世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第2章Part 3

It was a fine June night, cool and with a moon, and they were awake and frolicking in bed until dawn, indifferent to the breeze that passed through the bedroom, loaded with the weeping of Prudencio Aguilar's kin.
The matter was put down as a duel of honor, but both of them were left with a twinge in their conscience. One night, when she could not sleep, úrsula went out into the courtyard to get some water and she saw Prudencio Aguilar by the water jar. He was livid, a sad expression on his face, trying to cover the hole in his throat with a plug made of esparto grass. It did not bring on fear in her, but pity. She went back to the room and told her husband what she had seen, but he did not think much of it. "This just means that we can't stand the weight of our conscience." Two nights later úrsula saw Prudencio Aguilar again, in the bathroom, using the esparto plug to wash the clotted blood from his throat. On another night she saw him strolling in the rain. José Arcadio Buendía, annoyed by his wife's hallucinations, went out into the courtyard armed with the spear. There was the dead man with his sad expression.
"You go to hell," José Arcadio Buendía shouted at him. "Just as many times as you come back, I'll kill you again."
Prudencio Aguilar did not go away, nor did José Arcadio Buendía dare throw the spear. He never slept well after that. He was tormented by the immense desolation with which the dead man had looked at him through the rain, his deep nostalgia as he yearned for living people, the anxiety with which he searched through the house looking for some water with which to soak his esparto plug. "He must be suffering a great deal," he said to úrsula. "You can see that he's so very lonely." She was so moved that the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house. One night when he found him washing his wound in his own room, José Anedio Buendía could no longer resist.
"It's all right, Prudencio," he told him. "We're going to leave this town, just as far away as we can go, and we'll never come back. Go in peace now."
That was how they undertook the crossing of the mountains. Several friends of José Arcadio Buendía, young men like him, excited, by the adventure, dismantled their houses and packed up, along with their wives and children, to head toward the land that no one had promised them. Before he left, José Arcadio Buendía buried the spear in the courtyard and, one after the other, he cut the throats of his magnificent fighting cocks, trusting that in that way he could give some measure of peace to Prudencio Aguilar. All that úrsula took along were a trunk with her bridal clothes, a few household utensils, and the small chest with the gold pieces that she had inherited from her father. They did not lay out any definite itinerary. They simply tried to go in a direction opposite to the road to Riohacha so that they would not leave any trace or meet any people they knew. It was an absurd journey. After fourteen months, her stomach corrupted by monkey meat and snake stew, úrsula gave birth to a son who had all of hisfeatures human. She had traveled half of the trip in a hammock that two men carried on their shoulders, because swelling had disfigured her legs and her varicose veins had puffed up like bubbles. Although it was pitiful to see them with their sunken stomachs and languid eyes, the children survived the journey better than their parents, and most of the time it was fun for them. One morning, after almost two years of crossing, they became the first mortals to see the western slopes of the mountain range. From the cloudy summit they saw the immense aquatic expanse of the great swamp as it spread out toward the other side of the world. But they never found the sea. One night, after several months of lost wandering through the swamps, far away now from the last Indians they had met on their way, they camped on the banks of a stony river whose waters were like a torrent of frozen glass. Years later, during the second civil war, Colonel Aureliano Buendía tried to follow that same route in order to take Riohacha bysurprise and after six days of traveling he understood that it was madness. Nevertheless, the night on which they camped beside the river, his father's host had the look of ship-wrecked people with no escape, but their number had grown during the crossing and they were all prepared (and they succeeded) to die of old age. José Arcadio Buendía dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror wails rose up. He asked what city it was and they answered him with a name that he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo. On the following day he convinced his men that they would never find the sea. He ordered them to cut down the trees to make a clearing beside the river, at the coolest spot on the bank, and there they founded the village.

這是一個美妙的六月的夜晚，月光皎潔，涼爽宜人。他倆通古未睡，在牀上折騰，根本沒去理會穿過臥室的輕風，風兒帶來了普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾親人的哭聲。
人們把這樁事情說成是光榮的決鬥，可是兩夫婦卻感到了良心的譴責。有一天夜裏，烏蘇娜還沒睡覺，出去喝水，在院子裏的大土罐旁邊看見了普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾。他臉色死白、十分悲傷，試圖用一塊麻屑堵住喉部正在流血的傷口。看見死人，烏蘇娜感到的不是恐懼，而是憐憫。她回到臥室裏，把這件怪事告訴了丈夫，可是丈夫並不重視她的話。“死人是不會走出墳墓的，”他說。“這不過是咱們受到良心的責備。”過了兩夜，烏蘇娜在浴室裏遇見普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾——他正在用麻屑擦洗脖子上的凝血。另一個夜晚，她發現他在雨下徘徊。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞討厭妻子的幻象，就帶着標槍到院子裏去。死人照舊悲傷地立在那兒。
“滾開！”霍·阿·布恩蒂亞向他吆喝。“你回來多少次，我就要打死你多少次。”
普魯登希奧沒有離開，而霍·阿·布恩蒂亞卻不敢拿標槍向他擲去。從那時起，他就無法安穩地睡覺了。他老是痛苦地想起死人穿過雨絲望着他的無限淒涼的眼神，想起死人眼裏流露的對活人的深切懷念，想起普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾四處張望。尋找水來浸溼一塊麻屑的不安神情。“大概，他很痛苦，”霍·阿·布恩蒂亞向妻子說。“看來，他很孤獨。”烏蘇娜那麼憐憫死人，下一次遇見時，她發現他盯着爐竈上的鐵鍋，以爲他在尋找什麼，於是就在整個房子裏到處都給他擺了一罐罐水。那一夜，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞看見死人在他自己的臥室裏洗傷口，於是就屈服了。
“好吧，普魯登希奧，”他說。“我們儘量離開這個村子遠一些，決不再回這兒來了。現在，你就安心走吧。”
就這樣，他們打算翻過山嶺到海邊去。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞的幾個朋友，象他一樣年輕，也想去冒險，離開自己的家，帶着妻室兒女去尋找土地……渺茫的土地。在離開村子之前，霍。阿·布恩蒂亞把標槍埋在院子裏，接二連三砍掉了自己所有鬥雞的腦袋，希望以這樣的犧牲給普魯登希奧·阿吉廖爾一些安慰。烏蘇娜帶走的只是一口放着嫁妝的箱子、一點兒家庭用具、以及藏放父親遺產——金幣——的一隻盒子。誰也沒有預先想好一定的路線。他們決定朝着與列奧阿察相反的方向前進，以免遇見任何熟人，從而無影無蹤地消失。這是一次荒唐可笑的旅行。過了一年零兩個月，烏蘇娜雖然用猴內和蛇湯毀壞了自己的肚子，卻終於生下了一個兒子，嬰兒身體各部完全沒有牲畜的徵狀。因她腳腫，腳上的靜脈脹得象囊似的，整整一半的路程，她都不得不躺在兩個男人擡着的擔架上面。孩子們比父母更容易忍受艱難困苦，他們大部分時間都鮮蹦活跳，儘管樣兒可憐——兩眼深陷，肚子癟癟的。有一天早晨，在幾乎兩年的流浪以後，他們成了第一批看見山嶺西坡的人。從雲霧遮蔽的山嶺上，他們望見了一片河流縱橫的遼闊地帶——直伸到天邊的巨大沼澤。可是他們始終沒有到達海邊。在沼澤地裏流浪了幾個月，路上沒有遇見一個人，有一天夜晚，他們就在一條多石的河岸上紮營，這裏的河水很象凝固的液體玻璃。多年以後，在第二次國內戰爭時期，奧雷連諾打算循着這條路線突然佔領列奧阿察，可是六天以後他才明白，他的打算純粹是發瘋。然而那夭晚上，在河邊紮營以後，他父親的旅伴們雖然很象遇到船舶失事的人，但是旅途上他們的人數增多了，大夥兒都準備活到老（這一點他們做到了）。夜裏，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞做了個夢，營地上彷彿矗立起一座熱鬧的城市，房屋的牆壁都用晶瑩奪目的透明材料砌成。他打聽這是什麼城市，聽到的回答是一個陌生的、毫無意義的名字，可是這個名字在夢裏卻異常響亮動聽：馬孔多。翌日，他就告訴自己的人，他們絕對找不到海了。他叫大夥兒砍倒樹木，在河邊最涼爽的地方開闢一塊空地，在空地上建起了一座村莊。