美食祈祷与恋爱意大利文化 《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 77 (173):汽车自由行

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 77 (173):汽车自由行  

In the morning
Mario helps me buy a bicycle. Like a proper almost-Italian
he says
"I know a guy
" and he takes me to his cousin's shop
where I get a nice mountain bike
a helmet
a lock and a basket for slightly less than fifty American dollars. Now I'm mobile in my new town of Ubud
or at least as mobile as I can safely feel on these roads
which are narrow and winding and badly maintained and crowded with motorcycles
trucks and tourist buses.
In the afternoon
I ride my bike down into Ketut's village
to hang out with my medicine man for our first day of . . . whatever it is we're going to be doing together. I'm not sure
to be honest. English lessons? Meditation lessons? Good old-fashioned porch-sitting? I don't know what Ketut has in mind for me
but I'm just happy to be invited into his life.
He's got guests when I arrive. It's a small family of rural Balinese who have brought their one-year-old daughter to Ketut for help. The poor little baby is teething and has been crying for several nights. Dad is a handsome young man in a sarong; he has the muscular calves of a Soviet war hero's statue. Mom is pretty and shy
looking at me from way below her timidly lowered eyelids. They have brought a tiny offering to Ketut for his services—2
000 rupiah
which is about 25 cents
placed in a handmade basket of palm fronds
slightly bigger than a hotel bar's ashtray. There is one flower blossom in the basket
along with the money and a few grains of rice. (Their poverty puts them in stark opposition to the richer family from the capital city of Denpesar who will e to see Ketut later in the afternoon
the mother balan-cing on her head a three-tiered basket filled with fruit and flowers and a roasted duck—a headgear so magnificent and impressive that Carmen Miranda would have bowed down in humility before it.)
我到的时候，刚好他有客人。是一户巴厘乡下小家庭带来他们一岁的女儿找赖爷帮忙。可怜的小娃儿正在长牙，已经哭了好几个晚上。父亲是俊俏的年轻人，穿沙龙裙；有着苏俄战争英雄雕像的健壮小腿肚。母亲漂亮害羞，从羞怯低垂的眼睑底下注视着我。他们给赖爷的服务带来小小的奉献——两千卢比，相当于二十五美分左右，摆在比饭店酒吧的菸灰缸稍大一点的手工制棕榈篮内。篮子里有一朵花、钱和几粒稻米。（他们的贫穷和傍晚从省会登巴萨［Denpasar］前来造访赖爷的富裕人家——母亲头上顶着装花果和烤鸭的三层篮，香蕉女郎看见她也会自叹不如的头饰——形成强烈对比。）