第六章: 1974年2月 February 1974 |《群山回唱》双语小说在线阅读

Parallaxe 84 (WINTER 1974), P. 5

《视差》第 84期（1974年冬季号），第 5页

Sadly, however, a shadow hovers over this present issue. The artist featured this quarter is Nila Wahdati, an Afghan poet interviewed by Étienne Boustouler last winter in the town of Courbevoie, near Paris. Mme. Wahdati, as we are sure you will agree, gave Mr. Boustouler one of the most revealing and startlingly frank interviews we have ever published. It was with great sadness that we learned of her untimely death not long after this interview was conducted. She will be missed in the community of poets. She is survived by her daughter.

然而令人悲哀的是，这一期杂志笼罩在一片阴云之下。本季力推的艺术家乃阿富汗诗人妮拉·瓦赫达提，去年冬天在巴黎附近的小城库尔贝瓦，她接受了艾蒂安·布斯图勒的采访。瓦赫达提夫人给予布斯图勒先生的回答，实乃我们历年所刊采访中最为坦率的一篇，其诚实足以令人屏息，相信读者也会有同样的感受。就在采访后不久，我们怀着巨大的悲痛，得知了她过早死亡的噩耗。她必将受到诗歌界的怀念。她身后遗下一个女儿。

Five years ago, when we began our quarterly issues featuring interviews with little-known poets, we could not have anticipated how popular they would prove. Many of you asked for more, and, indeed, your enthusiastic letters paved the way for these issues to become an annual tradition here at Parallaxe. The profiles have now become our staff writers’ personal favorites as well. The features have led to the discovery, or rediscovery, of some valuable poets, and an overdue appreciation of their work.

五年前，本季刊开始发表专访，介绍一批鲜为人知的诗人，当时未曾料到他们会大受欢迎。许多读者要求我们再接再厉，诚然，是诸位热情的来信铺就了道路，让专访成为了《视差》年年都有的传统。如今对本刊的特约记者而言，这些人物特写同样深得他们本人的喜爱。特写引起了对某些重要诗人的发现或重新发现，促成了对其作品迟来的评价。

EDITOR’S NOTE,

编者按语

Dear Readers:

亲爱的读者：

Julien, who has already stepped into the elevator, says, “Let it ring.”

于连已经迈进了电梯。“让它响着吧。”他说。

He has made reservations for seven o’clock at a new restaurant in the 16th arrondissement that has been making some noise for its poulet braisé, its sole cardinale, and its calf’s liver with sherry vinegar. They are meeting Christian and Aurelie, old university friends of Julien’s — from his student days, not his teaching. They are supposed to meet for aperitifs at six-thirty and it is already sixfifteen. They still have to walk to the Métro station, ride to Muette, then walk the six blocks to the restaurant.

他订了七点钟的位，地点是十六区的一家新餐馆，因为红烧鸡肉、红衣主教鱼排[1]、小牛肝配雪梨酒醋，已经小有口碑。他们要去见克里斯蒂安和奥雷莉，于连在大学里——学生时代，不是任教以后——的两个老友。他们应该在六点半碰面，喝开胃酒，可现在已经六点一刻了，还得步行到地铁站，坐到米埃特，然后再走六个路口，才能到餐馆。【注：[1]红衣主教鱼排（Sole cardinale），因其红色沙司得名。】

It’s uncanny, the timing. The elevator door dings open at precisely — precisely — the same moment the phone begins to ring. Pari can hear the ringing because it comes from inside Julien’s apartment, which is at the head of the narrow, barely lit hallway and therefore closest to the elevator. Intuitively, she knows who is calling. By the look on Julien’s face, so does he.

很神秘，时间赶得真巧。电梯门叮当一声，恰好此时，一秒都不差，电话铃也响起来了。帕丽能听到铃声，因为电话就在于连的公寓里，走廊很窄，灯光黯淡，他的公寓把着头，紧挨着电梯。凭直觉，她知道是谁打来的。再看于连的表情，他也知道。

Behind him is the standoffish ruddy-faced woman from upstairs. She glares impatiently at Pari. Julien calls her La chèvre, because of her goatlike nest of chin hairs.

在他身后，是楼上那个冷淡的红脸膛女人，正不耐烦地瞪着帕丽。于连管她叫“母山羊”，因为她下巴上有一撮毛，跟山羊一样。

He says, “Let’s go, Pari. We’re already late.”

他说：“走吧，帕丽。咱们已经晚了。”

Julien casts a skeptical glance.

于连投以怀疑的一瞥。

“Yes, I am aware of that.”

“是，我知道。”

The phone keeps on ringing.

电话铃一直在响。

The goat woman coughs.

山羊女咳嗽了一声。

Julien sighs.

于连叹了口气。

“It could be important,” she says.

“可能有重要的事。”她说。

As the elevator doors close behind him, he leans against the hallway wall. He digs his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat, looking for a moment like a character from a Melville policier.

电梯门在他身后关上了。他靠到走廊墙上，双手深深插进军装式风衣的口袋，一时之间，他恍如梅尔维尔警匪片中的角色。

Irrationally, Pari thinks Maman — with her endless flair for drama — has chosen this specific moment to call to trap her into making precisely this choice: step into the elevator with Julien or take her call.

虽然不合情理，可帕丽还是觉得，妈芒专门挑了这个时间打来电话，以其无穷无尽的戏剧天赋，把她拖进这个非此即彼的选择：要么跟于连进电梯，要么接她的电话。

“It’s probably Maman,” Pari says.

“可能是妈芒。”帕丽说。

Julien says, more firmly now, “Pari?”

于连说：“帕丽？”这一次他的语气更坚决了。

“I’ll only be a minute,” Pari says.

“我一分钟就好。”帕丽说。

Julien’s apartment is small. Six quick steps and she has crossed the foyer, passed the kitchen, and is seated on the edge of the bed, reaching for the phone on the lone nightstand for which they have room. The view, however, is spectacular. It is raining now, but on a clear day she can look out the east-facing window and see most of the 19th and 20th arrondissements.

于连的公寓很小。只需六步，她便急急穿过了门厅和厨房，坐到床边，伸手拿起床头柜上的电话。他们只放得下孤零零的一个床头柜。但这儿的视野堪称壮观。现在下着雨。如果是晴天，她从朝东的窗户望出去，就能看到十九区和二十区的大部分景致。

A man’s voice answers. “Bonsoir. Is this Mademoiselle Pari Wahdati?”

电话里传出男人的声音。“晚上好。是帕丽·瓦赫达提小姐吗？”

“Who is calling?”

“您是哪位？”

“Oui, allo?” she says into the receiver.

“喂，你好？”她对着话筒说。

“Are you the daughter of Madame Nila Wahdati?”

“您是妮拉·瓦赫达提夫人的女儿？”

“Yes.”

“是的。”

“My name is Dr. Delaunay. I am calling about your mother.”

“我是德劳内大夫，我要讲的是您母亲的事。”

“She’s had an accident,” Dr. Delaunay says.

“她出了事故。”德劳内大夫说。

Pari shuts her eyes. There is a brief flash of guilt before it is overtaken by a customary dread. She has taken calls of this sort before, too many to count now, from the time that she was an adolescent, really, and even before that — once, in fifth grade, she was in the middle of a geography exam, and the teacher had to interrupt, walk her out to the hallway, and explain in a hushed voice what had happened. These calls are familiar to Pari, but repetition has not led to insouciance on her part. With each one she thinks, This time, this is the time, and each time she hangs up and rushes to Maman. In the parlance of economics, Julien has said to Pari that if she cut off the supply of attention, perhaps the demands for it would cease as well.

帕丽闭上眼睛。内疚的感觉短暂地一闪，然后便被习惯性的恐惧压服。她以前接到过这种电话，次数太多了，现在数也数不清，从她的少女时代开始——其实在那之前便已有过，那次是小学五年级，地理考试进行到中途，便被老师打断，她领她出了门，到走廊里，悄悄跟她解释发生了什么事。这些电话对帕丽来说太熟悉了，可是不断地重复并未让她变得满不在乎。每接到一个电话，她都会想，这一次，就这一次了。可每一次挂断之后，她都会急匆匆地赶到妈芒身旁。于连总是用经济学术语对帕丽说，如果她切断注意力的供给，那么对它的需求或许会随之消失。

The doctor is asking her a question.

大夫问了她一个问题。

“Pardon?”

“对不起？”

Pari stands by the window and listens as the doctor explains. She coils and uncoils the phone cord around her finger as he recounts her mother’s hospital visit, the forehead laceration, the sutures, the precautionary tetanus injection, the aftercare of peroxide, topical antibiotics, dressings. Pari’s mind flashes to when she was ten, when she’d come home one day from school and found twenty-five francs and a handwritten note on the kitchen table. I’ve gone to Alsace with Marc. You remember him. Back in a couple of days. Be a good girl. (Don’t stay up late!) Je t’aime. Maman. Pari had stood shaking in the kitchen, eyes filling up, telling herself two days wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so long.

帕丽站在窗边，等医生向她说明情况。她用手指绕着电话绳，再把它松开。医生详细讲了她母亲的就医情况，她前额破了，缝了针，打了破伤风作为预防，用双氧水清洗过，抹了外用抗生素，做了包扎。帕丽的心绪忽然回到了十岁那年，有一天她放学回家，在厨房桌子上发现了二十五法郎和一张手写的便条。我和马克去阿尔萨斯了。你认得他。过两天就回。乖。不要熬夜！我爱你。妈芒。帕丽当时站在厨房里浑身发抖，两眼含泪，对自己说，两天不算太长，也不算太坏。

“I was saying will you be coming to take her home, mademoiselle? The injury is not serious, you understand, but it’s probably best that she not go home alone. Or else we could call her a taxi.”

“小姐，我问的是您能不能过来接她回家？伤势不重，您知道的，可她最好别一个人回去。要不然我们替她叫辆出租车也行。”

She sits on the bed. Julien will be annoyed, probably embarrassed as well in front of Christian and Aurelie, whose opinions seem to matter a great deal to him. Pari doesn’t want to go out in the hallway and face Julien. She doesn’t want to go to Courbevoie and face her mother either. What she would rather do is lie down, listen to the wind hurl pellets of rain at the glass until she falls asleep.

她坐到床上。于连一定会生气，也许还会在克里斯蒂安和奥雷莉面前觉得难堪，他好像非常在乎他俩的看法。帕丽不想去走廊里面对于连，也不想去库尔贝瓦面对母亲。她宁愿躺下，听狂风吹着子弹一样的雨滴，狠狠敲打着玻璃，然后睡去。

“No. No need. I should be there in half an hour.”

“不，不用了。我半小时后就到。”

Parallaxe 84 (WINTER 1974), P. 33

《视差》第 84期（1974年冬季号），第 33页

She lights a cigarette, and when Julien enters the room behind her and says, “You’re not coming, are you?” she doesn’t answer.

她点了支香烟。于连走进了房间，在她身后说：“你不去了，是吗？”她没有回答。

EXCERPT FROM “AFGHAN SONGBIRD,” AN INTERVIEW WITH NILA WAHDATI BY ÉTIENNE BOUSTOULER,

《阿富汗夜莺》节选——妮拉·瓦赫达提访谈录，作者：艾蒂安·布斯图勒

NW: My mother was French, yes. She was a Parisian.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我母亲是法国人，是的，她是巴黎人。

EB: So I understand you are, in fact, half Afghan, half French?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：这样说来，我想您实际上一半是阿富汗人，一半是法国人？

NW: Yes. They met there in 1927. At a formal dinner in the Royal Palace. My mother had accompanied her father — my grandfather — who had been sent to Kabul to counsel King Amanullah on his reforms. Are you familiar with him, King Amanullah?

妮拉·瓦赫达提：对。他们 1927年在喀布尔认识的。在王宫举办的一次正式晚宴上。我母亲陪着她父亲，也就是我外公，他奉派前往喀布尔，为阿马努拉国王的改革做顾问。您了解阿马努拉国王吗？

EB: But she met your father in Kabul. You were born there.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：可她在喀布尔遇见了您父亲。您出生在那儿。

We are sitting in the living room of Nila Wahdati’s small apartment on the thirtieth floor of a residential building in the town of Courbevoie, just northwest of Paris. The room is small, not well lit, and sparsely decorated: a saffron-upholstered couch, a coffee table, two tall bookshelves. She sits with her back to the window, which she has opened to air the smoke from the cigarettes she lights continually.

我们坐在妮拉·瓦赫达提家的客厅里。这是一间小公寓，位于一座住宅大楼的第三十层。小城名叫库尔贝瓦，就在巴黎西北郊。房间很小，灯光昏暗，没有太多的装饰，仅有一张沙发，铺着番红花颜色的软垫，一张咖啡桌，两个大书架。她背对窗户坐着，窗子敞开着，好让烟散出去。她一根接一根地吸烟。

EB: “They”? You don’t consider yourself Afghan?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：“他们？”您不认为自己是阿富汗人吗？

NW: He was the best king they ever had.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：他们有过很多国王，他是最好的。

Nila Wahdati states her age as forty-four. She is a strikingly attractive woman, perhaps past the peak of her beauty but, as yet, not far past. High royal cheekbones, good skin, slim waist. She has intelligent, flirtatious eyes, and a penetrating gaze under which one feels simultaneously appraised, tested, charmed, toyed with. They remain, I suspect, a redoubtable seduction tool. She wears no makeup save for lipstick, a smudge of which has strayed a bit from the outline of her mouth. She wears a bandanna over her brow, a faded purple blouse over jeans, no socks, no shoes. Though it is only eleven in the morning, she pours from a bottle of Chardonnay that has not been chilled. She has genially offered me a glass and I have declined.

依妮拉·瓦赫达提所述，她今年四十四岁。她是个极具魅力的女人，即便美貌的巅峰已过，却只是稍有减损。高高的，也是高贵的颧骨，好皮肤，细腰。她有一双聪颖而饱含风情的眼睛，目光犀利，从中可以同时感觉到评判，试探，吸引和挑逗。我认为，这双眼睛仍然可以称得上一副令人敬畏的诱惑工具。她没化妆，只涂了口红，不过蹭跑了一点，零落在唇线之外。她头上包了一块印花的方巾，穿一件褪色的紫衬衫，工装裤，没穿袜子，也没穿鞋。虽然刚到上午十一点，她却开了一瓶霞多丽，根本没有冰过。她友好地问我要不要喝一杯，我谢绝了。

I find the remark of interest for its choice of pronoun.

我发现，她这句话在代词的选择上很有意思。

NW: If he had succeeded, meaning King Amanullah, I might have answered your question differently.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：如果他成功了，我说的是阿马努拉国王，我可能会给您一个完全不同的答案。

NW: Let’s say I’ve divorced myself from my more troublesome half.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：可以这么说，我和我自己离了婚，和我更令人烦恼的那一半。

EB: I’m curious as to why that is.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我很想知道为什么会这样。

NW: Or a fool. I have always found the line perilously thin myself.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：或者是个傻瓜。我一向认为这种路线危机四伏，难以维系。

I ask her to explain.

我请她做些解释。

EB: He was a visionary, then.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：这么看他是个空想家。

NW: The answer is as vexing as it is predictable, Monsieur Boustouler. Jihad, of course. They declared jihad on him, the mullahs, the tribal chiefs. Picture a thousand fists shot heavenward! The king had made the earth move, you see, but he was surrounded by an ocean of zealots, and you know well what happens when the ocean floor trembles, Monsieur Boustouler. A tsunami of bearded rebellion crashed down upon the poor king and carried him off, flailing helplessly, and spat him out on the shores of India, then Italy, and at last Switzerland, where he crawled from the muck and died a disillusioned old man in exile.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：不出所料，下场很惨，布斯图勒先生。圣战来了，毫无疑问。他们宣布对他发动圣战，那些毛拉们，部落的头人们。想像一下一千只拳头高高举起的样子吧。您瞧，国王挪动了大山，可他陷入了狂热分子们的汪洋大海，您也很清楚海床一旦摇晃起来会发生什么，布斯图勒先生。大胡子们的叛乱就像海啸一样，猛烈地扑向可怜的国王，把他卷起来，让他在波峰浪谷间无助地颠簸，然后把他甩出去，抛到印度的海岸上，再然后是意大利，最后是瑞士，到了那儿，他才从污泥中爬出来，慢慢成了个流亡的老头子，在破灭的幻想中死去。

NW: You see, he woke one morning, the king, and proclaimed his plan to reshape the country — kicking and screaming, if need be — into a new and more enlightened nation. By God! he said. No more wearing of the veil, for one. Imagine, Monsieur Boustouler, a woman in Afghanistan arrested for wearing a burqa! When his wife, Queen Soraya, appeared barefaced in public? Oh là là. The lungs of the mullahs inflated with enough gasps to fly a thousand Hindenburgs. And no more polygamy, he said! This, you understand, in a country where kings had legions of concubines and never set eyes on most of the children they’d so frivolously fathered. From now on, he declared, no man can force you into marriage. And no more bride price, brave women of Afghanistan, and no more child marriage. And here is more: You will all attend school.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：是这样的，国王有天早晨一醒过来，就宣布计划，要重塑国家，如果有必要，扒房牵牛，哭爸喊娘也在所不惜，一定要建成一个新的、更文明的国度。藉着真主！他说。其中一项就是不许再戴面纱。您想想，布斯图勒先生，在阿富汗，妇女竟然会因为穿布卡而遭到逮捕！等他妻子索拉雅王后脸上没有遮盖，就出现在公共场合的时候，人们又是什么反应呢？哦啦啦[2]。毛拉们肚子里的气啊，完全可以把一千艘兴登堡飞艇吹上天。一夫多妻也不行了，他说的。这可是在这样一个国家，您知道，历代国王的后宫粉黛足以组成一个个军团，国王们马不停蹄地做父亲，大部分孩子都没正眼瞧过。他宣布，从此以后，男人不能强行娶你们为妻，新娘父亲也不准收聘礼，勇敢的阿富汗妇女啊，童婚也被禁止了。还有一项：你们全都得上学。【注：[2]法语 Oh là là，可用以表达惊讶，失望，沮丧，同情，烦恼等多种情绪。】

EB: What happened to him?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：他后来怎么样了？

EB: And the country that emerged? I gather it did not suit you well.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：那个新生的国家呢？我猜它并不符合您的要求。

NW: The reverse is equally true.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：反过来说同样成立。

NW: I moved to France because I wished to save my daughter from a certain kind of life.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我来法国是因为我希望把女儿救出来，让她免于一种不可挽救的人生。

EB: Which was why you moved to France in 1955.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：所以您在 1955年来了法国。

NW: I didn’t want her turned, against both her will and nature, into one of those diligent, sad women who are bent on a lifelong course of quiet servitude, forever in fear of showing, saying, or doing the wrong thing. Women who are admired by some in the West — here in France, for instance — turned into heroines for their hard lives, admired from a distance by those who couldn’t bear even one day of walking in their shoes. Women who see their desires doused and their dreams renounced, and yet — and this is the worst of it, Monsieur Boustouler — if you meet them, they smile and pretend they have no misgivings at all. As though they lead enviable lives. But you look closely and you see the helpless look, the desperation, and how it belies all their show of good humor. It is quite pathetic, Monsieur Boustouler. I did not want this for my daughter.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我不想让她违背自己的意愿和天性，变成一个勤劳而悲伤的女人，一辈子俯首为奴，忍气吞声，永远处于恐惧的状态，不敢抛头露面，不敢说话，总是害怕做错事情。这样的女人在西方，比如说在这儿，在法国，却深受某些人的推崇，她们变成了女英雄，只是因为她们过着艰辛的生活，而那些在远方推崇她们的人，自己却连穿着鞋走一天都无法忍受。这样的女人眼睁睁地看着自己的欲火被熄灭，梦想被抛弃，可是最糟糕的，布斯图勒先生，如果您遇见这样的女人，她们还会露出微笑，假装自己根本不曾有过疑虑。仿佛她们过着人人艳羡的生活。可是您靠近一些看，就会看到她们无助的样子，看到绝望，看到它如何证明她们的好心情都是表演，都是虚伪的谎言。真可悲啊，布斯图勒先生。我不想在女儿身上看到这些。

EB: What kind of life would that be?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您指的是什么样的人生？

Dr. Delaunay turns out younger than Pari had expected. He has a slender nose, a narrow mouth, and tight blond curls. He guides her out of the emergency room, through the swinging double doors, into the main hallway.

德劳内大夫比帕丽预想的要年轻。他鼻子细长，薄嘴唇，密密实实的金色卷发。他带她走出急诊室，穿过两扇弹簧门，进了大走廊。

EB: I gather she understands all this?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我在想，她能理解这些吗？

She lights another cigarette.

她又点了一支烟。

NW: Well, children are never everything you’d hoped for, Monsieur Boustouler.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：唉，孩子们永远都不会事事如你所愿，布斯图勒先生。

“I’m not.”

“对。”

In the emergency room, Pari is instructed by an ill-tempered nurse to wait by the registration desk, near a wheeled rack filled with clipboards and charts. It astonishes Pari that there are people who voluntarily spend their youths training for a profession that lands them in a place such as this. She cannot begin to understand it. She loathes hospitals. She hates seeing people at their worst, the sickly smell, the squeaky gurneys, the hallways with their drab paintings, the incessant paging overhead.

到了急诊室，一个脾气暴躁的女护士指示帕丽在挂号台等着。旁边有个带脚轮的文件架，堆满了剪贴簿和记录纸。帕丽感到吃惊，竟然有人自愿耗去青春岁月接受培训，到头来只是为了一份把他们放到这种地方的职业。她真是不能理解。她憎恶医院。她讨厌看到状况糟糕的人，讨厌病恹恹的气味，吱吱嘎嘎的轮床，挂着单调画片的走廊，天花板上接连不断的广播寻呼。

“When your mother arrived,” he says in a confidential tone, “she was quite inebriated… You don’t seem surprised.”

“您母亲来的时候，”他用一种神秘兮兮的口气说，“醉得相当厉害…您好像并不意外。”

“Neither were a number of the nursing staff. They say she runs a bit of a tab here. I am new here myself, so, of course, I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“有些护理人员也不吃惊。她们说她是这儿的常客。我是新来的，所以当然了，以前从来没见过令堂。”

“She was quite ornery,” he says. “And, I should say, rather theatrical.”

“她脾气非常不好。”他说，“还有，我觉得她非常戏剧化。”

They share a brief grin.

两个人同时咧嘴笑了一下。

“How bad was it?”

“她严重吗？”

“Will she be all right?”

“她会没事的吧？”

“Yes, in the short term,” Dr. Delaunay says. “But I must recommend, and quite emphatically, that she reduce her drinking. She was lucky this time, but who’s to say next time…”

“从目前来看是的。”德劳内大夫说，“可是我必须提出建议，非常严肃的建议，她得把酒减下来。这一次她很幸运，可下一次就难说了。”

Pari thanks him and makes her way to her mother’s bed.

帕丽谢了他，走到母亲床边。

He leads her back into the emergency room and around the corner. “Bed three. I’ll be by shortly with discharge instructions.”

他带她回到急诊室，转过拐角。“三床。我很快就把出院手续拿过来。”

Pari nods. “Where is she?”

帕丽点点头。“她人在哪儿？”

“Salut, Maman.”

“嗨，妈芒。”

Maman smiles tiredly. Her hair is disheveled, and her socks don’t match. They have wrapped her forehead with bandages, and a colorless fluid drips through an intravenous linked to her left arm. She is wearing a hospital gown the wrong way and has not tied it properly. The gown has parted slightly in the front, and Pari can see a little of the thick, dark vertical line of her mother’s old cesarian scar. She had asked her mother a few years earlier why she didn’t bear the customary horizontal mark and Maman explained that the doctors had given her some sort of technical reason at the time that she no longer remembered. The important thing, she said, was that they got you out.

妈芒疲倦地笑了笑。她头发乱糟糟的，袜子一样一只，额头用绷带包扎过了，左腕上连着静脉注射管，无色的液体滴落。她身上的病号服穿得不对，没有系好，前襟敞着口，帕丽能看到一小段母亲剖腹产后留下的疤，一条纵向的粗线，颜色很深。几年前她问过母亲，为什么她这道疤与惯例不同，不是横切出来的，妈芒解释说，大夫当时说是某种技术上的原因，可她想不起来了。重要的是，她说，他们把你掏出来了。

“I could sleep a week.”

“我可以睡上一个星期。”

Pari sits on the bedside stool, waiting for Dr. Delaunay, picturing Julien at a low-lit table, menu in hand, explaining the crisis to Christian and Aurelie over tall goblets of Bordeaux. He offered to accompany her to the hospital, but in a perfunctory way. It was a mere formality. Coming here would have been a bad idea anyway. If Dr. Delaunay thought he had seen theatrical earlier… Still, even if he couldn’t come with her, Pari wishes he hadn’t gone to dinner without her either. She is still a little astonished that he did. He could have explained it to Christian and Aurelie. They could have picked another night, changed the reservations. But Julien had gone. It wasn’t merely thoughtless. No. There was something vicious about this move, deliberate, slashing. Pari has known for some time that he has that capacity. She has wondered of late whether he has a taste for it as well.

帕丽坐在床边的凳子上，等着德劳内大夫，想像着于连坐在灯光昏暗的桌边，菜单拿在手里，向波尔多高脚杯对面的克里斯蒂安和奥雷莉解释着这场危机。他刚才提出要陪她来医院，可这话说得更像是敷衍，只不过是出于礼节。不管怎么说，让他来这儿都不是个好主意。如果德劳内大夫觉得在此之前，他已经见识了戏剧化…尽管如此，就算他不能陪她过来，帕丽也希望他不要自顾自地去吃晚饭。可他去了。她现在仍然觉得有点惊讶。他满可以跟克里斯蒂安和奥雷莉解释一下。大家可以另挑一个晚上，换一下订座的时间。可于连去了。这不只是粗心的问题。不。这样做是怀着恶意的，是存心的，是拿刀子伤人。他有这能力。帕丽可不是才明白过来。最近她很想知道，他是不是还有这方面的偏好。

“I’m tired, Pari. You can scold me another time. The whipping post isn’t going anywhere.”

“我累了，帕丽。换个时间再骂我吧。老虎凳想跑也跑不掉。”

“I’ve ruined your evening,” Maman mutters.

“我毁掉了你的夜晚。”妈芒低声说。

“Accidents happen. I’ve come to take you home.”

“因为你出事了。我来接你回家。”

Maman cracks one eye half open. Her frequenting of doctors is exceeded only by her dislike of them. “That boy? He said that? Le petit salaud. What does he know? His breath still smells of his mother’s tit.”

妈芒把眼睛睁开一条缝。虽然频繁光顾医院，可她对医生的反感有增无减。“那个小屁孩？小流氓。他懂什么？嘴里还留着他母亲的奶头味儿。”

“You always joke. Every time I bring it up.”

“你老开玩笑。只要我一提这事。”

“I was just sitting and watching TV. I got hungry. I went to the kitchen to get some bread and marmalade. I slipped. I’m not sure how, or on what, but my head caught the oven-door handle on the way down. I think I might have blacked out for a minute or two. Sit down, Pari. You’re looming over me.”

“我坐着看电视来着。我饿了。我进了厨房，想找点面包，橘子酱。我滑倒了。我不清楚怎么回事，也不知道踩到什么了，可我摔倒的时候，头打到了烤箱的门把手。我想我昏迷了一分钟，也许两分钟吧。坐下，帕丽。你像个鬼影。”

Her eyes drift shut, though she keeps talking in a sluggish, stalling manner.

她慢慢合上了眼，不过仍然在用一种倦怠、困顿的声音说着话。

Now she does fall asleep. Snores, unattractively, as she does only after a binge.

她很快就睡着了。打着呼噜，毫无魅力可言，她只有烂醉之后才这样。

Pari sits. “The doctor said you were drinking.”

帕丽坐下了。“医生说你喝了酒。”

It was in an emergency room not unlike this one that Maman first met Julien. That was ten years ago, in 1963, when Pari was fourteen. He had driven a colleague, who had a migraine. Maman had brought Pari, who was the patient that time, having sprained her ankle badly during gymnastics in school. Pari was lying on a gurney when Julien pushed his chair into the room and struck up a conversation with Maman. Pari cannot remember now what was said between them. She does remember Julien saying, “Paris — like the city?” And from Maman the familiar reply, “No, without the s. It means ‘fairy’ in Farsi.”

妈芒第一次遇见于连，也是在急诊室，跟这一间可不一样。那是十年前了，是1963年，帕丽十四岁的时候。他开车送一个偏头疼发作的同事过来。妈芒领着帕丽。那一次帕丽是病人，在学校的体操课上，她扭伤了脚踝，伤得很厉害。帕丽躺在轮床上，于连拉了把椅子进房间，便和妈芒聊上了。帕丽现在想不起来他们俩当时都谈了什么。她只记得于连说：“帕丽——那不就是巴黎吗？”[3]然后是妈芒那百说不厌的回答：“不，没那个s。波斯语里是‘仙女’的意思。” 【注：[3]帕丽（Pari）和巴黎（Paris）在法语中同音。】

Before the meal they smoked, all three of them, and Maman and Julien had beer in oversize frosted mugs. They finished one round, Julien ordered a second, and there was a third as well. Julien, in white shirt, tie, and a checkered evening blazer, had the controlled courteous manners of a well-bred man. He smiled with ease and laughed effortlessly. He had just a pinch of gray at the temples, which Pari hadn’t noticed in the dim light of the emergency room, and she estimated his age around the same as Maman’s. He was well versed in current events and spent some time talking about De Gaulle’s veto of England’s entry into the Common Market and, to Pari’s surprise, almost succeeded in making it interesting. Only after Maman asked did he reveal that he had started teaching economics at the Sorbonne.

大家饭前先抽烟，三个人都抽，妈芒和于连还拿特大号的磨砂玻璃杯喝啤酒。等两人都喝完，于连又要了两大杯，还有第三轮呢。于连穿着白衬衫，打领带，方格子的晚装西服，一个有教养的男人，彬彬有礼，收放自如，时而轻松微笑，时而放声大笑。此前在急诊室昏暗的灯光下，帕丽都不曾注意，他只在鬓角有少许花白，她估计他的年纪和妈芒不相上下。他通晓时事，津津乐道于戴高乐对英国加入欧洲共同市场的否决。出乎帕丽的意料，这些话题在他讲来倒也不失有趣。妈芒问到了，他才交底，说他已经开始在索邦教经济学了。

They met him for dinner on a rainy night later that week at a small bistro off Boulevard Saint-Germain. Back at the apartment, Maman had made a protracted show of indecision over what to wear, settling in the end for a pastel blue dress with a close-fitting waist, evening gloves, and sharp-pointed stiletto shoes. And even then, in the elevator, she’d said to Pari, “It’s not too Jackie, is it? What do you think?”

那个星期晚些时候，一个雨夜，他们约了于连吃晚餐，地点是圣日耳曼大街边上的一间小酒馆。此前在家里，妈芒演示了一番什么才叫磨磨蹭蹭。她拿不定主意要穿什么，最后终于决定下来，崧蓝色的裙子，配紧身围腰，戴晚装长手套，尖头的细高跟鞋。甚至进了电梯，她还在问帕丽：“没那么杰姬[4]对吧？你觉得呢？” 【注：[4]大概出自俚语“像杰姬（Jackie）那样端坐”，指自我感觉特别好。】

“Maybe I will sneak in one day. Watch you in action.”

“没准儿哪天我偷偷溜进去，看你育人。”

“Oh, hardly,” he said. “You should sit in sometime. It would cure you of that notion swiftly.”

“噢，才没有呢。”他说，“改天你来听听课，马上就能把这种看法扳过来。”

“Maybe I will.”

“没准儿我真去。”

“A professor? Very glamorous.”

“做教授？非常迷人。”

Pari could tell Maman was already a little drunk.

帕丽能看出来，妈芒已经喝高了。

“Well, I doubt that.”

“呃，这我可不信。”

Pari did too. She guessed that a good many of Julien’s students wanted to sleep with him. Throughout dinner, she was careful not to get caught looking at him. He had a face right out of film noir, a face meant to be shot in black and white, parallel shadows of venetian blinds slashing across it, a plume of cigarette smoke spiraling beside it. A parenthesis-shaped piece of hair managed to fall on his brow, ever so gracefully — too gracefully, perhaps. If, in fact, it was dangling there without calculation, Pari noticed that he never bothered to fix it.

帕丽也不信。她猜测，肯定有大把的学生想和于连睡觉。在餐桌上，她小心翼翼，免得让人发现她在看他。他有一张典型的黑色电影里的脸，一张最适合拍黑白片的脸，活动百叶窗把一条条平行的暗影铺在他脸上，香烟一缕，从他脸旁袅袅而上。还有一缕头发，像个圆括号，精准地搭落在他的眉梢，非常优雅——也许过于优雅了。虽然这缕头发实际上只是未经计算掉下来的，可帕丽注意到，他就是不肯抬抬手，把它整理妥帖。

“‘Action’? You do recall I teach economic theory, Nila. If you do come, what you’ll find is that my students think I’m a twit.”

“育人？你可真没忘我是教经济理论的，妮拉。你要真来的话，就会发现学生们拿我当笨蛋。”

He asked Maman about the small bookshop she owned and ran. It was across the Seine, on the other side of Pont d’Arcole.

他问起妈芒开的小书店。它位于塞纳河对岸，阿尔科勒桥的另一头。

“Do you have books on jazz?”

“你有爵士乐的书吗？”

“Bah oui,” Maman said.

“有啊。”妈芒说。

The rain outside rose in pitch, and the bistro grew more boisterous. As the waiter served them cheese puffs and ham brochettes, there followed between Maman and Julien a lengthy discussion of Bud Powell, Sonny Stitt, Dizzy Gillespie, and Julien’s favorite, Charlie Parker. Maman told Julien she liked more the West Coast styles of Chet Baker and Miles Davis, had he listened to Kind of Blue? Pari was surprised to learn that Maman liked jazz this much and that she was so conversant about so many different musicians. She was struck, not for the first time, by both a childlike admiration for Maman and an unsettling sense that she did not really fully know her own mother. What did not surprise was Maman’s effortless and thorough seduction of Julien. Maman was in her element there. She never had trouble commanding men’s attention. She engulfed men.

屋外雨声高亢，小酒馆也愈发喧闹。跑堂的给他们端来奶酪泡芙和火腿烤串，妈芒和于连随即展开了冗长的讨论，涉及巴德·鲍威尔、桑尼·斯蒂特、迪齐·吉莱斯皮，以及于连深以为爱的查理·帕克。妈芒告诉于连，她更喜欢切特·巴克和迈尔斯·戴维斯的西岸爵士，他听过《几分蓝调》[5]吗？帕丽没想到妈芒这样喜欢爵士，对这么多不同风格的音乐家如此熟悉。她受到了打击，这可不是第一次了，她既感到像小孩子一样对妈芒的崇拜，同时也有一种不安的感觉，因为她对自己的母亲并没有完全了解。有一件事倒不让人吃惊，那就是妈芒对于连既轻松随意，又技艺精湛的引诱。妈芒干起来得心应手。在吸引男人的注意力上，她向来不会觉得力不从心。对男人们，她总是狼吞虎咽。【注：[5] 《几分蓝调》（Kind of Blue），爵士乐手迈尔斯·戴维斯1959年发行的唱片。】

Pari watched Maman as she murmured playfully, giggled at Julien’s jokes, tilted her head and absently twirled a lock of her hair. She marveled again at how young and beautiful Maman was — Maman, who was only twenty years older than herself. Her long dark hair, her full chest, her startling eyes, and a face that glowed with the intimidating sheen of classic regal features. Pari marveled further at how little resemblance she herself bore to Maman, with her solemn pale eyes, her long nose, her gap-toothed smile, and her small breasts. If she had any beauty, it was of a more modest earthbound sort. Being around her mother always reminded Pari that her own looks were woven of common cloth. At times, it was Maman herself who did the reminding, though it always came hidden in a Trojan horse of compliments.

帕丽看着妈芒，看她娇声低语，被于连的笑话逗得咯咯直乐，看她歪起脑袋，心不在焉地捻着一缕头发。她又一次感到惊奇，全因妈芒如此年轻，如此美丽。虽说她身为母亲，却只比她大二十岁。她长长的黑发，饱满的胸，摄人魂魄的眼睛，脸上散发出古典王族迫人的辉光。更让帕丽惊奇的是，她和妈芒的相似之处竟然如此之少，自己长了一双严肃而无神的眼睛，长长的鼻子，笑起来就看得见齿缝，还有这对小乳房。但凡她也有美貌可言，也只是最朴素、最凡尘的那种美。待在妈芒身边，帕丽总会想到，自己这副模样只配得上普普通通的布衣。偶尔，是妈芒让她产生这样的想法，尽管那层意思总是隐藏在恭维之辞的特洛伊木马里。

You’re saying I’m not beautiful.

你在说我不漂亮。

She would say, You’re lucky, Pari. You won’t have to work as hard for men to take you seriously. They’ll pay attention to you. Too much beauty, it corrupts things. She would laugh. Oh, listen to me. I’m not saying I speak from experience. Of course not. It’s merely an observation.

她会说，你很幸运，帕丽。你不必太努力工作，就能让男人们认真地对待你。他们一定会重视你的。太漂亮，只会把事情搞砸。她大笑起来。噢，听我说。这可不是我的经验之谈。当然不是了。只是观察。

I’m saying you don’t want to be. Besides, you are pretty, and that is plenty good enough. Je t’assure, ma cherie. It’s better, even.

我在说你别老想着漂亮。再说了，你蛮可爱的，这就够好的了。我向你保证，亲爱的。甚至更好。

She didn’t resemble her father much either, Pari believed. He had been a tall man with a serious face, a high forehead, narrow chin, and thin lips. Pari kept a few pictures of him in her room from her childhood in the Kabul house. He had fallen ill in 1955– which was when Maman and she had moved to Paris — and had died shortly after. Sometimes Pari found herself gazing at one of his old photos, particularly a black-and-white of the two of them, she and her father, standing before an old American car. He was leaning against the fender and she was in his arms, both of them smiling. She remembered she had sat with him once as he painted giraffes and long-tailed monkeys for her on the side of an armoire. He had let her color one of the monkeys, holding her hand, patiently guiding her brushstrokes.

帕丽相信，她也不太像父亲。他是个高个子，面容严肃，大脑门，尖下巴，薄嘴唇。在自己的房间里，帕丽留了几张父亲的照片，出自她在喀布尔家里度过的童年时代。1955年，也就是妈芒和她搬到巴黎的时候，父亲病倒，没过多久就死了。帕丽常常看着父亲的旧照，特别是他们俩——她和父亲的那张黑白合影，他们站在一辆老式美国汽车前，父亲靠着汽车的挡泥板，把她搂在怀里，两个人都在微笑。她记得有一次和父亲坐在一起，他往衣橱上画长颈鹿和长尾巴猴子。父亲让她给一只猴子涂颜色，抓着她的手，一笔一画，耐心地教她。

Seeing her father’s face in those photos stirred an old sensation in Pari, a feeling that she had had for as long as she could remember. That there was in her life the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence. Sometimes it was vague, like a message sent across shadowy byways and vast distances, a weak signal on a radio dial, remote, warbled. Other times it felt so clear, this absence, so intimately close it made her heart lurch. For instance, in Provence two years earlier when Pari had seen a massive oak tree outside a farmhouse. Another time at the Jardin des Tuileries when she had watched a young mother pull her son in a little red Radio Flyer Wagon. Pari didn’t understand. She read a story once about a middle-aged Turkish man who had suddenly slipped into a deep depression when the twin brother he never knew existed had suffered a fatal heart attack while on a canoe excursion in the Amazon rain forest. It was the closest anyone had ever come to articulating what she felt.

看着照片上父亲的脸，一直以来都存在的那种感觉在帕丽心头再度升起。从记事的时候起，她一直都有这种感觉，这种在她的生活中，某种东西或某个人缺失的感觉，对她自身的存在来说，缺失的东西或人又是不可或缺的。有时候，这种感觉朦朦胧胧，像一个信号，穿越了晦暗的小径和浩瀚的荒野，化作收音机里一声细弱的呼叫，遥远而飘忽不定。还有些时候，这种缺失的感觉却是那样清晰，那样亲密，仿佛触手可及，让她的心猛然沉落下去。比如两年前在普罗旺斯，帕丽看到农屋前有棵大橡树的时候。还有一次是在杜伊勒里公园，她看到有个年轻的母亲拉着红色的玩具车，车里坐着她儿子。帕丽想不明白。她曾经读到过一篇报道，说的是一个土耳其中年男子突然陷入了深度抑郁，而就在此时，他完全不知道有过的双胞胎兄弟正划着独木舟，在亚马逊雨林中漂流，致命的心脏病突然发作。要想清晰地反映她的感受，这件事是最接近的。

She had once spoken to Maman about it.

她曾和妈芒谈过。

Shortly after they finished their meals, Maman excused herself to go to the bistro’s bathroom and Pari was alone a few minutes with Julien. They talked about a film Pari had seen the week before, one with Jeanne Moreau playing a gambler, and they talked about school and music too. When she spoke, he rested his elbows on the table and leaned in a bit toward her, listening with great interest, both smiling and frowning, never lifting his eyes from her. It’s a show, Pari told herself, he’s only pretending. A polished act, something he trotted out for women, something he had chosen to do now on the spur of the moment, to toy with her awhile and amuse himself at her expense. And yet, under his unrelenting gaze, she could not help her pulse quickening and her belly tightening. She found herself speaking in an artificially sophisticated, ridiculous tone that was nothing like the way she spoke normally. She knew she was doing it and couldn’t stop.

吃完菜不久，妈芒暂时告退，去了酒馆的洗手间，于是帕丽有了几分钟的时间，单独和于连在一起。他们谈起了帕丽一星期前看过的一部电影，让娜·莫罗在片中扮演赌徒，他们还谈了谈学校和音乐。她讲话的时候，他把胳膊肘放到餐桌上，朝她凑近了一些，全神贯注地听着，又是微笑，又是皱眉，目光始终没有离开过她。这是表演，帕丽告诉自己，全都是他装出来的。油滑的行为，他专门做给女人看的，现在就在做，当场就做了，想和她调调情，拿她找乐子。然而，在他不屈不挠的注视下，她难以自禁地脉搏加快，小腹一阵紧似一阵。她发现自己正在用一种矫揉造作，假装世故的可笑腔调讲话，一点也不像她正常说话的样子。她知道自己正在这样做，却停不下来。

Well, it’s hardly a mystery, mon amour, Maman had said. You miss your father. He is gone from your life. It’s natural that you should feel this way. Of course that’s what it is. Come here. Give Maman a kiss.

好了，我亲爱的，这没什么神秘的。妈芒说。你想你父亲了。他从你的生活中消失了。你有这种感觉也很自然。肯定是这么回事。到这儿来。亲妈芒一下。

Her mother’s answer had been perfectly reasonable but also unsatisfactory. Pari did believe that she would feel more whole if her father was still living, if he were here with her. But she also remembered feeling this way even as a child, living with both her parents at the big house in Kabul.

妈芒的回答完全合理，可还是不能令人满意。帕丽的确相信，如果父亲还活着，还和她在一起，她会感觉更加充实。可她明明记得，就算她小时候，和父母一起住在喀布尔的大宅子里，她已经有这种感觉了。

He told her he’d been married once, briefly.

他告诉她，他结过一次婚，时间很短。

“Really?”

“真的？”

“A few years back. When I was thirty. I lived in Lyon at the time.”

“几年前的事。我三十岁的时候。那会儿我住在里昂。”

He had married an older woman. It had not lasted because she had been very possessive of him. Julien had not disclosed this earlier when Maman was still at the table. “It was a physical relationship, really,” he said. “C’était complètement sexuelle. She wanted to own me.” He was looking at her when he said this and smiling a subversive little smile, cautiously gauging her reaction. Pari lit a cigarette and played it cool, like Bardot, like this was the sort of thing men told her all the time. But, inside, she was trembling. She knew that a small act of betrayal had been committed at the table. Something a little illicit, not entirely harmless but undeniably thrilling. When Maman returned, with her hair brushed anew and a fresh coat of lipstick, their stealthy moment broke, and Pari briefly resented Maman for intruding, for which she was immediately overcome with remorse.

他娶过一个比他大的女人。婚姻没法持续，因为她对他有着非常强烈的占有欲。此前妈芒还在桌上的时候，他没透露过这些。“老实说，那是一种肉体上的关系。”他说，“那完全是性。她想占有我。”说这些话的时候，他看着她，露出一丝咄咄逼人的微笑，小心翼翼地揣度着她的反应。帕丽点了支香烟，努力不动声色，就像芭铎一样，就像成天都有男人对她讲这种事情。可是心里头呢，她正在颤抖。她知道，一种小小的背叛行为已经在餐桌上付诸实施，有点儿像偷食禁果，不是完全无害，但绝对惊心动魄。妈芒回来了，重新梳过头，补了口红，他俩鬼鬼祟祟的时刻便戛然而止。对妈芒横插一杠，帕丽忽然生出些怨愤，但立刻便被悔恨压服。

She saw him again a week or so later. It was morning, and she was going to Maman’s room with a bowl of coffee. She found him sitting on the side of Maman’s bed, winding his wristwatch. She hadn’t known he had spent the night. She spotted him from the hallway, through a crack in the door. She stood there, rooted to the ground, bowl in hand, her mouth feeling like she had sucked on a dry clump of mud, and she watched him, the spotless skin of his back, the small paunch of his belly, the darkness between his legs partly shrouded by the rumpled sheets. He clasped on his watch, reached for a cigarette off the nightstand, lit it, and then casually swung his gaze to her as if he had known she was there all along. He gave her a closemouthed smile. Then Maman said something from the shower, and Pari wheeled around. It was a marvel she didn’t scald herself with the coffee.

大约一周之后，她再次见到了他。那是早晨，她拿着一大碗咖啡，正要去妈芒的房间。她发现他就坐在妈芒床头，正在戴手表。她没想到他过了夜。她在走廊里，透过门缝瞅见他。她站在那儿，在地上生了根，碗拿在手中，嘴里就像吞进了一团干泥巴。她看着他，他背上的皮肤毫无瑕疵，肚腩微微鼓凸，两腿中间黑糊糊的，一部分挡在凌乱的床单下。他扣好手表，从床头柜上拿起香烟，点着了，然后漫不经心地把目光甩给她，好像始终知道她就在那儿。他朝她默默一笑。后来妈芒在淋浴间里说了句什么，帕丽赶快转身走掉。她竟然没被咖啡烫着，真是奇迹。

Maman and Julien were lovers for about six months. They went to the cinema a lot, and to museums, and small art galleries featuring the works of struggling obscure painters with foreign names. One weekend they drove to the beach in Arcachon, near Bordeaux, and returned with tanned faces and a case of red wine. Julien took her to faculty events at the university, and Maman invited him to author readings at the bookstore. Pari tagged along at first — Julien asked her to, which seemed to please Maman — but soon she started making excuses to stay home. She wouldn’t go, couldn’t. It was unbearable. She was too tired, she said, or else she didn’t feel well. She was going to her friend Collette’s house to study, she said. Her friend since second grade, Collette was a wiry, brittle-looking girl with long limp hair and a nose like a crow’s beak. She liked to shock people and say outrageous, scandalous things.

在大约六个月的时间里，妈芒和于连成了情人。他们常常去看电影，去博物馆，也去小画廊，那里展出的作品往往出自没什么名气的画家，顶着外国名字，正在奋斗。一个周末，他们驾车去了阿卡雄的海滩，就在波尔多附近，回来时带着晒黑的脸和一箱红酒。于连带她参加大学教员的活动，妈芒请他出席书店里的作家朗读会。一开始帕丽还跟着——于连要她去，似乎是为了取悦妈芒——没过多久她就开始找借口待在家里。她不愿意去，也不能去。去了就难以忍受。她说她太累了，要不就说她感觉不舒服。她说她要去朋友科莱特家学习。从二年级开始，科莱特就成了她朋友。她是个干瘦的，看上去弱不禁风的女孩，留着软塌塌的长头发，鼻子好像乌鸦嘴。她喜欢让人瞠目结舌，老说一些离谱的、恶心的事情。

“I’ll bet he’s disappointed,” Collette said. “That you don’t go out with them.”

“我敢打赌他很失望。”科莱特说，“因为你没跟他们一起出去。”

“Well, if he is, he’s not letting on.”

“嗯，就算他失望，他也没表现出来。”

“He wouldn’t let on, would he? What would your mother think?”

“他不会表现出来的，对吗？让你妈怎么想？”

“Or maybe he wants you both. Maybe he likes a crowd in bed. In which case, I might ask you to put in a good word for me.”

“也许你们两个他都想要。也许他喜欢大家挤一个床。要是这种情况，我想请你替我也美言几句。”

“About what?” Collette’s tone was sly, excited. “That he’s with her to get to you. That it’s you he wants.”

“想什么？”科莱特的语气变得既会心，又兴奋，“想他和她在一起是为了得到你。你才是他想要的。”

“About what?” Pari said, though she knew, of course. She knew, and what she wanted was to hear it said.

“想什么？”帕丽问。尽管她知道，她当然知道，可她想听人说出来。

Sometimes when Maman and Julien were out, Pari would undress in the hallway and look at herself in the long mirror. She would find faults with her body. It was too tall, she would think, too unshapely, too… utilitarian. She had inherited none of her mother’s bewitching curves. Sometimes she walked like this, undressed, to her mother’s room and lay on the bed where she knew Maman and Julien made love. Pari lay there stark-naked with her eyes closed, heart battering, basking in heedlessness, something like a hum spreading across her chest, her belly, and lower still.

有时，妈芒和于连出去的时候，帕丽便在走廊里脱掉衣服，看着大镜子里的自己。她挑剔着自己的身体。太高了，她想，太不匀称了，太…太实用了。妈芒的魔鬼曲线完全没有遗传给她。有时她就这样光着身子，走进她母亲的房间，躺到床上，她知道这是妈芒和于连做爱的地方。帕丽躺在那儿，一丝不挂，闭着眼，心脏猛烈捶击，迷醉于意乱神迷，有种嗡嗡的感觉荡漾开来，席卷了她的胸，她的腹，一直向下。

“That is disgusting,” Pari said with a flutter.

“好恶心。”帕丽说，心里一阵乱跳。

“You’re repulsive, Collette.”

“讨厌死了，科莱特。”

Then the predictable period when Maman would find a sudden taste for solitude. She would stay in bed, wearing an old winter coat over her pajamas, a weary, doleful, unsmiling presence in the apartment. Pari knew to leave her alone. Her attempts at consoling and companionship were not welcome. It lasted weeks, the sullen mood. With Julien, it went on considerably longer.

接下来的一段时间不出所料，妈芒会发现，孤独突然有了好味道。她待在床上，睡衣外面套旧棉服，变成公寓里一个疲倦、消沉、闷闷不乐的人形。帕丽知道，别理她。她的安慰和陪伴统统不受欢迎。沮丧的心境通常会持续几个星期，跟于连这一次则远为长久。

She is sitting up in bed, still in the hospital gown. Dr. Delaunay has given Pari the discharge papers, and the nurse is unhooking the intravenous from Maman’s arm.

她正要从床上坐起来，医院的病号服仍然穿在身上。德劳内大夫已把出院证明给了帕丽，护士正在帮妈芒取下胳膊上的静脉注射管。

It ended, of course. They ended, Maman and Julien. Pari was relieved but not surprised. Men always failed Maman in the end. They forever fell disastrously short of whatever ideal she held them up to. What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits and the flinging of cooking utensils and collapse. High drama. Maman was incapable of either starting or ending a relationship without excess.

结束了，理所当然。他们结束了，妈芒和于连。帕丽得到了解脱，但并不吃惊。男人们到了最后，总是让妈芒失望。他们永远都会变成不完美，悲惨地告别她为他们圈定的无论什么理想形象。以欢乐和热情开始，总是结束于轻易的指责和恶毒的语言，突如其来的怒火和哭泣，摔锅砸碗，然后全然失控。高潮迭起的大戏。妈芒就是不能在没有过度的情况下开始，或者结束一段恋情。

“Ah, merde!” Maman says now.

“噢，他妈的！”妈芒现在说话了。

Parallaxe 84 (WINTER 1974), P. 36

《视差》第 84期（1974年冬季号），第 36页

“A feature for a poetry magazine.”

“一份诗歌杂志的人物特写。”

“They’re accompanying the piece with a photo.” She points to the sutures on her forehead.

“他们还要给文章配张照片。”她指了指自己额头上缝合过的伤口。

“I’m sure you’ll find some elegant way to hide it,” Pari says.

“我敢保证，你一定能找到漂亮的办法把它挡住。”帕丽说。

FROM “AFGHAN SONGBIRD,” AN INTERVIEW WITH NILA WAHDATI BY ÉTIENNE BOUSTOULER,

《阿富汗夜莺》节选——妮拉·瓦赫达提访谈录，作者：艾蒂安·布斯图勒

Maman sighs, looks away. When the nurse yanks the needle out, Maman winces and barks at the woman something unkind and undeserved.

妈芒叹了口气，把目光移开。护士猛地拔出了针头，只见妈芒脸上抽搐了一下，朝那女人吼了一句，既不中听，也没必要。

NW: My daughter, Pari. Like the city but no s. It means “fairy.” That picture is from a trip to Normandy we took, the two of us. Back in 1957, I think. She must have been eight.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我女儿帕丽。和“巴黎”差不多，但没 s，意思是“仙女”。这张照片是我们去诺曼底的时候拍的，我们俩。我想那是 1957年的事，她肯定已经八岁了。

“I just remembered. I have an interview in a couple of days.”

“刚想起来。过几天我有个采访。”

I look around the apartment again and am drawn to a framed photograph on one of the bookshelves. It is of a little girl squatting in a field of wild bushes, fully absorbed in the act of picking something, some sort of berry. She wears a bright yellow coat, buttoned to the throat, which contrasts with the dark gray overcast sky above. In the background, there is a stone farmhouse with closed shutters and battered shingles. I ask about the picture.

我再次环顾公寓，书架上一个相框引起了我的注意。照片上是个小女孩，蹲在野草丛生的田野里，正在全神贯注地捡东西，也许是某种浆果。她穿着明黄色的外套，扣子扣到领口，与头顶灰暗的天空形成了鲜明的对照。背景里有一间石头盖的农舍，百叶窗关着，木瓦覆盖的屋顶破破烂烂。我问起这张照片。

“What is it?”

“怎么了？”

“That’s fantastic, Maman.”

“太好了，妈芒。”

“An interview?”

“采访？”

EB: You must be proud.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您肯定很骄傲。

She smiles and shrugs.

她笑了笑，耸耸肩。

She laughs.

她大笑起来。

EB: Perhaps it’s her way of rebelling. You know a thing or two about rebellion, I think.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：也许这是她反叛的方式。我想您对反叛还是略知一二的。

NW: She studies mathematics at the Sorbonne.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：她在索邦学数学。

NW: Besides, she would be the proverbial rebel without a cause. I’ve given her every freedom imaginable. She wants for nothing, my daughter. She lacks nothing. She’s living with someone. He is quite a bit older. Charming to a fault, well-read, entertaining. A raging narcissist, of course. Ego the size of Poland.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：还有，她应该是人们常说的那种无因的反叛。我给了她可以想像的所有自由。她一无所求。她什么也不缺。她现在和别人同居。那个人年纪比她大好多，迷人到了过分的地步，博学，风趣。毫无疑问，一个狂热的自恋者，自我意识有整个波兰那么大。

NW: Yes, but I did it the proper way. I drank and smoked and took lovers. Who rebels with mathematics?

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那是。可我是正儿八经地反叛。我又喝酒又抽烟，还谈恋爱。谁用数学来反叛呢？

NW: Whether I approve or not is irrelevant. This is France, Monsieur Boustouler, not Afghanistan. Young people don’t live or die by the stamp of parental approval.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我赞不赞成都无关紧要。这是法国，布斯图勒先生，不是阿富汗。年轻人不必靠父辈的恩准来决定生死。

EB: I am struck a bit by her choice of career, given that you devoted yourself to the arts.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我对她的职业选择有点吃惊，因为您献身于艺术。

EB: Does she live in Paris?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：她现在在巴黎吗？

EB: You don’t approve.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您不赞成。

NW: I don’t know where she gets the ability. All those incomprehensible formulas and theories. I guess they’re not incomprehensible to her. I can hardly multiply, myself.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我不知道她从哪儿获得了这种能力。那么多难以理解的公式啊，理论啊。可我猜这些东西对她来说就不是难以理解的了。我连乘法都不会，我自己。

EB: Distant, I would say. Grave. Inscrutable. Uncompromising.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：冷漠，请恕我直言。阴沉。难以参透。不肯妥协。

NW: I really insist you have a glass with me. I hate — no, I loathe — drinking alone.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我非得让您和我来一杯。我讨厌…不，我憎恶一个人喝酒。

EB: And in private?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：私下里呢？

NW: We left when she was six. She has limited memory of her time there.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我们离开的时候她才六岁。她对那段日子的记忆非常有限。

NW: My father. Nineteen twenty-nine. The year I was born.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我父亲。1929年。我出生的那年。

EB: He looks quite distinguished.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：他看上去是个大人物。

NW: He was part of the Pashtun aristocracy in Kabul. Highly educated, unimpeachable manners, appropriately sociable. A great raconteur too. At least in public.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：他属于喀布尔的普什图贵族阶层，受过高等教育，举止上无懈可击，善于交际，但很有分寸。也是个极为善谈的人，至少在公共场合是这个样子。

I ask her to tell me about her early life.

我请她给我讲讲她早年的生活。

She excuses herself and leaves the room for a moment. When she returns, she hands me an old, wrinkled black-and-white photograph. A stern-looking man, heavyset, bespectacled, hair shiny and combed with an impeccable part. He sits behind a desk, reading a book. He wears a suit with peaked lapels, double-breasted vest, high-collared white shirt and bow tie.

她短暂告退，离开了房间。回来时，她递给我一张皱巴巴的老照片。一个表情严厉的男人，身材魁伟，戴着眼镜，头发油光水滑，梳成无可挑剔的分头，正坐在桌边读书。他穿着尖领西装，双排扣的马甲，白色的高领衬衫，打着领结。

NW: Venture to guess, Monsieur Boustouler?

妮拉·瓦赫达提：您猜猜看，布斯图勒先生。

I pick up the photo and look at it again.

我拿起那张照片，又看了看。

EB: Your daughter has no ties to Afghanistan, then?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：那么您女儿和阿富汗没有什么瓜葛了？

EB: But not you, of course.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您肯定不是这样的。

She pours me a glass of the Chardonnay. Out of politeness, I take a sip.

她给我倒了一杯霞多丽。出于礼貌，我抿了一小口。

NW: He had cold hands, my father. No matter the weather. His hands were always cold. And he always wore a suit, again no matter the weather. Perfectly tailored, sharp creases. A fedora too. And wingtips, of course, two-toned. He was handsome, I suppose, though in a solemn way. Also — and I understood this only much later — in a manufactured, slightly ridiculous, faux-European way — complete, of course, with weekly games of lawn bowling and polo and the coveted French wife, all of it to the great approval of the young progressive king.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：他手冰凉，我父亲。不管什么天气，他的手总是凉凉的。可他总是穿着西装，同样不管天气如何。衣服都是精工细做，有棱有角。软呢帽也是。当然了，还有尖皮鞋，双色的。他很英俊，我觉得是，不过是那种一本正经的英俊。而且呢——这一点我后来才明白过来——而且有一种装腔作势的，有点可笑的，虚假的欧洲范儿——完全是装出来的，毫无疑问。他每个星期都去打草地滚球，打马球，还有个令人垂涎的法国妻子，所有这一切，年轻而进步的国王都大力支持。

She picks at her nail and doesn’t say anything for a while. I flip the tape in my recorder.

她摸了摸自己的指甲，暂时什么也不说了。我把录音机里的磁带翻了面。

NW: My father slept in his own room, my mother and I in ours. Most days, he was out having lunch with ministers and advisers to the king. Or else he was out riding horses, or playing polo, or hunting. He loved to hunt.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我父亲睡他自己的房间，我母亲和我睡。大多数时间，他都出去和部长们、国王的顾问们一起吃午餐。要不然他就出去骑马，打马球，打猎。他喜欢打猎。

EB: So you didn’t see much of him. He was an absentee figure.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：这么说您见他的时候不多。他是个不在场的形象。

NW: Not entirely. He made it a point every couple of days to spend a few minutes with me. He would come into my room and sit on my bed, which was my signal to climb into his lap. He would bounce me on his knees for a while, neither one of us saying much, and finally he would say, “Well, what shall we do now, Nila?” Sometimes he would let me take the handkerchief from his breast pocket and let me fold it. Of course I would just ball it up and stuff it back into his pocket, and he would feign an expression of mock surprise, which I found highly comical. And we’d keep doing this until he tired of it, which was soon enough. And then he would stroke my hair with his cold hands and say, “Papa has to go now, my fawn. Run along.”

妮拉·瓦赫达提：不完全是。他很留心，每隔两三天就陪我待几分钟。他走进我房间，坐到床上，这就是让我往他腿上爬的信号。他把我搁到膝盖上，颠我一会儿，我俩都没什么话讲，最后他说：“好了，妮拉，咱们现在干点什么呢？”有的时候，他会让我从他胸前的衣袋里扯出手帕，然后让我把它叠起来。当然了，我只是把它团成一团，再塞回他口袋里，他做出一副吃惊的样子，装出来的，可我觉得那样子滑稽死了。我们翻来覆去地玩这个，直到他烦了，很快他就烦了。然后他用大凉手摸摸我脑袋瓜，说：“爸爸现在得走了，我的小鹿。你撒欢去吧。”

EB: I’m sorry?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我不明白。

She smiles.

她笑了。

NW: That was his nickname for me. I loved it. I used to hop around the garden — we had a very large garden — chanting, “I am Papa’s fawn! I am Papa’s fawn!” It wasn’t until much later that I saw how sinister the nickname was.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那是他对我的爱称。我喜欢。我常常在花园里跳来跳去——我们有个非常大的花园——唱着：“我是爸爸的小鹿！我是爸爸的小鹿！”没过太久，我就发现这爱称是多么不吉利。

She takes the photograph back to the other room and returns, fetches a new pack of cigarettes from a drawer and lights one.

她把照片收进隔壁房间，又回来，从抽屉里取出另一包香烟，点了一支。

They could have walked the few blocks to Maman’s apartment, but the rain has picked up considerably. In the taxi, Maman sits balled up in the backseat, draped by Pari’s raincoat, wordlessly staring out the window. She looks old to Pari at this instant, far older than her forty-four years. Old and fragile and thin.

如果步行的话，走几个路口就能到妈芒的公寓，可是雨又下大了。在出租车的后座上，妈芒裹着帕丽的雨衣，缩成一团，无言地盯着窗外。这一瞬间，她在帕丽的眼中变老了，比她四十四岁的年纪要老上许多。又老又瘦，脆弱不堪。

NW: My father shot deer, Monsieur Boustouler.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我父亲猎鹿啊，布斯图勒先生。

Pari has not been to Maman’s apartment in a while. When she turns the key and lets them in, she finds the kitchen counter cluttered with dirty wineglasses, open bags of chips and uncooked pasta, plates with clumps of unrecognizable food fossilized onto them. A paper bag stuffed with empty wine bottles sits on the table, precariously close to tipping over. Pari sees newspapers on the floor, one of them soaking up the blood spill from earlier in the day, and, on it, a single pink wool sock. It frightens Pari to see Maman’s living space in this state. And she feels guilt as well. Which, knowing Maman, may have been the intended effect. And then she hates that she had this last thought. It’s the sort of thing Julien would think. She wants you to feel badly. He has said this to her several times over the last year. She wants you to feel badly. When he first said it, Pari felt relieved, understood. She was grateful to him for articulating what she could not, or would not. She thought she had found an ally. But, these days, she wonders. She catches in his words a glint of meanness. A troubling absence of kindness.

帕丽有一阵子没来妈芒的公寓了。她开了锁，和妈芒一进屋，就发现厨房的台子上堆满了脏酒杯，开了口的袋装薯条，没煮过的意大利面，无法辨认的食物结了块，成了盘子里的化石。桌子上放着个塞满空酒瓶的纸袋，歪歪斜斜的，眼瞅着就要翻倒。帕丽看到了地板上的报纸，有一张浸透了今天早些时候溅出的血，在它上面，是一只落单的粉红色羊毛袜。看到妈芒的生活空间竟然是这种状态，帕丽吓了一大跳。她也感到了愧疚。出于对妈芒的了解，这种效果也许是有意为之。可她马上又恨起刚才这个想法来了。于连就是这样想的。她想让你内疚。在过去的一年中，这种话他已经对她说过好几次了。她想让你内疚。他第一次这样说的时候，帕丽还有一种解脱的感觉，觉得自己得到了理解，对他心存感激，因为他心直口快，说出了她不能，或者不会说的话。她以为自己找到了盟友。但这些天来，她开始疑惑了。从他的话里，她捕捉到了一丝卑鄙，一种令人不安的善良的缺失。

“Don’t start in on me. Turn off the light.”

“别训斥我。把灯关了。”

“I don’t think so,” she says. It doesn’t come out like a plea for attention. Maman says this in a flat, bored voice. It sounds tired and sincere, and final.

“我可不这么想。”她说。这句话说的可不像在祈求关心。妈芒用的是一种模糊、厌烦的声音，听起来疲倦而诚恳，而且不留余地。

“Are you going to be all right, Maman?”

“你会好起来的吧，妈芒？”

“Are you leaving now?”

“你这就走？”

“Are you taking your pills? Have you stopped? I think you’ve stopped, and I worry.”

“你要吃药吗？你已经停了吗？我看你已经停了，我很担心。”

Pari does. She sits on the edge of the bed and watches her mother fall asleep. Then she heads for the kitchen to begin the formidable task of cleaning up. She finds a pair of gloves and starts with the dishes. She washes glasses reeking of long-soured milk, bowls crusted with old cereal, plates with food spotted with green fuzzy patches of fungus. She recalls the first time she had washed dishes at Julien’s apartment the morning after they had slept together for the first time. Julien had made them omelets. How she’d relished this simple domestic act, washing plates at his sink, as he played a Jane Birkin song on the turntable.

帕丽关了灯。她坐在床边，看着母亲入睡，然后迈进厨房，投身于艰巨的清理任务。她找到一双手套，开始洗碗。她洗了牛奶放酸、味道呛人的杯子，麦片放坏、结成硬壳的碗，食物长了丛丛绿毛和霉菌的盘子。她想起在于连家头一回洗碗，正是他俩初次上床后的隔天早晨。于连煎了蛋卷。她多么喜欢做这种简单的家务啊，她在他家洗碗池子里刷着盘子，而他在唱机上放起了一首简·伯金的歌。

Maman looks up at her, the back of one hand resting on her bandaged brow. The pose makes her look like an actress in a silent film about to faint.

妈芒仰望着她，手背搭在包扎过的额头上。这姿势让她看起来就像无声电影里要晕倒的女演员。

“Then I’ll stay.”

“那我就留下来。”

“Turn off the light.”

“把灯关了。”

“Maman?”

“妈芒？”

“Yes.”

“对。”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“你要我留下来吗？”

“Yes.”

“嗯？”

The bedroom floor is littered with pieces of clothing, records, books, more newspapers. On the windowsill is a glass half filled with water gone yellow from the cigarette butts floating in it. She swipes books and old magazines off the bed and helps Maman slip beneath the blankets.

卧室的地板上散落着一件件衣服、唱片、书，还有更多的报纸。窗台上，漂浮着烟头的半杯水已经变黄。她把书和旧杂志从床上扒拉下去，扶妈芒钻到毯子下。

“You’re scaring me, Maman.”

“你别吓唬我，妈芒。”

She had reconnected with him the year before, in 1973, for the first time in almost a decade. She had run into him at a street march outside the Canadian Embassy, a student protest against the hunting of seals. Pari didn’t want to go, and also she had a paper on meromorphic functions that needed finishing, but Collette insisted. They were living together at the time, an arrangement that was increasingly proving to their mutual displeasure. Collette smoked grass now. She wore headbands and loose magenta-colored tunics embroidered with birds and daisies. She brought home long-haired, unkempt boys who ate Pari’s food and played the guitar badly. Collette was always in the streets, shouting, denouncing cruelty to animals, racism, slavery, French nuclear testing in the Pacific. There was always an urgent buzz around the apartment, people Pari didn’t know milling in and out. And when they were alone, Pari sensed a new tension between the two of them, a haughtiness on the part of Collette, an unspoken disapproval of her.

去年，也就是1973年，她才和于连重新有了联系，差不多十年来的头一次。她在加拿大使馆外游行的时候撞见他，当时学生们正在抗议猎杀海豹。帕丽不想去，同时还有一篇亚纯函数的论文没有写完，但科莱特非拉上她不可。那段时间她们住在一起，可这种安排让彼此之间越来越不愉快。科莱特抽上了大麻。她绑发带，穿松松垮垮的洋红色套头衫，上面绣着鸟和雏菊。她把一些长头发、蓬头垢面的男孩带回家，他们吃帕丽的食物，弹难听的吉他。科莱特总是上街，喊叫着，谴责虐待动物、种族主义、奴隶制、法国在太平洋的核试验。家里也总是闹哄哄的，总有帕丽不认识的人进进出出。他们单独相处时，帕丽感到了两人之间一种新的紧张状态，科莱特总是带着一种傲慢，一种针对她的无言的责备。

Only about thirty people showed up. There was a rumor that Brigitte Bardot was going to make an appearance, but it turned out to be just that, only a rumor. Collette was disappointed at the turnout. She had an agitated argument with a thin, pale bespectacled young man named Eric, who, Pari gathered, had been in charge of organizing the march. Poor Eric. Pari pitied him. Still seething, Collette took the lead. Pari shuffled along toward the back, next to a flat-chested girl who shouted slogans with a kind of nervous exhilaration. Pari kept her eyes to the pavement and tried her best to not stand out.

到场的只有三十来人。谣传碧姬·巴铎会露面，结果证明，谣传就是谣传。科莱特对集会人数感到失望。她激动地和一个名叫埃里克的男青年争论着。此人很瘦，面无血色，戴着眼镜，帕丽断定就是他负责组织这次游行。可怜的埃里克。帕丽很同情他。科莱特倒仍然充满了激情，一马当先，帕丽拖着脚走在队伍后面，身边有个平胸女孩在喊口号，带着一种神经兮兮的兴奋劲儿。帕丽的眼睛一直看着人行道的方向，拼命让自己不要太打眼。

“They’re lying,” Collette said animatedly. “They say their methods are humane. Humane! Have you seen what they use to club them over the head? Those hakapiks? Half the time, the poor animal hasn’t even died yet, and the bastards stick their hooks in it and drag it out to the boat. They skin them alive, Pari. Alive!” The way Collette said this last thing, the way she emphasized it, made Pari want to apologize. For what, she was not quite sure, but she knew that, these days, it squeezed the breath out of her being around Collette and her reproaches and many outrages.

“他们在撒谎。”科莱特劲头十足地说，“他们说方法是人道的。人道！你知道他们用什么往脑袋上打吗？刺棒！很多时候，可怜的动物甚至还没死呢，那些王八蛋就伸出钩子钩住它，把它往船上拖。它们活活地就给剥了皮，帕丽，活活地呀！”科莱特说最后这句话时的样子，她强调的语气，弄得帕丽直想道歉。为了什么，她不太清楚，但她知道这些天来，待在科莱特身边，听着她的指责，感受着她如此之多的义愤，帕丽真觉得自己被勒得喘不上气。

At a street corner, a man tapped her on the shoulder.

在街角，有人拍了拍她的肩膀。

“You look like you’re dying to be rescued.”

“你一副等人救命的样儿。”

He was wearing a tweed jacket over a sweater, jeans, a wool scarf. His hair was longer, and he had aged some, but elegantly, in a way that some women his age might find unfair and even infuriating. Still lean and fit, a couple of crow’s-feet, some more graying at the temples, his face set with just a light touch of weariness.

他穿花呢夹克、毛衣和牛仔裤，戴羊毛围巾。他头发更长了，也更老了一些，但越老越优雅，有些女人到了他这个年纪，想必会因此觉得不公平，甚至让人生气。他仍然偏瘦，健壮，几条鱼尾纹，两鬓更显得花白，脸上带着少许疲倦。

“Your friend looks angry. Homicidally angry.”

“你朋友看起来很生气。气得要杀人了。”

They kissed on the cheek, and when he asked if she would have a coffee with him, she said yes.

两人亲了亲脸，他问她愿不愿意一起喝杯咖啡，她说愿意。

They went to a small café and sat at a table by the window. He ordered them coffee and a custard mille-feuille each. Pari watched him speak to the waiter in the tone of genial authority that she recalled well and felt the same flutter in the gut that she had as a girl when he would come over to pick up Maman. She felt suddenly self-conscious, of her bitten fingernails, her unpowdered face, her hair hanging in limp curls — she wished now that she’d dried it after the shower, but she’d been late, and Collette had been pacing like a zoo animal.

他们去了一家小咖啡馆，坐到临窗的桌边。他点了咖啡和千层酥，一人一份。帕丽看着他和男招待讲话，语气和蔼却不失威仪，不禁想起自己还是少女的时候，每当他过来接妈芒，她的心都会扑通扑通乱跳，就和现在一样。她突然自惭形秽起来——她咬过的指甲，没搽粉的脸，打了卷的、软耷耷的头发——真希望自己出门前洗过澡，吹过头发，可当时太晚了，科莱特焦躁不安地踱着步，活像动物园里的困兽。

“I am,” she said.

“没错。”她说。

Pari glanced behind her, saw Collette standing with Eric, still chanting and pumping her fist but also, absurdly, glaring at the two of them. Pari swallowed back laughter — that would have wrought irreparable damage. She shrugged apologetically and ducked away.

帕丽朝身后瞟了一眼，看到科莱特与埃里克站在一起，还在喊叫着，上下挥舞着拳头，可笑的是，她却怒视着他们俩。帕丽使劲憋住笑——真要笑出来，可就等于捅了马蜂窝。她耸耸肩，表示歉意，然后溜走了。

“Ah. Yes. You know I think I may be a little frightened of her.”

“噢，没错。你知道的，我看我都有点怕她了。”

“We all are.”

“咱俩一样。”

“I hadn’t pegged you as the protesting type,” Julien said, lighting her cigarette for her.

“真没看出来你是抗议分子。”于连说着，为她点着了香烟。

“Over Collette.”

“对科莱特。”

“Next you’ll say I’m living up to my name,” she said.

“接下来，你肯定会说我人如其名了。”她说。

“Ah, non. Please. Too obvious. There is an art to complimenting a woman, you know.”

“噢，不。得了吧。那太没劲了。恭维女人是门艺术，你知道的。”

The waiter brought the pastries and coffee. Pari focused on the waiter’s hands as he arranged the cups and plates on the table, the palms of her own hands blooming with sweat. She had had only four lovers in her lifetime — a modest number, she knew, certainly compared to Maman at her age, even Collette. She was too watchful, too sensible, too compromising and adaptable, on the whole steadier and less exhausting than either Maman or Collette. But these were not qualities that drew men in droves. And she hadn’t loved any of them — though she had lied to one and said she did — but pinned beneath each of them she had thoughts of Julien, of him and his beautiful face, which seemed to come with its own private lighting.

男招待端来了糕点和咖啡。他往桌上放杯子、摆盘子的当口，帕丽盯着他的手，也看着自己冒汗的掌心。她这辈子已经有过了四个情人，她知道，跟妈芒这么大的时候相比，这几个人可不算多，甚至比不上科莱特。她太谨慎，太精明，太容易妥协，也太容易适应别人了，可总的来说比妈芒或科莱特稳定，折腾得也没那么厉害。但是这些品质不足以吸引结群结队的男人。她谁也没爱过——尽管她对其中一位撒过谎，说她爱他——在这几个男人身上，无一例外，她都寄托了对于连的思念，她想着他，想着他漂亮的脸，那张脸带着自己隐秘的光，在别人身上时隐时现。

They laughed. He reached across the table and touched her scarf. He dropped his hand. “It would be trite to say that you’re all grown up, so I won’t. But you do look ravishing, Pari.”

他们哈哈一笑。于连把手伸过桌子，摸摸她的围巾，又把手放下。“人人都说女大十八变，所以这种话我不讲。可你迷人极了，帕丽。”

She pinched the lapel of her raincoat. “What, in this Clouseau outfit?” Collette had told her it was a stupid habit, this self-deprecating clowning around with which Pari tried to mask her nervousness around men she was attracted to. Especially when they complimented her. Not for the first time, and far from the last, she envied Maman her naturally self-assured disposition.

她捏了捏自己雨衣上的大翻领。“是吗，就凭这件克鲁索[6]的行头？”科莱特告诉过她，这是个愚蠢的习惯，每当男人对她产生好感，尤其是恭维她的时候，她便用这种自嘲式的插科打诨来掩饰自己的紧张。她对妈芒那种浑然天成、充满自信的处世方式生出了嫉妒。这种感觉不是第一次，也远非最后一次。【注：[6]雅克·克鲁索是好莱坞系列喜剧电影《粉红豹》里的主人公，一个缺心眼的法国警察。】

“I’m not. That was more guilt than conviction.”

“我不是。这事儿内疚比信念多。”

“Guilt? Over seal hunting?”

“内疚？对捕猎海豹？”

“No. But I’m certain you do.”

“我不知道。但我肯定你知道。”

Pari was inwardly flattered that he recalled something she had told him so many years before. He must have thought of her, then, in the intervening time. She must have been on his mind.

帕丽暗自得意，她告诉过于连的事，那么多年了，到现在他都记得。这么说，在断了联系的这段时间里，他肯定老想着她。他心里肯定有她。

“Where to?”

“去哪儿？”

“Were you published?”

“出版了吗？”

As they ate, he talked about his work. He said he had quit teaching some time ago. He had worked on debt sustainability at the IMF for a few years. The best part of that had been the traveling, he said.

吃东西的时候，他谈起了自己的工作。他说他已经有段时间不教书了，在国际货币基金组织工作过几年，做债务可持续性方面的研究。他说，这份工作最大的好处就是旅行。

“That is the rumor.” He smiled. “I work for a private consulting firm now here in Paris.”

“据说出了。”他笑了，“现在我在一家私营的咨询公司工作，就在巴黎。”

“I want to travel too,” Pari said. “Collette keeps saying we should go to Afghanistan.”

“我也想旅行。”帕丽说，“科莱特一直说，我俩应该去趟阿富汗。”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. Going back there, I mean. I don’t care about the hashish, but I do want to travel the country, see where I was born. Maybe find the old house where my parents and I lived.”

“好了，是我一直在想这事。我是说回那儿看看。我惦记的又不是哈希什[7]，我想到那个国家旅行，看看我出生的地方，说不定还能找到父母和我住过的老房子。” 【注：[7]哈希什（hashish），大麻膏。阿富汗以出产上品哈希什闻名。】

“I’m curious. I mean, I remember so little.”

“我很好奇。我的意思是，我记住的东西太少了。”

“Jordan, Iraq. Then I took a couple of years to write a book on informal economies.”

“约旦，伊拉克。然后我花了两年时间，写了本关于非正规经济的书。”

“I think one time you said something about a family cook.”

“我记着呢，有一次你说起过家里的厨子。”

“I didn’t realize you had this compulsion.”

“你还有这种强迫症，原先我可没看出来。”

“I suspect I know why she would want to go.”

“我猜我知道她为什么也想去。”

Later, he asked, and she told him, about her studies and her focus on complex variables. He listened in a way that Maman never did — Maman, who seemed bored by the subject and mystified by Pari’s passion for it. Maman couldn’t even feign interest. She made lighthearted jokes that, on the surface, appeared to poke fun at her own ignorance. Oh là là, she would say, grinning, my head! My head! Spinning like a totem! I’ll make you a deal, Pari. I’ll pour us some tea, and you return to the planet, d’accord? She would chuckle, and Pari would humor her, but she sensed an edge to these jokes, an oblique sort of chiding, a suggestion that her knowledge had been judged esoteric and her pursuit of it frivolous. Frivolous. Which was rich, Pari thought, coming from a poet, though she would never say so to her mother.

后来，既然于连问到了，她就跟他讲了自己的学业。她选了复变数为专业方向。他用与妈芒截然不同的方式听着——妈芒似乎厌烦这门学科，帕丽对它的热情也让她迷惑不解。就连假装有兴趣，妈芒都做不到。她大大咧咧地拿这事开玩笑，表面上看，似乎是在嘲弄自己的无知。哦啦啦，她笑嘻嘻地说，我的头啊！我的头！转起来像陀螺！我要跟你做笔交易，帕丽。我去给咱俩倒点儿茶，你回到地球，行吗[8]？她咯咯笑着，帕丽于是迁就她，可她能感觉到这种玩笑的尖刻，一种拐弯抹角的责怪，暗示着她的知识已被判定为晦涩难解，她的事业则无足轻重。无足轻重。真可笑啊，诗人也能这样说别人。想归想，帕丽绝不会对母亲这样讲。【注：[8]原文为法语。】

“Yes. His name was Nabi. He was the chauffeur too. He drove my father’s car, a big American car, blue with a tan top. I remember it had an eagle’s head on the hood.”

“对。他叫纳比。他也当司机。他给我父亲开车，很大的一辆美国车，蓝色的，带皮篷。我记得引擎盖上有个鹰头。”

Julien asked what she saw in mathematics and she said she found it comforting.

于连问她从数学里体验到了什么，她说她得到了慰藉。

“I might have chosen ‘daunting’ as a more fitting adjective,” he said.

“是‘畏惧’吧，我看这个词可能更合适。”他说。

She said there was comfort to be found in the permanence of mathematical truths, in the lack of arbitrariness and the absence of ambiguity. In knowing that the answers may be elusive, but they could be found. They were there, waiting, chalk scribbles away.

她说，数学公理的不变性，不随意也不模糊，可以让人从中找到安慰。虽然知道答案难以解出，但它们总能被发现。它们就在那儿，等待着，终究会有人拿着粉笔，把它们潦草地写出来。

“It is that too.”

“这也是它的一部分。”

“Nothing like life, in other words,” he said. “There, it’s questions with either no answers or messy ones.”

“你想说的是，它与生活完全不同。”他说，“生活中的问题不是没有答案，就是答案太多，怎么也理不清。”

“Am I that transparent?” She laughed and hid her face with a napkin. “I sound like an idiot.”

“我有那么透明吗？”她大笑起来，用餐巾挡住自己的脸，“我觉得自己好白痴。”

“Not at all,” he said. He plucked away the napkin. “Not at all.”

“一点也不。”他说。他扯掉了餐巾，“一点也不。”

“Like one of your students. I must remind you of your students.”

“像你学生是吧。我肯定让你想起学生来了。”

He asked more questions, through which Pari saw that he had a working knowledge of analytic number theory and was, at least in passing, familiar with Carl Gauss and Bernhard Riemann. They spoke until the sky darkened. They drank coffee, and then beer, which led to wine. And then, when it could not be delayed any longer, Julien leaned in a bit and said in a polite, dutiful tone, “And, tell me, how is Nila?”

他又问了些问题，帕丽从中看出，他对解析数论有相当的了解，而且至少是附带着的，他也通晓卡尔·高斯和伯恩哈德·黎曼。两人一直聊到天黑。他们喝了咖啡，接着是啤酒，不过瘾，又喝了葡萄酒。然后，实在没法再拖下去的时候，于连靠近了一些，用一种礼貌的、很有责任感的语气说：“告诉我，妮拉怎么样？”

Pari puffed her cheeks and let the air out slowly.

帕丽猛吸了一大口气，腮帮子鼓着，慢慢把这口气吐出。

Julien nodded knowingly.

于连会心地点着头。

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“很遗憾听到这个消息。”

“She may lose the bookstore,” Pari said.

“她的书店可能开不下去了。”帕丽说。

“Is she writing?”

“她还在写作吗？”

“She hasn’t been.”

“早不写了。”

“Business has been declining for years. She may have to shut it down. She wouldn’t admit to it, but that would be a blow. It would hit her hard.”

“这些年生意越来越不好做。她可能不得不把书店关掉。别看她不想承认，但肯定会很痛苦。对她的打击肯定蛮大。”

He soon changed the subject. Pari was relieved. She didn’t want to talk about Maman and her drinking and the struggle to get her to keep taking her pills. Pari remembered all the awkward gazes, all the times when they were alone, she and Julien, Maman getting dressed in the next room, Julien looking at Pari and her trying to think of something to say. Maman must have sensed it. Could it be the reason she had ended it with Julien? If so, Pari had an inkling she’d done so more as a jealous lover than a protective mother.

他很快换了话题。帕丽如释重负。她不想谈妈芒，也不想谈她的酒瘾，还有苦口婆心劝她继续服药的事。帕丽想起了那些尴尬的目光，每次她和于连独处，而妈芒在隔壁房间换衣服的时候，于连便看着帕丽，她绞尽脑汁，想说点什么。妈芒肯定感觉到了。难道就是这个原因，让她和于连分了手？如果是这样的话，帕丽隐隐约约地觉得，她这么做倒更像是个嫉妒的情人，而不是要保护女儿的母亲。

A few weeks later, Julien asked Pari to move in with him. He lived in a small apartment on the Left Bank in the 7th arrondissement. Pari said yes. Collette’s prickly hostility made for an untenable atmosphere at the apartment now.

几个星期之后，于连请帕丽搬去和他同住。他的小公寓位于左岸的第七区。帕丽答应了他。此时科莱特动辄伤人的敌意，已经让公寓里的气氛变得不适合居住了。

She could feel him tightening. He folded the paper, removed his reading glasses and put them on the arm of the couch.

她能感觉到于连的身体一下子绷紧了。他合上报纸，摘下老花镜，把它们放到沙发扶手上。

“She needs to know.”

“她需要知道。”

“We have to tell Maman.”

“咱们得告诉妈芒。”

“I suppose,” he said.

“我猜是吧。”

Pari remembers her first Sunday with Julien at his place. They were reclined on his couch, pressed against each other. Pari was pleasantly half awake, and Julien was drinking tea, his long legs resting on the coffee table. He was reading an opinion piece on the back page of the newspaper. Jacques Brel played on the turntable. Every now and then, Pari would shift her head on his chest, and Julien would lean down and place a small kiss on her eyelid, or her ear, or her nose.

帕丽还记得在于连家和他一起度过的第一个星期天。他们靠在沙发上，紧紧相挨。帕丽满心欢喜，还在半梦半醒之间。于连喝着茶，两条长腿搁在茶几上。他在读报纸末版上的一篇评论。唱机里放着雅克·布雷尔的歌。时不时地，帕丽把脑袋挪到他胸前，于连便低下头，轻轻吻一吻她的眼皮、耳朵，或者鼻子。

“No, of course. You’re right. You should call her. But be careful. Don’t ask for permission or blessing, you’ll get neither. Just tell her. And make sure she knows this is not a negotiation.”

“不，不是。你说得对。你该给她打个电话。不过小心点。别请求她允许，也别要她祝福，肯定哪一样你都得不到。告诉她就行了。而且让她明白，这不是讨价还价。”

“You ‘suppose’?”

“你‘猜’？”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“你说得倒容易。”

“Well, perhaps. Still, remember that Nila is a vindictive woman. I am sorry to say this, but this is why it ended with us. She is astonishingly vindictive. So I know. It won’t be easy for you.”

“嗯，也许吧。还有，别忘了妮拉是个报复心很强的女人。很遗憾我这么说，但就是这个原因，我们分了手。她报复心强得惊人。所以我知道。这对你可不容易。”

“I think that’s highly debatable.”

“不是才怪。”

“Well, I wish I could say that didn’t hurt.”

“哼，我倒真想告诉你，那事儿无所谓，伤不了我。”

“I don’t understand what that means,” Pari said.

“我不明白这是什么意思。”帕丽说。

“I look at you sometimes and I don’t see me in you. Of course I don’t. I suppose that isn’t unexpected, after all. I don’t know what sort of person you are, Pari. I don’t know who you are, what you’re capable of, in your blood. You’re a stranger to me.”

“有时我看你啊，在你身上看不到我自己。当然看不到嘛。话说回来，我想这也不意外。我不知道你是什么人，帕丽。我不知道你是谁，也不知道你安的什么心。我觉得你好陌生。”

“I know you were. You are. It can’t be hidden, a thing like this.”

“我知道你会。你这不就告诉我了吗？这种事瞒不住的。”

“Are you angry?”

“你生气了？”

Pari was standing by the window. With her finger, she absently traced the blue rim of Julien’s old, battered ashtray. She shut her eyes. “No, Maman. No it doesn’t.”

帕丽站在窗前，伸出一根指头，心不在焉地放到于连破旧的烟灰缸上，摸索着它蓝色的镶边。她闭上眼睛。“不，妈芒，不要紧。”

Julien stroked her back with his palm. “Don’t be squeamish.”

于连抬起手，抚摸着她的背。“别太较真了。”

“Does it matter?”

“我生不生气要紧吗？”

Of course, Pari thought. “I was going to tell you.”

果然，帕丽想。“我正要告诉你来着。”

“Collette.”

“科莱特。”

“I didn’t mean it to.”

“我不是那个意思。”

“Who told you?”

“谁告诉你的？”

Pari called her the next day. Maman already knew.

第二天，帕丽给她打了电话。妈芒已经知道了。

Pari sighed and closed her eyes. The thought of it made her stomach clench.

帕丽叹了口气，闭上眼睛。一想到这事，她心里便揪得慌。

“Why would I want to hurt you, Maman?”

“为什么我想伤害你，妈芒？”

Maman laughed. A hollow, ugly sound.

妈芒大笑起来。一种空洞而难听的声音。

Parallaxe 84 (Winter 1974), p. 38

《视差》第 84期（1974年冬季号），第 38页

We had lessons every day. It was very hard on me when she left Kabul.

我们天天上课。她离开喀布尔让我非常难受。

NW: It was devastating. I loved my mother. I had planned on living with her in France after the war.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：天塌了一样。我爱我母亲。我本来计划战争以后去法国，和她一起生活。

NW: My mother taught me in Kabul when I was little. She spoke only French to me.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：小时候在喀布尔我母亲教的。她只跟我讲法语。

EB: What happened to her?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：她后来怎么样了？

EB: Did you learn your French here?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您的法语是在这儿学的吗？

FROM “AFGHAN SONGBIRD,” AN INTERVIEW WITH NILA WAHDATI BY ÉTIENNE BOUSTOULER,

《阿富汗夜莺》节选——妮拉·瓦赫达提访谈录，作者：艾蒂安·布斯图勒

But her mother had already hung up.

可她的母亲已经挂断了电话。

EB: That must have been difficult.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您一定很难过。

EB: For France?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：她回法国了？

NW: Yes. My parents divorced in 1939 when I was ten. I was my father’s only child. Letting me go with her was out of the question. So I stayed, and she left for Paris to live with her sister, Agnes. My father tried to mitigate the loss for me by occupying me with a private tutor and riding lessons and art lessons. But nothing replaces a mother.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：是的，1939年，我父母离了婚，当时我十岁。父亲就我一个孩子。让我跟母亲走，那绝对不可能。所以我留下来了，她去了巴黎，和她妹妹阿涅丝一起生活。父亲为了缓解我的失落，就请了家庭教师，还让我学马术，上美术课，就是不想让我闲下来。可是什么也代替不了母亲。

NW: Oh, she died. When the Nazis came to Paris. They didn’t kill her. They killed Agnes. My mother, she died of pneumonia. My father didn’t tell me until the Allies had liberated Paris, but by then I already knew. I just knew.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：唉，她死了。纳粹到巴黎的时候。不是他们杀的。他们杀了阿涅丝。我母亲死于肺炎。父亲没告诉过我，盟军解放巴黎以后他才说，可那会儿我已经知道了。我就是知道。

EB: I assume that means your father and you didn’t get along.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我猜您的意思是说，您和您父亲相处得并不愉快。

NW: There were strains between us. We were quarreling. Quite a lot, which was a novelty for him. He wasn’t accustomed to being talked back to, certainly not by women. We had rows over what I wore, where I went, what I said, how I said it, who I said it to. I had turned bold and adventurous, and he even more ascetic and emotionally austere. We had become natural opponents. She chuckles, and tightens the bandanna’s knot at the back of her head.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我们的关系非常紧张。我们吵架，总是吵，这对他倒是个新奇的经验。他很不习惯有人跟他顶嘴，特别是女人。他申斥我，关于我穿了什么，去了哪儿，说了什么，怎么说的，对谁说的。我胆子大了，不管不顾，他倒越来越像个苦行僧，越来越禁欲。理所当然，我们成了死对头。她咯咯笑着，伸头到脑后，紧了紧印花方巾的结。

NW: And then I took to falling in love. Often, desperately, and, to my father’s horror, with the wrong sort. A housekeeper’s son once, another time a low-level civil servant who handled some business affairs for my father. Foolhardy, wayward passions, all of them doomed from the start. I arranged clandestine rendezvous and slipped away from home, and, of course, someone would inform my father that I’d been spotted on the streets somewhere. They would tell him that I was cavorting — they always put it like that — I was “cavorting.” Or else they would say I was “parading” myself. My father would have to send a search party to bring me back. He would lock me up. For days. He would say from the other side of the door, You humiliate me. Why do you humiliate me so? What will I do about you? And sometimes he answered that question with his belt, or a closed fist. He’d chase me around the room. I suppose he thought he could terrorize me into submission. I wrote a great deal at that time, long, scandalous poems dripping with adolescent passion. Rather melodramatic and histrionic as well, I fear. Caged birds and shackled lovers, that sort of thing. I am not proud of them.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：后来我就开始谈恋爱，一次又一次，不顾一切，而且我找的人总是不对头，可把我父亲吓坏了。有一回是个管家的儿子，还有一次是个低级别的公务员，他帮我父亲办过事。都是些草率而任性的感情，从一开始就注定了厄运。我偷偷摸摸地约会，从家里溜掉，然后呢，自然会有什么人给我父亲通风报信，说在大街上看见我了。他们告诉他，我正在外面撒欢儿呢。他们总是这个样子讲话——我在“撒欢儿”。要不然他们就说，我在招摇过市。于是我父亲就会派出搜索队，把我弄回去。他把我锁在屋里。他会在门外说，你真让我丢脸。你为什么让我这样丢脸？我该拿你怎么办啊？有时候他用皮带，或是握紧的拳头来回答这个问题。他追得我满屋子跑。我想，他认为可以使用恐怖手段，来让我屈服。那段时间我写了大量的诗，很长的、让人脸红的诗，充满了青春期的激情，恐怕也相当地夸张和造作。笼中的小鸟啊，带镣铐的恋人啊，诸如此类的东西。我并不以此为荣。

I sense that false modesty is not her suit and therefore can assume only that this is her honest assessment of these early writings. If so, it is a brutally unforgiving one. Her poems from this period are stunning in fact, even in translation, especially considering her young age when she wrote them. They are moving, rich with imagery, emotion, insight, and telling grace. They speak beautifully of loneliness and uncontainable sorrow. They chronicle her disappointments, the crests and troughs of young love in all its radiance and promises and trappings. And there is often a sense of transcendent claustrophobia, of a shortening horizon, and always a sense of struggle against the tyranny of circumstance — often depicted as a never named sinister male figure who looms. A not so-opaque allusion to her father, one would gather. I tell her all this.

我感觉虚伪的谦虚并不符合她的性格，因此只能假定，这番话是她对自己早期作品的诚实评价。若然如此，这种评价便太过苛刻了。她这一时期的诗作其实极为出色，即便经过了翻译，也是如此，更要考虑到她创作时还如此年轻。这些诗非常动人，意象丰富，感情饱满，不乏洞见，而且极富魅力，优美地表达了寂寞和难以抑止的悲伤。诗中记录了她的沮丧，也记录了初恋的波峰与浪谷，道尽了稚爱的辉光、诺言和罗网。还常常带有一种超验的幽闭恐惧症的感觉，仿佛天空在不断压低，始终挥之不去的还有一种在暴政环境下奋力挣扎的感觉，暴政往往表现为一个从未具名的男性形象，阴森可怖，若隐若现。人们可以想见，那是对她父亲的影射，这一点并不那么隐晦难解。我把这些话讲给她听了。

EB: And you break in these poems from the rhythm, rhyme, and meter that I understand to be integral to classic Farsi poetry. You make use of free-flowing imagery. You heighten random, mundane details. This was quite groundbreaking, I understand. Would it be fair to say that if you’d been born in a wealthier nation — say, Iran — that you would almost certainly be known now as a literary pioneer?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：在这些诗中，您还挣脱了节奏、韵律和音步的束缚，而就我所知，这些特点对古典波斯语诗歌来说是不可或缺的。您对意象的使用随心所欲。您突出了日常生活中没有规律可循的细节。依我之见，这是非常具有开创性的。公平地说，如果您生在一个更为富庶的国家，比如说伊朗，那么现在，几乎可以肯定，您已经被奉为文学先锋了。我这样说对吗？

NW: Imagine.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：您猜好了。

She smiles wryly.

她撇撇嘴，笑了一下。

EB: You mean separate the end from the means.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您的意思是结果和手段应该分开。

EB: Still, I am quite struck by what you said earlier. That you weren’t proud of those poems. Are you pleased with any of your work?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：还有，我对您刚才说的话非常吃惊。对这些诗，您说您并不以此为荣。那么您有过自己喜欢的作品吗？

EB: And you were very good at it.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您就特别长于此道。

NW: A thorny question, that one. I suppose I would answer in the affirmative, if only I could keep them apart from the creative process itself.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：您问了个棘手的问题。我想我可以作出肯定的回答，只要不考虑它们的创作过程。

NW: I see the creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我把创作过程当作一种必要的盗窃行为。如果对一部优美的作品深入挖掘，布斯图勒先生，您一定会找出形形色色不光彩的举动。创作意味着对他人生活的恣意破坏，把他们变成不情愿，也不知情的参与者。你盗取别人的欲望，别人的梦想，偷走别人的缺陷，别人的痛苦。你拿走了不属于你的东西。你是故意在这样做。

NW: I did it not for the sake of some high and lofty notion about art but because I had no choice. The compulsion was far too powerful. If I did not surrender to it, I would have lost my mind. You ask if I am proud. I find it hard to flaunt something obtained through what I know to be morally questionable means. I leave the decision to tout or not to others.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我这样做不是出于某种崇高、堂皇的艺术观念，而只是因为我没有选择。创作的冲动实在过于强烈，如果我不屈服，就会失去理智。您问我是否引以为荣。我发现有的东西很难去夸耀，因为我知道，这是通过道德上有疑问的手段获得的。谁吆喝谁决定吧，或者谁也别做这个决定。

NW: What I can tell you, however, is that no one was touting me in Kabul. No one in Kabul considered me a pioneer of anything but bad taste, debauchery, and immoral character. Not least of all, my father. He said my writings were the ramblings of a whore. He used that word precisely. He said I’d damaged his family name beyond repair. He said I had betrayed him. He kept asking why I found it so hard to be respectable.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：不过呢，我可以告诉您，在喀布尔一个替我吆喝的人都没有。在喀布尔没人把我看成是什么先锋，我只是个粗俗，放荡，不道德的人物。尤其是我父亲。他说我写的东西纯属婊子的梦话。他用的就是这个字眼。他说我败坏了他的姓氏，再也无法补救。他说我背叛了他。他不停地问我为什么，为什么我觉得做一个品行端正的女人就那么难。

EB: How did you respond?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您是怎样回答的？

She empties her glass of wine and refills it with what remains in the bottle.

她将杯中的酒一饮而尽，又拿瓶子里剩下的给自己满上。

NW: I told him I did not care for his notion of respectable. I told him I had no desire to slip the leash around my own neck.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我告诉他，我不在乎他那套品行端正的说辞。我告诉他，我才不想拿狗链子往自己的脖子上套呢。

NW: Naturally.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那当然。

EB: I suppose that only displeased him more.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：我猜这只会让他更生气。

I hesitate to say this next.

我犹豫了一下，不知道接下来的话当讲不当讲。

EB: He was a patriarch, was he not? And you were a direct challenge to all he knew, all that he held dear. Arguing, in a way, through both your life and your writing, for new boundaries for women, for women to have a say in their own status, to arrive at legitimate selfhood. You were defying the monopoly that men like him had held for ages. You were saying what could not be said. You were conducting a small, one-woman revolution, one could say.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：他就像个族长，对不对？而您对他相信的一切，珍视的一切，构成了直接的挑战。争辩呢，在某种程度上说，既通过您的生活，也通过您的写作，是在为女性拓展新的边界，让女性拥有以自己的身份发言的权利，从而实现合理的自我认同。您当年一直在反抗男人的垄断性特权，这种特权世世代代都由他那样的男人把持着。可以说，您当年讲的是不能讲的话。您当年从事的是一场小规模的、一个女人单打独斗的革命。

She cocks an eyebrow.

她眉毛一立。

EB: But I do understand his anger.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：可我确实理解他的愤怒。

NW: Well, I was angry. I was angry about the attitude that I had to be protected from sex. That I had to be protected from my own body. Because I was a woman. And women, don’t you know, are emotionally, morally, and intellectually immature. They lack self-control, you see, they’re vulnerable to physical temptation. They’re hypersexual beings who must be restrained lest they jump into bed with every Ahmad and Mahmood.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：是的，我的确愤怒，我愤怒是因为那种一定要让我与性绝缘、与我自己的身体绝缘的态度。因为我是个女人。而女人，你不知道吗，女人在感情上，在道德上，在智力上，统统都发育不全。女人缺乏自我控制，对不对，她们容易受到肉体上的诱惑。她们是性欲超强的生物，因此必须加以约束，以免她们钻进每一个艾哈迈德，每一个马哈茂德的被窝。

EB: But that’s part of it, isn’t it?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：性确实是一个方面，难道不对吗？

EB: But — forgive me for saying this — you did just that, no?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：可是…请恕我直言…您恰恰就是这样做的，对吗？

I flip through my notes and mention a few of the overtly erotic poems –“Thorns,” “But for the Waiting,” “The Pillow.” I also confess to her that they are not among my favorites. I remark that they lack nuance and ambiguity. They read as though they have been crafted with the sole aim of shocking and scandalizing. They strike me as polemical, as angry indictments of Afghan gender roles.

我翻了翻笔记，提到几首诗，它们都非常明显地涉及了肉欲——《棘》，《枕》，《如果没有等待》。我也实言相告，这几首并非我的最爱。我评论说，它们缺乏细腻和朦胧。打动我的是诗中的挑衅色彩，而这正是阿富汗妇女的愤怒控诉。

NW: And all this time, I thought I was writing about sex.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那段时间我一直以为自己在写性。

NW: Only as a protest against that very notion.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那只是对旧观念的抗议。

I tell her I do.

我说我同意。

NW: Do you agree, for the sake of this chat, that we should remain on good terms, Monsieur Boustouler?

妮拉·瓦赫达提：您是否同意，布斯图勒先生，为了这次交谈，我们应该让气氛保持融洽？

Needless to say, this preemptively quells any impulse I may have had to ask about the drinking.

不用说，这一招先发制人，打消了我探问喝酒之事的所有念头。

NW: I fell ill in 1948, when I was nearly nineteen. It was serious, and I will leave it at that. My father took me to Delhi for treatment. He stayed with me for six weeks while doctors tended to me. I was told I could have died. Perhaps I should have. Dying can be quite the career move for a young poet. When we returned, I was frail and withdrawn. I couldn’t be bothered with writing. I had little interest in food or conversation or entertainment. I was averse to visitors. I just wanted to pull the curtains and sleep all day every day. Which was what I did mostly. Eventually, I got out of bed and slowly resumed my daily routines, by which I mean the stringent essentials a person must tend to in order to remain functional and nominally civil. But I felt diminished. Like I had left something vital of myself behind in India.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我病了，那是 1948年，我十九岁。病得很厉害，具体什么病我就不说了。父亲带我去德里看病。他陪我待了六个星期，让大夫们给我治疗。他们说我差点死掉。也许我应该死。对一个年轻诗人而言，死亡大概是个相当不错的事业上的进步。回来以后，我变得脆弱而孤僻。我厌倦了写作。食物、谈话和娱乐都变得索然无味。我讨厌有人来访。我只想拉上窗帘，整天睡觉，也希望天天如此。这的确成了我最主要的活动。最后，我下了床，慢慢恢复了日常作息，只因为这是一个人不得不为的必要活动，以此保持身体的机能和表面上的教养。可我觉得不完整了，好像把一件极其重要的东西留在了印度。

EB: What happened next?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：后来怎么样了？

She has a delightful laugh, full of mischief and cunning intelligence. She asks if I want lunch. She says her daughter has recently restocked her refrigerator and proceeds to make what turns out to be an excellent jambon fumé sandwich. She makes only one. For herself, she uncorks a new bottle of wine and lights another cigarette. She sits down.

她爆出一阵开心的大笑，充满了调皮和狡猾的机灵劲儿。她问我想不想吃午饭，说她女儿最近刚帮她把冰箱装满，接下来她做了熏火腿三明治，吃到嘴里才知道好吃极了。她只做了一个。她自己喝酒。她又拿了一瓶，拔掉塞子，点了支烟，这才坐下。

NW: Then do me two favors. Eat your sandwich and quit looking at my glass.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：那就帮我两个忙：一、吃您的三明治；二、不许再看我酒杯。

She offers me another sandwich, which I decline, and a cup of coffee, which I accept. As she sets water on to boil, she asks if I am married. I tell her I am not and that I doubt I ever will be. She looks at me over her shoulder, her gaze lingering, and grins.

她问我要不要再来一块三明治，我谢绝了。那再来一杯咖啡？我接受了。她一边开始烧水，一边问我结婚了没有。我告诉她没有，也不知道将来会不会结婚。她回过头，看着我，目光逗留不去，然后咧嘴一笑。

EB: Was your father concerned?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您父亲担心吗？

NW: Quite the contrary. He was encouraged. He thought that my encounter with mortality had shaken me out of my immaturity and waywardness. He didn’t understand that I felt lost. I’ve read, Monsieur Boustouler, that if an avalanche buries you and you’re lying there underneath all that snow, you can’t tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise. That was how I felt, disoriented, suspended in confusion, stripped of my compass. Unspeakably depressed as well. And, in that state, you are vulnerable. Which is likely why I said yes the following year, in 1949, when Suleiman Wahdati asked my father for my hand.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：恰恰相反。他很受鼓舞。他认为与死亡的邂逅已经让我摆脱了不成熟和任性。他不理解我感到的是失落。我读到过，布斯图勒先生，如果雪崩把你埋住，你倒在好多好多雪的下面，就会分不清上在哪边，下在哪边。你想把自己挖出去，却选了错误的方向，于是把你自己挖进了死亡。这就是我当时的感觉，迷失了方向，置身于混乱的状态，却没了罗盘。还有无法形容的沮丧。处在这种状态下，你就会变得非常脆弱。可能就是出于这个原因吧，第二年，也就是 1949年，当苏莱曼·瓦赫达提向我父亲提亲时，我表示了同意。

NW: He was not.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：他可不是。

EB: You were twenty.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您那时二十岁。

NW: Ah. I can usually tell.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：唉，平时我可一眼就能看出来。

EB: Surprise!

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：真神奇！

She gives me the coffee, lights a cigarette, and takes a seat.

她把咖啡递给我，自己点了支烟，然后坐下。

NW: This isn’t a fashion statement. I slipped and fell a couple of days ago, tore my forehead open. Still, I should have known. About you, I mean. In my experience, men who understand women as well as you seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：这可不是赶时髦。几天前我滑倒了，摔了一跤，把脑门子摔开了。就算这样，我还是应该能看出来啊。我的意思是看出来您。凭我的经验，像您这样了解女人的男人，似乎都不太想和女人有什么关系。

EB: Ah. That must have come as a shock.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：哇。肯定是个很大的打击。

NW: Maybe it’s the concussion.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：大概是脑震荡。

She points to the bandanna.

她指了指印花方巾。

NW: I felt sorry for him, mostly. He could not have chosen a worse time or worse place to be born the way he was.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我主要还是替他难过。他实在是生错了时代，生错了地点。

She smiles a little sadly.

她笑了笑，带着少许的悲哀。

NW: I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it’s that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it’s going to work. It’s astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks. Me, I didn’t even need that long. My husband was a decent man. But he was much too serious, aloof, and uninteresting. Also, he was in love with the chauffeur.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：关于婚姻，布斯图勒先生，我有个理论。也就是说，用不了两个星期，您肯定就知道婚姻合不合适。让人吃惊的是，有太多的人好几年，甚至几十年都戴着枷锁，拖延着，双双陷在一种自欺欺人的状态里，摆脱不了虚幻的希望，可实际上，他们在最初的两个星期就已经有了自己的答案。我呢，我需要的时间更短。我丈夫是个正派人，可他太严肃，太冷漠，也太无趣了。而且他爱上了司机。

NW: Well, it did thicken the proverbial plot.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：是啊，的确让老生常谈的故事变得复杂了。

EB: Is your daughter a disappointment to you?

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：您对女儿感到失望吗？

He died of a stroke when our daughter was six. At that point, I could have stayed in Kabul. I had the house and my husband’s wealth. There was a gardener and the aforementioned chauffeur. It would have been a comfortable life. But I packed our bags and moved us, Pari and me, to France.

我们的女儿六岁时，他中风死了。当时我本可以待在喀布尔。我有房子，有我丈夫的财产，还有个园丁，加上刚才提到过的那位司机，可以舒舒服服地过日子。可我收拾了行李，然后我们俩，我和帕丽，就跑到法国来了。

EB: Which, as you indicated earlier, you did for her benefit.

艾蒂安·布斯图勒：可照您之前说的，您这样做是为了她着想。

NW: Everything I’ve done, Monsieur Boustouler, I’ve done for my daughter. Not that she understands, or appreciates, the full measure of what I’ve done for her. She can be breathtakingly thoughtless, my daughter. If she knew the life she would have had to endure, if not for me…

妮拉·瓦赫达提：我做的每件事情，布斯图勒先生，都是为我女儿做的。对我为她付出的这一切，倒不是说她不理解，或者说不知道感激，可能她就是没心没肺到了家，我的女儿啊。要是她知道自己可能会过上什么样的生活，遭多大的罪，要不是我…

NW: Monsieur Boustouler, I’ve come to believe she’s my punishment.

妮拉·瓦赫达提：布斯图勒先生，我已经相信了，她就是对我的惩罚。

One day in 1975, Pari comes home to her new apartment and finds a small package on her bed. It is a year after she fetched her mother from the emergency room and nine months since she left Julien. Pari is living now with a nursing student named Zahia, a young Algerian woman with curly brown hair and green eyes. She is a competent girl, with a cheerful, unfrazzled disposition, and they have lived together easily, though Zahia is now engaged to her boyfriend, Sami, and moving in with him at the end of the semester.

1975年的一天，帕丽回到自己新公寓里的家，看到床上有个小包裹。这是她把母亲从急诊室接回来一年之后，而她离开于连已经九个月了。帕丽现在和一个名叫扎希娅的护士生住在一起。扎希娅是个年轻的阿尔及利亚姑娘，棕色的卷发，绿色的眼睛，很能干，性格开朗，不知疲倦，也很好相处，不过她已经和男友萨米订了婚，这个学期一结束，就要搬到萨米那儿去了。

Pari rips the package open. Inside is a magazine and, clipped to it, another note, this one written in a familiar, almost femininely graceful script. This was sent to Nila and then to the couple who live in Collette’s old apartment and now it is forwarded to me. You should update your forwarding address. Read this at your own peril. Neither of us fares very well, I’m afraid. Julien.

帕丽扯开包裹。里面是一本杂志，上面还别着一张纸条，字迹亲切，柔美，仿佛出自女人的手笔：此件原本寄给妮拉，后递至住在科莱特过去公寓里的夫妇，现又转送给我。你应把转寄地址做一下变更。读的时候注意后果自负。恐怕我们谁也吃不消。于连。

There is a folded sheet of paper next to the package. This came for you. I’m spending the night at Sami’s. See you tomorrow. Je t’embrasse. Zahia.

包裹旁边有张折起来的纸：给你送来的。我在萨米家过夜。明天见。吻你。扎希娅。

Pari drops the journal on the bed and makes herself a spinach salad and some couscous. She changes into pajamas and eats by the TV, a small black-and-white rental. Absently, she watches images of airlifted South Vietnamese refugees arriving in Guam. She thinks of Collette, who had protested the American war in Vietnam in the streets. Collette, who had brought a wreath of dahlias and daisies to Maman’s memorial, who had held and kissed Pari, who had delivered a beautiful recitation of one of Maman’s poems at the podium.

帕丽把杂志放到床上，给自己做了个菠菜沙拉，又弄了点库斯库斯[9]。她换上睡衣，坐到租来的小黑白电视机前吃饭。她心不在焉地看着电视，画面是南越难民经空运抵达了关岛。她想起了科莱特曾经上街，抗议美国在越南发动的战争。科莱特也曾带了一个大丽花和雏菊编成的花圈，参加妈芒的追悼会，她拥抱并亲吻了帕丽，还在台上完美地朗诵了一首妈芒的诗。【注：[9]北非地区传统菜，以粗粒小麦粉加肉和蔬菜焖制而成。】

I think it’s best I stay clear.

我看我最好还是躲远点。

Who doesn’t? Pari had said.

谁不是呢？帕丽说。

She takes a bath after dinner and reviews some notes for an upcoming exam. She watches some more TV, cleans and dries the dishes, sweeps the kitchen floor. But it’s no use. She can’t distract herself. The journal sits on the bed, its calling to her like a lowfrequency hum.

吃完晚饭，她洗了个澡，温习了笔记，准备即将到来的考试。她又看了一会儿电视，把碗洗好，擦净，抹干了厨房的地板。可是全没用。她就是没办法让自己分心他顾。杂志放在床上，呼叫着她，仿佛一波又一波的低频信号。

Julien had not attended the services. He’d called and said, feebly, that he disliked memorials, he found them depressing.

于连没有在仪式上露面。他打过电话，有气无力地说他厌恶追悼会，因为现场令人压抑。

Do as you like, Pari had said into the receiver, thinking, But it won’t absolve you, not coming. Any more than attending will absolve me. Of how reckless we were. How thoughtless. My God. Pari had hung up with him knowing that her fling with Julien had been the final push for Maman. She had hung up knowing that for the rest of her life it would slam into her at random moments, the guilt, the terrible remorse, catching her off guard, and that she would ache to the bones with it. She would wrestle with this, now and for all days to come. It would be the dripping faucet at the back of her mind.

随你便吧。帕丽在电话里这样说，心里却在想，不来也不会让你解脱，你不露面只能让我得到解脱，因为我们曾经那么鲁莽轻率，那么没心没肺。我的天啊。帕丽挂断了电话，心里明白了，她和于连的放纵行为等于推了妈芒最后一把。她挂断的时候就知道了，终其一生，她将随时受到此事的剧烈冲撞。内疚，强烈的悔恨，会让她防不胜防，她将因此而痛入骨髓。她会时时为此纠结，现在如此，将来的每一天也是一样。就像有个不停滴水的龙头，架在她心底深处。

When she was young, Pari remembers, she had been all questions. Do I have cousins in Kabul, Maman? Do I have aunts and uncles? And grandparents, do I have a grand-pére and a grand-maman? How come they never visit? Can we write them a letter? Please, can we visit them?

帕丽记得年幼时，她有过各种各样的问题。我在喀布尔有表哥表弟吗，妈芒？我有姑姑舅舅吗？爷爷奶奶呢？我有外公外婆吗？他们怎么从不过来看看咱们？咱们能给他们写封信吗？咱们去看看他们好吗？

Afterward, she puts a raincoat over her pajamas and goes for a walk down Boulevard de la Chapelle, a few blocks south of the apartment. The air is chilly, and raindrops slap the pavement and shopwindows, but the apartment cannot contain her restlessness right now. She needs the cold, the moist air, the open space.

后来，她索性在睡衣外面套上雨衣，出门散步。从公寓往南，过几个路口就上了沙佩勒大街。空气清冷，雨点敲击着人行道和商店的橱窗，可是此时此刻，家里已容不下她的烦躁不安。她需要这冷而湿的空气，这开阔的空间。

Most of her questions had revolved around her father. What was his favorite color, Maman? Tell me, Maman, was he a good swimmer? Did he know a lot of jokes? She remembers him chasing her once through a room. Rolling her around on a carpet, tickling her soles and belly. She remembers the smell of his lavender soap and the shine of his high forehead, his long fingers. His oval-shaped lapis cuff links, the crease of his suit pants. She can see the dust motes they had kicked up together off the carpet.

她大部分问题都围绕着父亲。他最喜欢什么颜色，妈芒？告诉我，妈芒，他游泳游得好不好？他很会讲笑话吗？她记得，有一次他曾追着她跑过房间，还弄得她在地毯上打滚儿，挠她脚心，胳肢她的肚皮。她记得他熏衣草香皂的味道，亮亮的大脑门，长长的手指，椭圆形的青金石袖扣，还有西裤的裤褶。她仿佛又看见了他们一起从地毯上踢起的微尘。

Pari heads westbound, toward Pigalle, walking briskly, hands stuffed into the pockets of her raincoat. The sky is darkening rapidly, and the downpour lashing at her face is becoming heavier and more steady, rippling windows, smearing headlights. Pari has no memory of ever meeting the man, her grandfather, Maman’s father, has seen only the one photograph of him reading at his desk, but she doubts that he was the mustache-twirling villain Maman has made him out to be. Pari thinks she sees through this story. She has her own ideas. In her version, he is a man rightfully worried over the well-being of a deeply unhappy and self-destructive daughter who cannot help making shambles of her own life. He is a man who suffers humiliations and repeated assaults on his dignity and still stands by his daughter, takes her to India when she’s ill, stays with her for six weeks. And, on that subject, what really was wrong with Maman? What did they do to her in India? Pari wonders, thinking of the vertical pelvic scar — Pari had asked, and Zahia had told her that cesarian incisions were made horizontally.

帕丽向西，朝皮加勒广场的方向走去。她两手抄在雨衣口袋里，疾步快行。天空在迅速转暗，扑面而至的暴雨下得越来越大，越来越没有减缓的迹象，雨水浮荡起一扇扇窗，模糊了一对对车灯的光。帕丽想不起自己是否见过那个男人，她的外公，妈芒的父亲。她只见过一张相片，是他在伏案读书，可她不相信这就是妈芒说的那个翘胡子的恶棍。帕丽认为自己看透了这个故事。她有自己的想法。在帕丽的故事里，他是个对女儿能否幸福感到合理担忧的男人，女儿深深的不快乐，带有自毁的倾向，不可遏止地破坏着自己的人生。这男人蒙受着耻辱，尊严一再受到冒犯，却依然对女儿不离不弃，她得病的时候还带她去印度，一陪就是六个星期。谈到这个问题，妈芒到底得了什么病？在印度又接受了怎样的治疗？帕丽满心疑虑，想起了妈芒下腹那条纵向的疤——帕丽问过这个问题，扎希娅告诉她，剖腹产的切口是要横切的。

What Pari had always wanted from her mother was the glue to bond together her loose, disjointed scraps of memory, to turn them into some sort of cohesive narrative. But Maman never said much. She always withheld details of her life and of their life together in Kabul. She kept Pari at a remove from their shared past, and, eventually, Pari stopped asking.

帕丽一直想从母亲那儿得到的，是无形的胶水，能把她松散、杂乱的记忆碎片黏合起来，变成某种有形的故事。妈芒却从不多说。对她在喀布尔的生活，她们共同的生活，她总是捂着。她让帕丽与她们共有的过去保持着距离，到了最后，帕丽也就不问了。

Pari read the piece three times back at the apartment. And she doesn’t know what to think, what to believe. So much of it rings false. Parts of it read like a parody. A lurid melodrama, of shackled beauties and doomed romances and pervasive oppression, all told in such breathless, high-spirited fashion.

刚才在公寓里，帕丽把那篇文章读了三遍。她不知道该怎么想，又该相信什么。太多的话像谎言。有些部分读起来如同恶意的模仿。一出耸人听闻的戏：被禁锢的美人儿，在劫难逃的罗曼史，压迫无处不在，所有这一切，讲起来都如此扣人心弦，如此激情四溢。

And now it turns out that Maman had told this magazine writer, this Étienne Boustouler, more about herself and her life than she ever did her own daughter.

原来妈芒对这位杂志记者，对这位艾蒂安·布斯图勒，讲了她自己和帕丽的生活经历，讲得比她告诉自己女儿的还要多。

Or had she.

她从未这样讲过。

Lies?

谎言？

As for herself, Pari is not surprised by the unflattering treatment Maman had reserved for her — not after Julien — nor is she surprised by Maman’s selective, sanitized account of her own mothering.

至于她自己，帕丽并不因妈芒对她的贬低而感到惊讶——在于连的事情发生之前就已经这样了——同样不觉得意外的是，在谈到为母之道时，妈芒那种选择性的、自我开脱式的叙述。

And yet…

可是…

And then what Maman told the interviewer about her husband, Pari’s father. Was it slander? Was it true that he’d loved Nabi, the chauffeur? And, if it was, why reveal such a thing now after all this time if not to confuse, humiliate, and perhaps inflict pain? And, if so, on whom?

再看妈芒谈起丈夫，也就是帕丽的父亲时，对记者说的那番话。这是诋毁吗？他爱纳比，那个司机，这是真的吗？如果是真的，那为什么过了这么长时间，到现在才把这样一件事抖出来？是要扰乱，羞辱，或是刺痛什么人吗？如果是，那又是谁呢？

Maman had been a gifted writer. Pari has read every word Maman had written in French and every poem she had translated from Farsi as well. The power and beauty of her writing was undeniable. But if the account Maman had given of her life in the interview was a lie, then where did the images of her work come from? Where was the wellspring for words that were honest and lovely and brutal and sad? Was she merely a gifted trickster? A magician, with a pen for a wand, able to move an audience by conjuring emotions she had never known herself? Was that even possible?

妈芒是个才华出众的作家。帕丽读过她用法语写的所有文字，还有她从波斯语翻译过来的所有的诗。她作品中的才智与美是无可争辩的。可是，如果妈芒在采访时的人生叙述都是谎言，那么她作品中那一幅幅画面又来自何处？那些坦诚，优美，残忍，悲伤的字句，它们的源泉又在哪里呢？她仅仅是个才华出众的骗子吗？一个魔术师，拿笔来做魔杖，变出种种她从未亲身经历过的感情，让观众为之动容？这可能吗？

Pari does not know — she does not know. And that, perhaps, may have been Maman’s true intent, to shift the ground beneath Pari’s feet. To intentionally unsteady and upend her, to turn her into a stranger to herself, to heave the weight of doubt on her mind, on all Pari thought she knew of her life, to make her feel as lost as if she were wandering through a desert at night, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, the truth elusive, like a single tiny glint of light in the distance flickering on and off, forever moving, receding.

帕丽不知道——真的不知道。而且也许，也许妈芒的真正用意，就是要撼动帕丽脚下的大地，故意地动摇她，颠覆她，把她变成自己眼中的陌生人，擎起千钧的疑惑，压迫她的心，压迫她对人生的一切信念，让她感到失落，如同在夜晚彷徨于沙漠，被黑暗与未知包围，真相却难以捕捉，仿佛仅存的一点微光，只在远方明灭，永远在移动着，后退着，不断地暗弱下去。

Perhaps, Pari thinks, this is Maman’s retribution. Not only for Julien but also for the disappointment that Pari has always been. Pari, who was maybe supposed to bring an end to all the drinking, the men, the years squandered making desperate lunges at happiness. All the dead ends pursued and abandoned. Each lash of disappointment leaving Maman more damaged, more derailed, and happiness more illusory. What was I, Maman? Pari thinks. What was I supposed to be, growing in your womb — assuming it was even in your womb that I was conceived? A seed of hope? A ticket purchased to ferry you from the dark? A patch for that hole you carried in your heart? If so, then I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t nearly enough. I was no balm to your pain, only another dead end, another burden, and you must have seen that early on. You must have realized it. But what could you do? You couldn’t go down to the pawnshop and sell me.

也许，帕丽想，也许这是妈芒给她的惩罚。不只因为于连，也为了帕丽一直以来带给她的失望。也许她以为，帕丽可以让那一切统统结束：酗酒，男人们，不顾一切地冲向幸福却两手空空的岁月。勉力追求，却半途而废，每一次都走进死路。每一次失望带来的打击，都给妈芒留下更大的伤害，让她更远地偏离常轨，幸福也变得更加虚幻。我是什么，妈芒？帕丽想。我在你子宫里孕育——假定我就是在你的子宫里受孕的——那时我应该是什么？一颗希望的种子？一张买来的船票，带你脱离苦海？一块弥合你心头伤口的补丁？如果是这样，那么我是不够格的。远远不够。我没能成为你止痛的膏药，我只是你的又一条死路，又一副重担，你一定很早就看出了这一点。你一定已经明白了这一点。可你还能怎么做呢？你没办法走到当铺里把我卖掉。

Perhaps this interview was Maman’s last laugh.

也许，这篇采访就是妈芒最后一次放声大笑。

Pari steps beneath the awning of a brasserie to take refuge from the rain a few blocks west of the hospital where Zahia does part of her training. She lights a cigarette. She should call Collette, she thinks. They have spoken only once or twice since the memorial. When they were young, they used to chew mouthfuls of gum until their jaws ached, and they would sit before Maman’s dresser mirror and brush each other’s hair, pin it up. Pari spots an old woman across the street, wearing a plastic rain bonnet, laboring up the sidewalk trailed by a small tan terrier. Not for the first time, a little puff breaks rank from the collective fog of Pari’s memories and slowly takes the shape of a dog. Not a little toy like the old woman’s, but a big mean specimen, furry, dirty, with a severed tail and ears. Pari is unsure whether this, in fact, is a memory or the ghost of one or neither. She had asked Maman once if they had ever owned a dog in Kabul and Maman said, You know I don’t like dogs. They have no self-respect. You kick them and they still love you. It’s depressing.

帕丽走到一家啤酒屋的遮篷下避雨，向西过几个路口，就是扎希娅要完成部分实习的医院。她点了支香烟。她想，应该给科莱特打个电话。追悼会后她们只谈过一两次。小时候她俩常常嘴里塞着口香糖，一直嚼到下巴疼为止，还会坐到妈芒的妆镜前，给对方梳头，用发夹别好。帕丽看到马路对面有位老妇人，戴着塑料雨帽，牵着一条棕色的小梗犬，艰难地走在人行道上。不是第一次了，一股散乱的轻烟忽然从帕丽的记忆沉雾里泛起，慢慢化作狗的形状。不是老妇人手里那样的小宠物，而是不招人待见的大狗，多毛，肮脏，被人切去了尾巴和两只耳朵。帕丽无法确定，这到底是记忆呢，还是某条狗的幽灵，或者两个都不是。有一次她问过妈芒，在喀布尔的时候她们是不是养过狗。妈芒说，你知道我不喜欢狗。它们没有自尊。你踢它们，它们还是爱你。真让人沮丧。

Pari tosses her cigarette. She decides she will call Collette. Make plans to meet somewhere for tea. See how she is doing. Who she’s seeing. Go window-shopping like they used to.

帕丽丢掉香烟。她决定打电话给科莱特。约一下，找个地方喝茶。看看她过得怎么样，在跟谁交往。一起逛逛街，就像以前那样。

I don’t see me in you. I don’t know who you are.

我在你身上看不到我。我不知道你是谁。

Something else Maman said:

妈芒还说了别的：

Pari does meet Collette. They meet at a popular bar with a Moroccan design, violet drapes and orange pillows everywhere, curly-haired oud player on a small stage. Collette has not arrived alone. She has brought a young man with her. His name is Eric Lacombe. He teaches drama to seventh and eighth graders at a lycée in the 18th. He tells Pari he has met her before, a few years earlier, at a student protest against seal hunting. At first Pari cannot recall, and then she remembers that he was the one with whom Collette had been so angry over the low turnout, the one whose chest she’d knuckled. They sit on the ground, atop fluffy mango-colored cushions, and order drinks. Initially, Pari is under the impression that Collette and Eric are a couple, but Collette keeps praising Eric, and soon Pari understands he has been brought for her benefit. The discomfort that would normally overtake her in a situation like this is mirrored in — and mitigated by — Eric’s own considerable unease. Pari finds it amusing, and even endearing, the way he keeps blushing and shaking his head in apology and embarrassment. Over bread and black olive tapenades, Pari steals glances at him. He could not be called handsome. His hair is long and limp, tied with a rubber band at the base of his neck. He has small hands and pale skin. His nose is too narrow, his forehead too protruding, the chin nearly absent, but he has a bright-eyed grin and a habit of punctuating the end of each sentence with an expectant smile like a happy question mark. And though his face does not enthrall Pari as Julien’s had, it is a far kinder face and, as Pari will learn before long, an external ambassador for the attentiveness, the quiet forbearance, and the enduring decency that resides within Eric.

帕丽果然和科莱特见了面。她们在一家很有人气的酒吧碰了头，这里有摩洛哥风格的装饰，紫罗兰色的帷幔，到处摆放着橘黄色的靠枕，小舞台上还有个头发卷卷的乌德琴手。科莱特不是一个人到的。她带了个小伙子来。此人名叫埃里克·拉孔布，在十八区的一所高中教书，给七年级和八年级的学生讲戏剧。他告诉帕丽，他过去见过她，那是几年前，有一次学生示威，反对捕杀海豹。一开始帕丽没想起来，后来才恍然大悟，他就是科莱特因为到的人少而拿来撒气的那个人，那个被科莱特捶胸脯的人。他们席地而坐，身下是蓬松的芒果色坐垫，然后点了酒水。刚开始的时候，帕丽以为科莱特和埃里克是一对儿，但科莱特对埃里克赞不绝口，没过多久帕丽就明白了，科莱特是为了她，才把埃里克带过来的。通常在这种情况下，她会觉得很不舒服，可她却在埃里克的局促不安中看到了同样的不适，她自己反而因此得到了缓解。埃里克动不动就脸红，脑袋瓜子乱晃，满脸歉意，窘态百出。帕丽发现他这副模样蛮好玩，甚至也蛮可爱的。她一边吃着面包和黑橄榄酱，一边偷偷打量着埃里克。他称不上英俊，头发长长的，软塌塌的，用一根皮筋扎在脑后。他天生一双小手，皮肤没有血色，鼻子太尖，脑门又太大，几乎瞧不见下巴，可他笑起来明眸皓齿。他还有个习惯，每说完一句话，就用一个满怀期望的微笑加个标点，那笑容活像一个开心的问号。这张脸虽然不像于连那样让帕丽着迷，可它远比于连那张脸亲切友善，而且用不了太久，帕丽就能发现，埃里克的身上蕴藏着一种驻外大使般的专注，文静安恬的克制，经久不衰的端庄。

See if her old friend is still up for that trip to Afghanistan.

看看闺中密友是不是还打算去阿富汗。

“Will you go with me?”

“你和我一起去吗？”

When she tells him of her plans to go to Afghanistan, he understands in a way that Pari believes Julien never would. And also in a way that she had never openly admitted to herself.

她告诉埃里克，她计划去阿富汗，他表示理解的方式让帕丽相信，于连永远也不会这样理解她。而她也从未用如下的方式，坦率地在心里承认过。

They decide they will travel that summer, when school is out for Eric and Pari can take a brief hiatus from her Ph. D. work. Eric registers them both for Farsi classes with a tutor he has found through the mother of one of his pupils. Pari often finds him on the couch wearing headphones, cassette player on his chest, his eyes shut in concentration as he mutters heavily accented Thank yous and Hellos and How are you? s in Farsi.

他们决定夏天就动身，等埃里克的学校放假，帕丽也可以短暂地放下自己的博士论文。埃里克替他俩报了波斯语学习班，班上有个老师是他通过自己学生的母亲找到的。帕丽常常看见他靠在沙发上，戴着耳机，肚子上搁着卡式录音机，聚精会神地闭着眼，带着浓重的口音，咕哝着波斯语的“谢谢您”，“您好啊”，“您好吗？”

They marry on a chilly day in the spring of 1977, a few months after Jimmy Carter is sworn into office. Against his parents’ wishes, Eric insists on a small civil ceremony, no one present but the two of them and Collette as witness. He says a formal wedding is an extravagance they cannot afford. His father, who is a wealthy banker, offers to pay. Eric, after all, is their only child. He offers it as a gift, then as a loan. But Eric declines. And though he never says so, Pari knows it is to save her the awkwardness of a ceremony at which she would be alone, with no family to sit in the aisles, no one to give her away, no one to shed a happy tear on her behalf.

他们结了婚。那是1977年春天一个寒冷的日子，就在吉米·卡特宣誓就职几个月后。埃里克违逆了父母的愿望，坚持只办一个小小的世俗仪式。无人出席，只有他们俩，加上作为证婚人的科莱特。他说正式的婚礼太过铺张，他们负担不起。他父亲是个富有的银行家，提议由他来出钱。埃里克毕竟是他们的独苗儿。他先提出来把这笔钱作为礼物，后来又说作为借款，埃里克都拒绝了。虽然他嘴上从来不说，可帕丽知道，这样做是为了不让她感到尴尬，否则在婚礼上，她将只是孤零零的一个人，教堂里不会有家人入座，不会有人送她出嫁，也不会有人为了她淌下幸福的泪水。

“You think you were adopted,” he says.

“你认为自己是收养的。”他说。

It is Pari who decides against it. “It’s irresponsible,” she says. They are living in a studio with faulty heating, leaky plumbing, no air-conditioning, and an assortment of scavenged furniture.

决定不去的人是帕丽。“那样太不负责了。”她说。此时他们住的是一间画室，暖气有毛病，水管漏水，没空调，一堆别人不要的破烂家具。

“This is no place for a baby,” she says.

“宝宝不能住这种地方。”她说。

A few weeks before summer, just as Eric is looking into airfare and accommodations, Pari discovers she is pregnant.

再过几个星期就到暑假了，埃里克正在打探机票价格和住宿的时候，帕丽发现自己怀孕了。

Eric takes on a side job teaching piano, which he had briefly entertained pursuing before he had set his sights on theater, and by the time Isabelle arrives — sweet, light-skinned Isabelle, with eyes the color of caramelized sugar — they have moved into a small two-bedroom apartment not far from Jardin du Luxembourg, this with financial assistance from Eric’s father, which they accept this time on the condition that it be a loan.

埃里克找了兼职，教人弹钢琴，他以前学过，时间不长，纯属玩票，后来才专注于戏剧。等到伊莎贝尔降生时——甜美的、白净的伊莎贝尔，天生一双焦糖色的眼睛——他们已经搬进了一套两室的小公寓，离卢森堡公园不远，这多亏了埃里克父亲的资助，这一次他们接受了，条件是算作借款。

“We could still go,” Eric says. “We should still go.”

“咱们还是能去的。”埃里克说，“咱们应该去。”

Pari takes three months off. She spends her days with Isabelle. She feels weightless around Isabelle. She feels a shining around herself whenever Isabelle turns her eyes to her. When Eric comes home from the lycée in the evening, the first thing he does is shed his coat and his briefcase at the door and then he drops on the couch and extends his arms and wiggles his fingers. “Give her to me, Pari. Give her to me.” As he bounces Isabelle on his chest, Pari fills him in on all the day’s tidbits — how much milk Isabelle took, how many naps, what they watched together on television, the enlivening games they played, the new noises she’s making. Eric never tires of hearing it.

帕丽休了三个月的假。她整天和伊莎贝尔待在一起。有她在身边，帕丽便觉得自己进入了失重状态。不管什么时候，只要伊莎贝尔把目光转向她，她就感到自己周围满是灿烂的光华。到了晚上，当埃里克从学校回到家，头一件事就是在门口放下公文包，脱下外套，然后一屁股坐到沙发上，伸出双臂，抖着手指。“把她给我，帕丽。把她给我。”他把伊莎贝尔放到胸脯上，上上下下地颠着她，听帕丽向他播报这一整天的花絮——伊莎贝尔喝了多少奶，睡了多长时间，她俩一起看了什么电视，玩了哪些好玩的游戏，她又弄出了怎样的咿咿呀呀。听这些事，埃里克从来不觉得烦。

And the old feeling she has always had — that there is an absence in her life of something or someone vital — has dulled. It still comes now and then, sometimes with power that catches her unawares, but less frequently than it used to. Pari has never been this content, has never felt this happily moored.

那种熟悉的，始终挥之不去的感觉——生命中缺失了某种至关重要的东西，或某个至关重要的人——也变得暗淡下去了。偶尔它还会出现，有时来势汹汹，出其不意地击中她，但已不像过去那么频繁。帕丽从未像现在这样满足，从未像现在这样幸福地心有所属。

They have postponed going to Afghanistan. The truth is, Pari no longer feels the piercing urge to search for answers and roots. Because of Eric and his steadying, comforting companionship. And because of Isabelle, who has solidified the ground beneath Pari’s feet — pocked as it still may be with gaps and blind spots, all the unanswered questions, all the things Maman would not relinquish. They are still there. Pari just doesn’t hunger for the answers like she used to.

他们推迟了去阿富汗的旅行。事实是，那种如芒刺在背、要去寻根、去寻找答案的动力，帕丽已经感受不到了。因为有了埃里克，有了他不间断的、充满慰藉的陪伴。也因为有了伊莎贝尔，她稳固了帕丽脚下的大地，哪怕它仍然坑坑洼洼，有裂缝，有盲点，哪怕一切问题都不曾得到回答，一切妈芒不肯撒手的事情仍然让她受到羁绊。它们仍然在那儿。帕丽只是不再像过去那样渴求着答案。

In 1981, when Isabelle is three, Pari, a few months pregnant with Alain, has to go to Munich for a conference. She will present a paper she has coauthored on the use of modular forms outside of number theory, specifically in topology and theoretical physics. The presentation is received well, and afterward Pari and a few other academics go out to a noisy bar for beer and pretzels and Weisswurst. She returns to the hotel room before midnight and goes to bed without changing or washing her face. The phone wakes her at 2:30 A. M. Eric, calling from Paris.

1981年，伊莎贝尔三岁，帕丽怀了阿兰，已经好几个月了，却不得不去慕尼黑开会。她与人合写了一篇论文，要在会上宣读，主题是数论之外的模形式，特别是它在拓扑学和理论物理学中的应用。帕丽的陈述深受好评，会后，她和几位学者出门，去了一家喧闹的酒吧，喝啤酒，吃椒盐卷饼和巴伐利亚白香肠。临近午夜，她才回到酒店房间，没换衣服，也没洗脸，就上了床。电话弄醒她的时候，已经凌晨两点半了。是埃里克，从巴黎打来的。

“It’s Isabelle,” he says. She has a fever. Her gums have suddenly swollen and turned red. They bleed profusely at the lightest touch. “I can hardly see her teeth. Pari. I don’t know what to do. I read somewhere that it could be…”

“是伊莎贝尔。”他说。孩子在发烧，牙龈突然红肿了，轻轻一碰就大出血。“我看不见她的牙了。帕丽。我不知道怎么办。我在哪本书上看到过，这可能是…”

She wants him to stop. She wants to tell him to shut up, that she cannot bear to hear it, but she’s too late. She hears the words childhood leukemia, or maybe he says lymphoma, and what’s the difference anyway? Pari sits on the edge of the bed, sits there like a stone, head throbbing, skin drenched with sweat. She is furious with Eric for planting a thing as horrible as this in her mind in the middle of the night when she’s seven hundred kilometers away and helpless. She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you. I don’t have the heart for this. She actually says this under her breath. I don’t have the heart for this. At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent.

她想让他停下来。她想告诉他闭嘴，说她听到那几个字会受不了。可是太迟了。她听到了“儿童白血病”，也许他说的是“淋巴瘤”，[10]说来说去，这又有什么不同？帕丽坐在床边，像石头一样坐在那儿，脑袋一阵阵抽痛，出了一身的冷汗。她气急败坏，埃里克竟然把这样一件可怕的事塞进她脑子里，大半夜的，她又远在七百公里之外，束手无策。她气急败坏，恨自己愚蠢，情愿就这样把自己交付出去，从此一辈子都要提心吊胆，担惊受怕。真是疯狂啊。不折不扣的精神错乱。令人叹为观止的愚蠢，无凭无据的信念，全然不顾那庞大的几率，竟然相信一个并不归你掌控的世界，相信它绝不会夺走一件你无力承受其失去的东西，相信这个世界绝不会毁灭你。我的心承受不起。她在心里说，说得字字清晰。我的心承受不起。这一刻，她能想到的最不计后果，最没有理性的事，就是为人父母。【注：[10]白血病：leukemia；淋巴瘤：lvmphoma。】

“Eric. Eric! Ecoute moi. I’m going to call you back. I need to hang up now.”

“埃里克，埃里克！听我说。我等一下再给你打回去。现在我得挂了。”

She empties her purse on the bed, finds the small maroon notebook where she keeps phone numbers. She places a call to Lyon. Collette lives in Lyon now with her husband, Didier, where she has started a small travel agency. Didier is studying to be a doctor. It’s Didier who answers the phone.

她把手提袋里的东西全倒在床上，找出一个栗色的小本子，里面记着电话号码。她翻到一个里昂的电话。科莱特和她丈夫迪迪耶如今住在里昂，她在那儿开了一家小旅行社。迪迪耶还在学习，准备当医生。接电话的正是迪迪耶。

And part of her — God help me, she thinks, God forgive me for it — part of her is furious with Isabelle for doing this to her, for making her suffer like this.

她心里的一部分——上帝啊，救救我吧，她想，上帝啊，饶恕我这样想吧——她心里的一部分同样气急败坏，伊莎贝尔竟然对她做出这样的事，竟然让她如此痛苦。

“You do know I’m studying psychiatry, Pari, don’t you?” he says.

“你早就知道我是学精神病的，帕丽，对不对？”他问道。

“I know. I know. I just thought…”

“我知道，我知道。我只是觉得…”

Pari clutches the receiver so hard, her wrist aches. “Please,” she says patiently, “Didier.”

帕丽死死抓着听筒，手腕都握疼了。“拜托了，”她强忍着说，“迪迪耶。”

He asks some questions. Has Isabelle had any weight loss? Night sweats, unusual bruises, fatigue, chronic fevers?

他问了几个问题。伊莎贝尔的体重有没有减轻？夜里盗汗吗？有没有异常的瘀伤，疲劳，习惯性的发烧？

In the end, he says Eric should take her to a doctor in the morning. But, if he recalls correctly from his general training back in medical school, it sounds to him like acute gingivostomatitis.

最后他说，等到天亮，埃里克应该带他去看一下医生。但是，他在医学院上过通用培训课，如果他没记错的话，听上去很可能是急性龈口炎。

“Ah, sorry. What I mean is, it sounds like the first manifestation of a cold sore.”

“噢，对不起。我的意思是说，听上去这很可能是唇疱疹的初期症状。”

Pari has met Didier only twice, once before and once after his wedding to Collette. But at that instant, she loves him truly. She tells him so, weeping into the phone. She tells him she loves him — several times — and he laughs and wishes her a good night. Pari calls Eric, who will take Isabelle in the morning to see Dr. Perrin. Afterward, her ears ringing, Pari lies in bed, looking at the streetlight streaming in through the dull-green wooden shutters. She thinks of the time she had to be hospitalized with pneumonia, when she was eight, Maman refusing to go home, insisting on sleeping in the chair next to her bed, and she feels a new, unexpected, belated kinship with her mother. She has missed her many times over the last few years. At her wedding, of course. At Isabelle’s birth. And at myriad random moments. But never more so than on this terrible and wondrous night in this hotel room in Munich.

帕丽和迪迪耶只见过两面，他和科莱特结婚前一次，婚后一次。可是此时此刻，她打心眼里爱他。她就这样对他说了，在电话里哭着说的。她说她爱他，连说了好几次，他大笑起来，和她道了晚安。帕丽给埃里克打电话，他一早就会带伊莎贝尔去见佩兰大夫。然后，帕丽躺到床上，耳中嗡嗡作响，看着街灯的光穿过暗绿色的木制百叶窗，映照在屋中。她想起了那一次，她得了肺炎，不得不住进医院。当时她八岁，妈芒不肯回家，非要睡在她床边的椅子上。她对母亲产生了一种新的，意想不到的，迟来的亲情。过去这几年，有很多次她曾思念起妈芒。在婚礼上——理所当然。在伊莎贝尔出生的时候。还有许许多多，各种各样的时刻。但是从没有像现在这样，在这个可怕又奇妙的夜晚，置身于慕尼黑的酒店房间，这样强烈地思念着妈芒。

“A cold sore.”

“唇疱疹。”

Then he adds the happiest words Pari has ever heard in her life. “I think she’s going to be fine.”

他接着又说了一句，那是帕丽这辈子听过的最让人高兴的话。“我想她会没事的。”

Back in Paris the next day, she tells Eric they shouldn’t have any more children after Alain is born. It only raises the odds of heartbreak.

第二天回到巴黎，她告诉埃里克，等阿兰生下来，他们就不该再要孩子了。再要，只会增加心碎的几率。

In 1985, when Isabelle is seven, Alain four, and little Thierry two, Pari accepts an offer to teach at a prominent university in Paris. She becomes subject, for a time, to the expected academic jostling and pettiness — not surprising, given that, at thirty-six, she is the youngest professor in the department and one of only two women. She weathers it in a way that she imagines Maman never could or would have. She does not flatter or butter up. She refrains from locking horns or filing complaints. She will always have her skeptics. But by the time the Berlin Wall comes down, so have the walls in her academic life, and she has slowly won over most of her colleagues with her sensible demeanor and disarming sociability. She makes friends in her department — and in others too — attends university events, fund-raisers, the occasional cocktail hour and dinner party. Eric goes with her to these soirees. As an ongoing private joke, he insists on wearing the same wool tie and corduroy blazer with elbow patches. He wanders around the crowded room, tasting hors d’oeuvres, sipping wine, looking jovially bewildered, and occasionally Pari has to swoop in and steal him away from a group of mathematicians before he opines on 3-manifolds and Diophantine approximations.

1985年，伊莎贝尔七岁，阿兰四岁，小蒂埃里也两岁的时候，帕丽接受了聘任，到巴黎一所很有名望的大学教书。一段时间之内，可以想见，她不得不屈于学术圈内的明争暗斗和褊狭之见。这并不意外，想想看，才三十六岁，她已经成了系里最年轻的教授，而且加上她，也总共只有两位女性。她忍下来了。她想，妈芒绝对不能，也绝对不会像她这样处事。她不阿谀奉承，也不溜须拍马。她回避与人争斗，从不口出怨言。对她的怀疑不会绝迹。然而，到了柏林墙倒塌的时候，横亘在她学术生涯中的墙也倒掉了。她用自己明智豁达的处世态度，释人疑虑的社交能力，慢慢赢得了大多数同事的承认。她在本系有了朋友，别的系里也有。她出席学校的活动，参加募款集会，偶尔也在鸡尾酒会和晚餐派对上亮相。埃里克陪她出席此类聚会。由于总是系同一条羊毛领带，穿同一件胳膊肘打了补丁的灯芯绒西装，他成了人们私下经久不衰的笑谈。他在拥挤的房间里闲荡，吃着小点心，看上去乐呵呵的，一副找不着北的模样，帕丽得时不时地冲上去，把他从一堆数学家身边哄开，以及时阻止他对三维流形和丢番图逼近问题发表高论。

“I wouldn’t know,” she says. “Practically speaking, I’m Afghan only in name.”

“我不知道。”她说，“实话实说，我只是个名义上的阿富汗人。”

“Non mais, quande-même,” he says. “But, still, you must have some insight.”

“不管怎么说，也不会吧。”他说，“可是，尽管如此，您肯定会有深刻的见解。”

“But you grew up there, non?”

“可您是在阿富汗长大的，不是吗？”

Inevitably, someone at these parties will ask Pari her views on the developments in Afghanistan. One evening, a slightly tipsy visiting professor named Chatelard asks Pari what she thinks will happen to Afghanistan when the Soviets leave. “Will your people find peace, Madame Professeur?”

在这些派对上，难免有人向帕丽问起她对阿富汗局势的观点。有天晚上，一位名叫沙特拉尔的客座教授带着少许的醉意问帕丽，她对苏联撤军后的阿富汗形势怎么看。“您的人民能找到和平吗，教授夫人？”

She smiles, trying to keep at bay the inadequacy that always creeps in with these queries. “Just what I read in Le Monde. Like you.”

她笑了笑，力图阻止他的步步逼近，这种问题总是掺杂着想当然的成分。“只不过是我在《世界报》上看到的东西。和您一样。”

“I left when I was very little. Have you seen my husband? He’s the one with the elbow patches.”

“我很小的时候就离开了。您看见我丈夫了吗？就是胳膊肘打补丁那位。”

What she says is true. She does follow the news, reads in the papers about the war, the West arming the Mujahideen, but Afghanistan has receded in her mind. She has plenty to keep her busy at home, which is now a pretty four-bedroom house in Guyancourt, about twenty kilometers from the center of Paris. They live on a small hill near a park with walking trails and ponds. Eric is writing plays now in addition to teaching. One of his plays, a lighthearted political farce, is going to be produced in the fall at a small theater near Hôtel de Ville in Paris, and he has already been commissioned to write another.

她说得没错。她的确看新闻，读报纸上的战争报道，知道西方在给圣战者游击队提供武器，但是在她心里，阿富汗已渐行渐远。在家里，她有忙不完的活。现在她有了一幢四间卧室的漂亮房子，位于居扬古，离巴黎市中心大约二十公里。他们住在小山上，附近是公园，有步道，有池塘。埃里克教书之余，现在也写剧本，其中有一部欢快的政治笑剧，秋天时将在巴黎市政厅附近的一座小剧场排演，他也已接到了委托，再写一部。

Alain, their middle child, has a sly roguish charm. He is obsessed with martial arts. He was born prematurely and is still small for a boy of eleven, but what he lacks in stature he more than makes up for with desire and gumption. His opponents are always fooled by his wispy frame and slim legs. They underestimate him. Pari and Eric have often lain in bed at night and marveled at his enormous will and ferocious energy. Pari worries about neither Isabelle nor Alain.

老二阿兰很淘气，可爱中透着一股蔫坏的劲儿，痴迷于武术。他是早产儿，十一岁的男孩子了，还是显得小，可别看身高不如别人，他却有着比别人更强烈的进取心，更充沛的活力。他那副小身板儿，那两条小细腿儿，总是让对手上当受骗，因此而低估他。夜里躺到床上的时候，帕丽和埃里克经常为他那巨大的干劲和凶猛的能量惊奇不已。不过，帕丽既不担心伊莎贝尔，也不担心阿兰。

Isabelle has grown into a quiet but bright and thoughtful adolescent. She keeps a diary and reads a novel a week. She likes Sinéad O’Connor. She has long, beautiful fingers and takes cello lessons. In a few weeks, she will perform Tchaikovsky’s Chanson Triste at a recital. She was resistant at first to taking up the cello, and Pari had taken a few lessons with her as a show of solidarity. It proved both unnecessary and unfeasible. Unnecessary because Isabelle quickly latched onto the instrument of her own accord and unfeasible because the cello made Pari’s hands ache. For a year now, Pari has been waking in the morning with stiffness in her hands and wrists that won’t loosen up for half an hour, sometimes an hour. Eric has quit pressuring her to see a doctor and is now insisting. “You’re only forty-three, Pari,” he says. “This is not normal.” Pari has set up an appointment.

伊莎贝尔到了青春期，文文静静，却很聪明，也很有想法。她记日记，每个星期都要读一本小说。她喜欢听西尼德·奥康娜。她的手指细长，优美，正在上大提琴课。再过几个星期，她就要在音乐会上演奏柴可夫斯基的《悲歌》。一开始，她对学大提琴很有抵触，于是帕丽和她一起去上了几节课，表示有难同当。事实证明，这既不必要，也不可行。不必要是因为伊莎贝尔很快就自觉自愿地琴不离手，不可行是因为帕丽的手被大提琴弄得疼痛难当。已经过去一年了，她早晨醒来时，仍然觉得手发僵，手腕子发硬，得花上半个钟头，有时要一个小时，才能缓过劲来。埃里克已经不再逼她去看医生了，可现在他老是说个没完。“你才四十三啊，帕丽。”他说，“这不正常。”帕丽已经预约了门诊。

It is Thierry who concerns her. Thierry, who perhaps on some dark primordial level, senses that he was unexpected, unintended, uninvited. Thierry is prone to wounding silences and narrow looks, to fussing and fiddling whenever Pari asks something of him. He defies her for no other reason, it seems to Pari, than defiance itself. Some days, a cloud gathers over him. Pari can tell. She can almost see it. It gathers and swells until at last it splits open, spilling a torrent of cheek-quivering, foot-stomping rage that frightens Pari and leaves Eric to blink and smile miserably. Pari knows instinctively that Thierry will be for her, like the ache in her joints, a lifelong worry.

让她牵肠挂肚的是蒂埃里。这孩子也许与生俱来就带着阴影，总感觉自己是计划外的，不期而至的，不请自来的。蒂埃里动不动就拉长脸，一言不发，让人窝心。他爱发牢骚，自己有什么事，只要帕丽问起来，他总要耍点小聪明。他常常没来由地和她作对，好像是冲着帕丽，但更像为了作对而作对。有些日子里，他满腹阴云。帕丽能感觉得到。那乌云不断加厚，膨胀，最后一下子爆裂，跺着脚，腮帮子颤抖着，愤怒的洪水喷涌而出，让帕丽心惊肉跳，让埃里克睁一只眼闭一只眼，苦笑连连。帕丽凭直觉感到，蒂埃里将成为她终生的烦恼，就像她关节的疼痛一样。

She wonders often what sort of grandmother Maman would have made. Especially with Thierry. Intuitively, Pari thinks Maman would have proved helpful with him. She might have seen something of herself in him — though not biologically, of course, Pari has been certain of that for some time. The children know of Maman. Isabelle, in particular, is curious. She has read many of her poems.

她常常想，妈芒会是个怎样的外婆呢？她会怎样看待蒂埃里？凭着直觉，帕丽认为妈芒应该帮得上他。她会在他身上看到自己，尽管他们没有血缘关系，这一点毫无疑问，帕丽确信此事已经有段时间了。孩子们听说过妈芒，伊莎贝尔更是特别好奇。她已经读了妈芒的很多诗。

“I wish I’d met her,” she says.

“真希望能见见她。”她说。

“She sounds glamorous,” she says.

“感觉她好有魅力。”她说。

“I think we would have made good friends, she and I. Do you think? We would have read the same books. I would have played cello for her.”

“我想我们会成为好朋友的，她和我。你觉得呢？我们可以读一样的书。我可以给她拉大提琴。”

In the summer of 1994, Pari and Eric take the children to Majorca. It’s Collette who, through her now thriving travel agency, organizes the holiday for them. Collette and Didier meet up with them in Majorca, and they all stay together for two weeks in a beachfront rental house. Collette and Didier don’t have children, not by some biological misfortune but because they don’t want any. For Pari, the timing is good. Her rheumatoid is well controlled at the time. She takes a weekly dose of methotrexate, which she is tolerating well. Fortunately, she has not had to take any steroids of late and suffer the accompanying insomnia.

1994年夏天，帕丽和埃里克带着孩子们去了马略卡岛。科莱特通过自己蒸蒸日上的旅行社，替他们安排了这次度假。在马略卡，科莱特和迪迪耶与他们碰头，他们在海滨合租了一套房子，将一起度过两个星期。科莱特和迪迪耶没有孩子，原因不是什么生物学上的不幸，而是因为他们不想要。对帕丽来说，这个时间选得不错。她的风湿症此时控制得很好。她每周服一次氨甲蝶呤，而且对此药耐受良好。幸运的是，最近她无须服用任何一种类固醇，也就不必忍受伴生的失眠之苦。

“Well, she would have loved that,” Pari says. “That much I am sure of.”

“好啊，她会喜欢的。”帕丽说，“我肯定。”

Pari has not told the children about the suicide. They may learn one day, probably will. But they wouldn’t learn it from her. She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough. For Pari, the children and Eric have always been enough. They always will be.

帕丽没有跟孩子们讲过自杀的事。他们总有一天会知道的，也许一定能知道。可他们不会从她这儿知道。她绝不会在他们心里埋下这样的种子，让他们感到做父母的可以放弃自己的孩子，可以对他们说：你们并不足够。对帕丽来说，孩子们和埃里克一向都是足够的。他们永远都是足够的。

They spend the days touring the island, driving up the northwest coast by the Serra de Tramuntana Mountains, stopping to stroll by the olive groves and into the pine forest. They eat porcella, and a wonderful sea bass dish called lubina, and an eggplant and zucchini stew called tumbet. Thierry refuses to eat any of it, and at every restaurant Pari has to ask the chef to make him a plate of spaghetti with plain tomato sauce, no meat, no cheese. At Isabelle’s request — she has recently discovered opera — one night they attend a production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. To survive the ordeal, Collette and Pari surreptitiously pass each other a silver flask of cheap vodka. By the middle of act two, they are sloshed, and can’t help giggling like schoolgirls at the histrionics of the actor playing Scarpia.

他们花了几天时间，在岛上游览，驾车前往特拉蒙塔拿山脚下的西北海岸，停下车，漫步走过橄榄林，一直走到松林里去。他们吃波尔塞亚，还有一种名叫卢维纳的美妙大菜，由海鲈鱼烧成，以及茄子炖西葫芦，名叫通维特。[11]蒂埃里一样都不肯吃，于是每到一家饭馆，帕丽只好请厨师为他单做一盘意式细面条，只浇番茄沙司，不加肉，也不放奶酪。伊莎贝尔近来喜欢上了歌剧，在她的请求下，有天晚上他们去听了一场普契尼的《托斯卡》。为了经受住这可怕的折磨，科莱特和帕丽偷偷摸摸，把一个银色的小酒壶递来递去，里面装着廉价的伏特加。到第二幕中途，她们已经醉了，看着台上扮演斯卡皮亚的男演员装腔作势，她们就像两个小女生一样，情不自禁地咯咯乱笑。【注：[11]波尔塞亚（porcella），马略卡传统菜，近似烤乳猪，皮焦肉嫩，配番茄及其他蔬菜装盘。另两菜原拼lubina和tumbet。】

“Not to speak of the weight gain,” she tells Collette. “Knowing I’d have to get into a bathing suit in Spain?” She laughs. “Ah, vanity.”

“还没说体重暴增的事儿呢。”她告诉科莱特，“知道我必须在西班牙穿泳装吗？”她大笑起来。“唉，虚荣啊。”

One day, Pari, Collette, Isabelle, and Thierry pack a lunch and go to the beach; Didier, Alain, and Eric had left in the morning for a hike along Sóller Bay. On the way to the beach, they visit a shop to buy Isabelle a bathing suit that has caught her eye. As they walk into the shop, Pari catches a glimpse of her reflection in the plate glass. Normally, especially of late, when she steps in front of a mirror an automatic mental process kicks into gear that prepares her to greet her older self. It buffers her, dulls the shock. But in the shopwindow, she has caught herself off guard, vulnerable to reality undistorted by self-delusion. She sees a middle-aged woman in a drab floppy blouse and a beach skirt that doesn’t conceal quite enough of the saggy folds of skin over her kneecaps. The sun picks out the gray in her hair. And despite the eyeliner, and the lipstick that defines her lips, she has a face now that a passerby’s gaze will engage and then bounce from, as it would a street sign or a mailbox number. The moment is brief, barely enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow. It is a little devastating. This is what aging is, she thinks as she follows Isabelle into the store, these random unkind moments that catch you when you least expect them.

一天，帕丽、科莱特、伊莎贝尔和蒂埃里把午餐打包，要去海滩；迪迪耶、阿兰和埃里克一大早就走了，到索列尔湾去远足。前往海滩的路上，他们去了一家商店，给伊莎贝尔买她相中的游泳衣，他们走进店里的时候，帕丽在大玻璃上瞥见了自己的影子。通常来说，特别是最近这段时间，每当她走到镜前，一种机械的心理过程便投入运转，让她做好准备，迎接变老的自我。它起了缓冲的作用，减轻了她受到的震动。但是在商店的橱窗里，她毫无防备地看到了自己，脆弱地面对着未经自欺扭曲过的现实。她看见一个中年女人，穿着死气沉沉，松松垮垮的上衣，沙滩裙遮不住膝盖上松垂多皱的皮肤。阳光之下，白发尽露。虽然画了眼钱，用口红抹了嘴唇，她的脸还是会让路人看一眼便马上把目光挪开，好像人家看到的是个街牌，或邮筒上的号码。这一刻转瞬即逝，勉强来得及心头一颤，却又足够漫长，可以让她虚幻的自我，与现实中这个在橱窗里回望的女人迎头相遇。有点崩溃的感觉。这就是衰老，她这样想着，跟在伊莎贝尔身后走进了商店，这些残忍的时刻，就这样在你最意想不到的时候突然到来。

“Give me one year. We’ll come back next year, and I’ll race you around the island, mon pote.”

“给我一年。咱们明年一定回来，我和你玩环岛大赛，我的朋友。”

From behind the bar, Eric, who is mixing a carafe of sangria, rolls his eyes and shrugs genially.

埃里克正在酒水台后面勾兑桑格里亚汽酒，他笑眯眯把眼睛一翻，耸了耸肩。

Later, when they return from the beach to the rental house, they find that the men have already returned.

后来，他们从海滩回到租来的房子时，发现男人们已经回来了。

“Papa’s getting old,” Alain says.

“爸爸老了。”阿兰说。

They never do come back to Majorca. A week after they return to Paris, Eric has a heart attack. It happens while he is at work, speaking to a lighting stagehand. He survives it, but he will suffer two more over the course of the next three years, the last of which will prove fatal. And so at the age of forty-eight Pari finds herself, like Maman had, a widow.

他们再也没能重返马略卡。回到巴黎一个星期之后，埃里克便心脏病发作。出事的时候他还在工作，和灯光师说着话。这一次他活过来了，可是随后的三年时间里，他又发作了两次，最后一次是致命的。于是在四十八岁那年，帕丽发现，自己像妈芒那样成了寡妇。

One day, early in the spring of 2010, Pari receives a long-distance phone call. The call is not unexpected. Pari, in fact, has been preparing for it all morning. Prior to the call, Pari makes sure she has the apartment to herself. This means asking Isabelle to leave earlier than she customarily does. Isabelle and her husband, Albert, live just north of Île Saint-Denis, only a few blocks from Pari’s one-bedroom apartment. Isabelle comes to see Pari in the morning every other day, after she drops off her kids at school. She brings Pari a baguette, some fresh fruit. Pari is not yet bound to the wheelchair, an eventuality for which she has been preparing herself. Though her disease forced her into early retirement the year before, she is still fully capable of going to the market on her own, of taking a daily walk. It’s the hands — the ugly, twisted hands — that fail her most, hands that on bad days feel like they have shards of crystal rattling around the joints. Pari wears gloves, whenever she is out, to keep her hands warm, but mostly because she is ashamed of them, the knobby knuckles, the unsightly fingers with what her doctor calls swan neck deformity, the permanently flexed left pinkie.

2010年初春的一天，帕丽接到了一个长途电话。来电并不意外。实际上，帕丽已经等了整整一个早晨。在电话打进来之前，帕丽先得确保家里只有自己。这就意味着得让伊莎贝尔比平时提前离开。伊莎贝尔和她丈夫阿尔贝住在圣德尼岛的北区，离帕丽的单人公寓只有几个街区远。每隔一天，早上把孩子们送到学校后，伊莎贝尔都会过来看看帕丽。她会给帕丽带一条长棍面包，一些新鲜的水果。帕丽现在还没到坐轮椅的分上，不过她知道自己早晚有这一天。虽然因为疾病，不得不在去年办理了提前退休，她却完全能自己去市场采购，也能坚持每天散步。问题是手，这双丑陋的，扭曲的手，几乎让她什么也干不了。赶上坏天气，感觉就像指头里塞着碎水晶，在关节周围嘎嘎作响。不管什么时间出门，帕丽都要戴上手套，给手保暖，可最主要的原因，是她觉得这双手丢人现眼，疙疙瘩瘩的关节，不堪入目的手指，医生说这叫鹅颈畸形，永久性的小指曲屈。

“I thought I’d have to carry you, Papa.”

“我都想背着你走了，爸爸。”

This morning, Isabelle has brought her some figs, a few bars of soap, toothpaste, and a Tupperware containerful of chestnut soup. Albert is thinking of suggesting it as a new menu entry to the owners of the restaurant where he is the sous-chef. As she unloads the bags, Isabelle tells Pari of the new assignment she has landed. She writes musical scores for television shows now, commercials, and is hoping to write for film one day soon. She says she will begin scoring a miniseries that is shooting at the moment in Madrid.

这天早晨，伊莎贝尔给她带了些无花果，几块香皂，一条牙膏，还有一个特百惠保鲜盒，里面装着栗子汤。阿尔贝在餐馆里做副厨，正在考虑向老板提建议，把他这道栗子汤加进菜单。伊莎贝尔一边从袋子里往外拿东西，一边告诉帕丽，她的新合同已经到手。她现在给电视节目写配乐，希望很快能有一天为电影作曲。她说自己就要开始给一部迷你剧集配乐了，眼下这部戏正在马德里拍着呢。

“Will you be going there?” Pari asks. “To Madrid?”

“你去吗？”帕丽问，“去马德里？”

Ah, vanity, she tells Collette.

唉，虚荣啊。她对科莱特说。

“Oh, can you imagine, Maman? Poor Alain. He hardly has room to stretch his legs.”

“嗨，你想什么呢，妈芒？可怜的阿兰。他自己都没地方伸脚。”

Alain is a financial consultant. He lives in a tiny Madrid apartment with his wife, Ana, and their four children. He regularly e-mails Pari pictures and short video clips of the children.

阿兰在做理财顾问，和他妻子安娜，还有四个孩子一起，住在马德里一套很小的公寓里。他定期通过电子邮件，给帕丽发来孩子们的照片和短视频。

“Non. The budget is too small. They won’t cover my travel cost.”

“不。预算太少了。他们出不起我的路费。”

“That’s a pity. You could have stayed with Alain.”

“真可惜。不然你就能和阿兰一起住了。”

Pari asks if Isabelle has heard from Thierry, and Isabelle says she has not. Thierry is in Africa, in the eastern part of Chad, where he works at a camp with refugees from Darfur. Pari knows this because Thierry is in sporadic touch with Isabelle. She is the only one he speaks to. This is how Pari knows the general outlines of her son’s life — for instance, that he spent some time in Vietnam. Or that he was married to a Vietnamese woman once, briefly, when he was twenty.

帕丽问伊莎贝尔有没有蒂埃里的消息，伊莎贝尔说没有。蒂埃里去了非洲，在乍得东部的一座达尔富尔难民营工作。帕丽知道此事，是因为蒂埃里断断续续地和伊莎贝尔有联系。他只和伊莎贝尔联系。帕丽因此对儿子的生活有了个大致的了解，比如，他在越南待过一段时间。又比如，他曾经跟一个越南女人结过婚，时间很短，当时他才二十岁。

“A lover. Are you blind? Have you even looked at me recently?”

“情人。你没长眼吗？瞧我现在这德性。”

The man who calls at 9:30 A. M. is named Markos Varvaris. He had contacted Pari through her Facebook account with this message, written in English: Are you the daughter of the poet Nila Wahdati? If so, I would like very much to speak with you about something that will be of interest to you. Pari had searched the web for his name and found that he was a plastic surgeon who worked for a nonprofit organization in Kabul. Now, on the phone, he greets her in Farsi, and continues to speak in Farsi until Pari has to interrupt him.

上午九点半，电话响了。打电话的人名叫马科斯·瓦尔瓦里斯。此前，他通过帕丽的Facebook账号，与她取得了联络，留言是用英语写的，内容如下：您是诗人妮拉·瓦赫达提的女儿吗？如果是，我非常想和您谈谈。有些事情您一定感兴趣。帕丽在网上搜索他的名字，发现他是个整形外科医生，为喀布尔的一家非营利性组织工作。现在，在电话里，他用波斯语向她问了好，接着继续讲波斯语，帕丽不得不打断他。

“You need to go. I’ll explain later, I promise.”

“你得走了。过后跟你说，我保证。”

Isabelle sets a pot of water on to boil and fetches two cups from the cabinet.

伊莎贝尔灌好水壶，开始烧水，又从柜子里拿出两个杯子。

“I’ll tell you later,” Pari says.

“过后再告诉你。”帕丽说。

“A call? From who?”

“电话？谁的？”

“Not this morning, Isabelle. Actually, I need to ask you to leave.”

“今天早晨不行，伊莎贝尔。真的，我得请你走了。”

“What I mean to say is, I’m expecting a call and I need some privacy.”

“我是想说，我在等一个电话，不想让人听到。”

Isabelle gives her a wounded look, and Pari chides herself for not wording it better. Isabelle has always had a delicate nature.

伊莎贝尔委屈地看了她一眼，帕丽暗骂自己话不中听。伊莎贝尔一向比较敏感。

“D’accord, d’accord.” Isabelle slings her purse over her shoulder, grabs her coat and keys. “But I’ll have you know I’m duly intrigued.”

“成，成。”伊莎贝尔把包往身后一甩，抓起外套和钥匙。“可我得告诉你，我有权知道。”

“There is not a thing wrong with you.”

“没什么不好的嘛。”

Isabelle crosses her arms and grins. “Have you found a lover, Maman?”

伊莎贝尔抱起胳膊，龇牙一笑。“你找到情人了，妈芒？”

“Ah, of course. My apologies. I assumed… Although, of course, it does make sense, you left when you were very young, didn’t you?”

“噢，当然可以。抱歉抱歉。我以为…可是，没错，这么说就对了，您很小的时候就走了，对不对？”

“I learned Farsi here myself. I would say I am more or less functional in it. I have lived here since 2002, since shortly after the Taliban left. Quite optimistic days, those. Yes, everybody ready for rebuilding and democracy and the like. Now it is a different story. Naturally, we are preparing for presidential elections, but it is a different story. I’m afraid it is.”

“我是在这儿自学的波斯语，马马虎虎还能应付。我一直住在这儿，从2002年开始，塔利班刚离开不久。那段日子相当乐观。是的，所有人都准备着重建，准备民主什么的。现在情况可不一样了。当然了，我们正在准备总统大选，可情况不一样了。恐怕就是不一样了。”

“Monsieur Varvaris, I’m sorry, but maybe we speak in English?”

“瓦尔瓦里斯先生，对不起，我们可不可以讲英语？”

Pari listens patiently as Markos Varvaris makes protracted detours into the logistical challenge that are the elections in Afghanistan, which he says Karzai will win, and then on to the Taliban’s troubling forays into the north, the increasing Islamist infringement on news media, a side note or two on the overpopulation in Kabul, then on the cost of housing, lastly, before he circles back and says, “I have lived in this house now for a number of years. I understand you lived in this house too.”

帕丽耐心地听着，由着马科斯·瓦尔瓦里斯绕来绕去，费劲地做着铺垫。他谈了阿富汗的选举，说卡尔扎伊肯定能赢，然后扯到了塔利班让人担心的对北方的袭扰，伊斯兰主义者日益增长的对新闻媒体的侵犯，顺带着对喀布尔的人口过多问题发表了一两句点评，随即介绍了住房成本，兜了一个大圈子，终于回到了正题。“我在这房子里住了有些年头了。我知道，您也住过这房子。”

“Yes, that is true.”

“是的，一点也不错。”

“The landlord. His name is Nabi. It was Nabi, I should say. He is deceased now, sadly, as of recently. Do you remember him?”

“房东。他叫纳比。归真的纳比，这样说才对。让人伤心的是，他已经去世了，就在最近。您记得他吗？”

“I see.”

“我懂。”

“I’m sorry?”

“什么？”

“This was your parents’ house. That is what I am led to believe, in any case.”

“过去这是您父母的房子。不管怎样，我相信人家告诉我的没错。”

“If I can ask, who is telling you this?”

“请允许我问一句，谁告诉您的？”

The name conjures for Pari a handsome young face, sideburns, a wall of full dark hair combed back.

这名字如符咒，在帕丽眼前唤出一张年轻而英俊的脸，大鬓角，黑油油的头发，向后梳得跟墙一样。

“He was both, yes. He had lived here, in this house, since 1947. Sixty-three years. It is a little unbelievable, no? But, as I said, he passed on. Last month. I was quite fond of him. Everyone was.”

“两样都是，没错。他住在这儿，住这房子，从1947年就开始了。六十三年啊。有点难以置信，对吗？可是，我刚才说过，他过世了。上个月。我非常喜欢他。所有人都喜欢他。”

“Yes. Mostly, his name. He was a cook at our house. And a chauffeur as well.”

“记得。差不多只记得他名字了。他是我们家的厨师，也是司机。”

“Nabi gave me a note,” Markos Varvaris says. “I was to read it only after his death. When he died, I had an Afghan colleague translate it into English. This note, it is more than a note. A letter, more accurately, and a remarkable one at that. Nabi says some things in it. I searched for you because some of it concerns you, and also because he directly asks in it that I find you and give you this letter. It took some searching, but we were able to locate you. Thanks to the web.” He lets out a short laugh.

“纳比给我留了张便条。”马科斯·瓦尔瓦里斯说，“我在他死后才能看。他死了以后，我请一个阿富汗的同事把它翻译成了英语。这张便条，它可远不止一张便条。更准确地说，是一封信，而且是一封很不寻常的信。纳比在信里讲了些事情。我找您是因为信里有些事和您有关，还因为他直接在信里要求我，让我找到您，然后把这封信交给您。找您找了一段时间，可还是让我们找到了。谢天谢地谢网络。”他哈哈笑了一声。

But she doesn’t. Her pulse fluttering and her palms sweating, she says, “What… what does he say in his note, in this letter?”

可她没有。她的心扑通扑通跳着，手心在出汗。她说：“他…他在便条里，在这封信里，说了什么？”

There is a part of Pari that wants to hang up. Intuitively, she does not doubt that whatever revelation this old man — this person from her distant past — has scribbled on paper, halfway across the world, is true. She has known for a long time that she was lied to by Maman about her childhood. But even if the ground of her life was broken with a lie, what Pari has since planted in that ground stands as true and sturdy and unshakable as a giant oak. Eric, her children, her grandchildren, her career, Collette. So what is the use? After all this time, what is the use? Perhaps best to hang up.

帕丽有心挂掉电话。凭直觉，不管那老头，那个来自她遥远过去的人，在纸上写下了怎样的秘密，又怎样让它跨越半个世界，呈现给她，她都不会怀疑那是真的。很长时间以来她都知道，关于她的童年，妈芒对她撒了谎。可即使她人生的根基结束于一个谎言，她却继续在赖以立足的大地上培育这谎言，让它伫立着，以假乱真，以虚为实，不许动摇，如同一棵巨大的橡树。埃里克，她的子女，她的孙儿，她的事业，科莱特。现在这一切还有什么用？所有的这些岁月，还有什么用？也许最好是把电话挂掉。

“Your stepuncle, to be precise. And there is more. He says many other things as well.”

“确切地说，不是亲舅。还有别的。他还说了很多别的事。”

“I do.”

“我带着呢。”

“Well, for one thing, he claims he was your uncle.”

“嗯，其中一件，他说他是您舅舅。”

“Monsieur Varvaris, do you have it? This note, this letter, or the translation? Do you have it with you?”

“瓦尔瓦里斯先生，它在吗？这便条，这信，或是翻译好的？您带着呢吗？”

“My uncle.”

“我舅舅。”

“Maybe you read it for me? Can you read it?”

“也许您念给我听听？您能念念吗？”

“If you have the time. I can call you, to collect the charge.”

“如果您有时间的话。我可以打给您，由我来付电话费。”

“No need, no. But are you sure?”

“不必不必。不过您肯定吗？”

“You mean now?”

“您说现在？”

“Oui,” she says into the phone. “I’m sure, Monsieur Varvaris.”

“是的。”她对着电话说。“我肯定，瓦尔瓦里斯先生。”

After she hangs up, she sets the coffeemaker to brew a cup and moves to her window. From it, the familiar view presents itself to her — the narrow cobblestone path below, the pharmacy up the block, the falafel joint at the corner, the brasserie run by the Basque family.

她挂上电话，打开咖啡机，放好一杯的量，然后走向窗口。透过窗子，她看到了熟悉的画面：下方是窄窄的鹅卵石小路，街那边的药房，街角卖炸豆丸子的小店，一家巴斯克人开的啤酒屋。

Pari’s hands shake. A startling thing is happening to her. Something truly remarkable. The picture of it in her mind is of an ax striking soil and suddenly rich black oil bubbling up to the surface. This is what is happening to her, memories struck upon, rising up from the depths. She gazes out the window in the direction of the brasserie, but what she sees is not the skinny waiter beneath the awning, black apron tied at the waist and shaking a cloth over a table, but a little red wagon with a squeaky wheel bouncing along beneath a sky of unfurling clouds, rolling over ridges and down dried-up gullies, up and down ocher hills that loom and then fall away. She sees tangles of fruit trees standing in groves, the breeze catching their leaves, and rows of grapevines connecting little flat-roofed houses. She sees washing lines and women squatting by a stream, and the creaking ropes of a swing beneath a big tree, and a big dog, cowering from the taunts of village boys, and a hawk-nosed man digging a ditch, shirt plastered to his back with sweat, and a veiled woman bent over a cooking fire.

帕丽的手在颤抖。惊人的事情在她身上发生了。极其不寻常的事。她脑海中出现了一幅画面，一把斧头劈砍着泥土，突然，浓稠的黑色石油从地表喷涌而出。这就是发生在她身上的事，记忆被触动，从最深处向上升起。她凭窗远眺，呆望着啤酒屋的方向，可她看见的不是雨篷下那个店伙计，瘦巴巴的，腰扎黑围裙，抖着桌布，而是一辆红色的小勒勒车，轮子吱嘎作响，在长云铺卷的天空下颠簸向前，翻过山岭，爬过干涸的溪谷，在土黄色的山间上上下下，山景渐次浮现，又慢慢地隐没不见。她看见一棵棵果树，在园中扶肩而立，树叶轻阻了微风，又见一行行葡萄藤，与一座座平顶的小屋栉比相连。她看见了晾衣绳；女人们蹲在溪边；两根长绳支支扭扭，在一棵大树下来回摆荡；一条大狗面对着成群村童的逗弄，畏缩不前；一个鹰钩鼻子的男人在挖沟，衬衫已被汗水浸透，紧紧贴住了脊梁；还有个戴面纱的女人弯下腰，生火做饭。

He reads it to her. He reads her the whole thing. It takes a while. When he finishes, she thanks him and tells him she will be in touch soon.

他念给她听了。他把所有东西都念给她听了。这花了些工夫。他念完的时候，帕丽向他道了谢，说她会很快与他联系。

“Brother,” she says, unaware she is speaking. Unaware she is weeping.

“哥哥。”她说。她没意识到自己叫出了声，也没意识到自己在哭。

But something else too at the edge of it all, at the rim of her vision — and this is what draws her most — an elusive shadow. A figure. At once soft and hard. The softness of a hand holding hers. The hardness of knees where she’d once rested her cheek. She searches for his face, but it evades her, slips from her, each time she turns to it. Pari feels a hole opening up in her. There has been in her life, all her life, a great absence. Somehow, she has always known.

然而在这一切的边缘，几乎出离于她的幻象之外，还有什么东西，最让她目光流连。一个难以捉摸的影子。一个人影。软，硬，两种感觉相伴而来。软的是一只手，牵着她的手。硬的是膝盖，她曾把脸枕在上面。她搜寻着他的脸，可每次朝它那边一望，它就躲开了，滑出了她的视线。帕丽感到心里撕开了一个窟窿。她的人生，她全部的人生，始终存在着一种巨大的缺失。冥冥之中，她总有这样的感觉。

I know a sad little fairy

我知道伤心的小仙女，

A verse from a Farsi song suddenly tumbles to her tongue:

一首波斯语的歌，歌中的一段，忽然飘落到她的舌尖：

There is another, perhaps earlier, verse, she is sure of it, but that eludes her as well.

还有一段歌词，大概在此之前，她拿不准，连它也一起逃掉了。

Who was blown away by the wind one night.

晚风把她吹走了。

Pari sits. She has to. She doesn’t think she can stand at the moment. She waits for the coffee to brew and thinks that when it’s ready she is going to have a cup, and then perhaps a cigarette, and then she is going to go to the living room to call Collette in Lyon, see if her old friend can arrange her a trip to Kabul.

帕丽坐下。她不得不坐下。此时此刻，她知道自己再也站不住了。她等着咖啡煮好，心里想，煮好了就喝上一杯，然后呢，没准再来一支香烟，再然后，她要去客厅，打电话到里昂，找科莱特，看看老朋友能不能给她安排一下行程，去喀布尔。

But for the moment Pari sits. She shuts her eyes, as the coffeemaker begins to gurgle, and she finds behind her eyelids hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

可是现在，帕丽只是坐着。咖啡机咕噜咕噜响起来了，她却闭上了眼睛。透过眼帘，她看到丘陵温和柔软，天空高远而碧蓝，夕阳落入磨坊的身后，而且永远，永远，在天地的尽头，暗淡着，暗淡着的，是朦胧而连绵的群山。