The funeral director would be right with them, a woman’s voice said through the intercom when they rang the bell. After standing on the porch for a minute and then another minute, Jiayu and Chris sat down on two wicker chairs, a small round table with a potted yellow chrysanthemum between them. It was a cloudless day, the sky intensely blue. A pair of squirrels were chasing each other on the lawn, and some unseen birds in the trees, which had yet to change colors, made loud noises, a game of hue and cry in the quiet neighborhood. Perhaps the real setting of every Shakespeare play, Jiayu thought, is a wall-less waiting room like this: life as an antechamber to death.
办丧人这就到，他们敲门时，一个女人的声音从对讲机中传来。在门廊站了一分钟，又站了一分钟，佳瑜和克里斯坐到两张藤椅上，两人之间有一盏小圆桌，桌上摆着一盆黄色菊花。这一天，万里无云，天空湛蓝，一对松鼠在草坪上彼此追逐，树木还没褪色，绿叶间掩映着些许瞅不见的鸟儿，放声啁啾，给静谧的社区平添一阵嘈杂。佳瑜想，兴许所有莎士比亚喜剧的真正布景，都是这般一间无墙的等候室：生命不过是死亡的前厅。
That thought, four months later, struck Jiayu as unnecessarily theatrical. Who was she to talk about Shakespeare, when the last time she had read him was in college, in Beijing, for an English degree she had made little use of? Now, when Jiayu thought about the sun-soaked days immediately after Evan’s death, she realized that the woman whose voice she and Chris had heard through the intercom on that first and subsequent visits had never appeared in person. There was no front desk at the funeral home. Every time the door had opened, it was the funeral director’s handshake they’d encountered. The first time Jiayu had phoned, the soft-spoken man had said, “Oh, God,” after he had asked for Evan’s date of birth and received the answer.
四个月后，那种想法会让佳瑜感到做作，毫无必要。她最后一次读莎士比亚还是在北京上大学时，攻读基本没什么用处的英语学位，那时她谈起莎翁。现在，佳瑜想到伊文刚死后阳光普照的那些天，她意识到她和克里斯首次以及此后数次拜访时，对讲机里的声音没有一回是有人亲自在说话。殡仪馆没有前台。每次门打开时，他们都会同办丧人握手。佳瑜第一次打电话时，那个轻声细语的男人问了伊文的出生日期，得知答案后说：“哦，上帝”。
But the voice on the intercom belonged to someone, a receptionist who did not need a nametag. And she’d be spared meeting with all those clients, day in and day out, who never would have set foot in the house were it not for death’s mandate. Jiayu had never previously given a moment of thought to the receptionist in any other office. Yet this unmet woman, having remained faceless, refused to be reduced to a generic receptionist. The dead, too, should never become generally and generically dead, but that, Jiayu had realized as she read a recent article on the alarming statistics of teen-age suicides, was a futile protest.
可对讲机里的声音属于某个不需要姓名牌的接待员。若非死神令的驱使，没人会踏足此所，她也就用不着夜以继日地接待客户。在其他场所，前台接待从没让佳瑜过过脑子。可这个从未见过的女人，从来没有面目，却拒绝沦为一个平庸的接待员。死者也永远不该沦为一个泛泛的、平庸的死者，可佳瑜最近读到一篇令人惊心的青少年自杀统计，她才意识到那不过是种无谓的抗争。
Death brought a new routine. There were grief support groups to join, letters from relatives and friends to attend to, pleading phone calls to make to Naomi, who was a college sophomore in Wisconsin and who, after the funeral, had begun to limit her parents’ access to her life. This new, flimsy routine reminded Jiayu of her first transistor radio, a birthday present from her grandfather when she turned five. It was a luxury for a five-year-old. Frustrating, too, since it was not easy for her fingers to maneuver the dial to find the one station with a half-hour afternoon preschool program. And, when she did succeed, the dial stayed at the right frequency for no more than a few minutes before it began to shift, and the songs about the thieving foxes and partying bears would drift into static.
死亡带来新的平庸。接待丧亲慰藉组织，料理亲友的信件，恳请给内奥米打电话，葬礼后，这个威斯康星州的大二学生不让父母介入自己的生活了。这种新的、浅薄的套路让佳瑜想到她的第一台晶体管收音机，那是5岁时外祖父送给她的生日礼物。对一个5岁的孩子而言，那算是奢侈品。但也令人气馁，她的指头想拨出一个下午有半小时学前节目的电台还不太容易。就算成功了，超不过几分钟表盘的指针就从正确频率上滑开了，偷东西的狐狸和开宴会的熊，这些歌曲会化为静电音。
How did that girl with the radio in her lap become this woman, in the middle of her life, with so many dials failing? Sometimes Jiayu parked her car in front of the garage door, unable to push the button to open it. Other times, she cleaned the house tirelessly, or chopped onions until they became a translucent puddle of tears on the cutting board. Why she balked at the garage door or ill-used the onions she did not ask, because the answer was a given. Any action, any feeling, erratic or not, fell under the all-encompassing umbrella called grief.
那个怀里抱着收音机的女孩怎么就变成这个人到中年的女人，又经历了那么多拨盘失准呢？有时，佳瑜把车停在车库门前，却没法按下按钮打开库门。也有时，她不知疲倦地打扫房子，或是切洋葱时泪如雨下，直到菜板成了透明的水洼。她为何害怕车库门，又为何切不好洋葱，她没有问过，因为答案显而易见。任何行动，任何感受，不论怪异与否，都躲在包纳一切的雨伞下，那就是悲伤。
Grief? What is grief? One morning when Jiayu opened her eyes she said to the ceiling, Grief, I don’t know who you are, so don’t pretend you know who I am.
悲伤？什么是悲伤？一天早上，佳瑜睁开眼对着天花板说，悲伤，我不知道你是谁，你也别假装知道我是谁。
She and Chris went back to work right after the funeral. Jiayu administered cultural-exchange projects at the public university in a neighboring town. Chris managed the medical-engineering department at a local hospital. Both had struggled at first, Chris leaving work a few times, Jiayu hiding in the ladies’ room and weeping for two days in a row, but they carried on with a steadiness that appeared stoic to the world. Jiayu tidied up their garden and planted the autumn bulbs before the first frost. Chris winterized the irrigation system. Together they bought pumpkins from a roadside stand, four as usual. Both texted Naomi daily, knowing that behind the cold mask there was a heart as damaged as theirs. After some time, Naomi softened and agreed to come home for Thanksgiving.
葬礼一结束，她和克里斯就回去上班了。佳瑜在临近镇子的一所公立大学中负责文化交流项目。克里斯管理当地一家医院的医学工程部。一开始，两人都很难过，克里斯多次请假，佳瑜则躲在洗手间里一连哭上两天，可他们都坚强地活下去，看起来坦然面对这个世界。佳瑜收拾他们的花园，在头回下霜前种上秋茎。克里斯给灌溉系统做防冻。他们一起在路边摊儿买南瓜，和以前一样，买了四个。两人每天都给内奥米发短信，得知她冰冷的面具后有一颗和父母一样受伤的心。过了一阵子，内奥米态度转圜，同意感恩节回家来。
In their own minds it was not stoicism that sustained them but defeatism. At the end of the workday, when one of them felt paralyzed—they fell into that state by turns—the other would insist that they drive to a park in a nearby town. There they were just a middle-aged couple taking a walk in the dusk. Dusk fell earlier day by day and then took a leap into darkness in early November.
在他们自己的心里，让人撑下去的并非坚忍克己，反倒是一种失败主义。一周工作后，某人会感觉累瘫掉，他们交替如此，另一个就坚持要开车去附近镇子的一个公园。在那里，他们不过是在黄昏中漫步的一对中年夫妇。天黑的一天比一天早了，11月初，他们在夜幕中迈开腿。
But why? one of them would say, breaking the silence on their walk.
可这是为什么呢？一个人会问，打破散步的沉默。
And why him?
又为什么会是他？
I didn’t see it coming, did you?
我没看出迹象，你呢？
No, I thought it was adolescence.
没有，我以为就是青春期。
I thought so, too. I imagined adolescence as a difficult exam everyone has to take.
Not everyone passes.
我也这么想。我猜青春期是一场艰难的考试，每个人都要经历，但并非每个人都能过关。
It’s so hard to be a young person these days.
如今做个年轻人真难。
Harder than it was for us, isn’t it?
比我们那时候还难，不是吗？
A lot of researchers think so. I read about it in the newspapers.
许多研究人员这样说。我在报纸上读到的。
But I don’t understand. He talked about his swimming meet that morning. I thought he looked excited.
可我还是不明白。早上他还说游泳比赛呢，我觉得他看起来心情很好。
And the way he talked about his driver’s license. I was going to take him to the D.M.V. first thing on his birthday. I was going to call the school and say he had a doctor’s appointment.
他说到考驾照时也是如此，我准备在他过生日时带他到车管所去。我正打算给学校打电话，说他要去看医生。
Do you think something happened at school?
你认为学校出了什么事吗？
If none of his friends knew . . .
可他的朋友没人知道……
You’d think with so many friends . . .
你想想，他那么多朋友
And a happy childhood . . .
快乐的童年……
We did give him a happy childhood, didn’t we?
我们给了他快乐的童年，对不对？
He said so himself.
他自己也这样说。
Naomi says so, too.
内奥米也这样说。
What went wrong, then?
可哪里出了岔子呢？
We’ll never know.
我们永远都不知道。
Not knowing is hard.
不知道是痛苦的。
It’s so hard.
太痛苦了。
The hardest, isn’t it?
最痛苦对不对？
Fifty years ago, Jiayu and Chris might have caught side-glances in their Midwestern town. But now it was not a big deal for a man who’d grown up on a corn farm and a woman who’d grown up in a Beijing alleyway to marry and lead a family life not much different from their neighbors’, even though Chris’s mother had said several times at the wedding that to her it was a mind-boggling miracle.
五十年前，在这个美国中西部的城镇中，佳瑜和克里斯可能会相互打瞧，可如今，一个在玉米地长大的男人和一个在北京胡同长大的女人结婚、像当地人一样过日子，这算不上什么大事了，就算克里斯的母亲在婚礼上提过几次，对她而言，这是个让人难以置信的奇迹。
Their marriage—nineteen years this past summer—had had its share of stumbles, the kind that occurred in any marriage. Together Jiayu and Chris had striven to make a solid life, parenting Naomi and Evan with common sense and love. How had something this colossal found and trapped them, Jiayu thought, when they were so ordinary, so unambitious, so inconspicuous? The death of a child belonged to a different realm—that of a Greek tragedy or a mawkish movie. What was the probability of an ant’s being struck by lightning? And for the ant to survive and toil on? With what wounds?
到今年夏天，他们已经结婚19年了，共同经历了许多磕磕绊绊，正是所有婚姻都会出现的那种。佳瑜和克里斯共同努力，让日子过得红火，凭着常理和爱抚养内奥米和伊文。佳瑜想，如此非常之事怎么会降到他们头上，他们那么普通，不求腾达，不显山露水。一个孩子死了，这是另一个世界的事，是希腊悲剧或苦情电影中的事。一只蚂蚁被雷劈到的几率有多大？蚂蚁要生存下去还要辛勤工作？又受了何等伤痛？
Jiayu started a spreadsheet on her computer. Family members, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances—she tried to list all those she had met who had died. She put in what she could remember, the birth and death year for each person and the cause of death, leaving question marks here and there, though she could have looked up an obituary to find the missing information. What she wanted was to test her own memory. If she could remember a story or two about each of the dead, they would not be reduced to the generally and generically dead.
佳瑜在电脑上建了一个表格文件。家庭成员、亲戚、邻居、熟人——她列出自己遇到过所有死了的人。她记下每个人的生卒年份和死因，记不起来的就打上问号，到处是问号，虽说她该查查讣告，找到缺失的信息。可她就是想考考自己的记性。如果她还记得死者的一两件事，他们就不会沦为一个泛泛的、平庸的死者。
Take, for instance, Mrs. Eileen Wilson, one of the oldest guests at Jiayu’s wedding. A cousin of mine, Mrs. Wilson had told Jiayu at the reception, was a missionary in China.
例如，艾琳·威尔森，佳瑜结婚时最老的宾客之一。威尔森太太在婚礼上对佳瑜说，我的一个表亲是中国的一个传教士。
When was that? Jiayu asked.
那是什么时候？佳瑜问。
1891, Mrs. Wilson said.
1891年，威尔森太太说。
My grandfather was born that year, Jiayu said.
我爷爷那年出生，佳瑜说。
What a coincidence! My cousin died that year. He was in Shandong Province for two months and got his head chopped off, Mrs. Wilson said, placing a hand on her own neck.
多巧啊，我的表亲那年死的。他在山东省住了两个月，结果被砍了脑袋，威尔森把手放在脖子上说。
Oh, my goodness, Jiayu said. I’m so sorry.
哦，天啊，佳瑜说。抱歉。
The old woman laughed. Pah, you don’t have to apologize. I never met him. I’ll tell you who I would love to have met. My great-aunt Sallie. She stole five sheep from her neighbor. Back then you’d get hanged for that crime, but she was pardoned on account of being a woman.
那个女人笑了。得了吧，你不用道歉，我从没见过他。我告诉你我最喜欢碰到谁，我最喜欢我的姑姥萨莉。她从邻居那里偷了5头羊。当时那种罪行要上绞刑架，可因为她是个女人，就被宽恕了。
Thinking about the deceased was nothing like travelling down memory lane. Memory lane, Jiayu said to herself, what an odd phrase. Only an organized mind could have come up with it. Remembering was not like walking along a tree-lined path with wooden posts marking the years. Memory was a haystack. Search for any one story and you’d get a hundred stories, none of them complete.
追忆逝者和追溯记忆线大不相同。记忆线，佳瑜对自己说，多怪的一个词。只有一个有条有理的头脑才能找得到。回忆不像在沿着一条插着记年木桩的林荫道上行走。记忆是一垛干草堆，要找一个故事，你会找到一百个故事，但没有一桩是完整的。
And the stories kept coming. They were distractions from thinking about Evan, even though distraction was unattainable, and thinking about Evan was the wrong way to put it. Thinking, like remembering, was an action of retrospect. But Evan was here all the time: in the new, elaborate recipes she tried on weekends, in the vases of flowers she placed around the house to combat bleakness, in the hollow voice of the guided-meditations app that brought her little reprieve from heartache.
故事会不断涌现出来。想伊文会有很多分心之事，尽管这些枝杈都想不起来。想伊文本身也是个错误的说法。想，就像回忆样，是一种追溯行为，可伊文一直都在这里：在她每周末尝试的精致的新食谱中，在她放在屋里冲去惨淡的花瓶中，在冥想指导软件的空洞声音中，后者对缓解头痛几乎没有作用。
She left the spreadsheet open on her computer. Each name was more than just a story of a death. Take Sister Wen’s husband, for instance. Sister Wen, the youngest daughter of the family who’d lived next to Jiayu’s in Beijing, was fourteen years older than Jiayu. When Sister Wen started dating a police officer, every Sunday morning Jiayu would wait for him at the entrance of the alley. The moment he arrived on his motorcycle, she would run back. It didn’t matter that Sister Wen was already standing in the yard, listening for the engine. Jiayu wanted to be the one to shout, He’s here, he’s here, he’s here, as though she were a magpie, bringing the early good tidings of the marriage.
她电脑上的表格文件一直开着。每个名字都不仅是一个死亡的故事。例如，文姐的丈夫。文姐是家里最小的女儿，在北京时住在佳瑜隔壁，比佳瑜大14岁。文姐和一个警察谈对象时，每周日早上佳瑜都会在胡同口等他。他骑着摩托一进来，她就往回跑。就算文姐已经站在院子里，听到马达声，可这不打紧，佳瑜想第一个喊，他来了，他来了，他来了，好像自己是只喜鹊，早早带来婚配的美好潮汛。
Fifty, liver cancer. When Jiayu typed this next to the man’s name, she could not see him as an older man. Once, he and Sister Wen had taken Jiayu for a ride. Jiayu had climbed into the sidecar, clutching the metal bar in front of her and looking up at Sister Wen and her boyfriend: she in an apricot-colored dress, he in a white uniform.
50岁，肝癌。佳瑜将这两个词打在这个男人的名字旁边时，想象不出他是那么大岁数的一个男人。有一次，他和文姐带着佳瑜兜风。佳瑜爬进侧斗，抓着前面的金属把手，仰头看着文姐和她的男朋友：她穿着杏色裙子，他穿着白制服。
“When we were happy we had other names”: Jiayu remembered reading the line as a student, though she could not recall the context now. A young couple in love and a child wanting nothing more than to witness that love story—what were they all now? A dead man, a widow, and a mother who had lost a child.
“当我们幸福时，我们别有他名”：佳瑜还记得学生时读过的这句话，尽管现在想不起语境来了。一对相爱的年轻人、一个只想见证这段爱情故事的孩子——他们现在又如何呢？一个死了的男人、一个死了男人的寡妇、一个丧子的母亲。
But Jiayu was not the first parent to lose a child. Of this she constantly reminded herself. There was her cousin Min, whose baby had died of leukemia before she turned two. The baby had faded from Jiayu’s memory, though she knew that if she opened an old album she would find a picture of her. After she died, many relatives had shed tears, but how many of them could tell a story about that little girl now? Min had another child later, a healthy boy. An aunt who treasured sons more than daughters had said to Jiayu’s mother once that the whole thing could be seen in a positive light, since the baby’s death had made room for the little brother. Sometimes a daughter is just bad news, the aunt had said, and the one-child policy certainly doesn’t help.
但佳瑜并非第一个丧子的父母。她不断提醒自己这一点。丧子的还有他的表妹敏，敏的宝宝不到两岁就死于白血病。佳瑜已经记不起来了这个女孩的模样了，尽管她知道打开相册，还能找到她的照片。她死后，许多亲戚都掉了泪，但现在还有多少人能讲得出这个小女孩的事呢？敏后来又生了一个健康的男孩。一个重男轻女的姑母曾对佳瑜的母亲说，应该积极地看待整件事情，婴儿的死为她的小弟弟腾了地儿。这位姑母说过，有时候，生个女儿只能当个坏消息，一孩政策肯定也没能改变什么。
And there was Yingying, Jiayu’s playmate before the pair had moved to different elementary schools. Their mothers taught together at the Beijing No. 2 School for the Deaf and the Mute, and the girls would play together in the schoolyard in the afternoon as they waited for their mothers to get off from work. A year younger than Jiayu, Yingying was a timid girl, and Jiayu liked to tease her with a caterpillar hidden in a matchbox or a beetle let loose on the back of her hand. Yingying would cry, and Jiayu would comfort her, and then they would reconcile, all the while pretending that they did not notice the students around them, most of whom were boarders supported by the government. They were much older, some in their late teens, ready to leave school after an apprenticeship.
还有佳瑜儿时的玩伴盈盈，后来两人上了不同的小学。她们的母亲都在北京第二聋哑学校教书，两个女儿下午等着妈妈下班时，就一起在操场玩。盈盈比佳瑜小一岁，是个害羞的女孩，佳瑜喜欢把毛毛虫藏在火柴盒里或把甲壳虫放到她手背上来戏弄她。盈盈会哭，佳瑜就去安慰她，然后两人就和好了，她们自始至终都假装没看到周围的学生，多数学生都住在学校，由政府供养。他们年纪大很多，有人快20岁了，学徒期满后就要离校了。
Jiayu wondered now if they had both been performing a little, she seeking any excuse to make Yingying cry, and Yingying welcoming every opportunity to make loud noises that would differentiate the two of them from the students. Some of them stood in a half circle around Jiayu and Yingying, staring unsmilingly at the two girls and then gesturing among themselves. It thrilled Jiayu to know that they were talking about her and her friend. There was no other way for her and Yingying to enter that silent world than by being at the center of the half circle, speaking to each other without having to move a finger.
佳瑜现在好奇，两个人是不是有点故意的，她想法子让盈盈哭，盈盈也乐得制造噪音，让两人显得与学生们不一样。有些学生会围着佳瑜和盈盈站成半圈，严肃地盯着两个女孩，用手势相互比划着。佳瑜知道他们在谈论自己和玩伴时吓得不行。她和盈盈没法进入他们的安静世界里，只能站在半圆中心，不用动指头就可以彼此交流。
A year ago, Jiayu’s mother had called to report the death of Yingying. Ovarian cancer, forty-three, her daughter just starting middle school. Jiayu could not see her childhood playmate as a woman in a coffin, a mother’s lost child, a child’s lost mother. But what difference did seeing make? Perhaps grief was nothing but disbelief.
一年前，佳瑜母亲打电话说盈盈死了。卵巢癌，43岁，女儿刚上中学。佳瑜想象不出儿时的玩伴成为棺材里的一个女人，一个是失去孩子的妈妈，另一个是失去妈妈的孩子。可就算亲眼看到又如何？可能悲伤不过就是难以置信。
The first snow fell and melted. And the second snow. After that, there was no reason to keep counting. The neighbors put up Christmas lights, blue and white icicles under the eaves, orange and red bulbs outlining the evergreens, a deer pulling a sleigh in one front yard, wide-winged angels trumpeting in another. The world was not new and offered little evidence that it would ever be new again. Perhaps grief was the recognition of having run out of illusions.
下了第一场雪，融化了。然后下了第二场雪。后面就不用数了。邻居装上圣诞灯，屋檐下蓝白色的冰锥灯，常青树轮廓上挂着橙色和红色的灯泡，前院有一头拉着雪橇的鹿，张开双翅的天使对着吹喇叭。世界并非新造，也毫无迹象显示，将再次成为新的。可能悲伤不过是认识到假象不再。
Would decorating the house make us too sad? Jiayu asked one evening as they parked in front of their unlit house.
把房子装饰一下会让我们太悲伤吗？一天晚上，他们在房子前停车时，佳瑜问。
Would we be sadder if we didn’t?
要是不装饰会不会反而更悲伤？
What do you think Evan would’ve wanted us to do?
你觉得伊文希望我们怎么做？
I don’t know. I can talk myself into either option.
我不知道。怎么说都有理。
Same here.
我也是。
What about the Christmas tree? What about the four stockings Jiayu had embroidered with their names? What about going to Mrs. Erickson’s house on Christmas Eve? Mrs. Erickson’s granddaughter and Evan had been born a day apart, and had, for different reasons, stayed in the nicu in adjacent rooms. After that, Mrs. Erickson had turned Evan into another grandchild of hers, and for fifteen Christmases they had joined Mrs. Erickson and her extended family, feasting on baked ham, scalloped potatoes, and krumkake. Afterward they sang Christmas carols, accompanied by Mrs. Erickson on an old upright piano, which was tuned once a year for the occasion.
那圣诞树呢？佳瑜用他们的名字绣得四只袜子呢？圣诞节去埃里克森太太家呢？埃里克森太太的孙女和伊文的生日差一天，因为不同原因，两人住在两间相邻的新生儿重症监护病房里。后来，埃里克森太太认了伊文为干孙子，他们有15个圣诞节和埃里克森太太的大家庭一起度过，他们大嚼烤火腿、烤土豆和香脆薄饼。然后一起唱圣诞颂歌，埃里克森太太用一架老竖式钢琴伴奏，每年为了圣诞节弹琴而调一次音。
Every question asked led to a dead end. Jiayu figured that one of these days she and Chris would look at each other and, without hesitation, drive to the lot to pick out a tree. Chris would put up the lights and Jiayu would arrange the stockings, including Evan’s, on the mantel. When the invitation came from Mrs. Erickson, they would ask if they could bring pot stickers, their usual contribution. They would do everything as they had always done it. “Always” was an untrustworthy word. Still, what could one do but abide by the rule of “always”? In a fallible life, it was a path no better or worse than any other.
每个问题都走向一个死结。佳瑜认为那些天，她和克里斯会对视一眼，然后毫不犹豫地开车去挑一棵树。克里斯会装上灯，佳瑜把袜子放在壁炉上，其中有伊文的。埃里克森太太邀请时，他们会问要不要拿上锅贴，他们通常都带锅贴去。他们一切都会一如既往。“一如既往”是个不值得信任的词。再说，除了遵守“一如既往”的法则，你还能做什么呢？在一个不可靠的人生中，这是一条既不更好也不更差的路。
The spreadsheet stopped growing. The ache remained unmitigated. A person’s knowledge of death could be exhaustible, yet it did nothing to exhaust the pain of losing a child. If Jiayu were to start a spreadsheet of people who were alive and healthy and happy, perhaps she would end up with a much longer list, but if many deaths could not produce an effective antidote to one death, what difference would many lives make?
表格写不下去了。痛楚却没有得到缓解。一个人对死亡的知识可以枯竭，丧子止痛却绵绵无绝。如果佳瑜建个表格列出活着的、健康的和幸福的人，可能她能写个更长的单子，可如果诸多死亡都不能抵抗一遭死亡，诸多生命又有什么区别呢？
It occurred to Jiayu that someday Evan might appear on another person’s list. The thought neither consoled nor disturbed her. On the spreadsheet there was Hua, a high-school classmate who had committed suicide the year before they graduated. There was the father of Jiayu’s preschool friend, who had killed himself two years ago, one evening after he finished rehearsing with the retirees’ choir. Jiayu had never once spoken to Hua in high school. Her friend’s father wore dark-framed glasses, but that was all she could remember.
佳瑜意识到，伊文可能某天会进入另一个人的名单。这种想法无法安慰她，却也并不让她感到烦恼。表格里还有华，那是一个高中同学，他们毕业前一年自杀了。还有佳瑜儿时朋友的父亲，2年前自杀了，那是一个晚上，在退休合唱团的彩排结束后。佳瑜高中时从没和华说过话。她朋友的父亲戴着黑框眼镜，她能记着的就那么多了。
Still, she returned to the spreadsheet often, trying to recall one more moment, one more detail. Sometimes a new name occurred to Jiayu, amazing her, as though the dead were patiently waiting for her to recover them. An old woman known as Granny Brave, who had lived alone in the next alleyway, was said to have been a peasant partisan during the Second World War. After her death, this was confirmed by the newspapers, which also printed a picture of the Brave Girl—her nickname during the war—when she was a teen-ager, her hair chopped short, a carbine on her shoulder, and two unsheathed daggers haphazardly tucked into her belt.
她常常会打开表格，绞尽脑汁再补充些细节。有时会想到一个新名字，这让她感到惊喜，好像死者在耐心地等着她发掘。有个叫英勇奶奶的老妇人，自己住在旁边的一条胡同里，据说二战中是农民游击队员。她死后还上了新闻，登了一张“英勇姑娘”的照片，那是她在打仗时的别称，当时她还是个少年，剪短发，背着卡宾枪，腰上随意别着两把未出鞘的短刀。
In third grade, Jiayu and her best friend had schemed to win a yearlong contest that consisted of doing good deeds, and they decided that they would visit Granny Brave every day, cleaning her house, running errands for her, preparing simple meals, and listening to her reminisce about her legendary war years. She waved them away the first two times they came, and when they persevered she chased them out with a broom. If they dared to show up again, she admonished, she would report them to the school as harassers of a veteran revolutionary. Oh, such humiliation, such injustice, Jiayu thought now, feeling, for the first time in a long while, the urge to laugh. She remembered that, the day after Granny Brave’s threat, she and her friend had dug up ten earthworms and hurled them into the old woman’s yard.
三年级时，佳瑜和她最好的朋友策划进行为期一年的比赛，其中包括做好事，她们决定每天去看英勇奶奶，给她打扫屋子，跑跑腿，做点简单的饭，听她回忆战争岁月的传奇故事。她们头两次去，奶奶招手让她们离开，后来就用笤帚轰。她告诫说，要再敢来，就告到学校去，说她们骚扰老革命。哦，佳瑜现在想起来，这种羞辱，这种不公，这么久了头一回让人想笑。她记得，英勇奶奶发出威胁第二天，她和她的朋友就挖了十条毛毛虫，扔到老妇人的院子里去了。
Oh, what fun to relive the years of the young and the undefeated.
啊，再次生活在从没被打败过的年轻人的时光中多有趣。
Or to retrace the lives of the old and the accomplished. Of all the people on her list, Jiayu was most often drawn back to her grandfather. He had lived a long and happy life and had died at the age of a hundred and one. He had been a good husband to his wife, a loving father to his eight children, affectionate and fair to all his grandchildren. He had not cried when Min’s little girl died but had given each of his great-grandchildren born after that a silver longevity lock—a pendant with “A Hundred Years of Long Life” engraved on one side and “Wealthy, Lucky, Safe, and Peaceful” on the other—to secure their fragile existence.
或是看看那些功成名就的老年人的生活。清单所有人中，佳瑜经常回想起她外祖父。他长寿幸福，101岁才过世。对妻子而言，他是个好丈夫；对八个子女而言，是个好父亲，对所有孙辈而言，是个和蔼平和的爷爷。敏的小姑娘死时，他没哭，但此后每个曾孙辈出生，他都送一把银制的长寿锁，一边刻着“长命百岁”，另一边刻着”富有、幸运、平安、祥和“，保着小娃们的平安。
In his old age, after the death of his wife, he had spent part of his time living with each of his children and part travelling alone, sometimes stopping by the homes of those grandchildren who had established families of their own. Because Jiayu’s mother was the youngest of the siblings, her family often received her grandfather in August. Never did the visit extend beyond a few weeks. He did not allow himself to become a nuisance to anyone.
晚年丧妻后，他部分时间同子女们同住，也会自己旅行，有时会造访已经成家的孙辈。因为佳瑜的母亲是最小的，她家经常在8月接待外祖父。外祖父最多住几周。他不让自己给别人添麻烦。
Her grandfather’s life alone would make a good memory lane, Jiayu thought. His stay had usually overlapped with her summer holiday, and she had been his companion on his morning jogs, evening strolls, and many outings to the palaces and the parks of Beijing.
佳瑜想，外祖父的生活应该有一条美好的记忆线。他来家里是常逢自己放暑假，她陪外祖父晨跑，晚上遛弯，还去北京很多宫殿和公园远足。
She could, while sitting in front of the computer, walk down memory lane in the Summer Palace or the Forbidden City, as long as she followed the never-changing routes: from a round pavilion to an octagonal pavilion, from an arched stone bridge to an arched wooden bridge, from a koi pond with lily pads to a koi pond without lily pads.
坐在电脑前，她能再颐和园或紫禁城一路沿着记忆线走下去，只要她沿着不变的路线：从一个圆亭到一个八角亭，从一座石拱桥到一座木拱桥，从有莲叶的一洼锦鲤池到没有莲叶的一洼锦鲤池。
On the hottest days, they had remained at home, sitting in the shade of the scholar tree in the yard, her grandfather pouring tea for himself from a tin pot kept cool in a basin of water, Jiayu hunting for inchworms among the low-hanging branches. The transistor radio he had given her they kept at low volume, but when they tired of readjusting the dial they left it to broadcast static. Sometimes her grandfather dozed off. Only then would Jiayu pick out one of the coins he’d given her and go buy an ice pop.
最热的几天里，他们就呆在家，坐在院子里大槐树的树荫下，外祖父自己从一个凉在水盆中的锡壶里倒茶，佳瑜在低垂的树枝上找毛毛虫。外祖父送给她的晶体管收音机放低了音量，可他们懒得再拨表盘时，就让它放送着静电音。有时外祖父会打个盹。只有这时，佳瑜才会拿出他给她的一个钢镚儿，去买个冰棍儿。
Every summer before her grandfather’s arrival, her mother would talk to herself as she readied his room. Each visit is one visit fewer in this life, she said. At his age, you never know if there will be a next time. After years of teaching at the school for the deaf and the mute, she had developed a habit of speaking her thoughts aloud, forgetting that the world could hear what she said.
每年夏天外祖父到来前，母亲都会边打扫屋子，边自言自语。她说，来一次少一次了。他这把年纪，你说不好还有没有下一次了。在学校教了多年聋哑人，她养成了把所思所想大声说出来的习惯，忘了世界还能听得到她说的话。
Jiayu heard everything. A more sensitive child might have worried herself sleepless or watched her grandfather’s every movement with anxiety. But nothing about him had indicated ill health. After a day or two, it was hard not to believe that he was going to live forever.
佳瑜全都听到了。一个再敏感些的孩子可能会担心睡不着觉，或是担心地看着外祖父的每一个动作。但他毫无身体欠佳的迹象。一两天后，很难不去相信，他准备要长生不老呢。
All things had seemed in order under that scholar tree. Jiayu was an ordinary child, easily contented; her grandfather, a man with a well-lived life. Life was supposed to be like that, each generation reaching a gracious end when it was their turn. Yet this order, disturbed by Evan’s death, made Jiayu uneasy. If she had taken it for granted that Evan would lead a long and happy life, like her grandfather, could she not have made similar mistakes in blindly taking everything for granted?
槐树下，一切看起来都井井有条。佳瑜是个普通孩子，很容易满足；外祖父是个长寿的男人。生活感觉就是如此，每一代人都会在该结束的时候安详而去。可伊文的死扰乱了这种秩序，这让佳瑜感到不安。如果她认为伊文要幸福长寿这是理所当然的事，正像她外祖父一样，难道她不会犯类似的错误，盲目地认为一切都理所当然吗？
Then two more deaths showed up for her list one day, a mother and a daughter, neither name known to her. This so startled Jiayu that she thought her heart, already brittle, could no longer remain a steady organ inside her. For days afterward, she lived in a trance, fearing the inaccuracies of memory, excavating the archeology of her childhood, the fragments like small pieces of bone, delicate and dusty.
有一天，她的名单多了两个死者，一个母亲和一个女儿，两人的名字她都不知道。这让佳瑜感到震惊，以至于认为自己已经很脆弱的心脏不再是体内的一个稳定器官了。几天里，她恍恍惚惚，担心记忆不太真切，把儿时的陈年旧事都翻腾出来，不过是些陈芝麻烂谷子的碎片。
It was on one of their evening walks that Jiayu and her grandfather had met the woman and her two daughters, the older one Jiayu’s age, the younger one still in a bamboo stroller. That there had been two girls Jiayu was certain. And that there had been a bamboo stroller. She and the other girl took turns pushing it around while Jiayu’s grandfather and the girls’ mother sat on a bench nearby.
那是一天晚上散步时，佳瑜和她外祖父碰到这个女人和她的两个女儿，大女儿与佳瑜年纪仿佛，小女儿还坐在竹推车里。佳瑜肯定是两个女儿，肯定有个竹推车。她和另一个女孩轮流推车，佳瑜的外祖父和女儿们的妈妈坐在旁边的长椅上。
Jiayu had turned five earlier that spring, and she carried the transistor radio with her everywhere. The girl who was to be her playmate for a few weeks asked to see the radio, and Jiayu showed her the on-and-off switch, the dials for changing the frequency and the volume, and the collapsible antenna, which they pulled out and pretended was a fishing pole. The girl in the stroller, who, in their play, was the fish to be caught, held her hands up and cried, but they kept the end of the antenna just out of her reach. All these things Jiayu remembered now. The pot-lid haircuts of both sisters she could see. And her own favorite dress, a yellow sleeveless smock with sunflowers embroidered around the hem.
佳瑜那年春天五岁了，她拿着收音机到处跑。几周来和她一起玩的女孩想看看收音机，佳瑜演示了开关、调频和调音，还有可折叠的天线，她们抽出来假装是鱼竿。推车里的女孩是她们要钓的鱼，小姑娘举起手来哭，可她们就是不让她够到。佳瑜还记得这一切。两个女孩都剃了锅盖头。她穿着自己最喜欢的裙子，绣着向日葵褶边的黄色无袖裙。
Then the younger girl disappeared, along with the stroller. It happened that same summer, but Jiayu could not remember exactly when. One day, she and the older sister climbed up onto a rock next to a man-made lake, where the girl said that her sister had died but didn’t say how. Without the little sister to be the fish, Jiayu and the girl did not have a game to play that day. They stayed on the rock listening to the radio, Jiayu remembered, taking care not to drop the radio from that height, and watching the girl’s mother and Jiayu’s grandfather on the bench. Was the woman telling him the news with tears, or with dry eyes? Was he, despite maintaining the proper distance between an older man and a young mother, imagining her hands in his?
一转眼，小女孩和推车就消失了，就在那个夏天，佳瑜记不住具体哪天了。有一天，她和小姐姐爬上人工湖旁边的一块石头，女孩说她妹妹死了，但没说怎么死的。没有小妹妹当鱼，佳瑜和小姐姐当天也没得玩。佳瑜记忆中，她们坐在石头上听广播，仔细不把收音机掉下去，佳瑜看见女孩的妈妈和佳瑜的祖父坐在长椅上。那个女人在和他流泪诉说吗？还是没有流泪？尽管一个老人和一个年轻女子彼此距离合宜，他在想象自己握着她的手吗？
And soon came the storm in the house. It was the only time Jiayu had seen her mother lose her temper with her grandfather. Impossible, she had called him. Crazy, she had called the woman. What would people think, she had yelled, a man of his age and a woman young enough to be his granddaughter?
不久后家里就吵起来了。这是佳瑜唯一一次看到母亲和外祖父发脾气。不可能，她这样说外祖父。疯了，她这样说那个女人。人们会怎么想，她嚷嚷着，他这么大年纪的人，一个能当他孙女的年轻女子。
It could not have been only financial support that he had wanted to give the woman, Jiayu thought now, as he could have given her money without letting anyone know. Was it a marriage, or a less conventional arrangement, he was proposing? Had he envisioned altering his widower’s life out of pity for a widow and mother who had lost too much, or out of affection for a woman who had brightened a summer as his life approached its curtain call, or, perhaps, out of a loneliness that his many children and grandchildren could not entirely alleviate? Jiayu did not dare to answer any of these questions. An answer was unnecessary when a question asked was enough to give the past another name.
佳瑜现在想，原因不该只是因为他想给这个女人以经济支持，他可以不让任何人知道就给她钱。他是否说要结婚，或是一种不那么传统的关系？他设想要改变一个鳏夫的生活，只是出于怜悯一个寡妇和一个丧失惨重的母亲，抑或在生命即将拉下帷幕时的一个夏天为一个女人付出柔情，抑或是众多子女和孙辈都无法完全慰藉的孤独？问一个足以让逝者别有他名的问题，给出答案是没有必要的。
The summer after that had been eventless, as were those that followed. As always, Jiayu and her grandfather walked the city, but they did not run into the woman and her remaining daughter again. A few years later, the girl transferred to Jiayu’s school. Jiayu recognized her right away, but the girl didn’t seem to remember Jiayu. The story was that the girl’s mother had died, and the girl now lived with an uncle and an aunt, the latter a distant cousin of her mother’s. The couple had given her a new name, which Jiayu now remembered—memory could be tightfisted with the past and then, without warning, open the floodgate. Shuchang, the girl was called, a name with two characters, meaning “happy and carefree.” The couple who had adopted the girl must have had some hope for her. Jiayu realized that she had not known and would never know the girl’s old name, when she had been her mother’s daughter.
事后的那年夏天风平浪静，此后也是如此。一如既往，佳瑜和他的外祖父照样四处溜达，却再也没碰到那个女人和她还活着的那个女儿。几年后，这个女生转学到佳瑜的学校。佳瑜立马认出她来了，但这个女儿看起来不记得佳瑜了。结果这个女孩的母亲死了，女孩现在和舅舅和舅妈一起过，舅妈是她母亲的一个远房表亲。夫妇俩给她起了新名字，佳瑜现在还记得，对过去的记忆总是很吝啬，可毫无警告的情况下，就打开闸门。这个女孩叫舒畅，意思是”幸福和无忧无虑“。收养女孩儿的夫妇俩肯定对她有所希望。佳瑜意识到她不记得也永远不会记得这个女孩以前的名字了，她还是母亲的女儿时用的名字。
Jiayu’s grandfather had died when she was in college. Only then did she learn that he had had a wife before her grandmother. That wife had killed herself when their only son died, as an infant, of diphtheria. This knowledge, learned too late, had been boxed up by Jiayu as distant—ancient—history, and she had not imagined that family of three until now.
佳瑜的外祖父在她上大学时过世了。那时她才知道娶外祖母前，他还有一任妻子。他们唯一的儿子小时候因白喉病故后，那个妻子自杀了。佳瑜多年后才得知此事，这被当做一件久远的、古代的历史，直到现在她才想象得出外祖父那个三人家庭。
If life was an antechamber to death, death was an antechamber, too—to other lives. She thought about the rock by the man-made lake, from which she and the girl had watched the man and the woman on the bench. It had taken her child’s death for Jiayu to mourn her grandfather again, this time as the young man who had buried his wife and child. She would not say it was late, though. True grief, beginning with disbelief and often ending elsewhere, was never too late.
如果生命是死亡的前厅，死亡也是其他生命的前厅。她想到那个人造湖旁的石头，她和女孩坐在石头上，看着一个男人和一个女人坐在长椅上。是她孩子的死让佳瑜再次为外祖父哀悼，这回又是一个年轻男人埋了他的妻子和孩子。但她不会说这来得太晚了。真正的悲哀，起于难以置信，常常终于他处，真正的悲哀，从来都不会来得太晚。
小说题目 | When We Were Happy, We Have Other Names
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