The Levite of Ephraim

偶然的機會讀了盧梭的《以法蓮山地的利未人》，忽然覺得，這便是那「黑天鵝」（black swan）。在拿起《對話錄》之前，我根本聽也未聽過這部作品的存在。（真奇怪，《懺悔錄》不曉得是怎樣讀的。）它的重要性事前完全不可逆料。

盧梭年輕時便失眠，失眠的夜他愛讀《聖經》，同一個故事往往讀上六七遍。我也讀過《士師記》，但只記得耶弗他（他的獻女故事總令人想起格林童話《沒有手的姑娘》和法國童話《美女與野獸》）和參孫。利未人這個故事荒唐得很，也許實在太荒唐了，盧梭在逃亡的過程裡，「找點事做」，第一時間便想起出走前剛再讀過的這段經文。

這裡引用特拉維夫大學政治學教授Michael S. Kochin的英文重述：

The Levite journeys south from the far hill country of Ephraim to Bethlehem to retrieve his concubine from her father's house. The couple are reconciled, but the girl's father so delights in feasting the Levite that he compells them to tarry in their return for several days. When the Levite finally insists on setting out with his concubine and servant, it is already late in the day. Unwilling to stop at the heathen city of Jebus (Jerusalem), the Levite's party find themselves at nightfall in the hilltop village of Gibeah in the land of the tribe of Benjamin. They seek hospitality but no one takes them in until an old man comes and brings them home, a man who is himself not a Benjaminite but a member of the tribe of Ephraim sojourning in Gibeah.

The old man feasts the Levite, but while they are still at upper a gang of thugs surround the old man's house and demand that the Levite be brought out to them "that they might know him," that is, as we would say, rape him. The old man, appalled by the violation of hospitality, offers to appease the thugs by sending out his virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine. The gang is not appeased, but the Levite grabs his concubine and thrusts her out of the house into their hands. The gang proceeds to rape and torture her through the night. At dawn they "send her on her way," and she somehow finds her way back to the door of the Ephraimite host.

The Levite gets up to go on his way, but he is astonished to see his concubine collapsed at the door, "with her hands on the threshold." He calls to her to get up and go, but she does not answer. He puts her on his donkey and continues north to his home in the land of Ephraim. When the Levite get home, he takes a big knife of the type used for animal sacrifice and cuts her into twelve parts and sends the parts "throughout the entire bounded-off-land of Israel." "And everyone who saw [this] said 'there has not been and there as not be seen such as this, from the day in which the Children of Israel came up from the Land of Egypt until this day: Attend to this all of you, let us take counsel and speak'" (Judges 19:30, my trans.)

The sign of the limbs brings together "all of the Children of Israel," north and south, east and west. They gather four hundred thousand strong at Mitzpeh (a few miles from the village of Gibeah) to understand what has happened. The Levite narrates the awful events, not without a certain amount of convenient emendation, whereupon the Children of Israel resolve to demand that the tribe of Benjamin yield up the gang of thugs, and make war on Benjamin when the Benjaminites mobilize to defend Gibeah rather than yield up the evildoers.

The war is prosecuted with difficulty; but after two days of failure amid tremendous losses, the united tribes finally succeed in crushing the Benjaminites, not just in Gibeah but in the entire land of Benjamin. Only six hundred Benjaminite males escape, and their wives and children have been slaughtered. The other Israelites are unwilling to see the tribe of Benjamin extinguished, but are unable to repopulate the tribe by granting the remnant their own daughters because, the narrator says, they had before the battle commenced taken an oath at Mitzpeh not to give their daughters to the men of Benjamin (Judges 21:1). Fortunately the Israelites find a creative way to evade the terms of the oath: They first send an expedition to slaughter the men of Jabesh Gilead, an Israelite town in Transjordan whose lives and possessions were forfeit for having failed to answer the call of the limbs and come up to Mitzpeh. But as the expedition slaughters all of the men and adult women, and spares only the virgins, they return with only four hundred "brides"; The Israelites do not consider this to be a sufficient restoration, and so counsel the Benjaminites to seize brides from the girls of Shiloh, when they go out during the vintage festival to dance in the vineyards, and carefully direct them along the byways so as to ambush the girls without alerting their fathers and brothers. The Israelites catechize themselves to justify the virgin-unequipped Benjaminites' behavior by reference to the oath and the shortage of virgins from the punitive raid on Jabesh Gilead: "You didn't give them to the Benjaminites, they took them."; the Israelites propose to say, so that the father and brothers of Shiloh at least have the consolation that they have not broken their oath. This 'Rape of the Shilonite Women" comes off without difficulties from any party, and "The Children of Israel then went each man to his tribe and family, and each man returned to his own allotment of land." And, in case the reader wondered, "In those days there was no king in Israel; a man did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:24-25, cf. 19:1).

盧梭的改寫，主要是把這故事浪漫化。《The Levite of Ephraim》這篇散文詩，既是他的「治療」，也是他的復仇（revenge）。

也許這是我的唯一

再見了
其實也很晚了
你叫我回到某個書寫世界
也許這也是我唯一的吧
我緩步走向山坡
那裡有兔
我躲在樹後
鳥兒在叫
頭上甚麼在飛
然後終於曉得
世界誕生在冀及之外

一本我等了三年多的書，雖然它原本不是這樣子的

我們失去了他的21克

歐亨尼奧．蒙特霍
Eugenio Montejo（1938-2008）
大地轉動讓我們靠近
The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

大地轉動讓我們靠近
她自己轉，在我們裡面轉
最終在此夢裡　讓大家團圓
如《饗宴》所寫所說

一夜一夜過去，雪降，冬至；
每分每秒間，億年萬年間　時間消逝
往尼尼微路上的牛車
卻到了內布拉斯加
站在世界外某處的公雞，啼著
是我們的父　某個千世前生

大地在樂韻中轉動
讓我們佇立其上；
永不為改變某一刻停下
如同太多愛，太多奇蹟
藏於寫下經年的慢板樂章
在《饗宴》裡

就把悲傷留給自己

把我的悲傷留給自己，你的美麗讓你帶走。

《文雀》片末，傅先生放手讓籠中鳥珍妮離開，對方向他鞠躬，叫他不要抽太多雪茄，著他「保重」，他頗酷的說了句：「我有分數架啦。」

轉頭，他已在車廂內像小孩子失去了最心愛的玩具那般號哭。

把我的悲傷留給自己，表面上是一個浪子。但下文是問：可不可以，妳也會想起我？最後死唔斷氣的還在問：可不可以？

畢竟，浪子內裡就是一個孩子。

吊詭的是，片中傅先生不是浪子，阿祺才是。阿祺是任達華，最終是杜「琪」 峯。這個浪子，還是君子，義助珍妮，送走她後，看到那隻自來自去的雀，還想去捉牠，卻給撒了一頭雀屎。

以自嘲套掩放不開。四人共坐單車，滙成漂亮的下台階。

我終於明白，杜琪峯原來真係幾貪靚。

從前現在過去了再不來

夕陽武士站在城頭上，那是永恆的距離，不是他和她的，而是他和他之間的。

8x8

昨天，他們搖電話來，提起一些甚麼，吞吐一些甚麼。我將對話都紀錄在黃皮紙上，輕輕置於桌子的左上角。陽光灑下來，她的笑容從未如此燦爛，然後你提醒大家，數天下來的天氣真討厭，雨下得濕淋淋的，不負責清洗，卻帶來粘附，灰塵連病毒連憂鬱都粘附在不知名不欲自露自報家門的空間裡，某個角落裡。－－哪裡有陽光呢？然後她居然還可恬不知恥的吃吃笑道，不便在心上嗎？不便在心上嘛。我點點頭，把一切都紀錄下來，把黃皮紙置於桌子的左上角。

我由是記起十五年前的，為紀念這宗事件所做過的一次演出。鮑維（Power）、夏華（華夏）、雪鐵鈴這些角色好像又要活過來而隨即注定再度消沉於無何有之門。恨、悔和迷思輪迴又輪迴，進出於六道、七道以至n度的次元域。年復年月復月日復日的永劫，有些甚麼總沒法走出這一個圈子便是這麼一回事。白頭宮女早已沒當年可話，火炬都在前面閃動，你是否追上去其實沒多大分別。我想像魂兮歸來的某一日，身體已被燒掉或被佔據的李鐵拐。最俊美之士，奪舍而回，臭皮囊只是臭皮囊。

如果我曾算認真想像過申公豹的故事，我的下一個角色，一定是李玄。