木蘭花開: 波士頓爆炸案與列剋星敦槍聲

Boston is full of mourning and magnolia. Boylston Street, where limbs and lives were shredded on Monday, is still a crime scene. But parallel to it is Commonwealth Avenue, one of the world’s most handsome boulevards, Lined with dark-red sandstone houses, where a great river of blossom now flows – flesh-pink cups, for the most part, but here and there a sprinkling of feathery white.

波士頓沉浸在哀悼和木蘭花海當中。上週一血肉橫飛的博伊爾斯頓街(Boylston Street)，目前仍作爲罪案現場被警方封鎖。而與它平行的聯邦大道(Commonwealth Avenue)，是全世界最漂亮的街道之一，大道兩旁坐落着一座座暗紅色的砂岩外牆房屋——現在，這裏已是一片木蘭花海，大部分是肉粉色的花朵，另有些許如羽毛般的白色花朵點綴其中。

Bostonians, of which I was one for many years, come to gawk at the sudden shamelessness of the flowering, so at odds with the city’s customary inwardness and severity. Spring here is meant to be a gift as lavish as the winter is brutal. Until now, the usual threat to this outburst of April happiness has been the odd freak storm landing globs of clotted snow on the daffodils, breaking the necks of their stalks and the hearts of us gardeners.

突然怒放的木蘭花讓波士頓人看呆了。我曾在波士頓生活多年。這座城市一向內斂嚴肅，這波突如其來的花潮與其氣質格格不入。春天對波士頓而言本是個奢侈的禮物——冬天有多嚴酷，春天就有多奢侈。直到不久前，有可能撲滅四月這場洋洋春意的還只是一種常見的威脅：反季節的暴風雪會在水仙花上留下凝結的雪團，壓斷它們的莖稈，讓它們的主人心碎。

But the spring reawakening is also an act of history. Patriots’ Day, celebrated only in Massachusetts, and the day the murderers chose for their atrocious gratification, commemorates the beginning of American liberty, when on April 19 1775 on Lexington Green British redcoats in search of secret arms caches ran into a citizens’ militia determined to stop them. In a chaotic exchange of fire, eight of the Lexington Minutemen were killed. There was blood shed on that morning, too, but unlike whatever demented motives might have led to the Boylston bombings, Lexington’s blood was spilled in reluctant desperation and as an act of resistance to coercion.

春天的復甦也蘊含着歷史。愛國者日(Patriots' Day)這個只有馬薩諸塞州慶祝的節日，也即此次爆炸案兇手爲滿足自己殘暴快感而選定的日子，本是爲了紀念美國獨立戰爭打響第一槍。1775年4月19日在列剋星敦草地(Lexington Green)，正在搜尋祕密軍火庫的英軍士兵與一支決意要阻止他們的民兵隊伍狹路相逢。八名列剋星敦急召民兵(Minutemen)在混亂的交火中身亡。雖然那個早晨也有人流血，但與此次不知何種瘋狂動機引發博伊爾斯頓街爆炸案不同，急召民兵血灑列剋星敦是出於被迫的鋌而走險、是以實際行動反抗壓迫。

For years we lived in Lexington, and my wife and I would take the children to see the re-enactment of the battle before dawn, brimming with mixed loyalties but exhilarated by the drama that made history echo with the crack of muskets. It was high-class reconstruction, impeccable to the last detail of uniform, with British regulars looming out of the darkness to a steady drum beat, their major barking out the command to the “damned rebels” to lay down their arms; the volley and the return snap of musket fire; a general flight of the surviving Minutemen. Then, as light came up, we all trooped off for the fried dough that owed more to Boston’s Italian history than to 1775.

我們全家在列剋星敦生活了多年，我和妻子曾帶着孩子在黎明前出發，去看列剋星敦戰役的復原演出。我們的心中充滿了矛盾的忠誠感，但隨着滑膛槍聲響起、演出把歷史上的那一天重現在我們眼前，我們也感到了一種莫名的興奮。復原演出的水準很高，連制服的細節都毫無瑕疵。英國正規軍踏着固定的鼓點從黑暗中慢慢現出身影；英軍少校大聲喝令“該死的叛亂者”放下武器；隨後傳來排槍齊射和滑膛槍回擊、子彈呼嘯而過的聲音；倖存的急召民兵大舉潰逃。然後天就亮了，我們成羣結隊地奔向炸麪糰——這種食品更多地與波士頓意大利裔移民的歷史有關，與1775年沒有多大關係。

People thronged to Lexington from professorial Cambridge; from patrician Back Bay; from sylvan Lincoln and Wellesley, and from the gritty, “triple-decker” apartment blocks of Everett and Medford. Brit or Patriot, ferociously Irish (Noraid collection boxes could still be seen in the early 1980s in newsagents in Charlestown) or gently Armenian, we were all there, linked in a communion of memory; explaining to our kids what had been at stake all those centuries before; why it still mattered, why it was about something that changed the world.

雲集在列剋星敦的人們來自四面八方，比如學術氣息濃厚的劍橋、富人區後灣(Back Bay)、林中小鎮林肯(Lincoln)和韋爾斯利(Wellesley)、以及埃弗雷特(Everett)和梅德福(Medford)粗獷的“三層樓”(triple-decker)公寓街區。英國人也好愛國者也罷，脾氣暴躁的愛爾蘭人也好（上世紀80年代初，在查爾斯鎮(Charlestown)的報刊亭仍可見到愛爾蘭北方援助委員會(Noraid)的籌款箱）溫文爾雅的亞美尼亞人也罷，我們都來到了這裏，被一份共同的記憶聯繫在一起。我們要向孩子們解釋數百年前到底什麼事情曾處在緊急關頭、那段歷史在如今爲何依然重要、爲何說那段歷史關乎的某種東西改變了世界。

The mutilations of Patriots’ Day 2013 were enacted in mindless cruelty, not mindful remembrance, and will change nothing; not even, one hopes, the public’s state of mind at all the sporting events that constitute the city’s true calendar of devotion, with Fenway Park, where the Red Sox baseball team play, its cathedral of light.

2013年愛國者日發生的慘案，是一種無意的暴行、而非有意的紀念，它不會改變任何東西；人們希望，它甚至不會改變波士頓人對該市衆多體育賽事的心情。這些賽事纔是波士頓人真正關心的，紅襪隊(Red Sox)的主場芬威球場(Fenway Park)不啻於該市的光明大教堂。

Above all, the futile atrocity will not damage Boston’s sense of itself as a city that refuses to be flattened into a generic version of urbanism, with the same malls, multiplexes and multistorey car parks controlling the rhythms of city life.

最重要的是，這種徒勞的暴行不會摧毀波士頓的自我認知——這座城市決不會自甘墮落、向千篇一律的城市生活方式舉起白旗，讓毫無特色的商場、多廳電影院和多層停車場控制城市生活的律動。

To be sure, all those things exist in Boston but so does the sense of a chain of urban villages; each distinct in their own way, some of them beautifully connected by Frederick Law Olmsted’s “emerald necklace” of parks and public gardens. South Boston is still hardcore Irish, facing the water; South End’s bow fronts forever in states of gentrification; cobblestoned Beacon Hill, built by land speculators in the earliest years of the Republic, where we lived for a while right below the golden domed State House, one of the most perfect expressions of residential neighbourhood ever designed.

當然，波士頓並不是沒有這些設施，但除此之外，它還有一種都市化村莊集合體的韻味：每個區都有自己的特色，其中一些區被弗雷德裏克•勞•奧姆斯特德(Frederick Law Olmsted)設計的公園和公共花園——也就是所謂的“翡翠項鍊”——巧妙地串接在一起。臨海的南波士頓(South Boston)仍是傳統的愛爾蘭區；波士頓南區(South End)的弓形前沿永遠處在升級改造、吸引中產階級入住的狀態；鵝卵石鋪路的燈塔山(Beacon Hill)是美國建國初期地產投機商開發的，其設計堪稱居住區的典範。我們全家曾在燈塔山住過一段時間，住所就在金頂的州議會大廈(State House)正下方。

And overlooking the bloodstained sidewalk is a place representing everything the murderers hate: civility, tolerance, enlightenment: Boston Public Library. Originally created in 1848 as America’s first free municipal library, it was rebuilt on its present site by the great Charles McKim in the 1890s. Go up the grand staircase and you will find the unfinished grandiloquent murals of John Singer Sargent, which he called “The Triumph of Religion”.

在此次爆炸案中，人行道被鮮血染紅，而俯瞰這條人行道的就是波士頓公共圖書館(Boston Public Library)——這個地方代表着兇手所痛恨的一切：文明、寬容和啓蒙。波士頓公共圖書館原館建於1848年，是美國第一座免費市立圖書館，1890年由偉大的建築師查爾斯•麥金(Charles McKim)主持、在現址重建。沿着該圖書館氣派的樓梯往上走，你會看到約翰•辛格•沙金(John Singer Sargent)那組未完成的壁畫，他爲這組氣勢恢宏的壁畫取名爲“宗教的勝利”(The Triumph of Religion)。

But Sargent’s title is misleading for he meant his painting to be not a statement of dogma but its opposite – the triumph, in fact, of toleration; of the absolute privacy of moral convictions, a credo that linked the Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, with the Massachusetts sage, John Adams.

但沙金爲這組畫取的名字其實具有誤導性，因爲他這組畫的本意不在於申明教義，恰恰相反，他其實是爲了彰顯“寬容的勝利”，以及道德信念的絕對隱私性——正是基於這種信條，弗吉尼亞人托馬斯•傑斐遜(Thomas Jefferson)才與馬薩諸塞哲人約翰•亞當斯(John Adams)聯手。

Visibly moved at an interfaith ceremony in the city yesterday, President Barack Obama said the guilty would face justice. But perhaps whatever sentence is imposed on those who caused such suffering ought to include an obligation to march them up the library staircase and confront them with that imperishable American and universal truth: that a person’s beliefs are nobody’s business but their own. Heck, I’ll volunteer to do it myself.

波士頓上週四舉行了有不同信仰的人蔘與的追思活動，出席此次活動的美國總統巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)激動地表示，一定會將罪犯繩之以法。但是，無論這場災難的製造者會被處以何種刑罰，其中恐怕都應包含如下這項，那就是要押着他們走上波士頓公共圖書館的樓梯、去面對那個不僅適用於美國、也適用於全世界的永恆真理：一個人的信仰與他人無關，只關乎他自己。嘿，我願主動請纓去做押解工作。