He blinked, surprised. He wasn’t sure what the question was going to be, but now that it had come, he was relieved. He rarely thought of the scar these days, and now he looked at it, its taffeta gleam, and as he ran his fingertips across it, he thought of how this scar led to so many other problems, and then to Brother Luke, and then to the home, and to Philadelphia, to all of it.
他眨眨眼，很惊讶。他不确定这个问题会走向哪里，但既然已经提出了，他反而松了一口气。他最近很少想到这个疤，现在他看着它，那塔夫绸般的光泽。他用指尖轻轻抚过，想着这个疤会如何引出其他问题。然后他想到卢克修士，想到少年之家，想到费城，想到过往的一切。
But what in life wasn’t connected to some greater, sadder story? All Willem was asking for was this one story; he didn’t need to drag everything else behind it, a huge ugly snarl of difficulties.
但人生里，哪件事不会牵涉出其他更大、更哀伤的故事呢？威廉问的就是这个故事：他不必把背后的一切全扯出来，扯出那一大团巨大而丑陋、由种种难题纠结在一起的混乱。
He thought about how he could start, and plotted what he’d say in his head before he opened his mouth. Finally, he was ready. “I was always a greedy kid,” he began, and across the table, he watched Willem lean forward on his elbows, as for the first time in their friendship, he was the listener, and he was being told a story.
他想着要怎么开始，开口前把要讲的先在脑袋里规划好。终于，他准备好了。“小时候我向来很贪心，”他说。隔着桌子，他看到威廉撑着手肘，身体前倾，在他们多年的友谊中，这是威廉第一次成为倾听者，要听他说出一个故事。
He was ten, he was eleven. His hair grew long again, longer even than it had been at the monastery. He grew taller, and Brother Luke took him to a thrift store, where you could buy a sack of clothes and pay by the pound. “Slow down!” Brother Luke would joke with him, pushing down on the top of his head as if he were squashing him back to a smaller size. “You’re growing up too fast for me!”
他10岁，他11岁。他的头发又长了，比在修道院时还长。他长高了，卢克修士带他到一家二手商店，称重量买了一大袋衣服。“慢一点！”卢克修士会跟他开玩笑，按着他的头顶，好像要把他按小一点，“你长太快了！”
He slept all the time now. In his lessons, he was awake, but as the day turned to late afternoon, he would feel something descend upon him, and would begin yawning, unable to keep his eyes open. At first Brother Luke joked about this as well—“My sleepyhead,” he said, “my dreamer”—but one night, he sat down with him after the client had left. For months, years, he had struggled with the clients, more out of reflex than because he thought he was capable of making them stop, but recently, he had begun to simply lie there, inert, waiting for whatever was going to happen to be over. “I know you’re tired,” Brother Luke had said. “It’s normal; you’re growing. It’s tiring work, growing. And I know you work hard. But Jude, when you’re with your clients, you have to show a little life; they’re paying to be with you, you know—you have to show them you’re enjoying it.” When he said nothing, the brother added, “Of course, I know it’s not enjoyable for you, not the way it is with just us, but you have to show a little energy, all right?” He leaned over, tucked his hair behind his ear. “All right?” He nodded.
现在他总是在睡觉。上课时，他醒着，但到了傍晚，他就觉得有个什么降临到他身上，他会开始打呵欠，睁不开眼睛。一开始，卢克修士也把这件事拿来开玩笑。“我的瞌睡虫，”他说，“我的梦想家。”但是有一夜，顾客走了之后，卢克修士陪着他坐下来。有好几个月，甚至超过两年，他一直反抗顾客，大部分是出于本能反应，而不是以为可以让他们停下来。但最近，他开始只是躺在那里，一动也不动，等着发生的事情赶紧结束。“我知道你很累，”卢克修士说，“这很正常，你正在长大。长大很辛苦、很累人。而且我知道你很努力工作。但裘德，你跟顾客在一起的时候，就得表现得有点精神；他们花钱是为了跟你在一起，你知道——你得让他们看到你也很享受。”他什么都不说。修士又说：“当然了，我知道这对你来说并不愉快，不像我们两个在一起那样，但是你得表现出一点活力，好吗？”修士凑过来，把他的头发塞到耳后。“好吗？”他点点头。
It was also around then that he began throwing himself into walls. The motel they were staying in—this was in Washington—had a second floor, and once he had gone upstairs to refill their bucket of ice. It had been a wet, slippery day, and as he was walking back, he had tripped and fallen, bouncing the entire way downstairs. Brother Luke had heard the noise his fall made and had run out. Nothing had been broken, but he had been scraped and was bleeding, and Brother Luke had canceled the appointment he had for that evening. That night, the brother had been careful with him, and had brought him tea, but he had felt more alive than he had in weeks. Something about the fall, the freshness of the pain, had been restorative. It was honest pain, clean pain, a pain without shame or filth, and it was a different sensation than he had felt in years. The next week, he went to get ice again, but this time, on his way back to the room, he stopped in the little triangle of space beneath the stairwell, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was tossing himself against the brick wall, and as he did so, he imagined he was knocking out of himself every piece of dirt, every trace of liquid, every memory of the past few years. He was resetting himself; he was returning himself to something pure; he was punishing himself for what he had done. After that, he felt better, energized, as if he had run a very long race and then had vomited, and he had been able to return to the room.
也大约在这阵子，他开始撞墙。他们当时住的那家汽车旅馆（在华盛顿州）有两层，有回他拿着冰桶上楼去拿冰块。那天下雨，到处又湿又滑，他下楼时绊了一下摔倒了，一路摔到楼下。卢克修士听到声音赶紧冲出来。他没骨折，但是有擦伤和流血，卢克修士就取消了当天晚上的预约。那天晚上，修士对他小心翼翼，还帮他端茶，他觉得自己有好几个星期没这么有活力了。那回跌倒和疼痛的新鲜感有种恢复健康的功效。那是诚实的痛、干净的痛，没有羞耻和污秽，他已经好几年没有这样的感觉了。下个星期，他又去拿冰块，但这回，他下楼回房途中，在楼梯下方的小三角空间停下，还没意识到自己在做什么，就整个人朝砖墙撞过去，而且一边想象着把身上的每粒尘土、每滴液体、过去几年的每段记忆都撞出来。他要重新设定自己；他要让自己回到某种纯净的状态；他要为自己所做的事惩罚自己。之后，他好过多了，有精神多了，好像长途赛跑后那样呕吐了，这才有办法回到房间。
Eventually, however, Brother Luke realized what he was doing, and there had been another talk. “I understand you get frustrated,” Brother Luke said, “but Jude, what you’re doing isn’t good for you. I’m worried about you. And the clients don’t like seeing you all bruised.” They were silent. A month ago, after a very bad night—there had been a group of men, and after they had left, he had sobbed, wailed, coming as close to a tantrum as he had in years, while Luke sat next to him and rubbed his sore stomach and held a pillow over his mouth to muffle the sound—he had begged Luke to let him stop. And the brother had cried and said he would, that there was nothing more he’d like than for it to be just the two of them, but he had long ago spent all his money taking care of him. “I don’t regret it for an instant, Jude,” said the brother, “but we don’t have any money now. You’re all I’ve got. I’m so sorry. But I’m really saving now; eventually, you’ll be able to stop, I promise.”
但最后，卢克修士明白了他在做什么，找他谈话。“我知道你很失望，”卢克修士说，“但是裘德，你做这些事对你没有好处。我很担心你。顾客也不喜欢看到你全身都是瘀青。”他们沉默了一会儿。一个月前，遇到一个非常糟的夜晚，一群男人离开后，他又啜泣又哭号，多年来第一次近似乱发脾气。卢克坐在他旁边，一直揉着他发痛的肚子，还用枕头捂住他的嘴好闷住声音。他求卢克让他停下。修士也哭了，说他会的，说他恨不得只有他们两个人，但他为了照顾他，早就把所有钱都花光了。“裘德，我一点也不后悔，”修士说，“但现在我完全没钱了。我只剩下你。对不起。但我现在真的开始存钱了。总有一天，你可以停止的，我保证。”
“When?” he had sobbed.
“什么时候？”他啜泣着问。
“Soon,” said Luke, “soon. A year. I promise,” and he had nodded, although he had long since learned that the brother’s promises were meaningless.
“很快的，”卢克说，“很快的。一年。我保证。”他点点头，虽然他早就明白修士的承诺毫无意义。
But then the brother said that he would teach him a secret, something that would help him relieve his frustrations, and the next day he had taught him to cut himself, and had given him a bag already packed with razors and alcohol wipes and cotton and bandages. “You’ll have to experiment to see what feels best,” the brother had said, and had shown him how to clean and bandage the cut once he had finished. “So this is yours,” he said, giving him the bag. “You let me know when you need more supplies, and I’ll get them for you.” He had at first missed the theatrics, the force and weight, of his falls and his slams, but he soon grew to appreciate the secrecy, the control of the cuts. Brother Luke was right: the cutting was better. When he did it, it was as if he was draining away the poison, the filth, the rage inside him. It was as if his old dream of leeches had come to life and had the same effect, the effect he had always hoped it would. He wished he was made of metal, of plastic: something that could be hosed down and scrubbed clean. He had a vision of himself being pumped full of water and detergent and bleach and then blasted dry, everything inside him made hygienic again. Now, after the final client of the night had left, he took Brother Luke’s place in the bathroom, and until he heard the brother telling him it was time to come to bed, his body was his to do with what he chose.
但接着，修士说要告诉他一个秘密，可以帮助他纾解他的挫败感。次日，他给了他一袋装了刮胡刀片、酒精棉片、棉花和绷带的袋子，教他割自己。“你得实验一下，看什么感觉最适合。”修士说，然后教他割完了要如何清洁并贴上绷带。“这个给你。”他说，把袋子交给他，“需要补充的时候跟我说一声，我会帮你准备好。”他一开始很怀念摔下楼梯和撞墙的戏剧化动作，还有那种威力和分量，但他很快就喜欢上割自己的私密性和可控性。卢克修士说得没错：割自己比较好。他割的时候，好像排掉了体内的毒素、污秽、愤怒。就如同他旧日的水蛭梦复活了，有着同样的效果，而这种效果是他一直期盼的。他真希望自己是金属或塑料做的，可以用水冲一冲，刷洗干净。他想象自己被灌满了水、清洁剂和漂白水，排光光之后，他体内的一切又干净卫生了。现在，晚上的最后一个顾客离开后，他就会进入浴室，他的身体是他的，可以做他想做的事情，直到修士跟他说该睡觉了。
He was so dependent on Luke: for his food, for his protection, and now for his razors. When he needed to be taken to the doctor because he was sick—he got infections from the clients, no matter how hard Brother Luke tried, and sometimes he didn’t properly clean his cuts and they became infected as well—Brother Luke took him, and got him the antibiotics he needed. He grew accustomed to Brother Luke’s body, his mouth, his hands: he didn’t like them, but he no longer jolted when Luke began to kiss him, and when the brother put his arms around him, he obediently returned the embrace. He knew there was no one else who would ever treat him as well as Luke did: even when he did something wrong, Luke never yelled at him, and even after all these years, he had still never hit him. Earlier, he had thought he might someday have a client who would be better, who might want to take him away, but now he knew that would never be the case. Once, he had started getting undressed before the client was ready, and the man had slapped his face and snapped at him. “Jesus,” he’d said, “slow down, you little slut. How many times have you done this, anyway?” And as he always did whenever the clients hit him, Luke had come out of the bathroom to yell at the man, and had made the man promise to behave better if he was going to stay. The clients called him names: he was a slut, a whore, filthy, disgusting, a nympho (he had to look that one up), a slave, garbage, trash, dirty, worthless, a nothing. But Luke never said any of those things to him. He was perfect, said Luke, he was smart, he was good at what he did and there was nothing wrong with what he did.
他很依赖卢克：依赖他的食物，依赖他的保护，现在还依赖他的刮胡刀片。每回他生病必须去看医生时（无论卢克修士多么努力，他还是会被顾客传染，另外有时他割完后没有处理好，伤口也会感染），卢克修士就会带他去买他需要的抗生素。他逐渐习惯了卢克修士的身体、他的嘴、他的手。他不喜欢，但是卢克吻他时他不再慌张，而且修士双手抱着他时，他也会顺从地回抱。他知道再也没有人能像卢克对他那么好，即使他做错了什么事，卢克也从来没骂过他，即使过了这么多年，也从来没打过他。早些时候，他想过或许哪天会碰到一个更好的顾客，可能会想带他走，但现在他知道永远不可能了。有一回，他在顾客准备好之前就开始脱衣服，那男人打了他一耳光，然后骂他。“天啊，”他说，“别那么快，你这个小骚货。你做这个做多少次了？”就像每次有顾客打他时一样，卢克会从浴室里走出来骂那个男人，逼那个男人保证会更守规矩，否则就要赶他走。顾客会骂他：骂他骚货，骂他婊子，骂他肮脏，骂他恶心，还骂他花痴（他本来不懂花痴是什么，查了才知道），骂他是奴隶、垃圾、废物、污秽、没用、人渣。但卢克从来没对他说过这些字眼。卢克说，他很完美，他很聪明，他把这些事做得很好，一点错也没有。
The brother still talked of their being together, although now he talked of a house on the sea, somewhere in central California, and would describe the stony beaches, the noisy birds, the storm-colored water. They would be together, the two of them, like a married couple. No longer were they father and son; now they were equals. When he turned sixteen, they would get married. They would go on a honeymoon to France and Germany, where he could finally use his languages around real French and Germans, and to Italy and Spain, where Brother Luke had lived for two years: once as a student, once the year after he graduated college. They would buy him a piano so he could play and sing. “Other people won’t want you if they knew how many clients you’d been with,” the Brother said. “And they’d be silly to not want you. But I’ll always want you, even if you’ve been with ten thousand clients.” He would retire when he was sixteen, Brother Luke said, and he had cried then, quietly, because he had been counting the days until he was twelve, when Brother Luke had promised he could stop.
修士还是会谈到他们要在一起，不过他现在谈的是海边的一栋房子，在加州中部，然后描述卵石海滩、嘈杂的海鸟、色彩如风暴般的海水。他们会在一起，只有他们两个，就像已婚的伴侣。他们再也不是父子；现在他们是平等的。等到他满16岁，他们就会结婚。他们会去法国和德国度蜜月，在那里，他终于可以跟真正的法国人和德国人讲法语和德语。还要去意大利和西班牙，卢克修士曾在那住过两年：一次是以学生的身份，一次是大学毕业后那年。他们会给他买一架钢琴，这样他就可以弹琴唱歌。“其他人要是知道你接过多少客，就不会想要你了。”卢克修士说，“是他们太笨了才不想要你，但是我永远都想要你，就算你接过一万个客人也一样。”等他满16岁就可以退休了，卢克修士说。然后他静静地哭了，因为之前卢克修士答应他满12岁就可以停止，他一直在算日子。
Sometimes Luke apologized for what he had to do: when the client was cruel, when he was in pain, when he bled or was bruised. And sometimes Luke acted as if he enjoyed it. “Well, that was a good one,” he’d say, after one of the men left. “I could tell you liked that one, am I right? Don’t deny it, Jude! I heard you enjoying yourself. Well, it’s good. It’s good to enjoy your work.”
有时，卢克会为他必须做的事道歉，当顾客很残忍、当他很痛、当他流血或有瘀青的时候。有时，卢克表现得好像他很喜欢他做这些似的。“唔，刚刚那回真不错啊，”他会在顾客离开后说，“我看得出你喜欢这回，对不对？别否认，裘德！我听得出你自己也很享受。唔，这样很好。享受你的工作是好事。”
He turned twelve. They were now in Oregon, working their way toward California, Luke said. He had grown again; Brother Luke predicted he would be six foot one, six foot two when he stopped—still shorter than Brother Luke, but not by much. His voice was changing. He wasn’t a child anymore, and this made finding clients more difficult. Now there were fewer individual clients and more groups. He hated the groups, but Luke said that was the best he could do. He looked too old for his age: clients thought he was thirteen or fourteen, and at this age, Luke said, every year counted.
他满12岁了。卢克说，现在他们在俄勒冈，正要去加州。他又长高了，卢克修士预测他会一路长到六英尺一英寸或六英尺二英寸，还是比卢克修士矮，但没矮多少。他也开始变声，不再是小孩了，这使得找顾客变得更困难。现在单独来的客人变少了。他讨厌成群结伴来的顾客，但卢克说他只能找到这些。他看起来比他的实际年龄大，顾客都以为他13岁或14岁。卢克说，在这个年纪，每一年的生意都会差很多。
It was fall; September twentieth. They were in Montana, because Luke thought he would like to see the night sky there, the stars as bright as electrical lights. There was nothing strange about that day. Two days earlier, he’d had a large group, and it had been so awful that Luke had not only canceled his clients for the day after but had let him sleep alone for both nights, the bed completely his. That evening, though, life had returned to normal. Luke joined him in bed, and began kissing him. And then, as they were having sex, there was a banging at their door, so loud and insistent and sudden that he had almost bitten down on Brother Luke’s tongue. “Police,” he could hear, “open up. Open up right now.”
到了秋天，九月二十日。他们当时在蒙大拿州，因为卢克觉得他会想看看那儿的夜空，星星亮得像电灯。那天没有什么不寻常。两天前，他接了一大群结伴而来的客人，状况糟到卢克不光是取消了次日的顾客，还连续两夜让他单独睡觉，那张床完全是他的。不过那天夜里，生活又恢复正常。卢克来到他床上跟他一起睡，开始吻他。然后，他们性交到一半时，忽然有人敲门，很大声、既坚持又突然，害他差点咬到卢克修士的舌头。“警察，”他听到门外的人喊，“开门，马上开门。”
Brother Luke had clamped his hand over his mouth. “Don’t say a word,” he hissed.
卢克修士一手紧紧捂住他的嘴巴。“别出声。”他用气音说。
“Police,” shouted the voice again. “Edgar Wilmot, we have a warrant for your arrest. Open the door right now.”
“警察，”那声音又喊了，“埃德加·威尔默特，我们有你的逮捕令。马上开门。”
He was confused: Who was Edgar Wilmot? Was he a client? He was about to tell Brother Luke that they had made a mistake when he looked up and saw his face and realized that they were looking for Brother Luke.
他很困惑：谁是埃德加·威尔默特？是某个顾客吗？他正要告诉卢克他们搞错了，但他一抬头看到他的脸，立刻明白他们要找的就是卢克修士。
Brother Luke pulled out of him and motioned for him to stay in the bed. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “I’ll be right back.” And then he ran into the bathroom; he could hear the door lock click.
卢克修士起身离开他，比划着示意他待在床上。“别动，”他低声说，“我马上回来。”然后跑进浴室。他听到门“喀哒”一声锁上。
“No,” he’d whispered wildly, as Luke left him. “Don’t leave me, Brother Luke, don’t leave me alone.” But the brother had left anyway.
“不要，”他看到卢克离开，着急地用气音说，“别离开我，卢克修士，别留下我一个人。”但修士还是离开了。
