12
我留下来和莉拉吃饭，我的几个女儿不得不自己照顾自己。尽管我冻得瑟瑟发抖，我们一直在谈论那种体貌的相似性，我想搞清楚她到底在想什么。我还跟她说了我正在写的东西。为了鼓励她，我说：“和你交谈对我有好处，能促进我思考。”
My daughters had to fend for themselves,
I stayed to eat with Lila, even though I felt cold in my bones. We talked the
whole time about physical resemblances; I tried to understand what was
happening in her mind. But I also mentioned to her the work I was doing.
Talking to you helps, I said to give her confidence, you make me think.
我的话好像让她高兴起来了，她嘟哝了一句：“我知道自己对你有用，我感觉好多了。”很快，她为了展示自己对我有用，就说了一些要么难懂要么没头没尾的话。她往自己脸上抹了很多胭脂来掩盖苍白的脸色，她的颧骨很红，看起来像个狂欢节面具，已经不像她了。我满怀兴趣地听她说，有时候我从她的话里能听出她心里的那些症结，这让我很不安。她说，有一段时间，她以为自己生的孩子是尼诺的，就像我生了伊玛，一个有血有肉的孩子，但后来这个孩子成了斯特凡诺的，那尼诺的孩子去哪儿了？是在詹纳罗的身体里呢，还是在她身体里？说了一些类似这样的话之后，她忽然改变了话题，开始赞美我的厨艺，她说她吃得很香，她很久都没有这样吃饭了。我回答说，饭不是我做的，而是皮诺奇娅做的。她脸色阴沉下来，嘟囔着说，她不想和皮诺奇娅有任何关系。这时候艾尔莎在楼道里叫我，让我马上回家，说黛黛发烧时要比她好的时候还糟糕。我让莉拉需要我时随时叫我，然后急急忙忙上楼，回到我的房间里。
The idea seemed to cheer her, she said:
Knowing I’m useful to you I feel better. Right afterward, thanks to the
effort involved in being useful to me, she moved on to contorted or illogical
arguments. She had put on a lot of powder to hide her pallor, and she didn’t
seem herself but a Carnival mask with very red cheeks. At times I followed
her with interest, at times I recognized only the signs of the illness that I
was well acquainted with by now, and was alarmed. For example, she said,
laughing: For a while I brought up Nino’s child, just as you’ve done with
Imma, a flesh and blood child; but when that child became Stefano’s where did
Nino’s child go, does Gennaro still have him inside, do I have him? Remarks
like that: she got lost. Then she started abruptly to praise my cooking, she
said she had eaten with pleasure, something she hadn’t done for a long time.
When I said it wasn’t mine but Pinuccia’s, she darkened, she grumbled that
she didn’t want anything from Pinuccia. At that point Elsa called me from the
landing, she shouted that I had to come home right away, Dede with a fever
was even worse than Dede healthy. I urged Lila to call me whenever she needed
me, I told her to rest, I hurried up to my apartment.
那天剩下的时间，我尽量想忘记她，我一直工作到深夜。几个孩子已经习惯了，我被稿子逼得火烧眉毛时，她们要自己照顾自己，不应该打扰我。实际上，她们一直没打扰我，我工作很顺利。通常，只要跟莉拉说几句，我的脑子就会活跃起来，会变得敏锐。现在我明白，我能好好工作，主要是因为她仅仅通过几句不连贯的话，就能驱散我的不自信，让我确信自己是对的。我把她絮絮叨叨说的那些话，用一种紧凑优雅的方式写了出来。我写了我的胯骨，还有我的母亲。现在我有很多拥戴者，我毫不尴尬地承认，和莉拉交谈会激起我的想法，会推动我把那些看似不相干的东西联系在一起。在我们近距离生活的那些年里，我住在楼上，她住在楼下，这种事时有发生。我的脑子本来好像是空的，只要她轻轻一推，很快就会变得充盈而且活跃。我觉得她能看得很远，我一辈子都对此深信不疑，我认为这没什么不对。我想，成熟意味着承认自己需要她的激励，过去我掩饰她对我的启发，甚至在自己面前也不想承认，但现在我觉得，我为这一点感到自豪，甚至在文章里也有提到。我是我，正因为这个缘故，我应该给她空间，我应该让她有一个稳固的存在。但她不想做自己，因为她没法稳定下来：蒂娜的悲剧、她虚弱的身体、她不稳定的情绪，这都是使她崩溃的原因，她称之为“界限消失”的症状的根本原因就在这里。夜里三点我才上床睡觉，早上九点就醒了。
For the rest of the day I tried to forget
about her; I worked late into the night. The children had grown up with the
idea that when I really had my back to the wall they had to look after
themselves and not disturb me. In fact they left me in peace, and I worked
well. As usual a half sentence of Lila’s was enough and my brain recognized
her aura, became active, liberated my intelligence. By now I knew that I
could do well especially when she, even just with a few disjointed words,
assured the more insecure part of me that I was right. I gave to her
digressive complaints a concise, elegant organization. I wrote about my hip,
about my mother. Now that I was surrounded by admiration, I could admit
without uneasiness that talking to her incited ideas, pushed me to make
connections between distant things. In those years of being neighbors, I on
the floor above, she below, it often happened. A slight push was enough and
the seemingly empty mind discovered that it was full and lively. I attributed
to her a sort of farsightedness, as I had all our lives, and I found nothing
wrong with it. I said to myself that to be adult was to recognize that I
needed her impulses. If once I had hidden, even from myself, that spark she
induced in me, now I was proud of it, I had even written about it somewhere.
I was I and for that very reason I could make space for her in me and give
her an enduring form. She instead didn’t want to be her, so she couldn’t do
the same. The tragedy of Tina, her weakened physical state, her drifting
brain surely contributed to her crises. But that was the underlying cause of
the illness that she called “dissolving boundaries.” I went to bed around
three, I woke at nine.
黛黛的烧退了，但伊玛又开始咳嗽了。我把房子收拾了一下，然后去看莉拉。我敲了很长时间门，她都没有开门，我一直摁着门铃，直到听到她拖拖拉拉的步子和用方言骂骂咧咧的声音。她的辫子已经有些散了，脸上的妆也花了，她的脸比前一天看起来更像一张痛苦的面具。
Dede’s fever was gone, but in
compensation Imma had a cough. I straightened the apartment, I went to see
how Lila was. I knocked for a long time, she didn’t open the door. I pressed
the bell until I heard her dragging footsteps and her voice grumbling insults
in dialect. Her braids were half undone, her makeup was smeared, even more
than the day before it was a mask with a pained expression.
“皮诺奇娅给我下了毒，”她很确信地说，“我昨晚肚子疼得要死，一晚上没睡。”
“Pinuccia poisoned me,” she said with
conviction. “I couldn’t sleep, my stomach is splitting.”
我进到她的屋里，我看到房子里又脏又乱，我看到在洗手池旁边的地板上有浸满血的卫生纸。我说：
I went in, I had an impression of
carelessness, of filth. On the floor, next to the sink, I saw toilet paper
soaked with blood. I said:
“我和你吃了一样的东西，我没事儿啊。”
“I ate the same things you ate and I’m
fine.”
“那你说我怎么了？”
“Then explain to me what’s wrong with
me.”
“是不是痛经？”
“Menstruation?”
她很生气地说：
She got mad:
“我的月经一直都没走。”
“I’m always menstruating.”
“那你应该看医生。”
“Then you should be examined.”
“我不会让任何人检查我的肚子。”
“I’m not going to have my stomach
examined by anyone.”
“你觉得这是怎么啦？”
“What do you think is wrong?”
“我自己知道。”
“I know what it is.”
“我现在去药店里给你买点儿止痛片。”
“I’ll go get you a painkiller at the
pharmacy.”
“你家里没有吗？”
“You must have something in the house?”
“我不需要。”
“I don’t need them.”
“黛黛和艾尔莎呢？”
“And Dede and Elsa?”
“她们也不需要。”
“They don’t, either.”
“啊，你们都很完美，你们从来什么都不需要。”
“Ah, you’re perfect, you never need
anything.”
又来了，我叹了一口气说：
I was irked, it was starting up again.
“你要和我吵架吗？”
“You want to quarrel?”
“是你想吵架吧，你居然说我是痛经，我又不是像你女儿一样的小孩，我知道自己是痛经还是别的。”
“You want to quarrel, since you say I
have menstrual cramps. I’m not a child like your daughters, I know if I have
that pain or something else.”
她说的不是真的，她对自己的身体一点儿也不了解，涉及身体器官的运作，她比黛黛和艾尔莎还要不懂事。我知道她很痛苦，她用手摁着肚子。也许我错了：她一定是吓坏了，不是因为她之前的那些恐惧，而是真的病了。我给她泡了一杯甘菊茶，让她喝了。我穿上大衣，想去看看药店是不是还开着门。吉诺的父亲是一个很有经验的药剂师，他一定会给我推荐合适的药。我刚刚走到大路上，走在星期天的集市里，这时候我听到了爆炸的声音——“啪，啪，啪，啪！”很像圣诞节时孩子们玩的炮仗，先是响了四声，过了一下又听到第五声：“啪！”
It wasn’t true, she knew nothing about
herself. When it came to the workings of her body she was worse than Dede and
Elsa. I realized that she was suffering, she pressed her stomach with her
hands. Maybe I was wrong: certainly she was overwhelmed with anguish, but not
because of her old fears—she really was ill. I made her some chamomile tea,
forced her to drink it. I put on a coat and went to see if the pharmacy was
open. Gino’s father was a skilled pharmacist, he would surely give me good
advice. But I had barely emerged onto the stradone, among the Sunday stalls,
when I heard explosions—pah, pah, pah, pah—similar to the sound of the
firecrackers that children set off at Christmastime. There were four close
together, then came a fifth: pah.
距离圣诞节还很远呢，人们好像都很迷茫，我往去药店的路走去，这时候有人加快了脚步，有人开始跑。
I turned onto the street where the
pharmacy was. People seemed disoriented, Christmas was still weeks away, some
walked quickly, some ran.
忽然间警笛大响：警察、救护车开了过来。我问了一个路人发生了什么事情，他摇了摇头，然后催促自己的妻子赶紧走。这时候我看见了卡门和她的丈夫还有孩子，他们在街道的另一边，我穿过马路。在我开口之前，卡门用方言对我说：“索拉拉兄弟俩都被杀了。”
Suddenly the litany of sirens began: the
police, an ambulance. I asked someone what had happened, he shook his head,
he admonished his wife because she was slow and hurried off. Then I saw
Carmen with her husband and two children. They were on the other side of the
street, I crossed. Before I could ask a question Carmen said in dialect:
They’ve killed both Solaras.
13
有一些东西，好像永远都是我们生活的背景：国家、政党、信仰、纪念碑，还有那些很简单的事，日常生活中的一些人。在生命里的某些时刻，当我们忙于其他事情时，这些貌似永恒的东西会出人预料地垮掉，那段时间就是这样。一天又一天，一月又一月，经过了种种劳累艰辛，悸动不安，有很长一段时间我觉得自己像那些长篇小说或是绘画里的主人公，停在悬崖上面或者一艘船的船头，面对着一场暴风雨，他们非但没有慌乱，而且毫发未伤。我的电话不停响起，我住在索拉拉兄弟的地盘上，这样一个简单的事实就让我不得不写了很多，也说了很多。我妹妹埃莉莎在丈夫死后，变成了一个受到惊吓的小女孩，她日日夜夜都让我陪着她，她确信那些凶手还会回来，把她和她儿子杀死。尤其是我不得不照顾莉拉，就在同一个星期，她也不得不离开城区，放下她儿子、恩佐和工作，去医院接受救治。她很虚弱，不停地出血，而且出现了幻觉，医生检查出她得了子宫纤维瘤，就给她动了手术，把她的子宫切除了。她还在医院里，有一次她忽然惊醒，大声说蒂娜又从她肚子里出来了，现在要向所有人报复，甚至也包括向她。有那么一刹那，她好像很确信，是自己的女儿把索拉拉兄弟杀了。
There are moments when what exists on the
edges of our lives, and which, it seems, will be in the background forever—an
empire, a political party, a faith, a monument, but also simply the people
who are part of our daily existence—collapses in an utterly unexpected way,
and right when countless other things are pressing upon us. This period was
like that. Day after day, month after month, task was added to task, tremor
to tremor. For a long time it seemed to me that I was like certain figures in
novels and paintings who stand firm on a cliff or on the prow of a ship in
the face of a storm, which doesn’t overwhelm them and in fact doesn’t even
touch them. My telephone rang continuously. The fact that I lived in the
dominion of the Solaras compelled me to an infinite chain of words, written
and spoken. After the death of her husband, my sister Elisa became a
terrified child, she wanted me with her day and night, she was sure that the
murderers would return to kill her and her son. And above all I had to tend
to Lila, who that same Sunday was suddenly torn from the neighborhood, from
her son, from Enzo, from her job, and ended up in the hands of the doctors,
because she was weak, she saw things that seemed real but weren’t, she was
losing blood. They discovered a fibromatous uterus, they operated and took it
out. Once—she was still in the hospital—she woke suddenly, exclaimed that
Tina had come out of her belly again and now was taking revenge on everyone,
even on her. For a fraction of a second she was sure that the killer of the
Solaras was her daughter.
14
马尔切洛和米凯莱是在一九八六年十二月的一个星期天被人在小时候他们受洗礼的小教堂门口杀害的。没过几分钟，整个城区都知道了他们被杀时的细枝末节：米凯莱中了两枪，马尔切洛挨了三枪，吉耀拉一下子就逃走了，几个孩子出于本能也跟着她跑了，埃莉莎一下子把西尔维奥拉过来抱在怀里，转过身背对着杀手。米凯莱当场就死了，马尔切洛没有马上倒地，他在台阶上坐了下来，想把上衣扣子扣上，但他没做到。
Marcello and Michele died on a Sunday in
December of 1986, in front of the church where they had been baptized. Just a
few minutes after their murder the whole neighborhood knew the details.
Michele had been shot twice, Marcello three times. Gigliola had run away, her
sons had instinctively followed her. Elisa had grabbed Silvio and held him
tight, turning her back on the murderers. Michele had died immediately,
Marcello, no, he had sat down on a step and tried to button his jacket, but
couldn’t.
那些展示出自己非常清楚索拉拉兄弟是怎么死的人，当你问是谁杀死他们时，你会发现这些人几乎什么都没看到。“只有一个人开枪，他不慌不忙地上了一辆红色福特，然后车开走了。”“不，当时有两个人，两个男人，他们开着一辆黄色的‘菲亚特147’，车上还有一个女人。”“根本不是，一共有三个杀手，都是男的，脸用防寒头套蒙着，他们是步行离开的。”有时候你会感觉并没人开枪。比如卡门跟我讲述说，索拉拉兄弟、我妹妹、我外甥、吉耀拉和她几个儿子在教堂前手忙脚乱，就像中邪了一样，米凯莱的身子向后倒去，他的头狠狠撞在了石头台阶上，马尔切洛小心翼翼地坐在了一级台阶上，因为他扣不上穿在蓝色高领套头衫上的外套的扣子，他诅咒了几句，向一边倒下了。他们的妻子孩子都毫发无损，在短短几秒内都跑到教堂里躲了起来。在场的人，好像都只看着被杀的人这一边，没有看杀手那边。
When it came to saying who had actually
killed the Solara brothers, those who appeared to know everything about the
murders realized they had seen almost nothing. It was a single man who fired
the shots, then had got calmly into a red Ford Fiesta and left. No, there had
been two, two men, and at the wheel of the yellow Fiat 147 in which they
escaped there was a woman. Not at all, the murderers were three, men, faces
covered by ski masks, and they had fled on foot. In some cases it seemed that
no one had fired the shots. In the story Carmen told me, for example, the
Solaras, my sister, my nephew, Gigliola, her children became agitated in
front of the church as if they had been hit by effects without cause: Michele
fell to the ground backward and hit his head hard on the lava stone; Marcello
sat down cautiously on a step and since he couldn’t close his jacket over the
blue turtleneck sweater he cursed and lay down on one side; the wives, the
children hadn’t got even a scratch and in a few seconds had gone into the
church to hide. It seemed that those present had looked only in the direction
of the killed and not that of the killers.
在这个关头，阿尔曼多又来采访我，为他的电台做节目，他不是唯一来找我的记者。那时候，我要么通过口述，要么通过书面形式对不同媒体讲述了我所知道的事情。但在接下来的两三天里，我发现那不勒斯本地报纸的记者知道的比我多得多，之前在任何地方都看不到的消息忽然间都传了出来。有一张单子列举着索拉拉兄弟的种种犯罪行为，每件都骇人听闻，都是我之前没听说过的，他们都算到了索拉拉兄弟头上。让人惊异的还有他们的财富总量。在他们活着时，我和莉拉一起写的东西、我发表的文章，和他们死后那些出现在报纸上的文章相比，简直不值一提。但从另一个方面，我意识到我了解其他方面的一些事，就是没人知道也没有人会写，包括我自己也不会写的东西。我知道，我们小时候都觉得索拉拉兄弟很帅，他们开着他们的“菲亚特1100”在城区里巡回，就像乘坐战车的古代士兵。有一天晚上，他们在马尔蒂里广场上捍卫了我们，回击了基亚亚街上的那些有钱人家的男孩子。马尔切洛本来想娶莉拉，但他后来娶了我妹妹埃莉莎，米凯莱很早就明白了我朋友莉拉的神奇品质，他爱了莉拉很多年，爱得那么狂热，以至于迷失了自己。当我发现我知道这些事情时，我意识到他们很重要。他们像影响我那样，影响着那不勒斯成百上千的人，我们都曾经生活在索拉拉兄弟的世界里，我们参加了他们商店的开业仪式，我们在他们的酒吧里买过点心，我们庆祝过他们的婚礼，我们买过他们的鞋子，我们曾经在他们家里作过客，在一张桌子上吃过饭，我们直接或间接地拿过他们的钱，我们忍受过他们的暴力，但我们假装什么事儿也没有发生。不管我们愿不愿意，马尔切洛和米凯莱就像帕斯卡莱一样，都是我们生活的一部分，但尽管人们和米凯莱的关系千差万别，但仍可以迅速画出一条清晰的分割线，但在那不勒斯或整个意大利，人们和索拉拉兄弟那样的人之间的界线却不可能清晰。把索拉拉兄弟和帕斯卡莱放在一起，我越是回顾，越是惊恐地发现，那条线把我们也涵盖在内。
Armando, in this situation, returned to
interview me for his television station. He wasn’t the only one. At that
moment I said, and recounted in writing, in various places, what I knew. But
in the two or three days that followed I realized that in particular the
reporters for the Neapolitan papers knew much more than I did. Information
that until not long before could be found nowhere was suddenly flooding in.
An impressive list of criminal enterprises I had never heard of were
attributed to the Solara brothers. Equally impressive was the list of their
assets. What I had written with Lila, what I had published when they were
still alive was nothing, almost nothing in comparison with what appeared in
the papers after their death. On the other hand I realized that I knew other
things, things that no one knew and no one wrote, not even me. I knew that
the Solaras had always seemed very handsome to us as girls, that they went
around the neighborhood in their Fiat 1100 like ancient warriors in their
chariots, that one night they had defended us in Piazza dei Martiri from the
wealthy youths of Chiaia, that Marcello would have liked to marry Lila but
then had married my sister Elisa, that Michele had understood the
extraordinary qualities of my friend long before that and had loved her for
years in a way so absolute that he had ended up losing himself. Just as I
realized that I knew these things I discovered that they were important. They
indicated how I and countless other respectable people all over Naples had
been within the world of the Solaras, we had taken part in the opening of
their businesses, had bought pastries at their bar, had celebrated their
marriages, had bought their shoes, had been guests in their houses, had eaten
at the same table, had directly or indirectly taken their money, had suffered
their violence and pretended it was nothing. Marcello and Michele were, like
it or not, part of us, just as Pasquale was. But while in relation to
Pasquale, even with innumerable distinctions, a clear line of separation
could immediately be drawn, the line of separation in relation to people like
the Solaras had been and was, in Naples, in Italy, vague. The farther we
jumped back in horror, the more certain it was that we were behind the line.
在小小的城区，这种众所周知的关联让我很沮丧，有人为了给我抹黑，写文章说我和索拉拉兄弟是亲戚关系，有一段时间，我避免去找我妹妹和外甥，也避免和莉拉见面，当然，莉拉是索拉拉兄弟的死敌，但她用来启动那家小公司的资金，是通过给米凯莱工作积累起来的，或者说是从他身上榨取的。有一段时间，我一直在想这个问题，但时间一点点过去了，索拉拉兄弟和其他那些被杀的人一样，也慢慢淡去了。我们渐渐开始担心，那些取代他们的人会更凶残，而且我们对他们也不熟悉。我逐渐把索拉拉兄弟抛在了脑后。忽然有一天，一个十五岁左右的男孩给我送来了一个小包裹，是蒙泰桑托的一家首饰店送来的。我并没有马上明白里面放的是什么，让我惊异的是，那个袋子上写着埃莱娜·格雷科女士收，里面是一个红色的盒子。我看了上面的纸条，才明白那是怎么回事儿。马尔切洛用费力的笔迹在纸上写了一句：“对不起”。后面是他的签名，写得很工整，像小学老师教给我们的字体。盒子里是我的手镯，打磨得锃亮，就像新的一样。
The concreteness that being behind the
line assumed in the reduced and overfamiliar space of the neighborhood
depressed me. Someone, to sling mud on me, wrote that I was related to the
Solaras and for a while I avoided going to see my sister and my nephew. I
even avoided Lila. Of course, she had been the brothers’ bitterest enemy, but
hadn’t she gotten the money to start her little business working for Michele,
maybe stealing it from him? I wandered around that theme for a while. Then
time passed, the Solaras, too, joined the many who every day ended up on the
list of the murdered, and slowly what began to worry us was only that people
less familiar and more violent would take their place. I forgot them to the
point that when a teenage boy delivered a package from a jeweler in
Montesanto, I didn’t immediately guess what it contained. The red case inside
amazed me, the envelope addressed to Dottoressa Elena Greco. I had to read
the note to realize what it was. Marcello had, in a laborious handwriting, written
only “Sorry,” and had signed it with a swirling “M,” of the type that used to
be taught in elementary school. In the case was my bracelet, so highly
polished that it seemed new.
15
我告诉莉拉那个包裹的事，给她看了新锃锃的手镯。她说：“你再也不要戴这个手镯了，也不要让你的几个女儿戴。”从医院回来，她整个人变得很虚弱，上一段楼梯就会气喘吁吁。她还在吃药，给自己打针，但她变得非常苍白，就好像从死人的国度里走了一道，她提到那个手镯，就好像很肯定那也是从阴间来的。
When I told Lila about that package and
showed her the polished bracelet she said: Don’t wear it and don’t even let
your daughters wear it. She had returned home very weak; when she went up a
flight of stairs you could hear the breath straining in her chest. She took
pills and gave herself injections, but she was so pale that she seemed to
have been in the kingdom of the dead and spoke of the bracelet as if she were
sure that it had come from there.
索拉拉兄弟的死和她被送到医院急诊是同一天，在我对那个星期天的混乱的记忆里，她流的血和他们的血混合在一起。但每次我试着跟她讲述教堂前的那场“处决”，她都做出一副不乐意听的样子，会说出类似这样的话：“莱农，他们是两个烂人，谁他妈在乎他们，我只是为你妹妹感到难过，如果她聪明点儿的话，就不会嫁给马尔切洛，因为像他们这种人，迟早都会被弄死的。”
The death of the Solaras overlapped with
her emergency admission to the hospital, the blood she had shed was mixed—in
my feeling of that chaotic Sunday—with theirs. But whenever I tried to talk
to her about that execution, so to speak, in front of the church, she became
irritated, she reacted with remarks like: They were shits, Lenù, who gives a
damn about them, I’m sorry for your sister but if she had been a little
smarter she wouldn’t have married Marcello, everyone knows that people like
him end up getting killed.
有几次，我试着让她体味一下我的尴尬，毕竟我们曾与索拉拉兄弟那么近切，她应该比我更有这种感觉。我说了类似于这样的话：
Sometimes I tried to draw her into the
sense of contiguity that at that time embarrassed me, I thought she should
feel it more than I did. I said something like:
“我们从小就认识他们。”
“We’d known them since they were boys.”
“所有人都有小时候。”
“All men were once boys.”
“他们曾经给过你工作机会。”
“They gave you work.”
“我得到好处，他们也得到了好处。”
“It was convenient for them and it was
convenient for me.”
“米凯莱当然很讨厌，但有时候你的做法不比他强。”
“Michele was certainly a bastard but so
were you sometimes.”
“我当时应该更过分一些。”
“I should have done worse.”
她说话时尽量抑制自己对他们的鄙视，但她的目光变得很凶，手指交叉在一起，紧握着，能看见发白的骨节。她的话已经很残酷无情了，我能感受到，在那些话的后面还有其他更加残酷的话，她不想说出来，但这些话已经浮现在她脑子里了。我在她脸上能看出来，我感觉到她内心的叫喊：假如是索拉拉兄弟把蒂娜带走的，那简直太便宜他们了，他们应该被大卸八块，心和内脏都该被挖出来扔在街上喂狗；假如不是他们干的，那些杀了他们的人，也做了一件好事儿，他们死有余辜；假如他们动手前给我打个招呼，我会去给他们帮忙的。
She made an effort to limit herself to
contempt, but she had a malicious look, she entwined her fingers and gripped
them, making her knuckles turn white. I saw that behind those words, fierce
in themselves, there were even fiercer ones that she avoided saying, but that
she had ready in her mind. I read them in her face, I heard them shouted: If
it was the Solaras who took Tina away from me, then too little was done to
them, they should have been drawn and quartered, their hearts ripped out, and
their guts dumped on the street; if it wasn’t them, whoever murdered them did
a good thing just the same, they deserved that and more; if the assassins had
whistled I would have hurried to give them a hand.
但她从来都没有说出这样的话。从表面上看，这两兄弟的骤然退场，对她的生活几乎没有什么影响。现在她在街上不可能遇到他们了，她爱出来在城区里散步了，但完全无法恢复到蒂娜失踪前的活力，她也不再过着从家到办公室两点一线的生活。住院后的康复期一周周过去了，她在隧道里、大路上、小公园里转悠。她低着头走路，不和任何人交谈，因为她完全不修边幅，无论是对于她自己还是其他人而言，她看起来都像一个危险人物，也没人和她说话。
But she never expressed herself in that
way. To all appearances the abrupt exit from the scene of the two brothers
seemed to have little effect on her. Only it encouraged her to walk in the
neighborhood more frequently, since there was no longer any chance of meeting
them. She never mentioned returning to the activities of the time before
Tina’s disappearance, she never resumed the life of home and office. She made
her convalescence last for weeks and weeks, as she wandered around the
tunnel, the stradone, the gardens. She walked with her head down, she spoke
to no one, and since, partly because of her neglected appearance, she
continued to seem dangerous to herself and others, no one spoke to her.
有时候她会让我陪她出去，这让我无法回绝。我们经常经过索拉拉兄弟的酒吧兼点心房，酒吧门上挂了一个牌子，上面写着：因葬礼暂停营业。但那场葬礼一直都没结束，酒吧也一直没再开门，索拉拉兄弟的时代已经结束了。莉拉经过时，总会看一眼那道金属卷帘门，还有那块褪色的牌子，她很满意地说：“彻底关了。”她那么心满意足，以至于她走过店铺时会发出笑声，只有一声笑，没有别的表示，就好像酒吧关门这件事情里有让人发笑的成分。
Sometimes she insisted that I go with
her, and it was hard to say no. We often passed the bar-pastry shop, which
bore a sign saying “Closed for mourning.” The mourning never ended, the shop
never reopened, the time of the Solaras was over. But Lila glanced every time
at the lowered shutters, the faded sign, and said with satisfaction: It’s
still closed. The fact seemed to her so positive that, as we passed by, she
might even give a small laugh, just a small laugh, as if in that closure
there was something ridiculous.
只有一次我们在角落里停了一会儿，就好像为了适应那里的荒凉，现在那地方已经没有通常酒吧的装饰。之前那里有一些小桌子，还有彩色的凳子，空气中总是弥漫着甜点和咖啡的香气，人来人往，那些秘密交易，有诚实的交易，也有欺骗。但现在那里只能看到一面发黄的墙壁，墙皮脱落。莉拉说，他们的爷爷去世时，还有他们的母亲被杀害时，马尔切洛和米凯莱在整个城区贴满了十字架和圣母，他们的哀悼没完没了。现在他们死了，什么都没有。然后她想起了她住院时，我跟她讲的，按照那些路人的讲述，杀死索拉拉兄弟的子弹不知道是从哪儿来的，没人开枪。“没有人杀死他们，”她微笑了，“因此没人为他们哭泣。”这时候她停了下来，沉默了几秒。她的话题忽然就变了，她跟我说，她再也不想工作了。
Only once did we stop at the corner as if
to take in its ugliness, now that it was without the old embellishments of
the bar. Once, there had been tables and colored chairs, the fragrance of
pastries and coffee, the coming and going of people, secret trafficking,
honest deals and corrupt deals. Now there was the chipped gray wall. When the
grandfather died, Lila said, after their mother’s murder, Marcello and
Michele carpeted the neighborhood with crosses and Madonnas, they made
endless lamentations; now that they’re dead, zero. Then she remembered when
she was still in the clinic and I had told her that, according to the
reticent words of the people, the bullets that killed the Solaras hadn’t been
fired by anyone. No one killed them—she smiled—no one weeps for them. And she
stopped, and was silent for a few seconds. Then, without any obvious
connection, she told me that she didn’t want to work anymore.
16
她说她不想工作了，我觉得那不是因为她心情很坏一时冲动才做的决定，她一定是已经想了很久，也许出院之后她就一直在考虑这个问题。她说：
It didn’t seem like a random
manifestation of a bad mood, surely she had thought about it for a long time,
maybe since she had left the clinic. She said:
“假如恩佐一个人能行，公司就继续开下去，假如不行，那我们就把公司卖了。”
“If Enzo can do it by himself, good, and
if not we’ll sell it.”
“你想放弃你的公司？那你以后做什么？”
“You want to give up Basic Sight? And
what will you do?”
“一个人非得做点儿什么吗？”
“Does a person necessarily have to do
something?”
“你得让你的生活充实起来。”
“You have to use your life.”
“就像你所做的？”
“The way you do?”
“为什么不呢？”
“Why not?”
她笑了，叹了一口气说：
She laughed, she sighed:
“我想浪费时间。”
“I want to waste time.”
“你现在有詹纳罗，还有恩佐，你应该为他们着想。”
“You have Gennaro, you have Enzo, you
have to think of them.”
“詹纳罗已经二十三岁了，我已经对他考虑得太多了，我应该让恩佐离开我。”
“Gennaro is twenty-three years old, I’ve
been too taken up with him. And I have to separate Enzo from me.”
“为什么？”
“Why?”
“我想一个人睡觉。”
“I want to go back to sleeping alone.”
“一个人睡觉多不好啊。”
“It’s terrible to sleep alone.”
“你不是也一个人睡吗？”
“You do, don’t you?”
“我现在没男人。”
“I don’t have a man.”
“我为什么要有呢？”
“Why should I have one?”
“你对恩佐没有感情了吗？”
“Aren’t you fond of Enzo anymore?”
“有感情，但我不想要他，也不想要任何人了。我现在老了，睡觉时不希望有任何人搅扰。”
“Yes, but I have no desire for him or
anyone. I’m old and no one should disturb me when I sleep.”
“你去看一下医生吧。”
“Go to a doctor.”
“我再也不想看医生了。”
“Enough with doctors.”
“我陪你去，这些都是可以解决的问题。”
“I’ll go with you, those are problems
that can be solved.”
她变得很严肃，说：
She became serious.
“我现在这样很好。”
“No, I’m fine like this.”
“没人会觉得这样很好。”
“No one is fine like this.”
“我就觉得很好，交媾这件事，一直都被高估了。”
“I am. Fucking is very overrated.”
“我说的是爱情。”
“I’m talking about love.”
“我心里有其他事儿，你可能已经把蒂娜忘记了，但我却没有。”
“I have other things on my mind. You’ve
already forgotten Tina, not me.”
我听见她和恩佐在楼下更频繁地争吵，说得准确一点儿，恩佐低沉的声音只是比平时激动一点儿，莉拉一直在嚷嚷。我在他们的楼上，透过地板只能听到他寥寥的几句。他并不是气愤，在莉拉面前他从来都不会生气，他是绝望。从根本上来说，他的一切都毁掉了——蒂娜、工作还有他们的关系。但莉拉没有采取任何行动来挽回局面，她只是任凭事情一步步恶化下去。有一次恩佐对我说：“你跟她谈谈吧。”我回答说：“没什么用，她只是需要时间重新找回平衡。”恩佐第一次用一种不留情面的语气说：“莉娜从来都没有过平衡。”
I heard Enzo and her arguing more
frequently. Rather, in the case of Enzo, only his heavy voice reached me,
slightly more emphatic than usual, while Lila did nothing but scream. Only a
few phrases of his reached me upstairs, filtered through the floor. He wasn’t
angry—he was never angry with Lila—he was desperate. In essence he said that
everything had gotten worse—Tina, the work, their relationship—but she wasn’t
doing anything to redefine the situation; rather she wanted everything to
continue getting worse. You talk to us, he said to me once. I answered that
it was no use, she just needed more time to find an equilibrium. Enzo, for
the first time, replied roughly: Lina has never had any equilibrium.
这不是真的。当她自己愿意时，莉拉能心平气和，非常理性，甚至在事态紧张的那个阶段。好的时候，有几天她会很开朗，对人很好，她会照顾我和我的几个女儿，她会打听我出去的见闻，我写的东西还有我遇到的人。有时候她听得兴致勃勃，有时候义愤填膺。黛黛、艾尔莎，甚至是伊玛都会跟她谈到学校教育的低效、老师的疯狂、她们的争吵和各自的爱情。她很慷慨，有一天下午，她让詹纳罗帮着她把一台老电脑给我搬了上来。她教给我使用方法，然后说：“这是我送给你的。”
It wasn’t true. Lila, when she wanted,
could be calm, thoughtful, even in that phase of great tension. She had good
days, when she was serene and very affectionate. She took care of me and my
daughters, she asked about my trips, about what I was writing, about the
people I met. She followed—often with amusement, sometimes with
indignation—the stories Dede, Elsa, even Imma told about school failures,
crazy teachers, quarrels, loves. And she was generous. One afternoon, with
Gennaro’s help, she brought me up an old computer. She taught me how it
worked and said: I’m giving it to you.
第二天我就开始用这台电脑写作。尽管我非常担心忽然断电，让我好几个小时的心血白费，无论如何，这台机子让我很振奋，我很快就习惯了用电脑写作。当着莉拉的面，我对几个女儿说：“你们想想，我开始写字时用的是钢笔，然后我用圆珠笔，再后来是打字机，我也用过插电的打字机，最后我用上了电脑，我用键盘打出这些神奇的字。感觉简直太棒了！我再也回不去了，我再也不用笔写字了，我以后都用电脑。我们过来摸一摸我食指上面的茧子，感觉一下这个茧子多硬，一直都有，但现在它要下去了。”
The next day I began writing on it. I got
used to it quickly, even though I was obsessed by the fear that a power
outage would sweep away hours of work. Otherwise I was excited about the
machine. I told my daughters, in Lila’s presence: Imagine, I learned to write
with a fountain pen, then moved on to a ballpoint pen, then the
typewriter—and also an electric typewriter—and finally here I am, I tap on
the keys and this miraculous writing appears. It’s absolutely beautiful, I’ll
never go back, I’m finished with the pen, I’ll always write on the computer,
come, touch the callus I have here on my index finger, feel how hard it is:
I’ve always had it but now it will disappear.
莉拉看到我那么高兴，她也很高兴，她一副很幸福的样子，就像送了一件让人喜欢的礼物，她自己也很满意。这时候她说，那些不懂电脑的人才会像你们的母亲那样兴奋。然后她把几个姑娘带走了，让我安心工作。尽管她知道，我几个女儿已经不再信任她了，但她心情好的时候还是会把她们带到办公室里，教她们用那些新电脑，告诉她们电脑的工作原理。为了重新收买她们，她说：“埃莱娜·格雷科女士，我不知道你们是不是很了解她，她的注意力就像一头在池塘里睡觉的犀牛一样，但你们很机灵。”但她没法重新获得她们的感情，尤其是在黛黛和艾尔莎跟前。这两个孩子回家时会对我说：“妈妈，我不知道她脑子里是怎么想的，她先是让我们学电脑，然后跟我们说，这都是用来挣钱的机子，会毁掉之前的挣钱方式。”但无论如何，我只会用电脑写作，但我的几个女儿，包括伊玛，她们已经学到了一些让我骄傲的技能和概念。我一遇到电脑问题就会问艾尔莎，她总能解决，然后她在莉娜阿姨面前炫耀说：“我解决了这个问题，你说我是不是很棒？”
Lila enjoyed my satisfaction, she had the
expression of someone who is happy to have made a welcome gift. Your mother,
however, she said, has the enthusiasm of someone who understands nothing, and
she drew them away to let me work. Although she knew she had lost their
confidence, when she was in a good mood she often took them to the office to
teach them what the newest machines could do, and how and why. She said, to
win them back: Signora Elena Greco, I don’t know if you know her, has the
attention of a hippopotamus sleeping in a swamp, whereas you girls are very
quick. But she couldn’t regain their affection, in particular Dede and
Elsa’s. The girls said to me: It’s impossible to understand what she has in
mind, Mamma, first she urges us to learn and then she says that these
machines are useful for making a lot of money by destroying all the old ways
of making money. Yet, while I knew how to use the computer only for writing,
my daughters, and even Imma to a small extent, soon acquired knowledge and
skills that made me proud. Whenever I had a problem I began to depend
especially on Elsa, who always knew what to do and then boasted to Aunt Lina:
I fixed it like this and like that, what do you say, was I clever?
黛黛把里诺也拉进来，大家一起学电脑时，情况就越来越好了。里诺从来都没碰过恩佐和莉拉的那些东西，现在他开始有了一点点兴趣，不是为了别的，他只是不想被几个小姑娘取笑。有一天早上，莉拉笑着对我说：
Things went even better when Dede began
to involve Rino. He, who had never even wanted to touch one of those objects
of Enzo and Lila’s, began to show some interest, if only not to be admonished
by the girls. One morning Lila said to me, laughing:
“黛黛改变了詹纳罗。”
“Dede is changing Gennaro.”
我回答说：
I answered:
“里诺只是需要一些信任。”
“Rino just needs some confidence.”
她用一种明显很粗鲁的语气说：
She replied with ostentatious vulgarity:
“我知道他需要什么样的信任。”
“I know what kind of confidence he
needs.”
17
这都是好的时候，但很快糟糕的日子开始了：她一会儿热一会儿冷；她脸色发黄，一会儿又发红；她有时候嚷嚷，很霸道，有时候出一身冷汗，很虚弱；她会和卡门吵架，说卡门又蠢又烦人。她的身体功能在手术后似乎越来越失调。忽然间她对我几个女儿的态度也一下子变了，她批评黛黛，觉得艾尔莎让人无法忍受，对伊玛也很粗暴。有时候我正跟她说话时，她会忽然转身就走。在那个可怕的阶段，她在家里和办公室都待不住，她会坐公共汽车或地铁出去。
Those were the good days. But soon the
bad ones arrived: she was hot, she was cold, she turned yellow, then she
flared up, she yelled, she demanded, she broke out in a sweat, then she
quarreled with Carmen, whom she called stupid and whiny. After the operation
her body seemed even more confused. Suddenly she put an end to the
kindnesses; she found Elsa unbearable, reprimanded Dede, treated Imma
harshly; while I was speaking to her she abruptly turned her back and went
off. In those dark periods she couldn’t stand to be in the house and had even
less tolerance for the office. She took a bus or the subway and off she went.
“你在干什么？”我问她。
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“我在那不勒斯闲逛。”
“I’m traveling around Naples.”
“我知道，但你具体去了哪里？”
“Yes, but where?”
“难道我要向你汇报？”
“Do I have to account for myself to you?”
每次说不了几句，她就要找茬吵架。她和儿子吵得尤其凶，她把她和儿子的矛盾根源都归在黛黛和艾尔莎身上。的确，她是有道理的，我大女儿很乐意和里诺待在一起，妹妹艾尔莎为了不被孤立起来，也努力地接受里诺，他们现在经常在一起玩。结果是，我的两个女儿一直在压制里诺，让他处于下风。对于她们来说，和里诺在一起是充满激情的语言练习，但对于里诺却是一种混乱的、自我放纵的闲聊，这让莉拉受不了。她对着儿子叫喊：“她们俩说话是经过大脑的，你只是鹦鹉学舌。”那些日子她什么都受不了，她受不了别人说过的现成话、煽情的表达，还有任何形式的多愁善感，尤其是之前那些表达反抗精神的革命口号。她表现出来的无政府主义态度，让我觉得一点儿也不合时宜。在一九八七年选举前夕，我们在报纸上看到，娜迪亚·加利亚尼在基亚索被抓了，我们又一次分歧很大。
Any occasion could provide a pretext for
a fight; it took nothing. She quarreled mainly with her son but ascribed the
cause of their disagreements to Dede and Elsa. In fact she was right. My
oldest daughter happily spent time with Rino, and now her sister, in order
not to feel excluded, made an effort to accept him, and was often with them.
The result was that both were inoculating him with a sort of permanent
insubordination, an attitude that, while in their case was only a passionate
verbal exercise, for Rino became confused and self-indulgent chatter that
Lila couldn’t bear. Those two girls, she scolded her son, put intelligence
into it, you repeat nonsense like a parrot. In those days she was intolerant,
she wouldn’t accept clichéd phrases, maudlin expressions, any form of
sentimentality, or, especially, the spirit of rebellion fed by old slogans.
And yet at the opportune moment she herself displayed an affected anarchism
that to me seemed out of place now. We confronted each other harshly when, at
the approach of the electoral campaign of ’87, we read that Nadia Galiani had
been arrested in Chiasso.
卡门惊恐万分地跑到我家里来，她不知道怎么办才好。她说：“现在他们也会把帕斯卡莱也抓起来，你们看吧，他躲过了索拉拉兄弟，但最后会被警察杀死。”莉拉回答说：“娜迪亚并不是警察抓起来的，她是自首的，这样可以判得轻一点。”我觉得她说的这话很有道理，报纸上仅有寥寥几行，并没有说到追踪、射击和抓捕的事。为了让卡门平静下来，我又跟她建议：“帕斯卡莱如果能自首也是好事，你知道我的想法。”莉拉一下子就火了，“真是异想天开！”她开始嚷嚷：
Carmen hurried to my house in the grip of
a panic attack, she couldn’t think, she said: Now they’ll seize Pasquale,
you’ll see, he escaped the Solaras but the carabinieri will murder him. Lila
answered: The carabinieri didn’t arrest Nadia, she turned herself in to
bargain for a lighter sentence. That hypothesis seemed sensible to me. There
were a few lines in the papers, but no talk of pursuits, shooting, capture.
To soothe Carmen I again advised her: Pasquale would do well to turn himself
in, you know what I think. All hell broke loose, Lila became furious, she
began to shout:
“跟谁自首！”
“Turn himself over to whom.”
“跟国家自首。”
“To the state.”
“跟国家？”
“To the state?”
她跟我列举了从一九四五年到现在，国家那些间谍、法官、警察、议员还有部长各种各样的腐败和对犯罪的纵容，她展示出她掌握着我无法想象的资料。她叫喊着：
She made a concise list of thefts and
criminal collaborations old and new by ministers, simple parliamentarians,
policemen, judges, secret services from 1945 until then, showing herself as
usual more informed than I could have imagined. And she yelled:
“这就是国家，你他妈居然想把帕斯卡莱交给这些人？”然后她对我说，“娜迪亚在监狱里待几天就会被放出来，但如果他们把帕斯卡莱抓起来，那他们会把他关到死为止，你敢不敢和我打赌？”她简直都要指着我的鼻子了，她用越来越霸道的语气说：“你敢不敢和我打赌？”
“That is the state, why the fuck do you
want to give it Pasquale?” Then she pushed me: “Let’s bet that Nadia does a
few months in jail and comes out, while, if they get Pasquale, they’ll lock
him in a cell and throw away the key?” She was almost on top of me, repeating
aggressively: “Do you want to bet?”
我没回答，我很担忧她说的那些话对卡门没什么好处。索拉拉兄弟死了之后，卡门马上就撤销了对我的起诉，她对我很友好，虽然她很忙，有很多事儿要操心，但在我需要时，她会帮忙照顾我的几个女儿。我很遗憾，因为我没让她平静下来，反倒让她备受折磨。她在发抖，她利用莉拉的权威，对我说：“假如娜迪亚让警察把她抓起来的话，那就意味着她后悔了，她会把所有罪过都推到帕斯卡莱身上，她就能脱身了，是不是这样，莉娜？”然后她带着怨恨，利用我的权威对莉拉说：“这已经不是原则问题了，莉娜，我们应该为帕斯卡莱着想，我们应该让他知道，生活在监狱里也好过被杀死。是不是，莱农？”
I didn’t answer. I was worried, this sort
of conversation wasn’t good for Carmen. After the death of the Solaras she
had immediately withdrawn the lawsuit against me, she had done endless nice
things for me, she was always available to my daughters, even if she was
burdened by obligations and worries. I was sorry that instead of soothing her
we were tormenting her. She was trembling, she said, addressing me but
invoking Lila’s authority: If Nadia turned herself in, Lenù, it means that
she’s repented, that now she’s throwing all the blame on Pasquale and will
get herself off. Isn’t it true, Lina? But then she spoke bitterly to Lila,
invoking my authority: It’s no longer a matter of principle, Lina, we have to
think of what’s right for Pasquale, we have to let him know that it’s better
to live in prison than to be killed: isn’t it true, Lenù?
这时候莉拉狠狠地骂了我们，她摔门而去，尽管我们在她家里。
At that point Lila insulted us grossly
and, although we were in her house, went out, slamming the door.
18
对于她来说，去外面闲逛已经成了解决所有问题和她内心冲突的途径。她越来越频繁地早出晚归，她不管恩佐能不能应付所有客户，不管里诺，也不管我出去时有没有把几个女儿托付给她。她现在已经变得不可靠了，有任何不称心的地方，她就会放下一切摔门而去，根本不会考虑后果。
For Lila, going out, wandering around,
was now the solution to all the tensions and problems she struggled with.
Often she left in the morning and returned in the evening, paying no
attention to Enzo, who didn’t know how to deal with the clients, or to Rino,
or to the commitments she made to me, when I had to travel and left her my
daughters. She was now unreliable, all it took was some small setback and she
dropped everything, without a thought of the consequences.
有一次卡门对我说，她觉得莉拉经常躲进多卡内拉一座老公墓里，因为蒂娜没有墓，她选了一个小孩的墓，待在那里想蒂娜，她会在公墓的林荫小道中间散步，在那些老墓穴褪色的相片前停留。她跟我说，那些死人能让她安心，因为他们有一个墓碑，有出生和去世的日期，但她女儿却没有，她女儿只有一个出生日期，这很折磨人心，那个可怜的孩子一直都没一个终点，可以让她母亲坐下来静静地怀念她。卡门总是爱说这些和墓葬有关的事儿，因此我没太在意她说的。我想象莉拉会步行穿过整个城市，什么都不会关注，只是在走路，为了缓解这么多年来折磨着她的痛苦。我推测，或者她真的已经决定了，按照她的那种极端方式，她下定决心不在任何事、任何人身上投入精力。因为我知道，她的脑子和别人不一样，完全是反着来的，我很害怕她会失控，会在恩佐、里诺、我还有我女儿面前崩溃，在一个搅扰她的行人或者某个多看她一眼的人面前爆发。在家里，我可以和她吵架，让她平静下来，看着她。但在路上怎么办呢？每次她出去时，我都会担心她遇到麻烦。但是更为通常的情况是：我在家里做我的事儿，我听到楼下的门关上的声音，她下楼出去，我都会长长地舒一口气，因为这样她不会上来找我，就不会在我面前说一些挑衅的话，她不会责备我的女儿，不会贬低伊玛，不会想尽办法来伤害我。
Carmen maintained that Lila took refuge
in the old cemetery on the Doganella, where she chose the grave of a child to
think about Tina, who had no grave, and then she walked along the shaded
paths, amid plants, old niches, stopping in front of the most faded
photographs. The dead—Carmen said to me—are a certainty, they have stones,
the dates of birth and death, while her daughter doesn’t, her daughter will
remain forever with only the date of birth, and that is terrible, that poor
child will never have a conclusion, a fixed point where her mother can sit
and be tranquil. But Carmen had a propensity for fantasies about death and so
I took no notice. I imagined that Lila walked through the city paying no
attention to anything, only to numb the grief that after years continued to
poison her. Or I hypothesized that she really had decided, in her way,
extreme as always, not to devote herself anymore to anything or anyone. And
since I knew that her mind needed exactly the opposite, I feared that she
would have a nervous breakdown, that at the first opportunity she would let
loose against Enzo, against Rino, against me, against my daughters, against a
passerby who annoyed her, against anyone who gave her an extra glance. At
home I could quarrel, calm her down, control her. But on the street? Every
time she went out I was afraid she’d get in trouble. But frequently, when I
had something to do and heard the door below close and her steps on the
stairs, then out in the street, I drew a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t come up
to me, she wouldn’t drop in with provocative words, she wouldn’t taunt the
girls, she wouldn’t disparage Imma, she wouldn’t try in every possible way to
hurt me.
我又想着离开那不勒斯。现在对于我、黛黛、艾尔莎和伊玛来说，留在这个城区已经没有任何意义了。莉拉之前只是偶尔说说，她做完手术身体失调之后，但现在她频频对我说：“莱农，你走吧，你还住在这里干什么？你看看你，你住在这里，就好像在圣母面前许了愿，发誓要住在这里。”她想让我看到，我没有达到她期望的高度，我住在这个城区，只是知识分子摆出来的一种姿态知识分子面前做做样子，但实际上，对于她，对于我们出生的地方，我所有的学问，还有我写的所有的书，之前没有用，现在更没用。我很生气，我想：她就像是一个老板，因为我带来的收益太少了，她要解雇我。
I went back to thinking insistently that
it was time to leave. Now it was senseless for me, for Dede, for Elsa, for
Imma to remain in the neighborhood. Lila herself, besides, after her stay in
the hospital, after the operation, after the imbalances of her body, had
begun to say more often what she first said sporadically: Go away, Lenù, what
are you doing here, look at you, it’s as if you’re staying only because you
made a vow to the Madonna. She wanted to remind me that I hadn’t met her
expectations, that my living in the neighborhood was only an intellectual
pretense, that in fact for her, for the place where we were born—with all my
studies, with all my books—I had been useless, I was useless. I was irritated
and I thought: she treats me as if she wanted to fire me for poor
performance.
19
那段时间，我一直在考虑要怎么做。我几个女儿需要安定的生活，尤其是我得想办法让她们的父亲能照顾到她们。尼诺是最大的问题，有时候他会打电话，会在电话里和伊玛说几句甜言蜜语，伊玛总是用单音节的词回答，没有别的了。最近他做了一件我预料之中的事情，因为我了解他的野心：他自荐进入了社会党候选人名单。这期间他给我寄了一封很短的信，除了让我选他，还让我替他做广告。这封信最后一句话是：“你跟莉娜也说说！”在这封信里，还附上了一张传单，上面有他的照片和简介。我还注意到，他的简介里有一句话被用笔画了出来，说这位候选人有三个孩子——阿尔伯特、莉迪亚和伊玛，旁边写着：“你让孩子看看这个，拜托了。”
A period began in which I racked my
brains constantly over what to do. My daughters needed stability and I had to
work hard to get their fathers to attend to them. Nino remained the bigger
problem. Occasionally he telephoned, said some sweet thing to Imma on the
telephone, she responded in monosyllables, that was it. Recently he had made
a move that was, all in all, predictable, considering his ambitions: during
the elections he had appeared on the socialist party lists. For the occasion
he had sent me a letter in which he asked me to vote for him and get people
to vote. In the letter, which ended with Tell Lina, too! he had enclosed a
flyer that included an attractive photograph of him and a biographical note.
Underlined in pen was a line in which he declared to the electors that he had
three children: Albertino, Lidia, and Imma. Next to it he had written: Please
read this to the child.
我没选他，也没帮他宣传让别人选他，但我把那张传单给了伊玛时，她问我她能不能保留下来。当她父亲当选为议员时，我跟她大体讲了一下人民、选举、代表和议会是什么。现在尼诺一直在罗马，选举成功之后，他只是匆匆忙忙给我们写过一封信，信里没几句话，上面没有电话号码，也没有地址，只说他会远距离保护我们（“你们放心吧，我会罩着你们的。”），他兴致勃勃地让我把那封信给他女儿、黛黛还有艾尔莎看。伊玛也想保留那个证据，来证明她父亲的存在。她的姓和两个姐姐不一样，艾尔莎总是说类似这样的话：“你好无聊啊，这就是为什么你姓萨拉托雷，而我们姓艾罗塔。”伊玛看起来也不那么失落了，也许她没那么担心了。有一天老师问她：“你是萨拉托雷议员阁下的女儿吗？”第二天她把那张传单带去给老师看，她保留着这张传单，就是为了应对这种情况。我很高兴她为自己的父亲而自豪，我打算巩固这种情感。假如尼诺的生活还是游移不定，有很多女人呢？那也好。但我的女儿不是一个徽章，用完之后就会放在抽屉里，等着下一次机会。
I hadn’t voted and I had done nothing to
get people to vote for him, but I had shown the flyer to Imma and she had
asked if she could keep it. When her father was elected I explained briefly
the meaning of people, elections, representation, parliament. Now he lived
permanently in Rome. After his electoral success he had been in touch only
once, with a letter as hasty as it was self-satisfied, which he asked me to
read to his daughter, Dede, and Elsa. No telephone number, no address, only
words whose meaning was an offer of protection at a distance (Be sure that I
will watch over you). But Imma also wanted to keep that testimony to her
father’s existence. And when Elsa said to her things like, You’re boring,
that’s why you’re called Sarratore and we’re Airota, she seemed less
disoriented—perhaps less worried—by having a surname that was different from
that of her sisters. One day the teacher had asked her: Are you the daughter
of the Honorable Sarratore, and the next day she had brought in as proof the
flyer, which she kept for any eventuality. I was pleased with that pride and
planned to try to consolidate it. Nino’s life was, as usual, crowded and
turbulent? All right. But his daughter wasn’t a rosette to use and then put
back in the drawer until the next occasion.
这些年，我跟彼得罗的关系从来都没出过问题。他总是很准时给我汇两个女儿的抚养费（从尼诺那里，我从来都没得到过一分钱），而且彼得罗一有机会就会过来看两个孩子。但那段时间他和多莉娅娜分手了，他对佛罗伦萨感到厌烦，想去美国。他一直那么坚定，一定会实现他的目标，这让我很不安。我跟他说：“这样你就会离开你的女儿。”他回答说：“现在看起来是我离开她们，但你会看到，她们会是最大的受益者。”可能他的话和尼诺之前说的话很像——“你们放心吧，我会罩着你们的。”事实是，黛黛和艾尔莎也会成为没有父亲的孩子。假如伊玛一直都习惯了没有父亲，而黛黛和艾尔莎一直都很依恋彼得罗，她们已经习惯了想什么时候去找他就什么时候去找他。他的离去会让两个孩子很难过，会让她们失去很多优势，这一点我可以肯定。当然了，她们已经够大了，黛黛已经十八岁，艾尔莎快要十五岁了。她们的学校很好，都有很好的老师。但这就够了吗？她们从来都没有真正融入这里，她们俩都没有知心的同学或者朋友，好像只有在看到里诺时，她们才会很开心，她们和那个比她们大很多，但比她们幼稚的大男孩有什么共同之处呢？
With Pietro in recent years I had never
had any problems. He contributed money for his daughters’ maintenance
punctually (from Nino I had never received a lira) and was as far as possible
a conscientious father. But not long ago he had broken up with Doriana, he
was tired of Florence, he wanted to go to the United States. And, stubborn as
he was, he would manage it. That alarmed me. I said to him: You’ll abandon
your daughters, and he replied: it seems a desertion now but you’ll see, soon
it will be an advantage for them especially. He was probably right, in that
his words had something in common with Nino’s (Be sure that I will watch over
you). In fact, however, Dede and Elsa, too, would remain without a father.
And if Imma had always done without, Dede and Elsa clung to Pietro, they were
used to having recourse to him when they wanted. His departure would sadden
and limit them, that I was sure of. Of course they were old enough, Dede was
eighteen, Elsa almost fifteen. They were in good schools, they both had good
teachers. But was it enough? They had never become assimilated, neither of
them had close schoolmates or friends, they seemed comfortable only with
Rino. And what did they really have in common with that large boy who was
much older and yet more childish than they?
不能这样下去了，我应该离开那不勒斯。比如说，我可以试着在罗马生活。为了伊玛，我可以和尼诺重新建立联系，当然只是朋友。或者我应该回佛罗伦萨，让彼得罗和两个女儿更亲近，这样他就不会想着去大洋那边，我必须马上做决定。有一天晚上，莉拉气呼呼地上来，明显状态很不好。她问我：
No, I had to leave Naples. I could try to
live in Rome, for example, and for Imma’s sake resume relations with Nino,
only on the level of friendship, of course. Or return to Florence, so that
Pietro could be closer to his daughters, and thus would not move across the
ocean. The decision seemed particularly urgent when one night Lila came
upstairs with a quarrelsome look, evidently in a bad mood, and asked me:
“你是不是告诉黛黛，让她不要再和詹纳罗见面？”
“Is it true that you told Dede to stop
seeing Gennaro?”
我觉得很不自在，我只是跟我的女儿说，让她不要粘着詹纳罗。
I was embarrassed. I had only explained
to my daughter that she shouldn’t be stuck to him all the time.
“她想什么时候见詹纳罗都可以。我只是担心詹纳罗会很烦，他是大人了，黛黛还是个小姑娘。”
“See him—she can see him when she wants:
I’m only afraid that Gennaro might be annoyed, he’s grown-up, she’s a girl.”
“莱农，你把话说清楚，你是不是觉得，我儿子配不上你女儿？”
“Lenù, be clear. You think my son isn’t
good for your daughter?”
我有些不安地看着她问：
I stared at her in bewilderment.
“为什么说这些？”
“Good how?”
“你很清楚，她爱上詹纳罗了。”
“You know perfectly well she’s in love.”
我笑了起来。
I burst out laughing.
“黛黛？爱上里诺？”
“Dede? Rino?”
“有什么不可能？你觉得你女儿不可能为我儿子疯狂？”
“Why, don’t you think it’s possible that
your child has lost her head over mine?”