尾声 归还
EPILOGUE
RESTITUTION
1
写完这个故事，我自己也无法相信，我感觉这个故事永远都不可能结束。写完之后，我很耐心地重读了几遍，主要目的并不是要修订这些文字，而是为了查看莉拉有没有进入我的电脑对这些文字进行了修改，即使是只字片语。但我不得不承认，所有这些句子都是我一个人写的。莉拉经常威胁我，说她要进入我的电脑里，她其实没那么做，也许她也做不到。一直以来这都是我作为一个对网络、电缆、链接和电子一无所知的老女人的想象，莉拉并没有介入这些文字，这都是我写出来的东西。或者我那么投入地想象她可能会写的东西，还有她的写法，我已经没办法区分什么是我的，什么是她的了。
I can’t believe it myself. I’ve finished
this story that I thought would never end. I finished it and patiently reread
it not so much to improve the quality of the writing as to find out if there
are even a few lines where it’s possible to trace the evidence that Lila
entered my text and decided to contribute to writing it. But I have had to
acknowledge that all these pages are mine alone. What Lila often threatened
to do—enter my computer—she hasn’t done, maybe she wasn’t even capable of
doing, it was long a fantasy I had as an old woman inexperienced in networks,
cables, connections, electronic spirits. Lila is not in these words. There is
only what I’ve been able to put down. Unless, by imagining what she would
write and how, I am no longer able to distinguish what’s mine and what’s
hers.
通常，在我努力写作时，我会打电话给里诺，问他母亲有没有消息。他什么都不知道，警察只是把他叫去三四次，给他看了一些没人认领的女尸，失踪的年老女人很多。有几次我自己也会回那不勒斯，在城区他住的房子里和他见面。那套房子更晦暗、破败了。莉拉真的什么也没留下，任何属于她的东西都找不到了。至于她儿子，我觉得他比平时更加茫然，就好像他把母亲从脑子里彻底抹去了。
Often, during this work, I telephoned
Rino, I asked about his mother. He doesn’t know anything, the police limited
themselves to summoning him three or four times to show him the bodies of
nameless old women—so many of them disappear. A couple of times I had to go
to Naples, and I met him in the old apartment in the neighborhood, a space
darker, more run-down than it had been. There really wasn’t anything of Lila
anymore, everything that had been hers was gone. As for the son, he seemed
more distracted than usual, as if his mother had definitively gone out of his
head.
我回到城区是因为两场葬礼，先是我父亲过世了，然后是莉迪亚——尼诺的母亲也过世了。我没有出席多纳托的葬礼，并不是因为怨恨，而是因为那时我在国外。当我回城区参加我父亲的葬礼时，城区很骚动，有一个年轻男人在图书馆入口那里被杀了。当时我想，这个故事可以一直持续下去，那些处于社会底层、没有任何资源的孩子，为了提升自己，他们从那些破旧的书架上拿书来看，就像我和莉拉小时候那样。现在，那些诱人的空谈、许诺、欺骗和流血事件，妨碍了我的城市还有整个世界真正变好。
I returned to the city for two funerals,
first my father’s, then Lidia’s, Nino’s mother. I missed the funeral of
Donato, not out of bitterness, only because I was abroad. When I came to the
neighborhood for my father there was a great uproar because a young man had
just been murdered at the entrance to the library. That made me think that
this story would continue forever, recounting now the efforts of children
without privileges to improve themselves by getting books from the old
shelves, as Lila and I had done as girls, and now the thread of seductive
chatter, promises, deceptions, of blood that prevents any true improvement in
my city or in the world.
回去参加莉迪亚的葬礼那天是个阴天，整个城市好像很安静，我自己也觉得很安静。尼诺出现了，他一直在高谈论阔，开玩笑，大笑，就好像我们参加的不是他母亲的葬礼。我看到他发胖了，整个人笨重浮肿，成了一个头发稀少、身体粗壮、不停自我吹嘘的老男人。葬礼结束后，摆脱他并非易事。我不想听他说话，也不想看到他，他让我想起了被浪费的时光，白白的辛苦。我很害怕他会留在我的脑海里，会让我和周围一切都变成他那样。
The day of Lidia’s funeral was overcast,
the city seemed tranquil, I felt tranquil, too. Then Nino arrived and all he
did was talk loudly, joke, even laugh, as if we were not at his mother’s
funeral. I found him large, bloated, a big ruddy man with thinning hair who
was constantly celebrating himself. Getting rid of him, after the funeral,
was difficult. I didn’t want to listen to him or even look at him. He gave me
an impression of wasted time, of useless labor, that I feared would stay in
my mind, extending into me, into everything.
去参加这两场葬礼时，我都事先预留了时间去看帕斯卡莱。在那些年里我一有机会都会去看他，他在监狱里学习很努力，他学完了高中课程，最近他取得了天文地理专业的毕业证书。
On the occasion of both funerals I made
plans ahead of time to visit Pasquale. In those years I did that whenever I
could. In prison he had studied a lot, had received his high school diploma,
and, recently, a degree in astronomical geography.
“假如我知道要得到高中毕业证和大学学位，只要有空闲时间，关在一个地方，不用担心赚钱养家的问题，把一些相关的书都背下来，那我早就学成了。”有一次，他用一种开玩笑的语气对我说。
“If I’d known that to get a diploma and a
degree all you needed to have was free time, to be shut up in a place without
worrying about earning a living, and, with discipline, learning by heart
pages and pages of some books, I would have done it before,” he said once, in
a teasing tone.
现在他已经是一个老先生了，说话时平静安详，他比尼诺要耐老，他在我面前很少说方言。小时候他父亲教给他的那些高尚理想，他一个字都没忘记。莉迪亚的葬礼之后，我去看他，我跟他说了莉拉失踪的事，他笑了起来。他说：“她一定在某个地方，做那些充满智慧和想象力的事儿。”他有些感动地说起了小时候，我们在城区图书馆遇到的那次，老师给那些借书最多的人颁奖，结果第一名是莉拉，后面全是莉拉的家人，其实都是莉拉在用她家人的借书证在借书。啊，鞋匠莉拉，模仿肯尼迪夫人的莉拉，艺术家和装修设计师莉拉，工人莉拉，程序员莉拉，莉拉总在同一个地方，但总是那么出格。
Today he’s an old man, he speaks
serenely, he is much better preserved than Nino. With me he rarely resorts to
dialect. But he hasn’t moved even a hairsbreadth out of the space of generous
ideas in which his father enclosed him as a boy. When I saw him after Lidia’s
funeral and told him about Lila he burst out laughing. She must be doing her
intelligent and imaginative things somewhere, he muttered. And it moved him
to remember the time in the neighborhood library when the teacher assigned
prizes to the most diligent readers, and the most diligent was Lila, who took
out books illegally with her relatives’ cards. Ah, Lila the shoemaker, Lila
who imitated Kennedy’s wife, Lila the artist and designer, Lila the worker,
Lila the programmer, Lila always in the same place and always out of place.
“谁把蒂娜带走了？”我问他。
“Who took Tina from her?” I asked.
“索拉拉兄弟。”
“The Solaras.”
“你确信吗？”
“Sure?”
他笑了，露出几颗坏牙。我明白他说的不是真的，也许他根本不认识蒂娜，他也不关心这事儿。但他想表达的是他不容置疑的信仰，那是基于他小时候在城区的经历建立的信仰，虽然他一直在读书，已经取得了大学毕业证书，他背负着那些秘密使命走南闯北，还有算到他身上的那些犯罪行为，但他还是坚持自己的信仰。他对我说：
He smiled, showing his bad teeth. I
understood that he wasn’t telling the truth—maybe he didn’t know it and it
didn’t even interest him—but was proclaiming the unshakable faith, based on
the primary experience of injustice, the experience of the neighborhood,
that—in spite of the reading he had done, the degree he had taken, the
clandestine journeys, the crimes he had committed or been accused of—remained
the currency of every certainty he had. He answered:
“你想不想知道，是谁杀死了那两个混蛋？”
“Do you also want me to tell you who
murdered those two pieces of shit?”
在他的眼睛里，我忽然看到了一种让我害怕的东西——一种无法消除的怨恨。我说不，他摇了摇头，脸上的笑容保持了一会儿。他柔声说：
Suddenly I read in his gaze something
that horrified me—an inextinguishable rancor—and I said no. He shook his
head, and continued to smile. He said:
“你看吧，莉拉想清楚了，会出现的。”
“You’ll see that when Lila decides to,
she’ll show up.”
但我还是没有任何关于她的线索。回那不勒斯的那两次，我在城区里散步，出于好奇我会向周围的人打听她：没人记得她，或许他们假装不记得。我也没能和卡门聊聊她，罗伯特死了，她离开了大路上的加油站，和一个儿子住在福尔米亚。
But there was not a trace of her. On
those two occasions for mourning I walked through the neighborhood, I asked
around out of curiosity: no one remembered her, or maybe they were
pretending. I couldn’t even talk about her with Carmen. Roberto died, she left
the gas pump, went to live with one of her sons, in Formia.
我写了这么多到底有什么用。我的目的是抓住她，让她回到我身边，我可能到死都不会知道自己有没有做到。有时候我想她到底消失在哪里了。在深海？在一个只有她知道的裂缝或者地道里？还是一个里面装满强酸的旧浴缸里？还是在她详细谈过的、以前留下的炭坑里？在荒山里，一个被遗弃的教堂地下室里？还是在莉拉非常熟悉，但我并不知晓的那些诸多的空间里，她现在和她女儿在一起？
What is the point of all these pages,
then? I intended to capture her, to have her beside me again, and I will die
without knowing if I succeeded. Sometimes I wonder where she vanished. At the
bottom of the sea. Through a fissure or down some subterranean tunnel whose
existence she alone knows. In an old bathtub filled with a powerful acid. In
an ancient garbage pit, one of those she devoted so many words to. In the
crypt of an abandoned church in the mountains. In one of the many dimensions
that we don’t know yet but Lila does, and now she’s there with her daughter.
她会回来吗？
Will she return?
她们会一起回来，年老的莉拉和成熟的蒂娜？
Will they return together, Lila old, Tina
a grown woman?
今天早上，我坐在面对波河的小阳台上，我在等她。
This morning, sitting on the balcony that
looks out over the Po, I’m waiting.
2
每天早上七点，吃完早点，我带着最近才买的拉布拉多去报刊亭买报纸。我早上的大部分时间都在瓦伦蒂诺公园和狗玩，看几眼报纸。昨天我从外面回来，我在我的信箱上看到了一个用报纸包起的包裹，我有些不安地拿了过来。那个包裹上面没有任何标识，说明它是给我的而不是给其他人的，上面没有任何纸条，也没有写我的名字。
I have breakfast every day at seven, I go
to the newsstand with the Labrador I got recently, I spend a good part of the
morning in the Valentino playing with the dog, leafing through the papers.
Yesterday, when I got back, I found on top of my mailbox a package roughly
wrapped in newspaper. I took it, perplexed. Nothing indicated that it had
been left for me or for any other tenant. There was no note with it and it
didn’t even have my last name written in pen somewhere.
我小心翼翼地把包裹从侧面打开，我就知道那是给我的。我还没完全把包在外面的报纸拆开，蒂娜和诺从记忆里一跃而出。我马上就认出了两个布娃娃，那是在几乎六十年前，被我们扔到城区一个地窖里去的——我的娃娃是莉拉丢下去的，莉拉的娃娃是我丢下去的。它们的确是我们后来一直没找到的布娃娃，我们下到地窖里去找了。因为这两个娃娃，莉拉推动我去堂·阿奇勒——那个孩子们心中的强盗和恶魔的家里，堂·阿奇勒说他没有拿，也许他想着是他儿子阿方索偷了我们的娃娃，因此他给我们赔了钱，让我们去买新娃娃。但我们没有用那些钱买娃娃——我们怎么能用别的娃娃取代蒂娜和诺呢？我们买了一本《小妇人》，这本小说使莉拉写了《蓝色仙女》，使我成为今天的我——很多书的作者，尤其是一本非常成功的小说的作者，这部小说的题目是《友谊》。
I cautiously opened one edge of the
wrapping, and that was enough. Tina and Nu leaped out of memory even before I
got them completely out of the newspaper. I immediately recognized the dolls
that one after the other, almost six decades earlier, had been thrown—mine by
Lila, Lila’s by me—into a cellar in the neighborhood. They were the dolls we
had never found, although we had descended underground to look for them. They
were the ones that Lila had pushed me to go and retrieve from the house of
Don Achille, ogre and thief, and Don Achille had claimed that he hadn’t taken
them, and maybe he had imagined that it was his son Alfonso who stole them,
and so had compensated us with money to buy new ones. But we hadn’t bought
dolls with that money—how could we have replaced Tina and Nu?—instead we
bought Little Women, the novel that had led Lila to write The Blue Fairy and
me to become what I was today, the author of many books and, most important,
of a remarkably successful story entitled A Friendship.
那栋楼房的前厅很寂静，听不到房子里的声音。我很不安地看着四周，我希望莉拉从A楼梯或者B楼梯里出来，或者从空荡荡的门房那里出现：很消瘦，头发灰白，弯着腰。这是我那时最大的愿望，比渴望我的几个女儿带着外孙忽然回来更强烈。我期望她用往常那种开玩笑的语气对我说：你喜欢这个礼物吧？但她没有出现，我开始痛哭。这就是她做的事情：她欺骗了我，她把我拉到她想去的地方，从我们成为朋友开始，她一直都是这样，她一辈子都利用我的身体和我的生活，讲述了她得到救赎的故事。
The lobby of the building was silent, no
voices or other sounds came from the apartments. I looked around anxiously. I
wanted Lila to emerge from stairway A or B or from the deserted porter’s
room, thin, gray, her back bent. I wished it more than any other thing, I
wished it more than an unexpected visit from my daughters with their
children. I expected that she would say in her usual mocking way: Do you like
this gift? But it didn’t happen and I burst into tears. Here’s what she had
done: she had deceived me, she had dragged me wherever she wanted, from the
beginning of our friendship. All our lives she had told a story of redemption
that was hers, using my living body and my existence.
也许不是这样。也许那两个娃娃经过了半个多世纪，出现在了都灵，只是证明她现在很好，她还在意我，她打破了自己的界限，终于开始周游世界，这个世界已经比她的世界还小。现在进入老年，她开始过上了另一种生活，那是她年轻时，别人不允许她过的，她自己也不愿意过的生活。
Or maybe not. Maybe those two dolls that
had crossed more than half a century and had come all the way to Turin meant
only that she was well and loved me, that she had broken her confines and
finally intended to travel the world by now no less small than hers, living
in old age, according to a new truth, the life that in youth had been
forbidden to her and that she had forbidden herself.
我进了电梯，把自己关在屋子里。我仔细地看着那两个娃娃，我闻到了它们身上散发的霉味儿，把它们靠着我写的那些书的书脊放着，我看到它们那么简陋粗糙，百感交集。真实的生活和小说不一样，过去的生活没有凸现出来，而是陷于黑暗。我想：现在莉拉那么清楚地浮现出来了，我应该放弃继续找她。
I went up in the elevator, I shut myself
in my apartment. I examined the two dolls carefully, I smelled the odor of
mold, I arranged them against the spines of my books. Seeing how cheap and
ugly they were I felt confused. Unlike stories, real life, when it has
passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity. I thought: now that Lila has
let herself be seen so plainly, I must resign myself to not seeing her
anymore.
[1]梅尼乌斯·阿格里帕（Menenius
Agrippa），生年不详，卒于公元前493年，古罗马贵族。
