上帝：是的，你什么时候来都可以，
THE LORD: Therein thou’rt free, according
to thy merits;
我从来都没有仇恨过你的同类，
The like of thee have never moved My
hate.
以及那些不顺从我的人，
Of all the bold, denying Spirits,
讽刺——是我最不讨厌的行为，
The waggish knave least trouble doth
create.
人类最容易气馁，他们很快就会
Man’s active nature, flagging, seeks too
soon the level;
进入永恒的睡眠。
Unqualified repose he learns to crave;
因此我很乐意给他们找个同伴，
Whence, willingly, the comrade him I
gave,
充当魔鬼的角色，刺激他们。
Who works, excites, and must create, as
Devil.
——歌德《浮士德》
J. W. GOETHE, Faust,
人物表 童年与青春期
INDEX OF CHARACTERS
♦赛鲁罗一家（鞋匠的家人）
The Cerullo family (the shoemaker’s
family):
费尔南多·赛鲁罗：鞋匠。
Fernando Cerullo, shoemaker.
农齐亚·赛鲁罗：莉拉的母亲。
Nunzia Cerullo, wife of Fernando and
Lila’s mother.
拉法埃拉·赛鲁罗：所有人都叫她莉娜，只有埃莱娜叫她莉拉。
Raffaella Cerullo, called Lina, and by
Elena Lila.
里诺·赛鲁罗：莉拉的大哥，也是鞋匠。
Rino Cerullo, Lila’s older brother, also
a shoemaker.
莉拉的几个孩子中，有一个儿子也叫里诺。
Rino, also the name of one of Lila’s
children.
其他孩子。
Other children.
♦格雷科一家（看门人的家人）：
The Greco family (the porter’s family):
埃莱娜·格雷科：也叫莱农奇娅，或者莱诺，家里的长女。后面还有几个弟弟妹妹：佩佩、詹尼和埃莉莎。
Elena Greco, called Lenuccia or Lenù. She
is the oldest, and after her are Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa.
埃莱娜的父亲：在市政府做门房。
The father is a porter at the city hall.
母亲：家庭主妇。
The mother is a housewife.
♦卡拉奇一家（堂·阿奇勒的家人）
The Carracci family (Don Achille’s
family):
堂·阿奇勒·卡拉奇：童话中吃人的怪兽。
Don Achille Carracci, the ogre of fairy
tales.
玛丽亚·卡拉奇：堂·阿奇勒的妻子。
Maria Carracci, wife of Don Achille.
斯特凡诺·卡拉奇：堂·阿奇勒的儿子，肉食店经营者。
Stefano Carracci, son of Don Achille,
grocer in the family store.
皮诺奇娅和阿方索：堂·阿奇勒的其他孩子。
Pinuccia and Alfonso Carracci, Don
Achille’s two other children.
♦佩卢索一家（木匠的家人）
The Peluso family (the carpenter’s
family):
阿尔佛雷多·佩卢索：木匠。
Alfredo Peluso, carpenter.
朱塞平娜·佩卢索：阿尔佛雷多的妻子。
Giuseppina Peluso, wife of Alfredo.
帕斯卡莱·佩卢索：也叫帕斯卡，阿尔佛雷多和朱塞平娜的长子，泥瓦匠。
Pasquale Peluso, older son of Alfredo and
Giuseppina, construction worker.
卡梅拉·佩卢索：也叫卡门，帕斯卡莱的妹妹，杂货店售货员。
Carmela Peluso, who is also called
Carmen, sister of Pasquale, salesclerk in a dry-goods store.
其他孩子。
Other children.
♦卡普乔一家（疯寡妇的家人）
The Cappuccio family (the mad widow’s
family):
梅丽娜：莉拉母亲的一个亲戚，是个疯寡妇。
Melina, a relative of Lila’s mother, a
mad widow.
梅丽娜的丈夫：菜市场卸货工。
Melina’s husband, who unloaded crates at
the fruit and vegetable market.
艾达·卡普乔：梅丽娜的女儿。
Ada Cappuccio, Melina’s daughter.
安东尼奥·卡普乔：艾达的哥哥，技工。
Antonio Cappuccio, her brother, a
mechanic.
其他孩子。
Other children.
♦萨拉托雷一家（铁路职工——诗人的家人）
The Sarratore family (the railroad worker
poet’s family):
多纳托·萨拉托雷：检票员。
Donato Sarratore, conductor.
莉迪亚·萨拉托雷：多纳托的妻子。
Lidia Sarratore, wife of Donato.
尼诺·萨拉托雷：多纳托和莉迪亚的大儿子。
Nino Sarratore, the oldest of the five
children of Donato and Lidia.
玛丽莎·萨拉托雷：多纳托和莉迪亚的女儿。
Marisa Sarratore, daughter of Donato and
Lidia.
皮诺、克莱利亚以及西罗：多纳托和莉迪亚的其他孩子。
Pino, Clelia, and Ciro Sarratore, younger
children of Donato and Lidia.
♦斯坎诺一家（卖蔬菜水果的一家人）
The Scanno family (the fruit and
vegetable seller’s family):
尼科拉·斯坎诺：卖蔬菜水果的男人。
Nicola Scanno, fruit and vegetable
seller.
阿孙塔·斯坎诺：尼科拉的妻子。
Assunta Scanno, wife of Nicola.
恩佐·斯坎诺：尼科拉和阿孙塔的儿子，也是卖蔬菜水果的。
Enzo Scanno, son of Nicola and Assunta,
also a fruit and vegetable seller.
其他孩子。
Other children.
♦索拉拉一家（他们家有一家酒吧兼点心房）
The Solara family (the family of the
owner of the Solara bar-pastry shop):
西尔维奥·索拉拉：酒吧和点心房的主人。
Silvio Solara, owner of the bar-pastry
shop.
曼努埃拉·索拉拉：西尔维奥的妻子。
Manuela Solara, wife of Silvio.
马尔切洛和米凯莱：西尔维奥和曼努埃拉的儿子。
Marcello and Michele Solara, sons of
Silvio and Manuela.
♦斯帕纽洛一家（糕点师傅的家人）
The Spagnuolo family (the baker’s
family):
斯帕纽洛先生：索拉拉酒吧和点心房的糕点师傅。
Signor Spagnuolo, pastry maker at the
bar-pastry shop Solara.
罗莎·斯帕纽洛：糕点师傅的妻子
Rosa Spagnuolo, wife of the pastry maker.
吉耀拉·斯帕纽洛：糕点师傅的女儿。
Gigliola Spagnuolo, daughter of the
pastry maker.
其他孩子。
Other children.
♦吉诺：药剂师的儿子。
Gino, son of the pharmacist.
♦几位老师
The teachers:
费拉罗：小学男老师，兼任图书馆管理员。
Maestro Ferraro, teacher and librarian.
奥利维耶罗：小学女老师。
Maestra Oliviero, teacher.
杰拉切：中学男老师。
Professor Gerace, high school teacher.
加利亚尼：中学女老师。
Professor Galiani, high school teacher.
♦内拉·因卡尔多：奥利维耶罗老师的表姐，住在伊斯基亚岛。
Nella Incardo, Maestra Oliviero’s cousin,
who lives on Ischia.
引子
PROLOGUE
抹去所有痕迹
Eliminating All the Traces
1
今天早上里诺来电话了。我以为他又要向我要钱，我准备好了拒绝他，但他打电话却是另外一个原因：他母亲失踪了。
This morning Rino telephoned. I thought
he wanted money again and I was ready to say no. But that was not the reason
for the phone call: his mother was gone.
“什么时候的事？”
“Since when?”
“两周前。”
“Since two weeks ago.”
“那你现在才给我打电话？”
“And you’re calling me now?”
尽管我没有生气，也没有愤怒或者被冒犯的感觉，只是有一丝讽刺，但我的语气还是让他感觉到了敌意。他试图反驳，用夹杂着那不勒斯方言的意大利语解释，但显得很拙劣、尴尬。他说，他很确信他母亲这次还是像往常一样，在那不勒斯城里晃荡。
My tone must have seemed hostile, even
though I wasn’t angry or offended; there was just a touch of sarcasm. He
tried to respond but he did so in an awkward, muddled way, half in dialect,
half in Italian. He said he was sure that his mother was wandering around
Naples as usual.
“晚上也不回去吗？”
“Even at night?”
“你是了解她的。”
“You know how she is.”
“我知道，可是两个星期不回家，你觉得这正常么？”
“I do, but does two weeks of absence seem
normal?”
“是不正常。埃莱娜，你有些日子没见到她了，她的情况更糟了：她从来不睡觉，从家里出去，想干什么干什么，想什么时候回来就什么时候回来。”
“Yes. You haven’t seen her for a while,
Elena, she’s gotten worse: she’s never sleepy, she comes in, goes out, does
what she likes.”
无论如何，他开始担心了。他问了所有人，去所有医院问了一圈，最后甚至去了警察局，没有任何消息，还是没找到他母亲。多好的儿子！一个壮实的四十多岁的男人，一直没有正经工作，每天不过是坑蒙拐骗、虚度光阴罢了。我都能想得出，他找他母亲是多么用心。扯淡！他根本没脑子，他心里只有自己。
Anyway, in the end he had started to get
worried. He had asked everyone, made the rounds of the hospitals: he had even
gone to the police. Nothing, his mother wasn’t anywhere. What a good son: a
large man, forty years old, who hadn’t worked in his life, just a small-time
crook and spendthrift. I could imagine how carefully he had done his
searching. Not at all. He had no brain, and in his heart he had only himself.
“她没在你那里吧？”他突然问我。
“She’s not with you?” he asked suddenly.
他母亲在都灵？他对情况了如指掌，只是说说而已。的确，他自己喜欢旅行，我没有邀请他，他到我家里来过十几次了。他母亲才是我热情欢迎的人，但她一辈子没有离开过那不勒斯。我答道：
His mother? Here in Turin? He knew the
situation perfectly well, he was speaking only to speak. Yes, he liked to
travel, he had come to my house at least a dozen times, without being
invited. His mother, whom I would have welcomed with pleasure, had never left
Naples in her life. I answered:
“不，她不在我这里。”
“No, she’s not with me.”
“你确定？”
“You’re sure?”
“里诺，别这样。我告诉你了，她不在这里。”
“Rino, please, I told you she’s not
here.”
“那她去哪里了？”
“Then where has she gone?”
他哭了起来，我耐着性子，让他把绝望和痛苦都展示出来。他开始假装啜泣，后来是真哭了。等他哭完，我对他说：
He began to cry and I let him act out his
desperation, sobs that began fake and became real. When he stopped I said:
“拜托了。这次你要按她希望的那样：不要再找她了。”
“Please, for once behave as she would
like: don’t look for her.”
“你是什么意思？”
“What do you mean?”
“就是刚才我对你说的，找她也没用，你要学会自己生活，还有，别再给我打电话了。”
“Just what I said. It’s pointless. Learn
to stand on your own two feet and don’t call me again, either.”
我挂了电话。
I hung up.
2
里诺的母亲名叫拉法埃拉·赛鲁罗，大家都叫她莉娜，除了我。这两个名字我从来都没叫过，六十多年来，我一直叫她莉拉。我要是突然叫她莉娜，或是拉法埃拉，她会觉得我们之间的友谊走到了尽头。
Rino’s mother is named Raffaella Cerullo,
but everyone has always called her Lina. Not me, I’ve never used either her
first name or her last. To me, for more than sixty years, she’s been Lila. If
I were to call her Lina or Raffaella, suddenly, like that, she would think
our friendship was over.
三十多年前，她就告诉我她想消失，不留任何痕迹。只有我知道她想表达什么。她从来都没想过逃离；从来没想过改变身份，在别处重新开始生活；她从来没想过自杀，因为一想到里诺不得不处理她的尸体，她就打消了这个念头。她的目标不是这些，而是别的：她想从人间蒸发；她想让自己的每一个细胞都消失，让关于自己的一切都无迹可寻。因为我十分了解她，至少我认为我了解她，我觉得她一定找到了办法——不留一丝毛发、从这个世界消失的办法。
It’s been at least three decades since
she told me that she wanted to disappear without leaving a trace, and I’m the
only one who knows what she means. She never had in mind any sort of flight,
a change of identity, the dream of making a new life somewhere else. And she
never thought of suicide, repulsed by the idea that Rino would have anything
to do with her body, and be forced to attend to the details. She meant
something different: she wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells
to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found. And since I know her well, or
at least I think I know her, I take it for granted that she has found a way
to disappear, to leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world.
3
日子一天天过去，我查看电子邮件，也查看信箱，但没有任何音讯。我经常写信给她，而她几乎从来不回复，这是她的习惯。她喜欢打电话，或是在我去那不勒斯时与我彻夜长谈。
Days passed. I looked at my e-mail, at my
regular mail, but not with any hope. I often wrote to her, and she almost
never responded: this was her habit. She preferred the telephone or long
nights of talk when I went to Naples.
我打开抽屉，还有用来保存各种小玩意儿的金属盒子。我其实没有很多东西，之前已经扔掉了许多，尤其是跟她有关的物品，这她也知道。我发现，我没有找到任何和她有关的东西，没有一张照片、纸条，或是小礼物。我自己都感到很吃惊。有没有可能那些年她什么也没给我留下？或者更糟的是，我不想保留任何和她相关的东西？这很有可能。
I opened my drawers, the metal boxes
where I keep all kinds of things. Not much there. I’ve thrown away a lot of
stuff, especially anything that had to do with her, and she knows it. I
discovered that I have nothing of hers, not a picture, not a note, not a
little gift. I was surprised myself. Is it possible that in all those years
she left me nothing of herself, or, worse, that I didn’t want to keep
anything of her? It is.
这次是我打电话给里诺，我很不情愿打电话给他。他没接家里的电话，也没有接手机。晚上方便的时候他回了电话，他说话的语气，有一种想让我难过的意图。
This time I telephoned Rino; I did it
unwillingly. He didn’t answer on the house phone or on his cell phone. He
called me in the evening, when it was convenient. He spoke in the tone of
voice he uses to arouse pity.
“我看你打过电话，你有消息吗？”
“I saw that you called. Do you have any
news?”
“没有，你有吗？”
“No. Do you?”
“没有。”
“Nothing.”
他的话前言不搭后语。他说他想上电视，上那种关于失踪人口的电视节目。他想借助电视台做一个声明，寻求母亲的原谅，祈求她回来。
He rambled incoherently. He wanted to go
on TV, on the show that looks for missing persons, make an appeal, ask his
mamma’s forgiveness for everything, beg her to return.
我耐心地听着，然后问他：
I listened patiently, then asked him:
“你有没有看她的衣柜？”
“Did you look in her closet?”
“看衣柜干什么？”
“What for?”
最明显的事情，他竟然都没有想到。
Naturally the most obvious thing would
never occur to him.
“赶紧去看看。”
“Go and look.”
他去看了，这才发现衣柜里什么都没有，找不到他母亲的任何一件衣服，不管是冬天还是夏天的，一件都不在了，只剩下几只旧衣架。我让他在房子里到处找一找，看能找到什么东西。她的鞋子都消失了；仅有的几本书也不见了；所有照片也消失了；电影影碟不在了。她的电脑消失了，包括那些过时的软盘，还有其他和电脑相关的东西。她可是一位电脑高手，六十年代末她就开始使用电脑，那时候还用中间有孔的磁盘。里诺十分惊讶。
He went, and he realized that there was
nothing there, not one of his mother’s dresses, summer or winter, only old
hangers. I sent him to search the whole house. Her shoes were gone. The few
books: gone. All the photographs: gone. The movies: gone. Her computer had
disappeared, including the old-fashioned diskettes and everything, everything
to do with her experience as an electronics wizard who had begun to operate
computers in the late sixties, in the days of punch cards. Rino was
astonished. I said to him:
我对他说：“你慢慢找，找到的时候，打电话告诉我，看能不能找到属于她的东西，哪怕是一根别针。”
“Take as much time as you want, but then
call and tell me if you’ve found even a single hairpin that belongs to her.”
第二天他就打电话过来，非常激动地说：
He called the next day, greatly agitated.
“我没找到任何东西。”
“There’s nothing.”
“什么都没有吗？”
“Nothing at all?”
“没有。她把自己从合影上剪了下来，包括我小时候和她照的照片。”
“No. She cut herself out of all the
photographs of the two of us, even those from when I was little.”
“你仔细找了吗？”
“You looked carefully?”
“整个屋子都翻遍了。”
“Everywhere.”
“地下室也找了吗？”
“Even in the cellar?”
“我刚才说了，我到处都找了。装文件的盒子也不见了，我知道盒子里放着出生证明、电话合同，还有缴水电费的收据。这到底是怎么回事呢？难道是有人偷走了所有东西？他们在找什么呢？他们想从我和妈妈这里得到什么呢？”
“I told you, everywhere. And the box with
her papers is gone: I don’t know, old birth certificates, telephone bills,
receipts. What does it mean? Did someone steal everything? What are they
looking for? What do they want from my mother and me?”
我安慰他，让他放心，我说如果有人想要从他身上得到些什么东西，那是根本没有可能的事情。
I reassured him, I told him to calm down.
It was unlikely that anyone wanted anything, especially from him.
“我能去你那儿待一阵子吗？”
“Can I come and stay with you for a
while?”
“不行。”
“No.”
“求求你，我晚上睡不着。”
“Please, I can’t sleep.”
“那是你的事，里诺，我也无能为力。”
“That’s your problem, Rino, I don’t know
what to do about it.”
我挂了电话，他再打过来，我没有接，我坐在桌前。
I hung up and when he called back I
didn’t answer. I sat down at my desk.
我想这次莉拉还是像之前一样，有些过火了。
Lila is overdoing it as usual, I thought.
这次她夸大了“痕迹”在整体中的比重，在她六十六岁时，现在她不仅仅想自己消失——她还想把过往生活留下的一切都彻底抹去。
She was expanding the concept of trace
out of all proportion. She wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the
age of sixty-six, but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left
behind.
我非常生气。
I was really angry.
我对自己说，我们看看，这次到底谁会赢。我打开电脑开始写我们的故事，包括所有细节，我脑子能想起的一切。
We’ll see who wins this time, I said to
myself. I turned on the computer and began to write—all the details of our
story, everything that still remained in my memory.
童年 堂·阿奇勒的故事
CHILDHOOD The Story of Don Achille
1
那次，我和莉拉决定爬上那段阴暗的楼梯，我们一个台阶一个台阶、一层层往上走，一直走到堂·阿奇勒1的家门口，就是那天我们开始了与彼此的友谊。
My friendship with Lila began the day we
decided to go up the dark stairs that led, step after step, flight after
flight, to the door of Don Achille’s apartment.
我记得，院子里有一种紫色的光，空气中弥漫着春天夜晚的气息。母亲们都在做晚饭，是回家吃饭的时候了，我们没马上回家，而是在彼此较劲。虽然我和莉拉从来都没有说过话，但我们在比谁的胆子大。
I remember the violet light of the courtyard, the smells of a warm spring evening. The mothers were making dinner, it was time to go home, but we delayed, challenging each other, without ever saying a word, testing our courage.
这种比赛已经开始有一段时间了，无论在学校里，还是在学校外，我们都一直在较劲。莉拉把自己的手甚至整条胳膊都伸进了下水道黑黢黢的洞里；我也马上把手伸进去，但我的心在怦怦跳，我希望蟑螂不会顺着我的手臂爬上来，希望老鼠不会咬我。莉拉攀上住在一楼的斯帕纽洛太太家的窗户，吊在窗子的铁栏杆上，那是绑晾衣服绳的地方。她吊在那里，摇晃着身体，然后猛地跳到人行道上。我也马上照着做了，但我很害怕掉下来摔到自己。莉拉把一枚锈迹斑斑的法国胸针扎到皮肤里，那是她在路上捡的，她一直把胸针装在口袋里，说那是一位仙女送给她的礼物。我看着那个白色的金属尖头在她手掌上留下一道白色的口子，她把那枚胸针递给我，我也照她的样子做了。
For some time, in school and outside of
it, that was what we had been doing. Lila would thrust her hand and then her
whole arm into the black mouth of a manhole, and I, in turn, immediately did
the same, my heart pounding, hoping that the cockroaches wouldn’t run over my
skin, that the rats wouldn’t bite me. Lila climbed up to Signora Spagnuolo’s
ground-floor window, and, hanging from the iron bar that the clothesline was
attached to, swung back and forth, then lowered herself down to the sidewalk,
and I immediately did the same, although I was afraid of falling and hurting
myself. Lila stuck into her skin the rusted safety pin that she had found on
the street somewhere but kept in her pocket like the gift of a fairy
godmother; I watched the metal point as it dug a whitish tunnel into her
palm, and then, when she pulled it out and handed it to me, I did the same.
这时候，她用一种她特有的目光看了我一眼，她眼睛眯着，很坚决，然后看着堂·阿奇勒住的那栋楼。我吓呆了，因为堂·阿奇勒是童话中的怪兽，我绝对不能靠近他、看他、和他说话、偷窥他。我要假装他和他的家人都不存在。不仅仅是在我家，大家对于他都有一种又恨又怕的情感，我不知道这种情感是怎么来的。我父亲谈论堂·阿奇勒的方式，让我想象他是一位身材高大、满脸横肉、非常易怒的人，尽管他被尊称为“堂”，对我来说，拥有这个称呼的人，应该是那种非常平静安详的权威人士。我想象他由一些难以描述的材料构成：铁、玻璃和荨麻。但他是一个活生生的人，他的鼻子和嘴里冒着热乎乎的气息。我觉得，即使远远看见他，也会刺痛我的眼睛。假如我胆敢靠近他的家门，他一定会把我杀了。
At some point she gave me one of her firm
looks, eyes narrowed, and headed toward the building where Don Achille lived.
I was frozen with fear. Don Achille was the ogre of fairy tales, I was
absolutely forbidden to go near him, speak to him, look at him, spy on him, I
was to act as if neither he nor his family existed. Regarding him there was,
in my house but not only mine, a fear and a hatred whose origin I didn’t
know. The way my father talked about him, I imagined a huge man, covered with
purple boils, violent in spite of the “don,” which to me suggested a calm
authority. He was a being created out of some unidentifiable material, iron,
glass, nettles, but alive, alive, the hot breath streaming from his nose and
mouth. I thought that if I merely saw him from a distance he would drive
something sharp and burning into my eyes. So if I was mad enough to approach
the door of his house he would kill me.
我迟疑了一下，想看看莉拉会不会改变主意，退回去。我知道她想干什么，我徒然地希望她能忘记那件事情，但她却没有。路灯还没亮，楼道里的灯也暗着，从房子里传来让人不安的声音。要跟上莉拉的脚步，就要离开院子里微蓝的天光，进到漆黑的大门里去。我终于决定跟着她进去了，刚开始，我什么都看不见，只闻到一些旧物件，还有DDT杀虫剂的味道。我的眼睛最后适应了黑暗，我发现，莉拉坐在第一段楼梯的第一个台阶上。这时候她站了起来，我们开始向上爬。
I waited to see if Lila would have second
thoughts and turn back. I knew what she wanted to do, I had hoped that she
would forget about it, but in vain. The street lamps were not yet lighted,
nor were the lights on the stairs. From the apartments came irritable voices.
To follow Lila I had to leave the bluish light of the courtyard and enter the
black of the doorway. When I finally made up my mind, I saw nothing at first,
there was only an odor of old junk and DDT. Then I got used to the darkness
and found Lila sitting on the first step of the first flight of stairs. She
got up and we began to climb.
我们靠着墙走，她走在我前面两个台阶，我跟在后面。我觉得很矛盾，不知道是应该赶上去缩短我们之间的距离，还是应该拉开距离。我们肩膀靠着泥灰脱落的墙壁走，这时候我有一种感觉：那些台阶非常高，要比我们楼里的楼梯高。我在发抖。脚步声，任何一种声音都是堂·阿奇勒在我们身后出现，或者是迎面走过来的声音，他拿着一把长长的刀子，像那种给鸡开膛的刀子，楼道里弥漫着油炒蒜的味道，堂·阿奇勒的妻子玛丽亚会把我扔到热油锅里，几个孩子会把我吃掉，堂·阿奇勒会把我的脑子吸出来吞下去，就像我爸爸吃鱼头那样。
We kept to the side where the wall was,
she two steps ahead, I two steps behind, torn between shortening the distance
or letting it increase. I can still feel my shoulder inching along the
flaking wall and the idea that the steps were very high, higher than those in
the building where I lived. I was trembling. Every footfall, every voice was
Don Achille creeping up behind us or coming down toward us with a long knife,
the kind used for slicing open a chicken breast. There was an odor of
sautéing garlic. Maria, Don Achille’s wife, would put me in the pan of
boiling oil, the children would eat me, he would suck my head the way my
father did with mullets.
我们时不时停下来，每次我都希望莉拉后退。我浑身是汗，我不知道她有什么感觉。她时不时向高处看，但我不知道她在看什么，头顶上是楼梯间灰色的大窗户。这时候灯忽然亮了，但灯光很微弱，灯上落满了灰尘，还有很多可怕的角落沉浸在黑暗里。我们停了一下，想搞清楚是不是堂·阿奇勒开的灯，然而我们什么都没听到，没有脚步声，也没有开门、关门的声音。莉拉继续向前走，我跟在后面。
We stopped often, and each time I hoped
that Lila would decide to turn back. I was all sweaty, I don’t know about
her. Every so often she looked up, but I couldn’t tell at what, all that was
visible was the gray areas of the big windows at every landing. Suddenly the
lights came on, but they were faint, dusty, leaving broad zones of shadow,
full of dangers. We waited to see if it was Don Achille who had turned the
switch, but we heard nothing, neither footsteps nor the opening or closing of
a door. Then Lila continued on, and I followed.
她觉得自己在做一件该做的事情，而我忘记了我出现在那里的原因。唯一可以肯定的是：我在那里是因为她在那里。我们慢慢走向那些年我们最害怕的人，我们去探索、审问自己的恐惧。
She thought that what we were doing was
just and necessary; I had forgotten every good reason, and certainly was
there only because she was. We climbed slowly toward the greatest of our
terrors of that time, we went to expose ourselves to fear and interrogate it.
上到第四级楼梯时，莉拉的表现出乎我的意料：她停了下来，等了我一会儿。我赶上她，她向我伸出手来，这个举动彻底改变了我们之间的关系。
At the fourth flight Lila did something
unexpected. She stopped to wait for me, and when I reached her she gave me
her hand. This gesture changed everything between us forever.
2
那其实是她的错。在不久之前——可能是十天，也可能是一个月之前，没人知道，那时候我们不太重视时间——她拿了我的布娃娃，还忽然把娃娃扔到地窖里去了。现在我们朝上走，走向我们恐惧的人；但当她把娃娃扔到地窖时，我们不得不向下走，匆忙地奔向未知。无论是向上还是向下，我们都觉得我们在走向恐惧。尽管这些恐惧的事情在我们出生之前就存在了，但它们一直在等着我们。当时，我们来到这个世界上没多久，很难搞清楚哪些是灾难，哪些是灾难的源头，可能也觉得没必要了解这些。那些大人呢？他们在期待“明天”，在“现在”活动，“现在”之前有一个“昨天”，或者“前天”，最多一个星期前，其余的事情他们不愿意多想。小孩子不懂“昨天”的意思，也不懂“前天”和“明天”，所有一切都在“当下”：街道在这里，大门在那里；这些是楼梯；这是妈妈，那是爸爸；这是白天，那是夜晚。在我小时候，我的布娃娃可能都比我懂得多，我和她说话，她也会和我说话。她的脸是赛璐珞的，头发和眼睛也都是赛璐珞的，她身上穿着一件天蓝色的裙子，那是我母亲缝的，她难得有这个兴致，我的娃娃漂亮极了。而莉拉的娃娃是用破布块拼起来的，上面有好多裂口，我觉得那个娃娃很丑、很脏。两个布娃娃相互窥探，相互打量，假如要打雷下雨，假如有一位高大强壮、长着利齿的人要撕咬她们，她们好像会随时逃离我们的怀抱。
It was her fault. Not too long before—ten
days, a month, who can say, we knew nothing about time, in those days—she had
treacherously taken my doll and thrown her down into a cellar. Now we were
climbing toward fear; then we had felt obliged to descend, quickly, into the
unknown. Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward
something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for
us, just for us. When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to
comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you
don’t even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present
behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week:
they don’t want to think about the rest. Children don’t know the meaning of
yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is
this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this
is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night. I was small and
really my doll knew more than I did. I talked to her, she talked to me. She
had a plastic face and plastic hair and plastic eyes. She wore a blue dress
that my mother had made for her in a rare moment of happiness, and she was
beautiful. Lila’s doll, on the other hand, had a cloth body of a yellowish
color, filled with sawdust, and she seemed to me ugly and grimy. The two
spied on each other, they sized each other up, they were ready to flee into
our arms if a storm burst, if there was thunder, if someone bigger and
stronger, with sharp teeth, wanted to snatch them away.
我们在院子里玩耍，但我们假装没在一起玩儿。莉拉坐在地上，一边是地下室的小窗子，我坐在窗口的另一边。我们喜欢这个地方，我们可以在铁网边上的水泥地上，摆上蒂娜和诺的玩意儿，“蒂娜”是我的布娃娃的名字，莉拉的娃娃叫“诺”。我们会放一些石子儿、香槟酒塞子，还有玻璃碎片在娃娃旁边。莉拉给诺说的话，我也会低声说给蒂娜，但会换个说法。假如她拿一个酒瓶塞子放到她的布娃娃头上，就好像给娃娃戴一顶帽子，我就会对着我的娃娃用方言说：“蒂娜，戴上你这顶女王王冠，不然你会着凉的。”假如诺在莉拉的怀里玩跳格子的游戏，我也会让蒂娜玩。那时候，我们还没有一起玩过游戏，甚至那时候我们一起玩的地方，彼此也没有明确约定。莉拉坐到那里，我在她周围转悠，假装要去别的地方，后来我若无其事，也坐在了地下室的窗口旁边。
We played in the courtyard but as if we
weren’t playing together. Lila sat on the ground, on one side of a small
barred basement window, I on the other. We liked that place, especially
because behind the bars was a metal grating and, against the grating, on the
cement ledge between the bars, we could arrange the things that belonged to
Tina, my doll, and those of Nu, Lila’s doll. There we put rocks, bottle tops,
little flowers, nails, splinters of glass. I overheard what Lila said to Nu
and repeated it in a low voice to Tina, slightly modified. If she took a
bottle top and put it on her doll’s head, like a hat, I said to mine, in
dialect, Tina, put on your queen’s crown or you’ll catch cold. If Nu played
hopscotch in Lila’s arms, I soon afterward made Tina do the same. Still, it
never happened that we decided on a game and began playing together. Even
that place we chose without explicit agreement. Lila sat down there, and I
strolled around, pretending to go somewhere else. Then, as if I’d given it no
thought, I, too, settled next to the cellar window, but on the opposite side.
最吸引我们的是地下室吹出来的凉风，无论是春天还是夏天，那里的微风都让人觉得舒服。我们还喜欢铁栅栏上的蜘蛛网、地下室的黑暗，还有因为生锈有点发红的密密铁网。我坐的一边，还有莉拉坐的那边，铁网都有些散开了，形成了两个对称的洞，通过这两个洞，我们把石子丢进去，倾听石子落地的声音，一切很激动人心，也让人害怕。因为通过那两个洞，黑暗可能会忽然夺走我们的布娃娃。有时候，我们把娃娃紧紧抱在怀里，我们经常也把娃娃放在洞口旁边，也让她们享受地下室吹过来的凉风，听下面让人害怕的窸窸窣窣、吱吱嘎嘎的声音。
The thing that attracted us most was the
cold air that came from the cellar, a breath that refreshed us in spring and
summer. And then we liked the bars with their spiderwebs, the darkness, and
the tight mesh of the grating that, reddish with rust, curled up both on my
side and on Lila’s, creating two parallel holes through which we could drop
rocks into obscurity and hear the sound when they hit bottom. It was all
beautiful and frightening then. Through those openings the darkness might
suddenly seize the dolls, who sometimes were safe in our arms, but more often
were placed deliberately next to the twisted grating and thus exposed to the
cellar’s cold breath, to its threatening noises, rustling, squeaking,
scraping.
诺和蒂娜都不幸福，因为我们每天感受到的恐惧也会传递到她们身上。阳光照在石头、楼房、田野、外面和家人的身上，但我们都没有安全感，我们能感觉到那些黑暗的角落，还有那种近乎让人崩溃的感情。我们把这种恐惧和不安归结于那些黑洞——整个城区下面的地窖，即使是日光下也让我们害怕的东西。比如说堂·阿奇勒，他不仅仅生活在自己位于顶层的家里，而且也存在于这些楼房的下面，他是蜘蛛中的蜘蛛，老鼠中的老鼠，他可以呈现出很多种样子。我想象他张着血盆大口，因为满嘴獠牙，他合不上嘴，他的身子是石头和玻璃做成的，身上还长着毒草。他总是拿着一只巨大的黑包，会把我们扔到地下室的任何东西都放到包里，那只黑色大包是堂·阿奇勒的象征，他一直都带着那只包，在家里也背着，他在包里放着各种东西，死的活的都有。
Nu and Tina weren’t happy. The terrors
that we tasted every day were theirs. We didn’t trust the light on the
stones, on the buildings, on the scrubland beyond the neighborhood, on the
people inside and outside their houses. We imagined the dark corners, the
feelings repressed but always close to exploding. And to those shadowy
mouths, the caverns that opened beyond them under the buildings, we
attributed everything that frightened us in the light of day. Don Achille,
for example, was not only in his apartment on the top floor but also down
below, a spider among spiders, a rat among rats, a shape that assumed all
shapes. I imagined him with his mouth open because of his long animal fangs,
his body of glazed stone and poisonous grasses, always ready to pick up in an
enormous black bag anything we dropped through the torn corners of the grate.
That bag was a fundamental feature of Don Achille, he always had it, even at
home, and into it he put material both living and dead.
莉拉知道我很害怕，我的娃娃已经表达了我的恐惧，因为这个缘故，那天我们没经过商量，只是通过目光和动作，第一次交换了我们的娃娃。她刚拿到蒂娜，就把蒂娜从铁网上的洞口丢了出去，我的娃娃坠入黑暗之中。
Lila knew that I had that fear, my doll
talked about it out loud. And so, on the day we exchanged our dolls for the
first time—with no discussion, only looks and gestures—as soon as she had
Tina, she pushed her through the grate and let her fall into the darkness.
3
在我上小学一年级时，莉拉就出现在了我的生命里，她很快就给我留下了很深刻的印象：她很坏。那个班的所有女生都有点坏，但我们不当着奥利维耶罗老师的面淘气，而她在谁面前都一个样。有一次，她把卫生纸撕成碎片，塞到墨水瓶里，然后用钢笔尖捞出来，往我们身上甩。我被她击中了两次，一次是头发，一次是我的白领子。老师像往常一样尖叫起来，声音像针刺一样，我们都很害怕。老师让莉拉站到黑板后面去，莉拉不听，她看起来一点儿也不害怕，还继续往别人身上甩沾了墨水的纸。
Lila appeared in my life in first grade and immediately impressed me because she was very bad. In that class we were all a little bad, but only when the teacher, Maestra Oliviero, couldn’t see us. Lila, on the other hand, was always bad. Once she tore up some blotting paper into little pieces, dipped the pieces one by one in the inkwell, and then fished them out with her pen and threw them at us. I was hit twice in the hair and once on my white collar. The teacher yelled, as she knew how to do, in a voice like a needle, long and pointed, which terrorized us, and ordered her to go and stand behind the blackboard in punishment. Lila didn’t obey and didn’t even seem frightened; she just kept throwing around pieces of inky paper.
奥利维耶罗老师是一个比较肥胖、笨拙的女人，她那时候也就刚满四十岁，但我们都觉得她很老。她一边从讲台上下来，一边骂莉拉，这时她不知道被什么东西绊了一下，失去平衡摔倒了，脸撞到了桌角上。她倒在地板上，看起来像死了一样。
So Maestra Oliviero, a heavy woman who
seemed very old to us, though she couldn’t have been much over forty, came
down from the desk, threatening her. The teacher stumbled, it wasn’t clear on
what, lost her balance, and fell, striking her face against the corner of a
desk. She lay on the floor as if dead.
后来发生了什么，我记得不太清楚了。只记得老师一动不动，她的身体像一块黑色的包袱扔在地上，莉拉一脸严肃地看着她。
What happened right afterward I don’t
remember, I remember only the dark bundle of the teacher’s motionless body,
and Lila staring at her with a serious expression.
我想起了很多类似于这样的事故。我们生活的世界，大人和小孩都很容易受伤，伤口会流血，会化脓感染，有时候就死了。卖蔬菜水果的女人阿孙塔太太有一个女儿，有一次被钉子弄伤了，得破伤风死了。斯帕纽洛太太的小儿子，得哮喘死了。我的一个堂哥，他二十岁了，早上去清理废墟，晚上就被压死了。我外祖父在修建一栋楼房时死了，因为楼塌了。佩卢索先生少一条胳臂，因为出了意外，那条胳膊被车床切断了。佩卢索先生的妻子朱塞平娜有一个姐姐，二十二岁上死于肺结核。堂·阿奇勒的大儿子——我从来都没见过，但我总感觉有些印象——他去打仗，结果死了两次，第一次是淹死在太平洋里，第二次是被鲨鱼吃掉了。梅尔·奇奥莱全家人是抱在一起死的，在大轰炸期间，他们都吓得大喊大叫。老姑娘克劳林是煤气中毒死的。在我们上一年级的时候，章尼诺上四年级，有一天他死了，因为他找到了一颗炸弹，炸弹被引爆了。路易吉娜，我们之前一起在院子里玩耍过——也可能是我记错了——伤寒要了她的命。我们的世界就是这样，充满了致命的词汇：哮喘、破伤风、毒气、战争、机床、废墟、工作、轰炸、炸弹、肺结核和传染。那些年听到的这些词汇陪伴了我一辈子，是我很多恐惧和担忧的根源。
I have in my mind so many incidents of
this type. We lived in a world in which children and adults were often
wounded, blood flowed from the wounds, they festered, and sometimes people
died. One of the daughters of Signora Assunta, the fruit and vegetable
seller, had stepped on a nail and died of tetanus. Signora Spagnuolo’s
youngest child had died of croup. A cousin of mine, at the age of twenty, had
gone one morning to move some rubble and that night was dead, crushed, the
blood pouring out of his ears and mouth. My mother’s father had been killed
when he fell from a scaffolding at a building site. The father of Signor
Peluso was missing an arm, the lathe had caught him unawares. The sister of
Giuseppina, Signor Peluso’s wife, had died of tuberculosis at twenty-two. The
oldest son of Don Achille—I had never seen him, and yet I seemed to remember
him—had gone to war and died twice: drowned in the Pacific Ocean, then eaten
by sharks. The entire Melchiorre family had died clinging to each other,
screaming with fear, in a bombardment. Old Signorina Clorinda had died
inhaling gas instead of air. Giannino, who was in fourth grade when we were
in first, had died one day because he had come across a bomb and touched it.
Luigina, with whom we had played in the courtyard, or maybe not, she was only
a name, had died of typhus. Our world was like that, full of words that
killed: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war, lathe, rubble, work, bombardment,
bomb, tuberculosis, infection. With these words and those years I bring back
the many fears that accompanied me all my life.
那些看似普通的东西也能要人命。比如说一个人出了汗，如果没有先弄湿手腕，直接从水龙头上喝水，可能会满身长红点，开始咳嗽，喘不上气来死掉。也可能会因为吃黑樱桃没吐核而死掉。有时候可能吃美国口香糖，一不留神咽了下去，被卡死了。特别是，如果太阳穴挨上一拳的话，也会死掉，因为太阳穴是很关键的部位，我们都很小心，如果一块石头打中太阳穴，就会要了命，躲过石头是生存原则。学校门口有一伙乡下男生，领头的是恩佐，人称“混混恩佐”，他是卖菜的女人阿孙塔的儿子，他先向我们撇石头，他很生气，因为我们学习比他好。石头砸过来时，我们都逃开了，但莉拉没有，她还是像平时那样走路，有时候甚至会停下来。她很擅长推测石头扔过来的轨迹，不紧不慢地躲过，按照我现在的形容，她是很优雅地躲过去了。她有一个哥哥，这可能是她哥哥教给她的。我有好几个弟弟，但我从他们身上什么都没学到。我意识到她落在后面，虽然我很害怕，但我还是停下来等她。那时候我对她已经有某种情感，让我撇不下她。
You could also die of things that seemed
normal. You could die, for example, if you were sweating and then drank cold
water from the tap without first bathing your wrists: you’d break out in red
spots, you’d start coughing, and be unable to breathe. You could die if you
ate black cherries and didn’t spit out the pits. You could die if you chewed
American gum and inadvertently swallowed it. You could die if you banged your
temple. The temple, in particular, was a fragile place, we were all careful
about it. Being hit with a stone could do it, and throwing stones was the
norm. When we left school a gang of boys from the countryside, led by a kid
called Enzo or Enzuccio, who was one of the children of Assunta the fruit and
vegetable seller, began to throw rocks at us. They were angry because we were
smarter than them. When the rocks came at us we ran away, except Lila, who
kept walking at her regular pace and sometimes even stopped. She was very
good at studying the trajectory of the stones and dodging them with an easy
move that today I would call elegant. She had an older brother and maybe she
had learned from him, I don’t know, I also had brothers, but they were
younger than me and from them I had learned nothing. Still, when I realized
that she had stayed behind, I stopped to wait for her, even though I was
scared.
在班里班外，虽然我们一直在较劲，但我和她还不是很熟，我们从来没有说过话。那时候我模糊地感觉到，假如我和其他女生一起逃走的话，我会失去某些无法挽回的东西。
Already then there was something that
kept me from abandoning her. I didn’t know her well; we had never spoken to
each other, although we were constantly competing, in class and outside it.
But in a confused way I felt that if I ran away with the others I would leave
with her something of mine that she would never give back.
一开始我藏在一个墙角，探出身子，看莉拉有没有跟来。我看到她没有动，于是不得不跑到她跟前，递给她几块石头，我自己也扔出去几块。我扔石头时不是很确信，在我的生命中，我做了很多自己都不是很肯定的事情，我觉得自己的所作所为有时候很盲目，缺乏连贯性。莉拉从小——我现在说不准，她也就六七岁吧，或者是我们一起去堂·阿奇勒家里的那次，我们八九岁的样子——她的决心一直都很大。无论是手上拿着三色笔杆，还是拿着一块石头，又或者把手放在楼梯扶手上，给人的感觉都是她很坚决。她一下子把钢笔尖扎到木头桌面上，把沾满墨水的卫生纸甩出去，拿石头打那些乡下的男生，一直走到堂·阿奇勒的家门口，她都会毫不犹豫。
At first I stayed hidden, around a
corner, and leaned out to see if Lila was coming. Then, since she wouldn’t
budge, I forced myself to rejoin her; I handed her stones, and even threw
some myself. But I did it without conviction: I did many things in my life
without conviction; I always felt slightly detached from my own actions.
Lila, on the other hand, had, from a young age—I can’t say now precisely if
it was so at six or seven, or when we went together up the stairs that led to
Don Achille’s and were eight, almost nine—the characteristic of absolute
determination. Whether she was gripping the tricolor shaft of the pen or a
stone or the handrail on the dark stairs, she communicated the idea that
whatever came next—thrust the pen with a precise motion into the wood of the
desk, dispense inky bullets, strike the boys from the countryside, climb the
stairs to Don Achille’s door—she would do without hesitation.
这伙男生在火车站站台，用铁轨那里的石头袭击我们。恩佐是他们的头儿，他是一个非常危险的孩子，比我们至少年长三岁。他是个留级生，头发很短，是金色的，眼睛是浅蓝色的。他扔出来的石头很小，但边上很锋利，莉拉等他的石头撇过来，轻盈地躲过，这让他更加恼怒，接着扔过来的石头更加危险。有一次，我们打中了他的右脚踝，我说是“我们”打中了，因为是我递给了莉拉一块边上很锋利的扁平石头，那块石头像剃刀一样，擦过了恩佐的皮肤，留下了一道伤口，血很快就冒了出来。恩佐看着眼前受伤的腿，他的拇指和食指中间还捏着一块石头，他已经举起手臂了，这时候他惊异地停了下来，他手下的喽啰也用难以置信的眼神看着他脚踝上的血。石头打中了对手，莉拉没有任何满意的表示，她低下头去捡另一块石头。我拉住了她的一条胳膊，这是我们第一次身体接触，非常匆忙，充满惊恐。我感觉那伙男生会更加凶猛，我想把莉拉拉走，但来不及了，尽管恩佐脚踝破了，但是他回过神来，扔出了手上的石头，石头打中莉拉的额头。这时候我还紧紧地拉着她，她一下子就躺在了人行道上，头被打破了。
The gang came from the railroad
embankment, stocking up on rocks from the trackbed. Enzo, the leader, was a
dangerous child, with very short blond hair and pale eyes; he was at least
three years older than us, and had repeated a year. He threw small, sharp-edged
rocks with great accuracy, and Lila waited for his throws to demonstrate how
she evaded them, making him still angrier, and responded with throws that
were just as dangerous. Once we hit him in the right calf, and I say we
because I had handed Lila a flat stone with jagged edges. The stone slid over
Enzo’s skin like a razor, leaving a red stain that immediately gushed blood.
The child looked at his wounded leg. I have him before my eyes: between thumb
and index finger he held the rock that he was about to throw, his arm was
raised to throw it, and yet he stopped, bewildered. The boys under his
command also looked incredulously at the blood. Lila, however, manifested not
the least satisfaction in the outcome of the throw and bent over to pick up
another stone. I grabbed her by the arm; it was the first contact between us,
an abrupt, frightened contact. I felt that the gang would get more ferocious
and I wanted to retreat. But there wasn’t time. Enzo, in spite of his
bleeding calf, came out of his stupor and threw the rock in his hand. I was
still holding on to Lila when the rock hit her in the head and knocked her
away from me. A second later she was lying on the sidewalk with a gash in her
forehead.
4
血，一般是经过激烈的争吵和肮脏的辱骂之后，才从伤口里流出来，事情总是按照这个顺序来。我的父亲——我觉得他是一个好人，但是面对一些按他的话说“不配活在这个世界上的人”，他也会破口大骂，尤其针对堂·阿奇勒，我父亲总能找到骂他的理由。有时候，我用手堵住耳朵，不想听那些难听话。当父亲和母亲说起堂·阿奇勒时，会把他称之为“你表哥”，我母亲会马上否认这种亲戚关系（他们是远房表亲），也会跟着我父亲一起骂起来。他们的愤怒让我很害怕，最让我害怕的是堂·阿奇勒可能会有听到很远地方骂他的话，我害怕他会来杀了我父母。
Blood. In general it came from wounds
only after horrible curses and disgusting obscenities had been exchanged.
That was the standard procedure. My father, though he seemed to me a good
man, hurled continuous insults and threats if someone didn’t deserve, as he
said, to be on the face of the earth. He especially had it in for Don
Achille. He always had something to accuse him of, and sometimes I put my
hands over my ears in order not to be too disturbed by his brutal words. When
he spoke of him to my mother he called him “your cousin” but my mother denied
that blood tie (there was a very distant relationship) and added to the
insults. Their anger frightened me, I was frightened above all by the thought
that Don Achille might have ears so sensitive that he could hear insults even
from far away. I was afraid that he might come and murder them.
无论如何，堂·阿奇勒的死敌不是我父亲，而是佩卢索先生。佩卢索先生是一个木匠，非常能干，但他一直都没钱，在索拉拉酒吧的密室里，他总是把挣来的钱输光。佩卢索是我的同学卡梅拉的父亲，他有一个大儿子叫帕斯卡莱，还有两个更小的孩子。他们都是比我们更悲惨的孩子，我和莉拉有时候也会和他们玩。在学校里，在外面，他们总是会偷我们的东西：铅笔、橡皮、零食，回家时总是鼻青脸肿的，因为总是挨我们揍。
The sworn enemy of Don Achille, however,
was not my father but Signor Peluso, a very good carpenter who was always
broke, because he gambled away everything he earned in the back room of the
Bar Solara. Peluso was the father of our classmate Carmela, of Pasquale, who
was older, and of two others, children poorer than us, with whom Lila and I
sometimes played, and who in school and outside always tried to steal our
things, a pen, an eraser, the cotognata, so that they went home covered with
bruises because we’d hit them.
有时候我们也能看到佩卢索先生，他看起来真绝望。一方面，他赌博输掉了所有钱；另一个方面，他受到所有人的指责，因为他让家人都吃不饱。不知道是什么原因，他把这一切都归因于堂·阿奇勒，他欠堂·阿奇勒的钱，他所有的工具都被拿走了，就好像堂·阿奇勒的身体是磁铁做的，所有木工干活用的工具都被他吸走了，这样一来，那个木匠作坊就没什么用了。他骂堂·阿奇勒，后来作坊也被堂·阿奇勒收走了，变成了一家肉食店。很多年里，我都想象着那些锯子、夹子、榔头、锤子，还有成千上万的钉子，都像蜂群一样，跟在堂·阿奇勒身后；很多年里，我都想象各种各样的材料——香肠、奶酪、熏肉、猪油和火腿，像蜂群一样，从他粗糙的身体里往外冒着。
The times we saw him, Signor Peluso
seemed to us the image of despair. On the one hand he lost everything
gambling and on the other he was criticized in public because he was no
longer able to feed his family. For obscure reasons he attributed his ruin to
Don Achille. He charged him with having taken by stealth, as if his shadowy
body were a magnet, all the tools for his carpentry work, which made the shop
useless. He accused him of having taken the shop itself, and transforming it
into a grocery store. For years I imagined the pliers, the saw, the tongs,
the hammer, the vise, and thousands and thousands of nails sucked up like a
swarm of metal into the matter that made up Don Achille. For years I saw his
body—a coarse body, heavy with a mixture of materials—emitting in a swarm
salami, provolone, mortadella, lard, and prosciutto.
这都是我们不了解的年代发生的事情，在我们出生之前，堂·阿奇勒应该已经展示出了他那可怕的本性。“之前”——莉拉通常用这种说法，无论是在学校里还是在外面，我觉得她对于发生在我们之前的事情并不在乎。之前的事情，通常都是一些搞不清楚的事情，大人们不说，或者说的时候也闪烁其词。看起来，莉拉更在乎的是到底有没有所谓的“之前”。在当时，这就是让她不安，甚至让她烦恼的事。我们成为朋友之后，她经常会跟我谈起那些荒谬的事情——“我们之前”的事情，这让我觉得也有些焦虑。之前——那是很长很长的一段时间，我们还不存在的时间，在那段时间里，堂·阿奇勒向所有人展示了他的本性：一个很邪恶的人，身体一半是动物，一半是矿物，好像他能让别人流血，自己却从来都不会出血，你连抓一下都抓不到。
These things had happened in the dark
ages. Don Achille had supposedly revealed himself in all his monstrous nature
before we were born. Before. Lila often used that formulation. But she didn’t
seem to care as much about what had happened before us—events that were in
general obscure, and about which the adults either were silent or spoke with
great reticence—as about the fact that there really had been a before. It was
this which at the time left her puzzled and occasionally even made her
nervous. When we became friends she spoke so much of that absurd thing—before
us—that she ended up passing on her nervousness to me. It was the long, very
long, period when we didn’t exist, that period when Don Achille had showed
himself to everyone for what he was: an evil being of uncertain
animal-mineral physiognomy, who—it seemed—sucked blood from others while
never losing any himself, maybe it wasn’t even possible to scratch him.
我们当时上小学二年级，可能我和莉拉还没开始说话。那时候，据说在圣家教堂的前面，佩卢索先生做完弥撒出来很愤怒，就对着堂·阿奇勒大骂起来，堂·阿奇勒撇下大儿子斯特凡诺、女儿皮诺奇娅、妻子，还有和我们年龄相仿的阿方索，忽然间露出他让人毛骨悚然的本性，一下子扑到了佩卢索身上，把他举了起来，扔向小花园里的一棵树，转身就走了。佩卢索躺在那里，半死不活，从头到脚都在流血，都来不及说一句：“救救我！”
We were in second grade, perhaps, and
still hadn’t spoken to each other, when the rumor spread that right in front
of the Church of the Holy Family, right after Mass, Signor Peluso had started
screaming furiously at Don Achille. Don Achille had left his older son
Stefano, his daughter Pinuccia, Alfonso, who was our age, and his wife, and,
appearing for a moment in his most hair-raising form, had hurled himself at
Peluso, picked him up, thrown him against a tree in the public gardens, and
left him there, barely conscious, with blood coming out of innumerable wounds
in his head and everywhere, and the poor man able to say merely: help.