那不勒斯四部曲I-我的天才女友 中英双语版5
3
一段很糟糕的时期开始了。我发胖了，胸口长出了两个很硬的小球，腋窝和阴部长出了毛发。我很悲伤，也很焦虑。在学校里，我比第一年更加吃力，那些数学题我永远都解不出来，得不出书上的答案，对我来说，拉丁语句子没头没尾的。一有时间我就把自己锁在厕所，光着身子看着镜中的自己，我不知道自己是谁。我开始怀疑自己会一直变化下去，变成我母亲的样子：斜眼、跛脚，永远都不会有人爱我，我经常失声痛哭。我的胸先是很硬，后来变大了，也变软了。我感觉身体内部有一种阴暗力量摆布着我，让我很担忧。
A period of unhappiness began. I got fat,
and under the skin of my chest two hard shoots sprouted, hair flourished in
my armpits and my pubis, I became sad and at the same time anxious. In school
I worked harder than I ever had, yet the mathematics problems almost never
gave the result expected by the textbook, the Latin sentences seemed to make
no sense. As soon as I could I locked myself in the bathroom and looked at
myself in the mirror, naked. I no longer knew who I was. I began to suspect
that I would keep changing, until from me my mother would emerge, lame, with
a crossed eye, and no one would love me anymore. I cried often, without
warning. My chest, meanwhile, became large and soft. I felt at the mercy of
obscure forces acting inside my body, I was always agitated.
一天早上，在学校门口，药剂师的儿子吉诺跟在我身后，他告诉我，他同学都说我的胸不是真的，说我在胸口塞了棉絮。他一边说，一边笑，他说他觉得我的胸是真的，他们赌了二十里拉。他最后说，如果他赢了，他会自己留十里拉，剩下的十里拉给我，但我要向他证明我没在胸里塞棉絮。
One day as I came out of school, Gino,
the pharmacist’s son, followed me along the street and said that his
classmates claimed that my breasts weren’t real, I stuffed them with cotton
batting. He laughed as he spoke. He said that he thought they were real, he
had bet twenty lire on it. Finally he said that, if he won, he would keep ten
lire for himself and would give me ten, but I had to prove that I didn’t use
padding.
他的要求让我很害怕，我不知道该怎么回应。这时候，我故意装出莉拉放肆的语气说：
That request frightened me. Since I didn’t know how to act, I deliberately resorted to Lila’s bold tone:
“给我十里拉。”
“Give me the ten lire.”
“因为我说得对吗？”
“Why, am I right?”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
他逃开了，我很失落地走了。但没过多久，他就带着班里的一个同学来了，一个很瘦的男孩，我不记得他的名字，他嘴唇上已经冒出了一层黑黑的胡须。
He ran away, and I was disappointed. But soon he returned with a boy from his class, a skinny boy whose name I don’t remember, with a dark down above his lip.
吉诺对我说：“他也应该在场，不然的话，其他人不相信我赢了。”
Gino said to me, “He has to be there,
otherwise the others won’t believe I’ve won.”
我还是用莉拉的语气说：
Again I resorted to Lila’s tone.
“先给钱。”
“First the money.”
“假如你有棉花呢？”
“And if you have padding?”
“我没有。”
“I don’t.”
他给了我十里拉，我们三个人默不作声地来到一栋楼的顶层，那里距离小公园不远。我们站在天台的小铁门旁边，那道铁门线条简单，道道细长的光线包裹住我。我掀起了上衣，露出了胸部。那两个男生呆立在那里看着，好像不相信自己的眼睛，最后他们转身顺着楼梯逃走了。
He gave me ten lire and we all went,
silently, to the top floor of a building near the public gardens. There, next
to the iron door that led to the terrace, where I was clearly outlined by
slender segments of light, I lifted up my shirt and showed them my breasts.
The two stood staring as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. Then they
turned and ran down the stairs.
我松了一口气，走到索拉拉的酒吧，给自己买了一只冰激凌。
I heaved a sigh of relief and went to the
Bar Solara to buy myself an ice cream.
这件事情刻在了我的记忆里，我第一次尝试了自己的身体对于男性的魔力，但我尤其意识到：莉拉不仅仅像幽灵一样左右着卡梅拉，也左右着我。在当时那种失措和情绪激动的情况下，假如我自己做决定，我会怎么做呢？我会逃走。假如在莉拉的陪伴下，我会怎么做呢？我会拉着她的一条胳膊，在她耳边说：我们走吧。然而，像往常一样，我可能会留下来，因为她决定留下。
That episode remained stamped in my memory: I felt for the first time the magnetic force that my body exercised over men, but above all I realized that Lila acted not only on Carmela but also on me like a demanding ghost. If I had had to make a decision in the pure disorder of emotions in a situation like that, what would I have done? I would have run away. And if I had been with Lila? I would have pulled her by the arm, I would have whispered, Let’s go, and then, as usual, I would have stayed, because she, as usual, would have decided to stay.
但她不在我身边，短暂的犹豫之后，我决定像她一样行事。或者说，让她取代我的位子，替我做决定。回想吉诺向我提出要求的时刻，我非常准确地感觉到，我把自己推向了一边，在这种公然的困境中，我模仿了莉拉的目光、语气和动作，我非常高兴。但忽然间，我有些担忧：我就像卡梅拉一样吗？我觉得不像，我感到自己和她不一样，但我不知道是什么破坏了我的快乐心情。当我拿着冰激凌经过费尔南多的铺子时，我看到莉拉在专心地整理一个长架子上的鞋子，我想把她叫出来，跟她讲讲发生的事情，听听她的看法，但她没有看到我，我就走了过去。
Instead, in her absence, after a slight
hesitation I put myself in her place. Or, rather, I had made a place for her
in me. If I thought again of the moment when Gino made his request, I felt
precisely how I had driven myself away, how I had mimicked Lila’s look and
tone and behavior in situations of brazen conflict, and I was pleased. But
sometimes I wondered, somewhat anxiously: Am I being like Carmela? I didn’t
think so, it seemed to me that I was different, but I couldn’t explain in
what sense and my pleasure was spoiled. When I passed Fernando’s shop with my
ice cream and saw Lila intently arranging shoes on a long table, I was
tempted to stop and tell her everything, hear what she thought. But she
didn’t see me and I kept going.
4
莉拉总是很忙，那一年里诺又逼着她注册了学校，但她基本上都没去上学，后来又没有及格。她母亲让她帮着干家务，父亲让她待在店里，她不动声色，没做任何抵抗，好像很高兴两件事都做。我们见面的机会很少——只有星期天做完弥撒之后，或者在教堂前面的小公园和大路边上散步的时候。
She was always busy. That year Rino
compelled her to enroll in school again, but again she almost never went and
again she failed. Her mother asked her to help in the house, her father asked
her to be in the shop, and she, all of a sudden, instead of resisting, seemed
in fact content to labor for both. The rare times we saw each other—on Sunday
after Mass or walking between the public gardens and the stradone—
她对我在学校的事情一点也不感兴趣，总是充满热情地谈论她父亲和哥哥的工作，语气里充满了崇敬。
she displayed no curiosity about my
school, and immediately started talking intensely and with admiration about
the work that her father and brother did.
她得知，她父亲年轻的时候想解放自己，从爷爷的铺子里逃走了——她爷爷也是鞋匠，在卡索里亚的鞋厂工作了一段时间，他在工厂里做过各种各样的鞋子，包括军靴。
She knew that her father as a boy had wanted to be free, had fled the shop of her grandfather, who was also a shoemaker, and had gone to work in a shoe factory in Casoria, where he had made shoes for everyone, even soldiers going to war.
她发现，费尔南多能用手工从头到尾做一双鞋子，他也会使用各种各样的制鞋机器，切边机、卷边机和磨光机。她和我谈论皮子、鞋面、皮革制品和皮革商，还有高跟、中跟、备线和鞋掌，怎么上鞋底，还有怎么上色抛光。她使用那个行业的术语，就好像那些词都是有魔力的咒语，是他父亲在一个魔法世界——卡索里亚工厂里学到的。他父亲从工厂回来后，就像经过了一场洗礼，脑子里装满了各种想法，但现在他更喜欢待在自己家的小铺子：安静的工作台、钉锤、铁质的脚模、胶水和旧鞋子混合的味道。她充满热情，把我拉进那些词汇的世界里，她父亲和哥哥通过他们的手艺让人们穿上结实、舒适的鞋子，我觉得他们是整个城区最好的人。尤其是，在鞋匠铺子里度过了一天，每次我回到家里，面对我的父亲——一个非常普通的门房，我觉得有些自卑。
She had discovered that Fernando knew how
to make a shoe from beginning to end by hand, but he was also completely at
home with the machines and knew how to use them, the post machine, the
trimmer, the sander. She talked to me about leather, uppers, leather-goods
dealers, leather production, high heels and flat heels, about preparing the
thread, about soles and how the sole was applied, colored, and buffed. She
used all those words of the trade as if they were magic and her father had
learned them in an enchanted world—Casoria, the factory—from which he had
returned like a satisfied explorer, so satisfied that now he preferred the
family shop, the quiet bench, the hammer, the iron foot, the good smell of
glue mixed with that of old shoes. And she drew me inside that vocabulary
with such an energetic enthusiasm that her father and Rino, thanks to their
ability to enclose people’s feet in solid, comfortable shoes, seemed to me
the best people in the neighborhood. Above all, I came home with the impression
that, not spending my days in a shoemaker’s shop, having for a father a banal
porter instead, I was excluded from a rare privilege.
我开始觉得自己在学校是在白白浪费时间，有好几个月，我觉得书本里包含的所有能量和前途都没有了。从学校出来，我总是闷闷不乐，我经过费尔南多的铺子门口，就是为了看到莉拉在那里干活。她坐在铺子最里面的一张小桌子前，身子很消瘦，胸部一点都没发育，脖子很细，脸也很憔悴。我不知道她具体在做什么，但她好像很积极。透过玻璃门，我看到她待在哥哥和父亲中间，他们都低着头。她没有书，也不用上课，没有作业。有时候我会停下来，看橱窗里那些染了颜色的盒子，那些刚缝好、做好的鞋子，被用楦头撑着，让皮子撑开，为了穿起来舒服一点，我就像一个对他们的产品很感兴趣的客户一样。莉拉看到我会向我打招呼，这时候我才会恋恋不舍地离开，我也向她打个招呼，她又埋头做自己的事情了。但通常是里诺先看到我，对我做一个搞怪的鬼脸，让我发笑。我觉得有些尴尬，不等莉拉看到我，就马上跑开了。
I began to feel that my presence in class
was pointless. For months and months it seemed to me that every promise had
fled from the textbooks, all energy. Coming out of school, dazed by
unhappiness, I passed Fernando’s shop only to see Lila at her workplace,
sitting at a little table in the back, her thin chest with no hint of a
bosom, her scrawny neck, her small face. I don’t know what she did, exactly,
but she was there, active, beyond the glass door, set between the bent head
of her father and the bent head of her brother, no books, no lessons, no
homework. Sometimes I stopped to look at the boxes of polish in the window,
the old shoes newly resoled, new ones put on a form that expanded the leather
and widened them, making them more comfortable, as if I were a customer and
had an interest in the merchandise. I went away only, and reluctantly, when
she saw me and waved to me, and I answered her wave, and she returned to
concentrate on her work. But often it was Rino who noticed me first and made
funny faces to make me laugh. Embarrassed, I ran away without waiting for
Lila to see me.
一个星期天，我竟然热情地和卡梅拉·佩卢索谈起了鞋子。那时候，她着迷于照片小说2，买通俗杂志《梦》。刚开始的时候，我觉得她在浪费时间，后来我也看了一眼，就和她一起看了起来。在小公园里，我们评论那些故事和人物对话——写在黑色背景上的白字。卡梅拉在评论那些故事时，比我更加前言不搭后语，她总是把那些虚构的爱情故事扯到自己身上，就会说起了她真正的爱情——她对阿方索的爱。
One Sunday I was surprised to find myself
talking passionately about shoes with Carmela Peluso. She would buy the
magazine Sogno and devour the photo novels. At first it seemed to me a waste
of time, then I began to look, too, and we started to read them together, and
comment on the stories and what the characters said, which was written in
white letters on a black background. Carmela tended to pass without a break
from comments on the fictional love stories to comments on the true story of
her love for Alfonso.
我比她还要沉迷，有一次我告诉她，我觉得药剂师的儿子吉诺爱上我了。她不相信，在她眼里，药剂师的儿子是一位高不可攀的王子，一个阔佬，永远也不可能娶一个门房的女儿。
In order not to seem inferior, I once told her about the pharmacist’s son, Gino, claiming that he loved me. She didn’t believe it. The pharmacist’s son was in her eyes a kind of unattainable prince, future heir of the pharmacy, a gentleman who would never marry the daughter of a porter,
那时候我几乎要把那件事讲出来，就是药剂师的儿子要看我的胸，我让他看了，还赚了十里拉的事情。这时候，新一期《梦》杂志铺在我们的膝盖上，我的目光落在了一个女演员的漂亮鞋子上。我觉得那是一个更有意思的话题，所以就抛开了胸脯的事情。我没办法控制自己，就赞美起那双鞋子来，我赞美做出那双鞋子的人。这双鞋子那么漂亮，假如我们穿上的话，无论是吉诺还是阿方索，都无法抵挡我们的魅力。我越说，越是尴尬地发现，我正在把莉拉最近的爱好变成了自己的爱好。卡梅拉漫不经心地听我说话，然后她说她该走了。她和我不一样，尽管她也在模仿莉拉，但她还是紧紧抓住那几样自己喜爱的东西：照片小说和爱情。
and I was on the point of telling her about the time he had asked to see my breasts and I had let him and earned ten lire. But we were holding Sogno spread out on our knees and my gaze fell on the beautiful high-heeled shoes of one of the actresses. This seemed to me a momentous subject, more than the story of my breasts, and I couldn’t resist, I began to praise them and whoever had made such beautiful shoes, and to fantasize that if we wore shoes like that neither Gino nor Alfonso would be able to resist us. The more I talked, though, the more I realized, to my embarrassment, that I was trying to make Lila’s new passion my own. Carmela listened to me distractedly, then said she had to go. In shoes and shoemakers she had little or no interest. Although she imitated Lila’s habits, she, unlike me, held on to the only things that really absorbed her: the photo novels, love stories.
5
那个阶段一直都是这样。我很快发现：我一个人，无论做任何事情都没办法心情澎湃，只有莉拉触及的事情，才会变得重要。假如她远离、远离了我所做的事情，那这些事就会沾染污垢，落满灰尘：中学、拉丁语、老师和书籍，我觉得书上的文字远没有加工一只鞋子迷人，这让我很抑郁。
This entire period had a similar
character. I soon had to admit that what I did by myself couldn’t excite me,
only what Lila touched became important. If she withdrew, if her voice
withdrew from things, the things got dirty, dusty. Middle school, Latin, the
teachers, the books, the language of books seemed less evocative than the
finish of a pair of shoes, and that depressed me.
但在某个星期天，一切好像都发生了变化。卡梅拉、莉拉和我一起去上教理传授课，为我们的第一次圣礼做准备。上完教理课出来，莉拉说她有事就走了。我看她没有朝着回家方向走去，让我惊异的是，她进了小学的一栋房子里。
But one Sunday everything changed again.
We had gone, Carmela, Lila, and I, to catechism, we were preparing for our
first communion. On the way out Lila said she had something to do and she
left us. But I saw that she wasn’t heading toward home: to my great surprise
she went into the elementary school building.
我和卡梅拉走了一段路，但我觉得有些厌烦，就和她告别了。我绕着莉拉进去那栋楼走了一圈。星期天学校都关门了，莉拉进去干什么呢？我带着很忐忑的心情走进了大门，走到前厅，我毕业之后再也没有进来过，这是我的母校。我很激动，我熟悉这里的味道，觉得舒坦自在，我已经很久没有这种感觉了。我溜进一楼唯一开着的一扇门，那是一间很宽敞的大厅，白炽灯开着，靠墙全是书架，书架上堆满了旧书。那里有十几个大人，还有很多孩子和一些小学生在里面，他们手上拿着书，翻阅一下，放回去，最后选一本出来。选好书的人在一张写字台前排队，写字台后面，坐着奥利维耶罗老师的死对头费拉罗老师，他很瘦，头发花白，剪成了板寸。费拉罗看一眼人们选中的书籍，在登记簿上记下来，那些借完书的人，拿着一本或者几本书就出去了。
I walked with Carmela, but when I got
bored I said goodbye, walked around the building, and went back. The school
was closed on Sunday, how could Lila go into the building? After much
hesitation I ventured beyond the entranceway, into the hall. I had never gone
into my old school and I felt a strong emotion, I recognized the smell, which
brought with it a sensation of comfort, a sense of myself that I no longer
had. I went into the only door open on the ground floor. There was a large
neoncut gray hair. Ferraro examined the chosen text, marked something in the
record book, and the person went out with one or more books.
我看了看四周，莉拉没在那里，她可能已经走了。这就是她现在做的事情吗？她不再去学校，开始对鞋子和修鞋产生了兴趣，但她没告诉我，她来这个地方借书。她特别喜欢这地方吗？为什么她不让我陪她来呢？她为什么把我撇下，让我和卡梅拉在一起？为什么她只对我说学校很烦人，却没告诉我她读的书？
I looked around: Lila wasn’t there, maybe
she had already left. What was she doing, she didn’t go to school anymore,
she loved shoes and old shoes, and yet, without saying anything to me, she
came to this place to get books? Did she like this space? Why didn’t she ask
me to come with her? Why had she left me with Carmela? Why did she talk to me
about how soles were ground and not about what she read?
我很气愤，转身离开了那个地方。
I was angry, and ran away.
有一段时间，我觉得学校比平时更加乏味无聊。后来我被期末作业淹没了，我很担心拿不到好成绩，我学得很马虎，但学习时间很长，同时我还有很多其他担忧。母亲说，我现在胸长得那么大，很不像样子，她带我去买文胸。她比平时更加粗暴，好像我长了胸，我来了例假，这让她觉得很羞耻。她给我的指导说明，也是草草了事，带着怨气。我还没来得及问她一些问题，她就转身一瘸一拐地走了，留给我一个背影。
For a while school seemed to me more
meaningless than ever. Then I was sucked back in by the press of homework and
endthe-year tests, I was afraid of getting bad grades, I studied a lot but
aimlessly. And other preoccupations weighed on me. My mother said that I was
indecent with those big breasts I had developed, and she took me to buy a
bra. She was more abrupt than usual. She seemed ashamed that I had a bosom,
that I got my period. The crude instructions she gave me were rapid and
insufficient, barely muttered. I didn’t have time to ask her any questions
before she turned her back and walked away with her lopsided gait.
戴上文胸以后，我的胸更加明显了。在那几个月里，我被学校的男生纠缠。我很快明白是怎么回事了，吉诺和他同学把我向他们展示胸脯的事情说了出去，时不时会有男生过来，让我再展示一下。我试图摆脱他们，手臂交叉挡在胸前，我隐约觉得自己罪有应得。那些男生不断在路上或院子里提出要求，他们都在嘲笑我，开我的玩笑。我试着模仿莉拉的样子把他们推开，但效果不怎么样，后来我实在撑不住了，就哭了起来。我担心他们骚扰我，就把自己关在家里，下功夫学习，只有在上学的时候，我才很不情愿地从家里出去。
The bra made my chest even more
noticeable. In the last months of school I was besieged by boys and I quickly
realized why. Gino and his friend had spread the rumor that I would show how
I was made easily, and every so often someone would ask me to repeat the
spectacle. I sneaked away, I compressed my bosom by holding my arms crossed
over it, I felt mysteriously guilty and alone with my guilt. The boys
persisted, even on the street, even in the courtyard. They laughed, they made
fun of me. I tried to keep them off once or twice by acting like Lila, but it
didn’t work for me, and then I couldn’t stand it and burst into tears. Out of
fear that they would bother me I stayed in the house. I studied hard, I went
out now only to go, very reluctantly, to school.
一个五月的早上，吉诺从后面追上我，没有了平时的傲慢，甚至有些忐忑，他问我愿不愿意做他女朋友。我拒绝了他，出于怨恨、报复和尴尬，但同时我也很自豪，因为药剂师的儿子想要我当他的女朋友。第二天他又问了我一次，后来他不停地求我。一直到六月底，我们的父母生活繁忙，我们三个女孩——卡梅拉、莉拉和我才穿着新娘的礼服，举行第一次圣礼。我们穿上礼服，在教堂前的空地上等着举行仪式，我们马上谈起了爱情，这真是罪过。卡梅拉无法相信我拒绝了药剂师的儿子，就把这事告诉了莉拉。让我惊异的是，莉拉没有作出一副不关我事的模样，没有掉头走开，而是表现出了极大兴趣。我们三个人谈论起来。
One morning in May Gino ran after me and
asked me, not arrogantly but, rather, with some emotion, if I would be his
girlfriend. I said no, out of resentment, revenge, embarrassment, yet proud
that the son of the pharmacist wanted me. The next day he asked me again and
he didn’t stop asking until June, when, with some delay due to the
complicated lives of our parents, we made our first communion, the girls in
white dresses, like brides.In those dresses, we lingered in the church square
and immediately sinned by talking about love. Carmela couldn’t believe that I
had refused the son of the pharmacist, and she told Lila. She, surprisingly,
instead of slipping away with the air of someone saying Who cares, was
interested. We all talked about it.
“你为什么要拒绝他呢？”莉拉用方言问我。
“Why do you say no?” Lila asked me in
dialect.
我忽然用意大利语回答她，是为了提醒她，让她明白：尽管我们在聊男女问题，她不应该像对待卡梅拉那样对待我。
I answered unexpectedly in proper
Italian, to make an impression, to let her understand that, even if I spent
my time talking about boyfriends, I wasn’t to be treated like Carmela.
“因为我对自己的情感不是很肯定。”
“Because I’m not sure of my feelings.”
这是我在《梦》杂志上学到的句子。莉拉好像有些惊异。我们又开始聊了起来，就像小学时参加竞赛一样，我们用书上和漫画中的语言聊了起来，卡梅拉只有听的份。这时候，我感觉自己心灵和头脑都被点亮了：我和她说的话都是精心构思的。我在中学里从来都没出现过类似的经历，和老师们还有同学之间都没有进行过这样的对话，感觉太棒了。我们一句接一句聊起来，莉拉让我相信，坚固的爱情需要严厉的考验。后来，我们又用方言聊了起来，她建议我先做吉诺的女朋友，但他要答应一个条件，就是整个夏天，他要给我、她还有卡梅拉买冰激凌。
It was a phrase I had learned from
reading Sogno and Lila seemed struck by it. As if it were one of those
contests in elementary school, we began to speak in the language of comics
and books, which reduced Carmela to pure and simple listener. Those moments
lighted my heart and my head: she and I and all those well-crafted words. In
middle school nothing like that ever happened, not with classmates or with
teachers; it was wonderful. Step by step Lila convinced me that one achieves
security in love only by subjecting the wooer to hard tests. And so,
returning suddenly to dialect, she advised me to become Gino’s girlfriend but
on the condition that all summer he agree to buy ice cream for me, her, and
Carmela.
“如果他不答应的话，那就不是真爱。”
“If he doesn’t agree it means it’s not
true love.”
我按照她说的做了，吉诺消失了，因此那不是真爱，我一点儿也不难过。和莉拉的交流让我非常欣喜，以至于我决定全身心地投入到她身上，尤其是夏天空闲的时候。我想，我们之后见面，也要像那次那样对话。我又一次感觉自己很棒，就像有什么东西撞击了我的大脑，让我产生了思想和语言。
I did as she told me and Gino vanished.
It wasn’t true love, then, and so I didn’t suffer from it. The exchange with
Lila had given me a pleasure so intense that I planned to devote myself to
her totally, especially in summer, when I would have more free time.
Meanwhile I wanted that conversation to become the model for all our next
encounters. I felt clever again, as if something had hit me in the head,
bringing to the surface images and words.
但事情没有按照我想象的来，不但我和她之间的关系没有变得稳固、排他，她身边还围绕着很多其他女生。她和我的谈话、给我的建议，以及产生的效果让卡梅拉·佩卢索非常震撼，以至于她把这件事情告诉了很多人。结果是：鞋匠的女儿莉拉，连月经初潮都没有来，也没有任何一个追求者，短短的几天里成了爱情方面的专家。让我讶异的是，她接受了这个职责。假如她不是在家里和铺子里干活，我就看到她不是和这个女生就是那个女生在窃窃私语。我经过她身边，和她打招呼，但她那么专心，以至于都没听到我说话。我偶尔会听到一两句很美的句子，这让我很痛苦。
But the sequel of that episode was not
what I expected. Instead of consolidating and making exclusive the
relationship between her and me, it attracted a lot of other girls. The
conversation, the advice she had given me, its effect had so struck Carmela Peluso
that she ended up telling everyone. The result was that the daughter of the
shoemaker, who had no bosom and didn’t get her period and didn’t even have a
boyfriend, became in a few days the most reliable dispenser of advice on
affairs of the heart. And she, again surprising me, accepted that role. If
she wasn’t busy in the house or the shop, I saw her talking now with this
girl, now with that. I passed by, I greeted her, but she was so absorbed that
she didn’t hear me. I always caught phrases that seemed to me beautiful, and
they made me suffer.
6
这是一段很黯淡的日子，最糟糕的时候我觉得非常屈辱，但我不得不假装若无其事。学期结束时，阿方索·卡拉奇期末考试的平均分是八分，吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛的平均分是七分，我的拉丁语得了四分，其他课程得了六分。九月开学时，我要补考拉丁语。
These were desolate days, at the height
of which came a humiliation that I should have predicted and which instead I
had pretended not to care about: Alfonso Carracci was promoted with an
average of eight, Gigliola Spagnuolo was promoted with an average of seven,
and I had all sixes and four in Latin. I would have to take the exam again in
September in that one subject.
这次是父亲和我谈话，他说我再念下去也没什么用，上学的课本已经花了很多钱，拉丁语词典即使是买二手的，也会花很多钱。暑假期间，他们也没钱让我补课，最主要的原因是我学习不好：堂·阿奇勒的小儿子做到了，我却没有做到，糕点师傅斯帕纽洛的女儿做到了，我却没有，需要顺应天命。
This time it was my father who said it
was pointless for me to continue. The schoolbooks had already cost a lot. The
Latin dictionary, the Campanini and Carboni, even though it was bought used,
had been a big expense. There was no money to send me to private lessons
during the summer. But above all it was now clear that I wasn’t clever: the
young son of Don Achille had passed and I hadn’t, the daughter of Spagnuolo
the pastry maker had passed and I hadn’t: one had to be resigned.
我整天哭泣，故意蓬头垢面，惩罚自己。我是家里的长女，后面有两个弟弟，还有一个妹妹埃莉莎。两个弟弟佩佩和詹尼轮番来安慰我，一会儿给我送点儿水果，一会儿让我陪他们玩，但我还是觉得很孤单，面对自己糟糕的命运，我无法平静。后来有一天下午，我母亲从我身后走了过来，她用方言对我说话，还是平时那种粗声粗气的语气。她说：
I wept night and day, I made myself ugly
on purpose to punish myself. I was the oldest, after me there were two boys
and another girl, Elisa: Peppe and Gianni, the two boys, came in turn to
console me, now bringing me some fruit, now asking me to play with them. But
I felt alone just the same, with a cruel fate, and I couldn’t calm down. Then
one afternoon I heard my mother come up behind me. She said in dialect, in
her usual harsh tone:
“我们没钱让你补课，但你可以自学，看看能不能通过考试。”我很不安地看着她。她还是以前的样子：头发干枯，斜眼，大鼻子，身躯肥胖。她补充说：“没人说这样做不行。”
“We can’t pay for the lessons, but you
can try to study by yourself and see if you pass the exam.” I looked at her
uncertainly. She was the same: lusterless hair, wandering eye, large nose,
heavy body. She added, “Nowhere is it written that you can’t do it.”
她就说了这些话，或者说我只记得这些话。从那天开始我就自学起来，我要求自己不去院子和小公园里。
That was all she said, or at least it’s
what I remember. Starting the next day, I began to study, forcing myself
never to go to the courtyard or the public gardens.
有天早上，我听见有人在路上叫我，是莉拉。自从我们小学毕业之后，她就没有了来叫我的习惯。
But one morning I heard someone calling
me from the street. It was Lila, who since we finished elementary school had
completely gotten out of the habit.
“莱诺。”她喊道。
“Lenù,” she called.
我从窗子探出头去。
I looked out.
“我要跟你讲一件事。”
“I have to tell you something.”
“什么？”
“What?”
“你下来吧。”
“Come down.”
我很不情愿地走下楼去，我不愿意告诉她我考试不及格的事。我们顶着太阳在院子里走了一会儿，我闷声闷气地问了她那些男女朋友的事情。我记得，我问她卡梅拉和阿方索之间发展的怎么样了。
I went down reluctantly, it irritated me
to admit to her that I had to take the exam again. We wandered a bit in the
courtyard, in the sun. I asked unwillingly what was new on the subject of
boyfriends. I remember that I asked her explicitly if there had been
developments between Carmela and Alfonso.
“发展什么？”她说。
“What sort of developments?”
“她爱阿方索。”
“She loves him.”
她眨了一下眼睛，变得非常严肃。她露出这个表情时，脸上没有微笑，她眯着眼睛，就好像要使眼珠子更聚光，看得更清楚，这让我想起了那些猛禽的眼睛，那是我在教区电影院里看到的。我觉得，她好像在面对一件让她生气，同时又让她害怕的事情。
She narrowed her eyes. When she did that,
turning serious, without a smile, as if leaving the pupils only a crack
allowed her to see in a more concentrated way, she reminded me of birds of
prey I had seen in films at the parish cinema. But that day it seemed to me
she had perceived something that made her angry and at the same time
frightened her.
“她从来没对你说过她父亲的事吗？”她问我。
“She didn’t tell you anything about her
father?” she asked.
“她说她父亲是无辜的。”
“That he’s innocent.”
“那谁是杀手呢？”
“And who is the murderer?”
“一个不男不女的人，藏在下水道里，有时候会像老鼠一样，从井盖下溜出来。”
“A creature half male and half female who
hides in the sewers and comes out of the grates like the rats.”
“那就是真的了。”她说。忽然间她好像有些痛苦，她接着说，她说什么卡梅拉都会信以为真，院子里的女生全一样。“我不想说了，我不想和任何人说话了。”她皱着眉头说。我觉得她说这话时，并没有带着鄙视，她对我们产生的影响并没有让她很自豪，我有些不理解。假如我是她的话，我会很骄傲的，但她一点儿也不骄傲，而是表现出不耐烦，混杂着对承担责任的担忧。
“So it’s true,” she said, as if suddenly
in pain, and she added that Carmela believed everything she said, that all
the girls did. “I don’t want to talk anymore, I don’t want to talk to
anyone,” she muttered, scowling, and I felt that she wasn’t speaking with
contempt, that the influence she had on us didn’t please her, so that for a
moment I didn’t understand: in her place I would have been extremely proud.
In her, though, there was no pride but a kind of impatience mixed with the
fear of responsibility.
我嘀咕了一句：“和别人交谈很好啊！”
“But it’s good to talk to other people,”
I murmured.
“是的，但只有在有人能回应你的话时。”
“Yes, but only if when you talk there’s
someone who answers.”
我觉得胸口一阵惊喜，这么美妙的一个句子里，是不是含有某种请求？她是不是在告诉我，她只想和我说话，因为我不会对她说的所有话都信以为真，而是会作出回应？她是在告诉我，只有我能跟得上她的思维？
I felt a burst of joy in my heart. What
request was there in that fine sentence? Was she saying that she wanted to
talk only to me because I didn’t accept everything that came out of her mouth
but responded to it? Was she saying that only I knew how to follow the things
that went through her mind?
是的。她跟我说话时用了一种我很不熟悉的语气，很柔弱——通常她都很强悍。她说：“这是我建议卡梅拉的，在我看过的一部小说或电影里，一个凶手的女儿爱上了受害者的儿子。这是一种可能：要成为事实，那应该产生真正的感情。卡梅拉没明白，第二天她就告诉所有人她爱上了阿方索。这是带着卖弄的谎言，和其他谎言一样，但不知道会产生什么后果。”谈论这些事情时，我们十二岁，走在城区滚烫的街道上，四处都是灰尘和苍蝇，那是经过这里的卡车留下的。我们就像两个老太太一样，在总结自己充满失望的人生。我们手拉着手，没有人能理解我们，只有我们相互了解。我想，我们在一起，只有我们俩，我们知道，头顶上的苍穹一直压在这个城区之上，也就是说，自从我们记事开始，这个城区就是这样，假如木匠佩卢索没有把刀子插入堂·阿奇勒的脖子，假如凶手是一个住在下水道里的人，假如杀手的女儿和受害人的儿子结婚，那我们的生活还有一线生机。这里的人、事物、楼房和街道，有一种让人无法承受的东西，只有像在游戏中那样，重新安排这一切，眼前的一切才会变得让人可以接受，然而最主要的是：我和她一起玩，只有我和她才玩得了这个游戏。
Yes. And she was saying it in a tone that
I didn’t recognize, that was feeble, although brusque as usual. She had
suggested to Carmela, she told me, that in a novel or a film the daughter of
the murderer would fall in love with the son of the victim. It was a
possibility: to become a true fact a true love would have to arise. But
Carmela hadn’t understood and right away, the next day, had gone around
telling everyone that she was in love with Alfonso: a lie just to show off,
whose consequences were unknown. We discussed it. We were twelve years old,
but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and
flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old
ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to
each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one
another. We together, we alone, knew how the pall that had weighed on the
neighborhood forever, that is, ever since we could remember, might lift at
least a little if Peluso, the former carpenter, had not plunged the knife
into Don Achille’s neck, if it was an inhabitant of the sewers who had done
it, if the daughter of the murderer married the son of the victim. There was
something unbearable in the things, in the people, in the buildings, in the
streets that, only if you reinvented it all, as in a game, became acceptable.
The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and
I, knew how to do it.
这时候，她说了一句话，和之前的谈话没有直接的关系，但好像所有的话都必然会引向这句话。她问我：
She asked me at one point, without an
obvious connection but as if all our conversation could arrive only at that
question:
“我们还是朋友吗？”
“Are we still friends?”
“当然是啦。”
“Yes.”
“那你能不能帮我一个忙？”
“Then will you do me a favor?”
在当时的情况下，在那个一切从头开始的早上，我愿意为她做任何事情：离家出走，离开这个城区，在农舍里睡觉，吃草根，从井盖下到下水道里去，再也不回头，无论是严寒还是下雨。但她那时候请求我的事情，让我有点失望，她只是要求我每天去小公园里一次，每次一个小时也行，在吃晚饭之前，她让我带上拉丁语课本。
I would have done anything for her, on
that morning of reconciliation: run away from home, leave the neighborhood,
sleep in farmhouses, feed on roots, descend into the sewers through the
grates, never turn back, not even if it was cold, not even if it rained. But
what she asked seemed to me nothing and at the moment disappointed me. She
wanted simply to meet once a day, in the public gardens, even just for an
hour, before dinner, and I was to bring the Latin books.
“我不会搅扰你的。”她说。
“I won’t bother you,” she said.
她已经知道我考试不及格，她想和我一起学习拉丁语。
She knew already that I had to take the
exam again and wanted to study with me.
7
在我上中学那几年，我们眼睁睁地看着很多事情发生了变化，但我们一天天身处其中，并不觉得是真正的变化。
In those middle school years many things
changed right before our eyes, but day by day, so that they didn’t seem to be
real changes.
索拉拉的酒吧扩大了，变成了一个供应各种糕点的甜食店，糕点师傅是吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛的父亲。星期天，甜食店里挤满了各个年纪的男人，他们在给家人买甜点。西尔维奥·索拉拉的两个儿子——马尔切洛大约二十岁，米凯莱小一点，他们买了一辆蓝白相间的“菲亚特1100”汽车，星期天他们开着车在城区的街道上兜来兜去，尽情炫耀。
The Bar Solara expanded, became a
welland-white Fiat 1100 and on Sundays paraded around the streets of the
neighborhood.
前木匠佩卢索的铺子落到了堂·阿奇勒的手上之后，就变成了一家肉食店，里面摆满了美味的东西，有时候也会摆到人行道上来。经过肉食店门口，你能闻到香料、橄榄、香肠、新鲜面包和香油的味道，让人胃口大开。堂·阿奇勒死后，他可怕的影子慢慢消散了，远离了这个地方，远离了他的家人。寡妇玛丽亚大娘亲自经营这家肉食店，她说话非常客气。她十五岁的女儿皮诺奇娅也在店里工作，还有儿子斯特凡诺——他已经不再是那个愤怒的少年，想要从莉拉嘴里把她的舌头揪出来，而是变得非常有分寸，目光诚恳，带着柔和的微笑。他们的客户越来越多，我母亲经常让我去他们家买东西，父亲没表示反对，还有一个原因就是：我们没钱时，斯特凡诺会在一个小本上把账记下来，我们可以月末时结账。
Peluso’s former carpenter shop, which,
once in the hands of Don Achille, had become a grocery, was filled with good
things that spilled out onto the sidewalk, too. Passing by you caught a whiff
of spices, of olives, of salami, of fresh bread, of pork fat and cracklings
that made you hungry. The death of Don Achille had slowly detached his
threatening shadow from that place and from the whole family. The widow,
Donna Maria, had grown very friendly and now managed the store herself, along
with Pinuccia, the fifteenold daughter, and Stefano, who was no longer the
wild boy who had tried to pierce Lila’s tongue but a self-possessed young
man, his gaze charming, his smile gentle. The clientele had increased
greatly. My mother sent me there to do the shopping, and my father wasn’t
opposed, partly because when there was no money Stefano wrote everything in a
ledger book and we paid at the end of the month.
那个在街上和丈夫一起卖蔬菜水果的女人阿孙塔，她的腰出了毛病，不得不在家待着。几个月之后，一场肺炎几乎要了她丈夫的命。但无论如何，这两个不幸的人还有一个依靠，现在无论冬夏，无论刮风下雨还是晴天，每天早上他们的儿子恩佐都会驾着马拉车到城区卖菜。这时候的恩佐和当时向我们丢石头的恩佐完全不像一个人，他已经长成了一个壮实的小伙子，看起来强壮健康，金色的头发有些鬈曲，蓝色的眼睛，他声音很粗，在吆喝叫卖。他的货通常都很好，他很自豪地吆喝着。他动作沉稳，服务也很周到，让人觉得诚信可靠。他很熟练地称量东西，我很喜欢他在秤杆上找准星时的敏捷，喜欢听游码在铁杆上滑动的声音。他会很麻利地把土豆或者水果用纸包好，放在斯帕纽洛太太、梅丽娜，或者我母亲的篮子里。
Assunta, who sold fruit and vegetables on
the streets with her husband, Nicola, had had to retire because of bad back
pain, and a few months later pneumonia almost killed her husband. Yet those
two misfortunes had turned out to be a blessing. Now, going around the
streets of the neighborhood every morning with the horse-drawn cart, summer
and winter, rain and shine, was the oldest son, Enzo, who had almost nothing
about him of the child who threw rocks at us: he had become a stocky youth,
with a strong, healthy look, disheveled blond hair, blue eyes, a thick voice
with which he praised his wares. He had excellent products and by his
gestures alone conveyed an honest, reassuring willingness to serve his
customers. He handled the scale adroitly. I liked the speed with which he
pushed the weight along the arm to find the right balance, the sound of iron
scraping rapidly against iron, then wrapped the potatoes or the fruit and
hurried to put the package in Signora Spagnuolo’s basket, or Melina’s, or my
mother’s.
整个城区都生机勃勃，缝纫用品店忽然间就冒了出来——卡梅拉开始在那里做售货员。一个年轻的裁缝把店铺扩大了，店主野心勃勃，要把铺子变成给阔人做衣服的裁缝店。梅丽娜的儿子安东尼奥在汽车修理厂工作，多亏了先前的老板格莱西奥先生的儿子——能干的他要把汽车修理厂变成一个小型机动脚踏车工厂。
Initiatives flourished in the whole neighborhood. A young dressmaker became a partner in the dry goods store, where Carmela Peluso had just started working as a clerk, and the store expanded, aspiring to become a ladies’ clothing shop. The auto-repair shop where Melina’s son, Antonio, worked was trying, thanks to the son of the old owner, Gentile Gorresio, to get into motorcycles.
总之，到处都是一副百业待兴的样子，就好像卯足了劲，要改变原来的模样，要把之前的积怨、紧张和丑陋全部化解，要呈现出一副新面孔。我和莉拉在小公园里学习拉丁语的时候，我们周围的空间：小喷泉、灌木丛、街道旁边的小空地都发生了变化。空气中散发着沥青的味道，蒸汽压路机扑哧扑哧从散着热气的柏油马路上缓缓开过，那些光着背或者穿着背心的工人，在铺设城区里大大小小的路，城区的颜色也发生了变化。卡梅拉的哥哥帕斯卡莱被叫去砍伐铁路后面的树木，他们伐木时，人们好几天都听到树木倒地的声音。那些树木抖动着，散发出一种新鲜木材和青草的气息，树枝划过天空，倒在地上，发出一阵窸窸窣窣的声音，就像是一声叹息。帕斯卡莱和其他人用锯子锯，用斧头砍，把树根挖出来，树根带出了泥土的味道。那片树林逐渐消失，慢慢出现了一片发黄的平地。帕斯卡莱幸运地找到了这份工作，因为不久之前，有一个朋友告诉他，有人来到索拉拉的酒吧里，要找一些小伙子在晚上把那不勒斯市中心广场的树砍掉。尽管他不喜欢西尔维奥·索拉拉还有他的几个儿子，因为他父亲就是在那家酒吧里被毁掉的，但他要养家糊口，所以就去了。他回来的时候是黎明，精疲力竭，鼻孔里全是新鲜木头、被揉碎的树叶和大海的味道。事情就是这样，有第一次就会有第二次，他后来又被叫去做类似的工作。现在他在铁路后面的工地上干活，有时候，我们可以看到他在新建筑前的脚手架上干活，那些楼房在一层层增高。有时候，我们看到他头上戴着一顶用报纸折成的帽子，午饭时会在太阳底下吃着一块夹着香肠和煎蛋的面包。
In other words everything was quivering,
arching upward as if to change its characteristics, not to be known by the
accumulated hatreds, tensions, ugliness but, rather, to show a new face.
While Lila and I studied Latin in the public gardens, even the pure and
simple space around us, the fountain, the shrubbery, a pothole on one side of
the street, changed. There was a constant smell of pitch, the steamroller
sputtered, advancing slowly over the steamy asphalt, as bareshirted workers
paved the streets and the stradone. Even the colors changed. Pasquale,
Carmela’s older brother, was hired to cut down the brush near the railroad
tracks. How much he cut—we heard the sound of annihilation for days: the
trees groaned, they gave off a scent of fresh green wood, they cleaved the
air, they struck the ground after a long rustling that seemed a sigh, and he
and others sawed them, split them, pulled up roots that exhaled an odor of
underground. The green brush vanished and in its place appeared an area of
flat yellow ground. Pasquale had found that job through a stroke of luck.
Sometime earlier a friend had told him that people had come to the Bar Solara
looking for young men to do night work cutting down trees in a piazza in the
center of Naples. He—even though he didn’t like Silvio Solara and his sons,
he was in that bar because his father was ruined—had to support the family
and had gone. He had returned, exhausted, at dawn, his nostrils filled with
the odor of living wood, of mangled leaves, and of the sea. Then one thing
led to another, and he had been summoned again for that kind of work. And now
he was on the construction site near the railroad and we sometimes saw him
climbing up the scaffolding of the new buildings that were rising floor by
floor, or in a hat made of newspaper, in the sun, eating bread with sausage
and greens during his lunch break.
我们学拉丁语时，我看着帕斯卡莱走神了，莉拉会很愤怒。让我惊异的是，我很快发现，她已经懂得很多拉丁语知识，比如她知道所有的词尾变化，也会很多动词变格。我很小心地问她为什么会懂拉丁语，她做出一副不想浪费时间解释的表情，有些不悦地说，在我上初一时，她从流动图书馆，也就是费拉罗老师管理的那个图书馆，借了一本拉丁语语法书来看，因为她觉得很好奇，就学了一下。那个图书馆对她来说是一个很好的资源。我们聊着聊着，她向我展示了她所有的借书证，一共有四张：一张是她的，一张是里诺名下的，还有两张是她父母名下的。每张借书证可以借一本书，她有四张，可以借四本。她一个星期看完四本，第二个星期天还回去之后，又借四本。
Lila got mad if I looked at Pasquale and
was distracted. It was soon obvious, to my great amazement, that she already
knew a lot of Latin. She knew the declensions, for example, and also the
verbs. Hesitantly I asked her how, and she, with that spiteful expression of
a girl who has no time to waste, admitted that during my first year of middle
school she had taken a grammar out of the circulating library, the one
managed by Maestro Ferraro, and had studied it out of curiosity. The library
was a great resource for her. As we talked, she showed me proudly all the
cards she had, four: one her own, one in Rino’s name, one for her father, and
one for her mother. With each she borrowed a book, so she could get four at
once. She devoured them, and the following Sunday she brought them back and
took four more.
我从来没问她都看了什么书，正在看什么书，因为我们没有时间，我们要学习拉丁语。她会考我，如果我答不上来，她会发火。有一次，她狠狠打了一下我的手臂，她的手很瘦很长。她没有说对不起，她说假如我再答错的话，她会打得更狠。她着迷于拉丁语词汇，那本拉丁语词典很厚，有很多页，也很重，她之前从来都没见过。她在上面不停地查词，不仅仅是练习里出现的词汇，她脑子里想起什么就查什么。
I never asked her what books she had read
and what books she was reading, there wasn’t time, we had to study. She
drilled me, and was furious if I didn’t have the answers. Once she slapped me
on the arm, hard, with her long, thin hands, and didn’t apologize; rather,
she said that if I kept making mistakes she would hit me again, and harder.
She was enchanted by the Latin dictionary, so large, pages and pages, so
heavy—she had never seen one. She constantly looked up words, not only the
ones in the exercises but any that occurred to her.
她还会给我留作业，用她从奥利维耶罗老师那里学到的语气。她让我每天翻译三十个句子：二十句从拉丁语翻译到意大利语，另外十句从意大利语翻译到拉丁语。她也会做翻译，但比我快得多。夏天结束了，临近考试时，她看着我在词典里查找生词的样子，满脸疑惑。我按照句子中出现的生词顺序查词典，查完生词之后，抓住主要意思，我才能很吃力地明白句子的意思。她很谨慎地问我：
She assigned homework in the tone she had
learned from our teacher Maestra Oliviero. She obliged me to translate thirty
sentences a day, twenty from Latin to Italian and ten from Italian to Latin.
She translated them, too, much more quickly than I did. At the end of the
summer, when the exam was approaching, she said warily, having observed
skeptically how I looked up words I didn’t know in the dictionary, in the
same order in which I found them in the sentence to be translated, fixed on
the principal definitions, and only then made an effort to understand the
meaning:
“是拉丁语老师让你这么做的吗？”
“Did the teacher tell you to do it like
that?”
老师从来什么也不说，她只是给我们布置作业，并没有告诉我们应该怎么做，那是我自己摸索出来的方式。
The teacher never said anything, she
simply assigned the exercises. I came up with that method.
她沉默了一下，建议我说：
She was silent for a moment, then she
said to me:
“你先把整个句子看一遍，找出动词，根据动词的人称，你就能明白主语是什么。找到主语之后，你开始寻找宾语——假如是及物动词的话，你要找到宾语，如果不是及物动词，你要找到其他补语。你试试……”
“Read the whole sentence in Latin first,
then see where the verb is. According to the person of the verb you can tell
what the subject is. Once you have the subject you look for the complements:
the object if the verb is transitive, or if not other complements. Try it
like that.”
我试了一下，好像忽然间翻译变得非常容易。九月参加考试的时候，我的笔试基本没出现一个错误，口试时我也能回答所有问题。
I tried. Suddenly translating seemed
easy. In September I went to the exam, I did the written part without a
mistake and answered all the questions in the oral part.
“谁给你补的课？”老师皱着眉头问我。
“Who gave you lessons?” the teacher
asked, frowning.
“我的一个朋友。”
“A friend.”
“大学生吧？”
“A university student?”
我不知道她在说什么，就点了点头。
I didn’t know what that meant. I said
yes.
我考完试，莉拉在外面的树荫下等我。我出去时拥抱了她，我对她说，我考得很好，我问她还愿不愿意和我继续学习。我们一起学习，开始是她提出来的，我觉得邀请她继续和我学习是一种很好的方式，可以表达我的愉快和感激。她一口就回绝了我，几乎有些厌烦。她说，她只想搞清楚拉丁语原理，因为那些很厉害的人都学了拉丁语。
Lila was waiting for me outside, in the
shade. When I came out I hugged her, I told her that I had done really well
and asked if we would study together the following year. Since it was she who
had first proposed that we meet just to study, inviting her to continue
seemed to me a good way of expressing my joy and gratitude. She detached
herself with a gesture almost of annoyance. She said she just wanted to
understand what that Latin was that those clever ones studied.
“然后呢？”
“And then?”
“现在我搞清楚了，够了。”
“I’ve understood, that’s enough.”
“你不喜欢吗？”
“You don’t like it?”
“还行，我要从图书馆里借几本书来看。”
“Yes. I’ll get some books from the
library.”
“拉丁语的吗？”
“In Latin?”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
“但现在要学的东西很多。”
“But there’s still a lot to study.”
“你替我学吧。如果我有困难，你要帮我。我现在要和我哥哥做个东西。”
“You study for me, and if I have trouble
you’ll help me. Now I have something to do with my brother.”
“什么东西？”
“What?”
“我会给你看的。”
“I’ll show you later.”
8
开学了，我每门功课都很顺利。我迫不及待地希望莉拉让我帮她学习拉丁语或者其他课程，我觉得自己努力学习并不是为了学校，而是为了她。我成了班上的第一名，在小学时我的成绩也没那么好过。
School began again and right away I did
well in all the subjects. I couldn’t wait for Lila to ask me to help her in
Latin or anything else, and so, I think, I studied not so much for school as
for her. I became first in the class; even in elementary school I hadn’t done
so well.
那年，我觉得自己像做披萨面团一样发了起来。我的胸部、大腿和臀部变得愈来愈丰满。一个星期天，我和吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛约在小公园那里见面。这时候索拉拉兄弟开车过来了，年龄大一点的马尔切洛坐在方向盘前，弟弟米凯莱坐在他旁边，他们把车停到了我身边。兄弟俩都很帅气，头发乌黑发亮，笑的时候露出洁白的牙齿，但他们俩中间，我更喜欢马尔切洛，他长得像埃托雷——我们的课本《伊利亚特》插图里的人物。他们一直跟着我，我走在人行道上，他们在路上，坐在那辆“菲亚特1100”车里。
That year it seemed to me that I expanded
like pizza dough. I became fuller in the chest, the thighs, the rear. One
Sunday when I was going to the gardens, where I was planning to meet Gigliola
Spagnuolo, the Solara brothers approached me in the 1100. Marcello, the
older, was at the wheel, Michele, the younger, was sitting next to him. They
were both handsome, with glossy black hair, white teeth. But of the two I
liked Marcello better; he resembled Hector as he was depicted in the school
copy of the Iliad. They followed me the whole way, I on the sidewalk and they
next to me, in the 1100.
“你坐过汽车吗？”
“Have you ever been in a car?”
“没有。”
“No.”
“上来吧，我们带你兜一圈。”
“Get in, we’ll take you for a ride.”
“我父亲不会同意的。”
“My father won’t let me.”
“我们不会告诉他的。你什么时候才有机会坐上这么阔气的汽车啊？”
“And we won’t tell him. When do you get
the chance to ride in a car like this?”
永远不会，我想，但是我一直在说“不”，并加快脚步走向小公园。这时候他们的汽车加速开走了，一眨眼工夫就消失在正在修建的房子后面。我拒绝了他们，因为假如我父亲知道我上了他们的汽车，尽管他是一个温和的好人，非常爱我，他也一定会打死我的。我的两个弟弟佩佩和詹尼尽管年龄很小，也会感觉到有义务在长大后杀死索拉拉兄弟。没有明文规定，但大家都知道事情就是这样，包括索拉拉兄弟也知道。说实在的，他们一直都表现得很客气，只是邀请我上车。
Never, I thought. But meanwhile I said no
and kept saying no all the way to the gardens, where the car accelerated and
disappeared in a flash beyond the buildings that were under construction. I
said no because if my father found out that I had gone in that car, even
though he was a good and loving man, even though he loved me very much, he
would have beat me to death, while at the same time my little brothers, Peppe
and Gianni, young as they were, would feel obliged, now and in the future, to
try to kill the Solara brothers. There were no written rules, everyone knew
that was how it was. The Solaras knew it, too, since they had been polite,
and had merely invited me to get in.
后来在艾达面前，他们表现得就没那么客气了，艾达是疯寡妇——也就是在萨拉托雷搬家时，丢人现眼的那个寡妇梅丽娜·卡普乔的大女儿。艾达当时十四岁，星期天她背着母亲抹上口红，她的腿很长很直，胸比我还大，看起来很成熟，很漂亮。索拉拉兄弟会对她说一些不堪入耳的话，米凯莱用手抓住她的一条胳膊，打开车门，把她拉了进去。一个小时之后，他们会把艾达送回原处，她好像有些恼火，但又在笑。
They were not, some time later, with Ada,
the oldest daughter of Melina Cappuccio, that is the crazy widow who had
caused the scandal when the Sarratores moved. Ada was fourteen. On Sunday, in
secret from her mother, she put on lipstick and, with her long, straight
legs, and breasts even larger than mine, she looked grown-up and pretty. The
Solara brothers made some vulgar remarks to her, Michele grabbed her by the
arm, opened the car door, pulled her inside. They brought her back an hour
later to the same place, and Ada was a little angry, but also laughing.
有人看到索拉拉兄弟把艾达强行拉到车上，就把这件事情告诉艾达的哥哥安东尼奥，他在格莱西奥的修理厂做技工。安东尼奥干活很努力，很守纪律，也很羞怯。很明显，父亲的早逝和母亲的疯狂让他很受伤。他没对自己的亲戚和朋友说，就一个人去索拉拉的酒吧门口等马尔切洛和米凯莱，兄弟俩一出现，他一句话也没有说，上来就动了手。前面几分钟，他占了上风，但后来索拉拉兄弟的父亲，还有一个酒吧服务员出来了，他们四个人联手，打得安东尼奥浑身是血。这时候，经过的人，还有酒吧里的顾客，没有任何人介入、帮他一把。
But among those who saw her dragged into
the car were some who reported it to Antonio, her older brother, who worked
as a mechanic in Gorresio’s shop. Antonio was a hard worker, disciplined,
very shy, obviously wounded by both the untimely death of his father and the
unbalanced behavior of his mother. Without saying a single word to friends
and relatives he waited in front of the Bar Solara for Marcello and Michele,
and when the brothers showed up he confronted them, punching and kicking
without even a word of preamble. For a few minutes he managed pretty well,
but then the father Solara and one of the barmen came out. They beat Antonio
bloody and none of the passersby, none of the customers, intervened to help
him.
关于这件事情，我们这些女生都分成两派。吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛和卡梅拉·佩卢索支持索拉拉兄弟俩，因为他们很帅，而且有汽车。我有些犹豫，当着这两个朋友的面，我倾向于索拉拉，表现出很欣赏他们的样子。他们的确很帅，对于我们来说很难抵挡，我们想象自己坐在汽车里，坐在他们其中一个身边的样子。但我觉得他们俩在艾达面前的表现，实在是太糟糕了，安东尼奥虽然不是很帅，不像索拉拉兄弟一样肌肉发达、每天去健身房，但是他有勇气挑战他们。莉拉毫不犹豫地表达了她的观点，她和我想法一样，因此当着莉拉的面，我也说出了自己真实的想法。
We girls were divided on this episode.
Gigliola Spagnuolo and Carmela Peluso took the part of the Solaras, but only
because they were handsome and had an 1100. I wavered. In the presence of my
two friends I favored the Solaras and we competed for who loved them most,
since in fact they were very handsome and it was impossible not to imagine
the impression we would make sitting next to one of them in the car. But I
also felt that they had behaved badly with Ada, and that Antonio, even though
he wasn’t very good-looking, even though he wasn’t muscular like the
brothers, who went to the gym every day to lift weights, had been courageous
in confronting them. So in the presence of Lila, who expressed without half
measures that same position, I, too, expressed some reservations.
有一次，我们讨论得很激烈，也许因为她不像我们发育得那么好，她不知道受索拉拉兄弟关注的那种乐趣和恐惧。她比平时更加苍白，她说假如发生在艾达身上的事情发生在她身上，那她不会麻烦她父亲和哥哥里诺，她会亲自解决那俩兄弟。
Once the discussion became so heated that
Lila, maybe because she wasn’t developed as we were and didn’t know the
pleasure-fear of having the Solaras’ gaze on her, became paler than usual and
said that, if what happened to Ada had happened to her, to avoid trouble for
her father and her brother Rino she would take care of the two of them
herself.
“马尔切洛和米凯莱看都不看你一眼。”吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛说。我们以为莉拉会生气，
“Because Marcello and Michele don’t even
look at you,” said Gigliola Spagnuolo, and we thought that Lila would get
angry.
但她很严肃地说：“这样最好。”
Instead she said seriously, “It’s better
that way.”
她还是像之前那么单薄，但很紧致。我惊异地看着她的双手：在短时间内，她的双手就会像她哥哥里诺，还有她父亲的手那样，手指会长出厚厚的、发黄的茧。尽管没人逼她——在铺子里干活不是她份内的事情——她也开始干一些活儿，穿针引线，拆线，沾胶，缝边，她现在操作费尔南多的那些工具几乎和她哥哥一样熟练。这就是为什么那一年她不再问我拉丁语的事情。后来有一次她跟我说了她的想法，但和书本一点关系也没有：她想说服她父亲做新款的鞋子，但费尔南多连谈都不愿意谈。父亲对她说，做手工鞋是没有前途的。现在有很多机器，那些机器很贵，需要很多钱，但钱不是在银行，就是在放高利贷的人手里，赛鲁罗家里没这些钱。她还是坚持己见，跟父亲说了很多好话：爸爸，没人像你做鞋子做得那么好。他回答说，尽管这是事实，但现在的鞋子都是工厂加工的，批量生产，成本很低。他之前在工厂里待过，知道那些流向市场的鞋子有多糟糕，但没办法，人们要穿新鞋的话，已经不会去附近的鞋匠那里买，而是去雷蒂费洛区的商店买。尽管你规规矩矩地做好鞋子，也会卖不出去，白费力气，还赔上钱。
She was as slender as ever, but tense in
every fiber. I looked at her hands and marveled: in a short time they had
become like Rino’s, like her father’s, with the skin at the tips yellowish
and thick. Even if no one forced her—that wasn’t her job, in the shop—she had
started to do small tasks, she prepared the thread, took out stitches, glued,
even stitched, and now she handled Fernando’s tools almost like her brother.
That was why that year she never asked me anything about Latin. Eventually,
she told me the plan she had in mind, a thing that had nothing to do with
books: she was trying to persuade her father to make new shoes. But Fernando
didn’t want to hear about it. “Making shoes by hand,” he told her, “is an art
without a future: today there are cars and cars cost money and the money is
either in the bank or with the loan sharks, not in the pockets of the Cerullo
family.” Then she insisted, she filled him with sincere praise: “No one knows
how to make shoes the way you do, Papa.” Even if that was true, he responded,
everything was made in factories now, and since he had worked in the
factories he knew very well what lousy stuff came out of them; but there was
little to do about it, when people needed new shoes they no longer went to
the neighborhood shoemaker, they went to the stores in the center of town, on
the Rettifilo, so even if you wanted to make the handcrafted product
properly, you wouldn’t sell it, you’d be throwing away money and labor, you’d
ruin yourself.
莉拉没有像往常一样被父亲说服，她把里诺拉到自己一边。开始，她哥哥是站在父亲那一边的，因为他很烦莉拉，他才是做鞋子的行家，现在莉拉不谈读书的事了，却在对干活的事指手画脚。但后来，他逐渐被妹妹关于制鞋的诱人前景说服了，开始和费尔南多争吵，频繁顶嘴，说的都是莉拉说的那些话。
Lila wouldn’t be convinced and as usual
she had drawn Rino to her side. Her brother had first agreed with his father,
irritated by the fact that she interfered in things to do with work, where it
wasn’t a matter of books and he was the expert. Then gradually he had been
captivated and now he quarreled with Fernando nearly every day, repeating
what she had put into his head.
“我们至少要尝试一下。”
“Let’s at least try it.”
“不行。”
“No.”
“你看到索拉拉家的汽车了吗？你看到卡拉奇他们家的肉食店生意多火了吗？”
“Have you seen the car the Solaras have,
have you seen how well the Carraccis’ grocery is doing?”
“我看到，那个开裁缝用品店的女老板想开一家成衣店，但她后来放弃了。我还看到格莱西奥的修理厂，因为他那个蠢儿子的缘故，迈的步子比腿还长。”
“I’ve seen that the dry goods store that
wanted to be a dressmaker’s gave it up and I’ve seen that Gorresio, because
of his son’s stupidity, has bitten off more than he can chew with his
motorcycles.”
“但是，索拉拉他们家的店铺越来越大了。”
“But the Solaras keep expanding.”
“做你自己的事吧，别管人家索拉拉。”
“Mind your own business and forget the
Solaras.”
“在铁路旁边要建一个新小区。”
“Near the train tracks a new neighborhood
is being developed.”
“关我们屁事儿。”
“Who gives a damn.”
“爸爸，那些人赚到了钱，他们想花钱。”
“Papa, people are earning and they want
to spend.”
“人们会花钱买吃的东西，因为每天都得吃饭。鞋子首先不能吃；其次呢，如果鞋子坏了，让人修一修，还可以穿上二十年。就眼下看来，我们的工作就是修鞋子，我们不干别的。”
“People spend on food because you have to
eat every day. As for shoes, first of all you don’t eat them, and, second,
when they break you fix them and they can last twenty years. Our work, right
now, is to repair shoes and that’s it.”
我很喜欢里诺，因为他一直对我都很客气，但有时候他也能鼓起勇气，非常坚定，让他父亲也有些害怕。在任何时候，任何地方，他都在支持妹妹。我很嫉妒莉拉有这样一个哥哥，这样坚定地支持着她。有时候，我想我和她之间的差别是因为我只有弟弟，因此没有人鼓励我、反对我母亲，让我能独立思考；而莉拉可以依赖里诺，无论在谁面前，他都可以保护自己的妹妹，无论她怎么想，哥哥都会支持她。话是这么说，但我觉得费尔南多说得有道理，我比较同意他的观点。我和莉拉谈论这件事情时，发现她也这么想。
I liked how that boy, who was always nice
to me but capable of a brutality that frightened even his father a little,
always, in every circumstance, supported his sister. I envied Lila that
brother who was so solid, and sometimes I thought that the real difference
between her and me was that I had only little brothers, and so no one with
the power to encourage me and support me against my mother, freeing my mind,
while Lila could count on Rino, who could defend her against anyone, whatever
came into her mind. But really, I thought that Fernando was right, and was on
his side. And discussing it with Lila, I discovered that she thought so, too.
有一次，她让我看了一幅图，那是她和哥哥一起画的鞋子图纸，男鞋女鞋都有。那些设计图非常漂亮，画在方格纸上面，细节很丰富，颜色也很精确，就好像她从近处仔细观看过那些不属于我们这个世界的鞋子，她看到之后，就把它们画了下来。实际上，那些鞋子是她设计的，每个细节都是她想象的，就像在上小学时她画的那些公主。她画的那些鞋子，看起来虽然非常普通，但一点儿也不像我们这个城区卖的鞋子，包括照片小说里女演员脚上的鞋子，也不是这个样子。
Once she showed me the designs for shoes
that she wanted to make with her brother, both men’s and women’s. They were
beautiful designs, drawn on graph paper, rich in precisely colored details,
as if she had had a chance to examine shoes like that close up in some world
parallel to ours and then had fixed them on paper. In reality she had
invented them in their entirety and in every part, as she had done in
elementary school when she drew princesses, so that, although they were
normal shoes, they didn’t resemble any that were seen in the neighborhood, or
even those of the actresses in the photo novels.
“你喜欢吗？”
“Do you like them?”
“这些鞋子很优雅。”
“They’re really elegant.”
“里诺说这种鞋子很难做。”
“Rino says they’re difficult.”
“那他会做吗？”
“But he knows how to make them?”
“他说他肯定能做出来。”
“He swears he can.”
“那你父亲呢？”
“And your father?”
“他当然能做出来。”
“He certainly could do it.”
“那你们就做吧。”
“Then make them.”
“爸爸不愿意做。”
“Papa doesn’t want to.”
“为什么？”
“Why?”
“他说，我玩玩可以，但是他和里诺不能跟着我浪费时间。”
“He said that as long as I’m playing,
fine, but he and Rino can’t waste time with me.”
“什么意思？”
“What does that mean?”
“意思就是说，要真干起来的话，是要时间和金钱的。”
“It means that to actually do things
takes time and money.”
这时候，她把自己背着里诺算好的账给我看了看。她想知道做这些鞋子到底需要多少钱，最后她停了下来，把那几页皱巴巴的纸折了起来。她告诉我，她爸爸说的对，这是白费时间。
She was on the point of showing me the
figures she had put down, in secret from Rino, to understand how much it
really would cost to make them. Then she stopped, folded up the pages she was
holding, and told me it was pointless to waste time: her father was right.
“那你打算怎么办呢？”
“But then?”
“我们还是要试试。”
“We ought to try anyway.”
“费尔南多会发火的。”
“Fernando will get mad.”
“假如试都不试一下，那一切都会是老样子。”
“If you don’t try, nothing ever changes.”
她想要改变现状，还是同样的话题：我们应该从穷人变成富人，从一无所有到拥有一切。我跟她提了一下我们之前的计划：要像《小妇人》的作者，靠写小说发财。我还停留在这一步，还是很上心，还为了这个目标在学拉丁语。我内心深处相信，虽然她现在不再上学，尽管她专注于做鞋，但她在费拉罗老师的流动图书馆借阅了那么多书，是想和我一起写一本小说，赚很多钱。听到我的话，她耸了耸肩，一副满不在乎的样子。她对《小妇人》的想法已经变了，跟我解释说，现在要变得真正有钱，需要做生意。他们可以先做一双鞋子，向她父亲展示一下他们做的鞋子多漂亮，多舒服。一旦说服了费尔南多，就可以开始生产：今天做两双，明天做四双，一个月做三十双，一年做四百双，这样很快她就可以和她父亲、里诺、母亲，还有几个弟弟建起一家鞋厂——“赛鲁罗”鞋厂，雇佣至少五十个工人，用机器做鞋。
What had to change, in her view, was
always the same thing: poor, we had to become rich; having nothing, we had to
reach a point where we had everything. I tried to remind her of the old plan
of writing novels like the author of Little Women. I was stuck there, it was
important to me. I was learning Latin just for that, and deep inside I was
convinced that she took so many books from Maestro Ferraro’s circulating
library only because, even though she wasn’t going to school anymore, even
though she was now obsessed with shoes, she still wanted to write a novel
with me and make a lot of money. Instead, she shrugged in her careless way,
she had changed her idea of Little Women. “Now,” she explained, “to become
truly rich you need a business.” So she thought of starting with a single
pair of shoes, just to demonstrate to her father how beautiful and
comfortable they were; then, once Fernando was convinced, production would
start: two pairs of shoes today, four tomorrow, thirty in a month, four
hundred in a year, so that, within a short time, they, she, her father, Rino,
her mother, her other siblings, would set up a shoe factory, with machines
and at least fifty workers: the Cerullo shoe factory.
“一家做鞋的工厂？”
“A shoe factory?”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
她说起这个工厂时，充满了信心。她用平时说话的语气，用意大利语在我眼前勾勒出了一家工厂的样子。“赛鲁罗”的牌子会被烫在鞋面上，他们会做出“赛鲁罗”系列产品，设计都很漂亮、优雅。她说，穿上“赛鲁罗”鞋子，那么舒服漂亮，晚上睡觉时也不想脱。
She spoke with great conviction, as she
knew how to do, with sentences, in Italian, that depicted before my eyes the
factory sign, Cerullo; the brand name stamped on the uppers, Cerullo; and
then the Cerullo shoes, all splendid, all elegant, as in her drawings, shoes
that once you put them on, she said, are so beautiful and so comfortable that
at night you go to sleep without taking them off.
我们都笑了，觉得这个构想很有趣。
We laughed, we were having fun.
最后莉拉停了下来，就好像意识到我们是在开玩笑，就像很多年前我们把蒂娜和诺放在地窖通风口，一起玩布娃娃时一样。她对我说，她急于向我说明：这是一件很具体可行的事情。她一副小大人的样子，后来在我眼里，这种故作成熟成了她的一个主要特点：
Then Lila paused. She seemed to realize
that we were playing, as we had with our dolls years earlier, with Tina and
Nu in front of the cellar grating, and she said, with an urgency for
concreteness, which emphasized the impression she gave off, of being part
child, part old woman, which was, it seemed to me, becoming her
characteristic trait:
“你知道为什么索拉拉兄弟觉得自己是这个城区的主人？”
“You know why the Solara brothers think
they’re the masters of the neighborhood?”
“因为他们横行霸道。”
“Because they’re aggressive.”
“不是，因为他们有钱。”
“No, because they have money.”
“你这么认为？”
“You think so?”
“当然，你看到了吗？他们从来都不会骚扰皮诺奇娅·卡拉奇。”
“Of course. Have you noticed that they’ve
never bothered Pinuccia Carracci?”
“的确。”
“Yes.”
“那你知道为什么他们会那么对待艾达吗？”
“And you know why they acted the way they
did with Ada?”
“不知道。”
“No.”
“因为艾达没有父亲，她在帮梅丽娜打扫楼道和楼梯，她哥哥安东尼奥也没什么用。
“Because Ada doesn’t have a father, her
brother Antonio counts for nothing, and she helps Melina clean the stairs of
the buildings.”
所以，我们要自己赚钱，要比索拉拉赚得还多。要让那兄弟俩远离我们，就要让他们知道我们的厉害。”她给我看了一把非常锋利的割皮刀，那是她从她父亲的铺子里拿的。
As a result, either we, too, had to make
money, more than the Solaras, or, to protect ourselves against the brothers,
we had to do them serious harm. She showed me a sharp shoemaker’s knife that
she had taken from her father’s workshop.
“他们不会碰我，因为我很丑，我还没有来月经，但他们会骚扰你，如果发生这样的事情，你就告诉我。”她对我说。
“They won’t touch me, because I’m ugly
and I don’t have my period,” she said, “but with you they might. If anything
happens, tell me.”
我很迷惑地看着她，我们只有十三岁，什么都不懂，我们不懂法律、正义还有国家机构。我们只是在模仿从小看到和听到的，但我们从来都不肯定：难道正义不是靠斗殴获取的吗？佩卢索不是把堂·阿奇勒杀死了吗？回到家里，我意识到她最后说的那些话证明她很在乎我，这让我感觉到很幸福。
I looked at her in confusion. We were
almost thirteen, we knew nothing about institutions, laws, justice. We
repeated, and did so with conviction, what we had heard and seen around us
since early childhood. Justice was not served by violence? Hadn’t Signor
Peluso killed Don Achille? I went home. I realized that with those last words
she had admitted that I was important to her, and I was happy.
