At six in the morning the sky above the ski area is the hard, flawless blue that brings people up from the valley in their thousands. Regina, standing at the top of the main lift with a shovel in one hand and a radio in the other, knows she is about to ruin everyone's day.
清晨六点，滑雪场上空是那种硬朗无瑕的蓝，正是这样的天色，把成千上万的人从山谷里引上来。雷吉娜站在主缆车的顶端，一只手拿着铲子，另一只手拿着对讲机，她知道自己马上要搅了所有人的一天。
The storm that passed through four nights ago left a metre of new snow on top of an older, thinner layer of sugary crystals. They are the kind that look beautiful in a pit and hold nothing together. She has spent two hours digging, tapping and sawing through blocks of snow with a length of cord, and every test has ended in the same flat, clean break. On the way up, the whole slope settled under her skis with a deep, hollow whump that she felt more in her stomach than in her ears.
四个晚上前经过的那场暴风雪，在一层较老较薄的、砂糖般的晶体雪上，又压下了一米新雪。那种晶体，在雪坑里看着漂亮，却什么也粘不住。她已经花了两个小时挖坑、敲击，用一段绳子锯开一块块雪砖，每次测试，都以同样平整干脆的断裂收场。上山的路上，整片山坡在她的雪板下沉了一下，发出一声深沉空洞的“噗”，她与其说是用耳朵听到的，不如说是用胃感觉到的。
By seven she has written the bulletin, and by seven-fifteen she has come to regret the word "closed." The resort manager is on the radio before she has finished her tea.
七点钟，她写完了公告，到七点一刻，她已经后悔用了“关闭”这个词。她的茶还没喝完，度假村经理的声音已经在对讲机里响起。
"There's not a cloud out there," he says. "People have paid for this."
“外面一朵云都没有，”他说，“大家都是花了钱来的。”
"I know," she says. "It isn't the weather I'm forecasting."
“我知道，”她说，“我预报的不是天气。”
He says something short and unhelpful and signs off. Within an hour the car park is full, and a line of skiers at the rope below the bowl is looking at her as though she had personally invented gravity. Seldom has she been so unpopular before nine in the morning. A man in a bright yellow jacket tells the patrol, loudly and not for the first time, that forecasters sit in offices and have never seen real snow. Regina, who has slept in a snow hole on that very ridge, says nothing.
他说了句简短而毫无帮助的话，就挂断了。不到一个小时，停车场就满了，雪碗下方警戒绳边排起一队滑雪的人，看着她的样子，仿佛重力是她亲手发明的。早上九点前，她很少这么不受欢迎过。一个穿亮黄色夹克的男人，大声对巡逻队说，已经不是第一次了，说预报员都坐在办公室里，根本没见过真正的雪。雷吉娜曾在那道山脊上睡过雪洞，她什么也没说。
Elif, who runs the patrol, takes the rope line without being asked. She has worked on this mountain for fifteen years and knows better than to argue with a pit. All morning she turns people back with a cheerfulness that Regina, watching from the hut window, envies and could not manage herself.
管巡逻队的埃利芙没等人吩咐，就去守警戒绳了。她在这座山上工作了十五年，知道不该跟雪坑争辩。整个上午，她一直乐呵呵地把人劝回去，那份愉快，雷吉娜从小屋窗口看着，既羡慕，自己又做不到。
At ten past two, the radio crackles. Elif's voice, very flat and very calm, says that a slide has come down the main bowl: the closed slope, the one with the rope across it. Regina is at the window before the sentence is finished. From the hut she can see it, a long grey tongue of broken blocks, some as big as cars, spread across the run. At eleven o'clock, a hundred people had been asking to be let through there. Nobody was on it. Elif is already counting heads, and the count, when it comes, is exactly right.
两点十分，对讲机响了。埃利芙的声音非常平静、非常平淡，说主雪碗发生了雪崩：就是封闭的那片山坡，横着绳子的那一片。雷吉娜话没听完，人已经到了窗边。从小屋里她能看见：一条长长的灰色舌头，由碎裂的雪块组成，有的大得像汽车，铺满了整条雪道。十一点的时候，曾有上百个人要求放他们从那里过去。此刻上面没有人。埃利芙已经在清点人数，而结果出来时，一个不差。
What Regina feels is not triumph. Had the sky been grey, nobody would have questioned her at all; it was the blue that made her wrong, in everyone's eyes, until two o'clock. Her hands, she notices, are not quite steady on the radio.
雷吉娜此刻的感受，并不是得意。要是天空是灰的，根本没有人会质疑她；是那片蓝，让她在所有人眼里错了，一直错到两点钟。她发现，自己握着对讲机的手并不太稳。
The manager arrives at the hut without knocking and stands for a while, looking at the slope and then at her. He does not apologise, and she does not expect him to. Behind him, the man in the yellow jacket is standing very still in the doorway, his goggles pushed up on his forehead.
经理没敲门就走进了小屋，站了一会儿，先看看山坡，又看看她。他没有道歉，她也没指望他道歉。在他身后，那个穿黄夹克的男人一动不动地站在门口，护目镜推到了额头上。
"Tomorrow," the manager says at last. "Will it be the same?"
“明天，”经理终于开口，“还会一样吗？”
"Not until the layer settles," Regina says, "and I can't tell you when that will be."
“要等那一层沉降下来才行，”雷吉娜说，“而我没法告诉你那会是什么时候。”
She pulls the keyboard toward her, types tomorrow's date at the top of a blank bulletin, and begins with the same word she used today.
她把键盘拉到面前，在一张空白公告的顶端敲上明天的日期，然后以今天用过的那个词，开了头。
