世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第1章Part 3

"It's the smell of the devil," she said.
"Not at all," Melquíades corrected her. "It has been proven that the devil has sulphuric properties and this is just a little corrosive sublimate."
Always didactic, he went into a learned exposition of the diabolical properties of cinnabar, but úrsula paid no attention to him, although she took the children off to pray. That biting odor would stay forever in her mind linked to the memory of Melquíades.
The rudimentary laboratory-in addition to a profusion of pots, funnels, retorts, filters, and sieves-was made up of a primitive water pipe, a glass beaker with a long, thin neck, a reproduction of the philosopher's egg, and a still the gypsies themselves had built in accordance with modern descriptions of the three-armed alembic of Mary the Jew. Along with those items, Melquíades left samples of the seven metals that corresponded to the seven planets, the formulas of Moses and Zosimus for doubling the quantity of gold, and a set of notes and sketches concerning the processes of the Great Teaching that would permit those who could interpret them to undertake the manufacture of the philosopher's stone. Seduced by the simplicity of the formulas to double the quantity of gold, José Arcadio Buendía paid court to úrsula for several weeks so that she would let him dig up her colonial coins and increase them by as many times as it was possible to subdivide mercury. úrsula gave in, as always, to her husband's unyielding obstinacy. Then José Arcadio Buendía threw three doubloons into a pan and fused them with copper filings, orpiment, brimstone, and lead. He put it all to boil in a pot of castor oil until he got a thick and pestilential syrup which was more like common caramel than valuable gold. In risky and desperate processes of distillation, melted with the seven planetary metals, mixed with hermetic mercury and vitriol of Cyprus, and put back to cook in hog fat for lack of any radish oil, úrsula's precious inheritance was reduced to a large piece of burnt hog cracklings that was firmly stuck to the bottom of the pot.

“這是魔鬼的氣味，”她說。
“根本不是，”梅爾加德斯糾正她。“別人證明魔鬼只有硫磺味，這兒不過是一點點昇汞。”
接着，他用同樣教誨的口吻大談特談硃砂的特性。烏蘇娜對他的話沒有任何興趣，就帶着孩子析禱去了。後來，這種刺鼻的氣味經常使她想起梅爾加德斯。
除了許多鐵鍋、漏斗、曲頸瓶、篩子和過濾器，簡陋的試驗室裏還有普通熔鐵爐、長頸玻璃燒瓶、點金石仿製品以及三臂蒸餾器；此種蒸餾器是猶太女人馬利姬曾經用過的，現由吉卜賽人自己按照最新說明製成。此外，梅爾加德斯還留下了七種與六個星球有關的金屬樣品、摩西和索西莫斯的倍金方案、鍊金術筆記和圖解，誰能識別這些筆記和圖解，誰就能夠製作點金石。霍·阿·布恩蒂亞認爲倍金方案比較簡單，就入迷了。他一連幾個星期纏住烏蘇娜，央求她從密藏的小盒子裏掏出舊金幣來，讓金子成倍地增加，水銀能夠分成多少份，金子就能增加多少倍。象往常一樣，鳥蘇娜沒有拗過大夫的固執要求。於是，霍·阿·布恩蒂亞把三十枚金幣丟到鐵鍋裏，拿它們跟雌黃、銅屑、水銀和鉛一起熔化。然後又把這一切倒在蓖麻油鍋裏，在烈火上熬了一陣。直到最後熬成一鍋惡臭的濃漿，不象加倍的金子，倒象普通的焦糖。經過多次拼命的、冒階的試驗：蒸餾啦，跟七種天體金屬一起熔鍊啦，加進黑梅斯水銀和塞浦路斯硫酸鹽啦，在豬油裏重新熬煮啦（因爲沒有蘿蔔油），烏蘇娜的寶貴遺產變成了一大塊焦糊的渣滓，粘在鍋底了。