钱德拉教授追寻幸福的旅程 试译

Before the journalists left he assured them he was delighted for the winners and was glad it was all over and was looking forward to seeing them again next year. His performance fooled everyone except for Jasmine who for the rest of the morning repeated the same sentence with a seventeen-year-old’s mercilessness, asking, ‘Are you all right, Dad? Are you all right?’ keeping at it no matter what he said until finally, on the way to the airport, he lost his temper and shouted, ‘Can’t you see I’m fine?’

记者们终于还是走了。在此之前，钱德拉教授一直对他们说，他祝贺获奖者，很高兴活动顺利落下帷幕，并期待来年再见。没人看出他的言不由衷，只有贾斯敏，在上午余下的时间里，无论他怎么回答，老是不懂事地反反复复反反复复问同一个问题：“你没事吧，爸爸？你没事吧？”直到最后，在去机场的路上，他终于没能忍住，大吼道：“我说没事就没事！”

In the past he would have assumed Jasmine’s inquisition was motivated only by sweetness and concern, but now Chandra was convinced there was malice involved, that Jasmine had finally entered into the family tradition of torturing the patriarch, if this was what he still was, for she was a teenager now and lived with her mother in Boulder who blamed him not only for the divorce, three years old now, but also for the rise of Ebola and Boko Haram.

要是以前，他会觉得女儿的询问全是出于关心。而现在，他确信这里面还有故意的成分。贾斯敏，他的女儿，最终还是遗传了这家人骨子里就喜欢折磨自己父亲的臭毛病，要是她还认自己这个父亲的话。她现在已经是个17岁的大姑娘了，自从三年前他们离婚之后，一直和她母亲住在波德，也一直因为离婚的事情对他不忿。到现在，添了埃博拉和博科·哈拉姆之后，她更是心有怨懑了。

As soon as he reached home the phone began to ring with a stream of condolence calls that continued throughout the day and then, more sporadically, for the rest of the week. For the following month people he barely knew stopped him in the street to offer their sympathies, men and women who couldn’t have named three economists had their lives depended on it.

他刚回到家，电话就响了，然后一整天都有人源源不断地打电话来表示安慰，而且这周剩下的时间里，偶尔还会有这样的电话打来。接下来的一个月了，还有他根本不认识的人在街上拦住他，向他表示同情。有男人，也有女人。可要是你问问，对他们生活影响最大的经济学家都有谁，他们能说上名字的，恐怕连三个都不到。

By November the hysteria had died down, replaced by horror at the US election, and it was then that Chandra realised, in all probability, he would never win the prize now. The odds had gone down a decade before when the Bengali had worked his unctuous charm, but even if time enough elapsed for another Indian to win, the field had changed. For years economists had wantonly obscured their profession, rendering everything absurdly technical with incompressible logarithms such that they were treated more like mystic seers than social scientists. Economics was little more than a poor man’s mathematics now, but Chandra still struggled with calculus, considering it beneath him, a task for a penniless research assistant.

到了11月，这场闹剧才渐渐冷了下来，取而代之的是美国大选这部恐怖片。直到此时，钱德拉终于意识到，他十有八九是再没机会拿诺贝尔奖了。早在十年前，那个孟加拉人还没展示出他虚情假意的热情之前，这个机会就已经变小了。而就算后来再没有印度人拿奖，这么长时间过去了，经济学领域也早就发生了变化。多年来，经济学家一直在孜孜不倦地把这门学科变得晦涩难懂，什么东西都要套个荒谬的术语来命名，然后再用冗长而又不能简化的对数来表示，搞得一个个都像是先知，信奉的是神秘主义，而不是研究的社会科学。经济学早已不是穷人的数学了，而钱德拉还在微积分的苦海中挣扎。他心中甚是不满，觉得自己身为教授，干的却只是穷得叮当响的助理研究员的活。

In any case, his slide to the right was hardly something the Scandinavians were likely to reward; that sub-subcontinent of mediocrity would consider it a signal of intellectual and moral deviance. It was what Chandra loathed most about liberals –their shameless self-righteousness, as if the species’ failings were always someone else’s fault, while anything they did, murder and arson included, were heroic acts in the service of liberty and justice. In point of fact, the Swedes weren’t even liberals. They were neutrals, abstainers who behaved as if they had deliberately chosen not to become a superpower in the interests of preserving their objectivity.

不管怎样，他的保守做派可不为那些斯堪的纳维亚人所喜。这块次大陆的次大陆上，尽是些平庸之辈，反倒认为是他智商和道德有问题。对自由主义者，他最讨厌的一点就是，他们自以为是起来可是毫无廉耻。要是自己失败了，那一定是别人的错；而他们自己，无论做什么，就算杀人放火，也是为了自由正义的英雄之举。事实上，那些瑞典人连自由主义者都算不上。他们行的是中庸之道，信奉低调节制，就为了避免自己看起来过于强势，丧失了理客中的立场。

Chandra wished he had just one Swedish student he could torment mercilessly, but the closest thing was a Dutch girl with an American accent who was, regrettably, quite bright. And so he went on giving his lectures and affecting the appearance of a man too wrapped up in his own research to notice that such a petty and trivial thing as the Nobel Prize even existed.

钱德拉希望自己手下也能有瑞典籍的倒霉学生，哪怕就一个也好，这样他可以无情地折磨折磨。可惜，论他学生的国籍，离瑞典最近的只有一个荷兰的女学生，一口美国口音，而且令人懊恼的是，她还贼聪明。于是，他只好该上课就上课，努力扮演好一个一心沉湎于学术研究，两耳不闻窗外事的好教授形象，只当这些种种凡俗琐事统统都不存在，包括诺贝尔奖。

On the Wednesday morning after term had ended, Chandra walked across the meadows from his home in Grantchester to the university, something he did only when breakfasting with the Master of the college. Chandra’s was at Gonville & Caius, where he was Emeritus Clifford H. Doyle Professor, a lifetime appointment that left him free to teach as much or as little as he wished. Like Professor Hawking, Chandra was as permanent a fixture at the college as the flock of stone gargoyles on the roof.

期末之后的这周周三早晨，钱德拉离开格兰切斯特的家，穿过草地去学校，这是平日里他要和校长一起吃早饭时才走的路线。钱德拉是凯斯学院一名终身名誉教授，他可以想上课就上课，不想上课就不上课。同霍金一样，他也是这所学校的一个永久标志，就好像屋顶上的那些石像怪。