Book Excerpt: Emily St. John Mandel’s ‘Exit Party’ Imagines a Future Where a Spy Could Disappear

书摘：艾米莉·圣琼·曼德尔的《离场派对》构想了一个间谍可以凭空消失的未来

True diligence is following the improbable path. I read the sentence in a detective novel in childhood, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and then the phrase stayed with me forever after. “真正的勤勉是追随那条不可能的路径。”我在童年时读侦探小说看到了这句话，那时我才八九岁，从此这句话便永远留在了我的脑海里。

For a long time I wrote True Diligence in stylized curly letters on the inside page of every notebook, or sometimes on the front cover. I had notebooks for writing down clues, because even at 9 I wanted to work for the Internal Intelligence Service. What child doesn’t secretly wish to be a spy? 很长一段时间里，我都会在每个笔记本的内页，有时是封面上，用花哨的卷曲字体写下“真正的勤勉”。我准备了专门记录线索的笔记本，因为即便在九岁时，我就想为内部情报局工作。哪个孩子没有偷偷幻想过成为一名间谍呢？

We were terrified and fascinated by Service in equal measure. Service was dark cars moving down the block, men and women in forgettable clothing stopping our parents on the street for brief random interrogations. Service was the force that made people disappear—when I was in the first grade, my friend from across the street climbed into the back of a black car with her parents, and their apartment stood empty for a year before other people moved in—but also Service carried a kind of dark glamour, an aura of power that called to us. 我们对“局”既恐惧又着迷。局意味着在街区穿行的黑色轿车，意味着穿着平庸的男女在街上拦住我们的父母进行简短的随机盘问。局是让人们凭空消失的力量——我上一年级时，住在街对面的朋友和她的父母一起坐进了一辆黑色轿车的后座，他们的公寓空置了一年，之后才搬进了其他人——但同时，局也带有一种阴暗的魅力，一种召唤着我们的权力光环。

We played Ghosts and Agents all the time, my friends and I, but eventually they drifted off into other interests and I still wanted to be a spy, so after high school I applied successfully to the Service Academy in Los Angeles. I was talented and moved through school quickly, and afterward I was posted to Fillmore, a pretty town about 80 kilometers north of LA. My parents came to visit me there in my first year. 我和朋友们总是玩“幽灵与特工”的游戏，但最终他们转向了其他兴趣，而我依然想成为一名间谍。高中毕业后，我成功申请到了洛杉矶的局属学院。我很有天赋，在学校里进步神速，毕业后被派往菲尔莫尔，那是洛杉矶以北约80公里处的一座美丽小镇。我入职的第一年，父母来看望我。

“This is lovely, Ibari,” my mother said, when she stepped off the train. The town made a good first impression. The central station was beautiful, one of those Southern California structures with no serious boundary between indoors and out, a tiled platform that turned into a waiting area with benches, then archways opening out to the street. “这儿真可爱，伊巴里，”母亲下火车时说道。这座小镇给人的第一印象很好。中央车站很漂亮，属于那种南加州风格的建筑，室内外没有明显的界限，铺着瓷砖的站台延伸成带有长椅的候车区，随后是通向街道的拱门。

My parents had been on the train since Ohio, and they looked worn and dazed, blinking in the relentless sunlight. I was only in my mid-twenties at that point, which is to say I hadn’t thought much about the reality of aging parents, and their haziness was a glimpse into a future where I was the adult and they were confused. I didn’t like it. 父母从俄亥俄州一路乘火车过来，看起来疲惫而恍惚，在无情的阳光下不停地眨眼。那时我才二十出头，也就是说，我还没怎么考虑过父母老去的事实，他们那种迷茫的神情让我窥见了未来——那时我已是成年人，而他们却变得糊涂。我不喜欢这种感觉。

“Not a cloud in the sky,” my father said. “天空连一片云都没有，”父亲说。

“Do we need a taxi?” my mother asked. “I wouldn’t mind walking a bit, stretching my legs.” “我们需要打车吗？”母亲问，“我不介意走走，活动一下筋骨。”

“My house is close,” I said. “We can easily walk there if you’d like.” “我家很近，”我说，“如果你们愿意，我们可以轻松走过去。”

“Downtown residency permit?” my father asked, and whistled softly. “市中心居住证？”父亲问，并轻声吹了个口哨。

“What can I say,” I said. “I’ve been well-behaved.” “我能说什么呢，”我说，“我一直表现良好。”

I’ve spent a long time thinking about the nature of life in a surveillance state, which is perhaps obvious given my work, but there are observations I’ve made that I share with no one, and one of them has to do with the way in a place like this, reality splits into two. 我花了很多时间思考监控国家下的生活本质，考虑到我的工作，这或许显而易见，但我有一些从未与人分享过的观察，其中之一就是：在这样的地方，现实会分裂成两半。

This will seem a bit obvious—there’s your actual job, which is Service, and then there’s your cover, which is what you tell everyone you do—but for a long period of my life, at the beginning of my career, there was truth in both versions. 这看起来可能有点显而易见——你有你的实际工作，即“局”里的职务，然后是你的掩护身份，也就是你告诉所有人你在做的事情——但在我职业生涯初期的很长一段时间里，这两个版本都是真实的。

At the Service Academy I’d been trained in espionage and investigation, obviously, in relevant law, in the ins and outs of running down leads, interrogation, documentation, maintaining relationships with confidential informants, etc., but also I’d earned a master’s in urban planning, and this was my cover. As far as my parents and everyone else in my life was concerned, I was an up-and-coming academic with a tenure-track job at the local college. My parents didn’t know I was Service, because no one in my life knew I was Service. 在局属学院，我显然接受过间谍活动和调查方面的训练，学习了相关法律，掌握了追踪线索、审讯、记录、维护与机密线人关系等方方面面的技巧。但同时，我还获得了城市规划硕士学位，这就是我的掩护身份。在我的父母以及我生活中的其他人看来，我是一位前途无量的学者，在当地大学拥有一份终身教职轨道的工作。我的父母不知道我是“局”里的人，因为我生活中的任何人都不知道。

Here was the branching, as I thought of it, the point where one reality split off into another: It was actually true that I was a junior professor in an urban planning department. I’d applied for and earned that position, or so I told myself—if strings were pulled behind the scenes, that was well above my pay grade—and I took that job seriously. With that being the case, was it really just cover? It was a real job, a real life. When I introduced myself as a college instructor in urban planning, it wasn’t a lie. There was an expansiveness about it. It was like getting to live two lives at once. 这就是我所认为的“分叉点”，现实分裂为二的时刻：我确实是一名城市规划系的初级教授。我申请并获得了那个职位，或者我是这么告诉自己的——如果背后有什么暗箱操作，那也远超我的职权范围——而且我认真对待那份工作。既然如此，它真的仅仅是掩护吗？那是一份真实的工作，一种真实的生活。当我介绍自己是城市规划专业的大学讲师时，那并不是谎言。这其中有一种广阔感。就像是同时过着两种人生。

But in every version of reality I had an absolutely clean record, no subversion or other crimes of any kind, which had qualified me for a permit to live in an attractive neighborhood close to downtown. My parents and I walked out of the train station and up the hill together, and as an exercise in gratitude I tried to see Central Avenue through their eyes: the double row of palm trees, the century-old restored movie theater, the candy-colored awnings above the shops, an overall impression of having been unmoored from time and history sometime around 1965. 但在每一个现实版本中，我的记录都绝对清白，没有任何颠覆行为或其他任何罪行，这使我有资格获得在市中心附近一个宜人社区居住的许可。我和父母走出火车站，一起走上山坡。为了练习感恩，我试着通过他们的眼睛去看中央大道：两排棕榈树，那座修复后的百年电影院，商店上方糖果色的遮阳篷，整体给人一种仿佛在1965年左右就已脱离了时间和历史的感觉。

“I feel like I’m in a time capsule,” my mother said, and then quickly, “In a good way, I mean. It’s nice here.” “我觉得自己好像在一个时间胶囊里，”母亲说，随后又赶紧补充道，“我是说好的那种。这里真不错。”

“It is nice,” I said. I really did like it here, for the most part. In Fillmore, as in most backwaters without a significant history of subversion, the State operated with a fairly light touch: identity cards, neighborhood permits, and facial recognition technology, like everywhere, but none of the random interrogations and drone surveillance that one might expect in larger cities. “确实不错，”我说。在很大程度上，我确实喜欢这里。在菲尔莫尔，就像大多数没有重大颠覆历史的偏远地区一样，国家的管理相当宽松：虽然像其他地方一样有身份证、社区许可证和人脸识别技术，但没有在大城市里可能遇到的那种随机盘问和无人机监控。

My father took a nap on my couch while my mother and I went for a walk. We took a circuitous route that led us back through downtown. As we turned back onto Central Avenue, my attention was diverted by a scene playing out farther up the block and across the street. A black van had pulled up in front of the florist’s. The shop had been open an hour earlier, but now a crew had gone to work on it: The sign had been painted over, and two men were carting armloads of flowers into the van. The owners—a couple in their sixties whom I’d been surveilling for some time—were standing nearby, seemingly in shock. A second van pulled up, and the couple were led inside. They didn’t resist. 父亲在我的沙发上小睡，我和母亲出去散步。我们绕了一条路，穿过市中心。当我们转回中央大道时，我的注意力被街区前方对面发生的一幕吸引了。一辆黑色货车停在花店门前。一小时前这家店还开着，但现在一队人马已经开始动手了：招牌被涂掉了，两个男人正把成捆的花搬进货车。店主——一对六十多岁的夫妇，我监视他们已经有一段时间了——正站在附近，看起来处于震惊之中。第二辆货车开了过来，那对夫妇被带了进去。他们没有反抗。

In a moment, the two vans were gone, and with them all trace of the business and the business’s owners. The shop was locked and blank now, no me 转眼间，两辆货车消失了，随之消失的还有这家店和店主的所有痕迹。店铺现在锁着门，空空如也，没有我