《爱情笔记》Essays in love - 13

13

Intimacy

亲密

1. Watching a cube of sugar dissolve into a cup of camomile tea, Chloe, whose company I relied upon to make my life meaningful, remarked, 'We can't move in together because of my problem: I have to live on my own or else I melt. It's not that I don't want you, it's that I'm afraid of wanting only you, of finding that there's nothing left of me. So excuse it as part of my general screwed-upness, but I'm afraid I have to stay a bag lady.'克洛艾的相伴左右已成为我生命的意义所在，但她一边盯着方糖慢慢融化在黄春菊花茶里，一边说：“我们不能搬到一起住，问题出在我，我非得单独住，否则就会失去自我。这不只是一个关上门的问题，而是我内在的、心理上的问题。我不是不想要你，相反我担心只想要你而完全失去自我，所以我为自己开脱说，是由于我这个人总是邋遢。我想我得继续做拎包女人。”

2. I had first seen Chloe's bag at Heathrow Airport, a bright pink cylinder with a luminous green shoulder strap. She had arrived at my door with it the first night she came to stay, once more apologizing for its offensive colours, saying she had used it to pack a toothbrush and a set of fresh clothes for the next day. I had assumed the bag would be temporary, but she never gave it up, repacking it every morning as though this might be the last time we would ever see one another, as though to leave even a pair of earrings behind created an unsustainable risk of dissolution.我是在希斯罗机场第一次看到克洛艾的包：粉红的圆柱形箱体，鲜绿色的手柄。她到我那儿去的第一个晚上就拿着这个包，而且一再道歉说色彩太刺眼了，说里面装着牙刷和第二天要换的衣服。我以为是她还不习惯把牙刷和衣服放在我的房间，所以才要用包带来带去，这包不过是个临时的用具而已。但克洛艾却一如既往，每天早上都要把一切重新装进包，好像这是我们最后一次见面，好像落下甚至是一对耳环就意味着个性消融这一让人无法承受的风险。

她经常谈起个性消融，融入早上地铁里拥挤的人群，融入她的家庭和办公室同事，所以也暗指与心上人融于一体。她的话语解释了那只包的重要意义，它是自由的、独立的象征，是保存完整的自我、找回消融于他人之中的那部分个性的愿望。

3. Yet whatever her enthusiasm for independence, with time Chloe nevertheless began leaving things behind. Not toothbrushes or pairs of shoes, but pieces of herself. It began with language, with Chloe leaving me her way of saying 'not ever' instead of 'never', and of stressing the be of before, or of saying 'take care' before hanging up the telephone. She in turn acquired use of my 'perfect' and 'if you really think so'. Habits began to leak between us: I acquired Chloe's need for total darkness in the bedroom, she followed my way of folding the newspaper, I took to wandering in circles around the sofa to think a problem through, she acquired a taste for lying on the carpet.然而随着时间的推移，不论克洛艾每次是多么准确无误地把一切带来带去，她还是开始落下东西了，不是牙刷，不是鞋子，而是她自己，一点点，一片片。首先是语言，我学会她惯说的“不曾”，而不说“从不”，惯把“从前”的“从”字发得很重，惯于在挂电话前说“保重”。她也使用我常说的“太好了”、“如果你真的这么想”。接着是习惯开始彼此渗透，像克洛艾一样，我在卧室里不开灯了，克洛艾也照我的样子折报纸。思考问题时，我开始习惯围着沙发踱步，而她则像我一样喜欢躺在地毯上。

4. Diffusion brought with it intimacy. The borders between us ceased to be strictly patrolled. Our bodies no longer felt watched or judged. Chloe could read in bed and slide a finger into her nostril to clear an obstruction, roll it into a ball till it was dry and hard, and swallow it whole ?without needing to hide or apologize. We could risk intervals of silence, we were no longer paranoid talkers, unwilling to let the conversation drop lest tranquillity seem unfaithful. We grew assured of ourselves in the other's mind, rendering perpetual seduction (stemming from a fear of the opposite) obsolete.彼此的潜移默化让我们亲密起来，我们不再界限分明，从此布朗运动的微粒获得了自由的空间。彼此的身体不再感受到对方目光的停留。克洛艾会躺在床上一边看书，一边把手指伸进鼻孔，掏出点什么，在指间捏成一个又干又硬的小团。身体的熟悉也跨越了性的吸引。闷热的夏夜，我们一丝不挂地躺在一起，却没有意识到两人的赤身露体。我们偶尔也会沉默不语，不再喋喋不休，不再害怕冷场会让人生疑（“在沉默不语中，她/他在如何想我？”）。我们都对心上人眼中的自己有了信心，不再一味地彼此取悦。

5. I got to know not only Chloe's opinions and habits, but also the finer grain of her being: the sound of her voice when she spoke on the phone in the next room, the rumble of her stomach when she was hungry, her expression before a sneeze, the shape of her eyes when she awoke, the way she shook a wet umbrella, and the sound of a brush through her hair.伴随着亲密接踵而来的不再是对生活的哲学思考，而是大量小说一般具体的内容：克洛艾洗完澡后皮肤的气息、她在隔壁房间打电话的声音、她饥肠辘辘时胃里的响声、她打喷嚏前的表情、她醒来时的眼睛、她抖动湿伞时的姿势、梳子梳过她头发时的声音。

6. An awareness of each other's particularities gave us a need to rename one another. Chloe and I had met with names given to us by our parents and formalized by passports and birth registers and naturally found that the more private knowledge we had acquired of one another deserved to find expression (however oblique) in names that others didn't use. Whereas in her office, Chloe was Chloe, to me, for reasons neither of us ever quite understood, she became known simply as Tidge. For my part, because I had once amused her with talk of a word for the pessimistic outlook of German intellectuals, I became known, perhaps less mysteriously, as Weltschmerz. The importance of these nicknames lay not in the particular name we had landed on ?we might have ended up calling one another Pwitt and Tic - but in the fact that we had chosen to relabel one another. Tidge suggested a knowledge of Chloe that Roy in accounts did not possess (the knowledge of the sound of a brush through her hair). Whereas Chloe belonged to her civil status, Tidge lay beyond the ordinary social realm, in the more secret and unique folds of love.在了解彼此的性格特征之后，我们需要给对方一个新的称呼。初生爱意时，心上人的姓名是源自父母的馈赠，护照和公民登记使它正式化。考虑到心上人的卓尔不群，那么借助一个不曾有人使用过的称呼（无论怎样语义模糊）来表达这独一无二，不是很自然吗？克洛艾在办公室叫克洛艾，然而 和我独处时，她则成为“蒂吉”（我们都是明白这个名字是怎么来的）。而我，有一次为了逗她开心，曾跟她讲起德国知识分子遭受的苦难，于是，我就被称为（也许没有那么神秘）“维尔什麦兹”。这些别号的重要意义不在于我们选择了别具一格的称呼——我们完全可以称呼对方“普维特”或“蒂克”——而在于我们给对方另一个称呼这个事实本身。“蒂吉”表明克洛艾独有的某些东西是不为银行职员所具有的（她洗完澡后皮肤的气息，梳子梳过她头发的声音）。“克洛艾”属于她的公民身份，“蒂吉”则超越了任何政治色彩，只属于更灵动更惟一的爱情天地。

它战胜了过去，标志着爱带来的新生、新的洗礼。相遇时，你有自己的名字，心上人说，但我将给你一个新的称呼，以表明我眼中的你有别于他人眼中的你。办公室（在带有政治色彩的场所）里，别人称你为X，但在我的床上，你永远都是“我的胡萝卜”……

取别号的游戏也会延伸到语言的其他领域。普通的语言交流要求直观明了（因此意图明确），亲密的语言却摆脱了这个法则的束缚，不需要明显而恒定的语义指向。它可能毫无逻辑，只是在嬉戏；可能全是意识流的表达，而没有苏格拉底对四旬斋富有逻辑的叙述；可能只是一种声音，而不是交流。爱解释了位于可言说与不可言说、可表达与不可表达（爱情就是理解另一个人未成型思想的意愿）之间的试探。它是乱涂乱画与建筑图之间和差异。乱涂者无须知道铅笔在划向哪里，乱涂如同风筝随风飞舞一般随心所欲，从洗碟机到沃霍尔到淀粉到国籍到投影到放映机到爆米花到阴茎到流产到残杀婴儿到杀虫剂到吃奶到飞行到接吻。不管语言是否正确规范，我们不会有弗洛伊德的维也纳口误。我们没有站着，而是躺在床上仅凭意识滔滔不绝。任何事物都可能进入我们的话题，任何想法都随意发表。我们交替模仿政治家、流行明星、北方人或南方人的口音。与严格的语法学家不同，我们的句子开了头，却没有尾，而由对方补上缺少的动词，中对方接着话头，又连接到下一个句子。

7. In each other's company, we spent a good deal of time discussing how awful other people were. Unable to express ourselves honestly in most of our daily interactions, we could between us aerate our lies and atone for the social niceties we had performed. Chloe became the final repository of my harsh verdicts on friends or colleagues. Things I had long thought about them but had tried to deny, I was free to share with a sympathetic and even encouraging audience. We frequently indulged in orgies of gossip. Whatever the pleasures of discovering mutual loves, nothing compares with the intimacy of landing on mutual hates. At times, we came close to concluding (though coyness prevented us from quite admitting this openly) that everyone we'd ever come across was deeply flawed ?and that we were in truth the only decent humans left on the planet. Love nourished itself through perpetual criticism of outsiders. The finest proof of our loyalty towards one other was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.亲密并没有消除人与人之间的诋毁，它只是将其移到了二人世界之外。他者现在被放在了门外，证实了人们对爱情的疑虑：爱情从来都近于合谋。个人的评价成为了双人的裁判，外部的威胁由一张床上的两个人共同分担。简而言之，我们在背后对别人说长道短，但这并不总是恶毒的攻击，更多 的是对平常人际交往中虚伪的规范感到难受，因此需要将积累的谎言发泄掉。因为我不能跟你谈对你性格这方面或那方面的看法（因为你不会理解，或你会太受伤害），所以我就背着你，与其他能够理解的人私下议论或谈论。在这个世界，克洛艾成了我的评判的最后一个知己。我不能对朋友或同事述说我对他们的看法，甚至我不愿意对他们产生什么看法，如今这些都可以对克洛艾畅所欲言。爱情因为找到了共同厌恶的东西而迅速升温。我们都讨厌X所表达的内涵即是我们互相喜欢。情人因此成为罪犯，我们互相的忠实也就成为交流对他人不忠实的途径。

8. We retreated into each other's company to laugh at the hypocrisy demanded by society. We returned from formal work dinners and mocked the accents and opinions of those to whom we had politely said goodbye minutes before. We might in bed replay a conversation we had just had. I would impersonate a bearded journalist Chloe had spoken to, she would reply as she had done originally, all this while she masturbated me beneath the sheets. I would pretend to be shocked to find Chloe's hand where it was and ask her in the tone of a virginal parson: 'Madam, what on earth are you doing with my honourable member?'爱情也许是合谋的，但至少是真实的。我们私下里嘲笑正式场合中需要的虚假礼节。从正式的晚宴上回来，我们会嘲笑整个过程的死板，模仿我们刚刚与之礼貌道别的那些人的口音和观点。我们躺在床上，颠覆了正常生活的自重，学起晚宴上一连串彬彬有礼的对话。一个留着胡须的记者吃饭时曾问过她一个问题，而现在我也学着他提出同一个问题，克洛艾会同样礼貌地回答。一边这样游戏着，她的手一边在床单下抚弄着我的阴茎，我则用腿在她的两腿间轻柔地来回摩擦。然后突然之间，我会惊讶于她手的动作，会用最傲慢的口吻问她：“小姐，冒昧地问一下，您在对我高贵的阴茎干什么？”

'Sir,' she would reply like an aristocratic lady in a period drama, 'I have no idea how this dishonourable member ever came to be in my sight.' Or she would leap out of bed and scream, 'Sir, please leave my bed immediately, or I will have to call my manservant Bernard.' In our intimacy, social formalities found themselves rerun in a comic light, like a tragedy which is spoofed by the actors backstage, the actor playing Hamlet seizing Gertrude after the performance and shouting through the dressing room, 'Fuck me, Mummy!'她会回敬道：“我好心的先生，阴茎高贵的行为不关您的事。”或者会从床上跳起来，说：“先生，请您立即从我的床上离开，您打错了主意，我们互相还不认识呢。”在我们的亲密创造出来的空间里，生活的正规礼仪在滑稽的氛围中被重新演示。就如在一出悲剧的台后，演员们正开着玩笑，演出结束后，扮演哈姆雷特的演员在化装室里抓住扮演乔特鲁德的演员喊叫着：“操我，妈妈！”

9.We even started to acquire a story. Love seems indispensably connected to stories. 'One day, a boy met a girl' is enough for an audience to start to want to know what happened next. Powering most love stories are obstacles. Paul and Virginie, Anna and Vronsky, Tarzan and Jane tend to struggle against odds that confirm and enrich their bond. In a jungle, on a shipwrecked boat or the side of a mountain, the classic romantic couple proves the strength of its love by the vigour with which it overcomes adversities.亲密不随时光流逝而去；亲密融进了克洛艾和我讲述的关于我们自己的故事中；亲密融进了只有我们两人经历过的事件中。爱情有着史诗的传统，与故事有着必然的联系（说起爱情总是涉及故事）。更为特别的是，爱情与历险也密不可分，它有着开始、结尾、完成、败退和胜利的清晰结构。史诗跨越了时间的正常流逝，成为一种目的，推动人物向前发展——否则读者就会厌倦地打哈欠，不再读下去。保尔和维尔吉妮、安娜和沃伦斯基、泰山和简都通过反抗逆境，巩固、丰富了他们的关系。围困在丛林中、在发生海难的船上或是悬崖边，同大自然或社会抗争，史诗故事中的恋人们就是这样用克服灾难的气势，证明了他们的爱情的力量。

10.But there wasn't much adventure or struggle around to be had. The world that Chloe and I lived in had largely been stripped of capacities for epic conflict. Our parents didn't care, the jungle had been tamed, society hid its disapproval behind universal tolerance, restaurants stayed open late, credit cards were accepted almost everywhere, and sex was a duty, not a crime. Yet Chloe and I did have a modest story of our own, a set of common experiences that bonded us together. What is an experience? Something that breaks a polite routine and for a brief period allows us to witness things with the heightened sensitivity afforded to us by novelty, danger, or beauty - and it's on the basis of shared experiences that intimacy is given an opportunity to grow. Friendships nourished solely by occasional dinners will never have the depth of those forged on a trek or at a university. Two people who are surprised by a lion in a jungle clearing will ?unless one of them is eaten ?be effectively bonded by what they have seen.在现代爱情中，历险失去了统治地位，爱情中发生的事件不再是人物内心的体现。克洛艾和我是现代人，只会有内心独白，不会有爱情的历险。世界上基本没有了爱情历险存在的机会。父母不再理会你的爱情发展，丛林已经被开垦，社会将异议掩藏在普遍的容忍之中，餐馆很晚才关门，几乎任何地方都可以用信用卡，性爱成了一种责任而不是罪过。然而克洛艾和我确实拥有一个故事，一段使我们更亲密的共同经历（过去的重量压在经常是没有分量的现在……）。

那不是恐怖小说的素材，但自有其珍贵之处，共同的经历成为联结我们的纽带。经历是什么？是打破礼貌的陈规旧套，暂时让我们用新奇、危险或美丽增强的敏感观察事物。经历事情就是突破习惯的制约，以一种全新的方式睁大双眼。如果两人同时这样做，那么我们可以预料他们会由此走到一起。被丛林空地中的狮子惊吓的两人（如果他们能够生还的话）将会被他们的经历三角形般地结合在一起。

11. Chloe and I were never surprised by a predator, but we lived through a host of small urban experiences. Returning from a party one warm summer's night, we came across a dead body. The corpse lay on the corner of Charlwood Street and Belgrave Road. It was a beautiful young woman who looked at first as though she had collapsed drunk on the pavement. But as we were about to pass her, Chloe noticed the handle of a knife sticking out of her stomach. How much does one know of someone till one has seen a corpse with them? We kneeled down over the body, Chloe took on the voice of a pilot commandeering an agitated or plain hysterical crew (me) during an emergency landing, told me not to look, got me to call the police, checked the woman's pulse, and carefully left everything as she had found it. I felt in awe of her professionalism, though in the middle of police questioning she broke into uncontrollable sobbing and was unable to banish the image of the knife handle for several weeks. It was a barbaric incident, but one that served to unite us. We spent the rest of the night awake, drinking whisky in my apartment, telling each other a series of increasingly macabre and silly stories, impersonating policemen and corpses with kitchen knives in order to exorcize our fears.克洛艾和我永远不会有机会被一头狮子惊吓，但是我们却经历了一系列小小的都市奇遇。一天晚上参加完一个晚会回家时，我们看到了一具死尸。尸体就躺在夏尔伍德街和贝尔格雷夫路的拐角处，是一个女人，乍一看，就像喝醉了躺在路上睡觉似的，没有血，也没有打斗的迹象。但是当我们快要走过去时，克洛艾注意到那个女人的肚子上露出个刀柄。只有一起看到死尸时，我们才知道自己对同伴了解多少。我们朝尸体跑过去，克洛艾用护士/教师似的口吻告诉我不要去看，说我们应该报警。她查看了那个女人的脉搏（但实际上她已经死了），但一点也没有破坏现场。我不禁惊讶于她的行家本色。但是在警察问讯时，她一下子失控，啜泣起来。此后好几个星期，那把刀柄一直留在她脑海里，挥之不去。那是一次可怕的经历但由此我们更贴近了。那天晚上我们一夜未眠，在我的房间里喝着威士忌，讲了许多更毛骨悚然而又逗人发笑的故事，扮演着各种尸体和警察以驱除心中的恐惧。

12. A few months later, we were in a bagel shop in Brick Lane, when an elegant man in a pinstripe suit next to us in the queue silently handed Chloe a crumpled note, on which was scrawled in large letters the words: 'I love you.' Chloe opened the piece of paper, swallowed hard on reading it, then looked back at the man who had given it to her. But he had chosen to act as though nothing had happened and simply stared out at the street with the dignified expression of a man in a pinstripe suit. So just as innocently, Chloe folded the note and slipped it into her pocket. The bizarreness of the incident meant that, as with the corpse only more light-heartedly, it became something of a leitmotif in our relationship, an incident in our story to which we constantly alluded. In restaurants, we would occasionally silently slip one another notes with all the mystery of the man in the bagel shop, but with only the message _Please pass the salt_ written on them. For anyone watching, it must have seemed odd and incomprehensible to see us collapsing into giggles. But the essence of leitmotifs is that they refer back to incidents others cannot understand because they were absent from the founding scene. No wonder if such self-referential, egotistical behaviour drives those standing on the sidelines to distraction.几个月后，我们正在布里克街的一家面包店里排队时，旁边一位穿着粉红色条纹套装、风度优雅的男人消无声息地递给克洛艾一张皱巴巴的纸条，上面潦草地写着几个大字：“我爱你”。克洛艾打开纸条，迫不及待地看完后就回过头瞧那个男人。那个男人却盯着外面的街道，装作什么也没有发生，看上去只是个穿着粉红色条纹套装的男人，一脸的庄重。所以克洛艾也就若无其事地把纸条折了起来，迅速放进兜里。这件事如同那具尸体一样古怪，不过更轻松愉快一些，它成了我们经常重复的话题，我们会提起并为此打趣一番。后来在餐馆，我们偶尔也学学面包房里的那个神秘的男人，消无声息地把一张纸条迅速递给对方，不过上面写的只是请把盐递给我。周围的人看到我们哈哈大笑，一定觉得古里古怪，不可理喻。但这就是重复话题的意义：回溯一些事情，他人因为不在场而无法理解。所以这种只有两人知道的语言让旁边的人莫名其妙也就不足为奇了。

两个人越是熟悉，他们在一起使用的语言就越会脱离常用的、词典里的释义。熟悉会创造出一种全新的语言，一种亲密的室内语，有关他们共同的故事，不易为他人理解。这语言凝结了他们共同的经历，包含了关系进展的过程，使得与心上人谈话有异于跟他人交谈。

13. There were plenty of other joint experiences - people we had encountered or things we had seen, done, or heard - which helped to create a common heritage. There was a psychoanalyst we met at a dinner who told Chloe that he was currently sleeping with two of his patients. There was my friend Will Knott who, having initially taken little interest in Chloe, started sending her obscure books on architecture accompanied by quizzical notes ('Who can say how long each of us will stand??!' ran one, appended to _Steel - the Material of the Future_). There was the toy giraffe we bought in Bath to keep Chloe's elephant company on the bed and ended up calling Geoffrey after a long-necked colleague of Chloe's at work. And there was a meeting with an accountant on a train who confessed she always carried a gun in her handbag.实际还会有更多的共同经历：我们遇见的人，或我们看到、做过或听说过而且以后还会再谈论的事。共同的经历让我们无比欣慰，其中包括我们在一次宴会上认识了一位教授，他正在写一本书，书中称弗洛伊德的妻子才是精神分析学的真正创立者，我的朋友威尔·诺特，他的加利福尼亚人的习惯经常逗人发笑；我们买来陪克洛艾的大象睡觉的玩具长颈鹿；还有一次在火车上碰到一位会计，她告诉我们说她的手袋里总带着一支枪……

13.Interest did not naturally belong to such anecdotes. For the most part, only Chloe and I appreciated them, because of the subsidiary associations we attached to them. Yet these leitmotifs were important because they gave us the feeling that we were far from strangers to one another, that we had lived through things together, and remembered the joint meanings we had derived from them. However slight these leitmotifs were, they acted like cement. The language of intimacy they helped to create was a reminder that (without clearing our way through jungles, slaying dragons, or even sharing apartments) Chloe and I had created something of a world together.这类奇闻轶事本身并不那么有趣，但只有克洛艾和我两个人知道。这些重复的话题很重要，因为它们使克洛艾和我感觉到彼此不再陌生，我们共同经历了一些事情，我们记住了共同发掘的事物的含义。不论这些重复的话题多么微不足道，但它们就像水泥块一样牢不可摧。借助这些话题创造出来的亲密语言使我和克洛艾（不需要一起走出丛林、杀死蛟龙，或住在同一个公寓里）深深认为：我们共同创造了一个世界。