第一百零七章 木匠
第一百零七章 木匠
你且如苏丹般端坐于土星诸月之间，单取那超然抽象之人来看，他似是一桩奇迹、一种壮伟，也是一抹哀伤。但若从同一视角取人类之整体，则多半看来不过是一群多余的复本，无论同时代者还是世代相承者皆然。然而，尽管佩科特号上的这位木匠极为谦卑，远谈不上高洁人道之抽象典范，他却绝非复本；因此，他此刻亲身登上了这方舞台。
如同所有航海的船匠，尤其是捕鲸船上的船匠，他在一定程度上随手便能应付、实务上精通诸多与本行相辅的技艺与行当；木匠之业乃是那古老而枝蔓横生的主干，由此生出无数或多或少以木材为辅助材料的手工行当。然而，除却上述对其泛泛而论外，这佩科特号的木匠更有一桩异处：在蛮荒遥远海域长达三四年的航程中，大船上不断出现的千百种无名机械急务，他总能奇异地应付自如。且不说他于常职之娴熟——修补破艇、校正弯桅、重整笨刃之桨形、于甲板嵌牛眼窗、或于舷侧厚板钉新木钉，以及其他更直关本业的杂务；此外，于种种有用亦或随性的冲突性本领，他亦毫不犹豫，件件在行。
他上演这许多角色的唯一大舞台，便是他的台钳凳：一张粗陋笨重的长桌，装了几只大小不一、铁木兼有的台钳。除鲸鱼傍船之时，这凳子总被牢牢横缚于炼鲸炉的后侧。
系缆栓嫌大，不易塞入孔中：木匠将它往哪只常备的台钳里一夹，立刻锉小。一只羽色奇特的失路陆鸟飘落船上，成了囚徒：木匠用洁白的露脊鲸骨削成细杆，以抹香鲸牙作横梁，为它造了一座宝塔模样的笼子。桨手扭了手腕：木匠调一剂安抚的油膏。斯塔布想要每柄桨叶上都漆上朱红星辰；木匠将桨一一旋入那大木钳中，便匀整地补上那片星座。水手兴起要戴鲨骨耳环：木匠替他钻耳。另一人牙痛：木匠取出钳子，一手按在凳上，示意他坐下；可这可怜人未及完工便不住扭动；木匠将木钳把手一转，示意他将下巴卡进钳口，若还想拔那牙。
如此，这木匠处处有备，且一视同仁，毫无分别。齿在他看来不过是些象牙屑；头不过是顶滑车；人自身他轻看作绞盘。然而，既于如此广域皆擅诸般技艺，且自带这等活泼的熟巧，乍看该谓其智虑有不凡之敏。却也不尽然。此人最堪注目的，无过于某种非个人性的麻木；我说非个人性，是因它淡入周遭无穷之物事，竟似与这可见世界整体中可辨的普遍麻木浑然为一；那世界虽以不可胜数之态不息运作，却永恒缄默，无视于你，哪怕你为建大教堂而掘地基。然则，他这半可怖的麻木，似亦裹挟着一种遍及各处的无情；——却又时有古怪的点染，掺入老迈、如拐、远古、喘息般的幽默，间或也不无几丝灰白俏皮；那情味，倒可用来消磨诺亚方舟那生满胡须的前甲板上守夜的时光。莫非这老木匠一生漂泊，来回辗转非但未生苔痕；更且磨去了原初或许附于其身的一切细微外着？他是一具剥净的抽象；一个未分之整数；如初生婴孩般无可牵绊；活着，却不预谋此世或彼世。你几乎可以说，他这奇特的无可牵绊，含着某种不灵明；因于诸多行当，他劳作似不凭理、不凭本能，或单因受教于此，或诸般混杂、匀或不匀；而仅凭一种聋哑般、自发而拘泥的工序。他是纯粹的操弄者；他若有脑，早该渗流入指间筋肉。他如那些无理却极有用的“小中见大”之谢菲尔德巧物，外状——略显臃肿——似寻常折刀；内里却不仅含大小刀片，亦藏螺丝起、开瓶钻、镊、锥、笔、尺、锉甲、锪孔器。故若上官欲以这木匠为螺丝起，只消启开他那一部分，螺丝便紧；若欲为镊，提他双腿，镊便在手。
然而，如前所暗示，这浑身是具、开合自如的木匠，终究不只是自动的机括。他胸中若无寻常灵魂，却有某丝微妙之物，以某种异常之法尽其本分。那是何物，是汞之精还是几滴鹿角汁，无可确言。然它就在那里；且已驻此六十余载。正是它，这他身中难解而狡黠的生命之本；正是它，使他大半时光如自语不休；却只如无理之轮，亦嗡嗡自语；或更恰说，他的躯身是哨亭，而这自语者驻守其中，时刻言说以自醒。
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But
from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they
seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of
the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate;
hence, he now comes in person on this stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging
to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,
alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his
own; the carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk
of all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with
wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of
the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly
efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually
recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in
uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in
ordinary duties:—repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the
shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new
tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more
directly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover
unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both
useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,
was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several
vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times
except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed
athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.
A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:
the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and
straightway files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage
strays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of
right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter
makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the
carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion stars
to be painted upon the blade of his every oar; screwing each oar in his
big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the
constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the
carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out
pincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there;
but the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded
operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter
signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he
deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But
while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with
such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue
some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For
nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal
stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the
surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general
stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while
pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace,
and ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was
this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an
all-ramifying heartlessness;—yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an
old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked
now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have
served to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded
forecastle of Noah’s ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a
life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had
gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small
outward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a
stript abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born
babe; living without premeditated reference to this world or the next.
You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him
involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did
not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he
had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or
uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal
process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one,
must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was
like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, _multum in
parvo_, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little
swelled—of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of
various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,
pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted
to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open
that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him
up by the legs, and there they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a
common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously
did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few
drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it
had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same
unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept
him a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like an
unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his
body was a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking
all the time to keep himself awake.
