The Village Under the Storm

Polly had one place written down and no idea where it was. "Can you tell me how to get there?" she asked the ewe over breakfast. Follow the coast road west, the ewe said, until the land stops pretending to have hills. The Bay of Skaill is a long curve of pale sand with a green shelf behind it, and the shelf is where the village sits, half sunk into the ground with its roofs open to the sky.

Polly je imala zapisano jedno mjesto i nikakvu predodžbu gdje je. „Možete li mi reći kako da dođem onamo?” pitala je ovcu za doručkom. Idi obalnom cestom na zapad, rekla je ovca, sve dok se kopno ne prestane pretvarati da ima brda. Uvala Skaill duga je krivulja blijedog pijeska sa zelenom policom iza sebe, a na toj polici stoji selo Skara Brae, napola utonulo u zemlju, krovova otvorenih prema nebu.

An oystercatcher was working the site that morning, and oystercatchers can be heard in weather. Polly asked, "I would like to know the history of this particular monument." People lived here about five thousand years ago, he told her. They were farming this coast before Stonehenge and before the Great Pyramid. Then the sand came over the top of them and stayed for roughly four thousand years, until a storm in the winter of eighteen fifty stripped the dune away.

Tog jutra na nalazištu je radio ostrigar, a ostrigari se čuju i po nevremenu. Polly je pitala: „Htjela bih saznati povijest baš ovog spomenika.” Ovdje su ljudi živjeli prije otprilike pet tisuća godina, rekao joj je. Obrađivali su ovu obalu prije Stonehengea i prije Velike piramide. Onda se preko njih navukao pijesak i ostao otprilike četiri tisuće godina, sve dok oluja u zimu tisuću osamsto pedesete nije oderala dinu.

The wind took half of that, so Polly asked for it again. "Could you please repeat that for me?" The second telling had the detail that matters. Every house holds the same furniture in the same arrangement: a hearth in the middle, box beds at either side, and against the far wall a stone dresser facing the door. It is stone because there was no wood.

Vjetar je odnio pola toga, pa je Polly zatražila ponovno. „Možete li mi to, molim vas, ponoviti?” Drugo pričanje imalo je detalj koji je važan. Svaka kuća čuva isti namještaj u istom rasporedu: ognjište u sredini, zidane postelje sa svake strane, a uza suprotni zid kamenu policu okrenutu prema vratima. Kamena je zato što nije bilo drva.

"Could you tell me if the museum is open tomorrow?" Polly asked, already knowing she would come back. She stood a while at the edge of one open house, looking in at a room laid out the way anyone lays out a room, the good things where a visitor would see them first.

„Možete li mi reći je li muzej sutra otvoren?” pitala je Polly, već znajući da će se vratiti. Neko je vrijeme stajala na rubu jedne otvorene kuće i gledala unutra, u prostoriju posloženu onako kako svatko slaže prostoriju, s lijepim stvarima ondje gdje ih gost prvo vidi.