The Floating World
After Cora’s death I had a recurring dream.
科拉死后，我反复做了一个梦。
A heavy black cloud would pass over me.
一片沉重的乌云将掠过我的头顶。
The cloud was evil.
云是邪恶的。
I don’t mean that evil was among the incidental properties of the cloud, like its color or its state of matter, but that the essence of the cloud was evil, traveling only in order to fall.
我并不是说邪恶是云的附带属性之一，就像它的颜色或物质状态一样，而是说云的本质是邪恶的，它的旅行只是为了坠落。
As the cloud approached me, a change in the pressure of the dream medium would pin me down by the chest, leaving me unable to breathe.
当云接近我时，梦境介质压力的变化会将我压在胸口，让我无法呼吸。
Only once the cloud had passed could I gather enough air to scream.
只有当云层过去后，我才能聚集足够的空气来尖叫。
And this was how I woke the next day.
第二天我就是这样醒来的。
I reached for the bottle of water on my bedside table, hoping I had not woken Sybil in the neighboring room, and then I practiced the breathing exercise I had learned from a friend in remission.
我伸手去拿床头柜上的一瓶水，希望我没有吵醒隔壁房间的西比尔，然后我练习了从一位病情缓解的朋友那里学到的呼吸练习。
A gap in the curtains cut the streetlight into an accusatory finger pointing across the floorboards.
窗帘上的一个缝隙将路灯切割成一根指责的手指穿过地板。
I closed my eyes and felt the air move through my body, displacing panic.
我闭上眼睛，感觉空气在我的身体里流动，驱散了恐慌。
The absence of Cora was every morning a shock.
科拉的缺席每天早上都令人震惊。
Seeking solace in scale, I spun the material of my love for her into a silk thread that wrapped around every star in the galaxy.
为了寻求规模上的慰藉，我将我对她的爱的材料纺成一根丝线，包裹着银河系中的每一颗星星。
I thought about the microbes in my gut that would persist after my death as a diaspora, each of them finding new communities in foreign bodies and writing modernist novels in exile.
我想到了在我作为侨民去世后，我肠道中的微生物仍将继续存在，它们每个人都在异物中找到新的群落，并在流亡中写出现代主义小说。
With my mind’s eye I followed the beams of light carrying pictures of Cora on their journey through space, bent out of shape by gravitational fields but unimpeachably beautiful, until I came to a hubcap spinning on the forecourt of the petrol station next door to my childhood home and realized that I was dreaming.
我用心灵之眼跟随光束，载着科拉的照片穿越太空，它们被引力场弯曲变形，但无可挑剔的美丽，直到我来到我儿时家隔壁加油站前院的一个旋转的轮毂盖处，意识到我在做梦。
I woke for the second time into a room radiant with the morning.
我第二次醒来，发现房间里充满了早晨的光芒。
The spider that might, in combination with Sybil’s hallucinogens, have prompted these associations tiptoed across the white curtain rail, thinking itself unseen.
蜘蛛可能与西比尔的致幻剂结合起来，促使这些联想蹑手蹑脚地越过白色的窗帘栏杆，认为自己看不见。
I took a cold shower to shock the night’s excesses out of my system.
我洗了个冷水澡，把昨晚的过度行为从我的系统中驱逐出去。
The Technicolor dust motes dancing through the kitchen suggested that this plan had not entirely succeeded; that the garden was a network of incandescent lineaments corkscrewing through the ground to feed on the greenish sins of the dead was enough, on balance, to confirm it.
厨房里飞舞的彩色尘埃表明这个计划并没有完全成功。总的来说，花园是一个由炽热的线条组成的网络，在地面上盘旋，以死者的绿色罪恶为食，这足以证实这一点。
But the liveliness of this autumn day seemed benign, and I was pleased to take advantage of being awake before Rotimi to pack the stovetop machine with his superior coffee.
但这个秋日的生机似乎很温和，我很高兴能利用比罗蒂米早起的机会，在炉灶咖啡机里装上他的优质咖啡。
When the music on the radio was replaced by dispatches from a strictly limited intervention I turned it off.
当收音机里的音乐被严格限制的干预的消息取代时，我把它关掉了。
The news was to be avoided.
这个消息是要避免的。
As I searched for the expensive ginger-and-orange marmalade that I suspected Rotimi of hiding from me, it occurred to me that I should go to Tate Modern.
当我寻找昂贵的生姜和橙子果酱时，我怀疑罗蒂米向我隐瞒了它，我突然想到我应该去泰特现代美术馆。
I could spend that Saturday morning looking at Reith’s work in the collection, and thereby convince myself that its transcendence as art justified the compromise of my principles.
我可以在那个周六早上观看里斯收藏的作品，从而说服自己，它作为艺术的超越性证明了我对原则的妥协是合理的。
Because I really was conflicted about whether to take the offer.
因为我真的很矛盾要不要接受这个offer。
I would be working on what I knew to be a branding exercise for a luxury property development, which was difficult to square with my stated position on the corruption of art by corporate interests.
我将致力于豪华地产开发的品牌推广工作，这很难与我关于企业利益腐蚀艺术品的立场相一致。
But it was becoming clear that I was a terrible teacher, I wanted a way back into the career I had abandoned in the crisis precipitated by Cora’s death, and the money was very good.
但越来越明显的是，我是一个糟糕的老师，我想重新回到我在科拉去世引发的危机中放弃的职业生涯，而且钱非常好。
If you find the tinkle of empty nitrous oxide canisters when they are punted down the pavement beautiful, as I do, then London was very beautiful that morning.
如果你像我一样，发现空一氧化二氮罐被抛到人行道上时发出的叮当声很美，那么那天早上伦敦就非常美丽。
Trainers hung by their laces from telephone lines and a man with a heavily bandaged hand was eating peri-peri chicken outside the overground station.
运动鞋的鞋带挂在电话线上，一名手上缠着厚重绷带的男子正在地上车站外吃着鸡肉。
At Blackfriars I bought a croissant and carried it to the garden at St. Paul’s, where I sat on a bench, dedicated to Wisdom, beneath a window decorated with skulls.
在黑衣修士店，我买了一个羊角面包，然后把它带到圣保罗教堂的花园，坐在装饰有头骨的窗户下方一条供奉智慧的长凳上。
The sun was diffused by mottled clouds into a blueish glow.
阳光被斑驳的云朵漫射成蓝色的光芒。
Feeling philanthropic, I dropped some crumbs onto the grass so that a swarm of ants might share in my breakfast.
出于仁慈之心，我在草地上撒了一些面包屑，以便一群蚂蚁可以分享我的早餐。
A column was organized, by means I will never understand, from which one confused worker became detached.
一个专栏以我永远无法理解的方式组织起来，一名困惑的工人从中脱离了出来。
He wheeled round in panicked circles, and so I encouraged him onto my finger, rotating my hand to keep him from falling as I raised him to eye level.
他惊慌地转了一圈，所以我鼓励他用我的手指支撑，旋转我的手以防止他跌倒，同时将他举到与眼睛齐平的高度。
I told him that all would be well in this world, the best of all possible worlds, and then I lowered him to the ground.
我告诉他，这个世界一切都会好起来，这是所有可能的世界中最好的，然后我把他放倒在地。
That we cannot identify with other forms of consciousness might be the most moronic of the many moronic assertions of western philosophy, because the city was that morning shot through with electric sympathy.
我们无法认同其他形式的意识，这可能是西方哲学众多愚蠢断言中最愚蠢的一个，因为那天早晨，这座城市充满了强烈的同情心。
From the bridge I watched illuminated elevators rise like bright sap through glass buildings, while the river beneath me repeated and the birches on the bank swayed to the rhythms etched into their bark.
从桥上，我看到发光的电梯像明亮的汁液一样穿过玻璃建筑升起，而我脚下的河流不断重复，岸边的白桦树随着树皮上刻着的节奏而摇摆。
Inside the museum, shoals of robot jellyfish floated on swivel-jointed propellors over schoolchildren, and the air was thick with patchouli.
在博物馆内，成群结队的机器水母乘着旋转接头的螺旋桨漂浮在学童上方，空气中弥漫着浓浓的广藿香味。
I felt, on the escalator, that I was perfectly in time.
在自动扶梯上，我感觉自己来得正是时候。
I would have walked straight past the painting, having seen it a thousand times before, had the black grid lines separating its primary-colored rectangles not been vibrating like plucked strings.
如果分隔原色矩形的黑色网格线没有像拨动的琴弦一样振动，我会径直走过这幅画，因为我已经看过它一千次了。
I had first come across this canvas fifteen years ago, on a school trip from the less credulous North, most of which I spent laughing with my classmates about what people were prepared to accept as art.
十五年前，我第一次看到这幅画，是在一次来自不那么轻信的北方的学校旅行中，大部分时间我都在和同学们一起欢笑，谈论人们准备接受什么艺术。
But this painting had stopped me.
但这幅画阻止了我。
The three chords in primary colors, a truth that didn’t need explaining.
原色三和弦，无需解释的真理。
No aristocrats, no symbolism, no lies.
没有贵族，没有象征主义，没有谎言。
A painting clear as love.
一幅清晰如爱的画。
And now, back in the narrative present, this composition that I had revered for its conviction was trembling out of its frame.
现在，回到叙事现在，这部我曾因其信念而崇敬的作品正在颤抖着脱离它的框架。
I hurried away.
我赶紧走开。
Reith’s most famous work was housed in an extension paid for by a pharmaceutical company’s success in addicting millions of people to opioids.
里斯最著名的作品是由一家制药公司资助的扩建项目，该公司成功地使数百万人对阿片类药物上瘾。
This “interactive sculptural installation,” as the wall text described it, consisted of three Perspex cubes resembling vividly colored snow globes.
正如墙上的文字所描述的那样，这个“互动雕塑装置”由三个有机玻璃立方体组成，类似于色彩鲜艳的雪球。
The flurries of pigment inside them were dispersed by bursts of air delivered through the base of the box.
它们里面的颜料流被从盒子底部输送的阵阵空气驱散了。
The frequency of these small explosions was, as the same text informed visitors, determined by feedback from air quality meters in cities across the country.
正如同一篇文章告诉参观者的那样，这些小爆炸的频率是由全国城市空气质量计的反馈决定的。
The middle box, for instance, was correlated with a playground in East London.
例如，中间的盒子与东伦敦的一个游乐场相关。
The poorer the air being inhaled by children in Hackney, the more regularly the dust was agitated and the thicker the storm and richer the color inside the box.
哈克尼的孩子们吸入的空气越差，灰尘就越频繁地被搅动，风暴就越浓重，盒子内的颜色就越丰富。
The pigments were matched to sunsets painted by Turner and Monet, the sublime effects of which were caused by pollution from the Industrial Revolution, and so the work was likewise beautiful in direct proportion to the poisoning of our atmosphere.
这些颜料与特纳和莫奈画的日落相匹配，其壮丽的效果是由工业革命的污染造成的，因此这件作品同样美丽，与我们大气的污染成正比。
When the air is perfectly safe, the boxes will be transparent, as if one of Constable’s cloudscapes were uncannily to clear.
当空气完全安全时，盒子将是透明的，就好像康斯特布尔的一幅云景出奇地清晰一样。
I still associated this work with Cora.
我仍然将这项工作与科拉联系在一起。
Before we were married, five years after my first visit to the museum, she had taken me to an exhibition of Reith’s work on an industrial estate in Deptford.
在我们结婚之前，也就是我第一次参观博物馆五年后，她带我去德普特福德的一个工业区参观了里斯的作品展览。
Back then I was working as a real journalist and still tended to think of contemporary art, if I thought of it at all, as an exclusionary etiquette or an inscrutable financial instrument.
那时我是一名真正的记者，并且仍然倾向于将当代艺术（如果我有的话）视为一种排他性的礼仪或一种难以理解的金融工具。
I hadn’t realized that art could be so at odds with the idea of itself, that it might advocate for its own extinction.
我没有意识到艺术可能与自身的理念如此不一致，以至于它可能会主张自己的灭绝。
I was enthralled.
我被迷住了。
It became the first work of art I ever wrote about.
它成为我写过的第一件艺术作品。
Now, as then, shifting white shapes had been projected onto the walls around the boxes.
现在，和那时一样，不断变化的白色形状被投射到盒子周围的墙壁上。
Standing alone in that dark room, it seemed momentarily that the dust might settle into constellations, that the loosely biomorphic patterns would resolve into words and phrases.
独自站在那个黑暗的房间里，似乎一瞬间尘埃可能会沉淀成星座，松散的生物形态模式将分解为单词和短语。
Overwhelmed by something like vertigo, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I found Cora standing next to me, smiling in that characteristically crooked way, the light of seven heavens flooding through her.
我因眩晕感而不知所措，闭上了眼睛，当我睁开眼睛时，我发现科拉站在我旁边，以那种典型的弯曲方式微笑，七层天堂的光芒从她身上涌出。
There was a burst of dust in one of the boxes and shouts from the corridor and the image of Cora beside me flickered out, leaving only the upturned edges of a catlike smile, and the memory of her floated up in a rose-pink miasma to break against the ceiling.
包厢里扬起一阵灰尘，走廊里传来叫喊声，我身边科拉的影像一闪而过，只留下猫般微笑的上扬边缘，而关于她的记忆则在玫瑰粉色的瘴气中飘浮起来，冲破了天花板。
Angry to have been interrupted in this vision, I followed the shouts to a young woman standing beside a painting smeared with blood.
我对自己的幻象被打断而感到愤怒，顺着喊叫声向站在一幅沾满血迹的画旁的年轻女子喊道。
“This is happening,” she was shouting to an audience of camera phones.
“这正在发生，”她对着可拍照手机的观众大喊。
“Open your eyes!” Her T-shirt was printed with the logo of one of the many recently proscribed organizations and the veins in her neck were taut.
“睁开眼睛！”她的 T 恤上印有最近被禁止的众多组织之一的标志，她脖子上的血管绷紧。
The prospect of her imprisonment so depressed me that I pushed back against the tide of rubberneckers into a gallery scattered with sand in re-creation of a Brazilian beach.
她被监禁的前景让我感到非常沮丧，以至于我顶着橡皮颈椎的浪潮，退回到一个散布着沙子的画廊，以重建巴西海滩。
Hanging beside a replica wooden hut was a birdcage with a note explaining that the parrot had been removed for its own mental well-being.
复制品木屋旁边挂着一个鸟笼，上面有一张纸条，解释说这只鹦鹉被移走是为了它自己的精神健康。
In the adjoining room a long jag of bronze lightning was suspended from the ceiling over scattered casts of reindeer droppings.
在隔壁的房间里，天花板上悬挂着一条长长的青铜闪电，上面散落着驯鹿粪便。
I imagined myself in the parrot’s place, pressed without consent into the service of art history, forced to stare every day out at the work of this tiresome German charlatan, and I felt its despair.
我想象自己处于鹦鹉的位置，未经同意就被迫为艺术史服务，被迫每天盯着这个令人厌烦的德国江湖骗子的作品，我感受到了它的绝望。
Alarm bells started ringing.
警钟开始响起。
My kidney ached.
我的肾疼。
Policemen hurried past me, batons drawn.
警察拿着警棍从我身边匆匆走过。
I sat down for a moment on a marble bench inscribed with the phrase IT’S CRUCIAL TO HAVE AN ACTIVE FANTASY LIFE and put my hand to my heart to slow it, practicing for the second time that day the breathing exercises on which I had become reliant.
我在一张大理石长凳上坐了一会儿，上面刻着“拥有活跃的幻想生活至关重要”，我把手放在心上放慢节奏，当天第二次练习我一直依赖的呼吸练习。
A young girl inserted herself into one of a series of metal shelves installed on the wall, repurposing a sculpture beloved of bald academics for a bunk bed.
一名年轻女孩将自己插入墙上安装的一系列金属架子中的一个，将光头学者喜爱的雕塑重新用作双层床。
Inspired by her disregard for the rules, I pushed through an alarmed door and ran down a flight of metal stairs until I broke with relief into the light of the day.
受到她无视规则的启发，我推开一扇装有警报的门，跑下一段金属楼梯，直到我如释重负地冲进了白天的阳光下。
The first step toward a better society, I reflected while queuing outside a Routemaster bus repurposed as a riverbank café, would be to burn down all the museums.
当我在一辆改造成河岸咖啡馆的 Routemaster 巴士外排队时，我想到，迈向更美好社会的第一步就是烧毁所有博物馆。
Licking the whipped cream from the top of my hot chocolate, I watched diaphanous skeins of light stretch between mirrored buildings and thought, Fuck everyone else.
我舔着热巧克力顶部的生奶油，看着透明的光线在镜面建筑之间伸展，心想，操其他人。
Here was my chance to get out of London, this counterfeit of death with its everywhere rage and its moribund culture and its smug population and its streets steeped in resentment and the sky pressing down like a chloroform rag.
这是我离开伦敦的机会，这个假冒死亡的地方，到处都是愤怒，垂死的文化，自鸣得意的人口，充满怨恨的街道，天空像氯仿抹布一样压下来。
I took the appearance of Cora for a sign of her approval.
我把科拉的出现视为她认可的标志。
I neither wanted nor needed anyone else’s.
我既不想要也不需要别人的。
That night I signed the contract and the NDA without so much as skimming the small print, before ordering in pizza as a concession to my flatmates for my betrayal of their values.
那天晚上，我连小字都没有浏览就签署了合同和保密协议，然后点了一份披萨，作为对我背叛室友价值观的让步。
Sybil seemed indifferent and Rotimi was understanding, even if his righteousness had shaded into something more like worry, and together we watched a film about a sentient planet that could make real the unconscious fears of orbiting astronauts.
西比尔似乎漠不关心，罗蒂米也很理解，即使他的正义已经变成了更多类似担忧的东西。我们一起观看了一部关于一颗有知觉的星球的电影，它可以让轨道宇航员的无意识恐惧成为现实。
In the morning I received an email from Asha to say that my flight to Athens had been booked and accommodation arranged.
早上我收到了阿莎的邮件，说我去雅典的航班已经订好了，住宿也安排好了。
I would start in the spring.
我会从春天开始。
Excerpted from The Floating World by Ben Eastham.
摘自本·伊斯特姆的《漂浮的世界》。
Published by Astra House.
由阿斯特拉之家出版。
Copyright © Ben Eastham 2026.
版权所有 © 本·伊斯特姆 2026。
All rights reserved.
保留所有权利。