Contents
Portrait of an Invisible Man
The Book of Memory
回忆之书
Portrait of an Invisible Man
一个隐形人的自画像
In searching out the truth,be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it. —Heraclitus
在追寻真理的过程中,做好迎接未知的准备，因为要找到它是困难的，而当你找到它的时候，它又会使你困惑。 ——赫拉克利特（Heraclitus，约公元前540年—前470年）是一位富传奇色彩的哲学家，是爱菲斯学派的代表人物。（译者注）
One day there is life. A man, for example, in the best of health, not even old, with no history of illness. Everything is as it was, as it will always be.
某一天，生命出现了。比如说有这样一个人，身体是在最健康的状态，也不年长，同时没有任何疾病史。所有事物都一如往昔，
He goes from one day to the next, minding his own business, dreaming only of the life that lies before him. And then, suddenly, it happens there is death.
他在一天交替之际，琢磨着自己的事业，仅仅醉心于展现在他面前的生活。然后，突然，死亡降临了。
A man lets out a little sigh, he slumps down in his chair, and it is death.
一位男士发出一声轻叹，他瘫倒在椅子的怀里，然后就只有死寂。
The suddenness of it leaves no room for thought, gives the mind no chance to seek out a word that might comfort it.
突如其来的死亡没有留下任何思索的空间，任何寻找出一个安慰性词汇的机会。
We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality.
我们所得到的除了死亡，这一个无法免去的关于我们必死命运的事实，别无他物。
Death after a long illness we can accept with resignation. Even accidental death we can ascribe to fate.
长时间疾病之后的离世我们可以平静地接受。即使是意外导致的死亡我们也可以诉之命运。
But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on.
但是对于一个没有任何明显死因的人，对于一个仅仅是因为他自己是人而离世的人，却把我们带到了距离生与死之间那条无形的界限如此之近的地方。以至于我们不再明确我们自己，到底身处何方。
Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning. Which is to say: life stops. And it can stop at any moment.
生命变成了死亡，并且好像是这死亡一直拥有着生命。毫无征兆的死亡。也就意味着：生命会停下来，并且它在任何一个时刻都会停下来。
The news of my father’s death came to me three weeks ago.
我在三周前收到了我父亲的死讯。
It was Sunday morning, and I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for my small son, Daniel. Upstairs my wife was still in bed, warm under the quilts, luxuriating in a few extra hours of sleep.
那是一个周日的早晨，我在厨房里为小儿子丹尼尔准备早餐。在楼上，我的妻子还在床上温暖的被窝中，享受着额外的几小时的睡眠。
Winter in the country: a world of silence, wood smoke, whiteness. My mind was filled with thoughts about the piece I had been writing the night before, and I was looking ahead to the afternoon when I would be able to get back to work. Then the phone rang.
乡间的冬天是一个只有寂静，炊烟和纯白的世界。我的脑中全是关于昨夜一直在写的片段的思绪，同时我还在期盼着我能够回去干活的下午。这时候，电话响了起来。
I knew instantly that there was trouble. No one calls at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning unless it is to give news that cannot wait. And news that cannot wait is always bad news.
我顿时知道有麻烦了。因为除非是有着紧急的事情需要通知否则不会有人在周日的清早八点打电话来的。而且，不能等待的消息往往都是坏消息。
I could not muster a single ennobling thought.
我压根想不到什么好的方面。
Even before we packed our bags and set out on the three hour drive to New Jersey, I knew that I would have to write about my father.
即使在收拾好行李要踏上三小时开往新泽西的车程之前，我知道我将要写一些关于我父亲的文字。
I had no plan, had no precise idea of what this meant. I cannot even remember making a decision about it. It was simply there, a certainty, an obligation that began to impose itself on me the moment I was given the news. I thought: my father is gone. If I do not act quickly, his entire life will vanish along with him.
我没有计划，没有一个关于这到底意味着什么的准确概念。我甚至忘记了做了一个关于这件事的什么决定。这消息就在那儿，一个确信的消息，同时也是一项义务，自我得知了这条消息开始，便赋予在了我的身上。我想：我的父亲走了，如果我不赶紧做点什么，他整个人生都会随他一同离去。
Looking back on it now, even from so short a distance as three weeks, I find this a rather curious reaction. I had always imagined that death would numb me, immobilize me with grief.
现在回想起来，即使仅仅是才过了三周，我便发现这是一个相当令人好奇的反应。我过去总是想着死亡会麻痹我，使我悲伤到停滞不前。
But now that it had happened, I did not shed any tears, I did not feel as though the world had collapsed around me. In some strange way, I was remarkably prepared to accept this death, in spite of its suddenness. What disturbed me was something else, something unrelated to death or my response to it: the realization that my father had left no traces.
但是现在它发生了，我却没有抑制任何泪水，我也并没有感觉世界在我周围崩塌。从某种奇怪的角度来说，我已极大程度的准备好了接受这个死讯，尽管它来的那么突然。真正困扰我的是一些别的事情，一些无关乎死亡或是我的反应的事情：就是我意识到我的父亲离开的毫无痕迹。
He had no wife, no family that depended on him, no one whose life would be altered by his absence. A brief moment of shock, perhaps, on the part of scattered friends, sobered as much by the thought of capricious death as by the loss of their friend, followed by a short period of mourning, and then nothing. Eventually, it would be as though he had never lived at all.
他没有依赖他而生活的妻子和家庭，没有人的生活会因他的离去而被改变。对于他那些分散开来的朋友，可能他们其中的一部分可能会有一刹那的惊愕，因朋友离世而想到生死无常进而带来的啜泣，紧接着可能会有一小段时间的哀悼，然后，就没了，什么都不再发生。最终，情况会变得好像他从未存在于过这世界上。
Even before his death he had been absent, and long ago the people closest to him had learned to accept this absence, to treat it as the fundamental quality of his being. Now that he was gone, it would not be difficult for the world to absorb the fact that he was gone forever. The nature of his life had prepared the world for his death—had been a kind of death by anticipation—and if and when he was remembered, it would be dimly, no more than dimly.
即使在他离世之前他就已经开始变得没有存在感，很久以前开始亲近他的朋友就已经学会接受他的缺席，把这当做一种他存在的基本方式。现在既然他去世了，接受他永远缺席的事实也没那么困难。他生命的本质早已为这世界准备好他的死亡——一种意料之中的死亡——并且如果他被人记起，也只会是十分模糊的印象，除此之外别无他物。
Devoid of passion, either for a thing, a person, or an idea, incapable or unwilling to reveal himself under any circumstances, he had managed to keep himself at a distance from life, to avoid immersion in the quick of things.
对于无论是人，事或者仅仅是一个想法缺乏热情，不愿或不能够在任何情况下展现自己，他已经成功掌握了将自己同生活隔绝开来，以避免陷入到事情的核心之中。