世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第2章Part 1

WHEN THE PIRATE Sir Francis Drake attacked Riohacha in the sixteenth century, úrsula Iguarán's great-great-grandmother became so frightened with the ringing of alarm bells and the firing of cannons that she lost control of her nerves and sat down on a lighted stove. The burns changed her into a useless wife for the rest of her days. She could only sit on one side, cushioned by pillows, and something strange must have happened to her way of walking, for she never walked again in public. She gave up all kinds of social activity, obsessed with the notion that her body gave off a singed odor. Dawn would find her in the courtyard, for she did not dare fall asleep lest she dream of the English and their ferocious attack dogs as they came through the windows of her bedroom to submit her to shameful tortures with their red-hot irons. Her husband, an Aragonese merchant by whom she had two children, spent half the value of his store on medicines and pastimes in an attempt to alleviate her terror. Finally he sold thebusiness and took the family to live far from the sea in a settlement of peaceful Indians located in the foothills, where he built his wife a bedroom without windows so that the pirates of her dream would have no way to get in.
In that hidden village there was a native-born tobacco planter who had lived there for some time, Don José Arcadio Buendía, with whom úrsula's great-great--grandfather established a partnership that was so lucrative that within a few years they made a fortune. Several centuries later the great-great-grandson of the native-born planter married the great-great-granddaugh-ter of the Aragonese. Therefore, every time that úrsula became exercised over her husband's mad ideas, she would leap back over three hundred years of fate and curse the day that Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha. It was simply a way. of giving herself some relief, because actually they were joined till death by a bond that was more solid that love: a common prick of conscience. They were cousins. They had grown up together in the old village that both of their ancestors, with their work and their good habits, had transformed into one of the finest towns in the province. Although their marriage was predicted from the time they had come into the world, when they expressed their desire to be married their own relatives tried to stop it. They were afraid that those two healthy products of two races that had interbred over the centuries would suffer the shame of breeding iguanas. There had already been a horrible precedent. An aunt of úrsula's, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who went through life wearing loose, baggy trousers and who bled to death after having lived forty-two years in the purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair on the tip. A pig's tail that was never allowed to be seen by any woman and that cost him his life when a butcher friend did him the favor of chopping it off with his cleaver. José Arcadio Buendía, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: "I don't care if I have piglets as long as they can talk." So they were married amidst a festival of fireworks and a brass band that went on for three days. They would have been happy from then on if úrsula's mother had not terrified her with all manner of sinister predictions about their offspring, even to the extreme of advising her to refuse to consummate the marriage. Fearing that her stout and willful husband would rape her while she slept, úrsula, before going to bed, would put on a rudimentary kind of drawers that her mother had made out of sailcloth and had reinforced with a system of crisscrossed leather straps and that was closed in the front by a thick iron buckle. That was how they lived for several months. During the day he would take care of his fighting cocks and she would do frame embroidery with her mother. At night they would wrestle for several hours in an anguished violence that seemed to be a substitute for the act of love, until popular intuition got a whiff of something irregular and the rumor spread that úrsula was still a virgin a year after her marriage because her husband was impotent. José Arcadio Buendía was the last one to hear the rumor.
"Look at what people are going around saying, úrsula," he told his wife very calmly.
"Let them talk," she said. "We know that it's not true."

十六世紀，海盜弗蘭西斯·德拉克圍攻列奧阿察的時候，烏蘇娜。伊古阿蘭的曾祖母被噹噹的警鐘聲和隆隆的炮擊聲嚇壞了，由於神經緊張，競一屁股坐在生了火的爐子上。因此，曾祖母受了嚴重的的傷，再也無法過夫妻生活。她只能用半個屁股坐着，而且只能坐在軟墊子上，步態顯然也是不雅觀的；所以，她就不願在旁人面前走路了。她認爲自己身上有一股焦糊味兒，也就拒絕跟任何人交往。她經常在院子裏過夜，一直呆到天亮，不敢走進臥室去睡覺：因爲她老是夢見英國人帶着惡狗爬進窗子，用燒紅的鐵器無恥地刑訊她。她給丈夫生了兩個兒子；她的丈夫是亞拉岡的商人，把自己的一半錢財都用來醫治妻子，希望儘量減輕她的痛苦。最後，他盤掉自己的店鋪，帶者一家人遠遠地離開海濱，到了印第安人的一個村莊，村莊是在山腳下，他在那兒爲妻子蓋了一座沒有窗子的住房，免得她夢中的海盜鑽進屋子。
在這荒僻的村子裏，早就有個兩班牙人的後裔，叫做霍塞·阿卡蒂奧·布恩蒂亞，他是栽種菸草的；烏蘇娜的曾祖父和他一起經營這樁有利可圖的事業，短時期內兩人都建立了很好的家業。多少年過去了，西班牙後裔的曾孫兒和亞拉岡人的曾孫女結了婚。每當大夫的荒唐行爲使烏蘇娜生氣的時候，她就一下子跳過世事紛繁的三百年，咒罵弗蘭西斯·德拉克圍攻列奧阿察的那個日子。不過，她這麼做，只是爲了減輕心中的痛苦；實際上，把她跟他終生連接在一起的，是比愛情更牢固的關係：共同的良心譴責。烏蘇娜和丈夫是表兄妹，他倆是在古老的村子裏一塊兒長大的，由於沮祖輩輩的墾殖，這個村莊已經成了今省最好的一個。儘管他倆之間的婚姻是他倆剛剛出世就能預見到的，然而兩個年輕人表示結婚願望的時候，雙方的家長都反對。幾百年來，兩族的人是雜配的，他們生怕這兩個健全的後代可能丟臉地生出一隻蜥蜴。這樣可怕的事已經發牛過一次。烏蘇娜的嬸嬸嫁給霍·阿·布恩蒂亞的叔叔，生下了一個兒子：這個兒子一輩子部穿着肥大的燈籠褲，活到四十二歲還沒結婚就流血而死，因爲他生下來就長着一條尾巴——尖端有一撮毛的螺旋形軟骨。這種名副其實的豬尾巴是他不願讓任何一個女人看見的，最終要了他的命，因爲一個熟識的屠夫按照他的要求，用切肉刀把它割掉了。十九歲的霍·阿·布恩蒂亞無憂無慮地用一句話結束了爭論：“我可不在乎生出豬崽子，只要它們會說話就行。”於是他倆在花炮聲中舉行了婚禮銅管樂隊，一連鬧騰了三個晝夜。在這以後，年輕夫婦本來可以幸福地生活，可是烏蘇娜的母親卻對未來的後代作出不大吉利的預言，藉以嚇唬自己的女兒，甚至慫恿女兒拒絕按照章法跟他結合。她知道大夫是個力大、剛強的人，擔心他在她睡着時強迫她，所以，她在上牀之前，都穿上母親拿厚帆布給她縫成的一條襯褲；襯褲是用交叉的皮帶繫住的，前面用一個大鐵釦扣緊。夫婦倆就這樣過了若干月。白天，他照料自己的鬥雞，她就和母親一塊兒在刺染上繡花。夜晚，年輕夫婦卻陷入了煩惱而激烈的鬥爭，這種鬥爭逐漸代替了愛情的安慰。可是，機靈的鄰人立即覺得情況不妙，而且村中傳說，烏蘇娜出嫁一年以後依然是個處女，因爲丈大有點兒毛病。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞是最後聽到這個謠言的。
“烏蘇娜，你聽人家在說什麼啦，”他向妻子平靜他說。
“讓他們去嚼舌頭吧，”她回答。“咱們知道那不是真的。”