【时间旅行者的妻子】22

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I had spent my childhood thus far being carted around the capital cities of Europe, so the Field Museum satisfied my idea of “Museum,” but its domed¹ stone facade² was nothing exceptional. Because it was Sunday, we had a little trouble finding parking, but eventually we parked and walked along the lake, past boats and statues and other excited children. We passed between the heavy columns and into the museum.

　And then I was a boy enchanted³.

　Here all of nature was captured, labeled, arranged according to a logic⁴ that seemed as timeless as if ordered by God, perhaps a God who had mislaid the original paperwork on the Creation and had requested the Field Museum staff to help Him out and keep track of it all. For my five-year-old self, who could derive⁵ rapture⁶ from a single butterfly, to walk through the Field Museum was to walk through Eden and see all that passed there.

　We saw so much that day: the butterflies, to be sure, cases and cases of them, from Brazil, from Madagascar, even a brother of my blue butterfly from Down Under. The museum was dark, cold, and old, and this heightened the sense of suspension, of time and death brought to a halt inside its walls. We saw crystals and cougars⁷, muskrats⁸ and mummies, fossils and more fossils. We ate our picnic lunch on the lawn of the museum, and then plunged⁹ in again for birds and alligators¹⁰ and Neanderthals. Toward the end I was so tired I could hardly stand, but I couldn’t bear to leave. The guards came and gently herded¹¹ us all to the doors; I struggled not to cry, but began to anyway, out of exhaustion¹² and desire. Dad picked me up, and we walked back to the car. I fell asleep in the backseat, and when I awoke We were home, and it was time for dinner.

　We ate downstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Kim’s apartment. They were our landlords. Mr. Kim was a gruff, compact man who seemed to like me but never said much, and Mrs. Kim (Kimy, my nickname for her) was my buddy¹³, my crazy Korean card-playing babysitter. I spent most of my waking hours with Kimy. My mom was never much of a cook, and Kimy could produce anything from a soufflé to bi him bop with panache¹⁴. Tonight, for my birthday, she had made pizza and chocolate cake.

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