The Rhyl Poster
They’d ‘met’, then, in Switzerland: in the Italian part, Ticino, beside Lake Maggiore.
他们是在瑞士“相遇”的：在意大利的提契诺州，马焦雷湖畔。
To be precise: above it, on a mountain.
准确的说：在它的上方，一座山上。
The International Association for Emergent Legal Theory had convened a three-day conference at which scholars, practitioners and students disported themselves around the suites and grounds of a hotel built in the Bauhaus style – bold, white, orthogonal – shuttling from airy, glass-walled meeting rooms to airier, white railing-ringed terrace and thence onwards over tennis courts, tea gardens and herb gardens, along wooded pathways running past dilapidated timber stages, empty sunken Roman baths and other performance or assembly spaces of increasingly vague designation as they engaged in presentations and panel discussions, powwows, breakouts and less structured modes of congress.
国际新兴法律理论协会召开了一次为期三天的会议，会上，学者、从业者和学生在一家以包豪斯风格建造的酒店的套房和场地中嬉戏——大胆、白色、正交——从通风的玻璃墙会议室穿梭到通风的白色栏杆环绕的露台，然后越过网球场、茶园和药草园，沿着树木繁茂的小路穿过破旧的木舞台、空荡荡的罗马剧场。浴室和其他表演或集会空间的名称越来越模糊，因为它们用于演示和小组讨论、仪式、分组讨论和结构松散的会议模式。
Pirotti’s role there wasn’t really clear.
皮罗蒂在那里的角色并不明确。
He seemed, right from the off, to be in with the hosts: huddling among them, glad-handing speakers of the opening addresses, insouciantly commandeering reserved seats in the front row, laughing an in-crowd quarter-second before jokes cracked on the podium opened themselves up to secondary, public waves of comprehension .
他似乎从一开始就与主持人融为一体：挤在他们中间，热情地向开幕致辞的演讲者致意，漫不经心地霸占前排的预留座位，在讲台上讲笑话之前，他在人群中大笑了四分之一秒，然后才引发了次要的、公众的理解浪潮。
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But he gave no talk himself, nor was his name listed among the organisers, the only (synecdochal) indication of his presence there being the inclusion in the programme, among a small-print appendix of institutes, alliances and federations, of the outfit under whose flag he travelled: Centre for Juridical Collaboration.
但他本人没有发表讲话，组织者中也没有列出他的名字，他出席会议的唯一（比喻）迹象是，在该计划的一个小字附录中，在机构、联盟和联合会的小字附录中，提到了他所率领的机构：司法合作中心。
Stanton, later, would check out this CJC: it existed, inasmuch as it was entered in the Council of Europe’s official register of NGOs.
后来斯坦顿检查了这个 CJC：它确实存在，因为它已被记录在欧洲委员会的非政府组织官方登记册中。
Its very title, though, was a misnomer: it possessed a centre neither in the architectural sense (a building or HQ) nor in the more structural or discursive meaning of the word (nucleus, steering board, newsletter), instead folding and doubling across other contexts, institutions, academic papers like the maze that meandered across the hotel’s main lawn below the terrace, its kinks and forkings offsetting the building’s right-angled modernist clarity.
然而，它的标题本身就用词不当：它既没有建筑意义上的中心（建筑物或总部），也没有这个词的更具结构性或话语意义的中心（核心、指导板、时事通讯），而是在其他环境、机构、学术论文中折叠和折叠，就像蜿蜒穿过酒店露台下方主草坪的迷宫一样，它的扭结和分叉抵消了建筑直角现代主义的清晰度。
Like a spirit of the maze, Pirotti would pop out as if from nowhere during the conference: at bar counters, from behind rocks and abstract sculptures, on a boat trip to an island in the middle of the lake, back up the mountain in the park’s Zen Garden or its Elisarion Pavilion, his small frame back-screened by the rotunda’s fin-de-siècle cyclorama of male adolescent nudes and butterflies .
就像迷宫中的精灵一样，皮罗蒂会在会议期间不知从何处突然出现：在吧台前，从岩石和抽象雕塑后面，乘船前往湖中的一个岛屿，回到公园禅宗花园或 Elisarion 展馆的山上，他的小身躯被圆形大厅的世纪末男性青少年裸体和蝴蝶的天幕所遮蔽。
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Monte Verità’s hotchpotch collage of styles, allusions, epochs had been shaped by its episodic history: social reformers, early-uptake vegans and Freikörperkultur naturists, boosters of naked calisthenics, esotericists, theosophists, anarchists, avant-garde dancers, painters, poets and, yes, even legal theorists had wended their way up there over the previous century or so, all fellow travellers on the long, serpentine path to enlightenment they somehow hoped would, if not culminate there, at least provide them with a vantage point from which a part of transcendental wisdom’s larger vista might be visible.
维里塔山的风格、典故和时代的大杂烩是由它的历史事件所塑造的：社会改革者、早期素食主义者和自由文化自然主义者、裸体健美操的支持者、神秘主义者、神智学家、无政府主义者、前卫舞者、画家、诗人，是的，甚至法律理论家也在上个世纪或上世纪来到了那里。因此，所有在通往启蒙之路的漫长而蜿蜒的道路上的同路人，他们都希望，即使不能到达终点，至少也能为他们提供一个有利的位置，从那里可以看到超然智慧的更大远景的一部分。
Mountain of Truth – or as the townspeople of Ascona and Locarno termed it, piqued by tales told by their neighbours who delivered food to and did laundry for the unpragmatic seekers of higher consciousness on the hilltop, of balabiott , nude cavorting.
真理之山——或者正如阿斯科纳和洛迦诺的镇民所说，他们的邻居讲述的故事激起了他们的兴趣，他们为山顶上追求更高意识的不务实的追求者送食物和洗衣服，巴拉比奥特，裸体嬉戏。
Collective parading of bare flesh before the sun god may have given over some decades before the IAELT meeting to team-building exercises during corporate retreats, homegrown turnips and beetroots to a Michelin-starred restaurant, but something of the old licentiousness still hovered in the mountain air.
在IAELT会议之前的几十年里，在太阳神面前集体裸露的游行可能已经成为公司务虚会上的团队建设活动，在米其林星级餐厅里吃自产的萝卜和甜菜根，但山间的空气中仍然弥漫着一些古老的放荡气息。
No sooner, each day, were the presentations and discussions done than cocktail hour kicked in, which hour segued effortlessly into pre-dinner Proseccos, then a two-wine menu, more drinks served on the terrace while DJs set up their decks on the lawn for dance sessions which ran into the small hours, white lines far straighter than the maze’s disappearing intermittently up altitude-dilated nostrils, room numbers treated more as starting squares on some great snakes-and-ladders board than fixed accommodations.
每天，演示和讨论一结束，鸡尾酒时间就开始了，这个时间毫不费力地进入了餐前普罗塞克酒，然后是两种葡萄酒菜单，露台上供应了更多饮料，DJ们在草坪上搭起他们的甲板，进行舞蹈会议，一直持续到凌晨，白线比迷宫要直得多，间歇性地在海拔高度上扩张鼻孔，房间号更像是一些巨大的蛇和梯子上的起始方块。食宿较固定住宿。
Stanton hooked up with a grad student named Moira, a Slovenian with dark hair and novel takes on both Internal Energy Market rules and plein-air coitus.
斯坦顿勾搭上了一位名叫莫伊拉的研究生，莫伊拉是斯洛文尼亚人，一头黑发，对内部能源市场规则和户外性交有着新颖的看法。
After a blissed-up dawn tryst on the hillside, she wandered off, her pale form swallowed by magnolias and pine trees, and Stanton, loitering alone, suddenly cold, pulled on his clothes and staggered back in the direction of the hotel, only to run, not twenty feet away, into Pirotti, who immediately removed his coat and handed it to him.
在山坡上度过了一次幸福的黎明幽会后，她漫步离开，她苍白的身躯被木兰和松树吞没了，斯坦顿独自徘徊，突然感到寒冷，穿上衣服，摇摇晃晃地朝旅馆的方向走去，结果跑到不到二十英尺远的皮罗蒂身上，皮罗蒂立即脱下外套递给他。
‘Lake breeze,’ the older man said.
“湖风，”老人说。
‘And the air expands as it rises.’
“空气在上升时会膨胀。”
Had he been watching them?
他一直在看着他们吗？
He wore a kind of knowing smile – the same one that he’d worn throughout the conference, the one that primed his face to launch itself into a laugh that fraction of an instant before others’.
他脸上挂着一种会意的微笑——和他在整个会议期间一直挂着的微笑一样，正是这种微笑让他的脸在其他人笑之前的那一瞬间就笑了起来。
As they skirted the tennis court’s meshed-wire fence he told Stanton:
当他们绕过网球场的铁丝网围栏时，他告诉斯坦顿：
‘I was much taken by your presentation.’
“你的演讲让我很感动。”
‘It was pretty – it was, standard, you know: pretty standard stuff,’ Stanton responded, his habitual stutter expanded, like the air’s particles, by a mid-sentence shiver.
“这很漂亮——这是，标准，你知道：非常标准的东西，”斯坦顿回答道，他习惯性的口吃随着句子中间的颤抖而扩大，就像空气中的颗粒一样。
‘Not at all,’ Pirotti countered in a tone now serious.
“一点也不，”皮罗蒂反驳道，语气现在很严肃。
‘There was a clarity to it – made all the more sharp, I thought, by the counterintuitive direction of your argument.’
“它很清晰——我认为，由于你的论点反直觉的方向，它变得更加尖锐。”
‘Counter .
‘计数器。
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.’ Stanton repeated, but gave up on trying to formulate a phrase.
”斯坦顿重复道，但放弃了尝试组织一个短语。
His paper had been on the difference between lex lata and lex ferenda , or the law as it stands now and the law as it will or should be – a pretty classical distinction with which any first-year law student would have been familiar; his twist on it had been to elevate the commonplace derivative de lege ferenda ( ‘ with view to coming law’) into the model for a certain temporality or ‘tense’, a future anterior or not-yet-arrived post hoc , under which legal consciousness (he suggested) was obliged to find its presence, or its present.
他的论文是关于现有法和拟议法之间的区别，或者说现在的法律和它将要或应该的法律——这是任何一年级法学院学生都会熟悉的非常经典的区别；他对此的转折是将常见的衍生词“delegeferenda”（“考虑到即将到来的法律”）提升为某种暂时性或“时态”的模型，一种未来的预先或尚未到达的事后事实，在这种模型下，法律意识（他认为）有义务找到它的存在或它的现在。
‘Would you send it to me?’ Pirotti asked as the hotel loomed into view.
“你能把它寄给我吗？”当酒店隐约可见时，皮罗蒂问道。
Stanton muttered that he would and climbed the steps, for once, to his own room.
斯坦顿低声说他会的，然后爬上台阶，这一次，回到了自己的房间。
It was the fact of waking up with Pirotti’s coat still on him that reminded him to honour this half-consciously made promise, and the obligation to return the garment that occasioned their next conversation, as they boarded one of two shuttle-buses taking delegates on a field trip to a nearby valley in which an apparently renowned musician, avant-garde in his own field as denizens of Monte Verità’s various erstwhile sects had been in theirs, performed a composition that he mixed live on a deck into which kites, flown high above them by student-assistants, fed source sounds – wind, fluttering of canvas, echoes from surrounding mountains – down vibrating wires, the combined melodies (or threnodies, or fugues) being transmitted onwards from the deck to cordless headphones with which all members of the audience were issued.
醒来时，皮罗蒂的外套还穿着在他身上，这一事实提醒他要兑现这个半自觉的承诺，以及归还衣服的义务，这引发了他们的下一次谈话，当时他们登上了两辆穿梭巴士中的一辆，载着代表们前往附近的一个山谷进行实地考察，一位显然是著名的音乐家，在他自己的领域中是先锋派，是蒙特维里塔以前各个教派的居民，他在他们的山谷中演奏了一首他混合的作品。现场表演在甲板上进行，学生助理在高空放风筝，将源声音——风、帆布的飘动、周围群山的回声——沿着振动线传送，组合的旋律（或挽歌或赋格曲）从甲板上传输到所有观众都配有的无绳耳机。
‘You mentioned,’ Pirotti said as they were donning these, ‘that the lege ferenda insight came to you while you were penning an opinion on a CJEU case touching on criminal law .
“你提到，”当他们穿上这些衣服时，皮罗蒂说道，“当你就欧洲法院涉及刑法的案件撰写意见时，你就想到了关于法律草案的见解……”
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Nodding confirmation, Stanton reached down to his left shin, which the dampness of the meadow, or perhaps the frequent shift in altitude and pressure, was causing to play up, the scar angled across it throbbing like a compass needle drawn into alignment with a true north of dull pain.
斯坦顿点头确认，把手伸向左小腿，草地的潮湿，或者可能是海拔和气压的频繁变化，导致了左小腿的出现，疤痕倾斜地穿过它，像罗盘针一样抽动着，与钝痛的真正北方对齐。
Pirotti again smiled – and, smiling, managed to convey a mute assurance that, without being told, he knew just what was ailing Stanton – and knew why, knew all about the asymptotic bullet and its mark .
皮罗蒂再次微笑——微笑着，成功地传达了一种无声的保证，即在没有被告知的情况下，他知道斯坦顿的病到底是什么——并且知道为什么，知道关于渐近子弹及其标记的一切。
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He reached into his pocket and pulled out a canister of tablets, two of which he pressed into Stanton’s palm, which had, as though in anticipation of this handover, unfolded.
他把手伸进口袋，掏出一罐药片，将其中两片塞进斯坦顿的手掌里，斯坦顿的手掌仿佛期待着这次交接，展开了。
Stanton had no water on him.
斯坦顿身上没有水。
Finding someone who did took a few minutes.
找到这样做的人花了几分钟。
Even after procuring this, he delayed downing either pill, preferring instead to contemplate them for a while against his skin, intrigued by their pale cyan backgrounds with the navy skeins, their cambered upper surfaces, the enigmatic p and b carved into these, the letters separated from each other by deep trenches: defiles between stamped and rounded peaks, pillow-like swellings – miniature terrain as pronounced as that of the landscape all around him.
即使在拿到这个之后，他还是推迟了服用任何一颗药丸，而是更愿意在皮肤上观察它们一段时间，对它们带有海军绞线的淡青色背景、它们的弧形上表面、雕刻在其中的神秘的p和b、字母彼此之间被深沟隔开感兴趣：压印和圆形山峰之间的沟壑、枕头般的隆起——微型地形与他周围的风景一样明显。
Finding a spot in this, a soft clump of grass rising to form a bank against which he could rest his head, he washed the first one back, then settled in to listen to the kite performance which was just then beginning.
他找到了一个地方，一丛柔软的草丛升起，形成了一个可以让他把头靠在上面的地方，他把第一个草洗了回去，然后坐下来听刚刚开始的风筝表演。
Despite not being produced by instruments as such, the sequences Stanton found playing in his ears were strangely musical; their arrangement, through its patterning, the dynamism of its counterpoint and dissonance, almost symphonic.
尽管不是由乐器本身产生的，斯坦顿发现在他耳中播放的序列却具有奇怪的音乐性；他们的编曲，通过其模式、对位法和不和谐音的活力，几乎是交响乐。
For the first quarter-hour stretch, he presumed that the content he was hearing, its constituent timbres and pitches, belonged to the kites, that the composer’s trick had been to turn these hovering objects, their materials, into producers of tone and phrase.
在前一刻钟的时间里，他推测他所听到的内容，其构成的音色和音高，属于风筝，作曲家的技巧是将这些盘旋的物体及其材料变成音调和乐句的产生者。
After a while, though, he came to realise that the kites were operating more as microphones, relaying calls and responses already ricocheting around the various strata into which they’d been hoisted, as though by an eavesdropper, to spy on whatever conversations happened to drift through their resonant box-frames: birdsong, thunderclouds in neighbouring valleys, distant cars and trains.
但过了一段时间，他开始意识到，风筝更多的是像麦克风一样工作，转发已经在它们被吊入的各个地层周围反弹的呼叫和响应，就像被窃听者一样，监视在它们共振的盒子框架中发生的任何对话：鸟鸣声、邻近山谷中的雷雨云、远处的汽车和火车。
At one point a low and gut-vibrating chopchopchop started up quietly, then grew, and grew still more until it had become the passage’s dominant chord.
有一次，一首低沉而令人肠胃颤抖的chochopchop悄然响起，然后越来越大，越来越大，直到它成为该乐段的主导和弦。
It wasn’t until some minutes later that his eye, gazing down the canyon that extended several miles eastwards from his feet, picked out (first gnat-sized, then, larger, still blowfly-fuzzy, and then suddenly, aggressively pulled into focus) the helicopter that was generating that particular track.
直到几分钟后，他的眼睛凝视着从他脚下向东延伸几英里的峡谷，才认出了正在产生那条特定轨迹的直升机（首先是蚊子大小，然后是更大，仍然像苍蝇一样模糊，然后突然，咄咄逼人地聚焦）。
In Iraq, kids had often flown kites, for fun – but also, more strategically, for signalling, counter-surveillance, sometimes even small-arms delivery .
在伊拉克，孩子们经常放风筝，是为了好玩，但更具战略意义的是，为了发出信号、反监视，有时甚至是运送小型武器。
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There was another kite-scene too, a memory Stanton couldn’t quite place .
还有另一个放风筝的场景，斯坦顿记不清了。
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Pirotti’s pill was coming on now; he’d presumed that it was codeine or perhaps, as per the night before, MDMA, but this was stronger – some form of opiate, for sure, although not oxycodone either; he’d have recognised that, too.
皮罗蒂的药丸即将起效。他推测那是可待因，或者也许是前一天晚上的摇头丸，但这更强烈——肯定是某种形式的鸦片制剂，尽管也不是羟考酮；他也会认识到这一点的。
This was both harder and softer: more spread out, connective.
这既硬又软：更加分散，更具连接性。
From beneath his back, the springy grass bed, as cushioned as his earphones, seemed to run beyond itself, in a framework of roots and rhizomes, to the far horizon; from above him, somewhere in the expanse between eye and eyelid (shorter than the distance to the kites and at the same time larger than the one between him and the sky’s proscenium above these), a boy’s face was looking down, smiling as well .
在他的背下，有弹性的草床，就像他的耳机一样，在树根和根茎的框架中，似乎超越了自身，一直延伸到遥远的地平线。在他的上方，眼睛和眼睑之间的某处（比到风筝的距离短，同时又比他和风筝上方的天空台口之间的距离大），一张男孩的脸正向下看，脸上也带着微笑。
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Had Pirotti known about the wound?
皮罗蒂知道伤口的事吗？
Did he do that much research on each of his quarries?
他对每个采石场都做了那么多研究吗？
Or was he intuiting his way into Stanton’s interior as he went along – marking its fall levels, its contours, weak spots in its layout, vectors most suited to advances?
或者他是在行进过程中凭直觉进入斯坦顿的内部——标记出它的坠落高度、轮廓、布局中的弱点、最适合前进的矢量？
After the kite concert ended, he continued setting up his beachhead:
风筝音乐会结束后，他继续布阵：
‘I would love to see the notes you made while drafting that opinion,’ he said as they sat together on the way back to the hotel.
“我很想看看你在起草该意见时所做的笔记，”在返回酒店的路上他们坐在一起时他说道。
‘For my eyes only, of course: I wouldn’t circulate it any further.’
“当然，只是为了我的眼睛：我不会再传播它了。”
‘Notes I .
‘注释我。
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Oh, yes, sure,’ said Stanton, nodding out, still thinking about music.
哦，是的，当然，”斯坦顿点点头说，心里仍然想着音乐。
Later, under the aegis of the second tablet, he fired these on after the paper he’d sent earlier.
后来，在第二块平板电脑的支持下，他在之前发送的论文之后启动了这些平板电脑。
He’d never have done this in Luxembourg, or anywhere else, in fact – but Switzerland .
事实上，他从来没有在卢森堡或其他任何地方做过这样的事——除了瑞士。
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If neutrality had always been that country’s USP, then Monte Verità was Switzerland’s own Switzerland: unworldly, elevated zone of transient exchange, nebulous meeting point of vagrant times and places set in timekeeping’s own backyard.
如果说中立性一直是这个国家的独特卖点，那么维里塔山就是瑞士自己的瑞士：超凡脱俗的、短暂交流的高地、流浪时间的模糊交汇点和计时员自己后院的地点。
If its anachronistic nature, its strange overlay of periods and zeitgeists, seemed to hoist it out of time and hold it there suspended, then for the three days he spent there all rules and all prohibitions seemed suspended too.
如果说它不合时宜的性质，它奇怪的时代和时代精神的叠加，似乎把它从时间中吊起并悬置在那里，那么在他在那里度过的三天里，所有的规则和所有的禁令似乎也都悬置了。
Juridical Collaboration: up here on the mountain it made sense – seemed to express a spirit of the hive, of the collective.
司法合作：在山上这是有道理的——似乎表达了蜂巢和集体的精神。
It wasn’t until later, back in Luxembourg, that the word’s second sense impressed itself on him.
直到后来回到卢森堡，这个词的第二个含义才给他留下了深刻的印象。
Collaboration : of course.
合作：当然。
Was that what he’d become?
他就变成这样了吗？
A collaborator .
一个合作者。
.
。
.
。
On the last day of the conference, Pirotti, observing Stanton reach down once again to rub his shin, asked him about his wound.
会议的最后一天，皮罗蒂看到斯坦顿再次伸手揉搓他的小腿，就向他询问了伤口的情况。
When Stanton told him where he’d got it, he smiled knowingly again.
当斯坦顿告诉他从哪里得到它时，他又会意地笑了。
‘Old Operation TELIC,’ he said.
“旧的 TELIC 行动，”他说。
‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.
‘大规模杀伤性武器。
How did that go?’
进展如何？
Stanton wordlessly returned the smile, mouth set in a bitter twist.
斯坦顿无言地回以微笑，嘴角苦涩地扭曲着。
‘It’s superficial,’ Stanton told him.
“这很肤浅，”斯坦顿告诉他。
All the same, he asked Pirotti what he’d given him.
尽管如此，他还是问皮罗蒂给了他什么。
‘ Petit bleu ,’ Pirotti answered obtusely.
“小蓝色，”皮罗蒂迟钝地回答。
‘Blur?’ Stanton phonetically repeated.
“模糊？”斯坦顿用语音重复道。
‘ Bleu : blue.
’ 蓝：蓝色。
A little blue.
有点蓝色。
The name comes from the old pneumatic vacuum tubes that used to carry telegrams – well, letters really – around Paris at super-fast speed: analogue emails, more than a century avant la lettre .
这个名字来自于过去在巴黎以超快的速度传送电报（嗯，实际上是信件）的老式气动真空管：模拟电子邮件，一个多世纪以来的先锋。
You could get your message, written on blue paper enclosed in a canister, from one side of the city to another in just minutes.
您可以在短短几分钟内将写在蓝纸上并装在罐子里的信息从城市的一侧发送到另一侧。
It’s either from that or from a type of Marseille staranise pastis which had that name too; I’m not quite clear which .
它要么来自那个地方，要么来自一种也有这个名字的马赛星茴香茴香酒。我不太清楚是哪个。
.
。
.’
.’
‘Start-up.
‘启动。
Small pharma.
小药厂。
Prototype.
原型。
Approval pending.
待批准。
I have – colleague of mine, or associate really – a guy in the Netherlands: an architect, or rather urban planner, who’s the partner of the CEO of a research group operating under provisional licence from the EMA.
我有一个——我的同事，或者说真正的同事——一个荷兰人：一名建筑师，或者更确切地说是城市规划师，他是一个研究小组首席执行官的合伙人，该研究小组在 EMA 的临时许可下运作。
This guy – the CEO – sits on the board of an NGO with whom the CJC are allied, and he has .
这个人——首席执行官——是一个与 CJC 结盟的非政府组织的董事会成员，而他……。
.
。
.’
.’
Stanton lost track, among the acronyms’ proliferating onslaught, of the chain of hook-ups.
在缩写词激增的冲击中，斯坦顿迷失了这一连串的联系。
That didn’t matter, though.
不过，这并不重要。
By the time he descended for the last time from the maze and the gardens and the cocktails and the post-historical balabiott , he’d been handed his own canister of petits bleus , and the bare bones of the arrangement with Mehrtens had been set in place, if not yet named as such.
当他最后一次从迷宫、花园、鸡尾酒和后历史巴拉比奥特下来时，他已经收到了自己的小布鲁斯罐，与梅尔滕斯的安排的基本框架已经就位，如果还没有这样命名的话。
Pirotti framed it as a casual, offhand favour, of no consequence to him, Stanton or Mehrtens – just an ‘option’, ‘there’, if Stanton wanted to avail himself of it.
皮罗蒂将其视为一种随意的、即兴的恩惠，对他、斯坦顿或梅尔滕斯来说没有任何影响——只是一个“选择”，“那里”，如果斯坦顿想利用它的话。
‘His stock,’ he reasoned in his near-perfect English tinged with an Italian-Swiss lilt, ‘is one hundred per cent legitimate.
“他的股票，”他用带有意大利瑞士语轻快语调的近乎完美的英语推理道，“是百分百合法的。”
They’re almost at green-light stage – just tweaking the levels, nudging the potency up, down, whatever.
他们几乎处于绿灯阶段——只是调整水平，向上、向下推动效力，等等。
It’s being trialled on scores of volunteers – why not add one more?
它正在数十名志愿者身上进行试验——为什么不再增加一名志愿者呢？
Your circumstances render you a model target user.
您的情况使您成为模范目标用户。
It just .
它只是。
.
。
.’
.’
‘It just,’ Pirotti continued after a pause, ‘keeps it off-prescription for you this way.
“这只是，”皮罗蒂停顿了一下后继续说道，“这样可以让你不用开处方。”
You don’t want some medical record coming back to bite you in ten years from now, when you’re ascending to who knows what heights .
您不希望十年后当您上升到谁知道的高度时，一些医疗记录会回来咬您。
.
。
.’
.’
These words replayed for him throughout the train ride to Milan (from where he would fly back to Luxembourg), humming and zinging as though sent along a kite string both invisible and endless, remixed by some deck transmitting, without intermediary of headphones, just to him.
这些话在开往米兰的火车上（他将从那里飞回卢森堡）的整个过程中不断地向他重播，嗡嗡作响，嗡嗡作响，仿佛沿着风筝线传送，无形而无尽，由一些甲板重新混合，无需耳机作为媒介，只向他传输。
What heights .
什么高度。
.
。
.?
.?
As the train plied its way down valley after valley, Stanton gazed up at the peaks, still snow-capped, the impossibly steep cols and slopes and couloirs plunging from them.
当火车在一个又一个山谷中行驶时，斯坦顿抬头凝视着仍然被白雪覆盖的山峰，以及从山上直冲而下的极其陡峭的山坳、斜坡和峡谷。
Several of these, near their bases, were inlaid with pipes, wires and conveyor belts that ran further down to aggregate plants, substations and factories on the valley floor, converting these giant mountains’ minerality, their cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc and asphalt, their meltwater’s chutes and cascades, into energy and products.
其中一些靠近山脚的地方，镶嵌着管道、电线和传送带，这些管道、电线和传送带一直延伸到谷底的集料厂、变电站和工厂，将这些巨大山脉的矿物、钴、镍、铜、锌和沥青、融水的溜槽和瀑布转化为能源和产品。
One of these plants’ fronts announced its business in large painted letters: GRAPHITE.
其中一家工厂的正面用大号彩绘字母宣布了其业务：GRAPHITE。
Briefly, with the same sense of déjà vu that he’d experienced at the kite concert, Stanton half-recalled some kind of outsize pencil hovering above an equally enormous paper sheet, but couldn’t place that memory either.
简而言之，斯坦顿有一种似曾相识的感觉，就像他在风筝音乐会上经历过的那样，他隐约想起了某种特大号铅笔悬停在一张同样巨大的纸上，但也无法回忆起那段记忆。
Peaks towered on for another hour and more, above yet more valleys – but what most impressed itself on Stanton’s consciousness was all the industry about their lower slopes and at their bases: this elaborate scene of things being tapped, being put to use.
山峰又耸立了一个多小时，上方还有更多的山谷——但斯坦顿意识中印象最深刻的是关于它们的较低斜坡和底部的所有工业：这个精心设计的场景，事物被挖掘，被投入使用。
It was as though the mountains had been flipped round or inverted, and the drama of their scales, of their unfeasible dimensions, were actually a drama of not height but depth, not of ascent but of repeated and interminable falling.
就好像山脉被翻转或倒置一样，它们的尺度、它们不可行的尺寸的戏剧性实际上不是高度而是深度的戏剧，不是上升而是重复和无休止的下降。
From The Rhyl Poster by Tom McCarthy .
摘自汤姆·麦卡锡的《里尔海报》。
Copyright © 2026 by Tom McCarthy.
版权所有 © 2026 汤姆·麦卡锡。
Courtesy of New York Review Books
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