There's a game I like to play with my friends sometimes called "Watch This!" Whenever anybody's wondering about some obscure fact (for instance: "Who was Saint Louis?") I will say, "Watch this!" then pick up the nearest phone and dial my sister's number. Sometimes I'll catch her in the car, driving her kids home from school in the Volvo, and she will muse: "Saint Louis . . . well, he was a hairshirt-wearing French king, actually, which is interesting because . . ."

我喜欢和朋友玩一种叫看我的的游戏。每当有人对某个模糊的事实——比方对圣路易是什么人？有疑问，我就说看我的！然后拿起距离我最近的电话，拨我姐的号码。有时碰上她在开车，去接她孩子放学回家，她便沉思道：圣路易……这个嘛，他是穿粗毛衬衣的法国国王，这很有趣，因为……

So my sister comes to visit me in Rome—in my new city—and then shows it to me. This is Rome, Catherine-style. Full of facts and dates and architecture that I do not see because my mind does not work in that way. The only thing I ever want to know about any place or any person is the story, this is the only thing I watch for—never for aesthetic details. (Sofie came to my apartment a month after I'd moved into the place and said, "Nice pink bathroom," and this was the first time I'd noticed that it was, indeed, pink. Bright pink, from floor to ceiling, bright pink tile everywhere—I honestly hadn't seen it before.) But my sister's trained eye picks up the Gothic, or Romanesque, or Byzantine features of a building, the pattern of the church floor, or the dim sketch of the unfinished fresco hidden behind the altar. She strides across Rome on her long legs (we used to call her "Catherine-of-the-Three-Foot-Long-Femurs") and I hasten after her, as I have since toddlerhood, taking two eager steps to her every one.

于是我姐姐来罗马——我的新城市——探望我，然后带领我参观这座城市。这是凯瑟琳风格的罗马。充满我未看见的数据、年代和建筑，因为我的脑子并非如此运作。我只想知道任何地方或任何人的故事，我只关心这个，从不关心美学细节。（苏菲在我搬进公寓一个月后来访，说粉红色浴室，不错。这是我头一次留意到浴室确实是粉红色的。鲜粉红色，从地板到天花板，处处都是鲜粉红色磁砖——老实说，我之前完全没留意。）但我姐姐老练的眼睛看见了哥德式、罗马式或拜占庭式的建筑特点，教堂地板的图案，或者隐藏在祭坛后方未完成的昏暗壁画。她登着两条长腿大步走过罗马（我们过去叫她腿节一米长的凯瑟琳），我急忙跟在她后头，因为打从幼时，她每走一步路都得花我激烈的两步。

"See, Liz?" she says, "See how they just slapped that nineteenth-century façade over that brickwork? I bet if we turn the corner we'll find . . . yes! . . . see, they did use the original Roman monoliths as supporting beams, probably because they didn't have the manpower to move them . . . yes, I quite like the jumble-sale quality of this basilica. . ."

瞧，小莉？她说看那栋砖造建筑的正面，弄成19世纪的样子。我敢说，我们在转角看得见……没错！瞧，他们采用原来的罗马石柱作支撑梁柱，可能因为缺乏人力搬动……是的，我很喜欢这座教堂的多种风格，仿佛旧货拍卖场……

Catherine carries the map and her Michelin Green Guide, and I carry our picnic lunch (two of those big softball-sized rolls of bread, spicy sausage, pickled sardines wrapped around meaty green olives, a mushroom pâté that tastes like a forest, balls of smoked mozzarella, peppered and grilled arugula, cherry tomatoes, pecorino cheese, mineral water and a split of cold white wine), and while I wonder when we're going to eat, she wonders aloud, "Why don't people talk more about the Council of Trent?"

凯瑟琳带着地图和她的米其林绿色指南，我则带着我们的野餐（两个大圆面包、辣味腊肠、盘绕在绿橄榄上的腌沙丁鱼、尝起来有森林风味的磨菇馅饼、几团烟熏乳酪、加胡椒的烤芝麻菜、小番茄、佩科里诺〔Pecorino〕乳酪、矿泉水和半瓶冰白酒），我想知道何时该吃午饭，她则大声地想知道：为什么人们不多谈谈天特会议 （Council of Trent）？

She takes me into dozens of churches in Rome, and I can't keep them straight—St. This and St. That, and St. Somebody of the Barefoot Penitents of Righteous Misery . . . but just because I cannot remember the names or details of all these buttresses and cornices is not to say that I do not love to be inside these places with my sister, whose cobalt eyes miss nothing. I don't remember the name of the church that had those frescoes that looked so much like American WPA New Deal heroic murals, but I do remember Catherine pointing them out to me and saying, "You gotta love those Franklin Roosevelt popes up there . . ." I also remember the morning we woke early and went to mass at St. Susanna, and held each other's hands as we listened to the nuns there chanting their daybreak Gregorian hymns, both of us in tears from the echoing haunt of their prayers. My sister is not a religious person. Nobody in my family really is. (I've taken to calling myself the "white sheep" of the family.) My spiritual investigations interest my sister mostly from a point of intellectual curiosity. "I think that kind of faith is so beautiful," she whispers to me in the church, "but I can't do it, I just can't . . ."

她带我进十几家罗马教堂，我分不清哪座是哪座——圣此，圣彼，赤足苦行僧会的圣某某……但尽管我记不住一大堆扶壁与横檐的名称或细节，这并不表示我不喜欢和姐姐进这些地方，她那双钴蓝色的眼睛不错过任何东西。有一所教堂，里头的壁画很像美国的英雄式壁画，我虽不记得教堂名称，却记得凯瑟琳指着壁画对我说你不得不喜欢那些罗斯福教宗……我也记得我们起大早去圣苏撒纳（St.Susanna）做弥撒的那个早晨，握着彼此的手聆听修女们吟唱黎明圣歌，余音绕梁的祷告声使我们俩泪流满面。我的姐姐并非信教之人。我们家没有人真的是（我称自己是家里的白羊）。我的心灵探索引发姐姐的兴趣，大半出于满足知识的好奇。我认为这种信仰很美，她在教堂内低声对我说：但我没法办到，我就是没办法……