《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 33 (69):城市用詞大綱
I step off the train a few days later to a Rome full of hot, sunny, eternal disorder, where—immediately upon walking out into the street—I can hear the soccer-stadium-like cheers of a nearby manifestazione, another labor demonstration. What they are striking about this time, my taxi driver cannot tell me, mainly because, it seems, he doesn't care. " 'Sti cazzi," he says about the strikers. (Literal translation: "These balls," or, as we might say: "I don't give a shit.") It's nice to be back. After the staid sobriety of Venice, it's nice to be back where I can see a man in a leopard-skin jacket walking past a pair of teenagers making out right in the middle of the street. The city is so awake and alive, so dolled-up and sexy in the sunshine.
幾天後我下了火車，來到始終炎熱、陽光燦爛、混亂不堪的羅馬。我一走上街頭，便聽見足球場似的歡呼，是附近正在進行的“manifestazione”，又一場勞工示威活動。我的計程車司機無法告訴我這回的罷工理由，看來是因爲他不在乎“Sti cazzi，”他談論這些罷工者。（字面翻譯是：“這些球”；或也可以說：“我才懶得鳥他們。”）回來真不錯。在去過中規中矩的威尼斯之後，回來真不錯，在這兒能看見身穿豹皮夾克的男人從一對在街中心熱烈擁吻的青少年身邊走過。這城市如此清醒而活潑，在陽光中如此花枝招展而性感。I remember something that my friend Maria's husband, Giulio, said to me once. We were sitting in an outdoor café, having our conversation practice, and he asked me what I thought of Rome. I told him I really loved the place, of course, but somehow knew it was not my city, not where I'd end up living for the rest of my life. There was something about Rome that didn't belong to me, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Just as we were talking, a helpful visual aid walked by. It was the quintessential Roman woman—a fantastically maintained, jewelry-sodden forty-something dame wearing four-inch heels, a tight skirt with a slit as long as your arm, and those sunglasses that look like race cars (and probably cost as much). She was walking her little fancy dog on a gem-studded leash, and the fur collar on her tight jacket looked as if it had been made out of the pelt of her former little fancy dog. She was exuding an unbelievably glamorous air of: "You will look at me, but I will refuse to look at you." It was hard to imagine she had ever, even for ten minutes of her life, not worn mascara. This woman was in every way the opposite of me, who dresses in a style my sister refers to as "Stevie Nicks Goes to Yoga Class in Her Pajamas."
我想起我的朋友瑪莉亞的老公朱利歐曾對我說過的話。當時我們坐在戶外咖啡館，練習會話，他問我對羅馬的觀感。我跟他說我熱愛這個地方，卻知道它不是我的城市，不是讓我想度過餘生的地方。羅馬有某些東西不屬於我，我揣摩不出是什麼。我們講話的時候，一個幫助教學的活道具走了過去。是一位典型的羅馬女人——保養得當、滿戴珠寶的四十多歲夫人，高跟鞋四寸高，穿一條開叉足有手臂般長的緊身裙，戴一副看似賽車（價格可能也差不多）般的太陽眼鏡。她牽着那條高貴的小狗，狗鏈上飾有寶石，而她的緊身外套上的裘皮領，看起來彷彿是以她從前的高貴小狗身上的毛皮裁製而成。她散放出某種魅力逼人的神態：“你若看我，我可拒絕看你。”很難想象她這輩子曾經有過不塗睫毛膏的時候，甚至只有十分鐘的時間。這女子和我有如天壤之別，我姐姐說我的穿衣風格是“穿睡衣上瑜伽課的休閒風”。I pointed that woman out to Giulio, and I said, "See, Giulio—that is a Roman woman. Rome cannot be her city and my city, too. Only one of us really belongs here. And I think we both know which one."
我指這女人給朱利歐看，說：“瞧，朱利歐——這是羅馬女人。羅馬不可能同時是她的城市又是我的城市。我們只有其中一人屬於這裏。我想我們倆都知道是誰。”
Giulio said, "Maybe you and Rome just have different words."
朱利歐說：“或許你只是跟羅馬的用詞不同？”"What do you mean?"
“你的意思是……”He said, "Don't you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn—what is the word of the street?"
他說“難道你不曉得了解一個城市及其人民的祕訣是學會——什麼是街頭的用詞？”Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be—that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.
而後，他交相使用英語、意大利語和手勢繼續說明，每個城市都有一個定義用詞，與住在其中的多數人等同起來。假如你能在某個特定地點讀出走過街的人心中想些什麼，你會發現他們想的大半是同一件事情。大多數人想的是什麼——那就是城市的用詞。你的個人用詞和城市的用詞若不搭調，你就不屬於此地。
