经济学人16:天鹅之歌 A swan's song

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　　文艺；新生代小说;天鹅之歌;

　　Peter Carey's delightful¹ double story: The Chemistry of Tears，by Peter Carey.

　　彼得·凯里悦人的双线故事:《泪水制剂》,彼得·凯里著。

　　Few writers manage so consistently and delightfully² as Peter Carey to conjure³ wondrous⁴ scenes populated with idiosyncratic yet credible⁵ characters. “The Chemistry of Tears”, Mr Carey's 12th novel, does not disappoint.

　　鲜少有文墨之人能像彼得·凯里那样执着又讨喜，将一个个角色塑造得如此独特又不失真实感，再将其一并投入完美的场景中，共同构造出一幕幕戏法般的情节。凯里的第十二部小说《泪水制剂》，再一次没让我们失望。

　　As it opens, Catherine Gehrig, a conservator of clocks at a London museum, learns that her colleague and secret lover of 13 years has died. To comfort her in her grief she is assigned a new project: to reconstruct a fantastical 19th-century clockwork swan.

　　故事从一家伦敦博物馆的钟表管理员凯瑟琳·格里克（Catherine Gehrig）身上开始说起。凯瑟琳得知了她的同事（同时也是她长达十三年的地下情人）的死讯，为了抚平悲痛，她接受了一项新任务——修复一个十九世纪精美的天鹅钟表。

　　Mr Carey loves grand projects and intricate crafts. In “Oscar and Lucinda” (which won the Booker prize in 1988) he follows an extraordinary glass and iron church downriver to its final destination; the art of forgery⁶ pervades⁷ “Parrot and Olivier in America”. In “The Chemistry of Tears”, the inner workings of a clock's reliable tick-tock contrast with the ultimate betrayal of human flesh.

　　凯里总爱在故事中给角色各种宏大任务和各种精细的手艺。在《奥斯卡于露辛达》（荣获1988年布克奖）一书中，他描写了一座由玻璃和铁制成的教堂的构想，并且让这个构想随着主人公的旅程顺水而下，直到它的目的地，直到故事的最终；同样的，在小说《奥利维尔与鹦鹉》（“Parrot and Olivier in America ”暂无官方译名）中，他又痴情于仿品工艺，贯穿始终。在《泪水制剂》中，钟表发条永远忠实的滴答声与血肉人类最终的忘弃形成了鲜明对比。

　　Two stories intertwine. One strand⁸, set in 2010, follows Catherine, an “oddly elegant tall woman” with seaweed hair. She muses⁹ on her lover's fate, “trapped beneath the earth, all his beauty turned into a factory, producing methane¹⁰, carbon dioxide, rotten egg gas, ammonia.” She drinks vodka and rages at the weather, “hail and hate, the entire back garden stoned to death.”

　　小说分两个故事面，有如两缕丝线般难解难分。一条，是追随着凯瑟琳的，定点在2010年。凯瑟琳，这个一头海藻般头发的女人，这个“奇妙而优雅的高挑女人”，沉浸在爱人的命运中不可自拔，“那美丽的生命深陷在地底，如同化工厂一般制造着沼气、二氧化碳、硫化氢和氨气”；她用伏特加麻醉自己，她为坏天气而暴怒，“冰雹夹着憎恨，整个后花园犹如石刑后的死寂。”

　　A second narrative¹¹ traces the clock's original manufacture. Henry Brandling, a sorrowful, rich Englishman, travels to Germany to commission a “mechanical marvel” so wondrous it will raise his consumptive son from his sickbed.

　　另一条，追随着发条天鹅，回溯到其最初的诞生。富裕却忧伤的英国男子亨利·布兰德林（Henry Brandling）来到德国，希望能找人制造出一个美妙的“机械奇迹”，好让他身患肺痨的儿子能从中汲取战胜病魔的希望。

　　Henry's story, scrawled¹² in 11 notebooks, comforts Catherine as her lover can no longer. Yet as she reads and works, the distinction between the animate¹³ and inanimate blur¹⁴. She brings Henry's preening¹⁵ swan to life but eradicates¹⁶ the afterlife of her adultery, the e-mail trail between her and her lover: “I deleted, for ever, the celestial¹⁷ light through the pine forest behind Walberswick, the heath at Dunwich in full flower”; she lingers over his final e-mail, “I kiss your toes”, sent hours before he died.

　　这位亨利先生的故事潦草地记叙在他留下的11本笔记中，让凯瑟琳的心得到了死去的情人再也无法给予的抚慰。然而随着凯瑟琳对亨利遗稿的探读，也随着她修复工作的深入，生命与器物的界限开始模糊：她让亨利精美的发条天鹅重现生机，却抹去了她不光彩的感情的一切遗迹，抹去了她与情人间通情的电邮：“我永远地抹去了Walberswick后那片松林里，透过叶隙而下的缕缕阳光；也永远地告别了Dunwich平原上，彼时的繁华似锦”；在最后一封电邮前，凯瑟琳迟疑着，那是她的情人去世前几个小时发给她的字句，“我亲吻你的趾尖”，邮件中如是写道。

　　Mr Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative¹⁸ to entertain. His fault as a novelist is that at times he is too enamoured of his constructs and risks losing the reader. “The Chemistry of Tears” is a shorter and less ambitious book than some of his earlier works—but a wholly enjoyable journey.

　　凯里是现今仍然在世的最杰出的英语作家之一，他的佳作在理智与情感上都给人以犒赏；凯里极具诗意但从来不忘作品的必须——让读者享受其中。他的小说唯一不足的就是时常过分珍视自己的构思而几近忘记了读者。《泪水制剂》较于其早先的一些作品来说要短小一些，也少了几许气势，但终归来说，这份故事仍旧是一次美妙的旅程。

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