Note (2025-12-04 06:50)

Li, Yiyun. The Book of Goose. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2022).

America and fame: they are equally useful if you want freedom from your mother.

美国和名气：如果你想摆脱你的母亲、获得自由，这两者均有用。

The secrets inside me have not left much space for a fetus to grow.

我内心的秘密让可供胎儿成长的空间所剩无几。

If dead people had no choice but to become ghosts, Fabienne’s ghost would only scoff at the usual tricks that other ghosts take pride in. Her ghost would do something entirely different.

如果死去的人别无选择，仅可变成鬼魂，法比耶娜的鬼魂只会嘲笑这些其他鬼魂引以为傲的寻常把戏。她的鬼魂会做出一些截然不同的事。

Well-proportioned children are a rare happenstance. War guarantees disproportion, but during peacetime other things go wrong. I have not met a child who is not lopsided in some way. And when children grow up, they become lopsided adults.

身心均衡的儿童是难得的。由于战争，失衡成为必然，可在和平时期，其他方面出现问题。我没见过一个一切正常、没有偏差的小孩。而当小孩长大后，他们变成畸形的大人。

We were almost one person. I do not imagine that the half of an orange facing south would have to tell the other half how warm the sunlight is.

我们简直等于一个人。我猜，朝南的半个橙子无须告诉另外一半阳光有多暖和。

Most adults struck us as peripheral, some more annoying than others. But we liked the ceremony, the grave of a recently dead woman strewn with the more recently dead flowers.

大多数成年人在我们眼里无关大局，有些比其他更讨厌，但我们喜欢这仪式，把才刚死去的花铺在一位刚死去不久的妇人的坟上。

How do I measure Fabienne’s presence in my life—by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?

我怎么计量法比耶娜在我人生中的存在——用我们在一起的岁月，或用我们分开的岁月？在分开的岁月里，她的影子随时光的流逝而拉长，始终触及我。

Fabienne believed that we must always test the limits of our bodies. Not drinking until thirst scratched our throats like sand. Not eating until our heads were lightened by hunger.

法比耶娜认为，我们应该时时测试我们身体的极限。渴到喉咙像被沙子擦痛时才喝水。饿得头晕眼花才吃东西。

Time corrupts. And we pay a price for everything corruptible: food, roof beams, souls.

时间使东西变质。我们为一切易变质的东西付出代价：食物、顶梁、灵魂。

“Sad people don’t often know that they are sad and bored.”

“悲伤的人常常不知道他们既悲伤又空虚无聊。”

I did not speak