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簡體     傳統

此前曾有过一场地震：但这是测量天启灾难强度的里氏震级问世以来，所记下的最强地震。

它倾覆了整个大陆架。这种强震常常带来洪水；而这巨人则恰恰相反，它深吸一口气，将海水回吸。我们这世界上最隐秘的一层被展示出来了：就在海底——遇难的船只，房屋的前头，舞厅里的烛台，便池，海盗的大箱，电视屏幕，邮车，飞机机身，大炮，大理石塑像，卡拉希尼科夫式冲锋枪，旅游车的金属外壳，洗礼盆，自动洗碗机，电脑，被藤壶包裹的剑，化为石块的硬币。震惊的目光扫过这些物件。从摇摇欲坠的房屋逃到沿海山地的人又朝下面跑去。大地的破碎与怒吼镇住了他们，他们彻底静默下来。海洋的涎水在这些物件上闪光，过往和现今的事物杂乱无章地静躺着，仿佛时间已经停止，也从不存在，万物同一，一切归零——或者说，突然间一切都变得触手可及。

人们急匆匆地拿，拿啊，拿。这可是有价值的东西——什么时候？可能过去如此、抑或一直如此，这可能会有用，这个是什么，应该有人知道，这个则可能是富人的，不过现在是我的了，你不抓紧了别人就会拿走，脚一滑就会滑倒在海草上，陷在浸湿的沙子里。奄奄一息的海生植物盯着他们，也没人留意到鱼的缺席，栖居此处的它们被卷走了，随水而逝。政治叛乱时期人们常有机会掠夺商店，不过和这根本没法相比。纵欲之乐给了男人女人甚至他们的孩子力量，让他们克服淤泥与沙子的阻挠，抓起他们其实也不想要的东西，加快蹒跚的步伐徘徊着。这可不仅是飞来横财，这可是在抢劫大自然的力量啊，而他们此前还得无助地逃离这力量。拿吧，拿啊；掠夺之时他们便忘却了家园的破碎，忘却了所拥已久之物的失去。他们相互呼喊着，撕碎了沉默，他们就像早已不见的海鸥那样喊叫，因而也就没听到狂风大作般的声音正从远方而来。接着大海回来了，将他们吞咽，收进自己的宝库中。

人们知道的就只有这些了；电视采访上只看得见那深渊的白鑞色外皮，电台节目则采访了那一小部分因为胆小怯懦或小心谨慎没跑下山的人，而报纸报道了那些不知为何被大海拒绝、在某个海滩被冲上来的尸体。

不过笔者知道些别人所不知的东西；想象中海水的变换。

现在听着。有个男人终其一生都想得到一样东西（是什么呢）。他拥有很多——东西——有些东西经常攫取住他的目光，他十分喜爱；也有些东西他故意不去注意，都是那些他不应得到却无法舍弃的东西，比如一个新艺术派风格的台灯，平常他就在旁边读书，而在床头上方则有一幅日本版画，是葛饰北斋❶的作品《巨浪》，他并不怎么收集东方的物品，如果将这幅画挂在面朝他的墙上，它可能就不仅仅是家居装饰的一部分，可惜它还是栖居他的头颅之后，多年没被他注意到过了。他有那么多——东西——但就是没有找到那件东西。

他退休了，也离婚很久了，在沿海山丘上选择了一间虽然陈旧但装饰精美的别墅，以远离城市的袭击。村里的一个女人负责烹饪清扫，除此之外别无交流，不会干扰到他。这种生活幸运地远离了激情，他受够了这种打扰，不管愉快与否。当他看到这从未发生、从未被惠赐的景象时，他相信这是个命令。他是那群人中的一员：奔向闪光的海底，看见过去的一切展露无遗——瓦砾=珠宝，全都一样。

他没和其他掠夺者混在一起，和他们也没有什么相同之处，但他和他们一样，从一件物品跑向另一件物品，翻转上漆瓷器的碎片、被毁灭荒凉和锈蚀造就的雕塑、被海水捕获的酒桶、陷在泥中的摩托跑车、牙医椅。他跨着大步，行过破碎的人类肋骨和趾骨，反正他也辨认不出来。他和其他人不同，他什么也不拿走——直到：就在那，它装饰着棕褐色的海草，紧紧陷于珠贝和红珊瑚的雉堞间，就是那件东西。（一面镜子？）看来这不可能之物是真实存在的；他知道它就在这里，在海的下面，因此之前他才不知道它是什么，也从不能找到它。只有从未发生的事物才能将它展现出来，只有里氏震级所测量到的地球最强震才能做到。

他将它拿起来，拿起这东西，这面镜子，将沙子抹去，残留在上面闪光的水珠流下来，他将它拿到了，他最终拥有了它。

巨浪从他的床头后方涌来，带走了他。

他的名字在首都的前政权圈子里十分有名，却没能留在幸存者名单上。他处身于最新一批遇难者的骷髅中，陪伴他的则是古时的海盗和渔民，还有那些在独裁时期被从飞机上扔下来的人，由于海洋的同谋，他们永远不会被找到。那一天，在他们静躺之处，有谁认出他们了吗？

没有康乃馨和玫瑰浮上来。

在足足五英寻❷深之处❸。

译注：

❶葛饰北斋，1760年-1849年，日本江户时代的浮世绘画家，葛饰派创始人，其绘画风格对后来的欧洲画坛影响很大。

❷英寻：英制水深单位，合6英尺或1.6288米，主要用于航行或采矿的度量单位。

❸第二部分开头的“海水的变换”和最后的“五英寻深之处”受到莎士比亚《暴风雨》的影响。戈迪默原文为sea-change of the imagination和Full fathom five，在莎士比亚中的原文为：

"Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made,

Those are pearls that were his eyes,

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change,

into something rich and strange,

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.

五英寻的水深处躺着你的父亲，

他的骨骼已化成珊瑚，

他眼睛是耀眼的明珠；

他消失的全身没有一处不曾

受到海水神奇的变幻，

化成瑰宝，富丽而珍怪。

海的女神时时摇起他的丧钟，

叮！咚！

听！我现在听到了叮咚的丧钟。

《暴风雨》中腓迪南的父亲阿隆佐溺水后，精灵爱丽儿对他唱道。

▲温峰宁 译

Nadine Gordimer: Loot

Once upon our time, there was an earthquake: but this one is the most powerful ever recorded since the invention of the Richter scale made possible for us to measure apocalyptic warnings.

It tipped a continental shelf. These tremblings often cause floods; this colossus did the reverse, drew back the ocean as a vast breath taken. The most secret level of our world lay revealed: the sea-bedded - wrecked ships, facades of houses, ballroom candelabra, toilet bowl, pirate chest, TV screen, mail-coach, aircraft fuselage, canon, marble torso, Kalashnikov, metal carapace of a tourist bus-load, baptismal font, automatic dishwasher, computer, swords sheathed in barnacles, coins turned to stone. The astounded gaze raced among these things; the population who had fled from their toppling houses to the martime hills, ran down. Where terrestrial crash and bellow had terrified them, there was naked silence. The saliva of the sea glistened upon these objects; it is given that time does not, never did, exist down there where the materiality of the past and the present as they lie has no chronological order, all is one, all is nothing - or all is possessible at once.

People rushed to take; take, take. This was - when, anytime, sometime - valuable, that might be useful, what was this, well someone will know, that must have belonged to the rich, it's mine now, if you don't grab what's over there someone else will, feet slipped and slithered on seaweed and sank in soggy sand, gasping sea-plants gaped at them, no-one remarked there were no fish, the living inhabitants of this unearth had been swept up and away with the water. The ordinary opportunity of looting shops which was routine to people during the political uprisings was no comparison. Orgiastic joy gave men, women and their children strength to heave out of the slime and sand what they did not know they wanted, quickened their staggering gait as they ranged, and this was more than profiting by happenstance, it was robbing the power of nature before which they had fled helpless. Take, take; while grabbing they were able to forget the wreck of their houses and the loss of time-bound possessions there. They had tattered the silence with their shouts to one another and under these cries like the cries of the absent seagulls they did not hear a distant approach of sound rising as a great wind does. And then the sea came back, engulfed them to add to its treasury.

That is what is known; in television coverage that really had nothing to show but the pewter skin of the depths, in radio interviews with those few infirm, timid or prudent who had not come down from the hills, and in newspaper accounts of bodies that for some reason the sea rejected, washed up down the coast somewhere.

But the writer knows something no-one else knows; the sea-change of the imagination.

Now listen, there's a man who has wanted a certain object (what) all his life. He has a lot of - things - some of which his eye falls upon often, so he must be fond of, some of which he doesn't notice, deliberately, that he probably shouldn't have acquired but cannot cast off, there's an art noveau lamp he reads by, and above his bed-head a Japanese print, a Hokusai, 'The Great Wave', he doesn't really collect oriental stuff, although if it had been on the wall facing him it might have been more than part of the furnishings, it's been out of sight behind his head for years. All these - things - but not the one.

He's a retired man, long divorced, chosen an old but well-appointed villa in the maritime hills as the site from which to turn his back on the assault of the city. A woman from the village cooks and cleans and doesn't bother him with any other communication. It is a life blessedly freed of excitement, he's had enough of that kind of disturbance, pleasurable or not, but the sight from his lookout of what could never have happened, never ever have been vouchsafed, is a kind of command. He is one of those who are racing out over the glistening sea-bed, the past - detritus-treasure, one and the same - stripped bare.

Like all the other looters with whom he doesn't mix, has nothing in common, he races from object to object, turning over the shards of painted china, the sculptures created by destruction, abandonment and rust, the brine-vintaged wine casks, a plunged racing motorcycle, a dentist's chair, his stride landing on disintegrated human ribs and mettarsals he does not identify. But unlike the others, he takes nothing - until: there, ornate with tresses of orange-brown seaweed, stuck-fast with nacreous shells and crenellations of red coral, is the object. (A mirror?) It's as if the impossible is true; he knew that was where it was, beneath the sea, that's why he didn't know what it was, could never find it before. It could be revealed only by something that had never happened, the greatest paroxysm of our earth ever measured on the Richter scale.

He takes it up, the object, the mirror, the sand pours off it, the water that was the only bright glance left to it streams from it, he is taking it back with him, taking possession at last.

And the great wave comes from behind his bed-head and takes him.

His name well-known in the former regime circles in the capital is not among the survivors. Along with him among the skeletons of the latest victims, with the ancient pirates and fishermen, there are those dropped from planes during the dictatorship so that with the accomplice of the sea they would never be found. Who recognized them, that day, where they lie?

No carnation or rose floats.

Full fathom five.

楚尘文化 2015-08-23 08:38:48