The Shark with Legs

Tuesday

星期二

The shark had legs. That was the first piece of news this week, and Kwabena Asare, who had been painting film posters for thirty-one years, took it in the way a carpenter takes the measure of a board: without surprise, with a nod, the pencil already behind his ear. “Two legs,” he repeated. “Not four?”

鲨鱼长了腿。这是本周带来的头一条消息。画了三十一年电影海报的夸贝纳·阿萨雷听后，就像木匠记下一块木板的尺寸一样：毫不惊奇，只是点了点头，铅笔早已别在耳后。“两条腿，”他重复道，“不是四条？”

“Two,” said Grace Tetteh. “A shark with four legs would be an animal. With two he is a man who has something in mind.” She sat, as she did every Tuesday, on the upturned paint bucket beside his easel, her handbag on her knees, and told the film for the coming week the way she always told it: not with words alone but with both hands, with her shoulders, with a voice that went deep for the captain and high for his wife, and with pauses in which you could hear the surf. The film was called Deep Water Terror . The DVD lay between them on the table, next to the tubes, and neither of them looked at it.

“两条，”格蕾丝·特特说，“长四条腿的鲨鱼不过是头野兽，长两条腿就是心怀不轨的男人。”就像每个星期二那样，她坐在他画架旁倒扣的油漆桶上，手提包放在膝头，讲述着下周要放的电影。她讲电影从来不单靠嘴，还用双手、双肩，配着船长低沉、船长太太尖细的嗓音，还伴有让人能听见海浪拍击声的停顿。这部电影叫 Deep Water Terror 。DVD光盘就放在他们之间的桌上，挨着颜料管，但两人谁也没瞧它一眼。

His shed stood behind Boateng’s video hall in Bantama, a district of Kumasi that smelled of charcoal, diesel and frying plantain. The corrugated roof sang at every gust of wind, and on the walls hung the posters of past weeks, to dry or out of habit: painted on flour sacks cut open, ninety by one hundred and forty centimetres, in oil from tin cans, in colours that existed in no film. A lion with a crown of flames. A woman leading a helicopter on a lead like a dog. More than fifteen hundred of them, and every one had hung over the door of the hall on a Friday.

他的棚屋位于班塔马，那是库马西的一个街区，坐落在博阿滕的录像厅后头，到处弥漫着木炭、柴油和炸芭蕉油的气味。波纹铁皮屋顶在每一阵风吹过时都会嗡嗡作响。棚屋墙上挂着过去几周的海报，有的是为了晾干，有的纯粹是习惯：全画在割开的面粉袋上，九十乘一百四十厘米大小，用的是铁罐装的油画颜料，色彩在任何电影里都找不到。有一头戴着火焰王冠的雄狮，还有一位像牵狗一样牵着直升机的女人。足足一千五百多张，每一张都曾在某个星期五挂在录像厅门头上方。

He had never seen any of these films. In the first year he had, back then he still sat in the last row and afterwards faithfully painted what had been on the screen, a man in a car in front of a house, and the poster had hung there like wet washing: nobody had stopped in front of it. Grace had looked at it for a long time. “You paint what is there,” she had said. “People pay for what they feel.” The following Tuesday she had told him a film for the first time, and ever since, on the evening of the screening he had not sat in the hall but on a stool behind the wall, his back against the corrugated iron, and only listened to the film: the shots, the music and, above them, Grace.

这些电影他一部也没看过。头一年倒是看过；那时他还会坐在最后一排，随后如实画出屏幕上的画面：一幢房子前停着一辆车，车里坐着一个男人。然而那张海报挂出去就像湿衣服一样毫无生气，没人在它面前驻足。格蕾丝曾端详那张海报许久。“你画的是眼前所见，”她说，“可人们花钱买的是心中的感觉。”接下来的那个星期二，她头一次给他讲了电影。自那以后，到了放映当晚，他便不再坐进厅里，而是坐到墙后的小板凳上，背贴着波纹铁皮，只用耳朵听：枪声、音乐，以及高过这一切的格蕾丝的声音。

Grace was the hall’s narrator. She stood to the left of the television, in the dark, a microphone in her hand, and spoke the whole film over it in Twi, all the parts, the screams as well. People came for her sake; the films themselves were on sale at every market for a few cedis. Nobody had ever really seen her there, and that suited her, she said. A face wore out, a voice did not.

格蕾丝是录像厅的说书人。她站在电视机左侧的暗处，手里拿着麦克风，用特威语现场解说整部电影，配所有的角色，连尖叫也不落下。大家都是冲着她来的；至于电影本身，在随便哪个市场上花几个塞地就能买到。还从没人真正看清过她长什么样，她说这样正合心意。容颜会老去，声音却不会。