The Exam Proctor

At twenty to eleven, with ninety minutes of the exam gone and thirty to go, Sibylle sees Miriam's eyes drop to her left knee and come back up. It takes no more than a second. A folded square of paper held in the palm below the edge of the desk; a glance; then the pen moving again, a little faster than before.

十点四十分，考试已经过去九十分钟，还剩三十分钟，西比勒看见米丽娅姆的目光落到左膝上，又回了上来。只有一秒钟。一小方折起来的纸，握在掌心，藏在桌沿下面；瞥一眼；然后笔又动了起来，比刚才快了一点。

Sibylle goes on walking up the aisle at the same pace, because the first rule of proctoring is never to let a student see that you have seen. Among two hundred bent heads in the grey light of the hall, she keeps her face as blank as her clipboard, while her mind goes everywhere at once. She knows Miriam. Everyone in the department who has bothered to ask knows her. She is the quiet student in the third row who works nights at a bakery on the ring road. She arrives at morning lectures with flour still in the creases of her knuckles, and she has never once asked for an extension.

西比勒继续以同样的步子沿过道走着，因为监考的第一条规矩，就是绝不能让学生看出你已经看见了。在灰暗光线下的大厅里，两百个低着的脑袋之间，她让脸像手里的写字板一样空白，心里却一下子想到了各处。她了解米丽娅姆。系里凡是愿意问一问的人都了解她。她是第三排那个安静的学生，晚上在环路边的一家面包店打工。她来上早上的课时，指关节的皱褶里还沾着面粉，而且她从来没有申请过延期。

The rule is unambiguous. Unauthorised material means the paper is taken and a report is filed, and the report goes to a committee, which, for a first offence in a core course, may fail the year. Sibylle has read the regulations and does not doubt their purpose, which is to protect the students who did not cheat, and there are a hundred and ninety-nine of them in the room.

规则毫不含糊。携带未经许可的材料，纸条会被收走并提交报告，报告会交给一个委员会，对于核心课程的初犯，委员会可能判这一年不及格。西比勒读过这些规定，并不怀疑它们的用意，那就是保护没有作弊的学生，而房间里有一百九十九个这样的学生。

What stops her is not sympathy but the arithmetic of the alternatives. If she looked away, she would be deciding, silently and for good, that rules bend for people who seem deserving, and the next proctor would bend them for someone with a weaker case. If she made a scene, Miriam would lose her last half hour, and very possibly the whole exam, to humiliation. Neither feels like the thing she is here to do.

拦住她的并不是同情，而是对各种替代做法的盘算。如果她把目光移开，就等于默默地、永远地决定：规则可以为看上去值得同情的人弯曲，而下一位监考老师会为一个理由更弱的人弯曲它。如果她大闹一场，米丽娅姆会因为难堪而失去最后半个小时，很可能连整场考试都毁了。这两样，感觉都不是她来这里该做的事。

So she chooses a third way. Stopping at Miriam's desk as though to check the clock on the far wall, she lays one hand flat beside the paper and says, in a voice meant for nobody else, "I'll take that, please." Miriam does not look up. Slowly, like someone surrendering an object that has grown hot, she opens her left hand, and Sibylle slides the note into her folder and walks on. Miriam keeps writing. Her pen, Sibylle notices, does not slow down.

于是她选了第三条路。她在米丽娅姆的桌旁停下，好像要看远处墙上的钟，一只手平放在试卷旁边，用只想让对方一个人听见的声音说：“请把那个给我。”米丽娅姆没有抬头。她缓缓张开左手，像交出一件变烫了的东西，西比勒把纸条滑进自己的文件夹，继续往前走。米丽娅姆继续写着。西比勒注意到，她的笔没有慢下来。

Only when the last scripts are stacked does she unfold it. It is not a formula or a date. It is a list in a tired hand: the times of three night buses, a phone number with no name beside it, and one definition from the syllabus. The definition has been copied out twice, as if to be sure of it. Flour dusts the creases. Had she been a different proctor, she thinks, she would have seen the definition and nothing else.

直到最后几份答卷叠好，她才把纸条展开。上面不是公式，也不是日期。那是一份用疲惫的字迹写的清单：三班夜班公交的时间，一个没有写名字的电话号码，还有教学大纲里的一条定义。这条定义抄了两遍，像是要确保记住它。面粉还撒在折痕里。要是换一个监考老师，她想，就只会看见那条定义，别的什么也看不见。

She catches Miriam in the corridor and tells her the truth. The report has to be filed. She will write down exactly what she saw, one glance and nothing used, and she will add what she knows of Miriam's work over the term. Miriam nods twice. "Thank you for telling me," she says, which is worse than anger, and then goes to catch her bus.

她在走廊里追上米丽娅姆，把实情告诉了她。报告必须提交。她会如实写下自己看到的一切：一次瞥视，没有使用任何东西，同时她还会写上自己对米丽娅姆整个学期表现的了解。米丽娅姆点了两下头。“谢谢你告诉我，”她说，这比愤怒更让人难受，然后她就去赶公交了。

In the office, Sibylle fills in the form. Under Action Taken she writes the time, the room and the facts. Under Recommendation, where the form invites an opinion, she leaves the line empty and looks at it until the corridor lights switch themselves off. Then she slides the folded note into the folder beside the report, bus times and all, and does not know which of the two the committee will read first.

在办公室里，西比勒填写表格。在“处理措施”一栏下面，她写下时间、考场和事实。在“建议”一栏，表格邀请发表意见的地方，她把那一行留空，盯着它看，直到走廊的灯自己熄灭。然后她把折起的纸条，连同上面的公交时间，一并滑进报告旁边的文件夹，不知道委员会会先看哪一样。