丽原谅肖恩是上帝的旨意。如果我们不原谅，那么我们的罪过会比肖恩的还深重。
I had been in Paris for several weeks when, one afternoon, returning from a French lesson, I stopped at a café to check my email. There was a message from my sister.
在巴黎待了几周后，一天下午，上完法语课归来的途中，我在一家咖啡馆停留，查看电子邮件。有一条来自姐姐的消息。
I could easily imagine this meeting, the gravity of my father as he sat across from my sister, the reverence and power in his words.
我很容易便想象出这次会面的场景：父亲坐在姐姐对面，面色凝重，言语充满敬畏，铿锵有力。
Audrey told Dad that she had accepted the power of the Atonement long ago, and had forgiven her brother. She said that I had provoked her, had stirred up anger in her. That I had betrayed her because I’d given myself over to fear, the realm of Satan, rather than walking in faith with God. I was dangerous, she said, because I was controlled by that fear, and by the Father of Fear, Lucifer.
奥黛丽告诉爸爸，她早就接受了赎罪的力量，并且已经原谅了哥哥。她说是我煽动了她，又燃起了她的怒火。是我背叛了她，因为我不再信仰上帝，而是将自己交给恐惧——那是撒旦的领地。她说，我很危险，因为我被恐惧所控制，受控于恐惧之父路西法。
There was little hope of overpowering the history my father and sister were creating for me. Their account would claim my brothers first, then it would spread to my aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole valley. I had lost an entire kinship, and for what?
几乎不可能压倒我父亲和姐姐为我创造的历史。他们的讲述会先说服我的哥哥们，接着传及我的堂表亲，传遍整个山谷。我失去了所有亲戚，但这一切都是为了什么呢？
That is how my sister ended her letter, by telling me I was not welcome in her home, or even to call her unless someone else was on the line to supervise, to keep her from succumbing to my influence. When I read this, I laughed out loud. The situation was perverse but not without irony: a few months before, Audrey had said that Shawn should be supervised around children. Now, after our efforts, the one who would be supervised was me.
姐姐的信就是这样结尾的，她告诉我，我已经不受她的家人欢迎，甚至不能再打电话给她，除非有人监督，以免她屈服于我的影响。读到这里，我放声大笑。这种情况有悖常理，但也不无讽刺意味：几个月前，奥黛丽曾说肖恩和孩子们在一起时应当有人监督。现在，经过我们的努力，被监督的人变成了我。
I knew my father would pay my brothers the same visit he’d paid her. Would they believe him? I thought they would. After all, Audrey would confirm it. My denials would be meaningless, the rantings of a stranger. I’d wandered too far, changed too much, bore too little resemblance to the scabby-kneed girl they remembered as their sister.
我知道父亲会像去她家一样挨个造访我哥哥们的家。他们会相信他吗？我想会的。毕竟，奥黛丽会证实他的话。我的否认将毫无意义，只不过是一个陌生人的咆哮。我走得太远，改变得太多，早已与他们记忆中那个膝盖结痂的妹妹相去甚远。
When i lost my sister, I lost my family.
当我失去姐姐，也就失去了全部家人。
After I read Audrey’s letter, the past shifted. It started with my memories of her. They transformed. When I recalled any part of our childhood together, moments of tenderness or humor, of the little girl who had been me with the little girl who had been her, the memory was immediately changed, blemished, turned to rot. The past became as ghastly as the present.
读了奥黛丽的信后，过去的一切都变了。变化从我对她的回忆开始。当我忆起任意一段我们共同度过的童年时光，忆起那个曾经是我的小女孩和曾经是她的小女孩在一起时或温情或幽默的时刻，记忆立刻改变了，被玷污了，开始腐朽。过去变得和现在一样苍白可憎。
It was in this state of mind that I received another letter: I had won a visiting fellowship to Harvard. I don’t think I have ever received a piece of news with more indifference. I knew I should be drunk with gratitude that I, an ignorant girl who’d crawled out of a scrap heap, should be allowed to study there, but I couldn’t summon the fervor. I had begun to conceive of what my education might cost me, and I had begun to resent it.
在这种心境下，我收到了另一封信：我获得了哈佛大学访学奖学金。从没有哪个消息像这样让我漠不关心。我知道，作为一个从垃圾堆里爬出来的无知女孩，竟被允许去那样的地方读书，我应该感激涕零才是，但我丝毫提不起热情。我已开始思考教育让我付出的代价，开始对它心生怨恨。
The change was repeated with every member of my family. My memories of them became ominous, indicting. The female child in them, who had been me, stopped being a child and became something else, something threatening and ruthless, something that would consume them.
每个家庭成员都经历了同样的变化。我对他们的记忆变成了不祥的控诉。其中那个曾经是我的女孩，不再是个孩子，而是变成了另外一种生物，充满威胁，残忍无情，会将他们吞噬。
My journals were a problem. I knew that my memories were not memories only, that I had recorded them, that they existed in black and white. This meant that more than my memory was in error. The delusion was deeper, in the core of my mind, which invented in the very moment of occurrence, then recorded the fiction.
我的日记是个问题。我知道我的记忆不仅仅是记忆，我曾记录下它们，于是它们以白纸黑字的形式存在。这意味着不仅仅是我的记忆出了差错。错觉处于更深层，位于我的内心深处，在事情发生的那一刻便开始捏造，然后以虚构的形式被记录了下来。
I began to defer, always, to the judgment of others. If Drew remembered something differently than I did, I would immediately concede the point. I began to rely on Drew to tell me the facts of our lives. I took pleasure in doubting myself about whether we’d seen a particular friend last week or the week before, or whether our favorite crêperie was next to the library or the museum. Questioning these trivial facts, and my ability to grasp them, allowed me to doubt whether anything I remembered had happened at all.
我开始变得顺从，经常依从别人的判断。如果德鲁记得的东西和我的不一样，我会马上承认这一点。我开始依赖德鲁告诉给我的生活中的事实。我质疑自己并乐在其中，不确定我们是在上星期还是上上星期见过某个朋友，我们最喜欢的可丽饼店是在图书馆还是博物馆旁边。质疑这些琐碎的事实以及自己掌控它们的能力，让我得以怀疑记忆中的每一件事是否真的发生过。
This monster child stalked me for a month before I found a logic to banish her: that I was likely insane. If I was insane, everything could be made to make sense. If I was sane, nothing could. This logic seemed damning. It was also a relief. I was not evil; I was clinical.
这个怪物小孩跟踪了我一个月，我才找到驱逐她的逻辑：我可能疯了。如果我疯了，一切就说得通了。如果我神志正常，一切都说不通。这种逻辑似乎糟透了，同时也是一种解脱。我并不邪恶，我只是病了。
In the month that followed, I lived the life of a lunatic. Seeing sunshine, I suspected rain. I felt a relentless desire to ask people to verify whether they were seeing what I was seeing. Is this book blue? I wanted to ask. Is that man tall?
接下来的一个月，我像个疯子一样生活。见到阳光，我怀疑要下雨。我不停地渴望向人们核实，他们是否看到了我看到的东西。这本书是蓝色的吗？我想问。那个人个头高吗？
In those moments I searched feverishly for a reason to think myself sane. Evidence. I craved it like air. I wrote to Erin — the woman Shawn had dated before and after Sadie, who I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen. I told her what I remembered and asked her, bluntly, if I was deranged. She replied immediately that I was not. To help me trust myself, she shared her memories — of Shawn screaming at her that she was a whore. My mind snagged on that word. I had not told her that that was my word.
在那些时刻，我迫切寻找一个理由，让我相信自己神智正常。证据。我像渴望空气一样渴望它们。我写信给艾琳——肖恩在赛迪前后交往过的女人，我十六岁后再也没见过她。我把记忆中的事告诉了她，直截了当地问她，我是不是疯了。她立即回复说我没疯。为了帮助我相信自己，她分享了她的记忆——肖恩朝她尖叫，骂她是个妓女。我的思绪被那个词擢住了。我没有告诉她，那是我的专属词汇。
Sometimes this skepticism took the form of uncompromising certainty: there were days when the more I doubted my own sanity, the more violently I defended my own memories, my own “truth,” as the only truth possible. Shawn was violent, dangerous, and my father was his protector. I couldn’t bear to hear any other opinion on the subject.
有时候，这种怀疑以一种毫不妥协的确定的形式出现：有时候，我越怀疑自己的理智，就越强烈地捍卫自己的记忆，捍卫自己的“真相”，觉得这才是唯一可能的真理。肖恩暴力、危险，而父亲是他的保护者。在这个问题上，我不能接受听见其他的意见。
While traveling in Utah for research, I would meet a young man who would bristle at my last name.
在犹他州调研时，我遇到一个年轻人，他听到我的姓氏便很生气。
Erin told me another story. Once, when she had talked back to Shawn — just a little, she said, as if her manners were on trial — he’d ripped her from her house and slammed her head against a brick wall so hard she’d thought he was going to kill her. His hands locked around her throat. I was lucky, she wrote. I had screamed before he began choking me, and my grandpa heard it and stopped him in time. But I know what I saw in his eyes.
艾琳又给我讲了一件事。一次，她跟肖恩顶嘴——只是一点点，她说，近乎试探的态度——他一把将她从房子里拽出来，把她的头用力推到一面砖墙上，她还以为他要杀死她。他的手掐住她的喉咙。我很幸运，她写道，不等他开始掐我，我便高声尖叫，我爷爷听见了，及时阻止了他。但我知道我在他眼里看到了什么。
Her letter was like a handrail fixed to reality, one I could reach out and grasp when my mind began to spin. That is, until it occurred to me that she might be as crazy as I was. She was damaged, obviously, I told myself. How could I trust her account after what she’d been through? I could not give this woman credence because I, of all people, knew how crippling her psychological injuries were. So I continued searching for testimony from some other source.
她的信就像一根固定住现实的栏杆，当我思绪开始飞转时，伸手便可以抓住它。直到我突然意识到，她可能和我一样疯。她显然不正常，我对自己说。在她经历了这些后，我怎么还能相信她的话呢？我不能相信这个女人，因为在所有人中，只有我知道她的心理创伤有多么严重。于是我继续从其他渠道寻找证据。
Four years later, by pure chance, I would get it.
四年后，一个纯粹偶然的机会，我找到了证据。
“Well, the last time I saw your brother,” he would say, emphasizing this last word as if he were spitting on it, “he had both hands wrapped around my cousin’s neck, and he was smashing her head into a brick wall. He would have killed her, if it weren’t for my grandfather.”
“好吧，上次见到你哥哥，”他在最后一个词上加重语气，好像在上面吐了口唾沫，“他用双手掐住我表姐的脖子，把她的头朝砖墙上撞。要不是我祖父，他会要了她的命。”
“Westover,” he would say, his face darkening. “Any relation to Shawn?”
“韦斯特弗，”他阴着脸说，“跟肖恩有什么关系吗？”
“My brother.”
“那是我哥哥。”
And there it was. A witness. An impartial account. But by the time I heard it, I no longer needed to hear it. The fever of self-doubt had broken long ago. That’s not to say I trusted my memory absolutely, but I trusted it as much as I trusted anybody else’s, and more than some people’s.
终于找到了。一个证人。一个不偏不倚的描述。但当我听到它时，我已经不再需要它了。自我怀疑的狂热早已褪去。那并不意味着我完全相信自己的记忆，但我相信它就像相信别人的记忆一样，甚至相信它比一些人的记忆更可信。
But that was years away.
但那是多年以后的事了。
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