10

Speaking Love

爱的表白

1. In the middle of May, Chloe celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday. She had for a long time been dropping hints about a red cashmere pullover in the window of a shop in Piccadilly, so the day before the celebration, I bought it on my way back from work, and at home, wrapped it in blue paper with a pink bow. But in the course of preparing a card, I suddenly realized that I had never told Chloe that I loved her.五月中旬，克洛艾庆祝了她的二十四岁生日。这之前她一直暗示自己喜欢皮卡迪利街一家商店卖的红色套衫，所以头天晚上，我就在下班时把它买了回来，用蓝色的纸包起来，系上粉红色的蝴蝶结。但是当我准备再送一张卡片时，握着笔的我突然意识到还从来没对克洛艾说过我爱她。

2. A declaration would perhaps not have been unexpected, yet the fact that it had never been made was significant. Pullovers may be a sign of love between a man and a woman, but we had yet to translate our feelings into language. It was as though the core of our relationship, configured around the word love, was somehow unmentionable, either too evident or too significant to be uttered.示爱也许并不会让人意外（特别是和一件红色套衫一起），然而我还从来未向克洛艾明言却是有些非同寻常。套衫可以是一个男人和一个女人之间的爱情信号，但是我们还是得用语言将爱情表达出来。我们关系的核心——由爱这个词组成——似乎有些说不出中，或是不值得说，或是太重要，还没来得及构想好。

3. It was simple to understand why Chloe had never said anything. She was suspicious of words. 'One can talk problems into existence,' she had once said, and just as problems could come from words, so good things could be destroyed by them. I remembered her telling me that, when she was twelve, her parents had sent her on a camping holiday. There she had fallen in love with a boy her age, and after much blushing and hesitation, they had ended up taking a walk around a lake. By a shaded bank, the boy had asked her to sit down, and after a moment, had taken her damp hand in his. It was the first time a boy had held her hand. She had been so elated, she had felt free to tell him, with all the earnestness of a twelve-year-old, that he was 'the best thing that had ever happened to her'. The next day, she discovered that her words had spread all over the camp. A group of girls chanted mockingly 'the best thing that ever happened to me' when she came into the dining hall, her honest declaration replayed in a mockery of her vulnerability. She had experienced a betrayal at the hands of language, the way intimate words may be converted to a common currency, and had since hidden behind a veil of practicality and irony.克洛艾不曾对我言爱，这比较容易理解，她一贯对语言持怀疑态度。“祸从口出，”她曾经这样说，就如问题会被语言击中一样，爱情也会被语言破坏。我记得她曾讲过一件往事。十二岁时，父母送她参加一个青年团体举办的假期野营。在那里，她疯狂地爱上了一个同龄的男孩。在无数次的害羞和犹豫不决之后，他们终于一起到湖边散步了。走到一片浓荫掩映的堤边时，那个男孩让她坐下。片刻之后，他握起她汗湿的手。这是第一次有男孩握她的手，她感到无比高兴，迫不及待地告诉他（用一个十二岁女孩的全部诚挚），他是“她遇见的最美好的人儿”。但是她不应该这样说。第二天，她发现她的话传遍了整个营地，她傻傻的诚挚表白被人重复，嘲笑她经不起诱惑。她因为轻言而经历了一次背叛，亲密的语言成为众人的笑柄。从此她对话语失去了信心，只相信身体和行动。

4. With her customary resistance to the rose-tinted, Chloe would therefore probably have shrugged off a declaration with a joke, not because she did not want to hear, but because any formulation would have seemed dangerously close both to complete clich?and total nakedness. It was not that Chloe was unsentimental, she was just too discreet with her emotions to speak about them in the worn, social language of the romantic. Though her feelings may have been directed towards me, in a curious sense, they were not for me to know.克洛艾习惯性地抵触玫瑰谎言，对于表白也许只是付之一笑。这并非因为她不愿意听，而是任何构想好的话语，似乎都接近陈词滥调，过于直露。并不是克洛艾不易动感情，她只是对自己的感情太谨慎，不愿用那些陈旧的社交语言（通过中介的爱）表白。尽管她对我一往情深，但奇怪的是，她从来没有对我说起。

5. My pen was still hesitating over the card (a giraffe was blowing out candles on a heart-shaped cake). Whatever her resistance and my qualms, I felt that the occasion of her birthday called for a linguistic confirmation of the bond between us. I tried to imagine what she would make of the words I might hand her, I pictured her thinking about them on the way to work or in the bath, pleased but reluctant even to savour her own satisfaction.我握着笔，仍然不知该在生日卡片上（封面是一只正在吹蜡烛的长颈鹿）写些什么。我觉得，不论她怎样具有抵制心理，在她生日之际（充满了对诞生的荒唐尊敬），我需要用语言确认我们的关系。我努力想象她会怎样处理我送的这个包裹，不是红套衫，而是爱情表白的语言包裹。我想象她是独自一人，是在去上班的地铁中，或是在浴室里，或是在街上，轻松自在地把它打开，想弄明白那个爱她的男人送给她这样一件奇怪的礼物的意图。

6. Yet the difficulty of a declaration of love opens up quasi-philosophical concerns about language. If I told Chloe that I had a stomach ache or a garden full of daffodils, I could count on her to understand. Naturally, my image of a be-daffodiled garden might slightly differ from hers, but there would be reasonable parity between the two images. Words would operate as reliable messengers of meaning. But the card I was now trying to write had no such guarantees attached to it. The words were the most ambiguous in the language, because the things they referred to so sorely lacked stable meaning. Certainly travellers had returned from the heart and tried to represent what they had seen, but love was in the end like a species of rare coloured butterfly, often sighted, but never conclusively identified.表白远远难于平常的交流。如果我告诉克洛艾说我胃疼或我有一辆红色的车或我有一个开满黄水仙的花园，我料想她一定懂我的意思。当然我想象中开满黄水仙的花园也许与她的想象有细小的分别，但是两个想象至少大致相同。语言会跨越我们之间的差异，就如信件安全地送到目的地一样，成为传达意义的可靠信使。但是我眼下正挖空心思写的卡片无法担保有这样的可靠性。示爱的词语属于语言中最模棱两可的词汇，因为它们的所指缺乏稳定的含义。心路旅人已经归来，想尽力再现他们的见闻，但是语言缺少地理的定界，没有固定的纬度，只是一只稀有、从未确定种类的花蝴蝶。

7. The thought was a lonely one: of the error one may find over a single word, an argument not for linguistic pedants, but of desperate importance to lovers who need to make themselves understood. Chloe and I could both speak of being in love, and yet this love might mean significantly different things within each of us. We had often read the same books at night in the same bed, and later realized that they had touched us in different places: that they had been different books for each of us. Might the same divergence not occur over a single love-line? I felt like a dandelion releasing hundreds of spores into the air - and not knowing if any of them would get through.对同一个单词的理解也许存在分歧，这分歧没有学术争论的价值，而对于那些只愿意直抒心曲的情人却极其重要。我们可以彼此宣称徜徉爱河，但各自心中爱的内容却可能大相径庭。用言辞表达爱就如同用一台有故障的发报机发送密码情报，总是不能确定怎样才能被收到（但是还是要发送，就像蒲公英抛洒出数不清的种子，只能有一部分繁殖生长起来，随意而乐观地发出一个电报——相信邮政局吧）。

我必须消除语言的差异。我费尽力气填满筛网，其中之意她能理解吗？当我的爱传送到她那儿时还能剩下多少？我们可以用似乎我们共有的一种语言交谈，但届时却又发现词汇的含义千差万别。我们经常在同一个夜晚、躺在同一张床上、看着同一本书，后来却发现感动我们的部分各不相同，对我们来说，这书已成为两本不同的书。因此，难道在一条爱情线上不会发生同样和分歧吗？

8.The whole language of love had been corrupted by overuse.

但是这些言辞并非出自于我，已有太多的人先于我使用过，我出生时就被语言重重包围（尽管这不是我的生日）。也并非是我自己发明了语言的局限性——使用既有的语言，会带来问题，同时也带来便利，便利是因为几个世纪以来有一些共用的语言被分配用于表达爱情。尽管我和克洛艾对彼此的感觉也许并不一致，但我们都是很好的学生，知道爱情不是仇恨，知道好莱坞明星喝下马提尼酒讨论酒名时所表达的意思。

我们的爱情观浸染于爱的社会染缸。当我在白日梦中见到克洛艾时，我的梦必然伴随着既柔软又如卡拉梅尔糖般甜蜜的一百零一种方式的拥抱。我不仅是在爱着克洛艾，我同时也在参加一个社交仪式。

When I listened to the radio in the car, my love fed effortlessly off the love songs that happened to be playing, for example, off the passion of a black American female singer, whose accent I took on (I was on an empty motorway) while Chloe became the lady's 'baby'.

Wouldn't it be nice

To hold you in my arms

And love you, baby?

To hold you in my arms

Oh yeah and I say, I do,

I say I love you baby?

当我坐在车里听着最新流行歌曲的歌词时，我的爱不正在毫不费力地融入歌星那高昂的歌声吗？不正是从他人意味深长的歌词中，我发现了克洛艾吗？

难道这不美妙

拥你在我怀抱

爱着你，宝宝？

拥你在我怀抱

喔耶，爱着你，宝宝？

9.How much of what I thought I felt for Chloe had been influenced by songs like these? Was my sense of being in love not just the result of living in a particular cultural epoch? Was it not society, rather than any authentic urge, that was motivating me to pride myself on romantic love? In previous cultures and ages, would I not have been taught to ignore my feelings for Chloe in the way I was now taught to ignore (more or less) the impulse to wear stockings or to respond to insult with a challenge to a duel? 爱情无法自我释义，总是从我们庆祝生日的习俗中得到诠释。没有其他人提示我答案，我如何知晓自己对克洛艾的感情就是爱情？我从汽车收音机的歌曲中所辨识出来的一切并不意味着是对我爱克洛艾这一事实的自发理解。如果我让自己相信我在爱，这岂不只是生活在这样一个特定文化时代——寻求和崇拜无处不在的夸张心情——的结果？于我而言，岂不是社会，而非任何个人的原始感情需求，成了激发爱情的因素？如果回到以前的文化和时代里，难道我不会受到教诲去忽视自己对克洛艾的感情（如同我现在受到教诲去忽视穿长筒袜的冲动，或无视别人发出的决斗的挑战）？

'Some people would never have fallen in love if they had never heard of love,' aphorized La Rochefoucauld, and does not history prove him right? I was due to take Chloe to a Chinese restaurant in Camden, but declarations of love might have seemed more appropriate elsewhere given the scant regard traditionally given to love in Chinese culture. According to the psychological anthropologist L. K. Hsu, whereas Western cultures are 'individual-centred' and place great emphasis on emotions, in contrast, Chinese culture is 'situation-centred' and concentrates on groups rather than couples and their love (though the manager of the Lao Tzu was nevertheless delighted to take my booking). Love is never a given, it is constructed and defined by different societies. In at least one society, the Manu of New Guinea, there is not even a word for love. In other cultures, love exists, but is given distinctive forms. Ancient Egyptian love poetry had no interest in the emotions of shame, guilt, or ambivalence. The Greeks thought nothing of homosexuality, Christianity proscribed the body, the Troubadours equated love with unrequited passion, the Romantics made love into a religion, and the perhaps not-very-happily married S. M. Greenfield, in an article in the Sociological Quarterly which I had picked up at the dentist (I don't know what it was doing there either), wrote that love is today kept alive by modern capitalism only in order to: 拉罗什富科说过这样一句格言：“如果没有听说过爱情，有些我永远不会坠入情网。”难道历史没有证明他的正确？我预定带克洛艾去卡拉登的一家中国餐馆，但考虑到中国文化中很少有爱情表白的传统，我也许在其他场所表白爱情更为合适。文化人类学者许烺光认为，西方文化是“以个人为中心”，强调感情的重要性；相形之下，中国文化是“以群体为中心”，强调的是集体的重要性，而不是夫妻和他们的爱情（尽管老子餐馆的经理仍然高兴地接受了我的预定）。爱情绝非是一个一成不变的事物，不同的社会对之有不同的模式和概念。至少在同一个社会里，新几内亚马努族人就没有一个词表示爱情。在其他文化中，爱情虽然存在，却被赋予独特的形式。古埃及人的爱情诗对描写感情的羞耻、负罪或爱恨交织的矛盾心理不感兴趣，希腊人认为同性恋没什么大不了的，基督教则禁止肉体放纵，却让灵魂更为色情，行吟诗人把爱情等同于永无回应的激情，浪漫主义运动则将爱情崇拜成一种宗教。生活在幸福婚姻中的S·M·格林菲尔德在发表于《社会学季刊》上的一篇文章里写道，当今的现代资本主义社会还保留爱情，其目的只是：

... motivate individuals ?where there is no other means of motivating them ?to occupy the positions husband-father and wife-mother and form nuclear families that are essential not only for reproduction and socialization but also to maintain the existing arrangements for distributing and consuming goods and services and, in general, to keep the social system in proper working order and thus maintain it as a going concern.……激励个人——再没有其他方式可以激励他们的了——去履行丈夫——父亲的妻子——母亲的职责，组成核心家庭，那不仅是再生产和社会化的需要，也是保持目前存在的分配和消费产品及服务的需要。总之，是为了社会体系的正常运行，将其作为目前的要务保持下去。

人类学与历史在性爱方面充满了分歧（对于那些最终得选择自己立场的人来说有些恐怖）。英国维多利亚时代中期，手淫的女人被认为是疯狂的，会被关进收容所。在新几内亚，“男性”被认为是存在于男人精液中，所以在年轻男子中有一种吞食精液的传统习俗。在新几内亚艾威村子中，为了增长力量，曾经一度还有吃被杀男人阴茎的习惯。曼加伊女孩的阴蒂被拉长，而在玛萨伊社会中，女孩到了青春期就将阴蒂和阴唇切除，据说是清除“童年的肮脏”。美国印第安人的一些部落中存在性别变换，男人在战争中被俘虏后，会被带到胜利者家中，承担起妻子的身份。

社会就像一个上好的文具店，给了我一批标签，标识心脏的无数震颤。

10. The sickness, nausea, and longing that I had at times felt at the thought of Chloe might in some societies have been identified as signs of a religious experience. When St Teresa of Avila (1515-82), founder of the Discalced Carmelite Order, had a visit from an angel, she described an encounter which it would take a particularly open contemporary mind not to identify with an orgasm: 想到克洛艾，我时而产生的病痛、恶心和盼望，被我所在的社会归档为“L”。然而穿越大洋、回溯几个世纪，这个分类可能要归属于另一个目录。难道我的症状不可以轻松地被视为一次神人交接、是一次病毒感染或甚至是没有任何喻意的心脏病？《加尔默罗隐修规程》的制订者、阿维拉的圣特雷萨曾说过一种心理传感，今天也许可以称之为一种升华了的性高潮。她是这样描述如何通过一个天使——一位男子——体验上帝之爱的，这位男子：

The angel was very beautiful, his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest types of angels who seem to be all afire... In his hands I saw a golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails... The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that one can never wish to lose it, nor will one's soul be content with anything less than God.“……非常俊美，脸上充满了炽热的激情，就像一个最高贵的处于兴奋中的天使。……他握着一把金灿灿的利矛，在那铁质的末稍，如有火喷。他似乎用那利矛几番刺穿我的心，深入我的体内。……疼痛是那么锐利，以至我发出呻吟；剧烈疼痛带来的甜美感觉是那么强烈，以至我渴望持续下去，灵魂得到的满足不逊于从上帝那里获取的。”

11. In the end, I decided that a card with a giraffe might not be the best place to articulate my feelings ?and that I should wait till dinner. At around eight, I drove to Chloe's apartment to pick her up and give her the present. She was delighted to find that I had heard her hints about the Piccadilly window, the only regret (tactfully delivered a few days later) was that it had been the blue and not the red pullover she'd really been pointing to (though receipts gave us a second chance, after I had tried to but been desisted from throwing myself out of the window).最后我决定，这张印着长颈鹿的卡片不是示爱的最佳地点，我应该等到晚饭时分。八点钟时，我驾车到克洛艾的公寓去接她，并且把礼物送给了她。她很高兴我领会了她对皮卡迪利橱窗的暗示，惟一的遗憾是（很有策略地几天后表示出来），套衫是蓝色的，而不是她曾经想要的红色（尽管发票允许我们调换一次）。

12. The restaurant could not have been more romantic. All around us in the Lao Tzu, couples much like ourselves (though our subjective sense of uniqueness did not allow us to think so) were holding hands, drinking wine, and fumbling with chopsticks (a neighbour's cashew nut came at one point to rest on Chloe's lap).再没有比这家叫老子的餐馆更浪漫的了。在我们四周，都是一对对与我们相似的情人（尽管我们主观感觉上的独特笥不允许我们自己这样想）：手握着手，啜着酒，笨拙地用着筷子。

'God, I feel better, I must have been starving. I've been so depressed all day,' said Chloe.“老天，感觉好一些了。我肯定是太饿了，一整天都非常消沉，”克洛艾说道。

'Why?'“怎么了？”

'Because I have this thing about birthdays, they always remind me of death and forced jollity. But actually, I think this one's turning out to be not so bad in the end. In fact, it's pretty all right, thanks to a little help from my friend.'“因为生日，生日使我想起了死亡和逃不掉的生日宴。我想今天的生日宴肯定不会那么糟糕。实际上可以说好极了，多亏了你。”

She looked up at me and smiled.她看着我，笑了。

'You know where I was this time last year?' she asked. “你知道去年这个时候我在哪儿吗？”她问。

'No, where?'“不知道，在哪儿？”

'Being taken out for dinner by my horrible aunt. It was awful, I kept having to go to the bathroom to cry, I was so upset that it was my birthday and the only person who'd invited me out was my aunt with this irritating stutter who couldn't stop telling me she didn't understand how a nice girl like me didn't have a man in her life. So it's probably no bad thing I ran into you...'“被我那讨厌的姨妈带出来吃晚饭。感觉真是不好，我不停地到洗手间去流泪，很难过我的生日就是那样过的，惟一邀请我出来的人竟是我姨妈。令人恼火的是，她不停地唠叨，说不理解我这样好的女孩怎么会没有男朋友。看来遇见你也许 不是一件坏事……”

13. She really was adorable (thought the lover, a most unreliable witness in such matters). But how could I tell her so in a way that would suggest the distinctive nature of my attraction? Words like love or devotion or infatuation were exhausted by the weight of successive love stories, by the layers imposed on them through the uses of others. At the moment when I most wanted language to be original, personal, and completely private, I came up against the irrevocably public nature of emotional communication.她确实令人倾慕（虽然是她的心上人极其主观的看法）。但是怎样告诉她才能显示我的倾心卓尔不群？爱或者忠诚或者迷恋之类的词汇已经被一个接一个的爱情故事说得太滥，被人们用得太多。当我想用既新颖又个性化而且是完全独有的语言来表达时，还是无可避免这心灵表白之语固有的共性。

14. The restaurant was of no help, for its romantic setting made love too conspicuous, hence insincere. There was a recording of Chopin's Nocturnes over the loudspeakers and a heart-shaped candle on the table. We overheard a man at the next table (perhaps a Darwinist) joking it should have been a penis. There seemed to be no way to transport love in the word L-O-V-E without at the same time throwing the most banal associations into the basket. The word was too rich in foreign history: everything from the Troubadours to Casablanca had cashed in on the letters. 餐馆帮不上一点忙，它浪漫的装饰使得爱情太可怀疑，从而不真挚。这种浪漫弱化了表白之人的意图和语言之间的联系，甚至濒临语义的失真（特别是扬声器里传来肖邦的《小夜曲》，我们之间的桌子上点上了一支蜡烛时）。看来是没有办法既用L-O-V-E传递爱，同时又不把最平庸的东西一起带了出来。L-O-V-E需要一个名称，但是无论我怎样搜肠刮肚，这个词的历史还是太过于丰富：从行吟诗人到《卡萨布兰卡》，所有的一切都运用了这几个字母。

情感总有偷懒的办法——引用他人的话语。我可以拿来《普通爱情词典》，为感情套用现成的词句，给它涂上谎言和蜜糖。不过这个想法令人有些反感，就好像睡在别人肮脏的床单里。

Was it not my duty to be the author of my own feelings? Would I not have to fashion a declaration with a uniqueness to match Chloe's? 难道我没有责任成为自己爱情倾诉的作者？难道我不应该设计出与克洛艾的独一无二相称的表白？

引用他人的语言总会比自己创造更为轻松，用莎士比亚或辛拉特那的语言比冒险用自己疼痛的喉咙更容易。出生于语言海洋中的我们必定采用别人已经规范的语言，涉身于一个不属于我们自己的语言历史。对那些认为是自己的爱重新创造了世界的情人来说，他们会不可避免地与彼此结识以前的历史（他们自己的过去或过去的社会）发生矛盾。在认识克洛艾之前，我已有过爱的表白——曾经的心上人也总会庆祝生日，也许找不到最初的剖白（甚至十二岁的克洛艾在湖边已经表白过。要是拍摄下来那该有多好）。就像做爱，一提起来我就会想起曾经和我上过床的每一个女人。

因此，每一件事都夹杂着其他的记忆片断，而在我的食物和思想之中也存在差异。

I felt disconcertingly aware of the mundanity of our situation: a man and a woman, lovers, celebrating a birthday in a Chinese restaurant, one night in the Western world, somewhere towards the end of the twentieth century. No, my meaning could never make the journey in L-O-V-E. It would have to seek alternative transportation.当我希望餐馆里只有克洛艾时，事实上还是脱离不了文化背景：一个男人和一个女人、一对情人、在一家中国餐馆里庆祝生日、西方社会的一个夜晚、二十世纪行将结束的时候。我现在理解了克洛艾为什么害怕过生日，明白了我们被任意地甩在文化的传送带上。我的欲望迫使我抛开直白，寻找隐喻的表达方式。我的情意永远也不会用L-O-V-E来承载，送给心上人。它必须找到另一种交通工具，也许是一条有些破损的船，或是被延展，或是被缩减，或是不为从所见——这船不等同于有本身，为了更好地抓住爱的玄义，得像希伯来人的主那样去爱。

15. Then I noticed a small plate of complimentary marsh-mallows near Chloe's elbow and it suddenly seemed clear that I didn't love Chloe so much as marshmallow her. What it was about a marshmallow that should suddenly have accorded so perfectly with my feelings towards her I will never know, but the word seemed to capture the essence of my amorous state with an accuracy that the word love, weary with overuse, simply could not aspire to. Even more inexplicably, when I took Chloe's hand and told her that I had something very important to tell her, that I marshmallowed her, she seemed to understand perfectly, answering it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever told her.就在那时，我发现克洛艾肘弯旁边有一小盘免费赠送的果浆软糖。我突然莫名其妙地从语义学的角度获得了清楚的认识，我与其说是爱克洛艾，不如说是软糖克洛艾。我永远搞不清，软糖怎么会突然那么符合我对她的感情。它似乎精确地表达了我所处的情感状态，“爱”这个因为过度使用而沉闷无味的词已无法达到这样的精确程度。甚至更奇妙的是，当我托起克洛艾的手，朝博加特和罗密欧眨了一眼，告诉她我有重要的事情要说：我软糖她，克洛艾似乎完全领会了我的意思，说这是她听到的最甜蜜的语言。

16. From then on, love was, for Chloe and me at least, no longer simply love, it was a sugary, puffy object a few millimetres in diameter that melts deliciously in the mouth.从那时起，爱情，至少对于克洛艾和我来说，已不仅仅是爱情了，它还是一件物品，这物品直径只有几毫米，甜美蓬松，会美妙地融化在口中。