女孩写给男孩
My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have . . .”
“I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.
大家好，我叫海蓁•格蕾丝•兰卡斯特。奥古斯塔斯•沃特斯是我此生灾星下的恋人，我们的爱情故事如史诗般荡气回肠，我没法开口讲，只要讲起，我便会淹没在泪水中。如所有真正的爱情故事一样，它会随我们一起进坟墓，也理应如此。我本希望他为我致悼词，因为我不愿意别人来。
我没法讲我们的故事，我做不到，所以我会讲讲数学。我不是数学家，但我知道一件事：在0和1之间有无穷多个数字，有0.1 0.12 0.112，还有无穷多其他数字的集合。当然，在0和2之间还有一个更大的集合，0到100万亦是如此。“有些无穷比别的无穷更大”。这是一个我们曾经喜欢过的作家教我们的。知道吗，我还能拥有的日子，我希望更多。还有，上帝啊，我但愿奥古斯塔斯•沃特斯仅有的日子也能更多。但是，格斯，我的爱，我无法告诉你，我们小小的无穷，让我多么感激。你在有限的日子里，给了我永远，为此我……我感激不尽。
男孩写给女孩
Van Houten,
I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time—and from what I saw, you have plenty—I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless—epically useless in my current state—but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.
People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
I do, Augustus.
I do.
范•豪滕先生：我是个好人，但是东西写得稀烂。你是个烂人，但是东西写得不错。我觉得咱们搭档正好，我不想求你帮什么忙，但如果你有时间，而据我所见，你时间充裕。请帮我把这润色一下，是我给海蓁写的悼词。她想让我写一份，我在努力，但如果有人能帮上忙我也高兴。
是这么一回事，我们都希望被别人铭记，但海蓁不同，海蓁知道真相，她不求有数不清的爱慕者，只要那一个就好，而她得到了那个人，她被爱得或许不宽广，但却深沉，她拥有的难道不比大多数人多吗？
海蓁病着的时候，我知道自己快死了，但我不想这样告诉她。她在加护病房的时候，我溜了进去，在她旁边坐了十分钟左右才被发现，她的双眼紧闭，皮肤苍白，但她的手还是她的手，仍然温暖。指甲上涂着接近黑色的深蓝色指甲油。
我握着她的手，试图想象一个没有我们的世界，那会是个多么没有价值的世界啊！她那么美丽，你怎么看也看不厌，你不必担心她是否比你聪明，因为你很清楚她就是。她风趣而不刻薄，我爱她。天啊！我爱她！我真幸运能爱上她！
范•豪滕，在这世上你没法选择不受伤害，但让谁来伤害你，你却有几分决定权，我对我的选择很满意，希望她也满意自己的选择！好吗，海蓁•格蕾丝”？
好的！
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