I lowered the phone into the cradle and stared at it for a long time. It wasn’t until Aflatoon startled me with a bark that I realized how quiet the room had become. Soraya had muted the television.
我把话筒放回座机，久久凝望着它。阿夫拉图的吠声吓了我一跳，我这才意识到房间变得多么安静。索拉雅消掉了电视的声音。
There was a sliver of fat, just a hint of it, beneath Soraya’s chin now The past ten years had padded the curves of her hips some, and combed into her coal black hair a few streaks of cinder gray. But she still had the face of a Grand Ball princess, with her bird-in-flight eyebrows and nose, elegantly curved like a letter from ancient Arabic writings.
索拉雅白皙的下巴稍微胖了些。逝去的十年使得她臀部的曲线变宽了一些，在她乌黑的秀发渗进几丝灰白。然而她仍是个公主，脸庞圆润，眉毛如同小鸟张开的翅膀，鼻子的曲线像某些古代阿拉伯书籍中的字母那样优雅。
_June 2001_
2001年6月
“You look pale, Amir,” she said from the couch, the same one her parents had given us as a housewarming gift for our first apartment. She’d been tying on it with Aflatoon’s head nestled on her chest, her legs buried under the worn pillows. She was halfwatching a PBS special on the plight of wolves in Minnesota, half-correcting essays from her summer-school class — she’d been teaching at the same school now for six years. She sat up, and Aflatoon leapt down from the couch. It was the general who had given our cocker spaniel his name, Farsi for “Plato,” because, he said, if you looked hard enough and long enough into the dog’s filmy black eyes, you’d swear he was thinking wise thoughts.
“你脸色苍白，阿米尔。”她说，坐在沙发上，就是她父母当成我们第一套房子的乔迁之礼的沙发。她躺在那儿，阿夫拉图的头靠在她胸前，她的脚伸在几个破旧的枕头下面。她一边看着公共电视台关于明尼苏达濒危狼群的特别节目，一边给暑期学校的学生改作文——六年来，她在同一所学校执教。她坐起来，阿夫拉图从沙发跳下。给我们这只长耳软毛猎犬取名的是将军，名字在法尔西语里面的意思是柏拉图，因为，他说，如果你长时间观察那只猎犬朦胧的黑眼睛，你一定会发现它在思索着哲理。
“You took pale,” Soraya repeated, placing the stack of papers on the table.
“你脸色苍白。”索拉雅重复说，将那叠纸放在桌子上。
“Nay, I’d rather be alone.”
“不用，我想一个人。”
“Rahim Khan is very sick.” A fist clenched inside me with those words.
“拉辛汗病得很厉害。”我说着这话的时候内心绞痛。
“Should I go with you?”
“要我陪着你吗？”
“Kaka’s old business partner?” She’d never met Rahim Khan, but I had told her about him. I nodded.
“叔叔以前的合伙人吗？”她从未见过拉辛汗，但我提及过他。我点点头。
“We used to be close,” I said. “When I was a kid, he was the first grown-up I ever thought of as a friend.” I pictured him and Baba drinking tea in Baba’s study, then smoking near the window, a sweetbrier-scented breeze blowing from the garden and bending the twin columns of smoke.
“过去我们很要好。”我说，“当我还是孩子的时候，他是第一个被我当成朋友的成年人。”我描述起来，说到他和爸爸在书房里面喝茶，然后靠近窗户吸烟，和风从花园带来阵阵蔷薇的香味，吹得两根烟柱袅袅飘散。
“I don’t know. He wants to see me.”
“我不知道，他想看到我。”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Amir.”
“哦，”她说，“我很难过，阿米尔。”
I DROVE TO GOLDEN GATE PARK and walked along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of the park. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon; the sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp San Francisco breeze. I sat on a park bench, watched a man toss a football to his son, telling him to not sidearm the ball, to throw over the shoulder. I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails. They floated high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills.
我驱车前往金门公园，独自沿着公园北边的斯普瑞柯湖边散步。那是个美丽的星期天下午，太阳照在波光粼粼的水面上，数十艘轻舟在旧金山清新的和风吹拂中漂行。我坐在公园的长椅上，看着一个男人将橄榄球扔给他的儿子，告诉他不可横臂投球，要举过肩膀。我抬起头，望见两只红色的风筝，拖着蓝色的长尾巴。它们越过公园西端的树林，越过风车。
“Yes, it’s safe. I’ll be all right, Soraya.” It was the question she’d wanted to ask all along — fifteen years of marriage had turned us into mind readers.
“是的，那儿很安全。我会没事的，索拉雅。”她想问的是这个问题——十五年的琴瑟和鸣让我们变得心有灵犀。
“Is it…”
“那儿…”
“I’m going to go for a walk.”
“我想出去走走。”
“I have to go to Pakistan.”
“我得去一趟巴基斯坦。”
She stood up now. “Pakistan?”
她当即站起来：“巴基斯坦？”
“I remember you telling me that,” Soraya said. She paused. “How long will you be gone?”
“我记得你提到过。”索拉雅说。她沉默了一会，“你会去多久？”
“Come. There is a way to be good again,” Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought.
“来吧。这儿有再次成为好人的路。”拉辛汗在挂电话之前说了这句话。不经意间提起，却宛如经过深思熟虑。
A way to be good again.
再次成为好人的路。
I thought about a comment Rahim Khan had made just before we hung up. Made it in passing, almost as an afterthought. I closed my eyes and saw him at the other end of the scratchy long distance line, saw him with his lips slightly parted, head tilted to one side. And again, something in his bottomless black eyes hinted at an unspoken secret between us. Except now I knew he knew. My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands. He had always known.
我想起挂电话之前拉辛汗所说的一句话。他不经意间提起，却宛如经过深思熟虑。我闭上眼，看见他在嘈杂的长途电话线那端，看见他歪着头，嘴唇微微分合。再一次，他深邃莫测的黑色眼珠中，有些东西暗示着我们之间未经说出的秘密。但是此刻我知道他知道。我这些年来的怀疑是对的。他知道阿塞夫、风筝、钱，还有那个指针闪光的手表的事情。他一直都知道。
Two years earlier, the general had broken his right hip. He’d had one of his migraines again, and emerging from his room, bleary-eyed and dazed, he had tripped on a loose carpet edge. His scream had brought Khala Jamila running from the kitchen. “It sounded like a jaroo, a broomstick, snapping in half,” she was always fond of saying, though the doctor had said it was unlikely she’d heard anything of the sort. The general’s shattered hip — and all of the ensuing complications, the pneumonia, blood poisoning, the protracted stay at the nursing home-ended Khala Jamila’s long-running soliloquies about her own health. And started new ones about the general’s. She’d tell anyone who would listen that the doctors had told them his kidneys were failing. “But then they had never seen Afghan kidneys, had they?” she’d say proudly. What I remember most about the general’s hospital stay is how Khala Jamila would wait until he fell asleep, and then sing to him, songs I remembered from Kabul, playing on Baba’s scratchy old transistor radio.
两年前，将军摔断了右边髋骨。那时他的偏头痛又刚刚发作过，他从房间里出来，眼睛模糊昏花，被地毯松脱的边缘绊倒。听到他的惨叫，雅米拉阿姨从厨房跑出来。“听起来就像是一根扫把断成两半。”她总是喜欢那么说，虽然大夫说她不太可能听到那样的声音。将军摔断髋骨之后出现了诸多并发症状，有肺炎、败血症，在疗养院度过不少时日，雅米拉阿姨结束长期以来对自身健康状况的自怜自艾，而开始对将军的病况喋喋不休。她遇到人就说，大夫告诉他们，他的肾功能衰退了。“可是他们从来没有见过阿富汗人的肾，是吧？”她骄傲地说。至于将军住院的那些日子，我印象最深刻的是，雅米拉阿姨如何在将军身边轻轻哼唱，直到他人眠，在喀布尔的时候，那些歌谣也曾从爸爸那个嘶嘶作响的破旧变频收音机里传出来。
WHEN I CAME HOME, Soraya was on the phone with her mother. “Won’t be long, Madarjan. A week, maybe two… Yes, you and Padar can stay with me.”
我回到家中，索拉雅在跟她妈妈打电话。“不会太久的，亲爱的妈妈。一个星期吧，也许两个…是的，你跟爸爸可以来陪我住…”
The general’s frailty — and time — had softened things between him and Soraya too. They took walks together, went to lunch on Saturdays, and, sometimes, the general sat in on some of her classes. He’d sit in the back of the room, dressed in his shiny old gray suit, wooden cane across his lap, smiling. Sometimes he even took notes.
将军的病痛——还有时间——缓和了他和索拉雅之间的僵局。他们会一起散步，周六出去下馆子，而且，将军偶尔还会去听她讲课。他身穿那发亮的灰色旧西装，膝盖上横摆着拐杖，微笑着坐在教室最后一排。他有时甚至还做笔记。
THAT NIGHT, Soraya and I lay in bed, her back pressed to my chest, my face buried in her hair. I remembered when we used to lay forehead to forehead, sharing afterglow kisses and whispering until our eyes drifted closed, whispering about tiny, curled toes, first smiles, first words, first steps. We still did sometimes, but the whispers were about school, my new book, a giggle over someone’s ridiculous dress at a party. Our lovemaking was still good, at times better than good, but some nights all I’d feel was a relief to be done with it, to be free to drift away and forget, at least for a while, about the futility of what we’d just done. She never said so, but I knew sometimes Soraya felt it too. On those nights, we’d each roll to our side of the bed and let our own savior take us away. Soraya’s was sleep. Mine, as always, was a book.
那天夜里，索拉雅和我躺在床上，她的后背贴着我的胸膛，我的脸埋在她秀发里面。我记得过去，我们总是额头抵额头躺着，缠绵拥吻，低声呻吟，直到我们的眼睛不知不觉间闭上，细说着她那纤细弯曲的脚趾、第一次微笑、第一次交谈、第一次散步。如今我们偶尔也会这样，不过低语的是关于学校、我的新书，也为某人在宴会穿了不得体的衣服咯咯发笑。我们的性生活依然很好，有时甚至可以说是很棒。但有的夜晚，做完爱之后，我的全部感觉只是如释重负：终于做完了，终于可以放任思绪飘散了，至少可以有那么一时半会儿，忘记我们适才所做的竟然是徒劳无功。虽然她从没提起，但我知道有时索拉雅也有这样的感觉。
I lay in the dark the night Rahim Khan called and traced with my eyes the parallel silver lines on the wall made by moonlight pouring through the blinds. At some point, maybe just before dawn, I drifted to sleep. And dreamed of Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him, snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder: For you, a thousand times over!
在那些夜晚，我们会各自蜷缩在床的两边，让我们的恩人来解救我们。索拉雅的恩人是睡眠，我的永远是一本书。拉辛汗打电话来那晚，我躺在黑暗中，眼望月光剌穿黑暗、在墙壁上投射出来的银光。也许快到黎明的某一刻，我昏昏睡去。梦见哈桑在雪地奔跑，绿色长袍的后摆拖在他身后，黑色的橡胶靴子踩得积雪吱吱响。他举臂挥舞：为你，千千万万遍！
A WEEK LATER, I sat on a window seat aboard a Pakistani International Airlines flight, watching a pair of uniformed airline workers remove the wheel chocks. The plane taxied out of the terminal and, soon, we were airborne, cutting through the clouds. I rested my head against the window. Waited, in vain, for sleep.
一周之后，我上了巴基斯坦国际航空公司的飞机，坐在靠窗的位置，看着两个地勤人员把挡住机轮的东西搬开。飞机滑行，离开航站楼，很快，我们腾空而上，刺穿云层。我将头靠在窗子上，徒劳地等着入眠。
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