The rain began on a Thursday and did not stop for thirty-one hours. In Shitang, a hillside town of narrow streets and stone steps, water ran down the slopes the way it had always run, and then, on the lower street, it stopped running and began to rise. By Friday evening, the ground floor of the grain shop held twenty centimetres of brown water, and the owner stood in it, holding a broom as though it were a weapon.
雨从星期四开始下，下了三十一个小时没停。石塘是一座山坡上的小镇，窄街石阶；水顺着坡往下流，像它一直以来的那样流，然后，在下街，它不再流，开始涨。到星期五傍晚，粮店一层积了二十厘米黄水，店主站在水里，握着一把扫帚，像握着一件武器。
The town had a new drainage system, installed four years earlier with a plaque near the market. Naturally, people blamed the drainage. The contractor was called; the contractor sent a young engineer named Gu Wei, who had grown up three streets away. She arrived on Saturday with a torch and a set of drawings, and found the street full of people who had already decided what had gone wrong.
镇上有新的排水系统，四年前装的，市场边还立着一块牌子。人们自然怪排水。承包商被叫来；承包商派来一位年轻工程师，叫顾薇，她在三条街外长大。她星期六带着手电和一套图纸到，发现整条街的人已经认定是哪里出了问题。
Gu Wei did not argue with them. She took off her shoes, rolled up her trousers, and walked the length of the street, listening. Near the bottom, where the water was deepest, she heard something that did not belong to a blocked pipe: a steady, swallowing sound, like a drain doing its work somewhere it was not supposed to.
顾薇没有跟他们争。她脱了鞋，卷起裤腿，走完整条街，一路听。在最低处、水最深的地方，她听见一种不属于堵塞管道的声音：一种稳定的、吞咽般的声音，像某个不该在工作的地方，有个排水口正在工作。
The drawings showed a channel that ran beneath the lower street and emptied into the river. It had been built in 1962, according to the notes, by a work brigade with more muscle than machinery. The new system had been connected to it, on the assumption that it still existed. Gu Wei walked the line with a torch and found the channel's mouth behind a wall of new bricks, and the wall belonged to a shop that had been extended in 1998.
图纸上有一条通道，从下街底下穿过，排进河里。注释说它建于一九六二年，由一个力气比机器多的工程队修的。新系统接进了这条通道，前提是它还在。顾薇打着手电沿线路走，在一条新砖墙后面找到了通道口；那堵墙属于一家在一九九八年扩建过的店铺。
Nobody in the shop remembered a channel. Nobody in the town office had a record of the extension. It was Uncle Ma, who had swept the streets for forty years and now repaired bicycles, who remembered. He said as a boy he had crawled into the channel on a dare, and that it was tall enough for a child and cold enough to make you hurry. He said that the bricks had gone up the year of the big wedding, which was how he dated things.
店里没人记得什么通道。镇公所也没有扩建的记录。是马叔记得——他扫了四十年街，现在修自行车。他说他小时候打赌爬进过那条通道，里面高得够一个孩子站立，冷得让人想快点走。他还说，那堵砖墙是那年办大喜事的时候砌的，他记年份就靠这种事。
Gu Wei stood in the rain and looked at the wall. Behind it, the water was still swallowing. The town had not forgotten its infrastructure out of carelessness; it had forgotten it because the infrastructure had worked, silently, for thirty years, and things that work silently are easy to build over.
顾薇站在雨里，看着那堵墙。墙后面，水还在吞咽。小镇并不是因为粗心才忘了它的基础设施；它忘了，是因为这些设施三十年来一直安静地工作，而安静工作的东西最容易被盖起来。
The wall came down in one afternoon, with the owner's permission and a small crowd watching. Behind it, the channel was exactly as Uncle Ma had described: cold, dark, and tall enough for a child. Water moved through it with the steady appetite Gu Wei had heard from the street. By evening, the lower street was dry, and the grain shop's owner was sweeping mud out of his doorway with the same broom.
墙在一个下午拆掉了，店主同意，围观的人不多。墙后，通道跟马叔说的一模一样：冷、黑、高得够一个孩子站立。水以顾薇在街上听到的那种稳定胃口从中流过。到傍晚，下街干了，粮店老板又用那把扫帚把泥扫出门外。
The town could have stopped there. Instead, the committee asked Gu Wei to draw a map of everything buried under Shitang — pipes, cables, channels, the old well that had been covered by a car park. It took her a month. The map was hung in the market beside the plaque, and it was not beautiful, but it was honest about what the town could not see.
镇子本可以到此为止。但居委会请顾薇画一张石塘地下所有东西的图——管道、电缆、通道，还有那个被停车场盖住的老井。她画了一个月。图挂在市场那块牌子旁边，不好看，但它诚实地标出了这个镇看不见的东西。
Uncle Ma came to look at it and found the channel, marked in blue. He put on his glasses and traced the line with one finger, from the hill to the river. "I crawled through that," he said, pleased. Gu Wei nodded. It seemed to her that the map was a kind of memory the town had agreed to keep, and that this, more than the pipes, was what had been missing.
马叔来看图，找到了那条通道，标成蓝色。他戴上眼镜，用一根手指顺着线描，从山坡描到河。“我从这里爬过去过，”他满意地说。顾薇点点头。她觉得，这张图是小镇同意记住的一种记忆；比起管道，这才是真正缺的东西。