孩提時代我曾坐在爸媽有變形蟲圖案的床罩上，盯着排在母親梳妝台上的香水瓶，有如在觀看萬花筒。若光線恰到好處，就會在房間裏投射出彩虹般的光芒，教我痴然如醉。香味本身倒沒有那麼吸引人。當時我年紀小，鼻子未經太多訓練，無法領略多種化學物質混合而成的香氣。但當時我便已知道，香味是魅力的表徵，夜裏傳遞訊息的幽微之道。
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I sat on my parents’ paisley bedspread and stared at the kaleidoscopic bottles of perfume arranged on my mother’s dresser. They cast rainbows around the room in the right light, and I was mesmerised. Less appealing were the scents themselves, combinations of chemicals my young nose was too untrained to understand. But I knew even then that they were symbols of glamour, subtle ways to send signals in the night.
等到年紀大了些，我開始親身試驗。和許多一九九○年代的孩子一樣，我存下零用錢，買了蓋璞的袖珍銀瓶裝「夢幻」與「天堂」香水。 青少年時期的我，不知何故希望自己散發橘子即將過熟爛掉的氣味，因此爸媽送我拉夫.勞倫的「拉夫」香水。我最常招來的是夏日烤肉會時常見的黃蜂，對此沒人感到意外。後來我改用蔻依同名香水，冀望它能幫助我在那個尷尬的階段展現風情，也因為當時的男友喜歡它。之後我用肌膚哲理的「戀愛」香水，渴望每個認識的人都覺得我很甜美。
As I got older, I began to experiment. I saved up my pocket money and, like so many kids of the 1990s, spent it on travel-sized silver bottles of Gap Dream and Gap Heaven. As a teenager, my parents gave me Ralph by Ralph Lauren, because for some reason I wanted to smell like a tangerine putridly close to expiring. To no one’s surprise, the attention I most often caught was that of wasps at summertime barbecues. Later, I’d wear Chloé by Chloé, hoping in an awkward phase that it would flirt for me, and because my boyfriend at the time liked it. And then there was Philosophy’s Falling in Love, because I wanted so badly to be sweet to everyone I knew.
這些香水我都沒有持續使用。 我也終於明白，每一款用過的香水都是試圖討好某個人而讓自己變成某種樣子。於是我將它們束之高閣。
None of them lasted.And I realised, eventually, that every perfume I’d ever worn was an attempt to be something for somebody else. So I put them away.
或許不是人盡皆知，進醫院切除癌病變前的細胞，出來時會有像魚腐壞的氣味。療程在你身上留下的氣味會停留一星期以上。這有其意義；到檢驗室燒掉身上的一小部分，離開時當然會有像被燒過的味道。之後幾天刺鼻的味道徘徊不去，提醒你這幾天中不應太過操心。
IT IS NOT COMMON knowledge that when you go into the hospital to have pre-cancerous cells removed, you come out smelling like rotten fish. The procedure leaves you with a scent that hangs on for more than a week. It makes sense; you go into an examination room to have a little part of you burned away, and you come out smelling a little like a burn. It’s a lingering, acrid reminder in the days afterwards, the days during which you’re not supposed to worry too much.
等待過檢驗結果的人都知道，懸而未知的狀態有多磨人。有一個月的時間我像是遊魂，更加關心、更加注意自己是否罹癌。當天氣回暖，天空藍得不能再藍，我坐在公園長椅上，旁邊的男子瘋狂刮着一疊刮刮樂彩券，真希望他能分我一點那樣的信心。一天下午我走在雨中，看着雨滴落地成窪，開展為無止盡的漣漪。我心想，癌細胞就是這樣生長的。但如果你夠幸運，時光也是如斯流逝，生命之輪越擴越大，直到消退殆盡。
As anyone who has ever waited for test results knows, however, the unknown is an excruciating place to be stuck. For a month, I wandered around, paid more noticed better, wondered if I had cancer. As the weather turned warmer, the sky seemed the bluest of blue. I sat on a park bench beside a man rabidly scratching at a pile of lotto tickets, and I wished for a little bit of that kind of faith. Walking through the rain one afternoon, I watched droplets fall into puddles, unfurling into endless ripples. That’s how cancer grows, I thought. But it’s how time passes, too, if you’re lucky, the cycles of life growing wider and wider until they fade away.
人生有許多瞬間，在變得意義重大之前看似微不足道，四月的那天正是如此。洗髮精所剩不多，我到商店去買一罐。我果斷地走到店鋪後面，抓了罐白色瓶子裝的慣用品。但那天我一反常態，逛了一下，發現附近有一只瓶子格外顯眼。那玻璃瓶像來自藥房，標籤上以素樸的黑色粗體字寫着「複製」(編按：中文名稱為「記憶」香水)。我沒聽說過時尚品牌梅森.馬丁.馬傑拉有這一產品系列。搭配的文案保證這款「海灘漫步」的香氣有鹹味海風、 椰奶和佛手柑的調子，會讓人想起在海邊散步的情景。我覺得這一縷香味想達成的目標未免太多。但我仍舊拿起來，在手腕上噴了一點。
Like so many moments that seem utterly trivial until they become pivotally significant, I stopped at a shop in April to buy a bottle of shampoo as mine was running low. After walking purposefully to the back of the store and grabbing a white tube of the usual stuff, I browsed a little, which I almost never do. A bottle nearby stood out to me, a glass vial that looked like something out of an apothecary shop. It read ‘Replica’ in plain, blocky black type across the label. I’d never heard of the line, from the fashion house Maison Martin Margiela. The accompanying copy promised that the scent, Beach Walk, would evoke a stroll on the beach with its notes of salt air, coconut milk and bergamot, which seemed to me like a lot to accomplish in just one whiff. Still, I picked it up and sprayed some on my wrists.
「新香水既幫助我遺忘和回憶，也讓我減少了一點恐懼感。」- My new perfume helped me to forget and to remember, to feel a little less afraid.
當天下午後來的時間，我都把手腕貼近臉龐，像在嗅聞刮刮香貼紙，只是那貼紙就是我自己。那是我所用過最不像香水的香水。 我馬上知道應該要擁有並使用這款香水，作為自己每天最佳的刮刮香。
I spent the rest of the afternoon with my wrists affixed to my face, like a scratch-and-sniff sticker, except the sticker was me. It was the least perfumy perfume I’d ever worn, and I knew right away I should have it and wear it and be my best scratch-and-sniff self every day.
我年輕時，香水是要轉變自己。 但在療程過後的那幾週，我學會珍視氣味帶人進入其他佳境的能力。每天早上當我將香水抹上鎖骨，新香水既幫助我遺忘和回憶， 也讓我減少了一點恐懼感。在慢慢治癒的過程中，燒灼味日漸淡去，取而代之的，正是對那些我最珍愛的時光一幕幕的回憶所帶來的無拘無 束的歡笑：父親把我們幾個姊妹拋進海浪中時，母親和弟弟在岸上觀看；破曉時面對太平洋的日出，以一介渺小人類立於天地之間，心中的敬畏感受； 與某人初次牽手共度的近乎完美的午後，心中那份餘暉。
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, perfume was about transformation. But in the weeks after my procedure, I learned to value a scent’s ability to transport. As I swiped it across my collarbones each morning, my new perfume helped me both to forget and to remember, to feel a little less afraid. Gone was the burn, healing slowly, and in its place were the unbridled smiles brought by memories of my best-loved days. Like when my dad would toss my sisters and me into the ocean’s waves as my mother and brother watched from shore; the feeling of awe as I stood, a speck of a human, facing a Pacific sunrise at daybreak; the afterglow of a near-perfect afternoon spent holding hands for the first time with someone new.
如今看來，這香味在經過三十二年的遊蕩之後終於找到我，似乎是自然而然。那股麝香氣味像在沙丘間嬉鬧，也像夏陽曬過後尚未洗滌的肌膚，是我最喜歡的類型。
It seems natural, now, that such a scent would find me eventually, after 32 years of wandering, and that it would be a musky smell like a romp in the sand dunes, like unwashed, sunbaked summer skin, my favourite kind.
在那家店的機緣巧合時刻過後一個月左右，我遇到某一任前男友，兩人聊起香水。我把手腕湊近他鼻子，他說:「我聞不出來。」但我可以。我笑了。畢竟那香味不是為他而存在，而我的心早已在幾百公里外的沙灘上。
A month or so after that serendipitous moment in the shop, I ran into an ex. We got to talking about perfume. “I can’t smell it,” he said, as I held my wrist up to his nose. But I could. I smiled. After all, it wasn’t for him, and in my mind I was already in the sand hundreds of kilometres away.
- putridly (adv) 腐爛地
- acrid (adj) 刺激的
- rabidly (adj) 瘋狂地;狂熱地
- unfurl (v) 展開;打開
- apothecary (n) 藥師
- serendipitous (adj) 機緣湊巧的
(201905-122-127)