Essay
Five Mantas and One Hailstorm
五条披肩和一场冰雹
Five women from a dance troupe on the next street ordered mantas for the fiesta. They came together and then, one by one, each chose a different color: indigo, a green that is almost grey, cochineal red, and two yellows they insisted were not the same yellow. I wrote everything down and did not argue. My job is to make their decision hold.
The dye pots live in the patio behind the shop. Cochineal comes in a paper bag and stains my nails for a week. At this altitude water gives up early and boils at a lower heat, so everything takes longer than the books say. What should be twenty minutes is forty. I have stopped fighting it.
A color is somebody else's decision
Before the wool goes in, I dye a strip of the same cloth and dry it on the wall. Wet cloth lies. It comes out of the pot dark and dries two shades lighter in this dry air, and if you do not test it, you promise a woman a red you cannot deliver. The strips hang there for a day like small flags.
Here the water boils before it is properly hot, and everything takes twice as long.
On Thursday the sky turned the particular grey that means hail, and we moved fast. Wet wool on a line is fine; hail on wet wool is a week of work gone. We got four of the five inside. The fifth, the indigo one, took the weather across one corner and came out mottled like a stone.
What the weather changed
I offered to redye it. The woman said no. She held it up against the light, looked at the pale map the hail had left, and said it looked like something that had been outside in the world. She wore it to the fiesta on Sunday. I saw her from the corner, going up the stairs to the square, and the mark was the first thing the light caught.
Nobody in this city owns anything without a mark on it.
The other four were delivered on Saturday, folded, each in paper. My hands smelled of cochineal for two days after, that sour-sweet smell that does not wash off. I do not mind it. It is the smell of something having actually happened, in a room, at three thousand six hundred meters, by hand.
中文译文
邻街的舞队来订节庆用的披肩，一共五条。五个女人一起进门，然后一个一个报出自己的颜色：靛蓝、一种几乎发灰的绿、胭脂虫红，还有两块黄色——她们坚持说那不是同一种黄。我全部记下来，一句也不争。我的活儿是让她们的决定站得住。
染锅放在铺子后面的院子里。胭脂虫红是纸袋装来的，能把我的指甲染上一个星期。在这样的海拔上，水没耐心，没到该有的热度就滚了，什么都比书上写的慢。本该二十分钟的事要做四十分钟。我已经不跟它较劲了。
颜色是别人的决定
羊毛下锅之前，我先染一小条同样的布，晾在墙上。湿布会骗人。它出锅时很深，在这干燥的空气里干透要浅两个色号；不试，就等于答应了一个你交不出的红。几条小布条挂在墙上晾一整天，像几面小旗。
这里的水没热透就开了，什么事都要多花一倍时间。
星期四，天色转成那种一看就知道要下冰雹的灰，我们动得很快。湿羊毛挂在绳上不怕，湿羊毛上砸冰雹就是一个星期的活全废。五条里我们抢进来四条。第五条是靛蓝的，一个角挨了打，出来像石头一样斑斑驳驳。
天气改掉的部分
我说可以重染。她说不用。她把披肩对着光举起来，看了看冰雹留下的那幅浅色地图，说这像是出过门、见过世面的东西。星期天她披着它去了节庆。我从街角看见她上台阶往广场去，光最先打在的，就是那块印子。
在这座城里，没有谁的东西身上不带印子。
其余四条星期六交了货，叠好，各自用纸包着。之后两天我手上都是胭脂虫的味道，那种酸甜的、洗不掉的气味。我不讨厌它。那是某件事真的发生过的味道——在一间屋子里，三千六百米高的地方，用手做出来的。
