给W。

给W。

For W.

星期日下午五点，电工躺在旋转木马下面，嘴里叼着手电筒，她从早上八点就在那里了。

At five o’clock on Sunday the electrician was lying under the carousel with a torch in her mouth, and she had been there since eight.

她叫Bev。星期三我给十二个电工打过电话，十一个人一听日期就笑了，或者根本没接。Bev接了。星期一到星期六，她在一家大公司工作，专给办公楼接线，公司不许电工接私活；星期天她自己说了算。“就一个星期天，”她说。“这是你在听证会以前能有的。我八点开始，做完才走。如果到半夜十二点还没做完，那就是做不完。”

Her name was Bev. On Wednesday I had rung twelve electricians, and eleven had laughed at the dates or hadn’t answered. Bev had answered. From Monday to Saturday she worked for a big company that wired office buildings and didn’t allow its electricians to take private jobs; on Sundays she was her own boss. “One Sunday,” she had said. “That’s what you’ve got before your hearing. I’ll start at eight and stay till it’s done. If it isn’t done by midnight, it isn’t done.”

所以，当广场上的人看着Tom神父打开信箱，当我父亲在咖啡馆里对Pike先生讲2001年的时候，Bev一个人把每一间木屋都检查了一遍。她从旋转木马下面爬出来，把手电筒从嘴里拿出来。她五十岁左右，个子小，很结实，头发灰白，剪得很短，声音粗哑。

So while the square had watched Father Tom open the letter box, and while my father told Mr Pike about 2001 in the café, Bev had worked through every hut on her own. She came out from under the carousel and took the torch out of her mouth. She was about fifty, small and strong, with grey hair cut very short and a voice like gravel.

“灯，没问题。木屋，没问题，只要你们的木匠别再把钉子钉进我的电线。旋转木马，不行。”她说，控制箱是1985年左右的，里面的开关已经烧化了。这种开关现在买不到了。环城路上的电器批发店有一个能起同样作用的，可是今天是星期天，批发店关门了。“如果八点以前我拿到它，我就装上，再测试。没有它，除了旋转木马，别的我都签字。可是没有旋转木马的圣诞市集，只是一个有灯的停车场。”

“Lights, fine. Huts, fine, once your carpenter stops putting nails through my cables. Carousel, no.” The control box was from about 1985, she said, and the switch in it had melted. You couldn’t buy that switch any more. There was one that would do the same job at the electrical wholesaler on the ring road, and it was Sunday, and the wholesaler was shut. “If I had it by eight, I’d fit it and test it. Without it I sign for everything except the carousel. And a Christmas market without a carousel is a car park with lights.”

旋转木马的主人是个叫Ray Dunmore的人。Bev十月欠他一笔钱，不愿自己给他打电话。我躲在花店的货车后面给他打了。他正在孙女的生日会上，还很有感情地对我说了两遍。我让他说完。然后我告诉他那个开关是做什么用的，说愿意付他双倍的价钱，还保证开幕那天晚上Tom神父会在教堂台阶上点名感谢他——这件事我还没问过Tom神父。电话里沉默了很久，里面全是孩子们唱歌的声音。然后他说七点和我见面，还说我是他今年说过话的人里最烦人的一个。

The owner was a man called Ray Dunmore. Bev owed him for a job in October and wouldn’t ring him herself. I rang him from behind the florist’s van. He was at his granddaughter’s birthday party, and he told me so twice, with feeling. I let him finish. Then I told him what the switch was for, offered him double his price, and promised that Father Tom would thank him by name from the church steps on opening night, which I had not asked Father Tom about. There was a long silence full of children singing. Then he said he would meet me at seven, and that I was the most annoying man he had spoken to all year.

我开着我父亲的货车，在雪里去了环城路。车没有暖气，二挡的声音像受伤的动物在叫。Ray Dunmore戴着纸做的生日帽拉开卷帘门，在后面找到那个开关，眼都不眨地从我的卡里收了两倍的价钱。回家的路上，货车在红灯前停下，四分钟不肯发动，后面的车一直按喇叭，我大声笑了出来，一个人，也许是一年来的第一次。

I drove my father’s van to the ring road in the snow. It had no heater, and its second gear made a noise like an animal in pain. Ray Dunmore opened his shutter in a paper birthday hat, found the switch at the back, and took twice its price from my card without blinking. On the way home the van stopped at a red light and refused to start for four minutes, with cars sounding their horns behind me, and I laughed out loud, alone, for the first time in perhaps a year.

十一点二十分，旋转木马亮了，所有的小灯泡一起亮，开始在空荡荡的广场上慢慢转，放着一首我二十五年没听过的曲子。Bev在货车的引擎盖上签了证书。“别让任何人碰我的线，”她说。“还有，星期一别给我打电话。”

At twenty past eleven the carousel lit up, all its little bulbs at once, and began to turn slowly on the empty square, playing a tune I hadn’t heard for twenty-five years. Bev signed the certificate on the bonnet of the van. “Don’t let anyone touch my wiring,” she said. “And don’t call me on a Monday.”

半夜十二点，Tom神父带着早上的捐款来到店里。他告诉我们，他站在讲道台上说，市集在艰难的冬天里养活过半个教区，现在教区可以养它一次。然后他找不到信封了。他翻遍大衣的每个口袋，我父亲非常耐心地看着他，最后信封在他的帽子里，那顶帽子他一直拿在手上。里面有一千一百四十英镑，大部分是硬币。

At midnight Father Tom came into the shop with the morning’s collection. He had stood up in the pulpit, he told us, and said that the market had fed half the parish in hard winters and that the parish could feed it once. Then he couldn’t find the envelope. He searched every pocket of his coat while my father watched him with great patience, and it was in the end in his hat, which he had been holding the whole time. There was one thousand one hundred and forty pounds in it, mostly coins.

星期一早上，Pike先生守了他的诺言。九点他带着走掉的那五个人来到店里，还有三个我从没见过的人，他们一个接一个在柜台上签字，就在报纸和巧克力金币中间。卖针织帽的年轻女人最后一个签。“星期六的事，对不起，”她说，我说：“我也是。”我们两个都是真心的。下午卖栗子的夫妇也回来了，加上他们，我们有了二十一个。

On Monday morning Mr Pike kept his promise. He came into the shop at nine with the five who had walked out, and three more I had never seen, and they signed one after another on the counter, between the newspapers and the chocolate coins. The young woman with the knitted hats signed last. “I’m sorry about Saturday,” she said, and I said, “So am I,” and we both meant it. With the chestnut couple, who came back that afternoon, we had twenty-one.

星期二，光明节的第五个夜晚，Ruth在窗口点了五支蜡烛，走过广场，到教堂里开一场音乐会。她弹了巴赫、肖邦，还有一些她祖母村子里的古老犹太歌曲，钢琴因为天冷有点走音。人们在门口想付多少就付多少。我站在后面，惊讶地发现，第二首曲子弹到一半，我已经不再想钱了。后来她和Ansah先生在门廊的桌子旁数收入，比财务数得还快。

On Tuesday, the fifth night of Hanukkah, Ruth lit five candles in her window and walked across the square to give a concert in the church. Then she played Bach, Chopin and some old Jewish songs from her grandmother’s village, on a piano that was slightly out of tune because of the cold. People paid what they wanted at the door. I stood at the back and was surprised to find that I had stopped thinking about money halfway through the second piece. Afterwards she counted the takings with Mr Ansah at the table in the porch, faster than the treasurer did.

“两千二百零五。加上协会的钱和神父帽子里的钱，你们还差九百四十三英镑。”她把钱放进一个铁盒。“Ansah先生告诉我，星期四中午到期。我的那份我做完了。现在是你们的问题。”

“Two thousand two hundred and five. With the Association’s money and the priest’s hat, you are nine hundred and forty-three pounds short.” She put the money in a tin. “Due on Thursday at noon, Mr Ansah tells me. I’ve done my part. Now it’s your problem.”

那天晚上，在厨房的桌子旁，我以为我把它解决了。“我现在就转账，”我手里拿着手机对我父亲说。“九百四十三英镑。这不算什么。就当是给协会的圣诞礼物。”

I solved it that night, I thought, at the kitchen table. “I’ll transfer it now,” I told my father, with my phone in my hand. “Nine hundred and forty-three pounds. It’s nothing. I’ll call it a Christmas present to the Association.”

“不。”

“No.”