LOEFFLER was my trophy intellectual. We met at a party, where he hovered around my conversational circle for a while and then came up to me and asked, "Are you with someone?"吕弗勒是我认识的一个花瓶一样的知识分子。我们在一次聚会上相遇，他在我谈话的圈子周围徘徊了一会儿，然后走到我面前，问我：“有人和你一起吗?”

"Yes," I said. I’d come with my office mate, another editor.我说：“是的。”确实那一天我是和一个同事一起去的，他也是个编辑。

"Come home with me," he said.他又对我说：“跟我一起回家吧。”

I did. We sipped dry sherry on his porch until sunrise, and shortly thereafter he moved in to my small Florida home.我真的跟他回家了。我们在他家的门廊上啜饮着干雪利酒，直到太阳升起。此后不久，他搬进了我在佛罗里达的小家。

I began displaying him almost immediately, once I’d reviewed his credentials. They were just about right: Harvard, N.E.H. grant, a fellow at Yale, two sabbaticals in Africa, where he labored at compiling a Chamba dictionary. One night I half-woke and mumbled some words, and he shook me awake: "You know what that is, don’t you? It’s Chamba."自从看了他的履历证明后，我几乎立马开始炫耀他。他从哈佛大学毕业，获得过美国人文基金会的资助，是耶鲁的研究员，两次在非洲度年假，在那里辛苦的编撰他的昌巴人词典。有天夜里我半睡半醒的时候嘟囔了几句，结果他摇醒我，说：“你知道你说的什么吗?知道吗?那是昌巴语。”

But no, I don’t speak Chamba, not even in my sleep. There are only about 20,000 Chamba speakers in the world. Maybe one day they’ll use Loeffler’s dictionary, if he ever completes it.但那不是昌巴语，我不会说昌巴语，即使在梦里也不会说。现在世界上说昌巴语的人只剩20000人了。如果吕弗勒的词典完成了，也许有一天他们能用得上。

He has another unfinished book, on African motifs in "Finnegans Wake." He’s been writing this book for about 20 years, including the two years it took to put his notes on computer when he got his first PC.他还有另一本未完成的书，关于《芬尼根守灵》中的非洲主题。他写这本书已经用了大概20年时间了，其中包括他有了自己的第一台电脑后把所有笔记录入电脑的那两年。

Publish or perish did him in academically. He couldn’t finish his work, so he couldn’t publish it, which meant he couldn’t get tenure, which meant, essentially, the end of his academic career and along with it any reliable way of having an income. Oh, he got a grant at one point and also had some money from the sale of his mother’s house. But mostly he lived cheaply and was happy to be supported principally by others - by me for example.学术上他要承受不出版就完蛋的局面。他完不成自己的工作，就没办法发表，就意味着他没法获得长期聘用，从本质上说，这就意味着他的学术生涯以及于此相关的任何稳定的收入的结束。哦，他得到过一点补助金，卖掉他母亲的房子也让他得到了一点钱。但是大多数情况上他生活的很拮据。并很高兴得到别人的帮助，比如我的。

By the time I met Loeffler I’d already had a trophy husband, a man so tall and handsome and mannerly that I sometimes believed I married him just to confound my family, who long before had decided I was too stubborn and uncommunicative to attract a desirable man. That’s the unspoken agenda in acquiring a trophy anything, to say to those who doubted you: Look, you were wrong.我认识吕弗勒的时候已经有了一个花瓶丈夫，他高大英俊，彬彬有礼，有时候我觉得我之所以嫁给他就是为了让我们家人大吃一惊，因为他们很长时间以来都认为我太固执，有太沉默寡言了，所以无法吸引到一个好男人。世界上最棒的事情的就是向那些怀疑你的人说，看，你错了吧!

After I separated from my trophy husband and was left with three children and no child support or alimony (my husband, too, had arranged to have no income), I procrastinated for a long time on initiating a divorce. For one thing, I knew the whole endeavor would fall on me; I’d have to pay the fees for us both and complete the paperwork, file everything, see it through.我离开丈夫后，要抚养三个孩子，没有子女抚养费也没有赡养费(我丈夫也没有收入)，所以我拖了很长时间没有离婚。首先，我知道所有事情都要我来做，而且我还得负担我们两个人的费用，完成文字工作，把一切都归档整理好，还得想办法让事情顺利完成。

But also I had the idea ... well, I don’t know why I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I had the idea that maybe I could sell him. This was back when I lived in New York, and I imagined a wealthy Manhattan woman might spot him, a tall, handsome, well-spoken man, and think that, even as an escort, he was worth something. So she would ask me to divorce him, and I would say to her, "I’ll sell him to you."但是我还有一种想法……恩，我不知道为什么承认这一点让我很尴尬，但是我确实有这样的想法，或许我可以卖掉他。我在纽约生活时这种想法又回到了我的头脑中，我想象着一个富有的曼哈顿女人或许会现场买了他，毕竟他是个高大英俊，善于言辞的男人，想想吧，最算是给人做护卫者，他也应该值点钱吧。所以她可能会要求我跟他离婚，然后我会跟她说：“好吧，我把他卖给你。”

Just such a woman ran over his foot one day, as he stood waiting for the light at Lexington and 59th Street. She jumped out of her Lexus and apologized profusely, but unfortunately he did not get her name or phone number. I would have called her, definitely.有一天，当他在列克星敦的59街等待绿灯时，有这样一个女人开车碾过他的脚，然后她跳下自己的雷克萨斯向他大表歉意，但不幸的是他没有要她的名字和电话号码。不然我一定打电话给她。