My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
Fredrik Backman
To the monkey and the frog. For an eternity of ten thousand tales.
1
TOBACCO
Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero.
That’s just how it is.
Anyone who doesn’t agree needs their head examined.
That’s what Elsa’s granny says, at least.
Elsa is seven, going on eight. She knows she isn’t especially good at being seven. She knows she’s different. Her headmaster says she needs to “fall into line” in order to achieve “a better fit with her peers.” Other adults describe her as “very grown-up for her age.” Elsa knows this is just another way of saying “massively annoying for her age,” because they only tend to say this when she corrects them for mispronouncing “déjà vu” or not being able to tell the difference between “me” and “I” at the end of a sentence. Smart-asses usually can’t, hence the “grown-up for her age” comment, generally said with a strained smile at her parents. As if she has a mental impairment, as if Elsa has shown them up by not being totally thick just because she’s seven. And that’s why she doesn’t have any friends except Granny.
Because all the other seven-year-olds in her school are as idiotic as seven-year-olds tend to be, but Elsa is different. She shouldn’t take any notice of what those muppets think, says Granny. Because all the best people are different—look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them.
Granny is seventy-seven years old, going on seventy-eight. She’s not very good at it either. You can tell she’s old because her face looks like newspaper stuffed into wet shoes, but no one ever accuses Granny of being grown-up for her age. “Perky,” people sometimes say to Elsa’s mum, looking either fairly worried or fairly angry as Mum sighs and asks how much she owes for the damages. Or when Granny’s smoking at the hospital sets the fire alarm off and she starts ranting and raving about how “everything has to be so bloody politically correct these days!” when the security guards make her extinguish her cigarette. Or that time she made a snowman in Britt-Marie and Kent’s garden right under their balcony and dressed it up in grown-up clothes so it looked as if a person had fallen from the roof. Or that time those prim men wearing spectacles started ringing all the doorbells and wanted to talk about God and Jesus and heaven, and Granny stood on her balcony with her dressing gown flapping open, shooting at them with her paintball gun, and Britt-Marie couldn’t quite decide if she was most annoyed about the paintball-gun thing or the not-wearing-anything-under-the-dressing-gown thing, but she reported both to the police just to be on the safe side.
Those are the times, Elsa supposes, that people find Granny perky for her age.
奶奶的道歉信
作者：Fredrik
Backman
译者：Lily Bian（边晓华）
写给猴子和青蛙
永恒的一万个故事。
第一章
烟草
每个七岁的孩子都需要一个超级英雄。是的，是这么回事。
那些不同意的人需要去看看脑子是不是出了毛病。
至少，埃尔莎的奶奶是这么说的。
埃尔莎七岁，马上就八岁了。她知道自己不是特别擅长七岁的样子。她知道她有所不同。她的校长说她需要“归队”才能“与同龄人更好的配合”。其他成年人将她描述为“比实际年龄早熟”。埃尔莎知道这只是“七岁八岁狗也嫌”的另一种说法而已，因为只有在她在纠正成年人déjàvu错误的发音时，或者无法向她解释在句子结尾处主格和宾格之间的区别时，人们才倾向于这样说。人们没法说“她是个自作聪明的家伙”，因此，只能僵硬地对她的父母笑笑，做出“比实际年龄成熟”这样的评论，好像她有精神障碍，好像艾尔莎仅仅因为只有七岁才没能完全厚实地显示出来。这就是她除了奶奶以外没有任何朋友的原因。因为学校里其他七岁的孩子都像七岁的孩子一样愚蠢，但艾尔莎不一样。
奶奶说，她用不着去在乎那些人云亦云的想法，因为最好的人都是与众不同的---看看那些超级英雄就知道了。毕竟，如果超能力属于正常范围的话，每个人都会拥有它们。
奶奶七十七岁，马上就七十八岁了。她也不是非常擅长七十七岁的样子。你一眼就能看出来她的确很老，因为她的脸看起来就像是被揉成一团，塞到鞋子里的报纸。但是从没有人指责过奶奶，说她比实际年龄更成熟。当艾尔莎的妈妈又气又恼，一边叹气一边问自己需要为损失赔偿多少钱时，人们有时候会说一句“精神真好”。有一次奶奶在医院吸烟，火灾报警器响了，就在保安让她把烟熄灭时，她开始发狂咆哮：“该死的现在怎么什么都要在政治上正确！” 还有一次，奶奶在布列特玛丽和肯特的花园里堆了一个雪人，雪人恰好就在她们的阳台下方，奶奶给它穿上成年人的衣服，看起来很像一个人从屋顶掉下来的样子。还有一次，那些戴着眼镜循规蹈矩的男人们开始挨家挨户摁门铃，想和居民们谈谈关于上帝，耶稣和天堂的事情，而阳台上的奶奶则穿着长袍站在风中，任风将长袍吹起， 用彩弹枪射击他们。布里特玛丽不知道奶奶的彩弹枪和穿着睡袍不穿内衣哪个更令她不安，于是，她两样都报警了。
在爱尔莎看来，这个时候，人们就会说奶奶“精神真好”。
