Essay
The Night the Rain Took the Street
雨把整条街收走的那晚
The rain in Chiang Mai does not begin. It arrives. One minute the soi smells of grilled squid and hot oil, the next the whole sky is coming down and people are running with plastic bags over their heads, and the only sound is water hitting the tin roofs of the stalls.
You learn to move in a certain order: the electrical strip first, then the glass case, then the money box, then yourself. Two of us drag the cooler under the awning. The squid man and I have done this together enough times that we no longer say anything about it.
Under the awning
By the time it settled, there were nine of us. A student with a plastic folder held against her chest. A tourist whose sandal had come apart, holding the two halves like evidence. Two taxi drivers. The squid man's nephew, who is eleven and considers himself staff. Nobody was a customer any more.
Nobody bought anything for forty minutes. It was the best part of the week.
The student said she had an exam on Monday and had not slept. The squid man said his daughter had also not slept, for different reasons, and everyone laughed because we all knew the reasons. The tourist asked what the fruit was and got four answers. This is what a street does when it is forced to stop.
When the rain thinned, the street steamed. I put four plates of mango sticky rice on the table and said that the ones who waited get fed. The tourist tried to pay. The student translated for me, badly, and I let her.
After
The ride home that night was slow. The road shone and threw the headlight back at me. Frogs were shouting somewhere in the ditch, and the air smelled of wet cement and cut grass — the smell I will remember when I am old and living somewhere with no rain at all.
Every evening we build a small town on the pavement: tables, a fire, a cooler, three kinds of sauce. At midnight we take it down and the street goes back to being a street. I have done this for six years. It has never once felt like a job I could put down easily.
We build the same small town every night and take it apart by midnight.
中文译文
清迈的雨不是开始的，是到的。前一分钟巷子里还是烤鱿鱼和热油的味道，下一分钟整片天就压下来，人们顶着塑料袋四处跑，剩下的声音只有水砸在摊子的铁皮顶上。
你会学会一个固定的顺序：先收插线板，再收玻璃柜，然后是钱盒，最后才是自己。两个人一起把冰桶拖到雨棚下。这种事我和鱿鱼大叔做过太多次，已经不需要说话了。
雨棚底下
等雨势稳下来，棚下已经有九个人。一个女学生，把塑料文件袋抱在胸前。一个游客，凉鞋断了，两只鞋帮像证物一样捧在手里。两个出租司机。鱿鱼大叔十一岁的侄子，他一直认为自己是员工。这时候没有谁是客人了。
四十分钟没有人买过一样东西。那是这一周最好的四十分钟。
女学生说她周一有一场考试，一直没睡。鱿鱼大叔说他女儿也没睡，原因不一样，大家都笑了，因为我们都知道是什么原因。游客问那是什么水果，得到了四个答案。一条街被迫停下来的时候，就会变成这样。
雨细下去以后，整条街开始冒汽。我把四盘芒果糯米饭放到桌上，说等过雨的人白吃。游客要付钱。女学生替我翻译，翻得很糟，我没纠正她。
之后
那天回家骑得很慢。路面发亮，把车灯反回来照我。水沟里有青蛙在喊，空气里是湿水泥和割过的草的味道——等我老了，住在一个根本不下雨的地方，我会记得这个味道。
每天晚上我们都在人行道上搭起一个小镇：桌子、火、冰桶、三种酱。午夜把它拆掉，街道重新变回街道。我做了六年。它从来不像一份能随便放下的工作。
我们每晚搭起同一个小镇，午夜之前再把它拆开。
