No Words

The words were all still there. That was the joke of it, if it was a joke, and Walter Bell had never been much good at jokes. Bread, oven, flour, Mary, son. He could see them, the way you can see loaves through the glass of an oven door, risen and golden and ready. But when he reached for them, his hand closed on air.

Kata-kata itu sebenarnya masih ada di sana. Di situlah leluconnya, andai memang itu lelucon, padahal Walter Bell tidak pernah pandai melucu. Roti, oven, tepung, Mary, anak laki-laki. Ia bisa melihat semuanya, sebagaimana seseorang dapat melihat buku-buku roti di balik kaca pintu oven, mengembang, kuning keemasan, dan siap diangkat. Namun ketika ia mengulurkan tangan untuk meraihnya, tangannya hanya menggenggam udara kosong.

No, not his hand. His hand was something else now. His right hand lay on the blanket like a parcel somebody had left there by mistake, heavy and not quite his. For two years it had shaken so badly that he could not cut butter; now it did not shake at all, and he would have given anything, the bakery, the house, the last fifteen years, to feel it tremble again.

Bukan, itu bukan tangannya lagi. Tangannya sekarang telah berubah menjadi sesuatu yang lain sama sekali. Tangan kanannya terbaring di atas selimut bagaikan sebuah bungkusan pos yang tertinggal di sana karena kekeliruan orang lain, terasa berat dan seolah bukan miliknya lagi. Selama dua tahun tangan itu bergetar begitu hebat sampai-sampai ia tidak sanggup memotong mentega; kini tangan itu sama sekali tidak bergetar, padahal ia rela menyerahkan apa saja—toko roti itu, rumahnya, bahkan lima belas tahun terakhir hidupnya—hanya demi merasakan getaran itu kembali.

Time did not behave properly in this place. There was the window, and beyond the window a car park, and beyond the car park the hills where Mary had liked to walk on Sundays before the shop took all their Sundays away. Sometimes the light in the window was white, and sometimes it was orange from the street lamps, and he could not always remember how it had got from one to the other.

Waktu tidak berjalan semestinya di tempat ini. Ada jendela, dan di luar jendela itu terhampar tempat parkir mobil, dan di seberang tempat parkir itu berjejer perbukitan tempat Mary dulu senang berjalan-jalan pada hari Minggu sebelum kesibukan toko merampas seluruh hari Minggu mereka. Terkadang cahaya di jendela tampak putih, dan terkadang berwarna jingga temaram akibat lampu-lampu jalan, dan ia tidak selalu ingat bagaimana waktu bergulir dari satu keadaan ke keadaan lainnya.