English Original
Bill was a retired, lifelong bachelor. He lived alone in a small terraced house two doors down from us. I visited his home on several occasions, and it seemed largely unchanged since the 1950s. Some items appeared untouched since the 1930s, apart from the occasional silverfish or woodlouse.
In his small converted kitchen, which housed a huge, solid armchair with newspapers protruding from beneath its cushion, hung a picture of a dog among one or two other small photos. Upon closer inspection, these were:
- A grey-toned snapshot of seventeen-year-old Bill in a flat cap, sitting on grey grass with a winsome girl wearing her hair in bangs and a cloche hat.
- A sepia photo of a young boy in Edwardian dress, his head tilted back slightly despite a stiff collar, with a too-small school cap perched on his head. Bill claimed it was him, but it looked like a different person altogether.
- Almost lost among the clutter of pipe cleaners, matches, spills, bits of wire, tea coupons, and old Yale keys was a very small, dark photo of a black mongrel dog lying in a backyard. A white stripe down its nose and between its ears was one of the few details making it distinguishable from the surrounding gloom.
"This was Bram," Bill told me, "my dog. Or my brother Frank's dog, if we're being precise about ownership."
Over the years, my family had four dogs. We had no photographs of the first two. Yogi was gone before I could remember him. Rex came next—my only memory is drawing on him with a biro when I ran out of paper, which he seemed to love. Rusty ran away and was never seen again, and Benny... well, he deserves his own story.
中文翻译
比尔是一位退休的终身单身汉。他独自住在离我们两家之隔的一栋小联排房屋里。我曾多次拜访他的家，那里似乎自20世纪50年代以来就没什么变化。有些物品看起来自30年代起就未曾动过，除了偶尔出现的蠹虫或潮虫。
在他那间由厨房改造的小房间里，放着一把巨大的实心扶手椅，坐垫下还塞着露出来的报纸。墙上挂着一两张小照片，其中有一张是狗的图片。仔细看，这些照片是：
- 一张灰调的快照，拍的是十七岁的比尔，戴着平顶帽，和一位迷人的女孩坐在灰蒙蒙的草地上。女孩留着刘海，戴着一顶钟形帽。
- 一张棕褐色的照片，上面是一个穿着爱德华时代服装的小男孩，尽管衣领笔挺，他的头仍微微后仰，一顶过小的校帽顶在头上。比尔说那是他，但看起来完全是另一个人。
- 在一堆通条、火柴、引火纸片、电线头、茶券和旧耶鲁钥匙的杂物中，几乎被遗忘的是一张非常小的、昏暗的照片，拍的是一只躺在后院里的黑色杂种狗。它鼻子上和两耳之间的一道白条纹，是少数几个能让它在昏暗背景中被辨认出来的特征。
"这是布拉姆，"比尔告诉我，"我的狗。或者准确点说，是我兄弟弗兰克的狗，如果每件东西都要分清归属的话。"
这些年来，我家一共养过四只狗。我们实际上根本没有前两只狗的任何照片。瑜伽在我能真正记住他之前就离开了。雷克斯是下一只——我对他唯一的记忆是在没纸的时候用圆珠笔在他身上画画，而他似乎很喜欢这样。拉斯特跑掉后再也没出现过，而本尼……嗯，他值得拥有自己的故事。