The Slow Stopwatch in the Cheese Cellar

The cheese cellar lay inside the hill, behind a wooden door as thick as a man's arm. Inside, it was cool and dim and smelled of damp stone. On every shelf from floor to ceiling, the round pale wheels sat in rows like sleeping animals. Willem had worked there for ten months, and he still touched the door frame every morning for luck.

奶酪窖建在山腹里，门是一扇有人的手臂那么厚的木门。里面凉爽昏暗，弥漫着潮湿石头的气味。每一层架子从地面到天花板，淡色的圆奶酪一排排摆着，像睡着的动物。威廉在这里干了十个月，每天早上仍然会摸一摸门框，图个吉利。

Oksana, the head cheesemaker, kept the cellar the way some people keep a promise. She turned the wheels by hand and tested them with a thin steel probe. She wrote every result into a notebook with a pencil that never seemed to get shorter. She was thirty-eight, she rarely raised her voice, and in ten months she had never told Willem that he was doing well.

奶酪师傅奥克萨娜看守这座窖，就像有些人信守一个承诺。她用手翻动奶酪，再用一根细细的钢探针检查它们。每个结果她都用一支好像永远不会变短的铅笔记在笔记本上。她三十八岁，很少提高嗓门，十个月来，她从没对威廉说过他做得好。

On a Monday in spring, Willem finally spoke the thing he had been rehearsing for weeks. He stood at the washing table with a wet cloth in his hand. "I would like to run the cellar by myself for a week," he said.

春天的一个星期一，威廉终于说出了他练习了好几个星期的话。他站在洗涤台边，手里拿着一块湿布。“我想自己管一个星期的窖，”他说。

Oksana did not look up from her notebook. "Why?"

奥克萨娜没有从笔记本上抬起头。“为什么？”

"Because I want to know whether I can." He swallowed. "You do everything. I follow. I do not know what happens when I am the one who decides."

“因为我想知道自己行不行。”他咽了口唾沫。“什么都是您做，我跟着。我不知道由我来拿主意时会怎么样。”

She wrote something down, closed the notebook, and finally looked at him. For a long moment her face gave nothing away.

她写了点什么，合上笔记本，终于看向了他。好一会儿，她的脸上什么也看不出来。

"I leave on Friday to visit my brother at the coast," she said. "I was going to ask the neighbours to check the cellar twice a day. If you want it, you can have the week. Every wheel, every bath, every number in the book."

“我星期五要去海边看我哥哥，”她说，“我本来打算请邻居每天来看两次窖的。你要是想要，这个星期就给你。每一块奶酪，每一道盐水浴，笔记本里的每一个数字。”

"Yes," Willem said. "Please."

“好，”威廉说，“拜托了。”

"Then you will need this." She opened a drawer under the counter and took out an old steel stopwatch with a cracked glass face. She set it on the table between them. "Every brine bath in the cellar is timed with it. Forty minutes for the young wheels, fifty-five for the older ones. Write the times in the book and never skip an entry."

“那你就需要这个。”她打开柜台下的一个抽屉，拿出一块旧的钢制秒表，玻璃表面有一道裂纹。她把它放在两人之间的桌子上。“窖里每一道盐水浴都用它计时。新奶酪四十分钟，老一点的五十五分钟。把时间写进本子里，一条也不许漏。”

Willem picked up the stopwatch. It was heavier than it looked, and the second hand moved smoothly around the dial. "Does it work properly?"

威廉拿起秒表。它比看上去要沉，秒针在表盘上走得很平滑。“它走得准吗？”

"It works," said Oksana, and she went back to her notebook.

“能用，”奥克萨娜说，然后她又回头看她的笔记本了。

On Friday morning she left with a small bag and a bag of apples, and the cellar became his. For the first two days he moved through it carefully, afraid of making a mistake. He turned the wheels in the order she had taught him. He washed the rinds. He started the stopwatch for each brine bath and wrote the minutes in the book. Every time he closed the wooden door behind him, he felt a quiet pride.

星期五早上，她带着一个小包和一袋苹果离开了，窖成了他的。头两天，他小心翼翼地在窖里走动，生怕出错。他按她教的顺序翻动奶酪，清洗奶酪的外皮。每次盐水浴他都启动秒表，把分钟数写进本子。每次他在身后关上那扇木门，心里都有一种安静的自豪。

On the third day something began to bother him. He had set the stopwatch for the fifty-five minute bath at nine in the morning. He had spent the time cleaning the shelves by the north wall. When he looked up, the stopwatch had just reached fifty-five minutes, but the cellar clock above the door said it was nearly ten past ten.

第三天，有件事开始困扰他。他在早上九点为五十五分钟的那道盐水浴按下了秒表。这段时间他一直在擦北墙边的架子。他抬起头来，秒表刚好走到五十五分钟，可门上方的窖钟却显示已经快十点十分了。

Willem frowned. He told himself that he had simply misread the clock, and he lifted the wheels out of the brine. But that evening the same thing happened with the young wheels. The stopwatch said forty minutes, and the cellar clock said fifty.

威廉皱起眉头。他对自己说，只是看错了钟，便把奶酪从盐水里捞了出来。可当天傍晚，新奶酪那边又出了同样的事。秒表说四十分钟，窖钟说五十分钟。

He sat down on an upturned crate, put the stopwatch beside the clock, and watched them both for ten full minutes. The big clock moved forward by ten minutes. The stopwatch moved by only eight.

他在一只倒扣的木箱上坐下，把秒表放在钟旁边，两个都盯着看了整整十分钟。大钟往前走了十分钟，秒表只走了八分钟。

"It runs slow," he said out loud to the empty cellar. "It has been running slow since Friday. And every bath I timed was too long."

“它走得慢，”他对着空荡荡的窖大声说，“从星期五起就一直走得慢。而我计时的每一道盐水浴都泡得太久了。”

He opened the notebook to the page of the previous weeks. In Oksana's neat pencil, the times for the same baths were marked with a small cross beside each number. The crosses were easy to miss, but they were everywhere. He had read the notebook a hundred times and never understood them.

他翻开笔记本，翻到前几个星期的那几页。在奥克萨娜工整的铅笔字里，同样几道盐水浴的时间旁边，每个数字都标着一个小叉。叉很容易被忽略，可到处都是。这本子他读过上百遍，从没明白过它们是什么意思。

For a moment Willem felt sick. Nine wheels had spent far too long in the brine since Friday. If the salt had gone too deep, the cheeses would turn sharp and hard in a month. He thought about calling Oksana at the coast, and he put the idea down again. She had left him the cellar. She had also, he realised, left him a stopwatch that lied.

威廉一时觉得恶心。自星期五起，有九块奶酪在盐水里泡得太久了。要是盐渗得太深，一个月后奶酪就会变得又酸又硬。他想过给海边的奥克萨娜打电话，随后又打消了这个念头。她把窖留给了他。她也，他意识到，给他留下了一块会撒谎的秒表。

He spent the rest of the evening doing arithmetic. The stopwatch lost two minutes in every ten. A fifty-five minute bath therefore had to end at forty-four on the dial, and a forty minute bath at thirty-two. He made a small chart and taped it to the shelf above the washing table. Then he carried the nine wheels to the sink and rinsed the salt from their rinds in cold water. He laid them on dry boards so the salt could spread evenly. He wrote the real times in the notebook, with a small cross beside each number.

那天剩下的晚上，他都在做算术。秒表每十分钟慢两分钟。所以五十五分钟的盐水浴要在表盘上走到四十四分钟结束，四十分钟的要走到三十二分钟。他画了一张小表，贴在洗涤台上方的架子上。然后他把九块奶酪搬到水池边，用冷水冲掉外皮上的盐。他把它们摆在干燥的木板上，让盐分均匀散开。他把真实的时间写进笔记本，每个数字旁边都标上一个小叉。

By Monday the cellar was working as it should. He checked each bath against the big clock, not the stopwatch. He checked each wheel by the sound of his knuckles on the rind. When the neighbour came with a basket of eggs, she looked around. She said that everything seemed in perfect order, and that she had not seen the cellar so tidy in years.

到星期一，窖已经恢复了正常运转。他每道盐水浴都对照大钟，不看秒表。他检查每块奶酪时，用指关节敲外皮听声音。邻居带着一篮鸡蛋来的时候，四下看了看。她说一切似乎都井井有条，这窖已经好多年没这么整洁过了。

Oksana returned on Friday evening, smelling of sea air and carrying a paper bag of shells for the kitchen. She walked straight to the shelves without taking off her coat and ran her hand along the rinds. She opened the notebook and read it in silence for a long time. Willem stood by the door and tried to look like someone who was not afraid.

奥克萨娜在星期五傍晚回来了，身上带着海风的气息，拎着一纸袋给厨房的贝壳。她没脱外套就径直走向架子，用手沿着奶酪的外皮摸过去。她打开笔记本，默默地读了很久。威廉站在门边，努力装出一副不害怕的样子。

"You found the stopwatch," she said at last.

“你发现秒表了，”她终于说。

"On the third day," he answered. "I rinsed nine wheels that had soaked too long. I think they will be fine. I should have noticed on the first day, and I am sorry."

“第三天，”他回答，“我把九块泡得太久的奶酪冲洗了。我想它们会没事的。我第一天就应该发现的，对不起。”

"Sorry for what? You noticed it." She closed the book. "I have owned that watch for fourteen years. I use it to teach people that the thing you trust most can be the thing that fools you. Everyone who has worked here has made the same mistake, though most of them wait a week to find it."

“对不起什么？你发现了。”她合上本子。“这块表我用了十四年。我用它教人，你最信任的东西，可能正是骗你的东西。在这里干过的每个人都犯过同样的错，只不过大多数人要过一个星期才发现。”

"You knew it would happen," Willem said slowly. "You asked me to run the cellar, and you gave me a broken watch on purpose."

“您知道会这样，”威廉慢慢地说，“您让我管窖，却故意给了我一块坏表。”

"You asked for a week of deciding," Oksana said. "I gave you a week of deciding. A person who has only followed instructions has never had to decide anything. That is what a cellar is for."

“你要了一个星期的拿主意，”奥克萨娜说，“我就给了你一个星期的拿主意。一个只会照着指示做事的人，从来没有真正决定过任何事。窖就是用来学这个的。”

She took the stopwatch from the table, looked at it fondly, and put it in his hand.

她从桌上拿起秒表，亲切地看了看，把它放进他的手里。

"It is yours now," she said. "When the next apprentice comes, I will be watching how you teach it."

“现在它是你的了，”她说，“等下一个学徒来了，我会看着你怎么教他。”