Behind the Counter

Priya Shah had opened her shop at six o’clock every morning for thirty years, except for the four days after her husband died and one Christmas Day when her daughter had hidden the keys. She opened it now, at six, in the dark, with the familiar small sounds: the key in the lock, the bolt at the top that stuck in damp weather, the bell, the click of the lights coming on one row at a time over the newspapers, the sweets, the tins of soup.

Priya Shahは三十年間、夫が亡くなった後の四日間と、娘が鍵を隠したあるクリスマスの一日を除いて、毎朝六時に店を開けてきた。彼女は今、六時に、暗闇の中で、聞き慣れたかすかな音とともに店を開けた。鍵穴に差し込まれる鍵、湿気の多い天気に引っかかる一番上のボルト、すず、新聞や菓子、スープの缶詰の上に一列ずつ点灯していく照明の小気味よい音。

She liked this hour more than any other. Before the town woke up, the shop belonged entirely to her. Raj had liked it too. He used to stand where she was standing now, behind the counter, cutting the strings on the bundles of newspapers with the little curved knife that still hung on its hook beside the till, and reading the headlines aloud to her in a terrible fake newsreader’s voice until she laughed.

彼女はこの時間が他のどんな時間よりも好きだった。町が目を覚ます前、店は完全に自分だけのものだった。Rajもこの時間が好きだった。彼は今彼女が立っている場所、カウンターの後ろに立ち、レジの脇の留め具に今も掛かっている小さな曲がり刃のナイフで新聞の束の紐を切り、彼女が笑うまで、ひどく嘘っぽいニュースキャスターの声で大声で見出しを読み聞かせてくれたものだった。

Raj would have spoken up. She had thought that every day for fifteen years and had never once said it aloud. He had died eighteen months before the fire, of a heart that nobody had known was tired. If he had been alive that January morning, standing beside her on the pavement in his dressing gown, he would have smelled what she smelled, and he would have walked across the road to the man in the grey anorak and said something, in his calm, slightly too loud voice, and none of it would have happened.

Rajなら声を上げただろう。彼女は十五年間、毎日そう思い続けてきたが、一度も口に出したことはなかった。彼は火事の十八か月前に、誰もが疲れているとは知らなかった心臓のせいで亡くなった。もし彼があの１月の朝に生きていて、ガウン姿で舗道の上に彼女と並んで立っていたなら、彼女が嗅いだものを彼も嗅ぎ、道路を渡って灰色のヤッケを着た男のところへ行き、落ち着いた、少し大きすぎる声で何かを言ったはずだし、こんなことは何一つ起きなかっただろう。