We wandered through a confusion of departments where people sat at large tables doing intent, investigative things with arthropods and palm fronds and boxes of yellowed bones. Everywhere there was an air of unhurried thoroughness, of people being engaged in a gigantic endeavor that could never be completed and mustn't be rushed. In 1967, I had read, the museum issued its report on the John Murray Expedition, an Indian Ocean survey, forty-four years after the expedition had concluded. This is a world where things move at their own pace, including a tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly man with whom Fortey chatted genially and familiarly as we proceeded upwards at about the rate that sediments are laid down.
我們漫步穿過一個又一個部門，只見人們坐在大桌子跟前，仔細研究著節肢動物、棕櫚葉子和成箱的發了黃的骨頭。到處可見人們在不慌不忙地從事一個宏大的事業，這個事業是永遠也完不成的，因此沒有必要匆匆忙忙。1967年，博物館發表了一份關于約翰·默里探險的報告，那是一次對印度洋的考察，這時候距離探險結束已經44年。在那個天地里，人們是以自己的速度來辦事的。包括福泰和我乘坐的那部小小的電梯。電梯里有個學者模樣的老頭兒。電梯以大約沉積物下落的速度慢騰騰地往上移動，福泰和老頭兒親切地聊開了天。
When the man departed, Fortey said to me: "That was a very nice chap named Norman who's spent forty-two years studying one species of plant, St. John's wort. He retired in 1989, but he still comes in every week."
那個人走了以后，福泰對我說：“他是個很可愛的家伙，名叫諾曼，42年來一直在研究一種名叫金絲桃的植物。他于l989年退休，但仍然每個星期都過來。”
How do you spend forty-two years on one species of plant? I asked.
“怎么研究一種植物要花42年？”我問。
It's remarkable, isn't it? Fortey agreed. He thought for a moment. "He's very thorough apparently." The lift door opened to reveal a bricked-over opening. Fortey looked confounded. "That's very strange," he said. "That used to be Botany back there." He punched a button for another floor, and we found our way at length to Botany by means of back staircases and discreet trespass through yet more departments where investigators toiled lovingly over once-living objects. And so it was that I was introduced to Len Ellis and the quiet world of bryophytes—mosses to the rest of us.
“有點兒不可思議，對嗎？”福泰表示贊同，他想了片刻，“他顯然研究得很透徹。”電梯門開了，只見面前是一個用磚頭砌成的出口，福泰顯得有點不知所措，“這就怪了，”他說，“過去這兒是植物部。”他按了按電鈕再上一層樓。我們爬上后樓梯，小心翼翼地穿過幾個別的部，只見研究人員在不辭辛勞地研究曾經有過生命的物品，終于找到了通往植物部的路。于是，我被介紹給萊恩·埃利斯，以及那個靜悄悄的苔蘚世界。
評論
打印
