There was the day, during our first trip -- our first circle of paradise -- when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn -- to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart on -- a roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face… that look I cannot exactly describe… an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration -- and every limit presupposes something beyond it -- hence the neutral illumination. And when you bear in mind that these were the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child, you may better appreciate what depths of calculated carnality, what reflected despair, restrained me from falling at her dear feet and dissolving in human tears, and sacrificing my jealousy to whatever pleasure Lolita might hope to derive from mixing with dirty and dangerous children in an outside world that was real to her.
在我们第一次旅行中，有一天，——我们第一次环游伊甸园——我想静静享受我的幻想，因此决定不去理会那些我禁不住感觉到的事实：对她来说，我不是她的男朋友，不是个有魅力的男人，不是知己，甚至根本不是人，而只是两只眼睛或一只肌肉发达的脚——只提些可提及的东西。有那么一天，我收回了除夕夜对她的许诺（不论是她那颗有趣的心衷情的什么———滑旱冰、或她想单独去看的午后电影）后，碰巧从侧置的镜子和半开的浴室门巧妙的结合中瞥见了浴室中的她脸上的表情，那种表情我无法确切形容……是一种无助的表情，是那样的纯粹，它仿佛又渐渐变为一种很惬意的茫然，仅仅因为这是极端的不公正，她委屈到了极点——每一极限都有它的先决条件——这是给中立者的启蒙。当你牢牢把往极限表现在一个小孩子脸上是高高扬起的眉毛、启开的双唇，那你可能会更了解我有预谋的淫欲到了怎样的程度，是一种多么可怕的绝望使我不能跪倒在她可爱的脚下，感动得眼泪汪汪；使我不能允许她到外面实实在在的世界，和那些又脏又危险的孩子混在一起玩闹，不能让她希望从中得到任何快乐而牺牲我的嫉妒。
"You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate -- dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed -- an abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outbursts of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child.
“你知道，死为什么那样可怕？是因为你自己操纵着它！”这话震动了我，两只膝盖机械地上下移动着；我简直根本不知道我的小宝贝脑子里都在转些什么，而且，很可能，在那幼稚的陈词滥调的背后，她心中还有一个花园，一道曙光，一扇宫殿的大门——朦胧、神秘的区域，穿着肮脏的破衣烂衫、在痛苦中痉挛的手，是明确、彻底被禁止在那片区域以外的。因为我常常发现，象我们，象她和我这样生活在一个充满罪恶的世界里，每当我想谈谈她和一个老朋友，她和一位父亲，她和一个真正健康的情人，我和阿娜贝尔，洛丽塔和高尚的、纯粹的、明朗的、被她奉如神明的哈罗德。黑兹，可能已经谈论过——一个抽象的想法，一幅面，画点彩画的雷普金斯或剪了头发的波德莱尔，上帝或莎士比亚，任何坦率真诚的话题——每当我试着谈及这些话题时，我们都会变得异常尴尬。好主意！她会用老一套的无礼、傲慢和厌烦来掩饰她的脆弱，而我则用令人作呕、假惺惺的语调陈述我绝望、超然的论点，引起我的听众激烈的无礼举动，致使谈话再也进行不下去。噢，我可怜的、感情受到挫伤的孩子。
And I have still other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski, some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
我还有其他一些一直压抑着的记亿，现在，它们自己挣脱开来变成无手无脚的痛苦的怪兽。有一次，夕阳即将隐没，在比尔兹利的一条街上，她转身朝向小伊娃。罗森（我带着两个小天使去听音乐会，跟在她们后面走，紧紧的身子几乎碰到她们），她转身朝向伊娃，那样安详，那样庄重地应答着那一个说的话，什么宁可死掉，也不去听米尔顿。平斯基谈音乐，他是本地她认识的一个男学生，我的洛丽塔评论道：
I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her -- after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred -- I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever -- for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)-- and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again -- and "oh, no' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure -- all would be shattered.
我回忆起某些时候，让我把它们称为伊甸园的冰山期，当我饱享了她的肉体之后——在神话般疯狂的运动之后，我只剩筋疲力竭，青筋暴突——我会把她搂在怀里，最后终于满含柔情地悲叹一声。（她的皮肤在霓虹灯光里亮闪闪的。从石子铺的院里，霓虹灯透过窗帘的空隙照进来，照得地的皮肤熠熠闪光。她的黑漆漆的睫毛在颤动，她暗淡的灰眼睛比往日更茫然——一点不差，在一场大手术之后，小病人仍还没从麻醉药中清醒过来）——那温情会越来越强烈，变成羞耻和绝望，而且我会用我冰冷的手臂摇动我孤独恍惚的洛丽塔入睡。我会埋在她温暖的头发里悲叹，我要随意地抚弄她，默默地祈求她的恩惠；当这充满人情味、苦闷却毫无自私地温情到了顶峰（我的灵魂这时正悬在她裸露的身旁，正要悔悟），刹那间，很滑稽又很可怕，那肉欲又猛地袭来———“噢，不，”洛丽塔会说，对天堂无奈地叹口气，接下去，便又是温柔，又是天青色——这一切又立刻成为泡影。
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave Dolly Schiller.
我爱你，我是个怪物，但我爱你。我卑鄙无耻，蛮横残忍，等等等等，但我爱你，我爱你！有些时候我知道你是怎样的感觉，而知道更是要命啊，我的小宝贝。洛丽塔小姑娘，勇敢的多丽。希勒。
Mid-twentieth century ideas concerning child-parent relationship have been considerably tainted by the scholastic rigmarole and standardized symbols of the psychoanalytic racket, but I hope I am addressing myself to unbiased readers. Once when Avis's father had honked outside to signal papa had come to take his pet home, I felt obliged to invite him into the parlor, and he sat down for a minute, and while we conversed, Avis, a heavy, unattractive, affectionate child, drew up to him and eventually perched plumply on his knee. Now, I do not remember if I have mentioned that Lolita always had an absolutely enchanting smile for strangers, a tender furry slitting of the eyes, a dreamy sweet radiance of all her features which did not mean a thing of course, but was so beautiful, so endearing that one found it hard to reduce such sweetness to but a magic gene automatically lighting up her face in atavistic token of some ancient rite of welcome -- hospitable prostitution, the coarse reader may say. Well, there she stood while Mr. Byrd twirled his hat and talked, and -- yes, look how stupid of me, I have left out the main characteristic of the famous Lolita smile, namely: while the tender, nectared, dimpled brightness played, it was never directed at the stranger in the room but hung in its own remote flowered void, so to speak, or wandered with myopic softness over chance objects -- and this is what was happening now: while fat Avis sidled up to her papa, Lolita gently beamed at a fruit knife that she fingered on the edge of the table, whereon she leaned, many miles away from me. Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone -- to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing. And I have a neat pendant to that little scene -- also in a Beardsley setting. Lolita, who had been reading near the fire, stretched herself, and then inquired, her elbow up, with a grunt: "Where is she buried anyway?" "Who?" "Oh, you know, my murdered mummy." "And you know where her grave is," I said controlling myself, whereupon I named the cemetery -- just outside Ramsdale, between the railway tracks and Lakeview Hill. "Moreover," I added, "the tragedy of such an accident is somewhat cheapened by the epithet you saw fit to apply to it. If you really wish to triumph in your mind over the idea of death --" "Ray," said Lo for hurray, and languidly left the room, and for a long while I stared with smarting eyes into the fire. Then I picked up her book. It was some trash for young people. There was a gloomy girl Marion, and there was her stepmother who turned out to be, against all expectations, a young, gay, understanding redhead who explained to Marion that Marion's dead mother had really been a heroic woman since she had deliberately dissimulated her great love for Marion because she was dying, and did not want her child to miss her. I did not rush up to her room with cries. I always preferred the mental hygiene of noninterference. Now, squirming and pleading with my own memory, I recall that on this and similar occasions, it was always my habit and method to ignore Lolita's states of mind while comforting my own base self. When my mother, in a livid wet dress, under the tumbling mist (so I vividly imagined her), had run panting ecstatically up that ridge above Moulinet to be felled there by a thunderbolt, I was but an infant, and in retrospect no yearnings of the accepted kind could I ever graft upon any moment of my youth, no matter how savagely psychotherapists heckled me in my later periods of depression. But I admit that a man of my power of imagination cannot plead personal ignorance of universal emotions. I may also have relied too much on the abnormally chill relations between Charlotte and her daughter. But the awful point of the whole argument is this. It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif.
二十世纪中期，关于孩子与父母之间关系的那些观念，已深受教条式胡言乱语和精神分析学叫嚷的标准化特征的污染，但我仍希望，我是在对毫无偏向的读者讲这些话。有一次，阿维斯的爸爸在外面按汽车碉叭，意思是爸爸来接他和小宝贝回家了，我觉得我得邀他到客厅来坐坐，他就坐了一会。正当我们谈话的时候，阿维斯，一个身体笨重、相貌乎乎、感情丰富的孩子，走到他身边，而且直截了地坐到了他的膝上。现在，我已记不得我是否提到过，洛丽塔对陌生人总露出一种勾人魂魄的微笑，浓密的睫毛遮盖着眯起的眼睛；她的面庞闪烁着一种梦幻般甜密的光辉，这当然并不说明什么，但却是那么美丽动人，那么惹人喜爱。——滥施殷勤，粗鲁的读者会这么说。嗯，她就那么站着。伯德先生转着他的帽子，说着话，而且——是的，看我有多蠢，我把著名的洛丽塔式微笑的最主要特点漏掉了，具体说就是：当她那温柔、甜美、笑颜的光辉展示出来的，它从来就不是对着屋里的客人，而是徘徊在它自己遥远清澄的空间，这么说吧，或是带着凝滞的温和徜徉在偶然看见的物体上——现在，她就是这样：当胖胖的阿维斯侧着身子向她的爸爸走过去时，洛丽塔温柔地对着一把水果刀笑着，她靠在桌边用手指试了试刀刃，突然，当阿维斯双手攀住她父亲的脖子和耳朵，那父亲很随便地伸出—只手臂，搂住那又笨拙又庞大的后裔时，我看见，洛丽塔的微笑蓦地失去了一切光彩，变成了一片冰冷僵硬的小阴影，那把水果刀从桌上滑落下去，刀的银把打在她的脚跟上，发出一声怪响。这一下可痛得她透不过气来，于是低下头，脸上扭出一副怪相，很难看，这是小孩子在眼泪流出前的预备表情，接着单脚着地一跳一跳地走了，阿维斯立刻追着她进了厨房，去安慰她。阿维斯有这样—个胖大的、红脸膛的好爸爸，还有一个圃脸蛋的小弟弟，还有一个刚生下来的小妹妹，有一个家，两条龇牙咧嘴的狗，而洛丽塔却什么也没有。与这件小事相关的还有一件事——背景同样是比尔兹利。洛丽塔正在壁炉边读书，伸了个懒腰，胳膊还高高举着，就咕哝了一句：“她到底葬在哪儿？“谁？“噢，你知道，我被害死的妈妈。”你知道她的坟墓在哪儿，”我说，控制住自己约感情，进而把那墓地的名称告诉了她——就在拉姆斯代尔城外，在铁路线与观湖山之间。“另外，”，我又说，“你以为用这么个定语很合适，可这种事故的悲剧性却减弱了许多。知果你真的希望战胜你脑中死亡的观念”——“哇，”洛丽塔哼了一声，用“哇”代替了“好哇”，慢吞吞走出了房间，我酸痛的眼睛便一直久久地瞪着炉火。然后，我捡起了她的书，是给年轻人看的一种通俗读物。有一个阴郁的女孩玛丽恩，与一般人的看法完全相反，她的继母是个年轻、乐观、善解人意的红头发女人。她告诉玛丽恩，她的亡母是个英勇的母亲，因为她知道自己要死了，便故意掩藏起对女儿的厚爱，不让女儿想念她。我没有哭喊着冲进她的房间。我总是喜欢不受干涉的精神卫生。现在，我在自己的回忆中辗转反测，为自己辩护；我记得在这样或类似的情况下，我总是安慰卑劣的自我，而总是忽视了洛丽塔的心境，这已成了我防习惯。我的母亲是穿着湿淋淋的铅色衣衫，在一团翻漆的薄雾中（我就是这样生动地想象着她），气喘呼吁奔跑上莫利奈特的山脊时，被一声霹雳击倒的。那时我尚在襁褓中，回想起来，无论心理医生怎样蛮横地责难我后来颓丧的生活，我也无从承认在青春期中曾有过一般人所说的渴望。但我承认，一个有我这般想象力的人，不能为自己辩护说根本对一般的感情毫无所知。也可能是我过于相信夏洛特与她女儿以前那种不正常冷冰冰的关系了，所有这些争议中最难堪的就是这一点。在我们奇特的、充满兽性的同居生活中，我智力平平的洛丽塔渐渐清楚池意识到，即使最悲惨的家庭生活也比乱伦的同居要好得多；而乱伦，在那漫长的日子里，是我能给这个流浪儿最好的东西。