【“同”声传译·第13期】连载:西雅图最勇敢的女人(二)

接上期:西雅图最勇敢的女人(一)

原文地址:http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-bravest-woman-in-seattle/Content?oid=8640991

翻译:锄药

她第一天的当庭作证结束了。第二天——6月9号的上午,她再次站在了证人席上。法院大楼素来充满着人们对审讯的恐惧,但这间审判庭的恐怖气氛远远超出寻常——超出了大多数人敢于想象、更不用说是讲述的程度。从这一天起的审讯中,有的证词因太过骇人听闻而将不会出现在这篇报道中。但为了知道她付出了多大的勇气,我们要尽可能地了解她经历了什么。

巴斯的母亲像昨天一样坐在长木凳上,聆听证人的讲述。其他的家人紧紧坐在她的身旁。如同女儿,巴斯的母亲也是个身材矮小的女人。她让人不禁产生这样的想法:如果这样一位女人能够承受证词中她女儿所遭受的种种,能够直视血淋淋的犯罪现场照片,能够聆听报警电话中邻居俯在血泊中的女儿身旁一边喊到“小姐,醒醒吧!醒醒吧!”一面请求911接线员“请快一点,请快一点”,能够听取有关DNA鉴定的证词以及这些DNA是从女儿身上的什么部位提取的——那么法庭上就应该没有人可以回避这一切。巴斯母亲此时的出现同样告诉着人们:这一切已然发生。你们必须听到!

被告以赛亚·卡勒布被判定为行为难以控制因而被禁止出现在审判庭,这期间他呆在一间楼上的房间里,穿着防自杀服(没有领,没有袖子,没有系带等一切可以用来伤害自己的结构),坐在锁闭的椅子内,通过闭路电视观看审讯的进展。在此之前,卡勒布从未抗议过把自己监禁在法庭之外的地方,但今天,他换下了防自杀服而穿上了衬衫长裤,并要求进入法庭。直到他的律师上楼同他谈过之后,他才放弃了自己的要求。

巴斯的爱人开始描述当晚男子站在家中时可怕的寂静。他靠在梳妆台旁,瞪着她们,向她们作出更多许诺。“已经发生了太多。我在猜测还会怎么样……”“我感到我和特蕾莎无法交流,我没有办法告诉她,‘我爱你。’……不知道为什么,但我隐隐感到如果让他知道我这么爱她,情况会变得更加可怕。”

他对两个女人说到:“好了,准备进入第二轮吧。”

接下来发生的情节恐怖至极,书记员哭了,法警哭了,整个法庭的人都哭了。陪审团传递着一盒纸巾,检察官停顿了很长时间才让自己能正常说话。法庭上受害者的亲友们都哭了(当然,事实上他们在整个审讯过程中从未停止过流泪),坐在我身旁的《西雅图时报》记者哭了,我哭了。当地电视台的女摄影记者哭了。休庭的时候,她拥抱了正走出审判庭的巴斯的爱人。

对于当时发生的情况,或许只需引用检察官在开庭陈词时所作的总结就已足够:“卡勒布用所有能想到的方式强暴了她们,无论从阴道、肛门还是口腔。他没有戴安全套,并且射精多次。”

对于当时发生的情况,或许只需听听接下来犯罪现场发生的对话就已足够:

男人在对巴斯进行的又一轮施暴前向她们索要润滑油。当得知她们家中并没有润滑油时,他说:“那她可有的受了。”

男人问:“你们是同性恋还是双性恋?”

巴斯的爱人头脑飞快地运转。哪个回答会更糟糕?哪个回答更有可能让他停下来?

“我记得我说,‘我们在一起很久了,我想我们是同性恋吧。’”

她觉得自己这时有理由向他提问,于是她问到:“你以前见过我们吗?”

他摇头说没见过。

她谎称有人会在早上5点来接她们去波特兰参加一场婚礼,问男人会不会让她们赶上。男人作了肯定的回答。她又说:“请不要伤害我们。我们是好人。”

他说:“嗯,你们的确像好人。我希望我们是朋友。”

巴斯答道:“嗯,我希望我们可以做朋友。”

“这正是她会做的事,”巴斯的爱人在证人席上说道,“就算在那样的情况下,她也试图建立某种关系。……也许我们现在仍然可以。”

男人问道:“你们看我像好人吗?”

“她把指尖放在他的胸口——我永远不会忘记这一幕——然后说道:‘我相信这里藏着美好的东西。’”

他说:“从现在起不要再问问题了。”

“我只做了我不得不做的事,”巴斯的爱人说。“当时,我感到刀尖似乎碰到了我的手臂,便叫出了声。我听到他说,‘噢,对不起。’”

她回忆起自己当时想:“一个会道歉的人是不会杀我们的。我们会活下来的。他会有恻隐之心的。”

就在那时,巴斯踢开了刀。

Her first day of testimony ended. The next morning, June 9, she was back on the witness stand. In a building filled with trial horrors, this courtroom was about to go well beyond the normal—beyond what most people are brave enough to imagine, let alone recount. Some of her testimony from this day is not going to be recounted in this story. It got very gruesome. But in order to understand her courage it’s necessary to hear, as much as possible, what she lived through.

Butz’s mother sat listening to the testimony on one of the wooden benches, just as she had every day of the trial so far, other members of the Butz family tight on either side of her. She is a small woman, just like her daughter, who was only five feet two. One thought: If this woman can absorb, at the level of detail required for proof before a jury, the particulars of what happened to her daughter—can view the bloody crime-scene photographs, can listen to the 911 call from a neighbor leaning over her blood-soaked daughter and screaming, “Ma’am, please wake up! Please wake up!” (while, to the 911 operator pleading, “Please hurry, please hurry”), can hear the testimony about DNA evidence and what orifices it was recovered from—then no one else in this courtroom can dare turn away. Butz’s mother’s presence, too, created an imperative: This happened. You must listen.

Isaiah Kalebu, the man accused of these crimes, sat in a sealed courtroom on a higher floor, deemed so uncontrollable he’s been banned from his own trial, left to watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television while strapped into a restraint chair and dressed in a thick green flop of fabric known as a “suicide smock.” (No ties, strings, sleeves, or other possible aides to self-harm.) Up to this point in the trial, Kalebu hadn’t been fighting his confinement in the upstairs courtroom, but this morning, of all mornings, he changed from his suicide smock into a dress shirt and slacks and requested that he be allowed to sit in the eighth-floor courtroom with his accuser. After his lawyers went up and talked to him, he retracted the request.

Butz’s partner began her second day of testimony with the awful silence of the man standing there that night, leaning against the dresser, staring, promising more. “So much had already happened. I was trying to imagine what else…” And: “I didn’t feel like Teresa and I could communicate. I didn’t feel like I could tell her ‘I love you’… I almost thought it would be worse, and I don’t know why, if he knew I loved her too much.”

He said to the two women: “All right, get ready for round two.”

The horror of what happened next made the court reporter’s eyes well up, made the bailiff cry, had the whole room in tears. The jury handed around a box of tissues. The prosecutor took long pauses to collect himself. The family and friends in the courtroom cried (though, truth be told, they had been crying throughout). The Seattle Times reporter seated next to me cried. I cried. The camerawoman who was shooting video for all the television stations in town cried—and later on hugged Butz’s partner as she left the courtroom for the midmorning break.

Perhaps it is enough to restate how one of the two prosecuting attorneys summarized the attacks in opening arguments at the beginning of the trial. Kalebu, this prosecutor said, “raped them every way imaginable. Vaginally, anally, orally. He wasn’t wearing a condom, and he ejaculated several times.”

Perhaps it is enough to listen to some of their conversations during the later phases of these attacks, as Butz’s partner recounted them on the stand.

The man asked the couple for lube before one of his rapes of Butz. When the women replied that they didn’t have any lube, he said: “Too bad for her.”

The man asked, at one point: “So are you guys lesbians or are you bisexual?”

Butz’s partner’s mind spun. Which would be worse? Which answer would make him more likely to stop?

“I remember what I said was, ‘Well, we’ve been together a long time, so I guess that makes us lesbians.’”

She felt that she deserved to ask him a question at this point, so she asked: “Have you seen us before?”

He shook his head no.

Butz asked: “What if we’d been an old man?”

He just shrugged.

Butz’s partner made up a story that someone was coming to pick them up at 5:00 a.m. to take them to a wedding in Portland. She asked him if they were going to make the wedding. He said yes. She said: “Please don’t hurt us. We’re good people.”

He said: “Yeah, you seem like you’re good people. I wish we could have been friends.”

Butz replied: “Yeah, I wish we could.”

“Which,” her partner said on the stand, “is exactly what she would do… Even in that moment, she wanted to make some sort of connection. She said, ‘Maybe we still can.’”

He asked: “Do I seem like a good person to you?”

“She put the tips of her fingers on his chest—I will never ever forget this—and said, ‘I am sure there is some good in here.’”

He said: “No more questions.”

“I just did what I had to do,” Butz’s partner said. “At one point, I felt the tip of the knife just kind of touch my arm. I said, ‘Ouch!,’ and he actually said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’”

She remembers thinking: “There’s no way he’d say ‘I’m sorry’ and be a murderer. We’re going to get through this. There’s got to be some level of compassion there or something.”

At one point, Butz made a play for the knife.

翻译得辣么辛苦,也没个人来看

:yc_25:苦逼啊。
今天发现这种带点文学色彩的东西我翻译起来还是有点难的

可怜见的,摸摸~

辛苦辛苦:yc_28:,本来就是曲高和寡嘛,我也来附庸风雅一下。不过最近发现,比起激情的东西,自己越来越喜欢看感情的东西了。

呵呵,也谈不上“曲高和寡”“风雅”吧,以前这个栏目刚开始做的时候回帖还挺多的,当然跟选题也有关系。我翻译得一般,感情怕是表达不出来呢。

能静下来翻译这么长的段子,仰慕锄药啊,你可以去译言网试试,那边观众多很多

嗯,之前小鱼也说过的,我去看过的,上面翻译LGBT题材文章的还不少呢。过奖了~