The call came at ten past midnight. A neighbor had seen water running out from under the door of the town archive. By the time Alessia arrived, it was already pooling on the front steps.
电话在凌晨十二点十分打来。一位邻居看见水从镇档案馆的门缝底下流了出来。等亚历西娅赶到时，水已经在门前的台阶上积成了一摊。
A pipe had burst in the old market hall above. Down in the basement, the water stood ankle-deep and was rising by an inch every ten minutes. The water company had promised to send someone within the hour, but nobody knew how much the basement would hold by then.
楼上的老市场大厅里，一根水管爆裂了。地下室里，水已没过脚踝，每十分钟涨高一英寸。自来水公司答应一小时内派人来，可没人知道到那时地下室里会积多少水。
Three volunteers had answered her phone calls. One was a retired surveyor in a dressing gown. One was a teenager who did the Saturday filing. The third was a baker who should have been starting his night shift. Alessia handed out boots from the cupboard and looked at the shelves.
有三位志愿者接了她的电话。一位是穿着睡袍的退休测量员。一位是周六来整理档案的少年。第三位是个面包师，本该去上夜班了。亚历西娅从柜子里拿出靴子分给他们，然后看向那些架子。
The bottom drawers held the estate maps. They were hand-colored, more than two hundred years old, and they were the pride of the collection. The registers of births stood on a shelf just above them, plain and ugly, in gray cloth bindings.
最下面的抽屉里放着地产地图。它们是手工上色的，有两百多年的历史，是馆藏的骄傲。出生登记册放在紧挨着地图上方的一层架子上，朴素难看，装订成灰色的布面。
"The maps," the surveyor said immediately. "People come from other countries to see those."
“先救地图，”测量员立刻说，“人们从别的国家专程来看这些。”
"The registers," the teenager said. "People come every single week."
“先救登记册，”少年说，“人们每个星期都来查。”
Alessia thought about it for the length of one breath. The maps had been photographed ten years earlier, and the photographs were safe in another building. Nobody had ever scanned the registers. If a register were ruined, a person's proof of being born would simply vanish.
亚历西娅想了一口气的工夫。地图十年前拍过照，照片安全地存放在另一栋楼里。登记册却从没有人扫描过。要是一本登记册毁了，一个人的出生证明就会彻底消失。
"Registers first," she said. "Then the maps, drawer by drawer, for as long as we can."
“先救登记册，”她说，“然后是地图，一个抽屉一个抽屉地来，能救多久救多久。”
They formed a chain up the stairs. The baker, who was the strongest, lifted the heavy volumes from the shelf. The others passed them upward, hand to hand, until the corridor above looked like a crowded station. Meanwhile the water climbed past the second drawer.
他们沿着楼梯排成一条人链。面包师力气最大，负责把沉重的册子从架子上搬下来。其他人一个传一个地往上递，直到楼上的走廊看起来像一座拥挤的车站。与此同时，水漫过了第二个抽屉。
By the time the water company's van arrived, all forty-one registers were safe, and so were nine of the fourteen map drawers. The last five had been soaked.
等自来水公司的货车到达时，四十一本登记册全部安全，十四个地图抽屉里也保住了九个。最后五个已经泡透了。
In the morning, a conservator told Alessia to freeze the wet maps at once, because the cold would stop the mold. The baker offered his walk-in freezer, and the maps spent that week between sacks of flour and trays of dough.
早上，一位文物修复师叫亚历西娅立刻把湿了的地图冷冻起来，因为低温能阻止发霉。面包师提供了他的步入式冷冻库，于是那些地图在面粉袋和面团托盘之间度过了一个星期。
If they had started with the maps, Alessia thought afterward, they might have saved all fourteen. They would also have lost the registers, and she knew she would have regretted that choice.
事后亚历西娅想，要是他们先救地图，也许十四个抽屉都能保住。可那样他们也会失去登记册，她知道自己会为这个选择后悔。
On the day the archive reopened, a woman was already waiting at eight o'clock outside the door with a form in her hand. She needed her mother's birth record for a pension application.
档案馆重新开放的那天，早上八点就有一位女士等在门外，手里拿着一张表格。她申请养老金需要她母亲的出生记录。
Alessia went upstairs in her borrowed boots and found the right volume. Its corners were damp, but the page was whole. "It's a little wet at the edges," she said, handing it over. "Everything on it is still there."
亚历西娅穿着借来的靴子上了楼，找到了那一卷。书角是潮的，但那一页完好无损。“边上有点湿，”她把它递过去，说道，“上面所有的内容都还在。”
