-*-
82
卡门惊慌失措，她哭着说，她觉得这简直是对她家的另一场迫害。但我没法从我脑子里抹去那个光秃秃的小广场，吉诺家的药店就对着那个小广场，我还清楚地记得药店内部的陈设，我一直都很喜欢那儿糖果和糖浆的味道，里面的深色木头家具，各种颜色的瓶子一排排摆在一起。我尤其是喜欢吉诺的父母，他们一直都很热情，在柜台的后面弯着腰做事，他们从柜台那里探出身子时，就像是站在一个阳台上。当枪响传到他们耳朵里时，他们当时一定是在铺子里，也许他们就在那儿瞪着眼睛看着儿子倒在门槛上，鲜血四处流淌。我想和莉拉谈一谈这件事，但她表现得很无所谓，就好像这是一件司空见惯的事儿。她只是说：“警察不找帕斯卡莱才怪呢。”她的声音马上就抓住了我，说服了我，让我明白，如果真是帕斯卡莱杀死了吉诺——这是不可能的事儿——她也会站在帕斯卡莱那一边的。那些警察应该意识到，死者曾经作恶多端，他罪有应得，而不是找我们的朋友——一个当泥瓦匠的意大利comrades的事儿。说完这些，她用一种说正事儿的语气，问我能不能让詹纳罗在我这里待上一阵子，一直到学校开学。詹纳罗？我怎么办啊？我有黛黛和艾尔莎要照顾，这已经让我精疲力竭了。我嘟囔了一句：
Carmen was overwhelmed by anxiety, she
wept because of what seemed to her the revival of persecution. I, on the
other hand, couldn’t get out of my mind the small barren square the pharmacy
faced, and the shop’s interior, which I had always liked for its odor of
candies and syrups, the dark-wood shelves with their rows of colored jars,
and, above all, Gino’s parents, who were so kind, leaning out from behind the
counter as if from a balcony: surely they had been there, had been startled
by the sound of the shots, from there, perhaps, had watched, eyes wide, as
their son fell in the doorway, had seen the blood. I wanted to talk to Lila.
But she appeared completely indifferent, she dismissed the episode as one of
many, she said only: Of course the carabinieri would go after Pasquale. Her
voice knew how to grip me immediately, to persuade me; she emphasized that
even if Pasquale had murdered Gino—which she ruled out—she would be on his
side, because the carabinieri should have gone after the dead man for all the
terrible things he had done, rather than our friend, a construction worker
and Communist. After which, in the tone of someone who is going on to more
important things, she asked if she could leave Gennaro with me until school
began. Gennaro? How would I manage? I already had Dede and Elsa, who wore me
out. I said:
“为什么？”
“Why?”
“我要工作。”
“I have to work.”
“我要和两个女儿去海边。”
“I’m about to go to the beach with the
girls.”
“你也带上他吧。”
“Take him, too.”
“我要去维亚雷焦海边，我要在那儿待到八月末。孩子和我不熟，你也来吧。你来的话，那可以，我一个人可不行。”
“I’m going to Viareggio and staying till
the end of August. He barely knows me, he’ll want you. If you come, too,
that’s fine, but alone I don’t know.”
“但你已经发誓说，你会照顾他。”
“You swore you’d take care of him.”
“是的，但你当时病了。”
“Yes, but if you were ill.”
“我现在好没好，你又不知道。”
“And how do you know I’m not ill?”
“你病了吗？”
“Are you ill?”
“没有。”
“No.”
“你不能把孩子交给你母亲，或者斯特凡诺？”
“So why can’t you leave him with your
mother or Stefano?”
她沉默了一下，变得没声好气。
She was silent for a few seconds, she
became rude.
“你到底是帮还是不帮我？”
“Will you do me this favor or not?”
我马上让步了。
I gave in immediately.
“好吧，你把他送过来吧。”
“All right, bring him here.”
“恩佐会送他过来的。”
“Enzo will bring him.”
恩佐是一个星期六晚上到的，他开着一辆雪白的“菲亚特500”，那是他刚买的车。我只是透过窗子看到他，听到他用方言对着车里的孩子说话，就已经感觉到那是他，他一点儿都没有变，动作还是那么稳重，身体还是那么结实，他带来了那不勒斯和我们城区的气息。我打开了门，黛黛拉着我的衣服，我只看了一眼詹纳罗，就意识到五年前梅丽娜没看走眼：这个孩子已经十岁了，他现在看起来一点儿不像尼诺，也不像莉拉，他简直是斯特凡诺的翻版。
Enzo arrived on a Saturday night in a
bright white Fiat 500 that he had just bought. Merely seeing him from the
window, hearing the dialect in which he said something to the boy who was
still in the car—it was him, identical, the same composed gestures, the same
physical compactness—gave solidity back to Naples, to the neighborhood. I
opened the door with Dede hanging on my dress, and a single glance at Gennaro
was enough to know that Melina, five years earlier, had seen correctly: the
child, now that he was ten, showed plainly that he had in him not only
nothing of Nino but nothing of Lila; he was, rather, a perfect replica of
Stefano.
我内心很复杂，混合着失望和愉快。之前我想，这孩子要在家里住很久，让我女儿和尼诺的儿子在一起相处一段时间，这也很好；然而，我也乐意接受：尼诺和莉拉之间，什么也没留下。
The observation provoked an ambiguous
sentiment, a mixture of disappointment and satisfaction. I had thought that,
since the boy would be with me for so long, it would be nice to have in the
house, along with my daughters, a child of Nino; and yet I noted with
pleasure that Nino had left Lila nothing.
-*-
83
恩佐想马上回去，但彼得罗非常热情地挽留了他，让他第二天再走。我试着让詹纳罗和黛黛一起玩，尽管他们之间有六岁的年龄差距，黛黛表现出想一起玩的意思，但他坚决地摇了摇头。让我震撼的是恩佐对这个孩子的关注，那并不是他的儿子，但他很熟悉詹纳罗的习惯、口味和需求。詹纳罗说他很困，但恩佐还是很客气地让他上床前先去尿尿，洗脸刷牙。当孩子困得睡了过去，恩佐轻轻地帮他把衣服脱下来，给他穿上睡衣。
Enzo wanted to start off again right
away, but Pietro welcomed him courteously and obliged him to stay for the
night. I tried to get Gennaro to play with Dede, even if there was almost six
years’ difference between them, but while she was clearly eager he refused,
shaking his head decisively. I was struck by the way Enzo cared for the son
who wasn’t his, indicating that he knew his habits, his tastes, his needs.
Although Gennaro protested because he was sleepy, Enzo gently insisted that
he pee and brush his teeth before going to bed, and, when the child
collapsed, he delicately undressed him and put his pajamas on.
我在洗碟子、收拾厨房时，彼得罗在和客人聊天，他们坐在厨房的桌子前。他们没有任何共同之处，他们聊起了政治，当我丈夫说，最近意共向天主教民主党靠近，是一件好事儿，恩佐却断言说，假如这个路线取胜的话，那贝林格就帮了工人阶级的最大敌人一把。他们担心发生争吵，就不再谈论政治。这时候，彼得罗小心翼翼地问起了他的工作。恩佐觉得这种好奇是真诚的，就讲了起来，没平时那么空泛，他讲得很简单，但可能过于专业。IBM现在决定让他和莉拉去一家更大的公司，是诺拉附近的一家工厂，工厂里有三百工人，还有四十多位职员。公司提供的报酬简直让他们没法回绝：给他每月三十五万里拉，因为他是那个中心的头儿，莉拉是他的助理，给莉拉十万里拉。他们接受了这个工作，当然了，现在他们要赚那么多钱，要做的事情也很艰巨。我们是负责人，他给我们解释说，从那时候开始，他一直都用的是“我们”：我们要负责“系统3”，十个型号，我们有两个操作员，还有五个女打孔员，她们也是检测员。我们要收集信息，要给系统里输入很多数据，这可以让机子做很多的事情——算账、付钱、开发票、仓储、存货、供货商的订单、生产和运送。为了这个目的，我们需要那些卡片，也就是打孔的卡。这些孔就是一切，所有劳动都表现在那上面。我给你们举一个例子，我们需要进行一个简单的操作，从票据开始，比如说开发票，就是仓库管理员写着产品，还有客户信息的单子。那个客户有编号，他的个人信息也有一个对应的编号，产品也有一个编号。打孔员到机子那里，摁一下卡片的发放按钮，在键盘上输入票据的号码、客户的号码、个人信息的号码、产品的号码和数量，还有卡片上的其他信息。你们可以想象：一千张货单，十个产品，就是一万张打孔的卡片，上面的孔就像是针眼儿。你们清楚了吗，明白了吗？
While I washed the dishes and cleaned up,
Pietro entertained the guest. They were sitting at the kitchen table; they
had nothing in common. They tried politics, but when my husband made a
positive reference to the progressive rapprochement of the Communists and the
Christian Democrats, and Enzo said that if that strategy prevailed Berlinguer
would be giving a hand to the worst enemies of the working class, they ended
the discussion in order to avoid a quarrel. Pietro then politely asked him
about his job, and Enzo must have found his interest sincere, because he was
less laconic than usual and started on a dry, perhaps slightly too technical
account. IBM had just decided to send Lila and him to a bigger company, a
factory near Nola that had three hundred technical workers and forty clerical
employees. The financial offer had left them stunned: three hundred and fifty
thousand lire a month for him, who was the department head, and a hundred
thousand for her, as his assistant. They had accepted, naturally, but now
they had to earn all that money, and the work to be done was really
tremendous. We are responsible, he explained—and from then on he used
“we”—for a System 3 Model 10, and we have at our disposal two operators and
five punch-*-card operators sit at the machines, press a key to release the
cards, then by typing on the keys reduce the bill number, the client code,
the personal-*-quantity code, to holes in the cards. To help you understand,
a thousand bills for ten products make ten thousand punch cards with holes
like the ones a needle would make: is it clear, do you follow?
整个晚上都是那么过去的，彼得罗时不时会点头，表示自己在听，他有时候甚至会问一些问题（“那些孔是核心，但没打孔的地方也很重要吗？”），而我在擦洗厨房里的东西。给一位大学老师解释自己的工作，恩佐好像对此很高兴，彼得罗像一个遵守纪律的学生一样在听他讲，我呢，作为恩佐的一个老朋友，大学毕业，曾经还写了一本书，现在我在整理厨房，我们对于这些事全然不知。实际上，我很快就走神了。操作员拿起一万张卡片，然后把这些卡片塞入一个叫筛选机的东西，机子会根据产品的编号，把这些卡片整理排列。然后操作员来到两个“读者”前面，“读者”不是真正的人，而是读卡器，意思是这台机子已经被编辑好了程序，可以阅读卡片上的孔和没有孔的地方。然后呢？在这里开始，我就迷惑了，我迷失于那些编号和那些打孔的卡片，还有孔和孔之间的对比，选择那些孔，阅读那些孔，进行四步操作，打印名字、地址、总数。我迷失于那些我从来都没听说过的词汇——“file”（文档），恩佐在说这个词时，就好像它是“fila”（一排）的复数，但他用的是阳性，这是一个非常神秘的东西。这个“file”，那个“file”，他一直在这么说。我在莉拉身后迷失了，她现在知道所有这些词汇，熟悉这些机器和这份工作，她现在在诺拉一家大公司工作，即使只有她的伴侣恩佐一个人挣钱，她也要比我阔绰。我在恩佐的身后迷失了，他可以很自豪地说：“没有她的话，我肯定做不到的。”他表达了他忠诚的爱情，很明显，他很乐意提醒他自己和其他人，他的女人非常了不起，而我丈夫从来都不表扬我，相反地，他一直在贬低我，让我只是成了他孩子的母亲。他觉得，尽管我上了大学，最终我还是没有独立思考的能力，他一直在辱没我，贬低我读的东西，以及所有我感兴趣的东西，好像我一直表现得无用的话，他才会爱我。
So the evening passed. Pietro every so
often nodded to show that he was following and even tried to ask some
questions (The holes count but do the unperforated parts also count?). I
confined myself to a half smile while I washed and polished. Enzo appeared
pleased to be able to explain to a university professor, who listened to him
like a disciplined student, and an old friend who had her degree and had
written a book, and now was tidying up the kitchen, things that they knew
nothing about. But in truth I was quickly distracted. An operator took ten
thousand cards and inserted them in a machine that was called a sorter. The
machine put them in order according to the product code. Then there were two
readers, not in the sense of people but in the sense of machines programmed
to read the holes and the non-*-le, this file, that file, continually. I got
lost following Lila, who knew everything about those words, those machines,
that work, and was doing that work now in a big company in Nola, even if with
the salary her companion was earning she could be more of a lady than me. I
got lost following Enzo, who could say proudly: Without her I wouldn’t be
able to do it. Thus he conveyed to us his love and devotion, and it was clear
that he liked to remind himself and others of the extraordinary quality of
his woman, whereas my husband never praised me but, rather, reduced me to the
mother of his children; even though I had had an education he did not want me
to be capable of independent thought, he demeaned me by demeaning what I
read, what interested me, what I said, and he appeared willing to love me
only provided that I continually demonstrate my nothingness.
我最后终于也坐到了桌前，像一个影子，因为他们俩没有一个人对我说：“我来帮你摆桌子，我来帮你收拾，洗盘子或者打扫地板。”这时候，恩佐说，开发票是一件很简单的事情，我用手开一下，有什么要紧啊？但如果要开一千张呢？但那些读卡器一分钟可以读两百张卡片，因此两千张需要十分钟，一万张只需要五十分钟，机器的快捷会带来极大的便利，尤其是现在机器也进行一些复杂的、需要耗时很久的操作。现在，我和莉拉的工作就是这个：准备好系统，做一些比较复杂的操作。开发程序的阶段是非常棒的，操作阶段就没那么有意思了。很多时候，那些卡片会卡住，或是在筛选机里被撕裂。有时候，一个装着很多卡片的盒子，一不小心，里面的卡片全洒落在地上，这也很麻烦，但这个工作很棒，很麻烦，但很棒。
Finally I, too, sat down at the table,
depressed because neither of the two had made a move to say: Can we help you
set the table, clear, wash the dishes, sweep the floor. An invoice, Enzo was
saying, is a simple document, what does it take to do by hand? Nothing, if I
have to create ten a day. But if I have to do a thousand? The readers read
two hundred cards a minute, so two thousand in ten minutes, and ten thousand
in fifty. The speed of the machine is an enormous advantage, especially if
it’s enabled to do complex operations, which require a lot of time. And
that’s what Lila’s and my work is: to prepare the System 3 to do complex
operations. The development phases of the programs are really wonderful. The
operational phases a little less. The cards often jam and break in the
sorters. Very often a container in which the cards have just been sorted
falls and the cards scatter on the floor. But it’s great, it’s great even
then.
我想表示自己也在听，就打断了他的话说：
Just to feel that I was present, I
interrupted, saying:
“他也会错吗？”
“Can he make a mistake?”
“他是谁？”
“He who?”
“计算机。”
“The computer.”
“没有任何他，莱农，只有我，假如他错了，出了什么乱子，那是我错了，是我搞出来的乱子。”
“There’s no he, Lenù, he is me. If he
makes a mistake, if he gets in trouble, I’ve made a mistake, I’ve gotten in
trouble.”
“啊，这样啊。”我说，然后小声说：“我累了。”
“Oh,” I said, and then, “I’m tired.”
彼得罗点了点头，好像也打算结束那个夜晚的谈话。
Pietro nodded in agreement and seemed ready to end the evening.
他对恩佐说：
He turned to Enzo:
“真是振奋人心啊，但假如就像你说的，这些机器可以代替人，很多职业就会消失，菲亚特的工厂里已经是机器人在焊接，会有很多人失业的。”
“It’s certainly exciting, but if it’s as
you say, these machines will take the place of men, and skills will
disappear; at Fiat robots already do the welding. A lot of jobs will be
lost.”
恩佐先是点了点头，他想了一下，最后他用唯一一个他觉得很有权威的人的话，来捍卫自己：
Enzo at first agreed, then he seemed to
have second thoughts, and finally he resorted to the only person whose
authority he credited:
“莉娜说，这是一个好事，那些低贱的、让人变蠢的工作，还是消失的好。”
“Lina says it’s all a good thing:
humiliating and stultifying jobs should disappear.”
莉娜，莉娜，又是莉娜。我用开玩笑的语气问：“假如莉娜那么厉害，那为什么他们给你三十五万里拉，却给莉拉十万里拉，因为你是头儿，她是你的助理吗？”恩佐犹豫了一下，就好像他要说一件非常紧急的事儿，但最后他决定不说了。他说了一句：“我能做什么呢，需要推翻生产工具的私有制。”这时候，在厨房里，有几秒钟只能听到电冰箱的嗡鸣声。彼得罗站起来说：“我们去睡觉吧。”
Lina, Lina, Lina. I asked teasingly: if
Lina is so good, why do they give you three hundred and fifty thousand lire
and her a hundred thousand, why are you the boss and she’s the assistant?
Enzo hesitated again, he seemed on the point of saying something pressing,
which he then decided to abandon. He mumbled: What do you want from me,
private ownership of the means of production should be abolished. In the
kitchen the hum of the refrigerator could be heard for a few seconds. Pietro
stood up and said: Let’s go to bed.
-*-
84
恩佐想在早上六点出发，但在早上四点时，我就听见他在家里走动，我起身给他准备咖啡。在寂静的厨房里，我们面对面，计算机语言消失了，还有因为彼得罗在场时我们采用的意大利语也消失了，我们开始说方言。我问到了他和莉拉的关系，他说他们很好，尽管她一刻也不闲着。现在她忙于工作，有时候，她会和母亲、父亲还有哥哥吵架，有时候她会帮助詹纳罗做功课，她也会帮着里诺的儿子，还有其他来家里的孩子。莉拉不注意自己的身体，她很疲惫，总是处于崩溃的边缘，就像上次出现的情况那样，她太累了。我明白，他们是心心相印的一对伴侣，并肩工作，她现在工资那么高，交给她的工作也会越来越复杂。我鼓起勇气说了一句：
Enzo wanted to leave by six, but already
at four in the morning I heard him moving in his room and I got up to make
him some coffee. In private, in the silent house, the language of computers
disappeared, along with the Italian suited to Pietro’s position, and we moved
to dialect. I asked about his relationship with Lila. He said it was good,
even though she never sat still. Now she was chasing after work problems, now
she was squabbling with her mother, her father, her brother, now she was
helping Gennaro with his homework and, one way or another, she ended up
helping Rino’s children, too, and all the children who happened to be around.
Lila didn’t look after herself, and so she was overworked, she always seemed
close to collapse, as she once had; she was tired. I quickly understood that
their harmony as a couple, working side by side, blessed by good salaries,
should be set within a more complicated sequence. I ventured:
“也许你们应该调整一下你们的生活：莉娜不能总是那么辛苦。”
“Maybe the two of you have to impose some
order: Lina shouldn’t get overtired.”
“我也一直在跟她说。”
“I tell her that constantly.”
“另外，还需要办理离婚的手续，她现在和斯特凡诺还属于夫妻关系，这一点儿意义也没有。”
“And then there’s the separation,
divorce: it makes no sense for her to stay married to Stefano.”
“她一点儿也不在乎这个。”
“She doesn’t give a damn about that.”
“斯特凡诺是什么态度？”
“But Stefano?”
“他们不知道现在可以离婚。”
“He doesn’t even know that you can
divorce now.”
“艾达呢？”
“And Ada?”
“艾达现在生活都面临问题，风水轮流转，以前在上面的人，现在在下面。卡拉奇家现在一分钱都没有了，还欠索拉拉家很多债，艾达要在来不及之前，趁机捞一把。”
“Ada has survival problems. The wheel
turns, those who were on top end up on the bottom. The Carraccis don’t have
even a lira left, only debts with the Solaras, and Ada is taking care to get
what she can before it’s too late.”
“那你呢？你不想结婚吗？”
“And you? You don’t want to get married?”
我明白，他是很愿意结婚，但莉拉表示反对。一方面，她不想在离婚这件事情上浪费时间——我跟那人没离婚，谁他妈在乎！我现在和你在一起，和你一起睡觉，这就是事实——另一方面，再次结婚的想法，让她自己也觉得好笑。她说：“我和你？我和你结婚？你在说什么呢？我们这样不是很好吗？我们无论谁烦了，都可以随时走开。”对于一场新的婚姻，莉拉没有兴趣，她脑子里有别的事情需要考虑。
It was clear that he would happily get
married, but Lila was against it. Not only did she not want to waste time
with divorce—who cares if I’m still married to him, I’m with you, I sleep
with you, that’s the essential—but the mere idea of another wedding made her
laugh. She said: You and I? You and I get married? Why, we’re fine like this,
and as soon as we get fed up with each other we go our own way. The prospect
of another marriage didn’t interest Lila, she had other things to think
about.
“也就是说？”
“What?”
“算了吧，别说了。”
“Forget it.”
“说吧。”
“Tell me.”
“她从来都没有告诉过你吗？”
“She never talked to you about it?”
“什么事儿啊？”
“What?”
“关于米凯莱·索拉拉。”
“Michele Solara.”
他用一种简洁的语言，说那么多年来，米凯莱从来都没有停止要求莉拉为他工作。他要么想让莉拉帮他打理沃美罗的一家商店，要么让她做会计，负责税收的事务。要么就让她去给他朋友当秘书，那人是天主教民主党的一个要人。最后他甚至提出，要给她每月三十万里拉的工资，让她想发明点什么就发明点什么，任何疯狂的想法都行。尽管米凯莱现在住在波西利波，但在城区里，也就是在他父母亲的房子里，他还继续做他的那些生意。这样一来，莉拉不断遇到他，在路上，在市场，在商店里，他会拦住莉拉，对她总是很客气，很友好。他和詹纳罗开玩笑，送给他一些小礼物，然后会变得非常严肃。每次莉拉拒绝他提供的工作机会之后，他还是充满耐心，用以往那种带着戏谑的语气说：“我不会放弃的，我会一直等下去的，你想好了，给我一个电话，我会马上跑过来。”自从他知道莉拉在IBM工作，他非常气愤，他甚至动用了他认识的人，让他们把恩佐从这个行业里排挤出去，当然也包括莉拉。他的这一招没有奏效，因为IBM急需像恩佐和莉拉这样的技术人员，像他们这样出色的人很少。但现在气氛变了，有一次恩佐在楼下看到了吉诺的那伙法西斯分子，那次没发生什么事儿，是因为他及时把门关上了。但后来在詹纳罗身上，发生了一件让人担心的事情。莉拉的母亲像往常一样去学校接詹纳罗，所有学生都出来了，但她还是没看到詹纳罗。老师说，他一分钟前还在。他的同学说，他刚才在的，一下子就消失了。农奇亚吓得要死，她打电话给女儿，莉拉正在上班，马上就回来了，开始找詹纳罗。她在小花园的一张长椅上找到他了，孩子很安静，还穿着罩衣，书包也好好的，莉拉问他：“你去哪儿了？你做什么了？”他笑了起来，眼神很空洞。她想马上去找米凯莱，把他干掉，因为那次试图围殴恩佐的事，也因为绑架她儿子的事情，但恩佐把她拦住了。法西斯分子现在都盯着左派的人，他们没有任何证据说惹事的是米凯莱派的人。至于詹纳罗，他自己也承认，他那短暂的消失，也只是因为自己不听话。无论如何，恩佐安抚了莉拉之后决定去找米凯莱谈谈。他去了索拉拉的酒吧，米凯莱听他说这些，眼睛都没有眨一下。最后，他非常肯定地说：“恩佐，我不知道你他妈在说什么，我很喜欢詹纳罗，谁要敢碰他，就死定了。你说的这堆废话里，唯一一件真事儿是：莉娜非常聪明，她在浪费自己的智慧，这是一件非常遗憾的事儿。很多年以来，我一直在请她为我工作。”他又接着说：“我的这个请求，让你很烦？我他妈才不会在乎。但你错了，假如你真的爱她，你就应该鼓励她运用她的聪明才智。来吧，你坐下喝杯咖啡，吃块点心，跟我说说你们的电脑有什么用处。”但事情并没有就此结束，因为非常偶然的机会，他们后来又遇到了两三次，米凯莱对“系统3”的兴趣越来越高了。有一天，他还用开玩笑的语气说，他问了一个在IBM工作的人，恩佐和莉拉谁厉害？他说恩佐当然很出色，但现在这个行业里，最厉害的还是莉拉。后来有一次，米凯莱在路上拦住了莉拉，给她说了一件很重要的事儿。他打算租一台“系统3”，用于他所有的商业活动，最后的提议是：他想请莉拉做那个电脑中心的头儿，每个月给她四十万里拉。
He told me in brief, tense phrases that
in all these years Michele had never stopped asking Lila to work for him. He
had proposed that she manage a new shop on the Vomero. Or the accounting and
the taxes. Or be a secretary for a friend of his, an important Christian
Democratic politician. He had even gone so far as to offer her a salary of
two hundred thousand lire a month just to invent things, crazy notions,
anything that came into her head. Even though he lived on Posillipo, he still
kept the headquarters of all his businesses in the neighborhood, at his
mother and father’s house. So Lila found him around her constantly, on the
street, in the market, in the shops. He stopped her, always very friendly, he
joked with Gennaro, gave him little gifts. Then he became very serious, and
even when she refused the jobs he offered, he wasn’t impatient, he said
goodbye, joking as usual: I’m not giving up, I’ll wait for you for eternity,
call me when you want and I’ll come running. Until he found out she was working
for IBM. That had angered him, and he had gone so far as to get people he
knew to remove Enzo from the market for consultants, and hence Lila, too. He
hadn’t had any success, IBM urgently needed technicians and there weren’t
many good technicians like Enzo and Lila. But the climate had changed. Enzo
had found Gino’s fascists outside the house and he escaped because he managed
to reach the front door in time and lock it behind him. But shortly afterward
an alarming thing had happened to Gennaro. Lila’s mother had gone to pick him
up at school as usual. All the students had come out and the child was
nowhere to be seen. The teacher: He was here a minute ago. His classmates: He
was here and then he disappeared. Nunzia, terribly frightened, had called her
daughter at work; Lila returned right away and went to look for Gennaro. She
found him on a bench in the gardens. The child was sitting quietly, with his
smock, his ribbon, his schoolbag, and he laughed at the questions—where did
you go, what did you do—with expressionless eyes. She wanted to go and kill
Michele right away, both for the attempted beating of Enzo and the kidnapping
of her son, but Enzo restrained her. The fascists now went after anyone on
the left and there was no proof that it was Michele who ordered the
kidnapping. As for Gennaro, he himself had admitted that his brief absence
was only an act of disobedience. In any case, once Lila calmed down, Enzo had
decided on his own to go and talk to Michele. He had showed up at the Bar Solara
and Michele had listened without batting an eye. Then he had said, more or
less: I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Enzù: I’m fond of
Gennaro, anyone who touches him is dead, but among all the foolish things
you’ve said the only true thing is that Lina is smart and it’s a pity that
she’s wasting her intelligence, I’ve been asking her to work with me for
years. Then he continued: That irritates you? Who gives a damn. But you’re
wrong, if you love her you should encourage her to use her capabilities. Come
here, sit down, have a coffee and a pastry, tell me what those computers of
yours do. And it hadn’t ended there. They had met two or three times, by
chance, and Michele had demonstrated increasing interest in the System 3. One
day he even said, amused, that he had asked someone at IBM who was smarter,
him or Lila, and that person had said that Enzo was certainly smart, but the
best in the business was Lila. After that, he had stopped her on the street
again and made her a significant offer. He intended to rent the System 3 and
use it in all his commercial activities. Result: he wanted her as the chief
technician, at four hundred thousand lire a month.
“这件事，她也没跟你说？”恩佐很小心地问我。
“She didn’t even tell you that?” Enzo
asked me warily.
“没有。”
“No.”
“看来她不想打扰你，你有自己的生活。但你要知道，对于她个人来说，这是一个质的飞跃，对于我们俩来说，这是一大笔钱，算起来我们俩会赚七十五万里拉，我不知道，我说清楚了吗。”
“You see she didn’t want to bother you,
you have your life. but you understand that for her personally it would be a
significant step up, and for the two of us it would be a fortune: we’d have
seven hundred and fifty thousand lire a month altogether, I don’t know if
that’s clear.”
“莉娜怎么说？”
“But Lina?”
“她要在九月时回复。”
“She has to answer by September.”
“她会怎么做呢？”
“And what will she do?”
“我不知道。她做任何事情之前，她脑子里的想法，你有没有提前搞清楚过？”
“I don’t know. Have you ever been able to
figure out what’s in her mind ahead of time?”
“没有。但你觉得，她会怎么做？”
“No. But what do you think she should
do?”
“她怎么做，我都支持她。”
“I think what she thinks.”
“在你不赞同的情况下，也支持她？”
“Even if you don’t agree?”
“是的。”
“Even then.”
我陪着他来到了汽车前。走在楼梯上时，我想告诉他一件他不知道的事，也就是米凯莱对莉拉有一种狂热的爱意，一种非常危险的情感，就像蜘蛛结的网子，并不是要在肉体上占有她，也不是要她顺从。我有点想说这些，因为我还是很喜欢恩佐这个朋友。我不想他觉得，他面对的只是一个克莫拉分子，并认为一直以来，这个黑社会分子都只是想要买他的女人的聪明才智。
I went out to the car with him. On the
stairs it occurred to me that maybe I should tell him what he surely didn’t
know, that Michele harbored for Lila a love like a spiderweb, a dangerous
love that had nothing to do with physical possession or even with a loyal
subservience. And I was about to do it, I was fond of him, I didn’t want him
to believe that he was merely dealing with a quasi-camorrist who had been
planning for a long time to buy the intelligence of this woman. When he was
already behind the wheel I asked him:
“假如米凯莱想把她从你手上抢走呢？”
“And if Michele wants to sleep with her?”
他不动声色地说：
He was impassive.
“我会杀了他。但他不想要她的，所有人都知道，他已经有一个情人了。”
“I’ll kill him. But anyway he doesn’t
want her, he already has a lover and everybody knows it.”
“谁啊？”
“Who’s that?”
“玛丽莎，她又一次怀上了米凯莱的孩子。”
“Marisa, he’s got her pregnant again.”
我当时觉得有些迷糊。
For a moment it seemed to me that I
hadn’t understood.
“玛丽莎·萨拉托雷吗？”
“Marisa Sarratore?”
“是阿方索的妻子玛丽莎。”
“Marisa, the wife of Alfonso.”
我想起我和我的同学阿方索的谈话，他试着告诉我，他的生活非常复杂，但我回避了这个话题。阿方索说的那些话，我只是被其表层的意思所震撼，我没进入到内核。当时，他的痛苦让我觉得有些混乱，为了搞清楚状况，我本应该再和他聊聊，也许聊了，我也不一定能明白，但我还是有一些不舒服的感觉。
I recalled my conversation with my schoolmate. He had tried to tell me how complicated his life was and I had retreated, struck more by the surface of his revelation than by the substance. And to me his uneasiness seemed confused—to get things straight I would have had to talk to him again, and maybe not even then would I have understood—and yet it pierced me unpleasantly, painfully.
我问：
I asked:
“阿方索呢？”
“And Alfonso?”
“他不在乎，都说他是个飘飘。”
“He doesn’t give a damn, they say he’s a
fag.”
“谁说的？”
“Who says?”
“所有人。”
“Everyone.”
“所有人有些太模糊了，恩佐，所有人还说了什么？”
“Everyone is very general, Enzo. What
else does everyone say?”
他用一丝带着讽刺的语气说：
He looked at me with a flash of
conspiratorial irony:
“很多事儿，城区里是非不断。”
“A lot of things, the neighborhood is
always gossiping.”
“也就是说？”
“Like?”
“现在大家都在说以前的事儿，都说杀死堂·阿奇勒的人是索拉拉兄弟的母亲。”
“Old stories have come back to the
surface. They say it was the mother of the Solaras who murdered Don Achille.”
他出发了，我希望他把他说的那些话也带走，但那些话一直在我耳边回响，让我非常担心，也让我很气愤。为了摆脱这种感觉，我打电话给莉拉，语气里夹杂着不安和不满：“米凯莱让你给他工作的事儿，你为什么没跟我说过？尤其是最后这次他的提议。你为什么把阿方索的秘密说了出去？你为什么把索拉拉母亲的事儿传了出去？那是我们之间的玩笑。你为什么让詹纳罗来我这里？你为他的安危担忧了？你可以跟我说清楚一点，我需要了解真相。你为什么现在不告诉我你脑子里真正的想法？”对于我来说，这是一个发泄，但我说的这些话，字里行间，还有我的内心都想表达一个意思，就是我希望，我们不要停留在原地，我希望仅仅只是通过电话，我们依然能实现之前的一个愿望，就是保持完整的关系，审视这种关系，把一切都说清楚，对这种关系有一个充分的认识。我希望能激怒她，让她回答其他一些问题，一些更加个人的问题。但莉拉很厌烦，她心情很不好，她对我很冷淡。她说我已经离开很多年了，已经有了自己的生活，在我的生活里，索拉拉兄弟、斯特凡诺、玛丽莎和阿方索已经没有任何意义了，他们的重要性为零。她很简短地对我说，你度假，写东西，做知识分子，对你来说，我们太土了，太低级了，你就远远地待着吧！拜托了，让詹纳罗晒晒太阳，不然他会像他父亲那样佝偻着背。
He left, and I hoped he would take away
his words, too. But what I had learned stayed with me, worried me, made me
angry. In an attempt to get rid of it I went to the telephone and talked to
Lila, mixing anxieties and reproaches: Why didn’t you say anything about
Michele’s job offers, especially the last one; why did you tell Alfonso’s
secret; why did you start that story about the mother of the Solaras, it was
a game of ours; why did you send me Gennaro, are you worried about him, tell
me plainly, I have the right to know; why, once and for all, don’t you tell
me what’s really in your mind? It was an outburst, but, sentence by sentence,
deep inside myself, I hoped that we wouldn’t stop there, that the old desire
to confront our entire relationship and re-examine it, to elucidate and have
full consciousness of it, would be realized. I hoped to provoke her and draw
her in to other, increasingly personal questions. But Lila was annoyed, she
treated me coldly, she wasn’t in a good mood. She answered that I had been
gone for years, that I now had a life in which the Solaras, Stefano, Marisa,
Alfonso meant nothing, counted for less than zero. Go on vacation, she said,
abruptly, write, act the intellectual, here we’ve remained too crude for you,
stay away; and please, make Gennaro get some sun, otherwise he’ll come home
stunted like his father.
她的声音里透出讥讽和鄙夷，几乎是一种无礼，恩佐给我讲的那些事情，在她嘴里变得轻松。我想把她拉入我的世界：我读的书，我从马丽娅罗莎和佛罗伦萨女性团体那儿学到的话，还有我正在考虑的问题。我如果给她提供一些基本概念，她一定会比我更好地解答那些问题，但她的话抹去了任何在这方面进行交流的可能。我想，是的，我过我自己的日子，你过你的。现在你已经快三十岁了，假如你不愿意成长，那你就继续在院子里玩儿吧！够了，我去海边了，马上就动身。
The sarcasm in her voice, the belittling,
almost rude tone, removed any weight from Enzo’s story and eliminated any
possibility of drawing her into the books I was reading, the vocabulary I had
learned from Mariarosa and the Florentine women, the questions that I was
trying to ask myself and that, once I had provided her with the basic
concepts, she would surely know how to take on better than all of us. But
yes, I thought, I’ll mind my own business and you mind yours: if you like,
don’t grow up, go on playing in the courtyard even now that you’re about to
turn thirty; I’ve had enough, I’m going to the beach. And so I did.
-*-
85
彼得罗开着车，把我和三个孩子送到了维亚雷焦，我们在那儿租了一套不怎么样的房子，然后他回佛罗伦萨了，他想把他手头上的书完成。我想，现在我是一个度假的人了，一个生活富裕的太太，带着三个孩子，还有很多玩具。我的太阳伞在沙滩上第一排，柔软的毛巾，很多吃的东西，有五套颜色不同的比基尼，还有薄荷烟，太阳会让我的皮肤变成深色，会让我的头发更加金黄。我每天晚上都会给彼得罗，还有莉拉打电话。彼得罗会告诉我，有谁找了我，那都是一个遥远季节的残留，他极少跟我谈到他构思的工作。和莉拉通电话时，我会让詹纳罗来讲，他会很不情愿地，给她讲讲一天中发生的主要事情，然后对她说晚安。我基本上不说什么，和彼得罗基本没什么话说，对莉拉也很少说什么。莉拉已经彻底缩减了，只剩下声音了。
Pietro took the three children and me in
the car to an ugly house in Viareggio that we had rented, then he returned to
Florence to try to finish his book. Look, I said to myself, now I’m a
vacationer, a well-off lady with three children and a pile of toys, a beach
umbrella in the front row, soft towels, plenty to eat, five bikinis in
different colors, menthol cigarettes, the sun that darkens my skin and makes
me even blonder. I called Pietro and Lila every night. Pietro reported on
people who had called for me, remnants of a distant time, and, more rarely,
talked about some hypothesis having to do with his work that had just come to
mind. I handed Lila to Gennaro, who reluctantly recounted what he considered
important events of his day and said good night. I said almost nothing to
either one or the other. Lila especially seemed reduced to voice alone.
过了一段时间，我意识到，事情并非如此，她的一部分血肉存在于詹纳罗身上。那个孩子的确和斯特凡诺很像，他长得一点儿也不像莉拉，但他的动作、他说话的方式、他的一些用词和口头禅还有霸道的性格，非常像她小时候。我有时候不经意听到了他的声音，会很受震动，我入迷地看着他一边做手势，一边给黛黛解释怎么玩一个游戏。
But I realized after a while that it
wasn’t exactly so: part of her existed in flesh and blood in Gennaro. The boy
was certainly very like Stefano and didn’t resemble Lila at all. Yet his
gestures, the way he talked, some words, certain interjections, a kind of
aggressiveness were those of Lila as a child. So sometimes if I was
distracted I jumped at hearing his voice, or was spellbound as I observed him
gesticulating, explaining a game to Dede.
詹纳罗和他母亲不同，他很阴险，而莉拉小时候那种邪恶和坏，是很公然的，任何惩罚都不能使她隐藏这一点。詹纳罗在扮演一个有教养的小男孩，甚至有些羞怯，但你一转身，他就会捉弄黛黛，会把她的玩偶藏起来，会打她。作为惩罚，我威胁他说，我们晚上不会给他妈妈打电话，不跟她道晚安，他马上就装出一副懊悔的样子。但实际上，他对这种惩罚根本就不在乎，晚上给莉拉打电话是我要求的，打不打电话，他觉得无所谓。让他担心的是，我威胁说，不给他买冰淇淋，那他会哭起来，在抽泣间歇，会说他想回那不勒斯，我马上就让步了。但即使我给他买了，他心里还是不平衡，他会报复我，偷偷伤害黛黛。
Unlike his mother, however, Gennaro was
devious. Lila’s meanness when she was a child had always been explicit, no
punishment ever drove her to hide it. Gennaro, on the other hand, played the
role of the well-*-up, even timid child, but as soon as I turned my back he
teased Dede, he hid her doll, he hit her. When I threatened him, saying that
as a punishment we wouldn’t call his mamma to say good night he assumed a
contrite expression. In reality, that possible punishment didn’t worry him at
all; the ritual of the evening phone call had been established by me, and he
could easily do without it. What worried him, rather, was the threat that I
wouldn’t buy him ice cream. Then he began to cry; between his sobs he said he
wanted to go back to Naples, and I immediately gave in. But that didn’t
soothe him. He took revenge on me by secretly being mean to Dede.
我当时很确信，黛黛害怕他，仇恨他，但事实却不是这样的。随着时间的流逝，她越来越不会反抗詹纳罗的欺压，而是爱上了这种欺压。她称詹纳罗为“里诺”或者“里诺奇奥”，因为他说，他的朋友们都是这么叫他的。不管我怎么喊，黛黛都会跟着他走远，有时候，甚至是她鼓动詹纳罗远离我们的太阳伞。我一天到晚都在叫喊中度过：“黛黛，你去哪儿？”“詹纳罗，你过来！”“艾尔莎，你干什么，不要把沙子放在嘴里！”“詹纳罗，你不要这样！”“黛黛，假如你还不停下来，我过来给你点儿颜色看看。”但这一切都是白费口舌：艾尔莎还是在吃沙子，吃得很用心，当我在用海水给她漱口时，黛黛和詹纳罗就会消失。
I was sure that she feared him, hated
him. But no. As time passed, she responded less and less to Gennaro’s
harassments: she fell in love with him. She called him Rino or Rinuccio,
because he had told her that was what his friends called him, and she followed
him, paying no attention to my commands, in fact it was she who urged him to
wander away from our umbrella. My day was made up of shouting: Dede where are
you going, Gennaro come here, Elsa what are you doing, don’t put sand in your
mouth, Gennaro stop it, Dede if you don’t stop it I’m coming over and we’ll
see. A pointless struggle: Elsa ate sand no matter what and, no matter what,
Dede and Gennaro disappeared.
他们躲藏的地方，是距离海滩很近的一个芦苇丛。有一次，我和艾尔莎一起去看他们在干什么。我发现，他们把小游泳衣脱了，黛黛很好奇地抚摸着詹纳罗展示出来的下身的小玩意儿。我在离他们几米远的地方，不知道该怎么办。黛黛——我知道，我看见她了——经常趴在那里自慰，但我看了很多关于研究儿童性问题的书，我还给我女儿买了一本小书，上面有彩绘，用很简单的话说明了男女之间是怎么一回事儿。我给她读了那些话，她没有表现出任何兴趣。虽然我感觉很不自在，但我不打算打断她，骂她。我很肯定，她父亲会因此骂她，我很小心，不让他碰见这样的场景。
Their refuge was a nearby expanse of
reeds. Once I went with Elsa to see what they were up to and discovered that
they had taken off their bathing suits and Dede was touching, with
fascination, the erect penis that Gennaro was showing her. I stopped a short
distance away, I didn’t know what to do. Dede—I knew, I had seen her—often
masturbated lying on her stomach. But I had read a lot about infant
sexuality—I had even bought for my daughter a little book of colored
illustrations that explained in very short sentences what happened between
man and woman, words I had read her but which aroused no interest—and,
although I felt uneasy, I had not only forced myself not to stop her, not to
reproach her, but, assuming that her father would, I had been careful to keep
him from surprising her.
现在怎么办？我应该让他们继续玩儿？我还是应该撤退，离开那里？或者是走过去，若无其事地顾左右而言他？假如那个比黛黛要大好几岁。有些暴力的男孩，逼她做一些伤害她的事情，那怎么办？这种年龄的差别不是很危险吗？当时，推进事情进一步发展的，有两个因素：艾尔莎看到了姐姐，很欢快地叫喊起来，黛黛；同时我听到，詹纳罗在用方言对黛黛说着很粗鲁的话——我从小在院子里学到的那些话。我没法控制自己，所有我读过的关于快感、潜意识、神经官能症、孩子和女人的多种性变态的表现形式的知识马上消失了，我非常不客气地骂了他们俩，尤其是詹纳罗，我抓着他的一条胳膊，把他拉开了。他哭了起来，黛黛冷冰冰，很无畏地对我说：“你真坏！”
Now, though? Should I let them play
together? Should I retreat, slip away? Or approach without giving the thing
any importance, talk nonchalantly about something else? And if that violent
boy, much bigger than Dede, forced on her who knows what, hurt her? Wasn’t
the difference in age a danger? Two things precipitated the situation: Elsa
saw her sister, shouted with joy, calling her name; and at the same time I
heard the dialect words that Gennaro was saying to Dede, coarse words, the
same horribly vulgar words I had learned as a child in the courtyard. I
couldn’t control myself, everything I had read about pleasures, latencies,
neurosis, polymorphous perversions of children and women vanished, and I
scolded the two severely, especially Gennaro, whom I seized by the arm and
dragged away. He burst into tears, and Dede said to me coldly, fearless:
You’re very mean.
我给他们俩都买了冰淇淋，但我开始对他们严加看管，避免他们重犯，再加上现在黛黛的语言里开始有那不勒斯方言的粗话。晚上，几个孩子睡觉时，我开始努力地回想：我在小时候那个院子里，也和我的同龄人玩过这种游戏吗？莉拉有没有过类似的体验？我们从来都没谈过这个问题。在那个阶段，我们会说一些肮脏的话，这是真的。当时说那些骂人的话，是很有必要的，我们要推开成人那些猥亵的手，我们一边骂脏话，一边逃开。还有呢？我很努力地想一个问题：我和她之间，从来都没有相互抚摸过吗？我儿童时代、少女时代、青春期还有成年之后，从来都没有渴望做这件事情吗？她呢？我几乎长时间地沉浸在这个问题里。我慢慢对自己说：我不知道，我不想知道。我承认，我很欣赏她的身体，这一点是真的，而且过去也曾经有过那种情感，但我排除了我们之间曾经发生过什么的可能。我们太害怕了，假如我们被发现，会被打死的。
I bought them both ice cream, but a
period began in which a certain alarm at how Dede’s language was absorbing
obscene words of Neapolitan dialect was added to a wary supervision, intended
to keep the episode from being repeated. At night, while the children slept,
I got into the habit of making an effort to remember: had I played games like
that with my friends in the courtyard? And had Lila had experiences of that
type? We had never talked about it. At the time we had uttered repulsive
words, certainly, but they were insults that served, among other things, to
ward off the hands of obscene adults, bad words that we shouted as we fled.
For the rest? With difficulty I reached the point of asking myself: had she
and I ever touched each other? Had I ever wished to, as a child, as a girl,
as an adult? And her? I hovered on the edge of those questions for a long
time. I answered slowly: I don’t know, I don’t want to know. And then I
admitted that there had been a kind of admiration for her body, maybe that,
yes, but I ruled out anything ever happening between us. Too much fear, if we
had been seen we would have been beaten to death.
无论如何，在我思考这个问题的那几天里，我避免把詹纳罗带到公共电话那里，我担心他会跟莉拉说，他在这里过得不好，甚至会跟她提到那件事情。这种担忧让我很心烦。我为什么要担忧呢？我要让一切褪色，成为过去。我对两个孩子的监管也慢慢放松了，我也没办法一直盯着他们。我精心地照顾着艾尔莎，我随他们去。只有在他们冻得嘴唇发紫，手指已经起皱，但还不想从水里出来时，我会在海岸上喊他们，拿着干毛巾，迎接他们从水里出来。
In any case, on the days when I faced
that problem, I avoided taking Gennaro to the public phone. I was afraid he
would tell Lila that he didn’t like being with me anymore, that he would even
tell her what had happened. That fear annoyed me: why should I be concerned?
I let it all fade. Even my vigilance toward the two children slowly
diminished, I couldn’t oversee them continuously. I devoted myself to Elsa, I
forgot about them. I shouted nervously from the shore, towels ready, only if,
despite purple lips and wrinkled fingertips, they wouldn’t get out of the
water.
八月的日子就这样过去了：回家，买东西，准备去海边的包，去海滩，回到家里，吃晚饭，吃冰淇淋，打电话。我和其他那些孩子的母亲聊天，她们都比我年龄大，她们赞扬我的几个孩子，还有我的耐心，这让我很高兴。她们会和我谈到他们的丈夫，他们的工作。我也会谈到我的丈夫。我说，他是大学的拉丁语教授。在周末时，彼得罗会来这里，就像很多年前在伊斯基亚，周末的时候斯特凡诺和里诺也会出现一样。认识我的那些女人，会投来充满敬意的目光，好像因为他的教授身份，她们也会欣赏他头上那撮乱哄哄的头发。他和两个女儿还有詹纳罗一起下水游泳，他会假装让他们做一些非常危险的游戏，四个人玩得都非常开心，然后，他会待在太阳伞下面学习，时不时会抱怨他睡得很少，或者他常常忘记吃镇静剂。当孩子们睡着的时候，为了避免床发出吱吱扭扭的声音，在厨房里，他会站着要我。我觉得，婚姻和人们想的不一样，它像一个机构，剥夺了性交的所有人性。
The days of August slipped away. House,
shopping, preparing the overflowing beach bags, beach, home again, dinner,
ice cream, phone call. I chatted with other mothers, all older than me, and I
was pleased if they praised my children, and my patience. They talked about
husbands, about the husbands’ jobs. I talked about mine, I said: He’s a Latin
professor at the university. On the weekend Pietro arrived, just as, years
earlier, on Ischia, Stefano and Rino had. My acquaintances shot him
respectful looks and seemed to appreciate, thanks to his professorship, even
his bushy hair. He went swimming with the girls and Gennaro, he drew them
into make-believe dangerous adventures that they all hugely enjoyed, then he
sat studying under the umbrella, complaining from time to time about his lack
of sleep—he often forgot the sleeping pills. In the kitchen, when the
children were sleeping, we had sex standing up to avoid the creaking of the
bed. Marriage by now seemed to me an institution that, contrary to what one
might think, stripped coitus of all humanity.
-*-
86
彼得罗在一个星期六，在《晚邮报》上林林总总的标题里，发现了那篇文章。文章是关于那不勒斯郊外的一家小工厂的，那几天，报纸都在报道法西斯向伊塔利库斯丢的炸弹。
It was Pietro who, one Saturday, picked
out, in the crowd of headlines that for days had been devoted to the
‘fascists’ bombing of the Italicus express train, a brief news item in the
Corriere della Sera that concerned a small factory on the outskirts of
Naples.
“你朋友以前工作的工厂，是不是叫索卡沃？”他问我。
“Wasn’t Soccavo the name of the company
where your friend worked?” he asked me.
“发生了什么事儿？”
“What happened?”
他把那份报纸递给了我。我读到，两个男人和一个女人组成的行动队闯入了那不勒斯郊外的一家香肠厂。他们先是朝门卫菲利普的腿上打了几枪，现在门卫的伤势非常严重；然后，他们来到了工厂老板布鲁诺·索卡沃——一个年轻的那不勒斯企业家的办公室，他们连开四枪把他杀了，三枪打在胸口，一枪打在头上。在看那篇报道时，我仿佛看到了布鲁诺被毁掉的面孔，一起被毁掉的还有他白得耀眼的牙齿。噢，我的天呐，我简直目瞪口呆。我让彼得罗看着孩子，跑去给莉拉打电话，电话响了很久，但没人接。晚上我又试了一次，还是没人接。我在第二天才联系上她，她很紧张地问我：“怎么了？詹纳罗出了什么状况了吗？”我让她放心，詹纳罗很好，我跟她说了布鲁诺的事。她竟然一点儿也不知道，她听我讲完，最后很平淡地嘀咕了一句：“你真是跟我讲了一个坏消息。”她没说别的，我提醒她：“你给认识的人打个电话，让他们讲讲是怎么回事儿，你问问，看怎么发吊唁的电报。”她说，她和工厂的任何人都没联系了，再说，发什么电报。她嘟囔了一句，算了吧。
He handed me the paper. A commando group
made up of two men and a woman had burst into a sausage factory on the
outskirts of Naples. The three had first shot the legs of the guard, Filippo
Cara, who was in very serious condition; then they had gone up to the office
of the owner, Bruno Soccavo, a young Neapolitan entrepreneur, and had killed
him with four shots, three to the chest and one to the head. I saw, as I
read, Bruno’s face ruined, shattered, along with his gleaming white teeth. Oh
God, God, I was stunned. I left the children with Pietro, I rushed to
telephone Lila, the phone rang for a long time with no answer. I tried again
in the evening, nothing. I got her the next day, she asked me in alarm:
What’s the matter, is Gennaro ill? I reassured her, then told her about
Bruno. She knew nothing about it, she let me speak, finally she said
tonelessly: This is really bad news you’re giving me. And nothing else. I
goaded her: Telephone someone, find out, ask where I can send a telegram of
condolence. She said she no longer had any contact with anyone at the
factory. What telegram, she muttered, forget it.
我放弃了。但第二天，我在《宣言报》上看到了乔瓦尼·萨拉托雷，也就是尼诺写的一篇文章，他详细描述了坎帕尼亚大区的这家小工厂，并提供了很多信息。他强调了这个落后地区的政治冲突，充满温情地谈到了布鲁诺，还有他的悲剧下场。从那时候起，我一直在跟踪事情的进展，但于事无补，那件事很快就从报纸上消失了。除此之外，莉拉再也不想跟我讨论此事。晚上，我和几个孩子给她打电话，她总是长话短说，她会说：“让詹纳罗接电话。”她听到我提到尼诺，显得特别不耐烦。她嘟囔着说，他还是老毛病，总是要说点什么。这跟政治有什么关系，肯定是有别的什么原因，一个人被杀死的原因有上千种：戴绿帽子、经济矛盾，有时候甚至是别人看他不顺眼儿。就这样，时间一天天过去，布鲁诺只剩下一个影像，很快就过去了。难道他不是那个我曾利用艾罗塔家的权威，打电话威胁过的老板？难道他不是那个试图吻我，却被我强行推开的男孩？
I forgot it. But the next day I found in
Il Manifesto an article signed by Giovanni Sarratore, that is, Nino, which
had a lot of information about the small Campanian business, underlining the
political tensions present in those backward places, and referring
affectionately to Bruno and his tragic end. I followed the development of the
news for days, but to no purpose: it soon disappeared from the papers.
Besides, Lila refused to talk about it. At night I called her with the
children and she cut me off, saying, Give me Gennaro. She became especially
irritated when I quoted Nino to her. Typical of him, she grumbled. He always
has to interfere: What does politics have to do with it, there must be other
matters, here people are murdered for a thousand reasons, adultery, criminal
activity, even just one too many looks. So the days passed and of Bruno there
remained an image and that was all. It wasn’t the image of the factory owner
I had threated on the phone using the authority of the Airotas but that of
the boy who had tried to kiss me and whom I had rudely rejected.
-*-
87
从那时候开始，我在沙滩上胡思乱想。我想，莉拉非常精明地把她的情感和情绪隐藏起来。我想发现事情的真相，她正好相反，她把自己隐藏起来。我越想把她拉出来，让她也产生搞清事实真相的愿望，她就越躲藏在阴影里。她就像一轮满月，隐藏在一片树林后面，树枝挡住了她的脸。
I began to have some ugly thoughts on the
beach. Lila, I said to myself, deliberately pushes away emotions, feelings.
The more I sought tools to try to explain myself to myself, the more she, on
the contrary, hid. The more I tried to draw her into the open and involve her
in my desire to clarify, the more she took refuge in the shadows. She was
like the full moon when it crouches behind the forest and the branches
scribble on its face.
九月初，我回到了佛罗伦萨，但我的那些想法还没散去，反倒更加强烈了，跟彼得罗说了也没用。我和几个孩子回家了，这让他很不高兴，他那本书已经晚了，而且那学期马上就要开始了，这让他更加焦躁。有一天晚上，在饭桌上，黛黛和詹纳罗不知道为什么吵架了，詹纳罗忽然站起来，从厨房里出去了，狠狠地摔了一下门，门上的毛玻璃碎了一地。我给莉拉打了电话，我开门见山地说，她要马上过来，把孩子接走，他儿子已经和我生活了一个半月了。
In early September I returned to
Florence, but the ugly thoughts rather than dissolving grew stronger. Useless
to try to talk to Pietro. He was unhappy about the children’s and my return,
he was late with his book and the idea that the academic year would soon
begin made him short-tempered. One night when, at the table, Dede and Gennaro
were quarreling about something or other he jumped up suddenly and left the
kitchen, slamming the door so violently that the frosted glass shattered. I
called Lila, I told her straight off that she had to take her child back,
he’d been living with me for a month and a half.
“你不能让他待到月底吗？”
“You can’t keep him till the end of the
month?”
“不行。”
“No.”
“这里情况很糟糕。”
“It’s bad here.”
“这里也一样。”
“Here, too.”
恩佐是大晚上从那不勒斯出发的，早上到我这里。彼得罗已经上班去了，我已经准备好了詹纳罗的行李。我跟恩佐说，几个孩子的关系很糟糕，已经让人无法忍受了。我很遗憾，但三个孩子在一起，实在太多了，让人受不了。他说他理解，他感谢我所做的一切，只是最后嘟囔了一句，就像是在解释：你知道莉娜的。我没有接茬，一方面是因为黛黛在抽泣，她为詹纳罗的离开感到绝望；另一个原因是，假如我接茬了，我会说，莉娜的脾气是够呛。我知道自己会为此后悔的。
Enzo left in the middle of the night and
arrived in the morning, when Pietro was at work. I had already packed
Gennaro’s bag. I explained to him that the tensions between the children had
become unbearable, I was sorry but three was too many, I couldn’t handle it
anymore. He said he understood, he thanked me for all I had done. He said
only, by way of apology: You know what Lina is like. I didn’t answer, because
Dede was yelling, desperate at Gennaro’s departure, and because, if I had, I
might have said—beginning precisely with what Lila was like—things I would
later regret.
我有一些想法，我自己都不想说出来，我害怕我说的话，其实就是事实。我没办法把那些话从脑子里抹去，我感觉，这些话在我脑子里已经逐渐成形，我被迷住了。我感到害怕，但还会不由自主地想着那些事儿。在那些貌似不相干的事之间，我会找到一些联系和规律，这方面的思考常常会我情不自已。我把吉诺和布鲁诺·索卡沃的暴死联系在一起（工厂的门卫菲利普捡了一条命）。我最后想到，这两件事情都引向了帕斯卡莱，也许还有娜迪雅，这些推测让我陷于激动不安之中。我想给卡门打电话，我想问她有没有她哥哥的消息，但后来我改变了注意，我很担心她的电话受到了监控。恩佐来接詹纳罗时，我想：我现在和他讲讲，我看看他是什么反应。但在面对他时，我还是沉默不语，我担心自己说太多，担心说漏嘴，说出帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅的名字。莉拉还是老样子：莉拉只做不说；莉拉彻底汲取了我们城区的文化，根本不会考虑国家、警察和法律这些问题，她相信只有裁皮刀可以解决问题；莉拉懂得不平等的可怕；莉拉参加法院路上的聚会，她当时在革命理论和方法里，找到了如何运用自己过于活跃的大脑的方法；莉拉把她的新仇旧恨，都变成了政治目标；莉拉推动人们去行动，就像他们是小说中的人物；莉拉在过去和现在，都把我们所经历的贫穷、遭受的欺压，和针对法西斯、工厂老板和资本的武装斗争联系在一起了。现在，我第一次把这件事情讲清楚，我承认在九月的那些天，我怀疑的不仅仅是帕斯卡莱——他一直都有拿起武器的冲动——不仅仅是娜迪雅，我怀疑是莉拉自己制造的这些血案。在很长一段时间里，当我做饭时，当我照顾我的女儿时，我似乎能看见她和其他两个人一起，向吉诺开枪，向菲利普开枪，向布鲁诺·索卡沃开枪。假如我无法想象帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅的具体动作——我觉得帕斯卡莱是个好孩子，有点爱吹牛，打架比较狠，但是他不会杀人；我也觉得，娜迪雅是一个出生在好人家的小姑娘，她顶多会骂别人几句——但是，我从来都不怀疑莉拉。她能想出一些非常有效的方案，会把风险减少到最小，她会控制住自己的恐惧，会赋予谋杀一种非常抽象的纯洁。她知道怎么把人的肉身变成尸体和鲜血，她不会有任何顾忌，也不会有任何懊悔，她杀人，并且会觉得自己做得对。
I had in my head thoughts I didn’t want
to formulate even to myself; I was afraid that the facts would magically fit
the words. But I couldn’t cancel out the sentences; in my mind I heard their
syntax all ready, and I was frightened by it, fascinated, horrified, seduced.
I had trained myself to find an order by establishing connections between
distant elements, but here it had got out of hand. I had added Gino’s violent
death to Bruno Soccavo’s (Filippo, the factory guard, had survived). And I
had arrived at the idea that each of these events led to Pasquale, maybe also
to Nadia. This hypothesis was extremely distressing. I had thought of
telephoning Carmen, to ask if she had news of her brother; then I changed my
mind, frightened by the possibility that her telephone was bugged. When Enzo
came to get Gennaro I said to myself: Now I’ll talk to him about it, let’s
see how he responds. But then, too, I had said nothing, out of fear of saying
too much, out of fear of uttering the name of the figure who was behind
Pasquale and Nadia: Lila, that is. Lila, as usual: Lila who doesn’t say
things, she does them; Lila who is steeped in the culture of the neighborhood
and takes no account of police, the law, the state, but believes there are
problems that can be resolved only with the shoemaker’s knife; Lila who knows
the horror of inequality; Lila who, at the time of the collective of Via dei
Tribunali, found in revolutionary theory and action a way of applying her
hyperactive mind; Lila who has transformed into political objectives her
rages old and new; Lila who moves people like characters in a story; Lila who
has connected, is connecting, our personal knowledge of poverty and abuse to
the armed struggle against the fascists, against the owners, against capital.
I admit it here, openly, for the first time: in those September days I
suspected that not only Pasquale—Pasquale driven by his history toward the
necessity of taking up arms—not only Nadia, but Lila herself had spilled that
blood. For a long time, while I cooked, while I took care of my daughters, I
saw her, with the other two, shoot Gino, shoot Filippo, shoot Bruno Soccavo.
And if I had trouble imagining Pasquale and Nadia in every detail—I
considered him a good boy, something of a braggart, capable of fierce
fighting but of murder no; she seemed to me a respectable girl who could
wound at most with verbal treachery—about Lila I had never had doubts: she
would know how to devise the most effective plan, she would reduce the risks
to a minimum, she would keep fear under control, she would be able to give
murderous intentions an abstract purity, she knew how to remove human
substance from bodies and blood, she would have no scruples and no remorse,
she would kill and feel that she was in the right.
她好像就在我眼前，非常清楚，她，还有影子一样的帕斯卡莱和娜迪雅，不知道还有没有其他什么人。他们坐着车子，经过小广场，在药铺的前面放慢了车速，他们朝着吉诺射击，朝着他穿着白大褂的身体射击。要么是，他们经过那条尘土飞扬、路边堆满了各种垃圾的小路，来到索卡沃的工厂，帕斯卡莱穿过栅栏门，朝着门卫菲利普的腿射击，门卫睁着恐惧的眼睛在大声叫喊，岗亭里的血流得到处都是。莉拉对那儿非常熟悉，她穿过院子，来到工厂里，走上楼梯，闯入了布鲁诺的办公室，当他正愉快地和她打招呼：“嗨，什么风把你吹来了。”她三枪打中了他的胸口，一枪打中了脸。
So there she was, clear and bright, along
with the shadow of Pasquale, of Nadia, of who knows what others. They drove
through the piazza in a car and, slowing down in front of the pharmacy, fired
at Gino, at his thug’s body in the white smock. Or they drove along the dusty
road to the Soccavo factory, garbage of every type piled up on either side.
Pasquale went through the gate, shot Filippo’s legs, the blood spread through
the guard booth, screams, terrified eyes. Lila, who knew the way well,
crossed the courtyard, entered the factory, climbed the stairs, burst into
Bruno’s office, and, just as he said cheerfully: Hi, what in the world are
you doing around here, fired three shots at his chest and one at his face.
啊，是的，这才是行动起来的反法西斯分子、新的抵抗运动、无产阶级正义，以及其他那些口号。面对这些思想，出于本能，她能从那些普通群众中脱颖而出，她能赋予这些口号实质意义。我想象，这些行动可能是加入“红色旅”、“第一线”这类组织的要求。莉拉很快就会从城区消失，就像帕斯卡莱。也许是因为这个原因，她决定把詹纳罗交给我来照顾，表面上是一个月，但实际上，她想把儿子交给我来抚养，我再也见不到她了。要么她会像“红色旅”的那些首领——库尔西奥和弗兰切斯奇尼一样被逮捕，要么她会躲过警察的追捕，逃脱了监狱。她一直是那么充满想象力，那么冒失。当她做完那些大事儿，她会凯旋，因为那些丰功伟绩而备受崇拜，作为革命首领，她会对我说：“你写小说，但我的生活本身就是小说，里面的人物是真实的，流的血也是真实的。”
Ah yes, militant anti-fascism, new
resistance, proletarian justice, and other formulas to which she, who
instinctively knew how to avoid rehashing clichés, was surely able to give
depth. I imagined that those actions were necessary in order to join, I don’t
know, the Red Brigades, Prima Linea, Nuclei Armati Proletari. Lila would
disappear from the neighborhood as Pasquale had. Maybe that’s why she had
tried to leave Gennaro with me, apparently for a month, in reality intending
to give him to me forever. We would never see each other again. Or she would
be arrested, like the leaders of the Red Brigades, Curcio and Franceschini.
Or she would evade every policeman and prison, imaginative and bold as she
was. And when the big thing was accomplished, she would reappear triumphant,
admired for her achievements, in the guise of a revolutionary leader, to tell
me: You wanted to write novels, I created a novel with real people, with real
blood, in reality.
在夜里，我会觉得我想象的这些事是真实发生的，或者正在发生。我为她感到害怕和担忧，我看到她受伤了，被追击，就像世界上那些陷入混乱和危险的人一样，这让我觉得心疼，但同时让我嫉妒。我小时候的一些信念，现在越来越清晰：她注定会做一些了不起的丰功伟业。我很懊悔自己逃离了那不勒斯，和她分开了，我其实应该待在她身边。让我生气的是，她选择了那条道路，并没有和我商量，就好像她觉得不值得和我商议，尽管我非常了解资本、压迫、阶级斗争还有无产阶级革命的必然性，我会对她有用，我会参加她的行动。我感觉很不愉快，恹恹地躺在床上，对于自己作为家庭主妇、已婚妇女的身份感到很不满，我的未来让人沮丧，到死都要在厨房和卧室里重复那些家庭仪式。
At night every imagining seemed a thing
that had happened or was still happening, and I was afraid for her, I saw her
captured, wounded, like so many women and men in the chaos of the world, and
I felt pity for her, but I also envied her. The childish conviction that she
had always been destined for extraordinary things was magnified. And I
regretted that I had left Naples, detached myself from her, the need to be
near her returned. But I was also angry that she had set out on that road
without consulting me, as if she hadn’t considered me up to it. And yet I
knew a lot about capital, exploitation, class struggle, the inevitability of
the proletarian revolution. I could have been useful, participated. And I was
unhappy. I lay in bed, discontent with my situation as a mother, a married
woman, the whole future debased by the repetition of domestic rituals in the
kitchen, in the marriage bed.
白天，我的头脑会清楚一些，恐惧会占上风。我想象着一个任性的莉拉，非常擅长煽风点火，她越来越投身于那些残酷的行动。当然，她有足够的勇气向前推进，她会充满决心、非常残酷地采取行动，就像那些理直气壮的人。但她的目的是什么呢？要开启一场国内战争吗？要让城区、那不勒斯，还有整个意大利成为一个战场，成为地中海的越南吗？是要让我们所有人都陷入一场无边无尽、残酷无情的斗争，处于东方和西方的夹击之中吗？还是让战斗的火苗烧到整个欧洲，延伸到整个星球？一直到取得永远的胜利？什么样的胜利？城市被毁掉，街上全是战火和尸体。袭击不仅仅是针对阶级敌人，也会出现在同一个战壕里，都是以阶级革命和专制的名义，不同大区的革命团体之间会产生冲突，甚至会爆发核战争。
By day I felt more lucid, and the horror
prevailed. I imagined a capricious Lila who provoked hatred deliberately and
in the end found herself more deeply involved in violent acts. Certainly she
had had the courage to push ahead, to take the lead with the crystalline
determination, the generous cruelty of one who is spurred by just reasons.
But with what purpose? To start a civil war? Transform the neighborhood,
Naples, Italy into a battlefield, a Vietnam in the Mediterranean? Hurl us all
into a pitiless, interminable conflict, squeezed between the Eastern bloc and
the Western? Encourage its fiery spread throughout Europe, throughout the
entire planet? Until victory, always? What victory? Cities destroyed, fire,
the dead in the streets, the shame of violent clashes not only with the class
enemy but also within the front itself, among the revolutionary groups of
various regions and with various motivations, all in the name of the
proletariat and its dictatorship. Maybe even nuclear war.
我非常害怕地闭上了眼睛，两个孩子，未来，我想到了一些别人说过的概念：难以预测的主体、父权的毁灭性逻辑、女性价值、慈悲。我想，我应该和莉拉谈谈，让她告诉我，所有她做的事情，她打算做的事情，我再决定是否支持她。
I closed my eyes in terror. The children,
the future. And I hung on to formulas: the unpredictable subject, the
destructive logic of patriarchy, the feminine value of survival, compassion.
I have to talk to Lila, I said to myself. She has to tell me everything she’s
doing, what she plans, so that I can decide whether to be her accomplice or
not.
但我从来都没给她打电话，她也没打给我。我确信，那么多年里，我们通过电话线的联系，没有给我们带来任何益处。我们把过去的事情联系起来了，但也只是为了摆脱那些事。对于彼此，我们都成了抽象的存在，现在，我可以把她想象成一位电脑方面的专家，也可以想象成一位城市女战士，非常刚毅、不动声色。而她，有可能会把我想象成一个成功的知识分子，也可以把我想象成一位有教养的富裕的太太，每天的生活都是照顾孩子，看书，和做学问的丈夫进行深奥的谈话。我们都需要对彼此有新的认识，需要面对面的真实接触，然而我们已经相互远离，我们再也没有近距离接触的机会了。
But I never called nor did she call me. I
was convinced that the long voice thread that had been our only contact for
years hadn’t helped us. We had maintained the bond between our two stories,
but by subtraction. We had become for each other abstract entities, so that
now I could invent her for myself both as an expert in computers and as a
determined and implacable urban guerrilla, while she, in all likelihood,
could see me both as the stereotype of the successful intellectual and as a
cultured and well-off woman, all children, books, and highbrow conversation
with an academic husband. We both needed new depth, body, and yet we were
distant and couldn’t give it to each other.
-*-
88
就这样，九月过去了，然后是十月。我没和任何人说过这件事，我没和阿黛尔说，她那个阶段很忙碌。我也没和马丽娅罗莎说，她把弗朗科接到了家里——一个残废了的、需要帮助的弗朗科，一个因为抑郁，像变了个人似的弗朗科——我给马丽娅罗莎打电话，她很热情，并答应我会代我问候弗朗科，但她总是匆忙挂上电话，她有很多事情要做。彼得罗就别指望了，他总是沉默不语。对于他来说，书本之外的世界越来越沉重了，他很不情愿去大学，因为学校里一团糟，他经常请病假。他说要在家里做研究，但他一直没有完成他的书。他很少把自己关在房间里学习，就好像为了放过自己，并求得我的原谅，他照看艾尔莎，做饭，打扫卫生，洗衣服，熨衣服。我要对他非常不客气，才能逼他去上课，但我很快就后悔了。自从那些暴力事件已经关系到我认识的人，我开始为他担心。他的处境非常危险，但他从来都没有放弃过自己的主张，他公开反对他的学生和很多同事，用一句话总结就是：他们在做蠢事。尽管我为他感到担心，也许正是因为我很担心，我从来都不会支持他的观点。我希望，在我的批评下，他会重新考虑考虑，会放弃自己的反革命改良主义（我用的就是这个词），会变得通融一些。但在他的眼里，我的做法让我和那些攻击他的学生、反对他的老师成了一类人。
Thus September passed, then October. I
didn’t talk to anyone, not even Adele, who had a lot of work, or even
Mariarosa, who had brought Franco to her house—an invalid Franco, in need of
help, changed by depression—and who greeted me warmly, promised to say hello
to him for me, but then broke off because she had too many things to do. Not
to mention Pietro’s muteness. The world outside books burdened him
increasingly, he went reluctantly into the regulated chaos of the university,
and often said he was ill. He said he did it in order to work, but he
couldn’t get to the end of his book, he rarely went into his study, and, as
if to forgive himself and be forgiven, he took care of Elsa, cooked, swept,
washed, ironed. I had to treat him rudely to get him to go back to teaching,
but I immediately regretted it. Ever since the violence had struck people I
knew, I was afraid for him. He had never given in, even though he got into
dangerous situations, opposing publicly what, in a term that he preferred, he
called the load of nonsense of his students and many of his colleagues.
Although I was worried about him, in fact maybe just because I was worried, I
never admitted he was right. I hoped that if I criticized him he would
understand, would stop his reactionary reformism (I used that phrase), become
more flexible. But, in his eyes, that drove me yet again to the side of the
students who were attacking him, the professors who were plotting against
him.
但事情不是这样，情况要更加错综复杂。一方面我很想保护他；但另一方面，我感觉自己是和莉拉站在一起的，我支持她的做法——我暗地里认为，是她造成了那些恐怖事件——这使我时不时想拿起电话打给她，讲讲彼得罗的事情，讲讲我们之间的冲突，然后听她说她是怎么想的，说着说着，就把话题引到她身上。当然，我没有那么做，在电话里讲这些问题，并期望对方讲实话，这是很可笑的。但有一天晚上，是她打给我的，她非常高兴。
It wasn’t like that, the situation was
more complicated. On the one hand I vaguely wanted to protect him, on the
other I wanted to be on Lila’s side, defend the choices I secretly attributed
to her. To the point where every so often I thought of telephoning her and,
starting with Pietro, with our conflicts, get her to tell me what she thought
about it and, step by step, bring her out into the open. I didn’t to it,
naturally, it was absurd to expect sincerity on these subjects on the phone.
But one night she called me, sounding really happy.
“我要告诉你一个好消息。”
“I have some good news.”
“发生了什么事儿？”
“What’s happening?”
“我成了一个电脑中心的头儿了。”
“I’m the head of technology.”
“什么意思？”
“In what sense?”
“米凯莱租了一台IBM计算机，我成了计算机中心的头儿。”
“Head of the IBM data-processing center
that Michele rented.”
我觉得难以置信，我让她再说了一遍，跟我解释清楚一点了。难道她接受了索拉拉的提议？在抵抗了那么长时间之后，她又跑去给他工作了，就像在马尔蒂里广场上的那个时期一样？她说，是的。她充满热情，越来越高兴，越来越直接：米凯莱租了一台IBM“系统3”，放在位于阿切拉区的一个鞋子仓库那里，交给她来操作。她会拥有自己的操作员和打孔员，她的工资是每月四十二万五千里拉。当时，我想象的那个女战士马上烟消云散了，我觉得很难过，我对莉拉的所有认识，好像都站不住脚了。我说：
It seemed incredible to me. I asked her
to repeat it, to explain carefully. She had accepted Solara’s proposal? After
so much resistance she had gone back to working for him, as in the days of
Piazza dei Martiri? She said yes, enthusiastically, and became more and more
excited, more explicit: Michele had entrusted to her the System 3 that he had
rented and placed in a shoe warehouse in Acerra; she would employ operators
and punch-*-five thousand lire a month.I was disappointed. Not only had the
image of the guerrilla vanished in an instant but everything I thought I knew
of Lila wavered. I said:
“我真想不到，你会这么做。”
“It’s the last thing I would have
expected of you.”
“那我该怎么做呢？”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“拒绝。”
“Refuse.”
“为什么？”
“Why?”
“我们都知道索拉拉兄弟是什么人。”
“We know what the Solaras are.”
“因为这个？我已经决定了，给米凯莱干活，要比给索卡沃那个混蛋干活好得多。”
“And so what? It’s already happened, and
I’m better off working for Michele than for that shit Soccavo.”
“你想怎么做就怎么做吧。”
“Do as you like.”
我听见她的呼吸。她说：
I heard her breathing. She said:
“我不喜欢你现在说话的语气，莱农，我现在比恩佐的工资还高，而且他是个男人。你觉得有什么不好？”
“I don’t like that tone, Lenù. I’m paid
more than Enzo, who is a man: What’s wrong with that?”
“没什么。”
“Nothing.”
“你还想着革命、工人阶级、新世界，还有其他那些事儿？”
“The revolution, the workers, the new
world, and that other bullshit?”
“别说了。假如你忽然想跟我真正地谈谈，那可以，胡扯的话，那就算了。”
“Stop it. If you’ve unexpectedly decided
to make a truthful speech I’m listening, otherwise let’s forget it.”
“我能不能提醒你一件事儿呢？你无论是说话，还是写东西，你总是爱用‘真正’和‘真正地’这样的词，还有，你老是说‘忽然’这个词，但什么时候人们会‘真正地’谈论一个问题，什么事情会‘忽然’发生？你比我更清楚，所有事情都有前因后果，先是一件，然后是另一件。我已经不‘真正地’做任何事儿了，莱农。我学会了关注事情的前因后果，只有笨蛋才会以为事情会忽然发生。”
“May I point out something? You always
use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say:
unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things
ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it’s all a fraud and
that one thing follows another and then another. I don’t do anything
truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I’ve learned to pay attention to things. Only
idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly.”
“很好。你想让我相信什么？一切都在你的控制之下，是你在利用米凯莱，而不是米凯莱在利用你？算了吧，再见。”
“Bravo. What do you want me to believe,
that you have everything under control, that it’s you who are using Michele
and not Michele you? Let’s forget it, come on. Bye.”
“不，别这样，你想说什么就说吧。”
“No, speak, say what you have to say.”
“我没什么好说的。”
“I have nothing to say.”
“你说吧，你不说让我说。”
“Speak, otherwise I will.”
“你说吧，让我听听。”
“Then speak, let me listen.”
“你在批评我，但对你妹妹，你什么都不说？”
“You criticize me but you say nothing to
your sister?”
我感觉云里雾里的。
I was astonished.
“这和我妹妹有什么关系？”
“What does my sister have to do with
anything?”
“你难道对埃莉莎的事情一无所知？”
“You don’t know anything about Elisa?”
“我应该知道什么？”
“What should I know?”
她发出了一声坏笑。
She laughed maliciously.
“问问你母亲、你父亲，还有你的弟弟们。”
“Ask your mother, your father, and your
brothers.”