By late morning, friends and neighbors from adjoining houses frequently dropped in. Everyone would gather in our garden and then head out together to the beach below. Our house was the closest to the water, and all you needed was to open the tiny gate by the balustrade, take the narrow stairway down the bluff, and you were on the rocks. Chiara, one of the girls who three years ago was shorter than I and who just last summer couldn’t leave me alone, had now blossomed into a woman who had finally mastered the art of not always greeting me whenever we met. Once, she and her younger sister dropped in with the rest, picked up Oliver’s shirt on the grass, threw it at him, and said, “Enough. We’re going to the beach and you’re coming.”
 
每到近午時刻，友人或鄰居常常順路來訪，在我家花園集合，然后一起走到下方的海濱。我家離海最近，只要打開欄桿旁的小門，沿著狹窄的階梯走下峭壁就到礁石了。奇亞拉，一個三年前還比我矮、去年夏天一直粘著我的女孩，如今已是成熟的女性，總算熟諳不必每次見面都要跟我打招呼的藝術(shù)。有一次，她跟她妹妹還有其他人順道過來時，撿起奧利弗扔在草地上的襯衫，丟到他身上說：“夠了。我們要去海邊，你也得一起來。”
 
He was willing to oblige. “Let me just put away these papers. Otherwise his father”—and with his hands carrying papers he used his chin to point at me—“will skin me alive.”
“Talking about skin, come here,” she said, and with her fingernails gently and slowly tried to pull a sliver of peeling skin from his tanned shoulders, which had acquired the light golden hue of a wheat field in late June. How I wished I could do that.
“Tell his father that I crumpled his papers. See what he says then.”
 
奧利弗很樂意效勞。他手里拿著稿子，朝我揚揚下巴示意道：“等我把稿子收起來，不然他老爸……會活活剝了我的皮。”
“說到皮，過來。”她說完，翹起指頭溫柔地、慢慢地從奧利弗曬成六月底的麥田那般金黃色的肩膀上，拉起一條細長、剝落掉的皮。我多希望我也能這么做。
“告訴他爸爸是我弄皺他的文件，看看他怎么說。”
 
Looking over his manuscript, which Oliver had left on the large dining table on his way upstairs, Chiara shouted from below that she could do a better job translating these pages than the local translator. A child of expats like me, Chiara had an Italian mother and an American father. She spoke English and Italian with both.
 
奧利弗把手稿留在他上樓經(jīng)過的大餐桌上。奇亞拉大致翻過以后，從樓下大聲喊著她肯定能比那名本地譯者翻譯得更好。奇亞拉跟我一樣是混血兒，母親是意大利人，父親是美國人，她在家里總是雙語并用。
 
“Do you type good too?” came his voice from upstairs as he rummaged for another bathing suit in his bedroom, then in the shower, doors slamming, drawers thudding, shoes kicked.
“I type good,” she shouted, looking up into the empty stairwell.
“As good as you speak good?”
“Bettah. And I’d’a gave you a bettah price too.”
“I need five pages translated per day, to be ready for pickup every morning.”
“Then I won’t do nu’in for you,” snapped Chiara. “Find yuhsef somebuddy else.”
 
“你也很會打字嗎？”奧利弗的聲音從樓上傳來時，他正忙著在臥室翻找另一件泳褲，然后又到浴室找；門砰然關(guān)上，抽屜又是轟隆一聲，還有踢鞋的聲音。
“我很會打字！”奇亞拉大喊，抬頭望著空蕩蕩的樓梯口。
“跟你講的一樣厲害嗎？”
“更好，而且我算你更便宜。”
“一天要翻譯五頁，我每天早上要去取。”
奇亞拉厲聲說道：“那我不做，找別人吧。”

《請以你的名字呼喚我》