48
后来，我和尼诺为这事儿吵了一架。我说他不应该那么出言不慎，尽管他信誓旦旦地否认，但我确信，他一定是对他同事的妻子说过那些话。尽管我习惯把一切都埋在心里，那次我也忍不住发脾气了。
Afterward I quarreled with Nino for his
lack of tact, for the confidences that, although he denied it indignantly, he
must surely have made to the wife of his colleague, for everything I kept
inside me and that this time, too, in the end I stifled.
我没告诉他，莉拉觉得他是一个爱撒谎的叛徒。我知道那没有用，他一定会笑起来。但我怀疑，莉拉暗示他不值得信任，肯定有什么更具体的原因。那是一种迟缓的怀疑，夹杂着一丝不情愿，我没有任何意愿把这种怀疑转化成一种让人无法忍受的现实，但无论如何，怀疑一直在持续。因此，十一月的一个星期天，我先去了我母亲那里，然后在下午六点去了莉拉家里。我的两个女儿在佛罗伦萨她们父亲的家里，尼诺和他家人（那时候，我就是这么说的：“你的家人”）去参加他丈人的生日聚会了。至于莉拉，我知道她一个人在家，恩佐有事要去阿维利诺的亲戚那里，他把詹纳罗也带去了。
I didn’t say to him: Lila considers you a
traitorous liar. It was pointless, he would have started laughing. But the
suspicion remained that that mention of his unreliability alluded to
something concrete. It was a slow, reluctant suspicion, I myself had no
intention of transforming it into some intolerable certainty. And yet it
persisted. So one Sunday in November, I went first to my mother, then, around
six, to Lila’s house. My daughters were in Florence with their father, Nino
was celebrating his father-in-law’s birthday with his family (that was how I
put it now: your family). I knew that Lila was alone; Enzo had had to go and
see some relatives of his in Avellino and had taken Gennaro.
我肚子里的孩子很不安分，我说，这是天气太热的缘故。莉拉抱怨肚子里的孩子太折腾，在她肚子里不停地拳打脚踢。为了让肚子里的孩子平静下来，莉拉想去散散步。但我去的时候带了点心，还煮了咖啡，在那个面朝大路、非常简朴的房间里，我想坐下来和她心平气和地谈谈。
The creature in my womb was nervous, I
blamed the heavy air. Lila, too, complained that the baby was moving too
much, she said it was forever creating a choppy sea in her belly. To calm him
she wanted to take a walk, but I had brought pastries; I made the coffee
myself, I wanted to have a private conversation, in the intimacy of that bare
house with windows onto the stradone.
我假装特别想和她聊，我先说到了一些我不是特别关心的话题——为什么马尔切洛说，是你把他弟弟毁掉了？你对米凯莱做了什么？然后我要用一种半开玩笑的语气，就好像只是想说说笑而已，但我的目的是一步步让她说出心里话，我要问她一个我最在意的问题：关于尼诺，有什么事情是她知道而我不知道的。
I pretended I was in the mood for idle
talk. I mentioned matters that interested me less—Why does Marcello say
you’re the ruin of his brother, what did you do to Michele—and in a tone
partly of fun, as if they were just something to laugh about. I counted on
slowly getting to the question that I really cared about: What do you know
about Nino that I don’t know.
莉拉很不情愿地回答了我的问题。她一会儿坐着，一会儿站起来。她说，她肚子的感觉就像喝了好几升汽水儿。她说，奶油蛋卷的味道让她受不了，平常她很喜欢吃，但现在她觉得那味道太糟糕了。“你知道马尔切洛是什么人。”她说，“他从来都没有忘记我小时候对他做的，但他是一个懦夫，不敢当面把话说出来，他表面上装作是一个善人，一脸无辜，但却喜欢在背后说人闲话。”这时候，她用那个阶段她常用的语气，就是热情里夹杂着一丝不恭，她说：“你现在是个阔太太了，你不要再操心我的那些烂事儿了，跟我说说你母亲怎么样了。”她只想和我聊我的事儿，但我没死心，说完我母亲的身体，还有她对埃莉莎还有我两个弟弟的担忧，我又把话题扯到了索拉拉兄弟身上。她用满是讽刺的语气说，叹了一口气说，男人最热衷的事儿就是搞女人。她笑着解释说：“不是马尔切洛——虽然他也一样——我说的是米凯莱，他后来发疯了。他一直以来都对我有意思，他对我影子的影子都会穷追不舍。”她特别强调地说了“我影子的影子”。她说，因为这个缘故，马尔切洛才很生她的气，威胁了她，他无法忍受她像对狗一样对待米凯莱，用绳子拴住他带上街去遛，他觉得这很丢脸。她说这些时，依然在笑，她后来忽然冒出来一句：“马尔切洛以为自己能吓唬到我，真是的！唯一真正让人害怕的人是他母亲，你知道她后来的下场了吧。”
Lila answered unwillingly. She sat down,
she got up, she said her stomach felt as if she had swallowed liters of
carbonated drinks, she complained about the smell of the cannoli, which she
usually liked but which now seemed to her bad. Marcello—you know what he’s
like, she said, he’s never forgotten what I did to him as a girl, and since
he’s a coward he doesn’t say things to your face, he acts like a good person,
harmless, but he spreads gossip. Then she took the tone she always had in
that phase, affectionate and at the same time slightly teasing: But you’re a
lady, forget my troubles, tell me how your mother is. As usual she wanted me
to talk about myself, but I didn’t yield. Moving from my mother, from her
worries about Elisa and my brothers, I led her back to the Solaras. She
grumbled, she said sarcastically that men place such an enormous importance
on fucking, she laughed: not Marcello—although even he doesn’t joke—but
Michele, who went crazy, he’s been obsessed with me for a long time, and even
runs after the shadow of my shadow. She repeated that expression
allusively—shadow of my shadow—she said that was why Marcello was angry and
threatened her, he couldn’t bear the fact that she had put a leash on his
brother and led him in directions that in his view were humiliating. She
laughed again, she muttered: Marcello thinks he can scare me, but look, the
only person who really knew how to scare people was his mother and you know
how she ended up.
她在说话时，一直在摸自己的额头，抱怨天气太热，还有她早上起来轻微的头疼，到现在还没消退。我明白，她一方面想让我放心，一方面又向我展示出，她每天工作和生活背后的一些事，在新旧城区的街道上，在那些房子里发生的一些事情。一方面，她好几次都否认这里很危险，另一方面，她又说了各种各样的犯罪：勒索、殴打、偷盗、放高利贷和恶性报复。曼努埃拉的那本秘密的红本子，在她死了之后开始由米凯莱掌管，现在是马尔切洛掌管——因为不放心，他从他弟弟手里要了过来。马尔切洛现在也掌管着他们家所有合法和非法的生意，也包括和警察局的交涉。她忽然说：“好几年前，马尔切洛把毒品带到了城区，我想看看，这事儿怎么收场。”还有类似于这样的句子。她脸色很苍白，一边用裙摆扇风。
As she talked she kept touching her
forehead, she complained of the heat, of the slight headache she’d had since
the morning. I understood that she wanted to reassure me but also, in a
contradictory manner, show me a little of what was there where she lived and
worked every day, behind the façade of the houses, on the streets of the new
neighborhood and the old one. Thus on the one hand she repeatedly denied the
danger, on the other drew me a picture of spreading crime, extortion,
assault, theft, usury, revenge followed by revenge. The secret red book that
Manuela maintained and that after her death had passed to Michele was now
controlled by Marcello, who was also taking away from his brother—out of
distrust—the management of the legal and illegal trafficking, the political
friendships. She said suddenly: Marcello has been bringing drugs to the
neighborhood for several years, and I want to see where it’s going to end up.
A remark like that. She was very pale, fanning herself with the edge of her
skirt.
她提到的所有事儿，只有毒品让我印象深刻，尤其是她提到毒品时，用了那种非常鄙夷的语气。在那段时间，对于我来说，使用毒品很正常，在马丽娅罗莎家里，有时候在塔索街上的房子里，经常有人会吸。我自己从来没吸过，除了出于好奇，抽过几次大麻，但其他人这样做我觉得没什么大不了的。在我当时出没的那些场合，还有来往的人，大家都觉得这些没什么大不了。就这样，为了和她聊下去，我提到了这些使用非法毒品的人，还特别举了在米兰时的例子，在马丽娅罗莎看来，使用非法毒品是个人享受的众多渠道之一，是一种文明的释放形式，可以让人打破禁忌。莉拉很不赞同地摇了摇头：“释放什么？莱农，帕尔米耶里太太的儿子两个星期前吸毒死了，他们在小花园里找到了他。”我感觉，我说的那个词——释放，还有我说这个词时赋予它的正面价值，激起了她极大的反感。我一下变得很不自在，鼓起勇气说了一句：“他会不会是心脏病发作了呢。”她回答道：“是海洛因发作了。”她草草结束了话题：“不说了，我好烦，大星期天的，我不想说索拉拉兄弟的那些烂事儿。”
Of all her allusions, only the one to
drugs struck me, particularly because of her tone of disgust and disapproval.
Drugs for me at that time meant Mariarosa’s house, or, on certain evenings,
the apartment on Via Tasso. I had never used drugs, apart from smoking once
or twice, out of curiosity, but I wasn’t outraged if others did, in the
circles I had frequented and did frequent no one was outraged. So, to keep
the conversation going, I stated an opinion, drawing on the days in Milan,
and on Mariarosa, for whom taking drugs was one of many channels for
individual well-being, a way of freeing oneself from taboos, a cultivated
form of release. But Lila shook her head in opposition: What release, Lenù,
the son of Signora Palmieri died two weeks ago, they found him in the
gardens. And I perceived the irritation she felt at that word, release, at my
way of saying it, assigning it a positive value. I stiffened, I ventured: He
must have had some heart trouble. She answered, He had heroin trouble, and
she quickly added: That’s enough, I’m fed up, I don’t want to spend Sunday
talking about the revolting activities of the Solaras.
话虽然这么说，但她还是比其他时候说了更多他们的事儿。过了很漫长的一刻，因为烦躁不安，也因为疲惫，也可能是因为她的选择——我不知道——莉拉把话题扯开了。我意识到虽然只有寥寥几句，但她还是在我脑子里填满了各种各样的影像。我早就知道米凯莱想要她——他用那种非常抽象、偏执的方式想要她，这种欲望折磨着他，很明显，她利用这一点让他趴下了，但她提到了她“影子的影子”，让我马上想到了阿方索。阿方索特别像她的影子，在千人军街的那家店里，阿方索穿着那条裙子时我仿佛看到了米凯莱——一个被迷惑的米凯莱，他掀开了那条裙子，把阿方索揽到自己怀里。至于马尔切洛，忽然间毒品已经不是我通常想的那样，只是那些富人们休闲的游戏，我感觉毒品已经转移到了教堂旁边的小花园里了，已经变成了一条毒蛇，毒液慢慢渗入到我的两个弟弟、里诺，也许还有詹纳罗的身体里。这条毒蛇会杀人，会把钱带到曼努埃拉·索拉拉那里，那个红本子先是由她保管，后来经过米凯莱又交到马尔切洛手上，现在那个本子应该在我妹妹家里，在我妹妹手上。我又一次感到莉拉说话的那种魅力，她用短短几句话就能激起很多想象。她很随意地说着，说几句，停下来，让那些场景和情感慢慢浮现出来，她不补充别的。我有些凌乱地想：我错了，我到现在在写作时，我只是写出了我所知道的。我应该像她说话那样写作，我要留下漩涡，我要建立一些桥梁，但并不完全描述出来，我要强迫读者去注视流水。马尔切洛·索拉拉、我妹妹埃莉莎、西尔维奥、佩佩、詹尼、里诺和詹纳罗很快掠过我的脑海，还有跟在莉拉的影子的影子后面的米凯莱，我想象着帕尔米耶里太太的儿子的血管——我连他是谁都不知道，现在我为他感到心痛，他的血管和尼诺带到塔索街上的那些人的血管全然不同，和马丽娅罗莎家里的那些人的也不一样。现在我想起来了，马丽娅罗莎的一个女性朋友病了，后来不得不去戒毒。有人可以幸免，有人会死掉。我不知道我大姑子现在在哪儿，我已经很长时间没有她的消息了。
Yet she had done so, and more than usual.
A long moment slipped by. Out of restlessness, out of weariness, out of
choice—I don’t know—Lila had slightly widened the net of her conversation,
and I realized that even if she hadn’t said much she had filled my head with
new images. I had long known that Michele wanted her—wanted her in that
abstractly obsessive way that was harmful to him—and it was clear that she
had taken advantage of it by bringing him to his knees. But now she had
evoked the shadow of her shadow, and with that expression had thrust before
my eyes Alfonso, the Alfonso who posed as a reflection of her in a maternity
dress in the store on Via dei Mille, and I had seen Michele, a dazzled
Michele, lifting his dress, holding him tight. As for Marcello, in a flash
drugs stopped being what they had seemed to me, a liberating game for wealthy
people, and moved into the sticky theater of the gardens beside the church,
they had become a viper, a poison that spread through the blood of my
brothers, of Rino, perhaps of Gennaro, and murdered, and brought money into
the red book once kept by Manuela Solara and now—having passed from Michele
to Marcello—by my sister, in her house. I felt all the fascination of the way
Lila governed the imagination of others or set it free, at will, with just a
few words: that speaking, stopping, letting images and emotions go without
adding anything else. I’m wrong, I said to myself in confusion, to write as
I’ve done until now, recording everything I know. I should write the way she
speaks, leave abysses, construct bridges and not finish them, force the
reader to establish the flow: Marcello Solara who takes off quickly with my
sister Elisa, with Silvio, with Peppe, with Gianni, with Rino, with Gennaro,
with Michele enthralled by the shadow of the shadow of Lila; suggest that
they all slip inside the veins of Signora Palmieri’s son, a boy I don’t even
know and who now causes me pain, veins far away from those of the people Nino
brings to Via Tasso, from Mariarosa’s, from those of a friend of hers—I now
remembered—who was sick, and had to detox, and my sister-in-law, too,
wherever she is, I haven’t heard from her for a long time, some people are
always saved and some perish.
我很努力地从脑子里抹去那些影像：男人之间放荡的性交，插入到血管里的针管，欲望和死亡。我试着和她继续聊下去，但我感觉有些不对劲儿，那个午后的炎热让我喘不过气来。我记得我的腿很沉重，脖子上全是汗水，我看着厨房墙壁上的钟，那时候刚刚七点半过一点。在灰暗的灯光下，我感觉自己再也不想提到尼诺，比如问坐在我面前的莉拉：关于尼诺，她知道什么我不知道的事儿。她知道很多，甚至太多了，她本可以让我想象一些再也无法抹去的场景：他们曾经一起睡觉，一起学习，她帮助过他写过文章，就像我帮他修改文章一样。我忽然感到一阵嫉妒和醋意，让我很痛苦，我尽量把这些话压制下去了。
I tried to expel images of voluptuous
penetrations between men, of needles in veins, of desire and death. I tried
to resume the conversation but something wasn’t right, I felt the heat of
that late afternoon in my throat, I remember that my legs felt heavy and my
neck was sweaty. I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, it was just after
seven-thirty. I discovered I no longer felt like talking about Nino, like
asking Lila, sitting opposite me in a low yellowish light, what do you know
about him that I don’t know. She knew a lot, too much, she could make me
imagine whatever she wanted and I would never be able to erase the images
from my mind. They had slept together, they had studied together, she had
helped him write his articles, as I had done with the essays. For a moment
jealousy and envy returned. They hurt me and I repressed them.
或者，把这些话压下去的，是这栋楼和大路底下的轰隆声，就好像大路上那些来来往往的卡车向我们的方向开来了，就好像这些卡车马力十足，开到地下，在这栋楼房的地基下横冲直撞。
Or probably what actually repressed them
was a kind of thunder under the building, under the stradone, as if one of
the trucks that were constantly passing had swerved in our direction, was
descending rapidly underground with the engine at top speed, and running into
our foundations, crashing and shattering everything.
49
我喘不上气来，有那么一刹那，我不明白发生了什么事。咖啡杯在小碟子上颤抖，桌子腿碰到了我的膝盖。我一下子站了起来，我意识到莉拉也很忧虑，她也想站起来。椅子向后倒去，她试着想抓住它，但她的动作很慢，她弯着腰，一只手伸向前面，伸向我的方向。她的另一只手伸向椅子背，她眯着眼睛，好像在做出决定之前的表情。这时候房子下面的轰隆声依然在继续，就好像地下的一阵风，正在地板下掀起一阵神秘的波浪。我看着天花板，灯泡和上面的浅红色玻璃灯罩一起在摇晃。
My breath was cut short, and for a
fraction of a second I couldn’t understand what was happening. The coffee cup
trembled on the saucer, the leg of the table bumped my knee. I jumped up, and
realized that Lila, too, was alarmed, she was trying to get up. The chair was
tilting backward, she tried to grasp it, but slowly, bent over, one hand
reaching in front of her, in my direction, the other extended toward the
chair back, her eyes narrowing, the way they did when she concentrated before
reacting. Meanwhile thunder rumbled beneath the building, a stormy
underground wind lifted waves of a secret sea against the floor. I looked at
the ceiling; the light was swaying, along with the pink glass cover.
地震了！我喊道。地在摇晃，脚下爆发了一场风暴，像一阵摧枯拉朽的风，在摇撼着整个房屋，墙壁在咯咯吱吱作响，好像膨胀起来了，墙角在开合。天花板洒下来一阵阵灰尘，和墙壁上抖落的灰尘混合在一起。我冲向了门口，又喊了一句：“地震了！”但冲向门口只是我的一个意图，其实我没办法向前迈一步，我的脚很沉重，一切都很沉重，脑袋、胸口，尤其是肚子。我想踩上去的地板，好像忽然收缩回去了，之前还在，一刹那之后就远去了。
Earthquake, I cried. The earth was
moving, an invisible tempest exploding under my feet, shaking the room with
the howl of a forest subdued by gusts of wind. The walls creaked, they
appeared distended, they came unstuck and were pasted together again at the
corners. A cloud of dust rained down from the ceiling, adding to the cloud
that came out of the walls. I rushed toward the door, shouting again:
earthquake. But the movement was mere intention, I couldn’t take a step. My
feet were like lead, everything was heavy, my head, my chest, above all my
stomach. And yet the ground on which I wanted to step was receding: for a
fraction of a second it was there and then immediately it subsided.
我想到了莉拉，我用目光搜寻着她。那把椅子终于倒在地上，家具——尤其是一个老橱柜上面的所有东西：杯子、刀叉、中国的小玩意儿，都随着窗户玻璃一起抖动，就像刮风时屋檐口上长着的杂草。莉拉站在房间中央，她弯着腰，低着头，眯着眼睛，眉头紧皱，她的手紧紧抱着肚子，就好像担心肚子会蹦出去，消失在周围飞扬的灰尘里。过了漫长的几秒，一切都没有恢复。我叫她，她没有反应，我感觉她很冷静，她是在场的所有事物之中唯一能对抗这种抖动和摇晃的。她好像抹去了所有感觉：耳朵听不到，鼻子也不再呼吸，她的嘴巴紧闭着，眼皮也合拢着，她是一个僵硬的、一动不动的身体，只用张开手指捂着肚子的两只手是活的。
I remembered Lila, I sought her with my
gaze. The chair had finally fallen over, the ceiling light was swaying, the
furniture—especially an old sideboard with its knickknacks, glasses,
silverware, chinoiserie—vibrated along with the windowpanes, like weeds
growing in the eaves, stirred by the breeze. Lila was standing in the middle
of the room, leaning forward, head down, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, her
hands holding her stomach as if she were afraid that it would slip away from
her and get lost in the cloud of plaster dust. The seconds slid by, but
nothing appeared to want to return to order; I called to her. She didn’t
respond, she seemed solid, the only one of all the shapes impervious to
jolts, tremors. She seemed to have erased every feeling: her ears didn’t
hear, her throat didn’t inhale air, her mouth was locked, her eyelids
canceled her gaze. She was a motionless organism, rigid, alive only in the
hands that, fingers spread, gripped her stomach.
莉拉！我叫她。我要过去抓住她，把她从屋子里拉出去，那是最要紧的事情。但我的潜意识忽然又冒了出来，对我说：你应该像她那样，你应该一动不动，抱着肚子，保护好你肚子里的孩子，不要跑开。我很难做决定，尽管我们只有几步远，走到她跟前却是一件很艰难的事情。最后我抓住了她的一条胳膊摇晃了一下，她睁开了眼睛，我只能看到她的眼白。整个城市都在呼啸，维苏威火山、街道、大海、全部城区、法院路的老房子，还有波西利波的新房子，声音大得让人无法忍受。莉拉甩开了我，喊道：“不要碰我！”那是非常愤怒的叫喊，这声叫喊和地震漫长的几秒，深深地刻在了我的脑子里。我明白我错了：她总是能掌控一切，在那个时刻，她什么都掌控不了。她吓得已经动不了了，她害怕，即使我轻轻碰她一下，她就会破裂。
Lila, I called. I moved to grab her, drag
her away, it was the most urgent thing to do. The lower part of me, the part
I thought was exhausted but, instead, here it was reviving, suggested to me:
maybe you should be like her, stand still, bend over to protect your infant,
don’t run away, think calmly. I struggled to make up my mind, to reach her
was difficult, and yet it was just a step. Finally I seized her by the arm, I
shook her, and she opened her eyes, which seemed white. The noise was
unbearable, the whole city was making noise, Vesuvius, the streets, the sea,
the old houses of the Tribunali and the Quartieri, the new ones of Posillipo.
She wriggled free, she cried: Don’t touch me. It was an angry shout, and
shocked me even more than the long seconds of the earthquake. I realized that
I was mistaken: Lila, always in control of everything, at that moment wasn’t
in control of anything. She was immobilized by horror, fearful that if I
merely touched her she would break.
50
我用了很大的劲儿，又推又搡，再加上恳求，才把她拉到外面。我害怕，在刚才那阵让我们无法动弹的地震之后，会来另一场更彻底、更可怕的地震，会让一切都倒塌。我说她，恳求她，提醒她我们要保护肚子里的孩子。这样，我们也和大家一样，卷入慌忙失措的举动和叫喊中，就好像整个城区和城市的心脏快要破裂了。我们刚来到院子里，莉拉就吐了，我也强忍着呕吐。
I dragged her outside, tugging her
violently, pushing, entreating. I was afraid the tremor that had paralyzed us
would be followed immediately by another, more terrible, final, and that
everything would collapse on top of us. I admonished her, I begged her, I
reminded her that we had to rescue the creatures we carried in our wombs. So
we flung ourselves into the wake of terrified cries, a growing clamor joined
to frenzied movements—it seemed that the heart of the neighborhood, of the
city, was about to burst. As soon as we reached the courtyard, Lila threw up;
I fought the nausea that gripped my stomach.
那次地震——一九八〇年十一月二十三日的那次地震，还有随之而来的无穷无尽的余震，都深深刻在了我们的脑子里。这场地震，打破了我们往常那种坚固的信念：下一秒和上一秒会完全一样，下一秒的声音、动作都是我们熟悉的。我进入了对任何保证都会产生怀疑的阶段，我趋向于相信各种各样的预言，我开始关注这个世界支离破碎的迹象，我非常焦虑，很难恢复正常，每一秒都无比漫长。
The earthquake—the earthquake of November
23, 1980, with its infinite destruction—entered into our bones. It expelled
the habit of stability and solidity, the confidence that every second would
be identical to the next, the familiarity of sounds and gestures, the
certainty of recognizing them. A sort of suspicion of every form of
reassurance took over, a tendency to believe in every prediction of bad luck,
an obsessive attention to signs of the brittleness of the world, and it was
hard to take control again. Minutes and minutes and minutes that wouldn’t
end.
街上要比家里更混乱，到处都是叫喊的声音，一切都在动，我们听到了一些传言，让我们的恐惧增加了百倍。我们看到铁路那边有红色的光，维苏威火山醒了过来。大海掀起的巨浪，撞击着梅格丽娜莉娜区、市政府还有奇娅塔莫内。红桥那里塌陷了，“彼岸托”公墓和里面的死者一起下沉了，波焦雷亚莱监狱全塌了，犯人要么被压在了废墟下面，要么逃走了，现在他们在街上杀人放火，只是为了取乐。通往海边的隧道也塌了，把半个城区都埋了。传出很多危言耸听的消息，每个人都加入了自己的想象。我看到，莉拉什么都信，她在我怀里瑟瑟发抖。“整个城市都很危险，”她小声对我说，“我们要离开这里，房子会倒塌，把我们压在下面，下水道在往上喷水，你看看这些老鼠都在逃跑。”很多人都开车逃离，道路马上就塞住了。她拉住我，喃喃地说：“所有人都去乡下，那里要安全一些。”她想要去她的汽车那里，想去一个开阔的地方，头顶上只有天空，塌下来也不会那么重，我没办法让她平静下来。
Outside was worse than inside, everything
was moving and shouting, we were assaulted by rumors that multiplied the
terror. Red flashes could be seen in the direction of the railroad. Vesuvius
had reawakened. The sea was beating against Mergellina, the city hall,
Chiatamone. The cemetery of the Pianto had sunk, along with the dead,
Poggioreale had collapsed entirely. The prisoners were either under the ruins
or had escaped and now were murdering people just for the hell of it. The
tunnel that led to the Marina had collapsed, burying half the fleeing
neighborhood. Fantasies fed on one another, and Lila, I saw, believed
everything, she trembled as she clung to my arm. The city is dangerous, she
whispered, we have to go, the houses are cracking, everything is falling on
us, the sewers are spurting into the air, look how the rats are escaping.
Since people were running to their cars and the streets were becoming
congested, she began to pull me, she whispered, they’re all going to the
countryside, it’s safer there. She wanted to run to her car, she wanted to
get to an open space where only the sky, which seemed weightless, could fall
on our heads. I couldn’t calm her.
我们来到了汽车跟前，但莉拉没钥匙。我们从家里跑出来时，什么都没拿，门在身后拉上了，我们回不了家了，再说，我们也没有勇气回去。我抓住了一个车门把手，使尽全部力气拉，摇晃，这时候莉拉在叫喊，就好像我拉车门这个动作制造了极大的噪音，让她受不了。我看着周围，我看到了一块从矮墙上脱落下来的大石头，我用石头砸开了一个车窗。“我会找人给你修的，”我说，“我们在车上待一会儿，一切都会过去的。”我们坐到汽车里，但地震并没过去，我还是感觉到地在抖动。透过落满尘土的挡风玻璃，我们看着城区的人都一堆一堆围在那里交谈。当一切似乎平息下来了，但这时候有人一边跑，一边喊着过来了，这让大家都四散跑开，有人狠狠地撞到了我们的车上，我的心跳简直都要停下来了。
We reached the car, but Lila didn’t have
the keys. We had fled without taking anything, we had pulled the door shut
behind us and, even if we had found the courage, we couldn’t go back to the
house. I seized one of the door handles with all my strength and pulled it,
shook it, but Lila shrieked, she put her hands over her ears as if my action
produced intolerable sounds and vibrations. Looking around, I saw a big rock
that had fallen out of a wall, and used it to break a window. I’ll get it
fixed later, I said, now let’s stay here, it will pass. We settled ourselves
in the car, but nothing passed, we felt a continuous trembling of the earth.
Beyond the dusty windshield, we watched the people of the neighborhood, who
had gathered in small groups to talk. But when at last things seemed quiet
someone ran by shouting, which caused a general stampede, and people slammed
into our car with heart-stopping violence.
51
我很害怕，是的，简直太害怕了。但让我吃惊的是，我没莉拉那么害怕。在地震的那几秒里，她忽然褪去了一切武装，和一分钟前成为了截然不同的一个人——之前，她是那么的工于心计，能控制自己的思想、语言和动作，但在当时的情况下，好像这些武装都没有用。她是另一个女人，她又一次成为了我在一九五八年元旦夜里看到的那个人，卡拉奇家和索拉拉家的烟火战争开始之后的那个女孩，或者是把我叫到圣约翰·特杜奇奥的那个女人，那时候她在布鲁诺·索卡沃的工厂里工作，她觉得自己得了严重的心脏病，确信自己要死了，想把詹纳罗托付给我。在过去，两个莉拉之间的联系还在，但我眼前这个女人好像直接从地里冒出来的，她一点儿也不像几分钟前，我嫉妒的那个女人——特别擅长遣词造句，说什么都很能打动人，现在她们就连面部的线条也不一样了，眼前这个莉拉因为恐惧，面部变得扭曲。
I was afraid, yes, I was terrified. But
to my great amazement I wasn’t as frightened as Lila. In those seconds of the
earthquake she had suddenly stripped off the woman she had been until a
moment before—the one who was able to precisely calibrate thoughts, words,
gestures, tactics, strategies—as if in that situation she considered her a
useless suit of armor. Now she was someone else. She was the person I had
glimpsed the time Melina walked along the stradone eating soap; or the one of
the night of New Year’s Eve in 1958, when the fireworks war broke out between
the Carraccis and the Solaras; or the one who had sent for me in San Giovanni
a Teduccio, when she worked in Bruno Soccavo’s factory and, thinking
something was wrong with her heart, wanted to leave me Gennaro because she
was sure she would die. But now that other person seemed to have emerged
directly from the churning guts of the earth; she bore almost no resemblance
to the friend who a few minutes before I had envied for her ability to choose
words deliberately; there was no resemblance even in the features, disfigured
by anguish.
我永远都不能忍受这样急遽的变形，我的自控力是稳定的，周围世界在最可怕的时候，我也能自然接受。我知道，黛黛和艾尔莎在佛罗伦萨，和她们的父亲在一起，那里不会有任何风险，这让我很放心。我希望，最可怕的时刻已经过去了，我们的城区没有房屋倒塌，尼诺、我母亲、我父亲、埃莉莎还有我的两个弟弟，他们一定像我们一样受到了惊吓，但也像我们一样没事儿。但莉拉没办法平静下来，她没办法和我想法一样。她在发抖，整个身子缩成一团，她抚摸着自己的肚子，一点安全感也没有。对于她来说，詹纳罗和恩佐已经失联了，已经找不到了。她眼睛紧闭着，发出让人心悸的呻吟，她只是抱着肚子，语无伦次，不断重复着一些形容词和名词，说着一些没有意义的句子，但她说得很确信，还一边拽着我。
I could never have undergone such an
abrupt metamorphosis, my self-discipline was stable, the world existed around
me, in a natural way, even in the most terrible moments. I knew that Dede and
Elsa were with their father in Florence, and Florence was an elsewhere out of
danger, which in itself calmed me. I hoped that the worst had passed, that no
house in the neighborhood had collapsed, that Nino, my mother, my father,
Elisa, my brothers were surely, like us, frightened, but surely, like us,
alive. She, on the other hand, no, she couldn’t think in that way. She
writhed, she trembled, she caressed her stomach, she no longer seemed to
believe in solid connections. For her Gennaro and Enzo had lost every
connection with each other and with us, they were destroyed. She emitted a
sort of death rattle, eyes wide, she clutched herself, held tight. And she
repeated obsessively adjectives and nouns that were completely incongruous
with the situation we were in, she uttered sentences without sense and yet
she uttered them with conviction, tugging on me.
有很长一段时间，我给她指着一些我们认识的人，我打开车窗，挥舞着手臂，呼唤着他们，想让她想起他们的名字，让他们也讲讲这次地震糟糕的体验，也让她说几句正常的话，但没有用。我用手指着卡门和她的丈夫，还有几个孩子，他们用枕头挡在头上，看起来很滑稽；我给她指着一个男人，可能是卡门的小叔子，他甚至背了一个床垫，他们和其他人一起向火车站走去，走得很快。他们都带了一些很没意义的东西，有一个女人手上拿着一口平底锅。我给她指着安东尼奥、他的妻子还有孩子，那几个孩子很漂亮，就像电影里的人物，让我惊呆了，他们不慌不忙地坐上了一辆绿色的小面包，然后出发了。我给她指着卡拉奇全家人，还有几个相干的人：丈夫、妻子、父亲、母亲、同居者、情人等等，也就是说斯特凡诺、艾达、梅丽娜、玛丽亚、皮诺奇娅、里诺、阿方索、玛丽莎还有他们的孩子——他们出现，然后消失在人群，为了不走散，他们不停相互呼唤着彼此的名字。我指着马尔切洛·索拉拉的豪车，他的车子马达在轰鸣着，急于摆脱拥堵的路段：他旁边坐着我妹妹埃莉莎和他们的孩子，后面的位子上是我母亲和我父亲黯淡的影子。透过开着的窗子，我叫着那些认识的人的名字，我想让莉拉也看到他们，但她没有动。相反，我意识到，那些我们很熟悉的人会让她更加恐惧，尤其是那些激动的、叫喊的或者奔跑着的人。这时候，马尔切洛的车开上了人行道，从停在那里聊天的人中间开了过去，她紧紧握着我的手，闭上了眼睛。她呼喊了一声：“噢，圣母啊！”我从来都没听过她用这种感叹句。我问她：“你怎么了？”她喘息着说，那辆汽车的界限消失了，方向盘前的马尔切洛界限也消失了，那些东西和人都往外喷东西，金属和肉搅成了一团。
For a long time it was useless for me to
point out people we knew, to open the window, wave my arms, call out to
anchor her to names, to voices that would have their own stories of that
terrible experience and so draw her into an orderly conversation. I pointed
out Carmen with her husband and children, and others, hurrying, on foot,
toward the station. I pointed out Antonio with his wife and children, I was
astonished at how handsome they all were, like characters in a film, as they
calmly got into a green van, which then left. I pointed out to her the
Carracci family and their relations, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers,
people living together, lovers—that is to say Stefano, Ada, Melina, Maria,
Pinuccia, Rino, Alfonso, Marisa, and all their children—who appeared and
disappeared in the throng, shouting continuously for fear of losing each
other. I pointed out Marcello Solara’s fancy car that was trying, with a
roar, to get free of the jam of vehicles; he had my sister Elisa with her
child next to him, and in the back seat the pale shadows of my mother and
father. I shouted names with the window open, I tried to involve Lila, too.
But she wouldn’t move. In fact, I realized that the people—especially those
we knew well—frightened her even more, especially if they were agitated, if
they were shouting, if they were running. She squeezed my hand hard and
closed her eyes when, against all the rules, Marcello’s car went up on the
sidewalk honking and made its way amid the people who were standing there talking,
or were hauling things along. She exclaimed: Oh Madonna, an expression I had
never heard her use. What’s wrong, I asked. Gasping for breath, she cried out
that the car’s boundaries were dissolving, the boundaries of Marcello, too,
at the wheel were dissolving, the thing and the person were gushing out of
themselves, mixing liquid metal and flesh.
她用的就是“界限消失”这个词。在当时的情况下，她第一次在我跟前使用这个词，她很迫切地跟我解释这个词的意思，她想要让我明白，界限消失是怎么回事儿，多么让她害怕。她把我的手握得更紧了，她在喘息。她说，人和东西的界限是很脆弱的，会像棉线一样容易断裂。她小声说，对于她来说，一直都是这样，一样东西的界限消失之后，会落到另一件东西上，就像是不同材料都融化了，搅在一起，分不清谁是谁了。她大声说，她一直很难说服自己，生命的界限是很坚固的，因为她从小都知道，事情绝对不是这样的，因此她没办法相信，这些东西和人是坚固的，可以抵抗撞击和推搡。这时她又变成另一个极端，她开始说一些过于激动、深奥的话，夹杂着方言词汇，还有之前读的一些书的内容。她嘟囔着说，她永远要保持警惕，一不留神，那些东西的边缘会发生剧烈、痛苦的变形，会让她非常恐惧。那些本质的东西会占上风，会掩盖那让她平静的稳定实体，她会陷入一个黏糊糊的凌乱的世界，没办法清晰感知。这种触觉会卷入视觉，视觉会卷入味觉。“真实的世界是什么样的？莱农，我们现在看到了，我们不能说任何事情是稳定的。”因此，假如她一不小心，假如她不关注那个界限，洪水将会冲破它所有内部的东西都会崩裂出来，就像经血一样脱落，血肉模糊，还有发黄的筋。
She used that term: dissolving
boundaries. It was on that occasion that she resorted to it for the first
time; she struggled to elucidate the meaning, she wanted me to understand
what the dissolution of boundaries meant and how much it frightened her. She
was still holding my hand tight, breathing hard. She said that the outlines
of things and people were delicate, that they broke like cotton thread. She
whispered that for her it had always been that way, an object lost its edges
and poured into another, into a solution of heterogeneous materials, a
merging and mixing. She exclaimed that she had always had to struggle to
believe that life had firm boundaries, for she had known since she was a
child that it was not like that—it was absolutely not like that—and so she
couldn’t trust in their resistance to being banged and bumped. Contrary to
what she had been doing, she began to utter a profusion of overexcited
sentences, sometimes kneading in the vocabulary of the dialect, sometimes
drawing on the vast reading she had done as a girl. She muttered that she
mustn’t ever be distracted: if she became distracted real things, which, with
their violent, painful contortions, terrified her, would gain the upper hand
over the unreal ones, which, with their physical and moral solidity, pacified
her; she would be plunged into a sticky, jumbled reality and would never
again be able to give sensations clear outlines. A tactile emotion would melt
into a visual one, a visual one would melt into an olfactory one, ah, what is
the real world, Lenù, nothing, nothing, nothing about which one can say
conclusively: it’s like that. And so if she didn’t stay alert, if she didn’t
pay attention to the boundaries, the waters would break through, a flood
would rise, carrying everything off in clots of menstrual blood, in cancerous
polyps, in bits of yellowish fiber.
52
她谈了很久，那是第一次，也是最后一次向我说明了她的感情世界。一直到那时候为止，她说：“我以为这只是一时的坏心情，来了会走的，就像生长热。你记不记得，我跟你说过铜锅裂开的事儿？一九五八年元旦，索拉拉兄弟对着我们开枪，你记得吗？其实，当时他们开枪，并没让我觉得害怕，让我害怕的是烟花的颜色，我觉得那些颜色很锋利，尤其是绿色和紫色，会把我们切开。那些落在我哥哥身上的烟花像刀刃，像矬子，会把他身上的肉削下来，会让他身体里另一个让人作呕的哥哥冒出来，要么我把他塞进去——塞进他的老皮囊，要么他会伤害我。莱农，我这一辈子，除了躲开那样的时刻，没做过别的事儿。马尔切洛让我害怕，我通过斯特凡诺保护自己，斯特凡诺让我害怕，我通过米凯莱保护自己。米凯莱让我害怕，我通过尼诺保护自己。尼诺让我害怕，我通过恩佐保护自己。‘保护’这个词儿意味着什么？我要给你列举一个详细的单子，所有我构建的那些大大小小的藏身之所，但后来都没有用。你记不记得，在伊斯基亚时，我当时多么害怕那里的夜空？你们说夜空真美，但我没法感受到。我闻到一股臭鸡蛋的味道，就像蛋壳和蛋白里装着发绿的蛋黄，就像一颗煮鸡蛋裂开了；我嘴里感觉到这种臭鸡蛋——毒星星的味道，它们的光是一种黏糊糊的、白色的光，会和天空软乎乎的黑色黏在我的牙齿上，压抑着恶心感，一口咬下去，会有一种咬沙子的嘎嘎吱吱的声音。我解释得清楚吗？你能听明白吗？在伊斯基亚时，虽然我挺高兴的，心里充满爱，但没有用，我的脑袋还是会看到别的东西——上面，下面，侧面——还是能看到让我害怕的东西。比如说在布鲁诺的工厂里，动物的骨头在我的手指下裂开，轻轻碰一下，就会有散发着臭味的骨髓流出来，我感到那么恶心，我以为我生病了，后来我真的生病了。我心脏有杂音吗？没有。还是头脑的问题。我没办法停下来，我要一直做这做那：掩盖、揭发、加固又忽然拆掉、破坏。比如说阿方索，从小他都让我很不舒服，我感觉把他缝在一起的棉线正要裂开。米凯莱呢？他觉得自己特别了不起，但我要做的只是找对线头，拽一下，哈哈哈！我把他的线拽断了，我把他的线头和阿方索的线头绑在一起，男性和男性，他们的材料混合在一起。我白天编，晚上拆，脑子就是这么指挥我的。但这也没什么用，恐惧还在，我一直都有这种怀疑，它在正常事物之间的空隙里，一直在那里等待着。从今晚开始，我更确信这一点：莱农，一切都那么易碎，包括在我的肚子里这个小生物，看起来是长久的，但实际上却不是这样。莱农，你记不记得，我和斯特凡诺结婚时，想让这个城区从头开始，只有美好的事情，让之前那些丑恶的事儿不会再有？那个阶段持续了多久？好的意愿是很脆弱的，在我身上，爱也很脆弱。对于一个男人的爱持续不了多久，对于孩子的爱也持续不了很久，很快就会出现破绽。你看看那些破洞，你会看到好意和恶意混合在一起。詹纳罗让我充满愧疚，我肚子里的这个小家伙是一种责任，他在抓我，在切割着我。爱和恨在一起涌动，我受不了，我没办法一直投入到一种好的意愿里。奥利维耶罗老师说得对，我很坏，我连一份友谊都没办法保持。莱农，你对我很好，很有耐心。但今天晚上，我彻底明白了一件事情：即使没有地震，也有一种溶剂在缓慢起作用，很温和，但会把一切都消融。因此，拜托了，假如我得罪你，假如我对你说了一些难听的话，你要捂住耳朵，我不想说这些，但我说了。求求你，求求你，不要离开我，我会跌倒起不来的。”
She spoke for a long time. It was the
first and last time she tried to explain to me the feeling of the world she
moved in. Up to now, she said—and here I summarize in my own words, of the
present—I thought it was a matter of bad moments that came and then passed,
like a childhood illness. Do you remember New Year’s Eve of 1958, when the
Solaras shot at us? The shots were the least frightening part. First, even
before they started shooting, I was afraid that the colors of the fireworks
were sharp—the green and the purple especially were razorlike—that they could
butcher us, that the trails of the rockets were scraping my brother Rino like
files, like rasps, and broke his flesh, caused another, disgusting brother to
drip out of him, whom I had to put back inside right away—inside his usual
form—or he would turn against me and hurt me. All my life I’ve done nothing,
Lenù, but hold back moments like those. Marcello scared me and I protected
myself with Stefano. Stefano scared me and I protected myself with Michele.
Michele scared me and I protected myself with Nino. Nino scared me and I
protected myself with Enzo. But what does that mean, protect, it’s only a
word. I could make you, now, a detailed list of all the coverings, large and
small, that I constructed to keep myself hidden, and yet they were of no use
to me. Do you remember how the night sky of Ischia horrified me? You all said
how beautiful it is, but I couldn’t. I smelled an odor of rotten eggs, eggs
with a greenish-yellow yolk inside the white and inside the shell, a
hard-boiled egg cracked open. I had in my mouth poisoned egg stars, their
light had a white, gummy consistency, it stuck to your teeth, along with the
gelatinous black of the sky, I crushed it with disgust, I tasted a crackling
of grit. Am I clear? Am I making myself clear? And yet on Ischia I was happy,
full of love. But it was no use, my head always finds a chink to peer
through, beyond—above, beneath, on the side—where the fear is. In Bruno’s
factory, for example, the bones of the animals cracked in your fingers if you
merely touched them, and a rancid marrow spilled out. I was so afraid that I
thought I was sick. But was I sick? Did I really have a murmur in my heart?
No. The only problem has always been the disquiet of my mind. I can’t stop
it, I always have to do, redo, cover, uncover, reinforce, and then suddenly
undo, break. Take Alfonso, he’s always made me nervous, ever since he was a
boy, I’ve felt that the cotton thread that held him together was about to
break. And Michele? Michele thought he was who knows what, and yet all I had
to do was find his boundary line and pull, oh, oh, oh, I broke it, I broke
his cotton thread and tangled it with Alfonso’s, male material inside male
material, the fabric that I weave by day is unraveled by night, the head
finds a way. But it’s not much use, the terror remains, it’s always in the
crack between one normal thing and the other. It’s there waiting, I’ve always
suspected it, and since yesterday evening I’ve known for certain: nothing
lasts, Lenù, even here in my belly, you think the creature will endure but it
won’t. You remember when I married Stefano and I wanted the neighborhood to
start again from the beginning, to be only beautiful things, the ugliness of
before was not supposed to be there anymore. How long did it last? Good
feelings are fragile, with me love doesn’t last. Love for a man doesn’t last,
not even love for a child, it soon gets a hole in it. You look in the hole
and you see the nebula of good intentions mixed up with the nebula of bad.
Gennaro makes me feel guilty, this thing here in my belly is a responsibility
that cuts me, scratches me. Loving courses together with hating, and I can’t,
I can’t manage to solidify myself around any goodwill. Maestra Oliviero was
right, I’m bad. I don’t even know how to keep friendship alive. You’re kind,
Lenù, you’ve always had a lot of patience. But tonight I finally understood
it: there is always a solvent that acts slowly, with a gentle heat, and
undoes everything, even when there’s no earthquake. So please, if I insult
you, if I say ugly things to you, stop up your ears, I don’t want to do it
and yet I do. Please, please, don’t leave me, or I’ll fall in.
53
“好的，是的，”我一直这样回答，“但你现在要好好休息一下。”我让她偎依着我，她睡着了。我一直醒着，守着她，就像以前她要求我做的那样。我时不时会感觉到轻微的地震，还有汽车里发出的恐怖叫喊。现在大路上空荡荡的，我肚子里的孩子在轻轻地踢打，我抚摸了一下她的肚子，她的肚子也在动。一切都在动：地层下的熔岩、恒星的火焰、行星、整个宇宙、黑暗中的光、寒冷中的寂静。但我现在回味着莉拉激动地说出口的那些让人不安的话。我感觉在我心里，恐惧从来都站不住脚。火山，甚至是地表下面我想象的炽热熔岩。恐怖会变成一些整齐有序的句子或者和谐的影像，安置在我的脑子里，它会变成一块黑色的铺路石，就像那不勒斯街道上的石头，无论如何，恐惧是我可以主宰的东西。总之，无论发生什么，我可以控制自己，我不会六神无主。所有让我受打击的事情——学习、出书、弗朗科、彼得罗、两个孩子、尼诺、地震，都会过去，但是我——无论是哪个阶段的我，我都是稳定的，我就是那个圆点，是固定的，其他事情像圆规上的铅笔，会围绕着我画圈。现在我明白了，莉拉却不是这样，她很难有稳定感，这让我变得骄傲起来，我平静下来，心软了。即使她一直在主宰着一切，即使一直以来甚至是现在她还是决定着一切，把自己的意愿强加于人，她做不到，她也不相信这一点，她的怨恨和愤怒让人同情，她感觉自己就像一滴岩浆，她的所有努力最终来说只是保证自己不要裂开。虽然她工于心计，能控制人和事情，但她的状态是不稳定的，莉拉会失去自己，好像是唯一的事实是混乱。她是那么活跃勇敢，但她会吓得失魂落魄，失去自己，会变得谁也不是。
Yes—I kept saying—all right, but now
rest. I held her tight beside me, and finally she fell asleep. I stayed awake
watching her, as she had once begged me to do. Every so often I felt new
small aftershocks, someone in a car shouted with terror. Now the stradone was
empty. The infant moved in my belly like rolling waters, I touched Lila’s
stomach, hers was moving, too. Everything was moving: the sea of fire under
the crust of the earth, and the furnaces of the stars, and the planets, and
the universes, and the light within the darkness and the silence in the cold.
But, even now as I pondered the wave of Lila’s distraught words, I felt that
in me fear could not put down roots, and even the lava, the fiery stream of
melting matter that I imagined inside the earthly globe, and the fear it
provoked in me, settled in my mind in orderly sentences, in harmonious
images, became a pavement of black stones like the streets of Naples, a
pavement where I was always and no matter what the center. I gave myself weight,
in other words, I knew how to do that, whatever happened. Everything that
struck me—my studies, books, Franco, Pietro, the children, Nino, the
earthquake—would pass, and I, whatever I among those I was accumulating, I
would remain firm, I was the needle of the compass that stays fixed while the
lead traces circles around it. Lila on the other hand—it seemed clear to me
now, and it made me proud, it calmed me, touched me—struggled to feel stable.
She couldn’t, she didn’t believe it. However much she had always dominated
all of us and had imposed and was still imposing a way of being, on pain of
her resentment and her fury, she perceived herself as a liquid and all her
efforts were, in the end, directed only at containing herself. When, in spite
of her defensive manipulation of persons and things, the liquid prevailed,
Lila lost Lila, chaos seemed the only truth, and she—so active, so
courageous—erased herself and, terrified, became nothing.
54
整个城区变得空荡荡的，大路安静下来了，气温降了下来。城区里的那些楼房现在都成了深色的石头，没有一盏灯亮着，也没有电视的彩光闪烁着，我把座位放平躺下了。后来我忽然惊醒了，天还黑着，莉拉离开了汽车，她那边的车门虚掩着。我打开我这边的车门，四处看了看，停在周围的汽车里都有人，有人在咳嗽，有人在说梦话。我没看到莉拉，我很担忧，就朝着隧道方向走去。我在卡门的加油泵附近找到她了，她站在震落的屋檐和其他垃圾中间，仰头看着她的房子。她看到我之后，有些尴尬，说：“我很抱歉，我之前不舒服，对你说了那么多废话，还好我们在一起。”她脸上挂着一个有些不自在的微笑，说出了那天夜里众多难以理解的话中一句，这个“还好”就像摁着香水瓶喷出来的香气。她开始发抖，她还没好，我让她回到车里，没过几分钟，她又睡着了。
The neighborhood emptied, the stradone
became quiet, the air turned cold. In the buildings, transformed into dark
rocks, there was not a single lamp lighted, no colorful glow of a television.
I, too, fell asleep. I awoke with a start, it was still dark. Lila had left
the car, the window on her side was half open. I opened mine, I looked
around. The stopped cars were all inhabited, people coughed, groaned in their
sleep. I didn’t see Lila, I grew concerned, I went toward the tunnel. I found
her not far from Carmen’s gas pump. She was moving amid fragments of cornices
and other debris, she looked up toward the windows of her house. Seeing me
she had an expression of embarrassment. I wasn’t well, she said, I’m sorry, I
filled your head with nonsense, luckily we were together. There was the hint
of an uneasy smile on her face, she said one of the many almost
incomprehensible phrases of that night—“Luckily” is a breath of perfume that
comes out when you press the pump—and she shivered. She still wasn’t well, I
persuaded her to return to the car. In a few minutes she fell asleep again.
天刚刚亮，我就叫醒了她，她很平静，想解释。她喃喃地说：“你知道我的，有时候，有些事情让我很失控。”我说：“没什么，人有时候很疲惫，这很正常，你现在要管很多事情。无论如何，昨天晚上地震持续了很久，对于所有人都是很糟糕的经历。”她摇了摇头说：“我知道自己是怎么回事儿。”
As soon as it was day I woke her. She was
calm, she wanted to apologize. She said softly, making light of it: You know
I’m like that, every so often there’s something that grabs me here in my
chest. I said: It’s nothing, there are periods of exhaustion, you’re looking
after too many things, and anyway it’s been terrible for everyone, it
wouldn’t end. She shook her head: I know how I’m made.
我们采取了行动，想办法进到了她家里。我们打了很多电话，但要么电话占线，要么一直空响没人接。莉拉的父母没接电话，阿维利诺的亲戚也没接电话，也没有恩佐和詹纳罗的消息，尼诺的所有电话都没人接，他朋友家里也没人接电话。我和彼得罗打了电话，他也是才知道地震的事。我跟他说，让两个女儿再在他那儿多待几天，要等等看，看地震是不是彻底过去了。但时间一点点过去，我发现这次地震带来的灾难非常大，我们的恐惧真是有道理的。莉拉嘟囔着，为自己的表现开脱：“你看到了，地要裂成两半了。”
We organized ourselves, we found a way of
returning to her house. We made a great number of phone calls, but either
they didn’t go through or the phone rang in vain. Lila’s parents didn’t
answer, the relatives in Avellino, who could have given us news of Enzo and
Gennaro, didn’t answer, no one answered at Nino’s number, his friends didn’t
answer. I talked to Pietro, he had just found out about the earthquake. I
asked him to keep the girls for a few days, long enough to be sure the danger
had passed. But as the hours slid by, the dimensions of the disaster grew. We
hadn’t been frightened for nothing. Lila murmured as if to justify herself:
You see, the earth was about to split in two.
我们很疲惫，也很激动，有些晕乎乎的，但我们还是步行在城区，在一片狼藉的市里转了转，城市的寂静经常被救护车刺耳的鸣笛打破。我们一直在说话，只是为了压制我们的不安：尼诺在哪儿？恩佐在哪儿？詹纳罗在哪儿？我母亲怎么样了？马尔切洛·索拉拉把她带到哪儿了？莉拉的父母在哪儿？我意识到，她需要回到地震的那几秒钟，不是想说明当时有多恐怖，而是要把这件事情作为一个核心，围绕着这个核心，她想重新调整自己的情绪。她一有机会就会提到那个时刻，我感觉她越是能控制自己，南方所有城镇的死亡和毁灭就变得越明显。她很快就不再带着羞耻谈到她的恐惧，这让我觉得放心下来了，但有一种难以描述的东西留在她身上：她走路更小心，声音有一丝忧虑。关于地震的记忆还在继续，那不勒斯地震的记忆还在继续。炎热已经过去了，就像这个城市，从她缓慢嘶哑的身体里，呼出了一阵热气。
We were dazed by emotions and by
weariness, but still we walked through the neighborhood and through a
sorrowing city, now silent, now streaked by the nagging sounds of sirens. We
kept talking to alleviate anxiety: where was Nino, where was Enzo, where was
Gennaro, how was my mother, where had Marcello Solara taken her, where were
Lila’s parents. I realized that she needed to return to the moments of the
earthquake, and not so much to recount again its traumatic effects as to feel
them as a new heart around which to restructure sensibility. I encouraged her
every time, and it seemed to me that the more she regained control of herself
the more evident became the destruction and death of entire towns of the
South. Soon she began to speak of the terror without being ashamed and I was
reassured. But something indefinable nevertheless remained: her more cautious
steps, a hint of apprehension in her voice. The memory of the earthquake
endured, Naples contained it. Only the heat was departing, like a foggy breath
that rose from the body of the city and its slow, strident life.
我们一直走到了尼诺和埃利奥诺拉住的房子下面，我敲了很长时间门，叫了半天，但没有人回答。莉拉在距离我一百米的地方看着我，她的肚子挺着，很尖，满脸不悦。我和一个从门里出来的人说了几句，他拎着两个行李箱，他说，整栋楼都空了。我在那里待了一会儿，无法决定是否离开，我远远看着莉拉。我记得在地震之前，她跟我说的和给我暗示的事。我感觉到有一队魔鬼在追赶着她，她利用了恩佐、帕斯卡莱、安东尼奥，她重新塑造阿方索。她利用米凯莱对她的狂热的爱，把他制服了，把他的爱引向阿方索。米凯莱挣扎着想摆脱，他解雇了阿方索，关了马尔蒂里广场上的商店，但没用。莉拉羞辱他，不停羞辱他，利用他，驱使他。谁知道她了解多少事情，她知道索拉拉兄弟的交易。她为计算机搜集了数据，她看到了他们的所有生意，她知道他们靠贩毒挣钱。这就是为什么马尔切洛痛恨她，这就是为什么我妹妹埃莉莎痛恨她。莉拉知道所有一切，她知道所有事情，只是出于对一切——无论是死是活的东西——的纯粹恐惧。谁知道，她了解多少尼诺见不得人的事儿。她远远站着，仿佛在说：算了吧，我们都知道，他已经和他家人躲到安全的地方去了，根本不管你的死活。
We reached the house of Nino and
Eleonora. I knocked for a long time, I called, no answer. Lila stood a
hundred meters away, staring at me, her belly stretched, pointed, a sulky
expression on her face. I talked to a man who came out of the entrance with two
suitcases, he said that the whole building was deserted. I stayed another
moment, unable to make up my mind to leave. I observed Lila’s figure. I
remembered what she had said and implied shortly before the earthquake, I had
the impression that a legion of demons was pursuing her. She used Enzo, she
used Pasquale, she used Antonio. She remodeled Alfonso. She subdued Michele
Solara, leading him into a mad love for her, for him. And Michele was
thrashing about to free himself, he fired Alfonso, he closed the shop in
Piazza dei Martiri, but in vain. Lila humiliated him, continued to humiliate
him, subjugating him. How much did she know now of the two brothers’
business. She had set eyes on their affairs when she collected data for the
computer, she even knew about the drug money. That’s why Marcello hated her,
that’s why my sister Elisa hated her. Lila knew everything. She knew
everything out of pure, simple fear of all that was living or dead. Who knows
how many ugly facts she knew about Nino. She seemed to say to me from a
distance: Forget him, we both know that he’s safely with his family and
doesn’t give a damn about you.
55
从根本上来说，这也是真的。恩佐和詹纳罗当晚都回到城区，他们都非常着急，看起来就像是一场残酷的战争后回来的士兵。他们唯一操心的事情是：莉拉怎么样了。尼诺是几天之后才重新出现的，看起来像度假归来。“我吓懵了，”他对我说，“我带着我的孩子就逃走了。”
It turned out to be essentially true.
Enzo and Gennaro returned to the neighborhood in the evening, worn-out,
overwhelmed, looking like survivors of an atrocious war, with a single
preoccupation: How was Lila. Nino, on the other hand, reappeared many days
later, as if he’d come back from a vacation. I couldn’t understand anything,
he said, I took my children and fled.
他的孩子，真是一个负责的父亲，那我肚子里怀的这个孩子呢？
His children. What a responsible father.
And the one I carried in my belly?
他用洒脱的语气跟我说，他和两个孩子、埃利奥诺拉，还有他岳父岳母，在明图尔诺的别墅躲了几天。我的脸拉了下来了，几天没理他，我不想看到他，我为我的父母担心。我从马尔切洛那里得知，他把他们送到一个安全的地方了，他们和埃莉莎、西尔维奥在一起，在加埃塔的一处房产里。他是一个人回到城区的，马尔切洛也是他的家人的拯救者。
He said in his confident voice that he
had taken refuge with the children, Eleonora, his in-laws in a family villa
in Minturno. I sulked. I kept him away for days, I didn’t want to see him, I
was worried about my parents. I heard from Marcello himself, who had returned
alone to the neighborhood, that he had brought them to a safe place, with
Elisa and Silvio, to a property he had in Gaeta. Another savior of his
family.
这时候，我一个人回到了塔索街上的房子里。天气忽然变得很冷，房子冷冷清清的。我仔细地检查了所有墙壁，并没发现裂缝。但晚上我很害怕，我没法睡去，担心再次地震，我同时也很高兴，彼得罗和多莉娅娜同意帮我多照看几天女儿。
Meanwhile I returned to Via Tasso, alone.
It was very cold now, the apartment was freezing. I checked the walls one by
one, there didn’t seem to be any cracks. But at night I was afraid to fall
asleep, I feared that the earthquake would return, and I was glad that Pietro
and Doriana had agreed to keep the children for a while.
圣诞节来了，我忍不住又和尼诺和好了。我去佛罗伦萨接黛黛和艾尔莎，生活重新开始了，但像一个生病的人，看不到尽头。现在每次我遇到莉拉，我能感觉到她情绪不稳定，尤其是她用霸道的语气说话时，她看着我，就好像在说：你知道我的话里隐藏着什么。
Then Christmas came; I couldn’t help it,
I made peace with Nino. I went to Florence to get Dede and Elsa. Life began
again but like a convalescence whose end I couldn’t see. Now, every time I
saw Lila, I felt on her part a mood of uncertainty, especially when she took
an aggressive tone. She looked at me as if to say: You know what is behind my
every word.
但我真的知道吗？我经过边上有围栏的街道，还有那些数不清的摇摇欲坠、用柱子加固的楼房，这些都昭示着这个城市的低效，我也经常会陷入各种各样纷乱的麻烦中。我想到了莉拉，她马上就回去上班了，她操纵、移动、嘲笑和攻击。我想起了地震那几秒，令她崩溃的恐惧，我看到这种恐惧的痕迹还留在她的日常生活中，她经常张开手指放在肚子上了。我满心焦虑地想：她现在是谁？她会变成什么样子，会有什么样的反应？有一次，我为了跟她确认糟糕的时刻已经过去了，我说：
But did I really know? I crossed
barricaded streets and passed by countless uninhabitable buildings, shored up
by strong wooden beams. I often ended up in the havoc caused by the basest
complicit inefficiency. And I thought of Lila, of how she immediately
returned to work, to manipulate, motivate, deride, attack. I thought of the
terror that in a few seconds had annihilated her, I saw the trace of that
terror in her now habitual gesture of holding her hands around her stomach
with the fingers spread. And I wondered apprehensively: who is she now, what
can she become, how can she react? I said to her once, to underline that a
bad moment had passed:
“现在世界恢复了。”
“The world has returned to its place.”
她用一种轻蔑的语气回答说：
She replied teasingly:
“到底哪里恢复了？”
“What place?”
56
在怀孕的最后一个月，一切都变得很辛苦。尼诺很少露面，他有很多工作，这让我很恼火。他出现的几次，我对他也很粗暴，我想我现在很丑，他已经不在乎我了。这也是真的，我自己也不敢照镜子了，即使照镜子，也会很心烦。我的脸肿着，鼻子很大，我的胸脯、肚子就好像把身体其他部分吞没了，我看不到自己的脖子，我的腿很短，脚踝很粗大。我变得和我母亲一样了，但不是现在的她——她现在已经成了一个消瘦、忧虑的老太太，过去我最畏惧的、很难缠的那个母亲，已经仅仅存在于记忆里。
In the last month of pregnancy everything
became a struggle. Nino was hardly ever around: he had to work, and that
exasperated me. When he did appear, he was rude. I thought: I’m ugly, he
doesn’t want me anymore. And it was true, by now I couldn’t look at myself in
the mirror without disgust. I had puffy cheeks and an enormous nose. My bosom
and stomach seemed to have consumed the rest of my body, I saw myself without
a neck, with short legs and fat ankles. I had become like my mother, but not
the one of now, who was a thin, frightened old woman; rather, I resembled the
venomous figure I had always feared, who now existed only in my memory.
那个爱施虐的母亲忽然又冒了出来，开始通过我展示出她的疲惫不安，还有那个濒死的母亲，通过她的脆弱，像一个快要溺水的人的目光，让我感到心痛。我变得很难相处，每件偶然发生的事情，都让我觉得是一场阴谋，我经常会大喊大叫。在我最不开心的时候，我感觉，那不勒斯的那些问题已经进入我的身体，我已经没法做出一副可爱、讨人喜欢的样子。彼得罗给我打电话，让我和两个孩子说话，我也很不温和。我的出版社或者我讨厌的报纸给我打电话，我会说：“我已经怀孕第九个月了，我很烦，放过我吧。”
That persecuting mother was unleashed.
She began to act through me, venting because of the difficulties, the
anxieties, the pain the dying mother was causing me with her frailties, the
gaze of a person who is about to drown. I became intractable, every complication
seemed like a plot, I often started shouting. I had the impression, in my
moments of greatest unhappiness, that the chaos of Naples had settled even in
my body, that I was losing the capacity to be nice, to be likable. Pietro
called to talk to the children and I was brusque. The publisher called me, or
some daily paper, and I protested, I said: I’m in my ninth month, I’m
stressed, leave me alone.
我跟两个女儿的关系也越来越糟糕。跟黛黛倒好，因为她跟她父亲很像，很讲道理，很聪明。艾尔莎开始让我很讨厌，她从一个温顺的小姑娘，变得越来越没规矩了，老师一直在向我抱怨，说她是一个狡猾、暴戾的孩子。我自己呢，我会在街上或者在家里不停说她，说她爱无事生非，霸占其他孩子的东西，归还的时候她会故意把那些东西搞坏。真是三个女人一台戏。我心里想，尼诺当然会逃得远远的，他更愿意和埃利奥诺拉、阿尔伯特、莉迪亚待在一起。晚上我睡不着觉，因为肚子里的孩子踢腾得太厉害了，就好像肚子里全是气泡，我希望这个孩子和所有人预测的都不一样，我希望肚里的孩子是个男孩，一个像尼诺的男孩，一个他非常喜欢的儿子，让他爱这个孩子超过爱其他孩子。
With my daughters, too, I got worse. Not
so much with Dede, since she resembled her father, and I was by now
accustomed to her mixture of intelligence, affection, and harassing logic. It
was Elsa who began to upset me. The meek little girl was becoming a being
with blurry features, whose teacher did nothing but complain about her,
calling her sly and violent, while I myself, in the house or on the street,
constantly scolded her for picking fights, taking others’ things and breaking
them when she had to give them back. A fine trio of women we are, I said to
myself, it’s obvious that Nino is avoiding us, that he prefers Eleonora,
Albertino, and Lidia. When I couldn’t sleep at night because of the creature
stirring in my womb, as if it were made of mobile air bubbles, I hoped
against every prediction that the new baby would be a male, that he would
resemble Nino, that he would please him, and that Nino would love him more
than his other children.
无论我多么努力，想回到我喜欢的样子——我一直想成为一个心理平衡的人，能控制那些阴暗或者暴力的情感，但生产前的那些日子，我一直没办法取得平衡。我把一切都归罪于地震，当时好像没什么，但我内心深处开始感到不安，那种焦虑一直深入到我的肚子里。开车经过卡波迪蒙特的隧道时，我会感觉到一阵阵恐惧，我担心会另来一阵地震，让隧道倒塌下来。我经过马耳他大街上的高架桥，桥在动，我会加快车速，尽快地逃离那里，我担心地震随时都会让它断开。在某个阶段，我甚至不再消灭家里的蚂蚁，它们经常出现在洗手间里，我没把它们弄死，就是为了观察它们的动向，阿方索说，它们比人能更早觉察到灾难。
But although I forced myself to return to
the image I preferred of myself—I had always wanted to be an even-tempered
person who wisely curbed petty or even violent feelings—in those final days I
was unable to find an equilibrium. I blamed the earthquake, which at the time
didn’t seem to have disturbed me a great deal but perhaps remained deep
inside, right in my belly. If I drove through the tunnel of Capodimonte I was
gripped by panic, I was afraid that a new shock would make it collapse. If I
took the Corso Malta viaduct, which vibrated anyway, I accelerated to escape
the shock that might shatter it at any moment. In that phase I even stopped
battling the ants, which often and willingly appeared in the bathroom: I
preferred to let them live and every so often observe them; Alfonso claimed
that they could anticipate disaster.
不仅仅是地震，莉拉说的那些模棱两可的话也让我失措。我在街上，现在假如我看到针管，就像我在米兰无意中看到的那些用过的针管，有时候我在教堂旁边的小花园会看到，我都觉得有一股无名的火往上冒。我想去找马尔切洛和我的两个弟弟吵架，尽管我不知道我要对他们说什么。在这种情况下，我做了一些让人讨厌的事情，也说了让人后悔的话。我母亲一直在追问我有没有和莉拉说我两个弟弟的事，有一天，我很不客气地回了一句：“妈，莉娜不能要他们，她已经有一个哥哥吸毒了，她还要为詹纳罗操心，你们自己解决不了的问题，怎么能指望她。”她非常惊恐地看着我，她从来都没提到过吸毒的事儿，我说了一句不该说的话。假如在其他时候，她会大声叫喊，捍卫我的两个弟弟，会骂我麻木不仁，但现在她待在厨房一个阴暗的角落里，再也不吱声了。这让我很懊悔地对她说：“你不用担心，我们总会找到一个解决办法。”
But it wasn’t only the aftermath of the
earthquake that upset me; Lila’s fantastical hints also entered into it. I
now looked on the streets for syringes like the ones I had absent-mindedly
noticed in the days of Milan. And if I saw some in the gardens in the
neighborhood a querulous mist rose around me, I wanted to go and confront
Marcello and my brothers, even if it wasn’t clear to me what arguments I
would use. Thus I ended up doing and saying hateful things. To my mother, who
harassed me, asking if I had talked to Lila about Peppe and Gianni, I
responded rudely one day: Ma, Lina can’t take them, she already has a brother
who’s a drug addict, and she’s afraid for Gennaro, you can’t all burden her
with the problems you can’t fix. She looked at me in horror, she had never
alluded to drugs, I had said a word that shouldn’t be said. But if in earlier
times she would have started shouting in defense of my brothers and against
my lack of sensitivity, now she shut herself in a dark corner of the kitchen
and didn’t breathe a word, so that I had to say, repentant: Don’t worry, come
on, we’ll find a solution.
什么办法？我后来的做法让事情变得更加复杂。我在小花园里找到了佩佩——不知道詹尼在哪儿——我教训了他一通，我说，通过别人的恶习赚钱是很糟糕的事儿。我对他说：“你随便找个工作吧，但不要干这个，你会把自己毁掉，会让我们的母亲担心死的。”我说话时，他一边耷拉着眼皮听着，一边用左手大拇指指甲清理右手指甲里的污秽。他比我小三岁，我是大姐，他是小弟，他觉得我是一个重要人物，因此对我还是有一点儿敬畏，但这也无法阻止他在最后冷笑着对我说：“没有我的钱，妈妈已经死了。”然后他摆了摆手，走开了。
What solution? I made things even more
complicated. I tracked down Peppe in the gardens—who knows where Gianni
was—and made an angry speech about how terrible it was to earn money from the
vices of others. I said: Go find any job but not this, you’ll ruin yourself
and make our mother die of worry. The whole time he was cleaning the nails of
his right hand with the nail of his left thumb, and he listened to me
uneasily, eyes lowered. He was three years younger than me and felt like the
little brother in front of the big sister who was an important person. But
that didn’t keep him from saying to me, at the end, with a sneer: Without my
money Mamma would already be dead. He went away with a faint wave of
farewell.
他的态度让我更加烦躁。过了一两天，我去找埃莉莎了，我希望马尔切洛也在家。天气非常冷，新城区的街道和老城区一样肮脏破烂。马尔切洛不在家，他们家非常凌乱，我妹妹非常懒散地接待了我，她对我很不敬：她穿着睡衣，没有梳洗，只是照看着孩子。我几乎是对她叫喊着说：“告诉你丈夫——我强调了丈夫这个词，虽然他们还没有结婚——他要把我们的兄弟毁掉了，假如他要贩毒，让他自己去卖。”我就是这么说的，用的是意大利语，她的脸色变得苍白，说：“莱农，马上从我家里出去！你在跟谁这样说话呢？和你认识的那些阔佬吗？你赶紧走吧，你是一个自大狂，你一直都是。”我还想着回答，她叫喊起来了：“你再也不要来这里教训我，还有我的马尔切洛！他是一个好人，我们欠他的，假如我愿意，他会为我把你，还有莉娜那个婊子，以及所有你欣赏的那些混蛋全买下来！”
That answer got me even more upset. I let
a day or two go by and went to see Elisa, hoping to find Marcello, too. It
was very cold, the streets of the new neighborhood were as damaged and dirty
as those of the old. Marcello wasn’t there; the house was untidy; and I found
my sister’s slovenliness annoying: she hadn’t washed or dressed, all she did
was take care of her son. I almost scolded her: Tell your husband—and I
stressed that word husband even though they weren’t married—that he’s ruining
our brothers; if he has to sell drugs, let him do it himself. I expressed
myself like that, in Italian, and she turned pale, she said: Lenù, leave my
house immediately, who do you think you’re talking to, all those fancy people
you know? Get out, you’re presumptuous, you always were. As soon as I tried
to reply she shouted: Don’t ever come here again acting like the professor
about my Marcello: he’s a good person, we owe everything to him; if I want to
I can buy you, that whore Lina, and all the shits you admire so much.