-*-
9
对于我要去民政局结婚，而不是去教堂结婚，我家人的恐惧并不是一个晚上就能消散的，但那种恐惧慢慢淡了。第二天，我母亲对我极端愤恨，就好像她触碰的所有东西——咖啡壶、装着牛奶的杯子、糖罐子、一片新鲜的面包——都会让她想砸到我的脸上，然而她没有嚷嚷。我无视她，早上我很早出门了，我去办给家里装电话的手续。我匆忙办完，然后跑到阿尔巴港口，在那里逛书店。我决心要在很短的时间内，克服自己在公开场合说话时的羞怯，比如说在米兰的书店里的场面。我完全凭直觉一股脑选了一些书和杂志，花了不少钱。尼诺说的话经常会回响在我的脑海里，经过多次迟疑之后，我最后选了弗洛伊德的《性学三论》，对于弗洛伊德，我几乎一点都不了解，我知道的关于他的仅有一点理论，也让我无法接受。我还买了两本描写性的小册子。我想“研究”当今世界，就像之前在学校里读教科书、准备考试、写论文那样，也好像我之前对待加利亚尼老师给我的报纸，或者弗朗科在前些年给我的马克思主义小册子的方式。很难说清楚，那段时间我对世界的认识。我和帕斯卡莱聊过，和尼诺聊过，我有点儿关注古巴和拉丁美洲发生的事，我了解城区无法回避的贫穷、莉拉的溃败，还有学校把我的两个弟弟开除的事儿，因为他们在学习上不像我那么肯吃苦。我还有过跟弗朗科长时间的交谈，还有和马丽娅罗莎偶然的会面。现在，所有这些都卷入了一道白烟里（这个世界非常不公平，需要得到改变，但无论是美苏的和平共处，还是欧洲工党，尤其是意大利工党的政治改革，都倾向于让无产阶级处于等待状态，让他们保持附属地位，都在给革命泼冷水，结局是世界陷入僵局。假如社会民主党获胜，那么资本主义就会统治世界，工人阶级也会成为消费主义的一部分）。这些事刺激着我，时不时会让我很激动。我强迫自己更新知识，了解时事，至少在刚开始，我的目的是想出风头。长期以来，我都相信，所有一切都是可以学习的，包括政治热情。
My family’s horror at the idea of a civil
union alone certainly was not exhausted that night, but it diminished. The
next day my mother treated me as if anything she touched—the coffee pot, the
cup with the milk, the sugar bowl, the fresh loaf of bread—were there only to
lead her into the temptation to throw it in my face. Yet she didn’t start
yelling again. As for me I ignored her; I left early in the morning, and went
to start the paperwork for the installation of the telephone. Having taken
care of that business I went to Port’Alba and wandered through the
bookstores. I was determined, within a short time, to enable myself to speak
with confidence when situations like the one in Milan arose. I chose journals
and books more or less at random, and spent a lot of money. After many
hesitations, influenced by that remark of Nino’s that kept coming to mind, I
ended up getting Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality—I knew almost
nothing of Freud and the little I knew irritated me—along with a couple of small
books devoted to sex. I intended to do what I had done in the past with
schoolwork, with exams, with my thesis, what I had done with the newspapers
that Professor Galiani passed on to me or the Marxist texts that Franco had
given me. I wanted to study the contemporary world. Hard to say what I had
already taken in at that time. There had been the discussions with Pasquale,
and also with Nino. There had been some attention paid to Cuba and Latin
America. There was the incurable poverty of the neighborhood, the lost battle
of Lila. There was school, which defeated my siblings because they were less
stubborn than I was, less dedicated to sacrifice. There were the long
conversations with Franco and occasional ones with Mariarosa, now jumbled
together in a wisp of smoke. (The world is profoundly unjust and must be
changed, but both the peaceful coexistence between American imperialism and
the Stalinist bureaucracies, on the one hand, and the reformist politics of
the European, and especially the Italian, workers’ parties, on the other, are
directed at keeping the proletariat in a subordinate wait-*-see situation
that throws water on the fire of revolution, with the result that if the
global stalemate wins, if social democracy wins, it will be capital that
triumphs through the centuries and the working class will fall victim to
enforced consumerism.) These stimuli had functioned, certainly they had been
working in me for a long time, occasionally they excited me. But driving that
decision to bring myself up to date by forced marches was, at least at first,
I think, the old urgency to succeed. I had long ago convinced myself that one
can train oneself to anything, even to political passion.
在付钱买这些书时，我无意中看到我的小说就摆在其中一个书架上，我马上把目光转向了别的地方。每一次我在书店的橱窗里看到我的书和其他那些刚刚出版的新书放在一起，我都会感到一种混合着害怕的自豪，一种强烈的快感，但到最后都会变成不安。当然，这本小说是偶然产生的，是我用二十天写成的，没有花费太大功夫，就好像那是一种化解抑郁的药。当然，我知道什么是伟大的文学作品，我花了很长时间研究古典文学，我写这篇小说时，我从来都没有想过自己是在写一些有价值的东西，但我想找到一种表达方式，最后，我的这种宣泄变成了一本书——一本包含着我自己的东西。现在，“我”就展示在那儿，我看着我自己，我胸口跳得非常厉害。不仅仅是在我的书中，通常在那些小说里，我都感觉有一种让我激动的东西，就像一颗赤裸的、跳跃的心脏，就是在遥远的过去，当莉拉建议我们一起写一个故事时，我感到的那种心跳。这个梦想后来是我完成的。但这是我想要的吗？写作，写作不是随意的事情，要写得比之前好吗？我要研究现在和过去的那些小说，要了解小说的写法，要学习，学习这个世界上的所有东西，唯一的目的就是要塑造那些非常真实的心灵，没有人表现得像我那样到位，即使是莉拉，如果有机会，她也写不了那么好。
As I was paying, I glimpsed my novel on a
shelf, and immediately looked in another direction. Whenever I saw the book
in a window, among other novels that had just come out, I felt inside a
mixture of pride and fear, a dart of pleasure that ended in anguish.
Certainly, the story had come into being by chance, in twenty days, without
struggle, as a sedative against depression. Moreover, I knew what great
literature was, I had done a lot of work in the classics, and it never
occurred to me, while I was writing, that I was making something of value.
But the effort of finding a form had absorbed me. And the absorption had
become that book, an object that contained me. Now I was there, exposed, and
seeing myself caused a violent pounding in my chest. I felt that not only in
my book but in novels in general there was something that truly agitated me,
a bare and throbbing heart, the same that had burst out of my chest in that
distant moment when Lila had proposed that we write a story together. It had
fallen to me to do it seriously. But was that what I wanted? To write, to
write with purpose, to write better than I had already? And to study the
stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to
learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing
living hearts, which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if
she had had the opportunity?
从书店出去后，我在加富尔广场上停了一会儿。那天天气很好，弗里亚街的回廊由钢柱支撑着，看起来很稳固，要比平时干净整洁。我像往常那样，非常仔细地读起了刚买的书和报纸。我从口袋里拿出我新买的笔记本，想要像真正的作家那样，关注自己的思想，悉心观察，记下一些有用的信息。我从头到尾看了一遍《团结报》，记下我不知道的事情。我在《桥报》上看到了彼得罗的父亲的一篇文章，出于好奇，我仔细地读完了。但我觉得，它不像尼诺说的那么重要，那篇文章让我觉得不舒服，有两个原因：首先，圭多·艾罗塔使用的语言要比那个戴着厚眼镜的教授所用的语言更加生硬；其次，文中有一段，他提到了一些女大学生（“这是一个新群体，”他写到，“很明显都不是富家女，那些小姐们穿着朴素的衣服，受到过一些朴素的教育，她们希望通过努力学习，让自己将来不用只待在家里。”）我觉得他在影射我，他是故意的，或者说不加考虑地写了这些。我把这一点也记在了我的笔记里（对于艾罗塔家人来说，我算什么呢？在他们宽阔的视野里，我是不是一朵别在纽扣上的花？），这实在让人心情好不起来，我有些烦了，就开始翻看《晚邮报》。
I came out of the bookshop, I stopped in
Piazza Cavour. The day was fine, Via Foria seemed unnaturally clean and solid
in spite of the scaffolding that shored up the Galleria. I imposed on myself
the usual discipline. I took out a notebook that I had bought recently, I
wished to start acting like a real writer, putting down thoughts,
observations, useful information. I read l’Unità from beginning to end, I
took notes on the things I didn’t know. I found the article by Pietro’s
father in Il Ponte and skimmed it with curiosity, but it didn’t seem as
important as Nino had claimed. Rather, it put me off for two reasons: first,
Guido Airota used the same professorial language as the man with the thick
eyeglasses but even more rigorously; second, in a passage in which he spoke
about women students (“It’s a new crowd,” he wrote, “and by all the evidence
they are not from well-*-mindedness?) and, not exactly in a good mood, in
fact with some irritation, I began to leaf through the Corriere della Sera.
我记得，当时天气很温和，我还记得——可能是我虚构的，或者是真的——当时的味道，就是油炸披萨混合着报纸的气息。我一页一页地翻阅那些报刊，后来我看到了一个让我喘不过气的标题，我的一张照片出现在四列密密的铅字中间。从照片的背景，可以看到我们城区的一小部分，还有隧道。文章的题目是《一个充满野心的女孩的情色回忆——埃莱娜·格雷科的处女作》，后面的签名正是那个戴着厚镜片眼镜的男人。
I remember that the air was warm, and
I’ve preserved an olfactory memory—invented or real—a mixture of printed
paper and fried pizza. Page after page I looked at the headlines, until one
took my breath away. There was a photograph of me, set amid four dense
columns of type. In the background was a view of the neighborhood, with the
tunnel. The headline said: Salacious Memoirs of an Ambitious Girl: Elena
Greco’s Début Novel. The byline was that of the man with the thick
eyeglasses.
-*-
10
读完那篇文章，我出了一身冷汗，感觉自己要晕过去了。我的书在文章里只是引子，他要说的是在最近这十年，在社会、文化和生产的各个领域，从工厂到办公室，还有大学、出版社、电影界，这一代年轻人全都缺乏价值，是被惯坏的一代，整个世界都礼坏乐崩。他时不时会引用我小说中一些句子，用双引号标出来，就是为了展示：我代表了这一代人，我是个糟糕教育的典型产物。在文章最后，他把我定义为，一个通过平庸的淫秽描写来掩盖自己缺乏天分的小姑娘。
I was covered in a cold sweat while I
read; I had the impression that I was close to fainting. My book was treated
as an occasion to assert that in the past decade, in all areas of productive,
social, and cultural life, from factories to offices, to the university,
publishing, and cinema, an entire world had collapsed under the pressure of a
spoiled youth, without values. Occasionally he cited some phrase of mine, in
quotation marks, to demonstrate that I was a fitting exponent of my badly
brought-up generation. In conclusion he called me “a girl concerned with
hiding her lack of talent behind titillating pages of mediocre triviality.”
我哭了起来。自从那本书出版之后，那是我看到的最无情的抨击，不是在一份地方报纸上，而是在一份在整个意大利销售的报纸上。最让我难以忍受的是，我那张微笑的面孔，出现在这样一篇毫不留情的文章中。我是走路回家的，在回家前，我把报纸扔掉了，我很害怕我母亲读到那篇评论，然后会利用它来攻击我。我想象她会把那篇文章剪下来，放进她的剪报集里，每一次我得罪她的时候，她都会翻出来。
I burst into tears. It was the harshest
thing I had read since the book came out, and not in a daily with a small
circulation but in the most widely read newspaper in Italy. Most of all, the
image of my smiling face seemed to me intolerable in the middle of a text so
offensive. I walked home, not before getting rid of the Corriere. I was
afraid my mother might read the review and use it against me. I imagined that
she would have liked to put it, too, in her album, to throw in my face
whenever I upset her.
我看到桌子上只摆放着我的餐具。我父亲在上班，我母亲去邻居家了，不知道去要什么东西，我的弟弟妹妹都已经吃过饭了。我把面条和土豆放进锅里之后，开始看我的那本书。我很绝望地想：这本书也许真的没任何价值，也许他们出这本书，只是想给阿黛尔一个面子。我怎么能写出这么平淡的句子，提出这么平庸的看法？真是太拙劣了，那么多没用的引号。我再也不写了！我很沮丧，吃饭也是味同嚼蜡，我边吃边看着自己的书。这时候埃莉莎回来了，给了我一张纸条，那是斯帕纽洛太太给她的一个电话号码。斯帕纽洛太太对我很热情，我让那些着急找我的人把电话打到她那儿。那张纸条上说有我的三个电话，一个是吉娜·梅托蒂的，是负责出版社印刷的，一个是阿黛尔，最后一个是彼得罗。
I found the table set only for me. My
father was at work, my mother had gone to ask a neighbor for something or
other, and my siblings had already eaten. As I ate pasta and potatoes I
reread at random some passages of my book. I thought desperately: Maybe it
really is worthless, maybe it was published only as a favor to Adele. How
could I have come up with such pallid sentences, such banal observations? And
how sloppy, how many useless commas; I won’t write anymore. Between disgust
with the food and disgust with the book I was depressed, when Elisa arrived
with a piece of paper. It came from Signora Spagnuolo, who had kindly agreed
to let her telephone number be used by anyone who urgently needed to
communicate with me. The piece of paper said that there had been three phone
calls, one from Gina Medotti, who ran the press office at the publisher’s,
one from Adele, and one from Pietro.
斯帕纽洛太太的笔迹歪歪扭扭，看到这三个名字时，我觉得刚才心底里的想法变成了现实——那个眼镜片厚厚的男人写的那些坏话马上传播开来了，在一天之内就人尽皆知了。彼得罗已经看了，他的家人也看了，出版社的编辑也看了。也许尼诺也看到了，甚至我在比萨的老师也看到了。当然，这也会引起加利亚尼老师和她的几个孩子的注意。谁知道呢，也许莉拉也看到了。我一下子哭了起来，这让埃莉莎很害怕。
The three names, written in Signora
Spagnuolo’s labored handwriting, had the effect of giving concreteness to a
thought that until a moment before had remained in the background: the
terrible words of the man with the thick eyeglasses were spreading rapidly,
and in the course of the day they would be everywhere. They had already been
read by Pietro, by his family, by the directors of the publishing house.
Maybe they had reached Nino. Maybe they were before the eyes of my professors
in Pisa. Certainly they had come to the attention of Professor Galiani and
her children. And who knows, even Lila might have read them. I burst into
tears again, frightening Elisa.
“你怎么了？莱农？”
“What’s wrong, Lenù?”
“我觉得不舒服。”
“I don’t feel well.”
“我给你泡一杯洋甘菊茶？”
“Shall I make you some chamomile tea?”
“好吧。”
“Yes.”
她还没来得及泡茶，就有人敲门了，是斯帕纽洛太太。她非常高兴，有点儿气喘吁吁，因为她是一口气爬上楼梯的，她说我男朋友又打电话来了，他还在电话那头等着呢，他声音真好听，好听的北方口音。我马上跑下去接电话，一边对她表示歉意，说打扰她了。彼得罗想安慰我，他说他母亲让他告诉我，千万不要难过，重要的是有人谈论这本书。让斯帕纽洛太太惊异的是——她一直觉得我是一个温和的姑娘——我对着话筒吼道：“假如人们谈这本书时，说的全是坏话，你也让我无动于衷？”他又让我平静一下，然后补充说：“明天在《团结报》上会有一篇文章。”我冷冰冰地挂上了电话，我说：“最好谁也不要理我。”
But there wasn’t time. Someone was
knocking at the door, it was Rosa Spagnuolo. Cheerful, slightly out of breath
from hurrying up the stairs, she said that my fiancé was again looking for
me, he was on the telephone, what a lovely voice, what a lovely northern
accent. I ran to answer, apologizing repeatedly for bothering her. Pietro
tried to console me, he said that his mother urged me not to be upset, the
main thing was that it talked about the book. But, surprising Signora
Spagnuolo, who knew me as a meek girl, I practically screamed, What do I care
if it talks about it if it says such terrible things? He urged me again to be
calm and added: Tomorrow an article is coming out in l’Unità. I ended the
call coldly, I said: It would be better if no one worried about me anymore.
一整晚，我无法闭眼。早上我忍不住跑去买了一份《团结报》。在报刊亭前，我就开始翻阅，那是距离我曾经的小学几步远的一个报刊亭。我又一次看到了我的照片，还是《晚邮报》上刊登的那张，这一次照片不是放在文章中间，而是在文章最上面，在标题旁边，标题是：《年轻的反叛者和老反动派——论埃莱娜·格雷科的新书》。是一个我从来没听说过的作者写的，但那个人的文笔极好，他的话马上起到了疗伤的作用。他毫不吝啬地赞美了我的小说，批判了那个戴着厚眼镜的权威教授。我回到家里，心里舒服一些了，甚至心情完全变好了。我翻阅着我的书，现在又觉得书写得很精彩，很和谐。我母亲一脸讥讽地说：“你是不是中了彩票？”我把那份报纸放在了厨房的桌子上，什么话也没有说。
I couldn’t close my eyes that night. In
the morning I couldn’t contain myself and went out to get l’Unità. I leafed
through it in a rush, still at the newsstand, a few steps from the elementary
school. I was again confronted by a photograph of myself, the same that had
been in the Corriere, not in the middle of the article this time but above
it, next to the headline: Young Rebels and Old Reactionaries: Concerning the
Book by Elena Greco. I had never heard of the author of the article, but it
was certainly someone who wrote well, and his words acted as a balm. He
praised my novel wholeheartedly and insulted the prestigious professor. I
went home reassured, maybe even in a good mood. I paged through my book and
this time it seemed to me well put together, written with mastery. My mother
said sourly: Did you win the lottery? I left the paper on the kitchen table
without saying anything.
在下午的时候，斯帕纽洛太太又出现了，她说有人打电话给我。面对我的尴尬、我的抱歉，她很高兴地说，能给像我这样的姑娘提供帮助，她很高兴，然后又说了我很多好话。“吉耀拉很不幸，”她在楼道里叹息说，“她十三岁时，她父亲就让她在索拉拉的甜食店里干活，还好她和米凯莱订婚了，否则的话，那真是要吃一辈子苦。”她打开家门，经过走廊，把我带到挂在墙上的电话前面。我注意到，她还在电话前放了一把椅子，让我舒舒服服地坐着打电话：人们真是看得起那些念过书的人，大家都认为，那些聪明孩子努力学习，就是为了避免劳累的生活。我想，我该怎么向这个女人解释，我从六岁开始就成了文字和数字的奴隶，我的心情完全依赖这些文字组合，现在的这种愉悦是很罕见的，也是不稳定的，可能只会持续一个小时、一个下午或者一个晚上。
In the late afternoon Signora Spagnuolo
reappeared, I was wanted again on the telephone. In response to my
embarrassment, my apologies, she said she was very happy to be able to be
useful to a girl like me, she was full of compliments. Gigliola had been unlucky,
she sighed on the stairs, her father had taken her to work in the Solaras’
pastry shop when she was thirteen, and good thing she was engaged to Michele,
otherwise she’d be slaving away her whole life. She opened the door and led
me along the hall to the telephone that was attached to the wall. I saw that
she had put a chair there so that I would be comfortable: what deference was
shown to someone who is educated. Studying was considered a ploy used by the
smartest kids to avoid hard work. How can I explain to this woman—I
thought—that from the age of six I’ve been a slave to letters and numbers,
that my mood depends on the success of their combinations, that the joy of
having done well is rare, unstable, that it lasts an hour, an afternoon, a night?
“你看到了吗？”阿黛尔问我。
“Did you read it?” Adele asked.
“是的。”
“Yes.”
“你高兴吗？”
“Are you pleased?”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
“那我要告诉你一个好消息：你的书现在开始卖起来了，假如继续这样下去，我们会加印。”
“Then I’ll give you another piece of good
news: the book is starting to sell, if it keeps on like this we’ll reprint
it.”
“什么意思？”
“What does that mean?”
“意思是，《晚邮报》上的那个朋友以为他能毁掉我们，但他其实帮了我们大忙。再见，埃莱娜，享受你的成功吧。”
“It means that our friend in the Corriere
thought he was destroying us and instead he worked for us. Bye, Elena, enjoy
your success.”
-*-
11
在接下来的几天里，我发现那本书真的火起来了，最明显的标志就是吉娜的电话频繁起来了，她一会儿告诉我报纸上说了什么，一会儿通知我，有哪些书店和文化沙龙邀请我。最后她总是会很热情地说一句：“书卖得很火，格雷科小姐，恭喜您。”谢谢，我说，但我一点儿也高兴不起来。我觉得，出现在报纸上的那些评论很肤浅，他们都是仿照《团结报》上那篇文章的热情洋溢，或者《晚邮报》上的那篇文章的套路来写的。尽管每一次吉娜都会向我重复说，负面评论也会帮助这本书销售，但这还是让我很痛苦，我热切地期望获得赞同，去平衡那些批评，这会让我心里舒服点儿。我不再对我母亲隐藏负面评论，我把所有评论，好的坏的，都交给她。她会皱着眉头尝试着读一段，但她从来都看不过四五行，要么会找茬跟我吵架，要么她会很烦，马上把文章收到她的剪报集里，那是她非常热衷的事儿。她的目标是要把整个集子填满，我没东西给她时，她也会抱怨，她不愿意留白。
The book was selling really well, I
realized in the following days. The most conspicuous sign was the increasing
number of phone calls from Gina, who reported a notice in such-*-such a
newspaper, or announced some invitation from a bookstore or cultural group,
without ever forgetting to greet me with the kind words: The book is taking
off, Dottoressa Greco, congratulations. Thank you, I said, but I wasn’t
happy. The articles in the newspapers seemed superficial, they confined
themselves to applying either the enthusiastic matrix of l’Unità or the
ruinous one of the Corriere. And although Gina repeated on every occasion
that even negative reviews were good for sales, those reviews nevertheless
wounded me and I would wait anxiously for a handful of favorable comments to
offset the unfavorable ones and feel better. In any case, I stopped hiding
the malicious reviews from my mother; I handed them all over, good and bad.
She tried to read them, spelling them out with a stern expression, but she
never managed to get beyond four or five lines before she either found a
point to quarrel with or, out of boredom, took refuge in her mania for
collecting. Her aim was to fill the entire album and, afraid of being left
with empty pages, she complained when I had nothing to give her.
那段时间，最让我痛苦的评论出现在《罗马报》上。那个作者亦步亦趋地模仿《晚邮报》上的文章，是一种非常浮夸的文体，在最后一部分，他反复强调一个主题，就是现在这些女人正在失去控制，看看埃莱娜·格雷科的淫秽小说，就能意识到这一点，简直是粗鄙不堪的《你好，忧愁！》
[1]
的下脚料组成。最让我痛苦的不是那段评论，而是文章后面的签名。这篇文章是尼诺的父亲多纳托·萨拉托雷写的。我想起了小时候，那个男人多么让我震撼，因为他是一本诗集的作者；当我发现他在报纸上写文章时，对我来说，他好像头上戴着一个耀眼的光环。但现在他为什么要写这篇评论？他想报复我，因为他在小说中的那个骚扰女主人公的已婚男人身上看到了自己的影子？我真想打电话给他，用最肮脏的方言骂他一顿，最后我放弃了。因为我想到了尼诺，我发现了一件重要的事：他的经历和我很相似。我们俩都拒绝成为家人的样子：我从小就开始尝试和我母亲拉开距离，而他已经和他父亲断绝关系了。这种相似性给我带来了安慰，我的怒气慢慢消了。
The review that at the time wounded me
most deeply appeared in Roma. Paragraph by paragraph, it retraced the one in
the Corriere, but in a florid style that at the end fanatically hammered at a
single concept: women are losing all restraint, one has only to read Elena
Greco’s indecent novel to understand it, a novel that is a cheap version of
the already vulgar Bonjour Tristesse. What hurt me, though, was not the
content but the byline. The article was by Nino’s father, Donato Sarratore. I
thought of how impressed I had been as a girl by the fact that that man was
the author of a book of poems; I thought of the glorious halo I had enveloped
him in when I discovered that he wrote for the newspapers. Why that review?
Did he wish to get revenge because he recognized himself in the obscene
family man who seduces the protagonist? I was tempted to call him and insult
him atrociously in dialect. I gave it up only because I thought of Nino, and
made what seemed an important discovery: his experience and mine were
similar. We had both refused to model ourselves on our families: I had been
struggling forever to get away from my mother, he had burned his bridges with
his father. This similarity consoled me, and my rage slowly diminished.
但我没有意识到，在我们的城区里，《罗马报》是人们读得最多的报纸，我在当天晚上就发现了。药剂师的儿子吉诺，因为经常去健身房举铁，已经成了一个肌肉发达的青年了，当我晚上经过他父亲的药房门口时，他站在门槛那里，尽管还没有毕业，他穿着一件医生穿的白大褂。他摇晃着那份报纸，叫了我一声，用了相当严肃的语气，因为他在新法西斯社会运动党内部小有成就：“他们写你什么，你看到了吗？”我为了不让他称心，就回答说：“他们写得太多了。”然后我摆了摆手，就走了过去。他有些迷茫，嘟囔了一句什么，然后带着明显的恶意说：“我倒要看看你的这本书，我知道，那是非常有意思的一本书。”
But I hadn’t taken into account that, in
the neighborhood, Roma was read more than any other newspaper. I found out
that evening. Gino, the pharmacist’s son, who lifted weights and had become a
muscular young man, looked out from the doorway of his father’s shop just as
I was passing, in a white pharmacist’s smock even though he hadn’t yet taken
his degree. He called to me, holding out the paper, and said, in a fairly
serious tone, because he had recently moved up a little in the local section
of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement party: Did you see what they’re
writing about you? In order not to give him the satisfaction, I answered,
they write all sorts of things, and went on with a wave. He was flustered,
and stammered something, then he said, with explicit malice: I’ll have to
read that book of yours, I understand it’s very interesting.
那只是一个开始。第二天，我走在路上，米凯莱·索拉拉走近我，说要请我喝一杯咖啡。我们进了他的酒吧，吉耀拉一言不发地给我们准备咖啡，很显然，看到我和她男朋友一起出现，让她很烦。这时候，米凯莱说：“莱农，吉诺让我看了一篇文章，上面说你写了一本成人小说，禁止十八岁以下的小孩看。看看吧，谁能想到呢，这就是你在比萨学到的？这就是大学教给你的东西？我简直不敢想象。我觉得，你和莉娜两个人有一个秘密协议：她做那些坏事儿，你写出来。是不是这样？告诉我真相。”我一下子脸红了，我没等到咖啡上来，就和吉耀拉打了个招呼走了。他在我身后，打趣地喊道：“怎么啦，你生气啦，不要走，我是开玩笑的。”
That was only the start. The next day
Michele Solara came up to me on the street and insisted on buying me a
coffee. We went into his bar and while Gigliola served us, without saying a
word, in fact obviously annoyed by my presence and perhaps also by her
boyfriend’s, he began: Lenù, Gino gave me an article to read where it says
you wrote a book that’s banned for those under eighteen. Imagine that, who
would have expected it. Is that what you studied in Pisa? Is that what they
taught you at the university? I can’t believe it. In my opinion you and Lina
made a secret agreement: she does nasty things and you write them. Is that
right? Tell me the truth. I turned red, I didn’t wait for the coffee, I waved
to Gigliola and left. He called after me, laughing: What’s the matter, you’re
offended, come here, I was joking.
没过多久，我就遇到了卡门·佩卢索。我母亲让我去卡拉奇家的新肉食店里买东西，因为那里的油便宜。当时是下午，店里没有别的顾客，卡门说了我很多恭维话。你真棒啊！她嘀咕说，做你的朋友真是荣幸，是我这辈子唯一的幸运。最后她说，她看了萨拉托雷的文章，因为有个供货商把一份《罗马报》忘在了店里了。她说，萨拉托雷真不是个好东西。我觉得她的愤慨很真诚。她说，她哥哥帕斯卡莱让她看了一篇《团结报》上的文章，写得非常非常好，而且配了一张很漂亮的照片。你很漂亮，她说，你做的每样事情都让人羡慕。她从我母亲那里得知，我很快会和一位大学教授结婚，然后去佛罗伦萨生活，要住在一套很阔气的房子里。她也会结婚，是和在大路上的加油站工作的一个男人，但不知道会是在什么时候，他们都没有钱。后来，她忽然就说起了艾达，而且有很多怨言。艾达取代了莉拉，和斯特凡诺在一起之后，事情就变得更糟糕了，艾达在两家肉食店里都趾高气扬，而且特别针对她，说她偷东西，对她指手画脚，监视她。因此，她实在忍受不了了，她想辞职，去她未来丈夫的加油站里工作。
Soon afterward I had an encounter with
Carmen Peluso. My mother had obliged me to go to the Carraccis’ new grocery,
because oil was cheaper there. It was afternoon, there were no customers,
Carmen was full of compliments. How well you look, she said, it’s an honor to
be your friend, the only good luck I’ve had in my whole life. Then she said
that she had read Sarratore’s article, but only because a supplier had left
Roma behind in the shop. She described it as spiteful, and her indignation
seemed genuine. On the other hand, her brother, Pasquale, had given her the
article in l’Unità—really, really good, such a nice picture. You’re
beautiful, she said, in everything you do. She had heard from my mother that
I was going to marry a university professor and that I was going to live in
Florence in a luxurious house. She, too, was getting married, to the owner of
the gas pump on the stradone, but who could say when, they had no money.
Then, without a break, she began complaining about Ada. Ever since Ada had
taken Lila’s place with Stefano, things had gone from bad to worse. She acted
like the boss in the grocery stores, too, and had it in for her, accused her
of stealing, ordered her around, watched her closely. She couldn’t take it
anymore, she wanted to quit and go to work at her future husband’s gas pump.
我很认真地听她说，我记得，以前安东尼奥想和我结婚，我们也想在加油站给人加油。我把这件事情告诉了她，是想让她开心一下。但她脸色阴沉下来了，嘟囔着说：“是的，怎么不行，你在加油站给人加油！真是不可想象，你真是运气好，摆脱了这个困境。”最后她说了一些很模糊的话：“这世界太不公平了，莱农！太不公平了！需要改变这种处境，大家都受不了了。”她说话时，从抽屉里拿出了一本我的书，封面已经变得脏兮兮、乱糟糟的。这是我在城区看到的第一本我的书，让我震撼的是，刚开始那几页已经变得黑乎乎的，蓬起来了，但后面的纸张都还洁白紧致。“我晚上看几页，”她对我说，“或者没有客人的时候，但我现在才看到三十二页，我时间太少了，所有活儿都是由我来干，卡拉奇家的人让我从早上六点干到晚上九点。”后来，她忽然有些不怀好意地问我：“到那些比较惹火的章节，我还要看多久？”
I listened closely, I remembered when
Antonio and I wanted to get married and, similarly, have a gas pump. I told
her about it, to amuse her, but she muttered, darkening: Yes, why not, just
imagine it, you at a gas pump, lucky you who got yourself out of this
wretchedness. Then she made some obscure comments: there’s too much
injustice, Lenù, too much, it has to end, we can’t go on like this. And as
she was talking she pulled out of a drawer my book, with the cover all
creased and dirty. It was the first copy I’d seen in the hands of anyone in
the neighborhood, and I was struck by how bulging and grimy the early pages
were, how flat and white the others. I read a little at night, she said, or
when there aren’t any customers. But I’m still on page 32, I don’t have time,
I have to do everything, the Carraccis keep me shut up here from six in the
morning to nine in the evening. Then suddenly she asked, slyly, how long does
it take to get to the dirty pages? How much do I still have to read?
那些惹火的章节。
The dirty pages.
过了一会儿，我遇到了怀抱着玛丽亚的艾达，玛丽亚是斯特凡诺的女儿。在卡门给我讲了那一通话之后，我很难对艾达客气起来。我恭维了一下她的女儿，我说孩子的衣服很漂亮，耳环也很美。但艾达有些不耐烦，她跟我说了安东尼奥的情况，说他们开始通信了，他在信里说，他结婚生子了，但那不是真的。她说，我让安东尼奥的头脑坏掉了，他现在不会爱别人了。然后她又说到了我的小说。我没看，她首先向我申明，但我听说那本书不适合放在家里。然后她好像有些气愤地说：“如果孩子长大了，看到那本书，那怎么办？我很抱歉，我不会买的。”最后她补充说：“但我很高兴你能赚钱，祝你好运。”
A little while later I ran into Ada
carrying Maria, her daughter with Stefano. I struggled to be friendly, after
what Carmen had told me. I praised the child, I said her dress was pretty and
her earrings adorable. But Ada was aloof. She spoke of Antonio, she said they
wrote to each other, it wasn’t true that he was married and had children, she
said I had ruined his brain and his capacity to love. Then she started on my
book. She hadn’t read it, she explained, but she had heard that it wasn’t a
book to have in the house. And she was almost angry: Say the child grows up
and finds it, what can I do? I’m sorry, I won’t buy it. But, she added, I’m
glad you’re making money, good luck.
-*-
12
这样的事情一件接着一件发生，这让我怀疑，这本书之所以卖得很火，是因为无论那些充满敌意的报纸，还是支持我的报纸，都指出了这本书里有一些大胆的性描写。我甚至觉得，尼诺提到了莉拉在性方面的问题，是因为他觉得和一个写出类似内容的人，可以随便谈论这些话题。在当时的情况下，我非常想见莉拉，我想，不知道莉拉会不会像卡门那样，也找了一本来看。我想象：晚上，在工厂干完活之后，恩佐孤单单一个人在房间里，她带着孩子在另一个房间，尽管已经累得筋疲力尽了，但她还想看我写的书，她抿着嘴，皱着眉头在看那本书，带着她专注于某件事时的表情。对这本书，她会做出什么评价呢？她会不会也觉得，这本书火起来，只是因为有几页比较过火的描写？但是，她也许并没看这本书，我怀疑她没有钱买，我应该带一本给她。我开始觉得这是一个好主意，后来我放弃了。我还是觉得，莉拉是我生命中最重要的人，但我就是无法下决心去找她，我没时间，我需要尽快学会很多东西。而且，我想到了我们最后一次见面的情景：她的大衣外面套着一件围裙，在工厂的院子里，她站在篝火前，把《蓝色仙女》扔在火里烧掉了——那是她和童年的最后告别，我们之间的路已经越来越远了。也许她会告诉我：“你看到我的生活了吧？我没时间看你写的书。”我想，我还是继续走自己的路吧。
These episodes, one after the other, led
me to suspect that the book was selling because both the hostile newspapers
and the favorable ones had indicated that there were some risqué passages. I
went so far as to think that Nino had alluded to Lila’s sexuality only
because he thought that there was no problem in discussing such things with
someone who had written what I had written. And via that path the desire to
see my friend returned. Who knows, I said to myself, if Lila had the book, as
Carmen did. I imagined her at night, after the factory—Enzo in solitude in
one room, she with the baby beside her in the other—exhausted and yet intent
on reading me, her mouth half open, wrinkling her forehead the way she did
when she was concentrating. How would she judge it? Would she, too, reduce
the novel to the dirty pages? But maybe she wasn’t reading it at all, I
doubted that she had the money to buy a copy, I ought to take her one as a
present. For a while it seemed to me a good idea, then I forgot about it. I
still cared more about Lila than about any other person, but I couldn’t make
up my mind to see her. I didn’t have time, there were too many things to
study, to learn in a hurry. And then the end of our last visit—in the
courtyard of the factory, she with that apron under her coat, standing in
front of the bonfire where the pages of The Blue Fairy were burning—had been
a decisive farewell to the remains of childhood, the confirmation that our
paths by now diverged, and maybe she would say: I don’t have time to read
you, you see the life I have? I went my own way.
无论是出于什么原因，那本书真的卖得越来越好了。有一次，阿黛尔打电话给我，她还是用那种混杂着讽刺和温情的语气对我说：“假如继续这样下去，你要发大财了，不知道到时候你会拿可怜的彼得罗怎么办。”然后她把电话给了她丈夫。她说，圭多想和你说几句。我很激动，我和艾罗塔教授说话的次数很少，我觉得很尴尬。但彼得罗的父亲非常客气，他对我的成功表示祝贺，还开玩笑说，那些批判我的人太保守了，他提到了意大利漫长的中世纪，他赞扬我对意大利的现代化做出了贡献，以及其他诸如此类的话。他没有具体谈论任何关于小说的内容，他当然没看过那本书，他非常忙，但无论如何，他能肯定我、欣赏我，这让我很高兴。
Whatever the reason, the book really was
doing better and better. Once Adele telephoned and, with her usual mixture of
irony and affection, said: If it keeps going like this you’ll get rich and
you won’t know what to do with poor Pietro anymore. Then she passed me on to
her husband, no less. Guido, she said, wants to talk to you. I was agitated,
I had had very few conversations with Professor Airota and they made me feel
awkward. But Pietro’s father was very friendly, he congratulated me on my
success, he spoke sarcastically about the sense of decency of my detractors,
he talked about the extremely long duration of the dark ages in Italy, he
praised the contribution I was making to the modernization of the country,
and so on with other formulas of that sort. He didn’t say anything specific
about the novel; surely he hadn’t read it, he was a very busy man. But it was
nice that he wanted to give me a sign of approval and respect.
马丽娅罗莎对我也热情洋溢，说了很多赞赏的话。刚开始，她好像要跟我谈论我的书，但后来她改变了话题，用非常激动的声音对我说，她想请我去米兰国立大学，她觉得我非常有必要参加那里的运动——难以抵挡的潮流！你明天就出发，她激励我说，你看到法国发生什么了吗？我当然知道，我一直在听收音机，那是一台脏兮兮、油乎乎的蓝色收音机，是我母亲放在厨房里的。我说，我知道，太棒了！在巴黎第十大学、拉丁区的街垒。但她好像比我知道得更多，而且还参与其中。她想和其他几个同伴一起去巴黎，她让我和她开车去。我有些心动，我说好吧，我会考虑的。去米兰，然后去法国，抵达闹着学潮的巴黎，面对粗暴的警察，整个人投身于最近几个月最炽热的运动中去！出国，继续几年前我和弗朗科走过的那条路。如果我能和马丽娅罗莎一起出发，那该多好啊！她是我认识的唯一一个开放的女孩，现在，她可以完全投身于这个世界上的运动，她像男人一样，已经彻底掌握了政治语言。我欣赏她，没有哪个女孩子像她一样，勇敢地破坏旧世界。那些年轻的英雄——鲁迪·杜契克、丹尼尔·孔·本迪，他们能冒着生命危险，来面对反革命的暴力，就好像战争片里那样，只有男人做得到，女人很难模仿他们，只能爱他们，理解和跟随他们的思想，为他们的命运而痛苦。我想到，马丽娅罗莎的那些同伴之中可能会有尼诺，他们互相认识，这也可能。啊，遇到尼诺，和他一起投身于那场运动之中，和他一起冒险，那真是无法想象。那一天就这样过去了。厨房里非常安静，我父母在睡觉，两个弟弟还在外面闲逛，埃莉莎关在洗澡间里洗澡。出发，我明天早上就启程。
Mariarosa was no less affectionate, and
she, too, was full of praise. At first she seemed on the point of talking in
detail about the book, then she changed the subject excitedly, she said she
wanted to invite me to the university: it seemed to her important that I
should take part in what she called the unstoppable flow of events. Leave
tomorrow, she urged, have you seen what’s happening in France? I knew all
about it, I clung to an old blue grease-*-minded, so modern, completely in
touch with the realities of the world, almost as much a master of political
speech as the men. I admired her, there were no women who stood out in that
chaos. The young heroes who faced the violence of the reactions at their own
peril were called Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and, as in war films
where there were only men, it was hard to feel part of it; you could only
love them, adapt their thoughts to your brain, feel pity for their fate. It
occurred to me that among Mariarosa’s friends there might also be Nino. They
knew each other, it was possible. Ah, to see him, to be swept into that
adventure, expose myself to dangers along with him. The day passed like that.
The kitchen was silent now, my parents were sleeping, my brothers were still
out wandering in the streets, Elisa was in the bathroom, washing. To leave,
tomorrow morning.
-*-
13
我出发了，但不是去巴黎。经过那年风波不断的政治选举之后，吉娜让我到处去推广我的书，从佛罗伦萨开始。我先是受邀到师范学院，邀请我的女教授是艾罗塔家一个朋友的朋友。在充满动荡气息的大学里，我给三十几个男女学生做了一场讲座。首先让我感到意外的是，很多女生，比我公公在报纸上写的还要糟糕：她们穿衣打扮都很低俗，在表达自己时过于激动、语言混乱，总因为考试的事儿生气，对老师很不满。在那位教授的引导下，我谈论了学生运动，还有法国发生的事情，我很振奋。我炫耀了我学到的东西，我对自己很满意，我觉得自己的表述很清晰，充满自信。那些女生非常欣赏我说话的方式，还有我懂得的很多事情，以及我在陈述世界的那些复杂问题的能力，我说得井井有条。但我很快意识到，我尽量避免提到自己的书，谈到我的书会让我很不自在，我很害怕出现类似在我们城区里我的那种反应，我更喜欢用我的语言综述一下《悦读》或《每月评论》杂志里提到的思想，但我被邀请到那些地方，目的就是为了谈论我的书。有人要求提问，开始的问题都是围绕着书中的女主人公，她为了摆脱出生的环境做出的努力。只有在最后的时候，有一个姑娘，我记得她很高很瘦，说话时经常被一种紧张的笑声打断，她让我解释一下，为什么在这样一部优雅流畅的小说里，会出现“一段色情描写”。
I left, but not for Paris. After the
elections of that turbulent year, Gina sent me out to promote the book. I
began with Florence. I had been invited to teach by a woman professor friend
of a friend of the Airotas, and I ended up in one of those student-*-in-law
in Il Ponte: badly dressed, badly made up, muddled, excitable, angry at the
exams, at the professors. Urged by the professor who had invited me, I spoke
out about the student demonstrations with manifest enthusiasm, especially the
ones in France. I showed off what I was learning; I was pleased with myself.
I felt that I was expressing myself with conviction and clarity, that the
girls in particular admired the way I spoke, the things I knew, the way I
skillfully touched on the complicated problems of the world, arranging them
into a coherent picture. But I soon realized that I tended to avoid any
mention of the book. Talking about it made me uneasy, I was afraid of
reactions like those of the neighborhood, I preferred to summarize in my own
words ideas from Quaderni piacentini or the Monthly Review. On the other hand
I had been invited because of the book, and someone was already asking to
speak. The first questions were all about the struggles of the female
character to escape the environment where she was born. Then, near the end, a
girl I remember as being tall and thin asked me to explain, breaking off her
phrases with nervous laughs, why I had considered it necessary to write, in
such a polished story, a risqué part.
我很尴尬，也许我脸红了，我语无伦次地说了很多社会原因，最后我说，需要坦率地表现人类所有的体验。我强调道，包括那些难以启齿的事，还有那些我们对自己都不愿意说的事。最后的这句话讨得了大家的欢心，我又重新找到了自信。那位邀请我来的教授对我表示赞赏，说她会考虑这个问题，并且会写信给我。
I was embarrassed, I think I blushed, I
jumbled together a lot of sociological reasons. Finally, I spoke of the
necessity of recounting frankly every human experience, including—I said
emphatically—what seems unsayable and what we do not speak of even to
ourselves. They liked those last words, I regained respect. The professor who
had invited me praised them, she said she would reflect on them, she would
write to me.
她的认可让我脑子里原本就不多的几个观念固定下来，很快就成了我反复说的话。在公众面前，我有时候是用一种风趣的语气说，有时候用一种悲情的语气说，有时候言简意赅，有时候会引申出一段长篇大论。有一天，在都灵的一家书店里，面对很多读者，我用一种潇洒的语气在谈论我的书，觉得非常自在。即使有人用热情或者挑衅的语气，问起书里描写的在沙滩上的性事，我已经能够坦然面对，我已经有了现成答案，而且会说得让人心服口服，并获得认可。
Her approval established in my mind those
few concepts, which soon became a refrain. I used them often in public,
sometimes in an amusing way, sometimes in a dramatic tone, sometimes
succinctly, sometimes developing them with elaborate verbal flourishes. I
found myself especially relaxed one evening in a bookstore in Turin, in front
of a fairly large audience, which I now faced with growing confidence. It
began to seem natural that someone would ask me, sympathetically or
provocatively, about the episode of sex on the beach, and my ready response,
which had become increasingly polished, enjoyed a certain success.
在都灵，是塔兰塔诺教授陪我去参加读者见面会的，这也是出版社的安排。他是阿黛尔的老朋友了，他很自豪地说，他当时真是有先见之明，发现了这本书的潜力，他非常热情地把我介绍给听众，和一段时间以前他在米兰用的语气一样。晚上，读者见面会结束时，他表扬了我，说我在短时间内进步很大。然后，他还是用以往那种充满善意的语气问我：“他们说书中的性爱描写是‘下流的章节’，您为什么会欣然接受呢？您为什么自己也这么对公众说呢？”他跟我解释说，首先，我的小说除了沙滩上的那个情节，还有其他更有意思、更加精彩的章节。其次，那些看起来有些大胆的描述，其实很多女孩子在写作中，都会遇到的。最后他总结说，色情，在很多好的文学作品——真正的叙事艺术中都会出现，有时候虽然跨越了界限，但永远不会下流。
On the orders of the publisher,
Tarratano, Adele’s old friend, had accompanied me to Turin. He said that he
was proud of having been the first to understand the potential of my novel
and introduced me to the audience with the same enthusiastic words he had
used before in Milan. At the end of the evening he congratulated me on the
great progress I had made in a short time. Then he asked me, in his usual
good-humored way: why are you so willing to let your erotic pages be called
“risqué,” why do you yourself describe them that way in public? And he
explained to me that I shouldn’t: my novel wasn’t simply the episode on the
beach, there were more interesting and finer passages; and then, if here and
there something sounded daring, that was mainly because it had been written
by a girl; obscenity, he said, is not alien to good literature, and the true
art of the story, even if it goes beyond the bounds of decency, is never
risqué.
我脑子有些乱——那个非常有文化的男人想婉转对我说的是，我小说里的那些“罪过”，其实是非常轻微的，是可以被原谅的，而我每次那么大张旗鼓地解释，好像那些东西是致命的一样，我错了。总的来说，我太夸张了，我迎合了公众短浅的目光。我想：现在够了，我不要表现得那么低三下四，讨好别人，我要学会对我的读者说不，我不应该让自己降到他们的水平。我觉得下次一有机会，我就会用一种比较严厉的语气，回应对那几页内容提出问题的人。
I was confused. That very cultured man
was tactfully explaining to me that the sins of my book were venial, and that
I was wrong to speak of them every time as if they were mortal. I was
overdoing it, then. I was submitting to the public’s myopia, its superficiality.
I said to myself: Enough, I have to be less subservient, I have to learn to
disagree with my readers, I shouldn’t descend to their level. And I decided
that at the first opportunity I would be more severe with anyone who wanted
to talk about those pages.
晚饭是在一家宾馆的餐厅里，是出版社为我们预订的，我有些尴尬，但还是饶有兴趣地听着塔兰塔诺引用的文学作品。他再次声明，我是一位相当纯洁的女作家，他称呼我为“亲爱的孩子”。他说，亨利·米勒，还有二十世纪二三十年代不少有天分的女作家，她们描写的性事是我现在也无法想象的。我把这些作家的名字都写在了本子上，同时，我心里开始琢磨，这个男人虽然表扬了我，但他一定认为，我并没什么天分；在他眼里，我是一个侥幸获得成功的小姑娘；甚至那些最吸引读者的章节，在他看来也不过如此，只能震撼到那些懂得不多的人，但像他那样的知识分子会觉得这没什么。
At dinner, in the hotel restaurant where
the press office had reserved a table for us, I listened, half embarrassed,
half amused, as Tarratano quoted, as proof that I was essentially a chaste
writer, Henry Miller, and explained, calling me dear child, that not a few
very gifted writers of the twenties and thirties could and did write about
sex in a way that I at the moment couldn’t even imagine. I wrote down their
names in my notebook, but meanwhile I began to think: This man, in spite of
his compliments, doesn’t consider that I have much talent; in his eyes I’m a
girl who’s had an undeserved success; even the pages that most attract
readers he doesn’t consider outstanding, they may scandalize those who don’t
know much but not people like him.
我说我有点儿累了，我搀扶着和我共餐的人站起来——他喝得有点儿多，他是一个小个子男人，肚子很大，一副美食家的样子，一绺绺白发耷拉在耳朵上面，他的耳朵很大，脸红扑扑的，鼻子也很大，嘴唇很薄，眼睛很灵活，他抽烟很凶，手指是黄色的。在电梯里，他想拥抱我，亲吻我，尽管我挣扎着想推开他，他还是不放弃。我接触到他的肚子，还有他满嘴的酒气，那感觉深深刻在了我的脑海里。到那时候为止，我从来都没想到过，一个年老的男人、我未来婆婆的朋友，那么善良、有文化，却会表现出那副样子。我们到了走廊里，他赶忙向我道歉，他说那都是酒的错，他很快进到他的房间里，关上了房门。
I said that I was a little tired and
helped my companion, who had drunk too much, to get up. He was a small man
but had the prominent belly of a gourmand. Tufts of white hair bristled over
large ears, he had a red face interrupted by a narrow mouth, a big nose, and
very bright eyes; he smoked a lot, and his fingers were yellowed. In the
elevator he tried to kiss me. Although I wriggled out of his embrace I had a
hard time keeping him away; he wouldn’t give up. The touch of his stomach and
his winey breath stayed with me. At the time, it would never have occurred to
me that an old man, so respectable, so cultured, that man who was such a good
friend of my future mother-*-law, could behave in an unseemly way. Once we
were in the corridor he hastened to apologize, he blamed the wine, and went
straight to his room.
-*-
14
第二天吃早饭时，还有坐车去米兰的一路上，他都在很动情地说着他生命里最重要的一段时光——一九四五年到一九四八年。我从他的声音里听出一种非常真切的忧伤，但当他提到现在的革命气氛时，那种忧伤消失了，变得充满热情，我觉得这种热情也是真诚的。这种激情，他说，正在席卷年轻人，还有老人。我一直在点头，打动我的是他的劲头，他想让我觉得，在我面前，他过去的激情又回来了，我对他有些同情。后来，他提到了他的个人经历，我很快推算了一下，眼前的这个男人是五十八岁。
The next day, at breakfast and during the
entire drive to Milan, he talked passionately about what he considered the
most exciting period of his life, the years between 1945 and 1948. I heard in
his voice a genuine melancholy, which vanished, however, when he went on to
describe with an equally genuine enthusiasm the new climate of revolution,
the energy—he said—that was infusing young and old. I kept nodding yes,
struck by how important it was for him to convince me that my present was in
fact the return of his thrilling past. I felt a little sorry for him. A
random biographical hint led me, at a certain point, to make a quick
calculation: the person with me was fifty-eight years old.
到了米兰，我让他在距出版社没几步远的地方把我放下车，我告别了这位陪同我的人。因为前一天晚上没有睡好，我有一点晕乎。在路上，我想尽量摆脱和塔兰塔诺的身体接触带来的不适，但我还是有一种被玷污的感觉，类似于我们城区里的那种污秽。在出版社里，我受到了热烈欢迎，不是几个月前的客气，而是一种愉快和得意的祝贺，好像在说：我们多明智啊，我们料到了你很棒。甚至是接线员也出来向我祝贺，她从电话间里出来拥抱了我，她是唯一真正为我感到高兴的人。那个吹毛求疵的编辑，就是负责修订我的书的人，也第一次请我吃饭。
Once in Milan I had the driver drop me
near the publishing house, and I said goodbye to my companion. I had slept
badly and was in something of a daze. On the street I tried to eradicate my
disgust at that physical contact with Tarratano, but I still felt the stain
of it and a confusing continuity with a kind of vulgarity I recognized from
the neighborhood. At the publisher’s I was greeted warmly. It wasn’t the
courtesy of a few months earlier but a sort of generalized satisfaction that
meant: how clever we were to guess that you were clever. Even the switchboard
operator, the only one there who had treated me condescendingly, came out of
her booth and embraced me. And for the first time the editor who had done
that punctilious editing invited me to lunch.
当我们坐在一个距离出版社没几步远、空荡荡的小餐厅里，他就开始跟我说，我的文字里有一种迷人的东西。在我们吃饭的间隙，他建议我不要躺在功劳簿上，我应该开始着手准备下一本小说。之后他又提醒我，那天三点我要去一趟米兰国立大学，我在那儿有一个读者见面会。这个见面会和马丽娅罗莎没什么关系，这次出版社通过自己的途径组织了一批学生。我问他我到了那里之后该找谁。那个和我一起吃饭的权威编辑用自豪的语气说：“我儿子会在学校门口等您。”
As soon as we sat down in a half-empty
restaurant near the office, he returned to his emphasis on the fact that my
writing guarded a fascinating secret, and between courses he suggested that I
would do well to plan a new novel, taking my time but not resting too long on
my laurels. Then he reminded me that I had an appointment at the state
university at three. Mariarosa had nothing to do with it; the publishing
house itself, through its own channels, had organized something with a group
of students. Whom should I look for when I get there? I asked. My
authoritative lunch companion said proudly: My son will be waiting for you at
the entrance.
我从出版社拿了行李去宾馆，在宾馆没待几分钟就去大学了。天气酷热难耐，到了大学，我看到到处贴满了标语，还有很多红旗，众多参加斗争的人们，还有一些牌子，上面写着他们的纲领，到处都是大声说话、谈笑和鸣笛的声音，有一种令人焦虑不安的气氛。我在那里转了一圈，想找到任何一个和我相关的东西。我记得，当时有一个黑头发的男生撞了我，他跑过来，匆匆忙忙地撞到了我，打了一个趔趄，等他回过神来，马上就跑开了，就好像有人在追他一样，但他身后没有人。我记得，有一阵阵很清晰的喇叭声，刺破了让人窒息的空气。我记得有一个金发姑娘，身材很娇小，她拉着一个很粗的铁链子，声音很响，她大声对一个人喊“我来了！”，一边催促着。我记得这些，是因为我在等着有人认出我、走近我，我拿出了笔记本，摆出一副作家的样子，把看到的情景都记了下来。但过了半个小时，还是没有人来。这时候，我留心地看着那些贴在墙上的纸张和通告，想找到我的名字，或者那部小说的名字，但没有找到。我开始变得有些焦躁，我放弃了询问学生，我不好意思提到我的小说，因为四处墙上都贴满了标语，上面提到的问题要比我的小说重要。我发现自己怀着两种全然不同的情感：我非常喜欢那些高调的男生女生，喜欢他们肆无忌惮的声音和举动；另一面则是我从小就有的对混乱的恐惧，当时在那个地方，我觉得混乱可能会席卷我，很快就会出现一个无法对抗的权威人物——校工、教授、校长或者警察，会当场把我揪住——我总是那么听话，结果受到了惩罚。
I retrieved my bag from the office, and
went to the hotel. I stayed a few minutes and left for the university. The
heat was unbearable. I found myself against a background of posters dense
with writing, red flags, and struggling people, placards announcing
activities, noisy voices, laughter, and a widespread sense of apprehension. I
wandered around, looking for signs that had to do with me. I recall a
dark-haired young man who, running, rudely bumped into me, lost his balance,
picked himself up, and ran out into the street as if he were being pursued,
even though no one was behind him. I recall the pure, solitary sound of a
trumpet that pierced the suffocating air. I recall a tiny blond girl, who was
dragging a clanking chain with a large lock at the end, and zealously
shouting, I don’t know to whom: I’m coming! I remember it because in order to
seem purposeful, as I waited for someone to recognize me and come over, I
took out my notebook and wrote down this and that. But half an hour passed,
and no one arrived. Then I examined the placards and posters more carefully,
hoping to find my name, or the title of the book. It was useless. I felt a
little nervous, and decided not to stop one of the students: I was ashamed to
cite my book as a subject of discussion in an environment where the posters
pasted to the walls proclaimed far more significant themes. I found to my
annoyance that I was poised between opposing feelings: on the one hand, a
strong sympathy for all those young men and women who in that place were
flaunting, gestures and voices, with an absolute lack of discipline, and, on
the other, the fear that the disorder I had been fleeing since I was a child
might, now, right here, seize me and fling me into the middle of the
commotion, where an incontrovertible power—a Janitor, a Professor, the
Rector, the Police—would quickly find me at fault, me, me who had always been
good, and punish me.
我不想把这当回事儿，在一群比我小不了几岁的学生面前讲那老一套，这有什么意义呢？我想回宾馆，我要享受我作为成功女作家的生活——旅行，经常在餐馆里吃饭，在宾馆里睡觉。但这时候，有五六个姑娘急急忙忙从我前面经过，她们都拎着包，我不由自主地跟着她们向前走去，走进吵吵嚷嚷的人群，走进号角声里。走着走着，我走到一间挤满人的教室前面，正好在这时候，教室里传出了一阵愤怒的喊叫。那几个姑娘进去了，我也跟着她们小心翼翼地进去了。
I thought of sneaking away, what did I
care about a handful of kids scarcely younger than me, to whom I would say
the usual foolish things? I wanted to go back to the hotel, enjoy my
situation as a successful author who was traveling all over, eating in restaurants
and sleeping in hotels. But five or six busy-looking girls passed by,
carrying bags, and almost against my will I followed them, the voices, the
shouts, even the sound of the trumpet. Like that, walking and walking, I
ended up outside a crowded classroom from which, just then, an angry clamor
arose. And since the girls I was following went in, I, too, cautiously
entered.
几个派别在进行激烈的辩论，无论是挤在教室里的人，还是聚集在讲台边的几撮人，他们都很激动。我站在门边，随时准备离开，其实我已经想离开了，因为整个教室乌烟瘴气、群情激愤。
A sharp conflict involving various
factions was under way, both in the packed classroom and in a small crowd
that besieged the lectern. I stayed near the door, ready to leave, already
repelled by a burning cloud of smoke and breath, by a strong odor of excitement.
但我又想搞清楚状况，我觉得，他们在讨论纲领的问题。当时的情景是：有人在叫喊，有人沉默不语，有人开玩笑，有人大笑，有人像战场上的传令兵一样，快速地走来走去，有人对什么事情都不关注，还有人在学习——没人会觉得，他们可能达成一致。这时候，我已经习惯了那种喧闹和气味，我希望马丽娅罗莎也在里面。那里有好多人，男性居多，帅的、丑的、优雅的、不修边幅的、暴力的、惊恐的还有有趣的。我带着好奇，看着那些女生，我觉得我是唯一一个单独出现在那儿的女人。有些女生——比如说我跟着她们来到这里的那几位，她们挨得很近，在拥挤的教室里分发传单，她们一起叫喊，一起欢笑，她们之间保持几米远的距离，都很小心，以免走散。她们有可能是老朋友，也可能是临时认识的，她们组成一个团体，也许是为了获得进入这间混乱的教室的勇气。她们受到这种斗争场面的吸引，决定面对挑战，但条件是彼此不分开，就好像她们在安全的地方已经事先说好了，假如一个人离开，其他人也会跟着离开。其他女生则要么和女同学在一起，要么和男朋友在一起——她们夹杂在男生的群体里，会做出一些很私密的动作，表现得很豪放，她们愉快地跨越了安全线，但我觉得她们是最幸福、最自豪，也是最前卫的。
I tried to orient myself. I think they
were discussing procedural matters, in an atmosphere, however, in which no
one—some were shouting, some were silent, some poking fun, some laughing,
some moving rapidly like runners on a battlefield, some paying no attention,
some studying—seemed to think that agreement was possible. I hoped that
Mariarosa was there somewhere. Meanwhile I was getting used to the uproar,
the smells. So many people: mostly males, handsome, ugly, well-dressed,
scruffy, violent, frightened, amused. I observed the women with interest; I
had the impression that I was the only one who was there alone. Some—for
example the ones I had followed—stayed close together, even as they
distributed leaflets in the crowded classroom: they shouted together, laughed
together, and if they were separated by a few meters they kept an eye on each
other so as not to get lost. Longtime friends or perhaps chance
acquaintances, they seemed to draw from the group the authority to stay in
that place of chaos, seduced by the lawless atmosphere, yes, but open to the
experience only on the condition that they not separate, as if they had
decided beforehand, in more secure places, that if one left they would all
leave. Other women, however, by themselves or at most in pairs, had
infiltrated the male groups, displaying a provocative intimacy, the
lighthearted dissolution of safe distances, and they seemed to me the
happiest, the most aggressive, the proudest.
我感到自己和这个环境格格不入。我出现在那里，假如要沉浸在那些烟雾、气味之中，要融入其中，我也应该大喊几句，但这里的气味，让我想起了安东尼奥身上发出的味道，还有当我们在池塘边耳鬓厮磨时他的呼吸。我真是太可怜了，一心一意地追求学业，基本上没怎么去过电影院，从来都没有买过碟片，我从来都没有成为某些歌手的追随者，没收集过歌手签名，我从来都没去听过音乐会，我从来都没有喝醉过，我少数的性经验也是偷偷摸摸地，在不安中、在担惊受怕中进行的。但这些女生呢，她们的状态都差不多，她们应该活得很潇洒，面对这种彻底的改变，她们要比我更加有准备，如果有机会，我一定会和她们一样。也许，她们觉得出现在那里，出现在那种氛围里，不是一件出格的事情，而是一种正确、迫切的选择。我现在有一点儿钱了，我不知道还会赚到多少钱，我想，我可以弥补一些已经失去的东西。哦，或者不行，我太学究了，太无知了，太有控制力了，太习惯于冷静地生活，存储那些思想和数据，我太接近于婚姻和最后的归宿了，总之我太愚钝了，我把自己安置在已经日薄西山的秩序里。想到最后一点，我有些害怕。我想，我要马上离开这个地方，这里每个动作，每句话，都是对我付出的努力的嘲弄，但我没走，而是挤进了拥挤的教室。
I felt different, there illegally,
without the necessary credentials to shout myself, to remain inside those
fumes and those odors that brought to mind, now, the odors and fumes that
came from Antonio’s body, from his breath, when we embraced at the ponds. I
had been too wretched, too crushed by the obligation to excel in school. I
had hardly ever gone to the movies. I had never bought records, yet how I
would have liked to. I wasn’t a fan of any singers, hadn’t rushed to
concerts, collected autographs; I had never been drunk, and my limited sexual
experiences had taken place uncomfortably, amid subterfuges, fearfully. Those
girls, on the other hand, to varying degrees, must have grown up in easier
circumstances, and were more prepared to change their skin; maybe they felt
their presence in that place, in that atmosphere, not as a derailment but as
a just and urgent choice. Now that I have some money, I thought, now that
I’ll earn who knows how much, I can have some of the things I missed. Or
maybe not, I was now too cultured, too ignorant, too controlled, too
accustomed to freezing life by storing up ideas and facts, too close to
marriage and settling down, in short too obtusely fixed within an order that
here appeared to be in decline. That last thought frightened me. Get out of
this place right away, I said to myself, every gesture or word is an insult
to the work I’ve done. Instead I slipped farther inside the crowded
classroom.
一个很漂亮的女生马上就吸引了我的注意力，她脸上的线条很优美，黑色的长发披在肩上。她肯定要比我年轻，看到她之后，我没办法把目光移开。她站在一群看起来充满斗志的年轻人中间，一个大约三十岁的男人，就像保镖一样，紧贴着站在她身后，那个男人抽着一根雪茄。让她与众不同的，除了美貌之外，是她怀里还抱着一个没几个月大的婴儿，她正在给孩子喂奶，同时还关注着事情的进展，时不时会叫喊几句。那个小孩穿着天蓝色的衣服，小腿和小脚都露在外面，他的嘴离开了奶头，但他妈妈没把乳房收起来，她的白衬衣扣子解开着，胸部鼓胀，她皱着眉，嘴半闭着。当她意识到儿子不再吃奶，就又机械地把奶头给他。
I was struck immediately by a very
beautiful girl, with delicate features and long black hair that hung over her
shoulders, who was certainly younger than me. I couldn’t take my eyes off
her. She was standing in the midst of some combative young men, and behind
her a dark man about thirty, smoking a cigar, stood glued to her like a
bodyguard. What distinguished her in that environment, besides her beauty,
was that she was holding in her arms a baby a few months old, she was nursing
him and, at the same time, closely following the conflict, and occasionally
even shouting something. When the baby, a patch of blue, with his little
reddish-colored legs and feet uncovered, detached his mouth from the nipple,
she didn’t put her breast back in the bra but stayed like that, exposed, her
white shirt unbuttoned, her breast swollen, her mouth half open, frowning,
until she realized the child was no longer suckling and mechanically tried to
reattach him.
在这个吵吵嚷嚷的教室里，到处都乌烟瘴气的，这个孩子让我觉得很不安，而那个女生看起来不像一个正常的母亲。她外表很秀丽，虽然比我还小，却要承担起抚养儿子的责任。看起来她好像在抗拒自己的身份，她和那种全身心照料自己孩子的年轻女人没有任何共同点。她一边在叫喊，一边在做手势，有时候会发言，有时候生气地笑着，用鄙视的动作指着某个人。然而，儿子是她的一部分，他在找乳房，有时候会叼不住乳头。他们一起形成了一组晃动的影像，好像一幅画在玻璃上的画，而玻璃随时都可能破裂——那孩子也许会从她怀里掉下去，一个不小心的动作，手肘或者别的什么东西会碰到他的头。后来，马丽娅罗莎出现在这女孩的身旁，我很高兴。我想，她终于出现了。她真是活跃，脸上熠熠生辉，她真友好，她跟那个年轻母亲非常亲密。我摇了摇手，但她没看到我，她在那个女生耳边说了些什么，然后就消失了。过了一会儿，她出现在围着讲台的那堆人中间。这时候，从侧门闯进来一群人，教室里的人稍稍平息了一些。马丽娅罗莎做了一个手势，得到了大家的回应，她抓住麦克风，简短地说了几句，整个拥挤的教室安静下来了。这时候，有几秒的时间，我觉得在米兰，在那段紧张的日子里，我自己的不安，好像有一种力量让我脑子里的阴影全部消失了。在那几天里，我有多少次想到过我早期的政治教育？马丽娅罗莎把麦克风给了她旁边一个年轻人，我马上就认出了那个人——弗朗科·马里，我在比萨最初那几年的男朋友。
That girl disturbed me. In the noisy
smoke-filled classroom, she was an incongruous icon of maternity. She was
younger than me, she had a refined appearance, responsibility for an infant.
Yet she seemed determined to reject the persona of the young woman placidly
absorbed in caring for her child. She yelled, she gesticulated, she asked to
speak, she laughed angrily, she pointed to someone with contempt. And yet the
child was part of her, he sought her breast, he lost it. Together they made
up a fragile image, at risk, close to breaking, as if it had been painted on
glass: the child would fall out of her arms or something would bump his head,
an elbow, an uncontrolled movement. I was happy when, suddenly, Mariarosa
appeared beside her. Finally: there she was. How lively, how bright, how
cordial she was: she seemed to be friendly with the young mother. I waved my
hand, she didn’t see me. She whispered briefly in the girl’s ear,
disappeared, reappeared in the crowd that was gathered around the lectern. Meanwhile,
through a side door, a small group burst in whose mere arrival calmed people
down. Mariarosa signaled, waited for a signal in response, grabbed the
megaphone, and spoke a few words that silenced the packed classroom. For a
few seconds I had the impression that Milan, the tensions of that period, my
own excitement had the power to let the shadows I had in my head emerge. How
many times had I thought in those days of my early political education?
Mariarosa yielded the megaphone to a young man beside her, whom I recognized
immediately. It was Franco Mari, my boyfriend from the early years in Pisa.
