世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第13章Part10

During those days José Arcadio Segun-do reappeared in the house. He went along the porch without greeting anyone and he shut himself up in the workshop to talk to the colonel. In spite of the fact that she could not see him, úrsula analyzed the clicking of his foreman's boots and was surprised at the unbridgeable distance that separated him from the family, even from the twin brother with whom he had played ingenious games of confusion in childhood and with whom he no longer had any traits in common. He was linear, solemn, and had a pensive air and the sadness of a Saracen and a mournful glow on his face that was the color of autumn. He was the one who most resembled his mother, Santa Sofía de la Piedad. úrsula reproached herself for the habit of forgetting about him when she spoke about the family, but when she sensed him in the house again and noticed that the colonel let him into the workshop during working hours, she reexamined her old memories and confirmed the belief that at some moment in childhood he had changed places with his twin brother, because it was he and not the other one who should have been called Aureli-ano. No one knew the details of his life. At one time it was discovered that he had no fixed abode, that he raised fighting cocks at Pilar Ternera's house and that sometimes he would stay there to sleep but that he almost always spent the night in the rooms of the French matrons. He drifted about, with no ties of affection, with no ambitions, like a wandering star in úrsula's planetary system.
In reality, José Arcadio Segun-do was not a member of the family, nor would he ever be of any other since that distant dawn when Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez took him to the barracks, not so that he could see an execution, but so that for the rest of his life he would never forget the sad and somewhat mocking smile of the man being shot. That was not only his oldest memory, but the only one he had of his childhood. The other one, that of an old man with an old-fashioned vest and a hat with a brim like a crow's wings who told him marvelous things framed in a dazzling window, he was unable to place in any period. It was an uncertain memory, entirely devoid of lessons or nostalgia, the opposite of the memory of the executed man, which had really set the direction of his life and would return to his memory clearer and dearer as he grew older, as if the passage of time were bringing him closer to it. úrsula tried to use José Arcadio Segun-do to get Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía. to give up his imprisonment. "Get him to go to the movies," she said to him. "Even if he doesn't like the picture, as least he'll breathe a little fresh air." But it did not take her long to realize that he was as insensible to her begging as the colonel would have been, and that they were armored by the same impermeability of affection. Although she never knew, nor did anyone know, what they spoke about in their prolonged sessions shut up in the workshop, she understood that they were probably the only members of the family who seemed drawn together by some affinity.
The truth is that not even José Arcadio Segun-do would have been able to draw the colonel out of his confinement. The invasion of schoolgirls had lowered the limits of his patience. With the pretext that his wedding bedroom was at the mercy of the moths in spite of the destruction of Remedios' appetizing dolls, he hung a hammock in the workshop and then he would leave it only to go into the courtyard to take care of his necessities. úrsula was unable to string together even a trivial conversation with him. She knew that he did not look at the dishes of food but would put them at one end of his workbench while he finished a little fish and it did not matter to him if the soup curdled or if the meat got cold. He grew harder and harder ever since Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez refused to back him up in a senile war. He locked himself up inside himself and the family finally thought of him is if he were dead. No other human reaction was seen in him until one October eleventh, when he went to the. street door to watch a circus parade. For Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía it had been a day just like all those of his last years. At five o'clock in the morning the noise of the toads and crickets outside the wall woke him up. The drizzle had persisted since Saturday and there was no necessity for him to hear their tiny whispering among the leaves of the garden because he would have felt the cold in his bones in any case. He was, as always, wrapped in his woolen blanket and wearing his crude cotton long drawers, which he still wore for comfort, even though because of their musty, old-fashioned style he called them his "Goth drawers." He put on his tight pants but did not button them up, nor did he put the gold button into his shirt collar as he always did, because he planned to take a bath. Then he put the blanket over his head like a cowl. brushed his dripping mustache with his fingers, and went to urinate in the courtyard. There was still so much time left for the sun to come out that José Arcadio Buendía was still dozing under the shelter of palm fronds that had been rotted by the rain. He did not see him, as he had never seen him, nor did he hear the incomprehensible phrase that the ghost of his father addressed to him as he awakened, startled by the stream of hot urine that splattered his shoes. He put the bath off for later, not because of the cold and the dampness, but because of the oppressive October mist. On his way back to the workshop he noticed the odor of the wick that Santa Sofía de la Piedad was using to light the stoves, and he waited in the kitchen for the coffee to boil so that he could take along his mug without sugar. Santa Sofía de la Piedad asked him, as on every morning, what day of the week it was, and he answered that it was Tuesday, October eleventh. Watching the glow of the fire as it gilded the persistent woman who neither then nor in any instant of her life seemed to exist completely, he suddenly remembered that on one October eleventh in the middle of the war he had awakened with the brutal certainty that the woman with whom he had slept was dead. She really was and he could not forget the date because she had asked him an hour before what day it was. In spite of the memory he did not have an awareness this time either of to what degree his omens had abandoned him and while the coffee was boiling he kept on thinking out of pure curiosity but without the slightest risk of nostalgia about the woman whose name he had never known and whose face he had not seen because she had stumbled to his hammock in the dark. Nevertheless, in the emptiness of so many women who came into his life in the same way, he did not remember that she was the one who in the delirium of that first meeting was on the point of foundering in her own tears and scarcely an hour before her death had sworn to love him until she died. He did not think about her again or about any of the others after he went into the workshop with the steaming cup, and he lighted the lamp in order to count the little gold fishes, which he kept in a tin pail. There were seventeen of them. Since he had decided not to sell any, he kept on making two fishes a day and when he finished twenty-five he would melt them down and start all over again. He worked all morning, absorbed, without thinking about anything, without realizing that at ten o'clock the rain had grown stronger and someone ran past the workshop shouting to close the doors before the house was flooded, and without thinking even about himself until úrsula came in with his lunch and turned out the light.

這時，霍·阿卡蒂奧第二重新出現在家裏。他跟誰也不打招呼，就走到長廊盡頭，鑽到作坊裏去跟上校談話。烏蘇娜已經看不見他，可是分辨得出他那監工的靴子發出的啪噠聲，他跟家庭、甚至跟孿生兄弟之間不可逾越的距離使她感到詫異；
兒童時代他曾跟孿生兄弟玩弄換裝把戲，現在兩人都沒有一點共同之處了。霍·阿卡蒂奧第二又高又瘦，舉止傲慢，黝黑的臉龐上有一種晦暗的光彩，神態猶如薩拉秦人（注：薩拉秦人，古代阿拉伯遊牧民族）那麼陰鬱。他更象自己的母親聖索菲婭·德拉佩德，而不象布恩蒂亞家的人，烏蘇娜有時談起家庭，甚至忘了提到他的名字，雖然她也責備自己。她發現霍。阿卡蒂奧第二重新回到家裏，上校在作坊裏幹活時接見他，她就反覆憶起了往事，確信霍·阿卡蒂奧第二童年時代跟孿生兄弟換了位置，正是他而不是孿生兄弟應當叫做奧雷連諾。誰也不知道他的詳情。有一段時間大家知道，他沒有固定的住所，在皮拉·苔列娜家中飼養鬥雞，有時就在她那兒睡覺，然而其他的夜晚幾乎都是在法國藝妓的臥室裏度過的。他隨波逐流，沒有什麼眷戀，也沒有什麼志氣——彷彿是烏蘇娜行星系中的一顆流星。
實際上，霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二已經不是自己家庭裏的人，也不可能成爲其他任何一個家庭的成員，這是很久以前的一個早上開始的，當時格林列爾多。 馬克斯上校帶他到兵營去——並不是爲了讓他看看行刑，而是爲了讓他一輩子記住處決犯悲哀的、有點兒滑稽的微笑。這不僅是他最早的回憶，也是他童年時代唯一的回憶。他還記得的就是一個老頭兒的形象，那老頭兒穿着舊式坎肩，戴着帽檐活象烏鴉翅膀的帽子，曾在亮晃晃的窗子跟前給他講述各種奇異的事兒。可是，霍·阿卡蒂奧第二記不得這是什麼時候的事了。這件往事是朦朧的，在他心中沒有留下痛苦之感，也沒給他什麼教益，前一件往事卻不相同，實際上確定了他一生的方向，而且他越老，那件往事就越清楚，彷彿時間過得越久，那件往事離他就越近。烏蘇娜打算通過霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二，使奧雷連諾上校從禁錮中脫身出來。“勸他去看看電影吧，”她向霍·阿卡蒂奧第二說，“即使他不喜歡電影，哪怕呼吸一點兒新鮮空氣也好嘛。”但她很快發現，霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二象奧雷連諾上校一樣，對她的懇求無動於衷，兩人都有同樣的“甲胃”，任何感情都是透不過它的。儘管烏蘇娜不知道，而且也不知道，他倆關在作坊里長時間談些什麼，但她明白全家只有這兩個人是由內在的密切關係連在一起的。
其實，霍·阿卡蒂奧第二即使願意滿足烏蘇娜的要求，也是辦不到的。姑娘們的侵犯已使上校忍無可忍，雖然雷麥黛絲誘人的玩偶已經燒燬了，可他藉口臥室裏蟲子太多，就在作坊內掛起了吊牀，現在只是爲了到院子裏去解手才走出房子。烏蘇娜甚至無法跟他隨便聊聊。她到兒子那裏去時已經預先知道：他連食碟都不看看，就把它推到桌子另一頭去，繼續做他的金魚，湯上起了一層膜，肉變冷了，他根本就不理會。在他已到老年的時候，自從格林列爾多。 馬克斯上校拒絕幫助他重新發動戰爭，他就越來越冷酷了。他把自己關在作坊裏，家裏的人終於認爲他似乎已經死了。誰也沒有看到他表現人類的感情，直到十月十一號那天他到門外去觀看從旁經過的雜技團的時候。對奧雷連諾上校來說，這一天象他最後幾年中其它的日子一樣。早晨五點，癩蛤蟆和蟋蟀在院子裏掀起的鬧聲就把他驚醒了。星期六開始的霏霏細雨仍在下個不停，即使上校沒有聽見花園中樹葉之間籟籟的雨聲，他骨頭髮冷也感覺得到正在下雨，奧雷連諾上校象平常那樣披着毛料斗篷，穿着粗布長襯褲，這種長襯褲是他爲了舒適才穿上的，由於式樣太舊，他管它叫“哥特式襯褲”。他穿的褲於是緊繃繃的，沒有扣上鈕釦，襯衣領子也不象平常那樣扣上金色釦子，因爲他準備洗澡。然後，他把斗篷象風帽似的遮在頭上，用手指理了理下垂的鬍子，就到院子裏去小便。離太陽出來還早，霍。 阿。 布恩蒂亞還在棕櫚棚下面睡覺，棕櫚葉已給雨水淋得腐爛了。上校象往常一樣沒有看見父親，一股熱屎淋在幽靈的鞋子上，幽靈驚醒過來，向他說了一句莫名其妙的話，他也沒有聽見，他決定稍遲一些再洗澡——不是由於寒冷和潮溼，而是因爲十月間沉悶的迷霧。他回到作坊的時候，聖索菲婭·德拉佩德正在生爐子，他聞到煙氣，就在廚房裏等候咖啡壺煮開，以便取走一杯無糖的咖啡。象每天早晨一樣，聖索菲婭·德拉佩德問他今天是星期幾，他回答說是星期二，十月十一號。他面前的這個女人，面孔平靜，給爐火照得亮堂堂的；他望着她的面孔，無論過去或現在都不相信她是活人，而且他突然想起，在戰爭激烈的時候，也是十月十一號，有一次醒來，竟下意識地認爲跟他睡在一起的女人是死的。她的確已經死了，而且他還記得日期，因爲那個女人在出事之前一小時也問過他當天是星期幾。然而，即使記得這件事情，奧雷連諾上校畢竟不知道他的預感已經不靈了；接着，咖啡正要煮開的時候，他仍在繼續想着那個女人，但是純粹出於好奇，而沒有任何懷舊的感情；他始終都不知道那個女人的名字，在她死後他纔看見她的面孔，因爲她是在一團漆黑中摸到他的吊牀來的。這樣跟他發生關係的女人是很多的，因此他記不起來，正是這個女人在第一次發在的擁抱中，幾乎淹沒在自己的淚水裏，而且在死前一小時還發誓說她至死都愛他。回到作坊之後，他已經不再去想這個女人和其他的女人，點上了燈，打算數一數鐵罐子裏保存的金魚。金魚一共十六條。自從他決定不再去賣金魚，他每天都做兩條，達到二十五條時，他又拿它們在坩堝裏熔化，重新開始。他整個早上全神貫注地工作，什麼也沒去想，而且沒有發覺，十點鐘雨大了，有個人從作坊旁邊跑過，叫嚷關上房門，免得雨水灌進房子，可是上校甚至忘了自己，直到烏蘇娜拿着午飯進來，滅了燈。