殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(71)

March 1981 A young woman sat across from us. She was dressed in an olive green dress with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face against the night chill. She burst into prayer every time the truck jerked or stumbled into a pothole, her “Bismillah!” peaking with each of the truck’s shudders and jolts. Her husband, a burly man in baggy pants and sky blue turban, cradled an infant in one arm and thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in silent prayer. There were others, in all about a dozen, including Baba and me, sitting with our suitcases between our legs, cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-covered cab of an old Russian truck.
My innards had been roiling since we’d left Kabul just after two in the morning. Baba never said so, but I knew he saw my car sickness as yet another of my array of weakness--I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the beads--the praying woman’s husband--asked if I was going to get sick, I said I might. Baba looked away. The man lifted his corner of the tarpaulin cover and rapped on the driver’s window, asked him to stop. But the driver, Karim, a scrawny dark-skinned man with hawk-boned features and a pencil-thin mustache, shook his head.
“We are too close to Kabul,” he shot back. “Tell him to have a strong stomach.”
Baba grumbled something under his breath. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but suddenly I was salivating, the back of my throat tasting bile. I turned around, lifted the tarpaulin, and threw up over the side of the moving truck. Behind me, Baba was apologizing to the other passengers. As if car sickness was a crime. As if you weren’t supposed to get sick when you were eighteen. I threw up two more times before Karim agreed to stop, mostly so I wouldn’t stink up his vehicle, the instrument of his livelihood. Karim was a people smuggler--it was a pretty lucrative business then, driving people out of Shorawi-occupied Kabul to the relative safety of Pakistan. He was taking us to Jalalabad, about 170 kilometers southeast of Kabul, where his brother, Toor, who had a bigger truck with a second convoy of refugees, was waiting to drive us across the Khyber Pass and into Peshawar.
We were a few kilometers west of Mahipar Falls when Karim pulled to the side of the road. Mahipar--which means “Flying Fish”--was a high summit with a precipitous drop overlooking the hydro plant the Germans had built for Afghanistan back in 1967. Baba and I had driven over the summit countless times on our way to Jalalabad, the city of cypress trees and sugarcane fields where Afghans vacationed in the winter.
I hopped down the back of the truck and lurched to the dusty embankment on the side of the road. My mouth filled with saliva, a sign of the retching that was yet to come. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep valley that was shrouded in dark ness. I stooped, hands on my kneecaps, and waited for the bile. Somewhere, a branch snapped, an owl hooted. The wind, soft and cold, clicked through tree branches and stirred the bushes that sprinkled the slope. And from below, the faint sound of water tumbling through the valley.
Standing on the shoulder of the road, I thought of the way we’d left the house where I’d lived my entire life, as if we were going out for a bite: dishes smeared with kofta piled in the kitchen sink; laundry in the wicker basket in the foyer; beds unmade; Baba’s business suits hanging in the closet. Tapestries still hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books still crowded the shelves in Baba’s study. The signs of our elopement were subtle: My parents’ wedding picture was gone, as was the grainy photograph of my grandfather and King Nader Shah standing over the dead deer. A few items of clothing were missing from the closets. The leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me five years earlier was gone.
In the morning, Jalaluddin--our seventh servant in five years--would probably think we’d gone out for a stroll or a drive. We hadn’t told him. You couldn’t trust anyone in Kabul any more--for a fee or under threat, people told on each other, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent, brother on brother, servant on master, friend on friend. I thought of the singer Ahmad Zahir, who had played the accordion at my thirteenth birthday. He had gone for a drive with some friends, and someone had later found his body on the side of the road, a bullet in the back of his head. The rafiqs, the comrades, were everywhere and they’d split Kabul into two groups: those who eavesdropped and those who didn’t. The tricky part was that no one knew who belonged to which. A casual remark to the tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the dungeons of Poleh-charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next thing you knew, you were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner table, in the privacy of their home, people had to speak in a calculated manner--the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they’d taught children to spy on their parents, what to listen for, whom to tell.
What was I doing on this road in the middle of the night? I should have been in bed, under my blanket, a book with dog-eared pages at my side. This had to be a dream. Had to be. Tomorrow morning, I’d wake up, peek out the window: No grim-faced Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks, no tanks rolling up and down the streets of my city, their turrets swiveling like accusing fingers, no rubble, no curfews, no Russian Army Personnel Carriers weaving through the bazaars. Then, behind me, I heard Baba and Karim discussing the arrangement in Jalalabad over a smoke. Karim was reassuring Baba that his brother had a big truck of “excellent and first-class quality,” and that the trek to Peshawar would be very routine. “He could take you there with his eyes closed,” Karim said. I overheard him telling Baba how he and his brother knew the Russian and Afghan soldiers who worked the checkpoints, how they had set up a “mutually profitable” arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue, a MiG suddenly screamed past overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a hand gun from his waist. Pointing it to the sky and making shooting gestures, he spat and cursed at the MiG.
I wondered where Hassan was. Then the inevitable. I vomited on a tangle of weeds, my retching and groaning drowned in the deafening roar of the MiG. WE PULLED UP to the checkpoint at Mahipar twenty minutes later. Our driver let the truck idle and hopped down to greet the approaching voices. Feet crushed gravel. Words were exchanged, brief and hushed. A flick of a lighter. “Spasseba.”
Another flick of the lighter. Someone laughed, a shrill cackling sound that made me jump. Baba’s hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man broke into song, a slurring, off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song, delivered with a thick Russian accent:
Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro.(Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.)

1981年3月有個年輕的婦女坐在我們對面。她穿着一身橄欖綠服裝，黑色的披肩將面部包得嚴嚴實實，以抵禦深夜的寒意。每逢卡車急剎或顛簸過路面的凹陷，她就會出聲祈禱，每次汽車的高低起伏總伴隨着她的“奉安拉之名”。她的丈夫身材矮壯，穿着破舊的褲子、天藍色的長袍，一手抱着嬰兒，空出來的那隻手用拇指轉動着念珠。他嘴脣開合，默默祈禱。同行的還有其他人，總共十來個，包括爸爸跟我，行李箱放在我們兩腿之間，盤膝坐在被帆布包起來的後鬥上，跟這些陌生人擠在一起，搭乘這輛破舊的俄國卡車。
我們凌晨兩點離開喀布爾，自那時起我的內臟就已經翻江倒海。雖然爸爸沒有說什麼，但我知道在他眼裏，暈車是孱弱無能的表現——這可以從他的臉色看出來，有好幾次，我的胃收縮得厲害，忍不住呻吟，他的表情很尷尬。那個拿着念珠的矮壯男人——在祈禱的那個婦女的丈夫——問我是不是要吐了，我說可能是。爸爸把頭別開。那男人掀起帆布的一角，敲敲駕駛室的窗門，要求司機停下來。司機卡林是個黑瘦的漢子，一張老鷹般的臉上留着小鬍子，他搖搖頭。
“我們離喀布爾太近了。”他大喊，“讓他撐住。”
爸爸低聲咕噥了幾句。我想告訴他我很抱歉，但剎那間我滿嘴唾液，喉底嚐到膽汁的苦味。我轉過身，揭起帆布，在行進的卡車一邊嘔吐起來。在我身後，爸爸正向其他乘客賠不是，彷彿暈車是犯罪，彷彿人們到了十八歲就不應該暈車。我又吐了兩次，卡林這才同意停車，大部分原因還是因爲擔心我弄髒他的車，他賴以謀生的工具。卡林是個蛇頭，從被俄國人佔領的喀布爾，將人們偷偷運到相對安全的巴基斯坦，這在當時可是日進斗金的生意。他把我們載往喀布爾西南170公里外的賈拉拉巴特，他的堂兄圖爾在那邊接應，負責再送逃難的人一程，他有一輛更大的卡車，會載着我們通過開伯爾隘口 。
卡林把車停在路旁，這時我們在瑪希帕瀑布以西數公里的地方。瑪希帕——它的意思是“飛翔的魚兒”——是一處山峯，壁立千仞，俯覽着下面1967年德國人爲阿富汗援建的水電站。數不清有多少次，爸爸跟我路過那座山峯，前往賈拉拉巴特，那個遍地柏樹和甘蔗的城市是阿富汗人過冬的勝地。
我從卡車後面跳下去，跌跌撞撞走到路邊佈滿塵灰的護欄。我嘴裏漲滿了唾液，那是快要嘔吐的徵兆。我蹣跚着走近懸崖邊，下面的深淵被黑暗吞噬了。我彎下腰，雙手撐在膝蓋上，做好嘔吐的準備。在某個地方傳來樹枝劈啪作響的聲音，還有貓頭鷹的叫聲。寒風微微拂動樹枝，吹過山坡上的灌木叢。而下面，水流在山谷淌動，傳來陣陣微弱的聲音。
我站在路肩上，想起我們如何離開家園，那個我生活了一輩子的地方。彷彿我們只是外出下館子：廚房的洗碗盆堆放着沾有肉丸夾餅殘渣的盤子，盛滿衣物的柳條籃子擺在門廊，被褥還沒疊好，衣櫥裏掛着爸爸做生意穿的套裝。起居室的牆上仍掛着壁毯，我媽媽的圖書仍擁擠地佔據着爸爸書房裏的架子。我們出逃的跡象很微妙：我父母的結婚照不見了，爺爺跟納達爾國王站在死鹿之前合影的那張老照片杳然無蹤。衣櫥裏少了幾件衣服。五年前拉辛汗送我的那本皮面筆記本也消失了。
早晨，賈拉魯丁——五年來的第七個僕人——興許會以爲我們出去散步或者兜風。我們沒有告訴他。在喀布爾，你再不能相信任何人——爲了獲得懸賞或者因爲受到威脅，人們彼此告密：鄰居告發鄰居，兒童揭發父母，兄弟陷害兄弟，僕人背叛主人，朋友出賣朋友。我想起歌手艾哈邁德?查希爾，他在我13歲生日那天彈奏手風琴。他和幾個朋友開車去兜風，隨後有人在路邊發現他的屍體，有顆子彈射中他的後腦。那些人無所不在，他們將喀布爾人分成兩派：告密的和沒有告密的。最麻煩的是，沒有人知道誰屬於哪一派。裁縫給你量身時，你幾句無心快語可能會讓你身處波勒卡其區的黑牢。對賣肉的老闆抱怨幾句宵禁，你的下場很可能是在牢欄之後望着俄製步槍的槍管。甚至在吃晚飯的桌子上，在自家的屋子裏，人們說話也得深思熟慮——教室裏面也有這樣的人，他們教小孩監視父母，該監聽些什麼，該向誰告發。
我三更半夜在這路邊幹什麼呢?我應當躺在牀上，蓋着毯子，身旁放着一本毛邊的舊書。這肯定是一場夢，肯定是。明天早晨，我會醒來，朝窗外望出去：人行道上沒有那些陰沉着臉的俄國士兵在巡邏；沒有坦克在我的城市裏面耀武揚威，它們的炮塔活像責難的手指那樣轉動；沒有斷壁殘垣，沒有宵禁，沒有俄國軍隊的運兵車在市場上迂迴前進。這時，我聽到爸爸和卡林在我身後討論到了賈拉拉巴特的安排，持續了一根菸的時間。卡林一再向爸爸保證，他的兄弟有輛“很棒的、質量一流的”大卡車，到白沙瓦去可謂輕車熟路。“他閉上眼也能把你們送到那兒。”卡林說。我聽見他跟爸爸說，他和他的兄弟認識把守關卡的俄國和阿富汗士兵，他們建立了一種“互惠互利”的關係。這不是夢。一架“米格”戰鬥機突然從頭頂呼嘯而過，彷彿在提醒這一切都是真的。卡林扔掉手裏的香菸，從腰間掏出一把手槍，指向天空，做出射擊的姿勢，他朝那架米格吐口水，高聲咒罵。
我想知道哈桑在哪裏。跟着，不可避免地，我對着雜草叢吐出來，我的嘔吐聲和呻吟聲被米格震耳欲聾的轟鳴淹沒了。過了二十分鐘，我們停在瑪希帕的檢查站。司機沒熄火，跳下車去問候走上前來的聲音。鞋子踏上沙礫。短促的低聲交談。火機打火的聲音。“謝謝。”有人用俄語說。
又一聲打火的火機聲。有人大笑，一陣令人毛骨悚然的劈啪聲讓我跳起來。爸爸伸手按住我的大腿。發笑的那個男人哼起歌來，帶着厚厚的俄國口音，含糊走調地唱着一首古老的阿富汗婚禮歌謠：
慢慢走，我心愛的月亮，慢慢走。