世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第16章Part3

Fernanda, quite the contrary, raised her pitch. “I don’t have any reason to shut up,?she said. “Anyone who doesn’t want to listen to me can go someplace else.?Then Aureliano Segundo lost control. He stood up unhurriedly, as if he only intended to stretch, and with a perfectly regulated and methodical fury he grabbed the pots with the begonias one after the other, those with the ferns, the oregano, and one after the other he smashed them onto the floor. Fernanda was frightened because until then she had really not had a clear indication of the tremendous inner force of her singsong, but it was too late for any attempt at rectification. Intoxicated by the uncontained torrent of relief, Aureliano Segundo broke the glass on the china closet and piece by piece, without hurrying, he took out the chinaware and shattered it on the floor. Systematically, serenely, in the same parsimonious way in which he had papered the house with banknotes, he then set about smashing the Bohemian crystal ware against the walls, the hand-painted vases, the pictures of maidens in flower-laden boats, the mirrors in their gilded frames, everything that was breakable, from parlor to pantry, and he finished with the large earthen jar in the kitchen, which exploded in the middle of the courtyard with a hollow boom. Then he washed his hands, threw the oilcloth over himself, and before midnight he returned with a few strings of dried meat, several bags of rice, corn with weevils, and some emaciated bunches of bananas. From then on there was no more lack of food.
Amaranta ?rsula and little Aureliano would remember the rains as a happy time. In spite of Fernanda’s strictness, they would splash in the puddles in the courtyard, catch lizards and dissect them, and pretend that they were poisoning the soup with dust from butterfly wings when Santa Sofía de la Piedad was not looking ?rsula was their most amusing plaything. They looked upon her as a big,. broken-down doll that they carried back and forth from one corner to another wrapped in colored cloth and with her face painted with soot and annatto, and once they were on the point of plucking out her eyes with the pruning shears as they had done with the frogs. Nothing gave them as much excitement as the wanderings of her mind. Something, indeed, must have happened to her mind during the third year of the rain, for she was gradually losing her sense of reality and confusing present time with remote periods of her life to the point where, on one occasion, she spent three days weeping deeply over the death of Petronila Iguarán, her great-grandmother, buried for over a century. She sank into such an insane state of confusion that she thought little Aureliano was her son the colonel during the time he was taken to see ice, and that the Jos?Arcadio who was at that time in the seminary was her firstborn who had gone off with the gypsies. She spoke so much about the family that the children learned to make up imaginary visits with beings who had not only been dead for a long time, but who had existed at different times. Sitting on the bed, her hair covered with ashes and her face wrapped in a red kerchief, ?rsula was happy in the midst of the unreal relatives whom the children described in all detail, as if they had really known them. ?rsula would converse with her forebears about events that took place before her own existence, enjoying the news they gave her, and she would weep with them over deaths that were much more recent than the guests themselves. The children did not take long to notice that in the course of those ghostly visits ?rsula would always ask a question destined to establish the one who had brought a life-size plaster Saint Joseph to the house to be kept until the rains stopped. It was in that way that Aureliano Segundo remembered the fortune buried in some place that only ?rsula knew, but the questions and astute maneuvering that occurred to him were of no use because in the labyrinth of her madness she seemed to preserve enough of a margin of lucidity to keep the secret which she would reveal only to the one who could prove that he was the real owner of the buried gold. She was so skillful and strict that when Aureliano Segundo instructed one of his carousing companions to pass himself off as the owner of the fortune, she got him all caught up in a minute interrogation sown with subtle traps.
Convinced that Usula would carry the secret to her grave, Aureliano Segundo hired a crew of diggers under the pretext that they were making some drainage canals in the courtyard and the backyard, and he himself took soundings in the earth with iron bars and all manner of metal-detectors without finding anything that resembled gold in three months of exhaustive exploration. Later on he went to Pilar Ternera with the hope that the cards would we more than the diggers, but she began by explaining that any attempt would be useless unless ?rsula cut the cards. On the other hand, she confirmed the existence of the treasure with the precision of its consisting of seven thousand two hundred fourteen coins buried in three canvas sacks reinforced with copper wire within a circle with a radius of three hundred eighty-eight feet with ?rsula’s bed as the center, but she warned that it would not be found until it stopped raining and the suns of three consecutive Junes had changed the piles of mud into dust. The profusion and meticulous vagueness of the information seemed to Aureliano Segundo so similar to the tales of spiritualists that he kept on with his enterprise in spite of the fact that they were in August and they would have to wait at least three years in order to satisfy the conditions of the prediction. The first thing that startled him, even though it increased his confusion at the same time, was the fact that it was precisely three hundred eighty-eight feet from ?rsula’s bed to the backyard wall. Fernanda feared that he was as crazy as his twin brother when she saw him taking the measurements, and even more when he told the digging crew to make the ditches three feet deeper. Overcome by an exploratory delirium comparable only to that of his great-grandfather when he was searching for the route of inventions, Aureliano Segundo lost the last layers of fat that he had left and the old resemblance to his twin brother was becoming accentuated again, not only because of his slim figure, but also because of the distant air and the withdrawn attitude. He no longer bothered with the children. He ate at odd hours, muddled from head to toe, and he did so in a corner in the kitchen, barely answering the occasional questions asked by Santa Sofía de la Piedad. Seeing him work that way, as she had never dreamed him capable of doing, Fernanda thought that his stubbornness was diligence, his greed abnegation, and his thick-headedness perseverance, and her insides tightened with remorse over the virulence with which she had attacked his idleness. But Aureliano Segundo was in no mood for merciful reconciliations at that time. Sunk up to his neck in a morass of dead brandies and rotting flowers, he flung the dirt of the garden all about after having finished with the courtyard and the backyard, and he excavated so deeply under the foundations of the east wing of the house that one night they woke up in terror at what seemed to be an earthquake, as much because of the trembling as the fearful underground creaking. Three of the rooms were collapsing and a frightening crack had opened up from the porch to Fernanda’s room. Aureliano Segundo did not give up the search because of that. Even when his last hopes had been extinguished and the only thing that seemed to make any sense was what the cards had predicted, he reinforced the jagged foundation, repaired the crack with mortar, and continued on the side to the west. He was still there on the second week of the following June when the rain began to abate and the clouds began to lift and it was obvious from one moment to the next that it was going to clear. That was what happened. On Friday at two in the afternoon the world lighted up with a crazy crimson sun as harsh as brick dust and almost as cool as water, and it did not rain again for ten years.

菲蘭達提高嗓門回答：“我不住嘴，”她說。“誰不願意聽我的話，就讓他滾蛋。”這下子，奧雷連諾第二按捺不住了。他慢慢地站立起來，彷彿想伸個懶腰似的，平靜而惱怒地從架子上拿起一個個秋海棠、歐洲蕨、牛至花盆，一個個地摔在地上，砸得粉碎。菲蘭達嚇壞了——她直到此刻還不明白她的氣話包含着多麼可怕的力量。奧雷連諾第二突然不可遏制地感到自由了，發狂地擊碎了玻璃櫥，從裏面拿出一個個杯盤碗盞，不慌不忙地都把它們往地上扔。他的樣兒平平靜靜，神情嚴肅、專注，而且象從前用鈔票裱糊房子那麼仔細，把波希米亞水晶玻璃器皿、手繪彩色花瓶、薔薇船美女圖、金框鏡子都往牆上砸，凡是這座房子——從客廳到儲藏室——可以砸碎的東西都在牆上砸得稀爛。最後落到他手裏的是廚房裏立着的一個大瓦罐。象炸彈爆炸一樣，這隻瓦罐轟隆一聲在院子裏砸成了無數碎片。最後，奧雷連諾第二洗了洗手，披上油布就出門去了，可是半夜以前又回來了，帶來了幾大塊青筋嶙嶙的醃肉、幾袋大米、玉米和象鼻蟲（注：可以食用的一種害蟲），還有幾串乾癟的香蕉。從這時起，家裏就不缺少吃的了。
阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜和小奧雷連諾憶起下雨的那些年月，都覺得那是他倆一生中最快活的時候。儘管菲蘭達禁止，他倆還是在院子的泥潭裏啪噠啪噠走着玩兒，捉到了蜥蜴就把它們肢解，並且在聖索菲婭·德拉佩德注意不到的時候，悄悄地把蝴蝶翅膀上的粉末撒到鍋裏，假裝在湯裏下毒。烏蘇娜是他們最喜愛的玩具。他們拿她當做老朽的大玩偶，把她從一個角落拖到另一個角落，給她穿上花衣服，在她臉上塗抹油煙，有一次差點兒用修剪花木的剪刀扎破了她的眼睛，就象對付癲蛤蟆那樣。老太婆神志恍惚的時候，他倆特別開心。下雨的第三年，烏蘇娜腦子裏顯然真的發生了一些變化，她逐漸失去了現實感，把現時和早就過去的生活年代混在一起，傷心地號啕大哭了整整三天，哀悼一百多年前埋掉的她的曾祖母佩特羅尼娜·伊古阿蘭。她的腦海裏一切都攪亂了：她把小奧雷連諾當做是去參觀冰塊時的兒子——奧雷連諾上校，而把神學院學生霍·阿卡蒂奧錯看成她那跟吉卜賽人一起跑掉的頭生子。烏蘇娜大談特談自己的家庭，孩子們就假想出一些親戚來看望她，這些親戚不僅是許多年前去世的，而且是生活在不同時代的。她的頭髮給撒上了灰，眼睛繫上了一塊紅手絹，可她坐在牀上，和親戚們在一起，感到非常高興；阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜和小奧雷連諾細緻地描繪這些親戚，彷彿真的看見了他們似的。烏蘇娜跟自己的遠祖閒聊她出生之前的那些事情，對他們告訴她的那些消息很感興趣，跟他們一塊兒哀悼在這些想象的客人已經死後的那些親戚。孩子們很快發現，烏蘇娜極力想弄清楚一個人，那個人在戰爭時期有一次曾把聖約瑟夫的等身石膏像帶到這兒，要求存放到雨停以後就把它取走。於是，奧雷連諾第二想起了藏在什麼地方的財寶，那個地方只有烏蘇娜一個人知道，但他的一切探問和詭計都沒有奏效，因爲，她在夢幻的迷宮裏瞎闖，似乎仍有足夠的理智來保守自己的祕密；她拿定了主意，誰能證明自己是財寶的真正主人，她就把祕密告訴誰。烏蘇娜是那麼機靈和固執，奧雷連諾第二試圖拿自己的一個酒友冒充財寶的主人，她便向他作了細緻的盤問，設置了許多不易覺察的陷阱，就把冒充者戳穿了。
相信烏蘇娜將把自己的祕密帶進墳墓，奧雷連諾第二就僱了一些掘土工人，好象要在庭院和後院挖排水溝似的，他自己則拿着一根鐵釺在地上打眼試探，並且用各種金屬探測器到處勘察，可是經過三個月疲勞的勘探，沒有發現任何金子似的東西。隨後，他認爲紙牌比掘土工人更有眼力，就去找皮拉·苔列娜幫忙，但她向他解釋，除非烏蘇娜親手抽牌，否則任何企圖都是無用的。不過，她畢竟肯定了財寶的存在，甚至準確地說出這批財寶包括七千二百十四個金幣，是裝在三隻帆布口袋裏的，口袋上繫了銅絲，埋藏在半徑爲一百二十公尺的範圍之內，烏蘇娜的牀鋪就是半徑的中心。然而皮拉·苔列娜警告說，要等雨停了，連續三個六月的太陽把成堆的泥土變成了灰塵，才能弄到財寶。奧雷連諾第二覺得這些說法既玄奧又含糊，猶如鬼怪故事，於是立即決定繼續探索，雖然現在已是八月，要符合預言的條件至少還有三年，有一種情況特別使他驚異，甚至叫他莫名其妙，那就是從烏蘇娜的牀鋪到後院籬垣的距離正好是一百二十公尺。菲蘭達看見奧雷連諾第二測量房間，聽到他吩咐掘土工人把溝再挖深一公尺，她就生怕她丈夫象他兄弟那樣瘋了。他懷着一種“勘探熱”，這種“勘探熱”象他的曾祖父去尋找偉大發明時一樣，耗盡了自己最後剩下的脂肪，從前和孿生兄弟相似之處就又突出了：不僅瘦骨嶙嶙的身體，而且漫不經心的眼神和孤僻的樣兒，都象霍·阿卡蒂奧第二。他不再關心孩子們，他從頭到腳滿是污泥，該吃飯的時候，就坐在廚房角落裏吃，而且勉強回答聖索菲婭·德拉佩德偶然提出的問題。菲蘭達看見奧雷連諾第二拼命幹活（這種拼命精神是她以前在他身上沒有料到的），就把他的狂熱看做是愛好勞動，把他的黃金夢看做是忘我精神，把他的頑固看做是堅定。現在她一想起，爲了使他擺脫消極狀態，在他前面說過一些刻薄話，就感到良心的譴責。可是奧雷連諾第二這時顧不上原諒與和解。他立在齊頸的枯枝敗葉和爛花莠草的泥坑裏，在花園裏不停地挖呀挖呀，最後挖到了庭院和後院，就這樣深深地挖空了長廊東邊的地基，有一天夜裏，家裏的人被地下發出的震動聲和折裂聲驚醒起來；他們以爲是地震，其實是三個房間的地面塌陷了，長廊的地面出現很長的裂縫，裂縫一直到了菲蘭達的臥室。然而奧雷連諾第二並不放棄自己的勘探。儘管最後的希望破滅了，似乎只有依靠紙牌的預卜了，但他加固了搖搖欲墜的房基，用石灰漿填滿了裂縫，又在房屋兩邊繼續挖掘。在這兒，他挖到了下一年六月的第二個星期，雨終於開始停息。雨雲消散，每一天都可能放晴了。事情果然如此。星期五下午兩點，吉祥的紅太陽普照大地，它象磚頭一樣粗糙，幾乎象水那樣清澈。從這一天起，整整十年沒有下雨。