《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 96 (227):好男人
I went out with Brazilian Felipe again, twice over the weekend. On Saturday I brought him to meet Wayan and the kids, and Tutti made drawings of houses for him while Wayan winked suggestively behind his back and mouthed, "New boyfriend?" and I kept shaking my head, "No, no, no."(Though I'll tell you what—I'm not thinking about that cute Welsh guy anymore.) I also brought Felipe to meet Ketut, my medicine man, and Ketut read his palm and pro-nounced my friend, no fewer than seven times (while fixing me with a penetrating stare), to be "a good man, a very good man, a very, very good man. Not a bad man, Liss—a good man."
我又和斐利貝一同出去，週末出去兩次。我在週六帶他去見大姐與孩子們，圖蒂畫房子給他看，大姐則在他背後擠眉弄眼，以口形默示"新男友"？我不斷搖頭："不是，不是。"（儘管我已把那個威爾士傢伙拋諸腦後了。）我還把斐利貝帶去見我的藥師賴爺，賴爺爲我的朋友看手相，斷言——不下七次（同時以銳利的眼神直盯着我看）——他是"好男人，非常好的男人，非常非常好的男人。不是壞男人，小莉——是好男人。"
Then on Sunday, Felipe asked me if I'd like to spend a day at the beach. It occurred to me that I'd been living here in Bali for two months already and had not yet seen the beach, which now seemed like sheer idiocy, so I said yes. He picked me up at my house in his jeep and we drove an hour to this hidden little beach in Pedangbai where hardly any tourists ever go. This place that he took me to, it was as good an imitation of paradise as anything I'd ever seen, with blue water and white sand and the shade of palm trees. We talked all day, interrupting our talking only to swim and nap and read, sometimes reading aloud to each other. These Balinese women in a shack behind the beach grilled us freshly caught fish, and we bought cold beers and chilled fruit. Dallying in the waves, we told each other whatever was left of the life story details which we hadn't yet covered in the past few weeks of evenings spent out to-gether in the quietest restaurants in Ubud, talking over bottles and bottles of wine.
而後斐利貝在週日問我想不想去海灘。我突然想到自己在巴厘島住了兩個月之久，卻還沒見過海灘，簡直荒唐，於是我說好。他開着自己的吉普車來接我，我們花了一小時的車程去到帕當灣（Pedangbai）幾乎沒有遊客流連的隱密小沙灘。這個地方簡直是我見過最像天堂的地方，碧海、白沙、棕櫚樹陰。我們聊了一整天，偶爾停下來游泳、打盹、看書，時而爲對方朗誦。海灘棚屋裏的婦女烤捕獲的鮮魚給我們吃，我們買了冰啤酒和水果。我們在海浪中嬉戲時，訴說着彼此過去幾星期來在烏布各家餐廳喝酒共度夜晚時尚未提及的人生細節。
He liked my body, he told me, after the initial viewing at the beach. He told me that Brazili-ans have a term for exactly my kind of body (of course they do), which is magra-falsa, trans-lating as "fake thin," meaning that the woman looks slender enough from a distance, but when you get up close, you can see that she's actually quite round and fleshy, which Brazilians con-sider a good thing. God bless Brazilians. As we lay out on our towels talking, he would reach over sometimes and brush sand off my nose, or push a mutinying hair out of my face. We talked for about ten solid hours. Then it was dark, so we packed up our things and went for a walk through the not-very-well-lit dirt road main street of this old Balinese fishing village, linked comfortably arm-in-arm under the stars. That's when Felipe from Brazil asked me in the most natural and relaxed of ways (almost as if he were wondering if we should get a bite to eat), "Should we have an affair together, Liz? What do you think?"
他告訴我，他喜歡我的身材，在海邊第一次目睹之後。他說巴西人對我這種身材有個特定的說法，就是"magra-falsa"，譯爲"假瘦"，即這女人遠遠看來苗條，近看卻發現她其實頗豐腴，在巴西人眼裏很是不錯，願神保佑巴西人。我們躺在毛巾上談話時，有時他伸手過來拍去我鼻子上的沙，或撥去我臉上的亂髮。我們聊了整整十小時左右。而後天色漸黑，於是我們收拾東西，漫步穿越巴厘島這古老漁村昏暗的泥土主街，在星光下愉快地勾着手。這時，巴西人斐利貝十分自然而輕鬆地（彷彿在考慮我們是否該吃點東西）問我說："我們是否該談場戀愛，小莉？你說呢？"
I liked everything about the way this was happening. Not with an action—not with an attempted kiss or a daring move—but with a question. And the correct question, too. I remembered something my therapist had said to me over a year ago before I'd left on this journey. I'd told her that I thought I wanted to remain celibate for this whole year of traveling, but worried, "What if I meet someone I really like? What should I do? Should I get together with him or not? Should I maintain my autonomy? Or treat myself to a romance?" My therapist replied with an indulgent smile, "You know, Liz—all this can be discussed at the time the issue actually arises, with the person in question."
我喜歡這一切的發生方式。不是以行動——不是打算親吻我，或採取大膽行動——而是提問一個問題，而且是正確的問題。我記得一年前展開這趟旅行前，我的治療師說過的話。我跟她說，我希望在這一整年的旅程中維持單身，卻擔心"假使遇上自己真正喜歡的人呢？該如何是好？我該不該跟他在一起？我是否該保持自己的自主性？或者讓自己享受一場戀情？"我的治療師寬容地笑道："你曉得，小莉——這些可以等問題發生時，再和當事人一起討論。"
