His mind grew a little clearer with every day. Every day, he was awake a little longer. Mostly, he felt nothing. People came to see him and cried and he looked at them and could register only the strangeness of their faces, the way everyone looked the same when they cried, their noses hoggy, rarely used muscles pulling their mouths in unnatural directions, into unnatural shapes.
每过去一天，他的脑子就更清醒一点。每一天，他醒来的时间都更长一点。大部分时间，他什么感觉都没有。人们来看他，在那里哭，而他看着他们，只看到他们脸上那种奇怪之处：每个人哭的时候看起来都一样，哼着鼻子，脸上不常用的肌肉把嘴巴扯向不自然的方向，成为不自然的形状。
He thought of nothing, his mind was a clean sheet of paper. He learned little pieces of what had happened: how Richard’s studio manager had thought the plumber was coming at nine that night, not nine the following morning (even in his haze, he wondered how anyone could think a plumber would come at nine in the evening); how Richard had found him and called an ambulance and had ridden with him to the hospital; how Richard had called Andy and Harold and Willem; how Willem had flown back from Colombo to be with him. He did feel sorry that it had been Richard who’d had to discover him—that was always the part of the plan that had made him uncomfortable, although at the time he had remembered thinking that Richard had a high tolerance for blood, having once made sculptures with it, and so was the least likely among his friends to be traumatized—and had apologized to Richard, who had stroked the back of his hand and told him it was fine, it was okay.
他什么都没想，脑子宛如一片白纸。他得知了发生事情的片段：理查德的工作室主任以为水管工那天晚上9点要过来，而不是次日早晨9点（即使在朦胧的意识中，他还是搞不懂怎么有人以为水管工晚上9点会来）；于是理查德发现了他，叫了救护车送他到医院；然后理查德打电话给安迪、哈罗德跟威廉；威廉从科伦坡飞回来陪他。他很抱歉让理查德发现他——计划的这部分一直让他很不安，不过当时他还想着理查德对血的容忍度很高，因为他曾用血做雕塑，是朋友中最不可能有心理创伤的。他跟理查德道歉，他摸摸他的手背，跟他说没事的，没关系。
Dr. Solomon came every day and tried to talk to him, but he didn’t have much to say. Most of the time, people didn’t talk to him at all. They came and sat and did work of their own, or spoke to him without seeming to expect a reply, which he appreciated. Lucien came often, usually with a gift, once with a large card that everyone in the office had signed—“I’m sure this is just the thing to make you feel better,” he’d said, dryly, “but here it is, anyway”—and Malcolm made him one of his imaginary houses, its windows crisp vellum, which he placed on his bedside table. Willem called him every morning and every night. Harold read The Hobbit to him, which he had never read, and when Harold couldn’t come, Julia came, and picked up where Harold had left off: those were his favorite visits. Andy arrived every evening, after visiting hours had ended, and had dinner with him; he was concerned that he wasn’t eating enough, and brought him a serving of whatever he was having. He brought him a container of beef barley soup, but his hands were still too weak to hold the spoon, and Andy had to feed him, one slow spoonful after the next. Once, this would have embarrassed him, but now he simply didn’t care: he opened his mouth and accepted the food, which was flavorless, and chewed and swallowed.
所罗门医生每天都来，试着找他谈，但他没有什么可以说的。大部分时间，大家都不跟他讲话，只是来了就坐在那里，做自己的事情，或者兀自对他讲话，似乎不期待回应，这点他很感激。吕西安常常来，通常带着礼物，有回带了一张大卡片，事务所里每个人都签了名。“我很确定这玩意儿只会让你好过一点点，”他不动声色讽刺地说，“反正我都带来了。”而马尔科姆帮他做了一栋想象的房子模型，窗子是薄脆的羊皮纸，放在他床边的桌上。威廉每天早上和晚上都会打电话来。哈罗德念《霍比特人》给他听，这本书他从没看过；哈罗德没办法来的时候，朱丽娅就会来，接着哈罗德上回停下的地方继续念：那是他最喜欢的访客时间。安迪则是每天晚上在访客时间结束后过来，跟他一起吃晚餐；安迪担心他吃得不够多，所以自己吃什么都会多带一份给他。有回安迪外带了一盒牛肉大麦浓汤来，但他的手还太虚弱，无法拿汤匙，所以安迪得喂他，慢慢地一匙接一匙。这种事以前会让他难为情，但现在他不在乎了：他张开嘴巴接受那毫无滋味的食物，嚼一嚼吞下去。
“I want to go home,” he told Andy one evening, as he watched Andy eat his turkey club sandwich.
“我想回家。”有天晚上他说，同时看着安迪吃火鸡肉总汇三明治。
Andy finished his bite and looked at him. “Oh, do you?”
安迪吃掉最后一口看着他：“哦，是吗？”
“Yes,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I want to leave.” He thought Andy would say something sarcastic, but he only nodded, slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll talk to Solomon.” He grimaced. “Eat your sandwich.”
“是的，”他说。他想不出任何其他的话可说，“我想出院。”他以为安迪会说些讽刺的话，但他只是缓缓点头。“好，”他说，“好，我会跟所罗门谈。”他皱了一下脸，“吃你的三明治吧。”
The next day Dr. Solomon said, “I hear you want to go home.”
次日，所罗门医生说：“我听说你想回家。”
“I feel like I’ve been here a long time,” he said.
“我觉得我在这里待很久了。”他说。
Dr. Solomon was quiet. “You have been here a little while,” he said. “But given your history of self-injury and the seriousness of your attempt, your doctor—Andy—and parents thought it was for the best.”
所罗门医生沉默了一会儿。“你在这里没待几天，”他说，“不过以你自残的历史和你这回企图的严重性，你的医生安迪和你父母认为，继续住院是最好的。”
He thought about this. “So if my attempt had been less serious, I could have gone home earlier?” It seemed too logical to be an effective policy.
他想了想。“所以如果我的企图没那么严重，我就可以早点回家了？”这似乎太合逻辑了，不太可能有用。
The doctor smiled. “Probably,” he said. “But I’m not completely opposed to letting you go home, Jude, although I think we have to put some protective measures in place.” He stopped. “It troubles me, however, that you’ve been so unwilling to discuss why you made the attempt in the first place. Dr. Contractor—I’m sorry: Andy—tells me that you’ve always resisted therapy, can you tell me why?” He said nothing, and neither did the doctor. “Your father tells me that you were in an abusive relationship last year, and that it’s had long-term reverberations,” said the doctor, and he felt himself go cold. But he willed himself not to answer, and closed his eyes, and finally he could hear Dr. Solomon get up to leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Jude,” he said as he left.
医生微笑。“大概吧，”他说，“其实我不完全反对让你回家，裘德，但是我认为我们得准备一些保护措施。”他停了一下。“不过让我烦恼的是，你一直很不愿意跟我讨论你当初为什么会有这个企图。康垂克特医生，对不起，就是安迪，他告诉我，你一直很抗拒做心理咨询，你能不能告诉我为什么？”他什么都没说，医生也等了一会儿。“你父亲告诉我，你去年有过一段受凌虐的伴侣关系，对你造成了长期的影响。”医生说。他觉得自己全身发冷，但他逼自己闭上眼睛，不要回答，最后他听到所罗门医生站起来要离开。“我明天会再过来，裘德。”他走之前说。
Eventually, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to speak to any of them and that he was in no state to hurt himself again, they let him go, with stipulations: He was to be released into Julia and Harold’s care. It was strongly recommended that he remain on a milder course of the drugs that he’d been given in the hospital. It was very strongly recommended that he see a therapist twice a week. He was to see Andy once a week. He was to take a sabbatical from work, which had already been arranged. He agreed to everything. He signed his name—the pen wobbly in his grip—on the discharge papers, under Andy’s and Dr. Solomon’s and Harold’s.
最后，显然他不会接受医生的咨询，也不可能再伤害自己，他们就让他出院了，但是有一些条件：院方将他交由朱丽娅和哈罗德照顾，并且强烈建议他继续服用医院开的药，只是减轻剂量。同时也强烈建议他每周去做两次心理咨询。另外他每星期要去安迪那里一次。事务所那边则休长假，这个已经安排好了。他全部同意，在出院文件上签了名（手里的笔摇摇晃晃握不稳），在安迪、所罗门和哈罗德的签名下面。
Harold and Julia took him to Truro, where Willem was already waiting for him. Every night he slept, extravagantly, and during the day he and Willem walked slowly down the hill to the ocean. It was early October and too cold to get into the water, but they would sit on the sand and look out at the horizon line, and sometimes Willem would talk to him and sometimes he wouldn’t. He dreamed that the sea had turned into a solid block of ice, its waves frozen in mid-crest, and that Willem was at a far shore, beckoning to him, and he was making his way slowly across its wide expanse to him, his hands and face numb from the wind.
哈罗德和朱丽娅带他去特鲁罗，威廉已经在那里等他。每天晚上他都贪婪地沉睡，白天他和威廉会从沙丘走到海边。那是十月初，冷得没法下水，但他们会坐在沙滩上看着远方的地平线，有时威廉会跟他谈话，有时不会。他梦到过那海洋变为一片坚固的冰，海浪在上升途中冻结，威廉在远方的岸上，呼唤着他，他缓缓跨过冰面走向他，双手和脸被寒风吹麻。
They ate dinner early, because he went to bed so early. The meals were always something simple, easy to digest, and if there was meat, one of the three of them would cut it up for him in advance so he wouldn’t have to try to wield a knife. Harold poured him a glass of milk every dinner, as if he was a child, and he drank it. He wasn’t allowed to leave the table until he had eaten at least half of what was on his plate, and he wasn’t allowed to serve himself, either. He was too tired to fight this; he did the best he could.
他们很早就吃晚餐，好让他早早就寝。晚餐的菜总是很简单，容易消化。如果有肉，其他三个人就会帮他先切好，免得他还要拿刀。每次晚餐哈罗德都会倒一杯牛奶给他，好像他是个小孩，而他就喝了。他得吃完盘子里至少一半的食物才能离桌，另外他不能给自己夹菜。他累得没力气反抗，尽量配合一切。
He was always cold, and sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, shivering despite the covers heaped on top of him, and he would lie there, watching Willem, who was sharing his room, breathing on the couch opposite him, watching clouds drift across the slice of moon he could see between the edge of the window frame and the blind, until he was able to sleep again.
他总是很冷，有时他会在半夜醒来，盖了好几层被子还是冷得发抖。他会躺在那里，看着躺在同一间房对面沙发上的威廉呼吸着，然后望向窗框一角和窗帘之间，看着天空里一朵朵云飘过弦月，直到他能再入睡为止。
Sometimes he thought about what he had done and felt that same sorrow he had felt in the hospital: the sorrow that he had failed, that he was still alive. And sometimes he thought about it and felt dread: now everyone really would treat him differently. Now he really was a freak, a bigger freak than he’d been before. Now he would have to begin anew in his attempts to convince people he was normal. He thought of the office, the one place where what he had been hadn’t mattered. But now there would always be another, competing story about him. Now he wouldn’t just be the youngest equity partner in the firm’s history (as Tremain sometimes introduced him); now he would be the partner who had tried to kill himself. They must be furious with him, he thought. He thought of his work there, and wondered who was handling it. They probably didn’t even need him to come back. Who would want to work with him again? Who would trust him again?
有时他想着自己所做的，感觉到在医院时同样的悲伤：悲伤他失败了，悲伤他还活着。而有时他想着想着，又担心极了：现在每个人对他的态度真的不一样了。现在他真的是个怪胎了，一个比以前更怪的怪胎。现在他得开始重新说服人们他很正常。他想到办公室，本来在那里，他的过去根本不重要。但现在会有另一个关于他的故事与之相抗衡了。他不光是事务所有史以来最年轻的股东合伙人（特里梅因有时会这么介绍他），还是那个曾企图自杀的合伙人。他们一定很生他的气，他心想。他想到自己在那里的工作，不知道现在谁接手。他们大概根本不需要他回去了。谁会想要再跟他共事？谁有办法再信任他？
And it wasn’t just Rosen Pritchard who would see him differently—it was everyone. All the autonomy he had spent years accumulating, trying to prove to everyone that he deserved: now it was gone. Now he couldn’t even cut his own food. The day before, Willem had had to help him tie his shoes. “It’ll get better, Judy,” he said to him, “it’ll get better. The doctor said it’s just going to take time.” In the mornings, Harold or Willem had to shave him because his hands were still too unsteady; he looked at his unfamiliar face in the mirror as they dragged the razor down his cheeks and under his chin. He had taught himself to shave in Philadelphia when he was living with the Douglasses, but Willem had retaught him their freshman year, alarmed, he later told him, by his tentative, hacking movements, as if he was clearing brush with a scythe. “Good at calculus, bad at shaving,” he’d said then, and had smiled at him so he wouldn’t feel more self-conscious.
而且不光是罗森·普理查德看待他的眼光不一样——每个人看他的眼光都不同了。他花费多年累积起来的自主权，设法跟每个人证明那是他应得的，现在全没了。现在他连切自己的食物都不行。前一天，威廉还得帮他系鞋带。“会好转的，小裘，”威廉跟他说，“慢慢会好转的。医生说只是要花点时间。”每天早上，哈罗德或威廉得帮他刮胡子，因为他的手还不稳；他看着镜中那张不熟悉的脸，同时他们抓着刮胡刀从他的脸颊往下刮到下巴。他以前在费城的道格拉斯家时自己学着刮胡子，但大一那年威廉又重新教了他一次。当时威廉告诉他，因为看到他迟疑、乱刮的动作，好像用一把长柄大镰刀在清除灌木。“微积分很厉害，刮胡子很逊。”威廉当时说，朝他露出微笑，免得他更难为情。
Then he would tell himself, You can always try again, and just thinking that made him feel stronger, although perversely, he was somehow less inclined to try again. He was too exhausted. Trying again meant preparation. It meant finding something sharp, finding some time alone, and he was never alone. Of course, he knew there were other methods, but he remained stubbornly fixated on the one he had chosen, even though it hadn’t worked.
这时他会告诉自己，你总是可以再试一次。光是想到这个，就让他觉得更坚强，但反常地，他不知怎的就是不想再试了。他太累了。再试一次就表示要准备，表示他得找到够锋利的东西，找到独处的时间，而他一直没办法独处。当然，他知道还有别的办法，但他还是顽固地只想用他选择过的那个方式，即使没成功。
Mostly, though, he felt nothing. Harold and Julia and Willem asked him what he wanted for breakfast, but the choices were impossible and overwhelming—pancakes? Waffles? Cereal? Eggs? What kind of eggs? Soft-boiled? Hard? Scrambled? Sunny-side? Fried? Over easy? Poached?—and he’d shake his head, and they eventually stopped asking. They stopped asking his opinion on anything, which he found restful. After lunch (also absurdly early), he napped on the living-room sofa in front of the fire, falling asleep to the sound of their murmurs, the slosh of water as they did the dishes. In the afternoons, Harold read to him; sometimes Willem and Julia stayed to listen as well.
但大部分时间，他什么感觉都没有。哈罗德、朱丽娅和威廉问他早餐想吃什么，选择多到令人受不了——煎饼？华夫饼？谷物片？蛋？什么样的蛋？溏心蛋？全熟的水煮蛋？炒蛋？荷包蛋要煎一面还两面？要全熟还半生？或者水波蛋？他会摇摇头，最后他们就不再问了。他们任何事都不再问他的意见，他觉得清静多了。午餐（也是早得荒谬）之后，他会在客厅壁炉前的沙发小睡一下，听着他们的说话声、洗盘子的水声入眠。傍晚时，哈罗德会念书给他听；有时威廉和朱丽娅也会留下来一起听。
After ten days or so, he and Willem went home to Greene Street. He had been dreading his return, but when he went to his bathroom, the marble was clean and stainless. “Malcolm,” said Willem, before he had to ask. “He finished last week. It’s all new.” Willem helped him into bed, and gave him a manila envelope with his name on it, which he opened after Willem left. Inside were the letters he had written everyone, still sealed, and the sealed copy of his will, and a note from Richard: “I thought you would want these. Love, R.” He slid them back into the envelope, his hands shaking; the next day he put them in his safe.
大约十天后，他和威廉回到格林街的家。他一直很担心回来所看到的景象，但进入浴室后，他发现里头的大理石干净无瑕。“马尔科姆，”威廉在他开口问之前就说了，“他上星期才完成。全部换新了。”威廉帮着他躺上床，给了他一个牛皮纸信封袋，上头写着他的名字。威廉离开后，他打开来看。里头是他写给每个人的信，还没拆开，他的遗嘱也没拆开。理查德附上一张字条：“我想你会想要这些。爱你的，理查德。”他把那些信放回大信封袋，双手颤抖。隔天他把整袋放进他的保险箱。
