He looked at Willem, who took a breath. “At the hospital,” he said. “They were changing your dressings, and giving you a bath.”
他看着威廉，威廉吸了口气。“在医院里，”他说，“他们在帮你换药，还有帮你洗澡。”
His eyes turned hot, and he looked back up at the ceiling. “How much did you see?” he asked.
他双眼发热，又转回去瞪着天花板。“你看到多少？”他问。
“I didn’t see everything,” Willem reassured him. “But I know you have scars on your back. And I’ve seen your arms before.” Willem waited, and then, when he didn’t say anything, sighed. “Jude, I promise you it’s not what you think it is.”
“没有全看到，”威廉安慰他，“但我知道你背部有疤。我以前也看过你的手臂。”威廉等着，看他什么都没说，就叹了口气，“裘德，我保证不是你想的那样。”
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disgusted by me,” he was finally able to say. Caleb’s words floated back to him: You really are deformed; you really are. “I don’t suppose I could just never take my clothes off at all, right?” he asked, trying to laugh, to turn it into a joke.
“我怕你会对我反感。”他最后终于有办法开口。凯莱布的话又浮现在他脑海：你真的很畸形；你真的是。“我想我也不可能永远不脱掉衣服，对吧？”他问，试着笑出声，把这件事转成一个玩笑。
“Well, no,” Willem said. “Because I think—although it’s not going to feel like it, initially—it’ll be a good thing for you, Judy.”
“唔，是啊，”威廉说，“虽然一开始感觉不会太好，但小裘，我觉得这对你是好事。”
And so the next night, he did it. As soon as Willem came to bed, he undressed quickly, under the covers, and then flung the blanket away and rolled onto his side, so his back was facing Willem. He kept his eyes shut the entire time, but when he felt Willem place his palm on his back, just between his shoulder blades, he began to cry, savagely, the kind of bitter, angry weeping he hadn’t done in years, tucking into himself with shame. He kept remembering the night with Caleb, the last time he had been so exposed, the last time he had cried this hard, and he knew that Willem would only understand part of the reason he was so upset, that he didn’t know that the shame of this very moment—of being naked, of being at another’s mercy—was almost as great as his shame for what he had revealed. He heard, more from the tone than the words themselves, that Willem was being kind to him, that he was dismayed and was trying to make him feel better, but he was so distraught that he couldn’t even comprehend what Willem was saying. He tried to get out of the bed so he could go to the bathroom and cut himself, but Willem caught him and held him so tightly that he couldn’t move, and eventually he somehow calmed himself.
于是次日晚上，他脱了。威廉一上床，他就赶紧在被子底下脱掉衣服，然后转身面对自己那一头，背对着威廉。从头到尾眼睛都闭着，但是当他感觉威廉的手掌放在他背部，就在两块肩胛骨之间，他哭了出来，哭得很凶，是几年来不曾有过的伤心、忿恨的痛哭，整个人被羞愧淹没。他一直想起和凯莱布的那一夜，那是他最后一次这么没有保护、最后一次哭得这么惨，而他知道威廉只了解部分他这么难受的原因，知道他不会明白他这一刻的羞愧——裸着身子，承受另一个人的怜悯——几乎和他露出那些疤痕带来的羞愧同样重大。他听到威廉（主要是从口气，而不是从他所讲的话）一直好言安慰，而且很惊慌，试着让他好过一点，但他痛苦得根本听不出威廉在讲什么。他试着下床，好去浴室割自己，但威廉抱住他，抱得很紧，让他没法动弹，最后他终于平静下来。
When he woke the following morning—late: it was a Sunday—Willem was staring at him. He looked tired. “How are you?” he asked.
次日早晨醒来时——很晚，这天是星期天——威廉凝视着他，一脸疲倦。“你还好吗？”威廉问。
The night returned to him. “Willem,” he said, “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He realized, then, that he still wasn’t wearing any clothes, and he put his arms beneath the sheet, and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
他想起前一夜。“威廉，”他说，“我真的、真的很抱歉。真的很抱歉。我不知道自己怎么了。”他这才想到自己身上还是没穿衣服，于是双手伸进被单里，把毯子拉高到下巴。
“No, Jude,” Willem said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be so traumatic for you.” He reached over and stroked his hair. They were quiet. “That was the first time I’ve ever seen you cry, you know.”
“不，裘德，”威廉说，“我才应该抱歉。我不知道这对你会这么痛苦。”威廉伸手抚着他的头发。两个人沉默了一会儿。“这是我第一次看到你哭，你知道。”
“Well,” he said, swallowing. “For some reason it’s not as successful a seduction method as I’d hoped,” and smiled at Willem, a little, and Willem smiled back.
“唔，”他说，吞咽着，“出于某些原因，这诱惑的招数没有我希望的那么成功。”他对威廉露出一丝微笑，威廉也笑了。
They lay in bed that morning and talked. Willem asked him about certain scars, and he told him. He explained how he had gotten the scars on his back: about the day he had been caught trying to run away from the home; the beating that had followed; the resulting infection, the way his back had wept pus for days, the bubbles of blisters that had formed around the stray splinters from the broom handle that had embedded themselves into his flesh; what he had been left with when it was all over. Willem asked him when he was last naked before anyone and he lied and told him that—except for Andy—it had been when he was fifteen. And then Willem said various kind and unbelievable things about his body, which he chose to ignore, because he knew they weren’t true.
他们那天早上就躺在床上谈话。威廉问他某些疤的来由，他告诉了他。他解释自己为什么会有背部的那些疤：那天他想逃出少年之家，结果被逮到；接下来被毒打；因为扫帚柄上的碎木片嵌进肉里，造成感染，形成一个个脓包，他背部流脓流了好几天；伤口痊愈之后，就留下了那些疤。威廉问他最后一次在任何人面前裸身是什么时候，他撒谎说除了安迪之外，是他15岁的时候。然后威廉针对他的身体说了各式各样难以相信的好话，他选择忽略，因为他知道那些不是实话。
“Willem, if you want out, I understand,” he said. It had been his idea not to tell anyone that their friendship might be changing into something else, and although he had told Willem it would give them space, and privacy, to figure out how to be with each other, he had also thought it would give Willem time to reconsider, opportunities to change his mind without fear of everyone else’s opinions. Of course, with this decision he cannot help but hear the echoes of his last relationship, which had also been conducted in secrecy, and he had to remind himself that this one was different; it was different unless he made it the same.
“威廉，如果你想退出，我能了解。”他说。原先他建议不要跟任何人说他们的友谊可能转变成别的关系。尽管他告诉威廉这样可以给他们空间和隐私，好慢慢相处，但他也觉得这样可以多给威廉一些重新考虑的时间，有机会改变心意，而不必担心其他人的想法。当然，这个决定让他不禁想起，自己跟凯莱布的交往同样是秘密进行，但他还是得提醒自己这回不一样，除非他自己偏要弄得一样。
“Jude, of course I don’t,” Willem said. “Of course not.”
“裘德，我当然不想，”威廉说，“当然不要。”
Willem was running his fingertip over his eyebrow, which for some reason he found a comforting gesture: it was affectionate without being in the least sexual. “I just feel like I’m going to be this series of nasty surprises for you,” he said at last, and Willem shook his head. “Surprises, maybe,” he said. “But not nasty ones.”
威廉用一根指尖抚过他的眉毛。出于某些原因，他觉得这个手势很能安慰自己：深情却又毫无性爱意味。“我只是觉得，对你来说，我会带给你一连串不愉快的惊讶。”最后他终于说。威廉摇摇头。“惊讶，或许，”他说，“但不会是不愉快。”
And so every night, he tries to remove his clothes. Sometimes he can do it; other times, he can’t. Sometimes he can allow Willem to touch him on his back and arms, and other times, he can’t. But he has been unable to be naked before Willem in the daytime, or even in light, or to do any of the things that he knows from movies and eavesdropping on other people that couples are supposed to do around each other: he cannot get dressed in front of Willem, or shower with him, which he’d had to do with Brother Luke, and which he had hated.
于是每一夜，他都试着脱掉衣服。有时做得到，有时做不到。有时他可以让威廉碰触他的背部和手臂，有时就不行。但是他没办法大白天在威廉面前光着身子，有时连夜晚也没办法。他从电影和偷听别人的谈话中得知伴侣会对彼此做的事情，他也没办法。他无法在威廉面前换衣服，也无法跟他一起冲澡；他以前曾被卢克修士逼着一起冲澡，他很不喜欢。
His own self-consciousness has not, however, proven contagious, and he is fascinated by how often, and how matter-of-factly, Willem is naked. In the morning, he pulls back Willem’s side of the blanket and studies Willem’s sleeping form with a clinical rigor, noting how perfect it is, and then remembers, with a strange queasy giddiness, that he is the one seeing it, that it is being bestowed upon him.
但总之，结果证明他的害羞并没有传染效果，而且威廉那么频繁且不当回事地光着身子，简直让他着迷。早上，他偷偷拉开威廉那一侧的毯子，用一种临床检验的精确程度，仔细打量威廉睡觉的模样，注意到他的身体有多么完美。然后带着奇怪的反胃和晕眩，想起他是能看到的那个人，而眼前这一幕是天上掉下来的。
Sometimes, the improbability of what has happened wallops him, and he is stilled. His first relationship (can it be called a relationship?): Brother Luke. His second: Caleb Porter. And his third: Willem Ragnarsson, his dearest friend, the best person he knows, a person who could have virtually anyone he wanted, man or woman, and yet for some bizarre set of reasons—a warped curiosity? madness? pity? idiocy?—has settled on him. He has a dream one night of Willem and Harold sitting together at a table, their heads bent over a piece of paper, Harold adding up figures on a calculator, and he knows, without being told, that Harold is paying Willem to be with him. In the dream, he feels humiliation along with a kind of gratitude: that Harold should be so generous, that Willem should play along. When he wakes, he is about to say something to Willem when logic reasserts itself, and he has to remind himself that Willem certainly doesn’t need the money, that he has plenty of his own, that however perplexing and unknowable Willem’s reasons are for being with him, for choosing him, that he has not been coerced, that he has made the decision freely.
有时，他领悟到这一切有多么不可靠，于是整个人平静下来。他的第一次恋爱（那能称为恋爱吗？）：卢克修士。他的第二次：凯莱布·波特。第三次：威廉·拉格纳松，他最亲爱的朋友，他所认识最棒的人，他几乎可以得到他想要的任何人，无论男女，然而出于某些奇怪的理由（扭曲的好奇心？疯狂？同情？愚昧？）却挑上了他。他有天晚上做了个梦，梦到威廉和哈罗德一起坐在桌前，两人低头看着一张纸，哈罗德用计算器加总一个数字，他知道（虽然没人告诉他）哈罗德在付钱给威廉，好让威廉跟他在一起。在那个梦里，他觉得被羞辱的同时，又有种感激。因为哈罗德竟然这么慷慨，而威廉居然愿意配合。他醒来时，正要跟威廉讲话，然后脑子一转，想到这实在太不合逻辑了。他还得提醒自己威廉当然不需要那些钱，他已经很有钱了，而且无论威廉跟他在一起、选择他的理由有多令人不解且不可知，总之没有人强迫他，他是出于自由意志才做出这个决定的。
That night he reads in bed as he waits for Willem to come home, but falls asleep anyway and wakes to Willem’s hand on the side of his face.
那天晚上他在床上阅读，等着威廉回家，但最后还是睡着了。醒来时，威廉的手摸着他的侧脸。
“You’re home,” he says, and smiles at him, and Willem smiles back.
“你回来了。”他说，露出微笑，威廉也朝他微笑。
They lie awake in the dark talking about Willem’s dinner with the director, and the shoot, which begins in late January in Texas. The film, Duets, is based on a novel he likes, and follows a closeted lesbian and a closeted gay man, both music teachers at a small-town high school, through a twenty-five-year marriage that spans the nineteen-sixties through the nineteen-eighties. “I’m going to need your help,” Willem tells him. “I really, really have to brush up on my piano playing. And I am going to be singing in it, after all. They’re getting me a coach, but will you practice with me?”
他们躺在黑暗中，谈着威廉跟那个导演的晚餐，还有这部电影预定一月下旬在德州开拍。《二重唱》这部片子是他很喜欢的一本小说改编的，描述同在小城一所高中任教的两个音乐教师，一个是没出柜的同性恋女子，一个是没出柜的同性恋男子，两人从20世纪60年代到80年代的二十五年婚姻。“我需要你帮忙，”威廉告诉他，“我真的、真的得温习一下弹钢琴的技巧。而且我还得在电影里唱歌。他们会帮我请一个指导老师，不过你可以陪我练习吗？”
