23

Ellipsis

省略的時間

1. There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. While most of us are led by the strict demands of timetables and diaries, our soul, the seat of the heart, trails nostalgically behind, burdened by the weight of memory. If every love affair adds a certain weight to the camel's load, then we can expect the soul to slow according to the significance of love's burden. By the time it was finally able to shrug off the crushing weight of her memory, Chloe had nearly killed my camel.有句阿拉伯諺語說，靈魂以駱駝的緩慢步伐行進。當既定了時間表的現實以無情的動力迫使我們前行時，我們心之所在的靈魂卻飽含懷舊，擔負著沉重的記憶跟在后面。如果每一次情事都給駱駝增加一點背負，那么可以想見，巨大的愛情負擔會令靈魂舉步維艱。在靈魂最終能卸去記憶的重擔之前，克洛艾險些殺死我的駱駝。

2. With her departure had gone all desire to keep up with the present. I lived nostalgically, that is, with constant reference to my life as it had been with her. My eyes were never really open, they looked backwards and inwards to memory. I would have wished to spend the rest of my days following the camel, meandering through the dunes of yesteryear, stopping at charming oases to leaf through images of happier days. The present held nothing for me, the past had become the only inhabitable tense. What could the present be next to it but a mocking reminder of the one who was missing? What could the future hold beside yet more wretched absence? 我對現實的所有欲望都隨著她的離去而消逝。我生活在懷舊之中，不停地回首和她共度的時光。我的眼睛從沒有真正睜開，只是向后，向記憶深處回眸。我寧愿讓余生跟隨駱駝行走，若有所思地穿越記憶的沙丘，休憩在迷人的綠洲，翻閱往日的快樂時刻。現在時對我毫無意義，過去時才是惟一適宜的時態。除了提醒我想起那個離開的人兒，現在還能有什么意義？除了讓我遭受更多因她的離去而帶來的傷痛，未來還有什么？

3. When I was able to drown myself in memory, I would sometimes lose sight of the present without Chloe, hallucinating that the break-up had never occurred and that we were still together, as though I could have called her up at any time and suggested a film at the Odeon or a walk through the park. I would choose to ignore that she had decided to settle with Will in a small town in southern California; the mind would slip from factual reporting into a fantasy of the idyllic days of elation and laughter. Then, all of a sudden, something would throw me violently back into the Chloe-less present. The phone would ring and on my way to pick it up I would notice (as if for the first time, and with all the pain of that initial realization) that the place in the bathroom where Chloe used to leave her hairbrush was now empty. And the absence of that hairbrush would be like a stab in the heart, an unbearable reminder that she had left.當我沉溺于記憶深處時，我有時會忘了克洛艾已經離去，會幻想我們從沒有分手，仍然相依相隨，好像我隨時可以打電話給她，提議去奧第恩看場電影，或是到公園里散散步。我不顧她已經在加利福尼亞南部一個小鎮與威爾訂立終身，思想仍想從事實身邊溜走，幻想充滿狂歡、愛情和笑聲的田園詩般的時光。然后，什么東西會猛然將我拉回沒有克洛艾的現在。當電話鈴聲響起，我走過去接聽時，就會發現（好像是第一次才發現，有著初次發現的痛苦）浴室里無洛艾過去常常放發刷的位置空空如也。那發刷的消失猶如心頭的傷口，在殘忍地提醒我：她已經離去。

4. The difficulty of forgetting her was compounded by the survival of so much of the external world that we had shared together, and in which she was still entwined. Standing in my kitchen, the kettle might suddenly release the memory of Chloe filling it up, a tube of tomato paste on a supermarket shelf might by a form of bizarre association remind me of a similar shopping trip months before. Driving across the Hammersmith flyover late one evening, I recalled driving down the same road on an equally rainy night but with Chloe next to me in the car. The arrangement of pillows on my sofa evoked the way she placed her head down on them when she was tired, the dictionary on my bookshelf was a reminder of her passion for looking up words she did not know. At certain times of the week when we had traditionally done things together, there was an agonizing parallel between the past and present: Saturday mornings would bring back our gallery expeditions, Friday nights certain clubs, Monday evenings certain television programmes...曾經共度的生活留下了太多的痕跡，而今她的身影依然隱現其間，讓忘卻越發困難了。站在廚房里，水壺也許突然使我想起克洛艾曾把它灌滿水；超市貨架上的一罐番茄醬會奇異地讓我記起幾個月前一次類似的購物；深夜駕車經過漢默史密斯高架橋時，我會回憶起從前同樣的雨夜，我曾駕車駛過這同樣的路段，不同的是當時有克洛艾坐在旁邊；整理沙發坐墊喚醒我的記憶：她累了就會將頭枕在上面；書架上的辭典告訴我，她曾經多么熱情地從中查找不認識的字。一周的某些時段，我們習慣一起做些事，也成了過去和現在令人痛苦的對比：星期六上午使我想起我們參觀美術館、星期五夜晚到一些俱樂部去、星期一晚上看某檔電視節目。

5. The physical world refused to let me forget. Life is crueller than art, for the latter usually assures that physical surroundings reflect characters' mental states. If someone in a Garcia Lorca play remarks on how the sky has turned low, dark, and grey, this is no longer an innocent meteorological observation, but a symbol of a psychological state. Life gives us no such handy markers -- a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course, a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while. Similarly, in the course of a beautiful warm summer day, a car momentarily loses control on a winding road and crashes into a tree fatally injuring its passengers.物質世界不讓我忘記過去。生命比藝術還要殘酷。后者常常使人確信，物質環境反映人的精神狀況。如果洛爾卡的劇作里的某個人物說，天空變得多么低沉、灰暗，這已不再是一個單純的氣象觀測，而是心理狀態的象征。現實生活中沒有那么多外部環境與精神世界的精巧一致——一場暴風雨來了，雨水一直撲打窗戶，這遠非死亡和崩潰的預兆，相反，一個人可以從中發現愛情和真理、美麗和幸福。同樣，美麗溫暖的夏日，一條崎嶇的道路上，一輛車可能會突然失控，撞到樹上，給乘客致命的傷害。

6. The external world did not follow my inner moods, the buildings that had provided the backdrop to my love story and that I had animated with feelings derived from it now stubbornly refused to change their appearance so as to reflect my inner state. The same trees lined the approach to Buckingham Palace, the same stuccoed houses fronted the residential streets, the same Serpentine flowed through Hyde Park, the same sky was lined with the same porcelain blue, the same cars drove through the same streets, the same shops sold much the same goods to much the same people.但是外部世界并沒有隨著我的內心情緒的變化而變化，那些構成我愛情故事背景的建筑，那些讓我從中獲得生命力的建筑，如今頑固地拒絕改變它們的模樣以反映我的內心姿態。通向白金漢宮的那條路旁的樹還是那些樹；住宅區街道前面那些拉毛墻飾的房屋還是那些房屋；流過海德公園的那條舍潘泰河還是那條河；天空仍然是那樣的瓷器藍；開過街道的還是那些車；同樣的商店仍然將同樣的商品賣給同樣的顧客。

7. This refusal of change was a reminder that the world was an entity that would spin on regardless of whether I was in love or out of it, happy or unhappy, alive or dead. It could not be expected to change its expressions according to my moods, nor would the great blocks of stones that formed the streets of the city take time to consider my love story. Though they had been happy to accommodate my happiness, they had better things to do than to come crashing down now that Chloe was gone.這種穩固不變提醒我，世界并不反映我的內心，它是一個旋轉著的獨立實體，不管我戀愛還是失戀，幸福還是悲傷、活著還是死去。不可能期望世界隨著我的情緒變化而改變它的面目；也不可能期望組成城市街道的巨大石塊為我破裂的愛情故事發出詛咒之聲。盡管它們曾經幸福地迎合了我的幸福，它們現在還有更好的事情去做，而不是在克洛艾走后就隨之崩塌。

8. Then, inevitably, I began to forget. A few months after breaking up with her, I found myself in the area of London in which she had lived and noticed that the thought of her had lost much of the agony it had once held, I even noticed that I was not primarily thinking of her (though this was exactly her neighbourhood), but of the appointment that I had made with someone in a restaurant nearby. I realized that Chloe's memory had neutralized itself and become a part of history. Yet guilt accompanied this forgetting. It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.然后我不可避免地開始遺忘。與她分手幾個月后，我發覺當自己走過倫敦她曾居住的那個地方，再次想起她時，曾經有過的巨大痛苦消亡殆盡。我甚至發覺首先想起的并不是她（盡管就在她住的那個區），而是我曾與別人在附近一個餐館的約會。我意識到對克洛艾的記憶淡化了，成為歷史的一部分。然而負罪伴隨著忘卻。令我傷心的不再是她的離去，而是我對此日甚一日的冷漠。忘卻是死亡的提示，是失落的提示，是背棄我自己曾一度珍視無比的愛情的提示。

9. There was a gradual reconquering of the self, new habits were created and a Chloe-less identity built up. My identity had for so long been forged around 'us' that to return to the 'I' involved an almost complete reinvention of myself. It took a long time for the hundreds of associations that Chloe and I had accumulated together to fade. I had to live with my sofa for months before the image of her lying on it in her dressing-gown was replaced by another image, the image of a friend reading a book on it, or of my coat lying across it. I had to walk through Islington on numberless occasions before I could forget that Islington was not simply Chloe's district, but a useful place to shop or have dinner. I had to revisit almost every physical location, rewrite over every topic of conversation, replay every song and every activity that she and I had shared in order to reconquer them for the present, in order to defuse their associations. But gradually I forgot.自制逐漸恢復，新的習慣養成了，一個克洛艾滲入較少的自我建立起來，。我長久以來一直圍繞著“我們”打造出來的身份，現在幾乎發現了一個全新的自我，重新回到了“我”。時間過去很久，克洛艾和我之間的成百上千個聯系才消逝不見。好幾個月后我才能淡忘她穿著晨衣躺在我的沙發上的樣子，而由另外的影子——一個朋友坐在上面看書，或是我的外套放在上面——代替。我得有無數次走過伊斯靈頓才能適應，伊斯靈頓不僅是克洛艾所在的區，還是購物和餐飲的絕好去處。我得重新參觀每一個地點、重提每一個話題、重唱每一首歌曲以及重新進行每一個活動，只有重溫和克洛艾共同創造的這些舊事，我才能重新適應現在，才能忘記與克洛艾的這些聯系。然而我逐漸忘卻了。

10. My time with Chloe folded in on itself, like an accordion that contracts. My love story was like a block of ice gradually melting as I carried it through the present. The process was like a film camera which had taken a thousand frames a minute, but was now discarding most of them, selecting according to mysterious whims, landing on a certain frame because an emotional state had coalesced around it. Like a century that is reduced and symbolized by a certain pope or monarch or battle, my love affair refined itself to a few iconic elements (more random than those of historians but equally selective): the look on Chloe's face as we kissed for the first time, the light hairs on her arm, an image of her standing waiting for me in the entrance to Liverpool Street Station, her white pullover, her laugh when I told her my joke about the Russian in a train through France, her way of running her hand through her hair...時光縮略了，就像手風琴一樣有伸展有收縮，流淌如伸展，記住的只是收縮。我的克洛艾的那一段生活就像一塊冰，我帶著它前行，現在已經逐漸融化。就像眼前的事件，最終也會變成歷史。在這過程中，它們被壓縮成一些中心細節。這個過程就像攝影機為一分鐘的電影拍攝了成千的片段，但是卻被剪掉了大部分，只根據神秘的想法選擇一些片段，組合成某個畫面，只因為那與一種情緒狀態吻合。就像一個世紀被簡化和象征為一個特定的教皇、或一個王朝、或一場戰爭，我的愛情被提煉為一些圖像（同樣是選取，但比那些歷史學家更為隨機）：我們每一次接吻時克洛艾臉上的表情、她胳膊上淺淡的汗毛、她站在利物浦地鐵站入口處等我時的身影、她白色的套衫、當我講起“乘火車經過法國的俄羅斯人”這個笑話時她的笑聲、她用手拂弄頭發的樣子……

11. The camel became lighter and lighter as it walked through time, it kept shaking memories and photos off its back, scattering them over the desert floor and letting the wind bury them in the sand, and gradually the camel became so light that it could trot and even gallop in its own curious way - until one day, in a small oasis that called itself the present, the exhausted creature finally caught up with the rest of me.在時光中行走的駱駝越來越輕快，不斷將記憶和照片甩下背去，撒落在沙漠上，讓風沙掩埋它們。漸漸地，駱駝是那樣地輕快，能夠小跑進來，甚至以它自己奇怪的方式飛奔起來——直到有一天，在一片小小的自稱為“現在”的綠洲上，筋疲力盡的心靈終于追趕上我的其余部分，與它們合而為一。