The Mouth of the House

The Row

茶碗之列

Tea is tasted by north light. Nadeesha Herath had learned that on her first day, eleven years ago, and she had learned nothing since that was as easy to say. The tasting room of Harcourt & Perera lay on the fourth floor of an old office building in the Colombo Fort, with a single wall of windows facing north, towards the harbour, and a long white table on which, every morning at half past eight, the row stood ready: a hundred and twenty cups, behind each a little pot, in front of each a small heap of dry leaves, in each pot two point eight grams of tea, steeped for six minutes and not a second longer.

品茶宜在北窗天光下进行。这是十一年前第一天入行时，娜迪莎·赫拉特学到的规矩；自那以后，她再没学过什么能用寥寥数语道尽的诀窍。Harcourt & Perera茶行的品茶室位于科伦坡要塞区一座旧商行大楼的四层，唯有一面排窗向北敞开，俯瞰港口。室内设有一张白色长桌，每天清晨八点半，桌上准时摆好那一排茶碗：一百二十只茶碗，每只碗后各有一只小茶壶，碗前堆着一小撮干茶样，每只茶壶里精准投下二点八克茶叶，浸润整整六分钟，不多一秒，亦不少一秒。

A broker does not sell what he likes. He sells what he judges. Every lot that went to auction on Tuesday carried in the catalogue a valuation and a price in rupees per kilo, and the buyers from Dubai, Istanbul and Yokohama, who had never seen the tea, bid on that number as if on an oath. Behind the number, at Harcourt & Perera, stood one single person. The house called him, without any irony, the Mouth. In a hundred and twenty-two years it had had five Mouths. The fifth was named Lionel de Alwis, was sixty-seven years old, tied on a necktie even in April, when the city groaned under the heat, and initialled every page of the catalogue L. d. A.

经纪人卖的从来不是个人喜好，而是专业估值。逢周二参加拍卖的每个批次，在茶样目录中皆载有评语以及每公斤卢比的标价；那些来自迪拜、伊斯坦布尔和横滨的买家未曾谋得茶样一面，却对这一串数字信若誓言。在Harcourt & Perera茶行，决定这串数字的仅有一人。茶行里人人不带半分讥诮，径直唤他“口”。茶行历经一百二十二年风雨，只出过五位“口”。第五任名为莱昂内尔·德阿尔维斯，年届六十七，即便在整座城邑于酷热中喘息的四月，亦必定领带周正，并以 L. d. A. 在茶样目录的每一页签注核准。