世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第12章Part7

During the course of that week, at different places along the coast, his seventeen sons were hunted down like rabbits by invisible criminals who aimed at the center of their crosses of ash. Aureli-ano Triste was leaving the house with his mother at seven in the evening when a rifle shot came out of the darkness and perforated his forehead. Aureli-ano Centeno was found in the hammock that he was accustomed to hang up in the factory with an icepick between his eyebrows driven in up to the handle. Aureli-ano Serrador had left his girl friend at her parents' house after having taken her to the movies and was returning through the well-lighted Street of the Turks when someone in the crowd who was never identified fired a revolver shot which knocked him over into a caldron of boiling lard. A few minutes later someone knocked at the door of the room where Aureli-ano Arcaya was shut up with a woman and shouted to him: "Hurry up, they're killing your brothers." The woman who was with him said later that Aureli-ano Arcaya jumped out of bed and opened the door and was greeted with the discharge of a Mauser that split his head open. On that night of death, while the house was preparing to hold a wake for the four corpses, Fernanda ran through the town like a madwoman looking for Aureli-ano Segun-do, whom Petra Cotes had locked up in a closet, thinking that the order of extermination included all who bore the colonel's name. She would not let him out until the fourth day, when the telegrams received from different places along the coast made it clear that the fury of the invisible enemy was directed only at the brothers marked with the crosses of ash. Amaranta fetched the ledger where she had written down the facts about her nephews and as the telegrams arrived she drew lines through the names until only that of the eldest remained. They remembered him very well because of the contrast between his dark skin and his green eyes. His name was Aureli-ano Amador and he was a carpenter, living in a village hidden in the foothills. After waiting two weeks for the telegram telling of his death, Aureli-ano Segun-do sent a messenger to him in order to warn him, thinking that he might not know about the threat that hung over him. The emissary returned with the news that Aureli-ano Amador was safe. The night of the extermination two men had gone to get him at his house and had shot at him with their revolvers but they had missed the cross of ashes. Aureli-ano Amador had been able to leap over the wall of the courtyard and was lost in the labyrinth of the mountains, which he knew like the back of his hand thanks to the friendship he maintained with the Indians, from whom he bought wood. Nothing more was heard of him.
Those were dark days for Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía. The president of the republic sent him a telegram of condolence in which he promised an exhaustive investigation and paid homage to the dead men. At his command, the mayor appeared at the services with four funeral wreaths, which he tried to place on the coffins, but the colonel ordered him into the street. After the burial he drew up and personally submitted to the president of the republic a violent telegram, which the telegrapher refused to send. Then he enriched it with terms of singular aggressiveness, put it in an envelope, and mailed it. As had happened with the death of his wife, as had happened to him so many times during the war with the deaths of his best friends, he did not have a feeling of sorrow but a blind and directionless rage, a broad feeling of impotence. He even accused Father Antonio Isabel of complicity for having marked his sons with indelible ashes so that they-could be identified by their enemies. The decrepit priest, who could nolonger string ideas together and who was beginning to startle his parishioners with the wild interpretations he gave from the pulpit, appeared one afternoon at the house with the goblet in which he had prepared the ashes that Wednesday and he tried to anoint the whole family with them to show that they could be washed off with water. But the horror of the misfortune had penetrated so deeply that not even Fernanda would let him experiment on her and never again was a Buendía seen to kneel at the altar rail on Ash Wednesday.
Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía did not recover his calm for a long time. He abandoned the manufacture of little fishes, ate with great difficulty, and wandered all through the house as if walking in his sleep, dragging his blanket and chewing on his quiet rage. At the end of three months his hair was ashen, his old waxed mustache poured down beside his colorless lips, but, on the other hand, his eyes were once more the burning coals that had startled those who had seen him born and that in other days had made chairs rock with a simple glance. In the fury of his torment he tried futilely to rouse the omens that had guided his youth along dangerous paths into the desolate wasteland of glory. He was lost, astray in a strange house where nothing and no one now stirred in him the slightest vestige of affection. Once he opened Melquíades' room, looking for the traces of a past from before the war, and he found only rubble, trash, piles of waste accumulated over all the years of abandonment. Between the covers of thebooks that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated. One morning he found úrsula weeping under the chestnut tree at the knees of her dead husband. Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía was the only inhabitant of the house who still did not see the powerful old man who had been beaten down by half a century in the open air. "Say hello to your father," úrsula told him. He stopped for an instant in front of the chestnut tree and once again he saw that the empty space before him did not arouse an affection either.
"What does he say?" he asked.

隨後整整一個星期，在海邊不同的地方，奧雷連諾的十七個兒子都象兔子一樣遭到隱蔽的歹徒襲擊，歹徒專門瞄準灰十字的中心。晚上七時，奧雷連諾·特里斯特從白己的母親家裏出來，黑暗中突然一聲槍響，子彈打穿了他的腦門。奧雷連諾。 森騰諾是在工廠裏他經常睡覺的吊牀上被發現的，他的雙眉之間插着一根碎冰錐，只有把手露在外面。奧雷連諾·塞拉多看完電影把女朋友送回了家，沿着燈火輝煌的上耳其人街回來的時候，藏在人羣中的一個兇手用手槍向前看他射擊，使得他直接倒在一口滾沸的油鍋裏。五分鐘之後，有人敲了敲奧雷連諾。阿卡亞和他妻子的房門，呼叫了一聲：“快，他們正在屠殺你的兄弟們啦，”後來這個女人說，奧雷連諾·阿卡亞跳下牀，開了門，門外的一支毛瑟槍擊碎了他的腦殼。在這死亡之夜裏，家中的人準備爲四個死者祈禱的時候，菲蘭達象瘋子似的奔過市鎮去尋找自己的丈夫；佩特娜·柯特以爲黑名單包括所有跟上校同名的人，已把奧雷連諾第二藏在衣櫥裏，直到第四天，從沿海各地拍來的電報知道，暗敵襲擊的只是畫了灰十字的弟兄。阿瑪蘭塔找出一個記錄了侄兒們情況的小本子，收到一封封電報之後，她就劃掉一個個名字，最後只剩了最大的一個奧雷連比的名字。家裏的人清楚地記得他，因爲他的黑皮膚和綠眼睛是對照鮮明的，他叫奧需連諾·阿馬多，是個木匠，住在山麓的一個村子裏，奧雷連諾上校等候他的死汛空等了兩個星期，就派了一個人去警告奧雷連諾。 阿馬多，以爲他可能不知道自己面臨的危險。這個人回來報告說，奧雷連諾。 阿馬多安全無恙。在大屠殺的夜晚，有兩個人到他那兒去，用手槍向他射擊，可是未能擊中灰十字。奧雷連諾。 阿馬多跳過院牆，就在山裏消失了；由於跟出售木柴給他的印第安人一直友好往來，他知道那裏的每一條小烴，以後就再也沒有聽到他的消息了。
對奧雷連諾上校來說，這是黑暗的日子。共和國總統用電報向他表示慰問，答應進行徹底調查，並且讚揚死者。根據總統的指示，鎮長帶者四個花圈參加喪禮，想把它們放在棺材上，上校卻把它們擺在街上。安葬之後，他擬了一份措詞尖銳的電報給共和國總統，親自送到郵電局，可是電報員拒絕拍發。於是，奧宙連諾上校用極不友好的問句充實了電文。放在信封裏郵寄，就象妻子死後那樣，也象戰爭中他的好友們死亡時多次經歷過的那樣，他感到的不是悲哀，而是盲目的憤怒和軟弱無能，他甚至指責安東尼奧。 伊薩貝爾是同謀犯，故意在他的兒子們臉上阿上擦洗不掉的十字，使得敵人能夠認出他們。老朽的神父已經有點兒頭腦昏饋，在講壇上佈道時竟胡亂解釋《聖經》，嚇唬教區居民；有一天下午，他拿着一個通常在大齋第一天用來盛聖灰的大碗，來到布恩蒂亞家裏，想給全家的人抹上聖灰，表明聖灰是容易擦掉的。可是大家心中生怕倒黴，甚至菲蘭達也不讓他在她身上試驗；以後，在大齋的第一天，再也沒有一個布恩蒂亞家裏的人跪在聖壇欄杆跟前了。
在很長時間裏，奧雷連諾上校未能恢復失去的平靜。他懷着滿腔的怒火不再製作全魚，勉強進點飲食，在地上拖着斗篷，象夢遊人一樣在房子裏踱來踱去。到了第三個月末尾，他的頭髮完全白了，從前捲起的鬍梢垂在沒有血色的嘴脣兩邊，可是兩隻眼睛再一次成了兩塊燃燒的炭火；在他出生時，這兩隻眼睛曾把在場的人嚇了一跳，而且兩眼一掃就能讓椅子移動。奧雷遷諾上校滿懷憤怒，妄圖在自己身上找到某種預感，那種預感曾使他年輕時沿着危險的小道走向光榮的荒漠。他迷失在這座陌生的房子裏，這裏的任何人和任何東西都已激不起他的一點兒感情。有一次他走進梅爾加德斯的房間，打算找出戰前的遺蹟，但他只看見垃圾、穢物和各種破爛，這些都是荒蕪多年之後堆積起來的。那些早已無人閱讀的書，封面和羊皮紙已被潮氣毀壞，佈滿了綠黴，而房子裏往日最明淨的空氣，也充溢着難以忍受的腐爛氣味。另一天早晨，他發現烏蘇娜在慄樹底下——她正把頭伏在已故的丈夫膝上抽泣。在半個世紀的狂風暴雨中弄彎了腰的這個老頭兒，奧雷連諾是個家長久沒有看見過他的唯一的人。“向你父親問安吧，”烏蘇娜說。他在慄樹前面停了片刻，再一次看見，即使這塊主地也沒激起他的任何感情。
“他在說什麼呀！”奧雷連諾上校問道。