你相信吗？这就是我的命运

 　　《大鱼奇缘》（节选）Big Fish: A novel of mythic proportions (excerpts)

　　爱德华?布鲁姆拥有神奇的经历，他常常讲述自己年轻时如何从一个小镇出发游历世界，如何遇到巨人、巫婆、变形人、连体歌手等奇人，如何阅尽人间无数满载而归。而他的儿子威廉?布鲁姆却觉得自己老爸太浮夸，所讲之事不可能是真实的。直到老爸身患癌症，威廉才意识到自己对父亲了解太少，父亲的一生对他来说更是扑朔迷离、真假参半。当他根据父亲的故事去寻找父亲传奇一生的足迹时，他慢慢接触到以前的人、事、物，开始切身体会到父亲一生的辉煌与失败。
　　“你能相信吗？我想这就是我的命。大池塘里的一条大鱼——那就是我想要的。那就是从有生第一天起我就想要的，”爱德华?布鲁姆如是说。当我们随着《大鱼奇缘》幻妙的笔触浏览他的一生时，他仿佛从小就具有神奇的力量，注定要成为这万千广阔世界中的“一条大鱼”。在小说结尾，爱德华蓦然回首，他发现自己一直在孜孜所求的“伟大”原来就在自己的家里，那就是“被自己的儿子所深爱”，父与子之间的裂痕得以修复。
　　On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father’s life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree.
　　在我父亲快要走到生命终点之时，我们驾车出游过几次。其中一次，我们停在一条河的附近，我们步行到河岸边，在一棵老橡树的树阴下坐了下来。
　　After a couple of minutes my father took off his shoes and his socks and placed his feet in the clear-running water, and he looked at them there. Then he closed his eyes and smiled. I hadn’t seen him smile like that in a while.
　　几分钟之后，我父亲脱下鞋和袜子，把双脚伸进清澈的水流中，看着它们。然后他闭上双眼，脸上露出了微笑。我有段时间都没见他这么笑过了。
　　Suddenly he took a deep breath and said, “This reminds me.”
　　突然，他深吸了一口气，开口说道：“这提醒了我。”
　　And then he stopped, and thought some more. Things came slow for him then if they ever came at all, and I guessed he was thinking of some joke to tell, because he always had some joke to tell. Or he might tell me a story that would celebrate his adventurous 1 and heroic life. And I wondered, what does this remind him of? Does it remind him of the duck in the hardware store? The horse in the bar? The boy who was knee-high to a grasshopper 2? Did it remind him of the dinosaur 3 egg he found one day, then lost, or the country he once ruled for the better part of a week?
　　随后他就停了下来，还在想些什么。那时，他想事情总是很慢，如果最后他能想出来的话。我猜，他可能想说一个笑话，因为他总是有笑话可说。或者，他也许想给我讲个故事，颂扬他那充满冒险和英雄色彩的一生。我很好奇，（此情此景）究竟提醒了他什么？是不是令他想起了五金店的那只鸭子？又或是酒吧里的那匹马？那个只及蚱蜢膝盖高的男孩？还是让他想起了那个他曾经找到却又遗失的恐龙蛋，或是他曾经统治了大半个星期的国家？
　　“This reminds me,” he said, “of when I was a boy.”
　　“这让我想起了，”他说道，“我还是个小男孩的时候。
　　I looked at this old man, my old man with his old white feet in this clear-running stream, these moments among the very last in his life, and I thought of him suddenly, and simply, as a boy, a child, a youth, with his whole life ahead of him, much as mine was ahead of me. I’d never done that before. And these images—the now and then of my father—converged, and at that moment he turned into a weird 4 creature, wild, concurrently 5 young and old, dying and newborn.
　　My father became a myth...
　　我看着这位老人，我的父亲，他那双又老又白的脚浸在清澈的河流中——在他生命最后时期的这些时刻中，我还突然想到了他的一生，仅仅是作为一个男孩，一个少年，一个青年，他的一生就这样在他的面前展开，就像我的一生铺展在我面前一样。我从来没有以这样的方式看待过父亲。这些形象——我父亲的过去和现在——重叠在一起，就在那一刻，（在我眼中）他变成了一个神秘奇妙的生灵，带着些许野性，既年轻又苍老，正迈向死亡，却又迎来重生。
　　我父亲成为了一个神话……