世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第13章Part3

In the house they simply thought that her mind was wandering, especially since the time she had begun walking about with her right arm raised like the Arch-angel Gabriel. Fernanda, however, realized that there was a sun of clairvoyance in the shadows of that wandering, for úrsula could say without hesitation how much money had been spent in the house during the previous year. Amaranta had a similar idea one day as her mother was stirring a pot of soup in the kitchen and said all at once without knowing that they were listening to her that the corn grinder they had bought from the first gypsies and that had disappeared during the time before José Arcadio, had taken his sixty-five trips around the world was still in Pilar Ternera's house. Also almost a hundred years old, but fit and agile in spite of her inconceivable fatness, which frightened children as her laughter had frightened the doves in other times, Pilar Ternera was not surprised that úrsula was correct because her own experience was beginning to tell her that an alert old age can be more keen than the cards. Nevertheless, when úrsula realized that she had not had enough time to consolidate the vocation of José Arcadio, she let herself be disturbed by consternation. She began to make mistakes, trying to see with her eyes the things that intuition allowed her to see with greater clarity. One morning she poured the contents of an inkwell over the boy's head thinking that it was rose water. She stumbled so much in her insistence in taking part in everything that she felt herself upset by gusts of bad humor and she tried to get rid of the shadows that were beginning to wrap her in a straitjacket of cobwebs. It was then that it occurred to her that her clumsiness was not the first victory of decrepitude and darkness but a sentence passed by time. She thought that previously, when God did not make the same traps out of the months and years that the Turks used when they measured a yard of percale, things were different. Now children not only grew faster, but even feelings developed in a different way. No sooner had Remedios the Beauty ascended to heaven in body and soul than the inconsiderate Fernanda was going about mumbling to herself because her sheets had been carried off. The bodies of the Aureli-anos were no sooner cold in their graves than Aureli-ano Segun-do had the house lighted up again, filled with drunkards playing the accordion and dousing themselves in champagne, as if dogs and not Christians had died, and as if that madhouse which had cost her so many headaches and so many candy animals was destined to become a trash heap of perdition. Remembering those things as she prepared José Arcadio's trunk, úrsula wondered if it was not preferable to lie down once and for all in her grave and let them throw the earth over her, and she asked God, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications, and asking over and over she was stirring up her own confusion and she felt irrepressible desires to let herself go and scamper about like a foreigner and allow herself at last an instant of rebellion, that instant yearned for so many times and so many times postponed, putting her resignation aside and shitting on everything once and for all and drawing out of her heart the infinite stacks of bad words that she had been forced to swallow over a century of conformity.
"Shit!" she shouted.
Amaranta, who was starting to put the clothes into the trunk, thought that she had been bitten by a scorpion.
"Where is it?" she asked in alarm.
"What?"

大家認爲，烏蘇娜不過是在胡言亂語，特別是她象天使加百利那樣伸出右手打算走走的時候。但是菲蘭達看出，這種胡言裏面有時也有理性的光輝，因爲烏蘇娜能夠毫不口吃地回答，過去一年家中花了多少錢。阿瑪蘭塔也有同樣的想法。有一次，在廚房裏，她的母親正在鍋裏攪湯，不知道人家在聽她說話，竟突然說老玉米的手磨至今還在皮拉·苔列娜家中，這個手磨是向第一批吉卜賽人買來的，在霍·阿卡蒂奧六十五次環遊世界之前就不見了。皮拉·苔歹娜幾乎也有一百歲了，可是依然隱壯、靈活，儘管孩子們害怕她那不可思議的肥胖，就象從前鴿子害怕她那響亮的笑聲；她對烏蘇娜的話並不感到奇怪，因爲她已相信，老年人清醒的頭腦常常比紙牌更加敏銳。然而，烏蘇娜發現自己沒有足夠的時間教導霍·阿卡蒂奧確立他的志向時，就陷入了沮喪的狀態。那些靠直覺弄得更清楚的東西，她想用眼睛去看，就失誤了。有一天早晨，她把一瓶墨水倒在孩子頭上，還以爲它是花露水哩。她總想幹預一切事情，碰了一個個釘子之後，就感到越來越苦惱，妄圖擺脫周圍蛛網一般的黑暗。接着她又想到，她的失誤並不是衰老和黑暗第一次戰勝她的證明，而是時世不佳的結果。她想，跟土耳其人量布的花招不一樣，從前上帝還不騙人的時候，一切都是不同的。現在呢，不僅孩子們長得很快，甚至人的感覺也不象以前那樣了。俏姑娘雷麥黛絲的靈魂和軀體剛剛升到空中，沒有心肝的菲蘭達馬上嘮嘮叨叨，因爲她的牀單飛走了。十六個奧雷連諾在墳墓裏屍骨未寒，奧雷連諾第二又把一幫酒鬼帶到家中，彈琴作樂，狂飲濫喝，好象死去的不是基督徒，而是一羣狗；她傷了那麼多腦筋、耗去了那麼多糖動物的這座瘋人院似乎註定要成爲罪惡的淵藪了。烏蘇娜給霍·阿卡蒂奧裝箱子的時候，一面回憶痛苦的往事，一面問了問自己，躺進墳墓，讓人在她身上撒上泥土是不是更好一些呢；而且她又無所畏懼地請問上帝，他是不是真以爲人是鐵鑄的，能夠經受那麼多的苦難；但她越問越糊塗，難以遏制地希望象外國人那樣蹦跳起來，最終來一次片刻的暴動，這種片刻的暴動是她嚮往了多次，推遲了多次的；她不願屈從地生活，熱望唾棄一切，從心中倒出一大堆罵人的話，而這些話她己低三下四地壓抑整整一個世紀了。
“混蛋！”烏蘇娜罵了一聲。
正在動手衣服裝進箱子的阿瑪蘭塔，以爲蠍子螫了母親。
“它在哪兒？”阿瑪蘭塔驚駭地問。
“什麼？”