没有英雄梦想的疲惫生活

“She has gone back to Brooklyn. ”

重新踏上离乡之旅的Eillis 想着母亲对来找她的那个人如此解释。她知道这句话分量很重，当然是对她自己而言，因为她不得不放弃故土，重回大洋另一端。她笑了，闭上眼睛假装释然。

书翻到最后一页，结束在这里，我也释然了：终于看完了。前一天我在日记里写：Brooklyn 的关键词是什么呢？女性，移民，怀乡，商业，美国。平淡到不想读。

托宾这本长篇担不起过多赞誉。

他谈起过这个故事的来源，在他十二岁时，父亲去世，常有邻居来访，安慰他的母亲，“一个女人对我母亲讲述了她女儿到布鲁克林的经历，滔滔不绝……几乎四十年以后，我才把我听到的这些事，她女儿去布鲁克林，然后又回来的故事梗概，写成了小说”。

所以Brooklyn 讲的就是上世纪五十年代，年轻的爱尔兰小镇姑娘Eillis在家乡找不到合适工作，被姐姐和好心的牧师安排来到美国，在Brooklyn 她小心翼翼学习做店员、租客，并且与意大利裔的小伙子Tony 恋爱，在夜校学习会计知识，克服乡愁一点点融入这里时，姐姐突然去世，Eillis 回乡吊唁，有了出国光环的Eillis与家乡小伙产生感情，在去与留之间摇摆不定，被人揭穿她在美国已经秘密结婚后不得不再次离乡，“She has gone back to Brooklyn. ”

全书四章，结构规矩似古典小说，太普通了：从人物到情节到氛围。

并不是说写普通人普通事不好，事实上我觉得只要尊重爱护自己的人物，挖掘起来，深入内心，再普通也有旁人不及之处，那些暗藏在茫茫宇宙的微弱星光。托宾似乎不愿意做这种努力，让人感觉他写的主角Eillis不是一个活生生的独一无二的“人”，而是面目不清的移民群体，一群人中的某一个，毫不起眼但是确确实实会做出群体认可选择的那一个。

Eillis 明明是个二十来岁的年轻姑娘啊，为什么托宾写的像个老妇人呢？写到爱，写到性，都不能让我心动，有句相传是杜拉斯说的但未经考证的话“爱之于我,不是肌肤之亲，不是一蔬一饭。它是一种不死的欲望，是疲惫生活中的英雄梦想。”Brooklyn 充满了五十年代的灰暗调子，年轻的Eillis 已经垂垂老矣，这是一种没有英雄梦想的疲惫生活。

有人说这本书会让有相同经历的人产生共鸣，而没有经历则难以感受。并不是。

我如今也很年轻，二十岁开头的年纪，怎么过都觉得是在浪费，感受到找到合适的工作并不容易。Eillis 想家想到哭，谁不是呢？回不了爱尔兰，融入Brooklyn 有多么无奈，谁不懂呢。我高中就开始离家，甚至也经历过好几个女孩子寄居在房东家要一起吃饭、彼此生活相互打扰的情况，看人眼色、揣测人心。

有共鸣没什么。人类很多情感都是共通的。你不能因为一本书让你共鸣就夸它好，你不能因为人家说的和你三观正好一致就说三观正。

去年反复引王小波在《黄金时代》 那段：“那一天我二十一岁，在我一生的黄金时代。我有好多奢望。我想爱，想吃，还想在一瞬间变成天上半明半暗的云。后来我才知道，生活就是个缓慢受锤的过程，人一天天老下去，奢望也一天天消失，最后变得像挨了锤的牛一样。可是我当时没有预见到这一点。我觉得自己会永远生猛下去，什么也锤不了我。”以前过分关注书里性描写，这段其实印象不深，如今回头看来，真是值得年年看一遍，永远生猛，不要被锤倒啊依然怀有英雄梦想的年轻人。

最后，介绍托宾时常见到“英语文学中的语言大师”的称谓，附一段（据说是作者请教了女性朋友写出的），我的感觉是句子干净，没什么难度。

When they reached the house he held her but did not kiss her. She moved as close to him as she could until she felt the warmth of him and they both began to sob. She wished that she could tell him, in a way that would make him believe her, that she would not go, but then it struck her that Tony might feel she should go, that the letter had made him see where her duty lay, that he was crying now for everything, for Rose who was dead, for her mother who was lonely, for Eilis who would have to go, and for himself who would be left. She wished she could say something clear, or even wished that she could tell what he was thinking or why he was crying now harder than she was.

He kissed her gently and responded with his tongue only when she opened her mouth for him. His body was warm and seemed strangely vulnerable to her now as she pulled him against her. She ran her hands down his back and under his shirt until she was touching his skin. They moved towards the bed without speaking. As they lay beside each other, he lifted her skirt and opened his trousers enough for her to feel his penis against her. She knew that he was waiting for a sign from her, that he would do nothing more as they continued to kiss. She opened her eyes and saw that his were closed. Quietly, she moved away from him and took off her panties and by the time she lay beside him again he had pulled his trousers down further and his underwear too so that she could touch him. He tried to put his hands on her breasts but could not easily unloose her brassiere; he put his hand on her back and concentrated on kissing her fiercely.

When he moved on top of her and entered her she tried not to gasp as she began to panic. It was not only the pain and the shock but the idea that she could not control him, that his penis was pushing into her deeper than she wanted it to go. With each thrust it seemed to move further into her until she was sure it was going to injure something inside her. She felt a relief as it pulled back but only to find it worse each time as it pushed up into her. She tightened as much as she could to stop it and she wished she could call out or indicate that he should not push in so hard, that he was going to break something.

That she could not shout made her panic even greater; she put her energy into tightening her whole body with all the force she could gather. And as she did so he gasped, he made noises that she did not imagine anyone could make, a sort of muffled whining that did not let up. As he stopped moving she tightened more, hoping that he would now take his penis out, but instead he lay on top of her, gasping. It seemed to her that he was unaware of anything except his own breathing, that in these minutes as she lay with him quietly on top of her he did not know or care that she existed. She had no idea how they were going to face each other now. She did not move as she waited for him to do something.

What he did once he moved away from her surprised her. He stood up without saying anything, looked at her, smiled and took his shoes and socks off and then removed his trousers and underpants. He knelt on the bed and slowly undressed her, and when she was naked, with her arms covering her breasts, he took off his shirt so that he was naked too. He approached gently, almost shyly, and lifted the bed covers and they both moved in between the sheets and lay together for some time quietly. She realized when she touched him once more, his penis erect again, how smooth and beautiful he was, and how much stronger he seemed naked than when he was with her in the street or in the dancehall, where, compared to men who were taller or bigger, he had often appeared almost frail. When she understood that he wanted to enter her again she whispered to him that he had pushed in too far the first time.
“I thought you would go up into my neck.” She laughed under her breath.
“I wish I could,” he said.
She pinched him hard.
“No, you don’t wish you could.”
“Hey, that hurt,” he whispered and kissed her, moving slowly on top of her.
This time the pain was almost worse than before, as though he were hitting against something inside her that was bruised or cut.
“Is that better?” he asked.
She tightened as much as she could.
“Hey, that’s beautiful,” he said. “Can you do that more?”
Once again, as he pushed in further, he seemed to become unaware that she was with him. He seemed lost to the world. And this sense of him as beyond her made her want him more than she had ever done, made her feel that this now and the memory of it later would be enough for her and had made a difference to her beyond anything she had ever imagined.
Since the night he had spent in her room everything was different between them. She felt that he was more relaxed, more willing to be silent and not trying to impress her so much or make jokes. And every time she saw him waiting for her, she felt that they had become closer


 “Will we ever tell our children that we did this?” she asked.
“When we are old maybe and have run out of other stories,” Tony said. “Or maybe we’ll save it up for some anniversary.”