殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(120)

He nodded and dropped his head. “Agha sahib was like my second father... God give him peace.”
They piled their things in the center of a few worn rags and tied the corners together. We loaded the bundle into the Buick. Hassan stood in the threshold of the house and held the Koran as we all kissed it and passed under it. Then we left for Kabul. I remember as I was pulling away, Hassan turned to take a last look at their home. When we got to Kabul, I discovered that Hassan had no intention of moving into the house. “But all these rooms are empty, Hassan jan. No one is going to live in them,” I he would not. He said it was a matter of ihtiram, a matter of respect. He and Farzana moved their things into the hut in the backyard, where he was born. I pleaded for them to move into one of the guest bedrooms upstairs, but Hassan would hear nothing of it. “What will Amir agha think?” he said to me. “What will he think when he comes back to Kabul after the war and finds that I have assumed his place in the house?” Then, in mourning for your father, Hassan wore black for the next forty days.I did not want them to, but the two of them did all the cooking, all the cleaning. Hassan tended to the flowers in the garden, soaked the roots, picked off yellowing leaves, and planted rosebushes. He painted the walls. In the house, he swept rooms no one had slept in for years, and cleaned bathrooms no one had bathed in. Like he was preparing the house for someone’s return. Do you remember the wall behind the row of corn your father had planted, Amir jan? What did you and Hassan call it, “the Wall of Ailing Corn”? A rocket destroyed a whole section of that wall in the middle of the night early that fall. Hassan rebuilt the wall with his own hands, brick by brick, until it stood’ whole again. I do not know what I would have done if he had not been there. Then late that fall, Farzana gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Hassan kissed the baby’s lifeless face, and we buried her in the backyard, near the sweetbrier bushes. We covered the little mound with leaves from the poplar trees. I said a prayer for her. Farzana stayed in the hut all day and wailed--it is a heartbreaking sound, Amir jan, the wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you never hear it.
Outside the walls of that house, there was a war raging. But the three of us, in your father’s house, we made our own little haven from it. My vision started going by the late 1980s, so I had Hassan read me your mother’s books. We would sit in the foyer, by the stove, and Hassan would read me from _Masnawi_ or _Khayyám_, as Farzana cooked in the kitchen. And every morning, Hassan placed a flower on the little mound by the sweetbrier bushes.
In early 1990, Farzana became pregnant again. It was that same year, in the middle of the summer, that a woman covered in a sky blue burqa knocked on the front gates one morning. When I walked up to the gates, she was swaying on her feet, like she was too weak to even stand. I asked her what she wanted, but she would not answer.
“Who are you?” I said. But she just collapsed right there in the driveway. I yelled for Hassan and he helped me carry her into the house, to the living room. We lay her on the sofa and took off her burqa. Beneath it, we found a toothless woman with stringy graying hair and sores on her arms. She looked like she had not eaten for days. But the worst of it by far was her face. Someone had taken a knife to it and... Amir jan, the slashes cut this way and that way. One of the cuts went from cheekbone to hairline and it had not spared her left eye on the way. It was grotesque. I patted her brow with a wet cloth and she opened her eyes. “Where is Hassan?” she whispered.
“I’m right here,” Hassan said. He took her hand and squeezed it.

他點點頭，把頭垂下。“老爺待我就像父親一樣……真主保佑他安息。”
他們把家當放在幾塊破布中間，綁好那些布角。我們把那個包袱放在別克車裏。哈桑站在門檻，舉起《可蘭經》，我們都親了親它，從下面穿過。然後我們前往喀布爾。我記得我開車離開的時候，哈桑轉過頭，最後一次看了他們的家。到了喀布爾之後，我發現哈桑根本沒有搬進屋子的意思。“可是所有這些房間都空着，親愛的哈桑，沒有人打算住進來。”我說。但他不聽。他說那關乎尊重。他和法莎娜把家當搬進後院那間破屋子，那個他出生的地方。我求他們搬進樓頂的客房，但哈桑一點都沒聽進去。“阿米爾少爺會怎麼想呢？”他對我說，“要是戰爭結束，有朝一日阿米爾少爺回來，發現我鳩佔鵲巢，他會怎麼想？”然後，爲了悼念你的父親，哈桑穿了四十天黑衣服。我並不想要他們那麼做，但他們兩個包辦了所有做飯洗衣的事情。哈桑悉心照料花園裏的花兒，鬆土，摘掉枯萎的葉子，種植薔薇籬笆。他粉刷牆壁，把那些多年無人住過的房間抹乾淨，把多年無人用過的浴室清洗整潔。好像他在打理房間，等待某人歸來。你記得你爸爸種植的那排玉米後面的那堵牆嗎，親愛的阿米爾？你和哈桑怎麼稱呼它？“病玉米之牆”？那年初秋某個深夜，一枚火箭把那牆統統炸塌了。哈桑親手把它重新建好，壘起一塊塊磚頭，直到它完整如初。要不是有他在那兒，我真不知道該怎麼辦。那年深秋，法莎娜生了個死產的女嬰。哈桑親吻那個嬰兒毫無生氣的臉，我們將她葬在後院，就在薔薇花叢旁邊，我們用白楊樹葉蓋住那個小墳堆。我替她禱告。法莎娜整天躲在小屋裏面，淒厲地哭喊。母親的哀嚎。我求安拉，保佑你永遠不會聽到。
在那屋子的圍牆之外，戰爭如火如荼。但我們三個，在你爸爸的房子裏，我們自己營造了小小的天堂。自1980年代晚期開始，我的視力就衰退了，所以我讓哈桑給我讀你媽媽的書。我們會坐在門廊，坐在火爐邊，法莎娜在廚房煮飯的時候，哈桑會給我念《瑪斯納維》或者《魯拜集》。每天早晨，哈桑總會在薔薇花叢那邊小小的墳堆上擺一朵鮮花。
1990年年初，法莎娜又懷孕了。也是在這一年，盛夏的時候，某天早晨，有個身披天藍色長袍的女人敲響前門，她雙腳發抖，似乎孱弱得連站都站不穩。我問她想要什麼，她沉默不語。
“你是誰？”我說。但她一語不發，就在那兒癱下，倒在車道上。我把哈桑喊出來，他幫我把她扶進屋子，走進客廳。我們讓她躺在沙發上，除下她的長袍。長袍之下是個牙齒掉光的婦女，蓬亂的灰白頭髮，手臂上生着瘡。她看上去似乎很多天沒有吃東西了。但更糟糕的是她的臉。有人用刀在她臉上……親愛的阿米爾，到處都是刀痕，有一道從顴骨到髮際線，她的左眼也沒有幸免。太醜怪了。我用一塊溼布拍拍她的額頭，她睜開眼。“哈桑在哪裏？”她細聲說。
“我在這裏。”哈桑說，他拉起她的手，緊緊握住。她那隻完好的眼打量着他。