長大之後,我也變成了你們

我們翻譯這篇文章的理由

汪曾祺在《哀哀父母，生我劬勞》一文中寫道:「中國散文，包括寫父母的悼念性文章，自四十年代至七十年代有一個斷裂，其特點是作假……不斷地搞運動，使人心變了，變得粗硬寡情了。不知是誰發明了一種東西，叫做『劃清界限』，是親子之情變得淡薄了，有時直如路人。更有甚者，變成仇敵，失去人性。」要求「劃清界限」而內心又無法和不願「劃清界限」，也許就是阻擋我們處理好原生家庭關係的一大阻礙。正如龍應臺在《天長地久》裡所說的：「出國時，父母到松山機場送我。那時候出國留學就像永別。我進海關之前，有沒有回頭看美君一眼？一定沒有。當時我的心目中是沒有父母的。父母就是理所當然地在那，就像家裡的家具一樣。」年少的時候，我們拼命想擺脫自己身上或多或少父母的影子，渴望逃離家庭，也許因為對於家庭的記憶讓人覺得壓抑。長大之後發現我們真不愧是他們的孩子。終於，我們漸行漸遠，卻又慢慢靠近。親情，還是有滋味可品的。我們慢慢走向父母的過程，就像拉丁語「ave atque vale「所言，是致意，也是告別。

——朱小釗

👇

長大之後，我也變成了你們

作者：James Wood 

譯者：王雅婧

校對：朱小釗

點評&推薦閱讀：羅玉池

策劃：朱小釗

Nietzsche says somewhere that the industrious, virtuous English ruined Sundays. I knew this at the age of twelve—that is, the Sunday part and the ruination part. When I was growing up, Sunday morning was all industry and virtue, a religious bustle: the dejected selection of formal clothes (tie, jacket, gray trousers); a quick pre-ecclesiastical breakfast; lace-up shoes handed to my father, master of the polishing arts (that oily Kiwi cake, glistening in its tin like food). Then the eternal boredom of church, with its ponderously enthusiastic adults. And, after that, Sunday lunch, as regimented as the Hapsburg Sunday lunches of brisket of beef and cherry dumplings that the Trotta family eats week after week in 「The Radetzky March.」 A joint of beef, or of lamb, or of pork, with gravy, roast potatoes, and a selection of fatally weakened vegetables (softened cauliflower, tattered Brussels sprouts, pale parsnips, all boiled punitively, as if to get the contagion out of them). It was the nineteen-seventies, in a small town in the North of England, but it could almost have been the eighteen-seventies. The only unusual element in this establishment was that my father cooked lunch. He cooked everything for our family, and always had; my mother was never interested in the kitchen, and gladly conceded that territory.尼採曾說過，正是英國人數十年如一日的勤懇以及對美德的不懈追求「毀」了周日的美好時光。對此，十二歲的我就深以為然。在我成長的過程中，周日的早晨往往就是厲行勤勞，追求美德的早晨，要為參加禮拜而忙前忙後：先是沒精打採地挑選正裝（領帶啊夾克衫啊灰色褲子之類的），在禮拜開始前匆忙吃完早餐，把系好的鞋子遞給父親，他拋光打蠟的手藝可是相當了得（那罐頭裡油光晶亮的獼猴桃蛋糕十分逼真，正是出自父親之手）。在教堂裡的每分每秒都十分煎熬，而大人們卻十分投入，一副深沉嚴肅的模樣。午餐像《拉德茨基進行曲》（the Radetzky March）裡特洛塔一家每周吃的哈布斯堡周日午餐一般固定，頓頓都是牛胸肉和櫻桃餃子。教會的午餐包括燉牛肉（有時候是羊肉或豬肉）、烤土豆和一些蔫巴巴的讓人難以下咽的蔬菜（有嫩花菜、抱子甘藍碎、清口歐防風等，全都煮得稀爛，好像為了防止傳染病似的）。這般景象在70年代英格蘭北部的小鎮上很是常見，80年代也變化不大，不過後來我們就改在家裡吃父親做的午飯。廚房一直以來都是父親的地盤，他幾乎包攬了我們家所有燒菜燒飯的活。母親對烹飪從來就不感興趣，自然是愉快地接受了這樣的分工。After lunch, tired and entitled—but sweetly, not triumphantly—my father sat in the sitting room and listened to classical music on the record player. He fell asleep gradually, not really intending to succumb. He wanted to be awake for one of his favorite composers, a narrow but rich cycle of Beethoven (piano sonatas and string quartets), Haydn (string quartets), and Schubert (lieder, especially 「Die Winterreise」). These three masters were almost as unvarying as the rotation of Sunday beef, lamb, and pork. My brother and sister and I were all musical children, so we would be appealed to, as we crept toward the door. 「Don’t go quite yet—you』ll miss the next one, 『Der Lindenbaum,』 which Fischer-Dieskau does very well. He has the advantage over Peter Schreier.」 My father’s musical discussion involved grading performances; though an intelligent auditor, he didn’t play a musical instrument. So my memory of those Sunday afternoons is as much a memory of names as of music: 「No one has really approached the young Barenboim, in those late sonatas, except Kempff. But of course Kempff is a completely different pianist. Solomon, whom I heard playing the last two sonatas in London, when I was still at school, was tremendously fast and powerful.」 Richter, Kempff, Schnabel, Barenboim, Brendel, Ogdon, Pollini, Gilels, Arrau, Michelangeli, Fischer-Dieskau, Schreier, Schwarzkopf, Sutherland, Lott, Vickers, Pears—all the precious names of childhood.午飯後，略帶疲憊的父親會在客廳休息，享受他的獨屬時光。聽著錄音機裡的古典音樂，父親面露愉悅，卻沒有一絲張揚。慢慢地，他睡著了，不過只是小憩而已，等到錄音機放到他喜歡的作品時，父親便會醒來全神貫注地聆聽。父親喜歡的作曲家不外乎貝多芬（鋼琴奏鳴曲和弦樂四重奏）、海頓（弦樂四重奏）和舒伯特（抒情曲，尤其是《冬之旅》），但光是這三位大師已足以呈現一場聽覺盛宴。就像周日固定不變的午餐一樣，父親總是不厭其煩地循環著他們的作品。我和哥哥妹妹打小就喜歡音樂，當我們躡手躡腳地走到客廳門口時，總會被古典音樂吸引。「別急著走啊，聽聽下一首。下一首是菲舍爾-狄斯考唱的《菩提樹》，他唱得太好了，比彼得•施萊爾厲害。」父親可以算是位出色的聽眾，與我們討論音樂時還會給出自己的評價，但實際上他並不會演奏樂器。所以那些在周日下午與父親一起聽音樂的記憶，也僅剩下一些樂曲的名字罷了：「在後期的奏鳴曲中，除了肯普夫，還沒有人的水平能達到年輕時的巴倫博伊姆。不過肯普夫的確是位風格獨特的鋼琴家。至於所羅門，我還在上學的時候就在倫敦聽過他演奏的最後兩首奏鳴曲，他演奏得嫻熟流暢、鏗鏘有力。」裡赫特、肯普夫、施納貝爾、巴倫博伊姆、布倫德爾、奧格登、波利尼、吉列爾斯、阿勞、米開朗傑利、菲舍爾-狄斯考、施萊爾、施瓦茨科普芙、薩瑟蘭、洛特、維克斯、皮爾斯——這些名字，都是我童年時期珍貴的記憶。I thought of those Sundays when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died, some months ago. Some of the obituaries rightly suggested that he became a brand name for a kind of smooth, dependable quality. That is how he functioned in our household (which isn’t to deny his beauty as a singer, or the validity of my father’s admiration of him). I grew a bit suspicious of that rich emollience of tone, that tempered, bourgeois liquidity. Just as intolerantly, I grew restless with the way my father would look up from his armchair and calmly utter the double-barrelled guarantee: 「Fischer-Dieskau, of course. . . . Marvellous.」 The name had the shape and solidity of some dependable manufacturer or department store, a firm that would never go bust. Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Harvey Nichols, Austin Reed, Royal Enfield. My father had great faith in reliable British companies, often against the evidence, it should be said. It was a joke in our family. Once, at dinner, a wall plug and socket exploded, with a mild, odorous flash. Imperturbable, my dad went to the wall and examined the plug, like the scientist he was. 「M.K. and Crabtree,」 he said, intoning the names of the manufacturers. 「Totally dependable.」 We all laughed at this stolid evenness of response, while perhaps gratefully aware that this was the kind of man you would want around in an actual crisis. Fischer-Dieskau, like M.K. and Crabtree, was totally dependable, though inconveniently German.幾個月前，德國男中音歌唱家菲舍爾-狄斯考與世長辭。他的離世讓我又想起了與父親共度的周日時光。一些訃聞稱菲舍爾-狄斯考的作品就是流暢、有保障的代名詞。在我家，他的地位也是如此（這並非否定他的驚豔歌喉抑或是父親對他的崇拜）。我甚至開始有點質疑他作品中柔美治癒的曲調以及那種舒緩但庸常的流暢性。我同樣無法理解父親對他的痴迷。「菲舍爾-狄斯考，不用說，好肯定好！」每當坐在搖椅上的父親抬起頭，平靜地表達莫名的讚美時，這種態度就會讓我有些不耐煩。迪特裡希·菲舍爾-狄斯考這個名字在父親眼中似乎具體有型，像阿斯頓·馬丁、勞斯萊斯、夏菲尼高、奧斯汀·裡德和恩菲爾德這些製造商和百貨公司一樣，是一家值得信賴、永不破產的公司。父親對一些看似可靠的英國公司滿懷信心，縱使這些公司並沒有這般靠譜。在我們家有一段趣事，一次吃晚飯的時候，一個插座爆炸了，伴著一道輕微的、帶氣味的亮光。父親冷靜地走到牆邊，像個科學家一樣仔細檢查了插座，一邊檢查一邊叨叨製造商的名字：「M.K.和 Crabtree的品質都是可以保證的。」我們都嘲笑他反應冷淡，波瀾不驚，又暗自感嘆真正遇到危機的時候，希望能有像父親一樣冷靜的人在身邊。父親覺得菲舍爾-狄斯考和 M.K.、Crabtree 一樣可靠，儘管前者是個不折不扣的德國人。Boredom, headachey Sunday boredom: I blamed Christianity. On those English Sundays, the knowledge that all the shops were religiously shut (even the little back-alley record shop where my best friend and I fingered the new LPs) simmered like a sullen summer heat and made me lethargic. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. My brother was somehow more adept than I at slipping away to sin; he made it to his bedroom, and I would hear Robert Plant whining up there, the euphoric, demonic, eunuch antidote to Fischer-Dieskau’s settled baritone. (「I should have quit you, long time ago.」) My sister was too young to count as audience. My mother steered clear. So I would sit with my father, and sometimes when he fell asleep I would fall asleep, too, in companionable torpor.至於為何所有的禮拜天都如此無聊透頂，讓人頭痛，我認為是基督教的問題。在那些一成不變的英式周日裡，一想到所有商店都因為做禮拜而關門閉戶（甚至是讓我和朋友能找到最新黑膠唱片的那家街巷小店也是如此），我就像在陰鬱潮溼的夏日熱浪中蒸騰一般懶散昏沉。無處可去，又無事可做。哥哥比我要「叛逆」些，在周日也不願老老實實休息，在臥室放起了音樂。我在樓下也能聽到羅伯特·普蘭特尖銳的高音，他的聲線熱烈高亢，又有邪魅、風騷的味道，將我從菲舍爾-狄斯考無休無止的男中音中解脫出來（我早就該不聽他的音樂了）。當時妹妹還小，算不上聽眾，母親更是避之不及。所以常常是我和父親坐在一起聽音樂，有時他睡著了之後，我也懶洋洋地閉上了眼睛。For ages, I associated those three composers with that Sunday world. Haydn was killed for me. Even now, I can’t listen to him, despite the adulatory testimony of several musicians and composers I know. For quite a long time, I thought of Schubert only as the composer of snowy, trudging lieder. I refused to hear the limpid beauty of the songs, or the dark anguish; I knew nothing about the piano sonatas, now among my favorite pieces. Most terribly, I thought of Beethoven as the calm confectioner of the 「Moonlight」 Sonata; I heard the beauty, but not much more. It was music to go to sleep to. An idiotic assessment, of course. All the tension and dissonance, the jumpy rhythms, the fantastic experimental fugues and variations, the chromatic storms, the blessed plateaus (the sunlit achievement, once you have got through the storms, as at the end of Opus 109 and Opus 111)—in short, all the fierce complex modernity of Beethoven was lost to me.多年來，這三位作曲家的音樂都伴隨著我的周日時光。我欣賞不了海頓。儘管認識的幾位音樂家和作曲家都對他不吝讚美，但即便在今天，我也依舊無法欣賞。在很長一段時間裡，我都以為舒伯特只寫舒緩柔和的藝術歌曲（lieder）。我不願聽清澈美麗的歌聲，也不喜歡陰鬱愴痛的曲調，雖然現在我很喜歡鋼琴奏鳴曲，但當時我對這一類型的音樂卻是一無所知。更糟糕的是，我對貝多芬的認識僅僅停留在他是一位沉穩大氣、給《月光奏鳴曲》錦上添花的大師。我聽到了他曲中的美好，但也僅局限於此。在我看來，這是可以伴隨入睡的音樂，我知道這個評價過於膚淺。貝多芬作品中所體現的那些衝突對立、跳躍的節奏，那些極具實驗性但十分美妙的賦格曲和變奏曲，在大量急促的半音階之後趨於平靜的感覺（像Op.109和Op.111末尾傳遞的感覺一樣，經歷風雨洗禮之後享受登頂高原、陽光揮灑於身的成就）——總而言之，這些激烈複雜的現代性我都沒有體會到。And then Beethoven came back, as probably my father knew he would, in my early twenties, at a time of solitude and anxiety—came roaring back with the difficult romanticism that my incuriosity had repressed in childhood. I can’t now imagine life without Beethoven, can’t imagine not listening to and thinking about Beethoven (being spoken to by him, and speaking with him). And, like my father, I have quite a few recordings of the piano sonatas, especially the last three, and I listen to the young Barenboim playing, and think to myself, as my father did, Not quite as lucid as Kempff, but much better than Gould, who’s unreliable on Beethoven, and perhaps more interesting than Brendel, and, yes, I think I just heard him make a little mistake, which Pollini certainly never does. . . .但後來，我又開始聽貝多芬了，可能父親也料到了這一點。在二十出頭的那段日子裡，我倍感孤獨、內心充滿焦慮。童年時期的我由於缺乏興趣，一直無法理解貝多芬的浪漫主義，而如今我已經被這種浪漫主義所徵服，我無法想像沒有貝多芬的生活，無法想像不能欣賞貝多芬的音樂，並與之神交會是怎樣的體驗。和父親一樣，我有不少鋼琴奏鳴曲的錄音帶，尤其是貝多芬最後三首奏鳴曲。我在聽巴倫波伊姆早期的作品時，也像父親當年一樣會暗自思考評論：他的作品沒有肯普夫那樣易懂，但比顧爾德好多了，和貝多芬也完全不同。他也比布倫德爾有趣多了，嗯，是了，我想我剛剛聽到他犯了一個小錯誤，波裡尼可不會犯這種低級錯誤……Sometimes I catch myself and think, self-consciously, You are now listening to a Beethoven string quartet, just as your father did. And, at that moment, I feel a mixture of satisfaction and rebellion. Rebellion, for all the obvious reasons. Satisfaction, because it is natural to resemble one’s parents, and there is a resigned pleasure to be had from the realization. I like that my voice is exactly the same pitch as my father’s, and can be mistaken for it. But then I hear myself speaking to my children just as he spoke to me, in exactly the same tone and with the same fatherly melody, and I am dismayed by the plagiarism of inheritance. How unoriginal can one be? I sneeze the way he does, with a slightly theatrical whooshing sound. I say 「Yes, yes」 just as he does, calmly. The other day, I saw that I have the same calves, with the shiny, unlit pallor I found ugly when I was a boy, and with those oddly hairless patches at the back (blame for which my father unscientifically placed on trouser cloth rubbing against the skin). Sometimes, when I am sitting doing nothing, I have the eerie sense that my mouth and eyes are set just like his. Like him, I am irritatingly phlegmatic at times of crisis. There must be a few differences: I won’t decide to become a priest in my fifties, as he did. I’m not religious, and don’t go to church, as he does, so my Sundays are much less dull than those of my childhood (and the shops are all open now, a liberty that brings its own universal boredom). I’m no scientist (he was a zoologist). I am less decent, less ascetic, far more materialistic (「pagan」 would be my self-reassuring euphemism). And I’m sure he’s never Googled himself.有時我不禁會想，我現在正在聽貝多芬的弦樂四重奏，就像父親那樣。那一刻，我感覺到一種既滿足又叛逆的複雜情緒。叛逆感不言自明。之所以感覺到滿足，是因為與父母相像多麼自然，雖然有些無可奈何，但還是讓我感受到了一絲愉悅。我和父親說話音調相似，還有人會把我倆弄混，對此我欣然接受。但後來當我發現我與孩子們說話的口吻就像當初他和我說話一般，還是那如出一轍慈父般的腔調，我頓感低落，覺得自己徹徹底底就是一個遺傳的複製品。一個人和父母能有多像？我和父親打噴嚏的方式都一樣，總會帶著一絲誇張的嗖嗖聲。我說「是的，沒錯」時也和父親一樣，語氣平靜。有一天，我看到了自己的小腿時也想到了父親。小時候，我看到他慘白無光的小腿總覺得醜陋至極，有些地方還光禿禿的沒有毛（我覺得應該是父親隔著外褲肆意撓抓皮膚導致的）。有時即便我什麼都不做，一種奇怪的感覺也會油然而生——我的嘴巴和眼睛怎麼和父親一模一樣。在緊要關頭，我也會表現出令人抓狂的冷靜，這點自然也是隨了父親。但我和他多少還是有些不同：我不會在50多歲的時候決定做一名牧師，我不信教，不去禮拜，所以我的周日也沒有童年時那麼沉悶（現在商店不會關門了，這種自由無非是另一種層面的無聊）。我不是科學家（父親是動物學家），沒有那么正派，不會嚴於律己，也更物質主義（「異教徒」是我自我安慰的託詞）。我也相信他從來沒有在谷歌上搜索過自己。This summer, I happened to reread a beautiful piece of writing by Lydia Davis, called 「How Shall I Mourn Them?」 It is barely two and a half pages long, and is just a list of questions:今年夏天，我碰巧重讀了莉迪亞·戴維斯的作品《我該如何紀念他們？》。內容不多，只有兩三頁紙，但優美動人，作品中提出了一連串問題：Shall I keep a tidy house, like L.?Shall I develop an unsanitary habit, like K.?Shall I sway from side to side a little as I walk, like C.?Shall I write letters to the editor, like R.?Shall I retire to my room often during the day, like R.?Shall I live alone in a large house, like B.?Shall I treat my husband coldly, like K.?Shall I give piano lessons, like M.?Shall I leave the butter out all day to soften, like C.?When I first read this story (or whatever you want to call it), a few years ago, I understood it to be about mourning departed parents, partly because a certain amount of Davis’s recent work has appeared to touch obliquely on the death of her parents. I think that the initials could belong to the author’s friends—seen, over the years, falling into the habits of grief. It is a gentle comedy of Davis’s that those habits of grief are so ordinary (piano lessons, leaving out the butter) that they amount to the habits of life, and that therefore the answer to the title’s question must be: 「I can’t choose how to mourn them, as your verb, 『shall,』 suggests. I can mourn them only haplessly, accidentally, by surviving them. So I shall mourn them just by living.」 But I spoke recently to a friend about this story, and she thought that I had missed something. 「Isn’t it also about becoming one’s parents, about taking on their very habits and tics after they disappear? So it’s also about preserving those habits once they』ve disappeared, whether you want to or not.」 My friend told me that before her mother died she had had very little interest in gardening (one of her mother’s passions); after her mother’s death, she began to garden, and it now brings her real happiness.當我幾年前第一次讀到這篇故事時（故事也好，詩也罷，隨你怎麼稱呼），我明白這是在悼念她已逝的父母，因為戴維斯近期的一些作品似乎都隱晦地提及了她父母的死亡。故事裡的首字母可能是她朋友們名字的縮寫。這麼多年來，戴維斯在他們身上漸漸看到了他們父母的影子。這種表達悲傷的方式在戴維斯筆下帶有一抹輕喜劇的色彩，父母的生活習慣是如此的尋常，就這樣不聲不響地融入了子女的生活裡（教鋼琴課，把黃油擱著待它自動融化）。因此，標題的答案一定是：「就像這段故事裡的一連串問號一樣，我們不能選擇如何紀念他們，我們只能不幸又偶然地活出他們的樣子來，所以我要通過活著來紀念他們。」但我最近和一個朋友談起了這個故事，她認為我忽略了一些事情：「這個故事難道不是在講述我們會變為父母的樣子，繼承他們的習慣，並且在生活中自然地表現出來嗎？也就是說，在父母離世後，不論你是否願意，都會保留他們的習慣。」她還說，在她母親還在世的時候，她對園藝沒什麼興趣（園藝是她母親的一大愛好），但在母親去世後，她也開始打理花園，而且現在園藝為她帶來了真正的快樂。If you are mourning your parents by becoming them, then presumably you can mourn them before they are dead: certainly, I have spent my thirties and forties journeying through a long realization that I am decisively my parents』 child, that I am destined to share many of their gestures and habits, and that this slow process of becoming them, or becoming more like them, is, like the Roman ave atque vale, both an address and a farewell.如果想通過活出父母的樣子來紀念他們，那麼你現在就應該有所行動。當然，在我三四十歲這段時光裡，我花了很長時間才接受我無論如何都是父母生的這一事實，我必然會表現出和他們相似的體態，擁有相同的習慣。這段緩慢前行的人生旅程，正是我向他們邁進的過程，或者說我正慢慢變得越來越像他們，就像拉丁語「ave atque vale」說的那樣，是致意，也是告別。

譯註：ave atque vale, hail and farewell : I salute you, and goodbye —used especially in a eulogy to a hero.

My parents are still alive, in their mid-eighties now. But in the past two years my wife has watched both her parents die—her father, quickly, of esophageal cancer, and her mother, more slowly, from the effects of dementia. She bore one kind of grief for her father; and she bore a slightly different grief for her mother, for an absence that was the anticipation of loss, followed finally by the completion of that loss—grief in stages, terraced grief. I say to her, 「I haven’t yet had to go through any of what you』ve gone through.」 And she replies, 「But you will, you know that, and it won’t be so long.」我的父母還健在，不過也已到了耄耋之年。在過去的兩年裡，我妻子的父母相繼離世，她的父親死於食道癌，沒有遭受太多痛苦，但她的母親則飽受老年痴呆症的折磨。父母的疾病給她帶來的悲傷有些許不同，從知道母親終將離去到真正離世，她的悲傷與日俱增。我對妻子說：「我還沒有經歷過你所經歷的一切。」她回答道：「你終究會經歷的，這一天不會太遠。」My parents know much better than I do that it won’t be so long; that their life together is precarious, and balances on the little plinth of their fading health. There is nothing unique in this prospect: it’s just their age, and mine. Twice this year, my father has been hospitalized. When he disappears like that, my mother struggles to survive, because she has macular degeneration and can’t see. The second time, I raced over to damp Scotland, to find her almost confined to the dining room, where there is a strong (and pungently ugly) electric fire, and living essentially on cereal; the carpet under the dining table was littered with oats, like the floor of a hamster’s cage. When my father returned home, he had a cane for the first time in his robust life, and seemed much weaker. My brother took him around the supermarket in a wheelchair.我的父母比我更清楚自己已時日無多，他們的生活充滿變數，只能憑藉日益衰微的身體勉強維持著當前的生活。這幅光景沒什麼特別之處，只是他們已是耄耋之年，我亦不再年輕而已。今年父親兩次住院，他不在家中的時候，母親只能一人苦苦支撐，她患有黃斑變性，看不見東西。當父親第二次住院的時候，我跑到蘇格蘭，卻發現母親幾乎只在客廳內走動。蘇格蘭很潮溼，客廳裡電爐燒得正旺（還有刺鼻異味），那些天母親主要吃穀物充飢，餐桌下的地毯上散落著燕麥，像散落著木屑的倉鼠籠子。父親回家時拄著拐，這對於向來健康的父親來說還是頭一回，他看上去虛弱多了，後來是哥哥推著輪椅陪他逛超市。I spent a week at my parents』 home, helping out, and it took a couple of days for me to register that something was missing. It nagged at me, faintly, and then more strongly, and finally I realized that there was no music in the house. In fact, it occurred to me, there had been no music during several previous visits I』d made. I asked my father why he was no longer listening to music, and was shocked to discover that his CD player had been broken for more than a year, and that he had put off replacing it because a new one seemed expensive. He was much less perturbed than I was by this state of affairs. I could hardly imagine my parents』 life without thinking of him sitting in an armchair, while Haydn or Beethoven or Schubert played. But, of course, this idea of him is an old memory of mine, and thus a picture of a younger man’s habits—he is the middle-aged father of my childhood, not the rather different old man whom I don’t see often enough because I live three thousand miles away, a man who doesn’t care too much whether he listens to music or not. So, even as I become him, he becomes someone else.我在父母家忙前忙後了一個星期，幾天以來，我總覺得家裡少了些什麼，這種感覺一直困擾著我，並且愈發強烈，直到我意識到家裡少了音樂。不僅如此，我突然發現，前幾次回家時也都沒有聽到音樂。我問父親為什麼不再聽音樂了，還驚訝地發現他的CD機已經壞了一年多了，因為新的太昂貴，他遲遲沒有更換。可父親比我淡定多了。我很難想像不坐在搖椅上聽海頓，或是貝多芬、舒伯特，他的生活會是什麼樣子。話雖如此，我的想法也只是來源於我舊時的記憶和他年輕時的一些習慣。我對他的印象還停留在童年時的那個中年父親，而不是住在三千英裡外不常見面的老人，一位不在乎自己聽不聽音樂的老人。這樣看來，即便我變成了父親，父親卻已然變成了另一個人。Most likely, he is simply too busy looking after my mother to have time to relax. He is the cook, the driver, the shopper, the banker, the person who uses the computer, who gets wood or coal for the fire, who mends things when they break, who puts the cat out and who locks up at night. Perhaps he is too busy being anxious about my mother, being slightly afraid for both of them, to sit as he used to, triumphant and calm and secure.我猜父親可能是因為忙著照顧母親，所以才沒時間放鬆。他既是廚師，也是司機，既是採購員，也是銀行家。他不僅會使用電腦，用木材或煤炭生火也沒有問題。東西壞了他能修好，遛貓也值得信賴。也許，就是因為太忙了，忙著操心母親，偶爾還得為他倆的生活擔心，所以沒能像過去那樣可以得意洋洋、平靜安穩地坐著。Or perhaps this is just my fear projected onto him. When I was a teen-ager, I used to think that Philip Larkin’s line about how life is first boredom, then fear, was right about boredom (those Sundays) and wrong about fear. What’s so fearful about life? Now, at forty-seven, I think it should be the other way around: life is first fear, then boredom (as perhaps the fearful Larkin of 「Aubade」 knew). Fear for oneself, fear for those one loves. I sleep very poorly these days; I lie awake, full of apprehensions. All kinds of them, starting with the small stuff, and rising. How absurd that I should be paid to write book reviews! How long is that likely to last? And what’s the point of the bloody things? Why on earth would the money not run out? Will I be alive in five years? Isn’t some kind of mortal disease likely? How will I cope with death and loss—with the death of my parents, or, worse, and unimaginably, of my wife, or children? How appalling to lose one’s mind, as my mother-in-law did! Or to lose all mobility, but not one’s mind, and become a prisoner, like the late Tony Judt. If I faced such a diagnosis, would I have the courage to kill myself? Does my father have pancreatic cancer? And on and on.又或者，這只是我的恐懼在父親身上的映射。菲利普·拉金曾說，人生先是無聊，再是恐懼。十幾歲的時候，我認為只有前半句是對的。生活有什麼可怕的？現在，我也已經47歲了，對生活有了不同的解讀：生活先是恐懼，然後是無聊（也許就像《晨曲》一詩中拉金懼怕的那樣）。既為自己恐懼，也為所愛的人恐懼。這幾天我失眠了，經常是躺在床上，滿懷各種憂慮。先是想一些瑣碎小事，隨後越來越讓我不寒而慄。我竟然靠寫書評賺錢，太荒唐了！這樣到底還得持續多久？這些該死的事情究竟有什麼意義？為什麼錢還沒有花光？五年後我還會活著嗎？我會不會患上什麼致命的疾病？我將如何應對死亡和失去——父母的逝去，或是更糟糕，面對妻子或孩子的離世（這我完全不敢想像）？如果像我嶽母那樣活著該有多麼可怕啊！就算心智健全，要是像已故的託尼·朱特喪失所有的行動能力，那和禁錮的囚犯有何區別？如果我確診患有類似的疾病，我有勇氣自殺嗎？我的父親有胰腺癌嗎？如此種種，在我腦海中縈繞，揮之不去。

譯註：《晨曲》（Aubade）是詩人菲利普·拉金晚年的一首關於死亡的名詩。全詩https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6e2f07

託尼·朱特，世界上著名的歐洲問題和歐洲思想研究專家。2008年被診斷出肌肉萎縮性側索硬化症，2009年頸部以下癱瘓，但他仍堅持以口述的方式寫作。2010年，他在紐約曼哈頓的家中去世。

There is nothing very particular about these anxieties. They’re banal, even a little comic, as the mother in Per Petterson’s novel 「I Curse the River of Time」 understands when some bad medical news is delivered. She had lain awake, night after night, worried about dying of lung cancer: 「And then I get cancer of the stomach. What a waste of time!」 It’s just the river of time; and a waste of time. But there it is. And sometimes I murmur to myself, repetitively, partly to calm myself down, 「How shall I mourn them?」 How indeed? For it sounds like the title of a beautiful song, a German lament, something my father might have listened to on a Sunday afternoon, when he still did. 我的焦慮沒有什麼特別，無非是杞人憂天，甚至有點可笑，就像佩爾·帕特森的小說《我詛咒時間之河》中的母親聽到糟糕的醫訊一樣。她連續幾天徹夜未眠，擔心自己會死於肺癌：「後來我得了胃癌，真是浪費時間！」這只是時間之河的自然流逝而已，擔心過頭就會浪費時間。但是事實就是如此。有時我會不停喃喃自語，「我該如何紀念他們呢？」一定程度是為了讓自己能平靜下來。「究竟該怎麼做？」這句話聽起來像是一首德國輓歌的名字，也可能是父親在周日午後會聽的一首歌，如果他還聽音樂的話。原文連結：https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/21/becoming-them

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點評

     「當你向深淵望得太久時，深淵也會回望你」，讀完這篇文章，腦子裡跳出的第一句話竟是這個。這似乎與作者想傳達的意圖相反，在他看來，接納和成為父母，或許是紀念他們最好的方式之一。與父母的糾葛大概是我們一生都要去面對的問題，成為或是拒絕成為他們，像是一場曠日持久的搏鬥。這個戰場上，對手有他們，也有我們自己。

       作者說，我們或許會不知不覺成為了他們，這的確是溫情脈脈的感慨，但於我來說，聽著更像是一個魔咒。想起母親與我曾經討論婚姻問題，她成長在一個父親強勢家庭，年輕時最大的願望是不會嫁給同樣專制的男人，千挑萬選卻似乎重蹈了自己母親的覆轍，對當下的生活時而不滿，但知足常樂總是最有效的自我說服。又想起父親說自己在少年時代不認同父輩的官場生活，如今卻苦口婆心勸我從政。習慣或是記憶，像是一鍋溫水，人不知不覺，束手就擒。

       我時常緊張自己，是否努力掙脫，最終卻適得其反，作者的話似乎更添了幾分宿命論的涼意，掙脫是無謂的。當然，就像文章所敘說的，父母的遺產定不全是壞處，只是大概我還處在一個尚想重起爐灶的年齡與心境，還體會不到這種宿命的暖意。畢竟，真正的理解，來自於真正的經歷，也或許，到了某一天，我也會坦然地成為他們。

 

2019年8月15日

羅玉池

參考閱讀：

《原生家庭》：原生家庭是一個近年來很熱門的話題，雖然，這本書更多的是從原生家庭的一些負面影響進行討論，但或許仍能夠從心理學上提供一些幫助我們認識父母與自身關係的知識。

https://book.douban.com/subject/30199434/

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