世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第10章Part 1

YEARS LATER on his deathbed Aureli-ano Segun-do would remember the rainy afternoon in June when he went into the bedroom to meet his first son. Even though the child was languid and weepy, with no mark of a Buendía, he did not have to think twice about naming him.
"We'll call him José Arcadio," he said.
Fernanda del Carpio, the beautiful woman he had married the year before, agreed. úrsula, on the other hand, could not conceal a vague feeling of doubt. Throughout the long history of the family the insistent repetition of names had made her draw some conclusions that seemed to be certain. While the Aureli-anos were withdrawn, but with lucid minds, the José Arcadios were impulsive and enterprising, but they were marked with a tragic sign. The only cases that were impossible to classify were those of José Arcadio Segun-do and Aureli-ano Segun-do. They were so much alike and so mischievous during childhood that not even Santa Sofía de la Piedad could tell them apart. On the day of their christening Amaranta put bracelets on them with their respective names and dressed them in different colored clothing marked with each one's initials, but when they began to go to school they decided to exchange clothing and bracelets and call each other by opposite names. The teacher, Melchor Escalona, used to knowing JoséArcadio Segun-do by his green shirt, went out of his mind when he discovered that the latter was wearing Aureli-ano Segun-do's bracelet and that the other one said, nevertheless, that his name was Aureli-ano Segun-do in spite of the fact that he was wearing the white shirt and the bracelet with José Arcadio Segun-do's name. -From then on he was never sure who was who. Even when they grew up and life made them different. úrsula still wondered if they themselves might not have made a mistake in some moment of their intricate game of confusion and had become changed forever. Until the beginning of adolescence they were two synchronized machines. They would wake up at the same time, have the urge to go to the bathroom at the same time, suffer the same upsets in health, and they even dreamed about the same things. In the house, where it was thought that they coordinated their actions with a simple desire to confuse, no one realized what really was happening until one day when Santa Sofía de la Piedad gave one ofthem a glass of lemonade and as soon as he tasted it the other one said that it needed sugar. Santa Sofía de la Piedad, who had indeed forgotten to put sugar in the lemonade, told úrsula about it. "That's what they're all like," she said without surprise. "crazy from birth." In time things became less disordered. The one who came out of the game of confusion with the name of Aureli-ano Segun-do grew to monumental size like his grandfathers, and the one who kept the name of José Arcadio Segun-do grew to be bony like the colonel, and the only thing they had in common was the family's solitary air. Perhaps it was that crossing of stature, names, and character that made úrsula suspect that they had been shuffled like a deck of cards since childhood.
The decisive difference was revealed in the midst of the war, when José Arcadio Segun-do asked Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez to let him see an execution. Against úrsula's better judgment his wishes were satisfied. Aureli-ano Segun-do, on the other hand, shuddered at the mere idea of witnessing an execution. He preferred to stay home. At the age of twelve he asked úrsula what was in the locked room. "Papers," she answered. "Melquíades' books and the strange things that he wrote in his last years." Instead of calming him, the answer increased his curiosity. He demanded so much, promised with such insistence that he would not mistreat the things, that úrsula, gave him the keys. No one had gone into the room again since they had taken Melquíades' body out and had put on the door a padlock whose parts had become fused together with rust. But when Aureli-ano Segun-do opened the windows a familiar light entered that seemed accustomed to lighting the room every day and there was not the slightest trace of dust orcobwebs, with everything swept and clean, better swept and cleaner than on the day of the burial, and the ink had not dried up in the inkwell nor had oxidation diminished the shine of the metals nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where José Arcadio Buendía had vaporized mercury. On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard--like material, pale, like tanned human skin, and the manuscripts were intact. In spite of the room's having been shut up for many years, the air seemed fresher than in the rest of the house. Everything was so recent that several weeks later, when úrsula went into the room with a pail of water and a brush to wash the floor, there was nothing for her to do. Aureli-ano Segun-do was deep in the reading of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the boy enjoyed the story of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin, and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he gave him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that fulfilled wishes and about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked úrsula if all that was true and she answered him that it was, that many years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats to Macon-do.
"What's happening," she sighed, "is that the world is slowly coming to an end and those things don't come here any more."

多年以後，在臨終的牀上，奧雷連諾第二將會想起六月間一個雨天的下午，他如何到臥室裏去看自己的頭生子。兒子雖然孱弱、愛哭，一點不象布恩蒂亞家的人，但他毫不猶豫就給兒子取了名字。
“咱們就叫他霍·阿卡蒂奧吧，”他說。
菲蘭達·德卡皮奧這個標緻的女人，是一年前跟奧雷選諾第二結婚的。她同意丈大的意見。相反地，烏蘇娜卻掩飾不住模糊的不安之感。在漫長的家史中，同樣的名字不斷重複，使得烏蘇娜作出了她覺得確切的結論：所有的奧雷連諾都很孤僻，但有敏銳的頭腦，而所有的霍·阿卡蒂奧都好衝動、有膽量，但都打上了必遭滅亡的烙印。不屬於這種分類的只有霍·阿卡蒂奧第二和奧雷連諾第二。在兒童時代，他倆那麼相似，那麼好動，甚至聖索菲婭·德拉佩德自己都分辨不清他們兩人。在洗禮日，阿瑪蘭塔給他們的手腕戴上刻着各人名字的手鐲，給他們穿上繡着各人名字的不同顏色的衣服，但他們開始上學的時候，卻故意交換了衣服和手鐲，甚至彼此用自己的名字稱呼對方。教師梅爾喬爾·艾斯卡隆納慣於憑綠色襯衫認出霍·阿卡蒂奧第二，但他覺得生氣的是，竟發現身穿綠色襯衫的孩子戴着刻有“奧雷連諾第二”名字的手鐲，而另一個身穿白色襯衫的孩子卻說“奧雷連諾第二”是他，儘管他的手鐲上刻着“霍·阿卡蒂奧第二”的名字。從那時起，誰也搞不清他們誰是誰了。即使他長大以後，日常生活已使他們變得各不相同，烏蘇娜仍舊經常問自己，他們在玩複雜的換裝把戲時自個兒會不會弄錯了，會不會永遠亂了套。在孿生子進入青年時期之前，這是兩個同步的機器。他們常常同時醒來，同時想進浴室；他們患同樣的病，甚至做同樣的夢。家裏的人認爲，兩個孩子協調地行動只是想鬧着玩兒，誰也沒有精到真正的原因，直到某一天，聖索菲婭給他們每人一杯檸檬水，一個孩子剛剛用嘴沾了沾飲料，另一個孩子就說檸檬水不甜。聖索菲婭·德拉佩德真的忘了在杯子裏放糖，就把這個情況告訴烏蘇娜。“他們全是一路貨，”烏蘇娜毫不奇怪地回答。“天生的瘋子。”隨後，混亂更大了。在換裝把戲玩過之後，名叫奧雷連諾第二的孩子，長得象他曾祖父霍·阿·布恩蒂亞一樣魁梧，而名叫霍·阿卡蒂奧第二的孩子，卻長得象奧雷連諾上校一樣瘦削；孿生子唯一共同之點，是全家固有的孤獨樣兒。也許，正是由於身材、名字和性格上的不一致，烏蘇娜以爲孿生子在童年時代就搞混了。
他倆之間的主要區別是在戰爭最激烈時表現出來的；當時，霍·阿卡蒂奧第二要求格林列爾多·馬克斯上校允許他去看看行刑。儘管烏蘇娜反對，他的願望還是得到了滿足。恰恰相反，奧雷連諾第二想到去看行刑就渾身哆嗦。他寧肯呆在家裏。十二歲時，他向烏蘇娜打聽一間鎖着的房間裏有什麼東西。“紙兒嘛，”她回答，“梅爾加德斯的書，還有他最後幾年記的古怪筆記。”這個解釋不僅未使奧雷連諾第二平靜下來，反而增加了他的好奇。他纏着不放，堅決答應不弄壞任何東西，烏蘇娜終於把鑰匙給了他。自從梅爾加德斯的屍體擡出房間，門上掛了鎖，誰也沒有再進去過；門鎖生鏽的部分已經凝在一起。可是，奧雷連諾第二打開窗子的時候，陽光隨着就照進了房間，彷彿每天都是這樣，哪兒也看不到一小點塵土或蛛網，一切都顯得整齊、乾淨，甚至比安葬那一天還整齊乾淨；墨水瓶裏裝滿了墨水，沒有生鏽的金屬閃着光彩，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞熬水銀的熔鐵爐仍然有火。書架上立着一些書，精裝布面由於時間過久已經翹起，象曬過的皮膚那樣黝黑，若干手稿還完整無損地放在那兒。這個房間儘管鎖了多年，但這裏的空氣似乎比其他的房間還新鮮。一切都是那麼井然有序。過了幾個星期，烏蘇娜拿着水桶和刷子來擦洗地板的時候，她發現這兒沒有什麼可乾的。奧雷連諾第二埋頭閱讀一本書。他不知道書名，因爲封面已經沒有了，但這並不妨礙他欣賞書中的故事：有個故事講的是一個女人，她坐在桌邊只顧吃飯，每一粒飯她都用大頭針挑起來吃；另一個故事講的是一個漁夫，他向鄰人借了做魚網用的鉛錘，然後拿一條魚酬謝他，而這條魚的肚子裏卻有一枚大鑽石；還有一個故事講的是能夠滿足任何願望的幻燈和飛毯。他覺得驚異就問烏蘇娜，這一切是不是真的，她回答說，這些都是真的，許多年前吉卜賽人曾把幻燈和飛毯帶到馬孔多。
“問題是，”她嘆了口氣，“世界正在逐漸走向末日，那些個東西再也不會到馬孔多來啦。”