“Put your arm around my neck,” I told him, and he did, and as I lifted him, he cried out, and I apologized and settled him in his chair. As I did, I noticed that the back of his shirt—he was wearing one of those gray thermal-weave sweatshirts he liked to sleep in—was bloody, with new and old blood, and the back of his pants were bloody as well.

“一手勾住我脖子。”我告诉他。他照做了，接着我扶他起来，他叫出声，我连忙道歉，把他放在轮椅上。我注意到他的长袖运动衫背部沾着新的和旧的血（他穿着平常睡觉时穿的灰色保暖针织运动衫），而且长裤的背面也有血。

　 I stepped away from him and called Andy, told him I had an emergency. I was lucky: Andy had stayed in the city that weekend, and he would meet us at his office in twenty minutes.

我离开他几步，打电话给安迪，说我有紧急状况。我很幸运，安迪那个周末没出城，他说二十分钟内会赶到诊所跟我们会合。

　 I drove us there. I helped him out of the car—he seemed unwilling to use his left arm, and when I had him stand, he held his right leg aloft, so that it wouldn’t touch the ground, and made a strange noise, a bird’s noise, as I wrapped my arm around his chest to lower him into the chair—and when Andy opened the door and saw him, I thought he was going to throw up.

我开车送他过去，帮他下了车。他好像不愿意用左手臂，而且我扶着他站起来时，他的左脚一直悬空，避免碰到地面。当我用手臂抱住他胸膛、把他放到轮椅上时，他发出一种像鸟叫的声音。安迪打开门看到他时，我以为安迪就要吐出来了。

　 “Jude,” Andy said once he could speak, crouching beside him, but he didn’t respond.

“裘德。”安迪终于开口喊他，蹲在他旁边，但他没回应。

　 Once we’d installed him in an examination room, we spoke in the receptionist’s area. I told him about Caleb. I told him what I thought had happened. I told him what I thought was wrong: that I thought he had broken his left arm, that something was wrong with his right leg, that he was bleeding and where, that the floors had blood on them. I told him he wouldn’t report it to the police.

我们把他送进一间检查室，就出来跟安迪在接待区谈了一会。我告诉他凯莱布的事，还有我认为发生了什么事。我告诉他我认为他伤到哪里：他的左手臂应该有骨折，左腿不太对劲，还有他身上哪里在流血，他家里地板上也有血。我还说他不肯报案。

　 “Okay,” Andy said. He was in shock, I could see. He kept swallowing. “Okay, okay.” He stopped and rubbed at his eyes. “Will you wait here for a little while?”

“好的。”安迪说，我看得出来他很震惊，不断吞口水，“好的，好的。”他停下来揉揉眼睛，“你可以在这里等一阵子吗？”

　 He came out from the examining room forty minutes later. “I’m going to take him to the hospital to get some X-rays,” he said. “I’m pretty sure his left wrist is broken, and some of his ribs. And if his leg is—” He stopped. “If it is, this is really going to be a problem,” he said. He seemed to have forgotten I was in the room. Then he recalled himself. “You should go,” he said. “I’ll call you when I’m almost done.”

四十分钟后，他从检查室出来。“我要送他去医院照X光。”他说，“我很确定他的左手腕骨折了，还有几根肋骨。另外如果他的左腿……”他停下来，“也有骨折的话，那就麻烦了。”他说。他似乎忘了我也在场，忽然又想到了，“你该走了。”他说，“等我快处理完，会再打电话给你。”

　 “I’ll stay,” I said.

“我留下来吧。”我说。

　 “Don’t, Harold,” he said, and then, more gently, “you have to call his office; there’s no way he can go into work this week.” He paused. “He said—he said you should tell them he was in a car accident.”

“不要，哈罗德。”他说，然后声音放柔和些，“你得打电话到他办公室，他这星期不可能去上班了。”他暂停一下，“他说，他说请你告诉公司，说他出了车祸。”

　 As I was leaving, he said, quietly, “He told me he was playing tennis.”

我要离开时，安迪又低声说：“他之前跟我说他在打网球。”

　 “I know,” I said. I felt bad for us, then, for being so stupid. “He told me that, too.”

“我知道。”我说，很替彼此觉得难过，也觉得我们好笨，“他也是这么告诉我的。”

　 I went back to Greene Street with his keys. For a long time, many minutes, I just stood there in the doorway, looking at the space. Some of the cloud cover had parted, but it didn’t take much sun—even with the shades drawn—to make that apartment feel light. I had always thought it a hopeful place, with its high ceilings, its cleanliness, its visibility, its promise of transparency.

我带着他的钥匙回到格林街。有好几分钟，我只是站在门口，看着那个空间。那时云散开了一些，不需要很多阳光（即使遮光帘都拉下来）就能让整间公寓很亮。我一直觉得这是个充满希望的地方，有高高的天花板，非常干净、一目了然。

　 This was his apartment, and so of course there were lots of cleaning products, and I started cleaning. I mopped the floors; the sticky areas were dried blood. It was difficult to distinguish because the floors were so dark, but I could smell it, a dense, wild scent that the nose instantly recognizes. He had clearly tried to clean the bathroom, but here too there were swipes of blood on the marble, dried into the rusty pinks of sunsets; these were difficult to remove, but I did the best I could. I looked in the trash cans—for evidence, I suppose, but there was nothing: they had all been cleaned and emptied. His clothes from the night before were scattered near the living-room sofa. The shirt was so ripped, clawed at almost, that I threw it away; the suit I took to be dry-cleaned. Otherwise, the apartment was very tidy. I had entered the bedroom with dread, expecting to find lamps broken, clothes strewn about, but it was so unruffled that you might have thought that no one lived there at all, that it was a model house, an advertisement for an enviable life. The person who lived here would have parties, and would be carefree and sure of himself, and at night he would raise the shades and he and his friends would dance, and people passing by on Greene Street, on Mercer, would look up at that box of light floating in the sky, and imagine its inhabitants above unhappiness, or fear, or any concerns at all.

这是他的公寓，当然有很多清洁用品，于是我开始打扫。我擦了地板，有些黏黏的地方是干掉的血。因为地板颜色太黑了，实在很难看出来，但我闻得到，是一种浓厚、野生的气味，鼻子一闻就知道。他显然曾试着清理浴室，但里头的大理石上同样有擦过的血，干掉后成了落日般的锈粉红色，这些痕迹很难清洗，但我尽力。我去查看垃圾桶，可能是想寻找证据吧，但里头什么都没有，全都被清空了。他前一晚穿的衣服被扔在起居间的沙发附近。衬衫撕得破破烂烂，简直像是爪子抓破的，于是我把它丢掉了，把西装送去干洗。除此之外，公寓里面非常整齐。我不安地进入卧室，以为会看到破掉的灯、乱扔的衣服，但结果里面整齐干净得像是没人住，宛如是样品屋、展示广告里令人羡慕的生活。住在这里的人会开派对，无忧无虑，充满自信。夜里他会拉起遮光帘，和朋友们在屋里跳舞，经过格林街、默瑟街的人会往上看着这个浮在空中的灯箱，想象里面的人绝不会不快乐、恐惧或担心。

　 I e-mailed Lucien, whom I’d met once, and who was a friend of a friend of Laurence’s, actually, and said there had been a terrible car accident, and that Jude was in the hospital. I went to the grocery store and bought things that would be easy for him to eat: soups, puddings, juices. I looked up Caleb Porter’s address, and repeated it to myself—Fifty West Twenty-ninth Street, apartment 17J—until I had it memorized. I called the locksmith and said it was an emergency and that I needed to have all the locks changed: front door, elevator, apartment door. I opened the windows to let the damp air carry away the fragrance of blood, of disinfectant. I left a message with the law school secretary saying there was a family emergency and I wouldn’t be able to teach that week. I left messages for a couple of my colleagues asking if they could cover for me. I thought about calling my old law school friend, who worked at the D.A.’s office. I would explain what had happened; I wouldn’t use his name. I would ask how we could have Caleb Porter arrested.

我写了电子邮件给卢西恩（我跟他见过一次，他其实是劳伦斯一个朋友的朋友），说裘德出了车祸，现在住院了。我去杂货店买了应该适合他吃的食物：浓汤、布丁、果汁。我查到凯莱布·波特的地址，重复默念着，直到我背下来——西29街50号17J公寓。我打电话给锁匠说很急，要请他换掉所有的锁，包括一楼大门、电梯、这间公寓的前门。我打开窗子，让潮湿的空气带走血和消毒水的气味。我留了话给法学院的秘书说家里出了紧急状况，我这星期没办法回学校上课，并留了话给两个同事，问他们能不能帮我代课。我想过要打电话给以前法学院的朋友阿维，他在地检署工作。我会解释发生了什么事，不会提到他的名字。我会问这个朋友要怎么样才能逮捕凯莱布·波特。

　 “But you’re saying the victim won’t report it?” Avi would say.

“可是你说被害人不肯报案？”阿维会说。

　 “Well, yes,” I’d have to admit.

“唔，是啊。”我必须承认。

　 “Can he be convinced?”

“可以说服他吗？”

　 “I don’t think so,” I’d have to admit.

“我不认为。”我必须承认。

　 “Well, Harold,” Avi would say, perplexed and irritated. “I don’t know what to tell you, then. You know as well as I do that I can’t do anything if the victim won’t speak.” I remembered thinking, as I very rarely thought, what a flimsy thing the law was, so dependent on contingencies, a system of so little comfort, of so little use to those who needed its protections the most.

“那么，哈罗德，”阿维会说，既困惑又烦恼，“这样的话，我就不知道该跟你说什么了。你跟我一样清楚，如果被害人不肯说，我什么都做不了。”我记得自己当时想着，就像我非常偶尔会想到的，法律真是太靠不住了，这么取决于偶发事件，整个制度这么无法抚慰人心，对那些最需要法律保护的人这么没有用处。

　 And then I went into his bathroom and felt under the sink and found his bag of razors and cotton pads and threw it down the incinerator. I hated that bag, I hated that I knew I would find it.

然后我进入他的浴室，摸着水槽下方，找到那个装了刮胡刀片和棉垫的小袋子，丢进焚化炉。我厌恶那个袋子，也厌恶自己知道会发现它。