一页纸爱的故事——素描
暮色渐沉，一位老街头画家弓着身子，对着素描板而坐。天马上就要黑了，她的脸庞为暮色所遮掩，仅能看清一圈轮廓。我们本来打算去巴黎圣母院，但当她在河岸码头上看到这位老人时，我们停了下来。老人坐在一张小凳子上，面前是一副摇摇欲坠的画架，桥边的石墙上挂着他的画作，在猎猎的寒风中飘摇。
“我想要一幅”，她说。
“圣母院天黑以后就关了吧”，我回应道。
“应该来得及的”，她微笑着说。
用了将近一个小时，老人呈现了一幅令人惊艳的肖像画。炭笔完美描绘出了她的脸庞，高高的颧骨和微撅的嘴唇生动地跃然纸上。他甚至捕捉到了她眼眸中流转的那抹华光，尽管在初冬料峭的寒风中耐心坐着不动并不是一件舒适的事。
我们没来得及去圣母院，后来去了一家爵士乐酒吧，一边喝红酒一边静待晨曦。
我不知道那幅画现在在哪儿，那幅咱俩许多年前在巴黎偶得的素描。也许还在你那儿，你把它装进相框，和你的结婚照挂在一起，旁边还有你儿女的照片。也许你把它束之高阁，压在那些尘封了的相册下面，就像咱俩那段时光的其他痕迹一样。
最好的时光往往是那些被偷走的时光，不一定是被谁，但生活却是那个贼。身历其中，犹如置身虚幻，仿佛你小小地耍了缘分一把，虽然在漫漫人生中只有那么几分钟，但就在这几分钟，你感觉主宰了自己的命运。然后，几年过去了，几十年过去了，不管这中间发生了什么，那段时光总能刻骨铭心的使你无法释怀，仿佛拥有它本身就是命中注定的。不管当时看来是多么琐碎渺小的一件事，蓦然回首，细咂其中的韵味，它却是你生命中最珍贵的一段时光。那个冬日，塞纳河畔，正是这么一段时光。
后来我还会想起那位老街头画家。有多少脸庞被他付诸于纸上？有多少记忆永存在他笔下？又有多少瞬间被他转换成了永恒？
原文：
One Page Love Story - The Sketch
by Adam Stanley
In the fading light, the old street-artist hunched over his sketch pad. It was almost dark, and the contours of her face were only visible in shadow. We had planned on visiting Notre Dame, but when she saw the old man on the quay that runs along the river, sitting on a little stool in front of a shaky looking easel, surrounded by his windblown gallery of chalk drawings that were hanging on the rock wall beside the bridge, we stopped.
“I want one,” she said.
“Notre Dame probably closes at dark,” I answered.
“We might could still make it,” she said, and smiled.
He finished in about an hour, and it was an amazing portrait. Her face was flawless, the high cheekbones and slightly pouting lips rendered perfectly in charcoal. The early winter wind was brisk and cold, and he had even been able to capture that glassy looks in her eyes as she sat patiently, though uncomfortable, trying not to move.
We never made it to the tour of the cathedral. Instead, we went to a jazz bar and drank red wine until daylight.
I don't know where it is now, the charcoal sketch of your face that we got in Paris many years ago. Maybe you have it, and you framed it and put it on the wall beside your wedding photo, and photos of your children. It could be hidden away in the top of some closet, beneath the picture albums that you no longer look at, like all of the other evidence of our time together.
The best moments are those moments that feel like they have been stolen, not necessarily from someone else, but from life itself. At the time, it feels as if it were not supposed to happened, that you have somehow fooled fate, and changed your destiny, if only for a few minutes out of a lifetime. But later, maybe years, may be decades in the future, no matter what happened after, that moment always stands out as something that was meant to be. And no matter how trivial or insignificant it may seem, because it meant something once, it was, in hindsight one of the most important moment of your life. That cold day, down by the Seine, was one of those moments.
I sometime wonder what happened to that old street-artist. I wonder how many other faces he has drawn? How many other memories he has made real forever? How many other moments has he turned into eternity.
