世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第13章Part7
His friends left him at the house thinking that they had helped him fulfill his promise to his wife not to die in his concubine's bed. Petra Cotes had shined his patent leather boots that he wanted to wear in his coffin, and she was already looking for someone to take them when they came to tell her that Aureli-ano Segun-do was out of danger. He did recover, indeed, in less than a week, and two weeks later he was celebrating the fact of his survival with unprecedented festivities. He continued living at Petra Cotes's but he would visit Fernanda every day and sometimes he would stay to eat with the family, as if fate had reversed the situation and had made him the husband of his concubine and the lover of his wife.
It was a rest for Fernanda. During the boredom of her abandonment her only distractions were the clavichord lessons at siesta time and the letters from her children. In the detailed messages that she sent them every two weeks there was not a single line of truth. She hid her troubles from them. She hid from them the sadness of a house which, in spite of the light on the begonias, in spite of the heaviness at two in the afternoon, in spite of the frequent waves of festivals that came in from the street was more and more like the colonial mansion of her parents. Fernanda would wander alone among the three living ghosts and the dead ghost of José Arcadio Buendía, who at times would come to sit down with an inquisitive attention in the halflight of the parlor while she was playing the clavichord. Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía was a shadow. Since the last time that he had gone out into the street to propose a war without any future to Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez, he left the workshop only to urinate under the chestnut tree. He did not receive any visits except that of the barber every three weeks, He fed on anything that úrsula brought him once a day, and even though he kept on making little gold fishes with the same passion as before, he stopped selling them when he found out that people were buying them not as pieces of jewelry but as historic relics. He made a bonfire in the courtyard of the dolls of Remedios which had decorated, their bedroom since their wedding. The watchful úrsula realized what her son was doing but she could not stop him.
"You have a heart of stone," she told him.
"It's not a question of a heart," he said. "The room's getting full of moths."
擡他回家的朋友們以爲，他履行了給他妻子的諾言：不讓自己死在情婦牀上。佩特娜·柯特把他希望穿着躺進棺材的漆皮鞋擦乾淨，已在找人給他送去，就有人來告訴她說奧雷連諾第二脫離了危險。的確，不到一個星期他就康復了；兩個星期以後，他又以空前盛大的酒宴慶祝自己的復活。他繼續住在佩特娜。 柯特家裏，可是現在每天都去看望菲蘭達，有時還留下來跟全家一塊兒吃飯，彷彿命運變換了一切的位置，把他變成了情婦的丈夫、妻子的情人。
菲蘭達終於能夠稍微喘口氣了。在難以忍受的孤獨的日子裏，被棄的妻子唯一能夠解悶的，就是午休時彈琴和閱讀孩子的信。她自己每日兩次給霍·阿卡蒂奧和梅梅捎去詳細的信函，可是沒有一行是真話。菲蘭達向孩子們隱瞞了自己的不幸，隱瞞了這座房子的悲哀；這座房子，儘管長廊上的秋海棠充滿了陽光，儘管下午兩點鐘十分悶熱，儘管街頭的歡樂聲陣陣傳來，一天一天地變得越來越象她父母陰暗的宅子了。菲蘭達在三個活的幽靈和一個死人——霍·阿·布恩蒂亞的幽靈——當中孤零零地徘徊；這個死人經常呆在客廳中晦暗的角落裏，緊張地注意傾聽她彈琴。昔日的奧雷連諾上校只剩了一個影子。自從那一天他最後一次走出屋子，打算勸格林列爾多·馬克斯上校重新發動毫無希望的戰爭，他就不曾離開自己的作坊，除非到慄樹下去解手。除了每三個星期來一次的理髮師，他不接待任何人。烏蘇娜每天給他送一次飲食；她送什麼，他就吃什麼。他雖然象從前那樣辛勤地製作金魚，但已經不拿去賣了，因他發現人家購買金魚，不是拿它作裝飾品，而是當作歷史遺物。有一次，他把自己結婚以來臥室裏裝飾的雷麥黛絲的那些玩偶拿到院子裏付之一炬，警覺的烏蘇娜發現兒子正在幹些什麼，可是無法阻止他。
“你真是鐵石心腸啊，”她說。
“這跟心腸沒有關係，”他回答，“房間裏滿是蟲子嘛。”
