世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第3章Part 7

Aureliano threw a coin into the hopper that the matron had in her lap and went into the room without knowing why. The adolescent mulatto girl, with her small bitch's teats, was naked on the bed. Before Aureliano sixty-three men had passed through the room that night. From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. The girl took off the soaked sheet and asked Aureliano to hold it by one side. It was as heavy as a piece of canvas. They squeezed it, twisting it at the ends until it regained its natural weight. They turned over the mat and the sweat came out of the other side. Aureliano was anxious for that operation never to end. He knew the theoretical mechanics of love, but he could not stay on his feet because of the weakness of his knees, and although he had goose pimples on his burning skin he could not resist the urgent need to expel the weight of his bowels. When the girl finished fixing up the bed and told him to get undressed, he gave her a confused explanation: "They made me come in. They told me to throw twenty cents into the hopper and hurry up." The girl understood his confusion. "If you throw in twenty cents more when you go out, you can stay a little longer," she said softly. Aureliano got undressed, tormented by shame, unable to get rid of the idea that-his nakedness could not stand comparison with that of his brother. In spite of the girl's efforts he felt more and more indifferent and terribly alone. "I'll throw in other twenty cents," he said with a desolate voice. The girl thanked him in silence. Her back was raw. Her skin was stuck to her ribs and her breathing was forced because of an immeasurable exhaustion. Two years before, far away from there, she had fallen asleep without putting out the candle and had awakened surrounded by flames. The house where she lived with the grand-mother who had raised her was reduced to ashes. Since then her grandmother carried her from town to town, putting her to bed for twenty cents in order to make up the value of the burned house. According to the girl's calculations, she still had ten years of seventy men per night, because she also had to pay the expenses of the trip and food for both of them as well as the pay of the Indians who carried the rocking chair. When the matron knocked on the door the second time, Aureliano left the room without having done anything, troubled by a desire to weep. That night he could not sleep, thinking about the girl, with a mixture of desire and pity. He felt an irresistible need to love her and protect her. At dawn, worn out by insomnia and fever, he made the calm decision to marry her in order to free her from the despotism of her grandmother and to enjoy all the nights of satisfaction that she would give the seventy men. But at ten o'clock in the morning, when he reached Catarino's store, the girl had left town.
Time mitigated his mad proposal, but it aggravated his feelings of frustration. He took refuge in work. He resigned himself to being a womanless man for all his life in order to hide the shame of his uselessness. In the meantime, Melquíades had printed on his plates everything that was printable in Macondo, and he left the daguerreotype laboratory to the fantasies of José Arcadio Buendía who had resolved to use it to obtain scientific proof of the existence of God. Through a complicated process of superimposed exposures taken in different parts of the house, he was sure that sooner or later he would get a daguerreotype of God, if He existed, or put an end once and for all to the supposition of His existence. Melquíades got deeper into his interpretations of Nostradamus. He would stay up until very late, suffocating in his faded velvet vest, scribbling with his tiny sparrow hands, whose rings had lost the glow of former times. One night he thought he had found a prediction of the future of Macondo. It wasto be a luminous city with great glass houses where there was no trace remaining of the race of the Buendía. "It's a mistake," José Arcadio Buendía thundered. "They won't be houses of glass but of ice, as I dreamed, and there will always be a Buendía, per omnia secula seculorum." úrsula fought to preserve common sense in that extravagant house, having broadened her business of little candy animals with an oven that went all night turning out baskets and more baskets of bread and a prodigious variety of puddings, meringues, and cookies, which disappeared in a few hours on the roads winding through the swamp. She had reached an age where she had a right to rest, but she was nonetheless more and more active. So busy was she in her prosperous enterprises that one afternoon she looked distractedly toward the courtyard while the Indian woman helped her sweeten the dough and she saw two unknown and beautiful adolescent girls doing frame embroidery in the light of the sunset. They were Rebeca and Amaranta. As soon as they had taken off the mourning clothes for their grandmother, which they wore with inflexible rigor for three years, their bright clothes seemed to have given them a new place in the world. Rebeca, contrary to what might have been expected, was the more beautiful. She had a light complexion, large and peaceful eyes, and magical hands that seemed to work out the design of the embroidery with invisible threads. Amaranta, the younger, was somewhat graceless, but she had the natural distinction, the inner tightness of her dead grand-mother. Next to them, although he was already revealing the physical drive of his father, Arcadio looked like a child. He set about learning the art of silverwork with Aureliano, who had also taught him how to read and write. úrsula suddenly realized that the house had become full of people, that her children were on the point of marrying and having children, and that they would be obliged to scatter for lack of space. Then she took out the money she had accumulated over long years of hard labor, made some arrangements with her customers, and undertook the enlargement of the house. She had a formal parlor for visits built, another one that was more comfortable and cool for daily use, a dining room with a table with twelve places where the family could sit with all of their guests, nine bedrooms with windows on the courtyard and a long porch protected from the heat of noon by a rose garden with a railing on which to place pots of ferns and begonias. She had the kitchen enlarged to hold two ovens. The granary where Pilar Ternera had read José Arcadio's future was torn down and another twice as large built so that there would never be a lack of food in the house. She had baths built is the courtyard in the shade of the chestnut tree, one for the women and another for the men, and in the rear a large stable, a fencedin chicken yard, a shed for the milk cows, and an aviary open to the four winds so that wandering birds could roost there at their pleasure. Followed by dozens of masons and carpenters, as if she had contracted her husband's hallucinating fever, úrsula fixed the position of light and heat and distributed space without the least sense of its limitations. The primitive building of the founders became filled with tools and materials, of workmen exhausted by sweat, who asked everybody please not to molest them, exasperated by the sack of bones that followed them everywhere with its dull rattle. In that discomfort, breathing quicklime and tar, no one could see very well how from the bowels of the earth there was rising not only the largest house is the town, but the most hospitable and cool house that had ever existed in the region of the swamp. José Buendía, trying to surprise Divine Providence in the midst of the cataclysm, was the one who least understood it. The new house was almost finished when úrsula drew him out of his chimerical world in order to inform him that she had an order to paint the front blue and not white as they had wanted. She showed him the official document. José Arcadio Buendía, without understanding what his wife was talking about, deciphered the signature.
"Who is this fellow?" he asked:

奧雷連諾把錢扔到胖婦人膝上的一隻匣子裏，打開了房門，自己也不知道去幹什麼。牀上躺着那個年輕的混血姑娘，渾身赤裸，她的胸脯活象母狗的乳頭。在奧雷連諾之前，這兒已經來過六十三個男人，空氣中充滿了那麼多的碳酸氣，充滿了汗水和嘆息的氣味，已經變得十分污濁；姑娘取下溼透了的牀單，要求奧雷連諾抓住牀唯的一頭。牀單挺重，好象溼帆布。他們抓住牀單的兩頭擰了又擰，它才恢復了正常的重量。然後，他們翻過墊子，汗水卻從另一面流了出來。奧雷連諾巴不得把這一切沒完沒了地幹下去。愛情的奧祕他從理論上是知道的，但是他的膝頭卻在戰粟，他勉強才能姑穩腳跟。姑娘拾掇好了牀鋪，要他脫掉衣服時，他卻給她作了混亂的解釋：“是他們要我進來的。他們要我把兩角錢扔在匣子裏，叫我不要耽擱。”姑娘理解他的混亂狀態，低聲說道：“你出去的時候，再扔兩角錢，就可呆得久一點兒。”奧雷連諾羞澀難堪地脫掉了衣服；他總是以爲向己的裸體比不上哥哥的裸體。雖然姑娘盡心竭力，他卻感到肉己越來越冷漠和孤獨。“我再扔兩角錢吧，”他完全絕望地咕嚕着說。姑娘默不作聲地向他表示感謝。她皮包骨頭，脊背磨出了血。由於過度疲勞，呼吸沉重、斷斷續續。兩年前，在離馬孔多很遠的地方，有一天晚上她沒熄滅蠟燭就睡着了，醒來的時候，周圍一片火焰，她和一個把她養大的老大娘一起居住的房子，燒得精光。從此以後，老大娘就把她帶到一個個城鎮，讓她跟男人睡一次覺撈取兩角錢，用來彌補房屋的損失。按照姑娘的計算，她還得再這樣生活十年左右，一夜接待七十個男人，因爲除了償債，還得支付她倆的路費和膳食費以及印第安人的擡送費。老大娘第二次敲門的時候，奧雷連諾什麼也沒做就走出房間，好不容易忍住了淚水，這天夜裏，他睡不着覺，老是想着混血姑娘，同時感到憐憫和需要。他渴望愛她和保護她。他被失眠和狂熱弄得疲憊不堪，次日早晨就決定跟她結婚，以便把她從老大娘的控制下解救出來，白個兒每夜都得到她給七十個男人的快樂。可是早上十點他來到卡塔林諾遊藝場的時候，姑娘已經離開了馬孔多。
時間逐漸冷卻了他那熱情的、輕率的打算，但是加強了他那希望落空的痛苦感覺。他在工作中尋求解脫。爲了掩飾自己不中用的恥辱，他順人了一輩子打光棍的命運。這時，梅爾加德斯把馬孔多一切值得拍照的都拍了照，就將銀版照相器材留給霍·阿·布恩蒂亞進行荒唐的試驗：後者決定利用銀版照相術得到上帝存在的科學證明。他相信，拿屋內不同地方拍的照片進行復雜的加工，如果上帝存在的話，他遲早準會得到上帝的照片，否則就永遠結束有關上帝存在的一切臆想。梅爾加德斯卻在深入研究納斯特拉達馬斯的理論。他經常坐到很晚，穿着褪了色的絲絨坎肩直喘粗氣，用他乾瘦的鳥爪在紙上潦草地寫着什麼；他手上的戒指已經失去往日的光彩。有一天夜晚，他覺得他偶然得到了有關馬孔多未來的啓示。馬孔多將會變成一座輝煌的城市，有許多高大的玻璃房子，城內甚至不會留下布恩蒂亞家的痕跡。“胡說八道，”霍·阿·布恩蒂亞氣惱他說。“不是玻璃房子，而是我夢見的那種冰磚房子，並且這兒永遠都會有布思蒂亞家的人，Per omnia secula secul- orumo！”（拉丁語：永遠永遠）烏蘇娜拼命想給這個怪人的住所灌輸健全的思想。她添了一個大爐竈，除了生產糖動物，開始烤山整籃整籃的麪包和大堆大堆各式各樣的布丁、奶油蛋白松餅和餅乾——這一切在幾小時內就在通往沼澤地的路上賣光了。儘管烏蘇娜已經到了應當休息的年歲，但她年復一年變得越來越勤勞了，全神貫注在興旺的生意上，有一天傍晚，印第安女人正幫她把糖摻在生面裏，她漫不經心地望着窗外，突然看見院子裏有兩個似乎陌生的姑娘，都很年輕、漂亮，正在落日的餘暉中繡花。這是雷貝卡和阿瑪蘭塔。她們剛剛脫掉穿了三年的悼念外祖母的孝服。花衣服完全改變了她們的外貌。出乎一切預料，雷貝卡在姿色上超過了阿瑪蘭塔，她長着寧靜的大眼睛、光潔的皮膚和具有魔力的手：她的手彷彿用看不見的絲線在繡架的布底上刺繡。較小的阿瑪蘭塔不夠雅緻，但她從已故的外祖母身上繼承了天生的高貴和自尊心。呆在她們旁邊的是阿卡蒂奧，他身上雖已顯露了父親的體魄，但看上去還是個孩子。他在奧雷連諾的指導下學習首飾技術，奧雷連諾還教他讀書寫字。烏蘇娜明白，她家裏滿是成年的人，她的孩子們很快就要結婚，也要養孩子，全家就得分開，因爲這座房子不夠大家住了。於是，她拿出長年累月艱苦勞動積攢的錢，跟工匠們商量好，開始擴充住宅。她吩咐增建：一間正式客廳——用來接待客人：另一間更舒適、涼爽的大廳——供全家之用，一個飯廳，擁有一張能坐十二人的桌子；九間臥室，窗戶都面向庭院；一道長廊，由玫瑰花圃和寬大的欄杆（欄杆上放着一盆盆碳類植物和秋海棠）擋住晌午的陽光。而且，她還決定擴大廚房，安置兩個爐竈；拆掉原來的庫房（皮拉·苔列娜曾在裏面向霍·阿卡蒂奧預言過他的未來），另蓋一間大一倍的庫房，以便家中經常都有充足的糧食儲備。在院子裏，在大慄樹的濃蔭下面，烏蘇娜囑咐搭兩個浴棚：一個女浴棚，一個男浴棚，而星後卻是寬敞的馬廄、鐵絲網圍住的雞窩和擠奶棚，此外有個四面敞開的鳥籠，偶然飛來的鳥兒高興棲息在那兒就棲息在那兒。烏蘇娜帶領着幾十名泥瓦匠和木匠，彷彿染上了大大的“幻想熱”，決定光線和空氣進人屋子的方位，劃分面帆完全不受限。馬孔多建村時修蓋的這座簡陋房子，堆滿了各種工具和建築材料，工人們累得汗流浹背，老是提醒旁人不要妨礙他們幹活，而他們總是碰到那隻裝着骸骨的袋子，它那沉悶的咔嚓聲簡直叫人惱火。誰也不明白，在這一片混亂中，在生石灰和瀝青的氣味中，地下怎會立起一座房子，這房子不僅是全鎮最大的，而且是沼澤地區最涼爽宜人的。最不理解這一點的是霍·阿·布恩蒂亞，甚至在大變動的高潮中，他也沒有放棄突然攝到上帝影像的嘗試。新房子快要竣工的時候，烏蘇娜把他拉出了幻想的世界，告訴他說，她接到一道命令：房屋正面必須刷成藍色，不能刷成他們希望的白色。她把正式公文給他看。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞沒有馬上明白他的妻子說些什麼，首先看了看紙兒上的簽字。
“這個人是誰？”他問。