《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 91 (217):我想幫助她們

Other factors have emerged over time. Those two shy girls I noticed on the first day, hid-ing in the back of the kitchen? It turns out that these are a pair of orphans Wayan has adop-ted. They are both named Ketut (just to further confuse this book) and we call them Big Ketut and Little Ketut. Wayan found the Ketuts starving and begging in the marketplace a few months ago. They were abandoned there by a Dickensian character of a woman—possibly a relative—who acts as a sort of begging child pimp, depositing parentless children in various marketplaces across Bali to beg for money, then picking the kids up every night in a van, col-lecting their proceeds and giving them a shack somewhere in which to sleep. When Wayan first found Big and Little Ketut, they hadn't eaten for days, had lice and parasites, the works. She thinks the younger one is maybe ten and the older one might be thirteen, but they don't know their own ages or even their last names. (Little Ketut knows only that she was born the same year as "the big pig" in her village; this hasn't helped the rest of us establish a timeline.) Wayan has taken them in and cares for them as lovingly as she does her own Tutti. She and the three children all sleep on the same mattress in the one bedroom behind the shop.

其他因素亦隨時間一一浮現。我頭一天留意到那兩名躲在廚房後頭的害羞女孩呢！原來她們是大姐收養的一對孤兒。她們倆都叫"老四"，我們叫她們大老四和小老四。大姐幾個月前發現她們倆在市場捱餓乞討。她們遭一個狄更斯小說人物般的女人——可能是親戚——丟棄；這女人擔任某種乞兒掮客，把無父無母的孩子放在巴厘島各市場討錢，每天晚上再以貨車接回這些孩子，收取他們討來的錢，讓他們睡在棚屋。大姐最初看見大小老四時，她們已多天沒吃東西，身上滿是蝨子與寄生蟲。大姐推測小的大約十歲，年紀較大的約十三歲，但是她們都不清楚自己的年紀，也不清楚自己姓什麼。（小老四隻知道她和自己村裏的"豬公"同年出生；但這對日期的驗證毫無助益。）大姐收留她們，像照顧自己的圖蒂般關懷她們。她和三個孩子睡在店鋪後方臥室內的同一張牀墊上。

How a Balinese single mother facing eviction found it in her heart to take in two extra homeless children is something that reaches far beyond any understanding I've ever had about the meaning of compassion.

一位巴厘島的單親媽媽如何在面臨被迫搬遷的命運之際，還有心收留兩名額外的流浪兒——這已遠遠超越我對悲憫意義的理解。

I want to help them.

我想幫助她們。

That was it. This is what that trembling feeling was, which I'd experienced so profoundly after meeting Wayan for the first time. I wanted to help this single mother with her daughter and her extra orphans. I wanted to valet-park them into a better life. It's just that I hadn't been able to figure out how to do it. But today as Wayan and Armenia and I were eating our lunch and weaving our typical conversation of empathy and chopsbusting, I looked over at little Tutti and noticed that she was doing something rather odd. She was walking around the shop with a single, small square of pretty cobalt blue ceramic tile resting on the palms of her upturned hands, singing in a chanting sort of way. I watched her for a while, just to see what she was up to. Tutti played with that tile for a long time, tossing it in the air, whispering to it, singing to it, then pushing it along the floor like it was a Matchbox car. Finally she sat upon it in a quiet corner, eyes closed, singing to herself, buried in some mystical, invisible compartment of space all her own.

這正是我頭一次遇見大姐後，深深體驗的顫抖感受之所在。我想幫助這位單親母親和她的女兒及兩名孤兒，我想幫忙她們過更好的生活。我只是不知如何着手。但今天大姐、亞美尼亞和我吃着午飯，一如往常進行彼此體諒、互揭瘡疤的交談之際，我留意到圖蒂正在做一件頗爲奇怪的事。她雙手捧着一小塊漂亮的銀藍色正方形瓷磚在店裏走來走去，以某種吟誦的方式唱歌。我看了她一會兒，看她想做什麼。圖蒂耍弄這塊瓷磚好一段時間，扔入半空中，低語、吟唱，而後像火柴盒小汽車般沿着地板推動。最後她在安靜的角落裏坐在瓷磚上，閉上眼睛對自己吟唱，沉浸在屬於自己的某種神祕、隱形的空間當中。

I asked Wayan what this was all about. She said that Tutti had found the tile outside the construction site of a fancy hotel project down the road and had pocketed it. Ever since Tutti had found the tile, she kept saying to her mother, "Maybe if we have a house someday, it can have a pretty blue floor, like this." Now, according to Wayan, Tutti often likes to sit perched on that one tiny blue square for hours on end, shutting her eyes and pretending she's inside her own house.

我問大姐這一切是怎麼回事。她說圖蒂在路上一個豪華飯店建築的工地外頭髮現這塊瓷磚，遂據爲己有。打從圖蒂發現這塊瓷磚，她就不斷告訴母親："哪天我們如果有房子，或許能有這種漂亮的藍色地板。"據大姐說，圖蒂現在經常坐在這一小塊藍色瓷磚上一連數個小時，閉上眼睛假裝在自己的房子裏。

What can I say? When I heard that story, and looked at that child deep in meditation upon her small blue tile, I was like: OK, that does it.

我該怎麼說？我聽了這件事，見這孩子坐在自己小小的藍色瓷磚上陷入冥想，於是心想："好吧，就這麼辦。"

And I excused myself from the shop to go take care of this intolerable state of affairs once and for all. Eat, Pray, Love

我提早離開店裏，去徹底解決這件令人難以忍受的事情。