那不勒斯四部曲III-离开的，留下的 中英双语版16
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75
我等着莉拉看完我的小说，这时候，传来消息说，那不勒斯爆发了霍乱。我母亲非常不安，反应有些过激，她变得有些漫不经心，到最后她把我非常喜欢的一只汤盆打碎了，她说她要回家。我马上察觉到，她的这个决定，如果说霍乱是一个原因，那我拒绝给我的二女儿用她的名字，也是一个重要原因。我试着挽留她，但她还是离开了。那时候，我刚生产还没恢复，而且腿疼也没好。她再也受不了在我身上花费一个月又一个月的时间，我又是一个那么没良心、对她不尊敬的女儿，她更乐意和她的丈夫，还有几个好孩子一起，面对染上霍乱的风险。一直走到门口，她还是按照我对她的要求，没有嚷嚷，也没有抱怨，也没说我什么，完全不动声色。她很乐意让彼得罗开车送她去火车站，她感觉她的女婿很爱她。我想，她一直都忍耐着，可能不是为了让我满意，而是为了不在我丈夫面前丢脸。她和黛黛分开时，非常难舍，在楼梯间，她用费力的意大利语问孩子：“外婆要走了，你难过吗？”黛黛觉得，外婆的离开是一种背叛。她没声好气地说：“不难过。”
While I was waiting for Lila to read, we
learned that there was a cholera outbreak in Naples. My mother became
excessively agitated, then distracted, finally she broke a soup tureen I was
fond of, and announced that she had to go home. I imagined that if the
cholera figured heavily in that decision, my refusal to give her name to my
new daughter wasn’t secondary. I tried to make her stay but she abandoned me
anyway, when I still hadn’t recovered from the birth and my leg was hurting.
She could no longer bear to sacrifice months and months of her life to me, a
child of hers without respect and without gratitude, she would rather go and
die of the cholera bacterium with her husband and her good children. Yet even
in the doorway she maintained the impassiveness that I had imposed on her:
she didn’t complain, she didn’t grumble, she didn’t reproach me for anything.
She was happy for Pietro to take her to the station in the car. She felt that
her son-*-law loved her and probably—I thought—she had controlled herself not
to please me so that she wouldn’t make a bad impression on him. She became
emotional only when she had to part from Dede. On the landing she asked the
child in her effortful Italian: Are you sorry that grandma is leaving? Dede,
who felt that departure as a betrayal, answered grimly: No.
我生母亲的气，但我更生自己的气，几个小时之后，出自一种自我毁灭的狂热，我把克莱利亚解雇了。彼得罗觉得很惊异，但他也很警惕。我厌烦地说，黛黛有马雷玛口音，现在加上我母亲的那不勒斯口音，真让人受不了。现在我要成为家里的主人，要亲自带孩子，但实际上，我觉得充满愧疚，我要惩罚我自己。我沉迷于一种绝望的想法，就是我会被两个孩子、家里的活儿，还有我疼痛的腿累垮。
I was angry with myself, more than with
her. Then I was seized by a self-destructive frenzy and a few hours later I
fired Clelia. Pietro was amazed, alarmed. I said to him rancorously that I
was tired of fighting with Dede’s Maremman accent, with my mother’s
Neapolitan one. I wanted to go back to being mistress of my house and my
children. In reality I felt guilty and had a great need to punish myself.
With desperate pleasure I surrendered to the idea of being overwhelmed by the
two children, by my domestic duties, by my painful leg.
我坚信，艾尔莎肯定会像黛黛那样，让我度过非常恐怖的一年。但也许是因为我对于照顾婴儿已经有了经验，也许是我已经接受自己是一个糟糕的母亲，我不强求完美，结果孩子却顺利地就开始吃奶了，每次都安安静静，吃上很长时间，然后睡很久。结果是，我也会睡很长时间。刚回家的那几天，让人惊异的是：彼得罗会把家里打扫得干干净净，去买东西做饭，给艾尔莎洗澡，哄黛黛——外婆走了，又多了一个小妹妹，这让她有些不知所措。我的腿部疼痛也忽然好了，我感觉比较平静。一天午后，我在床上躺着，半梦半醒之间，我丈夫过来叫醒我说：“你那不勒斯的朋友打电话找你。”我跑去接电话。
I had no doubt that Elsa would compel me
to a year no less terrible than the one I’d had with Dede. But maybe because
I was more experienced with newborns, maybe because I was resigned to being a
bad mother and wasn’t anxious about perfection, the infant attached herself
to my breast with no trouble and devoted herself to feeding and sleeping. As
a result I, too, slept a lot, those first days at home, and Pietro
surprisingly cleaned the house, did the shopping and cooking, bathed Elsa,
played with Dede, who was as if dazed by the arrival of a sister and the
departure of her grandmother. The pain in my leg suddenly disappeared. And I
was in a generally peaceful state when, one late afternoon, as I was napping,
my husband came to wake me: Your friend from Naples is on the phone, he said.
I hurried to answer.
莉拉跟我谈了很久关于彼得罗的事，她说，她迫不及待地想认识彼得罗本人。我有些漫不经心地听着，对不属于他父母那个世界的所有人，彼得罗都很亲切。莉拉在顾左右而言他，说了很久，我觉得她愉快的语气里隐藏着不安。我差不多要对着她喊了：“我已经给了你尽可能伤害我的权力，快点儿吧，说吧，那本书在你手上已经十三天了，赶紧告诉我你的想法。”但我没有那么嚷嚷，我只是忽然打断了她的话，我问：
Lila had talked to Pietro for a long
time, she said she couldn’t wait to meet him in person. I listened
reluctantly—Pietro was always amiable with people who didn’t belong to the
world of his parents—and since she dragged it out in a tone that seemed to me
nervously cheerful, I was ready to shout at her: I’ve given you the chance to
hurt me as much as possible, hurry up, speak, you’ve had the book for
thirteen days, let me know what you think. But I confined myself to breaking
in abruptly:
“那本书，你到底看了没有？”
“Did you read it or not?”
她的语气变得很严肃：
She became serious.
“我看了。”
“I read it.”
“然后呢？”
“And so?”
“写得很好。”
“It’s good.”
“怎么个好法？你觉得有意思吗？有趣还是很乏味？”
“Good how? Did it interest you, amuse
you, bore you?”
“我觉得有意思。”
“It interested me.”
“有点儿意思，还是非常有意思？”
“How much? A little? A lot?”
“非常有意思。”
“A lot.”
“为什么呢？”
“And why?”
“故事很有意思，让人很想往下看。”
“Because of the story: it makes you want
to read.”
“然后呢？”
“And then?”
“然后什么？”
“Then what?”
我有些不耐烦了，我说：
I stiffened, and said:
“莉拉，我必须知道，我写的这些东西怎么样，没有任何人可以告诉我，除了你。”
“Lila, I absolutely have to know how this
thing that I wrote is and I have no one else who can tell me, only you.”
“我正在说啊。”
“I’m doing that.”
“不，你没说实话，你在骗我。以前无论谈什么事情，你从来都没有这么浮浅过。”
“No, it’s not true, you’re cheating me:
you’ve never talked about anything in such a superficial way.”
她沉默了很长时间，我想象她跷着二郎腿，坐在一张难看的小桌子旁边，桌子上放着电话。也许她和恩佐刚上完班回来，詹纳罗正在不远处玩耍。她说：
There was a long silence. I imagined her
sitting, legs crossed, next to an ugly little table on which the telephone
stood. Maybe she and Enzo had just returned from work, maybe Gennaro was
playing nearby. She said:
“我已经告诉你了，我已经不会读书了。”
“I told you I don’t know how to read
anymore.”
“这不是问题所在，问题是我需要你，但你却一点儿也不在意我。”
“That’s not the point: it’s that I need
you and you don’t give a damn.”
她又沉默了好一会儿，嘟囔了一些我听不懂的话，也许是一句骂人的话。她用一种不留情面、带着怨恨的语气说：“我做一份工作，你做另一份工作，你能指望我给你提什么建议，你是上过学的，你知道书应该怎么写。”后来，她的声音忽然变了，几乎是叫喊着说：“你不应该写这些东西，莱农！这不是你，你让我看的那些东西，一点儿都不像你，这是一本非常糟糕非常糟糕的书，之前那本也很糟糕。”
Another silence. Then she muttered
something I didn’t understand, maybe an insult. She said harshly, resentful:
I do one job, you do another, what do you expect from me, you’re the one who
had an education, you’re the one who knows what books should be like. Then
her voice broke, she almost cried: You mustn’t write those things, Lenù, you
aren’t that, none of what I read resembles you, it’s an ugly, ugly book, and
the one before it was, too.
她说得很快，有些哽咽，上气不接下气，就好像她轻盈的呼吸忽然变得很沉重，凝结在一起，没法从她的喉咙出入。我感到胃里一阵痉挛，肚子很疼，而且疼痛一直在加重，并不是因为她所说的话，而是因为她说这些话的方式。她在啜泣吗？我很不安地说：“莉拉，你怎么啦？平静一下，深呼吸。”但她没平静下来，她真的在抽泣，我听到了她的抽泣里充满了痛苦。她说，很糟糕，莱农，非常非常糟糕，第一本书也是——那本卖了很多册的书，让我成功的书，关于那本书，她一直什么都没说，她现在说，那本书很失败。让我痛苦的是她的哭泣，我没有心理准备，我也没想到她会哭。我更喜欢那个很坏的莉拉，我喜欢她那种邪恶的语气，但现在她在抽泣，没办法停下来。
Like that. Rapid and yet strangled
phrases, as if her breath, light, a whisper, had suddenly become solid and
couldn’t move in and out of her throat. I felt sick to my stomach, a sharp
pain above my belly, which grew sharper, but not because of what she said but
rather because of how she said it. Was she sobbing? I exclaimed anxiously:
Lila, what’s wrong, calm down, come on, breathe. She didn’t calm down. They
were really sobs, I heard them in my ear, burdened with such suffering that I
couldn’t feel the wound of that ugly, Lenù, ugly, ugly, nor was I offended
that she reduced my first book, too—the book that had sold so well, the book
of my success, but of which she had never told me what she thought—to a
failure. What hurt me was her weeping. I wasn’t prepared, I hadn’t expected
it. I would have preferred the mean Lila, I would have preferred her
treacherous tone. But no, she was sobbing, and she couldn’t control herself.
我感到很迷惘。好吧，我想，我写了两本很糟糕的书，但这有什么关系，这种痛苦才是更严重的。我嘟囔了一句：“莉拉，你有什么好哭的，应该哭的人是我，别哭了。”但她厉声说：“为什么你让我看这本书，为什么你逼我说出我心里的想法，我只想自己知道。”我回答说：“别这样，我向你发誓，你能告诉我，我很高兴。”我想让她平静下来，但做不到，她说了一些很混乱的话：“别让我再读别的东西了，我不适合。我对你期望很高，我非常肯定，你能做得很好，我希望你做得更好，这是我最渴望的事儿。假如你不是很棒的话，那我是谁？我是谁呢？”我小声对她说：“你不要担心，你要对我说你想的，只有这样，你才能帮助我，从小时候开始，你就一直在帮助我，没有你的话，我什么都做不好。”最后，她终于停止了抽泣，吸着鼻子说了一句：“我为什么会哭呢，我真是个白痴。”她笑了，说：“我不想让你难受，我准备了一通赞美的话，我还写了下来，我想给你留个好印象。”我让她把那篇评论发给我，我说：“可能，你比我更了解我该写什么。”然后，我们不再谈小说的事了，我告诉她，艾尔莎出生了。我们谈到了佛罗伦萨、那不勒斯还有霍乱。什么霍乱？她用嘲讽的语气说，这里没有霍乱，只有通常那些乱七八糟的事儿，人们担心拉肚子拉死，实际上没什么事儿，更多的是害怕，一点事儿也没有。我们吃了很多柠檬，没人拉肚子。
I felt bewildered. All right, I thought,
I’ve written two bad books, but what does it matter, this unhappiness is much
more serious. And I said softly: Lila, why are you crying, I should be
crying, stop it. But she shrieked: Why did you make me read it, why did you
force me to tell you what I think, I should have kept it to myself. And I:
No, I’m glad you told me, I swear. I wanted her to quiet down but she
couldn’t, she poured out on me a confusion of words: Don’t make me read
anything else, I’m not fit for it, I expect the best from you, I’m too
certain that you can do better, I want you to do better, it’s what I want
most, because who am I if you aren’t great, who am I? I whispered: Don’t
worry, always tell me what you think, that’s the only way you can help me,
you’ve helped me since we were children, without you I’m not capable of
anything. And finally she smothered her sobs, she said, sniffling: Why did I
start crying, I’m an idiot. She laughed: I didn’t want to upset you, I had
prepared a positive speech, imagine, I wrote it, I wanted to make a good
impression. I urged her to send it, I said, it could be that you know better
than I do what I should write. And at that point we forgot the book, I told
her that Elsa was born, we talked about Florence, Naples, the cholera. What
cholera, she said sarcastically, there’s no cholera, there’s only the usual
mess and the fear of dying in shit, more fear than facts, we eat a bag of
lemons and no one shits anymore.
提到这些事情，她说得很流畅，几乎有些高兴，她摆脱了一个负担。结果是，我又一次感觉陷入漩涡——两个年幼的女儿、一个经常不在家的丈夫、糟糕的作品。虽然如此，但我没感觉不安，反而觉得很轻松，是我自己让她说了我的失败。我脑子里浮现出类似这样的句子：你给我带来正面影响的纽带断了，就像绳子断了一样，我现在是真正一个人了。但我没对她说这些，我用一种自嘲的语气说，我非常费劲地写出这本书，是想和我出生的城区有一个清算，这本书里讲述了我周围发生的巨大变化，这些变化促使我写出了这本书，这是堂·阿奇勒，还有索拉拉兄弟的母亲的故事。她笑了起来，她说，这些恶心的面孔，用来写小说是不够的：如果没有想象力的话，这些面孔不像真的，而像一张张面具。
Now she talked continuously, without a
break, almost cheerful, a weight had been lifted. As a result I began again
to feel the bind I was in—two small daughters, a husband generally absent,
the disaster of the writing—and yet I didn’t feel anxious; rather, I felt
light, and I brought the conversation back to my failure. I had in mind
phrases like: the thread is broken, that fluency of yours that had a positive
effect on me is gone, now I’m truly alone. But I didn’t say it. I confessed
instead in a self-satirizing tone that behind the labor of that book was the
desire to settle accounts with the neighborhood, that it seemed to me to
represent the great changes that surrounded me, that what had in some way
suggested it, encouraging me, was the story of Don Achille and the mother of
the Solaras. She burst out laughing. She said that the disgusting face of
things alone was not enough for writing a novel: without imagination it would
seem not a true face but a mask.
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76
我不知道怎么回事儿，后来我试图厘清我们的这通电话，还有莉拉的啜泣带给我的影响，我觉得很难分析清楚。假如往深了想，她好像要对我表达一种有些矛盾的赞赏，好像她的哭泣，肯定了她对我的情感，还有对我的能力的信任，最后抹去了她对我的那两本书的负面评价。只有在过了几天之后，我才意识到，她的啜泣使她能在不明说的情况下摧毁我的作品，并躲过了我的怨恨。而且，她给我定了一个非常高的目标——不要让她失望，让我没法尝试写其他东西。但我要重申一遍，无论我怎么反复琢磨我们的那次通话，我都没办法说，这通电话是这件事或者那件事的开始，也是我们之间友谊最密切的，或者说是最猥琐的交流。当然，莉拉的镜子效应得到了加强，她更彰显了我的无能。当然，这样一来，我感觉我更容易接受我的失败，就好像莉拉的观点，要比我婆婆的观点更权威，更充满感情，也更具有说服力。
I don’t really know what happened to me
afterward. Even now, as I sort out that phone call, it’s hard to relate the
effects of Lila’s sobs. If I look closely, I have the impression of seeing
mainly a sort of incongruous gratification, as if that crying spell, in
confirming her affection and the faith she had in my abilities, had
ultimately cancelled out the negative judgment of both books. Only much later
did it occur to me that the sobs had allowed her to destroy my work without
appeal, to escape my resentment, to impose on me a purpose so high—don’t
disappoint her—that it paralyzed every other attempt to write. But I repeat:
however much I try to decipher that phone call, I can’t say that it was at
the origin of this or that, that it was an exalted moment of our friendship
or one of the most wretched. Certainly Lila reinforced her role as a mirror
of my inabilities. Certainly I was more willing to accept failure, as if
Lila’s opinion were much more authoritative—but also more persuasive and more
affectionate—than that of my mother-*-law.
实际上，过了几天之后，我给阿黛尔打了电话。我对她说：“谢谢你对我这么开诚布公，我意识到你说得对，现在我也感觉到了，其实我的第一本小说也有很多缺点，也许我需要反思，也许我在写作上没有天分，或者，我只是需要时间。”我婆婆马上就对我说了很多好话，她赞扬了我的自我批评的能力，她提醒我，我有自己的读者群，那些读者还在等着我。我嘟囔着说：“是的，当然了。”之后，我马上把剩下的一份手稿塞到抽屉里，把那些写满笔记的本子也放起来了，我投身于日常的琐事。第二本书让我白白浪费了精力，这给我带来了极大的烦恼，最后这种厌烦也延伸到了我的第一本书上，也许还包括文学创作本身。有时候，我脑子里掠过一个影像、一个迷人的句子，我就会觉得一阵痛苦，我会尽量转去思考其他事情。
In fact a few days later I called Adele
and said to her: Thank you for being so frank, I realized that you’re right,
and it strikes me now that my first book, too, had a lot of flaws. Maybe I
ought to think about it, maybe I’m not a good writer, or I simply need more
time. My mother-*-law hastily drowned me in compliments, praised my capacity
for self-criticism, reminded me that I had an audience and that that audience
was waiting. I said yes, of course. And right afterward I put the last copy
of the novel in a drawer, I also put away the notebooks full of notes, I let
myself be absorbed by daily life. The irritation at that useless labor
extended to my first book, too, perhaps even to the literary purposes of
writing. If an image or an evocative phrase came to mind, I felt a sense of
uneasiness, and moved on to something else.
我的精力都投向了家庭、两个女儿，还有彼得罗。我从来都没有想过让克莱利亚回来，一次也没有，我也从没想过另找一个人帮我。我开始什么活儿都干，我这么做，就是为了让自己感到麻木，我这么做并不是很吃力，也没有懊悔，就好像我忽然间发现了使用生命的正确方法。好像有另一个我，在对我耳语：不要胡思乱想了。我非常投入地做家务，照顾艾尔莎和黛黛，这给我带来了意外的惊喜，就好像除了肚子里的孩子，除了稿子的压力，我还摆脱了一个更为隐秘的包袱，我自己也无法说清的一种东西。艾尔莎表现出她是一个非常安静的小宝贝：她洗澡时间很长，也很愉快，她吃饭睡觉都很乖，在睡觉时也会笑。但我要非常小心黛黛，她非常恨这个小妹妹，她早上醒来时，总是一脸惶恐，说她梦见把妹妹从火中、从水里或者从饿狼的嘴里救下来。有时候，她会假装自己是个小婴儿，也想吃奶，并模仿婴儿的啼哭，实际上她不满足于自己的处境，她已经差不多四岁了，语言能力很发达，已经可以生活自理了。我一直对她充满感情，表扬她的聪明，还有她的灵敏。我让她相信，我做任何事情都需要她的帮助：买东西，做饭，还要留神小妹妹不要摔了。
I devoted myself to the house, to the
children, to Pietro. Not once did I think of having Clelia back or of
replacing her with someone else. Again I took on everything, and certainly I
did it to put myself in a stupor. But it happened without effort, without
bitterness, as if I had suddenly discovered that this was the right way of
spending one’s life, and a part of me whispered: Enough of those silly
notions in your head. I organized the household tasks rigidly, and I took
care of Elsa and Dede with an unexpected pleasure, as if besides the weight
of the womb, besides the weight of the manuscript, I had rid myself of
another, more hidden weight, which I myself was unable to name. Elsa proved
to be a placid creature—she took long happy baths, she nursed, she slept, she
smiled even in her sleep—but I had to be very attentive to Dede, who hated
her sister. She woke in the morning with a wild expression, recounting how
she had saved the baby from fire, from a flood, from a wolf, but mostly she
pretended to be a newborn herself, and asked to suck on my nipples, imitated
infant wails, refused to act as what she now was, a child of almost four with
highly developed language, perfectly independent in her primary functions. I
was careful to give her a lot of affection, to praise her intelligence and
her ability, to persuade her that I needed her help with everything, the
shopping, the cooking, keeping her sister out of trouble.
同时，我非常担心自己又一次怀孕，我开始吃避孕药，我发胖了。我觉得自己浑身是肿的，但我还是不敢停药。那时候，我最害怕的事情就是再次怀孕。另外，我已经不像之前那么关注自己的身体了。我觉得，有了两个孩子之后，我不再年轻，而且要承担各种辛劳：给她们洗澡，穿衣服，脱衣服，推着小车出去，买东西，做饭，抱一个，拉一个，或者同时抱着两个，给其中一个擦鼻涕，给另一个擦嘴，承担每天的工作。我作为女人已经成熟，会像城区的那些母亲一样，并没什么好惋惜的。这没什么不好，我对自己说。
Meanwhile, since I was terrified by the
possibility of getting pregnant again, I began to take the Pill. I gained
weight, I felt as if I’d swelled up, yet I didn’t dare stop: a new pregnancy
frightened me more than any other thing. And then my body didn’t matter to me
the way it used to. The two children seemed to have confirmed that I was no
longer young, that the signs of my labors—washing them, dressing them, the
stroller, the shopping, cooking, one in my arms and one by the hand, both in
my arms, wiping the nose of one, cleaning the mouth of the other—testified to
my maturity as a woman, that to become like the mammas of the neighborhood
wasn’t a threat but the order of things. It’s fine this way, I told myself.
在抵抗了很长时间之后，彼得罗终于接受了避孕药，他很担忧地看着我。他说，你越来越圆了，你身上长的这些斑是怎么回事儿？他担心我和两个孩子或者他自己会生病，但他很痛恨医生。我尽量让他放心，那段时间他瘦了很多：他的眼圈越来越黑了，头上已经开始出现了一缕缕白头发。他一会儿说膝盖疼，一会儿说右腰或者肩膀疼，但他不愿意去看医生。我逼他去，我自己带着孩子陪他去，最后的结果是，除了需要服用一些镇静剂，他的身体很健康。这让他欣喜若狂了好一阵子，所有症状都消失了。但没过多久，尽管他在服用镇静剂，他又开始出状况了。有一次，黛黛不让他看电视新闻——那是在智利的军政府刚上台之后——他非常粗暴地打了孩子的屁股。我刚开始吃避孕药时，他比之前更加频繁地想做爱，但只是在早上或者下午，他说，晚上做爱的话，那会让他一点儿也不困，让他不得不学习大半个晚上，会让他积劳成疾。
Pietro, who had given in on the Pill
after resisting for a long time, examined me, preoccupied. You’re getting
fat. What are those spots on your skin? He was afraid that the children, and
he, and I were getting sick, but he hated doctors. I tried to reassure him.
He had gotten very thin lately: he always had circles under his eyes and
white strands had appeared in his hair; he complained of pain in his knee, in
his right side, in his shoulder, and yet he wouldn’t have an examination. I
forced him to go, I went with him, along with the children, and, apart from
the need for some sleeping pills, he turned out to be very healthy. That made
him euphoric for a few hours, and all his symptoms vanished. But in a short
time, in spite of the sedatives, he felt ill again. Once Dede wouldn’t let
him watch the news—it was right after the coup in Chile—and he spanked her
much too hard. And as soon as I began to take the Pill he developed a desire
to make love even more frequently than before, but only in the morning or the
afternoon, because—he said—it was the evening orgasm that made him sleepless;
then he was compelled to study for a good part of the night, which made him
feel chronically tired and consequently ill.
这都是胡说，因为对他来说，晚上学习一直都是一种习惯，而不是一种必须。但是，我还是说：“那我们就别晚上做了，怎么都行。”当然了，他有时候让我很抓狂，很难让他做一些对家里有用的事儿，比如说，让他有空儿的时候去买东西，吃完晚饭后洗碗。有一天晚上，我失去了耐心，我没跟他说什么难听话，我只是提高了嗓门。我发现了一件非常重要的事：我只要叫喊一下，他的固执马上就会消失，他就会听我的。有时候，我对他很强硬，这也能让他那些臆想的疼痛消失，甚至让那种不断想要我的过剩欲望也会消失，但我不喜欢那么做。一旦那么做的时候，我自己也很受罪，我觉得，这会激起他一阵痛苦的痉挛。无论如何，效果持续的时间也不长。他会让步，调整自己，很严肃地做一些自己该做的事情，但当他真的很疲惫时，他会忘记我们说好的事，只想着自己，又会恢复到之前的样子。最后，我不管他了，我想逗他笑，吻他，让他洗几个盘子，而且他又洗得不干净，对我能有什么好处呢？只能看到他拉长的脸，还有嘟囔，他的意思是：我有工作要做，但我却在这里浪费时间。最好让他轻松一点，我很高兴能避免一种紧张的关系。
Nonsensical talk: working at night had
always been for him a habit and a necessity. Yet I said: Let’s not do it at
night anymore, anything was fine with me. Of course, sometimes I was
exasperated. It was hard to get help from him even in small things: the
shopping when he was free, washing the dishes after dinner. One evening I
lost my temper: I didn’t say anything terrible, I just raised my voice. And I
made an important discovery: if I merely shouted, his stubbornness
disappeared and he obeyed me. It was possible, by speaking harshly, to make
even his unpredictable pains go away, even his neurotic wish to make love
constantly. But I didn’t like doing it. When I behaved like that, I was
sorry, it seemed to cause a painful tremor in his brain. Besides, the results
weren’t lasting. He gave in, he adjusted, he took on tasks with a certain
gravity, but then he really was tired, he forgot agreements, he went back to
thinking only about himself. In the end I let it go, I tried to make him
laugh, I kissed him. What did I gain from a few washed dishes, poorly washed
at that? Better to leave him tranquil, I was glad when I could avoid tension.
为了不让他焦虑，我学会了不跟他说我自己的事，他好像也不是很关注我的看法。假如我们交谈，比如说，关于政府对于石油危机采取的措施，假如他赞美意共靠近天主教民主党的做法，他只希望我默默听着，并对他表示赞同。有几次，我对他说的观点表示不赞同，他做出一副漫不经心的样子，要么用一种老师对学生说话的语气说：“你没有受到好的教育，你不知道民主、国家、法律还有协调不同国家、不同利益，实现平衡的价值。”要么他就会说：“你喜欢世界末日。”我是他的妻子，一个受过高等教育的妻子，他期望在他谈论政治、他的研究，以及他正焚膏继晷、踌躇满怀写的新书时，我能仔细听他的话，但这种关注只是情感方面的，他不想听到我的看法，尤其是当我对他表示怀疑时。他对我说话，那就像他在大声思考，只是想让自己思路清晰。他母亲，还有他姐姐都是另一个类型的女人，很明显，他不希望我成为她们那样。在他比较脆弱的阶段，我从他的有些话中能听出来，他不仅仅不赞同我出版我的第一本书，那本书的成功也让他很不悦，至于我写的第二本书、我的稿子去了哪里，他从来都没有过问，也没有问我未来有什么打算。我再也没有提过写作的事儿，这似乎让他松了一口气。
In order not to upset him I also learned
not to say what I thought. He didn’t seem to care, anyway. If he talked, I
don’t know, about the government measure in response to the oil crisis, if he
praised the rapprochement of the Communist Party to the Christian Democrats,
he preferred me to be only an approving listener. And when I appeared to
disagree he assumed an absent-minded expression, or said in a tone that he
obviously used with his students: you were badly brought up, you don’t know
the value of democracy, of the state, of the law, of mediation between
established interests, balance between nations—you like apocalypse. I was his
wife, an educated wife, and he expected me to pay close attention when he
spoke to me about politics, about his studies, about the new book he was
working on, filled with anxiety, wearing himself out, but the attention had
to be affectionate; he didn’t want opinions, especially if they caused
doubts. It was as if he were thinking out loud, explaining to himself. And
yet his mother was a completely different type of woman. And so was his
sister. Evidently he didn’t want me to be like them. During that period of
weakness, I understood from certain vague remarks that he wasn’t happy about
not only the success of my first book but its very publication. As for the
second, he never asked me what had happened to the manuscript and what future
projects I had. The fact that I no longer mentioned writing seemed to be a
relief to him.
彼得罗越来越表现出很糟糕的、出乎我预料的一面，但这并没有促使我去找别人。有时候我会遇到马里奥，就是那个工程师，但我很快发现，勾引别人和被别人勾引的欲望已经消失了，而且我觉得，曾经那个不安分的阶段，让我觉得自己很好笑，还好那个阶段过去了。那种想从家里出去，参加这个城市公众生活的渴望，也慢慢消退了。假如我决定参加一场辩论会，或者一次游行，我总是会带着两个孩子，我觉得很自豪，我的包里鼓鼓囊囊，塞着她们需要的东西。那些不赞同我这么做的人会说：“她们这么小，可能会很危险。”
That Pietro every day revealed himself to
be worse than I had expected did not, however, drive me again toward others.
At times I ran into Mario, the engineer, but I quickly discovered that the
desire to seduce and be seduced had disappeared and in fact that former
agitation seemed to me a rather ridiculous phase; luckily it had passed. The
craving to get out of the house, participate in the public life of the city
also diminished. If I decided to go to a debate or a demonstration, I always
took the children, and I was proud of the bags I toted, stuffed with
everything they might need, of the cautious disapproval of those who said:
They’re so little, it might be dangerous.
尽管如此，但我还是每天都出门去，无论天气怎么样，只是为了让两个女儿晒太阳，呼吸新鲜空气。出去的时候，我总是会带上一本书，这是我一直以来的习惯，尽管想营造一个自己的文学世界的野心已经消失了，但在任何情况下，我都会读书。通常我会先走一走，找一个离家不远的长椅坐下来，翻阅一些复杂的评论，阅读报纸，有时候嘴里会喊：“黛黛，不要跑太远了，到妈妈这里来。”我就是这样，我要接受现实。无论莉拉的生活发生了什么，那都是她的事儿。
But I went out every day, in whatever
weather, so that my daughters could have air and sun. I never went without
taking a book. Out of a habit that I had never lost, I continued to read
wherever I was, even if the ambition of making a world for myself had
vanished. I generally took a short walk and then sat on a bench not far from
home. I paged through complicated essays, I read the newspaper, I yelled:
Dede, don’t go far, stay close to Mamma. I was that, I had to accept it.
Lila, whatever turn her life might take, was different.
-*-
77
那段时间，马丽娅罗莎来了佛罗伦萨，是为了推广她大学同事写的一本关于圣母生育的书。彼得罗发誓说他一定会参加，但到了最后关节，他找了个借口，不知道躲到哪里去了。我的大姑子开车来的，这次是她一个人来的，有点儿疲惫，但还是和平常一样热情，她给黛黛和艾尔莎带了很多礼物。她从来都没提到过我那部夭折了的小说，尽管我可以肯定，阿黛尔已经跟她说了。她很自在地给我讲了她的旅行、她读的书，她还是像往常一样充满热情。她兴高采烈地追随着这个世界上的新事物，认定一件事情，研究一阵子，厌烦了再去搞另一件事——那是之前她因为不注意，或因盲目而否认的事。在聚会上，她谈到她同事的书，很快就获得了听众的认可，在场的都是一些艺术史研究者。本来按照常规，她讲一些学术上的事情，那天晚上会顺顺当当地过去，但忽然间她话锋一转，有一些口无遮拦地说出了这样的话：“女人不要为任何男人生孩子，包括天父，孩子属于她们自己。现在，我们需要从女性角度，而不是男性角度来做研究。无论哪个学科的背后都是‘阴茎’，当这根‘阴茎’疲软了，就会求助于铁棍、警察、监狱、军队和集中营。假如你不屈服，假如你继续捣乱，那就开始大屠杀。”马丽娅罗莎说完，台下发出一阵阵嘈杂声，有人赞同，有人反对，最后她被一群女人围住了。她用非常愉快的语气让我到她身边去，她很自豪地把黛黛和艾尔莎介绍给她在佛罗伦萨的朋友，也说了我很多好话。有人提到了我的书，但我岔开了话题，就好像那本书不是我写的。那是一个非常愉快的夜晚，我们形成了一个小团体，是由各种各样的姑娘，还有成熟女人组成，其中一个邀请所有人去她家，一个星期聚一次，聊一下女人的问题。
It happened that around that time
Mariarosa came to Florence to present the book of a university colleague of
hers on the Madonna del Parto. Pietro swore he wouldn’t miss it, but at the
last minute he made an excuse and hid somewhere. My sister-*-law arrived by
car, alone this time, a bit tired but affectionate as always and loaded with
presents for Dede and Elsa. She never mentioned my aborted novel, even though
Adele had surely told her about it. She talked volubly about trips she’d
taken, about books, with her usual enthusiasm. She pursued energetically the
many novelties of the planet. She would assert one thing, get tired of it, go
on to another that a little earlier, out of distraction, blindness, she had
rejected. When she spoke about her colleague’s book, she immediately gained
the admiration of the art historians in the audience. And the evening would
have run smoothly along the usual academic tracks if at a certain point, with
an abrupt swerve, she hadn’t uttered remarks, occasionally vulgar, of this
type: children shouldn’t be given to any father, least of all God the Father,
children should be given to themselves; the moment has arrived to study as
women and not as men; behind every discipline is the penis and when the penis
feels impotent it resorts to the iron bar, the police, the prisons, the army,
the concentration camps; and if you don’t submit, if, rather, you continue to
turn everything upside down, then comes slaughter. Shouts of discontent, of
agreement: at the end she was surrounded by a dense crowd of women. She
called me over with welcoming gestures, proudly showed off Dede and Elsa to
her Florentine friends, said nice things about me. Some remembered my book,
but I avoided it, as if I hadn’t written it. The evening was nice, and
brought an invitation, from a small, varied group of girls and adult women,
to go to the house of one of them, once a week, to talk—they said—about us.
因为马丽娅罗莎说的那些非常挑衅的话，还有她朋友们的邀请，我重新把阿黛尔之前送给我的小册子从一堆书下面翻了出来，我出去时会放在包里，在外面读。在深冬灰色的天空下，我看到了一个很吸引我注意的标题——《啊呸！黑格尔》，就先看了那篇文章。在我读这篇文章时，艾尔莎在她的小车里睡觉，黛黛穿着厚外套，围着羊毛围巾，戴着羊毛帽子，在小声和她的布娃娃说话。这篇文章的每句话、每个字都让我震撼，尤其是那种肆无忌惮的自由思想。我在很多有力的句子下面都画了线，我用感叹号还有斜画线，把那些打动我的地方标了出来。啊呸！黑格尔。啊呸！男人的文化，啊呸！马克思、恩格斯和列宁。啊呸！历史唯物主义，弗洛伊德，啊呸！心理分析和阴茎嫉妒。啊呸！婚姻，家庭。啊呸！纳粹主义、斯大林主义，还有恐怖主义。啊呸！战争、阶级斗争，还有无产阶级专政。啊呸！社会主义、共产主义，还有人人平等的陷阱。啊呸！所有父权文化的体现，所有的组织形式。反对对女性智慧的污蔑，反对对女性进行洗脑。我们要从生育说起，不给任何人生孩子。我们要推翻奴仆和主人的二元结构，我们要从脑子里清除我们的自卑感。我们要做自己。不要犹豫。要坚持自己的不同，行动起来。大学不会解放女性，只能让对女性的压迫变得更完善，要反对智慧。男性已经进入了太空，但女性在这个星球上的生活，还没有真正开始。女人是这个星球的另一张脸。女人是主体，会出人意外。需要把女性从压迫的处境中解放出来，此时，此刻，就是现在。写这篇文章的人叫卡拉·隆奇。我想，一个女人怎么可能可以这样思考？我在读书上花费了很多力气，但我一直都在被动接受，我从来都没用到过那些书籍，我从来都没对那些书本产生过怀疑。这就是思考的方法，卡拉·隆奇正是通过思考来提出反对。我在费了那么大的劲儿之后，还是不会思考。马丽娅罗莎也不会：她读了一页又一页书，然后心血来潮，把这些思想用自己的话说出来，哗众取宠，这就是事实。但莉拉会用脑子，这是她的本能，假如她上过学，她也会像这样思考。
Mariarosa’s provocative remarks and the
invitation of her friends led me to fish out from under a pile of books those
pamphlets Adele had given me long before. I carried them around in my purse,
I read them outside, under the gray sky of late winter. First, intrigued by
the title, I read an essay entitled We Spit on Hegel. I read it while Elsa
slept in her carriage and Dede, in coat, scarf, and woolen hat, talked to her
doll in a low voice. Every sentence struck me, every word, and above all the
bold freedom of thought. I forcefully underlined many of the sentences, I
made exclamation points, vertical strokes. Spit on Hegel. Spit on the culture
of men, spit on Marx, on Engels, on Lenin. And on historical materialism. And
on Freud. And on psychoanalysis and penis envy. And on marriage, on family.
And on Nazism, on Stalinism, on terrorism. And on war. And on the class
struggle. And on the dictatorship of the proletariat. And on socialism. And
on Communism. And on the trap of equality. And on all the manifestations of
patriarchal culture. And on all its institutional forms. Resist the waste of
female intelligence. Deculturate. Disacculturate, starting with maternity,
don’t give children to anyone. Get rid of the master-slave dialectic. Rip
inferiority from our brains. Restore women to themselves. Don’t create
antitheses. Move on another plane in the name of one’s own difference. The
university doesn’t free women but completes their repression. Against wisdom.
While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this
planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other face of the earth. Woman is the
Unpredictable Subject. Free oneself from subjection here, now, in this
present. The author of those pages was called Carla Lonzi. How is it possible,
I wondered, that a woman knows how to think like that. I worked so hard on
books, but I endured them, I never actually used them, I never turned them
against themselves. This is thinking. This is thinking against. I—after so
much exertion—don’t know how to think. Nor does Mariarosa: she’s read pages
and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. That’s it.
Lila, on the other hand, knows. It’s her nature. If she had studied, she
would know how to think like this.
这种想法变得越来越顽固，我在这个阶段读的所有东西，最终都会通过这样或者那样的方式，和莉拉联系在一起。我遇到了这种女性主义的思想，虽然和莉拉的思想有所不同，但同样激起了我的崇拜，还有我在她面前的从属感。不仅仅如此，在看这些文章时，我想到的是莉拉，还有她生活的片段，那些她会认同的话，她会反对的话。后来，在阅读那些文章的过程中，我经常参加马丽娅罗莎那帮朋友的聚会，但事情并不容易，黛黛一个劲儿地问我：“我们什么时候走？”艾尔莎有时候会忽然欢呼雀跃。但问题不仅仅在我女儿身上，实际上，我在那儿只会遇到和我相似的女人，她们没办法帮助我。我觉得很无聊，因为她们谈论的都是我已经知道的事儿，而且她们的表达很糟糕。我感觉，我已经非常了解生为女人意味着什么，我对那些艰难的自我意识并不热衷。我不想在公众场合里谈到我和彼得罗，以及我和一般男性之间的关系，来为她们作证，说明每个阶层、每个年龄阶段的男性是什么样的。让自己的头脑男性化，从而融入男性的文化中——这意味着什么，没有人比我更清楚。我之前就是那么做的，我现在依然那么做。除此之外，我置身事外，没有卷入那些紧张的气氛、嫉妒的爆发、充满权威的语气、柔弱的声音、知识分子的等级，还有为争取这个群体领导权的斗争，最后会有人哭得一塌糊涂。对于我来说，出现了一种新情况，又把我自然引向莉拉，她们讲述和讨论的方式让我入迷，她们非常直率，甚至到了粗鲁的地步。我喜欢用啰嗦的长句来表达自己，那是我小时候就学会了的。我感到急切需要表达真实的自我，我之前从来都没用过那种方式说话，那可能不是我的本性。在那种情况下，我压抑住了自己的表达欲望，我一直都一言不发。但是我感觉我应该和莉拉谈谈，谈谈这些事情，用同样不留情面的方式，来分析发生在我们身上的事情，深入谈谈我们从来都没有谈过的问题，比如说谈一下我写的那本糟糕的书，还有她反常的哭泣。
That idea became insistent. Everything I
read in that period ultimately drew Lila in, one way or another. I had come
upon a female model of thinking that, given the obvious differences, provoked
in me the same admiration, the same sense of inferiority that I felt toward
her. Not only that: I read thinking of her, of fragments of her life, of the
sentences she would agree with, of those she would have rejected. Afterward,
impelled by that reading, I often joined the group of Mariarosa’s friends,
but it wasn’t easy: Dede asked me continuously when we were leaving, Elsa
would suddenly let out cries of joy. But it wasn’t just my daughters who were
the problem. It was that there I found only women who, resembling me,
couldn’t help me. I was bored when the discussion became a sort of inelegant
summary of what I already knew. And it seemed to me I knew well enough what
it meant to be born female, I wasn’t interested in the work of
consciousness-raising. And I had no intention of speaking in public about my
relationship with Pietro, or with men in general, to provide testimony about
what men are, of every class and of every age. And no one knew better than I
did what it meant to make your own head masculine so that it would be
accepted by the culture of men; I had done it, I was doing it. Furthermore I
remained completely outside the tensions, the explosions of jealousy, the
authoritarian tones, weak, submissive voices, intellectual hierarchies,
struggles for primacy in the group that ended in desperate tears. But there
was one new fact, which naturally led me to Lila. I was fascinated by the way
people talked, confronted each other—explicit to the point of being
disagreeable. I didn’t like the amenability that yielded to gossip: I had
known enough of that since childhood. What seduced me instead was an urge for
authenticity that I had never felt and that perhaps was not in my nature. I
never said a single word, in that circle, that was equal to that urgency. But
I felt that I should do something like that with Lila, examine our connection
with the same inflexibility, that we should tell each other fully what we had
been silent about, starting perhaps from the unaccustomed lament for my
mistaken book.
这种愿望很强烈，以至于让我想带着两个女儿到那不勒斯去住一段时间，或者让她带着詹纳罗来我这里，或者我们相互通信。我跟她说了一次，是通过电话说的，但没有说通她。我跟她说了我正在阅读的女权主义书籍，还有我参加的团体。她听我讲了一阵子，然后开始取笑那些书的书名，比如说，“阴蒂女性”、“子宫女性”。她话说得很粗俗：“你丫说什么呢？莱农，快感、性、生殖器，这里问题很多？你疯了吗？”她想给我展示，她没法谈论我感兴趣的事情。最后她的语气变得很鄙夷，她说：“你做点别的什么事儿吧，做点儿你该做的事情，别浪费时间了。”她生气了。很明显，这不是一个合适的时机，我想，过一段时间我会再试一试。最后我得出结论，我应该搞清楚自己，我要分析自己的女性本质。我非常费力地学习那些男性的事情，我觉得自己应该懂得一切，做各种事情，我越界了，政治斗争的事儿和我有什么关系呢。我想要在男人面前有面子，我要和他们站在同一个高度。什么高度？他们理性的高度，最不理性的高度。我非常投入地背诵那些流行的句子，真是白费力气。我被自己学习的东西限制了，这些东西塑造了我的头脑、我的声音。为了变得卓越，我和我自己定下的秘密协约。现在，在努力学习之后，我要遗忘学到的东西。再加上，我不得不想想，我是什么样的。莉拉在我面前时，我是她的附庸，我刚刚一远离她，我自己就变了，没有莉拉，我什么想法都没有。没有她的思想支撑，我就无法认定任何思想。我应该接受自己，那个不受她左右的自己，核心就是这个，我要接受自己是一个平庸的人。我该怎么办呢？接着尝试写作？也许我会没有激情，我只是在应付差事。因此我应该不要再写了，随便找一份工作，或者就像我母亲说的，当个阔太太，把自己关在家里，或者把一切都抛开——家庭、女儿和丈夫。
That need was so strong that I imagined
going to Naples with the children for a while, or asking her to come to me
with Gennaro, or to write to each other. I talked about it with her once on
the phone but it was a fiasco. I told her about the books by women I was
reading, about the group I went to. She listened but then she laughed at
titles like The Clitoral Woman and the Vaginal Woman, and did her best to be
vulgar: What the fuck are you talking about, Lenù, pleasure, pussy, we’ve got
plenty of problems here already, you’re crazy. She wanted to prove that she
didn’t have the tools to put into words the things that interested me. And in
the end she was scornful, she said: Work, do the nice things you have to do,
don’t waste time. She got angry. Evidently it’s not the right moment, I
thought, I’ll try again later on. But I never found the time or the courage
to try again. I concluded that first of all I had to understand better what I
was. Investigate my nature as a woman. I had been excessive, I had striven to
give myself male capacities. I thought I had to know everything, be concerned
with everything. What did I care about politics, about struggles. I wanted to
make a good impression on men, be at their level. At the level of what, of
their reason, most unreasonable. Such persistence in memorizing fashionable
jargon, wasted effort. I had been conditioned by my education, which had
shaped my mind, my voice. To what secret pacts with myself had I consented,
just to excel. And now, after the hard work of learning, what must I unlearn.
Also, I had been forced by the powerful presence of Lila to imagine myself as
I was not. I was added to her, and I felt mutilated as soon as I removed
myself. Not an idea, without Lila. Not a thought I trusted, without the
support of her thoughts. Not an image. I had to accept myself outside of her.
The gist was that. Accept that I was an average person. What should I do. Try
again to write. Maybe I didn’t have the passion, I merely limited myself to
carrying out a task. So don’t write anymore. Find some job. Or act the lady,
as my mother said. Shut myself up in the family. Or turn everything upside
down. House. Children. Husband.
-*-
78
我和马丽娅罗莎的关系变得密切起来。我经常给她打电话，当彼得罗发现这一点，就开始用一种越来越鄙夷的语气谈到了他姐姐：她很轻浮、空虚，对于自己和其他人来说，她都很危险，在他整个童年和青春期，马丽娅罗莎都一直是残酷折磨他的人，她是父母最大的担忧。有一天晚上，我正和我大姑子通电话，彼得罗从他的房间里出来了，头发乱蓬蓬的，面孔疲惫。他在厨房里转了一圈，往嘴里胡乱塞了点东西，他和黛黛开了玩笑，同时在侧耳听着我们的谈话。后来，他忽然间开始叫嚷：“那个白痴知不知道，现在是吃晚饭时间？”我向马丽娅罗莎道歉之后，马上挂了电话。我说，饭食已准备好，马上就可以吃，他用不着那么大声嚷嚷。他嘟哝着说，花长途电话费，去听他姐姐的疯言疯语，他觉得很愚蠢。我没有接茬，我把桌子摆好了。他发现我生气了，就有些担心地说：“我不是生你的气，我是生马丽娅罗莎的气。”但从那天晚上开始，他开始翻阅我看的那些书，看到我画线的地方，就开玩笑。他说，这都是蠢话，你不要上当受骗。他向我指出那些女性主义杂志和女性主义宣言里逻辑不通的地方。
I consolidated my relations with
Mariarosa. I called her frequently, but when Pietro noticed he began to speak
more and more contemptuously of his sister. She was frivolous, she was empty,
she was dangerous to herself and others, she had been the cruel tormenter of
his childhood and adolescence, she was the great worry of her parents. One
evening he came out of his study disheveled, his face tired, while I was
talking to my sister-*-law on the phone. He walked around the kitchen, ate
something, joked with Dede, eavesdropping on our conversation. Then all of a
sudden he shouted: Doesn’t that idiot know it’s time for dinner? I apologized
to Mariarosa and hung up. It’s all ready, I said, we can eat right away,
there’s no need to shout. He complained that spending money on phone calls to
listen to his sister’s nonsense seemed stupid to him. I didn’t answer, I set
the table. He realized I was angry, and said, in a tone of apprehension: I’m
mad at Mariarosa, not you. But after that night he began to look through the
books I was reading, to make sarcastic comments on the sentences I had
underlined. He said, Don’t be taken in, it’s nonsense. And he tried to
demonstrate the weak logic of feminist manifestos and pamphlets.
有一天晚上，正是因为这个问题，我们吵了起来，也许是我夸张了。我们你一句我一句地说着，最后我跟他说：“你觉得自己特别了不起？但你和马丽娅罗莎一样，你现在的一切，都是你父母亲给你的。”他给了我一个耳光，而且是当着黛黛的面，他的反应出乎我的意料。
On this very subject we ended up arguing
one evening and maybe I overdid it, going so far as to say to him: You think
you’re so great but everything you are you owe to your father and mother,
just like Mariarosa. His reaction was completely unexpected: he slapped me,
and in Dede’s presence.
我的承受能力很强，要比他强：我一辈子挨了不少耳光，但彼得罗从来都没打过别人耳光，当然也没有挨过耳光。在他脸上，我看到他为自己的行为感到憎恶，他盯着他女儿看了一会儿，然后出门了。我的火慢慢消了，我没上床睡觉，一直在等他，因为他一直没回家，这让我很担心，我不知道该怎么办才好。他神经衰弱，是因为休息得太少了吗？或者，这就是他的本性，埋藏在几千本书和良好教养之下的本性？我又一次意识到，我对他的了解太少了，我没有办法预测他的举动：他可能会跳到阿诺河里？或者是已经在某个地方喝醉了？甚至是动身去了热内亚，在他母亲的怀抱里寻求安慰，进行倾诉？哦，我无法想象他会做出什么事来，我太害怕了。我觉察到，因为我所读的书，我所知道的事情，我忽视了自己的私人生活，我有两个女儿，我不想出现一个草率的结果。
I took it well, better than he did: I had
had many blows in the course of my life, Pietro had never given any and
almost certainly had never received any. I saw in his face the revulsion for
what he had done; he stared at his daughter for an instant, and left the
house. My anger cooled. I didn’t go to bed, I waited for him, and when he
didn’t return I became anxious, I didn’t know what to do. Did he have some
nervous illness, from too little sleep? Or was that his true nature, buried
under thousands of books and a proper upbringing? I realized yet again that I
knew little about him, that I wasn’t able to predict his moves: he might have
jumped into the Arno, be lying drunk somewhere, even left for Genoa to find
comfort and complain in his mother’s arms. Oh enough, I was frightened. I
realized that I was leaving what I was reading, and what I knew, on the edges
of my personal life. I had two daughters, I didn’t want to draw conclusions
too hastily.
彼得罗是早上五点回来的，我看到他完好无损地回来了，深深松了一口气，我去拥抱了他，亲吻了他。他嘟囔着说：“你不爱我，你从来都没爱过我。”最后他补充说：“我也不值得你爱。”
Pietro came home at around five in the
morning and the relief of seeing him safe and sound was so great that I
hugged him, I kissed him. He mumbled: You don’t love me, you’ve never loved
me. And he added: Anyway, I don’t deserve you.
-*-
79
实际上，彼得罗没办法接受他生活各方面出现的问题。他期望的是安静、规律的生活，按照他那些一成不变的习惯生活：学习，教书，和孩子们玩儿，做爱，每天完成一点工作。在他的小世界里，大家用一种民主方式来应对意大利极端混乱的局面。但实际上，他被大学里的各种矛盾折磨得筋疲力尽，他在海外影响越来越大，他的同事想方设法贬低他的工作，他发现自己不断受到排挤和威胁。他感到，因为我的不安（什么不安？我是一个迟钝的女人），我们的家庭也不断受到威胁。有一天下午，艾尔莎在自己玩儿，我让黛黛在练习阅读，彼得罗关在自己的房间里，家里没什么动静。我有些焦虑，我想，彼得罗希望能有一个堡垒，能让他在里面完成他的书，我则负责家里的事务，孩子们健康成长。最后，我听到了一阵门铃声，我跑去开门，让我意外的是，进门的是帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅。
The fact was that Pietro couldn’t accept
the disorder that was by now spreading into every aspect of existence. He
would have liked a life ruled by unquestioned habits: studying, teaching,
playing with the children, making love, contributing every day, in his small
way, to resolving by democratic means the vast confusion of Italian affairs.
Instead he was exhausted by the conflicts at the university, his colleagues
disparaged his work, and although he was gaining a reputation abroad, he felt
constantly vilified and threatened, he had the impression that because of my
restlessness (but what restlessness, I was an opaque woman) our very family
was exposed to constant risks. One afternoon Elsa was playing on her own, I
was making Dede practice reading, he was shut in his study, the house was
still. Pietro, I thought anxiously, is looking for a fortress where he works
on his book, I take care of the household, and the children grow up serenely.
Then the doorbell rang, I went to open the door, and to my surprise Pasquale
and Nadia entered.
他们俩都背着军用大背包，帕斯卡莱浓密拳曲的黑色发上，戴着一顶破帽子，胡子又浓密又拳曲。娜迪雅看起来消瘦疲惫，她眼睛很大，就像一个充满恐惧的小姑娘，但假装自己不害怕。他们从卡门那儿要到了我的地址，而卡门有的地址是我母亲给的。他们俩都很热情，我也表现得很热情，就好像我们之间从来都没有过矛盾和分歧。他们占领了我家，把东西丢得到处都是。帕斯卡莱在不停地说话，一直在说方言，而且声音很大。刚开始，我觉得他们打破了我平庸的日常生活。但我很快发现，彼得罗不喜欢他们，尤其让他厌烦的是，他们没有事先打电话就来了，而且两个人都太随意了。娜迪雅脱下鞋子，躺在沙发上，帕斯卡莱没摘他头上的帽子，他一直乱动我家里的东西，随便翻书，问都不问，就从冰箱里给自己和娜迪雅各拿了一瓶啤酒，他咕噜咕噜喝着，还打嗝，这让黛黛觉得很好笑。他们说，他们决定出来走一圈，随便逛逛，他们就是这么说的，没有具体目的。他们是什么时候离开那不勒斯的？他们说得也不是很具体。他们什么时候回去？回答还是同样不清楚。工作呢？我问帕斯卡莱。他笑着说：“够了，我已经干了太多活了，现在我要休息一下。”他把自己的手展示给彼得罗看，他让彼得罗把手也拿出来，他用手摩挲着彼得罗的手说：“你能感觉到差别吗？”然后，他拿起那本《斗争在继续》，他用右手摸了一下第一页，粗糙的皮肤划过纸张时发出的嚓嚓声让他很自豪。他很高兴，就好像自己发明了一种新游戏，后来他用一种威胁的语气说：“没有这双粗糙的手，教授，连一把椅子、一栋楼、一辆汽车都不会有的，什么都不会有，包括你。假如我们工人决定停止干活，一切都会停下来，天会塌下来，天和地会碰在一起，城市会变成森林，阿诺河会淹没你们漂亮的房子，只有那些一直干活的人知道如何生存，而你们俩、你们的那些书都会被野狗撕裂。”
They carried large military knapsacks; he
wore a cap over a thick mass of curly hair that fell into an equally thick
and curly beard, while she looked thin and tired, her eyes enormous, like a
frightened child who is pretending not to be afraid. They had asked for the
address from Carmen, who in turn had asked my mother. They were both
affectionate, and I was, too, as if there had never been tensions or
disagreements between us. They took over the house, leaving their things
everywhere. Pasquale talked a lot, in a loud voice, almost always in dialect.
At first they seemed a pleasant break in my flat daily existence. But I soon
realized that Pietro didn’t like them. It bothered him that they hadn’t
telephoned to announce themselves, that they brazenly made themselves at
home. Nadia took off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa. Pasquale kept
his cap on, handled objects, leafed through books, took a beer from the
refrigerator for himself and one for Nadia without asking permission, drank
from the bottle and burped in a way that made Dede laugh. They said they had
decided to take a trip, they said just that, a trip, without specifying. When
had they left Naples? They were evasive. When would they return? They were
equally evasive. Work? I asked Pasquale. He laughed: Enough, I’ve worked too
much, now I’m resting. And he showed Pietro his hands, he demanded that he
show him his, he rubbed their palms together saying: You feel the difference?
Then he grabbed Lotta Continua and brushed his right hand over the first
page, proud of the sound of the paper scraping over his rough skin, as
pleased as if he had invented a new game. Then he added, in an almost
threatening tone: Without these rasping hands, professor, not a chair would
exist, or a building, a car, nothing, not even you; if we workers stopped
working everything would stop, the sky would fall to earth and the earth
would shoot up to the sky, the plants would take over the cities, the Arno
would flood your fine houses, and only those who have always worked would
know how to survive, and as for you two, you with all your books, the dogs
would tear you to pieces.
典型的帕斯卡莱的言论，非常激昂，也很真诚。彼得罗默默听着，一直都没有接茬。娜迪雅这时候也不说话，当她的同伴说话时，她一脸严肃躺在沙发上，盯着天花板看。在男人们谈话时，她很少插话，我也没说什么。但我去厨房煮咖啡时，她却跟了过来。她注意到艾尔莎缠着我，就很严肃地说：
It was a speech in Pasquale’s style,
fervent and sincere, and Pietro listened without responding. As did Nadia,
who, while her companion was speaking, lay on the sofa with a serious
expression, staring at the ceiling. She almost never interrupted the two
men’s talk, nor did she say anything to me. But when I went to make coffee
she followed me into the kitchen. She noticed that Elsa was always attached
to me, and she said gravely:
“她很爱你。”
“She really loves you.”
“她还小。”
“She’s little.”
“你是说，等她长大了，就不爱你了？”
“You’re saying that when she grows up she
won’t love you?”
“不是，我希望她长大了，也爱我。”
“No, I hope she’ll love me when she’s
grown up, too.”
“我母亲经常说到你。你只是她的一个学生，但我觉得，你比我更像她女儿。”
“My mother used to talk about you all the
time. You were only her student, but it seemed as if you were her daughter
more than me.”
“真的吗？”
“Really?”
“因此，我非常痛恨你，也因为你抢走了尼诺。”
“I hated you for that and because you had
taken Nino.”
“他离开你，并不是因为我。”
“It wasn’t for me that he left you.”
“谁在乎呢，我现在都想不起他长什么样儿了。”
“Who cares, I don’t even remember what he
looked like now.”
“我小时候，特别想和你一样。”
“As a girl I would have liked to be like
you.”
“和我一样做什么？生来一切就已经铺垫好了，你觉得这是一件好事儿？”
“Why? You think it’s nice to be born with
everything all ready-made for you?”
“好吧。你不用太费劲儿。”
“Well, you don’t have to work so hard.”
“你搞错了，实际上，一切都好像都有了，你就没理由那么努力了，你对自己的身份充满愧疚，因为你配不上你拥有的一切。”
“You’re wrong—the truth is that it seems
like everything’s been done already and you’ve got no good reason to do
anything. All you feel is the guilt of what you are and that you don’t
deserve it.”
“这要好过挫败感。”
“Better that than to feel the guilt of
failure.”
“这是你的朋友莉娜跟你说的？”
“Is that what your friend Lina tells
you?”
“也不是。”
“No.”
娜迪雅很夸张地甩了一下头，脸上做出一个很邪恶的表情，我从来都没想到，她会做出这副样子。她说：“你们俩中间，我更喜欢她，你们是两坨狗屎，根本没法改造，你们是两个底层烂人的典型，但你会献媚，她不会。”
“I prefer her to you. You’re two pieces
of shit and nothing can change you, two examples of underclass filth. But you
act all friendly and Lina doesn’t.”
我顿时说不出话来，她把我一个人留在厨房里，我听见她对帕斯卡莱喊道：“我要冲个澡，你最好也洗洗。”他们俩关在了洗手间里，我听见他们在里面咯咯笑，她发出尖叫。我看到，这让黛黛非常担忧。他们半裸着身子，从浴室里出来，头发湿漉漉的，两个人都非常愉快，仍然相互开玩笑，就像我们不存在一样。彼得罗问了他们类似这样一个问题：“你们在一起多长时间了？”娜迪雅冷冰冰地说：“我们没在一起，你们俩才在一起。”这时候，彼得罗用他那种面对那些非常肤浅的人时才会用到的固执语气问：“什么意思？”娜迪雅回答说：“你没办法明白。”我丈夫依然坚持说：“当一个人不明白时，就需要给他解释。”这时候，帕斯卡莱笑着说：“没什么可解释的，教授！你要想着，你已经死了，但你自己还不知道，你们的生活，你们说的话都是死的，一切都死了，你们觉得自己非常聪明、民主，而且是左派，但这些信念都死了，跟一个死了的人，怎么解释一样东西呢？”
She left me in the kitchen, speechless. I
heard her shout to Pasquale: I’m taking a shower, and you could use one, too.
They shut themselves in the bathroom. We heard them laughing, she letting out
little cries that—I saw—worried Dede. When they came out their hair was wet,
they were half-naked, and gay. They went on joking and laughing with each
other as if we weren’t there. Pietro tried to intervene with questions like:
How long have you been together? Nadia answered coldly: We’re not together,
maybe you two are together. In the finicky tone he displayed in situations
where people appeared to him extremely superficial: What does that mean? You
can’t understand, Nadia responded. My husband objected: When someone can’t
understand, you try to explain. And at that point Pasquale broke in laughing:
There’s nothing to explain, prof: you better believe you’re dead and you
don’t know it—everything is dead, the way you live is dead, the way you
speak, your conviction that you’re very intelligent, and democratic, and on
the left. How can you explain a thing to someone who’s dead?
气氛非常紧张。我什么都没说，我脑子里一直想着娜迪雅说的那些刻薄话，她说了那些话，依然若无其事地待在我家里。最后，他们终于走了，就像他们来时一样突然。他们收拾好自己的东西，就消失了。帕斯卡莱在门口，忽然用一种伤感的语气说：
There were other tense moments. I said
nothing, I couldn’t get Nadia’s insults out of my mind, the way she spoke, as
if it were nothing, in my house. Finally they left, almost without warning,
as they had arrived. They picked up their things and disappeared. Pasquale
said only, in the doorway, in a voice that was unexpectedly sorrowful:
“再见，艾罗塔太太。”
“Goodbye, Signora Airota.”
艾罗塔太太？我城区的朋友也这么轻视我？他是想说，对于他来说，我已经不是莱农了，也不是埃莱娜或者埃莱娜·格雷科了？对于他来说是这样，对于其他人也是一样吗？对于我来说，也是这样吗？我几乎从来都不用我丈夫的姓氏，现在，我的姓氏已经失去了它仅有的一点儿光辉了吗？我把家里打扫了一遍，尤其是洗手间，他们把洗手间搞得一团糟。彼得罗说：“我再也不想在家里看到那两个人，虽然那个男的自己意识不到，但一个这样谈论知识分子工作的人是纯粹的法西斯，至于那个女人，她是我比较了解的那种类型，她脑子里空空如也。”
Signora Airota. Even my friend from the
neighborhood was judging me in a negative way? Did it mean that for him I was
no longer Lenù, Elena, Elena Greco? For him and for how many others? Even for
me? Did I myself not almost always use my husband’s surname, now that mine
had lost that small luster it had acquired? I tidied the house, especially
the bathroom, which they had left a mess. Pietro said: I never want those two
in my house; someone who talks like that about intellectual work is a
Fascist, even if he doesn’t know it; as for her, she’s a type I’m very
familiar with, there’s not a thought in her head.
-*-
80
一切都证实了彼得罗说的，这种混乱现在变得很具体，已经席卷了我周围的人。我从马丽娅罗莎那里得知，弗朗科在米兰被法西斯分子打了，他失去了一只眼睛，现在情况非常糟糕。我和黛黛还有小艾尔莎一起，马上出发去看他。我坐上火车，我和两个孩子玩耍，给她们吃东西，但另一个我却非常忧郁——那个贫穷、没文化的女生，是当时政治上非常积极，经济上非常富有的弗朗科·马里的女朋友，现在这部分我还剩下多少？——那个我曾经消失了，但现在又冒了出来。
As if to prove Pietro right, the disorder
began to take concrete form, touching people who had been close to me. I
learned from Mariarosa that Franco had been attacked in Milan by the
fascists, he was in bad shape, and had lost an eye. I left immediately, with
Dede and little Elsa. I took the train, playing with the girls and feeding
them, but saddened by another me—the poor, uneducated girlfriend of the
wealthy and hyperpoliticized student Franco Mari: how many me’s were there by
now?—who had been lost somewhere and was now re-emerging.
我在火车站看到了我的大姑子，她脸色苍白，而且很惊恐。她把我们带到她家里，那所房子比上次大学聚会结束之后我留宿的时候，更加空旷凌乱。黛黛在玩，艾尔莎在睡觉，我的大姑子跟我讲了很多她在电话里没讲的事情。事情发生在五天前，弗朗科在一场工人先锋运动中讲了话，那是一个坐满人的小剧院。聚会结束后，他和西尔维亚步行离开，现在西尔维亚和一个《日报》编辑在同居，他们住在距离剧院几步远的一所漂亮房子里。那天晚上，弗朗科要在西尔维亚家里住，第二天出发去皮亚琴察。他们已经快走到大门那儿了，西尔维亚已经从包里拿出了钥匙，这时候，开过来一辆白色面包车，一些法西斯分子从车上跳了下来。弗朗科被打得很惨，西尔维亚被暴打，然后被强奸了。
At the station I met my sister-*-law, who
was pale and worried. She took us to her house, which this time was deserted,
yet even more untidy than when I had stayed there after the meeting at the
university. While Dede played and Elsa slept, she told me more than she had
on the telephone. The episode had happened five days earlier. Franco had
spoken at a demonstration of Avanguardia Operaia, in a packed theater.
Afterward he had gone off with Silvia, who now lived with an editor at Giorno
in a beautiful apartment near the theater: he was to sleep there and leave
the next day for Piacenza. They were almost at the door, Silvia had just
taken the keys out of her purse, when a white van pulled up and the fascists
had jumped out. He had been severely beaten, Silvia had been beaten and
raped.
我们喝了很多红酒，马丽娅罗莎拿出了“毒品”——她就是这么叫的。这次我决定尝试一下，尽管喝了酒，但我感觉自己心里空荡荡的、很无助。我的大姑子说了很多愤怒的话，最后不说话了，她哭了起来，我找不到一句话来安慰她。我能感觉到她的眼泪，我感觉，她眼泪从脸颊上滑落时会发出声音。最后忽然间，我看不到她了，也看不到房间了，眼前一切都变成了黑色，我晕了过去。
We drank a lot of wine, Mariarosa took
out the drug: that’s what she called it, in other situations she used the
plural. This time I decided to try it, but only because, in spite of the
wine, I felt I hadn’t a single solid thing to hold on to. My sister-*-law
became furious, then stopped talking and burst into tears. I couldn’t find a
single word of comfort. I felt her tears, it seemed to me that they made a
sound sliding from her eyes down her cheeks. Suddenly I couldn’t see her, I
couldn’t even see the room, everything turned black. I fainted.
当我苏醒过来时，我觉得很尴尬，我解释道那是因为我太累了。我晚上睡得很少，我的身体非常沉重，我感觉那些书和杂志里的词汇，就像水滴一样落下来，好像忽然间，那些字母符号已经没法拼在一起了。我紧紧挨着两个孩子，好像她们会安慰我，保护我。
When I came to, I apologized, hugely
embarrassed, I said it was tiredness. I didn’t sleep much that night: my body
weighed heavily because of an excess of discipline, and the lexicon of books
and journals dripped anguish as if suddenly the signs of the alphabet could
no longer be combined. I held the two little girls close as if they were the
ones who had to comfort and protect me.
第二天，我把黛黛和艾尔莎留在我大姑子家里，我去了医院。在一个浅绿色的病房里，我看到弗朗科，病房里充斥着各种气味：口臭、尿味还有药水的味道。他现在浑身浮肿，身体也好像缩短了，一直到现在，我脑子里还清楚地记着他身上的白色绷带，还有他脸上和脖子上的青色伤痕。我感觉，他对我不是很欢迎，他为自己的状态感到羞耻。我在说话，我跟他讲了我的两个女儿。几分钟之后，他小声说：“你走吧，我不想你出现在这里。”我还是坚持在那里待着，他有些不耐烦地说：“现在的我已经不是我了，你走吧。”他的状况很糟糕，我从他的一些同伴那里得知，他还要接受手术。我从医院里回去时，马丽娅罗莎发现我失魂落魄，她帮我照顾孩子，黛黛刚睡着了，她让我也上床睡一会儿。第二天，她想陪我去看看西尔维亚。我尽量向后退缩，去看弗朗科，已经是一件让人受不了的事儿，因为你感到你不仅不能帮助他，反倒会让他更脆弱。我说，我情愿记住我在学生大会上遇到她的样子。不，马丽娅罗莎坚持说，她希望我们看看她现在的样子，她很在意。
The next day I left Dede and Elsa with my
sister-*-law and went to the hospital. I found Franco in a sickly-green ward
that had an intense odor of breath, urine, and medicine. He was as if
shortened and distended, I can still see him in my mind’s eye, because of the
white bandages, the violet color of part of his face and neck. He didn’t seem
glad to see me, he seemed ashamed of his condition. I talked, I told him
about my children. After a few minutes he said: Go away, I don’t want you
here. When I insisted on staying, he was irritated, and whispered: I’m not
myself, go away. He was very ill; I learned from a small group of his
companions that he might have to have another operation. When I came back
from the hospital Mariarosa saw that I was upset. She helped with the
children, and as soon as Dede fell asleep she sent me to bed, too. The next
day, however, she wanted me to come with her to see Silvia. I tried to avoid
it, I had found it unbearable to see Franco and feel not only that I couldn’t
help him but that I made him feel more fragile. I said I preferred to
remember her as I had seen her during the meeting at the university. No,
Mariarosa insisted, she wants us to see her as she is now, it’s important to
her. We went.
我们一起去了，是一位非常优雅的太太给我们开的门，她金色的卷发垂在肩膀上，头发颜色非常浅。她是西尔维亚的母亲，她现在带着米尔科，米尔科也是金发，他已经五六岁了。黛黛还是那副介于不悦和霸道之间的态度，她马上让米尔科和她还有苔丝玩游戏，苔丝是她的那个旧玩偶，她无论去哪儿都随身带着。西尔维亚在睡觉，她留了话，说等我们来的时候，要叫醒她。我们等了很久，她才出现，她化了很浓的妆，穿了一件漂亮的绿色长裙。让我震撼的不是她身上的伤，青紫的伤痕和有些踉跄的脚步——当时莉拉蜜月旅行回来出现在我面前时，状况要更糟糕一些——让我震撼的是西尔维亚没有任何表情的目光。她的眼睛是空洞的，她说话的时候，前言不搭后语，中间会被神经质的笑声打断。她就是用这种方式，跟我讲述了那些法西斯对她做的事，因为在场的人中只有我还不知道那些事情的细节。她讲这件事情时，就好像在讲一个非常残酷可怕的童话。她现在不停地给到访的人讲述这件事情，这让那些恐怖气氛好像凝固起来了。她母亲好几次试图打断她，但她总是用一个厌烦的手势推开，她提高嗓门，一字一句地说着那些人对她做的、让人发指的龌龊事情。她预言很快，在非常短的时间内，会发生非常残酷的报复。我哭了起来，她忽然住嘴了，这时候又有其他人来了，都是一些亲友，还有她的女性朋友。西尔维亚又继续开始讲，我马上躲在一个角落里，紧紧抱着艾尔莎，轻轻吻着她。这时候，我想起了斯特凡诺对莉拉所做的，想到了很多细节，就是西尔维亚在讲述时，我想到的一些细节。我感觉，她们俩讲述时说的话，都像动物恐惧的叫喊。
A very well-groomed woman, with blond
hair that fell in waves over her shoulders, opened the door. It was Silvia’s
mother, and she had Mirko with her; he, too, was blond, a child of five or
six by now, whom Dede, in her sulky yet bossy way, immediately insisted play
a game with Tes, the old doll she carried everywhere. Silvia was sleeping but
had left word that she wanted to be awakened when we got there. We waited
awhile before she appeared. She was heavily made up, and had put on a pretty
long green dress. I wasn’t struck so much by the bruises, the cuts, the
hesitant walk—Lila had seemed in even worse shape when she returned from her
honeymoon—as by her expressionless gaze. Her eyes were blank, and completely
at odds with the frenetic talking, broken by little laughs, with which she
began to recount to me, only to me, who still didn’t know, what the fascists
had done to her. She spoke as if she were reciting a horrendous nursery rhyme
that was for now the way in which she deposited the horror, repeating it to
anyone who came to see her. Her mother kept trying to make her stop, but each
time she pushed her away with a gesture of irritation, raising her voice,
uttering obscenities and predicting a time soon, very soon, of violent
revenge. When I burst into tears she stopped abruptly. But other people
arrived, mostly family friends and comrades. Then Silvia began again, and I
quickly retreated to a corner, hugging Elsa, kissing her lightly. I
remembered details of what Stefano had done to Lila, details that I imagined
while Silvia was narrating, and it seemed to me that the words of both
stories were animal cries of terror.
后来我去找黛黛，我看见她在走廊里，和米尔科还有玩偶在一起。他们俩假装分别是一个孩子的父亲和母亲，但他们在吵架，模仿父母吵架的一幕。我停了下来，我听见黛黛在教育米尔科：“你应该给我一个耳光，明白了吗？”新的血肉之躯通过游戏在重复之前的故事。我们是一连串的影子，上台时，总是带着同样的爱恨情仇，还有欲望和暴力。我仔细地看着黛黛，她很像彼得罗，我也觉得，米尔科长得和尼诺一模一样。
At a certain point I went to look for
Dede. I found her in the hall with Mirko and her doll. They were pretending
to be a mother and father with their baby, but it wasn’t peaceful: they were
pretending to have a fight. I stopped. Dede instructed Mirko: You have to hit
me, understand? The new living flesh was replicating the old in a game, we
were a chain of shadows who had always been on the stage with the same burden
of love, hatred, desire, and violence. I observed Dede carefully; she seemed
to resemble Pietro. Mirko, on the other hand, was just like Nino.
-*-
81
没过多久，那些地下斗争忽然都出现在报纸和电视上：政变者的计划、警察的镇压、武装团伙、交火、受伤、屠杀、炸弹和血案，在大城市和小城市都有发生，这些事情也冲击到了我。卡门给我打了电话，她非常担忧，因为她有好几个星期都没有帕斯卡莱的消息了。
Not long afterward, the underground war
that occasionally erupted into the newspapers and on television—plans for
coups, police repression, armed bands, firefights, woundings, killings, bombs
and slaughters I was struck again by in the cities large and small. Carmen
telephoned, she was extremely worried, she hadn’t heard from Pasquale in
weeks.
“他有没有去你那儿啊？”
“Did he by any chance visit you?”
“来了，但已经是至少两个月前的事儿了。”
“Yes, but at least two months ago.”
“啊！他问了我你的电话号码，还有地址。他想问你一件事情，寻求你的建议，他问了吗？”
“Ah. He asked for your phone number and
address: he wanted to get your advice, did he?”
“关于什么事情？”
“Advice about what?”
“我不知道。”
“I don’t know.”
“他没问我什么。”
“He didn’t ask me for advice.”
“他说了什么？”
“What did he say?”
“没说什么，他很好，很愉快。”
“Nothing, he was fine, he was happy.”
卡门到处打听哥哥的消息，也问了莉拉和恩佐，也问了法院路上那些和他一起活动的人。最后她甚至给娜迪雅家里也打了电话，但娜迪雅的母亲非常不客气，后来阿尔曼多只是跟她说，娜迪雅已经搬走了，没有留下任何联系方式。
Carmen had asked everywhere, even Lila,
even Enzo, even the people in the collective on Via dei Tribunali. Finally
she had called Nadia’s house, but the mother had been rude and Armando had
told her only that Nadia had moved without leaving any address.
“他们可能一起生活了。”
“They must have gone to live together.”
“帕斯卡莱和那女人？没有留下任何联系地址和电话？”
“Pasquale and that girl? Without leaving
an address or phone number?”
我们谈了很长时间。我跟她说，可能因为帕斯卡莱的缘故，娜迪雅和她的家庭决裂了，谁知道呢，也许他们已经去德国、英国，或者法国生活了。但卡门还是不放心，帕斯卡莱是一个很顾家的大哥，她说，他不会就这样消失的。她有一种非常不好的预感：城区里每天都在发生冲突，任何一个左翼人士都要特别小心，那些法西斯分子都已经威胁了她和她丈夫了。他们说，是帕斯卡莱放火烧了新法西斯党的支部，还有索拉拉家的超市。我一点儿也不知道城区里发生了这些事情，我觉得很惊异。我问，那些法西斯分子认定是帕斯卡莱做的？是的，他排在法西斯黑名单的最前面，是要最先扫除的人。卡门说，也许吉诺让人把她哥哥杀了。
We talked about it for a long time. I
said maybe Nadia had broken with her family because of Pasquale, who knows,
maybe they had gone to live in Germany, in England, in France. But Carmen
wasn’t persuaded. Pasquale is a loving brother, she said, he would never
disappear like that. She had instead a terrible presentiment: there were now
daily clashes in the neighborhood, anyone who was a comrade had to watch his
back, the fascists had even threatened her and her husband. And they had
accused Pasquale of setting fire to the fascist headquarters and to the
Solaras’ supermarket. I hadn’t known either of those things, I was
astonished: This had happened in the neighborhood, and the fascists blamed
Pasquale? Yes, he was at the top of the list, he was considered someone to
get out of the way. Maybe, Carmen said, Gino had him killed.
“你去找警察了吗？”
“You went to the police?”
“是的。”
“Yes.”
“他们怎么对你说。”
“What did they say?”
“他们要逮捕我，他们比法西斯还要法西斯。”
“They nearly arrested me, they’re more
fascist than the fascists.”
我给加利亚尼老师打电话，她用热嘲冷讽的语气对我说：“发生什么事儿了？我在书店、在报纸上都没再看到你的名字了，你已经退休了吗？”我回答说，我生了两个女儿，我现在在照顾她们，然后我问起了娜迪雅。她变得很不客气，她说，娜迪雅已经长大了，她已经离开家独立生活了。她去哪里了，我问。这是她的事儿，她回答说。我正想问她儿子的电话号码时，她没打招呼，就把电话挂掉了。
I called Professor Galiani. She said to
me sarcastically: What happened, I don’t see you in the bookshops anymore or
even in the newspapers, have you already retired? I said that I had two
children, that for now I was taking care of them, and then I asked her about
Nadia. She became unfriendly. Nadia is a grownup, she’s gone to live on her
own. Where, I asked. Her business, she answered, and, without saying goodbye,
just as I was asking if she would give me her son’s telephone number, she
hung up.
我用了很长时间，才搞到阿尔曼多的电话，在他家里找到他，也费了很大力气。当他终于接了电话，他好像很高兴接到我的电话，甚至有点急于向我倾诉。他在医院里很忙，他的婚姻已经结束了，他妻子离开了，把孩子带走了，他现在是一个人，生活有点儿涣散。谈到他的妹妹时，他语气变得很生硬。他轻轻地说：“我已经和她断绝关系了，在政治和其他方面，我们分歧太大了，自从她和帕斯卡莱在一起以后，她就彻底失去了理智。”我问：“他们一起出去住了吗？”他不想谈论这个话题：“可以这么说吧。”就好像这个话题在他看来很轻浮，他越过这个话题，提到了现在糟糕的政治状况，提到了布雷西亚的血案，谈到那些收买政党的老板，情况恶化了，法西斯分子又抬头了。
I spent a long time finding a number for
Armando, and had an even harder time finding him at home. When he finally
answered, he seemed happy to hear from me, and even too eager for
confidences. He worked a lot in the hospital, his marriage was over, his wife
had left, taking the child, he was alone and eccentric. He stumbled when he
talked about his sister. He said quietly: I don’t have any contact with her.
Political differences, differences about everything. Ever since she’s been
with Pasquale you can’t talk to her. I asked: Did they go to live together?
He broke off: Let’s say that. And as if the subject seemed too frivolous, he
avoided it, moved on, making harsh comments on the political situation,
talking about the slaughter in Brescia, the bosses who bankrolled the parties
and, as soon as things looked bad, the fascists.
我又给卡门打电话，是想让她放心。我跟她说，为了和帕斯卡莱在一起，娜迪雅和她家人断绝了关系，帕斯卡莱像小狗一样，跟在她后面。
I called Carmen again to reassure her. I
told her that Nadia had broken with her family to be with Pasquale and that
Pasquale followed her like a puppy.
“你这么觉得？”卡门问。
“You think?” Carmen asked.
“毫无疑问，爱情就是这样。”
“I’m sure, love is like that.”
她表示怀疑，但我还是坚持自己的看法，我非常详细地跟她讲了帕斯卡莱来找我的那天下午的情况，我有些夸大其词地说，他们很相爱。我们挂了电话。但在六月中旬时，卡门又非常绝望地给我打了电话。在大白天，吉诺被杀死在自家的药店门口，他们朝着他的脸上开了枪。我当时想，她告诉我这个消息，因为药剂师的儿子是我们青少年记忆的一部分，不管他是不是法西斯。这个消息当然让我很震惊，毕竟我们是一起长大的。但她告诉我这个恐怖的消息，真正原因不是这个，而是警察去了她家里，把她家从头到脚搜了一遍，他们还搜了加油站。他们在找证据，想证明这是帕斯卡莱干的。她现在的处境非常糟糕，比堂·阿奇勒被杀死时，她父亲被逮捕时更加糟糕。
She was skeptical. I insisted, I told her
in greater detail about the afternoon they had spent at my house and I
exaggerated a little about how much they loved each other. We said goodbye.
But in mid-June Carmen called again, desperate. Gino had been murdered in
broad daylight in front of the pharmacy, shot in the face. I thought first
that she was giving me that news because the son of the pharmacist was part
of our early adolescence and, fascist or not, certainly that event would
upset me. But the reason was not to share with me the horror of that violent
death. The carabinieri had come and searched the apartment from top to
bottom, even the gas pump. They were looking for any information that might
lead them to Pasquale, and she had felt much worse than when they had come to
arrest her father for the murder of Don Achille.
