Built From What They Had

The chapel on Lamb Holm is two army huts end to end, which is the first thing anyone notices and the last thing anyone remembers. A caretaker was unlocking it when Polly arrived, an unhurried man with a ring of keys. "What is your job?" she asked him, and he said he opened the doors in the morning, closed them at night, and repainted what the salt air took off in between.

Kapelo na otočku Lamb Holm sestavljata dve vojaški baraki, postavljeni druga za drugo, in to je prvo, kar vsakdo opazi, in zadnje, česar se kdo spomni. Ko je Polly prišla, jo je odklepal oskrbnik, mož s šopom ključev, ki se mu ni nikamor mudilo."Kakšno delo opravljate?"ga je vprašala, in rekel je, da zjutraj odpre vrata, zvečer jih zapre, vmes pa prebarva tisto, kar odnese slani zrak.

Inside, the huts disappear. Italian prisoners of war were brought here in the nineteen forties to work on the sea barriers, and they asked for somewhere to worship. What they got was corrugated metal. What they made of it was a vaulted ceiling, a stone chancel, a wrought iron screen and a painted altarpiece, and one of them, a painter named Domenico Chiocchetti, led the work.

Znotraj baraki izgineta. Italijanske vojne ujetnike so sem pripeljali v štiridesetih letih prejšnjega stoletja, da bi delali na morskih pregradah, in prosili so za prostor za molitev. Dobili so valovito pločevino. Iz nje so naredili obokan strop, kamnit prezbiterij, kovano železno pregrado in poslikano oltarno sliko, delo pa je vodil eden izmed njih, slikar Domenico Chiocchetti.

"What do you need to complete the work?" is the question the camp had to answer. They asked for cement, and were given cement. Everything else came out of what the camp was throwing away. The screen is scrap iron worked cold. The candle holders are corned beef tins. The stone of the chancel is plasterboard, painted so carefully that you have to lean in before it admits what it is.

"Kaj potrebujete, da dokončate delo?"je vprašanje, na katero je moralo odgovoriti taborišče. Prosili so za cement in cement so dobili. Vse drugo je prišlo iz tistega, kar je taborišče metalo proč. Pregrada je hladno obdelano odpadno železo. Svečniki so pločevinke od mesnih konzerv. Kamen prezbiterija je mavčna plošča, pobarvana tako skrbno, da se moraš nagniti bliže, preden prizna, kaj v resnici je.

The caretaker had left a small hand tool on the sill. "Could you show me how to use this tool?" Polly asked, and he did, and the explanation went past her the first time. "Could you explain that again?" He did that too. Then he went back to his paint, and Polly looked up at a ceiling that is flat metal pretending to be a curve, and holds the pretence from every seat in the room.

Oskrbnik je na okenski polici pustil majhno ročno orodje."Mi lahko pokažete, kako se uporablja to orodje?"je vprašala Polly, in pokazal ji je, razlaga pa je šla prvič mimo nje."Mi lahko to še enkrat razložite?"Tudi to je storil. Potem se je vrnil k barvi, Polly pa je pogledala navzgor v strop, ki je ravna pločevina, ki se dela obok, in ta videz zdrži z vsakega sedeža v prostoru.