世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第17章Part5

With ?rsula’s death the house again fell into a neglect from which it could not be rescued even by a will as resolute and vigorous as that of Amaranta ?rsula, who many years later, being a happy, modern woman without prejudices, with her feet on the ground, opened doors and windows in order to drive away the rain, restored the garden, exterminated the red ants who were already walking across the porch in broad daylight, and tried in vain to reawaken the forgotten spirit of hospitality. Fernanda’s cloistered passion built in impenetrable dike against ?rsula’s torrential hundred years. Not only did she refuse to open doors when the arid wind passed through, but she had the windows nailed shut with boards in the shape of a cross, obeying the paternal order of being buried alive. The expensive correspondence with the invisible doctors ended in failure. After numerous postponements, she shut herself up in her room on the date and hour agreed upon, covered only by a white sheet and with her head pointed north, and at one o’clock in the morning she felt that they were covering her head with a handkerchief soaked in a glacial liquid. When she woke up the sun was shining in the window and she had a barbarous stitch in the shape of an arc that began at her crotch and ended at her sternum. But before she could complete the prescribed rest she received a disturbed letter from the invisible doctors, who mid they had inspected her for six hours without finding anything that corresponded to the symptoms so many times and so scrupulously described by her. Actually, her pernicious habit of not calling things by their names had brought about a new confusion, for the only thing that the telepathic surgeons had found was a drop in the uterus which could be corrected by the use of a pessary. The disillusioned Fernanda tried to obtain more precise information, but the unknown correspondents did not answer her letters any more. She felt so defeated by the weight of an unknown word that she decided to put shame behind her and ask what a pessary was, and only then did she discover that the French doctor had hanged himself to a beam three months earlier and had been buried against the wishes of the townspeople by a former companion in arms of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Then she confided in her son Jos?Arcadio and the latter sent her the pessaries from Rome along with a pamphlet explaining their use, which she flushed down the toilet after committing it to memory so that no one would learn the nature of her troubles. It was a useless precaution because the only people who lived in the house scarcely paid any attention to her. Santa Sofía de la Piedad was wandering about in her solitary old age, cooking the little that they ate and almost completely dedicated to the care of Jos?Arcadio Segundo. Amaranta ?rsula, who had inherited certain attractions of Remedios the Beauty, spent the time that she had formerly wasted tormenting ?rsula at her schoolwork, and she began to show good judgment and a dedication to study that brought back to Aureliano Segundo the high hopes that Meme had inspired in him. He had promised her to send her to finish her studies in Brussels, in accord with a custom established during the time of the banana company, and that illusion had brought him to attempt to revive the lands devastated by the deluge. The few times that he appeared at the house were for Amaranta ?rsula, because with time he had become a stranger to Fernanda and little Aureliano was becoming withdrawn as he approached puberty. Aureliano Segundo had faith that Fernanda’s heart would soften with old age so that the child could join in the life of the town where no one certainly would make any effort to speculate suspiciously about his origins. But Aureliano himself seemed to prefer the cloister of solitude and he did not show the least desire to know the world that began at the street door of the house. When ?rsula had the door of Melquíades?room opened he began to linger about it, peeping through the half-opened door, and no one knew at what moment he became close to Jos?Arcadio Segundo in a link of mutual affection. Aureliano Segundo discovered that friendship a long time after it had begun, when he heard the child talking about the killing at the station. It happened once when someone at the table complained about the ruin into which the town had sunk when the banana company had abandoned it, and Aureliano contradicted him with maturity and with the vision of a grown person. His point of view, contrary to the general interpretation, was that Macondo had been a prosperous place and well on its way until it was disordered and corrupted and suppressed by the banana company, whose engineers brought on the deluge as a pretext to avoid promises made to the workers. Speaking with such good sense that to Fernanda he was like a sacrilegious parody of Jews among the wise men, the child described with precise and convincing details how the army had machine-gunned more than three thousand workers penned up by the station and how they loaded the bodies onto a two-hundred-car train and threw them into the sea. Convinced as most people were by the official version that nothing had happened, Fernanda was scandalized with the idea that the child had inherited the anarchist ideas of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and told him to be quiet. Aureliano Segundo, on the other hand, recognized his twin brother’s version. Actually, in spite of the fact that everyone considered him mad, Jos?Arcadio Segundo was at that time the most lucid inhabitant of the house. He taught little Aureliano how to read and write, initiated him in the study of the parchments, and he inculcated him with such a personal interpretation of what the banana company had meant to Macondo that many years later, when Aureliano became part of the world, one would have thought that he was telling a hallucinated version, because it was radically opposed to the false one that historians had created and consecrated in the schoolbooks. In the small isolated room where the arid air never penetrated, nor the dust, nor the heat, both had the atavistic vision of an old man, his back to the window, wearing a hat with a brim like the wings of a crow who spoke about the world many years before they had been born. Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that Jos?Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room. Jos?Arcadio Segundo had managed, furthermore, to classify the cryptic letters of the parchments. He was certain that they corresponded to an alphabet of forty-seven to fifty-three characters, which when separated looked like scratching and scribbling, and which in the fine hand of Melquíades looked like pieces of clothing put out to dry on a line. Aureliano remembered having seen a similar table in the English encyclopedia, so he brought it to the room to compareit with that of Jos?Arcadio Segundo. They were indeed the same.
Around the time of the riddle lottery, Aureliano Segundo began waking up with a knot in his throat, as if he were repressing a desire to weep. Petra Cotes interpreted it as one more of so many upsets brought on by the bad situation, and every morning for over a year she would touch his palate with a dash of honey and give him some radish syrup. When the knot in his throat became so oppressive that it was difficult for him to breathe, Aureliano Segundo visited Pilar Ternera to see if she knew of some herb that would give him relief. The dauntless grandmother, who had reached a hundred years of age managing a small, clandestine brothel, did not trust therapeutic superstitions, so she turned the matter over to her cards. She saw the queen of diamonds with her throat wounded by the steel of the jack of spades, and she deduced that Fernanda was trying to get her husband back home by means of the discredited method of sticking pins into his picture but that she had brought on an internal tumor because of her clumsyknowledge of the black arts. Since Aureliano Segundo had no other pictures except those of his wedding and the copies were all in the family album, he kept searching all through the house when his wife was not looking, and finally, in the bottom of the dresser, he came across a half-dozen pessaries in their original boxes. Thinking that the small red rubber rings were objects of witchcraft he put them in his pocket so that Pilar Ternera could have a look at them. She could not determine their nature, but they looked so suspicious to her that in any case she burned them in a bonfire she built in the courtyard. In order to conjure away Fernanda’s alleged curse, she told Aureliano Segundo that he should soak a broody hen and bury her alive under the chestnut tree, and he did it with such good faith that when he finished hiding the turned-up earth with dried leaves he already felt that he was breathing better. For her part, Fernanda interpreted the disappearance as a reprisal by the invisible doctors and she sewed a pocket of casing to the inside of her camisole where she kept the new pessaries that her son sent her.
Six months after he had buried the hen, Aureliano Segundo woke up at midnight with an attack of coughing and the feeling that he was being strangled within by the claws of a crab. It was then that he understood that for all of the magical pessaries that he destroyed and all the conjuring hens that he soaked, the single and sad piece of truth was that he was dying. He did not tell anyone. Tormented by the fear of dying without having sent Amaranta ?rsula to Brussels, he worked as he had never done, and instead of one he made three weekly raffles. From very early in the morning he could be seen going through the town, even in the most outlying and miserable sections, trying to sell tickets with an anxiety that could only be conceivable in a dying man. “Here’s Divine Providence,?he hawked. “Don’t let it get away, because it only comes every hundred years.?He made pitiful efforts to appear gay, pleasant, talkative, but it was enough to see his sweat and paleness to know that his heart was not in it. Sometimeshe would go to vacant lots, where no one could see him, and sit down to rest from the claws that were tearing him apart inside. Even at midnight he would be in the red-light district trying to console with predictions of good luck the lonely women who were weeping beside their phonographs. “This number hasn’t come up in four months,?he told them, showing them the tickets. “Don’t let it get away, life is shorter than you think.?They finally lost respect for him, made fun of him, and in his last months they no longer called him Don Aureliano, as they had always done, but they called him Mr. Divine Providence right to his face. His voice was becoming filled with wrong notes. It was getting out of tune, and it finally diminished into the growl of a dog, but he still had the drive to see that there should be no diminishing of the hope people brought to Petra Cates’s courtyard. As he lost his voice, however, and realized that in a short time he would be unable to bear the pain, he began to understand that it was not through raffled pigs and goats that his daughter would get to Brussels, so he conceived the idea of organizing the fabulous raffle of the lands destroyed by the deluge, which could easily be restored by a person with the money to do so. It was such a spectacular undertaking that the mayor himself lent his aid by announcing it in a proclamation, and associations were formed to buy tickets at one hundred pesos apiece and they were sold out in less than a week. The night of the raffle the winners held a huge celebration, comparable only to those of the good days of the banana company, and Aureliano Segundo, for the last time, played the forgotten songs of Francisco the Man on the accordion, but he could no longer sing them.

烏蘇娜死後，整座房子又變成了廢墟。即使象阿瑪蘭塔烏蘇娜這麼一個剛強的人，再過許多年也不可能把房子從廢墟中搭救出來。那時，她將是一個成年婦女，毫無偏見，快快活活，富有時代感，腳踏實地，卻依然不可能敞開門窗，驅散毀滅的氣氛，不可能重建家園，不可能消滅在大白天放肆地順着長廊爬行的紅螞蟻，不可能使布恩蒂亞家恢復那種已經消失的好客精神；這個家庭對閉關自守的偏愛，猶如一個不可逾越的攔河壩，屹立在烏蘇娜風風雨雨的百年生活道路上，也佔據了菲蘭達的心靈。在熱風停息之後，菲蘭達不但拒不同意打開房門，還叫人把一個個木十字架釘在窗櫺上，爲的是遵從父母的遺教，活生生地埋葬自己。她跟沒有見過的醫生之間代價高昂的通信，也以徹底失敗告終。在月經多次延期之後，菲蘭達便在規定的那一天、那個時刻，把自己鎖在自己的臥室裏，頭朝北躺在牀上，全身只蓋一條白被單。到了半夜，她忽然感到有一條不知用什麼冰冷的液體浸溼的餐布擱在自己臉上，醒來以後，只見太陽照進了窗戶，她那肚子上的一塊弧形傷疤正在泛紅－一從腹股溝開始，一直紅到胸骨。可是，早在規定的手術休息期還沒過去之前，菲蘭達就收到沒有見過的醫生一封令人不愉快的來信。信中告訴她說，他們曾爲她作過一次仔細的檢查，檢查持續了六小時，但是沒有發現她的內臟有任何毛病能夠引起她不止一次十分詳盡地描述過的那些症狀。菲蘭達總是不愛說出任何東西的名稱，這個壞習慣又使她上了當，心靈感應術的醫生唯一發現的是子宮下垂，即使不動手術，靠宮託的幫助也能治癒。灰心喪氣的菲蘭達希望得到更明確的診斷，誰知那些沒有見過的醫生卻不再回她的信。她心裏對“宮託”這個不可理解的詞兒感到沉重，便決定不顧羞愧去問那位法國醫生，宮託究竟是什麼東西。這時她才聽說法國醫生在三個月前吊死在倉庫橫樑上了，奧雷連諾上校的一個老戰友違背大家的意願，把他埋葬在墳地上。於是，菲蘭達只好依靠自己的兒子，兒子從羅馬給她寄來一些宮託和一份使用說明書。菲蘭達開頭還背誦這份說明書，後來爲了對所有的人隱瞞自己的病情，又把它扔進了廁所。其實，這是一種不必要的預防措施，因爲這座房子裏的最後幾個人根本就不注意菲蘭達。聖索菲婭·德拉佩德沉湎在孤獨的老年生活中，除了爲全家做點簡單的午餐，她把其它的時間都用來照料霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二了。在一定程度上繼承了俏姑娘雷麥黛絲美貌的阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜，如今也把以往用去折磨烏蘇娜的時間，用來準備功課。奧雷連諾第二僞女兒開始顯露與衆不同的聰明才智，而且特別用功。這些素質使她父親心裏又產生了從前梅梅在他心裏引起過的那些希望。他答應阿瑪蘭塔。烏蘇娜，要按照香蕉公司時期的慣例，送她到布魯塞爾去完成學業。這個理想使他又想耕耘洪水沖毀的土地。不過，人們難得在家裏看到他，他只是爲了阿瑪蘭塔。 烏蘇娜纔去那兒，因爲對菲蘭達來說，隨着時光的流逝，他已成了外人。那個已成青年的小奧雷連諾也越來越熱衷於與世隔絕的孤獨生活。奧雷連諾第二相信，菲蘭達遲早會由於年老軟下心來，讓沒有得到承認的孫子投身到城市生活中去：在城市裏， 當然誰也不會想去翻他的家譜。但小奧雷連諾顯然愛上了遠離塵囂的孤獨生活，他從未表示任何一點願望，去認識家門以外的世界。烏蘇娜叫人打開梅爾加德斯的房間之後，他便開始在這個房間附近轉來轉去，不時往門縫裏窺視，不知什麼時候，也不知怎的，他忽然跟霍·阿卡蒂奧第二相互交談起來，彼此十分同情，成了朋友。過了許多個星期，有一天小奧雷連諾講起火車站上的血腥大屠殺，奧雷連諾第二這才發現了他倆建立的友誼。那一天，不知是誰在桌子旁邊對撇下馬孔多的香蕉公司表示惋惜，因爲從那時起，這個市鎮就開始走下坡路；小奧雷連諾立即跟他爭論起來，他的話使人感到他簡直象是一個善於表達思想的成年人。他的觀點跟一般人的看法不同，他認爲，要不是香蕉公司使馬孔多偏離了正確的軌道，讓它受到了毒化，把它劫掠一空，而且香蕉公司的工程師們不願向工人們讓步，又釀起一場大水，那麼馬孔多準是一個有着偉大前途的城鎮。小奧雷連諾還談到了一些確鑿可靠的詳細情節：軍隊怎樣用機槍打死一羣聚集在車站上的工人——總共有三千多人，怎樣把屍體裝上一列有二百節車廂的火車，把他們扔到海里，他講得頭頭是道，但在菲蘭達看來，他的話無異是讀書人褻瀆耶穌的污穢言詞。跟大多數人一樣，她深信不疑的是官方的報導，他們說車站廣場上似乎什麼事也沒發生。她有點反感地認爲這孩子繼承了奧雷連諾上校無政府主義的傾向，便叫他閉起嘴來。相反地，奧雷連諾第二卻證實了孿生兄弟的話是可靠的。實際上，被人看做瘋子的霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二，當時是家裏所有的人中最有頭腦的人，是他教會小奧雷連諾讀書寫字的，是他引導這孩子研究羊皮紙手稿的，也是他向這孩子灌輸自己的見解的，是他說香蕉公司給馬孔多帶來災難的，他的這種見解跟歷史學家們採納的、教科書中闡述的那種習慣說法迎然不同。不知過了多少年，當小奧雷連諾長大成人時，大家還把他的話錯當成一種謬論。在熱風、灰塵和炎熱都滲透不進的小房間裏，他倆還回憶起很久以前一個幽靈似的老頭兒，戴着一頂烏鴉翅膀似的寬邊帽，背朝窗戶坐在這兒說古道今，他倆同時發現，在這個房間裏，始終是三月，始終是星期一。這時，他倆才明白全家把霍。 阿。 布恩蒂亞看成瘋子是錯誤的，恰恰相反，他是家裏唯一頭腦清醒的人，清楚地瞭解這樣一個真理：時間在自己的運動中也會碰到挫折，遇到障礙，所以某一段時間也會滯留在哪一個房間裏。另外，霍·阿卡蒂奧第二還給羊皮紙手稿的密碼符號分了類，把它們排成一張表。他深信，這張表相當於四十六個到五十三個字母組成的字母表，這些字母單獨寫出來就象小蜘蛛和小壁蝨，把它們聯成行又象是曬在鉛絲上的內衣。小奧雷連諾不由得想起自己曾在英國百科全書裏見到過這類東西，便把書拿來比較了一下，兩張表果然相符。
在奧雷連諾第二打算推行謎語抽彩的時候，每夭早上他都覺得咽喉有點發緊，似乎那兒有一口痰卡住了。佩特娜·柯特斷定這只是惡劣的天氣引起的一種不舒服之感，便在每天早上拿一把小刷子給他的上顎抹一層蜂蜜和蘿蔔汁，抹了一年多。不料奧雷連諾第二咽喉裏的腫瘤越長越大，連呼吸都開始發生困難，他只好去拜訪皮拉，苔列娜，問她知不知道有什麼草藥能治腫瘤。他的這位曾在妓院裏當過老鴇的外祖母，精神矍鑠，已經活到一百歲，卻依然把醫學看成一種迷信。她連忙向紙牌請教。抽出的一張是被黑桃傑克的長劍刺中咽喉的紅桃老開，占卜老婦由此推論，菲蘭達在丈夫的照片上紮了一根別針，想靠這種陳舊的方式迫使他回家，可她又缺乏巫術知識，這就引起了丈夫體內的腫瘤。除了完整地保存在家庭影集裏的那些結婚照片之外，奧雷連諾第二記不得他還有什麼照片，就瞞着自己的妻子，翻遍了整座房子，只在五斗櫥的深處發現了半打包裝特殊的宮託。他以爲這些橡皮製的漂亮玩意兒準跟巫術有關，連忙在口袋裏藏了一隻，拿去給皮拉·苔列娜看。皮拉·苔列娜也不能斷定這種神祕玩意兒的用途和性質，不過覺得它們實在令人可疑，便叫奧雷連諾第二把半打宮託都拿來給她，爲了以防萬一，她在院子裏生起一堆火，把它們燒了個精光。她建議奧雷連諾第二抓一隻生蛋的母雞，往雞身上撒尿，然後把它活埋在慄樹下面的泥地裏，就可以消除菲蘭達可能造成的災害。奧雷連諾第二由衷地相信事情準會成功，就採納了這些建議。他剛給掘出的土坑蓋上一層幹樹葉，就感到呼吸好象順暢些了。不明真相的菲蘭達把宮託的失蹤解釋成沒有見過的醫生對她的報復，就趕緊在內衣背面縫上一隻貼身口袋，把兒子寄給她的一些新宮託藏在裏面。
奧雷連諾第二活埋抱蛋母雞之後過了六個月，一天半夜裏，他咳嗽一陣醒了過來，感到似乎有一隻大蟹在用鐵螯亂挾他的內臟。這時他纔開始明白，不管他燒掉了多少今人迷惑的宮託，也不管他在多少母雞身上撒尿，他照樣面臨着死亡，這纔是唯一確鑿而又可悲的現實。他沒向任何人透露這個想法。由於擔心死亡可能在他送阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜去布魯塞爾之前來臨，他不由得拿出一生中從未有過的勁頭，一星期搞了三次抽彩，代替過去的一次抽彩，天還沒亮，他就起牀，懷着只有即將死亡的人才能理解的痛苦心情，跑遍了全鎮，連最偏僻、最貧窮的居民區也不放過，一心想把自己的小彩票賣光。“請看天意呀！”他一路叫喊。“不要錯過機會，百年纔有一次呀！" 他令人感動地裝出一副高高興興、彬彬有禮、十分健談的樣子，但從他那沁出汗珠的死灰色臉上，一眼就可看出，他很快就不再是這個世界上的居民了，那對正在折磨他內臟的蟹螯使他不得不偶爾溜到一塊荒地上去，避開旁人的目光，坐下來喘一口氣，哪怕只有一分鐘也好。可是半夜裏，一想到在那些酒吧旁邊長吁短嘆的孤身女人身上可能賺得一大筆錢，他就又起牀，在人們尋歡作樂的那條街上轉來轉去。”請看，這個號碼已經四個月沒有人抽到了！“他指着自己的彩票向她們說。”不要錯過機會，生命比我們想象的還短促呀：“最後，大家失去了對他的敬意，開始挖苦他；在他一生的最後幾個月裏，人家再也不象從前那樣尊敬地稱他”奧雷連諾先生，，而是毫不客氣地當面叫他“天意先生”。他的嗓音也變得越來越微弱、低沉，終於變成了狗的嘶叫聲。雖然奧雷連諾第二還能在佩特娜。
柯特的院子裏保持人們對發獎的興趣，但是由於嗓門越來越低，疼痛日益加劇，眼看就要痛得不堪忍受，他就越來越明白拿豬和山羊來抽彩也不能幫助他的女兒去布魯塞爾了。這時他忽然想出一個主意，搞一次神話般的抽彩：把自己那塊被大水沖毀的土地作爲獎品，反正有錢的人可以想法平整土地。這個主意對每一個人都有誘惑力。鎮長親自用特別通告宣佈了這次抽彩，每張彩票一百個比索，人們一羣羣地組織起來，合夥購買彩票，不到一個星期，全部彩票就銷售一空。一天晚上，發獎以後，那些走運的人舉行了一次豪華的酒重，有點象從前香蕉公司鼎盛時期熱鬧的慶祝會，奧雷連諾第二最後一次用手風琴演奏了弗蘭西斯科人的歌曲，只是他再也不能唱這些歌了。