Essay
Standing Room, Third Tier, Second Act
顶层站票，第二幕
The stairs to the third tier are stone and there are ninety of them, or a hundred and something if you count the turns. I count. I am wearing the wine-red wool dress, which is warm enough to walk home in and plain enough to disappear among the students and the pensioners and the ushers who know the standing places by heart.
Standing room costs almost nothing and asks for everything: your back, your patience, your willingness to arrive forty minutes early and hold your coat over the rail. The people up there are not the people in the boxes. Someone is eating a sandwich. Someone is translating the surtitles for a friend. Nobody is being seen.
Where the Sound Arrives
From the third tier the orchestra is a rumour and the voices come from slightly above your ear, which is to say the sound arrives a half second after a gesture you can barely see. Technically it is worse than the stalls. I have sat in the stalls. I have never once cried in the stalls.
Up there the music reaches you late, and that half second is the whole evening.
During the interval the elderly woman beside me produced a flat flask and offered it without a word. We passed it back and forth. She told me she had been coming to this same standing place since she was nineteen, that her knees were finished, that she would keep coming until they were more finished. Then the lights went down.
I go for the second act and I stay for the costumes, which I notice the way other people notice the tenor. A sleeve too tight under the arm changes how a woman stands. A corset makes a person honest. Half the shape of a character is decided by a stranger with a needle, and nobody claps for them at the end.
Somebody sewed that despair. She should be on the stage too, bowing in her ordinary clothes.
Afterwards I walk home over the river, because the taxis are impossible and because the wine-red dress under my grey coat looks like a mistake in the streetlight, which pleases me. Florence at midnight is all shutters and water. My feet hurt in the good way. I am humming the wrong part, the accompaniment, as usual.
中文译文
上三层是石阶，九十级；要是把拐弯算进去，大概一百多。我数过。我穿那件酒红色毛线裙：够暖，能走回家；也够素，能混在学生、退休老人和那些闭着眼都找得到站位的老领座员中间。
站票几乎不要钱，但要你拿一切去换：你的背、你的耐心、你提前四十分钟到场并把外套搭在栏杆上的自觉。那上面的人和包厢里的人不是同一种人。有人在吃三明治，有人在给朋友翻字幕。没有人在被看见。
声音到达的地方
从三层听，乐队是一则传闻，人声从耳朵稍上方落下来——也就是说，你几乎看不清的那个手势，声音要晚半拍才到。技术上，这比正厅差。我在正厅坐过。我在正厅一次也没哭过。
上面的人听见音乐总是晚的，而那半秒钟，就是一整晚。
幕间，旁边那位老太太掏出一只扁酒壶，一句话没说递过来。我们传来传去。她说她十九岁起就站在这个位置，膝盖已经废了，等更废一点之前她还会一直来。然后灯暗了。
我为第二幕去，为戏服留下。我看衣服的方式，是别人听男高音的方式。腋下紧一寸，一个女人站立的姿态就变了；束身衣让人诚实。一个角色有一半的形状是某个拿针的陌生人决定的，而谢幕时没有人替他们鼓掌。
那份绝望是有人一针一针缝出来的。她也该上台，穿着自己的衣服鞠一躬。
散场我走桥回家，因为根本打不到车，也因为灰色大衣底下那截酒红，在路灯下看着像个错误——这点让我高兴。午夜的佛罗伦萨只剩卷帘门和水。脚疼，是好的那种疼。我哼错了声部，照例是伴奏。
