Twelve Rounds a Night

Daniel Osei knew Hollin Bridge the way other people know a song they have heard too often: not by thinking about it, but in his hands. Twelve rounds a night, eight years. The hump in the road outside the swimming baths that made the whole bus sigh. The traffic light by the town hall that stayed red for ninety seconds even when there was nobody within a mile. The fox that crossed Mill Road at twenty past one, every night, with the air of someone late for an appointment.

Daniel Osei对Hollin Bridge的熟悉，就像人们对自己听过太多遍的歌一样：不靠思考，而是熟稔于自己的双手。一晚十二趟，开了八年。露天泳池外路面上的凸起会让整辆公交车发出叹息。市政厅旁边的红绿灯会亮足整整九十秒红灯，哪怕方圆一英里内空无一人。每晚一点二十分穿过Mill Road的那只狐狸，神色匆匆，活像赶着去赴一场约会。

He knew his passengers too. Not their names, mostly, but their shapes. The nurses going home from the late shift, who slept with their heads against the window and woke exactly at their stops as if an alarm had gone off inside them. The cleaners going in. The lonely ones who rode the whole route twice because the bus was warm and the driver said hello. Once, for a month, a very old man who got on at the hospital every night at two and got off at the cemetery gates, and then one night did not get on any more.

他也熟悉车上的乘客。大多叫不出名字，却认得他们的身形。下晚班回家的护士们头贴着车窗入睡，一到站就准时醒来，仿佛体内装着一只闹钟。上早班的保洁员们。还有那些孤单寂寞的人，他们把整条线路坐上两遍，只因车厢里暖和，司机还会道一声你好。曾经有一个月的时间，一位极年迈的老人每晚两点在医院上车，在公墓门口下车，后来有一晚，他再也没有出现过。

That was the thing about the night, Daniel had found. People were more honest in it. Whatever they were carrying, they carried it more openly at three in the morning, as though the dark gave them permission. He had chosen the night shift eight years ago so that he could see Grace in the afternoons. He had stayed on it, he sometimes suspected, because in the daylight he had never been sure what to do with himself, and in the dark he always knew. Drive. Stop. Open the doors. Say hello.

Daniel发现，夜晚就是有这样一种特质。人在夜里更加坦诚。无论心头压着什么，在凌晨三点时，人们总是展露得更坦率，仿佛黑暗赋予了他们某种许可。他在八年前选择开夜班车，是为了下午能去见Grace。他有时也暗自猜想，自己留在这个班次，是因为在日光之下，他总不知该如何自处，而在黑暗中，他始终心中有数。开车。停靠。开门。问好。

This week, the night had been busier than usual. Not with passengers. With paper. There was a stack of Jess’s posters on the luggage rack behind his seat, and a box of leaflets on the front passenger seat that he refilled every round, and taped to the inside of his windscreen, where only he could see it, a list in Priya’s handwriting of every house on the route that had not yet been asked.

这个星期，夜晚比平日更加忙碌。不是因为乘客多。而是因为到处都是纸张。他座位后面的行李架上堆着一叠Jess印的海报，前排乘客座位上放着一盒传单，他每跑一趟就添满一次；而在挡风玻璃内侧只有他能看见的位置，贴着一张用Priya字迹写下的清单，记录着线路上每一户还没去登门询问的人家。

The numbers in Priya’s notebook had grown faster than any of them had dared to hope. Forty-three names had become eighty, eighty had become a hundred and thirty. The mayor had found a surveyor who owed him a favour, and the surveyor had walked round number seven with a tape measure and a doubtful face and said that, as a working bakery rather than a building site for flats, it was worth about two hundred and sixty thousand pounds. A lot of money. A great deal less than four hundred and twenty.

Priya笔记本上的数字增长得比他们所有人敢想的都要快。四十三个人名变成了八十个，八十个又变成了一百三十个。镇长找了一位欠他一个人情的测量员，测量员拿着卷尺，一脸疑虑地在七号周围走了一圈，说如果作为一家正常运作的面包房而非建造公寓的地皮，它大约值二十六万英镑。这是一大笔钱。但比起四十二万来，已经少得多了。

Then, on Tuesday, Michael had done something that none of them had expected, least of all, Daniel suspected, Michael himself. He had come to Priya’s kitchen table at eleven at night, where the campaign now lived among the tins and the photographs, and sat down, and said that he would give his half of the building to the town. Not sell it. Give it. For a pound, if the lawyers insisted on a number.

接着，在周二，Michael做了一件所有人都始料未及的事，Daniel猜想，恐怕连Michael自己都没想到。夜里十一点，他来到了Priya的餐桌旁——如今竞选活动的阵地就在那堆铁罐和照片之间——他坐了下来，说愿意把自己那一半楼房无偿赠予小镇。不是卖。是送。如果律师坚持要有个数字，那就收一英镑。