The Lottery Syndicate

The office syndicate had existed for nine years, and its record was four small wins, two refunds and a voucher for a restaurant that closed before anyone used it. So when the numbers matched on a Wednesday in March, and the website produced a figure with a comma in it, Tilde, who kept the records, assumed she had misread the page. She read it again, slowly, with her finger on the screen. It was not a fortune: divided twelve ways, it came to just under two hundred each. But it was the most the syndicate had ever won, and she had, to her private horror, only eleven payments on the sheet.

办公室的彩票小组已经存在九年了，战绩是四次小奖、两次退款，外加一张餐厅代金券，餐厅在没人用上之前就关门了。所以，三月的一个星期三，号码对上了，网站上跳出一个带逗号的数字时，负责记账的蒂尔德以为自己看错了页面。她又慢慢读了一遍，手指按在屏幕上。这并不是一笔巨款：十二个人分，每人刚好不到两百。可这是小组赢过的最多的一次，而她私下里惊恐地发现，表格上只有十一笔付款。

The missing one belonged to the man from logistics who sat beside the printer. Never once in nine years had he been late with his stake, an envelope of exact change handed over by noon on Friday with a small bow that nobody had ever mentioned. It was precisely that reliability that had kept Tilde from noticing until she ran the totals. In the column for the week of the draw, next to his name, the cell was empty. She stared at it the way one stares at a smudge on a clean window.

缺的那一笔，属于坐在打印机旁边的物流部那位男士。九年来，他从没迟交过一次份子钱，每次都是一个装着零钱、数目正好的信封，星期五中午前递过来，还带着一个没人提起过的小小鞠躬。正是这份可靠，让蒂尔德直到加总数时才发现。在开奖那一周的那一栏里，他的名字旁边，格子是空的。她盯着它看，就像人盯着一块干净窗玻璃上的污渍。

The rules, which predated her by a decade and were pinned above the kettle, were unambiguous. Article Four: no payment, no share. It had been drafted by an accountant who had since retired to the coast, and it was the only article anybody had ever bothered to memorise. By Thursday morning the news had crossed the office faster than a fire drill. Opinion divided in the usual way, along the line between those who had always paid on time and those who might one day forget. "Rules are rules," said the woman from procurement, who had not forgotten anything since the previous decade. A man in the next row wondered aloud whether a half share would be "a reasonable compromise," and was told that there was no such thing as a reasonable half in a syndicate.

规则比她早了十年，钉在烧水壶上方，毫不含糊。第四条：不付款，不分钱。它出自一位后来退休去了海边的会计之手，也是唯一一条人人都费心背下来的条款。到星期四早上，消息传遍办公室，比消防演习还快。意见照例分成了两派，一边是一向按时付款的人，一边是有朝一日可能忘记的人。“规矩就是规矩，”采购部那位女士说，她从上个十年起就没忘过任何事。隔壁排的一个男人琢磨着，分一半是不是“一个合理的折中”，有人告诉他，在彩票小组里，没有合理的一半这回事。

Tilde, who had wanted to be neither judge nor jury, found herself both. She went back to the ledger and, for want of anything better, began to count. Nine years, four hundred and sixty-eight weeks, and in four hundred and sixty-seven of them his envelope had been on her desk before lunch. Had he skipped any other Friday, the syndicate would have won nothing and nobody would ever have known. It struck her as an extraordinary piece of timing, and also as the kind of thing that should not, in a fair world, be allowed to decide anything.

蒂尔德本想既不当法官，也不当陪审团，却发现两个都是自己。她回到账本前，没有更好的办法，就开始数。九年，四百六十八周，其中四百六十七周，他的信封在午饭前就放在她的桌上。要是他漏的是别的哪个星期五，小组什么也赢不到，也永远不会有人知道。她觉得这是一个非同寻常的巧合，同时也觉得，这种事在一个公平的世界里，不该被允许决定任何事情。

She found him on Friday, standing by the printer and pretending to clear a paper jam that did not exist. "I should tell you," she said, "that we won last Wednesday."

星期五，她在打印机旁找到了他，他正假装清理一个并不存在的卡纸。“我该告诉你，”她说，“我们上星期三中奖了。”

"I heard." He did not look up. "I also heard about Article Four."

“我听说了。”他没有抬头。“我也听说了第四条。”

"Article Four says no payment, no share," Tilde said. "It says nothing about someone who has paid four hundred and sixty-seven weeks out of four hundred and sixty-eight."

“第四条说，不付款，不分钱，”蒂尔德说，“它没有说，四百六十八周里付了四百六十七周的人怎么办。”

He straightened at last. "I did forget," he said. "I've spent the week being reasonable about it."

他终于直起身来。“我确实忘了，”他说，“这个星期我一直在努力对这件事通情达理。”

"How is that going?"

“进行得怎么样？”

"Badly."

“很糟。”

Tilde put an envelope on top of the printer. "The committee met at lunch," she said, which was not strictly true, since the committee was herself and a vending machine. "Article Four has been amended. No payment, no share, except for members with nine unbroken years. It's a very narrow exception."

蒂尔德把一个信封放在打印机上。“委员会午饭时开了会，”她说，这并不完全属实，因为委员会就是她自己和一台自动售货机。“第四条修订了。不付款，不分钱，但连续九年没有间断的成员除外。这是一个非常窄的例外。”

"How many members does it apply to?"

“适用于多少个成员？”

"One."

“一个。”

He counted the notes with a grave attention that suggested he had been doing the arithmetic all week. Then he asked whether the revised rules allowed a person to buy the first round.

他数那些钞票时神情庄重，看得出来，他整个星期都在算这笔账。然后他问，修订后的规则是否允许一个人请大家喝第一轮。

"Article Five covers that," Tilde said. There was no Article Five. She wrote it that afternoon.

“第五条管这个，”蒂尔德说。其实根本没有第五条。她当天下午就把它写了出来。