The Train Stopped at the Border

The train had been creeping toward the border for most of the night when it stopped altogether, somewhere between two stations that Dalibor couldn't see. The lights flickered once and steadied. A tired voice on the speaker announced a technical fault and promised more news in twenty minutes.

火车朝边境爬行了大半夜，终于彻底停了下来，停在达利博尔看不见的两个车站之间。灯闪了一下，又稳住了。广播里一个疲惫的声音宣布出了技术故障，并承诺二十分钟后再通报消息。

The news did not come in twenty minutes. It did not come in sixty. By then the corridor had filled with passengers leaning against the windows, and Dalibor had given up on his book. He was sharing a compartment with a single stranger, a woman in a green coat who had been asleep since he boarded.

二十分钟后没有消息。六十分钟后也没有。到那时，走廊里已经站满了靠着车窗的乘客，达利博尔也看不进书了。他的包厢里只有一位陌生人，一个穿绿大衣的女人，从他上车起就一直睡着。

She woke around two, looked at the dark window and asked what had happened.

她两点左右醒了，看了看漆黑的车窗，问出了什么事。

"A technical fault, they say."

“说是技术故障。”

"They always say that," she replied. "It's their favorite fault."

“他们总这么说，”她回答，“这是他们最爱的故障。”

They sat in silence for a while. Then her stomach made a noise that both of them pretended not to hear. Dalibor, who had packed for a journey of six hours and not for a siege, opened his bag. He had a hunk of hard cheese, a packet of rye crackers and an apple that had been rolling around since morning.

他们沉默地坐了一会儿。接着她的肚子发出一声响，两个人都假装没听见。达利博尔本来是按六小时的行程准备的，可不是为了打一场围城战，他打开了自己的包。他有一块硬奶酪，一包黑麦脆饼，还有一个从早上起就在包里滚来滚去的苹果。

"I can offer you the cheese," he said. "The apple is a security risk."

“奶酪可以分你，”他说，“苹果有安全隐患。”

She laughed, and took a small tin of dried apricots from her pocket. "Fair exchange," she said.

她笑了，从口袋里掏出一小盒杏干。“公平交换，”她说。

Over the next hour, they learned each other's reasons for traveling. He was on his way to meet his newborn nephew, whom the entire family had already described as "very serious." She repaired old clocks, and a small town was paying her to wake up the one in its station tower after thirty years of silence.

接下来的一个小时里，他们了解了彼此出门的缘由。他是去看刚出生的外甥，全家人都已经形容这孩子“很严肃”。她修理旧钟，一个小镇出钱请她去唤醒车站钟楼上那座沉寂了三十年的钟。

"What if you can't fix it?" Dalibor asked.

“要是修不好呢？”达利博尔问。

"Then I will have been paid to be sad in a pleasant place," she said. "There are worse jobs."

“那我就是拿了钱，在一个舒服的地方难过一阵子，”她说，“还有更糟的工作呢。”

Outside, a pale line appeared along the horizon. A guard walked past with a flashlight, and somewhere ahead a door slammed. Dalibor checked his watch. The woman checked hers. They were an hour apart.

窗外，地平线上露出一道淡淡的亮线。一名乘务员拿着手电筒走过，前方某处传来一声关门的巨响。达利博尔看了看表。女人也看了看她的表。两块表差了一个小时。

"Border time," she said. "We have been sitting between two clocks all night, and neither of them wants us. If I were in charge of the border, I would put a clock in the middle, set to nobody's time."

“边境时间，”她说，“我们整夜坐在两座钟之间，哪一座都不想要我们。要是我来管边境，我就在中间放一座钟，调成谁的时间都不是。”

They talked about that for a long while, starting with the clock in the middle. Did a person belong to the place they had left, or to the place they were heading for? She said she had been moving between towns for eleven years and had never stayed long enough to be asked a hard question. He admitted that he had spent the whole journey afraid of holding the baby wrongly.

他们聊了很久，就从中间那座钟聊起。一个人是属于他离开的地方，还是属于他要去的地方？她说她十一年来一直在各个城镇之间辗转，从来没有待得久到会被人问起一个难回答的问题。他承认，自己一路上都在害怕抱孩子的姿势不对。

"You will hold him wrongly, and he will forgive you," she said. "Babies are surprisingly flexible about it."

“你会抱错的，他会原谅你的，”她说，“婴儿对这个出奇地宽容。”

By four, the sky had turned the color of weak tea. The apricot tin was empty, the crackers were gone. Dalibor had been laughing for ten minutes at something she had said about customs officers and their stamps.

到四点，天空变成了淡茶的颜色。杏干盒空了，脆饼也吃光了。达利博尔已经为她说的一句关于海关官员和他们的印章的话笑了十分钟。

Then the train gave a long groan, as if waking from the same sleep. Something clanked beneath the floor. Dalibor felt it first in his spine and then in his teeth, and the lights of the platform began to slide slowly past the window.

这时火车发出一声长长的呻吟，像是从同一场睡梦中醒来。地板下面传来哐当一响。达利博尔先是在脊背上，然后在牙齿里感觉到了震动，站台的灯光开始缓缓从窗外滑过。

"We're moving," the woman said. Neither of them reached for a book. She was still halfway through her sentence when the train gathered speed, and Dalibor leaned forward to hear the rest of it.

“我们动了，”女人说。两个人谁也没去拿书。她一句话才说到一半，火车就加起速来，达利博尔身子前倾，想听她把后面的话说完。