Page Forty-One Leaves the Van

The mobile library van made its rounds of the valley every summer, and Elan and Ozan had been hired to help. Their jobs were small. They stamped the cards, stacked the returns and carried the heavy boxes of picture books up the steps.

每年夏天，流动图书馆的车都会在山谷里巡回一圈，伊兰和奥赞受雇来帮忙。他们的活儿不重：给借书卡盖章，整理还回来的书，把沉重的绘本箱子搬上台阶。

On the second Friday, a book came back that Elan had never seen before. It was thick and brown, with a cracked spine and a title in faded gold: The Hearth Atlas of Salt and Smoke. The woman who returned it said she had borrowed it for a week and cooked from it twice.

第二个星期五，有一本伊兰从没见过的书被还了回来。它又厚又棕，书脊裂了，书名是褪色的金字：《盐与烟的灶台图志》。还书的女士说，她借了一个星期，照着它做过两次饭。

"Both meals were wonderful," she said. "But the last pages are a little loose, I am afraid."

“两顿饭都很棒，”她说，“不过恐怕最后几页有点松了。”

Elan thanked her and set the book on the desk. After the van had pulled away from the stop, he opened it to check for damage, and he turned the pages one by one. Near the middle, he stopped.

伊兰向她道了谢，把书放在桌上。车子驶离了站点之后，他翻开书检查有没有损坏，一页一页地翻。翻到中间，他停住了。

"Ozan, come and look at this," he said.

“奥赞，快来看这个。”他说。

Ozan leaned over his shoulder. Between page forty and page forty-two there was a ragged stub of paper, as if a page had been torn out in a hurry. The edge was still slightly damp, and when Elan touched it, the stub gave off a faint smell of woodsmoke.

奥赞凑到他肩膀边上。在第四十页和第四十二页之间，有一小截参差不齐的纸茬，像是有一页被人匆忙撕走了。纸的边缘还微微潮湿，伊兰一碰，那截纸茬散发出一股淡淡的柴烟味。

"Nobody tore that," Ozan said. "Look at the stitching. The page just left."

“没人撕过它，”奥赞说，“你看订线。这一页是自己走掉的。”

Elan laughed, and then he saw that Ozan was not joking. The librarian who drove the van had warned them on the first day that some of the old books on the shelf were unusual. She had said the Atlas was one of them, but she had not explained how.

伊兰笑了，然后他发现奥赞不是在开玩笑。开车的图书管理员第一天就提醒过他们，架子上有些旧书不同寻常。她说过这本《图志》就是其中之一，却没有解释是怎么个不同寻常。

They found out the rest from a note slipped inside the back cover. It was written in a neat hand: "The pages of this book are not content to stay bound. If one goes missing, follow the road it was carried along. It will always end up with the person it belongs to."

剩下的事，他们是从夹在封底里的一张字条上知道的。字条上是工整的字迹：“这本书的书页不甘心一直被装订着。如果有一页不见了，就沿着它被带走的路去找。它最终总会回到属于它的那个人身边。”

"That sounds like a joke," Elan said.

“听起来像个玩笑。”伊兰说。

"Then it is a joke that smells of smoke," Ozan replied, and he reached for the route map.

“那它就是个带着烟味的玩笑。”奥赞回答，伸手去拿路线图。

The woman had returned the book at the crossroads by the beekeeper's farm, the last stop before this one. The page could have slipped out there, and Ozan remembered seeing something pale flutter across the yard.

那位女士是在养蜂人农场旁边的十字路口还的书，那是上一个站点。书页可能就是在那里掉出来的，奥赞记得自己看到过有什么淡色的东西在院子里飘过。

They asked the librarian for ten minutes and ran the length of the lane. They found the beekeeper sitting on an upturned crate with a sheet of paper in her gloved hands.

他们向图书管理员要了十分钟，沿着小巷一路跑过去。他们看到养蜂人坐在一个倒扣的板条箱上，戴着手套的手里拿着一张纸。

"I found this on the gate," she said when they asked. "I read it twice. It is a recipe for a fish soup, which makes no sense, because I have never eaten fish in my life."

“我是在大门上发现的，”他们一问，她就说，“我读了两遍。这是一道鱼汤的食谱，但这没道理，因为我这辈子从没吃过鱼。”

She frowned at the page. "Every time I try to read the ingredients, the words slide away. It is plainly meant for somebody else."

她对着那页纸皱起眉头。“每次我想读配料，字就滑开了。很明显，它是留给别人的。”

Elan thanked her and took the page. It felt warm, like a stone left in the sun. But as soon as he reached the road, it tugged gently against his fingers, and a gust of air lifted it out of his hand.

伊兰谢过她，接过了那页纸。它摸起来是暖的，像一块晒过太阳的石头。可他一走到路上，它就轻轻地拽他的手指，一阵风把它从他手里掀了起来。

"It is leaving again!" Ozan shouted.

“它又要走了！”奥赞喊道。

They chased it down the hill, through a gap in a hedge and along the riverbank to the little ferry landing. The page skimmed across the water, and a mechanic wiping oil from his hands caught it neatly against his chest.

他们追着它下了山坡，穿过树篱的缺口，沿着河岸一直追到小渡口。那页纸掠过水面，一个正在擦手上机油的修理工利落地用胸口把它截住了。

"Is this yours?" the mechanic asked. He read the first line aloud, and then he frowned.

“这是你们的吗？”修理工问。他大声念了第一行，然后皱起了眉头。

"I cannot make sense of it. It describes a kitchen, I think, but the roof is a ship's deck. Whoever wrote this was not from around here." He glanced at the sky. "The ferry leaves in five minutes. If I had the time, I would help you look. A girl was waiting at the school gate earlier, and she was staring at everything that flew by."

“我看不懂。它好像在描述一间厨房，可屋顶却是一艘船的甲板。写这个的人不是本地人。”他瞥了一眼天空。“渡船五分钟后开。要是我有时间，就帮你们找了。早些时候，有个女孩在校门口等着，她盯着每一样飞过的东西看。”

He pressed the page into Ozan's hand. For a moment, it lay still, the ink glimmering as though it were wet. Then it slipped between his fingers, drifted up over the roof of the ferry house and went sailing away across the fields.

他把那页纸按进奥赞的手里。有那么一会儿，它安静地躺着，墨迹闪着微光，像是还没干。然后它从他指缝间滑了出去，飘过渡口小屋的屋顶，掠过田野飞走了。

"We must have let go too early," Elan panted, as they ran. "That is the second time!"

“我们一定是松手太早了，”伊兰边跑边喘着气说，“这已经是第二次了！”

"Third time lucky," said Ozan, who had never run so fast in his life.

“第三次就灵了。”奥赞说，他这辈子从没跑得这么快过。

The school gate stood at the end of the valley road, where the van was due to stop at four o'clock. It was a quarter to, and a thin line of children was already waiting. Some of them were reading and some were arguing. One was holding a sheet of paper over her head like a flag.

校门在山谷公路的尽头，车子四点钟要在那里停靠。现在是差一刻四点，已经有一小队孩子在等着了。有的在看书，有的在争吵，还有一个女孩把一张纸像旗子一样举过头顶。

She was about ten years old. She was wearing a coat too big for her and a pair of shoes that had been polished for a different town. When she saw the two boys, she held the page out with both hands and looked up at them without speaking.

她大约十岁，穿着一件太大的外套和一双为另一个城镇擦亮的鞋子。看到这两个男孩，她用双手把那页纸递出来，抬头看着他们，没有说话。

"Is that yours?" Elan asked, as gently as he could.

“这是你的吗？”伊兰尽可能轻声地问。

The girl shook her head, and then she nodded, and then she said, in a very small voice, "I do not know. It showed me our kitchen."

女孩摇了摇头，接着又点了点头，然后用很小很小的声音说：“我不知道。它让我看到了我们家的厨房。”

"Your kitchen?" Ozan asked.

“你们家的厨房？”奥赞问。

"At the harbour. Before we moved."

“在海港边上。在我们搬家以前。”

She turned the page toward them. The ink had rearranged itself into small handwriting that neither boy could read, but the picture beside it was clear enough. It showed a table by a window, a pan on a stove and a long grey ocean in the glass. "I have not eaten properly since we came here. Everything tastes of paper. But when I read this, I could smell the soup my mother makes, and I was not hungry any more. I was home."

她把纸转向他们。墨迹已经重新排成了一行小小的手写字，两个男孩谁也看不懂，但旁边的图画很清楚：窗边的一张桌子，炉子上的一口锅，玻璃里一片灰色的长长的海洋。“我们搬来以后，我就没好好吃过东西。什么都有一股纸味。可是读了这个，我闻到了妈妈煮的汤的味道，就不饿了。我回到家了。”

For a minute, nobody said anything. The other children had gone quiet too. A bell rang inside the school, and the van rumbled around the corner and stopped with a sigh of brakes.

有一分钟，没有人说话。别的孩子也安静了下来。学校里响起一阵铃声，车子隆隆地拐过街角，刹车发出一声叹息，停了下来。

Elan took a breath. "The book belongs to the library," he said slowly. "But I think this page belongs to you. If the librarian agrees, you can keep it. We will tell her it found its owner."

伊兰深吸了一口气。“这本书是图书馆的，”他慢慢地说，“但我觉得这一页是属于你的。如果管理员同意，你可以留着它。我们会告诉她，它找到主人了。”

The girl folded the page carefully, as if it might break, and tucked it inside her coat. Then she smiled for the first time, and it was a surprisingly wide smile. She said that she would come to the van every week, and that she would bring a bowl of the soup to share.

女孩小心翼翼地把纸页折好，像是怕它会碎，塞进外套里面。然后她第一次笑了，笑得出人意料地灿烂。她说，她每个星期都会来车上，还会带一碗汤来一起分享。

Ozan laughed. "I will hold you to that bowl," he said.

奥赞笑了。“我可记住你那碗汤了。”他说。

That evening, after the last stop, the two boys sat in the back of the van. The Atlas lay open on the desk between them. The librarian had read the note and nodded, saying that it had happened before and that it always ended well. Elan held the book up to the lamp, and he looked once more at the stub where the missing page had been.

那天傍晚，在最后一站之后，两个男孩坐在车厢后部。那本《图志》摊开在他们中间的桌上。图书管理员读了字条，点点头，说这种事以前发生过，总是有个好结局。伊兰举起书对着灯，又看了一眼那页缺失的纸留下的纸茬。

The stub was not empty. A line of fresh ink had appeared along the torn edge, written in the same neat hand as the note in the back cover. It was a short line.

纸茬不是空的。沿着撕破的边缘，出现了一行新鲜的墨迹，和封底字条上同样工整的笔迹。那是很短的一行。

"The next page is already on its way," Ozan read aloud.

“下一页已经在路上了。”奥赞大声念道。

Elan closed the book and slid it carefully onto the highest shelf. Then he glanced at the window, which he was almost certain he had shut.

伊兰合上书，小心地把它推到最高的那层架子上。然后他瞥了一眼窗户，他几乎可以肯定自己已经把它关上了。