世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第20章Part2

Germán and Aureliano took care of him. They helped him like a child, fastening his tickets and immigration documents to his pockets with safety pins, making him a detailed list of what he must do from the time he left Macondo until he landed in Barcelona, but nonetheless he threw away a pair of pants with half of his money in it without realizing it. The night before the trip, after nailing up the boxes and putting his clothing into the same suitcase that he had brought when he first came, he narrowed his clam eyes, pointed with a kind of impudent benediction at the stacks of books with which he had endured during his exile, and said to his friends:
“All that shit there I leave to you people!?
Three months later they received in a large envelope twenty-nine letters and more than fifty pictures that he had accumulated during the leisure of the high seas. Although he did not date them, the order in which he had written the letters was obvious. In the first ones, with his customary good humor, he spoke about the difficulties of the crossing, the urge he had to throw the cargo officer overboard when he would not let him keep the three boxes in his cabin, the clear imbecility of a lady who was terrified at the number thirteen, not out of superstition but because she thought it was a number that had no end, and the bet that he had won during the first dinner because he had recognized in the drinking water on board the taste of the nighttime beets by the springs of Lérida. With the passage of the days, however, the reality of life on board mattered less and less to him and even the most recent and trivial happenings seemed worthy of nostalgia, because as the ship got farther away, his memory began to grow sad. That process of nostalgia was also evident in the pictures. In the first ones he looked happy, with his sport shirt which looked like a hospital jacket and his snowy mane, in an October Caribbean filled with whitecaps. In the last ones he could be seen to be wearing a dark coat and a milk scarf, pale in the face, taciturn from absence on the deck of a mournful ship that had come to be like a sleepwalker on the autumnal seas. Germán and Aureliano answered his letters. He wrote so many during the first months that at that time they felt closer to him than when he had been in Macondo, and they were almost freed from the rancor that he had left behind. At first he told them that everything was just the same, that the pink snails were still in the house where he had been born, that the dry herring still had the same taste on a piece of toast, that the waterfalls in the village still took on a perfumed smell at dusk. They were the notebook pages again, woven with the purple scribbling, in which he dedicateda special paragraph to each one. Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end. ?lvaro was the first to take the advice to abandon Macondo. He sold everything, even the tame jaguar that teased passersby from the courtyard of his house, and he bought an eternal ticket on a train that never stopped traveling. In the postcards that he sent from the way stations he would describe with shouts the instantaneous images that he had seen from the window of his coach, and it was as if he were tearing up and throwing into oblivion some long, evanescent poem: the chimerical Negroes in the cotton fields of Louisiana, the winged horses in the bluegrass of Kentucky, the Greek lovers in the infernal sunsets of Arizona, the girl in the red sweater painting watercolors by a lake in Michigan who waved at him with her brushes, not to say farewell but out of hope, because she did not know that she was watching a train with no return passing by. Then Alfonso and Germán left one Saturday with the idea of coming back on Monday, but nothing more was ever heard of them. A year after the departure of the wise Catalonian the only one left in Macondo was Gabriel, still adrift at the mercy of Nigromanta’s chancy charity and answering the questions of a contest in a French magazine in which the first prize was a trip to Paris. Aureliano, who was the one who subscribed to it, helped him fill in the answers, sometimes in his house but most of the time among the ceramic bottles and atmosphere of valerian in the only pharmacy left in Macondo, where Mercedes, Gabriel’s stealthy girl friend, lived. It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending. The town had reached such extremes of inactivity that when Gabriel won the contest and left for Paris with two changes of clothing, a pair of shoes, and the complete works of Rabelais, he had to signal the engineer to stop the train and pick him up. The old Street of the Turks was at that time an abandoned corner where the last Arabs were letting themselves be dragged off to death with the age-old custom of sitting in their doorways, although it had been many years since they had sold the last yard of diagonal cloth, and in the shadowy showcases only the decapitated manikins remained. The banana company’s city, which Patricia Brown may have tried to evoke for her grandchildren during the nights of intolerance and dill pickles in Prattville, Alabama, was a plain of wild grass. The ancient priest who had taken Father Angel’s place and whose name no one had bothered to find out awaited God’s mercy stretched out casually in a hammock, tortured by arthritis and the insomnia of doubt while the lizards and rats fought over the inheritance of the nearby church. In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep because of the noise of the red ants, Aureliano, and Amaranta ?rsula were the only happy beings, and the most happy on the face of the earth.
Gaston had returned to Brussels. Tired of waiting for the airplane, one day he put his indispensable things into a small suitcase, took his file of correspondence, and left with the idea of returning by air before his concession was turned over to a group of German pilots who had presented the provincial authorities with a more ambitious project than his. Since the afternoon of their first love, Aureliano and Amaranta ?rsula had continued taking advantage of her husband’s rare unguarded moments, making love with gagged ardor in chance meetings and almost always interrupted by unexpected returns. But when they saw themselves alone in the house they succumbed to the delirium of lovers who were making up for lost time. It was a mad passion, unhinging, which made Fernanda’s bones tremble with horror in her grave and which kept them in a state of perpetual excitement. Amaranta ?rsula’s shrieks, her songs of agony would break out the same at two in the afternoon on the dining-room table as at two in the morningin the pantry. “What hurts me most,?she would say, laughing, “is all the time that we wasted.?In the bewilderment of passion she watched the ants devastating the garden, sating their prehistoric hunger with the beam of the house, and she watched the torrents of living lava take over the porch again, but she bothered to fight them only when she found them in her bedroom. Aureliano abandoned the parchments, did not leave the house again, and carelessly answered the letters from the wise Catalonian. They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits. They closed the doors and windows again so as not to waste time getting undressed and they walked about the house as Remedios the Beauty had wanted to do and they would roll around naked in the mud of the courtyard, and one afternoon they almost drowned as they made love in the cistern. In a short time they did more damage than the red ants: they destroyed the furniture in the parlor, in their madness they tore to shreds the hammock that had resisted the sad bivouac loves of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they disemboweled the mattresses and emptied them on the floor as they suffocated in storms of cotton. Although Aureliano was just as ferocious a lover as his rival, it was Amaranta ?rsula who ruled in that paradise of disaster with her mad genius and her lyrical voracity, as if she had concentrated in her love the unconquerable energy that her great-great-grandmother had given to the making of little candy animals. And yet, while she was singing with pleasure and dying with laughter over her own inventions, Aureliano was becoming more and more absorbed and silent, for his passion was self-centered and burning. Nevertheless, they both reached such extremes of virtuosity that when they became exhausted from excitement, they would take advantage of their fatigue. They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, much richer than those of desire. While he would rub Amaranta ?rsula’s erect breasts with egg whites or smooth her elastic thighs and peach-like stomach with cocoa butter, she would play with Aureliano’s portentous creature as if it were a doll and would paint clown’s eyes on it with her lipstick and give it a Turk’s mustache with her eyebrow pencil, and would put on organza bow ties and little tinfoil hats. One night they daubed themselves from head to toe with peach jam and licked each other like dogs and made mad love on the floor of the porch, and they were awakened by a torrent of carnivorous ants who were ready to eat them alive.
During the pauses in their delirium, Amaranta ?rsula would answer Gaston’s letters. She felt him to be so far away and busy that his return seemed impossible to her. In one of his first letters he told her that his Partners had actually sent the airplane, but that a shipping agent in Brussels had sent it by mistake to Tanganyika, where it was delivered to the scattered tribe of the Makondos. That mix-up brought on so many difficulties that just to get the plane back might take two years. So Amaranta ?rsula dismissed the possibility of an inopportune return. Aureliano, for his part, had no other contact with the world except for the letters from the wise Catalonian and the news he had of Gabriel through Mercedes, the silent pharmacist. At first they were real contacts. Gabriel had turned in his return ticket in order to stay in Paris, selling the old newspapers and empty bottles that the chambermaids threw out of a gloomy hotel on the Rue Dauphine. Aureliano could visualize him then in a turtleneck sweater which he took off only when the sidewalk Cafés on Montparnasse filled with springtime lovers, and sleeping by day and writing by night in order to confuse hunger in the room that smelled of boiled cauliflower where Rocamadour was to die. Nevertheless, news about him was slowly becoming so uncertain, and the letters from the wise man so sporadic and melancholy, that Aureliano grew to think about them as Amaranta ?rsula thought about her husband, and both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday and eternal reality was love.

傑爾曼和奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞照顧他，就象關心孩子一樣關心他：把車票和遷移證分放在他的兩個口袋裏，用別針別住袋口，又爲他列了一張詳細的表格，記明他從馬孔多動身到巴塞羅那的路上應該做的一切；儘管如此，博學的加泰隆尼亞人還是出了個紙漏，連他自己也沒發覺，竟把一隻口袋裏揣着一半現款的褲子扔進了污水坑。啓程前夕，等到一隻只箱子已經釘上，一件件零星什物也放進了他帶到馬孔多來的那隻箱子裏，他就合上蛤殼似的眼臉，然後做了一個帶有褻瀆上帝意味的祝福手勢，指着那些曾經幫助他經受了鄉愁的書，對朋友們說：
“這堆舊書我就留在這兒了。”
三個月後，他寄來了一個大郵包，裏面有二十九封信和五十張照片，這些都是他在公海上利用閒暇逐漸積累起來的。雖說博學的加泰隆尼亞人沒在上面註明日期，但也不難理解，這些郵件是按照怎樣的順序編排的。在開頭的幾封信中，他以慣有的幽默筆調介紹了旅途上的種種經歷：他說到一個貨物檢驗員不同意他把箱子放在船艙裏時，他真恨不得把那個傢伙扔到海里去：他又說到一位太太簡直是驚人的愚蠢，只要提到“十三”這個數字，她就會心驚肉跳——這倒不是出於迷信，而是因爲她認爲這是個不圓滿的數字；他還說到在船上吃第一頓晚飯的時候，他贏了一場賭博，他辨出船上的飲水有萊里達（萊里達，西班牙地名） 泉水的味道，散發出每天夜晚從萊里達市郊飄來的甜菜氣息。可是，隨着時光的流逝，他對船上的生活越來越感到乏味，每當回憶起馬孔多發生的那些事情，即使是最近的、最平淡的瑣事，也會勾起他的懷舊情緒：船走得越遠，他的回憶就越傷感。這種懷舊情緒的不斷加深，從照片上也透露了出來。在最初的幾張照片上，他看上去是那樣幸福，穿着一件白襯衫，留着一頭銀髮，背景是加勒比海，海面上照例飛濺着十月的浪花。在以後的一些照片上，他已換上了深色大衣，圍着一條綢圍巾，這時，他臉色蒼白，一副心不在焉的模樣，仁立在一條無名船的甲板上，這條船剛剛脫離夜間的險境，徘徊在秋天的公海上。傑爾曼和奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞都給老頭兒回了信。在開始的幾個月裏，老頭兒也經常來信，使他的兩個朋友覺得他彷彿就生活在他們身邊，比在馬孔多時離他們更近；他的遠別在他們心裏引起的痛苦，也幾乎消失得無影無蹤。他在信裏告訴他們，說一切猶如以往，家鄉的小屋裏至今還保存着那隻粉紅色的貝殼；麪包餡裏夾一片薰魚片，吃起來還是那種味道；家鄉的小溪每天晚上依然芳香怡人。在兩個朋友面前重又出現那一張張練習簿紙，上面歪歪斜斜地寫滿了紫色草體字，他們每一個人都單獨收到了一些。這些信洋溢着一個久病痊癒者那樣的振奮精神，們連博學的加泰隆尼亞人自個兒也沒有覺察到，它們漸漸變成了一首首灰心喪氣的田園詩。冬天的晚上，每當壁爐裏的湯鍋噝噝冒氣時，老頭兒就不禁懷念起馬孔多書店後面暖融融的小房間，懷念起陽光照射下沙沙作響的灰濛濛的杏樹葉叢，懷念起令人昏昏欲睡的晌午突然傳來的輪船汽笛聲，正象他在馬孔多的時候那樣，曾緬懷家鄉壁爐裏嗤嗤冒氣的湯鍋，街上咖啡豆小販的叫賣聲和春天裏飛來飛去的百靈鳥。這兩種懷舊病猶如兩面彼此對立着的鏡子，相互映照，折磨着他，使他失去了自己那種心馳神往的幻想。於是他勸朋友們離開馬孔多，勸他們忘掉他給他們說過的關於世界和人類感情的一切看法，唾棄賀拉斯（公元前65一8年，羅馬詩人及諷刺家）的學說，告誡他們不管走到哪兒，都要永遠記住：過去是虛假的，往事是不能返回的，每一個消逝的春天都一去不復返了，最狂熱、最堅貞的愛情也只是一種過眼煙雲似的感情。阿爾伐羅第一個聽從老頭兒的勸告離開馬孔多，他賣掉了一切東西，甚至把他家院子裏那隻馴養來戲弄路人的美洲豹都賣了，才爲自己購得一張沒有終點站的通票。不久他便從中間站上寄來一些標滿驚歎號的明信片，描述了車窗外一掠而過的瞬息情景，這些描述好象是一首被他撕成碎片、丟置腦後的長詩篇：黑人在路易斯安那*棉花種植園裏若隱若現；駿馬在肯塔基*綠色草原上奔馳；亞利桑那* 的夕陽照着一對希臘情人，還有一個穿紅絨線衣、用水彩描繪密執安湖*泊四周景物的姑娘，向他揮動着畫筆——在這種招呼中，並沒有告別，而只有希望，因爲姑娘並不知道這輛列車將一去不復返。過了一些日子，一個星期六，阿爾豐索和傑爾曼也走了，他們打算在下一週的星期一回來，但是從此誰也沒有再聽到他們的消息，在博學的加泰隆尼亞人離開之後過了一年，他的朋友中只有加布裏埃爾還留在馬孔多，他猶疑不決地待了下來，繼續利用加泰隆尼亞人不固定的恩賜，參加一家法國雜誌組織的競賽，解答有關的題目。競賽的一等獎是一次巴黎之行。奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞也訂了這份雜誌，便幫他填寫一張張印着題目的表格。他有時在自己家裏，但更多的時間是在加布裏埃爾暗中的情婦梅爾塞德斯的藥房裏幹這件事，那是馬孔多唯一完好的藥房，裏面擺着陶製藥罐，空氣中瀰漫着纈草的氣息。城裏只有這家藥房倖存下來。市鎮的破壞總是不見結束，這種破壞是無休無止的，好象每一剎那間都會完全結束，但最後總是沒有結束。市鎮透漸變成了一片廢墟，所以，加布裏埃爾在競賽中終於獲勝，帶着兩件換洗衣服、一雙皮鞋和一套拉伯雷全集，準備前往巴黎的時候，他只好不停地向司機招手，讓他把列車停在馬孔多車站上。此時，古老的土耳其人街也變成了荒蕪的一隅，最後一批阿拉伯人已把最後一碼斜紋布賣掉多年，在那晦暗的櫥窗裏只剩下了一些無頭的人體模型；這些阿拉伯人依然按照千年相傳的習俗，坐在自己的店鋪門口靜靜地等候着死神。在那有着種族偏見、盛產醋汁黃瓜的邊遠地區——在亞拉巴馬* 的普拉特維爾城* ，也許帕特里西亞·布勞恩還在一夜一夜地給自己的孫子們講述這座香蕉公司的小鎮，沒想到它如今已變成一片雜草叢生的平原。那個代替安格爾神父的教士——他的名字誰也不想弄清楚，——受到風溼和精疑引起的失眠症的折磨，一夜一夜地躺在吊牀上，等待上帝的恩賜。跟他作伴的蜥蜴和老鼠，晝夜不停地互相廝殺，爭奪教堂的統治權。在這個連鳥兒都嫌棄的市鎮上，持續不斷的炎熱和灰塵使人呼吸都感到困難，房子裏紅螞蟻的鬧聲，也使奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞和阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜每夜都難以成眠。他們受到孤獨和愛情的折磨，但他們畢竟是人世間唯一幸福的人，是大地上最幸福的人。
有一天，等候飛機等得不耐煩的加斯東，把一些必需的東西和所有的信件裝進一個箱子，暫時離開馬孔多回布魯塞爾去了，他打算把特許證和執照交給一個德國飛機設計師之後，就乘飛機回來，那個德國飛機設計師向政府當局提供了一項比加斯東自己的設計更宏偉的設計規劃。於是，奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞和阿瑪蘭塔，烏蘇娜在第一夜的愛情之後，開始利用加斯東外出的難得機會相聚，但這些相聚總是籠罩着危險的氣氛，幾乎總是被加斯東要突然歸來的消息所打斷。他們只好竭力剋制自己的衝動。他倆只是單獨在一起時，才置身於長期受到壓抑的狂熱的愛情中。這是一種失去理智、找害身體的情慾，這種情慾使他們始終處於興奮的狀態，甚至使得墳墓裏的菲蘭達驚得發抖。每天下午兩點，在午餐桌旁，每天半夜兩點，在儲藏室裏。都可聽到阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜的號叫聲和聲嘶力竭的歌聲。“我覺得最可惜的是咱們白白失去了那麼多的好時光，”她對奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞笑着說。她瞧見螞蟻正在把花園劫掠一空，正在用屋子裏的樑柱解除它們初次感到的飢餓；她還瞧見它們象迸發的熔岩似的重新在長廊裏川流不息，然而被情慾弄得麻木不仁的阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜，直到螞蟻出現在她的臥室裏，她才動手去消滅它們。此時，奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞也擱下羊皮紙手稿，不離開房子一步，只是偶爾給博學的加泰隆尼亞人寫回信。一對情人失去了現實感和時間觀念，搞亂了每天習慣的生活節奏。爲了避免在寬衣解帶上浪費不必要的時間，他們關上門窗，就象俏姑娘雷麥黛絲一直嚮往的那副走路模樣，在屋裏走來走去，赤裸裸地躺在院子的水塘裏。有一次在浴室的池子裏親熱時，差一點被水淹死。他們在短時期內給房子造成的損害比螞蟻還大：弄壞了客廳裏的傢俱，撐破了那張堅韌地經受了奧雷連諾上校行軍中一些風流韻事的吊牀，最後甚至拆散了牀墊，把裏面的蕊子掏出來放在地板上，以便在棉絮團上相親相愛。雖說奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞作爲一個情人，在瘋狂的愛情上並不遜於暫時離開的加斯東，但在極樂世界中造成家中一片慘狀的卻是阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜和她特別輕率的創造才能以及難以滿足的情慾。她在愛情上傾注了不可遏止的一切精力，就象當年她的高祖母勤奮地製作糖動物一樣。阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜望着自己的發明，常常快活得唱起歌來，笑得忘乎所以，奧雷連諾。 布恩蒂亞卻變得越來越若有所思、沉默寡言，因爲他的愛是一種自我陶醉的、使一切化爲烏有的愛。不過，他倆都掌握了愛情上的高度技巧，在他們熾熱的激情耗盡之後，他們在疲倦中都得到了能夠得到的一切。
阿瑪蘭塔。 烏蘇娜總是在頭腦清醒的時刻給加斯東覆信。在她看來，他是陌生而遙遠的，根本沒有想到他可能回來。在最初的一封信裏，他告訴她說，他的合夥人確實給他發過飛機，只是布魯塞爾的海上辦事處把飛機錯發到坦噶尼喀轉交給了馬孔多出生的一些人了。這種混亂造成了一大堆麻煩，單是取回飛機就可能花上兩年時間。於是阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜排除了丈夫突然回來的可能性。此時，奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞跟外界的聯繫，除了同博學的加泰隆尼亞人通信之外，只有從鬱鬱寡歡的藥房女店主梅爾塞德斯那兒瞭解到加布裏埃爾的消息。起先這種消息還是實在的。 爲了留在巴黎，加布裏埃爾把回來的飛機票兌換成一些錢，又賣掉了在多芬街上一家陰暗的旅館門外撿到的舊報紙和空瓶子。奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞不難想到朋友的樣子：現在他穿的是一件高領絨線衫，只有到了春天蒙帕納斯＊路邊咖啡館裏坐滿一對對情人時，他纔會從身上脫下這件絨線衫，爲了對付飢餓，他在一個散發着花椰菜氣味的小房間裏，白天睡覺，晚上寫東西，據說羅卡馬杜爾＊就是在那個房間裏結束一生的。但是沒過多久，加布裏埃爾的消息漸漸渺茫了，博學的加泰隆尼亞人的來信也漸漸稀少了，內容也憂鬱了·奧雷連諾。 布恩蒂亞對他們兩人的思念不知不覺跟阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇娜對她丈夫的思念一樣了。一對情人沉浸在環顧無人的世界中，對他們來說，每天唯一的、永恆的現實就是愛情。