Work Lights

“Mr Lloyd signs releases once a fortnight, and his signing day remains Monday the fourteenth,” I read aloud. “He thanks you for your letter.”

“Lloyd先生每两个星期签一次放行单，他的签字日仍然是十四号，星期一，”我大声念道。“他感谢您的来信。”

I was standing in the shop between the rice and the newspapers, at four o’clock on Tuesday, and my father was serving a woman who wanted stamps. My letter had been a very good letter, two pages long, polite and slightly frightening. It had asked the head of licensing to make an emergency exception and release the huts early, so that thirty of them could be mended before a hearing in ten days. His assistant had needed six hours to say no.

星期二下午四点，我站在店里，在大米和报纸之间，我父亲正在给一位要买邮票的女士结账。我的信写得很好，两页长，客气，又有点吓人。信里请许可事务负责人破例紧急处理，提前放行木屋，好让三十座木屋能在十天后的听证会前修好。他的助理用了六个小时才说不。

“He thanks you,” said my father. “That is nice of him.”

“他感谢你，”我父亲说。“他人真好。”

That night, when he had gone to bed, I sat at the kitchen table with the council’s scheme of delegation on my laptop. It is a document of ninety pages that tells every officer what they are allowed to decide on their own, and I read all ninety, slowly, the way you read a contract when you suspect the other side wrote it in a hurry. At three in the morning, on page seventy-one, in a paragraph about holidays and illness that nobody had changed since 2009, I found one sentence. Where the head of a service is absent and a decision cannot wait, a senior officer of that service may act on his behalf.

那天夜里，他睡下以后，我坐在厨房的桌子旁，笔记本电脑上打开着市政厅的授权方案。这份文件有九十页，告诉每位官员哪些事可以自己决定。我一页一页慢慢读完了，就像怀疑对方写得匆忙时读合同那样。凌晨三点，在第七十一页，在一段关于假期和生病的文字里，2009年以后没有人改过，我找到了一句话。如果一个部门的负责人不在，而决定不能等，该部门的一位高级官员可以代他行事。

It was meant for a man in hospital, not a man in a meeting. It was thin. It was also the only door in ninety pages, and I had found it because I had read the pages that nobody reads.

这句话原本是为住院的人写的，不是为在开会的人写的。它很单薄。但它也是九十页里唯一的一扇门，而我找到它，是因为我读了没有人读的那几页。

On Wednesday morning I rang Lloyd’s office and asked to speak to him. He was at a meeting on the other side of the city all day, his assistant said, and wasn’t taking calls. I rang again at one, and asked her to write down that I had called, and when. Then I took a bus to the council and climbed three floors to Hannah’s office.

星期三早上，我打电话到Lloyd的办公室，想和他通话。他的助理说，他整天在城市另一头开会，不接电话。一点钟我又打了一次，请她记下我打过电话，还有打电话的时间。然后我坐公共汽车去市政厅，爬上三楼，到了Hannah的办公室。

She was eating a sandwich at her desk. She looked at my face and put it down.

她正在桌前吃三明治。她看了看我的脸，把三明治放下了。

“Page seventy-one,” I said, and put it in front of her. “Paragraph thirty-four. The last sentence.”

“第七十一页，”我说，把它放在她面前。“第三十四段。最后一句。”

She read it twice, and then she looked at me. “You want me to sign the release.”

她读了两遍，然后看着我。“您想让我签放行单。”

“I want you to sign it for him. He’s absent, I’ve tried twice today and his office has a note of it, and if the huts don’t come out of that yard this week, there’s no market, and if there’s no market, there’s no land.” I made myself say the rest, because it was true and she would think it anyway. “It isn’t my job I’m asking you to risk. It’s yours.”

“我想请您替他签。他不在，我今天试了两次，他的办公室有记录。如果木屋这个星期不能从那个院子里出来，就没有市集；没有市集，就没有那块地。”我逼自己把剩下的话说完，因为这是真的，她自己也会这样想。“我请您冒险的，不是我的工作。是您的。”