-*-
106
我和埃利奥诺拉，还有三个孩子一起逛街，我心里非常舒服，即使是她拿着一把刀子刺我，我估计也不会感到疼。尼诺的妻子看到我那么兴高采烈，而且对她很热情，她对我不再有敌意。她赞美黛黛和艾尔莎，说她们太乖了，她向我坦白说，她很欣赏我。她丈夫跟她讲了所有关于我的事情，我的学业，还有我后来怎么成为一位成功的小说家。她承认说：“我有点儿嫉妒你，不是因为你很厉害，而是因为你一直都认识他，而我没有。我希望我在他小时候也能认识他，那我会知道，他十岁是什么样子，十四岁是什么样子，他变声期之前的声音是什么样子，他小时候是怎么笑的。她说，现在幸好我有阿尔伯特，他和他爸爸一模一样。”
I went out with Eleonora and the three
children in a state of such well-being that even if she had stuck a knife in
me I would not have felt bad. Nino’s wife, besides, in the face of my
euphoria and the many kindnesses I showed her, stopped being hostile, praised
Dede and Elsa’s good behavior, confessed that she admired me. Her husband had
told her everything about me, my studies, my success as a writer. But I’m a
little jealous, she admitted, and not because you’re clever but because
you’ve known him forever and I haven’t. She, too, would like to have met him
as a girl, and know what he was like at ten, at fourteen, his voice before it
changed, his laughter as a boy. Luckily I have Albertino, she said, he’s just
like his father.
我看着那个孩子，但我并没有看出尼诺的影子，可能他以后会显示出来吧。黛黛马上非常自豪地说：“我像我爸爸。”艾尔莎接着说：“我更像妈妈。”这时候，我想起了西尔维亚的儿子米尔科，他倒是和尼诺一模一样。当时在马丽娅罗莎的家里，我把他抱在怀里，哄他让他停止啼哭时，我是多么愉悦啊！那时候的我离结婚生子还很遥远，我当时想在那个孩子身上，得到什么样的感觉？我还不知道詹纳罗是斯特凡诺的孩子时，我在他身上寻找什么？现在我是黛黛和艾尔莎的母亲，我在阿尔伯特的身上寻找什么？为什么我那么关注地看着他？我觉得，尼诺一定不会想到米尔科，就我所知，他对詹纳罗也从来没表现出任何兴趣。这些男人被快感和高潮冲昏了头脑，他们漫不经心，随处播种，让女人怀孕。他们进入女人内部，然后抽身而出，给女人留下的是他们的幽灵，像遗失的物品一样，埋在肉里。阿尔伯特是他想要的、有意要的孩子吗？或者说，眼前这个年轻的母亲抱在怀里的孩子，尼诺并没有觉得和他有什么关系？心里想着这些，我告诉埃利奥诺拉说，她儿子和他父亲小时候一模一样，我为自己的这句谎言感到高兴。然后，我用一种温情柔和的语气，跟她仔细讲述了尼诺小学时的样子，就是奥利维耶罗老师和校长组织竞赛的那个阶段；还有高中时期，谈到了加利亚尼老师以及我们和其他朋友在伊斯基亚一起度假的事儿。我的讲述在这里就打住了，尽管她就像一个小孩一样，不停地问我：“后来呢？”
I observed the child, but it didn’t seem
to me that I saw signs of Nino, maybe they would appear later. I look like
Papa, Dede exclaimed suddenly, proudly, and Elsa added: I’m more like my
mamma. I thought of Silvia’s son, Mirko, who had seemed identical to Nino.
What pleasure I had felt holding him in my arms, soothing his cries in
Mariarosa’s house. What had I been looking for at that time, in that child,
when I was still far from the experience of motherhood? What had I sought in
Gennaro, before I knew that his father was Stefano. What was I looking for in
Albertino, now that I was the mother of Dede and Elsa, and why did I examine
him so closely? I dismissed the idea that Nino remembered Mirko from time to
time. Nor did I think he had ever demonstrated any interest in Gennaro. Men,
dazed by pleasure, absent-*-mother without Nino’s feeling that he had had
anything to do with it? I roused myself, I said to Eleonora that her son was
the image of his father and was content with that lie. Then I told her in
detail, with affection, with tenderness, about Nino at the time of elementary
school, at the time of the contests organized by Maestra Oliviero and the
principal to see who was smartest, Nino at the time of high school, about
Professor Galiani and the vacation we had had on Ischia, with other friends.
I stopped there, even though she kept childishly asking: And then?
聊着聊着，她对我越来越友好了，而且越来越信任我。我们进到一家商店里，假如我喜欢一件衣服，试了之后没买，我会发现在出来时，埃利奥诺拉已经买下送给我了。她也想给黛黛和艾尔莎买衣服。在餐厅吃饭时，也是她付钱。她花钱叫了一辆出租车，让司机先把我和两个女儿送回家，然后再送他们母子俩回宾馆，她拎着很多袋子。我们告别了，我和两个女儿一直在招手，直到汽车消失在街角。我想，她代表着那不勒斯的另一面，但距离我的体验很远。她花钱如流水，就好像那些钱没有任何价值，那些钱一定不是尼诺挣的，我排除了这种可能。她父亲是律师，祖父也是，她母亲是一位银行家的女儿。我想，这些资产阶级的财富和索拉拉家的财富有什么差别。我想，那些钱在变成律师的高工资，还有奢华的生活之前，经过了多少秘密的周转。我想起了我们城区的那些男孩子，他们靠装卸走私的货物、在公园里砍树、在工地上劳动来挣口饭吃。我想到了安东尼奥、帕斯卡莱和恩佐，为了挣口饭吃，他们从小就吃尽苦头。那些工程师、建筑师、律师、银行家却都是另一回事儿，他们的钱是从哪儿来的？尽管经过了千层过滤，但那些钱还是来自于黑暗的交易，同样的肮脏，有一些甚至成了我父亲的小费，成了我上学的钱。那些脏钱变成干净的钱，或者相反，其中的界限在哪里？埃利奥诺拉兴致勃勃，她在佛罗伦萨这一天里出手大方，花的钱到底有多干净？她签的支票，给我买的衣服，我带回家的这些礼物，和米凯莱付给莉拉的钱有多大差别？这个下午，我和两个女儿都在镜子前炫耀我们收到的礼物。那些都是好东西，颜色鲜艳，让人赏心悦目。有一件暗红色的、四十年代风格的裙子，尤其适合我，我希望尼诺看到我穿那条裙子的样子。
The more we talked, the more she liked
me; she became attached to me. If we went into a shop and I liked something,
tried it on but then decided against it, I discovered on leaving that
Eleonora had bought it, as a present for me. She also wanted to buy clothes
for Dede and Elsa. At the restaurant she paid. And she paid for the taxi in
which she took me home with the children, and then had herself driven to the
hotel, loaded with packages. We said goodbye, the children and I waved until
the car turned the corner. She’s another piece of my city, I thought. Outside
my field of experience. She used money as if it had no value. I ruled out
that it was Nino’s money. Her father was a lawyer, also her grandfather, her
mother was from a banking family. I wondered what difference there was
between their bourgeois wealth and that of the Solaras. I thought of how many
hidden turns money takes before becoming high salaries and lavish fees. I
remembered the boys from the neighborhood who were paid by the day unloading
smuggled goods, cutting trees in the parks, working at the construction
sites. I thought of Antonio, Pasquale, Enzo. Ever since they were boys they
had been scrambling for a few lire here, a few there to survive. Engineers,
architects, lawyers, banks were another thing, but their money came, if
through a thousand filters, from the same shady business, the same
destruction, a few crumbs had even mutated into tips for my father and had
contributed to allowing me an education. What therefore was the threshold
beyond which bad money became good and vice versa? How clean was the money
that Eleonora had heedlessly spent in the heat of a Florentine day; and the
checks with which the gifts that I was taking home had been bought, how
different were they from those with which Michele paid Lila for her work? All
afternoon, the girls and I paraded in front of the mirror in the clothes we
had been given as presents. They were nice things, pretty and cheerful. There
was a pale red, forties-style dress that looked especially good on me, I
would have liked Nino to see me in it.
但是，萨拉托雷全家回那不勒斯去了，离开前，我们没能再次碰面。但时间并不像我想象的那么难熬，相反却很愉快地过去了。尼诺会再回来的，这一点可以肯定，他会和我谈论我写的东西。为了避免发生不必要的争执，我给彼得罗的写字台上也放了一份自己的作品。我确信自己写得不错，我给马丽娅罗莎打电话，用一种自信、愉悦的语气跟她说，我把之前跟她谈到的那些东西整理出来了。她让我马上发给她。在几天之后，她就打电话给我了，她非常热情地问我，她能不能把我写的那些东西翻译成法语，发给一个在南泰尔的朋友，这个法国朋友拥有一家小出版社。我很高兴地答应了，但事情并没有就此结束。几个小时之后，我婆婆给我打了电话，她用一种假装的愠怒对我说：
But the Sarratore family returned to
Naples without our having a chance to see them again. Unpredictably, time
didn’t collapse; rather, it began to flow lightly. Nino would return, that
was certain. And he would talk about my writing. To avoid unnecessary
friction I put a copy of my work on Pietro’s desk. Then I called Mariarosa
with the pleasant certainty that I had worked well and told her I had managed
to put in order that tangle I had talked to her about. She wanted me to send
it immediately. A few days later she called me excitedly, asked if she could
translate it herself into French and send it to a friend of hers in Nanterre
who had a small publishing house. I agreed enthusiastically, but it didn’t
end there. A few hours later my mother-*-law called pretending to be
offended.
“现在你写了东西会让马丽娅罗莎看，反倒不给我看了，这是怎么回事？”
“How is it that now you give what you
write to Mariarosa and not to me?”
“我担心你对这些东西不感兴趣，我就写了七十多页，不是小说，我自己都不知道是什么。”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t interest you.
It’s just seventy pages, it’s not a novel, I don’t even know what it is.”
“当你不知道自己写了什么，那就意味着，你写得不错，无论如何，你要让我决定，我是不是感兴趣。”
“When you don’t know what you’ve written
it means you’ve worked well. And anyway let me decide if it interests me or
not.”
我给她也发去了一份，我并没有把这件事儿放在心上。正好就是我把那份稿子发出去的那天，在中午的时候，尼诺出乎预料地从火车站给我打电话，说他已经到了佛罗伦萨。
I sent her a copy. I did it almost
casually. The same morning Nino, around midday, called me by surprise from
the station, he had just arrived in Florence.
“我过半个小时，就能到你那儿，我放下行李，然后去图书馆。”
“I’ll be at your house in half an hour,
I’ll leave my bag and go to the library.”
“你不吃点儿东西吗？”我故作自然地问他。在经过那么漫长的历程之后，我们走到这一步，他来我家里住，我感觉很正常。在他洗澡的时候，我给他弄了点儿吃的，然后我们一起吃饭——我、他还有我的两个女儿，这时候，彼得罗在大学给学生考试。
“You won’t eat something?” I asked with
naturalness. It seemed to me normal that he—arriving after a long
journey—should come to sleep at my house, that I should prepare something for
him to eat while he took a shower in my bathroom, that we should have lunch
together, he and I and the children, while Pietro was giving exams at the
university.
-*-
107
尼诺足足待了十天。这期间我的状态和我之前有一段时间，狂热地想吸引男人的状态全然不同。我不和他开玩笑，我没有嗲声嗲气和他说话；我没有对他表现出任何殷勤讨好的态度；我没有像我大姑子那样，扮演一个解放的新女性；我没有对他有所暗示；我没有用含情脉脉的目光注视他；我没有在他坐在桌前，沙发上，或者电视前时，靠着他坐下。我没有衣冠不整地出现在家里；我没有创造机会单独和他在一起；我没有用胳膊肘碰着他的胳膊肘，手臂碰到他的手臂，腿碰到腿，或者和他碰个满怀。我当时很害羞，很克制，话很少，照顾他吃好，不让两个孩子吵到他，让他觉得自在。我不是故意这么做的，因为我不可能表现出别的样子。他和彼得罗、黛黛，还有艾尔莎经常开玩笑，但他一转向我，就会变得非常严肃，好像在斟词酌句，就好像我们之间没有那么多年的交情，所以我对他也很严肃。我很高兴能在家里接待他，但我感觉，我没有任何必要做出亲昵的动作和语气。事情正好相反，我喜欢站得远远的，避免和他直接接触。我觉得自己就像一张蜘蛛网上的雨滴，我很小心，避免自己滑落。
Nino stayed for ten days. Nothing of what
happened in that time had anything to do with the yearning for seduction I
had experienced years earlier. I didn’t joke with him; I didn’t act
flirtatious; I didn’t assail him with all sorts of favors; I didn’t play the
part of the liberated woman, modeling myself on my sister-*-law; I didn’t
tenderly seek his gaze; I didn’t contrive to sit next to him at the table or
on the couch, in front of the television; I didn’t go around the house
half-dressed; I didn’t try to be alone with him; I didn’t graze his elbow
with mine, his arm with my arm or breast, his leg with my leg. I was timid,
restrained, spoke concisely, making sure only that he ate well, that the
girls didn’t bother him, that he felt comfortable. And it wasn’t a choice, I
couldn’t have behaved differently. He joked a lot with Pietro, with Dede,
with Elsa, but as soon as he spoke to me he became serious, he seemed to
measure his words as if there were not an old friendship between us. And it
seemed right to me to do the same. I was very happy to have him in the house,
and yet I felt no need for confidential tones and gestures; in fact, I liked
staying on the edge and avoiding contact between us. I felt like a drop of
rain in a spiderweb, and I was careful not to slide down.
我们只深谈过一次，是围绕着我的那篇稿子。他刚到家里时，马上就和我说起了我的手稿，说得非常深入，分析很敏锐。尤其是，伊始和伊始阿的那段让他印象很深。他问我：“对于你来说，在圣经故事里，女人来自于男人，是来自男人本身？”我说，夏娃不能独立存在，也不知道如何独立，她在亚当之外，没有自己存在的支撑。她的好和坏，都是亚当说了算，夏娃是亚当女性的一面。上帝的创造是这么完美，她不知道自己是什么，她的外形是可以塑造的，她不拥有自己的语言，她没有自己的精神和逻辑，她随时都会变形。“这是非常可怕的处境。”尼诺评论说。我非常不安，我用余光瞄着他，想知道他是不是在和我开玩笑。没有，他不是在开玩笑，正好相反，他一点儿讽刺或开玩笑的意思都没有。他提到了几本我不知道的书，讨论的都是相关内容。他又一次强调说，那篇稿子可以出版。我听他说着这些，并没有表现得心满意足，最后我只是说：“这篇稿子，马丽娅罗莎也很喜欢。”这时，他问了我大姑子的情况，他赞扬了马丽娅罗莎，无论是从学者的角度，还是她对弗朗科的照顾，说完他就去图书馆了。
We had a single long exchange, focused
entirely on my writing. He spoke about it immediately, upon arriving, with
precision and acuteness. He had been struck by the story of Ish and Isha’h,
he questioned me, he asked: for you, the woman, in the Biblical story, is no
different from the man, is the man himself? Yes, I said. Eve can’t, doesn’t
know how, doesn’t have the material to be Eve outside of Adam. Her evil and
her good are evil and good according to Adam. Eve is Adam as a woman. And the
divine work was so successful that she herself, in herself, doesn’t know what
she is, she has pliable features, she doesn’t possess her own language, she
doesn’t have a spirit or a logic of her own, she loses her shape easily. A
terrible condition, Nino commented, and I nervously looked at him out of the
corner of my eye to see if he was making fun of me. No, he wasn’t. Rather, he
praised me without the slightest sarcasm, he cited some books I didn’t know
on relevant subjects, he repeated that he considered the work ready to be
published. I listened without showing any satisfaction, I said only, at the
end: Mariarosa also liked it. Then he asked about my sister-*-law, he spoke
well of her both as a scholar and for her devotion to Franco, and went off to
the library.
除了那次之外，我们都没有深谈。他每天早上和彼得罗一起出去，晚上比他晚回来。有很少的几次，我们所有人一起出去。比如有一次他带我们去电影院，看一场专门给儿童看的电影。尼诺坐在彼得罗旁边，我坐在两个女儿的中间。当我意识到，他笑时我也会笑起来，但我马上就停止笑。中间休息时，他想给黛黛、艾尔莎，当然还有我们几个大人买冰淇淋，我柔声责怪了他。我说，我不要，谢谢。他开了几句玩笑，说冰淇淋很美味，我不吃，那是我的损失，他让我尝一点，我就尝了。总之，都是一些很细小的事情。有一天下午，我们在散步，我、他、黛黛，还有艾尔莎。我们谈到了很多问题，尼诺一直在和两个孩子说话，但我们走的路线让我印象非常深刻，到现在我还能指出我们当时走过的每条街道，停留过的每个角落。天气很炎热，城里的人很多。他不停地和别人打招呼，有人对他用尊称，他向他的朋友介绍我，用了很多溢美之词。让我惊异的是他的名气，有那么多人认识他。有一个非常有名的历史学家赞扬了我的两个女儿，就好像她们是我和尼诺生的。没发生什么特别的事儿，除了忽然间，因为无法解释的原因，他和彼得罗的关系发生了变化。
Otherwise he left every morning with
Pietro and returned at night after him. On very rare occasions we all went
out together. Once, for example, he wanted to take us to the movies to see a
comedy chosen just for the girls. Nino sat next to Pietro, I between my
daughters. When I realized that I was laughing hard as soon as he laughed, I
stopped laughing completely. I scolded him mildly because during the
intermission he wanted to buy ice cream for Dede, Elsa, and naturally for the
adults, too. For me no, I said, thank you. He joked a little, said that the
ice cream was good and I didn’t know what I was missing, he offered me a
taste, I tasted. Small things, in other words. One afternoon we took a long
walk, Dede, Elsa, he and I. We didn’t say much, Nino let the children talk.
But the walk made a deep impression, I could point out every street, the
places where we stopped, every corner. It was hot, the city was crowded. He
constantly greeted people, some called to him by his last name, I was
introduced to this person and that, with exaggerated praise. I was struck by
his notoriety. One man, a well-known historian, complimented him on the
children, as if they were our children. Nothing else happened, apart from a
sudden, inexplicable change in the relations between him and Pietro.
-*-
108
一切都是从一天晚饭时他们的一场对话开始的。彼得罗用欣赏的语气跟尼诺谈到了一位那不勒斯教授，一个当时备受瞩目的人物。这时候，尼诺说：“我都敢打赌，你喜欢那混蛋。”我丈夫有些失措，他的微笑有些迷茫，但尼诺加重了语气，他继续取笑我丈夫说，他太容易被表象欺骗了。这种情况仍在持续，第二天早餐时还发生了一件令人不快的事。我不记得事情是怎么开始的，尼诺又提到了我和宗教老师之间因为圣灵问题发生的冲突。彼得罗并不知道这件事情，他表示想知道。尼诺这时候不是对他，而是对着两个小姑娘讲起了她们的妈妈小时候的丰功伟绩。
It all began one evening at dinner.
Pietro spoke to him with admiration of a professor from Naples, at the time
quite respected, and Nino said: I would have bet that you liked that asshole.
My husband was disoriented, he gave an uncertain smile, but Nino piled it on,
making fun of him for how easily he had let himself be deceived by
appearances. The next morning after breakfast there was another incident. I
don’t remember in relation to what, Nino referred to my old clash with the
religion professor about the Holy Spirit. Pietro, who didn’t know about that
episode, wanted to know, and Nino, addressing not him but the girls,
immediately began to tell the story as if it were some grandiose undertaking
of their mother as a child.
我丈夫表扬了我，说：“你当时真勇敢。”但他对黛黛解释——他采用的语气，就像电视上有人在胡说八道，他感觉有必要向女儿说清楚事情的真相——他跟我们的女儿讲了十二使徒的故事，还有五旬节那天早上发生的事儿：像风一样的声音，像火一样蔓延，让世界上所有人——说任何语言的人都明白了。这时候，我丈夫非常投入地对我和尼诺谈到了那些染了病的使徒，他提到了先知约珥说的话：“我会把我的精神传递到所有肉体上”。他说，圣灵是一个必不可少的象征，让我们可以反思，那些不同的东西如何对照，找到共同点。尼诺一直让我丈夫往下说，但是他脸上的表情越来越讽刺。最后，他感叹了一句：“我都敢打赌说，你心里藏着一个神父。”他打趣地对我说：“你是他的妻子，还是他的圣母？”彼得罗脸红了，他有些不知所措。彼得罗一直都喜欢谈论宗教问题，我觉得他有些难受，最后他说：“对不起，我浪费了你们的时间，我们去上班吧。”
My husband praised me, he said: You were
very courageous. But then he explained to Dede, in the tone he took when
stupid things were being said on television and he felt it his duty to
explain to his daughter how matters really stood, what had happened to the
twelve apostles on the morning of Pentecost: a noise as of wind, flames like
fire, the gift of being understood by anyone, in any language. Then he turned
to me and Nino speaking with passion of the virtus that had pervaded the
disciples, and he quoted the prophet Joel, I will spread my spirit over every
flesh, adding that the Holy Spirit was an indispensable symbol for reflecting
on how the multitudes find a way of confronting each other and organizing
into a community. Nino let him speak, but with an increasingly ironic
expression. At the end he exclaimed: I bet there’s a priest hiding in you.
And to me, in amusement: Are you a wife or a priest’s housekeeper? Pietro
turned red, he was confused. He had always loved those subjects, I felt that
he was upset. He stammered: I’m sorry, I’m wasting your time, let’s go to
work.
类似这样的时刻越来越多了，并没有一个特别明显的原因。我和尼诺之间保持原样，非常注意礼貌、很客气也很疏远，但他和彼得罗之间突破了防线。就像早餐时那样，在吃晚饭时，客人对家里的男主人越来越不恭敬了，几乎到了冒犯的地步，就是那种表面上很友好，但实际上让你很屈辱的做法，他嘴上挂着一抹微笑，让你没有办法反抗，否则会显得很小气。那是我熟悉的语气，就是在我们城区里那些聪明人用在笨人身上的口吻，让他们屈服，让他们无话可说，成为大家取笑的对象。彼得罗很不适应，他觉得很困惑：他和尼诺在一起感觉很好，他欣赏尼诺，因此他没做出反抗。他摇了摇头，装出一副开玩笑的样子，有时候他好像在问：我到底做错了什么。他希望他们之间能恢复到之前的样子，用那种温和投契的语气说话。但尼诺还是不动声色，坚持自己的方式，话的分量越来越重，他转向我，转向两个孩子，想获取我们的认同。这时候，两个孩子会笑着点头，有时候我也会。但我想：他为什么要这么做，假如彼得罗生气，那他们的关系就毁了。彼得罗没有生气，他只是不明白，但一天天地，尼诺越来越惹他心烦，他的脸色看起来很疲惫，那些年刻苦学习的痕迹又出现了，他满眼忧虑，眉头紧皱。我想，我应该采取行动，要马上采取行动，但我什么都没有做，正好相反，我很难抑制我对尼诺的欣赏，还有内心的亢奋——是的，是亢奋。我看到、听到艾罗塔家的人——非常有文化的彼得罗，正在失去自己的领地，他变得迷惘。他在用一些软绵绵的话，来应对尼诺那些轻快、精彩，甚至有些残忍的抨击，而尼诺·萨拉托雷是我的朋友、我的同学，像我一样，一个出生在那不勒斯老城区的人。
Such moments increased and for no obvious
reason. While relations between Nino and me remained the same, attentive to
form, courteous and distant, between him and Pietro the dikes broke. At both
breakfast and dinner, the guest began to speak to the host in a crescendo of
mocking remarks, just bordering on the offensive, humiliating but expressed
in a friendly way, offered with a smile, so that you couldn’t object without
seeming petulant. I recognized that tone; in the neighborhood the swifter
party often used it to dominate the slower one and push him wordlessly into
the middle of the joke. Mainly, Pietro appeared disoriented: he liked Nino,
he appreciated him, and so he didn’t react, he shook his head, pretending to
be amused, while at times he seemed to wonder where he had gone wrong and
waited for him to return to the old, affectionate tone. But Nino continued,
implacable. He turned to me, to the children, he exaggerated in order to
receive our approval. And the girls approved, laughing, and I, too, a little.
Yet I thought: Why is he acting like this, if Pietro gets mad their relations
will be ruined. But Pietro didn’t get mad, he simply didn’t understand, and
as the days passed his old nervousness returned. His face was tired, the
strain of those years reappeared in his worried eyes and his lined forehead.
I have to do something, I thought, and as soon as possible. But I did
nothing; rather, I struggled to expel not the admiration, but the
excitement—maybe yes, it was excitement—that gripped me in seeing, in
hearing, how an Airota, an extremely well-educated Airota, lost ground, was
confused, responded feebly to the swift, brilliant, even cruel aggressions of
Nino Sarratore, my schoolmate, my friend, born in the neighborhood, like me.
-*-
109
在尼诺回那不勒斯的前几天，发生了两件尤其让人不舒服的事儿。有一天下午，阿黛尔给我打了电话，她对我写的东西非常满意。她让我马上把手稿发给出版社，他们可以加紧做一个小册子，和法语版本同时出版，假如不能同时出版，前后出版也可以。在晚餐时，我谈到了这件事情，尼诺恭维了我，说了很多赞美的话。他对两个孩子说：
A few days before he returned to Naples,
there were two especially unpleasant episodes. One afternoon Adele
telephoned; she, too, was very pleased with my work. She told me to send the
manuscript right away to the publisher—they could make a small volume to
publish simultaneously with the publication in France or, if it couldn’t be
done in time, right afterward. I spoke of it at dinner in a tone of
detachment and Nino was full of compliments, he said to the girls:
“你们有一个非常棒的妈妈。”然后他问彼得罗：
“You have an exceptional mamma.” Then he
turned to Pietro: “Have you read it?”
“你看了吗？”
“I haven’t had time.”
“我没时间看。”
“Better for you not to read it.”
“你最好不要看了。”
“Why?”
“为什么？”
“It’s not stuff for you.”
“那不是你看的东西。”
“That is?”
“也就是说？”
“It’s too intelligent.”
“太过于犀利了。”
“What do you mean?”
“你什么意思？”
“That you’re less intelligent than
Elena.”
“你没有埃莱娜聪明。”
And he laughed. Pietro said nothing, Nino
pressed him:
他笑了，彼得罗什么话都没有说。尼诺还在刺激他：
“Are you offended?”
“你生气了？”
He wanted him to react, in order to
humiliate him again. But Pietro got up from the table, he said:
他还想继续羞辱彼得罗，但彼得罗从饭桌前站了起来。他说：
“Excuse me, I have work to do.”
“对不起，我要工作。”
I murmured:
我嘟囔了一句：
“Finish eating.”
“吃完饭再去吧。”
He didn’t answer. We were eating in the
living room, it was a big room. For a few seconds it seemed that he wished to
cross it and go to his study. Instead he made a half turn, sat down on the
couch, and turned on the television, raising the volume. The atmosphere was
intolerable. In the space of a few days it had all become complicated. I felt
very unhappy.
他不回答。我们在客厅里吃饭，客厅很大。刚开始，他好像真要穿过客厅，把自己关在书房里。但他转了一圈，最后坐在了沙发上，把电视打开了，声音开得很大。当时的气氛让人难以忍受，在短短几天时间里，一切都变得非常复杂，我感觉很不开心。
“Lower it a bit?” I asked him.
“你能不能把声音放小一点儿？”我对他说。
He answered simply:
他简洁明了地回答说：
“No.”
“不。”
Nino gave a little laugh, finished
eating, helped me clear. In the kitchen I said to him:
尼诺笑了一下，他吃完饭，帮着我收拾桌子。
“Excuse him, Pietro works a lot and
doesn’t sleep much.”
在厨房里，我对他说：
He answered with a burst of rage:
“别生他的气，彼得罗工作很多，他睡得很少。”
“How can you stand him?”
他忽然气愤地对我说：
I looked at the door in alarm, luckily
the volume of the television was still loud.
“你怎么能受得了他。”
“I love him,” I answered. And since he
insisted on helping me wash the dishes I added: “Go, please, otherwise you’re
in the way.”
我很警惕地看着门口，还好电视声音很大，没人听到我们。
The other episode was even uglier, but
decisive. I no longer knew what I truly wanted: now I hoped that this period
would be over quickly, I wished to return to familiar habits, watch over my
little book. Yet I liked going into Nino’s room in the morning, tidying up
the mess he left, making the bed, thinking as I cooked that he would have
dinner with us that evening. And it distressed me that it was all about to
end. At certain hours of the afternoon I felt mad. I had the impression that
the house was empty in spite of the girls, I myself was emptied, I felt no
interest in what I had written, I perceived its superficiality, I lost faith
in the enthusiasm of Mariarosa, of Adele, of the French publisher, the
Italian. I thought: As soon as he goes, nothing will make sense.
“我爱他。”我回答说。他坚持要帮我洗盘子，我说：“你去吧，拜托了，别给我添乱了。”
I was in that state—life was slipping
away with an unbearable sensation of loss—when Pietro returned from the
university with a grim look. We were waiting for him for dinner, Nino had
been back for half an hour but had immediately been kidnapped by the children.
I asked him kindly:
另一件事情要更糟糕，也是决定性的。我不知道，我自己到底想要什么：我已经开始希望那个阶段尽快结束，我想回到之前的日常生活，完成我的小书。但同时，我喜欢早上进入到尼诺的房间里，把他弄乱的房间收拾整洁，给他铺好床，做饭的时候，想着他晚上会和我们一起吃饭，但同时我又担忧，所有一切正在结束。在下午有些时刻，我觉得自己像一个疯子，尽管两个孩子都在家，我觉得家里空荡荡的。我感觉很空虚，我对自己写的东西失去了兴趣，我觉得那些东西很浮浅，我对马丽娅罗莎、阿黛尔的热情，还有法国和意大利的出版社失去了信心。我想，尼诺离开之后，所有这一切都失去了意义。我当时就处于那种状态：生命在流逝，我无法忍受那种失去的感觉。彼得罗从大学回来，比平时更加阴郁。我们都等着他吃晚饭，尼诺比他早回来半个小时，马上就被两个孩子缠住了。我很温和地问我的丈夫：
“Did something happen?”
“发生了什么事儿？”
He muttered:
他脱口而出：“你再也不要让你娘家的那些人来家里。”
“Don’t ever again bring to this house
people from your home.”
我一下子僵住了，我想，他可能指的是尼诺。这时候，尼诺也探进头来，他身后跟着黛黛和艾尔莎，他应该也觉得彼得罗指的是他，他脸上浮现出一个挑衅的微笑，就好像在等着彼得罗爆发。但彼得罗说的是其他事情，他用那种非常鄙夷的语气——通常他确信，已经涉及一些需要捍卫的基本原则时，他会采用的语气：
I froze, I thought he was referring to
Nino. And Nino, too, who had come in trailed by Dede and Elsa, must have
thought the same thing, because he looked at him with a provocative smile, as
if he expected a scene. But Pietro had something else in mind. He said in his
contemptuous tone, the tone he used well when he was convinced that basic
principles were at stake and he was called to defend them:
“今天警察又来找我了，他们给我看了几张照片，给我说了他们要找的人的名字。”
“Today the police returned and they named
some names, they showed me some photographs.”
我深深舒了一口气。我知道，对那个用枪指着他的学生，他没有收回指控，这使得学生和老师当中有更多的积极分子都鄙视他，警察的到访会让他们断定：彼得罗是个告密者。我确信，他是因为这个才变得心情很坏。我打断了他，埋怨他说：
I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that,
after he refused to withdraw the charges against the student who had pointed
a gun at him, the visits of the police—even more than the scorn of many
militant youths and not a few professors—weighed on him, as they treated him
as an informer. I was sure that was why he was angry and I interrupted him,
bitterly:
“这是你的错，你不应该那么做，我已经跟你说过了。现在，你没法摆脱这些警察了。”
“Your fault. You shouldn’t have acted
like that, I told you. Now you’ll never get rid of them.”
尼诺插了一句，用很不客气的语气问彼得罗：
Nino intervened, he asked Pietro,
mockingly:
“你把谁告发了？”
“Who did you report?”
彼得罗没有回头看他，他是生我的气，他想和我吵架。他对我说：
Pietro didn’t even turn to look at him.
He was angry with me, it was with me he wanted to quarrel. He said:
“我已经尽力了，我今天不得不那么做。我什么话都没有说，因为中间涉及你。”
“I did what was necessary then and I
should have done what was necessary today. But I was silent because you were
in the middle of it.”
这时候，我明白问题不在警察身上，而是他们说的话。我嘟囔了一句：
At that point I realized that the problem
was not the police but what he had learned from them. I said:
“这跟我有什么关系？”
“What do I have to do with it?”
他的声音变了：
His voice changed:
“帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅难道不是你朋友吗？”
“Aren’t Pasquale and Nadia your friends?”
我很迷惑地重复了一句：
I repeated obtusely:
“帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅？”
“Pasquale and Nadia?”
“警察给我看的那些恐怖分子的照片，里面就有他们。”
“The police showed me photographs of
terrorists and they were among them.”
我哑口无言，也说不出话来。所以，我当时想象的事情是真的，彼得罗的话确认了这一点。我的眼前闪过了帕斯卡莱用枪指着吉诺的样子，他打断菲利普的腿，这时候，娜迪雅——是娜迪雅而不是莉拉，她走上台阶，敲了敲布鲁诺的门，进去朝他的脸上开了枪。太可怕了！但我觉得，当时彼得罗的语气很不得体，就好像他要通过这个消息，说明一件我不想说的事儿，让我在尼诺面前下不来台。尼诺马上就插话了，他揶揄彼得罗说：
I didn’t react, words failed. What I had
imagined was true, then; Pietro in fact was confirming it. For a few seconds
the images returned, of Pasquale firing the gun at Gino, kneecapping Filippo,
while Nadia—Nadia, not Lila—went up the stairs, knocked on Bruno’s door, went
in and shot him in the face. Terrible. And yet at that moment Pietro’s tone
seemed out of place, as if he were using the information to make trouble for
me in Nino’s eyes, to start a discussion that I had no wish to have. In fact
Nino immediately interrupted again, continuing to make fun of him:
“这样看来，你真是警察的眼线？你居然干这个？你揭发那些人？你父亲知道这事儿吗？你母亲呢？你姐姐呢？”
“So are you an informer for the police?
What are you doing? Informing on comrades? Does your father know? Your
mother? Your sister?”
我很无力地说了一句：“我们吃饭吧。”我马上对尼诺说：“别这样说，什么眼线！”我用一种客气的方式，也是为了避免他继续提到彼得罗的家庭出身以便刺激他。然后，我有些凌乱地对尼诺说，帕斯卡莱·佩卢索来找我了，我不知道他还记不记得，就是我们城区的一个小伙子，一个好小伙子。因为各种机缘，帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅走在一起了，他一定会记得娜迪雅，是加利亚尼老师的女儿，就是她。这时候，我停了下来，因为尼诺开始笑了起来。他感叹说：“娜迪雅，我的天哪，娜迪雅！”他转向了彼得罗，还是用那种讥讽的语气说：“只有你和那些迟钝的警察，会觉得娜迪雅·加利亚尼是武装斗争队伍里的人，真是太疯狂了。娜迪雅是我认识的最好心、最热情的人，意大利是怎么啦，我们去吃饭吧。现在，对既定秩序的维持，离开你，也没什么大不了的。”然后，他叫黛黛和艾尔莎一起去饭桌边，我开始布置饭菜，确信彼得罗随后会来吃饭。
I said weakly: Let’s go and eat. But
right afterward I said to Nino, politely making light of it, and to get him
to stop goading Pietro by bringing up his family: Stop it, what do you mean,
informer. Then I alluded vaguely to the fact that some time ago Pasquale
Peluso, maybe he remembered him, from the neighborhood, a good kid who had
ended up getting together with Nadia, he remembered her, naturally, Professor
Galiani’s daughter. And there I stopped because Nino was already laughing. He
exclaimed: Nadia, oh good Lord, Nadia, and he turned again to Pietro, even
more mockingly: only you and a couple of idiot police could think that Nadia
Galiani is part of the armed struggle, it’s madness. Nadia, the best and
nicest person I’ve ever known, what have we come to in Italy, let’s go and
eat, come on, the defense of the established order can do without you for
now. And he went to the table, calling Dede and Elsa, as I began to serve,
sure that Pietro was about to join us.
但他没有出现，我想他可能去洗手了，他在拖延，因为他想平静下来。我坐在我的位子上，很激动，我希望能有一个安静祥和的夜晚，能顺利结束我们共同生活的这些天。但直到两个孩子已经吃完了，他还都没出来。这时候，尼诺也显得很不安：
But he didn’t. I thought he had gone to
wash his hands, that he was delaying in order to calm down, and I sat in my
place. I was agitated, I would have liked a nice calm evening, a quiet ending
to that shared life. But he didn’t come, the children were already eating.
Now even Nino seemed bewildered.
“吃饭吧，”我说，“要不然饭就凉了。”
“Start,” I said, “it’s getting cold.”
“你开始吃，我才吃。”
“Only if you eat, too.”
我有些犹豫，也许我应该去看看我丈夫，看看他在做什么，看看他是否平静下来了。但我不想去，他的表现让我很心烦。通常，他都不说这些事儿，为什么他不把警察到访的事藏在心里。他自己的事情从来都不对我讲。为什么他当着尼诺的面，要对我说出那样的话：你再也不要让你娘家的那些人来家里。他为什么急着把这件事情提出来，他可以等等，他可以在晚些时候，在我们关上房门时，再发泄出来。他生我的气，这是问题所在。他想破坏这个夜晚，他对于我所做的，我想要的根本就不在乎。
I hesitated. Maybe I should go and see
how my husband was, what he was doing, if he had calmed down. But I didn’t
want to, I was annoyed by his behavior. Why hadn’t he kept to himself that
visit from the police, usually he did with everything of his, he never told
me anything. Why had he spoken like that in Nino’s presence: Don’t ever again
bring to this house people from your home. What urgency was there to make
that subject public, he could wait, he could have an outburst later, once we
were in the bedroom. He was angry with me, that was the point. He wanted to
ruin the evening for me, he didn’t care what I did or what I wanted.
我开始吃饭了，我们四个人一起吃，第一道菜、第二道菜，还有我准备的甜点。彼得罗一直都没有出现，我变得出离愤怒。彼得罗不想吃饭吗？好吧，那就别吃了，很明显他肚子不饿。他是不是想自己待着？好吧，房子很大，没他的话，气氛就不会那么紧张。很明显，问题并不在于，在我们家里出现了一次的那两个人，恰好是武装分子。问题在于，他没有足够的智慧，他没办法承受男性之间的那种争斗，他觉得很痛苦，所以生我的气。但你，还有你的猥琐小气，和我有什么关系。我大声说，我待会儿收拾桌子！就好像给自己下令，为了理清头绪。然后我打开电视，和尼诺还有两个孩子坐在沙发上看电视。
I began to eat. The four of us ate, first
course, second, and even the dessert I had made. Pietro didn’t appear. At
that point I became furious. Pietro didn’t want to eat? All right, he didn’t
have to eat, evidently he wasn’t hungry. He wanted to mind his own business?
Very well, the house was big, without him there would be no tension. Anyway,
now it was clear that the problem was not simply that two people who had once
showed up at our house were suspected of being part of an armed gang. The
problem was that he didn’t have a sufficiently quick intelligence, that he
didn’t know how to sustain the skirmishes of men, that he suffered from it
and was angry with me. But what do I care about you and your pettiness. I’ll
clean up later, I said aloud, as if I were issuing an order to myself, to my
confusion. Then I turned on the television and sat on the sofa with Nino and
the girls.
经过了漫长、折磨人心的一刻。我觉得尼诺有些不自在，但又觉着很有趣。黛黛说：“我去叫爸爸。”她吃饱了肚子，开始操心彼得罗。你去吧，我说。她是踮着脚尖回来的，她在我耳边说：“他躺在床上，睡着了。”尼诺也听见了，他说：
A long time passed, filled with tension.
I felt that Nino was uneasy and yet amused. I’m going to call Papa, said
Dede, who, with her stomach full, was now worried about Pietro. Go, I said.
She came back almost on tiptoe, she whispered in my ear: He went to bed, he’s
sleeping. Nino heard her anyway, he said:
“明天我就走了。”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“你工作做完了？”
“Did you finish your work?”
“没有。”
“No.”
“你留下来吧。”
“Stay a little longer.”
“我不能。”
“I can’t.”
“彼得罗是一个好人。”
“Pietro is a good person.”
“你护着他吗？”
“You defend him?”
护着他？在谁面前，护着他？我不明白，我几乎要生尼诺的气了。
Defend him from what, from whom? I didn’t
understand, I was on the point of getting mad at him, too.
-*-
110
两个孩子在电视前睡着了，我把她们放在床上。我回到客厅时，尼诺已经不在那里了，他把自己关在房间里。我很沮丧地把桌子收拾了，洗干净盘子。我让他留下来，这是多么愚蠢的事儿，他还是离开的好。另一个方面，我怎么能忍受没有他的苍白日子，我至少要让他在走之前答应我他会很快回来。我希望他能再回来，住在我家里，我们早上一起吃早餐，晚上在同一张桌子前吃晚饭。他会说一些风趣话，或轻或重。当我想表达自己的想法时，他会在那里听我说，无论我说什么，他都会带着敬意听我说，对我从来都不会用嘲讽的语气。然而我不得不承认，现在这种关系遭到了破坏，我们在一起生活变得不再可能，那是他的错。彼得罗很依赖他，他希望能和尼诺相处，他非常在意这份友谊。但尼诺为什么要伤害他、羞辱他，让他失去权威呢？我卸了妆，洗了脸，换上了睡衣。我把门从里面锁上了，加上保险链子，把煤气关了，把所有百叶窗都放了下来，把灯关了。我去看了一眼两个孩子。我希望彼得罗没假装睡觉，没等着和我吵架。我看了他的床头柜，他已经吃了镇静剂，他完全睡了过去，他让我很心软，我在他脸颊上亲吻了一下。他真是一个难以预料的人：非常聪明，同时又很笨；很敏感，也很迟钝；很勇敢，也很怯懦；有文化，也很无知；很有教养，也很粗鲁，他是艾罗塔家的一个失败者，是一个在半路上跌倒的男人。尼诺那么自信，那么决断，他能帮助彼得罗，让他重新振作起来、提高自己吗？我又一次想，为什么这份友谊变成了单方面的敌意呢。现在，我似乎明白了，尼诺想帮助我看清我丈夫的本来模样。他很确信，我脑子里是一个理想化的丈夫，无论是从精神上，还是从才智上，我都依附于他。他希望能让我看清楚：这个年轻的教授其实什么都算不上，虽然他写出了一篇非常精彩的大学毕业论文，出版了一本备受欣赏的书，正在写一部新书，新书出版之后，他的威望会得到进一步巩固和提升。最近一段时间，就好像是他一直在朝着我叫喊：你在和一个平庸的男人生活在一起，你和一个没用的人，生了两个女儿。他的计划就是通过贬低我丈夫，使我得到解放，通过摧毁他，让我回到我自己。但他这么做时，无论是有意还是无意的，他把自己作为一种标准的男性形象，展示在我眼前，他有没有意识到这一点？
The children fell asleep in front of the
television, I put them to bed. When I came back Nino wasn’t there, he had
gone to his room. Depressed, I cleaned up, washed the dishes. How foolish to
ask him to stay longer, it would be better if he left. On the other hand, how
to endure the dreariness of life without him. I would have liked him at least
to leave with the promise that sooner or later he would return. I wished that
he would sleep again in my house, have breakfast with me in the morning and
eat at the same table in the evening, that he would talk about this and that
in his playful tone, that he would listen to me when I wanted to give shape
to an idea, that he would be respectful of my every sentence, that with me he
would never resort to irony, to sarcasm. Yet I had to admit that if the
situation had so quickly deteriorated, making our living together impossible,
it was his fault. Pietro was attached to him. It gave him pleasure to see him
around, the friendship that had arisen was important to him. Why had Nino
felt the need to hurt him, to humiliate him, to take away his authority? I
took off my makeup, I washed, I put on my nightgown. I locked the house door,
I turned off the gas, I lowered all the blinds. I checked on the children. I
hoped that Pietro wasn’t pretending to sleep, that he wasn’t waiting for me
in order to quarrel. I looked at his night table, he had taken a sleeping
pill, he had collapsed. It made me feel tender toward him, I kissed him on
the cheek. What an unpredictable person: extremely intelligent and stupid,
sensitive and dull, courageous and cowardly, highly educated and ignorant,
well brought up and rude. A failed Airota, he had stumbled on the path. Could
Nino, so sure of himself, so determined, have gotten him going again, helped
him improve? Again I asked myself why that nascent friendship had changed to
hostility in one direction. And this time it seemed to me that I understood.
Nino wanted to help me see my husband for what he really was. He was
convinced that I had an idealized image that I had submitted to on both the
emotional and the intellectual level. He had wanted to reveal to me the lack
of substance behind this very young professor, the author of a thesis that
had become a highly regarded book, the scholar who had been working for a
long time on a new publication that was to secure his reputation. It was as
if in these last days he had done nothing but scold me: You live with a dull
man, you’ve had two children with a nobody. His project was to liberate me by
disparaging him, restore me to myself by demolishing him. But in doing so did
he realize that he had proposed himself, like it or not, as an alternative
model of virility?
这个问题让我很愤怒。尼诺太冒失了，他把我苦心经营的平衡给打乱了。为什么他没和我商量，就把这一切搞得乱糟糟的？是谁让他帮我睁开眼，拯救我的？他从什么地方推测出我有这个需要呢？他想，他可以随便改变我的婚姻生活，还有我作为母亲的责任？他的目的是什么？他想得到一个什么样的结果？我想，是他自己要想清楚，难道他对我们的友情失去兴趣了吗？现在快放假了，我会出发去维亚雷焦。他说，他会去卡普里岛，他岳父岳母住在那里。我们应该等到假期结束时再见面吗？为什么呢？其实在这个夏天，我们已经有可能加固我们两个家庭的关系。我当然可以打电话给尼诺的妻子，邀请她、她丈夫，还有孩子到维亚雷焦来，和我们一起待几天。我希望他们也能邀请我、黛黛、艾尔莎和彼得罗去卡普里岛，我从来都没去过那里。假如整个夏天我们不能见面，那为什么我们不能写信，来交换我们的想法，或者交流一些可以读的书，谈谈我们的工作计划？
That question made me angry. Nino had
been reckless. He had thrown confusion into a situation that for me
constituted the only possible equilibrium. Why sow disorder without even
consulting me? Who had asked him to open my eyes, to save me? From what had
he deduced that I needed it? Did he think he could do what he wanted with my
life as a couple, with my responsibility as a mother? To what end? What did
he think he was driving at? It’s he—I said to myself—who ought to clarify his
ideas. Doesn’t our friendship interest him? The holidays are close. I’ll go
to Viareggio, he said he’s going to Capri to his in-laws’ house. Must we wait
until the end of the vacations to see each other again? And why? Now, during
the summer, it would be possible to consolidate the relation between our
families. I could telephone Eleonora, invite her, her husband, the child to
spend a few days with us in Viareggio. And I would like to be invited, in
turn, to Capri, where I’ve never been, with Dede, Elsa, and Pietro. But if that
doesn’t happen, why not write each other, exchange ideas, titles of books,
talk about our work?
我没办法平静下来，尼诺不应该那么做。假如他在乎我的话，他应该像刚开始那样，他应该重新获得彼得罗的欢喜和友谊，我丈夫不要求别的。他真的以为给我带来这种紧张的气氛是为我好？不，不，我应该和他谈谈，我要告诉他，他那么对待彼得罗是很愚蠢的。我小心翼翼地从床上下来，从房间里出去了。我光着脚，穿过了走廊，敲了敲尼诺的门。我等了一会儿，然后进去了，房间里一片黑暗。
I couldn’t quiet myself. Nino was wrong.
If he really was attached to me, he had to take everything back to the
starting point. He had to regain the liking and friendship of Pietro, my
husband asked nothing else. Did he really think he was doing me good by
causing those tensions? No, no, I had to talk to him, tell him it was foolish
to treat Pietro that way. I got out of bed cautiously, I left the room. I
went down the hall barefoot, knocked on Nino’s door. I waited a moment, I
went in. The room was dark.
“你决定了。”我听见他说。
“You’ve decided,” I heard him say.
我吃了一惊，我没想着要做什么决定，我只知道他说得对，我已经决定了。我飞快地把睡衣脱掉，尽管天气很热，我还是躺到了他身边。
I was startled, I didn’t ask decided
what. I knew only that he was right, I had decided. I quickly took off my
nightgown, I lay down beside him in spite of the heat.
-*-
111
大约凌晨四点，我回到了自己的床上。我丈夫惊了一下，在睡梦中嘟囔了一句：“发生什么事儿了？”我用坚定平稳的语气对他说：“睡吧。”他平静了下来。我觉得很懵，发生的事情让我感到幸福，但无论我怎么努力，我都没办法把我现在的处境、佛罗伦萨的这个家和刚刚发生的一切联系起来。我感觉，发生在我和尼诺之间的一切，都是在我们城区进行的：他的父母要搬家，梅丽娜发出痛苦的叫喊，把东西从窗子里丢出来；或者在伊斯基亚，我们一起出去散步，手拉着手；或者在米兰，在书店的会面上，他在那个严厉的批评家面前捍卫我。现在发生这样的事情，我觉得自己有些不负责任，也许很无辜，就好像作为莉拉的朋友、彼得罗的妻子、黛黛和艾尔莎的母亲，我和那个一直爱着尼诺，并最终得到他的女孩或者女人，没什么干系。我感到他的手、嘴唇的痕迹，还留在了我身体的每一个部分，那种享受的欲望久久不散。我唯一的想法是：离天亮还很远，我在这里做什么，我应该再次回到他身边。
I returned to my bed around four in the
morning. My husband started, he murmured in his sleep: What’s happening? I
said in a peremptory way: Sleep, and he became quiet. I was stunned. I was
happy about what had happened, but no matter how great an effort I made I
couldn’t comprehend it inside of my situation, inside of what I was in that
house, in Florence. It seemed to me that everything between Nino and me had
been sealed in the neighborhood, when his parents were moving and Melina was
throwing things out the window and yelling, racked by suffering; or on
Ischia, when we went for a walk and held hands; or the night in Milan, after
the meeting in the bookstore, when he had defended me against the fierce
critic. That for a while gave me a sense of irresponsibility, maybe even of
innocence, as if the friend of Lila, the wife of Pietro, the mother of Dede
and Elsa had nothing to do with the child-*-woman who loved Nino and finally
had made love with him. I felt the trace of his hands and his kisses in every
part of my body. The craving for pleasure wouldn’t be soothed, the thoughts
were: the day is far off, what am I doing here, I’ll go back to him, again.
我渐渐平息下来了，后来忽然惊醒，我重新睁开眼睛时，房子里已经有了天光。在这里，在我的家里，我到底干了什么？真是太愚蠢了。现在，彼得罗会醒来，两个女儿也会醒来，我应该准备好早餐。尼诺会和我们告别，他会回到那不勒斯，回到他妻子和孩子身边，我也会变回我自己。
Then I fell asleep. I opened my eyes
suddenly, the room was light. What had I done? Here, in my own house, how
foolish. Now Pietro would wake up. Now the children would wake up. I had to
make breakfast. Nino would say goodbye, he would return to Naples to his wife
and child. I would become myself again.
我起床了，用了很长时间洗了一个澡，我把头发吹干净。我仔细化好妆，穿上了盛装，就好像要出门一样。噢，当然了，昨天夜里，我和尼诺都发誓，我们再也不会失去彼此，我们会想方设法继续相爱。但是我们怎么相爱，什么时候？他为什么要再来找我？我们之间能发生的事情都已经发生了，剩下的只是麻烦。不要想了，我很用心地把早餐摆好，我想让他对于住在这儿的时光、这所房子和日常器物，以及我留下一个好的印象。
I got up, took a long shower, dried my
hair, carefully put on my makeup, chose a nice dress, as if I were going out.
Oh, of course, Nino and I had sworn in the middle of the night that we would
never lose each other, that we would find a way to continue to love each
other. But how, and when? Why should he have to look for me again? Everything
that could happen between us had happened, the rest was only complications.
Enough, I set the table carefully for breakfast. I wanted to leave him with a
beautiful image of that permanence, the house, the customary objects, me.
彼得罗头发凌乱地出现了，身上穿着睡衣。
Pietro appeared disheveled, in his
pajamas.
“你要去哪儿？”
“Where are you going?”
“不去哪儿。”
“Nowhere.”
他有些不安地看着我，我从来没有在一大早上起来，就打扮得那么用心：
He looked at me in bewilderment—I never
dressed that carefully as soon as I got up.
“你看起来很棒。”
“You look nice.”
“那也不是因为你。”
“No thanks to you.”
他走到窗子前，看着外面，嘟哝了一句：
He went to the window, looked out, then
muttered:
“我昨天晚上很累。”
“I was very tired, last night.”
“也很不礼貌。”
“Also very rude.”
“我会向他道歉的。”
“I’ll apologize to him.”
“你应该首先向我道歉。”
“You should apologize to me.”
“对不起。”
“I’m sorry.”
“今天他就走了。”
“He’s leaving today.”
这时候，黛黛露脸了，她光着脚，我去帮她拿拖鞋。我叫醒了艾尔莎，通常她眼睛还没睁开，就会一个劲儿地亲我，她是多么柔软，身上的味道多么温馨啊。我想，是的，事情已经发生了，这件事情也可能永远都不会发生，还好发生了。现在，我应该严格要求自己，我会打电话给马丽娅罗莎，问问她法国的情况；我会和阿黛尔交谈，会亲自去出版社，问问他们想怎么处理我的稿子，问他们是真的相信这是一本好书，还是只是顺从我婆婆的意思。最后，我听见走廊里有脚步声，那是尼诺。他的动静让我心里翻江倒海，他现在还在，但很快就走了。我把艾尔莎缠着我的手臂打开，说：“对不起，艾尔莎，妈妈马上回来。”我很快跑开了。
Dede appeared, barefoot. I went to get
her slippers and woke Elsa, who, as usual, her eyes still closed, covered me
with kisses. What a good smell she had, how soft she was. Yes, I said to
myself, it happened. Fortunately, it could never happen. But now I had to
discipline myself. Telephone Mariarosa to find out about France, talk to
Adele, go in person to the publishers to find out what they intend to do with
my book, if they are thinking about it seriously or just want to please my
mother-*-law. Then I heard noises in the hall. It was Nino, I was overwhelmed
by the signs of his presence, he was here, for a short time still. I
disentangled myself from the child’s hug, I said: sorry, Elsa, Mamma will be
right back, and I hurried out.
尼诺满脸困意地从房间里出来，我把他推到了洗手间，关上了房门。我们接吻了，我又一次忘记了自己身处何处，忘记了这是什么时候。我那么擅长隐藏我的情感，我对他的渴望，让我自己也觉得很惊异。我们拥抱的那种狂热，是我从来都没有体验过的，就好像我们的身体一个撞向另一个，要粉身碎骨一样。快感就在这里：粉碎，混合，再也分不清楚什么是我的，什么是他的，这时候即使是彼得罗和两个女儿出现，也不会认出我们来。我在他嘴边小声说：
Nino was coming sleepily out of his room,
I pushed him into the bathroom, I closed the door. We kissed each other,
again I lost awareness of place and time. I was amazed at how much I wanted
him: I was good at hiding things from myself. We embraced with a fury that I
had never known, as if our bodies were crashing against each other with the
intention of breaking. So pleasure was this: breaking, mixing, no longer
knowing what was mine and what was his. Even if Pietro had appeared, if the
children had looked in, they would have been unable to recognize us. I
whispered in his mouth:
“留下来吧。”
“Stay longer.”
“我不能。”
“I can’t.”
“那你要回来，你发誓说，你会回来。”
“Then come back, swear you’ll come back.”
“我发誓。”
“Yes.”
“给我打电话。”
“And call me.”
“好。”
“Yes.”
“告诉我，你不会忘记我，告诉我，你不会离开我，告诉我，你爱我。”
“Tell me you won’t forget me, tell me you
won’t leave me, tell me you love me.”
“我爱你。”
“I love you.”
“再说一遍。”
“Say it again.”
“我爱你。”
“I love you.”
“你发誓，你不是在撒谎。”
“Swear that it’s not a lie.”
“我发誓。”
“I swear.”
