《美食祈祷和恋爱》：盖新房

 I finally sat down with Wayan and told her about the money I'd raised for her house. I ex-plained about my birthday wish, showed her the list of all my friends' names, and then told her the final amount which had been raised: Eighteen thousand American dollars. At first she was shocked to such an extent that her face looked like a mask of grief. It is strange and true that sometimes intense emotion can cause us to respond to cataclysmic news in exactly the op-posite manner logic might dictate. This is the absolute value of human emotion-joyful events can sometimes register on the Richter scale as pure trauma; dreadful grief makes us some-times burst out laughing. This news I had just handed to Wayan was too much for her to take in, she almost received it as a cause for sorrow, so I sat there with her for a few hours, telling her the story repeatedly and showing her the numbers again and again, until the reality began to sink in.www.for68.com

我终于和大姐坐下来，告诉她有关我为她筹款购屋的事情。我说明一下我的生日愿望，让她看一看我全部朋友的名单，而后告诉她最后筹得的款数：一万八千美元。首先，她震惊万分，表情好似哀伤不已。有时强烈情绪能使我们对意想不到的消息产生违反逻辑的反应，这虽然奇怪却也真确。这是人类情感的绝对价值--喜悦的大事，有时在芮氏地震仪上显示出彻底的创伤；而可怕的悲痛有时让我们突然大笑起来。我刚才递给大姐的消息，令她难以承受，使她几乎以接受哀伤事件的方式接收，因此我陪她坐了几个小时，一而再、再而三地告诉她整件事情的始末，不断让她看筹款数目，直到她开始会意到事实。

Her first really articulate response (I mean, even before she burst into tears because she realized she was going to be able to have a garden) was to urgently say, "Please, Liz, you must explain to everyone who helped raise money that this is not Wayan's house. This is the house of everyone who helped Wayan. If any of these people comes to Bali, they must never stay in a hotel, OK? You tell them they come and stay at my house, OK? Promise to tell them that? We call it Group House . . . the House for Everybody . . ."

她第一个清晰的反应（我是说，甚至在她意识到自己即将拥有一座庭园而哭起来之前），是急忙说："拜托，小莉，你一定得向帮忙筹款的每个人说明，这不是大姐的房子。这房子属于帮助大姐的每个人。假使哪个人来到巴厘岛，谁也不准住旅馆，好吗？你请他们过来住我的房子，好吗？答应我跟他们说喔！我们把房子叫做"集团屋"……"众人之屋"……"

Then she realized about the garden, and started to cry.

然后她意识到自己能够拥有庭园，于是哭了起来。

Slowly, though, happier realizations come to her. It was like she was a pocketbook shaken upside down and emotions were spilling all over the place. If she had a home, she could have a small library, for all her medical books! And a pharmacy for her traditional remedies! And a proper restaurant with real chairs and tables (because she had to sell all her old good chairs and tables to pay the divorce lawyer). If she had a home, she could finally be listed in Lonely Planet, who keep wanting to mention her services, but never can do so, because she never has a permanent address that they can print. If she had a home, Tutti could have a birthday party someday!

然而，慢慢地，她开始领略到快乐，仿佛把钱包里的情感抖落四处。倘若有家，她就能有间小书房摆放所有的医疗书籍，一间传统医药房，一间体面的餐厅，有真正的桌椅（因为她已经把昔日的好桌椅变卖，以偿付离婚律师费）。倘若有家，她终于能被列入《孤独星球》旅游指南；他们一直想提及她的服务，却老是办不到，因为她没有永久住址能让他们列入书中。倘若有个家，图蒂下次就能开生日派对！

Then she got very sober and serious again. "How can I thank you, Liz? I would give you anything. If I had husband I loved, and you needed a man, I would give you my husband."

然后她又冷静、严肃起来。"小莉，我该怎么谢你？我愿意给你一切。如果我有个我爱的丈夫，你如果需要一个男人，我也会把丈夫给你。"

"Keep your husband, Wayan. Just make sure Tutti goes to university."

"留着丈夫吧，大姐。只要让图蒂上大学就行了。"

"What would I do if you never came here?"

"假如你没来这里，我该如何是好？"

But I was always coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.

但我"一直"都来到这里。我想起我最爱的一首苏菲诗歌，说神很久以前就在你此刻脚下的所在地周围，画上圆圈了。我永远不会不来到这里。这是注定发生的事情。

"Where are you going to build your new house, Wayan?" I asked.

"你要在哪里盖你的新房子？"我问。

Like a Little Leaguer who's had his eye on a certain baseball glove in the shop window for ages, or a romantic girl who's been designing her wedding dress since she was thirteen, it turned out that Wayan already knew exactly the piece of land she would like to buy. It was in the center of a nearby village, was connected to municipal water and electricity, had a good school nearby for Tutti, was nicely located in a central place where her patients and customers could find her on foot. Her brothers could help her build the home, she said. She'd all but picked out the paint chips for the master bedroom already.

犹如小球迷老早看中橱窗里的某个棒球手套，或梦幻少女打从十三岁就开始设计自己的结婚礼服，大姐也早就知道自己想买哪一块地。那个地点是在附近某村子的中心，连接公共水电，附近有好学校让图蒂上学，而因为坐落于中心地带，病患与客人步行即可找到她。她说她的兄弟们会帮忙盖房子。她也已经挑好主卧室的油漆。