The girl has a question for the boy: “How much do you love me?”
He thinks for a moment, then quietly replies, “As much as a train whistle in the night.”
She waits in silence for him to go on. Obviously there has to be a story there.
“Sometimes, just like that, in the dead of night, I wake up,” he begins. “I don’t know what time it is exactly. Maybe two or three, around then, I’d say. The time doesn’t actually matter. The point is that it’s the dead of night, and I’m totally alone, not a soul around. I want you to imagine that for me, ok? It’s completely dark, you can’t see anything. And there’s not a sound to be heard. You don’t even hear the hands of the clock, ticking out the time – for all I know, the clock could well have stopped. And then all of a sudden, it hits me that I’ve become isolated, that I’m separated some unbelievable distance from everyone I know, from every familiar place. I realize that no one in this wide world loves me anymore, that no one will talk to me, that I’ve become the kind of person no one even wants to remember. I could just disappear and no one would even notice. I feel like I’ve been pushed into a box with thick iron sides and sunk way down to the very bottom of the ocean. The pressure is so intense it makes my heart ache, I feel like I’m going to explode, to be torn in two – you know that feeling?”
The girl nods. She thinks she knows what he means.
The boy continues. “I think that’s one of the most painful experiences a person can have in life. I feel so sad and it hurts so much that I wish I could just go ahead and die, seriously. Actually, I take that back, it’s not that I wish I could die: I can tell that if things go on in this way, the air in the box is going to get so thin that I really willdie. It’s not just a metaphor. It’s reality. That’s what it means to wake up all alone in the dead of night. You still following me?”
The girl nods again, saying nothing. The boy lets a moment go by.
“And then, way off in the distance, I hear a train whistle. It’s really incredibly far off, this whistle. I don’t even know where the train tracks could be. That’s how far away the sound is. And it’s so faint that it’s right on the edge of being inaudible. Only I’m certain it’s a train whistle. There’s no doubt about that. So I lie perfectly still, in the darkness, listening as hard as I can. And then I hear it again. My heart stops aching. The hands on the clock start moving. The iron box begins to rise up, nice and slow, toward the surface of the sea. And it’s all thanks to that little whistle, you see. A whistle so faint I could barely hear it. And the point is, I love you as deeply as that whistle.”
With that, the boy’s brief story is over. And the girl begins telling her own.
——————–
Here’s a Chinese translation from: http://www.cunshang.net/book/duanpian/45.htm
女孩问男孩：「你怎么样的喜欢我？」
少年想了想，声音低沉地回答说：「就像喜欢夜半的汽笛声一样。」
少女默默地等着他说下去，他一定会加以说明的。
「有一天半夜里我忽然醒了。」他说：「正确的时间不知道，大概是两点或三点吧，但那时是几点并不重要。总之，是半夜里，我独自一个人，没有谁在我旁边。你试想像这种情形。四周黑漆漆，什么都看不见，没有一点声音，连时钟的针刻着时间的声音都听不见–也许是时钟停了。而我突然感到自己被隔离在一处遥远的谁也不知道的地方。我体会到在这广大的世界上，没有谁爱我，没有谁跟我说话，没有谁会想到我。即使我就这样从世界上消失了，也没有谁会发觉到吧？就像被装在大铁箱沉入深海的心情。因为气压我觉得心脏痛，痛得几乎会撕裂成两半–你体会得出这种感觉吧？」
少女点点头。大概是了解的吧。
少年继续说：「这恐怕是人活着所经验的最痛苦的事情之一吧，我真的悲伤得要死。不，不是死了也罢了，而是就那样下去，箱子里的空气稀薄，事实上会死。这不是比喻，是真的。是半夜里孤独一个人，醒来时的况味，你也了解吧？」
少女又默默地点头。少年停顿一下又说：「但是这时我听到远远的地方有汽笛声。
那真是真是很远的地方的汽笛声。铁路到底在那里我都不知道，可见多么的远。微微的声音似乎听见了，又似乎听不见。但我知道那是火车的汽笛声。没错。我在黑暗里静静地谛听着。于是我再一次听到了那汽笛声。而我的心脏不痛了，时钟的针开始动了，铁箱子慢慢浮上海面。这都是由于那小汽笛声，由于那又像听见又像听
不见的微微汽笛声。就像对那汽笛声一样我爱你。」
Strawberry Fields 