殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(111)

WHEN I CAME HOME, Soraya was on the phone with her mother. “Won’t be long, Madarjan. A week, maybe two... Yes, you and padar can stay with me.”
Two years earlier, the general had broken his right hip. He’d had one of his migraines again, and emerging from his room, bleary-eyed and dazed, he had tripped on a loose carpet edge. His scream had brought Khala Jamila running from the kitchen. “It sounded like a jaroo, a broomstick, snapping in half,” she was always fond of saying, though the doctor had said it was unlikely she’d heard anything of the sort. The general’s shattered hip--and all of the ensuing complications, the pneumonia, blood poisoning, the protracted stay at the nursing home--ended Khala Jamila’s long-running soliloquies about her own health. And started new ones about the general’s. She’d tell anyone who would listen that the doctors had told them his kidneys were failing. “But then they had never seen Afghan kidneys, had they?” she’d say proudly. What I remember most about the general’s hospital stay is how Khala Jamila would wait until he fell asleep, and then sing to him, songs I remembered from Kabul, playing on Baba’s scratchy old transistor radio.
The general’s frailty--and time--had softened things between him and Soraya too. They took walks together, went to lunch on Saturdays, and, sometimes, the general sat in on some of her classes. He’d sit in the back of the room, dressed in his shiny old gray suit, wooden cane across his lap, smiling. Sometimes he even took notes.
THAT NIGHT, Soraya and I lay in bed, her back pressed to my chest, my face buried in her hair. I remembered when we used to lay forehead to forehead, sharing afterglow kisses and whispering until our eyes drifted closed, whispering about tiny, curled toes, first smiles, first words, first steps. We still did sometimes, but the whispers were about school, my new book, a giggle over someone’s ridiculous dress at a party. Our lovemaking was still good, at times better than good, but some nights all I’d feel was a relief to be done with it, to be free to drift away and forget, at least for a while, about the futility of what we’d just done. She never said so, but I knew sometimes Soraya felt it too. On those nights, we’d each roll to our side of the bed and let our own savior take us away. Soraya’s was sleep. Mine, as always, was a book.
I lay in the dark the night Rahim Khan called and traced with my eyes the parallel silver lines on the wall made by moonlight pouring through the blinds. At some point, maybe just before dawn, I drifted to sleep. And dreamed of Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him, snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder: For you, a thousand times over!
A WEEK LATER, I sat on a window seat aboard a Pakistani International Airlines flight, watching a pair of uniformed airline workers remove the wheel chocks. The plane taxied out of the terminal and, soon, we were airborne, cutting through the clouds. I rested my head against the window. Waited, in vain, for sleep.

我回到家中，索拉雅在跟她媽媽打電話。“不會太久的，親愛的媽媽。一個星期吧，也許兩個……是的，你跟爸爸可以來陪我住……”
兩年前，將軍摔斷了右邊髖骨。那時他的偏頭痛又剛剛發作過，他從房間裏出來，眼睛模糊昏花，被地毯鬆脫的邊緣絆倒。聽到他的慘叫，雅米拉阿姨從廚房跑出來。“聽起來就像是一根掃把斷成兩半。”她總是喜歡那麼說，雖然大夫說她不太可能聽到那樣的聲音。將軍摔斷髖骨之後出現了諸多併發症狀，有肺炎、敗血症，在療養院度過不少時日，雅米拉阿姨結束長期以來對自身健康狀況的自憐自艾，而開始對將軍的病況喋喋不休。她遇到人就說，大夫告訴他們，他的腎功能衰退了。“可是他們從來沒有見過阿富汗人的腎，是吧？”她驕傲地說。至於將軍住院的那些日子，我印象最深刻的是，雅米拉阿姨如何在將軍身邊輕輕哼唱，直到他人眠，在喀布爾的時候，那些歌謠也曾從爸爸那個嘶嘶作響的破舊變頻收音機裏傳出來。
將軍的病痛——還有時間——緩和了他和索拉雅之間的僵局。他們會一起散步，週六出去下館子，而且，將軍偶爾還會去聽她講課。他身穿那發亮的灰色舊西裝，膝蓋上橫擺着柺杖，微笑着坐在教室最後一排。他有時甚至還做筆記。
那天夜裏，索拉雅和我躺在牀上，她的後背貼着我的胸膛，我的臉埋在她秀髮裏面。我記得過去，我們總是額頭抵額頭躺着，纏綿擁吻，低聲呻吟，直到我們的眼睛不知不覺間閉上，細說着她那纖細彎曲的腳趾、第一次微笑、第一次交談、第一次散步。如今我們偶爾也會這樣，不過低語的是關於學校、我的新書，也爲某人在宴會穿了不得體的衣服咯咯發笑。我們的性生活依然很好，有時甚至可以說是很棒。但有的夜晚，做完愛之後，我的全部感覺只是如釋重負：終於做完了，終於可以放任思緒飄散了，至少可以有那麼一時半會兒，忘記我們適才所做的竟然是徒勞無功。雖然她從沒提起，但我知道有時索拉雅也有這樣的感覺。
在那些夜晚，我們會各自蜷縮在牀的兩邊，讓我們的恩人來解救我們。索拉雅的恩人是睡眠，我的永遠是一本書。拉辛汗打電話來那晚，我躺在黑暗中，眼望月光剌穿黑暗、在牆壁上投射出來的銀光。也許快到黎明的某一刻，我昏昏睡去。夢見哈桑在雪地奔跑，綠色長袍的後襬拖在他身後，黑色的橡膠靴子踩得積雪吱吱響。他舉臂揮舞：爲你，千千萬萬遍！
一週之後，我上了巴基斯坦國際航空公司的飛機，坐在靠窗的位置，看着兩個地勤人員把擋住機輪的東西搬開。飛機滑行，離開航站樓，很快，我們騰空而上，刺穿雲層。我將頭靠在窗子上，徒勞地等着入眠。