Charles Bowden’s Fury

The house where he’s been living is in some cottonwood trees beside a stream, 16 miles north of the border with Mexico.

他一直居住的房子位于墨西哥边境以北 16 英里处的小溪旁的一些三叶杨树丛中。

We’re sitting on the porch and Bowden is telling me about the whale, the white whale.

我们坐在门廊上，鲍登正在给我讲鲸鱼，白鲸。

We’ve been here all day and I’ve been listening all day, but now it’s dark and I can’t see him.

我们在这里呆了一整天，我也听了一整天，但现在天黑了，我看不到他了。

Now there’s just his voice, like a low growl from the long grass, the pulsing of crickets, fireflies and the flicker shadows of bats against the stars.

现在只有他的声音，就像长草丛中低沉的咆哮，蟋蟀的搏动，萤火虫和蝙蝠在星空下闪烁的影子。

He first saw the whale nearly 20 years ago, in Mexico.

大约 20 年前，他在墨西哥第一次看到这头鲸鱼。

He was standing watch, so to speak, and the dark ocean exploded in foam and spray and there in front of him was the monster he’d been pursuing, the source of all the violence and corruption he’d seen.

可以说，他正在站岗，黑暗的海洋在泡沫和浪花中爆炸，在他面前的是他一直在追捕的怪物，他所见过的所有暴力和腐败的根源。

It scared the hell out of him and he turned away.

这把他吓坏了，他转身就走。

He didn’t go after it.

他没有追赶它。

Then, a few years later, the whale came back and killed a friend of his, and Bowden blames himself for this.

几年后，鲸鱼回来杀死了他的一个朋友，鲍登为此自责。

If he would have fought the whale in the beginning, he believes, his friend would still be alive.

他相信，如果他一开始就与鲸鱼战斗，他的朋友就还活着。

It didn’t happen quite like that.

事实并非如此。

The whale is an allegory, because I promised I wouldn’t write the real names and places.

鲸鱼是一个寓言，因为我保证不会写下真实的名字和地点。

But his friend did die and the thing that killed him is the thing Bowden saw, and it was like a horrible monster.

但他的朋友确实死了，杀死他的就是鲍登所看到的东西，它就像一个可怕的怪物。

The allegory fits.

这个寓言很合适。

Bowden is Ahab and he’s going after Moby Dick.

鲍登是亚哈，他正在追捕莫比迪克。

He’s 69 years old, in fair shape from lifting weights and going on long walks, but he’s losing some teeth and is pretty much penniless.

他今年 69 岁，由于举重和长途散步，身体状况良好，但他的一些牙齿正在脱落，而且几乎身无分文。

His possessions consist of a sleeping bag, a cot, a stove for coffee, a Honda Fit and a pair of Swarovski binoculars — high-quality glass.

他的财产包括一个睡袋、一张婴儿床、一个咖啡炉、一辆本田飞度和一副施华洛世奇双筒望远镜（优质玻璃）。

This is the way he wants it, having nothing to lose.

这就是他想要的方式，没有什么可失去的。

He knows his only real asset is more than 40 years’ experience as an investigative reporter, and also he knows that the whale is not Evil, that Ahab was wrong.

他知道自己唯一真正的资产是 40 多年作为调查记者的经验，而且他也知道鲸鱼不是邪恶的，亚哈错了。

The whale, for Bowden, is part of nature, our nature.

对于鲍登来说，鲸鱼是自然的一部分，是我们本性的一部分。

He’s speaking in the tone of a scientist but describing violence and violent acts, signs and sightings left in the wake of the whale.

他用科学家的语气说话，但描述了鲸鱼尾迹中留下的暴力和暴力行为、迹象和目击事件。

There was the man who was tortured and killed and his body was found without a head.

有一个人遭到酷刑和杀害，他的尸体被发现没有头。

A few days later the head was delivered to his family in a cooler.

几天后，头颅被装在冷藏箱里送到了他的家人手中。

There was the baby’s blood splattered on the wall above the bathtub.

浴缸上方的墙上溅满了婴儿的血。

There was the girl who was raped for a week by 10 policemen.

有一个女孩被10名警察强奸了一周。

There was the arm with a tricep as thick as a truck tire that strangled hundreds of men.

有一只手臂的三头肌像卡车轮胎一样粗，曾勒死过数百人。

The list is endless, stretching back decades.

这个清单是无穷无尽的，可以追溯到几十年前。

Even before he first saw the whale, Bowden was finding evidence of something he couldn’t explain, something dark beyond his imagination.

甚至在第一次看到鲸鱼之前，鲍登就发现了一些他无法解释的东西的证据，一些超出他想象的黑暗东西。

Bowden’s last report, for instance, was a confession by a member of the Chihuahua State Police who tortured and killed hundreds of people for a Juárez drug cartel.

例如，鲍登的上一份报告是奇瓦瓦州一名警察的供述，他为华雷斯贩毒集团折磨并杀害了数百人。

El Sicario , the assassin, describes in detail how there was no separation between the police and the cartel, how he was just following orders, and how he found himself in Hell.

刺客埃尔·西卡里奥详细描述了警察和贩毒集团之间如何没有分离，他如何只是执行命令，以及他如何发现自己身处地狱。

For instance, he became an expert at boiling people alive in a big kettle of water, keeping them alive for a day, long enough to get them to talk — you have a hook and you keep pulling them out and slicing off the dead flesh because they can’t feel that, and you have a doctor there pumping them with adrenaline so they won’t die.

例如，他成为了在一大壶水中活活煮人的专家，让他们活一天，足够长的时间让他们说话——你有一个钩子，你不断地把他们拉出来，切掉死肉，因为他们感觉不到这一点，然后你让医生给他们注射肾上腺素，这样他们就不会死。

Bowden talked to the sicario for months before he would open up, and then the more Bowden listened, the more he came to see the man as a normal human being, not evil.

鲍登和这位边境杀手聊了几个月，然后他才敞开心扉，然后鲍登听得越多，他就越觉得这个人是一个正常人，而不是邪恶的。

And then Bowden began to like him.

然后鲍登开始喜欢他。

They became friends.

他们成了朋友。

That was two years ago and since then Bowden has been silent.

那是两年前的事了，从那以后鲍登就一直保持沉默。

Reclusive.

隐居。

Back at headquarters there grew some concern — was he perhaps traumatized, drinking too much, unable to work?

回到总部后，人们开始担心——他是否可能受到了精神创伤、酗酒、无法工作？

And so I was sent to find him and measure his sanity, his health and well-being.

所以我被派去寻找他并测量他的理智、健康状况和幸福感。

He knows why I’ve come.

他知道我为什么来。

This morning, before I arrived, in order to prove he’s been working, he emailed a new book to an editor in New York.

今天早上，在我到达之前，为了证明他一直在工作，他通过电子邮件向纽约的一位编辑发送了一本新书。

It’s called Rhapsody and he says it’s a love story about wild things and wild places.

这本书叫《狂想曲》，他说这是一个关于野生动物和野生地方的爱情故事。

I wonder what this has to do with the whale, but I don’t ask the question.

我想知道这和鲸鱼有什么关系，但我没有问这个问题。

Instead I ask him if it’s true he’s been hiding out.

相反，我问他是否真的一直在躲藏。

“I just got tired of talking to stupid people on the phone,” he says.

“我只是厌倦了在电话里和愚蠢的人交谈，”他说。

“I wanted to strip everything down and start over.”

“我想把一切都拆掉并重新开始。”

He knows I understand the feeling and lets it sit for a moment with the crickets.

他知道我理解这种感觉，于是就让它和蟋蟀一起静置一会儿。

“I wanted to write about nature, about animals, what it’s like to be an animal, but I went into murder reporting and now I’m recovering.”

“我想写关于自然、关于动物、作为动物的感觉，但我开始报道谋杀案，现在我正在康复。”

I can’t see him but I know he’s lying on his back with his hand on a cup of red wine, looking up at the stars.

我看不到他，但我知道他仰面躺着，手放在一杯红酒上，仰望星空。

“Everything you see out there is constantly re-inventing itself,” he says.

“你看到的一切都在不断地自我重塑，”他说。

“We call it evolution.

“我们称之为进化。

It’s all one big yes .”

这都是一件大事，是的。”

“I want to write something that matters.

“我想写一些重要的东西。

In order to do it you have to get rid of yourself.

为了做到这一点，你必须摆脱自己。

The lion on the hunt ceases to be the lion and becomes the deer.”

狩猎中的狮子不再是狮子，而是变成了鹿。”

I know what he’s saying, but I’m wondering how to describe it to the folks back at headquarters.

我知道他在说什么，但我想知道如何向总部的人员描述。

“In the end all writing is about adding to life, not diminishing it.

“归根结底，所有写作都是为了增加生活，而不是减少生活。

That’s what life is all about.

这就是生活的全部意义。

There isn’t a plant out here that’s not trying to take all that chlorophyll and light and trying to add to life.

这里没有一种植物不试图吸收所有的叶绿素和光并试图增加生命。

The book I sent today I did 15 drafts, or I stopped counting at 15.

我今天寄出的书我打了15稿，或者说我在15稿时就停止计数了。

I don’t know if it’s any good, I just know it about killed me and it’s the best I can do.”

我不知道这有什么好处，我只知道这会杀了我，这是我能做的最好的事情。”

He hands me his computer so I can read the book off the screen.

他递给我他的电脑，这样我就可以在屏幕上阅读这本书。

He’ll let the work speak for itself.

他会让工作自己说话。

After one chapter I realize it’s a long poem, a song about being in a war.

读完一章后，我意识到这是一首长诗，一首关于战争的歌曲。

I tell him this and he takes back the computer and reads out loud from the second chapter:

我告诉他这一点，他收回电脑并大声朗读第二章：

...

...

There is a door that opens to a room and in that room is a table, a round table, and at that table sits power.

一扇门通向一个房间，房间里有一张桌子，一张圆桌，桌子上坐着权力。

The head of the table belongs to the fist or paw or talon that grabs power.

表头属于夺取权力的拳头或爪子或爪子。

I want to go through that door and get in that room and sit at that table with that power and the wolf should be there, the elk also, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, the serpents and monsters of the deep, and this time when the waters come there will be no Noah and no rainbow, God help us, no rainbow.

我想穿过那扇门，进入那个房间，用那种力量坐在那张桌子旁，狼应该在那里，麋鹿也在那里，天上的鸟，海里的鱼，深海里的蛇和怪物，而这一次，当水来时，将没有诺亚，也没有彩虹，上帝帮助我们，没有彩虹。

…

……

wolves I say, more wolves, elk in the dusk, wolves in the night, and in the morning meadowlarks singing the grass into the light and suddenly one green teal drake attacks another and rams it with its bill and I don’t know why and that is the reason I must get through the door and into the room and sit at that table with the slime and slobber and tooth and fang and fin and feather and ask

我说，更多的狼，黄昏中的麋鹿，夜晚中的狼，以及早晨草地鹨在草地上对着光歌唱，突然，一只青色的鸭子攻击了另一只鸭子，并用它的嘴撞击它，我不知道为什么，这就是为什么我必须穿过门进入房间，坐在那张桌子旁边，带着粘液、口水、牙齿、尖牙、鳍和羽毛，询问

Who writes like this?

谁会这样写？

It’s beautiful, but I wonder if he’s lost his mind.

很漂亮，但我想知道他是否失去了理智。

No, he hasn’t lost his mind.

不，他还没有失去理智。

This is his “big yes.” He’s written a love song to the whale.

这是他的“大肯定”。他为鲸鱼写了一首情歌。

Ahab, alone on deck, throws his sextant into the sea, opens his heart, and begins to sing.

亚哈独自一人在甲板上，将六分仪扔进海里，打开心扉，开始唱歌。

…

……

I stare up, and stars are everywhere, there is no city on the horizon, the cold seeks my bones and no moon rises ...

我抬头凝视，星星无处不在，地平线上没有城市，寒冷刺骨，月亮也没有升起……

the voices in my head are my father and his brothers and down the sweep of hill, past the two barns, the hog house, the limestone shed with a spring to cool the cans of milk, past the meadows and the creek and the woodlot the valley flows studded with quarries, refineries and coking mills and in the day the sky goes dark with plumes of smoke and in the night the gas venting off the refineries and the blazes off the coking mills fill the sky with flames and always there is the stench of fuels spent and lives incinerated and no one can tell me why and no one asks why because the money is good and life is hard and the women scrub and the game has fled and hardly a bone or hair remains to haunt us, and they say nothing, they play poker, drink, sit under the apple trees.

我脑海中的声音是我父亲和他的兄弟们，顺着山坡而下，经过两个谷仓、猪舍、带有泉水的石灰石棚，可以冷却牛奶罐，经过草地、小溪和林地，山谷里布满了采石场、炼油厂和焦化厂，白天，天空因浓烟而变暗，晚上，炼油厂排出的气体和焦化厂的火焰充满了天空伴随着火焰，总是弥漫着燃料消耗和生命被焚烧的恶臭，没有人能告诉我为什么，也没有人问为什么，因为钱很好，生活很艰苦，女人们擦洗，游戏已经消失，几乎没有一根骨头或头发留下来困扰我们，他们什么也不说，他们打扑克，喝酒，坐在苹果树下。

There is no mention of another way.

没有提到另一种方式。

And I mean it.

我是认真的。

I think he’s the best writer, or one of the best writers, we have, and I’ve felt this way since I read his early reports 30 years ago.

我认为他是最好的作家，或者说是我们最好的作家之一，自从 30 年前读到他的早期报告以来，我一直有这种感觉。

But back at headquarters — behind the desks — there are going to be some questions.

但回到总部，在办公桌后面，将会出现一些问题。

Bowden’s written more than 25 books and most of them were, let’s say, not financial successes — too grim, people don’t want to think about that stuff.

鲍登写了超过 25 本书，其中大多数都没有取得经济上的成功——太严峻了，人们不想考虑这些事情。

He’s written hundreds of magazine articles, but no magazine editor in New York will talk to him anymore because he tells them straight up they publish garbage — lies and fluff to sell advertisements.

他写了数百篇杂志文章，但纽约的杂志编辑再也不会和他说话了，因为他直截了当地告诉他们，他们发表垃圾——为了推销广告而发表的谎言和废话。

I’m afraid they are not going to understand his new book, and if I describe it as a love song to a whale …

我担心他们不会理解他的新书，如果我把它描述为一首鲸鱼的情歌……

they’ll call him a fool, write him off as a drunk.

他们会称他为傻瓜，把他视为酒鬼。

Maybe both of us.

也许我们俩。

So, before I go to sleep, I start laying out how I will present his defense, starting with an explanation of where he comes from and how he arrived at this place.

所以，在我睡觉之前，我开始列出我将如何为他辩护，首先解释他来自哪里以及他如何到达这个地方。

He was born four days after the first atomic bomb went off — a July 1945 test blast in New Mexico.

他出生于第一颗原子弹爆炸（1945 年 7 月在新墨西哥州试爆）四天后。

This timing put him in lockstep to come of age with the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War protests and the Monterey Pop Festival.

这个时机使他与民权运动、越南战争抗议和蒙特利流行音乐节同步成长。

He got arrested and beaten up by the cops in Madison, Wisconsin, for building a barricade on the street to protect some people who were burning down a grocery store, but he thought this was nothing compared to what he’d seen black protesters go through in the South in the fight for equal rights.

他在威斯康星州麦迪逊市因在街上设置路障以保护一些烧毁杂货店的人而被警察逮捕并殴打，但他认为这与他在南方看到的黑人抗议者争取平等权利的经历相比根本不算什么。

They were Bowden’s early model, people who were willing to risk everything in order to be treated as equal human beings.

他们是鲍登早期的榜样，愿意冒一切风险以获得平等的人类待遇。

Bowden was a part of a cultural movement that seemed to be winning a revolution by speaking truth to power, and it was exhilarating.

鲍登是一场文化运动的一部分，这场文化运动似乎通过向权力说出真相来赢得一场革命，这令人振奋。

He rode the crest of the high and beautiful 1960s wave that gonzo writer Hunter Thompson described as “a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

他正站在 20 世纪 60 年代浪潮的顶峰，奇闻趣事作家亨特·汤普森 (Hunter Thompson) 将其描述为“一种奇妙的普遍感觉，无论我们做什么都是正确的，我们正在获胜。

…

……

Our energy would simply prevail .”

我们的能量将会占上风。”

At that time, in the early ’70s, Bowden had a tenure-track position teaching history at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

当时，也就是 70 年代初，鲍登在芝加哥伊利诺伊大学获得了终身教职，教授历史。

He was a young rising star in the field, but he couldn’t take the competitive, small-minded bullshit that comes with academia.

他是该领域年轻的后起之秀，但他无法忍受学术界的竞争性、心胸狭隘的废话。

So he dropped out of the system and disappeared from the screen, living on a bicycle, sleeping on the side of the road around Tucson, Arizona, where he’d gone to high school.

于是他退出了系统，从屏幕上消失了，骑着自行车生活，睡在亚利桑那州图森市附近的路边，他在那里上高中。

He got good on the bike and started racing.

他骑得很好，并开始参加比赛。

When he won a 300-miler across the desert he thought he should buy a better bike, a Colnago, for $1,500.

当他赢得穿越沙漠 300 英里的比赛时，他认为自己应该花 1,500 美元买一辆更好的自行车 Colnago。

To earn some money, he took a job writing for a local daily, The Tucson Citizen , and then he fell in love with newspapers — writing for newspapers, the whole idea of being a fierce watchdog against power and corruption.

为了赚钱，他找到了一份为当地日报《图森公民》撰稿的工作，然后他爱上了报纸——为报纸撰稿，整个想法是成为反对权力和腐败的严厉监督者。

The reigning desert scribe, Edward Abbey, lived in Tucson at that time, Abbey and Bowden were friends, and this is how Abbey explained it in a piece called A Writer’s Credo :

当时的沙漠抄写员爱德华·艾比（Edward Abbey）住在图森，艾比和鲍登是朋友，艾比在一篇名为《作家的信条》的文章中是这样解释的：

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives.

我相信作家，自由作家，应该而且必须是他所生活的社会的批评家。

…

……

That is all I ask of the author.

这就是我对作者的全部要求。

To be a hero, appoint himself a moral leader, wanted or not.

要成为英雄，请指定自己为道德领袖，无论是否愿意。

I believe that words count, that writing matters, that poems, essays, and novels — in the long run — make a difference.

我相信字数很重要，写作很重要，诗歌、散文和小说——从长远来看——会产生影响。

If they do not, then in the words of my exemplar Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the writer’s work is of no more importance than the barking of village dogs at night.

如果他们不这样做，那么用我的榜样亚历山大·索尔仁尼琴的话来说，作家的作品并不比乡村狗在夜间的吠叫更重要。

Bowden followed Abbey’s credo and won awards.

鲍登遵循艾比的信条并赢得了奖项。

Politicians lived in fear of his pen.

政客们生活在对他的笔的恐惧之中。

Then, when nobody else at the paper wanted the job, Bowden took the crime beat.

然后，当报社没有其他人想要这份工作时，鲍登接受了犯罪打击。

And that’s when things changed.

就在那时，事情发生了变化。

For three years in the early ’80s, he covered crime and learned about violence and the results of violence — dead babies, raped women, the men who did it, men who killed.

在 80 年代初的三年里，他报道了犯罪并了解了暴力和暴力的后果——死去的婴儿、被强奸的妇女、行凶者、杀人者。

Gradually, as will happen with cops and crime reporters and public defenders, he began “to lose the distinction between the desires of criminals and the desires of the rest of us.”

渐渐地，就像警察、犯罪记者和公设辩护人一样，他开始“失去了罪犯的欲望和我们其他人的欲望之间的区别”。

…

……

I’d quit the paper twice, break down more often than I can remember, and I’d have to go away for a week or two and kill through violent exercise the things that roamed my mind.

我曾两次退出报纸，崩溃的次数比我记忆中的还要频繁，我不得不离开一两个星期，通过剧烈的锻炼来消除脑海中徘徊的事情。

It was during this period that I began taking 100 or 200 mile walks in the desert, far from any trails.

正是在这段时间里，我开始在远离任何小径的沙漠中徒步 100 或 200 英里。

I would write these flights from myself up and people began to talk about me as a “nature writer.” (Bowden reading aloud from his 1998 Harper’s piece, “Torch Song: At the Peripheries of Violence and Desire.”)

我会亲自写下这些飞行，人们开始谈论我作为“自然作家”。 （鲍登大声朗读他 1998 年《哈珀》杂志的文章《火炬之歌：暴力与欲望的边缘》。）

Nature writer sounded better to Bowden than crime reporter, as a career move.

对于鲍登来说，作为职业发展，自然作家听起来比犯罪记者更好。

He liked writing about nature.

他喜欢写有关自然的文章。

He was tired of violence and wanted to find out what it’s like to be a lizard or a bat.

他厌倦了暴力，想了解成为一只蜥蜴或蝙蝠是什么感觉。

So, like Abbey and Thoreau, Bowden went into the wilderness, trying to leave civilization behind.

因此，像艾比和梭罗一样，鲍登走进荒野，试图将文明抛在身后。

But when Bowden got to the desert, he found a war zone.

但当鲍登到达沙漠时，他发现了一个战区。

Instead of writing about animals and what it’s like to be an animal, he ended up covering the drug trade and the other smugglers who assisted one of the largest human migrations in history — lots of dead bodies, some murdered and dismembered with body parts rearranged as conceptual art, some lying in the hot desert getting eaten by birds and javelina.

他没有写动物和动物的感受，而是报道了毒品交易和其他走私者，他们协助了历史上最大规模的人类迁徙之一——大量尸体，一些被谋杀和肢解，身体部位被重新排列成概念艺术，一些躺在炎热的沙漠中被鸟类和标枪吃掉。

Bowden wrote the hard truths behind these facts, these dead bodies.

鲍登写下了这些事实、这些尸体背后的残酷事实。

It was our demand for illegal drugs that fueled the violence in Mexico.

正是我们对非法毒品的需求助长了墨西哥的暴力事件。

It was our free trade policy that broke Mexican farmers and started the mass migration north where they became like slaves, our slaves, if they made it alive.

正是我们的自由贸易政策摧毁了墨西哥农民，并开始大规模向北迁移，他们在那里变得像奴隶一​​样，我们的奴隶，如果他们活着的话。

There was no getting away from this part of our civilization, it spilled over into the wilderness, it was part of the wilderness.

我们文明的这一部分无法摆脱，它蔓延到了荒野，它是荒野的一部分。

Nobody wanted to hear these truths.

没有人想听这些真相。

Often his editors didn’t believe what he wrote because they’d never heard it before.

他的编辑常常不相信他写的东西，因为他们以前从未听说过。

If it hadn’t been in The New York Times , it didn’t exist.

如果它没有出现在《纽约时报》上，它就不存在。

Eventually, after a lot of arguing, his reports would get published and then be ignored, met with silence.

最终，经过多次争论，他的报告被发表，然后被忽视，陷入沉默。

Readers, common unsuspecting folk, also had never heard such horrors before and didn’t know whether it was fact or fiction or what, and they especially didn’t like how Bowden would bring these faraway horrors into their homes, even into their minds and bodies, and leave them there.

读者们，毫无戒心的普通民众，也从未听过这样的恐怖，也不知道这是事实还是虚构还是什么，他们尤其不喜欢鲍登将这些遥远的恐怖带入他们的家中，甚至带入他们的思想和身体，然后把他们留在那里。

People usually don’t want that to happen to them.

人们通常不希望这种事发生在自己身上。

Something like that we try to forget as soon as possible.

类似的事情我们试图尽快忘记。

And he seemed fearless.

而且他看起来无所畏惧。

In the mid-’90s, for instance, he published the name of the leader of the Juárez cartel, with a photo, presenting evidence that tons of illegal drugs were being flown into Juárez on commercial aircraft where they were unloaded by the Mexican military.

例如，在 20 世纪 90 年代中期，他公布了华雷斯贩毒集团头目的名字，并附上了一张照片，并提供了证据，证明大量非法毒品通过商用飞机空运到华雷斯，并由墨西哥军方卸下。

A month later the leader of the cartel, Amado Carrillo, died on the operating table while having his face redesigned by plastic surgeons.

一个月后，该贩毒集团头目阿马多·卡里略在整形外科医生重新设计脸部时死在手术台上。

The surgeons were tortured and killed.

外科医生遭到酷刑并被杀害。

Somehow, for reasons that remain a mystery, Bowden stayed alive.

不知何故，鲍登活了下来，原因至今仍是个谜。

He kept investigating the drug trade.

他不断调查毒品交易。

Everybody in Mexico knows the Mexican government and the Mexican military are involved in the drug trade, but proving it is difficult.

墨西哥的每个人都知道墨西哥政府和墨西哥军队参与毒品交易，但证明这一点很困难。

Reporters in Mexico are often threatened and sometimes killed.

墨西哥的记者经常受到威胁，有时甚至被杀害。

There is no rule of law — policemen become killers, judges are paid to let people out of jail, reporters are paid to be silent.

没有法治——警察成为杀手，法官受雇让人们出狱，记者受雇让他们保持沉默。

Those in power remain invisible.

那些掌权者仍然是隐形的。

Bowden wanted to see them, clearly, and know their nature, what it’s like to be them , the people who run the killing machine.

鲍登想清楚地看到他们，了解他们的本性，知道他们是运行杀人机器的人是什么样的。

He made friends with people who wanted to tell the truth about what they’d seen and what they’d lost, people on both sides, all sides, of the drug war.

他与那些想要说出自己所看到和失去的真相的人交了朋友，他们是毒品战争双方的人。

He told their stories and he got it right and he built a wide network of reliable informants, people who trusted him.

他讲述了他们的故事，他说得对，他建立了一个由可靠的线人、信任他的人组成的广泛网络。

He was putting the pieces together slowly and carefully.

他正在缓慢而小心地将这些碎片拼凑起来。

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Then one day the whole thing unfolded in front of him, emerged like Moby Dick surfacing from the depths of the ocean, and what he saw frightened him.

然后有一天，整个事情展现在他面前，就像白鲸从海洋深处浮现出来一样，他所看到的让他感到害怕。

It was too big, too powerful for him to fight.

它太大了，太强大了，他无法战斗。

A few years later, in the mid-’90s, another reporter named Gary Webb saw the same whale, and he didn’t turn away.

几年后，在 90 年代中期，另一位名叫加里·韦伯 (Gary Webb) 的记者看到了同样的鲸鱼，他并没有转身离开。

Webb wrote about it, but then Webb was ruined for what he wrote.

韦伯写了有关此事的文章，但后来韦伯因他所写的内容而毁了。

His report — charging that profits from the ’80s crack epidemic in Los Angeles were funneled to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency — was quickly denounced by The New York Times , the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times .

他的报告指控 80 年代洛杉矶的强效流行病的利润被输送给美国中央情报局管理的拉丁美洲游击队，很快遭到《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》和《洛杉矶时报》的谴责。

Webb became a pariah.

韦伯成了贱民。

But Bowden met Webb and investigated Webb’s sighting of the whale.

但鲍登见到了韦伯并调查了韦伯看到鲸鱼的情况。

He retraced all Webb’s steps and found no flaw in his methods or findings.

他回顾了韦伯的所有步骤，发现他的方法或发现没有任何缺陷。

In fact he found more evidence to support Webb’s claim, and wrote an 11,000-word magazine article about it.

事实上，他找到了更多证据来支持韦伯的说法，并为此撰写了一篇 11,000 字的杂志文章。

But it wasn’t enough.

但这还不够。

Webb lost his job, his marriage, his home, his money …

韦伯失去了工作、婚姻、家庭、金钱……

and then he shot himself in December 2004.

然后他于 2004 年 12 月开枪自杀。

That was the experience that left Bowden feeling alone, a coward.

那次经历让鲍登感到孤独、胆小。

In 2008, Juárez exploded in a wave of violence that lasted four years and left somewhere around 15,000 dead bodies.

2008 年，华雷斯爆发了持续四年的暴力浪潮，造成约 15,000 具尸体。

There were periods when it was more dangerous to be in Juárez than anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq.

曾经有一段时间，华雷斯比阿富汗或伊拉克的任何地方都更危险。

The wave of violence was said to be a war between the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels, but the people doing the killing often wore uniforms of police and the military, and the dead people were often innocent bystanders.

这波暴力事件据说是华雷斯和锡那罗亚贩毒集团之间的战争，但杀人者往往穿着警察和军队的制服，死者往往是无辜的旁观者。

Also, there was so much killing that the killers started to “sign” their work by arranging the body or body parts in a particular fashion, such as hanging the body from an overpass in morning rush hour traffic with a threat written on a poster board, or cutting off the head and placing it between the legs facing the crotch wearing a Santa Claus hat, or hanging the body, face covered with a pig mask, like Christ crucified on an iron fence.

此外，杀戮如此之多，凶手们开始通过以特定方式排列尸体或身体部位来“签名”他们的作品，比如在早高峰交通中将尸体悬挂在立交桥上，并在海报板上写下威胁，或者砍下头颅并将其放在两腿之间，面对胯部，戴着圣诞老人帽，或者将尸体挂在脸上，脸上蒙着猪面具，就像钉在铁栅栏上的基督一样。

Things like that, and worse.

诸如此类的事情，甚至更糟。

Bowden filed his reports, and always the reaction was the same — nobody cared, nothing happened, the killing continued.

鲍登提交了报告，但反应总是一样的——没人关心，什么也没发生，杀戮仍在继续。

One of his reports during this period described how killing is fun.

他在这段时期的一份报告描述了杀戮是多么有趣。

There were something like 500 separate street gangs in Juárez and the initiation was always the same — kill someone.

华雷斯城大约有 500 个不同的街头帮派，他们的初衷总是一样的——杀人。

Young boys joined the gangs knowing their lives would be short and violent, but also knowing that for a brief period they would have money and girls and cars and drugs — better than working like a slave in a maquiladora assembling televisions and vacuum cleaners to be sold in America — and they’d get to kill people, which made them feel real and alive like nothing they’d ever experienced.

年轻男孩加入帮派时，知道自己的生命短暂而充满暴力，但也知道在短时间内他们会拥有金钱、女孩、汽车和毒品——这比在加工厂像奴隶一样组装电视机和吸尘器销往美国要好——而且他们会杀人，这让他们感觉真实而充满活力，这是他们从未经历过的。

And then they would, in turn, get killed and it would be over, no more fear.

然后他们就会依次被杀，一切就结束了，不再有恐惧。

Bowden wrote this up and handed it in and the response was silence.

鲍登写下了这篇文章并交给了他，但得到的回应是沉默。

The paychecks from headquarters kept coming, but they stopped publishing what he wrote.

总部的薪水源源不断地传来，但他们停止发表他写的东西。

In 2010, Bowden was sitting in a restaurant with a man who happened to mention that he knew an assassin, a sicario , who had been a state policeman in charge of investigating kidnappings in Juárez, but instead he kidnapped, tortured and killed people for the cartel.

2010年，鲍登和一名男子坐在一家餐馆里，这名男子碰巧提到他认识一名刺客，这名杀手曾是一名负责调查华雷斯绑架案的州警察，但他却为卡特尔绑架、折磨和杀害人员。

Recently he’d gone into hiding and found Jesus Christ as his lord and savior.

最近，他躲藏起来，并发现耶稣基督是他的主和救世主。

He wanted to confess everything.

他想坦白一切。

Bowden pounded his fists on the table and said, “I want him!”

鲍登用拳头敲着桌子说：“我要他！”

He thought if the sicario would talk then he’d be able to say who was ordering the killings.

他想，如果杀手会说话，他就能说出是谁下令杀人的。

This would be hard evidence implicating those who were in charge, a way to make them visible.

这将是牵涉那些负责人的确凿证据，也是一种让他们可见的方式。

So he met the sicario and got to know him for several months, never asking a question about his former life.

于是他遇见了边境杀手，认识了他几个月，从来没有问过他以前的生活。

He knew that when the time was right he wouldn’t have to ask a question, and until then it would be pointless.

他知道，到了适当的时候，他就不必问问题了，而在那之前，问问题都是毫无意义的。

People don’t tell you anything worth knowing until they trust you.

人们在信任你之前不会告诉你任何值得知道的事情。

Eventually the man opened up and the truth poured out of him like a rare flood in a desert wash — how he did it, tortured and killed, how he became good at it and took pride in his work.

最终，这个人敞开了心扉，真相就像沙漠中罕见的洪水一样从他身上倾泻而出——他是如何做到这一点的，如何遭受酷刑和杀害，如何变得擅长并为自己的工作感到自豪。

Unfortunately, the sicario never knew who he was working for.

不幸的是，杀手永远不知道他在为谁工作。

His phone would ring and a voice would give him an order, and he would follow the order.

他的电话响起，一个声音给他下达命令，他就会按照命令执行。

He was a good soldier, doing his job as best he could, never asking questions that could get him killed.

他是一名优秀的士兵，尽其所能地做好自己的工作，从不提出可能导致他丧命的问题。

As Bowden got to know the sicario , he began to see him as a highly intelligent person who’d been trapped in the killing machine.

随着鲍登逐渐了解了这位边境杀手，他开始将他视为一个被困在杀人机器中的高智商之人。

He’d done evil things, but he was not evil.

他虽然做了坏事，但他并不坏。

They became friends ...

他们成为了朋友...

and oh, the horror.

哦，可怕的是。

Bowden came to this house in the trees next to the stream to strip everything down and start over.

鲍登来到溪边树林里的这座房子，把所有东西都拆掉并重新开始。

Writing the new book, finding a new way to write, has been his therapy.

写新书、寻找新的写作方式一直是他的治疗方法。

It makes perfect sense to me.

这对我来说非常有意义。

Bowden gets up at dawn and pours birdseed into two feeders and fills four hummingbird tubes with sugar water.

鲍登在黎明时起床，将鸟食倒入两个喂食器中，并在四个蜂鸟管中装满糖水。

He’s been doing this wherever he lives, for decades.

几十年来，无论他身在何处，他都一直这样做。

The birds are waiting for him, and within a minute there are 40, 60, 80 ...

鸟儿在等着他，一分钟之内就有40只、60只、80只……

too many to count.

多得数不过来。

I ask him what kind of birds we’re looking at.

我问他我们在看什么样的鸟。

“Broad-billed hummingbirds, white-winged doves, cardinals, brown-headed cowbirds, thick-billed kingbirds, lesser goldfinch, black-headed grosbeaks, Inca doves, mourning doves, violet-crowned hummingbirds, black-chinned hummingbirds.

“宽嘴蜂鸟、白翅鸽子、红雀、棕头牛鸟、厚嘴王鸟、小金翅雀、黑头蜡嘴鸟、印加鸽子、哀鸽、紫冠蜂鸟、黑下巴蜂鸟。

…

……

I go through 100 pounds of birdseed a month.”

我每个月要消耗 100 磅鸟食。”

He makes some coffee and we sit down in the same places as last night and he continues where he left off.

他煮了一些咖啡，我们坐在昨晚的同一个地方，他从上次停下的地方继续。

I don’t have to ask a question.

我不必问问题。

He knows why I’ve come.

他知道我为什么来。

“I’ve always felt alone,” he says.

“我一直感到孤独，”他说。

“I have a consciousness that separates me from other people.

“我有一种意识，将我与其他人区分开来。

I’m an animal, full of lust and desire.

我是一只动物，充满了情欲和欲望。

If people knew who I really am they wouldn’t like it.”

如果人们知道我的真实身份，他们就不会喜欢了。”

I’m thinking that’s how we all feel, sometimes, but never say it out loud.

我想这就是我们所有人的感受，有时，但永远不要大声说出来。

All in all, Bowden appears to be doing fine.

总而言之，鲍登似乎做得很好。

He’s going after the whale, and I hope he catches it.

他正在追鲸鱼，我希望他能抓住它。

Postscript from Bowden’s Blood Orchid , 1995: Imagine the problem is not physical.

鲍登的血兰花的后记，1995 年：想象一下问题不是身体上的。

Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned.

想象一下这个问题从来都不是物理问题，它不是生物多样性，不是臭氧层，不是温室效应，不是鲸鱼，不是古老的森林，不是失业，不是贫民窟的裂缝，不是堕胎，不是舌头在嘴里，不是随处可见的疾病，因为爱在漠不关心地进行着。

Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth.

想象一下，问题不是我们社会的某种综合症，可以通过委员会或法律或我们所谓的财富的重新分配来解决。

Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can affect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness …

想象一下，它更深入，直达我们所说的文明的核心，我们之外的任何人都无法影响真正的变化，我们的文明，我们的政府生病了，我们精神上有病，精神上已经死亡，我们所有的问题和危机都是这种更深层次疾病的症状……

then what are we to do?

那我们该怎么办呢？

Scott Carrier is a writer and documentarian based in Salt Lake City; his books include Running After Antelope , published in 2001, and his radio pieces have been aired on radio shows including Hearing Voices, This American Life, and All Things Considered.

斯科特·卡里尔 (Scott Carrier) 是一位居住在盐湖城的作家和纪录片制作人。他的著作包括 2001 年出版的《追羚羊》，他的广播作品曾在《聆听声音》、《美国生活》和《考虑到的一切》等广播节目中播出。