| When she said it she realized that she was giving the same reply that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had given in his death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle. But even then she did not give resignation a chance. She scolded Jos?Arcadio Segundo as if he were a child and insisted that he take a bath and shave and lend a hand in fixing up the house. The simple idea of abandoning the room that had given him peace terrified Jos?Arcadio Segundo. He shouted that there was no human power capable of making him go out because he did not want to see the train with two hundred cars loaded with dead people which left Macondo every day at dusk on its way to the sea. “They were all of those who were at the station,?he shouted. “Three thousand four hundred eight.?Only then did ?rsula realize that he was in a world of shadows more impenetrable than hers, as unreachable and solitary as that of his great-grandfather. She left him in the room, but she succeeded in getting them to leave the padlock off, clean it every day, throw the chamberpots away except for one, and to keep Jos?Arcadio Segundo as clean and presentable as his great-grandfather had been during his long captivity under the chestnut tree. At first Fernanda interpreted that bustle as an attack of senile madness and it was difficult for her to suppress her exasperation. But about that time Jos?Arcadio told her that he planned to come to Macondo from Rome before taking his final vows, and the good news filled her with such enthusiasm that from morning to night she would be seen watering the flowers four times a day so that her son would not have a bad impression of the house. It was that same incentive which induced her to speed up her correspondence with the invisible doctors and to replace the pots of ferns and oregano and the begonias on the porch even before ?rsula found out that they had been destroyed by Aureliano Segundo’s exterminating fury. Later on she sold the silver service and bought ceramic dishes, pewter bowls and soup spoons, and alpaca tablecloths, and with them brought poverty to the cupboards that had been accustomed to India Company chinaware and Bohemian crystal. ?rsula always tried to go a step beyond. “Open the windows and the doors,?she shouted. “Cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that’s the only way to drive off rain.?But it was a vain illusion. She was too old then and living on borrowed time to repeat the miracle of the little candy animals, and none of her descendants had inherited her strength. The house stayed closed on Fernanda’s orders. |
这时，她忽然想起奥雷连诺上校在死刑犯牢房里也曾这么回答过她。一想到时光并没有像她最后认为的那样消失，而在轮回往返，打着圈子，她又打了个哆嗦。然而这一次乌苏娜没有泄气。她像训斥小孩儿似的，把霍·阿卡蒂奥第二教训了一顿，逼着他洗脸、刮胡子，还要他帮助她完成房子的恢复工作。自愿与世隔绝的霍·阿卡蒂奥第二，想到自己必须离开这个使他得到宁静的房间就吓坏了。他忍不住叫嚷起来，说是没有什么力量能够使他离开这儿，说他不想看到两百节车厢的列车，因为列车上装满了尸体，每晚都从马孔多向海边驶去。“在车站上被枪杀的人都在那些车厢里，三千四百零八个。”乌苏娜这才明白，霍·阿卡蒂奥第二生活在比她注定要碰上的黑暗更不可洞察的黑暗中，生活在跟他曾祖父一样闭塞和孤独的天地里。她不去打扰霍·阿卡蒂奥第二，只是叫人从他的房门上取下挂锁，除留下一个便盆外，把其它的便盆都扔掉，每天到那儿打扫一遍，让霍·阿卡蒂奥第二保持整齐清洁，甚至不逊于他那长期待在栗树下面的曾祖父。起先，菲兰达把乌苏娜总想活动的愿望看作是老年昏呆症的发作，勉强压住自己的怒火。可是就在这时，威尼斯来了一封信——霍·阿卡蒂奥向她说，他打算在实现终身的誓言之前回一次马孔多。这个好消息使得菲兰达那么高兴，她自己也开始从早到晚收拾屋子，一天浇四次花，只要老家不让她的儿子产生坏印象就成。她又开始跟那些没有见过的医生通信，并且把欧洲蕨花盆、牛至花盆以及秋海棠花盆都陈列在长廊上，很久以后乌苏娜才知道它们都让奥雷连诺第二在一阵破坏性的愤怒中摔碎了。后来，菲兰达卖掉了一套银制餐具，买了一套陶制餐具、一些锡制汤碗和大汤勺，还有一些锡制器皿；从此，一贯保存英国古老瓷器、波希米亚水晶玻璃器皿的壁橱，就显得很可怜了。可是乌苏娜觉得这还不够。“把门窗都打开吧，”她大声说。“烤一些肉，炸一些鱼，买一些最大的甲鱼，让外国人来作客，让他们在所有的角落里铺床，干脆在玫瑰花上撒尿，让他们坐在桌边，想吃多少就吃多少，让他们连打响嗝、胡说八道，让他们穿着大皮鞋径直闯进一个个房间，把到处都踩脏，让他们跟我们一起干他们愿干的一切事儿，因为我们只有这样才能驱除破败的景象。”可是乌苏娜想干的是不可能的事。她已经太老了，在人世间活得太久了，再也不能制作糖动物了，而子孙后代又没继承她那顽强的奋斗精神。于是，按照菲兰达的吩咐，一扇扇房门依然紧紧地闭着。 |
| Aureliano Segundo, who had taken his trunks back to the house of Petra Cotes, barely had enough means to see that the family did not starve to death. With the raffling of the mule, Petra Cotes and he bought some more animals with which they managed to set up a primitive lottery business. Aureliano Segundo would go from house to house selling the tickets that he himself painted with colored ink to make them more attractive and convincing, and perhaps he did not realize that many people bought them out of gratitude and most of them out of pity. Nevertheless, even the most pitying purchaser was getting a chance to win a pig for twenty cents or a calf for thirty-two, and they became so hopeful that on Tuesday nights Petra Cotes’s courtyard overflowed with people waiting for the moment when a child picked at random drew the winning number from a bag. It did not take long to become a weekly fair, for at dusk food and drink stands would be set up in the courtyard and many of those who were favored would slaughter the animals they had won right there on the condition that someone else supply the liquor and music, so that without having wanted to, Aureliano Segundo suddenly found himself playing the accordion again and participating in modest tourneys of voracity. Those humble replicas of the revelry of former times served to show Aureliano Segundo himself how much his spirits had declined and to what a degree his skill as a masterful carouser had dried up. He was a changed man. The two hundred forty pounds that he had attained during the days when he had been challenged by The Elephant had been reduced to one hundred fifty-six; the glowing and bloated tortoise face had turned into that of an iguana, and he was always on the verge of boredom and fatigue. For Petra Cotes, however, he had never been a better man than at that time, perhaps because the pity that he inspired was mixed with love, and because of the feeling of solidarity that misery aroused in both of them. The broken-down bed ceased to be the scene of wild activities and was changed into an intimate refuge. Freed of the repetitious mirrors, which had been auctioned off to buy animals for the lottery, and from the lewd damasks and velvets, which the mule had eaten, they would stay up very late with the innocence of two sleepless grandparents, taking advantage of the time to draw up accounts and put away pennies which they formerly wasted just for the sake of it. Sometimes the cock’s crow would find them piling and unpiling coins, taking a bit away from here to put there, to that this bunch would be enough to keep Fernanda happy and that would be for Amaranta ?rsula’s shoes, and that other one for Santa Sofía de la Piedad, who had not had a new dress since the time of all the noise, and this to order the coffin if ?rsula died, and this for the coffee which was going up a cent a pound in price every three months, and this for the sugar which sweetened less every day, and this for the lumber which was still wet from the rains, and this other one for the paper and the colored ink to make tickets with, and what was left over to pay off the winner of the April calf whose hide they had miraculously saved when it came down with a symptomatic carbuncle just when all of the numbers in the raffle had already been sold. Those rites of poverty were so pure that they nearly always set aside the largest share for Fernanda, and they did not do so out of remorse or charity, but because her well-being was more important to them than their own. What was really happening to them, although neither of them realized it, was that they both thought of Fernanda as the daughter that they would have liked to have and never did, to the point where on a certain occasion they resigned themselves to eating crumbs for three days, so that she could buy a Dutch tablecloth. Nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just enough to live with. During the waking hours when the accounts were bad. they wondered what had happened in the world for the animals not to breed with the same drive as before, why money slipped through their fingers, and why people who a short time before had burned rolls of bills in the carousing considered it highway robbery to charge twelve cents for a raffle of six hens. Aureliano Segundo thought without saying so that the evil was not in the world but in some hidden place in the mysterious heart of Petra Cotes, where something had happened during the deluge that had turned the animals sterile and made money scarce. Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to fund the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs. |
这时，奥雷连诺第二又把自己的箱子搬进了佩特娜·柯特的房子，他剩下的钱只够勉强维持全家不致饿死。有一次抽骡子彩票时赢了一笔钱，奥雷连诺第二和佩特娜·柯特便又买了一些牲畜，开办了一家简陋的彩票公司。奥雷连诺第二亲自用彩色墨水绘制彩票，竭力使它们具有尽可能令人相信的迷人模样，然后走家串户地兜售彩票。也许连他自己也没发现，不少人买他的彩票是出于感激的心情，大部分人则是出于怜悯心。然而，即使是最有怜们心的买主，也都指望花二十个生丁赢得一头猪，或者花三十二个生丁赢得一头牛犊。这种指望把大家搞得挺紧张，以致每星期二晚上佩特娜·柯特家的院子里都聚集了一群人，等待一个有幸被选出来开彩的小孩子刹那间从一只布袋里抽出中彩的号码。这种集会很快变成了每星期一次的集市。天一黑，院子里便摆了一张张放着食品和饮料的桌子，许多幸运的人愿意宰掉赢得的牲畜供大家享受，但是有个条件：别人得请些乐师来，并且供应伏特加酒；这样，奥雷连诺第二只好违背自己的意愿，重新拿起手风琴，并且勉强参加饕餐比赛。昔日酒宴上这些无聊的做法，使得奥雷连诺第二认识到，他以往的精力已经耗尽，过去那种主宰者和舞蹈家的创造才能也已枯竭。是的，他变了。有一天，他向“母象”挑战，他夸口说他能承担一百二十公斤的重量，结果不得不减为七十八公斤，他那淳厚的脸庞，本来就由于喝醉了酒而肿胀起来，现在犹如扁平的甲鱼嘴脸，一位长就变得好似鬣蜥的嘴脸了。沮丧和疲惫混杂的神色也一直没从他的脸上消失过。可是佩特娜。 柯特还从来没像现在这样强烈地爱过奥雷连诺第二，可能是因为她把他的怜悯和两人在贫穷中建立的友情当成了爱情。现在，他们恋爱用的旧床已经破得摇摇晃晃，逐渐变成了他们秘密谈心的地方，那些照出他们每个动作的镜子已经取下来卖掉，卖得的钱购买了一些专供抽彩用的牲畜，那些细布被单和能激起情欲的绒被也已经被骡子嚼坏。一对昔日的情人，两个因为失眠而感到痛苦的老人，每天怀着一种纯洁的心情，直到深夜还精神抖擞，便把从前剧烈消耗体力的时间用来算票据账和钱。有时，他们一直坐到拂晓鸡啼，把钱分成若干小堆，一个个硬币不时从这一小堆挪到那一小堆，为的是这一小堆够菲兰达花销；那一小堆够阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜买一双皮鞋；另一小堆给圣索菲娅·德拉佩德，因为从混乱时期起她是从来没有更新过衣着的，还有一小堆够订购乌苏娜的棺材，以防她一旦去世，再一小堆够买咖啡，一磅咖啡每隔三星期就要上涨一个生丁；另一小堆够买砂糖，砂糖的甜味一天天变得越来越淡了，那一小堆够买雨停后还没晒干的劈柴；这一小堆购买绘制彩票的纸张和彩色墨水；而额外的一小堆够还四月份的一次彩票钱，因为那一次所有的彩票几乎都已卖掉，不料母牛犊身上出现了炭疽症状，只是奇迹般地抢救出了它的一张皮。奥雷连诺第二和佩特娜。 柯特的接济带有一种明显的特点，总是把较大的一部分给菲兰达，他们这么做倒不是由于良心的谴责，也不是为了施舍，而是他们认为菲兰达的幸福比自己的更为珍贵。事实上，他俩自己也没意识到，他们关心菲兰达，简直就象关心自己的女儿一样，因为他们一直想有一个女儿，结果却没想成。有一次，为了给菲兰达买一条荷兰亚麻布台布，他们整整吃了三天老玉米粥。但不管他们怎么操劳，也不管他们赚了多少钱，使用了多少心计，每天夜里，得到他们爱护的天使照样累得一下子就睡着了，也不等他们为了使钱够维持生活，把钱的分配和硬币的挪动工作结束。谁知钱永远攒不够，在为失眠感到苦恼的时候，他们不禁自问，这世界上到底发生了什么事呀，为什么牲畜繁殖得不象早先那么多，为什么握在手里的钱竟会贬值，为什么不久前还能无忧无虑地点燃一叠钞票跳孔比阿巴舞（注：男人手执蜡烛的一种舞蹈。）的人，如今大声嚷嚷，说他们在光天化日下遭到了抢劫，虽然向他们索取的不过是可怜的二十个生丁，以便让他们参加一次用六只鸡作奖品的抽彩。奥雷连诺第二虽然嘴上小说，心里却在想，祸根并不在周围世界，而是在佩特娜·柯特那不可捉摸的隐蔽的内心里。在发大水时，不知什么东西挪动了一下位置，于是牲畜便染上了不孕症，钱也开始象水一样流掉。奥雷连诺第二不禁时这个秘密产生了兴趣，以深邃的目光窥视了一下佩特娜·柯特的内心，可是就在他寻找收获的时候，突然遇上了爱情。他试图从自私的目的出发激起佩特娜·柯特的热情，最后却是自己爱上了她。随着他那股柔情的增长，佩特娜·柯特也越来越强烈地爱着奥雷连诺第二。这一年的深秋，她又孩子般天真地恢复了对“哪儿有贫穷，哪儿就有爱情”这句谚语的信念。现在，回忆起往年穷奢极侈的酒宴和放荡不羁的生活，他们不免感到羞愧和懊悔，抱怨两人为最终获得这座无儿无女的孤独天堂所花的代价太大，在那么多年没有生儿育女的同居之后，他俩在热恋中奇迹般地欣然发现，餐桌边的相爱比床上的相爱毫不逊色。他们感到了这样一种幸福：虽然精力衰竭，上了年纪，却依然能象家兔那样嬉戏，象家犬那样逗闹。 |
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