理查德博士伦的和平
西蒙•贝克(Simon Baker)写道，理查德•鲍什(Richard Bausch)精心制作的战争故事，探索了残忍与宽恕之间的界限。

2010年5月2日星期日英国夏令时00.05

理查德·鲍许的这部中篇小说以第二次世界大战快结束时的意大利为背景，当时德国人在进行最后几次抵抗时正在撤退。它以谋杀开始。一群美国大兵发现一名德国士兵和一名妓女藏在一辆马车里;罗伯特·马森下士在德国人杀死两名美国人之后开枪打死了他。令其他士兵惊恐的是，他们的头目格利克中士用枪指着这名手无寸铁的妓女的头，停止了“她的声音”。

在此之后，格利克派马森和另外两个人，阿希和乔伊纳，执行侦察任务。在一个老农民的带领下(他们强迫这个老农民带领他们穿过陌生的环境)，他们向一座山上进发，寻找德国人。恶劣的天气和恶劣的地形;这加大了这些年轻人的压力，他们已经受到震惊和良心不安的折磨。Asch无法停止对死亡的思考，而Joyner则在手臂发痒时止不住地流泪。马森是其中最成熟的一个，他试图避免两人发生争斗，但他开始质疑杀害陌生人的伦理道德，并怀疑自己的人性是否依然完好无损。

这是一本精心制作的书。散文简洁而不矫揉造作;鲍许在几行字里包藏了很多东西，就像这里，马森回忆起一个死去的同事:“沃尔伯格。那个男孩，笨拙的动作，一双大脚，柔软的下巴，使他看起来总是要哭。Walberg从来都不知道是什么打击了他，他的一切现在都消失了，所有的记忆、故事以及像其他人一样有趣和有趣的希望。”

角色的刻画是经济的，虽然阿斯齐-乔伊纳的动态——他们争吵，但真正关心彼此——以前就有过，但它被描绘得很有洞察力。战时是一个受欢迎的小说家,部分原因是有本质上的移动对普通民众被迫存在于特殊情况——人们如马森、Asch、 Joyner,俯仰棒球早一年或两年,现在谁是杀害或尽量不被杀死。

但《和平》是一部特别好的作品，因为它包含了真实的人物而不是寓言人物。他们会改变主意，对自己撒谎，不停地争论。但最终，他们发现了战争的一个奇怪之处:一旦你厌倦了杀戮，你就会抓住所有的生命，甚至是那个想要毁灭你的人的生命。鲍许的书回顾了威尔弗雷德•欧文(Wilfred Owen)不朽的一句话:“我是你杀死的敌人，我的朋友。”

ps: 这部电影是美籍华人宗康妮的老公出钱注资的。我想这么评价宗康妮：一辈子只做一件事。不是文化差异，也不是文化冲突。



Peace by Richard Bausch
Richard Bausch's finely wrought war story explores the territory between brutality and forgiveness, writes Simon Baker

Simon Baker

Sun 2 May 2010 00.05 BST
First published on Sun 2 May 2010 00.05 BST
Richard Bausch's novella is set in Italy towards the end of the second world war, when the Germans were retreating while carrying out a few final acts of resistance. It begins with a murder. A group of American GIs find a German soldier and a prostitute hiding in a cart; the German shoots dead two Americans before Corporal Robert Marson kills him. To the horror of the other GIs, their leader, Sergeant Glick, then puts a gun to the unarmed prostitute's head and stops "the sound of her".

After this, Glick sends Marson and two others, Asch and Joyner, on a scouting mission. Guided by an elderly peasant, whom they have press-ganged into leading them through unfamiliar surroundings, they head up a mountain, on the lookout for Germans. The weather is apocalyptic and the terrain is difficult; these intensify the pressure on the young men, who are already suffering from shock and troubled consciences. Asch cannot stop thinking about death, and Joyner obsessively tears at an itch on his arm. Marson, the most mature, tries to keep the pair from feuding, but is beginning to question the ethics of killing strangers, and to wonder whether his own sense of humanity is still intact.

This is a finely crafted book. The prose is spare without veering into affectation; Bausch packs a lot into a few lines, as here, when Marson reflects on a dead colleague: "Walberg. That boy, with his clumsy ways and his big feet and his soft chin that made him look always as if he were about to cry. Walberg never knew what hit him, and everything of him was now gone, all of it, the memory and the stories and the hope of being as funny and entertaining as the others."
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The characters are economically drawn, and while the Asch-Joyner dynamic – they bicker but really care for one another – has been done before, it is portrayed with insight. Wartime is a popular setting for novelists partly because there is something intrinsically moving about ordinary people being forced to exist in extraordinary circumstances – people such as Marson, Asch and Joyner, who were pitching baseballs a year or two earlier, and who are now either killing or trying not to be killed.

But Peace is an especially good work, because it contains real characters rather than parable figures. They change their minds, lie to themselves and argue incessantly. Ultimately, though, they discover an oddity of warfare: once you grow sick of slaughter, you cling to all life, even that of the person who wants to destroy you. Bausch's book recalls, in its examination of people trying to reconcile their brutal roles with their innate sense of forgiveness, an immortal line by Wilfred Owen: "I am the enemy you killed, my friend."