Book of Hours
The woman first saw the stranded pilgrim, babe in arms, on a poster on the wall of the Medieval Center at the University of Bordeaux the year she finally studied abroad.
这位女士第一次看到怀里怀着婴儿的滞留朝圣者是在她最终出国留学的那一年，波尔多大学中世纪中心墙上的一张海报上。
The black-and-white illustration showed a mother kneeling on the frothing waves’ surface, staring into the face of her naked infant as the Virgin Mary towered above them both, attended by angels circling her head.
这幅黑白插图描绘了一位母亲跪在泛着泡沫的海浪表面，凝视着她赤裸的婴儿的脸，圣母玛利亚高耸在她们之上，天使们围绕在她的头上。
On the shore, the witnesses dropped to their knees in awe.
岸上，目击者敬畏地跪倒在地。
The medieval abbey of Normandy’s Mont Saint-Michel, a tidal island only accessible at certain times each day, stretched from the lapping waves as though reaching for Heaven.
诺曼底圣米歇尔山的中世纪修道院是一座潮汐岛，每天只能在特定时间进入，从拍打的海浪中延伸出来，仿佛伸向天堂。
Mary’s gown billowed in the wind; in fact, the whole illustration showed the storm, from the water breaking against the monastery to the kneeling pilgrims, bundled for warmth, waiting out the downpour on the shore.
玛丽的礼服在风中飘扬；事实上，整个插图展示了暴风雨，从洪水冲击修道院到跪着的朝圣者，裹紧衣服取暖，等待岸上的倾盆大雨过去。
The year she had spent in Bordeaux, the young woman had sat under this poster to eat her lunch between her class on French medieval women, in which they read both the lais of Marie de France and the humiliating letters Heloise wrote to Abelard, and an afternoon class on manuscript studies.
这位年轻女子在波尔多度过的那一年，曾坐在这张海报下吃午饭，课间她上的是关于法国中世纪妇女的课，课上他们读了《玛丽·德·法兰西》和海洛伊丝写给阿伯拉德的羞辱性信件，下午课上则讲手稿研究。
She had looked at the poster each day without knowing what, exactly, she was looking at, until one day when they had read a copy of a manuscript called Miracula Beatae Mariae Virginis, or Miracles of the Virgin.
她每天都会看着海报，但不知道自己到底在看什么，直到有一天，他们读到了一份名为《Miracula Beatae Mariae Virginis》或《圣母的奇迹》的手稿。
This Marian hagiography was compiled by two English monks, Dominic of Evesham and William of Malmesbury, in the first half of the twelfth century.
这本玛丽亚圣徒传是由两位英国修道士伊夫舍姆的多米尼克和马姆斯伯里的威廉于十二世纪上半叶编撰的。
“Medieval pilgrims walking across the dangerous Norman-Breton coast to Mont Saint-Michel would have seen a large stone cross rising from the sand during low tide, the croix des gr èves, ” Professor Compère told the class.
“中世纪的朝圣者穿过危险的诺曼-布雷顿海岸前往圣米歇尔山时，会在退潮时看到一个巨大的石制十字架，即十字形十字架，”孔佩尔教授告诉全班同学。
Because the girl was still learning the language and history of this place she lived, she understood the legend’s foundations, but not its specifics.
因为这个女孩仍在学习她所居住的地方的语言和历史，所以她了解这个传说的基础，但不了解它的细节。
The legend was known as the Peril: A young pilgrim, returning from her journey to Mont Saint-Michel, was caught by a sudden storm as she crossed the beach back to the mainland.
这个传说被称为“危险”：一位年轻的朝圣者从圣米歇尔山归来，穿过海滩返回大陆时遭遇了一场突如其来的风暴。
The tides rose, covering her path with water as she frantically raced against rushing sea.
潮水上涨，水淹没了她的道路，她疯狂地与汹涌的大海赛跑。
She went into labor, and according to this manuscript, the Virgin Mary appeared to save the woman from the rising ocean.
她临产了，根据这份手稿，圣母玛利亚似乎将这位妇女从上升的海洋中拯救出来。
“[The Blessed Virgin] stretched out her sleeves above her, in that way [keeping the woman] untouched ( intacta ),” the manuscript read.
手稿中写道：“[圣母]将袖子伸到她身上，这样[使女人]不受影响（intacta）。”
Her sleeves were like “a bridal chamber” for the woman to lie in, “smelling like the sweet scent of balsam.” The woman christened her baby son “Peril” and earmarked him for the priesthood in gratitude for his miraculous birth.
她的袖子就像供女人睡觉的“新房”，“闻起来像香脂的甜香”。这位妇女给她的小儿子取名“危险”，并指定他担任牧师，以感谢他奇迹般的诞生。
Professor Compère explained each line to them.
康佩尔教授向他们解释了每一行诗。
“Medieval readers,” he said, “who understood the double meaning of “intacta” as protecting the pilgrim from the sea and as someone who had never had sexual intercourse—someone like the Virgin herself—would have also understood the Virgin’s sleeves as symbolizing a protected womb in which the pilgrim could labor.
“中世纪的读者，”他说，“他们理解“完整”的双重含义，即保护朝圣者免受大海的侵害，并且作为从未发生过性交的人（例如圣母玛利亚本人），也会将圣母的袖子理解为象征着朝圣者可以在其中分娩的受保护的子宫。
The Virgin acts as both midwife and priest, sheltering the pregnant pilgrim from the storm and washing away her sins so that she, too, can be delivered.
圣母玛利亚既是助产士又是牧师，保护怀孕的朝圣者免受暴风雨的侵袭，并洗清她的罪孽，使她也能重获新生。
“It was one of the most famous miracles of the Mont,” Professor Compère said.
“这是蒙特最著名的奇迹之一，”康佩尔教授说。
“But it was a theft.” The theft was committed by the English, he maintained, two monks who rewrote the legend of the Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel into the text they were now reading.
“但这是一起盗窃案。”他坚称，这起盗窃案是英国人犯下的，两名修道士将罗马圣米歇尔山的传说改写成了他们现在正在阅读的文字。
They had stolen Saint Michael’s miracle and attributed it to the Virgin Mary.
他们窃取了圣米迦勒的奇迹并将其归因于圣母玛利亚。
The postscript to this legend read, “Although it is reported that Saint Michael the archangel protected a certain female pilgrim from danger in the midst of the waves of the sea, it is the Mistress of the World [in other words, the Virgin] who saved this woman from impending death in the waves.” As close to an admission as these English monks could make that they knew the original story before they wrote their own version.
这个传说的后记写道：“虽然据报道，大天使圣米迦勒在海浪中保护了一位女性朝圣者免受危险，但拯救这位在海浪中濒临死亡的女人的是世界女士（换句话说，圣母玛利亚）。”这些英国修道士几乎承认，他们在写出自己的版本之前就知道了原始故事。
Why, the class discussed, did the monks rewrite a miracle originally attributed to Saint Michael and give credit to the Virgin?
课堂上讨论了为什么僧侣们重写了最初归因于圣米迦勒的奇迹并将功劳归功于圣母玛利亚？
Or had they believed it was Mary all along, but Saint Michael stole the miracle from her in the first retelling?
或者他们一直相信那是玛丽，但圣迈克尔在第一次重述中从她那里偷走了奇迹？
The young woman sat quietly, writing down what she could understand, struck that medieval audiences would call this a miracle while modern audiences would call it a legend.
年轻女子安静地坐着，写下她能理解的内容，她惊讶地发现中世纪的观众会称这是奇迹，而现代的观众会称其为传奇。
Later that day, the young woman went to the university’s bookstore and bought a copy of Le Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel .
当天晚些时候，这位年轻女子去了大学的书店，买了一本《圣米歇尔山的罗马》。
It was in their robust medieval literature collection, probably assigned in some classes, but she was only really looking for the Peril, to find out how the story changed when it was a male saint who saved the laboring woman rather than the version with Mary they had read in class.
那是在他们丰富的中世纪文学收藏中，可能在某些课程中分配，但她只是真正在寻找危险，找出当一个男性圣人拯救了劳动妇女而不是他们在课堂上读到的玛丽版本时，故事发生了怎样的变化。
Some of the plot points had changed—the pilgrim’s less-devout husband, for example, was a more robust character.
一些情节点发生了变化——例如，朝圣者不那么虔诚的丈夫变得更加坚强。
The circumstances of Saint Michael’s help while the pilgrim labored and delivered in the ocean were markedly different from those in the miracle ascribed to the Virgin.
当朝圣者在海上劳作和分娩时，圣迈克尔的帮助情况与圣母玛利亚奇迹中的情况明显不同。
When the pilgrim found her traveling companions after the strange delivery, who had been combing the beach for her body, she told them what had happened, and that she had been blessed by God to have been directly aided by an archangel.
当朝圣者在奇怪的分娩后找到她的旅伴时，他们一直在海滩上搜寻她的尸体，她告诉他们发生了什么事，并说她受到了上帝的祝福，得到了大天使的直接帮助。
But they saw no sign of the angel themselves, so had only the woman’s word.
但他们没有看到天使本人的迹象，所以只看到了女人的话。
Why, the young woman wondered, was this enough?
年轻女子想知道，为什么这样就够了？
When was a woman’s word ever enough?
女人的话什么时候够了？
The woman understood from her hasty reading that perhaps all miracles could be attributed to saints and angels if they were experienced by a believer.
这位女士从她匆忙的阅读中了解到，也许所有的奇迹都可以归因于圣徒和天使，如果他们是信徒所经历的。
The manuscripts the young woman spent her year in Bordeaux studying gave shape to her dreams.
这位年轻女子在波尔多学习了一年的手稿塑造了她的梦想。
She felt a rich harmony each time Professor Compère translated the Latin words into French—effortlessly—for the class.
每当康佩尔教授毫不费力地将拉丁语单词翻译成法语时，她都会感到一种丰富的和谐。
The harmony blurred the edges of a split she had felt since her Catholic high school days, between the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins, and the promises of the rest of the world the priests warned her about, a world bursting with art and literature and music written by people separate from the church, but who seemed as holy and miraculous in their own contributions as many of the saints she read about.
这种和谐模糊了她从天主教高中时代起就感受到的分裂边缘，即圣徒的相通和罪孽的宽恕，以及牧师警告她的世界其他地方的承诺，一个充满艺术、文学和音乐的世界，这些人与教会无关，但他们自己的贡献似乎与她读到的许多圣徒一样神圣和神奇。
Here in Bordeaux, she studied the art created by the church, its music and frescos, its manuscripts and history, which collapsed a binary she hadn’t realized she believed in between what was holy and what was academic.
在波尔多，她研究了教堂创造的艺术、教堂的音乐和壁画、教堂的手稿和历史，这打破了她从未意识到的神圣与学术之间的二元对立。
Each time her class translated these manuscripts, she felt lighter, like maybe she didn’t need to make a choice.
每次她的班级翻译这些手稿时，她都会感到轻松，好像她不需要做出选择。
For the first time in her life, she stopped going to church regularly, because although she always knew what part of the Mass happened when, no matter the language, it felt like she was going out of habit.
她有生以来第一次不再定期去教堂，因为尽管她总是知道弥撒的哪一部分发生在什么时候，无论语言如何，但感觉她已经不习惯了。
For the past few years, she had felt increasingly hypocritical to cherry-pick what she believed and what she couldn’t abide.
在过去的几年里，她越来越虚伪地挑选自己相信的和不能忍受的。
Here, away from the pressures of home, where she couldn’t understand the homily, her mind drifted off during the readings and consecration.
在这里，远离了家庭的压力，她无法理解讲道，在读经和祝圣的过程中，她的思绪开始走神。
One Sunday, she just stayed home instead, and when she realized no one would ever know, she did it again the next week, and the next.
一个周日，她只是呆在家里，当她意识到没有人会知道时，她在下周和下一周又这样做了。
It was so easy to break the habit, and when she got together with American friends in her program on Saturday nights, she sensed the luxuriousness of a lie-in the next morning, and stayed up late with them, drinking cheap wine and sitting around their host families’ coffee tables, trying on a new life.
改掉这个习惯很容易，当她周六晚上在节目中与美国朋友聚会时，第二天早上她就感受到了睡个懒觉的奢侈，于是和他们一起熬夜，喝着廉价的葡萄酒，坐在寄宿家庭的咖啡桌旁，尝试着新的生活。
A young man in her program, with dark eyes and olive skin, so tall he hunched when he walked, once led her to the doorway of his chambre de bonne apartment and kissed her.
她计划中的一个年轻人，黑眼睛，橄榄色皮肤，个子很高，走路时驼背，有一次把她领到他的 chambre de bonne 公寓门口，吻了她。
It caught her off guard, though when she thought back on it the next morning, from beneath the threadbare sheets of his twin bed, she realized he had been trying to do just that for months.
这让她措手不及，但第二天早上，当她在他单人床上破旧的床单下回想起这件事时，她意识到几个月来他一直在尝试这样做。
She considered the way he let his knees touch hers under a café table without moving them away, the way he pushed her hair back from her face in the basilica’s newly discovered crypt when she had been transfixed by a sign detailing it as a stop on the modern-day pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
她想起他在咖啡桌下用膝盖碰着她的膝盖而不把它们移开的方式，以及在大教堂新发现的地下室里，当她被一个详细说明这里是现代圣地亚哥德孔波斯特拉朝圣之旅的一站的标志惊呆了时，他把她的头发从脸上拨开的方式。
And how, when he realized she was reading something absorbing, he stepped away from her and left her alone.
当他意识到她正在读一些引人入胜的东西时，他从她身边走开，留下她一个人。
He asked her questions about what she wanted after college, knew her café and bar orders.
他问她大学毕业后想要什么，了解她在咖啡馆和酒吧的订单。
But because she had never been taught to ask for what she wanted, what her body felt, it took her until the moment he kissed her to consider the question.
但因为她从未被教导要询问她想要什么，她的身体感觉如何，所以直到他吻她的那一刻她才考虑这个问题。
And as she leaned back into him, and eventually took his hand and followed him upstairs, the answer came as a relief.
当她靠在他身上，最终握住他的手，跟着他上楼时，这个答案让她松了口气。
She wanted what so many other bodies wanted, and she kept wanting that for the next six months, until it was time to go home to the US.
她想要很多其他人想要的东西，并且在接下来的六个月里她一直想要这个，直到她回到美国的家。
Leaving Bordeaux meant leaving the other American students she had befriended with the intensity of young people far from home for the first time, forging a hasty and profound bond to sustain them.
离开波尔多意味着她第一次离开了远离家乡的年轻人，离开了她所结识的其他美国学生，并与他们建立了一种仓促而深刻的联系来维持他们。
It also meant leaving the Middle Ages—the medieval villages in the region, the old walls of the city, the rhythm of the ancient university she had folded herself into with a heaving effort.
这也意味着离开中世纪——该地区的中世纪村庄、城市的古老城墙、她费尽心思融入的古老大学的节奏。
When the young woman returned to her university in California, the late summer was humid and heady.
当这位年轻女子回到加州大学时，夏末潮湿而令人陶醉。
She felt strange being back.
回来后她感觉很奇怪。
She laughed when she opened her parents’ refrigerator and saw a gallon of milk; the milk in France had come in such small containers.
当她打开父母的冰箱，看到一加仑牛奶时，她笑了。法国的牛奶装在这么小的容器里。
She was awed by the sense of confidence she felt each time she went into a shop or a class and realized she didn’t need to translate before speaking anymore.
每次走进商店或上课时，她都会感受到一种自信，并意识到自己不再需要在说话前翻译，她对此感到敬畏。
An anxiety lifted, but so did that sublime electricity caused by existing in between languages.
焦虑消失了，但语言之间存在的崇高电力也消失了。
Her first day of classes back home, she marched into the French and Italian department on campus and asked the advisor if she could add an emphasis in medieval studies to her French major, then began the process of researching PhD programs in medieval literature, thinking perhaps she might chase the headiness of linguistic limbo and the reverence she felt each time she encountered a new manuscript for the first time—the illumination of the borders and small drawings, the cursive gloss of margin notes.
回到家的第一天，她走进校园的法语和意大利语系，询问导师是否可以在她的法语专业中增加中世纪研究的重点，然后开始研究中世纪文学的博士课程，心想也许她可以追逐语言上的迷茫和每次第一次遇到新手稿时感受到的崇敬——边框和小图画的照明，页边注释的草书光泽。
The possibility of studying these more formally, one she hadn’t known existed before her year in Bordeaux, excited her so much she had trouble falling asleep at night.
更正式地研究这些的可能性，她在波尔多那一年之前并不知道存在，这让她非常兴奋，以至于晚上难以入睡。
Her favorite professor in her new medieval studies emphasis at college, Professor Brown, was a woman who studied the women of the Middle Ages, and who used her hands generously when she lectured.
她在大学的新中世纪研究重点中最喜欢的教授是布朗教授，她是一位研究中世纪女性的女性，并且在讲课时慷慨地使用了她的双手。
She made herself known to this professor, gingerly at first, and then with greater courage once she told her of her year abroad, her plans to keep studying.
她一开始小心翼翼地向这位教授介绍自己，然后当她告诉她在国外的一年以及她继续学习的计划时，她变得更加勇敢。
Professor Brown’s office was lined with blown-up manuscript pages tacked to the walls.
布朗教授的办公室墙上钉满了放大的手稿页。
There were conference posters too, and books on wooden shelves.
还有会议海报和木架上的书籍。
The office, and Professor Brown’s unabashed obsession with women who had lived and worked a thousand years ago, shaped the young woman’s dreams.
办公室，以及布朗教授对一千年前生活和工作的女性毫不掩饰的痴迷，塑造了这位年轻女性的梦想。
She allowed herself to imagine her own life crowded with the specifics of Professor Brown’s and told her professor about her own ambition to translate Le Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel.
她让自己想象自己的生活充满了布朗教授的细节，并向她的教授讲述了她自己翻译《圣米歇尔山的罗马》的雄心。
When the young woman told Professor Brown of the literary and saintly theft—the monks who took Saint Michael’s miracle and gave it to the Virgin—she chalked the piracy up to the medieval cult that formed around the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages.
当这位年轻女子向布朗教授讲述文学和圣物盗窃事件时——僧侣们把圣迈克尔的奇迹交给了圣母——她将盗版归咎于中世纪围绕圣母玛利亚形成的中世纪崇拜。
“To the medieval mind, Mary was the perfect woman,” Professor Brown told her one day, the office windows thrown open to the sticky California fall.
“在中世纪人的心目中，玛丽是完美的女人，”布朗教授有一天告诉她，办公室的窗户打开，映入加州潮湿的秋天。
“They associated cult-like devotion with the rituals of childbirth, so frankly, it doesn’t surprise me some hagiographers stole this story for their own saint.
“他们将类似邪教的虔诚与分娩仪式联系在一起，所以坦率地说，一些圣徒传记作者为他们自己的圣人偷了这个故事，我并不感到惊讶。
It happened all the time.
这种事一直都在发生。
Mary was always getting credit for miracles she didn’t perform.”
玛丽总是因为她没有创造的奇迹而受到赞扬。”
“That seems so unusual,” the young woman said.
“这看起来很不寻常，”年轻女子说。
“To give credit to a woman for a man’s work.”
“把男人的工作归功于女人。”
“Well, it is now,” Professor Brown said.
“嗯，就是现在，”布朗教授说。
She leaned forward, almost conspiratorial.
她身体前倾，几乎是在阴谋。
“The Catholic church has never done much for women, but for a time, Mary was almost a parallel deity, crucified in spirit while her son was crucified in body.
“天主教会从来没有为女性做过多少事，但有一段时间，玛丽几乎是一个平行的神，她的精神被钉在十字架上，而她的儿子的身体被钉在十字架上。
She, like God, was capable of mercy as well as power.”
她就像上帝一样，既有力量又有怜悯。”
The idea of mercy consumed the young woman, as she spent the fall in a fever of translation, leaving no room for digressive thinking.
怜悯的想法吞噬了这位年轻女子，整个秋天她都沉浸在翻译的狂热中，没有留下任何离题思考的空间。
In this sublime concentration she filled out applications, got her statements and letters of recommendation in order.
她全神贯注地填写了申请表、整理了自己的陈述和推荐信。
Late at night, after her schoolwork was done and her applications were in stacks on her bed, she would devote herself to Le Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel, underlining the sentences she was unsure of, correcting muddled paragraphs, and researching the accuracy of her word choice.
深夜，当她的作业做完，她的申请书堆放在床上时，她会专心致志地读《圣米歇尔山的罗马》，在不确定的句子下划线，纠正混乱的段落，并研究自己选词的准确性。
After a few hours she would rise from her desk, creaky and stiff, and find she had left the tea bag in her cup in her dorm kitchen since dinnertime.
几个小时后，她会从办公桌上站起来，浑身僵硬，吱吱作响，发现自晚餐以来她就把茶包留在了宿舍厨房的杯子里。
It was always past midnight when she could shut off her mind enough to sleep.
总是在午夜过后，她才能静下心来睡觉。
She first saw Ted that winter of her senior year, after she’d submitted her grad school applications.
她第一次见到泰德是在她大四那年的冬天，当时她提交了研究生申请。
She was biking to a Catholic school themed party at their public university, where hardly anyone else seemed to have gone to Catholic school.
她骑自行车去公立大学参加天主教学校主题派对，那里似乎几乎没有人上过天主教学校。
He was covered in purple balloons, only his face peeking through.
他浑身上下都是紫色气球，只有他的脸从里面露出来。
At first she’d considered going to this party as Saint Lucy, maybe, her gouged-out eyes in hand, red face paint covering her real eyes, but she knew what the frat house really wanted from her, and how her friends were going to dress in sexy Baby One More Time uniforms.
起初，她考虑以圣露西的身份参加这个聚会，也许，她手里拿着被挖出的眼睛，红色的脸漆遮住了她真正的眼睛，但她知道兄弟会真正想从她身上得到什么，也知道她的朋友们将如何穿着性感的“宝贝再次时光”制服。
And even though she found it all slightly too familiar, she was trying on this new life, the one in which she didn’t go to church or see saints anymore.
尽管她发现这一切有点太熟悉了，但她正在尝试这种新生活，一种她不再去教堂或见到圣人的生活。
On her way, she passed the balloon-covered young man on her bike, her tiny plaid skirt flapping up in the wind, her bare legs pricked with the cold.
路上，她骑着自行车经过了那个浑身气球的年轻人，格子小裙子在风中飘扬，光着的双腿冻得刺痛。
He could barely walk, and she wondered what party he was going to that Saturday night, what he was supposed to be.
他几乎无法行走，她想知道周六晚上他要去参加什么聚会，他应该做什么。
Half an hour later, he showed up at the Catholic school party, greeted by lots of people she didn’t know, while she stayed in the kitchen with her friends.
半小时后，他出现在天主教学校的聚会上，受到了很多她不认识的人的欢迎，而她则和朋友们待在厨房里。
She’d already had two shots and could feel the pleasant swimminess climbing her neck.
她已经注射了两次，能感觉到令人愉悦的游泳感爬上她的脖子。
A few minutes later, when the balloon-covered young man entered the kitchen and opened the fridge to find a beer, she felt emboldened by the loud music and her short skirt and the floating feeling of drunkenness.
几分钟后，当满身气球的年轻人走进厨房，打开冰箱找啤酒时，喧闹的音乐、短裙和飘来的醉意让她壮了胆。
“I’m kind of an expert on Catholic schools,” she said into his ear.
“我是天主教学校方面的专家，”她在他耳边说道。
He turned to look at her, and she felt her skin catch fire.
他转头看向她，她感觉自己的皮肤着火了。
“And none of the priests I knew ever wore balloons.”
“我认识的牧师中没有一个戴过气球。”
“I’m a bunch of grapes,” he said.
“我是一串葡萄，”他说。
“If you squeeze me, you get the most precious blood of our lord, Jesus Christ.”
“如果你挤压我，你就会得到我们的主耶稣基督最珍贵的血。”
“Oh!” she said.
“哦！”她说。
“I wanted to come as a martyred saint, but I couldn’t find fake blood on such short notice.”
“我想以殉道圣人的身份来，但这么短的时间内我找不到假血。”
He laughed.
他笑了。
His face, sticking out through the purple grapes, seemed as familiar to her as her own, although she had never seen him before.
他的脸从紫色的葡萄中伸出来，对她来说，就像她自己的脸一样熟悉，尽管她以前从未见过他。
“That’s metal as hell,” he told her.
“那真是金属啊，”他告诉她。
“I went to Catholic school too and found this whole theme too close to home,” he said.
“我也上过天主教学校，发现这整个主题太贴近我的家了，”他说。
“This was the best I could do before I began hyperventilating from the repressed memories.”
“在我因压抑的记忆而开始过度换气之前，这是我能做的最好的事情了。”
“And the lack of oxygen from blowing up all those balloons,” she said, and again he laughed.
“还有因为吹气球而导致缺氧，”她说，他又笑了。
It felt good to make him laugh.
让他笑的感觉真好。
Over the course of the night, one by one, his balloons popped—when people accidentally pressed up against him, or deliberately stuck their keys or bottle openers into them, and caused him and the young woman to jump as they talked into the early morning.
整个晚上，他的气球一个接一个地破裂了——当人们不小心压到他身上，或者故意把钥匙或开瓶器塞进气球里时，导致他和年轻女子在谈话到凌晨时跳了起来。
Finally, when he said goodbye to her at two in the morning, she popped the last balloon when she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.
最后，当他在凌晨两点向她告别时，她倾身亲吻他的脸颊，戳破了最后一个气球。
She would have liked to go home with him, but he didn’t invite her, and this scalded her, since she’d enjoyed talking to him and didn’t want to say goodbye.
她很想和他一起回家，但他没有邀请她，这让她很受伤，因为她很喜欢和他说话，不想说再见。
But before she pedaled away, he asked for her number, and two days later he called and asked her to meet him after classes.
但在她骑车离开之前，他询问了她的电话号码，两天后，他打电话约她下课后见他。
The first time she slept with him, a few weeks later, she felt, gloriously, the full hunger of her body, the way it responded to him as though entirely separate from her mind.
几周后，她第一次和他一起睡觉时，她光荣地感觉到自己身体的完全饥饿，它对他的反应方式仿佛完全与她的思想分离。
He seemed concerned with her pleasure in a way that suggested it mattered to his own.
他似乎很关心她的快乐，这表明这对他自己很重要。
He took his time, and became serious while he kissed her.
他不紧不慢地吻着她，表情变得严肃起来。
She felt bewitched by him, like nothing but being with him could fulfill her.
她觉得自己被他迷住了，好像只有和他在一起才能让她感到满足。
The way he biked to see her as soon as his classes were done each day, and spent all weekend with her in her bed or his, made her think he was bewitched too, though neither of them said so yet.
他每天一放学就骑自行车去看她，整个周末都和她一起躺在她或他的床上，这让她觉得他也被迷住了，尽管他们都没有这么说。
By the time her grad school acceptance arrived that spring, the young woman was sure she was in love, which she was forced to admit as they began making plans for the following year.
那年春天，当她收到研究生录取通知书时，这位年轻女子确信自己恋爱了，当他们开始制定下一年的计划时，她被迫承认这一点。
Ted was accepted into a master’s program in data science at Columbia, but her own acceptance was at UC Berkeley.
泰德被哥伦比亚大学数据科学硕士项目录取，但她自己被加州大学伯克利分校录取。
She knew she would regret letting him go more than she would regret letting the PhD go.
她知道她会后悔让他离开，而不是后悔放弃博士学位。
By the night when he asked her to move to New York with him, she had already made her choice.
当他邀请她和他一起搬到纽约的那天晚上，她已经做出了选择。
She couldn’t imagine a life without him, although Nora kept urging her to try harder.
她无法想象没有他的生活，尽管诺拉不断敦促她更加努力。
Moving to New York sounded like it could be an adventure too.
搬到纽约听起来也可能是一次冒险。
She flew with him to do a campus visit, just the two of them, like a real couple who came as a package deal.
她和他一起飞去校园参观，只有他们两个人，就像一对真正的情侣一起来的。
On the plane ride over, they held hands at takeoff and landing and shared headphones to watch a movie.
在飞机上，他们在起飞和降落时手牵手，共用耳机看电影。
They stayed in a dorm, and she tried this life on for size.
他们住在宿舍里，她尝试着过这种生活。
While he went to meetings and classes all day, she took the subway from campus to the northern tip of Manhattan to see the medieval Cloisters, where she wandered the herb garden and walked under the shrine of the Poor Clares.
当他整天去开会和上课时，她从校园乘地铁到曼哈顿北端参观中世纪的回廊，在那里她在药草园里漫步，在可怜的克莱尔神殿下漫步。
The sun beat down on her bare arms.
阳光照在她裸露的手臂上。
She heard chanting ahead, but as she rounded a corner to get a better listen, she found not a choir, as she had expected, but a garden empty but for one woman, cloaked in black.
她听到前面有吟唱声，但当她转过街角想听得更清楚时，她发现并不是像她预料的那样有唱诗班，而是一个空荡荡的花园，只有一个穿着黑斗篷的女人。
Her eyes were cast up through the dappled light of the trees tossing their leaves in a light breeze.
她的眼睛透过树木斑驳的光芒，树叶在微风中摇曳。
The young woman watched for a moment, the hairs on her arms standing up as she took in the woman, ecstatic in prayer.
年轻女子看了一会儿，当她看着这个女人时，她手臂上的汗毛都竖起来了，欣喜若狂地祈祷着。
When two other visitors rounded the corner, the young woman turned for a moment to look at them, her eyes wide in warning, but when she looked back, the saint was gone, and in her place was a red-tailed hawk.
当另外两名访客绕过拐角时，年轻女子转过身来看着他们，睁大眼睛警告着，但当她回头时，圣人已经不见了，取而代之的是一只红尾鹰。
It turned once on the branch, looked the young woman in the eye, and took flight.
它在树枝上转了一圈，看着年轻女子的眼睛，然后飞走了。
Behind her, she heard the other visitors gasp.
她听到身后其他访客的喘息声。
That early spring day, she felt at home in the quiet gardens, and later in the crowded café where they got sandwiches for dinner and ate them in a small park.
那个早春的日子，她在安静的花园里感到宾至如归，后来在拥挤的咖啡馆里，他们吃了三明治当晚餐，然后在一个小公园里吃。
“I love it here,” Ted breathed into her hair that night, his body already slick with sweat as he moved against her.
“我喜欢这里，”那天晚上，特德向她的头发吹着气，当他靠在她身上时，他的身体已经被汗水打湿了。
“I love you here.” She responded urgently, kissing his shoulders and guiding his hand close to her.
“我爱你在这里。”她急切地回应，亲吻他的肩膀，引导他的手靠近她。
Her eyes were cast upward, as the saint’s had been, in her own private ecstasy.
她的眼睛向上望去，就像圣人一样，沉浸在内心的狂喜之中。
When they returned home to California after the campus visit, the young woman looked sideways at the cracked spine of Le Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel in her bookcase , as though she didn’t quite trust it, or herself, to reconcile the splintering she felt.
当他们结束校园参观回到加利福尼亚州的家中时，这位年轻女子斜视着书柜里《圣米歇尔山罗马人》那本破裂的书脊，似乎她不太相信这本书或她自己能够调和她所感受到的分裂。
In her bed, she turned to Ted and watched him while he slept.
在床上，她转向泰德，看着他熟睡。
In his face, she saw younger versions of him too, and wondered what their children would look like.
在他的脸上，她也看到了他年轻时的样子，想知道他们的孩子会是什么样子。
The thought came to her unbidden, and although it scared her, she decided to always remember, no matter how she might feel about this person someday, the thrill of seeing the child she wanted in his sleeping face.
这个想法不由自主地出现在她的脑海里，尽管这让她感到害怕，但她决定永远记住，无论有一天她对这个人的感觉如何，在他熟睡的脸上看到她想要的孩子时的兴奋。
How many lives are shaped by what we sacrifice when we fall in love?
有多少人的生活因我们坠入爱河时所做出的牺牲而改变？
There was always the chance she could apply again to PhD programs after Ted was done with school, she reasoned.
她推断，在泰德完成学业后，她总是有机会再次申请博士学位课程。
And she would always go home to this person she loved so much, who made her laugh and believed so many of the things she did, who had some of the same wounds she did, or at least understood what had caused some of hers.
她总是会回到这个她深爱的人身边，他让她开怀大笑，相信她所做的很多事情，她也曾受过一些同样的创伤，或者至少明白是什么造成了她的一些创伤。
It was so easy to sacrifice herself in this way, even when, every year or so, Ted would ask if she wanted to apply again, to pursue the life she’d once planned.
以这种方式牺牲自己是很容易的，即使每年左右，泰德都会问她是否想再次申请，追求她曾经计划的生活。
But she had convinced herself she could be practical, apply for a master’s and credential program that would allow her to speak French daily and find a job anywhere Ted did.
但她说服自己，她可以务实一点，申请硕士学位和证书课程，让她每天都能说法语，并在泰德能做的任何地方找到工作。
She told him the core of her passion was satisfied by the life she had chosen, and really, teaching was fine.
她告诉他，她的热情的核心是她所选择的生活得到满足，而且说实话，教学很好。
Months and eventually years went by when she didn’t think about the PhD she didn’t have.
几个月甚至几年过去了，她都没有想起自己没有获得的博士学位。
When the time was right for them to have a baby, she realized she had not wanted anything this much, except for two things: the PhD she hadn’t gotten, and her husband.
当他们生孩子的时候到了，她意识到自己并没有那么想要任何东西，除了两件事：她还没有获得博士学位，还有她的丈夫。
Unknowingly, she had been practicing self-erasure since she had first learned to love.
不知不觉中，她从学会爱开始，就一直在练习自我抹杀。
From Book of Hours by Ellen O’Connell Whittet.
摘自艾伦·奥康奈尔·惠特特的《时辰之书》。
Used with permission of the publisher, Dzanc Books.
经出版商 Dzanc Books 许可使用。
Copyright © 2026 by Ellen O’Connell Whittet.
版权所有 © 2026，艾伦·奥康奈尔·惠特特 (Ellen O’Connell Whittet)。