那时的西村正在发生变化;用不了多久，它最边缘的那些破旧的褐砂石就会落入更时髦的人手中。她住在一盆橡胶树的篱笆后面，不受潮流的影响，家里有三只猫，一只金丝雀的粪便，它的笼子里不停地筛下来，然后发芽，一群令人向往的幼苗唱诗班，围绕着窗台上的碟子，还有一群无情的蟑螂，她太近视了，无法对付，尽管她知道它们在那里，并且会悲伤地谈论它们，就像很久以前曾经可以避免的一种痛苦。无法归类的弃儿、不合群者、边缘案例:当你自己就是或接近于这样的人时，你可以通过与比你年长的人交往来证明自己没有完全破产，这让你感到安心。或者尝试。“它们是我的朋友，”她会这样说她的猫——莫丽、米齐和卡洛琳，它们的名字是莫丽、米齐和卡洛琳，她总是用出租车带着其中一只或另一只去看兽医——好像她没有别的猫似的。后来当了修女的室友，犹太人的室友，一个秋天她在赏叶旅行中遇到的那对夫妇，都是她再也见不到的人。她在一家律师事务所工作，说所有的法官都是酒鬼，从未投过票。但有时会请我吃饭——面包小牛肉、白葡萄酒、巴伐利亚草莓——有时，她不知道自己在说什么，我就会从她那陈腐的往事中撷取一二碎片。波罗的海冷。 Being sent home in a troika when her feet went numb. In summer, carriage rides. A swarm of gypsy children driven off with whips. An octogenarian father, bishop of a dying schismatic sect. A very young mother who didn't want her. A half-brother she met just once. Cousins in Wisconsin, one of whom phoned her from a candy store, out of the blue, while she was living in Chicago. What had brought her there, or when, remained unclear. As did much else. We'd met in church. I noticed first a big, soaring soprano with a wobble in it, then the thickly wreathed and braided crimp in the mouse- gold coiffure. Old? Young? She was of no age. Through rimless lenses she looked out of a child's, or a doll's, globular blue. Wore Keds the year round, tended otherwise to overdress. Owned a mandolin. Once I got her to take it down from the mantel and plink out, through a warm fuddle of sauterne, a lot of giddy Italian airs from a songbook whose pages had started to crumble. The canary fluffed and quivered, and the cats, amazed, came out from under the couch and stared. What could the offspring of the schismatic age and a reluctant child bride expect from life? Not much. Less and less. A dream she'd had kept coming back, years after. She'd taken a job in Washington with some right-wing lobby, and lived in one of those bow-windowed mansions that turn into roominghouses, and her room there had a full-length mirror: oval, with a molding, is the way I picture it. In her dream something woke her, she got up to look, and there in the glass she'd had was covered over—she gave it a wondering emphasis—with gray veils. The West Village was changing. I was changing. The last time I asked her to dinner, she didn't show. Hours— or was it days?—later, she phoned to explain: she hadn't been able to find my block; a patrolman had steered her home. I spent my evenings canvassing for Gene McCarthy. Passing, I'd see her shades drawn, no light behind the rubber trees. She wasn't out, she didn't own a TV. She was in there, getting gently blotto. What came next, I wasn't brave enough to know. Only one day, passing, I saw new shades, quick-chic matchstick bamboo, going up where the waterstained old ones had been, and where the seedlings— O gray veils, gray veils—had risen and gone down. Anonymous submission.