Nicoya and Daniel are born in the same hospital in Jerusalem on the same date. At 2 a.m., their fathers exchange smiles in the nursery. When Nicoya is three months old, her mother takes her on a bus to the assisted living home where Nicoya's grandmother lives. In the back of the same bus, Daniel sleeps against his mother's chest for two stops before he is carried off the bus and down the street and into his home, eyes peacefully closed all the while.
尼科娅和丹尼尔同一天出生在耶路撒冷，而且是同一家医院。凌晨两点，两人的父亲在育婴室曾相视一笑。尼科娅三个月大时，母亲抱着她乘公交车前往养老院看望祖母。就在这辆车的后排，丹尼尔倚在母亲胸前安睡；两站路后，母亲抱着他下了车，沿着街道回到家中，而他自始至终都闭眼沉睡。
They both read The Phantom Tollbooth at age eight and then carry the book around, fascinated by the Soundkeeper, who catalogues sounds in vaults just to enjoy the silence. They listen to"Free to Be You and Me" in the car during road trips. Daniel's family moves to Kfar Saba when his younger brother develops a rash like butterfly wings across his cheeks. The doctor who diagnoses his brother with lupus has a son in Nicoya's fifth-grade class. The two are friends, but Nicoya doesn't see him again after elementary school ends.
八岁时，他俩都读了《神奇的收费亭》，对这本书爱不释手，尤其着迷于那个将声音封存于地下室、只为享受寂静的“声音守护人”。公路旅行时，他们都在车上听《自由做自己》。当弟弟脸颊出现蝴蝶翅膀般的红斑后，丹尼尔一家搬到了卡法萨巴。确诊他弟弟患有红斑狼疮的医生有个儿子与尼科娅五年级同班。两人曾是朋友，但小学毕业后再无相逢。
In the army, Nicoya works a desk job on base just outside Ra'anana;Daniel is stationed on the border in Ramallah. After serving three years, they both travel to Central America. They each find their way to Cerro Chato on different days and hike down the inside of the volcano, pushing the vines and overgrown branches aside to reach the freshwater lake. They each sit alone on a log by the shore, waiting for their fellow hikers to catch up, contemplating the dangers of wading in. The fog rolls low when they swim in the volcanic lagoon, and before they are called back to shore, he by his friends, she by her sister, there are a few moments when all they can see as they tread water is the hurling of waves against rocks and the whiteness of the cloud around them.
服兵役期间，尼科娅在赖阿南纳郊外的军事基地担任文职工作，丹尼尔则被派驻在拉姆安拉的边境地带。结束三年兵役后，两人不约而同踏上了中美洲之旅。他们在不同的日子各自寻至塞罗查托火山，沿着火山口内部小径徒步，拨开交错的藤蔓与疯长的枝桠，抵达那片淡水湖。两人都曾独自坐在湖边的枯木上，一面等待同行的徒步者，一面思忖涉水可能带来的危险。他们在火山湖中游泳时，浓雾低垂。就在被各自的同伴——他的朋友，她的妹妹——唤回岸边之前，曾有片刻时光，两人踩水四望，唯见波浪拍岩、白云围绕。
The lodge near the volcano has a traveler's book exchange. Daniel leaves his book of Robert Frost poems in exchange for a copy of Galapagos by Vonnegut. The next traveler takes the Frost poems and leaves The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, which Nicoya picks up and brings with her to a tiny fishing village in Nicaragua where she and her sister live for two weeks on seventeen dollars a day. A man in the village takes her out on his boat and teaches her to scale and gut a fish. He almost persuades her to stay with him, but then she reads on page nineteen that love should be the moving sea between the shores of souls,and she returns to Israel with her sister.
火山旁的旅舍有一个旅行者图书交换角。丹尼尔留下他的罗伯特·弗罗斯特诗集，换走了冯内古特的《加拉帕戈斯群岛》。下一位旅人取走弗罗斯特诗集，留下纪伯伦的《先知》——尼科娅拾起此书带去了尼加拉瓜的一个小渔村。她与妹妹在此待了两周，每日花费十七美元。村里有个男人带她乘船出海，教她将鱼刮鳞掏肠。他差点就说服她留下相伴，此时她正好读到《先知》第十九页，那页的诗句说，爱当是灵魂两岸间涌动的大海，于是她与妹妹返回了以色列。
Daniel and Nicoya apply to different colleges. They study different fields,though she drops out before finishing her degree and becomes a secretary at a tech company in Tel Aviv. He is hired as a software engineer by the same company and, when a piece of his mail accidentally comes to her office, she registers how nice his name sounds before she drops the envelope in the mail forwarding pile.
丹尼尔和尼科娅申请了不同的大学。他们攻读的专业不同，不过尼科娅中途辍学，未能获得学位，后来在特拉维夫一家科技公司当秘书。丹尼尔被同一家公司聘为软件工程师，当他的信件误送至她的办公室时，她注意到他的名字听起来格外悦耳，随后将信放入邮件转送筐。
They live around the corner from each otherchose that particular street because of the bookstore cafe. On April 13th, they both compliment the barista on her enamel earrings.
他们住在同一个街角的两边——选择这条街全因那家书咖。四月十三日那天，他们不约而同地夸奖了咖啡师戴的珐琅耳环。
Daniel wants to be a teacher and interviews for a job at the University of Chicago, but he understands almost as soon as his interview begins that he can't live outside of Israel. Nicoya quits her job and flies to visit her cousin in Colorado. When she returns to Israel after a week of hiking, mostly alone,her first flight from Denver to New York is rerouted through Chicago. She sits across from Daniel at gate E12 but is crying over a boy killed in combat whom she hasn't even seen since elementary school. Daniel thinks about asking her what is wrong, if he can help, but he worries his foreign accent will scare her. They sit in separate sections of the plane.
丹尼尔想当老师，于是参加了芝加哥大学的教职面试.但面试刚一开始他就意识到自己离不开以色列。尼科娅辞去工作，飞往科罗拉多州探望表亲。她基本上独自徒步旅行了一周，之后返回以色列时，她从丹佛飞往纽约的首程航班经停芝加哥。在E12登机口，她与丹尼尔相对而坐，但当时她正为一个战死的男孩哭泣，一个自小学毕业就再未见过的男孩。丹尼尔本想向她是否需要帮助，却担心自己的异国口音会惊扰她。最终两人分别坐在了飞机的不同区域。
Three years later, walking down the main street in Tel Aviv one afternoon, Nicoya stops to listen to a street performer picking the strings of his guitar like a bass. She drops some loose change from the pocket of her steel blue trench coat into his guitar case. As she walks away, the musician starts to sing"Famous Blue Raincoat."
"For you," he calls, playing the opening chords.
She turns and smiles, though she doesn't recognize the song.
三年后的一个午后，尼科娅走在特拉维夫的主街上，为一位街头艺人停下了脚步——艺人拨动琴弦，吉他声如贝斯。她从灰蓝色风衣口袋里掏出几枚零钱放入艺人的吉他盒。当她转身离开，艺人忽然唱起了《著名的蓝雨衣》。
“送给您。”他弹着前奏喊道。
虽然不知道这首歌曲，她仍转身一笑。
When Daniel walks down the same block forty-five seconds later and hears the musician playing his favorite song,he stops and hands the musician the largest bill in his wallet, which is only a twenty, but still.
四十五秒后，丹尼尔走过同一条街道，听见艺人正弹奏他最爱的这首歌。他停下脚步，将钱包里最大面额的钞票——虽然只是二十谢克尔——郑重放入琴盒。
Nicoya gives birth to her daughter eleven months later in the hospital where Daniel's brother is having emergency surgery on his kidney. Nicoya's boyfriend never shows.
十一个月后，尼科娅在医院产下女儿。丹尼尔的弟弟当时正在这家医院接受肾脏急诊手术。尼科娅的男友始终未现身。
At their neighborhood grocery store on a Friday afternoon, she buys the last box of quinoa five minutes before Daniel arrives. He has promised to bring quinoa to a potluck dinner-it's the only dish he really knows how to cook-so he goes to another grocery store where he starts a conversation with a woman wearing an army uniform in the grains aisle and asks her out on a date.
某个周五午后，尼科娅买走了社区杂货店里的最后一盒藜麦，五分钟后丹尼尔来到了店里。他原本承诺要带藜麦去参加百乐餐聚会（他只会做这一种吃的），于是只好转去另一家杂货店。在谷物货架间，他与一位穿军装的女子攀谈起来，并邀她约会。
When he marries the girl from the grocery store six months later, Nicoya sees the bride being photographed in Yarkon Park the afternoon before the wedding. As she pushes her daughter in the stroller, she steals herself from envy and thinks to herself that the fiancé of a woman with such an easy smile must be a lucky man.
六个月后，丹尼尔与超市相识的女子就要结婚了。婚礼前的那个下午，尼科娅看见新娘在亚尔昆公园拍摄婚纱照。她推着躺在婴儿车里的女儿，压下心头的羡慕，暗自想着，这女子笑容如此明媚，未婚夫必定是个幸运儿。
Daniel accepts a job teaching at the Mada Tech Science Center. Five years later in Tel Aviv, before visiting his brother in assisted living, Daniel stops by the bookshop on his old corner and picks up a red picture book with a horse on the cover. The owner asks Daniel if he has children, and he tells him no,not yet, but the author of the book is a friend of his from the army. The owner smiles and moves the stack to the window display. Later, when Nicoya's sister walks by the bookstore, the red book in the window display catches her eye,and she purchases a copy for her niece.
丹尼尔受聘于玛达科技科学中心担任教师。五年后的特拉维夫，在去护理中心探望弟弟的路上，他顺道去了以前住的那个街角的书店，拿起一本封面上印着一匹马的红色图画书。店主问他是否有孩子，他回答还没有，但这本书的作者是他服役时的战友。店主微笑着将整摞书挪到橱窗展示。后来，尼科娅的妹妹路过书店，一眼相中了橱窗里的那本红皮书，便为外甥女买了一本。
One afternoon, Daniel finds Nicoya's daughter roaming the science center, separated from her school group,tears thick in her eyes. He crouches next to her, tells her the dinosaur skeletons won't hurt her if she's friendly. When the teacher finds Nicoya's daughter, she is telling the giganotosaurus all about her favorite book, Dad Runs Away with the Circus, and its red cover with a horse on the front, and how mom says that daddy ran away but not with the circus and also isn't coming back like the dad in the book does in the end.
某个午后，丹尼尔在科学中心遇见了尼科娅的女儿，她跟同学们走散了，正泪眼汪汪，不知往哪儿走。他蹲下身，安慰女孩说，只要友好相处，恐龙不会伤害人。后来，老师找到女孩时，她正和巨兽龙讲自己最爱的书——那本红色封面上印着一匹马、名为《爸爸和马戏团一起逃走了》的图画书，还喃喃说着，妈妈说爸爸也逃走了，但不是和马戏团一起，而且也像书里的爸爸那样不会回来了。
Ten years later, Nicoya reads the obituary of Daniel's brother at the breakfast table the morning after her daughter leaves for the army.
十年后，在女儿参军离家后的那个清晨，尼科娅坐在早餐桌旁，读到了丹尼尔弟弟的讣告。
In their happy old age, Nicoya and Daniel live across the street from each other in apartments outside of Jerusalem. Her son-in-law visits frequently with the grandchildren; his wife's smile is as easy as it was on the day they married. Still, more than anything, they remember swimming alone inside the volcano through the rolling fog, nothing but whiteness, and no one else in the world.
暮年时光安然静好，尼科娅与丹尼尔住在耶路撒冷郊外的公寓楼里，彼此隔着一条街。她的女婿常带着外孙们来访，他妻子的笑容仍如结婚那日般明媚。然而，最深切的记忆，仍是当年火山湖翻卷雾霭中的独游，天地间唯有纯白，再无他人。
（译者为“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛获奖者）
