請注意： 本文使用翻譯軟件輔助翻譯，我自己手動修改，所以有讀起來很機(jī)翻的地方，如您在閱讀過程中發(fā)現(xiàn)錯誤請指出，感謝!

僅供交流分享使用，請勿轉(zhuǎn)載，一切版權(quán)歸原作者所有，請支持正版圖書

___________

I was born 1989 in Stockholm to two very loving parents, Klas and Anki. My father used to call himself a paper merchant (with a grin), a good testament to the humble values of the Swedish community. He actually owned several office department stores and was well off. My mother was a successful actor, as was my brother when I was growing up.

我于1989年出生在斯德哥爾摩，父母非常疼愛我，他們的名字分別是Klas和Anki。我的父親曾經(jīng)自稱為一名紙商（帶著微笑），這是瑞典社會謙虛價值觀的證明。實(shí)際上，他很富有，擁有多家辦公用品商店。我的母親是一位成功的演員，我的哥哥在我成長期間也是如此。

___________

THE SMOKE ROSE UP towards the heavy chandeliers that hung from the ceiling of the hall. The hunters’ arrows pierced the air and the magicians threw fireballs at the dragon’s double heads, but this boss was a really tough bastard. His sharp teeth shone in the dark as he chased each one in the guild who dared approach him.

濃煙升騰，直沖天花板上懸掛的沉重枝形吊燈。獵人的箭矢在空中劃過，魔法師向雙頭龍投擲火球，但這個首領(lǐng)實(shí)在是個強(qiáng)敵。他尖銳的牙齒在黑暗中閃爍，追趕著公會中每一個敢于接近他的人。

Together with druids, priests and magicians, the knight Important had fought for hours to get here, to the penultimate beast to be destroyed before the battle would be won. Their guild had been tactical and clever – sometimes all forty of them had joined into a united troop, sometimes they had split up to destroy enough dragon eggs without expiring.

與德魯伊、牧師和魔法師一起，騎士Important為了抵達(dá)此地已經(jīng)戰(zhàn)斗了數(shù)小時，為了消滅戰(zhàn)斗勝利之前的倒數(shù)第二只野獸。他們的公會非常謹(jǐn)慎和聰明——有時候他們四十人會結(jié)成一個統(tǒng)一的隊伍，有時候他們會分開行動去摧毀足夠多的龍蛋而不會耗盡力量。

Now Important was hidden behind one of the stone walls of the castle, which lay cut into a mountain in the Eastern Kingdoms. In his fiery yellow armour, he moved resiliently and swiftly. He was a paladin, a knight with magical properties, who came to the rescue when someone else in the guild was losing their vitality.

現(xiàn)在，Important躲在一個山洞中的城堡的石墻后面，這個城堡位于東方王國。他身穿火焰般的黃色盔甲，動作敏捷迅速。他是一名圣騎士，一位具有魔法屬性的騎士，當(dāng)公會中其他人失去活力時前來解救他們。

On the whole, Important was a character who justified his name. He had knives in both shoulder plates of his armour, flexible iron gloves and his belt was the most coveted. Between the helmet’s visor and the dark cowl, his eyes shone an intense white. Sometimes the knight rode around the alliance’s capital Stormwind, only to feel the envious glances of others when they saw the mighty horns of his horse’s armour – a clear sign of what a devoted soldier he was.

總的來說，Important 是一個名副其實(shí)的人物。他的盔甲肩板上都插著刀，手套柔韌，他的腰帶是最令人垂涎的。在頭盔面罩和黑色兜帽之間，他的眼睛閃耀著強(qiáng)烈的白光。有時這位騎士會在聯(lián)盟首都暴風(fēng)城周圍騎行，只為感受到其他人對他馬鎧上威武的角的羨慕眼光——這是他忠誠的士兵身份的明證。

The sixteen-year-old Tim Bergling was sitting in his bed with his back leaned up against the wall and steered Important exactly where he wanted. His fingers slammed against the keyboard in his lap as the knight ran to save yet another warlock in distress.

十六歲的Tim Bergling坐在床上，背靠著墻壁，手指猛擊著他膝上的鍵盤，熟練地控制著游戲角色去拯救救另一個被困的女巫。

His friend Fredrik Boberg, who everyone called Fricko, was sitting beside him on the bed and looking on. It was evident that the guys had been playing for several hours – between glasses of stale Coca-Cola lay half-chewed sweets, crisp crumbs and spat-out packets of tobacco.

他的朋友Fredrik Boberg，大家都叫他Fricko，坐在他床邊看著他。顯然這些家伙已經(jīng)玩了好幾個小時——在陳舊的可樂杯之間，有半嚼過的糖果、脆脆的面包屑和吐出的煙草包裝紙。

Fricko and the other friends had come to Tim’s parents’ apartment on the street of Linnégatan straight after school, dragged up their computers and monitors to the fifth floor and set them up in Tim’s room. The clock had now reached long past midnight but the raid in World of Warcraft was still not over. One of the other friends had nearly fallen asleep on his keyboard.

放學(xué)后，F(xiàn)ricko和其他朋友來到了Tim父母住所的Linnégatan街道公寓，拖著他們的電腦和顯示器上了五樓，然后在Tim的房間里安裝好了它們?，F(xiàn)在時間已經(jīng)過了午夜，但是《魔獸世界》中的襲擊仍未結(jié)束。他的一個朋友幾乎在鍵盤上睡著了。

In this little room Tim Bergling had grown up. Here he had drawn portraits of his parents and friends, written poems about the leaves of autumn and the girl in class he was most fond of. From his parents he had got a subscription to the magazine Science Illustrated and he ploughed through everything he came across about satellites and archaeological excavations and robots. Tim was especially fascinated by outer space. When he was a little boy, a telescope had been launched into orbit outside Earth’s atmosphere. Hubble, as this dustbin-like machine was called, was equipped with cameras that, from their high position, could take sharp photos of everything from dying stars to luminous galaxies. Tim flipped through the close-ups of a giant gas cloud that seemed to be taken from a scary fairy-tale book – huge pillars of dust and gas lit up in ultraviolet light, reminiscent of monsters howling into the cosmos. It was probably in a similarly remote place that our own solar system had been created once upon a time, impossibly long ago. With the fastest spacecraft man had ever invented, it would take over a hundred million years to get there, to the incomprehensibly eternal.

Tim Bergling在這個小房間里長大了。他在這里為父母和朋友畫肖像，寫關(guān)于秋葉和班上他最喜歡的女孩的詩歌。他從父母那里得到了一份《科學(xué)插圖》雜志的訂閱，他鉆研了所有有關(guān)衛(wèi)星、考古挖掘和機(jī)器人的文章。Tim對外太空特別著迷。當(dāng)他還是個小男孩的時候，一架望遠(yuǎn)鏡被發(fā)射到了地球大氣層外的軌道上。這個像垃圾桶一樣的機(jī)器被稱為哈勃，配備了相機(jī)，從高處拍攝了從垂死的恒星到發(fā)光星系的清晰照片。Tim翻閱著一張巨大的氣體云的特寫照片，這看起來像是從一本嚇人的童話書中截取的——巨大的塵埃和氣體柱被紫外線燈照亮，讓人聯(lián)想到嚎叫著進(jìn)入宇宙的怪物。我們的太陽系可能也是在類似的偏遠(yuǎn)地方次被創(chuàng)造出來的，在無法想象的很久以前。用人類有史以來發(fā)明的最快的宇宙飛船，需要一億多年才能到達(dá)那里，那不可理解的永恒之地。

As Tim was sitting engrossed in his thoughts, his mother Anki busied herself in the kitchen, where she would cook meatballs and spaghetti for her son on the other side of the closed door to the right of the stove.

當(dāng)Tim沉浸在自己的思緒中時，他的母親Anki在廚房里忙碌著，在門的另一側(cè)，爐子的右邊為她的兒子煮肉丸和意大利面。

Her beloved little Tim-a-lim, who was so longed for when he was born in September in the last autumn of the 1980s.

她心愛的小Tim-a-lim，在1980年代的最后一個秋天的九月出生時就被期盼已久。

When she reflected on it, Anki remembered how intensely she had wanted to have a child with Klas, even though they had both just experienced broken marriages and were already a little over forty.

回想起來，Anki記得她曾極其渴望與Klas生育一個孩子，盡管他們兩個都經(jīng)歷了破裂的婚姻，并且都已經(jīng)超過四十歲了。

By the time Tim arrived his other three siblings were well into their teens. Linda and David, his half-siblings from the father’s previous relationship, had moved out first, Anki’s son Anton left home not long after. There had only been three of them left in the household – Anki thought that that might have been one of the reasons why Tim was a little restrained and hesitant.

當(dāng) Tim 出生時，他的其他三個兄弟姐妹已經(jīng)十幾歲了。Linda 和 David 是他父親前一段婚姻中的孩子，他們最先搬出去了，Anki的兒子Anton不久之后也離開了家。家里只剩下了他們?nèi)齻€——Anki認(rèn)為這可能是 Tim 略微保守和猶豫的原因之一。

At the same time, he was stubborn, determined. In preschool he had eaten neither pasta nor potato buns, neither fruit salad nor rhubarb cream. All the food that the other children snacked on, Tim rejected – he had stubbornly insisted on a diet consisting only of crispbread and butter. During the pre-school’s annual Christmas show one of the teachers had to carry Tim into the hall because he did not dare to walk on the floor, and when they were on an excursion to a circus, Tim had wanted to stay outside.

與此同時，他也很固執(zhí)、堅定。在幼兒園里，他既不吃意大利面也不吃土豆面包，不吃水果沙拉也不吃大黃奶油。其他孩子喜歡吃的所有食物，Tim都婉言謝絕，他固執(zhí)地堅持只吃脆餅和黃油。在幼兒園的圣誕節(jié)表演中，有一位老師不得不抱著Tim走進(jìn)禮堂，因為他不敢走在地板上。當(dāng)他們?nèi)ヱR戲團(tuán)參觀時，Tim想待在外面。

‘I don’t know that clown,’ he had stated and quite simply refused to go inside.

“我不認(rèn)識那個小丑”，他說，并很干脆地拒絕進(jìn)去。

He needed to be at peace sometimes, to have his own space, he was clear about that. If he and Anki had been arguing about something, Tim would shut himself in his room. They would then communicate by pushing notes back and forth through the gap under the bedroom door.

他有時需要平靜，有自己的空間，他很清楚這一點(diǎn)。如果他和Anki一直在爭論什么，Tim會把自己關(guān)在房間里。然后他們會通過在臥室門下的縫隙里互相傳紙條來溝通。

‘Okay! I admit it,’ Tim wrote after one of those quarrels. ‘I was wrong. And I apologise for that. But I think it was mean to call me a “couch potato”. Do you understand that?’

“好的！我承認(rèn)，”Tim在一次爭吵后寫道?！拔义e了。我為此道歉。但我認(rèn)為稱呼我為一個沙發(fā)土豆非?？瘫?。你明白嗎？”

‘I agree with you, sorry,’ Anki replied, pushing the note back into Tim’s room.

“我同意你的觀點(diǎn)，抱歉。”安琪回答說，并把便條推回到Tim的房間里。

And so they were friends again, and Tim came back out.

于是他們重新成為了朋友，Tim又出來了。

Maybe the careful and thoughtful family trait came from her side, Anki thought. She worked as an actress, had throughout her career been praised for the intensity of her acting – a few years before Tim was born, she had played one of the lead roles in the Oscar-nominated film My Life as a Dog. Now she commuted back and forth to a recording studio in Hallstahammar to portray a mother in the soap opera Friends and Foes. Like many others on the stage, Anki had been insecure about herself for much of her life. She felt too tall, too self-conscious and clumsy. When she laughed, she looked like a stuck Christmas pig, she thought, it was just the shiny apple in her mouth that was missing.

Anki想，也許細(xì)心周到的家族特質(zhì)是從她這邊傳下來的。她曾經(jīng)是一名演員，在整個職業(yè)生涯中都因她的表演強(qiáng)度而受到贊揚(yáng)——就在Tim出生前幾年，她在獲得奧斯卡提名的電影《我的狗生》中扮演了其中的一名主角?，F(xiàn)在，她來回穿梭于哈爾斯塔哈馬爾的錄音棚，在肥皂劇《朋友與敵人》中扮演一位母親。像舞臺上的許多其他人一樣，安琪在她的大部分生活中都感到不安全。她覺得自己太高了，自我意識過剩和笨拙。她笑起來像一頭卡在門縫里的圣誕豬，她想，只是她嘴里缺少了一顆亮晶晶的蘋果。

There was also a before and an after in Anki Lidén’s life.

Anki Lidén的人生也有過去和現(xiàn)在。

When she was a teenager, a stranger had dragged her into the woods and tried to strangle her. The incident had stayed with her for ever, making her sensitive and scared of the dark. She couldn’t wear a scarf without feeling her airways tighten. Maybe this trauma had also affected her children, although indirectly?

當(dāng)她還是個十幾歲的少女時，一個陌生人曾經(jīng)把她拖進(jìn)樹林并試圖勒死她。這件事情一直伴隨著她，使她變得敏感并害怕黑暗。她甚至無法戴圍巾，因為她會感到呼吸不暢。也許這種創(chuàng)傷也間接地影響了她的孩子們？

In any case, Tim had a wait-and-see attitude that she recognised. At family dinners, when all six gathered, the other three siblings could shout at each other without interruption and have a hell of a time. Tim would sit quietly out of the way and suddenly throw in a particularly drastic and apt comment. And then he would smile his wonderfully crooked smile and return to his room to carry on with his schoolwork.

無論如何，Tim都保持一種觀望的態(tài)度，她很認(rèn)同。在家庭晚餐時，當(dāng)六個人聚在一起，其他三個兄弟姐妹正互相大聲喊叫，玩得不亦樂乎。而Tim會靜靜地坐在一旁，突然拋出一個特別激烈和恰當(dāng)?shù)脑u論。然后他會露出他那迷人的歪嘴笑容，回到自己的房間繼續(xù)學(xué)習(xí)。

Tim’s father owned and operated Skottes, a business that sold office supplies to companies. At first glance, Klas Bergling could seem prim and proper, especially when he discussed purchase prices for pencils or perforators. If you scratched the surface, however, Klas also had an artistic vein, a creativity that wanted to be freed. He had grown up with the scent of white spirit, in the studio at the Royal Opera, where his father was head of decoration. At family gatherings, he could improvise small sketches in which he portrayed a zealous film director or a tipsy salesman. And on a free Saturday morning, it was not uncommon for Klas to turn up the volume on the stereo over by the bedroom. He rolled around in a bathrobe while the house god Ray Charles’s powerful voice thumped against the stucco. The blind soul singer from the American South had an unsurpassed verve in his piano playing, could roar and whisper in front of the microphone so that he alone sounded like a whole orchestra. Otherwise, there was a lot of blues in the vinyl collection, often from Chicago, often guitarists like Buddy Guy or Freddie King, battered and bruised men who narrated stories of infidelity and jealousy, violence and misery.

Tim的父親經(jīng)營著Skottes，這是一家銷售辦公用品給其他公司的企業(yè)。初看，Klas Bergling可能看起來很正統(tǒng)，尤其是當(dāng)他談?wù)撱U筆或打孔機(jī)的購買價格時。但是，如果你透過了表面，Klas也有一種藝術(shù)細(xì)胞，一種將要釋放的創(chuàng)造力。他在皇家歌劇院的工作室里長大，父親是裝飾部門的負(fù)責(zé)人，因此他從小就在油漆溶劑油的氣味中長大。在家庭聚會上，他可以即興創(chuàng)作小品，扮演一個熱心的電影導(dǎo)演或一個喝醉了的推銷員。在一個無所事事的星期六早晨，Klas不時會把臥室附近的音響打開。他穿著浴袍在房間里轉(zhuǎn)悠，而來自美國南部的盲人靈魂歌手雷·查爾斯強(qiáng)有力的聲音在灰泥墻上回蕩。這位盲人歌手對于鋼琴演奏有無與倫比的熱情，他可以在麥克風(fēng)前咆哮和低語，一個人聽起來就像一整個交響樂隊。此外，他們的黑膠唱片收藏中有很多藍(lán)調(diào)音樂，通常來自芝加哥，像巴迪·蓋伊或弗雷迪·金這樣的吉他手，這些遍體鱗傷的人敘述著不忠、嫉妒、暴力和痛苦的故事。

Tim’s older siblings had also listened to a lot of music, and had done their best to pass on their taste to their little brother. Linda had introduced the whole gang to the glam rockers in Kiss; David had listened to most things that went on MTV, from hip-hop to grunge; in high school Anton had started playing drums in a rock band.

Tim的哥哥姐姐也聽了很多音樂，并盡力將他們的品味傳給他們的小弟弟。Linda向所有人介紹了Kiss中的魅力搖滾樂；David聽過MTV上的大多數(shù)音樂，從嘻哈到垃圾搖滾；在高中，Anton開始在一支搖滾樂隊擔(dān)任鼓手。

In the summers, the family used to drive down to Skillinge on Sk?ne’s ?sterlen. In the old fishing village, they had bought a brick house that was worn and damp, but which had a view of the sea. As Klas played electric guitar without a shirt, Tim carved huts and learned to sail an Optimist dinghy down in the harbour. When he and a friend organised a flea market at a crossroads, Anki came over with burgers and soft drinks for her son.

在夏天，一家人常常開車前往位于斯科訥斯·厄斯特倫的斯基林厄 。在這個老漁村，他們買下了一座磚房，雖然有點(diǎn)陳舊潮濕，但是可以看到大海。當(dāng)Klas不穿襯衫彈著電吉他時，Tim在雕刻木棚，并在港口學(xué)習(xí)駕駛Optimist帆船。當(dāng)他和朋友在十字路口組織跳蚤市場時，Anki為兒子帶來了漢堡和飲料。

The family were neighbours of the prominent trombonist Nils Landgren, who one day cleared out his studio and lined up assorted instruments for sale in the square. Tim bought a discarded synth, a Yamaha from the late 70s, which he put in the room next to the hall. Much of that summer was spent trying to understand the new instrument.

這個家庭是著名長號手Nils Landgren的鄰居，有一天他清理了他的工作室，并在廣場上排列了各種樂器出售。Tim買了一臺被丟棄的合成器，一臺70年代末的雅馬哈，他把它放在大廳旁邊的房間里。那個夏天的大部分時間他都在試圖理解這個新樂器。

Tim plucked and pressed, never really finding the logic, but somehow it still felt right. He knew very little about what he was going to spend his life doing, but he knew he was creative. Anki’s ex-husband, the popular singer Tommy K?rberg, was somewhere in Tim’s head – his artistic career was proof that it was possible to shape his own life.

Tim撥了又撥，壓了又壓，從未真正找到邏輯，但不知為什么，他還是感覺很好。他沒怎么想過自己未來要從事什么，但他知道自己是有創(chuàng)造力的。Anki的前夫、知名歌手Tommy K?rberg在Tim的腦海中，他的藝術(shù)生涯證明了塑造自己的人生是可行的。

Back in Stockholm, Tim got a six-string Fender in mahogany from his father. Compared to the synth, the guitar felt easier to handle. Tim trained on classics such as Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’ and The Animals’ ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. With his lungs filled to the brim with air, he tried to sing the national anthem ‘Du gamla du fria’ (‘Thou Ancient, Thou Free’) and Nordman’s ‘Vandraren’ (‘The Wanderer’).

回到斯德哥爾摩后，Tim從他父親那里得到了一把紅木六弦Fender吉他。相比合成器，吉他更容易掌握。Tim練習(xí)了Eric Clapton的Tears In Heaven’和The Animals的‘House Of The Rising Sun’。他深呼吸，試著唱國歌‘Du gamla du fria’（你古老，你自由）和Nordman的‘Vandraren’（漫游者）。

The singing was swaying and skewed, but the guitar playing became more and more confident.

他的歌聲搖擺不定，有些跑調(diào)，但他的吉他彈奏越來越自信。

When his mother offered to arrange lessons for him, Tim thought it was an almost absurd thought.

當(dāng)他的母親提出為他安排課程時，Tim認(rèn)為這是一個有些荒謬的想法。

He would, of course, teach himself.

他當(dāng)然會自學(xué)。