By+Orhan+Pamuk
伊斯坦布尔富商子弟公凯末尔(Kemal)与他的远房亲戚、一个贫民少女芙颂(Füsun)相恋一个半月后便失去了她。339天后,他终于再次见到了已成他人之妻的芙颂。这之后的整整七年十个月里,凯末尔为了看望芙颂,曾1,593次去她家里吃晚饭,期间积攒了芙颂的4,213个烟头。他还用15年的时间走完1,743个博物馆,创造出独一无二的“纯真博物馆”,把芙颂用过或碰触过的盐瓶、小狗摆设、顶针、笔、发卡、烟灰缸、耳坠、纸牌、钥匙、扇子、香水瓶、手帕、胸针、烟头等等放入自己的博物馆,永久地慰藉自己那颗受创伤的心灵。
帕慕克用10年时间构思创作了《纯真博物馆》,2008年出版之后,曾学建筑学的他又用了四年时间,在伊斯坦布尔创建了一座与小说对应的真实的博物馆,以活生生的材料再现一本小说。这也是世界上第一家完全以一部小说为基础的博物馆,相信读过此书的读者会产生欲望亲自参观这座位于伊斯坦布尔老城区的铁锈红色的土耳其式三层小楼的纯真博物馆。一进门,你看到的第一件展品就是一整面钉满了烟蒂的墙壁—— 一 个男人在2,864天里承受痛苦的证明。
One cold and rainy day, while walking through the galleries of the Helsinki(赫尔辛基,芬兰首都)City Museum, I happened on just the sort of medicine bottles Id found in Tarik Beys drawers. Prowling(徘徊于)the mildewy(发霉的)rooms of a museum in the small city of Cazelles(卡泽勒), near Lyon(里昂)in France [a converted(改建的)former hat factory with no visitors but me], I saw hats exactly like those my mother and father had once worn. As I was viewing the playing cards, rings, necklaces, chess sets, and oil paintings of the State Museum of Württemberg(德国符腾堡国家博物馆), located in a tower of the old castle in Stuttgart(斯图加特), I was inspired by the belief that the Keskins(凯斯金一家,指芙颂和她父母)possessions(like my love for Füsun) deserved display in comparable splendor(辉煌). The smallest detail demanded the most exacting investigation: I spent an entire day in the Musée International de la Parfumerie(国际香水博物馆)in the South of France, some distance from the Mediterranean, in Grasse(格拉斯,香水之都), the world capital of perfume, struggling to identify Füsuns scent. At Munichs Alte Pinakothek(慕尼黑老绘画陈列馆)(whose stairs would serve as a model for those in my own museum) the sight of Rembrandts(伦勃朗,荷兰著名画家)masterpiece The Sacrifice of Abraham1 reminded me of having told Füsun this story many years earlier, and of the moral of giving up the thing most precious to us while expecting nothing in return. I gazed at length at George Sands(乔治·桑,法国女作家)lighter(打火机), her jewels, her earrings, and locks(缕)of her hair, which were stapled(钉住)to a piece of paper, until there, in the Musée de la Vie Romantique(罗曼蒂克博物馆)in Paris, I shivered. It was in Treiste(的里雅斯特,意大利东北部港市), where the Civico Museo del Mare(海洋城市博物馆)is housed in an old prison, that I first realized what many other museums would remind me of: being awash with(淹没于)memories of Füsun, the Bosphorus ferries(博斯普鲁斯海峡里的渡轮)would need to be represented by some model alongside other totems(图腾)of my obsession. In Honduras(洪都拉斯,中美洲国家), for which I had a hard time acquiring a visa, the Museum of Insects and Butterflies in La Ceiba(拉塞瓦), where I walked among tourists in shorts, led me to imagine that I could display all the butterfly barrettes(条状发夹)Id bought for Füsun over the years as if they were real butterflies; and that, by extension, I could organize and show all the mosquitoes, blackflies, horseflies, and other insects from the Keskin household. In the Chinese city of Hangzhou, in the Museum of Chinese Medicine, I felt that I had come face-to-face with one of Tarik Beys very own medicine boxes. I would note with pride at the Musée du Tabac(烟草博物馆), just opened in Paris, that its collection was not nearly as extensive as the one I had bought up over eight years. One bright spring day in Aix-en-Provence(普罗旺斯地区艾克斯,法国城市), I remember gazing with boundless happiness and admiration upon the shelves of pots and pans and other objects in the sun-drenched(沐浴在阳光里的)rooms of the Musée de lAtelier da Paul Cézanne(保罗·塞尚画室博物馆). But still I wonder if I could ever have learned to appreciate my own collection in the Merhamet Apartments(凯末尔和芙颂曾经的爱巢), let alone nurtured(培育)any hope of showing it proudly to others, had I not first gone to Vienna to see the Sigmund Freud Museum(弗洛伊德博物馆), crammed(塞满的)with the statues and the furniture of the famous pyscho-analyst(心理分析师). Was a visit to the old barbershop in the Museum of London on every London trip during my first traveling years merely an expression of nostalgia(怀旧之情)for my Istanbul barbers, Basri and Cevat the Chatterbox(喋喋不休的人), or something more? At the Florence Nightingale Museum(弗洛伦斯·南丁格尔博物馆), housed in a London hospital, I was hoping to find a painting or an object that the famous nurse had brought back from Istanbul, where shed run a hospital during the Crimean War2, but the memento(纪念品)I found was not just from Istanbul—it was a barrette identical to one of Füsuns. In the Musée de Temps(时间博物馆)in Besan?on(贝桑松), France, formerly a palace, as I wandered among the clocks, listening to the deep silence, I thought about museums and time. In Holland, gazing at the minerals, fossils, medals, coins, and old utensils(炊具)in the old wood-framed display cupboards, amid the silence of the Teylers Museum(泰勒斯博物馆)in Haarlem(哈勒姆,荷兰西部城市), I had an intimation that I would be able to say what it was that gave life meaning, and offered me the greatest solace(安慰), but as with the first blush of love, I couldnt at first express what bound me to such places. But it was not until I visited the Museum der Dinge(物品博物馆)in Berlin, once accommodated(安置于)in the Martin Gropius Building(马丁·格罗皮乌斯大楼)and later made homeless, that I saw this truth another way: One could gather up anything and everything, with wit and acumen(敏锐), out of a positive need to collect all objects connecting us to our most beloved, every aspect of their being, and even in the absence of a house, a proper museum, the poetry of our collection would be home enough for its objects. Every time I went to London I visited Sir John Soanes Museum(約翰·索恩爵士博物馆); after walking through its gorgeously cluttered(华美而凌乱的), crowded rooms and admiring his arrangement of the paintings, I would sit alone in a corner, listening for many hours to the noise of the city, thinking that one day I would exhibit Füsuns things in just this way, and that when I did, she would smile down on me from the realm of the angels. But not until I found myself in the sentimental collection which was on the top floor of the Museu Frederic Marès(弗雷德里克·马雷博物馆)in Barcelona(巴塞罗那), perusing(仔细观看)its romantic assortment of barrettes, pins, earrings, playing cards, keys, fans, perfume bottles, handkerchiefs, brooches, necklaces, handbags, and bracelets(手镯), did I realize at last what I could do with Füsuns things. And on my first tour of America—where I spent more than five months visiting 273 museums—I recalled that same emotional experience while visiting New Yorks Glove Museum. Then at the Museum of Jurassic Technology(侏罗纪科技博物馆)in Culver City(卡尔弗城,位于洛杉矶西部), California, I remembered again why some museums had the power to make me shudder: They induced the feeling that I had become suspended in one age while the rest of humanity lived in another. In the town of Smithfield, North Carolina, at the Ava Gardner Museum(艾娃·加德纳博物馆;艾娃:美国著名性感女影星), from which I stole a charming exhibition plaque(匾)reproducing a tableware advertisement in which she appeared, at the sight of Avas yearbook picture, her night-gowns, her mittens(连指手套), and her boots, I so ached for my lost Füsun that I very nearly aborted my journey and returned to Istanbul. As it happens, I had by then concluded that the true collectors only home is his own museum.
I did not remain for long in Istanbul. Following ?etins directions, I drove to the garage owned by Sevket Usta, who specialized in Chevrolets(美国雪佛兰牌汽车), in the streets behind Maslak(马斯拉克,位于伊斯坦布尔); in the empty lot(小块地)behind the garage one look at our 56 Chevrolet, a sizable market as most of the citys taxis were now the same model. When I poked(伸出)my head into the wreck, to peer at where the fuel gauge(燃油表)and the speedometer had once lodged in(停留在)mint(崭新的)condition, and the radio knobs, and the steering wheel, I caught the scent of leather rising from the seat coverings in the gentle heat of the sun, and my head began to swim. By instinct, I touched the steering wheel, which seemed almost as old as I was. And soon the intensity of the memories compressed into these remains overwhelmed me and I broke down.
For the first time since Füsuns death, Id been on the brink of(濒于)crying in public. A boy apprentice(学徒), sooty(沾满煤灰的)as a coal digger and covered in axle grease(车轴润滑脂), but with immaculately(洁净无瑕地)clean hands, brought us tea on a tray with the logo CYPRUS TURK(塞浦路斯的土耳其人)(I record this by force of habit; visitors should not waste time looking for it in the Museum of Innocence); as we drank our teas, after a bit of bargaining, we bought back my fathers car.
“So where are we going to put this, Kemal Bey?” asked?etin Efendi.
“I want to spend the rest of my life under the same roof with this car,” I said with a smile, but ?etin Efendi understood at once that I was earnest, and unlike the others, he did not say, “Oh, please, Kemal Bey, life must go on—you cant die with the dead.” Had he done so, I would have explained that the Museum of Innocence was to be a place where one could live with the dead. Though I had prepared this answer in advance, the words now stuck in my throat: Prompted by pride, I said something altogether different.
“There are lots of things stored in the Merhamet Apartments. I want to bring them together under one roof and spend the rest of my days among them.
I had many heroes in mind, who, during the last years of their lives, like Gustave Moreau(古斯塔夫·莫罗,法国象征主义画家), had arranged for their homes to be turned into museums posthumously(于死后). I loved the museums theyd created, and so I continued my travels, revisiting the hundreds Id come to know and cherish and going to the thousands of others I still longed to see.
1. 《亞伯拉罕献祭》,取材于《圣经·旧约》中的故事,描绘的是亚拉伯罕举刀准备杀他儿子时被天使拦下的场景。
2. 克里米亚战争(1853—1856),因争夺巴尔干半岛的控制权而在欧洲大陆爆发的一场战争,奥斯曼帝国、英国、法国、撒丁王国等先后向俄罗斯帝国宣战,以俄国的失败而告终,从而引发了国内的革命斗争。