《爱情笔记》Essays in love - 15
15
Intermittences of the Heart
情感的间歇
1. The stories we tell are always too simple. I was a man in love with a woman, but how much of the mobility and inconstancy of my emotions could such a sentence hope to carry? Was there room in it for all the infidelity, boredom, irritation, and indifference that was often knitted together with this love? Could any simple account accurately reflect the degree of ambivalence to which all relationships seem fated? Chloe and I lived a love story stretching over an expanse of time during which our feelings gyrated so much that to talk of being simply in love was, though reassuring, a desperately crude foreshortening of events.语言以其稳定性掩盖了我们的优柔寡断。世界分分秒秒都在变化，语言却让我们掩身在一种稳定持久的假象之下。“没有人能两次踏进同一条河流，”赫拉克利特说。哲人意在表明事物不可避免的变化，但他忽略了一个事实，即如果代表“河流”的单词没有更改，那么重要的一点就是，我们踏进的仍然是同一条河流。我身陷爱河，但我这纷扰多变的感情又怎一个“爱”字了得？与这份爱相连的背叛、厌倦、恼怒和冷淡会不会也被包含其中？能否找到一个词精确地反映我的感情注定要出现的举棋不定？
我拥有自己的称呼，这称呼将伴随我终生——照片中，六岁的“我”和六十岁的“我”都是用相同的字母组成的那个称呼来代表，尽管岁月也许已将我改变得面目全非。我把树称为树，尽管斗转星移，树已非昔日，随季节的变化为树命名会带来混乱，所以语言赋予它持久不变的名称，而忽略了一个季节树叶茂盛，在另一个季节却徒剩秃枝。
因此我们每前进一步，就缩略一分，我们只取主要特征（一棵树，或一种感情状态的主要特征），把部分标示为整体。同样，当我们讲述某个事件时，我们所述说的只是发生时的一个片断。一旦这个时间被讲述，就它抽象了的意义和述说者的意图而言，其多样性和矛盾性已不复存在。述说的部分体现了那个被记住的时刻其内容的贫瘠。在克洛艾和我的情爱故事的跨度中，我的感情经历了那么多的变化，以至仅仅称之为“陷入爱河”似乎是将发生的诸多事情无情地删减去。迫于时间，加上急于将之简化，我们只能省略地讲述、记住，否则我们将会为对方曾经对这份感情的犹豫不决和几度动摇而心痛不已。当下的内容被删汰之后，先成为历史，然后成为我们怀旧的素材。
2. One weekend, we went to Bath. At work the day after, when someone asked what I'd been up to, I replied, "We had a great couple of days in Bath.' Even in my own mind, the story of what had occurred grew elementary and facile. I remembered a beautiful sandy-coloured town and a blue sky. I remembered being happy, I remembered Chloe saying that I was a better, different sort of person on holiday. And yet if I now force myself to think back, to tell more than a one-line story, then I start to recall a more complicated set of events pullulating beneath the surface of the trip, events which it might take four hundred pages to describe properly.
To make a stab, I remember that shortly after our arrival, Chloe and I had an argument about what room we'd take in the hotel. I suggested we make a fuss about the one we were initially offered because I didn't like the curtains and there was a strange dripping sound in the bathroom. Chloe called me 'no longer endearingly insane'. On a walk around the abbey, I became preoccupied with my professional life and wished that I'd chosen a different career that paid more. When Chloe asked me what was wrong, I told her I was jealous of Will for all the attention he was getting among our peers. In the evening, Chloe declined to have sex, saying it was her period, though I suspected this had ended a bit earlier. The next day, in a restaurant called John Wood the Elder, I was drawn to a beautiful girl with glasses sitting near us and irrationally engineered an argument with Chloe about wildlife reserves to punish her for her inadvertent role in preventing me from kissing the stranger (who didn't seem sad about what she was missing out on), while on the way to the station, Chloe mysteriously flirted with a cross-eyed taxi driver, telling him that she loved showing off her belly-button in summer, which resulted in a sulk on my part that didn't end till we reached Paddington Station three hours later.克洛艾和我曾一起在巴思度过了一个愉快的周末。我们参观了罗马的浴室，在一家意大利餐馆吃饭，星期天下午绕着月牙形的街道散步。现在看来，在巴思度过的周末还剩下什么？不过是几副存在于脑海里的照片而已——旅馆房间的紫色窗帘；从火车上、公园里眺望到的城市景观；放在房间壁炉上的钟。这些尚可以描绘，而感情上的诸多内容更为粗略，更是所剩无几。我记得当时很开心，我记得爱着克洛艾。然而如果我强迫自己回忆，而不只是依赖即刻激活的记忆，那么我能找回更为复杂的内容：对拥挤的博物馆的恼怒；星期六晚上睡觉时的焦虑；进食牛肉片后轻微的消化不良；巴思火车站恼人的列车晚点；在出租车里与克洛艾的争吵。
3. Perhaps we can forgive ourselves for telling simple stories which sum up weekends with the word pleasant, stories which thereby introduce order into events which are in fact made up of tissues of troubling and ambivalent feelings. Yet perhaps we also owe it to ourselves occasionally to face the flux beneath the abbreviations. I loved Chloe ?and yet how much more variegated the reality was.因为语言让我们能够用愉快这个词来回忆曾在巴思度过的那个周末，从而赋予这个夜晚一种可驾驭的条理和名分，所以我们也许可以原谅语言的虚伪。然而人们不得不一次又一次地面对这个词掩盖之下的变幻不定，赫拉克利特的河流波涛汹涌——当只剩下字母作为这个词的连接时，人们期盼事件本身所承载的简单明了的含义。我爱克洛艾——这听起来再轻松不过，就如有人说他们爱苹果汁或爱马塞尔·普鲁斯特一样。但是真正的现实却更为复杂，以致我尽力不对任何时刻作一个结论，因为说了这点，自然又漏了那点——每一个断言都意味着压制成千个相反的结论。
4. When her friend Alice invited us to dinner one Friday night, Chloe accepted and predicted that I would fall in love with her. There were eight of us around Alice's dining table, everyone jogging elbows as they tried to bring the food to their mouths over a table built for four. Alice lived alone in the top floor of a house in Balham, worked as a secretary at the Arts Council, and I had to admit, I did fall a little in love with her.当克洛艾的朋友爱丽丝邀请我们在一个星期五晚上吃晚饭时，克洛艾接受了邀请，还预言说我会爱上爱丽丝。后来共有八个人围坐在一张四人桌旁，大家把食物送进嘴里，胳膊免不了撞在一起。爱丽丝在艺术委员会做秘书，独自住在巴尔厄姆的一栋公寓的顶层。坦白地说，我确实有点爱上她了。
5. However happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily hinders us from pursuing alternatives. Why should this constrain us if we love them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? Because in resolving our need to love, we do not always succeed in resolving our need to long.和心上人厮守令我们幸福无比，对他们的爱也必然阻止我们（除非生活在多夫妻制的社会）去开始另一段浪漫的恋情。但是如果我们真心爱恋他们，为何我们会认为这爱是一个损失，除非爱本身开始消退？答案也许就在于一个令人并不自在的想法，即虽然我们解决了爱的需求，却并不总能满足我们的渴望。
6. Watching Alice talk, light a candle that had blown out, rush into the kitchen with the plates and brush a strand of blonde hair from her face, I found myself falling victim to romantic nostalgia, which descends whenever we are faced with those who might have been our lovers, but whom chance has decreed we will never properly know. The possibility of an alternative love story is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives and it is the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness. There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.看着爱丽丝说话，看着她点上熄灭的蜡烛，看着她端着一大堆盘子冲进厨房，看着她拂过脸上的一缕金发，我发现自己沉浸于浪漫的怀旧。当命运安排我们与本会成为我们爱人的人儿——但我们又注定无法知晓是谁——相见之时，这浪漫的怀旧就油然而生。又一种情感生活选择的可能性让我们意识到我们此时的生活只是千百种可能性中的一种，也许是因为不可能一一去体验才让我们倍感忧伤。我们渴望回归不需要选择的时代，我们渴望避免选择（无论多么美好）必然带来的失落所产生的忧伤。
7. In city streets, I would often be made aware of hundreds (and by implication even millions) of women whose lives were running concurrently with mine, but who were fated to remain a mystery to me. Though I loved Chloe, the sight of these women occasionally filled me with such regret, it seemed like the only solution might be to tell them how I felt and thus alleviate the burden of sadness (I resisted the impulse). Standing on a train platform or in the line at the bank I would catch sight of a given face, perhaps overhear a snatch of conversation (the woman's car had broken down, she was graduating from university, her mother was ill...), and feel torn apart by being unable to know the rest of the story and kiss its protagonist.在城市的街道，或拥挤的餐馆里，我经常会注意到成百上千的（背后甚至有成百万）女性与我同时生活着，但是对我来说她们注定是无法解开的谜。虽然我爱克洛艾，但看到这么多的女人，我偶尔也会心存遗憾。每每站在列车站台上，抑或是在银行里排队里，当我看到某一张面孔，或听到某个谈话的只言片语时（某人车坏了，某人大学毕业了，一位母亲身体不适……），我心里会掠过片刻的伤感，为无法知晓此后的故事而伤感，我会构想一个也许合适的结局来安慰自己。
8. I could have chatted to Alice on the sofa after dinner, but something made me reluctant to do anything but dream. Alice's face evoked a void inside of me with no clear dimensions or intentions and that my love for Chloe had somehow not resolved. The unknown carries with it a mirror of all our deepest, most inexpressible wishes. The unknown is the fatal proposition that a face seen across the room will always hold out to the known. I may have loved Chloe but because I knew Chloe, I did not long for her. Longing cannot indefinitely direct itself at those we know, for their qualities are charted and therefore lack the mystery longing demands. A face seen for a few moments or hours only then to disappear for ever is the necessary catalyst for dreams that cannot be formulated, a desire that seems as indefinable as it is unquenchable.吃完饭，我本可以坐在沙发上和爱丽丝交谈一会儿，但有一种什么感觉使我只想坐在那里梦想。爱丽丝的脸，在我的内心里激起了微微的波澜，没有清晰的形状，没有明显的意图，而我对克洛艾的爱并没有因此而消失。陌生的事物映射出我们最深、最无法表达的渴望。陌生的事物是致命的命题：一屋之隔看到的脸蛋将总是排挤走我熟悉的事物。我可能爱着克洛艾，但因为我了解她，所以我并不渴望她。渴望不会总是落在我们认识的人那里，因为她们的品质已被我们了如指掌，从而缺乏渴望所要求的神秘感。一张看过一会儿或几小时后就消失不见的脸是我们无法成形的梦想的催化剂，是一个虚无的空间，一个不可估量的欲望，如同不能被战胜一样不可诠释。
9. 'So, did you fall in love with her?' Chloe asked in the car.“那么，你爱上她了吗？”坐在车里时，克洛艾这样问我。
'Of course not.'“当然没有。”
'She's your type.'“她符合你的标准。”
'No, she isn't. And anyway, you know I'm in love with you.'“才不是呢。再说，你知道我爱的是你。”
In the typical scenario of betrayal, one partner asks the other, 'How could you have betrayed me with x when you said you loved me?' But there is no inconsistency between a betrayal and a declaration of love if time is taken into the equation. 'I love you' can only ever be taken to mean 'for now'. I was not lying to Chloe, but my words were time-bound promises, a truth too disturbing for most relationships fully to take on board, or else couples would have little to talk about other than their fluctuating feelings.在典型的背叛情节中，一方问着另一方：“你口口声声说爱我，怎么又背叛我，和X好上呢？”但是如果把说话的时间考虑进来，那么在背叛的爱的表白之间就没有不一致的地方。“我爱你”只能理解为“我现在爱你”。从爱丽丝家吃完饭回去的路上，我对克洛艾说我爱她，这确实不是假话，但是我的话上有时间限制的诺言。
10. I was not only imaginatively unfaithful, I was also often bored. As inhabitants of luxury hotels and palaces attest, one can get used to anything. For periods, I entirely ceased to notice the miracle that was Chloe's love for me. She became a normal and hence invisible feature of my life.
如果我对克洛艾的感情有所改变，那么部分原因也是由于她自己不是一个不可变体，而是一个永久变化的含义载体。她的工作和电话号码的一成不变只是一个错觉，或者更确切点，是被简化了。面对一双全神贯注的眼睛来说，她的脸随着她的生理和心理姿态的改变而瞬息万变，我们会注意到当她面对不同的人时或看到不同的电影之后，她的口音就发生了改变；当她疲劳时，她的肩头会斜下来；当她倍感自尊时，她悲伤的眼神不同于她恼怒时，她读报时手上的静脉不同于洗澡时。从不同的角度支看，她会有不同的脸；越过桌子看到的脸，接吻前拥抱时的脸，或站在站台上等车时的脸。同样会有多个克洛艾：和父母在一起的克洛艾，和心上人厮守的克洛艾，微笑的克洛艾和刷牙的克洛艾。
我本应该成为一个不受限制的传记作家，描绘这万千变化，但是我却生性惫惰。疲倦通常意味着让克洛艾生命中最丰富的一部分——她的行动——悄悄溜走而未被注意。我会长时间地忽略（因为她于我而言再熟悉不过）她身体的所有变化，无视她脸上的道道皱纹，疏虞星期一的克洛艾不同于星期五。她的存在对我来说已是一个习惯，是我思想之眼的一个稳定的形象。
11. Then would come moments when I'd recover the ability to see her as I had done in the early days of our love story. One weekend, on a visit to Winchester, we broke down on the motorway and called the AA for help. When a van arrived a quarter of an hour later, Chloe went to deal with the mechanic (a primitive impulse had left me unable to talk to him, from a feeling of embarrassment that, though I was a man, I hadn't been able to repair the car, let alone work out how the bonnet opened). Watching her talk to this stranger (he was in leather from tip to toe, for reasons I hoped were strictly related to his professional role), by a form of identification with him, the woman I knew abruptly appeared foreign to me. I looked at her face and heard her voice without the dulling blanket of familiarity, I saw her as she might strike a leather-clad mechanic, I saw her stripped of the normalizing influence of time.然而终有一天习惯光滑的表层会破裂开来，我得以用全新的眼光再次审视她。有一个周末，我们的车在高速公路上抛锚了，只好打电话求助。四十五分钟后，汽车协会的车来了，克洛艾走上前与那个头头交涉。端详着她与陌生人讲话的样子（通过这个男人得以证实），我突然感到她显得陌生。我注视着她的脸，倾听她的声音，全然没有了来自熟悉感的那种单调乏味，我打量着她，就如打量一个素不相识的人，她不再是往日的克洛艾。摆脱了时间强加的成见，我注视着她。
12. As a result, I was overcome by an urge to tear off her grey-green cardigan and make passionate love to her on the motorway embankment. The disruption of habit had made Chloe unknown and exotic again, desirable like a woman I had never touched, even though she had only that morning walked around my flat naked without arousing any wish in me beyond that of finishing an article I had begun reading on macro-economics in the developing world.看着她谈论火花塞和汽油过滤器的样子，我的心中突然涌上一种不可抑制的欲望。习惯的打破带来疏远的效果，使克洛艾在我的眼中变得不可知，变得异乎寻常——因而使我寻她产生强烈的欲望，就像从没有触摸过她的身体一样。
13. It took the AA man a few minutes to locate the fault, something to do with the battery ('You want to watch your levels, darling,' he had called out to Chloe from behind the bonnet), and we were ready to continue to Winchester. But my desire signalled otherwise.汽车协会的我只用了几分钟就把问题找出来了，是电池出了毛病。接下来我们准备上路回伦敦了，但是我的欲望却发出了信号。
'Imagine that you've broken down by the side of the road and I'm this leather-clad stranger who wants to take off your clothes and take you roughly on the embankment, lifting up your innocent flowery skirt and handling you without mercy.'
'Are you sure?'
'With all my loins.'
'Christ, OK. Well, give me a moment to perfect my stranded-without-a-battery-but-extremely-horny expression.'
“我们得停下来，得去旅馆或把车停在乡间小路上。我们要做爱。”
“为什么？出了什么问题？你想干什么？求你了，不要现在，天啊……哦，主啊，不……，好吧，等一下，我们得先把车停下来，在这儿拐弯吧……”
变陌生的克洛艾所产生的吸引力提示了变化——从穿着衣服到脱去衣服的变化——与性爱之间的关联。我们在四号高速公路旁的小道上停了车。我伸过手去，透过薄薄的衣服抚摩她的乳房，疏远感的恢复激发了我的情欲。肉体迷失了又得到回归。这是裸露与衣饰之间、熟悉与陌生之间、终点与起点之间的令人欣喜的间隔。
14. We made love twice on the back seat of Chloe's Volkswagen, in between pieces of luggage and old papers. Though welcome, our sudden and unpredictable ecstasy, the grasping at one another's clothes and the imaginative scenarios (I adopted a Scottish accent for the roadside tryst, she played at being married-but-looking), were reminders of how confusing the flux of passions could be. Capable of being seized off the motorway by desire, might we not drift apart on the back of less compatible thoughts and hormones at a later date? 我们在克洛艾那辆大众车后座的一大堆行李和旧报纸里做了两次爱。虽然愉悦缠绵，然而突如其来、无法预料的欲望、撕扯着彼此的衣服和肉体的疯狂都提醒我们汹涌的激情具有的毁灭性。我们为欲望所驱，把车开下高速公路，但是日后，我们难道不会在又一次荷尔蒙冲动之后再次逐渐疏远对方？把我们的情感称为周而复始，也许存在逻辑上的缺陷。我们的爱也许更像山间激流，而非季节与季节的平缓交替。
15. Chloe and I had a joke between us which acknowledged the intermittences of the heart, and eased the demand that love's light burn with the constancy of an electric bulb.克长江路艾和我曾开玩笑说，我们情感的起伏不定是在实践赫拉克利特的哲学。这种哲学缓解了常人希望爱的光芒像灯泡一样始终闪亮，却又无法如愿的痛苦。
'Is something wrong? Do you not like me today?' one of us would ask.“怎么啦？今天你不喜欢我？”其中一个会这样问。
'I like you less.'“喜欢得少一点。”
'Really, much less?'“真的？少多少？”
'No, not that much.'“不太多。”
'Out of ten?'“有没有超过10分？”
'Today? Oh, probably six and a half or, no, perhaps more six and three-quarters. And how about with you with me?'“今天？大概就6.5分，不，可能有6.75分吧。你对我呢？”
'God, I'd say around minus three, though it might have been around twelve and a half earlier this morning when you...'“天啊，小于3分，虽然今天早上还有12.5分，那会儿你正……”
16. In another Chinese restaurant (Chloe loved them), I realized that life with other people functioned a little like the wheel at the centre of the table on which dishes had been placed, and which could be revolved so that one would be faced by shrimp one minute, pork the next. Did loving someone not follow a similar circular pattern, in which there were regular revolutions in the intensity and nature of one's feelings? We tend to remain attached to a fixed view of emotions, as though a line existed between loving and not loving that could only be crossed twice, at the beginning and end of a relationship, rather than commuted across from minute to minute. But in reality, in only a day, I might go around every available emotional dish on my inner Chinese platter. I might feel that Chloe was: 有一次，在另一家中国餐馆里（克洛艾喜欢中国餐馆），我体会到与他人的邂逅就如桌子中间的转盘一样，放在桌上的菜能够转动，所以客人才能一会儿吃到虾子，一会儿吃到肉。爱一个人难道不也同样如此？心上人的优点和不足轮次展露给我们。没有这种转动，我们会一直错误地维系一种固定不变的情感，保持爱或者不爱两种状态，只有两种情感体验——爱的开端与不爱的结尾，而非每天或每小时爱与不爱都在交替更换。人们有一种冲动，想将爱与恨截然分开，而不是把它们视作一个人多方面情感的合理反应。想要爱一个完美的事物和恨完全丑恶的事物、想要找到一个无可置疑的仇恨或爱恋的合适对象，这些想法都是幼稚的。克洛艾的性情起伏不定，我需要紧紧跟上她中式菜盘上的每五道菜的变换。而在这眼花缭乱的变换中，我感觉到的克洛艾也许是这样：
17. I was not alone in my erratic moods, for there were times when Chloe too would unexpectedly display bursts of aggression or frustration. Discussing a film with friends one night, she swerved into a hostile speech about my 'consistently patronizing' attitudes towards other people. I was at first baffled, for I had not even said anything, but I soon guessed that I was being repaid for a previous offence ?or even that I had become a useful target for a disgruntlement that Chloe was feeling towards someone else. Many of our arguments had an unfairness to them: I might get furious with Chloe not for the surface reason that she was emptying the dishwasher very noisily when I was trying to watch the news, but because I was feeling guilty about not having answered a difficult business call earlier in the day. Chloe might in turn deliberately make lots of noise in an effort to symbolize an anger she had not communicated to me that morning. We might define maturity as the ability to give everyone what they deserve when they deserve it, to separate the emotions that belong and should be restricted to oneself from those that should at once be expressed to their initiators rather than passed on to later and more innocent arrivals. We were often not mature.我们通常无法知晓是什么力量在操纵情感车轮的旋转。我可能看到克洛艾以这样一种方式坐着，或听到她在谈论着那样一件事情，或突然被她激怒，虽然片刻之前我们还甜蜜缠绵、轻松无比。不仅我如此，克洛艾也常常朝我大发脾气。有一天晚上，当我们正和朋友讨论一部电影时，克洛艾突然恶狠狠地批评我说，我对他人的观点或品位总持一种傲慢的态度。我起先迷惑不解，因为那会儿我一直保持缄默，但是我猜想一定是早些时候有什么事惹恼了她，她现在就利用这个机会来泄怒——或者别人让她不高兴，我这会儿正好成了替罪羊。我们很多次争吵都有类似的不公平，只是发泄情绪的借口，这情绪并非与此刻什么事情相关联或是我们当中哪个人惹起来的。我会对克洛艾恼怒无比，并不是因为她正在厨房里清理洗碗机的杂音干扰我看电视，而是因为那天早些时候的一个生意上的电话没有谈好而让我焦虑愧疚。克洛艾也有可能是故意弄出很大杂音来表达那天早上没有对我发的怒火。（我们也许会把成熟解释为——这是一个永远难以捉摸的目标——一种能力：公正地对待别人，把应该自我把握的情感和应立刻表达给情感激发人的情感区分开来，而不是日后把矛头指向无辜的对象。）
也许人们想知道为何有人声称爱恋我们的同时又对我们发一些显然不公平的怒火或怨恨。我们在内心深处掩藏了许多矛盾的情感，积淀了大量不太可能或不可能控制的幼稚反应。盛怒、残忍的要求、破坏性的幻想、性欲错乱和少年时代的偏执狂都纠缠在那些更值得尊敬的情感之中。“我们只应该说他人负有罪过，”法国哲学家阿兰说，“我们只应该找出是什么在刺激他们发脾气。”也就是说应该寻找隐藏在争吵或挑衅背后的激发原因。克洛艾和我都乐于做这种尝试，但是从性变态到幼时的心灵创伤，每一件事情都有难以处理的复杂性。
18. If philosophers have traditionally advocated a life lived according to reason, condemning in its name a life led by desire, it is because reason is a bedrock of continuity. Unlike romantics, philosophers do not let their interests veer insanely from Chloe to Alice and back to Chloe again, because stable reasons support the choices they have made. In love, they will stay constant, their feelings as assured as the trajectory of an arrow in flight.如果哲学家向来提倡理性地活着，谴责被欲望驱使的生活，那是因为理性是持久的基本原则，没有时间的限制，不存在有效期限。与浪漫主义者不同，哲学家不会让自己的兴趣在克洛艾和爱丽丝之间胡乱摆动，因为他的任何选择都有稳定不变的原因支持。哲学家的欲望只有进展，没有中断。哲学家的爱情会忠诚无比，始终如一，他们的生活就如离弦之箭的轨迹一样笔直向前。
但是更为重要的是，哲学家可以确定一个身份。什么是身份？当一个人乐于朝某个方向发展时，也许身份就形成了：我成为了我所喜欢的那种人。从大的范围来说，我的身份是由我的向往组成的。如果我十岁就爱打高尔夫球，现在我一百二十岁了，仍然热爱这项运动，那么我的身份（既是一位高尔夫球手，间接地又是一个人）就是稳定不变的。如果我从两岁到九十岁一直都信仰天主教，那么我的身体就不会含糊不清，不会像犹太人那样，在三十五岁的某天醒来时想成为一个主教或教皇，而在生命终结之时又皈依伊斯兰教。
19.As a result of such reasoning, philosophers can be assured a stable identity, for who I am is to a large extent constituted by what I want. If the emotional man one day loves Samantha and the next Sally, then who is he? If I went to bed one night loving Chloe, and awoke the next morning indifferent to her, then who was I? Yet I was also faced with the intractable problem of locating solid reasons for either loving or not-loving Chloe. Objectively, there were no compelling reasons to do either, which made my occasional ambivalence towards her all the more irresolvable. Had there been sound, unassailable reasons to love or hate, there would have been benchmarks to return to. But just as the gap between two front teeth had never been a reason to fall head over heels in love with someone, so opinions on wildlife reserves was never a fair basis for hating them.一个人的向往改变得是如此之快以至其身份也永远是一个疑问，所以如同钟表迅速革新一样的感情世界也是千变万化的。如果一个情感丰富的男人今朝爱萨曼莎，明晨爱莎莉，那么他是谁？如果今天怀着对克洛艾深深的爱睡去，明天却伴着对她满腔的恨醒来，那么“我”又是谁？我没有完全放弃去做一个更理性的人。我只是碰到了一个棘手的难题：无法找到自己爱或不爱克洛艾的充分理由。客观地说，我缺乏令人信服的理由去从中做出任何一个决定，它使我偶尔对克洛艾产生的那种矛盾情绪更难以解决。如果存在合理而无懈可击（如果我敢说这符合逻辑）的理由去爱，抑或去恨，那么就会有可以重复的基准。但是，就如她的两颗门牙之间的缝隙不可能成为我深深爱她的理由一样，我真能把她抓挠手肘的姿势作为恨的根据吗？不论我们在有意地引证什么理由，我们都只会偏向于真正吸引我们的因素（从而无可挽回的悲惨失恋过程则暗示着……）。
20. Tempering our ambivalence was a contrary pull towards stability and continuity, which reined us in whenever there was an urge to develop romantic subplots or digress from our love story. Waking up from an erotic dream I had spent in the company of a woman who was a blend of two faces I had seen at a conference on solar energy the day before, I at once relocated myself emotionally on finding Chloe beside me. I stereotyped my possibilities, I returned to the role assigned to me by my status as a boyfriend, I bowed to the tremendous authority of what already exists.与情感的间断不定相对而立的是一个自发的稳定要求：保持情感环境持久不变。稳定的冲力平息情感波动，追求平稳，避免动荡，实现渴望的连贯协调。当出现另一段感情时，当我背离或用现代小说中的精神分裂症来质问我的爱情故事时，稳定使我坚守着克洛艾和我之间的这个线形的爱情故事。当我从性梦中——梦中有前一天在商店里看到的两个女人的面孔——醒来时，发现身边躺着克洛艾，我会立刻回过神来。我规范了我的情欲发展的可能性，重新回到我的情爱故事指定给我的角色中，屈服于已存在的巨大权威。
21. Tempests within the couple were also kept in check by the more stable assumptions that others around us held about our relationship. I remember a furious row that erupted a few minutes before we were due to meet friends for coffee one Saturday. At the time, we both felt this row to be so serious, we imagined breaking up over it. Yet this possibility was curtailed by the arrival of friends who could not remotely envisage such a thing. Over coffee, there were questions directed at the couple, which betrayed no knowledge of the possibility of rupture and hence helped to avoid it. The presence of others moderated our mood swings. When we were unsure of where we were going, we could hide beneath the comforting analysis of those who stood on the outside, aware only of the continuities, unaware that there was nothing inviolable about our plot line.情感波动因为环境的连贯、因为我们身边那些人更为稳定的假设而得以制止。记得有一个星期六，我们准备和朋友一起去喝咖啡，可就在出发前的几分钟，我们激烈地吵了起来。当时，我们俩都觉得吵得太厉害，以至会就此分手。然而结束爱情故事的可能性却因为朋友而没有成为事实，朋友不能面对这样的结局。接下来在喝咖啡时，大家探究相亲相爱的夫妻，探究关系不破裂下的背叛，探究如何去避免它。朋友的在场平息了我们一度燃起的怒火，当我们不知自己想要什么，从而不确定自己的身份时，我们可以安身于局外人令人欣慰的分析之中。我们只注意到感情在继续，却没有意识到在我们的关系中并没有什么是不可以破坏的。
22. We also found comfort in planning the future. Because there was a threat that love might end as suddenly as it had begun, we tried to reinforce the present through an appeal to a common destiny. We dreamt of where we would live and how many children we would have, we identified ourselves with the wrinkled couples taking their grandchildren for walks and holding hands in Kensington Gardens. Defending ourselves against love's demise, we took pleasure in planning a mutual future in precise detail. There were houses we both liked near Kentish Town and together decorated in our heads, completing them with two small studies at the top, a large fitted kitchen with the sleekest appliances in the basement, and a garden full of flowers and trees. Though we had not discussed marriage in any concrete way, we had to believe that there was no reason why we might not contractually bind our hearts together. How is it possible to love someone and at the same time imagine decorating a house with someone else? It was indispensable that we contemplate what it would be like to grow old together and retire with our dentures to a bungalow by the sea.心情好的时候，我们也会设计未来，从幻想中寻找安慰。爱会如同它突然而至一样在瞬间消失，因为这个威胁，我们自然会求助于虚幻的未来以加强我们现在的关系，这是一个至少延续到我们生命终结之时的未来。我们想象我们将居住在哪里，养育多少个孩子，我们将采取什么样的养老金方式，我们把那些手拉手、带着孙子在肯辛顿花园里散步的老人确实为日后的我们。为了不让爱走向终点，我们在一个夸大的时标上计划着我们共同的生活，从中获取快乐。我俩都喜欢诺丁山附近的房子，我们在想象中装修着它：在顶楼安排两个小书房；在地下室建一个设备先进的厨房，装上豪华的电器；在花园里种满鲜花、绿树。虽然一切根本不可能进展到那么远，我们却必须相信没有理由不让它这样。我们怎么可以一边爱一个人，一边又想象要与他们分手，和另外一个人结婚，和另外一个人装饰房屋？不，我们需要责无旁贷地思量两人一直慢慢变老，老到带着一嘴的假牙退休，住在海边的一栋平房里将会是一副怎样的景象。如果我们对这一切深信不疑，我们甚至可以计划结婚，用这种最坚决最合法的方式迫使心沉浸在无尽的爱里。
23. My dislike of talking about ex-lovers with Chloe stemmed from a related fear of inconstancy. Ex-lovers were reminders that situations I had at one point thought to be permanent had proved not to be so. From within a relationship, there is infinite cruelty in the idea of one's indifference towards past loves. One evening, in the bookshop of the Hayward Gallery, I caught sight of an old girlfriend, leafing through a biography of Giacometti across the room. Chloe was a few steps away from me, searching for some postcards to send to friends. Giacometti had meant much to this ex-girlfriend and me. I could easily have gone to say hello. After all, I had met several of Chloe's former lovers, one or two of whom she saw on a regular basis. But my discomfort was too deep: the woman evoked a fickleness in myself, and by extension and just as importantly in Chloe, that I lacked the courage to face.我不愿意和克洛艾谈起自己过去的恋人，也许这同样表明我希望一切能够永恒。那些过去的恋人们只是在提醒我，一度自以为可以永久的东西最终并非如此，我和克洛艾也许会遭遇同样的命运。一天晚上，在海伍德美术馆的书店里，我碰到以前的一个女朋友，她正在书架旁翻阅一本关于毕加索的书。克洛艾在离我几步远的地方找些明信片，准备寄给朋友。我和那位前任女友对毕加索都非常感兴趣。我本可以轻松地走过去，和她打个招呼。毕竟这之前我也曾有好几次碰到克洛艾以前的恋人，她总是很坦然地面对他们。但是我却感到不自在，只是因为这个女人使我想起自己感情中变化不定的一面，而我宁愿事实并非如此。我担心自己曾经和她产生而又消失的亲密感会证实：我和克洛艾也会步此后尘。
24. There is something appalling in the idea that a person for whom you would sacrifice anything today might in a few months cause you to cross a road or a bookshop. If my love for Chloe constituted the essence of my self at that moment, then the definitive end of my love for her would mean nothing less than the death of a part of me.爱情的悲剧在于它无法逃脱时间的维度，当我们和眼前的心上人厮守时，想到对过去的恋人残存的只有冷漠，这实在过于残酷。今天你愿意为一个人献出你的一切，然而几个月之后，你可能为了避开他们而走到马路对面（或书店里），想到这些不禁让人觉得可怕。我意识到，如果说我此刻对克洛艾的爱是我自身的意义所在，那么有一天我对她的爱的终结就意味着我自身部分的消亡。
25. If Chloe and I continued despite all this to believe we were in love, it was perhaps because the affection far outweighed the boredom and indifference. Yet we always remained aware that what we had chosen to call love might be an abbreviation for a far more complex, and ultimately less palatable, reality.如果克洛艾和我不顾这一切，仍然笃信我们的爱情，那可能是因为最终彼此爱恋的时光远远超过（至少一段时间内）彼此厌倦和冷漠的那些时刻。然而我们还是一直都清醒地意识到，我们称之为爱的东西，也许是更为复杂、最终并不令人满意的现实的缩略而已。
