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[color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma]二战后作为战败国的德国处在盟军和苏军的管制中，万事萧条，百废待兴。生活在柏林的15岁少年迈克·伯格患上了猩红热，但他仍然时不时的坐车到很远的图书馆中找寻自己爱看的书籍，对于这位身处战后管制区的少年而言，这是他仅有的娱乐。迈克有一次在路上猩红热病发，汉娜将他送回家，两人开始渐渐交谈起来。病好的迈克前往汉娜住的地方感谢她的救命之恩，在汉娜的屋内，迈克第一次感受到了非比寻常的快乐。[/font][/color][color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma]　　两人的关系发生了奇妙的化学反应，情欲变成了爱情，他和汉娜私下见面的次数越来越多，两人在汉娜的公寓中度着属于自己的快乐时光。汉娜常常叫迈克带来不同的书籍，然后慢慢地读给她听。相处中迈克和汉娜的矛盾渐渐爆发，迈克试图对抗年龄的悬殊带来的服从感，并想摆脱自身的稚气和懦弱。终于有一天，当迈克前往汉娜的公寓，发现已经人去楼空，这段无果之恋也走到了尽头。[/font][/color][color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma]　　　毕业之前，迈克作为实习生前往旁听一次对纳粹战犯的审判，在审判席上，迈克做梦也没有想到，坐在战犯座位上的，竟然是汉娜！审判开始了，原来汉娜曾经做过纳粹集中营的看守。或许是出于自责、或是对法律的无知、汉娜对指控供认不讳，并因为不愿在众人面前暴露自己不认字的事实，认下本不属于自己的重责。迈克此时有能力帮助汉娜澄清事实，出于对汉娜罪行的谴责以及不愿暴露自己与汉娜的关系，他选择了沉默，就连给汉娜鼓励的勇气也没有。最终汉娜被判终身监禁。[/font][/color][color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma]　　迈克在很多年后开始给狱中的汉娜寄自己朗读的磁带，这让汉娜重新找到了活着的意义和勇气，并且汉娜通过磁带和书的逐字对比学会了阅读和书写！并且开始给迈克写信。迈克从来没有回过。也许他想逃避那份自责的心情；也许他没有勇气面对汉娜。这让汉娜感到无比的孤单。汉娜出狱的时间到了，迈克来到狱中看见已经白发苍苍的汉娜，虽然承诺给汉娜提供出狱后物质上的援助，却拒绝了心灵沟通。汉娜绝望自杀。[/font][/color][color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma]　　帮助汉娜处理遗愿并不能使迈克逃出自责，他最后选择倾诉来宣泄内心的痛楚。[/font][/color][/align]
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CHAPTER TWELVE A LL THIS happened ten years ago. In the first few years after Hanna’s death, I was tormented by the old questions of whether I had denied and betrayed her, whether I owed her something, whether I was guilty for having loved her. Sometimes I asked myself if I was responsible for her death. And sometimes I was in a rage at her and at what she had done to me. Until finally the rage faded and the questions ceased to matter. Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me—it was the path my life had taken. Soon after her death, I decided to write the story of me and Hanna. Since then I’ve done it many times in my head, each time a little differently, each time with new images, and new strands of action and thought. Thus there are many different stories in addition to the one I have written. The guarantee that the written one is the right one lies in the fact that I wrote it and not the other versions. The written version wanted to be written, the many others did not. At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever. At any rate, that’s what I think when I just happen to think about it. But if something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nevertheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear. Maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be. As soon as I returned from New York, I donated Hanna’s money in her name to the Jewish League Against Illiteracy. I received a short, computer-generated letter in which the Jewish League thanked Ms. Hanna Schmitz for her donation. With the letter in my pocket, I drove to the cemetery, to Hanna’s grave. It was the first and only time I stood there. 第12节　　　转眼间，这一切都成了十年前的事情了。在汉娜死后最初的几年里，那些老问题一直在折磨困扰着我，诸如，我是否拒绝和背叛了她，我是否仍欠她什么，我是否有罪——因为我曾经爱过她，我是否必须要宣布与她脱离关系或者把她摆脱掉。有时候我扪心自问，我是否要对她的死负责，有时候我对她十分气愤，气愤她对我的伤害，直到那气愤变得软弱无力为止，那些问题变得不重要为止。我做过什么和没做过什么，她对我有过什么伤害——这些恰恰成了我的生活。 　　汉娜死后不久，我就下决心要把我和汉娜的故事写出来。从那时以来，我已经在脑子里把我们的故事写过多次了，每次总有点不一样，总是有新的形象、新的情节和新的构思。这样一来，除了我写出来的版本外还有许多其他版本。有保障的是写出来的版本是正确的版本，原因在于它是我写出来的，而其他版本我没有写出来。已经写出来的版本是它自己想被写出来，其他许多版本不想被写出来。 　　起初，我想把我们的故事写出来的目的是为了摆脱她，但是，我的记忆不是为这个目的而存在的。随后我注意到，我们的故事是怎样地从我的记忆中悄悄地消失。于是，我想通过写作把我的记忆寻找回来。但是，就是写作也没有把记忆诱发出来。几年来，我一直没有云触扪及我们的故事，我们相安无事。这样一来，它反而回来了，一个细节接着一个细节，以一种完整的、一致的和正确的方式回来了，使我对此不再伤心。一个多么让人伤心的故事：我过去常这样想。这并不是说我现在认为它是幸福的。但是，我认为它是属实的。在这个前提下，它是伤心的还是幸福的问题就不重要了。 　　当我想起它时，无论如何我总是想这些。当我觉得受到了伤害时，过去受到伤害的感觉就又重现出来；当我觉得我对某事应负责任时，就会想起当时的那种负罪感；如果我如今渴望得到什么，或怀念家乡，那么我就会感觉出当时的那种渴望和怀乡情。我们的生活一环套一环，后一环总是离不开前一环，已经过去的没有结束，而是活现在现实中。这些我懂。尽管如此，我有时对此还是感到难以承受。也许我把我们的故事写出来的目的还是为了摆脱它，尽管我无法达到这个目的。 　　从纽约一回来，我就把汉娜的钱以她的名义汇给了"犹太反盲联盟"。我收到了一封用电脑写的短信，在信中，"犹太反盲联盟"对汉娜·史密芝女士的捐赠表示了感谢。兜里揣着那封信，我开车去了汉娜的墓地。那是我第一次，也是唯一的一次站在她的墓前。

CHAPTER ELEVEN I T WAS AUTUMN before I could carry out Hanna’s instructions. The daughter lived in New York, and I used a meeting in Boston as the occasion to bring her the money: a bank check plus the tea tin with the cash. I had written to her, introduced myself as a legal historian, and mentioned the trial. I told her I would be grateful for a chance to talk to her. She invited me to tea. I took the train from Boston to New York. The woods were a triumphal parade of brown, yellow, orange, tawny red, and chestnut, and the flaming glowing scarlet of the maples. It made me think of the autumn pictures in Hanna’s cell. When the rhythm of the wheels and the rocking of the car tired me, I dreamed of Hanna and myself in a house in the autumn-blazed hills that were lining our route. Hanna was older than when I had met her and younger than when I had met her again, older than me, more attractive than in earlier years, more relaxed in her movements with age, more at home in her own body. I saw her getting out of the car and picking up shopping bags, saw her going through the garden into the house, saw her set down the bags and go upstairs ahead of me. My longing for Hanna became so strong that it hurt. I struggled against the longing, argued that it went against Hanna’s and my reality, the reality of our ages, the reality of our circumstances. How could Hanna, who spoke no English, live in America? And she couldn’t drive a car either. I woke up and knew that Hanna was dead. I also knew that my desire had fixed on her without her being its object. It was the desire to come home. The daughter lived in New York on a street near Central Park. The street was lined on both sides with old row houses of dark sandstone, with stoops of the same sandstone leading up to the front door on the first floor. This created an effect of severity—house after house with almost identical façades, stoop after stoop, trees only recently planted at regular intervals along the sidewalk, with a few yellowing leaves on thin twigs. The daughter served tea by large windows looking out on the vest-pocket backyard gardens, some green and colorful and some merely collections of trash. As soon as we had sat down, the tea had been poured, and the sugar added and stirred, she switched from the English in which she had welcomed me, to German. “What brings you here?” The question was neither friendly nor unfriendly; her tone was absolutely matter-of-fact. Everything about her was matter-of-fact: her manner, her gestures, her dress. Her face was oddly ageless, the way faces look after being lifted. But perhaps it had set because of her early sufferings; I tried and failed to remember her face as it had been during the trial. I told her about Hanna’s death and her last wishes. “Why me?” “I suppose because you are the only survivor.” “And how am I supposed to deal with it?” “However you think fit.” “And grant Frau Schmitz her absolution?” At first I wanted to protest, but Hanna was indeed asking a great deal. Her years of imprisonment were not merely to be the required atonement: Hanna wanted to give them her own meaning, and she wanted this giving of meaning to be recognized. I said as much. She shook her head. I didn’t know if this meant she was refusing to accept my interpretation or refusing to grant Hanna the recognition. “Could you not recognize it without granting her absolution?” She laughed. “You like her, don’t you? What was your relationship?” I hesitated a moment. “I read aloud to her. It started when I was fifteen and continued while she was in prison.” “How did you . . .” “I sent her tapes. Frau Schmitz was illiterate almost all her life; she only learned to read and write in prison.” “Why did you do all this?” “When I was fifteen, we had a relationship.” “You mean you slept together?” “Yes.” “That woman was truly brutal . . . did you ever get over the fact that you were only fifteen when she . . . No, you said yourself that you began reading to her again when she was in prison. Did you ever get married?” I nodded. “And the marriage was short and unhappy, and you never married again, and the child, if there is one, is in boarding school.” “That’s true of thousands of people, it doesn’t take a Frau Schmitz.” “Did you ever feel, when you had contact with her in those last years, that she knew what she had done to you?” I shrugged my shoulders. “In any case, she knew what she had done to people in the camp and on the march. She didn’t just tell me that, she dealt with it intensively during her last years in prison.” I told her what the warden had said. She stood up and took long strides up and down the room. “How much money is it?” I went to the coat closet, where I had left my bag, and returned with the check and the tea tin. “Here.” She looked at the check and put it on the table. She opened the tin, emptied it, closed it again, and held it in her hand, her eyes riveted on it. “When I was a little girl, I had a tea tin for my treasures. Not like this, although these sorts of tea tins already existed, but one with Cyrillic letters, not one with a top you push in, but one you snap shut. I brought it with me to the camp, but then one day it was stolen from me.” “What was in it?” “What you’d expect. A piece of hair from our poodle. Tickets to the operas my father took me to, a ring I won somewhere or found in a package—the tin wasn’t stolen for what was in it. The tin itself, and what could be done with it, were worth a lot in the camp.” She put the tin down on top of the check. “Do you have a suggestion for what to do with the money? Using it for something to do with the Holocaust would really seem like an absolution to me, and that is something I neither wish nor care to grant.” “For illiterates who want to learn to read and write. There must be nonprofit organizations, foundations, societies you could give the money to.” “I’m sure there are.” She thought about it. “Are there corresponding Jewish organizations?” “You can depend on it, if there are organizations for something, then there are Jewish organizations for it. Illiteracy, it has to be admitted, is hardly a Jewish problem.” She pushed the check and the money back to me. “Let’s do it this way. You find out what kind of relevant Jewish organizations there are, here or in Germany, and you pay the money to the account of the organization that seems most plausible to you.” She laughed. “If the recognition is so important, you can do it in the name of Hanna Schmitz.” She picked up the tin again. “I’ll keep the tin.” 第11节　　　直到秋天，我才完成了汉娜的委托。那位女儿住在纽约，我参加了在波士顿举行的一个会议，利用这个机会把钱给她带去，一张银行存款的支票加上茶罐里的零钱。我给她写过信，自我介绍是法学史家并提到了那次法庭审判，说如果能和她谈谈我将木胜感激。她邀请我一起去喝茶。 　　我从波士顿乘火车去纽约。森林五光十色，有棕色、黄色、橘黄色、红棕色、棕红色，还有槭树光芒四射的红色。这使我想起了汉娜那间小屋里的秋天的图片。当车轮的转动和车厢的摇晃使我疲倦时，我梦见了汉娜和我坐在一间房子里，房子坐落在五光十色的、秋天的山丘上，我们的火车正穿过那座山丘。汉娜比我认识她时要老，比我再次见到她时要年轻，比我年纪大，比从前漂亮，正处在动作沉着稳重、身体仍很健壮的年龄段。我看见她从汽车里走出来，把购物袋抱在怀里，看见她穿过花园向房子这边走过来，看见她放下购物袋，朝我前面的楼梯走上来。我对汉娜的思念是如此地强烈，以至于这思念令我伤心痛苦。我尽力抗拒这种思念，抵制这种思念，这思念对汉娜和对我，对我们实际的年龄，对我们生活的环境完全不现实。不会讲英语的汉娜怎么能生活在美国呢？而且汉娜也不会开车。 　　我从梦中醒来，再次明白汉娜已经死了。我也知道那与她紧密相关的思念并不是对她的思念，那是一种对回家的向往。 　　那位女儿住在纽约一条离中央公园不远的小街道里，街道两旁环绕着一排排用深色沙石建造的老房子，通向一楼的台阶也用同样深色的沙石建成。这给人一种严格的感觉，房子挨着房子，房屋正面差不多都一个样，台阶挨着台阶，街道旁的树木也是不久前栽的，之间的距离都一样，很有规律，稀少的树枝上挂着稀稀落落的黄树叶。 　　那位女儿把茶桌摆在一扇大窗户前，从这里可以看到外面的四方形小花园，花园里有的地方郁郁葱葱，有的地方五颜六色，有的地方堆放着家用破烂。她给我斟上茶水，加上糖搅拌之后，马上就把问候我时所用的英语变成了德语。"是什么风把您吹到我这来了？"她不冷不热地问我。她的语气听上去非常地务实，她的一切看上去都务实，她的态度，她的手势和她的服饰。她的脸很特别，看不出有多大年纪。所有绷着的脸看上去就像她的脸那样。但是，也许是由于她早年的痛苦经历使其如此僵硬。我尽力回想她在法庭审理期间的面部表情，但怎么也想不起来。 　　我述说了汉娜的死和她的委托。 　　"为什么是我？" 　　"我猜想因为您是惟一的幸存者。" 　　"我该把它用在哪里？" 　　"您认为有意义的事情。" 　　"以此给予史密芝女士宽恕吗？" 　　起初，我想反驳，因为汉娜要达到的目的实际上远不止这些。多年的监禁生活不应该仅仅是一种赎罪。汉娜想要赋予赎罪本身一种意义，而且，汉娜想通过这种方式使它的意义得到承认。我把这层意思说给了她。 　　她摇摇头。我不知道她是否想拒绝我的解释，还是拒绝承认汉娜。 　　"不饶恕她您就不能承认她吗？" 　　她笑了。"您喜欢她，对吗？你们之间到底是什么关系？" 　　我迟疑了一会儿。"我是她的朗读者。这从我十五岁时就开始了，在她坐牢时也没有断。""您怎么…·" 　　"我给她寄录音带。史密芝女士几乎一生都是个文盲，她在监狱里才开始学习读写。" 　　"您为什么要做这些呢？" 　　"我十五岁的时候，我们就有过那种关系。" 　　"您是说，你们一起睡过觉吗？" 　　"是的。" 　　"一个多么残忍的女人。您一个十五岁的孩子就和她……您能承受得了吗？不，您自己说的，当她坐牢后，您又重新开始为她朗读。您曾经结过婚吗？" 　　我点点头。 　　"那么您的婚姻很短暂和不幸。您没有再结婚，您的孩子——如果您有孩子的话，在寄宿学校。" 　　"这种情况多的是，这与史密芝无关。" 　　"在您与她最近这些年的接触中，您是否有过这种感觉，就是说，她清楚她给您所带来的是什么吗？" 　　我耸耸肩。"无论如何她清楚地在集中营和在北迁的路途中给其他人带来了什么样的损失。她不仅仅是这样对我说的，而且，在监狱的最后几年里她还努力地去研究它。"我讲述了女监狱长对我讲述过的情况。 　　她站了起来，在房间里来回踱着大步："那么涉及到多少钱呢？" 　　我走到了我放包的衣帽架前，拿出支票和茶叶罐，走回来对她说："都在这里。'' 　　她看了看支票，然后把它放在了桌子上，又把茶叶罐打开倒空了，然后又关上。她把茶叶罐捧在手里，目光死死地盯着它说："当我还是小姑娘的时候，我有个茶叶罐，用来装我的宝贝，不是这样的，尽管当时也已经有这样的了。它上面有用西里尔字母书写的文字，盖不是往里压的那种，而是扣在上面的。我把它带到了集中营，有一天它被人偷走了。" 　　"里面有什么东西？" 　　"有什么，有一绝我们家小狗的鬈毛，有父亲带我去看过的歌剧的门票，一枚在什么地方得到的或是在一个包里发现的戒指——之所以被盗并不是由于里面装的东西。那个茶叶罐本身和人们在集中营里能拿它做的事情却很有价值。"她把茶叶罐放在了支票上面，"关于怎样使用这笔钱您有什么建议吗？把它用于任何与大屠杀有关的事，这对我来说，的确就是我既不能又不想给予的一种饶恕。" 　　"给那些想学习读写的文盲，一定有这样的公益基金会和社团组织，可以把钱捐献给这些机构。" 　　"当然会有这样的机构。"她思考着。 　　""也有类似的犹太人协会和社团吗？" 　　"如果有什么社团，那么您可以相信，也就会有犹太社团。不过，文盲问题不是犹太问题。" 　　她把支票和钱推到我这边。 　　"我们这样做吧：您去打听一下都有什么相关的犹太组织，这里也好，在德国也好。然后，把钱寄到您最信任的有关组织的账号上去。您也可以，"她笑了，"如果得到承认非常重要的话，以史密芝女士的名义寄。" 　　她又把茶叶罐拿到手里："我留下这个茶叶罐。

CHAPTER TEN N EXT MORNING, Hanna was dead. She had hanged herself at daybreak. When I arrived, I was taken to the warden. I saw her for the first time—a small, thin woman with dark blond hair and glasses. She seemed insignificant until she began to speak, with force and warmth and a severe gaze and energetic use of both hands and arms. She asked me about my telephone conversation of the night before and the meeting the previous week. Had I picked up any signals, had it made me fear for her? I said no. Indeed, I had had no suspicions or fears that I had ignored. “How did you get to know each other?” “We lived in the same neighborhood.” She looked at me searchingly, and I saw that I would have to say more. “We lived in the same neighborhood and we got to know each other and became friends. When I was a young student, I was at the trial that convicted her.” “Why did you send Frau Schmitz cassettes?” I was silent. “You knew that she was illiterate, didn’t you? How did you know?” I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t see what business the story of Hanna and me was of hers. Tears were filling my chest and throat, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. She must have seen how I was feeling. “Come with me, I’ll show you Frau Schmitz’s cell.” She went ahead, but kept turning around to tell me things or explain them to me. Here is where there had been a terrorist attack, here was the sewing shop where Hanna had worked, this is where Hanna once held a sit-down strike until cuts in library funding were reinstated, this was the way to the library. She stopped in front of the cell. “Frau Schmitz didn’t pack. You’ll see her cell the way she lived in it.” Bed, closet, table, chair, a shelf on the wall over the table, a sink and toilet in the corner behind the door. Glass bricks instead of window glass. The table was bare. The shelf held books, an alarm clock, a stuffed bear, two mugs, instant coffee, tea tins, the cassette machine, and on two lower shelves, the cassettes I had made. “They aren’t all here.” The warden had followed my glance. “Frau Schmitz always lent some tapes to the aid society for blind prisoners.” I went over to the bookshelf. Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Tadeusz Borowski, Jean Améry—the literature of the victims, next to the autobiography of Rudolf Hess, Hannah Arendt’s report on Eichmann in Jerusalem, and scholarly literature on the camps. “Did Hanna read these?” “Well, at least she ordered them with care. Several years ago I had to get her a general concentrationcamp bibliography, and then one or two years ago she asked me to suggest some books on women in the camps, both prisoners and guards; I wrote to the Institute for Contemporary History, and they sent a specialized bibliography. As soon as Frau Schmitz learned to read, she began to read about the concentration camps.” Above the bed hung many small pictures and slips of paper. I knelt on the bed and read. There were quotations, poems, little articles, even recipes that Hanna had written down or cut out like pictures from newspapers and magazines. “Spring lets its blue banner flutter through the air again,” “Cloud shadows fly across the fields”—the poems were all full of delight in nature, and yearning for it, and the pictures showed woods bright with spring, meadows spangled with flowers, autumn foliage and single trees, a pasture by a stream, a cherry tree with ripe red cherries, an autumnal chestnut flamed in yellow and orange. A newspaper photograph showed an older man and a younger man, both in dark suits, shaking hands. In the young one, bowing to the older one, I recognized myself. I was graduating from school, and was getting a prize from the principal at the ceremony. That was a long time after Hanna had left the city. Had Hanna, who could not read, subscribed to the local paper in which my photo appeared? In any case she must have gone to some trouble to find out about the photo and get a copy. And had she had it with her during the trial? I felt the tears again in my chest and throat. “She learned to read with you. She borrowed the books you read on tape out of the library, and followed what she heard, word by word and sentence by sentence. The tape machine couldn’t handle all that constant switching on and off, and rewinding and fast-forwarding. It kept breaking down and having to be repaired, and because that required permission, I finally found out what Frau Schmitz was doing. She didn’t want to tell me at first; when she also began to write, and asked me for a writing manual, she didn’t try to hide it any longer. She was also just proud that she had succeeded, and wanted to share her happiness.” As she spoke, I had continued to kneel, my eyes on the pictures and notes, fighting back tears. When I turned around and sat down on the bed, she said, “She so hoped you would write. You were the only one she got mail from, and when the mail was distributed and she said ‘No letter for me?’ she wasn’t talking about the packages the tapes came in. Why did you never write?” I still said nothing. I could not have spoken; all I could have done was to stammer and weep. She went to the shelf, picked up a tea tin, sat down next to me, and took a folded sheet of paper from her suit pocket. “She left a letter for me, a sort of will. I’ll read the part that concerns you.” She unfolded the sheet of paper. “There is still money in the lavender tea tin. Give it to Michael Berg; he should send it, along with the 7,000 marks in the bank, to the daughter who survived the fire in the church with her mother. She should decide what to do with it. And tell him I say hello to him.” So she had not left any message for me. Did she intend to hurt me? Or punish me? Or was her soul so tired that she could only do and write what was absolutely necessary? “What was she like all those years?” I waited until I could go on. “And how was she these last few days?” “For years and years she lived here the way you would live in a convent. As if she had moved here of her own accord and voluntarily subjected herself to our system, as if the rather monotonous work was a sort of meditation. She was greatly respected by the other women, to whom she was friendly but reserved. More than that, she had authority, she was asked for her advice when there were problems, and if she intervened in an argument, her decision was accepted. Then a few years ago she gave up. She had always taken care of herself personally, she was slender despite her strong build, and meticulously clean. But now she began to eat a lot and seldom washed; she got fat and smelled. She didn’t seem unhappy or dissatisfied. In fact it was as though the retreat to the convent was no longer enough, as though life in the convent was still too sociable and talkative, and she had to retreat even further, into a lonely cell safe from all eyes, where looks, clothing, and smell meant nothing. No, it would be wrong to say that she had given up. She redefined her place in a way that was right for her, but no longer impressed the other women.” “And the last days?” “She was the way she always was.” “Can I see her?” She nodded, but remained seated. “Can the world become so unbearable to someone after years of loneliness? Is it better to kill yourself than to return to the world from the convent, from the hermitage?” She turned to me. “Frau Schmitz didn’t write anything about why she was going to kill herself. And you won’t say what there was between you that might have led to Frau Schmitz’s killing herself at the end of the night before you were due to pick her up.” She folded the piece of paper, put it away, stood up, and smoothed her skirt. “Her death is a blow to me, you see, and at the moment I’m very angry, at Frau Schmitz, and at you. But let’s go.” She led the way again, this time silently. Hanna lay in the infirmary in a small cubicle. We could just fit between the wall and the stretcher. The warden pulled back the sheet. A cloth had been tied around Hanna’s head to hold up her chin until the onset of rigor mortis. Her face was neither particularly peaceful nor particularly agonized. It looked rigid and dead. As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him. Why had I not seen this reflection a week ago? I must not cry. After a time, when the warden looked at me questioningly, I nodded, and she spread the sheet over Hanna’s face again. 第10节　　　第二天早上，汉娜死了。她在黎明时分自缢了。 　　当我赶到时，我被带到了女监狱长那儿。我是第一次见到她，她又瘦又小，头发是深黄色的，戴着一副眼镜。在她没有开始说话之前看上去并不引人注目，但是，她说话却铿锵有力，热情洋溢，目光严厉，且精力充沛地挥舞着手臂。她问我昨天晚上的那次电话和一周前的那次会面。问我是否有预感和担忧，我做了否定的回答，我确实没有过预感和担忧，我没有隐瞒。 　　"你们是在哪认识的？" 　　"我们住得很近。"她审视地看着我，我意识到我必须多说些，"我们住得很近，后来就相互认识并成了朋友，作为一名年轻的学生我旁听了对她的法庭审判。" 　　"您为什么要给史密兰女士寄录音带？" 　　我沉默不语。 　　"您知道她是文盲，对吗？您是从哪儿知道的？" 　　我耸耸肩，看不出汉娜和我的故事与她有什么关系。我眼里含着泪水，喉头哽咽着，我害怕自己因此无法说话，我不想在她面前哭泣。 　　她看出了我所处的状态。"跟我来，我给您看一下史密芝女士的单人间。"她走在前面，不时地转过身来向我报告或解释一些事情。她告诉我哪里曾遭受过恐怖分子的袭击，哪里是汉娜曾工作过的缝纫室，哪里是汉娜曾静坐过的地方——直到削减图书馆资金的决定得到纠正为止，哪里可通向图书馆。在一个单人间的门前，她停了下来说："史密芝女士没有整理她的东西，您所看到的样子就是她在此生活时的样子。" 　　床、衣柜、桌子和椅子，桌子上面的墙上有一个书架，在门后的角落里是洗漱池和厕所，代替一扇窗户的是玻璃砖。桌子上什么东西都没有，书架上摆著书、一个闹钟、一个布熊、两个杯子、速溶咖啡、茶叶罐，还有录音机，在下面两层架子上摆放着我给她录制的录音带。 　　"这不是全部，"女监狱长追踪着我的目光说，"史密芝女士总是把一些录音带借给救援机构里的盲人刑事犯。" 　　我走近书架，普里莫·莱维、埃利·维厄琴尔、塔多西·波洛夫斯基、让·艾默里，除鲁道夫·赫斯的自传札记外，还有受害者文学、汉纳·阿伦特关于艾希曼在耶路撒冷的报道和关于集中营的科学文学。 　　"汉娜读过这些吗？" 　　"不管怎么样，她是经过深思熟虑之后才订这些书的。好多年以前，我就不得不为她弄一本关于集中营的一般书目，一年或两年以前她又请求我给她提供关于集中营里的女人、女囚犯和女看守这方面书的书名。我给现代史所写过信，并收到了相应的特别书目。自从史密兰女士学会认字之后，她马上就开始读有关集中营的书籍。" 　　床头挂了许多小图片和纸条。我跪到了床上去读，它们或是一段文章的摘录，或是一首诗，或是一则短讯，或是汉娜抄录的食谱，或者从报纸杂志上剪裁下来的小图片。"春天让它蓝色的飘带在空中再次飘扬"，"云影在田野上掠过"。所有的诗歌都充满了对大自然的喜爱和向往，小图片上展现的是春意盎然的森林、万紫千红的草坪、秋天的落叶、一棵树。溪水旁的草地、一棵坠满了熟透果实的红樱桃树、一棵秋天的浅黄和桔黄的闪闪发光的栗子树。有一张从报纸上剪下来的照片，上面有一位老先生和一位穿着深色西装的年轻人在握手。我认出了那位给老先生鞠躬的年轻人就是我，那时我刚刚中学毕业，那是我在毕业典礼上接受校长授予的一个奖品，那是汉娜离开那座城市很久之后的事情了。她一个目不识丁的人当时就预订了那份登有那张照片的地方报纸了吗？无论如何为了进一步获悉并获得那张照片，她一定费了不少周折。在法庭审理期间，她就有那张照片了吗？她把它带在身边了吗？我的喉咙又哽咽了。 　　"她是跟您学会了认字。她从图书馆借来您为她在录音带上朗读的书，然后逐字逐句地与她所听到的进行对照。那台录音机因不能长久地承受一会儿往前转，一会儿往后倒带，一会儿暂停，一会儿放音，所以总是坏，总要修理。因为修理需要审批，所以，我最终明白了史密芝所做的事情。她最初不愿意说，但是，当她也开始写并向我申请笔和纸时，她再也不能掩饰了。她学会了读写，她简直为此而自豪，她要与人分享她的喜悦。" 　　当她讲这些时，我仍旧跪在那儿，目光始终注视着那些图片和小字条，尽力把眼泪咽了下去。当我转过身来坐在床上时，她说："她是多么希望您给她写信。她从您那儿只是收到邮包，每当邮件被分完了的时候，她都问：'没有我的信？'她是指信而不是指装有录音带的邮包。您为什么从不给她写信呢？" 　　我又沉默不语了。我已无法说话，只能结结巴巴，只想哭。 　　她走到书架前，拿下一个茶罐坐在我身边，从她的化妆包里掏出一张叠好的纸说："她给我留下一封信，类似一份遗嘱。我把涉及到您的地方念给您听。"她打开了那张纸读到："在那个紫色的菜罐里还有钱，把它交给米夏尔·白格；他应该把这些钱还有存在银行里的七千马克交给那位在教堂大火中和她母亲一起幸存下来的女儿。她该决定怎样使用这笔钱。还有，请您转告他，我向他问好。" 　　她没有给我留下任何信息。她想让我伤心吗？他要惩罚我吗？或者她的身心太疲惫不堪了，以至于她只能写下所有有必要做的事情？"她这些年来过得怎么样？"我需要等一会儿，直到我能继续说话，"她最后的日子怎样？" 　　"许多年来，她在这儿的生活与修道院里的生活相差无几，就好像她是心甘情愿地隐退到这里，就好像她是心甘情愿地服从这里的规章制度，就好像这相当单调无聊的工作对她来说是一种反思。她总与其他女囚保持一定距离，她在她们中间享有很高威望。此外，她还是个权威，别人有问题时都要去向她讨主意和办法，争吵的双方都愿意听她的裁决。可是，几年前，她放弃了一切。在这之前，她一直注意保持体型，相对她强壮的身体来说仍旧很苗条，而且她干净得有点过分。后来，她开始暴饮暴食，很少洗澡。她变得臃肿起来，闻上去有种味道，但是，她看上去并非不幸福或者不满足。事实上，好像隐退到修道院的生活对她来说已经不够了，好像修道院本身的生活还太成群结队，还太多嘴多舌，好像她必须进一步隐退到修道院中一间孤独的小房间里去。在那里，没有人再会看到她，在那里，外貌、服装和体味不再具有任何意义了。不，说她自暴自弃是不妥的，她重新确定了她的地位，而且采取的是只作用于自己，不施及他人的方式。" 　　"那么她最后的日子呢？" 　　"她还是老样子。" 　　"我可以看看她吗？" 　　她点点头，却仍！日坐着，"在经历了多年孤独生活后，世界就变得如此让人难以忍受吗？一个人宁愿自杀也不愿意从修道院，从隐居处再一次回到现实世界中去吗？"她转过脸来对我说："史密芝没有写她为什么要自杀。您又不说你俩之间的往事，不说是什么导致史密芝女士在您要来接她出狱的那天黎明时分自杀了。"她把那张纸叠在一起装好，站了起来，把裙子弄平整。'"她的死对我是个打击，您知道，眼下我很生气，生史密芝女士的气，生您的气。但是，我们还是走吧。" 　　她还是走在前面，这一次，一言不发。汉娜躺在病房里的一间小屋子里。我们刚好能在墙和担架之间站下脚。女监狱长把那块布揭开了。 　　汉娜的头上绑着一块布，为了使下额在进入僵硬状态后仍能被抬起来。她的面部表情既不特别宁静，也不特别痛苦。它看上去就是僵硬的死人。当我久久地望着她时，那张死亡的面孔变活了，变成了它年轻时的样子。我在想，这种感觉在老夫老妻之间才会产生。对她来说，老头子仍旧保持了年轻时的样子，而对他来说，美丽妩媚的年轻妻子变老了。为什么在一周之前我没有看出这些呢？ 　　我一定不要哭出来。过了一会儿，当女监狱长审视地望着我时，我点点头，她又把那块布盖在了汉娜的脸上。

CHAPTER NINE T HE FOLLOWING week was particularly busy. I don’t remember whether I was under actual pressure to finish the lecture I was working on, or only under self-inflicted pressure to work and succeed. The idea I had had when I began working on the lecture was no good. When I began to revise it, where I expected to find meaning and consistency, I encountered one non sequitur after another. Instead of accepting this, I kept searching, harassed, obsessed, anxious, as though reality itself could fail along with my concept of it, and I was ready to twist or exaggerate or play down my own findings. I got into a state of strange disquiet; I could go to sleep if I went to bed late, but a few hours later I would be wide awake, until I decided to get up and continue reading or writing. I also did what needed to be done to prepare for Hanna’s release. I furnished her apartment with furniture from IKEA and some old pieces, advised the Greek tailor that Hanna would be coming in, and brought my information about social services and educational programs up to date. I bought groceries, put books on the bookshelves, and hung pictures. I had a gardener come to tidy up the little garden surrounding the terrace outside the living room. I did all this with unnatural haste and doggedness; it was all too much for me. But it was just enough to prevent me from thinking about my visit to Hanna. Only occasionally, when I was driving my car, or when I was in Hanna’s apartment, did thoughts of it get the upper hand and trigger memories. I saw her on the bench, her eyes fixed on me, saw her at the swimming pool, her face turned to me, and again had the feeling that I had betrayed her and owed her something. And again I rebelled against this feeling; I accused her, and found it both shabby and too easy, the way she had wriggled out of her guilt. Allowing no one but the dead to demand an accounting, reducing guilt and atonement to insomnia and bad feelings—where did that leave the living? But what I meant was not the living, it was me. Did I not have my own accounting to demand of her? What about me? On the afternoon before I was due to pick her up, I called the prison. First I spoke to the warden. “I’m a bit nervous. You know, normally people aren’t released after such long sentences before spending a few hours or days outside. Frau Schmitz refused this. It won’t be easy for her.” Then I spoke to Hanna. “Think about what we should do tomorrow. Whether you want to go straight home, or whether we might go to the woods or the river.” “I’ll think about it. You’re still a big planner, aren’t you?” That annoyed me. It annoyed me the way it did when girlfriends told me I wasn’t spontaneous enough, that I operated too much through my head and not enough through my heart. She could tell by my silence that I was annoyed, and laughed. “Don’t be cross, kid. I didn’t mean anything by it.” I had met Hanna again on the benches as an old woman. She had looked like an old woman and smelled like an old woman. I hadn’t noticed her voice at all. Her voice had stayed young. 第09节　　　接下来的那一周特别忙碌，我已记不得了这是由于我要做一篇报告而时间压力特大．还是由于工作压力，或者成就压力的缘故。 　　写那份报告的最初想法一点没用上。在开始修改报告时我发现，那些我原以为有普遍意义和从中可能归纳出规律的地方全都一个接一个地变成了偶然的案例。我不甘心接受这样的结果，我忙乱地、顽固地、不安地继续寻找着答案，好像我的现实现本身就荒谬。我已做好把检查结果进行歪曲、夸张或者大事化小、小事化了的准备。我陷入了一种特别的坐卧不安的状态，如果我很晚上床睡觉的话，尽管能入睡，但是过不了多久就又彻底地醒了，我只好再次起来继续阅读或者写作。 　　我也为汉娜的出狱做了一些准备。我为汉娜的房间里布置了宜家公司的家具，还配备了几件旧家具，把汉娜的情况告诉了那位希腊裁缝，带回了有关社会和教育活动方面的最新信息，买好了储备食品，在书架上摆好了图书，在墙上挂好了画。我还请了一位园艺工，清理了那个围抱客厅平台的小花园。我做这些时，也显得特别地忙乱和固执，这一切令我如负重负。 　　但是，这足以让我忙得没有时间去回想那次对汉娜的探望。只是有的时候，当我开车时，或疲惫地坐在写字台前时，或躺在床上睡不着时，或者在为汉娜准备的屋里时，记忆才会一泻千里，不可阻挡。我会看到她坐在长椅上，目光注视着我，看见她在游泳池里，脸向我这边张望着。那种背叛了她和愧对她的感觉就会再次涌上心头。但是，我又生气自己有这种感觉，并开始指责她，发现她悄悄地逃避了她应该承担的责任，这未免有点太便宜了。如果只有死人才有权要求她做出解释说明，如果可以把罪责用睡眠不好和做噩梦来搪塞了事的话，那么活人往哪儿摆？但是，我所指的活人不是指活下来的人，而是指我自己。我难道也没有权利要求她做说明解释吗？我算老几？ 　　下午，在我去接她之前，我给监狱打了电话。我先和女监狱长讲了话。 　　"我有点紧张。您知道，在通常情况下，一个人经过了这么多年的监禁之后，在没有尝试过在外界先呆上几个小时或几天以前，是不会让他出狱的。史密兰女士拒绝这样做。明天对她来说并非轻松。 　　我的电话被转到了汉娜那里。 　　"你考虑一下，我们明天都做什么，是想马上就回你的家，还是我们一起去森林或去河边？" 　　"我会考虑的。你仍旧是个伟大的计划家，对吗广 　　这令我生气。我感到生气，因为这与其他女友偶尔对我的态度没有两样，这等于说我不够灵活，不能随机应变，大脑起的作用过多，而肚子没派上用场。 　　她注意到了我沉默不语是生气了，于是笑着说："小家伙，别生气，我没有什么恶意。" 　　我在长凳上又看到的汉娜已经是位老妇人了，她看上去、闻上去都像一位老妇人了，但是，我完全没有注意她的声音，她的声音听上去仍旧十分年轻。

CHAPTER EIGHT I WENT THE next Sunday. It was my first visit to a prison. I was searched at the entrance, and a number of doors were unlocked and locked along the way. But the building was new and bright, and in the inner area the doors were open, allowing the women to move about freely. At the end of a corridor a door opened to the outside, onto a little lawn with lots of people and trees and benches. I looked around, searching. The guard who had brought me pointed to a nearby bench in the shade of a chestnut tree. Hanna? The woman on the bench was Hanna? Gray hair, a face with deep furrows on brow and cheeks and around the mouth, and a heavy body. She was wearing a light blue dress that was too tight and stretched across her breasts, stomach, and thighs. Her hands lay in her lap holding a book. She wasn’t reading it. Over the top of her half-glasses, she was watching a woman throwing bread crumbs to a couple of sparrows. Then she realized that she was being watched, and turned her face to me. I saw the expectation in her face, saw it light up with joy when she recognized me, watched her eyes scan my face as I approached, saw them seek, inquire, then look uncertain and hurt, and saw the light go out of her face. When I reached her, she smiled a friendly, weary smile. “You’ve grown up, kid.” I sat down beside her and she took my hand. In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled fresh, freshly washed or of fresh laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved. Sometimes she used perfume, I don’t know which one, and its smell, too, was more fresh than anything else. Under these fresh smells was another, heavy, dark, sharp smell. Often I would sniff at her like a curious animal, starting with her throat and shoulders, which smelled freshly washed, soaking up the fresh smell of sweat between her breasts mixed in her armpits with the other smell, then finding this heavy dark smell almost pure around her waist and stomach and between her legs with a fruity tinge that excited me; I would also sniff at her legs and feet—her thighs, where the heavy smell disappeared, the hollows of her knees again with that light, fresh smell of sweat, and her feet, which smelled of soap or leather or tiredness. Her back and arms had no special smell; they smelled of nothing and yet they smelled of her, and the palms of her hands smelled of the day and of work—the ink of the tickets, the metal of the ticket puncher, onions or fish or frying fat, soapsuds or the heat of the iron. When they are freshly washed, hands betray none of this. But soap only covers the smells, and after a time they return, faint, blending into a single scent of the day and work, a scent of work and day’s end, of evening, of coming home and being at home. I sat next to Hanna and smelled an old woman. I don’t know what makes up this smell, which I recognize from grandmothers and elderly aunts, and which hangs in the rooms and halls of old-age homes like a curse. Hanna was too young for it. I moved closer. I had seen that I had disappointed her before, and I wanted to do better, make up for it. “I’m glad you’re getting out.” “You are?” “Yes, and I’m glad you’ll be nearby.” I told her about the apartment and the job I had found for her, about the cultural and social programs available in that part of the city, about the public library. “Do you read a lot?” “A little. Being read to is nicer.” She looked at me. “That’s over now, isn’t it?” “Why should it be over?” But I couldn’t see myself talking into cassettes for her or meeting her to read aloud. “I was so glad and so proud of you when you learned to read. And what nice letters you wrote me!” That was true; I had admired her and been glad, because she was reading and she wrote to me. But I could feel how little my admiration and happiness were worth compared to what learning to read and write must have cost Hanna, how meager they must have been if they could not even get me to answer her, visit her, talk to her. I had granted Hanna a small niche, certainly an important niche, one from which I gained something and for which I did something, but not a place in my life. But why should I have given her a place in my life? I reacted indignantly against my own bad conscience at the thought that I had reduced her to a niche. “Didn’t you ever think about the things that were discussed at the trial, before the trial? I mean, didn’t you ever think about them when we were together, when I was reading to you?” “Does that bother you very much?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, then no one can call you to account. Not even the court could call me to account. But the dead can. They understand. They don’t even have to have been there, but if they were, they understand even better. Here in prison they were with me a lot. They came every night, whether I wanted them or not. Before the trial I could still chase them away when they wanted to come.” She waited to see if I had anything to say, but I couldn’t think of anything. At first, I wanted to say that I wasn’t able to chase anything away. But it wasn’t true. You can chase someone away by setting them in a niche. “Are you married?” “I was. Gertrud and I have been divorced for many years and our daughter is at boarding school; I hope she won’t stay there for the last years of school, and will move in with me.” Now I waited to see if she would say or ask anything. But she was silent. “I’ll pick you up next week, all right?” “All right.” “Quietly, or can there be a little noise and hoopla?” “Quietly.” “Okay, I’ll pick you up quietly, with no music or champagne.” I stood up, and she stood up. We looked at each other. The bell had rung twice, and the other women had already gone inside. Once again her eyes scanned my face. I took her in my arms, but she didn’t feel right. “Take care, kid.” “You too.” So we said goodbye, even before we had to separate inside. 第08节　　　在接下来的周日，我去了她那儿，那是我第一次探监。在大门口我受到了检查，在往里面走的时候，许多道门被打开又关上。但是，建筑是新的，很敞亮。在里面，房门都敞开着，女囚犯们可以自由地来来往往。在走廊的尽头有一扇大门通向外面——一块生机盎然的，长有树木，布置有长椅的小草坪。我四处张望寻找。那位给我带路的女看守指了指附近一棵栗子树阴下的一条长凳子。 　　汉娜？坐在凳子上的那个女人是汉娜吗？满头白发，满脸深深的皱纹，一副笨重的身躯。她身穿一件胸部、腰部及大腿处都绷得特别紧的浅蓝色的连衣裙，两手放在膝盖上，手里拿着一本书。她并没有看那本书，而正透过老花镜的边线在看另一位女人用面包屑一点一点地给麻雀喂食。后来，她意识到有人在注视她，她把脸转向了我。 　　当她认出我时，我看出了她期望的神情，看出她满脸喜悦的光彩。当我走近她时，她用询问的、不自信的、委屈的目光上下打量着我。我看到，她脸上的光彩逐渐消失了。当我走到她身边时，她对我友好地。疲惫地笑了笑："小家伙，你长大了。"我坐在她身边，她把我的手握在了她的手里。 　　以前，我特别喜欢她身上的气味。她闻上去总是那么清新，像刚洗过澡或刚洗过的衣服，像刚刚出过汗或刚刚做过爱。有时候，她也用香水，可我不知道是哪一种。就是她的香水闻上去也比所有其他的香水清新。在这种清新的气味下，还有另外一种气味，一种很浓重的说不清楚的酸涩味。我经常就像一只好奇的动物一样在她身上闻来闻去，从脖子和肩膀开始，闻那刚刚洗过的清新味，在她的两个乳房之间闻那清新的汗味，那汗味在腋窝处又和其他气味掺杂在一起，在腰部和腹部那种浓重的，说不上来的味道几乎是纯正的，在大腿之间还有一种令我兴奋的水果香味。我也在她的腿上和脚上闻来嗅去，到了小腿时，那种浓重味道就消失了，膝盖窝又稍微有点新出的汗味，脚上闻上去是香皂味或皮鞋味或身作疲惫不堪后的味道。后背和胳臂没有什么特别的味道，闻不出什么味道来，或者说闻上去还是她本身的味道。手上是白天工作的味道：车票的印刷墨、钳子的铁、洋葱、鱼，或者油腻、肥皂水或熨衣服的蒸气。如果她洗过了，手上起初什么味道也闻不出来。但是，只是香皂把各种味道覆盖住了罢了。过了一会儿，各种不明显的味道就又融会在一起卷土重来了：上班的，下班的，白天的，晚上的，回家的，在家的。 　　我坐在汉娜的身边，闻到的是一位老年妇女的味道。我不知道这味道是怎么形成的，这种味道我从祖母和老姨妈们那儿闻到过，或在养老院里——在那里，房间和走廊到处都是这种味道。不过，这种味道对汉娜来说未免太早了点。 　　我又往她身边靠近了些。我注意到，刚才我让她失望了。现在我想补救一下，做得更好些。 　　"你就要出来了，我很高兴。" 　　"是吗？" 　　"是的。你将住在我的附近，我感到高兴。'我告诉了她我已给她找到了房子和工作，给她讲了那个城区所具有的文化和社会生活，给她讲市图书馆的情况。"你看书看得多吗？" 　　"还可以，能听到朗读更好，"她看着我说，"现在结束了，对吧？" 　　"为什么该结束了呢？"但是，我看上去就像既没有给她录过音，又没有与她见过面和为她朗读过似的。"你学会了读书，我的确很高兴，而且很佩服你，你给我写的信多好啊！"事实的确如此。、她学会了读写，她给我写信，我对此非常高兴，也非常佩服她，但是，我也感觉到，与汉娜在读写上所付出的努力相比，我的钦佩和欣慰是多么少，少得多么可怜。她的努力竟然没能促使我哪怕给她回一封信，去探望她一次，与她聊聊。我为汉娜营造了一个小小的生存环境，一个小小的空间，它给予我一些东西，我也可以为它做些事情，但是，它在我的生活中却没有占有哪怕是一席之地。 　　但是，我为什么要在我的生活中为她留有一席之地呢？为什么让汉娜生活在这个小空间里会让我感到问心有愧？我对自己产生这种自愧心感到气愤。"在法庭审理之前，你难道从未考虑过那些在法庭上讨论的问题吗？我是说，当我们在一起时，当我给你朗读时，你从未想过这些问题吗？" 　　"你对此耿耿于怀？"但是，她并未等我回答就接着说，"我一直有种感觉，感到没有人理解我，没有人知道我是谁，我做过什么。你知道吗，如果没有人理解你，那么也就没有人有权力要求你做出解释说明，即使是法庭也无权要求我做解释说明。但是，那些死去的人却可以这样做，他们理解我，为此他们不必非得在场，但是，如果他们在的话，他们就更能理解我。在这监狱里，他们和我在一起的时候特别多，他们每天夜里都来，不管我是否想让他们来。在法庭审判之前，在他们想要来的时候，我还能把他们赶走。" 　　她在等着，看我是否想就此说点什么，但是，我却不知说什么为好。起初，我想说，我无法赶走任何东西。然而，那不符合事实，因为当一个人为另一个人营造一个小小生存环境时，他实际上就是赶他走。 　　"你结婚了吗？" 　　"我结过婚。葛特茹德和我已经离婚多年了。我们的女儿住在寄宿学校，我希望她在最后的这几年不要住在那儿了，最好搬到我这儿来往。"现在轮到我等着了，看她是否想就此说点什么，或问些什么。但是，她沉默不语。"我下周来接你，好吗？" 　　"好。 　　"是悄悄地，还是热闹一点地？" 　　"悄悄地。" 　　"好吧，我就悄悄地来接你，不放音乐，不喝香槟酒。" 　　我站了起来，她也站了起来。我们相互凝视着。已经响过两次铃了，其他女囚犯都已经进了屋。她的目光又在上下打量我的脸，我拥抱了她，但她换上去有些不对劲。 　　"小家伙，好自为之。" 　　"你也应如此。" 　　就这样，我们在不得不分手之前就告别了。

CHAPTER SEVEN A T THE TIME I never thought about the fact that Hanna would be released one day. The exchange of notes and cassettes was so normal and familiar, and Hanna was both close and removed in such an easy way, that I could have continued the situation indefinitely. That was comfortable and selfish, I know. Then came the letter from the prison warden. For years you and Frau Schmitz have corresponded with each other. This is the only contact Frau Schmitz has with the outside world, and so I am turning to you, although I do not know how close your relationship is, and whether you are a relative or a friend. Next year Frau Schmitz will again make an appeal for clemency, and I expect the parole board to grant the appeal. She will then be released quite shortly—after eighteen years in prison. Of course we can find or try to find her an apartment and a job; a job will be difficult at her age, even though she is in excellent health and has shown great skill in our sewing shop. But rather than us taking care of her, it would be better for relatives or friends to do so, to have the released prisoner live nearby, and keep her company and give her support. You cannot imagine how lonely and helpless one can be on the outside after eighteen years in prison. Frau Schmitz can take care of herself quite well, and manages on her own. It would be enough if you could find her a small apartment and a job, visit her, and invite her to your house occasionally during the first weeks and months and make sure she knows about the programs offered by the local congregation, adult education, family support groups, and so on. It is not easy, after eighteen years, to go into the city for the first time, go shopping, deal with the authorities, go to a restaurant. Doing it with someone else helps. I have noticed that you do not visit Frau Schmitz. If you did, I would not have written to you, but would have asked to talk to you during one of your visits. Now it seems as if you will have to visit her before she is released. Please come and see me at that opportunity. The letter closed with sincere greetings which I did not think referred to me, but to the fact that the warden was sincere about the issue. I had heard of her; her institution was considered extraordinary, and her opinion on questions of penal reform carried weight. I liked her letter. But I did not like what was coming my way. Of course I would have to see about a job and an apartment, and I did. Friends who neither used nor rented out the apartment attached to their house agreed to let it to Hanna at a low rent. The Greek tailor who occasionally altered my clothes was willing to employ Hanna; his sister, who ran the tailoring business with him, wanted to return to Greece. And long before Hanna could have used them, I looked into the social services and educational programs run by churches and secular organizations. But I put off the visit to Hanna. Precisely because she was both close and removed in such an easy way, I didn’t want to visit her. I had the feeling she could only be what she was to me at an actual distance. I was afraid that the small, light, safe world of notes and cassettes was too artificial and too vulnerable to withstand actual closeness. How could we meet face to face without everything that had happened between us coming to the surface? So the year passed without me going to the prison. For a long time I heard nothing from the warden; a letter in which I described the housing and job situation for Hanna went unanswered. She was probably expecting to talk to me when I visited Hanna. She had no way to know that I was not only putting off this visit, but avoiding it. Finally, however, the decision came down to pardon and release Hanna, and the warden called me. Could I come now? Hanna was getting out in a week. 第07节　　　当时，我从未想过汉娜有一天会出狱。问候信和录音带的交流是如此正常和亲密，汉娜对我如此自如，使我感到她既近在咫尺又远在天边，我完全可能让这种状态持续下去。我知道，这很舒适，很自私。 　　然而，女监狱长寄来了一封信： 　　几年以来，史密芝女士与您一直有书 信往来，这是史密芝女士与外界的谁一联系。这样，我只好求助于您，尽管我不知道您与她关系的密切程度，不知您是她的亲属，还是朋友。 　　明年史密芝女士将再次提出赦免申请，我认为，赦免委员会将会批准她的申请。在被监禁了十八年之后，她不久将要被释放。当然了，我们可以为她找房子和工作，也就是说，我们可以尽量为她找房子和工作。依她的年龄来看找工作将会比较困难，尽管她的身体仍旧很健康，尽管她在我们的缝纫厂里表现得非常出色，但是，如果亲属或朋友来操心这件事，在她出狱之后把她安排在他们附近，陪伴她，让她有个依靠，这要比我们来做好得多。您无法想象，一个人被监禁了十八年，出去之后会是多么孤独无助。 　　史密芝女士自理能力非常强。如果您能为她找到一个住处和一份工作，头几周或头几个月能常去看看她，能邀请邀请她，能让她了解教会、业余大学及家庭教育机构提供的各种机会，这就足够了。此外，十八年之后第一次进城购物，与政府部门约谈，或找一家饭店吃饭都不那么容易，有人陪伴就容易多了。 　　我注意到您没有探望过更密芝女士。 　　如果您这样做了，我也就不必给您写信了，而会是借您探望她的机会与您商谈此事。现在没有别的办法，只好请您在她出狱之前来探望她。烦请您借次机会来我这儿一起。 　　那封信以最衷心的问候结束。那问候并未让我感到那是对我的衷心问候，而是让我感到这件事是女监狱长的一桩心事。我已经听说过她，她的机构被认为是极不寻常的，她的意见在监禁法改革问题上举足轻重。我喜欢她的信。 　　但是，我不喜欢我所面临的事情。当然了，我必须要为她找房子，找工作，而且我也付诸行动了。一些朋友愿意把房子里既未使用也尚未出租的小住宅廉价出租给汉娜。我偶尔到一家希腊裁缝那里修改衣服，这位裁缝想雇用汉娜。和他一起经营这家裁缝店的是他的妹妹，她搬回希腊去了。早在汉娜出狱以前，我就开始关心教会和世俗机构所提供的社会福利和教育机会。但是，探望汉娜我却一拖再拖。 　　正因为汉娜对我如此自如，使我感到她既近在咫尺又远在天边，我才不想去探望她。我有一种感觉，她将说她与我像过去一样只能保持一种实际距离。我怕她说，那微不足道的、隐匿的问候和录音带太做作和太伤害人了，她必须因而承受近在咫尺之苦。我们怎么还能再次面对面地接触而对这期间我们之间发生的一切不感到恶心呢？ 　　时间就这样过去了，我几乎就要挨到不必去监狱了。我好久没有从女监狱长那儿听到什么消息了。我曾经写过一封信，信中谈到为汉娜找房子和找工作这些汉娜将要面临的问题，但是，我没有得到答复。她大概指望借我探望汉娜之际与我谈一次。她哪里会知道，我不仅把这次探望拖延了下去，而且想逃避它。但是，赦免汉娜的决定终于批下来了，汉娜即将出狱。女监狱长给我打电话，问我现在是否能过去一下。她说，一周之内汉娜就要出来了。

CHAPTER SIX I N THE FOURTH year of our word-driven, wordless contact, a note arrived. “Kid, the last story was especially nice. Thank you. Hanna.” It was lined paper, torn out of a notebook, and cut smooth. The message was right up at the top, and filled three lines. It was written in blue smudged ballpoint pen. Hanna had been pressing hard on the pen; the letters went through to the other side. She had also written the address with a great deal of pressure; the imprint was legible on the bottom and top halves of the paper, which was folded in the middle. At first glance, one might have taken it for a child’s handwriting. But what is clumsy and awkward in children’s handwriting was forceful here. You could see the resistance Hanna had had to overcome to make the lines into letters and the letters into words. A child’s hand will wander off this way and that, and has to be kept on track. Hanna’s hand didn’t want to go anywhere and had to be forced. The lines that formed the letters started again each time on the upstroke, the downstroke, and before the curves and loops. And each letter was a victory over a fresh struggle, and had a new slant or slope, and often the wrong height or width. I read the note and was filled with joy and jubilation. “She can write, she can write!” In these years I had read everything I could lay my hands on to do with illiteracy. I knew about the helplessness in everyday activities, finding one’s way or finding an address or choosing a meal in a restaurant, about how illiterates anxiously stick to prescribed patterns and familiar routines, about how much energy it takes to conceal one’s inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation. Then I looked at Hanna’s handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general. I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it’s too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as “too late”? Is there only “late,” and is “late” always better than “never”? I don’t know. After the first note came a steady stream of others. They were always only a few lines, a thank you, a wish to hear more of a particular author or to hear no more, a comment on an author or a poem or a story or a character in a novel, an observation about prison. “The forsythia is already in flower in the yard” or “I like the fact that there have been so many storms this summer” or “From my window I can see the birds flocking to fly south”—often it was Hanna’s note that first made me pay attention to the forsythia, the summer storms, or the flocks of birds. Her remarks about literature often landed astonishingly on the mark. “Schnitzler barks, Stefan Zweig is a dead dog” or “Keller needs a woman” or “Goethe’s poems are like tiny paintings in beautiful frames” or “Lenz must write on a typewriter.” Because she knew nothing about the authors, she assumed they were contemporaries, unless something indicated this was obviously impossible. I was astonished at how much older literature can actually be read as if it were contemporary; to anyone ignorant of history, it would be easy to see ways of life in earlier times simply as ways of life in foreign countries. I never wrote to Hanna. But I kept reading to her. When I spent a year in America, I sent cassettes from there. When I was on vacation or was particularly busy, it might take longer for me to finish the next cassette; I never established a definite rhythm, but sent cassettes sometimes every week or two weeks, and sometimes only every three or four weeks. I didn’t worry that Hanna might not need my cassettes now that she had learned to read by herself. She could read as well. Reading aloud was my way of speaking to her, with her. I kept all her notes. The handwriting changed. At first she forced the letters into the same slant and the right height and width. Once she had managed that, she became lighter and more confident. Her handwriting never became fluid, but it acquired something of the severe beauty that characterizes the writing of old people who have written little in their lives. 第06节　　　当我们的这种时而喋喋不休，时而无话可说的交流进行到第四个年头的时候，她寄来了一份问候："小家伙，上一个故事特别好。谢谢。汉娜。" 　　纸是带横线的，是从写字本上撕下来并剪得整齐的一页。问候写在最上边，占了三行，是用蓝色的圆珠笔写的。汉娜写的字用力很重，都印透到纸的背面了。地址也是用力写的。这个从中间折叠起来的纸条，上下都可看出字印。 　　第一眼看上去人们可能会认为这是一个孩子的字体，但是孩子的字体尽管不熟练，不流畅，却不这么用力。为了把直线变成字母，再把字母变成文字，汉娜要克服种种阻力。孩子的手可以挪来挪去，随着字体而变化。汉娜的手不知向什么方向移动，但又必须移动。写一个字母要下好几次笔，上划下一次笔，下划下一次笔，弧线下一次笔，延长线再下一次笔。每个字母都要付出新的努力，结果还是里出外进，高低不一。 　　我读着她的问候，心里充满了欢喜："她会写字了！她会写字了！"那些年里，能找到的有关文盲的文章我都读过了。我知道他们在日常生活中，如在找路，找地址或在饭店点菜时多么需要帮助，在按照约定俗成的规矩和传统的习惯做法行事时多么提心吊胆，在掩饰自己不具备读写能力时多么煞费苦心，他们因此而不能正常生活。文盲等于不成熟。汉娜鼓起勇气去学习读写，这标志着她已经从未成年向成年迈出了一步，脱离蒙昧的一步。 　　然后，我仔细观察汉娜的字，我看到了她为此付出了多少劳动，我为她感到自豪。与此同时，我又为她感到伤心，为来迟和错过的生活而感到伤心，为生活的迟来和错过而感到伤心。我在想，如果一个人错过了最佳的时间，如果一个人长期拒绝某事，如果一个人过久地被某事所拒绝，即使最终他开始花力气去做并乐此不疲，那么也为时太晚了。或许不存在"太晚"的问题，而只存在"晚不晚"的问题？而且，无论如何"晚"要比"从未"好？我搞不清。 　　在接到第一封问候信之后，我就不断地收到她的来信。总是寥寥几行字，或一份谢意，或一份祝福，或想更多地听同一位作者，或不想听了，或对一位作者、一首诗、一个故事、一本小说中的人物评论几句，或在监狱里看到一件什么事。"院子里的连翘已经开花了"，或者"我希望今年夏天雷雨天多点"，或者"从窗内向外眺望，我看到鸟儿是怎样地聚集在一起飞向南方的"。常常是汉娜的描述让我注意到连翘、夏日的雷雨或聚集在一起的鸟儿。她对文学的评论经常准确很令人惊讶不已："施尼茨勒在吠叫，斯特凡茨韦格是条死狗"，或者'凯勒需要一个女人"，或者"歌德的诗就像镶嵌在漂亮框架里的一幅小画"，或者"伦茨一定是用打字机写作的"。由于她对作者们的情况一无所知，所以，只要他们不是明显地不属于同代人，她都把他们视为同代人，她的评论也都是以此为前提做出的。实际上有多少早期文学作品读起来像现代作品呢？我对此感到困惑。不了解历史的人反而更能看清历史，旁观者清嘛。 　　我从未给汉娜回过信，但是我一直在为她朗读。我曾在美国逗留了一年，这期间我就从美国寄录音带给她。当我去度假或者特别忙的时候，录好下一盒录音带的时间可能就要长些。我给她寄录音带没有固定的周期，或一周一次，或两周一次，有时也可能隔三周或四周之后才寄。现在汉娜学会了阅读，也可能不再需要我的录音带了，那我也就不那么着急了。尽管如此，她可能仍然喜欢我给她阅读。朗读是我与她交谈的一种方式。 　　我把她所有的信都保存了起来。她的字体也有所改变，起初，她努力把字母写得工整，但却很不自如，后来就轻松自信多了，但是，她的字从未达到熟练的程度，却达到了某种严谨美，看上去像是一生中很少写字的老年人所写的字。

CHAPTER FIVE I BEGAN WITH the Odyssey. I read it after Gertrud and I had separated. There were many nights when I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours; I would lie awake, and when I switched on the light and picked up a book, my eyes closed, and when I put the book down and turned off the light, I was wide awake again. So I read aloud, and my eyes didn’t close. And because in all my confused half-waking thoughts that swirled in tormenting circles of memories and dreams around my marriage and my daughter and my life, it was always Hanna who predominated, I read to Hanna. I read to Hanna on tape. It was several months before I sent off the tapes. At first I didn’t want to send just bits of it, so I waited until I had recorded all of the Odyssey. Then I began to wonder if Hanna would find the Odyssey sufficiently interesting, so I recorded what I read next after the Odyssey, stories by Schnitzler and Chekhov. Then I put off calling the court that had convicted Hanna to find out where she was serving her sentence. Finally I had everything together, Hanna’s address in a prison near the city where she had been tried and convicted, a cassette player, and the cassettes, numbered from Chekhov to Schnitzler to Homer. And so finally I sent off the package with the machine and the tapes. Recently I found the notebook in which I entered what I recorded for Hanna over the years. The first twelve titles were obviously all entered at the same time; at first I probably just read, and then realized that if I didn’t keep notes I would not remember what I had already recorded. Next to the subsequent titles there is sometimes a date, sometimes none, but even without dates I know that I sent Hanna the first package in the eighth year of her imprisonment, and the last in the eighteenth. In the eighteenth, her plea for clemency was granted. In general I read to Hanna the things I wanted to read myself at any given moment. With theOdyssey, I found at first that it was hard to take in as much when I read aloud as when I read silently to myself. But that changed. The disadvantage of reading aloud remained the fact that it took longer. But books read aloud also stayed long in my memory. Even today, I can remember things in them absolutely clearly. But I also read books I already knew and loved. So Hanna got to hear a great deal of Keller and Fontane, Heine and Mörike. For a long time I didn’t dare to read poetry, but eventually I really enjoyed it, and I learned many of the poems I read by heart. I can still say them today. Taken together, the titles in the notebook testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture. I do not ever remember asking myself whether I should go beyond Kafka, Frisch, Johnson, Bachmann, and Lenz, and read experimental literature, literature in which I did not recognize the story or like any of the characters. To me it was obvious that experimental literature was experimenting with the reader, and Hanna didn’t need that and neither did I. When I began writing myself, I read these pieces aloud to her as well. I waited until I had dictated my handwritten text, and revised the typewritten version, and had the feeling that now it was finished. When I read it aloud, I could tell if the feeling was right or not. And if not, I could revise it and record a new version over the old. But I didn’t like doing that. I wanted to have my reading be the culmination. Hanna became the court before which once again I concentrated all my energies, all my creativity, all my critical imagination. After that, I could send the manuscript to the publisher. I never made a personal remark on the tapes, never asked after Hanna, never told her anything about myself. I read out the title, the name of the author, and the text. When the text was finished, I waited a moment, closed the book, and pressed the Stop button. 第05节　　　我是从《奥德赛》开始的。我和葛特茹德分手后，我重读了它。许多夜里我只能睡上几小时，我躺在那儿睡不着。当我打开灯拿起一本书看时，眼睛就睁不开了；而当我把书放到一边、关上灯时，我却又睡不着。这样我就大声朗读，大声朗读时，我就不再打盹。当我的大脑处于杂乱无章的回忆和梦幻中时，当痛苦在我脑中盘旋时，当我在似睡非睡的状态中对我的婚姻，对我的女儿和我的生活进行反思时，汉娜总是在左右着我，我干脆就为汉娜朗读，为汉娜在录音机上朗读。 　　当我把我录制的录音带寄出去时，几个月的时间已经过去了。起初，我不想寄片段，我在等着把全部的《奥德赛》录完。之后，我又怀疑汉娜是否对《奥德赛》有足够的兴趣。于是，在录完《奥德赛》之后，我又给她录了施尼茨勒和契河夫的短篇小说。然后，我硬着头皮给审判汉娜的法庭打了电话，打听出了汉娜在什么地方服刑。最后，我把一切都准备好了：汉娜服刑监狱的地址——它离审判和判处汉娜的城市不远，一台录音机和按照契河天——施尼茨勒——荷马这个顺序录制的录音带。最后，我把录音机和录音带一同打进邮包，寄给了汉娜了 　　最近，我找到了一个本子，上面记有那些年我为汉娜录过的东西。最早的十二个篇目很显然是同时做的记录。起初，我大概只是往下读，后来才注意到没有记录就记不住已经读过什么了。在后来的篇目中，有时注明了日期，有时没有注明，但是，即使是没有日期，我也知道第一次给汉娜寄录音带是她服刑的第八年，最后一次是第十八年。在第十八年的时候，她的赦免申请被批准。 　　我继续为汉娜朗读，读我自己也正想看的书。在录制《奥德赛》时我注意到，大声朗读不像自己轻声阅读那样容易让我集中精力，后来有所好转。朗读的缺点是它持续的时间较长，但是，正因为如此它才使朗读者把内容深深地铭刻在脑子里。至今我对一些内容仍记忆犹新。 　　我也朗读我已经熟悉和喜爱的作品。这样汉娜能听到很多凯勒、冯塔纳、海涅和默里克的作品。很长时间里，我不敢朗读诗歌，但是后来，我却乐此不疲。我可以背诵一系列我所朗读过的诗歌，时至今日仍能朗朗上口。 　　那个记录本所记载的书目，证明了受过教育的市民阶层的原始信赖。我也不记得了，是否我曾经想过不必局限于卡夫卡、弗里施、约翰逊、巴克曼和伦茨而读一些实验文学作品，也就是我既弄不清故事讲的是什么也不喜欢其中的任何人物的文学作品。我认为，实验文学自然是要拿读者做实验，汉娜和我都不需要这个。 　　当我自己开始写作时，我也把我写的东西拿来为她朗读。我要等我的手稿口授之后，打字稿也修改过以后，而且有了一种完全做好了的感觉之后才朗读。在朗读时，我能发现我的感觉正确与否。如果不正确，我可以重新再来，把！目的去掉，重新录制。但是．我不喜欢这样做，我想用朗读来划个圆满句号。我把我的一切力量。一切创造力和富于批判的想象力再次为汉娜调动起来。这之后，我才把手稿寄给出版社。 　　在录音中，我没做个人的评论，没有问起过汉娜的情况，没有讲述过我自己的情况。我只朗读书名、作者名和书的内容。当内容结束对，我稍等一会儿，合上书，按下录音机的停止键。

CHAPTER FOUR A FTER MY state exam, I had to decide on a profession within the law. I gave myself a little time; Gertrud, who immediately began working in the judiciary, had her hands full, and we were happy that I could remain at home and take care of Julia. Once Gertrud had got over all the difficulties of getting started and Julia was in kindergarten, I had to make a decision. I had a hard time of it. I didn’t see myself in any of the roles I had seen lawyers play at Hanna’s trial. Prosecution seemed to me as grotesque a simplification as defense, and judging was the most grotesque oversimplification of all. Nor could I see myself as an administrative official; I had worked at a local government office during my training, and found its rooms, corridors, smells, and employees gray, sterile, and dreary. That did not leave many legal careers, and I don’t know what I would have done if a professor of legal history had not offered me a research job. Gertrud said it was an evasion, an escape from the challenges and responsibilities of life, and she was right. I escaped and was relieved that I could do so. After all, it wasn’t forever, I told both her and myself; I was young enough to enter any solid branch of the legal profession after a few years of legal history. But it was forever; the first escape was followed by a second, when I moved from the university to a research institution, seeking and finding a niche in which I could pursue my interest in legal history, in which I needed no one and disturbed no one. Now escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. And the past I arrived in as a legal historian was no less alive than the present. It is also not true, as outsiders might assume, that one can merely observe the richness of life in the past, whereas one can participate in the present. Doing history means building bridges between the past and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides. One of my areas of research was law in the Third Reich, and here it is particularly obvious how the past and present come together in a single reality. Here, escape is not a preoccupation with the past, but a determined focus on the present and the future that is blind to the legacy of the past which brands us and with which we must live. In saying this, I do not mean to conceal how gratifying it was to plunge into different stretches of the past that were not so urgently connected to the present. I felt it for the first time when I was working on the legal codes and drafts of the Enlightenment. They were based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world, and that therefore the world can be brought into good order. To see how legal provisions were created paragraph by paragraph out of this belief as solemn guardians of this good order, and worked into laws that strove for beauty and by their very beauty for truth, made me happy. For a long time I believed that there was progress in the history of law, a development towards greater beauty and truth, rationality and humanity, despite terrible setbacks and retreats. Once it became clear to me that this belief was a chimera, I began playing with a different image of the course of legal history. In this one it still has a purpose, but the goal it finally attains, after countless disruptions, confusions, and delusions, is the beginning, its own original starting point, which once reached must be set off from again. I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as the story of a homecoming. But it is not the story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks, who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law? 第04节　　　做完候补官员之后，我必须要选择一门职业，但我没有马上做出选择。葛特茹德马上就当上了法官。她手头上要做的事堆积如山，而我能呆在家里照看朱丽雅，这令我们感到高兴。当葛特茹德克服了最初的困难、朱丽雅又入了幼儿园后，我的决定就迫在眉睫了。 　　我很难做出决定。在对汉娜的法庭审判中我所看到的种种法律角色，看不出有适合我的。对我来说，诉讼与辩护同样都被滑稽地简单化了，而判决又是所有简单化中最滑稽的。我认为，我也不适合在管理部门做政府官员。我作为候补官员在州政府工作过，我发现它的办公室、走廊、气味和公务员都很苍白、无味、单调。 　　这样一来可供选择的法律职业也就所剩无几了。我真不知道我会做什么，如果不是一位法学史教授给我提供了在他手下工作的机会的话。葛特茹德说，我的选择是一种逃避，是对生活的挑战和责任的逃避。她说得有道理，我是逃避了，逃避使我感到轻松。我的这个选择不是永久性的，我对她，也对自己这样说。我还年轻，教几年法学史之后，仍旧能找到各种实惠的法律职业，但是，这却成了我的永久性的选择。随着第一次逃避而来的是第二次逃避，也就是说，我从大学换到一家研究机构，我在那儿寻找并发现了一个我可以从事我喜欢的法学史研究的避风港。在那儿，我不需要任何人，也不打搅任何人。 　　结果我不但没有逃避掉，反而与过去更接近了。作为法学史家，我所接触的过去，其生动性并不逊色于现实生活。局外人可能会认为，人们对过去只能观察，而对现实才能参与，但事实并非如此。从事历史研究意味着在过去与现实之间架起桥梁，在历史与现实两方面进行观察，活跃于二者之间。我所研究的领域之一是第三帝国法，在这里，过去与现实如何在现实生活中难解难分，特别显而易见。在这里，人们逃避的不是过去，而正是现实和将来，人们没有把注意力坚定地集中在现实和将来上。人们对历史遗产茫然无知，不知我们深深地打上了历史的烙印，我们生活在历史中。 　　我沉浸在历史中时能够得到一种满足感。虽然它对现实并没有什么意义，我还是不想隐瞒它。我第一次产生这种满足感是在我研究启蒙教育法和启蒙教育法律草案的时候。之所以要制定这些法律是因为人们相信，从此以后世界有了好秩序，从此世界会变得更好。看到从这种信念中制定出维护良好秩序的条文，看到这些条文又变成了美好的法律，而它们又将以自身的美来证明它们的真，我感到幸福。很久以来我就坚信，尽管出现了可怕的倒退和挫折，但法律会越来越进步，会变得越来越美，越来越真，越来越理智，越来越人道。自从我发现我的这种信念不过是幻想而已后，我的法律演进现变得完全另一样。这个演进虽有目的地，但它经过种种震动、困惑和失去理智后到达的这个目的地，正是通向另一个目的地的起点，但在尚未到达这个新目的地时，又不得不重新开始。 　　我当时又重读了《奥德赛》。我在中学时就读过这本书，在我的记忆中，它讲的是一个返乡者的故事。但是，它讲的并不是一个返乡者的故事。相信一个人不可能再次过同一条河的希腊人怎么能相信返乡之事呢？奥德修斯回来不是为了留下，而是为了重新出发。《奥德赛》是一部运动史，这个运动是有目的的，同时又无目的，是成功的，同时又是徒劳的。法律的历史与此有什么区别呢？

CHAPTER THREE A S I WAS taking my second state exam, the professor who had given the concentration camps seminar died. Gertrud came across the obituary in the newspaper. The funeral was at the mountain cemetery. Did I want to go? I didn’t. The burial was on a Thursday afternoon, and on both Thursday and Friday morning I had to take written exams. Also, the professor and I had never been particularly close. And I didn’t like funerals. And I didn’t want to be reminded of the trial. But it was already too late. The memory had been awakened, and when I came out of the exam on Thursday, it was as if I had an appointment with the past that I couldn’t miss. I did something I never did otherwise: I took the streetcar. This in itself was an encounter with the past, like returning to a place that once was familiar but has changed its appearance. When Hanna worked for the streetcar company, there were long streetcars made up of two or three carriages, platforms at the front and back, running boards along the platforms that you could jump onto when the streetcar had pulled away from the stop, and a cord running through the cars that the conductor rang to signal departure. In summer there were streetcars with open platforms. The conductor sold, punched, and inspected tickets, called out the stations, signaled departures, kept an eye on the children who pushed their way onto the platforms, fought with passengers who jumped off and on, and denied further entry if the car was full. There were cheerful, witty, serious, grouchy, and coarse conductors, and the temperament or mood of the conductor often defined the atmosphere in the car. How stupid of me that after the failed surprise on the ride to Schwetzingen, I had been afraid to waylay Hanna and see what she was like as a conductor. I got onto the conductor-less streetcar and rode to the mountain cemetery. It was a cold autumn day with a cloudless, hazy sky and a yellow sun that no longer gave off any heat, the kind you can look at directly without hurting your eyes. I had to search awhile before finding the grave where the funeral ceremony was being held. I walked beneath tall, bare trees, between old gravestones. Occasionally I met a cemetery gardener or an old woman with a watering can and gardening shears. It was absolutely still, and from a distance I could hear the hymn being sung at the professor’s grave. I stopped a little way off and studied the small group of mourners. Some of them were clearly eccentrics and misfits. In the eulogies for the professor, there were hints that he himself had withdrawn from the pressures of society and thus lost contact with it, remaining a loner and thereby becoming something of an oddball himself. I recognized a former member of the concentration camps seminar. He had taken his exams before me, had become a practicing attorney, and then opened a pub; he was dressed in a long red coat. He came to speak to me when everything was over and I was making my way to the cemetery gate. “We were in the same seminar—don’t you remember?” “I do.” We shook hands. “I was always at the trial on Wednesdays, and sometimes I gave you a lift.” He laughed. “You were there every day, every day and every week. Can you say why, now?” He looked at me, good-natured and ready to pounce, and I remembered that I had noticed this look even in the seminar. “I was very interested in the trial.” “You were very interested in the trial?” He laughed again. “The trial, or the defendant you were always staring at? The only one who was reasonably good-looking. We all used to wonder what was going on between you and her, but none of us dared ask. We were so terribly sensitive and considerate back then. Do you remember . . .” He recalled another member of the seminar, who stuttered or lisped and held forth incessantly, most of it nonsense, and to whom we listened as though his words were gold. He went on to talk about other members of the seminar, what they were like back then and what they were doing now. He talked and talked. But I knew he would get back to me eventually and ask: “So—what was going on between you and the defendant?” And I didn’t know what to answer, how to betray, confess, parry. Then we were at the entrance to the cemetery, and he asked. A streetcar was just pulling away from the stop and I called out, “Bye,” and ran off as though I could jump onto the running board, ran alongside the streetcar beating the flat of my hand against the door, and something happened that I wouldn’t have believed possible, hadn’t even hoped for. The streetcar stopped, the door opened, and I got on. 第03节　　　当我参加第二次国家考试时，那位组织集中营问题研讨班的教授去世了。葛特茹德是在报纸的死亡讣告版上偶然看到这个消息的。葬礼在山地陵园举行。她问我是否想去参加。 　　我不想去。葬礼在星期四的下午举行，而我星期四和星期五上午都有考试。再者，那位教授和我之间的关系也不是特别近。我不喜欢参加葬礼。我不想再忆起那次审判。 　　但是，这已为时过晚，记忆已经被唤醒了。当我星期四考试归来时，就好像我必须去赴一个不允许错过的约会，一个与过去的约会。 　　我是乘坐有轨电车去的，平时我是不坐有轨电车的。这已经是与过去的一种接触了，就好像又回到了一个熟悉的地方，一个改变了面貌的地方。当汉娜在有轨电车公司上班时，有两节或三节车厢的有轨电车，车厢的两端有平台，平台旁边有踏板，如果电车已经启动，人们仍旧可以跳到踏板上，还有一条环绕整个车厢的绳子，售票员拉这根绳可以发出开车的信号。夏天的时候，有轨电车敞着平台开，售票员买票，给票打眼，查票，报站，发开车信号，照顾拥挤在平台上的孩子，训斥那些跳上跳下的乘客，当车满员时阻止再上人。有的售票员滑稽有趣，有的严肃，总绷着脸，有的粗鲁。他们的性格和心情如何往往左右着车厢里的气氛。我多么愚蠢，在那次乘车去施魏青根给汉娜一个惊喜的愿望落空之后，我就害怕把她当做售票员来等候，来经历。 　　我登上了一辆没有售票员的有轨电车去了山地陵园。那是一个较冷的秋日，天高云淡，太阳也不再温暖了，用眼睛望着它也不会被刺痛了。我用了好一会儿时间才找到了将在那里举行葬礼的墓地。我穿梭在高大无叶的树木与已有年头的墓碑之间，偶尔会遇见一位陵园的园工或一位手持浇花壶和修技剪刀的上了年纪的妇女。陵园非常安静，我从远处就听到了在那位教授的墓碑旁所唱的赞美诗。 　　我站在一边仔细地观察这小小的参加葬礼的人群。其中的一些人看上去明显地孤僻怪异。从介绍教授生平事迹和著作的悼词中可以听得出来，他自己逃避了社会的约束，从而脱离了与社会的联系，他一直保持着自己的独立性，变得孤僻起来。 　　我认出了当年参加研讨班的一位同学，他参加国家考试比我早，先当上了律师，后来又成了一家小酒店的老板。他是穿着一件红色的长大衣来的。葬礼结束后，当我往回向陵园的大门走去时，他走过来与我打招呼："我们一起参加了研讨班，你不记得了吗？" 　　"记得。"我们握了手。 　　"我总是在周三去法庭，有时我开车带你去，"他笑着说，"你每天都在场，每天，每周都在。现在你说说为什么？"他同情地、期待地望着我。这使我想起，他的这种目光在研讨班时我就注意到了。 　　"我对法庭审理特别感兴趣。" 　　"你对法庭审理特别感兴趣？"他又笑了，"是对法庭还是对那位你总是目不转睛地盯着的被告人？就是看上去还蛮不错的那位？我们大家心里都在嘀咕，你与她是什么关系，但是没人敢问你。我们当时非常富有同情心，善解人意。你还记得……"他提起了另外一位参加研讨班的同学，这位同学口吃，说话咬舌头，话很多且不着边际，我们还得洗耳恭听，好像他的话句句是金石之言。他开始谈起其他参加研讨班的同学，讲他们当时如何，现在又做什么。他滔滔不绝地讲个没完，但是，我知道他最终还会再问我："怎么样，你现在和那位被告的情况如何？"我不知道我该如何回答，如何否认，如何承认和如何回避。 　　这时候我们到了陵园的大门口，他真的问了我这个问题。车站刚好有一辆有轨电车在徐徐开动。我说了声"再见"，撒腿就跑，好像我能跳到踏板上一样，我挨着车身边跑边用手拍打着车门。我根本不敢相信，也没抱任何希望的事发生了：那辆车又停了下来，门开了，我上了车。

CHAPTER THREE A S I WAS taking my second state exam, the professor who had given the concentration camps seminar died. Gertrud came across the obituary in the newspaper. The funeral was at the mountain cemetery. Did I want to go? I didn’t. The burial was on a Thursday afternoon, and on both Thursday and Friday morning I had to take written exams. Also, the professor and I had never been particularly close. And I didn’t like funerals. And I didn’t want to be reminded of the trial. But it was already too late. The memory had been awakened, and when I came out of the exam on Thursday, it was as if I had an appointment with the past that I couldn’t miss. I did something I never did otherwise: I took the streetcar. This in itself was an encounter with the past, like returning to a place that once was familiar but has changed its appearance. When Hanna worked for the streetcar company, there were long streetcars made up of two or three carriages, platforms at the front and back, running boards along the platforms that you could jump onto when the streetcar had pulled away from the stop, and a cord running through the cars that the conductor rang to signal departure. In summer there were streetcars with open platforms. The conductor sold, punched, and inspected tickets, called out the stations, signaled departures, kept an eye on the children who pushed their way onto the platforms, fought with passengers who jumped off and on, and denied further entry if the car was full. There were cheerful, witty, serious, grouchy, and coarse conductors, and the temperament or mood of the conductor often defined the atmosphere in the car. How stupid of me that after the failed surprise on the ride to Schwetzingen, I had been afraid to waylay Hanna and see what she was like as a conductor. I got onto the conductor-less streetcar and rode to the mountain cemetery. It was a cold autumn day with a cloudless, hazy sky and a yellow sun that no longer gave off any heat, the kind you can look at directly without hurting your eyes. I had to search awhile before finding the grave where the funeral ceremony was being held. I walked beneath tall, bare trees, between old gravestones. Occasionally I met a cemetery gardener or an old woman with a watering can and gardening shears. It was absolutely still, and from a distance I could hear the hymn being sung at the professor’s grave. I stopped a little way off and studied the small group of mourners. Some of them were clearly eccentrics and misfits. In the eulogies for the professor, there were hints that he himself had withdrawn from the pressures of society and thus lost contact with it, remaining a loner and thereby becoming something of an oddball himself. I recognized a former member of the concentration camps seminar. He had taken his exams before me, had become a practicing attorney, and then opened a pub; he was dressed in a long red coat. He came to speak to me when everything was over and I was making my way to the cemetery gate. “We were in the same seminar—don’t you remember?” “I do.” We shook hands. “I was always at the trial on Wednesdays, and sometimes I gave you a lift.” He laughed. “You were there every day, every day and every week. Can you say why, now?” He looked at me, good-natured and ready to pounce, and I remembered that I had noticed this look even in the seminar. “I was very interested in the trial.” “You were very interested in the trial?” He laughed again. “The trial, or the defendant you were always staring at? The only one who was reasonably good-looking. We all used to wonder what was going on between you and her, but none of us dared ask. We were so terribly sensitive and considerate back then. Do you remember . . .” He recalled another member of the seminar, who stuttered or lisped and held forth incessantly, most of it nonsense, and to whom we listened as though his words were gold. He went on to talk about other members of the seminar, what they were like back then and what they were doing now. He talked and talked. But I knew he would get back to me eventually and ask: “So—what was going on between you and the defendant?” And I didn’t know what to answer, how to betray, confess, parry. Then we were at the entrance to the cemetery, and he asked. A streetcar was just pulling away from the stop and I called out, “Bye,” and ran off as though I could jump onto the running board, ran alongside the streetcar beating the flat of my hand against the door, and something happened that I wouldn’t have believed possible, hadn’t even hoped for. The streetcar stopped, the door opened, and I got on. 第03节　　　当我参加第二次国家考试时，那位组织集中营问题研讨班的教授去世了。葛特茹德是在报纸的死亡讣告版上偶然看到这个消息的。葬礼在山地陵园举行。她问我是否想去参加。 　　我不想去。葬礼在星期四的下午举行，而我星期四和星期五上午都有考试。再者，那位教授和我之间的关系也不是特别近。我不喜欢参加葬礼。我不想再忆起那次审判。 　　但是，这已为时过晚，记忆已经被唤醒了。当我星期四考试归来时，就好像我必须去赴一个不允许错过的约会，一个与过去的约会。 　　我是乘坐有轨电车去的，平时我是不坐有轨电车的。这已经是与过去的一种接触了，就好像又回到了一个熟悉的地方，一个改变了面貌的地方。当汉娜在有轨电车公司上班时，有两节或三节车厢的有轨电车，车厢的两端有平台，平台旁边有踏板，如果电车已经启动，人们仍旧可以跳到踏板上，还有一条环绕整个车厢的绳子，售票员拉这根绳可以发出开车的信号。夏天的时候，有轨电车敞着平台开，售票员买票，给票打眼，查票，报站，发开车信号，照顾拥挤在平台上的孩子，训斥那些跳上跳下的乘客，当车满员时阻止再上人。有的售票员滑稽有趣，有的严肃，总绷着脸，有的粗鲁。他们的性格和心情如何往往左右着车厢里的气氛。我多么愚蠢，在那次乘车去施魏青根给汉娜一个惊喜的愿望落空之后，我就害怕把她当做售票员来等候，来经历。 　　我登上了一辆没有售票员的有轨电车去了山地陵园。那是一个较冷的秋日，天高云淡，太阳也不再温暖了，用眼睛望着它也不会被刺痛了。我用了好一会儿时间才找到了将在那里举行葬礼的墓地。我穿梭在高大无叶的树木与已有年头的墓碑之间，偶尔会遇见一位陵园的园工或一位手持浇花壶和修技剪刀的上了年纪的妇女。陵园非常安静，我从远处就听到了在那位教授的墓碑旁所唱的赞美诗。 　　我站在一边仔细地观察这小小的参加葬礼的人群。其中的一些人看上去明显地孤僻怪异。从介绍教授生平事迹和著作的悼词中可以听得出来，他自己逃避了社会的约束，从而脱离了与社会的联系，他一直保持着自己的独立性，变得孤僻起来。 　　我认出了当年参加研讨班的一位同学，他参加国家考试比我早，先当上了律师，后来又成了一家小酒店的老板。他是穿着一件红色的长大衣来的。葬礼结束后，当我往回向陵园的大门走去时，他走过来与我打招呼："我们一起参加了研讨班，你不记得了吗？" 　　"记得。"我们握了手。 　　"我总是在周三去法庭，有时我开车带你去，"他笑着说，"你每天都在场，每天，每周都在。现在你说说为什么？"他同情地、期待地望着我。这使我想起，他的这种目光在研讨班时我就注意到了。 　　"我对法庭审理特别感兴趣。" 　　"你对法庭审理特别感兴趣？"他又笑了，"是对法庭还是对那位你总是目不转睛地盯着的被告人？就是看上去还蛮不错的那位？我们大家心里都在嘀咕，你与她是什么关系，但是没人敢问你。我们当时非常富有同情心，善解人意。你还记得……"他提起了另外一位参加研讨班的同学，这位同学口吃，说话咬舌头，话很多且不着边际，我们还得洗耳恭听，好像他的话句句是金石之言。他开始谈起其他参加研讨班的同学，讲他们当时如何，现在又做什么。他滔滔不绝地讲个没完，但是，我知道他最终还会再问我："怎么样，你现在和那位被告的情况如何？"我不知道我该如何回答，如何否认，如何承认和如何回避。 　　这时候我们到了陵园的大门口，他真的问了我这个问题。车站刚好有一辆有轨电车在徐徐开动。我说了声"再见"，撒腿就跑，好像我能跳到踏板上一样，我挨着车身边跑边用手拍打着车门。我根本不敢相信，也没抱任何希望的事发生了：那辆车又停了下来，门开了，我上了车。

CHAPTER TWO I MARRIED WHILE I was still clerking. Gertrud and I had met at the ski lodge, and when the others left at the end of vacation, she stayed behind until I was released from the hospital and she could take me home. She was also studying law; we studied together, passed our exams together, and began our clerking together. We got married when Gertrud got pregnant. I did not tell her about Hanna. Who, I thought, wants to know about the other’s earlier relationships, if he or she is not the fulfillment of their promise? Gertrud was smart, efficient, and loyal, and if our life had involved running a farm with lots of farmhands and maids, lots of children, lots of work, and no time for each other, it would have been fulfilling and happy. But our life was a three-room apartment in a modern building on the edge of the city, our daughter Julia and Gertrud’s and my work as legal clerks. I could never stop comparing the way it was with Gertrud and the way it had been with Hanna; again and again, Gertrud and I would hold each other, and I would feel that something was wrong, that she was wrong, that she moved wrong and felt wrong, smelled wrong and tasted wrong. I thought I would get over it. I hoped it would go away. I wanted to be free of Hanna. But I never got over the feeling that something was wrong. We got divorced when Julia was five. Neither of us could keep things going; we parted without bitterness and retained our loyalty to each other. It tormented me that we were denying Julia the sense of warmth and safety she obviously craved. When Gertrud and I were open and warm with each other, Julia swam in it like a fish in water. She was in her element. When she sensed tension between us, she ran from one to the other to assure us that we were good and she loved us. She longed for a little brother and probably would have been happy with more siblings. For a long time, she didn’t understand what divorce meant; when I came to visit, she wanted me to stay, and when she came to visit me, she wanted Gertrud to come too. When it was time to go, and she watched me from the window, and I had to get into the car under her sad gaze, it broke my heart. And I had the feeling that what we were denying her was not only her wish, but her right. We had cheated her of her rights by getting divorced, and the fact that we did it together didn’t halve the guilt. I tried to approach my later relationships better, and to get into them more deeply. I admitted to myself that a woman had to move and feel a bit like Hanna, smell and taste a bit like her for things to be good between us. I told them about Hanna. And I told them more about myself than I had told Gertrud; they had to be able to make sense of whatever they might find disconcerting in my behavior and moods. But the women didn’t want to hear that much. I remember Helen, an American literary critic who stroked my back silently and soothingly as I talked, and continued to stroke me just as silently and soothingly after I’d stopped speaking. Gesina, a psychoanalyst, thought I needed to work through my relationship with my mother. Did it not strike me that my mother hardly appeared in my story at all? Hilke, a dentist, kept asking about the time before we met, but immediately forgot whatever I told her. So I stopped talking about it. There’s no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does. 第02节　　　当我还是候补官员时我就结了婚。葛特茹德和我是在滑雪棚中认识的。在假期结束时，其他人都回去后，她仍旧留了下来，一直呆到我出院，然后把我送了回去。她也是学法律的，我们一起学习，一起通过考试并一起成为候补官员。当她怀孕时，我们结了婚。 　　我没有向她提起汉娜的事。我想，如果不是有义务，谁愿意听我来讲我以前与另外一个人的关系呢？葛特茹德聪明、勤奋、忠实。如果我们的生活是经营一座农庄，雇用许多男女奴工，生许多孩子，有许多活要干，没有时间给对方的话，那么我们的生活会充实幸福的。但是，一个三口之家，女儿朱丽雅和两个候补官员，即葛特茹德和我，住在市郊的一处新建楼房的三居室里，这就是我们的生活。与葛特茹德在一起时，我一直无法停止把她和我的共同生活与我和汉娜的共同生活进行比较。每当我们拥抱在一起时，我总有一种不对劲的感觉、有一种她不对劲的感觉，她接触和抚摸的地方不对，她的气味不对，滋味也不对。我想，这种感觉会消失的，我希望这种感觉会消失，我想摆脱汉娜，但是，这种不对劲的感觉从未消失过。 　　当朱丽雅五岁时，我们离了婚，因为我们两人都无法再忍受下去了。我们没有痛苦地离了婚，此后也忠诚地保持联系。令我痛苦的是我们不能给予朱丽雅安全感，她很明显地希望有这种安全感。当我和葛特茹德亲密无间、彼此之间都有好感时，朱丽雅在我们中间感到如鱼得水一样自由自在。当她注意到我们之间的紧张气氛时，就从我们的一方跑到另一方，向我们保证我们都很可爱，她爱我们。她希望有个小弟弟，也高兴能有很多兄弟姐妹。很长时间内，她没有明白离婚是怎么一回事。当我去看她时，她要我留下来。当她来看我时，要和葛特茹德一起来。每当我离开她时，她都趴着窗户往外看，当我在她伤心目光的注视下上车时，我感到心已碎。我有一种感觉，我们没有给予她的不仅仅是她的一种愿望，而是她拥有这种愿望的权利。当我们离婚时，我们就骗取了她的权利，我们共同做了这件事，但我们的罪责并没有因此减半。 　　我试图再建立一个较好的婚姻关系。我承认，我要找的女人必须要有点像汉娜，像她那样接触和抚摸，其气味和滋味都必须有点像汉娜的，只有这样，我们的共同生活才不会有不对劲的感觉。而且，我跟她们讲我和汉娜的事。我也在其他女人面前比在葛特茹德面前更多地讲述了我自己。她们应该按照自己的想法解释我在举止言谈中表现出来的令她们感到惊异的东西。但是，那些女人不想听得太多。我记得海伦，一位研究美国文学的学者，当我讲述时，她默默无声抚摸我的后背，安慰我；我停止讲述时，她同样默默无声地继续抚摸我，安慰我。葛西娜是位精神分析学家，她认为，我必须清理我与母亲的关系。她问过我是否注意到我的母亲在我的故事中几乎没有出现过？希尔克是位牙医，她翻来覆去地问我以前的事情，但是，随后就忘了我给她讲的一切。这样一来，我就又什么都不讲了，因为人们所讲的，不过是人们自己所做的，既然是事实，那就不一定非讲木可。

CHAPTER ONE I SPENT THE summer after the trial in the reading room of the university library. I arrived as the reading room opened and left when it closed. On weekends I studied at home. I studied so uninterruptedly, so obsessively, that the feelings and thoughts that had been deadened by the trial remained deadened. I avoided contacts. I moved away from home and rented a room. I brushed off the few acquaintances who spoke to me in the reading room or on my occasional visits to the movies. The winter semester I was much the same way. Nonetheless, I was asked if I would like to spend the Christmas vacation with a group of students at a ski lodge. Surprised, I accepted. I wasn’t a good skier, but I liked to ski and was fast and kept up with the good ones. Sometimes when I was on slopes that were beyond my ability, I risked falls and broken bones. I did this consciously. The other risk I was taking, and to which I succumbed, was one to which I was oblivious. I was never cold. While the others skied in sweaters and jackets, I skied in a shirt. The others shook their heads and teased me about it, but I didn’t take their worries seriously. I simply didn’t feel cold. When I began to cough, I blamed it on the Austrian cigarettes. When I started to feel feverish, I enjoyed it. I felt weak and light at the same time, and all my senses were pleasingly muffled, cottony, padded. I floated. Then I came down with a high fever and was taken to the hospital. By the time I left, the numbness was gone. All the questions and fears, accusations and self-accusations, all the horror and pain that had erupted during the trial and been immediately deadened were back, and back for good. I don’t know what the doctors diagnose when someone isn’t freezing even though he should be freezing. My own diagnosis is that the numbness had to overwhelm my body before it would let go of me, before I could let go of it. When I had finished my studies and began my training, it was the summer of the student upheavals. I was interested in history and sociology, and while clerking with a judge I was still in the university often enough to know what was going on. Knowing what was going on did not mean taking part—university and university reforms were no more interesting to me than the Vietcong and the Americans. As for the third and real theme of the student movement, coming to grips with the Nazi past, I felt so removed from the other students that I had no desire to agitate and demonstrate with them. Sometimes I think that dealing with the Nazi past was not the reason for the generational conflict that drove the student movement, but merely the form it took. Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it ended. How could those who had committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen or looked away while they were happening or tolerated the criminals among them after 1945 or even accepted them—how could they have anything to say to their children? But on the other hand, the Nazi past was an issue even for children who couldn’t accuse their parents of anything, or didn’t want to. For them, coming to grips with the Nazi past was not merely the form taken by a generational conflict, it was the issue itself. Whatever validity the concept of collective guilt may or may not have, morally and legally—for my generation of students it was a lived reality. It did not just apply to what had happened in the Third Reich. The fact that Jewish gravestones were being defaced with swastikas, that so many old Nazis had made careers in the courts, the administration, and the universities, that the Federal Republic did not recognize the State of Israel for many years, that emigration and resistance were handed down as traditions less often than a life of conformity—all this filled us with shame, even when we could point at the guilty parties. Pointing at the guilty parties did not free us from shame, but at least it overcame the suffering we went through on account of it. It converted the passive suffering of shame into energy, activity, aggression. And coming to grips with our parents’ guilt took a great deal of energy. I had no one to point at. Certainly not my parents, because I had nothing to accuse them of. The zeal for letting in the daylight, with which, as a member of the concentration camps seminar, I had condemned my father to shame, had passed, and it embarrassed me. But what other people in my social environment had done, and their guilt, were in any case a lot less bad than what Hanna had done. I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. And perhaps we are responsible even for the love we feel for our parents. I envied other students back then who had dissociated themselves from their parents and thus from the entire generation of perpetrators, voyeurs, and the willfully blind, accommodators and accepters, thereby overcoming perhaps not their shame, but at least their suffering because of the shame. But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one’s self-righteousness? Was their dissociation of themselves from their parents mere rhetoric: sounds and noise that were supposed to drown out the fact that their love for their parents made them irrevocably complicit in their crimes? These thoughts did not come until later, and even later they brought no comfort. How could it be a comfort that the pain I went through because of my love for Hanna was, in a way, the fate of my generation, a German fate, and that it was only more difficult for me to evade, more difficult for me to manage than for others. All the same, it would have been good for me back then to be able to feel I was part of my generation. 第01节　　　审判过后的那个夏天我是在大学图书馆阅览室度过的。阅览室一开门我就来，关门时我才走。周末我在家里学习。我是如此一心只读书，不闻窗外事，以至于审判给我的感觉和思想造成的麻木一直没有恢复正常。我避免与人接触，我从家里搬了出来，在外边租了一间房。仅有的几位熟人，也不过是在阅览室或偶尔在电影院相识的点头之交，现在我也不与他们点头了。 　　在冬季学期里，我的行为举止几乎没有什么改变。尽管如此，还是有人问我是否愿意和一些学生在圣诞节期间一起去滑雪。奇怪的是我竟然答应了。 　　我滑雪滑得并不好，但我喜欢滑，而且喜欢滑得很快，愿意和那些滑得特别好的人一起滑。我的下坡技术实际上还不过硬，但有时我还是冒摔交和骨折的危险从山上往下滑。然而，我冒的另一种风险——后来这个风险兑现了，我却全然不知。 　　我从未觉得冷。当其他人穿着毛衣和夹克衫滑雪时，我和穿着衬衫滑，其他人对此摇头不已，并对我进行劝告。但是，我对他们深怀忧虑的劝告不当回事，因为我没有觉得冷。当我开始咳嗽时，我把它归罪于奥地利香烟。当我开始发烧时，我反倒感觉那是一种享受。我感到虚弱，同时感觉轻飘飘的。我的感觉变得迟钝起来，但却感觉良好：惬意、充实。我好像在腾云驾雾。 　　随后，我因发高烧被送进了医院。出院时，我的麻木不仁消失不见了。一切问题、恐惧、控告、自责，所有在法庭审理期间出现而后又麻木了的惊恐和痛苦又出现了，并在我心里停留下来。我不知道当一个人该感觉冷却又感觉不出冷时，医生会对此做出什么样的诊断。我的自我诊断是：麻木不仁在它摆脱我之前或在我能摆脱它之前制服了我的肉体。 　　当我在夏季结束了学业并开始作为候补官员工作时，学生运动开始了。我对历史和社会学感兴趣，而且作为候补官员我还有足够的时间呆在大学里去经历所发生的一切。经历并不意味着参与，高校和高校改革对我来说归根结底就像越南的游击队和美国人一样无所谓。至于学生运动的第三个主题——实际上也是最基本的主题，即如何对待纳粹历史的问题，我感到自己与其他学生之间存在着非常大的距离，以至于我不愿意和他们一起宣传鼓动和一起游行。 　　有时我想，就纳粹历史进行辩论并不是学生运动的理由，而是两代人之间的冲突的表达方式，这种冲突显然是这场学生运动的推动力量。父辈在第三帝国，或者至少在第三帝国结束以后没有做他们应该做的事，这让年轻一辈感到失望。每一代年轻人都要从对父辈的这种失望中解脱出来。那些或犯下了纳粹罪行，或对纳粹罪行袖手旁观，或对之视而不见，或在一九四五年之后容忍和接受罪犯的父辈该对他们的孩子们说什么呢！但是另一方面，纳粹历史对那些无法或不愿意谴责父辈的孩子也是一个值得讨论的问题。对他们来说，就纳粹历史进行的这场辩论并不是两代人之间的冲突的外部表现形式，而是问题的症结所在。 　　不论集体犯罪在道德和法律方面应承担什么责任，对我们这一代学生来说它都是一个确凿事实。不仅仅在第三帝国所发生的事是这样的事实，就是后来发生的事，诸如犹太人的墓碑被涂上纳粹标志；许多老纳粹分子在法院，在管理部门或在大学里步步高升；联邦德国不承认以色列国；流亡和抵抗的故事流传开来的少，而由于适应变化了的情况而活命的故事居多……所有这些都使我们感到羞耻，尽管我们有权对负有责任的人进行指责。虽然对负有责任的人指责并不能使我们摆脱羞耻之心，但它却能消除由此产生的痛苦，它可以把由羞耻引起的被动痛苦转换为力量、积极性和进攻行为。正因为如此，与负有罪责的父辈较量起来显得劲头十足。 　　我不能对任何人进行指责。我不能指责我父母，因为我对他们没有什么可指责的。当年参加集中营研讨班时所具有的那种为澄清事实而指责自己父亲的热情，对我来说已成为过去，并令我难堪。我周围的其他人的所作所为，即他们所犯的罪行，与汉娜的所作所为比起来都算不了什么了。实际上，我必须指责汉娜，但是，指责汉娜的结果是搬起石头砸自己的脚。我爱过她，我不仅爱过她，我还选择了她。我极力这样自我安慰：当我选择汉娜时，我对她过去的所作所为一无所知。我努力使我自己认为自己无罪，说自己当时所处的状态与孩子爱父母的状态没有两样。但是，对父母的爱是谁一不需要人们承担责任的爱。 　　也许人们甚至也要为爱父母承担责任。当时，我很羡慕那些与他们的父母，同时与整个一代罪犯——旁观者、逃避者、容忍着和接受者划清界限的同学，因为，他们至少可以解除由耻辱产生的痛苦，如果不能解除耻辱本身的话，但是，我经常在他们身上见到的那种自我炫耀式的自负是从何而来的呢？怎样能够在感到有罪和耻辱的同时又自负他自我炫耀呢？难道与父母划清界限仅仅是一种雄辩和吵吵嚷嚷吗？难道想通过这种吵吵嚷嚷宣告：出于爱父母之心而纠缠其罪责的运动已经开始且无法挽回？ 　　这些都是我后来的想法，即使到后来这对我也并不是一种安慰。它怎么能是一种安慰？我爱汉娜的痛苦在一定程度上是我们这代人的命运，是德国人的命运。我比其他人更难摆脱这种命运，比其他人更不容易战胜这种命运。尽管如此，如果当时我能把自己融入同代人之中的话，那会对当时的我深有益处的。

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN T HE VERDICT was handed down at the end of June. Hanna was sentenced to life. The others received terms in jail. The courtroom was as full as it had been at the beginning of the trial. People from the justice system, students from my university and the local one, a class of schoolchildren, domestic and foreign journalists, and the people who always find their way into courtrooms. It was loud. At first, no one noticed when the defendants were brought in. But then the spectators fell silent. The first to stop talking were those sitting up front near the defendants. They nudged their neighbors and turned around to those sitting behind them. “Look,” they whispered, and those who looked fell silent too and nudged their neighbors and turned to those sitting behind them and whispered, “Look!” Until eventually the whole courtroom was silent. I don’t know if Hanna knew how she looked, or maybe she wanted to look like that. She was wearing a black suit and a white blouse, and the cut of the suit and the tie that went with the blouse made her look as if she were in uniform. I have never seen the uniform of the women who worked for the SS. But I believed, and the spectators all believed, that before us we were seeing that uniform, and the woman who had worked for the SS in it, and all the crimes Hanna was accused of doing. The spectators began to whisper again. Many were audibly outraged. They felt that Hanna was ridiculing the trial, the verdict, and themselves, they who had come to hear the verdict read out. They became more vociferous, and some of them began calling out what they thought of Hanna. But then the court entered the courtroom and after an irritated glance at Hanna, the judge announced the verdict. Hanna listened standing up, straight-backed, and absolutely motionless. She sat down during the reading of the reasons for the verdict. I did not take my eyes off her head and neck. The entire verdict took several hours to read. When the trial was over and the defendants were being led away, I waited to see whether Hanna would look at me. I was sitting in the same place I always sat. But she looked straight ahead and through everything. A proud, wounded, lost, and infinitely tired look. A look that wished to see nothing and no one. 第17节　　　六月底，宣布了审判结果。汉娜被判处终身监禁，其他人被判处有期徒刑。 　　法院大厅里像审判之初一样座无虚席，其中有司法部门的工作人员、我所在大学及当地大学的学生们、一组中学生、国内外的记者和那些平时总是在场的人。大厅里喧嚣不止。当被告被传叫送来时，起初没有人注意她们，但是随后大厅就变得鸦雀无声了。首先是在被告前就座的听众安静了下来。他们碰碰左右的邻居，然后转过身来对坐在后面的人低声地说道："注意看片于是后面的人开始向前看，并安静下来。他们再碰碰左右邻居，然后转向他们身后的男人低声说："注意看！。这样，审判大厅终于变得鸦雀无声了。 　　我不知道是否汉娜自己也清楚她看上去是什么样子，也许她愿意看上去就是这个样子。她穿了一套黑色套装，配一件白衬衫。那套装的式样和衬衫的领带使她看上去就好像穿了一套制服。我从未见过为纳粹党卫军工作的女人们所穿的制服，但是我认为——所有其他的听众也都这样认为，我们眼前的这个制服就是纳粹党卫军的女式制服，这个女人就是穿着这样的制服为纳粹党卫军工作的，汉娜的所作所为就是她被控告的原因。 　　听众又开始小声嘀咕起来。很多人发出的愤怒的声音都可以听得到。他们认为审判过程、判决还有那些为听宣读判决结果而来的人都被汉娜嘲弄了。他们的声音越来越大，少数人向汉娜又喊又叫，清楚地说出他们认为汉娜是什么东西，直到审判人员步人大厅，审判长愤怒地看着汉娜宣布判决结果时人们才安静下来。汉娜笔直地站着，一动不动地听着。当宣读判决原因时，她坐了下来。我的目光一直没有离开汉娜的头和后颈。 　　宣判持续了好几个小时。当宣判结束后被告被带走时，我在等着，看汉娜是否会看我一眼。我坐在老位子上。但是，她目不斜视，看穿了一切。那是一种高傲的、受到伤害的、绝望的、无限疲惫的目光，一种任何人、任何东西都不想看的目光。

CHAPTER SIXTEEN I DID GO to the presiding judge after all. I couldn’t make myself visit Hanna. But neither could I endure doing nothing. Why didn’t I manage to speak to Hanna? She had left me, deceived me, was not the person I had taken her for or imagined her to be. And who had I been for her? The little reader she used, the little bedmate with whom she’d had her fun? Would she have sent me to the gas chamber if she hadn’t been able to leave me, but wanted to get rid of me? Why did I find it unendurable to do nothing? I told myself I had to prevent a miscarriage of justice. I had to make sure justice was done, despite Hanna’s lifelong lie, justice both for and against Hanna, so to speak. But I wasn’t really concerned with justice. I couldn’t leave Hanna the way she was, or wanted to be. I had to meddle with her, have some kind of influence and effect on her, if not directly then indirectly. The judge knew about our seminar group and was happy to invite me to come and talk after a session in court. I knocked, was invited in, greeted, and offered the chair in front of his desk. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind it. His robe hung over the back and arms of his chair; he had sat down in the robe and then slipped out of it. He seemed relaxed, a man who had finished his day’s work and was content. Without the irritated expression he hid behind during the trial, he had a nice, intelligent, harmless civil servant’s face. He made general easy chitchat, asking me about this and that: what our seminar group thought of the trial, what our professor intended to do with the trial record, which semester we were in, which semester I was in, why I was studying law and when I planned to take my exams. He told me I must be sure to register for the exams on time. I answered all his questions. Then I listened while he talked about his studies and his exams. He had done everything the right way. He had taken the right classes and seminars at the right time and had passed his final exams with the right degree of success. He liked being a lawyer and a judge, and if he had to do it all again he would do it the same way. The window was open. In the parking lot, doors were being slammed and engines turned on. I listened to the cars until their noise was swallowed up in the roar of the traffic. Then children came to play and yell in the emptied parking lot. Sometimes a word came through quite clearly: a name, an insult, a call. The judge stood up and said goodbye. He told me I could come again if I had any other questions, or if I wanted advice on my studies. And he would like to know our seminar group’s evaluation and analysis of the trial. I walked through the empty parking lot. One of the bigger boys told me how I could walk to the railroad station. Our car pool had driven back right after the session, and I had to take the train. It was a slow rush-hour train that stopped at every station; people got on and off. I sat at the window, surrounded by ever-changing passengers, conversations, smells. Outside, houses passed by, and roads, cars, trees, distant mountains, castles, and quarries. I took it all in and felt nothing. I was no longer upset at having been left, deceived, and used by Hanna. I no longer had to meddle with her. I felt the numbness with which I had followed the horrors of the trial settling over the emotions and thoughts 第16节　　　我到底还是去找了审判长。去找汉娜我做不到，但是，袖手旁观什么都不做，我也做不到。 　　与汉娜谈一谈为什么我做不到呢？她离我而去，她欺骗了我，她不是那个我了解的汉娜，或令我为之想入非非的汉娜，而我对她来说又是何许人呢？一个被她利用的小朗读者？一个陪她睡觉，使她获得床第之欢的小家伙？如果无法离开我，但又想摆脱我时，她也会把我送进毒气室吗？ 　　那么，为什么我连袖手旁观也做不到呢？我心想，我一定要阻止一场错误的判决。我一定要主持公道，一种不计较汉娜的生活谎言的绝对公道，它或许对汉娜有利，也可能对她不利，但是，对我来说，这的确不是公道不公道的问题。我不能让汉娜想怎样就怎样，想怎么说就怎么说。我必须要对她施加影响，如果不能直接地，就间接地。 　　审判长知道我们这个小组，愿意在下次开庭后与我谈一次。我敲了敲门，然后被请了进去。他问候我之后请我坐在写字台前面的一把椅子上。他只穿了个衬衫，坐在写字台的后面。他的法官长袍挂在椅背和椅子的扶手上。他朝长袍坐下去，然后又让长袍滑落在地上。他看上去很轻松，像一个完成了当天的工作并对此感到很满意的人。脸上没有在法庭审理期间那种烦躁易怒的表情，取而代之的是一副和蔼可亲、充满智慧、心地善良的政府官员的面部表情，原来他在法庭上用假面具把自己掩饰了起来。他无拘无束地与我聊天，向我问这问那，譬如，我们这个小组对法庭审理程序是怎样想的，我们的教授对法庭备忘录将如何处理，我们是几年级的学生，我上了几个学期了，我为什么要学法律，我想何时参加考试等等。还说，报名参加考试无论如何不应该太晚。 　　我回答了所有的问题。之后我听他给我讲述了他的学习和考试的情况。他把一切都做得很好，他及时地以优异的成绩修满了各科学分，最后又及时地参加了毕业考试。他喜欢做法学家和法官，如果让他重新做一遍的话，他仍旧会如此去做。 　　窗户敞开着，我听得见停车场上的关门声和一辆车发动马达的声音。我听着那辆车开出去，直到它的声音被喧嚣的交通淹没为止。之后，我听得见孩子们在空旷的停车场上的玩耍吵闹声，时而非常清楚地听得见一个名字、一句骂人话或一声喊叫。 　　审判长站起来与我告别，他说如果我还有什么问题尽管再来找他，如果需要学业上的咨询也可找他。还说我们小组对审判程序的分析评估结果应该让他知道。 　　我向空旷的停车场走去，请一个稍大一点的男孩告诉我去火车站的路怎么走。我们一起乘车的那伙人在休庭之后马上就赶了回去，我只好坐火车回去。这是一辆慢行的班车，每站都停，人们上上下下。我靠窗坐着，被其他旅客的谈笑声和他们身上所发出的气味所环绕。外面的一座座房子、一条条街道、一辆辆汽车、一棵棵树木从窗外掠过，远处看得见山脉、城堡和采石场。我能看见一切，但对什么都毫无感觉。我不再为汉娜的弃我而去、为她对我的欺骗和利用感到伤心，我不必再对她施加什么影响了。在参加法庭的审理的过程中，对那些骇人听闻的事情我感到麻木木仁。现在我注意到，这种麻木不仁在过去的几周里对我的感觉和思想产生了影响。如果说我完全解脱了的话，那么未免有些言过其词了，但是我认为这样做是对的，这样才有可能让我重新回到我的日常生活中去，并在这种生活中继续生活下去。

CHAPTER FIFTEEN I WENT BACK there not long ago. It was winter, a clear, cold day. Beyond Schirmeck the woods were snowy, the trees powdered white and the ground white too. The grounds of the concentration camp, an elongated area on a sloping terrace of mountain with a broad view of the Vosges, lay white in the bright sunshine. The gray-blue painted wood of the two- and three-story watchtowers and the one-story barracks made a pleasant contrast with the snow. True, there was the entryway festooned with barbed wire and the sign CONCENTRATION CAMP STRUTHOF-NATZWEILER and the double barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. But the ground between the remaining barracks, where more barracks had once stood side by side, no longer showed any trace of the camp under its glittering cover of snow. It could have been a sledding slope for children, spending their winter vacation in the cheerful barracks with the homely many-paned windows, and about to be called indoors for cake and hot chocolate. The camp was closed. I tramped around it in the snow, getting my feet wet. I could easily see the whole grounds, and remembered how on my first visit I had gone down the steps that led between the foundations of the former barracks. I also remembered the ovens of the crematorium that were on display in another barracks, and that another barracks had contained cells. I remembered my vain attempts, back then, to imagine in concrete detail a camp filled with prisoners and guards and suffering. I really tried; I looked at a barracks, closed my eyes, and imagined row upon row of barracks. I measured a barracks, calculated its occupants from the informational booklet, and imagined how crowded it had been. I found out that the steps between the barracks had also been used for roll call, and as I looked from the bottom of the camp up towards the top, I filled them with rows of backs. But it was all in vain, and I had a feeling of the most dreadful, shameful failure. On the way back, further down the hill, I found a small house opposite a restaurant that had a sign on it indicating that it had been a gas chamber. It was painted white, had doors and windows framed in sandstone, and could have been a barn or a shed or servants’ living quarters. This building, too, was closed and I didn’t remember if I had gone inside it on my first visit. I didn’t get out of the car. I sat for a while with the motor running, and looked. Then I drove on. At first I was embarrassed to meander home through the Alsatian villages looking for a restaurant where I could have lunch. But my awkwardness was not the result of real feeling, but of thinking about the way one is supposed to feel after visiting a concentration camp. I noticed this myself, shrugged, and found a restaurant called Au Petit Garçon in a village on a slope of the Vosges. My table looked out over the plain. Hanna had called me kid. The previous time I had walked around the concentration camp grounds until they closed. Then I had sat down under the memorial that stood above the camp, and looked down over the grounds. I felt a great emptiness inside, as if I had been searching for some glimpse, not outside but within myself, and had discovered that there was nothing to be found. Then it got dark. I had to wait an hour until the driver of a small open truck let me climb up and sit on the truck bed and took me to the next village, and I gave up the idea of hitchhiking back that same day. I found a cheap room in a guest house in the village and had a thin steak with french fries and peas in the dining room. Four men were loudly playing cards at the next table. The door opened and a little old man came in without greeting anyone. He wore short pants and had a wooden leg. He ordered a beer at the bar. He sat facing away from the neighboring table, so that all they saw was his back and the back of his overly enlarged, bald skull. The card players laid down their cards, reached into the ashtrays, picked up the butts, took aim, and hit him. The man at the bar flapped his hands behind his head as if swatting away flies. The innkeeper set his beer in front of him. No one said a word. I couldn’t stand it. I jumped up and went over to the next table. “Stop it!” I was shaking with outrage. At that moment, the man half hobbled, half hopped over and began fumbling with his leg; suddenly he was holding the wooden leg in both hands. He brought it crashing down onto the table so that the glasses and ashtrays danced, and fell into an empty chair, laughing a squeaky, toothless laugh as the others laughed in a beery rumble along with him. “Stop it!” they laughed, pointing at me. “Stop it!” During the night the wind howled around the house. I was not cold, and the noise of the wind and the creaking of the tree in front of the house and the occasional banging of a shutter were not enough to have kept me awake. But I became more and more inwardly restless, until my whole body began to shiver. I felt afraid, not in anticipation that something bad was going to happen, but in a physical way. I lay there, listening to the wind, feeling relieved every time it weakened and died down, but dreading its renewed assaults and not knowing how I would get out of bed next day, hitchhike back, continue my studies, and one day have a career and a wife and children. I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna’s crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding. But even as I wanted to understand Hanna, failing to understand her meant betraying her all over again. I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks—understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both. The next day was another beautiful summer day. Hitchhiking was easy, and I got back in a few hours. I walked through the city as though I had been away for a long time; the streets and buildings and people looked strange to me. But that didn’t mean the other world of the concentration camps felt any closer. My impressions of Struthof joined my few already existing images of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and froze along with them. 第15节　　　我不久前又去了那儿一次。那是一个晴朗又寒冷的冬日。过了舍尔麦克，森林披上了银装，大地被皑皑白雪覆盖。集中营是一块狭长的场地，地处下斜的山坡梯地上，在耀眼的阳光照射下一片白茫茫。从那儿可眺望到远处的福戈森山谷。二层或三层的监视塔上面的和一层的木板房上面的被漆成蓝灰色的木头与皑皑白雪形成了一个和谐的对照。当然了，那里少不了有用铁丝网围成的大门，门上面挂着"斯特鲁特侯夫一纳茨瓦勒集中营"的牌子，也有围绕集中营四周的双层铁丝网。在残留下来的木板房之间，原来都是木板房，一间挨着一间地排列着，非常稠密，可现在，地面被皑皑白雪覆盖着，什么也辨认不出来。它看起来像是为孩子们准备的滑雪橇的斜坡。好像孩子们正在带有舒适方格窗户的、可爱的木板房里度寒假，好像他们随时都会被喊进去吃蛋糕和热巧克力。 　　集中营没开放。我只好在周围的雪地里走来走去，鞋都湿透了。我可以看清楚集中营的全貌。这使我想起，我第一次参观它时是怎样从已经被拆除的木板房的墙基与墙基间的台阶上走下来的。这也使我想起了当时在一间木板房里展出的火化炉及另外的曾用做单人牢房的木板房。也使我回忆起，当时我是怎样徒劳地想象过一个关满囚犯的集中营是什么样子，囚犯和警卫队都是什么样子，具体地想象过痛苦是什么滋味。我的确努力想象过，我曾望着一间木板房，闭上眼睛，思想从一个房间走到另一个房间。我仔细地测量了一间木板房，从测量中算出它占用情况并想象它的拥挤程度。我听说，木板房之间的台阶同时也是集合点名的地点，点名时，从下面向上面的集中营尽头望去，看到的是一排排的后背。但是，我的这一切想象都是徒劳的。我有一种可怜的、羞耻的失败感。在回去的路上，在远离山坡的地方，在一家饭店的对面，我发现了一间被用做毒气室的小房子。它被粉刷成白色，门窗用石头围砌起来。它看上去像个粮仓，或者像个仓库，或是用人住的陋室。这个房子也不开放。我记不得了是否我当时进过里面。我没有下车，坐在车里让发动机开着，看了一会儿就开走了。 　　在回家的路上，起初我对在阿尔萨斯地区的村子里绕来绕去地去找一家饭店吃午饭有所顾忌。但是，我的顾忌并不是产生于一种真正的感受，而是产生于一种思考，一种参观一所集中营之后人们所具有的思考。我自己意识到了这点，我耸耸肩。我在福戈森的山坡旁的村子里找到了一家名为"到小花园"的饭店。从我的座位上可以看到那个平原。在那里，汉娜叫过我"小家伙"。 　　我第一次参观集中营时在里面转来转去，一直转到它关门为止。之后我坐在了位于集中营上方的纪念碑下，俯瞰下面的集中营。我的心里空虚极了，就好像我不是在外部世界，而是在内心世界寻找着直觉，而我内心又空空如也。 　　随后，天黑了下来。我无可奈何地等了一个小时，才搭上一辆小型敞篷货车，坐在了放货物的位子上，去了下一座村子。我只好放弃了当天搭车赶回家去的希望，在村子里找了一家便宜的客栈住了下来，并在其餐厅里吃了一块薄薄的煎猪排，配菜是炸薯条和豌豆。 　　我的邻桌有四个男人吵吵嚷嚷地在打牌。这时，门开了，一位矮小的老人走了进来，没有和任何人打招呼。他穿着一条短裤，拖着一条木制假腿。他在吧台要了啤酒，把背和他的大秃头对着我的邻桌。玩牌的人放下牌，把手伸向烟灰缸抓起烟头向他扔去，并击中了他。坐在吧台的那个老头用手在后脑勺扑打着，好像要防止苍蝇落上似的。店主给他端上了啤酒，没人开口说话。 　　我忍不住跳了起来冲向了邻桌："住手！"我气得手直打哆嗦。这时候，那个老头一瘸一拐地蹦了过来，笨拙地用手摆弄着他的腿，突然那条木制假腿就握在他的双手中了。他用假腿"啪"的一声敲在桌子上，上面的杯子和烟灰缸都滚动着摔到空椅子上。与此同时，他那没牙的嘴发出了尖笑，其他人也和他一起狂笑，但那是一种耍酒风的狂笑，"住手！"他们一边笑一边指着我说，"住手户 　　那天夜里，房子周围狂风呼啸。我并没有感到冷，窗前的狂风怒吼、树木的嘎嘎作响以及偶尔传来的商店的关门声都没有大到让我睡不着觉的程度，但是，我心里感到越来越不安，直到我的整个身体也开始颤抖起来。我害怕，不过，不是怕发生什么坏事。我的害怕只是一种身体状态。我躺在那儿，听着狂风的呼啸。当风势减弱、风声变小时，我才感到轻松些。但是，我又害怕风势再起，我不知道第二天能否爬得起来，能否赶得回去，不知道我将如何继续我的学业，如何成家立业，生儿育女。 　　我想对汉娜的罪行既给予理解，同时也予以谴责，但是，这样做太可怕了。当我努力去理解时，我就会有一种感觉，即我觉得本来属于该谴责的罪行变得不再那么该谴责了。当我像该谴责的那样去谴责时，就没有理解的余地了。但是，在谴责她的同时我还是想理解她，不理解她就意味着对她的再次背叛。我现在还没到不行的时候。两者我都想要：理解和谴责。但是，两者都行不通。 　　第二天又是个阳光明媚的夏日。搭车很容易，我在几个小时内就到了家。我徒步穿过城里，好像我离开了很长时间，街道、房屋和那里的人都令我感到陌生。但是，我对陌生的集中营世界却没有因此而更熟悉。我在斯特鲁特俱夫所得到的印象与我头脑中固有的奥斯威辛、比肯瑙和贝尔根一贝尔森的极少的情景交织混合在一起，也与它们僵化在一起。

CHAPTER FOURTEEN I DECIDED TO go away. If I had been able to leave for Auschwitz the next day, I would have gone. But it would have taken weeks to get a visa. So I went to Struthof in Alsace. It was the nearest concentration camp. I had never seen one. I wanted reality to drive out the clichés. I hitchhiked, and remember a ride in a truck with a driver who downed one bottle of beer after another, and a Mercedes driver who steered wearing white gloves. After Strasbourg I got lucky; the driver was going to Schirmeck, a small town not far from Struthof. When I told the driver where I was going, he fell silent. I looked over at him, but couldn’t tell why he had suddenly stopped talking in the midst of a lively conversation. He was middle-aged, with a haggard face and a dark red birthmark or scar on his right temple, and his black hair was carefully parted and combed in strands. He stared at the road in concentration. The hills of the Vosges rolled out ahead of us. We were driving through vineyards into a wide-open valley that climbed gently. To the left and right, mixed forests grew up the slopes, and sometimes there was a quarry or a brick-walled factory with a corrugated iron roof, or an old sanatorium, or a large turreted villa among tall trees. A train track ran alongside us, sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right. Then he spoke again. He asked me why I was visiting Struthof, and I told him about the trial and my lack of first-hand knowledge. “Ah, you want to understand why people can do such terrible things.” He sounded as if he was being a little ironic, but maybe it was just the tone of voice and the choice of words. Before I could reply, he went on: “What is it you want to understand? That people murder out of passion, or love, or hate, or for honor or revenge, that you understand?” I nodded. “You also understand that people murder for money or power? That people murder in wars and revolutions?” I nodded again. “But . . .” “But the people who were murdered in the camps hadn’t done anything to the individuals who murdered them? Is that what you want to say? Do you mean that there was no reason for hatred, and no war?” I didn’t want to nod again. What he said was true, but not the way he said it. “You’re right, there was no war, and no reason for hatred. But executioners don’t hate the people they execute, and they execute them all the same. Because they’re ordered to? You think they do it because they’re ordered to? And you think that I’m talking about orders and obedience, that the guards in the camps were under orders and had to obey?” He laughed sarcastically. “No, I’m not talking about orders and obedience. An executioner is not under orders. He’s doing his work, he doesn’t hate the people he executes, he’s not taking revenge on them, he’s not killing them because they’re in his way or threatening him or attacking him. They’re a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.” He looked at me. “No ‘buts’? Come on, tell me that one person cannot be that indifferent to another. Isn’t that what they taught you? Solidarity with everything that has a human face? Human dignity? Reverence for life?” I was outraged and helpless. I searched for a word, a sentence that would erase what he had said and strike him dumb. “Once,” he went on, “I saw a photograph of Jews being shot in Russia. The Jews were in a long row, naked; some were standing at the edge of a pit and behind them were soldiers with guns, shooting them in the neck. It was in a quarry, and above the Jews and the soldiers there was an officer sitting on a ledge in the rock, swinging his legs and smoking a cigarette. He looked a little morose. Maybe things weren’t going fast enough for him. But there was also something satisfied, even cheerful about his expression, perhaps because the day’s work was getting done and it was almost time to go home. He didn’t hate the Jews. He wasn’t . . .” “Was it you? Were you sitting on the ledge and . . .” He stopped the car. He was absolutely white, and the mark on his temple glistened. “Out!” I got out. He swung the wheel so fast I had to jump aside. I still heard him as he took the next few curves. Then everything was silent. I walked up the road. No car passed me, none came in the opposite direction. I heard birds, the wind in the trees, and the occasional murmur of a stream. In a quarter of an hour I reached the concentration camp. 第14节　　　我决定去奥斯威辛看看。假使我今天做了决定明天就可以动身去的话，那我也就去了。但是，得到签证需要几周的时间。这样一来我就去了阿尔萨斯地区的斯特鲁特侯夫。那是最近的一个集中营。我从未看过任何一个集中营。我要用真实驱逐脑中的先人之见。 　　我是搭车去的，还记得在搭乘卡车的一段路上，司机一瓶接一瓶地灌着啤酒；也记得一位开奔驰车的司机，他戴着白手套开车。过了斯特拉斯堡之后，我的运气不错，搭的汽车是驶向舍尔麦克的，一个离斯特鲁特侯夫不太远的小城市。 　　当我告诉了司机我要去的具体地方时，他不说话了。我瞧了他一眼，但是从他的脸上我看不出来他为什么从生动活泼的交谈中突然默不作声了。他中等年纪，细长的脸，右边的太阳穴上有块深红色的胎痣或烙印，一架黑发整齐的流向两边。他看上去好像把注意力集中在了道路上。 　　延伸到我们面前的福戈森山脉是一片丘陵。我们穿过了一片葡萄园，来到一个开阔的、缓缓上升的山谷。左边和右边的斜坡上是针叶松和落叶松混长的森林，偶尔路过一个采石场，或一个用砖围砌起来的、带有折顶的厂棚，或一家养老院，或一处大型别墅——那里许多小尖塔林立于参天大树之中。有时，我们沿铁路线而行，铁路线时而在左边，时而在右边。 　　沉默之后，他又开口了，他问我为什么要去参观斯特鲁特俱夫。我向他讲述了审讯过程和我对直观形象的匮乏。 　　"啊，您想弄明白，人们为什么能做出那么恐怖的事情。"他的话听上去有点嘲讽的口吻，但是，这也许仅仅是声音和语言上的地方色彩。没等我回答，他又接着说："您到底想弄明白什么呢？人们之所以杀人有时是出于狂热，有时是出于爱，或者出于恨，或为了名誉，或为了复仇，您明白吗？" 　　我点点头。 　　"有时是为了财富去杀人，有时是为了权力，在战争中，或者在一场革命中都要杀人，这您也明白吗？" 　　我又点点头："但是…、··" 　　"但是，那些在集中营被杀死的人对那些杀害他们的人并没做过什么，对吗？您想说这个吗？您想说不存在憎恨和战争的理由吗？'" 　　我不想再点头了，他所说的没错，但是他说话的口气不对。 　　"您说得有道理，不存在战争和憎恨的理由，刽子手恨不恨他要处死的人，都要处死他。因为他这样做是按命令行事？您认为，他们这样做是因为他被命令这样做吗？您认为我现在在谈论命令和服从命令吗？在谈论集中营的警卫队得到命令和他们必须要服从命令吗？他鄙视地笑了起来，"不，我不是在谈论命令和服从命令。刽子手没有遵循任何命令。他在完成他的工作，他处死的不是他憎恨的人，他不是在向他们报仇雪恨。杀死他们，不是因为他们挡了他的路或者对他进行了威胁和进攻。他们对他来说完全无所谓的，他们对他来说如此地无所谓，以致他杀不杀他们都一样。" 　　他看着我说："没有'但是'吗？您说，一个人对另一个人不可以这样无所谓。您连这个都没学过吗？没学过要一致顾脸面？顾人的尊严？生命算什么？" 　　我被激怒了，但又束手无策。我在搜索一个词，或一句话，一句能让他哑口无言的话。 　　"有一次，"他接着说，"我看到一张熗杀俄国犹太人的照片。犹太人一丝不挂地排着长队在等着，有几位站在一个坑的边上，他们身后是手持步熗向他们颈部开熗射击的士兵。这事发生在一座采石场。在犹太人和土兵的上方，有位军官坐在墙上的隔板上，跷着二郎腿，吸着一支香烟。他看上去有点闷闷不乐，也许熗杀进行得还不够快。但是，他还是感到某种程度的满足，甚至轻松愉快，也许因为白天的活总算要干完了，而且很快就要下班了。他不恨犹太人，他本是……" 　　"那是您吧？是您坐在墙上的隔板上，还……" 　　他把车停下了，脸色苍白，太阳穴上的股清在乱跳。"滚下去！" 　　我下了车，他调转车头的方式使我不得不急忙躲闪。直到下几个拐弯处，我仍能听见他。然后一切才平静下来。 　　我走在上坡的路上，没有来往的汽车从我身边开过。我听得见鸟鸣和树木的风声，有时还有涓涓的溪水声。我松了口气。一刻钟之后，我到了集中营。

CHAPTER THIRTEEN I N JUNE, the court flew to Israel for two weeks. The hearing there took only a few days, but the judge and prosecutors made it a combined judicial and touristic outing, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Negev and the Red Sea. It was undoubtedly all aboveboard as regards rules of conduct, vacations, and expense accounts, but I found it bizarre nonetheless. I had planned to devote these two weeks to my studies. But it didn’t go the way I had imagined and planned. I couldn’t concentrate enough to learn anything, either from the professors or my books. Again and again, my thoughts wandered off and were lost in images. I saw Hanna by the burning church, hard-faced, in a black uniform, with a riding whip. She drew circles in the snow with her whip, and slapped it against her boots. I saw her being read to. She listened carefully, asked no questions, and made no comments. When the hour was over, she told the reader she would be going on the transport to Auschwitz next morning. The reader, a frail creature with a stubble of black hair and nearsighted eyes, began to cry. Hanna hit the wall with her hand and two women, also prisoners in striped clothing, came in and pulled the reader away. I saw Hanna walking the paths in the camp, going into the prisoners’ barracks and overseeing construction work. She did it all with the same hard face, cold eyes, and pursed mouth, and the prisoners ducked, bent over their work, pressed themselves against the wall, into the wall, wanted to disappear into the wall. Sometimes there were many prisoners gathered together or running from one place to the other or standing in line or marching, and Hanna stood among them and screamed orders, her screaming face a mask of ugliness, and helped things along with her whip. I saw the church steeple crashing into the roof and the sparks flying and heard the desperation of the women. I saw the burned-out church next morning. Alongside these images, I saw the others. Hanna pulling on her stockings in the kitchen, standing by the bathtub holding the towel, riding her bicycle with skirts flying, standing in my father’s study, dancing in front of the mirror, looking at me at the pool, Hanna listening to me, talking to me, laughing at me, loving me. Hanna loving me with cold eyes and pursed mouth, silently listening to me reading, and at the end banging the wall with her hand, talking to me with her face turning into a mask. The worst were the dreams in which a hard, imperious, cruel Hanna aroused me sexually; I woke from them full of longing and shame and rage. And full of fear about who I really was. I knew that my fantasized images were poor clichés. They were unfair to the Hanna I had known and still knew. But still they were very powerful. They undermined my actual memories of Hanna and merged with the images of the camps that I had in my mind. When I think today about those years, I realize how little direct observation there actually was, how few photographs that made life and murder in the camps real. We knew the gate of Auschwitz with its inscription, the stacked wooden bunks, the piles of hair and spectacles and suitcases; we knew the building that formed the entrance to Birkenau with the tower, the two wings, and the entryway for the trains, and from Bergen-Belsen the mountains of corpses found and photographed by the Allies at the liberation. We were familiar with some of the testimony of prisoners, but many of them were published soon after the war and not reissued until the 1980s, and in the intervening years they disappeared from publishers’ lists. Today there are so many books and films that the world of the camps is part of our collective imagination and completes our ordinary everyday one. Our imagination knows its way around in it, and since the television series Holocaust and movies like Sophie’s Choice and especiallySchindler’s List, actually moves in it, not just registering, but supplementing and embellishing it. Back then, the imagination was almost static: the shattering fact of the world of the camps seemed properly beyond its operations. The few images derived from Allied photographs and the testimony of survivors flashed on the mind again and again, until they froze into clichés. 第13节　　　六月，法官们去了以色列，为期两周。那里的听证用不了几天，但是法官和律师们把公务和游耶路撒冷、特拉维夫、内盖夫及红海结合了起来。这是一次公私兼顾的度假，费用自然也不会有问题。尽管如此，我认为这不正常。 　　我计划把这两周完全用于学习，但是，事情并未按我所设想的那样进行。我无法集中精力学习，无法集中精力听教授们讲课，无法集中精力看书。我的思想一次又一次地开小差，我浮想联翩。 　　我看见汉娜站在熊熊燃烧的教堂旁，表情僵硬，身着黑色制服，手执马鞭。她用马鞭在雪地里画着小圆圈，然后用长统靴一脚踢开。我看见她怎样让人为她朗读，她聚精会神地听着，不提问题，不做评论。当朗读的时间结束时，她便告诉她的朗读者，明天她将被送往奥斯威辛。那位瘦弱的、头上长出黑色头巷、眼睛近视的宠儿开始哭泣起来。汉娜用手敲敲墙壁，随后进来两位也穿着有条纹衣服的女囚犯，她们便把那位朗读者生拉硬拖出去。我看见汉娜沿着集中营的路走着，进了囚犯们住的临时搭建起来的木板房，监督她们干活。她带着同样僵硬的表情、冷酷的目光、微薄的嘴唇做着这一切。囚犯们突然低下头，弯腰屈背地干活，躲避到墙边，躲进墙里，恨不得消失在墙壁里。有时候囚犯被集合起来，来回跑步，或练习列队行走。汉娜站在她们中间，喊着口令。她喊叫口令时的表情丑陋难看，手中的马鞭令其更难看。我看见教堂的塔顶坍塌到教堂的房顶上，火光冲天。我听见女人们绝望的呼救声。我看见第二天早上被烧毁的教堂。 　　除了这个情景之外，我又看到了另一番景象。那个在厨房里穿长统袜的汉娜，那个在浴缸旁拿着浴巾的汉娜，那个骑着自行车、裙子随风飘舞的汉娜，那个在我父亲书房里的汉娜，那个在镜子前跳舞的汉娜，那个在游泳池向我这边张望着的汉娜，那个听我朗读、与我交谈、喜欢我、爱我的汉娜。当这些情景杂乱地出现在我的脑海中时最为糟糕。汉娜的形象还有：那个长着薄薄的嘴唇的、爱我的和那个目光冷酷的汉娜，那个默不作声听我朗读的和那个在朗读结束时用手敲击墙壁的汉娜，那个与我交谈和那个问我做鬼脸的汉娜。最糟糕透顶的是那些梦，梦境中，那个冷酷无情、专横跋扈、粗暴残酷的汉娜竟然引起了我的性欲。我带着渴望、羞愧和愤恨从梦中醒来，我忐忑不安，不知自己是何许人。 　　我知道，那些幻想已经落入微不足道的俗套，它对我所熟悉、所认识的汉娜来说不公平。不过它还是很有威力的，它破坏了我心目中的汉娜形象，使我总是联想起汉娜在集中营的情景。 　　当我现在回想当年的情景时，我发现，能让人具体地想象集中营生活和谋杀情景的直观形象是多么少。我们知道奥斯威辛刻有铭文的大门、多层的木板床及成堆的头发、眼镜和稻子。我们知道比肯瑙集中营带燎望塔的大门、侧廊和火车通道。我们知道贝尔根一贝尔森集中营由盟军在解放这个集中营时发现并拍摄下来的尸山图片。我们知道为数不多的几篇由囚犯写的报道，但是，许多报道是战后不久出版的。这之后，只是到了八十年代才又有这类报道出版发行。战后到八十年代这期间，这类报道不属出版社的出版发行项目。今天有这么多的书和电影存在，这样，集中营的世界就变成了我们大家共同想象的世界的一部分，集中营的世界使我们共同拥有的现实世界变得完整起来。世界充满想象。自从电视系列片《大屠杀》和电影故事片如《索菲姬的抉择》，尤其是电影《辛德勒的名单》上映以来，想象力开始在世界上活跃起来，想象不仅仅限于现实，而且还给它添枝加叶。这之前，人们的想象力几乎是静止的，人们认为在集中营里犯下的骇人听闻的罪孽不适于活跃的想象力。从盟军拍摄的照片和囚犯们写的报道中，人们联想到一些情景，这些情景反过来又束缚了人们的想象力，使它们变得越来越僵化。

CHAPTER TWELVE I DECIDED TO speak to my father. Not because we were particularly close. My father was undemonstrative, and could neither share his feelings with us children nor deal with the feelings we had for him. For a long time I believed there must be a wealth of undiscovered treasure behind that uncommunicative manner, but later I wondered if there was anything behind it at all. Perhaps he had been full of emotions as a boy and a young man, and by giving them no outlet had allowed them over the years to wither and die. But it was because of the distance between us that I sought him out now. I wanted to talk to the philosopher who had written about Kant and Hegel, and who had, as I knew, occupied himself with moral issues. He should be well positioned to explore my problem in the abstract and, unlike my friends, to avoid getting trapped in the inadequacies of my examples. When we children wanted to speak to our father, he gave us appointments just like his students. He worked at home and only went to the university to give his lectures and seminars. Colleagues and students who wished to speak to him came to see him at home. I remember lines of students leaning against the wall in the corridor and waiting their turn, some reading, some looking at the views of cities hanging in the corridor, others staring into space, all of them silent except for an embarrassed greeting when we children went down the corridor and said hello. We ourselves didn’t have to wait in the hall when our father had made an appointment with us. But we too had to be at his door at the appointed time and knock to be admitted. I knew two of my father’s studies. The windows in the first one, in which Hanna had run her fingers along the books, looked out onto the streets and houses. The windows in the second looked out over the plain along the Rhine. The house we moved to in the early 1960s, and where my parents stayed after we had grown up, was on the big hill above the city. In both places, the windows did not open the room to the world beyond, but framed and hung the world in it like a picture. My father’s study was a capsule in which books, papers, thoughts, and pipe and cigar smoke had created their own force field, different from that of the outside world. My father allowed me to present my problem in its abstract form and with my examples. “It has to do with the trial, doesn’t it?” But he shook his head to show that he didn’t expect an answer, or want to press me or hear anything that I wasn’t ready to tell him of my own accord. Then he sat, head to one side, hands gripping the arms of his chair, and thought. He didn’t look at me. I studied him, his gray hair, his face, carelessly shaven as always, the deep lines between his eyes and from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. I waited. When he answered, he went all the way back to beginnings. He instructed me about the individual, about freedom and dignity, about the human being as subject and the fact that one may not turn him into an object. “Don’t you remember how furious you would get as a little boy when Mama knew better what was good for you? Even how far one can act like this with children is a real problem. It is a philosophical problem, but philosophy does not concern itself with children. It leaves them to pedagogy, where they’re not in very good hands. Philosophy has forgotten about children.” He smiled at me. “Forgotten them forever, not just sometimes, the way I forget about you.” “But . . .” “But with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.” “Not even if they themselves are happy about it later?” He shook his head. “We’re not talking about happiness, we’re talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.” Today I like thinking back on that conversation with my father. I had forgotten it until after his death, when I began to search the depths of my memory for happy encounters and shared activities and experiences with him. When I found it, I was both amazed and delighted. Originally I was confused by my father’s mixing of abstraction and concreteness. But eventually I sorted out what he had said to mean that I did not have to speak to the judge, that indeed I had no right to speak to him, and was relieved. My father saw my relief. “That’s how you like your philosophy?” “Well, I didn’t know if one had to act in the circumstances I described, and I wasn’t really happy with the idea that one must, and if one really isn’t allowed to do anything at all, I find that . . .” I didn’t know what to say. A relief? A comfort? Appealing? That didn’t sound like morality and responsibility. “I think that’s good” would have sounded moral and responsible, but I couldn’t say I thought it was good, that I thought it was any more than a relief. “Appealing?” my father suggested. I nodded and shrugged my shoulders. “No, your problem has no appealing solution. Of course one must act if the situation as you describe it is one of accrued or inherited responsibility. If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes. One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him, to him and not to someone else behind his back.” Talk to Hanna? What would I say to her? That I had seen through her lifelong lie? That she was in the process of sacrificing her whole life to this silly lie? That the lie wasn’t worth the sacrifice? That that was why she should fight not to remain in prison any longer than she had to, because there was so much she could still do with her life afterwards? Could I deprive her of her lifelong lie, without opening some vision of a future to her? I had no idea what that might be, nor did I know how to face her and say that after what she had done it was right that her short- and medium-term future would be prison. I didn’t know how to face her and say anything at all. I didn’t know how to face her. I asked my father: “And what if you can’t talk to him?” He looked at me doubtfully, and I knew myself that the question was beside the point. There was nothing more to moralize about. I just had to make a decision. “I haven’t been able to help you.” My father stood up and so did I. “No, you don’t have to go, it’s just that my back hurts.” He stood bent over, with his hands pressed against his kidneys. “I can’t say that I’m sorry I can’t help you. As a philosopher, I mean, which is how you were addressing me. As your father, I find the experience of not being able to help my children almost unbearable.” I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. I thought he was making it easy on himself; I knew when he could have taken care of us more and how he could have helped us more. Then I thought that perhaps he realized this himself and really found it difficult to bear. But either way I had nothing to say to him. I was embarrassed, and had the feeling he was embarrassed too. “Well then . . .” “You can come any time.” My father looked at me. I didn’t believe him, and nodded. 第12节　　　我决定和我父亲谈谈，不是因为我们彼此之间无话不谈。我父亲是个沉默寡言的人，他既不能把他的感情告诉我们这些孩子，又不能接收我们带给他的感情。在很长的一段时间里，我猜想在这种互不通气的行为背后蕴藏着丰富的、没有发掘的宝藏。但是后来我怀疑那儿是否真的有什么东西。也许他年轻时有过丰富的感情，但是没有表达出来，天长日久这种感情就变得枯萎，就自消自灭了。 　　然而，正是由于我们之间存在着距离我才找他谈。我找的谈话对象是一位哲学家，他写过有关康德和黑格尔的书，而且我知道书中写的是有关道德问题。他也应该有能力就我的问题和我进行抽象的探讨，而不是像我的朋友们那样只举些空洞的例子。 　　如果我们这些孩子想和父亲谈话的话，他像对待他的学生一样与我们预约时间。他在家里工作，只是在有他的讲座和研讨课时才去大学。想要和他谈话的同事和学生都到家里来。我还记得学生们排着长队靠在走廊的墙上等着，有的阅读点什么，有的观赏挂在走廊里的城市风景图，也有的同学呆呆地东张西望。他们都沉默不语，直到我们这些孩子打着招呼穿过走廊时才回以一个尴尬的问候。我们与父亲约谈当然不必在走廊里等候，但是，我们也要在约定好的时间去谈，敲门后让进去时才能进去。 　　我见过父亲的两个书房。第一个书房，也就是汉娜用手指巡摸书脊的那间，它的窗户面向街道，对面有房屋。第二个书房的窗户面向莱茵平原。我们六十年代初搬进的那座房子坐落在山坡上面，面向城市。当我们这些孩子长大以后我的父母仍旧住在那儿。这处房子的窗户和那处房子的窗户一样不是外凸式的，而是内凸式的，仿佛是挂在房间里的一幅画。在我父亲的书房里，书籍、纸张、思想、烟斗和香烟冒出的烟相互交织在一起，足使外来的人产生各种各样的压抑感。我对它们既熟悉又陌生。 　　我父亲让我把问题全盘兜出，包括抽象描述和举例说明。"与法庭审判有关，对吗？"但是他摇着头向我示意，他并不期待得到回答，也不想逼迫我和不想知道我自己不想说出的事情。这之后，他坐着沉思起来，头侧向一边，两手扶着椅子的扶手。他没有看着我，我却仔细地打量着他，他的满头银发，他的总是刮得很糟糕的胡腮以及他那从鼻梁延伸到嘴角和两眼之间的清晰的皱纹。我等着。 　　当他讲话时，他先把话题拉得很远。他教导我如何对待人、自由和尊严；他教导我把人当做主体对待，不允许把人当做客体来对待。"你还记得你小时候妈妈教你学好时你是如何大发雷霆的吗？把孩子放任到什么程度，这的的确确是个问题。这是个哲学问题，但是哲学不探讨孩子问题，哲学把孩子们交给了教育学，可孩子们在教育学那儿也没有受到很好的照顾。哲学把孩子们遗忘了。"他看着我笑着，"把他们永远忘记了，不是偶尔把他们忘记了，就像我偶尔把你们忘记了一样。" 　　"但是…" 　　"但是在成人身上，我也绝对看不出有什么理由可以把别人认为对他们有好处的东西置于他们自己认为是好的东西之上。" 　　"'如果他们后来对此感到很幸福的话，这样做也不行吗？" 　　他摇着头说："我们谈论的不是幸福而是尊严和自由。当你还是个小孩子时就已经知道它们的区别了。你妈妈总有理，这并没有让你从中得到安慰。" 　　现在我很愿意回想和父亲的那次谈话。我已经把它忘记了，直到他去世后，我才开始在沉睡的记忆中寻找我与他的美好会面和美好的经历及美好的感受。当我找到它时，我惊奇不已地思考着它，它使我非常幸福。当时，父亲把抽象的东西和形象逼真的事情混合在一起，这使我最初感到很困惑，但是，我最终还是按他所说的去做了，我不必去找审判长谈话，我根本不允许自己找他谈话。我感到如释重负。 　　我的父亲看着我说："你这样喜欢哲学吗？" 　　"还可以。我不知道人们在我描述的上述情况下是否应该采取行动。如果人们必须采取行动却又不允许行动的话，我想，对此我会感到非常不幸。现在我感到……"我不知道说什么好。感到轻松？感到安慰？感到愉快？这听上去不道德和不负责任。我现在感觉不错，这听上去既道德又负责任，但我不能说我感觉不错，而且感到比卸下重负还好。 　　"感觉不错吗？"我父亲试探着问。 　　我点点头，耸耸肩。 　　"不，你的问题不会有愉快的解决办法。当然了，如果你所描述的情况是一种责任重大的情况的话，人们就必须要采取行动。如果一个人知道怎样做对其他人有好处，但他却闭上了眼睛，视而不见，这时，人们就必须努力让他睁开眼睛，正视此事。人们必须让他本人做最后的决定，但是人们必须和他谈，和他本人谈，而不是在他背后和其他什么人谈。" 　　和汉娜谈？我该和她说什么呢？说我识破了她的生活谎言？说她正在为这个愚蠢的谎言而牺牲她的整个一生？说为了这个谎言而牺牲不值得？说她应该争取尽量减少蹲监狱的年限，以便在出狱之后能开始更多的生活？到底该说什么呢？说到什么程度？她应该怎样重新开始她的生活呢？我不为她展示一个生活远景就能让她抛弃她的生活谎言吗？我不知道什么是她的生活远景，我也不知道我该如何面对她和该说什么，说她在做了那些事情后，她生活的近期和中期远景就是该坐牢？我不知道该如何面对她，也不知道到底该说些什么。我真的不知道该怎样面对她。 　　我问我父亲："如果人们不能跟他交谈的话，那该怎么办呢？" 　　他怀疑地看着我，我自己也知道这个问题已经离题了。这不存在什么道德问题，而是我必须做出决定的问题。 　　"我无法帮助你。"我父亲说着站了起来，我也站了起来。"不，你不必走，我只是背痛。"他弯曲地站着，双手压着腰。"我不能说，不能帮助你，我感到遗憾，我的意思是说，当你把我作为哲学家向我求教时。作为一名父亲，我不能帮助自己的孩子，这简直令我无法忍受。" 　　我等着，但是他不再往下说了。我发现他把这事看得无足轻重。我知道，他什么时候应该对我们多加关心和他怎样才能更多地帮助我们。随后我又想，他自己也许也清楚这个，而且的确感到难以承受，但是，无论如何我都不能对他说什么了。我感到很尴尬，而且觉得他也很尴尬。 　　"好吧，以后…… 　　"你以后可以随时来。"父亲看着我说。 　　我不相信他的话，可我还是点点头。