第一章: 回头不试，更待何时？ If Not Later, When? |《请以你的名字呼唤我》

“Later!” The word, the voice, the attitude.

“回头再说！”那字眼、那声音、那态度。

I’d never heard anyone use “later” to say goodbye before. It sounded harsh, curt, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled indifference of people who may not care to see or hear from you again.

我从未听过任何人用“回头再说”这句话来道别。听起来刺耳、简慢轻蔑，语气中有着隐藏的冷淡，感觉说话的人似乎不情愿再见到你或收到你的音信。

It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can hear it still today. Later!

这是我关于他的第一个记忆，至今依稀可闻。回头再说！

I shut my eyes, say the word, and I’m back in Italy, so many years ago, walking down the tree-lined driveway, watching him step out of the cab, billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, sunglasses, straw hat, skin everywhere. Suddenly he’s shaking my hand, handing me his backpack, removing his suitcase from the trunk of the cab, asking if my father is home.

闭上眼睛，说出这句话，我仿佛一下子又回到多年前的意大利：我沿着林荫车道走，看着他走下出租车，身上是件宽松的蓝衬衫，领口大敞，戴着太阳眼镜、草帽，露出大片肌肤；下一刻，他就跟我握手，把背包递给我，从出租车后备厢里拿出手提箱，寒暄着问我父亲是否在家。

It might have started right there and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the rounded balls of his heels slipping in and out of his frayed espadrilles, eager to test the hot gravel path that led to our house, every stride already asking, Which way to the beach?

一切或许始于那个地方、那个瞬间：那件衬衫、卷起的衣袖、浑圆的脚后跟在磨损的布面平底凉鞋里滑进滑出的样子、急着试探通往我们家的那条砾石道热腾腾的温度，迈开的每一步伐仿佛都在问着：“哪条路通往海边？”

This summer’s houseguest. Another bore.

今年夏天的来客，又一个讨厌鬼。

Then, almost without thinking, and with his back already turned to the car, he waves the back of his free hand and utters a careless Later! to another passenger in the car who has probably split the fare from the station. No name added, no jest to smooth out the ruffled leave-taking, nothing. His one-word send-off: brisk, bold, and blunted — take your pick, he couldn’t be bothered which.

接着，背对出租车的他几乎不假思索地挥挥空着的那只手，朝车上另一位或许是从车站一起拼车过来的乘客吐出一句漫不经心的“回头再说”。没加上名字，没有一句俏皮话来缓和告别时那种不甚愉悦的气氛，什么都没有。他那简短的道别显得快活、唐突、干脆——随你怎么说，他才不在乎。

You watch, I thought, this is how he’ll say goodbye to us when the time comes. With a gruff, slapdash Later!

看着吧，到时候他也会这样跟我们道别。用一个粗鲁又马虎的“回头再说”！

Meanwhile, we’d have to put up with him for six long weeks.

同时，我们得忍受他漫长的六个星期。

I was thoroughly intimidated. The unapproachable sort.

我有点害怕。他肯定是那种难以相处的人。

I could grow to like him, though. From rounded chin to rounded heel. Then, within days, I would learn to hate him.

不过，我也可能会慢慢喜欢他。从他圆圆的下巴到圆圆的脚跟。接着，几天之内，我会开始恨她。

This, the very person whose photo on the application form months earlier had leapt out with promises of instant affinities.

正是他，几个月前照片还贴在申请表的人，带着让人不由得喜欢的亲和力，活脱脱出现我眼前。

Taking in summer guests was my parents’ way of helping young academics revise a manuscript before publication. For six weeks each summer I’d have to vacate my bedroom and move one room down the corridor into a much smaller room that had once belonged to my grandfather. During the winter months, when we were away in the city, it became a part-time toolshed, storage room, and attic where rumor had it my grandfather, my namesake, still ground his teeth in his eternal sleep. Summer residents didn’t have to pay anything, were given the full run of the house, and could basically do anything they pleased, provided they spent an hour or so a day helping my father with his correspondence and assorted paperwork. They became part of the family, and after about fifteen years of doing this, we had gotten used to a shower of postcards and gift packages not only around Christmastime but all year long from people who were now totally devoted to our family and would go out of their way when they were in Europe to drop by B. for a day or two with their family and take a nostalgic tour of their old digs.

为了指导年轻学者在出版之前修改书稿，我父母年年接待夏季来客。每年夏天有六个星期，我必须腾出卧室，搬进走廊尽头那间祖父曾经住过的狭小的多的邻室。寒冬时节，当我们告别这里住进市区，那个阁楼的小房间就成了临时的工具间、储藏室，并且谣传与我同名的祖父长眠之后仍在那里面磨牙。夏季访客无需支付任何费用，基本上能够随心所欲使用屋内的任何设施，只要每天花一个小时左右帮父亲处理来往信件和分类文件即可。他们最后往往成了我们家的一分子。连续接待了十五年后，如今不只是圣诞时节，一年到头，明信片或礼物都会如雪片般飞来。寄东西来的人宛如我们家的一分子，每次来到欧洲，总会带着家人特地造访B城几日，到曾经短暂落脚的地方来趟怀旧之旅。

At meals there were frequently two or three other guests, sometimes neighbors or relatives, sometimes colleagues, lawyers, doctors, the rich and famous who’d drop by to see my father on their way to their own summer houses. Sometimes we’d even open our dining room to the occasional tourist couple who’d heard of the old villa and simply wanted to come by and take a peek and were totally enchanted when asked to eat with us and tell us all about themselves, while Mafalda, informed at the last minute, dished out her usual fare. My father, who was reserved and shy in private, loved nothing better than to have some precocious rising expert in a field keep the conversation going in a few languages while the hot summer sun, after a few glasses of rosatello, ushered in the unavoidable afternoon torpor. We named the task dinner drudgery — and, after a while, so did most of our six-week guests.

用餐时刻往往会多两三位客人，有时候是邻居或亲戚，有时候是同事、律师、医生等等名流，在前往自家的夏季别墅前顺路来探访我的父亲。有时候我们甚至开放餐厅给偶尔来访的夫妻或情侣旅客，他们因耳闻这栋老别墅，单纯想来一窥究竟。这些人受邀与我们共餐时，简直心醉神迷，然后热情地闲聊关于自己的一切。总在最后一分钟才接到这种临时通知的玛法尔达则会端上她的拿手菜。私底下内敛害羞的父亲其实最喜欢听在某些领域学有专长的新星以数种语言高谈阔论；伴着几杯玫瑰红下肚，坐在午后炎热的夏日阳光下，人不免变得呆滞。我们总把这段时光称为“正餐苦差”——过不了多久，那些即将长住六周的访客也会这么说。

Maybe it started soon after his arrival during one of those grinding lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan acquired during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the same as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bottom of his forearms, which hadn’t really been exposed to much sun. Almost a light pink, as glistening and smooth as the underside of a lizard’s belly. Private, chaste, unfledged, like a blush on an athlete’s face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him I never knew to ask.

一切或许始于他抵达不久后某一次磨人的午餐。当时他坐在我旁边，我总算注意到尽管那年夏天他在西西里岛逗留时晒得有点黑，但他掌心的颜色和他脚底、喉咙、前臂内侧一般白皙柔软，因为没有太多暴露在太阳下，几乎是淡粉色，像蜥蜴腹部一样光亮平滑。私密、纯洁、青涩，就像运动员脸上的红晕，像暴风雨夜的黎明曙光，透露了一些我完全不需要去问的事。

It may have started during those endless hours after lunch when everybody lounged about in bathing suits inside and outside the house, bodies sprawled everywhere, killing time before someone finally suggested we head down to the rocks for a swim. Relatives, cousins, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, colleagues, or just about anyone who cared to knock at our gate and ask if they could use our tennis court — everyone was welcome to lounge and swim and eat and, if they stayed long enough, use the guesthouse.

一切或许始于午餐后那些无止无尽的空闲时段，大伙儿都穿着泳衣，在屋子内外闲晃或躺倒来消磨时间，直到终于有人提议到礁石那边去游泳。不论是近亲远邻、朋友、朋友的朋友、同事，或随便哪个愿意敲我们的门、询问可否借用网球场的人，人人都被欢迎来这儿自由闲逛、游泳，与我们一同用餐；如果待得够久，当然还可以在客房留宿。

Or perhaps it started on the beach. Or at the tennis court. Or during our first walk together on his very first day when I was asked to show him the house and its surrounding area and, one thing leading to the other, managed to take him past the very old forged-iron metal gate as far back as the endless empty lot in the hinterland toward the abandoned train tracks that used to connect B. to N. “Is there an abandoned station house somewhere?” he asked, looking through the trees under the scalding sun, probably trying to ask the right question of the owner’s son. “No, there was never a station house. The train simply stopped when you asked.” He was curious about the train; the rails seemed so narrow. It was a two-wagon train bearing the royal insignia, I explained. Gypsies lived in it now. They’d been living there ever since my mother used to summer here as a girl. The gypsies had hauled the two derailed cars farther inland. Did he want to see them? “Later. Maybe.” Polite indifference, as if he’d spotted my misplaced zeal to play up to him and was summarily pushing me away.

又或者一切始于海边。或在网球场上。或者就在他刚到的第一天，我们第一次并肩同行，我遵照嘱咐为他介绍房子，带他参观周边。走着走着，我总算带他深入到偏僻区域那块仿佛无边无际的荒地，通过那道古老的锻铁金属门，往曾经连接B城与N城、如今弃置已久的那段铁轨走去。“附近有废弃火车站吗？”他抬眼望向烈阳下树林深处的另一头，或许是想对屋主的儿子提出恰到好处的问题。“没有，附近从来就没有火车站。火车只是随叫随停。”他对火车很好奇，因为铁轨看起来那么窄。是有皇家标志的无顶货车，我解释道。现在是吉普赛人住在里面。从我母亲少女时期到这儿来避暑时，他们就住在那里，还把两截脱轨的货车拖到更远的内陆去了。我问他想看吗？“回头再说。或许吧。”有礼的冷淡，仿佛他识破了我以不合时宜的热情去讨好他，还立刻一把推开我。

But it stung me.

这刺痛了我。

Instead, he said he wanted to open an account in one of the banks in B., then pay a visit to his Italian translator, whom his Italian publisher had engaged for his book.

不过，他倒说想在B城的银行开户，然后去拜访那位意大利译者，那是他的意大利出版商为他聘请的。

I decided to take him there by bike.

我决定骑单车带他过去。

The conversation was no better on wheels than on foot. Along the way, we stopped for something to drink. The bar-tabaccheria was totally dark and empty. The owner was mopping the floor with a powerful ammonia solution. We stepped outside as soon as we could. A lonely blackbird, sitting in a Mediterranean pine, sang a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas.

骑车时的对话不比步行时顺利。途中，我们停下来找东西喝。烟草店酒吧里漆黑一片，空荡荡的，老板正用气味强烈的氨水拖地，我们忙不迭地离开了。一只寂寞的乌鸦栖息在地中海松上唱出几个音符，旋即被喋喋不休的蝉鸣淹没。

I took a long swill from a large bottle of mineral water, passed it to him, then drank from it again. I spilled some on my hand and rubbed my face with it, running my wet fingers through my hair. The water was insufficiently cold, not fizzy enough, leaving behind an unslaked likeness of thirst.

我大口大口喝着大罐矿泉水，递给他，然后再拿回来喝。我洒了一些在手上，擦一把脸，再沾湿手指梳理头发。水不够凉，气泡太少，留下意犹未尽的那种渴。

What did one do around here?

——大家在这里都做些什么？

Nothing. Wait for summer to end.

——不做什么，等夏天结束。

What did one do in the winter, then?

——那么，冬天做什么？

I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, “Don’t tell me: wait for summer to come, right?”

答案到了嘴边，我不禁露出微笑。他领会我的意思，说道：“先别告诉我：是等夏天来，对不对？”

I liked having my mind read. He’d pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him.

我乐意让人看穿心思。这个人会比他的“前辈”更早意会到“正餐苦差”。

“Actually, in the winter the place gets very gray and dark. We come for Christmas. Otherwise it’s a ghost town.”

“其实，一到冬天，这里变得非常灰暗。我们来这里是为了过圣诞。否则这里杳无人烟。”

“And what else do you do here at Christmas besides roast chestnuts and drink eggnog?”

“除了烤栗子、喝蛋奶酒之外，你们圣诞节在这里还做什么？”

He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said nothing, we laughed.

他在逗我。我露出和之前一样的微笑。他领悟了，不再说什么，于是我们笑起来。

He asked what I did. I played tennis. Swam. Went out at night. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read.

他问我都做些什么。我说打网球。游泳。晚上出门。慢跑。改编乐曲。读书。

He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. Where did one jog around here? Along the promenade, mostly. I could show him if he wanted.

他说他也慢跑。一大早就出门。这附近去哪里慢跑？大抵来说，是沿着海滨大道。如果他想看看，我可以带路。

It hit me in the face just when I was starting to like him again: “Later, maybe.”

就在我又有点喜欢他的时候，他给了我一记当头棒喝：“回头再说。或许吧。”

I had put reading last on my list, thinking that, with the willful, brazen attitude he’d displayed so far, reading would figure last on his. A few hours later, when I remembered that he had just finished writing a book on Heraclitus and that “reading” was probably not an insignificant part of his life, I realized that I needed to perform some clever backpedaling and let him know that my real interests lay right alongside his. What unsettled me, though, was not the fancy footwork needed to redeem myself. It was the unwelcome misgivings with which it finally dawned on me, both then and during our casual conversation by the train tracks, that I had all along, without seeming to, without even admitting it, already been trying — and failing — to win him over.

我把“读书”放在爱好的最末位，因为我认为以他截至目前为止表现出来的任性固执与满不在乎，阅读对他来说应该是敬陪末座。但几个小时后，我想起来他刚刚完成一本探讨赫拉克利特①的书，“阅读”在他的生活中可能并非微不足道。我意识到我必须机灵点，改弦易辙，让他知道我真正的兴趣是跟他一致的。然而令我心烦意乱的并不是替自己扳回一城所需要的复杂策略，而是害怕讨人嫌的疑虑让我终于醒悟：虽然当时，或我们在铁轨旁闲聊时，我一直不露痕迹、甚至不愿承认地努力想要赢得他的好感——然而却徒劳无功。【注：①：赫拉克利特：希腊哲学家。】

When I did offer — because all visitors loved the idea — to take him to San Giacomo and walk up to the very top of the belfry we nicknamed To-die-for, I should have known better than to just stand there without a comeback. I thought I’d bring him around simply by taking him up there and letting him take in the view of the town, the sea, eternity. But no. Later!

我提议带他去圣吉亚科莫（访客都很喜欢那里），登上我们戏称为“死也要看”②的钟塔顶端时，我不该笨到只是呆站着吐不出一句机智的反驳。我原以为只要带他登上塔顶，让他看看这城镇、这片海、永恒的景致，就能争取到他的认同。可是不然。又是一句“回头再说”！【注：②原文to—die—for是指非常美好或吸引人的意思。】

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he’s either already gone or just about to leave, and you’re basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call I want. How couldn’t I have known, you ask? I know desire when I see it — and yet, this time, it slipped by completely. I was going for the devious smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he’d read my mind, when all I really wanted was skin, just skin.

但一切的开始也可能比我想的要晚得多，在我浑然不觉的时候。你看见某个人，但你其实没把他看进眼里，他尚在幕后准备登场；或者你注意到他了，可是没有触动，没有“火花”，甚至在你意识到某个存在或有什么困扰你之前，你所拥有的六个星期就快要过完，而到那时候他要么已然不在，要么即将离开。基本上你此时正忙乱地要去正视并接受些“什么”，这个“什么”在你混沌不知的情况下，当着你的面酝酿了数周，它所有的症状都逼着你不得不说出我想要。我们会问自己：怎么没能早点明白？我一向清楚欲望为何物啊。然而，这次它就这么悄悄溜过，不着痕迹。我迷恋他每次看破我心思时脸上闪现的那抹瞬间明媚的狡黯微笑，而我真心渴望的其实是皮肉，只是他的身体而已。

At dinner on his third evening, I sensed that he was staring at me as I was explaining Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ, which I’d been transcribing. I was seventeen that year and, being the youngest at the table and the least likely to be listened to, I had developed the habit of smuggling as much information into the fewest possible words. I spoke fast, which gave people the impression that I was always flustered and muffling my words. After I had finished explaining my transcription, I became aware of the keenest glance coming from my left. It thrilled and flattered me; he was obviously interested — he liked me. It hadn’t been as difficult as all that, then. But when, after taking my time, I finally turned to face him and take in his glance, I met a cold and icy glare — something at once hostile and vitrified that bordered on cruelty.

他来后第三天的晚餐上，我向客人解释我正在改编的海顿《耶稣临终七言》时，感觉到他正盯着我看。那年我十七岁。由于我是桌上最年轻、讲话可能最没分量的，因此我养成了尽可能以最精简的语句传达最多讯息的习惯。我讲得很快，给人一种我说话总是慌慌张张、含糊不清的印象。解释过我正在改编的东西之后，我意识到最热烈的目光从我左边投射过来，使我有刺激和飘飘然的感觉；他显然感兴趣——他喜欢我。当时，事情并没有那么困难。当我好整以暇，总算转身面对他，与他四目相接时，却遭遇冷冰冰的怒目相向。那是玻璃般带着敌意且近乎残忍的东西。

It undid me completely. What had I done to deserve this? I wanted him to be kind to me again, to laugh with me as he had done just a few days earlier on the abandoned train tracks, or when I’d explained to him that same afternoon that B. was the only town in Italy where the corriera, the regional bus line, carrying Christ, whisked by without ever stopping. He had immediately laughed and recognized the veiled allusion to Carlo Levi’s book. I liked how our minds seemed to travel in parallel, how we instantly inferred what words the other was toying with but at the last moment held back.

这令我不安到极点。我何苦受这种罪？我希望他再对我好，再跟我一起笑，就像几天前在废弃铁轨那儿一样，同样那个下午，我向他解释B城是意大利唯一能让区间公交载着基督一路急驰而去的城市。他立刻笑了出来，听出我在影射卡罗·列维③的书。我喜欢我们的心似乎平行前进，我们总能立刻猜出对方在玩什么文字游戏，却保留到最后一刻。【注：③卡罗·列维（Carlo Levi）：意大利作家、记者、医生、艺术家。】

He was going to be a difficult neighbor. Better stay away from him, I thought. To think that I had almost fallen for the skin of his hands, his chest, his feet that had never touched a rough surface in their existence — and his eyes, which, when their other, kinder gaze fell on you, came like the miracle of the Resurrection. You could never stare long enough but needed to keep staring to find out why you couldn’t.

他会是个难缠的邻居，我想最好离他远一点。一想到我几乎爱上他的手、他的胸膛、他生来从未接触粗糙表面的脚，他这些部位的肌肤…还有他的眼睛。当他另一种比较和善的凝视落在你身上，感觉就像耶稣复活的奇迹，看再久也不厌倦，反而得一直盯着看，好知道为什么总看不腻。

I must have shot him a similarly wicked glance.

我必定也曾对他投射出同样恶毒的眼光。

For two days our conversations came to a sudden halt.

有那么两天，我们的对话突然暂停。

On the long balcony that both our bedrooms shared, total avoidance: just a makeshift hello, good morning, nice weather, shallow chitchat.

在我们两间卧房共用的长阳台碰上，也是完全回避，只有敷衍了事的你好、早安、天气不错，完全是肤浅的闲扯。

Then, without explanation, things resumed.

接着，没有解释，一切又恢复原状。

Did I want to go jogging this morning? No, not really. Well, let’s swim, then.

今天早上想去慢跑吗？不，不怎么想。那么，我们游泳吧。

Today, the pain, the stoking, the thrill of someone new, the promise of so much bliss hovering a fingertip away, the fumbling around people I might misread and don’t want to lose and must second-guess at every turn, the desperate cunning I bring to everyone I want and crave to be wanted by, the screens I put up as though between me and the world there were not just one but layers of rice-paper sliding doors, the urge to scramble and unscramble what was never really coded in the first place — all these started the summer Oliver came into our house. They are embossed on every song that was a hit that summer, in every novel I read during and after his stay, on anything from the smell of rosemary on hot days to the frantic rattle of the cicadas in the afternoon — smells and sounds I’d grown up with and known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer.

新恋人带来的痛苦、狂喜、刺激；盘旋在咫尺之遥，这许多幸福的承诺；在我可能误解、不想失去、每逢转折必定先揣度一番的人之间寻寻觅觅；我用来对待每个我想望、渴望被想望人那种拼了命的狡猾；我立起重重屏障，仿佛自己与世界之间有着许多层的纸拉门；想把其实从来不曾加密的东西编码再解码的强烈冲动——如今这一切全始于奥利弗到我们家来的那个夏天。这些印记在那年夏天的每一首流行歌曲里，在他寄宿期间与其后我所阅读的每一本小说里，在热天迷迭香的气味，以及午后蝉鸣发狂似的嘶叫声里——直到当时，年年伴我成长的、熟悉的气味与声音，突然触动我，多了一种永远晕染上了那个夏天里历历情景色彩的韵味。

Or perhaps it started after his first week, when I was thrilled to see he still remembered who I was, that he didn’t ignore me, and that, therefore, I could allow myself the luxury of passing him on my way to the garden and not having to pretend I was unaware of him. We jogged early on the first morning — all the way up to B. and back. Early the next morning we swam. Then, the day after, we jogged again. I liked racing by the milk delivery van When it was far from done with its rounds, or by the grocer and the baker as they were just getting ready for business, liked to run along the shore and the promenade when there wasn’t a soul about yet and our house seemed a distant mirage. I liked it when our feet were aligned, left with left, and struck the ground at the same time, leaving footprints on the shore that I wished to return to and, in secret, place my foot where his had left its mark.

又或者一切始于他来的第一周：我见他仍然记得我是谁，没有忽视我，使我感到如此振奋，仿佛能够在前往花园的路上与他相遇，而不必佯装没注意到他，已经是一种奢侈的享受。第一天早晨，我们一早就去慢跑，一路跑到B城。第二天一早我们去游泳。接着，隔天，我们又去慢跑。我喜欢跟在满载牛奶的货车旁边跑，或跟在正准备好要开始做买卖的杂货商或面包师傅旁边跑，或趁连个鬼影也没有的时候沿着海岸跑，我们家的房子看起来像遥远的海市蜃楼。我喜欢我们俩并列而行，左脚对右脚，同时撞击地面，在岸边留下脚印；我想回到那儿，偷偷地，把脚轻踩在他留下印记的地方。

This alternation of running and swimming was simply his “routine” in graduate school. Did he run on the Sabbath? I joked. He always exercised, even when he was sick; he’d exercise in bed if he had to. Even when he’d slept with someone new the night before, he said, he’d still head out for a jog early in the morning. The only time he didn’t exercise was when they operated on him. When I asked him what for, the answer I had promised never to incite in him came at me like the thwack of a jack-in-the-box wearing a baleful smirk. “Later.”

每天交替着游泳、慢跑只不过是他读研究生时的“例行公事”。安息日那天他跑步吗？我开玩笑问道。他始终保持运动的习惯，就算生病了也一样，必要时他会在床上运动。甚至连前一夜跟新对象上床，一大早他仍然去慢跑。他说唯一没运动那次是因手术的关系。我问他为什么动手术，那个我发誓决不再诱发他讲的答案如同面露奸笑的弹簧玩偶般“啪”的一声向我袭来。“回头再说。”

Perhaps he was out of breath and didn’t want to talk too much or just wanted to concentrate on his swimming or his running. Or perhaps it was his way of spurring me to do the same — totally harmless.

或许因为他喘不过气来，不想多话，或者他只是想专心游泳或跑步。或者这可能是他激励我再接再厉的方式，完全没有恶意。

But there was something at once chilling and off-putting in the sudden distance that crept between us in the most unexpected moments. It was almost as though he were doing it on purpose; feeding me slack, and more slack, and then yanking away any semblance of fellowship.

然而在最意想不到的时刻，有些令人既寒心又反感的阻碍悄悄出现在我们之间。几乎像是故意的；他让我松懈、再松懈，然后使劲抽掉任何类似友谊的东西。

The steely gaze always returned. One day, while I was practicing my guitar at what had become “my table” in the back garden by the pool and he was lying nearby on the grass, I recognized the gaze right away. He had been staring at me while I was focusing on the fingerboard, and when I suddenly raised my face to see if he liked what I was playing, there it was: cutting, cruel, like a glistening blade instantly retracted the moment its victim caught sight of it. He gave me a bland smile, as though to say, No point biding it now.

钢铁般冷酷的眼神总是一再回来。有一天，我在后花园游泳池畔那张“我的桌子”旁练吉他，他就躺在附近的草地上，我立刻认出那种凝视。我专注在指板上的时候，他一直盯着我看，等我突然抬起头来，想看看他是否喜欢我演奏的曲子，那种眼神又出现了：锐利、冷酷，像亮晃晃的刀刃，在被害人瞥见时旋即收回。他给我一个平淡的微笑，仿佛说：现在没必要隐藏。

Stay away from him.

要与他保持距离。

He must have noticed I was shaken and in an effort to make it up to me began asking me questions about the guitar. I was too much on my guard to answer him with candor. Meanwhile, hearing me scramble for answers made him suspect that perhaps more was amiss than I was showing. “Don’t bother explaining. Just play it again.”

他必定注意到我的震惊，似乎为了补偿我，他开始问我关于吉他的问题。我警戒心太强，无法坦诚回答他。听到我慌乱的回答，他猜想或许还有什么我没表现出来的问题。“甭解释了，再弹一遍就是了。”

“But I thought you hated it.”

“可是我觉得你讨厌这首曲子。”

“Hated it? Whatever gave you that idea?” We argued back and forth.

“讨厌？你为什么那么想？”我们争论不休。

“Just play it, will you?”

“你弹就是了，好吗？”

“The same one?”

“同一首？”

“The same one.”

“同一首。”

I stood up and walked into the living room, leaving the large French windows open so that he might hear me play it on the piano. He followed me halfway and, leaning on the windows’ wooden frame, listened for a while.

我起身走进客厅，打开大落地窗，好让他听见我在钢琴上弹同一首曲子。他跟我走到半途，然后倚着木窗框听了一阵儿。

“You changed it. It’s not the same. What did you do to it?”

“你改了。这不是同一首。你做了什么？”

“I just played it the way Liszt would have played it had he jimmied around with it.”

“我只是用李斯特的即兴风格来弹。”

“Just play it again, please!”

“再弹一次就是了，拜托！”

I liked the way he feigned exasperation. So I started playing the piece again.

我喜欢他假装恼怒的样子，所以我又重新开始弹这首曲子。

After a while: “I can’t believe you changed it again.”

过了一会儿。“我不敢相信你又改了。”

“Well, not by much. This is just how Busoni would have played it if he had altered Liszt’s version.”

“恩，一点点。这是类似布索尼改写李斯特版本的弹法。”

“Can’t you just play the Bach the way Bach wrote it?”

“你就不能照巴赫写的来弹吗？”

“But Bach never wrote it for guitar. He may not even have written it for the harpsichord. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s by Bach at all.”

“可是巴赫从来没写过吉他的版本啊。说不定他根本不是写给大键琴的。事实上，我们甚至不确定这曲子究竟是不是巴赫写的。”

“Forget I asked.”

“当我没求你。”

“Okay, okay. No need to get so worked up,” I said. It was my turn to feign grudging acquiescence. “This is the Bach as transcribed by me without Busoni and Liszt. It’s a very young Bach and it’s dedicated to his brother.”

“好啦好啦，不必这么激动啊。”轮到我假装勉强同意。“这是我改编的巴赫，没有布索尼和李斯特的成分。是年轻时的巴赫献给兄弟的作品。”

I knew exactly what phrase in the piece must have stirred him the first time, and each time I played it, I was sending it to him as a little gift, because it was really dedicated to him, as a token of something very beautiful in me that would take no genius to figure out and that urged me to throw in an extended cadenza. Just for him.

打从第一次弹，我就很清楚这部作品的哪个乐句撩动了他。每当我演奏到那一段，都把它当做一份小礼物送给他，因为那的确是献给他的，那象征我美丽的部分、不必是个天才就能理解的部分，它激励我加入一段长长的华彩乐段，只为了他。

We were — and he must have recognized the signs long before I did — flirting.

我们在调情，而他必定远比我早看出端倪。

Later that evening in my diary, I wrote: I was exaggerating when I said I thought you hated the piece. What I meant to say was: I thought you hated me. I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite — and you did, for a while. Why won’t I believe it tomorrow morning?

当晚在日记里，我写道：“我说我认为你讨厌那部作品确实是有点夸张了。我真正想说的是：我觉得你讨厌我。我希望你说服我事实正好相反，你也的确这么做了一下子。但为什么明天早上我就不再相信？”

So this is who he also is, I said to myself after seeing how he’d flipped from ice to sunshine.

所以他也有这一面——看过他如何从冷若冰霜变得如阳光温煦后，我对自己这么说。

I might as well have asked: Do I flip back and forth in just the same way?

我或许也问过：我是否一样反复无常？

P. S. We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.

附注：我们都不是专为一种乐器而生：我不是，你也不是。

I had been perfectly willing to brand him as difficult and unapproachable and have nothing more to do with him. Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me to stop, till it’s time for lunch, till the skin on my fingers wears off layer after layer, because I like doing things for you, will do anything for you, just say the word, I liked you from day one, and even when you’ll return ice for my renewed offers of friendship, I’ll never forget that this conversation occurred between us and that there are easy ways to bring back summer in the snowstorm.

我一百个愿意给他贴上棘手难缠、拒人千里的标签，然后与他再无瓜葛。但他的只字片语，都能让我从摆臭脸变成我什么都愿意为他弹，直到他喊停，直到午餐时间，直到我手指上的皮一层一层剥落，因为我喜欢为他效劳，愿意为他做任何事，只要他开口。我从第一天就喜欢上他，即使我双手献上的友谊只得到了他冷冰冰的回应，我也永远不会忘记我们之间的这次对话，而且不会忘了要驱散暴风雪、重回艳阳夏日，有的是好办法。

What I forgot to earmark in that promise was that ice and apathy have ways of instantly repealing all truces and resolutions signed in sunnier moments.

而我忘记在那个许诺里加的一个注记是：冰霜和冷漠更有的是办法，能立即撤销所有在晴朗日子里签署的和平休战书。

Then came that July Sunday afternoon when our house suddenly emptied, and we were the only ones there, and fire tore through my guts — because “fire” was the first and easiest word that came to me later that same evening when 1 tried to make sense of it in my diary. I’d waited and waited in my room pinioned to my bed in a trancelike state of terror and anticipation. Not a fire of passion, not a ravaging fire, but something paralyzing, like the fire of cluster bombs that suck up the oxygen around them and leave you panting because you’ve been kicked in the gut and a vacuum has ripped up every living lung tissue and dried your mouth, and you hope nobody speaks, because you can’t talk, and you pray no one asks you to move, because your heart is clogged and beats so fast it would sooner spit out shards of glass than let anything else flow through its narrowed chambers. Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and I’ll die if he doesn’t knock at my door, but I’d sooner he never knock than knock now. I had learned to leave my French windows ajar, and I’d lie on my bed wearing only my bathing suit, my entire body on fire. Fire like a pleading that says, Please, please, tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’ve imagined all this, because it can’t possibly be true for you as well, and if it’s true for you too, then you’re the crudest man alive. This, the afternoon he did finally walk into my room without knocking as if summoned by my prayers and asked how come I wasn’t with the others at the beach, and all I could think of saying, though I couldn’t bring myself to say it, was, To be with you. To be with you, Oliver. With or without my bathing suit. To be with you on my bed. In your bed. Which is my bed during the other months of the year? Do with me what you want. Take me. Just ask if I want to and see the answer you’ll get, just don’t let me say no.

接着是七月那个星期天的下午，屋子突然空了，只剩我们俩，火迅速在我五胜六腑间呼啸蔓延开来——“火”是当晚我试图在日记里理清这件事时，第一个想到、也是最简单的字眼。我待在房间里，以一种惊恐又期待的恍惚状态紧缚在床上，等待再等待。那不是激情的火，不是摧残的火，而是让人麻痹瘫痪的东西，像子母弹的火那样吸光周围的氧气，让你气喘吁吁，内脏受到撞击，真空状态撕碎每一个活着的肺组织，让你口干舌燥。你希望谁也别说话，因为你无法开口；你祈求没人要你移动，因为你的心肌阻塞，跳得飞快，还来不及让任何东西流过狭窄的心室之前，似乎已经要喷出玻璃碎片。那火是害怕，是恐慌，仿佛再多捱一分钟，如果他还不来敲我的门我就会死——但与其现在来到，我宁可他永远别来。我将落地窗打开一条小缝，只穿着泳衣躺在床上，全身犹如着火一般。这片火犹如恳求着：拜托，求你了，告诉我我错了！告诉我这一切都是我的想象，因为这对你来说也不可能是真的；如果对你来说也是真的，那么你就是世上最残忍的人。仿佛被我的祈祷召唤而来，下午他终于真的没敲门就走进我的房间，问我为什么没跟其他人一起去海边，此时我满脑子只想说：为了跟你在一起——虽然我说不出口。为了跟你在一起，奥利弗。无论穿不穿泳衣都好。我想跟你在一起，在我床上，在你床上——那张一年中其他月份里本属于我的床。跟我做你想做的事。占有我。问我想不想要就好，看看你会得到什么答案，只是别让我拒绝。

And tell me I wasn’t dreaming that night when I heard a noise outside the landing by my door and suddenly knew that someone was in my room, someone was sitting at the foot of my bed, thinking, thinking, thinking, and finally started moving up toward me and was now lying, not next to me, but on top of me, while I lay on my tummy, and that I liked it so much that, rather than risk doing anything to show I’d been awakened or to let him change his mind and go away, I feigned to be fast asleep, thinking, This is not, cannot, had better not be a dream, because the words that came to me, as I pressed my eyes shut, were, This is like coming home, like coming home after years away among Trojans and Lestrygonians, like coming home to a place where everyone is like you, where people know, they just know — coming home as when everything falls into place and you suddenly realize that for seventeen years all you’d been doing was fiddling with the wrong combination. Which was when I decided to convey without budging, without moving a single muscle in my body, that I’d be willing to yield if you pushed, that I’d already yielded, was yours, all yours, except that you were suddenly gone and though it seemed too true to be a dream, yet I was convinced that all I wanted from that day onward was for you to do the exact same thing you’d done in my sleep.

也请告诉我那天晚上我不是无端做梦。我听到门边的楼梯平台传来一阵噪音，突然意识到有人进了我房间，就坐在我的床尾，思量、思量、再三思量，总算往我这边移来，而后躺倒下来——不是躺在我身边，而是压在趴着的我身上。我是多么喜欢这样子，因此丝毫不敢贸然而动，以免让他察觉他吵醒了我、或让他改变主意掉头离开。我假装酣睡，脑中一片轰然，想着：这不是、不可能是、最好不是一场梦。当我克制着紧闭双眼，此时所能想到的就只有：“这就像归乡”。就像外出多年与特洛伊人和莱斯特律戈涅斯人④作战后，终于回到只有同类的国度，那儿的人了解，他们就是了解；就像回到故里，尘埃落定，万事就绪，你突然醒悟原来这十七年来你只是虚度时光，不断与错误的人群瞎搅和。就是在这一刻，我决定一动也不动，以身体镇定的姿态告诉他：如果你前进一步，我愿意屈服；我已然屈服于你，我是你的，全是你的。然而你却突然离开了。虽然感觉太过真实，不像一场梦，但我深信从那天开始，我一心企盼着你对我做你在我睡梦中做的事，一模一样的事。【注：④特洛伊人（Trojans）：特洛伊为土耳其西部一古城废墟。根据希腊传说，特洛伊城被希腊联军围困十年之久。荷马在《伊利亚德》里描述这个故事。莱斯特律戈涅斯人：传说中住在西西里的巨人食人族。】

The next day we were playing doubles, and during a break, as we were drinking Mafalda’s lemonades, he put his free arm around me and then gently squeezed his thumb and forefingers into my shoulder in imitation of a friendly hug-massage — the whole thing very chummy-chummy. But I was so spellbound that I wrenched myself free from his touch, because a moment longer and I would have slackened like one of those tiny wooden toys whose gimp-legged body collapses as soon as the mainsprings are touched. Taken aback, he apologized and asked if he had pressed a “nerve or something”– he hadn’t meant to hurt me. He must have felt thoroughly mortified if he suspected he had either hurt me or touched me the wrong way. The last thing I wanted was to discourage him. Still, I blurted something like, “It didn’t hurt,” and would have dropped the matter there. But I sensed that if it wasn’t pain that had prompted such a reaction, what other explanation could account for my shrugging him off so brusquely in front of my friends? So I mimicked the face of someone trying very hard, but failing, to smother a grimace of pain.

第二天我们打双打。某次中场休息，我们正在喝玛法尔达准备的柠檬汁，他伸出一只手臂搂着我，轻轻以拇指和食指掐我的肩膀，做出好意搂着我帮我按摩的样子，整个过程非常亲密。但由于我是如此神魂颠倒不知所措，反而猛地转身甩开他，因为只要再多持续一秒，我恐怕就要像个一碰主发条身子就会垮掉的木头玩具一样瘫软了。他吓了一跳，向我道歉，问我是不是压到我的“神经或什么的”­——他不是故意要弄疼我。如果他以为伤害了我或他的触碰让我不舒服，他肯定觉得窘迫至极。让他却步是我最不愿意的事，不过我还是含糊地说了句“不痛”之类的话，想就此打住。但我也意识到，如果激起这种反应的不是痛，那还有什么理由解释我在朋友面前如此粗鲁地甩开他？我只好装出拼命忍痛却徒劳无功的扭曲表情。

It never occurred to me that what had totally panicked me when he touched me was exactly what startles virgins on being touched for the first time by the person they desire: he stirs nerves in them they never knew existed and that produce far, far more disturbing pleasures than they are used to on their own.

我从来没想到他的碰触会令我如此恐慌，这与处子第一次被心上人触摸所感受到的惊骇简直如出一辙：心上人撩拨了我们体内连自己也从未意识到的敏感神经，而那产生了令人不安的巨大快感，远远超出我们原来所习惯的范畴。

He still seemed surprised by my reaction but gave every sign of believing in, as I of concealing, the pain around my shoulder. It was his way of letting me off the hook and of pretending he wasn’t in the least bit aware of any nuance in my reaction. Knowing, as I later came to learn, how thoroughly trenchant was his ability to sort contradictory signals, I have no doubt that he must have already suspected something. “Here, let me make it better.” He was testing me and proceeded to massage my shoulder. “Relax,” he said in front of the others. “But I am relaxing.”

他对我的反应似乎仍然感到惊讶，却作出完全信服我的模样，就像我作势隐藏肩膀的疼痛一般。他以此来帮我圆场，同时也假装丝毫未意识到我的微妙反应。后来我知道了他是多么精于捕捉和梳理这种自相矛盾的讯息，我相信当时的他必定起了疑心。“来，我换个方式。”他试探我，继续按摩我的肩膀。“放轻松，”他当着其他人的面说。“我放松了呀。”

“You ‘re as stiff as this bench. Feel this,” he said to Marzia, one of the girls closest to us. “It’s all knots.” I felt her hands on my back. “Here,” he ordered, pressing her flattened palm hard against my back. “Feel it? He should relax more,” he said. “You should relax more,” she repeated.

“你僵硬得跟这张板凳一样。摸摸看。”他对离我们最近的女孩玛琪雅说。“全是硬块对吧？”我感觉到玛琪雅伸出双手摸我的背。“这里。”他说道，压着玛琪雅摊平的手掌用力按我的背。“感觉到了吗？他应该再放松一点。”于是玛琪雅也跟着说：“你应该再放松一点。”

Perhaps, in this, as with everything else, because I didn’t know how to speak in code, I didn’t know how to speak at all. I felt like a deaf and dumb person who can’t even use sign language. I stammered all manner of things so as not to speak my mind. That was the extent of my code. So long as I had breath to put words in my mouth, I could more or less carry it off. Otherwise, the silence between us would probably give me away — which was why anything, even the most spluttered nonsense, was preferable to silence. Silence would expose me. But what was certain to expose me even more was my struggle to overcome it in front of others.

我当下的反应，就像面对其他事情一般，不知道如何含蓄暗示，只能沉默以对。我像个还没学会手语的聋哑人，结结巴巴东拉西扯，以免吐露心声。这就是我使用暗语的程度。只要我还能撑得住隐藏不说，我多少就能若无其事地应付过去。否则，我们之间的沉默或许会使我暴露无遗。再怎么语无伦次也比沉默来得好。沉默或许会让我露出马脚，但我在别人面前拼命压抑的模样，铁定泄露更多。

The despair aimed at myself must have given my features something bordering on impatience and unspoken rage. That he might have mistaken these as aimed at him never crossed my mind.

我不由得对自己感到失望，想必也令我的表情看起来有点近乎不耐和未予明言的愤怒。我压根儿没想过他可能误以为这些全是冲着他来的。

Maybe it was for similar reasons that I would look away each time he looked at me: to conceal the strain on my timidity. That he might have found my avoidance offensive and retaliated with a hostile glance from time to time never crossed my mind either.

还有一件事，或许也出于类似的理由。他一看过来，我就撇开目光，这只是为了隐藏我的胆怯造成的紧张。他可能觉得我这样回避很失礼，才不时以带着敌意的眼神报复——这一点我当时也毫无头绪。

“What I hoped he hadn’t noticed in my overreaction to his grip was something else. Before shirking off his arm, I knew I had yielded to his hand and had almost leaned into it, as if to say — as I’d heard adults so often say when someone happened to massage their shoulders while passing behind them — Don’t stop. Had he noticed I was ready not just to yield but to mold into his body?

我希望他没有从我的过度反应中察觉到什么，这是另一回事。但在躲开他的手臂之前，我知道我早已向他屈服，几乎像是贴了上去，仿佛要说：“别停”（就像我听到那些成年人在有人偶然经过他们身后为他们按摩肩膀时常常这样说）。他有没有注意到我随时准备屈服于他，还想与他合为一体？

This was the feeling I took to my diary that night as well: I called it the “swoon.” Why had I swooned? And could it happen so easily — just let him touch me somewhere and I’d totally go limp and will-less? Was this what people meant by butter melting?

这也是我当晚日记里所描绘的感觉，我称之为“意乱情迷”。我为什么意乱情迷？这种情感来得如此轻易吗？只要他轻轻一碰我，我就双脚发软，神魂颠倒？这是大家所说的“如奶油般融化”吗？

And why wouldn’t I show him how like butter I was? Because I was afraid of what might happen then? Or was I afraid he would have laughed at me, told everyone, or ignored the whole thing on the pretext I was too young to know what I was doing? Or was it because if he so much as suspected — and anyone who suspected would of necessity be on the same wavelength — he might be tempted to act on it? Did I want him to act? Or would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not knowing, not-not-not knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can’t say “yes,” don’t say “no,” say “later.” Is this why people say “maybe” when they mean “yes,” but hope you’ll think it’s “no’ when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that?

我为什么不愿意让他知道我多容易软化？因为害怕随之而来的后果？怕他笑我？怕他四处宣扬？怕他拿我太年轻、不知道自己在做什么为借口，因而置之不理？或者他有那么点起了疑心，他或许会想要因此采取行动？我希望他行动吗？或者我宁可一辈子渴望，只要双方继续这种你来我往的猜谜游戏：不知道、知道、不知道？保持沉默就好，什么都别说；如果你不答应，也别拒绝，就说“回头再说”吧——大家不都这么做吗？即使同意，也要来句模糊的“或许吧”，表面看来像是拒绝，隐藏的真意却是：拜托，请再问我一次，再多问一次。

I look back to that summer and can’t believe that despite every one of my efforts to live with the “fire” and the “swoon,” life still granted wonderful moments. Italy. Summer. The noise of the cicadas in the early afternoon. My room. His room. Our balcony that shut the whole world out. The soft wind trailing exhalations from our garden up the stairs to my bedroom. The summer I learned to love fishing. Because he did. To love jogging. Because he did. To love octopus, Heraclitus, Tristan. The summer I’d hear a bird sing, smell a plant, or feel the mist rise from under my feet on warm sunny days and, because my senses were always on alert, would automatically find them rushing to him.

回顾那年夏天，我不敢相信在我费尽心机思考如何与“火”或“情迷意乱”共存之时，犹能注意到生活中的美好时刻。意大利的夏季。午后一两点钟的嘈杂蝉鸣。我的房间。他的房间。把全世界隔绝在外的阳台。微风追随花园里的水汽，沿楼梯往上吹进我的房间。那年夏天我爱上钓鱼，因为他爱。爱上慢跑，因为他爱。爱上章鱼、赫拉克利特、《特里斯坦》⑤。那年夏天我听鸟欢唱，闻百草香，感觉雾气在阳光灿烂的日子里从脚下升起，而我警醒的感官总是不由自主全涌向他。【注：⑤《特里斯坦》（Tristan）：在此可能指瓦格纳的歌剧《特里斯坦与伊索尔德》（Tristan and isold）。】

I could have denied so many things — that I longed to touch his knees and wrists when they glistened in the sun with that viscous sheen I’ve seen in so very few; that I loved how his white tennis shorts seemed perpetually stained by the color of clay, which, as the weeks wore on, became the color of his skin; that his hair, turning blonder every day, caught the sun before the sun was completely out in the morning; that his billowy blue shirt, becoming ever more billowy when he wore it on gusty days on the patio by the pool, promised to harbor a scent of skin and sweat that made me hard just thinking of it. All this I could have denied. And believed my denials.

我大可否认许多事。否认我渴望碰触他在太阳下会闪光的膝盖和手腕，我很少见到那样黏腻的光泽；否认我爱他的白色网球裤上似乎总有土色污渍，而几周过去，那污渍仿佛已与他的肤色化为一体；否认他每一天都愈发金黄的发色，在早晨太阳完全升起之前已经闪耀着阳光的金色；否认大风吹起时，他在游泳池畔的露台处穿起来更显波澜壮阔的那件大波浪蓝色宽衬衫，那下面肯定隐藏着只是一想到就令我硬起来的体味和汗味。我可以否认这一切，自欺欺人地相信这一切都不是真的。

But it was the gold necklace and the Star of David with a golden mezuzah on his neck that told me here was something more compelling than anything I wanted from him, for it bound us and reminded me that, while everything else conspired to make us the two most dissimilar beings, this at least transcended all differences. I saw his star almost immediately during his first day with us. And from that moment on I knew that what mystified me and made me want to seek out his friendship, without ever hoping to find ways to dislike him, was larger than anything either of us could ever want from the other, larger and therefore better than his soul, my body, or earth itself. Staring at his neck with its star and telltale amulet was like staring at something timeless, ancestral, immortal in me, in him, in both of us, begging to be rekindled and brought back from its millenary sleep.

是他脖子上的金项链和带有金门柱圣卷⑥的大卫之星⑦，告诉我存在着比我对他的任何渴望还要吸引人的东西，因为这条项链将我们联结在一起，提醒着我就算其他的一切都在合力证明我们俩是最不相似的两种存在，但至少，至少这一点超越了一切差异。几乎是他来到的第一天，我就看见了他脖子上那个大卫之星。从那一刻起，我就知道是什么令我迷惑不解、令我渴求他的友谊，甚至从来不希望找到他惹人讨厌的毛病；这个“什么”比我们渴望从彼此身上得到的任何东西还要广大、深远而重要，所以也远凌驾于他的灵魂、我的身体或尘世本身之上。凝视他戴着星形项链及泄露秘密的护身符的脖颈。就像凝视我的、他的以及我们体内共同的承继先祖、永恒不朽，祈求着从千年沉睡中被重燃、被召回的部分。【注：⑥门柱圣卷（mezuzah）：犹太人将刻有《圣经·申命记》（Deuteronomy）6；4—9与11；13—21经文的小块羊皮纸卷起来放入容器，常挂在门框等处，以宣示自己的信仰。⑦大卫之星（Spar ofDavid）：犹太教的象征，由两个等边三角形交错叠合组成的六角星形。】

What baffled me was that he didn’t seem to care or notice that I wore one too. Just as he probably didn’t care or notice each time my eyes wandered along his bathing suit and tried to make out the contour of what made us brothers in the desert.

令我不解的是，他似乎丝毫不在乎或者根本没发觉我也戴了一个大卫之星。就像他或许不在乎或者从没注意到我的眼神总是在他的泳衣上游移，想要弄明白究竟是什么使我们成为荒漠里的兄弟。

With the exception of my family, he was probably the only other Jew who had ever set foot in B. But unlike us he let you see it from the very start. We were not conspicuous Jews. We wore our Judaism as people do almost everywhere in the world: under the shirt, not hidden, but tucked away. “Jews of discretion,” to use my mother’s words. To see someone proclaim his Judaism on his neck as Oliver did when he grabbed one of our bikes and headed into town with his shirt wide open shocked us as much as it taught us we could do the same and get away with it. I tried imitating him a few times. But I was too self-conscious, like someone trying to feel natural while walking about naked in a locker room only to end up aroused by his own nakedness. In town, I tried flaunting my Judaism with the silent bluster that comes less from arrogance than from repressed shame. Not him. It’s not that he never thought about being Jewish or about the life of Jews in a Catholic country. Sometimes we spoke about just this topic during those long afternoons when both of us would put aside work and enjoy chatting while the entire household and guests had all drifted into every available bedroom to rest for a few hours. He had lived long enough in small towns in New England to know what it felt like to be the odd Jew out. But Judaism never troubled him the way it troubled me, nor was it the subject of an abiding, metaphysical discomfort with himself and the world. It did not even harbor the mystical, unspoken promise of redemptive brotherhood. And perhaps this was why he wasn’t ill at ease with being Jewish and didn’t constantly have to pick at it, the way children pick at scabs they wish would go away. He was okay with being Jewish. He was okay with himself, the way he was okay with his body, with his looks, with his antic backhand, with his choice of books, music, films, friends. He was okay with losing his prized Mont Blanc pen. “I can buy another one just like it.” He was okay with criticism too. He showed my father a few pages he was proud of having written. My father told him his insights into Heraclitus were brilliant but needed firming up, that he needed to accept the paradoxical nature of the philosopher’s thinking, not simply explain it away. He was okay with firming things up, he was okay with paradox. Back to the drawing board — he was okay with the drawing board as well. He invited my young aunt for a tête-à-tête midnight gita — spin — in our motorboat. She declined. That was okay. He tried again a few days later, was turned down again, and again made light of it. She too was okay with it, and, had she spent another week with us, would probably have been okay with going out to sea for a midnight gita that could easily have lasted till sunrise.

除了我的家人之外，涉足B城的犹太人或许只有他一个了。但他与我们不同，他从一开始就亮给人看。我的家人从不高调彰显犹太人身份，而是像其他分散世界各地的犹太人一样，放在衬衫里，不加隐藏却保持低调——借用我母亲的话来说，我们是“谨慎的犹太人”。看见奥利弗敞着衬衫领口宣告项链所代表的犹太信仰，直接骑上家里的脚踏车进城，令我们震惊，同时也让我们知道我们也可以这样，完全不会遇上什么麻烦。我几次试着学他那样出门，可是我太放不开，像个想要大大方方光着身子在更衣室走动的人，到头来却被自己的裸体勾起了性欲。更多是出于压抑的羞耻感而非自大的心态，我试着在城里以一种静默的虚张声势来昭示我的犹太信仰；而他则不然，尽管他并非从未考虑过在这个天主教国度里身为犹太人意味着什么，或犹太人的生活是怎样的。偶尔在漫长的午后，趁着一家老小和客人全都懒洋洋地晃进空余卧房里小憩个把钟头的时候，我俩会抛开工作，愉快地聊天，而我们讨论的正是这个话题。他曾在美国新英格兰的几个小镇住过相当长一段时间，很清楚犹太人只身在异乡的局外人感受，但犹太信仰带给我的困扰从未发生在他身上，也从来不是他自处或面对世界时，那个会引发永恒不变的、深奥难解的苦恼不安的主题。犹太信仰甚至并不包含那种玄秘的、未以言明的关于相互救赎的兄弟关系的美好预言。或许正是出于这个理由，犹太人身份对他丝毫不是困扰，他也不需要时不时就此烦恼一下，不像小孩子经常去抠伤疤，盼望着疤痕早些消失。身为犹太人对他而言不是问题。他很能接受自己，就像他接受自己的身体，接受自己的相貌，接受自己古怪的反手拍动作，接受自己选择读的书、听的音乐、看的电影和交的朋友。他弄丢了获奖得来的万宝龙钢笔也不介意。“我可以自己买支一模一样的。”他也不介意批评。他拿了几页引以为傲的文章给我父亲看。父亲告诉他，他对赫拉克利特的见解很精彩，但论点还需加强，他必须接受哲学家思想中的悖论本质，而不是一味找理由开脱。于是他接受立论必须加强的意见，也接受悖论，重起炉灶——他不介意从头开始修改文章。他邀请我的小阿姨半夜单独（开我们的汽艇）去gita，也就是兜风。小阿姨拒绝了。没关系。几天后他又试一次，再度遭拒，同样不以为意。小阿姨也无所谓，若是再多住一周，她或许就会答应半夜出海去兜风，甚至玩到天亮。

Only once during his very first few days did I get a sense that this willful but accommodating, laid-back, water-over-my-back, unflappable, unfazed twenty-four-year-old who was so heedlessly okay with so many things in life was, in fact, a thoroughly alert, cold, sagacious judge of character and situations. Nothing he did or said was unpremeditated. He saw through everybody, but he saw through them precisely because the first thing he looked for in people was the very thing he had seen in himself and may not have wished others to see. He was, as my mother was scandalized to learn one day, a supreme poker player who’d escape into town at night twice a week or so to “play a few hands.” This was why, to our complete surprise, he had insisted on opening a bank account on the very day of his arrival. None of our residents had ever had a local bank account. Most didn’t have a penny.

在他初来的那几天，只有一次，我感觉到这个固执却乐与人方便，悠然自得、满不在乎、沉着冷静、泰然自若，并且对生活中这么多事都毫不介怀的二十四岁青年，实际上对他人性格和事态形势有着十足敏锐、冷静精明的判断。他的言行无一不经过算计。他看透每一个人，但他之所以能够看透，正是因为他第一眼去寻找的就是他在自己身上见到而不愿意被别人窥见的部分。好比我母亲有一天震惊地发现他原来是扑克高手，每周约有两晚溜进城去“玩几手”。完全出乎我们的意料，原来这就是他抵达当天就坚持要在银行开户的原因。我们的住客多半身无分文，从来没人拥有本地银行的户头。

It had happened during a lunch when my father had invited a journalist who had dabbled in philosophy in his youth and wanted to show that, though he had never written about Heraclitus, he could still spar on any matter under the sun. He and Oliver didn’t hit it off. Afterward, my father had said, “A very witty man — damn clever too.”

某天午餐时，父亲邀请一名年少时对哲学颇有涉猎的记者，记者想证明虽然他从没写过关于赫拉克利特的文章，还是能就世界上的任何事与人辩论。这记者与奥利弗完全合不来。事后，父亲说那记者“很机智，也很聪明”。

“Do you really think so, Pro?” Oliver interrupted, unaware that my father, while very easygoing himself, did not always like being contradicted, much less being called Pro, though he went along with both. “Yes, I do,” insisted my father. “Well, I’m not sure I agree at all. I find him arrogant, dull, flat-footed, and coarse. He uses humor and a lot of voice”– Oliver mimicked the man’s gravitas –“and broad gestures to nudge his audience because he is totally incapable of arguing a case. The voice thing is so over the top, Pro. People laugh at his humor not because he is funny but because he telegraphs his desire to be funny. His humor is nothing more than a way of winning over people he can’t persuade. “If you look at him when you’re speaking, he always looks away, he’s not listening, he’s just itching to say things he’s rehearsed while you were speaking and wants to say before he forgets them.”

奥利弗却打断问道：“您真的这么想吗，教授⑧？”奥利弗不了解我父亲虽然性格随和，却未必喜欢别人反驳他的意见，更讨厌别人称他“教授”，即使他表面上对这两件事往往不动声色。“是，我是这么想。”父亲对自己的见解颇为坚持，奥利弗却模仿那记者正经严肃的样子说道：“我恐怕难以苟同。我认为他傲慢自大、沉闷无趣、迟钝笨拙，又粗俗不堪。他看似幽默，利用很多声音和夸张的动作来说服听众，因为他根本说不出一套道理。声音这一点实在太过火了，教授。大家被他的幽默逗笑，不是因为他有趣，而是因为他无意间流露出他渴望别人觉得他有趣。他的幽默只不过是用来拉拢自己无法说服的对象的手段而已。你说话的时候看着他，他却总是撇开目光，没专心聆听，他只想趁忘记以前，赶紧说出你发言时他在心里演练过的话。”【注：⑧Pro：教授的简称。】

How could anyone intuit the manner of someone’s thinking unless he himself was already familiar with this same mode of thinking? How could he perceive so many devious turns in others unless he had practiced them himself?

若非他自己熟悉同样的思考模式，怎能凭直觉洞悉别人的想法？若非早已亲身实践，他如何能察觉他人内心这许多曲折？

What struck me was not just his amazing gift for reading people, for rummaging inside them and digging out the precise configuration of their personality, but his ability to intuit things in exactly the way I myself might have intuited them. This, in the end, was what drew me to him with a compulsion that overrode desire or friendship or the allurements of a common religion. “How about catching a movie?” he blurted out one evening when we were all sitting together, as if he’d suddenly hit on a solution to what promised to be a dull night indoors. We had just left the dinner table where my father, as was his habit these days, had been urging me to try to go out with friends more often, especially in the evening. It bordered on a lecture. Oliver was still new with us and knew no one in town, so I must have seemed as good a movie partner as any. But he had asked his question in far too breezy and spontaneous a manner, as though he wanted me and everyone else in the living room to know that he was hardly invested in going to the movies and could just as readily stay home and go over his manuscript. The carefree inflection of his offer, however, was also a wink aimed at my father: he was only pretending to have come up with the idea; in fact, without letting me suspect it, he was picking up on my father’s advice at the dinner table and was offering to go for my benefit alone.

令我惊讶的不仅是他这么有识人的天分，能够轻易探察别人的内心，挖出其人格的精准轮廓；还有，他对事物的直觉与我对事物的直觉如出一辙——到头来，这正是超越了欲望、友谊、共同信仰等等因素，令我不可自拔地被他吸引的原因。“去赶一场电影如何？”有一晚我们大家都坐在一起时他脱口而出，仿佛忽然想到一个好点子来排解夜晚枯坐在家的无聊。那时我们刚吃完晚饭，而用餐时父亲才刚刚长篇大论地劝说我多出去找朋友玩，尤其是晚上——这好像成了他这阵子的习惯。奥利弗才来没多久，在城里也没熟人，我似乎是观影同伴的最佳人选。但是奥利弗这随口一问显得太轻松无意，仿佛想让我和客厅里的人觉得他并不那么热衷于看电影，而且大可在家里润色论文草稿也一样。他提议时那种随兴的语调也是向父亲示意：他假装想到了看电影的主意，但事实上他想在不让我起疑的情况下，采纳父亲晚餐时的建议，而且是为了我好才提议要去。

I smiled, not at the offer, but at the double-edged maneuver. He immediately caught my smile. And having caught it, smiled back, almost in self-mockery, sensing that if he gave any sign of guessing I’d seen through his ruse he’d be confirming his guilt, but that refusing to own up to it, after I’d made clear I’d intercepted it, would indict him even more. So he smiled to confess he’d been caught but also to show he was a good enough sport to own up to it and still enjoy going to the movies together. The whole thing thrilled me.

我笑了，不为他的提议，而是因为他两方讨好的策略。他立刻看到我的笑脸。既然看到了，也近乎自嘲般回以一笑，他意识到如果流露出任何猜到我已看穿他的迹象，他就得认罪；既然我表明早已看穿他的意图，他还拒绝爽快承认，更是罪加一等。所以他微笑承认自己被识破，但也想以此表明自己够上道、肯承认，而且仍然乐意一起去看电影。这整件事令我兴奋不已。

Or perhaps his smile was his way of countering my reading tit for tat with the unstated suggestion that, much as he’d been caught trying to affect total casualness on the face of his offer, he too had found something to smile about in me — namely, the shrewd, devious, guilty pleasure I derived in finding so many imperceptible affinities between us. There may have been nothing there, and I might have invented the whole thing. But both of us knew what the other had seen. That evening, as we biked to the movie theater, I was — and I didn’t care to hide it — riding on air.

或者他的微笑可能是他以自己的方式以牙还牙地反制我的解读，心照不宣地暗示：如同我识破他企图若无其事提出邀约的表象，他也发现我因为明白彼此有这么多难以察觉的相似点而获得那种精明、狡猾、罪恶的乐趣这点，觉得实在令人莞尔。这一切或许都不是真的，只是我无中生有的想象，但我们俩都知道对方看到了什么。当晚，我们骑车去戏院时，我开心得像是飞翔在云端，而且一点儿也无意隐藏这样的心情。

So, with so much insight, would he not have noticed the meaning behind my abrupt shrinking away from his hand? Not notice that I’d leaned into his grip? Not know that I didn’t want him to let go of me? Not sense that when he started massaging me, my inability to relax was my last refuge, my last defense, my last pretense, that I had by no means resisted, that mine was fake resistance, that I was incapable of resisting and would never want to resist, no matter what he did or asked me to do? Not know, as I sat on my bed that Sunday afternoon when no one was home except for the two of us and watched him enter my room and ask me why I wasn’t with the others at the beach, that if I refused to answer and simply shrugged my shoulders under his gaze, it was simply so as not to show that I couldn’t gather sufficient breath to speak, that if I so much as let out a sound it might be to utter a desperate confession or a sob — one or the other? Never, since childhood, had anyone brought me to such a pass. Bad allergy, I’d said. Me too, he replied. We probably have the same one. Again I shrugged my shoulders. He picked up my old teddy bear in one hand, turned its face toward him, and whispered something into its ear. Then, turning the teddy’s face to me and altering his voice, asked, “What’s wrong? You’re upset.” By then he must have noticed the bathing suit I was wearing. Was I wearing it lower than was decent? “Want to go for a swim?” he asked. “Later, maybe,” I said, echoing his word but also trying to say as little as possible before he’d spot I was out of breath. “Let’s go now.” He extended his hand to help me get up. I grabbed it and, turning on my side facing the wall away from him to prevent him from seeing me, I asked, “Must we?” This was the closest I would ever come to saying, Stay. Just stay with me. Let your hand travel wherever it wishes, take my suit off, take me, I won’t make a noise, won’t tell a soul, I’m hard and you know it, and if you won’t, I’ll take that hand of yours and slip it into my suit now and let you put as many fingers as you want inside me.

既然他那么善于察言观色，又怎么可能没注意我为何唐突地躲开他双手的抚触？怎么可能没注意到我已投身在他的掌握中？怎么可能不明白我不希望他放开我？怎么可能没察觉他替我按摩时，我僵硬的身体是最后的避难所、我最后的反抗、我最后的伪装，而我无论如何也不会抗拒，我只是假装在抵抗，事实上我已经无力抗拒也不想抗拒，无论他做什么、或要我做什么？那个周日下午，除了我们俩之外没人在家，当我坐在床上，看着他走进我房间，问我怎么没跟其他人去海边而我没有回答，只是在他的凝视下耸了耸肩——他怎么可能不知道那只不过是为了隐藏我已经无法鼓足气力说话的事实，只要我发出一点声音，恐怕就会不顾一切向他告白，或者禁不住啜泣不止？从小到大，从来没人让我陷入这样的困境。我拿过敏当借口。他说他也是，我们或许有同样的毛病。我又耸了耸肩。他一手抓起我的泰迪熊，把熊的脸转向自己，在布偶耳边低语几句，接着把泰迪熊的脸转向我，变了声音问道：“怎么回事？你心情不好？”他一定注意到我只穿着泳裤——我的裤腰是否太低了？“想去游泳吗？”他问。“回头再说，或许吧。”我模仿他的措辞，也想在他发现我呼吸困难之前尽量少说话。“我们现在去吧。”他伸手要扶我站起来。我抓住他的手起身，却转身面对墙，避开他的视线。“非去不可吗？”这已经最接近我想说的。别去。留在这里陪我。任你的手随意抚触你想碰的地方；脱掉我的泳裤，占有我。我不会发出一丝声音，不会告诉任何人…

He wouldn’t have picked up on any of this?

他什么也没察觉吗？

He said he was going to change and walked out of my room. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” When I looked at my crotch, to my complete dismay I saw it was damp. Had he seen it? Surely he must have. That’s why he wanted us to go to the beach. That’s why he walked out of my room. I hit my head with my fist. How could I have been so careless, so thoughtless, so totally stupid? Of course he’d seen.

“我在楼下等你。”他说他要去换衣服，然后走出了我房间。我看着裤裆，这才惊慌地发觉有印湿的痕迹。他看到了？他当然看到了。所以他才要我们一起去海边。所以他才走出我房间。我握起拳头敲自己的头。我怎么这么不小心，这么没脑子，这么蠢不可及？他当然看到了。

I should have learned to do what he’d have done. Shrugged my shoulders — and been okay with pre-come. But that wasn’t me. It would never have occurred to me to say, So what if he saw? Now he knows.

我应该学学他可能有的反应：耸耸肩，不在乎看见我湿了。但我不是这种人。我永远不可能觉得“就算他看见又怎样”。这下他知道了。

What never crossed my mind was that someone else who lived under our roof, who played cards with my mother, ate breakfast and supper at our table, recited the Hebrew blessing on Fridays for the sheer fun of it, slept in one of our beds, used our towels, shared our friends, watched TV with us on rainy days when we sat in the living room with a blanket around us because it got cold and we felt so snug being all together as we listened to the rain patter against the windows — that someone else in my immediate world might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was. It would never have entered my mind because I was still under the illusion that, barring what I’d read in books, inferred from rumors, and overheard in bawdy talk all over, no one my age had ever wanted to be both man and woman — with men and women. I had wanted other men my age before and had slept with women. But before he’d stepped out of the cab and walked into our home, it would never have seemed remotely possible that someone so thoroughly okay with himself might want me to share his body as much as I ached to yield up mine.

我从未想过，就在我身边，竟然有这么一个人，住在我们家，陪我母亲打牌，和我们共进早餐、晚餐，纯粹为了好玩而在周五背诵希伯来祷词，睡我们的床，用我们的毛巾，结识我们的朋友，雨天和我们一起坐在客厅里裹着同一条毛毯看电视——天气冷了，我们觉得大伙儿聚在一起听外面雨打窗权，感觉温暖又舒服——仿佛是另一个我一般，喜欢我喜欢的，想要我想要的。我从未起过这样的念头，因为除了在书上读到的、从谣言里猜测的和无意中听闻的淫言秽语外，我仍然活在这样的错觉里：我这个年纪的人没有谁想要同时扮演男人和女人的角色，或是同时想跟男人和女人在一起。我也曾经对同龄的男孩怀有欲望，也跟女孩子在一起过。但之前似乎连微乎其微的可能性都没有——像他这般完全接受自我的人，竟然想要和我分享他的身体，而我也同样渴望奉献出我的——直到他走下出租车、来到我家中。

And yet, about two weeks after his arrival, all I wanted every night was for him to leave his room, not via its front door, but through the French windows on our balcony. I wanted to hear his window open, hear his espadrilles on the balcony, and then the sound of my own window, which was never locked, being pushed open as he’d step into my room after everyone had gone to bed, slip under my covers, undress me without asking, and after making me want him more than I thought I could ever want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew extends to another, work his way into my body, gently and softly, after heeding the words I’d been rehearsing for days now, Please, don’t hurt me, which meant, Hurt me all you want.

然而，在他抵达大约两周后，每到夜晚，我满脑子只希望他走出房间。不是从前门，而是经过我们共用阳台的落地窗。我想听他落地窗打开的声音，听他布面平底凉鞋踏上阳台的声音，然后是我这边从不上锁的落地窗被推开的声音。众人入眠的夜里，他走进我的房间，钻进我的被窝，不由分说褪下我的衣物，当我渴望他超乎我对任何一个人的渴望时，轻轻地、温柔地，以一个犹太人对另一个犹太人的友爱，向我靠近；在他听到我那句已在舌尖练习了无数遍的“请不要伤害我”——真正的意思其实是：“随意对我做你想要的”之后，轻轻地，温柔地…

I seldom stayed in my room during the day. Instead, for the past few summers I had appropriated a round table with an umbrella in the back garden by the pool. Pavel, our previous summer resident, had liked working in his room, occasionally stepping out onto the balcony to get a glimpse of the sea or smoke a cigarette. Maynard, before him, had also worked in his room. Oliver needed company. He began by sharing my table but eventually grew to like throwing a large sheet on the grass and lying on it, flanked by loose pages of his manuscript and what he liked to call his “things”: lemonade, suntan lotion, books, espadrilles, sunglasses, colored pens, and music, which he listened to with headphones, so that it was impossible to speak to him unless he was speaking to you first. Sometimes, when I came downstairs with my scorebook or other books in the morning, he was already sprawled in the sun wearing his red or yellow bathing suit and sweating. We’d go jogging or swimming, and return to find breakfast waiting for us. Then he got in the habit of leaving his “things” on the grass and lying right on the tiled edge of the pool — called “heaven,” short for “This is heaven,” as he often said after lunch, “I’m going to heaven now,” adding, as an inside joke among Latinists, “to apricate.” We would tease him about the countless hours he would spend soaking in suntan lotion as he lay on the same exact spot along the pool. “How long were you in heaven this morning?” my mother would ask. “Two straight hours. But I plan to return early this afternoon for a much longer aprication.” Going to the orle of paradise also meant lying on his back along the edge of the pool with one leg dangling in the water, wearing his headphones and his straw hat flat on his face.

白天我不常待在自己的房间里。过去几年夏天的白天，我习惯占用后花园泳池畔一张撑有阳伞的圆桌。之前那位夏天住客帕维尔喜欢在房里工作，偶尔才走到阳台上看看海或抽根烟；在他之前的梅纳德也爱待在自己房间工作。奥利弗喜欢有个伴，起初他和我共用桌子，最后却渐渐喜欢在草地上铺一条大床单躺在上面，两边放着他零散的手稿，还有他喜欢称为“东西”的用品：柠檬茶、防晒霜、书、布面平底凉鞋、太阳镜、彩色笔和音乐；他戴着耳机听音乐，所以除非他先开口，否则听不到别人跟他说话。有时候，当我早上带着乐谱或其他书到楼下，他已经穿着红色或黄色的泳裤，汗涔涔地在太阳下躺成大字形。我们慢跑或游泳回来后，早餐已经在等着我们了。后来他习惯把“东西”留在草地上，人躺在铺了瓷砖的游泳池畔。他称游泳池畔为“天堂”——“这儿是天堂”的简称，因为午餐后他常说“现在我要去天堂”，然后补上一句“去晒太阳了”，当做拉丁学者的圈内笑话⑨。每次他躺在游泳池畔同一个地方，我们便取笑他花上大半天泡在防晒乳液里。“你今天早上‘在天堂’待了多久？”母亲问道。“整整两个钟头。不过下午我打算早点回去，晒久一点。”去天堂的门阶也就是指躺在游泳池畔，一只脚垂在水里，戴上耳机，脸上覆着草帽。【注：⑨这里的“晒太阳”用了apricate这个有希腊词源的罕用字。】

Here was someone who lacked for nothing. I couldn’t understand this feeling. I envied him.

这是一个没有缺憾感的人。我无法了解这种感觉。我羡慕他。

“Oliver, are you sleeping?” I would ask when the air by the pool had grown oppressively torpid and quiet.

“奥利弗，你睡着了吗？”当游泳池畔的空气变得愈发安静逼人的时候，我会问他。

Silence.

沉默。

Then his reply would come, almost a sigh, without a single muscle moving in his body. “I was.”

接着传来他的回答，几乎像一声叹息，好似浑身没有一块肌肉运动。“是啊。”

“Sorry.”

“抱歉。”

That foot in the water — I could have kissed every toe on it. Then kissed his ankles and his knees. How often had I stared at his bathing suit while his hat was covering his face? He couldn’t possibly have known what I was looking at.

他那泡在水里的脚——我原本能亲吻每一根脚趾头，吻他的脚踩和膝盖。他拿帽子遮住脸时，我盯着他泳裤看的频率有多高？他不可能知道我在看什么。

Or: “Oliver, are you sleeping?”

或者，我问：“奥利弗，你睡着了？”

Long silence.

长久的沉默。

“No. Thinking.”

“没有，在思考。”

“About what?”

“思考什么？”

His toes flicking the water.

他动动脚趾轻轻打水。

“About Heidegger’s interpretation of a fragment by Heraclitus”

“思考海德格尔⑩对赫拉克利特某段文字的诠释。”【注：⑩海德格尔：德国哲学家。】

Or, when I wasn’t practicing the guitar and he wasn’t listening to his headphones, still with his straw hat flat on his face, he would suddenly break the silence:

或者，当我不练习吉他，他也不听耳机的时候，依旧用草帽遮住脸的他会突然打破沉默。

“Elio.”

“艾里奥。”

“Yes?”

“嗯？”

“What are you doing?”

“你在做什么？”

“Reading.”

“读书。”

“No, you’re not.”

“不，你才没有。”

“Thinking, then.”

“不然，在思考。”

“About?”

“思考什么？”

I was dying to tell him.

我多想告诉他啊。

“Private,” I replied.

“私事。”我回答。

“So you won’t tell me?”

“所以你不告诉我？”

“So I won’t tell you.”

“所以我不告诉你。”

“So he won’t tell me,” he repeated, pensively, as if explaining to someone about me.

“所以他不告诉我。”他重复着，看起来忧心忡忡，仿佛向某个人解释我的事。

How I loved the way he repeated what I myself had just repeated. It made me think of a caress, or of a gesture, which happens to be totally accidental the first time but becomes intentional the second time and more so yet the third. It reminded me of the way Mafalda would make my bed every morning, first by folding the top sheet over the blanket, then by folding the sheet back again to cover the pillows on top of the blanket, and once more yet when she folded the whole thing over the bedspread — back and forth until I knew that tucked in between these multiple folds were tokens of something at once pious and indulgent, like acquiescence in an instant of passion.

我多么喜欢他那样重复我自己刚刚重复过的话。这让我想起一个爱抚，或一个姿势。第一次发生完全是偶然，第二次却变成有意为之，第三次更是如此。也让我想起玛法尔达每天早上替我整理床铺的样子：先把被单盖在毛毯上，然后反折塞入毛毯上的枕头下方，最后再覆上床罩——塞在这层层叠叠里的，是既虔诚又纵容的某个东西的象征，就像对刹那激情的默许。

Silence was always light and unobtrusive on those afternoons.

那些午后的沉默总是轻松而不唐突。

“I’m not telling,” I said.

“我不告诉你。”我说。

“Then I’m going back to sleep,” he’d say.

“那我要回去睡觉了。”他说。

My heart was racing. He must have known.

我心跳如雷。他肯定知道了。

Profound silence again. Moments later:

再度陷入深深的沉默。过了一会儿…

“This is heaven.”

“这里是天堂。”

And I wouldn’t hear him say another word for at least an hour.

接下来至少一小时，我不会听到他再说一个字。

There was nothing I loved more in life than to sit at my table and pore over my transcriptions while he lay on his belly marking pages he’d pick up every morning from Signora Milani, his translator in B.

人生中我喜爱的莫过于此，当我坐在我的桌边细读改编谱，他就趴在地上圈点他每天早晨从B城的译者米拉尼太太那儿拿来的文稿。

“Listen to this,” he’d sometimes say, removing his headphones, breaking the oppressive silence of those long sweltering summer mornings. “Just listen to this drivel.” And he’d proceed to read aloud something he couldn’t believe he had written months earlier.

他偶尔会摘掉耳机，打破漫长而闷热的夏日早晨那种压抑的沉默，说：“你听听这个…你听听这段蠢话。”然后大声朗读出来，不愿相信这是几个月前他自己写下的句子。

“Does it make any sense to you? Not to me.”

“你觉得有道理吗？我觉得说不通。”

“Maybe it did when you wrote it,” I said.

“或许你写的时候觉得有道理。”我说。

He thought for a while as though weighing my words.

他思考了一会儿，仿佛在斟酌我的话。

“That’s the kindest thing anyone’s said to me in months”– spoken ever so earnestly, as if he was hit by a sudden revelation and was taking what I’d said to mean much more than I thought it did. I felt ill at ease, looked away, and finally muttered the first thing that came to mind: “Kind?” I asked.

“这是几个月以来，所有人对我说过的最仁慈的话。”讲得非常诚恳，仿佛突然降临的天启感动了他，超乎预期地看重我的话。我觉得很不自在，撇开目光，终于还是喃喃说出我脑海中出现的第一句话：“仁慈？”

“Yes, kind.”

“对，仁慈。”

I didn’t know what kindness had to do with it. Or perhaps I wasn’t seeing clearly enough where all this was headed and preferred to let the matter slide. Silence again. Until the next time he’d speak.

我不知道仁慈跟这件事有何关系。然而我似乎对于这事态会往何处发展不是很明白，所以宁可让事情不知不觉地过去。再度沉默。直到他下一次开口。

I loved it when he broke the silence between us to say something — anything — or to ask what I thought about X, or had I ever heard of Y? Nobody in our household ever asked my opinion about anything. If he hadn’t already figured out why, he would soon enough — it was only a matter of time before he fell in with everyone’s view that I was the baby of the family. And yet here he was in his third week with us, asking me if I’d ever heard of Athanasius Kircher, Giuseppe Belli, and Paul Celan.

我多么喜欢他打破我们之间的沉默说点什么，什么都好——问我对A的看法，或问我是否听说过B。在我们家，从来没人针对任何事问过我的想法——我以为就算他不清楚个中原因，不用多久也会明白并赞同大家的看法，认为我是这个家里的小婴儿。然而他已经和我们同住了三个星期，现在还在问我是否听过基歇尔⑪、贝利⑫、保罗·策兰⑬这些名字吗？【注：⑪基歇尔：德国耶稣会教士、学者，有时候被称为“最后的文艺复兴人”。⑫贝利：意大利诗人。⑬保罗·策兰：犹太裔罗马尼亚诗人。】

“I have.”

“听过。”

“I’m almost a decade older than you are and until a few days ago had never heard of any of them. I don’t get it.”

“我比你大了将近十岁，但直到几天前，这些人我一个也没听过。我真不懂。”

“What’s not to get? Dad’s a university professor. I grew up without TV. Get it now?”

“有什么好不懂的？我爸是大学教授。我从小到大不看电视，懂了吗？”

“Go back to your plunking, will you!” he said as though crumpling a towel and throwing it at my face.

“够了，回去弹你的吉他吧！”他还作势揉起一团毛巾往我脸上扔。

I even liked the way he told me off.

我甚至喜欢他训斥我的样子。

One day while moving my notebook on the table, I accidentally tipped over my glass. It fell on the grass. It didn’t break. Oliver, who was close by, got up, picked it up, and placed it, not just on the table, but right next to my pages.

有一天我挪动桌上的笔记本时不小心打翻了玻璃杯，掉在草地上，没破。在一旁的奥利弗起身拾起玻璃杯，把杯子好好放在桌上，而且就放在我的稿子旁边。

I didn’t know where to find the words to thank him.

我不知道该说什么来感谢他。

“You didn’t have to,” I finally said.

最后说了句：“你不必这么做的。”

He let just enough time go by for me to register that his answer might not be casual or carefree.

他停了一会儿，足够我意识到他的回答可能不是偶然或随便的。

“I wanted to.”

“我想做。”

He wanted to, I thought.

他想做，我想。

I wanted to, I imagined him repeating — kind, complaisant, effusive, as he was when the mood would suddenly strike him.

“我想做”，我想象他重复着这句话——温和、恳切、热情，就像他突然感染了那种情绪而表现出来。

To me those hours spent at that round wooden table in our garden with the large umbrella imperfectly shading my papers, the chinking of our iced lemonades, the sound of the not-too-distant surf gently lapping the giant rocks below, and in the background, from some neighboring house, the muffled crackle of the hit parade medley on perpetual replay — all these are forever impressed on those mornings when all I prayed for was for time to stop. Let summer never end, let him never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I’m asking for very little, and I swear I’ll ask for nothing more.

在我们家花园里那张圆木桌旁度过的时光，永远烙印在那些让我一心只求时间能够暂停的早晨里。圆桌上那把遮阴不够大的大阳伞，让阳光洒落在文稿上；冰块在柠檬汁里融化，响起咔哒声；不远处，浪花轻轻拍打下方大礁石的声音；附近人家传来的声响，流行金曲合辑不断重复播放时发出的闷闷噼啪声…希望夏天永不结束，让他永不离去，让无尽重复的音乐永远播放。我的要求很少，我发誓我将别无所求。

What did I want? And why couldn’t I know what I wanted, even when I was perfectly ready to be brutal in my admissions?

我想要什么？为什么即使我准备好了要毫无保留地坦承一切，我仍然不知道我想要什么？

Perhaps the very least I wanted was for him to tell me that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was no less human than any other young man my age. I would have been satisfied and asked for nothing else than if he’d bent down and picked up the dignity I could so effortlessly have thrown at his feet.

或许我最不希望的，是让他来告诉我，我没有问题，我和其他同龄少年没什么不同。我能够轻易将自尊丢在他脚边，只要他愿意弯腰捡起，我将心满意足而别无所求。

I was Glaucus and he was Diomedes. In the name of some obscure cult among men, I was giving him my golden armor for his bronze. Fair exchange. Neither haggled, just as neither spoke of thrift or extravagance.

我是格劳克斯，而他是戴奥米底斯。以男人之间某种莫名的崇拜为名我拿我的黄金盔甲换他的青铜盔甲⑭。公平交易。双方都不讨价还价，就像双方都不提俭朴或铺张。【注：⑭格劳克斯的与戴奥米底斯在特洛伊战争期间分属敌对的两方。由于双方家族曾经是世交，因此在战场上相遇时不仅没有交战，反而交换武器表示亲善。格劳克斯的盔甲是黄金制的，戴奥米底斯的盔甲是青铜制的，因此后来有“格劳克斯的交易”（aGlaucusswap）这个词，表示“显然过于轻率的交易”。】

The word “friendship” came to mind. But friendship, as defined by everyone, was alien, fallow stuff I cared nothing for. What I may have wanted instead, from the moment he stepped out of the cab to our farewell in Rome, was what all humans ask of one another, what makes life livable. It would have to come from him first. Then possibly from me.

“友谊”这个字眼在心底浮现。但众人定义的友谊，是一种陌生的、不活跃的、我毫不在意的东西。相反地，从他走下出租车直到我们在罗马告别，我想要的可能是所有人类对彼此的要求，那种让人生值得一活的东西。但必须由他先主动，然后我才可能付出。

There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughly smitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well. Amor ch’a nulVamato amar perdona. Love, which exempts no one who’s loved from loving, Francesca’s words in the Inferno. Just wait and be hopeful. I was hopeful, though perhaps this was what I had wanted all along. To wait forever.

我记得在哪儿听过一个法则：当A完全迷恋B的时候，B必定无可避免地也爱上了A.Amorch’ anull’ amatoamar perdona。“爱，让每一个被爱的人无可豁免地也要去爱”——这是弗兰西斯卡⑮在《地狱篇》⑯里说的话。耐心等待并充满希望。我抱着希望，永远等待——或许这才正是我一直想要的。【注：⑮里米尼城的弗兰西斯卡为拉韦纳大会波伦塔城的奎多之女，但丁的《地狱篇》里有她的故事。弗兰西斯卡被迫嫁给里米尼大公乔凡尼·玛拉帕斯塔，却因为爱上小叔保罗而于1289年双双遭到杀害。⑯《地狱篇》但丁古典长诗《神曲》的第一部。】

As I sat there working on transcriptions at my round table in the morning, what I would have settled for was not his friendship, not anything. Just to look up and find him there, suntan lotion, straw hat, red bathing suit, lemonade. To look up and find you there, Oliver. For the day will come soon enough when I’ll look up and you’ll no longer be there.

早上我坐在圆桌那儿改编乐曲的时候，我原本所满足于的不是他的友谊，不是任何东西。只是想抬起头确认他在那儿，和他的防晒霜、草帽、红色泳裤、柠檬茶一起，在那儿。为了一抬头，就看见你在那儿，奥利弗。因为我抬起头来却看不见你的那一天，很快，很快就要到来。

By late morning, friends and neighbors from adjoining houses frequently dropped in. Everyone would gather in our garden and then head out together to the beach below. Our house was the closest to the water, and all you needed was to open the tiny gate by the balustrade, take the narrow stairway down the bluff, and you were on the rocks. Chiara, one of the girls who three years ago was shorter than I and who just last summer couldn’t leave me alone, had now blossomed into a woman who had finally mastered the art of not always greeting me whenever we met. Once, she and her younger sister dropped in with the rest, picked up Oliver’s shirt on the grass, threw it at him, and said, “Enough. We’re going to the beach and you’re coming.”

每到近午时刻，友人或邻居常常顺路来访，在我家花园集合，然后一起走到下方的海滨。我家离海最近，只要打开栏杆旁的小门，沿着狭窄的阶梯走下峭壁就到礁石了。奇亚拉，一个三年前还比我矮、去年夏天一直粘着我的女孩，如今已是成熟的女性，总算熟谙不必每次见面都要跟我打招呼的艺术。有一次，她跟她妹妹还有其他人顺道过来时，捡起奥利弗扔在草地上的衬衫，丢到他身上说：‘够了。我们要去海边，你也得一起来。”

He was willing to oblige. “Let me just put away these papers. Otherwise his father”– and with his hands carrying papers he used his chin to point at me –“will skin me alive.”

奥利弗很乐意效劳。他手里拿着稿子，朝我扬扬下巴示意道：“等我把稿子收起来，不然他老爸…会活活剥了我的皮。”

“Talking about skin, come here,” she said, and with her fingernails gently and slowly tried to pull a sliver of peeling skin from his tanned shoulders, which had acquired the light golden hue of a wheat field in late June. How I wished I could do that.

“说到皮，过来。”她说完，翘起指头温柔地、慢慢地从奥利弗晒成六月底的麦田那般金黄色的肩膀上，拉起一条细长、剥落掉的皮。我多希望我也能这么做。

“Tell his father that / crumpled his papers. See what he says then.”

“告诉他爸爸是我弄皱他的文件，看看他怎么说。”

Looking over his manuscript, which Oliver had left on the large dining table on his way upstairs, Chiara shouted from below that she could do a better job translating these pages than the local translator. A child of expats like me, Chiara had an Italian mother and an American father. She spoke English and Italian with both.

奥利弗把手稿留在他上楼经过的大餐桌上。奇亚拉大致翻过以后，从楼下大声喊着她肯定能比那名本地译者翻译得更好。奇亚拉跟我一样是混血儿，母亲是意大利人，父亲是美国人，她在家里总是双语并用。

“Do you type good too?” came his voice from upstairs as he rummaged for another bathing suit in his bedroom, then in the shower, doors slamming, drawers thudding, shoes kicked.

“你也很会打字吗？”奥利弗的声音从楼上传来时，他正忙着在卧室翻找另一件泳裤，然后又到浴室找；门砰然关上，抽屉又是轰隆一声，还有踢鞋的声音。

“I type good,” she shouted, looking up into the empty stairwell.

“我很会打字！”奇亚拉大喊，抬头望着空荡荡的楼梯口。

“As good as you speak good?”

“跟你讲的一样厉害吗？”

“Bettah. And I’d’a gave you a bettah price too.”

“更好，而且我算你更便宜。”

“I need five pages translated per day, to be ready for pickup every morning.”

“一天要翻译五页，我每天早上要去取。”

“Then I won’t do nu’in for you,” snapped Chiara. “Find yuhsef somebuddy else.”

奇亚拉厉声说道：“那我不做，找别人吧。”

“Well, Signora Milani needs the money,” he said, coming downstairs, billowy blue shirt, espadrilles, red trunks, sunglasses, and the red Loeb edition of Lucretius that never left his side. “I’m okay with her,” he said as he rubbed some lotion on his shoulders.

“嗯，米拉尼太太需要这笔钱。”奥利弗边说边走下楼，又是那件宽松蓝衬衫、布面平底凉鞋、红色泳裤、太阳镜，还有一本随身携带的红色洛布版⑰《卢克莱修》⑱。“我对她还算满意。”他边说边在肩膀上抹防晒乳。【注：⑰洛布版（Loeb edition）：美国银行家詹姆斯·洛布从1912年起投资出版译自希腊和拉丁语的古典文岸，称为洛布古典文库。⑱卢克莱修：活跃于公元前一世纪的拉丁诗人、哲学家。】

“I’m okay with her,” Chiara said, tittering. “I’m okay with you, you’re okay with me, she’s okay with him –“

奇亚拉哧哧笑着说：“我对她还算满意。我对你还算满意，你对我还算满意，他对她还算满意…”

“Stop clowning and let’s go swimming,” said Chiara’s sister.

“别开玩笑了，我们去游泳了。”奇亚拉的妹妹说。

He had, it took me a while to realize, four personalities depending on which bathing suit he was wearing. Knowing which to expect gave me the illusion of a slight advantage. Red: bold, set in his ways, very grown-up, almost gruff and ill-tempered — stay away. Yellow: sprightly, buoyant, funny, not without barbs — don’t give in too easily; might turn to red in no time. Green, which he seldom wore: acquiescent, eager to learn, eager to speak, sunny — why wasn’t he always like this? Blue: the afternoon he stepped into my room from the balcony, the day he massaged my shoulder, or when he picked up my glass and placed it right next to me.

我花了一段时间才了解，根据他当天身上的泳裤不同，他有四重人格。知道可能出现的是哪一种，让我有占了点优势的错觉。红色：大胆、固执、非常成熟、近乎粗暴的坏脾气——最好离他远一点。黄色：活泼、愉快、风趣、但并非没有芒刺——别太轻易让步。可能立马变成红色。他很少穿的绿色：默许、积极学习、积极发言、阳光开朗——为什么他不能一直是这样？蓝色：他从阳台走进我房间的那个下午，他为我按摩肩膀的那一天，或者他帮我捡起玻璃杯放在我旁边的时候。

Today was red: he was hasty, determined, snappy.

今天是红色：他仓促、坚决、急躁。

On his way out, he grabbed an apple from a large bowl of fruit, uttered a cheerful “Later, Mrs. P.” to my mother, who was sitting with two friends in the shade, all three of them in bathing suits, and, rather than open the gate to the narrow stairway leading to the rocks, jumped over it. None of our summer guests had ever been as freewheeling. But everyone loved him for it, the way everyone grew to love Later!

往外走的时候，他从大水果盘里抓起一个苹果，对母亲兴高采烈地说了一声“回头见，教授太太！”当时母亲正和两名好友坐在阴凉处，三个人都穿着泳衣。奥利弗没打开通往礁石那道狭窄阶梯的门，而是从上面跳过去。我们从没遇到过这样无拘无束的夏季住客，但人人都因此喜欢上他，也逐渐爱上他那句“回头再说”。

“Okay, Oliver, later, okay,” said my mother, trying to speak his lingo, having even grown to accept her new title as Mrs. P. There was always something abrupt about that word. It wasn’t “See you later” or “Take care, now,” or even “Ciao.” Later! was a chilling, slam-dunk salutation that shoved aside all our honeyed European niceties. Later! always left a sharp aftertaste to what until then may have been a warm, heart-to-heart moment. Later! didn’t close things neatly or allow them to trail off. It slammed them shut.

“好，奥利弗，回头见，好。”母亲试着讲他特有的口头禅，甚至学着接受她的新头衔“教授太太”。那句话总有些唐突的成分，不是“再见”或“请保重”，甚至不是“拜拜”。“回头再说”是个冷眼鹰、给人一记重拳般的招呼，褪去了所有甜美亲昵的欧式优雅。“回头再说”总是为原本温馨美好、亲密无间的时刻留下一道尖锐苦涩的余韵。“回头再说”让事情不能灵巧利落地结束或是渐渐消失，而是戛然而止。

But Later! was also a way of avoiding saying goodbye, of making light of all goodbyes. You said Later! not to mean farewell but to say you’d be back in no time. It was the equivalent of his saying “Just a sec” when my mother once asked him to pass the bread and he was busy pulling apart the fish bones on his plate. “Just a sec.” My mother, who hated what she called his Americanisms, ended up calling him Il cauboi — the cowboy. It started as a putdown and soon enough became an endearment, to go along with her other nickname for him, conferred during his first week, when he came down to the dinner table after showering, his glistening hair combed back. La star, she had said, short for la muvi star. My father, always the most indulgent among us, but also the most observant, had figured the cauboi out. “é un timido, he’s shy, that’s why,” he said when asked to explain Oliver’s abrasive Later!

不过，“回头再说”也是一种避免说再见、淡化所有道别的方式。“回头再说”也并不算道别，而意味着立刻回来，就像有一回我母亲让奥利弗帮忙递面包，而他正忙着剔盘里的鱼刺时说的“等一下”。“等一下。”母亲很讨厌他的“美式作风”，于是唤他为“牛仔”。起初是种奚落，但不多久就变成疼爱他的表现，跟她给取的另一个外号“大明星”交替着使用。这是在他来的第一周取的，当时他刚洗完澡下楼吃晚餐，头发闪闪发亮，往后梳成大背头，母亲看到便说：“好像大明星呀！”父亲一向是我们之中最宽厚也是观察力最敏锐的，他早就看透这个“牛仔”。有人要他解释奥利弗粗鲁的“回头再说”时，他是这么说的：“他害羞，就是这么回事。”

Oliver timido? That was new. Could all of his gruff Americanisms be nothing more than an exaggerated way of covering up the simple fact that he didn’t know — or feared he didn’t know — how to take his leave gracefully? It reminded me of how for days he had refused to eat soft-boiled eggs in the morning. By the fourth or fifth day, Mafalda insisted he couldn’t leave the region without tasting our eggs. He finally consented, only to admit, with a touch of genuine embarrassment that he never bothered to conceal, that he didn’t know how to open a soft-boiled egg. “Lasci fare a me, Signor Ulliva, leave it to me,” she said. From that morning on and well into his stay with us, she would bring Ulliva two eggs and stop serving everyone until she had sliced open the shell of both his eggs.

奥利弗害羞？这可真新鲜。有没有可能他粗鲁的美式作风只是为了掩饰他不知道或生怕自己不知道如何优雅地告别？这让我想起，好几天早上他都不肯吃水煮溏心蛋。但到了第四或第五天，玛法尔达坚持说没尝过她煮的蛋不准离开。他终于答应了，却带着一点他懒得掩饰、真真切切的难为情，承认他其实不知道怎么剥开半熟蛋。“让我来吧，奥立法先生。”从那天早上起，在他与我们同住的这段期间，玛法尔达总为“奥立法”准备两颗蛋，先帮他敲开那两颗蛋的蛋壳后，才为其他人上菜。

Did he perhaps want a third? she asked. Some people liked more than two eggs. No, two would do, he replied, and, turning to my parents, added, “I know myself. If I have three, I’ll have a fourth, and more.” I had never heard someone his age say, I know myself. It intimidated me.

你想再吃一个吗？有些人喜欢吃好几个，玛法尔达问他。不，两颗就够了，他回答，接着转向我父母补充道：“我了解我自己。如果我吃三颗，我就会想要第四颗，或者更多。”我从来没听过他那个年纪的人说“我了解我自己”。这有点吓到了我。

But she had been won over well before, on his third morning with us, when she asked him if he liked juice in the morning, and he’d said yes. He was probably expecting orange or grapefruit juice; what he got was a large glass filled to the rim with thick apricot juice. He had never had apricot juice in his life. She stood facing him with her salver flat against her apron, trying to make out his reaction as he quaffed it down. He said nothing at first. Then, probably without thinking, he smacked his lips. She was in heaven. My mother couldn’t believe that people who taught at world-famous universities smacked their lips after downing apricot juice. From that day on, a glass of the stuff was waiting for him every morning.

但他老早就赢得了玛法尔达的好感，就在他抵达的第三天早晨，玛法尔达问他早上要不要果汁而他说要的时候。他可能以为是橙汁或葡萄柚汁，结果拿到的却是满满一大杯的浓稠杏汁。他从来没喝过杏汁。玛法尔达手拿托盘贴着围裙，站在他对面想看清他一饮而尽后的反应。起初他没说什么。接着，或许想都没想，他顺了顺嘴。玛法尔达乐坏了。我母亲不敢相信，一个在世界知名大学教书的人竟在大口喝光杏汁之后顺嘴。从那天起，每天早上总有一杯那个东西等着他。

He was baffled to know that apricot trees existed in, of all places, our orchard. On late afternoons, when there was nothing to do in the house, Mafalda would ask him to climb a ladder with a basket and pick those fruits that were almost blushing with shame, she said. He would joke in Italian, pick one out, and ask, Is this one blushing with shame? No, she would say, this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age.

他很疑惑在我家果园里竟然就长了一棵杏树。黄昏之前，家里没事可做的时候，玛法尔达常要他带着篮子爬上梯子，摘她所谓“几乎羞红了脸”的果子。他会用意大利文开玩笑，挑出一颗来问“这颗羞红脸了吗？”玛法尔达会说：“还没。这颗还太年轻。年轻的不害臊，上了年纪才知道害臊。”

I shall never forget watching him from my table as he climbed the small ladder wearing his red bathing trunks, taking forever to pick the ripest apricots. On his way to the kitchen — wicker basket, espadrilles, billowy shirt, suntan lotion, and all — he threw me a very large one, saying, “Yours,” in just the same way he’d throw a tennis ball across the court and say, “Your serve.” Of course, he had no idea what I’d been thinking minutes earlier, but the firm, rounded cheeks of the apricot with their dimple in the middle reminded me of how his body had stretched across the boughs of the tree with his tight, rounded ass echoing the color and the shape of the fruit. Touching the apricot was like touching him. He would never know, just as the people we buy the newspaper from and then fantasize about all night have no idea that this particular inflection on their face or that tan along their exposed shoulder will give us no end of pleasure when we’re alone.

我永远无法忘记这一幕：我坐在我那张桌边看他穿着红色泳裤爬上小梯子，慢条斯理地挑出熟透了的杏。他提着柳条篮，穿着布面平底凉鞋、宽衬衫、涂着防晒乳液，在回厨房的路上捡一颗很大的丢给我，说声“给你的。”就跟他从球网对面把网球扔给我，说声“该你发球”时没什么两样。当然，他不可能知道我几分钟前在想些什么，但杏那圆润、中间一道凹弧的形状，让我想起他爬上树干伸手摘杏时，那紧实圆润的臀部与果子的颜色和形状彼此呼应。触摸那颗杏就像触摸他，他永远不会知道。就像卖报纸给我们，任我们整夜遐想的人也不知道，他们脸上某个特定的表情变化，或裸露肩膀上晒出的褐色肌肤，给予了我们独处时的无穷乐趣。

Yours, like Later!, had an off-the-cuff, unceremonious, here, catch quality that reminded me how twisted and secretive my desires were compared to the expansive spontaneity of everything about him. It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricated — and near it, if I dared to bite that far, his apricock.

“给你的”和“回头再说”、“拿去”、“接着”一样，都有种即兴不拘礼节的感觉，提醒着我：比起他热情奔放、随性所至的一切，我的欲望是多么曲曲折折、遮遮掩掩。他绝对想不到他把杏放到我手心里，其实是让我抚着他的臀；咬果子的同时，我也在咬他身上那个从未晒过太阳、一定特别白皙的部位——还有他的“杏器”⑲，如果我敢那么放肆的话。【注：⑲作者玩了一个文字游戏，晒太阳（apricate）和杏（apricot）拼法类似，接着又把apricot的字尾代换成阴茎（cock）变成apricock。】

In fact, he knew more about apricots than we did — their grafts, etymology, origins, fortunes in and around the Mediterranean. At the breakfast table that morning, my father explained that the name for the fruit came from the Arabic, since the word — in Italian, albicocca, abricot in French, aprikose in German, like the words ‘algebra,’ ‘alchemy,’ and ‘alcohol’ — was derived from an Arabic noun combined with the Arabic article al- before it. The origin of albicocca was al-birquq. My father, who couldn’t resist not leaving well enough alone and needed to top his entire performance with a little fillip of more recent vintage, added that what was truly amazing was that, in Israel and in many Arab countries nowadays, the fruit is referred to by a totally different name: misbmish.

其实他比我们更了解杏，包括杏的嫁接方法、词源、起源、在地中海地区的生长情况。那天吃早餐的时候，父亲解释这种水果的名称源于阿拉伯语，因为“杏”的意大利文是albicocca、法文是abricot、德文是aprikose，跟“代数”（algebra）、“炼金术”（alchemy）、“酒精”（alcohol）这几个词一样，皆源于阿拉伯语，并在前面加上阿拉伯语的冠词al—。albicocca的字源是al—birquq。一向无法见好就收，总忍不住要再来段最新消息锦上添花的父亲又补充说，真正令人惊讶的是，目前在以色列和许多阿拉伯国家，这种水果的名称竟是毫无类似之处的mishimish。

My mother was nonplussed. We all, including my two cousins who were visiting that week, had an impulse to clap.

母亲一脸困惑。而包括当时来做客的两位表亲在内，我们都有想鼓掌的冲动。

On the matter of etymologies, however, Oliver begged to differ. “Ah?!” was my father’s startled response.

然而、奥利弗表示绝对无法同意父亲关于词源的见解。“啊？”父亲吃了一惊。

“The word is actually not an Arabic word,” he said.

“这个字其实不是阿拉伯文。”

“How so?”

“怎么说？”

My father was clearly mimicking Socratic irony, which would start with an innocent “You don’t say,” only then to lead his interlocutor onto turbulent shoals.

父亲显然在模仿那个苏格拉底式的反讽，先从天真无邪的“真的吗”开始，接着把谈话者引入混乱的陷阱中。

“It’s a long story, so bear with me, Pro.” Suddenly Oliver had become serious. “Many Latin words are derived from the Greek. In the case of ‘apricot,’ however, it’s the other way around; the Greek takes over from Latin. The Latin word was praecoquum, from pre-coquere, pre-cook, to ripen early, as in ‘precocious,’ meaning premature. The Byzantines borrowed praecox, and it became prekokkia or berikokki, which is finally how the Arabs must have inherited it as al-birquq.”

“说来话长，所以请耐心听我说，教授。”奥利弗突然严肃起来。“许多拉丁词汇源于希腊语。但是就‘杏’来说，则是相反的状况；是希腊文借用拉丁文。拉丁词是praecoquum，源于pre—coquere，也就是pre—cook，早熟的意思，跟precocious算是同义字。拜占庭人借用了praecox，后来演变成prekokkia或berikokki，这必定是阿拉伯人后来继承了al—birquq一词的由来。”

My mother, unable to resist his charm, reached out to him and tousled his hair and said, “Che muvi star!”

母亲无法抗拒奥利弗的魅力，伸手揉乱他的头发说：“大明星！”

“He is right, there is no denying it,” said my father under his breath, as though mimicking the part of a cowered Galileo forced to mutter the truth to himself.

“他说的没错，无可否认。”父亲压低嗓子说，仿佛在模仿畏畏缩缩的伽利略只敢对自己喃喃说出事实的样子。

“Courtesy of Philology 101,” said Oliver.

“这要多亏文献学概论这堂课。”奥利弗说。

All I kept thinking of was apricock precock, precock apricock.

但我脑子里一直盘旋的只有性器、早熟的性器。

One day I saw Oliver sharing the same ladder with the gardener, trying to learn all he could about Anchise’s grafts, which explained why our apricots were larger, fleshier, juicier than most apricots in the region. He became fascinated with the grafts, especially when he discovered that the gardener could spend hours sharing everything he knew about them with anyone who cared to ask.

有一天我看到奥利弗和园丁安喀斯共用一个梯子，想尽可能把他的嫁接方法都学会。正因为这种嫁接法，我们家的杏比同地区其他大部分杏更大个儿、更肥美、更多汁。当奥利弗发现只要有任何人愿意开口问，园丁就乐意花上好几个钟头不厌其烦地跟人分享他有关杏的一切知识后，他对嫁接法更是入迷。

Oliver, it turned out, knew more about all manner of foods, cheeses, and wines than all of us put together. Even Mafalda was wowed and would, on occasion, defer to his opinion — Do you think I should lightly fry the paste with either onions or sage? Doesn’t it taste too lemony now? I ruined it, didn’t I? I should have added an extra egg — it’s not holding! Should I use the new blender or should I stick to the old mortar and pestle? My mother couldn’t resist throwing in a barb or two. Like all caubois, she said: they know everything there is to know about food, because they can’t hold a knife and fork properly. Gourmet aristocrats with plebian manners. Feed him in the kitchen.

结果我们发现，奥利弗对食物、奶酪、酒这些东西的了解，比我们全部的人加起来还多，连玛法尔达也大为惊叹，偶尔还询问他的意见：你觉得该用洋葱或鼠尾草炒意大利面？柠檬味会不会太重了？我搞砸了，是吧？我应该多加一颗蛋的——它不成形了！我应该用新的搅拌器，还是继续用旧的臼和杵？母亲忍不住说话带点儿刺：“牛仔”到底都一样啊；他那么了解食物，知道关于食物的一切，是因为连刀叉也拿不好。美食家贵族却只有平民的礼仪。直接在厨房里喂他吃就行了。

With pleasure, Mafalda would have replied. And indeed, one day when he arrived very late for lunch after spending the morning with his translator, there was Signor Ulliva in the kitchen, eating spaghetti and drinking dark red wine with Mafalda, Manfredi, her husband and our driver, and Anchise, all of them trying to teach him a Neapolitan song. It was not only the national hymn of their southern youth, but it was the best they could offer when they wished to entertain royalty.

“乐意之极”，玛法尔达会这么回答。的确，有天早上“奥立法先生”去找译者，很晚才回来吃午餐，于是他就进厨房里和玛法尔达、玛法尔达的丈夫，也是我们家的司机，曼弗雷迪，还有安喀斯一起吃意大利面、喝红酒。他们都想教他唱一首那不勒斯歌谣。那不只是他们南方人青春时期的圣歌，也是款待王室时的最佳献礼。

Everyone was won over.

他赢得了每个人的心。

Chiara, I could tell, was equally smitten. Her sister as well. Even the crowd of tennis bums who for years had come early every afternoon before heading out to the beach for a late swim would stay much later than usual hoping to catch a quick game with him.

我看得出奇亚拉对奥利弗也同样痴迷。她妹妹也是。数年来每天下午早早就来，然后去海边晚泳的那群网球迷也逗留得比平常晚些，希望跟他打上几手。

With any of our other summer residents I would have resented it. But seeing everyone take such a liking to him, I found a strange, small oasis of peace. What could possibly be wrong with liking someone everyone else liked? Everyone had fallen for him, including my first and second cousins as well as my other relatives, who stayed with us on weekends and sometimes longer. For someone known to love spotting defects in everyone else, I derived a certain satisfaction from concealing my feelings for him behind my usual indifference, hostility, or spite for anyone in a position to outshine me at home. Because everyone liked him, I had to say I liked him too. I was like men who openly declare other men irresistibly handsome the better to conceal that they’re aching to embrace them. To withhold universal approval would simply alert others that I had concealed motives for needing to resist him. Oh, I like him very much, I said during his first ten days when my father asked me what I thought of him. I had used words intentionally compromising because I knew no one would suspect a false bottom in the arcane palette of shadings I applied to everything I said about him. He’s the best person I’ve known in my life, I said on the night when the tiny fishing boat on which he had sailed out with Anchise early that afternoon failed to return and we were scrambling to find his parents’ telephone number in the States in case we had to break the terrible news.

换作其他任何一个夏季住客，我一定会对此深恶痛绝。看到每个人都这么喜欢他，我却感到一种奇异、微小的平和与欣慰。喜欢一个大家都喜欢的人，怎么可能有错？人人倾心于他，包括我那些来度周末或做客的远近亲戚。我爱挑人毛病是出了名的，因此，我把对他的感情隐藏在惯有的冷淡、敌意或刻意刁难家里每一个地位凌驾于我之上的人之下，反而从中获得一些满足感。因为每个人都喜欢他，所以我也必须说我喜欢他。我就像那种公开宣称其他男人帅得不得了，以便更好地隐藏自己太想拥抱他们的渴望的男人。如果大家都予以认可而我却不，只会让别人警觉我肯定暗藏了某种不得不抗拒他的动机。喔，我非常喜欢他——在他到访的最初十天，父亲问我对他有何看法，我说这么说的。我用词刻意折中，因为我知道没有人会怀疑在我谈论他时所使用的晦涩语调下隐藏了什么。“他是我这辈子认识的人当中最好的。”——有天下午他和安喀斯开小船出海，到了晚上还没回来；当晚我们忙着翻找他父母在美国的电话号码，以防不幸需要通报噩耗，我当时这么说。

On that day I even urged myself to let down my inhibitions and show my grief the way everyone else was showing theirs. But I also did it so none might suspect I nursed sorrows of a far more secret and more desperate kind — until I realized, almost to my shame, that part of me didn’t mind his dying, that there was even something almost exciting in the thought of his bloated, eyeless body finally showing up on our shores.

那天我甚至劝自己卸下压抑的伪装，像其他人一样表现出自己的悲痛。但这也是为了不让任何人揣测到我心里抱着一种远远更为私密、更为沉痛的哀伤，直到我几乎感到可耻地意识到，有一部分的我其实并不那么在乎他的死活，想到他可能肿胀不堪的、残缺不全的遗体终于冲回岸边，我甚至有种近乎兴奋的感觉。

But I wasn’t fooling myself. I was convinced that no one in the world wanted him as physically as I did; nor was anyone willing to go the distance I was prepared to travel for him. No one had studied every bone in his body, ankles, knees, wrists, fingers, and toes, no one lusted after every ripple of muscle, no one took him to bed every night and on spotting him in the morning lying in his heaven by the pool, smiled at him, watched a smile come to his lips, and thought, Did you know I came in your mouth last night?

但我骗不了自己。我相信世界上没有人比我更想要他的肉体，也没人像我一样准备为他奉献那么多。没人研究过他身上每根骨头、脚踝、膝盖、手腕、手指、脚趾：没人痴心妄想抚摸他每寸肌肤，夜夜在床上想他，早晨看他躺在泳池畔他的那处天堂，朝他微笑，看笑意浮现在他唇上，心思荡漾地想着：你知道我昨晚在你嘴里达到高潮了吗？

Perhaps even the others nursed an extra something for him, which each concealed and displayed in his or her own way. Unlike the others, though, I was the first to spot him when he came into the garden from the beach or when the flimsy silhouette of his bicycle, blurred in the midafternoon mist, would appear out of the alley of pines leading to our house. I was the first to recognize his steps when he arrived late at the movie theater one night and stood there looking for the rest of us, not uttering a sound until I turned around knowing he’d be overjoyed I’d spotted him. I recognized him by the inflection of his footfalls up the stairway to our balcony or on the landing outside my bedroom door. I knew when he stopped outside my French windows, as if debating whether to knock and then thinking twice, and continued walking. I knew it was he riding a bicycle by the way the bike skidded ever so mischievously on the deep gravel path and still kept going when it was obvious there couldn’t be any traction left, only to come to a sudden, bold, determined stop, with something of a declarative voila in the way he jumped off.

或许也有其他人对他暗怀心思，并以各自的方式掩饰或表现。然而，与其他人不同，是我第一个看他从海边走进花园，看着他骑脚踏车的单薄剪影在午后的轻雾中若隐若现，从松树小径那头儿一路往家里来。我是第一个听出他脚步声的人；有一晚他去电影院迟到了，不发一语地站着搜寻其他人的身影，直到我转身，知道他非常高兴我在人群中找到了他。我认出他，凭的是他爬楼梯上阳台时的脚步声变化，还有他落在我卧房门外的脚步声；我认得他在我落地窗外踟蹰止步的声音，仿佛挣扎着要不要敲门，考虑再三后接着往他房间走。我知道骑脚踏车的人是他，因为脚踏车是如此淘气地在砾石道上滑行。明显没有多余的摩擦力，一路继续前进，最后突兀、大胆、果断地戛然而止，他跳下车的方式有点宣告“你瞧瞧”的意味。

I always tried to keep him within my field of vision. I never let him drift away from me except when he wasn’t with me. And when he wasn’t with me, I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact same person with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else when he’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let him have a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me.

我总是尽力把他留在我的视线范围内。除非他不跟我在一起，我从来不让他漫无目的离开。他不跟我在一起的时候，我倒是不太在意他做什么，只要他还是跟我在一起时的那个人就好。他离开时，别让他变成另一个人。别让他变成我从来没见过的人。除了他跟我们、跟我在一起时，我所知道的那个人生之外，别让他再有另外的人生。

Don’t let me lose him.

别让我失去他。

I knew I had no hold on him, nothing to offer, nothing to lure him by.

我知道我抓不住他，没什么能奉献的，没什么吸引他的。

I was nothing.

我什么都不是。

Just a kid.

只是个孩子。

He simply doled out his attention when the occasion suited him. When he came to my assistance to help me understand a fragment by Heraclitus, because I was determined to read “his” author, the words that sprang to me were not “gentleness” or “generosity” but “patience” and “forbearance,” which ranked higher. Moments later, when he asked if I liked a book I was reading, his question was prompted less by curiosity than by an opportunity for casual chitchat. Everything was casual.

他只在自己方便的时候施舍一点注意力给我。有一天我决定读读“他的作者”赫拉克利特写些什么，他帮我理解其中一段文字时的态度令我想到的不是“和善”、“宽厚”这类字眼，而是更高等级的“耐心”与“容忍”。过了一会儿，他问我喜不喜欢我正在读的书。这问题与其说出于好奇，不如说是为了找机会随意闲聊。一切都是漫不经心。

He was okay with casual.

他觉得漫不经心无所谓。

How come you’re not at the beach with the others?

——你怎么没跟其他人去海边？

Go back to your plunking.

——回去弹你的吉他吧。

Later!

——回头再说！

Yours!

——给你的！

Just making conversation.

只是找话说而已。

Casual chitchat.

只是随便聊聊。

Nothing.

没什么。

Oliver was receiving many invitations to other houses. This had become something of a tradition with our other summer residents as well. My father always wanted them to feel free to “talk” their books and expertise around town. He also believed that scholars should learn how to speak to the layman, which was why he always had lawyers, doctors, businessmen over for meals. Everyone in Italy has read Dante, Homer, and Virgil, he’d say. Doesn’t matter whom you’re talking to, so long as you Dante-and-Homer them first. Virgil is a must, Leopardi comes next, and then feel free to dazzle them with everything you’ve got, Celan, celery, salami, who cares. This also had the advantage of allowing all of our summer residents to perfect their Italian, one of the requirements of the residency. Having them on the dinner circuit around B. also had another benefit: it relieved us from having them at our table every single night of the week.

奥利弗接到许多家庭邀请。对我们家的夏天住客来说，这也算是某种传统。父亲一直希望他们别拘束，多和人“聊聊”他们的书和研究主题；他也认为学者应该懂得怎么跟外行人说话，所以总是请一些律师、医生、商人来家里用餐。他总说，在意大利，人人都读过但丁、荷马、维吉尔[21]，无论跟谁谈话，只要先扯点但丁或荷马就对了。维吉尔是一定要讲的，接下来可以提提莱奥帕尔迪[22]。然后尽管用你所知道的一切让人折服，不管是策兰、芹菜或萨拉米腊肠，都没关系。这也有个好处，就是让夏季住客的意大利语得以精进。会说意大利语是住在这里的必要条件。让他们在B城巡回吃晚餐还有另一个好处：我们不必每天晚上都跟他们同桌用餐，也稍稍减轻了一点压力。【注：[21]维吉尔：罗马诗人 [22]莱奥帕尔迪：意大利诗人、学者、哲学家。】

But Oliver’s invitations had become vertiginous. Chiara and her sister wanted him at least twice a week. A cartoonist from Brussels, who rented a villa all summer long, wanted him for his exclusive Sunday soupers to which writers and scholars from the environs were always invited. Then the Moreschis, from three villas down, the Malaspinas from N., and the occasional acquaintance struck up at one of the bars on the piazzetta, or at Le Danzing. All this to say nothing of his poker and bridge playing at night, which flourished by means totally unknown to us.

但奥利弗接到的邀请多得令人眼花缭乱。奇亚拉和她妹妹一星期至少邀他两回。一名来自布鲁塞尔的漫画家夏天在这儿租了一栋别墅，他希望奥利弗参加他的周末晚宴，聚会只邀请一些住在近郊的作家和学者。还有与我家隔三栋别墅的莫雷斯奇家、来自N城的玛拉斯皮纳家，偶尔还有在小广场的酒吧或“跃动舞厅”认识的朋友。这还不包括他晚上玩扑克或桥牌的结交，以我们完全不知道的方式活跃着。

His life, like his papers, even when it gave every impression of being chaotic, was always meticulously compartmentalized. Sometimes he skipped dinner altogether and would simply tell Mafalda, “Esco, I’m going out.”

他的生活就像他的文稿一样，尽管怎么看都给人以混乱的印象，却总是做好了谨慎的区分。有时候他不吃晚餐，只跟玛法尔达说声“Esco，我出去喽。”就出门了。

His Esco, I realized soon enough, was just another version of Later! A summary and unconditional goodbye, spoken not as you were leaving, but after you were out the door. You said it with your back to those you were leaving behind. I felt sorry for those on the receiving end who wished to appeal, to plead.

我很快就知道他的Esco只是另一个版本的“回头再说”。简明扼要、没得商量的告别，不在离开前说出口，而是踏出门槛外才说。你背对着被你留在身后的那些人说。我为那些站在接受那一端，想要抗辩或恳求的人感到难过。

Not knowing whether he’d show up at the dinner table was torture. But bearable. Not daring to ask whether he’d be there was the real ordeal. Having my heart jump when I suddenly heard his voice or saw him seated at his seat when I’d almost given up hoping he’d be among us tonight eventually blossomed like a poisoned flower. Seeing him and thinking he’d join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there are certain wishes that must be clipped like wings off a thriving butterfly.

不确定他是否会跟我们一起吃晚餐，是一种折磨，却是可忍受的。不敢问他会不会来，才是真正的酷刑。有时候我几乎放弃了，觉得他当晚不跟我们吃晚餐，却听见他的声音或看见他坐在他的位子上时，我的心会猛然一跳，就像一朵有毒的花朵忽地绽放。看见他，以为他今晚会一起吃晚餐，最终却听到他一句专横的Esco，则让我体会到，总有一些愿望会落空，就像翩翩飞舞的蝴蝶被剪掉了翅膀。

I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him.

我希望他离开我们家，好让这一切有个了断。

I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death would put an end to it. I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, his tireless Pm-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of his bathing suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!, his lip-smacking love for apricot juice. If I didn’t kill him, then I’d cripple him for life, so that he’d be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he’d be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.

我也希望他死掉，这么一来，如果我控制不住想他，控制不住地担心下次不知何时才能见到他，至少他的死足以了结这一切。我甚至想亲手杀了他，好让他知道，仅仅他的存在本身对我而言是多大的困扰；他的随遇而安，如鱼得水，永远表现出“我不在意这、不在意那”的态度，其他人都要先打开门走出去，他却直接跳过通往海边的栅门——这一切都多么让人受不了！更别提他的泳裤、他在“天堂”的位子，他蛮横无礼的“回头再说”，还有对杏汁的咂嘴之爱。如果我不杀他，那我要让他终生残废，这样他会坐在轮椅上和我们待在一起，永远不回美国。如果他坐轮椅，我就随时知道他的行踪，也很容易找到他。我就会有优越感；既然他瘸了，我就是他的主人。

Then it hit me that I could have killed myself instead, or hurt myself badly enough and let him know why I’d done it. If I hurt my face, I’d want him to look at me and wonder why, why might anyone do this to himself, until, years and years later — yes, Later!– he’d finally piece the puzzle together and beat his head against the wall.

接着我意识到，我也能自杀，狠狠地伤害自己，让他知道我为什么这么做。如果我划伤我的脸，我希望他看着我，想不通为什么有人会这样伤害自己，直到多年多年以后回头（没错，回头再说），他终于拼凑出事情的全貌，懊恼地撞墙。

Sometimes it was Chiara who had to be eliminated. I knew what she was up to. At my age, her body was more than ready for him. More than mine? I wondered. She was after him, that much was clear, while all I really wanted was one night with him, just one night — one hour, even — if only to determine whether I wanted him for another night after that. What I didn’t realize was that wanting to test desire is nothing more than a ruse to get what we want without admitting that we want it. I dreaded to think how experienced he himself was. If he could make friends so easily within weeks of arriving here, you had only to think of what life at home was like. Just imagine letting him loose on an urban campus like Columbia’s, where he taught.

有时候，奇亚拉是那块必须铲除的绊脚石。我知道她在盘算什么。对奥利弗来说，与我同龄的她的身体可不只是“准备好了”。比我准备得还充分吗？我怀疑。她在追奥利弗，这点很清楚，而我真正想要的只是与奥利弗共度一夜，一夜就好，甚至一个钟头也行——只想借此确认一下之后我还想不想再与他共度一夜。我没意识到的是，测试欲望的举动，只不过是在不承认自己欲求的状况下，取得那个欲求之物的诡计罢了。我不敢去想奥利弗有多么经验丰富。如果他来这儿才几个星期就如此轻易交上朋友，怎能不去猜想他在家乡过着什么样的生活？只要想一想他在执教的哥伦比亚大学城市校区有多么自由就够了。

The thing with Chiara happened so easily it was past reckoning. With Chiara he loved heading out into the deep on our twin-hulled rowboat for a gita, with him rowing while she lounged in the sun on one of the hulls, eventually removing her bra once they had stopped and were far from shore.

他和奇亚拉之间的事来得那么轻易，超乎我的预料。他和奇亚拉在一起时，喜欢驾着我们的双船体划艇到远处兜风；他划船，奇亚拉则悠闲地躺在一边晒太阳，等到远离岸边船停下时，她就脱下胸罩。

I was watching. I dreaded losing him to her. Dreaded losing her to him too. Yet thinking of them together did not dismay me. It made me hard, even though I didn’t know if what aroused me was her naked body lying in the sun, his next to hers, or both of theirs together. From where I stood against the balustrade along the garden overlooking the bluff, I would strain my eyes and finally catch sight of them lying in the sun next to one another, probably necking, she occasionally dropping a thigh on top of his, until minutes later he did the same. They hadn’t removed their suits. I took comfort in that, but when later one night I saw them dancing, something told me that these were not the moves of people who’d stopped at heavy petting.

我就这么看着，怕奇亚拉抢走奥利弗，也怕奥利弗抢走奇亚拉。想到他们俩在一起，我并不灰心沮丧，反而情欲高涨，虽然我不知道激起性欲的是奇亚拉躺在太阳下的胴体，还是奥利弗躺在奇亚拉旁边的裸体，或两人的裸体。我在高耸于悬崖上的花园凭栏伫立，睁大眼睛仔细瞧，总算看到他们俩并排躺在阳光下，说不定正在亲热。有时候奇亚拉把大腿搭在他腿上，过一会儿他也会做同样的动作。他们没有宽衣解带，我因此感到安慰。后来有天晚上，我看见他们在跳舞，有些东西让我感觉到那并非仅止于相互亲吻和爱抚关系的人会有的举动。

Actually, I liked watching them dance together. Perhaps seeing him dance this way with someone made me realize that he was taken now, that there was no reason to hope. And this was a good thing. It would help my recovery. Perhaps thinking this way was already a sign that recovery was well under way. I had grazed the forbidden zone and been let off easily enough.

事实上，我喜欢看他们共舞。或许看他和别人这样跳舞，让我明白他已有所属，没有理由再抱希望。这是好事，帮助我复原。或许我能这么想已经是正在复原的症状。我曾经误人禁区，而且被轻易放过。

But when my heart jolted the next morning when I saw him at our usual spot in the garden, I knew that wishing them my best and longing for recovery had nothing to do with what I still wanted from him.

但是第二天早上，看他出现在花园里那个老地方，我的心又是猛然一颤，我知道祝福他们、渴望复原，与我对他仍然抱有的渴望无关。

Did his heart jolt when he saw me walk into a room?

看我走进房间，他的心会猛然一颤吗？

I doubted it.

我怀疑。

Did he ignore me the way I ignored him that morning: on purpose, to draw me out, to protect himself, to show I was nothing to him? Or was he oblivious, the way sometimes the most perceptive individuals fail to pick up the most obvious cues because they’re simply not paying attention, not tempted, not interested?

那天早上，他像我不理他那样，故意对我视而不见，这是为了我吐露真情，保护他自己，表示我对他无足轻重？或者他没注意到？就算是最敏锐的人偶尔也会错过最明显的暗示，只因为他们不注意、没被吸引或不感兴趣。

When he and Chiara danced I saw her slip her thigh between his legs. And I’d seen them mock-wrestle on the sand. When had it started? And how was it that I hadn’t been there when it started? And why wasn’t I told? Why wasn’t I able to reconstruct the moment when they progressed from x to y? Surely the signs were all around me. Why didn’t I see them?

他和奇亚拉跳舞时，我看见奇亚拉把大腿悄悄滑进他两腿之间。我也看到他们在沙滩上玩摔跤游戏。什么时候开始的？开始的时候，我怎么不在？为什么没人告诉我？为什么我无法重塑他们从X发展到Y的时刻？当然我四周全是征兆。我为什么没能看见？

I began thinking of nothing but what they might do together. I would have done anything to ruin every opportunity they had to be alone. I would have slandered one to the other, then used the reaction of one to report it back to the other. But I also wanted to see them do it, I wanted to be in on it, have them owe me and make me their necessary accomplice, their go-between, the pawn that has become so vital to king and queen that it is now master of the board.

我满脑子想着他们在一起做些什么事。我愿意竭尽所能破坏他们独处的每个机会。我可能会对其中一人诋毁另一个，然后将这个人的反应报告给另一个。但我也想看他们亲热，我想参与，让他们亏欠我，把我当做他们不可或缺的同伙，他们的掮客；就像一个对国王皇后来说，如此至关重要，以至于反客为主的爪牙。

I began to say nice things about each, pretending I had no inkling where things stood between them. He thought I was being coy. She said she could take care of herself.

我开始说两人的好话，假装对他们之间的事毫不知情。奥利弗以为我忸怩作态，奇亚拉说她自己的事情她自己处理。

“Are you trying to fix us up?” she asked, derision crackling in her voice.

“你想替我们牵线？”奇亚拉的声音里爆出嘲弄。

“What’s it to you anyway?” he asked.

“这跟你到底有什么关系？”奥利弗问。

I described her naked body, which I’d seen two years before. I wanted him aroused. It didn’t matter what he desired so long as he was aroused. I described him to her too, because I wanted to see if her arousal took the same turns as mine, so that I might trace mine on hers and see which of the two was the genuine article.

我描述两年前看到过奇亚拉的裸体。我想挑逗他。他欲望的对象是谁不重要，只要他被挑动就好。我也对奇亚拉描述他，想看她欲望被挑起时，是否和我有同样的转变，好让我根据她的反应来查探我自己的，看看谁才是真材实料。

“Are you trying to make me like her?”

“你想让我喜欢她？”

“What would the harm be in that?”

“有什么不好？”

“No harm. Except I like to go it alone, if you don’t mind.”

“没什么不好。只是我想自己来，如果你不介意的话。”

It took me a while to understand what I was really after. Not just to get him aroused in my presence, or to make him need me, but in urging him to speak about her behind her back, I’d turn Chiara into the object of man-to-man gossip. It would allow us to warm up to one another through her, to bridge the gap between us by admitting we were drawn to the same woman.

我花了好一阵子才了解我真正想要的是什么，不仅要让他在我面前起反应，或让他需要我，而是要煽动奥利弗背着她谈论她。我要把奇亚拉变成男人之间八卦的对象。通过她让我们之间热络起来，借着承认我们受同一个女人吸引，来搭起彼此间的桥梁。

Perhaps I just wanted him to know I liked girls.

或许我只是想让他知道我喜欢女生。

“Look, it’s very nice of you — and I appreciate it. But don’t.”

“听着，你是好意，我心领了。可是别这么做。”

His rebuke told me he wasn’t going to play my game. It put me in my place.

他的指责让我明白他不打算玩我的游戏。我只好不动声色，不再动作。

No, he’s the noble sort, I thought. Not like me, insidious, sinister, and base. Which pushed my agony and shame up a few notches. Now, over and above the shame of desiring him as Chiara did, I respected and feared him and hated him for making me hate myself.

我想，不，他是高贵的那类人。不像我，阴险、恶毒、下流。我的痛苦与羞愧因此加剧了好几级。这么一来。除了因和奇亚拉一样对他抱有欲望而产生的羞耻，我对他既敬又畏，并且憎恨他——因为他令我厌恶自己。

The morning after seeing them dance I made no motions to go jogging with him. Neither did he. When I eventually brought up jogging, because the silence on the matter had become unbearable, he said he’d already gone. “You’re a late riser these days.”

见过他们共舞之后的第二天早上，我没提议要跟他去慢跑。他也没有。最后我终于提起了，因为双方的沉默实在令人难以忍受。但他说他已经跑过了。“你最近都起床很晚。”

Clever, I thought.

真聪明，我想。

Indeed, for the past few mornings, I had become so used to finding him waiting for me that I’d grown bold and didn’t worry too much about when 1 got up. That would teach me.

的确，最近这几天，我习惯了看到他等我，导致我越来越大胆，从不担心自己睡过头。这给了我一个教训。

The next morning, though I wanted to swim with him, coming downstairs would have looked like a chastened response to a casual chiding. So I stayed in my room. Just to prove a point. I heard him step lightly across the balcony, on tiptoes almost. He was avoiding me.

第二天早上，虽然我想跟他一起游泳，但及时下楼就像是对一次无心的责备做出受教了的样子，所以我留在自己房间里。只为了证明一件事。我听见他轻轻走过阳台，几乎是蹑手蹑脚。他在回避我。

I came downstairs much later. By then he had already left to deliver his corrections and retrieve the latest pages from Signora Milani.

我过了很久才下楼，那时他已经出门去米拉尼太太那儿送修改稿，顺便取回最新的文稿。

We stopped talking.

我们不说话了。

Even when we shared the same spot in the morning, talk was at best idle and stopgap. You couldn’t even call it chitchat.

即使早上同在一个地方，最多也只是没意义、凑数似的场面话。连闲聊也称不上。

It didn’t upset him. He probably hadn’t given it another thought.

对这种状况他一点也没觉得苦恼。他可能根本没多想。

How is it that some people go through hell trying to get close to you, while you haven’t the haziest notion and don’t even give them a thought when two weeks go by and you haven’t so much as exchanged a single word between you? Did he have any idea? Should I let him know?

有人想接近你，因此受尽折磨，你却丝毫不知情，甚至连考虑一下都不肯。两周就这么过去了，你们之间连一句话也没说，怎么会这样？他知道吗？我应该让他知道吗？

The romance with Chiara started on the beach. Then he neglected tennis and took up bike rides with her and her friends in the late afternoons in the hill towns farther west along the coast. One day, when there was one too many of them to go biking, Oliver turned to me and asked if I minded letting Mario borrow my bike since I wasn’t using it.

与奇亚拉的罗曼史从海边开始。接着他不再玩网球，开始在傍晚时分陪她和她的朋友骑单车，到沿海岸西边较远的山城去兜风。有一天，因为要去骑车的人太多，奥利弗问我，既然我不用，能不能让马里奥借我的脚踏车骑。

It threw me back to age six.

我因此倒退回六岁的状态。

I shrugged my shoulders, meaning, Go ahead, I couldn’t care less. But no sooner had they left than I scrambled upstairs and began sobbing into my pillow.

我耸耸肩，意思是：请便，我一点也不在乎。不过他们一离开，我立刻冲上楼，埋在枕头里委屈地哭。

At night sometimes we’d meet at Le Danzing. There was never any telling when Oliver would show up. He just bounded onto the scene, and just as suddenly disappeared, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. When Chiara came to our home as she’d been in the habit of doing ever since childhood, she would sit in the garden and stare out, basically waiting for him to show up. Then, when the minutes wore on and there was nothing much to say between us, she’d finally ask, “C’è Oliver?” He went to see the translator. Or: He’s in the library with my dad. Or: He’s down somewhere at the beach. “Well, I’m leaving, then. Tell him I came by.”

有些晚上我们在“跃动舞厅”相遇。奥利弗什么时候出现从来就没有任何征兆，常常突然蹦出来，又同样突然消失，有时候是一个人，有时候跟其他人一起。奇亚拉来我们家的时候（这是她从小就有的习惯），总坐在花园里目不转睛盯着外面看，基本上都是在等他出现。时间一分一秒地过去，我们之间却无话可说，最后她终于问我：“奥利弗呢？”我只能回答：他去找译者了。或者：他跟我爸爸在书房。或者：他在海边吧。“嗯，那我要走了。告诉他我来过。”

It’s over, I thought.

结束了，我想。

Mafalda shook her head with a look of compassionate rebuke. “She’s a baby, he’s a university professor. Couldn’t she have found someone her own age?”

玛法尔达脸上带着点同情的责难摇着头说：“她年纪还小，而他是个大学教授。她就不能找个年龄相当的人吗？”

“Nobody asked you anything,” snapped Chiara, who had overheard and was not about to be criticized by a cook.

“没人问你的意见！”无意间听到的奇亚拉会厉声喊道，她可不愿意被一个厨娘批评。

“Don’t you talk to me that way or I’ll split your face in two,” said our Neapolitan cook, raising the palm of her hand in the air. “She’s not seventeen yet and she goes about having bare-breasted crushes. Thinks I haven’t seen anything?”

“不准那样对我说话，否则我把你的脸撕成两半。”我们的那不勒斯厨娘手掌举在半空中说。“还不满十七岁就光着胸脯跟人亲热。以为我什么都没看见么？”

I could just see Mafalda inspecting Oliver’s sheets every morning. Or comparing notes with Chiara’s housemaid. No secret could escape this network of informed perpetue, housekeepers.

我能想象玛法尔达每天早上检查奥利弗的床单，或跟奇亚拉家的佣人交流信息的样子。没有任何秘密躲得过管家（也就是包打听）的眼睛。

I looked at Chiara. I knew she was in pain.

我看着奇亚拉。我知道她很痛苦。

Everyone suspected something was going on between them. In the afternoon he’d sometimes say he was going to the shed by the garage to pick up one of the bikes and head to town. An hour and a half later he would be back. The translator, he’d explain.

大家都怀疑他们之间有什么。有些下午，奥利弗说要去车库的棚屋，骑一辆脚踏车到城里去。一个半小时就回来。找译者，他这么解释道。

“The translator,” my father’s voice would resound as he nursed an after-dinner cognac.

“译者…”父亲正在慢慢品味一杯正餐后的白兰地时，他的声音回荡着。

“Traduttrice, my eye,” Mafalda would intone. Sometimes we’d run into each other in town. Sitting at the caffè where several of us would gather at night after the movies or before heading to the disco, I saw Chiara and Oliver walking out of a side alley together, talking. He was eating an ice cream, while she was hanging on his free arm with both of hers. When had they found the time to become so intimate? Their conversation seemed serious.

“译者个鬼。”玛法尔达拖着声音说。有时候我们会在城里碰见。我坐在大伙儿晚上看完电影或上舞厅前爱去的那家咖啡店里，看见奇亚拉和奥利弗边说话边从路边的小巷走出来。奥利弗吃着冰淇淋，她则两手吊在他空出来的那只手臂。他们什么时候有空变得这么亲密了？他们聊的话题似乎很严肃。

“What are you doing here?” he said when he spotted me.

“你在这里干什么？”他一看到我就说。

Banter was both how he took cover and tried to conceal we’d altogether stopped talking. A cheap ploy, I thought.

取笑是他作为伪装和企图掩饰我们已经完全不讲话的方式。低劣的伎俩，我想。

“Hanging out.”

“出来玩儿。”

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“你的就寝时间不是过了吗？”

“My father doesn’t believe in bedtimes,” I parried.

“我爸爸不相信就寝时间那一套。”我回避这个话题。

Chiara was still deep in thought. She was avoiding my eyes.

奇亚拉仍深陷在沉思里，回避我的眼光。

Had he told her the nice things I’d been saying about her? She seemed upset. Did she mind my sudden intrusion into their little world? I remembered her tone of voice on the morning when she’d lost it with Mafalda. A smirk hovered on her face; she was about to say something cruel.

奥利弗是否已经告诉她我说过她的好话？她似乎很心烦。她是不是介意我突然闯进他们的小世界？我记得那天早上她对玛法尔达发脾气时的声调。一抹冷笑挂在她脸上；貌似她原本正打算讲几句伤人的话。

“Never a bedtime in their house, no rules, no supervision, nothing. That’s why he’s such a well-behaved boy. Don’t you see? Nothing to rebel against.”

“他们家从不规定就寝时间，没有规矩，没有监督，什么都没有。所以他才变成这样的好孩子。你还不懂吗？因为没什么好叛逆的啊。”

“Is that true?”

“真的吗？”

“I suppose,” I answered, trying to make light of it before they went any further. “We all have our ways of rebelling.”

“大概是吧。”我回答，尽量轻描淡写，免得他们继续深究。“每个人都有自己的叛逆方式。”

“We do?” he asked.

“是吗？”

“Name one,” chimed in Chiara.

“举个例子来听听。”奇亚拉蹦出一句。

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“你不会懂的。”

“He reads Paul Celan,” Oliver broke in, trying to change the subject but also perhaps to come to my rescue and show, without quite seeming to, that he had not forgotten our previous conversation. Was he trying to rehabilitate me after that little jab about my late hours, or was this the beginnings of yet another joke at my expense? A steely, neutral glance sat on his face.

“他读保罗·策兰呢。”奥利弗插嘴说，想改变话题，或许也想救我，同时不着痕迹地表明他并未忘记我们先前的对话。他是拿我深夜在外逗留的事轻轻戳我一下之后又设法为我平反，或者这只是另一个拿我开涮的起点？我在他脸上扫过冷硬而含义不明的中性的一瞥。

“E chi è?” She’d never heard of Paul Celan.

“那是谁？”奇亚拉根本没听说过策兰。

I shot him a complicit glance. He intercepted it, but there was no hint of mischief in his eyes when he finally returned my glance. Whose side was he on?

我对他投以“我们是一伙儿”的目光。他接收到了，但他终于回看我时，眼里却没有一丝玩笑的意味。他站在哪一边？

“A poet,” he whispered as they started ambling out into the heart of the piazzetta, and he threw me a casual Later!

“一位诗人。”他们朝小广场中心漫步过去时，他低声说道，然后丢给我一个漫不经心的回头再说！

I watched them look for an empty table at one of the adjoining caffès.

我看着他们在隔壁一家咖啡店里找空位。

My friends asked me if he was hitting on her.

几个朋友问我奥利弗是不是在追她。

I don’t know, I replied.

我不知道，我回答。

Are they doing it, then?

那他们做了吗？

Didn’t know that either.

我也不知道。

I’d love to be in his shoes.

我很乐意变成他。

Who wouldn’t?

谁不想？

But I was in heaven. That he hadn’t forgotten our conversation about Celan gave me a shot of tonic I hadn’t experienced in many, many days. It spilled over everything I touched. Just a word, a gaze, and I was in heaven. To be happy like this maybe wasn’t so difficult after all. All I had to do was find the source of happiness in me and not rely on others to supply it the next time.

但我仿佛置身天堂。他没忘记我们有关策兰的对话，给了我这么、这么多天以来不曾打过的一针强心剂。这种振奋感满溢出来，溢到了我接触的一切东西上。只需一句话、一个眼神，我就仿佛置身天堂。幸福或许一点都不难。下次我只需要从自己内心寻找幸福的源泉，不必再依赖他人给予。

I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish — we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut, the Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.

我记得《圣经》里的那个场景。雅各[23]向拉结[24]要水；听到拉结给他的预言之后，雅各双手高举向天，亲吻泉水旁的土地。我是犹太人、策兰是犹太人、奥利弗是犹太人——我们置身半犹太居住区、半绿洲，置身一个除此之外总是残酷、绝不妥协的世界。在这儿，醉鬼也会清明度日；在这儿我们不误解任何人，也没有任何人错估我们。在这儿，一个人就是能了解另一个人，而且了解得那么彻底，以致如果剥夺了这种亲密，就是galut，也就是希伯来文所谓的“背井离乡”或“离散”。他是我的故里，我的归处吗？你是我最后的归宿。当我与你和睦共处，我别无所求。奥利弗，你让我喜欢自己，跟你在一起时的那个自己。如果这世界有任何真实可言，真实就存在于我和你在一起的时候。如果有一天我鼓起勇气把我的真心告诉你，请提醒我，感恩节那天，要在罗马的每个圣坛点亮一根蜡烛。【注：[23]推各：又称以色列，为希伯来人的祖先。亚伯拉罕之孙，以撒之子。[24]拉结：推各之妻。】

It never occurred to me that if one word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn’t want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well.

我从来没想过，如果他的一句话让我如此幸福，另一句话也能同样轻易击垮我。如果我不想落个不幸，我也应该学会提防这小小的喜悦。

But on that same night I used the heady elation of the moment to speak to Marzia. We danced past midnight, then I walked her back by way of the shore. Then we stopped. I said I was tempted to take a quick swim, expecting she would hold me back. But she said she too loved swimming at night. Our clothes were off in a second. “You’re not with me because you’re angry with Chiara?”

但当天晚上，我就趁着当下那点令人飘飘然的得意欢欣和玛琪雅闲聊起来。我们跳舞跳到午夜之后，然后沿着海岸送她回家。我们在半路停下来。我说我很想游会儿泳，以为她要阻止我，她却说她也很喜欢在夜里游泳。我们立刻脱掉衣服。“你不是因为生奇亚拉的气才跟我在一起的吧？”

“Why am I angry with Chiara?”

“我为什么生奇亚拉的气？”

“Because of him.”

“因为他呀。”

I shook my head, feigning a puzzled look meant to show that I couldn’t begin to guess where she’d fished such a notion from.

我摇摇头，装出一脸困惑的样子，表示我搞不懂她怎么有这种想法。

She asked me to turn around and not stare while she used her sweater to towel her body dry. I pretended to sneak a clandestine glance, but was too obedient not to do as I was told. I didn’t dare ask her not to look when I put my clothes on but was glad she looked the other way. When we were no longer naked, I took her hand and kissed her on the palm, then kissed the space between her fingers, then her mouth. She was slow to kiss me back, but then she didn’t want to stop.

她要我转过身去，别趁她用运动衫擦干身子时盯着她看，我假装偷瞄一眼，但因为太听话还是照着她的话做。轮到我穿衣服的时候，我不敢要求她别看，不过她撇开眼去我倒是很高兴。等我们穿好衣服后，我牵起她的手吻了她的掌心，然后吻她手指之间的地方，再吻她的嘴。她没有立即回吻我，可是接着她就不想停下来了。

We were to meet at the same spot on the beach the following evening. I’d be there before her, I said.

第二天傍晚，我们打算在海边同一个地点见面。我会比她早到，我说。

“Just don’t tell anyone,” she said.

“不要告诉别人。”她说。

I motioned that my mouth was zipped shut.

我作势把嘴巴拉上拉链。

“We almost did it,” I told both my father and Oliver the next morning as we were having breakfast.

“我们差一点就做了。”第二天吃早餐的时候，我告诉父亲和奥利弗。

“And why didn’t you?” asked my father.

“那为什么没做？”

“Dunno.”

“不知道。”

“Better to have tried and failed…” Oliver was half mocking and half comforting me with that oft-rehashed saw. “All I had to do was find the courage to reach out and touch, she would have said yes,” I said, partly to parry further criticism from either of them but also to show that when it came to self-mockery, I could administer my own dose, thank you very much. I was showing off.

“宁可试过失败…”第二天吃早餐的时候，我告诉父亲和奥利弗引用那个经常改编的谚语，半开玩笑、半安慰我说。“我只需要鼓起勇气，伸手碰她，她会答应的。”我说，一方面避免他们俩进一步批评，一方面也表示自我解嘲的话我自个儿来就好，多谢了。我在炫耀。

“Try again later,” said Oliver. This was what people who were okay with themselves did. But I could also sense he was onto something and wasn’t coming out with it, perhaps because there was something mildly disquieting behind his fatuous though well-intentioned try again later. He was criticizing me. Or making fun of me. Or seeing through me.

“回头再试试。”奥利弗说。这就是自我感觉良好的人做的事。不过我也感觉到他有某种企图，而且不肯坦白说出来。或许在他愚蠢但好意的“回头再试试”背后，有些微微的心烦意乱也说不定。他在批评我。或寻我开心。或看透了我。

It stung me when he finally came out with it. Only someone who had completely figured me out would have said it. “If not later, when?”

“回头不试，更待何时？”他终于说了出来，却令我感到刺痛。只有真正看透我的人才这么说。

My father liked it. “If not later, when?” It echoed Rabbi Hillel’s famous injunction, “If not now, when?”

父亲喜欢这个说法。“回头不试，更待何时？”呼应了希列拉比[25]著名的训谕：“此时不做，更待何时？”【注：[25]希列拉比：活跃于公元前一世纪后半叶到公元一世纪初的犹太教圣人、圣经注释家。】

Oliver instantly tried to take back his stinging remark. “I’d definitely try again. And again after that,” came the watered-down version. But try again later was the veil he’d drawn over If not later, when?

奥利弗立刻收回他犀利的评论，说出更柔和的版本。“换了我绝对再试一次，而且再接再厉。”不过“回头再试”只是他用来遮掩“回头不试，更待何时”的托词而已。

I repeated his phrase as if it were a prophetic mantra meant to reflect how he lived his life and how I was attempting to live mine. By repeating this mantra that had come straight from his mouth, I might trip on a secret passageway to some nether truth that had hitherto eluded me, about me, about life, about others, about me with others.

我重复他这句话，仿佛那是先知的咒语，能够反映他如何度日，以及我打算如何过活。借着重复这句从他口中直接吐出来的咒语，我可能被一条通往下界真理的秘径绊倒，那是一条至今与我无缘、关于我、关于人生、关于其他人、关于我与他人的真理。

Try again later were the last words I’d spoken to myself every night when I’d sworn to do something to bring Oliver closer to me. Try again later meant, I haven’t the courage now. Things weren’t ready just yet. Where I’d find the will and the courage to try again later I didn’t know. But resolving to do something rather than sit passively made me feel that I was already doing something, like reaping a profit on money I hadn’t invested, much less earned yet.

“回头再试”，是我每晚暗自发誓要采取行动拉近奥利弗与我的距离时，对自己说的最后几个字。“回头再试”的意思是：我现在没有勇气，还没准备好；上哪儿去找“回头再试”的意志与勇气我不知道，但打定主意要采取行动而非坐以待毙，让我觉得自己已经做了什么，好像正从我尚未投资、更没赚到的钱中来获取利润。

But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try again laters, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by with nothing but Saint Try-again-later stamped on every day. Try again later worked for people like Oliver. If not later, when? was my shibboleth.

但我也清楚道我用“回头再试”为自己的人生筑起一道防线，就这样度过几个月、几个季节、整整几年、或者一辈子，除了铭刻在每一天的“回头再试”之外，什么都没有。对于奥利弗这样的人来说，“回头再试”是管用的。而“回头不试，更待何时”是我的口令。

If not later, when? “What if he had found me out and uncovered each and every one of my secrets with those four cutting words?

回头不试，更待何时？如果他看穿了我，用那八个尖刻的字揭发我一个又一个秘密怎么办？

I had to let him know I was totally indifferent to him.

我必须让他知道，我对他毫无兴趣。

What sent me into a total tailspin was talking to him a few mornings later in the garden and finding, not only that he was turning a deaf ear to all of my blandishments on behalf of Chiara, but that I was on the totally wrong track.

令我彻底陷入迷茫的是，几天后的早上，我在花园跟他说话，发现他不仅对我对奇亚拉的美言充耳不闻，而且我根本搞错了方向。

“What do you mean, wrong track?”

“你说搞错方向是什么意思？”

“I’m not interested.”

“我没兴趣。”

I didn’t know if he meant not interested in discussing it, or not interested in Chiara.

我不知道他的意思是没兴趣讨论，还是对奇亚拉没兴趣。

“Everyone is interested.”

“大家都有兴趣。”

“Well, maybe. But not me.”

“嗯，或许吧。可是我没有。”

Still unclear.

仍然不明朗。

There was something at once dry, irked, and fussy in his voice.

他的声音有一种既冷淡、恼怒又吹毛求疵的成分。

“But I saw you two.”

“可是我看见你们在一起。”

“What you saw was not your business to see. Anyway, I’m not playing this game with either her or you.”

“你看到的不关你的事。总之，我不跟你也不跟她玩这种游戏。”

He sucked on his cigarette and looking back at me gave me his usual menacing, chilly gaze that could cut and bore into your guts with arthroscopic accuracy.

他吸了口烟，回头看看我，又是他平常那种冷眼眼带有威胁的凝视，仿佛能以关节镜般的精准，切开、凿穿你的内脏。

I shrugged my shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry”– and went back to my books. I had overstepped my bounds again and there was no getting out of it gracefully except by owning that I’d been terribly indiscreet.

“好吧，我很抱歉。”我耸耸肩说，继续看我的书。我又越界了，除了归咎于我太不谨慎之外，没有任何更好的解释了。

“Maybe you should try,” he threw in.

“或许你应该试试。”他突然插话。

I’d never heard him speak in that lambent tone before. Usually, it was I who teetered on the fringes of propriety.

我从来没听过他用这种机巧的语气说话。通常，我才是那个为说话得体与否反复掂量的人。

“She wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“她不会想要和我有任何瓜葛的。”

“Would you want her to?”

“你希望她想要吗？

Where was this going, and why did I feel that a trap lay a few steps ahead?

这是要扯到哪里去？为什么我觉得陷阱就在几步之遥？

“No?” I replied gingerly, not realizing that my diffidence had made my “no’ sound almost like a question.

“不希望吧。”我小心翼翼地回答，没意识到我的畏缩让我的“不希望”听起来几乎像个问句。

“Are you sure?”

“你确定？”

Had I, by any chance, convinced him that I’d wanted her all along?

我是否在偶然间让他以为我一直对奇亚拉有意思？

I looked up at him as though to return challenge for challenge.

我抬头看他，仿佛要正面迎战。

“What would you know?”

“你知道什么？”

“I know you like her.”

“我知道你喜欢她。”

“You have no idea what I like,” I snapped. “No idea.”

我厉声反驳：“你才不知道我喜欢什么。完全不知道。”

I was trying to sound arch and mysterious, as though referring to a realm of human experience about which someone like him wouldn’t have the slightest clue. But I had only managed to sound peevish and hysterical.

我努力让我的话听起来调皮、神秘，好似透露一个像他那种人完全不可能理解的秘密，可实际听起来却只有暴躁和歇斯底里。

A less canny reader of the human soul would have seen in my persistent denials the terrified signs of a flustered admission about Chiara scrambling for cover.

就算是一个不那么精明的观察者，也能从我的执意否认中，看出我只是惊惶不安地拿奇亚拉当幌子。

A more canny observer, however, would have considered it a lead-in to an entirely different truth: push open the door at your own peril — believe me, you don’t want to hear this. Maybe you should go away now, while there’s still time.

然而，更加敏锐的观察者，却能以此为引子，探知完全不同的真相推开这扇门，但后果请自负——相信我，你不会想听到真相的。或许你该及时掉头离开。

But I also knew that if he so much as showed signs of suspecting the truth, I’d make every effort to cast him adrift right away. If, however, he suspected nothing, then my flustered words would have left him marooned just the same. In the end, I was happier if he thought I wanted Chiara than if he pushed the issue further and had me tripping all over myself. Speechless, I would have admitted things I hadn’t mapped out for myself or didn’t know I had it in me to admit. Speechless, I would have gotten to where my body longed to go far sooner than with any bon mot prepared hours ahead of time. I would have blushed, and blushed because I had blushed, fuddled with words and ultimately broken down — and then where would I be? What would he say?

但我也知道，只要他稍微露出一点对真相表示怀疑的迹象，我就会不遗余力地让他再度陷入茫然。然而，如果他毫不起疑，我慌乱不安的言词可能同样使他孤立无援。到头来，与其他继续追究，搞得我作茧自缚，倒不如让他以为我对奇亚拉有意思，我还比较开心一些。说不出口，我本可能承认自己尚未小心、筹划或者根本不知道已经在我心里生根发芽的那些东西。说不出口，比起几小时前事先准备好的任何妙语，我可能更容易抵达身体渴望去的地方。我可能会脸红，因为我已经是满脸通红、胡言乱语、终至崩溃——接着我将如何？他会怎么说？

Better break down now, I thought, than live another day juggling all of my implausible resolutions to try again later.

我想，与其再花一整天对关于“回头再试”的所有不切实际的决定思来想去，还不如现在就崩溃的好。

No, better he should never know. I could live with that. I could always, always live with that. It didn’t even surprise me to see how easy it was to accept.

不，最好他永远也不知道。我能忍受。我能一辈子，永远忍受。我甚至一点都不惊讶自己能如此轻易接受。

And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell him would almost slip out of my mouth. Green bathing suit moments, I called them — even after my color theory was entirely disproved and gave me no confidence to expect kindness on “blue” days or to watch out for “red” days.

偶尔，突如其来地，我们之间会有一些温情时刻，我几乎脱口而出那些我渴望告诉他的话。那是我所谓的绿色泳裤时刻——即使我的色彩理论已经完全被现实推翻，让我没信心在“蓝色”日子里期待友善，或是在“红色”日子里谨慎提防。

Music was an easy subject for us to discuss, especially when I was at the piano. Or when he’d want me to play something in the manner of so-and-so. He liked my combinations of two, three, even four composers chiming in on the same piece, and then transcribed by me. One day Chiara started to hum a hit-parade tune and suddenly, because it was a windy day and no one was heading for the beach or even staying outdoors, our friends gathered around the piano in the living room as I improvised a Brahms variation on a Mozart rendition of that very same song. “How do you do this?” he asked me one morning while he lay in heaven.

音乐是我们很容易聊起的主题，尤其是我坐在钢琴前，或他希望我用某种风格弹点什么的时候。他喜欢我在一首曲子里融合两位、三位，甚至四位作曲家的风格，再依我的方法改编。有一天，奇亚拉哼起一首流行歌的曲调。那天风大，没人去海边，甚至也没人在户外逗留，我即兴弹起一首由布拉姆斯改编的莫扎特所演奏过的一首曲子，我们的朋友突然都聚在客厅钢琴的四周。“你是怎么做到的？”有一天早上他躺在“天堂”时问我。

“Sometimes the only way to understand an artist is to wear his shoes, to get inside him. Then everything else flows naturally.”

“有时候，了解一位艺术家唯一的办法，就是设身处地进入他们的内心，然后一切自然水到渠成。”

We talked about books again. I had seldom spoken to anyone about books except my father.

我们又再度谈起书。除了父亲之外，我很少跟任何人谈书。

Or we talked about music, about the pre-Socratic philosophers, about college in the U. S.

或者我们谈音乐，谈苏格拉底之前的哲学家，谈美国的大学。

Or there was Vimini.

或者还有薇米妮。

The first time she intruded on our mornings was precisely when I’d been playing a variation on Brahms’s last variations on Handel.

那天早晨她第一次闯进来时，我正在改编布拉姆斯以韩德尔主题做的最后几个变奏。

Her voice broke up the intense midmorning heat.

她的声音穿透上午十点前后强烈的热气。

“What are you doing?”

“你在干什么？”

“Working,” I replied.

“工作。”我回答。

Oliver, who was lying flat on his stomach on the edge of the pool, looked up with the sweat pouring down between his shoulder blades.

趴在泳池边的奥利弗抬头看，汗水从他的肩胛骨骨间倾泻而下。

“Me too,” he said when she turned and asked him the same question.

“我也是。”她转向奥利弗问同一个问题时，他说。

“You were talking, not working.”

“你们在聊天，不是在工作。”

“Same thing.”

“一回事儿。”

“I wish I could work. But no one gives me any work.”

“我希望我能工作。可是没人肯给我工作。”

Oliver, who had never seen Vimini before, looked up to me, totally helpless, as though he didn’t know the rules of this conversation.

从来没见过薇米妮的奥利弗抬头看我，一副茫然无措的样子，仿佛不明白这段对话到底是什么情况。

“Oliver, meet Vimini, literally our next-door neighbor.”

“奥利弗，认识一下薇米妮，我们真正的隔壁邻居。”

She offered him her hand and he shook it.

她伸出手来，奥利弗跟她握了握手。

“Vimini and I have the same birthday, but she is ten years old. Vimini is also a genius. Isn’t it true you’re a genius, Vimini?”

“薇米妮的生日和我同一天，不过她才十岁。薇米妮也是个天才。对不对，你是个天才吧，薇米妮？”

“So they say. But it seems to me that I may not be.”

“他们是这么说没错。但在我看来可能不是。”

“Why is that?” Oliver inquired, trying not to sound too patronizing.

“为什么？”奥利弗问，语气尽量不显得太屈尊俯就。

“It would be in rather bad taste for nature to have made me a genius.”

“如果老天把我造就成天才，品味也未免太差了点。”

Oliver looked more startled than ever: “Come again?”

奥利弗看起来吃惊得不得了。“你说什么？”

“He doesn’t know, does he?” she was asking me in front of him.

“他不知道吧？”她当着奥利弗的面问我。

I shook my head.

我摇摇头。

“They say I may not live long.”

“他们说我可能活不久。”

“Why do you say that?” He looked totally stunned. “How do you know?”

“你为什么这么说？”他看起来震惊极了。“你怎么知道？”

“Everyone knows. Because I have leukemia.”

“大家都知道。因为我有白血病。”

“But you’re so beautiful, so healthy-looking, and so smart,” he protested.

“可是你这么漂亮，看起来这么健康，而且又这么聪明。”他反驳。

“As I said, a bad joke.”

“我说啦，一个冷笑话而已。”

Oliver, who was now kneeling on the grass, had literally dropped his book on the ground.

跪在草地上的奥利弗这下愣是把手里的书掉在了地上。

“Maybe you can come over one day and read to me,” she said. “I’m really very nice — and you look very nice too. Well, goodbye.”

“说不定你哪天可以来读书给我听。我人真的很好——你看起来也很好。那么，再见喽。”

She climbed over the wall. “And sorry if I spooked you — well –“

她翻过墙。“如果我吓着你了，对不起，嗯…”

You could almost watch her trying to withdraw the ill-chosen metaphor.

你几乎能看见她想要收回那不恰当的隐喻。

If the music hadn’t already brought us closer together at least for a few hours that day, Vimini’s apparition did.

如果那天音乐尚未将我们的距离拉近至少几个小时，薇米妮的意外现身却做到了。

We spoke about her all afternoon. I didn’t have to look for anything to say. He did most of the talking and the asking. Oliver was mesmerized. For once, I wasn’t speaking about myself.

整个下午我们都在谈她。我不必找话说。几乎都是他在说话、问问题，他被迷住了。就那么一次例外，我谈的不是自己。

Soon they became friends. She was always up in the morning after he returned from his morning jog or swim, and together they would walk over to our gate, and clamber down the stairs, and head to one of the huge rocks, where they sat and talked until it was time for breakfast. Never had I seen a friendship so beautiful or more intense. I was never jealous of it, and no one, certainly not I, dared come between them or eavesdrop on them. I shall never forget how she would give him her hand once they’d opened the gate to the stairway leading to the rocks. She seldom ever ventured that far unless accompanied by someone older.

他们很快成了朋友。早上薇米妮总是在他晨跑或晨泳回来后起床，然后他们一起走到花园的门那儿，小心翼翼下楼梯，往其中一块巨石走去，坐在那里聊天一直聊到早餐时间。我从来没见过这么美或更深刻的友谊。我从来不觉得嫉妒，也没有人，当然包括我自己，胆敢介入或偷听他们的对话。我永远忘不了每次他们打开通往海滨的门以后，薇米妮向他伸出手的模样。除非有大人陪伴，她很少冒险走那么远。

When I think back to that summer, I can never sort the sequence of events. There are a few key scenes. Otherwise, all I remember are the “repeat” moments. The morning ritual before and after breakfast: Oliver lying on the grass, or by the pool, I sitting at my table. Then the swim or the jog. Then his grabbing a bicycle and riding to see the translator in town. Lunch at the large, shaded dining table in the other garden, or lunch indoors, always a guest or two for lunch drudgery. The afternoon hours, splendid and lush with abundant sun and silence.

回想那年夏天，我永远无法理清事情的准确顺序。记忆中有几个主要的场景，除此之外，我只记得那些“重复”的时刻。早餐前后的早晨仪式：奥利弗躺在草地上或泳池边，我坐在我的桌子前。接着是游泳或慢跑。然后他抓起一辆脚踏车，骑到城里去见译者。在另一座花园阴凉处那张大桌子或室内吃午餐，“正餐苦差”总有一两位客人来报到。午后时光有充足的阳光，充满寂静的绚烂与奢靡。

Then there are the leftover scenes: my father always wondering what I did with my time, why I was always alone; my mother urging me to make new friends if the old ones didn’t interest me, but above all to stop hanging around the house all the time — books, books, books, always books, and all these scorebooks, both of them begging me to play more tennis, go dancing more often, get to know people, find out for myself why others are so necessary in life and not just foreign bodies to be sidled up to. Do crazy things if you must, they told me all the while, forever prying to unearth the mysterious, telltale signs of heartbreak which, in their clumsy, intrusive, devoted way, both would instantly wish to heal, as if I were a soldier who had strayed into their garden and needed his wound immediately stanched or else he’d die.

还有另外一些琐碎场景：父亲总好奇询问我怎样利用时间、为什么我老是落单；母亲鼓励我，如果对老朋友没有兴趣，就去结交新朋友，但最重要的是别老在家里晃来晃去——书、书、书，老是书，摆弄这些乐谱。他们俩都劝我多去打网球，多去跳舞，去认识人，自己去体会为什么其他人在我们的生命中是如此不可或缺的一部分，而并不是让人只敢偷偷摸摸接近的一些陌生身体。必要时可以做些疯狂的事。他们总是告诉我：他们永远在孜孜不倦地打探，想找寻透露出伤心内情，神秘难解的蛛丝马迹，他们都想以那种特有的笨拙、扰人，又饱含深情的方式立刻帮我疗伤治病，仿佛我是迷途的士兵，误闯了他们的花园，伤口若不立即止血就会死亡。

“You can always talk to me. I was your age once,” my father used to say. “The things you feel and think only you have felt, believe me, I’ve lived and suffered through all of them, and more than once — some I’ve never gotten over and others I’m as ignorant about as you are today, yet I know almost every bend, every toll-booth, every chamber in the human heart.”

“你随时可以找我商量，我也经历过你的年纪”，父亲以前常说。“相信我，你以为只有你感受过的事，我全经历过，也因此吃过苦头，而且不只一次——有些我从来没克服，有些我仍像你现在一样无知，但人心的每个秘密角落，我几乎都知道。”

There are other scenes: the postprandial silence — some of us napping, some working, others reading, the whole world basking away in hushed semitones. Heavenly hours when voices from the world beyond our house would filter in so softly that I was sure I had drifted off. Then afternoon tennis. Shower and cocktails. Waiting for dinner. Guests again. Dinner. His second trip to the translator. Strolling into town and back late at night, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.

还有其他场景：饭后的沉静——有些人小睡，有些人工作，有些人阅读，整个世界沉浸在安静的半音里。外面世界传来的声音温柔地渗透进来，在这段美妙的时光里，我确信我已经神游他方了。午后的网球；淋浴与鸡尾酒；等待晚餐；宾客再度光临。晚餐。他二度造访译者，散步进城，深夜回来，有时一个人，有时有朋友作伴。

Then there are the exceptions: the stormy afternoon when we sat in the living room, listening to the music and to the hail pelting every window in the house. The lights would go out, the music would die, and all we had was each other’s faces. An aunt twittering away about her dreadful years in St. Louis, Missouri, which she pronounced San Lui, Mother trailing the scent of Earl Grey tea, and in the background, all the way from the kitchen downstairs, the voices of Manfredi and Mafalda — spare whispers of a couple bickering in loud hisses. In the rain, the lean, cloaked, hooded figure of the gardener doing battle with the elements, always pulling up weeds even in the rain, my father signaling with his arms from the living room window, Go back, Anchise, go back.

还有些特殊的：暴风雨的下午，我们坐在客厅里，听音乐和冰雹重重拍打每扇窗户的声音。灯光熄灭，音乐停止，我们拥有的只是彼此的脸。某个阿姨把“圣路易”念成“三卢伊”，喊喊喳喳讲述她在密苏里州圣路易度过的可怕岁月。母亲闻着伯爵茶气味去找传来这气味的源头，背景是曼弗雷迪和玛法尔达从楼下厨房一路传来的额外声响——夫妻俩压低声音拌嘴的嘈杂嘶嘶声。雨中，园丁披着斗篷戴着兜帽的消瘦身影正与大自然搏斗，即使下雨也总要去拔杂草。父亲从客厅的窗口掸挥手臂示意着：回去，安喀斯，回去。

“That man gives me the creeps,” my aunt would say.

“那人真是让我起鸡皮疙瘩。”阿姨会这么说。

“That creep has a heart of gold,” my father would say.

“那个讨厌鬼可是有副菩萨心肠呢。”父亲回答说。

But all of these hours were strained by fear, as if fear were a brooding specter, or a strange, lost bird trapped in our little town, whose sooty wing flecked every living thing with a shadow that would never wash. I didn’t know what I was afraid of, nor why I worried so much, nor why this thing that could so easily cause panic felt like hope sometimes and, like hope in the darkest moments, brought such joy, unreal joy, joy with a noose tied around it. The thud my heart gave when I saw him unannounced both terrified and thrilled me. I was afraid when he showed up, afraid when he failed to, afraid when he looked at me, more frightened yet when he didn’t. The agony wore me out in the end, and, on scalding afternoons, I’d simply give out and fall asleep on the living room sofa and, though still dreaming, know exactly who was in the room, who had tiptoed in and out, who was standing there, who was looking at me and for how long, who was trying to pick out today’s paper while making the least rustling sound, only to give up and look for tonight’s film listings whether they woke me or not.

但这些美好时光都因为恐惧而变得紧张，仿佛恐惧是盘旋逼近的幽灵，或受困于这座小城的珍禽，它乌黑的羽翼给所有生物覆上永远洗不掉的阴影斑点。我不知道我害怕什么，也不知道我为什么这么担心，更不知道这般轻易造成恐慌的事，为何有时感觉像最黑暗的希望，带来不真实的喜悦，似一个陷阱般的喜悦。与他不期而遇，我的心怦然一跳，让我恐惧又兴奋。我怕他出现、怕他不出现，怕他看我、更怕他不看我。这痛苦的挣扎终于让我耗尽心力了。灼热的午后，我简直精疲力竭，在客厅的沙发上睡着了。虽然做着梦，却清楚知道谁在房里，谁蹑手蹑脚进来又出去，谁站在那里，谁盯着我看了多久，谁尽可能在不发出沙沙声以免吵醒我的状况下找出今天的报纸，后来却放下，改找今晚的电影放映表。

The fear never went away. I woke up to it, watched it turn to joy when I heard him shower in the morning and knew he’d be downstairs with us for breakfast, only to watch it curdle when, rather than have coffee, he would dash through the house and right away set to work in the garden. By noon, the agony of waiting to hear him say anything to me was more than I could bear. I knew that the sofa awaited me in an hour or so. It made me hate myself for feeling so hapless, so thoroughly invisible, so smitten, so callow. Just say something, just touch me, Oliver. Look at me long enough and watch the tears well in my eyes. Knock at my door at night and see if I haven’t already left it ajar for you. Walk inside. There’s always room in my bed.

恐惧从未离开。我醒来时它就在。早上听到他淋浴的声音，就知道他会下楼跟我们吃早餐，眼见它化为喜悦；然而，在他不喝咖啡，而是迅速走出屋外，立刻在花园里工作时，又只能眼见它变得闷闷不乐。到了中午，等待他给我只字片语的痛苦超乎我所能承受。我知道再过大约一小时，我只能独自躺在沙发上午睡。感觉如此无助、如此毫不起眼、如此迷恋、如此不成熟，令我憎恶自己。你就说句话吧，你就碰碰我吧，奥利弗。看我久一点，看泪水从我眼中涌出。夜里来敲我的门，看我是否为你打开一条小缝。走进来。我的床永远有空。

What I feared most were the days when I didn’t see him for stretches at a time — entire afternoons and evenings sometimes without knowing where he’d been. I’d sometimes spot him crossing the piazzetta or talking to people I’d never seen there. But that didn’t count, because in the small piazzetta where people gathered around closing time, he seldom gave me a second look, just a nod which might have been intended less for me than for my father, whose son I happened to be.

我最恐惧的是整个下午或晚上不见他踪影的日子，不知道他上哪儿去了。有时候我看到他横越小广场，或跟我从来没在那里见过的人说话。可那根本算不上见面。近打烊时间，大伙儿总会聚集到小广场上，他很少多看我一眼，只会点个头。那致意的对象与其说是我，不如说是父亲，而我正好是他儿子。

My parents, my father especially, couldn’t have been happier with him. Oliver was working out better than most of our summer residents. He helped my father organize his papers, managed a good deal of his foreign correspondence, and was clearly coming along with his own book. “What he did in his private life and his time was his business — If youth must canter, then who’ll do the galloping? was my father’s clumsy adage. In our household, Oliver could do no wrong.

我的父母，尤其是父亲，对他再满意不过。奥利弗显然比其他许多夏天住客还要能干。他帮父亲整理文稿，处理许多外国寄来的信件，而他自己的书显然也有进展。他的私生活和他在私人时间做什么，是他的事。“如果年轻人只能慢慢跑，那谁还来飞奔？”这是父亲自创的笨拙格言。在我们家，奥利弗永远不会错。

Since my parents never paid any attention to his absences, I thought it was safer never to show that they caused me any anxiety. I mentioned his absence only when one of them wondered where he’d been; I would pretend to look as startled as they were. Oh, that’s right, he’s been gone so long. No, no idea. And I had to worry not to look too startled either, for that might ring false and alert them to what was eating at me. They’d know bad faith as soon as they spotted it. I was surprised they hadn’t already. They had always said I got too easily attached to people. This summer, though, I finally realized what they meant by being too easily attached. Obviously, it had happened before, and they must have already picked up on it when I was probably too young to notice anything myself. It had sent alarming ripples through their lives. They worried for me. I knew they were right to worry. I just hoped they’d never know how far things stood beyond their ordinary worries now. I knew they didn’t suspect a thing, and it bothered me — though I wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. It told me that if I were no longer transparent and could disguise so much of my life, then I was finally safe from them, and from him — but at what price, and did I want to be so safe from anyone?

因为我父母从来不关心他在不在家，我觉得我最好别表现出对此多么焦虑。我只在父亲或母亲想知道他的下落时，才会提到他的缺席。我装出跟他们一样惊讶的样子。哦，对呀，他出去好久了。不，不知道。我也得注意别显得太惊讶，太过虚假会让他们警觉到有什么正在啃噬着我。他们总能一眼识破谎言，可到现在还没发现我真正的情感，真令我吃惊。他们总说我“太容易依恋”，然而直到今年夏天，我才总算了解他们所谓“太容易依恋”的意思。显然，我过去也是这样，在我或许还太年幼，难以自察的时候，他们已经注意到了。于是使他们感觉到了一丝引人担忧的涟漪。他们为我担忧。我知道他们丝毫不疑，这一点令我困扰，即使我也不希望事情往反方向发展。我因此知道，如果我不再透明，能够这样隐瞒我的生活，那么我也终于不用再怕被他们或他轻易看穿。但我要付出什么代价？我真的希望这样避开每个人吗？

There was no one to speak to. Whom could I tell? Mafalda? She’d leave the house. My aunt? She’d probably tell everyone. Marzia, Chiara, my friends? They’d desert me in a second. My cousins when they came? Never. My father held the most liberal views — but on this? Who else? Write to one of my teachers? See a doctor? Say I needed a shrink? Tell Oliver?

没人能倾诉。我能对谁说？玛法尔达？她会出门去。我阿姨？她可能告诉每一个人。玛琪雅？奇亚拉？我的朋友？他们会立刻弃我而去。等堂表亲来的时候对他们说？免谈。父亲的见解最开明——可是谈这种事？还有谁？写信给我的老师？看医生？说我需要心理医生？告诉奥利弗？

Tell Oliver. There is no one else to tell, Oliver, so I’m afraid it’s going to have to be you…

告诉奥利弗。不可能对其他任何人说。奥利弗，所以我恐怕倾听的那个人必须是你…

One afternoon, when I knew that the house was totally empty, I went up to his room. I opened his closet and, as this was my room when there were no residents, pretended to be looking for something I’d left behind in one of the bottom drawers. I’d planned to rifle through his papers, but as soon as I opened his closet, I saw it. Hanging on a hook was this morning’s red bathing suit which he hadn’t swum in, which was why it was hanging there and not drying on the balcony. I picked it up, never in my life having pried into anyone’s personal belongings before. I brought the bathing suit to my face, then rubbed my face inside of it, as if I were trying to snuggle into it and lose myself inside its folds — So this is what he smells like when his body isn’t covered in suntan lotion, this is what he smells like, this is what he smells like, I kept repeating to myself, looking inside the suit for something more personal yet than his smell and then kissing every corner of it, almost wishing to find hair, anything, to lick it, to put the whole bathing suit into my mouth, and, if I could only steal it, keep it with me forever, never ever let Mafalda wash it, turn to it in the winter months at home and, on sniffing it, bring him back to life, as naked as he was with me at this very moment. On impulse, I removed my bathing suit and began to put his on. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it with the kind of intoxicated rapture that makes people take risks they would never take even with plenty of alcohol in their system. I wanted to come in his suit, and leave the evidence for him to find there. Which was when a crazier notion possessed me. I undid his bed, took off his suit, and cuddled it between his sheets, naked. Let him find me — I’ll deal with it, one way or another. I recognized the feel of the bed. My bed. But the smell of him was all around me, wholesome and forgiving, like the strange scent which had suddenly come over my entire body when an elderly man who happened to be standing right next to me in a temple on Yom Kippur placed his tallis over my head till I had all but disappeared and was now united with a nation that is forever dispersed but which, from time to time, comes together again when one being and another wrap themselves under the same piece of cloth. I put his pillow over my face, kissed it savagely, and, wrapping my legs around it, told it what I lacked the courage to tell everyone else in the world. Then I told him what I wanted. It took less than a minute.

有一天下午，我发现屋里空无一人，于是我上楼走进他房间，打开他的衣柜——没有住客的时候，这里是我的房间，我假装想找我落在底层抽屉的东西。我原本打算快速翻找他的文件，但一打开衣柜，我就看见那个。吊在挂钩上的，是今天早上他没穿去游泳的红色泳裤，所以吊在衣柜里，而不是晾在阳台上。我这辈子从没窥看过他人的私人物品。我拿起他的泳裤，拿到面前，原来这就是他身上没涂防晒乳液时的味道啊。这就是他的味道，这就是他的味道，但愿我能偷走它，永远放在身边，永远不让玛法尔达洗，在冬天离开这儿的那几个月求助于它，嗅着它，让奥利弗重生，像他此刻一样赤裸裸与我在一起。一阵冲动之下，我脱掉我的泳裤，穿上他的。我知道我想要什么，而且我是抱着一种沉醉的狂喜想要这个东西，我想要冒险，一个人即使在烂醉时也绝对不愿意冒的险。我想穿着他的泳裤达到高潮，留下证据让他发现。这时一个更疯狂的念头攫住了我的心。我摊开他的被褥，脱下他的泳裤，一丝不挂地躺在他的被单下搂着他的泳裤。让他发现我吧——我会面对他，总有办法的。我认得这张床的感觉。我的床。但他的气味围绕着我，健康、宽容，就像在犹太教赎罪日[26]那天，一个碰巧站在我旁边的陌生人把他的祈祷披肩披在我头上盖住我时，我突然闻到的怪味，那气味与那个族人四散的国家合为一体，只有当一个人与另一个人将自己包裹在同一块布里时，这个民族会再度聚合起来。我拿起他的枕头盖在自己脸上，粗野地吻它，双腿夹着它，告诉它我没有勇气对世界上其他人说的事。我告诉它我想要什么。只花不到一分钟。【注：[26]赎罪日（赎罪日为七月初十，即犹太新年（又称岁首节））后的第十天。犹太新年的活动始于犹太新年，延续十天，到赎罪日进入高潮。犹太人在这十天中。卜悔自己的罪过，请求神给自己多一年的时间自我省察。赎罪日当天要禁食二十五小时，并虔诚祷告，通常在犹太教堂度过。】

The secret was out of my body. So what if he saw. So what if he caught me. So what, so what, so what.

秘密自我的身躯脱离。就算他看到又怎样？就算他抓到我又怎样？怎样？怎样？怎样？

On my way from his room to mine I wondered if I’d ever be mad enough to try the same thing again.

从他房间走回我房间的路上，我怀疑自己会不会疯狂到再次尝试相同的事。

That evening I caught myself keeping careful tabs on where everyone was in the house. The shameful urge was upon me sooner than I’d ever imagined. It would have taken nothing to sneak back upstairs.

那天晚上我发觉自己小心监视着每个人在屋里的位置。羞耻的强烈冲动来得比我想象的还快。我随时能毫不犹豫地偷偷溜回楼上。

While reading in my father’s library one evening, I came upon the story of a handsome young knight who is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him, though she seems not to be entirely aware of it, and despite the friendship that blossoms between them, or perhaps because of that very friendship, he finds himself so humbled and speechless owing to her forbidding candor that he is totally unable to bring up the subject of his love. One day he asks her point-blank: “Is it better to speak or die?”

有一天晚上我在父亲的书房里读书，读到一位年轻英俊的骑士疯狂地爱上公主的故事。公主也爱他，但似乎并未意识到这一点，所以尽管两人交情匪浅，或者正因为他们之间隔着一道友谊的防线，他发现自己因为公主令人生畏的坦白直率而变得非常卑微、无言以对，完全无法向公主诉说自己的爱意。有一天他直截了当问公主：“说出来好，还是死好？”

I’d never even have the courage to ask such a question.

我绝对连问这种问题的勇气也没有。

But what I’d spoken into his pillow revealed to me that, at least for a moment, I’d rehearsed the truth, gotten it out into the open, that I had in fact enjoyed speaking it, and if he happened to pass by at the very moment I was muttering things I wouldn’t have dared speak to my own face in the mirror, I wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have minded — let him know, let him see, let him pass judgment too if he wants — just don’t tell the world — even if you’re the world for me right now, even if in your eyes stands a horrified, scornful world. That steely look of yours, Oliver, I’d rather die than face it once I’ve told you.

但我对他的枕头说的话让我发现，至少有那么一刻，真相曾经上演，开诚布公，我已经享受过说出来的快感。即便我低声嘟嚷那些我甚至不敢对着镜中的自己说的话，如果那时他碰巧经过，我也不在乎，不介意了。让他知道吧，让他看见吧，如果他想要的话，也让他判决吧。只要不公之于世就好。即使现在你就是我的世界，即使你眼中立着一个震惊、鄙夷的世界。奥利弗，一旦我告诉你，我宁可死也不愿面对你那钢铁般冷酷的眼神。