The reel arrives in a biscuit tin, wound on a plastic core that has begun to smell of vinegar. That tells Samira, before she has threaded a single inch, that she has perhaps a year to save it. Its owner is Ruben, a retired surveyor with careful hands, who wants his late father's home movies digitised in time for a family gathering in the spring. Forty minutes of picnics, a christening, a wedding, a dog chasing a ball it never quite catches. Nothing in it, he assures her, could interest anyone outside the family.
胶片卷装在一只饼干盒里送来，绕在一个塑料卷芯上，卷芯已经开始散发醋味。这让萨米拉在还没有穿过一英寸胶片之前，就知道她大概只有一年的时间来抢救它。它的主人是鲁本，一位退休的测量师，双手很仔细，他想在春天的家庭聚会之前，把已故父亲的家庭录像数字化。四十分钟的内容：野餐，一场洗礼，一场婚礼，一条追着一只永远追不到的球的狗。他向她保证，里面没有任何东西会让家庭以外的人感兴趣。
She works the way she always does: slowly, a frame at a time, cleaning each splice and coaxing the faded dyes back until the grass turns from rust to green. Twenty-four frames make a second, and after eleven days she has learned to read them like words. Most repeat the one before. A few carry a flaw, a scratch or a thumbprint. It is in the middle of the wedding sequence, at frame eleven thousand two hundred and eight, that she meets a face that should not be there.
她照常工作：慢慢地，一帧一帧地，清洁每一处接口，让褪了色的染料慢慢恢复，直到草地从锈红变回绿色。二十四帧构成一秒，十一天之后，她已经学会像读字那样读它们。大多数帧都重复着前一帧。少数几帧带有瑕疵，一道划痕或是一个指纹。就在婚礼那一段的中间，在第一万一千二百零八帧，她遇见了一张不该在那里的脸。
It lasts one twenty-fourth of a second. A young woman looks straight into the lens and laughs, her head thrown back, her hair coming loose from a clip, in a light brighter and bluer than anything around her. Then the film returns to the cake and the shuffling guests. At normal speed the frame is invisible; only someone who stops to look would ever see it.
它只持续了二十四分之一秒。一位年轻女子直视镜头，放声大笑，头向后仰，头发从发夹里散落下来，所处的光线比周围的一切都更明亮、更蓝。然后胶片又回到蛋糕和挪动着脚步的宾客。以正常速度播放时，这一帧是看不见的；只有停下来细看的人，才会看到。
Samira stops. What gives the frame away is its edge. The markings beside the sprocket holes belong to a different year, and the film on either side is joined by narrow strips of tape, gone amber. Someone cut here with great care and, she suspects, more than once.
萨米拉停了下来。暴露这一帧的，是它的边缘。齿孔旁边的标记属于另一个年份，而这一帧两侧的胶片，是用窄窄的胶带粘接起来的，胶带已经变成了琥珀色。有人在这里剪过，非常小心，而且她怀疑，不止一次。
When she sends Ruben the still, he rings within the hour. He does not know the woman. Neither do his two aunts, or the cousin who remembers everyone. "A friend of my father's, possibly," he says, and the word stays on the line between them, unconvincing.
她把这张静帧发给鲁本后，不到一小时他就打来了电话。他不认识那位女子。他的两位姑姑也不认识，那位记得所有人的堂亲也不认识。“可能是我父亲的一位朋友吧，”他说，“朋友”这个词留在两人之间的线路上，毫无说服力。
She does not let it go. Going back through the tin, she finds a second, much shorter roll that Ruben had set aside as ruined: overexposed, mostly white, a thumb across the lens for most of its length. Only when she holds it up to the light box does she see the thumb slip aside for a moment, and the same young woman laughing behind it. The man who shot it had saved the single good frame and spliced it, by hand, into a film made years later.
她没有放下这件事。她翻回盒子里去找，发现了第二卷短得多的胶片，鲁本把它当作报废的放在一边：曝光过度，大部分是白色，几乎整卷都有一个拇指挡在镜头前。直到她把它举到灯箱前，才看到拇指有一瞬间滑开了，那位年轻女子正在它后面笑着。拍摄它的那个人，把这唯一好的一帧留了下来，用手工，把它剪接进了多年后拍的一部影片里。
It is the gap between the front teeth that settles the question. In the christening sequence the woman holding the baby is older and careful, and she smiles with her lips closed in every shot. Samira would never have connected the two had the younger woman not laughed hard enough to show everything. If the tape had been newer, she thinks, she might have missed the join altogether.
最终确定答案的，是门牙之间的缝隙。在洗礼那一段里，抱着婴儿的女人年纪更大，神情谨慎，每个镜头里都抿着嘴微笑。如果不是那位年轻女子笑得那么用力，露出了一切，萨米拉绝不会把这两个人联系起来。她想，要是胶带再新一点，她也许根本发现不了那处接口。
She rings Ruben again and tells him whose face it is. For a while she hears only the small noises of a kitchen, a tap, a chair.
她又给鲁本打了电话，告诉他这是谁的脸。有好一阵，她只听到厨房里细小的声响，一个水龙头，一把椅子。
"She never laughed like that," he says at last. "Not once that I saw."
“她从来不那样笑，”他终于说，“我从来没见过一次。”
Samira looks at the frozen face on her screen, caught mid-breath, a stranger to her own son. "It would seem your father saw it," she says.
萨米拉看着屏幕上那张定格的脸，在换气的半途被抓住，对自己的儿子来说，是个陌生人。“看来你父亲见过，”她说。
She finishes the transfer and leaves the frame exactly where he put it, at its true length of one twenty-fourth of a second. In the delivery notes, under Remarks, she types a single line: Frame 11,208 is not damage. Please leave it in.
她完成了转录，把这一帧原封不动地留在他放置的地方，保持它真实的长度，二十四分之一秒。在交付说明的“备注”一栏，她只打了一行字：第 11,208 帧不是损伤。请保留。
