Mira Okonkwo had spent three summers sweeping the floors of the harbor radio station, and in that time she had learned exactly one thing about Bellport: nobody ever asked her what she heard. So when the festival director handed her a recorder and a folded map, she assumed he was joking. Ten minutes of true silence, he said, from anywhere in town. Mira walked past the foghorn, past the gulls arguing over a dropped bun, past the fish-market freezer that hummed like a bee trapped in a jar. She found no silence at all.
米拉·奥孔科沃在港口广播站擦了三个夏天的地板，而在这段时间里，她只弄明白了一件事：在贝尔波特，从来没有人问过她听见了什么。所以，当艺术节总监把一台录音机和一张折好的地图递给她时，她以为他在开玩笑。他说，去镇上任何地方，录下十分钟真正的寂静。米拉走过雾号，走过为一只掉在地上的面包争抢的海鸥，走过鱼市里那台像被困在罐子里的蜜蜂一样嗡嗡作响的冰柜。她一点寂静也没找到。
By evening she was sitting on the breakwater with the recorder running, listening to what the town actually sounded like. A ferry engine coughed and settled. A child counted stones in a language Mira did not know. Somewhere behind her a man laughed at nothing in particular, and the laugh was answered by another, and then by a third. It was not silence. It was not noise, either. She carried the file back unedited. The director frowned at the waveform. “This is full of people,” he said. “Yes,” Mira said. “That is what I found.”
到了傍晚，她坐在防波堤上，让录音机一直转着，听着这座镇子真正的声音。一艘渡轮的引擎咳嗽了一声，然后安静下来。一个孩子用米拉听不懂的语言数着石头。她身后不知哪里，一个男人为了一件没什么特别的事笑了，那笑声被另一个笑声接住，然后又是第三个。那不是寂静。但也不是噪音。她把文件原样带了回去，没有做任何剪辑。总监对着波形皱起眉头。“这里面全是人，”他说。“是的，”米拉说，“这就是我找到的东西。”
The station's oldest volunteer was Ilse, who had lost her hearing at nineteen and had been editing tape ever since. Mira expected her to be lonely. Instead Ilse was the busiest person in the building, moving between the mixing desk and the window, writing notes on the backs of old programme schedules. When Mira asked how she worked without sound, Ilse wrote: I read the room. Then she pointed at the screen, where the waveform swelled whenever the mayor paused to breathe. Silence, she wrote, has a shape. You have been looking for a place without people. Try looking for a moment when people stop.
广播站里最年长的志愿者是伊尔泽。她十九岁那年失去了听力，从那以后一直在剪接磁带。米拉原以为她会很孤独。可伊尔泽反而是整栋楼里最忙的人，在调音台和窗户之间来回走动，在旧节目单的背面写便条。米拉问她听不见声音要怎么工作，伊尔泽写道：我读房间。然后她指着屏幕，市长停下来呼吸的时候，波形就会鼓起来。她写道，沉默是有形状的。你一直在找一个没有人的地方。试着去找人停下来的那一瞬。
They spent a week hunting such moments. Ilse would raise one finger and Mira would hold the microphone still while a fisherman hesitated before answering a question about his brother, or a bride forgot the words of her own toast and the hall waited, patient as a held breath. Those pauses lasted less than two seconds, and each one, played back, seemed to contain everything the speaker had decided not to say. Mira began to understand that she had been recording the wrong thing for three years. The silence was not empty. It was simply quiet enough to hear other people thinking.
她们花了一个星期寻找这样的瞬间。伊尔泽会竖起一根手指，米拉就把话筒稳住不动：一个渔夫在回答关于他弟弟的问题之前迟疑了，或者一个新娘忘了自己祝酒词的下半句，整个大厅就等着，耐心得像屏住的一口气。这些停顿都不足两秒，可每一段回放出来，似乎都装着说话人决定不说的全部内容。米拉开始明白，三年来她一直录错了东西。沉默并不是空的。它只是安静到足以让你听见别人在思考。
On the night of the festival, Mira's piece went out last, after the mayor's speech and a brass band that played slightly flat. Her recording began with the foghorn, then the gulls, then the laugh and its two answers, and then, for forty seconds, nothing but room tone: the faint electric breath of a hall where two hundred people were listening together. The station's phone line lit up before the piece had finished. A man complained that he had tuned in for music. A woman said she had heard her late husband's boat in the second minute and had needed to sit down.
艺术节那天晚上，米拉的节目排在最后，在市长的讲话和一支略微走音的铜管乐队之后。她的录音从雾号开始，然后是海鸥，然后是那个笑声和两声回应，接着有四十秒钟，什么也没有，只有房间的本底声：两百个人一起听着的时候，大厅那种微弱的、像电流呼吸一样的动静。节目还没播完，广播站的电话就亮了起来。一个男人抱怨说他是来听音乐的。一个女人说，她在第二分钟听见了已故丈夫的船，不得不坐下来缓一缓。
Afterwards, the director found Mira on the steps and asked whether she thought silence could ever really be broadcast. She considered the question seriously, because he had asked it seriously. “No,” she said at last. “But listening can.” He wrote that down on the back of a programme schedule, the way Ilse did, and for a moment the two of them stood in the dark of the harbor without saying anything, which was, Mira had learned, its own kind of answer.
节目结束后，总监在台阶上找到米拉，问她觉得沉默究竟能不能被播出。她很认真地想这个问题，因为他问得很认真。“不能，”她最后说，“但倾听可以。”他把这句话写在了一张节目单的背面，像伊尔泽那样，然后有一小会儿，两个人就站在港口黑下来的天色里，什么也没说——米拉已经学会，那本身也是一种回答。