周二十点

戴帽子的男人

The Man in the Hat

京都站的失物招领处位于地下一层，在一长排投币储物柜后面，大多数旅客只有在丢了东西时才会找到这里。这里有一个柜台，一个无人使用的传唤铃，还有两张供人等待的椅子，但椅子上几乎从没有人坐着等候。柜台后面摆着直达天花板的货架，货架上放着的，是这座城市每天遗落的记忆。

The lost-property office at Kyoto Station is in the basement, behind a long row of lockers, in a place most travellers only find once they have lost something. There is a counter there, a bell that nobody uses, and two chairs for people waiting, on which almost nobody ever waits. Behind the counter, shelves reach up to the ceiling, and on the shelves lies whatever the city forgets each day.

森遥在这个柜台工作了二十三年。她五十二岁，戴着一副挂在细链上的眼镜，并且有一套除了她自己之外无人能完全理解的归类体系。手套放左边，钥匙放在窗下的小盒子里，雨伞则按颜色分类，放进靠后墙的高伞架里。谁要是想找一把黑雨伞——而在京都，所有人找的都是黑雨伞——那就得有足够的耐心。

Haruka Mori had worked at this counter for twenty-three years. She was fifty-two, wore her glasses on a thin chain and had a system that nobody but her fully understood. Gloves went to the left, keys into the small boxes under the window, umbrellas into the tall stands on the back wall, sorted by colour. Anyone looking for a black umbrella – and in Kyoto everyone was looking for a black umbrella – had to be patient.

从今年春天起，她有了一位新同事。阿部健太今年二十六岁，之前在行政部门工作，他觉得森女士的这套系统是一段美好的历史陈迹，但遗憾的是必须予以取缔。他带来了一台平板电脑和一个数据库，每件拾得物品都会录入照片、发现地点和时间。“如果有人打电话询问一只灰色手套，”他解释道，“我只要输入 灰色 和 手套 ，两秒钟内我们就能一清二楚。”

Since the spring she had had a colleague. Kenta Abe was twenty-six, came from the administration, and considered Ms Mori’s system a fine piece of history that sadly had to be abolished. He had brought a tablet and a database in which every item found was entered with a photo, the place it was found and the time. “If someone calls and asks about a grey glove,” he explained, “I type grey and glove , and in two seconds we know.”

“然后你就能知道那是不是他的了？”遥问。

“And then you know whether it’s his?” asked Haruka.

“然后我就能知道我们这里有没有。”

“Then I know whether we have one.”

“那不是一回事。”她说，但还是由着他去弄。她并不排斥新事物。她只是早就明白，来柜台的人很少能准确说出自己真正在寻找什么。

“That’s not the same thing,” she said, but she let him get on with it. She was not against new things. She had only learned that the people at the counter were rarely looking for exactly what they said.

一位询问记事本的商务人士，其实是想听到自己并不是唯一一个丢三落四的人。一位询问布偶兔的母亲，真正寻找的是下半夜的安宁。而那些丢了钥匙的大学生，主要只是希望有人能训斥他们一顿，好让他们不必自己责怪自己。

A businessman who asked about his notebook really wanted to hear that he was not the only one who forgot things. A mother who asked about a toy rabbit was in truth looking for the peace of the coming night. And students who had lost their keys mostly wanted someone to scold them, so that they did not have to do it themselves.

这一点，在石田先生身上体现得最为淋漓尽致。

The best way to understand this was Mr Ishida.

石田先生每周二上午十点都会来。不是差五分十点，也不是十点过五分，而是准时得让遥有时甚至觉得车站的时钟都是依照他来对准的。他是一位年过八十的消瘦老人，无论冬夏都穿着一件灰色大衣，戴一顶帽子；走到柜台前，他会摘下帽子，双手捧在胸前。然后微微鞠一躬，问出他的问题。

Mr Ishida came every Tuesday at ten o’clock. Not at five to ten and not at ten past ten, but so punctually that Haruka sometimes thought the station clock set itself by him. He was a slender man of well over eighty, wore a grey coat, in summer as in winter, and a hat, which he took off at the counter and held in front of his chest with both hands. Then he bowed slightly and asked his question.

“早上好，森女士。请问有人送来一把深蓝色的雨伞吗？竹制手柄。手柄开裂了，上面缠着红线。”

“Good morning, Ms Mori. Has a dark blue umbrella been handed in, perhaps? With a bamboo handle. The handle is cracked and wrapped in red thread.”

尽管遥早已知道答案，但每次依然会走到后墙的高伞架前，一把一把地翻看那些蓝色的伞，然后走回来，说道：“很遗憾，石田先生，还没有。”

And Haruka, who knew the answer, still went every time to the tall stands on the back wall, looked through the blue umbrellas one after another, came back and said: “I’m afraid not, Mr Ishida.”

“那我下周再来。”他说着戴上帽子，转身离去。

“Then I’ll come again next week,” he said, put on his hat and left.

就这样持续了三年。遥没有特意去数，但健太计算过：有一百五十多个周二，一位老人走过同一段路，只为了听到同一个回答。遥清楚地记得他第一次来的情景。那是在秋天，他当时系着一条黑领带，就像去参加葬礼时系的那种。几周后，黑领带不见了。那个问题却留了下来。

It had been going on like this for three years now. Haruka had not been counting, but Kenta had worked it out: more than a hundred and fifty Tuesdays on which an old man had made the same journey to hear the same answer. Haruka remembered his first visit well. It had been in the autumn, and he had been wearing a black tie at the time, the kind one wears to a funeral. After a few weeks the tie had disappeared. The question had stayed.