炉火旁的椅子

那家旅馆立在港口上方，门开在背风的一侧，而在这些岛上，门就该开在那一侧。看店的是一只北罗纳德赛母羊，属于住在群岛最北端、靠吃海藻过日子的滩羊。波莉站在门厅里，雨水顺着身上往下淌。“你们还有空房吗？”

The guesthouse stood above the harbour with its door on the sheltered side, which on these islands is the side you build a door on. It was kept by a North Ronaldsay ewe, one of the shore sheep that live off seaweed at the north end of the archipelago. Polly stood in the hall with rain running off her. "Do you have any available rooms?"

有房。九月通常都有。波莉说：“我想要一间安静的房间，谢谢。”母羊礼貌地停顿了一下。后面的房间朝院子，前面的房间朝海水，风两边都找得到。这里没有一处是访客所说的那种安静。岛上给你的是另一种东西：一种从不间断的风，住上两夜，你就再也听不见它了。

There were rooms. There usually are in September. Polly said, "I would like a quiet room, please." The ewe paused long enough to be polite about it. The rooms at the back face the yard, the rooms at the front face the water, and the wind finds both. Nowhere here is quiet in the way a visitor means it. What the islands offer instead is a wind so constant that after two nights you stop hearing it.

“可以帮我拿一下行李吗？”母羊自己把包提上楼，放在炉火旁的一把椅子边上，而波莉正是因为那把椅子停下了说话。椅架是浮木做的，因为这里不长树，老房子里的每一块木板都是随潮水漂来的。椅背是燕麦秆，盘绕起来缝成一个兜帽，向前弯过肩膀。柯克沃尔一位名叫大卫·柯克内斯的细木工，在十九世纪中叶把这个农家习惯变成了固定的样式。

"Could you assist me with my luggage, please?" The ewe carried the bag up herself and set it beside a chair by the fire, and the chair was the reason Polly stopped talking. Its frame was driftwood, because no tree grows here and every plank in the old houses came in on the tide. Its back was oat straw, coiled and stitched into a hood that curves forward over the shoulders. A joiner in Kirkwall named David Kirkness turned that farmhouse habit into a standard design in the middle of the eighteen hundreds.

“退房时间是几点？”波莉问，因为在这里一切都由渡轮决定。然后她坐进那把椅子。草秆兜帽挡住了门口的穿堂风，炉火继续做炉火该做的事，而自下船以来，她第一次听见了自己的呼吸。

"What time is check-out?" Polly asked, because the ferry decides everything here. Then she sat down in the chair. The straw hood cut the draught off the door, the fire went on doing what fires do, and for the first time since the boat she could hear herself breathing.