There was a man in our village who never in his life had a pet of any kind until his wife died. By my calculation, Gerard Loomis was in his mid-fifties when Marietta was taken from him, but at the ceremony in the chapel he looked so scorched and stricken that people mistook him for a man ten or twenty years older. He sat collapsed in the front pew, his clothes mismatched and his limbs splayed in the extremity of his grief, looking as if he’d been dropped there from a great height, like a bird stripped of its feathers in some aerial catastrophe. Once the funeral was over and we’d all offered up our condolences and gone back to our respective homes, rumors began to circulate. Gerard wasn’t eating. He wouldn’t leave the house or change his clothes. He’d been seen bent over a trash barrel in the front yard, burning patent-leather pumps, brassieres, skirts, wigs, even the mink stole with its head and feet still attached that his late wife had worn with pride on Christmas, Easter, and Columbus Day.
People began to worry about him, and understandably so. Ours is a fairly close-knit community of a hundred and twenty souls, give or take a few, distributed among some fifty-two stone-and-timber houses that were erected nearly a century ago in what the industrialist B. P. Newhouse hoped would be a model of utopian living. We are not utopians, at least not in this generation, but our village, set as it is in the midst of six hundred acres of dense forest at the end of a consummately discreet road some forty miles from the city, has fostered, we like to think, a closeness and uniformity of outlook that you wouldn’t find in some of the newer developments built right up to the edges of the malls, gallerias, and factory outlets that surround them.
He should have a dog, people said. That sounded perfectly reasonable to me. My wife and I have a pair of shelties (as well as two lorikeets, whose chatter provides a tranquil backdrop to our evenings by the fireplace, and one very fat angelfish in a tank all his own, on a stand in my study). One evening at dinner, my wife glanced at me over her reading glasses and said, “Do you know that, according to this article in the paper, ninety-seven per cent of pet owners say their pets make them smile at least once a day?” The shelties—Tim and Tim II—gazed up from beneath the table with wondering eyes as I fed scraps of meat into their mobile and receptive mouths.
“You think I ought to speak with him?” I said. “Gerard, I mean?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” my wife said. And then, the corners of her mouth sinking toward her chin, she added, “The poor man.”
I went to visit him the next day—a Saturday, as it happened. The dogs needed walking, so I took them both with me, by way of example, I suppose, and because when I’m home—and not away on the business that takes me all over the world, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time—I like to give them as much attention as I can. Gerard’s cottage was half a mile or so from our house, and I enjoyed the briskness of the season—it was early December, the holidays coming on, a fresh breeze spanking my cheeks. I let the dogs run free ahead of me and admired the way the pine forest that B. P. Newhouse had planted all those years ago framed and sculpted the sky. The first thing I noticed on coming up the walk was that Gerard hadn’t bothered to rake the leaves from his lawn or cover any of his shrubs against the frost. There were other signs of neglect: the storm windows weren’t up yet, garbage overspilled the two cans in the driveway, and a pine bough, a casualty of the last storm, lay across the roof of the house like the severed hand of a giant. I rang the bell.
Gerard was a long time answering. When he did finally come to the door, he held it open just a crack and gazed out at me as if I were a stranger. (I was nothing of the sort—our parents had known each other, we’d played couples bridge for years and had once taken a road trip to Hyannis Port together, not to mention the fact that we saw each other at the lake nearly every day in the summer, shared cocktails at the clubhouse, and basked in an air of mutual congratulation over our separate decisions not to complicate our lives with the burden of children.)
“Gerard,” I said. “Hello. How are you feeling?”
He said nothing. He looked thinner than usual, haggard. I wondered if the rumors were true—that he wasn’t eating, wasn’t taking care of himself, that he’d given way to despair.
“I was just passing by and thought I’d stop in,” I said, working up a grin, though I didn’t feel much in the mood for levity and had begun to wish I’d stayed home and let my neighbor suffer in peace. “And look,” I said, “I’ve brought Tim and Tim II with me.” The dogs, hearing their names, drew themselves up out of the frost-blighted bushes and pranced across the doormat, inserting the long
Gerard’s voice was hoarse. “I’m allergic to dogs,” he said.
Ten minutes later, after we’d gone through the preliminaries and I was seated on the cluttered couch in front of the dead fireplace while Tim and Tim II whined from the front porch, I said, “Well, what about a cat?” And then, because I was mortified at the state to which he’d sunk—his clothes were grubby; he smelled; the house was like the lounge in a transient hotel—I found myself quoting my wife’s statistic about smiling pet owners.
“I’m allergic to cats, too,” he said. He was perched uncomfortably on the canted edge of a rocker and his eyes couldn’t seem to find my face. “But I understand your concern, and I appreciate it. And you’re not the first. Half a dozen people have been by, pushing one thing or another on me—pasta salad, a baked ham, profiteroles, and pets, too. Siamese fighting fish, hamsters, kittens. Mary Martinson caught me at the post office the other day, took hold of my arm, and lectured me for fifteen minutes on the virtues of emus. Can you believe it?”
“I feel foolish,” I said.
“No, don’t. You’re right, all of you—I need to snap out of it. And you’re right about a pet, too.” He rose from the chair, which rocked crazily behind him. He was wearing a stained pair of white corduroy shorts and a sweatshirt that made him look as gaunt as the Masai my wife and I had photographed on our safari to Kenya the previous spring. “Let me show you,” he said, and he wound his way through the tumbling stacks of magazines and newspapers scattered around the room and disappeared into the back hall. I sat there, feeling awkward—was this what it would be like if my wife should die before me?—but curious, too. And, in a strange way, validated. Gerard Loomis had a pet to keep him company: mission accomplished.
译文:
1300只老鼠【节选】【纽约客】
在我们村里有个男人，他妻子去世之前没有养过任何宠物。依我的推断，玛丽埃塔离开杰勒德*路米斯时，他五十中旬。但在教堂的告别典礼上，他面色枯黄，呈现出一种病态，这使别人误认为他要比他的实际年龄大十到二十岁。他瘫坐在前排的排座上，衣冠不整，两肢张开，呈现出极度的悲伤。看起来好像他刚从极高的地方摔下来并受了很大的创伤，就像一只鸟在空际大灾难中羽毛被拔得精光一样。葬礼结束后，我们也都表示了我们的哀悼，然后回到各自的家中，于是各种关于他的传闻传开了。杰勒德正在禁食。他几乎没有离开过屋子，也不换洗自己的衣服。有人在他前院的垃圾桶边看到他弯着腰在烧一些东西，黑漆皮的水泵啊，奶罩啊，裙子啊，假发啊之类的东西，甚至他从头到脚裹着的那件貂皮大衣。这件大衣是他已故的妻子生前在圣诞节，复活节和哥伦布日重大日子穿的，穿的时候带着几分神气。
大家开始担心他了，但也非常理解他。我们的小区是一个非常紧密的团体，120个灵魂紧密联系在一起，差不多是这样，大家分布在52所大约100多年前就已经用石头堆砌和木质的房子里，当初B.P.Newhouse的工业家们还希望这些建筑能成为理想生活的模型呢。我们不是乌托邦人，至少不属于那个年代。然而我们的村庄，坐落在城市四十英里外，森蔽的小路的尽头，六百英亩浓密的森林中。我们通常会认为它孕育了紧密一致的景观，这与最新建造在大商场、画廊、工厂旁的建筑截然不同。
他应该要有条狗来陪伴他，大家都这么认为。我也觉得没有比这更好了。我和妻子有一对狗狗（还有两只青绿色小鹦鹉，他们的啁啾声给我们夜晚围在火炉旁营造了一种安静氛围。我书房里还有一只胖的刺蝶鱼独自在器皿里遨游。）一天晚餐时刻，妻子透过她的眼镜看了我一眼，并说：“你知道吗，报纸上有篇文章说，95%的宠物主人说他们的宠物每天至少会逗乐他们一次？”我正在往Tim和TimII好动并贪婪的嘴中喂肉末，他们从桌子底下用好奇的目光盯着我们。
“你认为我应该找他聊聊？”我说。“我是说杰勒德。”
“这是有益无害的，”妻子回答。然后她嘴角向下一沉，接着说，“可怜的人啊。”
第二天，也是个周末，我去拜访了他。狗狗们需要散步，所以我把他们带在了身边。如果我在家，我就想尽多的去看护他们，如果我要是满世界的出差，有时一去就是几个礼拜或是几个月，我就照顾不到他们了。杰勒德的小屋离我们家大概半英里的距离。现在是十二月初，寒假刚刚开始，一阵微风吹过我的脸颊，我喜欢这个季节的凉爽。我让狗狗们在我前面自由的奔跑，独自享受着这片松树林的美景，这些树木是多年前B.P.Newhouse的人栽种的，树木和天际相辅相成，呈现画一般的美感。我出来散步所视察到的第一件事情是，杰勒德从来不费心去把草坪上的落叶扫开，也不把灌木丛覆盖以防冻。当然还有其他被忽视的地方：遮挡风雪的护窗没有打开，车道边两罐垃圾散落在一边，还有上次风暴压倒的松树杆横躺在屋顶上，像是巨人的一双硕大的手。我按响了门铃。
过了很长时间才传来杰勒德的回应。他最终过来开门时，只打开了一条缝，并向外打量我好像我是个陌生人。（他对我绝不陌生---我们的父母都是老相识了，我们一起玩了这么多年的桥牌，有一次还一起乘大巴去海厄尼斯港，更甚者，夏天我们几乎每天都在湖边见面，在俱乐部一起喝鸡尾酒，并沉浸在一种互相庆幸的气氛当中，庆幸我们都决定不让子女成为我们生活的负担。
“杰勒德，”我说道。“你好啊，最近怎么样？”
他沉默不语。他比以往看起来更瘦了，甚至有些憔悴。我想问他那些传言是不是真的----他不吃不喝，从来不打理自己，自甘堕落。
“我恰巧路过，觉得该来看看你，”我说道，咧嘴笑笑，虽然我没有太多的心情考虑这样做是否草率，我开始希望我此时待在家，好让我的邻居享受安宁。“瞧瞧，”我说，“我带着Tim 和TimII呢。”狗儿们，听到主人的召唤，从雾气笼罩的灌木丛跑回，跃过门垫，湿漉漉的鼻子向门缝嗅去。
杰勒德声音有些嘶哑地说：“我对狗过敏。”
十分种后，经过初步交谈，我坐在冰冷的壁炉前杂乱的沙发上，Tim和TimII有些不情愿地坐在前沿。我说，“那么，猫呢？你不会对猫也过敏吧？”过了片刻，因为我要克制自己面对他现在糟糕的样子---衣服肮脏不堪，还发出异味；此时引用妻子对宠物主人评价的说法，这个房子就像是暂时寄住在旅馆的一张沙发。
他说：“我对猫也敏感。”他站在一根摇杆的边缘，显得极为不自在，眼睛也不敢直视我的脸。“但我明白你很关心我，我也很感激。你不是第一个这样做的人。之前已经有六个人来过，一件一件的东西塞给我—意大利面色拉，烤火腿，空心甜饼，当然也有宠物，暹罗箭鱼，小老鼠，小猫。玛丽*马丁逊前几天在邮局碰到我，抓住我的手，给我讲鸸鹋的益处，足足讲了一刻种。你能相信吗？”
我回答说,“我觉得我这样真傻。”
“不，不是的。你很好。你们都很好—我需要摆脱现在的境况。我也同意你的养宠物的观点。”他从椅子上站起来，椅子咯吱咯吱地摇晃。他正穿着一条污渍斑斑的灯芯绒裤，一件汗衫更加映衬出他的憔悴。记得和妻子马赛某个春天去肯尼亚远征时拍的一张照片，照片上那个马赛亚人憔悴的表情与此时的杰勒德一样。“我给你看，”他说，正说着他穿过一堆摆放得歪歪扭扭的杂志和报纸的房间，消失在后厅。我尴尬地坐在那儿，试想着如果我的妻子先离开我，我也会这样么？同时对这件事情我也感到好奇。杰勒德*路米斯有一个宠物陪伴他，虽然方式有点奇怪，但若证实了的话，我也松了口气：任务完成。
我们正在进行纽约客中文翻译计划，如果你也感兴趣的话，就赶快加入我们吧！——New Yorker翻译小组