The Voice of Lower Village

Hoarse

嘶哑

On the morning of the final, Thinley Wangdi woke up and no longer had a voice.

决赛当天的清晨，廷莱·旺迪醒来时，发现自己彻底失声了。

He did not notice at once. He lay under the woollen blanket, listening to the roosters of Lower Village contradict one another, and thought what he had thought for thirty-one years on the last day of the tournament: today. Then he cleared his throat to try out the first verse of the day, and what came out of his chest was a sound like someone pushing a door across gravel.

他起初并未察觉。他躺在毛毯下，听着下村的公鸡此起彼伏地啼叫，心中想着三十一年来他在锦标赛最后一天总会想的那句话：就是今天了。接着，他清了清嗓子，想试唱当天的第一首诗，胸膛里发出的声音却像有人推着一扇门擦过碎石地。

He tried again, louder. Only air came out, dry and warm, and a scratching that pulled all the way up into his ears. For three days, in the quarter-final and the semi-final, he had shouted his mocking verses across the field, a hundred and forty metres, against the wind and against the cowbells, and in October the nights in the valley were already cold. That was the bill. He was sixty-three, a retired postman, and the only thing Lower Village had ever needed from him was precisely this organ.

他又试了一次，声音放得更大。出来的却只有干热的气流，以及一阵直钻耳底的刺痛。在过去三天的四分之一决赛和半决赛中，他一直隔着草场高声呼喊嘲讽诗，跨越一百四十米的距离，顶着风，盖过牛铃声，而十月里山谷的夜晚已经十分寒冷。代价终究来了。他六十三岁，是一名退休邮递员，下村对他唯一的依仗，正是这副嗓子。

He sat up, took the little slate from the shelf above the bed, on which the shopping list usually stood, and wrote: NOT TODAY. Then he looked at the words and wiped them off with his sleeve. Dechen had written the best verses, back then, at the kitchen table, and he had only shouted them. Since she had died four years ago he wrote them himself, and they had not got worse, but they came out of a head in which it was quieter.

他坐起身，从床头搁板上拿下平时记买菜清单的小石板，写道：今天不行。随后他看着这几个字，用衣袖擦掉了。德钦以前总在厨房的桌旁写出最好的诗句，而他只负责喊出来。自从她四年前去世后，便由他自己来写；写出来的诗虽不见得逊色，却源自一颗更为寂静的心灵。

“Grandfather?” Choden stood in the doorway, nineteen years old, in the grey jacket of the telephone company that was paying for the final this year, a lanyard around her neck saying EVENT TEAM. In her semester break she lugged cables and loudspeakers for the company, and she had a gift for walking into any room as if she had been expected. “You look as if you had received a letter addressed to yourself.”

“爷爷？”十九岁的秋登站在门口，身穿今年赞助决赛的电话公司的灰色夹克，脖子上挂着印有“活动团队”字样的带子。大学放假期间，她替这家公司搬运线缆和扬声器，她天生就有一种本领，无论走进哪个房间，都仿佛大家一直在等她。“你看上去像是收到了一封寄给自己的信。”

He pointed to his throat and shook his head.

他指了指自己的喉咙，摇了摇头。

“No,” she said. “No, no, no. Today?”

“别这样，”她说，“不，不，不。偏偏是今天？”

He nodded.

他点了点头。

“Say something.”

“你说句话。”

He opened his mouth. The door on the gravel came out, and Choden pressed her lips together so as not to laugh, and laughed all the same, and then she stopped, because she saw his face.

他张开嘴。喉咙里又发出了擦过碎石的声音，秋登抿起嘴唇忍着不笑，却还是笑了出来，接着看到他的脸色，笑容便收敛了。