殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(56)
Later, well past midnight, after a few hours of poker between Baba and his cousins, the men lay down to sleep on parallel mattresses in the same room where we’d dined. The women went upstairs. An hour later, I still couldn’t sleep. I kept tossing and turning as my relatives grunted, sighed, and snored in their sleep. I sat up. A wedge of moonlight streamed in through the window.
“I watched Hassan get raped,” I said to no one. Baba stirred in his sleep. Kaka Homayoun grunted. A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.
I thought about Hassan’s dream, the one about us swimming in the lake. There is no monster, he’d said, just water. Except he’d been wrong about that. There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.
That was the night I became an insomniac.
I DIDN’T SPEAK TO HASSAN until the middle of the next week. I had just half-eaten my lunch and Hassan was doing the dishes. I was walking upstairs, going to my room, when Hassan asked if I wanted to hike up the hill. I said I was tired. Hassan looked tired too--he’d lost weight and gray circles had formed under his puffed-up eyes. But when he asked again, I reluctantly agreed.
We trekked up the hill, our boots squishing in the muddy snow. Neither one of us said anything. We sat under our pomegranate tree and I knew I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come up the hill. The words I’d carved on the tree trunk with Ali’s kitchen knife, Amir and Hassan: The Sultans of Kabul... I couldn’t stand looking at them now.
He asked me to read to him from the _Shahnamah_ and I told him I’d changed my mind. Told him I just wanted to go back to my room. He looked away and shrugged. We walked back down the way we’d gone up in silence. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for spring.
後來，午夜過後，爸爸和他的親戚玩了幾個小時的撲克，終於在我們吃飯那間房子倒下，躺在平行擺放的地毯上呼呼入睡。婦女則到樓上去。過了一個鐘頭，我仍睡不着。各位親戚在睡夢中或咕噥，或嘆氣，或打鼾，我翻來覆去。我坐起身，一縷月光穿過窗戶，瀰漫進來。
“我看着哈桑被人強暴。”我自說自話。爸爸在夢裏翻身，霍瑪勇叔叔在說囈語。有一部分的我渴望有人醒來聽我訴說，以便我可以不再揹負着這個謊言度日。但沒有人醒來，在隨後而來的寂靜中，我明白這是個下在我身上的咒語，終此一生，我將揹負着這個謊言。
我想起哈桑的夢，那個我們在湖裏游泳的夢。那兒沒有鬼怪。他說，只有湖水。但是他錯了。湖裏有鬼怪，它抓住哈桑的腳踝，將他拉進暗無天日的湖底。我就是那個鬼怪。
自從那夜起，我得了失眠症。
又隔了半個星期，我纔開口跟哈桑說話。當時我的午餐吃到一半，哈桑在收拾碟子。我走上樓梯，回房間去，哈桑問我想不想去爬山。我說我累了。哈桑看起來也很累——他消瘦了，雙眼泡腫，下面還有灰白的眼圈。但他又問了一次，我勉爲其難地答應了。
我們爬上那座山，靴子踩在泥濘的雪花上吱嘎吱嘎響。沒有人開口說話。我們坐在我們的石榴樹下，我知道自己犯了個錯誤。我不應到山上來。我用阿里的菜刀在樹幹上刻下的字跡猶在：阿米爾和哈桑，喀布爾的蘇丹……現在我無法忍受看到這些字。
他求我念《沙納瑪》給他聽，我說我改變主意了。告訴他我只想走回自己的房間去。他望着遠方，聳聳肩。我們沿着那條來路走下，沒有人說話。我生命中第一次渴望春天早點到來。
