Halima pushed open the heavy door and stepped onto the roof. The basketball court lay flat and grey in the early light. Tall buildings stood all around it, and their windows shone like small mirrors. It was six in the morning. She had forty minutes before her shift at the laundry began.
哈利玛推开沉重的门，走上了屋顶。篮球场在清晨的光线里，平整而灰蒙蒙的。四周矗立着高楼，窗户像小镜子一样闪着光。早上六点。距离她洗衣店的班开始，还有四十分钟。
She had played here every morning for three months. Nobody else came so early. She liked the quiet, and she liked the sound of the ball on the concrete. The ball was old and had a strip of tape around one seam.
三个月来，她每天早上都在这里打球。没有别人来得这么早。她喜欢这份安静，也喜欢球砸在水泥地上的声音。那只球很旧，有一道接缝上缠着一圈胶带。
Halima had come to the city a year ago, and her English was still growing. She kept a small notebook in her jacket pocket. Every time she met a word she did not know, she wrote it down. Later, at home, she looked it up. Her neighbours teased her kindly about the notebook.
哈利玛一年前来到这座城市，她的英语还在慢慢长进。她的夹克口袋里装着一本小笔记本。每次遇到不认识的词，她就写下来。回家以后再去查。邻居们常常善意地拿那本笔记本打趣她。
Today she was not alone. A young man sat on the low wall at the far end of the court. He wore a delivery jacket with a bright yellow badge, and he held his phone in both hands. He looked at the screen, then at the sky, then at the screen again.
今天她并不是一个人。球场远端的矮墙上坐着一个年轻男子。他穿着一件外卖员的夹克，上面有一枚亮黄色的徽章，双手捧着手机。他看看屏幕，又看看天空，然后又看屏幕。
Halima started her usual warm-up. She dribbled to the line and shot. The ball hit the rim and bounced away. Behind her, the young man stood up and walked closer.
哈利玛开始了她惯常的热身。她运着球跑到线边，投篮。球砸在篮筐上，弹开了。她身后，那个年轻人站了起来，走近了些。
"Excuse me," he said. "I'm sorry to bother you. Do you speak English?"
“打扰一下，”他说，“不好意思打搅你。你会说英语吗？”
"A little," she said. "I am still learning. Why do you ask?"
“会一点，”她说，“我还在学。你为什么问？”
"Because you're the first person I've seen all morning," he said. "My name is Dax. I'm locked out of my work app, and I'm in trouble."
“因为你是我整个早上见到的第一个人，”他说，“我叫达克斯。我被锁在工作软件外面了，我有麻烦了。”
Halima held the ball against her hip. In her first months in the city, strangers had always helped her. They had pointed at maps, and they had read forms for her. Nobody had ever asked her for help before. It was a strange and pleasant feeling.
哈利玛把球抱在腰边。刚来城市的头几个月，总有陌生人帮助她。他们给她指过地图，替她读过表格。从来没有人向她求助过。这种感觉既奇怪又愉快。
"What is the trouble?" she asked.
“是什么麻烦？”她问。
"I changed my password last week," Dax said. "The app made me. It had to be long, with capital letters and numbers and symbols. So I wrote it on a sticky note, because I knew I would forget it."
“我上周改了密码，”达克斯说，“软件逼我改的。要很长，要有大写字母、数字和符号。所以我把它写在了一张便利贴上，因为我知道自己会忘。”
"That is a good idea," said Halima.
“这是个好主意，”哈利玛说。
"It would be, if I still had the note," he said. "I come up here between deliveries to rest my legs. I think I stuck it somewhere on this roof. If I don't log in by seven, I lose my whole morning."
“要是我还有那张便条，就是好主意了，”他说，“我在两趟送货之间会上来这里歇歇腿。我想我把它贴在这个屋顶的什么地方了。要是七点之前登录不上去，我这一早上就都白费了。”
Halima looked around the court. She knew every corner of it. There was the metal fence and the old bench. There was the water tank with its green door. Sticky notes lived on this roof. The players left them for each other. They wrote things like "Please close the door" or "Whoever took my blue towel, thank you anyway."
哈利玛环顾球场。她熟悉这里的每个角落。有金属围栏和旧长椅。有带着绿色小门的水箱。这个屋顶上总有便利贴。球友们会留给彼此。上面写着“请把门关好”，或者“谁拿了我的蓝毛巾，也谢谢你了”之类的话。
"What colour was your note?" she asked.
“你的便条是什么颜色的？”她问。
"Yellow. Like every sticky note in the world," Dax said, and he laughed without much joy.
“黄色。和世界上所有的便利贴一样，”达克斯说，笑得没什么快乐。
They searched together. Dax looked under the bench and behind the scoreboard. Halima walked along the fence, where six or seven notes still hung from the wire. One had a drawing of a cat. None of them belonged to Dax.
他们一起找了起来。达克斯在长椅底下和记分牌后面找。哈利玛沿着围栏走，那里的铁丝上还挂着六七张便条。其中一张画着一只猫。没有一张是达克斯的。
"Maybe the cleaners took it," Dax said. He sat down on the bench and put his head in his hands. "They come every few nights and throw everything away."
“也许被清洁工拿走了，”达克斯说。他在长椅上坐下，双手抱着头。“他们每隔几天晚上就来一次，把什么都扔掉。”
Halima stood still. Something was moving at the back of her mind. A yellow note. A long line of strange letters and numbers. She had seen it on the green door of the tank about ten days ago. She had not understood it at all.
哈利玛站着不动。她脑海深处有什么东西在浮动。一张黄色的便条。一长串奇怪的字母和数字。大约十天前，她在水箱的绿门上见过。当时她完全看不懂。
"Wait," she said. "Wait, please."
“等等，”她说，“请等一下。”
She took out her notebook and turned the pages quickly. Words flew past her eyes: "deadline," "borrow," "overdue," "elbow." Then she stopped. Near the bottom of one page, in her careful handwriting, she had copied a line of letters.
她拿出笔记本，飞快地翻着页。一个个词从她眼前掠过：“截止日期”“借”“逾期”“手肘”。然后她停住了。在某一页靠近底部的地方，用她工整的笔迹抄着一行字母。
"Look," she said, and she held the page out to him. "I saw this on the tank door. I thought it was a word. A very long English word that I did not know. So I copied it."
“你看，”她说着，把那一页递给他，“我在水箱门上看见了这个。我以为是一个词。一个我不认识的很长的英语单词。所以我就抄了下来。”
Dax read the line, and his mouth opened slowly. "Cloud, something round, Ladder, exclamation mark, five, eight," he said. "That's my password. You copied my password into your vocabulary notebook."
达克斯读着那一行，嘴巴慢慢张大了。“Cloud，一个圆圆的东西，Ladder，感叹号，五，八，”他说，“这是我的密码。你把我的密码抄进了你的生词本里。”
"Is it the right one?" she asked.
“是对的吗？”她问。
"I think so! I can't remember it, but I remember the word 'ladder.'" He lifted his phone and laughed again, and this time the laugh was real. "You are a genius."
“我想是！我自己记不得了，但我记得‘Ladder’这个词。”他举起手机，又笑了，这次笑得是真心的。“你是个天才。”
"I am only a person with a notebook," said Halima. She looked at the page again, and her face changed. "But there is one small problem."
“我只是一个带着笔记本的人，”哈利玛说。她又看了看那一页，脸色变了。“不过有一个小问题。”
"The sixth character," she said. "It is round. It could be the letter O. It could also be the number zero. I wrote very quickly, because a man was shouting for the court."
“第六个字符，”她说。“是圆的。可能是字母 O。也可能是数字 0。我写得很快，因为当时有个人在喊着要用球场。”
Dax looked at the clock on his phone. It was 6:41. "All right. The app says I have three tries before it locks me out for a whole day. So we have to think."
达克斯看了看手机上的时间。六点四十一分。“好吧。软件说我有三次机会，用完就锁住一整天。所以我们得想一想。”
He typed the letters with a round O. The screen shook from side to side. Wrong password, it said. Two tries left.
他输入了带圆形字母 O 的版本。屏幕左右晃了晃。密码错误，上面显示。还剩两次机会。
Halima closed her eyes and tried to see the yellow note on the green door. She remembered a thick, black pen.
哈利玛闭上眼睛，努力回想水箱绿门上的那张黄色便条。她记起了一支粗粗的黑笔。
"Wait," she said. "On the note, the round letter was narrow. Like an egg, not like a ball. The letter O would be wider, I think."
“等等，”她说，“便条上那个圆的字符是窄的。像鸡蛋，不像球。字母 O 应该更宽一些，我想。”
"A narrow one," said Dax. "That's the zero. Of course. I always write my zeros that way, long and thin. I learned it from my father, who worked with numbers."
“窄的，”达克斯说，“那就是零。当然了。我写零总是那样，又长又细。是跟我爸学的，他是做数字工作的。”
"Then try the zero," said Halima.
“那就试试零，”哈利玛说。
Dax's thumb hung over the screen. "If this is wrong, I lose the whole day."
达克斯的拇指悬在屏幕上方。“要是这次也错了，我就丢掉整整一天了。”
He typed slowly, saying each part aloud. Halima said the numbers with him, one by one, like a child learning to count. When he pressed the last key, nothing happened for a moment. The little wheel on the screen turned once, twice, three times.
他慢慢地输入，每一部分都念出声来。哈利玛和他一起念着数字，一个一个地，像个学数数的孩子。当他按下最后一个键时，有那么一会儿什么也没发生。屏幕上的小圆圈转了一圈，两圈，三圈。
Then the screen turned bright green, and a long list of orders appeared. Dax shouted, and the sound went out across the empty roof. Halima laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the bench.
然后屏幕变成了亮绿色，出现了一长串订单。达克斯大叫起来，声音传遍了空荡荡的屋顶。哈利玛笑得太厉害，只好在长椅上坐下来。
"Six forty-eight," Dax said. "Twelve minutes to spare. You saved my morning. But tell me, what are you doing with this notebook?"
“六点四十八分，”达克斯说，“还剩十二分钟。你救了我的一个早上。不过告诉我，你拿这本笔记本做什么？”
"I write words I do not know," said Halima. "You said it is not a word. So what do I write?"
“我写我不认识的词，”哈利玛说，“你说那不是一个词。那我该写什么？”
Dax thought about it. "It's called a password," he said. "Pass, like passing through a gate. And word, like any word. It's a word that opens a door."
达克斯想了想。“它叫 password，”他说，“pass，就像穿过一道门。word，就是任何一个词。它是一个能打开门的词。”
"A word that opens a door," Halima repeated. "That is a beautiful meaning. And today it is also true."
“一个能打开门的词，”哈利玛重复道，“这个意思真美。而且今天它也是真的。”
Dax stood up and zipped his jacket. He picked up his helmet and walked to the door. Then he turned around. "I'll never leave one on a wall again," he said. "From now on, I'll learn it by heart."
达克斯站起来，拉上夹克拉链。他拿起头盔，朝门口走去。然后他回过头。“我再也不会把它留在墙上了，”他说，“从现在起，我要把它背下来。”
He waved, and the heavy door closed behind him. His footsteps went down the stairs, quick and light, and then the roof was quiet again. The sun was higher now. It turned the windows around the court from grey to gold.
他挥了挥手，沉重的门在他身后关上。他的脚步声沿着楼梯往下去了，又快又轻，然后屋顶又安静了下来。太阳升得更高了。它把球场四周的窗户从灰色染成了金色。
Halima sat for a moment with her notebook open on her knee. She took her pen from her pocket and turned to a clean page. She wrote the date at the top. Then she wrote one new word in big, careful letters, and she underlined it twice: password.
哈利玛坐了一会儿，笔记本摊开在膝盖上。她从口袋里拿出笔，翻到一页干净的纸。她在最上面写下日期。然后她用又大又工整的字母写下了一个新词，并在下面画了两道线：password。
