纽约客小说：《第一任丈夫》（2）
如果你对别人身上所有的教训都加以留意，也许你就什么都不做了。
If you paid attention to all the lessons of others, you might never do anything.
卡莱布把苏格兰犬递给拉维。他自己一直用礼帽。“我想当银行家。”他说。（“苏格兰犬”和“礼帽”皆为强手棋棋子造型。——译注）
Caleb handed Lovey the dog. He was always the hat. “I want to be the banker,” he said.
“好啊。”她说。这样一来就更难保证让他赢了，但是，在抚养孩子的过程中就是有这样的挑战，不是吗？确保你欺瞒他们的能力与他们看透你的能力一起长进。到什么时候你才可以完全坦白？比方说，你能向孩子坦白说父母其实并没有平等地爱着子女吗？她的前夫偏爱最漂亮、最能干的大女儿。拉维呢？她始终对伯纳蒂特最为关注。伯纳蒂特的姐姐们发现这位继母不够格：她是那么的年轻。有一段时间，扮演时髦年轻妈妈的角色还挺有意思的，她跟她们换穿衣服，她喜欢她们听的音乐，四个人联合起来对付她的丈夫、她们的父亲，那个老男人，那么老！那么老派！老掉牙了！大惊小怪！但他其实并不是那样，到了某个时刻他的放纵便开始消减，他那家长般的容忍变成过去式，至少对拉维是如此，因为她最终不再是他美丽的小妻子；他太熟悉她、太了解她了，而她也太了解他了，他甚至无法确切地指摘她究竟是太怎么了，但他不再愿意跟她做爱了，不再觉得她有那么渴望，于是他无法跟她做爱。他不希望这样，他向她保证；这不是他的错。如果她坚持要，他可以吃药，但她真的想这样吗？他诚恳地问，她想让他假装出无法自然感受得到的感情吗？那是她想要的那种爱情吗？
“Fine,” she said, though this would make it more difficult for her to guarantee that he won. But that was the challenge in raising children, wasn’t it? Insuring that your ability to deceive kept pace with their ability to see through you. At what point were you able to come completely clean? Could you ever, for example, reveal to children that parents did not, actually, love their offspring equally? Her ex-husband had preferred his eldest, the prettiest, the strongest. And Lovey? She’d always been partial to needy Bernadette. Bernadette’s sisters had found their stepmother lacking. She was so young. For a while, it had been fun to play the hip young mother, the one who shared clothing with them, who liked their music, the four of them ganging up on her husband, their father, who was old, so old! So old-fashioned! So out of date! So shockable! But he wasn’t, not really, and at some point his indulgence began to falter, his paternal tolerance turned tense, at least as it regarded Lovey, because eventually she was no longer his pretty young wife; she was, instead, too familiar, too known and knowing, too something he could not even put his finger on, but he no longer wished to have sex with her, no longer found her desirable enough to be able to have sex with her. This wasn’t willed, he assured her; it wasn’t his fault. If she insisted, he could medicate himself into readiness, but did she really want that? Did she, he asked earnestly, want him to fake what he could not naturally feel? Was that the kind of love she wanted?
是的，她坦言，然而并未宣之于口。是的，如果他只能给她这些，那么她就接受这些。
Yes, she confessed, though only to herself. Yes, that was what she would take, if it was all he could offer.
“你告诉我要诚实，”他说，“这就是诚实的我。”
“You told me to be honest,” he said. “This is me being honest.”
强手棋的第一阶段总是最好的——各种收购，各种可能，庞大的现金流，公平竞争。卡莱布跪在椅子上，活像个石像鬼一样俯视着五颜六色的棋盘。拉维去看他的两个妹妹，他就替她掷骰子、向前移动她的苏格兰犬、经过起点的时候给她两百块。为了避免首先在海滨路买地，拉维让一个骰子滚到地板上，自己说了一个步数，走过去付了奢侈品税——管它做什么呢，能避开海滨路就是了。最后，卡莱布得以买下他心爱的宝蓝一条街。等这儿发展出高昂的过路费，拉维就故意多往这边走几次，好让他大收特收她的钱。
The first stage of the game was always the best—all that acquisition and possibility, the tidy array of money, the fairness. Caleb knelt in his chair, poised over the colorful board like a gargoyle, rolling for Lovey when she went to check on his sisters, moving her Scottie dog forward, providing her with two hundred dollars whenever Go came around. In order not to land on Boardwalk first, Lovey allowed one of the dice to fall to the floor, claiming a number that put her on Luxury Tax, whatever that was, instead. At last, Caleb acquired his beloved cobalt-blue plot. Later, once it was expensively developed, Lovey would land there an inordinate number of times so that he could fleece her.
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