世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第9章Part 8

During the following days he busied himself destroying all trace of his passage through the world. He stripped the silver shop until all that were left were impersonal objects, he gave his clothes away to the orderlies, and he buried his weapons in the courtyard with the same feeling of penance with which his father had buried the spear that had killed Prudencio Aguilar. He kept only one pistol with one bullet in it. úrsula did not intervene. The only time she dissuaded him was when he was about to destroy the daguerreotype of Remedios that was kept in the parlor lighted by an eternal lamp. "That picture stopped belonging to you a long time ago," she told him. "It's a family relic." On the eve of the armistice, when no single object that would let him be remembered was left in the house, he took the trunk of poetry to the bakery when Santa Sofía de la Piedad was making ready to light the oven.
"Light it with this," he told her, handing her the first roll of yellowish papers. "It will, burn better because they're very old things."
Santa Sofía de la Piedad, the silent one, the condescending one, the one who never contradicted anyone, not even her own children, had the impression that it was a forbidden act.
"They're important papers," she said.
"Nothing of the sort," the colonel said. "They're things that a person writes to himself."
"In that case," she said, "you burn them, colonel."
He not only did that, but he broke up the trunk with a hatchet and threw the pieces into the fire. Hours before, Pilar Ternera had come to visit him. After so many years of not seeing her, Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía was startled at how old and fat she had become and how much she had lost of the splendor of her laugh, but he was also startled at the depths she had reached in her reading of the cards. "Watch out for your mouth," she told him, and he wondered whether the other time she had told him that during the height of his glory it had not been a surprisingly anticipated vision of his fate. A short time later, when his personal physician finished removing his sores, he asked him, without showing any particular interest, where the exact location of his heart was. The doctor listened with his stethoscope and then painted a circle on his cheat with a piece of cotton dipped in iodine.

次日，他就忙於消滅自己留居人世的一切痕跡。在首飾作坊裏，他沒碰的只是沒有他個人烙印的東西；他把自己的衣服贈給了勤務兵，而將武器埋在院子裏，悔悟的心情就象他父親把殺死普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾的標槍埋藏起來那樣。他留給自己的只是一支剩了一發子彈的手槍。他想取下客廳里長明燈照着的雷麥黛絲的相片時，烏蘇娜才阻止他。“這相片早就不是你的啦，”烏蘇娜說。“這是家中的聖物。”停戰協定簽字前夕，家裏幾乎沒有留下一件東西能夠使人想起奧雷連諾上校時，他才把一小箱詩篇拎進麪包房，聖索菲婭·德拉佩德正在生爐子。
“拿這個生火吧，”說着，他把一卷發黃的紙兒遞給她。“這種舊東西容易引火。”
聖索菲婭·德拉佩德是個寡言、隨和的人，從不違拗任何人，甚至她自己的孩子，可她覺得奧雷連諾上校叫她做的是一件違禁的事。
“這是重要的紙兒嘛，”她說。
“不，”上校回答。“這都是爲自個兒寫的。”
“那麼，”她說，“你自個兒燒吧，上校。”
他不僅這麼做了，甚至用斧頭闢開箱子，把木片扔到火裏。幾小時前，皮拉·苔列娜來看過他。奧雷連諾上校多年沒有跟她見過面，一見她就覺得詫異，她變得又老又胖，笑聲也不如從前響亮了：但他同時也感到驚訝，她在紙牌占卜上達到了多深的程度啊！“當心嘴巴，”——這是皮拉·苔列娜提醒過他的，於是他想：前一次，在他名望最高的時候，她的這句話難道不是對他未來命運的驚人預見嗎？在跟皮拉·苔列娜見面之後不久，他竭力不表露特殊的興趣，問了問剛給他的膿瘡排了膿的私人醫生，心臟的準確位置究竟在哪兒。醫生用聽診器聽了一聽，就用蘸了碘酒的棉花在他胸上畫了個圈子。