世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第17章Part3
She had confused him with her son again, because the hot wind that came after the deluge and had brought occasional waves of lucidity to ?rsula’s brain had passed. She never got her reason back. When she went into the bedroom she found Petronila Iguarán there with the bothersome crinolines and the beaded jacket that she put on for formal visits, and she found Tranquilina Maria Miniata Alacoque Buendía, her grandmother, fanning herself with a peacock feather in her invalid’s rocking chair, and her great-grandfather Aureliano Arcadio Buendía, with his imitation dolman of the viceregal guard, and Aureliano Iguarán, her father, who had invented a prayer to make the worms shrivel up and drop off cows, and her timid mother, and her cousin with the pig’s tail, and Jos?Arcadio Buendía, and her dead sons, all sitting in chairs lined up against the wall as if it were a wake and not a visit. She was tying a colorful string of chatter together, commenting on things from many separate places and many different times, so that when Amaranta ?rsula returned from school and Aureliano grew tired of the encyclopedia, they would find her sitting on her bed, talking to herself and lost in a labyrinth of dead people. “Fire!?she shouted once in terror and for an instant panic spread through the house, but what she was telling about was the burning of a barn that she had witnessed when she was four years old. She finally mixed up the past with the present in such a way that in the two or three waves of lucidity that she had before she died, no one knew for certain whether she was speaking about what she felt or what she remembered. Little by little she was shrinking, turning into a fetus, becoming mummified in life to the point that in her last months she was a cherry raisin lost inside of her nightgown, and the arm that she always kept raised looked like the paw of a marimonda monkey. She was motionless for several days, and Santa Sofía de la Piedad had to shake her to convince herself that she was alive and sat her on her lap to feed her a few spoonfuls of sugar water. She looked like a newborn old woman. Amaranta ?rsula and Aureliano would take her in and out of the bedroom, they would lay her on the altar to see if she was any larger than the Christ child, and one afternoon they hid her in a closet in the Pantry where the rats could have eaten her. One Palm Sunday they went into the bedroom while Fernanda was in church and carried ?rsula out by the neck and ankles.
“Poor great-great-grandmother,?Amaranta ?rsula said. “She died of old age.?
?rsula was startled.
“I’m alive!?she said.
“You can see.?Amaranta ?rsula said, suppressing her laughter, “that she’s not even breathing.?
“I’m talking!??rsula shouted.
“She can’t even talk,?Aureliano said. “She died like a little cricket.?
她又把他錯當成了自己的兒子，因為代替暴雨使她神智清醒了一陣子的熱風剛剛過去。老太婆的判斷又不清楚了。走進臥室，她好象每一次都會遇到一些跟她交往過的人：佩特羅尼娜·伊古阿蘭令人注目地穿著一條華麗的鐘式裙，披著一塊用珠子裝飾的繡花披肩，都是她出入上流社會時的裝束；癱瘓的外祖母特蘭吉林娜·馬裡雅·米尼亞塔·阿拉柯克·布恩蒂亞莊重地坐在搖椅裡，揮著一把孔雀羽毛扇；那兒還有烏蘇娜的曾祖父——奧雷連諾·阿卡蒂奧·布恩蒂亞——穿著一套總督禁衛軍的制服，她的父親奧雷連諾·伊古阿蘭（牛虻的幼蟲一聽到他作的禱文就會喪命），從牛背上摔下來；此外還有她那位篤信神靈的母親；長著一條豬尾巴的堂弟霍塞·奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞和他那些已故的兒子們——他們一個個都端坐在沿牆擺著的椅子上，彷彿不是來作客，而是來聽安魂祈禱的。她開始娓娓動聽地跟他們談話，討論一些在時間和地點上彼此都無聯絡的事情。從學校回來的阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜，看厭了百科全書的奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞，走進她的臥寶時，也常常見她坐在床上大聲地自言自語，在回憶死者的迷宮裡瞎碰亂撞。有一次，她突然拉開嚇人的嗓子，叫喊起來：“夫火啦！”喊聲驚動了整座房子。事實上，她回憶起了自己四歲時見到的一次馬廄失火。她就這樣把過去跟現在混在一起。沒死之前，她還有過兩三次神智清醒的時候，但即使在那種時候，大概誰也不知道她講的是此時此刻的感覺，還是對往事的回憶，烏蘇娜漸漸枯槁了，還沒死就變成了一具木乃伊，在她一生最後的幾個月裡，乾癟得猶如掉在睡衣裡的一塊黑李子幹，她那隻總是僵硬的手也變得好象長尾猴的爪子。她可以整整幾天呆在那兒，一動也不動，聖索菲婭·德拉佩德只好把她搖了又搖，在確信她還活著之後，就讓她坐在自己膝上，喂她一小匙糖水。這時，烏蘇娜看上去就象一個獲得新生的老太婆。阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜和奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞架起她，在臥室裡拍著她，把她放在祭壇上，想證實一下她是否只比耶穌嬰兒時稍大一點兒。有一天晚上，他們甚至把她藏在儲藏室的一隻櫃子裡，在那兒，她差一點讓老鼠吃掉。在復活節前的那個禮拜日，趁菲蘭達正在做彌撒，他們又走進烏蘇娜的臥室，一下子抬起她的頭和腳。
“可憐的高祖母，”阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜脫口而出，“她老死了。”
烏蘇娜猝然一動。
“我還活著哩，”她反駁了一句。
“你瞧，”阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜抑住笑聲說：“呼吸都沒有啦。”
“我不是在講話嗎？”烏蘇娜叫道。
“連話也講不動啦！”奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞說。“象一支蠟燭燃盡了。”
