《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 12 (23):偶遇羅馬老太大綱
There are spontaneous conversation classes everywhere. Today, I was sitting on a park bench when a tiny old woman in a black dress came over, roosted down beside me and started bossing me around about something. I shook my head, muted and confused. I apologized, saying in very nice Italian, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Italian," and she looked like she would've smacked me with a wooden spoon, if she'd had one. She insisted: "You do understand!" (Interestingly, she was correct. That sentence, I did understand.) Now she wanted to know where I was from. I told her I was from New York, and asked where she was from. Duh—she was from Rome. Hearing this, I clapped my hands like a baby. Ah, Rome! Beautiful Rome! I love Rome! Pretty Rome! She listened to my primitive rhapsodies with skepticism. Then she got down to it and asked me if I was married. I told her I was divorced. This was the first time I'd said it to anyone, and here I was, saying it in Italian. Of course she demanded, "Perché?" Well . . . "why" is a hard question to answer in any language. I stammered, then finally came up with "L'abbiamo rotto" (We broke it).
隨處可見自發的會話課。今天，我坐在公園板凳上的時候，有個身穿黑衣的小老太婆走過來，在我身邊坐下，對我呼來喚去地說着什麼。我搖頭，無言而疑惑。我道歉，用完美的意大利語說：“真抱歉，我不會說意大利語。”她的樣子像是要拿木杓揍我似的，假如她手邊有的話。她斷然地說：“你明明懂啊！”（有趣的是，她沒說錯。我確實懂這句子。）然後她想知道我是哪裏人。我跟她說我是紐約人，並問她是哪裏人。這還用說——她是羅馬人。聽了回話，我像孩子似的拍起手來。“啊，羅馬！美麗的羅馬！我愛羅馬！漂亮的羅馬！”她聽着我原始的讚頌，流露出懷疑的神色。接着她問我結婚了沒。我告訴她我已離婚。這是我第一次用意大利語告訴其他人這件事。當然囉，她繼續問：“Perch?”這個嘛……“爲什麼”是個很難回答的問題，無論用哪一種語言。我支支吾吾，最後想出了“L”（我們婚姻破裂）。
She nodded, stood up, walked up the street to her bus stop, got on her bus and did not even turn around to look at me again. Was she mad at me? Strangely, I waited for her on that park bench for twenty minutes, thinking against reason that she might come back and continue our conversation, but she never returned. Her name was Celeste, pronounced with a sharp ch, as in cello.
她點點頭，站起身來，穿過街去等公車，然後搭上公車而去，甚至沒回來再看我一眼。她是否生我的氣？說也奇怪，我就坐在那張公園板凳上等她等了二十分鐘，反思她可能回來繼續跟我對話的理由，她卻沒再回來。她名叫雀蕾絲特（Celeste），發音如“雀”。
Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you'd never have guessed existed if you'd only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square, dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain. This fountain was going to be a contender for my favorite in Rome, I could tell immediately, though it was unlike any I'd seen so far. It was not carved of imperial marble, for starters. This was a small green, mossy, organic fountain. It was like a shaggy, leaking bush of ferns. (It looked, actually, exactly like the wild foliage growing out of the head of that praying figure which the old medicine man in Indonesia had drawn for me.) The water shot up out of the center of this flowering shrub, then rained back down on the leaves, making a melancholy, lovely sound throughout the whole courtyard.
當天稍晚，我找到一家圖書館。天哪，我真愛圖書館。因爲在羅馬，這所圖書館是個美麗的古物，當中有個花園中庭，若只從街上注視圖書館，你永遠猜不到中庭的存在。正方形的花園點綴着橘樹，中央有噴泉。我立刻知道，它將成爲我最愛的羅馬噴泉之一，儘管它跟我至今看過的都不相同。首先，它不是大理石雕刻的噴泉。而是一座綠色、長滿青苔、接近大自然的小型噴泉。像一株叢雜的蕨類植物。（事實上，它看起來就跟印尼藥師畫給我的那尊祈神人像頭上冒出的繁茂枝葉一模一樣。）水從這叢盛開的灌木中央噴濺出來，而後回灑到葉子上，發出哀傷、優美的聲音，充塞整個庭園。
I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I'd purchased yesterday. Louise Glück. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line:
我在一棵橘樹下找到座位，打開昨天買的其中 一本詩集。格麗克。我讀第一首詩，先讀意大利文，再讀英文，在這一行頓住：
Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . .
"From the center of my life, there came a great fountain . . ."
Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana... ‚從我的生命中央，冒出一股大泉……
I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief.
Eat, Pray, Love
我把書擱在腿上，因欣慰而顫抖。
