Thiago and Mr. Pruitt had been playing the same game of chess by postcard for eleven years, one move at a time, the board too large now for either of them to hold entirely in memory without notes.
蒂亚戈和普鲁伊特先生用明信片下同一盘棋已经十一年了，一次一步，棋局如今大得让他们谁也没法不靠笔记，把它完整地记在脑子里。
It had started as a joke between neighbors and outlived the neighborliness itself, surviving Thiago's move across the country and, eventually, Mr. Pruitt's move into a care facility that Thiago had never visited. The postcards kept coming regardless: a knight to a particular square, a note about the weather, nothing more. Thiago answered each one within a week, partly out of habit and partly because the game had become, without his quite choosing it, one of the steadier threads in an otherwise unpredictable year.
这最初只是邻居之间的一个玩笑，却比邻里关系本身活得更久，熬过了蒂亚戈搬到全国另一端，最终也熬过了普鲁伊特先生搬进一家蒂亚戈从未去过的护理机构。明信片依然不断寄来：一匹马走到某个特定的格子，附一句天气的话，再没有别的。蒂亚戈每张都在一周之内回复，一半出于习惯，一半是因为这盘棋在不经他刻意选择的情况下，成了这个本来动荡不安的一年里较为稳定的一根线。
What he hadn't expected was for the moves to stop making sense.
他没料到的是，棋步开始变得不合常理。
A bishop appeared where no bishop could legally go. A pawn moved backward. Thiago assumed a slip of the pen at first, a hand less steady than it used to be, and he wrote back gently pointing out the error, expecting a laugh in return. The next postcard repeated the same illegal move, in the same handwriting, as though his correction had never arrived.
一个象出现在了任何象都不可能合法到达的地方。一个兵向后走了。蒂亚戈起初以为是笔误，是一只不如从前稳当的手，于是回信温和地指出错误，期待得到一句笑着的回应。下一张明信片却重复了同一步违规的棋，同样的笔迹，仿佛他的更正从未送达。
It was a phone call from a woman named Dana, not a postcard, that finally explained it. She was Mr. Pruitt's caretaker at the facility, she said, and she had found Thiago's return address on a drawer full of postcards going back years.
最终解释这一切的，不是明信片，而是一位名叫达娜的女士打来的电话。她说她是普鲁伊特先生在护理机构里的看护，在一个装满了可追溯到好几年前的明信片的抽屉里，发现了蒂亚戈的回信地址。
"He still asks for the chess set most afternoons," Dana said. "He doesn't always remember your name. But he remembers there's a game."
“他大多数下午还是会要棋盘，”达娜说，“他不一定总记得你的名字。但他记得有一盘棋。”
"Does he know he's not playing it correctly anymore?" Thiago asked, and immediately regretted how clinical the question sounded.
“他知道自己已经下得不对了吗？”蒂亚戈问，问完立刻后悔这个问题听起来太冷冰冰了。
"I don't know that 'correctly' means much to him at this point," Dana said. "I set the pieces up how he tells me to, and I mail whatever he writes. It seems to make him steadier for the rest of the day. Whether that's worth more or less than a fair game, I couldn't tell you."
“我不知道‘对’这个字，到了现在对他还有多大意义，”达娜说，“他怎么说，我就怎么摆棋，他写什么，我就寄什么。这似乎能让他在那一天剩下的时间里更踏实。这是不是比一盘公平的棋更有价值，我说不上来。”
Thiago sat with the postcard for three days before answering it. Had he written back with the actual rules in mind, he would have had to correct a move that could not be corrected. Doing so would have meant saying, in effect, that the man on the other end was no longer entirely there. He wrote back instead with a queen moving to a square that made no strict sense either, a small illegal answer to an illegal question. He dropped it in the mailbox before he could talk himself out of it.
蒂亚戈对着那张明信片坐了三天才回复。如果他按真正的规则回信，就得去纠正一步无法纠正的棋。那样做，实际上就等于在说，另一头的那个人已经不完全在那里了。他于是回了一步，把王后走到一个同样说不通的格子，用一个小小的违规回答一个违规的提问。他在自己劝退自己之前，把明信片投进了邮箱。
He has kept doing this for four months now. The board, if either of them were still tracking it properly, would make no sense to any outside judge. Thiago has stopped minding. Some games, he has decided, are not really about who wins.
他这样已经持续了四个月。这盘棋，如果他们两人还有谁在正确地记录，在任何旁观的裁判看来都毫无道理。蒂亚戈已经不再介意了。他认定，有些棋局，并不真的在乎谁赢。
