36
差不多在同一时期，另一对恋人——艾尔莎和里诺的爱情也搁浅了。有五六个月他们很恩爱，后来有一次，我女儿把我拉到一边，说她受到一位年轻的数学老师的吸引，那是另一个班的老师，根本就不知道她的存在。我问：
More or less around the same time another
couple broke up, Elsa and Rino. Their love and complicity lasted for five or
six months, at which point my daughter took me aside and confided that she
felt attracted to a young mathematics teacher, a teacher in another section
who didn’t even know of her existence. I asked:
“那里诺呢？”
“And Rino?”
她回答说：
She answered:
“他是我的最爱。”
“He is my great love.”
她在一边叹息，一边说着让人又生气又可笑的话，我明白她把爱情和吸引分得很清楚，她虽然受到那个数学老师的吸引，但她对里诺的爱，没受到一丝一毫的影响。
I understood, as she added jokes to
sighs, that she was making a distinction between love and attraction, and
that her love for Rino wasn’t affected in the least by her attraction to the
teacher.
我像往常一样忙碌，我要写很多东西，还经常出门，伊玛成了他们俩的倾诉对象。我的小女儿很尊重他们各自的感情，并赢得了他们的信任，她成了我可靠的消息来源。我从她那里得知，艾尔莎最后终于勾引了那个老师。我从她那里得知，过了一段时间，里诺开始怀疑他和艾尔莎之间出了问题。我从她那里得知，艾尔莎为了不让里诺痛苦，放弃了那位老师。我还得知，艾尔莎消停了一个月之后，忍不住又和那个老师来往了。我从她那里得知，在痛苦了一年之后，里诺最后把这事儿说了出来，恳求艾尔莎答应依然爱他。我从她那里得知，艾尔莎对他喊道：“我已经不爱你了，我爱上别人了。”我从她那里得知，里诺扇了艾尔莎一个耳光，但只是指尖掠过她的皮肤，只是为了展示自己是个男人。这时候，艾尔莎跑到了厨房里拿了一把扫帚，对着里诺一阵乱打，里诺一点儿也没还手。
Since I was as usual stressed—I was
writing a lot, publishing a lot, traveling a lot—it was Imma who became the
confidante of both Elsa and Rino. My youngest daughter, who respected the
feelings of both, gained the trust of both and became a reliable source of
information for me. I learned from her that Elsa had succeeded in her
intention of seducing the professor. I learned from her that Rino had
eventually begun to suspect that things with Elsa weren’t going well. I
learned from her that Elsa had abandoned the professor so that Rino wouldn’t
suffer. I learned from her that, after a break of a month, she had started up
again. I learned from her that Rino, suffering for almost a year, finally
confronted her, weeping, and begged her to tell him if she still loved him. I
learned from her that Elsa had shouted at him: I don’t love you anymore, I
love someone else. I learned from her that Rino had slapped her, but only
with his fingertips, just to show he was a man. I learned from her that Elsa
had run to the kitchen, grabbed the broom, and beaten him furiously, with no
reaction from him.
从莉拉那里我得知，我不在时，艾尔莎放学后也不回家，有时候晚上也在外面过夜，里诺会到莉拉跟前哭诉。有一天晚上莉拉对我说：“你要关心关心你女儿，你要搞清楚她到底想干什么。”但她跟我说这些时，有些很不情愿，她好像对艾尔莎和里诺的命运并不关心。她补充说：“你自己看着办吧，假如你事儿多，没工夫管，其实也没什么。”最后她还说了一句：“我们都不适合养孩子。”我想反驳，我想说，我觉得自己是一个好母亲，我比任何人都尽心尽力，想在做好我的工作的同时让黛黛、艾尔莎和伊玛什么都不缺，但我没有说这些。我感觉当时她没生我的气，也没有生我女儿的气，艾尔莎对里诺的爱情淡了，她觉得这很正常，她只是想让这件事情尽快过去。
From Lila, however, I learned that
Rino—when I was absent and Elsa didn’t come home from school and stayed out
all night—had gone to her in despair. Pay some attention to your daughter,
she said one evening, try to understand what she wants. But she said it
indifferently, without concern for Elsa’s future or for Rino’s. In fact she
added: Besides, look, if you have your commitments and you don’t want to do
anything it’s all right just the same. Then she muttered: We weren’t made for
children. I wanted to respond that I felt I was a good mother and wore myself
out trying to do my work without taking anything away from Dede, Elsa, and
Imma. But I didn’t, I perceived that at that moment she wasn’t angry with me
or my daughter, she was only trying to make her own indifference toward Rino
seem normal.
艾尔莎离开那个数学老师后，事情却朝另一个方向发展了，她和一个同班同学好上了，他们一起准备高中毕业考试，她马上把这件事情告诉了里诺，说他们俩之间已经结束了。这时候，莉拉上楼来——我当时在都灵——她把艾尔莎痛骂了一顿。她用方言说：“你母亲是怎么教育你的，你伤害别人，自己一点都觉察不到吗？你太无情无义了。”然后她叫喊着说：“你觉得自己特别了不起，是个大小姐，但你其实就是个婊子。”这是艾尔莎后来对我说的，伊玛在一旁给她作证，伊玛说：“妈妈，真的，她用的就是‘婊子’这个词。”
Things were different when Elsa left the
professor, and began going out with a classmate with whom she was studying
for her final exams. She told Rino right away, so that he would understand
that it was over. Lila then came up to my house, and, taking advantage of the
fact that I was in Turin, made an ugly scene. What did your mother put in
your head, she said in dialect, you have no sensitivity, you hurt people and
don’t realize it. Then she yelled at her: My dear, you think you’re so
important, but you’re a whore. Or at least Elsa reported that, entirely
confirmed by Imma, who said to me: It’s true, Mamma, she called her a whore.
无论莉拉说了什么，我的二女儿艾尔莎都发生了变化。她不再那么轻浮，她和那个一起学习的男生也分开了，在里诺面前变得很友好，但不再和他睡在一起了，而是搬到了伊玛的房间里。她考完试，决定去她父亲和黛黛那里，尽管黛黛一直都无意和她和好，她最后还是去了波士顿。在彼得罗的帮助下，两姐妹达成谅解，她们都觉得爱上里诺对她们俩来说都是一场错误。她们和好之后，在美国开心地旅行了很长时间，艾尔莎回那不勒斯时，我觉得她整个人都更开朗了，但她在我身边没待很久。她先是注册了那不勒斯大学物理系，整个人又变得轻浮而尖刻，经常换男朋友。她遭到了她的同学、那个年轻的数学老师，当然还有里诺的纠缠，和新欢旧爱搅和在一起，她没参加考试，最后一事无成。她又一次飞往美国，决定在那里上大学。她和黛黛一样，走的时候没和莉拉告别，但出乎我预料的是，艾尔莎说了莉拉很多好话。她说她明白为什么这么多年我和她一直是朋友，她一本正经地说，莉拉是她认识的最好的人。
Whatever Lila had said, my second
daughter was marked by it. She lost her lightness. She also gave up the
schoolmate she was studying with, and became nice to Rino, but she left him
alone in the bed and moved to Imma’s room. When the exams were over she decided
to visit her father and Dede, even though Dede had never given any sign of
wanting to reconcile with her. She left for Boston, and there the two
sisters, helped by Pietro, agreed on the fact that being in love with Rino
had been a mistake. Once they made peace they had a good time, traveling
around the United States, and when Elsa returned to Naples she seemed more
serene. But she didn’t stay with me for long. She enrolled in Physics, she
became frivolous and sharp again, she changed boyfriends frequently. Since
she was pursued by her schoolmate, by the young mathematics teacher, and
naturally by Rino, she didn’t take her exams, returned to her old loves,
mixed them with new ones, accomplished nothing. Finally she flew off again to
the United States, having decided to study there. She, like Dede, left
without saying goodbye to Lila, but completely unexpectedly she spoke of her
positively. She said that she understood why I had been her friend for so
many years, and, without irony, called her the best person she had ever
known.
37
但里诺却不那样认为，让人惊异的是，艾尔莎走了之后，他还是继续住在我家里。有很长时间他都很绝望，怕又回到之前的精神和物质上的贫瘠状态——他认为是我帮他摆脱了的状态。他还是继续住在黛黛和艾尔莎的那个房间里，当然他也会帮我做各种各样的事儿。当我出发时，他会开车把我送到火车站，会帮我拿行李，当我回来时他会来接我。他成了我的司机、行李员还有管家。他需要钱时，会很客气、很自然地向我张口要。
That was not Rino’s opinion, however.
Elsa’s departure did not stop him, surprising as it may seem, from continuing
to live with me. He was in despair for a long time, afraid of falling again
into the physical and moral wretchedness from which I had rescued him. Full
of devotion he attributed that and many other virtues to me. And he continued
to occupy the room that had been Dede and Elsa’s. He naturally did many jobs
for me. When I left he drove me to the station and carried my suitcase, when
I returned he did the same. He became my driver, my errand boy, my factotum.
If he needed money he asked me for it politely, affectionately, and without
the least scruple.
有时候我有些心烦，我提醒他有义务要照顾他母亲。他明白我的意思了，会消失一段时间，但他迟早又会回来，嘟囔着说，莉拉从来不在家里，待在空荡荡的家里让他很难过。要么就抱怨说：“她跟我一个招呼都不打，她坐在电脑前写东西。”
At times, when he made me nervous, I
reminded him that he had some obligations toward his mother. He understood
and disappeared for a while. But sooner or later he returned discouraged,
muttering that Lila was never home, that the empty apartment made him sad, or
he grumbled: She didn’t even say hello, she sits at her computer and writes.
莉拉写东西吗？她在写什么？
Lila was writing? What was she writing?
刚开始，我的好奇心并不是很强，并没特别想知道答案。那时候我已经快五十岁了，处于成功的巅峰，每年甚至会出两本书，而且卖得很好。对于我来说，阅读和写作已经成为了一种职业，就像所有的职业一样，开始让我很沉重。我记得自己当时想：假如我是她的话，我会在沙滩上晒太阳。我又想：假如写作对她有好处，那样最好了。我又想别的事情了，逐渐把这事忘了。
My curiosity at first was faint, the
equivalent of an absent-minded observation. I was nearly fifty at the time, I
was in the period of my greatest success, I was publishing two books a year,
and selling well. Reading and writing had become a career, and, like all
careers, it began to burden me. I remember thinking: in her place I’d sit on
a beach in the sun. Then I said to myself: if writing helps her, good. And I
went on to something else, I forgot about it.
38
黛黛和艾尔莎的离开给我带来了很大伤痛。最让我难过的是，她们俩最终还是选择了她们的父亲，而不是我。当然，她们很爱我，会很想念我。我不停给她们写信，有时候很难过，就给她们打越洋电话，也不考虑电话费。我喜欢黛黛的声音，她跟我说：“我经常梦见你。”艾尔莎给我写的信让我很感动：“我在到处找你用的香水，我也想用。”但归根结底，她们还是离开了，我失去她们了。她们的每封信、每个电话都证明了：尽管她们对于我们的分离感到难过，但她们和父亲在一起时没有和我在一起的那些矛盾，而且父亲是她们真正进入世界的切入点。
Dede’s departure and then Elsa’s grieved
me. It depressed me that both, in the end, preferred their father to me. Of
course they loved me, of course they missed me. I sent letters constantly, at
moments of melancholy I telephoned without caring about the expense. And I
liked Dede’s voice when she said, I dream of you often; how moved I was if
Elsa wrote, I’m looking everywhere for your perfume, I want to use it, too.
But the fact was that they were gone, I had lost them. Every letter of
theirs, every telephone call attested to the fact that, even if they suffered
because of our separation, with their father they didn’t have the conflicts
they had had with me, he was the point of entry to their true world.
有一天早上，莉拉用一种很难描述的语气对我说：“你再让伊玛住在城区里，一点儿意义也没有，你让她去罗马找尼诺吧。大家都看得出来，她也想对两个姐姐说：‘我和你们一样。’”她的话让我很难受，就好像她不是给我提了一个中肯的意见，而是建议我和我的小女儿也分开。她好像在说：这样对伊玛有好处，对你也好。我回答说：“假如伊玛离开我的话，那我的生活就没意义了。”但她微笑了，说：“谁说生活应该有意义？”然后她开始取笑我那种忙忙碌碌的写作。她用开玩笑的语气说：“意义就是一段段黑线，就像虾子身体里的屎。”她让我歇一阵子，最后感叹了一句：“每天忙忙碌碌，有什么必要。”
One morning Lila said to me in a tone
that was hard to decipher: It makes no sense for you to keep Imma here in the
neighborhood, send her to Rome to Nino, it’s very clear that she wants to be
able to say to her sisters, I’ve done what you did. Those words had an
unpleasant effect on me. As if she were giving dispassionate advice, she was
suggesting that I separate also from my third child. She seemed to be saying:
Imma would be better off and so would you. I replied: If Imma leaves me, too,
my life will no longer have meaning. But she smiled: Where is it written that
lives should have a meaning? So she began to disparage all that struggle of
mine to write. She said mockingly: Is the meaning that line of black markings
that look like insect shit? She invited me to take a rest, she exclaimed:
What need is there to work so hard. Enough.
我心里不舒服了很久。一方面我想，她想让伊玛也离开我。另一方面，我想，她说得对，我应该让伊玛靠近她父亲。我不知道，我是应该紧紧抓住唯一在我跟前的女儿，还是为了她好，重新和尼诺建立联系。
I had a long period of uneasiness. On the
one hand I thought: she wants to deprive me of Imma, too. On the other I said
to myself: she’s right, I should bring Imma and her father together. I didn’t
know whether to cling to the affection of the only child who remained or, for
her sake, to try to reinforce her bond with Nino.
但最后这一点也很难实现，最近一次选举就是一场考验。伊玛才十一岁，但她已经对政治充满了热情。我记得她给父亲写信，还给他打电话，说她会全力支持他，而且希望我能帮助他。但那时候我比之前更讨厌社会党人。见到尼诺的那几次，我对他说了类似这样的话：“你现在变了，我都快认不出你了。”我甚至会用一种夸张的修辞说：“我们出生于一个贫穷、充满暴力的地方，索拉拉兄弟都是犯罪分子，他们想攫取一切，但你们更加糟糕，你们是一个洗劫所有人的帮派，你们制定法律只是为了防止其他人洗劫。”他很愉快地回答我说：“你对政治一窍不通，你永远都不会懂的，你还是玩文学吧，不要谈论你不懂的事。”
This last was not easy, and the recent
elections had been proof of it. Imma was eleven—but she was inflamed by
political passion. She wrote, I remember, to her father, she called him, she
offered in every possible way to campaign for him and wanted me to help him,
too. I hated the socialists even more than in the past. When I saw Nino I’d
made remarks like: What’s become of you, I no longer recognize you. I went so
far as to say, with some rhetorical exaggeration: We were born in poverty and
violence, the Solaras were criminals who stole everything, but you are worse,
you are gangs of looters who make laws against the looting of others. He had
answered lightheartedly: You’ve never understood anything about politics and
you never will understand anything, play with literature and don’t talk about
things you don’t know about.
但后来状况急转直下。一件很久之前的贿赂案，因为法官态度的忽然转变而浮出水面，虽然大家对贿赂习以为常，就像那是一条不成文、却最受尊重的规定。那些涉案的高级官员，人赃俱获的刚开始看起来没几个，好像案情被高估了，但后来牵扯的人越来越多，成了这个国家的管理层的真实普遍的状况。在选举之前，尼诺没有上次那么从容。因为我已经有自己的声誉和影响力，他利用伊玛想让我公开支持他。为了不让女儿失望，我就答应了她，但实际上我躲开了。伊玛很气愤，她重申她会支持她父亲。尼诺想让伊玛出现在他的一个宣传短片里，伊玛很振奋，我提出了反对。我左右为难，一方面我不允许伊玛去——让她伤心在所难免，一方面我在电话里对尼诺大喊：“你把阿尔伯特、莉迪亚放到你的短片里，你不能这样利用我的女儿。”他再三坚持，后来有些迟疑，最后只能放弃。我强迫他对伊玛说，小孩子不能出现在那些短片里。但她明白是我不让她公开出现她父亲的身边。她对我说：“妈妈，你不爱我，你让黛黛和艾尔莎去和她们的父亲一起生活，我和我爸爸一起待五分钟都不行。”尼诺没能再次当选，伊玛哭了起来，她说这都是我的错。
But then the situation came to a head.
Long-standing corruption—commonly practiced and commonly submitted to at
every level as an unwritten rule but always in force among the most widely
respected—came to the surface thanks to a sudden determination of the
judiciary. The high-level crooks, who at first seemed few and so
inexperienced that they were caught with their hands in the till, multiplied,
became the true face of the management of the republic. As the elections
approached I saw that Nino was less carefree. Since I had my fame and a
certain reputation, he used Imma to ask me to stand behind him publicly. I
said yes to the child in order not to upset her, but then in fact I withdrew.
Imma was angry, she repeated her support for her father and when he asked her
to stand next to him in a campaign ad she was enthusiastic. I rebelled and
found myself in a terrible situation. On the one hand I didn’t refuse Imma
permission—it would have been impossible without a rift—on the other I
scolded Nino on the telephone: Put Albertino, put Lidia in your ad, and don’t
dare use my daughter in this way. He insisted, he hesitated, finally he gave
in. I forced him to tell Imma that he had inquired and that children weren’t
allowed in the ads. But she understood that I was the reason she had been
deprived of the pleasure of standing publicly next to her father, and she
said: You don’t love me, Mamma, you send Dede and Elsa to Pietro, but I can’t
even spend five minutes with Papa. When Nino wasn’t reelected Imma began to
cry, she muttered between her sobs that it was my fault.
总之一切都很复杂。尼诺心灰意冷，变得很难打交道。有一段时间，我觉得他是那次选举唯一的牺牲品，但事情并非如此，很快整个政党系统都被颠覆了，我失去了他的消息。选举者对于以前的老政党很不满，对新政党和新新政党也同样愤怒。假如人们之前对那些要推翻政府的人充满恐惧，但现在那些打着要服务人民的旗号，但像苹果里的肥虫一样贪婪的人，也让那些选举者退避三舍。这股黑色的浪潮，之前隐藏在一片祥和的权力盛景之下，被歌功颂德、粉饰乾坤的言辞掩盖，现在这股黑浪在意大利每个角落里都在蔓延，而且事情越来越清楚，不仅仅我童年的城区是一个丑陋的地方，不仅仅那不勒斯是一个不可救药的地方。有一天早上，我在楼梯间遇到了莉拉，她看起来很高兴。她给我看了她刚买来了《共和国报》，上面有一张圭多·艾罗塔教授的照片，那个摄影师捕捉到了他满脸惊恐的表情，不知道是什么时候拍摄的，让人很难认出他来。这篇文章里有很多“听说”和“也许”，文章推测说，这位知名学者兼政治领袖，鉴于他对于意大利的腐败现实有着深刻了解，可能也会很快被叫到法官面前。
In other words, it was all complicated.
Nino was bitter, he became intractable. For a while he seemed to be the only
victim of those elections, but it wasn’t so, soon the entire system of the
parties was swept away and we lost track of him. The voters were angry with
the old, the new, and the very new. If people had been horrified at those who
wanted to overthrow the state, now they were disgusted by those who,
pretending to serve it, had consumed it, like a fat worm in the apple. A
black wave, which had lain hidden under gaudy trappings of power and a flow
of words as impudent as it was arrogant, became increasingly visible and
spread to every corner of Italy. The neighborhood of my childhood wasn’t the
only place untouched by any grace, Naples wasn’t the only irredeemable city.
I met Lila on the stairs one morning, she seemed cheerful. She showed me the
copy of the Repubblica she had just bought. There was a photograph of
Professor Guido Airota. The photographer had caught on his face, I don’t know
when, a frightened expression that made him almost unrecognizable. The
article, full of they-says and perhapses, advanced the hypothesis that even
the prestigious scholar, not to mention old political operator, might soon be
summoned by the judges as one who was well informed about the corruption of
Italy.
39
圭多·艾罗塔自始至终都没被叫到法官的面前，但报纸和周刊每天在谈论到腐败问题时都会提到他。在当时的情况下，我很高兴彼得罗在美国，黛黛和艾尔莎也在海外开始了她们各自的生活。我担心的是阿黛尔，我想我至少应该给她打个电话。但我很犹豫，我想：她一定会认为我很享受，很难让她相信，事情并非如此。
Guido Airota never appeared before the
judges, but for days dailies and weeklies drew maps of corruption in which
even he played a part. I was glad, in that situation, that Pietro was in
America, that Dede and Elsa, too, now had a life on the other side of the
ocean. But I was worried about Adele, I thought I should at least telephone
her. But I hesitated, I said to myself: she’ll think that I’m enjoying it and
it will be hard to convince her it’s not true.
最后我决定给马丽娅罗莎打电话，我觉得和她方便说话一些，但我错了，我已经有很多年没和她联系了，她接电话时口气冷冰冰的。她用一种带刺儿的口吻说：“亲爱的，你真是成果丰硕啊！到处都能看到你的文章，打开任何一份报纸或杂志都能看到你的名字。”她说了自己的情况，这是之前从来没有过的事情。她提到了一些书、文章，还有旅行，让我震撼的是，她已经离开大学了。
Instead I called Mariarosa, it seemed to
me an easier path to take. I was wrong. It was years since I’d seen or spoken
to her, she answered coldly. She said with a note of sarcasm: What a career
you’ve had, my dear, now you’re read everywhere, one can’t open a newspaper
or a journal without finding your name. Then she spoke in detail about
herself, something she had never done in the past. She cited books, she cited
articles, she cited travels. It struck me mainly that she had left the
university.
“为什么？”我问。
“Why?” I asked.
“大学让我很恶心。”
“It disgusted me.”
“现在呢？”
“And now?”
“现在什么？”
“Now what?”
“现在你靠什么生活？”
“How do you live?”
“我家里有钱啊。”
“I have a rich family.”
但她马上很懊悔自己说的话，她很不自在地笑了一下，主动提到了她父亲。她说这事儿迟早都会发生。她提到了弗朗科，她嚅嗫着说，弗朗科是第一批明白这一点的人：要么迅速改变一切，要么局势会越来越艰难，就再也没有任何希望了。她很生气地说：“我父亲想着可以你通过深思熟虑，这里改改，那里改改，但当做出的改变太少，或者几乎没有改变时，你不得不进入一个谎言系统，要么你和其他人一起说谎，要么你就出局了。”我问她：
But she regretted that phrase as soon as
she uttered it, she laughed uneasily, and it was she, right afterward, who
spoke of her father. She said: It was bound to happen. And she quoted Franco,
she said that he had been among the first to understand that either
everything would change, and in a hurry, or even harder times would come and
there would be no more hope. She was angry: My father thought you could
change one thing here and one there, deliberately. But when you change almost
nothing like that you’re forced to enter into the system of lies and either
you tell them, like the others, or they get rid of you. I asked her:
“圭多·艾罗塔拿钱了吗？他没做错什么吧？”
“Guido is guilty, he took money?”
她很紧张地笑了一下：
She laughed nervously:
“拿了，但他是非常清白的，他一辈子都没拿过任何不属于他的钱，一里拉也没有。”
“Yes. But he is entirely innocent, in his
whole life he never put a single lira that wasn’t more than legal in his
pocket.”
然后她又说到了我，几乎是一种生气的口吻，她又一次强调说：“你写得太多了，但已经不能给我带来惊喜了。”尽管是我打的电话，但是她先挂的电话。
Then she turned again to me, but in an
almost offensive tone. She repeated: You write too much, you no longer
surprise me. And although I had been the one to call, it was she who said
goodbye and hung up.
马丽娅罗莎对她父亲的双重评价，最后被证实是真的。围绕着圭多·艾罗塔的媒体热潮慢慢消散了，作为一个无辜的有罪者，或者是一个有罪的无辜者，他又把自己关进了书房。我觉得这时候我可以打电话给阿黛尔了。她用带着讽刺的语气，感谢我的关心，她好像比我更了解黛黛和艾尔莎的学习和生活，她说了这样一句话：“这个国家真的没办法待了，小人当道，善良的人都得赶紧移民。”我问她，我能不能向圭多·艾罗塔问好，她说：“我代你向他问好，他在休息。”然后她充满敌意地说：“他唯一犯的错误，就是他周围全是些没有底线的新文盲、贱民，不择手段往上爬的年轻人。”
The incongruous double judgment that
Mariarosa had pronounced on her father was true. The media storm around Guido
slowly faded and he returned to his study, but as an innocent who surely was
guilty and, if you like, as a guilty man who surely was innocent. It seemed
to me that at that point I could telephone Adele. She thanked me ironically
for my concern, showed that she was better informed than I was regarding the
life and studies of Dede and Elsa, uttered remarks like: This is a country
where one is exposed to every insult, respectable people should be in a hurry
to emigrate. When I asked if I could say hello to Guido she said: I’ll say it
for you, he’s resting now. Then she exclaimed bitterly: His only crime was to
be surrounded by newly literate types with no ethics, young arrivistes ready
for anything, scum.
那天晚上，电视上出现了前社会党议员乔瓦尼·萨拉托雷的影像——那时候他已经五十岁了，不再是一个年轻人，他也被列入了那份人数越来越多的腐败分子名单。
That very evening the television showed a
particularly cheerful image of the former socialist deputy Giovanni
Sarratore—who was not exactly a youth, at the time: he was fifty—and inserted
him in the increasingly crowded list of corrupters and corrupt.
40
这个消息让伊玛尤其受打击。从她开始懂事的短短几年里，她没见过尼诺几次，但父亲已经成为了她的偶像。她经常在同学面前炫耀，也在老师面前炫耀，她给所有人看一张照片：在蒙特奇托里奥宫的门口，她和她父亲手拉手。假如让她描述她将来想要嫁的男人，她会不假思索地说：“当然会是一个很高很帅、黑头发的男人。”当她得知，她父亲会像城区里的任何人一样被关进监狱，她那时候正在成长，觉得监狱是非常可怕的地方，她毫不掩饰地说自己很害怕。我没办法让她放下心来，她失去了我曾让她拥有的一点平静和安详，她经常在梦里抽泣，会在半夜醒来要和我一起睡。
That news especially upset Imma. In those
first years of her conscious life she had seen her father very little, and
yet had made him her idol. She boasted of him to her schoolmates, she boasted
to her teachers, she showed everyone a photograph from the newspapers in
which they were hand in hand right at the entrance to Montecitorio. If she
had to imagine the man she would marry, she said: He will surely be very
tall, dark, and handsome. When she learned that her father had ended up in
jail like an ordinary inhabitant of the neighborhood—a place that she
considered horrible: now that she was growing up she said in no uncertain
terms that she was afraid of it, and, increasingly, she had reason to be—she
lost the bit of serenity I had been able to guarantee her. She sobbed in her
sleep, she woke in the middle of the night and wanted to get in bed with me.
有一次，我们遇到了尼诺的妹妹玛丽莎，她的衣着很糟糕，整个人很崩溃，比平时看上去更加愤怒。她没注意到伊玛的情绪，就说：“尼诺真是活该，他一直都只想着自己，你非常了解他，他从来都没有帮助过我们，他只在亲戚面前表现得刚正不阿，真是一个混账！”我的女儿受不了玛丽莎说的任何一个字，她把我们撇在大路上，自己跑开了。我马上和玛丽莎告别，去追伊玛，我想安慰她。我说：“你不应该把这种话放在心上，你父亲和他妹妹玛丽莎从来都合不来。”但从那时候开始，我不再当着她的面说尼诺的不是，甚至不在任何人面前说尼诺的不是。我想起来之前我曾为了帕斯卡莱和恩佐的事情去找过他。任何人都需要有一个天堂里的圣人的保佑和指点，才能不迷失于这个晦暗的世界，虽然尼诺和其他圣人神仙不同，但他对我有过帮助。现在“圣人”都掉到了地狱里了，要了解他的状况，我不知道应该找谁。我只能从他的律师那里了解到一些不是很可信的消息。
Once we met Marisa, worn-out, shabby,
angrier than usual. She said, paying no attention to Imma: Nino deserves it,
he’s always thought only of himself, and, as you well know, he never wanted
to give us any help, he acted like an honest man only with his relatives,
that piece of shit. My daughter couldn’t bear even a word of it, she left us
on the stradone and ran away. I quickly said goodbye to Marisa, I chased
after Imma, I tried to console her: You mustn’t pay any attention, your
father and his sister never got along. But I stopped speaking critically of
Nino in front of her. In fact I stopped speaking critically of him in front
of anyone. I remembered when I went to him to find out about Pasquale and
Enzo. You always needed some patron saint in Paradise to navigate the
calculated opacity of the underworld, and Nino, although far from any
sanctity, had helped me. Now that the saints were falling into the inferno, I
had no one to ask to find out about him. Unreliable news came to me only from
the infernal circle of his many lawyers.
41
我不得不说，莉拉对尼诺的命运从来都没表现出任何兴趣。她听到尼诺惹上官司身陷囹圄，就好像那是一件很可笑的事情。她用一种很了解情况的语气提到了一个细节，就好像这件小事可以说明一切，她说：“每次他需要钱时，都会去找布鲁诺·索卡沃要，他当然从来都没把钱还给布鲁诺。”然后她说她可以想象发生了什么事情。她微笑着把两只手握在一起，说：“他觉得自己比所有人都强，一有机会就想展示出这一点。假如他做了什么错事，那也是为了赢得别人的喜爱，显示自己很聪明，为了爬得更高。”她就说了这么多，然后她就当尼诺不存在一样。她对于帕斯卡莱和恩佐的事有多热心，对于这位前议员阁下就有多漠视。也有可能，莉拉在电视和报纸上一直在追踪着尼诺的消息，他现在经常上电视，脸色苍白，忽然间头发都花白了，目光就像一个闷闷不乐的孩子。他嘟哝着说：“我发誓，这不是我做的。”当然她从来都没有问过我知不知道尼诺的事情，能不能见到他，他要面临什么样的命运，他父亲、母亲和弟弟妹妹都有怎样的反应。后来没什么明确的原因，她对伊玛又产生兴趣，又开始照顾她。
Lila, I have to say, never showed any
interest in Nino’s fate; she reacted to the news of his legal troubles as if
it were something to laugh about. She said, with the expression of someone
who has remembered a detail that explained everything: Whenever he needed
money he got Bruno Soccavo to give it to him, and he certainly never paid it
back. Then she muttered that she could imagine what had happened to him. He
had smiled, he had shaken hands, he had felt he was the best of all, he had
continuously wanted to demonstrate that he was equal to any possible
situation. If he had done something wrong he had done it out of a desire to
be more likable, to seem the most intelligent, to climb higher and higher.
That’s it. And later she acted as if Nino no longer existed. As much as she
had exerted herself for Pasquale and Enzo, so she appeared completely
indifferent to the problems of the former Honorable Sarratore. It’s likely
that she followed the proceedings in the papers and on television, where Nino
appeared often, pale, suddenly grizzled, with the expression of a child who
says: I swear it wasn’t me. Certainly she never asked me what I knew about
him, if I had managed to see him, what he expected, how his father, his
mother, his siblings had reacted. Instead, for no clear reason, her interest
in Imma was rekindled, she got involved with her again.
一方面她把儿子撇给了我，里诺就像是一个对别的主人产生了感情的小狗，不再对之前的主人摇尾巴，一方面她又开始对我女儿非常关心，伊玛一直对情感都很饥渴，她黏上了莉拉。我看见她们俩一起聊天，一起出去，莉拉对我说：“我带她去植物园、博物馆还有卡波迪蒙特逛逛。”
While she had abandoned her son Rino to
me like a puppy who, having grown fond of another mistress, no longer greets
the old one, she became very attached to my daughter again, and Imma, always
greedy for affection, went back to loving her. I saw them talking, and they
often went out together. Lila said to me: I showed her the botanic garden,
the museum, Capodimonte.
我们在那不勒斯居住的最后一段时间里，莉拉总是带着伊玛出去，她把对这个城市的热情传递给了伊玛，点燃了伊玛对这个城市的好奇。伊玛满脸崇拜地对我说，莉娜阿姨懂得很多东西。我很高兴，因为莉拉带着伊玛在外面逛，能缓解她对父亲的担忧。她的有些同学在家长的指示下，辱骂她，让她感到很愤怒，作为萨拉托雷的女儿，她也失去了老师之前对她的关注。但事情不仅如此，从伊玛的陈述中，我得知了一些非常详细的信息，就是莉拉现在脑子里考虑的事儿。她一连几个小时趴在电脑前写的东西，并非关于那不勒斯那些有纪念意义的建筑，而是和她从来都没对我讲过的一个巨大计划有关。她已经不再像之前那样把我也卷入她的激情里了，她把我女儿当成了她交流的对象。她对伊玛讲了她学到的东西，她把伊玛拉拉去看让她充满热情，或者只是有些好奇的东西。
In the last phase of our life in Naples,
she guided Imma all over the city, transmitting an interest in it that
remained with her. Aunt Lina knows so many things, Imma said in admiration.
And I was pleased, because Lila, taking her around on her wanderings, managed
to diminish her anguish about her father, the anger at the fierce insults of
her classmates, prompted by their parents, and the loss of the attention she
had received from her teachers thanks to her surname. But it wasn’t only
that. I learned from Imma’s reports, and with greater and greater precision,
that the object in which Lila’s mind was engaged, and on which she was
writing for perhaps hours and hours, bent over her computer, was not this or
that monument but Naples in its entirety. An enormous project that she had
never talked to me about. The time had passed in which she tended to involve
me in her passions, she had chosen my daughter as her confidante. To her she
repeated the things she learned, or dragged her to see what had excited or
fascinated her.
42
伊玛的接受能力很强，她能很快记住所有东西，是她告诉我马尔蒂里广场的历史。在过去，这个广场对于我和莉拉是那么重要，但我对它的历史一无所知。莉拉仔细研究了那个广场的历史，讲给伊玛听。有一天早上我们一起去买东西，伊玛把她听到的事情讲给我听，我觉得她把那些历史信息与她和莉拉的想象完全混合在一起了。她说：“妈妈，在十八世纪时这里还是田野，有一些树木、农民的房子，还有一些小旅店。有一条街道直直地通往大海，叫做基亚亚的‘圣卡塔林纳坡’，名字是从那个角落的教堂来的，那是一座很古老的教堂，但不怎么漂亮。一九四八年五月十五日之后，这个地方枪毙了很多爱国主义者，他们当时想要宪法和议会。波旁王朝的费迪南多二世国王想让人看到和平恢复了，就决定修建一条‘和平路’，然后在广场上立了一根柱子，上面有一尊圣母像。当那不勒斯宣布归顺意大利王国，波旁家族的统治者被赶走了，朱塞佩·克罗纳·迪斯提亚诺市长请雕刻家恩里科·阿尔维诺把那根上面顶着圣母的柱子变成一个纪念碑，纪念那些为自由而牺牲的人。当时恩里科·阿尔维诺在柱子的根基上放了四头狮子，象征着那不勒斯革命的伟大时刻：一七九九年的狮子受了致命伤；一八二〇年起义的狮子被一把剑刺中，但它仍在空中撕咬；一八四八年的狮子代表着爱国主义力量被镇压，但他们没有认输；一八五九年的狮子是一个威风凛凛的胜利者。还有，妈妈，之前的那个和平圣母被取代了，现在柱子上面放了一位非常美丽的女士，就是解放世界的维多利亚女神：维多利亚的左手拿着一把宝剑，右手拿着一个花环，是献给那些为了自由而牺牲的那不勒斯人，那些为了人民的解放被杀死的、被送上断头台流血牺牲的人。”
Imma was very receptive, and memorized
everything rapidly. It was she who taught me about Piazza dei Martiri, so
important for Lila and me in the past. I knew nothing about it, whereas Lila
had studied its history and told her about it. She repeated it to me right in
the piazza, one morning when we went shopping, mixing up, I think, facts, her
fantasies, fantasies of Lila’s. Here, Mamma, in the eighteenth century it was
all countryside. There were trees, there were the peasants’ houses, inns, and
a road that went straight down to the sea called Calata Santa Caterina a
Chiaia, from the name of the church there at the corner, which is old but
quite ugly. After May 15, 1848, when, right in this spot, many patriots who
wanted a constitution and a parliament were killed, the Bourbon King
Ferdinando II, to show that peace had returned, decided to construct a Road
of Peace and put up in the piazza a column with a Madonna at the top. But
when the annexation of Naples by the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed and the
Bourbon was driven out, the mayor Giuseppe Colonna di Stigliano asked the
sculptor Enrico Alvino to transform the column with the Madonna of Peace at
the top into a column in memory of the Neapolitans who had died for freedom.
So Enrico Alvino put at the base of the column these four lions, which
symbolized the great moments of revolution in Naples: the lion of 1799,
mortally wounded; the lion of the movements of 1820, pierced by the sword but
still biting the air; the lion of 1848, which represents the force of the
patriots subdued but not conquered; finally, the lion of 1859, threatening
and avenging. Then, Mamma, up there, instead of the Madonna of Peace he put
the bronze statue of a beautiful young woman, that is, Victory, who is
balanced on the world: that Victory holds the sword in her left hand and in
the right a garland for the Neapolitan citizens, martyrs for Freedom, who,
fallen in battle and on the gallows, avenged the people with their blood, et
cetera et cetera.
我经常感觉，莉拉利用过去的这些历史来淡化伊玛现在的遭遇。她给伊玛讲述的那不勒斯的历史起源，总是会发生一些很糟糕和丑陋的事情，才逐渐形成一栋漂亮的建筑、一条街道、一座古迹——但这些最后都会被遗忘，失去意义，恶化，变好再恶化，一切都是按照一种无法预测的潮流在起伏变化：先是平静如水，然后掀起波浪，形成瀑布。莉拉的模式中，最重要的是提问题：谁是牺牲者？狮子是什么意思？斗争、断头台、和平路、圣母、维多利亚是什么时候的事儿？这些故事很连贯，有前因后果。现在的基亚亚富人区之前是国王和阔佬住的地方。还有格里高利在他的书信里提到的沼泽，这片沼泽一直延伸到海滩上，那些野生的灌木丛也一直往上蔓延到沃美罗。十九世纪时人们对这片地进行了改造，在铁路工人开垦之前，这里不宜居住，每块石头都被腐蚀了，但之前还是有不少精美的古建筑，也被当时的人们打着改造的旗帜拆除了。“阔地”是有待改造的地区之一，指的是卡普安纳门到诺拉纳门之间的那片土地，这个地区尽管后来被改造过，但还是保留了原来的名字。莉拉一直都在强调那个名字——“阔地”，她喜欢这个名字，伊玛也喜欢。“阔地”和改造，不宜居和宜居，破坏和毁坏的狂热，把五脏六腑都挖出来，热衷于把老街道重新命名，修建、规整和设计新的街道，目的是为了掩盖之前的罪恶，巩固新世界，但旧世界随时都可能会回来占上风。
I often had the impression that Lila used
the past to make Imma’s tempestuous present normal. In the Neapolitan facts
as she recounted them there was always something terrible, disorderly, at the
origin, which later took the form of a beautiful building, a street, a
monument, only to be forgotten, to lose meaning, to decline, improve,
decline, according to an ebb and flow that was by its nature unpredictable,
made of waves, flat calm, downpours, cascades. The essential, in Lila’s
scheme, was to ask questions. Who were the martyrs, what did the lions mean,
and when had the battles and the gallows occured, and the Road of Peace, and
the Madonna, and the Victory. The stories were a lineup of the befores, the
afters, the thens. Before elegant Chiaia, the neighborhood for the wealthy,
there was the playa cited in the letters of Gregory, the swamps that went
down to the beach and the sea, the wild forest that crept up to the Vomero.
Before the Risanamento, or cleanup, of the end of the nineteenth century, before
the railroad cooperatives, there was an unhealthy area, polluted in every
stone, but also with quite a few splendid monuments, swept away by the mania
for tearing down under the pretense of cleaning up. And one of the areas to
be cleaned up had, for a very long time, been called Vasto. Vasto was a place
name that indicated the terrain between Porta Capuana and Porta Nolana, and
the neighborhood, once cleaned up, had kept the name. Lila repeated that
name—Vasto—she liked it, and Imma, too, liked it: Vasto and Risanamento,
waste and good health, a yearning to lay waste, sack, ruin, gut, and a
yearning to build, order, design new streets or rename the old, for the
purpose of consolidating new worlds and hiding old evils, which, however,
were always ready to exact their revenge.
莉娜阿姨说，“阔地”之前叫这个名字，它本质上并不是一片荒地，实际上这个地方过去有别墅、花园和喷泉。就在那里，维科侯爵修建了一座宫殿，还有一座大花园，叫做“天堂”。花园里有很多隐秘的水流，妈妈，最有名的是一棵高大的白桑树，上面放了一些细得几乎看不见的引水管子，水从枝条上落下，像雨水或者像瀑布一样，从树干上落下。你明白了吗？这个地方以前是维科侯爵的“天堂”，然后成了阔地侯爵的“阔地”，然后是尼古拉·阿莫尔市长的治理区，后来又成了“阔地”，最后繁荣起来，一步一步到现在。
In fact, before the Vasto was called
Vasto and was in essence wasteland—Aunt Lina recounted—there had been villas,
gardens, fountains. In that very place the Marchese di Vico had built a
palace, with a garden, called Paradise. The garden of Paradise was full of
hidden water games, Mamma. The most famous was a big white mulberry tree,
which had a system of almost invisible channels: water flowed through them,
falling like rain from the branches or coursing like a waterfall down the
trunk. Understand? From the Paradise of the Marchese di Vico to the Vasto of
the Marchese del Vasto, to the Cleanup of Mayor Nicola Amore, to the Vasto
again, to further renaissances and so on at that rate.
“啊！那不勒斯！”莉娜跟我女儿说，“真是一座美妙绝伦的城市。在这里人们讲着各种各样的语言，伊玛，这里修建了一切，也破坏了一切。这里的人不相信别人的废话，他们更爱自己吹牛。这里有维苏威火山，时刻提醒着你：再伟大的人类事业，那些最精美的作品，大火、地震、火山的灰烬还有大海，几秒时间就会让它们都化为乌有。”
Ah, what a city, said Aunt Lina to my
daughter, what a splendid and important city: here all languages are spoken,
Imma, here everything was built and everything was torn down, here the people
don’t trust talk and are very talkative, here is Vesuvius which reminds you
every day that the greatest undertaking of powerful men, the most splendid
work, can be reduced to nothing in a few seconds by the fire, and the
earthquake, and the ash, and the sea.
我默默地听伊玛讲这些，有时候我很不安。是的，伊玛是平静下来了，但这是因为莉拉给她灌输了那么多辉煌和黯淡的故事，那不勒斯城循环往复的历史：一会儿光辉夺目，一会儿又变得灰暗和疯狂，然后一切又恢复了，又开始熠熠生辉。那就像一片云在太阳下面飘着，让人感觉是太阳在跑，变成一个苍白、羞怯的圆盘，几乎要消失，但最后云消了，太阳忽然变得很耀眼，需要用手挡住眼睛。莉拉说那座带着“天堂”花园的宫殿，成了一片废墟和荒野，居住其间的要么是那些仙女、树精、农牧神、林神，要么是死人的鬼魂，要么是上帝派到城堡里或者普通人家里的，诱惑他们犯罪或是考验他们的魔鬼，如果这些人的灵魂是善良的，他们死后会得到奖赏。她们俩最喜欢的是鬼故事，那些关于夜晚的想象都很精彩、生动。伊玛对我说，波西利波的尽头，就是离海边没几步远的地方，在噶耀拉对面仙女洞的上面有一座有名的建筑，那里经常闹鬼。她对我说，在维科·圣曼达多和维科·蒙德拉戈内两栋宫殿里也有鬼。莉拉答应她，她们会一起去桑塔露琪娅的街上，找一个叫“大脸”的鬼，因为那个鬼的脸很宽，但他很危险，如果有人打搅他，他会丢大石头砸人。莉拉对她说，还有很多小孩的鬼魂住在披佐法尔科内和其他地方。在诺拉纳门那边，晚上经常会看到一个小女孩的鬼魂。真的有鬼吗？鬼到底存在不存在？莉娜阿姨说那些鬼是存在的，但不是在楼里，也不是在小胡同或者“阔地”的老城门那里。她说，那些鬼存在于人们的耳朵和眼睛里，当人们向里看而不是向外看时，也存在于人们正要说的话里，还有考虑问题的头脑里，因为我们说的话，还有我们的想象都充满了鬼魂。“这是真的吗？妈妈？”
I listened, but at times I was baffled.
Yes, Imma was consoled but only because Lila was introducing her to a
permanent stream of splendors and miseries, a cyclical Naples where
everything was marvelous and everything became gray and irrational and everything
sparkled again, as when a cloud passes over the sun and the sun appears to
flee, a timid, pale disk, near extinction, but now look, once the cloud
dissolves it’s suddenly dazzling again, so bright you have to shield your
eyes with your hand. In Lila’s stories the palaces with paradisiacal gardens
fell into ruin, grew wild, and sometimes nymphs, dryads, satyrs, and fauns
inhabited them, sometimes the souls of the dead, sometimes demons whom God
sent to the castles and also the houses of common people to make them atone
for their sins or to put to the test good-hearted inhabitants, to reward them
after death. What was beautiful and solid and radiant was populated with
nighttime imaginings, and they both liked stories of shades. Imma informed me
that at the cape of Posillipo, a few steps from the sea, opposite Gajóla,
just above the Grotta delle Fate, there was a famous building inhabited by
spirits. The spirits, she told me, were also in the buildings of Vico San
Mandato and Vico Mondragone. Lila had promised her that they would go
together to look in the streets of Santa Lucia for a spirit called Faccione,
called that because of his broad face, who was dangerous and threw big stones
at anyone who disturbed him. Also—she had told her—many spirits of dead
children lived in Pizzofalcone and other places. A child could often be seen
at night in the neighborhood of Porta Nolana. Did they really exist, or did
they not exist? Aunt Lina said that the spirits existed, but not in the
palaces, or in the alleys, or near the ancient gates of the Vasto. They
existed in people’s ears, in the eyes when the eyes looked inside and not
out, in the voice as soon as it begins to speak, in the head when it thinks,
because words are full of ghosts but so are images. Is it true, Mamma?
“是的，”我回答说，“也许是的，如果莉娜阿姨这么说，那可能是真的。”“这个城市充满了大大小小的故事，”莉拉跟伊玛说，“你在去博物馆、美术馆，尤其是国家图书馆时，也能看到鬼魂，在书里你可以看到很多。比如说你打开一本书，马萨尼埃罗就会跳出来。马萨尼埃罗是一个非常有趣但很可怕的鬼魂，他会让穷人发笑，让富人胆颤。”伊玛特别喜欢的情节是，他用一把剑不是直接杀死马达罗尼公爵还有公爵的父亲，而是杀死了他们的画像，咔嚓，咔嚓！她觉得最有趣的地方就是，马萨尼埃罗用宝剑砍掉了画像中公爵和他父亲的头，或者把画像里那些残暴的贵族吊死。“把画像里的头砍掉，”伊玛难以置信地笑着说，“把画像里的人吊死。”在砍完公爵的首级，把恶人吊起来之后，马萨尼埃罗穿着一件天蓝色的丝绸衣服，上面有银线绣的花，脖子上戴着一条金链子，帽子上戴一枚钻石做的别针，他去集市了。“妈妈，他就是那样去的，就像一个侯爵、公爵和国王一样昂首挺胸，但他其实是一个庶民，一个渔夫，他既不会读书，也不会写字。莉娜阿姨说，在那不勒斯会发生这样的事情，都是堂而皇之的，不用假装确立法令，假装整个地方的情况比之前好。在那不勒斯不用偷偷摸摸，可以心满意足、堂而皇之地向前走去，超越过去。”
Yes, I answered, maybe yes: if Aunt Lina
says so, it could be. This city is full of events, both large and small—Lila
had told her—you can even see spirits if you go to the museum, the painting
gallery, and, especially, the Biblioteca Nazionale, there are a lot of them
in the books. You open one and, for example, Masaniello jumps out. Masaniello
is a funny and terrible spirit, he makes the poor laugh and the rich tremble.
Imma liked it in particular when, with his sword, he killed not the duke of
Maddaloni, not the father of the duke of Maddaloni, but their portraits, zac,
zac, zac. In fact, in her opinion, the most entertaining moment was when
Masaniello cut off the heads of the duke and his father in the portraits, or
hanged the portraits of other ferocious noblemen. He cut off the heads in the
portraits, Imma laughed, in disbelief, he hanged the portraits. And after
those decapitations and hangings Masaniello put on an outfit of blue silk
embroidered with silver, placed a gold chain around his neck, stuck a diamond
pin in his hat, and went to the market. He went like that, Mamma, all decked
out like a marquis, a duke, a prince, he who was a workingman, a fisherman,
and didn’t know how to read or write. Aunt Lina had said that in Naples that
could happen and other things, openly, without the pretense of making laws
and decrees and entire conditions better than the previous ones. In Naples
one could get carried away without subterfuges, with clarity and complete
satisfaction.
一位大臣的故事让她很震撼，因为涉及我们这个城市的博物馆，还涉及庞贝古城。伊玛用严肃的语气说：“妈妈，你知道吗？有一个国家机构的大臣——纳西阁下，他是一百年前的人民代表。他接受了一个负责挖掘庞贝古城的人的礼物，那是一尊很有价值的雕像。你知道吗？他让人把庞贝发掘的那些最好的艺术品复制了一份，用来装点他的特拉帕尼别墅。妈妈，这个纳西，尽管他是意大利王国的大臣，他为所欲为：别人给他送了一尊雕像，他收下了，他觉得放在家里很有面子。有时候人们会犯错误，因为父母从小没教给你什么是公共财产，人们都不知道这是犯错误。”
The story of a minister had made a great
impression on her. It involved the museum of our city, and Pompeii. Imma told
me in a serious tone: You know, Mamma, that a Minister of Education, Nasi, a
representative of the people almost a hundred years ago, accepted as a gift
from workers at the excavations of Pompeii a small, valuable statue they had
just dug up? You know that he had models made of the best artworks found at
Pompeii to adorn his villa in Trapani? This Nasi, Mamma, even though he was a
Minister of the Kingdom of Italy, acted instinctively: the workers brought
him a beautiful little statue as a gift and he took it, he thought it would
make a very fine impression at his house. Sometimes you make a mistake, but
when as a child you haven’t been taught what the public good is, you don’t
understand what a crime is.
我不知道，她最后这句话是莉娜对她讲的，还是她自己的想法。无论如何我不喜欢这句话，我决定进行干预。我小心翼翼，但清清楚楚地对她说：“莉娜阿姨跟你讲了很多有意思的事情，我很高兴，当她对某个问题产生兴趣时，谁都拦不住。但你不应该相信，一个人做坏事是因为粗心大意。伊玛，你不要相信这一点，尤其是假如这些事情涉及一些达官贵人、部长、议员、银行家还有克莫拉分子的话。你也不应该相信，这是一个死循环的世界，一会儿好，一会儿坏，然后又会好起来。我们需要不懈地努力，一步一步脚踏实地，无论周围发生什么事情，我们都要小心，不要犯错误，因为犯了错误是要付出代价的。”
I don’t know if she said the last part
because she was reporting the words of Aunt Lina, or because she had made her
own arguments. Anyway I didn’t like those words and I decided to intervene. I
made a cautious speech, but explicit: Aunt Lina tells you so many wonderful
things, I’m pleased, when she gets excited no one can stop her. But you
mustn’t think that people carry out terrible acts lightly. You mustn’t
believe it, Imma, especially if it concerns members of parliament and
ministers and senators and bankers and Camorrists. You mustn’t believe that
the world is chasing its tail—now it’s going well, now badly, now it’s going
well again. We have to work with consistency, with discipline, step by step,
no matter how things are going around us, and be careful not to make a
mistake, because we pay for our mistakes.
伊玛的下嘴唇在颤抖，她问我：
Imma’s lower lip trembled, she asked me:
“爸爸再也不能参加议会了吗？”
“Papa won’t go to parliament anymore?”
我不知道说什么才好，她也意识到了这一点。就好像为了鼓励我给她一个正面答复，她小声说：
I didn’t know what to say and she
realized it. As if to encourage me to give a positive response, she said:
“莉娜阿姨说会的，他会回到议会的。”
“Aunt Lina thinks so, that he’ll return.”
我犹豫了很久，最后我下定了决心。我说：
I hesitated, then made up my mind.
“不，伊玛，我觉得不可能。你爱爸爸，这一点并不需要他是一个重要人物。”
“No, Imma, I don’t think so. But there’s
no need for Papa to be an important person for you to love him.”
43
那是一个错误的答复。还是像往常一样，尼诺逃脱了，摆脱了他落入的陷阱。伊玛知道这件事之后很高兴。她要求去见她父亲，但尼诺消失了一段时间，很难联系到他。当我们终于约定了一个时间，他把我们带到了梅格丽娜的一家披萨店里，他不像往常那么活跃。他很焦虑，有些心不在焉。他对伊玛说，永远都不要相信那些政治同盟，他说他自己是左派的牺牲品，其实那不是真正的左派，那简直比法西斯还要糟糕。他向女儿保证：“你等着看吧，爸爸会把一切都理顺的。”
It was the completely wrong answer. Nino,
with his usual ability, slipped out of the trap he had ended up in. Imma
found out and was very pleased. She asked to see him, but he disappeared for
a while, it was difficult to track him down. When we made a date he took us
to a pizzeria in Mergellina, but he didn’t display his usual liveliness. He
was nervous, distracted, to Imma he said one should never rely on political
alignments, he described himself as the victim of a left that wasn’t a left,
in fact it was worse than the fascists. You’ll see—he reassured her—Papa will
fix everything up.
随后，我在报纸上看到了很多尼诺的文章，言辞都很极端，他又重新提出了很久之前他的观点：国家的司法权应该受行政权控制。他很愤怒地写道：法官前一天还在和那些破坏国家心脏的人斗争，第二天他就让人们相信，那颗心脏已经生病了，需要丢弃。为了不被丢弃，他在拼命地抗争，他转变了政治立场，越来越偏向右派。一九九四年，他又兴高采烈地坐进了议会。
Later I read some very aggressive
articles of his in which he returned to a thesis that he had espoused long
ago: legal power had to be subject to executive power. He wrote indignantly:
How can the judges one day be fighting against those who want to strike at
the heart of the state and the next make the citizens believe that very same
heart is sick and should be thrown out. He fought not to be thrown out. He
passed through the old parties now out of commission, shifting further to the
right, and in 1994, radiant, he regained a seat in parliament.
伊玛很幸福地得知她父亲又成了萨拉托雷阁下，那不勒斯地区对他的支持率很高。伊玛得知这个消息之后，马上对我说：“你虽然写书，但你没莉娜阿姨那么有远见。”
Imma was joyful when she learned that her
father was again the Honorable Sarratore and that Naples had given him a very
high number of preferences. As soon as she heard the news she came to tell
me: You write books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does.
44
我并不生气，从根本上来说，我女儿只是想让我看到，我对她父亲不公平，我没明白他是好人。但她说的那句——“你虽然写书，但你没有莉娜阿姨那么又远见”，带来了一个出人预料的结果。我开始发现，莉拉——一个在伊玛眼里很有远见的女人，在五十岁时又正式回到了书本里，她又开始学习，甚至是写作了。彼得罗之前已经推测出，她做出的那种选择就是一种治疗，可以对抗失去蒂娜带来的焦虑和不安。在城区的最后一年，我再也不满足彼得罗的推测，还有伊玛跟我讲的那些，我一有机会就和莉拉谈论这个问题。我会问她：
I didn’t get angry with her, in essence
my daughter wanted only to point out to me that I had been spiteful about her
father, that I hadn’t understood how great he was. But those words (You write
books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does) had an unexpected
function: they pushed me to pay attention to the fact that Lila, the woman
who in Imma’s opinion could see the future, at fifty had returned officially
to books, to studying, and was even writing. Pietro had imagined that with
that decision she had self-prescribed a kind of therapy to fight the
anguishing absence of Tina. But in my last year in the neighborhood I wasn’t
satisfied with Pietro’s sensitivity or Imma’s mediation: as soon as I could,
I broached the subject, I asked questions.
“你为什么会对那不勒斯产生这么大的兴趣？”
“Why all this interest in Naples?”
“这有什么不对的吗？”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“没什么不对，我倒是很羡慕你。你学习是出于兴趣，我读书写作只是因为工作。”
“Nothing, in fact I envy you. You’re
studying for your own pleasure, while I now read and write only for work.”
“我没在学习。我只是随便看看宫殿、街道和古迹，然后我就去找找和那些地方相关的信息，就这些。”
“I’m not studying. I limit myself to
seeing a building, a street, a monument, and maybe I spend a little time
looking for information, that’s all.”
“这就是学习啊！”
“And that’s studying.”
“你这么觉得啊？”
“You think?”
她总是在回避话题，不想跟我说实话。但有时候，她会劲头十足地谈到这个城市，就好像那不勒斯不是由那些平常的街道，还有我们每天都看到的地方组成，她给我揭示了这个城市闪亮的一面。她三言两语就把这座城市变成了这个世界最值得欣赏的地方，一个充满意义的地方，每次跟她聊两句，我的脑子里就会充满火花，又回到了我自己的事情上。我出生和成长在这个城市，但我从来都没想着去了解它，真是太疏忽了。现在我要第二次离开这座城市，但我对我出生的地方基本一无所知。彼得罗过去已经指责了我的无知，现在我自己也在自责。听莉拉说那些，我意识到自己才疏学浅。
She was evasive, she didn’t want to
confide in me. But sometimes she became excited, the way she could be, and
began to speak of the city as if it were not made up of the usual streets, of
the normality of everyday places, but had revealed only to her a secret
sparkle. So in a few brief sentences she transformed it into the most
memorable place in the world, into the place richest in meanings, and after a
little conversation I returned to my things with my mind on fire. What a
grave negligence it had been to be born and live in Naples without making an
effort to know it. I was about to leave the city for the second time, I had
been there altogether for thirty full years of my life, and yet of the place
where I was born I knew almost nothing. Pietro, in the past, had admonished
me for my ignorance, now I admonished myself. I listened to Lila and felt my
insubstantiality.
和往常一样，她很容易就学会了很多东西。她好像能赋予每栋建筑、每块小鹅卵石重要的意义，她那种丰富的想象力，让我想放下自己正在写的那些乏味的东西，和她一起学习那不勒斯的历史。但那些“乏味的东西”耗尽了我的力气，我写的那些东西让我过着舒适的生活，我有时候夜里也在工作。有时候在寂静的房间里，我会停下来想，也许在同一时刻，莉拉也醒着，也许她像我一样，也在写东西，也许她正在总结她在图书馆里看到的东西，她在写自己的感想，在写自己的故事。也许她对于真实的历史并不感兴趣，她只是要找到一些激发她想象的东西。
Meanwhile, she, who learned with
effortless speed, now seemed able to give to every monument, every stone, a
density of meaning, a fantastic importance such that I would have happily
stopped the nonsense that I was busy with to start studying in turn. But “the
nonsense” absorbed all my energy, thanks to it I lived comfortably, I usually
worked even at night. Sometimes in the silent apartment I stopped, I thought
that perhaps at that moment Lila, too, was awake, maybe she was writing like
me, maybe summarizing texts she’d read in the library, maybe putting down her
reflections, maybe she moved on from there to recount episodes of her own,
maybe the historic truth didn’t interest her, she sought only starting points
from which to let imagination wander.
当然，她会以那种即兴的方式，忽然对某件事情产生兴趣，之后这种兴趣会变弱，会消失。就我所知，现在她一会儿研究王宫旁边的陶瓷厂，一会儿收集关于马热拉的圣彼得罗的信息，一会儿又在搜集外国游客在那不勒斯居留的痕迹。她觉得那就像追踪一些迷人又让人讨厌的事儿。她说，一个世纪又一个世纪，所有人都赞美海港、大海、船只、城堡、高大的维苏威火山和它愤怒的火焰，还有这座城市的大剧院、花园、菜园和大楼，但一个世纪又一个世纪，人们都在抱怨这里的低效、腐败、物质和精神的贫困。在那些宏伟的建筑后面，在浮华的名号还有众多享有厚禄的高官后面，但没有任何一个机构能有效运作起来，没有井然的秩序，只有纷乱的人群，还有在拥挤的街上各种卖东西的人。人们说话声音都极大，满街小混混还有叫花子。啊！没有任何一个城市像那不勒斯这么喧闹，这么嘈杂。
Certainly she proceeded in her usual
extemporaneous way, with unexpected interests that later weakened and
vanished. Now, as far as I could tell, she was concerned with the porcelain
factory near the Palazzo Reale. Now she was gathering information on San
Pietro a Majella. Now she sought testimonies of foreign travelers in which it
seemed to her she could trace a mixture of attraction and repulsion.
Everyone, she said, everyone, century after century, praised the great port,
the sea, the ships, the castles, Vesuvius tall and black with its disdainful
flames, the city like an amphitheater, the gardens, the orchards, the
palaces. But then, century after century, they began to complain about the
inefficiency, the corruption, the physical and moral poverty. No
institution—behind the façade, behind the pompous name and the numerous
employees—truly functioned. No decipherable order, only an unruly and
uncontrollable crowd on streets cluttered with sellers of every possible type
of merchandise, people speaking at the top of their lungs, urchins, beggars.
Ah, there is no city that gives off so much noise and such a clamor as
Naples.
有一次，她跟我说了暴力问题。她说，她以为这是我们城区的特点。从我们出生起，我们对暴力就已经司空见惯了，我们一辈子都不断经历着暴力。我们想：这是我们命不好。你记不记得我们以前骂人，想尽办法羞辱别人？你记不记得安东尼奥、恩佐、帕斯卡莱、我哥哥、索拉拉兄弟打人和被人打的事情，还有我和你挨过的打？你记不记得我父亲把我从窗子扔了出去？现在，我正在看一篇关于烧炭圣约翰的老文章，它解释了“烧炭”是怎么来的。我以为那里之前有煤炭，或者有卖炭的人，但实际上并不是这样，那是一个堆垃圾的地方，每个城市都有。那个地方叫做“炭坑”，脏水横流，人们会把动物的死尸丢在那里。从古代开始，那不勒斯的“炭坑”就位于烧炭圣约翰。那个区域当时被称为“烧炭广场”，在大诗人维吉尔的时代，每年都举行“烧炭比赛”，那是一种角斗士表演，但不是杀死对手才收场，而是练武的机会。讲这些时，她喜欢用引用一些古意大利语，她觉得很有意思，她讲得津津有味。但很快这不再是“表演”和“演习”的地方了，人们不仅仅会把动物的尸体和垃圾丢在那里，开始有了人和人之间的相互残杀。在那里，他们发明了一种打“猎物”的游戏。你记得吗？我们小时候也向别人丢石头——恩佐把一块石头砸到了我头上，我头上现在还有一块疤，他事后为了补救就送给了我一束花楸果。在烧炭广场上，人们开始是丢石头，后来动用兵器，他们会相互残杀，流尽最后一滴血。那些叫花子、阔佬和王公贵族都会跑去看人们为了报复而相互残杀。当某个强壮英俊的小伙子被致命的利剑刺中，倒地而死，那些叫花子、市民、国王和王后会拼命鼓掌，欢呼声直达云霄。啊！暴力、折磨、杀害、撕裂。莉拉的语气里带着恐怖和诱惑，她用混杂着方言的意大利语给我讲述这些事情，她还引经据典——不知道她在哪里看到并记下来的。她说，整个地球都是一个巨大的炭坑。有时候，我想，假如在一个报告厅里，她一定会让很多听众入迷，但我后来想到了她真实的状况。她是一个没有上过几天学的五十岁的女人，她不懂得研究方法，她不知道什么是可靠文献，她读书时会产生激情，会把那些真实和虚假的东西混合起来，她会加入自己的想象，除此之外没有别的。她感兴趣的，能给她带来乐趣的，好像就是那些腐烂的东西，那些残杀的场景，残缺的四肢，挖下来的眼睛，打破的头。后来这些都被掩盖了，根据历史记载，那个地方是被一座献给洗礼者圣约翰的教堂还有一座圣奥古斯汀修道院掩盖了，这家隐修修道院的图书馆藏书非常丰富。她笑着说：“下面是鲜血，上面是上帝、和平、祈祷和书本。这就是圣约翰和‘炭坑’的结合，也就是说‘烧炭圣约翰’的名字来源。这条路我们走了几千次，莱农，那里距离火车站、福尔切拉和法院都非常近。”
Once she talked to me about violence. We
believed, she said, that it was a feature of the neighborhood. We had it
around us from birth, it brushed up against us, touched us all our lives, we
thought: we were unlucky. You remember how we used words to cause suffering,
and how many we invented to humiliate? You remember the beatings that
Antonio, Enzo, Pasquale, my brother, the Solaras, and even I, and even you,
gave and took? You remember when my father threw me out the window? Now I’m
reading an old article on San Giovanni a Carbonara, where it explains what
the Carbonara or Carboneto was. I thought that there was coal there once, and
coal miners. But no, it was the place for the garbage, all cities have them.
It was called Fosso Carbonario, dirty water ran in it, animal carcasses were
tossed into it. And since ancient times the Fosso Carbonario of Naples was
where the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara stands today. In the area called
Piazza di Carbonara the poet Virgil in his time ordered that every year the
ioco de Carbonara take place, gladiator games that didn’t lead to the death
of men, as they did later—morte de homini come de po è facto (she liked that
old Italian, it amused her, she quoted it to me with visible pleasure)—but
gave men practice in deeds of arms: li homini ali facti de l’arme. Soon,
however, it wasn’t a matter of ioco or practice. In that place where they
threw out beasts and garbage a lot of human blood was shed. It seems that the
game of throwing the prete was invented there, the stone throwing that we did
as girls, you remember, when Enzo hit me in the forehead—I still have the
scar—and he was desperate and gave me a garland of sorb apples. But then, in
Piazza di Carbonara, from stones she moved on to weapons, and it became the
place where men fought to the last drop of blood. Beggars and gentlemen and
princes hurried to see people killing each other in revenge. When some
handsome youth fell, pierced by a blade beaten on the anvil of death,
immediately beggars, bourgeois citizens, kings and queens offered applause
that rose to the stars. Ah, the violence: tearing, killing, ripping. Lila,
between fascination and horror, spoke to me in a mixture of dialect, Italian,
and very educated quotations that she had taken from who knows where and
remembered by heart. The entire planet, she said, is a big Fosso Carbonario.
And at times I thought that she could have held crowded rooms fascinated, but
then I brought her down to size. She’s a barely educated woman of fifty, she
doesn’t know how to do research, she doesn’t know what the documentary truth
is: she reads, she is excited, she mixes truth and falsehood, she imagines.
No more. What seemed to interest and absorb her most was that all that filth,
all that chaos of broken limbs and dug-out eyes and split heads was then
covered—literally covered—by a church dedicated to San Giovanni Battista and
by a monastery of Augustinian hermits who had a valuable library. Ah, ah—she
laughed—underneath there’s blood and above, God, peace, prayer, and books.
Thus the coupling of San Giovanni and the Fosso Carbonario, that is to say
the place name of San Giovanni a Carbonara: a street we’ve walked on
thousands of times, Lenù, it’s near the station, near Forcella and the
Tribunali.
我知道烧炭圣约翰那条路，我非常清楚，但我不知道背后的故事。她跟我谈了很久。我怀疑，她说这些就是让我感觉到，她跟我口述的那些东西，实际上她已经写下来了，是我不知道结构的一本巨著的部分。我想：她到底在想什么，她的意图是什么？她只是想整理她出去逛和阅读时看到的东西，或者是她想写一本关于那不勒斯的书，一本自然是永远也不会完成的书，但这本书会帮助她一天一天把日子过下去。现在不仅是蒂娜消失了，索拉拉兄弟也消失了，恩佐也消失了，我迟早也会带着伊玛离开，无论如何，这本书会帮着她活下去吗？
I knew where the street of San Giovanni a
Carbonara was, I knew it very well, but I didn’t know those stories. She
talked about it at length. She talked so as to let me know—I suspected—that
the things she was telling me orally she had in substance already written,
and they belonged to a vast text whose structure, however, escaped me. I
wondered: what does she have in mind, what are her intentions? Is she just
organizing her wandering and readings or is she planning a book of Neapolitan
curiosities, a book that, naturally, she’ll never finish but that it’s good
for her to keep working on, day after day, now that not only Tina is gone but
Enzo is gone, the Solaras are gone, I, too, am going, taking away Imma, who,
one way and another, has helped her survive?
45
在移居都灵之前，我和她在一起度过了很长时间，那是一场温情的告别。一九九五年夏天的一天，我们谈了各种各样的话题，谈了好几个小时，但最后她谈到了伊玛。那时候伊玛已经十四岁了，她很活泼，也很漂亮，她刚刚取得了初中毕业证。她非常真诚地赞美了伊玛，语气中没有掺杂其他东西，我听她说着那些赞美的话，我感谢她在艰难的时刻帮助了伊玛。她有些不满地看着我说：
Shortly before I left for Turin I spent a
lot of time with her, we had an affectionate farewell. It was a summer day in
1995. We talked about everything, for hours, but finally she focused on Imma,
who was now fourteen; she was pretty, and lively, and had just graduated from
middle school. She praised her without sudden malice, and I listened to her
praise, I thanked her for helping her at a difficult time. She looked at me
in bafflement, she corrected me:
“我一直都在帮助伊玛，不只是现在。”
“I’ve always helped Imma, not just now.”
“是的，但在尼诺遇到麻烦之后，你对她的帮助非常大。”
“Yes, but after Nino’s troubles you were
really helpful to her.”
她也不喜欢我这样说，她心情有些混乱。她不想把她对伊玛的关注和尼诺联系在一起，她提醒我说，她从开始就很关心伊玛。她说，她这么做是因为蒂娜很爱伊玛。她接着说：“也许蒂娜比我更爱伊玛。”然后她有些不高兴地摇了摇头。
She didn’t like those words, either, it
was a moment of confusion. She didn’t want me to associate with Nino the
attention she had devoted to Imma, she reminded me that she had taken care of
the child from the start, she said she had done it because Tina loved her
dearly, she added: Maybe Tina loved Imma even more than me. Then she shook
her head in discontent.
“我不懂你。”她说。
“I don’t understand you,” she said.
“有什么不懂的？”
“What don’t you understand?”
她变得很烦躁，好像想对我说什么，但一直忍着没说。
She became nervous, she had something in
mind that she wanted to tell me but restrained herself.
“我不懂你这么长时间以来，怎么一次也没想到过。”
“I don’t understand how it’s possible
that in all this time you never thought of it even once.”
“想到什么，莉拉？”
“Of what, Lila?”
她沉默了一秒钟，然后垂下了眼睛。
She was silent for a few seconds, then
spoke, eyes down.
“你还记得《全景》上的那张照片吗？”
“You remember the photograph in
Panorama?”
“哪张照片？”
“Which one?”
“就是你和蒂娜在一起的照片，旁边写着她是你的女儿。”
“The one where you were with Tina and the
caption said that it was you and your daughter.”
“我当然记得了。”
“Of course I remember.”
“我想过蒂娜被带走了，可能是因为那张照片。”
“I’ve often thought that they might have
taken Tina because of that photo.”
“也就是说？”
“What?”
“他们想把你女儿偷走，但实际上那是我的女儿。”
“They thought they were stealing your
daughter, and instead they stole mine.”
她说了她的想法，那天早上，我切实地感觉到了之前一直折磨着她的那一千种推测。各种想象和顽固的念头，到那时候依然折磨着她，我之前都没注意到这一点。十几年过去了，她一直没有平静下来，她的脑子没法为她女儿找一个安静的角落。
She said it, and that morning I had the
proof that of all the infinite hypotheses, the fantasies, the obsessions that
had tormented her, that still tormented her, I had perceived almost nothing.
A decade hadn’t served to calm her, her brain couldn’t find a quiet corner
for her daughter. She said:
她嘟哝着说：“你老是上电视，上报纸，你满头金发，很漂亮，非常优雅。也许他们是想问你要钱，而不是针对我，谁知道呢，现在我什么都不知道了，事情发生了，然后转向了。”
“You were always in the newspapers and on
television, beautiful, elegant, blond: maybe they wanted money from you and
not from me, who knows, I don’t know anything anymore, things go one way and
then they change direction.”
她说，恩佐和警察说过这种可能，也和安东尼奥说过，但警察和安东尼奥都觉得没这种可能。但她跟我说这件事情时，好像很确信事情真是那样。谁知道她心里还有没有想着别的什么事，一些我从来都没意识到的事情。她的小农齐亚被当作我的小伊马可拉塔带走了吗？我的成功是她女儿被绑架的诱因？她对伊玛的关注是一种焦虑，还是一种保护和守卫？她想象着那些绑架她女儿的人，会把那个弄错了的孩子扔掉，会回来把那个正确的带走？或者还有别的可能？她想过什么，她还在想什么？为什么她现在才跟我说了这种可能？她想在我离开她之前惩罚我，给我灌输最后的毒药？啊，我明白为什么恩佐最后离开了，和她一起生活太让人悲痛了。
She said that Enzo had talked to the
police, that she had talked about it with Antonio, but neither the police nor
Antonio had taken the possibility seriously. Yet she spoke to me as if at
that moment she were again sure that that was what had happened. Who knows
what else she had brooded over and was still brooding over that I hadn’t
realized. Nunziatina had been taken in place of my Immacolata? My success was
responsible for the kidnapping of her daughter? And that bond of hers with
Imma was an anxiety, a protection, a safeguard? She imagined that the
kidnappers, having thrown away the wrong child, would return to get the right
one? Or what else? What had passed and was passing through her mind? Why was
she talking to me about this only now? Did she want to inject in me a final
poison to punish me for leaving her? Ah, I understood why Enzo had left.
Living with her had become too harrowing.
她意识到，我很担忧地看着她，她说起了她读的那些书，就好像为了挽回局面。但这时候她变得前言不搭后语，痛苦令她的面部线条变得扭曲。她忽然笑着说，那些罪恶冷不丁地就会冒出来。“你在上面放上教堂、修道院、书本——这些东西看起来是那么重要，”她用讽刺的语气说，“你在那些书本上投入一生，但罪恶会顶破地板，从你意想不到的地方冒出来。”后来她平静下来了，又说起了蒂娜、伊玛还有我，用一种缓和的语气，几乎是想为刚才她说的话道歉。她说：“当四周特别安静的时候，我会有很多想法，我不会太留意这些想法是否说得通。只有在那些糟糕的小说里，人们才会想着正确的事情，说着正确的话，事情总有个前因后果，有一些可爱的人和一些可恶的人，有好人和坏人，最后有一个让人安心的结局。”她嘀咕着说：“也有可能，蒂娜今天晚上就会回来，她之前去哪儿了，谁在乎呢，重要的是她又回到了这里，她会原谅我的疏忽。你也要原谅我。”她说着拥抱了我，最后说：“你走吧，走吧，你要做一些更精彩的事儿，要比你之前做过的那些更棒。我和伊玛非常亲近，也是因为担心有人把她带走。你真的很爱我儿子，虽然你女儿离开他了，你忍受了他多少事情啊，谢谢。我很高兴，我们做了那么长时间的朋友，我们会一直是朋友。”
She realized that I was looking at her
with concern and, as if to reach safety, began to speak about what she was
reading. But now in a jumbled way; her unease contorted her features. She
muttered, laughing, that evil took unpredictable pathways. You cover it over
with churches, convents, books—they seem so important, the books, she said
sarcastically, you’ve devoted your whole life to them—and the evil breaks
through the floor and emerges where you don’t expect it. Then she calmed down
and began to speak again of Tina, Imma, me, but in a conciliatory way, as if
apologizing for what she had said to me. When there’s too much silence, she
said, so many ideas come to mind, I don’t pay attention. Only in bad novels
people always think the right thing, always say the right thing, every effect
has its cause, there are the likable ones and the unlikable, the good and the
bad, everything in the end consoles you. She whispered: It might be that Tina
will return tonight and then who gives a damn how it happened, the essential
thing will be that she’s here again and forgives me for the distraction. You
forgive me, too, she said, and, embracing me, concluded: Go, go, do better
things than you’ve done so far. I’ve stayed near Imma also out of fear that
someone might take her, and you loved my son truly also when your daughter
left him. How many things you’ve endured for him, thank you. I’m so glad
we’ve been friends for so long and that we are still.
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