Richard Yates

《十一种孤独》

建筑师 Builders

我有个小花招，可以将自己与他人隔绝开来（很容易；你只要做到：双眼直盯着说话者的嘴巴，观察他说话的节奏，嘴唇、舌头无穷变幻的形状，你就什么也听不见了）

I have a trick of tuning out on people (it’s easy; all you do is fix your eyes on the speaker’s mouth and watch the rhythmic, endlessly changing shapes of lips and tongue, and the first thing you know you can’t hear a word), and I was about to start doing that when he said:

我刚才提到了‘建筑’；嗯，你看，你知道写小说也是建造什么吗？就像建座房子？”他很满意自己创造的这个意象，甚至等不及接受我奖励给他的认真的点头赞许。“我是说一所房子得有屋顶，但如果你先建屋顶就麻烦了，是不是？在你建屋顶前，你得砌好墙。在你砌墙前，你得打好地基——我的意思是从头至尾。在你打好地基前，你还得用推土机平整土地，在正确的地点挖合适的坑。对不对？”我完全同意他的说法，可他还是忽视了我全神贯注的、谄媚的凝视。他用手背蹭了蹭鼻梁；然后又洋洋得意地转向我。 　“那好，假设你为自己建造一座那样的房子。那会怎样？当房子建好后，你问自己的第一个问题会是什么？”　　　　我看得出他才不在乎我含糊不清的声音说没说出这个问题。他知道问题是什么，他迫不及待要告诉我。 　“窗户在哪里？”他摊开双手，迫切地问。“就是这个问题。光线从哪里进来？因为你明白我说的光线从哪里进来是什么意思，对吗，鲍勃？我是说小说的观点；文中蕴含的真理；还有——” “启示之类的，”我说，他用力地、快乐地弹了个响指，停止了对第三个名词的继续搜寻。

“Well, very nice,” he said. “I won’t take time to read this other one now, but this first one’s very nice. ’Course, naturally, as you said, this is a very different kind of material you got here, so it’s a little hard for me to—you know—” and he dismissed the rest of this difficult sentence with a wave of the hand. “I’ll tell you what, though, Bob. Instead of just reading here, let me ask you a couple of questions about writing. For example.” He closed his eyes and delicately touched their lids with his fingers, thinking, or more likely pretending to think, in order to give added weight to his next words. “For example, let me ask you this. Supposing somebody writes you a letter and says, ‘Bob, I didn’t have time to write you a short letter today, so I had to write you a long one instead.’ Would you know what they meant by that?”“I mean a house has got to have a roof, but you’re going to be in trouble if you build your roof first, right? Before you build your roof you got to build your walls. Before you build your walls you got to lay your foundation—and I mean all the way down the line. Before you lay your foundation you got to bulldoze and dig yourself the right kind of hole in the ground. Am I right?”

I couldn’t have agreed with him more, but he was still ignoring my rapt, toadying gaze. He rubbed the flange of his nose with one wide knuckle; then he turned on me triumphantly again.

“So all right, supposing you build yourself a house like that. Then what? What’s the first question you got to ask yourself about it when it’s done?”

But I could tell he didn’t care if I muffed this one or not. He knew what the question was, and he could hardly wait to tell me.

“Where are the windows?” he demanded, spreading his hands. “That’s the question. Where does the light come in? Because do you see what I mean about the light coming in, Bob? I mean the—the philosophy of your story; the truth of it; the—”

“The illumination of it, sort of,” I said, and he quit groping for his third noun with a profound and happy snap of the fingers.

“That’s it. That’s it, Bob. You got it.”

这过程中，我一直摆弄着那张钞票，折叠、摊开，再折叠、再摊开，我觉得手里握着的是我这一生中最不想要的东西。

I thought I heard his footsteps pause on the stairs, but I didn’t hear any answering “Goodnight” from him, so I guessed that all he’d done was to turn around and wave to her, or blow her a kiss. Then from the window I saw him move out across the sidewalk and get into his taxicab and drive away. All this time I was folding and refolding his money, and I don’t believe I’ve ever held anything in my hand that I wanted less.

“Was it really necessary,” she inquired, “to be so dreadfully unpleasant to him?”

And this, at the time, seemed clearly to be the least loyal possible thing she could have said, the unkindest cut of all. “Unpleasant to him! Unpleasant to him! Would you mind telling me just what the hell I’m supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit around being ‘pleasant’ while some cheap, lying little parasitic leech of a cab driver comes in here and bleeds me white? Is that what you want? Huh? Is that what you want?”

Then she did what she often used to do at moments like that, what I sometimes think I’d give anything in life never to have seen her do: she turned away from me and closed her eyes and covered her ears with both hands.

老实说，这么多年来我很少想起他。如果告诉你们我每次坐进出租车里都要凑近去看看司机后脑勺和侧面，这倒是神来之笔，可这不是真的。但有件事是真的，只不过我才意识到，为写封微妙的私人信件，我绞尽脑汁想一个恰当措词时，我想起来：“今天我没时间给你写封短信，所以我还是给你写封长的吧。” I can’t honestly say that I’ve thought very much about him over the years. It might be a nice touch to tell you that I never get into a taxicab without taking a close look at the driver’s neck and profile, but it wouldn’t be true. One thing that is true, though, and it’s just now occurred to me, is that very often in trying to hit on the right wording for some touchy personal letter, I’ve thought of: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter today, so I had to write you a long one instead.”

接着该讲讲我和琼的故事，这是我给你们的烟囱了。我只得告诉你们她和我所建的东西倒塌了，早在几年前就塌了。噢，我们现在还很友好——不会再有抚养费、监护权的法律之战，或那之类的事情——就到这里。

That takes the story right on up to Joan and me, and now I’ll have to give you the chimney top. I’ll have to tell you that what she and I were building collapsed too, a couple of years ago. Oh, we’re still friendly—no legal battles over alimony, or custody, or anything like that—but there you are.

那窗户在哪里？光线从哪里进来？

伯尼，老朋友，原谅我吧，我还没找到这个答案。我不敢肯定这间房子里有没有窗户。也许光线打算从建筑工人马虎粗糙的手艺留下的那些缝隙、裂缝中钻进来，如果是这样，你们可以确信没人比我感觉更糟。老天爷知道，伯尼；老天爷知道，这儿总有个什么地方会有窗户的，一扇我们大家的窗户。

and where are the windows? Where does the light come in?

Bernie, old friend, forgive me, but I haven’t got the answer to that one. I’m not even sure if there are any windows in this particular house. Maybe the light is just going to have to come in as best it can, through whatever chinks and cracks have been left in the builder’s faulty craftsmanship, and if that’s the case you can be sure that nobody feels worse about it than I do. God knows, Bernie; God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.

自讨苦吃 A Glutton for Punishment

亨德森九岁那会儿，有一阵子觉得装死是最浪漫的，一些小伙伴们也这样看。他们发现警昨晚刚洗的衣察抓强盗的游戏中真正有意思的就是假装被枪打中，捧着胸口，扔掉手，现在应该把枪，匍匐在地。不久，大家就撇开游戏的其他部分不玩了，如选择站在哪一边，偷偷摸摸地到处躲藏什么的，麻烦得很，他们只玩游戏的精华部分。结果这游戏就成了一场个人表演，几乎像一门艺术。每次会有一个人从山顶上冲下来，跑到指定的地方，受到伏击：许多把准备好的玩具手，现在应该把枪同时抠动扳机，喊哑的嗓门七嘴八舌响起——一种沙沙的轻声“砰！砰！”——这是男孩们在模仿手，现在应该把枪的声音。接下来，表演者要站住、转身、摆出一个优雅的痛苦姿势，并停留片刻，然后一头栽倒，手脚并用滚下山坡，卷起一阵尘土，最后平趴在地，成了一具皱巴巴的尸体。然后他站起来，掸去身上的泥土，这时其他伙伴就开始评论他的形体姿势（“好极了，”或“太僵硬，”或“不太自然”），然后轮到下一个上场。这就是整个游戏了，沃特很喜欢。他个头瘦小、协调能力差，这是唯一一个他能胜任的、有些类似于体育运动的活动。他蜷着身子滚下山去的样子，没人能比得上他的这种狂热，他陶醉在大家的欢呼声中。后来，一些年纪大点的孩子嘲笑他们，其他人也慢慢厌倦了这个游戏；沃特只有勉强地加入到其他益智游戏中去，不久他也把这忘记了。

FOR A LITTLE while when Walter Henderson was nine years old he thought falling dead was the very zenith of romance, and so did a number of his friends. Having found that the only truly rewarding part of any cops-and-robbers game was the moment when you pretended to be shot, clutched your heart, dropped your pistol and crumpled to the earth, they soon dispensed with the rest of it—the tiresome business of choosing up sides and sneaking around—and refined the game to its essence. It became a matter of individual performance, almost an art. One of them at a time would run dramatically along the crest of a hill, and at a given point the ambush would occur: a simultaneous jerking of aimed toy pistols and a chorus of those staccato throaty sounds— a kind of hoarse-whispered “Pk-k-ew! Pk-k-ew!”—with which little boys simulate the noise of gunfire. Then the performer would stop, turn, stand poised for a moment in graceful agony, pitch over and fall down the hill in a whirl of arms and legs and a splendid cloud of dust, and finally sprawl flat at the bottom, a rumpled corpse. When he got up and brushed off his clothes, the others would criticize his form (“Pretty good,” or “Too stiff,” or “Didn’t look natural”), and then it would be the next player’s turn. That was all there was to the game, but Walter Henderson loved it. He was a slight, poorly coordinated boy, and this was the only thing even faintly like a sport at which he excelled. Nobody could match the abandon with which he flung his limp body down the hill, and he reveled in the small acclaim it won him. Eventually the others grew bored with the game, after some older boys had laughed at them; Walter turned reluctantly to more wholesome forms of play, and soon he had forgotten about it.

他们一起走进厨房，他立刻感到被厨房的湿润明亮给包围住，陷在这湿润明亮之中了。他的眼睛忧郁地扫过牛奶盒、蛋黄酱罐子，汤盆和麦片盒，窗沿上桃子摆成一线，还没熟，两个孩子柔弱娇嫩，叽叽喳喳说着话，小脸蛋上沾着点土豆泥。

他朝房间里一把舒服的椅子走过去，背影明确宣告失败即将到来。他在地毯边上停下脚步，身体好像变得僵硬，一个受伤的男人，把自己拼凑起来；他转过身，面对她，想给她一丝忧郁的微笑。

“嗯，亲爱的——”他开口道。他的右手伸出来，摸着衬衣中间的钮扣，好像要解开它，接着长叹一声，颓然地向后倒进椅子里，一只脚耷拉在地毯上，另一只脚蜷在身下。这是他一天中做过的最优雅的事。“他们找我了，”他说

He began to walk slowly away toward an easy chair across the room, and the shape of his back was an eloquent statement of impending defeat. At the edge of the carpet he stopped and seemed to stiffen, a wounded man holding himself together; then he turned around and faced her with the suggestion of a melancholy smile.

“Well, darling—” he began. His right hand came up and touched the middle button of his shirt, as if to unfasten it, and then with a great deflating sigh he collapsed backward into the chair, one foot sliding out on the carpet and the other curled beneath him. It was the most graceful thing he had done all day. “They got me,” he said.

万事如意 The Best of Everything

他生活中的事情总是这样；只有他领上更像样的薪水后他才能拥有那样的包，他认了——就像只有结婚后他才能得到他的新娘一样，这个事实他也只有无条件接受，想到这里，他生平第一次低声叹了口气。