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我们当时十六岁。我坐在尼诺、阿方索和玛丽莎的对面，努力地微笑着。我用一种佯装的随意说：“好吧，还会有其他机会。”莉拉在餐厅的另一头——她是新娘，整个宴会的女王，斯特凡诺在她耳边说话，她在微笑。
We were sixteen. I was sitting with Nino
Sarratore, Alfonso, Marisa, and I made an effort to smile, I said with
pretended indifference, “All right, another time.” Lila was at the other end
of the room—she was the bride, the queen of the celebration—and Stefano was
whispering in her ear and she was smiling.
这场漫长、让人疲惫的婚宴快要接近尾声了。乐队在演奏，歌手在唱歌。安东尼奥背对着我，压抑着内心的痛苦看着大海，他的痛苦因我而起。恩佐可能正在对卡梅拉说爱她。里诺一定已经对皮诺奇娅表白过了，他们正四目相对，说着情话。帕斯卡莱有些担忧地在我们周围转悠，但在婚礼结束之前，艾达极有可能会逼他说出她想听到的话。大家已经开始祝酒，中间夹杂着淫秽的暗示，那个佛罗伦萨来的商人非常精于此道。地板已经被饭菜的汤汁弄脏——那是从一个小孩手中的盘子里洒出来的，从斯特凡诺的爷爷杯子里洒出来的红酒，也在地上流淌。
The long, exhausting wedding lunch was
ending. The band was playing, the singer was singing. Antonio, with his back
to me, was suppressing in his chest the pain I had caused him, and looking at
the sea. Enzo was perhaps murmuring to Carmela that he loved her. Rino
certainly had already done so with Pinuccia, who, as she talked, was staring
into his eyes. Pasquale in all likelihood was wandering around frightened,
but Ada would manage so that, before the party was over, she would tear out
of his mouth the necessary words. For a while toasts with obscene allusions
had been tumbling out; the metal merchant shone in that art. The floor was
splattered with sauces from a plate dropped by a child, wine spilled by
Stefano’s grandfather.
我咽下了眼泪。我想：也许，他们会在下一期杂志上发表我写的文章，也许尼诺没有坚持让他们把文章插进去，也许我应该亲自去编辑部。但我什么都没有说，我继续保持笑容，甚至打趣说：“我已经和神父吵了一次，再吵一次就没意义了。”
I swallowed my tears. I thought: maybe they’ll publish my piece in the next issue, maybe Nino didn’t insist enough, maybe I should have taken care of it myself. But I said nothing, I kept smiling, I even found the energy to say, “Anyway, I already argued once with the priest, to argue a second time would have been pointless.”
“的确如此。”阿方索说。
“Right,” said Alfonso.
但没有什么东西能缓解我的失望，我努力挣扎，想摆脱自己的低落和痛苦，但是我做不到。我认为，如果我能发表那篇文章，我的名字变成铅字，那代表着我最终能改变自己的命运，我的刻苦一定能提升我自己，那代表着奥利维耶罗老师说得对，她要把我推向前方，让我放弃莉拉。“你知道什么是庶民吗？”“知道，老师。”在那一刻，我更清楚什么是庶民，要比几年前奥利维耶罗老师问我时更加清楚。我们就是庶民，庶民就是争抢食物和酒，就是为了上菜的先后次序、服务好坏而争吵，就是那面肮脏的地板——服务员正在上面走来走去，就是那些越来越粗俗的祝酒词。庶民就是我的母亲，她喝了酒，现在整个背都靠着我父亲的肩膀上。我父亲一本正经，我母亲张着大嘴在笑，因为佛罗伦萨的古董商人讲了一个淫秽的段子。所有人都在笑，包括莉拉，她看起来像要把自己的角色扮演到底。
But nothing diminished the
disappointment. I struggled to detach myself from a sort of fog in my mind, a
painful drop of tension, and I couldn’t. I discovered that I had considered
the publication of those few lines, my name in print, as a sign that I really
had a destiny, that the hard work of school would surely lead upward,
somewhere, that Maestra Oliviero had been right to push me forward and to
abandon Lila. “Do you know what the plebs are?” “Yes, Maestra.” At that
moment I knew what the plebs were, much more clearly than when, years
earlier, she had asked me. The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for
food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that
dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly
vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was
leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth
gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer. They were all laughing,
even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the
utmost.
眼前上演的节目可能让尼诺觉得很恶心，他起身说他要走了。他和玛丽莎定好了一起回家的时间，阿方索答应把她按时送到说好的地方。玛丽莎很高兴拥有一个尽职的骑士。我有些忐忑地问尼诺：
Probably disgusted by the spectacle in
progress, Nino got up, said he was going. He made an arrangement with Marisa
for returning home together, and Alfonso promised to take her at the agreedon
place. She seemed very proud of having such a dutiful knight. I said
uncertainly to Nino:
“你不和新娘打个招呼吗？”
“Don’t you want to greet the bride?”
他做了一个手势，嘟囔了一句关于自己着装的话，然后就向门口走去，他没有和我、阿方索握手，也没有说任何告别的话。他走路的方式还是像平时一样，身子有些晃荡。他能自由出入这个城区，并且不受环境的影响，他可以做到，有能力做到，也许在很多年前他已经学会了，就是差点要了他命的那次迁徙——那个暴风雨般的时刻。
He gestured broadly, he muttered
something about his outfit, and, without even a handshake, or a nod to me or
Alfonso, he headed toward the door with his usual swinging gait. He could
enter and leave the neighborhood as he wished, without being contaminated by
it. He could do it, he was capable of doing it, maybe he had learned years
before, at the time of the stormy move that had almost cost him his life.
我怀疑自己做不到，去上学也没有用。我可以在考试中得满分，但那只是在学校。那些编杂志的人能从我的简述、从我和莉拉写的简述中，嗅到我的怯懦，因此他们没把那篇文章印出来。尼诺却能做到：他的面孔和手势，还有他走路的方式已经展示出来了，他会越来越强。他消失的时候，我觉得，唯一能把我从这个餐厅拉出去的人消失了。
I doubted that I could make it. Studying
was useless: I could get the highest possible marks on my work, but that was
only school: instead, those who worked at the journal had sniffed my report,
my and Lila’s report, and hadn’t printed it. Nino could do anything: he had
the face, the gestures, the gait of one who would always do better. When he
left it seemed that the only person in the whole room who had the energy to
take me away had vanished.
我感觉餐厅门被一阵风刮得闭上了。实际上没有风，也没有门扇撞击的声音。那时候发生了一件注定会发生的事情——在众人吃蛋糕发喜糖的时刻，索拉拉兄弟出现了，他们都很英俊，衣冠楚楚。他们走在餐厅里，和很多人打招呼，就像他们是这里的主人。吉耀拉一下子扑到了米凯莱的怀里，把他拉到自己身边坐下。莉拉的脸颊和眼睛周围忽然红了，她用力拉了一把丈夫的手臂，在他耳边说了些什么。西尔维奥很无力地给两个儿子打了个招呼，曼努埃拉满脸自豪地看着他们。歌手唱起了歌曲《娜札蕾拉》，模仿奥雷利奥·菲耶罗的腔调，效果还可以。里诺露出一个很友好的微笑，让马尔切洛坐在了他旁边，马尔切洛坐下来，松了松领带，跷起了二郎腿。
Later I had the impression that a gust of
wind had shut the door of the restaurant. In reality there was no wind or
even a banging of doors. There happened only what could have been predicted
to happen. Just in time for the cake, for the favors, the very handsome, very
well-dressed Solara brothers appeared. They moved through the room greeting
this one and that in their lordly way. Gigliola threw her arms around
Michele’s neck and drew him down next to her. Lila, with a sudden flush on
her throat and around her eyes, pulled her husband energetically by the arm
and said something in his ear. Silvio nodded slightly to his children,
Manuela looked at them with a mother’s pride. The singer started Lazzarella,
modestly imitating Aurelio Fierro. Rino with a friendly smile invited
Marcello to sit down. Marcello sat down, loosened his tie, crossed his legs.
出人预料的事情就在此时发生了。我看到莉拉脸色大变，她变得非常苍白，和她小时候一样，脸色要比她身上的婚纱还白，眼睛忽然之间眯成了一条缝，她眼前放着一瓶红酒，我担心她目光里传递的力量能让那个瓶子碎成一千块，她看的是远处，看的是马尔切洛·索拉拉的鞋子。
The unpredictable revealed itself only at
that point. I saw Lila lose her color, become as pale as when she was a
child, whiter than her wedding dress, and her eyes had that sudden
contraction that turned them into cracks. She had in front of her a bottle of
wine and I was afraid that her gaze would go through it with a violence that
would shatter it, with the wine spraying everywhere. But she wasn’t looking
at the bottle. She was looking farther away, she was looking at the shoes of
Marcello Solara.
那是一双“赛鲁罗”牌男鞋，但不是配着金色带扣、批量销售的款式。马尔切洛脚上穿的鞋子，是她丈夫斯特凡诺之前买的那双——那是她和里诺一起做的，他们改了又改，用了好几个月时间，把手都磨坏了，才做出来的鞋子。
They were Cerullo shoes for men. Not the
model for sale, not the ones with the gilded pin. Marcello had on his feet
the shoes bought earlier by Stefano, her husband. It was the pair she had
made with Rino, making and unmaking them for months, ruining her hands.
[1]意大利南方也像西班牙一样，用“堂”（don）来尊称男性，也用于对神父的尊称。
[2]照片小说（photonovel），一种小说门类，一般截取电影（电视）的情节片断，用剧照代替艺术类插图，配合情节性的文字。
[3]罗慕路斯（约公元前771—前717）与瑞摩斯（约公元前771—前753），是罗马神话中罗马的奠基人，在神话中是一对双生子，他们的母亲是女祭司雷亚·西尔维亚，父亲是战神玛尔斯。按照普鲁塔克和蒂托·李维等的传统罗马历史记载，罗慕路斯是罗马王政时代的首位国王。兄弟俩人后来因为给新建的城市命名的问题而发生争执，甚至爆发战斗，结果罗穆路斯将瑞摩斯杀死。
[4]盖乌斯·马略（公元前157—前86），是罗马帝国的将军和政治家，因击败了日耳曼部落的侵略，而被称为罗马的第三位创始人，后被高卢人卢奇奥·苏拉（公元前138—前78）所杀，苏拉是古罗马独裁者，为了结束内战娶敌人马略之女朱妮亚为妻，但朱妮亚已许配给流放者切契利奥。她欲杀卢奇奥·苏拉，他宽容她而退位。
[5]恺撒（公元前100—前44）与庞培（公元前106—前48），两人曾在公元前60年与克拉苏一起组成政治联盟（史称“前三头联盟”）。庞培率军平定了叙利亚一带，并建为行省，后和恺撒发生权力之争。庞培在法萨卢斯战役中败北后逃往埃及，恺撒追到埃及。埃及国王为了讨好恺撒，便杀了庞培。
[6]《约婚夫妇》是意大利十八世纪最负盛名的作家曼佐尼的代表作，以农村织工伦左和露琪亚这对恋人的曲折故事为主线，反映了十七世纪意大利社会的动荡。
[7]意大利文科高中五年。
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