第九章: 2010 年冬 Winter 2010 |《群山回唱》双语小说在线阅读

When I was a little girl, my father and I had a nightly ritual. After I’d said my twenty-one Bismillahs and he had tucked me into bed, he would sit at my side and pluck bad dreams from my head with his thumb and forefinger. His fingers would hop from my forehead to my temples, patiently searching behind my ears, at the back of my head, and he’d make a pop sound — like a bottle being uncorked — with each nightmare he purged from my brain. He stashed the dreams, one by one, into an invisible sack in his lap and pulled the drawstring tightly. He would then scour the air, looking for happy dreams to replace the ones he had sequestered away. I watched as he cocked his head slightly and frowned, his eyes roaming side to side, like he was straining to hear distant music. I held my breath, waiting for the moment when my father’s face unfurled into a smile, when he sang, Ah, here is one, when he cupped his hands, let the dream land in his palms like a petal slowly twirling down from a tree. Gently, then, so very gently — my father said all good things in life were fragile and easily lost — he would raise his hands to my face, rub his palms against my brow and happiness into my head.

我还是小女孩时，父亲和我每晚有个仪式。我说二十一遍比斯敏俩[1]，他把我塞进被窝，然后坐到我旁边，用拇指和食指从我脑袋里摘去噩梦。他的手指从我脑门跳到太阳穴，耐心地在我耳朵和脑袋后面搜寻，每从我脑袋瓜里抓走一个噩梦，他就发出“砰”的一声，好像拔掉瓶塞的动静。他把这些梦一个一个，收进他腿上无形的袋子，再把袋口扎牢。接着，他会在空气里搜寻，找出一堆好梦，来替换那些被他没收的梦。我看着他微微翘起脑袋，皱着眉，眼珠子滴溜溜乱转，又像竖起耳朵，听远方的音乐。我屏住呼吸，等着那个时刻到来，等着我父亲脸上绽开笑容，口中念念有词：哟，这儿有一个，等他捧出双手，让梦落在掌心，仿佛那是一片轻旋慢舞的花瓣，从树上飘落。然后，轻柔地，非常非常轻柔——我父亲说过，生活中一切美好的事物都是脆弱的，都是容易失去的——他把双手贴近我的脸，用掌心摩挲我的额头，把幸福揉进我的脑海。【注：[1]比斯敏俩意为“奉真主之名”，另据穆夫提穆罕默德·沙菲（Mufti Muhammad Shafi Sahib）所著《比斯敏俩的好处》（The Virtues of Bismillah，2010年，卡拉奇）一书：“如果你睡前念比斯敏俩二十一遍，你将免遭小偷之害，免受邪恶影响，免于猝死。” 】

What am I going to dream about tonight, Baba? I asked.

我今夜会梦到什么，巴巴？我问。

Ah, tonight. Well, tonight is a special one, he always said before going on to tell me about it. He would make up a story on the spot. In one of the dreams he gave me, I had become the world’s most famous painter. In another, I was the queen of an enchanted island, and I had a flying throne. He even gave me one about my favorite dessert, Jell-O. I had the power to, with a wave of my wand, turn anything into Jell-O — a school bus, the Empire State Building, the entire Pacific Ocean, if I liked. More than once, I saved the planet from destruction by waving my wand at a crashing meteor. My father, who never spoke much about his own father, said it was from him that he had inherited his storytelling ability. He said that when he was a boy, his father would sometimes sit him down — if he was in the mood, which was not often — and tell stories populated with jinns and fairies and divs.

哦，今夜。嗯，今夜这个可不一般。他总是先这么说，说完再告诉我。他会现编个故事。他把梦给我。在其中的一个梦里，我成了世界上最著名的画家。另一次，我是魔幻岛上的女王，有会飞的王座。他甚至给过我一个吉露果子冻的梦，那是我最喜欢的零食。我有了魔力，只要我想，挥一挥魔杖，就能把任何东西变成果冻——校车，帝国大厦，整个太平洋。不止一次，我对着猛扑而来的陨石挥舞魔杖，从毁灭的边缘拯救了地球。关于他自己的父亲，我父亲从不多谈，但是他说，他讲故事的本领得自家传。他说他小时候，他父亲有时会让他坐下——得赶上他心情好，不过这种时候不太多——给他讲故事，故事里都是精灵和仙女，还有魔王。

Some nights, I turned the tables on Baba. He shut his eyes and I slid my palms down his face, starting at his brow, over the prickly stubble of his cheeks, the coarse hairs of his mustache.

有些夜晚，我和巴巴掉个个儿。他闭上眼睛，我用双手抚过他的脸，从他脑门开始，经过腮帮子上扎扎的胡子茬儿，然后是嘴唇上方粗粗的胡子毛。

And so, what is my dream tonight? he would whisper, taking my hands. And his smile would open. Because he knew already what dream I was giving him. It was always the same. The one of him and his little sister lying beneath a blossoming apple tree, drifting toward an afternoon nap. The sun warm against their cheeks, its light picking out the grass and the leaves and clutter of blossoms above.

那么，我今夜是什么梦？他抓着我的手，小声问道。他眉开眼笑，因为他已经知道我要给他什么梦了。总是同样的梦。梦见他和他妹妹躺在开花的苹果树下，迷迷糊糊地开始午后的小睡。太阳暖暖地照着他们的脸，阳光辉映着青草、绿叶、头顶上锦簇的花团。

I was an only, and often lonely, child. After they’d had me, my parents, who’d met back in Pakistan when they were both around forty, had decided against tempting fate a second time. I remember how I would eye with envy all the kids in our neighborhood, in my school, who had a little brother or sister. How bewildered I was by the way some of them treated each other, oblivious to their own good luck. They acted like wild dogs. Pinching, hitting, pushing, betraying one another any way they could think of. Laughing about it too. They wouldn’t speak to one another. I didn’t understand. Me, I spent most of my early years craving a sibling. What I really wished I had was a twin, someone who’d cried next to me in the crib, slept beside me, fed from Mother’s breast with me. Someone to love helplessly and totally, and in whose face I could always find myself.

我是个独生的孩子，常常也是个孤独的孩子。我的父母相识于巴基斯坦，当时他们都已经四十岁上下，有了我以后，他们决定不再第二次冒险。我记得我看着邻居家、校园里那些有弟弟妹妹的小孩，满心的羡慕。可我也对有些孩子的相处方式感到迷惑不解，他们对自己的好运气视而不见。他们的举止就像野狗，互相抓挠，打斗，推撞，彼此背叛，无所不用其极，而且嬉皮笑脸。他们互不理睬。我真不明白。而我呢，我小时候大部分时间都在渴望着，家里不要只有我一个孩子。我最希望的是能有个孪生姐妹，在小床上挨着我哭，挨着我睡，和我一起吃妈妈的奶。她会无条件地、全身心地爱我，而且我总是可以从她脸上看到自己。

And so Baba’s little sister, Pari, was my secret companion, invisible to everyone but me. She was my sister, the one I’d always wished my parents had given me. I saw her in the bathroom mirror when we brushed our teeth side by side in the morning. We dressed together. She followed me to school and sat close to me in class — looking straight ahead at the board, I could always spot the black of her hair and the white of her profile out of the corner of my eye. I took her with me to the playground at recess, feeling her presence behind me when I whooshed down a slide, when I swung from one monkey bar to the next. After school, when I sat at the kitchen table sketching, she doodled patiently nearby or stood looking out the window until I finished and we ran outside to jump rope, our twin shadows bopping up and down on the concrete.

所以，巴巴的妹妹帕丽就成了我的秘密伙伴，除了我之外，谁也看不见她。她是我的妹妹，是我一直希望父母能给我的妹妹。早晨我俩肩并肩地在一起刷牙，我能在卫生间的镜子里看见她，我们一起穿衣。她跟我去上学，上课时坐在离我不远的地方，直愣愣地看着前方的黑板，我总是能用眼角的余光，看到她黑色的头发和白色的侧影。课间休息时，我带她去操场，不管是滑滑梯，还是从攀爬架一个杠子摆荡到下一个杠子，我都能感觉到，她就在我身后。放了学，我坐在厨房的桌子边画画，她也在一旁耐心地涂涂抹抹，要不就站在那儿，看着窗外，等我画完，我们便跑出去跳绳，我们的影子成双结对，在水泥地上蹦上蹦下。

No one knew about my games with Pari. Not even my father. She was my secret.

谁也不知道我和帕丽的游戏。连我父亲也不知道。她是我的秘密。

Sometimes, when no one was around, we ate grapes and talked and talked — about toys, which cereals were tastiest, cartoons we liked, schoolkids we didn’t, which teachers were mean. We shared the same favorite color (yellow), favorite ice cream (dark cherry), TV show (Alf), and we both wanted to be artists when we grew up. Naturally, I imagined we looked exactly the same because, after all, we were twins. Sometimes I could almost see her — really see her, I mean — just at the periphery of my eyesight. I tried drawing her, and, each time, I gave her the same slightly uneven light green eyes as mine, the same dark curly hair, the same long, slashing eyebrows that almost touched. If anyone asked, I told them I had drawn myself.

有时旁边没人，我们就吃葡萄，聊天，聊起来就没个完。我们谈玩具，谈哪种麦片最好吃，谈我们喜欢的卡通，我们不喜欢的同学，谈哪些老师比较凶。我们喜欢同一种颜色——黄色，我们最爱吃的冰激凌是黑樱桃味儿的，最爱看的电视节目是《家有阿福》，而且我们长大了都想当画家。我理所当然地认为，我俩长得一模一样，毕竟我们是双胞胎嘛。有时我几乎能看见她，我的意思是真真切切地、用我眼角的余光看见她。我想把她画下来，每一次，我都给她画上和我一样的眼睛，淡绿色的，稍微有点不均匀，同样的黑色卷发，同样的大长眉毛，双眉几乎连在了一起。如果有人问，我就说，我画的是我自己。

Some people hide their sadness very well, Pari. He was like that. You couldn’t tell looking at him. He was a hard man. But I think, yes, I think he was sad inside.

有些人非常善于隐藏自己的悲伤，帕丽。他就是那样。光看他的外表，你是看不出来的。他是个硬汉。可是我认为，是的，我认为在心里，他是难过的。

Do you think your father was sad? That he sold her?

你觉得你父亲难过吗？他把女儿卖掉了。

I felt certain that if I listened closely enough to her story, I would discover something revealed about myself.

我感觉，如果我对她的故事听得足够仔细，就一定能对自己有所发现。

The tale of how my father had lost his sister was as familiar to me as the stories my mother had told me of the Prophet, tales I would learn again later when my parents would enroll me in Sunday school at a mosque in Hayward. Still, despite the familiarity, each night I asked to hear Pari’s story again, caught in the pull of its gravity. Maybe it was simply because we shared a name. Maybe that was why I sensed a connection between us, dim, enfolded in mystery, real nonetheless. But it was more than that. I felt touched by her, like I too had been marked by what had happened to her. We were interlocked, I sensed, through some unseen order in ways I couldn’t wholly understand, linked beyond our names, beyond familial ties, as if, together, we completed a puzzle.

对我来说，我父亲怎样失去妹妹的故事，就像我母亲给我讲的先知生平一样耳熟能详——后来，父母送我到海沃德的清真寺，上星期日学校之前，我又把先知的故事温习了一遍。可是熟悉归熟悉，每天晚上，我还是要再听一遍帕丽的故事，仿佛被它巨大的引力俘获了一样。也许这很简单，因为我们有同样的名字。也许这就是为什么，我感觉到我们之间有一种联系，隐隐约约，包裹在神秘里，可又是那么真实。然而，它却不只如此。我能感觉到她的触碰，好像发生在她身上的事，也在我身上留下了印记。我感觉我们是连体的，通过某种看不见的规则，以我无法完全理解的方式，超越了我们的名字，超越了家庭的纽带，连接在一起，就像我们共同完成了一个谜题。

She was perfect, he would say. Like you are.

她是最好的。他说，像你一样。

The whole time we talked like this, a fantasy played out in my head. In it, I would save all my money, not spend a dollar on candy or stickers, and when my piggy bank was full — though it wasn’t a pig at all but a mermaid sitting on a rock — I would break it open and pocket all the money and set out to find my father’s little sister, wherever she was, and, when I did, I would buy her back and bring her home to Baba. I would make my father happy. There was nothing in the world I desired more than to be the one to take away his sadness.

我们像这样说着话，一种奇想便在我脑海中浮现。我幻想，我会存起所有的钱，一块钱都不花，不买糖果，不买贴画，等我的存钱罐满了——虽然那根本不是头猪，而是坐在石头上的美人鱼——我就把它砸开，装上所有的钱，启程去找我父亲的妹妹，不管她在哪儿，等我找到了，我就把她买回来，带她回家见巴巴。我要让我父亲快乐。在这个世界上，我最想成为那个为他抹去悲伤的人。

Baba?

巴巴？

He would kiss my cheek and tuck the blanket around my neck. At the door, just after he’d turned off the light, he would pause.

他亲我脸蛋儿，把毛毯在我脖子周围掖好，走到门口，关上灯，然后他会停一下。

You know already.

你已经知道了。

Mmm?

嗯？

My father would smile and say, Why should I be when I have you? but, even at that age, I could tell. It was like a birthmark on his face.

我父亲笑了，然后说：怎么会呢？我有了你。可是，就算年纪那么小，我也能看得出来，悲伤烙在他脸上，就像一块胎记。

Are you?

你现在还难过吗？

Was she a good sister?

她是个好妹妹吗？

Another smile. Yes, I know.

又一个微笑。对，我知道。

She was perfect.

她是最好的妹妹。

I always waited until he’d shut the door before I slid out of bed, fetched an extra pillow, and placed it next to my own. I went to sleep each night feeling twin hearts beating in my chest.

我一直等着，等他关上门，我就溜出被窝，再拿一个枕头，把它放在我自己的枕头边上。每天夜里入睡的时候，我都感觉到有两颗心在我胸中跳动。

So what’s my dream tonight? Baba would ask.

那我今夜是什么梦？巴巴问我。

I remember a minor miracle of a conversation I had had with Baba, about a month back. The exchange was a fleeting bubble of normalcy, like a tiny pocket of air down in the deep, dark, cold bottom of the ocean. I was late bringing him lunch, and he turned his head to me from his recliner and remarked, with the gentlest critical tone, that I was genetically programmed to not be punctual. Like your mother, God rest her soul.

我想起一个来月之前，我和巴巴谈话时出现了一个小小的奇迹。我们吵嘴了，这是久违的正常交流，如同一个小小的气泡，蛰伏在深深的、黑暗的、寒冷的洋底，却飞沫般转瞬即逝。那天我给他弄好午饭时已经迟了，他从躺椅上扭过头，用那种柔中带刺的腔调，说我生下来就带着不守时的基因。像你妈。愿真主让她灵魂安息。

But then, he went on, smiling, as if to reassure me, a person has to have a flaw somewhere.

不过呢，他接着说，脸上挂着笑容，好像要安抚我，人总得有点小毛病才好。

I check my watch as I veer onto the freeway from the Old Oakland Road entrance. It’s already half past noon. It will take me forty minutes at least to reach SFO, barring any accidents or roadwork on the 101. On the plus side, it is an international flight, so she will still have to clear customs, and perhaps that will buy me a little time. I slide over to the left lane and push the Lexus up close to eighty.

从老奥克兰路的入口拐上高速公路的时候，我看了看手表，已经中午十二点半了。至少还要四十分钟，我才能开到旧金山国际机场，而且还得指望101号高速路上不能有任何事故，也不能碰上道路施工。往好里想，这是国际航班，所以她还得过海关，这大概能让我赢得一点时间。我把车掰上了最内侧车道，将雷克萨斯的时速提到了一百三十公里。

So this is the one token flaw God tossed my way, then? I said, lowering the plate of rice and beans on his lap. Habitual tardiness?

所以我这毛病就是天赐的了，嗯？我说着，把一盘米饭和豆子放到他腿上。习惯性的不守时？

And He did so with great reluctance, I might add. Baba reached for my hands. So close, so very close He had you to perfection.

要我说，真主也不愿意这么做。巴巴拉住我的两只手。差一点儿，就差一丁丁点儿，真主就让你完美了。

“Pari?”

“帕丽？”

Well, if you like, I’ll happily let you in on a few more.

成，如果你愿意，我很高兴再让你多知道一些。

I am old and helpless.

我又老又不中用。

“Okay. I’ll ask your mother to make us lunch,” he says. “She could bring something from the restaurant.”

“那好，我让你妈给我们弄午饭吧。”他说，“她可以从饭馆带点儿什么回来。”

“Yes. He’s a wonderful young man. He made us eggs. We had them with toast. Where are you?”

“没事儿。这小伙子真不赖。他给我做了蛋。我们就着吐司吃了蛋。你在哪儿？”

“Yes, Baba. Is everything okay at the house with you and Hector?”

“是的，巴巴。你跟埃克托尔在家没事吧。”

I play with the radio, flipping from talk to country to jazz to more talk. I turn it off. I’m restless and nervous. I reach for my cell phone on the passenger seat. I call the house and leave the phone flipped open on my lap.

我瞎换着收音机的台，从谈话节目跳到乡村音乐，又从爵士跳到更话痨的节目。我把它关了。我心烦意乱，紧张不安。我够到副座上的手机，拨通了家里，把它开着放到腿上。

Now you want me to feel sorry for you.

现在你想让我可怜你了。

“I’m driving,” I say.

“我在开车。”我说。

Oh, heaps. Ready to be unleashed. For when you’re old and helpless.

噢，太对了。就等着全端出来呢。因为你又老又不中用了。

“Hello?”

“喂？”

You have them hidden away, do you?

你一直把我蒙在鼓里，对吗？

“To the restaurant? You don’t have a shift today, do you?”

“去饭馆吗？今天不该你轮休啊，对不对？”

“Salaam, Baba. It’s me.”

“赛俩目，巴巴，是我。”

“No, I’m on my way to the airport, Baba. I’m picking someone up.”

“是不该。巴巴，我在去机场的路上，我要接个人。”

To my relief, he doesn’t mention her again. But, some days, he won’t stop. Why won’t you tell me where she is, Pari? Is she having an operation? Don’t lie to me! Why is everyone lying to me? Has she gone away? Is she in Afghanistan? Then I’m going too! I’m going to Kabul, and you can’t stop me. We go back and forth like this, Baba pacing, distraught; me feeding him lies, then trying to distract him with his collection of home-improvement catalogs or something on television. Sometimes it works, but other times he is impervious to my tricks. He worries until he is in tears, in hysterics. He slaps at his head and rocks back and forth in the chair, sobbing, his legs quivering, and then I have to feed him an Ativan. I wait for his eyes to cloud over, and, when they do, I drop on the couch, exhausted, out of breath, near tears myself. Longingly, I look at the front door and the openness beyond and I want to walk through it and just keep walking. And then Baba moans in his sleep, and I snap back, simmering with guilt.

我松了口气，他没再提她。可有些日子，他一提起来就没个完。为什么你不告诉我她在哪儿啊，帕丽？她在动手术吗？别跟我撒谎！为什么所有人都跟我撒谎？她走了吗？她在阿富汗吗？那我也要去！我要去喀布尔，你拦不住我。我们像这样来回折腾，巴巴踱着步，焦虑不安。我用谎话哄着他，然后拿他收集的家庭装潢手册或电视节目，来分散他的注意力。有时候管用，可还有些时候，他对我的把戏无动于衷。他忧心忡忡，最后歇斯底里，以泪洗面。他狠狠拍着自己的脑袋，在椅子上前俯后仰，抽泣着，两腿哆嗦个不停，再后来，我不得不喂他一片劳拉西泮[2]。我等着他眼皮打架，他一合上眼，我便跌坐到沙发上，筋疲力尽，上气不接下气，恨不得自己也大哭一场。我满心渴望地看着大门，门外一片广阔的天地，我真想走出去，不停地走下去。可是巴巴在睡梦中一哼哼，我便一下子回过神来，因为内疚而脸上发烧。【注：[2]抗焦虑药物。】

“All right, Baba.”

“好的，巴巴。”

“Can I talk to Hector, Baba?”

“我跟埃克托尔说两句，巴巴。”

“Hey, girl.”

“嘿，姑娘。”

Hector Juarez lives across the street. We’ve been neighbors for many years and have become friends in the last few. He comes over a couple of times a week and he and I eat junk food and watch trash TV late into the night, mostly reality shows. We chew on cold pizza and shake our heads with morbid fascination at the antics and tantrums on the screen. Hector was a marine, stationed in the south of Afghanistan. A couple of years back, he got himself badly hurt in an IED attack. Everyone from the block showed up when he finally came home from the VA. His parents had hung a Welcome Home, Hector sign out in their front yard, with balloons and a lot of flowers. Everyone clapped when his parents pulled up to the house. Several of the neighbors had baked pies. People thanked him for his service. They said, Be strong, now. God bless. Hector’s father, Cesar, came over to our house a few days later and he and I installed the same wheelchair ramp Cesar had built outside his own house leading up to the front door, the American flag draped above it. I remember, as the two of us worked on the ramp, I felt a need to apologize to Cesar for what had happened to Hector in my father’s homeland.

埃克托尔·华雷斯住在马路对面，我们是老街坊了，最近几年成了朋友。他每个礼拜过来两三次，和我一起吃垃圾食品，看垃圾电视，大部分是真人秀，一直待到深夜。我们嚼着凉比萨，带着病态的迷恋，连连摇头，看着屏幕上的嬉笑怒骂。埃克托尔当过海军陆战队员，驻扎在阿富汗南部，两年前被土炸弹炸成了重伤。他复员回家时，整个街区的人都出来了。他父母在家门口挂起了“欢迎回家，埃克托尔”的牌子，还有气球和好多鲜花。等他父母开车到家，大伙都鼓起了掌。有几个邻居还烤了派。大家感谢他的服役。他们说：嘿，坚强起来。上帝保佑。几天之后，埃克托尔的父亲塞萨尔来了我们家，和我一起装了条轮椅坡道，跟塞萨尔在自己家装的那条一模一样，坡道铺在他家门口，门前挂着美国国旗。我记得我们俩装坡道的时候，我真想给塞萨尔道个歉，因为埃克托尔出事的地方正是我父亲的祖国。

I hear the receiver transferring hands. In the background, the sound of a game-show crowd groaning, then applause.

我听到听筒换了手。背景里传来竞猜节目的声音，能听见好多人交头接耳，随即一阵欢呼。

“Hey, I really like the new painting, girl. The one with the kid in the funny hat? Abe here showed it to me. He was all proud too. I was, like, damn! You should be proud, man.”

“嘿，姑娘，我真的很喜欢你的新画，小孩戴帽子那张，帽子好滑稽。亚伯给我看的，他也很骄傲。我…怎么说呢，该死！伙计，你真该觉得骄傲。”

I smile as I shift lanes to let a tailgater pass. “Maybe I know what to give you for Christmas now.”

我笑着换了车道，让后面的车超过去。“圣诞节送你什么，我大概现在就有底了。”

“I really owe you.”

“实在感激不尽。”

“Thanks for making him eggs,” I say.

“谢谢你给他做了蛋。”我说。

“It’s all good here,” Hector says. “We ate. We did Price Is Right. We’re chillin’ now with Wheel. Next up is Feud.”

“家里都挺好的。”埃克托尔说，“我们吃过了。我们玩《价钱猜猜看》来着，这会儿正忙乎《轮子》呢。接着还有《赛乐赛》。[3]”【注：[3]均为美国的竞猜类电视节目。】

It’s like seeing the photo of a radio personality, how they never turn out to look the way you had pictured them in your mind, listening to their voice in your car. She is old, for one thing. Or oldish. Of course I knew this. I had done the math and estimated she had to be around her early sixties. Except it is hard to reconcile this slim gray-haired woman with the little girl I’ve always envisioned, a three-year-old with dark curly hair and long eyebrows that almost meet, like mine. And she is taller than I imagined. I can tell, even though she is sitting, on a bench near a sandwich kiosk, looking around timidly like she’s lost. She has narrow shoulders and a delicate build, a pleasant face, her hair pulled back taut and held with a crocheted headband. She wears jade earrings, faded jeans, a long salmon tunic sweater, and a yellow scarf wrapped around her neck with casual European elegance. She had told me in her last e-mail that she would wear the scarf so I could spot her quickly.

这就像看见了广播名人的照片，他们跟你在车里听收音机的时候，脑子里想像出来的样子完全不同。首先，她很老，或者说显得太老气了。这一点我当然知道。我算过，估计她已经过了六十岁，可眼前这个花白头发的小老太太，还是很难和我一直以来想像中的那个小姑娘对上号，她本来只有三岁，黑头发卷卷的，两条眉毛长长的，几乎连在了一起，就像我一样。可她比我想像的要高。我能看出来，哪怕她坐着，坐在三明治小店边的长椅上，怯生生地看着四周，好像迷了路。她肩膀很窄，面容清秀可人，头发拢在脑后，用一条钩编的发带固定。她戴着翡翠耳环，穿褪色的牛仔裤，长长的鲑鱼色束腰毛衣，脖子上系着一条黄色围巾，颇有几分漫不经心的欧洲式优雅。她在临行前的电子邮件里告诉过我，她会戴上这样一条围巾，好让我很快认出她来。

Hector lowers his voice a notch. “Pancakes, actually. And guess what? He loved them. Ate up a four-stack.”

埃克托尔把嗓音压低了一度。“其实是煎饼。你猜怎么着？他可喜欢了。把四张一摞的饼给吃完了。”

“What for, mija? We’re having a good time. Aren’t we, Abe?”

“有什么对不起的，我的姑娘[4]。我们开心着呢。对不对呀，亚伯？”【注：[4]原文为西班牙语。】

“Ouch. Sorry.”

“哎呀，真对不起。”

I remind him to give Baba his late-morning pills and hang up.

我提醒他让巴巴服上午的药，便挂了电话。

“Hi,” I say. “I thought I’d check in.”

“嗨。”我在电话里说，“我想我该签个到。”

“Remind me again why we can’t get married?” Hector says. I hear Baba protesting in the background and Hector’s laugh, away from the receiver. “I’m joking, Abe. Go easy on me. I’m a cripple.” Then, to me, “I think your father just flashed me his inner Pashtun.”

“你一说我又想起来了，为什么咱俩不能结婚？”埃克托尔说。我听到巴巴在一旁抗议，埃克托尔哈哈笑着，嘴离开了听筒。“我开玩笑呢，亚伯，别当真。我是个残废。”他接着对我说：“我觉得你爸刚才用普什图语，在心里臭骂了我一通。”

We hug, and she kisses me on the cheeks. Her skin is soft like felt. When we pull back, she holds me at a distance, hands cupping my shoulders, and looks into my face as if she were appraising a painting. There is a film of moisture over her eyes. They’re alive with happiness.

我们拥抱在一起，她亲了我的脸，一边一下。她的皮肤柔滑，像细细的毛毡。我们分开时，她还是抓着我，胳膊向前伸着，两手把住我的肩膀，打量着我的脸，好像在给油画做鉴定。她眼睛里有一层湿漉漉的水膜，目光中满是喜悦。

We meet at the bench. She grins and my knees wobble. She has Baba’s grin exactly — except for a rice grain’s gap between her upper front teeth — crooked on the left, the way it scrunches up her face and nearly squeezes shut her eyes, how she tilts her head just a tad. She stands up, and I notice the hands, the knobby joints, the fingers bent away from the thumb at the first knuckle, the chickpea-sized lumps at the wrist. I feel a twist in my stomach, it looks so painful.

我们在长椅边见了面。她咧开嘴笑着，而我两腿发软。她笑起来和巴巴一模一样，只是上面两颗门牙中间，有道米粒般大小的齿缝。他们都是朝左边歪着嘴，笑得五官挤作一团，眼睛眯成一条缝，微微翘着脑袋。她站起身，我注意到了她的手，疙疙瘩瘩的指关节，从第一个指节开始，四个指头便朝着和拇指相反的方向，向外弯曲，手腕上还有鹰嘴豆大小的肿块，看上去是那么痛苦，让我觉得揪心。

She has not seen me yet, and I linger for a moment among the travelers pushing luggage carts through the terminal, the town-car chauffeurs holding signs with clients’ names. My heart clamoring inside my rib cage, I think to myself, This is her. This is her. This is really her. Then our eyes connect, and recognition ripples across her face. She waves.

她还没看见我，于是我又磨蹭了一会儿。航站楼里，旅客们推着行李车从我身边经过，接送车的司机们举着标牌，上面写有客人的姓名。我的心在胸腔里大声呼喊，我告诉自己：这就是她。这就是她。真的是她。然后我们的目光碰到了一块，她脸上漾起了认出我的表情。她挥手致意。

“I apologize for being late.”

“很抱歉我迟到了。”

“It’s nothing,” she says. “At last, to be with you! I am just so glad”– Is nussing. At lass, too be weez yoo! The French accent sounds even thicker in person than it did on the phone.

“没什么。”她说，“总算和你在一起了！我实在太高兴了！”——没什么。总算和你在一起了！面对面的时候，她的法国口音比电话里听起来还要重。

“I took a pill, otherwise I know I cannot sleep. I will stay awake the whole time. Because I am too happy and too excited.” She holds me with her gaze, beaming at me — as if she is afraid the spell will break if she looks away — until the PA overhead advises passengers to report any unsupervised luggage, and then her face slackens a bit.

“我吃了片药，不然我知道我睡不着。我肯定一路都醒着。因为我太高兴，太兴奋了。”她盯着我看，对着我笑，好像害怕看一眼别处，这魔咒就会失效，一直到头顶上的广播提醒旅客，遇到无人看管的行李要及时报告，她的表情才稍稍放松。

Later, as we settle into the car, I steal quick looks at her. It’s the strangest thing. There is something oddly illusory about Pari Wahdati, sitting in my car, mere inches from me. One moment, I see her with perfect clarity — the yellow scarf around her neck, the short, flimsy hairs at the hairline, the coffee-colored mole beneath the left ear — and, the next, her features are enfolded in a kind of haze, as if I am peering at her through bleary glasses. I feel, in passing, a kind of vertigo.

后来上车的时候，我偷偷地瞅了她两眼。真是奇怪。帕丽·瓦赫达提坐在我车里，离我不过几寸，却给了我一种怪异的错觉。一瞬间，我看她看个清清楚楚：脖子上的黄围巾，发际线上短而薄的头发，左耳下方咖啡色的痣，可是再一眨眼，她的容貌便罩上了一层雾霭，我好像在透过一层毛玻璃看她。我忽然感觉有点晕眩。

“Does Abdullah know yet that I am coming here?”

“阿卜杜拉知道我来吗？”

“I told him I was bringing home a guest,” I say.

“我告诉过他，我要带一位客人回家。”我说。

“I’m glad too,” I say. “How was your flight?”

“我也很高兴。”我说，“飞机上还好吗？”

“You are okay?” she says, eyeing me as she snaps the seat-belt buckle.

“你没事吧？”她一边扣好安全带，一边看着我问道。

She nods, smiling. “Ah, for me too. For me too it is strange. You know, my whole life I never meet anyone with the same name as me.”

她微笑着点点头。“哦，我也一样。我也觉得这很奇怪。你看，我这一辈子都没遇见过和我同名的人。”

“I keep thinking you’ll disappear.”

“我老在想你会消失。”

“Neither have I.” I turn the ignition key. “So tell me about your children.”

“我也没有啊。”我打着了火。“跟我讲讲你的孩子们吧。”

“It’s just… a little unbelievable,” I say, laughing nervously. “That you really exist. That you’re actually here.”

“只是…只是有点难以置信。”我说着说着，就神经质地哈哈笑了起来。“因为你真的存在。因为你居然就在眼前。”

I do wish we had.

我真希望我们有过这样的经历。

She tells me her son Alain –“and your cousin,” she adds — and his wife, Ana, have had a fifth baby, a little girl, and they have moved to Valencia, where they have bought a house. “Finalement, they leave that detestable apartment in Madrid!” Her firstborn, Isabelle, who writes musical scores for television, has been commissioned to compose her first major film score. And Isabelle’s husband, Albert, is now head chef at a well-regarded restaurant in Paris.

她告诉我，她儿子阿兰——“你表哥，”她补了一句——和他妻子安娜已经生了第五个宝宝，一个小千金，他们搬到了巴伦西亚，在那儿买了房子。“终于，他们离开了马德里那套破公寓！”她的大女儿伊莎贝尔给电视节目写配乐，如今已经受聘，开始写自己的第一部主流电影音乐了。伊莎贝尔的丈夫阿尔贝现在成了主厨，在巴黎一家颇受好评的餐馆掌勺。

“I’m sorry?”

“什么？”

As I pull out of the parking lot, she tells me all about them, using their names as though I had known them all my life, as though her children and I had grown up together, gone on family picnics and to camp and taken summer vacations to seaside resorts where we had made seashell necklaces and buried one another under sand.

我开出了停车场，她开始跟我讲孩子们的事，说起他们的名字来，仿佛我从小和他们相熟至今，仿佛她的孩子们和我一起长大，一起参加过家庭野餐，露营，去海滨度假地避暑，做过贝壳项链，玩过用沙子埋人的游戏。

“You owned a restaurant, no?” she asks. “I think you told me this in your e-mail.”

“你也开了个餐馆，对吗？”她问，“我记得你在电子邮件里告诉过我。”

“Well, my parents did. It was always my father’s dream to own a restaurant. I helped them run it. But I had to sell it a few years back. After my mother died and Baba became… incapable.”

“嗯，我父母开过。我父亲一直梦想着能开一家自己的饭馆。我给他俩帮忙。可是几年前没办法，我把它卖掉了。因为我母亲去世了，巴巴又…又没有能力了。”

I had told her, in passing the first time we spoke and she asked me what I did, that I had dreams of going to art school one day.

我告诉过她，顺便提起过。那是我们第一次通话的时候，她问我在做什么，我说我梦想有一天能上美术学院。

“Ah, I am sorry.”

“呀，对不起。”

She listens intently as I explain to her that I work for a firm that processes data for big Fortune 500 companies. “I write up forms for them. Brochures, receipts, customer lists, e-mail lists, that sort of thing. The main thing you need to know is how to type. And the pay is decent.”

她竖起耳朵听我解释，我在一家事务所上班，他们为《财富》五百强里的大公司处理数据。“我给他们填表格，录入说明书，开收据，整理客户名单，电子邮件列表，诸如此类。你需要知道的最重要的事，就是怎么打字。薪水还不错。”

“I should think not. You are an artist.”

“我想你也不是。你是艺术家。”

“Oh, don’t be. I wasn’t cut out for restaurant work.”

“没关系的。我也不是开饭馆的料。”

“Actually, I am what you call a transcriptionist.”

“其实，你可以说我是个誊写员。”

“I see,” she says. She considers, then says, “Is it interesting for you, doing this work?”

“我懂了。”她说。她想了想，又开口道：“你觉得有趣吗，做这个工作？”

We are passing by Redwood City on our way south. I reach across her lap and point out the passenger window. “Do you see that building? The tall one with the blue sign?”

我们正在向南驶过雷伍德城，我把手伸到她身前，指向副座的窗外。“看见那幢楼了吗？有蓝色标志的那幢高楼。”

“Yes?”

“看见了。”

“I was born there.”

“我生在那儿。”

“Ah, bon?” She turns her neck to keep looking as I drive us past. “You are lucky.”

“噢，真的吗？”她扭过头，我开车经过的时候，她也一直看着那幢楼。“你很幸运。”

“How so?”

“怎么讲？”

“To know where you came from.”

“你知道自己从哪里来的。”

“Bah, of course not. But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.”

“啊，当然没有。可是知道这一点很重要，知道你的根，知道你人生开始的地方。如果不知道，你的人生好像就不真实了，就像一个谜题。你明白吗？就像你错过了故事的开头，一下子就到了中间，拼命想弄个明白。”

“I guess I never gave it much thought.”

“我好像从来没想过这些。”

I imagine this is how Baba feels these days. His life, riddled with gaps. Every day a mystifying story, a puzzle to struggle through.

我猜巴巴这段日子也有同样的感受。他的人生遍布着缺口。每一天都是一个神秘的缺口，一个需要费劲思量的谜题。

We drive in silence for a couple of miles.

我们在沉默中行驶了几公里。

“Do I find my work interesting?” I say. “I came home one day and found the water running in the kitchen sink. There was broken glass on the floor, and the gas burner had been left on. That was when I knew that I couldn’t leave him alone anymore. And because I couldn’t afford a live-in caretaker, I looked for work I could do from home. ‘Interesting’ didn’t figure much into the equation.”

“我觉得我的工作有趣吗？”我说，“有一天我回到家，发现水在洗碗池里哗哗地流，地板上是碎玻璃，煤气灶上还烧着火。就是那个时候，我知道我再也不能让他一个人待着了。可我请不起住家的护工，所以我找了在家里也能干的工作。谈不上什么‘有趣’。”

I worry she will say next how lucky Baba is to have me for a daughter, but, to my relief and gratitude, she only nods, her eyes swimming past the freeway signs. Other people, though — especially Afghans — are always pointing out how fortunate Baba is, what a blessing I am. They speak of me admiringly. They make me out to be a saint, the daughter who has heroically forgone some glittering life of ease and privilege to stay home and look after her father. But, first, the mother, they say, their voices ringing, I imagine, with a glistening kind of sympathy. All those years of nursing her. What a mess that was. Now the father. She was never a looker, sure, but she had a suitor. An American, he was, the solar fellow. She could have married him. But she didn’t. Because of them. The things she sacrificed. Ah, every parent should have a daughter like this. They compliment me on my good humor. They marvel at my courage and nobility the way people do those who have overcome a physical deformity or maybe a crippling speech impediment.

我猜她接下来一定会说，巴巴有我这样一个女儿该多么幸运，可是让我觉得宽慰，也心存感谢的是，她只是点了点头，看着高速路上的交通标志从眼前不断滑过。但是其他人，特别是阿富汗人，总是说巴巴多么有福气，说我简直出自天赐。他们谈起我来赞不绝口。他们把我说成是圣女，一个英雄般的女儿，放弃了金光灿烂的生活，不要舒适，也不肯享福，宁愿留在家里照顾自己的父亲。可是一开始还有她妈呀。他们说。这些话不绝于耳，现在想起来，他们的声音里还透着几分同情。伺候她那么多年。多不容易啊。现在又是她父亲。她当然不是个大美人，可也有人向她求婚嘛。一个美国人啊，那男的，那搞太阳能的伙计。她本来可以嫁给他的，可她没有。因为这老两口。她做出了多少牺牲啊。噢，天下的父母都有这样的女儿就好了。他们夸我脾气好。他们对我的勇气和毅力惊叹不已，一如那些战胜了身体上的残疾、克服了严重口吃的人，让世人啧啧称奇。

“And art school can wait.”

“美术学院先放一放。”

“It has to.”

“只能这样了。”

But I don’t recognize myself in this version of the story. For instance, some mornings I spot Baba sitting on the edge of his bed, eyeing me with his rheumy gaze, impatient for me to slip socks onto his dry, mottled feet, and he growls my name and makes an infantile face. He wrinkles his nose in a way that makes him look like a wet, fearful rodent, and I resent him when he makes this face. I resent him for being the way he is. I resent him for the narrowed borders of my existence, for being the reason my best years are draining away from me. There are days when all I want is to be free of him and his petulance and neediness. I am nothing like a saint.

可我不承认这一个故事中的我自己。比如，有些早晨，我发现巴巴坐在床边，用阴冷的目光看着我，不耐烦地等着我把袜子套到他干燥、多斑的脚上。他吼我的名字，做出一副婴儿相。他抽鼻子，活像一只周身湿透、胆战心惊的老鼠。我厌恶他这种表情，我厌恶他这副做派，我厌恶他让我生活的世界如此狭窄，让我最好的年华白白地逝去。有些日子，我只想逃开他，逃开他的暴躁和贪求。我和圣女毫无相似之处。

I take the exit at Thirteenth Street. A handful of miles later, I pull into our driveway, on Beaver Creek Court, and turn off the engine.

我驶出第十三街的出口，再走几公里，便到了海狸溪街。我把车开到我家车库门前，熄了火。

Pari looks out the window at our one-story house, the garage door with the peeling paint job, the olive window trim, the tacky pair of stone lions on guard on either side of the front door — I haven’t had the heart to get rid of them because Baba loves them, though I doubt he would notice. We have lived in this house since 1989, when I was seven, renting it first, before Baba bought it from the owner back in ’93. Mother died in this house, on a sunny Christmas Eve morning, in a hospital bed I set up for her in the guest bedroom and where she spent the last three months of her life. She asked me to move her to that room because of the view. She said it raised up her spirits. She lay in the bed, her legs swollen and gray, and spent her days looking out the window at the cul-de-sac, the front yard with its rim of Japanese maples she had planted years before, the star-shaped flower bed, the swath of lawn split by a narrow path of pebbles, the foothills in the distance and the deep, rich gold they turned midday when sunlight shone full tilt on them.

帕丽透过车窗，看着我家的单层住宅，油漆剥落的车库门，橄榄绿颜色的窗棂，还有一对俗气的石头狮子，守卫在大门两侧，我不忍心把它们扔掉，因为巴巴喜欢它们，可我觉得就算扔了，他也注意不到。从1989年我七岁的时候起，我们就一直住着这房子，一开始是租的，到了1993年，巴巴从房东手里把它买了下来。妈妈就死在这房子里，死在圣诞节前一天，那个阳光明媚的早晨，死在客房里我给她架起的医用床上，她在客房度过了临终前的三个月。她要我把她挪进客房，因为那儿能看风景，用她的话说，可以让她提神。她躺在床上，双腿浮肿，肤色灰暗，日复一日地看着窗外的死巷和前院，院里有一圈鸡爪枫，那是她几年前种下的，还有星形的花池子，一条卵石铺就的窄径穿过草坪，山麓在远方，正午时分，阳光全力倾泻而下，山也变成了厚重而浓艳的金黄。

She toys with the frayed ends of her scarf. “Do you think it is possible that he will remember me?”

她揪弄着磨破的围巾边儿。“你觉得他有没有可能认出我来？”

“I am very nervous,” Pari says quietly.

“我非常紧张。”帕丽悄声说道。

I nod. I think better of telling her just how well I understand. I come close to asking whether she had ever had any intimations of my existence.

我点点头。我重新考虑了一下，还是不要和她说我多么理解她的感受吧。我差一点脱口而出，问她是否曾经觉得有我的存在。

“It’s understandable,” I say. “It’s been fifty-eight years.”

“可以理解。”我说，“五十八年了。”

She looks down at her hands folded in her lap. “I remember almost nothing about him. What I remember, it is not his face or his voice. Only that in my life something has been missing always. Something good. Something… Ah, I don’t know what to say. That is all.”

她低头看着夹在两膝之间的手。“我几乎一点儿也记不得他了。我记住的不是他的脸，也不是他的声音，只记得我这辈子始终缺少了一种东西。一种好的东西。一种…哎，我不知道该怎么说。只有这些。”

“Do you want the truth?”

“你想听实话吗？”

She searches my face. “Of course, yes.”

她打量了一番我的表情。“当然，我想。”

“It’s probably best he doesn’t.” I think of what Dr. Bashiri had said, my parents’ longtime physician. He said Baba needed regimen, order. A minimum of surprise. A sense of predictability.

“他最好别认出来。”我想起了巴希里大夫说过的话。他是我父母长期以来的医生。他说巴巴需要有规律、有条理的生活。别让他受惊。让他有稳定感。

I open my door. “Would you mind staying in the car a minute? I’ll send my friend home, and then you can meet Baba.”

我推开车门。“你在车里待一小会儿行吗？我得把朋友送回家，然后你就能见巴巴了。”

She puts a hand over her eyes, and I don’t wait to see if she is going to cry.

她抬起一只手，捂住了双眼，我可不想等着看她哭鼻子。

When I was eleven, all the sixth-grade classes in my elementary school went for an overnight field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The whole week leading up to that Friday, it was all my classmates talked about, in the library or playing four square at recess, how much fun they would have, once the aquarium closed for the day, free to run around the exhibits, in their pajamas, among the hammerheads, the bat rays, the sea dragons, and the squid. Our teacher, Mrs. Gillespie, told us dinner stations would be set up around the aquarium, and students would have their choice of PB& J or mac and cheese. You can have brownies for dessert or vanilla ice cream, she said. Students would crawl into their sleeping bags that night and listen to teachers read them bedtime stories, and they would drift off to sleep among the sea horses and sardines and the leopard sharks gliding through tall fronds of swaying kelp. By Thursday, the anticipation in the classroom was electric. Even the usual troublemakers made sure to be on their best for fear that mischief would cost them the trip to the aquarium.

我十一岁的时候，小学六年级的所有班级都要去蒙特雷湾水族馆，进行校外活动，还要在外面过夜。那个周五到来之前的整个星期，不管是在图书馆，还是课间休息、玩方块球的时候，我的同学们谈的全是这件事，那该有多好玩啊，水族馆当天一闭馆，他们就可以穿着睡衣，在各个展厅里到处跑，身边是双髻鲨、鲾鲼、海龙和乌贼。我们的老师吉莱斯皮夫人说，水族馆各个地方都设有食品站，学生们可以选花生黄油果酱三明治，或是芝士通心粉。她说：你们可以吃布朗尼巧克力当甜点，也可以选香草冰激凌。到了晚上，小朋友们钻进睡袋，还会有老师给他们读睡前故事，海马、沙丁鱼、豹鲨，在巨藻长长的叶子中间游弋，陪伴着他们进入梦乡。到了星期四，教室里期待的情绪说像通了电，连平时那几个捣蛋鬼也使劲做出一副乖模样，生怕因为言行不端，毁了自己的水族馆之行。

For me, it was a bit like watching an exciting movie with the sound turned off. I felt removed from all the cheerfulness, cut off from the celebratory mood — the way I did every December when my classmates went home to Douglas firs and stockings dangling over fireplaces and pyramids of presents. I told Mrs. Gillespie I wouldn’t be going along. When she asked why, I said the field trip fell on a Muslim holiday. I wasn’t sure she believed me.

对我来说，这就好像在看一部激动人心的电影，可是声音被关掉了。我感觉自己在远观别人的快乐，与这欢庆的气氛格格不入，每年十二月我也有同样的感受，那时同学们各自回家，他们有花旗松[5]、挂在壁炉上方的长袜，还有成堆的礼物。我告诉吉莱斯皮夫人，我不和大家一起去了。她问我为什么，我说校外活动刚好赶上穆斯林的节日。我不清楚她是否相信了我的话。【注：[5]花旗松也是流行的圣诞树种。】

The night of the trip, I stayed home with my parents, and we watched Murder, She Wrote. I tried to focus on the show and not think about the field trip, but my mind insisted on wandering off. I imagined my classmates, at that same moment, in their pajamas, flashlights in hand, their foreheads pressed against the glass of a giant tank of eel. I felt something clenching in my chest, and I shifted my weight on the couch. Baba, slung back on the other couch, tossed a roasted peanut into his mouth and chuckled at something Angela Lansbury said. Next to him, I caught Mother watching me pensively, her face clouded over, but when our eyes met her features cleared quickly and she smiled — a stealthy, private smile — and I dug inward and willed myself to smile back. That night, I dreamt I was at a beach, standing waist-deep in the ocean, water that was myriad shades of green and blue, jade, sapphire, emerald, turquoise, gently rocking at my hips. At my feet glided legions of fish, as if the ocean were my own private aquarium. They brushed against my toes and tickled my calves, a thousand darting, glistening flashes of color against the white sand.

那天晚上，我和父母待在家里，我们一起看《她书写谋杀》。我努力专注于剧情，不去想校外活动，可我的心偏偏要飞掉。我想像这个时候，同学们穿着睡衣，拿着手电筒，脑门紧抵着鳗鱼大水箱的玻璃。我觉得胸口一阵发紧，在沙发上换了个姿势。巴巴窝在另一张沙发上，往嘴里丢了一颗烤花生，安吉拉·兰斯伯里[6]说了句什么，逗得他咯咯直乐。在他旁边，我发现妈妈若有所思地在看我，脸上笼罩着阴云，可我们的目光刚碰到一起，她就马上云开雾散，朝我露出了笑容——一种偷偷摸摸、心照不宣的笑——我也拼命提气，强颜回笑。那天夜里，我梦见自己到了海滩，站在齐腰深的大海里，在绿与蓝之间，海水变幻着无尽的颜色，翡翠绿，宝石蓝，祖母绿，松石绿，温柔地摇荡在我屁股周围。我脚边滑过鱼儿的千军万马，整个海洋仿佛就是我一个人的水族馆。鱼儿碰触着我的脚趾，在我小腿上蹭来蹭去，一千次的冲撞，在白沙的映衬下，发出炫目的彩光。【注：[6]《她书写谋杀》的女主角。】

At the aquarium, I wandered gamely through the exhibits and did my best to answer Baba’s questions about different types of fish I recognized. But the place was too bright and noisy, the good exhibits too crowded. It was nothing like the way I imagined it had been the night of the field trip. It was a struggle. It wore me out, trying to make like I was having a good time. I felt a stomachache coming on, and we left after an hour or so of shuffling about. On the drive home, Baba kept glancing my way with a bruised look like he was on the verge of saying something. I felt his eyes pressing in on me. I pretended to sleep.

到了水族馆，我打起精神，在展厅里转悠，竭尽所能回答巴巴的问题，把我认识的不同种类的鱼讲给他听。可这地方太亮堂，也太吵闹了，好的展厅又太拥挤，一点儿也不像我想像中的校外活动之夜。这是挣扎。它让我筋疲力尽，还要拼命做出开心的样子。我开始觉得肚子疼，磨磨蹭蹭地转了一个来小时，我们就离开了。开车回家的路上，巴巴时不时就朝我瞥一眼，带着受伤的神情，好像有话要说。我感觉他的目光压迫着我。我假装睡着了。

That Sunday, Baba had a surprise for me. He shut down the restaurant for the day — something he almost never did — and drove the two of us to the aquarium in Monterey. Baba talked excitedly the whole way. How much fun we were going to have. How he looked forward to seeing all the sharks especially. What should we eat for lunch? As he spoke, I remembered when I was little and he would take me to the petting zoo at Kelley Park and the Japanese gardens next door to see the koi, and how we would give names to all the fish and how I would cling to his hand and think to myself that I would never need anyone else as long as I lived.

那个星期日，巴巴给了我一个惊喜。他让饭馆歇业一天——他几乎从不这么干——带上我们俩，开车去了蒙特雷的水族馆。巴巴兴奋地说了一路，说我们将要多么开心；他又多么期待着见到那些鲨鱼；午饭我们准备吃什么？他讲话时，我想起我小时候，他带我去过凯利公园的宠物乐园，还去隔壁的日本园林看过锦鲤，我们给每条鱼取名字，那时我紧紧抓住他的手，心里想，我这辈子再也不会有别的要求了。

The next year, in junior high, girls my age were wearing eye shadow and lip gloss. They went to Boyz II Men concerts, school dances, and on group dates to Great America, where they screeched through the dips and corkscrews of the Demon. Classmates tried out for basketball and cheerleading. The girl who sat behind me in Spanish, pale-skinned with freckles, was going out for the swim team, and she casually suggested one day, as we were clearing our desks just after the bell, that I give it a shot too. She didn’t understand. My parents would have been mortified if I wore a bathing suit in public. Not that I wanted to. I was terribly self-conscious about my body. I was slim above the waist but disproportionately and strikingly thick below, as if gravity had pulled all the weight down to my lower half. I looked like I had been put together by a child playing one of those board games where you mix and match body parts or, better yet, mismatch them so everyone has a good laugh. Mother said what I had was “strong bones.” She said her own mother had had the same build. Eventually, she stopped, having figured, I guess, that big-boned was not something a girl wanted to be called.

第二年上初中，同龄的女孩都画眼影，涂唇膏。她们去听Boyz IIMen的演唱会，出席校园舞会，结伴去大美洲主题公园，坐上魔鬼号飞车，急速下冲，又打着转儿上蹿，一路发出尖叫。同学们竞相报名，参加篮球队和拉拉队。在西班牙语课上，有个女孩坐在我后面，她脸色苍白，面带雀斑，正在努力进游泳队，有一天，下课铃响过以后，我们正在收拾桌子，她不经意地建议我也去试试。她不懂。如果我在公共场所穿上了游泳衣，我父母会无地自容。再说我也不想去。我对自己的身体感到极不自在。我腰以上挺苗条的，腰以下却肥大得不成比例，十分扎眼，就好像地心引力把体重全拉到了我的下半身。我看上去就像是玩拼图游戏的小孩拼出来的，本来不是一套的身体部位混合搭配在了一起，更妙的是，这孩子专找不般配的来拼，好让所有人哈哈大笑。妈说我长得“壮实”。她说她妈也有一副同样的身板。最后她不说话了，我猜她心里正在合计，没有哪个女孩子乐意被人用魁梧来称呼吧。

Despite the need to make a living, Baba found the time to drive me to Farsi lessons down in Campbell. Every Tuesday afternoon, after regular school, I sat in Farsi class and, like a fish made to swim upstream, tried to guide the pen, against my hand’s own nature, from right to left. I begged Baba to end the Farsi classes, but he refused. He said I would appreciate later the gift he was giving me. He said that if culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.

巴巴置赚钱养家的需要于不顾，竟然抽出时间，开车送我去坎贝尔城，上波斯语课。每个星期二下午，学校放学以后，我都要坐进波斯语教室，如同一条奋力游向上游的鱼，逆向运笔，跟我自己的手较劲，从右向左写字。我求巴巴停掉我的波斯语课，他拒绝了。他说我日后一定感激他给我的这份礼物。他说，如果文化是一座房子，那么语言就是钥匙，不仅开得了大门，里面所有的房间也都能开。没这个，他说，你就到处飘吧，找不着体面的家，连个正经身份都没有。

I did lobby Baba to let me try out for the volleyball team, but he took me in his arms and gently cupped his hands around my head. Who would take me to practice? he reasoned. Who would drive me to games? Oh, I wish we had the luxury, Pari, like your friends’ parents, but we have a living to make, your mother and I. I won’t have us back on welfare. You understand, my love. I know you do.

我倒确实游说过巴巴，让我去排球队试试，可他把我拉进怀里，双手捧起我的脑袋。谁送我去练球？他开始摆道理。谁开车送我去比赛？噢，我希望我们能有多余的时间，帕丽，像你朋友们的父母，可我们，你妈和我，得赚钱养家。我不想再让咱们领救济了。你懂，我亲爱的。我知道你懂。

Then there was Sundays, when I put on a white cotton scarf, and he dropped me off at the mosque in Hayward for Koran lessons. The room where we studied — a dozen other Afghan girls and I — was tiny, had no air-conditioning, and smelled of unwashed linen. The windows were narrow and set high, the way prison-cell windows always are in the movies. The lady who taught us was the wife of a grocer in Fremont. I liked her best when she told us stories about the Prophet’s life, which I found interesting — how he had lived his childhood in the desert, how the angel Gabriel had appeared to him in a cave and commanded him to recite verses, how everyone who met him was struck by his kind and luminous face. But she spent the bulk of the time running down a long list, warning us against all the things we had to avoid at all cost as virtuous young Muslim girls lest we be corrupted by Western culture: boys — first and foremost, naturally — but also rap music, Madonna, Melrose Place, shorts, dancing, swimming in public, cheerleading, alcohol, bacon, pepperoni, non-halal burgers, and a slew of other things. I sat on the floor, sweating in the heat, my feet falling asleep, wishing I could lift the scarf from my hair, but, of course, you couldn’t do that in a mosque. I looked up at the windows, but they allowed only narrow slits of sky. I longed for the moment when I exited the mosque, when fresh air first struck my face and I always felt a loosening inside my chest, the relief of an uncomfortable knot coming undone.

后来便是每个星期天，我都要戴上白色的棉头巾，他送我到海沃德的清真寺，让我下车去上古兰经课。我和十多个阿富汗女孩一起。我们上课的房间非常小，而且没有空调，有一股没洗过的床单味儿。窗户又小又高，如同电影里监狱的窗口。给我们上课的那位女士，是弗里蒙特一家杂货店的老板娘。我更喜欢她给我们讲先知的生平，我觉得那些故事很有趣——他童年时代住在沙漠里；天使吉卜利勒在山洞向他显灵，命令他宣读启示；每个遇见他的人都被他亲切和睿智的面容打动。可是她把大部分时间都用来念一份长长的清单，告诫我们，必须像贞洁的穆斯林女孩那样，不惜任何代价远离这一切，以免我们受到西方文化的腐蚀：男孩们理所当然排在首位，还有饶舌音乐，麦当娜，《飞越情海》[7]，短裤，舞会，当众游泳，拉拉队，酒精，熏肉，意大利腊肠，非清真的汉堡包，还有一大堆别的东西。我坐在地板上，热得汗流浃背，腿酸脚麻，真想从脑袋上摘下头巾，可是毫无疑问，你不可以在清真寺里做这样的事。我抬头望着窗户，却只能看到窄窄的天。我渴望着离开清真寺的那一刻，让新鲜的空气扑面而来，每当那个时候，我总是感到心情放松，如释重负，如同解开了一个不舒服的绳结。【注：[7]《飞越情海》（Melrose Place），美国肥皂剧。】

But until then, the only escape was to slacken the reins on my mind. From time to time, I would find myself thinking of Jeremy Warwick, from math. Jeremy had laconic blue eyes and a white-boy Afro. He was secretive and brooding. He played guitar in a garage band — at the school’s annual talent show, they played a raucous take on “House of the Rising Sun.” In class, I sat four seats behind and to the left of Jeremy. Sometimes I pictured us kissing, his hand cupped around the back of my neck, his face so close to mine it eclipsed the whole world. A sensation would spread through me like a warm feather gently shivering across my belly, my limbs. Of course it could never happen. We could never happen, Jeremy and I. If he had even the dimmest inkling of my existence, he had never given a clue. Which was just as well, really. This way, I could pretend the only reason we couldn’t be together was that he didn’t like me.

然而那个时候，松开思绪的缰绳是我惟一的逃避。我时常意识到自己在想数学课上的杰里米·沃里克。他有一双清澈的蓝眼睛，留着黑人男孩的爆炸头。他寡言少语，面带忧郁。他参加了一个车库乐队，弹吉他。在学校一年一度的才艺表演会上，他们乒乒乓乓地唱过《日升之屋》[8]。上课的时候，我坐在杰里米的左后方，前面隔了四个座位。我有时想像我俩在接吻，他一只手搂着我后脖梗子，脸离我好近，遮去了整个世界。兴奋的感觉贯穿我，就像一片温暖的羽毛轻颤，滑过我的小腹和四肢。当然，这绝不可能发生。我们俩，我和杰里米，绝不可能。就算他对我的存在有过一丝一毫的感知，我也浑然未觉。这也无妨，真的。我可以佯称，我们不能在一起的惟一原因，就是他不喜欢我。【注：[8]《日升之屋》（House of the Rising Sun），新奥尔良民歌。】

I worked summers at my parents’ restaurant. When I was younger, I had loved to wipe the tables, help arrange plates and silverware, fold paper napkins, drop a red gerbera into the little round vase at the center of each table. I pretended I was indispensable to the family business, that the restaurant would fall apart without me to make sure all the salt and pepper shakers were full.

每逢暑假，我都在父母的饭馆上工。小时候，我很喜欢擦桌子，摆盘子，放餐具，叠纸巾，往每张餐桌中央的小圆花瓶里，放一枝红色的非洲菊。我自命对家族生意不可或缺，没有我来检查小盐罐和胡椒瓶是否统统装满，饭馆就必将破产。

By the time I was in high school, days at Abe’s Kabob House dragged long and hot. Much of the luster that the things inside the restaurant had held for me in childhood had faded. The old humming soda merchandiser in the corner, the vinyl table covers, the stained plastic cups, the tacky item names on the laminated menus — Caravan Kabob, Khyber Pass Pilaf, Silk Route Chicken — the badly framed poster of the Afghan girl from National Geographic, the one with the eyes — like they had passed an ordinance that every single Afghan restaurant had to have her eyes staring back from the wall. Next to it, Baba had hung an oil painting I had done in seventh grade of the big minarets in Herat. I remember the charge of pride and glamour I had felt when he had first put it up, when I watched customers eating their lamb kabobs beneath my artwork.

等我上了高中，在亚伯烤肉馆的日子就变得燥热而难熬。饭馆里那些在我童年时代的眼中熠熠发光的东西，已经大部分归于黯淡。角落里老旧的汽水柜，塑料台布，变了颜色的塑料杯，过了塑的菜单上那些俗气的菜名——大篷车烤肉串，开伯尔山口抓饭，丝绸之路鸡——相框里装着歪歪扭扭的招贴画，是《国家地理》封面上的阿富汗女孩，眼睛特别大的那个——好像颁布了一条法令，所有的阿富汗餐馆都必须把她的眼睛搁到墙上，负责瞪人。在招贴旁边，巴巴挂了一张我在七年级时画的油画，画的是赫拉特的大宣礼塔。我记得他刚把画挂上去的时候，我看到顾客们在我的作品下吃着羊肉串，真感到心里充满了骄傲和激动。

At lunch hour, while Mother and I ping-ponged back and forth from the spicy smoke in the kitchen to the tables where we served office workers and city employees and cops, Baba worked the register — Baba and his grease-stained white shirt, the bushel of gray chest hair spilling over the open top button, his thick, hairy forearms. Baba beaming, waving cheerfully to each entering customer. Hello, sir! Hello, madam! Welcome to Abe’s Kabob House. I’m Abe. Can I take your order please? It made me cringe how he didn’t realize that he sounded like the goofy Middle Eastern sidekick in a bad sitcom. Then, with each meal I served, there was the sideshow of Baba ringing the old copper bell. It had started as a kind of joke, I suppose, the bell, which Baba had hooked to the wall behind the register counter. Now each table served was greeted by a hearty clang of the copper bell. The regulars were used to it — they barely heard it anymore — and new customers mostly chalked it up to the eccentric charm of the place, though there were complaints from time to time.

到了午餐时间，母亲和我就像乒乓球一样，在厨房辛辣的油烟和餐桌之间来来回回，招待写字楼的职员、市政员工和警察，巴巴则负责打理柜台，他穿着油糊糊的白衬衫，露出粗壮而多毛的小臂，领口敞开着，一大片花白的胸毛泼洒在外。每有顾客登门，巴巴便堆起笑脸，喜滋滋地招手致意。你好，先生！你好，女士！欢迎光临亚伯烤肉馆。在下就是亚伯。请问可以点菜了吗？我听了直起鸡皮疙瘩，因为他意识不到，他活像低劣的情景喜剧里一个愚蠢的中东配角。接着，我每上一道菜，都会穿插着巴巴摇响老铜铃的表演。一开始，巴巴把铃铛挂到柜台后面的墙上时，我还以为这只是图个好玩，可现在每张桌子上菜时，都会听到铜铃叮当一声，发出衷心的祝福。常客已经习惯了，几乎听而不闻，新客人听了，多半会给这个地方的古怪魅力再添一笔，不过偶尔也有人口出怨言。

You don’t want to ring the bell anymore, Baba said one night. It was in the spring quarter of my senior year in high school. We were in the car outside the restaurant, after we had closed, waiting for Mother, who had forgotten her antacid pills inside and had run back in to fetch them. Baba wore a leaden expression. He had been in a dark mood all day. A light drizzle fell on the strip mall. It was late, and the lot was empty, save for a couple of cars at the KFC drive-thru and a pickup parked outside the dry-cleaning shop, two guys inside the truck, smoke corkscrewing up from the windows.

你再也不想摇铃铛了。巴巴有天夜里说。那是我高中最后一年的春季，饭馆打烊之后，我们坐在店外的车上，等着妈妈，她把抗酸药落在店里了，刚刚跑回去取。巴巴挂着一副沉重的表情。他一整天都心情郁闷。微雨飘落在临街的商铺之上。很晚了，四下里空空荡荡，只有两辆汽车，等在肯德基的得来速车道上，还有一辆小卡车停在干洗店外，车里有两个家伙，烟雾飘出车窗，缭绕而上。

It was more fun when I wasn’t supposed to, I said.

我够不着的时候更好玩。我说。

Everything is, I guess. He sighed heavily.

我猜每件东西都是如此。他重重地叹了口气。

Long way to Baltimore.

巴尔的摩很远。

I remembered how it used to thrill me, when I was little, when Baba lifted me up by the underarms and let me ring the bell. When he put me down again, my face would shine happy and proud.

我还记得当年我是多么兴奋，我小时候，巴巴抱着我，把我举起来，让我摇铃铛。他把我放下来的时候，我脸上洋溢着快乐和自豪。

I said brightly, You can fly out to visit anytime.

我兴冲冲地说：你随时可以飞过来看我。

Baba turned on the car heater, crossed his arms.

巴巴打开车里的暖风，抱起了胳膊。

Fly out anytime, he repeated with a touch of derision. I cook kabob for a living, Pari.

随时飞过去。他重复了一句，语气中带着少许的嘲笑。我要烤肉糊口，帕丽。

Every day for a month I had been checking our mailbox, my heart riding a swell of hope each time the delivery truck pulled up to the curb. I would bring the mail inside, close my eyes, think, This could be it. I would open my eyes and sift through the bills and the coupons and the sweepstakes. Then, on Tuesday of the week before, I had ripped open an envelope and found the words I had been waiting for: We are pleased to inform you…

此前有一个月，我天天查看家里的信箱，每当邮车停到路边，我的心里都涨满了希望。我把邮件拿进屋里，闭上双眼，心想：可能就是它。我睁开眼睛，翻检着一封封账单、赠券和奖券。后来，上个星期二，我撕开一个信封，看到了我一直在等的那句话：我们很高兴通知您…

Baba rolled his eyes toward me and gave me a drawn look. His melancholy was like the darkness outside pushing against the car windows.

巴巴瞅了我一眼，目光憔悴。他的忧郁一如外面挤压着车窗的黑暗。

Then I’ll come visit.

那我回来看你。

I leapt to my feet. I screamed — an actual throat-ripping yowl that made my eyes water. Almost instantaneously, an image streaked through my head: opening night at a gallery, me dressed in something simple, black, and elegant, encircled by patrons and crinkle-browed critics, smiling and answering their questions, as clusters of admirers linger before my canvases and servers in white gloves float around the gallery pouring wine, offering little square bites of salmon with dill or asparagus spears wrapped in puff pastry. I experienced one of those sudden bursts of euphoria, the kind where you want to wrap strangers in a hug and dance with them in great big swoops.

我蹦高。我尖叫，实际上是扯破嗓子的嘶吼，吼得我流出了眼泪。一瞬间，一幅画面闪现在我眼前：画廊，展览开幕之夜，我打扮简单，黑衣，优雅，被赞助人和皱眉头的评论家们围在中间，微笑并回答他们的提问，与此同时，成群的崇拜者在我的画作前流连，服务生们戴着白手套，在画廊各处飘移，有的斟酒，有的端来鲑鱼小吃，切成了小方块，撒了莳萝，还有起酥皮卷的芦笋条。我经历了一场突如其来的狂喜，置身其中，仿佛连陌生人也要揽入怀抱，和他们共舞，舞得虎虎生风。

Have you thought some more, he said, about what we discussed?

咱们商量过的事，他说，你有没有再想想？

I’ll call every night. I promise. You know I will.

我每天晚上打电话，我保证。你知道我一定会打的。

You mean, junior college?

你是说，读专科？

It’s your mother I worry for, Baba said.

我最担心你妈。巴巴说。

Baba nodded. The leaves of the maples near the entrance to the parking lot tossed about in a sudden gust of wind.

巴巴点点头。忽然一阵风，停车场入口附近的枫树摆荡起了枝叶。

I shuddered with a sudden jolt of anger. Baba, these people reviewed my test scores and transcripts, and they went through my portfolio, and they thought enough of my artwork not only to accept me but to offer me a scholarship. This is one of the best institutes of art in the country. It’s not a school you say no to. You don’t get a second chance like this.

我一下子觉得有点儿生气，把肩膀一耸，说道：巴巴，这些人评估过我考试的分数和学校的成绩单，人家仔细地看了我的履历，人家也充分考虑了我的作品，所以不仅录取了我，还给了我奖学金。这是全国顶尖的美术学院，不是能让你说不去的学校。这样的机会你得不到第二次的。

Only for a year, maybe two. Just to give her time to get accustomed to the idea. Then you could reapply.

只要一年，也许两年。只是给她点儿时间，来适应这个计划。你以后还可以重新申请。

That’s true, he said, straightening up in his seat. He cupped his hands and blew warm air into them. Of course I understand. Of course I’m happy for you. I could see the struggle in his face. And the fear too. Not just fear for me and what might happen to me three thousand miles from home. But fear of me, of losing me. Of the power I wielded, through my absence, to make him unhappy, to maul his open, vulnerable heart, if I chose to, like a Doberman going to work on a kitten.

的确如此。他说着，在座位上坐直了身体。他把手团起来，往里面哈了口热气。我当然能理解。我当然为你高兴。我看得出他脸上的为难。还有忧惧。忧的是我离家五千公里，万一出点儿什么事；惧的是失去我。我大权在握，通过远走高飞，就能让他不快乐，重创他那颗脆弱而容易受伤的心——如果我真这样做的话——就像杜宾犬捉弄小猫咪。

Baba cleared his throat and looked out the window at the dark sky and the clouded-over moon, his eyes liquid with emotion.

爸爸清了清嗓子，望着窗外漆黑的天空和乌云密布的月亮，眼睛里充满了感情。

I found myself thinking of his sister. By then, my connection with Pari — whose presence had once been like a pounding deep within me — had long waned. I thought of her infrequently. As the years had swept past, I had outgrown her, the way I had outgrown favorite pajamas and stuffed animals I had once clung to. But now I thought of her once more and of the ties that bound us. If what had been done to her was like a wave that had crashed far from shore, then it was the backwash of that wave now pooling around my ankles, then receding from my feet.

我忽然想到了他妹妹。那个时候，我和帕丽之间的联系已经淡去很久。她的存在曾经像我体内一声声隐秘而剧烈的心跳。但现在我很少想到她了。随着一年又一年狂风般掠过，我已经长得比她大出了许多，就像我已穿不下自己最喜欢的睡衣，丢开了曾经手不忍释的毛绒动物玩具。然而，此时我又一次想起了她，想起了我们之间的纽带。如果她过去经历的事情像一个浪头，在海岸深处撞得粉碎，那么此时，退浪没过了我的脚面，又从我脚下退去了。

Everything will remind me of you.

每件事都会让我想起你。

It was in the tender, slightly panicky way he spoke these words that I knew my father was a wounded person, that his love for me was as true, vast, and permanent as the sky, and that it would always bear down upon me. It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.

他就是用这样温存的、带着少许惊惶的语气，讲出了这句话，让我知道了父亲是个受伤的人，知道了他对我的爱像天空一样真实，浩瀚，永恒，而且总在向我迫近。这样的爱或迟或早，都会逼得你走投无路，而必须做出选择：要么挣脱，要么留下，承受爱的重压，哪怕它把你塞进了比你更小的容器。

What’s taking so long? he murmured.

怎么这么久？他小声问。

I reached over from the darkened backseat and touched his face. He leaned his cheek onto my palm.

我从黑暗的后座上伸出手，抚摸他的脸。他歪一歪头，把脸颊枕到我手中。

A month later, a couple of weeks before I was due to fly east for a campus visit, Mother went to Dr. Bashiri to tell him the antacid pills had done nothing to help her stomach pain. He sent her for an ultrasound. They found a tumor the size of a walnut in her left ovary.

一个月之后，就在我应该飞往东部、参观校园之前两个星期，妈妈去见了巴希里大夫，告诉他抗酸药对自己的胃痛没有什么作用。他安排她做了超声波检查。在她左侧的卵巢里，他们发现了一个核桃般大小的肿瘤。

“Baba?”

“巴巴？”

She’s locking up, I said. I felt exhausted. I watched Mother hurry to the car. The drizzle had turned into a downpour.

她在锁门。我说。我觉得筋疲力尽。我看到妈妈快步走回汽车。细雨已经变大，势如瓢泼。

He is on the recliner, sitting motionless, slumped forward. He has his sweatpants on, his lower legs covered by a checkered wool shawl. He is wearing the brown cardigan sweater I bought him the year before over a flannel shirt he has buttoned all the way. This is the way he insists on wearing his shirts now, with the collar buttoned, which makes him look both boyish and frail, resigned to old age. He looks a little puffy in the face today, and strands of his white hair spill uncombed over his brow. He is watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with a somber, perplexed expression. When I call his name, his gaze lingers on the screen like he hasn’t heard me before he drags it away and looks up with displeasure. He has a small sty growing on the lower lid of his left eye. He needs a shave.

他坐在躺椅上，一动不动，往前弓着腰。他穿上了运动裤，小腿上盖着一条方格子的羊毛披巾。他穿着我去年给他买的棕色开襟羊毛衫，里面是法兰绒衬衫，扣子全部系了起来。这就是他现在穿衬衫的方式，非把领子也扣上不可，让他看上去既像小男生，又像个小女生，只是到了这一大把年纪。今天他脸上有点肿，头也没梳，几缕白发耷拉在脑门上。他正在看《谁想成为百万富翁？》，表情忧郁而茫然。我叫他时，他好像没听见，目光又在电视屏幕上磨蹭了一会儿，这才挪开眼神，不高兴地抬起头。他左眼的下眼睑上长了个小小的针眼。他得刮脸了。

“Baba, can I mute the TV for a second?”

“巴巴，我能把电视的声音关一下吗？”

I pluck the remote from the arm of the recliner and turn off the sound, bracing myself for a tantrum. The first time he threw one, I was convinced it was a charade, an act he was putting on. To my relief, Baba doesn’t protest beyond a long sigh through the nose.

我从躺椅的扶手上拿起遥控器，关掉了声音，同时防着他勃然而怒。他头一次大发脾气时，我相信那只是佯怒，是他演的一出戏。现在我松了一口气，巴巴没有抗议，只是从鼻孔里发出了一声长长的叹息。

“I’m watching,” he says.

“我在看。”他说。

I motion to Pari, who is lingering in the hallway at the entrance to the living room. Slowly, she walks over to us, and I pull her up a chair close to Baba’s recliner. She is a bundle of nervous excitement, I can tell. She sits erect, pale, leaning forward from the edge of the chair, knees pressed together, her hands clamped, and her smile so tight her lips are turning white. Her eyes are glued on Baba, as if she has only moments with him and is trying to memorize his face.

帕丽在门口和客厅之间的走廊上徘徊，我朝她做了个手势。她慢慢走进来，我给她拉了把椅子，放在巴巴的躺椅旁边。我看得出来，她颇为激动不安。她坐得笔直，脸色煞白，两腿并在一起，双手交叠，从椅子边儿向前探出身体，笑得那么僵硬，连嘴唇都白了。她的目光死死盯着巴巴，好像只有片刻的工夫能和他在一起，因此要使劲记住他这张脸。

“I know. But you have a visitor.” I had already told him about Pari Wahdati’s visit the day before and again this morning. But I don’t ask him if he remembers. It is something that I learned early on, to not put him on the spot, because it embarrasses him and makes him defensive, sometimes abusive.

“我知道。可是有客人来看你了。”我已经告诉过他，帕丽·瓦赫达提要来，昨天说的，今天早晨又说了一次。可我这会儿没问他还记不记得。我早就明白，不能让他下不来台，因为他会觉得难堪，会自卫，有时还会出口伤人。

“Baba, this is the friend I told you about.”

“巴巴，这就是我跟你说过的那位朋友。”

He eyes the gray-haired woman across from him. He has an unnerving way of looking at people these days, even when he is staring directly at them, that gives nothing away. He looks disengaged, closed off, like he meant to look elsewhere and his eyes happened upon them by accident.

他看着眼前这位白发苍苍的妇人。这段日子他看人的眼神总是让人揪心，就算他直视着他们，目光中也是空空如也。看上去，他是游离的，隔绝的，似乎他本来打算瞧一瞧别的地方，却一不小心，目光才落到了他们身上。

He nods slowly. I can practically see the uncertainty and confusion rippling across his face like waves of muscle spasm. His eyes shift from my face to Pari’s. He opens his mouth in a strained half smile the way he does when he thinks a prank is being played on him.

他慢吞吞地点点头。我清清楚楚地看见他脸上泛起了茫然和困惑，仿佛面部肌肉的痉挛。他看看我的脸，再看看帕丽。他张开了嘴巴，露出干涩的笑容，他认为人家捉弄他的时候，就是这副皮笑肉不笑的表情。

“You have an accent,” he finally says.

“你有口音。”他终于说话了。

Baba nods. “So you live in London?” he says to Pari.

巴巴点点头。“这么说你住在伦敦？”他对帕丽说。

“What?” He turns sharply to me. Then he understands and gives an embarrassed little laugh before switching from Farsi. “Do you live in London?”

“怎么了？”他狠狠问了我一句，接着才明白过来，不好意思地呵呵一笑，然后改说英语。“你住在伦敦？”

Pari clears her throat. Even so, her voice shakes when she speaks. “Hello, Abdullah. My name is Pari. It’s so wonderful to see you.”

帕丽清了清嗓子，可是清也白清，她一张嘴，声音就在哆嗦。“你好，阿卜杜拉。我叫帕丽。真高兴见到你。”

“Baba!”

“巴巴！”

“She lives in France,” I said. “And, Baba, you have to speak English. She doesn’t understand Farsi.”

“她住在法国。”我说，“对了，巴巴，你必须讲英语。她听不懂波斯语。”

“Paris, actually,” Pari says. “I live in a small apartment in Paris.” She doesn’t lift her eyes from him.

“实际上，是巴黎。”帕丽说。“我住在巴黎的一套小公寓。”她没有把目光从他脸上挪开。

Actually, Mother didn’t much like to travel. She never saw why she would forgo the comfort and familiarity of her own home for the ordeal of flying and suitcase lugging. She had no sense of culinary adventure — her idea of exotic food was the Orange Chicken at the Chinese take-out place on Taylor Street. It is a bit of a marvel how Baba, at times, summons her with such uncanny precision — remembering, for instance, that she salted her food by bouncing the salt grains off the palm of her hand or her habit of interrupting people on the phone when she never did it in person — and how, other times, he can be so wildly inaccurate. I imagine Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist. She is becoming a ghostly outline, a hollow shell, that he feels compelled to fill with bogus details and fabricated character traits, as though false memories are better than none at all.

其实，我母亲不太喜欢旅游。她从来也弄不明白，为什么要抛下自己家里的舒适和随意，跑去吃坐飞机的苦，受搬行李的罪。她对天下美食兴趣索然，最心仪的外国菜只是陈皮鸡，泰勒街一家中餐馆就能送外卖。有点让人称奇的是，有时巴巴会以不可思议的精确，让我母亲在他心里还魂。比如说，他能记起她加盐的时候，会把盐粒放到手上，再抖落到自己的菜里；再比如说，她有个习惯，别人打电话时，她喜欢插嘴，可是又不拿过电话来自己说。可是其他时间，他又会变得什么也记不清。我猜想，妈妈正在他脑海中不断暗落，她的脸退入了阴影，每过去一天，对她的记忆就会有所衰退，有所流失，如同握在手中的沙子不断漏掉。她正在变成一个没有血肉的鬼影，一个空壳，他不得不逼着自己，用臆想的细节和捏造的个性，去加以填补，哪怕这记忆是伪造的，似乎也总要好过忘得一干二净。

“I always planned to take my wife to Paris. Sultana — that was her name, God rest her soul. She was always saying, Abdullah, take me to Paris. When will you take me to Paris?”

“我一直有个计划，带我妻子去巴黎。苏丹娜，她叫苏丹娜。愿真主让她灵魂安息。她过去老是说：阿卜杜拉呀，带我去趟巴黎吧。你什么时候带我去巴黎？”

“Maybe I’ll take her still. But she has the cancer at the moment. It’s the female kind — what do you call it?– the…”

“也许我还是要带她去的。可她现在得了癌症。女人得的那种——叫什么来着？卵…”

“Ovarian,” I say.

“卵巢癌。”我说。

Pari nods, her gaze flicking to me and back to Baba.

帕丽点点头，她飞快地看了我一眼，又把目光挪回到巴巴身上。

“I have, yes. It is beautiful up there. But I am scared of high places, so it is not always comfortable for me. But at the top, on a good sunny day, you can see for more than sixty kilometers. Of course a lot of days in Paris it is not so good and not so sunny.”

“我爬过，是的。上面很美。可我害怕登高，所以有的时候会觉得不太舒服。可是到了塔顶，如果赶上大晴天，你就能看到六十公里以外的地方。当然了，巴黎的很多日子没那么好，天也没那么晴。”

“What she wants most is to climb the Eiffel Tower. Have you seen it?” Baba says.

“她最想去爬埃菲尔铁塔。你见过吗？”巴巴问。

“Well, it is a lovely city,” Pari says.

“嗯，这是座漂亮的城市。”帕丽说。

“Have you climbed it? All the way to the top?”

“你爬过吗？有没有一直爬到顶？”

“The Eiffel Tower?” Pari Wahdati laughs. “Oh yes. Every day. I cannot avoid it, in fact.”

“埃菲尔铁塔？”帕丽·瓦赫达提笑出了声。“哦，是的。天天见。说实话，我想躲都躲不开。”

Baba grunts. Pari, encouraged, continues talking about the tower, how many years it took to build it, how it was never meant to stay in Paris past the 1889 World’s Fair, but she can’t read Baba’s eyes like I can. His expression has flattened. She doesn’t realize that she has lost him, that his thoughts have already shifted course like windblown leaves. Pari nudges closer on the seat. “Did you know, Abdullah,” she says, “that they have to paint the tower every seven years?”

巴巴咕噜了两声。帕丽受到鼓舞，继续大讲铁塔，讲它花了多少年才建成，讲它本来没打算保留到1889年的世界博览会之后，可她没法像我那样读懂巴巴的眼神。他拉长了脸。她没有意识到自己已经抓不住他了，他的思绪已经像风中的落叶一样变换了方向。帕丽在座位上挪了挪，又凑近了一点儿。“你知道吗，阿卜杜拉？”她说，“每隔七年，他们就要刷一遍铁塔。”

“That’s my daughter’s name.”

“那是我女儿的名字。”

“Abdullah, can I ask you a question?”

“阿卜杜拉，我能问你个问题吗？”

“You have the same name,” Baba says. “The two of you, you have the same name. So there you have it.” He coughs, absently picks at a small tear in the leather of the recliner’s arm.

“你们名字一样。”巴巴说。“你们俩，你们俩名字一样。知道了吧。”他咳嗽了两声，心不在焉地揪着躺椅扶手上的一小块破皮子。

He shakes his head. With a fist, he yanks at his cardigan and clutches it shut at his throat. His lips barely move as he begins to hum under his breath, a rhythmic muttering he always resorts to when he is marauded by anxiety and at a loss for an answer, when everything has blurred to vagueness and he is bowled over by a gush of disconnected thoughts, waiting desperately for the murkiness to clear.

他摇摇头，一只手攥起来，使劲一拉羊毛衫，一直拉到下巴底下。他开始小声哼哼，嘴唇几乎不动，嘴里发出一种有节奏的咕哝声。他总是这个样子，只要他陷入焦虑而找不出答案，只要一切变得模糊不清，而支离破碎的思绪突然涌入脑海，冲得他不知所措，两眼一抹黑，只好绝望地等着云开雾散。

“Yes, I know.”

“对，我知道。”

Baba shifts his gaze to the window, his fingernail still scraping the tear in the recliner’s arm.

巴巴扭过头，看着窗子，手指甲还在抠着躺椅扶手上的破洞。

“What did you say your name was?” Baba says.

“你说你叫什么来着？”巴巴问。

Baba shrugs.

巴巴耸了耸肩。

“Pari.”

“帕丽。”

Pari looks up at me like she is asking for permission. I give her the go-ahead with a nod. She leans forward in the chair. “How did you decide to choose this name for your daughter?”

帕丽仰起脸，看着我，好像在请求允许。我朝她点了下头，意思是行。她在椅子上探身向前。“你是怎么决定的，给你女儿取这个名字？”

“Do you remember, Abdullah? Why this name?”

“你记得吗，阿卜杜拉？为什么是这个名字？”

Pari Wahdati lets out a sudden laugh that sounds like a deep, guttural cry, and she covers her mouth. “Ah, mon Dieu,” she whispers. She lifts her hand. In Farsi, she sings:

帕丽·瓦赫达提突然大笑了一声，听起来像是发自喉咙深处的呼喊，她捂住了自己的嘴。“我的上帝呀。”她低声叫着，放下手，用波斯语唱道：

“Can you sing it for me?” Pari says urgently, a catch in her voice. “Please, Abdullah, will you sing it?”

“你能唱给我听吗？”帕丽急切地说着，声音哽塞了一下。“拜托了，阿卜杜拉，唱出来好吗？”

“Abdullah? What is that?” Pari says.

“阿卜杜拉？你说什么？”帕丽问。

Who was blown away by the wind one night.

晚风把她吹走了。

“It’s like a nursery rhyme,” I say. “Remember, Baba? You said you learned it when you were a boy. You said you learned it from your mother.”

“好像是首儿歌。”我说，“还记得吗，巴巴？你说你小时候学会的。你说你妈妈教你的。”

He turns to me, helpless. He doesn’t know.

他扭头看我，一脸的无助。他不知道。

He lowers his head and shakes it slowly.

他低下头，慢吞吞地摇晃着脑袋。

“He used to say there was a second verse,” I say to Pari, “but that he’d forgotten it.”

“他老说还有另一段。”我告诉帕丽，“可他忘了。”

“Go ahead, Baba,” I say softly. I rest my hand on his bony shoulder. “It’s okay.”

“唱吧，巴巴。”我轻声说着，伸出一只手，放到他瘦骨嶙峋的肩膀上。“没事的。”

“Okay.”

“好吧。”

Beneath the shade of a paper tree.

待在纸树影子下。

“Nothing,” he mutters.

“什么也没说。”他咕哝道。

Hesitantly, in a high, trembling voice and without looking up, Baba sings the same two lines several times:

巴巴踌躇再三，头也不抬，尖着嗓子，声音抖颤，反反复复，唱出了相同的两句词：

I found a sad little fairy

我瞅见伤心的小仙女，

“No, that song you are singing — what is it?”

“不对，你在唱歌——你在唱什么？”

I know a sad little fairy

我知道伤心的小仙女，

Smiling, her eyes teared over, Pari reaches for Baba’s hands and takes them into her own. She kisses the back of each and presses his palms to her cheeks. Baba grins, moisture now pooling in his eyes as well. Pari looks up at me, blinking back happy tears, and I see she thinks she has broken through, that she has summoned her lost brother with this magic chant like a genie in a fairy tale. She thinks he sees her clearly now. She will understand momentarily that he is merely reacting, responding to her warm touch and show of affection. It’s just animal instinct, nothing more. This I know with painful clarity.

她微笑着，泪水盈眶，一把抓过巴巴的双手，握在自己手中。她亲吻他两个手背，把他的手掌紧贴在自己脸上。巴巴咧开嘴笑了，眼睛里湿乎乎的，也积成了泪滴。帕丽抬头看着我，强忍住幸福的泪，我知道，她认为已经取得了突破，已经用这首神奇的歌，像童话里的精灵一样，唤回了失去的兄长。她以为哥哥已经认出了她。她马上就会明白，这只是他的正常反应，是在对她热情的抚触和外露的情感作出响应。这不过是动物的本能，仅此而已。对这一点，我痛在心里，却看得清清楚楚。

“Oh, Abdullah…” Pari says.

“噢，阿卜杜拉…”帕丽说。

A few months before Dr. Bashiri passed me the phone number to a hospice, Mother and I took a trip to the Santa Cruz Mountains and stayed in a hotel for the weekend. Mother didn’t like long trips, but we did go off on short ones now and then, she and I, back before she was really sick. Baba would man the restaurant, and I would drive Mother and me to Bodega Bay, or Sausalito, or San Francisco, where we would always stay in a hotel near Union Square. We would settle down in our room and order room service, watch on-demand movies. Later, we would go down to the Wharf — Mother was a sucker for all the tourist traps — and buy gelato, watch the sea lions bobbing up and down on the water over by the pier. We would drop coins into the open cases of the street guitarists and the backpacks of the mime artists, the spray-painted robot men. We always made a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, and, my arm coiled around hers, I would show her the works of Rivera, Kahlo, Matisse, Pollock. Or else we would go to a matinee, which Mother loved, and we would see two, three films, come out in the dark, our eyes bleary, ears ringing, fingers smelling of popcorn.

临终关怀医院的电话号码是巴希里大夫给我的，此前几个月，母亲和我出去玩了一趟，我们去了圣克鲁斯山，在酒店里过了周末。母亲不喜欢长途旅行，在病倒以前，她和我偶尔也做一些短途游。巴巴看着饭馆，我开车载上母亲，去博迪加湾、索萨利托或旧金山。去旧金山的时候，我们总是待在靠近联合广场的一家酒店。我们窝在房间里，叫送餐服务，看点播电影。后来我们去渔人码头——母亲对各种骗游客的地方都很上瘾——买意式冰激凌，看海狮在码头周围的水面上沉浮。我们把硬币放进街头吉他手敞开的琴盒，放进哑剧艺人和周身喷漆的假机器人的背包。每次我们都要去现代艺术博物馆，我挽着她的胳膊，带她看里维拉、卡洛、马蒂斯和波洛克[9]的作品。要不我们就去看日场电影，母亲喜欢这个，连看两三部，出来时天已经黑了，我们眼酸耳鸣，满手爆米花的味道。【注：[9]迭戈·里维拉、弗里达·卡洛、亨利·马蒂斯和杰克逊·波洛克。】

Folds appear on Baba’s forehead. For a transitory moment, I think I detect a tiny crack of light in his eyes. But then it winks out, and his face is placid once more. He shakes his head. “No. No, I don’t think that’s how it goes at all.”

巴巴脑门上出现了几道褶皱。我觉得短短的一瞬间，我在他眼里看到了一丝微光。可它随即熄灭了，他的脸也恢复了平静。他摇了摇头。“不，不，根本就不是这么唱的。”

It was easier with Mother — always had been — less complicated, less treacherous. I didn’t have to be on my guard so much. I didn’t have to watch what I said all the time for fear of inflicting a wound. Being alone with her on those weekend getaways was like curling up into a soft cloud, and, for a couple of days, everything that had ever troubled me fell away, inconsequentially, a thousand miles below.

和母亲在一起要轻松得多——历来如此——不那么复杂，也没那么多心眼儿。我用不着太戒备，也用不着时刻留心，惟恐说出什么伤人的话。和她单独在一起，一次又一次的周末逃离，就像遁入高空，化作柔云，这两天的时间，困扰我的一切都变得微不足道，统统抛到了九霄之外。

We were celebrating the end of yet another round of chemo — which also turned out to be her last. The hotel was a beautiful, secluded place. They had a spa, a fitness center, a game room with a big-screen TV, and a billiards table. Our room was a cabin with a wooden porch, from which we had a view of the swimming pool, the restaurant, and entire groves of redwood that soared straight up into the clouds. Some of the trees were so close, you could tell the subtle shades of color on a squirrel’s fur as it dashed up the trunk. Our first morning there, Mother woke me up, said, Quick, Pari, you have to see this. There was a deer nibbling on shrubs outside the window.

在圣克鲁斯山，我们庆祝另一轮化疗的结束。后来才知道，这是她最后一个疗程。酒店很漂亮，偏居一隅，有温泉浴场，健身中心，带大屏幕电视的游戏房，还有台球桌。我们的房间是个小屋子，带木头门廊，从门廊上可以看到游泳池和餐厅，红杉高耸入云，郁郁成林，一览无余。有些树离得很近，松鼠顺着树干往上蹿的时候，皮毛上深浅不一的微妙色调都能看得清。我们在那儿度过的第一个早晨，母亲就把我叫醒，对我说：快点，帕丽，你得看看这个。窗外有一头鹿在啃着矮树。

We have to do something about these eyebrows, Mother said. She was wearing a winter coat over a sweater and the maroon wool beanie hat she had knitted herself a year and a half earlier when, as she put it, all the festivities had begun.

我这眉毛得拾掇拾掇了。母亲说。她穿着冬装外套，里面是毛衣，戴着栗色的毛线便帽，那是一年半以前她给自己织的，用她的话说，好事连连，就此开始。

I pushed her wheelchair around the gardens. I’m such a spectacle, Mother said. I parked her by the fountain and I would sit on a bench close to her, the sun warming our faces, and we would watch the hummingbirds darting between flowers until she fell asleep, and then I wheeled her back to our cabin.

我推着她的轮椅走过花园。我真是一景儿。母亲说。我把轮椅停在喷泉旁边，坐在离她不远的长椅上。阳光温暖着我们的脸，我们看着蜂鸟在花丛中奔突。等她睡过去，我便把她推回小屋。

Make them dramatic, then.

那就画得夸张点儿。

On Sunday afternoon, we had tea and croissants on the balcony outside the restaurant, which was a big cathedral-ceilinged room with bookshelves, a dreamcatcher on one wall, and an honest-to-God stone hearth. On a lower deck, a man with the face of a dervish and a girl with limp blond hair were playing a lethargic game of Ping-Pong.

星期天下午，我们在餐厅外的露台上喝茶，吃羊角面包，餐厅的屋子很大，天花板像大教堂一样，还有书架，墙上挂着捕梦网，壁炉前是货真价实的石头炉台。露台下方的平台上，有一男一女，男的长了张苦行僧的脸，女孩则留着软塌塌的金发。他们在打乒乓球，无精打采。

She grinned weakly. Why not? She took a shallow sip of tea. Grinning accentuated all the new lines in her face. When I met Abdullah, I was selling clothes on the side of the street in Peshawar. He said I had beautiful eyebrows.

她咧开嘴，无力地笑了笑。为什么不呢？她喝了一小口茶。一笑起来，她脸上新添的道道皱纹便暴露无遗。认识阿卜杜拉的时候，我正在白沙瓦的马路边卖衣服。他说我眉毛长得漂亮。

I’ll paint them back on for you, I said.

我给你画新的。我说。

Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra dramatic?

像《埃及艳后》里的伊丽莎白·泰勒那样夸张？

Yeah.

嗯？

Pari?

帕丽？

I put down my cup, began to speak, but she cut me off.

我放下杯子，刚要张嘴，她就打断了我。

She told me how, for years now, Baba had been sending this Iqbal — my half uncle, I thought with an inner lurch — a thousand dollars every three months, going down to Western Union, wiring the money to a bank in Peshawar.

她告诉我，多年以来，巴巴一直在寄钱，给这位伊克巴尔——我的叔叔。一想到这个，我心里忽然有些五味杂陈——每三个月寄一千美元，去西联公司，把钱电汇到白沙瓦的一家银行。

His name is Iqbal. He has sons. He lives in a refugee camp near Peshawar.

他叫伊克巴尔，有几个儿子。他住在白沙瓦附近的一座难民营。

I turned to her sharply.

我一下子扭过头，看着她。

The Ping-Pong pair ditched the paddles. They were leaning now against the wooden railing, sharing a cigarette, looking up at the sky, which was luminous and clear but for a few frayed clouds. The girl had long, bony arms.

那对乒乓男女丢开了球拍，此时正靠着木头栏杆，合吸一支香烟。他们仰头望着天，朗朗晴空，飘着少许残云。女孩的胳膊又细又长。

I read in the paper there’s an arts-and-crafts fair up in Capitola today, I said. If you’re up to it, maybe I’ll drive us, we’ll have a look. We could even have dinner there, if you like.

我在报纸上看到的，今天在卡皮托拉有个美术工艺品展览会。我说，你要能去，那我开上车，咱们去看看。你要愿意的话，晚餐咱们就在那儿吃。

Abdullah has a brother in Pakistan, Mother said. A half brother.

阿卜杜拉有个弟弟，在巴基斯坦。母亲说，同父异母的弟弟。

Okay.

说吧。

I want to tell you something.

有件事我想告诉你。

I’m telling you now, aren’t I? That’s all that matters. Your father has his reasons. I’m sure you can figure them out, you give it some time. Important thing is, he has a half brother and he’s been sending him money to help out.

我这就告诉你，不是吗？最重要的就是这些。你父亲有他的理由。我相信你会想明白的，过些日子就好了。重要的是他有个异母兄弟，他一直在给他寄钱，接济他。

Because I think you should know even if he doesn’t. Also, you will have to take over the finances soon and then you would find out anyway.

因为我觉得你应该知道，可他不这么想。再说了，很快就该由你来管账了，到那个时候，不管怎样你都会发现的。

You’ll be doing the books for a long time yet, Mother, I said. I did my best to disguise the wobble in my voice.

妈，管账你还要管很长时间呢。我说。我尽力掩饰着自己声音里的颤抖。

Why are you telling me now? I asked.

为什么现在告诉我？我问。

I won’t, she said. And don’t you go thinking I will. The time has come, you have to be ready for it.

我管不了了。她说。你也别以为我还能管下去。我的时间到了，你得做好准备。

There was a dense pause. When she spoke again, it was in a lower tone, slower, like when I was little and we would go to the mosque for a funeral and she would hunker down next to me beforehand and patiently explain how I had to remove my shoes at the entrance, how I had to keep quiet during prayers and not fidget, not complain, and how I should use the bathroom now so I wouldn’t have to later.

一阵令人心悸的停顿。等她再开口时，声音变得又低又慢，就像我小时候，我们去清真寺参加葬礼，她提前在我身边蹲下，耐心地告诉我，我必须在门口把鞋脱掉，礼拜时必须保持安静，不能坐立不安，不能口出怨言，而且要提前上厕所，免得过一会儿再去。

I turned away, watched a cat, its tail erect, sidle up to the Ping-Pong couple. The girl reached to pet it and the cat tensed up at first. But then it curled up on the railing, let the girl run her hands over its ears, down its back. My mind was reeling. I had family outside of the U. S.

我扭过脸，看到一只猫竖着尾巴，悄悄走近那对乒乓男女。女孩伸出手摸它。一开始，猫还有些紧张，后来就在栏杆上蜷缩起来，让女孩的手从它耳朵一直摸到后背。我思前想后。我竟然还有亲戚在海外。

I made myself look at the trees, the wash of sunlight falling on the feathery leaves, the rough bark of the trunks. I slid my tongue between the incisors and bit down hard. My eyes watered, and the coppery taste of blood flooded my mouth.

我注视着树林，阳光如洗，洒落在羽毛般的树叶和粗糙的树皮上。我把舌尖移到两排门牙之间，狠咬了一下。我流出了眼泪，血腥的味道灌满了嘴巴。

Your father is like a child. Terrified of being abandoned. He would lose his way without you, Pari, and never find his way back.

你爸就像个小孩，生怕被人遗弃。如果没有你，帕丽，他会失去方向，而且再也找不回原来的路。

A brother, I said.

他有个弟弟。我说。

Ask me tonight. When I’m not as tired. I’ll tell you everything I know.

晚上再问我吧。等我不太累的时候。我把我知道的一切都告诉你。

I have a lot of questions.

我有很多问题。

I blew out a gush of air; a hardness lodged in my throat. Somewhere, a chain saw buzzed to life, the crescendo of its whine at violent odds with the stillness of the woods.

我长长地吐出一口气，感觉嗓子堵得慌。不知道什么地方传来电锯的声音，吱吱作响，渐渐加强，粗暴地破坏着树林的静谧。

Yes.

对。

I nodded. I gulped the rest of my tea, which had gone cold. At a nearby table, a middle-aged couple traded pages of the newspaper. The woman, red-haired and open-faced, was quietly watching us over the top of her broadsheet, her eyes switching from me to my gray-faced mother, her beanie hat, her hands mapped with bruises, her sunken eyes and skeletal grin. When I met her gaze, the woman smiled just a tad like there was a secret knowledge between us, and I knew that she had done this too.

我点点头，一口气喝掉了剩下的茶，水已经凉了。近处的桌边，一对中年夫妇交换了手中的报纸。那女人红头发，神情坦然，从报纸上方默默注视着我们，她看看我，再看看我面带倦容的母亲，看着她的无檐便帽，青肿的双手，深陷的眼窝和形销骨立的笑容。我们目光相遇时，那女人微微一笑，仿佛和我心有灵犀，我知道她也感觉到了这一点。

I tossed the napkin on the table and pushed back my chair, walked around to the other side. I released the brake on the wheelchair and pulled the chair away from the table.

我把纸巾丢到桌上，拉开椅子，走到桌对面。我松开轮椅的闸，推上母亲，离开了桌边。

I could use a new hat, she said.

那我就能戴新帽子了。她说。

Yes?

嗯？

Mother’s gaze lingered on me. Her eyes looked too big for her head and her head too big for her shoulders.

母亲看了我好几眼。她的眼睛相对于脑袋显得太大了，而她的脑袋相对于肩膀，同样显得过大。

So what do you think, Mother? The fair, are you up for it?

妈，你觉得怎么样？展览会你想去吗？

Pari? Mother said.

帕丽？母亲说。

Do you even know how strong God has made you? she said. How strong and good He has made you?

你知道真主让你多么坚强吗？她说，你知道真主让你多么坚强，多么善良吗？

She rolled her head all the way back to look up at me. Sunlight pushed through the leaves of the trees and pinpricked her face.

她把头整个仰起来，看着我。阳光穿过树叶，细碎地落在她脸上。

There is no accounting for how the mind works. This moment, for instance. Of the thousands and thousands of moments my mother and I shared together through all the years, this is the one that shines the brightest, the one that vibrates with the loudest hum at the back of my mind: my mother looking up at me over her shoulder, her face upside down, all those dazzling points of light shimmering on her skin, her asking did I know how good and strong God had made me.

心理活动常常无法解释。此时此刻就是这样。这么多年以来，母亲和我共同度过了千千万万的时光，惟有这一刻最为明亮，它在我心底震颤着，发出最响亮的回声：我母亲仰起脸望着我，下巴朝上，斑驳而灿烂的阳光在她皮肤上闪烁，她在问我，问我是否知道，真主让我多么善良与坚强。

We move from the living room to the kitchen. I fetch a pot from the cabinet and fill it at the sink.

我们从客厅走到厨房。我从柜子上拿起水壶，接着洗碗池，灌满了水。

After Baba falls asleep on the recliner, Pari gently zips up his cardigan and pulls up the shawl to cover his torso. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear and stands over him, watching him sleep for a while. I like watching him sleep too because then you can’t tell something is wrong. With his eyes closed, the blankness is lifted, and the lackluster, absent gaze too, and Baba looks more familiar. Asleep, he looks more alert and present, as if something of his old self has seeped back into him. I wonder if Pari can picture it, looking at his face resting on the pillow, how he used to be, how he used to laugh.

巴巴在躺椅上睡着了，帕丽轻手轻脚地给他拉好羊毛衫的拉链，拿起披巾，盖好他的身体，又替他把一缕松垂的头发拢到脑后。她在他身边站了一会儿，看着他睡觉。我也喜欢看他入睡，因为你看不出他哪儿有毛病。他闭着眼，呆滞消失了，郁闷结束了，心不在焉的眼神也不见了，巴巴因此看上去更亲近。睡着的时候，他反而显得更机灵，更有存在感，仿佛旧有的自我慢慢回注于体内。我不知道帕丽看着他靠在枕头上的这张脸，能不能想像出他原来的举止，原有的欢笑。

“I want to show you some of these,” Pari says, a charge of excitement in her voice. She’s sitting at the table, busily flipping through a photo album that she fished from her suitcase earlier.

“有些东西我想给你看看。”帕丽说，声音里充满了兴奋。她从手提箱里取出一本相册，坐到桌边，刷刷地翻着。

“I’m afraid the coffee won’t be up to Parisian standards,” I say over my shoulder, pouring water from the pot into the coffeemaker.

“我怕咖啡比不上巴黎的好喝。”我一边提着水壶，往咖啡机里倒水，一边扭过头对她说道。

When the coffeemaker begins to gurgle, I take my seat at the kitchen table beside Pari. “Ah oui. Voilà. Here it is,” she says. She flips the album around and pushes it over to me. She taps on a picture. “This is the place. Where your father and I were born. And our brother Iqbal too.”

咖啡机咕嘟咕嘟响起来了，我挨着帕丽坐到了厨房的桌边。“噢对了。就是这个。在这儿呢。”她说。她把相册转过来，推到我面前。她点了点一张照片。“就是这儿。你父亲和我出生的地方。我们的弟弟伊克巴尔也生在这儿。”

When she first called me from Paris, she mentioned Iqbal’s name — as proof, perhaps, to convince me she was not lying about who she said she was. But I already knew she was telling the truth. I knew it the moment I picked up the receiver and she spoke my father’s name into my ear and asked whether it was his residence she had reached. And I said, Yes, who is this? and she said, I am his sister. My heart kicked violently. I fumbled for a chair to drop into, everything around me suddenly pin-drop quiet. It was a shock, yes, the sort of third-act theatrical thing that rarely happens to people in real life. But on another plane — a plane that defies rationalizing, a more fragile plane, one whose essence would fracture and splinter if I even vocalized it — I wasn’t surprised that she was calling. As if I had expected it, even, my whole life, that through some dizzying fit of design, or circumstance, or chance, or fate, or whatever name you want to slap on it, we would find each other, she and I.

她第一次从巴黎给我打电话时，曾经提起过伊克巴尔的名字——作为证据，好让我相信她没有撒谎，她就是自己所说的那个人。可我已经知道她讲的都是实话。我一拿起电话听筒，听到她讲出我父亲的名字，问我这是不是他家的电话，我就知道她是谁了。当时我说：是的，您是谁？她说：我是他妹妹。我的心好一通乱撞。我摸到把椅子，一屁股坐下去，周围的一切都变得无声无息，连根针掉在地上都听得见。震惊，真的，就像一出三幕剧，演到了最后一幕，出现了现实生活中人们难得一遇的情节。可是从另一个角度来看——一个公然蔑视合理性的角度，一个脆弱的平台，仿佛我一出声，它的基础便会折断，碎裂——我对她的电话并不觉得吃惊，好像我已经预料到它的到来，甚至可以说，我用一生在等待，通过某种令人眼花缭乱的安排，或缘分，或机遇，或命运，或者随便你给它扣上什么帽子，我们俩，她和我，都终将找到对方的存在。

“I promise you I am not a coffee snob.” She has taken off the yellow scarf and put on reading glasses, through which she is peering at pictures.

“我向你保证，我不是品咖啡的行家。”她已经摘掉了黄围巾，戴上了老花镜，透过镜片端详着照片。

I carried the receiver with me to the backyard then and sat on a chair by the vegetable patch, where I have kept growing the bell peppers and giant squash my mother had planted. The sun warmed my neck as I lit a cigarette with quivering hands.

我拿上电话听筒，走到后院，在菜园边的椅子上坐下，母亲在这儿种了灯笼椒和南瓜，现在我接着种。阳光暖暖地照着我的脖子，我用颤抖的手点燃了一支香烟。

There was silence at the other end, but I had the impression she was weeping soundlessly, that she had rolled her head away from the phone to do it.

电话另一端陷入了沉默，可我感觉她在无声地哭泣，而且哭的时候，她背过了脸，嘴巴离开了电话。

I know who you are, I said. I’ve known all my life.

我知道你是谁。我说，从小到大，我一直都知道。

We spoke for almost an hour. I told her I knew what had happened to her, how I used to make my father recount the story for me at bedtime. Pari said she had been unaware of her own history herself and would have probably died without knowing it if not for a letter left behind by her stepuncle, Nabi, before his own death in Kabul, in which he had detailed the events of her childhood among other things. The letter had been left in the care of someone named Markos Varvaris, a surgeon working in Kabul, who had then searched for and found Pari in France. Over the summer, Pari had flown to Kabul, met with Markos Varvaris, who had arranged for her to visit Shadbagh.

我们谈了差不多一个钟头。我告诉她，我知道她过去的经历，过去我在睡觉之前，常常让我父亲多讲一遍讲她的故事。帕丽说，她对自己的过去一无所知，而且很可能到死都不会知道，多亏她舅舅纳比在喀布尔去世之前，留下了一封信，他在信中详细地回忆了她童年时的种种遭遇，还有其他的事情。这封信留给了某个叫马科斯·瓦尔瓦里斯的人，让他转交，他是个外科医生，在喀布尔工作，他四下打听，最后在法国找到了帕丽。这一年的夏天，帕丽飞到了喀布尔，和马科斯·瓦尔瓦里斯见了面，他安排她去了沙德巴格。

“My God!” I breathe.

“我的天！”我倒吸了一口凉气。

I slide the photo album closer now and inspect the picture that Pari is pointing to. I see a mansion nestled behind high shiny-white walls topped with barbed wire. Or, rather, someone’s tragically misguided idea of a mansion, three stories high, pink, green, yellow, white, with parapets and turrets and pointed eaves and mosaics and mirrored skyscraper glass. A monument to kitsch gone woefully awry.

现在，我把相册拉近，细看帕丽指给我的照片。我看到一座豪宅，深居于高墙之内，墙体煞白，墙头围着铁丝网。或者不如说，有人可悲地误断了豪宅的定义。它三层高，有粉，有绿，有黄，有白，也有胸墙，有角楼，有突出的房檐，有马赛克，还有反光的玻璃幕墙。一座媚俗的纪念碑，惨不忍睹。

That was when I had to tell her.

到了那个时候，我不得不实言相告。

Near the end of the conversation, I sensed her gathering herself before she finally said, Well, I think I am ready. Can I speak with him now?

谈话临近结束，我感到她鼓足勇气，才终于开口发问：我现在能和他讲话吗？

“Orchards.”

“果园。”

“C’est affreux, non?” Pari says. “It is horrible. The Afghans, they call these Narco Palaces. This one is the house of a well-known criminal of war.”

“真丑，不是吗？”帕丽说，“真难看。阿富汗人管它叫‘毒宫’。房主是个有名的战争罪犯。”

“Yes.” She runs her fingers over the photo of the mansion. “I wish I know where our old house was exactly, I mean in relation to this Narco Palace. I would be happy to know the precise spot.”

“对。”她的手指在豪宅照片的周围比画着。“我真想弄清楚我们的老房子具体在哪儿，我知道它就在毒宫这一片。要是能弄清楚准确的地点，那就太好了。”

“So this is all that’s left of Shadbagh?”

“沙德巴格只剩下了这些东西？”

“Of the old village, yes. This, and many acres of fruit trees of — what do you call it?– des vergers.”

“对老村子来说，是的。看这儿，有好多亩果树的…你们怎么说？… des vergers。”

She tells me about the new Shadbagh — an actual town, with schools, a clinic, a shopping district, even a small hotel — which has been built about two miles away from the site of the old village. The town was where she and her translator had looked for her half brother. I had learned all of this over the course of that first, long phone conversation with Pari, how no one in town seemed to know Iqbal until Pari had run into an old man who did, an old childhood friend of Iqbal’s, who had spotted him and his family staying on a barren field near the old windmill. Iqbal had told this old friend that when he was in Pakistan, he had been receiving money from his older brother who lived in northern California. I asked, Pari said on the phone, I asked, Did Iqbal tell you the name of this brother? and the old man said, Yes, Abdullah. And then, alors, after that the rest was not so difficult. Finding you and your father, I mean.

她跟我讲起了新沙德巴格。它是座有模有样的小城镇，建在离老村旧址三公里远的地方，有学校、医院、商业区，甚至还有一家小旅馆。她带着翻译，到镇上找过她的异母弟弟。第一次和帕丽在电话里长谈时，她已经告诉过我了，镇上好像没有一个人认得伊克巴尔，帕丽最后碰到一个老头，他是伊克巴尔童年时代的朋友，曾经见过他和全家老小，住在老磨坊附近的一块荒地上。伊克巴尔告诉过这位老友，他在巴基斯坦的时候，一直都能收到他哥哥寄来的钱，他哥哥住在加州北部。我问，帕丽说，我问，伊克巴尔有没有告诉你他哥哥叫什么？那老头说，告诉过，叫阿卜杜拉。那么，alors[10]，这以后的事就不是那么困难了。我是说，找到你和你父亲就不难了。【注：[10]法语：于是。】

I asked Iqbal’s friend where Iqbal was now, Pari said. I asked what happened to him, and the old man said he did not know. But he seemed very nervous, and he did not look at me when he said this. And I think, Pari, I worry that something bad happened to Iqbal.

我问伊克巴尔的朋友，伊克巴尔现在在什么地方？帕丽说，我问，他出了什么事？那老头说他不知道。可他好像非常紧张，说话的时候都没有看我。所以我想，帕丽，我担心，伊克巴尔遇到了什么不好的事。

“That was the night that we met,” Pari says. “It was a setup.”

“我们就是那天晚上认识的。”帕丽说，“别人介绍的。”

Pari nods. “Yes. When we get married, I thought, Oh, we will have a long time together. I thought to myself, Thirty years at least, maybe forty. Fifty, if we are lucky. Why not?” She stares at the picture, lost for a moment, then smiles lightly. “But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.” She pushes the album away and sips her coffee. “And you? You never get married?”

帕丽点点头。“是啊。我们结婚时，我想，噢，我们要在一起过很长时间。我心里想，最少也得三十年，也许四十年，如果我们有福气的话。为什么不呢？”她盯着这张照片，有点出神，过了一会儿才微微一笑。“可是时间啊，它就像美貌，你拥有的总是不如想的那么多。”她推开相册，喝了口咖啡。“你呢？你一直没结婚吗？”

I keep turning the pages of the album as she provides captions to the snapshots — her old friend Collette, Isabelle’s husband Albert, Pari’s own husband Eric, who had been a playwright and had died of a heart attack back in 1997. I pause at a photo of the two of them, impossibly young, sitting side by side on orange-colored cushions in some kind of restaurant, her in a white blouse, him in a T-shirt, his hair, long and limp, tied in a ponytail.

现在我来给相册翻页，她告诉我照片上的人都是谁。她的闺中密友科莱特，伊莎贝尔的丈夫阿尔贝，还有帕丽的丈夫埃里克。埃里克是个剧作家，1977年死于心脏病。我在他俩的一张照片上停下来，他们年轻得不可思议，肩并肩，坐在餐厅橘黄色的坐垫上，她穿白衬衫，埃里克穿圆领衫，他的头发又长又软，扎成了马尾辫。

“He had a kind face.”

“他看上去人很好。”

She flips through more pages now and shows me photographs of her children — Alain, Isabelle, and Thierry — and snapshots of her grandchildren — at birthday parties, posing in swimming trunks at the edge of a pool. Her apartment in Paris, the pastel blue walls and white blinds pulled down to the sills, the shelves of books. Her cluttered office at the university, where she had taught mathematics before the rheumatoid had forced her into retirement.

她往后翻，给我看她孩子们的照片，阿兰、伊莎贝尔和蒂埃里，还有她孙子孙女们的生活小照，有的是在生日晚会上拍的，有的穿着游泳裤，在泳池边上摆着姿势。还有她在巴黎的公寓，浅蓝色的墙，白色的百叶窗向下拉到窗台上，成排的书架。她在大学里乱糟糟的办公室，在风湿病逼得她退休之前，她一直在大学里教数学。

“Non, non. It’s all right.” She brushes the picture absently with the side of her thumb.

“不，不。不要紧。”她心不在焉地用大拇指的指肚蹭了蹭照片。

I point to a striking-looking woman with long dark hair and big eyes. In the picture, she is holding a cigarette like she is bored — elbow tucked into her side, head tilted up insouciantly — but her gaze is penetrating, defiant.

我指着一个引人注目的女人，长长的黑发，大大的眼睛。在照片上，她手里夹着一支香烟，似乎颇为厌倦，胳膊肘紧贴着身体一侧，头漫不经心地向后仰着，可她的目光非常犀利，充满了挑衅的味道。

This is not true. It was painful and messy. Even now, the memory of it is like a soft ache behind my breastbone.

这不是实话。那件事既痛苦又让人心乱如麻。即使到了现在，一想起来，胸口还是会隐隐作痛。

“This is Maman. My mother, Nila Wahdati. Or, I thought she was my mother. You understand.”

“这是妈芒。我的母亲，妮拉·瓦赫达提。也可以说我原以为她是我母亲。你知道的。”

“No. It’s fine. He found someone both more beautiful and less… encumbered, I guess. Speaking of beautiful, who is this?”

“不，没关系的。他找了别人，更漂亮，也…也没那么多的拖累，我猜的。说到漂亮，这是谁？”

“She’s gorgeous,” I say.

“她漂亮极了。”我说。

I shrug and flip another page. “There was one close call.”

我耸耸肩，翻到了下一页。“有一次，千钧一发。”

“Maman was elegant and talented. She read books and had many strong opinions and always she was telling them to people. But she had also very deep sadness. All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.”

“妈芒很优雅，也很有才华。她读了很多书，有很多非常大胆的观念，而且从来都是对别人直言相告。可她心里也深藏着悲伤。我这一辈子都觉得，她给了我一把铁锹，对我说：把我心里这些窟窿填上，帕丽。”

She ducks her head. “I am sorry. I am very rude.”

她把脑袋一低。“真对不起，我太冒昧了。”

“She was. She committed suicide. Nineteen seventy-four.”

“是很漂亮。她自杀了。1974年。”

“I’m sorry.”

“对不起。”

“I am sorry, ‘close call’?”

“对不起，‘千钧一发’？”

“It means I almost did. But we never made it to the ring stage.”

“意思是差一点儿就结了。可我们没到戴戒指的阶段。”

She lets out a heavy breath and folds the photo album shut. After a pause, she says brightly, “Ah, bon. Now I wish to ask something of you.”

她长长地出了一口气，合上了相册。稍停片刻，她又高高兴兴地说：“噢，好了。现在我想问你点事情。”

“Of course.”

“当然可以。”

“But I could not. And later, I did not want to. I did careless things. Reckless things.” She sits back in the chair, her shoulders slumping, puts her thin white hands in her lap. She considers for a minute before saying, “J’aurais dû être plus gentille — I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.” For a moment, her face looks stricken. She is like a helpless schoolgirl. “It would not have been so difficult,” she says tiredly. “I should have been more kind. I should have been more like you.”

“可我做不到。后来呢，我也不想做。我干了些不负责任的事。不顾后果的事。”她靠到椅子背上，肩膀塌下来，把两只又白又细的手放到腿上。她思考了一分钟，才开口说道：“J‘ aurais d être plus gentille——我真该对她好点。人永远都不会后悔这样做。等你老了，你永远都不会对自己说：噢，真希望我过去对某某人不好。你永远不会那样想的。”有一阵儿，她露出了一副深受打击的表情，看上去就像个无助的小女生。“那样做本来也没那么困难。”她疲倦地说，“我真该对她好点。我真该向你学习。”

I nod. I think I understand something of that.

我点点头，感觉自己听懂了什么。

“Will you show me some of your paintings?”

“能给我看看你的画吗？”

We smile at each other.

我们俩相视一笑。

Pari stays a month with Baba and me. In the mornings, we take breakfast together in the kitchen. Black coffee and toast for Pari, yogurt for me, and fried eggs with bread for Baba, something he has found a taste for in the last year. I worried it was going to raise his cholesterol, eating all those eggs, and I asked Dr. Bashiri during one of Baba’s appointments. Dr. Bashiri gave me one of his tight-lipped smiles and said, Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. And that reassured me — at least until a bit later when I was helping Baba buckle his seat belt and it occurred to me that maybe what Dr. Bashiri had really meant was, We’re past all that now.

帕丽跟巴巴和我待了一个月。早晨我俩一起下厨，弄早餐。黑咖啡和吐司是帕丽的，我喝酸奶，煎蛋和面包给巴巴，从去年开始，他就喜欢上了这一口。吃这么多的鸡蛋，我担心会让他的胆固醇增高，所以有一次巴巴去看病的时候，我问了巴希里大夫。他还是老样子，冲我抿嘴一笑，说：哦，我可不担心。这句话打消了我的疑虑，至少暂时如此，可是过了一会儿，在帮巴巴扣好安全带的时候，我才想到，也许巴希里大夫的本意是：我们已经过了那个阶段。

You could just pop in and ask, I said.

你进来问就行了。我说。

After lunch, the three of us go out for a stroll. We keep it short for both their sakes — what with Baba tiring quickly and Pari’s arthritis. Baba has a wariness in his eyes, tottering anxiously along the sidewalk between Pari and me, wearing an old newsboy cap, his cardigan sweater, and wool-lined moccasins. There is a middle school around the block with an ill-manicured soccer field and, across that, a small playground where I often take Baba. We always find a young mother or two, strollers parked near them, a toddler stumbling around in the sandbox, now and then a teenage couple cutting school, swinging lazily and smoking. They rarely look at Baba — the teenagers — and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.

吃完午饭，我们便出门散步，时间不长，因为他俩都撑不下来——巴巴很快就累了，而帕丽有关节炎。巴巴的目光中带着警惕，心神不宁地沿着人行道，一步三晃地走在我和帕丽中间。他戴着一顶旧前进帽，身穿开襟羊毛衫，脚上是一双翻毛软皮鞋。街区周围有一座中学，校内有块足球场，草皮修剪得很烂，对面就是我常带巴巴去的小运动场。我们总能看见一两个年轻的母亲，婴儿车停在她们身边，小宝宝在沙坑里东倒西歪，偶尔有一对十几岁大的孩子，旷了课，抽着烟，吊儿郎当地晃来晃去。这些半大孩子啊，他们从来不拿正眼瞧巴巴，就算看一眼，也是无动于衷，甚至带着隐隐的蔑视，好像我父亲的年老力衰纯属活该。

After breakfast, I retreat into my office — otherwise known as my bedroom — and Pari keeps Baba company while I work. At her request, I have written down for her the schedule of the TV shows he likes to watch, what time to give him his midmorning pills, which snacks he likes and when he’s apt to ask for them. It was her idea I write it all down.

吃完早餐，我就回到自己的办公室——其实就是我的卧室。我工作时，帕丽陪着巴巴。应她的要求，我给她写了巴巴喜欢看的电视节目表：什么时候让他吃上午的药，他喜欢哪种零食，一般什么时间吃。是她让我把这些都写下来的。

If you want him to nap, flip on the Weather Channel or anything to do with golf. And never let him watch cooking shows.

如果你想让他小睡一会儿，就换到天气频道，任何跟高尔夫有关的节目也成。千万别让他看烹饪节目。

I don’t want to disturb you, she said. And I want to know. I want to know him.

我不想打扰你。她说，我也想了解。我想了解他。

I don’t tell her that she will never know him the way she longs to. Still, I share with her a few tricks of the trade. For instance, how if Baba starts to get agitated I can usually, though not always, calm him down — for reasons that baffle me still — by quickly handing him a free home-shopping catalog or a furniture-sale flyer. I keep a steady supply of both.

我没告诉她，她永远也没办法按自己希望的方式了解他了。不过，我还是跟她讲了一些小窍门。比如说，如果巴巴开始焦虑不安，要想让他平静下来，我通常——不是次次如此——会马上递给他一本免费送来的家庭购物目录，或是一份卖家具的广告折页。这两样东西我总是有充足的备货。

They agitate him for some reason.

不知道怎么搞的，他一看就激动。

Why not?

为什么不能？

“Yes, but a lot of years have passed,” Pari says. “She is older now, you see.”

“是不像，可是已经过去很多年了。”帕丽说，“你瞧，她现在长大了。”

One day, I pause during dictation and go to the kitchen to refresh my coffee and I find the two of them watching a movie together. Baba on the recliner, his moccasins sticking out from under the shawl, his head bent forward, mouth gaping slightly, eyebrows drawn together in either concentration or confusion. And Pari sitting beside him, hands folded in her lap, feet crossed at the ankles.

有一天，我放下手头正在听写的录音，去厨房添咖啡。我发现他们俩正在看一部电影。巴巴靠在躺椅上，从披巾底下伸出两只便鞋，脑袋前倾，嘴巴微张，眉毛皱在一起，不知道是专心还是困惑。帕丽坐在他身边，两只手夹在膝盖中间，双脚交叠。

“That is Latika.”

“这是拉蒂卡。”

“Latika, the little girl from the slums. The one who could not jump on the train.”

“拉蒂卡，贫民窟那个小姑娘。没爬上火车的那个。”

“Who’s this one?” Baba says.

“这是谁呀？”巴巴问。

“Who?”

“谁？”

One day the week before, at the playground, we were sitting on a park bench, the three of us, and Pari said, Abdullah, do you remember that when you were a boy you had a little sister?

此前的那个星期，有一天在运动场，我们仨坐在街头长凳上，帕丽问：阿卜杜拉，你还记得吗？你小时候有个妹妹。

She’d barely finished her sentence when Baba began to weep. Pari pressed his head into her chest, saying, I am sorry, I am so sorry, over and over in a panicky way, wiping his cheeks with her hands, but Baba kept seizing with sobs, so violently he started to choke.

她话音还未落，巴巴就哭起来了。帕丽把他的脑袋搂进怀里，连声说：对不起，真对不起。她一遍又一遍地说着，惊慌失措，拿手给他抹着脸上的泪水，可是巴巴哭得没完没了，昏天黑地，都喘不上气来了。

“She doesn’t look little.”

“她不像小姑娘。”

Baba grins.

巴巴咧开嘴巴笑了。

But it’s only minutes later, when I am back in my room wearing earphones and typing, that I hear a loud shattering sound and Baba screaming something in Farsi. I rip the earphones off and rush to the kitchen. I see Pari backed up against the wall where the microwave is, hands bunched protectively under her chin, and Baba, wild-eyed, jabbing her in the shoulder with his cane. Broken shards of a drinking glass glitter at their feet.

可是只过了几分钟，我刚回到自己房间，戴上耳机，正打着字呢，就听见很响的一声，有东西碎了，巴巴在用波斯语大叫着什么。我一把扯下耳机，冲进厨房，只见帕丽背靠着微波炉那面墙，两只手抱在一起，挡在下巴底下，巴巴怒目圆睁，正在拿拐棍戳她的肩膀。水杯的碎片在他们脚下闪闪发光。

“You don’t think?”

“你觉得不是？”

“He’s serving tea!”

“他是送茶水的！”

“He is not,” Baba says roughly.

“不是。”巴巴断然否认。

Baba looks at her blankly.

巴巴面无表情地看着她。

Flashback, I mouth into my coffee cup.

闪回。我悄悄对着自己的咖啡杯说。

“I know what I would do,” Pari says.

“我知道我想做什么。”帕丽说。

Baba grunts.

巴巴嘟哝了一声。

“The game show is now, Abdullah. And when he was serving tea, that was before.”

“竞猜节目是现在的事，阿卜杜拉。可他送茶水的时候，那是从前。”

“Yes, but that was — what do you call it?– it was from the past. From before. It was a…”

“没错，可这是…你们怎么说？说过去，说从前。这叫…”

Pari watches him as though waiting for a moment when something will open in his eyes. “Let me ask you something, Abdullah,” she says. “If one day you win a million dollars, what would you do?”

帕丽望着他的眼睛，好像等着他茅塞顿开的一刻。“我问你个事情，阿卜杜拉。”她说，“如果有一天，你赢了一百万美元，你想做什么？”

Baba blinks vacantly. On the screen, Jamal and Salim are sitting atop a Mumbai high-rise, their feet dangling over the side.

巴巴瞪大了眼睛，一脸茫然。电视屏幕上，贾马尔和萨利姆坐在孟买一座高楼的顶上，脚悬在楼外。

“If I win a million dollars, I buy a house on this street. That way, we can be neighbors, you and me, and every day I come here and we watch TV together.”

“如果我赢了一百万美元。我就在这条街上买幢房子。这样咱们就能做邻居了，你和我，然后我每天都过来，咱们一起看电视。”

Baba grimaces, shifting his weight, then stretches out farther in the recliner.

巴巴龇牙咧嘴，换了个姿势，四仰八叉地歪在躺椅上。

“And do you know who this is, Abdullah?”

“那你知道这个是谁吗，阿卜杜拉？”

“He is Jamal. The boy from the game show.”

“这是贾马尔。竞猜节目里那个小伙子。”

“Get her out of here!” Baba cries when he sees me. “I want this woman out of my house!”

“让她滚出去！”巴巴一看见我就吼，“让这女人从我家里滚出去！”

“Baba!”

“巴巴！”

“She stole my pills!”

“她偷了我的药！”

Pari’s cheeks have gone pale. Tears spring from her eyes.

帕丽脸色煞白，泪如泉涌。

I wrestle the cane from his hand but not before he gives me a good fight for it.

我花了好大的力气，才从他手里夺下拐棍。

“Put down the cane, Baba, for God’s sake! And don’t take a step. You’ll cut your feet.”

“放下拐棍，巴巴，看在真主分上！别往前走，你会把脚割伤的。”

“I want this woman gone! She’s a thief!”

“我要这女人滚！她是小偷！”

“Those are hers, Baba,” I say. I put a hand on his shoulder and guide him out of the kitchen. He shivers under my palm. As we pass by Pari, he almost lunges at her again, and I have to restrain him. “All right, that’s enough of that, Baba. And those are her pills, not yours. She takes them for her hands.” I grab a shopping catalog from the coffee table on the way to the recliner.

“那是她的药，巴巴。”我说。我用一只手搂住他肩膀，领着他走出厨房。他在我胳膊底下哆嗦着。我们经过帕丽身过的时候，他差一点儿又朝她扑过去，我不得不死死把他拉住。“行了，巴巴，够了。那是她的药，不是你的。她吃这药，是治她手的。”我领着他走向躺椅，顺手从茶几上抓了一本购物目录。

“What is he saying?” Pari says miserably.

“他在说什么？”帕丽可怜巴巴地问。

“I don’t trust that woman,” Baba says, flopping into the recliner. “You don’t know. But I know. I know a thief when I see one!” He pants as he grabs the catalog from my hand and starts violently flipping the pages. Then he slams it in his lap and looks up at me, his eyebrows shot high. “And a damn liar too. You know what she said to me, this woman? You know what she said? That she was my sister! My sister! Wait ’til Sultana hears about this one.”

“我信不过那女人。”巴巴说着，一屁股坐到躺椅上。“你不知道，可我知道。我一眼就能看出谁是小偷！”他气喘吁吁说着，从我手里抓过那本目录，哗啦哗啦地翻了一通，然后把目录放腿上一放，抬头看着我，眉毛竖得老高。“她还是个骗子。你知道这女人跟我说什么吗？你知道她说了什么吗？她说她是我妹妹！我妹妹！让苏丹娜也来听听。”

“All right, Baba. We’ll tell her together.”

“好的，巴巴。到时候咱们一起告诉她。”

“Crazy woman.”

“疯婆子。”

“We’ll tell Mother, and then us three will laugh the crazy woman right out the door. Now, you go on and relax, Baba. Everything is all right. There.”

“一定讲给我妈听，到时候咱们一起笑，赶那疯婆子出门。现在你得想开点儿，巴巴。瞧，现在都挺好的。”

“I am very sorry,” she says. “That was not prudent of me.”

“真对不起。”她说，“我太不小心了。”

I flip on the Weather Channel and sit beside him, stroking his shoulder, until his shaking ceases and his breathing slows. Less than five minutes pass before he dozes off.

我换到天气频道，然后挨着他坐下，抚摸着他的肩膀，直到他不再哆嗦，呼吸也慢了下来。不到五分钟，他就睡着了。

Back in the kitchen, Pari sits slumped on the floor, back against the dishwasher. She looks shaken. She dabs at her eyes with a paper napkin.

我回到厨房，帕丽坐在地板上，耷拉着脑袋，背靠着洗碗机。看上去她在发抖。她用纸巾擦着眼睛。

“Je suis une imbécile. I wanted to tell him so much. I thought maybe if I tell him the truth… I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“我是个笨蛋。我以为我可以告诉他真相…真不知道我是怎么想的。”

“It’s all right,” I say, reaching under the sink for the dustpan and brush. I find little pink-and-orange pills scattered on the floor among the broken glass. I pick them up one by one and sweep the glass off the linoleum.

“没关系的。”我说着，从洗碗池下面够出簸箕和扫把。在地板上，我发现了一些小药片，粉色和橙色相间，散落在碎玻璃当中。我把它们一粒粒捡起来，再把玻璃从油地毡上扫掉。

I empty the broken glass into the trash bin. I kneel down, pull back the collar of Pari’s shirt, and check her shoulder where Baba had jabbed her. “That’s going to bruise. And I speak with authority on the matter.” I sit on the floor beside her.

我把碎玻璃倒进垃圾桶，然后跪下来，拉开帕丽衬衫的领口，看看她肩膀上被巴巴戳过的地方。“会肿起来的。我跟你说肯定会肿起来的。”我挨着她坐到地板上。

She opens her palm, and I pour the pills into it. “He is like this often?”

她张开手，我把药片放进她手里。“他经常这个样子吗？”她问。

“He has his spit-and-vinegar days.”

“有些日子他就是这种臭脾气。”

“Maybe you think about finding professional help, no?”

“也许你该考虑一下，找专业人员来帮忙，对吗？”

“I know,” I say, “but not yet. I want to take care of him as long as I can.”

“我知道。”我说，“可是还不到时候。我想照顾他，等我实在照顾不了再说。”

I sigh, nodding. I have thought a lot lately of the inevitable morning when I will wake up to an empty house while Baba lies curled up on an unfamiliar bed, eyeing a breakfast tray brought to him by a stranger. Baba slumped behind a table in some activity room, nodding off.

我叹口气，点点头。最近一段时间，我曾翻来覆去想过那个不可避免的早晨，我将在空荡荡的家里醒来，而与此同时，巴巴蜷缩着身体，躺在一张陌生的床上，看着陌生的人用托盘给他端来早餐。巴巴曾经在一个活动室里打起了瞌睡，跌到了桌子下。

I am not sure she does. I don’t tell her the other reason. I can barely admit it to myself. Namely, how afraid I am to be free despite my frequent desire for it. Afraid of what will happen to me, what I will do with myself, when Baba is gone. All my life, I have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank, behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath.

我不知道她是不是真能理解。还有另一个原因我没有告诉她。这个原因连我自己都难以承认。也就是说，尽管我常常充满渴望，却害怕得到自由，害怕我将要遇到的事，害怕巴巴一走，我自己会手足无措。从小到大，我一直都像一条水族馆里的金鱼，生活在安全的玻璃水箱里，周围的屏障固然透明，却终究不可逾越。我可以随意观察外面那个模糊的世界，如果我愿意，也可以想像自己置身其中。然而我一直都被关在里面，受到限制，那是巴巴为我修造的生存边界，坚硬而不可弯折。在我小的时候，他这样做是刻意而为，现在却是无心插柳，因为他正在一天天地老去。我感觉自己已经习惯了这层玻璃，害怕它一旦碎掉，而我又孤身一人，必将被裹挟而出，冲入未知的汪洋，扑扑打打，无助，迷失，上气不接下气。

Pari smiles and blows her nose. “I understand that.”

帕丽笑了，擤了擤鼻子。“我能理解。”

Next to me, Pari begins to get up. I watch her flatten the wrinkles of her dress, and I am struck anew by what a miracle it is that she is here, standing inches from me.

帕丽从我身边站起身。我望着她抚平衣褶，再一次感到这是个多么大的奇迹，她在这儿，就站在我触手可及的地方。

The truth I rarely admit to is, I have always needed the weight of Baba on my back.

我难以承认的真相就是，我始终需要背负着巴巴的重量。

Why else had I so readily surrendered my dreams of art school, hardly mounting a resistance when Baba asked me not to go to Baltimore? Why else had I left Neal, the man I was engaged to a few years ago? He owned a small solar-panel-installation company. He had a square-shaped, creased face I liked the moment I met him at Abe’s Kabob House, when I asked for his order and he looked up from the menu and grinned. He was patient and friendly and even-tempered. It isn’t true what I told Pari about him. Neal didn’t leave me for someone more beautiful. I sabotaged things with him. Even when he promised to convert to Islam, to take Farsi classes, I found other faults, other excuses. I panicked, in the end, and ran back to all the familiar nooks and crannies, and crevasses, of my life at home.

还有别的理由吗？当年巴巴要我别去巴尔的摩的时候，我就那样轻易地放弃了美术学院的梦想，几乎没有做出反抗。还有别的理由吗？我离开了尼尔。几年前我和他订了婚。他拥有一家小公司，经营太阳能电池板的安装。他长了一张皱巴巴的方脸盘，我在亚伯烤肉馆一见他就喜欢上了，当时我请他点菜，他从菜单上抬起头，龇牙一笑。他很耐心，也很随和，处事稳重。我跟帕丽谈到他时，说的不是真话。尼尔不是为了某个更漂亮的人离开了我，是我蓄意毁掉了我们之间的关系。就算他保证皈依伊斯兰教，上波斯语课，我还是挑出了别的毛病，找到了别的借口。到头来是我慌了神，跑回了熟悉的角落，钻进了地洞和墙缝，回到了我在家的生活。

I get up and go to my room. One of the quirks of never leaving home is that no one cleans out your old room and sells your toys at a garage sale, no one gives away the clothes you have outgrown. I know that for a woman who is nearly thirty, I have too many relics of my childhood sitting around, most of them stuffed in a large chest at the foot of my bed whose lid I now lift. Inside are old dolls, the pink pony that came with a mane I could brush, the picture books, all the Happy Birthday and Valentine’s cards I had made my parents in elementary school with kidney beans and glitter and little sparkling stars. The last time we spoke, Neal and I, when I broke things off, he said, I can’t wait for you, Pari. I won’t wait around for you to grow up.

我起身进了自己的房间。从不离家有很多借口，其中之一是，这样就不会有人把你的闺房清理干净，把你的玩具摆在车库门前卖掉，也不会有人把你穿不下的衣服送人。作为一个年近三十的女人，我对此深有体会，我身边有太多童年时代的遗存，大部分装在我床边的一个大箱子里。现在我打开它的盖子，里面放着许多旧娃娃，一匹粉红色的小马，身上有供我梳理的鬃毛，还有图画书，所有的生日快乐和情人节快乐的贺卡，那是我上小学时给我父母做的，上面有红芸豆、亮亮的小饰物和发光的小星星。尼尔和我最后一次讲话，是我提出分手的时候，他说：我不能等你了，帕丽。我不会痴痴地等着你长大。

She reaches for her reading glasses sitting on the side table and yanks off the rubber band holding the postcards together. Looking at the first one, she frowns. It is a picture of Las Vegas, of Caesars Palace at night, all glitter and lights. She flips it over and reads the note aloud.

她拿过放在边桌上的老花镜，扯掉把明信片捆在一起的橡皮筋。她眯起眼睛，看着第一张。上面印着拉斯维加斯的照片，恺撒宫酒店的夜景，灯光璀璨。她把明信片翻过来，念出了写在上面的文字。

I shut the lid and go back to the living room, where Pari has settled into the couch across from Baba. I take a seat next to her.

我合上盖子，走回客厅，帕丽已经坐到了巴巴对面的沙发上。我

“I want to show you something,” I say.

“我想给你看些东西。”我说。

“Here,” I say, handing her the stack of postcards.

挨着她坐下。“给。”我说，递给她一摞明信片。

July 21, 1992

1992年7月21日

Pari

帕丽

Dear Pari,

亲爱的帕丽：

P. S. I’m having the most awesome ice cream sundae as I write this.

又及：我一边写字，一边在吃最棒的冰激凌圣代。

You wouldn’t believe how hot this place gets. Today Baba got a blister when he put his palm down on the hood of our rental car! Mother had to put toothpaste on it. In Caesars Palace, they have Roman soldiers with swords and helmets and red capes. Baba kept trying to get Mother to take a picture with them but she wouldn’t. But I did! I’ll show you when I get home. That’s it for now. I miss you. Wish you were here.

你想不到这地方有多热。我们租了辆小汽车，巴巴今天把手放到引擎盖上，结果烫出个大水泡！妈妈只好往他手上抹牙膏。恺撒宫有古罗马的士兵，拿着剑，戴头盔，披着红斗篷。巴巴老想让妈妈跟他们拍张照片，她不肯。可我拍了！我到家就给你看。暂时写到这儿吧。我想你。真希望你也在这儿。

She flips to the next postcard. Hearst Castle. She reads the note under her breath now. Had his own zoo! How cool is that? Kangaroos, zebras, antelopes, Bactrian camels — they’re the ones with two humps! One of Disneyland, Mickey in the wizard’s hat, waving a wand. Mother screamed when the hanged guy fell from the ceiling! You should have heard her! La Jolla Cove. Big Sur. 17 Mile Drive. Muir Woods. Lake Tahoe. Miss you. You would have loved it for sure. Wish you were here.

她翻到下一张明信片。赫斯特城堡[11]。这一次她小声读了上面的字。他有自己的动物园！多酷啊！袋鼠，斑马，羚羊，双峰驼——它们长了两个驼峰！一张迪士尼乐园的，米老鼠戴着巫师帽，挥舞着魔杖。吊死鬼从天花板上落下来的时候，妈妈发出了尖叫！你都能听得见！拉霍亚湾，大苏尔，十七英里大道，穆尔森林，太浩湖。想你。你肯定喜欢。真希望你也在这儿。【注：[11]美国报业大亨威廉·兰道夫·赫斯特建造的城堡，现为加州州立公园。】

I wish you were here.

我真希望你在这儿。

Pari puts the postcards down on the coffee table and nudges closer to me. “Tell me.”

帕丽把明信片放到茶几上，凑近我。“跟我说说。”

I look down at my hands and rotate my watch around on my wrist. “I used to pretend we were twin sisters, you and I. No one could see you but me. I told you everything. All my secrets. You were real to me, always so near. I felt less alone because of you. Like we were Doppelgängers. Do you know that word?”

我低头看着自己的手，转动着我腕子上的手表。“我经常假装咱俩是孪生姐妹，你跟我。除了我，谁都看不见你。我什么都跟你说。我所有的秘密。对我来说你是活生生的，总是那么亲近。因为有你，我感觉就不那么孤单了。我们好像Doppelg.ngers[12]。你懂这个词吗？” 【注：[12]德语：分身。】

I shake my head. “To you.” I laugh. “This is embarrassing.”

我摇摇头。“给你的。”我大笑起来，“说起来真是丢脸。”

I wish you were here.

我真希望你在这儿。

A smile comes to her eyes. “Yes.”

她笑眯眯地说：“我懂。”

I used to picture us as two leaves, blowing miles apart in the wind yet bound by the deep tangled roots of the tree from which we had both fallen.

我常把我俩想像成两片树叶，从同一棵树上飘落，被风吹散，相隔数里，却仍然找得到深深纠缠的树根。

Pari takes off her glasses. “You wrote postcards to yourself?”

帕丽摘下眼镜。“你给自己写明信片？”

“For me, it was the contrary,” Pari says. “You say you felt a presence, but I sensed only an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like the patient who cannot explain to the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.” She puts her hand on mine, and neither of us says anything for a minute.

“对我来说，情况正好相反。”帕丽说，“你说你能感到我的存在，我体会到的却只是一种缺失。一种没来由的模糊的疼痛。我就像一个病人，跟医生讲不清什么地方疼，只是觉得疼。”她扣住我的手，有一分钟的时间，我们谁也没有说话。

“I’m really sorry,” I say.

“真遗憾。”我说。

From the recliner, Baba groans and shifts.

巴巴在躺椅上哼哼起来，翻了个身。

“Why are you sorry?”

“为什么要说遗憾？”

“But we have found each other, no?” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “And this is who he is now. It’s all right. I feel happy. I have found a part of myself that was lost.” She squeezes my hand. “And I found you, Pari.”

“可我们已经团聚了呀，不是吗？”她说。她动了感情，声音也沙哑了。“这就是现在的他。挺好的。我觉得很幸福了。我已经找到自己失去的一部分。”她抓紧了我的手。“我也找到了你，帕丽。”

“That you found each other too late.”

“因为你们团聚得太迟了。”

Her words tug at my childhood longings. I remember how when I felt lonely, I would whisper her name — our name — and hold my breath, waiting for an echo, certain that it would come someday. Hearing her speak my name now, in this living room, it is as though all the years that divided us are rapidly folding over one another again and again, time accordioning itself down to nothing but the width of a photograph, a postcard, ferrying the most shining relic of my childhood to sit beside me, to hold my hand, and say my name. Our name. I feel a tilting, something clicking into place. Something ripped apart long ago being sealed again. And I feel a soft lurch in my chest, the muffled thump of another heart kick-starting anew next to my own.

她这句话唤醒了我童年的渴望。我想到自己那时多么孤单，我曾轻轻呼唤她的名字——我们的名字——然后屏住呼吸，等待着一声回唤，并且相信总有一天它会到来。现在听到她叫出我的名字，就在这客厅里，仿佛分隔我们的这些岁月正在折叠，一道又一道，时间因此聚拢了，几乎化作无形，只剩下一幅照片、一张明信片的宽度，飞一般送来我童年时代最瑰丽的纪念，坐在我身边，抓着我的手，叫我的名字。我们的名字。我感觉心里一震，好像有什么东西咔嗒一声，扣在了一起。好像有什么东西，很久以前分崩离析，现在复归了原位。我感到胸口被软软地顶着，那是另一颗心，重新跳动起来了，它紧挨着我自己的心，发出低沉的、怦怦的声响。

In the recliner, Baba props himself up on his elbows. He rubs his eyes, looks over to us. “What are you girls plotting?”

巴巴在躺椅上用胳膊肘撑起身体，揉揉眼睛，看看我俩。“你们这俩丫头在鼓捣啥？”

Another nursery rhyme. This one about the bridge in Avignon.

另一首儿歌。这一首唱的是阿维尼翁的桥。

He grins.

他咧开嘴笑了。

Pari hums the tune for me, then recites the lyrics:

帕丽为我哼着调子，接着念出了歌词：

Sur le pont d’Avignon

在阿维尼翁的桥上

L’on y danse, l’on y danse

我们跳舞，我们跳舞

Sur le pont d’Avignon

在阿维尼翁的桥上

“Maman taught it to me when I was little,” she says, tightening the knot of her scarf against a sweeping gust of cold wind. The day is chilly but the sky blue and the sun strong. It strikes the gray-metal-colored Rhône broadside and breaks on its surface into little shards of brightness. “Every French child knows this song.”

“我小时候妈芒教我的。”她说着把头巾扎紧，抵挡忽然吹来的一阵寒风。空气冷飕飕的，天却很蓝，阳光强烈，倾泻在铁灰色的罗纳河上，将水面击碎，幻化成无数细小的光斑。“所有法国孩子都会这首歌。”

L’on y danse tous en rond.

我们围成圆圈跳着舞

We are sitting on a wooden park bench facing the water. As she translates the words, I marvel at the city across the river. Having recently discovered my own history, I am awestruck to find myself in a place so chockful of it, all of it documented, preserved. It’s miraculous. Everything about this city is. I feel wonder at the clarity of the air, at the wind swooping down on the river, making the water slap against the stony banks, at how full and rich the light is and how it seems to shine from every direction. From the park bench, I can see the old ramparts ringing the ancient town center and its tangle of narrow, crooked streets; the west tower of the Avignon Cathedral, the gilded statue of the Virgin Mary gleaming atop it.

我们坐在木制的公共长椅上，面对着河水。她替我翻译着歌词，我却对河对岸的城市暗自称奇。不久以前，我才找到自己的历史，现在又发现自己置身于这样一个充满历史的地方，一切都有记录，一切都得以保存。真是个奇迹。关于这座城市的每一件东西都是如此。我惊讶于它空气的清澈，惊讶于从河上席卷而过的风，吹送着河水，拍击着石岸，也惊讶于阳光多么饱满，多么丰富，仿佛来自四面八方，照耀着整个世界。坐在长椅上，我可以看到老旧的墙垒环绕着古城的中心，狭窄、蜿蜒的街道错乱交缠，阿维尼翁大教堂的西塔之上，镀金的圣母马利亚雕像闪闪发光。

Outside the Papal Palace, she spoke nearly without pause, the names of all the saints and popes and cardinals spilling from her as we strolled through the cathedral square amid the flocks of doves, the tourists, the African merchants in bright tunics selling bracelets and imitation watches, the young, bespectacled musician, sitting on an apple crate, playing “Bohemian Rhapsody” on his acoustic guitar. I don’t recall this loquaciousness from her visit in the U. S., and it feels to me like a delaying tactic, like we are circling around the thing she really wants to do — what we will do — and all these words are like a bridge.

在教皇宫外，她不停地讲啊讲，嘴里迸出一串又一串圣徒、教皇、红衣主教的名字，和我一起漫步穿过教堂前的广场，身边是成群的鸽子，如织的游客，非洲来的小贩穿着颜色鲜艳的袍子，兜售着手镯和假表，有个年轻的乐师戴着眼镜，坐在苹果筐上，怀抱民谣吉他，弹着《波希米亚狂想曲》。我记得她去美国时可没这么健谈，现在我感觉，这就像一种拖延的策略，我们正围着她真心想做的——我们也一定会做的那件事兜圈子，这一番唠叨不过是一座桥而已。

Pari tells me the history of the bridge — the young shepherd who, in the twelfth century, claimed that angels told him to build a bridge across the river and who demonstrated the validity of his claim by lifting up a massive rock and hurling it in the water. She tells me about the boatmen on the Rhône who climbed the bridge to honor their patron, Saint Nicholas. And about all the floods over the centuries that ate away at the bridge’s arches and caused them to collapse. She says these words with the same rapid, nervous energy she had earlier in the day when she led me through the Gothic Palais des Papes. Lifting the audio-guide headphones to point to a fresco, tapping my elbow to draw my attention to an interesting carving, stained glass, the intersecting ribs overhead.

帕丽讲给我听这座桥的历史。话说十二世纪，有个年轻的牧羊人宣称，天使告诉他建一座横跨两岸的桥，为了证明自己所言不虚，他举起一块巨石，把它丢进了河中。帕丽还给我讲了罗纳河上的船夫，他们爬到桥上，敬奉自己的保护神圣尼古拉。可洪水在几百年里侵蚀着桥拱，最后把它冲垮了。她讲这些话时语速很快，兴奋得有些神经兮兮，一如当天早些时候，她带我游览哥特式的教皇宫，摘下语音导览的耳机，指着壁画，轻敲我的胳膊肘，引起我的注意，让我去看有趣的浮雕，教堂的彩窗，头顶上交叉的弯梁。

Baba lives in a nursing home now. When I first went to scout the facility, when the director, Penny — a tall, frail woman with curly strawberry hair — showed me around, I thought, This isn’t so bad.

巴巴现在住进了疗养院。我头一次去那儿考察设施的时候，院长彭妮——一个高个子的纤瘦女人，留着草莓色的卷发——领着我转了一圈，我想：还不算太差。

Further along the path, I said.

每况愈下。我说。

“But you will see a real bridge soon,” she says. “When everybody arrives. We will go together to the Pont du Gard. Do you know it? No? Oh là là. C’est vraiment merveilleux. The Romans built it in the first century for transporting water from Eure to Nîmes. Fifty kilometers! It is a masterpiece of engineering, Pari.”

“你很快就能看到真正的桥了。”她说，“等大伙都到了，咱们一起去加尔桥。你听说过这桥吗？没有？哦啦啦。漂亮死了。那是罗马人在一世纪的时候建造的，好把水从厄尔河运到尼姆。五十公里啊！帕丽，简直是巧夺天工的杰作。”

I have been in France for four days, in Avignon for two. Pari and I took the TGV here from an overcast, chilly Paris, stepped off it to clear skies, a warm wind, and a chorus of cicadas chirping from every tree. At the station, a mad rush to haul my luggage out ensued, and I nearly didn’t make it, hopping off the train just as the doors whooshed shut behind me. I make a mental note now to tell Baba how three seconds more and I would have ended up in Marseille.

我来法国已经四天了，在阿维尼翁待了两天。巴丽和我坐上TGV[13]，从阴郁、寒冷的巴黎来了这儿，一下火车，就是晴朗的天，和暖的风，每棵树上都听得到知了的合唱。在车站，我手忙脚乱地拉出行李，差一点来不及下车，结果我刚跳下火车，车门就嘶的一声，在我身后关上了。此时我暗暗告诉自己，一定把这事告诉巴巴，要是晚下车三秒钟，现在我人就在马赛了。【注：[13]法国的高速火车。】

How is he? Pari asked in Paris during the taxi ride from Charles de Gaulle to her apartment.

他还好吗？帕丽在巴黎问过我。当时我们正坐在出租车上，从戴高乐机场开往她家。

I guess I expected worse, I said.

我本来以为很差劲的。我说。

The place was clean, with windows that looked out on a garden, where, Penny said, they held a tea party every Wednesday at four-thirty. The lobby smelled faintly of cinnamon and pine. The staff, most of whom I have now come to know by first name, seemed courteous, patient, competent. I had pictured old women, with ruined faces and whiskers on their chins, dribbling, chattering to themselves, glued to television screens. But most of the residents I saw were not that old. A lot of them were not even in wheelchairs.

这地方很干净，窗户外面正对着花园，彭妮说，每个星期三的下午四点半，他们都要在花园里开个茶会。大厅里有股淡淡的肉桂和松木味儿。护工们看上去有礼貌，有耐心，也有能力，大多数人我现在已经能叫得出名字了。我本来以为这里是一群老太婆，脸上一塌糊涂，下巴长出了胡须，流着口水，自言自语，唠叨个不停，死盯着电视屏幕。可我看到的大多数住客并没那么老，很多人连轮椅都用不着。

Did you? Penny said, emitting a pleasant, professional laugh.

是吗？彭妮说着，愉快而职业地哈哈一笑。

And then I said it. This isn’t so bad.

然后我说：还不算太差。

Not at all. We’re fully conscious of the image most people have of places like this. Of course, she added over her shoulder with a sober note of caution, this is the facility’s assisted-living area. Judging by what you’ve told me of your father, I’m not sure he would function well here. I suspect the Memory Care Unit would be more suitable for him. Here we are.

没关系的。我们完全了解，大部分人对这样的地方是有成见的。肯定会有。她回过头，用一种稳重的腔调提醒我说：这是本院的辅助生活区。从你告诉我的情况判断，我担心你父亲在这儿很难保证良好的起居。我看，记忆监护区对他更合适。咱们到了。

That was offensive. I’m sorry.

真是冒犯。对不起。

I let myself into the locked unit. They don’t have tea parties on this side of the door, no bingo. No one here starts their morning with tai chi. I went to Baba’s room, but he wasn’t there. His bed had been made, his TV was dark, and there was a half-full glass of water on the bedside table. I was a little relieved. I hate finding Baba in the hospital bed, lying on his side, hand tucked under the pillow, his recessed eyes looking out at me blankly.

我走进了封闭病区。进了这道门，他们就没有下午的茶会了，也没有宾果游戏，没有人一大早就打太极拳。我去了巴巴的房间，可他不在。他的床已经收拾过了，电视没开，有半杯水放在床头柜上。我稍微松了口气。我就怕看见巴巴待在病床上，侧躺着，一只手塞在枕头下，深陷的眼睛看着我，目光空空如也。

She used a card key to let us in. The locked unit didn’t smell like cinnamon or pine. My insides shriveled up, and my first instinct was to turn around and walk back out. Penny put her hand around my arm and squeezed. She looked at me with great tenderness. I fought through the rest of the tour, bowled over by a massive wave of guilt.

她用钥匙卡开了门，我们走进封闭的病区，这里闻不到肉桂或松木的味道了。我心里一凉，第一个反应就是转身走掉。彭妮伸手扶住我的胳膊，捏了一把。她看着我，目光中饱含温情。我挣扎着走完全程，内疚的巨浪没过了我的头顶。

The morning before I left for Europe, I went to see Baba. I passed through the lobby in the assisted-living area and waved at Carmen, who is from Guatemala and answers the phones. I walked past the community hall, where a roomful of seniors were listening to a string quartet of high school students in formal attire; past the multipurpose room with its computers and bookshelves and domino sets, past the bulletin board and its array of tips and announcements — Did you know that soy can reduce your bad cholesterol? Don’t forget Puzzles and Reflection Hour this Tuesday at 11 A. M.!

启程前往欧洲的前一天早晨，我去看了巴巴。我穿过辅助生活区的大厅，冲卡门招招手，她来自危地马拉，负责接电话。我走过社区音乐厅，里面坐了满满一屋子老人，正在听穿礼服的高中生表演弦乐四重奏。我也经过了多功能厅，里面有电脑、书架和多米诺骨牌；我又走过公告栏，上面有成排的小贴士和通知——你知道大豆可以降低你的有害胆固醇吗？不要忘记本周二上午11点的“猜谜与思考时间”！

So tomorrow is the big day, I said. I’m flying out to visit Pari in France. You remember I told you I would?

明天是个大日子。我说，我要飞到法国去看帕丽。我告诉过你的，还记得吗？

I kissed his cheek and pulled up a seat. Someone had given him a shave, and wetted and combed his hair too. His face smelled like soap.

我亲了他的脸，拉过一把椅子坐下。有人给他刮过脸，还帮他打湿、梳理了头发。他的脸闻起来像肥皂。

I found Baba in the rec room, sunk into a wheelchair, by the window that opens into the garden. He was wearing flannel pajamas and his newsboy cap. His lap was covered with what Penny called a fidget apron. It has strings he can braid and buttons he likes to open and close. Penny says it keeps his fingers nimble.

我在康乐室找到了巴巴，他蜷缩在轮椅上，靠着打开的窗户，窗外是花园。他穿着法兰绒睡衣，戴前进帽，腿上盖着彭妮所说的烦躁围裙，上面有绳子，可以让他编穗子，还有他喜欢系上再解开的纽扣。彭妮说，这围裙可以让他的手指保持灵活。

Baba blinked. Even before the stroke, he had already started withdrawing, falling into long, silent lapses, looking disconsolate. Since the stroke, his face has become a mask, his mouth frozen perpetually in a lopsided, polite little smile that never climbs to his eyes. He hasn’t said a word since the stroke. Sometimes, his lips part, and he makes a husky, exhaling sound — Aaaah!– with enough of an upturn at the tail end to make it sound like surprise, or like what I said has triggered a minor epiphany in him.

巴巴干瞪着眼睛。早在中风之前，他就已经开始遁离，长久地陷入一言不发的痴呆状态，看起来郁郁寡欢。中风之后，他的脸变成了一副面具，嘴巴持久地凝固着，歪向一边，仿佛一个客客气气的浅笑，可这笑容永远爬不到他的双眼。自从中风，他再没说过一个字。有时他咧开嘴，发出一记响亮而悠长的声音——啊！——快结束时再往上提，让这个“啊”听起来颇有几分惊讶，又好像我说的话在他心里触发了一种小小的顿悟。

Baba smiled on, the way he did when Hector came by the week before to see him, the way he did when I showed him my application to the College of Arts and Humanities at San Francisco State.

巴巴笑了，笑得就像上个星期埃克托尔来看他时一样，就像我给他看我的入学申请时一样，我给旧金山州立大学的艺术与人文学院写了申请。

Nearby, an old woman in a bathrobe complacently slid around the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. At the next table, another woman with fluffy white hair was trying to arrange forks and spoons and butter knives in a silverware drawer. On the big-screen TV over in the corner, Ricky and Lucy were arguing, their wrists locked together by a pair of handcuffs.

不远处，有个穿浴袍的老妇人正在美滋滋地玩着拼图。另一张桌边还有位老妇人，一头蓬松的白发，正在忙活着，往餐具匣里摆着叉子、勺子和黄油刀。角落那边的大屏幕电视上，里奇和露西[14]正在拌嘴，他俩的腕子被一副手铐铐在了一起。【注：[14]美国情景喜剧《我爱露西》的主人公。】

We’re meeting up in Paris, and then we’ll take the train down to Avignon. That’s a town near the South of France. It’s where the popes lived in the fourteenth century. So we’ll do some sightseeing there. But the great part is, Pari has told all her children about my visit and they’re going to join us.

我们要在巴黎碰头，然后搭火车去阿维尼翁。那是个小城，在法国南部。十四世纪的时候，教皇就住在那儿。所以我们要游览一下。不过最棒的是，帕丽把我要去的事告诉了她所有的孩子，他们也要过去和我们会合。

Your niece, Isabelle, and her husband, Albert, have a vacation home in Provence, near a town called Les Baux. I looked it up online, Baba. It’s an amazing-looking town. It’s built on these limestone peaks up in the Alpilles Mountains. You can visit the ruins of an old medieval castle up there and look out on the plains and the orchards. I’ll take lots of pictures and show you when I get back.

你侄女伊莎贝尔和她丈夫阿尔贝，在普罗旺斯有个度假屋，靠近一个叫莱博的小镇。我上网查了一下，巴巴。那是个非常壮观的小镇，建在阿尔皮耶山的石灰岩山顶上。到了那儿，你可以去参观中世纪的古堡遗址，远处还有平原和果树林。我一定要拍好多照片，一回来就拿给你看。

Ah. I almost forgot.

哟。我差一点儿忘了。

Baba said, Aaaah!

巴巴说：啊！

I kissed his cheek again later when I rose to leave. I lingered with my face against his, remembering how he used to pick me up from kindergarten and drive us to Denny’s to pick up Mother from work. We would sit at a booth, waiting for Mother to sign out, and I would eat the scoop of ice cream the manager always gave me and I would show Baba the drawings I had made that day. How patiently he gazed at each of them, glowering in careful study, nodding.

后来我站起身，准备走的时候，又一次亲了他的脸。我把脸贴到他的脸上，回想起过去，他经常到幼儿园来接我，再载上我去丹尼斯餐馆，接妈妈下班。我们坐在小隔间里，等着妈妈登记下工，经理总会舀一勺冰激凌给我，我就把它吃掉，我还给巴巴看我那一天画的画。他多么有耐心啊，每一张都看得仔细，一边认真地端详，一边频频点头。

Alain, that’s your nephew, and his wife, Ana, are coming over from Spain with all five of their kids. I don’t know all their names, but I’m sure I’ll learn them. And then — and this is the part that makes Pari really happy — your other nephew — her youngest, Thierry — is coming too. She hasn’t seen him in years. They haven’t spoken. But he’s taking his R & R from his job in Africa and he’s flying over. So it’s going to be a big family reunion.

阿兰——那是你侄子，和他妻子安娜也要从西班牙过来，带着他俩的五个孩子。我还不知道他们都叫什么，可我肯定会记下来的。还有——这件事最让帕丽开心了——你另一个侄子，她最小的孩子蒂埃里，也要过来。她已经好多年没见过他了。他俩一直不讲话。他在非洲工作，这次请了假飞过来。所以呢，这将是一次大家庭的团聚。

I stooped down and performed our customary farewell ritual, running my fingertips from his cheeks up to his creased forehead and his temples, over his gray, thinning hair and the scabs of his roughened scalp to behind the ears, plucking along the way all the bad dreams from his head. I opened the invisible sack for him, dropped the nightmares into it, and pulled the drawstrings tight.

我弯下腰，依照旧例，开始我们的告别仪式，指尖顺着他的两颊向上，直抵他皱巴巴的脑门和太阳穴，抚过他稀疏的白发，坑坑洼洼的头皮，头皮上的结痂，直到耳后，一边摸着，一边从他脑袋里摘除所有的噩梦。我替他打开那个无形的口袋，把噩梦丢进去，再将绳子拉紧。

Baba smiled his smile.

巴巴笑了，典型的巴巴笑。

“Ah voilà. C’est ça.”

“噢，对。就是。”

“Pari?”

“帕丽？”

Happy dreams, Baba. I’ll see you in two weeks. It occurred to me that we had never been apart for this long before.

做好梦，巴巴。过两个星期我来看你。我突然想到，以前我们从来没有分开过这么长的时间。

“Plus on est de fous, plus on rit,” she says. “What is the English? The more the happier?”

“Plus on est de fous， plus on rit。”她说，“用英语怎么说？人越多，就越高兴？”

As I was walking away, I had the distinct feeling that Baba was watching me. But when I turned to see, his head was down and he was toying with a button on his fidget apron.

我走开的时候，明明感觉巴巴在望着我，可我回头再看，他的脑袋却低垂着，手里玩着烦躁围裙上的一颗纽扣。

“You could not see in the picture that I showed to you, but it has fantastic view of the Vaucluse Mountains.”

“我给你看过照片，可是从照片上你看不到，沃克吕兹山的景色美极了。”

She empties her chest of a long breath. “You can give it to me now.”

她长长地出了一大口气。“现在你可以给我了。”

“Are we all going to fit? It’s a lot of people for a farmhouse.”

“咱们都去，住得下吗？这么多人，就一幢农房。”

Baba made a guttural sound.

巴巴喉咙里咕噜了一声。

“Merrier.”

“热闹。”

“How about the children? Where are they –“

“孩子们怎么办？他们去哪儿…”

I look over to her. “Yes?”

我望着她。“嗯？”

Pari is talking about Isabelle and Albert’s house now. She has shown me pictures of it. It is a beautiful, restored Provençal farmhouse made of stone, set up on the Luberon hills, fruit trees and an arbor at the front door outside, terra-cotta tiles and exposed beams inside.

此时，帕丽谈起了伊莎贝尔和阿尔贝的房子。她给我看过那房子的照片。那是一幢漂亮的普罗旺斯农舍，用石头盖的，已经翻新过了，建在吕贝龙山上，大门外有果树和凉亭，赤褐色的瓦，屋里看得见房梁。

There.

成了。

I suppose I should have found it months ago when I moved Baba to the nursing home. But when I was packing for Baba, I reached in the hallway closet for the top suitcase, from the stack of three, and was able to fit all of Baba’s clothes in it. Then I finally worked up the nerve to clear my parents’ bedroom. I ripped off the old wallpaper, repainted the walls. I moved out their queen-size bed, my mother’s dresser with the oval vanity mirror, cleared the closets of my father’s suits, my mother’s blouses and dresses sheathed in plastic. I made a pile in the garage for a trip or two to Goodwill. I moved my desk to their bedroom, which I use now as my office and as my study when classes begin in the fall. I emptied the chest at the foot of my bed too. In a trash bag, I tossed all my old toys, my childhood dresses, all the sandals and tennis shoes I had outworn. I couldn’t bear to look any longer at the Happy Birthday and Father’s Day and Mother’s Day cards I had made my parents. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing they were there at my feet. It was too painful.

我觉得几个月之前，我送巴巴去疗养院时，就该发现它。可是我给他收拾东西的时候，只拿了最上面的那个手提箱，就这一个，巴巴所有的衣服都能装下了，而箱子有三个，摞在一起，放在走廊的壁橱里。后来我终于鼓起勇气，去清理父母的卧室。我撕掉了旧墙纸，重新粉刷了墙壁。我搬走了他们的大号双人床，撤掉了我母亲的梳妆台，上面配有椭圆形的化妆镜。我清空了大衣柜，取出了父亲的西装，母亲的衬衫，还有封装在塑料袋里的裙子。我把它们堆在车库里，准备去一两趟慈善商店。我把我的书桌搬进了他们的卧室，现在这里是我的办公室了，等秋天一开学，就做我的书房。我把我床脚的那个大箱子也清空了。我所有的旧玩具，我小时候的衣服，我所有穿坏的凉鞋和网球鞋，统统丢进了一个大垃圾袋。我再也不忍心看我给父母做的那些生日快乐卡，父亲节和母亲节的贺卡。想到它们在我脚边，我夜里就睡不着。太痛苦了。

I nod. I reach into the handbag sitting between my feet.

我点点头，把手伸进脚下的提包。

It was when I was clearing the hallway closet, when I pulled out the two remaining suitcases to store them in the garage, that I felt a thump inside one of them. I unzipped the suitcase and found a package inside wrapped with thick brown paper. An envelope had been taped to the package. On it were written, in English, the words For my sister, Pari. Immediately, I recognized Baba’s handwriting from my days working at Abe’s Kabob House when I picked up the food orders he would jot down at the cash register.

就在清理走廊的壁橱时，我拉出剩下的那两个手提箱，准备把它们放到车库去，我感到其中一个箱子里咣当一响。我拉开箱子的拉锁，发现里面有一包东西，用发黄的报纸裹了好几层。包裹上用胶带捆着一个信封，信封上用英语写着如下字句：给我妹妹帕丽。我一眼就认出那是巴巴的笔迹，因为我在亚伯烤肉馆干活的时候，每当我帮客人点完菜，他都会在收银机边草草记上一笔。

I hand the package now to Pari, unopened.

现在，我把包裹递给了帕丽。我没有打开过。

She looks down at it in her lap, running her hands over the words scribbled on the envelope. From across the river, church bells begin to ring. On a rock jutting from the edge of the water, a bird tears at the entrails of a dead fish.

她把包裹放到腿上，低头看着，双手抚过写在信封上的字。在河的对岸，教堂的钟声开始鸣响。突出于水边的石头上，一只鸟在撕扯着死鱼的内脏。

“Do you want me to read it for you?”

“你想让我读给你听吗？”

Pari rummages in her purse, digging through its contents. “J’ai oublié mes lunettes,” she says. “I forgot my reading glasses.”

帕丽把手伸进她的手提包，在里面的东西中间摸索着。“‘ ai oublié mes lunettes。”她说，“我忘了带老花镜。”

She tries to tear the envelope from the package, but today is not a good day for her hands, and, after some struggle, she ends up handing me the package. I free the envelope and open it. I unfold the note tucked inside.

她左拉右拽，想把信封从包裹上扯掉，可是今天天气不好，她手不灵，经历了一番揪扯，她最后还是把包裹递给了我。我取下信封，把它打开，展平里面叠放着的信纸。

“But you can read it, no?” Pari says, her eyebrows knotted with worry. “You can translate.”

“你认得，对吗？”帕丽皱起了眉头，有些担心地问道，“你能翻译吧。”

“Yes,” I say, feeling a tiny smile inside, grateful — if belatedly — for all the Tuesday afternoons Baba had driven me to Campbell for Farsi classes. I think of him now, ragged and lost, staggering across a desert, the path behind him littered with all the shiny little pieces that life has ripped from him.

“能。”我说，内心窃喜。尽管姗姗来迟，可我还是暗自感激那些星期二的下午，巴巴开车送我去坎贝尔上的波斯语课。现在我想起了他，破衣烂衫，魂不守舍，摇摇晃晃地走过沙漠，在他的身后，一路上散落着、闪亮着许许多多细小的碎片，那是生活从他身上撕落下来的。

“He wrote it in Farsi.”

“他用波斯语写的。”

There is a date too. August 2007. “August of 2007,” I say. “That’s when he was first diagnosed.” Three years before I had even heard from Pari.

还有日期。2007年8月。“2007年的8月。”我说，“那是他刚确诊的时候。”三年前，我还没有得到帕丽的消息。

I hold the note tightly against the blustering wind. I read for Pari the three scribbled sentences.

我紧紧抓住那页信纸，免得怒号的风把它卷跑。笔迹潦草，一共三句话，我读给帕丽听了。

They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.

他们告诉我，我必然要走入水里，很快就将沉没。出发之前，我把它留在岸上，给你。我恳求你找到它，妹妹，所以你一定会知道，在我沉入水中时，心中想着什么。

Pari nods, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. A young couple rolls by on a tandem bicycle, the girl in the lead — blond, pink-faced, and slim — the boy behind, with dreadlocks and coffee-colored skin. On the grass a few feet away, a teenage girl in a short black leather skirt sits, talking into a cell phone, holding the leash to a tiny charcoal-colored terrier.

帕丽一边点头，一边拿掌端抹着眼泪。一对年轻的男女骑着双人自行车驶过。姑娘打头，金色头发，粉嘟嘟的脸，苗条的身材。小伙子居后，梳了满头的小辫，咖啡色的皮肤。几米开外，有个十几岁的女孩，穿着黑皮短裙，坐在草地上，正用手机聊着天。她手里抓着皮带，另一端拴着一头黑不溜秋的小梗犬。

Pari hands me the package. I tear it open for her. Inside is an old tin tea box, on its lid a faded picture of a bearded Indian man wearing a long red tunic. He is holding up a steaming cup of tea like an offering. The steam from the teacup has all but faded and the red of the tunic has mostly bleached to pink. I undo the latch and lift the lid. I find the interior stuffed with feathers of all colors, all shapes. Short, dense green feathers; long black-stemmed ones the color of ginger; a peach-colored feather, possibly from a mallard, with a light purple cast; brown feathers with dark blotches along the inner vanes; a green peacock feather with a large eye at the tip of it.

帕丽把包裹递给我，我替她撕开。里面是个旧的铁皮茶叶盒，盒盖上的图案已经褪了色，那是个大胡子印度人，身穿长长的红色束腰外衣，举着一杯热气腾腾的茶，好像在献祭。茶杯里冒出的热气几乎看不见了，束腰外衣上的红颜色也已大部分褪成了粉色。我打开锁扣，掀起盖子，发现盒子里塞满了各种颜色、各种形状的羽毛。短而密实的绿羽；几支姜黄色的毛，有着长长的黑色羽干；一支桃色羽毛，也许出自野鸭，泛出少许浅紫；几支棕羽，羽瓣内缘长着黑色的斑点；还有一支绿色的孔雀翎，顶端有只大眼睛。

Chin quivering, Pari slowly shakes her head. She takes the box from me and peers inside it. “No,” she says. “Only that when we lost each other, Abdullah and I, it hurt him much more than me. I was the lucky one because I was protected by my youth. Je pouvais oublier. I still had the luxury of forgetting. He did not.” She lifts a feather, brushes it against her wrist, eyeing it as though hoping it might spring to life and take flight. “I don’t know what this feather means, the story of it, but I know it means he was thinking of me. For all these years. He remembered me.”

帕丽的下巴颤抖着，慢慢摇了摇头。她从我手里接过茶叶盒，仔细地看着。“不。”她说，“我们俩，阿卜杜拉和我失散的时候，他受到的伤害比我重得多。我比较幸运，因为我年轻小，这一点保护了我。Je pouvais oublier。[15]我还能享受遗忘。他不行。”她拿起一片羽毛，轻轻蹭着自己的手腕，盯着它，好像在希望它活起来，飞起来。“我不知道这羽毛意味着什么，也不知道它的故事，可我知道它的意思是，他想着我。这么多年来一直想着我。他记得我。”【注：[15]法语：我可以忘掉。】

I turn to Pari. “Do you know what this means?”

我扭头看着帕丽。“你知道这是什么意思吗？”

I put an arm around her shoulder as she weeps quietly. I watch the sun-washed trees, the river flowing past us and beneath the bridge — the Pont Saint-Bénezet — the bridge the children’s song is about. It’s a half bridge, really, as only four of its original arches remain. It ends midway across the river. Like it reached, tried to reunite with, the other side and fell short.

她轻声哭了起来，我搂住她的肩膀。我看着沐浴在阳光下的树，河水流过我们身旁，流过这座桥——圣贝内泽桥，儿歌里的桥。它其实是座断桥，原来的桥拱只剩下了四个，走到河中央便戛然而止。仿佛它在努力渡河，让两岸聚首，却功亏一篑。

That night at the hotel, I lie awake in bed and watch the clouds nudging against the big swollen moon hanging in our window. Down below, heels click on the cobblestones. Laughter and chatter. Mopeds rattling past. From the restaurant across the street, the clinking of glasses on trays. The tinkling of a piano meanders up through the window and to my ears.

当晚在酒店，我躺在床上，醒着，望着月亮大而圆满，高挂在我们的窗棂中间，由着云朵轻推慢撞。窗外月下，高跟鞋咔嗒咔嗒，敲击着鹅卵石。欢笑，絮语。小摩托车咯噔咯噔驶过。马路对面的餐馆里，杯盘叮当，钢琴叮咚，蜿蜒流转，从窗口攀援而入，轻敲着我的耳鼓。

I turn over and watch Pari sleeping soundlessly beside me. Her face is pale in the light. I see Baba in her face — youthful, hopeful Baba, happy, how he used to be — and I know I will always find him whenever I look at Pari. She is my flesh and blood. And soon I will meet her children, and her children’s children, and my blood courses through them too. I am not alone. A sudden happiness catches me unawares. I feel it trickling into me, and my eyes go liquid with gratitude and hope.

我翻过身，看着帕丽，她安静地睡在我身边。灯光之下，她的脸显得苍白。我在她脸上看见了巴巴，年轻而满怀希望的巴巴，像过去那样快乐。我知道了，不管什么时候，只要看到帕丽，我也就看得见巴巴。她是我的血与肉。很快我也将见到她的孩子，还有她孩子的孩子们，我的血也在他们周身奔流。我不孤单。一种突然的幸福，出其不意地淹没了我。我感到它在涓涓流入我的身体，也带着感恩和希望，流入了我的双眼。

As I watch Pari sleep, I think of the bedtime game Baba and I used to play. The purging of bad dreams, the gift of happy ones. I remember the dream I used to give him. Careful not to wake Pari, I reach across now and gently rest my palm on her brow. I close my own eyes.

我看着熟睡中的帕丽，想起了巴巴和我常玩的睡前游戏。清除掉一个个噩梦，再以好梦相赠。我想起了我常常送给他的那个梦，于是小心翼翼地伸出手，生怕弄醒帕丽，轻轻盖住了她的额头。我闭上了眼睛。

It is a sunlit afternoon. They are children once more, brother and sister, young and clear-eyed and sturdy. They are lying in a patch of tall grass in the shade of an apple tree ablaze with flowers. The grass is warm against their backs and the sun on their faces, flickering through the riot of blossoms above. They rest sleepily, contentedly, side by side, his head resting on the ridge of a thick root, hers cushioned by the coat he has folded for her. Through half-lidded eyes, she watches a blackbird perched on a branch. Streams of cool air blow through the leaves and downward.

这是个明媚的午后。他们又一次成了孩童，哥哥和妹妹。小小的年纪，明澈的眼睛，结结实实的身子骨。他们躺在一片高草中，置身于苹果树的树荫下。一树花开，满枝吐焰。他们身下铺着暖草，脸上披着阳光，高高的光影，闪烁在怒放的新花中间。他们躺着，带着睡意，带着满足，紧紧相挨。他枕着粗大而隆起的树根，而她的脑袋下面，垫着他叠起的外衣。透过半开的眼皮，她看见一只乌鸫栖于高枝。凉风习习，吹过树叶中间，又转而下探。

She turns her face to look at him, her big brother, her ally in all things, but his face is too close and she can’t see the whole of it. Only the dip of his brow, the rise of his nose, the curve of his eyelashes. But she doesn’t mind. She is happy enough to be near him, with him — her brother — and as a nap slowly steals her away, she feels herself engulfed in a wave of absolute calm. She shuts her eyes. Drifts off, untroubled, everything clear, and radiant, and all at once.

她扭过脸看着他，看着她的哥哥，她不离不弃的伙伴，可他的脸太近了，她看不到全貌。只有他下落的眼眉，微翘的鼻子，弯弯的睫毛。可她不在乎。待在他身边，和他，和她哥哥在一起，她足以感到幸福。当睡意慢慢把她偷走，她感觉到，一片绝对平静的波浪将她浸没。她闭上眼，漂进了睡乡，没有烦忧，一切都是清澈的，灿烂的，一切都同时来到了。