Elsa’s birthday was always extremely important to Granny. Maybe because Elsa’s birthday is two days after Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve, when most people celebrate the holiday, is very important to everyone else, and as a result no child with a birthday two days after Christmas Eve ever gets quite the same amount of attention as a child born in August or April. So Granny had a tendency to overcompensate. Mum had banned her from planning surprise parties, after that time Granny let off fireworks inside a hamburger restaurant and accidentally set fire to a seventeen-year-old girl who was dressed up as a clown and apparently supposed to be providing “entertainment for the children.” She really was entertaining, Elsa should say in her defense. That day, Elsa learned some of her very best swearwords.
爱莎的生日对外婆来说是非常重要的。也许因为爱莎的生日是圣诞节过后两天，而圣诞节后两天过生日的孩子不会得到像八月或四月出生的孩子同样多的关注。所以外婆有一个倾向：过度补偿。妈妈已经禁止她再策划惊喜派对了。因为有一次，外婆在一家汉堡店里放烟花，结果不小心烧到了一个打扮成小丑、本该给孩子们逗乐的十七岁女孩。爱莎得为外婆辩解一句，那姑娘真的把所有孩子都逗乐了。那天，爱莎学到了她最棒的一些脏话。
It’s a bit tricky to explain, but some things in Granny’s fairy tales are like that. You have to understand, first of all, that no creature in the Land-of-Almost-Awake is sadder than the sea-angel, and it’s actually only once Elsa remembers this whole story that Granny’s treasure hunt begins to make sense.
这解释起来颇为棘手，但在外婆的童话故事里有些东西就是这样的。你要明白，首先，在不眠大陆，没有比海天使更悲伤的生物，实际上直到爱莎记起这整个故事，外婆的寻宝游戏才开始说得通。
The thing is, in Miamas you don’t get presents on your birthday. You give presents. Preferably something you have at home and are very fond of, which you then give to someone you like even more. That’s why everyone in Miamas looks forward to other people’s birthdays, and that’s the origin of the expression “What do you get from someone who has everything?” When the enphants took this fairy tale into the real world, someone here managed to get the wrong end of the stick, of course, making it “What do you GIVE to someone who has everything?” But what else would you expect? These are the same muppets who managed to misinterpret the word “interpret,” which means something completely different in Miamas. In Miamas an interpreter is a creature most easily described as a combination between a goat and a chocolate cookie. Interpreters are extremely gifted linguistically, as well as excellent to grill on the barbecue. At least they were until Elsa became a vegetarian, after which Granny was not allowed to mention them anymore.
事情是这样的，在密阿玛斯生日这天你不收礼物，而是给别人送礼物。最好是你家里有的、自己很喜欢的东西，然后就把它送给你更加喜欢的人。这就是为什么密阿玛斯的每个人都期待其他人的生日，也是“你从拥有一切的人那里得到了什么”这句话的由来。当蚁象把这个童话故事带去现实世界后，这里的人弄反了，把这句话变成了“你给拥有一切的人送了什么”。还有什么指望呢？同样是这些笨蛋曲解了“口译”这个词的意思，它在密阿玛斯的意思完全不同。简单来说，在密阿玛斯，“口译者”是一种羊和巧克力饼干结合的生物。它们有非常高的语言天赋，烤起来也很好吃。至少在爱莎成为素食主义者之前，的确是这样的。不过那之后，外婆就再也不提它们了。
Elsa was five and about to turn six when she read about it online for the first time. On her sixth birthday, Granny told her the story of the sea-angel. To teach her that not all monsters are monsters in the beginning, and not all monsters look like monsters. Some carry their monstrosity inside.
爱莎快六岁时，第一次在网上读到这件事。她六岁生日那天，外婆告诉她海天使的故事，以此教导她不是所有怪物一开始就是怪物，也不是所有怪物看起来都像怪物。有些人会把怪物的一面藏在心里。
Anyway: so Elsa was born two days after Christmas Eve almost eight years ago, the same day that the scientists registered the gamma radiation from that magnetar. The other thing that happened that day was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Elsa knows that this is a sickeningly big wave caused by an earthquake. Except sort of at sea. So more like an ocean-quake, really, if you want to be persnickety about it. And Elsa is quite persnickety.
不管怎样，爱莎是在八年前的圣诞节过后两天出生的，也就是科学家记录下磁星放出伽玛射线的同一天。那天发生的另一件事是印度洋海啸。爱莎知道那是一波特别大的地震引起的，只不过是在海上。所以，它更像一场海洋地震，真的，如果你吹毛求疵的话。爱莎挺容易吹毛求疵的。
Two hundred thousand people died at the same time that Elsa started to live. Sometimes when Elsa’s mum thinks Elsa can’t hear, she tells George she still feels guilty — it cuts her to the quick to think that this was the happiest day of her life.
在二十万人死亡的同时，爱莎开始了她的人生。有时，在以为爱莎听不到的情况下，爱莎的妈妈会对乔治说她仍然感到内疚——想到这是她一生中最快乐的一天，她就备受良心的谴责。
The very last thing the shadows did before the ending of the War-Without-End was to destroy all of Mibatalos, the kingdom where all the warriors had been brought up. But then came Wolfheart and the wurses, and everything turned, and when the shadows fled the Land-of-Almost-Awake they charged out over the sea with terrible force from all the coastlines of the six kingdoms. And their imprint on the surface of the water stirred up hideous waves, which, one by one, smashed into each other until they had formed a single wave as high as the eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. And to stop anyone pursuing the shadows, the wave turned and threw itself back in towards land.
暗影在无尽战争的尾声做的最后一件事情就是摧毁密巴塔洛斯——培养所有战士的王国。但狼心和呜嘶们扭转了战局。暗影逃离不眠大陆时，带着骇人的威力从六大王国的海岸线逃向大海。它们在海面上留下的痕迹激起了可怕的波浪，波浪一个接一个地互相撞击，最终形成了一道像“一万个童话永恒”那样高的巨浪。为了阻止追兵，巨浪调转方向，把自己抛向陆地。
It could have crushed the whole Land-of-Almost-Awake. It could have broken over the land and decimated the castles and the houses and all those who lived in them far more terribly than all the armies of the shadows could have managed through all eternity.
它原本会粉碎整个不眠大陆，冲上陆地，摧毁城堡和所有生活在城堡里的人，它比全部暗影的军队在“完全永恒”中造成的恐惧还要大。
And even if Granny always said that those snow-angels were arrogant sods who sniffed at wine and made a right fuss, she never tried to take away from them the heroism they showed on that day. For the day when the War-Without-End came to an end was the happiest day ever for everyone in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, apart from the hundredth snow-angel.
即使外婆老说，那些雪天使是挑三拣四、烂醉如泥的自负混蛋，她也从未诋毁过他们在那天显示出的英雄气概。那是无尽战争的终结，是不眠大陆所有居民最幸福的一天，除了那第一百位雪天使。
That was when a hundred snow-angels saved the remaining five kingdoms. Because, while everyone else was running from the wave, the snow-angels rushed right into it. With their wings open and the power of all their epic stories in their hearts, they formed a magical wall against the water and stopped it coming in. Not even a wave created by shadows could get past a hundred snow-angels prepared to die so that a whole world of fairy tales could live.
就是那时，一百个雪天使拯救了五大王国。当其他人逃离巨浪时，雪天使冲了上去。他们张开翅膀，凭借心中史诗故事所蕴含的力量，组成了一面神奇的墙，抵挡巨浪，阻止了它的前进。即使是暗影创造的巨浪也无法通过一百个视死如归的雪天使，于是整个童话世界得以幸存。
Only one of them turned back from the massive body of water.
但他们中有一个，在巨浪面前转过了身。
Since then, the angel had drifted up and down the coast, burdened by a curse that prevented it from leaving the place that had taken away all those it loved. It did this for so long that the people in the villages along the coast forgot who it used to be and started calling it “the sea-angel” instead. And as the years went by, the angel was buried deeper and deeper in an avalanche of sorrow, until its heart split in two and then its whole body split, like a shattered mirror. When the children from the villages sneaked down to the coast to catch a glimpse of it, one moment they might see a face of such beauty it took their breath away; but in the next, they would see something so terrible and deformed and wild looking back at them that they would run screaming all the way home.
从那天起，那位天使就沿着海岸随波逐流，身中诅咒——无法离开这个带走她心爱之人的地方。时间久了，海岸沿线的人们忘记了她是谁，开始称之为“海天使”。随着岁月的流逝，天使在悲伤中越陷越深，直到她的心裂成两半，然后她的身体四分五裂，像一面破碎的镜子。村子里的孩子们溜去海岸边偷看她，某个瞬间他们也许会看到一张美得令人窒息的容颜；但下一秒，就会变成一张可怕、畸形、粗野的脸回望着他们，吓得他们尖叫着跑回家。
According to one of the most-often-told stories in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, it was a small child from Miamas who managed to break the curse on the sea-angel, releasing it from the demons of memory that held it captive.
不眠大陆一个流传甚广的故事说，是一个密阿玛斯的小孩打破了海天使的诅咒，将她从监禁她的回忆恶魔手中释放。
Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.
不是所有的怪物一开始都是怪物。有些因为悲伤才变成了怪物。
So Elsa sits in the passenger seat in Renault and inhales deeply. As usual, Renault’s doors weren’t locked, because Granny never locked anything, and he still smells of smoke. Elsa knows it’s bad, but because it’s Granny’s smoke she takes deep breaths of it anyway.
爱莎坐在雷诺的副驾驶座上，深吸一口气。像往常一样，雷诺的门没有锁，外婆从来不锁任何东西。车里闻上去仍然有烟味。爱莎知道这很不好，但因为那是外婆的烟，她还是深深地吸了一口气。
It has taken Elsa a few days to work it out. Only tonight, when Britt-Marie mentioned that Renault had suddenly been parked in the garage without anyone knowing how it got there, did Elsa remember where Granny had put the lion on guard.
爱莎花了几天才明白过来。今晚布里特—玛丽提到，雷诺突然停到了车库里，没人知道它怎么跑那儿去的，直到这时，爱莎才记起外婆让狮子负责守护的是什么地方。
When Granny told Elsa that story for the first time on her sixth birthday, Elsa realized she was no longer a child. So she gave Granny her cuddly toy lion as a present. Because Elsa didn’t need it anymore, she realized, and wanted it to protect her granny instead. And that night Granny whispered into Elsa’s ear that if they were ever parted, if Granny ever got lost, she would send the lion to go and tell Elsa where she was.
外婆第一次给爱莎讲这个故事是在她六岁生日那天，爱莎意识到自己不再是个孩子了。她把她的玩具狮子作为礼物送给了外婆。因为爱莎不再需要它，并且希望玩具狮子能保护外婆。那天晚上，外婆在爱莎的耳边说，如果她们分开了，如果外婆迷路了，她就派这只狮子来告诉爱莎她在哪里。
The glove compartment in Renault. That was where Granny kept her cigarettes. And nothing in Granny’s life needed a lion guarding it more than that.
雷诺的储物箱。那是外婆存放香烟的地方。外婆的生命中没有什么比这里更需要狮子的守护了。
Later that night Elsa sits on the top step outside Granny’s flat until the ceiling lights switch themselves off. Runs her finger over Granny’s writing on the envelope again and again, but doesn’t open it. Just puts it in her backpack and stretches out on the cold floor and mostly keeps her eyes closed. Tries one more time to get off to Miamas. She lies there for hours without succeeding. Stays there until she hears the main door at the bottom of the house opening and closing again. She lies on the floor and mostly keeps her eyes closed until she feels the night embracing the windows of the house and hears the drunk start rattling around with something a couple floors farther down.
那天晚上，爱莎坐在外婆的公寓门外最顶上的一级楼梯，直到天花板上的灯自动熄灭。她用手指一遍又一遍地摸着信封上外婆的字迹，但没有拆开。她把信放进背包，在冰冷的地面上伸长腿，微微闭上眼睛，试着再一次前往密阿玛斯。她在那里躺了几个小时都没有成功。她听见楼房底层的正门开了又关，又继续躺在地板上微闭着眼睛，直到夜色笼罩大楼的玻璃窗，听见醉鬼在几级台阶下跌跌撞撞地走着，似乎手里拿着什么东西。
“I miss you,” she whispers into the upholstery of the backrest.
“我想你。”她冲着旁边的座椅低声说。
Then she opens the glove compartment. Moves the lion aside and takes out the letter. On it is written: “For Miamas’s Bravest Knight, to be delivered to:” And then — scrawled in Granny’s awful, awful handwriting — a name and an address.
然后她打开仪表台上的储物箱，把狮子移到一边，拿出信。信封上写着：“密阿玛斯最勇敢的骑士，递送至…”外婆糟糕的笔迹潦草地写着一个名字和一个地址。
Elsa’s mum doesn’t like it when she calls the drunk “the drunk.” “What do I call her then?” Elsa used to ask, and then Mum used to look very unsure and sound a bit smarmy, while managing to suggest something like: “It’s… I mean, it’s someone who’s… tired.” And then Granny used to chime in, “Tired? Hell yeah, of course you get tired when you’re up boozing all night!” And then Mum used to yell, “Mum!” and then Granny used to throw out her hands and ask, “Oh, good God, what did I say wrong now?” and then it was time for Elsa to put on her headphones.
爱莎的妈妈不喜欢她叫醉鬼“醉鬼”。“那我该叫她什么？”爱莎曾经这么问。然而妈妈自己也很不确定，绞尽脑汁才给出一条听着像奉承的建议：“嗯…我看，可以说是一个…很累的人。”外婆这时插嘴了：“累？他妈的当然累啊，你整夜喝酒你也会累！”然后妈妈会大喊“妈妈”！外婆一摊手：“哦，天啊，我又说错话了，是吗？”这种时刻爱莎就必须戴上耳机。
That’s what the drunk always does. Roars and screams and bashes things with that shoehorn. Then sings that same old song of hers. Of course, no one ever comes out and quiets her down, not even Britt-Marie, for in this house drunks are like monsters. People think if they ignore them they’ll cease to exist.
醉鬼总是这样。咆哮、尖叫、用鞋拔子敲打某件东西，然后唱她那首老歌。当然从没有人出来叫她安静下来，即使是布里特—玛丽，因为在这栋楼里，醉鬼和怪物一样——人们认为，如果无视他们，他们就不复存在了。
Elsa sits up into a squatting position and peers down through the gap between the stairs. She can only make out a glimpse of the drunk’s socks as she shambles past, swinging the shoehorn as if scything tall grass. Elsa can’t quite explain to herself why she does it, but she heaves herself up on her tiptoes and sneaks down the first flight of stairs. Out of pure curiosity, perhaps. Or more likely because she is bored and frustrated about no longer being able to get to Miamas.
爱莎蹲下身，透过楼梯间的缝隙向下张望。她只能在醉鬼踉跄之间瞥见一眼她的袜子，挥动的鞋拔子扫过高处的玻璃。爱莎也说不清自己为什么要这么做，但她踮起脚尖，偷溜下楼梯。纯粹出于好奇，也许。又或许是她很无聊，因为去不了密阿玛斯而沮丧。
“Turn off the water, I said! No bathing at night!!!” the drunk stammers from below at no one in particular, whacking her shoehorn against the banister.
“把水关掉，我说！晚上不准洗澡！！！”醉鬼在楼下结结巴巴地喊，拿鞋拔子砸着楼梯扶手，她的叫喊没有特定的对象。
The door of the drunk’s flat is open. There’s a faint light cast by an overturned floor lamp. Photos on all the walls. Elsa has never seen so many photos — she thought Granny had a lot of them on her ceiling, but these must be in the thousands. Each of them is framed in a small white wooden frame and all are of two teenage boys and a man who must be their father. In one of the photos, the man and the boys are standing on a beach with a sparkling green sea behind them. The boys are both wearing wetsuits. They smile. They are bronzed. They look happy.
醉鬼公寓的门敞开着。一盏翻倒的落地灯放出微弱的光芒。满墙都是照片。爱莎从没见过那么多照片——她本以为外婆的天花板上已经够多了，但这里有几千张，每一张都装在小小的白色木头相框里。所有照片拍的都是两个青春期男孩和一个可能是他们父亲的男人。在其中一张照片里，男人和男孩们站在海滩上，身后是闪光的绿色大海。两个男孩全身古铜色皮肤，穿着潜水服。他们微笑着，看上去很快乐。
“WHATAREYOUDOINGHERE?”
“你、在、这、里、干、什、么？”
Beside the card hangs a mirror. Shattered.
贺卡旁边挂着一面镜子。四分五裂。
Under the frame is one of those cheap congratulatory cards, the kind you buy in a gas station when you’ve forgotten to get a proper card. “To Mum, from your boys,” it says on the front.
相框下是一张廉价的贺卡，那种你因为忘记准备贺卡，于是顺路在加油站买的便宜货。“给妈妈，你的儿子们。”正面这么写着。
The words reverberating over the landing are so sudden and so filled with fury that Elsa loses her balance and slips down the bottom four or five steps, right into the wall. The echo throws itself at her, as if determined to claw her ears.
突然楼道间响起愤怒的喊声，爱莎吓了一跳，失去平衡，一屁股滑倒，摔了四五级台阶，撞到墙上。
Elsa peers up through the railings at the deranged person wielding the shoehorn at her, looking simultaneously incandescent and terrified. Her eyes flicker. That black skirt is full of creases now. She smells of wine, Elsa can feel it all the way from the floor below. Her hair looks like a bundle of string in which two birds have got themselves tangled up during a fight. She has purple bags under her eyes.
爱莎透过楼梯扶手的缝隙看着这个冲她挥舞鞋拔子的疯狂女人，跟对方一样既愤怒又害怕。那女人的眼睛里闪着泪花。身上的黑裙现在皱巴巴的。她身上一股酒味儿，浓烈得一直传到了跌坐在地上的爱莎的鼻子里。她的头发像一蓬稻草，有两只小鸟被缠在里头打了一架。她的眼睛下面挂着发紫的眼袋。
The woman sways. She probably means to yell, but it comes out as a wheeze: “You’re not allowed to bathe at night. The water… turn off the water. Everyone will drown…”
穿黑裙的女人摇晃了一下。她似乎本想要大喊，但吐出口的却是喘息：“晚上不许洗澡，水…关掉水。所有人会淹死…”
The woman looks confused. As if she has suddenly forgotten where she is. She disappears and, in the next moment, Elsa feels her mum gently plucking her from the stairs. Feels her warm breath against her neck and her “ssshhh” in her ear, as if they were standing in front of a deer and had got a bit too close.
那女人看起来很迷茫，似乎一瞬间忘记了自己身在何处。然后，她走开了，而下一秒，爱莎就感觉到妈妈在楼梯上温柔地拽了拽她，感觉到脖子后她温暖的气息，耳边“嘘——”的轻语，就好像她们正站在一头狍子跟前，站得有点儿太近了。
“Shush,” whispers Mum again, and keeps her arms tight around her.
“嘘。”妈妈又轻声说，然后紧紧地抱着爱莎。
Elsa opens her mouth, but Mum puts her finger over her lips.
爱莎张了张嘴，但妈妈用手指在嘴上比了个“安静”的手势。
The white cable she always talks into sits in her ear, but the other end just dangles against her hip, disconnected. Elsa realizes there has probably never been anyone there, and that’s not an easy thing for an almost-eight-year-old to understand. Granny told many fairy tales about many things, but never about women in black skirts pretending to have telephone conversations while they went up the stairs, so their neighbors wouldn’t think they’d bought all that wine for themselves.
她的耳朵里还塞着她总对着里头说话的白色耳机，但另一头荡在她的胯部，并没有连着手机。爱莎意识到，也许她从未跟任何人通话。一个快八岁的孩子能明白这一点颇为不易。外婆讲过很多童话故事，谈论过很多事，但从未说过这种故事：黑裙女人假装在上楼时讲电话，为了不让她的邻居觉得她买的所有酒都是给自己喝的。
Elsa curls up in her arms in the dark, and they see the woman in the black skirt drifting back and forth down there like a flag that’s torn itself free in the wind. Plastic bags lie scattered on the floor of her flat. One of the wine boxes has toppled over. A few last drops of red are dripping onto the parquet floor. Mum makes a gentle movement against Elsa’s hand. They stand up quietly and go back up the stairs.
爱莎在黑暗中蜷成一团，她们看着那黑裙女人来来回回地游荡，就像一面旗子在风中撕扯着自己。塑料袋散落在她公寓房内的地上，其中一个酒盒翻了，最后的几滴红酒滴在木地板上。妈妈轻轻捏了一下爱莎的手。她们安静地起身，走上楼梯。
And that night Elsa’s mum tells Elsa what everyone except Elsa’s parents was talking about on the day Elsa was born. About a wave that broke over a beach five thousand miles away and crushed everything in its path. About two boys who swam out after their father and never came back.
那晚，爱莎的妈妈告诉了爱莎，在她出生那天，除了她父母之外，那件人人都在谈论的事情。一万公里之外，一波巨浪侵袭了某个海滩，摧毁了阻挡在它面前的一切。有两个男孩跟在他们父亲之后游了出去，再也没有回来。
Elsa hears how the drunk starts singing her song. Because not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.
爱莎听见醉鬼开始唱她那首歌。因为不是所有怪物外表看上去就是怪物。有些怪物隐藏在心里。
0 条评论