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And Then There Was One: Three People Lived in This Village Until Two Were Murdered.
一个人的村庄：当他仅有的两个邻居被谋杀之后
DOBRUSA, Moldova — Thirty years ago, the village of Dobrusa had about 200 residents. At the start of this year, it had just three.
摩尔多瓦多布鲁莎——30年前，多布鲁莎村约有居民200人。今年年初，只有三人。
Then two were murdered.
然后两人被谋杀了。
And now there is just one: Grisa Muntean, a short, mustachioed farmer often found in a flat-cap, a checked shirt and a ripped pair of blue trousers held up by a drawstring.
于是现在只剩一人：格里沙·蒙泰安(Grisa Muntean)，一个留胡子的矮个儿农民，他常常戴着一顶鸭舌帽，身穿一件格子衬衫，一条用绳子捆着的蓝色破裤子。
For company, Mr. Muntean has his two cats, five dogs, nine turkeys, 15 geese, 42 chickens, about 50 pigeons, 120 ducks and several thousand bees. The other humans have either died, left for larger towns and cities in Moldova, or emigrated to Russia or other parts of Europe.
给蒙泰做伴的，有他的两只猫、五只狗、九只火鸡、15只鹅、42只鸡、50来只鸽子、120只鸭子和几千只蜜蜂。其他的人类要么已去世，去了摩尔多瓦的大城镇和城市，要么移民到了俄罗斯或欧洲其他地方。
"The loneliness kills you," Mr. Muntean, 65, said on a recent afternoon.
“孤独让人窒息，”现年65岁的蒙泰安在不久前的一个下午说。
His former neighbors' houses are vanishing almost as fast as their owners. With few animals to graze the roadsides, and with only Mr. Muntean to prune the orchards, the buildings are sinking below a canopy of walnut groves and apple trees.
昔日邻居的房屋消失的速度，几乎和它们的主人一样快。由于路边没有动物放牧，且只有蒙泰安一人修剪果园，核桃林和苹果树已绿荫如盖，遮蔽了一栋栋楼房。
Dobrusa (pronounced Doh-BROO-shuh) was once a village of 50 houses that lined two parallel streets at the bottom of a shallow valley. Like many settlements across Moldova, it emptied out after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an exodus mirrored across Eastern Europe, which has the world's fastest shrinking population.
多布鲁莎曾是一片有50户人家的村庄，分布在一片浅浅的山谷底部两条平行的街道上。像摩尔多瓦各地的许多定居点一样，1991年苏联解体后它便成了空城，整个东欧都有人大批离去，是世界上人口减少最快的地区。
Now only a few corrugated iron roofs can still be seen in Dobrusa, poking above the undergrowth. They are visible from the dirt track that connects the village to the nearest tarmac road.
如今多布鲁莎依然能看到的，只有几片皱巴巴的金属屋顶，从矮树丛中探出头来。从连接村庄和最近的柏油路的土路上，能看到它们。
Even the village graveyard, set on the other side of the valley, is slowly receding into an undergrowth of nettles and brambles, grass flowers and cow parsley.
就连坐落在山谷另一侧的村子墓地，也日渐变成一片荨麻、荆棘、草花和花牛欧芹的灌木丛。
Plants like these are the closest Mr. Muntean has to neighbors.
像这样的植物是蒙泰安最亲近的邻居。
"When I work, I speak with the trees," he said. "With the birds, with the animals, with my tools. There is no one else to talk to."
“我干活的时候，会跟树说话，”他说。“跟鸟、跟动物、跟我的工具说话。没有其他人可以交谈。”
Until February, Mr. Muntean relied on the company of Gena and Lida Lozynsky, a couple in their early 40s who lived at the other end of the village.
直到2月份，蒙泰安还与盖纳(Gena)和利达·洛兹恩斯基(Lida Lozynsky)为伴，他们是住在村子另一头的一对40来岁的夫妻。
The Lozynskys helped Mr. Muntean tend his small holding, and kept an eye on his home when he took his eggs and vegetables to the area market. The trio spoke, at least by phone, on a near-daily basis.
洛兹恩斯基夫妇会帮蒙泰安打理他的小农田，他带着鸡蛋和蔬菜上地区市场时，他们会帮他看家。三人几乎每天都会交谈，至少会通电话。
But one Sunday last February, the Lozynskys stopped answering Mr. Muntean's calls. He heard nothing from them on that Monday. When they failed to call him back on that Tuesday, he assumed he had done something to annoy them.
但在去年二月的一个星期天，洛兹恩斯基夫妇没有再接听蒙泰安的电话。那个周一，他也没收到他们来电。当周二他们仍未打来电话时，他想着他可能做了什么惹他们不高兴的事。
On the Wednesday, after a tipoff, the mayor of the surrounding area, Grigore Munteanu, visited the Lozynskys' home. In their garden, the mayor found the couple's cow, its udders unmilked in days. Inside the cottage, he found their half-naked corpses, cold and bloodstained, lying on the wooden floor.
周三，得知这个消息后，这一带的镇长格里戈雷·蒙泰亚努(Grigore Munteanu)去了洛兹恩斯基的家。在他们的花园里，镇长发现了这对夫妇的奶牛，已经好几天没挤奶。在小屋里，他发现木地板上倒着他们半裸的尸体，已经冰凉，还带着血迹。
An investigation found that the couple had been bludgeoned to death by a drunk laborer, after he and a fellow farmhand had tried to rape Ms. Lozynsky, the mayor said.
镇长说，调查发现，这对夫妇被一名醉酒的雇农用钝器击打致死，此人和一个一起干活的雇农此前想强奸洛兹恩斯基夫人。
Six months on, their home is almost as they left it, with clothes strewn on the floor and a box of powdered milk in the front window.
六个月过去，他们的家一如他们离世前那样，衣物散落一地，前窗旁放着一盒奶粉。
Their garden is already wild. Up on the hillside, their graves are being slowly submerged by the weeds. Within a few years, a visitor may struggle to find the gravestones, let alone remember who was buried there; Gena's mound is wrongly marked "Gheorghe."
他们的花园已经荒芜。他们的坟冢正渐渐淹没在半山腰的荒草里。过不了几年，旁人可能就无法找到墓碑，更不用提记得谁被葬在那里了；盖纳的坟堆被错写成了“格奥尔基”(Gheorghe)。
Now, Mr. Muntean is the last survivor of a village that was first settled in the 19th century, when the area was part of the Russian Empire. According to local folklore, its first residents were Ukrainians who had ultimately hoped to reach the United States (but missed their boat), and Moldovans who had fallen out with a landowner in another area.
如今，蒙泰安是这个村子的最后一位幸存者，这里19世纪开始有人定居，当时还是俄罗斯帝国的一部分。根据当地的民间传说，它的第一批居民是原本希望最终去往美国的乌克兰人（但没搭上船），还有一些是在另一个地区和地主闹翻了的摩尔多瓦人。
The village prospered in the decades after World War II, when Moldova was folded into the Soviet Union. Dobrusa gained a shop, an elementary school, a summer camp for children and a village hall that showed films on Sundays. The collective farm provided work for all in the nearby wheat fields, vineyards and orchards.
第二次世界大战后，摩尔多瓦被划归苏联，村子兴盛了几十年。多布鲁莎多了一间商店、一所小学、一个儿童夏令营和一个周日放映电影的村务大厅。集体农场让所有人都有事可做，在附近的小麦田、葡萄园和果园忙碌。
But the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the decline of the collective system and the privatization of the agriculture sector. To find jobs, many Moldovans left their villages — and to find higher salaries, thousands left the country altogether. When Mr. Muntean, who had lived in a neighboring village, arrived in Dobrusa in 2000 to set up a small sheep farm, the village's population had fallen to around 70, Mr. Muntean reckoned.
但苏联的解体导致了集体制度的衰落和农业领域的私有化。为找工作，许多摩尔多瓦人离开了他们的村子——并且为争取更高的薪水，数千人离开了这个国家。据蒙泰安估计，当此前住在邻村的他2012年到达多布鲁莎，在这里开一个小型养羊场时，村子的人口已经减少到了70人左右。
Between 1990 and 2015, Eastern Europe's population fell by 18 million people, to 292 million. About one in four Moldovans lives abroad, according to estimates by the United Nations Development Program, while the resident population fell by 500,000 to 2.8 million between the censuses of 2004 and 2014.
1990年至2015年间，东欧人口减少了1800万人，降至2.92亿人。据联合国开发计划署(United Nations Development Program)估计，大约四分之一的摩尔多瓦人生活在国外，而2004年至2014年间的人口普查显示，居民人口变为280万人，减少了50万人。
In Dobrusa, most of those who remained were pensioners. The school closed in the late 1990s, along with the shop, the camp and the village hall.
在多布鲁莎，留下来的大多是退休者。学校于1990年底便已关门，商店、夏令营和村务大厅也是。
"It started to feel like a ghost town," said Valentina Artin, who was born here in 1939. "It was like a desert."
“这里开始感觉像个鬼城，”1939年出生于此的瓦伦丁娜·阿尔廷(Valentina Artin)说。“它就像一片沙漠。”
Ms. Artin left for the nearby village of Vadul-Leca in 2012 with her grandchildren, leaving no more than 20 residents behind. Then the Ialii family left, and the Petermans. Old Colea Masalkoski passed away, aged somewhere near 100, and so too did Mr. Lozynsky's mother, Klava.
阿尔廷2012年和孙辈们去了附近的瓦都尔-莱卡村，这里剩下不足20名居民。此后艾利(Ialii)一家和彼得曼一家(Peterman)相继离开。老科莱亚·马萨尔科斯基(Colea Masalkoski)快100岁时去世了，洛兹恩斯基的母亲克拉娃(Klava)也过世了。
Mr. Muntean's wife left him; and their four children, who had never actually moved to the village in the first place, emigrated to Spain.
蒙泰安的妻子离开了她；他们的四个孩子移民到了西班牙，他们实际上从一开始就没搬到这个村子。
By 2016, Dobrusa had three villagers.
到2016年，多布鲁莎剩下三个村民。
Even Mr. Muntean's sheep had gone; with so few villagers to help him, he gave up the sheep farm in 2013. Now even Mr. Muntean is considering leaving for a nearby town himself.
甚至蒙泰安的羊也不见了；由于没几个村民帮他，他2013年放弃了养羊场。如今就连蒙泰安自己也在考虑去附近一个镇子生活。
Yet, for all his loneliness, Mr. Muntean says there is a kind of joy to the peace and solitude. He grows his own vegetables and makes his own honey. He lives among nature, disturbed only by the sound of his geese, in a valley he describes as a kind of heaven.
但纵使全然孤独，蒙泰安说也有一种平和与宁静的乐趣。他自己种菜，自己做蜂蜜。他生活在大自然中，只听见他的鹅的叫声，回荡在一片他形容为天堂一般的山谷里。
Besides, Mr. Muntean doesn't always feel so alone when he sits in his cluttered farmyard — next to his chicken coops, his greenhouses and his broken-down Lada — and gazes up at the village graveyard.
此外，当蒙泰安坐在他杂乱的农院里——身旁是他的鸡笼、他的大棚还有他那辆坏了的拉达车——凝望山上的村子墓地时，他就不觉得那么孤独了。
"Gena always said he'd be watching over me," Mr. Muntean said.
“盖纳总说他会在上面看着我，”蒙泰安说。
"And now he is."
“现在他就在看。”
