《毕业翻译材料》Longley

11、WRE 10 10

　　10 Waylaid by Facts

　　Your friend Martha wrote, I said.

　　She’s in college now, Nikolai said. How is she?

　　I don’t know. She didn’t say in the letter. She talked only about you.

　　Oh.

　　I didn’t recognize her name, but when she wrote that she was the bassoonist I remembered her, I said.

　　Poor Martha. I hope she has more time to practice now.

　　The girl had been in a chamber group with Nikolai the year before, and had been warned by the music teacher several times. Yet how could she have found time, trying to be everything she could and applying to colleges? At the concert last winter, she and Nikolai and a clarinetist played a trio piece by Bach. Halfway through she had slipped off and couldn’t get back. She sat there, elegant in her long black dress and smiling at Nikolai and the clarinetist. Could you tell she missed the second part of the piece, Nikolai had asked, and when I said I couldn’t he had been pleased. She played a few notes toward the end, he said, so it all looked as though that was what it should be like.

　　I had never talked with the girl but I was fond of that memory.

　　I wonder who else wrote you, Nikolai said.

　　Your friends, our friends, your teachers, parents of your classmates, people you don’t know, I said. Oh, Lemony Snicket.

　　One thing I can’t brag about now, he said. Which of my friends wrote?

　　Let me just make the turn first, I said. I was waiting for the green light, and I couldn’t see much of the road. I had thirty minutes before teaching, and I did not know how my tears had begun between one block and the next. Something had ambushed me.

　　I still like waylay better, Nikolai said. Less seasonal than ambush.

　　What? I said.

　　Think, Mommy. It’s winter. You’re less likely to be ambushed.

　　I looked at the bushes along the road, bare and unable to hide anything. Try as I might, I still couldn’t see manythings seen by him.

　　Waylay is more inevitable, he said, unless you can avoid roads altogether.

　　The light changed and I turned into a street with old houses on both sides but no bushes. If you have a sudden possession of something you don’t understand, I said, is there a way to discard it promptly without understanding it?

　　What is it?

　　Words provided to me—loss, grief, sorrow, bereavement, trauma—never seemed to be able to speak precisely of what was plaguing me. One can and must live with loss and grief and sorrow and bereavement.

　　Together they frame this life, as solid as the ceiling and the floor and the walls and the doors. But there is something else, like a bird that flies away at the first sign of one’s attention, or a cricket chirping in the dark, never settling close enough for one to tell from which corner the song comes.

　　If I could say what it is, I said, wouldn’t that mean at least I have some understanding?

　　Do you understand a tree and how it feels when you know its name?

　　There are encyclopedias, I said. At least I can gather some general knowledge.

　　General knowledge is not going to help you, he said. But look at it this way: If you possess something, whatever it is, by definition that thing is at your disposal.

　　Yes, by definition.

　　Then dispose it!

　　How, I said, if I don’t know what it is?

　　Isn’t that what we have to do all the time? he said. You, I mean. Not me anymore. If you have a thousand dollars, it’s easy to make up a plan about the money. But if you have a life, do you understand what a life is, do you know what to do with it?

　　A life is not a disposable thing, I protested.

　　When I say dispose it, I don’t mean to get rid of it, but to settle it.

　　Oh.

　　There are better definitions for many words than the definitions you want to use, he said.

　　My dictionary is limited, I said.

　　No doubt, he said.

　　You know what I realized? I said. I don’t want to use the word flawed anymore. I rather like limited.

　　A flawed character is limited, no? he said. I’m flawed, you’re flawed, we all fault ourselves for being flawed.

　　A limited character, I said, may still be perfect.

　　You’re not talking about yourself? he said.

　　Oh dear no, I said. Perfection is not my pursuit.

　　If you’re talking about me, I can’t make do with being limited and thinking of myself as perfect, he said.

　　It is wrong from beginning to end.

　　My understanding is wrong?

　　Remember the Caterpillar said so to Alice?

　　Ah, yes, I said. A few years ago we had visited Alice’s Shop in Oxford, and had brought two prints back, one with the Caterpillar telling Alice from on top of the mushroom, It is wrong from beginning to end, and the other, the Red Queen pulling Alice behind her and saying, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

　　I’ve always found those two statements comforting, Nikolai said.

　　Me too, I said. Not always though. Sometimes.

　　On the other hand, he said, if we’re willing, we can pick out any number of statements from any number of books and find them comforting.

　　Not for me, I said, not at this moment.

　　Why not? Don’t you need more of those soothing words now?

　　I’m not looking for comfort food in any book.

　　What’s wrong with comfort food? I like your little pancakes.

　　Little pancake was the name Nikolai had given to something I had improvised when he was in preschool. A simple mixture of flour, egg, sugar, and the key for them to be a genuine success was that every piece had its own shape, irregular, not representing any number, letter, or anything that could be pinned down by imagination. There were no two little pancakes alike as there were no two leaves alike. Dr. Seuss gave only twenty more letters on beyond zebra. I had cooked hundreds of them for Nikolai and his little brother. Like writing stories for only two readers.

　　What feeds your stomach should not be the same thing that feeds your mind, I said.

　　That belief is scientifically unsound, he said.

　　Yes, on the cellular level and on the molecular level, I’d agree with you, I said. Did I tell you about this man we visited for grief counseling? He asked us to imagine the universe as a giant cauldron of molecular soup. These molecules here make this table, those molecules there made Nikolai, I said, imitating the doctor, and began to laugh.

　　If he made you laugh wouldn’t you consider him effective?

　　Upon our entering his office the man had also said, I sense suffering coming, but that I didn’t tell Nikolai.

　　Some laughter does not last, I said.

　　Nothing does.

　　There are a few things that do.

　　Like what? Don’t say love.

　　Our present conversation.

　　I noticed that you used an adjective, he said. Not our past conversations, or future conversations?

　　The word future is unnecessary if this conversation lasts, I said. Don’t you think in this case futureless is not a bleak word at all?

　　How do you know this will last?

　　Indeed, I thought, how would I know?

　　And the past conversations? Nikolai asked.

　　They are memories.

　　And you don’t think memories last?

　　One wishes they did, I said.

　　So memories are like cells, always replaced by new ones?

　　I thought about it. Without replacements would his memories now remain unfaded and unfadable? Were they becoming part of his omniscience?

　　I’ve never thought about that, he said. They’re not my concerns, you know?

　　I don’t know, because I don’t know what your concerns are these days, I said.

　　You used to know, he said.

　　Yes.

　　Why not anymore?

　　It’d be preposterous to say I know anything about you now, I said. I used to say one can know a person without understanding him, but I’ve never thought the opposite can be true, too, until now.

　　You understand me without knowing me? he asked.

　　Let’s face it. Death is a divide no matter how little you and Ibelieve its power to separate.

　　Is that how my friends feel too? That there is a divide between them and me?

　　A few of Nikolai’s friends had written to him, remembering the time they had spent together, and asking why he had departed so abruptly. Others had written to us, remembering the time they had spent together, not asking what had made him depart so abruptly.

　　In some ways, I said, they don’t feel that at all, but in other ways they feel it keenly.

　　I must point out a sentence like this is meaningless, Nikolai said. You can apply it to any situation to sound so profound.

　　For the record, I want you to know I’ve never used profound in my writing, I said.

　　Well, that is one adjective I wouldn’tdefend.

　　But I’ve been thinking about your friends’ letters.

　　Don’t make fun of their writing skills.

　　Nikolai’s death was a difficult thing for people to talk about, but his friends, when they wrote, did not have to resort to the ready words because of helplessness, awkwardness, or politeness. They wrote from a place where Nikolai was still one of them and where they were told that he was no longer one of them.

　　If there is one thing to make fun of, I said, it’show quickly we grownups are at a loss for words in an unfamiliar or unwanted situation.

　　Unfamiliar or unwanted?

　　Sometimes it’shard to tell the difference.

　　An unfamiliar situation doesn’t have to be unwanted,he said. Like love at first sight.

　　You’re a true stickler.

　　You’re the one to say precision, precision, precision.

　　What about this? We grownups quickly feel at a loss for words when what words we have can’t do half of what we want them to do.

　　Half, or a quarter?

　　We feel at a loss for words when they can’t do fully what we want them to, I said.

　　They never can, Nikolai said.

　　Precisely.

　　Why not make do with the percentage they can achieve? he said.

　　Imagine writing a letter of condolence, I said, like this: I know my words are not enough to express my devastation at your loss and my words will not do much to alleviate your pain, but these words are all I have…

　　Sounds reasonable to me, Nikolai said.

　　I’m not done yet, I said. These words are all I have and we must make do with them, believing, both you and I, in the largesse in even such paucity.

　　So people are too modest to say that?

　　Or self-conscious, I said. Not knowing what to say. Not wanting to say the wrong thing perhaps.

　　What’s the right thing to say?

　　There’s no right thing or wrong thing to say in this situation. Your friends all seem to know what to say.

　　That’s because they are my friends.

　　No, not only that. They are your friends, but they are young, too.

　　That’s so ageist, he said. You should not hold it against anyone because he or she is young.

　　Rather the opposite, I said. What I’m trying to say is, we were young once. And your friends one day will grow up and become as gormless as we are. They will lose that one thing they have now.

　　What is it?

　　Your friends meet you where you are.

　　Where else can they meet me?

　　Yes, but think of what extraordinary courage they possess to meet you where you are. We grownups tend to get stuck with a fact, and for many people you have become a fact. Hard to accept. Impossible to understand. Still, you are a fact and that is how they will prefer to think of you and remember you now.

　　Not me, but my death, he said.

　　Important correction, my dear.

　　What do people do when they can’t accept something they don’tunderstand?

　　They ask, How could that happen? What went wrong? Or, they say things to the effect that in the direst situation there is a bright side if we let words like love and hope work their magic.

　　Does that bother you?

　　No.

　　Why not?

　　Because people who know you and people who know me meet us where we are. People who don’t know you and people who don’t know me are only facts. Flawed or limited, whichever adjective you prefer.

　　Just as we are flawed facts for them.

　　Exactly, I said.

　　Do facts meet then?

　　In fairytales, I said, but not in this life.

　　Or in any life, Nikolai said.