When I read a book from my mother’s shelves, it’s not unusual to come across a gap in the text. A paragraph, or maybe just a sentence, has been sliced out, leaving a window in its place, with words from the next page peeping through. The chopped up page looks like a nearly complete jigsaw puzzle waiting for its missing piece. But the piece isn’t lost, and I always know where to find it. Dozens of quotations, clipped from newspapers, magazines—and books—plaster one wall of my mother’s kitchen. What means the most to my mother in her books she excises and displays.

當(dāng)我翻看媽媽書架上的書時，常常會發(fā)現(xiàn)其中的文字缺了一部分。其中的一個段落，或可能只是一個句子，被剪了下來，在原來的位置上留下了一扇窗戶，讓后一頁上的文字探頭探腦地露了出來。被挖掉一塊的那一頁看上去就像是一幅幾乎就要完成的拼圖作品，等待著缺失的那一塊拼圖。但那一塊拼圖并沒有丟，而且我總是知道在哪兒能找到它。在我媽媽的廚房里，從報紙上、雜志上——還有書上——剪下的紙片貼滿了一面墻。在她的書里，那些她最喜歡的句子和段落都被她剪了下來，貼在墻上。

I’ve never told her, but those literary amputations appall me. I know Ann Patchett and Dorothy Sayers, and Somerset Maugham would fume alongside me, their careful prose severed from its rightful place. She picks extracts that startle me, too: “Put your worst foot forward, because then if people can still stand you, you can be yourself.” Sometimes I stand reading the wall of quotations, holding a scissors-victim novel in my hand, puzzling over what draws my mother to these particular words.

我從未當(dāng)面和她說過，但她對文學(xué)作品的這種“截肢手術(shù)”的確讓我感到震驚。我知道，安•帕契特、多蘿西•塞耶斯和薩默塞特•毛姆也在我身旁氣得冒煙呢，怎么能把這些他們嘔心瀝血寫出來的文字就這樣從它們原來的位置上“截肢”了呢!她挑出來的那些段落也著實嚇了我一跳，比如：“以你最糟糕的一面示人，因為如果那樣人們也能容忍你的話，你就能做真正的自己了。”有時候，我會站在那兒讀墻上那些書摘，手里拿著一本備受剪刀“迫害”的小說，心里充滿困惑，不知道到底是什么驅(qū)使媽媽剪下了這樣一些稀奇古怪的句子。

My own quotation collection is more hidden and delicate. I copy favorite lines into a spiral-bound journal-a Christmas present from my mother, actually—in soft, gray No. 2 pencil. This means my books remain whole. The labor required makes selection a cutthroat process: Do I really love these two pages of On Chesil Beach enough to transcribe them, word by finger-cramping word? (The answer was yes, the pages were that exquisite.)

我也摘錄和收藏文字，不過我的收藏更為隱秘和精致。我會用灰色的二號軟芯鉛筆把我最喜歡的句子摘抄到一個活頁日記本里——事實上，這還是我媽媽送我的一份圣誕禮物呢。也就是說，我的書都是完整的。但因為摘抄需要工夫，因此選擇哪些文字摘抄就成了一個痛苦的過程：我是不是真的喜歡《在切瑟爾海灘上》里的這兩頁文字?喜歡到我愿意一個字一個字地把它們抄下來，直抄到手指頭都抽筋?(答案為“是”，因為這兩頁文字寫得實在太美了。)

My mother doesn’t know any of this. She doesn’t know I prefer copying out to cutting out. I’ve never told her that I compile quotations at all.

我媽媽一點(diǎn)也不知道這件事。她不知道與剪貼相比，我更喜歡抄錄。我壓根就沒告訴過她我也收集自己喜歡的文字。

There’s nothing very shocking about that; for all our chatting, we don’t have the words to begin certain conversations. My mother and I talk on the phone at least once a week, and in some ways, we are each other’s most dedicated listener. She tells me about teaching English to the leathery Russian ladies at the library where she volunteers; I tell her about job applications, cover letters, and a grant I’d like to win. We talk about my siblings, her siblings, the president, and Philip Seymour Hoffman movies. We make each other laugh so hard that I choke and she cries. But what we don’t say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything, really, that pierces us.

其實這一點(diǎn)沒什么值得大驚小怪的;盡管我們總是聊天，但對于某些特定的話題，我們總是不知道該怎么開口。媽媽和我一個星期至少會通一次電話，從某些方面來說,我們是對方最專心的聽眾。她會告訴我她在圖書館做志愿者教那些強(qiáng)悍的俄羅斯婦女英語時發(fā)生的事;而我會和她談?wù)勎艺夜ぷ鞯氖隆⑽业那舐毿牛€有我想要爭取的補(bǔ)助什么的。我們會聊我的兄弟姐妹、她的兄弟姐妹、總統(tǒng)，還有菲利普•塞默•霍夫曼的電影。我們常常逗得對方大笑，笑得我喘不過氣來，笑得她眼淚都流出來了。但我們不聊的東西也很多，多得幾個房間都裝不下。譬如她和我爸吵架了，又譬如我在學(xué)校遇到一些小挫折了。事實上，所有讓我們傷心的事，我們都避而不談。

I like to say that my mother has never told me “I love you.” There’s something reassuring in its self-pitying simplicity—as if the three-word absence explains who I am and wins me sympathy-so I carry it with me, like a label on my back. I synthesize our cumbersome relationship with an easy shorthand: my mother never said “I love you”. The last time my mother almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me that a friend had been hospitalized.

我常常說，媽媽從來沒和我說過“我愛你”。這句有點(diǎn)自憐的簡單話語聽起來頗有些自我安慰的味道——仿佛這三個字的缺失就為我為什么成為現(xiàn)在的我提供了借口，還為我贏得了同情——于是，我總是把這句話掛在嘴邊，就像把它貼在背上當(dāng)標(biāo)簽一樣。對于我和媽媽之間的這種微妙關(guān)系，我總是簡單地用一句“誰讓她從來不說‘我愛你’”來總結(jié)。上一次媽媽差點(diǎn)說出這幾個字是在兩年前，當(dāng)時她給我打電話，告訴我她有個朋友住院了。

I said, “I love you, Mom.” She said, “Thank you.” I haven’t said it since, but I’ve thought about it, and I’ve wondered why my mother doesn’t. A couple of years ago, I found a poem by Robert Hershon called “Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?” that supplied words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:

我對她說：“我愛你，媽媽。” 而她說:“謝謝。” 這件事后來我再沒提過，但卻始終在我的腦海里盤旋不去，我一直想知道為什么我媽媽從來不說這幾個字。幾年前，我讀到羅伯特•赫爾希寫的一首詩，詩名叫《感傷的時刻或面包為什么要過馬路?》，這首詩填補(bǔ)了我和媽媽的對話中許多我不能理解的空白：

Don’t fill up on bread. I say absent-mindedly. The servings here are huge. My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says: Did you really just say that to me? What he doesn’t knowis that when we’re walking together, when we get to the curb. I sometimes start to reachfor his hand.

別用面包把肚子塞滿了。我心不在焉地說。這兒的菜量大得很，我的兒子，我那發(fā)線已開始后退少許的兒子，對我說：你怎么會跟我說這樣的話? 他不知道的是當(dāng)我們一起散步時，當(dāng)我們走到馬路邊時，我有時會不自覺地伸出手想要去牽他的手。

It’s a humble poem, small in scope, not the stuff of epic heartbreak, yet poignant. After copying it down in my quotation journal, my wrist smudging the pencil into a gray haze as I wrote, I opened an e-mail I had begun to my mother, and added a postscript: “This poem made me think of you,” with the 13 lines cut and pasted below. My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me that she reads poetry-and I felt nervous clicking, “Send” .

這是一首樸實無華的小詩，篇幅不長，不是動人心魄的宏偉詩篇，但讀了卻讓人感到有點(diǎn)心酸。我把它抄在了我的書摘日記本里，寫的時候，手腕把灰色的鉛筆字跡都蹭模糊了。然后，我打開一封寫給媽媽的電子郵件，信已經(jīng)開了頭，我在后面加上了附言：“這首詩讓我想起了你。”然后，我在電腦上把這首13行詩剪切下來，粘貼在了郵件下面。我媽媽從來不讀詩——或至少她從沒告訴過我她讀詩——所以，點(diǎn)下“發(fā)送”鍵時，我感到心中隱隱的緊張和不安。

She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen. Not on her quotation wall, but across the room, fixed to an antique magnetic board: Robert Hershon’s poem, printed on a scrap of white paper in the old-fashioned font of a typewriter. The board hung above the radiator, where we drape wet rags and mittens dripping with snow, in the warmest spot in the kitchen. The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.

她從未和我提起過這首詩，但后來放假回家時，我注意到廚房里有了樣新東西。這次不是在她常常粘紙片的墻上，而是在廚房的另一頭，粘在一塊老舊的磁力板上：羅伯特•赫爾希的詩。詩打印在一小片白紙上，字體有點(diǎn)過時，像是打字機(jī)打出來的字體。這塊板子高高掛在暖氣片的上方，那兒可是廚房里最溫暖的地方，我們常在那兒掛濕抹布和粘著雪的手套。那首詩現(xiàn)在還掛在那兒，但無論媽媽還是我，都從未開口談?wù)撨^它。


 

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