Tigen: переводы

→“Don’t you need to take anything with you?” her mother asks, still looking for her watch.
“No.”
“Aren’t you kids using a book? Sheet music?”
“I’m having a private lesson today. I just need to sing.”
The mother and daughter quickly shut the apartment door behind them. They run down the spiral staircase to the ground floor.

→Mistral’s so accustomed to being alone at home that she’s almost startled. “Oh! My lesson!” she says, putting down her sketchpad and rushing out her bedroom door. She hurries over to her mother, who is rummaging through her purse, looking for her keys.
Her mother glances at her wrist to check the time but realizes she isn’t wearing a watch. “Darn it! Where did I put it?” she exclaims, rummaging through her purse again.
“Mistral, we really need to go!”The woman’s perfume lingers in the air. One of the sweet kinds that even the bees would gladly follow. Cecile Blanchard is a perfume designer.
Mistral walks into the other room.

→Beyond her window, Paris spreads out in all its glory, with sparkling rooftops, the white cupola of Sacré-Coeur and, on the other side of the Seine River, the Eiʃel Tower.
Gleaming in the distance like stone bellflowers are the spires of Notre Dame.
“Mistral!” her mother calls from the living room. “It’s late!”

→A plump yellow bee hovers over a bunch of violets. Mistral watches the insect alight on a blossom and hears it buzzing as the petals stir sweetly between its feet. Fascinated by this beautiful sight, she picks up a pencil and her sketchbook and draws it. She can see the grains of yellow pollen on its tiny legs. It’s incredible how a simple bunch of flowers can contain an entire universe.…

→It’s afternoon. As she has on many other afternoons spent watching the bees, Mistral imagines with horror that someone in the building might notice them and, with a single swipe of a broom, destroy seven months of hard work done by ten thousand bees. That’s according to the calculations, drawings and notes she’s made in her sketchbook.

→Do they have enough flowers? The girl wonders, lost in thought. Just in case, she always keeps little plants and fresh flowers on the windowsill.

→“Almost two hundred thousand kilometers …,” Mistral whispers, watching a forager bee fly of and disappear down the street below. That’s how far a hive of bees needs to fly, sucking up nectar from flower to flower, to make one kilogram of honey. A real race against time before the start of winter.

→On the sixth floor of a building on rue de l’Abreuvoir, surrounded by the sound of the buzzing bees, Mistral smiles. Her elbows are propped on the windowsill, her chin resting on the palms of her hands, her dreamy eyes lost in the endless whirl of activity. The beehive is just below the roof, in the shelter of the gutter. A few months ago, the bees’ home was practically invisible, just a little hexagon of wax. But when she returned from her trip to New York, it was already as big as an egg carton, nestled between the copper gutter and the overhang.

→FIVE YEARS HAVE PASSED.
Tiny insects are dancing outside the window, hovering up and down in lazy spirals, forming circles in the air. They’re handfuls of dots scattered in the sky.
They’re bees. The bees of Montmartre, the historic artists’ district of Paris.

→“Can I ask you something?” says the woman.
“It depends.”
“Your name. Is it your real name?”
The man shakes his head. “Is Zoe yours?”

→The man tents his fingers below his nose. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, as
if to shoo away a fly. Then he takes off his glasses and rests them on the desk in front of
him. “I’m listening.”

→“Soon, the four of us are going to pass down the secret to the four who’ll come after
us.”
“And once you’ve passed it down?”
“We can finally die.”

→windowpanes.
“Why would you sell me such an important secret?”
“Because you’re willing to pay for it. You’re very wealthy. And now’s the time to do
it.”
“What do you mean?”

→“We call it Century, because it’s handed down every hundred years, more or less. The
secret’s connected to something that’s destined to return.”
“Like comets.”
“Exactly.”
A long silence follows, disturbed only by the faint tapping of raindrops against the

→“Then call us the Four Wise Men. Or better yet, the Four Magi.”
For the first time, the man’s eyes narrow with a trace of cold interest. “I know what
the Magi are. Are you telling me it’s that old? Two, three thousand years old?”
“The secret dates back to that era, yes.”
“Does this secret have a name?”

→“Who are the others?”
Plastic, the woman thinks. This is like talking to a plastic mannequin. There’s absolutely
nothing human about this man. She shifts nervously in her chair. “At this stage, their
names aren’t important.”
“Maybe not to you. To me, they’re essential.”

→“To accomplish what?”
“To pass the secret down to those who come after them.”
“Are you the only one who knows about it?”
“No. There are four of us.”

→“I’m more than twice that old.”
“Surprising. Why should I believe you?” The man’s gaze is ice-cold.
“Because you know it’s true. Because my age is a part of the secret I know about.
Those who need to protect it, like I do, have the gift of living long lives.”

→“Looks can be deceiving,” the woman replies. “How old do you think I am?”
If there’s any teasing in her question, the man doesn’t seem to notice it. His answer is
totally void of emotion. “Forty.”

→“Many years ago?” the man with the black-rimmed glasses asks. His voice is unusually
hoarse. “You don’t look so old.”