writer作者：Alice Sebold艾丽斯·西伯德
cast演播：underage未成年吖
Chapter Two
When I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in
everyone’s heaven there were soccer goalposts in the distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s.
刚到天堂时，我以为每个人看到的都和我一样：橄榄球球门竖立在远处，粗壮的女学生在投掷铅球和标枪，所有建筑物看起来都像六十年代兴建的高中学校。
Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there.
这些坐落在镇子东北郊的学校，校区内没什么花草树木，方方正正的整排教室散布在操场四周，教室的屋顶高挑，空间宽阔，看起来颇具现代感。我最喜欢青绿色与橙橘色相间的石板，费尔法克斯高中就有这样的石板地，我在世时经常缠着爸爸带我到费尔法克斯高中逛逛，我常想象自己在那里上课的模样。
Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start. When I got to Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would wear my hair feathered or up in a bun. I would have a body that the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I’d be so nice on top of it all that they would feel too guilty to do anything but worship me. I liked to think of myself – having reached a sort of queenly status – as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria. When someone taunted Clive Saunders for walking like a girl, I would deliver swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter’s less-protected parts. When
the boys teased Phoebe Hart for her sizable breasts, I would give a speech on why boob jokes weren’t funny. I had to forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos, Hoo-has, Johnny Yellows. At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father drove. I was beyond reproach. I would overtake high school in a matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar for Best Actress during my junior year.
初中毕业之后，高中将是个全新的开始。等我上了费尔法克斯高中，我要坚持大家叫我“苏姗”，我要梳个披肩发，或是扎个马尾辫，我要有个让男生垂涎、让女生忌妒的身材。最重要的是，我要对每个人都非常好，好到大家不得不崇拜我，不然会良心不安。我喜欢想象自己受到像女王般的尊崇，而且还保护那些在学校餐厅受欺负的同学。有人讥笑克里弗·桑德斯走路像女孩子时，我会对那人狠狠地踹一脚；男孩子嘲笑菲比·哈特发育良好的胸部时，我会大声告诉他们大胸脯的笑话一点都不好笑。其实菲比走过我身旁时，我也在笔记本的边缘偷偷写下“大胸部”、“厢型车”等字眼，当然我必须不经意地“忘记”自己也如此幼稚。我坐在车子后座，爸爸一边开车，我一边做白日梦，想到后来几乎得意忘形。我想象自己短短的几天就征服了费尔法克斯高中，说不定高二时还莫名其妙地拿到了奥斯卡女主角奖。
These were my dreams on Earth.
这些就是我在人间的梦想。
After a few days in heaven, I realized that the javelin-throwers and the shot�putters and the boys who played basketball on the cracked blacktop were all in their own version of heaven. Theirs just fit with mine – didn’t duplicate it precisely, but had a lot of the same things going on inside.
在天堂待了几天之后，我发现投掷铅球、标枪的运动员，以及那些在龟裂的柏油路上打篮球的男孩都有各自的天堂。我和他们的天堂虽然不完全一样，但其中有很多相同之处，所以我才能在我的天堂里看到他们。
I met Holly, who became my roommate, on the third day. She was sitting on the swing set. (I didn’t question that a high school had swing sets: that’s what made it heaven. And no flat-benched swings – only bucket seats made out of hard black rubber that cradled you and that you could bounce in a bit before swinging.) Holly sat reading a book in a weird alphabet that I associated with the pork-fried rice my father brought home from Hop Fat Kitchen, a place Buckley loved the name of, loved so much he yelled “Hop Fat!” at the top of his lungs. Now I know Vietnamese, and I know that Vietnamese is not what Herman Jade, who owned Hop Fat, was, and that Herman Jade was not Herman Jade’s real name but one he adopted when he came to the U.S. from China. Holly taught me all this.
在天堂的第三天，我遇见哈莉，她后来成了我的室友。第一次见面时，她坐在秋千上看书。（我没问为什么高中里还有秋千，你要什么，就有什么，这就是天堂。秋千的座位可不是普通的木板，而是厚实的黑橡胶圈。荡秋千之前，你可以舒服地缩在橡胶圈里，或是在上面跳一跳。）哈莉坐着看书，书上的文字奇形怪状，我不知道那是什么。爸爸有时从“合发小馆”带肉丝炒饭回家，我在外带盒子上曾看过类似的文字。巴克利非常喜欢这家餐厅的名字，他每次都扯着嗓门大喊：Hot Fat！我现在知道什么是越南文，也知道合发小馆的老板赫曼·杰德不是越南人，我还知道老板不叫赫曼·杰德，这只是他从中国移民到美国时取的名字，这些都是哈莉告诉我的。
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Susie.”
“嗨，”我说，“我叫苏茜。”
Later she would tell me she picked her name from a movie, Breakfast at
Tiffany’s. But that day it rolled right off her tongue.
哈莉后来告诉我，她从电影《蒂芬尼早餐》里选了这个名字，那天她未加思索，脱口就说她叫哈莉。
“I’m Holly,” she said. Because she wanted no trace of an accent in her heaven, she had none.
“我叫哈莉。”她说。因为她想说一口标准的英文，所以在她的天堂里，她讲话不带任何口音。
I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines. “How long have you been here?” I asked.
我瞪着她的黑发，黑发闪烁着丝绸般的光芒，就像时装杂志里的广告所许诺的那样。“你在这里多久了？”我问道。
“Three days.”
“三天了。”
“Me too.”
“我也是。”
I sat down on the swing next to her and twisted my body around and around to tie up the chains. Then I let go and spun until I stopped.
我在她旁边的秋千上坐下来，我不停地转圈，将铁链缠绕成一团，铁链缠绕到顶端之后我才松手，秋千转了又转，过了一会儿才停住。
“Do you like it here?” she asked.
“你喜欢这里吗？”她问道。
“No.”
“不喜欢。”
“Me either.”
“我也不喜欢。”
So it began.
我们就这样成了好朋友。
We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams. There were no
teachers in the school. We never had to go inside except for art class for me and jazz band for Holly. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue.
And our heavens expanded as our relationship grew. We wanted many of the same things.
在天堂里，我们最单纯的梦想都会实现。学校里没有老师。我上美术课，哈莉参加爵士乐团，除此之外，我们不必进教室。学校里的男孩子不会偷掐我们的臀部，也不会说我们有狐臭。我们的教科书是《十七岁》、《魅力》和《时尚》杂志。哈莉和我有许多相同的梦想，我们的感情越来越好，天堂也不断扩充。
Franny, my intake counselor, became our guide. Franny was old enough to be our mother – mid-forties – and it took Holly and me a while to figure out that this had been something we wanted: our mothers.
辅导员弗妮成了我们的良师。四十几岁的弗妮，年纪足以当我们的妈妈。哈莉和我过了一段时间才想清楚，原来我们一直想要妈妈。
In Franny’s heaven, she served and was rewarded by results and gratitude. On Earth she had been a social worker for the homeless and destitute. She worked out of a church named Saint Mary’s that served meals to women and children only, and she did everything there from manning the phones to swatting the roaches – karate-chop style. She was shot in the face by a man looking for his wife.
在弗妮的天堂里，她勤奋工作，努力有了成果，也得到应得的感激。她在世时是个协助游民和贫民的社会工作者，她在圣玛丽教堂工作，教堂只提供妇女和小孩膳食，弗妮负责接电话、打蟑螂，大小事情一手包办。有一天，一个男人到教堂找太太，他一枪射中弗妮的脸，弗妮当场毙命。
Franny walked over to Holly and me on the fifth day. She handed us two Dixie Cups of lime Kool-Aid and we drank. “I’m here to help,” she said.
I looked into her small blue eyes surrounded by laugh lines and told her the truth. “We’re bored.”
在天堂的第五天，弗妮走到我和哈莉面前，她递给我们两杯青柠檬果汁，我们接过杯子，喝了果汁。“我来看看能不能帮得上忙。”她说。我望着弗妮笑纹密布的蓝色小眼睛，实话对她说：“我们好无聊。”
Holly was busy trying to reach her tongue out far enough to see if it had
turned green.
哈莉伸长舌头，忙着看舌头有没有变绿。
“What do you want?” Franny asked.
“你想要什么？”弗妮问道。
“I don’t know,” I said.
“我不知道。”我说。
“All you have to do is desire it, and if you desire it enough and understand why – really know – it will come.”
“想清楚自己要什么就行了。只要想得清清楚楚，而且明白理由，你的梦想就会成真。”
It seemed so simple and it was. That’s how Holly and I got our duplex.
听起来很简单，做起来也不难；我和哈莉就这样得到了复式公寓。
I hated our split-level on Earth. I hated my parents’ furniture, and how our
house looked out onto another house and another house and another – an echo of sameness riding up over the hill. Our duplex looked out onto a park, and in the distance, just close enough to know we weren’t alone, but not too close, we could see the lights of other houses.
我不喜欢我在人间住的错层式房子，也不喜欢我爸妈的家具。我们家看得到邻居家，邻居家也看得到隔壁邻居，基本上，山坡上的每栋房子看起来都一样。哈莉和我的复式公寓看出去是个公园，还可以隐约看到其他房子的灯火，这个距离刚刚好：我们知道有其他邻居，但又不会离得太近。
Eventually I began to desire more. What I found strange was how much I
desired to know what I had not known on Earth. I wanted to be allowed to grow up.
到后来我想要的东西越来越多。奇怪的是，我发现自己特想知道在世时从不知道的事情。我希望能够长大。
“People grow up by living,” I said to Franny. “I want to live.”
“活着才会长大，”我对弗妮说，“我想活着。”
“That’s out,” she said.
“不行。”弗妮说。
“Can we at least watch the living?” asked Holly.
“最起码我们可以观看活人吧？”哈莉问道。
“You already do,” she said.
“你们已经这么做了。”弗妮说。
“I think she means whole lives,” I said, “from beginning to end, to see how they did it. To know the secrets. Then we can pretend better.”
“我想哈莉是说想看看凡人怎么过一辈子，”我说，“从出生看到去世，看看大家怎么度过一生。我们想知道他们的秘密，这样我们才能假装好过一些。”
“You won’t experience it,” Franny clarified.
“你还是没办法体验到的。”弗妮明确地说。
“Thank you, Brain Central,” I said, but our heavens began to grow.
“谢谢你，聪明人。”我说，我们的天堂依然变得越来越热闹了。
There was the high school still, all the Fairfax architecture, but now there were roads leading out.
天堂高中里的建筑物和费尔法克斯高中的一样，只是多了通往各方的道路。
“Walk the paths,” Franny said, “and you’ll find what you need.”
“出去走走吧，”弗妮说，“你们会看到想找寻的东西。”
So that’s when Holly and I set out. Our heaven had an ice cream shop where, when you asked for peppermint stick ice cream, no one ever said, “It’s seasonal”; it had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important; it had real men in it and beautiful women too, because Holly and I were devoted to fashion magazines. Sometimes Holly seemed like she wasn’t paying attention, and other times she was gone when I went looking for her. That was when she went to a part of heaven we didn’t share. I missed her then, but it was an odd sort of missing because by then I knew the meaning of forever.
因此，我和哈莉启程一探究竟。我们发现天堂里有个冰淇淋店，你点薄荷冰淇淋时，没有人会告诉你：“对不起，现在不是薄荷冰淇淋的季节。”天堂里有份报纸时常刊登我们的照片，让我们觉得自己成了大人物。因为哈莉和我都喜欢时装杂志，因此报上还出现了时尚名人、美女等真实人物。哈莉有时显得心不在焉，有些时候我去找她，发现她不知道到哪里去了，这时我就知道哈莉去了她的小天地，那里没我的份。每当这时我就想念她，我知道我们永远会在一起，但她离开一会儿，我居然还会想她，这种思念的心情有点奇怪。
I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn’t perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth.
我希望哈维先生以死赎罪，也希望自己还活着，这是我最企盼的梦想，但却无法实现。天堂毕竟不是十全十美，但我相信只要我仔细观看，认真期盼，说不定能改变凡间我所爱的人的生活。
My father was the one who took the phone call on December ninth. It was the beginning of the end. He gave the police my blood type, had to describe the lightness of my skin. They asked him if I had any identifying features. He began to describe my face in detail, getting lost in it. Detective Fenerman let him go on, the next news too horrible to interrupt with. But then he said it: “Mr. Salmon, we have found only a body part.”
十二月九日接电话的是爸爸，自此揭开了悲剧的序幕。他告诉警方我的血型，还向警方描述我光洁的皮肤。警方问他我还有什么特征，他便仔细地描述我的脸部，讲到后来几乎说不下去了。费奈蒙警探没有打断爸爸的话，他还有一个非常悲惨的消息要告诉爸爸，却不知道如何开口。后来他终于开了口：“沙蒙先生，我们只找到一块尸体。”
My father stood in the kitchen and a sickening shiver overtook him. How could he tell that to Abigail?
爸爸站在厨房里，悲伤令他忍不住颤抖，他怎能告诉妈妈这个消息呢？
“So you can’t be certain that she’s dead?” he asked.
“这么说，你们无法确定苏茜已经死了？”他问道。
“Nothing is ever certain,” Len Fenerman said.
“没有什么事是百分之百确定的。”费奈蒙警探说。
That was the line my father said to my mother: “Nothing is ever certain.”
爸爸就这么告诉妈妈：“没有什么事是百分之百确定的。”
For three nights he hadn’t known how to touch my mother or what to say.
Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to borrow from the stronger one’s strength. And they had never understood, as they did now, what the word horror meant.
一连三个晚上，爸爸不知道该对妈妈说什么，或是怎么安慰她。在这之前，他们两人从来没有同时崩溃，通常都是一方安抚另一方，从来不曾同时需要彼此的慰藉。以前总有一方比较坚强，遇到难过的事，两人互相抱抱，比较软弱的一方便可感受到对方的力量，心情也会好过一点。他们从来不了解什么叫做“恐惧”，此刻才初尝“惊恐”的滋味。
“Nothing is ever certain,” my mother said, clinging to it as he had hoped she might.
“没有什么事是百分之百确定的……”妈妈喃喃自语，爸爸希望她听得进这句话，她也紧抓着这句话不放。
My mother had been the one who knew the meaning of each charm on my bracelet – where we had gotten it and why I liked it. She made a meticulous list of what I’d carried and worn. If found miles away and in isolation along a road, these clues might lead a policeman there to link it to my death.
妈妈知道我银手镯上所有小饰物代表什么，她记得我们在哪里买到银手镯，也知道我为什么这么喜欢它。她列了一张表，毫无遗漏地写下我身上的服饰，如果有人在远处或大马路的偏僻地点发现我身上的东西，警方说不定能借着这些线索，找到杀害我的凶手。
In my mind I had wavered between the bittersweet joy of seeing my mother name all the things I carried and loved and her futile hope that these things mattered. That a stranger who found a cartoon character eraser or a rock star button would report it to the police.
我看着妈妈仔细地列出我的穿戴及喜爱的东西，心中充满温情，却又带着阵阵苦楚。她明知机会极为渺茫，却仍抱着一丝希望。她依然希望那些捡到卡通人物造型橡皮擦或是摇滚明星徽章的陌生人，能将这些东西交给警方。
After Len’s phone call, my father reached out his hand and the two of them sat in the bed together, staring straight in front of them. My mother numbly clinging to this list of things, my father feeling as if he were entering a dark tunnel. At some point, it began to rain. I could feel them both drinking the same thing then, but neither of them said it. That I was out there somewhere, in the rain. That they hoped I was safe. That I was dry somewhere, and warm.
和费奈蒙警探通过电话之后，爸爸伸手握住妈妈的手，两人坐在床上，一言不发地瞪着前方发呆。妈妈麻木地紧握着手上的单子，爸爸觉得有如置身黑暗的隧道。过了一会儿，天上飘起雨丝，虽然他们都没说话，但我可以感觉到他们想着同一件事：下雨了，苏茜却一个人孤零零地在雨中；他们都希望我没事，安全地躲在一个温暖干燥的地方。
Neither of them knew who fell asleep first; their bones aching with exhaustion, they drifted off and woke guiltily at the same time. The rain, which had changed several times as the temperature dropped, was now hail, and the sound of it, of small stones of ice hitting the roof above them, woke them together.
他们不知道谁先入睡，两人筋疲力尽，不知不觉就睡着了。雨势忽大忽小，气温也不停下降，到后来下起冰雹，小小的冰球敲打在屋顶上，激起阵阵声响。他们被冰雹的声音吵醒，两人同时醒来，心中都充满了罪恶感。
They did not speak. They looked at each other in the small light cast from the lamp left on across the room. My mother began to cry, and my father held her, wiped her tears with the pad of his thumbs as they crested her cheekbones, and kissed her very gently on the eyes.
他们沉默不语，房间另一端的灯还亮着，他们在微弱的灯光中看着对方，妈妈失声痛哭，爸爸把她抱在怀里，用大拇指抹去她的泪痕，轻抚她的脸颊，双唇轻柔地盖上她的双眼。
I looked away from them then, as they touched. I moved my eyes into the
cornfield, seeing if there was anything that in the morning the police might find.The hail bent the stalks and drove all the animals into their holes. Not so deep beneath the earth were the warrens of the wild rabbits I loved, the bunnies that ate the vegetables and flowers in the neighborhood nearby and that sometimes, unwittingly, brought poison home to their dens. Then, inside the earth and so far away from the man or woman who had laced a garden with toxic bait, an entire family of rabbits would curl into themselves and die.
他们轻触彼此，这时我不再看着他们，而把视线移到玉米地，看看警方隔天早晨能不能在地里找到什么东西。冰雹打弯了玉米茎，也把小动物全赶进了洞穴。离地面不深的洞穴里住着一群我喜欢的野兔，野兔常跑到附近人家的花园里偷吃蔬菜，人们在花园里放了毒药，有时某只不知情的兔子把毒药带回家，结果在这个远离花园的洞穴里，整个野兔家族蜷伏在一起，静静地同归于尽。
On the morning of the tenth, my father poured the Scotch down the kitchen sink. Lindsey asked him why.
十日早上，爸爸把整瓶威士忌倒进厨房水槽里，琳茜问他为什么把酒倒掉。
“I’m afraid I might drink it,” he said.
“我怕我会把酒喝光。”他说。
“What was the phone call?” my sister asked.
“昨晚那电话是什么事？”我妹妹问道。
“What phone call?”
“哪个电话？”
“I heard you say that thing you always say about Susie’s smile. About stars exploding.”
“我听到你说星星爆裂的光芒，每次提到苏茜的笑容，你总是这么说。”
“Did I say that?”
“是吗？”
“You got kind of goofy. It was a cop, wasn’t it?”
“没错，听起来怪怪的，是警察打电话来，对不对？”
“No lies?”
“你要听实话？”
“No lies,” Lindsey agreed.
“我要听实话。”琳茜肯定地说。
“They found a body part. It might be Susie’s.”
“警方找到一块尸体，他们说可能是苏茜的。”
It was a hard sock in the stomach. “What?”
琳茜觉得有人狠狠地朝胃部打了一拳：“你说什么？”
“Nothing is ever certain,” my father tried.
“没有什么事情是百分之百确定的。”爸爸试图解释。
Lindsey sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m going to be sick,” she said.
琳茜坐在餐桌旁说：“我觉得我快吐了。”
“Dad, I want you to tell me what it was. Which body part, and then I’m going to need to throw up.”
“爸，我要你告诉我：警方找到的是哪一部分的尸体，然后请你准备好，我八成会吐。”
My father got down a large metal mixing bowl. He brought it to the table and placed it near Lindsey before sitting down.
爸爸拿出一个大金属盆，他把盆子拿到桌边，摆到琳茜身旁，然后坐了下来。
“Honey?”
“宝贝儿，你还好吗？”
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”
“好吧，”她说，“告诉我。”
“It was an elbow. The Gilberts’ dog found it.” He held her hand and then she threw up, as she had promised, into the shiny silver bowl.
“警方说是一只臂肘，吉伯特家的狗发现的。” 说完爸爸握住琳茜的手，正如先前所说，琳茜果然吐在那个闪闪发亮的金属盆里。
Later that morning the weather cleared, and not too far from my house the police roped off the cornfield and began their search. The rain, sleet, snow, and hail melting and mixing had left the ground sodden; still, there was an obvious area where the earth had been freshly manipulated. They began there and dug.
当天上午，天气逐渐转晴，警察把离我家不远的玉米地围起来，开始进行搜索。雨水、冰霜，再加上融化的积雪与冰雹，使整片玉米地泥泞不堪，但仍看得出有个地方刚被动过，警方由这里开始挖掘。
In places, the lab later found, there was a dense concentration of my blood mixed with the dirt, but at the time, the police grew more and more frustrated, plying the cold wet ground and looking for girl.
根据后来的化验报告显示，那里的泥土多处混杂着我的血迹。警察不断地翻寻干硬的田地，试图找寻失踪的女孩，但越挖越觉得沮丧。
Along the border of the soccer field, a few of my neighbors kept a respectful distance from the police tape, wondering at the men dressed in heavy blue parkas wielding shovels and rakes like medical tools.
在靠近足球场的地边，好几位邻居远远地站在警戒线的外边，他们看着玉米地里站了一群身穿厚重蓝色冬衣、手执铁铲和类似医疗器具的男人，大家都不知道出了什么事。
My father and mother remained at home. Lindsey stayed in her room. Buckley was nearby at his friend Nate’s house, where he spent a lot of time these days. They had told him I was on an extended sleepover at Clarissa’s.
爸妈待在家里，琳茜在她房里，巴克利留在他朋友奈特家。奈特住在附近，接下来这一段日子里，巴克利经常待在他家。大家告诉巴克利说我去克莱丽莎家玩，过一阵子才会回来。
I knew where my body was but I could not tell them. I watched and waited to see what they would see. And then, Like a thunderbolt, late in the afternoon, a policeman held up his earth-caked fist and shouted.
我知道我的尸体在哪里，但却没办法告诉任何人，我只能悄悄观察，等着看大家会找到什么。当天傍晚，如同晴天霹雳一般，有个警察突然举起沾满泥土的拳头，高声喊叫。
“Over here!” he said, and the other officers ran to surround him.
“快来这里！”他大喊，其他警察马上跑过去围住他。
The neighbors had gone home except for Mrs. Stead. After conferring around the discovering policeman, Detective Fenerman broke their dark huddle and approached her.
除了史泰德太太之外，其他的邻居都回家了。搜寻人员围着发现东西的警察，费奈蒙警探穿过拥挤的人墙，走向史泰德太太。
“Mrs. Stead?” he said over the tape that separated them.
“史泰德太太吗？”他隔着警戒线问道。
“Yes.”
“我是。”
“You have a child in the school?”
“你有个上学的小孩，是不是？”
“Yes.”
“是的。”
“Could you come with me, please?”
“请跟我过来，好吗？”
A young officer led Mrs. Stead under the police tape and over the bumpy,
churned-up cornfield to where the rest of the men stood.
一名年轻的警员带领史泰德太太进入警戒区，他们穿过凹凸不平、被翻得乱七八糟的玉米地，走到大家站的地方。
“Mrs. Stead,” Len Fenerman said, “does this look familiar?” He held up a
paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. “Do they read this at the school?”
“史泰德太太，”费奈蒙警探说，“这个东西看起来眼熟吗？”他边说边举起一本平装小说《梅岗城的故事》（杀死一只知更鸟），“孩子们在学校读这本书吗？”
“Yes,” she said, her face draining of color as she said the small word.
“是的。”她小声地回答，脸上血色尽失。
“Do you mind if I ask you …” he began.
“你介不介意我请问您……”他展开探讯。
“Ninth grade,” she said, looking into Len Fenerman’s slate blue eyes. “Susie’s grade.” She was a therapist and relied on her ability to hear bad news and discuss rationally the difficult details of her patients’ lives, but she found herself leaning into the young policeman who had led her over. I could feel her wishing that she had gone home when the other neighbors had left, wishing that she was in the living room with her husband, or out in the backyard with her son.
“九年级，”她凝视着费奈蒙警探湛蓝的双眼说，“苏茜今年九年级。”她从事心理咨询，向来自认能承受坏消息，也能理智地和患者讨论各种难以处理的问题，但现在她却发现自己扑倒在带她过来的年轻警察的怀里，我可以感觉到她真巴不得在其他邻居回家时，她也跟着离开，现在和先生坐在客厅里，或是和儿子待在后院里。
“Who teaches the class?”
“谁是这门课的老师？”
“Mrs. Dewitt,” Mrs. Stead said. “The kids find it a real relief after Othello.”
“迪威特太太，”史泰德太太说，“读了《奥赛罗》之后，孩子们觉得读《梅岗城的故事》轻松多了。”
“Othello?”
“《奥赛罗》？”
“Yes,” she said, her knowledge of the school suddenly very important right now – all the policemen listening. “Mrs. Dewitt likes to modulate her reading list, and she does a big push right before Christmas with Shakespeare. Then she passes out Harper Lee as a reward. If Susie was carrying around To Kill a Mockingbird it means she must have turned in her paper on Othello already.”
“是的，”她说，史泰德太太知道一些学校的事情，这些讯息忽然变得非常重要，所有警察都在仔细倾听，“迪威特太太喜欢随时调整阅读书目，圣诞节之前，她决定逼紧一点，规定大家读莎士比亚的作品，她把《梅岗城的故事》当作奖品，如果苏茜有本《梅岗城的故事》，这表示她已经交了《奥赛罗》的读书报告。”
All of this checked out.
这些讯息后来都得到了证实。
The police made calls. I watched the circle widen. Mrs. Dewitt had my paper. Eventually, she sent it back to my parents, unmarked, through the mail. “Thought you would want to have this,” Mrs. Dewitt had written on a note attached to it. “I’m so very very sorry.” Lindsey inherited the paper because it was too painful for my mother to read. “The Ostracized: One Man Alone,” I had called it. Lindsey had suggested “The Ostracized,” and I made up the other half. My sister punched three holes down the side of it and fastened each carefully handwritten page into an empty notebook. She put it in her closet under her Barbie case and the box that held her perfect-condition Raggedy Ann and Andy that I’d envied.
警察打电话查证。我看着受到波及的圈子逐渐扩大。迪威特太太确实已收到我的读书报告，她后来把报告原封不动地寄还给爸妈，“我想你们一定想保留这份报告，”迪威特太太附了一张纸条，上面写道：“我深感抱歉。”妈妈难过得看不下去，所以琳茜把报告收了起来。我给报告起了“被放逐者：独行侠”的标题，“被放逐者”是琳茜的点子，我再加上“独行侠”三个字。琳茜在报告边缘打了三个洞，把每一页仔细手写的纸张夹进空白的活页笔记本，她把笔记本压在衣柜里的芭比娃娃盒下面，盒里放了几乎全新、让我眼红的红发安安和安迪娃娃。
Detective Fenerman called my parents. They had found a schoolbook, they believed, that might have been given to me that last day.
费奈蒙警探打电话给爸妈，他说警方找到一本笔记本，他们相信我遇害当天带着这本笔记本。
“But it could be anyone’s,” my father said to my mother as they began
another restless vigil. “Or she could have dropped it along the way.”
“谁都可能有这种笔记本。”爸爸对妈妈说。两人又彻夜守候，“说不定这是苏茜哪天上学时丢掉的。”
Evidence was mounting, but they refused to believe.
证据越来越多，但他们依然拒绝接受事实。
Two days later, on December twelfth, the police found my notes from Mr.
Botte’s class. Animals had carried off the notebook from its original burial site – the dirt did not match the surrounding samples, but the graph paper, with its scribbled theories that I could never understand but still dutifully recorded, had been found when a cat knocked down a crow’s nest. Shreds of the paper were laced among the leaves and twigs. The police unbraided the graph paper, along with strips of another kind of paper, thinner and brittle, that had no lines.
两天之后，也就是十二月十二日，警方找到我在伯特先生课堂上的笔记。纸张上的泥土和周遭所采集到的泥土不符，因此警方研判纸张可能被小动物从命案现场叼到别处。伯特先生在课堂上讲了一大堆理论，虽然有些我多半永远无法理解，但我依然很尽心地在方格纸上做笔记。有只小猫踢翻了乌鸦的巢穴，这些方格纸的碎条就夹杂在树叶和细枝之间。警方仔细地挑出纸张，发现除了方格纸外，还有一些比较薄、易碎、上面没有格线的纸片。
The girl who lived in the house where the tree stood recognized some of the handwriting. It was not my writing, but the writing of the boy who had a crush on me: Ray Singh. On his mother’s special rice paper Ray had written me a love note, which I never read. He had tucked it into my notebook during our Wednesday lab. His hand was distinct. When the officers came they had to piece together the scraps of my biology notebook and of Ray Singh’s love note.
在自家树下发现我的笔记的女孩，认出那些纸张上的字有些不是我的笔迹，而是雷·辛格的笔迹。雷在他妈妈特制的稻草纸上，写了一些悄悄话给我，但我却没有机会看到他的情书。星期三上实验课时，他把纸条夹在我的笔记本里，他的笔迹，一看就认得出来。警方取回这些纸条，拼凑出我的生物笔记和雷·辛格的情书。
“Ray is not feeling well,” his mother said when a detective called his house and asked to speak to him. But they found out what they needed from her. Ray nodded to her as she repeated the policeman’s questions to her son. Yes, he had written Susie Salmon a love note. Yes, he had put it in her notebook after Mr. Botte had asked her to collect the pop quiz. Yes, he had called himself the Moor.
一名警探打电话到辛格家找雷问话，他妈妈对警探说：“雷有点不舒服。”但警方从她那里得到了他们所要的消息。警探在电话里提出问题，她重复说给儿子听，雷听了逐一回答：是的，他写了一封情书给苏茜·沙蒙；是的，伯特先生请苏茜收小考考卷，他趁机把纸条夹在苏茜的笔记本里；是的，他曾说自己是摩尔人。
Ray Singh became the first suspect.
雷·辛格成了头号嫌犯。
“That sweet boy?” my mother said to my father.
“那个讨人喜欢的男孩是嫌犯？”当天晚上吃饭时，我妈问我爸。
“Ray Singh is nice,” my sister said in a monotone at dinner that night.
“雷·辛格人不错。”晚餐时琳茜语调平平地说。
I watched my family and knew they knew. It was not Ray Singh.
我看着我的家人，我知道大家都很清楚雷·辛格绝不是凶手。
The police descended on his house, leaning heavily on him, insinuating things. They were fueled by the guilt they read into Ray’s dark skin, by the rage they felt at his manner, and by his beautiful yet too exotic and unavailable mother. But Ray had an alibi. A whole host of nations could be called to testify on his behalf.
警方突然造访雷·辛格家，他们仔细地讯问雷，话语中带着强烈暗示。雷黝黑的肤色，以及愤怒的神情，再加上他美丽、颇具异国情调、莫测高深的母亲，更加深了警方的猜疑。但雷有不在场证明，一群不同国籍的学生可以证明他的清白。
His father, who taught postcolonial history at Penn, had urged his son to
represent the teenage experience at a lecture he gave at the International House on the day I died.
雷的父亲在宾州大学教授后殖民地历史，凶杀案发生当天，他在宾大的国际学生中心演讲，并鼓励雷当场讲述了自己的青春期经验。
At first Ray’s absence from school had been seen as evidence of his guilt, but once the police were presented with a list of forty-five attendees who had seen Ray speak at “Suburbia: The American Experience,” they had to concede his innocence. The police stood outside the Singh house and snapped small twigs from the hedges. It would have been so easy, so magical, their answer literally falling out of the sky from a tree. But rumors spread and, in school, what little headway Ray had made socially was reversed. He began to go home immediately after school.
起初，事发之时雷不在学校，使警方把这点视为证据，将他当成嫌犯，后来警察取得一张参加“郊区生活：美国经验谈”演讲的名单，名单上四十五名成员都看到雷站在讲台上演讲，警方只好承认雷是清白的。警察站在辛格家门外，随手折断树篱上的小树枝，他们以为已经不费吹灰之力就捉到了凶手，好像变魔术一样，凶手从高高的树上掉到他们面前，但结果却并非如此。虽然雷是清白的，但学校里已经谣言满天飞，同学们才刚刚开始接受他，现在所有的进展全被一笔抹杀。自此之后，他一放学马上回家，不再多作停留。
All this made me crazy. Watching but not being able to steer the police toward the green house so close to my parents, where Mr. Harvey sat carving finials for a gothic dollhouse he was building. He watched the news and scanned the papers, but he wore his own innocence like a comfortable old coat. There had been a riot inside him and now there was calm.
这些事情让我急得发狂。哈维先生的绿色房子就在我家旁边，他在屋里裁剪尖型塔，拼建一座哥特式的玩具屋，我看在眼里，却不能把警察引进哈维先生家，心里真是着急。哈维先生看电视新闻，翻阅报上的消息，坦然地摆出无辜的样子，先前他心中曾经波涛汹涌，现在他已平静下来了。
I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn’t yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn’t believe it, would not believe it. Holiday stayed with Lindsey at night, stood by my father each time he answered the door to a new unknown. Gladly partook of any clandestine eating on the part of my mother. Let Buckley pull his tail and ears inside the house of locked doors.
我试着从小狗“假日”身上寻求慰藉。我不让自己太想念爸爸、妈妈、妹妹和弟弟，但我告诉自己：想念“假日”没关系。我觉得想念家人等于默认自己永远不能和他们在一起，听来或许有点愚蠢，但我不相信、也不接受我已经和他们分开了。“假日”晚上待在琳茜身旁；每次爸爸开门，面对另一个未知的新情况时，它总是站在爸爸身旁；它静静地分享妈妈的悲伤；在大门紧闭的家中，它也乖乖地让巴克利拉扯它的尾巴和双耳。想念它，就如同想念亲人一样。
There was too much blood in the earth.
泥土里有太多血迹。
On December fifteenth, among the knocks on the door that signaled to my family that they must numb themselves further before opening their house to strangers – the kind but awkward neighbors, the bumbling but cruel reporters – came the one that made my father finally believe.
这些日子以来，陌生人不时上门造访。好心却显得不知所措的邻居，假装关心却毫不留情的记者。家里不时有人敲门，一听到敲门声，家人都得先麻痹自己，以免情绪受到影响。十二月十五日又有人敲门，这次爸爸终于接受了事实。
It was Len Fenerman, who had been so kind to him, and a uniform.
敲门的是赖恩·费奈蒙和一名穿着制服的警察，这些日子以来，费奈蒙警探对爸爸一直很好。
They came inside, by now familiar enough with the house to know that my mother preferred them to come in and say what they had to say in the living room so that my sister and brother would not overhear.
他们走进屋子，他们现在对我家已经很熟，也知道妈妈认为大家在客厅里谈话比较恰当，警方若有话必须和爸妈说，大家在客厅里讲，琳茜和巴克利才听不到。
“We’ve found a personal item that we believe to be Susie’s,” Len said. Len was careful. I could see him calculating his words. He made sure to specify so that my parents would be relieved of their first thought – that the police had found my body, that I was, for certain, dead.
“警方找到一样东西，我们认为是苏茜的。”赖恩小心翼翼地说。我可以感觉到他考虑再三之后开口，他知道爸妈一听到他的话，第一个念头一定是警方找到了我的尸体，确定了我的死讯，他必须把话说清楚，爸妈才不会这么想。
“What?” my mother said impatiently. She crossed her arms and braced for another inconsequential detail in which others invested meaning. She was a wall. Notebooks and novels were nothing to her. Her daughter might survive without an arm. A lot of blood was a lot of blood. It was not a body. Jack had said it and she believed: Nothing is ever certain.
“什么东西？”妈妈急切地问道，她双臂交握，等着听另一个微小却引人猜疑的消息。她很固执，警方找到的笔记本和小说对她都不具意义，她甚至觉得女儿少了一只手臂也活得下来，血迹再多也只是血，而不是尸体。诚如她丈夫所言：没有什么事是百分之百确定的。她相信这话是对的。
But when they held up the evidence bag with my hat inside, something broke in her. The fine wall of leaden crystal that had protected her heart – somehow numbed her into disbelief – shattered.
但当警察举起装着我的帽子的物证袋，妈妈忽然崩溃了。她心头的最后一道防线开始动摇，她再也无法麻痹自己，拒绝接受事实。
“The pompom,” Lindsey said. She had crept into the living room from the
kitchen. No one had seen her come in but me.
“啊，绒球。”琳茜说，她偷偷从厨房溜进客厅，除了我之外，没有人看到她溜进来。
My mother made a sound and reached out her hand. The sound was a metallic squeak, a human-as-machine breaking down, uttering last sounds before the whole engine locks.
妈妈伸出双手，发出金属破裂般的尖叫，她如机械般顽固的心慢慢地破碎，似乎想在完全崩溃之前说出最后几句话。
“We’ve tested the fibers,” Len said. “It appears whoever accosted Susie used this during the crime.”
“我们对纤维做了测试，”赖恩说，“不管是谁诱拐了苏茜，他在行凶时似乎用了这顶帽子。”
“What?” my father asked. He was powerless. He was being told something he could not comprehend.
“你说什么？”爸爸问道，他周身无力，完全无法理解警方告诉他的事情。
“As a way to keep her quiet.”
“凶手用这顶帽子阻止苏茜喊叫。”
“What?”
“什么意思？”
“It is covered with her saliva,” the uniformed officer, who had been silent until now, volunteered. “He gagged her with it.”
“帽子上沾满了她的唾液。”穿着制服的警察说，他一直安静地站在一旁，到现在才说话，“凶手用帽子堵住苏茜的嘴。”
My mother grabbed it out of Len Fenerman’s hands, and the bells she had sewn into the pompom sounded as she landed on her knees. She bent over the hat she had made me.
妈妈从赖恩·费奈蒙手上夺下帽子，她亲手缝在绒球上的铃铛发出声响。妈妈颓然跪倒在地，她亲手为我编织的帽子平躺在面前。
I saw Lindsey stiffen at the door. Our parents were unrecognizable to her;
everything was unrecognizable.
我看到琳茜呆站在门口，她认不出爸妈，也认不出周遭的一切。
My father led the well-meaning Len Fenerman and the uniformed officer to the front door.
爸爸把好心的赖恩·费奈蒙和穿制服的警察带到大门口。
“Mr. Salmon,” Len Fenerman said, “with the amount of blood we’ve found, and the violence I’m afraid it implies, as well as other material evidence we’ve discussed, we must work with the assumption that your daughter has been killed.”
“沙蒙先生，”赖恩·费奈蒙说，“我们发现大量血迹，下手的人恐怕相当凶暴，再加上我们讨论过的一些证据，我们必须假设你女儿已经遇害，我们打算把此事当成凶杀案来侦办。”
Lindsey overheard what she already knew, had known since five days before, when my father told her about my elbow. My mother began to wail.
琳茜偷听到她已经知道的事情，五天前爸爸告诉她警方找到我的臂肘，从那时她就知道我已经不在人世。妈妈开始嚎啕大哭。
“We’ll be working with this as a murder investigation from this point out,”
Fenerman said.
“从现在开始，我们会以凶杀案来侦办。”费奈蒙说。
“But there is no body,” my father tried.
“但我们还没有看到尸体。”爸爸依然不放弃希望。
“All evidence points to your daughter’s death. I’m very sorry.”
“所有证据都显示你女儿已经遇害，我真的非常抱歉。”
The uniformed officer had been staring to the right of my father’s pleading eyes. I wondered if that was something they’d taught him in school. But Len Fenerman met my father’s gaze. “I’ll call to check in on you later today,” he said.
那个穿着制服的警察一直没有正眼面对爸爸哀求的眼神，我怀疑警察学校是否教他们这么做。但赖恩·费奈蒙双眼直勾勾地面对爸爸的注视，“我晚一点再打电话给你们，看看大家情况如何。”他说。
By the time my father turned back to the living room, he was too devastated to reach out to my mother sitting on the carpet or my sister’s hardened form nearby. He could not let them see him. He mounted the stairs, thinking of Holiday on the rug in the study. He had last seen him there. Into the deep ruff of fur surrounding the dog’s neck, my father would let himself cry.
爸爸颓然地走回客厅，他伤心得没办法安慰坐在地毯上的妈妈，或是安抚呆站在一旁的妹妹，他不能让她们看到自己这副模样。他蹒跚地走上二楼，心想“假日”卧在书房的地毯上，他刚才还在书房看到它。等看到“假日”，他把头埋在小狗浓密的颈毛里，此时，他才让自己尽情痛哭。
That afternoon the three of them crept forward in silence, as if the sound of footsteps might confirm the news. Nate’s mother knocked on the door to return Buckley. No one answered. She stepped away, knowing something had changed inside the house, which looked exactly like the ones on either side of it. She made herself my brother’s co-conspirator, telling him they would go out for ice cream and ruin his appetite.
那天下午，爸爸、妈妈和妹妹蹑手蹑脚地走动，好像害怕脚步声会引来更多坏消息。奈特的妈妈送巴克利回家，她敲敲门，却无人应答，等了一会儿后她只好悄悄离开。虽然我家大门和左邻右舍看起来完全相同，但她知道屋里已起了变化。父母都不喜欢小孩吃零食，但此时她决定和巴克利一起犯规，她问巴克利想不想吃冰淇淋，然后两人一起去吃冰淇淋，吃得小弟晚上没胃口吃饭。
At four, my mother and father ended up standing in the same room
downstairs. They had come in from opposite doorways.
四点钟时，爸爸和妈妈来到楼下的一个房间，他们从不同方向走过来，结果在同一个房间碰头。
My mother looked at my father: “Mother,” she said, and he nodded his head. He made the phone call to my only living grandparent, my mother’s mother, Grandma Lynn.
妈妈看着爸爸说：“我妈。”爸爸听了点点头，然后打电话给我惟一还活着的隔代长辈，琳恩外婆。
I worried that my sister, left alone, would do something rash. She sat in her room on the old couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see.
妹妹孤零零地被抛在一旁，我真担心她会一时冲动做出傻事。她坐在她房里一张爸妈不要的旧沙发上，拼命告诉自己要坚强。深深吸一口气，屏住呼吸；尽量长时间地挺直腰板；缩起身子，让自己像小石头一样；把身体缩成一团，蜷在没有人看得到的角落。
My mother told her it was her choice whether she wanted to return to school before Christmas – there was only one week left – but Lindsey chose to go.
离圣诞节只剩下一星期，妈妈让琳茜自己决定是不是继续上学校，琳茜决定回去上课。
On Monday, in homeroom, everyone stared at her as she approached the front of the classroom.
星期一早晨，她在大家的注目下走向教室门口。
“The principal would like to see you, dear,” Mrs. Dewitt confided in a hush.
“亲爱的，校长想找你谈谈。”迪威特太太悄悄对她说。
My sister did not look at Mrs. Dewitt when she was speaking. She was
perfecting the art of talking to someone while looking through them. That was my first clue that something would have to give. Mrs. Dewitt was also the English teacher, but more importantly she was married to Mr. Dewitt, who coached boys’ soccer and had encouraged Lindsey to try out for his team. My sister liked the Dewitts, but that morning she began looking into the eyes of only those people she could fight against.
琳茜开口说话，眼睛却没有看着迪威特太太，她趁机练习，希望自己能够视而不见地与人交谈。这是我第一次发现琳茜放弃了一些东西。迪威特太太是英文老师，更重要的是，迪威特先生是男孩们的橄榄球教练，他一直鼓励琳茜加入他的球队，琳茜也非常喜欢迪威特夫妇。但从那天早晨起，琳茜决定不再正视关心的眼神，只有面对那些她想吵架的人时，她才会直视对方。
As she gathered her things, she heard whispers everywhere. She was certain that right before she left the room Danny Clarke had whispered something to Sylvia Henley. Someone had dropped something near the back of the classroom. They did this, she believed, so that on their way to pick it up and back again, they could say a word or two to their neighbor about the dead girl’s sister.
她慢慢收拾桌上的东西，她听到教室四处传来窃窃私语。她确定她离开教室之前，丹尼·克拉克对施薇亚·亨妮说了什么。她相信有人故意把东西放在教室后面，这样大家走到后面拿回东西时，才可以顺便和同学们谈论已经过世的姐姐。
Lindsey walked through the hallways and in and out of the rows of lockers – dodging anyone who might be near. I wished I could walk with her, mimic the principal and the way he always started out a meeting in the auditorium: “Your principal is your pal with principles!” I would whine in her ear, cracking her up.
琳茜穿过走廊，她穿梭于成排的寄物柜中，小心翼翼地躲避可能碰见的人。我真希望能和她走在一起，边走边模仿校长走路的姿势和在校会上讲话的样子。每次在礼堂集合开校会时，校长总喜欢说：“你们的校长就像是一个有原则的朋友！”我每次都在琳茜耳边学校长说话，逗得她忍不住大笑。
But while she was blessed with empty halls, when she reached the main office she was cursed with the drippy looks of consoling secretaries. No matter. She had prepared herself at home in her bedroom. She was armed to the teeth for any onslaught of sympathy.
她很庆幸走廊上没什么人，但她一走进行政中心，马上面临秘书们同情的眼光。没关系，她在家中自己的房间里已经练习好了，她已装备齐全准备应付众人的同情。
“Lindsey,” Principal Caden said, “I received a call from the police this morning. I’m sorry to hear of your loss.”
“琳茜，”校长凯定先生说，“今天早上我接到警方的电话，我为你的失去感到难过。”
She looked right at him. It was not so much a look as a laser. “What exactly is my loss?”
她直视着他，眼神有如激光般尖锐，“我到底失去了什么？”
Mr. Caden felt he needed to address issues of children’s crises directly. He walked out from behind his desk and ushered Lindsey onto what was commonly referred to by the students as The Sofa. Eventually he would replace The Sofa with two chairs, when politics swept through the school district and told him, “It is not good to have a sofa here – chairs are better. Sofas send the wrong message.”
凯定先生觉得他必须直截了当地讨论这个悲剧。他起身走过书桌，带琳茜一起坐在学生们口中的“校长室沙发”上。后来校方对一些问题变得比较敏感，有人建议说：“沙发容易让人产生错觉，在校长室里摆张沙发不太好，椅子比较恰当。”凯定先生听了之后才把“校长室沙发”搬走，换上了两把椅子。
Mr. Caden sat on The Sofa and so did my sister. I like to think she was a little thrilled, in that moment, no matter how upset, to be on The Sofa itself. I like to think I hadn’t robbed her of everything.
凯定先生和琳茜坐在“校长室沙发”上，我希望不管她多么生气，坐在这张大名鼎鼎的沙发上，仍会觉得有点兴奋。我不愿自己剥夺了她所有的快乐。
“We’re here to help in any way we can,” Mr. Caden said. He was doing his best.
“我们会尽全力帮助你。”凯定先生说，他真是尽了全力。
“I’m fine,” she said.
“我很好。”琳茜说。
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“你想不想谈谈？”
“What?” Lindsey asked. She was being what my father called “petulant,” as in, “Susie, don’t speak to me in that petulant tone.”
“谈什么？”琳茜问道，她露出爸爸所谓的“傲慢”神情，爸爸有时对我说：“苏茜，你别用这种傲慢的口气和我说话。”
“Your loss,” he said. He reached out to touch my sister’s knee. His hand was like a brand burning into her.
“你所失去的。”校长说。他伸手碰碰琳茜的膝盖，他的手有如烙印一般，烫了她一下。
“I wasn’t aware I had lost anything,” she said, and in a Herculean effort she made the motions of patting her shirt and checking her pockets.
“我不觉得自己失去了什么。”她说，同时鼓起勇气，强作镇定地拍拍衬衣，检查一下衣袋。
Mr. Caden didn’t know what to say. He had had Vicki Kurtz fall apart in his arms the year before. It had been difficult, yes, but now, in hindsight, Vicki Kurtz and her dead mother seemed an artfully handled crisis. He had led Vicki Kurtz to the couch – no, no, Vicki had just gone right over and sat down on it – he had said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and Vicki Kurtz had burst like an overinflated balloon. He held her in his arms as she sobbed, and sobbed, and that night he brought his suit to the dry cleaner’s.
凯定先生不知道该说什么。一年以前他和维琪·克兹谈话时，维琪哭倒在他的怀里，当时情况确实有点棘手，但现在看来，维琪·克兹似乎成功地克服了丧母的打击。当时他把维琪·克兹带到沙发旁，嗯，其实是维琪自己走到沙发旁，径自坐了下来，“我为你的失去感到抱歉。”话一出口，维琪·克兹马上像爆破的气球一样嚎啕大哭，他把她拥入怀中，她哭了又哭，当天晚上，他把西装送去干洗了。
But Lindsey Salmon was another thing altogether. She was gifted, one of the twenty students from his school who had been selected for the statewide Gifted Symposium. The only trouble in her file was a slight altercation early in the year when a teacher reprimanded her for bringing obscene literature – Fear of Flying – into the classroom.
但琳茜·沙蒙是个完全不同的女孩，她天资聪颖，学校选派了二十名天才生，代表学校出席全州“天才生研讨会”，琳茜就是其中之一。她档案中惟一的小问题是今年年初她带了一本黄色内容的小说《害怕飞行》到课堂上，结果受到老师的申诫。
“Make her laugh,” I wanted to say to him. “Bring her to a Marx Brothers
movie, sit on a fart cushion, show her the boxers you have on with the little devils eating hot dogs on them!” All I could do was talk, but no one on Earth could hear me.
“想办法逗她开心吧，”我真想对校长说，“带她去看麦克斯兄弟的电影，试试看坐了会发出像放屁声音的椅垫，让她看看你那几件上面印着小魔鬼吃热狗的短裤！”我只能不停地说话，但凡间的人却听不到我说什么。
The school district made everyone take tests and then decided who was gifted and who was not. I liked to suggest to Lindsey that I was much more pissed off by her hair than by my dumbo status. We had both been born with masses of blond hair, but mine quickly fell out and was replaced with a grudging growth of mousy brown. Lindsey’s stayed and acquired a sort of mythical place. She was the only true blonde in our family.
学校让每个学生接受测验，借此决定谁是、谁不是天才生，我常对琳茜说，虽然我有点不高兴自己不是天才生，但更让我恼火的是琳茜的金发。我们姐妹生来都有一头金发，但我的发色越来越淡，到后来变成一头不听话的灰褐发；琳茜仍是一头金发，而且闪耀着神秘的光泽，她是家里惟一地道的金发女孩。
But once called gifted, it had spurred her on to live up to the name. She
locked herself in her bedroom and read big books. When I read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, she read Camus’s Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. She might not have gotten most of it, but she carried it around, and that made people – including teachers – begin to leave her alone.
获选为天才生后，琳茜发愤图强，一心想成为名副其实的优等生。她闭门苦读，而且专看重头书，我看《你在那里吗？上帝；是我，玛格丽特》之类的青少年读物，她则研读卡谬的《抵抗》、《反叛》和《死亡》，虽然她或许读不透这些作品，但她把书本带在身边，同学甚至老师们看了都对她敬畏三分。
“What I’m saying, Lindsey, is that we all miss Susie,” Mr. Caden said.
“我的意思是，我们都想念苏茜。”凯定先生说。
She did not respond.
琳茜默不作声。
“She was very bright,” he tried.
“她是个非常聪明的女孩。”凯定先生试着安慰琳茜。
She stared blankly back at him.
琳茜面无表情地回瞪他一眼。
“It’s on your shoulders now.” He had no idea what he was saying, but he
thought the silence might mean he was getting somewhere. “You’re the only Salmon girl now.”
“现在你得负起责任喽，”他不知道自己在说些什么，但琳茜始终保持沉默，让他觉得自己或许说中了什么，“你是沙蒙家惟一的女孩了。”
Nothing.
琳茜依然毫无反应。
“You know who came in to see me this morning?” Mr. Caden had held back his big finish, the one he was sure would work. “Mr. Dewitt. He’s considering coaching a girls’ team,” Mr. Caden said. “The idea is all centered around you. He’s watched how good you are, as competitive as his boys, and he thinks other girls would come out if you led the charge. What do you say?”
“你知道今天上午谁来找我吗？”凯定先生一直保留这个大消息，他确定这件事一定能引发琳茜的反应。“迪威特先生早上来找我，他想组织一个女子球队。”凯定先生继续说，“你是其中的灵魂人物，他看到你表现得那么好，简直和他队里的男选手一样杰出，他觉得如果由你领头的话，其他女孩一定踊跃参加，你觉得怎么样？”
Inside, my sister’s heart closed like a fist. “I’d say it would be pretty hard to play soccer on the soccer field when it’s approximately twenty feet from where my sister was supposedly murdered.”
妹妹的心房有如拳头般紧闭，她面无表情地回答：“据说我姐姐在离球场大约二十英尺的地方遭到谋杀，我想我恐怕很难在这里踢球。”
Score!
这话说到了点子上！
Mr. Caden’s mouth opened and he stared at her.
凯定先生目瞪口呆地看着琳茜。
“Anything else?” Lindsey asked.
“还有什么事吗？”琳茜问道。
“No, I …” Mr. Caden reached out his hand again. There was a thread still – a desire to understand. “I want you to know how sorry we are,” he said.
“没事了，我……”凯定先生再度伸出手，他还抱着一丝希望，指望琳茜能够理解他的用心。“我希望你知道，大家都很难过。”
“I’m late for first period,” she said.
“我第一堂课快迟到了。”她说。
In that moment she reminded me of a character in the Westerns my father loved, the ones we watched together on late-night TV. There was always a man who, after he shot his gun, raised the pistol to his lips and blew air across the opening.
在那一刻，她让我想起西部片中的一个角色。爸爸喜欢西部片，我们父女三人常一起看深夜播出的影片，片中总有一个男人，开枪射击之后把手枪举到唇边，吹一口气，将烟雾吹向荒野。
Lindsey got up and took the walk out of Principal Caden’s office slow. The walks away were her only rest time. Secretaries were on the other side of the door, teachers were at the front of the class, students in every desk, our parents at home, police coming by. She would not break. I watched her, felt the lines she repeated over and over again in her head. Fine. All of it is fine. I was dead, but that was something that happened all the time – people died. As she left the outer office that day, she appeared to be looking into the eyes of the secretaries, but she was focusing on their misapplied lipstick or two-piece paisley crêpe de
chine instead.
琳茜站起来，慢慢走出校长办公室，这是她惟一可以喘息的时刻，秘书们聚集在校长室外，老师们在教室里，学生们坐在课桌后，爸妈在家里，警察时来时往。她绝不崩溃，我看着她，感觉得到她在心里不断重复：很好，一切都很好。没错，我死了，但这种事情随时都会发生，人总是难免一死，不是吗？那天她走过校长室外面的办公室，她看起来好像在直视秘书们的眼睛，其实她看的是秘书们擦得不好的口红，以及她们的绉纱上衣。
At home that night she lay on the floor of her room and braced her feet under her bureau. She did ten sets of sit-ups. Then she got into push-up position. Not the girl’s kind. Mr. Dewitt had told her about the kind he had done in the Marines, head-up, or one-handed, clapping between. After she did ten push-ups, she went to her shelf and chose the two heaviest books – her dictionary and a world almanac. She did bicep curls until her arms ached. She focused only on her breathing. The in. The out.
当天晚上，她躺在自己房间的地上，双脚伸到衣柜下方，做了十下仰卧起坐。然后翻身继续做俯卧撑，她做的可不是女孩子通常做的，而是迪威特先生教的陆战队操式：抬头、单手着地，或是两下之间合掌拍击。做了十下俯卧撑之后，她走到书柜旁取下两本最重的书，一本是大辞典，另一本是世界年鉴。她一手拿一本练习举重，举到手臂发酸才停下来。她只专注于自己的呼吸：吸气，吐气；吸气，吐气。
I sat in the gazebo in the main square of my heaven (our neighbors, the
O’Dwyers, had had a gazebo; I had grown up jealous for one), and watched my sister rage.
邻居欧垂尔家有个阳台，我从小就羡慕他们家的阳台。天堂的广场上也有个大阳台，此时，我坐在阳台上看着满怀怒气的妹妹。
Hours before I died, my mother hung on the refrigerator a picture that
Buckley had drawn. In the drawing a thick blue line separated the air and ground. In the days that followed I watched my family walk back and forth past that drawing and I became convinced that that thick blue line was a real place – an Inbetween, where heaven’s horizon met Earth’s. I wanted to go there into the cornflower blue of Crayola, the royal, the turquoise, the sky.
我过世几小时前，妈妈在冰箱上贴了一张巴克利的画，图画里有条粗粗的蓝线，将天空与地面隔成两半。我死后的那些日子里，我看着家人在画前走来走去，到后来我相信天堂和凡间，真的有这么一条粗粗的蓝线，那是所谓的阴阳界，天堂与人间的地平线在此处交叠，色泽有如蓝紫的矢车菊、宝蓝的土耳其玉及湛蓝的天空，我真希望置身于这片深蓝之中。
Often I found myself desiring simple things and I would get them. Riches in furry packages. Dogs.
我有些单纯的梦想，这些梦想通常也会成真。我想要一些毛茸茸的小动物，我要有小狗作伴。
Every day in my heaven tiny dogs and big dogs, dogs of every kind, ran
through the park outside my room. When I opened the door I saw them fat and happy, skinny and hairy, lean and hairless even. Pitbulls rolled on their backs, the nipples of the females distended and dark, begging for their pups to come and suckle them, happy in the sun. Bassets tripped over their ears, ambling forward, nudging the rumps of dachshunds, the ankles of greyhounds, and the heads of the Pekingese. And when Holly took her tenor sax, set herself up outside the door that looked onto the park, and played the blues, the hounds all ran to form her chorus. On their haunches they sat wailing. Other doors opened then, and women stepped out from where they lived alone or with roommates. I would step
outside, Holly would go into an endless encore, the sun going down, and we would dance with the dogs – all of us together. We chased them, they chased us. We circled tail to tail. We wore spotted gowns, flowered gowns, striped gowns, plain. When the moon was high the music would stop. The dancing stopped. We froze.
于是，在我的天堂里，每天早上会有各种大大小小的狗、在门外的公园奔驰，我一开门就看到这些快乐的小狗，有些瘦小多毛，有些强壮结实，甚至有些是无毛狗。比特犬在地上打滚，母狗的乳头膨胀、黝黑，拼命把小狗赶过来吃奶，一家大小快乐地在阳光下嬉戏。巴萨特矮脚长耳犬被自己的耳朵弄得磕磕绊绊的，小跑着在德国猎犬及大灰狗的脚踝间和京巴的脑袋边穿梭前进。哈莉拿出高音萨克斯风，在门外坐正，对着公园吹奏蓝调音乐，所有大灰狗都围在她身旁，坐在地上随着乐声低嚎。邻居们打开了大门，独居的女人或是有室友的女孩纷纷出来观望。我会走出大门，哈莉在大家热烈的呼声中，不停地再奏一曲。夕阳逐渐西下，我们穿着小碎花、斑点、条纹或是花色简单的睡衣和小狗随着乐声起舞，大家都非常高兴。我们追着小狗跑，小狗们也反过来追我们，大家绕着圈子追来追去，当明月高挂天际时，乐声告一段落，我们也停下来，静静地站着。
Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer, the oldest resident of my heaven, would bring out her violin. Holly tread lightly on her horn. They would do a duet. One woman old and silent, one woman not past girl yet. Back and forth, a crazy schizoid solace they’d create.
此时，天堂里年纪最大的贝赛儿·厄特迈尔太太拿出小提琴，哈莉脚下打着拍子，吹奏萨克斯风，两人开始二重奏。她们两人一个年长而沉默，一个还不到青春期，乐声你来我往，交织出抚慰人心的欢快乐章。
All the dancers would slowly go inside. The song reverberated until Holly, for a final time, passed the tune over, and Mrs. Utemeyer, quiet, upright, historical, finished with a jig.
随着音乐起舞的听众逐渐走进屋内，乐声在空中回荡，哈莉终于示意厄特迈尔太太接手，沉默、严肃、上了年纪的厄特迈尔太太以一曲轻快的三拍吉格舞，画下了休止符。
The house asleep by then; this was my Evensong.
此时四下一片沉寂，这就是我的晚祷。
