世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第15章Part1

THE EVENTS that would deal Macondo its fatal blow were just showing themselves when they brought Meme Buendía’s son home. The public situation was so uncertain then that no one had sufficient spirit to become involved with private scandals, so that Fernanda was able to count on an atmosphere that enabled her to keep the child hidden as if he had never existed. She had to take him in because the circumstances under which they brought him made rejection impossible. She had to tolerate him against her will for the rest of her life because at the moment of truth she lacked the courage to go through with her inner determination to drown him in the bathroom cistern. She locked him up in Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s old workshop. She succeeded in convincing Santa Sofía de la Piedad that she had found him floating in a basket. ?rsula would die without ever knowing his origin. Little Amaranta ?rsula, who went into the workshop once when Fernanda was feeding the child, also believed the version of the floating basket. Aureliano Segundo, having broken finally with his wife because of the irrational way in which she handled Meme’s tragedy, did not know of the existence of his grandson until three years after they brought him home, when the child escaped from captivity through an oversight on Fernanda’s part and appeared on the porch for a fraction of a second, naked, with matted hair, and with an impressive sex organ that was like a turkey’s wattles, as if he were not a human child but the encyclopedia definition of a cannibal.
Fernanda had not counted on that nasty trick of her incorrigible fate. The child was like the return of a shame that she had thought exiled by her from the house forever. As soon as they carried off Mauricio Babilonia with his shattered spinal column, Fernanda had worked out the most minute details of a plan destined to wipe out all traces of the burden. Without consulting her husband, she packed her bags, put the three changes of clothing that her daughter would need into a small suitcase, and went to get her in her bedroom a half hour before the train arrived.
“Let’s go, Renata,?she told her.
She gave no explanation. Meme, for her part, did not expect or want any. She not only did not know where they were going, but it would have been the same to her if they had been taking her to the slaughterhouse. She had not spoken again nor would she do so for the rest of her life from the time that she heard the shot in the backyard and the simultaneous cry of pain from Mauricio Babilonia. When her mother ordered her out of the bedroom she did not comb her hair or wash her face and she got into the train as if she were walking in her sleep, not even noticing the yellow butterflies that were still accompanying her. Fernanda never found out nor did she take the trouble to, whether that stony silence was a determination of her will or whether she had become mute because of the impact of the tragedy. Meme barely took notice of the journey through the formerly enchanted region. She did not see the shady, endless banana groves on both sides of the tracks. She did not see the white houses of the gringos or their gardens, dried out by dust and heat, or the women in shorts and blue-striped shirts playing cards on the terraces. She did not see the oxcarts on the dusty roads loaded down with bunches of bananas. She did not see the girls diving into the transparent rivers like tarpons, leaving the passengers on the train with the bitterness of their splendid breasts, or the miserable huts of the workers all huddled together where Mauricio Babilonia’s yellow butterflies fluttered about and in the doorways of which there were green and squalid children sitting on their pots, and pregnant women who shouted insults at the train. That fleeting vision, which had been a celebration for her when she came home from school, passed through Meme’s heart without a quiver. She did not look out of the window, not even when the burning dampness of the groves ended and the train went through a poppy-laden plain where the carbonized skeleton of the Spanish galleon still sat and then came out into the dear air alongside the frothy, dirty sea where almost a century before Jos?Arcadio Buendía’s illusions had met defeat.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, when they had come to the last station in the swamp, she got out of the train because Fernanda made her. They got into a small carriage that looked like an enormous bat, drawn by an asthmatic horse, and they went through the desolate city in the endless streets of which, split by saltiness, there was the sound of a piano lesson just like the one that Fernanda heard during the siestas of her adolescence. They went on board a riverboat, the wooden wheel of which had a sound of conflagration, and whose rusted metal plates reverberated like the mouth of an oven. Meme shut herself up in her cabin. Twice a day Fernanda left a plate of food by her bed and twice a day she took it away intact, not because Meme had resolved to die of hunger, but because even the smell of food was repugnant to her and her stomach rejected even water. Not even she herself knew that her fertility had outwitted the mustard vapors, just as Fernanda did not know until almost a year later, when they broughtthe child. In the suffocating cabin, maddened by the vibration of the metal plates and the unbearable stench of the mud stirred up by the paddle wheel, Meme lost track of the days. Much time had passed when she saw the last yellow butterfly destroyed in the blades of the fan and she admitted as an irremediable truth that Mauricio Babilonia had died. She did not let herself be defeated by resignation, however. She kept on thinking about him during the arduous muleback crossing of the hallucinating plateau where Aureliano Segundo had become lost when he was looking for the most beautiful woman who had ever appeared on the face of the earth, and when they went over the mountains along Indian trails and entered the gloomy city in whose stone alleys the funereal bronze bells of thirty-two churches tolled. That night they slept in the abandoned colonial mansion on boards that Fernanda laid on the floor of a room invaded by weeds, wrapped in the shreds of curtains that they pulled off the windows and that fell to pieces with every turn of the body. Meme knew where they were because in the flight of her insomnia she saw pass by the gentleman dressed in black whom they delivered to the house inside a lead box on one distant Christmas Eve. On the following day, after mass, Fernanda took her to a somber building that Meme recognized immediately from her mother’s stories of the convent where they had raised her to be a queen, and then she understood that they had come to the end of the journey. While Fernanda was speaking to someone in the office next door, Meme remained in a parlor checkered with large oil paintings of colonial archbishops, still wearing an etamine dress with small black flowers and stiff high shoes which were swollen by the cold of the uplands. She was standing in the center of the parlor thinking about Mauricio Babilonia under the yellow stream of light from the stained glass windows when a very beautiful novice came out of the office carrying her suitcase with the three changes of clothing. As she passedMeme she took her hand without stopping.
“Come, Renata,?she said to her.

整個馬孔多將要遭到致命打擊的那些事情剛露苗頭，梅梅的兒子就給送到家裏來了。全鎮處於驚惶不安的狀態，誰也不願去管別人的家庭醜事，因此，菲蘭達決定利用這種有利情況把孩子藏起來，彷彿肚上沒有他這個人似的。她不得不收留這個孫子，因爲周圍的環境不容許她拒絕。事與願違，她到死的一天都得承認這個孩子；她本來暗中決定在浴寶水池裏把他溺斃，可是在最後時刻她又失去了這種勇氣。她把他關在奧雷連諾上校往日的作坊裏，她讓聖索菲婭。 德拉佩德相信，她是在河上漂來的一隻柳條筐裏發現這個孩子的。烏蘇娜直到臨終的時候，始終都不知道他的出生祕密。有一天，小姑娘阿瑪蘭塔。烏蘇娜偶然走進作坊，菲蘭達正在那兒喂孩子，小姑娘也相信了關於柳條筐的說法。因爲妻子的荒唐行爲毀了梅梅的一生，奧雷連諾第二終於離開了妻子，他是三年以後才知道這個孫子的，那時由於菲蘭達的疏忽，孩子跑出了作坊，在長廊上呆了一會兒——這孩子全身赤裸裸的，頭髮亂蓬蓬的，他的男性器官猶如火雞的垂肉；他不象人，而象百科全書中野人的圖像。
菲蘭達沒有料到無可避免的命運會這樣殘酷地捉弄她。她認爲已經永遠雪洗了的恥辱，彷彿又跟這個孩子一起回到了家裏。當初還沒擡走負傷的毛裏西奧·巴比洛尼亞時，菲蘭達已經周密地想好了消滅一切可恥痕跡的計劃，她沒跟丈夫商量，第二天就收拾好了行李，把女兒的三套換洗衣服放進一口小提箱，在列車開行之前半小時來到梅梅的臥室。
“走吧，雷納塔，”她說。
菲蘭達未作任何解釋，梅梅也沒要求和希望解釋。梅梅不知道她倆要去哪兒，然而，即使帶她到屠宰場去，她也是不在乎的。自從她聽到後院的槍聲，同時聽到毛裏西奧·巴比洛尼亞疼痛的叫聲，她就沒說一句話，至死都沒有再說什麼。母親叫她走出臥室的時候，她沒杭頭，沒洗臉，就象夢遊入似的坐上火車，甚至沒去注意還在她頭上飛來飛去的黃蝴蝶。菲蘭達決不知道，而且不想知道，女兒死不吭聲是表示她的決心呢，還足她遭到打擊之後變成了啞巴。梅梅幾乎沒有注意她們經過了往日的“魔區”，她沒看見鐵道兩邊綠蔭如蓋的、廣褻無邊的香蕉園，她沒看見外國佬白色的兒園房子，由於炎熱和塵上，這些口子顯出一派乾旱的景象；她沒看見穿着短褲和藍白條紋上衣、在露臺上玩紙牌的女人；她沒看見塵土飛揚的道路上滿載香蕉的牛車，她沒看見象魚兒一樣在清澈的河裏嬉戲的姑娘，她們那高聳的乳房真叫火車上的乘客感到難受；她沒看見工人們居住的骯髒簡陋的棚屋——毛裏西奧·巴比洛尼亞的黃蝴蝶正在棚屋周圍飛舞，而棚屋門前卻何一些又瘦又髒的孩子坐在自己的瓦罐上，幾個懷孕的女人正在朝着駛過的列車臭罵，從前，梅梅從修道院學校回家的時候，這些一晃而過的景象是叫她愉快的，現在卻沒使她的胸懷恢復生氣。她沒朝窗外看上一眼，即使散發着熱氣和潮氣的種植園已到盡頭，列車穿越一片罌粟地（罌粟中間仍然立若燒焦的西班牙大帆船骨架），然後駛人泡沫直翻、污濁混沌的大海旁邊清新空氣裏的時候，她都沒朝窗外瞧上一眼；幾乎一百年前，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞的幻想曾在這大海之濱遭到破滅。
下午1點鐘，她們到了沼澤地帶的終點站，菲蘭達把梅梅領出車廂，她們坐上一輛蝙蝠似的小馬車，穿過一座荒涼的城市，駕車的馬象氣喘病人一樣直喘粗氣，在城內寬長的街道上空，在海鹽摧裂的土地上空，迴盪着菲蘭達青年時代每天午休時聽到的鋼琴聲。她倆登上一艘內河輪船，輪船包着生鏽的外殼，象火爐似的冒着熱氣，而木製蹼輪的葉片划着河水的時候，卻象消防唧筒那樣發出噗哧噗哧的響聲。梅梅躲在自己的船艙裏。菲蘭達每天兩次拿一碟食物放在梅梅牀邊，每天兩次又把原封未動的食物拿走，這倒不是因爲梅梅決心餓死，而是因爲她厭惡食物的氣味，她的胃甚至把水都倒了出來。梅梅還不懷疑用芥未膏沐浴對她並無幫助，就象菲蘭達幾乎一年以後見到了孩子才明白真相一樣。在悶熱的船艙裏，鐵艙壁不住地震動，蹼輪攪起的淤泥臭得難聞，梅梅已經記不得日子了。過了許多時間，她纔看見最後一隻黃蝴蝶在電扇的葉片裏喪生，終於意識到毛裏西奧·巴比洛尼亞已經死了，這是無法挽回的事了。可是梅梅沒有忘記自己鍾愛的人。她一路上都不斷想到他。接着，她和母親騎着騾子經過幻景幢幢的荒漠（奧雷連諾第二尋找世上最美的女人時曾在這兒徘徊過），然後沿着印第安人的小徑爬上山崗，進入一座陰森的城市；這裏都是石鋪的、陡峭的街道，三十二個鐘樓都敲起了喪鐘，她倆在一座古老荒棄的宅子裏過夜，房間里長滿了雜草，菲蘭達鋪在地上的木板成了她倆的臥鋪，菲蘭達把早已變成破布的窗簾取下來，鋪在光木板上，身體一動破布就成了碎片。梅梅已經猜到她們是在哪兒了，因爲她睡不着覺，渾身戰慄，看見一個身穿黑衣的先生從旁走過，這就是很久以前的一個聖誕節前夕用鉛製的箱子擡到她們家中的那個人。第二天彌撒以後，菲蘭達把她帶到一座陰暗的房子。梅梅憑她多次聽到的母親講過的修道院（她母親家中曾想在這兒把她母親培養成爲女王），立即認出了它，知道旅行到了終點。菲蘭達在隔壁房間裏跟什麼人談話的時候，梅梅就在客廳裏等候；客廳裏掛着西班牙人主教古老的大幅油畫。梅梅冷得發抖，因爲他還穿若滿是黑色小花朵的薄衣服，高腰皮鞋也給荒原上的冰弄得翹起來了。她站在客廳中間彩繪玻璃透過來的昏黃的燈光下面，想着毛裏西奧。 巴比洛尼亞；隨後，隔壁房間裏走出一個很美的修女，手裏拎着梅梅的衣箱。她走過梅梅面前的時候，停都沒停一下，拉着梅梅的手，說：
“走吧，雷納塔。”