殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(109)

I put my glass on the ledge, where a row of her potted geraniums were dripping water. “I think I agree with General Sahib.”
Reassured, the general nodded and went back to the grill.
We all had our reasons for not adopting. Soraya had hers, the general his, and I had this: that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. It wasn’t meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.
A FEW MONTHS LATER, we used the advance for my second novel and placed a down payment on a pretty, two-bedroom Victorian house in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights. It had a peaked roof, hardwood floors, and a tiny backyard which ended in a sun deck and a fire pit. The general helped me refinish the deck and paint the walls. Khala Jamila bemoaned us moving almost an hour away, especially since she thought Soraya needed all the love and support she could get--oblivious to the fact that her well-intended but overbearing sympathy was precisely what was driving Soraya to move.
SOMETIMES, SORAYA SLEEPING NEXT TO ME, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya’s womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I’d feel it rising from Soraya and settling between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child.
FOURTEEN
_June 2001_
I lowered the phone into the cradle and stared at it for a long time. It wasn’t until Aflatoon startled me with a bark that I realized how quiet the room had become. Soraya had muted the television.
“You look pale, Amir,” she said from the couch, the same one her parents had given us as a housewarming gift for our first apartment. She’d been tying on it with Aflatoon’s head nestled on her chest, her legs buried under the worn pillows. She was halfwatching a PBS special on the plight of wolves in Minnesota, half-correcting essays from her summer-school class--she’d been teaching at the same school now for six years. She sat up, and Aflatoon leapt down from the couch. It was the general who had given our cocker spaniel his name, Farsi for “Plato,” because, he said, if you looked hard enough and long enough into the dog’s filmy black eyes, you’d swear he was thinking wise thoughts.
There was a sliver of fat, just a hint of it, beneath Soraya’s chin now The past ten years had padded the curves of her hips some, and combed into her coal black hair a few streaks of cinder gray. But she still had the face of a Grand Ball princess, with her bird-in-flight eyebrows and nose, elegantly curved like a letter from ancient Arabic writings.
“You took pale,” Soraya repeated, placing the stack of papers on the table.
“I have to go to Pakistan.”

我把酒杯放到架子上，上面一排天竺葵滴着水。“我同意將軍大人的看法。”
將軍很滿意，點點頭，走回烤架去。
我們都有不收養的理由。索拉雅有她的理由，將軍有他的理由，而我的理由是：也許在某個地方，有某個人，因爲某件事，決定剝奪我爲人父的權利，以報復我曾經的所作所爲。也許這是我的報應，也許這樣是罪有應得。也許事情不是這樣的。雅米拉阿姨說。或者，也許事情註定是這樣的。
幾個月後，我們用我第二部小說的預付款作爲最低首期付款，買下一座漂亮的維多利亞式房子，有兩個臥房，位於舊金山的巴諾爾山莊。它有尖尖的屋頂，硬木地板，還有個小小的後院，盡頭處有一個曬臺和一個火爐。將軍幫我重新擦亮曬臺，粉刷牆壁。雅米拉阿姨抱怨我們搬得這麼遠，開車要一個半小時，特別是她認爲索拉雅需要她全心全意的愛護和支持——殊不知正是她的好意和憐憫讓索拉雅難以承受，這才決定搬家。
有時候，索拉雅睡在我身旁，我躺在牀上，聽着紗門在和風吹拂下開開關關，聽着蟋蟀在院子裏鳴叫。我幾乎能感知到索拉雅子宮裏的虛空，它好像是個活着的、會呼吸的東西。它滲進我們的婚姻，那虛空，滲進我們的笑聲，還有我們的交歡。每當夜闌人靜，我會察覺到它從索拉雅身上升起，橫亙在我們之間。像新生兒那樣，睡在我們中間。
第十四章
2001年6月
我把話筒放回座機，久久凝望着它。阿夫拉圖的吠聲嚇了我一跳，我這才意識到房間變得多麼安靜。索拉雅消掉了電視的聲音。
“你臉色蒼白，阿米爾。”她說，坐在沙發上，就是她父母當成我們第一套房子的喬遷之禮的沙發。她躺在那兒，阿夫拉圖的頭靠在她胸前，她的腳伸在幾個破舊的枕頭下面。她一邊看着公共電視臺關於明尼蘇達瀕危狼羣的特別節目，一邊給暑期學校的學生改作文——六年來，她在同一所學校執教。她坐起來，阿夫拉圖從沙發跳下。給我們這隻長耳軟毛獵犬取名的是將軍，名字在法爾西語裏面的意思是柏拉圖，因爲，他說，如果你長時間觀察那隻獵犬朦朧的黑眼睛，你一定會發現它在思索着哲理。
索拉雅白皙的下巴稍微胖了些。逝去的十年使得她臀部的曲線變寬了一些，在她烏黑的秀髮滲進幾絲灰白。然而她仍是個公主，臉龐圓潤，眉毛如同小鳥張開的翅膀，鼻子的曲線像某些古代阿拉伯書籍中的字母那樣優雅。
“你臉色蒼白。”索拉雅重複說，將那疊紙放在桌子上。
“我得去一趟巴基斯坦。”