Willem stayed with him until the very day he had to leave for Colombo. He was playing the eldest son of a faded Dutch merchant family in Sri Lanka in the early nineteen-forties, and had grown a thick mustache that curled up at its tips; when Willem hugged him, he felt it brushing against his ear. For a moment, he wanted to break down and beg Willem not to leave. Don’t go, he wanted to tell him. Stay here with me. I’m scared to be alone. He knew that if he did say this, Willem would: or he would at least try. But he would never say this. He knew it would be impossible for Willem to delay the shoot, and he knew that Willem would feel guilty for his inability to do so. Instead, he tightened his hold on Willem, which was something he rarely did—he rarely showed Willem any physical affection—and he could feel that Willem was surprised, but then he increased his pressure as well, and the two of them stood there, wrapped around each other, for a long time. He remembered thinking that he wasn’t wearing enough layers to really let Willem hug him this closely, that Willem would be able to feel the scars on his back through his shirt, but in the moment it was more important to simply be near him; he had the sense that this was the last time this would happen, the last time he would see Willem. He had this fear every time Willem went away, but it was keener this time, less theoretical; it felt more like a real departure.
威廉一直陪着他，直到要去科伦坡[1]那天。他将在新片中饰演20世纪40年代初斯里兰卡一个没落荷兰商人家族的长子，他已经蓄了厚厚的小胡子，两边尾端还朝上翘；威廉跟他拥抱告别时，他感觉到那小胡子搔着他的耳朵。一时间，他差点崩溃，很想求威廉不要离开。他想告诉他，别走。留在这里陪我。我很怕孤单一人。他知道如果自己真的这么说，威廉会留下的，至少他会想办法试试看。但他永远不会这么做。他知道威廉不可能耽误电影拍摄，他知道威廉会因为自己无法留下而觉得内疚。于是，他什么都没说，只是很难得地抱紧了威廉（他很少在肢体上对威廉显露任何情感），他可以感觉到威廉很惊讶，接着也把他抱得更紧，两个人就站在那里紧拥了好久。他记得当时还想着自己穿得不够厚，威廉把他抱得这么紧，会感觉到他背部衬衫底下的疤痕，但是那一刻，更重要的就只是靠近他。他感觉这是最后一次这样了，是他最后一次见到威廉了。每回威廉离开时，他都有这种恐惧，但这回却特别强烈，特别难以解释，感觉像是真正的离别。
After Willem left, things were fine for a few days. But then they got bad again. The hyenas returned, more numerous and famished than before, more vigilant in their hunt. And then everything else returned as well: years and years and years of memories he had thought he had controlled and defanged, all crowding him once again, yelping and leaping before his face, unignorable in their sounds, indefatigable in their clamor for his attention. He woke gasping for air: he woke with the names of people he had sworn he would never think of again on his tongue. He replayed the night with Caleb again and again, obsessively, the memory slowing so that the seconds he was standing naked in the rain on Greene Street stretched into hours, so that his flight down the stairs took days, so that Caleb’s raping him in the shower, in the elevator, took weeks. He had visions of taking an ice pick and jamming it through his ear, into his brain, to stop the memories. He dreamed of slamming his head against the wall until it split and cracked and the gray meat tumbled out with a wet, bloody thunk. He had fantasies of emptying a container of gasoline over himself and then striking a match, of his mind being gobbled by fire. He bought a set of X-ACTO blades and held three of them in his palm and made a fist around them and watched the blood drip from his hand into the sink as he screamed into the quiet apartment.
威廉离开后，刚开始几天还好，但接着又恶化了。那些鬣狗回来了，数量比之前更多，也更饥饿，更留神寻找猎物。然后其他的一切也回来了：他以为自己已经控制且抹去棱角的多年回忆，全部再度涌向他，在他眼前吠叫跳跃着，那些声音让人无法忽视，那些吵嚷坚持不懈，非得要吸引他的注意。他半夜猛喘着醒来，嘴里喊着的那些名字是他早已发誓绝对不再想起的。他脑袋里一次又一次地回放着和凯莱布的那一夜，走火入魔，而且记忆放慢许多，因而他赤裸地站在格林街雨中的几秒钟延长为几个小时，他飞下楼梯花了好几天，凯莱布在淋浴间、在电梯里强暴他花了好几个星期。他幻想着拿起一把冰锥，刺穿耳朵，刺入脑中，好停止那些回忆。他梦想用脑袋撞墙，撞到头骨破裂、炸开，灰色的肉“砰”的一声滚出来，成为一摊湿漉漉、血淋淋的模糊碎块。他空想着要把一桶汽油淋遍全身，然后点一根火柴，让他的脑子被大火吞噬。他买了一套X-ACTO片[2]刀片，放了三片在掌心，捏紧拳头，看着血从手里滴入水槽，同时他的尖叫声响彻安静的公寓。
He asked Lucien for more work and was given it, but it wasn’t enough. He tried to volunteer for more hours at the artists’ nonprofit, but they didn’t have any additional shifts to give him. He tried to volunteer at a place where Rhodes had once done some pro bono work, an immigrants’ rights organization, but they said they were really looking for Mandarin and Arabic speakers at the moment and didn’t want to waste his time. He cut himself more and more; he began cutting around the scars themselves, so that he could actually remove wedges of flesh, each piece topped with a silvery sheen of scar tissue, but it didn’t help, not enough. At night, he prayed to a god he didn’t believe in, and hadn’t for years: Help me, help me, help me, he pleaded. He was losing himself; this had to stop. He couldn’t keep running forever.
他要求吕西安给他更多的工作，也如愿以偿了，但还是不够。他想去那个非营利艺术家团体做更多义务服务，但他们没有多余的时段给他。他去了以前罗兹做公益服务的一个移民权利组织，但他们说目前缺的是会讲中文和阿拉伯语的人，不想浪费他的时间。他割自己割得越来越凶；又开始绕着疤痕周围割，这样就可以把那些凸起、发着银光的疤痕组织割掉，但这样没有什么帮助，就是不够。到了夜里，他向自己多年不信的神祈祷：帮我，帮我，帮我，他恳求道。他快发疯了，这个状况必须停止。他没法永远跑下去。
It was August; the city was empty. Malcolm was in Sweden on holiday with Sophie; Richard was in Capri; Rhodes was in Maine; Andy was on Shelter Island (“Remember,” he’d said before he left, as he always said before a long vacation, “I’m just two hours away; you need me, and I catch the next ferry back”). He couldn’t bear to be around Harold, whom he couldn’t see without being reminded of his debasement; he called and told him he had too much work to go to Truro. Instead he spontaneously bought a ticket to Paris and spent the long, lonely Labor Day weekend there, wandering the streets by himself. He didn’t contact anyone he knew there—not Citizen, who was working for a French bank, or Isidore, his upstairs neighbor from Hereford Street, who was teaching there, or Phaedra, who had taken a job as the director of a satellite of a New York gallery—they wouldn’t have been in the city anyway.
那是八月，纽约市一片空寂。马尔科姆跟苏菲去瑞典度假；理查德在意大利的卡普里岛；罗兹在缅因州；安迪去了长岛东端的谢尔特岛（“记住，我离这里只有两个小时；如果你需要我，我坐下一班渡轮就回来了。”他离开前说，一如他每次放长假那样）。他没办法跟哈罗德在一起，每次看到哈罗德，他都会想起自己曾经沦落得有多惨；他打电话说自己工作太多，没办法去特鲁罗。然后他临时起意买了张机票飞到巴黎，在那里度过漫长、孤单的劳动节周末，独自在街上漫游。他没联络任何在巴黎的熟人（西提任当时在一家法国银行工作，住赫里福德街时楼上的邻居伊西多尔也在巴黎教书，菲德拉则在一家纽约画廊的巴黎分公司当总监），反正他们一定都到外地度假了，不会留在巴黎市区。
He was tired, he was so tired. It was taking so much energy to hold the beasts off. He sometimes had an image of himself surrendering to them, and they would cover him with their claws and beaks and talons and peck and pinch and pluck away at him until he was nothing, and he would let them.
他累了，真的好累。他花了好多力气不让那些野兽近身。他有时想象自己被包围，它们一起扑上前，用爪子和尖喙又啄又抓又扯，直到他被吞噬殆尽，他完全不会反抗。
After he returned from Paris, he had a dream in which he was running across a cracked reddish plain of earth. Behind him was a dark cloud, and although he was fast, the cloud was faster. As it drew closer, he heard a buzzing, and realized it was a swarm of insects, terrible and oily and noisy, with pincerlike protuberances jutting out from beneath their eyes. He knew that if he stopped, he would die, and yet even in the dream he knew he couldn’t go on for much longer; at some point, he had stopped being able to run and had started hobbling instead, reality asserting itself even in his dreams. And then he heard a voice, one unfamiliar but calm and authoritative, speak to him. Stop, it said. You can end this. You don’t have to do this. It was such a relief to hear those words, and he stopped, abruptly, and faced the cloud, which was seconds, feet away from him, exhausted and waiting for it to be over.
从巴黎回来后，他做了个梦，梦到自己跑过一大片干裂的红土平原。他身后是一团乌云。他跑得很快，但那团云更快。乌云离他越来越近，他听到嗡嗡声，才明白那是一大群昆虫，又可怕又油亮又嘈杂，双眼底下伸出一对像螯的东西。他知道自己停下来就会死，但即使在梦中，他都知道自己撑不了多久；到了某个时间，他就再也跑不动，必须开始跛行，连在梦中都无法脱离这个现实。接着他听到一个人声，不熟悉，但冷静、充满权威，对着他说话。“停下，”那声音说，“你可以结束这个。你不必撑下去。”你可以结束这个。你不必撑下去。听到这句话真是一大解脱，于是他突然停下，面对那团离他只差几秒钟距离的乌云，筋疲力尽地等着一切结束。
He woke, frightened, because he knew what the words meant, and they both terrified and comforted him. Now, as he moved through his days, he heard that voice in his head, and he was reminded that he could, in fact, stop. He didn’t, in fact, have to keep going.
他醒来，很害怕，因为他知道那些话的意思，惊骇的同时又觉得欣慰。现在，当他熬过每一天，脑袋里都会听到那个声音，然后想到他其实可以停止，不必再继续下去。
He had considered killing himself before, of course; when he was in the home, and in Philadelphia, and after Ana had died. But something had always stopped him, although now, he couldn’t remember what that thing had been. Now as he ran from the hyenas, he argued with himself: Why was he doing this? He was so tired; he so wanted to stop. Knowing that he didn’t have to keep going was a solace to him, somehow; it reminded him that he had options, it reminded him that even though his subconscious wouldn’t obey his conscious, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still in control.
他以前当然考虑过自杀；当年在少年之家，还有在费城，还有安娜死后，他都想过。但总有事情阻止他，不过现在他不记得是什么事了。如今每当他被那些鬣狗追着跑时，他就会跟自己争辩：为什么他要这么做？他好累；他好想停下来。不知怎的，知道自己不必继续下去是一大慰藉；这提醒了他，让他想到自己还有别的选择；也提醒他：即使潜意识不遵从他的知觉，也不表示他失控了。
Almost as an experiment, he began thinking of what it would mean for him to leave: in January, after his most lucrative year at the firm yet, he had updated his will, so that was in order. He would need to write a letter to Willem, a letter to Harold, a letter to Julia; he would also want to write something to Lucien, to Richard, to Malcolm. To Andy. To JB, forgiving him. Then he could go. Every day, he thought about it, and thinking about it made things easier. Thinking about it gave him fortitude.
仿佛是做实验一般，他开始想如果他要离开的话，得交代什么。一月，他领到进事务所后最大的一笔年度分红，他更新了自己的遗嘱，所以这部分准备妥当了。他得写一封信给威廉、一封给哈罗德、一封给朱丽娅；他也想留话给吕西安、理查德、马尔科姆。还要写给安迪。写给杰比，原谅他。然后他就可以走了。每一天，他都想着这些事情，然后就好过一点。想着这件事给了他坚毅。
And then, at some point, it was no longer an experiment. He couldn’t remember how he had decided, but after he had, he felt lighter, freer, less tormented. The hyenas were still chasing him, but now he could see, very far in the distance, a house with an open door, and he knew that once he had reached that house, he would be safe, and everything that pursued him would fall away. They didn’t like it, of course—they could see the door as well, they knew he was about to elude them—and every day the hunt got worse, the army of things chasing him stronger and louder and more insistent. His brain was vomiting memories, they were flooding everything else—he thought of people and sensations and incidents he hadn’t thought of in years. Tastes appeared on his tongue as if by alchemy; he smelled fragrances he hadn’t smelled in decades. His system was compromised; he would drown in his memories; he had to do something. He had tried—all his life, he had tried. He had tried to be someone different, he had tried to be someone better, he had tried to make himself clean. But it hadn’t worked. Once he had decided, he was fascinated by his own hopefulness, by how he could have saved himself years of sorrow by just ending it—he could have been his own savior. No law said he had to keep on living; his life was still his own to do with what he pleased. How had he not realized this in all these years? The choice now seemed obvious; the only question was why it had taken him so long.
然而，想到一个程度，那就不再只是个实验。他想不起自己是怎么决定的，但决定之后，他觉得自己更轻盈、更自由，也比较不那么受折磨了。那些鬣狗依然追着他，但现在他可以看到，在很远的远方，有一栋房子开着门，他知道一旦自己跑进那栋房子，他就安全了，一切追逐都会消失。那些鬣狗当然不喜欢这样——它们也看得到那扇门，它们知道他就要逃掉了——而每一天，那些追逐都更凶恶，追逐他的阵容变得更壮大、更吵嚷，也更坚持。他的脑子狂吐出一段段回忆，到处泛滥——他回想起多年来没再想过的人、感觉和事件。他舌头上仿佛变魔术般冒出种种滋味；还闻到几十年没闻到过的香味。他的身体都妥协了；他会被他的回忆淹没；他得做点事情。他试过了——他这辈子都在努力尝试。他试过当个不一样的人，他试过当个更好的人，他试过让自己干净。但是没有用。一旦他决定之后，他就深深入迷了，因为自己满怀希望，只要结束生命，就可以拯救自己多年来的不幸——他可以成为自己的拯救者。没有法律规定他得活下去；他的这条命还是他自己的，他爱做什么就做什么。这么多年来，他怎么都没有明白这一点？现在他的选择似乎很明显了；唯一的问题就是为什么拖了这么久。
He talked to Harold; he could tell by the relief in Harold’s voice that he must be sounding more normal. He talked to Willem. “You sound better,” Willem said, and he could hear the relief in Willem’s voice as well.
他打电话找哈罗德；从哈罗德如释重负的声音，他知道自己听起来一定比较正常了。他跟威廉交谈。“你听起来好多了。”威廉说。他也听得出威廉松了口气。
“I am,” he said. He felt a pull of regret after talking to both of them, but he was determined. He was no good for them, anyway; he was only an extravagant collection of problems, nothing more. Unless he stopped himself, he would consume them with his needs. He would take and take and take from them until he had chewed away their every bit of flesh; they could answer every difficulty he posed to them and he would still find new ways to destroy them. For a while, they would mourn him, because they were good people, the best, and he was sorry for that—but eventually they would see that their lives were better without him in it. They would see how much time he had stolen from them; they would understand what a thief he had been, how he had suckled away all their energy and attention, how he had exsanguinated them. He hoped they would forgive him; he hoped they would see that this was his apology to them. He was releasing them—he loved them most of all, and this was what you did for people you loved: you gave them their freedom.
“我是好多了啊。”他说。跟他们分别谈过之后，他感觉到一股后悔的力量，但是他下定决心了。总之，他对他们没有好处；他只是个麻烦的大集合，如此而已。除非他自己停下来，否则他会以自己的种种需要毁掉他们。他会从他们身上一直索取一直索取一直索取，直到他一口口啃光他们的肉为止；他们会解决他所提出的每一道难题，但他还是会找出新的办法摧毁他们。他走了之后，他们会为他哀悼一阵子，因为他们是好人，最好的人，而他会因此遗憾——但最终他们会明白，他们的人生没有他会更好。他们会看清他从他们身上偷走了多少时间；他们会了解他根本是个小偷，吸光了他们所有的精力和注意力，吸干了他们的血。他希望他们能原谅他；他希望他们能看清这是他对他们的道歉。他离开他们——他最爱的人，而为了你所爱的人，你就该这么做：让他们自由。
The day came: a Monday at the end of September. The night before he had realized that it was almost exactly a year after the beating, although he hadn’t planned it that way. He left work early that evening. He had spent the weekend organizing his projects; he had written Lucien a memo detailing the status of everything he had been working on. At home, he lined up his letters on the dining-room table, and a copy of his will. He had left a message with Richard’s studio manager that the toilet in the master bathroom kept running and asked if Richard could let in the plumber the following day at nine—both Richard and Willem had a set of keys to his apartment—because he would be away on business.
那天来到了：九月底的星期一。前一夜他才发现，他挨揍后几乎正好满一年，不过他并没有刻意这样计划。那天晚上他很早就下班了。前一个周末，他都在整理手上的案子，他写了一份备忘录给吕西安，详细列出手上工作的状况。回到家，他把他的信排列在餐厅的桌上，还加上一份遗嘱。他留话给理查德的工作室主任，说主浴室的马桶水箱一直在漏水，问理查德能不能让水管工次日早上9点过来检查（理查德和威廉都有他公寓的备份钥匙），因为届时他已经去上班了。
He took off his suit jacket and tie and shoes and watch and went to the bathroom. He sat in the shower area with his sleeves pushed up. He had a glass of scotch, which he sipped at to steady himself, and a box cutter, which he knew would be easier to hold than a razor. He knew what he needed to do: three straight vertical lines, as deep and long as he could make them, following the veins up both arms. And then he would lie down and wait.
他脱掉西装外套、领带、鞋子和手表，进入浴室。他坐在淋浴间，卷起袖子。他准备了一杯苏格兰威士忌，慢慢喝着稳定情绪，还有一把美工刀，他知道这比刮胡刀片好握。他也知道自己该怎么做：沿着两边手臂的静脉割三条垂直线，尽量割得深而长。然后他就会躺下来等死。
He waited for a while, crying a bit, because he was tired and frightened and because he was ready to go, he was ready to leave. Finally he rubbed his eyes and began. He started with his left arm. He made the first cut, which was more painful than he had thought it would be, and he cried out. Then he made the second. He took another drink of the scotch. The blood was viscous, more gelatinous than liquid, and a brilliant, shimmering oil-black. Already his pants were soaked with it, already his grip was loosening. He made the third.
他等了一会儿，哭了一会儿，因为他又累又怕，也因为他准备好要走了，他准备要离开了。最后他揉揉眼睛，开始动手。他先从左手臂开始，划下第一刀，结果比他原先以为的要痛，他叫出声来。然后划了第二刀。他又喝了一杯威士忌。那些血好黏稠，比较像胶状而非液体，而且是一种明亮、闪着微光的油黑色。他的长裤已经沾上了血，紧握的手也开始放松了。他划了第三刀。
When he was done with both arms, he slumped against the back of the shower wall. He wished, absurdly, for a pillow. He was warm from the scotch, and from his own blood, which lapped at him as it pooled around his legs—his insides meeting his outsides, the inner bathing the outer. He closed his eyes. Behind him, the hyenas howled, furious at him. Before him stood the house with its open door. He wasn’t close yet, but he was closer than he’d been: close enough to see that inside, there was a bed where he could rest, where he could lie down and sleep after his long run, where he would, for the first time in his life, be safe.
两手都割完之后，他往后靠着淋浴间的墙壁，忽然很荒谬地希望有个枕头。苏格兰威士忌让他全身温暖，他的血流出来，围绕着双腿越积越多，于是他的体内与体外交会，内部浸浴着外表。他闭上眼睛。在他后方，那些鬣狗朝着他怒不可遏地嚎叫。他前方是那栋打开门的房子。他还没接近，但已经比以前都更接近了：近得足以看到屋里，有一张床可以休息，他可以在长跑之后躺下来睡觉，在里头，有生以来第一次，他将会安全了。
After they crossed into Nebraska, Brother Luke stopped at the edge of a wheat field and beckoned him out of the car. It was still dark, but he could hear the birds stirring, hear them talk back to a sun they couldn’t yet see. He took the brother’s hand and they skulked from the car and to a large tree, where Luke explained that the other brothers would be looking for them, and they would have to change their appearance. He took off the hated tunic, and put on the clothes Brother Luke held out for him: a sweatshirt with a hood and a pair of jeans. Before he did, though, he stood still as Luke cut off his hair with an electric razor. The brothers rarely cut his hair, and it was long, past his ears, and Brother Luke made sad noises as he removed it. “Your beautiful hair,” he said, and carefully wrapped the length of it in his tunic and then stuffed it into a garbage bag. “You look like every other boy now, Jude. But later, when we’re safe, you can grow it back, all right?” and he nodded, although really, he liked the idea of looking like every other boy. And then Brother Luke changed clothes himself, and he turned away to give the brother privacy. “You can look, Jude,” said Luke, laughing, but he shook his head. When he turned back, the brother was unrecognizable, in a plaid shirt and jeans of his own, and he smiled at him before shaving off his beard, the silvery bristles falling from him like splinters of metal. There were baseball caps for both of them, although the inside of Brother Luke’s was fitted with a yellowish wig, which covered his balding head completely. There were pairs of glasses for both of them as well: his were black and round and fitted with just glass, not real lenses, but Brother Luke’s were square and large and brown and had the same thick lenses as his real glasses, which he put into the bag. He could take them off when they were safe, Brother Luke told him.
他们进入内布拉斯加州之后，卢克修士在一小片麦田边缘停下，示意他下车。当时天还没亮，但他听得到鸟儿的骚动，听到它们跟尚未露脸的太阳对话。他牵着修士的手，两人蹑手蹑脚离开车旁，来到一棵大树下。卢克解释其他修士会找他们，所以他们得改变外貌。他脱掉那件讨厌的长袍，穿上卢克修士递给他的衣服：有帽兜的长袖运动衫和牛仔裤。不过他换上之前，先站着不动，让卢克用一把电动剃刀帮他剪头发。修士们很少帮他剪头发，现在已经留得很长，超过耳朵了，卢克修士边剪边发出难过的声音。“你美丽的头发。”他说，然后小心翼翼地把头发包在他的长袍里，再塞进一个垃圾袋。“你现在看起来就像其他男孩了，裘德。但之后等我们安全了，你就可以再把头发留长，好吗？”他点点头，但其实，他喜欢自己看起来像其他男孩。然后，卢克修士自己也换了衣服，他转开身好让修士有隐私。“你可以看的，裘德。”卢克笑着说，但他摇摇头。等他转回身来，看到身穿格子衬衫和牛仔裤、露出微笑的修士，根本认不出来了。接着修士剃掉大胡子，那银色的短毛像金属碎片般掉落。然后两个人都戴上棒球帽，不过卢克修士的帽子里还装了一顶淡黄色的假发，好盖住他全秃的脑袋。另外他们还有一人一副眼镜：他的是黑色圆框平光镜，卢克修士的则是大大的褐色方框镜，原先的眼镜则放到垃圾袋里。卢克修士说，等到安全后，他就可以把眼镜拿下来了。
They were on their way to Texas, which is where they’d build their cabin. He had always imagined Texas as flat land, just dust and sky and road, which Brother Luke said was mostly true, but there were parts of the state—like in east Texas, where he was from—that were forested with spruce and cedars.
他们要前往德州建造他们的小木屋。他原先一直想象德州是一片平原，只有沙尘、天空、马路。卢克修士说大部分是这样没错，但这个州的某些部分，比如他的家乡东德州，就有云杉和雪松森林。
It took them nineteen hours to reach Texas. It would have been less time, but at one point Brother Luke pulled off the side of the highway and said he needed to nap for a while, and the two of them slept for several hours. Brother Luke had packed them something to eat as well—peanut butter sandwiches—and in Oklahoma they stopped again in the parking lot of a rest stop to eat them.
他们花了十九个小时才抵达德州。本来可以更快的，但中间修士在公路边暂停，说他们得打个盹，于是两个人睡了几小时。卢克修士也带了一些花生酱三明治，到了俄克拉荷马州时，他们在休息站的停车场停下来吃。
The Texas of his mind had, with just a few descriptions from Brother Luke, transformed from a landscape of tumbleweeds and sod into one of pines, so tall and fragrant that they cottoned out all other sound, all other life, so when Brother Luke announced that they were now, officially, in Texas, he looked out the window, disappointed.
他心目中的德州原本由一大片风滚草和草皮组成，但单凭卢克修士的少许描述，它已经转变为一片松树森林。那些松树高大而芳香，阻绝了其他声音、其他生活。当卢克修士宣布他们现在正式进入德州时，他看着车窗外，觉得很失望。
