世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第20章Part1

Chapter 20
PILAR TERNERA died in her wicker rocking chair during one night of festivities as she watched over the entrance to her paradise. In accordance with her last wishes she was not buried in a coffin but sitting in her rocker, which eight men lowered by ropes into a huge hole dug in the center of the dance floor. The mulatto girls, dressed in black, pale from weeping, invented shadowy rites as they took off their earrings, brooches, and rings and threw them into the pit before it was closed over with a slab that bore neither name nor dates, and that was covered with a pile of Amazonian camellias. After poisoning the animals they closed up the doors and windows with brick and mortar and they scattered out into the world with their wooden trunks that were lined with pictures of saints, prints from magazines, and the portraits of sometime sweethearts, remote and fantastic, who shat diamonds, or ate cannibals, or were crowned playing-card kings on the high seas.
It was the end. In Pilar Ternera’s tomb, among the psalm and cheap whore jewelry, the ruins of the past would rot, the little that remained after the wise Catalonian had auctioned off his bookstore and returned to the Mediterranean village where he had been born, overcome by a yearning for a lasting springtime. No one could have foreseen his decision. He had arrived in Macondo during the splendor of the banana company, fleeing from one of many wars, and nothing more practical had occurred to him than to set up that bookshop of incunabula and first editions in several languages, which casual customers would thumb through cautiously, as if they were junk books, as they waited their turn to have their dreams interpreted in the house across the way. He spent half his life in the back of the store, scribbling in his extra-careful hand in purple ink and on pages that he tore out of school notebooks, and no one was sure exactly what he was writing. When Aureliano first met him he had two boxes of those motley pagesthat in some way made one think of Melquíades?parchments, and from that time until he left he had filled a third one, so it was reasonable to believe that he had done nothing else during his stay in Macondo. The only people with whom he maintained relations were the four friends, whom he had exchanged their tops and kites for books, and he set them to reading Seneca and Ovid while they were still in grammar school. He treated the classical writers with a household familiarity, as if they had all been his roommates at some period, and he knew many things that should not have been known, such as the fact that Saint Augustine wore a wool jacket under his habit that he did not take off for fourteen years and that Arnaldo of Villanova, the necromancer, was impotent since childhood because of a scorpion bite. His fervor for the written word was an interweaving of solemn respect and gossipy irreverence. Not even his own manuscripts were safe from that dualism. Having learned Catalan in order to translate them, Alfonso put a roll of pages in his pockets, which were always full of newspaper clippings and manuals for strange trades, and one night he lost them in the house of the little girls who went to bed because of hunger. When the wise old grandfather found out, instead of raising a row as had been feared, he commented, dying with laughter, that it was the natural destiny of literature. On the other hand, there was no human power capable of persuading him not to take along the three boxes when he returned to his native village, and he unleashed a string of Carthaginian curses at the railroad inspectors who tried to ship them as freight until he finally succeeded in keeping them with him in the passenger coach. “The world must be all fucked up,?he said then, “when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.?That was the last thing he was heard to say. He had spent a dark week on the final preparations for the trip, because as the hour approached his humor was breaking down and things began to be misplaced,and what he put in one place would appear in another, attacked by the same elves that had tormented Fernanda.
“Collons,?he would curse. “I shit on Canon Twenty-seven of the Synod of London.?

第 二 十 章
一個節日的晚上，皮拉。 苔列娜守着她那個“天堂”*入口的時候，在一把藤製的搖椅裏去世了。遵照死者臨終的意願，八條漢子沒有把她裝進棺材，而讓她直接坐在搖椅裏，放進了一個很大的墓穴，墓穴就挖在跳舞場的中央。幾個淚流滿面、臉色蒼白的混血女人，穿上喪服，開始履行魔術般的儀式。她們摘下自己的耳環、胸針和戒指，把它們丟進墓坑，拿一塊沒有刻上名字和日期的大石板蓋住坑穴，而在石板上用亞馬孫河畔的山茶花堆起了一座小丘。然後，混血女人們用毒藥毒死祭奠用的牲畜，又用磚瓦堵住門窗，便各奔東西了；她們手裏提着自己的小木箱，箱蓋背面裱糊着石印的聖徒畫像、雜誌上的彩色圖片，以及爲時不長、不能置信、幻想出來的情人照片，這些情人看上去有的象金剛大漢，有的象食人野獸，有的象紙牌上漫遊公海的加冕國王。
這就是結局。在皮拉·苔列娜的墳墓裏，在妓女的廉價首飾中間，時代的遺物——馬孔多還剩下的一點兒殘渣——即將腐爛了。在這之前，博學的加泰隆尼亞人就拍賣了自己的書店，回到地中海邊的家鄉去了，因爲他非常懷念家鄉真正漫長的春天。誰也沒有料到這老頭兒會走，他是在香蕉公司鼎盛時期，爲了逃避戰爭來到馬孔多的。他開設了出售各種文字原版書的書店，就再也想不出其他更有益的事情來幹了。偶爾有些顧客，在沒有輪到他們進入書店對面那座房子去圓夢之前，都順便到這裏來消磨時間，他們總是有點擔心地翻閱着一本本書，好象這些書都是從垃圾堆裏拾來的。博學的加泰隆尼亞人每天總有半天泡在書店後面一個悶熱的小房間裏，用紫墨水在一張張練習簿紙上寫滿了歪歪斜斜的草體字，可是誰也無法肯定他說出他究竟寫了些什麼。老頭兒和奧雷連諾。 布恩蒂亞初次認識時， 已經積滿了兩箱亂糟糟的練習簿紙，它們有點象梅爾加德斯的羊皮紙手稿。老頭兒臨走，又拿練習簿紙裝滿了第三箱。由此可以推測，博學的加泰隆尼亞人住在馬孔多的時候，沒有幹過其他任何事情。同他保持關係的只有四個朋友，他們早在學校唸書時·博學的加泰隆尼亞人就要他們把陀螺和紙蛇當作抵押品·借書給他們看，並使他們愛上了塞尼加*和奧維德* 的作品。他對待古典作家一向隨隨便便、不拘禮節，好象早先曾跟他們在一個房間裏生活過。他了解這一類人的許多隱祕事情。而這些事情似乎是誰也不知道的，比如：聖奧古斯丁 *穿在修士長袍裏的那件羊毛背心，整整十四年沒脫下來過，巫師阿納爾多·德維拉諾瓦* 早在童年時代就被蠍子螫了一下，是一個陽萎者。博學的加泰隆尼亞人對待別人的論著有時嚴肅、尊重，有時又極不禮貌。他對待自己寫的東西也是這種雙重的態度。那個叫阿爾豐索的人，爲了把老頭兒的手稿譯成西班牙文，曾專門攻讀過加泰隆尼亞語言。有一次他隨手把加泰隆尼亞人的一疊稿紙放進了自己的口袋——他的口袋裏總是被一些剪報和特殊職業的指南塞得脹鼓鼓的，可是有一天晚上，在一個妓院裏，在一羣由於飢餓不得不出賣內體的女孩子身邊，他不慎丟失了所有的稿紙。博學的加泰隆尼亞人發覺這件事以後，並沒有象阿爾豐索擔心的那樣大事張揚，反倒哈哈大笑地說：“這是文學自然而然的命運。”但他要隨身帶着三箱手稿回家，朋友們怎麼也說服不了他。鐵路檢查員要他將箱子拿去託運時，他更忍不住出口傷人，滿嘴迦太基* 流行的罵人話，直到檢查員同意他把箱子留在旅客車廂裏，他才安靜下來。“一旦到了人們只顧自己乘頭等車廂，卻用貨車車廂裝運書籍的那一天，就是世界末日的來臨，”他在出發前這麼嘀咕了一句，就再也不吭聲了。最後的準備花了他整整一個星期，對博學購加泰隆尼亞人來說，這是黑暗的一週——隨着出發時間的迫近，他的情緒越來越壞，不時忘記自己打算要做的事，明明放在一個地方的東西，不知怎的突然出現在另一個地方，他以爲準是那些折磨過他的家神挪動了它們的位置。
“兔崽子們！我詛咒倫敦教會的第二十七條教規。”他罵道。