老年 坏血统的故事
OLD AGE THE STORY OF BAD BLOOD
1
我是一九九五年彻底离开那不勒斯的，那时候人们都说，这个城市正在崛起，但我对于它的崛起已经不抱什么希望了。那些年，我看到新火车站、诺瓦拉街上的摩天大楼，以及斯卡姆比亚区那些展翅欲飞的建筑拔地而起。还有修建在阿莱纳奇亚区灰色的石头上的、塔代奥·达赛萨街和国家广场上的那些鳞次栉比的新建筑。那些建筑在法国或日本被设计出来，然后在彭蒂塞利和波焦雷亚莱区被用一种缓慢、晃晃悠悠的方式修建起来，在很短的时间里，这些大楼会失去所有光彩，成为那些绝望的人的巢穴。我们说的是什么复兴呢？那只是现代化的胭脂，胡乱涂抹在这个城市腐朽的脸上，只能让人觉得滑稽。
I left Naples definitively in 1995, when
everyone said that the city was reviving. But I no longer believed in its
resurrections. Over the years I had seen the advent of the new railway
station, the dull tower of the skyscraper on Via Novara, the soaring
structures of Scampia, the proliferation of tall, shining buildings above the
gray stone of Arenaccia, of Via Taddeo da Sessa, of Piazza Nazionale. Those
buildings, conceived in France or Japan and rising between Ponticelli and
Poggioreale with the usual breakdowns and delays, had immediately, at high
speed, lost all their luster and become dens for the desperate. So what
resurrection? It was only cosmetic, a powder of modernity applied randomly,
and boastfully, to the corrupt face of the city.
每次都会发生这样的事情，重生的口号会点燃人们的希望，一切都会支离破碎，成为残渣，落在之前的残渣之上。因此我没留在那不勒斯，支持在意大利Communist领导下的城市重建，我决定搬去都灵，去一家当时势头很好的出版社当主编。四十岁之后，时间开始狂奔，我没法跟上来，真实的日历被合同上的交稿日期取代了，一年一年就随着一本本书的出版过去了。对于发生在我还有我女儿身上的事情，很难说出一个具体的日子。我大部分时间都在写作，我把这些事情都嵌进写作了，这件事或那件事是什么时候发生的？我几乎会用一种不自觉的方式，去查看我的书的出版日期。
It happened like that every time. The
scam of rebirth raised hopes and then shattered them, became crust upon
ancient crusts. Thus, just as the obligation arose to stay in the city and
support the revival under the leadership of the former Communist party, I
decided to leave for Turin, drawn by the possibility of running a publishing
house that at the time was full of ambition. Once I turned forty, time had
begun to race, I couldn’t keep up. The real calendar had been replaced by one
of contract deadlines, the years leaped from one publication to the next;
giving dates to the events that concerned me, and my daughters, cost me a
lot, and I forced them into the writing, which took me more and more time.
When had this or that happened? In an almost heedless way I oriented myself
by the publication dates of my books.
我已经写了很多书了，这给我带了一些权威和声誉，还有富裕的生活。随着时间的流逝，抚养几个女儿的负担也越来越轻省。黛黛和艾尔莎——先是老大，然后是老二——都去波士顿上学了。彼得罗那时已经在哈佛当了七八年教授，他鼓励两个女儿去美国。和父亲在一起，她们很自在。除了有几次，她们会写信抱怨那里的气候，还有波士顿人爱卖弄学问，她们对自己很满意，很高兴摆脱了很多年前我强迫她们作出的选择。这时候伊玛也渴望能像两个姐姐一样，我还在城区做什么？刚开始，回那不勒斯这个选择给作为作家的我带来了好处——我本可以选择生活在别处，但却留在了一个充满危险的城郊，继续接触现实，从中汲取素材，但现在有很多知识分子都会这么做，其次是因为我的书选择了其他的道路，城区的主题已经退缩到一个角落了，我现在拥有一定的名声和地位，假如我把自己的生活限定在一个很小的空间里，只能不安地记载我的兄弟姐妹、朋友、他们的孩子和侄子外甥，甚至是我的女儿的生活一步步恶化，这难道不是一种虚伪？
I now had quite a few books behind me,
and they had won me some authority, a good reputation, a comfortable life.
Over time the weight of my daughters had greatly diminished. Dede and
Elsa—first one, then the other—had gone to study in Boston, encouraged by
Pietro, who for seven or eight years had had a professorship at Harvard. They
were at ease with their father. Apart from the letters in which they
complained about the cruel climate and the pedantry of the Bostonians, they
were satisfied, with themselves and with escaping the choices that, in the
past, I had compelled them to confront. At that point, since Imma was
desperate to do what her sisters had, what was I doing in the neighborhood?
If at first the image of the writer who, although able to live elsewhere, had
stayed in a dangerous outlying neighborhood to continue to nourish herself on
reality, had been useful to me, now there were many intellectuals who prided
themselves on the same cliché. And my books had taken other paths, the
material of the neighborhood had been set aside. Wasn’t it therefore
hypocritical to have a certain fame, and many advantages, and yet to limit
myself, to live in a place where I could only record uneasily the
deterioration of the lives of my siblings, my friends, their children and
grandchildren, maybe even of my last daughter?
伊玛当时是一个十四岁的小姑娘，她学习很努力，生活上也什么都不缺。但她说一口粗粝的方言，她的同学我都不喜欢，假如她晚饭后出去，我会非常不安，但她常常会自觉待在家里。我自己不怎么出去，我在那不勒斯的生活很局限，我会和那不勒斯文化圈的朋友见面，会有一些男人追求我，后来都不了了之，非常短暂。那些非常出色的男人生活在这里，他们迟早也会为成为失望的人，对自己的处境感到愤怒，他们很风趣，但总夹杂着一丝恶意。有时候我感觉到，他们追求我只是为了让我看看他们的稿子，询问我对于电视或者电影的看法，有时候只是为了向我借钱，然后就消失了。我强颜欢笑，很艰难地维系着我的社会和感情生活。晚上穿上漂亮的衣服从家里出去，对我来说不是一种乐趣，而是一种惩罚。有一次，我没有来得及关上大门，就被两个不到十三岁的男孩抢劫了，那个出租车司机在距离我两步远的地方等着，他一直没有从窗口探出头来。因此我决定离开。一九九五年夏天，我和伊玛一起离开了那不勒斯。
Imma was then fourteen; I didn’t deprive
her of anything, and she studied hard. But if necessary she spoke in a harsh
dialect, she had schoolmates I didn’t like, I was so worried if she went out
after dinner that often she decided to stay home. I, too, when I was in the
city, had a limited life. I saw my friends from cultured Naples, I let myself
be courted and embarked on relationships, but they never lasted. Even the
most brilliant men sooner or later turned out to be disillusioned, raging at
a cruel fate, witty and yet subtly malicious. At times I had the impression
that they wanted me mainly so that they could give me their manuscripts to
read, ask me about television or the movies, in some cases borrow money that
they never paid back. I made the best of it, exerting myself to have a social
and emotional life. But going out at night, dressed up, wasn’t a pleasure, it
was a cause of anxiety. On one occasion I didn’t have time to close the
street door behind me before I was beaten and robbed by two kids who were no
more than thirteen. The taxi driver, who was waiting right out front, didn’t
even look out the window. So in the summer of 1995 I left Naples with Imma.
我在波河沿岸租了一套房子，就在伊莎贝拉桥边上，我和小女儿的生活马上就好了很多。对我来说，住在都灵，让反思那不勒斯的一切变得更加容易，我能更清醒地描述它。我热爱我的城市，但我再也不会捍卫它。我确信，我对那不勒斯的不安和沮丧迟早会消失，但对它的爱就像一个镜子，可以让我看到整个西方。那不斯勒是一个欧洲大都市，它的姿态很明确：相信技术、科学和经济发展，相信自然是善意的，历史会向好的方向发展，相信民主会得到普及，但一切都缺乏根基。我有一次写道——我想到的不是我自己，而是莉拉的悲观主义——出生在那不勒斯，只在一个方面有用，就是从一开始我们就几乎本能地知道：梦想着毫无限度的发展，其实是一个充满暴力和死亡的噩梦，现在很多人都不约而同地产生了类似的想法。
I rented an apartment on the Po, near the
Isabella Bridge, and my life and that of my third daughter immediately
improved. From there it became simpler to reflect on Naples, to write about
it and let myself write about it with lucidity. I loved my city, but I
uprooted from myself any dutiful defense of it. I was convinced, rather, that
the anguish in which that love sooner or later ended was a lens through which
to look at the entire West. Naples was the great European metropolis where
faith in technology, in science, in economic development, in the kindness of
nature, in history that leads of necessity to improvement, in democracy, was
revealed, most clearly and far in advance, to be completely without
foundation. To be born in that city—I went so far as to write once, thinking
not of myself but of Lila’s pessimism—is useful for only one thing: to have
always known, almost instinctively, what today, with endless fine
distinctions, everyone is beginning to claim: that the dream of unlimited
progress is in reality a nightmare of savagery and death.
二〇〇〇年伊玛去巴黎上学了，我又成了一个人。我尽量说服她不要去，我说没这个必要，但她周围的朋友都作出了这个选择，她也不想落后。刚开始，我没觉得太难过，因为我有很多事情要做。但过了两年，我开始感觉到年老的到来，就好像我自己，还有我取得成功的那个世界都在慢慢淡去。尽管我的几部作品都获得了一些非常重要的奖项，但那些书卖得很少，比如说二〇〇三年，我写的十三本小说还有两本杂文，一共给我带来了两千三百二十三欧元的收入。我应该采取对策，我的老读者对我已经没什么期待了，那些年轻的读者——准确来说应该是女读者，从我开始写作以来，我的大部分读者都是女性——她们都有着别的品味和兴趣。为报纸撰稿也不再是一个收入来源，报纸对我已经失去兴趣了，编辑也很少找我约稿，要么他们会给我很少的稿费，要么就一点儿钱也不给。至于电视，在九十年代的几次成功演播之后，我试着做了一个关于古希腊和古罗马文学的节目，是一个下午的节目。产生这样一个想法，只是因为几个朋友——其中包括阿尔曼多·加利亚尼的建议，他在广播5台有自己的节目，他和国家电视台的人关系不错。结果那个节目彻头彻尾地失败了，我再也没有过类似的工作机会。我之前一直担任主编的出版社，也开始走下坡路。二〇〇四年，一个三十多岁、很聪明的小伙子让我出局了，我成了一个外部顾问。我六十岁了，感觉自己走到了职业生涯的尽头。在都灵，冬天太冷，夏天太热，文化圈的人都不是很热情，男人眼里已经没有我了。我很焦虑，晚上睡得很少。我从阳台上看着波河，河上划船的人，还有旁边的小山，我很厌倦。
In 2000 I was left alone; Imma went to
study in Paris. I tried to convince her that there was no need, but since
many of her friends had decided to go, she didn’t want to be left out. At
first it didn’t bother me, I had a busy life. But within a few years I began
to feel old age, it was as if I were fading along with the world in which I
had established myself. Although I had won, at various times and with various
works, some prestigious prizes, my books were now hardly selling at all: in
2003, for example, the thirteen novels and two volumes of essays I had
published earned altogether twenty-three hundred and twenty-three euros
before taxes. I had to acknowledge, at that point, that my audience expected
nothing more from me and that younger readers—it would be more accurate to
say younger women readers; from the start it was mainly women who read my
books—had other tastes, other interests. The newspapers were no longer a
source of income, either. They weren’t interested in me; they rarely asked
for articles, and paid nothing or next to nothing. As for television, after
some successful experiences in the nineties, I had tried to do an afternoon
show devoted to classics of Greek and Latin literature, an idea that was
accepted only thanks to the regard of some friends, including Armando
Galiani, who had a show on Channel 5 but good relations with public
television. It was an unquestionable fiasco and I had not had other
opportunities. Things also deteriorated at the publishing house I had run for
many years. In the fall of 2004 I was pushed out by a clever young man,
scarcely over thirty, and reduced to an external consultant. I was sixty, I
felt my journey was ending. In Turin the winters were too cold, the summers
too hot, the cultured classes unwelcoming. I was anxious, I didn’t sleep
much. Men no longer noticed me. I looked out at the Po from my balcony, at
the rowers, the hill, and I was bored.
我开始频繁去那不勒斯，但我已经不想再见我的亲戚朋友了，他们也不想见我。我只和莉拉见面，但经常我连她的面也不见，她让我很不自在。最近几年，她对那不勒斯产生了激情，但在我看来，那是一种很粗野的地方主义。我更愿意一个人沿着卡拉乔洛海滨路走，走上沃美罗，或者去法院路散步。二〇〇六年春天，我在维托里奥·埃曼努埃莱大街的一家老宾馆住着，天开始下雨，一直停不下来，我关在房间里出不去。为了打发时间，我开始写作，在短暂的几天时间里，我写了一篇大约八十页的小说，以城区为背景，讲了蒂娜的故事。我写得很快，没有时间去虚构，结果写出了一些干巴巴、很直接的文字，故事的结尾是通过想象加上去的。
I began to go more frequently to Naples,
but I had no wish to see friends and relatives, and friends and relatives had
no wish to see me. I saw only Lila, but often, by my choice, not even her.
She made me uneasy. In recent years she had become passionate about the city
with a chauvinism that seemed crude, so I preferred to walk alone on Via
Caracciolo, or go up to the Vomero, or walk through the Tribunali. So it
happened that in the spring of 2006, shut up in an old hotel on Corso
Vittorio Emanuele during an incessant rain, I wrote, in a few days, to pass
the time, a narrative of scarcely eighty pages that was set in the
neighborhood and told the story of Tina. I wrote it rapidly in order not to
give myself time to invent. The pages were terse, direct. The story took off
imaginatively only at the end.
我在二〇〇七年秋天发表了这篇小说，题目是《友谊》。这本书很受欢迎，到现在还卖得很好，学校老师会让学生读这本书，作为暑假作业。
I published the book in the fall of 2007
with the title A Friendship. It was very well received, and it still sells
well today; teachers recommend it to students as summer reading.
但我很讨厌这本书。
But I hate it.
在这本书出版两年前，吉耀拉的尸体在城区小花园里被发现时——她死于心脏病发作，一场惨淡、孤寂、可怕的死亡——莉拉让我答应她，永远都不会写她，但我没信守诺言，我用一种最直接的手法把她的故事写了出来。有几个月，我相信这是我至今为止写得最好的一本书，我作为作家达到了新的顶峰，我已经有很长时间没受到关注了。但二〇〇七年年末快要到圣诞节时，我去马尔蒂里广场上的菲尔特瑞奈利书店推广这本书，我忽然为自己感到羞耻，我很担心在人群里看到莉拉，她可能会出现在第一排，已经做好了提问的准备，随时会让我陷入尴尬和困境。但那天晚上一切都很顺利，我受到了大家的欢迎。回到宾馆，我感觉信心大增，我试着给她打电话，先是固定电话，然后是手机，后来又打了固定电话，她没有接。从那以后，她再也没有接过我的电话。
Just two years earlier, when Gigliola’s
body was found in the gardens—she had died of a heart attack, in solitude, a
death terrible in its bleakness—Lila had made me promise that I would never
write about her. Instead, here, I had done it, and I had done it in the most
direct way. For a few months I believed that I had written my best book, and
my fame as a writer took off again; it was a long time since I’d had such
success. But already by the end of 2007—during the Christmas season—when I
went to Feltrinelli in Piazza dei Martiri to present A Friendship, I suddenly
felt ashamed and was afraid of seeing Lila in the audience, maybe the front
row, ready to interrupt and make trouble for me. But the evening went very
well, I was much celebrated. When I returned to the hotel, a bit more
confident, I tried to telephone her, first on the regular phone, then on the
cell, then again on the other. She didn’t answer, she hasn’t answered me
since.
2
我没办法讲述莉拉的痛苦，她命中注定遇到的那些事情，可能一直都潜伏在她的生活里：她女儿不是因为生病、事故或者暴力事件死去，而是忽然消失了。她的痛苦没有着落，她没有一具失去生命的身体可以拥抱，也不能举行一场葬礼，她不能停在孩子的遗体前失声痛哭，想着她刚才还在走路，奔跑，说话，拥抱母亲，但忽然间就消失了。我觉得莉拉一定感觉到了一阵强烈的撞击，一分钟之前，蒂娜还是她身体的一部分，但一下子她女儿就脱离了出去，没有经历生离死别，就消失得无影无踪，我无法充分体会她的痛苦，也没有办法想象。
I don’t know how to recount Lila’s grief.
What befell her, what had perhaps been lying in wait in her life forever, was
not the death of a daughter through illness, an accident, an act of violence,
but her daughter’s sudden disappearance. The grief couldn’t coagulate around
anything. She had no lifeless body to cling to in despair, there was no one
for whom to hold a funeral, she couldn’t linger before a corpse that had
walked, run, talked, hugged her, and had ended up a broken thing. Lila felt,
I think, as if a limb, which until a moment before had been part of her body,
had lost form and substance without undergoing any trauma. But I don’t know
the suffering that derived from it well enough, nor can I imagine it.
在失去蒂娜之后的十年时间里，尽管我们继续住在同一栋楼里，我每天都会看到她，但我从来都没看到她哭过，也没有看到她绝望发狂的时刻。她先是日日夜夜在城区里跑来跑去，寻找她的女儿，毫无结果，后来她好像太疲惫了，不再继续寻找，她坐在厨房的窗前，一动不动，一坐就是大半天，尽管从那里只能看到一小段铁路，还有一丁点蓝天。后来她又回到了日常生活里，但一点儿也没有听天由命，她的脾气越来越坏了，让周围的人很不舒服，也很害怕。岁月在她身上留下痕迹，她在叫喊和争吵中日益老去。刚开始，她在任何时候和任何人都会说起蒂娜，她死死地抓住这个名字，好像提到女儿的名字，就会让她回到自己身边。但之后，再在她跟前提蒂娜的名字变得不可能，甚至我在她面前提到蒂娜，几秒之后她就会摔门而去。她对彼得罗写的一封信表示欣赏，我觉得这是因为他表达了自己的慰问，但从来都没有提蒂娜的名字。包括一九九五年，在我离开之前，除了很少几次提到蒂娜，她表现得就好像什么事儿也没发生一样。有一次皮诺奇娅提到蒂娜，说她像一个天使，在天上看着我们所有人，莉拉对她说：“滚！”
In the ten years that followed the loss
of Tina, although I continued to live in the same building, although I met
Lila every day, I never saw her cry, I never witnessed a crisis of despair.
After at first rushing through the neighborhood, day and night, in that vain
search for her daughter, she gave in as if she were too weary. She sat beside
the kitchen window and didn’t move for a long period, even though from there
you could see only a slice of the railroad and a little sky. Then she pulled
herself together and began normal life again, but without resignation. The
years washed over her, her nasty character got even worse, she sowed
uneasiness and fear, she grew old screeching, quarreling. At first she talked
about Tina on every occasion and with anyone, she clung to the name of the
child as if uttering it would serve to bring her back. But later it was
impossible even to mention that loss in her presence, and even if it was I
who did so she got rid of me rudely after a few seconds. She seemed to appreciate
only a letter from Pietro, mainly—I think—because he managed to write to her
lovingly without ever mentioning Tina. Even in 1995, before I left, except on
very rare occasions she acted as if nothing had happened. Once Pinuccia spoke
of the child as a little angel watching over us all. Lila said: Get out.
3
在我们的城区里，没有任何人对于执法机关和报纸抱有希望。男人、女人，甚至那些少年帮派，他们完全无视警察和电视，都在找蒂娜，找了一天又一天，一个星期又一个星期。所有亲戚朋友都发动起来了。唯一偶尔打来电话的人是尼诺，他会说一些泛泛的话，唯一的目的就是重申：“我没任何责任，我已经把孩子交给莉娜和恩佐了。”但我一点儿也不惊异，他就是那种会陪着小孩一起玩儿的大人，但孩子跌倒了，摔破了膝盖，他们也会变得和孩子一样，担心有人会对他说：“是你让孩子摔倒的。”也没人想到他，在几个小时之后，我们就忘了他这个人。恩佐和莉拉最信任的人是安东尼奥，发生这样的事情之后，为了找到蒂娜，他又一次推迟了去德国的时间。他这么做是因为友谊，让我们吃惊的是，他说这也是米凯莱·索拉拉交待的。
No one in the neighborhood put faith in
the forces of order or in the journalists. Men, women, even gangs of kids
spent days and weeks looking for Tina, ignoring the police and television.
All the relatives, all the friends were mobilized. The only one who turned up
just a couple of times—and by telephone, with generic phrases that existed
only to be repeated: I have no responsibility, I had just handed the child
over to Lina and Enzo—was Nino. But I wasn’t surprised, he was one of those
adults who when they play with a child and the child falls and skins his knee
behave like children themselves, afraid that someone will say: It was you who
let him fall. Besides, no one gave him any importance, we forgot about him in
a few hours. Enzo and Lila trusted Antonio above all, and he put off his
departure for Germany yet again, to track down Tina. He did it out of
friendship but also, as he himself explained, surprising us, because Michele
Solara had ordered him to.
索拉拉兄弟比任何人都投入到孩子失踪的事情中。我不得不说，他们很多时候都是做做样子，让人们看到他们在采取行动。尽管他们知道自己不受欢迎，有一天晚上，他们还是出现在莉拉家里，他们用一种代表整个城区的语气，说他们想尽办法，尽一切努力使蒂娜完好无损地回到她父母的身边。莉拉一直都盯着索拉拉兄弟，好像根本听不到他们在说什么。恩佐脸色非常苍白，他听他们说了几分钟，然后大声说，是他们把孩子带走了。他在其他场合也说过这样的话，他对所有人说，索拉拉兄弟把蒂娜带走了，因为他和莉拉一直拒绝给他们分公司的利润。他期望有人能提出反对，他好跟人动手，但当着他的面，没人说什么，那天晚上索拉拉兄弟也没说什么。
The Solaras undertook more than anyone
else in that business of the child’s disappearance and—I have to say—they
made their involvement highly visible. Although they knew they would be
treated with hostility they appeared one evening at Lila’s house with the
attitude of those who are speaking for an entire community, and they vowed
they would do everything possible to return Tina safe and sound to her
parents. Lila stared at them the whole time as if she saw them but didn’t
hear them. Enzo, extremely pale, listened for a few minutes and then cried
that it was they who had taken his daughter. He said it then and on many
other occasions, he shouted it everywhere: the Solaras had taken Tina away
from them because he and Lila had refused to give them a percentage of the
profits of Basic Sight. He wanted someone to object so that he could murder
him. But no one ever objected in his presence. That evening not even the two
brothers objected.
“我们理解你的痛苦。”马尔切洛说，“假如有人把我的西尔维奥带走的话，我也会跟你一样，会疯了的。”
“We understand your grief,” Marcello
said. “If they had taken Silvio I would have gone mad, just like you.”
他们等着有人让恩佐平静下来，然后走了。第二天，他们让各自的妻子——吉耀拉和埃莉莎——过来探望，莉拉和恩佐很冷淡地接待了她们，但并没有失礼。在这之后，他们寻找得更卖力了，可能就是索拉拉兄弟，组织人扫荡了所有通常来城区摆摊的小商小贩，还有周围所有吉普赛人的营地。当然，也是他们组织那些愤怒的民众，针对那些开着警车、鸣着警笛过来抓人的警察。他们先抓了斯特凡诺——他那个阶段第一次心脏病发作，后来住院了，他们还抓了里诺，但几天后就被放出来了，最后甚至是詹纳罗，他哭了好几个小时，发誓说他比世界上任何人都爱这个小妹妹，他永远都不可能伤害她。无法排除的是，索拉拉兄弟派人在小学门口守着，因为他们的缘故，那个在小学门口诱拐儿童的变态狂，才从一个道听途说的传言成了一件有理有据的事儿。那是一个三十多岁的瘦小男人，尽管没孩子要接送，但他一直出现在学校门口。他被痛打了一顿，逃走了，他被一群愤怒的人追打到了小花园那里。假如他没把话说清楚，那他肯定会被人们打死。他说，他不是人们想象的变态，他只是《晨报》的实习生，正在寻找素材。
They waited for someone to calm Enzo and
they left. The next day they sent on a courtesy call their wives, Gigliola
and Elisa, who were welcomed without warmth but more politely. And later they
multiplied their initiatives. Probably it was the Solaras who organized a
sort of roundup of all the street peddlers who were usually present in the
neighborhood on Sundays and holidays and of all the Gypsies in the area. And
certainly they were at the head of a real surge of anger against the police
when they arrived, sirens blasting, to arrest Stefano, who had his first
heart attack at that time and ended up in the hospital, and then Rino, who
was released in a few days, and finally Gennaro, who wept for hours, swearing
that he loved his little sister more than any other person in the world and
would never harm her. Nor can it be ruled out that they were the ones
responsible for surveillance of the elementary school—thanks to which the
“faggot seducer of children,” who until then had been only a popular fantasy,
materialized. A slender man of around thirty who, although he didn’t have
children to deliver to the entrance and pick up at the exit, appeared just
the same at the school, was beaten, managed to escape, was pursued by a
furious mob to the gardens. There he would surely have been murdered if he
hadn’t managed to explain that he wasn’t what they thought but a trainee at
Il Mattino looking for news.
经过那个事件之后，城区逐渐平静下来了，人们逐渐恢复了之前的生活。因为没有发现任何关于蒂娜的线索，她被大卡车轧了的传言越来越可信了，那些厌倦于寻找的人，还有警察和记者都相信了这一点。人们的注意力放在了那个地区的工地上，那里停工已经很久了。这时候，我重新见到阿尔曼多·加利亚尼——我高中老师的儿子，他已经不再做医生了，他在一九八三年的选举中没能进入议会，现在通过一家不怎么样的私人电台在尝试一种非常尖锐的报道方式。我得知，他父亲在一年多前死了，她母亲在法国生活，身体也不怎么好。他让我陪着他去找莉拉，我跟他说，莉拉现在状态不好，但他依然坚持要去。我给莉拉打了电话，莉拉费了很大力气才想起了阿尔曼多，想起他来之后——到那时候为止，她还没和任何记者谈过——她同意见面。阿尔曼多解释说，他正在做一个地震后的报道，他在那些工地里走动时，他听说有一辆卡车被快速报废了，那是因为它卷入了一件很恶劣的事情。莉拉让他说了一会儿，然后说：
After that episode the neighborhood began
to settle down, people slowly slipped back into the life of every day. Since
no trace of Tina was found, the rumor of the truck hitting her became
increasingly plausible. Those who were tired of searching took it seriously,
both police and journalists. Attention shifted to the construction sites in
the area and remained there for a long time. It was at that point that I saw
Armando Galiani, the son of my high-school teacher. He had stopped practicing
medicine, had lost in the parliamentary elections of 1983, and now, thanks to
a scruffy local television station, he was attempting an aggressive type of
journalism. I knew that his father had died a little over a year earlier and
that his mother lived in France but wasn’t in good health, either. He asked
me to take him to Lila’s, I said Lila wasn’t at all well. He insisted, I
telephoned. Lila struggled to remember Armando, but when she did she—who
until that moment hadn’t spoken to journalists—agreed to see him. Armando
explained that he had been investigating the aftermath of the earthquake and
that traveling around to the construction sites he had heard of a truck that
was scrapped in a hurry because of a terrible thing it had been involved in.
Lila let him speak, then said:
“这都是你的想象。”
“You’re making it all up.”
“我只是告诉你我所知道的事情。”
“I’m saying what I know.”
“你根本就不在乎什么卡车、工地和我女儿。”
“You don’t care a thing about the truck,
the construction sites, or my daughter.”
“你在骂我吗？”
“You’re insulting me.”
“不，刚才不算，我现在开始骂你：你是一个很烂的医生，一个很烂的革命者，现在你是一个很烂的记者，从我家里滚出去！”
“No, I’ll insult you now. You were
disgusting as a doctor, disgusting as a revolutionary, and now you’re
disgusting as a journalist. Get out of my house.”
阿尔曼多的眉毛皱了起来，他跟恩佐打了一个招呼就走了。我们到了外面，他表现得很难过。他嘟囔着说：“即使是这么大的痛苦，也没能改变她，你跟她说说，我想帮助她。”他对我进行了一个非常漫长的采访，然后我们告别了。让我印象很深的是他和气的态度，还有他说话时的措辞。他应该度过了非常艰难的时刻，先是她妹妹娜迪亚作出的选择，后来是他和妻子分开。他看起来很精神，他之前那种对反资本主义无所不知的态度，现在变成了一种痛楚的厌世。
Armando scowled, nodded goodbye to Enzo,
and left. Out on the street he looked annoyed. He said: Not even that great
sorrow has changed her, tell her I wanted to help. Then he did a long
interview with me and we said goodbye. I was struck by his kind manners, by
his attentiveness to words. He must have been through some bad times both
when Nadia made her decisions and when he separated from his wife. Now,
though, he seemed in good shape. His old attitude, of a know-it-all who
follows a strict anticapitalist line, had turned into a painful cynicism.
“意大利现在变成了一个盲井。”他用痛苦的语调说，“所有人都掉了进去，你四处看看，那些善良的人都明白了这一点。埃莱娜，真的太遗憾了，工人阶级的党派里有很多诚实正直的人，但他们都已经失去希望了。”
“Italy has become a cesspool,” he said in
an aggrieved tone, “and we’ve all ended up in it. If you travel around, you
see that the respectable people have understood. What a pity, Elena, what a
pity. The workers’ parties are full of honest people who have been left
without hope.”
“为什么你要做现在这份工作？”
“Why did you start doing this job?”
“和你做你的工作原因一样。”
“For the same reason you do yours.”
“也就是说？”
“What’s that?”
“当我毫无遮掩时，我发现自己很虚荣。”
“Once I was unable to hide behind
anything, I discovered I was vain.”
“谁说我很虚荣。”
“Who says I’m vain?”
“对比而言，你的朋友一点儿也不虚荣，我为她感到难过，虚荣是一种资源。假如你很虚荣，你会很小心你自己，还有你自己的东西。莉拉一点儿也不虚荣，因此她失去了女儿。”
“The comparison: your friend isn’t. But
I’m sorry for her, vanity is a resource. If you’re vain you pay attention to
yourself and your affairs. Lina is without vanity, so she lost her daughter.”
我听了一阵子他的电台，他似乎做得很出色。他在红桥那里找到了一辆烧掉的卡车架子，他把这辆卡车和蒂娜的失踪联系在一起。这个消息引起了一阵轰动，后来出现在全国的报纸上，有一阵子，人们都在谈论这事儿。最后事情搞清楚了，这辆被烧的卡车和孩子的失踪没有任何关系。莉拉跟我说：
I followed his work for a while, he
seemed good at it. He tracked down the burned-out wreck of an old vehicle in
the neighborhood of the Ponti Rossi, and connected it to Tina’s
disappearance. The news caused a certain sensation, it reverberated in the national
dailies, and remained in the news for several days. Then it was ascertained
that there was no possible connection between the burned vehicle and the
child’s disappearance. Lila said to me:
“蒂娜活着，我再也不想见到那个烂人。”
“Tina is alive, I never want to see that
piece of shit again.”
4
我不知道她在多长时间里一直相信她女儿还活着。恩佐越是绝望哭泣，越是愤恨，莉拉就越说：“你看吧，他们会把孩子还回来的。”她从来都不相信是那辆卡车肇事逃走。她说，如果事情真是那样，她一定会马上察觉的，她一定会比任何人更早听到撞击声或者叫喊。我觉得，她也不赞同恩佐的看法，她从来都没有说孩子丢了的事儿和索拉拉兄弟有关。但有很长一段时间，她认为是她的一个客户把蒂娜带走了，因为他知道“Basic
Sight”的经营情况，他一定是想要让他们用钱把孩子赎回去。这也是安东尼奥的看法，不知道有什么具体的依据。警察当然觉得这是有可能的，但他们从来都没有接到要钱的电话，最后也只能不了了之。
I don’t know how long she believed that
her daughter was still alive. The more Enzo despaired, worn out by tears and
rage, the more Lila said: You’ll see, they’ll give her back. Certainly she
never believed in the hit-and-run truck, she said that she would have noticed
right away, that before anyone else she would have heard the collision, or at
least a cry. And it didn’t seem to me that she gave credence to Enzo’s
thesis, either, she never alluded to involvement on the part of the Solaras.
Instead for a long period she thought that one of her clients had taken Tina,
someone who knew what Basic Sight earned and wanted money in exchange for the
child. That was also Antonio’s thesis, but it’s hard to say what concrete
facts inspired it. Of course the police were interested in that possibility,
but since there were never any telephone calls asking for ransom they finally
let it go.
城区里的人持有两种观点，大部分人认为蒂娜已经死了，小部分人认为她被关在了某个地方，我们这些爱莉拉的人属于少数派。卡门非常肯定这种可能，她遇到谁都会这样说，假如有人认为蒂娜死了，那就会成为她的敌人。我听见她有一次对恩佐说：“你告诉莉娜，帕斯卡莱和我们想法一样，他觉得孩子一定能找到的。”但大部分人不那么认为，他们觉得那些继续寻找蒂娜的人，要么很蠢，要么很虚伪。他们对于莉拉的看法也变了，觉得她的脑子帮不了她。
The neighborhood was soon divided into a
majority that believed Tina was dead and a minority that thought she was
alive and a prisoner somewhere. We who loved Lila dearly were part of that
minority. Carmen was so sure of it that she repeated it insistently to
everyone, and if, as time passed, someone was persuaded that Tina was dead
she became that person’s enemy. I once heard her whisper to Enzo: Tell Lina
that Pasquale is with you, he thinks the child will be found. But the
majority prevailed, and those who kept on looking for Tina seemed to the
majority either stupid or hypocritical. People also began to think that
Lila’s intelligence wasn’t helping her.
卡门是第一个意识到：在蒂娜失踪之前人们对莉拉的支持，以及孩子失踪之后大家对她的安慰，都是非常表面的，在这些安慰和支持下面是对她根深蒂固的讨厌。她对我说：“你看，以前人们都觉得她像圣母一样，现在他们连看都不看她一眼，就过去了。”我也开始注意到这一点，我意识到事情真是这样的。人们内心深处一定是这么想的：蒂娜丢了，我们也很难过，但这意味着，假如你真是你之前表现的那么有能耐，那肯定没人敢碰她的。我们一起走在路上，人们开始跟我而不是跟她打招呼。她那副心神不安的模样，还有遭遇不幸的惨淡让人很担忧。总之，城区里那些以前认为莉拉可以取代索拉拉兄弟的人也失望地退缩了。
Carmen was the first to intuit that the
respect our friend had inspired before Tina’s disappearance and the
solidarity that arose afterward were both superficial, an old aversion toward
her lurked underneath. Look, she said to me, once they treated her as if she
were the Madonna and now they pass by her without even a glance. I began to
pay attention and saw that it was true. Deep inside, people thought: we’re
sorry you lost Tina, but it means that if you had truly been what you wanted
us to believe, nothing and no one would have touched you. On the street, when
we were together, they began to greet me but not her. They were put off by
her troubled expression and the cloud of misfortune they saw around her. In
other words, the part of the neighborhood that had become used to thinking of
Lila as an alternative to the Solaras withdrew in disappointment.
不仅仅如此，刚开始几天人们的善意举动，后来充满了恶意。在她家大门口，在“Basic
Sight”门口，刚开始几个星期出现了一些写给莉拉，或者是写给蒂娜的纸条，甚至是一些从课本上抄的诗歌，后来开始有一些妈妈、奶奶和孩子送来的玩具、发卡、彩色的皮筋，还有穿过的鞋子，最后出现了手工缝制的表情很可怕的娃娃，上面有红色的墨水，还有一些包在肮脏的破布里小动物的尸体。莉拉静静地把每样东西都捡了起来，扔到了垃圾桶里，但忽然间，她开始叫喊，大声咒骂经过那里的任何人，尤其是骂那些从远处看着她的小孩子，她从一个让人同情的母亲，变成了一个让人害怕的疯子。有一次莉拉狠狠骂了一个女孩，那个女孩用粉笔在门上写了一句：“蒂娜被鬼吃了。”后来这个女孩得了重病，之前关于莉拉的那些谣传又回来了，就好像看她一眼都会带来不幸。
Not only that. An initiative was
undertaken that at first seemed kind but then became malicious. In the early
weeks, flowers, emotional notes addressed to Lila or directly to Tina, even
poems copied from schoolbooks appeared at the entrance to the house, at the
door of Basic Sight. Then there were old toys brought by mothers,
grandmothers, and children. Then barrettes, colorful hair ribbons, old shoes.
Then puppets sewed by hand, with ugly sneers, stained with red, and animal
carcasses wrapped in dirty rags. Since Lila calmly picked everything up and
threw it into the trash, but suddenly began screaming horrible curses at
anyone who passed by, especially the children, who observed her from a
distance, she went from being a mother who inspired pity to a madwoman who
spread terror. When a girl she had been angry with because she had seen her
writing with chalk on the doorway, the dead are eating Tina, became seriously
ill, old rumors joined the new and people avoided Lila, as if just to look at
her could bring misfortune.
她自己好像没觉察到这一点，她确信蒂娜还活着，她全身心地相信这一点，这把她推向了伊玛。在开始几个月，我尽量减少我的小女儿和她的接触，我担心莉拉看见她会更加痛苦，但莉拉不停地想要伊玛和她待在一起，假如我允许，她让孩子晚上也睡在她家里。有一天早上，我去她家接伊玛，门虚掩着，我就进去了，孩子正在问蒂娜的事儿。在那个星期天蒂娜出事儿之后，为了让伊玛平静下来，我一直都跟她说，蒂娜去了阿维利诺恩佐一个亲戚家了，但她会一直追问，蒂娜到底什么时候回来。现在，她直接问莉拉，但莉拉好像没听到伊玛的声音，她没回答，而是仔细说起了蒂娜出生时的事儿，她的第一个玩具，还有她吃奶时很投入根本停不下来，诸如此类的事儿。我在门槛那里听了几秒钟，我听见伊玛忽然很不耐心地打断了她，问：
Yet she seemed not to realize it. The
certainty that Tina was still alive absorbed her completely and it was what,
I think, pushed her toward Imma. In the first months I had tried to reduce
the contact between her and my youngest daughter, I was afraid that seeing
her would cause more suffering. But Lila soon seemed to want her around
constantly, and I let her keep her even to sleep. One morning when I went to
get her the door of the house was half open, I went in. My child was asking
about Tina. After that Sunday I had tried to soothe her by telling her that
Tina had gone to stay for a while with Enzo’s relatives in Avellino, but she
kept asking when she would return. Now she was asking Lila directly, but Lila
seemed not to hear Imma’s voice, and instead of answering was telling her in
detail about Tina’s birth, her first toy, how she attached herself to her
breast and never let go, things like that. I stopped in the doorway for a few
seconds, I heard Imma interrupt her impatiently:
“她什么时候回来啊？”
“But when is she coming back?”
“你觉得孤单啊？”
“Do you feel lonely?”
“我不知道和谁玩儿。”
“I don’t know who to play with.”
“我也一样。”
“I don’t, either.”
“那她什么时候回来啊？”
“Then when is she coming back?”
莉拉有很长时间都没说话，然后开始责备伊玛。
Lila said nothing for a long moment, then
scolded her:
“你不要问了，那不是你管的事儿。”
“It’s none of your business, shut up.”
这样的话用方言说出来，听起来是那么粗暴，那么尖刻和不合时宜，这让我很不安。我和她泛泛聊了几句，就把我女儿带回家了。
Those words, uttered in dialect, were so
brusque, so harsh, so unsuitable that I was alarmed. I said something,
brought my child home.
我一直原谅莉拉做的那些过分的事儿，在当时的情况下，我比过去更倾向于原谅她。她经常很夸张，我尽量体谅她。警察在审讯斯特凡诺时，她马上确信蒂娜是他带走的。在斯特凡诺心脏病发作后有一段时间，她拒绝去医院看他，我开导了她，跟她一起去看了她前夫。警察在审讯里诺时，她没把这事怪在她哥哥身上，那也是我的功劳。在她儿子詹纳罗被叫去警察局的可怕的那天，我也全力缓和他们的关系，詹纳罗回到家里，感觉自己受到了委屈，他和莉拉吵了一架，然后去他父亲家里住了。他对莉拉说，她不但永远失去了蒂娜，也永远失去了他这个儿子。总之，情况非常糟糕，我明白，她生所有人的气，包括我。但她不能生伊玛的气，她没这个权力。从那时候开始，当莉拉把伊玛带走时，我会为此焦虑，我会想办法，想找到解决的方案。
I had always forgiven Lila her excesses
and in those circumstances I was inclined to do so even more than in the
past. She often went too far, and as much as possible I tried to get her to
be reasonable. When the police interrogated Stefano and she was immediately
convinced that he had taken Tina—so that at first she refused even to visit
him in the hospital after the heart attack—I mollified her, and we went
together to visit him. And it was thanks to me that she hadn’t attacked her
brother when the police questioned him. I had also done all I could on the
awful day when Gennaro was summoned to the police station and, once at home,
felt himself accused; there was a quarrel, and he went to live at his
father’s house, shouting at Lila that she had lost forever not only Tina but
also him. The situation, in other words, was terrible and I could understand
why she fought with everyone, even me. But with Imma, no, I couldn’t allow
it. From then on, when Lila took the child I became anxious, I pondered, I looked
for ways out.
但没办法，她的痛苦已经缠绕成一团，伊玛是这团乱麻的一部分。总的来说，我们每个人都卷入其中，莉拉尽管很崩溃，还是一直跟我说我女儿的每个小问题，我后来不得不决定让尼诺来家里。我感觉到她的顽固，这让我很恼火，但我尽量让自己看到事情好的一面：她慢慢把她的母爱移到了伊玛身上。我想，她要对我说的是：你看你多幸运，你女儿还在，你应该好好珍惜，关心她，好好照顾她。
But there was little to do; the threads
of her grief were tangled and Imma was for a time part of that tangle. In the
general chaos where we had all ended up, Lila, despite her weariness,
continued to tell me about my daughter’s every little difficulty, as she had
done until I decided to insist that Nino visit. I felt angry, I was
irritated, and yet I tried also to see a positive aspect: she’s slowly
shifting onto Imma—I thought—her maternal love, she’s saying to me: Since
you’ve been lucky, and you still have your daughter, you ought to take
advantage of it, pay attention to her, give her all the care you haven’t
given her.
但这只是表面。我很快有了一个不同的推测，在莉拉内心深处，伊玛在她看来应该是她内疚感的象征。我经常想着孩子丢失的情景，尼诺把孩子交给了莉拉，但莉拉没有看好自己的女儿。当时她可能对孩子说：“你在这儿待着。”然后跟我女儿说：“你跟阿姨来。”也许她这么做，是想把伊玛放在她父亲眼皮底下，是想在他面前赞扬她，激发尼诺的情感，谁知道呢。但蒂娜很活跃，或者她觉得自己被忽视了，生气地走远了。结果是那种痛苦和伊玛在她怀里的感觉——一种活生生的热度联系在一起了。但我女儿脆弱、迟钝，她和蒂娜截然不同，蒂娜是那么聪慧灵巧。伊玛无论如何都不能取代蒂娜，她只是对抗时间的一道堤坝。我想象着，莉拉让伊玛在她跟前，就是想让时间停留在那个可怕的星期天，她会想着：蒂娜马上会回来，她一会儿就会拽着我的裙子，会叫我，我就会把她抱起来，一切都恢复到之前的样子。这就是为什么她不愿意伊玛打乱任何东西的原因，当伊玛问她蒂娜什么时候出现时，当孩子让莉拉想到蒂娜不在这里时，莉拉就会变得很粗暴，她对待伊玛就好像对待我们大人一样。我没法接受这些。她来接伊玛时，我会找一个借口让黛黛或者艾尔莎跟去，看着她。如果我在场的时候，她就是用的那种语气，我不在场的几个小时，我不知道会发生什么事情。
But that was only the appearance of
things. Soon I had a different theory: that, more deeply, Imma—her body—must
be a symbol of guilt. I thought often of the situation in which the little
girl had been lost. Nino had handed her over to Lila but Lila hadn’t attended
to her. She had said to her daughter, You wait here, and to my daughter, Come
with your aunt. She had done it, perhaps, to show off Imma to her father, to
praise her to him, to stir his affection, who knows. But Tina was lively, or
more simply she had felt neglected, offended, and had wandered off. As a
result Lila’s suffering had made a nest in the weight of Imma’s body in her
arms, in the contact, in the living warmth it still gave off. But my daughter
was fragile, slow, different in every way from Tina, who was shining,
vivacious. Imma could in no way become a substitute, she was only holding
back time. I imagined, in other words, that Lila kept her nearby in order to
stay within that terrible Sunday, and meanwhile thought: Tina is here, soon
she’ll pull on my skirt, she’ll call me, and then I’ll pick her up in my
arms, and everything will return to its place. That was why she didn’t want
the child to upset everything. When the little girl kept asking for her
friend, when she merely reminded Lila that in fact Tina wasn’t there, Lila
treated her with the same harshness with which she treated us adults. But I
couldn’t accept that. As soon as she came to get Imma, I found some excuse or
other to send Dede or Elsa to watch her. If she had used that tone when I was
present, what might happen when she took her away for hours?
5
我时不时离开那不勒斯去出差，离开把我和她房间隔开的那几道台阶，离开小花园和大路。在那些时刻，我会舒一口气，我会把自己打扮得漂漂亮亮，穿上优雅的衣服，甚至是我生完孩子之后遗留的一丝跛足的痕迹，也成了一种与众不同的特点。尽管我经常讽刺那些文人和艺术家的种种表现，但对当时的我来说，所有和出版、电影、电视以及任何与艺术沾边的事儿，都是充满想象的风景，我都愿意投入其中。我去参加那些浮夸的研讨会和笔会，各种大型演出、展览、电影还有作品推广会。我喜欢参与其中，当我坐在前排那些预留的位子上和那些名流一起很舒适地欣赏节目时，我觉得非常有面子。莉拉一直生活在她的恐惧里，她从来都没有可以让她散心的事儿。有一次我受邀去圣卡罗剧院看一场歌剧——那是个非常神奇的地方，我自己从来都没进去过，我坚持要带她去，但她不想去，后来我说服卡门陪我去。分散注意力——假如可以这样说的话，已经成了另一个让她痛苦的原因。这是一种新的痛苦，就像解药一样作用于她，她变得很有决心，充满斗志，就像一个知道自己要淹死的人，但还是摆动着胳膊和腿想浮上水面。
Every so often I escaped from the
apartment, from the flight of stairs between my rooms and hers, from the
gardens, the stradone, and left for work. These were moments when I sighed
with relief: I put on makeup, stylish clothes, even the slight limp that
remained from the pregnancy was a sort of pleasingly distinctive trait.
Although I frequently made sarcastic remarks about the ill-humored behavior
of literary people and artists, at the time everything having to do with
publishing, cinema, television—every type of aesthetic display—seemed to me a
fantastic landscape in which it was marvelous to appear. I liked being
present in the extravagant, festive chaos of big conventions, big
conferences, big theater productions, big exhibitions, big films, big operas,
and I was flattered on the few occasions when I had a place in the front
rows, the reserved seats, from which, sitting among famous people, I could
observe the spectacle of powers large and small. Lila, on the other hand,
remained at the center of her horror, without any distraction. Once I had an
invitation to an opera at the San Carlo—a magnificent place where not even I
had been—and I insisted on taking her; she didn’t want to go, and persuaded
Carmen to go instead. The only distraction, if that is the right word for it,
she would allow was another reason for suffering. A new affliction acted on
her as a sort of antidote. She became combative, determined, she was like
someone who knows she has to drown but in spite of herself agitates her arms
and legs to stay afloat.
有一天晚上，我得知她儿子又开始吸毒。她一句话都没说，也没告诉恩佐，就去斯特凡诺家里找她儿子了。那是新城区的房子，也是她十几年前结婚后住的地方。但她没找到儿子：詹纳罗和父亲吵架了，已经搬到他舅舅里诺家里去了。斯特凡诺和玛丽莎对她都充满了敌意，他们现在已经生活在一起了，之前那个英俊的男人已经瘦成一把骨头了，他非常苍白，身上穿的衣服好像大了两个号。
One night she discovered that her son had started shooting up again. Without saying a word, without even telling Enzo, she went to get him from Stefano, in the house in the new neighborhood where decades earlier she had lived as a bride. But he wasn’t there: Gennaro had quarreled with his father, too, and a few days earlier had moved to his uncle Rino’s. She was greeted with open hostility by Stefano and Marisa, who now lived together. That once handsome man was now skin and bones, and very pale; his clothes seemed several sizes too big.
心脏病把他摧毁了，他被吓到了。他现在吃得很少，不喝酒，不抽烟，也不能太激动。但莉拉去时，他非常激动，他的激动是有道理的。因为心脏病的缘故，他把那家肉食店彻底关掉了，艾达为了自己和女儿向他要钱，他妹妹皮诺奇娅和母亲玛丽亚也指望他养活，玛丽莎和她的几个孩子也指望他。莉拉马上明白，斯特凡诺想用詹纳罗为借口问她要钱。实际上，尽管他几天前就把儿子从家里赶了出去，他还在捍卫詹纳罗，玛丽莎在声援他。他说，为了让詹纳罗得到更好的治疗，需要很多很多钱。这时候莉拉说，她再也不会给任何人一分钱，她再也不想理会什么亲戚、朋友和整个城区，他们吵得更凶了。斯特凡诺满眼泪水，叫喊着列举了那些年他失去的东西——从肉食店到他的房子，而且他话里的意思是这都是莉拉应该承担的责任。但玛丽莎对她的指责更可怕，她叫喊着说：“阿方索因为你才被毁掉了，你把我们所有人都毁掉了，你比索拉拉兄弟还要糟糕，你的孩子被偷走了，那是你活该！”
The heart attack had crushed him, he was
frightened, he scarcely ate, he didn’t drink, he no longer smoked, he wasn’t
supposed to get upset, because of his bad heart. But on that occasion he
became extremely upset and had reason to be. He had closed the grocery
because of his illness. Ada demanded money for herself and their daughter.
His sister Pinuccia and his mother, Maria, also demanded money. Marisa
demanded it for herself and her children. Lila understood immediately that
Stefano wanted that money from her and that the excuse for getting it was
Gennaro. In fact, although he had thrown his son out of the house, he took
his side; he said, and Marisa supported him, that it would take a lot of
money to get treatment for Gennaro. And since Lila replied that she would
never give a cent to anyone, she didn’t give a damn about relatives, friends,
or the whole neighborhood, the quarrel became furious. With tears in his
eyes, Stefano listed all he had lost over the years—from the grocery stores
to the house itself—and for those losses he in some obscure way blamed Lila.
But the worst came from Marisa, who yelled at her: Alfonso was ruined because
of you, you’ve ruined us all, you’re worse than the Solaras, whoever stole
your child did a good thing.
只有在这时候，莉拉才不说话了，她看了看周围，想找一把椅子坐下来。她没有找到椅子，就靠在了客厅的墙壁上。十几年前，这是她的客厅，当时墙壁是白色的，家具崭新，一切都完好无损，没有被在那里长大的孩子糟蹋，没有被大人疏忽。“我们走吧。”斯特凡诺跟她说，也许他已经意识到玛丽莎太夸张了，“我们去找詹纳罗吧。”他们一起出去了，斯特凡诺扶着她，他们一起去里诺家。
Only at that point did Lila become
silent, she looked around for a chair to sit on. She couldn’t find one and
leaned against the living room wall, which, decades earlier, had been her
living room, a white room at the time, the furniture brand-new, nothing yet
damaged by the havoc of the children who had grown up there, by the
carelessness of the adults. Let’s go, Stefano said to her, perhaps realizing
that Marisa had gone too far, let’s go get Gennaro. And they left together;
he took her by the arm, and they went to Rino’s house.
一走到外面，莉拉就缓过来了，她甩开了斯特凡诺的手。他们一起走了一段，她走在前面，他跟在后面。她的哥哥现在和皮诺奇娅、他们的几个孩子，还有他丈母娘住在卡拉奇家以前的老房子里。詹纳罗在那里，他一看到父母出现就开始叫喊，又是一场争吵，先是父亲和儿子，然后是母亲和儿子。刚开始里诺没说话，然后他说起了他妹妹从小给他带来的伤害。这时候斯特凡诺也插了进来，里诺也开始骂他，说所有的灾难都从他身上开始，他摆出一副了不起的样子，但他先是被莉拉后是被索拉拉骗了。他们快要打起来。皮诺奇娅把丈夫拉住了，她小声说：“你说得对，但这不是吵架的时候，消消气。”老玛丽亚太太不得不喘着气，拉住斯特凡诺：“够了，我的孩子，你就假装没听到，里诺比你病得还厉害。”这时候莉拉死死抓住了她儿子，把他带走了。
Once they were outside, Lila recovered,
and freed herself. They walked, she a few steps ahead. Her brother lived in
the Carraccis’ old house, with his mother-in-law, Pinuccia, their children.
Gennaro was there and as soon as he saw his parents he began shouting. So
another fight broke out, first between father and son, then between mother
and son. For a while Rino was silent, then, his eyes dull, he began whining
about the harm his sister had done since they were children. When Stefano
intervened Rino got angry at him, insulted him, insisted that all the trouble
had started when he wanted to make people think he was someone and instead he
had been cheated first by Lila and then by the Solaras. They were about to
come to blows and Pinuccia had to restrain her husband, muttering, You’re
right, but calm down, this isn’t the moment, while the old lady, Maria, had
to restrain Stefano, wheezing: That’s enough, son, pretend you didn’t hear
him, Rino is sicker than you. At that point Lila grabbed her son forcefully
by the arm and took him away.
但在路上，里诺就赶了上来，他们听到他在身后走得气喘吁吁。他想要钱，他想尽一切办法要钱，马上就要。他说：“你如果不管我，我会死了。”莉拉接着往前走，她哥哥推她，全身发抖，笑着拽她的一条胳膊。詹纳罗哭了起来，对她喊道：“你有钱，妈，给他点钱吧。”但这时候莉拉把哥哥赶走了，她把儿子拉回家里，一字一句地说：“你要成为这样吗？你想落到你舅舅那个地步吗？”
But Rino followed them to the street,
they heard him limping after them. He wanted money, he wanted it at all
costs, right away. He said: You’ll kill me if you leave me like this. Lila
kept walking while he pushed her, laughed, moaned, held her back by the arm.
Gennaro began to cry, he yelled at her: You have money, Ma, give it to him.
But Lila drove her brother away and brought her son home, hissing: You want
to become like that, you want to end up like your uncle?
6
詹纳罗回到了楼下的房子里，一切都变得更糟糕了，有时候我担心他们出事儿，就跑下去看。这种时候，莉拉会给我开门，冷冰冰地问我：“你想要什么？”我也冷冰冰地回答说：“你们太夸张了，黛黛在哭，她想打电话叫警察，艾尔莎被吓坏了。”她回答说：“假如你们不想听到的话，那就待在自己家里，把耳朵堵上！”
With the return of Gennaro the apartment
below became an even worse inferno; at times I was compelled to go down
because I was afraid they’d kill each other. Lila opened the door, said
coldly: What do you want. I answered just as coldly: You’re overdoing it,
Dede’s crying, she wants to call the police, and Elsa is scared. She
answered: Stay in your own home and plug up your children’s ears if they
don’t want to hear.
那个阶段，莉拉对我的几个女儿越来越失去了兴趣，她称她们为“娇小姐”。同时我几个女儿对她的态度也变了，尤其是黛黛，已经彻底不再迷恋她了，就好像蒂娜失踪之后，莉拉失去了所有的权威。
In that period she showed less and less interest in the two girls; with explicit sarcasm she called them the young ladies. But my daughters’ attitude toward her changed as well. Dede especially stopped feeling her fascination, as if in her eyes, too, Tina’s disappearance had taken away Lila’s authority.
有一天晚上，她问我：
One evening she asked me:
“假如莉娜阿姨不想生孩子，她为什么还生了这个孩子？”
“If Aunt Lina didn’t want another child
why did she have one?”
“谁跟你说，她不想要这个孩子？”
“How do you know she didn’t want one?”
“这是她跟伊玛说的。”
“She told Imma.”
“跟伊玛？”
“Imma?”
“是的，我亲耳听见她对伊玛说的，她跟伊玛说话，就好像伊玛已经是大人了，我觉得她疯了。”
“Yes, I heard it with my own ears. She
talks to her as if she weren’t a child, I think she’s insane.”
“黛黛，那不是疯狂，那是痛苦。”
“It’s not insanity, Dede, it’s grief.”
“但她从来都没有掉过一滴眼泪。”
“She’s never shed a tear.”
“眼泪不代表痛苦。”
“Tears aren’t grief.”
“是的，但如果没有眼泪，那谁向你保证她很痛苦？”
“Yes, but without tears how can you be
sure that the grief is there?”
“没有眼泪，通常代表更深的痛苦。”
“It’s there and often it’s an even
greater suffering.”
“但这不是她的情况。你想知道我的想法吗？”
“That’s not her case. You want to know
what I think?”
“说来听听。”
“All right.”
“她是故意让蒂娜丢掉了，她现在也想失去詹纳罗，更别说恩佐了，你看到她是怎么对待恩佐的吗？莉娜阿姨和艾尔莎一模一样，她谁都不爱。”
“She lost Tina on purpose. And now she
also wants to lose Gennaro. Not to mention Enzo, don’t you see how she treats
him? Aunt Lina is just like Elsa, she doesn’t love anyone.”
黛黛就是这样，她喜欢表现得比别人有远见，爱下一些不容置否的判断。我禁止她当着莉拉的面说这些可怕的话。我试着跟她解释，并不是所有人的感情机制都一样，莉拉和艾尔莎的感情机制和她不同。
Dede was like that, she wanted to be
someone who is more perceptive than everyone else, and loved to formulate
judgments without appeal. I forbade her to repeat those terrible words in
Lila’s presence and tried to explain to her that not all human beings react
in the same way, Lila and Elsa had emotional strategies different from hers.
“比如说，你妹妹，”我说，“面对自己在意的事情，她的表现和你不一样，她觉得那些过于直白的感情很可笑，她总是会向后退一步。”
“Your sister, for example,” I said,
“doesn’t confront emotional issues the way you do; she finds feelings that
are too intense ridiculous, and she always stands back a step.”
“总是向后退一步，她失去了所有的敏感度。”
“By standing back a step she’s lost any
sensitivity.”
“你为什么要跟艾尔莎过不去？”
“Why are you so annoyed with Elsa?”
“因为她和莉娜阿姨一模一样。”
“Because she’s just like Aunt Lina.”
这真是一个死循环，莉拉错了，是因为她和艾尔莎一样，艾尔莎做错了，是因为她和莉拉一样。实际上这种负面评价牵扯到了詹纳罗。在那种情况下，按照黛黛的看法，艾尔莎和莉拉做出错误的判断，是因为她们有同样的情感障碍。艾尔莎对詹纳罗的看法和莉拉一样，她说詹纳罗简直比畜生还糟糕。黛黛跟我说，她妹妹经常带着鄙视对她说，莉拉和恩佐做得对，詹纳罗想溜出去时，就是应该痛殴他。艾尔莎对她姐姐说：“只有一个像你这么愚蠢、对男人一窍不通的人，才会被这个一点儿脑子也没有、脏兮兮的臭男人所迷惑。”黛黛回答说：“只有一个像你这样的冷血动物，才会用这种话来描述一个人。”
A vicious circle: Lila was wrong because
she was like Elsa, Elsa was wrong because she was like Lila. In reality at
the center of this negative judgment was Gennaro. According to Dede,
precisely in this crucial situation Elsa and Lila were making the same
mistaken assessment and showed the same emotional disorder. Just as for Lila,
for Elsa, too, Gennaro was worse than a beast. Her sister—Dede reported to
me—often told her, to offend her, that Lila and Enzo were right to beat him
as soon as he tried to stick his nose out of the house. Only someone as
stupid as you—she taunted her—who doesn’t know anything about men, could be
dazzled by a mass of unwashed flesh without a crumb of intelligence. And Dede
replied: Only a bitch like you could describe a human being that way.
她们俩都读了很多书，她们用书面语言进行争吵，要不是她们忽然会用非常粗俗的方言互骂，我几乎是带着欣赏听她们相互攻击。她们的争吵，好的结果是黛黛对我的抵触越来越少了，但这种矛盾带来的负面影响让我感觉很沉重：艾尔莎和莉拉成了她恶意的攻击对象。黛黛不停地给我打艾尔莎的小报告，说她在学校的种种恶行：男女同学都很讨厌她，因为她觉得自己高人一等，她不停羞辱别人，吹嘘自己和一些成年男人的关系，甚至伪造我的签名逃课。关于莉拉，黛黛说：“她是一个法西斯，你是怎么和她成为朋友的？”她毫无条件地站在詹纳罗那边，她觉得，毒品是敏感的人反对压制的一种方式。她发誓，她一定要想办法让里诺逃出他母亲的牢狱，黛黛一直把詹纳罗称为里诺，我们也跟着她那样叫。
Since they both read a lot, they
quarreled in the language of books, so that, if they didn’t slip suddenly
into the most brutal dialect to insult each other, I would have listened to
their squabbling almost with admiration. The positive side of the conflict
was that Dede’s rancor toward me diminished, but the negative side burdened
me greatly: her sister and Lila became the object of all her malice. Dede was
constantly reporting to me Elsa’s disgraceful actions: she was hated by her
schoolmates because she considered herself the best at everything and was
always humiliating them; she boasted of having had relations with adult men;
she skipped school and forged my signature on the absence slips. Of Lila she
said: She’s a fascist, how can you be her friend? And she took Gennaro’s side
with no equivocation. In her view drugs were a rebellion of sensitive people
against the forces of repression. She swore that sooner or later she would
find a way of getting Rino out—she always called him that, and only that,
habituating us to call him that, too—from the prison in which his mother kept
him.
我抓住一切机会想平息她们的争端，我会捍卫莉拉，批评艾尔莎。但有时候我很难找到话来捍卫莉拉，她那种尖刻的痛苦让我很害怕。另一方面，我害怕就像过去一样，她的身体会无法承受这些痛苦。因此，尽管我喜欢黛黛的清醒和犀利，也觉得艾尔莎那种古怪的无礼行为很有意思，但我很小心，我不希望她们在莉拉面前说一些不该说的话（我知道，黛黛一定会不假思索地说：“莉娜阿姨，你就说实话吧，是你故意让蒂娜丢掉的，这件事情并非偶然。”）。但每天我都担心更糟糕的事：两位“娇小姐”，就像莉拉称呼她们的，尽管她们生活在城区的氛围里，她们深知自己的不同之处。尤其当她们从佛罗伦萨回来时，她们觉得自己高人一等，在任何人面前都想表现出这一点。黛黛在上高中，她成绩优异，她的老师是一位不到四十岁的男人，非常有文化，他仰慕艾罗塔家人的学识，他向黛黛提问时好像更担心自己提错问题，而不是担心黛黛回答错误。艾尔莎在学校里成绩平平，她的期中考试成绩通常都很差，但最让人无法忍受的是，她的期终考试成绩会很潇洒地名列前茅。我知道她们的不安全感和恐惧，我感觉她们是两个惊恐的小姑娘，因此我并不太相信她们真的那么霸道。但其他人并不是这样，从外人看来，她们俩一定是让人生厌。比如说艾尔莎，她对谁都没有敬意，她会给学校里外的人随心所欲地起一些带有贬义的外号。她给恩佐起的外号是“沉默的乡巴佬”；她称莉拉为“幺蛾子”；她称詹纳罗为“微笑的鳄鱼”。她尤其针对安东尼奥，他几乎每天都要来看莉拉，要么是去办公室，要么是来她家里，每次他一来就把莉拉和恩佐拉到一个房间里说话。蒂娜丢了之后，安东尼奥变得鬼鬼祟祟。假如我在场的话，他们会明摆着打发我走，假如我两个女儿在那里，一分钟后她们就会被排除在外，关在门外。艾尔莎那时候很熟悉爱伦坡，她给安东尼奥起了一个外号叫做“黄死魔的面具”，因为他天生脸色有些发黄。很明显，我担心她们会说错话，但我担心的事情最后还是发生了。
I tried whenever I could to throw water
on the flames, I reprimanded Elsa, I defended Lila. But sometimes it was hard
to take Lila’s part. The peaks of her bitter grief frightened me. On the
other hand I was afraid that, as had happened in the past, her body wouldn’t
hold up, and so, even though I liked Dede’s lucid and yet passionate
aggression, even though I found Elsa’s quirky impudence amusing, I was
careful not to let my daughters set off crises with reckless words. (I knew
that Dede would have been more than capable of saying: Aunt Lina, tell things
as they are, you wanted to lose Tina, it didn’t happen by chance.) But every
day I feared the worst. The young ladies, as Lila called them, although they
were immersed in the reality of the neighborhood, had a strong sense that
they were different. Especially when they returned from Florence they felt
they were of superior quality and did all they could to demonstrate it. Dede
was doing very well in high school and when her professor—a very cultivated
man no more than forty, awestruck by the surname Airota—interrogated her he
seemed more worried that he would make a mistake in the questions than that
she would make a mistake in the answers. Elsa was less brilliant
scholastically, and her midyear report cards were generally poor, but what
made her intolerable was the ease with which at the end she shuffled the
cards and came in among the top. I knew their insecurities and terrors, I
felt them to be fearful girls, and so I didn’t put much credence in their
domineering attitudes. But others did, and seen from the outside they must
surely have seemed odious. Elsa, for example, gleefully bestowed offensive
nicknames in class and outside, she had no respect for anyone. She called
Enzo the mute bumpkin; she called Lila the poisonous moth; she called Gennaro
the laughing crocodile. But she was especially irked by Antonio, who went to
Lila’s almost every day, either to the office or to her house, and as soon as
he arrived drew her and Enzo into a room to conspire. Antonio, after the
episode of Tina, had become cantankerous. If I was present he more or less
explicitly took his leave; if it was my daughters, he cut them off by closing
the door. Elsa, who knew Poe well, called him the mask of yellow death, because
Antonio had a naturally jaundiced complexion. It was obvious, therefore, that
I should fear some blunder on their part. Which duly happened.
有一次我在米兰，莉拉跑到了院子里。那时候黛黛在院子里看书，艾尔莎和她几个朋友聊天，伊玛在旁边玩儿。她们已经不是小孩子了，黛黛已经十六岁了，艾尔莎十三岁，只有伊玛很小，刚刚五岁。但莉拉把她们强行拉回家里，就好像她们还没有任何自主能力。她二话不说（在这种情况下，她们期望把任何事情讲清楚），就把她们带回家里，她只是嚷嚷着说，待在外面很危险。我的大女儿无法忍受这种行为，就叫喊着说：
I was in Milan. Lila rushed into the
courtyard, where Dede was reading, Elsa was talking to some friends, Imma was
playing. They weren’t children. Dede was sixteen, Elsa almost thirteen; only
Imma was little, she was five. But Lila treated all three as if they had no
autonomy. She dragged them into the house without explanation (they were used
to hearing explanations), crying only that staying outside was dangerous. My
oldest daughter found that behavior unbearable, she said:
“我妈妈让我照看两个妹妹，由我自己来决定是不是回家！”
“Mamma entrusted my sisters to me, it’s
up to me to decide whether to go inside or not.”
“你们的母亲不在时，我就是你们的母亲。”
“When your mother isn’t here I’m your
mother.”
“什么狗屁母亲。”黛黛用方言说，“你把蒂娜弄丢了，你一声都没哭。”
“A shit mother,” Dede answered, moving to
dialect. “You lost Tina and you haven’t even cried.”
莉拉一巴掌就扇了过去，让她住嘴。艾尔莎捍卫自己的姐姐，也被扇了一个耳光，这时候伊玛哭了起来。我的朋友喘着气，重申了一遍，她们别想着从这家里出去，外面很危险，外面有死亡的危险。她强迫她们待在家里，一直到我回来。
Lila slapped her, crushing her. Elsa
defended her sister and was slapped in turn, Imma burst into tears. You don’t
go out of the house, my friend repeated, gasping, outside it’s dangerous,
outside you’ll die. She kept them inside for days, until I returned.
我回来时，黛黛跟我讲了事件的始末。她很诚实，这是她的原则，她也跟我说了她那个毫不留情的回答。我想让她明白，她说的那些话很可怕，我狠狠批评了她。我说：“我跟你说过了，你不能说这样的话。”这时候艾尔莎站在她姐姐一边，她说，她觉得莉娜阿姨已经疯了，她以为关在家里就能躲过所有危险。我很难跟她们解释说，错并不在莉拉身上，而是因为苏联的一个叫切尔诺贝利的地方核电站发生了事故，会发射出非常危险的辐射，因为我们生活的是一个很小的星球，辐射可能会伤害到任何人。我说：“莉娜阿姨保护了你们。”但艾尔莎大喊着说：“这不是真的，她打了我们，她每天都给我们吃速冻食品。”伊玛说：“我不爱吃速冻食品，我哭了好久。”这时候黛黛说：“她对我们比对詹纳罗还糟糕。”我小声说：“莉娜阿姨可能也会这样对待蒂娜，你们想象，对于她来说，这是多么可怕的折磨，她保护了你们，同时想象着，她女儿在某个地方没人照顾。”在伊玛面前，我不应该说这样的话，黛黛和艾尔莎做出一副很怀疑的表情，伊玛很不安，她跑出去玩了。
When I returned, Dede recounted the whole
episode, and, honest as she was, on principle, she also reported her own ugly
response. I wanted her to understand that what she had said was terrible, and
I scolded her harshly: I warned you not to. Elsa sided with her sister, she
explained to me that Aunt Lina was out of her mind, she was possessed by the
idea that to escape danger you had to live barricaded in the house. It was
hard to convince my daughters that it wasn’t Lila’s fault but the Soviet
empire’s. In a place called Chernobyl a nuclear power plant had exploded and
emitted dangerous radiation that, since the planet was small, could be
absorbed by anyone. Aunt Lina was protecting you, I said. But Elsa shouted:
It’s not true, she beat us, the only good thing is that she fed us only
frozen food. Imma: I cried a lot, I don’t like frozen food. And Dede: She
treated us worse than she treats Rino. I said: Aunt Lina would have behaved
the same way with Tina, think of what torture it must have been for her to
protect you, imagining that her daughter is somewhere and no one’s taking
care of her. But it was a mistake to express myself like that in front of
Imma. While Dede and Elsa looked skeptical, she was upset, and ran away to
play.
几天之后，莉拉用她那种很直接的方式对我说：
A few days later Lila confronted me in
her direct way:
“是你告诉你女儿，我把蒂娜弄丢了，一声都没哭过？”
“Is it you who tell your daughters that I
lost Tina and never cried?”
“你怎么能这么说？你觉得我会说出这样的话吗？”
“Stop it, do you think I would say a
thing like that?”
“黛黛说我是一个狗屎母亲。”
“Dede called me a shit mother.”
“她只是一个孩子。”
“She’s a child.”
“她是一个没教养的孩子。”
“She’s a very rude child.”
这时候我犯了一个错误，和我女儿犯的错误同样严重。我说：
At that point I committed errors no less
serious than those of my daughters. I said:
“你不要太激动。我知道你曾经多么爱蒂娜。你不要把一切都藏在心里，你应该发泄出来，你应该想到什么就说什么。的确生个孩子不容易，但你不要胡思乱想。”
“Calm down. I know how much you loved
Tina. Try not to keep it all inside, you should let it out, you should say
whatever comes into your mind. I know the birth was difficult, but you
shouldn’t elaborate on it.”
我说错话了，我不应该说“曾经多么爱”，不应该用平淡的语气，提到她生孩子的事情。她忽然爆发了，说：“这不关你的事儿！”然后她喊道——就好像伊玛是一个大人：“你要告诉你女儿，假如别人跟她说一件事，她不应该到处跟人说。”
I got everything wrong: the past tense of
“you loved,” the allusion to the birth, the fatuous tone. She answered
curtly: Mind your own business. And then she cried, as if Imma were an adult:
Teach your daughter that if someone tells her something, she shouldn’t go
around repeating it.
