劳伦·格罗夫朗读伊丽莎白·哈德威克的作品

这里是《纽约客》杂志的纽约客小说播客。我是黛博拉·特雷斯曼，《纽约客》的小说编辑。每个月，我们都会邀请一位作家从杂志档案中挑选一篇小说来朗读并讨论。本月，我们将聆听伊丽莎白·哈德威克于1979年2月发表在《纽约客》上的《忠诚者》。

This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month, we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, we're going to hear The Faithful by Elizabeth Hardwick, which appeared in The New Yorker in February 1979.

在阿姆斯特丹，我们认识许多人，没有一个从记忆中溜走。就在刚才的梦境里，我又被拉回到一位名叫西蒙娜的女画家身边，还有她那位热情的浪漫追求者——永恒的丈夫，Z医生。

In Amsterdam, we knew many people, and not a single one has slipped from memory. Just now, dreaming, I am drawn back to a woman painter named Simone and to her fervent romancer, the eternal husband, doctor z.

这个故事由劳伦·格罗夫挑选，她已出版七部小说作品，包括短篇小说集《精致的可食用鸟类》和《佛罗里达》，后者在2018年赢得了故事奖。嗨，劳伦。

The story was chosen by Lauren Groff, who's published seven books of fiction, including the story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida, which won the story prize in 2018. Hi, Lauren.

嗨，黛博拉。

Hi, Deborah.

你今天朗读的《忠诚者》后来成为伊丽莎白·哈德威克小说《不眠之夜》的一个章节，该书于同年1979年出版。你告诉我你已经读了那本书15遍。

So the story you're reading today, The Faithful, became a chapter of Elizabeth Hardwick's novel, Sleepless Nights, which was published later the same year in 1979. You told me that you've read that book 15 times.

至少15遍。而且不瞒你说，我昨天又重读了一遍。作为一本完整的书，它对我来说意义非凡。嗯，这是本小书，大约130页左右。

At least. And, no, I just read it again yesterday. So it makes sense to me as a whole book. I well, it's it's a short book. It's a 130 pages, something like that.

这是我最爱的书之一。每次阅读都能发现新意。它像颗宝石，对吧？你在手中转动它——

It's one of my favorites. Every time you read it, you see something new. It's like a jewel. Right? You turn it in the hand.

总能发现某种全新、不同且奇异的东西。所以它无疑是我生命中的试金石书籍之一。

You find something radically new and different and strange. So it's just one of those touchstone books for me for sure.

你认为是什么让它具有这种特质？

What do you think is it that makes it that way?

是啊。这些年来，或者说几十年来，我一直在思考这本书。作为小说作品它很特别，对吧？它没有亚里士多德式的故事弧线。

Yeah. I've been thinking about this book for years now or decades. And it's unusual for a work of fiction. Right? It doesn't have the Aristotelian arc.

对吧？从高潮攀升到结局的过程。明白吗？这完全是一个星座般的故事。它像是从伊丽莎白·哈德威克真实生活的血肉与骨骼中写就的，尽管她坚称这纯属虚构作品。

Right? The rise into a climax to a denouement. Right? It's very much a constellated story. It's a story that feels written from the flesh and the blood and the bone of Elizabeth Hardwick's actual life, while she said that it was very much a work of fiction.

对吧？所以书中有些时刻真实得令人难以承受，几乎真实到她难以把握。而落在纸面上时，它们自然变成了别的东西。另外，我了解伊丽莎白·哈德威克的生活境遇，因此我确实感觉这本书是围绕一个极深的创伤写成的。这是个间接谈论伤痛的故事。

Right? So so there are these moments that seem unbearably true, almost so true that she's having a hard time holding them in her hands. And then on the page, of course, they become something different. And And I think the other thing too is I know the circumstances of Elizabeth Hardwick's life, and so I do feel as if this book is written around a very deep wound. And it's a story talking about the wound without talking about it directly.

这让我重新感受到那种渴望与思念的情绪。

It brings me back to this feeling of longing and yearning.

是的。而且这本书是以独立章节的形式写成的，每章都可以脱离整体单独阅读。如你所说，它没有传统小说的标准叙事弧线。每章节都有微小的起伏推进。你认为她为何采用这种方式？

Yeah. And it's very much written in these individual chapters that can be read separately from the whole. And as you said, it doesn't have the standard arc of a novel. Each chapter has a bit of an arc and progression. Why do you think she approached it that way?

是因为她断断续续写作的缘故吗？还是

Was it just that she was writing it in pieces? Or

她在不同章节聚焦不同人物。比如有个关于比莉·哈乐黛的精彩章节，简直令人惊叹。最后一章则讲述几位曾在她生活中从事家政服务的人，非常感人。所以我认为这本书不以情节为基础。

She's focusing on different people in different chapters. I mean, there's a whole amazing chapter about Billie Holiday in it. It's just an an astonishing chapter. The last chapter is about a number of people who worked in domestic labor in her life, and it's really touching and moving. So I think that it's not based on plot.

对吧？这本书让我想起其他几部无情节的杰作，比如乔·布雷纳德的《我记得》或安妮·埃尔诺的《悠悠岁月》，它们都紧紧围绕某种读者或许难以完全触及的东西展开。

Right? I this is very much a book that reminds me of a number of other sort of plotless amazing books like I Remember by Jo Brainard or Les Aneurs, the years by Anil Neaux, right, where it feels deeply focused around something that is slightly out of the reach of the reader perhaps.

没错。无论那是自传体还是比我们预期更私密的内容。你

Right. And whether that's autobiography or just something more personal than we would expect. You

明白吗？书中存在非常清晰的隐藏结构，读者能感受到这种清晰，但或许又有些疏离感。

know? There's a buried architecture that was very clear, and it feels very clear, but it's maybe a little bit distant to the reader perhaps.

你最初是如何接触到哈德威克的作品的？

How did you first come across Hardwick's work?

我是《纽约书评》经典系列的狂热粉丝。我想我几乎读遍了他们出版的所有作品，其中许多书都令人叹为观止。这本书应该是他们最早推出的作品之一，我大概已经送出了三十本。我太喜欢它了，总想推荐给每个还没读过的人。

I am a New York review of Books Classic Freak. I think I read exactly everything they've ever put out, and so many of those books are absolutely astonishing. So this was one of the first books, I believe, that they put out, and I think I've given away 30 copies of this book. I love it so much. I try to give it to everyone who hasn't read it.

偶然读到这本书后，它就在我脑海中挥之不去。可能还毁了我的写作风格——我总忍不住模仿伊丽莎白·哈德威克的文笔，但这实在太难了。是啊，我想我们

I stumbled on it, and it took hold in my brain. And I it probably has ruined some of my writing because I tried to write like Elizabeth Hardwick, it's very hard to do. Yeah. Well, I think we

现在该听朗读了。稍后我们再继续讨论。现在有请劳伦·格罗夫朗读伊丽莎白·哈德威克的《忠贞》。

should listen to it now. So we'll talk some more after the reading. And now here's Lauren Groff reading the faithful by Elizabeth Hardwick.

《忠贞》。青春的游历，物价的低廉，以及无畏的贫穷。所有热爱奥兰治亲王的人们，请鼓起勇气随我前行。那年是1951年，我们来到荷兰。三百多年前，笛卡尔曾形容自己是阿姆斯特丹唯一不因商务驻留的外邦人。

The faithful. The travels of youth, the cheapness of things and one's intrepid poverty. All ye who love the prince of orange, take heart and follow me. So it was Holland that year, 1951. Descartes, more than three hundred years before, had spoken of himself as the only foreigner in Amsterdam not on business.

那年我们在欧洲所到之处——除了阿姆斯特丹——都能遇见和我们如出一辙的美国人：新婚燕尔或尚未婚配的年轻人，大多揣着奖学金和微薄积蓄。十二月的我们裹着冬衣，褶皱里还藏着在破旧行李箱中蛰伏了整个夏天的痕迹。我们循着莫特利的《荷兰共和国兴衰史》和弗罗明顿《往昔大师》小巧的费顿版来到荷兰。阿姆斯特丹市中心不起眼的尼古拉斯·维滕卡德街，这条繁忙的中产阶级街道毗邻浑浊水域，西望可见国立博物馆的尖塔。

Everywhere we went in Europe that year, everywhere except for Amsterdam, there were Americans just like ourselves, Those who had not been married long or were not married at all. Most of us with fellowships and a little savings. We were to be seen now in December wearing winter coats pleaded with the wrinkles of a long summer's rest in torn suitcases. Holland led there by Motley's The Rise of the Dutch Republic and Fromington's The Masters of Pastime in its neat little Feidon edition. An unfashionable in the center of Amsterdam, the Nicholas Wittendkada, a busy bourgeois street bordering on sloppy waters and the towers of the Rakesh Museum in view toward the west.

黄红砖墙的房屋带着石阶，以二十世纪二十年代务实得近乎刻板的体面姿态排列着。外立面的秋日瓷砖装饰，门廊上零星点缀的紫琥珀色扇形玻璃。几个世纪的主妇们用深色镶板营造出温馨闷热的小房间，在铺着地毯的餐桌上悬挂着带流苏丝绸灯罩的圆形吊灯。房子不算漂亮，房东太太却为公寓忧心——这里曾是她自己的家，每件物品都承载着回忆。当迎上她焦虑的目光时，我和他异口同声：每个国度都是奇迹。

Houses with stone steps and made of yellow or red brick were lined up in a businesslike practical nineteen twenties decency and dullness. Autumnal tile decorations on the facades and here and there fans of purple and amber glass over the doorways. Housewives of centuries had created the pleasantly stuffy little rooms with their dark paneling, had hung round lamps with shades of old tasseled silk over the carpeted dining tables. The house was not handsome, and the landlady worried about the apartment because it had been her own, and everything in it was dear to her. Anyway, he and I said as we met her anxious glance, what a triumph every country is.

我们注意到，小国的温馨惬意往往能抵御侵略者的强取豪夺。没错。那个又矮又圆的亮黑色炉子像头温顺的老驴般兢兢业业工作多年，如今却因陌生人的笨拙操作而整日整夜发出笨重的怨怼。刚被哄燃的炭火转瞬即灭，我们钻进古老厚被褥下的冰冷被单，床架头尾雕镂的锋利枝叶果实金属装饰将人牢牢禁锢，成为春天最尖锐的提醒。天光乍现时，整座城市便在黎明苏醒。

We observed that the coziness of small countries could not always be expropriated by an invader. Yes. A squat, round, shiny black stove that had worked for years with the solemn obedience of an old donkey tormented our days and nights with its bulky resentment of a new and ignorant hand. Perplexing dying of the embers so soon after they had been coaxed to blaze, we crept into the cold sheets under the ancient thick coverlets and were held at head and foot by the heavy frame of the bed, pierced by the sharp metal of carved leaves and fruits, acute reminders of spring. Daylight came in a rush, and the whole town came alive at dawn.

面包师和煤炭商来得如此迅捷，仿佛彻夜穿戴等候。贪婪的美国旅人们欢呼着迎接新体验的黎明。冬日冰雨掠过美丽的城市，将阿姆斯特尔河水染成铅灰。春日白昼与黄昏时分，我们常在对面的门廊观察失业印尼人的生活。他们的祖先曾是流放者，从须德海的沼泽被放逐到雅加达的潮湿空气里。

The baker and coal seller arrived with such swiftness they might have been dressed and waiting throughout the night. Greedy travelers, Americans, hail the dawn of a new experience. In the winter, sleet blew through the beautiful town, graying the waters of the Amstel. In the spring, in daylight, and in the early evening, we used to watch on the porch that faced us, the life of the unemployed Indonesians. Their ancestors had been exiles once flung out from the swamps of the Zuiderzee to the humid airs of Jakarta.

如今后代们作为殖民地的地理奇观重返故土，回到水闸与围垦地的家园——这个陌生的故土以恰如其分的懊恼接纳他们，像对待一张迟来的账单。印尼人聚集在门廊，如同荷兰人伟大能量的迟暮见证：古老的地图绘制者、造船匠、放贷人、钻石切割师、收留犹太人/胡格诺派/清教徒的庇护所。我们凝视的这些结合，曾发生在难以想象的甘蔗种植园里，在耗尽精力的帝国酷热中。那些有着液体般美丽棕肤的女人，绸缎般娇小的岳母，尘埃肤色的孩童，他们纤细如鸡骨的手腕脚踝，与毛发蓬乱、长满雀斑的敦实荷兰男人形成反差——后者虽貌不惊人却令人安心。

Now their children were returned to colon's geographical curiosities back once more to the sluices and polders of home, the unfamiliar homeland that received them with the chagrin proper to what they were. A delayed bill finally arriving. The Indonesians gathered on their porch, sitting there as a depressed late testament to the great energy of the Dutch, to old mapmakers, shipbuilders, moneylenders, diamond cutters, receivers of Jews, Huguenots, Puritans. The unions we were staring at had taken place on unimaginable sugar plantations in the deranging heat of exhausting empires. Beautiful liquid brown women, silky, petite mother-in-law, dust colored child, their little wrists and ankles delicate as chicken bones, and the heavy, dry, freckled, tufted Dutchman, homely and reassuring.

战争阴霾仍笼罩着这个国家，但我们的荷兰朋友都在读瓦莱里·拉博斯的《巴纳巴斯日记》，沉迷于富豪主角狡黠时髦的做派及其对...的癖好。阿姆斯特丹街头甚至乡间都挤满居家人群，每个都像落魄贵族般共享空间，如同树木默默接纳每晚成群结队的椋鸟栖息。整个欧洲的智慧似乎也在此筑巢，带着某种忧伤，某种窒息感。不，不是这样。

The disasters of the war still lay over the country, and yet all of our Dutch friends were reading Valerie LaBose a o Barnabas, his diary, enjoying the sly chic of the fabulously rich hero and his addiction to. The crowds of Amsterdam and even the countryside filled with people in their houses, each one a sort of declassed nobleman sharing the space as a tree would patiently accept the nightly roosting of flocks and flocks of starlings. All the knowledge of Europe seemed to be nesting there too. In a certain sadness, a gasping for breath, No. No.

这点压力不算什么。别在意。我只是突然怀念起群山。在阿姆斯特丹时，我们认识许多人，没有一个被遗忘。方才梦中，我又想起那位女画家西蒙娜，以及她那位热情似浪的永恒情人，Z医生。

The strain is nothing. Take no notice of it. I have just had a wish for the mountains. In Amsterdam, we knew many people, and not a single one has slipped from memory. Just now dreaming, I am drawn back to a woman painter named Simone and to her fervent romancer, the eternal husband, doctor z.

Z医生有着与他那学识渊博的小圈子相称的、适度的、教养良好的自我主义，正符合阿姆斯特丹知识阶层的做派。他事业有成，部分源于他在血液疾病领域的医学成就，部分则来自风流韵事。由于他花在女人身上的时间太多，若被人以丈夫身份铭记，他或许会感到惊讶。在荷兰，生活的安逸是如此彻底。即便是那些在其他地方足以让爱侣挚友永远决裂的激烈情感破裂，也无法扰乱这份安宁。

Doctor z had the moderate, well nourished egotism suitable to his small, learned group of colleagues and friends, and proper to the educated professional world of Amsterdam. He had his success, some of it medical, as a specialist in blood diseases, and some of it amorous. Because of the time he devoted to women, he might be surprised to find himself remembered as a husband. In Holland, the coziness of life is so complete. It cannot even be disturbed by the violent emotional ruptures that tear couples and friends forever apart in other places.

相反，他们的前夫前妻总与现任伴侣出现在相同的晚宴和生日庆典上。离婚者与旧情人们混杂相处，仿佛过去是掺入当下这桶橄榄油的醋。人能逃往何处？这群不安分者的新结合，不过是熟悉家具的重新摆放。房屋与生活就此发生有限度的改变。

Instead, their first husbands and first wives are always at the same dinner parties and birthday celebrations with their second husbands and wives. Divorces and fractured loves mingle together as if the past were a sort of vinegar blending with the oil of the present. Where can one flee to? New alliances among this restless people are like the rearrangement of familiar furniture. Houses and lives are thus transformed up to a point.

亲爱的你看，街上拉小提琴的人和他的萨克斯风儿子。硬币正从窗口坠落。阴影掠过，一切重归井然。她搬进了他的位置。

My dear, look. There is the man who plays his violin in the street, and there is his son with the saxophone. Coins are falling from the windows. The shadow has passed, and everything is in order once more. She moves into his place.

赫林运河区，大有改善。他妻子带着存在主义哲学著作搬去了别处。重组却不迁徙，何等惬意。市中心褪色的老地图浸在阳光里。Z医生终日穿着白大褂，晚间系红蓝条纹领带，生于阿姆斯特丹。

The Heringacht, a great improvement. His wife settles someplace else taking along her volumes of the existentialist philosophers. What a pleasure to be recombining and yet not going any place. The old map of the central city with its faded tintings catches the sunlight. Doctor z, all day in his white coat and in the evenings wearing a tie of bright red and blue stripes, was born in Amsterdam.

但东方血液在他血管里流淌。他身上带着游牧气质。尽管周遭不乏更张扬、更英俊的年轻人，他却以温和而强烈的自信占据自己的空间。他的私生活丰富多彩却不失深思。他的独特之处在于，与其说是更替，不如说是累积。

But the blood of the East ran in his veins. There was something shakish about him. And although there were more flamboyant men around, handsomer and younger, he occupied his space with a kindly intense assurance. His personal life was rich in variety and yet thoughtful. His originality was that he did not shift so much as acquire.

忠诚、体贴、温厚的纵情，是这位不忠丈夫的特质。某种程度上，他像每年参加百米赛跑的跛足者。当他得分时，众人喝彩。当然他的风流事迹不算多，作为常受邀至大学讲台领奖的严肃忙人，他的纠葛也如其人般朴实庄重，却值得投入，令人沉溺。

Fidelity, consideration, sweet natured luxuriousness were the marks of this faithless husband. In a way, he was like a cripple who yearly enters the 100 yard dash. Bravo, everyone cried out when he scored. Of course, his exploits were not large in number, and he was a busy serious man who was often called to the platform of universities and academies to receive honors. Still, he had his entanglements, rather plain and serious like himself, but worthy, intense, absorbing.

他从未离开发妻，却将每个情人都变成了妻子。“税款缴了吗？”他会问。“这周给母亲打电话没？噢亲爱的，我不喜欢这咳嗽声。”

Without ever leaving his only wife, he turned each of the women in his life into a wife. Have you paid your taxes? He would say. Have you called your mother this week? Oh, dearest, I do not like the sound of that cough.

多次他冲动欲逃，自以为准备好或被爱逼迫着开创新生活。但对舍不得丢弃任何东西的人而言，这不可能。“亲密关系永远是种承诺。”他常叹息。男女间神圣的交流——床上絮语、咖啡馆闲谈、电话粥、虚度光阴。关于时间这美丽而善变的金色枷锁，他有什么不了解？

Many times, he was seized by the impulse to flee and thought himself ready or forced by love to make a new life. But this was impossible for one who could not throw anything away. What a commitment intimacy always is, he would sigh. The sacred flow between men and women in bed conversing in a cafe, talking on the telephone, passing time. What didn't he know about the treacherous, beautiful golden yoke of time?

人还会喜欢老同学和表亲吗？这不是重点。他们是你的同学、你的表亲，就像你永远存在的大脚趾。她始终在那里。他们曾被战争分离，最终又回到原来的老房子团聚。

Does one still enjoy his old schoolmates, his first cousins? That is not the point. They're one's schoolmates, one's cousins, and there is always something there like the enduring presence of one's big toe. She had been there forever. They had been separated by the war, but managed to get back together in their same old house.

梅弗劳迪斯喜欢被称为夫人，因为她是法国人。身材娇小的她，在青春初期必定曾是那种娇小紧凑、永不改变的人，她们找到某种外在风格并接受它，就像接受一件建筑作为购买物一样。当她的年轻黑发开始变灰时，她将其染回旧色，并以她年轻时的短发波波头造型示人。每天早晨起床那一刻，她都会用黑色睫毛膏重新描绘睫毛。她戴着天鹅绒贝雷帽，坚定地保持她的卢克风格，这像号角一样宣告她不是荷兰人。

Mefraudis liked to be called madame because she was French. Small, she must have become in her first youth one of those petite compact persons who never change, who find a certain exterior style and accept it as one accepts a piece of architecture for a purchase. When her young black hair began to turn gray, she dyed it back to the old color and wore it in the short bob of her youth. The moment she got out of bed in the morning, she recolored her eyelashes with black mascara. She wore velvet berets and held firmly to her luke, which announced like a trumpet that she was not Dutch.

她是法国人。除此之外，她不符合任何关于法国女人的观念。她不擅长烹饪。她对吸引男人不感兴趣。她在家庭账目上没有精明的手段。

She was French. Otherwise, she did not conform to any of the notions of a French woman. She did not cook well. She was not interested in attracting men. She did not have a shrewd hand with household accounts.

她让一位来自乡村的荷兰老妇人照看房子。除了大量的阅读和对法国戏剧的狂热，泽夫人无所事事。她每天在法国报纸上阅读戏剧资讯，并经常去巴黎，每晚观看一场演出。见过她几次后，你会发现她虚荣但不爱争论。生活中很少有事物对她来说是新鲜的。

She let an old Dutch woman from the country look after the house. Madame Zie was idle except for the enormous amount of reading she did and except for her passion for the French theater. She read about the theater in French papers every day and went to Paris often taking in a performance every night. After you had seen her a few times, you found that she was vain but not argumentative. Little appeared to her as new in life.

很少有事情能让她感到惊讶。这很吸引人。她认为粗俗、简单的自私是古老的真理，而人们正试图掩饰这种新力量。Z医生发现自己生活中的事件充满了独特、意外和难以解释的光芒，有时当她表达对重复原则的信念时，他会咬着嘴唇感到恼火。尽管如此，他们生活在深刻的亲密关系中。

Little came as a surprise. It was appealing. She had the idea that a gross, uncomplicated self interest was the old truth that a new force a person was trying to disguise. Doctor z who found the events of his own life flushed with the glow of the unique, the unexpected, the inexplicable sometimes chewed his lip in an annoyance when she expressed her belief in the principle of repetition. They lived in a profound intimacy nevertheless.

从荷兰，我写了许多抱怨的信。亲爱的M，房子多么冷，我们在喝了太多杜松子酒后如何争吵，等等，等等。抱怨的信，而这却是我生命中最快乐的时期之一。带着怎样的感激，我第一次回望欧洲。就这样，维罗纳的故事结束了。

From Holland, I wrote many complaining letters. Dear m, how cold the house is, how we fight after too much gin, etcetera, etcetera. Complaining letters, and this one of the happiest periods of my life. With what gratitude I look back on Europe for the first time. So that wraps up Verona.

我们领略了伊斯坦布尔的破窗和辉煌的凌乱。以及在荷兰的漫长时光，有时间乘火车去哈勒姆，看老济贫院的管理者们被弗兰斯·哈尔斯在晚年用无情的黑白苦难描绘。那些欢笑的骑士们或许吃了太多牡蛎，喝了太多啤酒，心满意足地不情愿死去，留下穷人和他们的守护者从致命的快乐中解脱，靠慈善萎缩，带着他们黝黑坚强的面孔继续生活。安特卫普和根特，多么美妙的名字，坚硬如广场上的厚重鹅卵石。阿姆斯特丹，一座读者的城市。

We take in the cracked windows and the brilliant dishevelment of Istanbul. And the long time in Holland, time to take trains, went to Harlem to see the old almshouse governors painted in their unforgiving black and white misery by Franz Halls in his last days. The laughing Gavaliers perhaps had eaten too many oysters, drunk too much beer, and died a replete unwilling death, leaving the poor and their guardians freed by a bitter life from the killing pleasures to shrivel on charity, live on with their strong blackening faces. Antwerp and Ghent, what wonderful names hard as the heavy cobbles in the square. Amsterdam, a city of readers.

整晚，你似乎都能听到翻页的声音。法语、意大利语、英语和被鄙视的德语的页面。那些金发脑袋记住了奥维德、叶芝、波勒，也记住了苦难、躲藏、冰冻，书籍和战争的重量。Z医生在他的办公室里雇了一位护士，一位看起来清新的未婚女性，她节俭地住在市中心外，每天骑自行车长途跋涉。她偶尔与Z医生共度下午，如今据传言，这些下午变得像体检一样敷衍且有益健康。

All night long, you seem to hear the turning of pages. Pages of French, Italian, English, and the despised German. Those fair heads remembered Ovid, Yeats, Bohler, and remembered suffering, hiding, freezing, the weight of books and wars. Doctor z had acquired the nurse in his office, a fresh looking woman who had never married and who lived frugally outside the center, a long trip on her bicycle. She had her occasional afternoons with doctor z, afternoons now grown according to gossip as perfunctory and health giving as a checkup.

哦，那些负担。Z医生在西蒙娜的丈夫离开她后接纳了她，这位画家。他轻推其他两位让出空间。西蒙娜常被称为阿姆斯特丹最独立的女性。她也是人们谈论的唯一女画家，正是她长期焦虑的自我确立斗争带来了这种独立，如果确实如此的话。

Oh, the burdens. Doctor z acquired Simone, the painter, after her husband left her. He nudged the other two to make room. Simone was often spoken of as the most independent woman in Amsterdam. She was also the only female painter anyone talked about, and it was from her long anxious struggle to establish herself that the independence had arrived, if indeed it had.

她并未因做得好而表现出特别的快乐或自信。"为什么画画会让你快乐？"她说，"这不是消遣。"她的神经疲惫不堪，强烈倾向于忧郁和疲惫。然而，尽管她自认为被生活磨损，她总是在运动中，总是跑上跑下通往五楼工作室的楼梯。

She did not display any special happiness or confidence from doing something well. Why should painting pictures make you happy? She said, it is not a diversion. Her nerves were frazzled, and she had a strong leaning toward melancholy and exhaustion. Yet worn down by life as she saw herself to be, she was always in movement, always running up and down the stairs to her studio on the Fifth Floor.

在她焦躁的疲惫中，西蒙娜是一个引人注目的人物，穿着她在旅行中从旧货店购买的破旧神秘衣物。缎子或花布裙子、衬衫和夹克，巴尔干装饰，旧珠子，披肩，围巾，耳环。效果有时像一种疯狂的节俭，有时她又成功驾驭，就像佛罗伦萨的教会显贵穿着磨损的天鹅绒和破碎的皮毛，从大教堂的祭坛释放鸽子。如果她是男人，或许会成为红衣主教。她出生时是天主教徒，尽管这在自由主义阿姆斯特丹的知识分子世界中已被搁置，那里是托洛茨基主义、社会主义和无政府主义学问的某种档案馆。

In her agitated fatigue, Simone was a striking figure in tattered mysterious clothes that she apparently bought in junk shops on her travels. Skirts and blouses and jackets of satin or flowered cloth, Balkan decorations, old beads, capes, shawls, earrings. The effect was sometimes that of a deranged frugality, and other times she brought it off, like the church dignitaries in Florence when they go in their worn velvets and shredded furs to release the dove from the altar of the Duomo. Perhaps if she had been a man, she would have become a cardinal. She had been born a Catholic, and although this had been set aside in the libertarian Amsterdam intellectual world, which was a sort of archive of Trotskyist, socialist, and anarchist learning.

人们有时会看到西蒙娜披着几条可怜兮兮的大披肩，乔装打扮溜进教堂。有传言说，她或许是在为她那位曾与纳粹合作的兄弟的灵魂祈祷。西蒙娜的丈夫看起来像位高山滑雪运动员，实则是个历史学教授。他确实独自去了奥地利进行长途滑雪度假，大约六个月后，一位美国新女性来到了阿姆斯特丹。“我一直想要个美国人。”丈夫说道。

Simone was sometimes seen slipping into church wearing several large shawls in pitiful disguise. It was whispered that perhaps she was praying for the soul of her brother who had collaborated with the Nazis. Simone's husband looked like an alpine skier and was instead a professor of history. He actually went off alone on a long skiing holiday in Austria, And in about six months, a new woman arrived in Amsterdam, an American. I've always wanted an American, the husband said.

Z医生同情西蒙娜，对她丈夫的满不在乎感到愤怒，更对他与漂亮美国人的荒唐幸福感到愤慨。作为被记忆束缚的人，Z医生本可以采取不同的处理方式。他开始引用普希金小说《上尉的女儿》中提到的俄罗斯民歌：“若你找到比我更好的人，便会忘记我；若遇到不如我的，你将铭记。”

Doctor z was sympathetic to Simone and outraged by the husband's complacency and more by his ridiculous happiness with the pretty American. The doctor would have managed differently somehow in some way, man of binding memories that he was. He took to quoting the Russian folk song mentioned in Pushkin's story, The Captain's Daughter. If you find one better than me, you'll forget me. If one who is worse, you'll remember.

“更差？他现在怎么知道？如果真变成那样，就太迟了。”Z夫人坚持道。无论缓慢与否，Z医生的二重奏逐渐变成了三重奏。他和妻子认识西蒙娜多年，这难道不是有利条件吗？

Worse, how does he know now? And if it turns out that way, it will be too late, madam z insisted. Slowly or not so slowly, doctor z's duet became a trio. He and his wife had known Simone for years. Was that not favorable?

那位前夫不是正和他的美国女友住在西蒙娜楼下的公寓里吗？Z医生天性被动，也就是说，他常被引导做出截然相反的行动和情绪。当然，在恋情初期，这种天生的被动性会消失无踪，他会以狂热的情感爆发开始。

Wasn't the ex husband living with his American in the apartment below Simone's? Doctor z was a passive man by nature. That is, he was often led to actions and moods quite the contrary. Certainly, at the beginning of his affairs, this natural passivity took flight. He began in a frenzy of passionate feeling.

他坠入爱河，酗酒过度，匆匆完成工作后很晚才回家吃饭，有时甚至午夜才归。他的巢穴被新的风暴撼动，鸟群开始聒噪。妻子表示这完全在她预料之中，对此毫无兴趣。

He fell in love. He drank too much. He rushed through his work as quickly as possible and got home very late for dinner and sometimes not until midnight. His nest was shaken by the new windstorm and the squawking of birds began. His wife said that this was exactly what she had expected and that it did not interest her.

西蒙娜犹豫不决，但痴迷的Z医生拿着剧院门票出现了。当他们在家门口遇见她丈夫和那个美国女孩时，他紧紧挽住她的手臂。很快她沮丧地叹息道自己也陷入了爱河。护士整天哭泣，甚至在病人面前也不例外。当西蒙娜偶尔打电话到诊所时，护士会辱骂威胁她。

Simone hesitated, but there was the infatuated doctor z with theater tickets. There he was holding fast to her arm as they passed her husband and the American girl at the door of the house. Soon she said with a disheartened sigh that she too was in love. The nurse cried all day even in front of the patients. When Simone sometimes called the office, the nurse abused and threatened her.

“让护士处于这种状态是非常糟糕的医疗管理。”西蒙娜说，“或许可以给她另寻职位。”Z医生一时语塞，但迅速恢复镇定：“她彻底没戏了，但我不能抛弃相识共事七年的同事。”Z医生嫉妒西蒙娜，她的沉默让他充满可怕的恐慌。

It is very poor medicine to have nurses in such a state, Simone said. Perhaps another position could be found for her. Doctor z was taken aback but quickly resumed his ground. It's all over with her, he insisted, but I cannot turn away someone I have known and worked with for seven years. Doctor z was jealous of Simone, and her silences filled him with terrible alarm.

他将自己的爱意回溯到几年前。是的，他记得多年前仅是看见她在广场买书，或新年派对上她穿着绿色天鹅绒鞋子的模样，就让他情难自禁。“我不记得这类事情，对我来说现在这样就够了。”她说。

He pushed his love back a few years. Yes. He remembered being overcome with feeling years ago just at the sight of her buying a book in the square and at a New Year's party when she was wearing green velvet shoes. I don't remember anything of that sort. Right now is soon enough for me, she said.

有时医生深夜不愿回家，宣称准备把房子留给妻子或在法国安置她。连续几周，似乎总有新计划在酝酿。“是的，我正在筹划。”他对所有人说。但后来他的情绪变得沮丧悲伤。

At times, the doctor did not want to go home at night and announced that he was prepared to give his house to his wife or to set her up in France. For weeks, some new plan would seem to be working itself out. Yes. I am working it out, he said to everyone. But then the time came when his mood turned crestfallen and sad.

他说：“Z夫人厌恶改变。”“没人喜欢改变。”西蒙娜回答。Z医生哭了：“可这已经超过二十年了，想想看。”

He said, madam z hated change. No one likes change, Simone said. Doctor z wept. But it has been more than twenty years. Think of that.

在阿姆斯特丹，没有声名显赫的侨民隐居山间或栖身海滨花团锦簇的别墅。某周大雪纷飞，我们不禁自问：这是爱荷华城吗？北欧的许多时刻，仿佛所有电车轨道都蜿蜒指向美洲。

In Amsterdam, there were no celebrated expatriates living in the hills or set up in flowery villas near the sea. One week, a lot of snow. Where are we, we wondered? In Iowa City? Northern Europe, many times, it was as if all of the trams were leading back to America.

夜晚，因周遭过分熟悉而倍感漂泊的我们，会彼此讲述人生故事。羽绒被褥带着霉味的拥抱让我们漂浮起来——不是作为旅人，而是被某种力量推回故乡砖瓦与织物之中。我们去鲜花市场，那里有千百幅静物画。利兹广场上奔忙的人群，与我们留在故土的那些人有着幽灵般的相似。炉火熄灭了。

At night, feeling uprooted because so much was familiar, we would tell each other the story of our lives. The downy, musty embrace of the bed set us afloat, not as travelers, but as ones somehow borne backward to the bricks and stuffs of home. We went to the flower market, a thousand still lifes. People rushing about on the Lidsplain revealed ghostly similarities to those we had left behind. The stove died.

积雪黏附窗棂。流苏灯罩的轮廓捕捉着街灯的光晕。在暗影里聆听报时的钟声，我们躺着抽烟交谈。荷兰低地平线上浮现故乡山峦。想想看，他总说，我们的父母生于上个世纪。

The snow clung to the panes. The outline of our fringed lamps caught the light of the street. In the shadows, listening to the bells ringing the hours, we would lie smoking and talking. The hills of home in the flatness of Holland. Think of it, he would say, our parents were born in the last century.

沙皇正劈柴锻炼身体。历史会突袭你。若幸存，你就重回流言蜚语的世界。Z医生的经历正是如此。这个混血犹太人在德国劳改营度过岁月。

The czar was out chopping wood for exercise. History assaults you. And if you live, you are restored to the world of gossip. That is what it had been for doctor z. He was half Jewish and had spent time in a labor camp in Germany.

这位荷兰情场老手带着神经质的联盟与古怪的忠诚直面过死亡，目睹幼弟遭屠杀却活了下来。他骄傲的橄榄色眼眸里沉淀着此生余韵，血液里流淌着毁灭性研究，在向死而生的欢爱中延续。他宛如小心翼翼穿行和平年代的欧洲小国，被可怖记忆驱策前行。所谓劫后余生，不过是再度坠入爱河、经营小本生意、学开车、乘飞机、去阳光之地度假。西蒙娜显然不适合情妇角色。

This well established Netherlands lover with his nervous alliances and peculiar fidelities had looked death in the eye, had lived through the extermination of his younger brother. This life, his aura, remained in his proud olive tinted eyes and his researches on the devastations flowing in the bloodstream in his death defying lovemaking. He was a small, shrewd European country moving about carefully in peacetime driven on by the force of ghastly memories. So life after death is to fall in love once more, to set up a little business, to learn to drive a car, take airplane trips, go to the sun for vacations. It began to appear that Simone was not suited to the role of mistress.

她说：这事让我性情变粗鄙。我恨Z夫人。她算什么？将军吗？对我们这些后方人员发号施令。

She said, this thing has brought a coarsening of my nature. I hate madam z. What is she? A general? She seems to be giving a great many orders to those of us behind the lines.

Z医生说：恨，这太极端了。她自有优点。西蒙娜街上遇见正妻便仓皇逃窜，因惧怕碰面连朋友家都要仔细打听才敢造访。他们在阿姆斯特丹的整个社交圈都卷入了这段私情。

Hate, doctor z said, that's quite extreme. She has her qualities. When Simone saw the wife on the street, she rushed off in the opposite direction. So fearful was she of a meeting that she would not go to her friends' houses without making careful inquiries. The whole of their circle in Amsterdam was involved in the affair.

人们断定：驱逐Z夫人和护士是西蒙娜的核心诉求。没错。这个曾牵过无数修女小手的女孩，无法接受Z医生矛盾本性造就的炼狱。有次Z夫人去巴黎数周，西蒙娜尖刻指出：当然买的是往返票。

This wish to oust madam Z and the nurse is Simone's cardinal side, people decided. Yes. The little girl who held the hand of so many nuns cannot accept the purgatory of doctor Z's confusing nature and intentions. One time, madam Z went to Paris for several weeks. With a round trip ticket, of course, Simone observed bitterly.

但趁此自由，她与医生同赴伦敦赏画度周末。并不愉快。Z医生总给巴黎妻子或诊所护士打电话，用学术会议的弥天大谎搪塞。西蒙娜在伦敦多数时间都在说：快结束了，我们将回到原点。医生劝道：亲爱的别急着承受未来痛苦。可一切如她所料。

But in the freedom, she and the doctor went for a weekend to London to look at pictures. It was not a happy time. Doctor z was always calling Paris to speak to his wife or calling his office to speak to the nurse, telling them tremendous lies about a conference. Simone spent most of her time in London saying, it will soon be over, and we will be back where we started. Dearest darling, do not rush to suffer future pain, the doctor said, but all went as she had predicted.

回归后，每周总有几晚能看见西蒙娜在顶层公寓窗前俯视街道，等待情人匆匆而来。深夜当他返家时，她会打开百叶窗，向这个转过街角渐行渐远的体面又邋遢的活泼男人挥动漫长的告别。Z医生沉溺于爱的痛楚，最爱在西蒙娜的工作室抽烟喝咖啡，配巧克力小蛋糕啜饮杜松子酒。他确实越爱越深，而这真挚常惹得西蒙娜迸出愤怒的泪。

Back once more, Simone could be seen several evenings a week at the window of her Top Floor, looking down on the street, waiting for the hurried approach of her lover. And late in the night when he was returning to his wife, Simone would open the shutters and wave a long goodbye to this worthy, badly dressed, vivacious man now turning a corner and fading from sight. Doctor z was happy in his love pains. He adored to spend the evening in Simone's studio, smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, eating little chocolate cakes, and sipping gin. He was honestly more and more in love, and the genuineness of his feelings often caused Simone to burst into tears of anger.

Z医生研究过人体及其运作，并喜欢说，我们人类往往构造相当简单。是的，相当简单。复杂的那部分，即便我们科学家也对其一无所知。在爱情问题上，他似乎也持相同看法。

Doctor z has studied the body and its workings and like to say, we human beings are often put together quite simply. Yes. Quite simply. The part that is complicated, even we as scientists are ignorant of that. In matters of love, he seemed to feel the same.

他那令人困扰的三角关系使他常常烦躁、失眠、焦虑、嫉妒，甚至酗酒。但他也深谙认命的沮丧与离别之苦。尽管饱受折磨、指责甚至负罪感，他仍能在日暮时安慰哭泣的护士，给妻子带回肉酱和奶酪，挽着西蒙娜的手沿幽暗运河散步歌唱时找到快乐。不知怎的，他竟能为这高贵组合注入真挚的调情意味。我们在荷兰那一年，西蒙娜终于开始主动挽回局面。

His distressing trio caused him to be often fretful, sleepless, anxious, jealous, even drunken. But he also knew well the dejection of resignation and the torture of absence. So tormented, accused, even guilty, there was still happiness to be found in reassuring the weeping nurse at the end of the day, in bringing home a pate and cheese to his wife, and going down a dark canal on the arm of Simone and singing. Somehow, he could lend to the noble composition a heartfelt flirtatiousness. During our year in Holland, there was at last a movement of reclamation on the part of Simone.

她与医生断绝往来，在屋里躲了几周，生怕遇见他又屈服于他的狂热。他在窗下吹口哨，送来盆栽郁金香。看看这些颜色。他留的便条写着：像蒙德里安晚期作品。他还搬出欧洲诗歌求助。

She broke off with the doctor and stayed in the house for weeks for fear of meeting him and once more surrendering to his passion for her. He whistled below the window, potted tulips arrived. Look at the colors. A late Mondrian know, his note would say. He called upon the help of European poetry.

呜呼，冬日何处寻芳华？何处觅大地光影？墙壁无言冰冷立，风向标在风中咔嗒响。抑郁发作反倒帮了西蒙娜，她没有回头。她的话伤了医生的心：我现在似乎不在乎任何人，尤其不在乎自己。

Alas for me, where shall I get the flowers when it is winter, and where the sunshine and shadow of earth? The walls stand speechless and cold. The weather veins rattle in the wind. Simone was assisted by an attack of depression and did not turn back. She hurt the doctor's feelings by saying, I do not seem to care for anyone just now, least of all myself.

充满活力与希望的恋情不会永远周而复始。就像你不再打网球，不再夏日辗转各地，不再明白安第斯山脉或卢克索柱廊对你有何意义。渐渐明朗的是，西蒙娜无可替代。可怜的Z医生，带着他的不忠与讨巧谎言，新欢与迷人风波。这些突然消逝，却如此悄无声息又自然而然，他竟是最后一个明白的人。

Love affairs with their energy and hope do not arrive again and again forever. So you no longer play tennis, no longer move from place to place in the summer, no longer understand what use you can make of the site of the Andes or the Columns Of Luxor. It gradually became clear that Simone would not be replaced. Poor doctor z with his infidelities and agreeable lies, his new acquisitions and engaging disruptions. They vanished suddenly, but so quietly and naturally, he was the last to know.

正如罗利评价伊丽莎白女王：衰老如霜降般突袭了她。几年间，护士回乡照顾年迈母亲；西蒙娜去世。人们发现她为Z医生画了十几幅肖像，其中一幅被美国博物馆以不错的价格收购。画中的Z医生穿着白大褂，周围散落着职业用具。

As Raleigh said about queen Elizabeth, old age took her by surprise like a frost. In a few years, the nurse went home to retire to look after her old mother in the country. Simone died. It turned out that she had done more than a dozen portraits of doctor z, and one was sold to an American museum for a fair price. In it, doctor z is seen in a white jacket, and there are instruments of his profession about him.

墙上挂着幅画，三个程式化的骷髅悬于钩上。1973年。医生夫妇来纽约参加会议。我在西七十街一家破旧压抑的酒店见他们——那是欧洲非富人群的常选住处。他们像两个羊毛玩偶，我分不清是法国女人长到了荷兰人的块头，还是他礼貌地屈尊俯就，让自己矮到了娇小法国妻子的尺寸。

On the wall, not one with three stylized skeletons are dangling from Hooks. 1973. The doctor and his wife were in New York for a conference. I went to meet them at a shabby, depressing hotel in the West Seventies where Europeans who are not rich often stay. They were like two woolen dolls, and I could not decide whether the French woman had grown to the size of the Dutchman or whether he had, with a courteous condescension, simply inclined downward to the size of his little French wife.

她仍戴着黑色贝雷帽，指甲闪着酒红色光泽。她混杂使用荷兰语、德语、法语和英语，像在点心盘里挑选蛋糕。Z医生穿着西伯利亚式多层衣物迎接纽约温和的冬日。他裹着厚重黑大衣、羊毛马甲、深灰毛衣。当他在大堂休息区坐下时，灰色冬裤下还露出保暖内衣。

She was still wearing her black berets and her fingernails shone with a wine colored polish. She spoke in tongues, Dutch, German, French, and English, as if choosing cakes from a tray. Doctor z met a mild New York winter day clothed in Siberian layers. He was wearing a heavy black overcoat, a woolen vest, a dark gray sweater. And when he sat down in the waiting room of the lobby, gray winter underwear appeared above his socks.

他滔滔不绝：讲阿姆斯特丹八卦，谈工作，抱怨物价骇人，说起冯德尔公园的嬉皮士。Z夫人抽着烟咳嗽。他们正研究城市地图，寻找地铁公交线路。

He talked. He told the Amsterdam gossip. He spoke of his work, of the fearful cost of things, of hippies in Vondelpark. Madame Zee smoked cigarettes and coughed. They were studying the map of the city, looking for subway and bus lines.

纽约节俭生活的突出困境令他们困惑不已，他们坐在那里，仿佛被拽入了令人沮丧的错位泥潭——那种困扰着不时髦的老年外国游客初到美国时的混乱感。他们可是从雅加达、东京、印度到欧洲各国都游历过的人。Z医生微笑着鞠躬，匆忙在安静角落寻找椅子。实际上，他似乎在纽约的空气中摸索着阿姆斯特丹生活的支柱：他在阿姆斯特尔河畔饱经风霜的小屋，一楼的诊所，楼上铺着旧图案地毯的房间，患者赠送的那些丑陋抽象画带来的慰藉——这些抽象作品像陈旧漏水留下的彩色水渍般爬满楼梯旁的墙壁。我的生活去哪儿了？

The outstanding difficulties of thrift in New York bewildered them, and they sat there as if pulled down into the mud of a dismaying displacement, the confusion that afflicts unfashionable elderly foreigners when they visit America. They who had been everywhere from Jakarta to Tokyo to India and every country in Europe. Doctor z smiled and bowed and dashed about looking for chairs in a quiet corner. In fact, he seemed to be groping in the New York air for the supports of his life in Amsterdam, for his weathered little house on the Amstel, with his office on the First Floor and the rooms above with the old patterned carpets, the comfort of the hideous abstract paintings given by patients, abstractions that covered the walls next to the stairs like so many colored water spots left over from an old leak. Where is my life?

他仿佛在说：我的腌贻贝盘子、奶酪切片、柠檬杜松子酒杯。然而他橄榄色的眼眸仍闪烁着重要性的微光，那记忆里虚荣的油彩仍在发亮，又似乎要被漫长人生中习得又遗忘的一切所引发的泪水淹没。"我们荷兰人最早完成了几项重要血液研究"他说，"虽然医院实验室不再属于我，但我始终跟进着领域内的发展。"

He seemed to be saying. My plates of pickled mussels, the slices of cheese, the tumblers of lemon gin. Still, importance flickered in his eyes, his olive eyes still shining with the oil of remembered vanity and threatening to water with the tears of all he had learned and forgotten in his long life. We in Holland were the first to do certain important blood studies, he said. I no longer have my laboratory at the hospital, but I keep up with the developments in my field.

"怎能不跟进？这是我们毕生的事业啊。"他的谈话中不断浮现"我们荷兰人"。飞越的广袤天空与落地后坠入的巨大深渊，使他像大使般召唤自己的国度——一个代表整体的存在。"您记得他在这里很有名"他妻子平淡地说。

How can one not? Our life's work. We in Holland kept appearing in his conversation. The vastness of the skies they had flown over and the large abyss into which they had fallen on the ground made him call forth his country like an ambassador, one who stands for the whole. You remember that he was well known here, his wife said without any special inflection.

"当然记得，我清楚地记得著名的Z医生。""够了"他打断道，"亚当奶酪都比任何荷兰人有名。"

Oh, I know. I know. I remember well the well known doctor z. Enough of that, he said. Adam Cheese is better known than any Dutchman.

"这也值得记住。"临近六点时，我提议去附近爱尔兰酒吧喝一杯。医生惊恐地退缩，但他妻子激烈响应："确实，我想喝一杯"她带着古怪的坚持与挑衅重复。我们坐在昏暗卡座里，Z夫人点了"美式马天尼"，她特意强调了两遍。

That is well to recall also. As it got to be near 06:00, I asked if they wanted to go to a nearby Irish saloon for a drink. The doctor drew back with a frightened look, but his wife took up the suggestion vehemently. Indeed, yes, she would like a drink, she said with a peculiar insistence and defiance. We sat in a dark booth and madam z ordered a martini, an American martini, she said twice.

医生瘫软在喜力啤酒前。"支持家乡产业"他妻子说。突然，在昏暗中Z夫人开始抑扬顿挫的长篇大论，所有话语都带着骇人的能量倾泻而出。"她以前话很少"医生试图挤出微笑。

The doctor crumpled and sagged over a beer. Heineken's. Supporting home industries, his wife said. Suddenly, the gloom, madam Zee began her lilting harangue, all of it pouring forth with an appalling energy. She did not used to talk very much, the doctor said, attempting a smile.

"看啊，这未经召唤、无法预料的衰老变化，像满天坠落的星辰。"显然这番演说并非首次，期间她只暂停点了另一杯酒。"我一直憎恨荷兰。我不是荷兰人，我生在巴黎。"

See the unbeckoned, unpredicted changes of age, the sky full of falling stars. It was clear that the recitation was not new and that in the midst of it, she could pause only to order another drink. I have always hated Holland. I am not Dutch. I am French born in Paris.

"法国人多的是"医生插话，"我不认为这本身算什么特殊区别。"她继续道："荷兰人也多得很，全都一个样——男女老少，那种狭隘。你能想象一个国家为瘦弱的印尼仆人骄傲吗？那些穿红外套、阴郁迟钝的原始人？印尼米饭宴？笑话。"

There are many Frenchmen, the doctor interrupted. It is not what I would call a special distinction in itself. She went on, there are many Dutchmen too and all alike, the men and the women, the provincialism. Can you imagine a country proud of skinny Indonesians, dark and slow and surly primitives serving in red coats? Ristafel, a joke.

"坚果葡萄干香蕉？要选我宁愿吃鲱鱼——反正必须选择否则就饿死。但最糟的是人的丑陋。穿破麦金托什雨衣、踩橡胶底鞋的男女，谁能分得清？看看女王，简直荒谬。"

Nuts and raisins and bananas. I would rather have herring if the choice must be made, and it must be made or starve. But the worst thing is the ugliness of the people. Who can tell the men and the women apart in their rotten Macintoshes, their rubber soled shoes? Look at the queen, a joke.

"穿粗花呢的威廉明娜老得像水牛。夏天闷热如地狱，其他季节永远下着冻雨。'Drizzling'是英语吗？阿姆斯特丹现在到底什么样？告诉我。"

An old Wilhelmina in her tweeds like a buffalo. And the weather steaming like hell in the summer and drizzling sleet the rest of the year. Drizzling, is that English? What is going on in Amsterdam? Tell me.

有人在教堂弹管风琴。他们说法语时自以为文化修养极高。但若要写点什么，却用无人阅读的荷兰语写。谁又会去读呢？连波兰人都比这强。

Someone playing the organ in a church. They think they are masters of culture when they speak French. But if you want to write something, you write it in Dutch, which no one reads. And why should they? Even the Poles are better off.

华沙是座真正的城市，不像阿姆斯特丹那样是木偶戏布景。她那乌黑发亮的秀发，纤巧的黑色小脚，戴着镶嵌红绿半宝石金戒指的葡萄酒色手指。她就像个布满裂纹却仍能盛水的古老釉罐。医生颤抖着说：这可称不上是讨论。

Warsaw is a real city, not a puppet show setting like Amsterdam. Her black, black hair, her tiny little black feet, her wine colored fingers heavy with red and green semi precious stones set in gold. She was like an old glazed vessel veined and cracked that nevertheless held water. The doctor trembled. This is not what you would call a discussion, he said.

他侧身试图扭转这糟糕的话题：我不是爱国者。但难道不能说荷兰人是文明民族吗？或许对失去印尼耿耿于怀有点烦人，但她尖叫着'印尼'，酒保耸耸肩。你们当年去那里讲课、所谓指导、拜访种植园主时，整夜抱怨蚊虫潮湿，高贵荷兰人的汗流浃背。

And turning aside, he made an effort to change the awful flow. I am not a patriot, he said. Still, couldn't I claim that the Dutch are a civilized people? A bit tiresome about the loss of Indonesia and all that perhaps, but Indonesia, she shrieked, and the bartender shrugged. How all of you used to complain when you had to go out there to lecture, to advise as you called it, to visit the rich man on their plantations, little cries all night about the bugs and the humidity, the suffering sweat of the lordly Dutchman.

想象荷兰还有殖民地的样子。见过所谓帕拉马里博城吗？简直荒谬可笑。Z夫人踉跄起身精疲力竭，医生搀扶她手臂，发出死亡般深沉的叹息。

Imagine Holland with colonies. Have you ever seen the so called city of Paramaribo? It's a scandal, a joke. Madame z tuttered to her feet exhausted. The doctor took her arm and gave a sigh as deep as death itself.

寒风中，他搀扶站不稳的小妻子。她像黑色购物袋挂在他臂弯。此刻她安静下来，他强作轻松低声补充：如你所见，她酗酒成灾。叹息后，他带着旧日轻浮鞠了一躬，将我拽进他的回忆。

Out on the street in the cold wind, he supported his little wife who could not stand alone. She dangled on his arm like a black shopping bag. For the moment, she was quiet, and he attempted a lighthearted manner, a whispered addition. As you can see, she has taken to drink in a disastrous fashion. A sigh, and then he bowed with something of his old shakishness drawing me into his memories.

都是那些风流债，特别是亲爱的西蒙娜。她们终究不会原谅你，会报复的。医生似乎从揽责中获得安慰，仿佛报复也让他重返青春。他苦笑中看不出是否真信自己说的话。

It's all those love affairs, especially the darling Simone. They don't forgive you after all. They have their revenge. It seemed to soothe the doctor to try to take the blame as if even the revenge brought him back to his younger days. It was not clear whether he believed what he was saying, the ruefulness of his smile.

临近酒店时他苦涩地说：才晚上八点，但除了饿着肚子上床还能怎样？她会醉倒睡着，像他们那样什么都不记得。真神秘。是的，她必须睡觉了。

As we neared the hotel, he said bitterly, it is only 08:00, but what can we do except go to bed without dinner? She will sleep it off and not remember a thing the way they do. So mysterious. Yes. She must go to bed.

睡觉！但MZ用最后力气喊叫：他们都是糟糕的情人，骗子，个个都是败笔。他们走进棕灰色大堂，这对老伙伴悲伤却不至凄惨。他们挥手告别，他鞠躬，她此刻正眨眼微笑。

Bed, but MZ cried out calling upon her last breath. They're all terrible lovers, frauds, every one of them, fiascoes. They passed into the brown and gray lobby, old companions, sad but not quite miserable. They were waving goodbye. He was bowing, and she was now winking and smiling.

她像西班牙狂怒般冲击医生，所幸他习惯了北海的风。歪斜的帽子，一缕散发垂落脸颊——巴黎的Z夫人终于荷兰化了，只需散落的牡蛎壳和流浪狗，就让人想起十七世纪绘画中那些抽烟酗酒的女人，荷兰资产阶级乐于购买欣赏的市井形象。

She had hit the doctor like the Spanish fury, but fortunately, he was accustomed to the wind from the North Sea. Her hat, a skew, and a strand of hair slanted down her cheek, madame Zee of Paris had at last become Dutch, needing only a few strewn oyster shells and a ragged dog to bring to mind those tippling, pipe smoking women in the paintings of the seventeenth century, creatures of the common life the Dutch bourgeoisie were pleased to admire and purchase.

刚才劳伦·格罗夫朗读的是伊丽莎白·哈德威克的《信徒》。该小说发表于1979年2月的《纽约客》，后收录于哈德威克的小说《不眠之夜》及2010年遗作集《伊丽莎白·哈德威克的纽约故事》中。

That was Lauren Groff reading the faithful by Elizabeth Hardwick. The story appeared in the New Yorker in February 1979 and was included in Hardwick's novel, sleepless nights, as well as in the collection, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, which was published posthumously in 2010.

我是《纽约客广播时间》的主持人大卫·雷姆尼克。没有什么比找到一个能让你真正沉浸其中、屏蔽外界噪音并专注于重要事物的故事更棒的了。无论是在印刷品上还是在这个播客中，《纽约客》都能带给你在其他地方找不到的深思、深度甚至幽默。所以请每周加入我，收听《纽约客广播时间》，无论你在哪里收听播客。

I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters. In print or here on the podcast, the New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

所以，劳伦，《信徒》的开篇几乎像一篇游记，对吧？有一对夫妇在旅行。他们抵达阿姆斯特丹并租了一间公寓，我们听说了家具、文化和周围环境，但几乎没听到关于这对夫妇自己的事情，除了他们在喝了太多杜松子酒后吵架。

So, Lauren, the faithful begins almost as a travelogue. Right? There's a couple. They're traveling. They land in Amsterdam and get an apartment, and we hear about the furnishings and the culture and the surroundings, but we hear almost nothing about the couple themselves, except that they fight after too much gin.

正如你之前提到的，这很大程度上是自传性的，哈德威克和她当时的丈夫、诗人罗伯特·洛威尔在五十年代初在欧洲旅行，并在1952年左右住在阿姆斯特丹。所以很明显，这取材于现实生活，但那段生活的具体部分描述得很少。你认为为什么这里的目光如此向外？

And as you mentioned before, a lot of this is autobiographical, and Hardwick and her then husband, the poet Robert Lowell, spent the early fifties traveling around in Europe and did live in Amsterdam in, I think, the '52. So clearly, it draws on real life, but very little of that particular part of life is described. Why do you think the gaze here is so directed outward?

嗯，正如你所说，罗伯特·洛威尔或类似罗伯特·洛威尔的人物在这部作品中有所提及。嗯。他们的爱情故事很复杂，对吧？这对伊丽莎白·哈德威克来说非常、非常痛苦，因为他为了别人离开了她，但他又不断回到她身边。

Well, as you said, mentions of Robert Lowell or a character like Robert Lowell are in this. Mhmm. And the story of their love complicated. Right? And it was really very, very, very painful to Elizabeth Hardwick because he left her for someone else, but he kept coming back to Elizabeth Hardwick.

这可能是我读得太自传性了。在这种情况下很难不这样做，但我确实觉得也许中心有某种东西太烫手了。也许通过重新聚焦于另一个三人组，嗯，Z医生、Z夫人和西蒙娜，有一种方式可以讨论她生活中的核心问题而不直接触及它自己。对吧？

And this is maybe me reading a little bit too much autobiographically. It's hard not to do in this case, but I do feel like perhaps there's something too hot to handle at the center of this. And maybe by refocusing on a separate trio, right, that of Mhmm. Doctor z and madam z and Simone, there's a way to discuss her own nuclear reactor in her life without actually touching it herself. Right?

感觉这部作品在很大程度上从某种她甚至可能无法直接讨论的东西中获得了许多情欲的张力。对吧。你觉得呢？

And it feels very much as the this is getting a lot of its maybe erotic charge out of something that she even couldn't maybe discuss directly. Right. What do you think?

嗯，我认为她非常擅长观察他人。嗯。这显然对她来说是一种着迷。她在观察互动、行为和社会模式方面几乎是科学性的。也许不可能将这种严苛的科学性转向自己。

Well, I think that she was brilliant at observing other people. Mhmm. And that was obviously a fascination for her. And she's sort of scientific about observing interactions and behaviors and patterns socially among other people. And perhaps it's not possible to turn that exacting kind of science on oneself.

也许吧。

Maybe.

在某种程度上，这似乎预示了雷切尔·卡斯克在《轮廓》三部曲中的项目，对吧，通过写别人来勾勒出自己的负面形象。《弗兰克·辛纳屈感冒的一年》通过围绕事物来描绘形象，但我觉得你是对的。我认为她非常擅长观察别人。至少在《不眠之夜》中，她也非常擅长观察自己，但那是碎片化的时刻，这些非常紧凑、几乎是自嘲的时刻。但你是对的。

In some ways, it seems a prefiguring Rachel Cusk's project in the Outline trilogy, right, where by writing about other people, one is drawing a negative image of oneself. Frank Sinatra has a cold year circling around things in order to draw an image, but I think you're right. I think that she's so good at observing other people. And she's very, very good, at least in sleepless nights, in observing herself, but it it comes in fractured moments, in these really tight, almost self deprecating moments. But you're right.

散文更习惯于观察他人。

The prose is more comfortable looking at others.

是的。这几乎是一个完整的故事，关于《信徒》中Z医生的故事。对吧？因为我们看到了尾声，看到了后续发展的某种呈现。

Yeah. And this is sort of a complete story, the story of doctor z in the faithful. Right? Because we get a coda. We get a sort of look at the aftermath.

而在她自己的生活中，她可能并未真正拥有过这种完整。

And in her own life, she maybe didn't quite have that.

对，对。没错。这是1979年，洛厄尔与她分手很久之后。然后你知道，另一件可怕又艰难的事是他拿走了她写给他的信，重新发表在《海豚》里——就是他的书《海豚》中，这同样令人难以接受。

Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's 1979, so this is a while after Lowell broke up with her. And then, you know, the other horrible difficult thing that happened is that he took letters that she had written to him and republished them in the dolphin, right, in his book, the dolphin, which is really difficult as well too.

所以这件事似乎给整本书留下了深刻烙印。即使在这个故事里，我们也看到这样的时刻——'从荷兰，我写了许多抱怨的信'。对吧？她的信件就像重复的副歌贯穿全书，也贯穿这里。我认为书写当下时刻，作为潜流在这故事和整本书中具有强大力量。

So that seemed to have a really strong impression upon this book as a whole. And even in this story, we do see these moments where from Holland, I wrote many complaining letters. Right? So her letters throughout are repeated refrain through the book and through this too. And I do think, you know, writing about the moment is something that's very powerful as, like, a powerful undercurrent in this story and in this book as a whole.

嗯。嗯。

Mhmm. Mhmm.

她还说过，当她写那些抱怨信时，其实是她生命中最快乐的时光。她当时并不知道即将发生什么。

And she also says that when she was writing those complaining letters, this was actually the happiest time of her life. Little did she know, you know, what was coming.

没错。正是如此。

Right. Right. Exactly.

那么你认为为什么Z医生、Z夫人和西蒙会成为焦点？她想通过他们表达什么？这是他们特有的，还是更宏大的命题？

So why do you think doctor and madam Z and Simone are in the spotlight here? What is she trying to tell us about them? Is it specific to them? Is it something larger?

我认为是他们特有的。他们看起来是如此具体的人。对吧？嗯。但其中贯穿着'故土塑造人格'的主题思想，这在整个《不眠之夜》中都有体现。

I think it's specific to them. They seem like such specific humans. Right? Mhmm. But there's very much themes and ideas of one's country informing who one is, which is very much the case throughout sleepless nights.

对吧？伊丽莎白·哈德威克来自肯塔基，那是她身份的根基。她不断回归这个主题。所以有这层含义在其中。

Right? Elizabeth Hardwick comes from Kentucky. It's the basis of who she is. She comes back to it over and over again. So there's that aspect of it.

但还有作为战后欧洲的美国人的视角——来自一个被二战波及却相对间接的地方，得以目睹或生活在像二战这样巨大爆发后的余波中，这某种程度上也是本故事所呈现的。对吧？它追踪着西蒙娜如火山般闯入Z医生和Z夫人生活的爆发，以及随之而来的余波，在那里每个人都因岁月、旧爱与怨恨而略显衰微。

But there's also the aspect of being an American in postwar Europe, coming from a place that was touched by World War two, but perhaps less directly so, and being able to see sort of the aftermath or live in the aftermath of a great eruption like World War two, which is sort of what this story is also doing. Right? It's sort of tracking the great eruption of Simone into doctor z and madam z's life and then the aftermath too, where everyone is a little bit diminished by age and past loves and ranker.

是啊。我是说，在遇到西蒙娜之前，他总能得到女人却从未真正放手，就这么一直维持着关系。而西蒙娜对他来说是不同的。

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, until Simone, he's been able to acquire women and never actually give them up, just sort of keep them going. Right. And Simone is different for him.

或许是第一个真正坚持自我身份的女性

Perhaps the first woman who truly insists on her own identity

嗯。

Mhmm.

独立于他之外。她不是他的妻子，也不是他的雇员。

As separate from his. She's not married to him. She's not working for him.

对，她是艺术家。记得吗？我想她是阿姆斯特丹公认最独立的女性之一。

Yeah. She's an artist. Right? I mean, I think she she is known as one of the most independent women in Amsterdam. Right?

故事本身就这么说的。我觉得这里还有层意思，就像你说的，关于艺术家能够自我定义，能够超然独立并坚持自主权——这种特质或许是护士甚至Z夫人都不具备的。想到Z夫人时，总觉得她可能是个被压抑的艺术家。对吧？她确实热爱戏剧。

The story itself says that. And I think there is something there also, as you're saying, about an artist being able to describe themselves, an artist being able to stand apart and insist on their own autonomy in a way that maybe the nurse and even Madame Zee weren't able to have. One gets the impression, thinking about Madame Zee, that she's maybe an artist Monquet. Right? Like, she really loves theater.

是啊。或许她曾渴望别样的生活。如果拥有那种能在某些时刻勾勒灵魂外部边界的艺术——艺术不正是如此吗？

Yeah. And maybe she was longing for some other thing. And maybe having had that art, which delineates us in certain moments, the external reaches of the soul. Right? What art that's what art does.

嗯。若真如此，或许她也能像西蒙娜那样与丈夫分离。而现实中我们只看到结尾的哀伤，那种极度的苦涩。

Mhmm. Maybe if she'd had that, she would have been able to separate also, like Simone, from her husband. And instead, we get this sadness at the end. Right? This great bitterness at the end.

所以从某种角度看，Z夫人或许是个警示故事——虽然不止于此——她展现了另一种人生可能。

Yeah. So maybe in some ways, madam Z is a cautionary tale without reducing it to that, but someone an alternative life.

是啊。虽然最后她有些悲伤，但还不至于痛苦。

Yeah. Though at the end, she's sad but not miserable.

对，对。好吧

Right. Right. Well

那里有一丝解脱的意味。

A little bit of relief there.

她通过买醉来报复。没错。

She's taking her revenge by becoming drunk. Yeah.

是啊。

Yeah.

从某些方面来说，这是一种非常糟糕的报复方式。

A very terrible revenge in some ways.

对，这很有趣。你知道吗，西蒙妮是唯一一个有名字的角色。护士就是护士，Z女士就是Z女士。

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, Simone is the only one who gets a first name. The nurse is the nurse. Madam Z is Madam Z.

她只是他姓氏的附属品。

She's an appendage to his last name.

我都没注意到这点。确实如此。但西蒙妮是个独立的人。

I had not even noticed that. Yeah. It's true. But Simone is her own person.

嗯。西蒙妮没有姓氏。

Mhmm. Simone doesn't get a last name.

是啊。这无所谓。

Yeah. It doesn't matter.

哈德威克说过一句精妙的话：历史会袭击你，如果你活下来，就会被重新抛回闲言碎语的世界。而Z医生正是被历史袭击的人。我确信他是当时阿姆斯特丹众多战争受难者之一，他失去了兄弟，曾在劳改营待过。他直视过死亡，某种程度上，他通过风流韵事和激情来反抗死亡。

Hardwick, she has that beautiful line. History assaults you, and if you live, you're restored to the world of gossip. And doctor z was assaulted by history. He's one of many people, I'm sure, in Amsterdam at that time who has suffered during the war, and he's lost his brother. He was in a labor camp, And he's looked death in the eye, and he's defying it, in a sense, with his affairs, with his passion.

在这个社交圈里，他可能是少数这样做的人之一。

And there's a sense in which he may be one of few people who are doing that in this social circle.

尽管他是只猫，我还是爱他。真的。因为他进过死亡集中营，对吧？

I love him even though he's a cat. Right? I really do. Because he was in a death camp. Right?

他确实目睹了兄弟的死亡，见识过人性最黑暗的一面，于是在爱情中或许做出了不负责任的反应。我倒觉得某种程度上，这比其他任何反应都更恰当。对吧？走进世界享受阿姆斯特丹难得的阳光，一次次坠入爱河，维持着多段感情，沉溺享乐主义，和妻子吃完鹅肝酱又去幽会情人。

He did witness his brother dying. He he saw the worst of humanity and to react maybe irresponsibly in love. I mean, I actually feel as if in some ways that is a more appropriate way to react than any other. Right? To go out into the world and enjoy whatever rare sun there is on his cheeks in Amsterdam and to fall in love serially and to keep his loves going and to enjoy the hedonism, to eat the pate with his wife and then go visit.

明白吗？他所选择的，正是曾经被迫忍受的反面。我认为这种选择本身就是一种力量，甚至可能超越了故事本身的妥协性。他身上有种光芒，让你几乎能原谅他对身边女性的恶劣行径——至少让我几乎原谅了他。

Right? I mean, all of these things, he's choosing the opposite of what he had to endure, and I think that that is a kind of strength that maybe even the story doesn't really acquiesce to. But there's some sort of sparkliness in him that makes you almost forgive him even as he's being awful to the women around him. It made me almost forgive him.

没错。因为他保持着对所有人的温柔。她们不只是露水情缘，他操心她们的税务，惦记她们的咳嗽。

Yeah. Because he's maintaining this tenderness towards all of them. They are not just women he's sleeping with. He worries about their taxes. He worries about their cough.

某种意义上，他把她们庇护在自己的羽翼之下。

He's taking them under his wing in a sense and sheltering.

可西蒙妮卖出的那幅杰作里，背景晃荡着三具骷髅。这死亡名单相当沉重啊。没错，死亡名单。要我说，他实际造成的伤害远不止于此。

And yet Simone's great painting that she sold has three skeletons dangling in the background. I mean, that was a Pretty heavy body count. Yeah. Body count. Mean, I his body count would be much higher.

对吧？但那三个是被他始终吊着的人。是啊，他一直在玩弄她们的感情与爱意。

Right? But those are the three people who he just kept hanging. Yeah. He kept playing with their affections and their loves.

是的。西蒙娜还有另一个复杂之处，她的兄弟曾是纳粹合作者，尽管她也是荷兰人，但她的出身背景截然不同。

Yeah. There's the other complication with Simone that her brother was a Nazi collaborator, and she's come from a very different heritage even though she's also Dutch.

你知道，这本书我读过上百次。真的读过太多次了。嗯。但只有当我慢慢大声朗读时，我才真正停下来思考那个问题，对吧，那种复杂性，那种更深层次的抗拒？他们的爱情故事里有些东西让它带上了某种砂纸般的质感，非常有趣，而我之前从未注意到这一点。

You know, I've read this book hundreds of times. I have so many times. Mhmm. But only in slowly reading it out loud did I actually take a moment and think about that, right, that complication, that deeper resistance? You know, something's happening there in their love story that gives it a little bit of a sandpapery feel that's really interesting, and I hadn't picked up on it before.

没错。我感觉有太多世界历史的潜台词在这里酝酿。同时，书中不断讨论印尼和印尼人。我记得印尼在这故事发生前几年刚独立，而那些瘦弱的贫穷印尼人就住在运河对岸，始终处于故事角色的视线范围内。还有那些战争幸存者。

Yeah. I feel as though so many world historical subtexts are sort of percolating in this. At the same time, you have the constant discussion of Indonesia and Indonesians. I think Indonesia had just gotten its independence a couple of years before this, and you still have these skinny, poor Indonesians sort of right across the canal that are under your gaze at all times in the story. And you have war survivors.

如果Z医生是从集中营出来的，他的状态肯定不好。明白吗？他没那么快恢复。所以这里的人和文化都带着种被摧残过的感觉，也许这就是为什么会有这种延伸的家的感觉，以及那种蜷缩进舒适区的描写。

If doctor z is coming from a concentration camp, he is not in great shape. You know? He hasn't had that long to recover. So there's kind of a sort of blasted feel to the people and the culture, and maybe that's why there's this extended sense of hominess and sort of crawling into comfort.

是啊。我觉得她的潜台词处理得精妙绝伦。你说得对，在这看似平静的表面下，有太多东西在翻腾或沸腾。对吧？

Yeah. You know, I think she works wonders with her subtext. I think you're right. There's so much percolating or there's so much boiling underneath this almost rye surface. Right?

我会说她的文风非常冷峻。她讲述人类那些奇怪的棱角和拐弯抹角，但在表面之下，你确实能看到这些宏大历史事件仍在涌动。它们就在一层薄薄的表面下沸腾。我认为她在整本书中都这么处理。但在这特定部分，你能看到这种'余波'的概念。

I would say that her voice is very rye. And she tells these strange corners and elbows of humans, but underneath the surface, you do see these large, vast historical events still pushing up. They're boiling up right under a very thin surface. So I think she does that throughout the book. But in this particular part of the book, that's where you see this idea of aftermath.

我们仍然生活在冲突的节点上，某种意义上仍活在战争中。战争即使结束了也并未真正终结。对吧？它仍会延伸到未来。

We're still living, right, in the point of conflict. We're still living in the war in some ways. The war is not over even when it ends. Right? It still sort of extends into the future.

在人际关系层面也能看到这点。也许这就是为什么我们在二十年后看到他们生活在纽约。我们看到余波在延续。

You can see that in a interpersonal level too. I mean, that's maybe why we get them in New York City two decades after originally looking at them. We see the aftermath extending.

没错。这些年他们经历了什么？你觉得这段时间他们发生了什么？

Right. And what has happened to them? What do you think has happened to them in that time?

这是那种漫长的婚姻。到七十年代末时，他们已经在一起四十多年了。Z夫人忍受了不忠。当然，西蒙娜之后就没有再发生了。知道吗，他们就像古老的橄榄树般盘根错节地纠缠在一起。

It's one of those long marriages. Right now, they've been together for over forty years by the end in the nineteen seventies. And madame Z has lived with the infidelity. Of course, after Simone, there weren't any more. You know, they're twisted together like old olive trees.

对吧？他们的共生关系让我联想到自己生活中认识的人。这种关系很美。虽然心理治疗师可能不赞同，但我确实认为在一段漫长婚姻的尽头，这种相互依存的状态非常非常动人。

Right? They're codependent in ways that I see in people in my own life. Right? And it's a beautiful thing. I know therapists probably wouldn't agree with me, but I do think in certain ways, at the end of a long marriage, this codependency is very, very beautiful to watch and to look at.

所以尽管这个故事带着灰褐色调——除了西蒙娜的天鹅绒鞋外几乎没什么鲜亮色彩。就连Spool上的句子，虽然优美却也相当含蓄。即便如此，我仍感受到一种震撼的美。在我看来，这是个无人行为得当的故事，却在结尾呈现出深刻的愉悦与美感。

So, you know, even though the story is tinted and, I would say, gray and beige and there's not a whole lot of brightness other than Simone's velvet shoes. You know, there's not a whole lot of bright color in this. Even the way that the sentences on Spool, they're very beautiful sentences, but they're pretty subtle. I do think even so, we have this shocking beauty. I look at it as the story in which nobody behaves correctly, and yet there's this very profound pleasure and and beauty at the end.

我感觉叙述者有点站在C夫人这边。看着她当众出丑、说着丈夫的坏话时，叙述者似乎带着某种快感在旁观。不知道你是否持不同看法？

I feel that the narrator is a bit on madame c's side. You know, watching her get absolutely trashed in public and say these horrible things about her husband, in some ways, I feel as if the narrator is watching with a kind of pleasure as this is happening. So Yeah. I don't know if you have a different read. But

我正想说，你觉得1973年写《MetMZ》时，她是否在其中看到了自己的影子？

Well, I was going to say, do you think that she's seeing something of herself as she writes MetMZ in 1973, I think it is? Do you think she's seeing something of herself there?

无论是否刻意，在我看来答案绝对是肯定的。'我坚守到底，始终爱你，看看你的所作所为，再看看我现在能当众对你说什么'。

Whether or not it's intentional, I think, just in my read, the answer is absolutely yes. Right? I have stayed the course. I have still loved you, and look at what you did, and look what I get to say in public about Yeah. About you.

但最终——这也是我自身艺术创作仍在挣扎的部分——我们确实拥有最终话语权。我们确实能微妙或彻底地改写自己与他人的人生故事。这种强大力量可能被滥用，需要道德担当。当被炽烈的倾诉欲支配时，人们往往无暇顾及后续涟漪效应。

But in the end, and this is the part of my own art that I am still struggling with, we do get the last word. You know? We do get we do get the ability to subtly or radically change the story of our life and of other people in our lives. And that's a a profound power that could be used in terrible ways. And I you know, there's a moral responsibility there that sometimes when you're in the flush and the hot, the white hot urge to get it all out of you, you don't really think about these rippling ramifications afterwards.

但这确实关乎道德责任。我认为伊丽莎白·哈德威克多少在C夫人身上发现了某些闪光点，哪怕是间接的。

But there is a moral responsibility to this. I do think probably, even if indirectly, Elizabeth Hardwick did find something, some sort of gleams even in the distance in Madem C.

是的。当然，这个结局是她选择的创作。不知道阿姆斯特丹是否真有个Z医生的原型。

Yeah. And, of course, you know, she chose this ending. She wrote this ending. I don't know if there was an original for Doctor. Z in her life in Amsterdam.

也不知道她后来是否再见过那对夫妇。我感觉最后那场戏可能是虚构程度最高的。

I don't know if she saw the couple again later. My feeling is that the later scene might be the most fictionalized.

嗯，我同意。确实感觉那部分最像虚构的，不是吗？

Mhmm. I would agree. Yeah. It feels the most fictionalized, doesn't it?

是的，是的。这是最具故事性的部分，因为她正将我们引向一个结局。有趣的是，虽然你能感觉到她站在C夫人这边，但同时，你知道，Z医生搀扶着她的手臂，因为她无法独自站立。

Yeah. Yeah. It's the most story like because she's bringing us to an ending. And it's interesting because, yes, you do feel she's on the side of Madame C, but at the same time, you know, Doctor. Z takes her arm because she can't stand alone.

嗯。

Mhmm.

就在那一刻，你会感受到那种触动。她对他怒斥，而他却在支持她。没错，沿着街道。但你仍能看出他们是一个多么紧密的整体。

And that's where you get that moment. It's sort of touching. She's railing against him, and he's supporting her Right. Along the street. But you can see just how much of a unit they are still.

也许这部分读起来更像故事，因为其余部分是以一种更为疏离的方式叙述的。没有太多场景描写，没有真正的场景，只有零碎的声音在构建实际场景。我一边说一边翻看页面，但这种叙述方式恰恰是所有写作工坊告诫你不要采用的，然而，没错，这真是个精彩的故事。

Maybe it also reads as more story like because the rest of the story is told at a more arm's length. There are not many scenes. There are no actual scenes. There's just snippets of voice that actually creating actual scenes. I'm trying to look through the pages as I'm talking, but it's sort of told in a way that all writing workshops tell you not to do, then, yeah, that's an amazing story.

然后在结尾处，我们得到了这个真实的场景，或许正因如此它才显得更具虚构感——因为当你把真实探访也浓缩成虚构时，就与读者达成了某种关于逼真而非真实的契约。其余部分因采用公认的非虚构距离叙述，反而更贴近现实。对吧？这次因为它是个场景，反而让人觉得有点非虚构，却又感觉像虚构的。

And then at the end, we get this actual scene, and maybe that's why it feels more fictional because by the time you have condensed even actual visits into fictional because there's some sort of scene, pact with the reader of the verisimilitude rather than the verity. The rest of it seems trucking in by closer reality because it's being told with the distance of accepted nonfiction. Right? It it feels a little bit more nonfictional this time because it's a scene. It feels fictional.

是的。前四分之三更像是那个时代和地域的文化概览。而这只是一个长场景。对，我想这是第一次出现对话。

Yeah. And the first three quarters are more of a cultural overview of that time and place. And this is just one long scene. Yeah. With dialogue for the first time, I think.

没错。有实际发生在特定场景中的对白。还有她现在描述他们的方式——他仿佛缩小到她的尺寸，他们变成了两个玩偶。你知道吗？这几乎就像人们在记忆中看待他人的方式。

Yeah. With actual speeches that last in a setting. And also the way she describes them now, that he sort of shrunk down to her size, that they've become these two dolls. You know? It's almost it's almost the way one sees people in memory.

对吧？

Right?

对。

Right.

你会在记忆中对他们进行某种调整。

You sort of adjust them in your memory of them.

确实如此。尽管他们体型上更小了，但在某些方面却显得更宏大了。仿佛岁月褪去了他们神话般的光环，赋予了他们更多人性的特质。

Yeah. It is. It is. Even though they're physically smaller, they seem at the same time, in some ways, larger. Like, age has given them less of a mythic quality and more of a human quality.

他们逐渐被还原为普通人——也许在年轻时轰轰烈烈的爱情里，当医生事业有成，Z夫人总爱跑去巴黎看戏时，他们还带着些符号化的色彩。但到故事结尾，他们都成了真实的人。对吧？在叙述者眼中，他们多少被祛魅了。

They're being relaxed into as human beings, maybe during the great love affairs when they're younger and, you know, the doctor is very successful in his practice, and Madame Z is always trotting off to Paris to go watch theater. They're sort of archetypes, and then they become actual people by the end. Right? They're humbled a little bit in the narrator's eyes.

是啊。而且他们已经过了那个阶段——一方容忍另一方的行为，另一方则心怀愧疚，你懂吧？

Yeah. And they've passed this point where one was tolerating the other one's behavior, and the other one was feeling guilty and, you know?

或许现在角色互换了。变成他一直在容忍她的任性。对。

Or maybe it's switched. Now he's tolerating her bad behavior all the time. Yeah.

可能他觉得这是欠她的。

And perhaps he owes her that.

确实如此。

And he does.

但你说得对。就像1951年章节里描述的，叙述者始终带着几分戏谑与温情观察一切。而到最后，她却显得措手不及。

But you're right. It's like it's told in the nineteen fifty one section. The narrator is sort of looking at everything with a certain degree of amusement and affection. And at the end, she's much more taken aback.

这个问题可能有点冒昧——如果现在看到这个故事，毕竟它太不寻常了。开篇几乎带着神谕般的口吻，最开始完全像篇游记。

It's hard to ask this question of you. If you saw this story now, because it's so unusual for a story. Right? It does start in almost like a godlike tone. You know, it's a travelogue in the very beginning.

换作现在，你会采用这种写法吗？虽然最终它成为了天才之作。对吧？

Yeah. Would you take it now? Mean, it ends up being a work of genius. Right? Yeah.

但这完全不符合2025年的审美。

But it's very much not of 2025.

虽然这不是2025年的作品，但它在1979年出版时，那段时光在记忆中仍鲜活如初。我觉得我得反复读上几遍。

It's not of 2025, but with it being published here in 1979, this period of time was a lot fresher in in memory. I think I would have to read it several times.

嗯。但我

Mhmm. But I

我想我会接受它。

think I would take it.

太可爱了。它

That's so cute. It's

太棒了。因为文笔简直不可思议。

so good. Because the writing is just incredible.

不可思议。她总是如此不可思议。你介意我读一下《不眠之夜》的第一段吗？当然。我很乐意听。

Incredible. She's always so incredible. Would you mind if I read, actually, the first paragraph of sleepless nights? Sure. I'd love that.

天啊，我太爱这段了。好吧。现在是六月。这就是我刚刚为自己人生做出的决定。我将完成这部关于被转化甚至扭曲记忆的作品，并过好今天这样的生活。

God, I love it so much. Okay. It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work of transformed and even distorted memory and lead this life, the one I am leading today.

每个清晨，蓝色的时钟，钩针编织的床罩上粉蓝灰相间的方格与菱形。多么美好啊，这出自肮脏养老院里一个破碎老妇人之手的创作。美好与肮脏、悲伤在冷漠中交战，这就是我所见。更美的是放着电话的桌子，书籍杂志，门口的时代报，街上卡车粗粝碾轧如鸟鸣的声响。我想读这段是因为它像分形段落般浓缩了整本书。

Every morning, the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread with its pink and blue and gray squares and diamonds. How nice it is, this production of a broken old woman in a squalid nursing home. The niceness and the squalor and sorrow in apathetic battle, that is what I see. More beautiful is the table with the telephone, the books and magazines, the times at the door, the birdsong of rough grinding trucks in the street. I think the reason I wanted to read that is it's one of those fractal paragraphs that sort of gives you the entire book.

对吧？深埋的核心悲痛向外星群般碎裂扩散。我确实看到记忆的具体劳作——不断回归这些强烈意象，并从中提炼深刻情感。这就是她写得如此美妙之处。她的文字美得难以置信又充满智慧。

Right? The the buried heartbreak at the very center and the rest of it sort of fragmenting out, very fracturing out in a constellation. And I see a lot of, actually, sort of the work of memory, the tangible work of memory, right, coming back to these images that are so powerful and out of them extrapolating profound feeling. This is just what she does so beautifully. Her writing is so unbelievably beautiful and smart.

她会突然插入普鲁士式的哲学长句，又转回街道尽头垃圾车粗粝的鸟鸣声。这种质地几乎无人能及，太绝妙了。

And she'll throw in, you know, a long Prussian philosophical sentence and then go back to the rough birdsong of the garbage trucks at the end of the street. And I just find it it's so just texturally, almost nobody can write like that. It's so great.

是啊。真希望她能多写些作品。

Yeah. I wish she'd written more.

我懂。她写过一本非虚构作品叫《诱惑与背叛》，我觉得简直太棒了。不过我也希望她能创作更多。

I know. She wrote a nonfiction book called Seduction and Betrayal, and I think it's it's so amazing. No. But I do I wish she wrote more too.

对。就像你之前说的，《忠贞》的情节很单薄。说白了就是男人出轨引发后续风波。但我看了《巴黎评论》上达里尔·平克尼对哈德威克的专访，记者问她为何小说里缺乏情节。

Yeah. You know, as you said earlier, the faithful does not have much of a plot. I mean, what little plot there is is simply man has an affair. It has aftermath. But I was looking at the Paris Review interview with Hardwick, which Daryl Pinkney did, and he asked her about the fact that she doesn't have much plot in her fiction.

她回答说：'想看情节我会去看《达拉斯》。'对她而言更重要的是'通过语言达成的腔调'。一切都是语言与节奏，建立叙述者与素材的关系——不是作为具体的人，而是作为一种思维、一种感知力在发声。我觉得这正是本书的精髓所在。

And she says, if I want a plot, I'll watch Dallas. And what was more important to her was, quote, tone arrived at by language. It's all language and rhythm, and the establishment of the relation to the material of who's speaking, not speaking as a person exactly, but as a mind, a sensibility. And I feel that is what's going on here. You know?

当我们观察Z医生时，我们正栖居在某种感知力之中。

We are inhabiting a sensibility as we watch doctor z.

这个说法太妙了。这也解释了她如何让这本看似松散的书浑然天成——通过个人感知力维系整体。这对小说创作要求极高，而她竟能实现，简直是个奇迹。

Oh, I love that so much. That also speaks to how she does it, how this seemingly disparate book hangs together so beautifully. It hangs together through personal sensibility, which is is you know, that's a lot for a novel to write on, but the fact that she pulls it off feels like a miracle.

而且故事核心始终萦绕着'临时性'——人们不在正确的位置，远离故土，或许正奔赴他处。一切都是暂时的...除了那段病态的婚姻。

And, you know, at the center of it is the center of the story anyway is this sense of temporariness, of transience, of people not in the right place, not in the place they come from, perhaps on their way to another place. Everything is temporary Mhmm. Except for the marriage of disease.

确实如此。地点虽非临时，却经历着剧烈嬗变。

Yeah. That's actually true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the place is not temporary, but it goes through such radical transformations.

对吧？阿姆斯特丹既是永恒的，又...

Right? Yeah. Amsterdam. I mean, it's both everlasting. Right?

几乎每个段落里，她都在回望遥远的过去。比如最后那段绝妙描写：玛德姆齐变成了伦勃朗笔下的荷兰妇人，或是老大师画作里微醺的荷兰淑女。这种'过去存活于当下'的意象贯穿全书，她为这个主题创造了深邃的叙事空间——而且不仅限于这本书。

In every paragraph almost, you see her looking at the past as well, the distant past. Or even in the last paragraph with that beautiful image of Mademnzi having turned into one of Rembrandt's Dutch ladies, right, or one of the old masters tippling drunken Dutch ladies. I love this idea that, you know, the past is living within the present, and it's throughout the story. She creates such profound space for that in this story. And it's not just in this story.

对吧？这就是生活的写照。正因如此，故事在时间中的流淌才如此绚烂。不是吗？我们正深入伦勃朗的时代。

Right? It's in the life. This is why the story flows in time so gorgeously. Right? We're going deep into Rembrandt's time.

我们将进入二战刚结束的阿姆斯特丹。故事在时空中来回穿梭，表面上是关于一个三角恋——这已是相当撩人的情节设定——但它远不止于此，因为她对世界有着历史性的理解。明白吗？她能视欧洲为历史情感的储藏室。这种能力也体现在她对质感的把控上。

We're going into Amsterdam just after World War two. We go back and forth throughout this story, and it's ostensibly about a love trio, which is one of the more titillating story ideas out there, but it's about so much more because she has this historical conception of the world. Right? She's able to sort of see Europe as this repository of historical feeling. And it goes to her ability to work in textures.

她在文字质感和节奏中游刃有余，句子本身以截然不同的质感呈现，只为传递她的敏锐感知。同时，这种感知又极具包容性。在这个故事里，她的思维尤其宏大。

She's working in textures of prose and rhythm, and the sentences themselves come in radically different textures in order to give you her sensibility. At the same time, the sensibility is this capacious one. She's very large thinking in this story in particular.

是啊。简直是全景式的。她甚至用'所有热爱奥兰治亲王的人啊，振作精神随我来'开篇。嗯。

Yeah. It's panoramic. Yeah. She even begins it with all ye who love prince of orange, take heart and follow me. Mhmm.

要知道，这是十六世纪荷兰阿姆斯特丹争取独立、摆脱西班牙统治的战斗口号。于是故事就这样展开，明白吗？我们一下子倒回四个世纪前的荷兰，转眼又来到1951年。她驾驭时间的方式，将往昔融入当下叙事的功力实在惊人。

You know, a sixteenth century rallying cry for independence in Holland, in Amsterdam, to try to escape Spanish rule. So it's here they go, you know? We've gone back four centuries, and we're in Holland, and now it's 1951. So the way that she moves through time and pulls past time into the present of the story is amazing.

确实惊人。阅读时我不断自问——毕竟作为2025年的作家，我带着当代视角——她在开篇大篇幅铺垫，比如谈论古地图绘制者，这些抽象描写若出现在写作工坊里，所有人都会说：删掉。对吧？

It's amazing. I was asking myself as I was reading this because, you know, I'm a writer in 2025, and I read with a 2025 eyeball. And I was thinking, would this whole first section where she's really setting everything up, like talking about the old map makers, it's all very abstract. I know that in a writing workshop, everyone would say, cut it. Right?

太冗长了。但我认为正是这些赋予那对当众醉酒争吵的夫妇最后的时刻以沉重感。开篇的历史厚重感在结尾以镜像方式重现，所以对这个故事而言必不可少。

It's too much. I actually think that it gives such gravity to the final moments of this squabbling couple getting drunk in public. Right? We get the historical weight from the beginning is somehow applied in a mirror way in the end. So I think it's really necessary for this story.

没错。他们抵达阿姆斯特丹时衣衫褴褛，行李箱开裂，外套皱巴巴塞了一夏天。而结尾处你看到同样流离失所、格格不入的狼狈夫妇。懂吧？

Yeah. They're also arriving in Amsterdam kind of tattered with torn suitcases, and their coats are all wrinkled because they've been in the suitcase all summer. And then you have that same kind of displaced, out of place, slightly bedraggled couple at the end. You know?

是啊。到处都在上演联姻戏码。嗯。我

Yeah. There's a lot of marrying happening all over the place. Yeah. I

超爱结尾描写C夫人的那句：'她就像个布满裂纹的旧釉罐，却依然能盛住清水。'

love the line about Madame C at the end. She was like an old glazed vessel veined and cracked that nevertheless held water.

我太喜欢它了。

I love it so much.

太棒了。所以你在小说的语境中读过这么多次。脱离那个语境来读，对你来说是很不同的体验吗？

So good. So you've read this in the context of the novel so many times. Is it a very different experience for you to read it outside that context?

非常不同。是的，完全正确。对我来说，阅读小说的体验就像打开一个又一个问题。当我遇到一本小说时，最深刻的快乐就是这种门不断打开的感觉，我不知道自己要去哪里，也不知道作者的意图是什么。

It's very different. Yes. Exactly. For me, the experience of reading the novel is sort of opening question into question. That's my most profound joy when I encounter a novel is just having this feeling of doors opening throughout, and I don't know where I'm going, and I don't know what the writer is intending.

也许，你知道，在内心深处，他们自己也不知道。他们只是凭感觉行事。这本书就是一系列、无穷无尽的门，你可以选择任何一扇。我有时为了渴望而读，有时为了地方、地方的概念而读。

And perhaps, you know, deep down, they don't know either. It's just that they're going by feel. And this book is just a series, an endless series of doors, and you can take whichever one you want. And I sometimes read for the longing. I sometimes read for the place, the idea of place.

对吧？但在书中过半之后，这个秋天出现在这里，我感受到了它的紧迫感和密度。其他很多章节有点飘忽不定，我是说，更抽象一些。它们在不同的语域之间切换。

Right? But having this fall where it does in the book after the half point of the book, I feel the urgency of the density of it. The so a lot of the other chapters are sort of floaty a little bit. I mean, a little bit more abstract. They switch between registers.

这一章从头到尾都保持在同一个语域。它似乎在书的流动中试图告诉我一些具体的东西。单独阅读它，没有书的其余部分作为蜘蛛所坐的网，我得以看到它如何以自己的方式平衡和结构化，它的建筑，这个角色与哈德威克在这里不断关联的生活中与其他角色的对话是分开的。我可以把它看作它自己的东西，它自己的宝石。这也是一种礼物，因为突然间，我能在其中看到不同的东西。

This one stays in the same register throughout. It's trying to tell me something concrete, it feels like, in the flow of the book. Reading it separately without the rest of the book as the web that the spider is sort of sitting on, I get to see the way that it is in its own way balanced and structured, the architecture of it, the character is separate from speaking to the other characters in this constantly related life that Hardwick is sort of putting on the page here. I can see it as its own thing, its own jewel. And that is a gift too because they're suddenly, I'm able to see different things in it.

是的。嗯，关于那个，故事的中心的另一个问题是关于不忠的。

Yeah. Well, another question about that, that the center of the story is infidelity.

对。

Right.

为什么这个故事叫《忠实的》？

Why is the story called the faithful?

哦，嗯，我的意思是，在最后，他们是忠实的。对吧？我是说，Z夫人一直是忠实的。然后医生以自己的方式在Simone之后对她忠实。我是说，这种相互依赖的概念在故事中逐渐发展，最后在结尾处绽放。

Oh, well, I mean, at the end, they're faithful. Right? I mean, madame z is always faithful. And then the doctor is faithful to her after Simone in his own way. I mean, this idea of codependency, it sort of grows through the story, and it sort of blooms at the end.

我认为这是其中的一部分。当然，贯穿始终的信仰有多种形式。比如触及到的宗教信仰——西蒙娜是天主教徒，那位医生我想是犹太人，至少有一半犹太血统。

I think that's part of it. But, of course, there are different kinds of faith throughout. I mean, there's religious faith that sort of touched on. Simone is a Catholic. The doctor, I think he's Jewish, at least half Jewish.

一半犹太血统。没错。明白吗？而坚守与不忠配偶的婚姻也需要某种信念。还有叙事者'我'的信念，她追踪记录这些人几十年的生活并不断回访。

Half Jewish. Right. You know? And that there's something of faith in staying in a marriage with an unfaithful spouse. There's also the faith of the narrative I, which has tracked these people over the course of a few decades and returns to them too.

信仰有很多不同的表现形式。我相信如果有人愿意，完全可以就此写篇长篇论文。可能已经有人写过了。我知道的，对吧？

There's a lot of different manifestations of faith. One could write a whole long paper on this, I believe, if you really wanted to. Someone probably has. I know. Right?

非常感谢你，劳伦。

Well, thank you so much, Lauren.

噢，这真是莫大的荣幸。谢谢你，黛博拉。

Oh, it has been a profound pleasure. Thank you, Deborah.

伊丽莎白·哈德威克是评论家、散文家兼小说家，著有《幽灵情人》《简单真相》和《不眠之夜》等小说。她的散文集包括《曼哈顿的巴特比及其他随笔》和《美国虚构作品》。哈德威克于2007年去世，享年91岁。劳伦·格罗夫的小说作品包括《命运与怒涛》《矩阵》（均入围美国国家图书奖决选）以及2023年出版的《更广阔的荒野》。新短篇集《斗士》将于2026年2月出版。

Elizabeth Hardwick was a critic, essayist, and fiction writer, author of the novels The Ghostly Lover, Simple Truth, and Sleepless Nights. Her essay collections include Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays, and American Fictions. Hardwick died in 2007 at the age of 91. Lauren Groff's works of fiction include the novels Fates and Furies and Matrix, both of which were finalists for the National Book Award, and The Vaster Wilds, which was published in 2023. A new story collection, Brawler, will come out in February 2026.

2024年，她在佛罗里达州盖恩斯维尔开设了书店'The Links'。您可以下载《纽约客》小说播客过往二十多期节目，包括劳伦·格罗夫朗读并讨论雪莉·赫泽德和爱丽丝·门罗作品的集数，或在苹果播客免费订阅该节目。在'The Writer's Voice'播客中，您可以听到杂志作者亲自朗读的短篇小说。在您的播客应用中即可找到'The Writer's Voice'及其他《纽约客》播客节目。欢迎在Facebook页面分享对本节目的看法，或在苹果播客给我们评分评论。

In 2024, she opened the bookstore The Links in Gainesville, Florida. You can download more than two ten previous episodes of the New Yorker fiction podcast, including episodes in which Lauren Groff reads and discusses work by Shirley Hazzard and Alice Munro, or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page, or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts.

本期《纽约客》小说播客由克洛伊·普罗西诺斯制作。我是黛博拉·特雷斯曼。感谢收听。

This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Prossinos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.

诗歌具有连接内心宇宙与外部世界的力量。我是诗人玛吉·史密斯，美国公共媒体播客《慢下来》的主持人。每个工作日，从待办清单或末日刷屏中抽身，用精选诗歌享受片刻沉思。在任意播客平台收听《慢下来》。

Poetry has the power to connect our inner universe and the outer world. I'm Maggie Smith, poet and host of The Slow Down, a podcast from American Public Media. Each weekday, find time to take a breather from your to do list or doom scrolling for that matter and take in a moment of reflection with a handpicked poem. Listen to the slowdown wherever you get podcasts.

来自PRX。

From PRX.