The public library had one long table, and the long table had one rule that nobody had written down: whoever arrived first set the volume. On Tuesdays it was the debate club; on Thursdays, a group of retired men who played cards and laughed like doors slamming. In between sat Jun, thirteen, who came to read and left with a headache he could not explain to anyone.
公共图书馆有一张长桌，长桌有一条没人写下来的规矩：谁先到，谁定音量。星期二归辩论社；星期四归一群打牌、笑得像摔门一样的退休男人。夹在中间的是十三岁的俊，他来读书，离开时却带着一种他无法向任何人解释的头痛。
He tried the window seat, the reference room, even the corridor by the fire exit, where a draught flipped his pages. Each place was either too loud or too far from the books he needed. One afternoon he drew a small map of the library and marked every spot with a color: red for noise, blue for quiet. There was almost no blue, and the only blue patch was a storage alcove full of broken chairs.
他试过窗边的座位、参考阅览室，甚至消防出口旁的走廊，那里有穿堂风会把他的书页吹翻。每个地方不是太吵，就是离他需要的书太远。一天下午，他画了一张图书馆的小地图，用颜色标出每个位置：红色代表吵，蓝色代表安静。蓝色几乎没有，唯一的蓝色区域是一个堆满坏椅子的储藏凹间。
Jun asked the librarian whether he could clear the alcove. She said yes, if he found homes for the chairs and did not damage the wall. He spent three Saturdays carrying, sweeping, and taping a notice that said, simply, “Quiet corner. Please whisper.” The first week, two people used it. The second week, the card players moved their table closer to it, not out of unkindness, but because the light was better there.
俊问图书管理员能不能让他清理那个凹间。她说可以，只要他给那些椅子找到去处，而且不弄坏墙壁。他花了三个星期六搬运、清扫，并贴了一张告示，上面只写着：“安静角。请低声说话。”第一周，有两个人使用它。第二周，打牌的人把桌子挪得更近了——不是出于恶意，而是因为那里的光线更好。
Jun nearly gave up. Instead, he asked the card players what they needed. Light, they said, and a place where laughing would not bother anyone. Together they measured the room, and the librarian found a folding screen in the basement. They moved the loud table to the far end, put the screen beside the alcove, and left a gap so nobody had to walk through the quiet to reach the exit.
俊差点放弃。但他转而问打牌的人需要什么。光线，他们说，还有一个大笑不会打扰别人的地方。他们一起量了房间，管理员在地下室找到一架折叠屏风。他们把吵闹的桌子移到远端，把屏风放在凹间旁边，并留出一个缺口，这样没人必须穿过安静区才能到出口。
The new arrangement was not perfect. The screen blocked light from one shelf, and the card players missed the window. But the library now had two kinds of silence: the careful silence of readers, and the comfortable pause between one joke and the next. Jun discovered he could concentrate even when laughter rose and fell on the other side of the screen, because it no longer felt aimed at him.
新的安排并不完美。屏风挡住了一个书架的光，打牌的人也想念窗户。但图书馆现在有两种安静：读者小心翼翼的那种安静，以及一个笑话和下一个笑话之间舒服的停顿。俊发现自己即使隔着屏风听到笑声起落也能专心，因为那笑声不再像是冲着他来的。
In spring, the librarian asked him to write the corner’s rules on a card. He wrote three lines: whisper here; leave the gap clear; if you need to laugh, the table by the window is yours. Then he added a fourth line in smaller letters, which the librarian pretended not to see because she agreed with it: “Quiet is not the absence of people. It is people making room.”
春天，管理员请他把这个角落的规则写在一张卡片上。他写了三行：在此低声；保持缺口畅通；如果你想笑，窗边的桌子归你。然后他用更小的字加了第四行，管理员假装没看见，因为她同意这句话：“安静不是没有人。安静是人们为彼此让出空间。”