16

The Fear of Happiness

懼怕幸福

1. One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us seriously happy.愛情最大的缺點之一就在于，至少在一段時間里，它具有使我們幸福的危險性。

2. Chloe and I chose to travel to Spain in the final week of August - travel (like love) an attempt to follow a dream into reality. In London, we had read the brochures of Utopia Travel, specialists in the Spanish rental market, and had settled for a converted farmhouse in the village of Aras de Alpuente, in the mountains behind Valencia. The house looked better in reality than it had in the photographs. The rooms were simply but comfortably furnished, the bathroom worked, there was a terrace shaded by vine leaves, a lake nearby to swim in, and a farmer next door who kept a goat and welcomed us with a gift of olive oil and cheese.在八月的最后一個星期，我們選擇去西班牙旅行——旅游（如同愛一樣）是跟隨夢走進現(xiàn)實的舉動。在倫敦時，我們?yōu)榱诉@烏托邦的旅行已經(jīng)讀過一些專門介紹西班牙租房市場的手冊，并且已經(jīng)租下了巴倫西亞后面山區(qū)的一套改裝過的農(nóng)舍。農(nóng)舍位于阿拉斯-德阿爾蓬特村，看起來要比照片里的好，裝修得很簡單，但非常舒適，浴室也可以用，有一個覆蓋著葡萄藤的平臺，旁邊還有一個湖可以游泳。住在隔壁的一位農(nóng)民養(yǎng)著一只山羊，他用橄欖油和奶酪歡迎我們的到來。

3. We had arrived in the late afternoon, having hired a car at the airport and driven up the narrow mountain roads. We immediately went for a swim, diving into the clear blue waters and drying off in the dying sun. Then we had returned to the house and sat on the terrace with a bottle of wine and olives to watch the sun set behind the hills.我們在飛機場租了一輛車沿著窄窄的山路開到傍晚時分才到達。一到那兒，我們就跳進碧藍清。澈的湖水里游泳了，而后又在夕陽中曬干身上的水珠。接著我們回到屋里，拿出一瓶酒和一些橄欖坐在平臺上，觀看著太陽落下山去。

'Isn't it wonderful,' I remarked lyrically.“多么美麗啊，”我用詩一般的語言說。

'Isn't it?' echoed Chloe.“確實如此，”克洛艾回應我的話。

'But is it?' I joked.“真是這樣嗎？”我開玩笑說。

'Shush, you're ruining the scene.'“噓，你把這景色都毀了?！?/p>

'No, I'm serious, it really is wonderful. I could never have imagined a place like this existing. It seems so cut off from everything, like a paradise no one's bothered to ruin.'“沒有，我是認真的。這景色確實很美。我從未想到世界上還會有這樣的地方。它似乎與世隔絕，就像一個沒有人忍心破壞的樂園?！?/p>

'I could spend the rest of my life here,' sighed Chloe.“我可以在這兒過我的后半生，”克洛艾嘆息道。

'So could I.'“我也一樣?！?/p>

'We could live here together, I'd tend the goats, you'd handle the olives, we'd write books, paint, and fa...'“我勻可以一同生活在這兒，我照料山羊，你種橄欖，我們還可以寫書、畫畫……”

'Are you all right?' I asked, seeing Chloe suddenly wince with pain.“你沒事吧？”看到克洛艾面部的肌肉因為疼痛而抽搐，我問她。

'Yeah, I am now. I don't know what happened. I just got this terrible pain in my head, like an awful throbbing or something. It's probably nothing. Ah, no, shit, there it comes again.'“嗯，好了。不曉得剛才是怎么回事，只是頭部有些劇疼，就像抽痛一樣?？赡軟]事。哎喲，不行，見鬼，又疼起來了。”

'Let me feel.'“讓我來摸一下。”

'You won't be able to feel anything, it's inside.'“你摸不到的，是腦袋里面疼?！?/p>

'I know, but I'll empathize.'“我知道，不過我可以分散一下你的疼痛感。”

'God, I'd better lie down. It's probably just the travelling, or the height, or something. But I'd better go inside. You stay out here, I'll be fine.'“天啊，我最好還是躺下來吧?？赡苤皇且驗槁眯?，或高原反應什么的。不過我還是進屋里去。你就待在這兒，我一會兒就好了?！?/p>

4. Chloe's pains did not get better. She took an aspirin and went to bed, but she was unable to sleep. Unsure of how seriously to take her suffering, but worried that her natural tendency to play everything down meant it was probably extremely serious, I decided to get a doctor. The farmer and his wife were in their cottage eating dinner when I knocked and asked in fragments of Spanish where the nearest doctor could be found. It turned out he lived in Villar del Arzobispo, a village some twenty kilometres away.克洛艾的疼痛并沒有好轉(zhuǎn)。她吃了一粒阿司匹林后，就上了床，但是又無法入睡。我不能確定她到底有多嚴重，但又擔心她這樣輕描淡寫表明實際情況要糟糕得多，我決定去請一個醫(yī)生。當我敲開隔壁那一家的門時，那位農(nóng)夫和他妻子正在吃晚飯。我用結(jié)結(jié)巴巴的西班牙語詢問最近的醫(yī)生住在哪里。后來得知醫(yī)生住在離這兒近二十公里的阿索維斯波村。

5.Dr Saavedra was immensely dignified for a country doctor. He wore a white linen suit, had spent a term at Imperial College in the 1950s, was a lover of the English theatrical tradition, and seemed delighted to accompany me back to assist the maiden who had fallen ill so early in her Spanish sojourn. When we arrived back in Aras de Alpuente, Chloe's condition was no better. I left the doctor alone with her and waited nervously in the next room. Ten minutes later, the doctor emerged.薩夫特拉醫(yī)生是一位頗愛尊敬的鄉(xiāng)村醫(yī)生。他穿著一套白色的亞麻套裝，五十年代曾在英國皇家學院念過一段時間的書，而且鐘情于英國戲劇傳統(tǒng)?？磥硭浅芬馀阄一厝フ樟夏俏粍偟轿靼嘌谰筒±那Ы鹦〗?。等我們回到阿拉斯-德阿爾蓬特村，克洛艾仍然沒有好轉(zhuǎn)。我讓醫(yī)生單獨和她待在一直，自己焦躁不安地等在隔壁的屋子里。十分鐘后，醫(yī)生出來了。

'Ess nutting to worry about.'“不用擔心?！?/p>

'She'll be OK?'“她很快就會好的吧？”

'Yes, my friend, she'll be OK in the mornin'.'“是的，朋友，她明天早上就會好?！?/p>

'What was wrong with her?'“到底是什么毛??？”

'Nutting much, a leetle stomach, a leetle head, ees very common among dee 'oliday makres. I give her peels. Really just a little anchedonia in de head, wha you espect?'“沒什么，胃有點兒疼，頭也不舒服，不過，出外旅行，這種情況很常見。我給她開了些藥片。真的，只是腦袋有些快感缺乏癥，你怎么想？”

6.Dr Saavedra had diagnosed a case of anhedonia, a disease defined by the British Medical Association as a reaction remarkably close to mountain sickness resulting from the sudden terror brought on by the threat of happiness. It was a common disease among tourists in this region of Spain, faced in these idyllic surroundings with the sudden realization that earthly happiness might be within their grasp, and prey therefore to a violent physiological reaction designed to counteract such a daunting possibility.薩夫特拉醫(yī)生診斷克洛艾患快感缺乏癥，這種病癥被英國醫(yī)療協(xié)會解釋為幸福的威脅帶來的突如其來的恐懼感，非常近似于高山反應。對那些來西班牙這個地區(qū)觀光的游客們來說，這是一種很常見的病癥，因為面對這如詩如畫的景色，突然意識到塵世的幸福觸手可及，所以無法承受這強烈的心理反應。

7. Because happiness is so terrifying and anxiety-inducing to accept, somewhat unconsciously, Chloe and I had always tended to locate hedonia either in memory or in anticipation. Though the pursuit of happiness was our avowed goal, it was accompanied by an implicit belief that it would be realized somewhere in the very distant future - a belief challenged by the felicity we had found in Aras de Alpuente and, to a lesser extent, in each other's arms.伴隨幸福而來的問題源自幸福的罕見、稀有，使人一旦接受，就會焦慮，害怕幸福短暫。因此，克洛艾和我（雖然我沒有生?。撘庾R里總希望在我們的記憶里或期望中找到幸福。雖然追求幸福是人生公開的中心目標，但是這種目標卻伴隨著一個懷疑，懷疑幸福在遙不可及的將來才會實現(xiàn)。而今這個懷疑受到我們從阿拉斯-德阿爾蓬特村發(fā)現(xiàn)的田園風光的挑戰(zhàn)，范圍說得更小一點，受到彼此臂彎里發(fā)現(xiàn)的田園風光的挑戰(zhàn)。

8. Why did we live this way? Perhaps because to enjoy ourselves in the present would have meant engaging ourselves in an imperfect or dangerously ephemeral reality, rather than hiding behind a comfortable belief in an afterlife. Living in the future perfect tense involved holding up an ideal life to contrast with the present, one that would save us from the need to commit ourselves to our situation. It was a pattern akin to that found in certain religions, in which life on earth is only a prelude to an ever-lasting and far more pleasant heavenly existence. Our attitude towards holidays, parties, work, and perhaps love had something immortal to it, as though we would be on the earth for long enough not to have to stoop so low as to think these occasions finite in number - and hence be forced to draw proper value from them.為什么我們這樣活著？大概是因為享受現(xiàn)世的快樂意味著我們把自己投進一個并不完美或者有些危險的短暫現(xiàn)實中，而不是掩身于對來世的令人舒適的信念里。生活在將來完成時使人想象有一種比現(xiàn)世更理想的生活，一種讓我們不必把自己融入身邊世界的理想生活。這與一些宗教的模式很相似。在那些宗教看來，凡塵生活只是天長地久、更為快樂的天堂生活的序曲。對于假期、晚會、工作，可能還包括愛情，我們的態(tài)度都有些不朽的味道，好像我們可以在這世界上活得長久，以至于我們不需自我貶低地想到這些都是有限的，從而被迫從中尋找價值。生活在將來完成時中有一個令人輕松之處：我們無須認為現(xiàn)世就是真實的，也沒有必要知道我們必須和諧社會愛戀，我們必然死去。

9. If Chloe had now fallen ill, was it not perhaps because the present was catching up with her dissatisfaction? The present had, for a brief moment, ceased to lack anything the future might hold. But was I not just as guilty of the disease as Chloe? Had there not been many times when the pleasures of the present had been rudely passed over in the name of the future, love stories in which, almost imperceptibly, I had abstained from loving fully, comforting myself with the immortal thought that there would be other love affairs I would one day try to enjoy with the insouciance of men in magazines, future loves that would redeem my calamitous efforts to communicate with another whom history had set spinning on the earth at much the same time as me? 如果克洛艾病了，這難道沒有可能是因為她對現(xiàn)實不滿嗎？在一個短暫的時刻，未來應該擁有的一切我們都擁有了。但是難道我不是和克洛艾生病一樣心存內(nèi)疚嗎？難道不是有很多次，我們以不可命名的未來作為借口而粗魯?shù)睾鲆暚F(xiàn)世的幸福？在那些愛情故事中，我?guī)缀跏遣豢捎X察地避免全身心地去愛，而用一個不朽的思想安慰自己：將來有一天我會盡量像雜志上的那些男人一樣無憂無慮地享受愛情，在這未來的愛情中，我將輕松自如地與另一位心上人交流，這位心上人現(xiàn)在和我正同時生活在地球上。

9.The future has some of the satisfactions and safety of the past. I recalled that as a child every holiday grew perfect only when I was home again, for then the anxiety of the present would make way for stable memories. I spent whole childhood years looking forward to the winter holidays, when the family took two weeks to go skiing in the Alps. But when I was finally on top of a slope, looking at pine-covered valleys below me and a fragile blue sky above, I felt a pervasive, existential anxiety that would then evaporate from the memory of the event, a memory that would be exclusively composed of the objective conditions (the top of a mountain, a fragile blue sky) and would hence be free of everything that had made the actual moment trying. The present was unpleasant not because I might have had a runny nose, or been thirsty, or forgotten a scarf, but because of my reluctance to accept that I was finally going to live out a possibility that had all year resided in the comforting folds of the future. Yet as soon as I had reached the bottom of the slope, I would look back up the mountain and declare that it had been a perfect run. And so the skiing holiday (and much of my life generally) proceeded: anticipation in the morning, anxiety in the actuality, and pleasant memories in the evening.但是，對永遠不會到來的未來的渴望就是對已經(jīng)成為過去的時光的向往。過去常常更美好難道不是因為它已成過去？我記得小時候每個假期都是在快結(jié)束時才會越發(fā)美好，因為到那時，對現(xiàn)在的焦慮已經(jīng)成為一些可以被容納的記憶。已經(jīng)發(fā)生的并沒有那些即將發(fā)生的事情重要，它能讓我愈合創(chuàng)傷或重溫樂事。我整個童年時代都盼望寒假到來，一家人開著車從蘇黎世出發(fā)，到恩加丁去滑兩個星期的雪。但是當我最終到了山頂，俯視那沒人動過的白色滑道，我會體驗到本應從這件事情的記憶中消失的焦慮，一個僅僅由客觀條件（山頂、明朗的天氣）組成的記憶，這記憶與把這眼前的時刻變成地獄的一切毫不相干。不僅僅是我可能感冒了，或我渴了，或我忘了拿圍巾了令我不開心，而是我不愿意接受一個事實，即我終于把一直保存在未來那舒適的褶皺中的可能性付諸實施了?；?、讓我盼得流口水的三明治和美好的記憶飛快地隨時光流逝。一滑到山底，我就會回過頭看著這座山，對自己說，真是完美漂亮的一滑。于是滑雪假期（總的來說，我的大部分生命）都會是如此的過程：在早上時向往；在實現(xiàn)中焦慮；在晚上時變成美好的記憶。

11. There was for a long time something of this paradox in my relationship with Chloe: I would spend all day looking forward to a meal with her, would come away from it with the best impressions, but find myself faced with a present that had never equalled its anticipation or memory. It was one evening shortly before we'd left for Spain, on Will Knott's houseboat with Chloe and other friends, when, because everything was so perfect, I first grew unavoidably aware of my lingering suspicions towards the present moment. Most of the time, the present is too flawed to remind us that the disease of living in the present imperfect tense is within us, and nothing to do with the world outside. But that evening in Chelsea, there was simply nothing I could fault the moment on and hence had to realize that the problem lay within me: the food was delicious, friends were there, Chloe was looking beautiful, sitting next to me and holding my hand. And yet something was wrong all the same, the fact that I could not wait till the event had slipped into history.有很長一段時間我和克洛艾之間的關(guān)系也存在這種時態(tài)的自相矛盾：我會一整天都盼望和克洛艾一直用餐，而且會在離開時留下美好的印象，但是我卻發(fā)現(xiàn)事情在進行時的感覺與我事前的期盼及事后的記憶永遠不能一致。在我們即將去西班牙之前的一個晚上，我和克洛艾以及其他幾個朋友在威爾·諾特的船屋里玩。因為一切都太美好，我第一次不可避免地意識到自己對現(xiàn)在揮之不去的懷疑。多數(shù)時候，現(xiàn)在過于不完美，以至無法讓我們明白生活在現(xiàn)在不完美時態(tài)中的病根在我們自己，與我們外部的世界無關(guān)。但是那天晚上在切爾西，實在找不出現(xiàn)在有什么不好的地方，吃的非?？煽冢笥褕F聚一起，克洛艾看上去漂亮迷人，拉著我的手坐在我身邊。然而從頭到尾一直有點什么不太對勁，這不對勁在于我迫不及待地想讓一切成為歷史。

12. The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live. If commitment is seen as a group of eggs, then to commit oneself to the present is to risk putting all one's eggs in the present basket, rather than distributing them between the baskets of past and future. And to shift the analogy to love, to finally accept that I was happy with Chloe would have meant accepting that, despite the danger, all of my eggs were firmly in her basket.沒有勇氣生活在現(xiàn)世也許在于害怕意識到眼前的一切就是自己一生都在盼望的東西，害怕離開相對受到庇護的期盼或記憶空間，從而默認現(xiàn)在時就是自己可能（撇開上天的介入）會過的惟一生活。如果托付被看作是一些雞蛋，那么把自己托付給現(xiàn)在時就是冒險把所有的雞蛋都放進現(xiàn)在時的籃子里，而不是把它們分配在過去和將來兩個籃子。由此推及到愛，最終承認我和克洛艾在一起是幸福的將意味著接受這樣一個事實：我所有的雞蛋都堅定不移地放進她的籃子，盡管危機潛伏。

13. Whatever pills the good doctor had given her, Chloe seemed completely cured the next morning. We prepared a picnic and went back to the lake, where we passed the day swimming and reading by the water. We spent ten days in Spain, and I believe (as much as one can trust memory) that for the first time, we both risked living those days in the present. Living in this tense did not always mean bliss. The anxieties created by love's unstable happiness routinely exploded into argument. I remember a furious row in the village of Fuentelespino de Moya, where we had stopped for lunch. It had started with a joke about an old girlfriend, and had grown into a suspicion in Chloe's mind that I was still in love with her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, yet I had taken such suspicion to be a projection of Chloe's own declining feelings for me and accused her of as much. By the time the arguing, sulking and reconciliations were over, it was mid-afternoon, and we were both left wondering what the tears and shouting had been about. There were other arguments. I remember one near the village of Losa del Obispo about whether or not we were bored with one another, another near Sot de Chera that had started after I had accused Chloe of being an incompetent map reader and she had countered the charge by accusing me of 'road fascism'.不管那位能干的醫(yī)生給克洛艾服用的是什么藥片，反正克洛艾第二天早上就完全痊愈了。我們準備了一些野餐食品，又去了湖邊。我們一整天都在湖里游泳，在湖邊看書。我們在西班牙待了十天，我相信（就如一個人相信自己的記憶力一樣）那些天是我們倆第一次冒險生活在現(xiàn)在時中。生活在這種時態(tài)中并不總意味著擁有極樂：由愛情不穩(wěn)定的幸福產(chǎn)生的焦慮會重復地爆發(fā)為爭吵。我記得我們在豐特萊斯皮諾-德莫亞村停下吃飯時，曾有過一次激烈的爭吵。爭吵起于一個關(guān)于我過去的女朋友的玩笑，這玩笑讓克洛艾疑心我仍然還愛著那個女人。真實情況簡單明了，然而我卻把這疑心當作是克洛艾自己對我的感情在逐漸衰退，并就此指責她。從爭吵、生氣，又到和好，已經(jīng)是下午三點左右了，我們都不明白那些眼淚、那些吼叫從何而來。此外還有幾次爭吵。我記得有一次在洛薩-德爾奧維斯波村，我們爭論著是否對彼此感到厭煩；還有一次是在索特德切拉村附近，由于我指責克洛艾不會看地圖，克洛艾反攻說我是地圖繪制法西斯主義。

14. The reasons behind such arguments were never the surface ones: whatever Chloe's deficiencies with the Guide Michelin, or my intolerance to driving around in large circles through the Spanish countryside, what was at stake were far deeper anxieties. The strength of the accusations we made, their sheer implausibility, showed that we argued not because we hated one another, but because we loved one another too much ?or, to risk confusing things, because we hated loving one another to the extent we did. Our accusations were loaded with a complicated subtext, I hate you, because I love you. It amounted to a fundamental protest, I hate having no choice but to risk loving you like this. The pleasures of depending on someone pale next to the paralysing fears that such dependence involves. Our occasionally fierce and somewhat inexplicable arguments during our trip through Valencia were nothing but a necessary release of tension that came from realizing that each one had placed all their eggs in the other's basket ?and was helpless to aim for more sound household management. Our arguments sometimes had an almost theatrical quality to them, a joy and exuberance would manifest itself as we set about destroying the bookshelf, smashing the crockery, or slamming doors: 'It's nice being able to feel I can hate you like this,' Chloe once said to me. 'It reassures me that you can take it, that I can tell you to fuck off and you'll throw something at me but stay put.' We needed to shout at one another partly to see whether or not we could tolerate each other's shouting. We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.諸如此類爭吵的原因絕不是表面上所看到的那樣，什么克洛艾不會使用《米其林導游圖》，什么我無法忍受開著車在西班牙的鄉(xiāng)村兜大圈。真正的問題是更為深遠的焦慮。我們指責對方時的聲嘶力竭，以及這些指責的不合情理表明我們爭吵不是因為彼此怨恨，而是我們彼此相愛——或者說得更難以理解一點，因為我們恨自己愛對方愛到現(xiàn)在這個程度。我們的指責承載著一個復雜的下文：我恨你，因為我愛你。它等同于一個根本的抗議：我恨自己別無選擇，只能冒險這樣來愛你。寄情于某人的快樂與這種寄情最終帶來的恐懼相比黯然失色。在巴倫西亞度假期間，我們偶爾爆發(fā)的那些激烈而有點莫名其妙的爭吵只是緊張狀態(tài)的一個必要釋放，這緊張來自于我們意識到彼此都把自己的雞蛋全部放在對方的籃子里——不能致力于更明智的家政管理。我們的爭吵本身有些帶有戲劇性的格調(diào)，當我們毀掉書架、摔碎瓷器或用力摜門時，喜悅或旺盛的精力從中得以展示?！澳芨杏X到我可以如此恨你真是太好了，”克洛艾有一次對我說，“它再次使我相信你能夠這樣做：我叫你滾出去，你就會朝我扔東西，但待在原地不動?！蔽覀冃枰獙Ρ舜舜舐暫鸾校糠衷蛟谟跒榱伺逦覀兪欠衲軌蛉淌軐Ψ降暮鸾?。我們想驗證彼此忍受的限度：只有當我們徒勞地嘗試過摧毀對方，我們才知道自己是安全的。

15. It is easiest to accept happiness when it is brought about through things that one can control, that one has achieved after much effort and reason. But the happiness I had reached with Chloe had not come as a result of any personal achievement or effort. It was simply the outcome of having, by a miracle of divine intervention, found a person whose company was more valuable to me than that of anyone else in the world. Such happiness was dangerous precisely because it was so lacking in self-sufficient permanence. Had I after months of steady labour produced a scientific formula that had rocked the world of molecular biology, I would have had no qualms about accepting the happiness that ensued from such a discovery. The difficulty of accepting the happiness Chloe represented came from my absence in the causal process leading to it, and hence my lack of control over the happiness-inducing element in my life. It seemed to have been arranged by the gods, and was consequently accompanied by all the primitive fear of divine retribution.當幸福源自人們可以控制的那些事物，源自人們經(jīng)過很大的努力和推理之后才獲得的那些事物，這種幸福是最容易接受的。但是我和克洛艾共同獲得的幸福卻不是來自深刻的哲學推理，或任何個人成就。它只是在神的介入產(chǎn)生的奇跡之下，找到一個對我而言最有價值的人而已。這種幸福因為非常缺乏自身的永恒而危險重重。如果經(jīng)過幾個月持之以恒的努力之后，我得出一個震驚分子生物學界的科學公式，那么我會毫不猶豫地接受隨這個發(fā)現(xiàn)接踵而來的幸福。接受克洛艾所代表的幸福其困難在于，我未能參加獲得這種幸福的因果過程，從而不能控制生活中那么導致幸福的因素。一切似乎都是神的安排，所以才會伴有對神圣的因果報應的恐懼。

16. 'All of man's unhappiness comes from an inability to stay in his room alone,' said Pascal, advocating a need for man to build up his own resources over and against a debilitating dependence on the social sphere. But how could this possibly be achieved in love? Proust tells the story of Mohammed II who, sensing that he was falling in love with one of the wives in his harem, at once had her killed because he did not wish to live in spiritual bondage to another. Short of this, I had long ago given up hopes of achieving self-sufficiency. I had gone out of my room, and begun to love another ?thereby taking on the risk inseparable from basing one's life around another human being.“人類的不幸源于他不能獨居，”帕斯卡說。他提倡人類有必要建立自己的對策，去戰(zhàn)勝和抑制對社會環(huán)境的依賴，一種使人受到削弱的依賴。但是在愛情中怎么可能做到這一點？普魯斯特講過一個關(guān)于穆罕默德二世的故事，那位穆罕默德覺得自己對一位妻妾萌生了愛情，于是就立刻把她殺死了。他不愿因為他人而讓自己的精神受到束縛。我不可能有他這樣的勇氣，所以我很早就放棄獲得這種感情的自給自足。我走出自己的屋子，而且開始陷入愛河——因此也開始了冒險：把自己的生活密不可分地建立在另一個人的周圍。

17.The anxiety of loving Chloe was in part the anxiety of being in a position where the cause of my happiness might so easily vanish, where she might suddenly lose interest, die, or marry another. At the height of love, there appeared a temptation to end the relationship prematurely, so that either Chloe or I could play at being the executioner, rather than see the other partner, or habit, or familiarity end things. We were sometimes seized by an urge (manifested in our arguments about nothing) to kill our love affair before it had reached its natural end, a murder committed not out of hatred, but out of an excess of love - or rather, out of the fear that an excess of love may bring. Lovers may kill their own love story only because they are unable to tolerate the uncertainty, the sheer risk, that their experiment in happiness has delivered.愛戀克洛艾而產(chǎn)生的焦慮，部分源于我對幸福易逝的焦慮。克洛艾可能會突然沒有了興趣、離開人世、和別人結(jié)婚。所以當愛達到頂點時，就會現(xiàn)一種誘惑：讓彼此之間的關(guān)系提早結(jié)束，以便使克洛艾或是我成為終結(jié)的挑起者，而不愿看到第三者、習慣，或熟悉結(jié)束一切。我們有時被一種沖動攫取（這表現(xiàn)在我們無事生非地爭吵），想在我們的愛自然地走到結(jié)點之前就結(jié)束它。兇手謀殺不出于恨，而是出于極度的愛——或者更應該說，是出于極度的愛所帶來的恐懼。也許只是因為無法忍受自己進行的幸福實驗帶來的不確定性和極大的冒險性，戀人們才結(jié)束自己的愛情故事。

18. Hanging over every love story is the thought, as horrible as it is unknowable, of how it will end. It is as when, in full health and vigour, we try to imagine our own death, the only difference between the end of love and the end of life being that at least in the latter, we are granted the comforting thought that we will not feel anything after death. No such comfort for the lover, who knows that the end of the relationship will not necessarily be the end of love, and almost certainly not the end of life.無法知曉愛情如何走向終點的想法威脅著每一個愛情故事，就如它的不可知一樣令人害怕。這是因為當健康而又精力充沛的我們努力想象自己的死亡時，愛的終結(jié)和生命的終結(jié)惟一的區(qū)別在于，至少對于后者來說，我們獲得了一種輕松的想法，即了斷塵緣之后的我們將對萬般事物一無所知。但對于心上人來說，卻無輕松可言，他們知道關(guān)系的結(jié)束不一定是愛的終點，而且?guī)缀蹩梢钥隙?，也不是生命的盡頭。