Dear Esther 中英
jetty
A.
亲爱的艾丝特：有时我觉得，似乎是我产下了这座岛。不知何处，经纬之间张开裂缝，它就遥远的在这里地搁浅。不论我怎样前思后想，它仍是我生命中最奇异的事件，一个拒绝所有推测的奇点。 每次归来我都会留下新的标记，期望在那绝望的时光里也能寻得些新的进展。
Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.
B.
亲爱的艾丝特：后来海鸥再没在这里停下。我到今年才晓得，它们似乎在避开这里。可能是过度捕捞赶走了它们，但也许原因在我。当唐纳利第一次在这里登陆时，他写道：“牛群病怏怏的，他们的牧者是赫布里底群岛最悲惨的底层人。“三百年过去，即便他们也都离开了。
Dear Esther. The gulls do not land here anymore; I’ve noticed that this year, they seem to shun the place. Maybe it’s the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me. When he first landed here, Donnelly wrote that the herds were sickly and their shepherds the lowest of the miserable classes that populate these Hebridean islands. Three hundred years later, even they have departed.
C.
亲爱的艾丝特：我已然记不清来这里有多久了，也记不清一共探寻过多少次。但可以肯定的是，现在我对那些地标已烂熟于心，以至于不得不提醒自己必须认真在意脚下的道路。我可以闭眼翻越山石，穿过峭壁边缘，完全不用担心自己会失足跌落进海里。另外，我总觉得如果有真要掉下去的时候，一定要睁大你的双眼。
Dear Esther. I have lost track of how long I have been here, and how many visits I have made overall. Certainly, the landmarks are now so familiar to me that I have to remind myself to actually see the forms and shapes in front of me. I could stumble blind across these rocks, the edges of these precipices, without fear of missing my step and plummeting down to sea. Besides, I have always considered that if one is to fall, it is critical to keep one’s eyes firmly open.
D.
亲爱的艾丝特：今早我被冲上岸的时候，耳朵里有盐，嘴里有沙子，海浪冲击着我的脚踝，好像一切都预谋好了要沉了这最后的船。我什么都不记得了，只记得海水、我的鞋、我肚子里的结石都想把我拽沉到那有着倦怠生灵的波涛中去。
Dear Esther. The morning after I was washed ashore, salt in my ears, sand in my mouth and the waves always at my ankles, I felt as though everything had conspired to this one last shipwreck. I remembered nothing but water, stones in my belly and my shoes threatening to drag me under to where only the most listless of creatures swim.
firstclimb
唐纳利写到过隐士的传奇。那圣人寻求孤独最纯粹的形式。据说他自内陆而来，划着无底的小船，这样，深夜里海中的生灵可以浮上来与他交谈。这谈话一定会让他倍感失望。如果是在今天，海洋里作祟的东西只剩油船倾倒出的垃圾，他也许能寻得一点清净。传说中在南边的山谷他伸开双臂，悬崖就为他洞开为居室；他们说他一百一十六年后才因热病去世。牧羊人在岩洞的洞口为他留下了礼物，但据唐纳利记载牧羊人从未见过他。我去过洞穴，也留下了我的礼物，但像牧羊人一样，我好像无福领受他的孤独。
Donnelly reported the legend of the hermit; a holy man who sought solitude in its most pure form. Allegedly, he rowed here from the mainland in a boat without a bottom, so all the creatures of the sea could rise at night to converse with him. How disappointed he must have been with their chatter. Perhaps now, when all that haunts the ocean is the rubbish dumped from the tankers, he’d find more peace. They say he threw his arms wide in a valley on the south side and the cliff opened up to provide him shelter; they say he died of fever one hundred and sixteen years later. The shepherds left gifts for him at the mouth of the cave, but Donnelly records they never claimed to have seen him. I have visited the cave and I have left my gifts, but like them, I appear to be an unworthy subject of his solitude.
firstbeach
A.
在夜晚，有时你可看到油船或渔船发出的灯光。站在峭壁上望去那景象平凡平常，但走下这里，它们就荡成了一首暧昧的歌。比如，我难以分辨它是在波浪之上还是之下。此时分清这些真是多余，何不万有归一！除了沉浸在内心的纠结里等待生命的经纬次第呈现，这里再无事情可做。
At night you can see the lights sometimes from a passing tanker or trawler. From up on the cliffs they are mundane, but down here they fugue into ambiguity. For instance, I cannot readily tell if they belong above or below the waves. The distinction now seems banal; why not everything and all at once! There’s nothing better to do here than indulge in contradictions, whilst waiting for the fabric of life to unravel.
B.
有一次他们讨论在这儿建造海上风力发电站，这里远离大众的愤怒和狭隘。据他们说，海风太大，电机机身承受不住：他们显然未曾亲身体验过此地的静谧。从个人的角度我支持建电站，它会给隐士提供现代化的庇护：革命性而又永久。
There was once talk of a wind farm out here, away from the rage and the intolerance of the masses. The sea, they said, is too rough for the turbines to stand: they clearly never came here to experience the becalming for themselves. Personally, I would have supported it; turbines would be a fitting contemporary refuge for a hermit: the revolution and the permanence.
C.
你妈妈曾说，你出生时，产房里静了下来。一个红色大胎记盖住了你的左脸。没人知道该说些什么好，只有你的哭声填补了空白。我一直很佩服你，你可以用哭声填补任何你找到的空白。我开始制造空白，只为了你展现自己的才能。六岁那年胎记褪去，而我们初次时候它已完全消失不见，但你对空白的着迷和它的疗效，还全都在。
When you were born, you mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.
D.
那些远处的岛屿，我相信不外乎是另一时代的遗迹，睡着的巨人，或者躺下开始作最后一梦的梦游之神。我洗掉嘴上的沙子，将手握得更紧，颤抖的臂膀都拿不起我褪色的日记。
Those islands in the distance, I am sure, are nothing more than relics of another time, sleeping giants, somnambulist gods laid down for a final dreaming. I wash the sand from my lips and grip my wrist ever more tightly, my shaking arms will not support my fading diaries.
cliffpath
A.
在午后的微光中读唐纳利的书。他在岛的南侧登陆，循着去港湾的路爬上了山顶，他没有发现山洞也没有绘制北面的地图。我想这就是为何他对这岛屿的理解有缺陷，不完整。他站在山顶上，只是一时间想了下如何下山。确实，他没有我心里的缘由。
Reading Donnelly by the weak afternoon sunlight. He landed on the south side of the island, followed the path to the bay and climbed the mount. He did not find the caves and he did not chart the north side. I think this is why his understanding of the island is flawed, incomplete. He stood on the mount and only wondered momentarily how to descend. But then, he didn’t have my reasons.
B.
唐纳利的书在图书馆自 1974 年之后就没有借出过。我暗下决心绝不放过这一本，把它揣在大衣里，出门时躲过了图书馆管理员的视线。如果说这书的主题已够晦涩，那作者的文字风格则更有过之：这不是那种谨慎实录的记者文章。也许在最后的日子里和我为伴的就该是一本由濒死之人写就的偷来的书。
Donnelly’s book had not been taken out from the library since 1974. I decided it would never be missed as I slipped it under my coat and avoided the librarian’s gaze on the way out. If the subject matter is obscure, the writer’s literary style is even more so, it is not the text of a stable or trustworthy reporter. Perhaps it is fitting that my only companion in these last days should be a stolen book written by a dying man.
C.
山峰是景致交汇之地。它出现在这里是如此恰当，几近人造。我发现自己很容易遁入追寻目的的冥想，寻找着这里一切动机的故意。也许撞击的那一瞬间，这岛屿就形成了：当我们从座位松脱，安全带在胸口和肩膀深深的刻下这段公路一样的痕迹，他就在这时破浪而出？
The mount is clearly the focal point of this landscape; it almost appears so well placed as to be artificial. I find myself easily slipping into the delusional state of ascribing purpose, deliberate motive to everything here. Was this island formed during the moment of impact; when we were torn loose from our moorings and the seatbelts cut motorway lanes into our chests and shoulders, did it first break surface then?
D.
景象动人心魄。月亮嵌在石阵和栈道的交汇处，为横跨海滩的岩脊投下阴影，仿佛你就在这世界，在这片沙滩上留下了潦草的签名。
A wonderful sight. The moon cresting the junction between the cliff path and the stone circle. It cast a shadow of the ridge across the beach, all the world as if you had signed your name across the sand in untidy handwriting.
whitelines
当有人死去或病情危殆，他们放弃了本可挣扎的微小希望，在山崖上刻出平行的线条，露出下面的白垩。从内陆或者渔船上仔细观察，就会知道有人需要援助或标示出保护区域的警戒线，等待着直到在悬崖那边肆虐的瘟疫和寄主一同死去。我画的线同样作此用：让可能到来的营救者止步。疾病感染的不只是肉体。
When someone had died or was dying or was so ill they gave up what little hope they could sacrifice, they cut parallel lines into the cliff, exposing the white chalk beneath. You could see them from the mainland or the fishing boats and know to send aid or impose a cordon of protection, and wait a generation until whatever pestilence stalked the cliff paths died along with its hosts. My lines are just for this: to keep any would-be rescuers at bay. The infection is not simply of the flesh.
valleytop
A.
那些牧羊人惶恐敬神，与神的关系中并不包括爱。唐纳利告诉我他们只有一本严格按次序传阅的圣经，在1776年被一位来访的僧侣偷走，两年后这岛屿就全部被遗弃了。在此期间，我想也许他们将经书的章节赋予了石头与草木，给予了地形特殊的含义，这样也许就可以行走在圣经之中，安居于它的自相矛盾？
They were godfearing people those shepherds. There was no love in the relationship. Donnelly tells me that they had one bible that was passed around in strict rotation. It was stolen by a visiting monk in 1776, two years before the island was abandoned altogether. In the interim, I wonder, did they assign chapter and verse to the stones and grasses, marking the geography with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk the bible and inhabit its contradictions?
B.
我们不像罗德的妻子：你和我觉得没必要回头，回头也寻不到什么。没有疲倦的老人用他的双臂分开山崖，也没有在沙滩上等待捡拾的礼物或圣经。没有潮汐涨落，没有头上嘶叫的海鸥。隐士的骨骸也不在了：我偷了它们，把它们带到了岛屿内部变得漆黑的巷道中我们能用那里奇异的冷光照亮彼此的脸。
We are not like Lot’s wife, you and I; we feel no particular need to turn back. There’s nothing to be seen if we did. No tired old man parting the cliffs with his arms; no gifts or bibles laid out on the sand for the taking. No tides turning or the shrieking gulls overhead. The bones of the hermit are no longer laid out for the taking: I have stolen them away to the guts of this island where the passages all run to black and there we can light each others faces by their strange luminescence.
C.
我直接引述如下：“乌合之众。和他们呆了三天，我想对于一个不是土生的人已然够受的了。且不提他们乏味的引述经文的习惯，对我来说他们是所有外岛里最未开化的居民了。实际上，顾名思义——被神遗弃——这个词算是说出了本意。“我看，唐纳利也觉得那些游荡在这海岸线上的人远离了任何救赎的机会。你说，这也包括他自己吗？
I quote directly: “A motley lot with little to recommend them. I have now spent three days in their company that is, I fear, enough for any man not born amongst them. Despite their tedious inclination to quote scripture, they seem to me the most godforsaken of all the inhabitants of the outer isles. Indeed, in this case, the very gravity of that term – forsaken by god – seems to find its very apex.” It appears to me that Donnelly too found those who wander this shoreline to be adrift from any chance of redemption. Did he include himself in that, I wonder?
paul
亲爱的艾丝特：我见了保罗。我去做了这次自己的小小朝圣。在伍尔弗汉普顿的郊区的一座房子里我看见了启示。我们在他家厨房喝了咖啡，试着聊聊彼此。虽然知道我不是来要求道歉，寻找原因或者企图报复，他仍然心情忐忑，凹陷的帽子下面是高昂清晰的声音。生活的重担让他变老了，和我们一样，他已经越过了任何可以想象的生命界限。
Dear Esther. I met Paul. I made my own little pilgrimage. My Damascus a small semi-detached on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. We drank coffee in his kitchen and tried to connect to one another. Although he knew I hadn’t come in search of an apology, reason or retribution, he still spiralled in panic, thrown high and lucid by his own dented bonnet. Responsibility had made him old; like us, he had already passed beyond any conceivable boundary of life.
hermit
A.
我张开双臂，山崖就洞开为居室。我从山上小屋把家当都搬来，打算住在这里。夜里很冷，涨潮时海浪撞击着洞穴的入口。要爬到山顶，我必须更深入探索岛的层层脉络，那里信号被完全阻隔。只到那时我才能完全理解他们，站在山顶时他们流向我，纯净无染。
I threw my arms wide and the cliff opened out before me, making this rough home. I transferred my belongings from the bothy on the mount and tried to live here instead. It was cold at night and the sea lapped at the entrance at high tide. To climb the peak, I must first venture even deeper into the veins of the island, where the signals are blocked altogether. Only then will I understand them, when I stand on the summit and they flow into me, uncorrupted.
B.
我想赠你礼物，留于你居处之外，就在那山崖和海滩之间。我想送你五饼二鱼，但是鱼已被捞光，面包也已吃完。我想用无底的船载你回故乡，但我担心那些海中生灵发出的声响会让我们发疯。
I would leave you presents, outside your retreat, in this interim space between cliff and beach. I would leave you loaves and fishes, but the fish stocks have been depleted and I have run out of bread. I would row you back to your homeland in a bottomless boat but I fear we would both be driven mad by the chatter of the sea creatures.
C.
我发现我越来越无法分清隐士世界和保罗与我的世界了。我们被织进一条湿透的毯子，塞进船底来防止漏水，挡开海洋。看的时候我的脖子会疼，它在随着我的内脏悸动，我知道我又开始造出一块新的石头。在梦中，那石头看起来酷似罗德的妻子，于完美的冷静之中，她凝视着高速路上驰来的车。
I find myself increasingly unable to find that point where the hermit ends and Paul and I begin. We are woven into a sodden blanket, stuffed into the bottom of a boat to stop the leak and hold back the ocean. My neck aches from staring up at the aerial; it mirrors the dull throb in my gut where I am sure I have begun to form another stone. In my dreams, it forms into a perfect representation of Lot’s wife, head over her shoulder, staring along the motorway at the approaching traffic, in a vacuum of fatalistic calm.
D.
这隐士，这个先知，这远去的骨与老面包的史家，他去了哪里？“为何”，岛民问到，“为何”，雅克布森问道，如果你只是伸开双臂，山岩就在背后闭合，把你封禁在岛的肚腹：为何还为你的梦兆烦心？除了最虔敬的人，这博物馆大门一律紧闭。
This hermit, this seer, this distant historian of bones and old bread, where did he vanish to? Why, asked the farmers, why asked Jakobson, why bother with your visions at all, if you are just to throw your arms up at the cliff and let it close in behind you, seal you into the belly of the island, a museum shut to all but the most devoted.
valleyreturn
A.
在梦里，我站在太阳的中心，太阳风从最深处烘烤着我的心。我的牙齿卷曲，我的指甲脱落如松手掉入兜里的零钱。如果我尚能忍受，就吃东西，但看起来我只能喝海水。如果牲畜还在这里，我会兽性大发大快朵颐。我像石台上的尸体般枯瘦，早早的开启了死之泉。我乘着无底的心来到这座岛屿；内脏里的细菌都在向我歌唱。
I dreamt I stood in the centre of the sun and the solar radiation cooked my heart from the inside. My teeth will curl and my fingernails fall off into my pockets like loose change. If I could stomach, I’d eat, but all I seem capable of is saltwater. Were the livestock still here, I could turn feral and gorge. I’m as emaciated as a body on a slab, opened up for a premature source of death. I’ve rowed to this island in a heart without a bottom; all the bacteria of my gut rising up to sing to me.
B.
这里的植物从根部就石化了。想到他们曾经在这里放牧，这些就是留存的证明。所有东西都病得要死：水被污染难以有鱼，天空太稀薄鸟不能飞，土地则被隐士和牧人的骨骸分割。我听说人的骨灰是很好的肥料，一个人的骨盆和肋骨可以养活一大片树林，而剩下的可以足够让空气回复厚重，让港湾重新繁荣。
The vegetation here has fossilized from the roots up. To think they once grazed animals here, the remnants of occupation being evidence to that. It is all sick to death: the water is too polluted for the fish, the sky is too thin for the birds and the soil is cut with the bones of hermits and shepherds. I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a great forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay.
C.
他坚持说他没喝醉，就是累了。我再也看不出分别。我在这里上岸时也醉了，也非常累。我在几乎全黑的暮色里爬上峭壁，在拖网渔船搁浅的港湾里露营。发现棚屋时已是黎明，我决定让自己临时居住在此。现在我最希望看到的就是山顶上有着防水外罩的天线和发射机了，它有着令人不安的永恒气氛，像这里的其他建筑一样，它似乎完全没有受到侵蚀。
He still maintains he wasn’t drunk but tired. I can’t make the judgement or the distinction anymore. I was drunk when I landed here, and tired too. I walked up the cliff path in near darkness and camped in the bay where the trawler lies beached. It was only at dawn that I saw the bothy and decided to make my temporary lodgings there. I was expecting just the aerial and a transmitter stashed in a weatherproof box somewhere on the mount. It had an air of uneasy permanence to it, like all the other buildings here; erosion seems to have evaded it completely.
D.
现在我相信我并不孤单，同时也确信这不过是我的处境带来的幻觉。例如，我不记得我在哪里找到的蜡烛，或者为什么我会举起它照亮这奇怪的通路。也许那只为了注定要跟随我的人。
I have become convinced I am not alone here, even though I am equally sure it is simply a delusion brought upon by circumstance. I do not, for instance, remember where I found the candles, or why I took it upon myself to light such a strange pathway. Perhaps it is only for those who are bound to follow.
entry
亲爱的艾丝特：这是我第二十一次开车经过在埃克塞特和布里斯托尔之间伸展的 M5 国道。纵然有所有事故报告，所有目击证人，在标准地图上交叉对比误差以厘米计，我还是找不到确切地点。你可能会想那里会有痕迹作为证据。那是去桑福德的转弯和惠康超市之间的某处。我从后视镜中总能看到这些，但那地方还是无法浮现。
Dear Esther. I have now driven the stretch of the M5 between Exeter and Bristol over twenty-one times, but although I have all the reports and all the witnesses and have cross-referenced them within a millimetre using my ordnance survey maps, I simply cannot find the location. You’d think there would be marks, to serve as some evidence. It’s somewhere between the turn off for Sandford and the Welcome Break services. But although I can always see it in my rear view mirror, I have as yet been unable to pull ashore.
secondbeach
A.
亲爱的艾丝特：这会是我最后的信。在我们空无一人的房前，这些信是否已堆成了堆？为什么我仍要给你写信寄往家里呢？也许我能幻想一次，在我不可能的归来实现时，我会亲自把它们捡拾起来，然后见你舒服的在家，看着日间节目。现在，信件堆砌起来该有四英尺高了，那是我自己堆成的塔庙，是我自己用大页信纸和马尼拉纸完成的巨碑。接下来岁月流转，它们也将变成化石，从那失落的岛屿而来的不安的时间囊。邮戳印于奥本：这封信必须在最后登顶时寄出。
Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime television and all its comforts. They must form a pile four feet high now, my own little ziggurat; a megalith of foolscap and manila. They will fossilise over the centuries to follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Postmarked Oban: it must have been sent during the final ascent.
B.
亲爱的艾丝特：我发现我自己和这海一样毫无特色，和这海滩一样空虚无聊，像一艘懒洋洋的无主船骸。我的岩石，就是这些骸骨，它细密的栅栏将断崖拦在海滩上。从我的洞穴望出去，是那额头般的山脉，这天线就把这些信号发送给我。所有暴露在外的，那神经系统，在那里唐纳利与你我的靴子曾经踏过。我会为你拿一只火炬，我会将它留在我的墓石前。在带我进入地下的隧道中，你会用得上它。
Dear Esther. I have found myself to be as featureless as this ocean, as shallow and unoccupied as this bay, a listless wreck without identification. My rocks are these bones and a careful fence to keep the precipice at bay. Shot through me caves, my forehead a mount, this aerial will transmit into me so. All over exposed, the nervous system, where Donnelly’s boots and yours and mine still trample. I will carry a torch for you; I will leave it at the foot of my headstone. You will need it for the tunnels that carry me under.
C.
亲爱的艾丝特：当他们细数你的损伤时，我还是害怕你突然坐起来伸个懒腰，然后认不出我。我就像忧郁的彗星一样绕你运行，来自日光灯的罡风让我们的过去像彗尾在我身后飘散。你的头发还没有梳，妆还没有补。在我看去你和一座海滩无比相像，正横陈着等待被调查。你的样子要向我讲一个故事，线索却隐在万千伤口的织成的谜语里。
Dear Esther. Whilst they catalogued the damage, I found myself afraid you’d suddenly sit up, stretch, and fail to recognise me, I orbited you like a sullen comet, our history trailing behind me in the solar wind from the fluorescent tubes. Your hair had not been brushed yet, your make-up not reapplied. You were all the world like a beach to me, laid out for investigation, your geography telling one story, but hinting at the geology hidden behind the cuts and bruises.
D.
我发现这船的货物清单，皱缩着泡在水里，掉在一堆颜料罐下。它告诉我在这批货物中有很多抗酸酸奶，本要运往欧洲市场。它们一定是被冲没了，浑然不知知道这里已经没有海鸥和山羊来吃它。
I have found the ship’s manifest, crumpled and waterlogged, under a stash of paint cans. It tells me that along with this present cargo, there was a large quantity of antacid yoghurt, bound for the European market. It must have washed out to sea, God knows there are no longer gulls or goats here to eat it.
boat
在船的底部一定有个洞。否则新的隐士该怎样到来呢？
There must be a hole in the bottom of the boat. How else could new hermits have arrived?
buoy
A.
只有在晚上，这地方才会有些呆滞的生气。你能看到浮标和天线。以前曾经睡上一天来让自己重获活力。我知晓自己的日子不多了——继续下去已无意义。这里一定能找到些新的东西——一些角落缝隙让我值得熬下去。我已经烧了我的桥，沉了我的船，看着它进入水里。
It’s only at night that this place makes any sluggish effort at life. You can see the buoy and the aerial. I’ve been taking to sleeping through the day in an attempt to resurrect myself. I can feel the last days drawing upon me – there’s little point now in continuation. There must be something new to find here – some nook or some cranny that offers a perspective worth clinging to. I’ve burnt my bridges; I have sunk my boats and watched them go to water.
B.
整个晚上，浮标都让我神智清明。我坐在那里，当我快要绝望的时候，当我想到我将永远无法解开这座岛屿的秘密的时候，我坐在悬崖边看着这白痴一样的浮标整夜闪烁。它又聋又傻；它的金属脑袋里根本没有思想只是随着每分钟每一道波浪在闪烁，直到晨光把他变得聋哑且盲。在很多方面，我都与它并无二致。
All night the buoy has kept me lucid. I sat, when I was at the very edge of despair, when I thought I would never unlock the secret of the island, I sat at the edge and I watched the idiot buoy blink through the night. He is mute and he is retarded and he has no thought in his metal head but to blink each wave and each minute aside until the morning comes and renders him blind as well as deaf-mute. In many ways, we have much in common.
C.
我开始怀疑，唐纳利在这里的旅程是否如他所写一样平淡无奇。没有找到圣人的遗骨他会有多么失望！难怪他不喜欢当地人。对他来说，他们一定像毫无心智的贴住圣座的藤壶。为什么紧紧贴住石头？唯此可以阻止我们滑入海洋，被人遗忘。
I’ve begun to wonder if Donnelly’s voyage here was as prosaic as it was presented. How disappointed not to have found the bones of the holy man! No wonder he hated the inhabitants so. To him, they must have seemed like barnacles mindlessly clinging to a mercy seat. Why cling so hard to the rock? Because it is the only thing that stops us from sliding into the ocean. Into oblivion.
D.
一个想象中的电话答录机留言。轮胎瘪了，车轮松松的转动，制动液四散流淌，像墨水在这地图上流淌，将地标浸染，把海岸线默默侵蚀。在你看到银河的地方，我只看到了伤痕，它们被我的神志不清刻进悬崖。
An imagined answerphone message. The tires are flat, the wheel spins loosely, and the brake fluid has run like ink over this map, staining the landmarks and rendering the coastline mute, compromised. Where you saw galaxies, I only saw bruises, cut into the cliff by my lack of sobriety.
wreck
A.
我不知道港湾中船骸的名字，它在这里似乎有好几年了，至今还未被侵蚀殆尽。我不知道事故中是否有人丧生，如果有，我定也未曾见过。也许当直升机来接他们回家时，返程的飞行吓跑了海鸟。我应该在北面的沙滩上找些鸟蛋，那是生命又在这里自行复苏的证据。也许是我们把它们挡在海湾里。
I don’t know the name of the wreck in the bay; it seems to have been here for several years but has not yet subsided. I don’t know if anyone was killed; if so, I certainly haven’t seen them myself. Perhaps when the helicopter came to lift them home, their ascent scared the birds away. I shall search for eggs along the north shore, for any evidence that life is marking this place out as its own again. Perhaps it is us that keeps them at bay.
B.
我记得自己曾在克罗默的沙滩上奔跑，那里没有这儿的船骸。我曾经花了几天给冲到沙滩上垃圾分类，在最深的罅隙里找到了奇异的藏品组合。这将组成一个多么奇特的博物馆啊。馆长的尸体该怎么办？我应该找一个玻璃棺材，假装我们是白雪公主吗？
I remember running through the sands of Cromer; there was none of the shipwreck I find here. I have spent days cataloguing the garbage that washes ashore here and I have begun to assemble a collection in the deepest recess I could find. What a strange museum it would make. And what of the corpse of its curator? Shall I find a glass coffin and pretend to make snow white of us both?
C.
为何海洋如此平静？它呼唤你行在它的面上，但我知道得很清楚，它将如何汹涌，将我拖入海底。这里的礁石经受百年风雨，而现在，海潮退去，他们东倒西歪的默默耸立，像一座无主的神庙。有一天，我会试着爬上礁石，在它顶端寻找海鸥遗弃的鸟蛋和鸟巢。
Why is the sea so becalmed? It beckons you to walk upon its surface; but I know all too well how it would shatter under my feet and drag me under. The rocks here have withstood centuries of storms and now, robbed of the tides, they stand muted and lame, temples without cause. One day, I will attempt to climb them, hunt among their peaks for the eggs, the nests, that the gulls have clearly abandoned
lowervalley
A.
我得了肾结石，你来医院看我。手术刚做完，我还没完全从麻醉中清醒，你的样子和话语都很模糊。现在，我的石头已长成了一座岛屿，使他们逃出生天，而你因为一辆酒后驾驶的汽车而渐渐隐没。
I had kidney stones, and you visited me in the hospital. After the operation, when I was still half submerged in anaesthetic, your outline and your speech both blurred. Now my stones have grown into an island and made their escape and you have been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk.
B.
我开始从西边的绿色斜坡登顶。在透过岩缝我向山中远眺，已明了我必将向上攀登然后再找路下山。我将我文明的最后痕迹藏在石墙中，去更深处展开工作。我被天线和岩壁吸引：那里有一种重生等待着我。
I have begun my ascent on the green slope of the western side. I have looked deep into the mountain from the shaft and understood that I must go up and then find a way under. I will stash the last vestiges of my civilisation in the stone walls and work deeper from there. I am drawn by the aerial and the cliff edge: there is some form of rebirth waiting for me there.
C.
在无风的西侧斜坡，我将开始登顶。正在落下的夕阳像一只红肿的眼睛，眯起来躲闪着医生照过来的光。我的脖子因为长时间抬头追寻天线的光亮而疼痛。我必须向下看了，顺着岛下方的小路寻得新的开始。
I have begun my ascent on the windless slope of the western side. The setting sun was an inflamed eye squeezing shut against the light shone in by the doctors. My neck is aching through constantly craning my head up to track the light of the aerial. I must look downwards, follow the path under the island to a new beginning.
D.
我已经开始攀爬，远离海洋，向着岛中心。它是到山顶的一条直路，在那里夜色在天线上盘卷，把讯号压向早来的寂静。茅屋踞在山边，躲开天线的瞪视。我也要像动物一样在岛下蠕行，再从北岸慢慢接近它。
I have begun to climb, away from the sea and towards the centre. It is a straight line to the summit, where the evening begins to coil around the aerial and squeeze the signals into early silence. The bothy squats against the mount to avoid the gaze of the aerial; I too will creep under the island like an animal and approach it from the northern shore.
shaft
A.
当我第一次进入竖洞的时候，我发誓我觉得肚子里的的结石因认出这里而悸动。
When I first looked into the shaft, I swear I felt the stones in my stomach shift in recognition.
B.
这深渊的下面是个什么样的藏骨堂？多少死去的牧人才能填住这个窟窿？
What charnel house lies at the foot of this abyss? How many dead shepherds could fill this hole?
C.
这是保罗透过挡风玻璃看到的景象吗？不是罗德的妻子，越过她的肩膀看去，是山腰上的一道疤痕，在永恒中慢慢降成黑色。
Is this what Paul saw through his windscreen? Not Lot’s wife, looking over her shoulder, but a scar in the hillside, falling away to black, forever.
goatshed
A.
唐纳利写道，当他们在这里放牧的时候，天总是下雨。然而最近都没有下，植被静默伫立，像在聆听从别的恒星返回的讯号。
When they graze their animals here, Donnelly writes, it is always raining. There’s no evidence of that rain has been here recently. The foliage is all static, like a radio signal returning from another star.
B.
在失事渔船的船舱里，我找到了多达几吨的反光涂料。也许他们正在进口这种东西。现在，我要把他们用起来，用我们苦难的徽记和象征装点这座岛。
In the hold of the wrecked trawler I have found what must amount to several tons of gloss paint. Perhaps they were importing it. Instead, I will put it to use, and decorate this island in the icons and symbols of our disaster.
C.
克罗默正在下雨，我们去学校。我们挤在一起在公共汽车站躲雨，像牲口般群聚，老师则是呆滞的牧人。我兜里的沙子正迅速的变得潮湿。
Cromer in the rain; a school trip. We took shelter en masse in a bus stop, herded in like cattle, the teachers dull shepherds. The sand in my pocket becoming damper by the second.
uppervalley
茅屋是在十八世纪初建造的。那时候，牧羊正式变成了一种职业。最初定居的牧羊人叫做雅克布森，来自一支漂泊的斯堪迪纳维亚家族。本地人认为他不适合做这个工作。每到夏天，他都带着希望来到这里建设茅屋。期望他终能成个有产业的人，再讨个老婆传宗接代。根据唐纳利的记录，这事没有成：他从坏脾气的山羊身上染上了什么病，在房屋建成的第二年便去世。也无人在悬崖为他刻下白线。
The bothy was constructed originally in the early 1700s. By then, shepherding had formalised into a career. The first habitual shepherd was a man called Jakobson, from a lineage of migratory Scandinavians. He was not considered a man of breeding by the mainlanders. He came here every summer whilst building the bothy, hoping, eventually, that becoming a man of property would secure him a wife and a lineage. Donnelly records that it did not work: he caught some disease from his malcontented goats and died two years after completing it. There was no one to carve white lines into the cliff for him either.
bothy
A.
全部家当：一张搁板桌，在上面我们展开装饰第一个家要用的壁纸；折叠椅，因为要带去湖边露营我冲你大笑，后来笑得难受，你也乐了；这本日记；一张弹簧坏掉的床，睡觉的时候，一定要注意别做梦；换洗的衣服；唐纳利的书，在来这儿的路上从爱丁堡图书馆偷出来。在最后的黎明我会把他们都烧掉，建一座我自己的天线。
Inventory: a trestle table we spread wallpaper on in our first home. A folding chair; I laughed at you for bringing camping in the lakes. I was uncomfortable later and you laughed then. This diary; the bed with the broken springs – once asleep, you have to remember not to dream. A change of clothes. Donnelly’s book, stolen from Edinburgh library on the way here. I will burn them all on the last morning and make an aerial of my own.
B.
油灯燃尽的时候，我没有点燃火炬，只借着月光读下去。当我全读完的时候，我会将唐纳利的书扔下峭壁，也许我也会跟着下去。可能在雨季来临时被它会被冲回溶洞里，从泉水中涌出，回到隐士的山洞。也许我醒来的时候，他会回到我的桌上。我想，也许我以前已经把它扔进海里好几次了。
When the oil lamps ran out I didn’t pick up a torch but used the moonlight to read by. When I have pulled the last shreds of sense from it, I will throw Donnelly’s book from the cliffs and perhaps myself with it. Maybe it will wash back up through the caves and erupt from the spring when the rain comes, making its return to the hermit’s cave. Perhaps it will be back on the table when I wake. I think I may have thrown it into the sea several times before.
C.
黄昏时见到三只鸬鹚，它们没有落地。这房子以石头为料，由那个早已逝去的牧羊人建成。家里的摆设：我的行军床、一个炉子、一张桌子、几把椅子、我的衣服、我的书。这些空洞填满了岛的肚腹，让它饥饿难忍。我的四肢和肚腹，饥饿难忍。这皮肤，这些器官，这衰退的视力。当手电筒的电池耗尽，我将潜入洞穴，只循着磷光回家。
Three cormorants seen at dusk; they did not land. This house, built of stone, built by a long-dead shepherd. Contents: my camp-bed, a stove, a table, chairs. My clothes, my books. The caves that score out the belly of this island, leaving it famished. My limbs and belly, famished. This skin, these organs, this failing eyesight. When the battery runs out in my torch, I will descend into the caves and follow only the phosphorescence home.
D.
我的心是填埋场，这些暮光消散殆尽晨光又迟迟不来。在深夜我为你流着汗水，把我的毯子团成一团。总听到海浪拍打着这些失落的海岸，总有遗忘的海鸥。我可以把这瓶子放到耳边，那对我来说曾是风笛吹奏的音乐。
My heart is landfill, these false dawns waking into whilst it is still never light. I sweat for you in the small hours and wrap my blankets into a mass. I have always heard the waves break on these lost shores, always the gulls forgotten. I can lift this bottle to my ear, and all there ever is for me is this Hebridean music.
toppath
A.
编辑在脚注里评论这一时刻：唐纳利已经疯了，梅毒像酒驾的司机正摧毁他的身体。他不可信——他的很多说辞无根无据，虽然他绘制了一幅彩画，但他的大部分言辞也许只因为高烧所致。但是我来过这里，我真切的知道，就像唐纳利体验到的，这地方半是想象所造。如果用心观看，即便是岩石和山洞也都渐隐渐显。
In a footnote, the editor comments that at this point, Donnelly was going insane as syphilis tore through his system like a drunk driver. He is not to be trusted – many of his claims are unsubstantiated and although he does paint a colourful picture, much of what he says may have been derived directly from his fever. But I have been here and I know, as Donnelly did, that this place is always half-imagined. Even the rocks and caves will shimmer and blur, with the right eyes.
B.
他将自己的遗体留给了医学院，在他去世后的第二十一天被一大堆学生充分的解剖。尸检报告已经包括在我编辑的他这本书里。就像是酒驾的司机一样，梅毒摧毁了唐纳利的身体，他的器官像盘子里的炒蛋。但是，但还保有足够的细节来做出粗略的检测，像我怀疑的一样，他们找到了肾结石的证据。他很有可能在痛苦中渡过余生：也许这就是他鸦片成瘾的原因。虽然这使他成为了一个并不可靠的见证人，但我发现自己开始绕着他转。
He left his body to the medical school and was duly opened out for a crowd of students twenty-one days after his passing. The report is included in my edition of his book. The syphilis had torn through his guts like a drunk driver, scrambling his organs like eggs on a plate. But enough definition remained for a cursory examination and, as I suspected, they found clear evidence of kidney stones. He is likely to have spent the last years of his life in considerable pain: perhaps this is the root of his laudanum habit. Although its use makes him an unreliable witness, I find myself increasingly drawn into his orbit.
C.
到底是什么造就了唐纳利？鸦片或是梅毒？当然都不是。但我没法得知前者究竟是他造访此地的原因，还是驱使他来到这里的力量。对于梅毒而言，一位酒驾的司机在这路上撞得肝脑涂地，我只能表示同情。我们都是时代的受害者。我的疾病是内燃机引擎和廉价酵母的发酵。
What to make of Donnelly? The laudanum and the syphilis? It is clearly not how he began, but I have been unable to discover if the former was a result of his visiting the island or the force that drove him here. For the syphilis, a drunk driver smashing his insides into a pulp as he stumbled these paths, I can only offer my empathy. We are all victims of our age. My disease is the internal combustion engine and the cheap fermentation of yeast.
D.
他们告诉唐纳利，雅各布森胸腔畸形，这是由于天生缺陷或者童年时的外伤。他的胸部是如此脆弱轻薄，也许正因如此才最终承受不住心脏的敲击。在晨光中，他的骨骼像一幅空架子，一只虚幻僵化的海鸟。
Jakobson’s ribcage, they told Donnelly, was deformed, the result of some birth defect or perhaps a traumatic injury as a child. Brittle and overblown it was, and desperately light. Perhaps it was this that finally did for him, unable to contain the shattering of his heart. In half-light, his skeleton a discarded prop, a false and calcified seabird.
middlepath
A.
在早春冰川刚解冻的时候，他们发现了雅克布森，他虽已经死了快七个月，可身体被冻了个透，甚至还未开始腐烂。他已经挣扎爬到了栈道的一半，可能在寻找丢失的山羊，又或者因为发了疯而力竭，他在冬月下蜷成了一团。即便是动物都避开他的尸体，本地人觉得将他带回去很不吉利。唐纳利宣称他们将雅克布森的遗体拖进了山洞，让他解冻腐烂，但是他已是不可靠的见证人。
They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. He’d struggled halfway down the cliff path, perhaps looking for some lost goat, or perhaps in a delirium and expired, curled into a claw, right under the winter moon. Even the animals shunned his corpse; the mainlanders thought to bring it home unlucky. Donnelly claims they dragged it to the caves to thaw out and rot, but he is proving an unreliable witness.
B.
在早春冰川刚解冻的时候，他们发现了雅克布森，他虽已经死了快七个月，可身体被冻了个透，甚至还未开始腐烂。他的指甲满是伤而且被咬到见肉，他们在指甲深处发现了洞穴里的磷光苔藓。力竭前他在岛的下面做了什么已不可考。在力气耗尽、蜷缩在石头边之前，他又挣扎爬上了栈道的一半，也许是发了疯，也许是要去茅屋生火。
They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. His fingernails were raw and bitten to the quick; they found the phosphorescent moss that grows in the caves deep under the nails. Whatever he’d been doing under the island when his strength began to fail is lost. He’d struggled halfway up the cliff again, perhaps in a delirium, perhaps trying to reach the bothy’s fire, before curling into a stone and expiring.
C.
在早春冰川刚解冻的时候，他们发现了雅克布森，他虽已经死了快七个月，可身体被冻了个透，甚至还未开始腐烂。在他的周围，小小的花朵伸向微弱的日光，山羊没有了牧人，已在山谷中快活自在。唐纳利写道，他们因为厌恶把尸体抛进了岩缝，但对此我也无法证实。
They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. All around him, small flowers were reaching for the weak sun, the goats had adjusted happily to life without a shepherd and were grazing freely about the valley. Donnelly reports they hurled the body in fear and disgust down the shaft, but I cannot corroborate this story.
thirdbeach
A.
我会成为你的火炬，成为那天线。我将像关于一块烂水泥的古老广播信号一样从天上掉下来，穿过地下泉水和冻结的地下河，穿过我肚腹和心脏里的细菌，也穿过无底之舟和没人在上面死去的遗弃的渔船。就像隐士和罗德的妻子一样，我会石化，然后将岩石洞开让自己通过。
I will become a torch for you, an aerial. I will fall from the sky like ancient radio waves of flawed concrete. Through underground springs and freezing subterranean rivers. Through the bacteria of my gut and heart. Through the bottomless boat and forgotten trawlers where nobody has died. Like the hermit and Lot’s wife, I will fossilise and open a hole in the rock to admit me through.
B.
在这里，探险会成为内向私密的旅程，不会尝试逾越界限。我烧掉了船染上了病，使得这对我来说容易些。穿过这块微缩的陆地需要来几次远征，要耗掉无数的脑细胞，一个质数的丰饶角，经过数不清的服务站和旁路，才能辗转到达最终离开的地方。
To explore here is to become passive, to internalise the journey and not to attempt to break the confines. Since I burnt my boats and contracted my sickness, this has become easier for me. It will take a number of expeditions to traverse this microcontinent; it will take the death of a million neurons, a cornucopia of prime numbers, countless service stations and bypasses to arrive at the point of final departure.
C.
这个海滩不是结束生命的地方。雅各布森明了这一点，唐纳利也明白。雅各布森已在回悬崖的半路，唐纳利则失去了信心回家等死。我已从这段历史中汲取了教训。有人架起了天线，引领我穿过这些黑色的波浪，这烽火穿透了岩石，像苔藓发出的磷光。
This beach is no place to end a life. Jakobson understood that, so did Donnelly. Jakobson made it halfway back up the cliff. Donnelly lost faith and went home to die. I have the benefit of history, of progress. Someone has erected an aerial to guide me through these black waves, a beacon that shines through the rocks like phosphorescent moss.
cavesentrance
爬下洞穴的时候我滑倒了，伤了腿。我想是股骨断了。它很明显感染了：皮肤成了发亮，紧绷的粉色，疼痛如波涛般袭来，冬天的波涛拍击着海岸线，盖过了结石的疼痛。我勉强走回茅屋休息，最后大致的结果明显只有一个。我从渔船捡回的医疗用品突然派上了用场：它们在我最后登顶前能让我保持清醒。
Climbing down to the caves I slipped and fell and have injured my leg. I think the femur is broken. It is clearly infected: the skin has turned a bright, tight pink and the pain is crashing in on waves, winter tides against my shoreline, drowning out the ache of my stones. I struggled back to the bothy to rest, but it has become clear that there is only one way this is likely to end. The medical supplies I looted from the trawler have suddenly found their purpose: they will keep me lucid for my final ascent.
tunnel
A.
最后一次从这里出发，我明了我已不能回头。火炬随着我的决心渐渐熄灭。我可以听得到头顶栈道边，海中的生灵在歌唱，他们答应我海鸥一定会归来。
From here, this last time, I have understood there is no turning back. The torch is failing along with my resolve. I can hear the singing of the sea creatures from the passages above me and they are promising the return of the gulls.
B.
雅克布森爬到过这么远吗？我能分辨他印入岩石中的抓痕吗？我是否跟着他亦步亦趋？为什么他退缩回头，没有坚持完成登顶？
Did Jakobson crawl this far? Can I identify the scratches his nails ruined into the rocks? Am I following him cell for cell, inch for inch? Why did he turn back on himself and not carry through to the ascent?
C.
唐纳利从没有穿越过洞穴。从这里开始，他的导引，虽说并不可靠，也已离我而去。我知道现这只是我们之间的事，若要交流的话可以透过潮湿的岩石。
Donnelly did not pass through the caves. From here on in, his guidance, unreliable as it is, is gone from me. I understand now that it is between the two of us, and whatever correspondence can be drawn from the wet rocks.
D.
对唐纳利的嗜好我一向明了。在深夜的微光下醒来时，我发现景色已随我断续的泪水改变，我知道他还在影响着我。
Donnelly’s addiction is my one true constant. Even though I wake in false dawns and find the landscape changed, flowing inconstantly through my tears, I know his reaching is always upon me.
deepcave
A.
最初我看到他坐在路边。我正在等你被从残骸中切割出来。汽车像是从高空掉下，引擎的零碎散落在柏油路上，像地下的水。
I first saw him sat by the side of the road. I was waiting for you to be cut out of the wreckage. The car looked like it had been dropped from a great height. The guts of the engine spilled over the tarmac. Like water underground.
B.
他们停止了远到桑福德枢纽的交通，然后像来自另一个星球的广播讯号一样走上路肩。他们花了二十一分钟才到，我看见保罗在计时，看着表记住了每分每秒。
They had stopped the traffic back as far as the Sandford junction and come up the hard shoulder like radio signals from another star. It took twenty-one minutes for them to arrive. I watched Paul time it, to the second, on his watch.
C.
仿佛是有人把汽车拿起来然后像调酒一般的晃它。储物箱被打开倒空，然后是烟灰缸和行李箱；这是为一个皱巴巴的博物馆准备的，破碎的展览。
It was as if someone had taken the car and shaken it like a cocktail. The glove compartment had been opened and emptied with the ashtrays and the boot; it made for a crumpled museum, a shattered exhibition.
D.
这里没有别的去向，这高速路上没有别的出口。高速驶过这路口时，我看见你在路边等待，颤抖的手里拿着最后一瓶酒。
There is no other direction, no other exit from this motorway. Speeding past this junction, I saw you waiting at the roadside, a one last drink in your trembled hands.
river
A.
我正穿过死亡的剧痛。腿上的感染像是油井从我骨头深处钻出黑色的淤泥。我吞下大把安定和扑热息痛以使我保持清醒。疼痛像地下海一样在我身上流淌。
I’m traversing my own death throes. The infection in my leg is an oilrig that dredges black muck up from deep inside my bones. I swallow fistfuls of diazepam and paracetamol to stay conscious. The pain flows through me like an underground sea.
B.
如果洞穴是我的内脏，这一定是岩石最初成型的地方。细菌们发着磷光浮起，歌唱，穿过隧道。这里的一切都随着海潮涨落。也许，整个岛屿其实都在水面之下。
If the caves are my guts, this must be the place where the stones are first formed. The bacteria phosphoresce and rise, singing, through the tunnels. Everything here is bound by the rise and fall like a tide. Perhaps, the whole island is actually underwater.
C.
我在自己的体内旅行，随着感染的红线从粉碎的腿骨直到心脏。我吞下大把的止疼药片来保持清醒。在我的幻觉之中，我能看到月亮和发光的天线辉映，穿过岩石向我照来。
I am travelling through my own body, following the line of infection from the shattered femur towards the heart. I swallow fistfuls of painkillers to stay lucid. In my delirium, I see the twin lights of the moon and the aerial, shining to me through the rocks.
D.
在我最后的梦里，我与雅克布森静静坐着，看着桑福德枢纽上的月亮。山羊在路肩上吃草，一个变成草与救赎的世界。他给我看他发烧的疤痕，我也照做。在每个肩膀中间是飞翔的起源。
In my final dream, I sat at peace with Jakobson and watched the moon over the Sandford junction, goats grazing on the hard shoulder, a world gone to weed and redemption. He showed me his fever scars, and I mine, between each shoulder the nascency of flight.
chimney
A.
手术后我醒转过来，我记得有光照进我的眼睛，检查瞳孔的反应。这就像是在井底抬头看铺满月光的天空。人们在山顶上移动，但我不知道你是否是其中之一。
When I was coming round from the operation, I remember the light they shone in my eyes to check for pupil contraction. It was like staring up at a moonlit sky from the bottom of a well. People moved at the summit but I could not tell if you were one of them.
B.
这不会是他们扔下山羊的那一个岩缝。这不会是你生命中烧不掉的部分最后会去的填埋场。这肯定不是那个让你飘上天空的烟囱。这不可能是那个你又化雨降下去滋润土地，让小花在岩间开放的地方。
This cannot be the shaft they threw the goats into. It cannot be the landfill where the parts of your life that would not burn ended up. It cannot be the chimney that delivered you to the skies. It cannot be the place where you rained back down again to fertilise the soil and make small flowers in the rocks.
C.
我会抓紧你伸向我的手，从那山顶直到这井中；到黑暗的波涛里，那小花伸展向太阳的地方。车灯在你眼中闪现，火葬场烟囱下暗影中的月光。
I will hold the hand you offer to me; from the summit down to this well, into the dark waters where the small flowers creep for the sun. Headlights are reflected in your retinas, moonlit in the shadow of the crematorium chimney.
D.
月光照耀的水中映出的是溺死之人的脸。那只能是死去的牧人，他醉酒驾车带你回家。
This is a drowned man’s face reflected in the moonlit waters. It can only be a dead shepherd who has come to drunk drive you home.
emergence
A.
月亮悬在桑福德枢纽之上，而车前灯的光线映在你眼中。唐纳利驾驶一辆无底的灰色小车，柏油路上的所有的生灵都浮起，朝他歌唱。各式各样的徽记草草划过我凌乱的崖面。我的生命已沦为一张电气线路图。我的海鸥都逃走了，他们不再在这些岩层上筑巢。在桑福德枢纽，月光的诱惑实在太过强烈。
The moon over the Sandford junction, headlights in your retinas. Donnelly drove a grey hatchback without a bottom, all the creatures of the tarmac rose to sing to him. All manner of symbols crudely scrawled across the cliff face of my unrest. My life reduced to an electrical diagram. All my gulls have taken flight; they will no longer roost on these outcrops. The lure of the moon over the Sandford junction is too strong.
B.
我坐在这里，看见两架喷气机在天空划下长长的平行白线。它们一路飞过，他们按照航程飞了21分钟，直到接近桑福德，我目送他们消失不见。如果我是海鸥，我将会放弃自己的巢，跟随它们。我会大脑缺氧，苦于超卓的妄想。我会撕开我的船底，划着它横过高速，直到再一次到达我的岛屿。
I sat here and watched two jets carve parallel white lines into the sky. They charted their course and I followed them for twenty-one minutes until they turned off near Sandford and were lost. If I were a gull, I would abandon my nest and join them. I would starve my brain of oxygen and suffer delusions of transcendence. I would tear the bottom from my boat and sail across the motorways until I reached this island once again.
C.
我本希望能在此结识唐纳利——那样我们会有很多话题可聊。是他在岩石上作画，还是我？谁在码头的小屋上里留下罐子？谁造就了水下的博物馆？谁静默的的走向了死亡，走向了死寂的水中？又起初是谁在海中竖起了这荒唐的天线？是否这岛在我胸中升起，让海鸥全部飞去？
I wish I could have known Donnelly in this place – we would have had so much to debate. Did he paint these stones, or did I? Who left the pots in the hut by the jetty? Who formed the museum under the sea? Who fell silently to his death, into the frozen waters? Who erected this godforsaken aerial in the first place? Did this whole island rise to the surface of my stomach, forcing the gulls to take flight?
rocks
A.
火与土，我选择火。这个选择似乎很现代，更卫生。我受不了把这样的废墟再度拼合的想法。把手臂和肩膀缝起来，再缝起大腿和胯骨。缝线飞走像是车流仍在高速路上行驶。让这变故在那些因这事才飞来的含泪的婶婶和受惊的叔叔看来全能接受。碾成灰，混着水，为这些岩穴居室画上磷光闪闪的图画。
Of fire and soil, I chose fire. It seemed the more contemporary of the options, the more sanitary. I could not bear the thought of the reassembly of such a ruins. Stitching arm to shoulder and femur to hip, charting a line of thread like traffic stilled on a motorway. Making it all acceptable for tearful aunts and traumatised uncles flown in specially for the occasion. Reduce to ash, mix with water, make a phosphorescent paint for these rocks and ceilings.
B.
我们要开始装配属于我们的北部海滩了。我们用死去的语言和电路图表乱涂，然后藏起他们，让未来的神学家沉思玄想，絮叨没完。我们要写信给艾丝特唐纳利并要求她回信。我们把颜料，骨灰，和我们伤口发出的光亮调在一起。我们在桑福德枢纽处画个月亮，在路肩两侧，蓝色光芒像星星一样倾泻直下。
We shall begin to assemble our own version of the north shore. We will scrawl in dead languages and electrical diagrams and hide them away for future theologians to muse and mumble over. We will send a letter to Esther Donnelly and demand her answer. We will mix the paint with ashes and tarmac and the glow from our infections. We paint a moon over the Sandford junction and blue lights falling like stars along the hard shoulder.
C.
我回到家里，口袋里是偷拿的骨灰。有一半掉出我的大衣，在车厢的坐垫里消失。但是其余的我小心的藏了盒子里，放进了床边的抽屉。这不是有意为之，但是几年过去，它已成了一道护符。我坐着，静静地坐着，很久都拿着那渐渐消散的灰烬在我掌心，感受的柔滑。总有一天，我们都会化为微尘，被冲入海中消散开。
I returned home with a pocket full of stolen ash. Half of it fell out of my coat and vanished into the car’s upholstery. But the rest I carefully stowed away in a box I kept in a drawer by the side of my bed. It was never intended as a meaningful act but over the years it became a kind of talisman. I’d sit still, quite still, for hours just holding the diminishing powder in my palm and noting its smoothness. In time, we will all be worn down into granules, washed into the sea and dispersed.
D.
亲爱的艾丝特：我每一步都变得更困难，更沉重。我将唐纳利的尸体背在背上，穿过那些岩石。我听到的只是他内疚的低语，他的告诫，他烧掉的信，他叠得整齐的衣服。他告诉我，我完全没有喝醉。
Dear Esther. I find each step harder and heavier. I drag Donnelly’s corpse on my back across these rocks, and all I hear are his whispers of guilt, his reminders, his burnt letters, his neatly folded clothes. He tells me I was not drunk at all.
lostbeach
从这里望去，我可以看到我的舰队。我收集了想寄给你的所有信件，我本想把他们都送到内陆但他们还是压在了背包的底层，然后我沿着这迷失的海滩洒下他们。然后，我捡起每一封信，将它们折成了船。我将你折进纸痕，然后，太阳落山，我送这舰队出航。已碎成了二十一片，我把你交付给大西洋。我坐在这里，看着你们直至沉没。
From here I can see my armada. I collected all the letters I’d ever meant to send to you, if I’d have ever made it to the mainland but had instead collected at the bottom of my rucksack, and I spread them out along the lost beach. Then I took each and every one and I folded them into boats. I folded you into the creases and then, as the sun was setting, I set the fleet to sail. Shattered into twenty-one pieces, I consigned you to the Atlantic, and I sat here until I’d watched all of you sink.
paul2
A.
在他递过咖啡的马克杯上有分子式图，粘在他颤抖的手拿着的杯柄上。他为一家制药公司工作，办公室在伍尔弗汉普顿郊外。他从一个在埃克塞特举行的销售会议上归来：为一种抗酸酸奶进入欧洲市场制定战略愿景。你的手指可以跟着分子链接游走，连起那些小点，然后一种新的化合物就会被激活投入使用。
There were chemical diagrams on the mug he gave me coffee in; sticky at the handle where his hands shook. He worked for a pharmaceutical company with an office based on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. He’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter: forming a strategic vision for the peddling of antacid yoghurt to the European market. You could trace the connections with your finger, join the dots and whole new compounds would be summoned into activity.
B.
在等待室墙上的海报上有分子式图。它似乎出现的正是时候，对那化学过程的抽象图解似乎已在开始分解你在隔壁的的神经和肌肉。因为要生吞活剥的备考化学，我曾咽下大量的安定。我正在对自己长久幸福生活的可能做出校正。
There were chemical diagrams on the posters on the walls on the waiting room. It seemed appropriate at the time; still-life abstractions of the processes which had already begun to break down your nerves and your muscles in the next room. I cram diazepam as I once crammed for chemistry examinations. I am revising my options for a long and happy life.
C.
柏油路上有化学污渍：泄漏的空调，还有刹制动液和汽油。他坐在路边的时候一直嗅着手指，仿佛不太明白或者不认得这些气味。他说他这次从一个在埃克塞特举行的销售会议上归来，之前参加了告别酒会，但是小心的控制着酒量。你听见警笛在停滞的交通外盘旋。
There were chemical stains on the tarmac: the leak of air conditioning, brake fluid and petrol. He kept sniffing at his fingers as he sat by the roadside waiting as if he couldn’t quite understand or recognise their smell. He said he’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter; he’d stopped for farewell drinks earlier, but had kept a careful eye on his intake. You could hear the sirens above the idling traffic.
D.
保罗，在路边，在通往大马色的路口，所有滴答作响慢慢冷却的东西，所有羽翼和悔恨，所有这些信号都顺着那张我们内脏的线路图流转。那草草写就的船在肿胀的伤处被扯掉船底，一遍遍的冲刷我们回到岸上。
Paul, by the roadside, by the exit for Damascus, all ticking and cooled, all feathers and remorse, all of these signals routed like traffic through the circuit diagrams of our guts, those badly written boats torn bottomless in the swells, washing us forever ashore.
northpath
A.
当保罗在大马色路上倒下要死时，他们用路边捡的石头撞他的胸来复苏他。在二十一分里他没有生命体征时间当然长到使脑部的氧含量降低，产生幻觉和超卓的妄想。我的止痛药快吃完了，月光开始亮的让我受不了。
When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they resuscitated him by hitting him in the chest with stones gathered by the roadside. He was lifeless for twenty-one minutes, certainly long enough for the oxygen levels in his brain to have decreased and caused hallucinations and delusions of transcendence. I am running out of painkillers and the moon has become almost unbearably bright.
B.
挣扎着爬上山崖路的时候，有几分钟我腿疼得几乎让我看不见了。我吞下又一把止疼片，现在几乎清醒了。在我周围，岛屿已退入遥远的迷雾，这时月亮好像降到了我的手中指引着我。我可以看到从裤腰向心脏延伸着黑色密集的感染线。这多像我从低地向高处的天线行进时切割出的路线。
The pain in my leg sent me blind for a few minutes as I struggled up the cliff path: I swallowed another handful of painkillers and now I feel almost lucid. The island around me has retreated to a hazed distance, whilst the moon appears to have descended into my palm to guide me. I can see a thick black line of infection reaching for my heart from the waistband of my trousers. Through the fugue, it is all the world like the path I have cut from the lowlands towards the aerial.
C.
我把我的腿拖在后面，就像拖着那皱起来的两厢车，爆裂的轮胎和火花飞过我渐暗的视线。我吃光了止疼片，正跟着闪烁月光回家。当保罗在大马色路上倒下要死时，他们用皱起的车里的接地线让他心脏重跳，一共试了二十一次才让他醒转过来。
I will drag my leg behind me; I will drag it like a crumpled hatchback, tyres blown and sparking across the dimming lights of my vision. I am running out of painkillers and am following the flicker of the moon home. When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they restarted his heart with the jump leads from a crumpled hatchback; it took twenty-one attempts to convince it to wake up.
D.
金属撕裂的声音，牙齿划过岩石边缘，月光投下一个讯号。当我躺在你身边无法动弹时，发动机冷却的滴答声，从远处传来的呼声，都从我的心绪旁绕开。
A sound of torn metal, teeth running over the edge of the rocks, a moon that casts a signal. As I lay pinned beside you, the ticking of the cooling engine, and the calling from a great height, all my mind as a bypass.
overlook
我乘着无底的纸船开始航程，我要驾着它飞向月亮。我被折进一个时间的痕迹，人生的纸页中一处脆弱的地方。现在，你停在纸的另一边，我看见你的踪迹和着墨水被吸进纤维，那被打碎的植物里。当我们都浸满水，牢笼会化作尘，我们要成为一体。当这纸飞机离开山崖边，在黑暗中划出平行的航迹，我们会在一起。
I’ve begun my voyage in a paper boat without a bottom; I will fly to the moon in it. I have been folded along a crease in time, a weakness in the sheet of life. Now, you’ve settled on the opposite side of the paper to me; I can see your traces in the ink that soaks through the fibre, the pulped vegetation. When we become waterlogged, and the cage disintegrates, we will intermingle. When this paper aeroplane leaves the cliff edge, and carves parallel vapour trails in the dark, we will come together.
channel
如果唐纳利经历过这些，他会明白他就是自己的海岸线，如我一般。就如成为了这个岛屿，他也成为了自身的梅毒，退守到了燃烧的触突，礁石，和感染里。
If only Donnelly had experienced this, he would have realised he was his own shoreline, as am I. Just as I am becoming this island, so he became his syphilis, retreating into the burning synapses, the stones, the infection.
ascent1
A.
回到我的车后，手抖得厉害，头也被撞开。再见了含泪的婶婶和受惊的叔叔，再见了现象世界，再见了现实世界，再见了伍尔夫安普顿，再见了桑福德，再见了克罗默，再见了大马士革。峭壁的小路在露水中变滑，身有这种感染很难爬得上去。我必须挖掉腐烂的肉把它从天线上抛出，我必须让入新鲜的空气进入。
Returning to my car afterwards, hands still shaking and a head split open by the impact. Goodbye to tearful aunts and traumatised uncles, goodbye to the phenomenal, goodbye to the tangible, goodbye Wolverhampton, goodbye Sandford, goodbye Cromer, goodbye Damascus. This cliff path is slippery in the dew; it is hard to climb with such an infection. I must carve out the bad flesh and sling it from the aerial. I must become infused with the very air.
B.
车头灯光映在眼中，我在无底之岛上的岩洞里呆得太久。海中的生灵上浮水面，但没有海鸥带他们回巢。我被定住了：两只眼睛睁大了互相盯着。我成了一只受感染的腿，在上面划着标准地图上 M5 国道枢纽的交通线。我会在大腿一半的地方驶离，疾驰向我的艾丝特。
There are headlights reflected in these retinas, too long in the tunnels of my island without a bottom. The sea creatures have risen to the surface, but the gulls are not here to carry them back to their nests. I have become fixed: open and staring, an eye turned on itself. I have become an infected leg, whose tracking lines form a perfect map of the junctions of the M5. I will take the exit at mid-thigh and plummet to my Esther.
C.
我胃中的结石拉我下坠，确保我会一头栽下去。我会战胜这些讨厌的药丸，重获清爽。我的身体机能被堵塞，我血管被堵住。如果在到达山顶前我的腿没有烂掉，那会是个奇迹。在防抱死系统的电路中有二十一个连接，岛上有二十一种海鸥，回家的弯道到桑福德枢纽处有二十一英里。所有这些事情不可能，也不会是巧合。
The stones in my stomach will weigh me down and ensure my descent is true and straight. I will break through the fog of these godforsaken pills and achieve clarity. All my functions are clogged, all my veins are choked. If my leg doesn’t rot off before I reach the summit, it will be a miracle. There are twenty-one connections in the circuit diagram of the anti-lock brakes, there are twenty-one species of gull inhabiting these islands , it is twenty-one miles between the Sandford junction and the turn off for home. All these things cannot, will not, be a co-incidence.
D.
腰弯的像一个钉子，一个衣钩，像个紧紧抱住轮子的溺水的人，醉酒而眩晕，在月光下被冲上迷失的海滩，如同折断破碎的翅膀。我们劈砍，飞行然后疾停，那些该死的止疼药。我要起飞逃离这世事无常。
Bent back like a nail, like a hangnail, like a drowning man clung onto the wheel, drunk and spiraled, washed onto the lost shore under a moon as fractured as a shattered wing. We cleave, we are flight and suspended, these wretched painkillers, this form inconstant. I will take flight. I will take flight.
ascent2
A.
艾丝特，他没喝醉，他根本没有。他没有和唐纳利喝酒或者在海边与雅克布森争吵，也未曾奔向这新兴群岛的迷乱海滩和岬角。他也没有故意让自己的帽子被撞得像是皱缩的旧面纸。他的挡风玻璃没有像天堂地图上的星星一样撒了一地。他的画作刻着电路图，奇怪的鱼儿正赶走海鸥。刹车带发出的磷光照亮了从埃克塞特往大马士革去的路。
He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all. He had not drunk with Donnelly or spat Jakobson back at the sea; he had not careered across the lost shores and terminal beaches of this nascent archipelago. He did not intend his bonnet to be crumpled like a spent tissue by the impact. His windscreen was not star-studded all over like a map of the heavens. His paintwork etched with circuit diagrams, strange fish to call the gulls away. The phosphorescence of the skid marks lighting the M5 all the way from Exeter to Damascus.
B.
恐慌而目盲，被堵塞交通的轰鸣声弄得耳聋，心脏在往大马士革去的路上停跳。保罗，坐在在路边蜷起来像一只海鸥，一只他妈的海鸥。像得了梅毒的制图师一样没用而厄运缠身，像垂死的牧羊人，一只感染的腿，一颗注定堵在桑福德和埃克塞特之间的结石。艾丝特，他没喝醉，根本没醉。他经过的所有大路小路和隧洞都无可避免的把他带到了相撞的时刻。这不是有记录的自然情况：他不应该带着他药物和电路图坐在这里，完全不应该坐这儿。
Blind with panic, deaf with the roar of the caged traffic, heart stopped on the road to Damascus, Paul, sat at the roadside hunched up like a gull, like a bloody gull. As useless and as doomed as a syphilitic cartographer, a dying goatherd, an infected leg, a kidney stone blocking the traffic bound for Sandford and Exeter. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all; all his roads and his tunnels and his paths led inevitably to this moment of impact. This is not a recorded natural condition: he should not be sat there with his chemicals and his circuit diagrams, he should not be sat there at all.
C.
我抽干了这片水域寻找隐士的骨骼，寻找唐纳利的踪迹，寻找雅克布森的羊群的任何踪迹，寻找任何能证明他有罪的空酒瓶。我二十一次梭巡过这段公路，希望重建他车行的轨迹，在他心脏停跳死去的那一刻，他能看到的只有桑福德枢纽上的月亮。艾丝特，他没有喝醉，他根本没醉，这不是他的错，是并行线毁了他。这不是个有记录的一般情况，海鸥平时不会在高速路上飞的这么低，让他的车转了向。他车上的油漆在公路上刮出了线，像一次感染，直冲着心脏而来。
I have dredged these waters for the bones of the hermit, for the traces of Donnelly, for any sign of Jakobson’s flock, for the empty bottle that would incriminate him. I have scoured this stretch of motorway twenty-one times attempting to recreate his trajectory, the point when his heart stopped dead and all he saw was the moon over the Sandford junction. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all, and it was not his fault, it was the converging lines that doomed him. This is not a recorded natural condition, the gulls do not fly so low over the motorway and cause him to swerve. The paint scored away from his car in lines, like an infection, making directly for the heart.
D.
在路边，海鸥在旧帽中栖息。不远处警笛大作，金属为我们的不幸呻吟。只记得我在这夜里散步，陈年的面包和海鸥的骨骼。老去的唐纳利在酒吧攥着他的酒，老去的艾丝特在和我们的孩子一同走着。老保罗，和以前一样，他颤颤巍巍，径自关上了灯。
A gull perched on a spent bonnet, sideways, whilst the sirens fell through the middle distance and the metal moaned in grief about us. I am about this night in walking, old bread and gull bones, old Donnelly at the bar gripping his drink, old Esther walking with our children, old Paul, as ever, old Paul he shakes and he shivers and he turns off his lights alone.
summit
A.
我已经无处可继续攀登。我将抛掉这身体，进入天空。
I have run out of places to climb. I will abandon this body and take to the air.
B.
我们将在天空留下一对航迹，像刻进石头的白线。
We will leave twin vapour trails in the air, white lines etched into these rocks.
C.
我就是天线，当我离开的时候，这消息我将会告诉每一颗星。
I am the aerial. In my passing, I will send news to each and every star.
ascension
A.
亲爱的艾丝特：我烧掉了我的东西、我的书和这死亡证明。我会写满整个岛屿。谁是雅克布森？谁记得他？唐纳利写到过他，但是谁是唐纳利？谁又记得他？我涂画、雕刻、开凿，把我能回想起来的他的一切凿进这地方。也会有人到这海岸来怀念我。我会像无底的小岛那样从海中升起，像岩石一样积聚，成为一座天线，一个让他们对你永志不忘的标记。我们总是被吸引到这里：有一天，海鸥会回来，在我们的骨骼和记忆上作巢。从我自己身旁飞过时，我望向左边，看见艾丝特唐纳利；在我身边飞翔，我望向右边，看见保罗雅克布森，在我身边飞翔。他们将在空气中刻下白色的线条，直到大陆。在那里，救援会来到。
Dear Esther. I have burnt my belongings, my books, this death certificate. Mine will be written all across this island. Who was Jakobson, who remembers him? Donnelly has written of him, but who was Donnelly, who remembers him? I have painted, carved, hewn, scored into this space all that I could draw from him. There will be another to these shores to remember me. I will rise from the ocean like an island without bottom, come together like a stone, become an aerial, a beacon that they will not forget you. We have always been drawn here: one day the gulls will return and nest in our bones and our history. I will look to my left and see Esther Donnelly, flying beside me. I will look to my right and see Paul Jakobson, flying beside me. They will leave white lines carved into the air to reach the mainland, where help will be sent.
B.
亲爱的艾丝特：我烧毁了大马士的峭壁，我对它过于痴迷。我的心就是我的腿和这无底纸船上环绕蚀刻的一条黑线。你必然是我的巢，在那里，完整的卵像化石般生成。来我这里，把黑色的小花打碎然后送进这天空。因这疾病，得有希望，因这岛屿，得有飞翔，因这悲伤，得有爱。
Dear Esther. I have burned the cliffs of Damascus, I have drunk deep of it. My heart is my leg and a black line etched on the paper all along this boat without a bottom. You are all the world like a nest to me, in which eggs unbroken form like fossils, come together, shatter and send small black flowers to the very air. From this infection, hope. From this island, flight. From this grief, love.
comeback
A.
回来！
Come back!
B.
回来。。。
Come back…