世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第11章Part 3

She believed it, even though they were sitting at the long table with a linen tablecloth and silver service to have a cup of watered chocolate and a sweet bun. Until the day of her wedding she dreamed about a legendary kingdom, in spite of the fact that her father, Don Fernando, had to mortgage the house in order to buy her trousseau. It was not innocence or delusions of grandeur. That was how they had brought her up. Since she had had the use of reason she remembered having done her duty in a gold pot with the family crest on it. She left the house for the first time at the age of twelve in a coach and horses that had to travel only two blocks to take her to the convent. Her classmates were surprised that she sat apart from them in a chair with a very high back and that she would not even mingle with them during recess. "She's different," the nuns would explain. "She's going to be a queen." Her schoolmates believed this because she was already the most beautiful, distinguished, and discreet girl they had ever seen. At the end of eight years, after having learned to write Latin poetry, play the clavichord, talk about falconry with gentlemen and apologetics, with archbishops, discuss affairs of state with foreign rulers and affairs of God with the Pope, she returned to her parents' home to weave funeral wreaths. She found it despoiled. All that was left was the furniture that was absolutely necessary, the silver candelabra and table service, for the everyday utensils had been sold one by one to underwrite the costs of her education. Her mother had succumbed to five-o'clock fever. Her father, Don Fernando, dressed in black with a stiff collar and a gold watch chain, would give her a silver coin on Mondays for the household expenses, and the funeral wreaths finished the week before would be taken away. He spent most of his time shut up in his study and the few times that he went out he would return to recite the rosary with her. She had intimate friendships with no one. She had never heard mention of the wars that were bleeding the country. She continued her piano lessons at three in the afternoon. She had even began to lose the illusion of being a queen when two peremptory raps of the knocker sounded at the door and she opened it to a well--groomed military officer with ceremonious manners who had a scar on his cheek and a gold medal on his chest. He closeted himself with her father in the study. Two hours later her father came to get her in the sewing room. "Get your things together," he told her. "You have to take a long trip." That was how they took her to Macon-do. In one single day, with a brutal slap, life threw on top of her the whole weight of a reality that her parents had kept hidden from her for many years. When she returned home she shut herself up in her room to weep, indifferent to Don Fernando's pleas and explanations as he tried to erase the scars of that strange joke. She had sworn to herself never to leave her bedroom until she died when Aureli-ano Segun-do came to get her. It was an act of impossiblefate, because in the confusion of her indignation, in the fury of her shame, she had lied to him so that he would never know her real identity. The only real clues that Aureli-ano Segun-do had when he left to look for her were her unmistakable highland accent and her trade as a weaver of funeral wreaths. He searched for her without cease. With the fierce temerity with which José Arcadio Buendía had crossed the mountains to found Macon-do, with the blind pride with which Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía had undertaken his fruitless wars, with the mad tenacity with which úrsula watched over the survival of the line, Aureli-ano Segun-do looked for Fernanda, without a single moment of respite. When he asked where they sold funeral wreaths they took him from house to house so that he could choose the best ones. When he asked for the most beautiful woman who had ever been seen on this earth, all the women brought him their daughters. He became lost in misty byways, in times reserved for oblivion, in labyrinths of disappointment. He crossed a yellow plain where the echo repeated one's thoughts and where anxiety brought on premonitory mirages. After sterile weeks he came to an unknown city where all the bells were tolling a dirge. Although he had never seen them and no one had ever described them to him he immediately recognized the walls eaten away by bone salt, the brokendown wooden balconies gutted by fungus, and nailed to the outside door, almost erased by rain, the saddest cardboard sign in the world: Funeral Wreaths for Sale. From that moment until the icy morning when Fernanda left her house under the care of the Mother Superior there was barely enough time for the nuns to sew her trousseau and in six trunks put the candelabra, the silver service, and the gold chamber-pot along with the countless and useless remains of a family catastrophe that had been two centuries late in its fulfillment. Don Fernando declined the invitation to go along. He promised to go later when he had cleared up his affairs, and from the moment when he gave his daughter his blessing he shut himself up in his study again to write out the announcements with mournful sketches and the family coat of arms, which would be the first human contact that Fernanda and her father would have had in all their lives. That was the real date of her birth for her. For Aureli-ano Segun-do it was almost simultaneously the beginning and the end of happiness.
Fernanda carried a delicate calendar with small golden keys on which her spiritual adviser had marked in purple ink the dates of venereal abstinence. Not counting Holy week, Sundays, holy days of obligation, first Fridays, retreats, sacrifices, and cyclical impediments, her effective year was reduced to forty-two days that were spread out through a web of purple crosses. Aureli-ano Segun-do, convinced that time would break up that hostile network, prolonged the wedding celebration beyond the expected time. Tired of throwing out so many empty brandy and champagne bottles so that they would not clutter up the house and at the same time intrigued by the fact that the newlyweds slept at different times and in separate rooms while the fireworks and music and the slaughtering of cattle went on, úrsula remembered her own experience and wondered whether Fer-nanda might have a chastity belt too which would sooner or later provoke jokes in the town and give rise to a tragedy. But Fernanda confessed to her that she was just letting two weeks go by before allowing the first contact with her husband. Indeed, when the period was over, she opened her bedroom with a resignation worthy of an expiatory victim and Aureli-ano Segun-do saw the most beautiful woman on earth, with her glorious eyes of a frightened animal and her long, copper-colored hair spread out across the pillow. He was so fascinated with that vision that it took him a moment to realize that Fernanda was wearing a white nightgown that reached down to her ankles, with long sleeves and with a large, round buttonhole, delicately trimmed, at the level of her lower stomach. Aureli-ano Segun-do could not suppress an explosion of laughter.
"That's the most obscene thing I've ever seen in my life," he shouted with a laugh that rang through the house. "I married a Sister of Charity."

菲蘭達相信她的說法，雖然她們坐在鋪着亞麻布桌布、擺着銀製餐具的長桌旁邊，可是每人通常只有一杯巧克力茶和一個甜麪包。菲蘭達直到結婚之日都在幻想傳奇的王國，儘管她的父親唐（注：西班牙人用的尊稱，含義爲先生）。 菲蘭達爲了給她購置嫁妝，不得不把房子抵押出去。這種幻想不是由於天真或者狂妄產生的，而是由於家庭教育。從菲蘭達記事的時候起，她就經常在刻着家徽的金便盆裏撒尿。滿十二歲時，她第一次離家去修道院學校上學，家裏的人竟讓她坐上一輛輕便馬車，雖然距離只有兩個街區。班上的同學覺得奇怪的是，她獨個兒坐在一把遠離大家的高背椅子上，甚至課間休息時也不跟大家在一起。“她跟你們不同，”一個修女向她們解釋。“她會成爲一個女王。”她的女同學們相信這一點，因爲當時她已經是個最美麗、最高貴、最文雅的姑娘，是她們從來沒有見過的。過了八年，她已學會：寫拉丁文詩歌，彈舊式鋼琴，跟紳士們談論鷹獵，跟大主教暢談護教學（注：基督教神學的一個部門）跟外國執政者議論國務，跟教皇討論宗教事務；然後回到父母家中，重新開始編織花圈。她發現家中已經空空如也。房子裏只剩下最必要的傢俱、枝形燭臺和銀製餐具，其餘的東西都已逐漸賣掉——因爲需要爲她繳納學費。她的母親已經
患寒熱病死了。父親唐。 菲蘭達穿着硬領黑衣服，胸前掛着金錶鏈，每星期一都給她一枚銀幣作爲家庭開銷，把她在一星期中編織的花圈帶走。大多數日子他都關在書房裏，偶爾進城，總在六時以前趕回家中，跟女兒一起祈禱。菲蘭達從來不跟任何人交往，從沒聽說國家正在經歷流血的戰爭，從沒停止傾聽每天的鋼琴聲。她已經失去了成爲女王的希望，有一天忽然聽到有人在門壞上急促地敲了兩下：菲蘭達給一個穿著考究的軍官開了門；這人恭恭敬敬，臉頰上有一塊傷疤，胸前有一塊金質獎章。他和她父親在書房裏呆了一陣。過了兩小時，唐·菲蘭達就到她的房間裏來了。“準備吧，”他說。“你得去作遠途旅行啦。”他們就這樣把她送到了馬孔多；在那兒，她一下子碰到了她的父母向她隱瞞了多年的嚴酷的現實。從那兒回家以後，她呆在自己的房間裏哭了半天，不顧唐·菲蘭達的懇求和解釋，因爲他想醫治空前的侮辱給她的心靈造成的創傷。菲蘭達已經決定至死不離自己的臥室，奧雷連諾第二卻來找她了。他大概運氣好，因爲菲蘭達在羞惱之中，爲了使他永不可能知道她的真正身份，是向他撒了謊的。奧雷連諾第二去尋找她的時候，僅僅掌握了兩個可靠的特徵：她那山地人的特殊口音和編織花圈的職業。他毫不惜力地尋找她，一分鐘也不泄
氣地尋找她，象霍·阿·布恩蓓亞翻過山嶺、建立馬孔多村那麼蠻勇，象奧雷連諾上校進行無益的戰爭那麼盲目驕傲，象烏蘇娜爭取本族的生存那麼頑強。他向人家打聽哪幾出售花圈，人家就領着他從一個店鋪到另一個店鋪，讓他能夠挑選最好的花圈。他向人家打聽哪兒有世間最美的女人，所有的母親都帶他去見自己的女兒。他在霧茫茫的峽谷裏遊蕩，在往事的禁區裏徘徊，在絕望的迷宮裏摸索。他經過黃橙橙的沙漠，那裏的回聲重複了他的思想，焦急的心情產生了幢幢幻象。經過幾個星期毫無結果的尋找，他到了一座陌生的城市，那裏所有的鐘都在敲着喪鐘。儘管他從沒見過這些鍾，根本沒有聽到過它們的聲音，但他立即認出了北風侵蝕的牆垣、腐朽發黑的木陽臺、門上釘着的一塊紙板，紙板上寫着幾乎被雨水沖掉的、世上最淒涼的字兒：“出售花圈。”從這一時刻起，直到菲蘭達在女修道院長照顧下永遠離開家庭的那個冰冷的早晨，相隔的時間很短，修女們好不容易給菲蘭達縫好了嫁妝，用六口箱子裝上了枝形燭臺、銀質餐具、金便盆，此外還有長達兩個世紀的家庭災難中留下的許多廢物。唐·菲蘭達拒絕了陪送女兒的建議，他答應，償清了一切債務，稍摳一些就去馬孔多；於是，給女兒祝福之後，他馬上又關在書房裏了，後來，他從書房
裏給她寄去一封封短信，信紙上有慘淡的小花飾和族徽——這些信函建立了父女之間的某種精神聯繫。對菲蘭達來說，離家的日子成了她真正誕生的日子。對奧音連諾第二來說，這一天幾乎同時成了他幸福的開端和結束。
菲蘭達帶來了一份印有金色小花朵的日曆，她的懺悔神父在日曆裏用紫色墨水標明瞭夫妻同牀的禁忌日子。除了聖潔周（注：復活節前的一週年）、禮拜日、每月第一個星期五、彌撒日、齋戒日、祭祀日以及患病的日子，在蛛網一般的紫色××中，一年只剩四十二夭有用的日子了，奧雷連諾第二相信時間能夠破壞這種蛛網，就不顧規矩延長婚期。香擯酒和白蘭地酒空瓶子是那麼多，烏蘇娜爲了不讓它們堆滿屋子，不得不沒完沒了地往外扔，搞得厭煩極了，但她同時覺得奇怪，新婚夫婦總在不同的時刻和不同的房間睡覺，而鞭炮聲禾口樂曲聲卻沒停息，殺豬宰羊仍在繼續，於是她就想起了自己的經驗，詢問菲蘭達是否也有“貞潔褲”，因爲它遲早會在鎮上引起笑話，造成悲劇。然而菲蘭達表示，她只等待婚禮過了兩週就跟大夫第一次同寢。的確，這個期限一過，她就打開了自己的臥室門，準備成爲贖罪的犧牲品了，奧雷連諾第二也就看見了世間最美的女人，她那明亮的眼睛活象驚恐的扁角鹿，銅色的長髮披散在枕頭上。奧雷連諾第二被這種景象弄得神魂顛倒，過了一會才發現，菲蘭達穿着一件長及腳踝的白色睡衣，袖子頗長，跟肚腹下部一般高的地方，有一個紗得十分精巧的又大又圓的窟窿。奧雷連諾第二忍不住哈哈大笑。
“這是我生乎見到的最討厭的玩意兒了，”他的笑聲響徹了整座房子。“我娶了個修女啦。”