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| “Wind twenty knots,” he wrote. “Thinking of you.” |
| “风速二十节，我在想着你。”他写道。 |
| “Sent via High Seas satellite phone,” read the email footer. “Please keep replies short.” |
| 电邮页脚上写着，“通过公海卫星电话发送，请简短回复。” |
| He was somewhere off Antarctica, a place he had been dozens of times, aboard a no-frills tourist ship where he was the expedition leader. There was a separate captain and crew, but he directed the itinerary, oversaw the staff and guides, and was responsible for 50 well-heeled passengers who had shelled out five figures to chug across 2,000 nautical miles of hostile Southern Ocean to a distant land of ice and snow. |
| 他在南极洲的某个地方，那个地方他已经去过几十次，在一艘简朴的旅游船上做探险队领队。船上有另外的船长和船员，但他负责行程，监督员工和导游，并对50名富有的乘客负责。这些乘客花了五位数的钱，在危险的南冰洋上穿行2000海里，登上这片遥远的冰雪之地。 |
| “Thinking aloud,” he wrote in January, “I have no idea what your diary looks like for April, but I could come to California for a couple weeks. I would be interested in some hiking in national parks.” |
| 他在1月写道，“我努力地想，不知你4月的日程是怎样的，但我可以来加州住上几周。我对去国家公园徒步很感兴趣。” |
| I agreed, but soon he wrote with a new proposition: He would buy me a plane ticket to the Solomon Islands, and we would sail around in a 20-foot open boat, exploring atolls and bays and camping on the beach. |
| 我答应了他，但很快他又写了一个新提议给我：他会给我买一张去所罗门群岛的机票，然后我们可以坐着一艘20英尺长的敞篷船四处航行，探索环礁和海湾，在海滩上露营。 |
| “Maggie,” he wrote, “I know this is a big ask for a first date. I nervously await your reply. Have I pushed the boat out too far?” |
| “玛姬，”他写道，“我知道这要求对初次约会来说有点过分。我紧张地等待你的答复。我是不是做得太过火了？” |
| He asked if I had any concerns, and I did. They included (but were not limited to) sunburn, saltwater crocodiles, unexploded ordnance from World War II, and the simple but daunting possibility that, once alone on a small boat, he and I might discover we didn’t actually like each other. We’d never even kissed. We were basically strangers, and he was 30 years older than I was. I was 32. |
| 他问我是否有什么顾虑，我的确有。这些顾虑包括（但不限于）晒伤、咸水鳄、二战时未爆炸的炮弹，以及一种简单但令人畏惧的可能性：一旦我们在一艘小船上独处，他和我可能会发现自己其实并不喜欢对方。我们甚至没接过吻。我们基本上是陌生人，他比我大30岁。我当时32岁。 |
| One of my friends called him Old Salt; another, the Ancient Mariner. His life was so adventurous that, in my mind, the concept of age didn’t really apply. He lived mostly on ships and spent his free time snowmobiling across Siberia. |
| 我的一个朋友叫他“老水手”；还有个朋友说他是古代航海家。他的生活充满了冒险精神，在我看来，年龄的概念对他并不适用。他大部分时间住在船上，空闲时会骑着雪地摩托穿越西伯利亚。 |
| I had met him on a trip he’d led to the remote subantarctic islands scattered south of New Zealand. Though scoured by wind, the islands are relatively temperate and abound with life: giant prehistoric-looking flowers, thousands of king penguins, blindingly white southern royal albatrosses with nearly 12-foot wingspans. |
| 我是在他带队的旅行中认识他的，那一次是去往分散在新西兰南部的偏远亚南极群岛。尽管遭受风化，这些岛屿气候相对温和，充满了生命力：看起来像来自史前时代的巨大花朵，成千上万的帝企鹅，羽毛亮白、翼展将近12英尺的的南方皇家信天翁。 |
| I felt full of life there, too, invigorated by the wildness. Seemingly immune to the seasickness that felled many passengers, I spent hours in the bridge watching the bow crash over the swells. |
| 受到这种野性的激发，我也觉得自己充满活力。我似乎对许多乘客都有的晕船免疫，在驾驶室里待了好几个小时，看着巨浪不断拍打船首。 |
| Midway through the two-week trip, I began to wonder if he had a crush on me. No, I must be imagining things. And even if I wasn’t, could I seriously consider someone so much older, so salty? But my infatuation with the subantarctic had cracked me open, and he was very much of these islands. On one, he had rediscovered a species of bird previously thought extinct. On another, he had acquired a scar on his knee from a sea lion bite. Sometimes when he talked about subantarctic wildlife, he teared up. |
| 在为期两周的旅途中，我开始怀疑他是否对我有好感。不，一定是我在胡思乱想。即使是真的，我能认真考虑和一个比我大那么多、那么饱经世故的人在一起吗？但对亚南极的迷恋让我敞开了心扉，他非常热爱这些岛屿。在一个岛上，他重新发现了一种以前被认为已经灭绝的鸟类。在另一个岛上，他被海狮咬伤，膝盖上留下了一道伤疤。有时，谈到亚南极的野生动物，他会泪流满面。 |
| As I sat in the ship’s bar with some Irish filmmakers — the only other passengers well under retirement age — he brought me small gifts, as courting penguins will offer pebbles to potential mates: extra bowls of potato chips, a book he had co-written. |
| 当我和几个爱尔兰电影人（仅有的几个没到退休年龄的乘客）坐在船上的酒吧里时，他会给我带一些小礼物：多出来的几碗薯片，他与人合著的一本书，就像求偶的企鹅会给潜在的伴侣送鹅卵石一样。 |
| The filmmakers smirked at me. |
| 那些电影人冲我诡异地笑着。 |
| “Is it crazy that I think I’m interested?” I asked them. |
| “我觉得我有兴趣，是不是疯了？”我问他们。 |
| On our last night, I sought him out, curious if he would make a move. Our conversation was awkward at best, but in the course of it he told me about arriving by night at an encampment of Chukchi reindeer herders in Siberia. Above a vast herd of thousands of animals and the thin frozen cloud of their breath, twisting sheets of green aurora had filled the sky. |
| 在我们旅程的最后一晚，我找到他，好奇他是否会采取主动。我们的对话往好里说也是很尴尬的，但他对我讲起夜间到达西伯利亚的楚科奇驯鹿牧民营地的经历。在成千上万的大群动物和它们呼出的稀薄冰雾之上，蜿蜒闪烁的绿色极光布满了天空。 |
| Never before had I so envied another person’s memory. My internal compass swung toward him and stuck. |
| 我从来没有这么羡慕一个人的记忆。我内心的指针向他转了过去，停在了那里。 |
| When I left the ship, I decided that if I was still thinking about him in a week, I would take action. On day eight, I sent an email casually inquiring about coming along on one of his Siberian trips to write about it. The logistics didn’t work, but soon we were trying to figure out where and when we could meet instead. |
| 下船之后，我决定如果一星期后还惦记他，就采取行动。第八天，我发了一封态度随意的电子邮件，询问是否能参加他的西伯利亚之旅，作为写作素材。虽然西伯利亚的行程不好协调，但我们很快就开始讨论改为在其他的什么时间地点见面了。 |
| I said yes to the Solomon Islands, but the plan was derailed by a scheduling conflict. He wrote back the next day. He would return from Antarctica in two weeks, restock and refuel, pick up new passengers and depart again. Did I want to come along? |
| 我答应去所罗门群岛，但计划因日程冲突而搁浅。他第二天写了回信。他将在两周后从南极洲返回，补充物资和燃料，接上新乘客，然后再次出发。我想一起去吗？ |
| “You won’t like his body,” my mother said when I told her I was going on a five-week-long first date to an ice-covered continent with someone nearly her age. “It won’t be what you’re used to.” Ominously, she added, “You won’t like his toenails.” |
| “你不会喜欢他的身体的，”当我告诉妈妈，我要与一个和她年龄相仿的人去冰封的大陆进行为期五周的初次约会时，她说。“不会是你看惯了的样子，”她幽幽地说，“你不会喜欢他的脚趾甲的。” |
| When I left, it was winter in Los Angeles, and when I arrived, it was summer in Invercargill, a port city at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island. He was in the tiny terminal, looking nervous, wearing a polo shirt with his company’s logo embroidered on the breast and clutching three red roses in cellophane. |
| 我出发时，洛杉矶正是冬天，而当我抵达时，位于新西兰南岛最南端的港口城市因弗卡吉尔已是夏天。他在狭窄的航站楼里，看上去很紧张，穿着胸前绣着公司标志的Polo衫，手里拿着三朵用玻璃纸包好的红玫瑰。 |
| As he kissed me briefly on the mouth, I wondered if we would have sex that night. I couldn’t fathom it. He seemed utterly unknown. The reality hit me that, once the ship sailed, I would have no way of turning back. |
| 他轻轻与我接吻的时候，我在想我们当晚是否会发生关系。我无法想象那番场面。他完全像个陌生人。到船开的时候，我才意识到一个现实，我没有回头路了。 |
| As we drove to the docks, he held my hand and explained that he’d put me in a passenger cabin with a nice Kiwi lady, and, also, he’d decided it would be best if I functioned as a staff member. That way, he wouldn’t seem to be involved with a passenger, and I could eat with the staff and generally have a more interesting time. |
| 开车去码头时，他拉着我的手解释说，他会把我安排在客舱，和一位人很好的新西兰女士住一起，而且他认为我的身份最好是一名工作人员。这样一来，他就不会显得像是和乘客有关系，我也可以和工作人员一起吃饭，这样通常会更有乐趣。 |
| I was presented with an embroidered polo shirt of my own. We agreed I would tend bar, herd people along on the hikes, and do whatever else my modest skill set would allow. |
| 我得到了一件自己的印标Polo衫。我们商量好了，我负责照看酒吧，徒步时带团，做我那点技能所能做的各种事。 |
| This seemed like a great idea, as I had no interest in being a freeloader or concubine, and I craved the legitimacy of being part of the team. But when I boarded, awkwardness overwhelmed me. While the other staff members were kind, I could see the truth in how they looked at me: I was the girlfriend. I tucked the roses into my bag. |
| 这似乎是个好主意，因为我不想吃白食或者做别人的情妇，我也渴望成为他们团队的一员。但当我上船后，还是浑身都很尴尬。虽然其他工作人员都很善良，但我能从他们看我的眼神中看出真相：我是他的女朋友。我把玫瑰花塞进了包里。 |
| I can’t tell the whole story of a first date that could have been a disaster but instead turned out to be the risk that has inspired my subsequent risks, a leap into something wildly uncertain, something that didn’t last but expanded my world in ways beyond latitude. I came to covet his competence and intrepidness, and I realized my task was not to glom onto him but to foster those qualities in myself, to go out into the world in pursuit of what moves me. |
| 我无法完整讲述这场初次约会的故事，它本来可能是一场灾难，但结果却成了我此后冒险之旅的开端，让我走进了极不确定的世界，那些并不持久但却无限拓展了我自身世界的东西。我开始觊觎他的能力和无畏，也意识到我的任务不是依附在他身上，而是自己培养出这些品质，闯荡世界，追寻让我感动的东西。 |
| I can’t tell the whole story because it’s too long. But if I could, I would tell you how he took me into a forest of gnarled ironwood trees, where red flowers fallen from their branches carpeted the ground and penguins and sea lions peeked from behind moss-covered logs. I would tell you about ice-covered seas and penguins porpoising out of black water. I would tell you about the love notes he left on my pillow. I would assure you that, actually, he hadn’t been sure we would sleep together on the trip at all, but I would admit too that in the first week, my skittishness had alchemized into powerful desire. |
| 我无法把整个故事讲完，因为太长了。但如果要讲，我会讲他把我带到一片长满粗糙铁木的森林，红色花朵从枝头飘落，铺满了地面，企鹅和海狮在长满苔藓的原木后面窥视。我会讲那些冰层覆盖的海域和跃出黑色水面的企鹅。我会讲他在我枕头上留下的情书。我可以保证，他实际上根本不确定我们能在旅途中一起睡，但我也得承认，在第一周，我的不安转化成了强烈的欲望。 |
| On the surface, we struggled to connect, but something buried and wordless pulled us together. To explain it would have been as impossible as explaining why we both loved the sea, the wild animals, the raw landscapes. After each day’s work was done, as we sailed ever farther from my known world, I would go to his cabin and climb into his bunk while 20-foot swells rolled the ship and the perpetual twilight of the Antarctic summer lingered over the sea. |
| 表面上，我们很难沟通，但掩埋在内心深处的某些无声的东西把我们拉到了一起。要解释这一点，就像解释我们为什么都爱大海、爱野生动物、爱原始风景一样不可能。当我们更远地驶离我所熟悉的世界，每天的工作结束后，我就会去他的船舱，爬上他的铺位，船舱之外20英尺高的巨浪滚滚而来，海面上笼罩着南极夏季永恒的暮光。 |
| Since I can’t tell you about all that, I don’t have to explain how things fell apart, either. I don’t have to get into how antsy he was in the domesticated, urban spaces where I spend most of my life, or how he had trouble incorporating me into his world, too. I won’t tell you that the last night we spent together was in an RV in Alaska, parked beside the dog yard of a man who would later win the Iditarod, or that I woke in the night to a hundred sled dogs howling together, an unearthly, inscrutable vortex of sound. |
| 既然我不能说出所有事，也就不必解释我们的关系是如何破裂的了。我无需描述他在我生活了大半生的被驯服的城市空间里有多么焦躁不安，也无需说明他如何难以让我融入他的世界。我不会告诉你，我们在阿拉斯加州的房车里一起度过了最后一晚，车就停在一个人养狗的院子里，那个人后来在艾迪塔罗德（狗拉雪橇比赛——译注）拿了冠军。我也不会告诉你，我在那天夜里被上百只雪橇狗的嚎叫吵醒，那是一种诡异而神秘的声音漩涡。 |
| As he slept on beside me, undisturbed, I thought of how this memory would be only mine: the lavender night, the sleeping man, the sky swirling with dog music. |
| 他平静地睡在我身边，我想，这些记忆将只属于我自己：淡紫色的夜晚，熟睡的男人，盘旋于空中的狗的合奏。 |
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