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Books and Arts;New fiction;A swan's song;
Peter Carey's delightful double story: The Chemistry of Tears，by Peter Carey.
Few writers manage so consistently and delightfully as Peter Carey to conjure wondrous scenes populated with idiosyncratic yet credible characters. “The Chemistry of Tears”, Mr Carey's 12th novel, does not disappoint.
鮮少有文墨之人能像彼得·凱里那樣執(zhí)著又討喜，將一個個角色塑造得如此獨特又不失真實感，再將其一并投入完美的場景中，共同構造出一幕幕戲法般的情節(jié)。凱里的第十二部小說《淚水制劑》，再一次沒讓我們失望。
As it opens, Catherine Gehrig, a conservator of clocks at a London museum, learns that her colleague and secret lover of 13 years has died. To comfort her in her grief she is assigned a new project: to reconstruct a fantastical 19th-century clockwork swan.
故事從一家倫敦博物館的鐘表管理員凱瑟琳·格里克（Catherine Gehrig）身上開始說起。凱瑟琳得知了她的同事（同時也是她長達十三年的地下情人）的死訊，為了撫平悲痛，她接受了一項新任務——修復一個十九世紀精美的天鵝鐘表。
Mr Carey loves grand projects and intricate crafts. In “Oscar and Lucinda” (which won the Booker prize in 1988) he follows an extraordinary glass and iron church downriver to its final destination; the art of forgery pervades “Parrot and Olivier in America”. In “The Chemistry of Tears”, the inner workings of a clock's reliable tick-tock contrast with the ultimate betrayal of human flesh.
凱里總愛在故事中給角色各種宏大任務和各種精細的手藝。在《奧斯卡于露辛達》（榮獲1988年布克獎）一書中，他描寫了一座由玻璃和鐵制成的教堂的構想，并且讓這個構想隨著主人公的旅程順水而下，直到它的目的地，直到故事的最終；同樣的，在小說《奧利維爾與鸚鵡》（“Parrot and Olivier in America ”暫無官方譯名）中，他又癡情于仿品工藝，貫穿始終。在《淚水制劑》中，鐘表發(fā)條永遠忠實的滴答聲與血肉人類最終的忘棄形成了鮮明對比。
Two stories intertwine. One strand, set in 2010, follows Catherine, an “oddly elegant tall woman” with seaweed hair. She muses on her lover's fate, “trapped beneath the earth, all his beauty turned into a factory, producing methane, carbon dioxide, rotten egg gas, ammonia.” She drinks vodka and rages at the weather, “hail and hate, the entire back garden stoned to death.”
小說分兩個故事面，有如兩縷絲線般難解難分。一條，是追隨著凱瑟琳的，定點在2010年。凱瑟琳，這個一頭海藻般頭發(fā)的女人，這個“奇妙而優(yōu)雅的高挑女人”，沉浸在愛人的命運中不可自拔，“那美麗的生命深陷在地底，如同化工廠一般制造著沼氣、二氧化碳、硫化氫和氨氣”；她用伏特加麻醉自己，她為壞天氣而暴怒，“冰雹夾著憎恨，整個后花園猶如石刑后的死寂。”
A second narrative traces the clock's original manufacture. Henry Brandling, a sorrowful, rich Englishman, travels to Germany to commission a “mechanical marvel” so wondrous it will raise his consumptive son from his sickbed.
另一條，追隨著發(fā)條天鵝，回溯到其最初的誕生。富裕卻憂傷的英國男子亨利·布蘭德林（Henry Brandling）來到德國，希望能找人制造出一個美妙的“機械奇跡”，好讓他身患肺癆的兒子能從中汲取戰(zhàn)勝病魔的希望。
Henry's story, scrawled in 11 notebooks, comforts Catherine as her lover can no longer. Yet as she reads and works, the distinction between the animate and inanimate blur. She brings Henry's preening swan to life but eradicates the afterlife of her adultery, the e-mail trail between her and her lover: “I deleted, for ever, the celestial light through the pine forest behind Walberswick, the heath at Dunwich in full flower”; she lingers over his final e-mail, “I kiss your toes”, sent hours before he died.
這位亨利先生的故事潦草地記敘在他留下的11本筆記中，讓凱瑟琳的心得到了死去的情人再也無法給予的撫慰。然而隨著凱瑟琳對亨利遺稿的探讀，也隨著她修復工作的深入，生命與器物的界限開始模糊：她讓亨利精美的發(fā)條天鵝重現(xiàn)生機，卻抹去了她不光彩的感情的一切遺跡，抹去了她與情人間通情的電郵：“我永遠地抹去了Walberswick后那片松林里，透過葉隙而下的縷縷陽光；也永遠地告別了Dunwich平原上，彼時的繁華似錦”；在最后一封電郵前，凱瑟琳遲疑著，那是她的情人去世前幾個小時發(fā)給她的字句，“我親吻你的趾尖”，郵件中如是寫道。
Mr Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative to entertain. His fault as a novelist is that at times he is too enamoured of his constructs and risks losing the reader. “The Chemistry of Tears” is a shorter and less ambitious book than some of his earlier works—but a wholly enjoyable journey.
凱里是現(xiàn)今仍然在世的最杰出的英語作家之一，他的佳作在理智與情感上都給人以犒賞；凱里極具詩意但從來不忘作品的必須——讓讀者享受其中。他的小說唯一不足的就是時常過分珍視自己的構思而幾近忘記了讀者。《淚水制劑》較于其早先的一些作品來說要短小一些，也少了幾許氣勢，但終歸來說，這份故事仍舊是一次美妙的旅程。
