17
这是我和我公公婆婆的第一次正面冲突。后来也发生了类似的冲突，但从来都没有变成一种公然的鄙视。在接下来的几天里，他们试图通过各种方法向我表示，假如我只考虑自己的生活，我应该把黛黛和艾尔莎交给他们来抚养。
That was the first clash with my in-laws.
Others followed, though they never reached such explicit contempt. Later my
in-laws confined themselves to demonstrating in every possible way that, if I
insisted on being concerned with myself above all, I had to entrust Dede and
Elsa to them.
当然，我不同意。我没有一天不是在愤怒中度过，没有一天不想着把我的两个女儿带走，去佛罗伦萨、米兰、那不勒斯，去任何地方，而不是待在那个家里。但我很快就放弃了，我推迟带她们离开的日子，因为总是会发生一些事情，跟我的想法作对。比如说，尼诺打电话给我，我没办法拒绝，我总是去他说的地方找他。还有，我的那本新书在意大利也掀起了一股小小的浪潮，尽管那些大报纸都没有谈论它，但它还是赢得了一批读者。因此，我要参加一些读者见面会，再加上要和情人见面，都让我不得不和两个孩子分开。
I resisted, naturally: there was not a
day that I didn’t get angry and decide to take my children away with me
immediately, to Florence, to Milan, to Naples—anywhere, just so as not to
leave them in that house a moment longer. But soon I would give in, put off
my departure; something always happened that bore witness against me. Nino,
for example, telephoned and, unable to refuse, I rushed to meet him wherever
he wanted. And then in Italy, too, the new book had begun to make a small
wave, and, although it was ignored by the reviewers of the big papers, it was
nevertheless finding an audience. So often I added encounters with readers to
the meetings with my lover, which extended the time that I was away from the
children.
我很难和她们分开，我能感受到她们审判的目光，我很痛苦。尽管如此，但我一坐上火车，当我学习时，当我准备公众讨论时，当我想象着马上要和尼诺会面时，我都会感觉有一种快乐在我内心沸腾。我很快发现自己逐渐适应了同时感受到幸福和不幸，就好像这是我新生活的一种常态。当我回到热内亚，我会感到很愧疚，黛黛和艾尔莎已经很习惯那里的生活了，她们都开始上学了，而且有自己的玩伴和所有她们需要的东西，她们已经完全独立于我了。但我一离开，那种愧疚感就会变弱，成了一种轻微的不适。这两种情绪的波动让我觉得自己很卑微，我意识到这一点，我不得不承认，对于尼诺的爱，他的光辉会使黛黛和艾尔莎黯然失色，这对我来说是一件很屈辱的事。虽然如此，莉拉的那句话还回响在我耳边：“你要想想，你会给你两个女儿带来多大的伤害！”在这个阶段，我一想起这句话，就会陷入一种不愉快的情绪里。我出去旅行，居无定所，经常晚上睡不着觉。我想起了我母亲对我的诅咒，她的话和莉拉的话混合在一起。对于我来说，我的母亲和我的朋友莉拉，她们一直都是两个截然相反的存在，但在那些无法入睡的夜晚，她们常常会站在一条战线上。我感觉她们对我充满敌意，她们不赞同我的新生活。从另一个方面，我觉得这说明我终于成了一个独立的人，但我要一个人面对那些困难，我感到很孤单。
I separated from them unwillingly. I felt
their accusing gaze on me, and I suffered. And yet already in the train, as I
studied, as I prepared for some public discussion, as I imagined my meeting
with Nino, an impudent joy began to bubble up inside me. I soon discovered
that I was getting used to being happy and unhappy at the same time, as if
that were the new, inevitable law of my life. When I returned to Genoa I felt
guilty—Dede and Elsa were now comfortable, they had school, friends,
everything they wanted, independently of me—but as soon as I left the guilt
became a tedious obstacle; it weakened. I realized this, naturally, and the
alternation made me wretched. It was humiliating to have to admit that a
little fame, and love for Nino, could obscure Dede and Elsa. And yet it was
so. The echo of Lila’s phrase, Think of the harm you’re doing to your
daughters, became in that period a sort of permanent epigraph that introduced
unhappiness. I traveled, I was often in a new bed, often I couldn’t sleep. My
mother’s curses returned to mind, and were mixed up with Lila’s words. She
and my friend, although they had always been, for me, the opposite of one
another, in those nights often came together. Both were hostile, estranged
from my new life: on the one hand this seemed the proof that I had finally
become an autonomous person; on the other it made me feel alone, at the mercy
of my troubles.
我试着和我的大姑子建立联系。她像往常一样热情，她在米兰的一家书店组织了一场读者见面会来推广我的新书，来的大部分都是女性。对于我的那本书，他们要么非常赞赏，要么提出了尖锐批评。因为有几个人的姿态和我完全不同，刚开始我非常害怕，但马丽娅罗莎用一种充满权威的语气说了几句，我意外地发现，她能以一个协调者的身份出现，能协调赞同方和反对方的观点。她会采用这样的措辞：“这不是格雷科女士想说的……”最后我赢得了大家的掌声，尤其是她的。
I tried to repair relations with my
sister-in-law. As usual she showed herself to be very willing, and organized
an event in honor of my book at a bookstore in Milan. Most of those who came
were women, and I was now much criticized, now much praised by opposing
groups. At first I was frightened, but Mariarosa interceded with authority
and I discovered in myself an unsuspected capacity to summarize disagreement
and agreement, choosing in the meantime a role as mediator. I was good at
saying in a convincing way: That isn’t exactly what I meant. In the end I was
celebrated by everyone, especially by her.
晚饭之后，我去她家住。我在她家里看到了弗朗科，也看到了西尔维亚和她儿子米尔科——我算了一下，他应该有八岁了，我把他长得像尼诺的地方都记了下来，甚至是一些和尼诺很像的性格特征。我从来都没有对尼诺说过，我认识这个孩子，我决定永远都不提这件事。但整个晚上，我一直都在和他说话，和他玩儿，我让他坐在我的膝盖上，宠爱他。在我们混乱的生活之中，我们自身有多少碎片会崩裂开，这些小孩就像是我们迸裂掉落的碎片。在米兰有这个孩子，在热内亚是我的两个女儿，在那不勒斯是阿尔伯特。我忍不住和西尔维亚、马丽娅罗莎、弗朗科谈到了这些散落在四处的孩子，我分析这些事儿，表现得很客观冷静。实际上，我可能期待着，我的前男友能用他通常的方式，说出一些鞭辟入里的话，用他犀利的语言陈述现在，展望未来，让我们理清思绪。但是，他是整个晚上最让我吃惊的人。他说，历史的这一页快要翻过去了，从客观上来说——他说“客观”这个词时，语气里充满了讽刺——革命的一季现在已经日薄西山了，而且会把曾经作为风向标的阶层全部抹去。
Afterward I had dinner and stayed at her
house. I found Franco there, I found Silvia with her son Mirko. The whole
time, all I did was observe the child—I calculated that he must be eight—and
register the physical resemblances to Nino, and even resemblances in
personality. I had never told him that I knew about that child and had
decided that I never would, but all evening I talked to him, cuddled him,
played with him, held him on my lap. In what disorder we lived, how many
fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into
splinters. In Milan, there was this child, in Genoa my daughters, in Naples
Albertino. I couldn’t restrain myself, I began talking about that dispersion
with Silvia, with Mariarosa, with Franco, assuming the attitude of a
disillusioned thinker. In reality I expected that my former boyfriend would,
as usual, take over the conversation and arrange everything according to a
skillful dialectic that settled the present and anticipated the future,
reassuring us. But he was the true surprise of the evening. He spoke of the
imminent end of a period that had been objectively—he used the adverb
sarcastically—revolutionary but that now, he said, was declining, was
sweeping away all the categories that had served as a compass.
“我不觉得。”我提出了反对，但只是为了挑衅他，“在意大利，一切都很活跃，充满了斗争精神。”
“I don’t think so,” I objected, but only
to provoke him. “In Italy things are very lively and combative.”
“你不觉得，那是因为你对自己很满意。”
“You don’t think so because you’re
pleased with yourself.”
“才不是，我很抑郁。”
“Not at all, I’m depressed.”
“那些抑郁的人不会写书，那些幸福的人、旅行的人、恋爱的人才会写书，他们说呀说，说呀说，他们确信自己说的话都会派上用场。”
“The depressed don’t write books. People
who are happy write, people who travel, are in love, and talk and talk with
the conviction that, one way or another, their words always go to the right
place.”
“是这样吗？”
“Isn’t that how it is?”
“是的，那些话真的会派上用场，但只是在很短的时间里，其余时候，只需要随便说说，信口开河，就像现在，要么假装一切在自己的控制之下。”
“No, words rarely go to the right place,
and if they do, it’s only for a very brief time. Otherwise they’re useful for
speaking nonsense, as now. Or for pretending that everything is under
control.”
“假装？你是一直都掌控着一切，还是在假装？”
“Pretending? You who have always kept
everything under control, you were pretending?”
“为什么不呢？假装一下很正常。我们想搞革命，就搞了革命，我们在混乱之中，也发明了一种秩序，我们假装知道事情朝着哪个方向发展。”
“Why not? It’s unavoidable to pretend a
little. We who wanted to enact the revolution were the ones who, even in the
midst of chaos, were always inventing an order and pretending to know exactly
how things were going.”
“你是在做自我批评吗？”
“You’re accusing yourself?”
“是呀，文采很好，句法也说得通，前后也很连贯，出现这个状况有前因也有后果，对所有人都有一个交代，事儿就成了。”
“Yes. Good grammar, good syntax. An
explanation ready for everything. And such great skill in logic: this derives
from that and leads necessarily to that. The game is over.”
“这行不通了吗？”
“It doesn’t work anymore?”
“哦，行得通，特别行得通。面对任何事情，从来都不会迷失，没有任何感染的伤口，缝合的地方也没有留下伤疤，没有任何让你害怕的小黑屋，这真是让人感到安慰啊！只是忽然间，这个伎俩已经不管用了。”
“Oh, it works very well. It’s so
comfortable never to be confused by anything. No infected bedsores, no wound
without its stitches, no dark room that frightens you. Only that at a certain
point the trick no longer functions.”
“也就是说？”
“Meaning what?”
“莱农，叨叨叨，叨叨叨，意义已经脱离语言了。”
“Blah blah blah, Lena, blah blah blah.
The meaning is leaving the words.”
但他还没说完，他又围绕着这句话说了很多，都是自嘲或讽刺我的话。他嘀咕了一句：“我说了多少傻话。”然后就沉默下来，听我们三个人说。
And he didn’t stop there. He mocked what
he had just said, making fun of himself and of me. Then he said: What a lot
of nonsense I’m talking, and he spent the rest of the evening listening to
the three of us.
让我震动的是，假如西尔维亚遭受暴力的痕迹已经彻底消退，弗朗科几年前遭受的殴打，让他的另一个身体和精神逐渐暴露出来了。他不停起身去厕所，他有点儿跛，但不是很明显，他发红的眼眶里装着一只义眼，看起来要比另一只眼睛更凶，他的一个眼睛是活的，但因为抑郁而变得灰暗。尤其是，受伤前的那个充满能量、让人欣赏的弗朗科消失了，康复期的那个阴郁温柔的弗朗科也消失了。我感觉他现在是一个忧伤、温和的人，有一点愤世嫉俗。关于我要接回我的女儿的事，西尔维亚说了她的看法。马丽娅罗莎说，没找到一个彻底的安置方案之前，黛黛和艾尔莎最好还是爷爷奶奶待在一起。这时候弗朗科赞美了我的决心，他用一种满是讽刺的语气说，我不用考虑女性的那些义务，我要接着努力，增强我男性的一面。
It struck me that if in Silvia the
terrible marks of violence had completely disappeared, in him the beating
suffered several years earlier had gradually exposed another body and another
spirit. He got up often to go to the bathroom; he limped, though not
conspicuously; the purple socket, in which the false eye was clumsily set,
seemed more combative than the other eye, which, although it was alive,
seemed opaque with depression. Above all, both the pleasantly energetic
Franco of long ago and the shadowy Franco of convalescence had disappeared.
He seemed gently melancholy, capable of an affectionate cynicism. While
Silvia said that I should take my daughters back, and Mariarosa said that, as
long as I hadn’t found a stable arrangement, Dede and Elsa were fine with
their grandparents, Franco exaggerated his praise of my capacities,
ironically defined as male, and insisted that I should continue to refine
them without getting lost in female obligations.
回到房间后，我很难入睡。怎么做才是对我女儿好，怎样会不好？我的好，我的不好，都体现在哪里呢？怎样才能把好和不好融合在一起，或者说分开呢？那个夜晚，尼诺成了次要的事情，莉拉又浮现在我的脑海，只有莉拉，没有我母亲。我感觉到我需要和她吵架，我要对着她叫喊：不要老是想着批评我，你要替我想想，告诉我应该怎么做。第二天，我回到了热内亚，我当着公公婆婆的面，毫无过渡就对黛黛和艾尔莎说：
When I went to my room I had trouble
falling asleep. What was bad for my children, what was their good? And bad
for me, and my good, what did those consist of, and did they correspond to or
diverge from what was bad and good for the children? That night Nino faded
into the background, Lila reemerged. Lila alone, without the support of my
mother. I felt the need to argue with her, shout at her: Don’t just criticize
me, take responsibility, tell me what to do. Finally I slept. The next day I
returned to Genoa and said point-blank to Dede and Elsa, in the presence of
my in-laws:
“孩子们，这个阶段我有很多工作。再过几天，我又要出发了，但我会回来。你们是想和我一起，还是想和爷爷奶奶在一起？”
“Girls, I have a lot of work at the
moment. In a few days I have to leave again and then again and again. Do you
want to come with me or stay with your grandparents?”
对于这个问题，现在我写到这里时，我还是感到很羞愧。
Even today as I write that question I’m
ashamed.
先是黛黛，然后是艾尔莎，她们回答说：
First Dede and then, right afterward,
Elsa answered:
“我们要和爷爷奶奶在一起。但如果可以的话，你要来看我们，给我们带一些礼物。”
“With Grandma and Grandpa. But come back
whenever you can and bring us presents.”
18
有两年多时间，我都是这样度过的：充满着快乐、痛苦、意外，还有折磨人心的等待。后来，我逐渐理顺了我的生活。虽然我的私生活经历了种种痛苦和折磨，在同时，我的公众生活却很幸运。我写的那不到一百页的小书，我最初将它写出来只是为了讨得尼诺的欢心，这本书后来也被翻译成了德语和英语。在法国和意大利，我十年前写的第一本书也开始重新再版，我又开始给报纸和杂志写文章。我的名字，还有我这个人逐渐获得一定的知名度，报纸上频繁地出现我的名字，就像过去一样，我引起了一些人的好奇，有时候是欣赏，这些人都是那时候公众生活的代表人物。米兰出版社的那个主编向来对我很热情，我从他那里听到了一句闲话，让我信心倍增。有一天，我们一起吃晚饭，要谈论我的书的出版事宜，不得不说，当时我还把尼诺写的一本杂文集推荐给他。他对我说，阿黛尔给他施压了，那是上个圣诞节前的事情了，她想阻止我的书在意大利出版。
It took me more than two years, filled
with joys, torments, nasty surprises, and agonizing mediations, to put some
order into my life. Meanwhile, although I was privately suffering, publicly I
continued to be successful. The scant hundred pages I had written to make a
good impression on Nino were translated into German and English. My book of
ten years earlier reappeared in both France and Italy, and I began writing
again for newspapers and journals. My name and my physical person gradually
reacquired their modest fame, the days became crowded, as they had been in
the past, I gained the interest, and at times the respect, of people who at
the time were well known on the public stage. But what helped my
self-confidence was some gossip from the director of the Milan publishing
house, who had liked me from the start. One evening when I was having dinner
with him to talk about my publishing future, but also—I have to say—to
propose a collection of Nino’s essays, he revealed that, the preceding
Christmas, Adele had pressured him to block the publication of my book.
“艾罗塔家的人，”他开玩笑说，“他们已经习惯了在吃早饭时推荐一个副部长，晚饭时撤掉一个部长，但他们拿你的书没办法，你的书当时已经送到印刷厂了。”
He said, jokingly, “The Airotas are used
to plotting the rise of an undersecretary at breakfast and deposing a
minister at dinner, but with your book they didn’t succeed. The volume was
ready and we sent it to the printer.”
刚开始，我的书在意大利报纸上没有引起什么评论，按照他的看法，这也是我婆婆在其中作梗。结果，那本书获得了成功，并不是因为艾罗塔太太改变了想法，而是因为我的文字的力量。这样一来，我觉得现在我不欠阿黛尔什么，每次我去热内亚，她都要强调自己的影响力，编辑的话给了我自信，让我变得很自豪，最后我觉得，我依赖艾罗塔家的日子已经结束了。
According to him, my mother-in-law was
also behind the meager number of reviews in the Italian press. As a result,
if the book had nevertheless made a name for itself, certainly the credit
should go not to kind second thoughts from Dottoressa Airota but to the force
of my writing. Thus I learned that this time I owed nothing to Adele,
although she continued to tell me I did whenever I went to Genoa. That gave
me confidence, made me proud, I was finally convinced that the period of my
dependence was over.
莉拉绝对不会意识到这些，她在城区的最深处，对现在的我来说，那地方就是一口痰那么大，她继续觉得我是她的附庸。她从彼得罗那里要了热内亚的电话，把电话打到我公公婆婆家里，根本不考虑这会让他们很烦。接到她的电话时，我心不在焉，她假装对此不在乎，她一直说个不停，把两个人的话都说了。她谈到了恩佐，她的工作，她儿子在学校里学习很好，还说到了卡门和安东尼奥。她打电话没找到我时，还会坚持再打过来，就像有强迫症。阿黛尔在一个本子上记着我的所有来电，就我所知，上面记录了某月某日，萨拉托雷（三个电话），赛鲁罗（九个电话）。阿黛尔会抱怨说这些电话让她很烦。我试着说服莉拉，假如他们说我不在，就不要老打电话了，因为热内亚的家不是我的，这会让我很尴尬，但没用，尼诺也开始打这个电话。很难说清楚我和尼诺的真实情况：他处境尴尬，长话短说，很担心说错什么话，会让我生气。刚开始，他跟我说，莉拉给埃利奥诺拉家里打了好几个电话，这让后者很生气。我得知，莉拉还往多莫大街上那栋房子，也就是尼诺现在住的地方打电话，最后他不得不找到莉拉的号码，让她不要一直给他妻子打电话。事情的结果是，莉拉逼着他见面，但不是单独见面——尼诺马上澄清说，她是和卡门一起来的——因为卡门有急事要跟我讲。
Lila didn’t notice at all. She, from the
depths of the neighborhood, from that area that now seemed to me
infinitesimal, continued to consider me an appendage of hers. From Pietro she
got the telephone number in Genoa, and she began to use it without worrying
about annoying my in-laws. When she managed to reach me she pretended not to
notice my terseness and talked for both of us, without pause. She talked
about Enzo, about work, about her son, who was doing well in school, about
Carmen, about Antonio. When I wasn’t there, she persisted in telephoning,
with neurotic perseverance, enabling Adele—who wrote in a notebook the calls
that came for me, putting down, I don’t know, such and such month, such and
such day, Sarratore (three calls), Cerullo (nine calls)—to complain about the
nuisance I caused. I tried to convince Lila that if they said I wasn’t there
it was pointless to insist, that the house in Genoa wasn’t my house, and that
she was embarrassing me. Useless. She went so far as to call Nino. It’s hard
to say how things really went: he was embarrassed, he made light of it, he
was afraid of saying something that would irritate me. Early on he told me
that Lila had telephoned Eleonora’s house repeatedly, angering her, then I
gathered that she had tried to get him on the phone at Via Duomo directly,
finally that he himself had hastened to track her down to prevent her from
constantly telephoning his wife. Whatever had happened, the fact was that
Lila had forced him to meet her. Not alone, however: Nino was immediately
eager to explain that she had come with Carmen, since it was Carmen—mainly
Carmen—who urgently needed to get in touch with me.
我听着尼诺给我讲他们见面的情景，内心很平静。尼诺说，莉拉想知道我在公众场合讲我的书时的细节：我穿什么衣服，梳什么样的发型，怎么化妆，是不是很害羞，我讲得是不是很有趣，我是念稿子还是即兴发言。其他事情，她都一个字都没说，都是卡门说的。后来尼诺发现，她们那么着急联系我，是因为帕斯卡莱的缘故。卡门通过自己的渠道得知娜迪亚·加利亚尼已经去了国外，在一个安全的地方生活，因此她想请求我的帮助，让我联系我的中学老师，打听一下帕斯卡莱是否也安全了。卡门感叹了几次：“我不希望，那些有钱人家的孩子都没事儿了，我哥哥却在劫难逃。”卡门让尼诺把这些事儿都告诉我，就好像她对于帕斯卡莱的担忧，担心他成为被追捕的罪犯，这事儿我也脱不开干系。假如我想帮助她，我不能通过电话，不能打电话给加利亚尼老师，也不能打给她，因为电话可能会受到监听。最后，尼诺总结说：“卡门和莉娜都有些糊里糊涂的，你最好别管这事儿，她们可能会给你惹麻烦的。”
I listened to the account of the meeting
without emotion. First, Lila had wanted to know in detail how I behaved in
public when I talked about my books: what dress I wore, how I did my hair and
my makeup, if I was shy, if I was entertaining, if I read, if I improvised.
Otherwise she was silent, she had left the field to Carmen. So it turned out
that all that eagerness to talk to me had to do with Pasquale. Through her
own channels, Carmen had found out that Nadia Galiani had fled to safety
abroad, and so she wanted to ask a favor again, that I get in touch with my
high-school teacher to ask her if Pasquale, too, was safe. Carmen had
exclaimed a couple of times: I don’t want the children of the rich people to
get out and not the ones like my brother. Then she had urged him to let me
know—as if she herself considered her worry about Pasquale to be an
indictable crime that could involve me, too—that if I wanted to help her I
shouldn’t use the telephone either to get in touch with the professor or to
get in touch with her. Nino concluded: Both Carmen and Lina are imprudent,
better to let it go, they can get you in trouble.
我想，几个月前，即使是卡门在场，尼诺和莉拉见面也会让我很警惕，现在我发现，对这些我已经无所谓了。很明显，我已经确信尼诺对我的爱，不能排除莉拉还想把他从我手上抢走的可能，但我觉得她不可能得逞。我抚摸着尼诺的面孔，用开玩笑的语气对他说：“拜托了，你自己不要陷入麻烦就好！你从来都没有一刻空闲，这次，你是怎么腾出时间和她们见面的？”
I thought that, a few months earlier, an
encounter between Nino and Lila, even in the presence of Carmen, would have
alarmed me. Now I was discovering instead that it left me indifferent.
Evidently I was now so sure of Nino’s love that, although I couldn’t rule out
that she wanted to take him away from me, it seemed impossible that she could
succeed. I caressed his cheek, I said, amused, Don’t you get into trouble,
please: How is it that you never have a free moment and now you found the
time for this?
19
在那个阶段，我第一次感觉到，莉拉给自己划定的活动范围多么小，多么不容跨越，这让我也觉得很震撼。她越来越不关注发生在城区之外的事情，她的兴趣范围仅限于城区，还有那些发生在童年就认识的人身上的事儿。就我所知，甚至是工作，她的活动范围也很窄。因为工作的缘故，恩佐有时候会去米兰、都灵，莉拉从来都不挪窝。我自己越来越热衷于旅行，她的自我封闭让我觉得很奇怪。
I noted for the first time, during that
period, the rigidity of the perimeter that Lila had established for herself.
She was less and less interested in what happened outside the neighborhood.
If she became excited by something whose dimensions were not merely local, it
was because it concerned people she had known since childhood. Even her work,
as far as I knew, interested her only within a very narrow radius. Enzo
occasionally had to spend time in Milan, or Turin. Not Lila, she had never
moved, and I only began to notice that closing off of herself seriously when
my own taste for travel intensified.
在那个阶段，我利用一切机会离开意大利，尤其是能和尼诺一起同行的时候。比如说，当德国一家小出版社出版了我的书，在西德和奥地利组织了一个巡回推广，尼诺放下了所有工作和我一起出发了，给我当司机，他非常愉快，也很配合。我们一起旅行了十五天，从南到北，从东到西，窗外油画一样的风景，从我们眼前掠过。那些湖光山色、所有的城市和古迹都成了我们在一起的美好见证，都为我们的幸福增添了光彩。甚至是我们遇到的一些糟糕处境——因为我们在一些非常极端的读者面前说了一些挑衅的话——当时我们很害怕，但事后谈起来，就像那是一种愉悦的经历。
I took every possible opportunity to
travel outside of Italy, at the time, especially if it was possible to do so
with Nino. For example, when the small German publisher who had brought out
my little book organized a promotional tour in West Germany and Austria, Nino
canceled all his engagements and acted as my cheerful and obedient driver. We
travelled all over for some two weeks, gliding from one landscape to the next
as if beside paintings with dazzling colors. Every mountain or lake or city
or monument entered our life as a couple only to become part of the pleasure
of being there, at that moment, and it always seemed like a refined
contribution to our happiness. Even when rude reality intervened and
frightened us because it corresponded to the darkest words that I uttered
night after night in front of radical audiences, we recounted the fear to
each other afterward as if it had been a pleasant adventure.
有一天晚上，我们开着汽车正要回宾馆，警察拦住了我们。在黑暗中，那些身穿制服的人手上拿着武器，口中说出的德语，无论是在我还是尼诺听来都觉得很邪恶。那些警察把我们从车里拉出来，把我们俩分开了，我上了一辆响着警笛的车，尼诺上了另一辆。我们被关在一个小房间里，好像被遗忘在那里，但后来我们受到了审问：证件、到德国的原因，还有我们的工作。一面墙壁上贴着一组照片，照片里都是一些阴沉的脸：有很多留胡子的男性，还有短头发的女性。我非常不安地在照片里寻找帕斯卡莱和娜迪亚的面孔，但没看到他们。我们到黎明时才被释放，警察把我们带到了汽车那里，没有人向我们道歉：我们的车牌是意大利的，我们是意大利人，检查是必须的。
One night when we were driving back to
the hotel, the police stopped us. The German language, in the dark, in the
mouths of men in uniform, guns in hand, sounded, both to my ear and to
Nino’s, sinister. The police pulled us out of the car, and separated us; I
ended up, yelling, in one car, Nino in another. We were reunited in a small
room, left to ourselves, then brutally questioned: documents, reason for our
stay, job. On one wall there was a long row of photos: grim faces, mostly
bearded, some women with short hair. I surprised myself by looking anxiously
for the faces of Pasquale and Nadia; I didn’t find them. We were released at
dawn, returned to the place where we had been forced to leave our car. No one
apologized: we had an Italian license plate, we were Italians, the check was
obligatory.
在德国，我不由自主在被全世界通缉的那些罪犯的照片里，寻找莉拉非常在意的一个人，这让我自己也觉得意外。那天晚上，我觉得帕斯卡莱·佩卢索像一个冲天炮，是从莉拉盘踞的那个小天地里发射出来落进我的世界里——一个更宽广的世界，她是想提醒我，她现在也卷入了这桩全球性事件的漩涡里。有那么几秒钟，卡门的哥哥成了她越来越小的世界和我的越来越大的世界的接触点。
I was surprised by my instinct to seek in
Germany, among the mug shots of criminals all over the world, that of the
very person who was then close to Lila’s heart. Pasquale Peluso, that night,
seemed to me a sort of rocket launched from the narrow space in which Lila
had enclosed herself to remind me, in my much broader space, of her presence
in the whirlwind of planetary events. For a few seconds Carmen’s brother
became the point of contact between her diminishing world and my expanding
world.
在我谈论我的书的夜晚，在那些我根本就不熟悉的小城市，关于政治气氛的严肃问题越来越少了，我总是用一些泛泛的话，围绕着“压迫”这个词发表看法。作为一个小说家，我觉得自己应该充满想象力。我说，没有任何地方可以避免压迫。一台巨大的压路机，正在从西到东一直辗轧过来，会在整个世界建立一种新秩序，会改变现状：工人卖命工作，失业的人无精打采，挨饿的人虚弱憔悴，知识分子夸夸其谈，黑人被称为黑鬼，女人雌伏着。所有这一切会得到改变。但有时候，我觉得有必要说一些真实、真诚的事儿——我自己经历的事情，我讲了帕斯卡莱，还有他的悲剧性转折，从他童年的经历，到他选择走上犯罪道路。我说不出更具体的话，我采用的词汇是我十年前就掌握的，我觉得那些词汇只有在和我们城区发生的事联系在一起时才会充满涵义，剩下的全是一些精心构造的句子，只是为了打动人心。之前，在我讲自己的第一本书时，无论如何我都会提到“革命”这个词，就好像这是一个大家都认同的词，但现在我避免使用这个词。尼诺觉得这个词太简单、太天真，从他身上，我了解到政治是一件非常复杂的事儿，我要更慎重。我重新调整了自己的表达方式，在说到“革命”时，我会说“反抗是正义的”，很快我会补充说，反抗需要获得认同和支持，这种状态会比我们想象的持续时间更长，我们需要学会管理一个国家。这些夜晚结束时，我并不是每次都很高兴，很满意。尼诺坐在那些乌烟瘴气的大厅里，坐在那些和我年纪相仿或者比我年轻的外国女人中间听我讲。有时候，为了让尼诺高兴，我降低了语调，但有时候我会忍不住很夸张，暗自沉溺于一种当年促使我和彼得罗吵架的莫名冲动，这种情况主要发生在我的听众是那些看过我的书的女人，她们期望我说出犀利的话时。我会说，我们要小心，不要把自己变成警察，只有在我们彻底赢了之后，战争才会结束，要流尽最后一滴血进行斗争。在会后，尼诺会开我玩笑，他说我总是会夸大其词，我们会一起笑起来。
On the evenings when I talked about my
book in foreign cities I knew nothing about, there was a host of questions on
the harshness of the political climate, and I got by with generic phrases
that in essence rotated around the word “repress.” As a fiction writer, I
felt obliged to be imaginative. No space is spared, I said. A steamroller is
moving from land to land, from West to East, to put the whole planet in
order: the workers to work, the unemployed to waste away, the starving to
perish, the intellectuals to speak nonsense, blacks to be black, women to be
women. But at times I felt the need to say something truer, genuine, my own,
and I told the story of Pasquale in all its tragic stages, from childhood to
the choice of a clandestine life. I didn’t know how to make more concrete
speeches, the vocabulary was what I had appropriated ten years earlier, and I
felt that the words had meaning only when I connected them to certain facts
of the neighborhood, for it was only old, worn-out material, of certain
effect. What’s more, if at the time of my first book I had sooner or later
ended by appealing to revolution, as that seemed to be the general feeling,
now I avoided the word: Nino had begun to find it naïve; from him I was
learning the complexity of politics and I was more cautious. I resorted,
rather, to the formula to rebel is just, and immediately afterward added that
it was necessary to broaden the consensus, that the state would last longer
than we had imagined, that it was urgent to learn to govern. I wasn’t always
satisfied with myself on those evenings. In some cases it seemed to me that I
lowered my tone only to make Nino happy, as he sat listening to me in smoky
rooms, among beautiful foreigners who were my age or younger. Often I
couldn’t resist and I overdid it, indulging the old obscure impulse that in
the past had pushed me to argue with Pietro. It happened mainly when I had an
audience of women who had read my book and expected cutting remarks. We must
be careful not to become policemen of ourselves, I said then, the struggle is
to the last drop of blood and will end only when we win. Nino teased me
afterward, he said that I always had to exaggerate, and we laughed together.
有的夜晚，我偎依在他身边，想向他表白，讲清楚自己的想法。我坦白说，我喜欢那些极端的词汇，那些控诉不同党派之间的勾结，控诉国家暴力的话。我说：“你所想的政治，政治的本质让我很厌烦，你去搞政治吧，我干不了这个。”不过，再三考虑后，我觉得，我也不适合自己之前不得不做的一件事儿，就是拉扯着两个孩子出现在游行队伍里。游行队伍里的叫喊和威胁让我很害怕，那些暴力的少数派、武装力量、路上的尸体，以及反对一切的革命仇恨，都让我感到害怕。我坦白说，在公共场合讲话，我不知道自己是谁，对我说的话也不是很确信，我不知道自己是不是真的那么想。
Some nights I curled up next to him and
tried to explain myself to myself. I confessed that I liked subversive words,
words that denounced the compromises of the parties and the violence of the
state. Politics—I said—politics the way you think about it, as it certainly
is, bores me, I leave it to you, I’m not made for that sort of engagement.
But then I had second thoughts and added that I didn’t feel cut out, either,
for the other sort of engagement that I had forced myself into in the past,
dragging the children along with me. The threatening shouts of the
demonstrators frightened me, as did the aggressive fringes, the armed gangs,
the dead on the streets, the revolutionary hatred of everything. I have to
speak in public, I confessed, and I don’t know what I am, I don’t know to
what point I seriously believe what I say.
现在，和尼诺在一起，我可以推心置腹，说出内心最秘密的情感，包括那些对自己也不愿意说的事情，即我的怯懦，我的言行不一。他那么自信坚定，对任何事情都有非常细致入微的看法，我感觉自己像是在童年混乱的反抗上贴了一个标签，好像只是用工整的字迹写着很得体的话，给自己脸上贴金。有一次，我们去了博洛尼亚——我们去支持一个主张城市自由生活的反抗组织——我们不断遇到警察的盘查，一路上被拦下了五次：警察的武器都对准我们，我们被要求从汽车里出来，亮出证件，被迫对着墙站着。那时候我很害怕，要比在德国经历的那次更害怕：这是我的国家，这是我的语言，我想沉默，想按照他们说的来，但我很恼火，我开始嚷嚷。在自己没有意识到的情况下，我开始用方言叫喊，对着那些警察破口大骂，因为他们对我推推搡搡，毫无礼貌。我内心充满了愤怒和恐惧，通常我没办法控制这两种情绪。但尼诺一直都保持平静，他和警察开玩笑，让他们不要生气，让我也平静下来。对于他来说，只有我们俩在一起是最重要的。他对我说：“你要记住，现在我们在一起，其他一切都只是背景。”
Now, with Nino, I seemed able to put into
words the most secret feelings, even things I didn’t say to myself, even the
incongruities, the acts of cowardice. He was so sure of himself, solid, he
had detailed opinions about everything. I felt as if I had pasted onto the
chaotic rebellion of childhood neat cards bearing phrases suited to making a
good impression. At a conference in Bologna—we were part of a determined
exodus headed to the city of freedom—we ran into constant police checks, and
were stopped at least five times. Weapons leveled against us, out of the car,
documents, there against the wall. I was frightened, at the time, even more
than in Germany: it was my land, it was my language, I became anxious, I
wanted to be silent, to obey, and instead I began to shout, I slipped into
dialect without realizing it, I unloaded insults at the police for pushing me
rudely. Fear and rage were mixed up, and often I couldn’t control either one.
Nino instead remained calm, he joked with the policemen, humored them, calmed
me. For him only the two of us counted. Remember that we’re here, now,
together, he said, the rest is background and will change.
20
那些年，我们的生活一直都没有安定过。我们想出面参与、观察、研究、理解、分析、作证，尤其是相爱。警察无情的鸣笛、检查站、直升机螺旋桨的声音、被杀死的人，都是我们在一起的时间线上的一些标志。几个星期，几个月，第一年，然后是一年半，总是从佛罗伦萨的那个夜里，我进到尼诺的房间开始算起。我们说，从那时候起，生活才刚刚开始，我们称之为“真正的生活”，即使每天面对可怕的场景，那种神奇的感觉也没有散去。
We were always moving, in those years. We
wanted to be present, observe, study, understand, argue, bear witness, and
most of all love each other. The wailing police sirens, the checkpoints, the
crack of helicopter blades, the murdered—all were paving stones on which we
marked the time of our relationship, the weeks, the months, the first year,
and then a year and a half, starting from the night when, in the house in
Florence, I had gone to Nino in his room. It was then that—we said to each
other—our true life had begun. And what we called true life was that
impression of miraculous splendor that never abandoned us even when everyday
horrors took the stage.
阿尔多·莫罗被绑架之后的那几天，我们在罗马。尼诺在罗马推广他在那不勒斯的一位同事写的一本关于南方政治地理的书，我去和他团聚。关于那本书，大家都没说什么，但在场的人一直在讨论天主教民主党主席被绑架的事情。有一部分听众开始骚动，我非常害怕，这时候尼诺说，正是莫罗政府给国家抹黑，暴露出了国家最糟糕的一面，给“红色旅”恐怖集团的诞生创造了条件，当时他掩盖对他的政党不利的一些事实，放过了那些腐败分子，而是把天主教民主党等同于国家，让自己的政党免于所有惩罚和起诉。他最后总结说，要捍卫国家机构，并不需要暗箱操作，而是要使一切变得透明，不回避任何事情，也需要提高效率，使正义能够得到伸张，人们的良心是无愧的。我看到，尼诺的脸色越来越苍白，一有机会，我就把他拉开了。我们藏身于爱情，就像那是一道刀枪不入的盔甲。
We were in Rome in the days following the
kidnapping of Aldo Moro. I had joined Nino, who was to discuss a book by a
Neapolitan colleague on southern politics and geography. Very little was said
about the volume, while there was a lot of argument about Moro, the head of
the Christian Democrats. Part of the audience rose up, scaring me, when Nino
said it was Moro himself who threw mud at the state, who embodied its worst
aspects, who created the conditions for the birth of the Red Brigades, and
thus obscured uncomfortable truths about his corrupt party, and indeed
identified it with the state to avoid every accusation and every punishment.
Even when he concluded that defending the institutions meant not hiding their
misdeeds but making them transparent, without omissions, efficient, capable
of justice in every nerve center, the people didn’t calm down, and insults
flew. I saw Nino turn pale, and I dragged him away as soon as possible. We
took refuge in us as if in shining armor.
那段时间，我们基本上都是这种状态。后来又有一次，我也遇到了麻烦，有一天晚上在费拉拉，当时阿尔多·莫罗的尸体已经被找到了一个月了。我不小心说漏嘴，我说，那些绑架他的人都是凶手。我的那些听众希望我斟酌用词，按照极左派的措辞来讲话，我一直都很小心，但通常我都会变得很激动，我会说出一些不经过大脑过滤的话。“凶手”这个词，对于在场的听众来说很刺耳。“法西斯才是凶手！”他们是这样批评、攻击和嘲笑我的。我不说话了，忽然间失去人们的支持和认同，我是多么难受啊！我失去了信心，感觉自己又回到了出发点，我感觉自己是一个小女人，在政治上我很无能，对于这类事情最好不要开口。有一段时间，我尽量避免在公众场合出现。假如杀死了一个人，那杀人的人不是凶手吗？那天晚上不欢而散，尼诺几乎要和一个坐在大厅后面的人打起来了。但是，在那种情况下，最重要的是我们俩是一心的。事情就是这样：假如我们俩在一起，没有任何批评能伤害到我们，我们反倒会变得很骄傲，我们的观点是最重要的，其他事情都没有意义。我们一起去吃饭，享受美食、红酒和性爱，我们只想紧紧拥抱在一起。
The times had that rhythm. Things went
badly for me, too, one evening, in Ferrara. Moro’s body had been found a
little more than a month earlier and I let slip a description of his
kidnappers as murderers. It was always difficult with words, my audience required
that I calibrate them according to the current usage of the radical left, and
I was very careful. But often I would get excited and then I made
pronouncements with no filter. “Murderers” did not sit well with that
audience—the fascists are the murderers—and I was attacked, criticized,
jeered. I was silent. How I suffered in situations where approval suddenly
vanished: I lost confidence, I felt dragged down to my origins, I felt
politically incapable, I felt I was a woman who would have been better off
not opening her mouth, and for a while I avoided every occasion of public
confrontation. If one murders someone, is one not a murderer? The evening
ended unpleasantly, Nino nearly came to blows with someone at the back of the
room. But even in that situation only the return to the two of us counted.
That’s how it was: if we were together, there was no critic who could truly
touch us; in fact we became arrogant, nothing else made sense except our
opinions. We hurried to dinner, to good food, wine, sex. We wanted only to
hold each other, cling to each other.
21
一九七八年年末，第一盆凉水迎面浇了下来，当然是莉拉对我泼的凉水。从十月中旬起发生了一系列让我很难受的事儿，到莉拉那里达到了最高峰。第一件事情是，一天彼得罗从大学下班回家的路上，被几个男孩子打了。红头发？黑头发？没人知道。他们蒙着脸，手里拿着棒子。我急忙跑到医院去看他，我确信他会比往常更消沉。但是，尽管他的头被包着，一只眼睛乌青，但他很愉快。他很和气地接待了我，很快就忘记了我的存在，他和几个学生聊得热火朝天，在这些学生里有一个很漂亮的女生。后来大部分学生走了，那个女生坐在他的床边上，拉着他的一只手。她身上穿着一件白色的高领T恤，一条蓝色的迷你裙，黑发一直垂到腰上。我对她很客气，问了她的学习情况。她说，再考两门，她就可以毕业了，但她已经开始写论文了，写的是古罗马诗人卡图鲁斯。她很出色，彼得罗这么赞扬她说。她的名字叫多莉娅娜，我离开时，她一直握着彼得罗的手，帮他整理枕头。
The first cold shower arrived at the end
of 1978, from Lila, naturally. It was the end of a series of unpleasant
events that began in mid-October, when Pietro, returning from the university,
was openly attacked by a couple of kids—reds, blackshirts, who knew
anymore—armed with clubs. I hurried to the hospital, convinced that I would
find him more depressed than ever. Instead, in spite of his bandaged head and
a black eye, he was cheerful. He greeted me with a conciliatory tone, then he
forgot about me and talked the whole time with some of his students, among
whom a very pretty girl was conspicuous. When most of them left, she sat next
to him, on the edge of the bed, and took one of his hands. She wore a white
turtleneck sweater and a blue miniskirt, and her brown hair hung down her
back. I was polite, I asked her about her studies. She said she had two more
exams before getting her degree, but she was already working on her thesis,
on Catullus. She’s very good, Pietro praised her. Her name was Doriana and
the whole time we were in the ward she only let go of his hand to rearrange
the pillows.
当天晚上，在佛罗伦萨家里，我婆婆带着黛黛和艾尔莎出现了。我跟她提到了那个姑娘，她很满意地微笑了，她知道儿子的新恋情。她说：“你离开他了，还指望着什么？”第二天，我们一起去了医院。黛黛和艾尔莎马上就被多莉娅娜的手镯和项链吸引了过去，基本没有专注她们的父亲和我，一直在院子里和多莉娅娜还有她们的奶奶玩儿。我想，现在开始了一个新阶段，我和彼得罗很小心地相互试探。在他被打之前，他去看孩子的次数已经减少了很多，现在我明白是为什么了。我问了那个女生的情况，他用自己的方式谈到了那个姑娘，语气充满了深情。我问：“她会和你一起生活吗？”他说，这还为时尚早，他还不知道，但有可能会的。我说：“我们要谈谈孩子的问题。”他表示同意。
That night, in the house in Florence, my
mother-in-law appeared with Dede and Elsa. I talked to her about the girl,
she smiled with satisfaction, she knew about her son’s relationship. She
said: You left him, what did you expect. The next day we all went together to
the hospital. Dede and Elsa were immediately charmed by Doriana, by her
necklaces and bracelets. They paid little attention to either their father or
me, they went out to the courtyard to play with her and their grandmother. A
new phase has begun, I said to myself, and I cautiously tested the ground
with Pietro. Even before the beating his visits to his daughters had
decreased, and now I understood why. I asked him about the girl. He talked
about her as he knew how to do, with devotion. I asked: Will she come to live
with you? He said that it was too soon, he didn’t know, but yes, maybe so. We
have to discuss the children, I said. He agreed.
一有机会，我就和阿黛尔说明了这个新情况，她以为我会抱怨，但我跟她说，现在的情况我觉得很好，我的问题是两个女儿。
As soon as possible, I took up this new
situation with Adele. She must have thought that I wanted to complain but I
explained that I wasn’t unhappy about it, my problem was the children.
“也就是说？”她很警惕地问我。
“What do you mean?” she asked, alarmed.
“到目前为止，出于需要，我把她们都放在你那儿，我想，彼得罗也需要时间调整，现在情况发生了变化，他有了自己的生活，我也有权过一种稳定的生活。”
“Until now I’ve left them with you out of
necessity and because I thought that Pietro needed to resettle himself, but
now that he has a life of his own things have changed. I, too, have the right
to some stability.”
“你打算怎么办？”
“And so?”
“我会在那不勒斯租一套房子，会和我女儿搬到那里去住。”
“I’ll take a house in Naples and move
there with my daughters.”
我们吵得不可开交。她非常爱两个孩子，不放心把孩子交给我。她说我太专注自己的事儿了，根本就照顾不过来。她说，家里有两个女孩子，然后让一个外人——她说的是尼诺，来家里，这是一件很不慎重的事情。最后，她强调说，她不会让两个孙女在一个像那不勒斯那样混乱的城市生活。我们吵得很凶，什么话都说出来了。
We had a violent quarrel. She was very
attached to the girls and didn’t trust leaving them to me. She accused me of
being too self-absorbed to take care of them properly. She insinuated that
setting up house with a stranger—she meant Nino—when you have two female
children was a very serious imprudence. Finally she swore that she would
never allow her grandchildren to grow up in a disorderly city like Naples.
她提到了我母亲，她儿子应该跟她讲了在佛罗伦萨家里上演的那一幕。
We shouted insults. She brought up my
mother—her son must have told her about the terrible scene in Florence.
“你出差时会把两个孩子留给我，怎么不留给她呢？”
“When you have to go away who will you
leave them with, her?”
“我想留给谁就留给谁。”
“I’ll leave them with whoever I like.”
“我不希望黛黛和艾尔莎和这些不理性，经常会失控的人接触。”
“I don’t want Dede and Elsa to have any
contact with people who are out of control.”
我回答她说：
I answered:
“这么多年里，我一直觉得，你是我想要的那种母亲，但我错了，我母亲要比你好得多。”
“In all these years I believed that you
were the mother figure I’d always felt the need for. I was wrong, my mother
is better than you.”
22
随后，我对彼得罗提出我要把两个女儿带走。很明显，他很为难，但为了能多和多莉娅娜待在一起，他愿意作出任何让步。我去那不勒斯和尼诺谈这件事情，我不想在电话里谈论这么重要的事情。他把我带到了多莫路上的那套房子，现在，我们通常都是去那里。尽管每次都有一种仓促的感觉，那里破旧的床单让我有些厌烦，但我知道他一直住在那里，那是他的家，见到他很幸福，所以我总是心甘情愿地去找他。我对他说，我已经想好了，要和两个女儿搬回那不勒斯居住。他表现得十分惊喜，我们庆祝了一下，他说要尽快给我们找一套房子，他想承担找房子的责任。
I subsequently brought up the subject
again with Pietro, and it became evident that, despite his protests, he would
agree to whatever arrangement allowed him to be with Doriana as much as
possible. At that point I went to Naples to talk to Nino; I didn’t want to
reduce such a delicate moment to a phone call. I stayed in the apartment on
Via Duomo, as I had often done now. I knew that he was still living there, it
was his home, and although I always had a sense of temporariness and the
dirty sheets annoyed me, I was glad to see him and I went there willingly.
When I told him that I was ready to move, with my daughters, he had a real
explosion of joy. We celebrated, he promised to find us an apartment as soon
as possible, he wanted to take on all the inevitable annoyances.
我松了一口气，经过那么长时间的四处奔波、悲喜交集的生活，现在是消停的时候了。我有了一点儿钱，彼得罗也会给我孩子的抚养费，而且我正要签一本报酬丰厚的新书。除此之外，我终于感觉自己成熟了，地位越来越高，我以新身份回到那不勒斯，这对我的工作可能会是一个激励和促进。尤其是，我要和尼诺生活在一起，和他一起散步，会见他的朋友，进行交谈，晚上参加很多文化活动是多么美好的事儿。我想租一套明亮的房子，可以看到大海，这样两个女儿就不会怀念热内亚的舒适生活。
I was relieved. After so much running
around and traveling and pain and pleasure, it was time to settle down. Now I
had some money, I would get some from Pietro for the children’s maintenance,
and I was about to sign a favorable contract for a new book. I felt that I
was finally an adult, with a growing reputation, in a state in which
returning to Naples could be an exciting risk and fruitful for my work. But
mainly I wished to live with Nino. How lovely it was to walk with him, meet
his friends, talk, come home late. I wanted to find a light-filled house,
with a view of the sea. My daughters mustn’t feel the lack of the comforts of
Genoa.
我避免给莉拉打电话，我没告诉她我的决定。我很肯定，她一定会强行掺和进来，介入我的生活，我不希望出现这样的情况。但我给卡门打了电话，在那些年，我和她建立了比较稳固的关系。为了让她高兴，我和娜迪亚的哥哥阿尔曼多见面了，我发现，他现在不仅仅是一个医生，也是无产阶级民主党的一个要人。他充满敬意地接待了我，他赞扬了我最近写的那本书，并邀请我去城里的某个地方，和读者谈论这本书。他把我拉到了一个有很多人收听的电台，那是他自己建立的一个电台，在一个异常凌乱的地方，他对我进行了采访。但是，我打听他妹妹时，他变得遮遮掩掩，他把我的询问称为“持之以恒的兴趣”。他说，娜迪亚现在很好，她和母亲一起去远方旅行了，没有别的。关于帕斯卡莱，他什么都不知道，也不感兴趣。“像他那样的人，”阿尔曼多强调说，“是这伟大政治阶段的毁灭者。”
I avoided calling Lila and telling her my
decision. I assumed that she would inevitably get mixed up in my affairs and
I didn’t want her to. Instead I called Carmen, with whom in the past year I
had established a good relationship. To please her I had met Nadia’s brother,
Armando, who—I had discovered—was now, besides a doctor, a prominent member
of the Proletarian Democracy party. He had treated me with great respect. He
had praised my last book, insisting that I come and talk about it somewhere
in the city, had brought me to a popular radio station he had founded; there,
in the most wretched disorder, he had interviewed me. But as for what he
ironically called my recurrent curiosity about his sister, he had been
evasive. He said that Nadia was well, that she had gone on a long trip with
their mother, and nothing else. About Pasquale he knew nothing nor was he
interested in knowing: people like him—he had said emphatically—had been the
ruin of an extraordinary political period.
在卡门跟前，我非常委婉地谈到了这次会面，很明显，她还是很难过，那是一种沉重的难过。这让我每次去那不勒斯时，都会去看她，从她身上，我能感觉到一种我可以理解的不安。帕斯卡莱是我们的帕斯卡莱，无论他做过什么，我们都很爱他，或者说，无论人们认为他做了什么，我们都爱他。关于他，我的记忆变得支离破碎，非常模糊：我们在城区图书馆相遇的那次，在马尔蒂里广场上打架的那次，他开车带着我去看莉拉的那次，还有他和娜迪亚出现在佛罗伦萨的家里。我对卡门的记忆要更清晰一些，她孩童时代的痛苦——警察抓走她父亲的场景，我记得很清楚——现在加上了她对哥哥的忧虑，她一直在操心着哥哥的命运。假如之前我们只是孩童时代的朋友，因为莉拉的缘故，她成了卡拉奇家的新肉食店的售货员，现在她是我很愿意见面、很在意的一个人。
To Carmen, obviously, I had given a
toned-down report of that meeting, but she was unhappy just the same. A
decorous unhappiness, which in the end had led me to see her occasionally
when I went to Naples. I felt in her an anguish that I understood. Pasquale
was our Pasquale. We both loved him, whatever he had done or was doing. Of
him I now had a drifting, fragmentary memory: the time we had been together
at the neighborhood library, the time of the fight in Piazza dei Martiri, the
time he had come in the car to take me to Lila, the time he had showed up at
my house in Florence with Nadia. Carmen on the other hand I felt as more
consistent. Her suffering as a child—I had a clear memory of her father’s
arrest—was welded to her suffering for her brother, to the tenacity with
which she tried to watch over his fate. If she had once been only the
childhood friend who had ended up behind the counter in the Carraccis’ new
grocery store thanks to Lila, now she was a person I saw willingly and was
fond of.
我们在多莫街上的一家酒吧里见面，那地方很黑，我们坐在对着街道的门边儿。我跟她详细说了我的计划，我知道，她会告诉莉拉的。我想，这也没什么问题。卡门穿着黑色的衣服，满脸沉重，她一声不吭地听我讲，中间没打断我。我感觉我的一切都很轻浮：我穿的体面衣服、尼诺，还有想生活在一栋漂亮房子里的愿望。最后她看了一下表，对我宣布说：
We met in a coffee shop on Via Duomo. The
place was dark, and we sat near the street door. I told her in detail about
my plans, I knew she would talk to Lila and I thought: That’s as it should
be. Carmen, wearing dark colors, with her dark complexion, listened
attentively and without interrupting. I felt frivolous in my elegant outfit,
talking about Nino and my desire to live in a nice house. At a certain point
she looked at the clock, announced:
“莉娜马上就要过来了。”
“Lina’s coming.”
我有些不安，我约的是她，而不是莉拉。这时候，我也看了看手表说：
That made me nervous; I had a date with her, not with Lila. I looked in turn at the clock, and said,
“我要走了。”
“I have to go.”
“等一下，她过五分钟就来了。”
“Wait, five minutes and she’ll be here.”
她满怀温情和感激，说起了我们的朋友莉拉对大家的照顾。莉拉关心所有人：她父母、她哥哥，甚至是斯特凡诺。莉拉帮安东尼奥找了一套房子，她和安东尼奥的德国妻子成了好朋友。莉拉想开一家自己的计算机公司。莉拉很诚实、有钱、慷慨，假如你有困难的话，她就会拿钱出来。莉拉会想尽一切办法来帮助帕斯卡莱。“啊，是的，莱农！”她说，“你们一直都那么要好，那么息息相通，真是太幸运了，我从小就很嫉妒你们俩。”我感觉，我在她的声音、语气和手势里，都看到了莉拉对她的影响。我想到了阿方索，我想起来，我当时看到他——一个大男人，连轮廓都和莉拉相似时的震撼。整个城区都向她看齐，她现在又成了一种风潮了吗？
She began to speak of her with affection
and gratitude. Lila took care of her friends. Lila took care of everyone: her
parents, her brother, even Stefano. Lila had helped Antonio find an apartment
and had become very friendly with the German woman he had married. Lila
intended to set up her own computer business. Lila was sincere, she was rich,
she was generous, if you were in trouble she reached into her purse. Lila was
ready to help Pasquale in any way. Ah, she said, Lenù, how lucky you two are
to have always been so close, how I envied you. And I seemed to hear in her
voice, to recognize in a movement of her hand, the tones, the gestures of our
friend. I thought again of Alfonso, I remembered my impression that he, a
male, resembled Lila even in his features. Was the neighborhood settling in
her, finding its direction?
“我要走了。”我说。
“I’m going,” I said.
“再等一下，莉拉要跟你说一件非常重要的事。”
“Wait a minute, Lila has something
important to tell you.”
“你告诉我就好了。”
“You tell me.”
“不，这是她的事儿。”
“No, it’s up to her.”
我在那儿等着，但我越来越不耐烦了。最后莉拉终于来了，这次她对于自己的外表很重视，不像在阿米迪欧广场上那次那么不修边幅。我发现，假如她愿意的话，她会变得非常漂亮。她感叹了一句：
I waited, with growing reluctance.
Finally Lila arrived. This time she had paid much more attention to her looks
than when I’d seen her in Piazza Amedeo, and I had to acknowledge that, if
she wanted, she could still be very beautiful. She exclaimed:
“看来你已经决定了，要回那不勒斯生活。”
“So you’ve decided to return to Naples.”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
“你跟卡门说了，却不跟我说？”
“And you tell Carmen but not me?”
“我知道她会告诉你的。”
“I would have told you.”
“你父母知道么？”
“Do your parents know?”
“不知道。”
“No.”
“埃莉莎呢？”
“And Elisa?”
“也不知道。”
“Not her, either.”
“你母亲病了。”
“Your mother’s not well.”
“她怎么了？”
“What’s wrong?”
“咳嗽，但她不愿意去看医生。”
“She has a cough, but she won’t go to the
doctor.”
我坐在凳子上，有些不安，我又开始看表。
I became restless, I turned to look at
the clock.
“卡门跟我说，你要告诉我一件很重要的事情。”
“Carmen says you have something important
to tell me.”
“并不是一件好事儿。”
“It’s not a nice thing.”
“说来听听。”
“Go ahead.”
“我让安东尼奥跟踪了尼诺。”
“I asked Antonio to follow Nino.”
我惊得简直要跳起来了。
I jumped.
“怎么个跟踪法？”
“Follow in what sense?”
“就是看看他每天都在做什么。”
“See what he does.”
“为什么？”
“Why?”
“我是为了你好。”
“I did it for your own good.”
“这是我自己的事儿。”
“I’ll worry about my own good.”
莉拉看了一眼卡门，想获得她的支持，然后她看着我说：
Lila glanced at Carmen as if to get her
support, then she turned back to me.
“假如你是这个态度，那就别说了，我不希望你又生气。”
“If you act like that I’ll shut up: I
don’t want you to feel offended again.”
“我不生气，你快点儿说。”
“I’m not offended, go on.”
她盯着我的眼睛，用意大利语言简意赅地说尼诺从来都没离开他妻子，他还是继续和她还有他们的儿子一起生活。作为奖赏，这两天，他开始在一个非常重要的研究机构做头儿，这个机构是他丈人的银行赞助的，他丈人是那家银行的行长。最后，她严肃地问我：
She looked me straight in the eye and
revealed, in curt phrases, in Italian, that Nino had never left his wife,
that he continued to live with her and his son, that as a reward he had been
named, just recently, the director of an important research institute
financed by the bank that his father-in-law headed. She concluded gravely:
“你知道这事儿吗？”
“Did you know?”
我摇了摇头。
I shook my head.
“不知道。”
“No.”
“假如你不相信我说的，我们现在可以去找他，你会看到，在他面前我也会说一样的话，一字一句都不差，就像现在我告诉你的。”
“If you don’t believe me let’s go see him
and I’ll repeat everything to his face, word for word, just as I told you
now.”
我摆了摆手，就是想让她明白，没这个必要。
I waved a hand to let her know there was
no need.
“我相信你。”我小声说，为了回避她的眼睛，我看着门外的街道。
“I believe you,” I whispered, but to
avoid her eyes I looked out the door, at the street.
这时候，卡门的声音听起来好像从很远的地方传来，她说：“假如你们去找尼诺，我也要去，我们三个会把事情说清楚，会让他无话可说。”我感觉她在轻轻触碰我的胳膊，就好像为了引起我的关注。从小，我们一起在教堂旁边的小公园里看照片小说，我们对陷于困境的女主角深怀同情。她内心一定和那时候一样坚定，但现在她很严肃，那是一种真实的感情，不是对一种虚构的东西，而是对真实发生的事情产生的反应。莉拉一直都很鄙视我们看的那些小书，那时候她坐在我对面，她心里一定是怀着和卡门不一样的情感。我想象，她一定感到很满意，安东尼奥发现尼诺的虚伪行径时，他一定也是同样的感情。我看到莉拉和卡门交换了一下眼神，就好像她们要做一个决定，那是很漫长的一瞬。我在卡门的嘴唇上看到了这个字——不！同时，她还轻轻地摇了摇头，呼出来一口气。
Meanwhile from very far away came
Carmen’s voice saying: If you’re going to Nino I want to come, too; the three
of us will settle things properly. I felt her lightly touching my arm to get
my attention. As small girls we had read photo-romances in the garden next to
the church and had felt the same urge to help the heroine when she was in
trouble. Now, surely, she had the same feeling of solidarity of those days,
but with the gravity of today, and it was a genuine feeling, brought on by a
wrong that was not fictional but real. Lila on the other hand had always
scorned such reading and there was no doubt that at that moment she was
sitting across from me with other motives. I imagined that she felt
satisfied, as Antonio, too, must have been when he discovered Nino’s
falseness. I saw that she and Carmen exchanged a look, a sort of mute
consultation, as if to make a decision. It was a long moment. No, I read on
Carmen’s lips, and that breath was accompanied by an imperceptible shaking of
her head.
什么不？
No to what?
莉拉盯着我看，她的嘴半闭着。像通常一样，她在我的心上扎了一针，并不是让我的心脏停下来，而是让它跳得更快。她的眼睛眯着，眉头紧皱着，她等着我的反应。她希望我会叫喊，会哭泣，会对她说出我内心的话。但我轻声说：
Lila stared at me again, her mouth half
open. As usual she was taking on the job of sticking a pin in my heart not to
stop it but to make it beat harder. Her eyes were narrowed, her broad
forehead wrinkled. She waited for my reaction. She wanted me to scream, weep,
hand myself over to her. I said softly:
“我不得不走了。”
“I really have to go now.”
