The next day, Andy calls him at his office. “I need to talk to you in person,” he says. “It’s important. Can you meet me somewhere?”

次日，安迪打电话到他办公室。“我得私下跟你谈谈，”他说，“有很重要的事情。能不能找个地方碰面？”

　 He’s alarmed. “Is everything okay?” he asks. “Are you all right, Andy?”

他警觉起来。“一切都没事吧？”他问，“你还好吧，安迪？”

　 “I’m fine,” Andy says. “But I need to see you.”

“我很好。”安迪说，“但是我得跟你碰面谈谈。”

　 He takes an early dinner break and they meet near his office, at a bar whose regular customers are the Japanese bankers who work in the tower next to Rosen Pritchard’s. Andy is already there when he arrives, and he places his palm, gently, on the unmarked side of his face.

他把晚餐休息的时间提早，两人约在他办公室附近的一家酒吧，里面的常客是罗普克事务所旁边那栋大楼里的日本银行职员。他到的时候，安迪已经在了，他将手掌轻轻地放在没受伤的那半边脸上。

　 “I ordered you a beer,” Andy says.

“我帮你点了啤酒。”安迪说。

　 They drink in silence and then Andy says, “Jude, I wanted to see your face when I asked you this. But are you—are you hurting yourself?”

他们沉默地喝着，然后安迪说：“裘德，我问你这个问题的时候，我要你抬头看着我。你——你是不是在伤害自己？”

　 “What?” he asks, surprised.

“什么？”他惊讶地问。

　 “These tennis accidents,” Andy says, “are they actually—something else? Are you throwing yourself down stairs or against walls, or something?” He takes a breath. “I know you used to do that when you were a kid. Are you doing it again?”

“这些打网球的意外，”安迪说，“会不会其实是——是别的？你是不是故意摔下楼梯、去撞墙，或什么的？”他吸了口气，“我知道你小时候常常这样。现在又开始了吗？”

　 “No, Andy,” he says. “No. I’m not doing this to myself. I swear to you. I swear on—on Harold and Julia. I swear on Willem.”

“没有，安迪。”他说，“我没有，这些伤不是我自己弄的。我跟你发誓，我以——以哈罗德和朱丽娅发誓，我以威廉发誓。”

　 “Okay,” Andy says, exhaling. “I mean, that’s a relief. It’s a relief to know you’re just being a bonehead and not following doctor’s orders, which, of course, is nothing new. And, apparently, that you’re a terrible tennis player.” He smiles, and he makes himself smile back.

“好吧。”安迪说，吐了一口气，“我的意思是，我真的松了口气。知道你只是个笨蛋，不听医生的指示，但这也不是新闻了。而且很明显，你网球打得很烂。”安迪微笑。他逼自己微笑以对。

　 Andy orders them more beers, and for a while, they are quiet. “Do you know, Jude,” Andy says, slowly, “that over the years I have wondered and wondered what to do about you? No, don’t say anything—let me finish. I would—I do—lie awake at night asking myself if I’m making the right decisions about you: there’ve been so many times when I was so close to having you committed, to calling Harold or Willem and telling them that we needed to get together and have you taken to a hospital. I’ve talked to classmates of mine who are shrinks and told them about you, about this patient I’m very close to, and asked them what they would do in my position. I’ve listened to all their advice. I’ve listened to my shrink’s advice. But no one can ever tell me for certain what the right answer is.

安迪又帮两人点了一轮啤酒，有一会儿，两个人沉默无言。“裘德，你知道吗，”安迪缓缓地说，“这几年来，我想了又想，不知道该拿你怎么办。不，什么都别说，先让我讲完。我常常夜里睡不着，问自己对你的处理对不对：有好多次，我差点要把你强制送医，准备打电话给哈罗德或威廉，跟他们说我们得合力把你送去住院。我跟一些当心理医生的老同学谈过，把你的事情告诉他们，说这个病人我很熟，问他们如果站在我的立场该怎么做。我认真听了所有人的建议，还听了我的心理医生的建议，但没有一个人能肯定地告诉我正确的答案是什么。

　 “I’ve tortured myself about this. But I’ve always felt—you’re so high-functioning in so many ways, and you’ve achieved this weird but undeniably successful equilibrium in your life, that I felt that, I don’t know, I just shouldn’t upset it. You know? So I’ve let you go on cutting yourself year after year, and every year, every time I see you, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by letting you do so, and how and if I should be pushing harder to get you help, to make you stop doing this to yourself.”

“我一直为了这件事折磨自己。但我始终觉得——你在很多方面都这么正常，而且生活达到这么诡异、但不可否认成功的平衡，所以我想，我不知道，我实在不应该打乱这个平衡。你知道吗？所以我就让你一年接着一年地继续割自己，而每一年，每一次我看到你，就会想到自己让你继续这样是不是对的，是不是应该更努力地逼你去寻求专业协助，让你停止伤害自己。”

　 “I’m sorry, Andy,” he whispers.

“对不起，安迪。”他低声说。

　 “No, Jude,” Andy says. “It’s not your fault. You’re the patient. I’m supposed to figure out what’s best for you, and I feel—I don’t know if I have. So when you came in with bruises, the first thing I thought was that I had made the wrong decision after all. You know?” Andy looks at him, and he is surprised once more to see Andy swipe, quickly, at his eyes. “All these years,” says Andy, after a pause, and they are both quiet again.

“不，裘德，”安迪说，“这不是你的错。你是病人。我本来就该搞清楚什么是对你最好的，但是我觉得——我不知道自己有没有办到。所以你带着那些瘀青来找我的时候，我第一个想到的就是我的决定还是错了。你知道吗？”安迪看着他，再度看到安迪迅速擦了一下眼睛，他很惊讶。“这么多年都是这样。”安迪暂停一下说，两人又陷入沉默。

　 “Andy,” he says, wanting to cry himself. “I swear to you I’m not doing anything else to myself. Just the cutting.”

“安迪，”他终于说，自己也很想哭，“我跟你发誓，我没有用别的方式自残，只有割伤而已。”

　 “Just the cutting!” Andy repeats, and makes a strange squawk of laughter. “Well, I suppose—given the context—I have to be grateful for that. ‘Just the cutting.’ You know how messed up that is, right, that that should be such a relief to me?”

“只有割伤而已！”安迪说，然后发出一个刺耳的笑声，“好吧，我想，就你这几年的状况来说，我应该很庆幸，‘只有割伤而已。’你知道这样有多惨吧，我居然应该松一口气？”

　 “I know,” he says.

“我知道。”他说。

　 Tuesday turns to Wednesday, and then to Thursday; his face feels worse, and then better, and then worse again. He had worried that Caleb might call him or, worse, materialize at his apartment, but the days pass and he doesn’t: maybe he has stayed out in Bridgehampton. Maybe he has gotten run over by a car. He finds, oddly, that he feels nothing—not fear, not hate, not anything. The worst has happened, and now he is free. He has had a relationship, and it was awful, and now he will never need to have one again, because he has proven himself incapable of being in one. His time with Caleb has confirmed everything he feared people would think of him, of his body, and his next task is to learn to accept that, and to do so without sorrow. He knows he will still probably feel lonely in the future, but now he has something to answer that loneliness; now he knows for certain that loneliness is the preferable state to whatever it was—terror, shame, disgust, dismay, giddiness, excitement, yearning, loathing—he felt with Caleb.

星期二、星期三过去了，然后是星期四；他感觉脸上的伤恶化，接着又好转，然后又恶化了。他一直担心凯莱布可能会打电话给他，或是更糟，去他公寓，但几天过去了，都没有消息。或许他一直待在汉普顿桥。或许他被车子撞了。说来奇怪，他发现自己竟然没有任何感觉——没有害怕，没有恨意，什么都没有。最坏的状况已经发生了，现在他自由了。他有过一段伴侣关系，结果很糟糕，现在他再也不必去试了，因为他已经向自己证明他没有那个能力。以前他老担心人们会怎么想他、想他的身体，跟凯莱布在一起的那段日子证实了他害怕的种种都是对的。他的下一个任务就是学会接受这件事，而且不要悲伤。他知道自己以后大概还是会觉得孤单，但现在他知道如何回应那种孤单了。现在他很确定那种孤单还是比较好的状态，好过他跟凯莱布在一起体会到的恐惧、羞愧、厌恶、沮丧、眩晕、兴奋、渴望、勉强。

　 That Friday he sees Harold, who is in town for a conference at Columbia. He had already written Harold to warn him of his injury, but it doesn’t stop Harold from overreacting, exclaiming and fussing over him and asking him dozens of times if he is actually all right.

那个星期五，哈罗德来纽约参加哥伦比亚大学的一场学术会议，他们碰了面。他已经事先写信警告哈罗德自己受了伤，但哈罗德还是大惊小怪，操心了半天，问他是不是真的还好，问了好几十次。

　 They have met at one of Harold’s favorite restaurants, where the beef comes from cows that the chef has named and raised himself on a farm upstate, and the vegetables are grown on the roof of the building, and they are talking and eating their entrées—he is careful to only chew on the right side of his mouth, and to avoid letting any food come in contact with his new tooth—when he senses someone standing near their table, and when he looks up, it is Caleb, and although he had convinced himself he feels nothing, he is immediately, overwhelmingly terrified.

他们在哈罗德最喜欢的餐厅之一碰面，那里的牛肉来自主厨自己在纽约州北部农场里饲养的牛，每只都取了名字；蔬菜则种在大楼屋顶。他们边聊天边吃着主菜时（他很小心地只用右边牙齿咀嚼，而且小心不要让新装的那颗牙齿碰到食物），忽然感觉到有个人站在桌子旁，他抬头看，是凯莱布。他已经说服自己别有任何感觉，但那一刻，他立刻被排山倒海而来的恐惧淹没。