The Referee's Last Season

Mathilde had refereed for thirty-one seasons, and she had decided, without telling anyone, that the thirty-second would be her last. She began to notice things the way people notice the furniture in a house they are about to sell. The line-marking machine had a cracked wheel. The bench had a missing slat. Wet grass and liniment clung to her kit bag until Wednesday.

玛蒂尔德当了三十一个赛季的裁判，她没有告诉任何人，就已经决定，第三十二个赛季将是最后一个。她开始留意各种东西，就像人们留意一座即将卖掉的房子里的家具。划线机有一只轮子裂了。长凳少了一根板条。潮湿的草味和药膏味，要到星期三才会从她的球具包上散去。

Every match was the same and different. There was always a father shouting about offside from behind the rope, and always a goalkeeper who blamed the low sun. Somewhere around the seventieth minute there was always a moment when the whole field seemed to lean toward her and wait. Having answered some nine hundred of those moments, she had trained herself to answer in a single motion: whistle, arm, one short word. Nobody had ever asked whether she was sure. Sureness was what they wanted from her, though the league paid her only enough to cover petrol and the occasional new pair of boots.

每一场比赛都一样，又不一样。总有一位父亲在绳子后面朝越位大喊，总有一位守门员怪罪低低的太阳。到七十分钟前后，总有那么一刻，整个球场仿佛都朝她倾过来，等着她。这样的时刻她应对了大约九百次，早已训练得能一气呵成：哨声，手臂，一个简短的词。从来没有人问过她是否确定。确定，正是他们对她的要求，尽管联赛给她的报酬，只够付汽油钱，外加偶尔买一双新球鞋。

Her last match was an under-eighteens game on a grey Sunday in March, between two sides with nothing left to play for. With ten minutes remaining, a cross swung into the area and a defender's arm went up. Whether the ball had struck it or the arm had moved toward the ball, Mathilde could not have sworn; she had been twenty metres back, half hidden behind a forward. She pointed to the spot anyway.

她的最后一场比赛，是三月里一个阴沉的星期天的十八岁以下组比赛，两支队伍都已经没有什么可争的了。比赛还剩十分钟，一记传中球划进禁区，一名后卫的手臂抬了起来。是球打到了手臂，还是手臂迎向了球，玛蒂尔德不敢发誓；她当时在二十米开外，被一名前锋挡住了一半视线。她还是指向了点球点。

The boy who came toward her was the home captain, a long-limbed centre-back called Zeno. He did not shout. Rarely had a player so young looked so unafraid of her. He stopped an arm's length away, put his hands behind his back, and said, "I'm not going to argue. I only want to know if you're sure."

朝她走来的男孩是主队队长，一个手长脚长的中后卫，叫泽诺。他没有叫嚷。这么年轻的球员，这样不怕她，实属少见。他在一臂远的地方站定，双手背在身后，说：“我不打算争辩。我只想知道，您确定吗。”

"The arm was away from your body," she said. It was the sentence she had used a hundred times.

“你的手臂离开了身体。”她说。这句话，她已经说过上百次。

"You say it the same way when you're right and when you're wrong," Zeno said, without heat. "I've watched you since I was nine. It's like there's nobody in the whistle."

“您对的时候和错的时候，说得都一模一样，”泽诺说，语气里没有火气，“我从九岁起就看您执法。就好像那哨子里没有人。”

Mathilde looked at him a moment too long. What struck her was not the accusation but how exactly it fitted. Her sister had said something similar at a wedding years before, that Mathilde spoke to people as if she were issuing them a ruling, and Mathilde had laughed and refilled her glass. Had the boy raised his voice, she would have shown him a card without breaking stride. Speaking quietly, he had left her nowhere to stand.

玛蒂尔德看了他一会儿，时间稍微长了点。让她吃惊的，不是这番指责，而是它竟如此贴切。几年前，在一场婚礼上，她姐姐说过类似的话，说玛蒂尔德对人说话，就像在向他们宣布裁决，当时玛蒂尔德笑了笑，又给自己添满了酒。要是这男孩提高了嗓门，她会头也不回地向他出示一张牌。他却轻声说话，让她无处立足。

If she had allowed herself one honest doubt aloud in her first decade, she thought, she might not need a seventeen-year-old to do it for her. The certainty had been a uniform, like the black kit, and at some point she had stopped taking it off.

她想，如果在最初的十年里，她就允许自己大声说出一点真诚的怀疑，也许今天就不需要一个十七岁的孩子来替她做这件事了。那份笃定就像一身制服，如同那套黑色的球衣，不知从什么时候起，她再也没有脱下来过。

"I think it hit your arm," she said slowly. "From where I was, I couldn't see the ball move. I'm not certain. I gave it because the arm was out, and that is what the law asks me to judge."

“我觉得球打到了你的手臂，”她慢慢地说，“从我的位置，我看不清球有没有动。我不敢肯定。我判罚，是因为手臂伸了出去，而规则要我判断的就是这个。”

Zeno considered this, then nodded once, like a customer checking his change. "Thank you," he said, and jogged back to his line.

泽诺思忖了一下，点了一次头，像顾客核对找零。“谢谢您，”他说，然后小跑着回到了自己的防线。

The striker hit the penalty against the post. Nobody on either side said a word about it, and Mathilde found, for the first time in thirty-one years, that she was watching the players and not the clock. At the end she shook eleven hands on each side. Two boys said, "Thanks, ref." One said, "Thanks, Mathilde," which she had not expected and did not correct.

前锋把点球踢中了门柱。双方没有一个人提起这件事，玛蒂尔德发现，三十一年来头一回，自己看的是球员，而不是时钟。比赛结束时，她与两边各十一个人一一握手。两个男孩说：“谢谢，裁判。”有一个说：“谢谢，玛蒂尔德。”她没有料到，也没有纠正。

Afterwards she did not return the keys to the shed. She walked a full lap of the pitch, something she had never once done. She passed the bench with the missing slat and the machine with the cracked wheel, and at six the floodlights clicked off on their timer. Then she kept walking in the dark until her hand found the gate.

事后，她没有去还棚屋的钥匙。她绕着球场走了整整一圈，这是她从来没有做过的事。她经过那张少了板条的长凳，经过那台轮子裂了的机器，六点整，泛光灯按定时器咔嗒一声熄灭了。然后她在黑暗里继续往前走，直到手摸到了大门。