NIGHT WALKER Brent Staples: “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Ability to Alter Public Space”

My first victim was a woman - white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago. As I swung onto the avenue behind her, there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us. Not so. She cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man - a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket - seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street.
我的第一个受害者是一名女性——白人，穿着得体，大概20出头。一天傍晚，我在海德公园的一条荒废的街道上遇见了她。海德公园是芝加哥一个相对富裕的街区，在另一个卑鄙、贫穷的地区。当我在她身后的大街上转过身来时，我们之间似乎有一段谨慎的、不起火的距离。并非如此。她回过头来，忧心忡忡地看了一眼。在她看来，这位年轻的黑人男子——一个六英尺二英寸宽、留着胡须、卷发、双手插在一件厚重的军用夹克口袋里的男人——似乎很危险。再快速瞥了几眼之后，她加快了步伐，很快就认真地跑了起来。几秒钟后，她消失在一条十字路口。

That was more than a decade ago. I was 23 years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into - the ability to alter public space in ugly ways. It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist, or worse. Suffering a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defenseless wayfarers. As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to raw chicken - let alone hold it to a person’s throat - I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny. It also made it clear that I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto. That first encounter, and those that followed signified that a vast unnerving gulf lay between nighttime pedestrians - particularly women - and me. And I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation, or crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman. Where fear and weapons meet - and they often do in urban America - there is always the possibility of death.
那是十多年前的事了。我23岁，刚到芝加哥大学读研究生。正是在那个吓坏了的女人脚步声的回响中，我第一次意识到了我所继承的不易处理的遗产——以丑陋的方式改变公共空间的能力。很明显，她认为自己是抢劫犯、强奸犯或更糟的猎物。然而，由于失眠，我一直在睡觉，而不是毫无防备的旅行者。作为一个柔弱的人，我几乎不会拿刀去生鸡肉——更不用说拿刀到人的喉咙了——我一下子感到惊讶、尴尬和沮丧。她的逃跑让我觉得自己是暴政的帮凶。这也清楚地表明，我与偶尔从周围的贫民窟渗入该地区的抢劫犯无法区分。第一次相遇，以及随后的相遇，意味着夜间行人——尤其是女性——和我之间存在着巨大的令人不安的鸿沟。我很快意识到，被视为危险本身就是一种危险。我只需要把一个角落变成一个危机四伏的局面，或者把一些害怕的、带着武器的人挤在门厅的某个地方，或者在被警察拦下后做出一个错误的举动。在恐惧和武器相遇的地方——通常在美国城市里——总会有死亡的可能性。

In that first year, my first away from my hometown, I was to become thoroughly familiar with the language of fear. At dark, shadowy intersections in Chicago, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver - black, white, male, or female - hammering down the door locks. On less traveled streets after dark, I grew accustomed to but never comfortable with people who crossed to the other side of the street rather than pass me. Then there were the standard unpleasantries with police, doormen, bouncers, cab drivers, and others whose business it is to screen out troublesome individuals before there is any nastiness.
第一年，我第一次离开家乡，我彻底熟悉了恐惧的语言。在芝加哥黑暗阴暗的十字路口，我可以在一辆停在红绿灯前的汽车前穿过，听到司机——黑人、白人、男性或女性——砰的一声，砰的，砰，砰。天黑后，在人迹罕至的街道上，我习惯了那些横穿马路而不是从我身边经过的人，但从来都不觉得舒服。然后，警察、门卫、保镖、出租车司机以及其他人的标准不愉快，他们的职责是在出现任何肮脏行为之前把麻烦的人筛出来。

I moved to New York nearly two years ago and I have remained an avid night walker. In central Manhattan, the near-constant crowd cover minimizes tense one-on-one street encounters. Elsewhere - visiting friends in SoHo, where sidewalks are narrow and tightly spaced buildings shut out the sky - things can get very taut indeed.
近两年前，我搬到了纽约，我仍然是一个狂热的夜行者。在曼哈顿市中心，几乎恒定的人群覆盖将紧张的一对一街头冲突降至最低。在其他地方——在苏豪区拜访朋友，那里的人行道很窄，间隔很紧的建筑物遮住了天空——事情确实会变得很紧张。

Black men have a firm place in New York mugging literature. Norman Podhoretz in his famed (or infamous) 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem - and Ours,” recalls growing up in terror of black males; they were “tougher than we were, more ruthless,” he writes - and as an adult on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he continues, he cannot constrain his nervousness when he meets black men on certain streets. Similarly, a decade later, the essayist and novelist Edward Hoagland extols a New York where once “Negro bitterness bore down mainly on other Negroes.” Where some see mere panhandlers, Hoagland sees “a mugger who is clearly screwing up his nerve to do more than just ask for money.” But Hoagland has “the New Yorker’s quickhunch posture for broken-field maneuvering,” and the bad guy swerves away.
黑人在纽约抢劫文学中占有一席之地。诺曼·波德霍雷茨（Norman Podhoretz）在他1963年著名（或臭名昭著）的文章《我的黑人问题——和我们的问题》（My Negro Problem-and Ours）中回忆了他在对黑人男性的恐惧中长大；他写道，他们“比我们更强硬，更无情”，作为曼哈顿上西区的成年人，当他在某些街道上遇到黑人时，他无法克制自己的紧张。同样，十年后，散文家兼小说家爱德华·霍格兰（Edward Hoagland）称赞了一个曾经“黑人的痛苦主要压在其他黑人身上”的纽约。在一些人眼中，霍格兰只是乞丐，但在那里，他看到的却是“一个抢劫犯，他显然是在鼓起勇气做更多的事情，而不仅仅是要钱。”。但霍格兰拥有“纽约人在破场机动时的快速直觉姿势”，坏人转身离开了。

I often witness that “hunch posture,” from women after dark on the warrenlike streets of Brooklyn where I live. They seem to set their faces on neutral and, with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being talked. I understand, of course, that the danger they perceive is not a hallucination. Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence. Yet these truths are no solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, against being set apart, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact.
我经常在我居住的布鲁克林战乱般的街道上看到天黑后的女人们的“驼背姿势”。他们的脸看起来是中性的，胸前系着荷包带，像是一条带状腰带，他们奋力向前，好像在为自己不被人说话做准备。当然，我理解他们所感知到的危险并不是幻觉。妇女尤其容易受到街头暴力的侵害，而年轻的黑人男性在暴力行为的肇事者中所占比例大大过高。然而，这些事实并不能让人安心，因为他们永远都是嫌犯，也不能让人感到疏远，因为他们被分开，一个可怕的实体，行人避免与之眼神接触。

It is not altogether clear to me how I reached the ripe old age of 22 without being conscious of the lethality nighttime pedestrians attributed to me. Perhaps it was because in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town where I came of age in the 1960s, I was scarcely noticeable against a backdrop of gang warfare, street knifings, and murders. I grew up one of the good boys, had perhaps a half-dozen first fights. In retrospect, my shyness of combat has clear sources.
我并不完全清楚，我是如何在22岁高龄的时候，却没有意识到夜间行人对我的杀伤力。也许是因为在宾夕法尼亚州的切斯特，一个愤怒的工业小镇，我在20世纪60年代成年，在帮派战争、街头刺杀和谋杀的背景下，我几乎不引人注目。我是一个好孩子，也许有过六次初战。回想起来，我的战斗羞怯有明确的来源。

Many things go into the making of a young thug. One of those things is the consummation of the male romance with the power to intimidate. An infant discovers that random flailings send the baby bottle flying out of the crib and crashing to the floor. Delighted, the joyful babe repeats those motions again and again, seeking to duplicate the feat. Just so, I recall the points at which some of my boyhood friends were finally seduced by the perception of themselves as tough guys. When a mark cowered and surrendered his money without resistance, myth and reality merged - and paid off. It is, after all, only manly to embrace the power to frighten and intimidate. We, as men, are not supposed to give an inch of our lane on the highway; we are to seize the fighter’s edge in work and in play and even in love; we are to be valiant in the face of hostile forces.
一个年轻的暴徒有很多事情要做。其中一件事就是用恐吓的力量来完成男性的浪漫。一名婴儿发现，随意的拍打会让婴儿奶瓶飞出婴儿床，摔在地板上。欣喜的宝贝一次又一次地重复这些动作，试图复制这一壮举。正是如此，我回忆起我童年时的一些朋友最终被认为是硬汉所诱惑的时刻。当一个马克畏缩不前，毫无抵抗地交出了他的钱时，神话和现实融合在一起，并得到了回报。作为男人，我们不应该在高速公路上让出一寸车道；我们要在工作、游戏甚至爱情中抓住斗士的优势；我们要勇敢面对敌对势力。

Unfortunately, poor and powerless young men seem to take all this nonsense literally. As a boy, I saw countless tough guys locked away; I have since buried several, too. They were babies, really - a teenage cousin, a brother of 22, a childhood friend in his mid- twenties - all gone down in episodes of bravado played out in the streets. I came to doubt the virtues of intimidation early on. I chose, perhaps even unconsciously, to remain a shadow - timid, but a survivor.
不幸的是，贫穷而无能为力的年轻人似乎把这些胡说八道都当成了字面意思。作为一个男孩，我看到无数硬汉被关起来；此后，我也埋葬了几个。他们真的是婴儿，一个十几岁的表弟，一个22岁的哥哥，一个20多岁的童年朋友，都在街头上演的一幕幕虚张声势中死去。我很早就开始怀疑恐吓的好处。我选择了，甚至是在不知不觉中，保持一个影子——胆小，但却是一个幸存者。

The fearsomeness mistakenly attributed to me in public places often has a perilous flavor. The most frightening of these confusions occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day, rushing into the office of a magazine I was writing for with a deadline story in hand, I was mistaken for a burglar. The office manager called security and, with an ad hoc posse pursued me through the labyrinthine halls, nearly to my editor’s door. I had no way of proving who I was. I could only move briskly toward the company of someone who knew me.
在公共场所被错误地归因于我的恐惧感往往带有危险的味道。这些混乱中最可怕的发生在20世纪70年代末和80年代初，当时我在芝加哥做记者。有一天，我手里拿着一篇截稿稿，冲进一家杂志社的办公室，被误认为是小偷。办公室经理给保安打了电话，带着一支特遣队在迷宫般的大厅里追赶我，几乎追到了编辑的门口。我无法证明我是谁。我只能轻快地走向认识我的人的陪伴。

Another time I was on assignment for a local paper and killing time before an interview. I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash. She stood, the dog extended toward me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head. I took a cursory look around, nodded, and bade her good night. Relatively speaking, however, I never fared as badly as another black male journalist. He went to nearby Waukegan, Illinois, a couple of summers ago to work on a story about a murderer who was born there. Mistaking the reporter for the killer, police hauled him from his car at gunpoint and but for his press credentials would probably have tried to book him. Such episodes are not uncommon. Black men trade talks like this all the time.
还有一次，我被派去当地一家报纸，在面试前消磨时间。我进入了该市富裕的近北区的一家珠宝店。店主原谅了自己，带着一条巨大的红色杜宾猎犬回来了。她站着，狗向我伸过来，对我的问题一言不发，她的眼睛几乎从脑袋里凸出。我粗略地看了看四周，点了点头，向她道了晚安。然而，相对而言，我的表现从未像另一位黑人男性记者那样糟糕。几年前的夏天，他去了附近的伊利诺伊州沃基根，写了一个关于在那里出生的杀人犯的故事。警察误以为记者是凶手，持枪将他从车上拖了下来，如果没有他的记者证，他很可能会试图将其逮捕。此类事件并不少见。黑人总是这样交易。

In “My Negro Problem - And Ours,” Podhoretz writes that the hatred he feels for blacks makes itself known to him through a variety of avenues - one being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness - via that special “paranoid touchiness” that so annoyed Podhoretz at the time he wrote the essay.
在《我的黑人问题——还有我们的问题》中，波德霍雷茨写道，他对黑人的仇恨通过多种途径向他昭示，其中一种被视为罪犯。如果不这样做，肯定会导致疯狂——因为波德霍雷茨在写这篇文章时非常恼火的那种特殊的“偏执敏感”。

I began to take precautions to make myself less threatening. I move about with care, particularly late in the evening. I give a wide berth to nervous people on subway platforms during the wee hours, particularly when I have exchanged business clothes for jeans. If I happened to be entering a building behind some people who appear skittish, I may walk by, letting them clear the lobby before I return, so as not to seem to be following them. I have been calm and extremely congenial on those rare occasions when I’ve been pulled over by the police.
我开始采取预防措施，以减少自己的威胁。我小心翼翼地走动，尤其是在傍晚。在凌晨，我对地铁站台上紧张的人敬而远之，尤其是当我把工作服换成牛仔裤时。如果我碰巧在一些人后面进入一栋大楼，他们看起来有些神经过敏，我可能会走过，让他们在我回来之前离开大厅，以免我好像在跟踪他们。当我被警察拦下时，在那些罕见的情况下，我一直很冷静，非常投缘。

And on late-evening constitutionals along streets less traveled by, I employ what has proved to be an excellent tension-reducing measure: I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime destinations seem to relax and occasionally they even join in the tune. Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is my equivalent to the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.
在傍晚，在人迹罕至的街道上，我采用了一种被证明是极好的缓解紧张的措施：我吹贝多芬和维瓦尔迪以及更受欢迎的古典作曲家的旋律。即使是坚韧不拔的纽约人，也似乎放松了心情，偶尔他们也会加入其中。几乎每个人都感觉到，抢劫犯不会用颤抖的声音唱出维瓦尔迪《四季》中明亮、阳光明媚的歌曲。这相当于远足者知道自己在熊国时戴的牛铃。