《美食祈祷和恋爱》

　　Her cheer, her optimism—they in no way match this stinky, slow, sinking, mysterious, silent, weird city. Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place. Seeing Venice, I'm grateful that I chose to live in Rome instead. I don't think I would have gotten off the antidepressants quite so quick here. Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.

她的振奋，她的乐观——与这座发臭、缓慢、逐日下陷、神秘、沉默、古怪的城市毫不搭调。威尼斯似乎是个适合慢慢酒精中毒身亡，或失去爱人，或爱人遇难后丢弃凶器的城市。玩过威尼斯，我很庆幸选择了罗马。若住在此地，我想我无法那么快摆脱抗忧郁剂。威尼斯很美，但就像柏格曼电影的美；你虽喜欢，却不想住在其中。

　　The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families will barricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep the maintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side—this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment—Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?

整座城市正在剥落、衰退，仿若家道中落的大宅后面上锁的房间，因维修过于昂贵，倒不如把门钉死，忘却门后陈旧的宝藏——这就是威尼斯。亚德里亚海的油污反流推向这些深受磨难的建筑物地基，考验着这项十四世纪科学博览会的实验——“喂，我们若建造一座自始至终坐落在水里的城市，会有怎样的结果？”——撑得了多久。

　　Venice is spooky under its grainy November skies. The city creaks and sways like a fishing pier. Despite Linda's initial confidence that we can govern this town, we get lost every day, and most especially at night, taking wrong turns toward dark corners that dead-end dangerously and directly into canal water. One foggy night, we pass an old building that seems to actually be groaning in pain. "Not to worry," chirps Linda. "That's just Satan's hungry maw." I teach her my favorite Italian word—attraversiamo ("let's cross over")—and we backtrack nervously out of there.

威尼斯在11月的粒状天空下让人毛骨悚然，像渔船码头般嘎嘎响，东摇西晃。尽管琳达一开始相信我们支配得了这座城市，我们却天天迷路，尤其夜间，朝直接通往运河的死巷转错弯。某个雾蒙蒙的夜晚，我们经过一栋简直像在痛苦呻吟的老建筑。“用不着担心，”琳达吭声说，“只是撒旦饥饿的胃罢 了。”我教给她我最爱的意大利用词——（我们过街吧）——我们紧张兮兮地退出那里。

　　The beautiful young Venetian woman who owns the restaurant near where we are staying is miserable with her fate. She hates Venice. She swears that everyone who lives in Venice regards it as a tomb. She'd fallen in love once with a Sardinian artist, who'd promised her another world of light and sun, but had left her, instead, with three children and no choice but to return to Venice and run the family restaurant. She is my age but looks even older than I do, and I can't imagine the kind of man who could do that to a woman so attractive. ("He was powerful," she says, "and I died of love in his shadow.") Venice is conservative. The woman has had some affairs here, maybe even with some married men, but it always ends in sorrow. The neighbors talk about her. People stop speaking when she walks into the room. Her mother begs her to wear a wedding ring just for appearances—saying, Darling, this is not Rome, where you can live as scandalously as you like. Every morning when Linda and I come for breakfast and ask our sorrowful young/old Venetian proprietress about the weather report for the day, she cocks the fingers of her right hand like a gun, puts it to her temple, and says, "More rain."

我们旅馆附近的餐厅老板娘是个威尼斯美少妇，她为自己的命运感到悲哀。她讨厌威尼斯。她发誓住在威尼斯的每个人都觉得像住在坟墓里一般。她曾爱上一位撒丁艺术家，他答应给她阳光灿烂的另一种世界，却离开了她。带了三名孩子的她别无选择，只能回到威尼斯经营家庭餐馆。她跟我年纪相当，看起来却比我老，我无法想象哪种男人会对如此迷人的女子做这种事。（“他是强者，”她说，“我在他的阴影下因爱而死。”）威尼斯是座保守的城市。这女子有几段情事，甚至和已婚男人发生婚外情，却始终以哀伤作结。邻居议论她。人们在她走进屋里的时候停止说话。她的母亲求她戴上结婚戒指做做样子，说：“亲爱的女儿，这里不是罗马，让你能随心所欲地过丢人现眼的生活。”每天早上琳达和我来吃早饭，向这位悲愁的老板娘询问当天的天气预 报时，她便竖起右手指头，像拿枪一样，对准她的太阳穴，说：“又是雨天。”

　　Yet I don't get depressed here. I can cope with, and even somehow enjoy, the sinking melancholy of Venice, just for a few days. Somewhere in me I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city's own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it. This is a sign, I cannot help but think, of healing, of the coagulation of my self. There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, when I used to experience all the world's sadness as my own. Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind.

然而我在这儿并不忧郁。我有办法应付，甚至有办法享受几天忧郁的威尼斯。我心中某处分辨出这并非我的忧郁，而是这座城市本身固有的忧郁；我近来很健康，感觉得出自己和这座城市的不同。我禁不住想，这是伤口愈合的证据，代表着我不再四散纷飞。有好几年的时间，我沉浸在无边无际的抑郁中，独自经历全世界的哀伤。一切的哀伤从我身上漏出来，留下斑斑痕迹。

　　Anyhow, it's hard to be depressed with Linda babbling beside me, trying to get me to buy a giant purple fur hat, and asking of the lousy dinner we ate one night, "Are these called Mrs.Paul's Veal Sticks?" She is a firefly, this Linda. In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega—a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets. This is Linda—my temporary, special-order, travel-sized Venetian codega.

　　Eat, Pray, Love

无论如何，有琳达在身边念念叨叨，很难沮丧得起来，她要我买一顶紫色大毛帽，还谈起我们某天晚上吃的差劲晚饭“那东西是不是叫保罗太太的小牛肉条？”琳达是萤火虫：中世纪的威尼斯曾有一种职业，称为“codega”——你雇用这种职业的人，晚上提着灯笼走在你前面带路，吓跑小偷和魔鬼，在黑暗的街道保护你，使你安心。这就是琳达——我临时性、特别订制、旅行携带用的威尼斯。