【连载】《美食、祈祷和恋爱》至86节_派派后花园

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[Novel] 【连载】《美食、祈祷和恋爱》至86节

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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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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 39 (84):住在道场
One of my first roommates at the Ashram was a middle-aged African-American devout Baptist and meditation instructor from South Carolina. My other roommates, over time, would include an Argentinean dancer, a Swiss homeopath, a Mexican secretary, an Australian mother of five, a young Bangladeshi computer programmer, a pediatrician from Maine and a Filipino accountant. Others would come and go, too, as devotees cycled in and out of their residencies.
一开始，我在道场的室友是一位中年、美籍非裔的浸礼会教徒和禅修指导老师，来自南卡罗莱纳州。不久，我的其他室友包括阿根廷舞者、瑞士顺势疗法师、墨西哥秘书、五个孩子的澳洲母亲、年轻的孟加拉程序设计师、缅因州来的小儿科医师和菲律宾会计师。还有其他信徒来来去去，做周期性的居留。
This Ashram is not a place you can casually drop by and visit. First of all, it's not wildly accessible. It's located far away from Mumbai, on a dirt road in a rural river valley near a pretty and scrappy little village (composed of one street, one temple, a handful of shops and a population of cows who wander about freely, sometimes walking into the tailor's shop and lying down there). One evening I noticed a naked sixty-watt lightbulb hanging from a wire on a tree in the middle of town; this is the town's one street-lamp. The Ashram essentially creates the local economy, such as it is, and also stands as the town's pride. Outside the walls of the Ashram, it is all dust and poverty. Inside, it's all irrigated gardens, beds of flowers, hidden orchids, birdsong, mango trees, jackfruit trees, cashew trees, palm trees, magnolias, banyans. The buildings are nice, though not extravagant. There's a simple dining hall, cafeteria-style. There's a comprehensive library of spiritual writings from the world's religious traditions. There are a few temples for different types of gatherings. There are two meditation "caves"—dark and silent basements with comfortable cushions, open all day and night, to be used only for meditation practice. There's a covered outdoor pavilion, where Yoga classes are held in the morning, and there's a kind of a park with an oval walking path around it, where students can jog for exercise. I'm sleeping in a concrete dormitory.
这座道场不是让你顺道造访的地方。首先，它位于不易通达的郊外。它的地点远离孟买，在乡间河谷的一条尘土路上，接近一个散乱的美丽小村庄（由一条街、一座寺院、几个店家组成，还住了在街上随意漫游的牛，时而走入裁缝店里躺下来）。一天傍晚，我留意到一盏光秃秃的六十瓦灯泡挂在镇中央一棵树的电线上；这是镇上的街灯。道场基本上开拓了当地经济，也是镇上的骄傲。道场墙外的世界，是尘土与贫困。墙内则是灌溉的庭园，花坛，隐蔽的兰花，鸟啭，芒果树，波罗蜜树，腰果树，棕榈树，木兰，榕树。虽是不错的建筑物，却不奢华。有一间自助餐厅式的简单食堂。还有一间无所不包的图书室，汇集世界各地的宗教作品。有几间供各种聚会使用的寺院。有两间禅修洞 ——黑暗寂静的地下室，内有舒适的椅垫，日夜开放，仅供禅坐之用。有一座户外凉亭，清晨的瑜伽课在此举行。还有一座小公园，椭圆形步道环绕四周，供学员们慢跑。我睡在水泥建造的宿舍里。
During my stay at the Ashram, there were never more than a few hundred residents at any time. If the Guru herself had been in residence, those numbers would have swollen considerably, but she was never in India when I was there. I'd sort of expected that; she'd been spending a fair bit of time lately in America, but you never knew when she might show up anywhere by surprise. It's not considered essential to be in her literal presence in order to keep up your living Yogic master, and I've experienced that before. But many longtime devotees agree that it can also sometimes be a distraction—if you're not careful, you can get all caught up in the celebrity buzz of excitement that surrounds the Guru and lose the focus of your true intention. Whereas, if you just go to one of her Ashrams and discipline yourself to keep to the austere schedule of practices, you will sometimes find that it is easier to communicate with your teacher from within these private meditations than to push your way through crowds of eager students and get a word in edgewise in person.
我待在道场期间，未曾有过居住人数超过百名的时候。导师本人若下榻此地，人数随即暴增，但我在印度时，她不曾返回此地。这早在我的预料内；近来她在美国待不少时间，可是你永远不清楚她在何时会冷不防地出现。有她在不在身边让你持续学习，这并不重要。当然，能跟一位活生生的瑜伽大师在一起，有一种无可替代的快感，我从前经历过。许多长期的虔诚信徒都同意，有时这可能分散你的注意力——你得当心点，才不至于陷入环绕导师身边的名人热潮，让你的真实意图失去焦点。反之，你若是去她的道场静修，训练自己严守禅修时刻表，有时你会发现，从这些个人禅修当中，更容易和你的老师沟通，而不是从一群狂热的学员当中跻身而过，亲自听她说一句话。
There are some long-term paid staffers at the Ashram, but most of the work here is done by the students themselves. Some of the local villagers also work here on salary. Other locals are devotees of the Guru and live here as students. One teenage Indian boy around the Ashram somehow really provoked my fascination. There was something about his (pardon the word, but . . .) aura that was so compelling to me. For one thing, he was incredibly skinny (though this is a fairly typical sight around here; if there's anything in this world skinnier than an Indian teenage boy, I'd be afraid to see it). He dressed the way the computer-interested boys in my junior high school used to dress for band concerts—dark trousers and an ironed white button-down shirt that was far too big for him, his thin, stemlike neck sticking out of the opening like a single daisy popping out of a giant flowerpot. His hair was always combed neatly with water. He wore an older man's belt wrapped almost twice around what had to be a sixteen-inch waist. He wore the same clothes every day. This was his only outfit, I realized. He must have been washing his shirt by hand every night and ironing it in the mornings.(Though this attention to polite dress is also typical around here; the Indian teenagers with their starched outfits quickly shamed me out of my wrinkled peasant dresses and put me into tidier, more modest clothes.) So what was it about this kid? Why was I so moved every time I saw his face—a face so drenched with luminescence it looked like he'd just come back from a long vacation in the Milky Way? I finally asked another Indian teenager who he was. She replied matter-of-factly: "This is the son of one of the local shopkeepers. His family is very poor. The Guru invited him to stay here. When he plays the drums, you can hear God's voice."
道场有一些领薪的长期雇员，但这里的活儿大半由学员自己来做。有些当地村民受雇于此；而也有些当地人是导师的追随者，以学员身份住在此地。道场有个印度少年引发了我浓厚的兴趣。他具有某种令我赞赏的气质。首先，他骨瘦如柴（尽管在当地这是很典型的形象，但如果世界上有任何东西比印度少年更瘦，我会很害怕看见）。他的穿着就像我初中时那些喜欢玩电脑的男生去听乐团演奏的装束——黑长裤，熨烫过的白衬衫；衬衫穿在他身上显得太大，茎状的瘦脖子从领口伸出来，有如一朵雏菊从庞大的花盆冒出来。他的头发总是用水梳得整整齐齐的。他戴着一条成年人的皮带，几乎绕了两圈，束在他一尺六的腰上。他天天穿同一套衣服。我意识到，这是他仅有的一套装束。他肯定每晚手洗他的衬衫，清晨时分熨烫。（尽管对衣着礼貌的注重，在当地亦很常见；印度少年们浆挺的衣着过不久使我皱巴巴的农家服饰相形见绌，促使我穿上更整洁、更端庄的衣裳。）这孩子有啥特别？为什么每次看见他的脸都让我深受感动——如此容光焕发的面容，看起来仿佛刚从银河度了长假归来？最后我跟一位印度少女探问他的身份。她语气平淡地说：“他是当地某商家的儿子。他家很穷。导师邀他住在这里。他打鼓的时候，你听得见神的声音。”


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 39 (85):敬拜"完善大师"
There is one temple in the Ashram that is open to the general public, where many Indians come throughout the day to pay tribute to a statue of the Siddha Yogi (or "perfected master") who established this lineage of teaching back in the 1920s and who is still revered across India as a great saint. But the rest of the Ashram is for students only. It's not a hotel or a tourist location. It's more like a university. You must apply to come here, and in order to be accepted for a residency, you must show that you've been studying this Yoga seriously for a good long while. A minimum stay of one month is required. (I've decided to stay here for six weeks, and then to travel sites.)
道场有个寺院对大众开放，一整天有许多印度人前来敬拜瑜伽士悉达（Siddha Yogi“完善大师”），他在20世纪20年代创立了此学派，在印度各地被尊为大圣人。但道场的其余部分仅供学员使用。这儿不是旅馆或观光地，比较像是一所大学。你得经过申请才进得来，为了被收作常驻学员，你得证明你对此种瑜伽学派已认真研究好一阵子。你至少必须在此地连续待上一个月。（我决定待六个星期，而后独自周游印度，探索别的寺院、道场与朝拜地点。）
The students here are about equally divided between Indians and Westerners (and the Westerners are about evenly divided between Americans and Europeans). Courses are taught in both Hindi and English. On your application, you must write an essay, gather references, and answer questions about your mental and physical health, about any possible history of drug or alcohol abuse and also about your financial stability. The Guru doesn't want people to use her Ashram as an escape from whatever bedlam they may have created in their real lives; this will not benefit anyone. She also has a general policy that if your family and loved ones for some reason deeply object to the idea of your following a Guru and living in an Ashram, then you shouldn't do it, it's not worth it. Just stay home in your normal life and be a good person. There's no reason to make a big dramatic production over this.
这里的学生大致均分为印度人与西方人（西方人则大约一半美国人，一半欧洲人）。课程以印度语和英语教授。申请时，你必须写篇论文，收集推荐信，并详加说明自己的精神与身体健康状况，以及任何服药或酗酒的历史，并说明财务稳定状况。导师不希望有人利用她的道场当做某种逃避真实生活的手段；这对任何人皆无益处。她还有个政策：倘若任何亲戚朋友因某种原因，而强烈反对你追随导师住在道场的主意，那么你不该这么做，因为不值得。你只该待在家中过正常生活，做个好人，没必要搞得满城风雨。
The level of this woman's practical sensibilities are always comforting to me.
这位女子高尚的务实情操，对我始终是极大的安慰。
To come here, then, you must demonstrate that you are also a sensible and practical human being. You must show that you can work because you'll be expected to contribute to the overall operation of the place with about five hours a day of seva, or "selfless service." The Ashram management also asks, if you have gone through a major emotional trauma in the last six months (divorce; death in the family) that you please postpone your visit to another time because chances are you won't be able to concentrate on your studies, and, if you have a meltdown of some sort, you'll only bring distraction to your fellow students. I just made the post-divorce cutoff myself. And when I think of the mental anguish I was going through right after I left my marriage, I have no doubt that I would have been a great drain on everyone at this Ashram had I come here at that moment. Far better to have rested first in Italy, gotten my strength and health back, and then showed up. Because I will need that strength now.
来到这里之后，你得展现自己也是一个通情达理、脚踏实地的人类。你得让大家知道你能干活儿，因为你应当对道场的整体运作做出贡献，一天有五小时的“歇瓦”（seva），或称“无私的服务”。道场的经营还要求你，假使过去六个月内经历过重大的感情创伤（离婚、亲人过世等），请延后你的造访，因为你十之八九无法专心学习；若有情绪变动的情况发生，只会让其他学员分心。我自己才刚结束后离婚时期。当我想起自己刚从婚姻出走时所经历的痛苦，更确信我若在当时前来道场，肯定会成为学员的一大负担。最好让自己先在意大利休息，恢复体力和健康，再到此地。因为我现在需要这种体力。
They want you to come here strong because Ashram life is rigorous. Not just physically, with days that begin at 3:00 AM and end at 9:00 PM, but also psychologically. You're going to be spending hours and hours a day in silent meditation and contemplation, with little distraction or relief from the apparatus of your own mind. You will be living in close quarters with strangers, in rural India. There are bugs and snakes and rodents. The weather can be extreme—sometimes torrents of rain for weeks on end, sometimes 100 degrees in the shade before breakfast. Things can get deeply real around here, very fast.
他们要你体力充沛地来到道场，因为道场生活十分严酷。不仅对身体而言，每天从凌晨三点开始、晚间九点结束，就心理而言亦然。每天连续几个小时静坐禅修，几乎无法让自己的思考分心或解脱。 你在印度乡间和陌生人住在一起，各种臭虫、蛇、老鼠。天候恶劣——有时一连下数星期的倾盆大雨，有时早餐前的阴影处气温高达 38℃。这儿的一切可能在短短时间内变得非常真实。
My Guru always says that only one thing will happen when you come to the Ashram—that you will discover who you really are. So if you're hovering on the brink of madness already, she'd really rather you didn't come at all. Because, frankly, nobody wants to have to carry you out of this place with a wooden spoon clenched between your teeth.Eat, Pray, Love
我的导师总说，到道场来，只会发生一件事——你将发现自己的真相。因此假若你已在疯狂边缘徘徊，她情愿你不要来。因为，坦白地说，没有人想扛着紧咬木杓的你离开这地方。


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 40 (86):印度除夕夜
My arrival coincides nicely with the arrival of a new year. I have barely one day to get myself oriented to the Ashram, and then it is already New Year's Eve. After dinner, the small courtyard starts to fill with people. We all sit on the ground—some of us on the cool marble floor and some on grass mats. The Indian women have all dressed as though for a wedding. Their hair is oiled and dark and braided down their backs. They are wearing their finest silk saris and gold bracelets, and each woman has a brightly jeweled bindi in the center of her forehead, like a dim echo of the starlight above us. The plan is to chant outside in this courtyard until midnight, until the year changes over.
我来的时候正好碰上新年到来。我还没搞清楚道场的东南西北，就已是除夕夜。晚餐后，中庭已开始挤满人潮。我们大家坐在地上——有些人坐在凉爽的大理石地板上，有些则坐在草席上。印度妇女身穿仿佛参加婚礼的装束。她们的头发上油，乌黑，绑成一条辫子垂在身后。她们穿上最好的丝质莎丽，戴上金手链，每位妇女的额头中央都有个珠光闪耀的“bindi”，有如星辰的暗影。大家打算在中庭内吟诵，直到午夜，年度交替之际。
Chanting is a word I do not love for a practice that I love dearly. To me, the word chant connotes a kind of dronelike and scary monotony, like something male druids would do around a sacrificial fire. But when we chant here at the Ashram, it's a kind of angelic singing. Generally, it's done in a call-and-response manner. A handful of young men and women with the loveliest voices begin by singing one harmonious phrase, and the rest of us repeat it. It's a meditative practice—the effort is to hold your attention on the music's progression and blend your voice together with your neighbor's voice so that eventually all are singing as one. I'm jetlagged and afraid it will be impossible for me to stay awake until midnight, much less to find the energy to sing for so long. But then this evening of music begins, with a single violin in the shadows playing one long note of longing. Then comes the harmonium, then the slow drums, then the voices . . .
我不喜欢用“吟诵”一词来称呼我深爱的活动。对我而言，“吟诵”含有某种单调诵念的可怕含义，仿佛一群僧侣绕着牺牲仪式的火堆做的事情。然而我们在道场的吟诵，是一种天使般的歌唱。一般说来，是以一呼一应的方式诵唱。一群嗓子优美的年轻男女开始唱出一段和谐的句子，然后我们其他人重复一次。这是一种禅修——把注意力集中在乐曲的进行，让你的歌声跟邻座的歌声交织在一起，最后大家像一个声音一样齐声而唱。我有时差，担心自己昏昏欲睡，撑不到午夜，更甭说有力气唱得久。然而这一夜的音乐响起，一把小提琴在黑暗中奏出 一长声的渴望。接着是小风琴，而后是慢鼓，而后是歌声……
I'm sitting in the back of the courtyard with all the mothers, the Indian women who are so comfortably cross-legged, their children sleeping across them like little human lap rugs. The chant tonight is a lullaby, a lament, an attempt at gratitude, written in a raga (a tune) that is meant to suggest compassion and devotion. We are singing in Sanskrit, as always (an ancient language that is extinct in India, except for prayer and religious study), and I'm trying to become a vocal mirror for the voices of the lead singers, picking up their inflections like little strings of blue light. They pass the sacred words to me, I carry the words for a while, then pass the words back, and this is how we are able to sing for miles and miles of time without tiring. All of us are swaying like kelp in the dark sea current of night. The children around me are wrapped in silks, like gifts.
我坐在中庭后方，和所有的母亲坐在一起；这些印度妇女自在地盘腿而坐，她们的孩子像膝盖毯似的跨在她们身上睡觉。今晚的吟诵是一首催眠曲，一首哀歌，意在感激，“拉格”（raga）曲式，表达悲悯与虔敬。我们以梵语诵唱（在印度已然绝迹的语言，除了用作祷告和宗教学术研究之用），一如既往，我尝试做领唱者的声音镜子，接收有如一道道蓝光的音调。他们将神圣的歌词传递给我，我接过歌词，过一会儿再把歌词传回去，使我们得以源源不断地吟唱，却不觉疲倦。我们大家好似夜晚在黑色海潮中荡漾的海藻般摇来晃去。我周围的孩子们裹在丝绸里，犹如礼物。
I'm so tired, but I don't drop my little blue string of song, and I drift into such a state that I think I might be calling God's name in my sleep, or maybe I am only falling down the well shaft of this universe. By 11:30, though, the orchestra has picked up the tempo of the chant and kicked it up into sheer joy. Beautifully dressed women in jingly bracelets are clapping and dancing and attempting to tambourine with their whole bodies. The drums are slamming, rhythmic, exciting. As the minutes pass, it feels to me like we are collectively pulling the year 2004 toward us. Like we have roped it with our music, and now we are hauling it across the night sky like it's a massive fishing net, brimming with all our unknown destinies. And what a heavy net it is, indeed, carrying as it does all the births, deaths, tragedies, wars, love stories, inventions, transformations and calamities that are destined for all of us this coming year. We keep singing and we keep hauling, hand-over-hand, minute-by-minute, voice after voice, closer and closer. The seconds drop down to midnight and we sing with our biggest effort yet and in this last brave exertion we finally pull the net of the New Year over us, covering both the sky and ourselves with it. God only knows what the year might contain, but now it is here, and we are all beneath it.
我很疲倦，却未丢下小小的蓝色歌曲，我不知不觉地进入某种状态，我想我或许在沉睡中呼唤神的名字，或者只是跌入宇宙的深渊。不过，十一点半的时候，管弦乐奏出吟诵曲调的拍子，激发成纯粹的喜悦。衣着华美、手环叮当响的女子拍着手，整个身子随鼓声起舞。鼓声猛烈、优美、激动。随着一分一秒过去，感觉就像我们同心协力把2004年拉向我们。就好似我们用音乐系住它，拖过夜空，犹如一张巨大的渔网，网中装满我们未知的命运。确实是一张沉重的大网，载着一切生、死、悲剧、战争、爱情故事、发明、变动、苦难，专为每个人未来的一年而准备。我们持续诵唱、拖网，手拉手，一分又一秒，歌声不断，愈来愈近。分秒在午夜落下，我们尽己所能地吟唱，这最终的努力使我们终于将新年的网盖在自己身上，覆盖天空和我们自己。唯有神明知道这一年将由什么组成，然而此时此刻，我们每个人都在此地。
This is the first New Year's Eve I can ever remember in my life where I haven't known any of the people I was celebrating with. In all this dancing and singing, there is nobody for me to embrace at midnight. But I wouldn't say that anything about this night has been lonely.
这是我这辈子头一次和陌生人一同庆祝除夕。在舞蹈歌唱当中，没有人让我在午夜时分拥抱。但我要说，这不是寂寞的夜晚。
No, I would definitely not say that.Eat, Pray, Love
肯定不是。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 38 (81):为什么学瑜伽?
"Why do we practice Yoga?"
“我们为什么练瑜伽？”
I had a teacher once ask that question during a particularly challenging Yoga class, back in New York. We were all bent into these exhausting sideways triangles, and the teacher was making us hold the position longer than any of us would have liked.
我在纽约时，曾经有位老师在一堂别具挑战性的瑜伽课上问起这个问题。当时我们每个人都弯成侧向一旁的三角形，相当累人，老师让我们久久保持这种没人愿意做这么久的姿势。
"Why do we practice Yoga?" he asked again. "Is it so we can become a little bendier than our neighbors? Or is there perhaps some higher purpose?"
“我们为什么练瑜伽？”他再一次问，“是否让你比你的邻居更‘能屈能伸’？或者为了某种更崇高的目的？”
Yoga, in Sanskrit, can be translated as "union." It originally comes from the root word yuj, which means "to yoke," to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in Yoga is to find union—between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and our sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors. In the West, we've mainly come to know Yoga through its now-famous pretzel-like exercises for the body, but this is only Hatha Yoga, one limb of the philosophy. The ancients developed these physical stretches not for personal fitness, but to loosen up their muscles and minds in order to prepare them for meditation. It is difficult to sit in stillness for many hours, after all, if your hip is aching, keeping you from contemplating your intrinsic divinity because you are too busy contemplating, "Wow . . . my hip really aches."
梵语的“瑜伽”可译为“结合”。它的字根来自“yuj”，意思是“套上轭”，以牛一般的纪律参与即时任务。瑜伽的即时任务是寻找结合——心与身之间、个人与神明之间、思想与思源之间、老师与学生之间，甚至我们自身与屈伸不易的邻人之间的结合。我们在西方，主要透过知名的卷麻卷似的身体训练而认识瑜伽，但那只是瑜伽哲学的一支，叫“哈达瑜伽”（Hatha Yoga）。古人发明这些体能伸展不是为了个人健康，而是为了放松肌肉与心灵，为打坐做准备。毕竟，静坐数个小时并非易事，因为在你髋骨疼痛、无法思索内在神性的时候，你满脑子只是：“哇……我的髋骨真痛啊。”
But Yoga can also mean trying to find God through meditation, through scholarly study, through the practice of silence, through devotional service or through mantra—the repetition of sacred words in Sanskrit. While some of these practices tend to look rather Hindu in their derivation, Yoga is not synonymous with Hinduism, nor are all Hindus Yogis. True Yoga neither competes with nor precludes any other religion. You may use your Yoga—your disciplined practices of sacred union—to get closer to Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha or Yahweh. During my time at the Ashram, I met devotees who identified themselves as practicing Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and even Muslims. I have met others who would rather not talk about their religious affiliation at all, for which, in this contentious world, you can hardly blame them.
然而瑜伽也意味着透过打坐、透过学术研究、透过沉默训练、透过忠心事奉，或透过念咒——重复诵念梵语经文——去发现神。这些练习尽管就其起源而言看似印度教，瑜伽却不等同于印度教，印度瑜伽士也并非都信仰印度教。真正的瑜伽不与其他宗教竞争，也不排斥其他宗教。你利用瑜伽——神圣结合的修练——可以更接近黑天（Krishna）、耶稣、穆罕默德、佛陀或雅赫维（Yahweh）。我在道场期间遇上各种信徒，称自己信仰的宗教为基督教、犹太教、佛教、印度教，甚至伊斯兰教。我还遇上宁可完全不谈宗教信仰的人，在这充满争议的世界，你没办法责怪他们。
The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanations for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not."
瑜伽的道路，是关于解开人类固有的毛病——我在此将之过度简化一点来谈，称之为无法维持满足的毛病。数个世纪以来，各家思想学派曾为人类固有的缺陷找到不同的解释。道家说失调，佛教说无知，伊斯兰教将我们的苦难归咎于违抗神，犹太基督教传统上将我们的受苦归因于原罪 。弗洛伊德派说痛苦是我们的本能与文明需求之间发生冲突所造成的必然结果 （正如我的心理学家朋友黛博拉所说：“欲望是设计的缺失。”）瑜伽士却说，人类的不满很简单，只是因为身份认知错误。我们之所以痛苦，是因为我们只不过是区区个人，有恐惧、缺陷、愤恨与难逃一死。我们错以为有限的小小自我构成我们的整个天性。我们未能看出自己内心深处的神性。我们不知道，每个人的内心某处，都存在一种永久平和的至高自我。至高的自我是我们的真实身份，完整而神圣。瑜伽士说，在明白此一事实之前，你将永远感到绝望，斯多葛派的希腊哲学家爱比克泰德（Epictetus）说过一句话，精确地表达了此种想法“你这可怜的人，心中怀抱着神，却不认识他。”

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 38 (82):寻找"恒在"
Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you. True Yogis, from their seat of equipoise, see all this world as an equal manifestation of God's creative energy—men, women, children, turnips, bedbugs, coral: it's all God in disguise. But the Yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity, because only in a human form and only with a human mind can Godrealization ever occur. The turnips, the bedbugs, the coral—they never get a chance to find out who they really are. But we do have that chance.
瑜伽是致力于亲身体验自身的神性，而后抓住此种体验。瑜伽是一种自我控制，努力不让自己的注意力集中于思索过去、担心未来，让你去寻找一个“恒在”的处所，泰然自若地从那儿观察自己和周遭一切。唯有从这种平心静气的观点，才能明白世界的真实性质（以及你本身的真实性格）。真正的瑜伽士，从他们的平衡状态，把这个世界看作是神灵创造力的均一表现：男人、女人、孩童、芜菁、臭虫、珊瑚，都是神的化身。瑜伽士认为人生是非凡的机会，因为对神的了悟，只发生在人的身上和脑子里。芜菁、臭虫、珊瑚——它们没有机会发现自我。而我们却有机会。
"Our whole business therefore in this life," wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen."
“因此，我们整个一生，”圣奥古斯丁（Saint Augustine）以相当带有瑜伽精神的口吻说，“都是 为了让心灵的眼睛恢复健康，为了看见神。”
Like all great philosophical ideas, this one is simple to understand but virtually impossible to imbibe. OK—so we are all one, and divinity abides within us all equally. No problem. Understood. But now try living from that place. Try putting that understanding into practice twenty-four hours a day. It's not so easy. Which is why in India it is considered a given that you need a teacher for your Yoga. Unless you were born one of those rare shimmering saints who come into life already fully actualized, you're going to need some guidance along your journey toward enlightenment. If you're lucky enough, you pilgrims have been coming to India to seek for ages. Alexander the Great sent an ambassador to India in the fourth century BC, with a request to find one of these famous Yogis and return with him to court. (The ambassador did report finding a Yogi, but couldn't convince the gentleman to travel.) In the first century AD, Apollonius of Tyrana, another Greek ambassador, wrote of his journey through India: "I saw Indian Brahmans living upon the earth and yet not on it, and fortified without fortifications, and possessing nothing, yet having the richness of all men." Gandhi himself always wanted to study with a Guru, but never, to his regret, had the time or opportunity to find one. "I think there is a great deal of truth," he wrote, "in the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible without a Guru."
如同每一种伟大的哲学观念，这观念不难了解，事实上却难于吸收。好吧——我们都是一家人，神性一视同仁地居住在我们内心。没问题。了解 。但现在试着从那个地方生活。试着把这种了解付诸一天二十四小时的实际行动。并非轻易之举。因此在印度的已知事实是，想练瑜伽，你需要老师。除非你是那些少数生而得道的圣哲、智者之一，否则在通往启蒙的路上，你需要某种指引。幸运的话，你能找到活在人间的导师。这正是多年来朝圣者前来印度寻找的事物。亚历山大大帝（Alexander the Great）在西元前四世纪曾派大使前往印度，寻找有名的瑜伽士，带他回宫。（大使报告说找到一位瑜伽士，却无法说服这位男士旅行。）公元一世纪，另一名希腊大使阿波罗尼奥斯（Apollonius of Tyrana）曾写文章描述他的印度之行“我看见印度婆罗门虽然脚踩在土地上生活，却未生活在世间：心灵强固，却未设防；一无所有，却拥有最大的财富。”甘地本人始终想追随精神导师学习，却遗憾没有时间或机会寻找导师。“真理唯靠导师方可获得，”他写道：“此一教条大有真理。”
A great Yogi is anyone who has achieved the permanent state of enlightened bliss. A Guru is a great Yogi who can actually pass that state on to others. The word Guru is composed of two Sanskrit syllables. The first means "darkness," the second means "light." Out of the darkness and into the light. What passes from the master into the disciple is something called mantravirya: "The potency of the enlightened consciousness." You come to your Guru, then, not only to receive lessons, as from any teacher, but to actually receive the Guru's state of grace.
所谓伟大的瑜伽士，是达到开朗常定之人。导师则是将此种常定传递给他人的伟大瑜伽士。导师（Guru）是由梵语的两个音节所组成。第一个音节是“黑暗”之意，第二则是“光明”。走出黑暗，迎向光明。导师传给弟子所谓的“mantravirya”（智慧的强度）；你去找自己的导师，并非为了上课，而是蒙受导师感召。

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 38 (83):寻找内心的平静
Such transfers of grace can occur in even the most fleeting of encounters with a great being. I once went to see the great Vietnamese monk, poet and peacemaker Thich Nhat Hanh speak in New York. It was a characteristically hectic weeknight in the city, and as the crowd pushed and shoved its way into the auditorium, the very air in the place was whisked into a nerve-racking urgency of everyone's collective stress. Then the monk came on stage. He sat in stillness for a good while before he began to speak, and the audience—you could feel it happening, one row of high-strung New Yorkers at a time—became colonized by his stillness. Soon, there was not a flutter in the place. In the space of maybe ten minutes, this small Vietnamese man had drawn every single one of us into his silence. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that he drew us each into our own silence, into that peace which we each inherently possessed, but had not yet discovered or claimed. His ability to bring forth this state in all of us, merely by his presence in the room—this is divine power. And this is why you come to a Guru: with the hope that the merits of your master will reveal to you your own hidden greatness.
此种感召即使在跟一个大人物的短暂接触时也会出现。我曾去听伟大的越南僧人、诗人、和平运动者一行禅师（Thich Nhat Hanh）在纽约演讲。在那个典型的疯狂之夜，群众推推搡搡挤入礼堂；礼堂内的气氛迅即转变成因集体压力集结而成的紧张。而后禅师走上讲台。他静静地坐了好一阵子，然后开口说话。你感觉到正在发生这样的事情，这些激动的纽约人逐渐被他的沉静所统治。过不久，礼堂内没有半点声响。在十分钟内，这位瘦小的越南禅师已把我们每个人卷入他的沉默中。或者更确切的说法是，他让我们每个人卷入自己的沉默，卷入我们与生俱来、却尚未发现或索求的平静。他只要出现在礼堂，即诱导出我们每个人内心的平静——这是神力。这是你寻求导师的原因：期望导师的优点向你展现你自身潜藏的伟大。
The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe:
古代印度圣贤写过，有三个因素可以说明一个灵魂是否拥有宇宙间最至高无上的幸运：
1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry.
一、生为人类，有探索意识的能力。
2. To have been born with—or to have developed—a yearning to understand the nature of the universe.
二、生来拥有——或培养出——了解宇宙本质的渴望。
3. To have found a living spiritual master.
三、找到世间的精神导师。
There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny's molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need. It was only one month after my first night of desperate prayer on my bathroom floor—a night spent tearfully begging God for answers—that I found mine, having walked into David's apartment and encountered a photograph of this stunning Indian woman. Of course, I was more than a bit ambivalent about the concept of having a Guru. As a general rule, Westerners aren't comfortable with that word. We have a kind of sketchy recent history with it. In the 1970s a number of wealthy, eager, susceptible young Western seekers collided with a handful of charismatic but dubious Indian Gurus. Most of the chaos has settled down now, but the echoes of mistrust still resonate. Even for me, even after all this time, I still find myself sometimes balking at the word Guru. This is not a problem for my friends in India; they grew up with the Guru principle, they're relaxed with it. As one young Indian girl told me, "Everybody in India almost has a Guru!" I know what she meant to say (that almost everyone in India has a Guru) but I related more to her unintentional statement, because that's how I feel sometimes—like I almost have a Guru. Sometimes I just can't seem to admit it because, as a good New Englander, skepticism and pragmatism are my intellectual heritage. Anyhow, it's not like I consciously went shopping for a Guru. She just arrived. And the first time I saw her, it was as though she looked at me through her photograph—those dark eyes smoldering with intelligent compassion—and she said, "You called for me and now I'm here. So do you want to do this thing, or not?"
有个理论说，只要有足够的诚意寻找导师，即可找到。宇宙发生变动，命运的分子重新组织，你的道路与你需要的导师两者所走的道路不久就会互相交会。我在浴室地板上绝望跪祷的第一个晚上——泣求神灵给我答案的晚上——过后大约一个月，我找到自己的导师；当时我走进大卫的公寓，意外地看见这位印度美女的照片。当然，对于拥有一位导师，我的看法矛盾。一般说来，西方人对导师一词觉得不自在。我们和它在不久的过去有着某种过节。20世纪70年代，一群富裕、充满热忱、年轻的西方探求者，和一群具有领袖魅力但来历不明的印度导师发生了冲突。其所造成的混乱大半已然平息，不信任感却依然余音缭绕。即便对我来说，即使经过这么久的时间，我发现自己依然时而对“导师”一词有所迟疑。对我的印度朋友们而言，这不是问题；他们在导师的原则下长大，因而处之泰然。有位印度姑娘告诉我：“印度每个人几乎都有导师！”我明白她的意思（她是说，印度几乎每个人都有导师），但我更同感于她无心的表达，因为我有时的感觉——确实像是我“几乎有个”导师。有时候，我似乎无法承认，因为身为一个中规中矩的新英格兰人，怀疑主义和实用主义是我的智力遗产。无论如何，我并非有意识地出门采购“导师”。她自然而然地到来。我头一次看见她，仿佛她通过照片注视我——一双黑色眸子，流露出智性的慈悲——说：“你需要我，现在我来了。所以，你是否想做这件事？”
Setting aside all nervous jokes and cross-cultural discomforts, I must always remember what I replied that night: a straightforward and bottomless YES. Eat, Pray, Love
暂时把紧张兮兮的玩笑话和跨文化的不安情绪 搁在一旁，我必须永远牢记自己当天晚上的回答：直截了当、深不可测的“是”。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 37 (79):来到印度



When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one died off—taken away by hawk or fox or by some obscure chicken illness—my father would replace the lost hen. He'd drive to a nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can't just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don't notice the newcomer, thinking only, "She must have been here all the time since I didn't see her arrive." The clincher of it is, awaking within this flock, the newcomer herself doesn't even remember that she's a newcomer, thinking only, "I must have been here the whole time . . ."在成长过程中，我家里养鸡。我们在任何时刻都有12只鸡，每回死去一只——被老鹰、狐狸攫去，或罹患某种不清楚的疾病死去——我父亲便补上一只。他开车去附近的家禽农场，回来的时候，袋子里装着一只新的鸡。问题是，想让新的鸡加入鸡群行列，必须非常谨慎。你不能只是把它丢进旧的鸡群，否则会被当做闯入者看待。你必须在三更半夜，趁别的鸡睡觉时，把新来的鸡偷偷放入鸡笼中。把它放在鸡群旁边的窝，然后蹑手蹑脚地走开。鸡在早晨醒来时，不会留意到新来的鸡，只会以为：“它肯定一直待在这里，因为我没看见它被送来。”重要的是，新来的鸡在鸡群当中醒来时，自己也不记得自己是新来者，只以为：“我肯定从头到尾都待在这里。”



This is exactly how I arrive in India.这正是我到达印度的情况。



My plane lands in Mumbai around 1:30 AM. It is December 30. I find my luggage, then find the taxi that will take me hours and hours out of the city to the Ashram, located in a remote ruralvillage. I doze on the drive through nighttime India, sometimes waking to look out the window, where I can see strange haunted shapes of thin women in saris walking alongside the road with bundles of firewood on their heads. At this hour? Buses with no headlights pass us, and we pass oxcarts. The banyan trees spread their elegant roots throughout the ditches.我的班机大约在凌晨一点半降落于孟买。那天是12月31日。我领了行李，而后找计程车出城，前往数个钟头车程外、位于某偏远乡村的静修道场。我一路打盹儿，穿越夜间的印度，时而醒来望向窗外，看见身穿莎丽服装的瘦小女人们诡异神秘的身影，她们走在路上，头上顶着柴火。“这么早？”不亮前灯的公车超越我们，我们超越牛车。榕树伸展着优雅的树根，遍及沟渠。



We pull up to the front gate of the Ashram at 3:30 AM, right in front of the temple. As I'm getting out of the taxi, a young man in Western clothes and a wool hat steps out of the shadows and introduces himself—he is Arturo, a twenty-four-year-old journalist from Mexico and a devotee of my Guru, and he's here to welcome me. As we're exchanging whispered introductions, I can hear the first familiar bars of my favorite Sanskrit hymn coming from inside. It's the morning arati, the first morning prayer, sung every day at 3:30 AM as the Ashram wakes. I point to the temple, asking Arturo, "May I . . .?" and he makes a be-my-guest gesture. So I pay my taxi driver, tuck my backpack behind a tree, slip off my shoes, kneel and touch my forehead to the temple step and then ease myself inside, joining the small gathering of mostly Indian women who are singing this beautiful hymn.我们在凌晨三点半左右抵达道场，停在寺院门口。我下了计程车，一名身穿西方服饰、头戴羊毛帽的年轻人从黑暗中走出来，自报姓名——他是阿图洛，24岁的墨西哥记者，我的精神导师的追随者，他向我表示欢迎。我们低声互相介绍的当儿，我听见我最喜爱的梵语赞歌熟悉的第一小节从寺院传出来。是清晨的“灯仪”（arati）：每天清晨三点半在道场起身时所进行的第一次晨祷。我指着寺院，问阿图洛：“我可不可以……？”他做出“请便”的手势。于是我付了计程车费，把背包塞在树后，脱了鞋，跪下来，在寺院阶梯上磕了头，慢慢移身进去，加入大半由印度女人唱出优美赞歌的小小聚会。



《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 37 (80):唱起赞歌


This is the hymn I call "The Amazing Grace of Sanskrit," filled with devotional longing. It is the one devotional song I have memorized, not so much from effort as from love. I begin to sing the familiar words in Sanskrit, from the simple introduction about the sacred teachings of Yoga to the rising tones of worship ("I adore the cause of the universe . . . I adore the one whose eyes are the sun, the moon and fire . . . you are everything to me, O god of gods . . .") to the last gemlikesummation of all faith ("This is perfect, that is perfect, if you take the perfect from the perfect, the perfect remains").这首赞歌被我称为“奇异恩典梵语版”，充满虔诚的渴望。我熟记这首奉献赞歌，与其说费心熟记，不如说打从心底去爱。我开始用梵语唱出熟悉的歌词，从瑜伽神圣教诲的简单介绍，到崇奉朝拜的扬调（“我敬拜宇宙之缘起……我敬拜眼是日、月和火的神……你是我的一切，喔万神之神……”），到玉石般的信仰总结（“这很完美，那很完美，你若从完美取出完美，完美依然留存”）。



The women finish singing. They bow in silence, then move out a side door across a darkcourtyard and into a smaller temple, barely lit by one oil lamp and perfumed with incense. I follow them. The room is filled with devotees—Indian and Western—wrapped in woolen shawls against the predawn cold. Everyone is seated in meditation, roosted there, you might say, and I slip in beside them, the new bird in the flock, completely unnoticed. I sit crosslegged, place my hands on my knees, close my eyes.女人们停止咏唱。她们静静地鞠躬，而后从侧门穿过黑暗的庭院，走进小寺庙，庙里只点一盏煤油灯，薰香弥漫。我跟在她们后头。屋里都是虔诚的信徒——印度人和西方人——裹着羊毛披巾，抵御黎明前的寒冷。人人都在打坐，可以说是窝在那里，而我则溜进他们旁边，鸡群当中的新来者，根本无人注意。我盘腿坐着，双手搁在膝上，闭上眼睛。



I have not meditated in four months. I have not even thought about meditating in four months. I sit there. My breath quiets. I say the mantra to myself once very slowly and deliberately, syllableby syllable.我已有四个月的时间未曾打坐。这四个月内我想都没想过打坐的事。我坐在那儿。呼吸静下来。我对自己念一次咒语，缓慢从容，逐字逐句。



Om. Na. Mah. Shi. Va. Ya. Om Namah Shivaya.唵——南——嘛— —湿— —婆 ——耶。唵南嘛湿婆耶。



I honor the divinity that resides within me.我敬重存在内心的神灵。



Then I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused. I don't know if I fall asleep or if I drop into some kind of spell or even how much time passes. But when the sun finally comes up that morning in India and everyone opens their eyes and looks around, Italy feels ten thousand miles away from me now, and it is as if I have been here in this flock forever. Eat, Pray, Love而后我又念了一遍。一遍。又一遍。与其说我在打坐，不如说我在小心翼翼地解开咒语，有如从盒子里解开祖母收藏多年、未曾使用的最好的瓷器。我不知道自己是否睡着，或者陷入某种魔咒当中，也不知经过多久时间。可是当天清晨，太阳在印度升起，人人睁开眼睛、环顾四周之时，感觉意大利已距离我有千万里之遥，仿佛我一直跟这群人待在这里。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 36 (77):意大利,这是怎样一个国家
"No town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens . . . do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love."“没有哪个城镇能过太平日子，无论制定什么法律，”柏拉图写道，“假使市民……无所事事，只是享受美酒盛宴，因为谈情说爱而搞得自己筋疲力竭。”



But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favoritefountain? And then to do it again the next day? 可是偶尔过过这样的生活有何不好？一生当中只花数个月的时间，除了找寻下一顿佳肴之外别无所求，难道罪无可赦？只是为了取悦自己的听觉而去学习一种语言，别无其他目的？或者正午时分在庭园的一方阳光中，坐在自己最爱的喷泉边打盹？隔天再这么做一次？真那么难以原谅吗？



Of course, one can't live like this forever. Real life and wars and traumas and mortality willinterfere eventually. Here in Sicily with its dreadful poverty, real life is never far from anyone's mind. The Mafia has been the only successful business in Sicily for centuries (running the business of protecting citizens from itself), and it still keeps its hand down everybody's pants. Palermo—a city Goethe once claimed was possessed of an impossible-to-describe beauty—may now be the only city in Western Europe where you can still find yourself picking your steps through World War II rubble, just to give a sense of development here. The town has been systematically uglified beyond description by the hideous and unsafe apartment blocks the Mafia constructed in the 1980s as money-laundering operations. I asked one Sicilian if those buildings were made from cheap concrete and he said, "Oh, no—this is very expensive concrete. In each batch, there are a few bodies of people who were killed by the Mafia, and that costs money. But it does make the concrete stronger to be reinforced with all those bones and teeth." 当然，没有人能够永远过这种日子。真实生活、战争、苦难、道德终将起而干预。在贫困的西西里，真实生活永远走不出任何人的脑海。黑手党是西西里数百年来唯一成功的事业（保护市民免受其害），而它的魔爪仍伸及每个人。巴勒莫（Palermo）——歌德曾称之为拥有无法形容之美的城市——或许是目前西欧唯一能让你走在二战瓦砾堆中感受发展状况的城市。黑手党在20世纪80年代为洗钱操作而建造的丑陋不堪的公寓危楼，使这座城市有计划地遭受不可名状的丑化。我问一位西西里人，这些建筑是否用廉价的混凝土建造而成，他说：“喔不——是很贵的混凝土。每一批混凝土都混有几具遭黑手党杀害的尸体，这可花钱咧。不过用骨头、牙齿加固，的确让混凝土比较坚固。”



In such an environment, is it maybe a little shallow to be thinking only about your next wonderful meal? Or is it perhaps the best you can do, given the harder realities? Luigi Barzini, in his 1964 masterwork The Italians (written when he'd finally grown tired of foreigners writing about Italy and either loving it or hating it too much) tried to set the record straight on his own culture. He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. Why are they the planet's masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be suchshrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation? 在这种环境下思考下一顿佳肴，是否有些肤浅？或者，考虑到这般严峻的现实，你也只能这么做，无从选择？巴兹尼（Luigi Barzini）在1964年的大作《意大利人》（他之所以书写此书，是因为描述意大利的外国人对这个国家不是爱就是恨得要命，这些终于让他感到厌倦）当中，尝试明确记录他的文化。他试图回答几个问题：关于意大利为何出产最伟大的艺术家、政治家和科学家，却仍未能成为世界强国？他们为什么是外交辞令的佼佼者，却仍拙于国内政治？他们为什么具有个人勇气，组织军队却集体溃败？就个人而言，他们每个人都是精打细算的商人，为什么作为一个国家的时候，就成了缺乏效率的资本主义国家？



His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken,unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors . . ." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artisticexcellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. 他给予这些问题的答案，比我在此所能引用的更为复杂，而其和意大利长期以来地方官员的贪污以及外来统治者的剥削有很大的关系，这一切悲伤的历史经验，导致意大利人得出看来正确的结论：这世界上没有任何人或任何事可让人信赖。因为世界如此腐败、动荡、夸大、不公，你只能信赖自己的感官体验，正因为如此，意大利人的感官在欧洲首屈一指。巴兹尼说，因此意大利可以忍受庸碌无能的将军、总统、暴君、教授、官僚、记者和工业大亨，却永远无法忍受无能的“歌剧演唱家、指挥家、芭蕾舞者、交际花、演员、电影导演、厨师、裁缝……”在一个混乱失序、灾祸连连、充满诈骗的世界，有时只能信赖美。唯有卓越的才艺不会腐败。快乐无法降价求售。有时一顿饭是唯一真实的货币。




《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 36 (78):再见,意大利!



To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business—not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into . . . rhetoric and plot. Not too long ago, authorities arrested a brotherhood of Catholic monks in Sicily who were in tight conspiracy with the Mafia, so who can you trust? What can you believe? The world is unkind and unfair. Speak up against thisunfairness and in Sicily, at least, you'll end up as the foundation of an ugly new building. What can you do in such an environment to hold a sense of your individual human dignity? Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing except, perhaps, to pride yourself on the fact that you always fillet your fish with perfection, or that you make the lightest ricotta in the whole town?因此，致力于美的创造与享受，可说是严肃的事——并不见得是逃避现实的手段，有时反倒是抓住现实的手段，在一切都分解为……修辞与情节之时。没多久之前，政府当局在西西里逮捕了一个与黑手党紧密串通的修士会，因此谁能让你信赖？你能相信什么？世界残酷不公。你若在西西里挺身抗议不公，最后可能成为某栋丑陋新厦的地基。在此种环境下，该怎么做才能保有自己的个人尊严？或许什么也不能做。或许除了切鱼的完美本领以及做出全镇最松软的瑞科达乳酪，才能让人引以为傲？



I don't want to insult anyone by drawing too much of a comparison between myself and the long-suffering Sicilian people. The tragedies in my life have been of a personal and largely self-created nature, not epically oppressive. I went through a divorce and a depression, not a few centuries of murderous tyranny. I had a crisis of identity, but I also had the resources (financial,artistic and emotional) with which to try to work it out. Still, I will say that the same thing which has helped generations of Sicilians hold their dignity has helped me begin to recover mine—namely, the idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity. I believe this is what Goethe meant by saying that you have to come here, to Sicily, in order tounderstand Italy. And I suppose this is what I instinctively felt when I decided that I needed to come here, to Italy, in order to understand myself.我不想把自己和长期受苦的西西里人民拿来比较而侮辱任何人。我的人生悲剧属于一种个人性质、大致掌握在自己手中的问题，并非起因于长期受压迫。我经历的是离婚和忧郁症，并非好几世纪的恐怖暴政。我有身份认同的危机，却也拥有各种资源（财务、艺术、感情），想出解决之法。尽管如此，我要说，历代帮助西西里人保有尊严的观念，也帮助我开始找回自己的尊严——亦即，对快乐的鉴赏力，是能成为人性之依靠。我相信歌德说你若想了解意大利就得来西西里，正是这个意思。我想，在我决定必须来意大利时，正是直觉到我必须了解自己。



It was in a bathtub back in New York, reading Italian words aloud from a dictionary, that I first started mending my soul. My life had gone to bits and I was so unrecognizable to myself that I probably couldn't have picked me out of a police lineup. But I felt a glimmer of happiness when I started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt—this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter howslight.在纽约的浴缸里大声念出字典里的意大利词句，使我开始修补自己的灵魂。我的生活裂成碎片，让我认不出自己，在警察局任人指认的话，恐怕连我也指认不出自己。可是当我开始读意大利文时，我感觉到一丝快乐；而当你在经历黑暗时期后，感受到丝毫可能的快乐，就得死命抓住这一点快乐，直到它将你拉出土中——这并非自私，而是义务。你被赋予生命；你有责任（也是你身为人类的权利）去寻找生命当中的美，无论多么微不足道。



I came to Italy pinched and thin. I did not know yet what I deserved. I still maybe don't fully know what I deserve. But I do know that I have collected myself of late—through the enjoyment ofharmless pleasures—into somebody much more intact. The easiest, most fundamentally human way to say it is that I have put on weight. I exist more now than I did four months ago. I will leave Italy noticeably bigger than when I arrived here. And I will leave with the hope that theexpansion of one person—the magnification of one life—is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody's but my own. Eat, Pray, Love我到意大利时瘦骨如柴，那时的我还不清楚自己应得的东西。或许我仍未完全清楚自己应得的东西。但我明白近来我已振作起来——藉着享受无害的快乐——成为一个更完整的人。最简单、最符合人类的说法是，“我的体重增加了”。现在我的存在比四个月前更有分量。离开意大利的时候，我将比刚来时胖得多。离开的时候，我希望一个人的膨胀——一个人生的扩张——在这世界上是一种有价值的行动。尽管这一回，这个人生恰好不属于别人， 而是属于我自己。
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88848鲜花 260鸡蛋

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6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 35 (75):我胖了!



I couldn't hold out. None of my pants, after almost four months in Italy, fit me anymore. Not even the new clothes I just bought last month (when I'd already outgrown my "Second Month in Italy" pants) fit me anymore. I can't afford to buy a new wardrobe every few weeks, and I am aware that soon I will be in India, where the pounds will just melt away, but still—I cannot walk in these pants anymore. I can't stand it.我撑不下去。在意大利待了将近四个月后，我的长裤再也没有一条合身，甚至上个月才买的新衣服（因为我已穿不下“意大利第二个月”的长裤）也不再合身。我没能力每隔几个星期买一整套新衣，而且我很清楚过不久将去印度，体重即将“溶解”，但尽管如此——我已没办法穿这些长裤走路。我撑不住。



Which all makes sense, given that I recently stepped on a scale in a fancy Italian hotel and learned that I have gained twenty-three pounds in my four months of Italy—a truly admirable statistic. About fifteen pounds of that I actually needed to gain because I had become so skeletal during these last hard years of divorce and depression. The next five pounds, I just gained for fun. As for the final three? Just to prove a point, I suppose.这一切都很合理：前不久我在一家高级饭店踏上磅秤，得知我在意大利的四个月已重了二十三磅——真教人佩服的数字。事实上我大概需要增加十五磅，因为过去几年间，离婚和抑郁的折磨使我变得瘦骨如柴。多出来的五磅只是闹着玩儿。至于最后的三磅？只是为了加以证明吧。



But so it is that I find myself shopping for an item of clothing I will always keep in my life as acherished souvenir: "My Last Month in Italy Jeans." The young lady in the shop is nice enough to keep bringing me bigger and bigger sizes, handing them through the curtain one after another without commentary, only asking with concern each time if this is closer to a fit. Several times, I have needed to poke my head out of this curtain and ask, "Excuse me—do you have a pair that isslightly bigger?" Until the nice young lady finally gives me a pair of jeans with a waistmeasurement that verily hurts my eyes to witness. I step out of the dressing room, presenting myself to the salesgirl. She doesn't blink. She looks at me like an art curator trying to assess the value of a vase. A rather large vase.于是我去采购一件衣物，当做生命中永久保存的珍贵纪念品——“我在意大利最后一个月的牛仔裤”。年轻女店员很好心，不断给我拿来愈来愈大的尺寸，一件一件递给布帘后的我，未做任何评论，每回只是关心地询问这件是否比较合身。好几次我不得不从帘子后探出头来：“请问，有没有‘稍微’大一点的尺寸？”直到好心的年轻女士终于拿给我一件腰围尺寸刺痛我眼睛的牛仔裤为止。我走出更衣间，出现在女店员面前。她并未眨眼。她看着我，好似美术馆长尝试评估花瓶的价值，一只相当大的花瓶。



"Carina," she decides finally. Cute.她终于断定地说，“可爱。”



I ask her in Italian if she could please tell me honestly whether these jeans are causing me toresemble a cow.我用意大利语问能否请她诚实地告诉我，这件牛仔裤是否让我像头母牛。



No, signorina, I am told. You do not resemble a cow. "Do I resemble a pig, then?"“不，女士，”她告诉我，“你不像母牛。”“那像不像猪？”



No, she assures me with great seriousness. Nor do I resemble a pig in the least.不，她郑重其事向我保证我一点也不像猪。



"Perhaps a buffalo?"“也许像水牛？”



This is becoming good vocabulary practice. I'm also trying to get a smile out of the salesclerk, but she's too intent on remaining professional. I try one more time: "Maybe I resemble a buffalo mozzarella?"这是很好的词汇练习。我还尝试让店员露出一点笑容，可是她一心想保持专业态度。我又试了一次“或许像一块水牛乳酪（Buffalo Mozzarella）？”



Okay, maybe, she concedes, smiling only slightly. Maybe you do look a little like a buffalo mozzarella . . . Eat, Pray, Love[font=verdana, 'ms song']好吧，或许吧，她承认，仅微微一笑。或许你的确有点像水牛乳酪……


《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 36 (76):再看一眼西西里


I have only a week left here. I'm planning to go back to America for Christmas before flying to India, not only because I can't stand the thought of spending Christmas without my family but also because the next eight months of my journey—India and Indonesia—require a complete repacking of gear. Very little of the stuff you need when you are living in Rome is the same stuff you need when you are wandering around India.我在这里的日子只剩下一个星期。我打算回美国过圣诞，之后再飞去印度，不仅因为我没法容忍不和家人过圣诞，也因为接下来为期八个月的旅行——印度和印尼——需要重新打包行装。住在罗马需要的东西，和你周游印度需要的东西是两回事。



And maybe it's in preparation for my trip to India that I decide to spend this last week traveling through Sicily—the most third-world section of Italy, and therefore not a bad place to go if you need to prepare yourself to experience extreme poverty. Or maybe I only want to go to Sicily because of what Goethe said: "Without seeing Sicily one cannot get a clear idea of what Italy is."或许是为了印度之旅预作准备，我决定最后一个礼拜去西西里旅行——意大利境内最第三世界的地区，因此如须让自己做好体验赤贫的准备，这是不错的地方。也或许我去西西里，只是因为歌德说过：“没去过西西里，便无从清楚了解意大利。”



But it's not easy getting to or around Sicily. I have to use all my finding-out skills to find a train that runs on Sunday all the way down the coast and then to find the correct ferryboat to Messina (a scary and suspicious Sicilian port town that seems to howl from behind barricaded doors, "It's not my fault I'm ugly! I've been earthquaked and carpet-bombed and raped by the Mafia, too!") Once I've arrived in Messina, I have to find a bus station (grimy as a smoker's lung) and find the man whose job it is to sit there in the ticket booth, mourning his life, and see if he will please sell me a ticket to the coastal town of Taormina. Then I rattle along the cliffs and beaches of Sicily's stupendous and hard-edged east coast until I get to Taormina, and then I have to find a taxi and then I have to find a hotel. Then I have to find the right person of whom to ask my favorite question in Italian: "Where is the best food in this town?" In Taormina, that person turns out to be a sleepy policeman. He gives me one of the greatest things anyone can ever give me in life—a tiny piece of paper with the name of an obscure restaurant written on it, a hand-drawn map of how to find the place.然而去西西里旅行并不容易。我得用尽所有的探知能力找到周日一路南下抵达海岸的火车，然后找到正确的渡轮前往墨西拿（Messina；一个恐怖可疑的海港城市，似乎从堵住的门后咆哮：“丑并不是我的错！我经历过地震，遭受过地毯式轰炸，还惨遭黑手党蹂躏！”）。一抵达墨西拿后，得找到公车站（和吸烟者的肺一样肮脏），找到坐在卖票亭里自怨自艾的男人，问他能否卖我一张开往滨海小镇陶尔米纳（Taormina）的车票。公车在西西里锋芒毕露的东海岸沿着峭壁和海滩颠簸行驶，直到抵达陶尔米纳后，我得找到一辆计程车，然后找一家旅社。而后得找对人，用意大利语问我最爱的问题：“镇上 哪个地方东西最好吃？”结果在陶尔米纳找到的人是个睡眼惺忪的警察。他给了我最好的东西——一张纸条，上面写了一家地处偏僻的餐厅名字，并有指出餐厅方位的手写地图。



Which turns out to be a little trattoria where the friendly elderly proprietress is getting ready for her evening's customers by standing on a table in her stocking feet, trying not to knock over the Christmas crèche as she polishes the restaurant windows. I tell her that I don't need to see themenu but could she just bring me the best food possible because this is my first night in Sicily. She rubs her hands together in pleasure and yells something in Sicilian dialect to her even-more-elderly mother in the kitchen, and within the space of twenty minutes I am busily eating the hands-down most amazing meal I've eaten yet in all of Italy. It's pasta, but a shape of pasta I've never before seen—big, fresh, sheets of pasta folded ravioli-like into the shape (if not exactly the size) of the pope's hat, stuffed with a hot, aromatic puree of crustaceans and octopus and squid, served tossed like a hot salad with fresh cockles and strips of julienned vegetables, all swimming in an olivey, oceany broth. Followed by the rabbit, stewed in thyme.结果是一家小酒馆。友善年长的女掌柜正在为当晚的生意做准备，她穿着长袜的脚站在桌上，一边擦拭餐厅窗户，试着不碰倒圣诞耶稣像。我跟她说我无须看菜单，请她为我拿来最好的食物，因为这是我在西西里的第一个夜晚。她欣喜地摩拳擦掌，用西西里方言朝她在厨房的老迈母亲叫喊；然后在二十分钟内，我忙着享用在整个意大利吃过最让人惊奇的一餐。是面食，却是我从未见过的形状——又大又新鲜，一片片像意大利饺子（虽然尺寸不尽相同）般折叠成教皇帽子的形状，内馅是甲壳动物、章鱼和乌贼熬煮而成的又滚烫又香浓的泥末，和切丝蔬菜拌在一起，浸泡在橄榄风味、海洋般的汤汁里。下一道菜则是百里香炖兔肉。



But Syracuse, the next day, is even better. The bus coughs me up on a street corner here in the cold rain, late in the day. I love this town immediately. There are three thousand years of history under my feet in Syracuse. It's a place of such ancient civilization that it makes Rome look like Dallas. Myth says that Daedalus flew here from Crete and that Hercules once slept here. Syracuse was a Greek colony that Thucydides called "a city not in the least inferior to Athens itself." Syracuse is the link between ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Many great playwrights and scientists of antiquity lived here. Plato thought it would be the ideal location for a utopianexperiment where perhaps "by some divine fate" rulers might become philosophers, and philosophers might become rulers. Historians say that rhetoric was invented in Syracuse, and also (and this is just a minor thing) plot.可是隔天的锡拉库萨（Syracuse）更是精采。公车在傍晚的冷雨中让我在某个街角下车。我立即爱上这个城市。锡拉库萨的三千年历史就在脚下。这儿的古老文明使罗马看起来就像美国的达拉斯。传说狄德勒斯（Daedalus）从克里特岛飞到此地，赫丘力士（Hercules）曾睡过这里。锡拉库萨曾是希腊殖民地，修昔底德（Thucydides）说它是“丝毫不逊于雅典的城市”。锡拉库萨是联系古希腊和古罗马的纽带。许多古代剧作家和科学家曾住在此地。柏拉图认为它是实现乌托邦的理想地点，或许“藉由某种天命”，让统治者成为哲学家，哲学家成为统治者。历史学家说，修辞学的发明是在锡拉库萨，而剧本的“情节”亦然（这只是一桩小事）。



I walk through the markets of this crumbly town and my heart tumbles with a love I can't answer or explain as I watch an old guy in a black wool hat gut a fish for a customer (he has stuck his cigarette in his lips for safekeeping the way a seamstress keeps her pins in her mouth as she sews; his knife works with devotional perfection on the fillets). Shyly, I ask this fisherman where I should eat tonight, and I leave our conversation clutching yet another little piece of paper, directing me to a little restaurant with no name, where—as soon as I sit down that night—the waiter brings me airy clouds of ricotta sprinkled with pistachio, bread chunks floating in aromaticoils, tiny plates of sliced meats and olives, a salad of chilled oranges tossed in a dressing of raw onion and parsley. This is before I even hear about the calamari house specialty.我从这座脆弱城市的市场走过去，看着一位戴黑色羊毛帽的老人为顾客剖开鱼肚（他叼着烟，就像裁缝师缝制衣服时叼着针；他持刀把鱼片切得完美无缺），令我心中洋溢着某种无法回答或解释的爱意。我羞怯地问这位鱼贩今晚该去哪儿吃饭，我们谈过话之后，我取了张纸条，指引我去一家无名小餐馆。我一坐下，服务生便拿来一团团松软、撒有开心果的瑞科达（Ricotta）乳酪，面包块漂浮在芬芳的油中，一碟碟肉片和橄榄，佐以生洋葱与欧芹的冰橘沙拉。之后，我才听说鱿鱼招牌菜。
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88848鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 34 (73):在意大利的感恩节



It is odd, then, that Luca would want to use this birthday to celebrate an American Thanksgiving, given these circumstances, but I do like the idea of it. Thanksgiving is a nice holiday, something an American can freely be proud of, our one national festival that has remained relatively uncommodified. It's a day of grace and thanks and community and—yes—pleasure. It might be what we all need right now.因此在这个情况下，卢卡想利用他的生日来庆祝美国的感恩节可是件怪事，但我确实喜欢这个点子。感恩节是很棒的节日，让美国人引以为傲的节日，我国尚未废弃的一个节庆日。这是感恩、欢聚以及快乐的日子。或许正是我们每个人现在所需要的东西。



My friend Deborah has come to Rome from Philadelphia for the weekend, to celebrate the holiday with me. Deborah's an internationally respected psychologist, a writer and a feminist theorist, but I still think of her as my favorite regular customer, back from the days when I was a diner waitress in Philly and she would come in for lunch and drink Diet Coke with no ice and say clever things to me over the counter. She really classed up that joint. We've been friends now for over fifteen years. Sofie will be coming to Luca's party, too. Sofie and I have been friends for about fifteen weeks. Everybody is always welcome on Thanksgiving. Especially when it also happens to be Luca Spaghetti's birthday.我的朋友黛博拉从费城来罗马度周末，和我一同过节。黛博拉是享誉国际的心理学家、作家兼女性主义理论家。但她在我心目中仍是我最喜爱的常客，打从我在费城担任餐厅服务员的时候，她常来吃午饭，喝不加冰块的健怡可乐，和柜台后面的我谈论机智的东西。她确实提高了那家小餐厅的格调。我们是交往十五年多的朋友。苏菲也会参加卢卡的生日派对。苏菲和我是交往十五个礼拜的朋友。在感恩节的时候，每个人都受到欢迎。尤其碰巧还是卢卡的生日。



We drive out of tired, stressed-out Rome late in the evening, up into the mountains. Luca loves American music, so we're blasting the Eagles and singing "Take it . . . to the limit . . . one more time!!!!!!" which adds an oddly Californian sound track to our drive through olive groves and ancient aqueducts. We arrive at the house of Luca's old friends Mario and Simona, parents of the twin twelve-year-old girls Giulia and Sara. Paolo—a friend of Luca's whom I'd met before at soccer games—is there, too, along with his girlfriend. Of course, Luca's own girlfriend, Giuliana, is there, as well, having driven up earlier in the evening. It's an exquisite house, hidden away in a grove of olive and clementine and lemon trees. The fireplace is lit. The olive oil is homemade.我们晚上开车离开疲乏紧张的罗马，进入山区。卢卡喜欢美国音乐，因此我们大声播放老鹰合唱团的歌曲，高唱“Take it...to the limit...one more!!!!!!”（再一次到达极限），为我们开车穿越橄榄树丛和水道古桥的时候，添加某种奇特的加州音乐。我们抵达卢卡的老友马里奥和席莫娜的家，他们有一对十二岁的双胞胎女儿茱莉亚和莎拉。保罗——卢卡的朋友，我们曾在足球赛上见过面——也来了，带来他的女朋友。当然，卢卡自己的女朋友茱莉亚 娜也来了，傍晚从南边开车过来。这是一栋美妙的房子，隐藏在橄榄丛、柑橘树和柠檬树当中。壁炉在燃烧。还有自制的橄榄油。



No time to roast a twenty-pound turkey, obviously, but Luca sautés up some lovely cuts of turkey breast and I preside over a whirlwind group effort to make a Thanksgiving stuffing, as best as I can remember the recipe, made from the crumbs of some high-end Italian bread, with necessary cultural substitutions (dates instead of apricots; fennel instead of celery). Somehow it comes out great. Luca had been worried about how the conversation would proceed tonight, given that half the guests can't speak English and the other half can't speak Italian (and only Sofie can speak Swedish), but it seems to be one of those miracle evenings where everyone canunderstand each other perfectly, or at least your neighbor can help translate when the odd word gets lost.显然没有时间烤二十磅的火鸡，但卢卡煎了几块漂亮的火鸡胸肉，我则率领一大群人尽力制作内馅，就我记忆所及的食谱，以高档意大利面包屑作材料，以及必要的文化替代物（以蜜枣取代杏脯；以茴香取代芹菜）。结果竟相当好。卢卡担心今晚对话如何进行，因为半数的客人不会讲英语，另一半则不会讲意大利语（仅苏菲一人讲瑞典语），但这似乎是个神奇之夜，大家都听得懂对方的话，至少找不到某个单字时，由邻近的人帮忙翻译。



I lose count of how many bottles of Sardinian wine we drink before Deborah introduces to the table the suggestion that we follow a nice American custom here tonight by joining hands and—each in turn—saying what we are most grateful for. In three languages, then, this montage ofgratitude comes forth, one testimony at a time.我们不知喝了多少瓶撒丁酒后，黛博拉向席间的人建议我们今晚按照美国习俗，大家携手轮流说出自己最感谢的一切。于是，这场“感恩蒙太奇”以三种语言开演，人人轮流表白。





《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 34 (74):美妙的感恩夜



Deborah starts by saying she is grateful that America will soon get a chance to pick a new president. Sofie says (first in Swedish, then in Italian, then in English) that she is grateful for thebenevolent hearts of Italy and for these four months she's been allowed to experience such pleasure in this country. The tears begin when Mario—our host—weeps in open gratitude as he thanks God for the work in his life that has enabled him to have this beautiful home for his family and friends to enjoy. Paolo gets a laugh when he says that he, too, is grateful that America will soon have the chance to elect a new president. We fall into a silence of collective respect for little Sara, one of the twelve-year-old twins, when she bravely shares that she is grateful to be here tonight with such nice people because she's been having a hard time at school lately—some of the other students are being mean to her—"so thank you for being sweet to me tonight and not mean to me, like they are." Luca's girlfriend says she is grateful for the years of loyalty Luca has shown to her, and for how warmly he has taken care of her family through difficult times. Simona—our hostess—cries even more openly than her husband had, as she expresses her gratitude that a new custom of celebration and thankfulness has been brought into her home by these strangers from America, who are not really strangers at all, but friends of Luca's and therefore friends of peace.黛博拉先开始。她说她很感谢美国过不久有机会挑选新总统。苏菲说（先讲瑞典语，再讲意大利语，最后讲英语），她感谢意大利人的善心，以及这四个月来在这个国家所体会的快乐。招待我们的主人马里奥流着泪，公开感谢上帝赐予他工作，使他拥有这栋让家人和朋友乐在其中的漂亮房子。保罗说的话引起哄堂大笑，因为他说他也感谢美国很快就有机会举行新总统的选举。我们一致对小莎拉表达沉默的敬意——这位十二岁的双胞胎之一勇敢地告诉大家，她感谢今晚能在此地与这些好人共度，因为最近她在学校很不好过——有些同学对她不友善——“因此感谢你们今晚善待我，不像那些同学。”卢卡的女友说她感谢卢卡多年来对她一片赤忱，在困难的日子里热诚地照顾她的家人。我们的女主人席莫娜甚至比她的老公更开怀大哭，因为她感谢这群来自美国的陌生人带给她家新的节庆风俗与感恩之意，这些人不是陌生人，而是卢卡的朋友，因此也是和平的朋友。



When it comes my turn to speak, I begin "Sono grata . . ." but then find I cannot say my real thoughts. Namely, that I am so grateful to be free tonight from the depression that had been gnawing at me like a rat over the years, a depression that had chewed such perforations in my soul that I would not, at one time, have been able to enjoy even such a lovely night as this. I don't mention any of this because I don't want to alarm the children. Instead, I say a simpler truth—that I am grateful for old and new friends. That I am grateful, most especially tonight, for Luca Spaghetti. That I hope he has a happy thirty-third birthday, and I hope he lives a long life, in order to stand as an example to other men of how to be a generous, loyal and loving human being. And that I hope nobody minds that I'm crying as I say all this, though I don't think they do mind, since everyone else is crying, too.轮到我说时，我开口说“Sono grata……”，可是我发现自己讲不出真正的想法。换句话说，我非常感谢今晚得以免于这几年啃噬我的抑郁，这抑郁使我的灵魂穿孔，使我一度无法享受如此美好的夜晚。我并未提及这些，因为我不想引起孩子们的恐慌。我只说出更简单的事实——我对新朋友和旧朋友不胜感激。我说今晚尤其感谢卢卡•斯帕盖蒂。我希望他能有个快乐的三十三岁生日，希望他长命百岁，以作为他人的表率，让大家知道何谓慷慨、赤诚、博爱。我说希望没有人介意我说这些话的时候哭了出来，尽管我想他们并不介意，因为大家都哭了。



Luca is so clutched by emotion that he cannot find words except to say to all of us: "Your tears are my prayers."卢卡情绪激动得说不出话来，只对我们说：“你们的眼泪是我献上的祷告。”



The Sardinian wine keeps on coming. And while Paolo washes the dishes and Mario puts his tired daughters to bed and Luca plays the guitar and everyone sings drunken Neil Young songs in various accents, Deborah the American feminist psychologist says quietly to me, "Look around at these good Italian men. See how open they are to their feelings and how lovingly theyparticipate in their families. See the regard and the respect they hold for the women and children in their lives. Don't believe what you read in the papers, Liz. This country is doing very well."撒丁酒源源不绝。保罗洗碗，马里奥把女儿送去睡觉，卢卡弹吉他，大家南腔北调地唱着尼尔•杨（Neil Young）的醉歌。美国女性主义心理学家黛博拉悄悄地告诉我：“看看这些意大利好男人。看看他们多么公开自己的感觉，多么关爱自己的家庭。看看他们多么尊重自己生命中的女人和小孩。别去相信报上的报道，小莉。这国家干得很好。”



Our party doesn't end until almost dawn. We could have roasted that twenty-pound turkey, after all, and eaten it for breakfast. Luca Spaghetti drives me and Deborah and Sofie all the way back home. We try to help him stay awake as the sun comes up by singing Christmas carols. Silent night, sainted night, holy night, we sing over and over in every language we know, as we all head back into Rome together. Eat, Pray, Love我们的派对在将近黎明时分才结束。我们原本可以烤二十磅的火鸡，当早餐吃。卢卡载着我、黛博拉和苏菲一路回家。太阳升起，我们唱圣诞颂歌，帮助他保持清醒。平安夜，圣善夜，我们唱自己知道的各种语言，一遍又一遍，一同回到罗马。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 34 (72):悲伤的气氛




Thanksgiving turkey, though he's seen them in pictures. He thinks it should be easy to replicatesuch a feast (especially with the help of me, a real American). He says we can use the kitchen of his friends Mario and Simona, who have a nice big house in the mountains outside Rome, and who always host Luca's birthday parties.卢卡•斯帕盖蒂今年的生日正好是美国感恩节，因此想为自己的生日派对准备火鸡大餐。他从未吃过肥美的美国感恩节烤火鸡，尽管他曾在图片上看过。他认为复制这类大餐并不难（尤其有我这道地的美国人协助）。他说我们可以用他朋友马里奥和席莫娜的厨房，他们在罗马郊区山上有栋大房子，总是为卢卡办生日派对。



So here was Luca's plan for the festivities—he would pick me up at around seven o'clock at night, after he'd finished work, and then we would drive north out of Rome for an hour or so to his friends' house (where we would meet the other attendees of the birthday party) and we'd drink some wine and all get to know each other, and then, probably around 9:00 PM, we wouldcommence to roasting a twenty-pound turkey . . .为了准备这顿大餐，卢卡的计划是——下班后，晚间七点过来接我，而后开车北上，出城约一个小时后抵达朋友家（我们将在那里遇上出席派对的其他人），然后我们将喝些酒，认识彼此，而后在九点左右开始烤二十磅的火鸡……



I had to do some explaining to Luca about how much time it takes to roast a twenty-poundturkey. I told him his birthday feast would probably be ready to eat, at that rate, around dawn the next day. He was destroyed. "But what if we bought a very small turkey? A just-born turkey?"我不得不跟卢卡说明，烤一只二十磅的火鸡必须花多少时间。我跟他说，以这种速度，大概隔天黎明时分才吃得到火鸡大餐。他大失所望。“那买一只很小的火鸡如何？一只出生不久的火鸡？”



I said, "Luca—let's make it easy and have pizza, like every other good dysfunctional American family does on Thanksgiving."我说：“卢卡——我们弄简单点，吃比萨饼吧，美国的每个病态家庭在感恩节都这么吃。”



But he's still sad about it. Though there's a general sadness around Rome right now, anyway. The weather has turned cold. The sanitation workers and the train employees and the national airline all went on strike on the same day. A study has just been released saying that 36 percent of Italian children have an allergy to the gluten needed to make pasta, pizza and bread, so there goes Italian culture. Even worse, I recently saw an article with the shocking headline: "Insoddisfatte 6 Donne su 10!" Meaning that six out of ten Italian women are sexually unsatisfied. Moreover, 35 percent of Italian men are reporting difficulty maintaining un'erezione, leaving researchers feeling very perplessi indeed, and making me wonder if SEX should be allowed to be Rome's special word anymore, after all.但他依然感到悲伤。尽管近来的罗马也弥漫着一种悲伤气氛。天气变冷了。清洁工、火车雇员和国内航空全在同一天闹罢工。近来发布的一则研究报导指出，百分之三十六的意大利孩童对制作面食、比萨和面包必不可少的面筋过敏，让人对意大利文化忧心忡忡。最近我看到一篇文章，标题令人震惊：“Insoddisfatte 6 Donne su 10!”意思是“十个意大利女人有六个欲求不满”。此外，百分之三十五（勃起），令研究人员大感“perplessi（困惑），也令我怀疑“性”是否应该继续作为罗马的特殊用词。



In more serious bad news, nineteen Italian soldiers have recently been killed in The Americans' War (as it is called here) in Iraq—the largest number of military deaths in Italy since World War II. The Romans were shocked by these deaths and the city closed down the day the boys were buried. The wide majority of Italians want nothing to do with George Bush's war. The involvement was the decision of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister (more commonly referred to around these parts as l'idiota). This intellect-free, soccer-club-owning businessman, with his oily film ofcorruption and sleaze, who regularly embarrasses his fellow citizens by making lewd gestures in the European parliament, who has mastered the art of speaking l'aria fritta ("fried air"), who expertly manipulates the media (not difficult when you own it), and who generally behaves not at all like a proper world leader but rather like a Waterbury mayor (that's an inside joke for Connecticut residents only—sorry), has now engaged the Italians in a war they see as none of their business whatsoever.更严重的坏消息是，十九名意大利士兵最近在“美国人的战争”（这里的人如此称呼）中，丧命于伊拉克——自二战以来，意军最高的死亡数字。这些士兵的死令罗马人大感震惊；埋葬这些年轻人的当天，全城歇业。绝大部分的意大利人都不想和布什的战争有任何瓜葛。介入战争是意大利前首相贝卢斯科尼（Silvio Berlusconi；这地方的人更常称他为“l'diota”［白痴］）所下的决定。这个愚蠢、拥有足球会的生意人，以其卑鄙腐败的行径，经常在欧盟议会上做出下流之举，使他的人民同胞感到难堪。他精通空口说白话的艺术，熟练地操控媒体（这一点都不难，只要你拥有媒体），他的一举一动丝毫不像体面的世界领袖，倒像是瓦特伯利市（Waterbury）市长（康州居民才听得懂这个笑话——抱歉），如今让意大利人介入一场在他们看来跟他们毫不相干的战争。



"They died for freedom," Berlusconi said at the funeral of the nineteen Italian soldiers, but most Romans have a different opinion: They died for George Bush's personal vendetta. In this political climate, one might think it would be difficult to be a visiting American. Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathyfrom most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying, "Weunderstand how it is—we have one, too."“他们为自由而死。”贝卢斯科尼在十九位意大利士兵的葬礼上说道。不过多数的罗马人看法不同：“他们为小布什的个人恩怨而死。”在这种政治气氛下，你或许认为对一个美国访客而言并不好过。我来意大利时，的确预期会遭遇许多憎恨情绪，但却发现多数意大利人都感同身受“我们了解你的感受——因为我们也有一个这样的总统。”



We've been there.[font=verdana, 'ms song']我们到过那里。


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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 33 (71):身处意大利的我



And still, after a few weeks of thinking about it, I can't answer it any better now. I know some words that it definitely isn't. It's not MARRIAGE, that's evident. It's not FAMILY (though this was the word of the town I'd lived in for a few years with my husband, and since I did not fit with that word, this was a big cause of my suffering). It's not DEPRESSION anymore, thank heavens. I'm not concerned that I share Stockholm's word of CONFORM. But I don't feel that I'm entirely inhabiting New York City's ACHIEVE anymore, either, though that had indeed been my word all throughout my twenties. My word might be SEEK. (Then again, let's be honest—it might just as easily be HIDE.) Over the last months in Italy, my word has largely been PLEASURE, but that word doesn't match every single part of me, or I wouldn't be so eager to get myself to India. My word might be DEVOTION, though this makes me sound like more of a goody-goody than I am and doesn't take into account how much wine I've been drinking.然而，经过数星期的考虑，我现在能够做出完美的回答。我知道哪些用词肯定不是。显然不是“婚姻”，不是“家庭”（尽管这个用词属于我和我先生同住几年的城镇，但由于我不符合这个词，因此造成我的苦难），不再是“抑郁”，感谢上天。我不担心我和斯德哥尔摩共用“循规蹈矩”这词，但我也认为我并不住在纽约市的“实现”当中，尽管它确实是我二十几岁整段岁月的用词。我的用词或许是“寻求”。（可是诚实点的话，或许“躲藏”较为妥当。）在意大利的过去几个月中，我的用词大半是“快乐”，可是这个词并不完全吻合每一部分的我，否则我不致急于前往印度。我的用词或许是“虔诚”，尽管这听起来像乖乖牌，也没把我喝过多少酒考虑进去。



I don't know the answer, and I suppose that's what this year of journeying is about. Finding my word. But one thing I can say with all assurance—it ain't SEX.我不清楚答案，我猜这正是这一年的旅游任务。寻找我的用词。但我能斩钉截铁地说——可不是“性”。



Or so I claim, anyhow. You tell me, then, why today my feet led me almost of their own accord to a discreet boutique off the Via Condotti, where—under the expert tutelage of the silky young Italian shop girl—I spent a few dreamy hours (and a transcontinental airline ticket's worth of money) buying enough lingerie to keep a sultan's consort outfitted for 1,001 nights. I bought bras of every shape and formation. I bought filmy, flimsy camisoles and sassy bits of panty in every color of the Easter basket, and slips that came in creamy satins and hush-now-baby silks, and handmade little bits of string and things and basically just one velvety, lacy, crazy valentine after another.至少这是我的主张。那么，请告诉我，今天我的脚为何不由自主地领我到康多提大道（Via Condotti）附近一家不起眼的商店——在轻声细语的年轻意大利售货小姐专业的监护下——我花数小时的梦幻时光（以及相当于一张跨洲机票的费用），买下足以让苏丹王的老婆换穿一千零一夜的贴身内衣裤。我买了各式各样的胸罩，我买了又轻又薄的紧身衬衣、各种颜色的漂亮内裤、性感的丝绸衬裙、手工袜带等，基本上是一件又一件柔软光滑、带花边、疯狂的情人节礼物。



I have never owned things like this in my life. So why now? As I was walking out of the store, hauling my cache of tissue-wrapped naughties under my arm, I suddenly thought of the anguished demand I'd heard a Roman soccer fan yell the other night at the Lazio game, when Lazio's star player Albertini at a critical moment had passed the ball right into the middle of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever, totally blowing the play.我这辈子不曾拥有这些东西。那为何是此时？我走出商店，腋下夹着包在薄纸里的贴身衣物，突然想起某晚我在拉齐奥队的球赛上，听见一个罗马足球迷喊出的痛苦请求。当时拉齐奥的明星球员阿尔贝蒂尼不知何故，在关键时刻把球踢到哪儿都不是的地方，大爆冷门。



"Per chi???" the fan had shouted in near-madness. "Per chi???"“Per chi??? ”球迷近乎疯狂地叫喊，“Per chi???”



For WHOM??? For whom are you passing this ball, Albertini? Nobody's there!为了谁？阿尔贝蒂尼，你传这球是为了谁？那里没有人啊！



Out on the street after my delirious hours of lingerie shopping, I remembered this line and repeated it to myself in a whisper: "Per chi?"在几个小时疯狂的内衣裤采购后走出商店，我想起这个句话，重复对自己低语：“Per chi?”



For whom, Liz? For whom all this decadent sexiness? Nobody's there. I had only a few weeks left in Italy and absolutely no intention of knocking boots with anyone. Or did I? Had I finally beenaffected by the word on the streets in Rome? Was this some final effort to become Italian? Was this a gift to myself, or was it a gift for some as yet not even imagined lover? Was this an attempt to start healing my libido after the sexual self-confidence disaster of my last relationship?为了谁，小莉？这颓废的性感是为了谁？那里没有人啊！我在意大利只剩几个星期，绝不想和任何人炒饭。真的吗？罗马的用词是否终于影响了我？这是成为意大利人的最后一招吗？这是给我自己的礼物，或是给甚至尚未在想象中成形的情人的礼物？这可是因为我在上一段关系中丧失性自信心，于是尝试开始治疗性欲？



I asked myself, "You gonna bring all this stuff to India?" Eat, Pray, Love我自问：“你想把这些东西带去——印度？”
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 33 (70):罗马用词



"What's Rome's word?" I asked.“罗马的用词是什么？”我问。



"SEX," he announced.“性。”他声称。



"But isn't that a stereotype about Rome?"“但这不是大家对罗马的成见吗？”



"No."“不是 。”



"But surely there are some people in Rome thinking about other things than sex?"“罗马肯定有些人在想‘性’以外的其他事吧？”



Giulio insisted: "No. All of them, all day, all they are thinking about is SEX."朱利欧坚称：“不。每一个人，每一天，他们只想着‘性’。”



"Even over at the Vatican?"“甚至梵蒂冈？ ”



"That's different. The Vatican isn't part of Rome. They have a different word over there. Their word is POWER."“那不一样。梵蒂冈不属于罗马。那里有不同的用词。他们的用词是‘权力 ’。”



"You'd think it would be FAITH."“我以为你会说‘信仰 ’。”



"It's POWER," he repeated. "Trust me. But the word in Rome—it's SEX."“是‘权力’，”他又说一次，“相信我。但罗马的用词是——性。”



Now if you are to believe Giulio, that little word—SEX—cobbles the streets beneath your feet in Rome, runs through the fountains here, fills the air like traffic noise. Thinking about it, dressing for it, seeking it, considering it, refusing it, making a sport and game out of it—that's all anybody is doing. Which would make a bit of sense as to why, for all its gorgeousness, Rome doesn't quite feel like my hometown. Not at this moment in my life. Because SEX isn't my word right now. It has been at other times of my life, but it isn't right now. Therefore, Rome's word, as it spins through the streets, just bumps up against me and tumbles off, leaving no impact. I'm not participating in the word, so I'm not fully living here. It's a kooky theory, impossible to prove, but I sort of like it.你若相信朱利欧的话，这小小的字——性——就砌成你踩在脚下的罗马街道，流过喷泉，充塞在空气中，有如车辆的噪音。思考它，为它而打扮，寻求它，思索它，拒绝它，当做一种运动和游戏——这正是每个人做的事情。这或许说明，罗马虽迷人，却未给我家乡的感觉。在我的此生此刻。因为“性”并不是我现在的用词。从前它曾是我的用词，此刻却不是。因此，罗马的用词在穿行于街头巷尾时撞上我后踉跄地走开，未留下任何影响。我未参与这用词，因此无法充分过这里的生活。这是个古怪的理论，无从证明，可是我还算喜欢。



Giulio asked, "What's the word in New York City?"朱利欧问：“纽约的用词是什么？”



I thought about this for a moment, then decided. "It's a verb, of course. I think it's ACHIEVE."我想了一下，而后决定：“当然是动词。我想是‘实现’吧。”



(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe, which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)（我相信这和洛杉矶的用词有着细微却显著的不同，洛杉矶的用词也是动词：“成功”。后来我和我的瑞典朋友苏菲分享这整套理论，她提供的想法是，瑞典的街头用词是“循规蹈矩”，令我们俩沮丧的用词。）



I asked Giulio, "What's the word in Naples?" He knows the south of Italy well.我问朱利欧：“那不勒斯的用词是什么？”他对意大利南部十分了解。



"FIGHT," he decides. "What was the word in your family when you were growing up?"“打闹。”他判断，“在你成长期间，你家的用词是什么？”



That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines bothFRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Giulio was already on to the next and most obvious question: "What's your word?"这问题不易回答。我尝试找个结合“节俭”和“不虔诚”的用词。但朱利欧已进行到下一个最明显的问题：“你的用词是什么？”



Now that, I definitely could not answer.这一题，我肯定答不出来
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 33 (69):城市用词




I step off the train a few days later to a Rome full of hot, sunny, eternal disorder, where—immediately upon walking out into the street—I can hear the soccer-stadium-like cheers of a nearby manifestazione, another labor demonstration. What they are striking about this time, my taxi driver cannot tell me, mainly because, it seems, he doesn't care. " 'Sti cazzi," he says about the strikers. (Literal translation: "These balls," or, as we might say: "I don't give a shit.") It's nice to be back. After the staid sobriety of Venice, it's nice to be back where I can see a man in a leopard-skin jacket walking past a pair of teenagers making out right in the middle of the street. The city is so awake and alive, so dolled-up and sexy in the sunshine.几天后我下了火车，来到始终炎热、阳光灿烂、混乱不堪的罗马。我一走上街头，便听见足球场似的欢呼，是附近正在进行的“manifestazione”，又一场劳工示威活动。我的计程车司机无法告诉我这回的罢工理由，看来是因为他不在乎“Sti cazzi，”他谈论这些罢工者。（字面翻译是：“这些球”；或也可以说：“我才懒得鸟他们。”）回来真不错。在去过中规中矩的威尼斯之后，回来真不错，在这儿能看见身穿豹皮夹克的男人从一对在街中心热烈拥吻的青少年身边走过。这城市如此清醒而活泼，在阳光中如此花枝招展而性感。



I remember something that my friend Maria's husband, Giulio, said to me once. We were sitting in an outdoor café, having our conversation practice, and he asked me what I thought of Rome. I told him I really loved the place, of course, but somehow knew it was not my city, not where I'd end up living for the rest of my life. There was something about Rome that didn't belong to me, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Just as we were talking, a helpful visual aid walked by. It was the quintessential Roman woman—a fantastically maintained, jewelry-sodden forty-something dame wearing four-inch heels, a tight skirt with a slit as long as your arm, and those sunglasses that look like race cars (and probably cost as much). She was walking her little fancy dog on a gem-studded leash, and the fur collar on her tight jacket looked as if it had been made out of the pelt of her former little fancy dog. She was exuding an unbelievably glamorous air of: "You will look at me, but I will refuse to look at you." It was hard to imagine she had ever, even for ten minutes of her life, not worn mascara. This woman was in every way the opposite of me, who dresses in a style my sister refers to as "Stevie Nicks Goes to Yoga Class in Her Pajamas."我想起我的朋友玛莉亚的老公朱利欧曾对我说过的话。当时我们坐在户外咖啡馆，练习会话，他问我对罗马的观感。我跟他说我热爱这个地方，却知道它不是我的城市，不是让我想度过余生的地方。罗马有某些东西不属于我，我揣摩不出是什么。我们讲话的时候，一个帮助教学的活道具走了过去。是一位典型的罗马女人——保养得当、满戴珠宝的四十多岁夫人，高跟鞋四寸高，穿一条开叉足有手臂般长的紧身裙，戴一副看似赛车（价格可能也差不多）般的太阳眼镜。她牵着那条高贵的小狗，狗链上饰有宝石，而她的紧身外套上的裘皮领，看起来仿佛是以她从前的高贵小狗身上的毛皮裁制而成。她散放出某种魅力逼人的神态：“你若看我，我可拒绝看你。”很难想象她这辈子曾经有过不涂睫毛膏的时候，甚至只有十分钟的时间。这女子和我有如天壤之别，我姐姐说我的穿衣风格是“穿睡衣上瑜伽课的休闲风”。



I pointed that woman out to Giulio, and I said, "See, Giulio—that is a Roman woman. Rome cannot be her city and my city, too. Only one of us really belongs here. And I think we both know which one."我指这女人给朱利欧看，说：“瞧，朱利欧——这是罗马女人。罗马不可能同时是她的城市又是我的城市。我们只有其中一人属于这里。我想我们俩都知道是谁。”



Giulio said, "Maybe you and Rome just have different words."朱利欧说：“或许你只是跟罗马的用词不同？”



"What do you mean?"“你的意思是……”



He said, "Don't you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn—what is the word of the street?"他说“难道你不晓得了解一个城市及其人民的秘诀是学会——什么是街头的用词？”



Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be—that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.而后，他交相使用英语、意大利语和手势继续说明，每个城市都有一个定义用词，与住在其中的多数人等同起来。假如你能在某个特定地点读出走过街的人心中想些什么，你会发现他们想的大半是同一件事情。大多数人想的是什么——那就是城市的用词。你的个人用词和城市的用词若不搭调，你就不属于此地。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (68):欣赏威尼斯



Her cheer, her optimism—they in no way match this stinky, slow, sinking, mysterious, silent, weird city. Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place. Seeing Venice, I'm grateful that I chose to live in Rome instead. I don't think I would have gotten off the antidepressants quite so quick here. Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.她的振奋，她的乐观——与这座发臭、缓慢、逐日下陷、神秘、沉默、古怪的城市毫不搭调。威尼斯似乎是个适合慢慢酒精中毒身亡，或失去爱人，或爱人遇难后丢弃凶器的城市。玩过威尼斯，我很庆幸选择了罗马。若住在此地，我想我无法那么快摆脱抗忧郁剂。威尼斯很美，但就像柏格曼电影的美；你虽喜欢，却不想住在其中。



The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families willbarricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep themaintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side—this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment—Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?整座城市正在剥落、衰退，仿若家道中落的大宅后面上锁的房间，因维修过于昂贵，倒不如把门钉死，忘却门后陈旧的宝藏——这就是威尼斯。亚德里亚海的油污反流推向这些深受磨难的建筑物地基，考验着这项十四世纪科学博览会的实验——“喂，我们若建造一座自始至终坐落在水里的城市，会有怎样的结果？”——撑得了多久。



Venice is spooky under its grainy November skies. The city creaks and sways like a fishing pier. Despite Linda's initial confidence that we can govern this town, we get lost every day, and most especially at night, taking wrong turns toward dark corners that dead-end dangerously and directly into canal water. One foggy night, we pass an old building that seems to actually be groaning in pain. "Not to worry," chirps Linda. "That's just Satan's hungry maw." I teach her my favorite Italian word—attraversiamo ("let's cross over")—and we backtrack nervously out of there.威尼斯在11月的粒状天空下让人毛骨悚然，像渔船码头般嘎嘎响，东摇西晃。尽管琳达一开始相信我们支配得了这座城市，我们却天天迷路，尤其夜间，朝直接通往运河的死巷转错弯。某个雾蒙蒙的夜晚，我们经过一栋简直像在痛苦呻吟的老建筑。“用不着担心，”琳达吭声说，“只是撒旦饥饿的胃罢 了。”我教给她我最爱的意大利用词——（我们过街吧）——我们紧张兮兮地退出那里。



The beautiful young Venetian woman who owns the restaurant near where we are staying ismiserable with her fate. She hates Venice. She swears that everyone who lives in Venice regards it as a tomb. She'd fallen in love once with a Sardinian artist, who'd promised her another world of light and sun, but had left her, instead, with three children and no choice but to return to Venice and run the family restaurant. She is my age but looks even older than I do, and I can't imagine the kind of man who could do that to a woman so attractive. ("He was powerful," she says, "and I died of love in his shadow.") Venice is conservative. The woman has had some affairs here, maybe even with some married men, but it always ends in sorrow. The neighbors talk about her. People stop speaking when she walks into the room. Her mother begs her to wear a wedding ring just for appearances—saying, Darling, this is not Rome, where you can live as scandalously as you like. Every morning when Linda and I come for breakfast and ask our sorrowful young/old Venetian proprietress about the weather report for the day, she cocks the fingers of her right hand like a gun, puts it to her temple, and says, "More rain."我们旅馆附近的餐厅老板娘是个威尼斯美少妇，她为自己的命运感到悲哀。她讨厌威尼斯。她发誓住在威尼斯的每个人都觉得像住在坟墓里一般。她曾爱上一位撒丁艺术家，他答应给她阳光灿烂的另一种世界，却离开了她。带了三名孩子的她别无选择，只能回到威尼斯经营家庭餐馆。她跟我年纪相当，看起来却比我老，我无法想象哪种男人会对如此迷人的女子做这种事。（“他是强者，”她说，“我在他的阴影下因爱而死。”）威尼斯是座保守的城市。这女子有几段情事，甚至和已婚男人发生婚外情，却始终以哀伤作结。邻居议论她。人们在她走进屋里的时候停止说话。她的母亲求她戴上结婚戒指做做样子，说：“亲爱的女儿，这里不是罗马，让你能随心所欲地过丢人现眼的生活。”每天早上琳达和我来吃早饭，向这位悲愁的老板娘询问当天的天气预 报时，她便竖起右手指头，像拿熗一样，对准她的太阳穴，说：“又是雨天。”



Yet I don't get depressed here. I can cope with, and even somehow enjoy, the sinkingmelancholy of Venice, just for a few days. Somewhere in me I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city's own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it. This is a sign, I cannot help but think, ofhealing, of the coagulation of my self. There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, when I used to experience all the world's sadness as my own. Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind.然而我在这儿并不忧郁。我有办法应付，甚至有办法享受几天忧郁的威尼斯。我心中某处分辨出这并非我的忧郁，而是这座城市本身固有的忧郁；我近来很健康，感觉得出自己和这座城市的不同。我禁不住想，这是伤口愈合的证据，代表着我不再四散纷飞。有好几年的时间，我沉浸在无边无际的抑郁中，独自经历全世界的哀伤。一切的哀伤从我身上漏出来，留下斑斑痕迹。



Anyhow, it's hard to be depressed with Linda babbling beside me, trying to get me to buy a giant purple fur hat, and asking of the lousy dinner we ate one night, "Are these called Mrs.Paul's Veal Sticks?" She is a firefly, this Linda. In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega—a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets. This is Linda—my temporary, special-order, travel-sized Venetian codega.
Eat, Pray, Love无论如何，有琳达在身边念念叨叨，很难沮丧得起来，她要我买一顶紫色大毛帽，还谈起我们某天晚上吃的差劲晚饭“那东西是不是叫保罗太太的小牛肉条？”琳达是萤火虫：中世纪的威尼斯曾有一种职业，称为“codega”——你雇用这种职业的人，晚上提着灯笼走在你前面带路，吓跑小偷和魔鬼，在黑暗的街道保护你，使你安心。这就是琳达——我临时性、特别订制、旅行携带用的威尼斯。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (67):意大利语突飞猛进


He's surprised. He didn't realize I spoke Italian. Neither did I, actually, but we talk for about twenty minutes and I realize for the first time that I do. Some line has been crossed and I'm actually speaking Italian now. I'm not translating; I'm talking. Of course, there's a mistake in everysentence, and I only know three tenses, but I can communicate with this guy without much effort. Me la cavo, is how you would say it in Italian, which basically means, "I can get by," but comes from the same verb you use to talk about uncorking a bottle of wine, meaning, "I can use this language to extract myself from tight situations."他吃了一惊，没想到我会讲意大利语。事实上，我也没想到，但我们讲了大约二十分钟后，才第一次明白自己会讲呢。我已跨越某条界线，现在我竟然讲着意大利语。我不在翻译，而在讲话。当然，每一句都容有错误之处，而我只知道三种时态，却没费多少劲就能和这家伙沟通。意大利语“me la”，基本上是“混得过去”的意思，跟谈论拔开酒瓶塞时用的是同一个动词，意即“我可以用这个语言让自己从紧绷的状况抽身而出”。我摆脱尴尬局面。



He's hitting on me, this kid! It's not entirely unflattering. He's not entirely unattractive. Though he's not remotely uncocky, either. At one point he says to me in Italian, meaning to becomplimentary, of course, "You're not too fat, for an American woman."他在招惹我，这小子！这并非不讨人喜欢。他并非不迷人。尽管他显得太自信。他一度用意大利语告诉我，尽管本意是恭维：“就美国女人而言，你不太胖。”



I reply in English, "And you're not too greasy, for an Italian man."我用英语回答：“就意大利男人而言，你不太奉承。”



"Come?"“Come？”



I repeat myself, in slightly modified Italian: "And you're so gracious, just like all Italian men."我重复一次，用稍作修正过的意大利语说：“你很殷勤，就像所有的意大利男人。”



I can speak this language! The kid thinks I like him, but it's the words I'm flirting with. My God—I have decanted myself! I have uncorked my tongue, and Italian is pouring forth! He wants me to meet him later in Venice, but I don't have the first interest in him. I'm just lovesick over the language, so I let him slide away. Anyhow, I've already got a date in Venice. I'm meeting my friend Linda there.我能讲这语言！这小子以为我喜欢他，然而我是在和文字调情。我的天——我正在沥干自己！我已拔掉舌头的瓶塞，意大利语滔滔不绝地冒了出来！他要我之后和他在威尼斯会面，但他已经不像一开始让我感兴趣。我只为语言害了相思病，因此我让他脱逃而去。无论如何，我在威尼斯已经有约。我在那儿将和我的朋友琳达见面。



Crazy Linda, as I like to call her, even though she isn't, is coming to Venice from Seattle, anotherdamp and gray town. She wanted to come see me in Italy, so I invited her along on this leg of my trip because I refuse—I absolutely decline—to go to the most romantic city on earth by myself, no, not now, not this year. I could just picture myself all alone, in the butt end of a gondola, getting dragged through the mist by a crooning gondolier as I . . . read a magazine? It's a sad image, rather like the idea of humping up a hill all by yourself on a bicycle-built-for-two. So Linda will provide me with company, and good company, at that.狂人琳达——我喜欢这么叫她，尽管她并不疯狂——从另一个潮湿灰暗的城市西雅图来到威尼斯。她要来意大利看我，因此我邀她参与这一段旅程，因为我拒绝——绝对不愿——独自前往世上最浪漫的城市，现在可不行，今年不行。我想象孤伶伶一人坐在平底船的一端，由哼着小曲的船夫在雾中载着前进，而我则……阅读杂志？这是一幅可悲的画面，好比独自一人骑着双人脚踏车使劲儿爬上山。因此琳达陪伴我，而且是绝佳的伴儿。



I met Linda (and her dreadlocks, and her piercings) in Bali almost two years ago, when I went for that Yoga retreat. Since then, we've done a trip to Costa Rica together, too. She's one of my favorite traveling companions, an unflappable and entertaining and surprisingly organized little pixie in tight red crushed-velvet pants. Linda is the owner of one of the world's more intactpsyches, with an incomprehension for depression and a self-esteem that has never even considered being anything but high. She said to me once, while regarding herself in a mirror, "Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself." She's got this ability to shut me up when I start fretting over metaphysical questions, such as, "What is the nature of the universe?" (Linda's reply: "My only question is: Why ask?") Linda would like to someday grow her dreadlocks so long she could weave them into a wire-supported structure on the top of her head "like a topiary" and maybe store a bird there. The Balinese loved Linda. So did the Costa Ricans. When she's not taking care of her pet lizards and ferrets, she is managing a software development team in Seattle and making more money than any of us.大约两年前，我在巴厘岛参加瑜伽训练营时遇上琳达（留着细发辫，在身上穿洞）。在那之后，我们还一起去哥斯达黎加旅游。她是我最喜爱的旅伴，一个冷静、有趣、井井有条、身穿红色紧身天鹅绒长裤的小精灵。她是世界上心灵较健康的人之一，无法理解抑郁是什么，还拥有高得不能再高的自尊。她曾看着镜子里的自己，对我说：“我固然不是什么了不起的人，却还是禁不住爱上自己。”当我为形而上的问题，比方说"宇宙的本质是什么？而忧心忡忡时，她总有法子让我闭嘴（琳达答道：“我唯一的问题是：何必问？”）。琳达希望把发辫留长，有一天能在头顶编成钢丝支撑的结构，“类似树雕”，或许在里头摆只鸟。巴厘人爱琳达。哥斯达黎加人也爱她。她不在照顾自己的宠物蜥蜴和白鼬时，就在西雅图管理一个软件开发小组，赚的钱比我们任何人都多。



So we find each other there in Venice, and Linda frowns at our map of the city, turns it upside down, locates our hotel, orients herself and announces with characteristic humility: "We are the mayors of this town's ass."于是我们在威尼斯碰面，琳达瞪了瞪我们的市区地图，把地图倒过来寻找我们的旅馆位置，确定自己的方位，以特有的谦虚态度宣布：“我们是城市屁股的市长。”
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 32 (66):品味意大利



Florence is just a weekend, a quick train ride up on a Friday morning to visit my Uncle Terry and Aunt Deb, who have flown in from Connecticut to visit Italy for the first time in their lives, and to see their niece, of course. It is evening when they arrive, and I take them on a walk to look at the Duomo, always such an impressive sight, as evidenced by my uncle's reaction:我在佛罗伦萨待了一个周末；周五早晨搭火车北上花不了太多时间，去探望我的泰瑞伯父和黛比伯母，他们从康州飞过来，有生以来头一次来意大利，顺便看看我这个侄女。他们在晚间抵达，我带他们参观主教堂（Duomo），这始终是令人印象深刻的景点，这可从我伯父的反应看出来：



"Oy vey!" he says, then pauses and adds, "Or maybe that's the wrong word for praising a Catholic church . . ."“赞！”他说，然后停顿一下，又说，“或许这么赞美天主教堂有点用词失当……”



We watch the Sabines getting raped right there in the middle of the sculpture garden with nobody doing a damn thing to stop it, and pay our respects to Michelangelo, to the science museum, to the views from the hillsides around town. Then I leave my aunt and uncle to enjoy the rest of their vacation without me, and I go on alone to wealthy, ample Lucca, that little Tuscan town with its celebrated butcher shops, where the finest cuts of meat I've seen in all of Italy are displayed with a "you know you want it" sensuality in shops across town. Sausages of everyimaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed like ladies' legs into provocative stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in the windows, beckoning like Amsterdam's high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and contented even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly, after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest. But it's not just the meat that's wonderful in Lucca; it's the chestnuts, the peaches, the tumbling displays of figs, dear God, the figs . . .我们在雕塑庭园中央观看萨宾人（Sabines）遭掠夺，却没有人能做半点儿事阻止；我们向米开朗基罗致敬，去科学博物馆，从城市周围的山坡观景。而后我留伯母和伯父独自享受他们剩下的假期，我则继续单人行，去了富庶的卢卡（Lucca）；这个托斯卡纳小镇以肉铺闻名，意大利最好的肉片在全镇各处的店家展现其"你明白自己想要它"的肉感。各种你能想象的尺寸、颜色、来历的腊肠，就像女士的腿穿上撩人裤袜般丰满迷人，悬挂在肉铺天花板。性感的火腿挂在橱窗内，犹如阿姆斯特丹的高级娼妓向人招手。死去的鸡看起来丰腴而满足，使你想象它们在世时彼此争相成为最肥嫩的鸡，然后 引以为傲地献出自己。然而卢卡最让人叫好的不单是肉，还有栗子、桃子、满坑满谷的无花果，天啊，无花果……



The town is famous, too, of course, for having been the birthplace of Puccini. I know I should probably be interested in this, but I'm much more interested in the secret a local grocer has shared with me—that the best mushrooms in town are served in a restaurant across from Puccini's birth-place. So I wander through Lucca, asking directions in Italian, "Can you tell me where is the house of Puccini?" and a kind civilian finally leads me right to it, and then is probably very surprised when I say "Grazie," then turn on my heel and march in the exact opposite direction of the museum's entrance, entering a restaurant across the street and waiting out the rain over my serving of risotto ai funghi.当然，卢卡以普契尼的出生地而闻名。我知道我该对这点感兴趣，但我更着迷于当地一家杂货商跟我分享的秘密——全镇煮得最好的草菇位于普契尼出生地对街的餐厅。于是我在卢卡到处逛，说意大利语问路：“请告诉我普契尼之家在哪？”一位亲切的市民最后直接领我去那里，他肯定大吃一惊，因为我道过谢后，转身朝博物馆入口的反方向走去，进了街对面的餐厅点了risotto ai funghi（野菇炖饭）等雨停。



I don't recall now if it was before or after Lucca that I went to Bologna—a city so beautiful that I couldn't stop singing, the whole time I was there: "My Bologna has a first name! It's P-R-E-T-T-Y." Traditionally Bologna—with its lovely brick architecture and famous wealth—has been called "The Red, The Fat and The Beautiful." (And, yes, that was an alternate title for this book.) The food is definitely better here than in Rome, or maybe they just use more butter. Even the gelato in Bologna is better (and I feel somewhat disloyal saying that, but it's true). The mushrooms here are like big thick sexy tongues, and the prosciutto drapes over pizzas like a fine lace veil draping over a fancy lady's hat. And of course there is the Bolognese sauce, which laughs disdainfully at any other idea of a ragù.我现在记不得是在去卢卡之前或之后才前往博洛尼亚——此城之美，使我在那里的整段时间都不断在哼歌："波隆那的姓氏，叫作美丽！"传统上，波隆那——拥有漂亮的砖造建筑以及闻名的财富——被称作"红色、肥胖、美丽"的城市（这三个形容词，也可以拿来当做本书的书名）。这儿的食物比 罗马明显好得多，或者只是奶油用得较多的关系。甚至博洛尼亚的冰也好得多（这么说使我觉得有点对不住，但这是事实）。这里的草菇就像厚大的性感舌头，烟熏火腿覆盖在比萨饼上，就像精致的蕾丝面纱掩在漂亮的女帽上。当然还有波隆那肉酱，不屑地嘲笑其他任何一种肉酱。



It occurs to me in Bologna that there is no equivalent in English for the term buon appetito. This is a pity, and also very telling. It occurs to me, too, that the train stops of Italy are a tour through the names of the world's most famous foods and wines: next stop, Parma . . . next stop, Bologna . . . next stop, approaching Montepulciano . . . Inside the trains there is food, too, of course—little sandwiches and good hot chocolate. If it's raining outside, it's even nicer to snack and speed along. For one long ride, I share a train compartment with a good-looking young Italian guy who sleeps for hours through the rain as I eat my octopus salad. The guy wakes up shortly before we arrive in Venice, rubs his eyes, looks me over carefully from foot to head and pronounces under his breath: "Carina." Which means: Cute.我在博洛尼亚突然想到，英语中没有相当于“buon appetito”的用词。这很可惜，也很说明问题所在。我还想到，意大利的火车停靠站带你经过全世界最出名的食物名与酒名：下一站，帕尔玛（Parma）……下一站，博洛尼亚……下一站，即将抵达蒙特普齐亚诺（Montepulciano）……火车内当然也有食物——小三明治和好喝的热可可。若窗外下雨，吃着点心全速前进更是一大快事。有回搭长途火车，我和一个好看的意大利年轻男子同坐一个包厢，他在雨中睡了好几个小时，我则吃着我的章鱼沙拉。男子在我们即将抵达威尼斯的时候醒来，揉揉眼睛，把我从头到脚仔细看了一遍，低声说“Carina”。是“可爱”的意思。



"Grazie mille," I tell him with exaggerated politeness. A thousand thanks.“我以夸大的客气语调回应他。”万分感谢。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 30 (63):我不走寻常路



Almost certainly, other people who attended this party came away with different images than I did. Any number of the other guests could have felt great envy for this beautiful woman with her healthy new baby, for her successful artistic career, for her marriage to a nice man, for her lovely apartment, for her cocktail dress. There were people at this party who would probably have traded lives with her in an instant, given the chance. This woman herself probably looks back on that evening—if she ever thinks of it at all—as one tiring but totally worth-it night in her overallsatisfying life of motherhood and marriage and career. All I can say for myself, though, is that I spent that whole party trembling in panic, thinking, If you don't recognize that this is your future, Liz, then you are out of your mind. Do not let it happen.
几乎可以肯定的是，参加这场派对的其他人带着和我不同的印象离开。许多客人都会羡慕这位生了一个健康新生儿的美丽女子，她成功的艺术事业、嫁给了一个好男人、她漂亮的公寓、她的派对礼服。只要有一丁点机会，派对上有人会很愿意和她易地而处。这名女子自己回顾这一夜——倘若她曾想起来的话——的时候，或许看作是她整个满意的母亲、婚姻、事业生涯当中，一个劳累却完全值得的夜晚。然而对于我自己，我只能说，我在整场派对上因恐慌而颤抖，心想：倘若你看不出这就是你的将来，小莉，那么你真是头脑有问题。别让它发生。


But did I have a responsibility to have a family? Oh, Lord—responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond. And what I ultimately had to respond to was the reality that every speck of my being was telling me to get out of my marriage. Somewhere inside me an early-warning system was forecasting that if I kept trying to whiteknuckle my way through this storm, I would end up getting cancer. And that if I brought children into the world anyway, just because I didn't want to deal with the hassle or shame of revealing some impractical facts about myself—this would be an act of grievous irresponsibility.
但我是否有责任成立一个家？天啊——责任。这字眼在我身上下功夫，直到我对它下功夫，仔细研究它，把它拆解成“回应”（respond）的“能力”（ability），这两个真正定义它的字。而我终须回应的事实是，我的每个细胞都叫我摆脱婚姻。我心中某个预警系统正在预报，假使我持续握紧拳头穿越这场风暴，最后我会罹患癌症。假使我不顾一切把孩子带到世界上，只因为我对揭发自己某些不切实际的真相感到麻烦或耻辱而不愿想办法处理的话——这将是一种严重的不负责任之举。


In the end, though, I was most guided by something my friend Sheryl said to me that very night at that very party, when she found me hiding in the bathroom of our friend's fancy loft, shaking in fear, splashing water on my face. Sheryl didn't know then what was going on in my marriage. Nobody did. And I didn't tell her that night. All I could say was, "I don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth."
但是最后，是我的朋友雪柔对我说的一席话指引了我。就在那一晚的派对上，就在她发现我躲在我们的朋友那层顶楼画室的浴室里吓得发抖，朝脸上泼水的时候。雪柔当时不清楚我的婚姻状况，没有任何人清楚。那天晚上我并未告诉她，我只说：“我不知如何是好。”我记得她握着我的肩，笑容平和地看着我的眼睛，只说：“说实话，说实话，说实话。”


So that's what I tried to do.
于是我试着去做。


Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal/ financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off thetrack of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever. To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent — at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. You sit with the other children, or teenagers, or young parents, or retirees. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety year-olds in the shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem—you're the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and moreover, it's universally recognized. How many people have I heard claim their children as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It's the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy—If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.
然而，摆脱婚姻很不好过，不止因为法律与财务纠葛，或生活方式的剧变，（如同我朋友黛博拉的英明指点：“从未有人因为平分家具而丧命。”）而是情感的退缩，走出传统的生活方式，失去原本拥有的所有安慰，而使你丧命。与配偶成立一个家庭，是一个人在美国 （或任何）社会找到延续和意义的最基本方式之一。每回去母亲在明尼苏达的娘家聚会，我便重新发现此一事实，看见每个人都在自己的岗位上坚守多年。首先你是个孩子，而后成为青少年，而后结婚，而后生子，然后退休，然后为人祖父母——你在每一阶段都清楚自己的身份，清楚自己的职责，清楚家庭聚会时坐在哪个地方。你和其他的孩子、青少年、父母或退休人士坐在一起。直到最后，你和一群九十岁老者坐在树阴下，心满意足地照看你的子孙后代。你是什么人？没问题——你是创造“这一切”的人。这种认知带来的满足感是即时性的，而且举世公认。有多少人说过，他们的孩子是自己生命中最大的成就与安慰？这是在危机时期或犹豫时刻得以仰赖的东西——我这辈子倘若什么也没做，至少把孩子抚养得很好。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 30 (62):没有小孩的生活





I am so surprised sometimes to notice that my sister is a wife and a mother, and I am not. Somehow I always thought it would be the opposite. I thought it would be me who would end up with a houseful of muddy boots and hollering kids, while Catherine would be living by herself, asolo act, reading alone at night in her bed. We grew up into different adults than anyone might have foretold when we were children. It's better this way, though, I think. Against all predictions, we've each created lives that tally with us. Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness; my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone, even when I am single. I'm happy that she's going back home to her family and also happy that I have another nine months of traveling ahead of me, where all I have to do is eat and read andpray and write.有时候我很讶异为人妻母的是我姐姐，而不是我。我一直认为应当反过来才是。我以为有一屋子小孩叫叫嚷嚷的人应当是我，凯瑟琳则是独自一人过日子，晚上一个人躺在床上读书。我们与小时候所有人所预期的完全相反。尽管如此，我认为这样比较好。违反一切预期，我们各自创造出符合自己的生活。她的孤寂天性，意味着需要家庭让她免于寂寞；而我的群居天性，则意味着永远无须担心孤单一个人，即使单身未婚。我很高兴她回到家人身边，也很高兴我还有九个月的旅行在等待我，而在这整段期间内，我只须吃饭、读书、祈祷、写作。
I still can't say whether I will ever want children. I was so astonished to find that I did not want them at thirty; the remembrance of that surprise cautions me against placing any bets on how I will feel at forty. I can only say how I feel now—grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won't go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don't think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth. Though I suppose people doreproduce sometimes for that reason—for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons—sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.我依然不能断言自己想不想生孩子。我在三十岁的时候，讶异地发现我不要孩子；回顾当时的讶异，让我也不敢担保四十岁时的感觉。我只能说当下的感觉——衷心感谢今天的我是独自一人。我还知道我不会因为害怕晚年后悔，而勇往直前去生孩子；我认为这个动机并不够强大到让这个世界有更多的孩子。尽管我猜想人们有时为了这个理由而生孩子——确保将来不后悔。我想人们生孩子有各式各样的理由——有时纯粹想要养育、目睹生命，有时出于缺乏选择，有时为了抓住伴侣或延续香火，有时并不特别考虑任何理由。生孩子的理由并非都相同，也不尽然都是无私的理由。不生孩子的理由也并非都相同，也不尽然都是自私的理由。
I say this because I'm still working out that accusation, which was leveled against me many times by my husband as our marriage was collapsing—selfishness. Every time he said it, I agreed completely, accepted the guilt, bought everything in the store. My God, I hadn't even had the babies yet, and I was already neglecting them, already choosing myself over them. I was already a bad mother. These babies—these phantom babies—came up a lot in our arguments. Who would take care of the babies? Who would stay home with the babies? Who would financially support the babies? Who would feed the babies in the middle of the night? I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, "I don't want my children growing up in a household like this." Susan said, "Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet, Liz. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore? That neither of you does. And it's better to realize it now, by the way, than in the delivery room when you're at five centimeters."我之所以这么说，是因为我仍持续思考，在婚姻日渐崩溃的时候，我先生多次针对我提出的控诉——自私。每回他这么说，我都完全同意，承认罪过，买全部的账。天啊，我甚至还没生孩子，却已在忽略他们，已决定不选择他们 ，而去选择自己。我已经是个坏母亲。这些孩子——这些有名无实的孩子——经常出现在我们的争论中。谁来照顾这些孩子？谁和这些孩子待在家中？谁来赚钱养这些孩子？谁半夜起床喂孩子？我记得在我的婚姻已叫人难以忍受的时候，我曾对我的朋友苏珊说：“我不想让我的孩子在这样的家庭长大。”苏珊说：“为什么不把这些所谓的孩子排除在讨论之外？他们根本还不存在呀，小莉。为什么不承认你只是不想再过不快乐的生活？你们两人都不想过啊。而且最好现在就搞清楚，而不是进产房的时候才恍然大悟。”
I remember going to a party in New York around that time. A couple, a pair of successful artists, had just had a baby, and the mother was celebrating a gallery opening of her new paintings. I remember watching this woman, the new mother, my friend, the artist, as she tried to be hostess to this party (which was in her loft) at the same time as taking care of her infant and trying to discuss her work professionally. I never saw somebody look so sleep-deprived in my life. I can never forget the image of her standing in her kitchen after midnight, elbows-deep in a sink full of dishes, trying to clean up after this event. Her husband (I am sorry to report it, and I fully realize this is not at all representational of every husband) was in the other room, feet literally on the coffee table, watching TV. She finally asked him if he would help clean the kitchen, and he said, "Leave it, hon—we'll clean up in the morning." The baby started crying again. My friend was leaking breast milk through her cocktail dress.我记得大约在那段时间，我去了纽约的一场派对。有一对夫妻，是一对成功的艺术家，刚生小孩，母亲正庆祝新作品在画廊开幕。我记得看着这个女人，这初为人母的女人，这位我的画家朋友在招呼派对（在她的顶楼画室），同时照顾她的初生儿，并讨论她的专业工作。我这辈子没见过看起来如此没睡够的人。我永远忘不了午夜过后她站在厨房，双手浸泡在堆满碗盘的水槽，尝试在派对过后收拾残局。她的老公（做这样的描述令我遗憾，我完全了解这不能代表所有的老公）在另一个房间，双脚搁在咖啡桌上看电视。她最后问他能不能帮忙清理厨房时，他说“别理了，甜心——我们早上再收拾吧。”婴儿又开始大哭。我朋友的乳汁从她的派对礼服漏出来。
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (61):姐姐离开了




Here's another example of the difference in our worldviews. A family in my sister's neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace." She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.
另有一个例子可以说明我们之间不同的世界观。 我姐姐家附近有一户人家最近遭受双重悲剧的打击，年轻的母亲和她三岁的儿子两人被诊断罹患癌症。凯瑟琳告知我此事时，我只能吃惊地说：“天啊，这家人需要恩典。”她坚定地回答：“这家人需要烧锅炖菜。”而后着手把整个街坊邻居组织起来，每个晚上轮流带晚餐给这家人，持续一整年。我不清楚我姐姐承不承认这正是恩典。


We walk out of St. Susanna, and she says, "Do you know why the popes needed city planning in the Middle Ages? Because basically you had two million Catholic pilgrims a year coming from all over the Western World to make that walk from the Vatican to St. John Lateran—sometimes on their knees—and you had to have amenities for those people."
我们走出圣苏撒纳的时候，她说：“你可知道为什么中世纪的教宗需要都市计划？因为，基本上每一年有两百万名天主教朝圣者从西方世界各地前来，从梵蒂冈徒步走到圣若望拉特朗（St John Lateran）大殿——有时跪着走——你需要为这些人提供设施。”


My sister's faith is in learning. Her sacred text is the Oxford English Dictionary. As she bows her head in study, fingers speeding across the pages, she is with her God. I see my sister in prayeragain later that same day—when she drops to her knees in the middle of the Roman Forum, clears away some litter off the face of the soil (as though erasing a blackboard), then takes up a small stone and draws for me in the dirt a blueprint of a classic Romanesque basilica. She points from her drawing to the ruin before her, leading me to understand (even visually challenged me can understand!) what that building once must have looked like eighteen centuries earlier. She sketches with her finger in the empty air the missing arches, the nave, the windows long gone. Like Harold with his Purple Crayon, she fills in the absent cosmos with her imagination and makes whole the ruined.
我姐姐的信仰是学习。她的圣经是牛津英语辞典。当她埋头读书，手指快速翻阅书页时，她正与她的上帝同在。该日傍晚，我再一次看见我姐姐祈祷——她在罗马古墟（Roman Forum）中央跪了下来，清除地面上的废弃物（犹如擦黑板），而后拿起一块小石子，在泥土上为我画下古典罗马教堂的蓝图。她指着图画前方的废墟，引导我了解（甚至用视觉形象挑战我去了解！）1800年前的建筑物是何种光景。她在空气中比画，画出不复存在的拱门、中殿、窗户，就像拿着神仙棒，用想象力填满缺席的宇宙，使废墟变得完整。


In Italian there is a seldom-used tense called the passato remoto, the remote past. You use this tense when you are discussing things in the far, far distant past, things that happened so long ago they have no personal impact whatsoever on you anymore—for example, ancient history. But my sister, if she spoke Italian, would not use this tense to discuss ancient history. In her world, the Roman Forum is not remote, nor is it past. It is exactly as present and close to her as I am.
意大利语当中有个不常使用的时态，叫（遥远的过去 ）。在讨论遥不可及的往事，很久以前发生但对你不再有任何个人冲击的事情时，使用此一时态——比方说，古代历史。然而我的姐姐若说意大利语，绝不会用这时态讨论古代历史。在她的世界中，罗马古墟并不遥远，也不是往事。而是处于当下而且近在咫尺的事情，就像我在她眼前一般真实。


She leaves the next day.
她隔天离开了。


"Listen," I say, "be sure to call me when your plane lands safely, OK? Not to be morbid, but . . ."
“听着，”我说，“在你的飞机安全降落后，一定得打电话给我，好吗？我知道这有点神经，只不过……”


"I know, sweetie," she says. "I love you, too."
Eat, Pray, Love
“我了解，亲爱的，”她说，“我也爱你。”
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (60):带着姐姐游罗马




There's a game I like to play with my friends sometimes called "Watch This!" Whenever anybody's wondering about some obscure fact (for instance: "Who was Saint Louis?") I will say, "Watch this!" then pick up the nearest phone and dial my sister's number. Sometimes I'll catch her in the car, driving her kids home from school in the Volvo, and she will muse: "Saint Louis . . . well, he was a hairshirt-wearing French king, actually, which is interesting because . . ."
我喜欢和朋友玩一种叫“看我的”的游戏。每当有人对某个模糊的事实——比方对“圣路易是什么人？”有疑问，我就说“看我的”！然后拿起距离我最近的电话，拨我姐的号码。有时碰上她在开车，去接她孩子放学回家，她便沉思道：“圣路易……这个嘛，他是穿粗毛衬衣的法国国王，这很有趣，因为……”


So my sister comes to visit me in Rome—in my new city—and then shows it to me. This is Rome, Catherine-style. Full of facts and dates and architecture that I do not see because my mind does not work in that way. The only thing I ever want to know about any place or any person is the story, this is the only thing I watch for—never for aesthetic details. (Sofie came to my apartment a month after I'd moved into the place and said, "Nice pink bathroom," and this was the first time I'd noticed that it was, indeed, pink. Bright pink, from floor to ceiling, bright pink tile everywhere—I honestly hadn't seen it before.) But my sister's trained eye picks up the Gothic, or Romanesque, or Byzantine features of a building, the pattern of the church floor, or the dimsketch of the unfinished fresco hidden behind the altar. She strides across Rome on her long legs (we used to call her "Catherine-of-the-Three-Foot-Long-Femurs") and I hasten after her, as I have since toddlerhood, taking two eager steps to her every one.
于是我姐姐来罗马——我的新城市——探望我，然后带领我参观这座城市。这是凯瑟琳风格的罗马。充满我未看见的数据、年代和建筑，因为我的脑子并非如此运作。我只想知道任何地方或任何人的“故事”，我只关心这个，从不关心美学细节。（苏菲在我搬进公寓一个月后来访，说“粉红色浴室，不错。”这是我头一次留意到浴室确实是粉红色的。鲜粉红色，从地板到天花板，处处都是鲜粉红色磁砖——老实说，我之前完全没留意。）但我姐姐老练的眼睛看见了哥德式、罗马式或拜占庭式的建筑特点，教堂地板的图案，或者隐藏在祭坛后方未完成的昏暗壁画。她登着两条长腿大步走过罗马（我们过去叫她“腿节一米长的凯瑟琳”），我急忙跟在她后头，因为打从幼时，她每走一步路都得花我激烈的两步。


"See, Liz?" she says, "See how they just slapped that nineteenth-century façade over that brickwork? I bet if we turn the corner we'll find . . . yes! . . . see, they did use the original Roman monoliths as supporting beams, probably because they didn't have the manpower to move them . . . yes, I quite like the jumble-sale quality of this basilica. . ."
“瞧，小莉？”她说“看那栋砖造建筑的正面，弄成19世纪的样子。我敢说，我们在转角看得见……没错！瞧，他们采用原来的罗马石柱作支撑梁柱，可能因为缺乏人力搬动……是的，我很喜欢这座教堂的多种风格，仿佛旧货拍卖场……”


Catherine carries the map and her Michelin Green Guide, and I carry our picnic lunch (two of those big softball-sized rolls of bread, spicy sausage, pickled sardines wrapped around meaty green olives, a mushroom paté that tastes like a forest, balls of smoked mozzarella, peppered and grilled arugula, cherry tomatoes, pecorino cheese, mineral water and a split of cold white wine), and while I wonder when we're going to eat, she wonders aloud, "Why don't people talk more about the Council of Trent?"
凯瑟琳带着地图和她的米其林绿色指南，我则带着我们的野餐（两个大圆面包、辣味腊肠、盘绕在绿橄榄上的腌沙丁鱼、尝起来有森林风味的磨菇馅饼、几团烟熏乳酪、加胡椒的烤芝麻菜、小番茄、佩科里诺〔Pecorino〕乳酪、矿泉水和半瓶冰白酒），我想知道何时该吃午饭，她则大声地想知道：“为什么人们不多谈谈天特会议 （Council of Trent）？”


She takes me into dozens of churches in Rome, and I can't keep them straight—St. This and St. That, and St. Somebody of the Barefoot Penitents of Righteous Misery . . . but just because I cannot remember the names or details of all these buttresses and cornices is not to say that I do not love to be inside these places with my sister, whose cobalt eyes miss nothing. I don't remember the name of the church that had those frescoes that looked so much like American WPA New Deal heroic murals, but I do remember Catherine pointing them out to me and saying, "You gotta love those Franklin Roosevelt popes up there . . ." I also remember the morning we woke early and went to mass at St. Susanna, and held each other's hands as we listened to the nuns there chanting their daybreak Gregorian hymns, both of us in tears from the echoing haunt of their prayers. My sister is not a religious person. Nobody in my family really is. (I've taken to calling myself the "white sheep" of the family.) My spiritual investigations interest my sister mostly from a point of intellectual curiosity. "I think that kind of faith is so beautiful," she whispers to me in the church, "but I can't do it, I just can't . . ."
她带我进十几家罗马教堂，我分不清哪座是哪座——圣此，圣彼，赤足苦行僧会的圣某某……但尽管我记不住一大堆扶壁与横檐的名称或细节，这并不表示我不喜欢和姐姐进这些地方，她那双钴蓝色的眼睛不错过任何东西。有一所教堂，里头的壁画很像美国的英雄式壁画，我虽不记得教堂名称，却记得凯瑟琳指着壁画对我说“你不得不喜欢那些罗斯福教宗……”我也记得我们起大早去圣苏撒纳（St.Susanna）做弥撒的那个早晨，握着彼此的手聆听修女们吟唱黎明圣歌，余音绕梁的祷告声使我们俩泪流满面。我的姐姐并非信教之人。我们家没有人真的是（我称自己是家里的“白羊”）。我的心灵探索引发姐姐的兴趣，大半出于满足知识的好奇。“我认为这种信仰很美，”她在教堂内低声对我说：“但我没法办到，我就是没办法……”
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《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 29 (59):我的姐姐来了



My sister's arrival in Rome a few days later helped nudge my attention away from lingering sadness over David and bring me back up to speed. My sister does everything fast, and energy twists up around her in miniature cyclones. She's three years older than me and three inches taller than me. She's an athlete and a scholar and a mother and a writer. The whole time she was in Rome, she was training for a marathon, which means she would wake up at dawn and run eighteen miles in the time it generally takes me to read one article in the newspaper and drink two cappuccinos. She actually looks like a deer when she runs. When she was pregnant with her first child, she swam across an entire lake one night in the dark. I wouldn't join her, and I wasn't even pregnant. I was too scared. But my sister doesn't really get scared. When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby—such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, "My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican."
我的姐姐几天后来到罗马，帮我把注意力从对大卫的悲伤中牵引出来，带我走回正途。我姐姐手脚利落，浑身充满精力。她比我大三岁，高三吋。她身兼运动员、学者、母亲、作家。在罗马整段期间，她都在做马拉松训练，也就是黎明起身，跑九公里路，大约是我阅读报上的一篇文章、喝两杯卡布奇诺的时间。她跑起来简直像头鹿。她怀第一个孩子时，有天在黑夜中游过一整座湖。我没陪她去，而我甚至没怀孕。我太害怕，但我的姐姐不害怕。她怀第二个孩子时，助产士问凯瑟琳是否对婴儿可能发生的任何闪失，有任何无法言说的恐惧——比方先天缺陷或生产途中的并发症。我姐姐说：“我只担心他长大后加入共和党。”
That's my sister's name—Catherine. She's my one and only sibling. When we were growing up in rural Connecticut, it was just the two of us, living in a farmhouse with our parents. No other kids nearby. She was mighty and domineering, the commander of my whole life. I lived in awe and fear of her; nobody else's opinion mattered but hers. I cheated at card games with her in order to lose, so she wouldn't get mad at me. We were not always friends. She was annoyed by me, and I was scared of her, I believe, until I was twenty-eight years old and got tired of it. That was the year I finally stood up to her, and her reaction was something along the lines of, "What took you so long?"
我姐姐的名字就叫凯瑟琳。她是我唯一的兄弟姐妹。我们在康乃狄克州郊区长大，就我们两人，和我们的父母亲住在一间农舍，附近没有其他小孩。她盛气凌人，指挥我的整个生活。我对她又敬又怕；除了她以外，谁的想法都不重要。和她玩牌的时候，如果我作弊，只为了输给她，以免她跟我发脾气。我们未必时时友好。我让她不耐烦，她使我恐惧，我相信自己直到二十八岁才对这样的关系感到厌倦。那年我终于起而反抗，她的反应大约是说：“你干嘛憋这么久才说？”
We were just beginning to hammer out the new terms of our relationship when my marriage went into a skid. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have gained victory from my defeat. I'd always been the loved and lucky one, the favorite of both family and destiny. The world had always been a more comfortable and welcoming place for me than it was for my sister, who pressed so sharply against life and who was hurt by it fairly hard sometimes in return. It would have been so easy for Catherine to have responded to my divorce and depression with a: "Ha! Look at Little Mary Sunshine now!" Instead, she held me up like a champion. She answered the phone in the middle of the night whenever I was in distress and made comforting noises. And she came along with me when I went searching for answers as to why I was so sad. For the longest time, my therapy was almost vicariously shared by her. I'd call her after every session with a debriefing of everything I'd realized in my therapist's office, and she'd put down whatever she was doing and say, "Ah . . . that explains a lot." Explains a lot about both of us, that is.
我的婚姻失控时，我们才开始为我们的关系制定新条款。凯瑟琳原本可以轻而易举地从我的失败取得胜利。我向来是受宠的幸运儿，受家庭和命运眷顾。世界对我来说向来比对我姐姐来说更舒适；她紧贴生命，有时反倒伤得很严重。凯瑟琳可以很轻易地对我的离婚和忧郁回以“哈！瞧瞧阳光小姐现在的下场！”然而，她却把我推举为优胜者。在我身陷悲苦时，她三更半夜接我的电话，发出慰藉的声音。在我寻找为什么如此哀伤的答案时，她会助我一臂之力。很长一段时间，她几乎以共鸣的方式分享我的治疗。每次疗程结束，我即致电给她报告我在治疗师那里了解的一切，她于是放下手边的事情，说：“啊……这说明了许多事。”是的，也说明了许多有关我们两人的事。
Now we speak to each other on the phone almost every day—or at least we did, before I moved to Rome. Before either of us gets on an airplane now, the one always calls the other and says, "I know this is morbid, but I just wanted to tell you that I love you. You know . . . just in case . . ." And the other one always says, "I know . . . just in case."
现在我们几乎天天通电话——至少在我迁居罗马之前。现在我们其中一个搭飞机前，一个人总要 打电话给另一个人说：“我知道这有点神经，我只想告诉你，我爱你。你知道……以防万一……”另一个人总会说：“我知道……以防万一 。”
She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented before she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 percent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister's eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to the cookbooks—and reads it, for pleasure.
她一如往常，万事俱备地抵达罗马。她带了五本指南，每一本都已读过，她脑子里已预先画好这座城市的地图。即使在离开费城之前，她即已完全搞清楚了东南西北。这是典型的例子，说明我们之间的差异。我在罗马的头几个星期到处漫游，百分之九十迷路，百分之百快乐，将周遭一切看作不可解释的美丽之谜。我也一向如此看待世界。在我姐姐看来，只要善加利用图书馆，就不存在任何无法解释的事情。这名女子把《哥伦比亚百科全书》摆在厨房的食谱旁边——只是为了消遣而阅读。
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88848鲜花 260鸡蛋

等级: 派派版主
配偶: 靡荼不知返
6.3上任 7.1生日 7.26周年 8.13结婚周年
举报 只看该作者 31楼  发表于: 2012-08-22 0
《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 28 (58):遇到乔凡尼




I drop my face in my hands for a longer and even sadder time. Finally I look up, only to see that one of the Albanian women who work at the Internet café has paused from her nightshift mopping of the floor to lean against the wall and watch me. We hold our tired gazes on each other for a moment. Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, "This blows ass." She nodssympathetically. She doesn't understand, but of course, in her way, she understands completely.
我把头埋在手中，持续一段更长、更悲伤的时间。终于抬起头来的时候，我看见在网吧工作的一名阿尔巴尼亚妇女，停下手边的夜班拖地工作，靠在墙上看着我。我们疲倦的眼神望着彼此一会儿，然后我对她郑重摇摇头，大声说：“倒胃口！”她同情地点点头。即使她听不懂，却以她自己的方式完全明白。


My cell phone rings.
我的手机响了。


It's Giovanni. He sounds confused. He says he's been waiting for me for over an hour in the Piazza Fiume, which is where we always meet on Thursday nights for language exchange. He's bewildered, because normally he's the one who's late or who forgets to show up for our appointments, but he got there right on time tonight for once and he was pretty sure—didn't we have a date?
是乔凡尼。他听起来很困惑。他说已在河流广场（Piazza Fiume）等了我一个多小时，那是我们每周四晚间会面做语言交流的地方。他感到迷惘，因为通常迟到或忘记赴约的人总是他。可是今晚他一反平常，准时到达那里，而且他十分肯定——我们不是有约吗？


I'd forgotten. I tell him where I am. He says he'll come pick me up in his car. I'm not in the mood for seeing anybody, but it's too hard to explain this over the telefonino, given our limitedlanguage skills. I go wait outside in the cold for him. A few minutes later, his little red car pulls up and I climb in. He asks me in slangy Italian what's up. I open my mouth to answer and collapseinto tears. I mean—wailing. I mean—that terrible, ragged breed of bawling my friend Sally calls "double-pumpin' it," when you have to inhale two desperate gasps of oxygen with every sob. I never even saw this griefquake coming, got totally blindsided by it.
我忘记我们有约。我跟他说我在何处。他说他会开车过来接我。我没心情见任何人，但透过“迷你电话”很难说明，鉴于我们有限的语言能力。我在寒冷的户外等候他。几分钟过后，他的红色小车停了下来，我爬进车里。他用意大利俚语问我怎么回事。我张嘴回答却潸然泪下。我是说——嚎啕大哭。我是说，如我朋友莎莉所谓“双重抽吸”的可怕哀号——在你每次啜泣之时，都得使劲儿吸两口氧气。我在全然毫无防备的情况下，从未见识过这惊天动地的悲痛乍然来临。


Poor Giovanni! He asks in halting English if he did something wrong. Am I mad at him, maybe? Did he hurt my feelings? I can't answer, but only shake my head and keep howling. I'm so mortified with myself and so sorry for dear Giovanni, trapped here in this car with this sobbing,incoherent old woman who is totally a pezzi—in pieces.
可怜的乔凡尼！他用结结巴巴的英语问我他是否做错了什么事。我在生他的气吗？他是否伤了我的感情？我回答不了，只能摇摇头，继续嚎哭。我对自己感到懊恼，对亲爱的乔凡尼深感抱歉，他和我这个啜泣、神智不清、完全粉身碎骨的老女人被困在这辆车里。


I finally manage to rasp out an assurance that my distress has nothing to do with him. I chokeforth an apology for being such a mess. Giovanni takes charge of the situation in a manner far beyond his years. He says, "Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots." He gives me some tissues from a box in the back of the car. He says, "Let's drive."
最后我以粗嘎的嗓门一再表示，我的悲痛与他无关。我为自己的失态哽咽着向他致歉。乔凡尼以远超过自己年纪的态度控制住场面。他说：“别因为哭泣而道歉。若没有这样的情绪，我们就只是机器人罢了。”他从后座的面纸盒里拿了几张面纸给我。 他说：“我们开车吧。”
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