Willow Lane had been a quiet street for eighty years, and then, in one autumn, it became a place people came to at midnight. The change began with a noodle stall run by Auntie Fang, who had cooked in the same doorway for a decade without anyone complaining. When the subway opened two streets away, her customers began arriving after eleven, and so did their scooters, their laughter, and their appetite.
柳巷安静了八十年，然后在一个秋天，变成了人们半夜才来的地方。变化是从方姨的面摊开始的。她在同一个门洞里煮了十年面，从没人抱怨。地铁在两街之外开通后，她的客人开始在十一点以后出现，跟着来的还有他们的电动车、笑声和胃口。
Nurse Tan lived above the stall. She worked twelve-hour shifts in the emergency department and slept from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, which meant that the hours everyone else called evening were, for her, the middle of the night. For three weeks she said nothing. Then she wrote a letter to the neighborhood committee and signed her name, because anonymous letters, she believed, were a way of not being responsible for your own complaint.
护士谭住在面摊楼上。她在急诊上十二小时的班，早上八点睡到下午四点——也就是说，别人叫傍晚的那几个小时，对她是深夜。她忍了三个星期，然后给居委会写了一封信，签了名，因为她认为，匿名信是一种不为自己的抱怨负责的方式。
The letter was short. It described the sound of a metal stool dragged across stone at one in the morning, and the particular way laughter carries upward. It did not mention the noodles, which were excellent, or the fact that Auntie Fang had once carried Tan's groceries upstairs when her mother was ill.
信很短。它写到凌晨一点金属凳子拖过石板的声音，写到笑声向上飘的那种特别的走法。它没有提面很好吃，也没有提方姨曾在她母亲生病时帮她把菜拎上楼。
The committee meeting was held in the room where the old residents played cards, and it was fuller than usual. Auntie Fang came in her apron, having closed early, which cost her money. Tan came in her uniform, having slept four hours. They sat on opposite sides of a folding table, and the chair of the committee, who was seventy-six, asked each of them to describe the night.
居委会的会开在老人们打牌的那间屋里，比平时满。方姨穿着围裙来，提前收了摊，这让她损失了钱。谭穿着制服来，只睡了四个小时。她们坐在折叠桌的两边，七十六岁的居委会主任请她们各自描述一下夜晚。
Tan described it precisely: the dark, the quiet, the body's slow return. She said that noise did not disturb her sleep so much as forbid it, and that a person who cannot sleep begins to make mistakes. Auntie Fang listened without interrupting. Then she described her own night: the last customer who had nowhere else to eat, the student who studied at her table until two, the rent that had risen twice since the subway came.
谭描述得很准确：黑、静、身体缓慢地回来。她说噪音与其说打扰她睡觉，不如说禁止她睡觉；一个睡不了觉的人会开始出错。方姨没有打断。然后她说自己的夜晚：那个没别处吃饭的最后一位客人，那个在她桌边学到两点的学生，地铁来了以后涨了两次的房租。
"You want me to close," Auntie Fang said. "I want to sleep," Tan answered, "not to close you." For a moment nobody spoke. The chair of the committee looked at the two women and said, with the tired authority of someone who had mediated forty years of such evenings, "Then we are not asking the right question."
“你想让我关门，”方姨说。“我想睡觉，”谭回答，“不是想让你关门。”有一会儿没人说话。居委会主任看着这两个女人，用一种调解了四十年这类夜晚的疲惫权威说：“那我们问的问题不对。”
The agreement took two more meetings. Auntie Fang moved her late customers into the old storage room behind the stall, which she had been using for crates, and bought rubber caps for the stool legs. After half past eleven the alley belonged to the sleepers. In exchange, the committee asked the hospital to provide a rest room for staff who could not sleep at home, and Tan, to her own surprise, agreed to serve at the stall one night a week.
又开了两次会才定下来。方姨把深夜的客人挪进摊子后面原来堆箱子的旧储物间，给凳腿套上胶皮。十一点半以后，巷子归睡觉的人。作为交换，居委会请医院给回不了家睡觉的员工安排一间休息室；谭也出乎自己意料地答应，每周到面摊帮一个晚上。
The first of those nights was a Thursday. Tan stood behind the counter at midnight, still clumsy with the ladle, and served soup to a taxi driver, two students, and a man who had just finished his shift at the same hospital. He looked at her uniform and laughed. She laughed too, and understood, for the first time, that the lane had two nights in it, and that neither was more real than the other.
第一个这样的晚上是星期四。午夜，谭站在柜台后面，用汤勺还很笨，给一个出租车司机、两个学生和一个刚下夜班的男人盛汤。那男人看了看她的制服，笑了。她也笑了，并且第一次明白，这条巷子里有两个夜晚，没有哪一个比另一个更真实。
The noise complaints stopped, though the stall did not become quiet. Auntie Fang still cooked until two. Tan still slept badly on some days. But when the metal stools were dragged across the stone now, the sound was softer, and both women knew whose sleep it was protecting.
投诉停了，虽然面摊并没有变安静。方姨还是煮到两点。谭有些日子还是睡不好。但现在金属凳子拖过石板时，声音轻了一些，两个女人都知道，它护着的是谁的睡眠。