Ottavio has told nobody he is coming. He steps off the bus at the foot of the hill and stands for a while, looking up at the housing block he designed twenty years ago. Five slabs of pale concrete step down the slope like a staircase built for giants. In the photographs that won the prize, nobody was in it. Now there are bicycles chained to every railing, a mattress airing over a balcony, and a washing line strung between two of his carefully proportioned columns.
奥塔维奥没有告诉任何人他要来。他在山脚下下了公交车，站了好一会儿，抬头望着二十年前自己设计的那片住宅楼。五座浅色混凝土的板楼顺着山坡层层下降，像是为巨人修的台阶。在那些为他赢得大奖的照片里，楼里空无一人。如今，每道栏杆上都拴着自行车，一个阳台上晾着一张床垫，他精心设计过比例的两根柱子之间，拉着一条晾衣绳。
He climbs the long outdoor stair, the one part he is sure about, and on the third landing a woman in a quilted dressing gown stops him. She takes him for a surveyor, presumably because of the notebook, and she has clearly been waiting years for one. Her name is Farida, she says, and she has lived on this landing since the first week. "The wind," she says. "Come and feel it."
他沿着那条长长的室外楼梯往上走，这是他唯一有把握的部分，到了三层的平台，一个穿着绗缝睡袍的女人拦住了他。她把他当成了测量员，大概是因为那个笔记本，而且她显然已经等一个测量员等了好多年。她说她叫法里达，从头一个星期起，就住在这层平台上。“风，”她说，“来感受一下。”
She leads him to the corner where the walkway turns, and there the air hits his face like a slammed door. Nobody tested for this, she tells him. Every autumn the bins roll across the courtyard unless somebody chocks them with a brick.
她领他走到走廊拐弯的那个角落，风迎面扑来，像一扇被猛地摔上的门。她告诉他，没人测试过这个。每年秋天，垃圾桶都会滚过整个院子，除非有人拿砖头把它们垫住。
The complaints come in a steady, well-rehearsed list, like something she has said to a wall many times. The lift is too small for a stretcher. The flat roofs leak at the joints, which he had worried about at the time and been overruled on. The balconies, so narrow in his drawings that he had privately called them gestures, have all been glassed in by their tenants, each in a different shade of plastic. Taking notes in the margin of his sketchbook, Ottavio finds that he is not defending any of it, and this surprises him more than the wind did.
抱怨一条接一条地涌来，是一份有条不紊、早已演练纯熟的清单，像是对着墙壁说过许多遍。电梯太小，放不下担架。平屋顶的接缝处漏水，这一点他当年就担心过，却被人否决了。阳台在他的图纸里窄得让他私下里管它们叫“象征性的姿态”，如今都被住户们封成了玻璃阳台，每一家用的塑料颜色各不相同。奥塔维奥在速写本的页边做着记录，发现自己一点也没有替它们辩解，这让他比那阵风更吃惊。
What he had not expected was the landing itself. He drew it wide, wider than the fire regulations required, over the objections of a cost consultant who called the extra width vanity. Now it holds a row of mismatched chairs, three tomato plants in buckets, a card table with a half-finished jigsaw, and two children racing toy cars along the gutter. Rarely has he seen a corridor so firmly refuse to be one.
他没料到的，是平台本身。他把它画得很宽，比消防规范要求的还宽，当年一位成本顾问反对，说多出来的宽度是虚荣。如今这里摆着一排各不相配的椅子、三株种在水桶里的番茄、一张摆着拼了一半的拼图的牌桌，还有两个孩子正沿着排水沟让玩具车赛跑。他很少见过有哪条走廊如此坚决地拒绝只做一条走廊。
"That's where we sit," Farida says, as if answering a question he has not asked. "In summer, half the floor is out here."
“我们就坐在这儿，”法里达说，像是在回答一个他并没有问出口的问题，“夏天，半层楼的人都在这儿。”
She looks at him sideways. "The man who drew this never imagined it, I'd say. If he had, he would have put in a bench."
她斜着眼看他。“画这楼的人，我想，根本没想到会这样。要是想到了，他会放一条长凳的。”
The sentence "I drew this" is ready in Ottavio's mouth, and he finds that it will not stand up next to the leaking roofs and the wind. It was the width, not the prize, that he had come to check, though he would not have admitted that on the bus. He closes the notebook instead.
“这是我画的”这句话，已经在奥塔维奥的嘴边准备好了，可他发现，它在漏水的屋顶和那阵风旁边，根本站不住脚。他来核实的，是这宽度，而不是那个奖，尽管在公交车上他不会承认这一点。他合上了笔记本。
"You look tired," Farida says. She drags out a green chair with a cracked seat and sets it beside the card table. "Sit. Everyone does, up here."
“你看上去很累，”法里达说。她拖出一把绿色的椅子，椅面有一道裂缝，放在牌桌旁边。“坐吧。在这上头，谁都坐。”
"Just for a minute," Ottavio says. He lowers himself into the chair, and, noticing a corner piece lying alone on the concrete beside the jigsaw, he picks it up and finds, on the second try, where it goes.
“就坐一会儿，”奥塔维奥说。他慢慢坐进椅子里，看见拼图旁边的混凝土地面上，孤零零躺着一块边角的拼片，就捡了起来，试了第二次，找到了它该放的位置。
