‘A beach house,’ he said, ‘doesn’t even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate,’ he went on, ‘at boundary conditions.’

“一栋海滨小屋。”他说，“甚至不必建在海滨上，尽管最好的那些都在那儿。我们都喜欢，”他继续道，“临界状态下的派对。”

‘Really?’ said Arthur.

“当真？”阿瑟问。

‘Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other.’

“在大地遭遇海水的地方。在大地遭遇空气的地方。在身体遭遇心灵的地方。在空间遭遇时间的地方。我们喜欢待在一边，然后望着另一边。”

Arthur got terribly excited. This was exactly the sort of thing he’d been promised in the brochure. Here was a man who seemed to be moving through some kind of Escher space saying really profound things about all sorts of stuff.

阿瑟激动万分。旅游手册里跟他承诺的就是这个。这人似乎活动在艾歇尔画上的空间里，而且对各式各样的东西都能发表无比深刻的见解。

It was unnerving though. The man was now stepping from pole to ground, from ground to pole, from pole to pole, from pole to horizon and back: he was making complete nonsense of Arthur’s spatial universe. ‘Please stop!’ Arthur said, suddenly.

不过这真让人有些精神崩溃——那老头现在开始从杆子上走到地上，从地上走到杆子上，从一根杆子走上另一根杆子，从杆子上走到地平线然后再回来。阿瑟的三维宇宙被他搞得一团糟。“拜托你快停下。”他突然说。

‘Can’t take it, huh?’ said the man. Without the slightest movement he was now back, sitting cross-legged, on top of the pole forty feet in front of Arthur. ‘You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognise. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual I suppose.’ He sighed and squinted mournfully into the distance.

“受不了了，呃？”老头又回到四十尺之外的那根杆子上盘腿坐下，丝毫看不出任何活动的迹象，“你向我寻求建议，却应付不来任何自己不明白的东西，那我只好跟你讲些你已经知道的事儿，不过当然，要让它听起来好像很新鲜的样子，呃？好吧，跟平时一样，我就开始做生意吧。”他叹了口气，眯起眼睛，把悲伤的目光投向远方。