I T WAS AUTUMN before I could carry out Hanna’s instructions. The daughter lived in New York, and I used a meeting in Boston as the occasion to bring her the money: a bank check plus the tea tin with the cash. I had written to her, introduced myself as a legal historian, and mentioned the trial. I told her I would be grateful for a chance to talk to her. She invited me to tea.
I took the train from Boston to New York. The woods were a triumphal parade of brown, yellow, orange, tawny1 red, and chestnut2, and the flaming glowing scarlet3 of the maples4. It made me think of the autumn pictures in Hanna’s cell. When the rhythm of the wheels and the rocking of the car tired me, I dreamed of Hanna and myself in a house in the autumn-blazed hills that were lining5 our route. Hanna was older than when I had met her and younger than when I had met her again, older than me, more attractive than in earlier years, more relaxed in her movements with age, more at home in her own body. I saw her getting out of the car and picking up shopping bags, saw her going through the garden into the house, saw her set down the bags and go upstairs ahead of me. My longing6 for Hanna became so strong that it hurt. I struggled against the longing, argued that it went against Hanna’s and my reality, the reality of our ages, the reality of our circumstances. How could Hanna, who spoke7 no English, live in America? And she couldn’t drive a car either.
I woke up and knew that Hanna was dead. I also knew that my desire had fixed8 on her without her being its object. It was the desire to come home.
The daughter lived in New York on a street near Central Park. The street was lined on both sides with old row houses of dark sandstone, with stoops of the same sandstone leading up to the front door on the first floor. This created an effect of severity—house after house with almost identical fa?ades, stoop after stoop, trees only recently planted at regular intervals9 along the sidewalk, with a few yellowing leaves on thin twigs10.
The daughter served tea by large windows looking out on the vest-pocket backyard gardens, some green and colorful and some merely collections of trash. As soon as we had sat down, the tea had been poured, and the sugar added and stirred, she switched from the English in which she had welcomed me, to German. “What brings you here?” The question was neither friendly nor unfriendly; her tone was absolutely matter-of-fact. Everything about her was matter-of-fact: her manner, her gestures, her dress. Her face was oddly ageless, the way faces look after being lifted. But perhaps it had set because of her early sufferings; I tried and failed to remember her face as it had been during the trial.
I told her about Hanna’s death and her last wishes.
“Why me?”
“I suppose because you are the only survivor11.”
“And how am I supposed to deal with it?”
“However you think fit.”
“And grant Frau Schmitz her absolution?”
At first I wanted to protest, but Hanna was indeed asking a great deal. Her years of imprisonment12 were not merely to be the required atonement: Hanna wanted to give them her own meaning, and she wanted this giving of meaning to be recognized. I said as much.
She shook her head. I didn’t know if this meant she was refusing to accept my interpretation13 or refusing to grant Hanna the recognition.
“Could you not recognize it without granting her absolution?”
She laughed. “You like her, don’t you? What was your relationship?”
I hesitated a moment. “I read aloud to her. It started when I was fifteen and continued while she was in prison.”
“How did you . . .”
“I sent her tapes. Frau Schmitz was illiterate14 almost all her life; she only learned to read and write in prison.”
“Why did you do all this?”
“When I was fifteen, we had a relationship.”
“You mean you slept together?”
“Yes.”
“That woman was truly brutal15 . . . did you ever get over the fact that you were only fifteen when she . . . No, you said yourself that you began reading to her again when she was in prison. Did you ever get married?”
I nodded.
“And the marriage was short and unhappy, and you never married again, and the child, if there is one, is in boarding school.”
“That’s true of thousands of people, it doesn’t take a Frau Schmitz.”
“Did you ever feel, when you had contact with her in those last years, that she knew what she had done to you?”
I shrugged16 my shoulders. “In any case, she knew what she had done to people in the camp and on the march. She didn’t just tell me that, she dealt with it intensively during her last years in prison.” I told her what the warden17 had said.
She stood up and took long strides up and down the room. “How much money is it?”
I went to the coat closet, where I had left my bag, and returned with the check and the tea tin. “Here.”
She looked at the check and put it on the table. She opened the tin, emptied it, closed it again, and held it in her hand, her eyes riveted18 on it. “When I was a little girl, I had a tea tin for my treasures. Not like this, although these sorts of tea tins already existed, but one with Cyrillic letters, not one with a top you push in, but one you snap shut. I brought it with me to the camp, but then one day it was stolen from me.”
“What was in it?”
“What you’d expect. A piece of hair from our poodle. Tickets to the operas my father took me to, a ring I won somewhere or found in a package—the tin wasn’t stolen for what was in it. The tin itself, and what could be done with it, were worth a lot in the camp.” She put the tin down on top of the check. “Do you have a suggestion for what to do with the money? Using it for something to do with the Holocaust19 would really seem like an absolution to me, and that is something I neither wish nor care to grant.”
“For illiterates20 who want to learn to read and write. There must be nonprofit organizations, foundations, societies you could give the money to.”
“I’m sure there are.” She thought about it.
“Are there corresponding Jewish organizations?”
“You can depend on it, if there are organizations for something, then there are Jewish organizations for it. Illiteracy21, it has to be admitted, is hardly a Jewish problem.” She pushed the check and the money back to me. “Let’s do it this way. You find out what kind of relevant Jewish organizations there are, here or in Germany, and you pay the money to the account of the organization that seems most plausible22 to you.” She laughed. “If the recognition is so important, you can do it in the name of Hanna Schmitz.” She picked up the tin again. “I’ll keep the tin.”
直到秋天，我才完成了汉娜的委托。那位女儿住在纽约，我参加了在波士顿举行的一个会议，利用这个机会把钱给她带去，一张银行存款的支票加上茶罐里的零钱。我给她写过信，自我介绍是法学史家并提到了那次法庭审判，说如果能和她谈谈我将木胜感激。她邀请我一起去喝茶。
我从波士顿乘火车去纽约。森林五光十色，有棕色、黄色、橘黄色、红棕色、棕红色，还有槭树光芒四射的红色。这使我想起了汉娜那间小屋里的秋天的图片。当车轮的转动和车厢的摇晃使我疲倦时，我梦见了汉娜和我坐在一间房子里，房子坐落在五光十色的、秋天的山丘上，我们的火车正穿过那座山丘。汉娜比我认识她时要老，比我再次见到她时要年轻，比我年纪大，比从前漂亮，正处在动作沉着稳重、身体仍很健壮的年龄段。我看见她从汽车里走出来，把购物袋抱在怀里，看见她穿过花园向房子这边走过来，看见她放下购物袋，朝我前面的楼梯走上来。我对汉娜的思念是如此地强烈，以至于这思念令我伤心痛苦。我尽力抗拒这种思念，抵制这种思念，这思念对汉娜和对我，对我们实际的年龄，对我们生活的环境完全不现实。不会讲英语的汉娜怎么能生活在美国呢？而且汉娜也不会开车。
我从梦中醒来，再次明白汉娜已经死了。我也知道那与她紧密相关的思念并不是对她的思念，那是一种对回家的向往。
那位女儿住在纽约一条离中央公园不远的小街道里，街道两旁环绕着一排排用深色沙石建造的老房子，通向一楼的台阶也用同样深色的沙石建成。这给人一种严格的感觉，房子挨着房子，房屋正面差不多都一个样，台阶挨着台阶，街道旁的树木也是不久前栽的，之间的距离都一样，很有规律，稀少的树枝上挂着稀稀落落的黄树叶。
那位女儿把茶桌摆在一扇大窗户前，从这里可以看到外面的四方形小花园，花园里有的地方郁郁葱葱，有的地方五颜六色，有的地方堆放着家用破烂。她给我斟上茶水，加上糖搅拌之后，马上就把问候我时所用的英语变成了德语。"是什么风把您吹到我这来了？"她不冷不热地问我。她的语气听上去非常地务实，她的一切看上去都务实，她的态度，她的手势和她的服饰。她的脸很特别，看不出有多大年纪。所有绷着的脸看上去就像她的脸那样。但是，也许是由于她早年的痛苦经历使其如此僵硬。我尽力回想她在法庭审理期间的面部表情，但怎么也想不起来。
我述说了汉娜的死和她的委托。
"为什么是我？"
"我猜想因为您是惟一的幸存者。"
"我该把它用在哪里？"
"您认为有意义的事情。"
"以此给予史密芝女士宽恕吗？"
起初，我想反驳，因为汉娜要达到的目的实际上远不止这些。多年的监禁生活不应该仅仅是一种赎罪。汉娜想要赋予赎罪本身一种意义，而且，汉娜想通过这种方式使它的意义得到承认。我把这层意思说给了她。
她摇摇头。我不知道她是否想拒绝我的解释，还是拒绝承认汉娜。
"不饶恕她您就不能承认她吗？"
她笑了。"您喜欢她，对吗？你们之间到底是什么关系？"
我迟疑了一会儿。"我是她的朗读者。这从我十五岁时就开始了，在她坐牢时也没有断。""您怎么…·"
"我给她寄录音带。史密芝女士几乎一生都是个文盲，她在监狱里才开始学习读写。"
"您为什么要做这些呢？"
"我十五岁的时候，我们就有过那种关系。"
"您是说，你们一起睡过觉吗？"
"是的。"
"一个多么残忍的女人。您一个十五岁的孩子就和她……您能承受得了吗？不，您自己说的，当她坐牢后，您又重新开始为她朗读。您曾经结过婚吗？"
我点点头。
"那么您的婚姻很短暂和不幸。您没有再结婚，您的孩子——如果您有孩子的话，在寄宿学校。"
"这种情况多的是，这与史密芝无关。"
"在您与她最近这些年的接触中，您是否有过这种感觉，就是说，她清楚她给您所带来的是什么吗？"
我耸耸肩。"无论如何她清楚地在集中营和在北迁的路途中给其他人带来了什么样的损失。她不仅仅是这样对我说的，而且，在监狱的最后几年里她还努力地去研究它。"我讲述了女监狱长对我讲述过的情况。
她站了起来，在房间里来回踱着大步："那么涉及到多少钱呢？"
我走到了我放包的衣帽架前，拿出支票和茶叶罐，走回来对她说："都在这里。''
她看了看支票，然后把它放在了桌子上，又把茶叶罐打开倒空了，然后又关上。她把茶叶罐捧在手里，目光死死地盯着它说："当我还是小姑娘的时候，我有个茶叶罐，用来装我的宝贝，不是这样的，尽管当时也已经有这样的了。它上面有用西里尔字母书写的文字，盖不是往里压的那种，而是扣在上面的。我把它带到了集中营，有一天它被人偷走了。"
"里面有什么东西？"
"有什么，有一绝我们家小狗的鬈毛，有父亲带我去看过的歌剧的门票，一枚在什么地方得到的或是在一个包里发现的戒指——之所以被盗并不是由于里面装的东西。那个茶叶罐本身和人们在集中营里能拿它做的事情却很有价值。"她把茶叶罐放在了支票上面，"关于怎样使用这笔钱您有什么建议吗？把它用于任何与大屠杀有关的事，这对我来说，的确就是我既不能又不想给予的一种饶恕。"
"给那些想学习读写的文盲，一定有这样的公益基金会和社团组织，可以把钱捐献给这些机构。"
"当然会有这样的机构。"她思考着。
""也有类似的犹太人协会和社团吗？"
"如果有什么社团，那么您可以相信，也就会有犹太社团。不过，文盲问题不是犹太问题。"
她把支票和钱推到我这边。
"我们这样做吧：您去打听一下都有什么相关的犹太组织，这里也好，在德国也好。然后，把钱寄到您最信任的有关组织的账号上去。您也可以，"她笑了，"如果得到承认非常重要的话，以史密芝女士的名义寄。"
她又把茶叶罐拿到手里："我留下这个茶叶罐。
收听单词发音 |
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tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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maples
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| 槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木 | |
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lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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holocaust
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| n.大破坏；大屠杀 | |
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illiterates
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| 目不识丁者( illiterate的名词复数 )； 无知 | |
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illiteracy
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| n.文盲 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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