ASP.net|论坛 Plowing the Dark——想译而不知深浅的书

cyberwar - 2008-5-29 17:33:00

本书是以计算机虚拟现实技术为背景所演绎的一个奇幻而又发人深省的故事。

PLOWING THE DARK

RICHARD POWERS

冲破黑暗

理查德·鲍尔斯著

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south . . .

—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of William Butler Yeats"

The first year of the war, Picasso and Eve, with whom he was living then, Gertrude Stein and myself, were walking down the boulevard Raspail a cold winter evening. There is nothing in the world colder than the Raspail on a cold winter evening, we used to call it the retreat from Moscow. All of a sudden down the street came some big cannon, the first any of us had seen painted, that is camouflaged. Pablo stopped, he was spell-bound. C'est nous qui avons fait ca, he said, it is we that have created that, he said. And he was right, he had. From Cezanne through him they had come to that. His foresight was justified.

—
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

　　因为诗无济于事：它永生于
　　它辞句的谷中，而官吏绝不到
　　那里去干预；它向南流去···

——W·H·奥登，“怀念叶芝”①

战争的头一年，一个寒冬的傍晚，毕加索和伊芙（那时他正跟她生活在一起），格特鲁德·斯泰因和我，正沿着拉斯佩尔大街一块散步。没有哪个地方的寒冬的傍晚会有拉斯佩尔大街上那么冷，我们习惯把它叫做撤离莫斯科。突然，从大街的那一边冒出来几门大炮，我们中走在最前头的人看到了大炮上涂了色的伪装。帕布鲁停下步子，完全被迷住了。C'est nous qui avons fait ca, 他说，是我们造的，他说。他是对的，他早有预见。塞尚（Cezanne）如此，他也一样。他确有远见。

——格特鲁德·斯泰因，《爱丽斯·B·托克拉斯的自传》②

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① W·H·奥登（Wystan Hugh Auden ，1907～1973），英国著名诗人。叶芝（William Butler Yeats1865～1939），爱尔兰伟大的抒情诗人和剧作家。此处的译文取自查良铮先生的翻译，但略有改动。

② 格特鲁德·斯泰因 (Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946)，美国女作家，一生大部分时间旅居在法国。她被视为对20世纪西方文学产生了重要影响的人物。

This room is never anything o'clock.
Minutes slip through it like a thief in gloves. Hours fail even to raise the dust. Outside, deadlines expire. Buzzers erupt. Deals build to their frenzied conclusions. But in this chamber, now and forever combine.
This room lingers on the perpetual pitch of here. Its low local twilight outlasts the day's politics. It hangs fixed, between discovery and inven tion. It floats in pure potential, a strongbox in the inviolate vault.
Time does not keep to these parts, nor do these parts keep time. Time is too straight a line, too limiting. The comic tumbling act of causality never reaches this far. This room spreads under the stilled clock. Only when you step back into the corridor does now revive. Only escaped, beneath the failing sky.
Out in the template world, flowers still spill from the bud. Fruit runs from ripe to rot Faces still recognize each other in surprise over a fire sale. Marriages go on reconciling and cracking up. Addicts swear never again. Children succumb in their beds after a long fever. But on this island, in this room: the faint rumble, the standing hum of a place that passes all understanding.

（引子）

这屋子跟时间是毫不沾边的。

　　几分钟对它来说就象一个倏尔穿过的戴着手套的小偷。几小时甚至也扬不起一丁点灰尘。外面，最终期限已到，蜂鸣器嗡嗡响起。进程发展到了狂乱的状态。可在这间屋子里，现在与永恒却融为一体。

　　这房间苟延着这儿永恒的基调。它虚弱的一隅微光比之当红的政策还要命运久长。它停顿下来，介于发现与创造之间。它浮游于纯粹的潜态，就象置身于纤尘不染的地窖中的一个保险箱。

　　时间不与这屋子里的一切同调，它们也不与时间相循。时间是一条太笔直的线，束缚太甚。有因果的滑稽跟斗表演从不会走得那么远。这房间展示在静止的时钟之下。仅当你退回到走廊里，现在方才会复活。只有逃出去，脱离这有缺陷的空间。

　　在这个模板的世界之外，花儿依然在蓓蕾中绽放。果实依然从成熟到腐烂。脸孔在看到火灾受损物品大甩卖时依然会惊奇地相互赞赏。婚姻照常和谐和崩溃。隐君子仍旧赌咒决不再犯。发了很久烧的孩子们绻卧在他们的床上。但是在这个孤岛上，在这个房间里：微弱的嘀嘀咕咕，某处持续的嗡嗡声，全都超越了人们的理解。

（请多提意见，谢谢！）

yilin - 2008-5-30 9:01:00

有版权的授权吗？

cyberwar - 2008-5-30 11:03:00

没有。我只是想译一部分，一方面是想得到指点，另一方面是希望以此寻求一个愿意引进并出版它的出版商。我当然不会干侵犯版权的蠢事。

yilin - 2008-5-30 19:38:00

理查德·鲍尔斯r的《回声制造者》目前还没有出来，不知他的作品如何。

cyberwar - 2008-6-1 18:20:00

是啊，真是可惜呢！不过我也是在译林过去的介绍中了解到他的作品，才开始对其感兴趣的呀！而做为一个对作品中的科技成分和细节特别关注，并爱在这方面挑刺的人，我自己就选择了《Plowing the Dark》来做为对自己翻译能力的挑战，不知译林是否有意呢？你们能破例拆除一次那个只选择近一、两年新作才肯引进翻译的篱笆吗？<img src=" alt="" /> （顺便说一声，明日出差，三、四日后回见）

cyberwar - 2008-6-6 22:40:00

1

Years later, when she surfaced again, Adie Klarpol couldn't say just how she'd pictured the place. Couldn't even begin to draw what she'd imag ined. Some subterranean confection of dripped stone, swarming with blind cave newts. A spelunker's scale model Carlsbad. Summer dacha of the Mountain King.
　　The Cavern, Stevie had called it. Stevie Spiegel, phoning her up out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, after years of their thinking one another dead, when they thought of each other at all. The Cavern. A name that formed every shape in her mind except its own.
　　She had not placed him on the phone. It's Steve, he said. And still, she was anywhere.
　　Adie fumbled with the handset in the dark. She struggled back ward, upstream, toward a year when an a capella Steve might have meant something. Steve. You know: the twelfth most common name for American males between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-eight?
　　Steve Spiegel, he repeated, hurt by her confusion. Madison? Your housemate and collaborator? Mahler Haus? Don't tell me: you've torched your entire past.
　　A vision of herself at twenty-one congealed in front of her, like the Virgin come to taunt Slavic schoolchildren. Recollection swamped her carefully packed sandbags. Steve Spiegel. The three of them had planned to live the rest of their lives together, once. He, she, and the man who'd live long enough to become Adie's ex-husband.

1
几年以后，当她再次露面时，阿迪·克拉波尔已无法说清她是怎么描绘出那个地方的，甚至于也不再能勾勒出她脑海中曾有的想象。一些地下滴水石上附着的甜食，周围聚集着成群无视力的洞穴蝾螈。一个洞穴探险者卡尔斯巴德的成比例的模型。还有山大王的夏日邸宅。
　　洞窟，史蒂夫是这么称呼它的。在他们的思维彼此都沉寂了多年之后，在他们相互满脑子都想着对方的这个午夜时分，史蒂夫·斯佩吉给不知身在何处的她打电话。洞窟，一个在她心中完整成形的名字，只除了洞窟本身。
　　她并没有听出是他打来的电话。我是史蒂夫，他说。她仍在某个地方。
　　阿迪在黑暗中摸索到电话听筒。她徘徊、挣扎了差不多一年时间，这会儿冒出的一个卡配拉腔调的①史蒂夫本该意味着点什么。史蒂夫。可你知道：这可是在年龄从24岁到38岁的美国男人中排在第12位的最普通的名字啊！
　　我是史蒂夫·斯佩吉，他重复道，为她的昏昏然痛心不已。麦迪逊？你的同居者与合作伙伴？马勒·豪斯？别对我说：你把你整个的过去都付之一炬了。
　　一幅她自己21岁时的幻象固化在她的眼前，就象圣母玛丽亚现身奚落斯拉夫的学童。往事涌了上来，一点点填满了她记忆的沙袋。史蒂夫·斯佩吉。他们三人一度曾打算从今往后生活在一起。他，她，还有那个过了很久才成了阿迪的前夫的男人。

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① 卡配拉：capella的音译。这里意指没有背景音乐伴奏的清唱人声。——译注。

cyberwar - 2008-6-12 17:28:00

晦涩难译，果然不是个好差事！多提意见哦!

　　　
　　Jesus! Stevie. Her voice skidded away from her, a gypsum imitation of pleasure's bronze. Stevie. What on earth have you been doing with yourself?
　　Doing . . . ? Adie, my love. You still make life sound like a summer camp craft project.
It isn't?
　　No, you decorative little dauber. It is not. Life is a double-blind, con¬trolled placebo experiment. Has middle age taught you nothing?
　　Hah. I knew that at twenty. You were the one in denial.
　　Tag-team remembrance dissolved the years between them. OK, the gaps and rifts. OK, all the expended selves that would never again fit into the rag box of a single curriculum vitae.
　　Adie. Ade. You busy these days? I thought we might be able to hook up.
　　Outside her loft, the stink of singed oil and rotting vegetables settled. Car alarms clear down to the Battery sounded the predawn call to prayer. She cradled the phone under her chin, a fiddler between reels.
　　Steve, it's kind of late . . . She hoisted the guillotine window above her futon, its counterweights long ago lost at the bottom of the sash's well. She crawled out onto her fire hazard of a fire escape, adopting her favorite phone crouch, rocking on her haunches, her lumbar pressed to the rose brick.
　　Jesus Christ, he said. 1 am so sorry. Entirely forgot the time difference. What is it out there: like after one?
　　I mean, it's a little late for reunions, isn't it?

　　耶稣！史蒂夫。她的声音从嘴里滑出，那神情就象一尊用石膏仿造的带笑的铜像。史蒂夫。你到底一直在忙些什么？
　　忙•••？阿迪，我的爱人。你还是把生活当成了夏令营里做的一件手工活。
　　它不是？
　　不是，你这个毫无修饰的蹩脚画家。它不是这样。生活是一个双盲的，受控的安慰剂试验②。人到中年难道你还是一无所知？
　　哈哈。我20岁就明白这个了。你就是被拒绝中的一个。
　　职业性摔跤般的回忆融化了他们之间的经年隔膜，冰释了隔阂和裂痕。的确，所有的枉费心机，还不如一场一对一的揶揄式拳击操练来得更为合适。
　　阿迪。阿德。这些日子你忙么？我曾想我们也许能联系上的。
　　她所在的阁楼外面，始终有一股焦油的恶臭味和腐烂的蔬菜味。汽车警报器的声音一直传到炮台公园③，听上去就象黎明前召唤人们去做祷告。她把电话放在颌下夹住，就象个步履蹒跚的拉琴人。
　　史蒂夫，有点迟了•••她把吊升窗推到她坐的蒲团上方，窗子的平衡锤早就掉到窗框底下的槽里去了。她爬到一个火灾安全出口处，选择了自己最喜爱的打电话蹲坐姿势，摆着后胯，把腰靠在了玫瑰红砖上。
　　耶稣基督，他说。真对不起，我竟把时差全给忘了。在那边怎么样：一个人的日子？
　　我是说，重聚有点迟了，不是么？

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② 双盲试验（double blind）：指测试者和被测试者对相关试验细节均无所知，从而使结果不会受成见或心理反应影响的测试。
③
炮台公园：美国纽约市曼哈顿岛南端的公园。

cyberwar - 2008-6-16 14:22:00

　　Missing the whole point, the sole purpose of reunions, their sad cel¬ebration of perpetual too-lateness, the basic one-step-behindhood of existence.
　　Oh, I don't want a reunion, Ade. I just want you.
　　She laughed him off and they pressed on. They made the obligatory exchange of hostages, each giving over the short versions of their over-land passage across the intervening decade.
　　Seattle, he told her. Can you believe it? Your doltish poet friend, the one who used to spout "Sunday Morning" until late Monday night. Supporting the computer industry's insidious plan for world domination.
　　Still lower Manhattan, she replied. Your washed-up watercolorist. Currently supporting the wall of my crumbling apartment building with the small of my back.
　　Surprised? he asked.
　　About. . . ?
　　About where we've landed?
　　Nobody lands, she said. So how is the world of software?
　　It's the oddest thing, Ade. Ade: as if they still knew each other. You know, I lied to get into this business in the first place. Told them I knew C++ when I didn't know it from B¯ ¯ . But it turns out, I know this stuff in my sleep. Bom to it. Code is everything I thought poetry was, back when we were in school Clean, expressive, urgent, all-encompassing. Fourteen lines can open up to fill the available universe.
　　Different kind of sonnet, though, right? Different rhyme scheme?
　　I don't know. Sometimes you gotta wonder.

　　完全不得要领，重聚的唯一目的，就是他们总归太迟了的可悲的庆祝，就是实质上存在的一步之隔。
　　哦，我不要什么重聚，阿德。我只要你。
　　她对此一笑置之，两个人较上了劲。他们的制约角色现在正好掉了个个，各自都免去了对他们隔着大陆一别十载情况的简要诠释。

　　西雅图，他告诉她。你信么？你那位有点愚钝的诗人朋友，那个最喜欢滔滔不绝地念叨“周日早安”直到周一深夜的人，居然会拥护计算机产业主宰世界的阴险计划。
　　还有曼哈顿南部，她回答。你那位过了气的水彩画家。现在却正以我的腰背部支撑着我分崩离析的公寓房。
　　惊讶么？他问。
　　哪方面的？
　　就是我们在哪登的岸？
　　没人登岸，她说。这个软件世界怎么样？
　　简直奇怪极了，阿德。阿德：好象他们彼此还熟识一样。你知道，首先我靠撒谎参与到了这个项目中来。我连那玩意是啥都搞不清楚就告诉他们我懂得C++④，可是结果呢，我现在在睡梦里都能把它做得倍儿棒，天生就是干这个的料。编码这活儿我看就跟学作诗差不多，让人回想起我们中学那会儿。整洁，表意，注重优先缓急，还有整个的包装。象14行诗那样的语句就能够概括世间万物。
　　尽管跟14行诗还是有些不同，对不？韵律安排上也是如此？
　　我不知道。有时你真觉得不可思议。

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④ C++：当代十分流行的一种功能强大的程序设计语言。　此处原文“Told them I knew C++ when I didn't know it from B¯ ¯ .”直译是：“我连它跟B¯ ¯有啥区别都不知道就告诉他们说我懂得C++。” 　事实上B¯ ¯并不是什么程序设计语言，而是史蒂夫的随口杜撰，史蒂夫说这话的含义是表示他此前对软件设计一窍不通。

cyberwar - 2008-6-17 10:24:00

书还没读完就敢放胆翻译，结果梦里常常会被自己的错误给吓醒:-| :-| :-|

cyberwar - 2008-6-19 17:33:00

　　Wonder, in fact, was why he'd called. He'd come to rest in a moist den of pine on a twisty black macadam road looking out over Puget Sound. He was coding for a start-up called the Realization Lab, the lat est tendril of that runaway high-tech success story TeraSys. But the RL was still experimental, more of a tax write-off than a source of any near-term revenue.
　　TeraSys? You mean you work for that little Boy Billionaire?
　　Indirectly, he laughed. And they're all boy billionaires out here.
　　What does your building look like?
　　What do you mean? My building, building? What does that have to do with anything?
　　I'm trying to visualize where you are. You're calling from work, aren't you?
　　I... well, I guess 1 am.
　　William Butler Spiegel! The man who swore he'd never do anything more serious than wait on tables, so as not to compromise his muse. Still in his office in the middle of the night.
　　Middle . . . ? Out here, we're usually just getting started around 10 p.m.
　　Just tell me where you are. OK, look: I'll start. I'm squatting in my undershirt out on a black wrought-iron grille about twenty feet above the exhaust fan of the kitchen of a pasta dive . . .

　　He played along, the stakes high. Khaki shorts and a green raglan T-shirt. Kicked back in a molded plastic office chair in the middle of a . . . well. . . redwood-and-cedar kind of thing. Lots of river stone. Local materials.
　　Very tasteful, they declared in unison. Old shtick, recovered from a dozen lost lives ago.
　　Geez, I don't know. What does my building look like? I've never really thought about it, Adie.
　　Come on, poet. Look around you. Walk me through the front door.

　　不可思议，事实上，那就是他打电话的原因。他蜗在门前有一条弯曲的黑色碎石路、能够俯看皮吉特湾的一个潮湿的松木小房间里，为因在高技术领域创造了巨大成功神话的太拉系统公司新近孳生出的一个名叫摹真研究室（Realization Lab）的机构编写程序。不过这个摹真研究室完全建立在实验基础之上，纳税冲销的各种费用远多于它的新项目营收。
　　太拉系统公司？你是说你在为那个小屁孩亿万富翁干活？
　　是间接的干，他笑道。而且到这来的他们那些人都是些小屁孩亿万富翁。
　　你的房子象个啥样？
　　你什么意思？我的房子，房子？那又能跟什么扯上关系？
　　我想要想象出你那地方的样子。你是从工作场所打过来的，是吧你？
　　我···这个，我想是的。
　　威廉·巴特勒·斯佩吉！那个诅咒发誓说他决不会干比在餐馆当服务员更严肃的工作、以免损害了他的灵感的家伙，居然半夜时分还呆在办公室里。
　　半夜···？在这儿，我们通常差不多晚上10点左右才开始工作。
　　你只告诉我你在哪儿。好吧，瞧着：我先来。我这会正穿着汗背心，蹲坐在一个黑色的铁格栅上，这位置就在一家意大利面食店的厨房抽风机上方大约20英尺处···
　　他假意应从，这赌注很高。我穿着一条卡其布短裤，上身是一件绿色的插肩袖T恤。靠在一把塑模的办公椅里，在一堵象是···红木和雪松木的墙面的···中间位置。有很多河里的石头，是本地材料。
　　很有鉴赏力，他们表现得很协调。一个老套的法子，从前曾帮助不少人迷途知返。
　　吉兹语，我听不懂。我的房子象个啥样？我从未认真想过这个问题，阿迪。
　　来吧，诗人。朝你周围看看。穿过前门向我走过来。

cyberwar - 2008-6-25 8:53:00

　　Hmm. Let's see. Maybe 10,000 square feet of usable floor, all on a sin-gle story. Lots of brick and earth tones. A maze of little cubicles made out of those tan-fabric-lined divider things. There's a nice little sunken atrium and such. A ton of vegetation per cubic liter. Big panoramic expanse of passive-solar smart window looking out at Rainier, on the ventral side.
　　I see. Kind of a futuristic forest ranger's roost.
　　Sure. Why not? You'll love it.
　　Hang on. You? As in me . . .?
　　He slowed and unfolded. We're putting together a prototype immer sion environment we're calling the Cavern. Computer-Assisted Virtual Environ— Look, Adie. I'm not going to describe this thing to you over the phone. You just have to come see it.
　　Sure, Steve. I'll be out in an hour.
　　How about a week from next Tuesday? For a no-obligations site visit. All expenses paid.
　　Oh. Oh God. You told them I knew C++?
　　Worse. I told them I knew the greatest illustrator since representa tional art self-destructed.
　　Illustrator, Stevie? How tasteful. Haven't lost your knack for words, I see.
　　Nothing had changed in him. He was still that kid of twenty, com-pelled to round up and protect everything he thought he loved. A mini-Moses, still shepherding around the dream of starting an artist's colony where he could gather all those who needed a hideout from the real world. His voice alone was proof, if Adie ever needed it: no one abandons his first survival kit. The most we ever do is upgrade the splints.

　　You're exactly what the project is looking for, Adie. We can make these incredible digital circus animals, and we can get them to jump through any hoop imaginable. We just need someone who can draw the hoops.
　　I don't get it, Stevie. Don't get it at all.
　　We're all coders and chrome monkeys. A bunch of logic monsters, trying to make walk-in, graphical worlds. We need someone who can see.

　　嗯嗯。让我们瞧瞧。楼层使用面积也许有10，000平方英尺，都在单独一层内。大部分是砖土的褐色调。用茶色建筑材料划分出的迷宫一样的许多小隔间。几个低凹的中庭。限制在很小空间中的大量的植被。在前面一侧，有巨大的全景式无源太阳能灵巧窗户，可以看到雷尼尔山⑤的景色。
　　明白了。有点象未来的森林护林员的栖息所。
　　没错。干吗不呢？你会喜欢上它的。
　　等一会。你？找我···？
　　他慢慢地把问题摊开。我们正在打造一个我们把它叫做洞窟的沉浸环境的原型。这是个计算机辅助的虚拟环境，阿迪。我不想在电话里向你描述这个东西。你只能过来看它。
　　得，史蒂夫。我一个小时就会被弄晕糊去。
　　再下周的周二怎么样？来一次无义务的场所探访。费用全包。
　　哎哟，我的天哪！你告诉他们我懂C++？
　　比那还糟。我告诉他们我认识自打具象派艺术自我毁灭以来最伟大的插图画家。
　　插图画家，史蒂夫？你可太有鉴赏力了。看来你还没有丧失你的语言技能。
　　他什么都没有变。他还是那个尽力要把他所爱的一切聚拢来加以保护的20岁的毛头小伙子。一个微型化的摩西⑥，满脑子想的都还是要为那些需要一个逃避现实世界的藏身地的艺术家们开辟一个定居点。他与众不同的嗓音就是证明，如果阿迪真有需求，他会第一时间伸出援手。我们反复做的许多事只是使这一点更加强化。
　　你就是这工程要找的人，阿迪。我们可以造出这些令人难以置信的数字杂耍动物，我们能让它们跳过任何想象得到的铁环。我们只需要能画出这些铁环的人。
　　我没听懂，史蒂夫。一点也没听懂。
　　我们所有人都是编码者和铬猴子⑦，一群逻辑怪物⑧，想要造出一个可以进入的图形化的世界。我们需要有领悟力的人。

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⑤ 雷尼尔山：美国华盛顿州中西部喀斯喀特山脉中的一座火山，海拔4,395米，为本州的最高峰。其所在地已辟为雷尼尔山国家公园。
⑥ 摩西：《圣经》故事中古代犹太人的先知和立法者，曾率领以色列人逃离埃及。
⑦ 铬猴子（chrome monkeys）：用镀铬金属制作的拟人化的猴头模型，多见于艺术创作中。也有以此为品牌的商品，如自行车等。作者在此用它形容惯于熬夜、脸色苍白、头发凌乱、双睛突出的典型程序员形象，可谓别有风趣。

⑧ 此处的逻辑非指一般意义上的形式逻辑学，而是指计算机数理逻辑和布尔代数等的范畴。

cyberwar - 2008-7-2 11:31:00

　　Know how I picture it out there? Open-toe sandals made out of sili con. Fuzzy-faced, bicycling Boeing executives. Tofu-eating knowledge engineers and multiply-pierced, purple-frosted meth heads waiting next to each other on the curb for the Walk light.
　　See? You know what the place looks like before you've even seen it. I told the team how you used to do those Draw-the-Pirate tests as a kid and fix all the originals errors. 1 showed them that artforum sidebar. The reviews of your SoHo show in '79 . . .
　　Oh God, Stevie. That's ancient history.
　　Oh, I went further back than that. I showed them my color slide of your huge acrylic group portrait of us. The one that won the university painting prize . . . ?
　　How dare you. I hate you.
　　1 told them about the award controversy. How one of the judges thought you were using projection? How he refused to believe that you'd actually freehanded . . .
　　Steven. We were children then. You don't have to fly a stranger across the continent just to find someone who can draw. Courtroom portraitists are a dollar ninety-eight a square yard. Besides, I already have a life.
　　You're not a stranger, Ade. He sounded hurt. That's what's so perfect about this. You don't have to stop painting. Just come out here and do what you—
　　Steve. You have the wrong person. I don't do . . . I'm not painting anymore.
　　Silence pinged off the far coast, full duplex.
　　Did something happen? he asked.
　　Tons happened. Oh, all my parts are still intact, if that's what you mean. It's just that painting's over. No great loss, I assure you.
　　Loss? Adie! How can you say that? What... what are you doing, then?

　　About what? Oh. You mean for work? I freelance. Commercial stuff. Fliers and the like. Book jackets.
　　You'll do a book jacket but you won't. . . ?
　　Won't do original work. I have no problem with designing for a living. Copy and paste. All the pastel coffee mugs and cartoon cars that you want. But Art's done.
　　Adie. If you can still make . . . Do you see? This would be a chance to do something completely . . .
　　Sounds like you're looking for somebody else, Stevie. For the greatest illustrator since representation self-destructed.
　　Well, have it your way. Something in his voice said: You always did. But do me a favor, Adie? Just make sure that you see this thing once before you die.
　　The sentence jumped out at her, from a place she could not make out. The sound of the words, their roll, their order. See this thing once, before you die. The strange familiarity of the invitation caught her ear, if not yet her eyes.
　　Put it that way, she heard herself mouth, I wouldn't mind.
　　Sure, he said. He'd never asked for anything but the chance to save her. Whenever you like. Preferably after 10 p.m.
　　The hard rose building brick pressed up against the small of her back. From a flight and a half up above night's fire escape where she sat, she watched herself say, How about a week from next Tuesday, then? On you.

　　知道我怎么描绘那儿的场景吗？用硅制造的露趾凉鞋，脚踏波音飞机来来去去的行政经理，吃豆腐的博学工程师，还有身上穿了不少孔、脸孔被美沙酮弄成绛紫色的扎堆儿在马路边等交通灯的人群。
　　瞧？你甚至还没见过它就知道它是个啥模样了。我告诉他们你过去是怎么象个孩子似地常干那些画赝品画的试验，而且纠正了原作里的所有错误。我带他们观看了艺术论坛里的那些逸闻趣事，回顾了你1979年在苏荷区⑨办的画展···
　　天啦，史蒂夫。那都是老掉牙的往事了。
　　哦，我比那还回溯得早。我还给他们看了你绘制的我们集体肖像的巨幅丙烯画的彩色幻灯片，就是你赢得大学绘画奖的那幅画···
　　你怎么敢这样。我恨你。
　　我告诉他们有关这个奖项的争论。其中一位评审员是怎么评价你对画面的处理的？还有他又是如何拒绝承认你不拘形式的优美笔法···
　　史蒂夫。那时我们还是孩子。你不必为了找一个会画画的人就破费让一个陌生人飞越大陆。法庭肖像画家的要价是每平方码1美元98分。再说，我已经有了自己的生活。
　　你不是个陌生人，阿迪。他伤心地说。这才是最重要的。你不必停止绘画。你只是到这来做你——
　　史蒂夫。你找错人了。我不做···我再也不画画了。
　　寂静从遥远的海岸那边传过来，双方都感觉到了⑩。
　　出了什么事？他问。
　　出了无数的事。哦，就我的身体来说倒是毫发未损，如果你问的是这个。就是绘画结束了。没什么大的损失，我向你保证。
　　损失？阿迪！你怎么能那样说？那···那你现在做什么？
　　哪方面的？喔，你是说工作？我是个自由职业者。画点广告画呀，招贴画啦什么的。还有书的封套设计。
　　你为书做封套？可你不会···？
　　不是做原始的工作。我靠做设计谋生没有问题。无非就是模仿和粘贴。所有粉笔画的咖啡杯和卡通车我都能做。但艺术却完结了。
　　阿迪。如果你还能够···你明白么？这可是个实实在在做点事的机会···
　　好象你也可以找别人，史蒂夫。寻找自具象派艺术自我毁灭以来最伟大的插图画家。
　　好吧，随你的便吧。他的声音里好像在说：你总是这样。不过请你帮我个忙好吗，阿迪？仅仅保证在你死之前见上这东西一面。
　　这句话冲她而来，而且来自于一个她无法理解的地方。话中各个词的口气，音调，还有顺序。见这东西一面，在死以前。这种不同寻常的亲昵吸引住了她的耳朵，若是还没有吸引住她的眼睛的话。
　　随它去，她听见自己说，我不在乎。
　　当然，他说。他除了给她一个机会外决不提任何要求。你高兴什么时候打过来都行。最好晚上10点以后。
　　坚硬的玫瑰红砖抵住了她的腰背。从她坐的梯子上（在夜间安全出口的一半位置处），她看着自己说，那么，再下周的星期二怎么样？就依了你。

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⑨ 苏荷区（SOHO）：位于美国曼哈顿岛西南端以格林街为中心的三条铺石路面形成的街区，以其画廊、住宅、饭店和艺术家群体聚集地而闻名，是美国新兴文化产业在旧工业废墟基础上崛起的代表。
⑩ 此处为意译，原文full duplex本是一句通信术语，意为“全双工（通信）”，指通信的双方发送和接收可以同时进行，互不干扰（电话和大部分通信方式皆属此类）。引申于此，由于双方一个在东海岸一个在西海岸，电话里的缄默对双方来说在直观感觉上是差不多的。

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