第十六章: 芝士男孩 The Cheese Boys
My friend Bongani was a short, bald, super-buff guy. He wasn’t always that way. His whole life he’d been skinny, and then a bodybuilding magazine found its way into his hands and changed his life. Bongani was one of those people who brought out the best in everybody. He was that friend who believed in you and saw the potential in you that nobody else did, which was why so many of the township kids gravitated toward him, and why I gravitated toward him as well. Bongani was always popular, but his reputation really took off when he beat up one of the more infamous bullies in the school. That cemented his status as sort of the leader and protector of the township kids.
我的朋友邦哈尼个子很矮，秃头，但超级健壮。他并不是一直都长那样。其实，他之前是一个很瘦弱的人，直到有一天不知从哪里搞到一本健美杂志，自此改变了他的人生。邦哈尼是那种能从每个人身上看到优点的人。在所有人都不相信你的时候，他会相信你，并看出你身上的潜力——他就是这样的朋友，这也是为什么很多小镇孩子都不由自主地被他吸引，这也是为什么我不由自主地被他吸引。邦哈尼原本就很受欢迎，但是他打败了学校里那帮臭名昭著的恶霸以后，声望达到了前所未有的高度，坐实了他在小镇孩子们心中领导者和老大哥的地位。
Bongani lived in Alex, but I never visited him there while we were still in school; he’d always come to my house in Highlands North. I’d been to Alex a few times, for brief visits, but I’d never spent any real time there. I’d never been there at night, let’s put it that way. Going to Alex during the day is different from going there at night. The place was nicknamed Gomorrah for a reason.
邦哈尼住在亚历山德拉，但我从来没去那边找过他，因为当时我们还在上学，总是他来高地北，到我家来找我。我去过亚历山德拉几次，但都只是短暂停留，从没在那边真正待过。或者这么说吧，我从没在那边过过夜。白天造访亚历山德拉和晚上造访完全是两种不同的感觉。那地方被叫作蛾摩拉是有一定道理的。
“Hey, let’s go to the hood,” he said.
“嘿，咱们去街区玩吧。”他说。
One day after school, not long before we matriculated, Bongani walked up to me on the quad.
就在我们毕业前不久，有一天放学后，邦哈尼在校园里向我走过来。
“The hood?”
“街区？”
The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop was blowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood. Before, living in a township was something to be ashamed of; it was the bottom of the bottom. Then we had movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and they made the hood look cool. The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kids in the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge of honor: You were no longer from the township — you were from the hood. Being from Alex gave you way more street cred than living in Highlands North. So when Bongani said, “Let’s go to the hood,” I was curious about what he meant. I wanted to find out more.
种族隔离的墙倒塌之时，正是美国嘻哈音乐蓬勃发展的时刻，而在嘻哈文化里，来自“街区”是一件很酷的事。在此之前，住在黑人小镇是一件令人羞耻的事，那是社会底层的最底层。但后来，我们看到了像《街区男孩》《威胁2：社会》这样的电影，黑人小镇都被塑造得特别酷。这些电影的主角们，包括主题歌，都以此为傲。小镇的孩子们也开始有样学样，以自己的身份出处为傲：你不再是来自小镇的人了——你来自街区。而住在亚历山德拉，能让你比住在高地北获得更高的街头信誉。所以当邦哈尼说“咱们去街区玩吧”时，我很好奇他到底是什么意思。我想了解更多。
At first I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew the word “hood” from rap songs, and I knew the different townships where black people lived, but I had never used the one to describe the other.
一开始我完全不知道他在说什么。我从说唱音乐里听到过“街区”这个词，也知道黑人住的各个小镇各有不同，但我从来没有用这个词形容过另一个黑人小镇。
When Bongani took me to Alex we entered as most people do, from the Sandton side. You ride through one of the richest neighborhoods in Johannesburg, past palatial mansions and huge money. Then you go through the industrial belt of Wynberg that cordons off the rich and white from the poor and black. At the entrance to Alex there’s the huge minibus rank and the bus station. It’s the same bustling, chaotic third-world marketplace you see in James Bond and Jason Bourne movies. It’s Grand Central Station but outdoors. Everything’s dynamic. Everything’s in motion. Nothing feels like it was there yesterday, and nothing feels like it will be there tomorrow, but every day it looks exactly the same.
邦哈尼带我到亚历山德拉后，我们像大多数人那样，从桑顿区那一侧穿进去，经过了约翰内斯堡最富有的生活区，经过了宫殿般的豪宅和金山银山，然后又穿过了韦恩堡这条工业隔离带，富有白人和贫穷黑人的世界，就是从这里分界的。在进入亚历山德拉的入口处，列着一排长长的迷你小巴，以及一个巴士站。这是你会在007电影或《谍影重重》里见到的那种熙熙攘攘、混乱不堪的第三世界市集。这里就是中央车站，只不过是在户外。一切都生机勃勃，一切都在飞速运转。好像这里没有什么存在于昨日，也没有什么能持续到明天，但每天都是完全一样的。
Once you go past the minibus rank, you’re in Alex proper. I’ve been in few places where there’s an electricity like there is in Alex. It’s a hive of constant human activity, all day long, people coming and going, gangsters hustling, guys on the corner doing nothing, kids running around. There’s nowhere for all that energy to go, no mechanism for it to dissipate, so it erupts periodically in epic acts of violence and crazy parties. One minute it’ll be a placid afternoon, people hanging out, doing their thing, and next thing you know there’s a cop car chasing gangsters, flying through the streets, a gun battle going off, helicopters circling overhead. Then, ten minutes later, it’s like it never happened — everyone’s back to hanging out, back to the hustle, coming and going, running around.
一旦经过小巴的队列，你就真正进入亚历山德拉了。我从未在其他地方感受过像亚历山德拉这样的紧张活力。这里简直是人类的蜂巢，人们在这里一刻不停地来来去去，黑帮在争夺地盘，路人在街角无所事事，小孩到处乱跑。由于这些高度集中的能量无处发泄，没有机制可令其自然消解，所以这里会周期性地爆发大规模的暴力事件，亦或是极度疯狂的派对。在一分钟以前，这还是一个平静的下午，人们在四处闲逛，干着自己的事，突然之间，警车和黑帮就开始上演追逐火拼大戏，车辆在街道上飞驰，枪声不绝于耳，直升机出现在头顶盘旋。十分钟后，这一切又好像从未发生过——所有人又开始闲逛着做自己的事了，熙熙攘攘，来来去去，东奔西跑着。
Right next to the minibus rank, of course, is a KFC. That’s one thing about South Africa: There’s always a KFC. KFC found the black people. KFC did not play games. They were in the hood before McDonald’s, before Burger King, before anyone. KFC was like, “Yo, we’re here for you.”
在迷你小巴的旁边，当然，是一家肯德基。这是南非的一个特点：到处都有肯德基。肯德基拥抱了黑人兄弟。肯德基不玩花头。他们早早地在街区里扎了根，在麦当劳之前，在汉堡王之前，在所有人之前。肯德基好像在说：“哟，我们在这里，正是为你而来。”
As you walk, there’s every smell you can imagine. People are cooking, eating takeaways in the streets. Some family has a shack that’s jury-rigged onto the back of someone else’s shack, and they don’t have any running water, so they’ve bathed in a bucket from the outdoor tap and then dumped the dirty water in the street, where it runs into the river of sewerage that’s already there because the water system has backed up again. There’s a guy fixing cars who thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t. He’s dumping old motor oil into the street, and now the oil is combining with the dirty bathwater to make a river of filth running down the street. There’s probably a goat hanging around — there’s always a goat. As you’re walking, sound washes over you, the steady thrum of human activity, people talking in a dozen different languages, chatting, haggling, arguing. There’s music playing constantly. You’ve got traditional South African music coming from one corner, someone blasting Dolly Parton from the next corner, and somebody driving past pumping the Notorious B. I. G.
走在街区，你可以闻到你能想到的所有气味，譬如烧菜的味道，街边外卖的味道。有的人家的棚屋就临时搭在别人家的棚屋后面，他们没有自来水，所以他们从户外的水龙头接水，用桶洗澡，洗后的脏水就直接泼在街上，这些脏水会自动汇入街面上那条污水溪流里——因为这里的下水系统又堵了。有人在修车，他以为自己知道自己在干什么，实际上却一窍不通。他把旧机油倾倒在街面上，现在机油和洗澡水混在一起，组成了一条脏河，在街面上潺潺流动。应该还会有一只山羊在旁边踱步——不知为何，那里总会有一只山羊。你一边走着，音浪向你袭来，人类活动的稳定节拍，人们用十几种不同语言对话、闲聊、争论、吵架。每时每刻都有音乐声。你会听到某个角落里播着传统南非音乐，另一个角落大声放着桃莉·巴顿，而一辆车呼啸而过，留下一串震天响的克里斯托弗·华莱士的节奏鼓点。
Alex is laid out on a grid, a series of avenues. The streets are paved, but the sidewalks are mostly dirt. The color scheme is cinder block and corrugated iron, gray and dark gray, punctuated by bright splashes of color. Someone’s painted a wall lime green, or there’s a bright-red sign above a takeaway shop, or maybe somebody’s picked up a bright-blue piece of sheet metal just by luck. There’s little in the way of basic sanitation. Trash is everywhere, typically a garbage fire going down some side street. There’s always something burning in the hood.
亚历山德拉这个地方被许多条街道划分成网格状。马路的路面铺过沥青，但是人行道基本就是土路。整个城市的色彩主题，是煤渣砖和波状钢的颜色，灰色和深灰色，间或点缀着跳跃的明艳色彩。有人会把自己的墙漆成柠檬绿色，外卖店门口会立着一个亮红色的招牌，也许有人凑巧捡到一片天蓝色的金属钢片。整座城市的卫生条件很差，到处都是垃圾，总是有人在某条巷子里烧垃圾。在街区里，任何时候都有什么东西在燃烧。
The hood was a complete sensory overload for me, but within the chaos there was order, a system, a social hierarchy based on where you lived. First Avenue was not cool at all because it was right next to the commotion of the minibus rank. Second Avenue was nice because it had semi-houses that were built when there was still some sort of formal settlement going on. Third, Fourth, and Fifth Avenues were nicer — for the township. These were the established families, the old money. Then from Sixth Avenue on down it got really shitty, more shacks and shanties. There were some schools, a few soccer fields. There were a couple of hostels, giant projects built by the government for housing migrant workers. You never wanted to go there. That’s where the serious gangsters were. You only went there if you needed to buy an AK-47.
对我来说，街区实在是一个感官超负荷的存在，但是在它的嘈杂之中，又隐含了一种秩序，一种社会系统，一种会依据你所居住的位置而划分的社会分阶标准。一街很差，因为它紧挨着混乱的小巴站。二街还不错，那里有一些以前这里还算正规居民区时留下的洋房。三街、四街和五街就更好了——对于这个小镇来说。那里聚集了一些大家族，都是有祖传基业的。从六街开始，情况又急转直下，棚户和临时屋逐渐增多。那里有几所学校和几个足球场，还有几个给外来打工人员盖的招待所，算是大规模的政府项目。你不会想去那边，那是黑帮的地盘。你只有在需要买一把AK—47步枪的时候，才会造访那片土地。
After Twentieth Avenue you hit the Jukskei River, and on the far side of that, across the Roosevelt Street Bridge, was East Bank, the newest, nicest part of the hood. East Bank was where the government had gone in, cleared out the squatters and their shacks, and started to build actual homes. It was still low-income housing, but decent two-bedroom houses with tiny yards. The families who lived there had a bit of money and usually sent their kids out of the hood to better schools, like Sandringham. Bongani’s parents lived in East Bank, at the corner of Roosevelt and Springbok Crescent, and after walking from the minibus rank through the hood, we wound up there, hanging around outside his house on the low brick wall down the middle of Springbok Crescent, doing nothing, shooting the shit. I didn’t know it then, but I was about to spend the next three years of my life hanging out at that very spot.
过了二十街后，你会来到朱科斯凯河畔，过了罗斯福桥，走到河对岸，就来到了整个亚历山德拉最新、最好的地方，名为东岸。那是政府规划的地方，他们清理了非法占地者和棚屋，在那里建起了真正的房子。虽然仍是给低收入家庭的房子，但起码是像样的两卧带小花园的小洋房。住在那边的家庭通常都有一点儿积蓄，会把孩子送到街区以外更好的地方去上学，譬如桑德林汉姆。邦哈尼的父母就住在东岸，罗斯福路和跳羚弯的交界处。从小巴站穿过整个街区后，我和邦哈尼来到东岸，在他家门口的跳羚弯路中间的矮砖墙上玩起来，无所事事，吹吹牛皮。我那时还不知道，未来的三年，我都会在这个地方度过。
Another nice thing about the hood was that it’s super cheap. You can get by on next to nothing. There’s a meal you can get in the hood called a kota. It’s a quarter loaf of bread. You scrape out the bread, then you fill it with fried potatoes, a slice of baloney, and some pickled mango relish called achar. That costs a couple of rand. The more money you have, the more upgrades you can buy. If you have a bit more money you can throw in a hot dog. If you have a bit more than that, you can throw in a proper sausage, like a bratwurst, or maybe a fried egg. The biggest one, with all the upgrades, is enough to feed three people.
街区还有一个好处，就是东西超级便宜，生活花销极少。你可以在街区买到一种叫柯塔的食物，它的外壳是四分之一条面包，把面包芯挖出来，再往里面放入炸土豆、一片熏肠和一种叫“阿査”的腌渍芒果泡菜。这一整套只需要几兰特。而你钱越多，就可以有更多的升级选择。譬如你的预算稍有富裕，那么可以往里面加个热狗。如果还有更多的钱，可以加个香肠，譬如德国碎肉肠，或者一个煎蛋。而最豪华的版本，就是把能加的都加了，足够填饱三个人的肚子。
I graduated from high school when I was seventeen, and by that point life at home had become toxic because of my stepfather. I didn’t want to be there anymore, and my mom agreed that I should move out. She helped me move to a cheap, roach-infested flat in a building down the road. My plan, insofar as I had one, was to go to university to be a computer programmer, but we couldn’t afford the tuition. I needed to make money. The only way I knew how to make money was selling pirated CDs, and one of the best places to sell CDs was in the hood, because that’s where the minibus rank was. Minibus drivers were always looking for new songs because having good music was something they used to attract customers.
17岁那年，我从高中毕业，那时我的家已经变成了一个很可怕的地方，因为继父的关系。我不想再在家里住了，我妈同意后，我搬了出去。她帮我搬去了道路尽头的一栋楼，我在那找了一个满是蟑螂的便宜公寓。那时我的计划——如果说我有计划的话——就是去上大学，以后做一名电脑程序员，但是我们付不起学费，我得还钱。我知道的唯一的赚钱方法就是卖盗版碟，卖盗版碟最好的地方就是在街区，因为那里有小巴。而小巴司机总是在找新歌，播放好音乐是他们招揽乘客的手段之一。
For us, the ultimate upgrade was to throw on a slice of cheese. Cheese was always the thing because it was so expensive. Forget the gold standard — the hood operated on the cheese standard. Cheese on anything was money. If you got a burger, that was cool, but if you got a cheeseburger, that meant you had more money than a guy who just got a hamburger. Cheese on a sandwich, cheese in your fridge, that meant you were living the good life. In any township in South Africa, if you had a bit of money, people would say, “Oh, you’re a cheese boy.” In essence: You’re not really hood because your family has enough money to buy cheese.
对我们来说，终极升级版就是在上面加一片芝士。芝士是精华，因为它好贵。不用想什么金本位制了，街区信奉的是芝士本位制。在任何东西上加芝士都意味着钱。如果你有个汉堡，那很不错，但如果你有的是芝士汉堡，那就意味着你比那个买火腿汉堡的人更有钱。三明治上加芝士，冰箱里有芝士，这都表明你的生活水平不错。在南非的任何小镇上，只要你有点儿钱，人们都会说：“哦哟，你是个芝士男孩。”言下之意是，你不是真的街区人，因为你的家庭有钱买芝士。
In Alex, because Bongani and his crew lived in East Bank, they were considered cheese boys. Ironically, because they lived on the first street just over the river, they were looked down on as the scruff of East Bank and the kids in the nicer houses higher up in East Bank were the cheesier cheese boys. Bongani and his crew would never admit to being cheese boys. They would insist, “We’re not cheese. We’re hood.” But then the real hood guys would say, “Eh, you’re not hood. You’re cheese.” “We’re not cheese,” Bongani’s guys would say, pointing further up East Bank. “They’re cheese.” It was all a bunch of ridiculous posturing about who was hood and who was cheese.
在亚历山德拉，因为邦哈尼和他的伙伴们都住在东岸，所以都被认作是芝士男孩。讽刺的是，由于他们住在过河后的第一条街，住在东岸后面街道上那些更好的房子里的小孩是“更加芝士”的芝士男孩，所以看不起邦哈尼和他的小伙伴。邦哈尼和朋友们从来不承认自己是芝士男孩的一员，他们坚称：“我们不是芝士，我们属于街区。”但是真正的街区男孩们会说：“呃，你们才不属于街区，你们是芝士。”“我们不是芝士。”邦哈尼的伙伴们会说，并用手指向东岸远处，“他们才是芝士。”他们总是为了谁是街区谁是芝士而争个不停。
The unemployment rate, technically speaking, was “lower” in South Africa during apartheid, which makes sense. There was slavery — that’s how everyone was employed. When democracy came, everyone had to be paid a minimum wage. The cost of labor went up, and suddenly millions of people were out of work. The unemployment rate for young black men post-apartheid shot up, sometimes as high as 50 percent. What happens to a lot of guys is they finish high school and they can’t afford university, and even little retail jobs can be hard to come by when you’re from the hood and you look and talk a certain way. So, for many young men in South Africa’s townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up, maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill on the corner the whole day, talking shit. They’re free, they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.
严格来说，种族隔离时期的失业率反而要“低一些”，这是说得通的。因为有奴隶制度——人们就是像这样被雇佣的。而实现民主以后，法律规定所有人都要拿最低基本工资。雇佣劳动力的成本上去了，一夜之间，几百万人面临失业。种族隔离结束后，年轻黑人的失业率急速上涨，有时甚至能达到50%。很多人的情况是，高中毕业后付不起大学的学费，甚至连一个零售的工作都找不到，因为你来自街区，你的长相和说话方式都带着街区的味道。于是，对于很多生活在南非小镇的青年人来说，自由是这样的：每天早晨醒来，可能父母去上班了，也可能没去。他们就走出门，整天泡在街角玩，吹牛皮。他们是自由的，虽然他们已经被“授之以渔”，但是没人给他们钓鱼竿。
Bongani was the leader of his crew, the guy who got everyone together and got things moving. Then there was Mzi, Bongani’s henchman. Small guy, just wanted to tag along, be in the mix. Bheki was the drinks man, always finding us booze and always coming up with an excuse to drink. Then there was Kakoatse. We called him G. Mr. Nice Guy. All G was interested in was women. If women were in the mix, he was in the game. Then, finally, there was Hitler, the life of the party. Hitler just wanted to dance.
邦哈尼是一群小伙伴里的头儿，他能把所有人召集到一起，让大家一起去做什么事。这伙人里有个人叫门子，是邦哈尼的跟班，只是想随大流混在人群里。柏奇是队伍里的酒鬼，总能不知从哪儿变出酒来，也总能找到喝酒的借口。然后就是卡克茨，我们叫他G帅哥。G只对姑娘感兴趣。只要队伍里有姑娘，他就会来。最后，就是希特勒了，派对之魂。希特勒只想跳舞。
Cheese boys were in a uniquely fucked situation when apartheid ended. It is one thing to be born in the hood and know that you will never leave the hood. But the cheese boy has been shown the world outside. His family has done okay. They have a house. They’ve sent him to a decent school; maybe he’s even matriculated. He has been given more potential, but he has not been given more opportunity. He has been given an awareness of the world that is out there, but he has not been given the means to reach it.
在种族隔离制度终结以后，芝士男孩们的处境格外尴尬。一方面，如果你生在街区，心里就会明白自己永远不会离开街区，但是芝士男孩们已经见过外面的世界，他们的家庭条件不错，他们有小洋房，上过正规的学校，甚至可能考上了某所大学。他们拥有更多的潜力，但是并没有得到更多的机会。他们大概了解了一些外面的世界，但是没有办法真正融入到外面的世界里去。
In the hood, gangsters were your friends and neighbors. You knew them. You talked to them on the corner, saw them at parties. They were a part of your world. You knew them from before they became gangsters. It wasn’t, “Hey, that’s a crack dealer.” It was, “Oh, little Jimmy’s selling crack now.” The weird thing about these gangsters was that they were all, at a glance, identical. They drove the same red sports car. They dated the same beautiful eighteen-year-old girls. It was strange. It was like they didn’t have personalities; they shared a personality. One could be the other, and the other could be the one. They’d each studied how to be that gangster.
在街区里，你的朋友和邻居可能就是黑帮成员。你认识他们。你会和他们在街角聊天，在派对上遇到他们，他们是你的世界的一部分，你在他们成为黑帮成员之前就认识他们了。并不是说“嘿，那是个毒贩子”，而是“哦，小吉米开始贩毒了”。黑帮成员很奇怪的一点是，他们看上去都一模一样，开着同样的红色跑车，和同样漂亮的18岁姑娘约会。很奇怪。就好像他们没有自己的人格，共享同一个人格。这个人可以是那个人，那个人也可以是这个人。他们都学过如何去当那个黑帮成员。
One of the first things I learned in the hood is that there is a very fine line between civilian and criminal. We like to believe we live in a world of good guys and bad guys, and in the suburbs it’s easy to believe that, because getting to know a career criminal in the suburbs is a difficult thing. But then you go to the hood and you see there are so many shades in between.
我在街区里学到的第一件事，就是明白平民与罪犯之间的界限。我们总是觉得世界由好人和坏人组成，住在郊区会给你这样的感觉，因为你住在郊区，就难结识到职业罪犯。但如果你去街区，就会发现这之间有着许许多多的灰色地带。
My life of crime started off small, selling pirated CDs on the corner. That in itself was a crime, and today I feel like I owe all these artists money for stealing their music, but by hood standards it didn’t even qualify as illegal. At the time it never occurred to any of us that we were doing anything wrong — if copying CDs is wrong, why would they make CD writers?
我的犯罪生涯开始于在街角卖盗版碟。这确实是犯罪了，直到今天我都感觉我自己欠那些音乐家的钱，因为我偷了他们的音乐，但是以街区标准来看，这连违法的等级都算不上。在那个时候，我们从来没想过这件事有什么不对的地方——如果刻碟算犯罪的话，那商店里干吗会卖刻录机？
In the hood, even if you’re not a hardcore criminal, crime is in your life in some way or another. There are degrees of it. It’s everyone from the mom buying some food that fell off the back of a truck to feed her family, all the way up to the gangs selling military-grade weapons and hardware. The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.
在街区里，就算你不是真正意义上的罪犯，人生中也会或多或少接触到犯罪。只是程度不同而已。从那个去购买卡车后面滑落下来的食物来养家糊口的母亲，到卖军用武器和硬件的黑帮成员，都是在犯罪。街区让我意识到，犯罪连绵不绝，是因为犯罪这件事做了政府没有做到的事：犯罪活动关心你的人生。犯罪是这里的基础。照顾需要帮助的小孩，帮了他们一把的，正是犯罪活动。提供实习机会和暑期工作、给予你晋升机会的，正是犯罪活动。犯罪活动渗透在这个社区的角角落落。犯罪活动不会歧视任何人。
The garage of Bongani’s house opened up onto Springbok Cresent. Every morning we’d open the doors, run an extension cord out into the street, set up a table, and play music. People would walk by and ask, “What is that? Can I get one, please?” Our corner was also where a lot of minibus drivers ended their routes and turned around to loop back to the minibus rank. They’d swing by, place an order, come back, pick it up. Swing by, place an order, come back, pick it up. We spent our whole day running out to them, going back to the garage to make more mixes, and going back out to sell. There was a converted shipping container around the corner where we’d hang out when we got tired of the wall. It had a pay phone installed inside that we’d use to call people. When things were slow we’d wander back and forth between the container and the wall, talking and hanging out with the other people with nothing to do in the middle of the day. We’d talk to drug dealers, talk to gangsters. Every now and then the cops would come crashing through. A day in the life of the hood. Next day, same thing.
邦哈尼家车库的大门正对着跳羚弯。每天早晨，我们都会打开门，把电线接到外面，在路上支起一张桌子，开始放音乐。路过的人们会询问：“这是什么碟？我能买一张吗？”我们这个角落也是很多小巴司机的终点，他们会从这里调头回到小巴总站去。他们也会路过时下个订单，回头再来拿货。路过，下个订单，回来，拿货。我们一整天的时间都在接单，再回到车库刻录更多的碟，然后再拿回去卖。如果我们对那堵矮墙感到厌烦了，街角还有个改装过的旧集装箱，我们也会去那边玩。那里面有个付费电话，我们躲在里面给别人打电话。如果那天不太忙，我们就在矮墙和集装箱之间来来回回，和其他同样无所事事的人聊天玩耍。我们会和毒贩子聊天，也会和黑帮成员聊天。时不时地会有警察冲过来打断我们正在做的事。这就是在街区里的日常。到了第二天，一切照旧。
We started making more money. Never more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand rand at a time, but it was all cash on hand. Bongani was quick to realize the position we were in. Cash is the one thing everyone in the hood needs. Everyone’s looking for a short-term loan for something, to pay a bill or pay a fine or just hold things together. People started coming to us and asking for money. Bongani would cut a deal, and then he’d come to me. “Yo, we’re going to make a deal with this guy. We’re going to loan him a hundred, and he’s going to give us back one-twenty at the end of the week.” I’d say okay. Then the guy would come back and give us 120 rand. Then we did it again. Then we did it some more. We started to double our money, then triple our money.
我们挣的钱越来越多。尽管每次也不过几百兰特，最多一千兰特，但那都是实实在在攥在手里的现金。邦哈尼立刻意识到我们所处的地位。街区里的每个人都需要现金。每个人都在寻找短期借贷，来付一笔账单，交一笔罚款，或贴补家用。邦哈尼会出去谈生意，然后回来找我：“哟，我们可以和这个家伙做笔交易，我们借给他100块，这周末他还我们120。”我会说好的。然后那个人周末回来还给我们120兰特，我们再重复这个流程，再借更多钱出去。我们的财富开始呈两倍、三倍地增长。
Selling slowly evolved into hustling because Bongani saw all the angles and knew how to exploit them. Like Tom, Bongani was a hustler. But where Tom was only about the short con, Bongani had schemes: If we do this, we get that, then we can flip that for the other thing, which gives us the leverage we need to get something bigger. Some minibus drivers couldn’t pay up front, for example. “I don’t have the money, because I’ve just started my shift,” they’d say. “But I need new music. Can I owe you guys some form of credit? I’ll owe you a ride. I’ll pay you at the end of my shift, at the end of the week?” So we started letting drivers buy on credit, charging them a bit of interest.
卖碟逐渐演化为倒买倒卖，因为邦哈尼可以从各个地方发现商机，知道如何获得最大利润。邦哈尼和汤姆一样，也是个诡计多端的骗子，只不过汤姆是小拐小骗，而邦哈尼则更有谋略：如果我们这样做，会获得那样的结果，然后我们再把它转手换成别的，这就给了我们做更大生意的杠杆。譬如，有些小巴司机无法当场付钱：“我手上没钱，因为我这趟才刚开始跑。但是我需要新碟。我可以先赊着吗？你可以免费坐我的车。我这周末交班的时候就来付清，可以吗？”于是我们开始让小巴司机赊账，并从中获取少量利息。
Cash gave us leverage in the hood’s barter economy as well. It’s common knowledge that if you’re standing at a corner of a main street in the hood, somebody’s going to try to sell you something. “Yo, yo, yo, man. You want some weed?” “You wanna buy a VCR?” “You wanna buy a DVD player?” “Yo, I’m selling a TV.” That’s just how it works.
现金也给了我们在街区的物物交易中插上一脚的能力。众所周知，只要你站在街区某条主路的拐角，就总有人上前想卖给你点儿什么。“哟，哟，哟，老兄，要大麻不？”“要录像机吗？”“要DVD机吗？”“哟，我在卖电视。”就是这样的。
“Look, I understand you can’t pay for the DVD player now,” Bongani says. “But how much are you willing to pay for it?”
“看着，我知道你现在付不起DVD机的钱，”邦哈尼说，“但是你心理价位是多少？”
Let’s say we see two guys haggling on the corner, a crackhead trying to sell a DVD player and some working dude who wants it but doesn’t have the money because he hasn’t got his wages yet. They’re going back and forth, but the crackhead wants the money now. Crackheads don’t wait. There’s no layaway plan with a crackhead. So Bongani steps in and takes the working guy aside.
假设我们看到两个家伙在街角讨价还价，一个瘾君子想出手一台DVD机，另一个上班族想要，但是手头没有现金，因为还没拿到工资。他们在那来来回回地磨，但是瘾君子想立刻拿到现金，他可不想等。瘾君子的字典里没有分期付款的定义。这个时候，邦哈尼就会上前，将那个上班族拉到一边。
“I’ll pay one-twenty,” he says.
“我想的是120。”他说。
“How much do you want for the DVD player?”
“这台DVD机你想卖多少钱？”
Then Bongani takes the crackhead aside.
然后，邦哈尼再把瘾君子拉到一边。
“Okay, cool.”
“好的，酷。”
“I want one-forty.”
“我想要140。”
“Okay, listen. You’re a crackhead. This is a stolen DVD player. I’m going to give you fifty.”
“好的，听着。你是个瘾君子。这是台偷来的DVD机，我只能给你50。”
“But I don’t have the one-twenty.”
“但是我现在手上没有120块现金。”
The crackhead protests a bit, but then he takes the money because he’s a crackhead and it’s cash and crack is all about the now. Then Bongani goes back to the working guy.
那个瘾君子抗议了一会儿，但最终还是收下钱，毕竟他得嗑药，嗑药需要现金，必须立刻马上拿到钱。这时，邦哈尼再回去找那个上班族。
So now we’ve invested 50 rand with the crackhead and that gets us 140 from the working guy. But Bongani would see a way to flip it and grow it again. Let’s say this guy who bought the DVD player worked at a shoe store.
于是，我们给瘾君子投入了50兰特，从上班族那赚回了140。但是邦哈尼还能看到再将其翻倍的可能。假设这个买了DVD机的人在一家鞋店工作。
“All right. We’ll do one-twenty. Here’s your DVD player. It’s yours.”
“好了。120成交，这是你的DVD机了，是你的了。”
“It’s cool. You can take it now, only instead of one-twenty you give us one-forty when you get your wages.”
“没事。你先拿去，等你拿到工资，付给我140就行。”
“I can get a pair of Nikes for one-fifty.”
“我买一双的话大概150。”
“How much do you pay for a pair of Nikes with your staff discount?” Bongani would ask.
“用你的员工折扣买一双耐克大概多少钱？”邦哈尼会这么问。
“Okay.”
“好的。”
“Okay, instead of you giving us one-forty, we’ll give you ten and you get us a pair of Nikes with your discount.”
“好的，你不是还要给我140吗？现在我们给你十块，你用你的员工价帮我们买一双耐克。”
So now this guy’s walking away with a DVD player and 10 rand in his pocket. He’s feeling like he got a good deal. He brings us the Nikes and then we go to one of the cheesier cheese boys up in East Bank and we say, “Yo, dude, we know you want the new Jordans. They’re three hundred in the shops. We’ll sell them to you for two hundred.” We sell him the shoes, and now we’ve gone and turned 60 rand into 200.
于是这个家伙得到了DVD机，兜里还多了十块钱，他觉得自己做了笔好生意。他给我带来那双耐克鞋，我们去东岸找到那种特别芝士的芝士男孩，对他说：“哟，兄弟，我们知道你想要那双新乔丹鞋。店里要卖300块，我们200块卖给你了。”我们卖了那双鞋，就这样，我们把60兰特变成了200。
“Yeah, when white people lose stuff they have insurance policies that pay them cash for what they’ve lost, so it’s like they’ve lost nothing.”
“是啊，白人丢东西了以后，他们找保险公司赔偿他们的损失，等于他们什么也没丢。”
At first I didn’t know not to ask. I remember one time we bought a car stereo or something like that.
开始我不知道这不能问。我记得有一次我们买了个类似车载音响的东西。
That’s the hood. Someone’s always buying, someone’s always selling, and the hustle is about trying to be in the middle of that whole thing. None of it was legal. Nobody knew where anything came from. The guy who got us Nikes, did he really have a “staff discount”? You don’t know. You don’t ask. It’s just, “Hey, look what I found” and “Cool, how much do you want?” That’s the international code.
这就是街区。总有人在买，总有人在卖，倒买倒卖就是要在全程搅混水。没有哪一步是合法的，也没人知道这些东西是哪儿来的。那个帮我们拿到耐克鞋的家伙，他真的有“员工优惠”吗？你不知道。你也不问。对话只会是这样，“嘿，看看我找到了什么”，以及“酷，你要卖多少钱”。这是国际通用密码。
“But who did this belong to?” I said.
“但这原来是谁的？”我说。
“Eh, don’t worry about it,” one of the guys told me. “White people have insurance.”
“呃，别担心，”其中一个人告诉我，“白人有保险的。”
“Insurance?”
“保险？”
And that was as far as we ever thought about it: When white people lose stuff they get money, just another nice perk of being white.
于是，我们心里就只会这么想：白人丢东西之后能拿到钱，真是当白人的又一大好处。
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Sounds nice.”
“哦，好的，”我说，“听起来不错。”
It’s easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they’re willing to participate in. If a crackhead comes through and he’s got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he’s stolen out of the back of a supermarket, the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes. No. She’s thinking, My family needs food and this guy has Corn Flakes, and she buys the Corn Flakes.
如果你住在一个富裕安稳的世界里，远离犯罪，那么你很容易对犯罪这件事带有批判的眼光。但是街区告诉我，每个人心中对错的观念都不同，对于到底什么是犯罪，以及自己能接受参与多大程度的犯罪，也有不同的定义。如果一个瘾君子从超市偷了一大箱玉米片出来卖，前来购买的贫穷母亲并不会觉得我买这些玉米片，是在协助并教唆犯罪呢。不，她只会想，家里需要食物，这个人手上有玉米片，于是她就买了这些玉米片。
“What the hell is this?” I said.
“这是什么鬼？”我问。
“Mom, he stole it.”
“妈，他偷的。”
“But where did he get it from?”
“可是他从哪儿拿到的？”
My own mother, my super-religious, law-abiding mother who used to shit on me about breaking the rules and learning to behave, I’ll never forget one day I came home and in the kitchen was a giant box of frozen burger patties, like two hundred of them, from a takeaway place called Black Steer. A burger at Black Steer cost at least 20 rand.
而我自己的母亲，我那超级虔诚、遵纪守法、一直因为我违反规则而教训我让我学会遵纪守法的母亲——我永远也忘不了那天我回到家后，看到厨房里放着一大箱速冻的汉堡肉饼的情形，足足有两百多个肉饼，上面打着黑牛餐厅的标志。黑牛餐厅的一个汉堡要卖至少20兰特。
“We don’t know that.”
“我们可不知道啊。”
“Oh, some guy at work had these and was selling them,” she said. “I got a great discount.”
“哦，我上班的地方有个家伙卖给我的，”她说，“给我打了很低的折扣。”
When Bongani first said to me, “Let’s go to the hood,” I thought we were going to sell CDs and DJ parties in the hood. It turned out that we were selling CDs and DJing parties in order to capitalize a payday-lending and pawnshop operation in the hood. Very quickly that became our core business.
邦哈尼一开始对我说“我们去街区吧”的时候，我以为我们就是去那边卖卖碟，或者在派对上做做DJ。结果，我们卖碟做DJ，都是为了在街区里做小额贷款和当铺生意积累资本。很快，后者变成了我们的事业中心。
Of course, we ate the burgers. Then we thanked God for the meal.
当然了，那晚我们吃的就是肉饼，还感谢了上帝赐予我们美食。
“We do know that. Where the hell is some guy going to get all of these burger patties from, randomly?”
“我们知道。他认识的那个人能从哪儿搞来这么多汉堡肉饼啊？路上捡的吗？”
“I don’t know. He said he knew somebody who –“
“不知道。他说他认识一个人而那个人——”
Every day in the hood was the same. I’d wake up early. Bongani would meet me at my flat and we’d catch a minibus to Alex with my computer, carrying the giant tower and the giant, heavy monitor the whole way. We’d set it up in Bongani’s garage, and start the first batch of CDs. Then we’d walk. We’d go down to the corner of Nineteenth and Roosevelt for breakfast. When you’re trying to stretch your money, food is where you have to be careful. You have to plan or you’ll eat your profits. So every morning for breakfast we eat vetkoek, which is fried dough, basically. Those were cheap, like 50 cents a pop. We could buy a bunch of those and have enough energy to sustain us until later on in the day.
在街区里度过的每一天都是一样的。我早早起床，邦哈尼来我的公寓找我，我们坐小巴去亚历山德拉，带着我的电脑、巨大的主机以及那个又大又重的显示器。我们在邦哈尼家的车库把设备调试好，摆出第一批CD，然后我们走到十九街和罗斯福街的交叉口吃早餐。你想要用钱生钱的时候，可得留意你在吃上的开销。你得仔细算着，否则会把利润吃没了。每天早晨我们都会吃肥饼，一种基本是炸生面团的食物，很便宜，一块卖五毛钱。我们会买上一堆，这样就有足够的热量供我们撑到下午。
Then we’d sit on the corner and eat. While we ate, we’d be picking up orders from the minibus drivers as they went past. After that we’d go back to Bongani’s garage, listen to music, lift weights, make the CDs. Around ten or eleven, the drivers would start coming back from their morning routes. We’d take the CDs and head out to the corner for them to pick up their stuff. Then we’d just be on the corner, hanging out, meeting characters, seeing who came by, seeing where the day was going to take us. A guy needs this. A guy’s selling that. You never knew what it was going to be.
然后我们会坐在街角吃早饭。一边吃，一边接过路小巴司机的订单。接着，我们会回到邦哈尼的车库里，听听音乐，举举重，刻碟。到了10点或11点的时候，司机们陆陆续续结束了早班。我们会带上CD去街角，让他们各自认领自己的碟。之后，我们就在那街角待着，随便闲逛，见见人，看谁会路过，看这一天该怎么过。这个人需要这个，那个人在买那个，你永远不会知道接下来会发生什么。
There was always a big rush of business at lunch. We’d be all over Alexandra, hitting different shops and corners, making deals with everyone. We’d get free rides from the minibus drivers because we’d hop in with them and use it as an opportunity to talk about what music they needed, but secretly we were riding with the guy for free. “Hey, we want to collect orders. We’ll talk to you while you drive. What do you need? What music are you looking for? Do you need the new Maxwell? Okay, we got the new Maxwell. Okay, we’ll talk to you later. We’ll jump out here.” Then we’d hop on another ride going wherever we were going next.
午饭时分的生意单很多。我们会在亚历山德拉满城跑，去各种商店和街角，和各种人做生意。我们可以免费搭小巴，因为我们会假借和小巴司机讨论他们需要什么音乐，但暗地里就是不想给车钱。“嘿，我们来接订单的。你一边开车，我们一边聊。你需要什么？哪种音乐？你要新的麦克斯韦专辑吗？好的，我们有新的麦克斯韦。好，一会儿聊，我们先在这下车。”然后，我们再跳上另一辆车，带我们去接下来要去的地方。
After lunch, business would die down, and that’s when we’d get our lunch, usually the cheapest thing we could afford, like a smiley with some maize meal. A smiley is a goat’s head. They’re boiled and covered with chili pepper. We call them smileys because when you’re done eating all the meat off it, the goat looks like it’s smiling at you from the plate. The cheeks and the tongue are quite delicious, but the eyes are disgusting. They pop in your mouth. You put the eyeball into your mouth and you bite it, and it’s just a ball of pus that pops. It has no crunch. It has no chew. It has no flavor that is appetizing in any way.
中午的饭点过后，一般就没什么生意了，所以我们会在这时开始吃午饭，一般就是吃我们能找到的最便宜的食物，譬如一份“笑笑”配上玉米面。“笑笑”是羊头。清水煮过，洒了玉米面的羊头。我们叫它“笑笑”，是因为当你把它上面的肉吃完后，这只羊头看上去就好像在碟子里冲你笑一样。脸颊和舌头的肉很好吃，但是眼球很恶心，会在你的嘴里爆开。你把一只羊眼球放进嘴里，咬下去，一包脓浆会在你的嘴巴里爆裂，既不脆，也没有嚼劲儿，而且也一点儿都不入味。
We made some of the craziest trades. Moms in the hood are protective of their daughters, especially if their daughters are pretty. In Alex there were girls who got locked up. They went to school, came straight home, and went straight into the house. They weren’t allowed to leave. Boys weren’t allowed to talk to them, weren’t even allowed to hang around the house — none of that. Some guy was always going on about some locked-away girl: “She’s so beautiful. I’ll do anything to get with her.” But he couldn’t. Nobody could.
比如我们曾经做了好几笔疯狂的交易。街区里的妈妈们都很宝贝她们的女儿，尤其是漂亮女儿。在亚历山德拉，很多女孩儿是被锁在家里的。她们会去上学，放学后直接回家，直接进屋，再也不许出门。男孩子也不许跟她们讲话，甚至都不能在她们家门口徘徊——什么都不能。有些男生总是梦想和这些锁在家里的女孩儿们交往：“她太美了，如果能和她在一起，我什么都愿意做。”但是他没法和她在一起。没有人可以。
After lunch we’d head back to the garage, relax, sleep off the meal, and make more CDs. In the afternoons we’d see a lot of moms. Moms loved us. They were some of our best customers. Since moms run the household, they’re the ones looking to buy that box of soap that fell off the back of the truck, and they were more likely to buy it from us than from some crackhead. Dealing with crackheads is unpleasant. We were upstanding, well-spoken East Bank boys. We could even charge a premium because we added that layer of respectability to the transaction. Moms are also often the most in need of short-term loans, to pay for this or that for the family. Again, they’d rather deal with us than with some gangster loan shark. Moms knew we weren’t going to break anyone’s legs if they couldn’t pay. We didn’t believe in that. Also we weren’t capable of it — let’s not forget that part. But that’s where Bongani’s brilliance came in. He always knew what a person could provide pending their failure to pay.
吃过午饭，我们回到车库，放松一会儿，小睡一会儿，接着继续刻碟。到了下午，我们会遇见很多的妈妈们。妈妈们超爱我们，她们是我们最好的客户。因为妈妈们要管家，一直期待能买到那种从卡车后面滑落的成箱肥皂，而且比起和瘾君子打交道，她们更愿意从我们手上买。和瘾君子打交道并不是什么舒心的经历，而我们是正直、文雅的东岸男孩。我们甚至可以要更高的价格，因为我们的身份给这场交易蒙上了一层体面的光。妈妈们也很需要短期借贷，家里的各项支出都急需现金。同样，她们更愿意和我们做交易，而不愿去找那些放高利贷的黑帮。妈妈们知道，即使她们没还上钱，我们也不会打断任何人的腿。我们并不信奉暴力，另外我们也没那个能力——可别忘了这一点。这个时候，邦哈尼的聪明才智又要发挥用场了，他总是清楚当一个人付不出钱的时候，可以让他拿什么来抵债。
“Okay, so tonight we’re going to this party. You give us two cases of beer for the party.”
“好的，那今晚我们会来你的派对，到时候你要给我们两箱啤酒。”
“Hey, let’s make a deal. We’ll bring the girl to your party and you get to hang out with her. How much can you give us?”
“嘿，我们来做个交易吧，如果我们能把那个姑娘带到你的派对上来，让你和她相处相处的话，你愿意出多少钱？”
“I don’t have money,” he’d say, “but I have some cases of beer.”
“我没钱，”他说，“但我有几箱啤酒。”
Then that mom would need a loan. Once we lent her the money, until she paid us back she couldn’t chase us away from her house. We’d go by and hang out, chat, make small talk. The daughter would be right there, but the mom couldn’t say, “Don’t talk to those boys!” The loan gave us access to establish a relationship with the mom. We’d get invited to stay for dinner. Once the mom knew we were nice, upstanding guys, she’d agree to let us take her daughter to a party as long as we promised to get her home safely. So then we’d go to the guy who’d been so desperate to meet the daughter.
但是这个女孩儿的妈妈可能会需要一笔贷款。一旦我们把钱借给她，在她还钱之前，她都无法把我们从她家门口赶走。我们可以经过，进去坐坐，聊聊天。那个漂亮女儿会在家里，但她妈妈并不会说：“不许和那些男孩说话！”贷款让我们和这位母亲建立了联系。她会请我们去吃晚餐，而当这位母亲了解了我们是正直、文雅的男孩后，她会同意让我们带她女儿参加派对，只要我们保证能把她安全送回家就行。随后，我们再去找那个为了和这个女生见面什么都愿意做的家伙。
“Cool.”
“酷。”
Then we’d go to the party. We’d invite the girl, who was usually thrilled to escape her mother’s prison. The guy would bring the beer, he’d get to hang out with the girl, we’d write off the mom’s debt to show her our gratitude, and we’d make our money back selling the beer. There was always a way to make it work. And often that was the most fun part: working the angles, solving the puzzle, seeing what goes where, who needs what, whom we can connect with who can then get us the money.
我们去参加派对前，约上那个姑娘——她正为可以逃离母亲的牢笼而激动不已。那个男生带来了啤酒，也终于和心爱的姑娘见了面，而我们则把她妈妈欠我们的债一笔勾销以示感谢，随后再把那几箱酒卖了，把钱补回来。总有解决的办法，而这是最有趣的部分：拐个弯抹个角，解决难题，看谁走到了哪一步，谁又需要什么，我们可以联系到谁，让钱兜兜转转又回到我们手里。
At the peak of our operation we probably had around 10,000 rand in capital. We had loans going out and interest coming in. We had our stockpile of Jordans and DVD players we’d bought to resell. We also had to buy blank CDs, hire minibuses to go to our DJ gigs, feed five guys three times a day. We kept track of everything on the computer. Having lived in my mom’s world, I knew how to do spreadsheets. We had a Microsoft Excel document laid out: everybody’s name, how much they owed, when they paid, when they didn’t pay.
在我们生意巅峰的时候，我们手上大概有10000兰特的现金。我们有借贷，有利息，还存了一堆乔丹鞋和DVD机，我们从别人那买过来，等时机合适了再卖出去。我们还得买空白CD，雇小巴来装我们的DJ器材，每天还得喂饱五个人的肚子。我们把所有的细节都记在了电脑上。和我妈相处久了，我知道怎么做表格记账。我们做了一个Excel表格，记录了所有人的名字，他们欠我们多少钱，什么时候还了款，什么时候还没还。
After work was when business started to pick up. Minibus drivers picking up one last order, men coming home from work. The men weren’t looking for soap and Corn Flakes. They wanted the gear — DVD players, CD players, PlayStation games. More guys would come through selling stuff, too, because they’d been out hustling and stealing all day. There’d be a guy selling a cellphone, a guy selling some leather jackets, a guy selling shoes. There was this one dude who looked like a black version of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. He’d always come by at the end of his shift with the most random useless crap, like an electric toothbrush without the charger. One time he brought us an electric razor.
下班时分，我们的生意才真正开始火起来。小巴司机会过来取他们最后一份订单，上班族都在回家的路上，但他们的关注点不是肥皂盒、玉米片，而是各种器材——DVD播放机、CD播放机、游戏机。还有很多人开始过来卖东西，因为他们一天都在各种坑蒙拐骗加盗窃，是时候销赃了。有人在卖手机，有人卖皮夹克，有人卖鞋。有一个长得很像《辛普森一家》里的黑人版伯恩斯先生的家伙，总能在交班时间拿出最莫名其妙而且毫无用处的垃圾，譬如一个没有电池的电动牙刷。有一次，他给我们带来了一个电动剃须刀。
“What the hell is this?”
“这是什么鬼？”
Slowly the rush would start to taper off and we’d wind down. We’d make our last collections, go over our CD stock, balance our accounts. If there was a party to DJ that night we’d start getting ready for that. Otherwise, we’d buy a few beers and sit around and drink, talk about the day, listen to the gunshots in the distance. Gunshots went off every night, and we’d always try to guess what kind of gun it was. “That’s a nine-millimeter.” Usually there’d be a police chase, cop cars flying through after some guy with a stolen car. Then everyone would go home for dinner with their families. I’d take my computer, get back in a minibus, ride home, sleep, and then come back and do it all again the next day.
慢慢地，人潮散去，我们也开始放松下来。这时候，我们会清点一下货物，整理整理CD库存，算一下今天的收支明细。如果晚上接了DJ的活儿，那我们就要准备一下，不然我们就买点儿啤酒，无所事事地喝点儿，聊聊刚过去的这一天，听听远处传来的枪声。每天晚上都有枪声，我们总是试图通过声音来猜测那是哪个型号的枪。“应该是把口径9毫米的手枪。”当然，警察追逐戏也是固定节目，警车呼啸而过，追着前面开着刚偷来的车的家伙。最后，每个人都准备回家吃晚餐了，我也带上电脑，搭上一辆小巴，到家，睡觉。第二天再回来，把这所有的事再做一遍。
“It’s an electric razor?”
“这是电动剃须刀吧？”
“An electric razor? We’re black. Do you know what these things do to our skin? Do you see anyone around here who can use an electric razor?”
“电动剃须刀？我们是黑人。你知道用这种东西的话我们的皮肤会怎样吗？你见到周围有人用过电动剃须刀吗？”
We never knew where he was getting this stuff from. Because you don’t ask. Eventually we pieced it together, though: He worked at the airport. It was all crap he was boosting from people’s luggage.
我们永远不会知道他到底是从哪儿搞到这些东西的。因为我们不会问。但是我们最终还是从细枝末节拼出了答案：他在机场工作。那些没用的垃圾，都是他从别人的行李箱里摸出来的。
The tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working, working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happening at all. I was out there every day from seven a. m. to seven p. m., and every day it was: How do we turn ten rand into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? How do I turn fifty into a hundred? At the end of the day we’d spend it on food and maybe some beers, and then we’d go home and come back and it was: How do we turn ten into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? It was a whole day’s work to flip that money. You had to be walking, be moving, be thinking. You had to get to a guy, find a guy, meet a guy. There were many days we’d end up back at zero, but I always felt like I’d been very productive.
街区吊诡的地方在于，你总是在干活，干活，干活，你感觉好像有什么事情在发生，但其实什么都没有。每天从早上7点到晚上7点，都是一样的流程：我们怎么把10兰特变成20兰特？怎么把20变成50？怎么把50变成100？到了晚上，我们就把赚了的钱花在吃上，或许还有啤酒上，然后回家，第二天回来再重复：我们怎么把10变成20？怎么把20变成50？忙忙碌碌一整天，才能把钱翻倍。你得走来走去，到处晃悠，不停思考。你得找到这个人，跟那个人搭个话，再想办法认识认识那个人。很多时候，一天忙到最后，我们手上一分钱都不会剩下，但却总觉得自己赚了挺多。
Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet — tweets, Facebook posts, lists — you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel. If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d have earned an MBA. Instead I was majoring in hustling, something no university would give me a degree for.
倒买倒卖之于工作，就像上网之于读书。如果你把你一年在网上读到的文字加起来——推特、脸书推送、网页列表——那你读的文字量都约等于一吨书了，但事实上是，这一年里你一本书都没有读。当我回头想想，倒买倒卖就是那样。你投入了无限的精力进去，获得了最少的收获，就好像每天在转轮里跑步的仓鼠。如果我把同等的精力放在学习上，早就MBA毕业了。但事实却是，我只是专攻了倒买倒卖，没有哪个大学可以给我颁发个倒买倒卖学位证。
A year passed. Then two. I had stopped planning for school, and was no closer to having the money to enroll.
过了一年。两年。我已经不再想着去上大学了，而且也完全没有赚到学费。
When I first went into Alex, I was drawn by the electricity and the excitement of it, but more important, I was accepted there, more so than I’d been in high school or anywhere else. When I first showed up, a couple of people raised an eyebrow. “Who’s this colored kid?” But the hood doesn’t judge. If you want to be there, you can be there. Because I didn’t live in the hood I was technically an outsider in the hood, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like one.
我第一次到亚历山德拉的时候，就被那里永不停歇的活力和刺激深深吸引了，更重要的是，我被那里接纳了。我在那儿获得到的归属感，比我在高中或其他任何地方得到的都多。我第一次出现在那里的时候，确实有几个人抬了抬眉毛：“这个有色小孩是谁？”但街区并不会以貌取人。如果你想去那里住，就可以去那里住。因为我不住在那儿，所以从严格意义上说，我是个局外人，但是在那里，我却这辈子第一次感觉自己不是局外人。
The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.
街区的生活压力小，日子可以过得很舒适。你脑子里想的都是得过且过，所以也不必问自己什么大问题，譬如，我是谁？我应该在哪里？我做的足够与否？在街区里，你可以是一个40岁的老男人，住在自己妈妈房子里，四处向人借钱过活，也没人会看不起你。你在街区里不会觉得自己是个失败者，因为总有人比你更失败，让你感觉自己也不用再怎么努力，因为你身边最成功的人也没有比你成功多少。这让你活在一种了无生机的状态里，可以一动不动。
“Yeah, cool.”
“好的，我去。”
The hood has a wonderful sense of community to it as well. Everyone knows everyone, from the crackhead all the way through to the policeman. People take care of one another. The way it works in the hood is that if any mom asks you to do something, you have to say yes. “Can I send you?” is the phrase. It’s like everyone’s your mom, and you’re everyone’s kid.
街区里也有着很强的社区感。每个人认识每个人，从瘾君子到警察，都互相认识。人们会互相帮助。如果某个妈妈让你做什么，你就得去做。标准句型是“我可以劳烦你吗”，就好像所有人都是你妈妈，你是所有人的孩子一样。
“Can I send you?”
“我可以劳烦你吗？”
Then she gives you some money and you go buy milk and bread. As long as you aren’t busy and it doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t say no.
然后她会给你一些钱，你去买面包和牛奶。只要你当时没在忙，也不耽误你什么事，你都不会拒绝。
“Yeah, whaddya need?”
“可以啊，你需要什么？”
“I need you to go buy milk and bread.”
“我想你去帮我买面包和牛奶。”
The township polices itself as well. If someone’s caught stealing, the township deals with them. If someone’s caught breaking into a house, the township deals with them. If you’re caught raping a woman, pray to God the police find you before the township does. If a woman is being hit, people don’t get involved. There are too many questions with a beating. What’s the fight about? Who’s responsible? Who started it? But rape is rape. Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community.
小镇也有自己的治安系统。如果有人偷东西被抓，小镇上的人会管。如果有人入室抢劫被抓，小镇上的人也会管。如果你强奸妇女被抓，那你要赶快祈祷，宁可警察先到一步，也别落到小镇人民的手里。如果一个妇女被打了，人们并不太会管。因为挨打牵扯了太多问题，为什么被打？谁来负责？谁先动的手？但强奸就是强奸，盗窃就是盗窃，你玷污了社区的名声。
The biggest thing in the hood is that you have to share. You can’t get rich on your own. You have money? Why aren’t you helping people? The old lady on the block needs help, everyone pitches in. You’re buying beer, you buy beer for everyone. You spread it around. Everyone must know that your success benefits the community in one way or another, or you become a target.
住在街区里，最重要的事是学会分享。你不能一个人闷声发财。你有钱？那你为什么不帮助别人？邻居里哪个奶奶需要帮忙，所有人都会来伸出援手。你要是去买啤酒，就得给所有人都买上，四处分发。每个人都需要了解你获得的成就会以这样或那样的方式回馈给社区，否则你就会变成众矢之的。
“Yo, G, what’s going on? What’s up with the job?”
“哟，G，怎么了？工作怎么样了？”
“They accused me of stealing something and I got fired.”
“他们说我偷东西，我被开除了。”
“Oh, I don’t work there anymore.”
“哦，我不在那儿干了。”
One morning, after a month of G working at the place, we were hanging out on the wall, and G came out in his slippers and his socks. He wasn’t dressed for work.
G上了一个月班之后，有一天早晨，我们在矮墙上玩，G穿着拖鞋和袜子就出来了。他没穿工作正装。
The hood was strangely comforting, but comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling. In our crew, our friend G was like the rest of us, unemployed, hanging out. Then he got a job at a nice clothing store. Every morning he went to work, and the guys would tease him about going to work. We’d see him headed out all dressed up, and everyone would be laughing at him. “Oh, G, look at you in your fancy clothes!” “Oh, G, going to go see the white man today, huh?” “Oh, G, don’t forget to bring some books back from the library!”
生活在街区里，有种奇异的舒适感，但舒适的同时也很危险。舒适给了供你躺倒的地方，但也给了压在头顶的天花板。在我们那帮人里，朋友G本来和我们一样，也没工作，整天四处闲逛。但后来，突然有一天，他在一家服装店找到了工作。每个早晨去上班的时候，其他人就会取笑他。我们看着他穿着正装出门，所有人都会在一边嘲讽：“喔，G，看看你穿的那身儿衣服！”“喔，G，今天又要去见白人了，哈？”“喔，G，别忘了从图书馆拿几本书回来！”
And I’ll never forget thinking to myself that it felt like he did it on purpose. He sabotaged himself so that he’d get accepted back into the group again.
我永远不会忘记当时我脑内遏制不住的一个念头，我觉得他是故意的。他陷害了自己，这样才能重新被其他伙伴们接纳。
“Why?”
“为什么？”
The hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind, but it also never lets you leave. Because by making the choice to leave, you’re insulting the place that raised you and made you and never turned you away. And that place fights you back.
街区有种吸引力，它永远不会将你落下，也永远不会让你离开。因为你一旦决定离开，你就冒犯了这个生你养你、塑造了你、永不会背叛你的地方。这个地方会对你加倍奉还。
As soon as things start going well for you in the hood, it’s time to go. Because the hood will drag you back in. It will find a way. There will be a guy who steals a thing and puts it in your car and the cops find it — something. You can’t stay. You think you can. You’ll start doing better and you’ll bring your hood friends out to a nice club, and the next thing you know somebody starts a fight and one of your friends pulls a gun and somebody’s getting shot and you’re left standing around going, “What just happened?”
但一旦你在街区的生活变得顺心遂意，那你就该离开了。因为街区会将你拖下深渊，它总有办法，总会有某个家伙偷了东西后，把东西扔在你的车里，结果被警察找到。你不能留下来，你以为你可以，甚至开始想要做更多好事，把你的街区朋友带到某个高级俱乐部玩，但不一会儿，你身边人就打起架来，你的朋友掏出了枪，有人中了弹，而你留在原地，一头雾水：“刚刚发生了什么？”
The hood happened.
只是发生了街区里会发生的事。
One night I was DJ’ing a party, not in Alex but right outside Alex in Lombardy East, a nicer, middle-class black neighborhood. The police were called about the noise. They came busting in wearing riot gear and pointing machine guns. That’s how our police roll. We don’t have small and then big. What Americans call SWAT is just our regular police. They came looking for the source of the music, and the music was coming from me. This one cop came over to where I was with my computer and pulled this massive assault rifle on me.
有一天晚上，我正在一个派对上当DJ，不在亚历山德拉，而是在紧挨着亚历山德拉的伦巴第东，这里是一个稍微富裕些的中产阶级黑人社区。有人报了警，投诉说噪音太大。警察穿着防爆装备冲了进来，端着机关枪。我们的警察就是这样出警的，没有小情况，只有大事件。美国人所说的特种部队，对我们来说只是常规警察。他们过来查看噪音的源头，就是我。一个警察冲着我和我的电脑走过来，将他的冲锋枪对准我。
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m shutting it down.”
“好的，好的，”我说，“我在关了。”
“You gotta shut this down right now.”
“把音乐关掉，现在。”
“Shut it down! Shut it down!”
“关掉！关掉！”
But I was running Windows 95. Windows 95 took forever to shut down. I was closing windows, shutting down programs. I had one of those fat Seagate drives that damaged easily, and I didn’t want to cut the power and possibly damage the drive. This cop clearly didn’t give a fuck about any of that.
但我当时电脑系统是Windows 95，而Windows 95关起机来大概需要一辈子的时间。我忙着一个一个关闭窗口，退出程序，我有一个很容易受损的希捷硬盘，所以不想直接切断电源，那样会对硬盘造成伤害。但警察很显然一点儿也不在乎。
“I am! I’m shutting it down! I have to close the programs!”
“我在关！我在关呢！我得先关掉程序！”
The tear gas had nothing to do with me or the music. Tear gas is just what the police use to shut down parties in black neighborhoods, like the club turning on the lights to tell everyone to go home.
催泪弹和我以及音乐本身都没有关系。催泪弹只是警察用来关闭黑人社区的派对的常规手段，就好像夜店打开灯，告诉所有人该回家了一样。
The crowd was getting angry, and the cop was getting nervous. He turned his gun away from me and shot the computer. Only he clearly didn’t know anything about computers because he shot the monitor. The monitor exploded but the music kept playing. Now there was chaos — music blaring and everyone running and panicking because of the gunshot. I yanked the power cord out of the tower to shut the thing down. Then the cops started firing tear gas into the crowd.
群众开始骚动不安，警察也越发紧张。他调转枪口，直接射向了电脑。不过，他可能不太懂什么是电脑，因为他射击的是显示器，显示器爆炸了，但音乐还在响。现场一团混乱——音乐震耳欲聋，所有人都在四处乱窜，被枪声吓得不行。我一把拔下主机电源，音乐没了，但此时，警察又开始向人群投掷催泪弹。
I lost the hard drive. Even though the cop shot the monitor the explosion somehow fried the thing. The computer would still boot up, but it couldn’t read the drive. My music library was gone. Even if I’d had the money for a new hard drive, it had taken me years to amass the music collection. There was no way to replace it. The DJ’ing business was over. The CD-selling business was done. All of a sudden our crew lost its main revenue stream. All we had left was the hustle, and we hustled even harder, taking the bit of cash we had on hand and trying to double it, buying this to flip it for that. We started eating into our savings, and in less than a month we were running on dust.
我的硬盘没了。尽管警察冲着显示器开枪，但不知怎么我的硬盘却烧了。电脑还能开机，但是读不出这个硬盘。我的音乐库没了。尽管我有钱买一个新硬盘，但是我几年积累起来的音乐全没了。没有办法可以弥补。我的DJ生涯到次年结束，贩卖盗版碟的生意也戛然而止。突然之间，我们的小团体失去了主要收入来源。我们的技能只剩下了倒买倒卖。于是，我们只有更加勤奋地倒买倒卖，拿着一点儿现金，努力让它翻倍，买这个换那个。到后来，我们开始花积蓄，但不出一个月，我们便身无分文，只能吃土了。
Then, one evening after work, our friend from the airport, the black Mr. Burns, came by.
有天晚上，我们那位在机场工作的朋友——黑人版的伯恩斯先生——下班后来找我们。
“What’ve you got?”
“你找到什么了？”
“Hey, look what I found,” he said.
“嘿，看我找到什么了。”他说。
“A camera.”
“照相机。”
I’ll never forget that camera. It was a digital camera. We bought it from him, and I took it and turned it on. It was full of pictures of a nice white family on vacation, and I felt like shit. The other things we’d bought had never mattered to me. Nikes, electric toothbrushes, electric razors. Who cares? Yeah, some guy might get fired because of the pallet of Corn Flakes that went missing from the supermarket, but that’s degrees removed. You don’t think about it. But this camera had a face. I went through those pictures, knowing how much my family pictures meant to me, and I thought, I haven’t stolen a camera. I’ve stolen someone’s memories. I’ve stolen part of someone’s life.
我永远不会忘记那台相机。那是一台数码相机。我们从他手里买了过来。我拿着相机，打开之后，发现里面都是一个白人家庭的度假照片，我感觉糟透了。我们买的其他所有东西，对我来说从来都不重要，耐克鞋、电动牙刷、电动剃须刀。谁在乎？是啊，可能会有人因为超市里丢了一小拖车玉米片被开除，但那不过是小事一桩。你不会去多想。但是这个相机里全是人的面孔。看着那些照片，我想起了我的家庭照片对我来说意味着什么，我心里想，我偷的不是相机，而是某个人的回忆，我偷了属于某个人的一部分生活。
It’s such a strange thing, but in two years of hustling I never once thought of it as a crime. I honestly didn’t think it was bad. It’s just stuff people found. White people have insurance. Whatever rationalization was handy. In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see their face. We don’t see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don’t live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.
这真的很奇怪，但是在两年倒买倒卖的生涯中，我从来没想过我在犯罪。我真的不觉得这是一件坏事。这只是人们找到的东西罢了。反正白人有保险。只要能找到合适的理由，一切都顺理成章。在社会中，我们彼此伤害，是因为我们看不到受伤之人的样子。我们看不到他的表情。我们不觉得他们也是人。这也是为什么会出现街区的终极理由——把种族隔离出去的那群人赶得远远的，眼不见心不烦。因为如果白人有一瞬间把黑人当人看的话，就会发现奴隶制是如此不合理。在我们生活着的世界里，我们完全看不到自己做的事情会对他人造成什么影响，因为我们并不住在同一个地方。如果一个投资银行家和那个借了次级房贷的人住在一起的话，那投资银行家估计会不忍心从贷款人手里大肆捞钱。如果我们能够看到彼此的痛苦，彼此同情对方的处境的话，我们从一开始可能就不会去犯罪了。
As much as we needed the money, I never sold the camera. I felt too guilty, like it would be bad karma, which I know sounds stupid and it didn’t get the family their camera back, but I just couldn’t do it. That camera made me confront the fact that there were people on the other end of this thing I was doing, and what I was doing was wrong.
尽管我们当时很需要钱，但我没有转手卖掉相机。我感觉太内疚了，好像这会带来厄运一般，我知道这很蠢，那家人也拿不回相机了，但我就是无法将它出手。那台相机时刻提醒着我，我所做的这一切，都有人在另一头为此受罪，而我所做的事是错的。
We took a minibus over to Diepkloof the night of the dance, me and Bongani, Mzi and Bheki and G, and Hitler. Hector won the competition. Then G was caught kissing one of their girls, and it turned into a fight and everything broke down. On our way back to Alex, around one in the morning, as we were pulling out of Diepkloof to get on the freeway, some cops pulled our minibus over. They made everyone get out and they searched it. We were standing outside, lined up alongside the car, when one of the cops came back.
那天晚上，我们乘上小巴去迪普克鲁夫，一行人里包括我、邦哈尼、门子、柏奇、G和希特勒。赫克托赢了比赛。G被人抓到在和那边的一个女孩接吻，结果爆发了一场群架，所有的东西都被砸碎了。半夜1点，我们准备回亚历山德拉，但刚刚驶出迪普克鲁夫拐上高速，一些警察就拦下了我们的小巴。他们让我们下车，把整辆车搜了一遍。我们站在车外，沿路排成一排。一名警察走过来。
One night our crew got invited to dance in Soweto against another crew. Hitler was going to compete with their best dancer, Hector, who was one of the best dancers in South Africa at the time. This invitation was a huge deal. We were going over there repping our hood. Alex and Soweto have always had a huge rivalry. Soweto was seen as the snobbish township and Alexandra was seen as the gritty and dirty township. Hector was from Diepkloof, which was the nice, well-off part of Soweto. Diepkloof was where the first million-rand houses were built after democracy. “Hey, we’re not a township anymore. We’re building nice things now.” That was the attitude. That’s who we were up against. Hitler practiced a whole week.
有一天晚上，我们的团队被邀请去索韦托和另一伙人斗舞。希特勒要和他们中最好的舞者赫克托较量高下，赫克托是当时南非最棒的舞者之一。这封邀请函可是件大事，我们是代表我们的街区前去应战。亚历山德拉和索韦托这两个镇一直在较劲。索韦托被认为是个很势利的小镇，而亚历山德拉则被认为是肮脏下流的地方。赫克托来自迪普克鲁夫，那里是索韦托的富人区。在民主之后，迪普克鲁夫建起了第一批百万豪宅，仿佛在宣告“嘿，我们不再是小镇了，我们现在开始修高档房子了”。我们必须要与这样的地方较量一下，为此，希特勒辛苦练习了一整周。
“You guys are trash,” the cop said. “Where are you from?”
“你们都是垃圾，”那警察说，“你们从哪儿来？”
At a certain point we realized what was going on. This cop was shaking us down for a bribe. “Spot fine” is the euphemism everyone uses. You go through this elaborate dance with the cop where you say the thing without saying the thing.
忽然，我们明白发生了什么。警察是在问我们要贿赂。用委婉语来说就是，“现场罚款”。你要按着警察精心设计的步骤来，用不挑明的方式把事情说明白。
“I don’t care. You’re all going to jail until we figure out whose gun this is.”
“我不管。在我们查明枪是谁的以前，你们都要蹲监狱。”
We all shrugged.
我们都耸耸肩。
Then he went down the line, slapping each of us across the face, berating us about the gun. We couldn’t do anything but stand there and take it.
接着，他开始按顺序扇我们每个人巴掌，挨个揍，问我们说不说枪是谁的。我们无法反抗，只有站在原地任由他打。
“Officer, we really don’t know,” Bongani said.
“但是，我们真的不知道啊。”邦哈尼说。
“What do you want me to do?”
“你们想让我怎么样？”
“You’re bullshitting me!”
“你再跟我胡说八道！”
He slapped Bongani hard across the face.
他重重地扇了邦哈尼一巴掌。
“Ohhhhh, okay, I see. Dogs from Alex. You come here and you rob people and you rape women and you hijack cars. Bunch of fucking hoodlums.”
“哦哦哦，好的，我知道了。亚历山德拉狗。你们来这儿偷东西，强奸妇女，拦路抢劫，是吧。一群下贱的流氓串子。”
“No, we’re dancers. We don’t know –“
“不是，我们是舞者。我们不知道——”
“Alex.”
“亚历山德拉。”
“Nope, somebody knows. It’s somebody’s gun.”
“不可能，肯定有人知道。这是某个人的枪。”
“We’ve found a gun,” he said. “Whose gun is it?”
“我们找到一把枪，”他说，“谁的枪？”
“We don’t know,” we said.
“不知道。”我们说。
“Can’t we do something?” you ask the officer.
“就没什么我们能做的吗？”你哀求警官。
“You tell me.”
“你告诉我啊。”
“You’re not from Alex,” he said. “What are you doing with these crooks?” I didn’t know what to say. He glared at me hard. “Listen here, rich boy. You think it’s fun running around with these guys? This isn’t play-play anymore. Just tell me the truth about your friends and the gun, and I’ll let you go.”
“你不是亚历山德拉人啊？”他说，“那你和这帮混球在一起搞什么？”我不知道怎么回答。他狠狠地瞪着我说：“听着，富少爷，你以为和这些人厮混很好玩是吗？这可不是过家家。跟我说实话，供出来到底是他们谁的枪，我就让你走。”
“We’re really sorry, Officer. What can we do?”
“我们真的很抱歉，警官。有什么我们能做的吗？”
Then you’re supposed to make up a story whereby you indicate to the cop how much money you have on you. Which we couldn’t do because we didn’t have any money. So he took us to jail. It was a public bus. It could have been anyone’s gun, but the guys from Alex were the only ones who got arrested. Everyone else in the car was free to go. The cops took us to the police station and threw us in a cell and pulled us out one by one for questioning. When they pulled me aside I had to give my home address: Highlands North. The cop gave me the most confused look.
这时轮到你编故事了，故事里要暗示一下，让警察听你现在身上有多少钱，我们没法这么做，因为我们当时没有钱。于是他就把我们关进了监狱。那辆小巴是公共小巴，那把枪可以是任何人的枪，但是只有来自亚历山德拉的几个家伙被抓，车里其他人都没事。警察把我们带回警察局，把我们关在一间牢房里，再将我们一个个拎出去审问。他们审问我的时候，我写下了我家的地址：高地北。这些警察一脸迷惑地望着我。
I told him no, and he threw me back in the cell. We spent the night, and the next day I called a friend, who said he could borrow the money from his dad to get us out. Later that day the dad came down and paid the money. The cops kept calling it “bail,” but it was a bribe. We were never formally arrested or processed. There was no paperwork.
我拒绝后，他把我丢回了牢房。我们在这过了一夜，第二天我给一个朋友打电话，他说可以跟他爸爸借一些钱，保我们出去。那天晚些时候，朋友的父亲过来付了钱。警察说这叫“保释金”，但其实就是贿赂。我们没有被正式批捕或审判，也没有留下任何档案记录。
We got out and everything was fine, but it rattled us. Every day we were out in the streets, hustling, trying to act as if we were in some way down with the gangs, but the truth was we were always more cheese than hood. We had created this idea of ourselves as a defense mechanism to survive in the world we were living in. Bongani and the other East Bank guys, because of where they were from, what they looked like — they just had very little hope. You’ve got two options in that situation. You take the retail job, flip burgers at McDonald’s, if you’re one of the lucky few who even gets that much. The other option is to toughen up, put up this facade. You can’t leave the hood, so you survive by the rules of the hood.
从警察局出去后，一切都恢复了平静，但这件事却令我们感到恐慌。每天我们都在街上胡闹，倒买倒卖，表现得好像我们和那些黑帮是一伙儿的，但事实是，我们就是比街区里的人更“芝士”的芝士男孩。为了要在这个世界生存下去，我们在心里给自己塑造出了那样一个形象。邦哈尼和其他那些东安的伙伴，只因为他们来自的地方和皮肤的颜色，人生就没有了盼头。在那种处境下，你大概只有两个选择。要么接下那份零售工作，或者在麦当劳煎汉堡肉饼——这还得是在你足够幸运的情况下——要么选择强大起来，戴上面具，正面迎上去。你既然离不开街区，就要按照街区的法则生存下去。
I chose to live in that world, but I wasn’t from that world. If anything, I was an imposter. Day to day I was in it as much as everyone else, but the difference was that in the back of my mind I knew I had other options. I could leave. They couldn’t.
我选择活在那个世界里，但我并不来自那个世界。如果非要说的话，我就是个冒名顶替的家伙。我身在其中，一天又一天地过着，貌似和所有人一样，但不同的是，在意识深处，我明白我有其他选择。我可以离开。他们不行。
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