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	Introduction When you're traveling in India—especially through holy sites and Ashrams—you see a lot of people wearing beads around their necks. You also see a lot of old photographs of naked, skinny and intimidating Yogis (or sometimes even plump, kindly and radiant Yogis) wearing beads, too. These strings of beads are called japa malas. They have been used in India for centuries to assist devout Hindus and Buddhists in staying focused during prayerful meditation. The necklace is held in one hand and fingered in a circle—one bead touched for every repetition of mantra. When the medieval Crusaders drove East for the holy wars, they witnessed worshippers praying with these japa malas, admired the technique, and brought the idea home to Europe as rosary. The traditional japa mala is strung with 108 beads. Amid the more esoteric circles of Eastern philosophers, the number 108 is held to be most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to nine, which is three threes. And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see. Being as this whole book is about my efforts to find balance, I have decided to structure it like a japa mala, dividing my story into 108 tales, or beads. This string of 108 tales is further divided into three sections about Italy, India and Indonesia—the three countries I visited during this year of self-inquiry. This division means that there are 36 tales in each section, which appeals to me on a personal level because I am writing all this during my thirty-sixth year. Now before I get too Louis Farrakhan here with this numerology business, let me conclude by saying that I also like the idea of stringing these stories along the structure of a japa mala because it is so . . . structured. Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all. As both a seeker and a writer, I find it helpful to hang on to the beads as much as possible, the better to keep my attention focused on what it is I'm trying to accomplish. In any case, every japa mala has a special, extra bead—the 109th bead—which dangles outside that balanced circle of 108 like a pendant. I used to think the 109th bead was an emergency spare, like the extra button on a fancy sweater, or the youngest son in a royal family. But apparently there is an even higher purpose. When your fingers reach this marker during prayer, you are meant to pause from your absorption in meditation and thank your teachers. So here, at my own 109th bead, I pause before I even begin. I offer thanks to all my teachers, who have appeared before me this year in so many curious forms. But most especially I thank my Guru, who is compassion's very heartbeat, and who so generously permitted me to study at her Ashram while I was in India. This is also the moment where I would like to clarify that I write about my experiences in India purely from a personal standpoint and not as a theological scholar or as anybody's official spokesperson. This is why I will not be using my Guru's name throughout this book—because I cannot speak for her. Her teachings speak best for themselves. Nor will I reveal either the name or the location of her Ashram, thereby sparing that fine institution publicity which it may have neither the interest in nor the resources for managing. One final expression of gratitude: While scattered names throughout this book have been changed for various reasons, I've elected to change the names of every single person I met—both Indian and Western—at this Ashram in India. This is out of respect for the fact that most people don't go on a spiritual pilgrimage in order to appear later as a character in a book. (Unless, of course, they are me.) I've made only one exception to this self-imposed policy of anonymity. Richard from Texas really is named Richard, and he really is from Texas. I wanted to use his real name because he was so important to me when I was in India. One last thing—when I asked Richard if it was OK with him if I mentioned in my book that he used to be a junkie and a drunk, he said that would be totally fine. He said, "I'd been trying to figure out how to get the word out about that, anyhow." But first—Italy . . . Eat, Pray, Love Eat, Pray, Love

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[table=80%,#ffffff,#548dd4,3][tr][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][/tr][tr][td] [/td][td]《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 1 (1):遇见意大利美男



I wish Giovanni would kiss me.
但愿乔凡尼（Giovanni）可以吻我。


Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and—like most Italian guys in their twenties—he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am aprofessional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old. Purely as a matter of principle I wouldn't inflict my sorry, busted-up old self on the lovely, unsullied Giovanni. Not to mention that I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy.
哦，不过有太多原因表明 ，这是个恐怖的念头。首先 ，乔凡尼比我小十岁，而且— —和大多数二十来岁的意大利男人一样——他仍和妈妈住在一起。单凭这些事情，他就不是个恰当的恋人人选。尤其因为我是一位三十岁过半的美国职业女性 ，在刚刚经历失败的婚姻和没完没了的惨烈离婚过程后 ， 紧接着又来了一场以心碎告终的炽热恋情。这双重耗损使我感到悲伤脆弱，觉得自己像七千岁。纯粹出于原则问题，我不想把自己这样一团糟的可怜老女人，强加于清白可爱的乔凡尼身上。更甭说我这种年纪的女人已经开始会质疑，失去了一个褐眼年轻美男子 ，最明智的遗忘方式是否就是马上邀请另一个上床 。这就是我已独处数月的理由 。事实上，这正是我决定这一整年过独身生活的原因。


To which the savvy observer might inquire: "Then why did you come to Italy?"
机敏的观察者或许要问：“那你干嘛来意大利？”


To which I can only reply—especially when looking across the table at handsome Giovanni—"Excellent question."
我只能回答——尤其隔着桌子注视着俊俏的乔凡尼——“问得好”。


Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it's not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other's languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I'd arrived in Rome, thanks to that big Internet café at the Piazza Barbarini, across the street from that fountain with thesculpture of that sexy merman blowing into his conch shell. He (Giovanni, that is—not the merman) had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for-word identical in every way, right down to the typeface. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same.
乔凡尼是我的“串连交流伙伴”。这词听来颇具影射意味，可惜不然。它真正的意思是 ，我们每个礼拜在罗马此地见几个晚上的面 ，练习对方的语言。我们先以意大利语交谈，他宽容我；而后我们以英语交谈，我宽容他。我在抵达罗马几个礼拜后找到乔凡尼，多亏巴巴里尼广场（PiazzaBarbarini）的一家大网吧，就在吹海螺的性感男人鱼雕像喷泉对街。他（这指的是乔凡尼，而不是男人鱼）在布告板上贴了张传单，说有个操意大利母语的人想找以英文为母语的人练习语言会话 。在他的启事旁边有另一张传单，做出相同的寻人请求，逐字逐句、连打印字体都一模一样 。唯一不同的是联络资料。一张传单列出某某乔凡尼的电邮地址；另一张则介绍某个叫达里奥（Dario）的人。不过两人的住家电话则都一样。


Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, "Are you perhaps brothers?"
运用敏锐的直觉力 ，我同时寄给两人电子邮件，用意大利文问道 ：“敢情你们是兄弟？”


It was Giovanni who wrote back this very provocativo message: "Even better. Twins!"
乔凡尼回复了一句相当挑逗的话：“更好咧。是双胞胎。”


Yes—much better. Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year-old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. After meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless . . . I was already composing my letter to Penthouse:
是啊 ，好得多 。结果是两位身材高大、肤色浅黑、相貌英俊的二十五岁同卵双胞胎 ，水汪汪的意大利褐眼使我全身瘫软 。亲眼见到两名大男孩后 ，我开始盘算是否应该调整一下今年过独身生活的规定。比方说，或许我该全然保持独身，除了留着一对帅气的二十五岁意大利双胞胎当情人 。这有点像我一个吃素的朋友只吃腌肉。然而„„我已开始给 《阁楼》杂志写起信来：


In the flickering, candlelit shadows of the Roman café, it was impossible to tell whose hands werecaress—
在罗马咖啡馆摇曳的烛影下，无法分辨谁的手 在抚摸——






《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 1 (2):无尽的花痴中



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But, no.
但是，不行。


No and no.
不行，不行。


I chopped the fantasy off in mid-word. This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.
我截断自己的幻想。这可不是我追求浪漫的时刻，让已然纷乱不堪的生活更加复杂（会像白日跟着黑夜而来一般）。此刻我要寻找的治疗与平静，只来自于孤独。


Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, the shy, studious Giovanni and I have become dear buddies. As for Dario—the more razzle-dazzle swinger brother of the two—I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and how they've been sharing their evenings in Rome is another kind of Tandem Exchange altogether. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentlegrammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception. A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.
反正，11 月中旬的此时，害羞又用功的乔凡尼已和我成为好友。至于达里奥——在两兄弟中较为狂野新潮——已被我介绍给我那迷人的瑞典女友苏菲，他们俩如何共享他们的罗马之夜，可完全是另一种“串连交流”。但乔凡尼和我 ，我们仅止于说话而已。好吧，我们除了说话，还吃东西 。我们吃吃说说，已度过好几个愉快的星期 ，共同分享比萨饼以及友善的文法纠正，而今天也不例外 。一个由新成语和新鲜起司所构成的愉快夜晚。


Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome, which meander organically around the ancient buildings like bayou streams snaking around shadowy clumps of cypress groves. Now we are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug. This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice to kiss me. On the other hand, he might just kiss me right now, tonight, right here by my door . . . there’s still a chance . . . I mean we're pressed up against each other's bodies beneath this moonlight . . . and of course it would be a terrible mistake . . . but it’s still such a wonderful possibility that he might actually do it right now . . . that he might just bend down . . . and . . . and . . .
午夜此时 ，雾气弥漫，乔凡尼陪我走回我住的公寓；我们穿过罗马的僻静街巷，这些小巷迂回绕过古老的建筑 ，犹如小溪流蜿蜒绕过幽暗的柏树丛。此刻我们来到我的住处门口。我们面对面，他温暖地拥抱我一下。这有改进；头几个礼拜，他只跟我握手 。我想我如果在意大利再多待三年，他可能真有吻我的动力。另一方面，他大可现在吻我，今晚，就在门口这儿？还有机会？我是说 ，我们在这般的月光下贴近彼此的身体？当然，那会是个可怕的错误？但他现在仍大有可能这么做？他也许会低下头来？然后？接着？ Nope. 啥也没发生。


He separates himself from the embrace.
他从拥抱中分开来。


"Good night, my dear Liz," he says.
“晚安，亲爱的小莉。”他说。


"Buona notte, caro mio," I reply.
“晚安，亲爱的。”我回道。


I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night’s sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrasebooks and dictionaries.
我独自走上四楼公寓。我独自走进我的小斗室。关上身后的门。又一个孤零零的就寝时间 ，又一个罗马的漫漫长夜，床上除了一叠意大利成语手册和辞典之外，没有别人，也没有别的东西。


I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.
我独自一人，孤孤单单，孤独无偶。


Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks.
领会到此一事实的我，放下提包，跪下来，额头磕在地板上。我热忱地对上苍献上感谢的祷告。


First in English.
先念英语祷告。


Then in Italian.
再念意大利语。


And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit. Eat, Pray, Love
接着——为使人信服起见 ——念梵语。








《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 2 (3):我不想要孩子



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And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began —a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.
既已跪在地上祈祷，让我保持这个姿势，回溯到三年前，这整则故事开始的时刻——那时的我也一样跪在地上祈祷。


Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I'd recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o'clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and—just as during all those nights before—I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, averitable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and con-fusion and grief.
然而在三年前的场景中，一切大不相同。当时的我不在罗马 ，而是在纽约郊区那栋跟我先生才买下不久的大房子的楼上浴室里。寒冷的十一月，凌晨三点。我先生睡在我们的床上，我躲在浴室内。大约 持续了四十七个晚上，就像之前的那些夜晚， 我在啜泣。痛苦的呜咽，使得一汪眼泪、鼻涕在我眼前的浴室地板上蔓延开来，形成一小滩羞愧、恐惧、困惑与哀伤的湖水。


I don't want to be married anymore.
我不想再待在婚姻中。


I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.
我拼命让自己漠视此事，然而实情却不断地向我逼来。


I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house. I don't want to have a baby.
我不想再待在婚姻中。我不想住在这栋大房子里。我不想生孩子。


But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six—had built our entire life around the commonexpectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of trav-eling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairlyaccurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn't—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn't happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn't there. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breastfeeding her firstborn: "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you com-mit."
但是照说我应当想生孩子的。我三十一岁。我先生和我——我们在一起的时间已八年，结婚已六年——一生的共同期望是，在过了“老态龙钟”的三十岁后，我愿意定下心来养儿育女。我们双方都预料，到时候我开始厌倦旅行，乐于住在一个忙碌的大家庭里，家里塞满孩子和自制拼被，后院有花园，炉子上炖着一锅温馨的食物。（这一幅对我母亲的准确写照，是一个生动的指标；它指出要在我自己 和抚养我的女强人之间作出区分，对我而言是多么困难。）然而我震惊地发现，自己一点都不想要这些东西。反而，在我的二十几岁年代要走入尾声，将面临死刑般的“三十”大限时，我发现自己不想 怀孕。我一直等着想生孩子，却没有发生。相信我，我知道想要一样东西的感觉；我深知渴望是什么感受。但我感受不到。再说，我不断想起我姐姐在哺育第一胎时告诉过我的话“生小孩就像在你脸上 刺青。做之前一定得确定你想这么做。”


How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was ex-periencingpsychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bath-room: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live . . .
但现在我怎能挽回？一切都已定案。照说这就是那一年。事实上，我们尝试怀孕已有好几个月。然而什么事也没发生（除了——像是对怀孕的反讽——我经历到心理因素影响的害喜，每天都神经质地把 早餐吐出来）。每个月大姨妈来的时候，我都在浴室里暗自低语：谢天谢地，谢天谢地 ，让我多活一个月……








《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 2 (4):我也不想要婚姻了



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I'd been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they're trying to get pregnant, I'd decided. ("Ambivalent" was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: "utterly consumed with dread.") I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary—such as the acquaintanceI'd run into last week who'd just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king's ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she'd been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn't find them. I sawthe joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignmentto New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, "Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby."
我试图说服自己这很正常。我推断，每个女人在尝试怀孕的时候，都一定有过这样的感受。（我用的词是“情绪矛盾”，避免使用更精确的描述：“充满恐惧”。）我试着安慰自己说，我的心情没啥异常，尽管全部证据都与此相反 ——比方上周巧遇的一个朋友，在花了两年时间、散尽大把钞票接受人工受孕，刚发现自己第一次怀孕后。她欣喜若狂地告诉我，她始终梦想成为人母。她承认自己多年来暗自买婴儿衣服，藏在床底下，免得被丈夫发现。她脸上的喜悦，我看得出来。那正是去年春天在我脸上绽放的那种喜悦；那一天，我得知我服务的杂志社即将派我去新西兰，写一篇有关寻找巨型鱿鱼的文章。我心想：“等到我对生孩子的感觉，像要去新西兰找巨型鱿鱼一样欣喜若狂的时候，才生小孩。”


I don't want to be married anymore.
我不想再待在婚姻中。


In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a cata-strophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated—the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming theaisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinnerand the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and—somewhere in my stolen moments—a writer . . .?
白天的时候，我拒绝想及这个念头，但到了夜幕降临，这念头却又啃噬着我。好一场灾难。我怎么如此浑蛋，深入婚姻，却又决定放弃？我们才在一年前买下这栋房子。我难道不想要这栋美丽的房子？我难道不爱它？那我现在为何每晚在门厅间出没时，嚎叫有如疯妇？我难道不对我们所积聚的一切——哈德逊谷（HudsonValley）的名居、曼哈顿的公寓、八条电话线、朋友、野餐、派对、周末漫步于我们选择的大型超市的过道、刷卡购买更多家用品——感到自豪？我主动参与创造这种生活的每时每刻当中——那为什么我觉得这一切根本就不 像我？为什么我觉得不胜重担，再也无法忍受负担 家计、理家、亲友往来、蹓狗、做贤妻良母，甚至在偷闲时刻写作……？


I don't want to be married anymore.
我不想再待在婚姻中。


My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress—what would be the point? He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him.We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he’d been losing patience with it. We'd been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees.
我先生在另一个房间里，睡在我们的床上。我一半爱他，却又受不了他。我不能叫醒他，要他分担我的痛苦——那有什么意义？几个月来，他见我陷于崩溃，眼看我的行为有如疯妇（我俩对此用词意见一致），我只是让他疲惫不堪。我们两人都知道“我出了问题”，而他已渐渐失去耐心。我们吵架、哭喊，我们感到厌倦，只有婚姻陷入破裂的夫妇才感受的厌倦。我们的眼神有如难民。


The many reasons I didn't want to be this man's wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. Muchof it had to do with my problems, but a good portion of our troubles wererelated to his issues, as well. That's only natural; there are always two figures in a marriage, after all—two votes, two opinions, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. But I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss his issues in my book. Nor would I ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriage's failure will remain untold here. I also will not discuss here all the reasons why I did still want to be his wife, or all his wonderfulness, or why I loved him and why I had married him and why I was unable to imagine life without him. I won't open any of that. Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
我之所以不想再做这个男人的妻子，涉及种种私人、伤心的原因，难以在此分享。绝大部分涉及我的问题，但我们的困境也很大程度和他有关。这并不奇怪；毕竟婚姻中总是存在两个人——两张票，两个意见，两种相互矛盾的决定、欲求与限制。然而，在我的书中探讨他的问题并不妥当。我也不要求任何人相信我能公正无私地报道我们的故事，因此在此略过讲述我们失败婚姻的前因。我也不愿在此讨论我真的曾经想继续做他妻子、他种种的好、 我为何爱他而嫁给他、为何无法想象没有他的生活等一切的原因。我不想打开这些话题。让我们这么说吧，这天晚上，他仍是我的灯塔，也同时是我的包袱。不离开比离开更难以想象；离开比不离开更不可能。我不想毁了任何东西或任何人。我只想从后门悄悄溜走，不惹出任何麻烦或导致任何后果，毫不停歇地奔向世界的尽头。


This part of my story is not a happy one, I know. But I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life—almost like one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and its molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shaperadically, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical. Something like that.
这部分的故事并不快乐，我明白。但我之所以在此分享，是因为在浴室地板上即将发生的事，将永久改变我的生命进程 ——几乎就像一颗行星毫无来由地在太空中猝然翻转这类天文大事一般，其熔心变动、两极迁移、形状大幅变形，使整个行星突然变成长方形，不再是球形。就像这样。


What happened was that I started to pray.
You know—like, to God.
Eat, Pray, Love
发生的事情是：我开始祈祷。
你知道— —就是向神祷告那样。








《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 3 (5):我心目中的神



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Now, this was a first for me. And since this is the first time I have introduced that loaded word—GOD—into my book, and since this is a word which will appear many times again throughout these pages, it seems only fair that I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get.
这对我来说可是头一遭。既然我首次把这个沉重的字眼——神——引进本书，既然这个字眼将在本书中重复出现多次，请容我在此停顿片刻，原原本本地解说我提及这个字眼时意指为何，以便让大家能立刻决定自己会被触怒的程度。


Saving for later the argument about whether God exists at all (no—here's a better idea: let's skipthat argument completely), let me first explain why I use the word God, when I could just as easily use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus. Alternatively, I could call God "That," which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced. But that "That" feelsimpersonal to me—a thing, not a being—and I myself cannot pray to a That. I need a proper name, in order to fully sense a personal attendance. For this same reason, when I pray, I do notaddress my prayers to The Universe, The Great Void, The Force, The Supreme Self, The Whole, The Creator, The Light, The Higher Power, or even the most poet-ic manifestation of God’s name, taken, I believe, from the Gnostic gospels: "The Shadow of the Turning."
把神是否存在的论点留待稍后（不 ——我有个更好的主意：干脆跳过这一点 ），容我先行说明使用“神”这个字的原因，而我原本是可以使用“耶和华”“阿拉”“湿婆”“梵天”“毗湿奴 ”或“宙斯”等这些名称的。或者我可以把神称为“那东西 ”，在古梵语经文中正是如此称呼，而我认为这很接近自己时而体验到的那种无所不包、不可名状的实体。然而“那东西”让我觉得没有人味——一种非人的东西——而就我个人而言 ，我是无法对一个“东西”祈祷的。我需要一个确切的名称，以便能完全感觉到一种随侍在侧、属人的气质。同理，在我祈祷时，祷词的对象并非“宇宙”“太虚”“原力”“至高者”“全灵”“造物主”“灵光”“大能”，或选自诺斯底福音书（Gnosticgospels）、我认为最富诗意的神名：“峰回路转的阴影”。


I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equallyadequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. But we each do need a functionalname for this indescribability, and "God" is the name that feels the most warm to me, so that’s what I use. I should also confess that I generally refer to God as "Him," which doesn't bother me because, to my mind, it's just a convenient personalizing pronoun, not a precise anatomicaldescription or a cause for revolution. Of course, I don’t mind if people call God "Her," and Iunderstand the urge to do so. Again—to me, these are both equal terms, equally adequate andinadequate. Though I do think the capitalization of either pronoun is a nice touch, a small politeness in the presence of the divine.
我并不反对使用这些词。我觉得它们一律平等，因为其既适用、亦不适用于描述无可名状的东西。不过我们每个人都需要一个功能性的名称，来指称这无可名状之对象。而“神 ”这个名称，让我觉得最温暖，于是我用它。我也得承认，基本上我把神称作“他”（Him），这对我并不费事，在我脑海里，这只是一种方便的个人化代词，并非某种确切的解剖学描述或革命的理由。当然，若有人称作“她”Her，我也不介意，我能了解想这么称呼的冲动。我还是要说，这两者对我来说都是平等的词儿，既恰当，也不恰当。不过，我认为两个代词大写是不错的表示，是对神的存在略表敬意。








《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 3 (6):我的信仰



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Culturally, though not theologically, I'm a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Je-sus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can't swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God.Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christi-ans I know don't speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business.
就文化上而言，虽然并非从神学上来说，我是基督徒。我生为盎格鲁撒克逊白人的新教教徒。我虽爱名叫耶稣的和平良师，我虽也保留权利，在身处困境之时自问他能做什么，但我却无法忍受基督教的既定规则，坚称基督是通往神的“唯一”途径。因此严格说来，我不能自称基督徒。我认识的大部分基督徒都大方豁达地接受我这种感受。不过我认识的这些大部分基督徒，其关于神的说法也并不严格。对于那些说法（和想法）严格的人，我只能对造成任何情感方面的伤害表示遗憾，并请求他们的原谅。


Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in adogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed—much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond withgratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them.
通常 ，我响应每一种宗教的超然神秘仪式。只要哪个人说神不住在教条的经文中或遥远的天边宝座上，而是与我们比邻而居，比我们想象中更接近，在我们的心中生息，向来都令我屏息热切响应。我深深感激那些曾经停靠在那颗心，而后返回世界，向我们报告神是 “至爱体验”的所有人士。在世界上的一切宗教传统中，向来有抱持神秘主义的圣徒与仙人，他们所报道的正是这种体验。不幸的是，他们许多人的下场是被捕、丧命 ，然而我仍认为他们很了不起。


In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It's like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, "What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God."
Eat, Pray, Love
最终，我对神的信念很简单。类似这样——我养过一条大狗 ，它来自动物收容所，它是十个品种的混种，但似乎遗传到每个品种的最佳特点。它是棕狗。每逢有人问我“它是哪种狗”的时候，我总是给一样的回答：“它是只棕狗。”同样地，当有人提问“你信哪种神”时，我的回答很简单：“我信仰至高无上的神。”






《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 4 (7):只能祈祷



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Of course, I've had a lot of time to formulate my opinions about divinity since that night on the bathroom floor when I spoke to God directly for the first time. In the middle of that dark November crisis, though, I was not interested in formulating my views on theology. I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopeless and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I’d read that in a book somewhere.
当然，从在浴室地板上首次直接与神说话的那晚以来，我有许多时间可以阐明我对神的想法。尽管在那黑暗的十一月危机期间，我并无兴趣探明我的神学看法。我只想拯救我的生活。我终于留意到，我似乎已经来到某种无可救药、危及生命的绝望状态之中。我想到，处在此种状态下的人，有时会尝试向神求援。我想我曾在什么书中读过这样的例子。


What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: "Hello, God. How are you? I'm Liz. It's nice to meet you."
在我喘息的呜咽中，我跟神的对话，类似这样：“哈啰，神啊。您

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[table=80%,#ffffff,#548dd4,2][tr][td]《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 6 (11):分手以后
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Oh, but it wasn't all bad, those few years . . .
但那几年也并非全是坏事……


Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies (or however the old adage goes), some wonderful things did happen to me in the shadow of all that sorrow. For one thing, I finally started learning Italian. Also, I found an Indian Guru. Lastly, I was invited by an elderly medicine man to come and live with him in Indonesia.
因为当神把门往你脸上摔的时候，也会打开一盒女童军饼干（管它谚语怎么说）；在这些哀伤的阴影之中，我也遇到一些美妙的事情。首先，我终于开始学意大利语。此外，我找到一位印度精神导师。最后还有，一位老药师邀我去印尼同住。


I'll explain in sequence.
让我依序说明。


To begin with, things started to look up somewhat when I moved out of David's place in early 2002 and found an apartment of my own for the first time in my life. I couldn't afford it, since I was still paying for that big house in the suburbs which nobody was living in anymore and which my husband was forbidding me to sell, and I was still trying to stay on top of all my legal and counseling fees . . . but it was vital to my survival to have a One Bedroom of my own. I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital. My sister gave me a hot water bottle as a housewarming gift (so I wouldn’t have to be all alone in a cold bed) and I slept with the thing laid against my heart every night, as though nursing a sports injury.
首先，我在2002年初搬离大卫家，这辈子头一次找到属于自己的公寓时，情况开始稍有好转。但我付不起租金，因为我仍在支付郊区大房子的贷款，虽然房子里已无人居住，可是我先生不许我卖掉，此外还有诉讼费和咨询费……但拥有自己的套房公寓，对我的存活至关重要。这公寓像我的疗养院，一间使我康复的收容所。我把墙壁粉刷成我能找到的最温暖的颜色，每个礼拜给自己买花，仿佛去医院探望自己。我的姐姐送我一个热水袋做乔迁礼物（让我无须独自睡在冷冰冰的床上），让我每天晚上搁在心口上，好比护士照料运动伤害患者。


David and I had broken up for good. Or maybe we hadn't. It's hard to remember now how many times we broke up and joined up over those months. But there emerged a pattern: I wouldseparate from David, get my strength and confidence back, and then (attracted as always by my strength and confidence) his passion for me would rekindle. Respectfully, soberly and intelligently, we would discuss "trying again," always with some sane new plan for minimizing our apparentincompatibilities. We were so committed to solving this thing. Because how could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn't it? Reunited with fresh hopes, we'd share a few deliriously happy days together. Or sometimes even weeks. But eventuallyDavid would retreat from me once more and I would cling to him (or I would cling to him and he would retreat—we never could figure out how it got triggered) and I’d end up destroyed all over again. And he’d end up gone.
大卫和我永远分手了。或许也没有。如今已记不清那几个月来，我们分分合合多少次。但出现一种模式：我离开大卫，找回自己的力量和信心，而之后（他向来被我的力量和信心所吸引）他对我的热情又重新燃起。我们慎重、清醒而明智地讨论“再试一次”，总是实行某种合情合理的新计划，减少彼此明显的不相容处。我们努力解决这件事。因为两个如此相爱的人，最后怎么可能不过着幸福快乐的日子呢？非行得通不可，不是吗？我们怀着新希望重聚，共享几天欣喜若狂的日子。有时甚至几个星期。然而最终，大卫再一次退避，于是我又一次缠住他（或者我先缠住他，于是他避开我——我们从来搞不清楚是怎么引起的），然后我又一次被摧毁。最后他离我而去。


David was catnip and kryptonite to me.
大卫是我的猫草，我的U形锁。


But during those periods when we were separated, as hard as it was, I was practicing living alone. And this experience was bringing a nascent interior shift. I was beginning to sense that—even though my life still looked like a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike during holiday traffic—I was tottering on the brink of becoming a self-governing individual. When I wasn't feeling suicidal about my divorce, or suicidal about my drama with David, I was actually feeling kind of delighted about all the compartments of time and space that were appearing in my days, during which I could ask myself the radical new question: "What do you want to do, Liz?"
但是在我们分开期间，尽管艰难，我却学着独自生活。而此种经验带来了新兴的内在变化。我开始感觉到——尽管我的生活仍像是假日交通时段的高速公路连环车祸——我正颤颤巍巍地逐渐成为自治的个体。当我对我的离婚不再有自杀的念头时，当我对我和大卫之间的事件也不再有自杀的想法时，我居然对出现在生命中的时间和空间感到欢喜，让我得以在其中自问“小莉，你想做什么”这个全新的问题。


Most of the time (still so troubled from bailing out of my marriage) I didn't even dare to answer the question, but just thrilled privately to its existence. And when I finally started to answer, I did so cautiously. I would only allow myself to express little baby-step wants. Like:
在大多数时候（我仍对自己逃出婚姻感到心神不安），我根本不敢问这个问题，只是私底下激动地发现其存在。而当我终于开始回答时，我十分谨慎。 我只容许自己表达初级的需要。像是：


I want to go to a Yoga class.
我想上瑜伽课。


I want to leave this party early, so I can go home and read a novel.
我想离开这场派对，早点回家读小说。


I want to buy myself a new pencil box.
我想给自己买新铅笔盒。


Then there would always be that one weird answer, same every time:
还有一个屡试不爽的奇特回答：


I want to learn how to speak Italian.
我想学意大利语。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 6 (12):下一站意大利

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For years, I'd wished I could speak Italian—a language I find more beautiful than roses—but I could never make the practical justification for studying it. Why not just bone up on the French or Russian I'd already studied years ago? Or learn to speak Spanish, the better to help mecommunicate with millions of my fellow Americans? What was I going to do with Italian? It’s not like I was going to move there. It would be more practical to learn how to play the accordion.
多年来，我一直希望能讲意大利语——这语言的美让我觉得更甚于玫瑰——但我从来找不到实际的理由去学。何不去温习多年前学过的法语或俄语？或者学西班牙语 ；这更能帮助我和成千上万的美国同胞沟通？学意大利语干嘛？又不是要移居那里。不如学手风琴实际些。


But why must everything always have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years—working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? And it wasn't that outrageous a goal, anyway, to want to study a language. It's not like I was saying, at age thirty-two, "I want to become the principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet." Studying a language is something you can actually do. So I signed up for classes at one of those continuing education places (otherwise known as Night School for Divorced Ladies). My friends thought this was hilarious. My friend Nick asked, "Why are you studying Italian? So that—just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again, and is actually successful this time—you can brag about knowing a language that's spoken in two whole countries?"
但为什么每件事都必须是实用的？多年来，我一直是个勤勉的小兵——上班 ；总是准时完成工作，照顾我的亲人、我的牙龈、我的信用纪录，投票等。难道这辈子只薀拓乎尽到责任？在这黑暗的失落期，我还需要什么正当理由去学意大利语，除了这是我此刻所能想到能给自己带来快乐的唯一事情？而无论如何，想学习语言也不是什么罪不可赦的目标。又不是像三十二岁的人说“我要成为纽约市立芭蕾舞团的首席女主角。”学习语言，是你真正做得到的事情，于是我报名参加某推广教育（亦称离婚女子夜校）的课程。我的朋友们觉得很逗趣 。我的朋友尼克问说 “你干嘛学意大利语？是不是为了——万一意大利再次侵犯埃塞俄比亚，而且这回成功的话——你可以夸说你懂得这两个国家的语言？”


But I loved it. Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. I would slosh home through the rain after class, draw a hot bath, and lie there in the bubbles reading the Italian dictionary aloud to myself, taking my mind off my divorce pressures and my heartache. The words made me laugh in delight. I started referring to my cell phone as il mio telefonino ("my teensy little telephone"). I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's anabbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!") Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client  (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again.
但我喜欢得很。每个字对我来说都是歌唱的鸟儿、魔术、松露。下课后，我冒雨回家，放热水，躺在泡泡浴缸中向自己高声朗诵意大利辞典，暂时忘却离婚压力和头疼。那些词语使我欢笑。我开始把我的手机叫作“il mio telefonino”（“我的迷你电话机 ”）。我成了那些老是说“Ciao!”的讨厌鬼之一。只不过我还是超级讨厌鬼，因为我老跟人说明该字的字源。（倘若你一定要知道的话，这是从中古世纪威尼斯人亲密问候的用语“Sono il suo schiavo!”缩写而成。意思是 ：“我是您的奴隶！”）光讲这些字，就使我觉得又性感又快乐 。我的离婚律师叫我用不着担心；她说有个客户（韩裔）在不愉快的离婚后，把名字正式改为意大利名，只为了再一次觉得性感而快乐。


Maybe I would move to Italy, after all . . .
Eat, Pray, Love
或许最终我会搬去意大利……


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 7 (13):我需要精神导师

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The other notable thing that was happening during that time was the newfound adventure ofspiritual discipline. Aided and abetted, of course, by the introduction into my life of an actual living Indian Guru—for whom I will always have David to thank. I'd been introduced to my Guru the first night I ever went to David's apartment. I kind of fell in love with them both at the same time. I walked into David's apartment and saw this picture on his dresser of a radiantly beautiful Indian woman and I asked, "Who's that?"
这段期间发生了另一件值得注意的事，是新获得的灵修体验。当然是借助于介入我生命的一位印度导师——这我永远得感谢大卫。第一次去大卫的公寓，我就见到导师的面。我多少有点同时爱上他们俩。我走进大卫的公寓，看见衣柜上的相片，是个光彩夺目的印度女子，我问：“她是谁？”


He said, "That is my spiritual teacher."
他说：“是我的精神导师。”


My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher." I literally mean that it was my heart who said this, speaking through my mouth. I felt this weird division in myself, and my mind stepped out of my body for a moment, spun around to face my heart in astonishment and silently asked, "You DO?"
我的心砰砰跳，绊了一下，扑倒在地。然后我的心站起来，拍拍身子，深呼吸，宣告：“我要一位精神导师。”我确切的意思是，我的心透过我的嘴巴这么说。我奇妙地感觉自身一分为二，我的大脑离开我的身体片刻，吃惊地绕到心的面前，问道：“你确定？”


"Yes," replied my heart. "I do."
“是的，”我的心答道：“我确定。”


Then my mind asked my heart, a tad sarcastically: "Since WHEN?"
然后我的大脑问我的心，带点挖苦的语气：“从什么时候开始的？”


But I already knew the answer: Since that night on the bathroom floor.
但我已知道答案：从浴室地板的那天晚上开始的。


My God, but I wanted a spiritual teacher. I immediately began constructing a fantasy of what it would be like to have one. I imagined that this radiantly beautiful Indian woman would come to my apartment a few evenings a week and we would sit and drink tea and talk about divinity, and she would give me reading assignments and explain the significance of the strange sensations I was feeling during meditation . . .
天啊，我要一位精神导师。我立即开始想象有个精神导师会怎么样。我想像这位光彩夺目的印度女子，每个礼拜有几个晚上来到我的公寓，我们坐着喝茶，谈论神灵，她让我阅读作业，解释我在冥想时刻感受到的奇异知觉是何意义……


All this fantasy was quickly swept away when David told me about the international status of this woman, about her tens of thousands of students—many of whom have never met her face-to-face. Still, he said, there was a gathering here in New York City every Tuesday night of the Guru's devotees who came together as a group to meditate and chant. David said, "If you're not too freaked out by the idea of being in a room with several hundred people chanting God's name in Sanskrit, you can come sometime."
在大卫告知我这名女子的国际地位，学生成千上万——许多人都未曾亲眼见过她时——这些幻想立即一扫而光。不过，他说，纽约这儿每周二有个聚会，让导师的追随者聚在一起沉思吟诵。大卫说：“倘若跟几百人在房间里用梵语吟诵神的名字，不会吓着你的话，哪天就过来看看吧。”


I joined him the following Tuesday night. Far from being freaked out by these regular-looking people singing to God, I instead felt my soul rise diaphanous in the wake of that chanting. I walked home that night feeling like the air could move through me, like I was clean linen fluttering on a clothes-line, like New York itself had become a city made of rice paper and I was light enough to run across every rooftop. I started going to the chants every Tuesday. Then I started meditating every morning on the ancient Sanskrit mantra the Guru gives to all her students (the regal Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, "I honor the divinity that resides within me"). Then I listened to the Guru speak in person for the first time, and her words gave me chill bumps over my whole body, even across the skin of my face. And when I heard she had an Ashram in India, I knew I must take myself there as quickly as possible.
Eat, Pray, Love
隔周的礼拜二晚上，我跟他去了。这些看上去很正常的人士在歌诵神，并未把我吓着，反而让我觉得自己的灵魂随着吟唱轻盈飘升。那天晚上我走回家时，感觉空气穿透我，好似我是一条在晾衣绳上迎风飘扬的干净的亚麻布，好似纽约本身成了纸绢做成的城市——使我轻盈地跑过每一户人家的屋顶。我开始在每周二前去吟诵。而后我开始每天早晨沉思导师发给每个学生的古梵语静坐（庄严的“唵南嘛湿婆耶”［OmNamahShivaya］，意味“我敬重内心的神灵”）。而后我第一次聆听导师亲自讲道，她说的话使我全身发麻，甚至传到我脸上的皮肤。而当我得知她在印度有个道场时，我知道我得尽快去那儿才行。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 8 (14):遇见精神导师

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In the meantime, though, I had to go on this trip to Indonesia.
不过，我同时得去一趟印尼。


Which happened, again, because of a magazine assignment. Just when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself for being broke and lonely and caged up in Divorce Internment Camp, an editor from a women's magazine asked if she could pay to send me to Bali to write a story about Yoga vacations. In return I asked her a series of questions, mostly along the line of Is a bean green? and Does James Brown get down? When I got to Bali (which is, to be brief, a very nice place) the teacher who was running the Yoga retreat asked us, "While you're all here, is there anybody who would like to go visit a ninth-generation Balinese medicine man?" (another question too obviousto even answer), and so we all went over to his house one night.
又是一次杂志社的指派工作。正当我为自己的崩溃和寂寞自怜自艾、被关在“离婚战俘营”的时候，一位女性杂志编辑询问能否出钱派我去巴厘岛写一篇有关瑜伽假期的文章。我报以一连串与“豆子是绿色的吗？”“詹姆士•布朗（JamesBrown）会跪着唱歌吗？”等同类的问题回问她。我抵达巴厘岛（简而言之，一个很好的地方）时，举办瑜伽营的老师问我们：“你们在这里的时候，有没有人想去拜访一位传承到第九代的巴厘药师？（又一个明显用不着回答的问题。）于是有天晚上，我们全部去了他家。


The medicine man, as it turned out, was a small, merry-eyed, russet-colored old guy with a mostly toothless mouth, whose resemblance in every way to the Star Wars character Yoda cannot beexaggerated. His name was Ketut Liyer. He spoke a scattered and thoroughly en-tertaining kind of English, but there was a translator available for when he got stuck on a word.
这才发现，药师是个瘦小、眼神欢乐、赤褐色的老家伙，几乎没有牙齿，说他各方面都像《星际大战》里的犹大（Yoda）并不夸张。他名叫赖爷（Ketutliyer），讲一口零零碎碎、很具娱乐效果的英语，若碰上说不出哪个字的时候，则有翻译帮忙。


Our Yoga teacher had told us in advance that we could each bring one question or problem to the medicine man, and he would try to help us with our troubles. I'd been thinking for days of what to ask him. My initial ideas were so lame. Will you make my husband give me a divorce? Will you make David be sexually attracted to me again? I was rightly ashamed of myself for these thoughts: who travels all the way around the world to meet an ancient medicine man in Indonesia, only to ask him to intercede in boy trouble?
我们的瑜伽老师事先已告诉我们，每个人可以向药师提一个问题，他会尽力帮我们解决。我考虑了好几天该问他什么。我最初的想法很没用：“能不能让我先生同意离婚？“能不能让大卫再一次迷恋我？”我该为这些想法感到羞愧。有谁大老远跑来印尼见一位老药师，只为了要他调解男人问题？


So when the old man asked me in person what I really wanted, I found other, truer words.
因此当老人亲自问我，我想要什么，我找到其他更真诚的话来说。


"I want to have a lasting experience of God," I told him. "Sometimes I feel like I understand  thedivinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God."
“我想要和神有终身的体验，”我告诉他。“有时我觉得自己了解这世界的神灵，然后却因为一些小小的欲望和恐惧而分心，于是丧失了祂。我想一直与神同在。但我不想出家，或完全放弃世俗享乐。 我想学习如何活在世上享受生活的乐趣，却同时能为神奉献。”


Ketut said he could answer my question with a picture. He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart.
赖爷说他能用一张图片回答我的问题。他给我看一张某回他静坐时画下的草图。图上画了个雌雄同体的人，合拢双手，站着祈祷。但此人有四条腿，没有头。原本是脑袋的地方，只有蔓生的花叶。一 张微笑的小脸画在心脏处。


"To find the balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, “this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."
“想找到你要的平衡，”赖爷透过翻译说，“你必须变成这样。你必须坚定地踩在地上，就像你有四条腿，不是两条。这样才可能待在世上。但你不能透过脑袋看世界，而是透过心去看才成。如此才可能了解神。”


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 8 (15):赖爷的寓言

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Then he asked if he could read my palm. I gave him my left hand and he proceeded to put me together like a three-piece puzzle.
而后他问我能否看看我的手相。我让他看左手，而后他将我组合起来，就像拼图。


"You're a world traveler," he began.
“你是个世界的旅人。”他开始说。


Which I thought was maybe a little obvious, given that I was in Indonesia at the moment, but I didn’t force the point . . .
这我认为未免也太明显了吧，毕竟我当时就在印尼，但我没怎么在乎这一点。


"You have more good luck than anyone I've ever met. You will live a long time, have many friends, many experiences. You will see the whole world. You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to ever worry about anything, will you believe me?"
“你是我碰到过最幸运的人。你活得很久，有许多朋友，许多经验。你看整个世界。你的生命只有一个问题。你过分焦虑，总是太情绪化，太紧张。假如我要你相信，生活中永远没必要去担忧任何事情，你信不信？”


Nervously I nodded, not believing him.
我紧张不安地点点头，并不相信。


"For work, you do something creative, maybe like an artist, and you get paid good money for it. Always you will get paid good money for this thing you do. You are generous with money, maybe too generous. Also one problem. You will lose all your money once in your life. I think maybe it will happen soon."
“工作上，你是搞创作的，类似艺术家，工作让你赚不少钱。你的工作永远让你挣不少钱。你对钱很大方，或许太过大方。另一个问题是，你这一生当中，有一次会失去所有的钱。我想可能再过不 久就要发生。”


"I think maybe it will happen in the next six to ten months," I said, thinking about my divorce.
“我想可能未来六到十个月内会发生。”我说，心里想的是离婚 。


Ketut nodded as if to say, Yeah, that sounds about right. "But don't worry," he said. "After you lose all your money, you will get it all right back again. Right away you'll be fine. You will have two marriages in your life. One short, one long. And you will have two children . . ."
赖爷点点头，仿佛在说：“没错，八九不离十。” “但用不着担心。”他说，“损失所有的钱财后，你会再拿回来。你立刻就会很好的。你这辈子会有两次婚姻。一短，一长。你会有两个孩子……”


I waited for him to say, "one short, one long," but he was suddenly silent, frowning at my palm. Then he said, "Strange . . . ," which is something you never want to hear from either your palm-reader or your dentist. He asked me to move directly under the hanging lightbulb so he could take a better look.
我等他说“一矮，一高 ”，但他突然沉默下来，看着我的手掌皱起眉头。然后他说：“怪了……”你可不想听你的手相师或牙医师这么说。他要我移到悬挂的灯泡底下，让他看个仔细 。


"I am wrong," he announced. "You will only have only one child. Late in life, a daughter. Maybe. If you decide . . . but there is something else." He frowned, then looked up, suddenly absolutelyconfident: "Someday soon you will come back here to Bali. You must. You will stay here in Bali for three, maybe four months. You will be my friend. Maybe you will live here with my family. I can practice English with you. I never had anybody to practice English with. I think you are good with words. I think this creative work you do is something about words, yes?"
“我错了，”他说道，“你只会有一个孩子。晚年的时候，是女儿。或许吧。假如你决定……还有另一件事。”他皱着眉，然后抬起头 ，突然非常肯定地说“不久之后，你会回到巴厘岛这儿。你不得不。 你在这里会待上三四个月，成为我的朋友。或许你会跟我的家人住在这里。我能跟你学英语。我从没跟任何人练习过英语。我想你很擅长文字。我想你的创意工作和文字有关，是吗？ ”


"Yes!" I said. "I'm a writer. I’m a book writer!"
“是的 ！”我说，“我是作家。我写书 ！”


"You are a book writer from New York," he said, in agreement, in confirmation. "So you will come back here to Bali and live here and teach me English. And I will teach you everything I know."
“你是纽约来的作家，”他同意、认可地说道，“所以你会回巴厘岛来，住在这里，教我英文。我也会把我知道的一切教给你。”


Then he stood up and brushed off his hands, like: That's settled.
而后他站了起来，拂拂双手，像是在说，“就这么说定了。”


I said, "If you're serious, mister, I'm serious."
我说：“您若不是开玩笑，大师，我可当真。”


He beamed at me toothlessly and said, "See you later, alligator."
Eat, Pray, Love
他以无牙的微笑望着我，说：“回头见。”


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 9 (16):做个行者

[font=verdana, 'ms song']Now, I'm the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you're destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that. And this, finally, was how my whole idea about this year of traveling began to gel. I absolutely needed to get myself back to Indonesia somehow, on my own dime this time. This was evident. Though I couldn't yet imagine how to do it, given my chaotic and disturbed life. (Not only did I still have a pricey divorce to settle, and David-troubles, I still had a magazine job that prevented me from going anywhere for three or four months at a time.) But I had to get back there. Didn't I hadn't he foretold it? Problem was, I also wanted to go to India, to visit my Guru's Ashram, and going to India is an expensive and time-consuming affair, also. To make matters even more confusing, I'd also been dying lately to get over to Italy, so I could practice speaking Italian in context, but also because I was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure and beauty are revered.[font=verdana, 'ms song']
我是那种当一位第九代印尼药师跟你说你注定搬到巴厘岛跟他住四个月的时候 ，会觉得自己应当尽力而为的人。最终，我这一年的整个旅行想法都因而开始瓦解。我必须让自己再回到巴厘岛才行，这回用的是自己的钱。这很明显。尽管如果考虑到我当时杂乱失常的生活，我无法想象自己应该怎么做（不仅要解决一场昂贵的离婚，以及大卫的问题，还有一份不容许我一次离开三四个月的杂志社工作。）但是我“必须”回到那里。不是吗？他不是已做了预言？不过问题是，我也想去印度，去拜访印度导师的道场，而去印度也还是件花钱、花时间的事情。更为难的是，我最近想去意大利想得要命， 除了可以实地练习讲意大利语外，也因为我渴望在一个崇尚享乐与美的国家住上一阵子。


All these desires seemed to be at odds with one another. Especially the Italy/India conflict. What was more important? The part of me that wanted to eat veal in Venice? Or the part of me that wanted to be waking up long before dawn in the austerity of an Ashram to begin a long day ofmeditation and prayer? The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruousopposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I'd said to the medicine man in Bali—I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divinetranscendence—the dual glories of a human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which toflourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion . . . well, surely there was a way to learn that trick. And it seemed to me, just from my short stay in Bali, that I maybe could learn this from the Balinese. Maybe even from the medicine man himself.
这些渴望似乎互相抵触。尤其是意大利 ／印度的矛盾。什么比较重要？想在威尼斯吃小牛肉的我？或者黎明前在朴素的道场中起身、开始整天静坐祷告的我？伟大的苏菲主义者鲁米（Rumi），曾叫他的学生们写下他们人生中最想要的三件事。假若清单中的任何项目与其他项目发生冲突，鲁米告诫说，就注定不快乐。过单一目标的生活较好，他如此教导。那如果要在极端中过协调的生活，怎么样呢？如果说，你能创造一种辽阔的生活，有办法把看似不协调的对立物整合成一种无所不包的世界观，那又如何？我的理念正是我告诉巴厘药师的话——我想同时体验两者。我要世俗享乐，也要神圣的超越——人类生活的双重荣耀。我要希腊人所谓的，善与美合而为一。在过去 痛苦的几年间，我失去了两者，因为欢乐与虔诚都需要在没有压力的空间中茁壮，而我却生活在一个焦虑无止境的垃圾压缩机当中。至于如何在享乐的需要以及对虔诚的渴望之间求取平衡……这个嘛，总有方法学到诀窍。从我在巴厘岛的短暂居留看来，似可从巴厘人，甚至药师本身身上学到这点。


Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart . . .
四脚着地，枝叶蔓生的脑袋，通过心看世界……


So I stopped trying to choose—Italy? India? or Indonesia?—and eventually just admitted that I wanted to travel to all of them. Four months in each place. A year in total. Of course this was aslightly more ambitious dream than "I want to buy myself a new pencil box." But this is what I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to write about it. It wasn't so much that I wanted to thoroughlyexplore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later,

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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 12 (21):独一无二的罗马

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In every major city in the Western World, some things are always the same. The same African men are always selling knockoffs of the same designer handbags and sunglasses, and the same Guatemalan musicians are always playing "I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail" on their bamboowindpipes. But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich counterman so comfortably calling me "beautiful" every time we speak. You want this panino grilled or cold, bella? Or the couples making out all over the place, like there is some contest for it, twisting into each other on benches, stroking each other's hair and crotches, nuzzling and grinding ceaselessly . . .
西方世界的每个大城市总有一些雷同之处。总有非洲男子兜售仿冒的名牌皮包和太阳眼镜，总有危地马拉乐手表演竹笛，吹奏“我宁可当麻雀也不肯当蜗牛”。然而有些东西只在罗马才有。比方卖三明治的掌柜每回跟我说话时都悠哉地唤我“美人儿”。“来个热烤或冷三明治，美人儿？”或者是到处拥吻的情侣，像参加竞赛似的，交缠在板凳上，抚摸彼此的头发和裤裆，没完没了地耳鬓厮磨……


And then there are the fountains. Pliny the Elder wrote once: "If anyone will consider theabundance of Rome's public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens, villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the mountains pierced, the valleys spanned—he will admit that there never was anything more marvelous in the whole world."
还有喷泉。老普林尼（Pliny  the  Elder）曾写道：“想想罗马众多的公共水资源，供给浴场、贮水池、沟渠、房舍、庭园、别墅；再考虑水流过的距离、耸立的拱桥、穿过的山、跨越的山谷——任何人都会承认，全世界最了不起的东西莫过于此。”


A few centuries later, I already have a few contenders for my favorite fountain in Rome. One is in the Villa Borghese. In the center of this fountain is a frolicking bronze family. Dad is a faun and Mom is a regular human woman. They have a baby who enjoys eating grapes. Mom and Dad are in a strange position—facing each other, grabbing each other's wrists, both of them leaning back. It's hard to tell whether they are yanking against each other in strife or swinging around merrily, but there's lots of energy there. Either way, Junior sits perched atop their wrists, right between them, unaffected by their merriment or strife, munching on his bunch of grapes. His little clovenhoofs dangle below him as he eats. (He takes after his father.)
在数个世纪后，已有多座罗马喷泉竞相成为我的最爱。其一位于博盖塞花园。在这座喷泉中央，是正在嬉戏的铜像家庭。父亲是半人半羊的牧神，母亲是一介女子。他们有个喜欢吃葡萄的宝宝。爸妈姿势奇特——面对面，抓着对方的手腕，两人的身子后仰。看不出他们究竟是拽住彼此在争斗，或是因兴高采烈而摇摆，倒是都洋溢活力。反正，小家伙趴坐在他们的手腕上，就在他们之间，对他们的愉悦或争斗无动于衷，大口嚼着他的那串葡萄。而吃着的同时，脚下的分趾蹄晃悠着。（它遗传自父亲。）


It is early September, 2003. The weather is warm and lazy. By this, my fourth day in Rome, myshadow has still not darkened the doorway of a church or a museum, nor have I even looked at a guidebook. But I have been walking endlessly and aimlessly, and I did finally find a tiny little place that a friendly bus driver informed me sells The Best Gelato in Rome. It's called "Il Gelato di San Crispino." I'm not sure, but I think this might translate as "the ice cream of the crispy saint." I tried a combination of the honey and the hazelnut. I came back later that same day for the grapefruit and the melon. Then, after dinner that same night, I walked all the way back over there one last time, just to sample a cup of the cinnamon-ginger.      
2003年9月初，天气暖和懒散。此时是我在罗马的第四天，我仍未踏进任何一座教堂或博物馆，甚至未读过旅游指南。但我已漫无目的地走个不停，最后还找到一位友善的公车司机告诉我的那家罗马最好的意大利冰店。它叫“圣克里斯皮诺冰店”。我不确定能否翻译成“香酥圣徒冰”。我试了蜂蜜加榛果的混合口味。当天稍晚，我又回来品尝葡萄柚加香瓜。当天吃过晚饭后， 我又一路走回去 ，只为了尝一杯肉桂与姜。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 12 (22):读报纸 学意大利语

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I've been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today's news was fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than "Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d'Europa!" Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French babies.(Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article. (The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness wereunveiled yesterday by—no need to translate here—"una task force internazionale." It took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a pizza and listening to one of Italy's children play the accordion across the street. The kid didn't look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I'm not sure if I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the government that the only way to deal with theobesity crisis in Italy was to implement a tax on the overweight . . .? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will they come after me?
我每天尝试把报纸上的一篇文章从头到尾读一遍，无论花多少时间。我大概每三个字查一次字典。今天的消息很有意思。很难想像有比 “Obesit? I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d' Europa!”更戏剧性的新闻标题。老天爷！肥胖症！我想这篇文章在宣称意大利的婴儿是欧洲最胖的婴儿！我往下念，得知意大利婴儿比德国婴儿胖得多，比法国婴儿更是胖上许多（幸好未提及和美国婴儿较量的结果。）文章指出，较大的孩子近来的肥胖情况亦很严重。（面食工业为自己辩护。）这些意大利幼童肥胖症的惊人统计数字，昨日由一个国际专责小组所发表。我花了将近一个钟头转译整篇文章。这期间，我吃着比萨饼，听着意大利孩童中的一位在对街演奏手风琴。这孩子在我看来并不太胖，但或许因为他是吉普赛人。我不确定是否误读文章的最后一行字，但看来政府似乎谈到，解决意大利肥胖危机的唯一方式是课征“超重税”……？这是真的吗？这么吃了几个月后，他们会不会来找我麻烦？



It's also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope's health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today.
每天看报来了解教宗的状况也很重要。在罗马，报上天天刊载教宗的健康状况，就像天气预报，或电视节目表。今天，教宗很累。昨天，教宗比今天不累。明天，预料教宗将不像今天这么累。


It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It's like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It's like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They'll even print their newspapers in Italian while I'm here; they don't mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I'd entered an enchanted palace. Everything was in Italian—even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old and couldn't read yet, but was dying to learn. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with my mother, holding a Good Housekeeping magazine in front of my face, turning the pages slowly, staring at the text, and hoping the grown-ups in the waiting room would think I was actually reading. I haven't felt so starved for comprehension since then. I found some works by American poets in that bookstore, with the original English version printed on one side of the page and the Italian translation on the other. I bought a volume by Robert Lowell, another by Louise Glück.
对我来说，这里是语言的仙境。对于一向想说意大利语的人而言，哪个地方能比罗马更好？就像有人为了配合我的需要而创造出一座城市，城里每个人（甚至连儿童、计程车司机、电视广告的演员）都用这神奇的语言在说话。就好似整个社会同心协力教我意大利语。他们甚至趁我待在这儿的时候印意大利文报纸；他们一点也不介意大费周章！他们这里有些书店只卖意大利文写的书！昨天早上我发现这样一家书店 ，觉得自己进了一座魔法宫殿。所有的书都是意大利文——甚至苏斯博士（Dr.Seuss）也是。我逛遍整间书店，触摸每一本书 ，希望任何人看见我 ，都以为我的母语是意大利语。喔，我多么希望意大利语朝我开放它自己！这感觉让我回想起四岁时仍不识字，却渴望学会阅读。我记得和母亲坐在诊所的候诊室，拿着一本《好管家》（Good Housekeeping）杂志摆在面前，慢慢地翻着，盯着内文，希望候诊室里的大人们以为我确实在读。从那以后，我从未感到如此渴望理解。我在这家书店看见美国诗人的作品，书页的一边印着英文版原文，另一边印着意大利文翻译。我买了一本洛 威尔（Robert Lowell）的书，另买一本格丽克（Louise Glck）的。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 12 (23):偶遇罗马老太

[font=verdana, 'ms song']There are spontaneous conversation classes everywhere. Today, I was sitting on a park benchwhen a tiny old woman in a black dress came over, roosted down beside me and started bossingme around about something. I shook my head, muted and confused. I apologized, saying in very nice Italian, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Italian," and she looked like she would've smacked me with a wooden spoon, if she'd had one. She insisted: "You do understand!" (Interestingly, she was correct. That sentence, I did understand.) Now she wanted to know where I was from. I told her I was from New York, and asked where she was from. Duh—she was from Rome. Hearing this, I clapped my hands like a baby. Ah, Rome! Beautiful Rome! I love Rome! Pretty Rome! She listened to my primitive rhapsodies with skepticism. Then she got down to it and asked me if I was married. I told her I was divorced. This was the first time I'd said it to anyone, and here I was, saying it in Italian. Of course she demanded, "Perché?" Well . . . "why" is a hard question to answer in any language. I stammered, then finally came up with "L'abbiamo rotto" (We broke it).[font=verdana, 'ms song']
随处可见自发的会话课。今天，我坐在公园板凳上的时候，有个身穿黑衣的小老太婆走过来，在我身边坐下，对我呼来唤去地说着什么。我摇头，无言而疑惑。我道歉，用完美的意大利语说：“真抱歉，我不会说意大利语。”她的样子像是要拿木杓揍我似的，假如她手边有的话。她断然地说：“你明明懂啊！”（有趣的是，她没说错。我确实懂这句子。）然后她想知道我是哪里人。我跟她说我是纽约人，并问她是哪里人。这还用说——她是罗马人。听了回话，我像孩子似的拍起手来。“啊，罗马！美丽的罗马！我爱罗马！漂亮的罗马！”她听着我原始的赞颂，流露出怀疑的神色。接着她问我结婚了没。我告诉她我已离婚。这是我第一次用意大利语告诉其他人这件事。当然啰，她继续问：“Perch?”这个嘛……“为什么”是个很难回答的问题，无论用哪一种语言。我支支吾吾，最后想出了“L”（我们婚姻破裂）。


She nodded, stood up, walked up the street to her bus stop, got on her bus and did not even turn around to look at me again. Was she mad at me? Strangely, I waited for her on that parkbench for twenty minutes, thinking against reason that she might come back and continue ourconversation, but she never returned. Her name was Celeste, pronounced with a sharp ch, as incello.
她点点头，站起身来，穿过街去等公车，然后搭上公车而去，甚至没回来再看我一眼。她是否生我的气？说也奇怪，我就坐在那张公园板凳上等她等了二十分钟，反思她可能回来继续跟我对话的理由，她却没再回来。她名叫雀蕾丝特（Celeste），发音如“雀”。


Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you'd never have guessed existed if you'd only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square, dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain. This fountain was going to be a contender for my favorite in Rome, I could tell immediately, though it was unlike any I'd seen so far. It was not carved of imperial marble, for starters. This was a small green, mossy, organicfountain. It was like a shaggy, leaking bush of ferns. (It looked, actually, exactly like the wild foliage growing out of the head of that praying figure which the old medicine man in Indonesia had drawn for me.) The water shot up out of the center of this flowering shrub, then rained back down on the leaves, making a melancholy, lovely sound throughout the whole courtyard.
当天稍晚，我找到一家图书馆。天哪，我真爱图书馆。因为在罗马，这所图书馆是个美丽的古物，当中有个花园中庭，若只从街上注视图书馆，你永远猜不到中庭的存在。正方形的花园点缀着橘树，中央有喷泉。我立刻知道，它将成为我最爱的罗马喷泉之一，尽管它跟我至今看过的都不相同。首先，它不是大理石雕刻的喷泉。而是一座绿色、长满青苔、接近大自然的小型喷泉。像一株丛杂的蕨类植物。（事实上，它看起来就跟印尼药师画给我的那尊祈神人像头上冒出的繁茂枝叶一模一样。）水从这丛盛开的灌木中央喷溅出来，而后回洒到叶子上，发出哀伤、优美的声音，充塞整个庭园。


I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I'd purchased yesterday. Louise Glück. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line:
我在一棵橘树下找到座位，打开昨天买的其中 一本诗集。格丽克。我读第一首诗，先读意大利文，再读英文，在这一行顿住：


Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . .
"From the center of my life, there came a great fountain . . ."
Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana... ‚从我的生命中央，冒出一股大泉……


I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief.
Eat, Pray, Love[font=verdana, 'ms song']我把书搁在腿上，因欣慰而颤抖。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 13 (24):我不是天生的行者

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Truthfully, I'm not the best traveler in the world.
说实话，我不是世上的最佳旅人。


I know this because I've traveled a lot and I've met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcuttagutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard orcajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go—in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab . . .
我之所以知道这点，是因为我经常旅行，也遇过精通旅行的人，真正生而旅行的人。我遇过身强体健的旅人，即使从加尔各答的水沟喝下一大鞋盒的水，也永远不会生病。有些人很快学会新语言，而我们其他人却只会染上传染病。有些人懂得如何制服边界警卫或利诱执拗的签证官僚。有些人有恰当的身高和肤色，无论去哪儿都是一种半正常人——他们在土耳其可能是土耳其人，在墨西哥就突然成了墨西哥人，在西班牙也可能被误认成巴斯克人，在北非有时可能被当做是阿拉伯人……


I don't have these qualities. First off, I don't blend. Tall and blond and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children—who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person—would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China.
我没有这些特质。首先，我格格不入。高大、金发、粉红肤色。我不是变色龙，反倒是红鹤。除了去杜塞尔多夫（Dusseldorf）之外，我都突兀地刺人眼目。我在中国的时候，妇女经常当街朝我走来，向她们的孩子指着我，仿佛我是从动物园逃出来的动物。而他们的孩子——从没见过这种粉红脸、黄头发的妖怪——往往一见我就哇哇大哭。对于中国，我很痛恨这件事。


I'm bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending just to show up and see what happens. When you travel this way, what typically "happens" is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused, or dropping way too much money on hotels because you don't know better. My shaky sense of direction and geography means I have explored six continents in my life with only the vaguest idea of where I am at any given time. Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into thatblank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparenttransmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, "You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face."
我不擅长（或者说懒得）在旅行前研究目的地，往往是人到了当地后，再看发生什么。这种旅行方式经常“发生”的是，你花很多时间站在火车站内不知所措，或者花太多钱住旅馆，因为你没概念。我这种不可靠的方向感和地理概念意味着，一生虽去过五大洲，却在任何时刻对于自己身处何处一无所知。除了歪斜的内在罗盘之外，我还缺乏沉着冷静，这对旅行可能是一大不利。我从没学会如何把自己的脸调整为视而不见的面无表情，这在危险的异地旅行时十分有用。你知道——那种超轻松、掌握一切的表情，使你看起来像是属于那个地方，任何地方，所有的地方，即使在雅加达的一场暴乱当中亦然。喔，不。当我不清楚自己在做什么的时候，我看起来就像不清楚自己在做什么。兴奋或紧张的时候，我便露出兴奋或紧张的神色。迷路的时候——这经常发生——我就像迷路。我的脸是每个想法 的透明发送机。大卫曾说“你和扑克脸孔正好相反。 你像是……迷你高尔夫球脸。”


And, oh, the woes that traveling has inflicted on my digestive tract! I don’t really want to open that (forgive the expression) can of worms, but suffice it to say I've experienced every extremeof digestive emergency. In Lebanon I became so explosively ill one night that I could only imagine I’d somehow contracted a Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus. In Hungary, I suffered from an entirely different kind of bowel affliction, which changed forever the way I feel about the term "Soviet Bloc." But I have other bodily weaknesses, too. My back gave out on my first day traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my party to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask you—I beg of you!—who gets sunburned in Stockholm?
还有，哦，旅行对我的消化道造成痛苦！我不想把事情说得太复杂，一言以蔽之，我经历过每一种极端的消化紧急事件。在黎巴嫩，某天晚上我突如其来地生了病，使我只能猜想自己恐怕感染上了某种中东版本的伊波拉（Ebola）病毒。在匈牙利，我罹患某种截然不同的肠胃疼痛，从此改变我对“苏联集团”一词的感受。然而我还有其他的身体弱点。我在非洲之行的第一天弄坏了背；我是我那团人出了委内瑞拉丛林，唯一一个被蜘蛛咬而感染的成员；还有，请问有谁会在斯德哥尔摩晒伤？


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 13 (25):无法停止的脚步

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Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice . I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don't care.
尽管如此，旅行仍是我生命中的一大真爱。打从十六岁我用打工存下来的保姆工资第一次去俄罗斯开始，我总觉得旅行值得付出任何代价或牺牲。我对旅行的爱忠贞不渝，正如我对其他的爱恋不见得忠贞不渝一般。我对旅行的感觉，就像初为人母的快乐妈妈面对她那难以应付、罹患疝气、躁动不安的婴孩怀有的感觉一样——我偏不在乎自己必须经历的严格考验。因为我爱他。因为他是我的。因为他长得和我一模一样。他尽可以吐得我一身都是——我就是不在乎。


Anyway, for a flamingo, I'm not completely helpless out there in the world. I have my own set ofsurvival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. I'm a fearless eater. But my onemighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. I once made friends with a war criminal in Serbia, and he invited me to go on a mountain holiday with his family. Not that I'm proud to list Serbian mass murderers amongst my nearest and dearest (I had to befriend him for a story, and also so he wouldn't punch me), but I'm just saying—I can do it. If there isn't anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock. This is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left for Italy, "Do you have friends in Rome?" and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will.
无论如何，对一只红鹤来说，我在世界上并非完全脆弱无助。我有自己的一套生存技能。我有耐心。我知道如何轻装上路。我什么都吃。但我的一大旅行才能是能与“任何人”交朋友。我能和死人交朋友。我曾在塞尔维亚跟一个战犯交朋友，他邀我和他一家人上山度假。我并不是很荣幸地把塞尔维亚杀人犯列为我的至亲至爱（我必须与他为友，是因为一篇故事的缘故，而且免得他揍我一顿 ），但我要说的是——我做得到。假如身边没有人可以说话，我也许还能和堆了一米高的石膏板交朋友。正因为如此，我不害怕去世界上最偏远的地方旅行，即便没能在那儿遇上人类。我去意大利前，大家问我：“你在罗马有没有朋友？”我只是摇头说没有，心里却想，但就要有了。


Mostly, you meet your friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on a train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell. But these are chance encounters, and you should never rely entirely on chance. For a more systematic approach, there is still the grand old system of the "letter of introduction" (today more likely to be an e-mail), presenting you formally to theacquaintance of an acquaintance. This is a terrific way to meet people, if you're shameless enough to make the cold call and invite yourself over for dinner. So before I left for Italy, I asked everyone I knew in America if they had any friends in Rome, and I'm happy to report that I have been sent abroad with a substantial list of Italian contacts.
通常来说，你是在旅行的时候不经意地遇见你的朋友，比方在火车、餐厅或拘留所内比邻而坐。但这些只是不期而遇，而你永远不该完全依赖巧遇。一种较有计划的方法依然存在，即伟大而古老的“介绍信”系统（今天电子邮件较有可能 ），把你正式介绍给熟人的熟人。这是结交朋友的绝佳方式，假使你脸皮够厚，敢于主动自我推销，登门去吃晚餐。因此在我去意大利前，我问在美国认识的每一个人，有没有在罗马的朋友。而我很乐于告诉大家，我在出国的时候，带了一长串意大利人的联络资讯 。


Among all the nominees on my Potential New Italian Friends List, I am most intrigued to meet a fellow named . . . brace yourself . . . Luca Spaghetti . Luca Spaghetti is a good friend of my buddy Patrick McDevitt, whom I know from my college days. And that is honestly his name, I swear to God, I’m not making it up. It's too crazy. I mean—just think of it. Imagine going through life with a name like Patrick McDevitt?
在我可能的意大利新朋友候选人名单中，我最想认识的人名叫……请做好心理准备……卢卡斯•帕盖蒂（Luca Spaghetti）。斯帕盖蒂是我大学时代认识的好友麦戴伟（Patrick McDevitt）的好朋友。 而这的的确确是他的名字，我向上天发誓，我可没捏造。这太古怪了。我是说——你怎能想象，一辈子顶着“斯帕盖蒂”这样的名字？


Anyhow, I plan to get in touch with Luca Spaghetti just as soon as possible.
Eat, Pray, Love
无论如何，我打算尽快与斯帕盖蒂联系。
词汇点津：
babysitting 临时保姆
spaghetti 意大利面条


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 14 (26):意大利语学习班开课

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First, though, I must get settled into school. My classes begin today at the Leonardo da VinciAcademy of Language Studies, where I will be studying Italian five days a week, four hours a day. I'm so excited about school. I'm such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me.
不过，首先，我得料理学校的事。我在达•芬奇语言学院（Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Language Studies）的意大利语课今天开课，每星期五天、每天四个小时。上学很让我兴奋。我是个毫不怕羞的学生。昨晚我把我的衣服摆出来，就像我在小学一年级开学前一天，摆好我的漆皮皮鞋和新便当盒一般。希望老师会喜欢我。


We all have to take a test on the first day at Leonardo da Vinci, in order to be placed in the proper level of Italian class for our abilities. When I hear this, I immediately start hoping I don't place into a Level One class, because that would be humiliating , given that I already took a whole entire semester of Italian at my Night School for Divorced Ladies in New York, and that I spent the summer memorizing flash cards, and that I've already been in Rome a week, and have been practicing the language in person, even conversing with old grandmothers about divorce. The thing is, I don't even know how many levels this school has, but as soon as I heard the word level, I decided that I must test into Level Two—at least.
在达芬•奇的第一天，我们每个人都必须进行测验，以按照能力分派到适当的意大利语班别。我一听，立即开始期望自己不要被分配到初级班，因为这是很不光彩的事，毕竟我已在纽约的“离婚女子夜校”上了一整个学期的意大利语课，背了一整个夏天的生字卡，而且在罗马已待了一个礼拜，已实地练习语言，甚至和老祖母聊过了离婚。事实上，我根本不晓得这学校分多少级别，但我一听见“分级”，便立即决定至少得考进二级班才行。


So it's hammering down rain today, and I show up to school early  (like I always have—geek!) and I take the test. It's such a hard test! I can't get through even a tenth of it! I know so much Italian, I know dozens of words in Italian, but they don't ask me anything that I know. Then there's an oral exam, which is even worse. There's this skinny Italian teacher interviewing me and speaking way too fast, in my opinion, and I should be doing so much better than this but I'm nervous and making mistakes with stuff I already know (like, why did I say Vado a scuola instead of Sono andata a scuola? I know that!).
那天倾盆大雨，而我早早就到了学校（我向来如此——怪胎！），做了测验。真困难的测验！我甚至没办法完成十分之一！我知道很多意大利文，我认识成打的意大利单字，但我懂得的，他们都没考。接着是口试，情况更惨。给我面试的是个削瘦的意大利老师，依我看来，话说得太快，而我本该表现得更好，却因为紧张，明明早已知道的东西也出了错（比方说，我干嘛不说“我要去上学Sono andata，却说“我上学”Vado a scuola？我明明知道的呀！）。


In the end, it's OK, though. The skinny Italian teacher looks over my exam and selects my class level: Level TWO!
结果却是还好。意大利瘦老师检查了我的试卷，给了我的级别——二级班！


Classes begin in the afternoon. So I go eat lunch (roasted endive) then saunter back to theschool and smugly walk past all those Level One students (who must be molto stupido, really) and enter my first class. With my peers. Except that it becomes swiftly evident that these are not my peers and that I have no business being here because Level Two is really impossibly hard. I feel like I’m swimming, but barely. Like I'm taking in water with every breath. The teacher, a skinnyguy (why are the teachers so skinny here? I don't trust skinny Italians), is going way too fast, skipping over whole chapters of the textbook, saying, "You already know this, you already know that . . ." and keeping up a rapid-fire conversation with my apparently fluent classmates. My stomach is gripped in horror and I'm gasping for air and praying he won’t call on me. Just as soon as the break comes, I run out of that classroom on wobbling legs and I scurry all the way over to the administrative office almost in tears, where I beg in very clear English if they could please move me down to a Level One class. And so they do. And now I am here.
课程在下午开始。于是我去吃午饭（烤莴苣），而后漫步回校，得意洋洋地从初级班学生面前走过（他们肯定“molto stupido”很笨），我和程度与我相当的同学们一起走进第一堂课的教室。只不过，很快我就发现，他们不是和我程度相当的同学，我无权待在这个班，因为二级班的课程困难得令人难以置信。我觉得像在游泳，却游得很勉强，就像每换一口气就吃到水。瘦个子男老师（这儿的老师怎么都这么瘦？我不信任削瘦的意大利人）讲话太快，跳过整章整章课文，说：“这个你们都会了，那个你们都会了。”……不断跟我那些对答如流的同学们连珠炮似的对谈。恐惧紧抓着我的胃，我喘着气，祈祷他不会叫到我。下课时间一到，我就脚步踉跄地跑出教室，几乎泪眼汪汪地一路跑去行政办公室，用非常清晰的英语乞求能否让我换到初级班。他们这么做了。于是现在我就在初级班。


This teacher is plump and speaks slowly. This is much better.
Eat, Pray, Love
老师是个胖子，讲话速度慢。这好多了。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 15 (27):世界上最美的语言

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The interesting thing about my Italian class is that nobody really needs to be there. There are twelve of us studying together, of all ages, from all over the world, and everybody has come to Rome for the same reason—to study Italian just because they feel like it. Not one of us canidentify a single practical reason for being here. Nobody's boss has said to anyone, "It is vitalthat you learn to speak Italian in order for us to conduct our business overseas."

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 17 (31):我抑郁了 I'd stopped taking my medication only a few days earlier. It had just seemed crazy to be taking antidepressants in Italy. How could I be depressed here? 几天前，我才停止服药。在意大利服用抗忧郁剂似乎不太对劲。住在这里怎可能觉得抑郁？ I'd never wanted to be on the medication in the first place. I'd fought taking it for so long, mainly because of a long list of personal objections (e.g.: Americans are overmedicated; we don't know the long-term effects of this stuff yet on the human brain; it's a crime that even American children are on antidepressants these days; we are treating the symptoms and not the causes of a national mental health emergency . . .). Still, during the last few years of my life, there was no question that I was in grave trouble and that this trouble was not lifting quickly. As my marriagedissolved and my drama with David evolved , I'd come to have all the symptoms of a majordepression—loss of sleep, appetite and libido, uncontrollable weeping, chronic backaches and stomachaches, alienation and despair, trouble concentrating on work, inability to even getupset that the Republicans had just stolen a presidential election . . . it went on and on. 一开始我并不想靠药物治疗。我长时间反对服药，主要因为一长串个人的反对理由（诸如，美国人用药过度；我们不清楚这些东西对于人脑的长期影响；近来连美国孩童也吃起抗忧郁剂，这是一种罪过；我们治疗的是症状，并未能根治造成全国心理健康危机的原因……）。尽管如此，生命中的过去几年间，毫无疑问，我陷入极度困境，而这困境短期内无法解除。随着婚姻瓦解，与大卫之间的戏剧性发展，我有了严重忧郁症的所有征状——失眠、食欲减退、丧失性欲、不能自已地失声痛哭、慢性背痛与胃痛、疏离与绝望、难以专心工作，甚至对共和党抢了总统大选一事无动于衷……等等，等等。 When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore. 你在森林中迷失的时候，有时得花一阵子时间才明白自己迷了路。很长一段时间，你可以说服自 己只是偏离步道几米距离，随时都可能找到返回步道起点的路。而后夜幕一再降临，你仍不清楚自己的方位，此时不得不承认自己已远离步道，甚至不再知道太阳从哪边升起。 I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological?(Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstableGemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid? 我承担我的抑郁，就像它是我生命中的一搏，事实也确是如此。我研究我自己的抑郁经验，尝试解开原因。这一切沮丧源自何处？是不是心理上的原因？（父母的过错？）或只是暂时性的，我生命中的“倒霉时刻”？（离婚事件了结后，抑郁是否会随之而终？）是不是遗传？（有多种称谓的忧郁症，在我的家族传了好几代，带着它哀伤的新娘：酗酒问题。）是不是文化原因？（一个后女性主义时代的美国职业女性尝试在紧张疏离的都市世界中求得平衡而导致的结果？）是不是星座的缘故？（我之所以如此哀伤，是不是因为我是敏感的巨蟹座，主宫全由反复无常的双子星座控制？）是否和艺术有关？（搞创作的人难道不都是因为超敏感且与众不同而为抑郁所苦？）是否和进化有关？（我身上是否带有远古人类试图在野蛮世界求生存而残存的恐慌？）是因果报应？（这些悲伤时刻是否只是前生作恶多端的结果，在解脱前夕最后阶段的阻碍？）是荷尔蒙作祟？饮食问题？哲学问题？季节性？环境造成？我是否也感染了全球对上帝渴求的症状？是内分泌失调？或者我只是需要性关系？

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 17 (32):和抑郁抗争 What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers weoperate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches! I came to feel that my depression was probably some ever-shifting assortment of all those factors, and probably also included some stuff I couldn't name or claim. So I faced the fight at every level. I bought all thoseembarrassingly titled self-help books (always being certain to wrap up the books in the latestissue of Hustler, so that strangers wouldn't know what I was really reading). I commenced to getting professional help with a therapist who was as kind as she was insightful. I prayed liked a novice nun. I stopped eating meat (for a short time, anyway) after someone told me that I was "eating the fear of the animal at the moment of its death." Some spacey new age massagetherapist told me I should wear orange-colored panties, to rebalance my sexual chakras, and, brother—I actually did it. I drank enough of that damn Saint-John's-wort tea to cheer up whole a Russian gulag, to no noticeable effect. I exercised. I exposed myself to the uplifting arts and carefully protected myself from sad movies, books and songs (if anyone even mentioned the words Leonard and Cohen in the same sentence, I would have to leave the room). 每一个人是由多少的因素所构成的呀！我们在如此多种的层面上运作，而我们经受来自我们的心理、身体、历史、家庭、城市、灵魂，甚至是吃下的午餐多少影响呀！我觉得自己的抑郁或许来自这些变幻不定的种种因素，或许还包括我无从指名道姓的东西。因此我面临每个层面的搏斗。我买了所有那些书名教人难堪的励志书籍（总不忘把书用最新一期的《好色客》（Hustler）杂志包起来，以免让陌生人得知我真正读的东西）。我开始接受治疗师的专业协助，她和蔼可亲而且具有洞察力。我像见习修女一样祈祷。我停止吃肉（反正时间不长），因为有人告诉我，我“吃下动物临死前的恐惧”。某个古怪的新时代按摩师告诉我，我该穿橘色内裤，以重新调整性脉轮——唉！我竟真的做了。我喝了许多该死的圣约翰草茶，其分量足以让一整团苏联劳改营开心起来，却不见任何成效。我运动。我让自己接触令人振奋的艺术，小心避开哀伤的电影、书籍与歌曲（倘若任何人在同一个句子里提及李欧纳与科恩［Leonard Cohen］这两个字，我就得离开房间）。 I tried so hard to fight the endless sobbing . I remember asking myself one night, while I was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same oldrepetition of sorrowful thoughts, "Is there anything about this scene you can change, Liz?" And all I could think to do was stand up, while still sobbing, and try to balance on one foot in the middle of my living room. Just to prove that—while I couldn't stop the tears or change my dismalinterior dialogue—I was not yet totally out of control: at least I could cry hysterically while balanced on one foot. Hey, it was a start. 我极力抵抗永无休止的哭泣。我记得某天晚上，我蜷缩在那同一个旧沙发相同的一角，因相同的悲哀思绪，又一次泪眼盈眶时，我自问：“小莉，这样的场景有没有任何你能改变的地方？”而我所能想到的，就是站起身来，试着在客厅中间单脚站立，虽然仍不时抽泣。这只为证明——尽管无法停止哭泣或改变内心的悲伤对话——我尚未完全失去自制力：至少，在我哭得歇斯底里的时候，还可以单脚站立。嘿嘿，这就是一个开始。 I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine. I leaned on my support network, cherishing my family and cultivating my most enlightening friendships. And when those officious women's magazines kept telling me that my low self-esteem wasn’t helping depression matters at all, I got myself a pretty haircut, bought some fancy makeup and a nice dress. (When a friend complimented my new look, all I could say, grimly , was, "Operation Self-Esteem—Day Fucking One.") 我过街走在阳光下。我依靠我的支持网络，珍惜我的家人，培养最具启发性的友谊。在那些好管闲事的妇女杂志不断告诉我，低自尊无助于忧郁症时，我去剪了个漂亮的发型，买了时髦的化妆品和一件美丽的洋装。（一位朋友称赞我的新造型时，我只狞笑着说“这是自尊心作战计划——他妈的第一天。”） The last thing I tried, after about two years of fighting this sorrow, was medication. If I mayimpose my opinions here, I think it should always be the last thing you try. For me, the decisionto go the route of "Vitamin P" happened after a night when I'd sat on the floor of my bedroom for many hours, trying very hard to talk myself out of cutting into my arm with a kitchen knife. I won the argument against the knife that night, but barely. I had some other good ideas around that time—about how jumping off a building or blowing my brains out with a gun might stop the suffering. But something about spending a night with a knife in my hand did it. 与哀伤搏斗将近两年后，服用药物是我的最后尝试。容我在此加入自己的意见，我认为药物应当是你的最后尝试。就我的情况而言，决定走上服药之路，是在某天晚上过后；那一晚，我在卧室地板坐了几个小时跟自己说话，极力尝试阻止自己拿菜刀割腕。当晚我虽然战胜了菜刀，却只差之毫厘。当时我还有其他好主意——跳楼或举熗自尽以求解脱。但手握菜刀过了一夜却让我解脱开来。 The next morning I called my friend Susan as the sun came up, begged her to help me. I don't think a woman in the whole history of my family had ever done that before, had ever sat down in the middle of the road like that and said, in the middle of her life, "I cannot walk another step further—somebody has to help me." It wouldn't have served those women to have stopped walking. Nobody would have, or could have, helped them. The only thing that would've happened was that they and their families would have starved. I couldn't stop thinking about those women. 隔天早晨太阳一升起，我打电话给我的朋友苏珊，求她协助我。在我的整个家族史中，我想没有哪个女子曾这么做过，曾这么坐在人生的半途，说：“我一步也走不动了——哪个人来帮帮我吧。”这些女子停下脚步也没用。没有人愿意或能够帮忙她们。唯一可能发生的事情，就是她们和家人饿肚子。我不断想起这些女子。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 17 (33):走出抑郁 And I will never forget Susan's face when she rushed into my apartment about an hour after my emergency phone call and saw me in a heap on the couch. The image of my pain mirrored back at me through her visible fear for my life is still one of the scariest memories for me out of all those scary years. I huddled in a ball while Susan made the phone calls and found me a psychiatristwho would give me a consultation that very day, to discuss the possibility of prescribing antidepressants. I listened to Susan's one-sided conversation with the doctor, listened to her say, "I'm afraid my friend is going to seriously hurt herself." I was afraid, too. 我永远忘不了苏珊冲进我公寓时的表情，当时大约是我打了紧急电话过后一个小时，她见我瘫倒在沙发上。透过她担忧我的生命所流露出的表情，我的痛苦反映到自己的眼中，此意象对我来说，依然是那段恐怖岁月中最最恐怖的记忆。我缩成一团，苏珊打电话找精神科医生，让他当天给我诊疗，讨论开抗忧郁剂的可能性。我听着苏珊和医生的单边对话，听她说“我担心我的朋友会严重伤害自己！”我也很担心。 When I went to see the psychiatrist that afternoon, he asked me what had taken me so long to get help—as if I hadn't been trying to help myself already for so long. I told him my objections and reservations about antidepressants. I laid copies of the three books I'd already published on his desk, and I said, "I'm a writer. Please don't do anything to harm my brain." He said, "If you had akidney disease, you wouldn't hesitate to take medication for it—why are you hesitating with this?" But, see, that only shows how ignorant he was about my family; a Gilbert might very well notmedicate a kidney disease, seeing that we're a family who regard any sickness as a sign of personal, ethical , moral failure. 当天下午去看精神科医生时，他问我为何拖这么久才寻求协助——好像这么久以来我没尝试自救似的。我对他说明我对抗忧郁剂的反对与保留立场。我把自己已出版的三本书摆在他桌上，说：“我是作家。请别做任何伤害我脑子的事。”他说：“假如你患了肾脏病，你不会对服药有所犹豫——却为什么对此犹豫？”然而，你瞧，这只显示他对我的家族一无所知；吉尔伯特家族成员很可能不去服药治疗肾脏病，因为这家人将疾病视为个人、伦理、道德失败的表现。 He put me on a few different drugs—Xanax, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Busperin—until we found thecombination that didn't make me nauseated or turn my libido into a dim and distant memory. Quickly, in less than a week, I could feel an extra inch of daylight opening in my mind. Also, I could finally sleep. And this was the real gift, because when you cannot sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch—there's not a chance. The pills gave me those recuperative night hours back, and also stopped my hands from shaking and released the vise grip around my chest and thepanic alert button from inside my heart. 他让我试着服用几种不同的药——“Xanax”，“Zoloft”，“Wellbutrin”，“Busperin”——直到我们找到不使我呕吐或把性欲变成遥远记忆的组合。很快地，不到一个礼拜，我感觉到心中开启了一线曙光。此外，我终于睡得着了。这真叫人欣喜，因为你睡不着的时候，便无法爬出阴沟——毫无可能。药丸使我重拾恢复体力的夜间时分，也让我的手不再颤抖，松开胸口的紧张和心头的恐慌。 Still, I never relaxed into taking those drugs, though they helped immediately. It never mattered who told me these medications were a good idea and perfectly safe; I always felt conflicted about it. Those drugs were part of my bridge to the other side, there's no question about it, but I wanted to be off them as soon as possible. I'd started taking the medication in January of 2003. By May, I was already diminishing my dosage significantly. Those had been the toughest months, anyhow—the last months of the divorce, the last ragged months with David. Could I have endured that time without the drugs, if I'd just held out a little longer? Could I have survived myself, by myself? I don't know. That's the thing about a human life—there's no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed. 尽管如此，服用这些药物从未使我安心，尽管它们立即奏效。无论谁告诉我这些药物是好主意，而且安全无虞，我却始终觉得矛盾。毫无疑问，这些药是我通往另一头的桥梁，但我却想尽快摆脱它们。我在2003年1月开始服药。到了5月，我的剂量已大大减少。那几个月却是最艰难的时期——离婚的最后几个月，与大卫之间残破的最后几个月。假设我再撑久一点，我能否不靠药物度过那段时期？我能否靠自己存活下来？这就是人生——没有控制组；若更改任何变量，我们便无从晓得自己会变成什么样子 。 I do know these drugs made my misery feel less catastrophic. So I'm grateful for that. But I'm still deeply ambivalent about mood-altering medications. I'm awed by their power, but concernedby their prevalence. I think they need to be prescribed and used with much more restraint in this country, and never without the parallel treatment of psychological counseling. Medicating thesymptom of any illness without exploring its root cause is just a classically hare-brained Western way to think that anyone could ever get truly better. Those pills might have saved my life, but they did so only in conjunction with about twenty other efforts I was making simultaneously during that same period to rescue myself, and I hope to never have to take such drugs again. Though one doctor did suggest that I might have to go on and off antidepressants many times in my life because of my "tendency toward melancholy." I hope to God he's wrong. I intend to do everything I can to prove him wrong, or at least to fight that melancholic tendency with every tool in the shed. Whether this makes me self-defeatingly stubborn, or self-preservingly stubborn, I cannot say. 但我知道这些药物稍微减轻了我的痛苦。我对此不胜感激。然而我对改变情绪的药物仍深感矛盾。我慑于它们的力量，却对它们的泛滥感到不安。我认为在我这个国家应由医师开立处方给药，应当更适可而止地使用 ，而且必须与心理咨询并行治疗。以药物治疗任何病状，却未探勘其根源所在，是轻率的典型西方想法，认为任何人都能因此好起来。这些药丸或许救了我的命，却是结合了我在那段时间内同时所做的其他二十种努力才得以奏效，而我希望永远无须再服用这些药。尽管有医生指出，我一辈子或许得断断续续地服用多次抗忧郁剂，因为我有“忧郁的倾向”。但愿他是错的。我打算尽自己所能证明他是错的，或至少用尽一切手段对抗忧郁倾向。究竟我的顽固是自毁或自保，我也还不知道。 But there I am. Eat, Pray, Love 不过我就在那儿。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 18 (34):和自己的对话 Or, rather—here I am. I am in Rome, and I am in trouble. The goons of Depression and Loneliness have barged into my life again, and I just took my last Wellbutrin three days ago. There are more pills in my bottom drawer, but I don't want them. I want to be free of them forever. But I don't want Depression or Loneliness around, either, so I don't know what to do, and I'mspiraling in panic , like I always spiral when I don't know what to do. So what I do for tonight is reach for my most private notebook, which I keep next to my bed in case I'm ever in emergency trouble. I open it up. I find the first blank page. I write:或者该说——我就在这儿。我在罗马，陷入麻烦“抑郁”和“寂寞”两个暴徒再次闯入我的生活，而我三天前才服了最后一次的“Wellbutrin”。我的底层抽屉还有药丸，但我不需要它们。我要永远摆脱它们。但我也不想让“抑郁”和“寂寞”赖在身边，因此不知所措，惊慌得原地打转；每当我不知所措时，总是原地打转。因此今晚我要做的事是伸手去拿我的私人笔记本，把它放在我的床边，以应付紧急时刻。我打开本子，找到空白页。 "I need your help."我写道：“我需要你的协助。” Then I wait. After a little while, a response comes, in my own handwriting:之后我等着。过一会儿，回应来了，由我亲笔写下： I'm right here. What can I do for you?我在这里。我能为你做什么？ And here recommences my strangest and most secret conversation.最奇特、最隐密的对话就此再度展开。 Here, in this most private notebook, is where I talk to myself. I talk to that same voice I met that night on my bathroom floor when I first prayed to God in tears for help, when something (or somebody) had said, "Go back to bed, Liz." In the years since then, I've found that voice again in times of code-orange distress, and have learned that the best way for me to reach it is writtenconversation. I've been surprised to find that I can almost always access that voice, too, no matter how black my anguish may be. Even during the worst of suffering, that calm,compassionate, affectionate and infinitely wise voice (who is maybe me, or maybe not exactly me) is always available for a conversation on paper at any time of day or night.在这本最私人的笔记本中，我和自己展开对话。我跟那一晚在浴室地板首次向神泣诉遇上的同一个声音讲话，当时某个东西（有某个人）开口说：“回床上去，小莉。”此后的几年内，我在极端悲痛的时候，再度发现这个声音，得知与它联系的最佳方式即是书面对话。我也惊讶地发现，我几乎可以随时取得这个声音，无论多么痛苦沮丧。即使在最糟的时刻，那平静、慈悲、友善、无穷睿智的声音（可能是我，也可能不完全是我 ）总是在纸上与我对话，无论昼夜。 I've decided to let myself off the hook from worrying that conversing with myself on paper means I'm a schizo. Maybe the voice I am reaching for is God, or maybe it's my Guru speaking through me, or maybe it's the angel who was assigned to my case, or maybe it's my Highest Self, or maybe it is indeed just a construct of my subconscious, invented in order to protect me from my own torment. Saint Teresa called such divine internal voices “locutions”—words from thesupernatural that enter the mind spontaneously, translated into your own language and offering you heavenly consolation . I do know what Freud would have said about such spiritualconsolations, of course—that they are irrational and "deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is no nursery." I agree—the world isn't a nursery. But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help,appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.我决定让自己不去担心跟自己在纸上对话是精神分裂症的行为。或许这伸手可及的声音是神，或许是透过我开口说话的导师，或是分派给我的天使，或是我的至高自我，或只是潜意识中的某个概念， 为了保护我自己免受折磨而被创造出来的。泰瑞莎修女将这些神圣的内在声音称为“叙语（locutions）——来自超自然的语词，自发地进入你的心灵，转译成你自己的语言，给予你天堂的慰藉。我知道佛洛伊德对于这种心灵慰藉会怎么说——毫无理性，而且“不该相信。经验告诉我们，世界可不是育幼院”。我同意——世界不是育幼院。但正是因为世界如此复杂，才偶尔需要跳出它的管辖寻求协助，吁请高层权威助你找到安慰。 At the beginning of my spiritual experiment, I didn't always have such faith in this internal voice of wisdom. I remember once reaching for my private notebook in a bitter fury of rage and sorrow, and scrawling a message to my inner voice—to my divine interior comfort—that took up an entire page of capital letters:在心灵试验的初期，并非始终对于这种睿智的内在声音坚信不疑。记得有一回，我既愤怒又悲伤地拿起笔记本，匆匆写下信息给我的内在声音——给我神圣的内在慰藉——以大写字母占据整个页面： "I DO NOT FUCKING BELIEVE IN YOU!!!!!!!!"我他妈的不相信你！！！！！

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 18 (35):做自己的朋友 After a moment, still breathing heavily, I felt a clear pinpoint of light ignite within me, and then I found myself writing this amused and ever-calm reply: 过了一会儿，依然喘着大气的我，感觉有个清晰的光点在我内心燃起，而后我发现自己写下这句 顽皮而平静的回答： Who are you talking to, then? 那么你在跟谁讲话？ I haven't doubted its existence again since. So tonight I reach for that voice again. This is the first time I've done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal tonight is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I'm scared they will never leave. I say that I don't want to take the drugs anymore, but I'm frightened I will have to. I'm terrified that I will never really pull my life together. 从此我不再怀疑它的存在。因此今晚我再次联系这个声音。这是我来意大利之后头一次做这件事。 我在日记里说我感到软弱，充满恐惧。我说“抑郁”和“寂寞”跑来了，我害怕它们永远不会离开。我说不想再吃药，却害怕非吃不可。我担心自己永远无法振作起来。 In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page: 某种现已十分熟悉的存在降临在我内心某处，做出回应，给我肯定；在我遇上麻烦时，一直希望另一个人能告诉我一切。我在纸上写给自己这段话： I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger thanDepression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. 我在这里。我爱你。我不管你是否必须彻夜哭泣，我会跟你待在一起。你若需要再度服药，就服吧——我还是一样爱你。你若不需要药物，我也会爱你。无论你做什么，都不会失去我的爱。我会保护你，至死不渝，在你死后，我仍会保护你。我比抑郁强大，比寂寞勇敢，没有任何事能让我筋疲力竭。 Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in hurry, dashed into the waitingelevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glimpse of myself in a security mirror'sreflection. In that moment my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: "Hey! You know her! That's a friend of yours!" And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In aflash instant, of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page: 今晚，内心里这个奇特的友善姿态——当身边没有人提供安慰时，我向自己伸出援手——使我回想起有回在纽约发生的事。某天下午，我匆匆走进一栋办公大楼，奔向等着的电梯。我跑进去的当儿，出奇不意地在安全镜里瞥见自己的倒影。我的脑子在那一刻做了件古怪的事，瞬间发射出以下这则信息：“嗨，你认识她啊！那是你的朋友啊！”而我竟然朝自己的倒影跑上前去，面带微笑，准备欢迎这个我忘了姓名、脸孔却很熟悉的女孩。当然，转瞬间，我意识到自己的错误，为自己像狗一样对镜子瞧感到困惑，尴尬地笑了起来。但由于某种原因，今晚在罗马，在我哀伤之时，这件插曲再度涌入我的脑际，于是我在页底写下这段勉励的句子： Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend. 永远别忘记很久以前，在一个没有防备的时刻，你曾把自己看成朋友。 I fall asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance . In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of Depression's lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy Loneliness beat it, too. Eat, Pray, Love 我接受这最新的鼓励，拿着笔记本按在胸口睡着了。早晨醒来时，我还依稀闻得到“抑郁”留下的烟雾，但他本人已不见踪影。他在夜间起身离开了。他的伙伴“寂寞”也滚蛋了。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 19 (36):无心练瑜伽 Here's what's strange, though. I haven't seemed to be able to do any Yoga since getting to Rome. For years I've had a steady and serious practice, and I even brought my Yoga mat with me, along with my best intentions. But it just isn't happening here. I mean, when am I going to do my Yoga stretches ? Before my Italian speedball breakfast of chocolate pastries and double cappuccino? Or after? The first few days I was here, I would gamely roll out my Yoga mat every morning, but found I could only look at it and laugh. Once I even said aloud to myself, in the character of the Yoga mat: "OK, little Miss Penne ai Quattro Formaggi . . . let's see what you got today." Abashed, I stashed the Yoga mat away in the bottom of my suitcase (never to be unrolled again, it would turn out, until India). Then I went for a walk and ate some pistachio gelato. Which Italians consider a perfectly reasonable thing to be eating at 9:30 AM, and I frankly could not agree with them more. 奇怪的是，自从来到罗马，我似乎没办法练瑜伽。多年来，我持续而认真地练习，甚至带来我的瑜伽垫，而且毫无二心。然而在这儿就是做不到。我是说，我该在何时做我的瑜伽伸展？在我吃巧克力糕点和双份卡布奇诺的意大利早餐之前？或之后？刚来的头几天，我每天早上兴致勃勃地摊开瑜伽垫，却发现自己只能看着垫子发笑。有一回我甚至担任“瑜伽垫”这个角色，大声跟自己说：“好咧，四味起司通心面丫头……让我们看看你今天怎么了。”我难为情地把瑜伽垫放进行李箱最底层（结果从此未再摊开过，直到去了印度）。而后我出去散步，吃了开心果冰。意大利人认为早上九点半吃冰完全合情合理，我的确再同意不过了。 The culture of Rome just doesn't match the culture of Yoga, not as far as I can see. In fact, I've decided that Rome and Yoga don't have anything in common at all. Except for the way they both kind of remind you of the word toga. Eat, Pray, Love 就我看来，罗马文化和瑜伽文化就是不搭。事实上，我判定罗马和瑜伽根本毫无相同之处。除了 两者多少都让你想起古罗马人所穿着的“托加袍”（toga）这词儿。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 20 (37):我的新朋友 I needed to make some friends. So I got busy with it, and now it is October and I have a nice assortment of them. I know two Elizabeths in Rome now, besides myself. Both are American, both are writers. The first Elizabeth is a novelist and the second Elizabeth is a food writer. With an apartment in Rome, a house in Umbria, an Italian husband and a job that requires her to travel around Italy eating food and writing about it for Gourmet, it appears that the second Elizabeth must have saved a lot of orphans from drowning during a previous lifetime. Unsurprisingly, she knows all the best places to eat in Rome, including a gelateria that serves a frozen rice pudding(and if they don't serve this kind of thing in heaven, then I really don't want to go there). She took me out to lunch the other day, and what we ate included not only lamb and truffles and carpaccio rolled around hazelnut mousse but an exotic little serving of pickled lampascione, which is—as everyone knows—the bulb of the wild hyacinth. 我需要交些朋友。于是我忙着交友，现在是十月，我已交了各种各样的朋友。我在罗马认识两位除我之外的伊莉莎白。两人都是美国人，两人都是作家。第一位伊莉莎白是小说家，第二位伊莉莎白是美食作家。这第二位伊莉莎白，在罗马有间公寓，在翁布里亚（Umbria）有栋房子，先生是意大利人，还有一份让她周游意大利品尝美食并加以报道的工作，看来其前世肯定救了许多溺水孤儿。毫不令人讶异，她晓得罗马最好的餐厅，包括一家供应米制布丁的冰店（倘若天堂不供应这种东西，那我真的不想去）。前几天她带我出去吃午饭，我们吃的不仅包括松露羊肉薄片卷榛果慕斯，还吃了一种珍奇的腌制“lampascione”——众所周知——野生风信子的球根。 Of course, by now I've also made friends with Giovanni and Dario, my Tandem LanguageExchange fantasy twins. Giovanni's sweetness, in my opinion, makes him a national treasure of Italy. He endeared himself to me forever the first night we met, when I was getting frustrated with my inability to find the words I wanted in Italian, and he put his hand on my arm and said, "Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new." Sometimes I feel like he's older than me, what with his solemn brow and his philosophy degree and his serious political opinions. I like to try to make him laugh, but Giovanni doesn't always get my jokes. Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, "When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder." 不消说，此时的我早已跟“串连语言交流”的梦幻双胞胎乔凡尼和达里奥成了朋友。乔凡尼的亲切可爱，依我看来，完全是意大利国宝级人物。他在我们见面的第一晚就赢得我的喜爱，因为当我找不到想表达的意大利字而深感受挫折时，他会握着我的手臂说：“小莉，学新东西的时候，你得对自己‘很客气’。”有时我觉得他比我年长，因为他威严的眉毛、他的哲学学位以及他严肃的政治观点等特质。我喜欢尝试逗他发笑，但乔凡尼不见得懂得我的笑话。幽默很难透过另一种语言捕捉，尤其当你是像乔凡尼一样严肃的年轻人时。有天晚上他对我说：“在你嘻谑嘲弄的时候，我总是落在你后头。我慢半拍，就好像你是闪电，我是雷声。” And I thought, Yeah, baby! And you are the magnet and I am the steel! Bring to me yourleather, take from me my lace ! 我心想，是的，宝贝！而你是磁铁，我是铁！拿你的皮鞭来吧，解开我的系带吧！ But still, he has not kissed me. 但是他仍未吻我。 I don't very often see Dario, the other twin, though he does spend a lot of his time with Sofie. Sofie is my best friend from my language class, and she's definitely somebody you'd want to spend your time with, too, if you were Dario. Sofie is Swedish and in her late twenties and so damn cute you could put her on a hook and use her as bait to catch men of all different nationalities and ages. Sofie has just taken a four-month leave of absence from her good job in a Swedish bank, much to the horror of her family and bewilderment of her colleagues, only because she wanted to come to Rome and learn how to speak beautiful Italian. Every day after class, Sofie and I go sit by the Tiber, eating our gelato and studying with each other. You can't even rightly call it "studying," the thing that we do. It's more like a shared relishing of the Italian language, an almost worshipful ritual, and we're always offering each other new wonderful idioms. Like, for instance, we just learned the other day that un'amica stretta means "a close friend." But stretta literally means tight, as in clothing, like a tight skirt. So a close friend, in Italian, is one you that can wear tightly, snug against your skin, and that is what my little Swedish friend Sofie is becoming to me. 我不太常见到双胞胎的另一位——达里奥，尽管他花很多时间和苏菲共处。苏菲是我在意大利语班最好的朋友，而她的确也是你想花时间共处的人，假使你是达里奥的话。苏菲是瑞典人，二十八九岁，可爱得要命，倘使把她当做钓饵，可捕捉到各种国籍、年龄的男人。苏菲有份在瑞典某银行的好工作，不过她请了四个月的长假，使她的家人大为惊恐，同事们疑惑不解，只因为她想来罗马学习讲漂亮的意大利语。每天下课，苏菲和我去台伯河畔闲坐，吃我们的冰，一起念书。你甚至不能把我们做的事称为“念书”。还不如说薀筒同玩味意大利语，一种近乎崇拜的仪式，我们总是提供给对方奇妙的新短语。比方说，我们有天得知“un'amica stretta”是“密友”的意思。但“stretta”原意指“紧”，像是服装的紧身裙。因此意大利语中的密友，是让你能紧紧穿在身上、紧贴皮肤的人。我的瑞典朋友苏菲对我来说正是如此。 At the beginning, I liked to think that Sofie and I looked like sisters. Then we were taking a taxi through Rome the other day and the guy driving the cab asked if Sofie was my daughter. Now, folks—the girl is only about seven years younger than I am. My mind went into such aspin-control mode, trying to explain away what he'd said. (For instance, I thought, Maybe this native Roman cabdriver doesn't speak Italian very well, and meant to ask if we were sisters.) But, no. He said daughter and he meant daughter. Oh, what can I say? I've been through a lot in the last few years. I must look so beat-up and old after this divorce. But as that old country-western song out of Texas goes, "I've been screwed and sued and tattooed, and I'm still standin' here in front of you . . ." 一开始，我喜欢把苏菲和我想成是姐妹淘。然后有一天我们一起在罗马搭计程车，司机问苏菲是不是我的女儿。各位朋友——这女孩不过才小我七岁。我的脑子立即进入扭转控制阶段，试图为他的话进行解密。（比方说，我心想，或许这位土生土长的罗马计程车司机意大利语讲得不好，他打算问我们是不是“姐妹”。）但事实不然。他说女儿，意思就是女儿。喔，我能说什么呢？过去几年来我历经坎坷，一场离婚过后肯定看起来又老又丑。但正如德州乡村老歌所唱：“我历经风吹雨打、人生波折，却仍然站在你面前……”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 20 (38):我的新生活 I've also become friends with a cool couple named Maria and Giulio, introduced to me by my friend Anne—an American painter who lived in Rome a few years back. Maria is from America, Giulio's from the south of Italy. He's a filmmaker, she works for an international agricultural policy organization. He doesn't speak great English, but she speaks fluent Italian (and also fluent French and Chinese, so that's not intimidating ). Giulio wants to learn English, and asked if he could practice conversing with me in another Tandem Exchange. In case you're wondering why he couldn't just study English with his American-born wife, it's because they're married and they fight too much whenever one tries to teach anything to the other one. So Giulio and I now meet for lunch twice a week to practice our Italian and English; a good task for two people who don't have any history of irritating each other. 我也和一对很酷的夫妻成为朋友，他们名叫玛莉亚和朱利欧，由我的朋友安——几年前住在罗马的一位美国画家——所介绍认识。玛莉亚是美国人， 朱利欧是意大利南部人。他拍电影，她为国际农业 政策组织工作。他的英语说得不太好，她则说一口流利的意大利语 （也说流利的法语和中文，因此这并不吓唬人）。朱利欧想学英语，询问我能否跟我练习会话。假如你想知道他干嘛不跟他的美国老婆念 英语，那是因为他们是夫妻，每回其中一人尝试教另一人什么的时候，就吵得如火如荼。朱利欧和我如今每周见两次面吃午饭，练习我们的意大利语和英语；这对于没惹恼过对方的两个人来说是件好事。朱利欧和玛莉亚有间美丽的公寓，其中最给人印象深刻的，在我看来是一面墙壁。玛莉亚（用粗黑奇异笔）在墙上写满对朱利欧的愤怒诅咒，因为他们起争执的时候，“他吼得比我大声”，因此她想要有插话的机会。 Giulio and Maria have a beautiful apartment, the most impressive feature of which is, to my mind, the wall that Maria once covered with angry curses against Giulio (scrawled in thick black magic marker) because they were having an argument and "he yells louder than me" and she wanted to get a word in edgewise . I think Maria is terrifically sexy, and this burst of passionate graffiti is only further evidence of it. Interestingly, though, Giulio sees the scrawled-upon wall as a sure sign of Maria's repression, because she wrote her curses against him in Italian, and Italian is her second language, a language she has to think about for a moment before she can choose her words. He said if Maria had truly allowed herself to be overcome by anger—which she never does, because she's a good Anglo-Protestant—then she would have written all over that wall in her native English. He says all Americans are like this: repressed. Which makes them dangerous andpotentially deadly when they do blow up. 我认为玛莉亚性感得不得了，而这瞬间迸发的激烈涂鸦更证明了这点。但有趣的是，朱利欧把这面涂鸦墙壁看作是玛莉亚的压抑迹象，因为她用意大利语写下对他的咒骂，而意大利语是她的第二语言，一种在她选用词汇之前必须思索片刻的语言。 他说玛莉亚假使真的怒不可抑——这从未发生在她身上，因为她是中规中矩的盎格鲁新教徒——那她就会用她的英文母语写那面墙。他说所有的美国人都像这样：受压抑。这让他们在爆发之时更加危险而且有诱发致命的可能性。 "A savage people," he diagnoses. “一群野蛮人。”他判断道。 What I love is that we all had this conversation over a nice relaxed dinner, while looking at the wall itself. 我喜欢一面吃轻松的晚餐进行这样的对话，一面观看这面墙。 "More wine, honey?" asked Maria. “甜心，再来杯酒？”玛莉亚问道。 But my newest best friend in Italy is, of course, Luca Spaghetti. Even in Italy, by the way, it's considered a very funny thing to have a last name like Spaghetti. I'm grateful for Luca because he has finally allowed me to get even with my friend Brian, who was lucky enough to have grown up next door to a Native American kid named Dennis Ha-Ha, and therefore could always boast that he had the friend with the coolest name. Finally, I can offer competition. 但我在意大利最近期的好友当然是卢卡•斯帕盖蒂。顺便提一句，即使在意大利，斯帕盖蒂这姓也被认为是相当逗趣的事。我很感谢卢卡，因为他终于让我和我的朋友布莱恩打成了平手。布莱恩从小有幸跟一个名叫丹尼斯•哈哈（Dennis Ha-Ha）的美国原住民小孩做邻居，因此老是夸口说他有个名字最酷的朋友。我终于能和他一较高下了。 Luca also speaks perfect English and is a good eater (in Italian, una buona forchetta—a good fork), so he's terrific company for the hungry likes of me. He often calls in the middle of the day to say, "Hey, I'm in your neighborhood—want to meet up for a quick cup of coffee? Or a plate of oxtail?" We spend a lot of time in these dirty little dives in the back streets of Rome. We like the restaurants with the fluorescent lighting and no name listed outside. Plastic redcheckered tablecloths. Homemade limoncello liqueur. Homemade red wine. Pasta served in unbelievable quantities by what Luca calls "little Julius Caesars"—proud, pushy, local guys with hair on the backs of their hands and passionately tended pompadours. I once said to Luca, "It seems to me these guys consider themselves Romans first, Italians second and Europeans third." He corrected me. "No—they are Romans first, Romans second and Romans third. And every one of them is an Emperor." 卢卡的英语说得很好，还是个老饕（依意大利语的说法是“una buona forchetta”——好叉子），因此对我这种饿狠狠的人来说是绝佳好伴。他经常在中午打电话说“嗨，我在附近——想不想见个面，快快喝杯咖啡？或吃盘牛尾？”我们在罗马后街那些肮脏小酒吧消磨了许多时间。我们喜欢那种日光灯照明、外头没有店名的餐厅。塑料红格子桌布。私酿的柠檬甜酒。私酿的红酒。而卢卡称之为“小凯撒们”的侍者，总是端上分量惊人的面条；这些骄傲、有干劲的当地男子，手背有毛，头发照料得俊俏。有回我对卢卡说：“依我看，这些家伙认为自己一是罗马人，二是意大利人，三是欧洲人。”他更正我：“不——他们一是罗马人，二是罗马人，三是罗马人。他们人人都是皇帝。”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 20 (39):好朋友卢卡 Luca is a tax accountant. An Italian tax accountant, which means that he is, in his owndescription, "an artist," because there are several hundred tax laws on the books in Italy and all of them contradict each other. So filing a tax return here requires jazzlike improvisation . I think it's funny that he's a tax accountant, because it seems like such stiff work for such alighthearted guy. On the other hand, Luca thinks it's funny that there's another side of me—this Yoga side—that he's never seen. He can't imagine why I would want to go to India—and to an Ashram, of all places!—when I could just stay in Italy all year, which is obviously where I belong. Whenever he watches me sopping up the leftover gravy from my plate with a hunk of bread and then licking my fingers, he says, "What are you going to eat when you go to India?" Sometimes he calls me Gandhi, in a most ironic tone, generally when I'm opening the second bottle of wine. 卢卡是税务会计师。如他自己描述，一个意大利税务会计师意味着他是个“艺术家”，因为意大利有数百条税法，而且全部相互矛盾。因此在此地申报所得税需要爵士乐般的即兴创作。我认为他是个税务会计师真滑稽，因为这对一个无忧无虑的人来说似乎是件艰难的工作。另一方面，卢卡认为我那个他没见过的另一面——瑜伽那一面——也很滑稽。他想不通我为何想去印度——而且还挑了个道场——干嘛不整年待在显然令我如鱼得水的意大利。每逢他看着我拿面包沾取盘里剩下的肉汁，然后舔舔手指时，就说：“你去印度要吃什么？”有时他语气嘲弄地叫我甘地，通常在我开第二瓶酒的时候。 Luca has traveled a fair amount, though he claims he could never live anywhere but in Rome, near his mother, since he is an Italian man, after all—what can he say? But it's not just his mamma who keeps him around. He's in his early thirties, and has had the same girlfriend since he was a teenager (the lovely Giuliana, whom Luca describes fondly and aptly as acqua e sapone—"soapand water" in her sweet innocence). All his friends are the same friends he's had since childhood, and all from the same neighborhood. They watch the soccer matches together every Sunday—either at the stadium or in a bar (if the Roman teams are playing away)—and then they all return separately to the homes where they grew up, in order to eat the big Sunday afternoon meals cooked by their respective mothers and grandmothers. 卢卡经常旅行，尽管他宣称他只能住在罗马，离他母亲很近的地方，毕竟他是个意大利男人，能怎么样呢？然而让他留下的原因不仅是他的妈妈。他三十岁出头，从十几岁起就和同一个女朋友在一起（可爱的茱莉亚娜，卢卡亲热而恰当地形容她是“acqua e sapone”——“肥皂和水”，因为她既甜美又纯真）。他的朋友都是从小认识的，来自相同的邻里。他们每个礼拜天一起看足球赛——在体育场或酒吧（罗马队去外地比赛的时候）——而后每个人分别回到自己成长的家，吃母亲和祖母准备的周日大餐。 I wouldn't move from Rome, either, if I were Luca Spaghetti. 换作我是斯帕盖蒂，我也不想搬离罗马。 Luca has visited America a few times, though, and likes it. He finds New York City fascinating but thinks that people work too hard there, though he admits they seem to enjoy it. Whereas Romans work hard and resent it massively. What Luca Spaghetti doesn't like is American food, which he says can be described in two words: "Amtrak Pizza." 不过，卢卡去了几次美国，也喜欢美国。他觉得纽约很迷人，却认为那里的人工作太卖力，尽管他承认他们似乎以此为乐。而罗马人工作虽卖力， 却痛恨得很。卢卡不喜欢美国食物，他说美国食物可以用四个字形容：“铁路比萨”。 I was with Luca the first time I ever tried eating the intestines of a newborn lamb. This is a Roman specialty. Food-wise, Rome is actually a pretty rough town, known for its coarse traditional farelike guts and tongues—all the parts of the animal the rich people up north throw away. My lamb intestines tasted OK, as long as I didn't think too much about what they were. They were served in a heavy, buttery, savory gravy that itself was terrific, but the intestines had a kind of . . . well . . . intestinal consistency. Kind of like liver, but mushier. I did well with them until I started trying to think how I would describe this dish, and I thought, It doesn't look like intestines . It actually looks like tapeworms. Then I pushed it aside and asked for a salad. 我第一次吃初生小羊的肠子是跟卢卡一起的，这是罗马的特产。就食物而言，罗马是颇为简陋的城市，以粗糙的传统食物知名，比方内脏、舌头——北方富人扔掉的动物下脚料。我的羊肠尝起来还行，只要我不去多想它是什么玩意。又浓又香的肉汁本身很棒，但肠子却具有一种……“肠”的黏稠度，有点像肝，但比较糊。我原本吃得很好，直到开始尝试描述这道菜的时候，我心想，这看起来不像肠子，倒像条虫。而后我把盘子推到一旁，要了沙拉。 "You don't like it?" asked Luca, who loves the stuff. “你不喜欢？”卢卡问道，他喜欢这道菜。 "I bet Gandhi never ate lamb intestines in his life," I said. "He could have."“我敢说甘地一辈子从不吃羊肠。”我说。“他可能吃过。” "No, he couldn't have, Luca. Gandhi was a vegetarian ." “不可能，卢卡。甘地吃素。” "But vegetarians can eat this," Luca insisted. "Because intestines aren't even meat, Liz. They're just shit." Eat, Pray, Love “但吃素的人可以吃这道菜，”卢卡坚持。“因为肠子甚至不是肉，小莉。只是屎罢了。”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 21 (40):做无所事事的高手 Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here, I admit it. 我承认，有时候我不了解自己在这里做什么。 While I have come to Italy in order to experience pleasure, during the first few weeks I washere, I felt a bit of panic as to how one should do that. Frankly, pure pleasure is not my culturalparadigm . I come from a long line of superconscientious people. My mother's family were Swedish immigrant farmers, who look in their photographs like, if they'd ever even seen something pleasurable, they might have stomped on it with their hobnailed boots. (My uncle calls the whole lot of them "oxen.") My father's side of the family were English Puritans, those great goofy lovers of fun. If I look on my dad's family tree all the way back to the seventeenth century, I can actually find Puritan relatives with names like Diligence and Meekness. 我来意大利是为了体验快乐，但我到这里的头几个星期却提心吊胆，不知该如何做。老实说，纯粹的快乐，并非我的文化概念。我来自一个世世代代超级勤勉的家系。我母亲的家族是务农的瑞典移民，相片里的他们看起来像是，他们若看见任何令人快乐的东西，就用脚上的钉靴一脚踩上去（我舅舅把他们统称为“耕牛”）。我的父方家族是英国清教徒，拙于吃喝玩乐。假使把我的父方族谱一路回 溯到17世纪，我确实能找到名叫“勤勉”和“谦恭”的清教徒亲戚。 My own parents have a small farm, and my sister and I grew up working. We were taught to bedependable, responsible, the top of our classes at school, the most organized and efficientbabysitters in town, the very miniature models of our hardworking farmer/nurse of a mother, a pair of junior Swiss Army knives, born to multitask. We had a lot of enjoyment in my family, a lot of laughter, but the walls were papered with to-do lists and I never experienced or witnessed idleness, not once in my whole entire life. 我自己的父母有个小农场，我姐姐和我在工作中长大。我们学会可靠、负责，在班上名列前茅，是镇上最一丝不茍、最有效率的保姆，是我们那位刻苦耐劳的农人／护士母亲的缩影，一对年幼的瑞士刀，天生擅于多种任务。我们在家中拥有许多快乐与欢笑，但墙上贴满工作清单，因此我从未体验 或目睹游手好闲，这辈子从未有过。 Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is anentertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. Americans work harder and longer and morestressful hours than anyone in the world today. But as Luca Spaghetti pointed out, we seem to like it. Alarming statistics back this observation up, showing that many Americans feel more happy and fulfilled in their offices than they do in their own homes. Of course, we all inevitablywork too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure). Americans don't really know how to do nothing. This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype—the overstressed executivewho goes on vacation, but who cannot relax. 尽管一般说来，美国人无法放松享受全然的快乐。我们是寻求娱乐的国家，却不见得是寻求快乐的国家。美国人花费数亿元逗乐自己，从色情、主题乐园到战争，却和平静的享受不相干。美国人比世上任何人工作得更卖力、更久、更紧张。正如卢卡•斯帕盖蒂所说，我们似乎乐此不疲。令人担忧的统计数字支持此一观察，显示许多美国人在公司比在自己家里的时候感觉更快乐、更满足。没错，我们无疑都工作得太卖力，而后筋疲力竭，必须整个周末身穿睡衣、直接从盒子里拿粟米片出来吃，头脑呆滞地盯着电视看（没错，跟工作正好对立，但跟快乐可不算同一回事）。美国人不懂得如何无所事事。这是可悲的美国典型 ——压力过度的即便去度假，却无法放松的起因。 I once asked Luca Spaghetti if Italians on vacation have that same problem. He laughed so hard he almost drove his motorbike into a fountain. 我曾经问过卢卡，度假的意大利人是否有相同的问题。 "Oh, no!" he said. "We are the masters of bel far niente." 他捧腹大笑，几乎把摩托车撞上喷泉。“喔，没有！”他说“我们是‘bel far niente’的能手。” This is a sweet expression. Bel far niente means "the beauty of doing nothing." Now listen—Italians have traditionally always been hard workers, especially those long-suffering laborers known as braccianti (so called because they had nothing but the brute strength of their arms—braccie—to help them survive in this world). But even against that backdrop of hard work, bel far niente has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi—the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast, or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent for happiness can do this, not only the rich. 这是个漂亮的措辞。“bel far niente”是“无所事事之美”的意思。听我道来——传统来说，意大利人自古以来一直存在着勤奋工作的人，尤其是那些长期受苦的劳动者，即所谓“braccianti”（因为他们除了手臂［braccie］的蛮力能帮助他们幸存于世之外，别无所有，故名）。但即使在艰苦劳动的背景下，“无所事事”始终是大家抱持的一个意大利梦想。无所事事的美好，是你全部工作的目标，是你备受祝贺的最后成果。你愈是闲暇舒适地无所事事，你的生活成就便愈高。你也不见得要有钱才能体验其中的奥妙。另有一个美妙的意大利措辞：“l'arte d'rrangiarsi”——“无中生有的艺术”。将几种简单配料变成一场盛宴，或是几个聚在一起的朋友变成一场喜庆的艺术。任何有快乐天赋的人都能上手，这并非有钱人的玩意儿。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 21 (41):如何定义快乐 For me, though, a major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritanguilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American, too—the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. ThisBud's for You! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You're Worth It! You've Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I am gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even two six-packs! And then comes the reactionary binge. Followed by the remorse. Such advertising campaigns would probably not be as effective in the Italian culture, where people already know that they are entitled to enjoyment in this life. The reply in Italy to "You Deserve a Break Today" would probably be, Yeah, no duh. That's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon, to go over to your house and sleep with your wife. 然而对我来说，追求快乐的主要障碍是我根深蒂固的清教徒罪恶感。我是否该拥有这种快乐？这也是很典型的美国态度——对于自己是否值得快乐，感到惶惑不安。美国的广告系统完全环绕在说服拿不定主意的消费者：是的，你确实有权享受特殊待遇。这啤酒是给你的！你今天应该休息一下！因为你值得！苦尽甘来了，宝贝！缺乏安全感的消费者心想，是啊！谢啦！我就去买个该死的半打吧！干脆一打算了！而后开始反动式地狂饮。接着才懊悔不已。这类广告战在意大利文化中很可能起不了效用，因为人们早已知道他们有权享受人生。在意大利，面对 “你今天应该休息一下”的回答可能是：“对啊，不，废话。所以我打算中午休息一下，去你家和你老婆睡觉。” Which is probably why, when I told my Italian friends that I'd come to their country in order to experience four months of pure pleasure, they didn't have any hang-ups about it. Complimenti! Vai avanti! Congratulations, they would say. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Be our guest. Nobody once said, "How completely irresponsible of you," or "What a self-indulgent luxury." But while the Italians have given me full permission to enjoy myself, I still can't quite let go. During my first few weeks in Italy, all my Protestant synapses were zinging in distress, looking for a task. I wanted to take on pleasure like a homework assignment, or a giant science fair project. I pondered such questions as, "How is pleasure most efficiently maximized?" I wondered if maybe I should spend all my time in Italy in the library, doing research on the history of pleasure. Or maybe I should interview Italians who've experienced a lot of pleasure in their lives, asking them what their pleasures feel like, and then writing a report on this topic. (Double-spaced and with one-inch margins, perhaps? To be turned in first thing Monday morning?) 或许因为如此，当我告诉意大利朋友们，我到他们的国家来体验四个月纯粹的快乐，他们对此并无任何心理障碍。“Complimenti!Vai avanti!”（恭喜），他们会这么说。就这么办吧。尽情玩吧。来我们家做客吧。从来没有人说：“你完全缺乏责任感”或者“多么自我耽溺的享受”。然而尽管意大利人完全允许我好好享受，我却仍无法完全放松。在意大利的头几个礼拜，我的每根清教徒神经都在蠢动，到处找寻任务。我想把快乐当做家庭作业或庞大的科学研究来处理。我思索这类问题：“如何以最有效的方式强化快乐？”我心想，或许我在意大利的全部时间应当待在图书馆研究快乐的历史。或者应当去采访在生活中体验许多快乐的意大利人，问他们快乐是什么感觉，然后以此为题写篇报告。（或许双倍行距、留一吋边？周一一大早就把稿子交出去？） When I realized that the only question at hand was, "How do I define pleasure?" and that I was truly in a country where people would permit me to explore that question freely, everything changed. Everything became . . . delicious. All I had to do was ask myself every day, for the first time in my life, "What would you enjoy doing today, Liz? What would bring you pleasure right now?" With nobody else's agenda to consider and no other obligations to worry about, this question finally became distilled and absolutely self-specific. 当我明白手边的唯一问题是“如何定义快乐”，而当我真正待在这个人们准许我放手探索这个问题的国家时，一切都改观了。一切都开始变得……美味。有生以来第一次，我每天只需要问自己：“你今天乐于做什么事，小莉？现在什么东西能带给你快乐？”无须考虑任何人的议程，也无须忧心任何责任，这个问题终于变得纯粹而确定。 It was interesting for me to discover what I did not want to do in Italy, once I'd given myselfexecutive authorization to enjoy my experience there. There are so many manifestations of pleasure in Italy, and I didn't have time to sample them all. You have to kind of declare a pleasure major here, or you'll get overwhelmed. That being the case, I didn't get into fashion, or opera, or cinema, or fancy automobiles, or skiing in the Alps. I didn't even want to look at that much art. I am a bit ashamed to admit this, but I did not visit a single museum during my entire four months in Italy. (Oh, man—it's even worse than that. I have to confess that I did go to one museum: the National Museum of Pasta, in Rome.) I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really—in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato). 一旦准许自己在这儿享受经验，而且了解自己在意大利什么事也不想做 ，对我而言是有趣的事。意大利有多种快乐的表现形式，而我没有时间全部尝试。你得在这儿宣告你的主修，否则会应接不暇。既然如此，我感兴趣的并非时尚、歌剧、电影、高级车，或去阿尔卑斯山滑雪。我甚至不那么想观看艺术。在意大利的整整四个月当中，我没去过任何博物馆，我承认这一点让我有些羞愧。（天啊——更糟糕的是，我得承认我的确去过一家博物馆：位于罗马的国立面 食博物馆［National Museum of Pasta］。）我发现我真正想做的是吃美好的食物，尽可能多说美好的意大利语。就这样。因此事实上，我宣告了双主修——说话与饮食（专修冰品 ）。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 21 (42):享受意大利 The amount of pleasure this eating and speaking brought to me was inestimable, and yet so simple. I passed a few hours once in the middle of October that might look like nothing much to the outside observer, but which I will always count amongst the happiest of my life. I found a market near my apartment, only a few streets over from me, which I'd somehow never noticed before. There I approached a tiny vegetable stall with one Italian woman and her son selling a choice assortment of their produce—such as rich, almost algae-green leaves of spinach, tomatoes so red and bloody they looked like a cow's organs, and champagne-colored grapes with skins as tight as a showgirl's leotard. 这样的饮食与说话带给我至高无上却又简单朴素的快乐。我在十月中旬度过的几个小时，对旁观者来说或许没啥大不了，但我始终认为是自己生命中最愉快的时期。我在公寓附近发现一个市场，仅几条街之远，我先前不曾注意到它。我走近有个意大利妇女的小蔬菜摊，她和她儿子贩卖各式各样的产品——像是叶片丰润、绿藻色的菠菜，血红有如动物器官的番茄，外皮紧绷的香槟色葡萄。 I selected a bunch of thin, bright asparagus. I was able to ask the woman, in comfortable Italian, if I could possibly just take half this asparagus home? There was only one of me, I explained to her—I didn't need much. She promptly took the asparagus from my hands and halved it. I asked her if I could find this market every day in the same place, and she said, yes, she was here every day, from 7:00 AM. Then her son, who was very cute, gave me a sly look and said, "Well, she tries to be here at seven . . ." We all laughed. This whole conversation was conducted in Italian—a language I could not speak a word of only a few months earlier. 我挑了一捆细长鲜艳的芦笋。我轻松地用意大利语问这位妇女，能不能带半捆芦笋回家？我向她说明，我只有一个人，分量无需太多。她立即从我手中拿过芦笋，分成两半。我问她每天能否在老地方找到市场？她说，是的，她每天都在这里，从早上七点开始。而后她俊俏的儿子表情诡秘地说：“这个嘛，她尽量想在七点来这里……”我们全笑了。 整段谈话以意大利语进行。才几个月前，这语言我还无法讲半个字呢。 I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch. I peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all). I put some olives on the plate, too, and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the formaggeria down the street, and two slices of pink, oily salmon. For dessert—a lovely peach, which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm from the Roman sunlight. For the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch, a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing. Finally, when I had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal, I went and sat in a patch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bite of it, with my fingers, while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian. Happiness inhabited my everymolecule. 我走回公寓，把两个蛋煮嫩吃午餐。我剥了蛋壳，排放在盘子上，摆在七条芦笋旁边（它们又细又美，根本无须烹煮）。我还在盘子里放了几颗橄榄，以及昨天在路上的乳酪铺买来的四小团羊乳酪，还有两片粉红油嫩的鲑鱼。饭后点心是一颗漂亮的桃子，是那位市场妇女免费送我的：桃子晒了罗马的阳光，余温犹存。好长一段时间，我甚至无法碰这餐饭，因为这顿午餐像是大师杰作，真正表现了无中生有的艺术。最后，充分享受菜肴之美色后，我在干净的木头地板上一块阳光中坐下，用手指头吃掉每一口菜，一面阅读每日的意大利语报纸。幸福进驻我的每个毛细孔中。 Until—as often happened during those first months of travel, whenever I would feel such happiness—my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband's voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up everything for? This is why you gutted our entire life together? For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper? 直到——如同头几个月的旅行期间，每当我感觉到此种幸福时，经常发生的那样——我的罪恶感警报便响起。我听见前夫的声音在我耳边不屑地说： 所以，你放弃一切就为了这个？这就是你把我们的共同生活一手摧毁的理由？为了几条芦笋和一份意大利语报纸？ I replied aloud to him. "First of all," I said, "I'm very sorry, but this isn't your business anymore. And secondly, to answer your question . . . yes." Eat, Pray, Love 我高声回复他：“首先，我很抱歉，这已不干你的事。其次，让我回答你的问题……没错！”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 22 (43):我也想找个伴儿 One obvious topic still needs to be addressed concerning my whole pursuit of pleasure thing in Italy: What about sex? 关于我在意大利追求快乐一事，显然还有件事得提提：性的问题怎么说？ To answer that question simply: I don't want to have any while I'm here. 为了回答这个问题，我只能说：我人在此地的时候，不想有任何性关系。 To answer it more thoroughly and honestly—of course, sometimes I do desperately want to have some, but I've decided to sit this particular game out for a while. I don't want to get involved with anybody. Of course I do miss being kissed because I love kissing. (I complain about this so much to Sofie that the other day she finally said in exasperation, "For God's sake, Liz—if it gets bad enough, I'll kiss you.") But I'm not going to do anything about it for now. When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings. 更彻底、更诚实的回答是——当然，有时我确实很渴望，但我已决定暂时不参加这项特定活动。我不想跟任何人扯上关系。我自然怀念亲吻，因为我喜欢亲吻（有一天我向苏菲滔滔不绝地抱怨起这件事，最后她愤怒地说：“看在老天爷的份儿上，小莉——假如情况太糟，就让我亲你吧。”）但目前我不去做任何事。近来我若觉得寂寞，我就想：那就寂寞吧，小莉。学学处理寂寞，为寂寞做计划。一辈子就这么一次，与它并肩而坐。接受这种人生体验。别再利用他人的身体或感情，来抒发你未满足的渴望。 It's a kind of emergency life-saving policy, more than anything else. I got started early in life with the pursuit of sexual and romantic pleasure. I barely had an adolescence before I had my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life ever since I was fifteen years old. That was—oh, let's see—about nineteen years ago, now. That's almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week's breather in between. And I can't help but think that's been something of a liability on my path to maturity. 这是一种紧急时期的求生方针，尤甚于其他任何事情。早在人生初期，我即已开始追求性与浪漫之乐。我在交往第一个男友前几乎没有青春期，而打从十五岁起，我一贯有男孩或男人（有时两者）做伴。那大约是——喔，十九年前的事了。足足有二十个年头，我一直与某男子纠结于某场戏剧当中。情事彼此重叠，之间从没有一个星期的喘息时间。我不禁要想，这在我的成熟道路上多少造成阻碍。 Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that's not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time—everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are notavailable, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. 再者，我跟男人之间有分界的问题。或许这么说不公平。照说有分界问题，理当一开始就有“界线”，对吧？但我却是整个消失而成为我爱的那个人。我是可渗透的薄膜。我若爱你，你即可拥有一切。你能拥有我的时间、我的忠诚、我的屁股、我的金钱、我的家人、我的狗、我的狗的金钱、我的狗的时间——一切的一切。我若爱你，我会扛起你所有的痛苦，为你承担所有的债务（就每一种定义而言），我将保护你免于不安，把你从未在自己身上养成的各种优秀品质投射给你，买圣诞礼物给你的全家人。我会给你雨和太阳，假使没办法立刻给你的话，我会改天给你。除了这些，我还会给你更多更多，直到我筋疲力竭，耗尽心力，只能靠迷恋另一个人才能再使我恢复精力。 I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it's always been. 我并非引以自豪地说明这些关于我本身的事实，但事情一贯如此。 Some time after I'd left my husband, I was at a party and a guy I barely knew said to me, "You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men." 离开我先生一段时间后，在一次派对上，有个我不太熟悉的男子对我说 “你知道吗？现在你跟你的新男友在一起，似乎完全变了个人。从前你跟你先生看起来很像，但现在的你看上去活像大卫。你甚至连穿着、讲话都像他。你知道有些人跟他们养的狗看起来很像吧？我想或许你一向跟你的男人很像。” Dear God, I could use a little break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I'm not trying to merge with someone. And also, let's be honest—it might be a generous public service for me to leave intimacy alone for a while. When I scan back on my romantic record, it doesn't look so good. It's been one catastrophe after another. How many more different types of men can I keep trying to love, and continue to fail? Think of it this way—if you'd had ten serious traffic accidents in a row, wouldn't they eventually take your driver's license away? Wouldn't you kind of want them to? 天啊，我真该暂时摆脱这种循环，稍事休息，给自己一些空间去发现，在我不试着与他人融为一体时，我自己看起来、说起话来的样子。还有，让我们都诚实点吧——暂时把亲密关系放在一旁，或许在我来说是一种慷慨的公共服务。当我回顾我的浪漫史，发现其看起来并不怎么好。可说是一个接着一个灾难。还能再有几种不同类型的男人让我继续尝试去爱，然后继续失败？这样想吧 ——你若连 续出十场重大车祸，难道最后不会被吊销驾照？难道你不会多少希望驾照被吊销？ There's a final reason I'm hesitant to get involved with someone else. I still happen to be in love with David, and I don't think that's fair to the next guy. I don't even know if David and I are totally broken up yet. We were still hanging around each other a lot before I left for Italy, though we hadn't slept together in a long time. But we were still admitting that we both harbored hopes that maybe someday . . . 我之所以对卷入另一段感情有所迟疑，还有最后一个原因。我碰巧还爱着大卫，我想这对下一个男人来说不公平。我甚至不晓得大卫与我是否完全分手。在我动身前往意大利之前，我们仍常彼此消磨时间，尽管我们已有很长一段时间未同床共枕。但我们依然承认，我们俩都仍抱着希望，或许有一天…… I don't know. 我不晓得。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 22 (44):禁欲 This much I do know—I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hastychoices and chaotic passions. By the time I left for Italy, my body and my spirit were depleted. I felt like the soil on some desperate sharecropper's farm, sorely overworked and needing a fallowseason. So that's why I've quit. 我只晓得——一生仓促的抉择和混乱的激情所累积而成的后果，使我心力交瘁。在我前往意大利时，已是身心俱疲。我就像某个绝望的佃农所耕种的土壤，负担过重，亟需休耕。这正是我放弃的原因。 Believe me, I am conscious of the irony of going to Italy in pursuit of pleasure during a period of self-imposed celibacy. But I do think abstinence is the right thing for me at the moment. I was especially sure of it the night I could hear my upstairs neighbor (a very pretty Italian girl with an amazing collection of high-heeled boots) having the longest, loudest, flesh smackingest, bed-thumpingest, back-breakingest session of lovemaking I'd ever heard, in the company of the latest lucky visitor to her apartment. This slam-dance went on for well over an hour, complete with hyperventilating sound effects and wild animal calls. I lay there only one floor below them, alone and tired in my bed, and all I could think was, That sounds like an awful lot of work . . . 相信我，我知道在自愿独身期间来意大利追求快乐，所蕴涵的讽刺意味。但我认为禁欲是目前该做的事。那晚当我听见我的楼上邻居（一位很漂亮的意大利姑娘，收藏了一批令人吃惊的高跟靴），在她最近期的幸运访客陪同下，经历着我所听过时间最长、声音最大、最肉体撞击、最床摇铺动、最粉身碎骨的做爱时刻。这场喧嚣之舞的持续时间远超过一个小时，伴随着超通风声效以及野兽的呼喊。我在他们底下仅一层楼，孤单、疲倦地躺在床上，只能想着：听起来真费劲…… Of course sometimes I really do become overcome with lust. I walk past an average of about a dozen Italian men a day whom I could easily imagine in my bed. Or in theirs. Or wherever. To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say—no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They're like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud. The men here, in their beauty, force me to call upon romance novel rhapsodies in order to describe them. They are "devilishly attractive," or "cruelly handsome," or "surprisingly muscular." 当然，有时我确实充满欲望。我一天大约从平均一打能轻而易举想象跟我上床的意大利男人身边走过。对我的口味而言，罗马的男人美得可笑、有害、愚蠢。说实话，甚至比罗马女人还美。罗马男人的美就像法国女人的美，也就是说——巨细靡遗地寻求完美。他们像参赛的贵宾犬。有时他们看起来完美得令我想鼓掌叫好。这里的美男子迫使我不得不沿用浪漫小说的赞赏语词来描述他们——他们“极端迷人“英俊得无情”，或“强壮得叫人讶异”。 However, if I may admit something not entirely flattering to myself, these Romans on the street aren't really giving me any second looks. Or even many first looks, for that matter. I found this kind of alarming at first. I'd been to Italy once before, back when I was nineteen, and what I remember is being constantly harassed by men on the street. And in the pizzerias. And at the movies. And in the Vatican. It was endless and awful. It used to be a real liability about traveling in Italy, something that could almost even spoil your appetite. Now, at the age of thirty-four, I am apparently invisible. Sure, sometimes a man will speak to me in a friendly way, "You look beautiful today, signorina," but it's not all that common and it never gets aggressive. And while it's certainly nice, of course, to not get pawed by a disgusting stranger on the bus, one does have one's feminine pride, and one must wonder, What has changed here? Is it me? Or is it them? 然而，容我承认对自己来说不怎么愉快的事吧——街上这些罗马人并未朝我多看一眼，甚至连第一眼也没有。一开始我发现这有点令人担忧。从前在我十九岁的时候，我来过意大利，记得被街上的男人不断骚扰。在比萨店，在电影院，在梵蒂冈。无止无境，恐怖至极。从前在意大利旅行是一大负担，几乎能破坏你的食欲。如今，三十四岁的我显然成了隐形人。当然，有时男人会态度友善地对我说：“你今天看起来很美，女士。”但这不常发生，而且从未超过分寸之外。不被公车上讨厌的陌生人伸手乱摸尽管是件不错的事，一个女人却有她的自尊，不禁要猜想：到底是什么改变了？是我吗？还是他们？ So I ask around, and everybody agrees that, yes, there's been a true shift in Italy in the last ten to fifteen years. Maybe it's a victory of feminism, or an evolution of culture, or the inevitablemodernizing effects of having joined the European Union. Or maybe it's just simpleembarrassment on the part of young men about the infamous lewdness of their fathers and grandfathers. Whatever the cause, though, it seems that Italy has decided as a society that this sort of stalking, pestering behavior toward women is no longer acceptable. Not even my lovely young friend Sofie gets harassed on the streets, and those milkmaid-looking Swedish girls used to really get the worst of it. 于是我到处问人，每个人都同意，是的，意大利在过去十到十五年间的确发生了变化。或许是女性主义的胜利，或许是文化的进化，或许是加入欧盟而导致无可避免的现代化结果。或许是只是年轻男人在这方面对父亲和祖父们恶名昭彰的猥亵之举感到困窘。无论原因为何，意大利整个社会似乎一致决定，这种跟踪、骚扰妇女的行为，不再能让人接受。甚至我漂亮的年轻朋友苏菲，也没在街头碰上这种事，可是从前这些白白净净的瑞典女孩总是被骚扰得很严重。 In conclusion—it seems Italian men have earned themselves the Most Improved Award. 总而言之——意大利男人似乎已为自己赢得“最佳进步奖”。 Which is a relief, because for a while there I was afraid it was me. I mean, I was afraid maybe I wasn't getting any attention because I was no longer nineteen years old and pretty. I was afraid that maybe my friend Scott was correct last summer when he said, "Ah, don't worry, Liz—those Italian guys won't bother you anymore. It ain't like France, where they dig the old babes." Eat,Pray, Love 这叫人松一口气，因为有一阵子我担心是“我自己”的缘故。我是说，我担心之所以不被人注意，是因为我不再是十九岁的美少女。我担心或许我的朋友史考特去年夏天说得对：“啊，甭担心，小莉——那些意大利男人不会再骚扰你。这跟法国不同，法国人专找徐娘。”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 23 (45):做足球发烧友 Yesterday afternoon I went to the soccer game with Luca Spaghetti and his friends. We were there to watch Lazio play. There are two soccer teams in Rome—Lazio and Roma. The rivalry between the teams and their fans is immense, and can divide otherwise happy families and peacefulneighborhoods into civil war zones. It's important that you choose early in life whether you are a Lazio fan or a Roma fan, because this will determine, to a large part, whom you hang out with every Sunday afternoon for the rest of time. 昨天下午，我跟卢卡•斯帕盖蒂和他的朋友们去看足球赛。我们在那儿看拉齐奥队（Lazio）比赛。罗马有两个足球队——拉齐奥队和罗马队（Roma）。两队及其粉丝之间竞争激烈，足以将快乐的家庭和平静的街坊分裂成内战地带。无论是拉齐奥粉丝或罗马粉丝，都得自幼作出抉择，因为这大抵决定你一辈子的周日午后将和谁泡在一起。 Luca has a group of about ten close friends who all love each other like brothers. Except that half of them are Lazio fans and half of them are Roma fans. They can't really help it; they were all born into families where the loyalty was already established. Luca's grandfather (who I hope is known as Nonno Spaghetti) gave him his first sky-blue Lazio jersey when the boy was just a toddler. Luca, likewise, will be a Lazio fan until he dies. 卢卡有一群十个左右的好友，全像兄弟般相亲相爱。除开其中一半是拉齐奥粉丝，另一半是罗马粉丝。他们无能为力；他们所生长的家庭都早已确立其忠诚。卢卡的祖父（但愿他叫作诺诺——斯帕）在卢卡还小的时候，就给了他第一件天蓝色的拉齐奥球衣。卢卡也将永远是拉齐奥粉丝，一直到死。 "We can change our wives," he said. "We can change our jobs, our nationalities and even our religions, but we can never change our team." “我们可以换老婆，”他说“我们可以换工作、换国籍，甚至改换宗教，但我们永远无法换球队。”顺带一提，“粉丝”的意大利语是“tifoso”。源自斑疹伤寒（typhus）这个词。 By the way, the word for "fan" in Italian is tifoso. Derived from the word for typhus. In other words—one who is mightily fevered. 换句话说，即是严重发烧的人。 My first soccer game with Luca Spaghetti was, for me, a delirious banquet of Italian language. I learned all sorts of new and interesting words in that stadium which they don't teach you inschool. There was an old man sitting behind me, stringing together such a gorgeous flower-chain of curses as he screamed down at the players on the field. I don't know all that much about soccer, but I sure didn't waste any time asking Luca inane questions about what was going on in the game. All I kept demanding was, "Luca, what did the guy behind me just say? What does cafone mean?" And Luca—never taking his eyes from the field—would reply, "Asshole. It means asshole." 我和卢卡的第一场足球赛，对我来说是一场疯狂的意大利语盛宴。我在体育场内学到学校未教的各式各样新奇有趣的字眼。坐在我身后的一名老人，以堆积成串的华丽辞藻朝球场上的球员尖声诅咒。我对足球所知甚少，但我并未浪费任何时间去询问卢卡，有关比赛进行当中的种种无聊问题。我不断要他告诉我：“卢卡，我后面那家伙刚刚说什么？‘cafone’是什么意思？”目光始终未曾离开球场的卢卡答道：“王八蛋。王八蛋的意思。” I would write it down. Then shut my eyes and listen to some more of the old man's rant, which went something like: Dai, dai, dai, Albertini, dai . . . va bene, va bene, ragazzo mio, perfetto, bravo, bravo . . . Dai! Dai! Via! Via! Nella porta! Eccola, eccola, eccola, mio bravo ragazzo, caro mio, eccola, eccola, ecco—AAAHHHHHHHHH!!! VAFFANCULO!!! FIGLIO DI MIGNOTTA!! STRONZO! CAFONE! TRA-DITORE! Madonna . . . Ah, Dio mio, perché, perché, perché, questo è stupido, è una vergogna, la vergogna . . . Che casino, che bordello . . . NON HAI UN CUORE, ALBERTINI! FAI FINTA! Guarda, non è successo niente . . . Dai, dai, ah. . . . Molto migliore, Albertini, molto migliore, sì sì sì, eccola, bello, bravo, anima mia, ah, ottimo, eccola adesso . . . nella porta, nella porta, nell—VAFFANCULO!!!!!!! 我写了下来。而后闭上眼睛，继续听老人咆哮，听起来像这样： Dai, dai, dai, Albertini, dai . . . va bene, va bene, ragazzo mio, perfetto, bravo, bravo . . . Dai! Dai! Via! Via! Nella porta! Eccola, eccola, eccola, mio bravo ragazzo, caro mio, eccola, eccola, ecco—AAAHHHHHHHHH!!! VAFFANCULO!!! FIGLIO DI MIGNOTTA!! STRONZO! CAFONE! TRA-DITORE! Madonna . . . Ah, Dio mio, perché, perché, perché, questo è stupido, è una vergogna, la vergogna . . . Che casino, che bordello . . . NON HAI UN CUORE, ALBERTINI! FAI FINTA! Guarda, non è successo niente . . . Dai, dai, ah. . . . Molto migliore, Albertini, molto migliore, sì sì sì, eccola, bello, bravo, anima mia, ah, ottimo, eccola adesso . . . nella porta, nella porta, nell—VAFFANCULO!!!!!!!

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 23 (46):在意大利看球赛 Which I can attempt to translate as: 我的译文如下： Come on, come on, come on, Albertini, come on . . . OK, OK, my boy, perfect, brilliant, brilliant . . . Come on! Come on! Go! Go! In the goal! There it is, there it is, there it is, my brilliant boy, my dear, there it is, there it is, there—AHHHH! GO FUCK YOURSELF! YOU SON OF A BITCH! SHITHEAD! ASSHOLE! TRAITOR! . . . Mother of God . . . Oh my God, why, why, why, this is stupid, this is shameful, the shame of it . . . What a mess . . . [Author's note: Unfortunately there's no good way to translate into English the fabulous Italian expressions che casino and che bordello, which literally mean "what a casino," and "what a whorehouse," but essentially mean "what a friggin' mess."] . . . YOU DON'T HAVE A HEART, ALBERTINI!!!! YOU'RE A FAKER! Look, nothing happened . . . Come on, come on, hey, yes . . . Much better, Albertini, much better, yes yes yes, there it is, beautiful, brilliant, oh, excellent, there it isnow . . . in the goal, in the goal, in the—FUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUU!!! 来吧，来吧，来吧，阿尔贝蒂尼，来吧……很好，很好，好孩子，干得好，漂亮，漂亮……来吧！来吧！快！快！进球！很好，很好，我高明的孩子，我的好孩子，很好，很好，很——啊啊啊！干你自己去吧！狗娘养的！笨蛋 ！王八蛋！叛徒！……圣母娘娘……喔我的天，为什么，为什么，为什么，蠢，丢脸，耻辱……一塌糊涂……（作者注：遗憾的是，意大利用语‚che casino‛和‚che bordello‛很难译成恰当的英语，按字面翻译是‚真是卖淫嫖娼，但基本上是‚真他妈的一团糟的意思）……你狼心狗肺，阿尔贝蒂尼!!!你这冒牌货！瞧，没啥看头……来吧，来吧，嘿，对啦 ……好多了，阿尔贝蒂尼，好多了，对，对，对，很好，漂亮，高明，喔，棒，很好……进球，进球，进——滚你妈的蛋!!! Oh, it was such an exquisite and lucky moment in my life to be sitting right in front of this man. I loved every word out of his mouth. I wanted to lean my head back into his old lap and let him pour his eloquent curses into my ears forever. And it wasn't just him! The whole stadium was full of such soliloquies. At such high fervor! Whenever there was some grave miscarriage of justice on the field, the entire stadium would rise to its feet, every man waving his arms in outrage and cursing, as if all 20,000 of them had just been in a traffic altercation. The Lazio players were no less dramatic than their fans, rolling on the ground in pain like death scenes from Julius Caesar, totally playing to the back row, then jumping up on their feet two seconds later to lead another attack on the goal. 喔，能坐在这个男人的正前方，真是我这辈子的幸运时刻。我热爱出自他口中的每一个字。我想把自己的头往后靠，谛听他的责备，以他动人的咒骂注入我的耳中。不止他而已！整个体育场都充满这种独白。如此激昂热烈！每当球场上发生严重的审判不公，整个体育馆的人便站起身来，人人挥动手臂，愤怒咒骂，仿佛有两万人正在进行一场交通争议。拉齐奥球员的戏剧性演出也不亚于他们的粉丝，在地上痛苦打滚，好比《凯萨大帝 》的死亡场景，完完全全夸张演出，两秒钟后又跃起身来重新攻击。 Lazio lost, though. 拉齐奥最后还是输了。 Needing to be cheered up after the game, Luca Spaghetti asked his friends, "Should we go out?" 赛后，卢卡需要让自己快活起来，于是问他的朋友们：“我们出去吧。” I assumed this meant, "Should we go out to a bar?" That's what sports fans in America would do if their team had just lost. They'd go to a bar and get good and drunk. And not just Americans would do this—so would the English, the Australians, the Germans . . . everyone, right? But Luca and his friends didn't go out to a bar to cheer themselves up. They went to a bakery. A small,innocuous bakery hidden in a basement in a nondescript district in Rome. The place was crowded that Sunday night. But it always is crowded after the games. The Lazio fans always stop here on their way home from the stadium to stand in the street for hours, leaning up against their motorcycles, talking about the game, looking macho as anything, and eating cream puffs. 我以为这意味着：“我们去酒吧吧。”美国的球迷在自己的球队输赛的时候都这么做。他们上酒吧大醉一场。这么做的不止美国人——英国人、澳洲人、德国人……每个人都这么做，对吧？但卢卡和他的哥儿们并未上酒吧让自己快活起来。他们去了糕饼店。他们上罗马一家无名又无害的地下室糕饼店去。那个周日晚上挤满了人。但这家糕饼店在球赛过后向来挤满人。拉齐奥粉丝从体育馆返家途中一向在此停留数个小时，倚靠在他们的摩托车上，谈论球赛，一副男子汉的模样，一边吃着奶油泡芙。 I love Italy. Eat, Pray, Love 喔，我爱意大利。