The Chair by the Fire

The guesthouse stood above the harbour with its door on the sheltered side, which on these islands is the side you build a door on. It was kept by a North Ronaldsay ewe, one of the shore sheep that live off seaweed at the north end of the archipelago. Polly stood in the hall with rain running off her. "Do you have any available rooms?"

Pansion je stajao iznad luke, s vratima na zavjetrinskoj strani, a na ovim otocima to je jedina strana na koju se vrata i grade. Vodila ga je ovca s otoka North Ronaldsay, jedna od onih obalnih ovaca koje se na sjevernom kraju arhipelaga hrane morskom travom. Polly je stajala u hodniku, a kiša se cijedila s nje. „Imate li slobodnih soba?”

There were rooms. There usually are in September. Polly said, "I would like a quiet room, please." The ewe paused long enough to be polite about it. The rooms at the back face the yard, the rooms at the front face the water, and the wind finds both. Nowhere here is quiet in the way a visitor means it. What the islands offer instead is a wind so constant that after two nights you stop hearing it.

Soba je bilo. U rujnu ih obično ima. Polly je rekla: „Htjela bih mirnu sobu, molim vas.” Ovca je zastala taman toliko da to ostane pristojno. Sobe straga gledaju na dvorište, sobe sprijeda gledaju na vodu, a vjetar nađe i jedne i druge. Ovdje nigdje nije mirno onako kako gost to misli. Ono što otoci nude umjesto toga jest vjetar toliko postojan da ga nakon dvije noći prestaneš čuti.

"Could you assist me with my luggage, please?" The ewe carried the bag up herself and set it beside a chair by the fire, and the chair was the reason Polly stopped talking. Its frame was driftwood, because no tree grows here and every plank in the old houses came in on the tide. Its back was oat straw, coiled and stitched into a hood that curves forward over the shoulders. A joiner in Kirkwall named David Kirkness turned that farmhouse habit into a standard design in the middle of the eighteen hundreds.

„Možete li mi, molim vas, pomoći s prtljagom?” Ovca je torbu sama odnijela gore i spustila je kraj stolice uz vatru, a upravo je stolica bila razlog zbog kojeg je Polly ušutjela. Okvir joj je bio od naplavljenog drva, jer ovdje ne raste nijedno stablo i svaka daska u starim kućama došla je s plimom. Naslon je bio od zobene slame, uvijene i ušivene u kapuljaču koja se svija naprijed preko ramena. Stolar iz Kirkwalla po imenu David Kirkness pretvorio je tu seosku naviku u standardni oblik sredinom devetnaestog stoljeća.

"What time is check-out?" Polly asked, because the ferry decides everything here. Then she sat down in the chair. The straw hood cut the draught off the door, the fire went on doing what fires do, and for the first time since the boat she could hear herself breathing.

„U koliko sati je odjava?” pitala je Polly, jer ovdje sve odlučuje trajekt. Zatim je sjela u stolicu. Slamnata kapuljača presjekla je propuh s vrata, vatra je nastavila raditi ono što vatre rade, i prvi put otkako je sišla s broda čula je vlastito disanje.