06.21 雙語：被一隻狗愛著意味著什麼？

被一隻狗愛著意味著什麼？

What It Means to Be Loved by a Dog

MARGARET RENKL

2018年6月21日

NASHVILLE — There’s a story my husband has been telling for nearly 15 years, since not long after United States forces invaded Iraq. In a news report, American soldiers were going door to door with bomb-sniffing dogs, trying to persuade the citizens of Baghdad to adopt a well-trained pet.

納什維爾——從美國軍隊入侵伊拉克後不久開始，有一個故事我丈夫講了近15年。在一篇新聞報道中，美國士兵帶著炸彈嗅探犬挨家挨戶地敲門，試圖說服巴格達市民領養一隻訓練有素的寵物。

Many Iraqis regard dogs as unclean, and American soldiers were making the case for rethinking that policy: Baghdad would be safer if dogs were housed throughout the city, sounding the alarm whenever an enemy tried to plant a roadside bomb in the night. Also, a dog will love you unconditionally.

很多伊拉克人認為狗不潔，美國士兵給出了重新考慮這項原則的理由：如果全市都養狗，每當敵人試圖趁著夜色在路邊放炸彈時，狗便會發出警報，巴格達因此會變得更加安全。而且，狗會無條件地愛你。

The Iraqi homeowner in the story looked at the G.I. and shrugged. “Then you would be loved by a dog.”

故事中的那個伊拉克房主看著美軍，聳了聳肩。“那你就會被一條狗愛著。”

My husband thinks this story is hilarious because it reminds him of the small-town Southerners and country people he grew up among — and also because it is so deeply at odds with the attitudes of suburban America, with its pet strollers and doggy day cares and canine pulmonologists. Iraqi soldiers would have no better luck persuading suburban Nashvillians to banish their dogs to the yard than American soldiers had in persuading Iraqis to invite a dog into the house.

我丈夫覺得這個故事很好笑，因為這讓他想起了自己成長過程中遇到的那些狹隘的南方人和鄉下人，也因為這完全不同於美國郊區對狗的態度。在美國的郊區，寵物推車、狗狗日託機構和犬科動物肺臟專家隨處可見。伊拉克士兵說服納什維爾郊區的人把自己的狗趕到院子裡去的運氣，不會比美國士兵說服伊拉克人請一隻狗進門的運氣好。

As a measure of how deeply dogs are embedded in our own lives, consider what happened when Emma, our 15-year-old dachshund, died last month. Three friends brought flowers. One brought chocolate. One brought a homemade strawberry pie. One brought a barbecue supper and an original poem. Two little girls who loved her made candle holders. (“I need some water, some glue, a jar and a lot of glitter,” the 7-year-old told her father.) On Facebook, 158 people wrote messages of condolence.

想想上月我們15歲的臘腸犬艾瑪(Emma)去世時的情況吧。它表明了狗狗在我們生活中的分量。當時，三個朋友帶來了鮮花。一個帶了巧克力。一個帶了自制的草莓派。還有一個帶來了燒烤晚餐和一首原創詩歌。兩個喜歡艾瑪的小女孩做了燭臺。（“我需要一些水、一些膠水、一個瓶子和好多亮片，”其中一個7歲的姑娘對她父親說。）在Facebook上，158人發表了悼念文字。

The outpouring of kindness reminded me of the days just after my mother’s sudden death, when it seemed that everyone I knew brought flowers and food and sweet notes. It might seem disrespectful to compare the loss of even the dearest animal companion to the loss of a beloved mother, but it makes a particular kind of emotional sense. Everyone has a mother, and the profound grief of losing her is one most people instinctively understand, even if their own mothers are alive and well. Everyone who’s ever loved a dog knows the true depth of that loss, even if they’ve never met the specific dog being mourned.

人們表現出來的善意讓我想起了母親突然去世後的那幾天。當時，似乎我認識的每一個人都帶來了鮮花、食物和善良的勸慰。把失去寵物——即使是最親近的寵物——和失去深愛的母親相提並論似乎有些不敬，但就情感而言特別合理。每個人都有母親，失去母親那種痛徹心扉的悲傷，大部分人都能本能地理解，即使他們自己的母親還健在。每個愛狗之人都知道這種失去之痛，即使他們從來沒見過那條被哀悼的狗。

As it happens, Emma was my mother’s dog first, and losing her has been a double grief. I miss her inimitable sandwich-snarfing, bookshelf-climbing, purse-raiding, cabinet-unlocking, smoothie-stealing, ever-grinning rascal self. I miss the way, even in her nearly blind, completely deaf, partially paralyzed old age, she wanted to be right beside me, tugging her little bed till it was directly under my feet while I worked.

碰巧，艾瑪最初是我母親的狗，失去她令人備加傷心。我想念她獨特的狼吞虎嚥地吃三明治、爬書架、突襲包包、打開儲藏櫃、偷奶昔和總是偷笑的樣子。我想念她即使在近乎失明、完全失聰和部分癱瘓的晚年也想待在我旁邊，在我工作的時候把她的小床拖到我腳下的時光。

I miss her, but I also miss taking care of her — rushing her to the emergency vet at least three times a year for eating everything from chocolate bonbons to rat poison, carefully dispensing her medicine twice a day, constantly pushing the chairs under the table to keep her from climbing up and launching herself off from the table’s full height. Protecting Emma from herself felt like a way to keep caring for Mom even years after Mom was gone.

我想念她，但我也想念照顧她的日子：一年至少三次因為她吃了從巧克力糖果到老鼠藥的各種東西而緊急送她去獸醫急診、一天兩次小心翼翼地給她配藥、不斷把椅子推到桌子底下以防她爬上去再從桌子上跳下來。保護艾瑪不被自己傷到感覺就像還在照顧母親一樣，儘管她已經離開多年。

That little dog caused my lonely mother untold exasperation and delight. Emma would drag Mom’s purse under the bed to a place Mom couldn’t reach even lying on the floor. Mom would get up from her chair for half a minute and turn around to find Emma in her place, lapping up the coffee she’d left on the table beside the recliner and finishing off the oatmeal too. Half the stories Mom told her grandchildren at supper every night were stories about me as a little girl. The other half were about Emma.

孤獨的母親沒有說過那隻小狗帶給她的憤怒和愉悅。艾瑪會把母親的包拖到床底下某個地方，母親就算躺在地上也夠不著。母親會在離開椅子半分鐘後，轉身發現艾瑪正在她的座位上，舔食她放在躺椅旁邊的桌子上的咖啡，燕麥片也快吃完了。母親每天吃晚飯時給孫輩講的故事中，有一半是關於我小時候的。另一半是關於艾瑪的。

A dog loves a person the way people love each other only while in the grip of new love: with intense, unwavering focus, attentive to every move the beloved makes, unaware of imperfections, desiring little more than to be close, to be entwined, to touch and touch and touch. For my mother, who never ceased to miss my father and who must have felt herself to be on the margins of her children’s busy lives, it was nothing less than a godsend to be loved by that little dog.

狗愛人的方式，就跟剛墜入愛河中的人類一樣：強烈且堅定的關注，關心愛人的每一個舉動，看不到缺點並且只想親近、待在一起和不停地撫摸對方。我的母親從未停止思念我的父親，她一定覺得自己處在子女忙忙碌碌的生活的邊緣。對她來說，被那隻小狗愛簡直是上天的恩賜。

Every time Mom went to visit my sister or my brother, she would leave Emma with me. For days, the dog would sit before our back door, the same door my mother used every night when she and Emma came over for supper. The window in that door is the only one in our house that reaches low enough for a dachshund to see though. She would sit in front of the door and wait. She waited and waited — she had endless reserves of patience and time — and three days later, a week at most, my mother always came back to her.

每當母親去看我的兄弟姐妹時，她都會把艾瑪留給我。一連幾天，艾瑪都會坐在我家後門前面。母親每天晚上帶著艾瑪過來吃晚飯時，走的就是這扇門。它上面的窗戶是我家唯一一扇足夠低，能讓臘腸犬夠得著的窗戶。她會坐在門前等。她等呀等呀，有無盡的耐心和時間。三天後，最多一個星期後，母親總會回到她身邊。

Two weeks after the funeral, Emma went missing when she was outside with me. That tiny, dapple-colored dog was both willful and invisible: She never once came when called, and she could disappear beneath the lowest bushes, behind the smallest fallen branch. I turned that yard inside out looking for her. When I finally thought to check at Mom’s house across the street, I found her at the back door, jumping up and scratching to be let in. She had been scratching so urgently, and for so long, the paint was chipped away from the doorjamb.

葬禮結束兩週後，艾瑪在和我一起外出時失蹤了。那條小花斑狗既任性又不顯眼：叫她的時候她從來不會來到你跟前，她可能會鑽進最矮的灌木叢裡或被砍下的小樹枝後面消失不見。為了找她，我把院子翻了個底朝天。當我終於想到去街對面的母親家看看時，我在後門發現了她。她正跳著撓門，想進來。她一直在急切地撓門，並且撓了很長時間，以至門框上的油漆都被弄掉了。

That’s what it means to be loved by a dog.

這就是被狗愛著的含義。