In the spring of 1917, when Doctor Richard Diver first arrived in Zurich, he was twenty-six years old, a fine age for a man, indeed the very acme of bachelorhood. Even in war-time days, it was a fine age for Dick, who was already too valuable, too much of a capital investment to be shot off in a gun. Years later it seemed to him that even in this sanctuary he did not escape lightly, but about that he never fully made up his mind—in 1917 he laughed at the idea, saying apologetically that the war didn’t touch him at all. Instructions from his local board were that he was to complete his studies in Zurich and take a degree as he had planned.

Switzerland was an island, washed on one side by the waves of thunder around Gorizia and on another by the cataracts along the Somme and the Aisne. For once there seemed more intriguing strangers than sick ones in the cantons, but that had to be guessed at—the men who whispered in the little cafés of Berne and Geneva were as likely to be diamond salesmen or commercial travellers. However, no one had missed the long trains of blinded or one-legged men, or dying trunks, that crossed each other between the bright lakes of Constance and Neuchatel. In the beer-halls and shop-windows were bright posters presenting the Swiss defending their frontiers in 1914—with inspiring ferocity young men and old men glared down from the mountains at phantom French and Germans; the purpose was to assure the Swiss heart that it had shared the contagious glory of those days. As the massacre continued the posters withered away, and no country was more surprised than its sister republic when the United States bungled its way into the war.

Doctor Diver had seen around the edges of the war by that time: he was an Oxford Rhodes Scholar from Connecticut in 1914. He returned home for a final year at Johns Hopkins, and took his degree. In 1916 he managed to get to Vienna under the impression that, if he did not make haste, the great Freud would eventually succumb to an aeroplane bomb. Even then Vienna was old with death but Dick managed to get enough coal and oil to sit in his room in the Damenstiftgasse and write the pamphlets that he later destroyed, but that, rewritten, were the backbone of the book he published in Zurich in 1920.

Most of us have a favorite, a heroic period, in our lives and that was Dick Diver’s. For one thing he had no idea that he was charming, that the affection he gave and inspired was anything unusual among healthy people. In his last year at New Haven some one referred to him as “lucky Dick”—the name lingered in his head.

“Lucky Dick, you big stiff,” he would whisper to himself, walking around the last sticks of flame in his room. “You hit it, my boy. Nobody knew it was there before you came along.”

At the beginning of 1917, when it was becoming difficult to find coal, Dick burned for fuel almost a hundred textbooks that he had accumulated; but only, as he laid each one on the fire, with an assurance chuckling inside him that he was himself a digest of what was within the book, that he could brief it five years from now, if it deserved to be briefed. This went on at any odd hour, if necessary, with a floor rug over his shoulders, with the fine quiet of the scholar which is nearest of all things to heavenly peace—but which, as will presently be told, had to end.

For its temporary continuance he thanked his body that had done the flying rings at New Haven, and now swam in the winter Danube. With Elkins, second secretary at the Embassy, he shared an apartment, and there were two nice girl visitors—which was that and not too much of it, nor too much of the Embassy either. His contact with Ed Elkins aroused in him a first faint doubt as to the quality of his mental processes; he could not feel that they were profoundly different from the thinking of Elkins—Elkins, who would name you all the quarterbacks in New Haven for thirty years.

“—And Lucky Dick can’t be one of these clever men; he must be less intact, even faintly destroyed. If life won’t do it for him it’s not a substitute to get a disease, or a broken heart, or an inferiority complex, though it’d be nice to build out some broken side till it was better than the original structure.”

He mocked at his reasoning, calling it specious and “American”—his criteria of uncerebral phrase-making was that it was American. He knew, though, that the price of his intactness was incompleteness.

“The best I can wish you, my child,” so said the Fairy Blackstick in Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring, “is a little misfortune.”

In some moods he griped at his own reasoning: Could I help it that Pete Livingstone sat in the locker-room Tap Day when everybody looked all over hell for him? And I got an election when otherwise I wouldn’t have got Elihu, knowing so few men. He was good and right and I ought to have sat in the locker-room instead. Maybe I would, if I’d thought I had a chance at an election. But Mercer kept coming to my room all those weeks. I guess I knew I had a chance all right, all right. But it would have served me right if I’d swallowed my pin in the shower and set up a conflict.

After the lectures at the university he used to argue this point with a young Rumanian intellectual who reassured him:“There’s no evidence that Goethe ever had a ‘conflict’ in the modern sense, or a man like Jung, for instance. You’re not a romantic philosopher—you’re a scientist. Memory, force, character—especially good sense. That’s going to be your trouble—judgment about yourself. Once I knew a man who worked two years on the brain of an armadillo, with the idea that he would sooner or later know more about the brain of an armadillo than any one. I kept arguing with him that he was not really pushing out the extension of the human range—it was too arbitrary. And sure enough, when he sent his work to the medical journal they refused it—they had just accepted a thesis by another man on the same subject.”

Dick got up to Zurich on less Achilles’ heels than would be required to equip a centipede, but with plenty—the illusions of eternal strength and health, and of the essential goodness of people; illusions of a nation, the lies of generations of frontier mothers who had to croon falsely that there were no wolves outside the cabin door. After he took his degree, he received his orders to join a neurological unit forming in Bar-sur-Aube.

In France, to his disgust, the work was executive rather than practical. In compensation he found time to complete the short textbook and assemble the material for his next venture. He returned to Zurich in the spring of 1919 discharged.

The foregoing has the ring of a biography, without the satisfaction of knowing that the hero, like Grant, lolling in his general store in Galena, is ready to be called to an intricate destiny. Moreover it is confusing to come across a youthful photograph of some one known in a rounded maturity and gaze with a shock upon a fiery, wiry, eagle-eyed stranger. Best to be reassuring—Dick Diver’s moment now began.

一九一七年春天，理查德·戴弗医生初到苏黎世时二十六岁，正是男人的大好年华，更是单身汉的黄金时代。即使正值战争年代，这也是迪克的好时光——他已成为一个宝贵人才，受到大力培养，是当不了炮灰的。而几年后，他觉得即使偏安一隅，日子也并非逍遥自在（不过，对于这一点，他心中并无定论）。在一九一七年，他还嘲笑过这种想法，歉疚地说战争连他的一根头发丝都没有碰到。家乡的医学董事会给他的指示是：完成在苏黎世的学业，按原定计划拿到学位。

瑞士就像一座孤岛，一边受意大利戈里齐亚一带狂涛怒浪的冲刷，另一边则有法国索姆河和埃纳河的激流咆哮而过。有一段时间，出现在瑞士各州的身份不明的外国人似乎多于前来疗养的病人。在伯尔尼和日内瓦的小咖啡馆里处处可见窃窃私语的外国人，他们的身份难以猜测——可能是珠宝商人，也可能是旅行推销员。不过，盲人啦，独腿人啦，奄奄待毙的可怜人啦，在康斯坦茨湖以及纽沙特尔湖那明媚的湖畔也是处处可以遇见的。咖啡馆以及商店的橱窗里贴着鲜艳的宣传画，画的是一九一四年瑞士人保卫边疆的情景（同仇敌忾的青年和老人在山头怒视着山下假想的敌人——法国人和德国人），目的是要振奋民心，让瑞士国民不要忘记过去的光荣岁月。随着大屠杀的持续进行，这些宣传画渐渐失去了感召力。当美国也卷入战争时，没有哪个国家比同为共和国的瑞士更感到吃惊了。

此时，戴弗医生处于战争的边缘，闻到了硝烟味。一九一四年，他获得罗兹奖学金，从美国的康涅狄格州到牛津大学学习，最后一个学年回国在约翰·霍普金斯大学继续学习，并获得了学位。一九一六年，他急急忙忙赶到了维也纳，如果不早点儿去，他觉得弗洛伊德大师说不定哪一天就会死于空袭。即使在那个时候，维也纳也弥漫着死亡的气息。不过，迪克想办法搞到了足够的取暖的煤炭和点灯用的煤油，躲在修女街的出租屋里写论文（这些论文曾被他付之一炬后，又重新写出来，成为他一九二○年在苏黎世出版的那本专著的奠基石）。

在我们的一生中，恐怕人人都有自己得意和风光的时期，而那些日子就是迪克·戴弗的得意期。首先，他有着迷人的魅力（只是他不知道罢了），时常给人以关爱，也能激起别人对他的爱戴，这在普通男女中是不多见的。在纽黑文的最后一年，有人称他是“福星迪克”——这称号他始终难以忘怀。

“好一个‘福星迪克’，你这个大傻瓜！”他常常在出租屋里绕着即将熄灭的炉火踱步，一边暗暗对自己这样说，“你只不过是瞎猫逮住个死老鼠，碰上好运气罢了，伙计。别人没碰上，而你碰上了！”

到了一九一七年初，就比较难搞到煤炭了。于是，他就把积存下来的差不多一百册教材都当柴火烧了。每当将一册书投入火中，他都会自信地一笑，觉得自己已经掌握了书里的内容，哪怕再过上五年，要他简单复述，他也能复述得了。这种非常的情况就出现在那个非常的时期。如果冷得受不了，他就把一块地毯披在身上御寒，心中却感受到学者的那种恬然自得（心情如接近天堂那样宁静）。不过，如下所述，这样的日子势必会终结的。

多亏他在纽黑文练过吊环，身体很棒，才能在那种环境里坚持学习，而且还能在多瑙河里冬泳。他和大使馆二等秘书埃尔金斯合住一套公寓，有两个可爱的女孩常来往（仅此二人，别人不常来，大使馆的人也不常来）。在与埃德·埃尔金斯的交往中，他开始对自己的智力是否上乘有了几丝怀疑，觉得埃尔金斯的智力跟他没有多大的差别——埃尔金斯能报得出纽黑文橄榄球队三十年中所有四分卫球员的名字。

“‘福星迪克’不可能属于这类聪明人，绝对不是什么完人，甚至还稍有欠缺。假如命运不是如此安排，而是叫他疾病缠身，或者心灵破碎，抑或自卑感严重，那就另当别论了（不过，如果有了缺陷，修复后也许比原样更好呢）。”

他暗自嘲笑自己的这一推论，称之为“似是而非的瞎说”，是“美国式”推论——只要是非理智性的言论，他就将其归于“美国式”。不过他也清楚，他虽然完好无损，但付出的代价却是“不完美”。

“我对你最大的希望，我的孩子，”在萨克雷的作品《玫瑰和戒指》中，仙女布莱克斯迪克如此说，“就是让你的命运有一些波折。”

有时他对自己的推论感到颇为得意。在一个选举日，他心想：“大伙儿四处找皮特·利文斯顿，谁知他却坐在更衣室里不出来，这能怪我吗？我认识的人太少，是不可能击败伊莱休的，但我却胜出了。他出类拔萃，是个合适的人选，也许我应该坐在更衣室里不出来才对。如果我想到自己有机会当选，也许会那么做的。可是，默瑟那几个星期老来宿舍找我，我应该知道自己是有机会当选的呀！自己酿下的苦果自己吃！谁叫我自找麻烦，使自己陷于纠结的境地！”

上大学时，课后他常跟一位年轻的罗马尼亚学者探讨这个问题。那人安慰他说：“没有证据表明歌德曾有过这种现代意味的‘纠结’，荣格那样的人也未曾有过。你不是浪漫的哲学家，而是一个科学家。记忆、逻辑力量、性格——尤其是良知，这些都会成为你判断自我的障碍。我曾经认识一个人，他花了两年时间研究犰狳的大脑，自以为他所获得的有关犰狳大脑的知识终究会超过任何人。我不停地同他争论，说他并未真正地了解人类知识的广度，认为他的看法过于武断。果不其然，当他将研究论文投给一家医学杂志时，遭到了拒绝，原因是他们刚刚接受了另外一个人写的论文，也是同样的课题。”

迪克去苏黎世时，身上的阿喀琉斯之踵虽说没有蜈蚣的腿那么多，但数量也是可观的——例如，他错以为一个人可以永远精力充沛、身体健康，以为人心都是善良的。对于国家，他也有错误的认识，就像生活在边疆的母亲低声吟唱代代相传的谎言（她们硬说木屋门外没有狼）。获得学位后，他奉命参加了一支在奥布河畔的巴尔城组建的精神病医疗队。

到了法国，他大为扫兴——他干的是行政工作，而非治病救人。作为补偿，他寻找时间写完了他那本简明教材，并为他的下一部著作收集了材料。一九一九年春，医疗队解散，他回到了苏黎世。

上面的文字有点像在写人物传记，只不过没有写明此处的主人公一如当年的格兰特——格兰特曾在加莱纳的一家杂货店里消磨时光，随时准备听从召唤，迎接扑朔迷离的命运。如果你看到过一个熟人的照片（他刚刚步入成年，青春洋溢），后来见他简直变成了一个陌生人（热情似火、体魄健壮、目光炯炯），你一定会感到困惑和吃惊的。这就是迪克·戴弗的写照——真正的他现在粉墨登场了！