Sometime between the potato gratin going cold and my guest refusing coffee, the main section of the Commune Social tapas bar in Shanghai falls silent. It is tempting to imagine that the whole city has done the same.
在芝士焗土豆变冷和我的客人不要咖啡之间的某个时刻，位于上海的西班牙小食餐厅食社(Commune Social)的主用餐区静了下来，让人忍不住想象整个城市也安静了。
Eric Cantona — the actor and philosophical sketch artist perhaps better known as one the finest and most combustible footballers in history — closes his eyes and starts whistling Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour”.
埃里克?坎通纳(Eric Cantona)闭上眼，吹起了埃迪特?皮亚夫(Edith Piaf)的那首《爱的赞歌》(Hymne à l’amour)的口哨。他是一名演员、一位富有哲理的画家，他更被人熟知的身份是历史上极为优秀且富有激情的足球运动员。
It is somehow unsurprising. This is exactly why Britain fell in love with Cantona in the 1990s and why his years at Manchester United were the centrepiece of one of the most thrilling epochs in the beautiful game. It takes only moments of meeting the 51-year-old Frenchman to discover that he remains, first and foremost, a performer. On the field, in his pomp, he could electrify tens of thousands of fans every time he made contact with the ball. Off the pitch the performance was even more audacious — a scene-stealing role as the French pseud surrounded by barbaric Brits.
这在某种程度上并不那么令人意外。这就是为什么英国在上世纪90年代爱上坎通纳的原因，也正因如此，他在曼联(Manchester United)的日子成为足球运动一个极为激动人心的时代的重头戏。在见到这位51岁的法国人后，不出片刻，我就发现他（首先也是最重要的）仍是一名表演者。在足球场上，在他的鼎盛时期，他每次碰球都能点燃无数球迷的热情。在足球场外，他的表演甚至更为大胆——他扮演着一群野蛮英国人中的法国伪哲学家这个抢镜的角色。
His reign defined not just the stunning success of a dream team that featured David Beckham, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs, but the tectonic shifts — led by huge TV deals — that reshaped English football. There was a swagger that infused the era, and Cantona’s was the biggest and most brazen. The game was then in the throes of becoming a global, televised circus. His superstardom, he says, arose in part because “I understood before the others what the circus was”.
他的鼎盛时期定义了一只改变了英国足球面貌的梦幻球队（该队球员包括大卫?贝克汉姆(David Beckham)、罗伊?基恩(Roy Keane)和瑞安?吉格斯(Ryan Giggs)）令人瞩目的成功（由大笔电视协议推动）。不仅如此，那个时代还被注入了一种趾高气扬的感觉，坎通纳是其中最突出也是最无所顾忌的。当时，足球运动正在痛苦地转型为一场全球电视直播的马戏表演。如今他说，他当时之所以成为超级巨星，在一定程度上是因为他“先于其他人理解了这场马戏表演是什么”。
When the whistling comes to an end, 32 seconds later, the Frenchman’s expression is unmistakable: that defiant, imperious flare of entitlement that accompanied every sublime goal, every telepathic pass, every thoroughly deserved red card and every enigmatic pronouncement flicked towards the media. Two decades since his retirement from the professional game, and even with his once trademark upturned collar neatly turned down, he could still ignite a stadium.
吹完32秒的口哨之后，这位法国人脸上再次露出那个让人不可能看错的表情：桀骜不驯、目空一切——他每次绝妙进球、每次心有灵犀地传球、每次绝对罪有应得地被罚红牌以及每次向媒体抛出谜一般的声明时，都是这种表情。他退出职业赛事已有20年，即便他曾经标志性的上翻的衣领如今服帖地翻了下来，他仍可以让一个体育场嗨起来。
“The whistling? My kids used to like it. Nowadays they tell me to stop,” he shrugs, convinced of its brilliance but acknowledging, as one dad to another, that we can sometimes be embarrassing to our children. He asks whether I would also like to hear a more piercing whistle he uses to summon dogs. I don’t, but he does it anyway. It is quite fabulously piercing. Heads around the restaurant jerk to attention. No dogs appear.
“口哨？我的孩子们曾经喜欢这个。如今，他们让我别吹了。”他耸了耸肩说。这是在承认，尽管自信于自己吹得很好，但作父亲的人总有一些时候会让孩子为我们感到尴尬。他问我想不想听他用来唤狗的更响亮的口哨。我不想听，但他还是吹了。口哨相当响亮。整个餐厅的人都猛地转过头来。一条狗也没有出现。
Cantona, the Marseille-born son of a nurse and a dressmaker, did not need to whistle to be the centre of attention. An hour and a half earlier, he had arrived, rather late, at the Commune Social to find me halfway into a Bloody Mary. He does not accept the offer of something similar, opting instead for a mug of hot water, a gesture towards his larynx and a display of his professionalism as an actor. There is no point arguing: after appearing in more than 25 films since 1997, Cantona now takes his acting as seriously as he once took his football.
坎通纳在马赛出生，是护士和裁缝的儿子。换作以前，他可不需要用吹口哨来吸引旁人的关注。一个半小时之前，他抵达食社，有些来迟，看到我已喝了半杯的“血腥玛丽”(Bloody Mary)。我劝他点酒，他没有听，而是点了一杯热水，他指了指自己的喉咙，显示出了他作为一位演员的专业性。我们没有理由争辩：自1997年出演超过25部影片后，坎通纳现在对表演跟他当年对足球一样认真。
Asked whether he would ever consider a return to the game, he replies immediately. “No. Only to manage Manchester United?.?.?.?They won’t ask me. Maybe that’s why they didn’t win the Premier League. Only I could have made them succeed [after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement]. Nobody else. Only me.”
在被问及他是否考虑重返足球界时，他马上回答。“不。除非是做曼联的老板......他们不会请我的。或许这就是他们没有赢得英超联赛(Premier League)的原因。只有我才能让他们赢（在亚历克斯?弗格森爵士(Sir Alex Ferguson)退休后）。没有其他人。只有我。”
We are meeting at a friendly, higher-end Shanghai brunching spot beloved of expats — cramped and informal enough that one of the three bankers at the next table is cheerfully earwigging our conversation. Various people, including one of the bankers and several Chinese kitchen staff, interrupt our lunch for selfies. The restaurant, built into the brickwork confines of a former police prison cell, has been recommended to me by a British diplomat as Cantona enters the final days of a two-month film shoot in China. It is a Franco-Chinese production called Magic, about which Cantona is tight on details — he says he will play “a nice man, but when you see him you won’t think that”.
我们见面的地点是一个温馨、比较高端的上海早午餐场所，这里深受外籍人士的喜爱，它狭小、不正式，邻桌的3名银行家中的一位一直在兴致勃勃地偷听我们的谈话。各式各样的人来到我们的餐桌前自拍，有那位银行家，还有几名餐厅的中国工作人员。餐厅打造成四面砖墙的隔间，仿佛以前的警察局监狱；这家餐厅是一位英国外交官向我推荐的。坎通纳在中国为期两个月的电影拍摄已进入尾声。这是一部法中合拍电影，影片名字是《Magic》，坎通纳对电影具体内容三缄其口，他说，他演的是“一个好人，但当你看到他时你不会这么认为”。
For the most recent stretch of the project he has been in Turpan, a beautiful but remote city in the country’s north-western deserts. The various noises of appreciation — “magnifique!” and “parfait!” — that later punctuate our lunch suggest that the restaurant’s meaty, comforting, Mediterranean spread is stuff that he has missed.
他最近一个阶段的拍摄是在吐鲁番，中国西北沙漠中一个美丽但偏远的城市。午餐后半段，他不时发出“太好吃了”、“完美”等赞美声，看样子他很久没有吃过这间餐厅里这种扎实、抚慰心脾的地中海式菜肴了。
After retiring from United in 1997, Cantona left football altogether rather than seeing out his thirties in one of several countries with “a lot of money but no history of football”. He took up acting and has appeared in what is now a decent list of films (Elizabeth, as well as an assortment of French dramas and comedies). To British audiences, his most famous post-football work is Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric, a 2009 film in which Cantona plays a hallucination of his Man Utd-era self experienced by a football-obsessed postman. The film brims with lines of soulful machismo (“I am not a man, I am Cantona”) that would not be unexpected coming straight-faced from him now, and he reveals, proudly, that he made important contributions to the script.
1997年从曼联退役后，坎通纳完全告别足球，而没有去一个“有很多钱但没有足球历史”的国家度过他剩余的三字头岁月。他开始演戏，现在他出演过的电影已经不少了（有《伊丽莎白》(Elizabeth)，还有不少法国戏剧和喜剧）。对于英国观众而言，他在告别足球界后最著名的作品是肯?洛克(Ken Loach)的《寻找埃里克》(Looking For Eric)，在这部2009年的电影中，坎通纳扮演了片中那位迷恋足球的邮差想象中的曼联球员坎通纳。影片很多台词体现出深沉的男子气概（“我不是一个人，我是坎通纳”），即便他现在一本正经地说出这些台词，也不会让人意外；他还骄傲地透露，他为剧本做出了重要贡献。
Loach, and Ferguson, he says, were geniuses who had a similar impact on his life. “Director. Manager. Football. Film. It’s just a different game, but still play, play, play,” he says, embarking on a more general thesis about work hierarchies. “I think the boss has a bad image,” he says, after an uncharacteristically long pause.
他说，洛克和弗格森是天才，两人对他的生活有着类似的影响。“导演。俱乐部老板。足球。电影。这只是不同的比赛，但仍然是在场上拼搏。”他说，他提出了一个有关工作等级关系的更一般性论题。“我认为这个老板的形象不好。”在不同寻常地停顿了很长时间之后，他说。
“In the media we need to make a good image for businessmen. Some of them are nice. Some are very creative?.?.?.?but if you ask the person on the street about the boss, he says ‘he’s shit’. Why? Because we all say that.” I note that Cantona did, in fact, say that of Henri Michel, the former manager of the French national team who, in 1988, Cantona publicly described as a “bag of shit” in a TV interview. The window is small, but I see an open goal. What about his own relationship with managers?
“在媒体上，我们需要为商人塑造良好形象。其中一些不错，还有些非常有创意……但是如果你在街上向人们打听老板，人们会说‘他是个混蛋’。为什么呢？因为我们都这么说。”我注意到，实际上坎通纳的确是这样说法国国家队前教练亨利?米歇尔(Henri Michel)的——1988年，坎通纳在一次电视采访中公开将他称为 “一包屎”。我抓住这个稍纵即逝的机会问坎通纳：你自己和教练的关系如何？
“I respect the boss. I loved some of my bosses,” says Cantona, weaving out of danger. “That was the secret of Alex Ferguson. We loved him and we respected him. That is the job of the boss — to be loved and respected.”
坎通纳的回答尽量打安全牌：“我尊重老板。我喜欢我的某些老板……这是亚历克斯?弗格森(Alex Ferguson)的诀窍。我们喜欢他，我们尊重他。这是老板的工作——受人喜欢和尊重。”
And how about Guy Roux? I ask, speaking of the manager of Auxerre who gave Cantona his first job in professional football, but had to deal with his protégé punching a teammate in the face.
那么居伊?鲁(Guy Roux)呢？我问道，我指的是欧塞尔足球俱乐部(Auxerre)的教练，坎通纳职业足球生涯的第一份工作就是他给的，但这位教练不得不处理坎通纳给队友照脸一拳的事件。
“Yes, I was like a son. We had a very strong father-son relationship. That doesn’t mean everything was nice. No. I was like a teenager. He was like a father and we had a lot of fighting together but in the end we loved each other.”
“是的，我就像个儿子。我们的关系很像父子。这并不意味着一切都融洽，不是这样的。我就像一个十几岁的孩子，而他像一个父亲，我们发生了很多冲突，但最后我们仍彼此爱着对方。”
But, I begin to say?.?.?.?
但是，我开始说……
The waiter, who is French and crimson with excitement, materialises at the table and I realise we haven’t ordered. There is a brief to and fro, during which Cantona rapidly agrees to all the waiter’s recommendations, before steering conversation to the evils of mobile phones and why he bans his children (aged four and eight, by his second marriage) from going near them. “I don’t want to live in the world of phones,” he says, suddenly sniffing at the air like a deer and tasting some imaginary food plucked from the forest floor, “I want my senses to be always activated. I want to feel nature. I want to focus on smells, nature, the sound of words, the sound of birds?.?.?.?” — he runs out of inspiration and glares at the table — “?.?.?.?a fork?.?.?.?”
侍者出现在桌子旁，他是一位法国人，激动得脸色发红，我意识到我们还没有点菜。在简短的一来一回中，坎通纳迅速同意了侍者所有的建议，然后将话题转向手机的弊端以及为什么他禁止自己的孩子（他与第二任妻子生的两个孩子，一个4岁，另一个8岁）接触手机。他说：“我不想生活在一个有手机的世界里。”然后他突然像一只鹿一样嗅了嗅，假装品尝从林间地上采摘的一些食物：“我希望我的感官总是处于激活状态，我想感受大自然，我想专注于气味、自然、说话声、鸟鸣声……”——这时他没了灵感，干瞪着桌子：“……叉子碰击声……”
The food — all sharing plates — conveniently starts arriving and suddenly, the flinty professionalism behind this digital debunking dawns. Cantona has just released a book called My Notebook that shows off some of the thousands of sketches he makes, as a constant hobby, in a Moleskine. He archly suggests this habit is the anti-thesis of the mobile phone — a pen-and-ink engagement with the world, rather than the seditious virtuality of the screen.
食物——所有食物都装在分享盘里——很快送了上来，突然间，我想起，他对数字时代的大力批判是有专业性作支撑的。坎通纳刚刚出版了一本名为 《我的笔记本》(My Notebook)的书——他喜欢画画，在Moleskine记事本上画了数千张，这本书出版了其中的一些。他诙谐地表示，这种习惯正好跟手机对着干——用笔和墨水跟这个世界打交道、而不是沉迷于手机屏幕上带有煽动性的虚拟内容。
Cantona historians will surely identify in this artistic oeuvre echoes of the press conference he delivered in 1995 at the end of an eight-month ban from the game, the result of the inglorious night at Crystal Palace when he aimed a flying kick at a racist fan. As he now recounts it, he didn’t want to say anything. The rules (in this case Manchester United’s lawyers) required something, however. “They said I should just say anything, so I said anything,” he says.
坎通纳在1995年曾被禁赛8个月，那是因为有一天晚上，在水晶宫(Crystal Palace)比赛时，他飞起一脚踹了一个种族主义球迷。禁赛结束后，他举行了新闻发布会。他刚刚出版的这本书肯定会让长期关注坎通纳的人们想起他那次新闻发布会。如今他这样描述当时的情形：他什么也不想说，然而，规则（具体来说，是曼联的律师）要求他必须说些什么。他说：“他们说我应该说些话，所以我说了一些话。”
His 21-word response (“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much”) remains among the most memorable lines ever uttered by a footballer, and sealed Cantona’s image as a Gallic pseud in shorts. He remains sniffily unsure how many of the journalists in the room understood that they were the seagulls in question.
这就是他给出的简短回应：“当海鸥跟着拖网渔船，那是因为它们认为船上的人会往海里扔沙丁鱼。非常感谢。”直到如今，这依然是出自足球运动员之口的最令人印象深刻的一段话之一，坎通纳的形象也就此确立为穿着短裤的法国伪哲学家。他到现在依然轻蔑地认为房间里可能没有多少记者听懂了他们就是他所说的海鸥。
I induce him to explain, with 20 years of hindsight, what drove his career. “I was just someone who always, totally wanted to give everything to the game all the time. That’s it. And to be on the field with everyone who wants the same — that is unity. That is beauty. The outperformance of the individual in service of the team. It is the most exceptional education,” he says, forking scrambled egg and salmon towards his plate after checking that I have had my fill.
我诱导他解释，从20年后的今天来看，当初他对足球的职业热情源自哪里。他说：“我就是一个什么时候都总想把竭尽全力去踢好球的人。就是这样。与所有同样只想踢好球的人在球场上踢球，这就是团结，这就是美。个人为了团队而尽力表现。这是最非凡的教育。”在确认我已经吃好了之后，他把炒鸡蛋和三文鱼叉到了自己的盘子里。
“But at Manchester, even that was different. That is why I have always said it was like going home. A different energy. More energy. You have more passion for football in England than in France. I felt that immediately. Of course the game is loved everywhere, but in England it is real passion,” he says, pausing to check whether this is profound enough. “You can buy everything except passion,” he ends, just to be sure.
他说：“但在曼联，甚至这也是不同的。这就是为什么我总是说在曼联我就好像回家了一样。一种不同的能量。更多的能量。英国对足球比法国更有激情。我马上感觉到了这一点，当然，足球在任何地方都受到喜爱，但在英格兰，人们对足球是真的有激情。”他停下想了想自己说的是否足够深刻。他决定再最后总结一句：“所有东西都可以买，只有激情买不到。”