我也沒有多少時間給你寫信了,希望你能把這封信讀上兩遍 ― 雖然這看上去比較痛苦。或許,你現在會拒絕接受它,但是過不了多久,這些話將成為你的真理。我在跟你說這些的時候,你或許認為我已是一個老人,是個"專橫"的人;當我向你說起自己年輕時的經歷,我所說的一切對你來說是不真實的 ― 因為年輕人總是不相信父輩們年輕時候的事情。但是,如果我能把它寫下來的話,你也許會理解一點。

當我像你那麼大的時候,我生活在一個偉大的夢想中。夢想一直成長,我也學會了如何描述出它,讓別人聆聽它。有一天,夢想破碎了,那就是我最終決定和你媽媽結婚的時候,盡管我知道她從小嬌生慣養,而且對我來說沒什麼好處。跟她結婚之後,我就立刻後悔了,但是那些天我還是很耐心,盡量維持這種關係,通過另一種方式去愛她。在你出生之後,有很長一段時間,我們的生活充滿了幸福。但我是一個分裂的人 ― 她需要我為她做更多的工作,因而我不能更好地追求自己的夢想。當她意識到工作是我僅有的神聖的事業時,一切都為時已晚,她試圖通過自己的工作來彌補這些,但是已經太遲了,她的身體已經不行了,徹底地不行了。

讓我去彌補損失的話也已經晚了 ― 在她身上,我已經花費了幾乎全部的資源、精力和財富,但是我依然奮鬥了5年,直到我的身體也徹底垮掉,現在,我所關心的事情只有酗酒和遺忘。

我所犯的錯誤就是跟她結婚。我和她屬於不同的世界 ― 如果她在南方的莊園跟一個單純的男人結婚的話,她可能會過得很快樂。她缺少在大城市這個舞台生存的能力 ― 有時她會裝做有這個能力,而且偽裝得很好,但事實上她並沒有。在應該強硬的時候,她表現得軟弱;在應該讓步的時候,她卻表現得很強硬。她從來都不知道如何運用自己的力量 ― 她已經把這些弱點都傳給了你。

有很長一段時間,我恨她的母親沒有教給她任何好的習慣 ― 除了"得過且過"和狂妄自負。在這個世界上,我永遠不想再見到任何被懶散帶大的女人。我生命中最重要的一個願望就是你不要變成那種人,那種給自己和別人都帶來毀滅的人。當你在14歲那年開始顯露出令我煩擾的跡象時,我安慰自己說,你可能在社交方面早熟了一些,而接受嚴格的學校教育將會解決這些問題。但是,有時我也這樣想,那些懶散的人似乎是一個特殊的階層,對他們來說,什麼事情都沒安排好,也不能強求他們什麼 ― 他們對於人類家庭唯一的貢獻,就是占據一張普通桌子前的一個坐位罷了。

我重新調整自己的日子已經結束了,如果你選擇了那種懶散的生活方式,我也不想去改變你。但是,我希望不管是在家裡還是在外面,我都不再被懶散的人煩擾。我希望自己的精力和薪水能用來服務那些跟我有共同語言的人們。

我擔心你並沒有意識到這些,沒有意識到我在這裡所做的一切,是一個曾經做出優秀業績的人最後的竭盡所能。我已經沒有足夠的精力,或者說足夠的金錢來承擔一個沉重的負擔。當我感覺自己正在做這些的時候,我心裡會充滿憤怒和怨恨。像你媽媽那樣的人必須得到幫助,因為他們的病痛致使他們無所作為。但是,另外一件事就完全不同了:你已經度過了兩年碌碌無為的生活,你既泳有改進你的身體狀況,也沒有調整你的精神狀態,你唯一做的就是一封接一封地給那些沉悶的人們寫一些沉悶的信件,除了收到一些你自己並不接受的邀請之外,你做這件事沒有任何目的。甚至在睡覺的時候,這件事仍然在繼續。因此,我知道你現在的整個旅行就是等待郵件的漫長過程,那就像一個愛嚼舌的老婦從來不能讓她的舌頭停止下來。

你已經到了這樣的年齡:只有當你看起來有前途時,大人們才會對你產生興趣。小孩子的心靈是迷人的,因為他用全新的眼睛看待舊的事物 ― 但是大約12歲的時候,這種情形就改變了。青少年們提供不了任何東西,他們什麼也不會做,什麼也不會說,而成年人則相反,他們對這些非常擅長。和你一起住在巴爾的摩時(你曾跟哈羅德說我對你的態度在嚴格和疏忽之間變換不停,據此我猜你這些話的意思是指我有時候非常輕率,所以感染了肺結核;或者是我只顧自己一心寫作,因為我幾乎沒有任何社交活動,除了跟你在一起之外),由於你母親的病情,我不得不負擔起家庭的責任。但是,我對你戴男禮帽和不停地打電話的行為,一直都沒放在心上,直到那天在舞蹈學校你故意怠慢我,從那以後,我才不願忐......

總而言之,自從你在夏令營把自己訓練成一個優秀的潛水員,之後(你現在已經比以前退步了不少),你所做的能讓我高興和自豪的事情簡直可以忽略不計。你作為"野蠻社會女孩"的經歷,那是在1925年,我一點兒也不感興趣。我不想再知道這些 ― 它們會讓我心煩意亂,就像跟富家子弟共進晚餐一樣。當我感覺到你沒有做有益的事情時,你的陪伴和照料只會讓我失望,因為那是愚蠢的浪費和瑣碎的煩擾。從另一面來說,當我看到你身上散發出生活的氣息和向上的意志時,我在世界上將不再需要任何陪伴。因為毫無疑問,你身上依然存在美好的品質,一種對於生活的真正激情 ― 一種屬於你自己的真正的夢想 ― 我的想法就是抓住機會,讓它變成你實實在在的品質 ― 因為當你媽媽下決心花些時間和精力去學些什麼的時候,卻為時已晚。當你還是個孩子時,你曾學過說法語,你對知識的零星掌握讓人著迷 ― 而你現在的談話卻非常平庸,似乎是在考恩•霍洛高級中學度過了最後兩年 ― 就像你在《生活》和《性傳奇》中所看到的內容那樣。

9月份,我將到東部去接你 ― 但是,這封信是要向你聲明:我將對你的許諾不再感興趣,只對自己親眼所看到的感興趣。我會一直愛你,但讓我感興趣的只是那些與我志同道合的人,而且像我這樣的年齡也不可能作出什麼樣的改變。無論你是否願意 ― 或者是想要 ― 就讓我看你的表現吧。

爸爸

1938年7月7日於加利福尼亞州卡爾弗城米高梅影片公司

又及:如果你還堅持寫日記的話,請不要讓你的日記成為枯燥乏味的東西,我用10法郎就能買到的《旅行指南》裡就有。我對日期、地名,甚至"新奧爾良大戰"之類不感興趣,除非你對它們有些獨特的體會。寫作時不要追求措辭巧妙詼諧,除非是自然行文的需要 ― 要實實在在。

再及:請你把這封信再看一遍好嗎?這封信我寫了兩遍。

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation

Culver City, California

July 7, 1938

Dearest Scottie,

I don't think I will be writing letters many more years and I wish you would read this letter twice ― bitter as it may seem. You will reject it now, but at a later period some of it may come back to you as truth. When I'm talking to you, you think of me as an older person, an "authority", and when I speak of my own youth what I say becomes unreal to you ― for the young can't believe in the youth of their fathers. But perhaps this little bit will be understandable if I put it in writing.

When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to many your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided ― she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too late that work was dignity, and the only dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too late and she broke and is broken forever.

It was too late also for me to recoup the damage ― I had spent most of my resources, spirit and material, on her, but I struggled on for five years till my health collapsed, and all I cared about was drink and forgetting.

The mistake I made was marrying her. We belonged to different worlds ― she might have been happy with a kind simple man in a southern garden. She didn't have the strength for the big stage ― sometimes she pretended, and pretended beautifully, but she didn't have it. She was soft when she should have been hard, and hard when she should have been yielding. She never knew how to use her energy ― she's passed that failing no to you.

For a long time I hated her mother for giving her nothing in the line of good habit ― nothing but "getting by" and conceit. I never wanted to see again in this world women who were brought up as idlers. And one of my chief desires in life was to keep you from being that kind of person, one who brings ruin to themselves and others. When you began to show disturbing signs at about fourteen, I comforted myself with the idea that you were too precocious socially and a strict school would fix things. But sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them ― their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.

My reforming days are over, and if you are that way I don't want to change you. But I don't want to be upset by idlers inside my family or out. I want my energies and my earnings for people who talk my language.

I have begun to fear that you don't. You don't realize that what I am doing here is the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better. There is not enough energy, or call it money, to carry anyone who is dead weight and I am angry and resentful in my soul when I feel that I am doing this. People like ― and your mother must be carried because their illness makes them useless. But it is a different story that you have spent two years doing no useful work at all, improving neither your body nor your mind, but only writing reams and reams of dreary letters to dreary people, with no possible object except obtaining invitations which you could not accept. Those letter go on, even in your sleep, so that I know your whole trip now is one long waiting for the post. It is like an old gossip who cannot still her tongue.

You have reached the age when one is of interest to an adult only insofar as one seems to have a future. The mind of a little child is fascinating, for it looks on old things with new eyes ― but at about twelve this changes. The adolescent offers nothing, can do nothing, say nothing that the adult cannot do better. Living with you in Baltimore (and you have told Harold that I alternated between strictness and neglect, by which I suppose you mean the times I was so inconsiderate as to have T. B. o or to retire into myself to write, for I had little social life apart from you) represented a rather too domestic duty forced on me by your mother's illness. But I endured your Top Hats and Telephones until the day you snubbed me at dancing school, less willingly after that...

To sum up: What you have done to please me or make me proud is practically negligible since the time you made yourself a good diver at camp (and now you are softer than you have ever been). In your career as a "wild society girl", vintage of 1925, I'm not interested. I don't want any of it  ― it would bore me, like dining with the Ritz Brothers. When I do not feel you are "going somewhere", your company tends to depress me for the silly waste and triviality involved. On the other hand, when occasionally I see signs of life and intention in you, there is no company in the world I prefer. For there is no doubt that you have something in your belly, some real  gusto for life ― a real dream of your own ― and my idea was to wed it to something solid before it was too late ― as it was too late for your mother to learn anything when she got around to it. Once when you spoke French as a child it was enchanting with your odd bits of knowledge ― now your conversation is as commonplace as if you'd spent the last two years in the Corn Hollow High School ― what you saw in Life and read in Sexy Romances.

I shall come East in September to meet your boat ― but this letter is a declaration that I am no longer interested in your promissory notes but only in what I see. I love you always but I am only interested by people who think and work as I do and it isn't likely that I shall change at my age. Whether you will ― or want to ― remains to be seen.

Daddy

P. S. If you keep the diary, please don't let it be the dry stuff I could buy in a ten-franc guide book. I'm not interested in dates and places, even the Battle of New Orleans, unless you have some unusual reaction to them. Don't try to be witty in the writing, unless it's natural ― just true and real.

P. P. S. Will you please read this letter a second time? I wrote it over twice.