很多年前我有一个叫吉姆的朋友，他是我见过最悲伤的北美人。我见过很多绝望的人，但他们中没有一个如吉姆这般悲伤。有一次他到秘鲁去——据说要在那逗留六个月以上，但还没过多久我就又见到了他。墨西哥街头的孩子曾经问他，吉姆，诗是用来干什么的？听着他们的问题，吉姆盯着天上的云彩，然后开始呕吐。丰富语言，能言善辩，追寻真理。猛然醒悟。就和你看到圣母玛利亚显灵一样。令人感到惊讶的是，他曾在中美洲遭遇过几次抢劫，因为他曾经是一名海军陆战队的成员，还在越南打过仗。我不再战斗了，吉姆曾经这样说。我现在是一名诗人，追求非凡的感悟，用平凡、日常的语言把它们表达出来。所以你觉得平凡、日常的语言是存在的吗？我认为是的，吉姆曾经这样说。他的妻子是一位奇卡诺诗人，她时不时就会威胁吉姆要离开他。吉姆给我看过她的照片。她算不上特别漂亮。她的脸上流露出痛苦，在那种痛苦之下，酝酿着沸腾的愤怒。我想象着她住在旧金山或者洛杉矶的公寓里，窗户紧闭，窗帘打开，她坐在桌旁，吃着切了片的面包和一碗绿色的汤。吉姆大概是喜欢深肤色的女人，那是历史中的秘密女郎，他这样解释，却不再作赘述。而我嘛，我喜欢金发妞。有一次，我在墨西哥城的一条街上看到他正观看吞火者表演。我从他背后看到了他，但没有和他打招呼，不过那显然就是吉姆。那剪得一团糟的头发，脏兮兮的白衬衫和驼背，就好像他还背着那沉重的行军包。不知道为什么，他的脖颈——他那“红脖子”，唤起了乡村里私刑的画面：一副黑白电影的场景，没有广告牌也没有加油站的灯光——那正是乡村本该有的样子：一大片荒芜的土地，一片接着一片，逐渐模糊，我们曾经逃离的砖墙小屋，依旧矗立在那里，等待着我们的回归。吉姆把手插在口袋里。吞火者挥舞着火把，放声大笑。他那张黑乎乎的脸上看不到岁月的痕迹：他或许是三十五岁或者十五岁。他没有穿衬衫，能看到一条垂直的伤疤从肚脐直通胸骨。时不时地，他会用易燃液体灌满嘴巴，然后吐出一条长长的火蛇。街上的人会驻足停留一会儿，欣赏他的技巧，然后继续脚下的路。只有吉姆不同，他一动不动地站在人行道边上，好像期待着吞火者再表演些别的什么，第十种把戏（此前已经表演了九个常规把戏），又或者从那张晒得变色的脸里看出一位老友或是一个曾被他杀掉的人的模样。我在背后看了他好一会儿。那时候我才十八九岁，相信自己永生不灭。如果那时我意识到我并非如此的话，一定会转身离去。过了一会儿，我看腻了吉姆的背和那个吞火者的鬼脸。于是我走了过去，叫了吉姆的名字。吉姆大概没听到我的呼唤。当他转过身时，我才注意到他满脸是汗。他看起来正发着烧，花了好一会儿才弄明白我是谁；他点头向我问好，之后便又转头去看吞火者了。站到他身边时，我才注意到他正在哭——他大概真的是发烧了。我还发现了一件事，当时我远没有现在这么惊讶：那个吞火者是在专门为吉姆表演的，就好像墨西哥城的那个街角其他路人根本不存在一样。有时火焰会窜到离我们站的地方不到一码远的地方。你在等什么，我问，你想在街上被来个BBQ吗？这是个很蠢的俏皮话，我没多想就说出来了，但我马上就意识到了：那正是吉姆在等待的。我记得那一年，有些热闹的地方总是在放一首歌，副歌部分是“Chingado, hechizado”（糟透了，着了魔）。吉姆就是这样：糟透了，还着了魔。墨西哥的魔力缠住了他，而此刻他正面对着自己心里的恶魔。我们走吧，我说。我还问了他是不是磕大了，或是病了。他摇了摇头，吞火者注视着我们。接着，那家伙鼓起腮帮子，像风神埃俄罗斯似的，朝我们走了过来。一瞬间我意识到，他要带来的不会是什么阵风。走吧，我拽着吉姆，把他从那要命的人行道边缘拉开。我们沿着街往改革大道走去，过了一会儿便分道扬镳了。那一路，吉姆一句话也没说。在那之后我再也没见过他。

Many years ago I had a friend named Jim, and he was the saddest North American I’ve ever come across. I’ve seen a lot of desperate men. But never one as sad as Jim. Once he went to Peru—supposedly for more than six months, but it wasn’t long before I saw him again. The Mexican street kids used to ask him, what’s poetry made of, Jim? Listening to them, Jim would stare at the clouds and then he’d start throwing up. Vocabulary, eloquence, the search for truth. Epiphany. Like when you have a vision of the Virgin.He was mugged several times in Central America, which is surprising,because he’d been a Marine and fought in Vietnam. No more fighting, Jim used to say. I’m a poet now, searching for the extraordinary, trying to express it in ordinary, everyday words. So you think there are ordinary, everyday words? I think there are, Jim used to say. His wife was a Chicana poet;every so often she’d threaten to leave him. He showed me a photo of her. She wasn’t especially pretty. Her face betrayed suffering, and under that suffering, simmering rage. I imagined her in an apartment in San Francisco or a house in Los Angeles, with the windows shut and the curtains open,sitting at a table, eating sliced bread and a bowl of green soup. Jim liked dark women, apparently,history’s secret women, he would say, without elaborating. As for me, I liked blondes. Once I saw him watching fire-eaters on a street in Mexico City. I saw him from behind, and I didn’t say hello, but it was obviously Jim. The badly cut hair, the dirty white shirt and the stoop, as if he were still weighed down by his pack. Somehow his neck, his red neck, summoned up the image of a lynching in the country—a landscape in black and white, without billboards or gas station lights—the country as it is or ought to be: one expanse of idle land blurring into the next, brick-walled rooms or bunkers from which we have escaped, standing there, awaiting our return. Jim had his hands in his pockets. The fire-eater was waving his torch and laughing fiercely. His blackened face was ageless: he could have been thirty-five or fifteen. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and there was a vertical scar from his navel to his breastbone.Every so often he’d fill his mouth with flammable liquid and spit out a long snake of fire. The people in the street would watch him for a while, admire his skill, and continue on their way, except for Jim, who remained there on the edge of the sidewalk, stock-still, as if he expected something more from the fire-eater, a tenth signal (having deciphered the usual nine), or as if he’d seen in that discolored face the features of an old friend or of someone he’d killed.I watched him for a good long while. I was eighteen or nineteen at the time and believed I was immortal. If I’d realized that I wasn’t, I would have turned around and walked away. After a while I got tired of looking at Jim’s back and the fire-eater’s grimaces. So I went over and called his name. Jim didn’t seem to hear me. When he turned around I noticed that his face was covered with sweat. He seemed to be feverish, and it took him a while to work out who I was; he greeted me with a nod and then turned back to the fire-eater. Standing beside him, I noticed he was crying. He probably had a fever as well.I also discovered something that surprised me less at the time than it does now, writing this: the fire-eater was performing exclusively for Jim, as if all the other passersby on that corner in Mexico City simply didn’t exist. Sometimes the flames came within a yard of where we were standing.What are you waiting for, I said, you want to get barbecued in the street? It was a stupid wisecrack, I said it without thinking, but then it hit me: that’s exactly what Jim’s waiting for. That year, I seem to remember, there was a song they kept playing in some of the funkier places with a refrain that went, Chingado, hechizado (Fucked up, spellbound).That was Jim: fucked up and spellbound. Mexico’s spell had bound him and now he was looking his demons right in the face. Let’s get out of here, I said. I also asked him if he was high, or feeling ill. He shook his head. The fire-eater was staring at us. Then, with his cheeks puffed out like Aeolus, the god of the winds, he began to approach us. In a fraction of a second I realized that it wasn’t a gust of wind we’d be getting. Let’s go, I said, and yanked Jim away from the fatal edge of that sidewalk. We took ourselves off down the street toward Reforma, and after a while we went our separate ways. Jim didn’t say a word in all that time. I never saw him again.