The Light in the East Wing

Simone's new bedroom faced the courtyard, and the courtyard faced the east wing, and it was there, on her third night in the building, that she first noticed the light.

西蒙娜的新卧室朝着中庭，中庭对着东楼，就在搬进这栋楼的第三个晚上，她第一次注意到了那盏灯。

It came on at exactly six-forty, stayed lit for eleven minutes, and went out. The next evening it did the same. Having nothing better to do in a city where she knew no one yet, Simone started timing it, convinced she had found a pattern worth solving. Six-forty came to feel less like a coincidence and more like an appointment somebody was keeping with an empty room.

它在六点四十分整亮起，亮十一分钟，然后熄灭。第二天傍晚，它又是这样。在这座谁也不认识的城市里，她闲着没事，便开始给它计时，认定自己发现了一个值得解开的规律。六点四十，越来越不像是巧合，倒像是有人在跟一间空屋子赴约。

She mentioned it to her mother, who barely looked up from unpacking boxes. "That's Mr. Renner's flat. Poor man lost his wife last spring. Leave him be."

她跟妈妈提起这件事，妈妈正忙着拆箱子，几乎没抬头。“那是雷纳先生的住处。可怜的人，去年春天没了妻子。别去打扰他。”

Simone did not leave him be, not entirely. She noticed him some mornings in the courtyard, a tall, unhurried man who watered a single pot of geraniums and nodded at neighbors without quite meeting their eyes. It was hard to picture him running any kind of code from that window, and harder still to imagine what message he could possibly be sending, or to whom.

西蒙娜没有真的不去打扰他，至少不完全是。有几个早晨，她在中庭看见过他，一个高个子、从容不迫的男人，给一盆天竺葵浇水，对邻居点头，却不太看人的眼睛。很难想象他会从那扇窗里发出什么密码，更难想象他能发出什么信息，又是发给谁的。

By the second week she had a theory: Morse. She spent an evening with her phone propped against the glass, timing the light against a Morse chart she had found online, certain she was about to crack something. The intervals refused to cooperate. Nothing spelled out a word, a name, or anything resembling one. What had looked so deliberately structured from across the courtyard turned out, on close counting, to have no code in it at all — only the same eleven minutes, every evening, without variation.

到了第二个星期，她有了一个推测：摩尔斯电码。她花了一个晚上，把手机靠在玻璃上，对照着在网上找到的摩尔斯电码表给灯光计时，满心以为自己就要破解什么了。可那些间隔就是不配合。拼不出任何一个词，一个名字，或是任何像样的东西。从中庭对面看起来那么刻意、那么有章法的东西，仔细一数，里面根本没有什么密码，有的只是同样的十一分钟，每天傍晚，毫无变化。

It was a chance encounter by the mailboxes that finally explained it, not her spreadsheet of timings. Mr. Renner was struggling with a stuck lock, and Simone held the door while he wrestled his key free.

最后是在信箱旁的一次偶遇解开了谜团，而不是她那张记满计时的表格。雷纳先生被卡住的锁难住了，西蒙娜扶着门，看他费力地把钥匙拔出来。

"You're the girl who watches my window," he said, not unkindly, and she felt her face go hot. "My wife worked the evening shift for thirty years. Six-forty was when her train got in. I'd put the lamp on so she could see the flat was lit from the platform, and I'd leave it on until she was through the door."

“你就是那个盯着我窗户看的姑娘，”他说，语气并无责怪，她感到脸一下子烧了起来。“我妻子上了三十年的晚班。六点四十，是她那班火车到站的时间。我会把灯打开，让她在站台上就能看到家里亮着灯，一直亮到她进了门。”

"And now?" Simone asked, before she could think better of it.

“那现在呢？”西蒙娜还没来得及多想，话就问出了口。

"Now I put it on anyway," he said, "and I leave it on for exactly as long as it used to take her to walk from the station. Then I turn it off, because by then, in my head, she's home."

“现在我还是照样把灯打开，”他说，“让它亮着，亮的时间正好是她以前从车站走回来的那么久。然后我就把它关掉，因为到那时候，在我心里，她已经到家了。”

Simone did not know what to say to that, so she said nothing, which turned out to be the right choice. Had she pressed him further, she suspected, he would have stopped telling her anything at all.

西蒙娜不知道该对这话说什么，于是什么也没说，事后证明这是对的。她想，要是当时再追问下去，他大概就一句也不会再告诉她了。

She never mentioned the light again, not to her mother, not to Mr. Renner himself. But most evenings now, at six-forty, she found some reason to be near her own window. She left her own lamp on until his went dark, a small and useless signal that nobody had asked her to send.

她再也没有提起过那盏灯，对妈妈没提，对雷纳先生本人也没提。可如今大多数傍晚，到了六点四十，她总能找到理由待在自己的窗边。她让自己的灯一直亮着，直到他的灯熄灭，那是一个微小而没有用处的信号，没有人要求她发出。