60: Business of Death - This American Life
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00:00 00:00 Transcript Share This American Life Life Partners How to Listen Episodes Recommended About Overview Staff Announcements Fellowships Jobs Music Make Radio On The Road FAQ Submissions Merch Contact Us Our Other Shows Merch Follow Us Life Partners Subscribe to our newsletter Full episode Toggle Audio and Transcript Sync Transcript | Episode #60 | April 18, 1997 60: Business of Death Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard.
00:00 00:00 文字记录 分享此 美国生活 生活伙伴 如何收听 剧集 推荐 关于 概述 员工公告 奖学金 工作 音乐 在路上制作电台 常见问题解答 提交 商品 联系我们 我们的其他节目 商品 关注我们 生活伙伴 订阅我们的时事通讯 整集 切换音频和文字记录同步 文字记录 | 内容第 60 集 | 1997 年 4 月 18 日 60：《死亡笔记》：《美国生活》是为耳朵而制作的，旨在让人们听到。
If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page.
如果可以的话，我们强烈建议您收听音频，其中包括页面上没有的情感和重点。
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
文字记录是使用语音识别软件和人工转录员结合生成的，可能包含错误。
Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
请在印刷版引用前检查相应的音频。
Kaddish Allen Ginsberg Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg, 1894-1956.
卡迪什·艾伦·金斯伯格 卡迪什为娜奥米·金斯伯格，1894-1956 年。
This is the way we usually think about death.
这就是我们通常思考死亡的方式。
We stare at it, trying to comprehend.
我们凝视着它，试图理解它。
Here's Allen Ginsberg.
请听艾伦·金斯伯格的报道。
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets and eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
当我走在格林威治村阳光明媚的人行道上时，想起你，没有紧身胸衣，没有眼睛，现在感到很奇怪。
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, reading Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles--
曼哈顿市中心，晴朗的冬日正午，我彻夜未眠，大声说话，朗读《卡迪什》，听雷·查尔斯的歌——
When we think about death, we stare at the two images in our head over and over.
当我们想到死亡时，我们会一遍又一遍地盯着脑海中的两个图像。
The person we knew alive, breathing and talking, and the thought of them dead.
我们认识的那个人还活着，还在呼吸，在说话，而我们却想到他们已经死了。
And we take these two pictures and we turn them around and around, shuffle one on top of the other, trying to understand.
我们拍下这两张照片，然后把它们翻来覆去，将一张放在另一张上面，试图理解它们。
How did this living person become that dead one?
这个活人怎么变成那个死人了？
The early part of Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Kaddish," mourning his dead mother, is a series of these images.
艾伦·金斯伯格哀悼已故母亲的诗《卡迪什》的前半部分就是一系列这样的图像。
--with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirt pants, a photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
——YPSL 搭便车穿过宾夕法尼亚州，穿着黑色宽松的运动裙裤，照片中 4 个女孩在荒地周围互相拥抱，笑眼，太害羞了，1920 年处女般的孤独
all girls grown old, now, and that long hair in the grave--
现在所有的女孩都老了，还有坟墓里的长发——
This is the way we usually think about death.
这就是我们通常思考死亡的方式。
But there's another way.
但还有另一种方法。
Death isn't just a mystery, a tragedy.
死亡不仅是一个谜，也是一个悲剧。
It's also a business.
这也是一门生意。
Somebody has to sell embalming supplies, somebody has to drive a hearse, somebody has to kill cows for beef, and kill cockroaches in people's houses.
必须有人出售防腐用品，必须有人驾驶灵车，必须有人杀牛买牛肉，并杀死人们家里的蟑螂。
Welcome to WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life .
欢迎来到 WBEZ 芝加哥，这里是“美国生活”。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Today on our program, The Business of Death, people who work with the dead, people who see death every day.
今天，在我们的节目《死亡之事》中，那些与死者打交道的人，那些每天都目睹死亡的人。
Do they know anything about it that we don't?
他们是否知道一些我们不知道的事情？
Act One of our program, The Undertaking.
我们的节目第一幕，《承诺》。
Funeral director Thomas lynch conducts his own father's funeral.
葬礼承办人托马斯·林奇主持了自己父亲的葬礼。
Act Two, The Forbidden Zone.
第二幕，禁区。
Writer Michael Lesy tells us about his own journey to figure out what autopsy pathologists, homicide detectives, slaughterhouse workers, and others who deal with death know about death.
作家迈克尔·莱斯向我们讲述了他自己的旅程，了解尸检病理学家、凶杀案侦探、屠宰场工人和其他与死亡打交道的人对死亡的了解。
Act Three, Fireman Larry Brown.
第三幕，消防员拉里·布朗。
Act Four, writer David Sedaris explains how to sneak a corpse into a four star hotel, and why you might want to, and how his friends actually have.
第四幕，编剧大卫·塞达里斯（David Sedaris）解释了如何将尸体偷偷带入四星级酒店，以及为什么你可能想要这样做，以及他的朋友们实际上是如何做到的。
And Act Five, The Happiest Death Worker, proving that it's all not doom and gloom in the death biz.
第五幕《最幸福的死亡工人》证明了死亡行业并非厄运和悲观。
Stay with us.
留在我们身边。
Act One, The Undertaking.
第一幕，承诺。
When researching today's show, one of our producers talked with a funeral director who said at one point, well, you know, all funeral directors are either alcoholics or born-agains.
在研究今天的节目时，我们的一位制作人与一位葬礼承办人交谈，他曾说过，嗯，你知道，所有葬礼承办人要么是酗酒者，要么是重生者。
Which seems like an exaggeration, but clearly this is a job with some pressure and stress to it that takes its toll on many people.
这似乎有点夸张，但显然这是一份有一定压力和压力的工作，给很多人带来了损失。
Well, Thomas Lynch is an undertaker in Milford, Michigan.
托马斯·林奇是密歇根州米尔福德市的一名殡葬承办人。
He says that it is not the sort of job where you get rich, usually.
他说，这通常不是那种能让你致富的工作。
He says you can afford an orthodontist for your kids but not boarding school.
他说你可以为你的孩子请正牙医生，但不能负担寄宿学校的费用。
And so, he says, you do not stay in this job unless you get some sort of satisfaction from it.
因此，他说，除非你从中得到某种满足，否则你不会留在这份工作中。
Most people, he says, could not be paid enough to embalm a neighbor on Christmas, stand with a widower at his wife's open casket, talk with a leukemic mother about her fears for her children about to be motherless.
他说，大多数人都拿不到足够的钱在圣诞节为邻居进行防腐处理，无法与鳏夫站在妻子打开的棺材前，与患有白血病的母亲谈论她对孩子们即将失去母亲的恐惧。
He says that the ones who stay with this work believe that they actually are helping the living in some way by burying their dead.
他说，那些坚持从事这项工作的人相信，他们实际上是在通过埋葬死者以某种方式帮助生者。
The undertakers are over on the other island.
殡仪馆已经在另一个岛上了。
They are there for what is called their Midwinter Conference.
他们在那里参加所谓的仲冬会议。
The name they give to the week in February every year when funeral directors from Michigan find some warm place in the Lesser Antilles to discuss the pressing issues of their trade.
他们给每年二月的那一周起这个名字，来自密歇根州的殡葬承办人会在小安的列斯群岛找到一些温暖的地方讨论他们行业中的紧迫问题。
The names for the workshops and seminars are borderline.
讲习班和研讨会的名称很模糊。
"The Future of Funeral Service," "What Folks Want in a Casket," "Coping with the Cremation Crowd," things like that.
“殡葬服务的未来”、“人们想要棺材里的东西”、“应对火葬人群”，诸如此类。
The resorts must have room service, hot tubs, good beaches and shopping on site or nearby.
度假村必须提供客房服务、热水浴缸、良好的海滩以及度假村内或附近的购物设施。
No doubt, it is the same for orthodontists and trial lawyers.
毫无疑问，对于正牙医生和出庭律师来说也是如此。
And I'm here on the neighboring island, a smaller place, with a harbor too shallow for cruise ships and no airport.
我现在在邻近的岛屿上，这是一个较小的地方，港口太浅，无法容纳游轮，而且没有机场。
I'm a ferry boat ride from the undertakers from my home state.
我是从我的家乡从殡仪馆乘渡船来的。
But I've timed my relief from the Michigan winter with theirs in case I want to register for a meeting and write-off my travel.
但我和他们一起安排了密歇根冬天的休息时间，以防我想登记参加会议并取消我的旅行。
My father was a funeral director, and three of my five brothers are funeral directors, and two of my three sisters work pre-need and bookkeeping in one of the four funeral homes around the metro area that bear our name, our father's name.
我的父亲是一名丧葬承办人，我的五个兄弟中的三个是丧葬承办人，我的三个姐妹中的两个在都市区周围以我们和父亲的名字命名的四家殡仪馆之一从事预需和簿记工作。
It is an odd arithmetic, a kind of family farm working the back 40 of the emotional register.
这是一种奇怪的算术，就像家庭农场一样，在情感寄存器的后 40 位进行运算。
Our livelihoods depending on the deaths of others in the way that medicos depend on sickness, lawyers on crime, the clergy on the fear of God.
我们的生计依赖于他人的死亡，就像医生依赖于疾病、律师依赖于犯罪、神职人员依赖于对上帝的敬畏一样。
My father died three years ago on an island off the Gulf Coast of Florida.
我父亲三年前在佛罗里达州墨西哥湾沿岸的一个岛上去世。
He wasn't exactly on a Midwinter Conference.
他并没有参加仲冬会议。
He'd quit going to those years before, after my mother had died.
几年前我母亲去世后，他就不再去那儿了。
But he was sharing a condo with a woman friend, who always overestimated the remedial powers of sexual aerobics.
但他与一位女性朋友合住一套公寓，而这位女性朋友总是高估性有氧运动的治疗作用。
Or maybe she only underestimated the progress of his heart disease.
或许她只是低估了他心脏病的进展。
We all knew it was coming.
我们都知道它即将到来。
In the first year of his widowhood, he sat in this chair, heartsore, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
在他守寡的第一年，他坐在这张椅子上，心痛不已，等待另一只鞋落地。
Then he started going out with women.
然后他开始和女人出去。
The brothers were glad for him.
兄弟们都为他感到高兴。
The sisters rolled their eyes a lot.
姐妹们纷纷翻白眼。
In the two years of consortium that followed, he'd had a major-- which is to say, a chest-ripping, down for the count-- heart attack every six months, like clockwork.
在接下来的两年里，他每隔六个月就会有一次心脏病发作，就像发条一样。
He survived all but one.
除了一个人以外，他都活了下来。
Three out of four, I can hear him saying.
四分之三，我能听到他说。
You're still dead when it's over.
当一切结束时你还是死了。
He'd had enough.
他已经受够了。
When we got the call from his woman friend, we knew what to do.
当我们接到他女性朋友的电话时，我们知道该怎么做了。
My brother and I had done the drill in our heads before.
我和我的兄弟之前已经在头脑中进行了演练。
We had a traveling kit of embalming supplies, gloves, fluids, needles, odds and ends.
我们有一套旅行箱，里面有防腐用品、手套、液体、针头、零碎物品。
We had to explain to the security people at the airlines who scrutinized the contents of the bag, wondering how we might make a bomb out of Dodge Permaglow or overtake the cabin crew with a box marked "Slaughter Surgical Supplies," full of stainless steel oddities they'd never seen before.
我们必须向航空公司的保安人员解释，他们仔细检查了袋子里的东西，想知道如何用道奇珀马格洛制造炸弹，或者用一个标有“屠宰手术用品”的盒子追上机组人员，盒子里装满了他们以前从未见过的不锈钢奇怪东西。
When we got to the funeral home they had taken him to, taken his body to, the undertaker there asked if we were sure we wanted to do this, our own father, after all.
当我们到达殡仪馆时，他们把他带到了那里，把他的尸体带到了那里，那里的殡仪员问我们是否确定要这样做，毕竟我们自己的父亲。
He'd be happy to call in one of his own embalmers.
他很乐意叫来自己的一位防腐师。
We assured him it would be OK.
我们向他保证没问题。
It was something we had always promised him.
这是我们一直向他承诺的。
Though I can't now, for the life of me, remember the context in which it was made.
尽管我现在无法记住它的制作背景。
The promise that when he died his sons would embalm him, dress him, pick out a casket, lay him out, prepare the obits, contact the priest, manage the flowers, the casseroles, the wake and procession, the Mass and burial.
他承诺，当他去世时，他的儿子们将为他进行防腐处理，给他穿衣服，挑选棺材，安放他，准备讣告，联系牧师，管理鲜花，砂锅菜，守灵和游行，弥撒和埋葬。
Maybe it was just understood.
或许刚刚才明白。
His was a funeral he would not have to direct.
他的葬礼不需要他来主持。
It was ours to do.
这是我们要做的。
And though he directed thousands of them, he had never made mention of his own preferences.
尽管他指挥了数千次，但他从未提及过自己的喜好。
Whenever he was pressed on the matter, he would only say, you'll know what to do.
每当他被追问此事时，他只会说，你就会知道该怎么做。
We did.
我们做到了。
I had seen my father horizontal before.
我以前见过我父亲横着躺着。
At the end, it had been intensive care units, mostly, after his coronaries and bypass.
最后，在他接受了冠状动脉和搭桥手术后，大部分时间都被送进了重症监护室。
He'd been helpless, done unto.
他已经无能为力，已经完蛋了。
But seeing him outstretched on the embalming table of the Andersen Mortuary in Fort Myers, with the cardiac blue in his ears and fingertips, and along his distal regions, shoulders, and lower ribs, and buttocks, and heels, I thought, this is what my father will look like when he's dead.
但看到他平躺在迈尔斯堡安徒生太平间的防腐台上，耳朵和指尖、远端、肩膀、下肋骨、臀部和脚后跟都呈心蓝色，我想，这就是我父亲死后的样子。
And then, like a door slammed shut behind you, the tense of it all shifted into the inescapable present of, this is my father, dead.
然后，就像一扇门在你身后砰地关上一样，一切的紧张感都转变为不可避免的现实：这是我的父亲，死了。
Then we went to work in the way our father had trained us.
然后我们按照父亲训练我们的方式去工作。
He was a cooperative body.
他是一个合作团体。
Despite the arterial sclerosis, his circulatory system made the embalming easy.
尽管动脉硬化，但他的循环系统使防腐工作变得容易。
And having just stepped from the shower into his doom, he was clean and cleanly shaven.
刚洗完澡，走向末日，他全身干净，胡子刮得干干净净。
He hadn't been sick in the hospice or intensive care sense of the word, so there were none of the bruises on him or tubes in him that medical science can inflict and install.
他没有生过临终关怀或重症监护意义上的病，所以他身上没有任何瘀伤，也没有医学上可以造成和安装的管子。
He'd gotten the death he wanted, caught in full stride, quick and cleanly, after a day strolling the beach picking sea shells for the grandchildren and, maybe, after a little bone bouncing with his condo mate.
他已经得到了他想要的死亡，全速前进，快速而干净，在海滩上漫步了一天，为孙子们捡贝壳，也许，在和他的公寓伴侣一起蹦蹦跳跳之后。
Though she never said, and we never asked and can only hope.
尽管她从未说过，我们也从未问过，只能希望。
And massaging his legs, his hands, his arms, to affect the proper distribution of fluid and drainage, watching the blue clear from his fingertips and heels, as the fluid that would preserve him long enough for us to take our leave of him worked its way around his body, I had the sense that I was doing something for him, even though, now dead, he was beyond my kindnesses or anyone's.
按摩他的腿、手、手臂，以影响体液和引流的正常分布，看着蓝色从他的指尖和脚后跟上消失，当能够保存他足够长的时间让我们告别他的体液在他的身体里流动时，我感觉到我正在为他做点什么，尽管他现在已经死了，我或任何人都无法对他仁慈。
Likewise, his body bore a kind of history.
同样，他的身体也承载着一段历史。
The tattoo, with my mother's name on it, he'd had done as an 18-year-old Marine during World War II, the perfectly trimmed mustache I used to watch him darken with my mother's mascara, when he was younger than I am and I was younger than my children are.
纹身上有我母亲的名字，是他在二战期间当一名海军陆战队队员时18岁时纹的，我曾经看着他用我母亲的睫毛膏把胡子变黑，那时他比我年轻，我也比我的孩子们年轻。
There were the graying chest hairs, the hairless ankles, the male pattern baldness I see on the heads of men in the first-class section of airplanes and in the double mirrors in the barber shop.
我在飞机头等舱和理发店的双层镜子里看到了灰色的胸毛、没有毛发的脚踝、男性型秃顶。
Embalming my father I was reminded of how we bury our dead and then become them.
对我父亲进行防腐处理让我想起了我们如何埋葬死者，然后成为他们。
In the end, I had to say that, maybe, this is what I'm going to look like dead.
最后我不得不说，也许，这就是我死了的样子。
Maybe it was at a Midwinter Conference my father first thought about what he did and why he did it.
也许是在一次仲冬会议上，我父亲第一次思考他做了什么以及为什么这么做。
He always told us that embalming got to be, forgive me, de rigueur during the Civil War when, for the first time in our history, lots of people, mostly men, mostly soldiers, were dying far from home and the families that grieved them.
他总是告诉我们，请原谅我，在内战期间，防腐必须成为必要的礼仪，当时，在我们的历史上第一次，许多人，大部分是男人，大部分是士兵，在远离家乡和令他们悲伤的家人的地方死去。
Dismal traders worked in the tents on the edges of the battlefields, charging to disinfect, preserve, and restore dead bodies.
忧郁的商人在战场边缘的帐篷里工作，负责对尸体进行消毒、保存和修复。
Which is to say, they closed mouths, sutured bullet holes, stitched limbs or parts of limbs back on, and sent the dead back home to wives and mothers, fathers and sons.
也就是说，他们闭上嘴，缝合弹孔，缝合四肢或四肢的一部分，然后将死者送回妻子、母亲、父亲和儿子身边。
All of this bother and expense was predicated on the notion that the dead need to be at their obsequies, or, more correctly, that the living need the dead to be there, so that the living can consign them to the field or fire after commending them to God, or the gods, or whatever is out there.
所有这些麻烦和费用都是基于这样一种观念：死者需要参加葬礼，或者更准确地说，生者需要死者在那里，以便生者可以在将他们推荐给上帝、诸神或其他任何东西之后，将他们送到田野或火上。
The presence and participation of the dead human body at its funeral is, as my father told it, every bit as important as the bride's being at her wedding, the baby at its baptism.
正如我父亲所说，死者尸体在葬礼上的出现和参与与新娘参加婚礼、婴儿接受洗礼一样重要。
A man that I work with, named Wesley Rice, once spent all of one day and all night carefully piecing together the parts of a girl's cranium.
和我一起工作的一个人，名叫韦斯利·赖斯（Wesley Rice），曾经花了一天一整夜的时间仔细拼凑一个女孩的头盖骨的各个部分。
She'd been murdered by a madman with a baseball bat after he'd abducted and raped her.
她被一个疯子绑架并强奸后，用棒球棒谋杀了。
The morning of the day it all happened, she'd left for school dressed for picture day.
这一切发生的那天早上，她穿着去学校拍照的衣服。
A school girl, dressed to the nines, waving at her mother, ready for the photographer.
一名穿着盛装的女学生向母亲挥手，准备迎接摄影师。
The picture was never taken.
这张照片从未被拍摄过。
She was abducted from the bus stop and found a day later in a stand of trees just off the road, a township south of here.
她在公交车站被绑架，一天后在南边一个小镇路边的树林里被发现。
The details were reported dispassionately in the local media, along with the speculations as to which of the wounds was the fatal one, the choking, the knife, or the baseball bat.
当地媒体冷静地报道了这些细节，并猜测到底哪一个伤口是致命的，是窒息的、刀子的还是棒球棒的。
No doubt, these speculations were the focus of the double postmortem the medical examiner performed on her body before signing the death certificate, multiple injuries.
毫无疑问，这些猜测是法医在签署死亡证明之前对她的身体进行的双重尸检的焦点，多处受伤。
Most embalmers, faced with what Wesley Rice was faced with after we'd opened the pouch from the morgue, would have simply said, closed casket, treated the remains enough to control the odor, zipped the pouch, and gone home for cocktails.
大多数防腐师，在我们从太平间打开袋子后，面对韦斯利·赖斯所面临的情况，只会说，关上棺材，对遗体进行足够的处理以控制气味，拉上袋子的拉链，然后回家喝鸡尾酒。
It would've been easier.
本来会更容易。
The pay was the same.
工资是一样的。
Instead, he started working.
相反，他开始工作。
18 hours later, the girl's mother, who had pleaded to see her, saw her.
18小时后，女孩的母亲在恳求见她的情况下见到了她。
She was dead, to be sure, and damaged.
可以肯定的是，她已经死了，并且受到了伤害。
But her face was hers again, not the madman's version.
但她的脸又是她的了，而不是疯子的脸。
The hair was hers, not his.
头发是她的，不是他的。
The body was hers, not his.
身体是她的，不是他的。
Wesley Rice had not raised her from the dead nor hidden the hard facts, but he had retrieved her death from the one who had killed her.
韦斯利·赖斯没有让她起死回生，也没有隐瞒铁石心肠的事实，但他从杀害她的凶手那里夺回了她的死亡。
He had closed her eyes, her mouth.
他闭上了她的眼睛，她的嘴。
He'd washed her wounds, sutured her lacerations, pieced her beaten skull together, stitched the incisions from the autopsy, cleaned the dirt from under her fingernails, scrubbed the fingerprint ink from her fingertips, washed her hair, dressed her in jeans and a blue turtleneck, and laid her in a casket beside which her mother stood for two days and sobbed as if something had been pulled from her by force.
他清洗了她的伤口，缝合了她的撕裂伤，将她被打碎的头骨拼凑在一起，缝合了尸检时的切口，清除了她指甲下的污垢，擦掉了她指尖上的指纹墨水，洗了她的头发，给她穿上了牛仔裤和蓝色高领毛衣，把她放在棺材里，她的母亲在棺材旁边站了两天，抽泣着，仿佛有什么东西被强行从她身上拉走了。
It was then, and always will be, awful, horrible, unappeasably sad.
无论是过去还是将来，这都是可怕的、可怕的、难以平息的悲伤。
But the outrage, the horror, the heartbreak belonged not to the murderer, or the media, or the morgue, each of whom had staked their claims to it.
但愤怒、恐惧、心碎不属于凶手、媒体或太平间，他们每个人都声称拥有这些。
It belonged to the girl and to her mother.
它属于女孩和她的母亲。
Wesley had given them the body back.
韦斯利已经把尸体还给了他们。
What Wesley Rice did was a kindness.
韦斯利·赖斯的所作所为是一种善意。
It served the living by caring for the dead.
它通过照顾死者来服务生者。
Over on the other island, they are trying to reinvent the funeral as a vehicle for the healthy expression of grief, which, of course, it is.
在另一个岛上，他们正试图将葬礼重新改造为健康表达悲伤的工具，当然，事实确实如此。
Or as a brief therapy for the acutely bereaved, which, of course, it is.
或者作为对严重失去亲人的人的短暂治疗，当然，确实如此。
There will be talk of stages, steps, recovery.
将会讨论阶段、步骤、恢复。
Maybe I'll take the boat over tomorrow.
也许我明天就坐船过来。
Maybe some of the old timers are there, men of my father's generation, men you could call in the middle of the night if there was trouble.
也许那里有一些老前辈，我父亲那一代的人，如果有麻烦你可以在半夜打电话给他们。
They remind me of my father.
他们让我想起了我的父亲。
Maybe they'll say I remind them of him.
也许他们会说我让他们想起了他。
Thomas Lynch, reading from his memoir, The Undertaking , which will be published in July by Norton.
托马斯·林奇正在朗读他的回忆录《承诺》，该书将于 7 月由诺顿出版社出版。
Act Two, The Forbidden Zone.
第二幕，禁区。
In a certain sense, writer Michael Lesy is in the business of death himself.
从某种意义上说，作家迈克尔·莱斯（Michael Lesy）自己也在从事死亡事务。
He's the author of, Wisconsin Death Trip , The Forbidden Zone , and other writings which either touch on or obsess over the subject.
他是《威斯康星死亡之旅》、《禁区》以及其他涉及或痴迷于该主题的著作的作者。
In his book, The Forbidden Zone , he heads out to talk with all sorts of people in the business of death-- autopsy pathologists, executioners on death row, mercenaries, undertakers, homicide detectives-- on a quest of understanding.
在他的《禁区》一书中，他与各种从事死亡工作的人进行了交谈——尸检病理学家、死囚牢房里的刽子手、雇佣兵、殡仪员、凶杀案侦探——以寻求理解。
I wanted to find out how people bear the facts of death.
我想知道人们如何承受死亡的事实。
My father, who I loved very dearly, was very, very old.
我深爱的父亲已经非常非常老了。
And he was going to die, and very soon, I thought.
他就要死了，而且很快，我想。
And I thought that I could bear it more easily if I went out and talked to people who dealt with death professionally.
我想，如果我出去和那些专业处理死亡问题的人交谈，我会更容易忍受。
Because I thought, maybe, they knew things that I didn't.
因为我想，也许他们知道我不知道的事情。
Let me ask you to read from a scene where you go to an autopsy.
让我请你读一下你去尸检的场景。
Let me ask you to turn to page 33 in the book.
让我请你翻到这本书的第33页。
Because this is a fairly typical kind of a scene of the sort of things that you would encounter when you would go out.
因为这是一个相当典型的外出时会遇到的场景。
The radio was on to a rock station.
收音机正在播放一个摇滚电台。
There was a bearded man sitting hunched over the second autopsy table, finishing a post.
一名留着胡须的男子弓着背坐在第二张尸检台上，正在完成一篇文章。
Post, meaning a?
帖子，意思是？
Michael Lesy A postmortem.
迈克尔·莱西 尸检。
--On a 20 week old fetus that had been spontaneously aborted the night before.
——前一天晚上自然流产的 20 周大胎儿。
The bearded man looked up.
大胡子男子抬起头来。
"Who are you?" he wanted to know.
“你是谁？”他想知道。
I said I was a writer.
我说我是作家。
"What are you writing?" he asked.
“你在写什么？”他问道。
"A book about people who deal with death."
“一本关于人们如何应对死亡的书。”
"Death?" he said.
“死亡？”他说。
"We don't deal with death.
“我们不处理死亡。
Go upstairs and talk to the oncologists.
上楼和肿瘤科医生交谈。
They deal with death.
他们面对死亡。
Their patients die all the time.
他们的病人总是死去。
Down here, we get them when they're dead.
在这里，等他们死了我们就能找到他们。
We never knew them, never talked to them, never had them as patients."
我们从来不认识他们，从未与他们交谈过，也从未将他们当作病人。”
As he spoke, he delicately unwound the child's small intestine, holding one end with the forceps, while gently pulling it between the blunt blades of another.
他一边说话，一边小心翼翼地解开孩子的小肠，用镊子夹住一端，同时轻轻地将其拉到另一端的钝刀片之间。
Stripping it of its outer mucous membrane by opening and closing the forceps so rapidly that its pinchers behaved like the beak of a little bird nibbling at its feathers.
通过快速打开和关闭镊子，使其钳子的行为就像小鸟的喙啃咬羽毛一样，从而剥离它的外粘膜。
I thought, if you don't deal with death, what are you doing now?
我想，如果你不面对死亡，那你现在在做什么呢？
Isn't the kid dead?
孩子不是死了吗？
Aren't you taking him apart?
你不把他拆散吗？
What if I went upstairs and talked to the oncologists?
如果我上楼和肿瘤科医生交谈怎么办？
Death?
死亡？
they'd say.
他们会说。
We don't deal with death.
我们不处理死亡。
We deal with the disease process.
我们处理疾病的过程。
None of them would admit it.
他们谁也不会承认。
Do you think that the pathologists, who you visited, do you think that they actually did understand something about death that you didn't walking into it?
你认为你拜访过的病理学家是否真的了解一些关于死亡的事情，而你却没有真正了解这些事情？
I think they understood the body.
我认为他们了解身体。
But what they didn't understand, and what I don't think anyone can understand, is the difference between being alive and being dead.
但他们不明白，我认为任何人都无法理解的是，生与死之间的区别。
And how the spirit leaves the body, or how that thing that animates the body, evacuates it.
以及精神如何离开身体，或者那个赋予身体活力的东西如何疏散它。
Right, and that's at the center of our fascination with death, as lay people.
是的，这就是我们作为外行人对死亡着迷的核心。
Oh, absolutely.
哦，绝对是。
Ira Glass It's interesting that both the pathologist and the homicide detective, they basically, in your description, you talk about how they're both looking at the body.
艾拉·格拉斯：有趣的是，病理学家和凶杀案侦探，基本上，在你的描述中，你谈论了他们如何看待尸体。
They don't look at death.
他们不看死亡。
What they do is that they look at the body for clues, for what happened, for clues about the story that they're writing.
他们所做的就是在尸体上寻找线索，寻找发生的事情，寻找有关他们正在写的故事的线索。
Yes, the read the body.
是的，阅读正文。
They read the body.
他们阅读了尸体。
And the body tells a story.
身体会讲述一个故事。
They learn how to work backwards, from the corpse to the murder.
他们学习如何倒推，从尸体到谋杀案。
But again, do you view what they're doing, that is, trying to take the body, trying to take the fact of this death and turn it into some kind of meaning, as being in any way parallel to what you were doing, coming on to the scene, trying to take the fact of these deaths and turn them into some sort of meaning?
但是，你是否认为他们正在做的事情，即试图带走尸体，试图将死亡的事实转化为某种意义，是否与你来到现场，试图将这些死亡的事实转化为某种意义所做的事情平行？
Or is it very different?
还是有很大不同？
I was looking for some transcendent meaning.
我一直在寻找某种超然的意义。
I don't believe they ever were looking for any transcendent meaning.
我不相信他们曾经在寻找任何超越的意义。
They had a body in question.
他们有一具尸体。
The question is, how did the body reach them?
问题是，尸体是怎么到达他们身边的？
I had another question, which is, how does one bear grief?
我还有一个问题，就是如何承受悲伤？
And how does one bear loss?
又如何承担损失呢？
And how does one understand the inevitability of death as a fact of life?
人们如何理解死亡是生命的必然事实？
At one point you write that at the bottom of the hierarchy of death jobs is the slaughterhouse.
在某一时刻，你写道，死亡工作的最底层是屠宰场。
Let me ask you to talk about what you found there.
让我请你谈谈你在那里发现了什么。
Well-- Ira Glass You went to a slaughterhouse in Omaha.
嗯——艾拉·格拉斯（Ira Glass） 你去了奥马哈的一家屠宰场。
Right, I went to a medium-size slaughterhouse, a beef kill.
对了，我去了一家中型屠宰场，杀牛肉。
I think it killed 150 animals an hour.
我认为它每小时杀死 150 只动物。
And the place was a mess.
这个地方一片混乱。
I mean, it was clean enough.
我的意思是，它足够干净。
They used germicides, and mechanical scrubbers, and so on at the end of every day.
他们在每天结束时使用杀菌剂和机械洗涤器等。
But when they were killing these animals and dismembering them, it was a howling, whistling, steam-filled chaos.
但当他们杀死并肢解这些动物时，却是一片嚎叫、呼啸、充满蒸汽的混乱。
At one point when you were there, you're watching the person who actually kills the animals, and he operates an airgun, which presses a bolt into the animal's skull, and he hands it to you.
当你在那里时，你会看到真正杀死动物的人，他操作一把气枪，将一个螺栓压入动物的头骨，然后他把它交给你。
He says, go ahead, try it.
他说，去吧，试试吧。
Yeah, he handed it to me.
是的，他递给我了。
He went down.
他下去了。
He fell.
他摔倒了。
And he'd lost his hard hat.
他的安全帽也丢了。
He handed me this airgun, and I did it.
他递给我这把气枪，我就这么做了。
You killed the steer.
你杀了那头公牛。
Michael Lesy I killed the steer, yep.
迈克尔·莱斯 我杀了那头公牛，是的。
Can I ask you to talk about how that changed your story, your perception of what you were writing?
我可以请您谈谈这如何改变了您的故事以及您对所写内容的看法吗？
Well, everyone, everyone wears some sort of protective clothing.
好吧，每个人，每个人都穿着某种防护服。
And certainly, my protective clothing was that I was a watcher and a listener, not a participant.
当然，我的防护服是我是一个观察者和倾听者，而不是参与者。
It was always those people who did those things, and I was always there standing, listening to them, thinking whatever I was thinking to myself and not doing it.
总是那些人做这些事情，而我总是站在那里，听他们说话，思考我自己在想的事情，但不做。
And actually, in an earlier scene, a detective says to you, everbody is a killer, everybody could be a killer.
事实上，在之前的场景中，一名侦探对你说，每个人都是杀手，每个人都可能是杀手。
And you tell him, not me.
你告诉他，而不是我。
Not me, yeah.
不是我，是的。
Well, I mean, I thought I was protected.
嗯，我的意思是，我以为我受到了保护。
I mean, half my relatives had gone up the chimney in the Holocaust.
我的意思是，我的一半亲戚在大屠杀中都上了烟囱。
I figured, I wasn't about to kill anyone.
我想，我并不想杀人。
People like me had been on the receiving end of things.
像我这样的人一直是事情的接收端。
We didn't perpetuate the murders.
我们没有让谋杀继续下去。
We were the recipients.
我们是接受者。
And it's a rather comforting, smug place to be existentially.
这是一个相当舒适、自鸣得意的存在之地。
Well, once I killed the steer, I figured the detective was right.
好吧，当我杀死那头公牛后，我认为侦探是对的。
I'd done it.
我已经做到了。
It hadn't bothered me very much.
这并没有太困扰我。
And the fact that it hadn't bothered me very much was very scary.
事实上，它并没有太困扰我，这让我非常害怕。
Do you believe that being around death so much taints a person?
你相信与死亡共存会严重玷污一个人吗？
Do you believe that it tainted you?
你相信它污染了你吗？
I think it taught me stuff.
我认为它教会了我一些东西。
I think it does taint you to the extent that if you go out looking for this stuff, it'll come looking for you.
我认为它确实会污染你，如果你出去寻找这些东西，它就会来找你。
What do you mean by that?
你这是什么意思？
Michael Lesy What I mean is that you make your own fate.
迈克尔·莱斯 我的意思是你的命运由你自己决定。
I think that, if you think for one minute that you can go out looking for death the way you might take a vacation, and that at the end of two weeks, you can turn the rental car in and get on the plane and leave, you're wrong.
我认为，如果你想一分钟你可以像度假一样出去寻找死亡，两周后你可以把租来的车交上飞机然后离开，那你就错了。
Did you find that people who had these kinds of jobs viewed people who did not have these kinds of jobs and this contact with death at a distance?
你有没有发现，从事此类工作的人会对那些没有此类工作的人以及与死亡的接触保持距离？
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
I mean, I can remember the scene, which was when I was spending time with homicide detectives, they were called to a crime scene in which a man had ended his life, his own life, because of a broken heart.
我的意思是，我记得那个场景，当时我和凶杀案侦探一起度过了一段时间，他们被叫到一个犯罪现场，一个男人因为心碎而结束了他的生命，他自己的生命。
He'd put a .22 caliber bullet in his brain.
他把一颗 0.22 口径的子弹射进了他的大脑。
The homicide detectives walked in and found him stretched out on his bed.
凶杀案侦探走进去，发现他躺在床上。
He'd done a very nice job of cleaning the apartment beforehand.
他事先把公寓打扫得很干净。
He'd left a series of heartbroken notes to the woman who'd broken his heart.
他给那个伤了他心的女人留下了一系列心碎的字条。
They were handwritten.
它们是手写的。
The i's were dotted with little open circles like bubbles.
i 上点缀着像气泡一样的小空心圆圈。
Very, very quickly, everyone who was living in this apartment complex came running.
很快，住在这栋公寓楼里的所有人都跑了过来。
Including, eventually, the man's first wife and their children.
最终包括该男子的第一任妻子和他们的孩子。
And soon there were people weeping, and sobbing, and crying.
很快，人们就开始哭泣，抽泣，哭泣。
And I can remember that a cab pulled up and out of the cab came the man's girlfriend.
我记得一辆出租车停了下来，从出租车里走出来的是那个男人的女朋友。
And she ran into the house, into the apartment.
她跑进房子，跑进公寓。
But then the cab driver got out.
但随后出租车司机就下车了。
And the cab driver stood, with the door of his cab open, leaning on the top of the seal of the door, looking at all of this.
而出租车司机则站着，出租车门开着，靠在门封条上，看着这一切。
And he looked very, very different from everyone around him.
他看起来与周围的每个人都非常非常不同。
So different, the expression on his face was so different, that at the end of this scene, I asked the two homicide detectives I was with about that man.
如此不同，他脸上的表情如此不同，以至于在这一幕结束时，我向和我在一起的两名凶杀案侦探询问了那个人的情况。
I said that he was very strange.
我说他很奇怪。
I didn't understand quite how, but there was something odd about him, and did they know him?
我不太明白为什么，但他身上有一些奇怪的东西，他们认识他吗？
And they said, yeah.
他们说，是的。
He used to be a homicide detective.
他曾经是一名凶杀案侦探。
I mean, again, it's under the heading of useless and precious knowledge.
我的意思是，这又是在无用而宝贵的知识的标题下。
The knowledge of these things separates you out from ordinary people.
这些知识使你与常人区别开来。
When you set out on your journey, you actually thought that these people would have some kind of knowledge, and that, by observing them and talking to them, you might learn something from them.
当你踏上旅程的时候，你其实以为这些人会有某种知识，通过观察他们、与他们交谈，你可能会从他们身上学到一些东西。
But, in fact, it seems more what happened was, you simply got to see what they saw, that it wasn't the things people told you, and it wasn't the stories of the people who died, but simply being able to have contact with the physical fact, the concrete fact that this happens.
但事实上，发生的事情似乎更多的是，你只需看看他们所看到的，这不是人们告诉你的事情，也不是死者的故事，而只是能够接触到发生这种情况的物理事实，具体事实。
Right, the concrete fact of death is the equivalent of either satanic or divine miracle.
是的，死亡的具体事实相当于撒旦或神圣的奇迹。
It's as unprecedented as birth.
这就像诞生一样前所未有。
And most of us, in this world, in this country, don't even have the primary knowledge of such things.
而我们大多数人，在这个世界上，在这个国家里，甚至不具备这些事情的基本知识。
Absolutely, absolutely.
绝对，绝对。
Ira Glass You said when we began that one of the reasons that you set out to go and see these things and see these people was that you wanted help in dealing with your own father's then-impending death.
艾拉·格拉斯（Ira Glass）：当我们开始时，您说您去看看这些事情和这些人的原因之一是您需要帮助来应对您父亲即将到来的死亡。
Did you find what you wanted?
你找到你想要的了吗？
Did you find something that actually helped you?
您是否找到了真正对您有帮助的东西？
No, my father died demented and skeletal at the age of 94.
不，我的父亲在94岁那年，精神错乱、骨瘦如柴地去世了。
His dying destroyed him.
他的死毁了他。
By the end, I was looking at someone who looked like my father but wasn't.
到最后，我看到了一个看起来像我父亲但又不是的人。
Look, I think, Ira, it's the equivalent of-- I mean, I am married.
听着，我想，艾拉，这相当于——我的意思是，我结婚了。
I have two children.
我有两个孩子。
They're young adults.
他们是年轻人。
And I can remember going with my wife Elizabeth to Lamaze classes to prepare her for the birth of these children.
我还记得和我的妻子伊丽莎白一起去拉梅兹课程，让她为这些孩子的出生做好准备。
But no matter what she was taught, once the contractions really began, the contractions began.
但无论她被教导什么，一旦宫缩真正开始，宫缩就开始了。
And you can sit through all sorts of peaceful breathing exercises and visualization exercises, but once the contractions start, any sort of preparatory seminars do you little good.
你可以坐下来完成各种平静的呼吸练习和想象练习，但一旦宫缩开始，任何类型的准备研讨会都对你没有什么好处。
Do you feel like going through this experience and reflecting on it and writing, I mean, in one way or another, about death and things related to death since then, do you think that it's helped you in thinking about your own death?
你是否想经历这段经历并反思它，我的意思是，以某种方式，关于死亡以及从那时起与死亡相关的事情，你认为这对你思考自己的死亡有帮助吗？
Sure.
当然。
Absolutely.
绝对地。
But, again, I've got to say, you can think about it all you like.
但是，我还是要说，你可以随心所欲地思考它。
It doesn't do you any good.
这对你没有任何好处。
Michael Lesy, author of The Forbidden Zone , and other books.
迈克尔·莱斯（Michael Lesy），《禁区》等书的作者。
Well, coming up, David Sedaris, Smuggler, a fireman, and others in the business of death.
好吧，接下来是大卫·塞达里斯（David Sedaris），他是走私者、消防员，还有其他与死亡有关的人。
That's in a minute, when our program continues.
一会儿之后，我们的节目就会继续。
It's This American Life , I'm Ira Glass.
这就是美国生活，我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of writers, and performers, and documentary producers to contribute stories on the theme.
当然，我们每周的节目都会选择一个主题，邀请各种作家、表演者和纪录片制片人就该主题贡献故事。
Today's program-- The Business Of Death.
今天的节目——死亡之事。
Stories about people who are near death, every day, in their jobs, and what they see that we don't.
讲述每天在工作中濒临死亡的人们的故事，以及他们看到的我们看不到的东西。
Act Three, Fireman.
第三幕，消防员。
One of the things that Michael Lesy wrote about when he went with homicide detectives out on their cases, is that when they find a corpse, they don't think about the more existential questions about death.
迈克尔·莱西（Michael Lesy）与凶杀案侦探一起处理案件时所写的一件事是，当他们发现尸体时，他们不会考虑有关死亡的更存在的问题。
They do their jobs.
他们各司其职。
The corpse, to them, is primarily a source of clues to solve the case.
尸体对他们来说，主要是破案的线索来源。
Firemen also see the body but cannot dwell on it if they're going to do their jobs.
消防员也能看到尸体，但如果他们要完成自己的工作，就不能停留在尸体上。
Larry Brown was a firefighter in Oxford, Mississippi.
拉里·布朗是密西西比州牛津市的一名消防员。
This is from his book, On Fire .
这是他的书《On Fire》中的内容。
Actor Michael Stumm reads.
演员迈克尔·斯图姆朗读。
The worst thing I ever saw was either two babies and their grandmother burnt to death, to nothing, to just charred black lumps that had to be picked up out of smoking rubble, or a guy who wasn't dead yet, who was mashed half in two by a truck.
我见过的最糟糕的事情要么是两个婴儿和他们的祖母被烧死，化为乌有，要么变成烧焦的黑色肿块，必须从冒烟的瓦砾中捡起来，要么一个还没死的人被卡车撞成两半。
I saw a lot of death, and I worked at a small department in a little Mississippi town.
我目睹了很多死亡，我在密西西比州小镇的一个小部门工作。
It may sound cold, but the dead who were already gone never bothered me as much as the living ones, who were in great amounts of pain and shock, who had to be assured that, yes, in fact, they were not going to die, but were going to live if they'd just take it easy and relax.
这听起来可能很冷，但那些已经离世的死者从来没有像那些活着的人那样困扰我，他们承受着巨大的痛苦和震惊，他们必须确信，是的，事实上，他们不会死，但只要他们放松下来，就会活下去。
That day when those two little kids and their grandmother burned up, I was out at the elementary school giving a fire extinguisher class with the Chief, and somebody else had to drive my pumper to the fire.
那天，那两个小孩和他们的祖母被烧毁，我正在小学和酋长一起上灭火器课，其他人不得不把我的泵车开到火上。
We got the call during the class, and I rode with Uncle Chiefy out there.
我们在上课时接到电话，我和酋长叔叔一起骑车出去。
And we saw, right away, the house was falling in with fire.
我们立即看到房子因火灾而倒塌。
I was breaking in a rookie and nobody had even told him to put his gloves on.
我正在闯入一名新秀，甚至没有人告诉他戴上手套。
He stood there in the yard and did all he could, and blistered his hands badly while using an inch and a half hose.
他站在院子里，竭尽全力，在使用一英寸半的软管时，他的手被严重磨出了水泡。
Then the house fell in, and we were told that there were people inside.
然后房子倒塌了，我们被告知里面有人。
It was late in the evening by then, winter.
那时已是深夜，正是冬天。
The ruins were smoking.
废墟冒着烟。
Cops tried to keep screaming family members back.
警察试图阻止尖叫的家人回来。
The smoke shifted in the rubble and we all stood back, dreading what had to be done.
烟雾在废墟中移动，我们都往后退了一步，担心必须采取什么行动。
We entered the back side of the house and no words were said.
我们走进房子的后侧，没有再说什么。
The police had set out the body bags for us.
警察已经为我们准备了尸袋。
The smoke moved among the charred timbers and piles of ashes and glowing embers, and we had to find the things we were looking for.
烟雾在烧焦的木材、成堆的灰烬和发光的余烬中移动，我们必须找到我们要找的东西。
It was hard to tell, everything being so burned, everything looking so much alike.
很难说清楚，一切都被烧毁了，一切看起来都那么相似。
There was silence among us as our people lifted the bodies out.
当我们的人把尸体抬出来时，我们之间一片寂静。
The children were so small.
孩子们太小了。
I thought of my own.
我想到了我自己的。
No words were said.
没有说话。
I wondered what my life would ever come to.
我想知道我的生活会变成什么样子。
The lights of all the emergency vehicles blinked out on the street.
街上所有急救车辆的灯都熄灭了。
And even the cops wanted to turn their faces away.
就连警察也想转过脸去。
I know they have a hard time.
我知道他们很难过。
People mess with them, and they have to mess with drunks, and, once in awhile, they have to look at something with us.
人们招惹他们，他们不得不招惹醉汉，而且，偶尔，他们还得和我们一起看一些东西。
A few days later, the man who was the father of the dead children came into the station to try and get his hands on a copy of the fire report, so he could turn it over to his insurance company.
几天后，死去孩子的父亲来到车站，试图拿到一份火灾报告副本，以便将其交给保险公司。
A poker game was going on at our big table in the middle of the kitchen.
厨房中间的大桌子上正在玩扑克游戏。
This man had his cap in his hands.
这个男人手里拿着帽子。
And his clothes were ragged.
而且他的衣服也破烂不堪。
The betting went on, our boys never looking crossways at him, not knowing who he was.
赌注继续进行，我们的孩子们从来没有用异样的眼神看着他，不知道他是谁。
Their voices got louder while the man stood there patiently, waiting for the Chief to find the report in the file cabinet.
他们的声音越来越大，男人耐心地站在那里，等待局长在文件柜里找到报告。
The man looked humbled by what had happened to him.
这名男子因发生在自己身上的事情而显得很谦卑。
His children had probably been buried quickly.
他的孩子们可能很快就被埋葬了。
The poker game went on.
扑克牌游戏继续进行。
And the man kept standing there with his cap in his hands, until finally, mercifully, Uncle Chiefy found the report and took the man back to the Xerox machine to make a copy of it.
那人一直站在那里，手里拿着帽子，直到最后，幸运的是，酋长叔叔发现了这份报告，并带那人回到复印机那里复印了一份。
I never asked them to stop the game.
我从来没有要求他们停止比赛。
Sometimes there was a weird callousness about the work we did.
有时我们所做的工作有一种奇怪的冷酷无情。
We couldn't let it get too close to us, because we didn't want to be touched by it.
我们不能让它离我们太近，因为我们不想被它碰到。
We didn't talk much about the bad ones.
我们没有过多谈论不好的事情。
When they happened, we dealt with them.
当它们发生时，我们就处理它们。
Then we went back and ate, or watched a movie, or went on another call, or washed the trucks, or polished the chrome.
然后我们回去吃饭，或者看电影，或者去接另一个电话，或者洗卡车，或者擦亮铬合金。
We got through our shifts, and then we went home and went fishing, or hunting, or made love to our wives, or played with our children.
我们轮班完毕，然后回家去钓鱼，或者打猎，或者与我们的妻子做爱，或者和我们的孩子一起玩耍。
We hoped the bad things we saw would never claim us.
我们希望我们所看到的坏事永远不会夺走我们的生命。
We hoped we wouldn't die in smoke and flames or torn steel, like the people we couldn't save.
我们希望我们不会像那些我们无法拯救的人一样死于烟雾、火焰或撕裂的钢铁中。
Michael Stumm, reading from Larry Brown's book, On Fire.
迈克尔·斯图姆（Michael Stumm）正在朗读拉里·布朗（Larry Brown）的书《着火了》（On Fire）。
Act Four, Smugglers.
第四幕，走私者。
Well, David Sedaris is a frequent contributor to This American Life , and for years has been an occasional contributor to NPR's Morning Edition .
大卫·塞达里斯 (David Sedaris) 经常为《美国生活》撰稿，多年来也偶尔为 NPR 早间版撰稿。
And for years, there have been two stories that he has tried to get onto Morning Edition without any success at all.
多年来，他一直试图将两个故事纳入晨报版，但都没有成功。
These days he is on a book tour for his book, Naked .
这些天他正在为他的书《Naked》进行巡回售书活动。
And he reads these two stories wherever he goes, along with special modified versions of the stories that he also tried to smuggle on the air, without any success.
无论他走到哪里，他都会阅读这两个故事，以及这些故事的特殊修改版本，他还试图在广播中走私这些故事，但没有成功。
One of these two stories actually touches on people in the business of death.
这两个故事之一实际上触及了从事死亡事务的人。
So this seems like, at last, at last, radio audience of America, this is the perfect opportunity to put these on the air.
所以，对于美国的广播听众来说，这似乎是最后、最后播出这些节目的绝佳机会。
And then, I just wanted to read these.
然后，我只想读这些。
I had a couple things that I was dragging around for a while.
我有几件事拖了一段时间。
But I tried to get on Morning Edition and they just wouldn't let them on for anything.
但我试图上早间版，但他们就是不让他们上任何节目。
And so these are just two of the little things.
这些只是其中的两件小事。
I had dinner with Jean and Evelyn.
我和吉恩和伊芙琳共进晚餐。
Both of them work for the Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, where they plan the annual meetings.
他们两人都在整形外科学会工作，负责策划年度会议。
Jean told me that hotels have a rule stating you're not allowed to display a cadaver in any room where food is being served.
吉恩告诉我，酒店有一条规定，不允许在任何提供食物的房间展示尸体。
It never occurred to me that someone might be forced to make such a rule, let alone enforce it.
我从来没有想过有人会被迫制定这样的规则，更不用说执行它了。
But both Jean and Evelyn have snuck the dead into meeting rooms.
但吉恩和伊芙琳都把死者偷偷带进了会议室。
Evelyn once traveled with half a woman.
伊芙琳曾经和半个女人一起旅行。
She named her Judy and carried her around in a refrigerated suitcase.
她给她起名叫朱迪，并用冷藏箱带着她到处走。
Jean once had to sneak an entire cadaver into the San Francisco Fairmont.
吉恩曾经不得不将一具尸体偷偷带进旧金山费尔蒙特酒店。
She said they dressed the corpse in casual clothing and mussed up his hair, so he'd look drunk.
她说，他们给尸体穿上便服，并弄乱了他的头发，让他看起来喝醉了。
Then they carried him into the meeting room, supported by two sober doctors.
然后他们在两名清醒的医生的搀扶下把他抬进了会议室。
Jean said the only hard part was finding two sober doctors at the convention.
吉恩说，唯一困难的部分是在大会上找到两名清醒的医生。
At another meeting, a surgeon heard that Jean and Evelyn had a refrigerator in their room and knocked late at night asking if he could store a couple of knees until morning.
在另一次会议上，一位外科医生听说吉恩和伊芙琳的房间里有一台冰箱，深夜敲门询问他是否可以将几个膝盖存放到早上。
His own refrigerator was packed with elbows and tendons, and he had no more room.
他自己的冰箱里塞满了肘部和肌腱，他已经没有更多的空间了。
I guess when you check that little square on your driver's licenses, there's no telling where you'll wind up.
我猜当你检查驾照上的那个小方块时，你根本不知道你会去哪里。
Parts of you may eventually check into some of the finest hotels of this country.
你们中的一部分人最终可能会入住这个国家一些最好的酒店。
All right, now, that was the first story.
好吧，这是第一个故事。
Now, we come to the second story that David wasn't able to get onto Morning Edition , and I have to admit, this has nothing to do with our theme.
现在，我们来看第二个故事，大卫没能进入早间版，我必须承认，这与我们的主题无关。
But you know, we've come this far, you and me.
但你知道，你和我，我们已经走了这么远。
We might as well continue down this path.
我们不妨沿着这条路继续走下去。
We had Easter dinner at John's house.
我们在约翰家吃复活节晚餐。
A big afternoon meal, which we ate in his backyard.
一顿丰盛的下午饭，我们在他的后院吃的。
Everyone had taken their places at the table, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom.
当我借口去洗手间时，每个人都在餐桌上就座。
And there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life, no toilet paper or anything, just this thick and coiled specimen.
在厕所里，绝对是我一生中见过的最大的粪便，没有卫生纸或任何东西，只有这个厚厚的卷曲标本。
I flushed the toilet and the big turd roused around.
我冲了马桶，大便惊醒了。
It budged and bobbed a little, but that was it.
它稍微移动了一下，但仅此而已。
This thing wasn't going anywhere.
这件事哪儿也去不了。
Just then someone knocked on the door, and I started to panic.
就在这时，有人敲门，我开始慌了。
Just a minute!
请稍等！
At an early age, my mother sat me down and explained that everyone has bowel movements.
很小的时候，妈妈就让我坐下来，告诉我每个人都会排便。
Everyone, she said, even the President and his wife, everyone in the world, everyone but me.
她说，每个人，甚至是总统和他的妻子，世界上的每个人，除了我之外的每个人。
And I could picture them all, everyone from Red Skelton to Lady Bird Johnson, but something this big?
我可以想象他们所有人，从红骷髅到伯德·约翰逊夫人，但是这么大的东西？
Just a minute!
请稍等！
And I seriously considered lifting this turd out of the toilet and tossing it out the window.
我认真考虑过把这个粪便从厕所里拿出来扔到窗外。
I honestly considered it, but John lives on the ground floor, and a dozen people were seated at a picnic table 10 feet away.
老实说，我也考虑过，但约翰住在一楼，十几个人坐在 10 英尺外的野餐桌旁。
And these were people who would surely investigate and gather round.
而这些人肯定会调查并聚集过来。
And there I'd be, trying to explain that it wasn't mine!
我会在那里，试图解释这不是我的！
But why would I bother throwing it out the window if it wasn't mine?
但如果它不是我的，我为什么要把它扔出窗外呢？
No one would have believed me.
没有人会相信我。
Just a minute!
请稍等！
And I scrambled for the plunger and used it to break the turd into manageable pieces.
我抓起柱塞，用它把粪便打碎成易于处理的碎片。
And even then, I had to flush twice just to get rid of it.
即便如此，我也不得不冲两次才能摆脱它。
It was Janet at the door, and she said, well, it's about time.
珍妮特站在门口，她说，好吧，时间到了。
And I was left thinking that the person who left the huge turd had no problem with it, so why did I?
我当时就想，留下大便的人对此没有任何问题，那我为什么要这么做呢？
And later, at the table, I examined each guest, trying to figure who was capable.
后来，在餐桌上，我检查了每位客人，试图找出谁有能力。
And they rejected that time after time, so then-- and there's no foul language in it or anything-- so I rewrote it.
他们一次又一次地拒绝了，所以——里面没有脏话或任何东西——所以我重写了它。
I rewrote it, trying to slip it past them as lighthearted verse.
我重写了它，试图将它作为轻松的诗句从他们身边溜走。
I had dinner last night with Evelyn and Jean, at a place specializing in island cuisine.
昨晚我和伊芙琳和吉恩在一家专门提供岛屿美食的地方共进晚餐。
Jean had the bass and Evelyn, sturgeon.
吉恩钓的是鲈鱼，伊芙琳钓的是鲟鱼。
The two of them work for a large group of surgeons.
他们两人为一大群外科医生工作。
They handle the dues and plan the convention.
他们负责处理会费并策划会议。
It calls for a great deal of anal retention.
它需要大量的肛门保留。
It's difficult work setting up the exhibits.
布置展品是一项艰巨的工作。
These hotels have rules that strictly prohibit displaying cadavers in large meeting halls where people are eating.
这些酒店有规定，严格禁止在人们就餐的大型会议厅展示尸体。
It's strict protocol.
这是严格的协议。
It makes sense to me, but Evelyn and Jean have reason to think that this law is obscene.
这对我来说有道理，但伊芙琳和琼有理由认为这条法律是淫秽的。
Because of their work, they both snuck dead bodies through dining halls featuring stuffed manicottis and beef tenderloin.
由于工作原因，他们都偷偷地在餐厅里偷偷地溜进尸体，餐厅里摆满了马尼科蒂馅饼和牛里脊肉。
It was Evelyn's duty to carry a corpse, half a woman named Judy, around in a suitcase packed with dry ice.
伊芙琳的职责是在装满干冰的手提箱中搬运一具半个女人的尸体，名叫朱迪。
That's nothing, her friend said, I have once or twice snuck into hotels with a full-grown dead body.
她的朋友说，这没什么，我曾经有一两次带着一具成年尸体潜入旅馆。
We dressed a guy up, then we made him look shoddy.
我们给一个人穿上衣服，然后让他看起来很劣质。
I untucked his shirt and rumpled his suit, then mussed up his hair and unlaced one boot.
我解开他的衬衫，弄乱了他的西装，然后弄乱了他的头发，解开了一只靴子的鞋带。
To make him look drunk, right?
为了让他看起来醉了，对吧？
The guy looked like hell.
那家伙看起来就像地狱一样。
We carried him right through the Fairmont Hotel, supported by doctors.
在医生的支持下，我们带着他穿过费尔蒙酒店。
I searched the place over.
我把那个地方搜遍了。
The hard part was finding two doctors still sober.
困难的部分是找到两名仍然清醒的医生。
She told of the time she once found herself lending her hotel room, cooler for storing a tendon.
她讲述了有一次她借用了酒店房间，房间里有一个凉爽的地方用来存放肌腱。
A doctor had visited, begging her, please, I'd use my own fridge, but it's chock full of knees.
一位医生来看望她，恳求她，我可以用我自己的冰箱，但里面塞满了膝盖。
When surgeons convene, they come packed with parts, like kidneys and spleens, spinal columns and hearts.
当外科医生开会时，他们会带着肾脏和脾脏、脊柱和心脏等部件前来。
It makes you think twice about checking that square, that space on your license whereby you swear to offer your body to science so others might see with your eyes, for the first time, their brothers, or love with your heart, or pee with your kidney, kick with your foot, or bend on your mid-knee.
它让你在检查驾照上的那个方格时三思而后行，你发誓将你的身体献给科学，以便其他人第一次用你的眼睛看到他们的兄弟，或者用你的心去爱，或者用你的肾撒尿，用你的脚踢，或者用你的膝盖中部弯曲。
It's something to think about when you're alive, the thought, when you're dead, there's a chance you'll arrive at four star hotels, cut up into pieces, displayed near a chart or a plastic prosthesis.
当你活着的时候，这是值得思考的事情，当你死后，你有机会到达四星级酒店，被切成碎片，展示在图表或塑料假肢附近。
Your lung or your liver will grace the convention, the objects of pure undivided attention.
你的肺或你的肝脏将为会议增光添彩，成为纯粹全神贯注的对象。
And then, we had Easter dinner at John's house on Irving.
然后，我们在欧文的约翰家吃了复活节晚餐。
A big sit-down meal in daytime's unnerving.
白天坐下来吃一顿大餐令人不安。
For me, anyway, I like to eat later.
对我来说，反正我喜欢晚点吃。
I took some roast lamb, a couple potaters, and carried my plate outside to the lawn, to a table he'd covered in bright pink chiffon.
我拿了一些烤羊肉，几个土豆泥，然后把盘子端到外面的草坪上，放在他铺着亮粉色雪纺的桌子上。
I'd had a few beers and a glass of chablis and thought, before eating, I might want to pee.
我喝了几瓶啤酒和一杯夏布利酒，想在吃饭前我可能想小便。
I stepped back inside, down the hall to the toilet.
我走回屋内，穿过走廊来到厕所。
The door creaked behind me.
门在我身后吱吱作响。
John needed to oil it.
约翰需要给它上油。
Unzipping my fly then, I glance in the bowl and spotted a turd there, a huge tootsie roll.
然后拉开我的门襟拉链，我朝碗里看了一眼，发现里面有一坨粪便，一个巨大的小便卷。
The thing was gigantic, all coiled and massive.
那东西非常巨大，盘绕着，而且巨大。
I flushed the john then, but this turd was impassive.
我当时冲了马桶，但这个粪便却无动于衷。
It budged and it bobbed, but the large stool remained long after the water had spiraled and drained.
它动了动，上下浮动，但在水盘旋并排干后，大凳子仍然存在很长一段时间。
This stool was the largest that I'd ever seen.
这个凳子是我见过的最大的。
It looked like a log or a toy submarine.
它看起来像一根圆木或一艘玩具潜艇。
I flushed it again, and the action repeated.
我又冲了一遍，又重复了这个动作。
The feces remained while the water retreated.
当水退去时，粪便仍然存在。
Someone came to the door then, they knocked and they pounded.
这时有人来到门口，他们敲门，敲门。
Just a second!
等一下！
I cried, panic-struck and dumbfounded.
我哭了，惊慌失措，目瞪口呆。
A bowel movement's normal, my mom once said, hesitant.
我妈妈曾经犹豫地说，排便是正常的。
Everyone has them, why, even the President.
每个人都有它们，为什么，甚至总统也是如此。
But something this big was beyond comprehension.
但这么大的事情却是无法理解的。
I'm coming!
我来了！
I yelled.
我喊道。
It was my sole intention to get rid of this turd.
我唯一的目的就是摆脱这个粪便。
But how could I do it?
但我该怎么办呢？
I said to myself, then what if I threw it out of the window?
我对自己说，那我把它扔出窗外怎么办？
But to my dismay, the guests were all sitting just 10 feet away.
但令我沮丧的是，客人们都坐在离我只有 10 英尺远的地方。
They'd look up from their plates and in no time would gather around this big turd.
他们会从盘子里抬起头来，很快就会聚集在这个大粪周围。
And meanwhile I'd brather, it wasn't my doing!
同时我想说，这不是我干的！
This wasn't my stool!
这不是我的凳子！
No one would believe me.
没有人会相信我。
They'd think me a fool.
他们会认为我是个傻瓜。
They'd look at me funny and think I was lying.
他们会用滑稽的眼神看着我，并认为我在撒谎。
Why toss a turd if it's not even mine?
如果连粪便都不是我的，为什么要扔它呢？
Just a second!
等一下！
I shouted.
我喊道。
And plunger in hand, I worked with the handle and tried to disband this turd into pieces.
我手里拿着柱塞，用手操作手柄，试图将这些粪便分解成碎片。
I broke it to bits.
我把它摔碎了。
Then flushed twice to wash away all the small [BLEEP].
然后冲两次，把小[BLEEP]全部冲掉。
I opened the door then, to find my friend Janet.
然后我打开门，找到了我的朋友珍妮特。
While waiting she'd eaten a whole pomegranate.
在等待的过程中，她吃了一整个石榴。
It's about time, she said.
是时候了，她说。
And I left the room thinking, the person who left that huge turd in there, stinkin', walked off with no problem, so why the big deal?
我离开房间时想，那个把巨大的粪便留在里面的人，发臭了，没有问题就走了，那有什么大不了的呢？
I picked up my fork and returned to my meal.
我拿起叉子，继续吃饭。
The thought of that turd, though, it was inescapable.
然而，想到那堆粪便，它是不可避免的。
I examined each guest then, wondering who might be capable.
然后我检查了每一位客人，想知道谁有能力。
Thanks.
谢谢。
David Sedaris, author of the book, Naked.
大卫·塞达里斯（David Sedaris），《裸体》一书的作者。
Well, that song brings us perfectly to Act Five.
嗯，这首歌完美地把我们带到了第五幕。
Act Five, The Happiest Death Worker.
第五幕，最快乐的死亡工人。
What's the point of listening to public radio if you don't occasionally learn a new word?
如果你偶尔学不到一个新单词，那么听公共广播还有什么意义呢？
Well, as a public service, to give you your money's worth, we know that many of you gave in the last fund drive, here's today's word.
好吧，作为一项公共服务，为了让你们的钱物有所值，我们知道你们中的许多人在上次的募款活动中做出了贡献，这就是今天的发言。
Enucleator.
去核器。
Meema Spadola How do you spell that?
米玛·斯帕多拉 这个词怎么拼写？
E-U-N-U-C-L-E-A-- I don't know.
E-U-N-U-C-L-E-A--我不知道。
I have to write it down.
我必须把它写下来。
You can't ask me that.
你不能问我这个。
Lou Zeidberg is an enucleator himself.
卢·泽德伯格本人就是一名剜除者。
It means that he removes people's eyes for a living, the eyes of dead people.
这意味着他为了谋生而摘除人们的眼睛，死人的眼睛。
He works for an eye bank in New York City.
他在纽约市的一家眼库工作。
Meema Sapdola talked him into an interview.
米玛·萨普多拉说服他接受采访。
Lou tells me I can tag along with him on Saturday night.
卢告诉我周六晚上我可以跟他一起去。
But he warns me, I don't want you fainting and cracking your dome on the floor, because I'm going to have to wipe up the blood.
但他警告我，我不想让你晕倒，让你的圆顶在地板上破裂，因为我必须擦掉血迹。
Lou talks like that.
卢就是这样说话的。
I'll take you places you've never been before, he says.
我会带你去你以前从未去过的地方，他说。
The Brooklyn medical examiner's office, think of the worst scene you can, it's worse than that.
布鲁克林法医办公室，想想你能想到的最糟糕的场景，比那更糟糕。
Let me put it this way, when you walk out of there, you want to burn your shoes.
让我这样说吧，当你走出那里时，你想烧掉你的鞋子。
In the end, the director of the eye bank decides I can't go with Lou.
最后，眼库主任决定我不能和卢一起去。
Eye donations are desperately needed, and they don't want me doing a story that'll scare people.
迫切需要捐献眼睛，他们不希望我做一个会吓到人们的故事。
So on a bright spring day, Lou takes me to this place I've never been before, a small office on the 10th floor of the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital.
于是在一个明媚的春日，卢带我来到了这个我以前从未去过的地方，曼哈顿眼耳鼻喉医院十楼的一间小办公室。
It looks like any other office you've been in, except for a small lab in the back, and a sink where they scrub-up for procedures.
它看起来和你去过的任何其他办公室没什么两样，只是后面有一个小实验室，还有一个用来清理程序的水槽。
Lou's completely decked out in blue surgical cap, blue surgical mask, eye shield.
卢戴着蓝色手术帽、蓝色手术口罩和眼罩。
Lou is tall and handsome.
卢先生又高又帅。
He makes me think of a tough-talking version of Gary Cooper.
他让我想起了强硬的加里·库珀版本。
In college he used to be a boxer.
在大学期间，他曾经是一名拳击手。
The procedure he's doing is to remove a cornea from a donor's eye.
他正在做的手术是从捐赠者的眼睛上摘除角膜。
Usually it's just the cornea, or sometimes the white part of the eye, the sclera, that gets transplanted.
通常移植的只是角膜，有时是眼睛的白色部分，即巩膜。
Now he's opening a package, another blue, sterile--
现在他正在打开一个包裹，另一个蓝色的，无菌的——
These are towels, just to dry my hands when I'm done scrubbing in.
这些是毛巾，只是擦洗完后用来擦干双手的。
There's a ritual to eye transplantation.
眼睛移植有一个仪式。
Lou lays out the blue cloths and sterilized tools.
卢把蓝色的布和消毒过的工具摆好。
I'm impure and must stand away from the sterile field.
我不纯洁，必须远离无菌区。
So the first thing I do is I scrape-- any bacteria that might be on the edge, I would clear it away using a scalpel.
所以我做的第一件事就是刮掉边缘上的任何细菌，我会用手术刀将其清除。
Lou lays the eyeball on a strip of gauze.
卢将眼球放在一条纱布上。
He expertly rolls the eye, like a piece of sushi, and holds it firmly.
他熟练地转动眼睛，就像一块寿司一样，然后牢牢地握住它。
The eye peeks out at us.
眼睛向外窥视着我们。
We always talk about, oh, eyes have so much expression.
我们总是谈论，哦，眼睛有这么多的表情。
Do eyes ever have any expression at all, of the eyes that you're removing from either a donor, or once you have it out?
当您从捐献者身上摘除眼睛或取出眼睛后，眼睛是否有任何表情？
Of all the procedures I've done, the biggest change in feeling I've got, or the biggest education about death that I've got, is that a person's body is just that.
在我做过的所有手术中，我感受上最大的改变，或者说我对死亡最大的教育，就是一个人的身体就是这样。
And that everything that makes up the person that you know is gone once that person dies.
一旦你认识的人死了，构成他的一切都会消失。
He snips around the cornea with tiny curved scissors, then lifts it off the eye to reveal a soft, bright, blue iris.
他用小弯剪刀剪断角膜，然后将其从眼睛上取下，露出柔软、明亮的蓝色虹膜。
Oh, it's like you lifted off the cap of the cornea, and it's so much more beautiful now underneath.
哦，就像你揭开了角膜的盖子，现在它下面更加美丽了。
This cornea was somewhat opaque, so you weren't able to see all the true blueness of this person's iris.
这个角膜有点不透明，所以你看不到这个人虹膜的全部真正的蓝色。
And when I lifted it up, a lot of people say, it really looks like I'm just taking a contact lens off of the eye.
很多人说，当我举起它时，看起来真的就像我刚刚把隐形眼镜从眼睛上取下来一样。
The eye is really an amazing structure, the way it's so delicately put together.
眼睛确实是一个令人惊奇的结构，它的组合如此精致。
And it's really tough, in one way.
从某种意义上说，这确实很困难。
I mean the white part of your eye is a thick-- it almost feels like rubber.
我的意思是你眼睛的白色部分很厚——感觉就像橡胶一样。
And behind that--
而这背后——
As we're standing in the lab, a coworker comes in to grab medical supplies from the fridge.
当我们站在实验室时，一位同事进来从冰箱里拿医疗用品。
You have a donor, Lou asks him?
卢问他，你有捐赠者吗？
Where are you going?
你要去哪里？
Med Tech [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
医疗技术 [难以理解]
You bummed you're going to miss that staff meeting?
你因为要错过那次员工会议而感到沮丧吗？
No. [INAUDIBLE] Meema Spadola They have another donor, meaning another person in New York just died.
不。[听不清] Meema Spadola 他们还有另一位捐赠者，这意味着纽约又有一个人刚刚去世。
Later, the education director tells me they get 1,200 eyes every year.
后来，教育主任告诉我，他们每年都会有 1,200 只眼睛。
600 people who die, I say.
我说，有 600 人死亡。
600 people who donate, she corrects me.
她纠正了我的说法，有 600 人捐款。
Lou's enucleated 100 of them.
卢已经摘除其中 100 个。
To be honest, before I started doing this work, like most Americans, I didn't really think about death.
说实话，在我开始做这项工作之前，像大多数美国人一样，我并没有真正考虑过死亡。
Now, seeing so many dead people, old people, teenagers, little kids, it's easy for Lou to picture his own body spread out on a slab.
现在，看到这么多死去的人，老人、青少年、小孩，卢很容易想象自己的尸体躺在一块平板上。
I definitely take health and safety a lot more seriously than I did when I was a young man.
我确实比年轻时更加重视健康和安全。
Definitely drive a little bit more carefully, always wear seat belts.
开车一定要小心一点，一定要系好安全带。
And then also, just, I eat well and don't smoke or drink alcohol, things like that.
然后，我吃得很好，不抽烟或喝酒，诸如此类。
Lou's only 26.
卢才26岁。
And when I met Lou at a party six months ago, he had a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
六个月前，当我在一次聚会上见到卢时，他一手拿着啤酒，另一只手拿着香烟。
He tells me he's quit since then.
他告诉我从那以后他就辞职了。
There's something about this job that makes him think he's supposed to be a saint.
这份工作让他觉得自己应该是个圣人。
A benevolent angel, scrubbed and sterilized, calling the next of kin and calmly asking when he can remove the eyes of their loved ones.
一位仁慈的天使，经过擦洗和消毒，打电话给近亲，平静地询问何时可以摘除亲人的眼睛。
Do you ever look down at this person, whose eyes you're removing, and think, this is someone's mother, this is someone's brother?
你是否曾经低头看着这个被你摘掉眼睛的人，然后想，这是某人的母亲，这是某人的兄弟？
Yeah, every time, I always think that.
是啊，每次我都这么想。
And I just try and provide a little bit of comfort in this otherwise awful experience.
我只是尝试在这次糟糕的经历中提供一点安慰。
I mean you, in a sense, of every profession that deals directly with death, yours has got to be the most positive.
我的意思是，从某种意义上说，在每一个直接与死亡打交道的职业中，你的职业一定是最积极的。
You and anyone else who's dealing with transplanting organs of any kind.
您和任何其他从事任何类型器官移植的人。
Because everyone else, the doctors losing the patient, the person at the funeral home, I mean, it's just death.
因为其他人，失去病人的医生，殡仪馆的人，我的意思是，这只是死亡。
There's nothing particularly positive there.
那里没有什么特别积极的事情。
It's interesting, have you ever--
这很有趣，你有没有——
I have to disagree.
我必须不同意。
Because I think that a funeral home does provide a very important service.
因为我认为殡仪馆确实提供了非常重要的服务。
I mean it's a service that everybody does need.
我的意思是这是每个人都需要的服务。
And to attempt to do such a hard job, I think is noble in and of itself.
我认为尝试完成如此艰巨的工作本身就是高尚的。
Are you noble?
你高贵吗？
Lou Zeidberg I don't know.
卢·泽德伯格 我不知道。
I'm fortunate to have such a benevolent job.
我很幸运能有这样一份仁慈的工作。
And I try to do it as well as I can.
我尽力做到最好。
The dictionary says to enucleate means to remove an eye.
字典上说“剜除”的意思是摘除一只眼睛。
An older meaning of the word is to elucidate, to explain.
这个词的较旧含义是阐明、解释。
After I leave Lou's office, I check my driver's license to see if I ever filled out the organ donor section on the back.
离开卢的办公室后，我检查了我的驾驶执照，看看我是否填写过背面的器官捐赠部分。
I hadn't.
我没有。
I stare at my license and hesitate.
我盯着我的驾照，犹豫了一下。
Checking this one tiny box means admitting that I'm going to die.
勾选这个小盒子就意味着承认我快要死了。
I sign up.
我报名。
I might as well tattoo a recycling symbol on my chest.
我不妨在胸前纹一个回收标志。
I'm ready to be processed.
我已经准备好接受处理了。
On the subway after the interview, all I see are eyeballs.
采访结束后在地铁上，我看到的都是眼球。
Eyes stupidly rolling around in people's heads, reading papers, checking watches.
人们的眼睛愚蠢地转动着，看报纸，看手表。
The man opposite me with pale blue eyes blinks.
我对面的淡蓝色眼睛的男人眨了眨眼。
His eyes shuttle left and right as he watches the subway tunnel fly past.
他的目光左顾右盼，看着地铁隧道飞驰而过。
A woman, with glazed over brown eyes, stares at an ad for corn and bunion removal.
一位女士棕色的眼睛呆滞地盯着一则去除鸡眼和拇囊炎的广告。
I think of Lou delicately snipping away at their eyeballs, lifting off their corneas, peeling away the sclera.
我想起卢小心翼翼地剪掉他们的眼球，摘下他们的角膜，剥掉巩膜。
Well, our program was produced today by Paul Tough and myself, with Julie Snyder, Alix Spiegel, and Nancy Updike.
嗯，我们今天的节目是由保罗·托夫和我本人以及朱莉·斯奈德、阿利克斯·斯皮格尔和南希·厄普代克共同制作的。
Contributing editors Margie Rochlin, Jack Kitt, and Sarah Vowell, who also found most of the music for today's program.
特约编辑玛吉·罗克林 (Margie Rochlin)、杰克·基特 (Jack Kitt) 和莎拉·沃威尔 (Sarah Vowell) 也为今天的节目找到了大部分音乐。
Other musical help today from John Connors.
今天约翰·康纳斯提供的其他音乐帮助。
Thanks today to KUOW for their recording of David Sedaris.
今天感谢 KUOW 录制 David Sedaris。
If you would like a cassette of this program or any other This American Life program, well, it only costs $10.
如果您想要该节目或任何其他《This American Life》节目的磁带，那么只需花费 10 美元。
Call us at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380.
请致电芝加哥 WBEZ，电话：312-832-3380。
Again, 312-832-3380.
再次拨打 312-832-3380。
Our email address, radio@ well.com.
我们的电子邮件地址，radio@well.com。
[FUNDING CREDITS] WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia who insists, insists, insists--
[资金来源] WBEZ 管理由 Torey Malatia 监督，他坚持、坚持、坚持——
It wasn't mine.
这不是我的。
Ira Glass I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life .
艾拉·格拉斯（Ira Glass） 我是艾拉·格拉斯（Ira Glass），下周回来，带来更多《美国生活》的故事。
This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.
《This American Life》与 WBEZ Chicago 合作制作，并由 PRX 公共广播电台传送到各电台。