It turns out they don’t really get along.
事实证明，他们相处得并不好。
Granny’s fairy tales from Miamas were fairly dramatic, as a rule. Wars and storms and pursuits and intrigues and stuff, because these were the sorts of action stories that Granny liked. They were hardly ever about everyday life in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. So Elsa knows very little about how monsters and wurses get along, when they don’t have armies to lead and shadows to fight.
通常来说，外婆的密阿玛斯故事都相当有戏剧性。战争、风暴、追捕、阴谋之类的，这些都是外婆喜欢的故事类型。她几乎从不讲述不眠大陆日常生活的故事，所以爱莎完全不知道当没有军队可领导、没有暗影可战斗时，怪物和呜嘶是怎么相处的。
It starts with the wurse totally losing its patience with The Monster when The Monster tries to wash the floor under the wurse while the wurse is still lying on it, and then, because The Monster is extremely reluctant to touch the wurse, he accidentally spatters some alcogel in its eye. Elsa has to intervene to stop a full-blown fight, and later when The Monster with extreme frustration insists that Elsa must put one of those blue plastic bags on each of the wurse’s paws, the wurse thinks it’s gone far enough. In the end, once twilight is falling outside and she’s certain that the police are not still hanging about on the stairs, Elsa forces them both outside into the snow, to give herself a bit of peace and quiet to think over the situation and decide what to do next.
一切是这样开始的：当怪物试图清洗呜嘶身下那块地板时，呜嘶还躺在上面，并且完全失去了耐心，而怪物又极度不愿意碰触到呜嘶，他不小心溅了一点儿洗手液到呜嘶的眼睛里。爱莎必须出面阻止这场大战。后来怪物忍无可忍了，他要求爱莎必须给呜嘶的每只脚爪套上一个蓝色鞋套，呜嘶则认为这太过分。暮色终于降临，爱莎确认警察已经离开楼道，便把他俩都赶到外面雪地里去，给屋里点儿清静，好让自己想想现在的状况并决定下一步该怎么做。
She would have worried about being seen by Britt-Marie from the balcony, except that it’s six o’clock sharp and Britt-Marie and Kent have their dinner at exactly six o’clock because “only barbarians” eat their dinner at any other time. Elsa nestles her chin into her Gryffindor scarf and tries to think clearly. The wurse, still looking quite offended by the blue plastic bags, backs into a bush until only its nose is sticking out of the branches. It stays there, its eyes focused on Elsa with a very dissatisfied expression. It takes almost a minute before The Monster sighs and makes a pointed gesture.
她本应该担心布里特—玛丽会从阳台上看见他们，但现在是六点整，布里特—玛丽和肯特总是在六点整吃晚餐，因为“只有野蛮人”才会在其他时间用餐。爱莎把下巴埋进格兰芬多围巾里，想要好好思考一下。呜嘶看上去还是对蓝色鞋套很生气，退到了灌木丛里，只有鼻子露在外面。它待在那儿，用特别委屈的眼神盯着爱莎。差不多过了一分钟，怪物才叹了口气，用手指戳着空气。
“Crapping,” mumbles The Monster, and looks the other way.
“胡来。”怪物喃喃自语，转开了视线。
“Sorry,” says Elsa guiltily to the wurse and turns away. They are using normal language again, because something in Elsa’s stomach turns into a dark lump when she talks in the secret language to anyone but Granny. Either way, The Monster doesn’t seem too keen on any language. Meanwhile, the wurse looks like you or I might if someone came barging in while you were attending to nature’s needs, and it took a while before they understood how inappropriate it was to stand there gawking. Only then does Elsa realize that it actually can’t have had a chance to relieve itself for several days, unless it did so inside its flat. Which she rules out because she can’t see how it could have maneuvered itself into using a toilet, and it certainly wouldn’t have crapped on the floor, because this is not the sort of thing a wurse would demean itself by doing. So she assumes that one of the wurse’s superpowers is clenching.
“对不起。”爱莎内疚地对呜嘶说，然后转过身。他们现在又讲起了正常语言，在爱莎心里，始终觉得对外婆之外的人说秘密语言让她很不爽。不管怎样，怪物似乎也并不在意用哪种语言。呜嘶则是一副正准备解决生理需求却被人打断的样子。过了一会儿，他们才发现站在这儿发呆有多不妥，爱莎也才意识到它已经好几天没有机会上厕所了，除非它在自己的公寓里这么干。她排除了这种情况，因为它显然没法自己使用马桶，当然也不会直接在地板上排泄，这不是一只呜嘶会屈尊去做的事情。所以她推测呜嘶的超能力之一大概就是憋住生理冲动。
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude. I just wanted to know what sort of accident.”
“对不起，我不该这么没礼貌。我只是想知道是什么样的事故。”
He shakes his head. Elsa continues pointing at his trousers, because she has seen this type of trousers on the news.
他摇了摇头。爱莎还是指着他的裤子，因为她在新闻上看到过这种裤子。
The Monster nods.
怪物点头。
“Those are soldier trousers.”
“这是士兵的裤子。”
“Are you a soldier?” asks Elsa, pointing at his trousers.
“你是个士兵吗？”爱莎指着他的裤子问。
“Accident,” The Monster replies even more tersely.
“意外。”这次的回答更简洁。
“No shit, Sherlock — I wasn’t implying you did it on purpose.”
“废话，我又没说是故意弄的。”话一出口爱莎就后悔了。
She turns to The Monster. He rubs his hands together and looks down at the tracks in the snow as if he’d like to smooth out the snow with an iron.
她转向怪物。他正搓手看着雪地上的痕迹，似乎想要把雪地给熨平。
“How did you get that scar?” asks Elsa, pointing at his face.
“那道伤疤是怎么来的？”爱莎指着他的脸问。
(“No shit, Sherlock” is one of her favorite expressions in English. Her father always says one should not use English expressions if there are perfectly good substitutes in one’s own language, but Elsa actually doesn’t think there is a substitute in this case.)
（“废话”是她最喜欢的英语表达方式之一。她父亲总是说，如果自己的语言中有非常好的替代品，就不应该使用英语表达，但艾尔莎实际上并不认为在这种情况下有替代品。）
“Why are you wearing soldier’s trousers if you’re not a soldier, then?” she interrogates.
“如果你不是军人，为什么要穿军人的裤子？”她质问。
“Old trousers,” The Monster replies tersely.
“旧裤子。”怪物的回答很简洁。
She understands that he is alluding to her, not to himself. She points at the wurse.
她明白他是暗指她，而不是他自己。她指了指呜嘶。
“Normal accident,” he growls, as if that settles matters. The Monster disappears under the huge hood of his jacket. “Late now. Should sleep.”
“普通的事故。”他咆哮道，以为大点儿声就能结束这话题。怪物躲进他外套的巨大兜帽下。“现在晚了。应该睡觉。”
“That one has to sleep with you tonight.”
“那家伙今晚得和你一起睡。”
“Not sleep there. Can’t. Not sleep there. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.”
“它不能睡这儿。不能。不能睡这儿，不能。不能。不能。”
The Monster looks at her as if she just asked him to get naked, roll in saliva, and then run through a postage stamp factory with the lights off. Or maybe not exactly like that. But more or less. He shakes his head, so that his hood sways like a sail.
怪物看着她，好像她刚刚是在要求他立刻脱光衣服，在口水里打滚，然后跑步通过一座没有开灯的邮票厂。也许不是完全一样，但也差不多了。他摇头，兜帽像船帆一样晃动。
The Monster retracts deeper into his hood. Points at Elsa.
怪物的脑袋在兜帽里缩得更深，指着爱莎。
Elsa puts her hands on her stomach and glares at him. “Where’s it going to sleep then?”
爱莎双手搭在肚子上，瞪着他。“那它要睡在哪里呢？”
The wurse comes out of the bushes, making a lot of noise and looking offended. Elsa clears her throat and apologizes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean ‘that thing’ in a bad sense.”
呜嘶走出灌木丛，弄出不小的动静，看上去受到了冒犯。爱莎清了清喉咙，道歉：“对不起。我说‘那玩意儿’没有贬义。”
Elsa snorts. “Mum didn’t even let me get myself an owl! Do you get how she’d react if I came home with that t-h-i-n-g?”
爱莎哼了一声。“妈妈连一只猫头鹰都不让我养！如果我带那玩意儿回家，你知道她会有什么反应吗？”
“Wrote ‘sorry,’ ” he says without turning around.
“写了‘对不起’。”他没有转身。
Elsa rolls her eyes, realizing that if she presses the point he’ll probably have a heart attack. The Monster turns away and looks as if he is trying to insert an invisible eraser into his brain to banish that image from his memory.
爱莎翻了个白眼，意识到如果她再坚持下去，他可能会心脏病发作。怪物转过身，感觉想往自己的大脑里投入一块隐形的橡皮擦，消除他刚刚记忆中的图像。
The Monster breathes grimly under his hood.
怪物在兜帽下深吸一大口气。
The Monster sighs and shakes his head and nods towards the entrance of the house.
怪物叹息着，摇摇头，又向房子门口点了点头。
“What did Granny write in the letter?” she asks him.
“外婆在信里写了什么？”她问他。
“Late now. Sleep,” he growls.
“现在晚了。睡觉。”他低吼。
The Monster rubs his hands in circles faster and faster, and starts to look as if he’s panicking, and hisses down at the ground: “Shit on fur. Has shit on fur. Shit on fur.”
怪物搓手的速度越来越快，整个人恐慌了起来，朝着地面哼哼：“毛上的屎。毛上有屎。屎在毛上。”
The Monster looks like a very tired person being kept awake by someone thumping him at regular intervals, as hard as he can, with a pillowcase filled with yogurt. Or more or less, anyway. He looks up and frowns and evaluates Elsa, as if trying to work out how far he could fling her.
怪物的样子像是个极度疲累的人，每隔一段时间被人用一个装满酸奶的枕头大力砸醒。反正差不多就是这种感觉。他抬头，皱眉，上下掂量着爱莎，像在琢磨能把她甩多远。
The wurse looks a bit as if it’s close to muttering, “Sure you didn’t.”
呜嘶的表情像是在喃喃自语：“你当然没有咯。”
“Not until you tell me about the letter!”
“除非你告诉我那封信的内容！”
“But what else? It was a really long letter!”
“还有什么？那是一封很长的信！”
Elsa steps closer to show him that she’s not afraid of him. Or to show herself.
爱莎走近一步，向他表明她并不害怕他。或是向自己证明这点。
Elsa hears muted panting from the other side of the yard and turns around. George comes jogging towards the house. She knows it’s George because he’s wearing shorts over his leggings and the greenest jacket in the world. He doesn’t see her and the wurse, because he’s too busy bouncing up and down from a bench. George trains a lot at running and jumping up and down from things. Elsa sometimes thinks he’s in a permanent audition to be in the next Super Mario game.
爱莎听到院子另一边隐约的喘息声，转过身看见乔治正慢慢地跑向房子。她知道那是乔治，因为他的衣服总束在运动短裤里头，还总穿世界上最绿的夹克。他正忙着在一条长凳上跳上跳下，所以没有看到呜嘶。乔治在跑步和跳上跳下这些事上花了很多时间。爱莎有时认为他是在为下一款超级马里奥游戏进行长期试镜。
He hunches up inside his hood and starts walking off through the snow.
他缩回兜帽里，在雪地上迈步走了起来。
“Wrote ‘protect castle,’ ” he repeats.
“写了‘保护城堡’。”他说。
“And what else?”
“还有什么？”
Then he disappears in the darkness and is gone. He disappears a lot, Elsa will learn in due course. He’s surprisingly good at it for someone so large.
然后他就在黑暗中消失了，离开了。他动不动就消失，爱莎算是见识到了。身为体型这么庞大的人，他出乎意料地擅长玩消失。
The wurse brushes past her legs so its coat tickles her all the way up to her forehead, and she’s almost knocked down by the force of it. She laughs. It looks at her and seems to be laughing as well.
呜嘶擦过她的腿，皮毛搔得她全身发痒。她几乎被它的力量撞倒。她笑了。它看着她，似乎也笑了。
“Protect you. Protect Elsa.”
“保护你。保护爱莎。”
“Come!” whispers Elsa quickly to the wurse to get it inside before George catches sight of it. And to her surprise, the mighty animal obeys her.
“来！”爱莎立刻叫呜嘶进屋，赶在乔治看到它之前。令她惊奇的是，这只强壮的动物竟服从了她。
The wurse doesn’t look hugely impressed, but it lies down and rolls onto its side and peers nonchalantly into the parts of the cellar that still lie steeped in darkness. Elsa checks where it’s looking, then focuses on the wurse.
呜嘶似乎并不乐意，但还是躺下，滚到了一边，漫不经心地张望着地下室还处在黑暗中的部分。爱莎循着它的视线看了看，然后又看向呜嘶。
She makes sure Britt-Marie is not prowling about on the stairs and that George still hasn’t seen them, and then she leads the wurse down into the cellar. The storage units are each assigned to a flat, and Granny’s unit is unlocked and empty.
她确认布里特—玛丽没有在楼梯上徘徊，而乔治也没有看到他们，于是她领着呜嘶去了地下室。每一户公寓都分配有一间储藏室，外婆的储藏室没有上锁，里面空空如也。
The wurse lies unconcerned on its side on the floor, its hatchet-sized incisors glinting through the darkness.
呜嘶漠不关心地躺在那儿，斧头般的门牙在黑暗中反着光。
Apart from Granny, the wurse is the first friend Elsa has ever had.
除了外婆，呜嘶是爱莎拥有的第一个朋友。
“You have to stay here tonight,” she whispers. “Tomorrow we’ll find you a better hiding place.”
“今晚你必须留在这里，”她低声说，“明天我再给你找个更好的藏身处。”
“Granny always said there were ghosts down here,” she says firmly. “You mustn’t scare them, d’you hear?”
“外婆总说这里有鬼魂，”她紧张地说，“你不要吓唬它们，听到了吗？”
“I’ll bring more chocolate tomorrow if you’re nice,” she promises.
“如果你态度好，我明天会带更多巧克力来。”她保证。
The wurse looks as if it is taking this concession into consideration. Elsa leans forward and kisses it on the nose. Then she darts up the stairs and closes the cellar door carefully behind her. She sneaks up without turning on the lights, to minimize the risk of anyone seeing her, but when she comes to Britt-Marie and Kent’s flat she crouches and goes up the last flight in big leaps. She’s almost sure that Britt-Marie is standing inside, peering out of the spyhole.
呜嘶仿佛在认真考虑这个提议。爱莎向前倾，亲了亲它的鼻子。然后她飞奔上楼，小心翼翼地关上身后地下室的门，接着偷溜上楼，没有开灯，尽量减少被人看到的风险。来到布里特—玛丽和肯特的公寓门口时，她猫起腰，大步跨上最后一级楼梯。她几乎可以肯定，布里特—玛丽就站在里面，从猫眼往外偷看。
The other children keep their distance, watching her guardedly. Rumors of The Monster’s intervention outside the park have spread, but Elsa knows it will only last a short while. It happened too far from school. Things that happen outside school may as well be happening in outer space, because she is protected in here anyway. She may have a respite of a couple of hours, but those who are chasing her will keep testing the boundaries, and once they drum up the courage to have another pop at her they’ll hit her harder than ever.
其他的孩子保持着距离，警惕地看着她。关于怪物在公园外进行干涉的传闻已经传开，但爱莎知道这只会持续很短时间。那件事发生的地方离学校太远了。发生在学校以外的事情就像发生在外太空一样，不管怎样她在学校里总是受到保护的，这为她争取到几个小时的缓刑时间。但那些追逐她的人会一直试探，一旦找到机会，又会冲她来的，到时他们会揍她揍得更狠。
The next morning both The Monster’s flat and the cellar storage unit are dark and empty. George drives Elsa to school. Mum has already gone to the hospital because, as usual, there’s some emergency going on there and it’s Mum’s job to sort out emergencies.
第二天早上，怪物公寓和地下室的储藏室都黑乎乎、空荡荡的。乔治开车送爱莎去学校，而妈妈已经去医院了，像往常一样，那里发生了一些紧急情况，妈妈的工作就是解决紧急情况。
George talks about his protein bars the whole way. He bought a whole box of them, he says, and now he can’t find them anywhere. George likes talking about protein bars. And various functional items. Functional clothes and functional jogging shoes, for example. George loves functions. Elsa hopes no one ever invents protein bars with functions, because then George’s head will probably explode. Not that Elsa would find that such a bad thing, but she imagines Mum would be upset about it, and there’d be an awful lot of cleaning. George drops her off in the parking area after asking her one more time if she’s seen his missing protein bars. She groans with boredom and jumps out.
乔治一路上都在谈论他的蛋白棒。他买了一整盒，说这个牌子现在哪儿都找不到了。乔治喜欢谈论蛋白棒以及其他功能性物品。比方说，功能性服装与功能性慢跑鞋。乔治爱功能性。爱莎希望没有人发明出功能性蛋白棒，因为那样的话，乔治的头可能会爆炸。倒不是说爱莎觉得这是件坏事，但她估计妈妈会伤心，而且会有很多清理工作要做。乔治让她在停车场下车时，又问了她一次有没有看到他失踪的蛋白棒。她不耐烦地随口敷衍，然后跳下车。
Eventually she lets herself drift off in her own thoughts. That is probably why she doesn’t see it. She’s thinking about Granny and Miamas, wondering what plan Granny had in mind when she sent her out on this treasure hunt; that is, if she had any plan at all. Granny always sort of made her plans as she went along, and now that she’s no longer there Elsa is having problems recognizing what the next step of the treasure hunt is supposed to be. Above all she wonders what Granny meant when she said she was worried that Elsa would hate her when she found out more about her. Up until now Elsa has only found out that Granny had some pretty dodgy friends, which was hardly a shock, you might say.
最终，她沉浸在自己的思绪中。这也许就是她没注意到它的原因。她想着外婆和密阿玛斯，想知道外婆让她去寻宝到底有什么计划，当然前提是有任何计划。外婆总是边行动边制定计划，现在她不在了，爱莎很难搞明白这场寻宝游戏的下一步是什么。更重要的是，她想知道，外婆说的“当你知道我的过去时，不要恨我”到底是什么意思。到目前为止，爱莎只发现外婆有一些非常不靠谱的朋友，那对她而言没什么奇怪的。
And she knows that The Monster will never get anywhere near the fence even for her sake, because schools are full of children and children are full of bacteria, and there’s not enough alcogel in the whole world for The Monster after that.
而她知道怪物不会为她靠近围墙，因为学校里全是孩子，而孩子们身上满是细菌，如果他来了，那之后全世界的洗手液都不够他用。
In the first break she allows herself a walk along the fence. She tightens her backpack straps from time to time, to make sure it isn’t hanging too loose. She knows they won’t be chasing her now, but it’s a difficult habit to break. You run slower if your backpack’s loose.
第一节课下课时，她沿着围墙走了一圈，时不时地拉紧背包肩带，以确保它不会太松。她知道他们现在不会追她，但拉紧肩带是个很难打破的习惯，如果你的背包松了，你就无法跑快。
But she enjoys her freedom that morning in spite of all. It’s the second-to-last day before the Christmas holidays and after tomorrow she can have a couple of weeks of rest from running. A couple of weeks without notes in her locker about how ugly she is and how they’re going to kill her.
总之，她很享受这天早上的自由。这是圣诞节假期前的倒数第二天，后天她就可以歇上几个星期。几个星期没有储物柜里的纸条——那些写着她有多丑、他们将如何揍她的字条。
And Elsa obviously understands that Granny’s statement about who she was before she became a granny must have something to do with Elsa’s mum, but she’d rather not ask Mum unless she has to. Everything Elsa says to Mum these days seems to end in an argument. And Elsa hates it. She hates that one can’t be allowed to know things unless one starts arguing.
爱莎当然明白，外婆声称的“变成外婆之前，她是怎样的人”，这一定与妈妈有关，但不到万不得已，她不想问妈妈。这些天里，爱莎对妈妈说的一切话似乎都在争吵中结束。爱莎讨厌这样。她讨厌一个人只有通过争吵才能获取事情的真相。
So it must be for that reason that she doesn’t notice it. Because she’s probably no more than two or three yards away when she finally sees it, which is an insane distance not to see a wurse from. It’s sitting by the gate, just outside the fence. She laughs, surprised. The wurse seems to be laughing as well, but internally.
所以一定是这个原因，让她没有注意到它。最终看见它的时候，他们相距只有两三米远，一般情况下你很难离这么近都没有看到一只呜嘶。它坐在校门口，就在围墙外面。她大笑起来，同时又很惊讶。呜嘶似乎也在笑，但是默默地没出声。
And she hates being as alone as one can only be without Granny.
她也讨厌独自一人，没有外婆的陪伴。
“I looked for you this morning,” she says, and goes into the street, even though this is not allowed during breaks. “Were you nice to the ghosts?”
“我今天早上找你来着。”她走到街上，尽管休息时间不允许出校门。“你对鬼魂的态度好吗？”爱莎问。
The wurse doesn’t look as if it was, but she throws her arms around its neck all the same, buries her hands deep in its thick black fur, and exclaims: “Wait, I’ve got something for you!” The wurse greedily sticks its nose into her backpack, but looks remarkably disappointed when it pulls it back out again.
呜嘶看起来好像并没有按爱莎的要求做，但她还是抱住了它的脖子，把手深深地埋进它厚厚的黑毛里。“等等，我有东西给你！”呜嘶贪婪地把鼻子凑近她的背包，但很快就露出失望的表情，又把鼻子收了回去。
“They’re protein bars,” says Elsa apologetically. “We don’t have any sweets at home because Mum doesn’t want me to eat them, but George says these are mega-tasty!”
“这些是蛋白棒，”爱莎怀着歉意，“我们家没有糖果，因为妈妈不让我吃，但是乔治说这些非常好吃！”
She knows that the other children in the playground see her do it. The teachers may be able to avoid noticing the biggest, blackest wurse appearing out of nowhere in the morning break, but no child in the entire universe could.
她知道操场上的其他孩子都看见了。老师们也许能忽略这只课间休息时不知从哪里突然冒出来的巨大的黑色呜嘶，但整个宇宙里都没有一个孩子会忽视它。
No one leaves any notes in Elsa’s locker that day.
那一天，没有人在爱莎的储物柜里留下任何字条。
The wurse doesn’t like them at all. It only has about nine of them. When the bell goes, Elsa hugs it hard, hard, hard one more time and whispers, “Thanks for coming!”
呜嘶完全不喜欢。它只吃了九块。上课铃响了，爱莎再一次紧紧、紧紧地拥抱它，低声说：“谢谢你来！”
0 条评论