23

Ellipsis

省略的时间

1. There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. While most of us are led by the strict demands of timetables and diaries, our soul, the seat of the heart, trails nostalgically behind, burdened by the weight of memory. If every love affair adds a certain weight to the camel's load, then we can expect the soul to slow according to the significance of love's burden. By the time it was finally able to shrug off the crushing weight of her memory, Chloe had nearly killed my camel.有句阿拉伯谚语说，灵魂以骆驼的缓慢步伐行进。当既定了时间表的现实以无情的动力迫使我们前行时，我们心之所在的灵魂却饱含怀旧，担负着沉重的记忆跟在后面。如果每一次情事都给骆驼增加一点背负，那么可以想见，巨大的爱情负担会令灵魂举步维艰。在灵魂最终能卸去记忆的重担之前，克洛艾险些杀死我的骆驼。

2. With her departure had gone all desire to keep up with the present. I lived nostalgically, that is, with constant reference to my life as it had been with her. My eyes were never really open, they looked backwards and inwards to memory. I would have wished to spend the rest of my days following the camel, meandering through the dunes of yesteryear, stopping at charming oases to leaf through images of happier days. The present held nothing for me, the past had become the only inhabitable tense. What could the present be next to it but a mocking reminder of the one who was missing? What could the future hold beside yet more wretched absence? 我对现实的所有欲望都随着她的离去而消逝。我生活在怀旧之中，不停地回首和她共度的时光。我的眼睛从没有真正睁开，只是向后，向记忆深处回眸。我宁愿让余生跟随骆驼行走，若有所思地穿越记忆的沙丘，休憩在迷人的绿洲，翻阅往日的快乐时刻。现在时对我毫无意义，过去时才是惟一适宜的时态。除了提醒我想起那个离开的人儿，现在还能有什么意义？除了让我遭受更多因她的离去而带来的伤痛，未来还有什么？

3. When I was able to drown myself in memory, I would sometimes lose sight of the present without Chloe, hallucinating that the break-up had never occurred and that we were still together, as though I could have called her up at any time and suggested a film at the Odeon or a walk through the park. I would choose to ignore that she had decided to settle with Will in a small town in southern California; the mind would slip from factual reporting into a fantasy of the idyllic days of elation and laughter. Then, all of a sudden, something would throw me violently back into the Chloe-less present. The phone would ring and on my way to pick it up I would notice (as if for the first time, and with all the pain of that initial realization) that the place in the bathroom where Chloe used to leave her hairbrush was now empty. And the absence of that hairbrush would be like a stab in the heart, an unbearable reminder that she had left.当我沉溺于记忆深处时，我有时会忘了克洛艾已经离去，会幻想我们从没有分手，仍然相依相随，好像我随时可以打电话给她，提议去奥第恩看场电影，或是到公园里散散步。我不顾她已经在加利福尼亚南部一个小镇与威尔订立终身，思想仍想从事实身边溜走，幻想充满狂欢、爱情和笑声的田园诗般的时光。然后，什么东西会猛然将我拉回没有克洛艾的现在。当电话铃声响起，我走过去接听时，就会发现（好像是第一次才发现，有着初次发现的痛苦）浴室里无洛艾过去常常放发刷的位置空空如也。那发刷的消失犹如心头的伤口，在残忍地提醒我：她已经离去。

4. The difficulty of forgetting her was compounded by the survival of so much of the external world that we had shared together, and in which she was still entwined. Standing in my kitchen, the kettle might suddenly release the memory of Chloe filling it up, a tube of tomato paste on a supermarket shelf might by a form of bizarre association remind me of a similar shopping trip months before. Driving across the Hammersmith flyover late one evening, I recalled driving down the same road on an equally rainy night but with Chloe next to me in the car. The arrangement of pillows on my sofa evoked the way she placed her head down on them when she was tired, the dictionary on my bookshelf was a reminder of her passion for looking up words she did not know. At certain times of the week when we had traditionally done things together, there was an agonizing parallel between the past and present: Saturday mornings would bring back our gallery expeditions, Friday nights certain clubs, Monday evenings certain television programmes...曾经共度的生活留下了太多的痕迹，而今她的身影依然隐现其间，让忘却越发困难了。站在厨房里，水壶也许突然使我想起克洛艾曾把它灌满水；超市货架上的一罐番茄酱会奇异地让我记起几个月前一次类似的购物；深夜驾车经过汉默史密斯高架桥时，我会回忆起从前同样的雨夜，我曾驾车驶过这同样的路段，不同的是当时有克洛艾坐在旁边；整理沙发坐垫唤醒我的记忆：她累了就会将头枕在上面；书架上的辞典告诉我，她曾经多么热情地从中查找不认识的字。一周的某些时段，我们习惯一起做些事，也成了过去和现在令人痛苦的对比：星期六上午使我想起我们参观美术馆、星期五夜晚到一些俱乐部去、星期一晚上看某档电视节目。

5. The physical world refused to let me forget. Life is crueller than art, for the latter usually assures that physical surroundings reflect characters' mental states. If someone in a Garcia Lorca play remarks on how the sky has turned low, dark, and grey, this is no longer an innocent meteorological observation, but a symbol of a psychological state. Life gives us no such handy markers -- a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course, a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while. Similarly, in the course of a beautiful warm summer day, a car momentarily loses control on a winding road and crashes into a tree fatally injuring its passengers.物质世界不让我忘记过去。生命比艺术还要残酷。后者常常使人确信，物质环境反映人的精神状况。如果洛尔卡的剧作里的某个人物说，天空变得多么低沉、灰暗，这已不再是一个单纯的气象观测，而是心理状态的象征。现实生活中没有那么多外部环境与精神世界的精巧一致——一场暴风雨来了，雨水一直扑打窗户，这远非死亡和崩溃的预兆，相反，一个人可以从中发现爱情和真理、美丽和幸福。同样，美丽温暖的夏日，一条崎岖的道路上，一辆车可能会突然失控，撞到树上，给乘客致命的伤害。

6. The external world did not follow my inner moods, the buildings that had provided the backdrop to my love story and that I had animated with feelings derived from it now stubbornly refused to change their appearance so as to reflect my inner state. The same trees lined the approach to Buckingham Palace, the same stuccoed houses fronted the residential streets, the same Serpentine flowed through Hyde Park, the same sky was lined with the same porcelain blue, the same cars drove through the same streets, the same shops sold much the same goods to much the same people.但是外部世界并没有随着我的内心情绪的变化而变化，那些构成我爱情故事背景的建筑，那些让我从中获得生命力的建筑，如今顽固地拒绝改变它们的模样以反映我的内心姿态。通向白金汉宫的那条路旁的树还是那些树；住宅区街道前面那些拉毛墙饰的房屋还是那些房屋；流过海德公园的那条舍潘泰河还是那条河；天空仍然是那样的瓷器蓝；开过街道的还是那些车；同样的商店仍然将同样的商品卖给同样的顾客。

7. This refusal of change was a reminder that the world was an entity that would spin on regardless of whether I was in love or out of it, happy or unhappy, alive or dead. It could not be expected to change its expressions according to my moods, nor would the great blocks of stones that formed the streets of the city take time to consider my love story. Though they had been happy to accommodate my happiness, they had better things to do than to come crashing down now that Chloe was gone.这种稳固不变提醒我，世界并不反映我的内心，它是一个旋转着的独立实体，不管我恋爱还是失恋，幸福还是悲伤、活着还是死去。不可能期望世界随着我的情绪变化而改变它的面目；也不可能期望组成城市街道的巨大石块为我破裂的爱情故事发出诅咒之声。尽管它们曾经幸福地迎合了我的幸福，它们现在还有更好的事情去做，而不是在克洛艾走后就随之崩塌。

8. Then, inevitably, I began to forget. A few months after breaking up with her, I found myself in the area of London in which she had lived and noticed that the thought of her had lost much of the agony it had once held, I even noticed that I was not primarily thinking of her (though this was exactly her neighbourhood), but of the appointment that I had made with someone in a restaurant nearby. I realized that Chloe's memory had neutralized itself and become a part of history. Yet guilt accompanied this forgetting. It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.然后我不可避免地开始遗忘。与她分手几个月后，我发觉当自己走过伦敦她曾居住的那个地方，再次想起她时，曾经有过的巨大痛苦消亡殆尽。我甚至发觉首先想起的并不是她（尽管就在她住的那个区），而是我曾与别人在附近一个餐馆的约会。我意识到对克洛艾的记忆淡化了，成为历史的一部分。然而负罪伴随着忘却。令我伤心的不再是她的离去，而是我对此日甚一日的冷漠。忘却是死亡的提示，是失落的提示，是背弃我自己曾一度珍视无比的爱情的提示。

9. There was a gradual reconquering of the self, new habits were created and a Chloe-less identity built up. My identity had for so long been forged around 'us' that to return to the 'I' involved an almost complete reinvention of myself. It took a long time for the hundreds of associations that Chloe and I had accumulated together to fade. I had to live with my sofa for months before the image of her lying on it in her dressing-gown was replaced by another image, the image of a friend reading a book on it, or of my coat lying across it. I had to walk through Islington on numberless occasions before I could forget that Islington was not simply Chloe's district, but a useful place to shop or have dinner. I had to revisit almost every physical location, rewrite over every topic of conversation, replay every song and every activity that she and I had shared in order to reconquer them for the present, in order to defuse their associations. But gradually I forgot.自制逐渐恢复，新的习惯养成了，一个克洛艾渗入较少的自我建立起来，。我长久以来一直围绕着“我们”打造出来的身份，现在几乎发现了一个全新的自我，重新回到了“我”。时间过去很久，克洛艾和我之间的成百上千个联系才消逝不见。好几个月后我才能淡忘她穿着晨衣躺在我的沙发上的样子，而由另外的影子——一个朋友坐在上面看书，或是我的外套放在上面——代替。我得有无数次走过伊斯灵顿才能适应，伊斯灵顿不仅是克洛艾所在的区，还是购物和餐饮的绝好去处。我得重新参观每一个地点、重提每一个话题、重唱每一首歌曲以及重新进行每一个活动，只有重温和克洛艾共同创造的这些旧事，我才能重新适应现在，才能忘记与克洛艾的这些联系。然而我逐渐忘却了。

10. My time with Chloe folded in on itself, like an accordion that contracts. My love story was like a block of ice gradually melting as I carried it through the present. The process was like a film camera which had taken a thousand frames a minute, but was now discarding most of them, selecting according to mysterious whims, landing on a certain frame because an emotional state had coalesced around it. Like a century that is reduced and symbolized by a certain pope or monarch or battle, my love affair refined itself to a few iconic elements (more random than those of historians but equally selective): the look on Chloe's face as we kissed for the first time, the light hairs on her arm, an image of her standing waiting for me in the entrance to Liverpool Street Station, her white pullover, her laugh when I told her my joke about the Russian in a train through France, her way of running her hand through her hair...时光缩略了，就像手风琴一样有伸展有收缩，流淌如伸展，记住的只是收缩。我的克洛艾的那一段生活就像一块冰，我带着它前行，现在已经逐渐融化。就像眼前的事件，最终也会变成历史。在这过程中，它们被压缩成一些中心细节。这个过程就像摄影机为一分钟的电影拍摄了成千的片段，但是却被剪掉了大部分，只根据神秘的想法选择一些片段，组合成某个画面，只因为那与一种情绪状态吻合。就像一个世纪被简化和象征为一个特定的教皇、或一个王朝、或一场战争，我的爱情被提炼为一些图像（同样是选取，但比那些历史学家更为随机）：我们每一次接吻时克洛艾脸上的表情、她胳膊上浅淡的汗毛、她站在利物浦地铁站入口处等我时的身影、她白色的套衫、当我讲起“乘火车经过法国的俄罗斯人”这个笑话时她的笑声、她用手拂弄头发的样子……

11. The camel became lighter and lighter as it walked through time, it kept shaking memories and photos off its back, scattering them over the desert floor and letting the wind bury them in the sand, and gradually the camel became so light that it could trot and even gallop in its own curious way - until one day, in a small oasis that called itself the present, the exhausted creature finally caught up with the rest of me.在时光中行走的骆驼越来越轻快，不断将记忆和照片甩下背去，撒落在沙漠上，让风沙掩埋它们。渐渐地，骆驼是那样地轻快，能够小跑进来，甚至以它自己奇怪的方式飞奔起来——直到有一天，在一片小小的自称为“现在”的绿洲上，筋疲力尽的心灵终于追赶上我的其余部分，与它们合而为一。