《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 82 (190):賴爺的老婆

As for Ketut's wife, it takes me a while to align myself with her. Nyomo, as he calls her, is big and plump with a stiff-hip limp and teeth stained red by chewing on betel nut tobacco. Her toes are painfully crooked from arthritis. She has a shrewd eye. She was scary to me from the first sight. She's got that fierce old lady vibe you see sometimes in Italian widows and righteous black churchgoing mamas. She looks like she'd whup your hide for the slightest of misdemeanors. She was blatantly suspicious of me at first—Who is this flamingo traipsing through my house every day? She would stare at me from inside the sooty shadows of her kitchen, unconvinced as to my right to exist. I would smile at her and she'd just keep staring, deciding whether she should chase me out with a broomstick or not.

至於賴爺的老婆，我花了些時候才與她成爲同盟。他叫她彌歐姆（Nyomo），是個胖女人，四肢健壯，微跛，牙齒因嚼食檳榔而染成紅色。罹患關節炎使她的腳趾痛苦地彎曲。她的眼神強悍。第一眼看見她教讓我害怕。她給人那種在意大利寡婦和上教堂的黑人母親身上所看得見的兇狠老婦的感覺。她看起來像會爲了最輕微的罪行鞭打你的屁股。她一開始對我抱持懷疑的態度——"這隻紅鶴幹嘛天天在我家閒晃？"她從滿是煤煙的陰暗廚房瞪着外頭的我，對我的存在不以爲然。我朝她微笑，而她只是繼續瞪着眼，決定是否該拿掃帚趕我出去。

But then something changed. It was after the whole photocopy incident.

但事情發生變化，那是在複印事件過後。

Ketut Liyer has all these piles of old, lined notebooks and ledgers, filled with tiny little handwriting, of ancient Balinese-Sanskrit mysteries about healing. He copied these notes into these notebooks way back in the 1940s or 1950s, sometime after his grandfather died, so he would have all the medical information recorded. This stuff is beyond invaluable. There are volumes of data about rare trees and leaves and plants and all their medicinal properties. He's got some sixty pages of diagrams about palm-reading, and more notebooks full of astro-logical data, mantras, spells and cures. The only thing is, these notebooks had been through decades of mildew and mice and they're shredded almost to bits. Yellow and crumbling and musty, they look like disintegrating piles of autumn leaves. Every time he turns a page, he rips the page.

賴爺擁有一堆堆老舊的橫線筆記本與賬簿，裏頭以小小的古巴釐梵語寫滿治療祕密。他遠在祖父過世之後的20世紀40、50年代，就將一些療方摘錄抄寫到這些筆記本上，把所有的醫藥資訊記錄下來。這東西的價值難以估量。一冊冊資料記載了罕見的樹木、葉子、植物及其醫療特性。他有六十頁的圖表在說明手相，還有寫滿占星資料、咒語、符咒與療法的筆記本。問題是，數十年來的發黴和老鼠齧咬，使這些筆記本幾乎殘破不堪。枯黃、龜裂、發黴，彷若一堆堆逐漸瓦解的秋葉。他每翻一頁，紙張便剝裂開來。

"Ketut," I said to him last week, holding up one of his battered notebooks, "I'm not a doctor like you are, but I think this book is dying."

"賴爺，"上禮拜我拿起他的一本破爛筆記本告訴他，"我雖然不像你是位醫生，但我想這些本子快死了。"

He laughed. "You think is dying?"

他笑了出來，"你覺得它們快死了？"

"Sir," I said gravely, "here is my professional opinion—if this book does not get some help soon, it will be dead within the next six months."

"先生，"我嚴肅地說，"這是我的專業意見——這本子若不趕緊找人幫忙，用不着六個月就會翹辮子。"