“Richard,” he said, “I’d love to. But how much are you charging?”

“理查德，”他说，“我很愿意，不过你打算收多少钱？”

　 “I’m not talking about renting it, Jude,” said Richard. “I’m talking about buying it.” Richard had already talked to his father, who was his grandparents’ lawyer: they’d convert the building into a co-op, and he’d buy a certain number of shares. The only thing Richard’s family requested is that he or his heirs give them the right to buy the apartment back from him first if he ever decided to sell it. They would offer him a fair price, and he would pay Richard a monthly rent that would be applied toward his purchase. The Goldfarbs had done this before—his grouchy cousin’s girlfriend had bought a floor of the vinegar building a year ago—and it had worked out fine. Apparently, they got some sort of tax break if they each converted one of their buildings into at least a two-unit co-op, and so Richard’s father was trying to get all of the grandchildren to do so.

“我谈的不是租，裘德，”理查德说，“是买。”理查德说他已经跟父亲谈过了，他父亲就是他祖父母的律师。他家里会把这栋楼房改成合作公寓，请他买一定数额的股份。理查德家里唯一的要求，就是理查德或他的继承人如果决定要卖，就要给理查德家优先购买权。理查德家会开一个合理的房价，他每个月付理查德一笔租金，分期抵免房款。理查德说，他们戈德法布家族之前已经这样做过了，他那位爱抱怨的表哥的女友一年前就买下了醋大楼的一层。显然，如果他们每个人都把手上的一栋楼改为至少两个单位的合作公寓，就可以得到某种减税优惠，所以理查德的父亲正在设法让所有的孙辈照做。

　 “Why are you doing this?” he asked Richard, quietly, once he had recovered. “Why me?”

“你为什么要这么做？”他一回过神来，就轻声问理查德，“为什么是我？”

　 Richard shrugged. “It gets lonely here,” he said. “Not that I’m going to be stopping by all the time. But it’d be nice to know there’s another living being in this building sometimes. And you’re the most responsible of my friends, not that there’s a lot of competition for the title. And I like your company. Also—” He stopped. “Promise you won’t get mad.”

理查德耸耸肩，“住在这里有点孤单。”他说，“虽然我也不会总是跑去找你。不过知道有另一个活人住在这栋楼里感觉比较好。而且你是我朋友里面最有责任感的，其他人都差太多了。我喜欢有你做伴。另外……”他停下来，“答应我你不会生气。”

　 “Oh god,” he said. “But I promise.”

“老天，”他说，“我答应就是了。”

　 “Willem told me about what happened, you know, when you were trying to get upstairs last year and the elevator broke. It’s not anything to be embarrassed about, Jude. He’s just worried about you. I told him I was going to ask you about this anyway, and he thought—he thinks—it’s someplace you could live for a long time: forever. And the elevator will never break here. And if it does, I’ll be right downstairs. I mean—obviously, you can buy somewhere else, but I hope you’ll consider moving in here.”

“威廉跟我说了你上回发生的事情，你知道，就是你去年想上楼，结果电梯坏了。没什么好难为情的，裘德。他只是担心你而已。我跟他说我本来就打算要问你，而他觉得你在这里可以住很久，永远住下去。这里的电梯从来不会坏。就算坏了，我就在楼下。我的意思是——当然啦，你可以买别的地方，不过我希望你考虑搬进来。”

　 In that moment he feels not angry but exposed: not just to Richard but to Willem. He tries to hide as much as he can from Willem, not because he doesn’t trust him but because he doesn’t want Willem to see him as less of a person, as someone who has to be looked after and helped. He wants Willem, wants them all, to think of him as someone reliable and hardy, someone they can come to with their problems, instead of him always having to turn to them. He is embarrassed, thinking of the conversations that have been had about him—between Willem and Andy, and between Willem and Harold (which he is certain happens more often than he fears), and now between Willem and Richard—and saddened as well that Willem is spending so much time worrying about him, that he is having to think of him the way he would have had to think of Hemming, had Hemming lived: as someone who needed care, as someone who needed decisions made for him. He sees the image of himself as an old man again: Is it possible it is also Willem’s vision, that the two of them share the same fear, that his ending seems as inevitable to Willem as it does to himself?

那一刻他感觉到的不是生气，而是被暴露：不光是气理查德，也气威廉。他尽可能把自己的种种隐藏起来，不让威廉看到，不是因为不信任，而是不想让威廉把他当成一个不完整的人，需要照顾跟帮助。他希望威廉和其他所有人都认为他可靠又坚强，可以把自己的问题拿来找他帮忙解决，而不要总是让他向他们求助。他觉得很难为情，想着那些有关他的对话——威廉和安迪，威廉和哈罗德（他很确定出现的频率比他想的要多），而现在又有威廉和理查德——他也很难过威廉花那么多时间担心他，难过他对威廉来说就像是亨明一样（如果亨明还活着的话）了是个需要照顾、代他做决定的人。他眼前又浮现出自己成为老人的那个画面：有可能在威廉的预想中，他的未来也是这样，他们两人有同样的恐惧吗？在威廉心中，他的人生结局似乎是不可避免的，就跟他自己所想的一样？

　 He thinks, then, of a conversation he had once had with Willem and Philippa; Philippa was talking about how someday, when she and Willem were old, they’d take over her parents’ house and orchards in southern Vermont. “I can see it now,” she said. “The kids’ll have moved back in with us, because they won’t be able to make it in the real world, and they’ll have six kids between them with names like Buster and Carrot and Vixen, who’ll run around naked and won’t be sent to school, and whom Willem and I will have to support until the end of time—”

然后他想到有次和威廉、菲莉帕的对话，菲莉帕正谈着等到有一天，她和威廉都老了，他们会接收她父母在南佛蒙特州的房子和果园。“我现在就可以预想到那个样子。”她说，“孩子们都搬回来跟我们住，因为他们在真实世界混不下去，而且他们会有六个孩子，都取了些破坏狂、胡萝卜或雌狐之类的怪名字。那些小鬼会光着身子跑来跑去，不去学校读书。威廉和我还得养他们，直到地老天荒。”

　 “What will your kids do?” he asked, practical even in play.

“那你们的小孩会做哪一行？”他问，即使玩游戏也还是很务实。

　 “Oberon will make art installations using only food products, and Miranda will play a zither with yarn for strings,” said Philippa, and he had smiled. “They’ll stay in grad school forever, and Willem will have to keep working until he’s so broken down that I have to push him onto the set in a wheelchair”—she stopped, blushing, but carried on after a hitch—“to pay for all their degrees and experiments. I’ll have to give up costume design and start an organic applesauce company to pay all our debts and maintain the house, which’ll be this huge, glorious wreck with termites everywhere, and we’ll have a huge, scarred wooden table big enough to seat all twelve of us.”

“奥伯伦做装置艺术，只用食品做，而米兰达弹奏纱线琴弦的齐特琴。”菲莉帕说，于是他微笑了，“他们会永远在读研究生，威廉得一直工作到非常老，最后我还得用轮椅推他到拍片现场……”她停下来，脸红了，稍微暂停了会又立刻继续，“……才能付他们的学费和生活费。我得放弃服装设计，开一家有机苹果泥公司，才能支付所有债务，同时维修我们的房子，那房子到处都被白蚁蛀蚀。我们会有一张充满刮痕的大木桌，大到我们十二个人都坐得下。”

　 “Thirteen,” said Willem, suddenly.

“十三个人。”威廉忽然说。

　 “Why thirteen?”

“为什么？”

　 “Because—Jude’ll be living with us, too.”

“因为——裘德也会跟我们一起住。”

　 “Oh, will I?” he asked lightly, but pleased, and relieved, to be included in Willem’s vision of old age.

“哦，是吗？”他轻声问，但是心里很开心，而且松了一口气，因为自己被纳入了威廉的老年规划中。

　 “Of course. You’ll have the guest cottage, and every morning Buster will bring you your buckwheat waffles because you’ll be too sick of us to join us at the main table, and then after breakfast I’ll come hang out with you and hide from Oberon and Miranda, who’re going to want me to make intelligent and supportive comments about their latest endeavors.” Willem grinned at him, and he smiled back, though he could see that Philippa herself wasn’t smiling any longer, but staring at the table. Then she looked up, and their eyes met for half a second, and she looked away, quickly.

“当然了，你会住在访客小屋，每天早上破坏狂会送荞麦格子松饼给你，因为你太受不了我们，不肯加入我们的大餐桌。早餐过后，我会过去跟你一起混，好躲开欧布朗和米兰达，不然他们会要我对他们最近的工作成果发表睿智和表示支持的评论。”威廉朝他咧嘴笑，他也微笑以对。不过他看得出菲莉帕再也笑不出来了，只是瞪着桌子。然后她抬起头，他们的双眼对上半秒钟，她又赶紧别开视线。

　 It was shortly after that, he thought, that Philippa’s attitude toward him changed. It wasn’t obvious to anyone but him—perhaps not even to her—but where he used to come into the apartment and see her sketching at the table and the two of them were able to talk, companionably, as he drank a glass of water and looked at her drawings, she would now just nod at him and say, “Willem’s at the store,” or “He’s coming back soon,” even though he hadn’t asked (she was always welcome at Lispenard Street, whether Willem was there or not), and he would linger a bit until it was clear she didn’t want to speak, and then retreat to his room to work.

之后没多久，他觉得菲莉帕对他的态度就改变了。除了他之外，其他人都看不出来——或许连她自己都不觉得——但他以前回到公寓，看到她在桌前画草图，两人会友好地聊聊天，他会喝着水看她画；但现在她只是朝他点个头说“威廉去买东西了”或“他很快就回来”，即使他根本没问（利斯本纳街的公寓向来欢迎她，无论威廉在不在），而他会逗留一下，直到她摆明了不想聊天，他才回自己的房间去工作。

　 He understood why Philippa might resent him: Willem invited him everywhere with them, included him in everything, even in their retirement, even in Philippa’s daydream of their old age. After that, he was careful to always decline Willem’s invitations, even if it was to things that didn’t involve his and Philippa’s couplehood—if they were going to a party at Malcolm’s to which he was also invited, he’d leave separately, and at Thanksgiving, he made sure to ask Philippa to Boston as well, though she hadn’t come in the end. He had even tried to talk to Willem about what he sensed, to awaken him to what he was certain she was feeling.

他明白菲莉帕为什么会怨恨他：无论他们去哪里，威廉都会邀请他，什么事都会把他算在内，即使他们退休，即使在菲莉帕为他们的老年所编织的白日梦里。从此之后，他就会小心地推辞威廉的邀约，即使是一些非伴侣性质的聚会——如果他们要去马尔科姆家的派对，而他也受邀了，他会刻意自己去；到了感恩节，他一定会邀请菲莉帕一起来波士顿过节，不过最后她还是没出席。他甚至设法跟威廉讨论自己感觉到的，好提醒威廉注意她的感受。

　 “Do you not like her?” Willem had asked him, concerned.

“你不喜欢她吗？”威廉担心地问。

　 “You know I like Philippa,” he’d replied. “But I think—I think you should just hang out with her more alone, Willem, with just the two of you. It must get annoying for her to always have me around.”

“你明知道我喜欢菲莉帕，”他回答，“但是我觉得——我觉得你应该更常跟她单独相处，威廉，只有你们两个。总是有我在旁边，她一定觉得很困扰。”

　 “Did she say that to you?”

“她这么跟你说了？”