一晚十二趟

一晚十二趟

Twelve Rounds a Night

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

“那本来就不是我的，”当Priya开始争执时，他说道，“那是我母亲的，她留给我，就是为了让我不得不和我父亲说话。好吧，我现在总算在同他说话了，不管怎么说。所以它已经尽到了它的使命。”他低头看着自己的双手。“而且我不想从Helen Pickering那里拿二十一万英镑。不然我余生都会忍不住去想，为此到底付出了什么样的代价。”

“It was never mine,” he had said, when Priya started to argue. “It was my mother’s, and she gave it to me so that I would have to talk to my father. Well, I’m talking to him now, after a fashion. So it’s done its job.” He had looked down at his hands. “And I don’t want two hundred and ten thousand pounds from Helen Pickering. I’d only spend the rest of my life wondering what it had cost.”

所以现在小镇不再需要二十六万英镑了。它需要十三万，用来买下Walter的那一半：足以还清他欠银行的钱，并为他支付一间没有楼梯的一楼房间，以及他将要需要的照料。而在Priya的笔记本底部，经过八天挨家挨户的敲门走访，总额已经达到了九万六千多镑。

So now the town did not need two hundred and sixty thousand pounds. It needed a hundred and thirty, to buy Walter’s half: enough to pay what he owed the bank, and to pay for a ground-floor room with no stairs and the help he was going to need. And at the bottom of Priya’s notebook, after eight days of knocking on doors, the total stood at a little over ninety-six thousand.

还差三万四千镑，只剩下五天了。Daniel在每个红灯前都会想到那个数字。现在是周五凌晨两点十五分，他正坐在市政厅旁那个亮九十秒的红灯前，发动机嘀嗒作响，车上一个乘客也没有，他望着已打烊的报刊亭橱窗里Jess的海报，心里又想起了这个数字。让光亮常在。有人在下面用圆珠笔添了一句：求求你们。

Thirty-four thousand short, with five days to go. Daniel thought about that number at every red light. He thought about it now, at a quarter past two on Friday morning, sitting at the ninety-second light by the town hall with the engine ticking and nobody on the bus at all, looking at Jess’s poster in the window of the closed newsagent’s. KEEP THE LIGHT ON. Somebody had added, in biro underneath, PLEASE.

周六下午，Grace帮了忙。她坐在洗衣店楼上他的餐桌旁，舌头抵在牙齿间，为竞选活动画了一幅画，还坚持要亲手交给Priya。画上画着一个大大的褐色面包、一只鼻子发灰的小黑狗，还有一位头发里沾着面粉的女士——Grace耐心地解释说，这位就是会跟面包说话的面包师。Priya把它钉在餐桌上方的墙上，挂在自己孙辈的照片之间，还忍不住落了泪。

On Saturday afternoon Grace had helped. She had sat at his kitchen table above the launderette with her tongue between her teeth and drawn a picture for the campaign, which she had insisted on giving to Priya personally. It showed a large brown loaf, a small black dog with a grey nose, and a lady with flour in her hair who was, Grace explained patiently, the baker who talked to the bread. Priya had pinned it on the wall above her kitchen table, between the photographs of her own grandchildren, and cried a little.

会跟面包说话的面包师。直到Grace画出来，Daniel才知道自己的女儿注意到了这一点。在周六早晨他带女儿去面包房买小面包时，Ana在给面团塑形的同时，会用她自己的母语低声跟面团说话，就像别人逗猫一样。他在几个月前的第一个早晨就注意到了，却从未对任何人提起过。显然他根本无须多言。Grace注意到了他的留意。

The baker who talked to the bread. Daniel had not known, until Grace drew it, that his daughter had noticed. That on the Saturday mornings when he brought her to the bakery for a bun, Ana talked to the dough under her breath in her own language while she shaped it, as other people talk to cats. He had noticed it on the first morning, months ago, and had never said so to anyone. Apparently he had not needed to. Grace had noticed that he noticed.

他并没有过多去细想这件事。他三十一岁，离异，在夜里开公交车；他已经学会了在看清根基之前，绝不把任何东西建立在某种感觉之上。Ana是他的朋友。她睡在他家的折叠沙发床上，而且他相当肯定，她心里除了这个小镇和那一台烤箱之外，别无他人。这就足够了。每天早晨差十分五点，他会得到两个奶酪面包卷、一杯咖啡，以及柜台后她的笑脸，即使他对这些的期待稍稍超过了一个男人对奶酪面包卷应有的期待，那也纯属他自己的事，与旁人无关。

He did not think about that too much. He was thirty-one, divorced, and drove a bus at night; he had learned not to build anything on a feeling until he had looked at its foundations for a long time. Ana was his friend. She was living on his sofa bed and, he was fairly sure, in love with no one but a town and an oven. That was enough. At ten to five every morning he got two cheese rolls and a coffee and her face behind the counter, and if he looked forward to that slightly more than a man should look forward to cheese rolls, it was nobody’s business but his.

周三，Maureen给他打了电话。她的号码是从Priya那里要来的，Priya给她号码时，顺带还给她上了一堂关于竞选的说教，并塞给她一罐酥饼。Maureen从不喜欢闲聊。她说自己在Mill Road炸鱼薯条店排队时，看到了在那艘船上乱涂乱画的一个男孩，她非常笃定。高个子，姜黄色头发，大约十六岁，穿着一件在十一月没有理智的人会穿的橙色球衣。她一路跟着他回了家。

On Wednesday, Maureen had phoned him. She had got his number from Priya, who had given it to her along with a lecture about the campaign and a tin of shortbread. Maureen did not believe in small talk. She said that she had seen one of the boys who painted the boat, in the queue at the chip shop on Mill Road, and that she was certain. Tall, ginger, about sixteen, in an orange football shirt that no sensible person would wear in November. She had followed him home.